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♫ P!nk ft. Nate Ruess - Just Give Me A Reason
***
After the battle, things don’t go back to normal. What an odd word, really — normal, like anything had been close to typical about the two of them. Nevertheless, for what they were, before all that was said and done at the gates to Erebor; Thorin had feared that gone forever, would have been grateful for just a shred of it back, but he wasn’t foolish enough to think he’d deserve even that pithy charity.
The talk he dreads for days after regaining consciousness doesn’t happen. When Thorin can walk again, they kiss in his tent, and Thorin’s too busy being grateful for Bilbo not leaving him to know anything more than Bilbo’s hands, Bilbo’s lips, Bilbo’s heart throbbing softly against his skin.
***
The marriage proceeds as planned, but in light of recent observations Thorin can’t help but think of things snagging on themselves, like loose threads caught on nails, creating a dissonance he only detects by stripping himself away from the situation and looking exactly where he doesn’t want to, in the blanks between their words and the dimmest, darkest places.
He wants to say that everything’s fine — wants it to be true so very badly — but he knows better than to stumble into that trap. It’s the little things that steers him away from that assumption when he notices them, like how Bilbo never smiles when he thinks that Thorin can’t see him, or the circles that have started to ring Bilbo’s eyes faintly, or the nights where he twists in his sleep, whimpering under his breath like he’s being attacked by something. Little but far from insignificant, it’s piecing together these things that makes Thorin ask after Bilbo, only to be answered with a placid smile and a kiss, and it’s enough to make Thorin forget, if just for a while.
He keeps telling himself that he’s reading too much into signs that aren’t there, but having been the one to raise the issue of his grandfather’s mental state when it first troubled him, Thorin knows that the threshold of overlooking and putting everything down to tiredness has a limit. It's too convenient an excuse to settle his mind for long, and eventually his doubts slide back into place when he gives it a week and the shadows beneath Bilbo's eyes remain. There’s only so much Thorin can blame on not getting sufficient rest, and it still begs the question as to why Bilbo hasn’t been sleeping well in the first place.
And then there’s the feeling he can’t shake whenever they’re together: Bilbo will be warm, grinning against Thorin’s jaw as they kiss, but there’s no colour in his cheeks and the lines in his face tell a different story. Behind his lips the love is still unmistakably there, but Thorin can still sense that diminishing in some other dimension like a lit candle shortening through the night. Bilbo’s always been smaller than Thorin, but not even a hobbit should feel this meagre in his arms, wrapped up in the sensation of something slipping away despite his best efforts to contain him.
When Thorin wakes up one night to tears pooled in the crook of his arm where Bilbo takes to resting his head, he is unable to do anything but hold Bilbo and lie awake until morning in the realisation that something has gone very, very wrong.
***
Bilbo gets out of Erebor on the weekends, basket in hand and waving to Thorin from the front gates before he leaves. No one actually knows where he goes, but sometimes he comes back with trinkets and articles of clothing that point to shopping in Dale, and that hypothesis holds until he starts returning empty-handed and Thorin gets word that Bilbo hasn’t been seen around Dale for weeks. It’s remarkably easy to miss a hobbit, but the guardsmen of Dale are particularly sticky when it comes to visitors, and their daily movement tallies of traffic in and out of the town don’t lie.
On an impulse, Thorin tails him the same week he receives the information. He’s not sure what to expect, maybe a secret lover or a harboured fugitive, and thinking about the insanity of either one being the case almost makes him lose the trail. Idiot, he fumes at himself. There’s going to be a perfectly good explanation at the end, there has to be, and if there isn’t one...well, he tries not to think about that. Nonetheless, it’s something he prepares himself to accept, constantly reminding himself that he loves Bilbo no matter what, and his feelings for him have to hold in lieu of anything else.
