Archive of Our Own

The rotations continued.

Now all they could do was wait for Frodo and Sam to wake. The days turned, slow and blurring in their sameness, and Thorin’s watch grew numbing. Not only that, but he could not bear to watch their frequent nightmares. Frodo would weep, and that was bad enough - but Sam, Sam would call out , begging for Frodo, and it broke Thorin's heart to hear.

Too, Gimli and Legolas seemed rather… preoccupied with each other. Thorin had interrupted their tryst on one memorable occasion, and had vowed (with all the determination and fervour in his body and soul) never to do so again. He’d never needed to see so much of an Elf, let alone his star's furry behind.

And so he spent time with his father, mother and brother, visited his sister, and hovered worriedly over Fili and Kili as they resumed their vigil over Sam and Frodo. Fili would not relinquish his task, no matter the argument. Thorin was prouder of his golden nephew than he could ever express, and fretted about how little sleep he took.

(Fris called it the deepest irony known to Dwarrow-kind.)

The rest of his time he spent reorganising his workroom. The walls were clustered with ploughs, rakes and shovels instead of swords, and a full set of copper-bottomed cookpots, engraved in the flowery designs of the Shire and the angular diamonds of the Dwarves, hung above the hearth. They glowed with the ruddy warmth of the fire, and he rather liked the look of them there.

Now and then, he had company.

“What are you making?” Bilbo peered at his bench. “Not a present for your mother, this.”

Thorin gave the little garden set a fond look. “No. It’s for you.”

Bilbo glanced up, and then he snorted. “And how am I ever to use them? Even if there weren’t the sundering seas between us, my living body is older than half the trees in my garden. And you’re touched in the head if you think I can manage to kneel down and weed any of my garden beds these days.”

“That matters not at all, not to me,” Thorin said, and he reached out and picked up the trowel. It looked a little small and doll-like in his hands, but it would fit a hobbit’s hand perfectly. “And I would not care if you never used them. They were made for you, for you. Not for any other.”

Bilbo’s ears pinked, and he coughed awkwardly. “Well, all right. Did you enjoy making them?”

“They’re not finished. But aye, I like making you things.” Thorin stole a sidelong peek at the Hobbit, and repressed his grin. Bilbo’s face was a picture. He obviously had no idea how to respond to an honest compliment, let alone a well-meant gift.

Or perhaps it was simply because it was Thorin’s work, and Bilbo had no idea how to deal with the emotions such a gift from such hands might produce. Even more likely, maybe he was bemused by the gift itself, and all it stood for. One that was impossible to give, one that needed no answer, one that may never be used – and yet one that was made anyway, in the full knowledge of its hopelessness.

“How are they not finished?” Bilbo said, and he was a little hoarse. “They look perfectly finished to me.”

“I haven’t decorated them yet.” Thorin ran his finger down the handle, the unvarnished and unpainted wood catching upon his skin. “I’ve not decided how. Perhaps snowdrops?”

“If it.” Bilbo stopped, and licked his lips. “If it were me, I should choose. Um. Strawberries.”

Thorin’s head whipped up, and he looked the blushing Hobbit full in the face. “Strawberries.” Perfect goodness. Esteem.

Bilbo squared his shoulders and lifted his chin to Thorin’s stare, even as his face burned red. “Strawberries,” he repeated. “And honey flowers. And perhaps spruce.”

Love sweet and secret, whispered Thorin’s mind. Hope in adversity.

“And at the blade-end, a curling loop of Ivy.” Bilbo was roughly the colour of one of his prized tomatoes, but he did not look away.

Marriage, came the answer, but it felt muted and dim compared to the sudden rushing of blood in Thorin’s ears. “Around the uppermost part of the handle,” he heard his own voice say. Marriage. Marriage.

“That’s right.” Bilbo seemed to have found his footing through wrong- footing Thorin so thoroughly. He smiled warmly, obviously enjoying the expression on Thorin’s face. “Where your index finger is.”

