LOTR/Hobbit Imagines

Thorin - And there was only one bed...

My entry for day 2 of the Richard Armitage Summers Splash hosted on Tumblr

Prompts were "one bed trope" and the line "I never knew it'd be like this"

*

"This is a joke, right?" Kíli asked, his voice finally breaking the awkward silence that hung heavily in the small bedroom as the three Dwarves stared at the single bed.

"I am sure they can find us another room with better arrangements," Fíli tried to soothe his brother, although he wasn't so sure of it himself. He turned to his uncle for help, but the look on Thorin's face told him everything he needed to know.

"It was the last room available, so it's either this or sleeping under the stars."

"Not in this weather we're not!" Kíli protested as he looked out the window, his nose pressed against the glass. "It's pouring outside!"

Thorin sighed and a loud thud sounded through the room when he dropped his pack on the wooden floor. "Then we'll just have to make it work. It'll be like old times, remember? When we had sleepovers in front of the fireplace and slept as long as we wanted?"

It had definitely not been like old times.

For one, Fíli and Kíli were older now and took up a lot more space than he remembered. He had been quick enough to claim the spot in the middle to avoid being pushed out of the bed, even going as far as drawing imaginary lines on the mattress that neither of them could cross, but that didn't quite turn out like he had hoped...

First there was the matter of the blanket and sheets. If Thorin dared to hope that laying perfectly centered in the middle of the bed would leave him with plenty of covers and warmth, he was sorely mistaken. Fíli had pulled the blanket over him the minute he climbed onto the mattress and Kíli was hogging the sheets, leaving Thorin with nothing but his fur coat to cover himself.

And secondly... the last thing Thorin got that night was sleep.

His oldest nephew kept tossing and turning until he finally settled on his right side, facing away from Thorin. But Fíli was a restless sleeper at the time and more than once Thorin received an elbow or a knee in his side, jolting him awake every time he was this close to drifting away.

Kíli wasn't making it easy for him either. Unlike Fíli, he'd turned towards him to fall asleep and kept breathing in his ear, making whistling sounds until a highly frustrated Thorin clenched his jaws so hard that he expected his teeth to shatter. When he couldn't stand it any longer, he gave Kíli a not so gentle push to wake him up, but he rolled over instead, so Thorin had to jump up and quickly throw his arm around his nephew's waist to stop him from falling out of the bed. He couldn't risk Dís' anger when they returned home and she saw one of her sons got injured under his care, even if it was only a scratch or small bruise. Kíli didn't even so much as flinch and a few minutes later he started mumbling in his sleep, doing so for the rest of the night.

Thorin grumbled when the first rays of sunshine shone in his eyes. He hadn't been able to catch one minute of sleep and groaned heavily when he left the bed to go to the bathroom. "You know, I was very excited about this trip but... I never knew it'd be like this!" he muttered to himself.

Later that day they arrived back home in Ered Luin and Thorin spotted his sister Dís standing in the doorway of their small but cozy house, waiting for them to come home.

"Did you guys have fun?" she asked her sons, tilting her head when she saw the state Thorin was in. Dís frowned when she was met with a low grumble when she asked if he was alright but decided not to pry. Not yet at least.

Fíli and Kíli told her all about their trip during dinner, about the things they've seen, what Thorin had taught them and how they had spent the night in an inn.

"Did they behave themselves?" Dís asked when she collected the dirty dishes from the table. "Thorin?" she asked again when there came no answer. When she looked up, she couldn't help but laugh at the sight before her.

There sat Thorin, head resting on his hand, elbow still on the table and his other hand clutching the spoon that was still in his soup. She had wondered how long he would last, having recognized the exhausted look in his face as soon as she laid eyes on him.

She smiled to herself as she wrapped a blanket around his shoulders.

"I guess that means no."

*

Love my writing? Maybe you'll love my story "Guarding Your Heart"! You can find it on my profile. It's a modern Fili story, loosely based on The Bodyguard movie, but with a twist. It has some smut so it's R rated!