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1.
If Thorin hadn’t loved his people so much, he might have abdicated the throne, left Fíli as King Under the Mountain, and run off to a quiet little hamlet with his consort just to escape the paperwork.
No, really—a lonely dinner in his office, scads of dry reading, almost three hours of drafting decrees and law proposals for tomorrow’s council meeting… He’d call it near maddening, if he didn’t already know exactly how it felt to lose his grip on sanity.
Finally, finally, though, he’d slogged through the last of the scrolls for the evening, and now he was free to spend the twilight hours with his burglar. If he were the skipping-and-grinning sort, that’s what he’d have done down the corridor on his way to the royal chambers. Instead, he settled for a slightly faster walk and an upward quirk of the lips.
When he stepped into the suite at last, however, he found no hobbit, no gleaming honey curls or bright eyes or thick-thatched feet. No matter; Bilbo shan’t be much longer, surely, he thought, and wouldn’t it be a nice surprise if he were lying in wait for his lover—perhaps literally? And so he shed his layers and sprawled out on the bed, wincing at the tight pull of scar tissue in his belly, which seemed about as healed as it was ever going to get. Curse that slimy, murderous rat of an orc—it figured that he’d end up saddled with a reminder of Azog’s thrice-accursed existence for the rest of his life, as though the monster hadn’t made him suffer enough already.
Thankfully, in the next few moments, monstrous orcs slipped from his mind in favor of sunny-smiled hobbits, and he cupped his prick with a calloused palm and set his heels against the mattress, knees spread in a V toward the door.
After a pause he took his hand away, not wanting to get too much of a head-start, and lay back against the pillows to wait.
The minutes seemed to coagulate as they passed, flowing slower and slower yet, and all the work of the day began to catch up with Thorin, his eyelids ticking down, then up, then down again… A chill deepened in the air, and he tugged a couple of furs and blankets over himself with a sleepy sigh, their material soft against his bare skin and his thighs still tipped open in invitation.
Later, he roused to muted thumping and cursing in the dark, the candle on the nightstand having burned down to nothing. The mattress sank beside him under the weight of a body, and a burst of cold air swept his skin as Bilbo wriggled down into the nest of covers with him, brushing a quick kiss over his mouth and muttering, “Sorry, sorry, I’ve just gotten in from the library. Ori was dead set on us sorting the last of the jeweler’s guild scrolls tonight, or I’d’ve been here hours ago.”
Eyelids battened down almost as much as his sleep-fogged brain, Thorin just offered a throaty hum and curled an arm ’round Bilbo’s smaller body. He settled his palm on the hint of belly just beginning to fill out again with regular meals and muttered, “Sleep, ghivashel.”
Bilbo shifted closer, nightshirt brushing the wiry hair of Thorin’s groin, arse pressing flush into the cradle of Thorin’s bare hips. The sensation sparked a little guttering flame of remembrance in Thorin’s mind—there was something he’d wanted, now wasn’t there? He thought there probably was—but his brain and body conspired to put everything off till the morrow, and he dropped back into the abyss of sleep, his breath syncing with the already slowing rhythm of his hobbit’s inhales.
2.
“Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” Bilbo said as he slipped into Thorin’s office, clutching a cup and a steaming bowl of stew and wielding his sweetest smile like a sword. “I’ve brought you an afternoon pick-me-up, seeing as you’ve forgotten about lunch again. Or maybe you haven’t.” He cast a furtive look around, then whispered loudly, “If you’ve chained yourself to your chair by mistake and are too embarrassed to tell anyone, I know a burglar who’s passably good with locks, you know.”
Thorin sighed. “As mortifying as that would be, I think I’d still pick it over the current situation.” He glanced away from the mass of reports on his desk, straightening his hunched posture and reaching up to rub his neck. If he never had to read another treatise on tax reforms in the pottery guild, it’d still be too soon.
Bilbo shot him a concerned frown and set the cup and bowl on the corner of the desk. “Are you feeling all right?”
“I’m perfectly fine,” he said, but the wince when he tilted his head back branded him a liar.
“Hmm. Maybe this will help.” Bilbo stepped behind him and dropped both hands to Thorin’s shoulders, then began to knead the tightly knotted flesh with a firm grip. He worked his way up until he was just below Thorin’s hairline and started a slow, deliberate circling of his thumbs at the base of Thorin’s skull. Thorin tilted his head forward, a groan rumbling up from low in his chest.
A slight pressure tugged at one of his braids, and he smiled a secret smile down at the floor. Bilbo’s fingers lingered for a long moment on the courting bead he’d placed in Thorin’s hair only weeks ago, rubbing slowly at its engravings, which were a perfect match to those on the bead in Bilbo’s much shorter locks.
“Much as I’m enjoying this, I can think of another way to help you relax,” Bilbo murmured.
“Mmm, and what might that be, Master Baggins?”
Lips touched the shell of his ear, accompanied by a puff of warm, damp breath. “I do quite like riddles. Would you like to guess?” A small hand crept to the top button of Thorin’s shirt and popped it free of its buttonhole. A second hand joined the first, sliding beneath the fabric, and Bilbo pressed up against his back, both arms draped ’round Thorin’s shoulders as warm, solid weights. Bilbo’s familiar scent filled his nose, all pipe-smoke and pastries and book-dust, and his eyes drifted shut as he leaned back into the contact. One, two, three buttons slipped free, slim fingers tugging gently at his chest hair along the way. He squirmed in his chair, inching it back to open up a perfectly hobbit-sized space between his thighs and the desk—
—and the office door crashed open, Bilbo jerking backward at the sudden burst of motion and sound. The hands disappeared from his chest, and Thorin barely contained the growl of exasperation that flooded his throat.
