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English
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Part 4 of Excerpts from Unwritten Works (The Hobbit)
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Published:
2023-06-14
Completed:
2023-06-14
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2,615
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2/2
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Honey Cake and Curls

Summary:

The Company had been at Beorn’s for a few days, and, being the slightly stressed, confined hobbit she was, Bilba Baggins had begun to bake.
The audience was unexpected, but welcome.

The audience was just happy to be there.

Chapter 1: Honey Cakes and Hobbit Bakes

Notes:

Moderate edits 2/14/2024

Chapter Text

The Company had been at Beorn’s for a few days, and, being the slightly stressed, confined hobbit she was, Bilba Baggins had begun to bake. She had stolen a now-washed scrap of some tattered piece of someone's clothing to contain her bouncy curls and was presently staring down the massive kitchen with slight distaste. Why couldn’t more people be sensibly sized? She spied a jar that looked about right on a high shelf, likely within easy reach for Beorn but far above her own head. She sighed and turned around to haul over a massive chair, grunting slightly as she lined it up. 

“What are you making?” 

The question made her nearly jump out of her skin, as she thought most of the company had retreated outside for the day, but Fili was leaned over her mixing bowl, inspecting the contents with a critical eye. 

She cleared the residual fear from her throat. “I was thinking a nice batch of honey biscuits.” She dusted her hands off nervously as Fili turned his full attention to her. “That or some honey cake, but I’m not sure Beorn has all the ingredients.” His eyes widened at that. 

“Honey cake?” He asked.

“Yes, it’s, well, it’s a cake with, ha-” she laughed a little nervously “well, with honey, which I understand isn’t very descriptive but-”

Fili cut her off. “No, I know honey cake. You uh-” Suddenly he got very shy, eyes dropping to the floor as he picked at the edge of a sleeve. “There was a loaf in your pantry the night we, uh... visited.” His laugh was a little forced. “I believe I ate the entire loaf myself!” 

He sheepishly met her eyes again. “Oh! Well. I suppose I’ll have to make it if Beorn has the supplies then.” she said decisively. They could all do with a little cheering up. Fili smiled gently and she returned it easily, but quickly switched it for her best stern face, propping her fists on her hips. “You better not have come in here to try and help me - I’ve seen you ‘help’ Bombur.” Heavy air quotes around ‘help’ made her point clear. 

Fili threw up his hands in mock surrender, sobering quickly.  “Wouldn’t dream of it, m’lady.” He took two big steps back to further emphasize, before hopping up onto a chair near the end of the table, leaning on the table comfortably.  

She eyed him carefully. “Humph. If all you’re going to do is sit there at least be entertaining.” she teased, turning back to the shelf she had yet to conquer.

“As the lady wishes,” Fili replied softly, and after a long moment began to hum, lovely and low. 

Bilba nearly slipped off the chair in surprise but recovered quickly. The song was slow and pleasant, one she didn't recognize from the shire or from their weeks on the road, and she let herself swim in it for a moment before grabbing the jar. 

Fili’s tune swirled around the kitchen as she gathered more ingredients, and slowly blended into another song, and then another when she didn’t notice, the melodies equally smooth and sweet. 

She started on the cookies as he began to clean one of his knives, where he had been hiding it in his simple tunic and trousers she had no idea, but the two of them fell into a rhythm of mixing and polishing. She felt her stress begging to melt away in the calm of baking and pleasant company, and soon enough she was scooping and then pushing the tray into the oven to bake. She sighed as she looked at her mountain of oversized dishes, and pushed up her sleeves to get started. 

Bilba knew the cookies were nearly done when dwarves began trickling in, the enticing scent of sugar and honey drawing them in from the garden. Despite the new company Fili kept up his humming, and even though Bilba registered the door opening and closing, she floated in the little bubble Fili’s song had formed around the kitchen. When she finally grabbed a towel to dry her hands and check the cookies, her eye caught on Fili. He was staring at her, or rather, a better word would have been gazing. A more romantic hobbit might have even said admiring. His knife sat mostly forgotten in his palm, his shoulders relaxed, and his eyes were soft and happy. Behind him though were several of Beorn’s goats, who had obviously been waiting to get his attention. Based on their sizes they were a few of the baby goats she had seen hopping happily around and atop the brothers in the previous days. It was likely she had stolen one of their new favorite playmates, and she couldn't squash the silly smile that snuck up at the thought. 

“I think the kids miss you, Fili,” she told him, grabbing a spatula to move the cookies from the tray to a plate. 

