One of my favorite character types is really gruff ones who put a hard face to the world but have their significant other they’re soft with like I know it’s cliche but I love it.
But it also means when I’m writing fic for those characters they can almost come across as OOC despite my best efforts. Because I’m showing a harsh or sarcastic character with the person they love, I’m showing them differently than they normally appear, except that is my personal story crack so I’ll sustain an entire narrative which is just Hard Ass Character and their SO (who might ALSO be hard ass) being sickeningly sweet with each other.
To date I’ve had this happen with Bagginshield, where I see both thorin and bilbo as closed off or sarcastic assholes who get really romantic and devoted with one another when they’re in private (and I tend to write them in isolation together a lot), lately with Joe Miller and Julie because she’s canonically the person he softened and became better for and I think if they’d ever “been together” he’d be tough still with everyone except her, and probably a bunch of old OTPs too like Erik/Christine, Tohru/Kyo and some others.
Look I mean, I have a type. Couples that inspire one another and are intensely devoted to each other are my romantic story crack and I like writing characters in a romance in isolation together for action and emotional scenes. And I don’t even know why I’m rambling about this it’s just on my mind while I write yet another vaguely sappy Miller/Julie fic or continue one of many Bagginshield fics. Like, I promise I know they can be assholes, but I fucking love showing them with the one person they aren’t an asshole around.
I never meant to ship them this hard, yet here we are
Penmanship, where Thorin wants to write something for Bilbo
Thank you SO MUCH for not prompting it the other way around! I will say, Thorin doesn’t have half-bad penmanship. However, the story went in a slightly different (and angstier) direction than I expected. Cue the return of “grubby soul” Thorin, ie a Thorin who maybe had to do some less than savory things to survive the Exile, something I explored further in my other ficlet “All We Are”.
Bilbo shuffled through the stack of letters on the tabletop, sunlight streaming in the kitchen windows of Bag End as he went through the onerous process of reading his mail. It was good to get started early in the morning so the task was forgotten by lunch. “Bills, bills,” he muttered under his breath. The grocer, the butcher, Mr. Holman and Hamfast for the garden, he hadn’t had to pay a repair bill of any kind since Thorin had taken up residence with him, and truth be told none of the amounts were terribly burdensome. It was just one more task that kept him from his book and husband.
“Thorin, could you take a look at these?” Bilbo called to the next room. “I want to be sure we have it right before putting our name to them. Feel free to sign them if there’s nothing amiss.” He was most certainly not trying to skip on the task’s boredom, it was just that Thorin had a better head for figures. “I’ll be in the study.”
He managed a whole paragraph before it was time to prepare for elevensies, and found the stack of letters neatly folded on the kitchen table. Bilbo picked them up, flipping through them before his eyes widened. “Thorin dear,” he said in a slightly more strangled tone that before, “did you sign these or have I completely lost my mind?”
Thorin appeared in the doorway, leaning against the side as he craned his neck to look at the pages Bilbo held. There was gray in his hair that had not been there when they first met in Bag End some ten years before, but he did not look nearly as tired as he had in Erebor. Shire living had done him a great deal of good. “I did, is that not what you asked?”
Bilbo stared. “Really? You are positively certain I did not sign them?”
His own signature was clearly visible on each page, as perfect a copy (if that’s indeed what it was) as he had ever seen. “I just… my goodness, I never realized you had such a skill at forgery that wasn’t, well, in a forge. I believe we’ve had some confusion, I thought you would sign with your own name. And… hang on, how are you so good at this?!”
Bilbo looked up as Thorin approached and took the sheafs from his hand, glancing through the pages. “It is not an exact match, had I more care I would have put more of an angle to the B. As it is, it’s too precise,” Thorin said, the corner of his mouth twitching as he added, “Your penmanship is somewhat more… creative.”
“But how?” Bilbo exclaimed. “I could not have picked those out from my own in a thousand years!”
A shadow flitted across Thorin’s face, but he shrugged, glancing down at the bills as he said, “Many years ago, when my people still wandered the road after the Mountain fell, we stayed the night in a walled village in the foothills of the Misty Mounts. One of our scouts during the night overheard the mayor saying his people intended to rob us while we slept. They had recognized that we were the dwarves of Erebor, and expected us to be quite rich. We were exhausted from our wandering, and with us were our children and wounded, most of us were unarmed. They might very well have won. The mayor had written an order to his guards that we would not be permitted to leave. So that night, I forged his signature for a falsified counter-order, and we were able to escape before they noticed we were gone.”
