Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Bilbo Baggins had been unemployed for an hour and fifty six minutes.

It was the first time that he had been unemployed since he had graduated, some fifteen years ago, and if he was being entirely honest with himself, he probably wasn’t taking it very well.

He had considered going out for a drink, and then probably at least seven more drinks after that, but he had the car with him, and he didn’t fancy paying for a taxi, not now that he was officially living on redundancy pay (which was rather stingy, to tell you the truth). And no doubt at some point, Bofur would end up calling him, and then Thorin would after that, and the two of them would hunt him down at whatever bar he had ended up in, and that would only end up being horribly embarrassing for all three of them, because no doubt they would have to manhandle him into one of their cars (be it Thorin’s rather sleek BMW or Bofur’s old campervan that still managed to smell of weed even though he swore down that he hadn’t smoked a joint in there in over a decade) and drag him home.

If it would be anything like the last time, he would end up throwing up over one of their shoes, and he didn’t fancy repeating that experience.

(Particularly if it ended up being Thorin’s shoes again – Bofur’s banged up old converse weren’t that expensive to replace, but Thorin’s Italian loafers – eesh).

So instead, he had used that hour and fifty six minutes to engage in what he considered to be a rather productive series of activities. First, he had driven home, a twenty minute journey in rush hour that barely took ten in the middle of the day (Thorin had often mocked him for not just using public transport, but the fact of the matter was that it often left him anxious and uncomfortable, and he would rather avoid it at all costs).Once he had arrived home he had forced himself not to collapse on the hallway floor and cry over the humiliation of being fired, and had instead called a storage company who, after being told that they would receive triple their normal rates, had promised to have a van with him within the hour. 

That had given him something of a deadline, so he called his landlord next, and had given notice on his apartment. Said landlord had been rather irritated, though rather less so when Bilbo reminded him that he wouldn’t even be in the apartment for the last three weeks of his contract, giving his landlord ample time to advertise and find a new tenant. Now the decision was made, and could not be taken back, he took a moment to breathe, and then to retrieve the storage boxes that had been sitting undisturbed in his storage compartment since he had moved into this place fourteen years previously. Following that, he threw about half his possessions into those boxes.

Nearly everything else went into bin bags, ready for collection the following Tuesday. He left them in the hallway, and since he had no intention of being there for the bin men, left a note for the rather crotchety old man downstairs, explaining himself, and asking him to forward any mail to Thorin’s address.

He hadn’t bothered asking Thorin, but then he rarely did: it was doubtful that Thorin would even notice for the first few weeks, and after that he would probably assume that he had agreed, but had promptly forgotten. That was Thorin’s way, and Bilbo had grown quite used to it, over the years.

His passport was in his pocket, as was the small notebook that he kept all of his bank account details in.

There wasn’t much else that he would need.

He shoved his pillows and his duvet into another bin bag, along with a sleeping bag and the old tent that he hadn’t used in years that he had dug out of the storage compartment. The last few items in his apartment consisted of his mobile, camera and laptop and their respective chargers, which were thrown in the top of a very old suitcase (inherited, he’d never used it before) that was currently stuffed full of very poorly folded clothes. They weren’t packed with any particular thought in mind, nor with any set plan, but right now he could not particularly bring himself to care. He threw an old road atlas of Europe (twenty years out of date, but it had belonged to his mother and was a good start) in, and slammed it shut.

He took one last deep breath before he bundled everything out of the door to his apartment, leaving it unlocked for the moving people, and bounding quickly down the twisting staircase to the ground floor; he dropped the keys through the mailbox of the apartment downstairs, as he instructed the landlord that he would, and he slammed the front door shut behind him with some very odd satisfaction.

His neighbour had always complained whenever he closed it too loudly, and this would be the last time that he would ever had a chance to piss him off.

He jumped down the steps onto the street, the quiet suburban little avenue that he had picked because it was pretty and out of the way: he unlocked his car, threw his suitcase and bin bag of bedding in the back seat, not even bothering with the lengthy battle that opening the boot would inevitably be, and took a seat behind the wheel.

After that, he had a very understandable momentary breakdown, and bit his steering wheel for a moment to stop himself from screaming.

It seemed faintly ridiculous, to be doing this.

He should have been inside, with a nice cup of tea, googling editorial positions within the London area. He should have been acting like a reasonable, normal adult, not some wild eighteen year old without any responsibilities. He should have come home, baked himself a nice cake, and called Bofur to lament over the fact that his arsehole of a boss couldn’t see what a great asset he was to the company. No doubt Bofur would have insisted on coming over with a case of beer, and later on in the evening, when Thorin had read the numerous texts that they both would have sent to him, he would have joined them, with a bottle of very expensive whiskey.