When the humming stopped but he didn’t move, she looked over at him again. He truly was staring at her now, slightly open-mouthed. His relaxed posture was the same, but there was a line of tension through it, like he had frozen in the middle of a breath he could neither complete nor release. 

“Fili? The kids?” she gestured uselessly past him at the baby goats with her spatula, and she would bet her lemon bun recipe if she pressed her ear to his head at that moment she would hear nothing but crickets. After another still moment his head did begin to rotate slowly, and in a slightly creepy move his eyes remained glued to her until his head was simply turned too far. He stared at the goats for another long moment that had Bilba worrying slightly for his sanity, before finally speaking. “Goats. Baby goats. Kids. Yes.” He stared at them for several more seconds. 

Bilba looked out over the table and caught the eyes of Balin, who had come in and taken a seat at the far end of the long table. She arched a brow at him in a silent, ‘What on earth?’, but the old dwarf just chuckled quietly and shook his head. 

Kili smashed whatever was left of the moment by bounding through the door. “Cookies! You're the best Bilba!” he cheered, before snatching one off of the plate and practically stuffing it in his mouth. He instantly regretted it as he both dropped the cookie and let the half-chewed bite fall out of his mouth onto the floor. “Hot! Hot hot hot!” 

Bilba looked at the gloopy mess on the floor in disgust. “Fresh out of the oven,” she mumbled to no one, since Kili had noticed the goats and his mildly catatonic brother.

“Goats! You found Fili! Good job!” He pulled his brother out of the chair, which finally seemed to wake him up. 

“Kili!” Dwalin boomed from somewhere. “Clean up the damn cookie first, for Mahal’s sake.”

Bilba sighed and turned back to finish drying the dishes. She missed her quiet, music-filled kitchen already. 

Chapter 2: Golden Curls and Hobbit Girls

Summary:

Fili's Point of View is a little different.

Notes:

Moderate edits 2/14/24
WHO let me post the sentence "he physically shook it out of his head, mustache beads beating on his cheeks and lips" 🤮🤮🤮
I edited it like FOUR times before I posted the first time and that one STILL got the green light??? Someone revoke my Ao3 membership fr

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Fili slipped into the house while Kili was busy trying to beat Nori in some contest involving climbing a tree and hopping through a bush. It had been fun to watch the first time, but he was tired, and there was someone else he’d rather see today. 

Her face as she fell from the ledge in the goblin caves flashed through his mind for a moment, and he physically shook it out of his head. She was fine. They were all fine. Mostly. He looked up at the sound of a chair scraping on the ground to see her in the kitchen, beautiful curls bouncing in the midday sunlight as she dragged a chair over to a shelf. The sight of her bounty of hair barely contained by some scrap of fabric across the top of her head had his heart beating a little funny, and he took a breath before ambling into the kitchen. She had a large bowl and several ingredients out on the table already, and he peeked into the dish. 

“What are you making?” he asked, breaking the silence. 

She startled adorably, and he watched her out of the corner of his eye as she took her own steadying breath. 

“I was thinking a nice batch of honey biscuits.” She wrung her hands nervously, so Fili turned his full attention to her, taking her in completely. Mahal, she was a sight. He knew that the moment she had opened her front door, but knowing the cultured, resourceful, witty, and brave woman beneath the rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes turned her natural beauty into the most perfectly cut diamond. “That or some honey cake, but I’m not sure Beorn has all the ingredients.” Fili perked up. 

“Honey cake?” He asked. He remembered a sweet honey loaf from the feast that first night at her home. It was cinnamony and sweet, and he had eaten half of it with his hands before even getting it out of the pantry. 

“Yes, it’s, well, it’s a cake with, ha-” she laughed a little nervously, “well, with honey, which I understand isn’t very descriptive but-”

Fili cut her off. “No, I know honey cake. You uh-” He realized his slight blunder of mentioning their plundering of her pantry and dropped his eyes, pulling at a loose thread at the hem of his sleeve. “There was a loaf in your pantry the night we, uh, visited.” He laughed lightly, hoping to avoid any lingering ire from that night. “I believe I ate the entire loaf myself!” 

He dared to meet her eyes again, and was rewarded with a pleased expression. “Oh! Well. I suppose I’ll have to make it if Beorn has the supplies then.” she said decisively. Fili smiled gently at the offer, and his heart soared when she returned it, but her smile quickly dropped and she propped fists on her hips. “You better not have come in here to try and help me - I’ve seen you ‘help’ Bombur.” He internally cringed at the memory of nearly spilling the entire pot of stew one night, and nearly burning it another. He was on firewood gathering duty for days after that.