Bilbo took the bills back from Thorin’s hand, horror, anger and a strange feeling of guilt churning in his stomach as he stared down at the pages. “That was the first time you had to forge a signature?”
“No,” Thorin said, and offered a wan smile. “It was only one example. My people have steady hands, as you may have noticed. One illiterate mayor’s signature was hardly a challenge, even when I was less practiced at the art. I know yours far better.”
“Well,” Bilbo said, perking up with forced cheer, waggling a finger at Thorin, “next time, I full expect you to use your own, thank you very much! As my husband you do have equal standing after all, and it will free me from some of these pesky bills!”
“Of course,” Thorin said wryly, inclining his head in acknowledgement.
Bilbo cleared his throat. “And! If I should ever meet that mayor, I should like to give him a good kicking. He sounds like a terrible sort who well deserves it.”
“It was over a hundred years ago, Bilbo,” Thorin said gently. “By now I suspect time will have done the kicking for you.”
Bilbo had intended to go back to his study, see if he could get a few more passages down about their time in Beorn’s house, but it would have to wait. He could hardly stop himself from looping his arm through Thorin’s, pressing his face briefly to Thorin’s shoulder. Closing his eyes, his writer’s eye saw too clearly the moonlit road, women and children fleeing into the night, and a young prince Thorin, eyes darkened as he turned away from those they had thought would offer sanctuary, only to find another betrayal.
“Let us go for a walk,” Bilbo said. “I think I could use some air, and these bills will not deliver themselves.”
There was something between them that only existed in silence, and silence was a rare commodity in the crash-bang of their adventure. Everything was always running or revelry, sweat and heat and the clash of steel. Bilbo was terrified out of his mind most of the time, until terror had settled as a sort of constant background hum and he found himself almost at peace with it, which was strange enough on its own.
He would not say an island of peace had always existed beside Thorin. Quite the contrary, Bilbo had found him vexing most of the time when they first set off. Would it have killed the dwarf lord to smile when Bilbo came huffing and puffing after them? But the looks were less forbidding now, dare he say they were uncertain and a little shy ever since the burning pines and Thorin’s sudden and quite terrifying embrace, and the apologies that followed.
Bilbo had nearly jumped out of his skin the first time Thorin’s fingertips had brushed his. The dwarf had barely looked at him, but continued walking ahead. It may have been Bilbo’s imagination that his pace slowed, that his head turned a fraction to look over his shoulder as if expecting Bilbo to catch up. Madness indeed to take it as an invitation, but Bilbo was feeling quite mad lately and so setting his shoulders and take a deep breath, he had picked up his pace until he walked alongside Thorin.
A stolen glance was all he needed. Thorin was looking back at him, wearing a faint smile at the sight of him, and by jove if it didn’t make up for that missing smile when Bilbo had first dashed out his door after them. He let his fingertips brush Thorin’s back, a reassurance that the touch was accepted, even appreciated, and they had said nothing of it. It made it all much easier. Words always got in the way, all the fuss and bother of propriety, finding some way to overcome all the thousands of differences that existed between them. The sheer number of apologies for their (mutual) boorish behavior towards one another would take all day. Yes, it was much easier to let it remain silent.
Cold nights gave further excuses, summer was fading into autumn and they were wandering north. It was not unusual for the dwarves to sit cheek-by-jowl, and he was practically a dwarf now, was he not? He sat resolutely beside Thorin on the log they had dragged over to serve as seats ‘round the campfire, idly placing a companionable hand on Thorin’s knee before turning to his meal. Thorin did not stir, barely nodded, and it was just as it should be, even as their shoulders touched the whole night, a light reassuring pressure that felt as if it grounded Bilbo, steadied him all this madness of a world that was not his own.
When they set their bed rolls side by side, he thought to be a little daring with this nameless something that existed between them. The lights were out save for some embers in the fire-pit when Bilbo rolled over, the angle shielding them from view as he found Thorin’s hand beneath his blankets with his own. Thorin’s fingers was chill from the cold, they had only just gone to bed, but it warmed Bilbo to his toes when those callused hands tightened around his. After a short while, Thorin’s thumb gave a light stroke over Bilbo’s palm. It was no trouble at all then to focus on that light touch, and let the sense of contentment wash over him as he slid into sleep.
…. now i kinda want to do a really mushy Bagginshield prompt, anyone want to hit me up?
