Work Text:
Ori noticed it first. Truth be told, it was hard not to notice, not when Bilbo showed up at Beorn’s breakfast table, bleary-eyed and yawning and looking casually gorgeous.
None of the Company looked particularly alluring, not after weeks of marching through downpours and mud, stumbling beneath a mountain range, alternately fleeing or battling goblins and orcs, and then limping through the forest after a hair-raising eagle ride without hardly any gear or supplies whatsoever. Until their arrival here, there certainly hadn’t been opportunity for proper bathing since Rivendell, nor hardly a moment to tend to one’s grooming, so the Company wasn’t looking their best.
That didn’t stop certain royally brooding Company members from staring wistfully at small curly-haired Company members when he thought nobody was looking, but now he openly stared, slack-jawed like a fool. They all did. Because Bilbo had a beard.
It wasn’t a wispy patchy scruffy thing worn by an awkward stripling half between child and grown dwarf (no offense to Kíli). It wasn’t that unfortunate in-between stage of growth when one’s chin and cheeks might grow properly, but one’s upper lip is late by months or years in fully arriving to join the rest. It wasn’t lank or scraggly. It wasn’t even unhealthy-looking for all the poor victuals and uncomfortable nights’ sleep they’d had. Bilbo’s beard was gorgeous.
It was red. Not a brash orange, nor a light brown that only looked reddish in certain light, but a striking deep copper red that was as rich as a treasury. Similar to the golden curls on his head that spilled prettily into his auburn sideburns, or the tidily combed curls on his feet, Bilbo had the start of pleasing curls in his beard, too. His beard was short. That was the only disparagement truthfully told about such a beard. But it was full and clung to his jaws and chin and upper lip as perfectly as if a great master artist touched by the Valar had painted them there and Bilbo was his muse.
When Bilbo shuffled into Beorn’s dining hall that morning, Ori eeped and blindly tugged at his brother’s sleeve. Dori glanced at him, and his words stuck half-articulated in his throat. Bofur’s knife halted from buttering his bread. Óin poured rather far too much cream on his porridge because he momentarily forgot the jug was tipped over in his hand. Conversation silenced; movement stilled. Their hobbit padded up to the oversized breakfast table. Grunting a bit from early morning exertion, he gracelessly heaved himself onto the bench between Dori and Bombur and knelt like a fauntling so he could reach his breakfast plate.
“Good morning,” he mumbled.
“Good morning,” they replied absently, by now well-accustomed to the hobbitish greeting.
If Bilbo had been altogether more alert upon waking, he would have felt mortified to have so many bald stares upon him, but he hadn’t yet had his tea, so he instead sleepily fumbled after his toast and looked weirdly beautiful while doing so.
“Uh. Bilbo?”
“Yes, Kíli?”
The young dwarf’s gaze fell from Bilbo’s eyes to his bearded chin, to the hobbit’s plate.
Even eating with his fingers while half asleep, Bilbo’s table manners were impeccable. Not a crumb besmirched his beard.
“What did you eat last night? For supper?”
Bilbo set down his toast. “Er? What?”
“You must’ve eaten something that the rest of the Company did not.”
He scratched at a pointed ear peeping through golden curls. “I suppose? That’s not especially unusual, is it? I appreciate vegetables when I can get them, y’know. Beorn has a very fine garden here, what little of it I’ve seen, anyhow.”
Fíli and Kíli looked at one another.
“Vegetables?” wondered Fíli with a dubious twitch of a carefully, painstakingly cultivated mustache.
“Vegetables,” replied Kíli decisively as he scruffed one hand across his stubbled jaw.
They were gone from the table in a trice.
“It’s far too early in the morning for those two’s nonsense,” yawned Bilbo as he got perilously close to buttering his thumb rather than his toast.
“It’s half past ten,” blinked Glóin.
Dori slid a fresh cup of tea sweetened with honey next to his elbow.
“Oh, Yavanna and all her sweet peas bless you,” he breathed, and he took a grateful sip of the brew.
“We didn’t see much of you yesterday.”
“I do apologize for my absence,” he smiled, and the fetching way his mustaches lifted was enough to raise the pulses of those watching him. “I was far too busy sleeping on an actual mattress, with a dry blanket, and not being interrupted for a turn at the watch.”