He threw up his hands in surrender, hoping she wouldn’t kick him out entirely, but not entirely unable to avoid poking a little fun. “Wouldn’t dream of it, m’lady.” He took two big steps back to further emphasize his point. He hesitated a moment before hopping up onto a chair near the end of the table, waiting for her to properly shoo him out as she ought to. When she only watched him with a critical eye but a poorly concealed smile, he hesitantly leaned on the table and got comfortable.  

“Humph. If all you’re going to do is sit there at least be entertaining.” she teased in return, and he didn't bother to stop the grin that split his face as she turned back to her shelf.

“As the lady wishes.” He replied. Now how was he to be entertaining without being too distracting? He thought back to his amad in the kitchen. She was always humming some song or another she had heard at the market, and suddenly he was reminded of being a little pebble, when Kili had only been a thought and his father had still been alive. He had been sitting at their table with his adad, and his amad had been making something, filling the house with smells as sweet as Bilba's honey cake. His adad had joined in, his low bass voice blending with his amads perfectly. He got up and danced with her too, at some point, and Fili began to hum the song from his memory, in time with his parents. 

Bilba stilled in her ascent, and he almost stopped the song, but she seemed to gather herself and grabbed her ingredient. 

As his memory of the song failed he let the song flow into another, and he slipped a knife out of his boot to absently clean when his hands got restless. He watched as Bilba worked magic on the ingredients. The tension around her eyes and mouth slowly bled away as she mixed, and it was a hopeless endeavor to keep his eyes off her for longer than it took to not cut himself on his knife. He sent a quiet prayer to Mahal - one that he would never voice aloud and one that he was even a little ashamed of. He asked that he could live in this moment forever, Erebor be damned, safe and warm and fed with this hobbit, humming the love songs of his parents to her as she baked heaven into a biscuit. 

He gave in to the haze of the warm afternoon and youth and let his mind float, knife practically forgotten as she began on the dishes. He imagined the way her hair might feel as he ran his fingers through it. For a moment he thought about what it might be like to braid it, but he discarded it immediately. He would buy her the finest of soaps and oils, and her hair would bounce free and shiny for all to envy. The afternoon sun added a honey glaze to the curls as she bent to pull out the cookie trays, and he let himself think, for only a moment, that their children would have hair like rivers of liquid gold. 

She met his eyes as she put the trays down on the table to cool. A sneaky smile lifted her whole face as she looked at him, and he didn’t care that he likely looked as besotted as he felt. 

“I think the kids miss you, Fili,” she told him, eyes warm and lips still quirked up in a smile, as she casually moved to grab a spatula.

Fili’s whole world stuttered to stop as golden children ran before his eyes. He daren’t hope Mahal had even begun to grant his wishes- Durins weren’t nearly that lucky. And besides, while children would be wonderful, he certainly didn’t mean to miss out on, well, making them. He stopped that line of thought quickly. There was no way she had actually said what he thought she had said. He continued to stare at her. 

Her smile dropped just a little. “Fili? The kids?” she gestured with her spatula at something half behind him. 

He couldn’t breathe. Half of him desperately needed to know, and the other half couldn't bear to break the spell of their eye contact, afraid that if he looked away from her all he would see was the dirty stone of Ered Luin, everything about her nothing more than a dream. He turned his head without moving his eyes as a compromise, until he could look no longer, and then finally turned his attention to… goats. 

He blinked at them as they stared back at him in that intelligent way all of Beorn’s animals did. Goats. Baby goats. 

Kids. 

He wanted to bang his head on the table. Damn goats. Bilba was probably waiting for him to reply, and he had definitely been staring at the goats too long. “Goats. Baby goats. Kids. Yes.” He said, unable to say anything more intelligent.

Kili saved him from having to say anything more by barging in and being absolutely disgusting, and he let his brother pull him outside with the goats to do something silly. ‘Kids’ echoed around his head all night, and for the first night since the goblin tunnels, he didn't have nightmares about Bilba falling. He dreamt about goats with golden hair instead. 

Notes:

This fic gained loads of traction! I love Fili-centric fics and if you have any recs or just want to say something cute feel free to drop a comment!! I'm doing Fili-February right now and this blonde middle-child (equivalent) WILL be appreciated. Thanks for reading!!