Thorin hadn’t been paying attention to what his hands were doing, and he realised he had continued to run his finger along the handle of the trowel. “Oh.”

“Around the top,” Bilbo prompted. “Like a band.”

A marriage-band.

“No decoration upon the blade, then,” Thorin croaked, and Bilbo’s head shook.

“I’d only be cleaning soil out of any etching or the like, why bother?”

“Because I would embed it in sapphires and diamonds, to show my fidelity and my love for you,” he said, and watched Bilbo’s eyes widen. “I would place blue topaz between the other stones, for your bright mind and clever tongue and your courage.”

Bilbo took a rather loud breath. Thorin wondered if his face were anything like as red as Bilbo’s had been – but no, he did not feel embarrassed. His feelings were no longer a source of shame, and he wore them openly. He had been caught long ago, after all.

“And I would dig for potatoes and carrots with sapphires and diamonds and topaz, would I?” said Bilbo. His throat bobbed.

Thorin laughed a little, deep and content. “Why not? There is no shortage of precious stones in these Halls. But we are remarkably low on gardens, and Hobbits to tend them.”

“Perhaps I could remedy that.”

“Perhaps,” Thorin echoed, and ignored the small pang that travelled through him upon that word. He cannot ever join us here, in our endless waiting. His fate is unknown to all. “I have learned never to underestimate Hobbits.”

“Eventually.” Bilbo took a step closer, and then his eyes dropped to the bare unadorned trowel again. “Seems a lot of trouble to go to, for a little garden tool.”

“But not for the one I love,” Thorin said, low.

Bilbo started, and then he exclaimed crossly, “oh, it is intolerable that I cannot even touch you! Why did these meddling Valar even go to such trouble, when you say such things and I cannot…”

“Shh, I know.” Thorin laid down the trowel and turned to Bilbo. “I have had time to grow used to it, whereas you have not, Idùzhib . It is the cruellest kindness anyone has ever done me.”

“I would kiss you now, you know,” Bilbo said, his face still screwed up in irritation and his hands balled at his side. He was trembling ever so slightly. “I don’t even recall the scent of your hair. I remember your arms around me, but not the scent of your hair, and you stand right in front of me, and….”

“Shh,” Thorin said again, and he reached out and hovered a hand over his Hobbit’s face – or so he named him now, his Hobbit, for had he not proposed in the most Bilboish way imaginable? “Though we are parted by dreams and death, I’m here. I’m still here, and I shall never leave you.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Bilbo said, and his gaze fell to the floor. “I know you wouldn’t.”

There was a pause full of terrible longing, and Thorin pushed it away with all the determination he possessed.

“Do Hobbits grow out their hair?” he said as softly as he dared, and he ghosted a hand over the tawny, messy curls. “I would put a braid in yours, to show everyone who cared to know it that you held my heart.”

Bilbo’s eyes widened and he looked up. “You can do that?”

“Aye, that’s not unheard of.”

“Well, the Shire’s a long way away from Rivendell,” Bilbo said, and he looked thoughtfully at Thorin’s own hair, windblown and a little damp from his exertions at the forge. “I don’t expect that Elves give a fig for what an old duffer does with his hair, but I certainly like the notion. And would I do the same to yours?”

His heart skittered at the idea of those nimble, soft little hands scratching his scalp, carding through the long fall of tangled black-and-white. Thorin nodded slowly.

“Where,” Bilbo breathed.

Silently, Thorin brought up his hands to part his hair at the crown. “Here is usual,” he said, and then he let one of his hands touch his chin. “Or in the beard, also. Where it may be easily seen.”

“Proud bunch, aren’t you,” Bilbo said, and he brought up his own hand to cover Thorin’s, a breath apart. Thorin could nearly feel the warmth of him, nearly smell the pipeweed-and-crushed-grass scent.