Anyway, on a more serious note, I wonder if there was some occurring at the beginning of 2013 that started the whole “One” trend? Maybe a spike in soulmate AUs prompt on tumblr or something? or there was something about the fact of dwarves falling in love only once…
There’s two pieces of Canon that could back it up – (to paraphrase) Tolkien’s quote about dwarves loving only once or not at all, and that many dwarves never bother to get into relationships especially because their population is only 1/3 women (which I think combined with Gimli’s statement based on the LotR appendix that dwarf men and women are indistinguishable is what led to a lot of the gender play fic we see in the Hobbit fandom, and the general liberty with which authors treat dwarven conceptions of gender despite lack of canon representation of female dwarves or in fact any dwarf in a relationship).
The other is the similar statement that Elves only love once* (*some terms and conditions may apply, for example Finduilas in Children of Hurin, so Elves are monogamous unless it’s plot related apparently). Furthermore, that elves actually fade if their love is denied, as a broken heart is one of the few things that can kill these immortal beings besides injury. Kinda goes along with Tolkien having so many of his races be Biologically Catholic as I like to call it, so he never has to address things like infidelity in immortal relationships, they’re all strictly monogamous by default.
That I think combined with popular soulmate trends which may have indeed been doing the rounds early in 2013 may have lead to someone using “One” as shorthand to describe a soulmate, and applying that to Tolkien’s world. As I’ve said elsewhere, I totally understand why it’s a useful word, it just rubs me the wrong way because Tolkien’s world is SO linguistically based and unlike most other fandoms where fanon runs rampant because the writers didn’t provide backstory on every little thing, Tolkien actually HAS provided backstory on an exhaustive amount of Middle Earth’s culture and history, so there’s a lot of fanon where there doesn’t really need to be any. Again, which is totally fine, I just hope that people are conscious of what is fanon and what is canon because the canon can in fact be very rich and rewarding to work from and a lot of stuff that ends up in fanon often comes from other fandoms and carries with a lot of very tired, overused tropes (so many yaoi tropes…. so many…).
TL;DR The “One” thing is not without basis in Tolkien’s world, he just never used that word for it, and I’m still not sure who was the first author to apply it to Hobbit fic.
uuuh I don’t know actually? I think one of the oldest ones I read was Child of Earth and Sky where this is mentioned, which dates back to march 2013
Hmm, interesting. Something Blue was published three days after Child of the Earth and Sky, but Child doesn’t bring it up (as far as my cursory find word search found) until Ch. 20 10 (I stand corrected) but Something Blue brings it up much sooner around ch. 2. Given how close they are in time wrt publish date, but the fact fics, y’know, take time to write they could both be working from a similar source or inspiration. I don’t mean to deep dive into people’s works so much, but I’m terribly curious as to where some of these fanon artifacts really began, and I agree it first emerged around March 2013.
Also it’s a shame that the Child author orphaned their account 😦
Honest question to the Bagginshield fandom, does anyone recall what was the first fanfic to use the idea that dwarves have a “One”? Was it “Something Blue” by @themarchrabbit?
Y’know, I’ve been asked about Prayers to Broken Stone dialogue before and I usually refer to three of my favorites, the tea scene in ch. 5, the love confession moment, and Gandalf’s assurance to Thorin that regardless of his rank in life he still deserved to be saved, so I’m going to take this in a less epic direction.
“Mahal have mercy, he has claws!” Dori exclaimed from behind him. Dwalin only grunted, giving Thorin a look as if daring him to try to throw him off. “Mister Gandalf, what is this witchcraft?”
“The dragon sickness, Master Dori, which I thought at this point should be obvious,” Gandalf said grimly.
“Well, forgive me for saying so, but this has all gotten a bit too literal for my taste! Is it contagious?” said Dori.
Most of the time when I write dialogue it’s all, y’know, in my head where most of the voices I hear come from. But sometimes you get a line that so badly needs to be in the story that you actually hear it, as if it exists outside your head. This is one of those lines. I’m pretty sure in the earliest drafts I had Dori’s fussy voice saying it.
A huge part of this line was just the need to poke fun at myself, I mean PTBS is all about dragon sickness being taken literally to an absolutely comical extent, and I felt someone at some point in the fic needed to point out this absurdity. But a huge part of it was also that it just… sounded like something Dori would say in that situation!
OH MAN YEAH there are some lines in Hamilton that absolutely AMBUSH you with Bagginshield feels. The one that hit me hard was “That Would Be Enough” imagining Thorin under the dragon sickness in Erebor and Bilbo trying to snap him out of it with:
Look at where you are Look at where you started The fact that you’re alive is a miracle Just stay alive, that would be enough
Avelera 