What Thorin isn’t prepared for is when Bilbo stops in the woods and sets his basket down and huddles behind a large spruce, bringing his legs up and wrapping his arms around them. Thorin has managed to evade detection so far, but he very nearly foils it when the sobs begin, his body moving instinctively to close the distance between them and reach out to Bilbo and hold him. The rustling he makes goes unnoticed; Bilbo has his face buried in his knees and is crying in soft, choppy jerks of his tiny shoulders. The gasping is muffled through Bilbo’s folded arms, but loud enough that Thorin feels his heart clench like a fist inside his chest.
He steps out when he can’t stand idle any longer, whispering, “Bilbo?” as he approaches.
The crying stops immediately. “Thorin,” Bilbo says, his voice thick with tears and surprise. He’s pawing frantically at his face, presumably eradicating all of the evidence which could give him away. “I…I thought you were back at Erebor.”
“I was worried about you.” Now close to him, Thorin stoops and puts his hands on Bilbo’s shoulders, trying to look into his eyes. “You were crying.”
Sniffing, Bilbo doesn’t nod, keeping his face hidden.
“What’s wrong?” Thorin asks, a terrible fear starting inside him.
Bilbo looks up and smiles. His eyes are red and there are shiny streaks on his cheeks where he swiped away his tears. “I just stubbed my toe is all. Hurts.”
“Your toe.” Thorin wishes his normal tone of voice wasn’t so painfully unsympathetic, but he’s afraid to try for anything else.
“Mm.” Bilbo closes a hand around his right foot and winces, drawing a quick breath through his teeth. “Caught it on a tree trunk somewhere.”
Thorin wants to buy the deception, but no matter how he tries he finds that he cannot, and at the same time he doesn’t have it in his heart to call Bilbo’s bluff. Instead, he picks Bilbo up in his arms, ignoring his squawk of “Thorin!” and says, “I’ll carry you home,” before beginning the journey back to Erebor.
The round trip is as short as the route they took to get to the woods, but thinking about the only other lie Bilbo has told him in the time they have been together makes it seem to Thorin as though he’s walking all the way from the Shire.
***
After Thorin catches Bilbo crying in the woods, they spend the next weekend in bed together.
“You didn’t go out today,” Thorin says, fingers brushing Bilbo’s bare belly. It’s moments like these that almost lets Thorin forgive himself for ever raising a hand against Bilbo, when they’re naked and exposed and vulnerable like this, with nothing to hide in this compressed space. He’d struggled with living with himself over that for the longest time even up to their wedding, but it’s not as difficult now that they’ve come this far, though it isn’t to say he still can’t feel his thumbs digging into the apple of Bilbo’s throat on his worst nights.
Bilbo makes an indiscernible noise that could mean just about anything. He’s lying with his face turned away from Thorin and a hand tucked underneath his pillow, the blanket drawn up to his hip. “I wanted to spend the weekend with you.”
He doesn’t mean to, but Thorin sees through that all too easily. He kisses Bilbo’s shoulder blades, nuzzles his neck, breathes the smell of his hair. It takes a while for his tongue to become unstuck from behind his teeth. “You know you can tell me anything, don’t you?”
There’s a slight motion to Bilbo’s head that could be taken to indicate a nod, but he says nothing in reply. It’s only marginally less gutting than hearing an uttered confirmation and being able to tell that it isn’t true as well.
That he’s expecting to be lied to again makes Thorin feel sick, but he can’t help it.
“Bilbo,” Thorin murmurs.
Bilbo’s reply is to lean back into Thorin, shifting closer until he is pressing against him. So solicited, Thorin twines his fingers with Bilbo’s and noses his ear, letting his lips move to the junction of his jawline. The shiver that rides over Bilbo’s body when Thorin presses his lips to the back of his neck finds its way to Thorin’s core in a wave of cold, and immediately he puts off asking about the nightmares he’s sure that Bilbo has been having recently.
***
For two people this close to each other in bed, it shouldn’t feel so much like there are entire worlds caught in the space between them, unseen obstacles unwieldy and impassable and so much larger than life.