“Aye, in love as in everything else,” Thorin said, and his fingers sank into his slowly-lengthening beard.

“I can’t even touch you,” Bilbo said, and he stepped even closer. Their bodies were but a thought apart. Thorin’s arms ached.

“I will be your hands, if you would like,” Thorin said, and he glanced down to Bilbo’s lips. He was right, he thought with a touch of resigned longing. It was intolerable.

“My hands never looked like yours,” Bilbo murmured.

“I will do my very best,” Thorin promised, and he leaned his head over Bilbo’s and breathed in. An almost-embrace, so near, and so far. “I shall obey your every word.”

“There’s a heady thought,” Bilbo said, and his small fingers were raised as though he wished to press them against Thorin’s chest.

Neither wished to break the illusion, and so no matter how close they became, no matter how desperately he longed for a single touch, Thorin would not allow himself to pass through Bilbo’s insubstantial form.

“Very well,” Bilbo said, and his voice was rough. “Then put that braid into your hair. Slowly, if you please.”

Thorin bent to the small pointed ear, and whispered, “as you command, my One.”

Bilbo made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a brutally-suppressed whimper.

Then Thorin stepped back a little and raised his arms, and watched as Bilbo’s eyes lingered upon his biceps, tracing the tattoos there. It was a little gratifying to know that Bilbo found him pleasing to look upon in return. Encouraged, he tipped his head and began to separate out the strands for the bond-braid.

“Four strands, gracious. Unnecessarily complicated,” Bilbo said. He kept glancing back at the muscles of Thorin’s arms, and every so often he wetted his lips with a small pink tongue.

“One for the past,” Thorin said, and Bilbo swallowed hard at the tone of his voice. “One for the present. One for the future.”

“And the last?” Bilbo’s breath made his chest rise and fall in the most entrancing way, and it was all Thorin could do to keep his focus upon his fingers, and the half-finished braid in his hair.

“For death and beyond,” Thorin said. And Bilbo huffed and shifted, his cheeks darkening.

“Well.”

“Well,” Thorin agreed, and let the unbound braid fall. He had no bead nor leather to tie it with, and the ends tickled at his cheek in an unfamiliar way.

“I like it,” Bilbo said after a moment.

“As do I,” said Thorin, and he touched it with a forefinger.

“Yes, do – do that,” Bilbo said, and he coloured even further. His neck had stained a lovely rosy pink. “Stroke it.”

Thorin found that no hardship, and he carefully gathered the new braid by the tip, holding it together by its strands, and then ran his other palm along it. His own hair whispered and tickled his palms. "Perhaps, when my beard reaches a respectable length, I would place another there, my hands as your hands,” he said, and Bilbo shivered.

“Drat this half-existence. I’d put it there myself.”

“You have put this here, as surely as I did,” Thorin reminded him, and he slid his fingers over the new braid once more. Bilbo’s eyes snapped to it as though drawn by a magnet.

“What does it feel like,” he said, hoarsely.

“Strange, and right,” Thorin said, and he let his fingertip travel over the bumps of tightly-bound hair. “the weight of it is unfamiliar, but it is as though it was missing all these decades…”

“No… not the braid, your hair, what does it feel like under your hands,” Bilbo interrupted. “Under my hands.”

Thorin looked up, and noted the uncomfortable way Bilbo was wriggling upon the spot, shifting in his trousers. Mahal save me, he thought in wonder, and it was as though someone had suddenly set a fire in his flesh. He desires me.

“Smooth,” he croaked. “And it smells of the lavender oil my mother uses for our grooming. Rough, as Dwarves’ hair is by nature, catching in the ridges of my fingerprints. Warm by my scalp, cool as you move down.”

With the tremendous pressure in his ears and the growing heat in his belly, he barely caught the words, “ cool as you move down, eh? Have to fix that.”

“Touch… your neck. There, by the collarbone,” Bilbo said, and he moved again, legs twitching restlessly.