Bofur said, “A bit of shuteye did you a world of good, lad! You look…” He searched for an adequate word and failed. “You look well.”
“Nothing a big meal, a hot bath, and a good night’s sleep couldn’t fix!” He had perked up having consumed half a cup of tea and most of a jammy slice of toast as large as the dinner plates in the Shire.
“Did you know there is a lake under those mountains?” Bilbo said between delicate munching. “I got personally acquainted with every last slough of mud there while bumbling in the dark. I had lake scum in my ears and mud in my eyebrows!”
“You were well coated,” said Gandalf. A mysterious smile had hovered over his lips ever since Bilbo had come into sight. “Looked like a muddy little goblin, you did. You clean up nicely.”
He scoffed lightly. “Flatterer.”
“Your mother was a great beauty, and I always thought the shine of adventure brightened her complexion considerably. You take after her.”
“You’re pouring it on a bit thick, there, Gandalf. Are you buttering me up for some unpleasantry?”
“No, no, not at all, my good hobbit,” he said. His eyes twinkled with a mischievous light as he glanced across the table of slightly stunned dwarves and his gaze fell upon one wide-eyed dwarf in particular. “You look well, Thorin. Rest and a meal have done you good, too.”
Bilbo leaned forward with a concerned frown. “How are you, Thorin? That warg did a real number on you. I—we’ve all been terribly worried.”
“Guh,” replied Thorin.
At that moment, Thorin remained wholly inarticulate, nearly unable to breathe. If one had the ability to put an ear up to his head and listen hard, they might have heard the chorus to Donna Summer’s 1979 single, “Hot Stuff,” resonating there on a loop. Thorin, of course, was not aware of this, being a dwarf of Middle Earth and unaware of anything remotely approaching the English language or disco, but the unmistakable four-on-the-floor baseline thudding in his heart communicated a thrill, an overwhelming desire, that transcended all languages and all songs. Thorin was smitten.
“Are you alright?”
Balin’s gaze flickered from his king to their burglar and he supplied, “Dwarves are made of sturdy stuff, laddie. A few more days’ rest here, and Thorin will be as well as the rest of us.”
That apparently satisfied the hobbit because he then turned back to his toast and made eyes at what remained of a tureen of porridge and stewed fruit. He was so occupied with his meal and the bits of friendly conversation around him that he did not notice the unwavering blue-eyed stare from across the table that followed every movement of his slender hands, and every bounce of his golden curls, and every twitch of his red, red beard.
After the hobbit finished his breakfast and toddled off to Beorn’s garden to sniff flowers or whatever it is hobbits do among summery green growing things and blossoms, Thorin sagged in his seat. Longsuffering Dwalin patted his shoulder in rough, manly consolation.
“Good Mahal’s great left pinkie,” he murmured, slowly lifting a meaty hand to his brow. “Did you see him, Dwalin?”
“I saw him.”
“Did you see the curl in his beard? Did you see how red it is? Did you see how jaw-droppingly gorgeous he is?
“I’ve got eyes.”
“By Mahal’s anvil, what happened?”
Dwalin snorted. “You’ve been swooning over that little hobbit from the moment you met him. You’ve shown your regard in the most boorish way possible, of course, ‘cause you’re useless at all this, but this isn’t a new development, Thorin.”
“But now he’s beautiful! He always was, but now!” His hands gestured helplessly because he had no fitting words to plumb Bilbo Baggins’ new depth of beauty.
“He’s got a beard,” replied Dwalin flatly. “That’s all that’s different.”
“That’s what I said!”
They stared at one another for an incredulous moment before Dwalin scoffed with a small sigh and shake of his head.
“So what will you do about it?”
“Do? Do?” Thorin scowled and then wilted hopelessly before concluding, “There isn’t anything to be done.”
“I can think of at least one member of this Company you’d like to ‘do.’ And I surely wish you’d do him real good, so I won’t have to listen to your moaning anymore.”
Thorin punched his arm with the mumbled admonishment, “don’t be crude,” but he knew his dearest friend, his shield brother, was right. He must do something about this new development with the hobbit. The local orc population, currently far too occupied with being maimed and chewed upon by giant bears, was unlikely to swarm Beorn’s house today, so there was no better time to act without fear of interruption.
Feeling a strange juxtaposition of elation and irresistible desire accompanied by the sensation of walking to his gallows, Thorin searched for his hobbit. He began in Beorn’s garden.