He should be being sensible.

But instead, he had cleared out his flat, abandoned his life, and was sitting here biting his steering wheel.

He realised, abruptly, that nice old Mrs Rogers from down the road was staring at him in bemusement, and he promptly let go.

There were teeth marks in the leather of the wheel.

He was going to do it.

He was going to leave. He was going to drive around Europe for a year, for as long as he could manage, see as many places and try as many new things as he possibly could.

It was a stupid idea. It was a fantastic idea. He’d start by driving south, out of London, and then go through the Chanel tunnel. He’d be in France by the end of the day! And after that? Well, he’d stop to fill up on petrol, to fuel up on food, to sleep – in the back of his car, or on a campsite, or wherever the hell he wanted. Out under the stars, if he could – because he’d be damned if he wasn’t going to avoid as many cities as possible. He’d drive through the countryside, through the mountains, across borders: he’d stop in small towns, tiny villages, where no one spoke English and he’d have to garble his way through phrases from an awful book that he’d no doubt pick up at a service station. It would be wonderful – he wouldn’t see any of the tourist hotspots, would visit nowhere famous whatsoever. He’d have a real adventure.

And it would be amazing.

After all, what was the problem with acting like he had no responsibilities, when he really didn’t?

He started the car, grinning to himself, making sure not to glance at himself in the mirror, given that he was pretty sure that he might be looking like something of a maniac right now – he could feel how wide his eyes were, how stretched his grin was, how much he probably looked like he was about to cry or drive his car over the middle of the closest roundabout. No. He was absolutely fine, he was great, this was definitely in no way a response to being fired and the general fear that his life was going absolutely nowhere.

And why shouldn't he do this, anyway? He’d never done anything impulsive and wild in his twenties, when you were supposed do stupid things, so why not do it now? He had never even gotten around to getting a gold fish, for God’s sake. His parents had passed away years before, he had been fired from his job, he had next to no ties in his life –

Except, well, for Bofur and Thorin.

Bilbo sighed, and turned out of his road, heading towards the turn off for the motorway.  

He had told them both, last night, that his boss had scheduled a meeting with him for the next day. They’d been at Bofur’s, and he’d been grilling burgers on the barbeque – the weather had hardly been warm enough for it, but when Thorin had complained about that Bofur had cheerily reminded him that he was free to eat anywhere he liked, and had promptly continued: Thorin had just shaken his head, smiling a little, and had pulled another round of beers out from the fridge. They’d drunk two or three, eaten slightly charred burgers, and sat out in Bofur’s messy back garden until the summer evening had finally begun to grow dark, a fairly normal evening for the three of them.

Bofur would definitely call him within the hour, just when he would have been due to get home from work had he not been fired, to ask whether it he had been promoted. Thorin would text him later on in the evening, when he finally got back from work. They’d want to know what had happened, and they would certainly notice if he jumped ship and left the country for a year.

Perhaps it was odd that the three of them spent so much time together: certainly he didn’t know anyone else who still remained as close with their university friends. But the three of them had simply clicked, back then, despite their differences. They had been thrown together into one student flat together, three tiny bedrooms surrounding a cramped living room and a kitchen that always seemed to smell slightly of mould, no matter how much Bilbo scrubbed it down with bleach. And it was improbable, and almost impossible to believe how well they had ended up getting along, once they had adjusted to Bilbo’s caustic sense of humour, and Bofur’s initial shyness, and Thorin’s rather disconcerting haughtiness.

Thorin had been a tightly wired Economics student, an assured job in his family’s investment company after he graduated lending him a certain sense of superiority. He had already been addicted to coffee, and had spent most of his three years at University on a caffeine high, or yelling at other students who were being too loud at three in the morning. He’d spent most of his time working, running, or arguing with his professors, and if he was going to be quite honest with himself, Bilbo had fallen in love with him by the end of the first fortnight.

Bofur had been there to study mechanical engineering, only he had seemed to spend most of his time sitting down by the university lake feeding the ducks and getting high with an odd collection of friends that he always seemed to acquire along the way. He cleaned the flat meticulously, had slept in for hours, and had somehow come out with a better grade than either Bilbo or Thorin, and if he was going to be quite honest with himself (again), Bilbo had fallen in love with him by reading week.

Bilbo, reading English Literature, had arrived as a cynical eighteen year old with a propensity to wear eyeliner and a desire to smoke (though he never actually managed to finish one cigarette without choking), convinced that love was dead and that romance was a sham.

He’d gone home for his first Christmas at university and had spent two weeks doodling love hearts on his notebooks.