Thorin let his hands fall from the new braid – his bond-braid, his very own at last – and the tickling ends swung against his cheek once more. His fingertips landed against his shoulders, he smoothed down the fabric of his tunic and it whispered beneath his touch.

That, and the sound of Bilbo’s breathing, were the only noises in his workroom.

“Good,” Bilbo praised him, and when he looked up to Thorin his eyes were no longer their usual light hazel, but a hot brandy-brown with desire. “Very good.”

“I am pleased to have pleased you,” Thorin said, and he could feel the muscles in his legs begin to tremble, as though he had run by Gimli’s side over Rohan all over again.

“Mmm. It would please me even more if you would get rid of that dratted tunic that’s in the way.” Bilbo’s chin set, as though he knew very well how audacious he was being, but was ignoring it in his customary way.

Although, this was not exactly customary, by either standard…

Before he had fully thought it through, Thorin was pulling off the grey tunic to stand bare-chested before Bilbo. A rush of breath left the Hobbit, and he smiled a trifle giddily.

“Oh, the things I should like to do to you, my dear.”

“You can,” Thorin said, and lifted his hands once more, wiggling his fingers.

“Ah,” Bilbo said, and his smile broadened. “Indeed.” He studied Thorin for a moment, and then he declared, “on your chest please. Touch your chest for me. Follow your tattoos.”

Thorin closed his eyes and inhaled through his nose, and then did as he was bid. His own hands felt unattached, disembodied in some odd way, and he was hyper-aware of the sensations upon the skin of his palms and fingers. He began to slowly sweep across his chest, and his skin prickled in the wake of each pass of his hands.

“Good,” Bilbo murmured. “Oh, how very very good.”

Another surge of warmth, and Thorin’s mouth gulped at the air.  “Bilbo, Âzyungel …”

“And very beautiful,” Bilbo said, and his voice sounded nearer. “Oh no, please open your eyes, my dear. That’s it, open them. Kindly look at me.”

“Kindly is not how I would look at you, in this moment,” Thorin rasped, and he opened his eyes. Bilbo’s smile had turned secretive and mischievous. The flush upon his neck now stained his cheeks.

“Kindly is not how I’m feeling, either,” he agreed, an impish note in the words. “Not in the slightest.”

“Good,” Thorin said, a single heartfelt rush of breath.

“Good,” Bilbo echoed, and his dark eyes glittered. “And how are you feeling?”

“Like a very clever Hobbit is successfully seducing me,” Thorin answered immediately, and Bilbo chuckled.

“You’re the one who offered to be my hands, you have only yourself to blame. Now, tell me. How does it feel, under these hands of mine?”

“My hair feels odd to me, upon my own chest, how have you done this,” Thorin said, and he allowed one questing palm to slide over his belly, the hair crisping beneath his overstimulated palm. “It is… coarse, and resists smoothing… it tugs…”

“What a genius you are,” Bilbo said, and he sat down upon a nearby chair, crossing his legs insouciantly. “Tug at your nipples, thank you very much.”

Thorin groaned at the very thought, but his hands immediately rose to obey. First one side, and then the other, and his legs trembled further as arousal the likes of which he had never experienced coursed through him. Such a simple touch, from his own hand, and he was shuddering against it.

“What do those pretty piercings feel like,” Bilbo said, sounding rather awed at the display Thorin was making of himself.

“Pretty!” he snorted, and then moaned a little as a barbell turned under a careless touch, pulling his nipple taut. “Good,” he managed, and he tried to breathe more deeply, tried not to let the weight of Bilbo’s gaze drive him to such a pass.

Impossible.

“Good? Come now, you can do better than that,” Bilbo said, and his chest moved up and down, up and down, and Thorin tried not to fixate on that as well.

“Warm, from my body,” he said, his words hitching and catching in his chest – his chest where his hands roamed now, exploring his belly and neck and nipples with abandon. “Hard. Smooth, as metal is…”

“Lift your hand now, and lick it,” Bilbo said, utterly fascinated.