***
They don’t say I love you to each other as much nowadays, their shared silences far too thick for even something as heartfelt as that to penetrate effectively. Besides, there are more things to say and burning questions to ask, but then Bilbo will look at Thorin and give an anaemic smile like neither of them are aware of the cracks that have started to show, and Thorin stops breathing despite himself, not quite daring to believe it but too desperate to doubt his sincerity just that once.
“I love you,” Thorin mumbles for a dearth of anything better to say, and he wants to take it back on the spot when Bilbo’s eyes droop and his mouth quivers and something dark comes over his face for the barest of seconds and Thorin only just registers it before Bilbo replies in a tone clearly shaped into a brittle veneer of warmth, “I love you too.”
This much shouldn’t be a lie, at least, but it doesn’t stop Thorin from wondering, and he hates himself for that.
***
Being woken up by shouts of I’m sorry, I’m sorry is even more painful with each successive time it happens, especially since Thorin has a good guess as to whom Bilbo is addressing as he battles ghosts in his sleep. For a person with such small hands, Bilbo grips hard enough to bruise, and Thorin lets him, if only to feel that there is something he can actually control about all of this. Sometimes he thinks that the words are as embedded into the lining of his skin as the marks are, the light patterns twisted and mottled purple, like injury is a form of apology in its own way as well.
He entertains that and knows that it's still not enough. It will never be enough.
By the eighth instance, Thorin is the one who says it afterwards as he strokes Bilbo’s back with trembling fingers, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, tears streaming from his eyes like blood from an open wound.
***
It’s the end of the year when Bilbo finally tells Thorin that he wants to go home.
But you are home, Thorin thinks, and he manages to catch that reply before it can slip out. Bag End, obviously. Hobbiton. The Shire. Where they had first met and Thorin knew at once he’d found the person he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. Has it really been a year and a half since then? It feels longer somehow, like having Bilbo in his life has allowed him to get so much more out of it, and that does make sense now that he habitually measures his days in terms of minutes and hours of loving everything about Bilbo.
“I don’t want to lose you,” Thorin says, and this is when Bilbo starts crying.
“I’m sorry,” Bilbo says, looking demolished. He has a hand at his throat and he’s shaking his head as though as he’s vehemently denying an accusation. “I’m sorry.”
Thorin moves to him quickly in one long stride and collects Bilbo into his arms, clutching at him tightly in reaffirmation of the last thing he said. They rock back and forth on the spot slightly, which is just as well for the world having been thrown off balance in the last five minutes. He has to think about the solid ground under their feet to keep from falling over.
“I can’t,” Bilbo whispers into Thorin’s tunic. “I just can’t anymore.”
Misery works its way through Thorin, hot as poison in his veins and sinking into the soles of his feet. “You can’t what?” He hears his own voice break midway through, much more fragile than he’s come to expect, just like the rest of him.
Bilbo shudders and goes very still. His palms are pressed against Thorin’s chest and his fingers slowly curve inwards like dried leaves. He doesn’t seem to breathe when he mouths soundless words over Thorin’s heart and his legs shake and Thorin just holds on because this must be what it’s like to have a person shattering to bits in front of him, and he’s never felt so powerless before, even counting the day the Firedrake had flown out of the ether to raze Erebor to the ground.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” Thorin says quietly into Bilbo’s hair. “Tell me and I’ll fix it, I promise.”
“Will you?” Bilbo moans, and it is the lack of conviction in his voice that gets Thorin the worst, almost as though Bilbo doesn’t believe it as much as every last inch of Thorin does.
His throat is gritty and Thorin has to push the words out through the channel of his mouth like a confession. “Please. I love you.”
That’s all there is to it, and it has to be reason enough, but Bilbo makes an awful noise and clings to Thorin like he’s drowning, and this is how Thorin comes to grips with the possibility that maybe, just maybe, it’s precisely that which Bilbo can’t deal with anymore.