And they’d spent a year in shit student accommodation before Thorin had insisted on covering most of the rent on a huge place in the city centre, where they had thrown the greatest of parties and spent long nights watching crap on the tv and drinking beer until six in the morning. They lived there throughout their degrees, until graduation, at which point Thorin had moved down to London to take up his assured job. Bilbo had followed him, crashing in his spare room for six months whilst he had completed an unpaid internship. Bofur had moved back home, to the North West, before ending up on Thorin’s sofa as he searched for jobs: within a year they both had actually achieved the most implausible graduate dream (paid employment) and had moved out, though all of them still lived within a ten minute drive of each other.

They were his best friends, at the end of the day.

Bilbo sighed, and performed a rather illegal three point turn in the middle of the road, happily ignoring the line of cars behind him that started honking angrily.

There was no point in trying to get hold of Thorin at this time of day: he wouldn’t be contactable until six pm at the very earliest, and so instead he turned towards Bofur’s house, an old and ramshackle place that he was always saying he would renovate, but never seemed to get around to fixing up.

When he’d come to London, Bofur had ended up in a position that Bilbo suspected was actually rather high powered, though he never really spoke enough about it to be sure. It must have been lucrative, though, because after ten years he’d earned enough to quit, and now he just took three or four jobs a year to keep things ticking over, giving the profits over to Thorin to invest on his behalf. It wasn’t really Bilbo’s business, but he was pretty certain that Bofur was actually a lot better off than his ripped jeans, eyebrow piercing and faded band t-shirts suggested. Certainly, the exterior of his house, with its peeling paintwork and overgrown shrubbery, didn’t suggest a successful mechanical engineer: neither, really, did the broken down cars sat on his long driveway that Bofur enjoyed finding and restoring in his spare time.

He sighed, and got out of the car.

Bofur opened the door after two knocks, and blinked down at Bilbo for a moment.

“Hullo,” he said, and then his mouth broke into that same easy smile that he had worn for as long as Bilbo had known him, that gentle smile that still made Bilbo’s stomach flip. But right now he didn’t have time to relax into that old, familiar feeling – the longer he put off leaving, the more likely he, or someone else, was to talk him out of it.

“How was your meet-”

“I’m leaving,” he cut across, not quite willing to explain what had happened, embarrassed and a little ashamed.

Bofur stared down at him, his smile only growing a little dimmer as his forehead began to crease into a frown of confusion. “What?”

Bilbo shrugged, shuffling a little as he realised just how ridiculous his plan sounded when he had to explain it to someone else, but he was here now, and it was too late to go back on it, so he offered Bofur a smile that was only a little less genuine that usual.

“Um. Well. I’m going. For a year. I’m going to cross the Channel and drive until I run out of money. I just thought I should tell you, and, um, would you tell Thorin, too? I don’t want to bother him when he is at work, and, well-”

Bofur cut across him.

“Wait, what?"

Bilbo just stared at him, his face pulled in an uneasy smile, before he eventually shrugged.

"I'm going away."

Bofur was still staring at him; after a long moment he reached up, and ran a hand across his jaw, across the rough just-too-long stubble that Bilbo had often daydreamed about rubbing across his neck, and nodded.

"Just, hold on a moment.”

He shut the front door, leaving Bilbo standing perplexed on the front step, feeling a little wrong-footed. Was his plan really so strange that Bofur needed to take a moment to come to terms with it? Or had he perhaps arrived at an inconvenient moment? It wouldn’t be the first time that Bilbo had accidentally crashed a day that Bofur was having with one of the several people that he hooked up with now and again, always gentle and friendly affairs, without any real commitment. It wouldn’t have been awkward at all but for the fact that it made Bilbo feel a little uncomfortable seeing Bofur with someone else – at least he never had that problem with Thorin, who didn’t seem to socialise with anyone other than his siblings and the two of them.

He hovered there for a few minutes, trying to decide whether to just leave a note and get back into his car, but before he could make his mind up the door was opening again, and Bofur was grinning, his old rucksack slung over his shoulder and – was that a sleeping bag, tucked under his arm?

Bilbo blinked.

“What are you doing?”

Bofur smile, if anything, stretched a little wider.

“Going with you.”

He locked the door behind him, shuffling forward so that Bilbo was forced to take a step down, off the front porch and onto the steps. He felt thrown, completely confused, and just stood there gawping as Bofur tucked his keys into his pocket and crowded Bilbo down the steps, down the front path, back to the road.

“That… what?” Bilbo managed, eventually.

Bofur shrugged. “Sounds like fun. And I figured you might want some company.”

