Bagginshield Fanfics

Planting a Hobbit northerntrash

Summary:

Bilbo liked Erebor, he really did. Even if everyone seemed convinced he was going to leave.

In which soil causes international incidents, Thorin is over-dramatic, and dwarves are rubbish at keeping secrets. Oh, and they build a garden. Eventually.

Bilbo liked Erebor.

Honestly, he liked it a lot more than he had even expected: he had perhaps been a little put off by his initial experience of the mountain kingdom, stinking of dragon, full of skeletons and dust, and besieged by armies (and who, really, could blame him for that?) but once all of that was over, and the great clean-up and repair work had begun, he had found himself liking it a lot more.

The corridors were not dark and cold as he had expected; the lit forges in the heart of the mountain spread warmth throughout, from the lowest hallway to the highest room, and all the great and caverous halls in-between. An ingenious system of pipework diverted the hot air pumped through the forges by the bellows to all parts of the Mountain, leaving the stone floors and walls warm to the touch, a similar warmth that might have been found had he pressed his hands to the wooden panelling of Bag End after a long, slow summer day.

The smell passed after several weeks of airing, and thank Eru for that.

As for the dark, the oil lamps were kept lit throughout the day and night (for all that the difference was still hard for Bilbo to realise most of the time when he hadn't been able to reach a window that day); the wicks were kept trimmed and the oil wells refilled by a host of younger dwarves whose duty it was to ensure the place remained bright and fair. In the main halls and larger chambers, great mirrored devices buried deep in the rock reflected the daylight back into the heart of the mountain, lighting them with the brightness of noon or the shadowy golden light of sunset.

Even in the lower reaches of the mountain, were the majority of the population of the re-claimed Erebor lived, it was rare that Bilbo found himself struggling to see, for all that he lacked the canny dark-vision of the dwarves.

And of course, the company of his friends and newly found family made it a great deal more cheerful than it had been on his initial arrival: the great battle that the men were referring to as the Battle of Five Armies had shocked Thorin from the gold-sickness that had cast the shadow of its fear over them all, the horror of the bloodshed, the extent of his injuries and the knowledge that he had nearly killed them all enough to make him realise what he had done.

Bilbo had still not been entirely sure that he was going to stay in Erebor, unsure if the ache in his chest would ever ease being around the dwarf he had found himself caring deeply, perhaps too deeply, for, but he had promised Bofur and Fili and Kili that he would remain a little while. He had thought to find passage back to the Shire after a few months, but then Thorin, on the eve of his coronation, had found him, still leaning heavily on his left leg to spare the brunt of his injuries (but refusing to use a cane, for all that Oin and his nephews called him a fool) and had pressed his ring into Bilbo's hands, begging for another chance, for them to start over, for something more than they had been before.

It had been unexpected, but hardly unwanted.

Rather, in hindsight, like the entire adventure had been.

He had been unable to refuse: the leap in his chest had had him drawing Thorin's mouth to his, pressing their bodies close together, for all that it meant they were disregarding the usual rules of dwarven courtship – and it at least explained why Fili had kept leaving great tomes on that particular subject in Bilbo's rooms.