***
Bilbo leaves on a Mersday morning. He doesn’t take much with him, and Thorin helps him pack all his things — clothes, food, a few chests of gold that get whittled down to just the one. The escort he arranges for Bilbo is rendered obsolete by Gandalf’s suspiciously timely arrival, but Thorin throws all negativity to the back of his mind and tries to focus for Bilbo’s sake. It goes without saying that he while he’s disagreed heavily with Gandalf in the past, he trusts nobody more than him to get Bilbo back to the Shire in one piece.
Well. In fewer pieces than he’s already been broken into.
They made love the night before. Neither of them had cried or said anything throughout, and it was only when there were only a few hours until morning did one of them say, “I love you,” and nothing was said back. It might have been Thorin, but he likes to think that it was Bilbo who had said it, or perhaps it was both of them speaking at the same time; anything, anything to draw the conclusion that Bilbo still felt that way about him even if it made it more difficult to let go.
What he does regret is not taking Bilbo by his shoulders and looking him in the eye and coming up with some way to say I’ve never loved anyone more than I love you, nor will there be anyone else after you who makes me feel like this. He was afraid that the truth would have been more sharp-edged than Bilbo knew how to take, having seen what it had done to him in the weeks prior, and the thought of wounding Bilbo even more had left Thorin paralyzed with the words stuck in his throat. Four hours before Bilbo walked entirely out of his life and Thorin still had not gotten his voice to work again, not that he knew what he would have had to say if he somehow managed to.
Instead, he couldn’t stop touching and kissing Bilbo, memorising the texture of his skin and the contours of his body. It would be all that he had to keep himself afloat when he was finally, inevitably alone once more. If Thorin closed his eyes and thought about it hard, it wouldn’t be too difficult to remember how soft Bilbo was under his hands, how it felt to have curls threading into his fingers, what it was like to taste Bilbo on the tip of his tongue. And then, on its heels, the feeling of something brittle around his heart splintering to the point of breaking open.
Too soon, Thorin thinks as he holds Bilbo at the gates. His hands are flat against Bilbo’s back and he puts his forehead down on Bilbo’s. There are so many things he still doesn’t understand, and it just can’t end like this. He still doesn’t know if there was anything he could have done to prevent this, if there was some other outcome he had lost the way to for want of trying hard enough, and he’s sure that the hollow promise of ifs is going to stick to him until the day he dies.
“Goodbye,” Thorin chokes, the word raking his throat on its way out. He tips Bilbo’s face up and kisses him, hurting too much to do or say anything else. His eyes are closed.
The kiss is a long one, but like everything else, it does find its ending.
“Goodbye,” Bilbo whispers over his lips, and ten minutes later he is gone.
***
Their room — although, Thorin thinks he should get used to calling it his room from now on — is quiet. It still smells like Bilbo, and Thorin buries his face in the pillow Bilbo had always used ever since their wedding night, breathing in and wondering how long the scent of him will last. Traces of him cling to every edge and surface, in creases across the bedspread and empty fruit bowls on the table. He can’t even bear to think about it just yet, not when the scars are fresh and open and stinging to the touch.
Bilbo smells of tea leaves and soap, honey and baking bread. Thorin doesn’t know how he'll ever be able to stomach breakfast like this, but it’s so much easier to breathe when he can pretend that Bilbo’s still with him and not on his way back to the Shire where Thorin will never see him again. The punch that reality delivers afterwards winds all the more for that, but it’s worth the minutes where Thorin doesn’t feel so horribly empty inside, like something’s been carved out of his chest and all he can do is gasp Bilbo’s name into the covers to remember that he’d been here hale and whole not just an hour ago.
He goes to sleep in the guest bedroom when the pain of it overflows and threatens to consume him, when he tires of waking in the night and turning to face Bilbo and finding empty sheets in his place. He could theoretically get the royal bedchambers renovated, tailor it to suit a single occupant, but he thinks he wouldn’t be able to take tearing apart one of the last few remaining things which prove that Bilbo had once been a part of his life.