“No, I-”

But Bofur was already throwing his bag in the backseat, where it fell against Bilbo’s suitcase, looking entirely comfortable and a lot more in tune with what was going on than Bilbo was at the moment. He glared at the bags for a moment, wondering why he hadn’t thought to lock the car behind him, so that Bofur might have been forced to stop on this mad crusade to join Bilbo on his equally mad adventure. But he hadn’t, and already Bofur was climbing into the front seat, buckling his seatbelt and playing around with the radio station settings.

“Come on then,” he said, glancing up at Bilbo, who was starting to feel a little like he jumped into a river, only to find that it was about to take him over a waterfall. “But you’re the one telling Thorin.”

There were three options here, really. Either he could get into a huge argument, here on the street, and force Bofur out of his car, or he could agree that this whole thing was a big mistake, go into Bofur’s and drink beer all afternoon.

Or else he could cave.

His shoulders slumped, and he got into the car

“I’ll… text him.”

Bofur grinned across at him.

“So- where are we going first?”

“Bilbo.”

They had been in the car for a few hours now, and were well outside of London, driving south: the traffic had held them up somewhat, but they'd finally got out of the city, into the rolling fields of the country, the sort of landscape that always made him feel at home, all low hills and green fields and thickets of dense trees. Bilbo had once been quite nervous about driving on motorways, but time had eased that, and right now he wasn’t thinking about it, was just thinking about getting out of the country, away from all of this, away from the little rut that he had contentedly carved for himself.

Because that is what it had been, hadn’t it? He’d settled in a job in which he wasn’t entirely happy because at least it had been secure, and the pay had been okay. He’d put off going to all the places that he had always dreamed of because it wasn’t the right time, or money is a bit tight right now, even though he knew in reality that he was just frightened – what if he got there, only to discover that it wasn’t anything like he had dreamed? He’d remained close friends with Bofur and Thorin even though it left him so frustrated, sometimes, being so exposed to everything that he wanted that he could never possibly have.

Well, sod it. He was cutting his ties. He was leaving. He was going to do something stupid and impulsive and wonderful for once. And no one was going to stop him.

But his phone, resting in the cup holder between him and Bofur, wouldn’t stop vibrating.

“Bilbo.”

“I’m driving, Bofur, I can’t pick up the phone.”

Bofur made a considering noise, and didn’t say anything more about it as they turned off, heading towards the Channel tunnel, but when they pulled into the queue, the car slowing to a stop, he began to glance at it again. Eventually, when it became clear that Bilbo was not going to check his phone, he gave a sigh and picked it up himself, unlocking the old brick of a nokia and whistling to himself.

“Bilbo, Thorin’s tried to call you sixteen times.”

Bilbo cleared his throat, and ignored his friend.

"I think he's left you six voicemails, too."

Bilbo stared resolutely out the window, at the rather uninspiring line of cars: the one right in front of them was bedecked with an alarming array of bumper stickers, including the rather depressing 'If you want a stable relationship... GET A HORSE!!!"

"Wow, and twelve text messages. Sure would be rude if you just carried on ignoring him like this."

"Hey, are you thirsty?" Bilbo chimed in, only a little desperately. "I'm really thirsty. Maybe I should pop over to that shop, and pick us up some water for the road?"

With something of a huff, Bofur stretched around and reached for the side pocket of his own rucksack, leaving Bilbo to try and ignore the taut line of muscled stomach that had suddenly appeared as Bofur’s shirt rode up, keeping his eyes fixed very firmly on the approaching woman from passport control, who was stopping at every car in the queue. It was something of a relief, as it always was, when Bofur settled back in his seat and that taunting line of skin disappeared.

“Bilbo, he’s tried to call me nine times.”

“I’m just going to nip to the loos,” he replied, his voice airy, and fooling neither of them.

Bofur looked at him, one eyebrow raised, and then he shook his head.

“Bilbo, do you want me to call him back for you?”

Bilbo swallowed, and got out of the car.

“Yes, please.”

He slammed the door behind him, and pretended that it wasn’t entirely deliberate. It was too early for Thorin to be out of work, and he wouldn’t have been this desperate to hear what happened at Bilbo's meeting, which could only leave the possibility that Bofur had sent him a text already – presumably at some point when they were driving, when he had been fiddling with his phone.

He gritted his teeth.

It was a couple more hours until they were officially out of the UK, the afternoon wearing on now: they pulled off the motorway down a smaller side road, finding themselves in a small town, where they stopped to eat. This at least was more like what Bilbo had imagined his trip to be like, staring up at the sky, slowly turning from a midday cornflower blue to a duller shade, that would soon be laced with the colours of sunset, sipping coffee and finally feeling a little peace, for the first time that day. Perhaps, even, for the first time in years. Admittedly, he had imagined that he would be doing this alone, with only a book or his thoughts for company, and Bofur’s whistling was something of a distraction, but it was close enough.