“Have you seen Mister Baggins?”
He could smell something green and reminiscent of pine where Óin was clipping bits of leaves from Beorn’s large herb garden and muttering to himself. Knowing him to be as deaf as a selectively hearing post, Thorin directed his words to his younger brother who was busily sharpening his axes.
“Nope,” replied Glóin. “You lelkhar! Lu’! Do you not have eyes in your hollow head?!”
Momentarily startled at such vehemence, Thorin followed his intense gaze in time to see Balin flip Bofur over his shoulder to the grass, and the dwarf’s hat went cartwheeling off into a clump of white flowers.
“Fool must wear his hat over his eyes,” grumbled Glóin to his ax, “‘cause he never sees it coming.”
Balin peered down at his victim, “You weren’t bending your knees, laddie. Sloppy footwork makes it too easy for the orcs.”
Bofur wheezed in reply.
He shook his whitened head. “I did not cheat. But I should cheat because orcs are cheaters.”
“Beg pardon, Mister Balin,” said Ori sitting nearby with notebook balanced on his knee, “but some might hold that saying, ‘why, would you lookee over there’ in the middle of a training spar is a cheat.”
“‘Tis such a poor cheat, it doesn’t count as one. I didn’t think he’d actually look.”
“Balin,” said Thorin.
He inclined his head in greeting.
“Have you seen Mister Baggins?”
“If our burglar wandered this way, I did not notice him. He is light-footed.”
“He is, isn’t he,” agreed Thorin with a little too much pride in his voice. “He has good nimble feet.”
“T’other end’s not so shabby, neither,” laughed Bofur.
Unamused, Thorin loomed into the downed dwarf’s sightline. “I do beg your pardon?”
“I meant the beard,” yelped Bofur and he rolled to his feet. “The beard! All I meant was isn’t it a wonder he’s been hiding such a magnificent set of whiskers all this time?”
Balin stroked his own impressive whiskers. “Curious, though.”
“What is?”
“I’m old enough to know full beards don’t magically sprout up overnight, no matter what the little pebbles’ bedtime stories say. Obviously, Mister Baggins has been shaving his chin, and I do not know why.”
“His parents are dead,” Ori said quietly. “Hobbit families are large as a general rule, but he is alone now they are gone.”
“You believe he bared his chin because he mourns?”
“It is a possibility.”
Glóin rubbed down his blade with a thoughtful frown, drawing his striking eyebrows together. He courted his wife by the strength of such handsome brows. “You don’t suppose it’s a penance of some sort? He’s such a pleasant unassuming little fellow, I hate to speculate.”
“Well…” Bofur rubbed at his goatee and worried his lower lip between his teeth. “He does say so himself that he’s odd, for a hobbit. Not well liked in certain corners of the Shire, since he don’t fit in well. Maybe hobbits are strict with their odd folk?”
Identical expressions of horror turned toward him.
“Reprehensible!”
“What civilized people could do such a thing?”
“A beard is one’s pride, one’s joy! And they force him to shave it off like a hairless elf?”
Bofur raised his hands against the onslaught, “Lay off the hammers! I’m only repeating what he’s told me!”
“Bilbo is not odd,” scowled Thorin.
“He’s odd for a dwarf,” mused Ori.
He turned his scowl onto the young scribe who was momentarily immune to the king’s glowering because he was looking up into the tree branches at the birds.
Ori absently fiddled with the quill in his hand. “And odd for a hobbit, or so he says. But I feel a bit of an oddity at times, too, and Bilbo never thinks ill of me for it. Perhaps it’s not such a bad thing to be odd.”
“You’re not odd, laddie,” soothed Balin. “You have rare talents, is all. A rarity is valuable.”
Ori ducked his head with a shy smile. “Whatever his reasons, I’m glad Bilbo decided to grow his beard.” He sighed dreamily, “He’s as pretty as the stories, like a young Fullangr Ironhand, or Andvari of Moria! Put him in a tunic, and he could have walked right out of the pages of a storybook with a beard like that!”
“He’s a pretty little thing, to be certain, but he’s no storybook dwarf!” guffawed Bofur. “Your heroes haven’t got a single pointy ear among ‘em, and I bet they all wear boots!”
They laughed and Ori conceded the point with a good-natured nod.