It is New Year’s Eve the next day. Save its king, the whole of Erebor celebrates.
***
Thorin manages to keep it together for a quarter of the new year. Some mornings he doesn’t wake up and immediately think of arranging a visit to the Shire. That never happens. Same as always, he rises and washes up and gets dressed to sit in his court; regardless of the state of his heart, he has a kingdom to rule, and Thorin has always been a dwarf of priorities. He can get through listening to a thousand provincial complaints a day if it means walking away at the end too tired to think about the dreams where Bilbo returns to Erebor with his bags and a wide smile, even if it does nothing for the ache in his chest whenever he wakes in the morning to the quiet weight of his absence pressing down on him.
There doesn’t seem to be a transition time of any sort when Thorin throws himself back into his duties, and if there is one it ticks along slow enough to burn. He works harder and longer than ever. Half the time he’s starving and can’t bring himself to care about his stomach when it’s perpetually tied in a knot and his throat feels like it’s coated with something thick and acidic. Twice, he shouts at Ori for getting his records mixed up and regrets it when the young dwarf bursts into tears, taking the combined consoling of Dori and Nori to settle down again, by which time the load sitting on Thorin’s shoulders has doubled with an addition of guilt and shame on top of everything else.
The experience leaves Thorin with a bitter taste in his mouth. It isn’t right to make this hard for anyone else, not when it’s already bordering on excruciating for all parties involved as it is. He apologises to Ori and gives him the rest of the week off before breaking down in the forges, where anyone would be hard-pressed to hear anything over roaring furnaces and the smash of metal all around.
Down by the main kiln, it's so hot that he has to gasp the air into his lungs, tasting the coke roasting in the air, and he swallows that down along with everything else. His ears are ringing and sweat stings at his eyes, and every inch of him is hurting so badly that he just wants to forgetforgetforget it all because he doesn't know how else to make things better.
For now, all he can do is lower his head, blurry eyes closing against the sweltering heat all around him, and beg to be numb.
***
No one asks too many questions about the sudden disappearance of the king’s consort; apparently the sight of Thorin’s face is all that it takes to put anyone off the topic. Rumours start going around about infidelity and exile, and while Dwalin generously offers to have all offending tongues cut off, Thorin ultimately decides to do nothing about it. Whispers will be whispers, and that’s as far as they will get given enough time for speculation to fizzle out. He has more than his fair share of dealing with being haunted by the truth to start letting himself be bothered by empty falsehoods anyway.
***
He writes letters to Bilbo that never get sent. It’s the same story with each one, all of them leading up to please come back or some other variation of that despite his best intentions to keep them well-meaning. Reading them all at once makes the want rise in Thorin stronger and more furious than ever, but he can’t bring himself to destroy any of them. After a few hours of fretting, they end up forming a neat pile of paper in a drawer at the back of his wardrobe where only Bilbo has ever had the sense to clean out.
***
Six months after Bilbo leaves, when Thorin’s new clothes arrive and turn out to be several sizes too large around the waist, Balin shakes his head and says to him, “You can’t go on like this.”
Thorin doesn’t see an alternative, but he nods all the same.
***
The dwarf’s name is Doric, Son of Korick, and he is just about everything a king could want in a consort. An emissary sent down from the Iron Mountains, he’s stocky and taller than most dwarves but stands at about an inch shorter than Thorin, just the right height to kiss without either of them having to tiptoe or bend over. He’s a warrior who knows his way around an anvil but can also make a killer goulash and he writes poetry in his spare time. Dangerously handsome, Doric has a beard and a dozen braids that put even Thorin to shame and looks like the exact kind of dwarf everybody would listen to in a diplomatic meeting.
