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Bilbo’s husband was buried under children.
This wasn’t an unusual occurrence, truth be told. Bilbo and Bofur were both terribly popular with the younger set, who loved their stories of adventure, and had to hear both versions due to the differences in the telling: Bilbo tended to paint the great Thorin Oakenshield as their true story’s hero; Bofur preferring to wave tales of the brave Bilbo Baggins, nanny to a group of naughty dwarves constantly in need of saving. Bofur also told some strange dwarf tales, albeit in the common tongue and changed enough that his conscience didn’t trouble him about sharing dwarf culture with a group of big-eyed mini-Hobbits. Seeing small hobbits hanging off his dwarf’s arms or clinging to his shoulders was a warm and familiar sight.
But it was different tonight.
Tonight they were surrounded by noise and laughter, seemingly every Hobbit of any age in the West Farthing in attendance. Ale flowed and food was abundant, and everyone knew that Gandalf the Grey would be setting off fireworks later.
It was Bilbo’s birthday. Bilbo’s, and their dear Frodo’s. His eleventy-first, Frodo’s thirty-third.
It would be Bilbo’s last birthday in the Shire, though their beloved nephew didn’t know it yet.
"Let him up!" Bilbo ordered with a laugh, kicking a young cousin soundly in the trousers when he wouldn’t relinquish his spot on Bofur’s stomach. "He’s not as young as he used to be, you bratlings!"
Bofur let out a muffled shout of offended dismay at this. “I’m plenty young, thank you, Master Burglar!” he argued, but when his head popped out from the hobbitling pile, his thick braids and fluff of a beard were as gray as they were brown, and there were deep (and well-earned) laugh lines at the corner of his eyes.
Bilbo thought him terribly handsome, even after all these years.
He shooed the little hobbits away with promises of biscuits on the treat table to the left of the party tree. One lingered, a tiny Bracegirdle who threw her arms around Bofur’s neck and gave him a noisy, little girl kiss before she scampered off into the dark, giggling to herself in pleased exultation.
Bofur blinked. “I was assaulted,” he said.
Bilbo smiled and reached out his hands, taking the thick, strong fingers in his own and providing an anchor as Bofur hopped to his feet. Bofur dusted himself off, chuckling under his breath and looking after the children as they piled on the promised treats.
He had always fit in so well here.
Better, sometimes, than Bilbo.
How strange, that it should be easier to be the only dwarf among Hobbits than to be a Hobbit who had been on an adventure and buried beloved friends under a distant mountain.
"You could stay," he blurted.
Bofur looked at him, tilting his head. “Why would I want to,” he asked with honest confusion, “when you’re off adventuring across Arda?” He rested his hands on his hips a moment, still tall and broad, but softer in the middle and narrower in the shoulders after sixty years married to Mad Baggins of the Shire. “It’d be you I followed to the Shire, Bilbo. And it’ll be you I’m holding hands with when you’ve done all your wandering, and we take our tired old bones back to Erebor.”
Of course.
Bilbo smiled, and held out his hands again, waiting until Bofur’s - older now, softer, the hands of a tinker and a landlord rather than those of a miner - slipped into his own. It was a familiar pose, warm with a hundred memories. But always Bilbo thought of the first time, of Bofur lifting him to his feet in the garden, when he was young and tired and shocked to find his friend who should have been beneath a mountain instead mixed in among his begonias.
Bofur had asked the question that day. Bilbo asked tonight:
"May I kiss you?" with a sparkle in his eye.
The answering grin was pure joy and kindness and mischief and everything that was Bofur. Bofur quoted, “A kiss? Without even a hello?” but without the dark blush and embarrassing squeak Bilbo felt sure had accompanied the words the first time.
Bilbo stepped closer. The party went on around him, and it was noise and bother and grated on his nerves, and he didn’t regret his choice to go, with this dwarf by his side. “Hello,” he said, as Bofur had, all those years ago.
"Ah well, then, with the niceties out of the way," Bofur leaned down and Bilbo pushed up on his toes, as comfortable and practiced as the old slippers Bofur would insist on wearing around the house, the ones Bilbo had carefully packed just that morning for the trip ahead, "it’s only polite that I say yes."
It was only fitting, Bilbo thought, that their last kiss in the Shire should be just as the first one.
He was ready for their next great adventure.