“—spends all his time with her! It’s getting out of hand, Uncle. I might as well be a pile of old goat dung for all the attention he pays me,” Fíli grouched as he stormed inside, face red with temper. It was going to be one of those rants, apparently.
Bilbo made the wise choice to retreat, shooting Thorin a regretful look on his way ’round the desk. Thorin wished with every ounce of flesh on his body that he could do the same, but alas, being an uncle came with its necessary evils, including listening to his nephew vent about having a case of the green-eyed monster.
“Later,” Bilbo mouthed as he slunk to the door, and Thorin sank back in his chair with a sigh, reaching for his bowl of stew as Fíli’s complaints washed over him. Might as well fit a late lunch in, if other pleasures were off the menu.
3.
“Later,” as it were, they made it all the way to the mattress before disaster struck.
Thorin had Bilbo spread out beneath him, flushed and squirming, the hobbit stripped of his shirt and waistcoat and growing delightfully pushy as Thorin rasped his beard along the smooth, bare column of Bilbo’s throat. He paused to suck a mark or two along the way, relishing in the sight of the rosy blooms on Bilbo’s skin each time he pulled his mouth off, even as Bilbo’s heels dug into the small of his back, urging him onward as if he were a stubborn pony. He trailed his way down to the closest nipple and lapped until it was a slick, hardened nub.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
Mahal’s beard… He let out a deep groan against Bilbo’s chest as they both looked toward the door. Maybe if they ignored it, the interloper would go away.
Bam! Bam!
No such luck.
“Your Majesty, you’re needed in the throne room!” Balin’s voice floated through the door.
Oh, for the love of…!
In his almost two hundred years of life, Thorin had pitted himself against a horrifying assortment of enemies—dragons, orcs, wargs, trolls, goblins, giant spiders, men… not to mention those bloody tree-shaggers. Against all odds, he’d prevailed. He would not be foiled in this quest, either, despite the fact that even the members of his own Company were proving to be more adversary than ally this time around.
Yet another knock. “It can wait, Balin!” he shouted.
“I’m sorry to say that it really can’t, my lord. Bard is here about the winter provisions, and he’s demanded to speak to you directly. Apparently there was a mishap with the barley stores.”
Barley stores? Seriously? He never thought he’d see the day that barley, of all things, brought his sex life to a grinding—or, well, not-so-grinding—halt.
He huffed a resigned sigh against Bilbo’s nipple. “We’ll finish this later,” he murmured, and felt a shudder run through Bilbo at the husky thread of promise in his voice.
Bilbo’s dark tone when he responded, “Yes, we shall, so long as everybody’s fresh out of crises for the evening,” was probably the strongest trigger for empathy Thorin had ever heard.
+1
Things came to a head (ahem) the next evening, during a private dinner with the Company.
Bilbo had just given a wide, deliberate yawn over the last crumbs on his dessert plate and said, “Well, that’s me off to bed,” and Thorin, clever fellow that he was, had been quick to add, “I should be leaving as well. I’ll walk you to our chambers, amrâlimê.”
They’d risen from their chairs and made for the door, but scarcely a half-dozen steps passed before…
“Wait, no! Uncle, what about our sparring session?” Kíli’s protest was garbled courtesy of a heaping spoonful of custard, but still plenty loud. “You promised you’d make time for it tonight, after you cancelled it last time!”
Oh, bollocks. He had, hadn’t he? Shoulders slumping, he turned back to the table, but he didn’t even get the chance to speak before Balin cut in. “That’ll have to wait, laddie. Lord Selmak from the goldsmithing guild’s requested an audience for tomorrow morning, and we’ve yet to go over the paperwork.”
He barely held back his groan. What, pray tell, was the point of being a king if it meant you were badgered every waking second with endless bureaucracy?
“All right, that’s it,” Bilbo declared, stomping back to Thorin’s side. “I’m exercising my authority as royal consort. You lot have been running us both ragged, and we’re taking the rest of the night for some time together. Alone.”
“Oh, come on!” Kíli said. “You just want to shag. Don’t you get plenty of time for that already?”
Bilbo’s expression twisted into something both pained and telling, and Thorin felt his own do the same.
Dwalin’s eyebrows shot up in response. “Oi, Master Burglar! Freshly married, and you’ve not been polishin’ his sword?” (“Or him yours?” Nori piped up from the other side of the table.) “No wonder he’s been so tetchy lately. Why, his balls oughta be near as blue as his eyes!”
The rest of the Company agreed loudly, and over the tumult of voices, Thorin heard Kíli announce, “If that’s what it’s like being king, thank Mahal that Fíli’s the heir.”
Fíli responded with fervent horror, “Uncle had better live forever.”
“Oh, hush up, all of you!” The look Bilbo served the others was decidedly frosty. “Believe me, we’d be doing plenty of ‘polishing’ if you lot would leave us be for half a breath. And on that note…” He grabbed Thorin’s hand and gave it a tug. “We’ll see you all tomorrow, and not a moment sooner!”
Thorin didn’t bother trying to suppress his grin as Bilbo hauled him out the door.