7) routine kisses where the other person presents their cheek/forehead for the hello/goodbye kiss without even looking up from what they’re doing

It was a bloody stupid thing to do, and Bilbo’s only excuse for it was that everything surrounding the rebuilding of Erebor was happening at a break-neck pace, and that included personal lives. It also included even less sleep, somehow, than he recalled getting on the quest. 

So with the Company all gathered around a salvaged banquet table, maps and accounts laid out in a flurry before them while more dwarves trickled in every day, and day and night had no meaning because there was so much work to be done and they were underground, he had hardly thought of it.

Clearly Thorin had hardly thought of it either, when Bilbo stood and stretched with a yawn, his spine popping as he stretched after a day spent sitting.

“Well I think that’s me for the night. If spend one more minute looking at those scribbles I quite believe my eyes will fall out,” Bilbo said. He made no pretense of dwarven constitution. There was a lethargic murmur from the surrounding dwarves, a half-hearted wave from Ori as he glanced up from his work.

“Goodnight,” Bilbo said to Thorin, and leaned over to give him a companionable pat on the shoulder. It was all they’d agreed upon for when they were in public, at least until such a time as they chose, a time when it made sense to try to explain to the others what they barely understood themselves.

Bilbo did not know exactly when staying up beside Thorin’s sickbed to free the healers to see to the other wounded had turned to sharing that bed. Or when it had turned to falling asleep at Thorin’s side to the steady beat of Thorin’s heart, as soothing a sound as he had ever heard with how close it had been. 

He could not pinpoint it, but once both were given their separate quarters set up within Erebor, they had exchanged one silent, knowing look and that had been that. Bilbo wasn’t sure he’d spent a single night in his generous quarters, only used it to store his clothes (though even those were making a steady migration to Thorin’s wardrobe, only for convenience’s sake of course) and then it was on with his little ring and sneaking back to the only place that felt like home since he’d left Bag End.

It had been at least a month now though of waking up beside Thorin in the few hours of sleep they were afforded, but those private moments of warmth between waking and sleeping were a better courtship than any Bilbo had thought to have, with anyone for that matter, much less with Thorin when they might so easily have had nothing at all.

He would admit in retrospect that small part of him had hoped the little pat on the shoulder would be sign enough to Thorin of his intentions, once a suitably unsuspicious amount of time had passed and Bilbo had absolutely been seen entering his own room for any eyes that might be there to pry. For those eyes would certainly not note the tiny opening of that door as an invisible, hobbit-size form slipped out.

That said, they really did need to stop the sneaking around though, as much of a game as it had become, as lovely as the privacy and lack of prying had been, but that was hardly on Bilbo’s mind at the moment. There was nothing on his mind except how badly he looked forward to that bed, and the warmth of Thorin beside him to share it.

So when Thorin inclined his head in return with a murmured, “Goodnight,” Bilbo had not thought about it, or about anything at all when the pat on the shoulder turned to a familiar goodnight kiss to Thorin’s forehead.

The murmuring of the other dwarves stopped. Bilbo stopped. The warm creep of exhaustion over his eyes and brain stopped, replaced with a sudden horrible alertness.

But maybe it was his imagination. Maybe they’d gone undetected, with the others too focused on their work. Bilbo craned his neck, peaking out of one eye in a hope against hope…

Nope. Every eye in the room was trained on them. Kili was openly gaping, and Dwalin’s expression was worryingly unreadable.

“Uh,” Bilbo tried, intelligently. “I… suppose someone just won a bet?”