Thorin did not laugh. Ugly little whispers of jealousy sniped at his soul. They whispered that a being as beautiful as Bilbo deserved to be paired with a dwarf of equal beauty, of which beauty Thorin was bereft. No one ever compared him to a young statuesque Fullangr or a legendarily handsome Andvari. His looks were usually compared to the hind end of a mine mule (only by Dwalin when he was in a temper; Thorin, after all, was a king and his subjects did not insult him to his face, as homely as it was).
Óin wandered through and peered at Thorin’s black scowl. He pressed a woody bit of root into his hand.
“Here. Chew that. It cures headache.”
Thorin snorted and wandered away from dwarves who wagged their beards too much and strode deeper into Beorn’s gardens. The brisk walk did him good, and he felt the uncomfortable tightness in his jaw relax without the aid of any of Óin’s herbs. The greenery in this part of the garden grew distinctly more vegetable.
He spied Fíli and Kíli on the other side of a vibrant patch of beans and squashes.
“Have you seen Mister Baggins?”
His eldest sister-son winced around a mouthful of something unpleasantly green and fibrous. He made a noise apparently indicating, “no.”
“Fíli. You’re not supposed to eat that part.”
“Mmph?”
His rough hands gently parted the leaves to uncover the plant’s fruit. “This part, the long rounded bit. Dark green. See how it is different than the stem?”
“I didn’t think you a gardener, Uncle.”
“I’m not, but I recognize a zucchini when I see one.”
“Oh.” He examined the bit of gnawed-upon greenery remaining in his hand. “Is that what this is?”
“Yes.”
He pointed, “What about that one there? The reddish one?”
Thorin peered at the large-leafed plant. “I’ve never seen one like that. You shouldn’t eat things you don’t know the name of.”
As Fíli pondered that nugget of wisdom, Kíli strolled up.
“Bilbo’s sure making that new beard of his look good, isn’t he, Uncle?” said his youngest sister-son. Kíli twirled a large orange flower in his fingers before stuffing it in his mouth.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he bristled. “Mister Baggins appears as well as he ever has.”
Kíli nibbled a long green bean with a grimace unrelated to his words. “Me and Fee are gonna have gorgeous beards to our knees by the time we leave this place.”
“You will, will you?”
“Yep. Everything grows a little strange here, you see. Have you seen the size of the bumblebees? The dogs and sheep act very weird tottering around on their hind legs—unnaturally intelligent, they are. And you saw Bilbo at breakfast, yourself! Cute little hairless hobbit snacks on a bit of Beorn’s garden, and bâkhza! He wakes up with that all over his face!” He gestured at his own scruff pantomiming a beard far larger than what Bilbo now wore.
“What wonders will we discover next?”
Kíli had not detected the patronizing tone of his uncle’s rumbling reply. “Who knows! Will Dwalin gain a sunny disposition? Will Nori grow a foot in height?” He plucked another green bean from its bush and took a large crunchy bite. “Maybe Gandalf will start speaking in plain, straightforward sentences?”
“Now that would be a wonder.”
“I hope Bilbo isn’t too put out by his new beard. I bet it’d be a shock to wake up with a beard where there wasn’t one before.” He downed the rest of his green bean with a pained wince. “It suits him so. It’d be a shame if he decided he didn’t like it.”
Just then, the hobbit in question panted towards them at a jog. Believing Bilbo to be the sensible sort who would run very fast and not jog if an orc or something of that nature was in pursuit, Thorin remained unalarmed, but he did give Bilbo his attention when he halted before them.
“Fíli! Do not eat that!” exclaimed Bilbo.
“Uh oh. Is Beorn back?”
“No. That’s poisonous.”
“Poison!” He spat over his shoulder and scrubbed his tongue on his sleeve for good measure.
“Stop that. You’ll just have to launder that shirt over again.”
“Why does Beorn grow poison in his garden?” wondered Kíli, examining the large offending plant. “I rather think teeth and claws are enough of a deterrent to his enemies that he needn’t resort to poison, too.”
“Didn’t I just tell you not to eat that thing?” grumbled Thorin, and Fíli shrank away with a chagrined grimace.
“Watch,” said Bilbo.
He reached among the large, fan-like leaves and pulled at a red stalk and twisted. It came up in his hand with a soft wet pop.
“See? You pluck the stalks. Never cut them, else you might kill the whole plant. We wouldn’t want to do that to Beorn’s lovely garden.”