And — Balin makes this clear to Thorin from the start of his visit — Doric doesn’t like dwarrowdams. He prefers dwarves, as a matter of fact. Very much so. Thorin isn’t so drunk to be unable to recognise a formal matchmaking when he sees one, but he just wishes that they could have at least chosen a dwarf who didn’t happen to have the exact same shade of brown hair as Bilbo. At least he doesn’t smell like him, too; if Thorin whiffed breakfasts with Bilbo instead of mineral oil every time he shook hands with Doric, he doesn’t know what he’d do.
Aside from that, it’s almost sort of perfect. Doric looks at him with a clever smirk and his arms folded and they can butt heads without Thorin worrying about knocking him out. Unlike Bilbo, Doric can drink a whole barrel of ale and walk in a straight line afterwards and when they arm-wrestle Thorin doesn’t have to put on a show of letting him win. They can spend the morning in Thorin’s court and an entire afternoon date in the forges together, not to mention the fact that Doric’s a bloody good kisser. Probably stellar at sex, too, judging from how he knows exactly where to put his tongue when they kiss and the way he winds three different braids into Thorin’s beard in a matter of minutes.
People still mutter in the corridors about the king seeing someone else of the same gender as him, but at least the buzzings about the less desirable traits of halflings have stopped.
They could be very happy together if they got married, Thorin thinks. Doric has all of Bilbo’s patience and is more rugged than the hobbit had ever been, and on occasion Thorin can forget that he hates goulash with a living passion. The one time they try to bake something, they start the most tactical flour war in history. They’re so achingly domestic sometimes it hurts to think about how he never had as many moments in the kitchen with Bilbo as he has had with Doric, and it’s all Thorin can do not to rip off his apron and travel godspeed to the Shire and beg Bilbo to come back and give them a second chance.
Thinking about the piece of paper which continues to tether him to Bilbo on the highest shelf in his study sours something awful in the pit of Thorin’s stomach, and the prospect of a second betrothal is suddenly the last thing he needs right now.
At the end of the month, there isn’t another marriage. Doric returns to the Iron Mountains with a skull bash, a brotherly hug and a I’m sorry it didn’t work out. As it turns out, Thorin’s sorry too. He’s just not sure what for.
***
Another two months and a number of failed diet plans later, his pants go down another size, and Thorin pokes several holes in his belt so that Balin doesn’t notice. In the meantime, the stack of unsent letters that he keeps in his wardrobe steadily increases in height, an inch a week, until he has to start a second column short of letting the whole thing topple over.
***
Balin notices. A trip to Thorin’s wardrobe to find him some better-fitting pants later, he discovers the letters instead.
***
Travelling to the Shire takes all of a week when they’re not running into trolls or fighting orcs or getting imprisoned by wood elves on the way, and it’s unearthly late at night when they reach the outskirts of Bree. Balin finds them boarding at the same inn where Thorin had met Gandalf the day before they all gathered in Hobbiton, and the innkeeper still has a damn horse’s head mounted over the fireplace like a trophy. Not much prance in that pony, Gandalf had said when they sat down, and all Thorin did was furrow his brows as Gandalf guffawed at his own little joke.
That night, Thorin can hardly sleep. The sheets crumple in his hands like misshapen flowers blooming and closing. He shivers in bed and tries to blame it on the cold. In the days following Bilbo’s departure it had become starkly clear to Thorin that falling asleep on his own took much longer than it did with Bilbo beside him. Then there’s the ice that surges his system in a numbing rush when he reaches for Bilbo in a daze and grasps air, and it jolts him awake to search about for a few frantic seconds before he finally remembers.
Morning rolls around in a gradual rise of light across Thorin’s closed eyelids. When he stumbles into the vestibule downstairs for breakfast, Balin takes one look at him and the question forming on his lips wings away. He never asks if Thorin gets enough sleep anymore, just as he’s stopped interrogating Thorin about his diet, but Thorin is sure to wolf down a crust of bread in front of him just to have one less scolding about that in their future on the road.