Thorin did as he was told, and wetted the pads of his fingers under his tongue. Bilbo’s hiss of indrawn breath was very gratifying.

“What do you taste like,” Bilbo whispered.

“Salt,” Thorin said, his words muffled by his own fingers. “The mineral tang of metal, from the forge, from my warrior’s piercings…”

“So that’s what they’re for,” Bilbo said unsteadily, and he huffed and shifted and wriggled in his seat. “Should have known.”

Thorin sent him a loaded look, and licked his own fingers some more for vengeance’s sake. Bilbo wriggled again, and he pressed a hand against his inner thigh and swapped his crossed legs over. “Stop that,” he said, shaking a trembling finger at Thorin. “Bad Dwarf.”

“I thought I was good, very very good, to be exact, and also a genius,” Thorin said archly. Some pleasure in Bilbo’s state could be his, after all.

“I’ll show you, you dreadful, delicious…” Bilbo growled, and he leaned forward slightly on the heel of his hand, trapped at the join of his thighs. “Drop those wet fingers to your nipples, and get them shiny. Go on!”

Thorin felt himself twitch in his trousers, and knew his beloved for a wicked, wicked creature. “Mahal help me,” he muttered, and let his hands fall again. This time the air blew cool over the wetted skin, and his skin contracted and pulled away as his nipples hardened beneath his fingers.

“If I were able, I’d give them a jolly good nibble,” Bilbo said, staring at where Thorin’s fingers teased and pulled and pinched. “They look like they’d like that.”

“Do they now,” Thorin growled, and he levelled a look at the Hobbit that had him gulping and leaning heavily upon the palm pressed against his length. “I believe your ears would like it also. And your fingers. And your-”

“Touch your belly,” Bilbo blurted. “Like I would, like I want to. Like your hands are my mouth, and I’m kissing your every scar, your every mark.”

Thorin let out a groan that seemed to come from his boot-soles, and let his hands fall to his waistline.

“A little too thin still,” Bilbo said, softly, breathily, and he shook his curly head though his eyes never left Thorin. “You lot never eat enough, for all that you’re broader and bigger than us.”

“I’ve more meat on me now than I did in life,” Thorin said, and his head tipped back as the pads of his fingers slid over an old scar, the healed line sensitive and ticklish. “Regular meals and a bossy grandmother.”

“And I like it,” Bilbo purred. “I like the way it looks on you. I want to lick into your navel just to see the face you make.”

Thorin really needed to stopper that terrible, terrible mouth – how on Mahal’s sweet earth had he come to this – and oh how he wished for it never to stop …

“I can promise, Ghivasha ,” Thorin panted, as his fingers roamed, pinching and tickling and kneading at will, and he also needed to get rid of these cursed thrice-damned obstructing trousers… and boots… and lock the door. “-that if this experiment is any indication, then ahh… then I would make it something to see.”

“Mmm. And aren’t you something to see,” Bilbo said, hoarse and husky and nearly slurring with want. “Just look at you. My hands all over you, my braid in your hair.”

“Bilbo,” Thorin moaned, and his hands rested at the clasps of his trousers, “Bilbo, beloved…”

“Yes, do… do that, then,” Bilbo said, and blunt white teeth showed as he bit down upon his lip. “Slowly, mind.”

“Cruel burglar,” Thorin said, and grinned at him.

“Yes, yes,” Bilbo laughed breathlessly. “But you know I would do it slowly, and so you must as well.”

“You would not . You would be impatience itself,” Thorin said, and he popped open the first clasp. Bilbo’s eyes snapped down, and his breath snagged in his throat.

“Lies,” he quavered.

“You know it would be so,” Thorin said. And he enjoyed the expression that crossed the Hobbit’s face as he popped open the second clasp with torturous slowness. Beneath the cloth, his flesh pushed against his own busy fingers.