The dwarves watched him curiously. Kíli served as his ad hoc gathering basket and was holding quite the armful by the time Bilbo finished.
“This is a vegetable called ‘rhubarb.’ The leaves will make you very sick, but the stalks are very tasty, especially when they’re baked in a pie.”
“Poison pie?” blinked Fíli. “Mahal’s hairy fist, are you hobbits vicious to people you don’t like! Murder them with a meal!”
Kíli flinched and moved to drop the poisonous plants but jolted back into compliance at Bilbo’s frown.
“Rhubarb pie isn’t poisonous!” scoffed Bilbo. “Just to prove it, I will bake one for you this afternoon, since you two are so keen to sample all of Beorn’s garden.”
Fíli and Kíli gave one another a stricken glance.
“That’s alright, Mister Baggins! There’s no need!”
“We know now not to eat those leaves! We’ll be careful! Don’t do anything drastic.”
But Bilbo only laughed and took the rhubarb. Thorin was too preoccupied admiring the flash of copper and gold in the hobbit’s curls as he moved about the sunny garden to spare a thought for the potential demise of his two heirs at the hand of this beautiful creature.
But as he followed Bilbo inside to Beorn’s kitchen, Thorin did feel it his duty in the interest of preserving Durin’s line to inquire, “It isn’t actually poisonous, is it?”
Bilbo’s clever fingers did not pause from stripping veined leaves from curiously red stalks. “Not kill a dwarf poisonous, but certainly make a dwarf vomit all night poisonous, especially what with the way those two ninnies are gobbling down everything green! They’re worse than a pack of fauntlings scrumping from Farmer Maggot!”
Thorin hesitated, unaware of the meaning of ninnies, fauntlings, or scrumping, but figured he had the right idea of it from context alone, if Fíli and Kíli’s current behavior was relatively worse. “So not poison.”
“No,” he smiled. Thorin thought Bilbo’s lovely smile was all the more lovely to be framed so handsomely by whiskers. “I wouldn’t harm your boys for anything in the world. Rhubarb pie is lovely. You’ll like it, I promise.”
Thorin helpfully pushed over Beorn’s oversized chair so Bilbo could reach the countertop. At his hobbit’s request, he fetched the massive cutting board and various bowls and spoons and heavy jars of flour and sugar from the pantry.
He made two pies. Thorin felt a touch jealous to share Bilbo’s craft with more than just his sister-sons, but he soon decided that the hobbit was simply far too generous by nature. It would be a crime to discourage such kind impulses when they were part of the reason Thorin loved him so.
He also loved the shockingly masterful way the hobbit handled a knife. Rising to his tiptoes to see the top of the cutting board, he looked on in awe as Bilbo handled Beorn’s oversized knife like he was born to it. With a twitch of his wrist, Bilbo chopped the freshly washed pink stalks as quick as a blink.
Thorin sputtered, “Why do you struggle to swing your elf blade if you can make a knife do that?”
Bilbo raised an eyebrow. It was unfair what such a gesture did to him. Thorin felt the strongest impulse to scramble up onto the chair beside him and press his lips to the arched eyebrow, and then the other one, and then his pink pouting frown.
But Thorin refrained. Bilbo did have a knife in his hand, after all.
The hobbit replied, “For the same reason that you do not struggle to swing your elf blade: I practiced as soon as I was old enough to hold a knife in my hand. You turned your blade at orcs; mine was always directed at vegetables.”
A tiny grin curled in the middle of Bilbo’s lovely beard. “You’ve seen me wave a blade at orcs, pitiful warrior that I am. It’s only fair I get to see what your blade can do in a kitchen.”
He knew he was about to be made a fool, but as soon as Thorin realized that Bilbo meant him to share the narrow standing room of Beorn’s wooden chair, he eagerly clambered up. He felt a little breathless.
Bilbo appeared unaffected by their close quarters. He inclined his head toward the kitchen knife and rhubarb in gracious invitation. Perhaps it was a challenge.
Having smithed more sets than he could count for human housewives, Thorin knew kitchen knives nearly as well as any sword or ax. This blade was shaped like a paring knife, but it was oversized and as large as any meat cleaver. The handle was fat and long, being made for Beorn’s massive mitts, but not impossible for a dwarf to grasp one-handed. Thorin picked it up.
