I normally don’t enter these things unless I’ve already got at least a third of them already written. This time, I have half of tomorrow’s idea and that’s all. We’ll see if I manage to keep it up… (it’s doubtful, friends)
Day 1
“Can you feel this?”
Bilbo hummed, in a manner intended to be both appreciative and noncommittal. He lay half reclined against soft, shaggy goatskins and tapestry pillows, with his abandoned book still open on the nightstand beside him. If he lolled his head back just right and squinted, he could even still read it.
“Bilbo, my love,” said Thorin.
Bilbo hummed again. He had just reached an interesting bit of analysis on the different implications between talas and tallunë in Quenya.
“Bilbo.”
This time he looked up. His feet lay in his husband’s lap, and it appeared Thorin was jabbing his thumb repeatedly into the arch of one foot, a distinctly quizzical look on his face. If Bilbo concentrated, he could just about feel it.
“Ah,” said Bilbo guiltily. Thorin regarded the foot with something like wonder, and jabbed it again.
“Yes, yes all right,” said Bilbo, sitting up and squirming back on the heavy silk bedspread until he was out of reach. “Point made, thank you, yes. Look, you – you said it would be romantic. I felt it would be churlish to refuse. Thorin, I can’t help it if I don’t have delicate Dwarf toes.”
“Delicate,” repeated Thorin. He sat at the end of their enormous royal bed in his night-clothes, his long hair tied back for sleep, and looked rather crestfallen.
Bilbo frowned, twitching his nose in thought. “Tell you what,” he suggested. “I’ll admit, this foot massage business doesn’t do anything for me, but if it’s a thing for you Dwarves, well then, why don’t I have a go at doing it for you? Hmm?”
At the mere suggestion his husband brightened instantly. A blush suffused his skin like the breaking of a Spring dawn, and suddenly the whole ridiculous pantomime made sense at last.
“You great fool,” said Bilbo fondly, lifting one of Thorin’s dear, soft little feet up onto the bed. “You could have just asked.”
Fictober
Published
serenbach86 