“I think I’ve proven that I’m a dab hand at waiting, don’t you?” Bilbo said, and he took several very deep, slow breaths and grasped at the arms of the chair with tense fingers. His ears were a burning cherry-red.

“Mmm, aye, you have.” Thorin popped the next clasp, and the next, and his hands hovered over the last even as Bilbo watched with wide, avid, hungry eyes.

“Go on,” he urged. “Thorin…”

“You see?” Thorin said, and laughed deep and rough in his throat. “You may have waited, my diamond. But you didn’t like it any more than I did.”

“Blast it Thorin - very well, all right , the point is made , now pop those damnable complicated buttons and drop your trou,” Bilbo grumbled. His eyes could have burned a hole in the cloth, so intent were they at the place where Thorin’s hands rested.

“Are you certain, my heart? After all, you have seen me unclad before, and you were distinctly adamant that I dress myself. You were particularly insistent about trousers, as I recall,” Thorin teased gently.

Bilbo wrinkled his nose. “You were being an admirable set of hands, and now you’re being cheeky. You said you would obey my every word, and I get this instead.”

Thorin smiled, and did as he was bid.

“Kick them off, well off thank you,” Bilbo said primly, before letting out a little gasp as Thorin’s length fell towards him, hard and flushed. “My word… well .” And his little hand crept to the top of his own trousers, dipping inside.

Thorin’s skin prickled under Bilbo’s lascivious gaze. “I please you, then?”

“Don’t say such silly things,” Bilbo managed, and his breath stuttered between his lips as his wrist worked rhythmically. “Oh, my dear. My beautiful, beautiful dearest one... Touch yourself. Go gently.” He looked up to meet Thorin’s eyes, and grinned. “At least, to begin with.”

It was with relief that Thorin took himself in hand and began to stroke. “Tell me,” Bilbo said, and his hips rose ever so slightly from the chair upon which he sat. “Tell me, tell me…”

“Soft,” Thorin croaked, and his voice was ruined with desire. “The skin, soft. Piercings warm… hard. Smooth. Good…”

“Good, yes…” Bilbo moaned, and his hand moved faster. “Gently… no, tease yourself. Touch your berries… like that, go on.”

“Berries,” Thorin laughed, his stomach turning liquid as he reached to cradle his stones in his other hand. A pooling core of molten metal was churning inside him, bubbling and building.

“Hush! And squeeze, a little… harder now!” Bilbo’s hips were rising in earnest, and Thorin’s legs were shaking properly now. He leaned himself back against his workbench, his own hips canting forward into the air. “Oh, what a picture you are, laid out like that…”

“One to talk, darling,” Thorin grunted.

“Reach under yourself now, have a good prod about, stroke…” and it was obvious that Bilbo was performing the same actions upon himself as he instructed Thorin, his hand plunged beyond the wrist into his trousers and one of his bracers slipping down off his shoulder.

Thorin let his head fall back as his fingers moved back, and back, and his blood was a war-drum in his head and belly, pounding at him. Back, and back… Bilbo's fingers were slender and clever, not thick and blunt, he would have a lighter touch, yes - but bold, so very bold...

“I’d kiss you,” Bilbo said, breathless and wrecked, “now. With my fingers in you, and the others at your nipple, I’d kiss you. Open up your mouth, and then put it to use.”

Thorin’s breath whistled fast and hot into his lungs, and his thighs shook. His fingers tugged, pulled, dipped; his flesh ached, his heart sang in his chest.

“Dohyarzirikhab,” Bilbo said, and it was perfect, it was perfect –

“Diamond,” gasped Thorin, “for marriage, I would wed you, Bilbo, Bilbo my heart…”

“Ivy,” Bilbo gasped in return, and his hand was speeding up, his hips canting rhythmically, “Thorin, can you imagine - I would come to you with an ivy wreath in my hair and you…”

“Never so beautiful, Bilbo,” Thorin’s skin felt a size too small, his desire standing proud and yearning before him, to Bilbo, for Bilbo, so hard he ached, “your hands, your touch on me, mine on…”

“I’d drop to my knees and put my hands on that lovely backside and my face between your ridiculous hairy legs and never look up ever again, not even for supper,” Bilbo moaned, high and thin and babbling.