He made a single satisfying stroke through fibrous stalks that clacked to the cutting board. Pleased with himself, he looked at Bilbo.
“Mm… no,” he said.
Bilbo plucked the knife from his fingers with a disparaging mutter that was something about how he was “more likely to whittle the thing than chop it properly.”
“Here. Let me show you how—” he said as he shifted Thorin and himself this way and that on the narrow chair seat. Thorin felt arms attempt to encompass his own from behind, but Bilbo was too short and Thorin’s shoulders too broad to accomplish it.
“Yavanna’s turnips!” he grumbled under his breath.
Then Thorin felt the nimble hobbit scramble up behind him until he was perched on the tall backrest of Beorn’s chair, and he practically draped himself over Thorin’s head and shoulders. He helplessly reached towards the cutting board and failed.
“No, that won’t work either,” he sighed.
Finally, Bilbo wiggled under Thorin’s arm and cozied so close that they were standing flush back to front. Thorin could smell honey-scented soap. His breath twitched a flyaway curl on Bilbo’s head. He prayed in silence to any Valar who would deign to listen to a pitifully awkward dwarf that Bilbo would not feel the thudding of Thorin’s poor heart knocking against his shoulder blades.
“Alright?” Bilbo rested his right hand over Thorin’s right hand and his left hand over his left. “You can see alright over me?”
Thorin was certain the tips of his ears had warmed to a pink more brilliant than rhubarb. His cheek was—by necessity, he lied to himself—resting lightly against soft golden curls. Bilbo had rolled up his sleeves at the start and Thorin could now see the flex of every garden-tanned muscle in Bilbo’s forearms as his long fingers moved above his own. The backs of his arms and hands were lightly furred by delicate, coppery gold hair.
“Yes. This is fine.”
Thorin’s concentration split between savoring the sensation of softness and warmth between his arms and not slicing his left thumb off as Bilbo very slowly guided his hands under his own. He hadn’t enough braincells left unoccupied to comprehend the hobbit’s chatter of instruction. It melted into a pleasant hum in his ears. Led by a master, his clumsy fingers rocked the blade again and again with satisfying strokes.
Their hands stilled.
“You see, it is quite simple. It’s only a matter of practice.”
“I don’t know… perhaps you need to show me how again?”
Bilbo turned in his arms so they were facing one another. The knife demonstration was over.
“I’m afraid we’re clean out of rhubarb,” his voice was oddly hushed. Thorin felt the stir of exhaled breath on his cheek. “Maybe Bombur could use another kitchenhand for dinner tonight?”
Reluctant and feeling a cold hobbit-shaped hollow in his arms, Thorin made an inconclusive noise in his throat and slipped down off the chair.
Bilbo stood staring after him for a long moment.
“Bilbo? What is next?”
He cleared his throat. “Right. Pie. Yes, pie. Uh, would you fetch that jar of sugar here, please? I think I smelled cinnamon in the pantry. Hopefully Beorn has a nutmeg there, too.”
He lightly jumped from the chair without any noise at all like a damn elf and disappeared into Beorn’s pantry as fast as a fleeing rabbit.
After that, they worked together in near silence. Not that Thorin minded silence. He liked feeling the comforting presence of his hobbit nearby and felt satisfied without the interference of words. But he worried that perhaps he had been a little too indulgent. He had made Bilbo uncomfortable and was now reaping the silence which grew from that discomfort.
“I apologize.”
Bilbo looked at him blankly. “For what?”
“I make you uneasy. I’m sorry,” said Thorin.
His eyes smiled warmly, a pair of half moons of quiet joy. “I’m quite comfortable with you, Thorin.”
“But you do not speak.”
“Just thinking, is all.” He grated the last of the nutmeg and began stirring the pie filling together in a large bowl. He winked, “It’s hard to speak and think at the same time, sometimes.”
Thorin agreed with a nod. He was the king of speaking without thinking, after all. He fidgeted with a bead in his hair, a habit he thought he’d broken as an eighty-year-old young dwarf.
“Bilbo? May I ask you something?”
“Of course. What is it?”
“I do not wish to pain you by my asking.”
“Gracious! Now I don’t know what to think. You had better just ask me, then.”
Thorin took a steadying breath and marshalled his courage. “In all the time I’ve known you, you shaved your beard. Why? Is it grief? Is it a secret shame that has brought you to such an extremity?”
