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avelera · 4 years

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@angel-starbeam asked for a Bagginshield prompt where Thorin and Bilbo finally plant the acorn and I’m not sure if it was meant or a happy or sad prompt but I just COULDN’T make a sad prompt out of it, so here’s some domestic Bagginshield fluff!

word count: ~1,000 words

Bag End was quiet but for the crackling of the hearth as a drowsy contentment settled upon the room. Bilbo sat curled up with a book in his familiar, hard-won armchair across from Thorin, lost in his own world.

It had been a month now since they’d reached the Shire from over the Misty Mountains, only to discover Bilbo’s home ransacked and his furniture, of all things, auctioned off to various greedy relatives and townsfolk. This fact had done little to improve Thorin’s view of the sleepy village in which he had agreed to spend the rest of his life with Bilbo, leaving Erebor in the hands of his nephews with a clean slate free of their uncle’s misdeeds. This was the first night of peace he and Bilbo had, after the flurry of polite requests and flat-out intimidation (as well as the occasional bribe) required to re-furnish Bag End, a month they had spent for all practical purposes camping out on Bilbo’s floor with their bedrolls piled beside one another in front of the hearth.

He could see the lack of tension in Bilbo’s bearing, as he seemed truly engrossed in his book and not simply flipping the pages angrily while trying to distract himself, a distraction that usually failed and ended in another explosive rant that Thorin entertained with good humor and no small amount of sympathetic irritation on Bilbo’s behalf. Thorin knew he’d been surly enough during his own quest to reclaim his homeland, he could hardly judge Bilbo in return for fits of temper upon finding his own home ransacked by dragons of a less fearsome sort.

They were home. Home in a way they never could have been had they remained in Erebor. Thorin knew now that the palace of his childhood would only ever be a tomb for him. That his quest was best served as a gift to the next generation of Durin’s Folk, and he was content in passing the great city on to their stewardship. During those weeks of darkness and dragon sickness, when visions of gold swam before his hazy vision, and after during the intermittent nightmares of his sickbed while he recovered from his wounds, it was visions of Bilbo’s green home, dimly remembered, that soothed Thorin. Bilbo’s promise that there would be peace for him there, at the end of the long road.

“We should plant the acorn,” Thorin mused aloud. Bilbo started and looked up from his book. His brow furrowed in confusion, so Thorin clarified, “From Beorn’s house, the one you kept. We should plant it in your garden.”

“In our garden,” Bilbo corrected as if by reflex but his expression twisted unusually for what Thorin thought was the innocent nature of the statement. “Err, yes, about that…”

“Or elsewhere?” Thorin frowned. “If you fear it will do damage to your prized tomatoes.”

“What? No! I, that is, I realize that acorn meant a great deal to you, Thorin, and to me, of course, a great deal, in fact, so much so that I, err, already… planted it in, ah… Dale.”

“In Dale,” Thorin said blankly.

“Well, yes, you see,” Bilbo’s book slid from his lap as he began to fidget, tapping the tips of his fingers together and looking everywhere that wasn’t at Thorin. “It’s not as if I knew then that you would tell me to plant it here, on what was very nearly your deathbed, my dear. I hadn’t the faintest that you took that little encounter so seriously or, good heavens, that you even remembered it, distracted as you were at the time by, err, by the gold and all that…”

“Be that as it may,” Thorin interrupted, “you said you wished to plant it in your garden, once you returned home. Why in Durin’s name would you plant it in Dale?” Had Bilbo some unexpressed wish to settle down in the town of Men that Thorin was only just learning of? He felt flat-footed at the thought, that he understood Bilbo so little, that Thorin might have insisted they return to the Shire against Bilbo’s wishes.

Bilbo flushed. “I… thought I was going to, err, IthoughtIwasgoingtodie.”

“What?”

Bilbo straightened. “I thought I was going to die! There, are you happy? I planted it in Dale in the midst of the battle because I couldn’t see how any of us were going to make it through another suicidal charge! The thought of it ending up lost or, heaven forbid, boiled up in some goblin soup pot when they ate us all after was too horrific to be borne, and if we did make it I wanted whoever survived to see it! To know it was there to know… that there’s light after the darkness, and even those who set out to die that day had hope.” Bilbo ducked his head. “And then after, when you asked after it, when I thought you were… that you were dying, I didn’t have the heart tell you it was already planted.”

“…Bilbo,” Thorin said softly and chuckled under his breath as he rose from his chair and went over to place a hand around Bilbo’s shoulders while the hobbit continued to look away, flushing to the tips of his ears. Thorin bent down and pressed a kiss to his forehead, which drew Bilbo’s gaze up. “I don’t know why you waited so long to tell me. There’s no shame in what comfort a warrior takes on the battlefield to see himself through. I only ever meant that I wished you to lead a long, happy life, even if I wasn’t there to see it.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” Bilbo muttered. “Though if you truly thought that I would have been happy that day or any other if I’d buried you in Erebor, then I’d say you were hit harder on the head by that Pale Orc than we realized.”

Thorin’s hand tightened on Bilbo’s shoulder and Bilbo’s hand crept up to grasp it in return. “Fortunately for me, I had the services of a most excellent burglar to see me through.”

“Fortunately for you?” Bilbo scoffed, then sighed. “I do truly hope you’re not upset.”

“Not upset, only jealous of the Men of Dale. Perhaps we can visit one day, and see what has become of that little seed,” Thorin murmured, a faint smile twisting at the corner of his lips, one answered by Bilbo as he glanced up.

“I would like that.”

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Author Note: This fic referenced the BotFA deleted scene, where Bilbo planted the acorn in Dale. I think it’s good that they took it out, as it would have undermined Thorin’s request to Bilbo to plant the acorn at Bag End, but I couldn’t resist it as an amusing twist on the prompt.

#bagginshield #thilbo #my writing

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