Thorin panted and laughed raggedly, the muscles in his shoulders aching with pent-up need. The molten metal had pooled at the base of his spine, his neck taut and throat dry, his belly on fire, and lower… “I would… make love to those ears with my mouth… and then turn you over and lick down your back to the soles of your feet, every inch of you… and back…”

“There and back again,” Bilbo rasped, giggling.

“And again and again,” Thorin promised. His words came out strangled, heaving and stuttering from his mouth with every hard-blown breath. There was a sheen of sweat upon the smooth skin of Bilbo’s throat, it shone – it shone, and so: “I would lick and suck at your neck. Bilbo, your hands, your hands would…”

“Yessss,” Bilbo keened, and he arched up with his entire body, stiffening like a drawn bow, his face contorting and his mouth falling open in a soundless shout. Then he slumped down in his chair all at once.

“Your mouth is a menace,” he slurred happily. He stroked himself a couple more times, before removing his hand from his trousers and wiping it upon his knee absently. “Oh, a simply terrible menace… I shall… I shall have to do something about it.”

“Like what,” Thorin said, acutely aware than he was still painfully hard. But Bilbo in his pleasure had been so beautiful, he could not help but stop to watch.

“Your lips,” Bilbo said, soft as a breath of wind, “touch them. Like a kiss.”

Thorin did, pressing his mouth against the pads of his fingers, and never allowing his gaze to shift from Bilbo’s. The Hobbit seemed entirely mesmerised.

“Now, Dohyarzirikhab,” Bilbo said, even more quietly. “The same, but imagine… imagine my mouth against yours, my darling. My lips moving on yours, alive and real and hot, my tongue smooth and slippery-wet upon yours. There’s not a breath you can take that I do not also take, not a whisper that I cannot swallow…”

The words swirled thundering in Thorin’s blood. His heart quaked even as his eyes rolled back in his head. My lips moving on yours, not a breath, not a whisper, Dohyarzirikhab – my darling –

“I would never stop touching you,” Bilbo whispered. “You are so beautiful. So good, yes, that’s it… you’re so good…”

At that, the pool bubbled over. Thorin’s gut clenched, his ears roared, and with a near-growl he spent himself upon the floor of his workroom, thrusting roughly against the air and with his fingers pressed against his lips so firmly that he could make out the edge of his upper teeth that lay just beneath them.

Bilbo beamed up at him as Thorin hunched over, trying to gather his breath and his thoughts. “Ivy,” he said. “Definitely.”

“And you say my mouth is a menace,” Thorin husked. His limbs felt loose, boneless and heavy.

“It is,” Bilbo said, as serene as Galadriel herself. “All I did was talk about kissing.”

“Oh, is that all,” Thorin said, chuckling, as his heart finally slowed in its mad gallop. He shook his head, his heart impossibly tender, his eyes half-lidded. An odd lassitude was upon him, leaving him drowsy, warm and content. The new braid bumped against his cheek with the movement of his head, already fraying at the end. “Nothing more than that?”

Bilbo’s eyes danced. “You are utterly delicious this way, I should tell you. I should see you after a good seeing-to as often as possible. I’d have never believed you could look so soft.”

Thorin decided not to inquire about that. Soft was not something he had been accused of terribly often, after all. “If I have my way, you shall. See me often, I mean.”

Bilbo’s slow smile was promising. “Good. It appears that you make an acceptable set of hands after all, Master Dwarf.”

Thorin met his One’s gaze, and there was an adventure waiting for him there. “Well, you know what they say about Dwarves’ hands, Master Hobbit…”

…

FIN