“Shame? Not at all! All hobbit men of good breeding shave their whiskers,” he said, expertly draping a fragile pie crust into a large round tin.
“All hobbits shave?”
“Hobbit women, as a general rule, don’t grow any beard at all. But, yes, hobbit men shave.”
He busily spooned chopped rhubarb into the waiting pie crust. He was too busy to notice the stunned dwarf at his elbow.
“Why, some of the lads up in the Brockenbores grow out their sideburns into regular muttonchops! But everyone knows they have some wild rascals up in their corner of the Shire.”
He briefly twiddled his spoon, having already heaped all the filling into the tins in attractive mounds. “A bare chin—it’s, er, it’s a mark of refinement. Civility. My father would have rather died than be seen outside our smial with his chin unshaved and the hair on his head or feet untidy. He shaved twice in a day sometimes.” He barked a small laugh and confessed, “I shave twice a day, too, at times!”
Thorin absently touched the short dark hairs of his beard. His pitiful beard was unattractive to both dwarves and hobbits. Forty-three years ago, a man complimented Thorin’s beard while he worked the forge in Grimslade, but in retrospect, the fellow had been sloppily drunk, so Thorin’s beard was likely nothing to admire among menfolk, either. (He refused to accept either compliments or insults from elves, so he had no interest to know their thoughts on his beard.) He already knew he was not pretty, but Bilbo thought him uncivilized too?
“Seeing our beards,” he sighed heavily, “you must think us all no better than heathens.”
“It was… startling, at the first, I must admit. But now…” Bilbo trailed off as if uncertain he should speak about dwarvish grooming.
Thorin looked at him hopefully and he waited. He then nearly melted into a puddle of dwarvish goo, because Bilbo’s eyes crinkled fondly and he said in a breathless whisper as if sharing a secret known to them two only, “Now I find the lack of pretense refreshing.”
Silently wrangling his cavorting heart into submission, Thorin watched him for a time. Bilbo’s clever flour-dusted fingers wove a lattice of pie crust over the pink mounds of spiced rhubarb. They crimped the crust into a well-practiced pattern to finish off the pie, and Bilbo made it look easy. The dwarf could not help but imagine such clever fingers weaving braids into his hair, and he wondered how they would feel moving across skin other than the back of his calloused hands. He took the pies Bilbo carefully handed down to him.
With a pie balanced in each hand, Thorin watched him gingerly climb down from the chair. “You need no razor to prove your refinement,” he said.
Bilbo’s eyes slowly rose to meet his gaze. “That’s good since I am without one, and I think it likely there isn’t a single razor blade to be had in all Erebor!”
He reached for a pie, but before he could take it, Thorin said, “You are beautiful.”
He halted like a deer hearing an unexpected noise. “Thorin?”
“I should have said so sooner.”
Bilbo didn’t speak. He was standing so still, his slender clever hands still reaching for the pie. His eyes were round. Had he made his dear hobbit unbearably uncomfortable by his words? Of course he did, hulking unrefined ugly dwarf with nothing to offer but poverty and an insane quest that ended in dragon fire. Of course. Bilbo is too good, too lovely, too kind. But these smothered feelings had clawed at Thorin’s insides for too many months. Better to be out with it so the resulting wound could finally heal.
Wishing to flee, but trapped by the weight of a large rhubarb pie in each hand, Thorin stood firm and spoke his piece.
“You are beautiful,” he said again. “You are mithril in a mine, a clear spring in the rock in summer, rest after a long journey. I have ached for you for a hundred years and did not know the source of my loss until I saw you. You make my heart dance in strong quarter time until all of me is filled with song.” He shook his head plaintively, “Bilbo, I am not a dancer and still you do this to me.”
Bilbo blinked at him, and his arms slowly fell to his side. He opened his mouth and then shut it. He searched Thorin’s blue-eyed stare.
“So… you like my beard, then?”
“Yes,” he breathed.
Bilbo clasped floured hands to his ribs and rose on tiptoes to slot their mouths together. It was starshine, and bonfires, and the breath-taking thrill that came from plunging into a cold lake. His entire soul danced, and Thorin’s staid dwarfish heart struck music within his chest, and every beat reverberated Bilbo, Bilbo, Bilbo.