***
Hobbiton is just as confusing the second time Thorin steps into the neighbourhood. Pieces of linen flap from laundry lines like flags in a carnival and an array of fences and gates join up into a maze which they navigate, taking it one door at a time. Gandalf’s mark must be long gone by now, painted over or obliterated by eons of rain and sun, but Thorin knows that he’ll recognise Bag End when he sees it. Where he has dreamed of Bilbo returning to Erebor, he has had similar dreams of stalking into Hobbiton and walking up that garden path and rapping on that round, green door and watching it open —
They stop at a mustard-yellow gate that’s all too familiar for the right reasons. A lonely-looking bench sits empty in the front garden, surrounded by overturned flowerpots. Thorin's heart seems to swell inside his chest. “This is it,” Balin informs him, checking the letterbox. “Mister Bilbo Baggins, Bag End. Do you want me to come with you?”
“No,” Thorin says, his voice barely a whisper. “I want to see him alone.”
Balin bows out graciously, stepping behind the fence and leaning against it.
The front gate creaks noisily when it swings open, announcing his arrival, and Thorin half-expects Bilbo to burst from the front door and run straight into his arms at that. No such thing happens, though he waits a few seconds to be sure. He’s inclined to let this go however it will without presuming anything, not even that Bilbo will follow him back to Erebor at the end. If it comes to just laying eyes on him and finding closure in the fact that he still exists before he slams the door shut in Thorin’s face, then he’ll take that as well. It’s never been his intention to force Bilbo’s hand for anything, now more than ever.
Just as he’s about to knock, Thorin pauses, his knuckles scraping wood. It occurs to him that on the terms they had separated, he doesn’t even know if Bilbo wants to see him again, if the sight of Thorin is going to excoriate him just like it used to before he left, or worse, if he’s found someone else by now. Thorin’s always been selfish by nature, and maybe that’s why he didn’t think that while his own life has been steadily falling apart without Bilbo, Bilbo might have been busy moving on all the while. What if he doesn’t fit in Bilbo’s life in any shape, manner or form anymore? What if turning up on his doorstep tears down whatever Bilbo’s been trying to repair about himself for the past nine months or so?
He’s always been selfish, but Bilbo had changed that about him. Or so he thought.
Reconsidering his options, Thorin stands at the front door for a few minutes, just thinking, before he hears someone saying from behind him, “Mister Dwarf, are you looking for Mister Bilbo?”
Thorin turns around and glimpses a hobbit in the garden next door, his arms full of shears and trowels and spades. He is looking at Thorin with some bemusement, as though he’s never seen a living dwarf before. “Hamfast Gamgee, at your service, Mister Dwarf. Mister Bilbo left about a week ago. Hasn’t been home since,” the hobbit volunteers in Thorin’s silence.
“Left?” Balin inquires from the gate.
“Aye. Packed all his things and left without a word to anyone, just like that.” Hamfast smiles sadly.
“Might you know where he may have gone to?”
Hamfast shakes his head. “Not a word. Didn’t look like he’d be coming back, though. Took his bags and everything.”
Thorin stares down the door and drops his forehead into it with a thud. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees that the mark is still there, glowing pale blue like a reminder that regardless of all that has happened, there are in fact some things which have been made to last.
***
They spend another day asking around in Hobbiton before making their way back to Erebor. Thorin finds his silence again with ease, and Balin does not try to coax him out of it. Balin does say I’m sorry once and leaves it at that, and this too is something that Thorin is thankful for about one of his oldest, most trusted friends.
It rains on the third day, much too heavy to travel through, and they stop on the wrong side of the Misty Mountains to wait for the storm to peter out. By some miracle, Thorin manages to sleep, and for the first time in a long while, he does not dream.
In the morning, his voice cracks on the echo of Bilbo’s name in his mouth when he wakes. He’s not sure if Balin hears, but decides it doesn’t really matter one way or another.
***
Coming up the route to Erebor, the sentry on duty calls out to them, and Balin hallos in reply with a wave.