But his attention torn, Thorin reluctantly broke their kiss, even when his hobbit greedily chased after another taste of his lips.
“Bilbo?” His laden arms wobbled. “Bilbo!”
Slightly stupefied, he blinked at the pie tins that Thorin held aloft. “Oh. Oh! The pies!”
Bilbo released him from his pillory of pie. He slid the pies into the waiting oven and straightened. Thorin admired the view.
“Are you finished with your pies?”
“Well, they must bake, of course, and then cool for a bit. Oh! And I need to whip a lot of cream, but not until it’s ready to serve.”
“For now, you must wait? For a good amount of time?”
“Er. Yes?”
“Good.”
He eagerly crowded Bilbo against a cupboard door and Bilbo eagerly let himself be wholly crowded, wholly engulfed by an embrace and smothered by ardent kisses that pressed against his lips, each impertinent eyebrow, and up and down his smooth neck. By the time Thorin’s mouth reached the tender corner below his pointed ear and behind his red, red beard, Bilbo wilted to the floor with a blissed-out sigh and his dwarf eagerly followed him down. He felt a little delightedly shocked that Bilbo took the opportunity to leap on him like, well, like a hobbit on a fresh slice of pie.
It was a most pleasant diversion on a long afternoon.
Momentarily pulling away, Bilbo gasped breathlessly, “I should be doing the dishes!”
“Dishes can wait,” panted Thorin.
“Yes. Yes, I believe so,” he agreed, and he helped himself to a second serving.
The rhubarb pie after dinner was a hit.
It was tart and sweet in a flakey buttery crust and crowned with a dollop of fresh whipped cream. It was a slice of summery heaven on a plate. Every dwarf at the table declared it a piece of culinary perfection. Gandalf said something smug and knowing about the remarkable baked goods of hobbits of the Shire and cleaned his plate. Bombur immediately demanded the recipe.
“You got flour in your hair. And all over your tunic,” Dwalin said to Thorin as the dwarves around them relished in their share of the pies. He squinted at him with a scowl. “What did you do? Go rolling in the flour bin?”
“I made pie with Bilbo.”
His scowl turned uncomfortably speculative, “Is ‘making pie’ some kind of hobbity euphemism—”
“You are literally eating pie right now,” interrupted Thorin. He tapped his plate. “We made pie. See? Pie.”
“And?”
“And it’s none of your business,” he grumbled, pulling yet again at the collar of his tunic to hide the beard burn there.
Sharp-eyed Dwalin smothered a delighted guffaw and pounded him on the shoulder with a strength that would have flattened a lesser dwarf. “Good lad.”
It took quite a bit of cajoling to convince Fíli and Kíli to try a taste of the “poison pie.” They both swore they had had enough of vegetables for the day (“for the year,” declared Kíli), but pleading hobbit eyes were terribly effective. After Bilbo wheedled them into a single bite of pie, they each ate two slices with extra cream.
“I dare say, you all could use a few more vegetables in your diets,” Bilbo told them, “but, no, vegetables don’t necessarily encourage beard growth.”
“Are you certain? You sure grew yourself a nice crop there on your chin.”
“Sorry, lads. I inherited my beard fair and square from my father. It’s a terribly embarrassing secret, but us Baggins all grow exceptionally thick beards.” Seeing Fíli and Kíli’s crushing disappointment, he added, “But my mother always told me that eating my bread crusts would put curls in my hair.”
The young dwarves’ eyes fixed upon the lovely curls resting in Bilbo’s hair. “You always eat your bread crusts, do you?”
“Of course!”
Kíli eyed the demolished pie tins. “What about pie crusts?”
“I’m not certain.” He tapped his bearded chin, “Perhaps pie crust will put hair on your chests?”
Fíli and Kíli looked at one another.
Fíli shrugged at Kíli. “It’s worth a shot.”
Thorin watched his sister-sons make themselves into perfect nuisances as they prowled the table, filching any unattended crumbs of pie crust.
Bilbo leaned into him and murmured in his ear, “Do dwarves aspire to hairy chests?”
“It is a desirable mark of beauty,” he hummed.
“Hm. I suppose it’s just as well, then.”
“What is?”
“That I stopped waxing weeks ago.” As if he hadn’t just exploded poor Thorin’s brain, he pushed another sliver of pie towards him. “Here. You’re too thin. Have some more pie.”