“I’ve been told that Your Majesty’s presence is requested urgently in Erebor,” the sentry informs them.
“And what’s the matter, now?” Balin asks. Quite out of the blue, Thorin thinks that if he should become mute someday, he wouldn’t have a problem with Balin speaking for him. It very nearly makes him chuckle.
The sentry tips the visor of his helmet back and nods at Thorin. “You’ve a visitor, Your Majesty.”
***
Whirling to his bedroom from the main entrance so fast it leaves Balin puffing in the main hall, Thorin throws the doors open with a bang and loses all his air when he sees a figure in the bed that he hasn’t had replaced just yet.
Bilbo bolts upward in fright, back straight, grasping the covers to his chest. His mouth is half-open as if to shout for help, but no sound escapes him. He blinks at Thorin for a few seconds, then closes his mouth and swallows visibly.
Thorin drifts to the bed, taking everything in, and Bilbo tracks his movements with his eyes from where he is on the bed. He looks weary and thinner than Thorin remembers, but that’s fine, Thorin is as well; they’re both smaller in their own ways and Thorin wonders if Bilbo observes that about him too, but for the time being, Thorin just feels so full up as he hasn’t felt in months. All of his blood is rushing to his head and he’s so dizzy at the sight of Bilbo that he’s a misstep short of falling flat on his face, and yet he makes it to the bed and manages to get a knee on it to ground himself before he does something which might just make this any less real than it already feels.
His breaths are shallow and he’s just waiting, now. The silence between them isn’t new and he’s so used to it that it frightens him, there being infinitely too many between them leading up to Bilbo’s departure, and he doesn’t want to have to go through that all over again. “Bilbo,” he whispers, unable to wait any longer. He reaches out to touch Bilbo’s face, and Bilbo does not flinch away from him and — and he doesn't look sad, just tired, perhaps a little frazzled, but the grey is gone from his cheeks and his lips are parted slightly and his eyes are clear, seeing Thorin and rendering nothing else.
“Thorin — I…” Bilbo stops, looking confused. He doesn’t continue that, doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t even move when Thorin inches closer and presses his lips to his, and his eyes fall shut as he lets Thorin kiss him.
The explanation neither of them requires right now does not come, and Bilbo is warm and soft, and breathing him is so good that Thorin doesn’t think he’ll ever want to stop. He curls a hand around Bilbo’s head and holds him fast, pressing into him and Bilbo’s tongue meets his through the barest, most vital scrape of teeth on lip, and it really has been too long; so, so long since they last touched, and Thorin's hurting and healing all at once, and if he holds Bilbo like this, kisses him long and hard enough, maybe they’ll never have to be apart ever again.
Thorin swings back and gasps and keeps looking at Bilbo, his hand sliding limply off Bilbo’s shoulder. Bilbo catches Thorin’s fingers in his own hand and brings them to his cheek, rubbing Thorin’s palm against his smooth face, as if he himself doesn’t really believe that he’s here as well; Thorin takes Bilbo’s other hand and spreads it over his chest where his heart is thrumming like a war drum, and Bilbo’s eyes widen, mouth shaping around the oh on his lips, and Thorin kisses him again, letting them both feel what Bilbo does to him. What he has always done to him.
“You came back,” Thorin rasps when it is safe to speak again, when he’s sure that his voice will do the things he wants it to. “You — you came back. To me.”
“For you,” Bilbo sighs, and he shifts closer to lean on Thorin, and Thorin kisses his hair. He wraps his arms around Thorin’s midsection, tight. “For you,” he repeats.
“You,” Thorin mumbles into Bilbo's neck, his breath catching raw on the tip of the word, and then he whispers, "Stay," and as he pulls Bilbo close to him he can feel the answer in his bones already, but he needs to hear Bilbo say it.
“Stay,” Bilbo breathes back.
Stay, like a promise, and Thorin has to say it one more time, “Stay.”
“Yes.”
“With me.”
“With you.”