Besides, perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad to have one friend with him on this trip. He had grown so used to their company, the pair of them, that it might have been strange to go a full year without really speaking to either of them.

No doubt Thorin would be fuming, though Bilbo doubted that it would be because he felt left out. No, Thorin Durin was above such petty and childish things, and for that matter so was Bofur, although that was more due to his general laid back nature. It was only ever Bilbo that had had to deal with the unpleasant, stomach-twisted anger that inevitably came whenever Thorin and Bofur did something together without him, only ever Bilbo that seemed unable to put aside that childhood fear of rejection, leaving him despondent and furious every time, and unable to articulate why.

Thorin would be angry because he would view it as the pair of them abandoning their responsibilities, would be annoyed because they hadn’t asked his advice, would think the whole thing was a stupid idea from start to finish. But he tried not to let that bother him too much, tried to avoid the guilt that was already starting to build in the pit of his stomach. Bilbo doubted that Thorin would particularly miss them over the course of the year (he was too busy to ever really seem to miss anything much, apart from his nephews whenever he hadn’t had the chance to see them in a while), and would no doubt have gotten over it by the time him and Bofur returned.

That is, if Bofur even stayed for the entire year.

Not everyone had just been fired, after all, and once again Bilbo forced himself to swallow down the painful combination of anxiety and failure that threatened to overwhelm him every time he dared to think about that meeting with his boss.

“What are you going to do about work?”

Bofur started, apparently having grown used to Bilbo’s brooding silence.

“Well,” he began, before shrugging. “I’ll just send an email around the places that I usually freelance for, tell ‘em that I won’t be around for the next year except for the occasional advisory thing over the phone. And,” he carried on, cutting over Bilbo, who had already been lining up his next objection. “I’ve already texted my brother. He’s got the spare key to my place, said he’d sort it out and keep an eye on it while I was away.”

Bilbo nodded, fidgeting a little. He supposed that Bofur was in a position where he could up and leave his life for a little while.

He wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved, or disappointed.

They got back on the road shortly after, and though Bilbo attempted to stick to winding country roads, he must have had cities hardwired into his mind after living in one for so long: eventually he found himself on the busy roads of an unfamiliar one, or at least, of a large town, though he wasn’t familiar enough with the area to really know where he was. He cursed under his breath as he saw the first pinks and reds of the sunset: he had intended to spend the first night out in an open field somewhere, but that would necessitate getting out of here. Unfortunately, every turn he took seemed only to take him further into concrete and asphalt.

Bofur was glancing at him, his face a little nervous, his hands turning his phone over and over.

He sniffed, and rubbed a hand through his hair, dislodging his old hat.

He cleared his throat, and looked out of the window.

He hummed a little, under his breath, and drummed his fingers against the dash.

He let out a deep sigh, and shifted in his seat.

 “What?” Bilbo snapped, his eyes on the road, unable not to ask any longer.

When no answer was immediately forthcoming, he glanced across at Bofur, only to see an expression that he had grown far too familiar with over the last decade or so. It was the slightly apologetic look of someone that was going to have to say something that they knew was not going to be well received.

“Errm.”

Bilbo closed his eyes, and tried his hardest to keep patient.

“Oh god, what?”

Bofur pulled an apologetic expression. “He wanted to know where we were.”

He could only mean one person: there was no one other than Thorin who would demand an exact location off them. No doubt if he could have gotten away with it, he would have installed tracking devices in both their phones years ago. However, Bilbo didn’t quite understand why Thorin’s normal obsessive need to understand and control every situation warranted Bofur looking so guilty: Bilbo frowned a little, and slowed the car. “Why?”

Bofur shrugged. “I don’t know? But he told you to take the next right.”

Bilbo took a very deep breath, and tried very hard not to throw something at Bofur. It wouldn’t have been fair: it didn’t really count as back-seat-driving if the person was only relaying someone else’s words.

He groaned under his breath, and flicked his indicator: they drove on in silence for a while longer.

The road was taking them out of the city (Bilbo would never have admitted it, but he was quite grateful about that – they’d been going around in what had felt like circles for over forty minutes, after all), but Bilbo still wasn’t really sure where they were going – he was starting to slightly regret never having brushed up on his school-age French lessons, as he had always said that he would.

Bofur cleared his throat, and the spark of irritation that had started to die leapt up again, as if it had been dying embers fed fresh kindling. Despite the fact that this road had lead him where he wanted to go, it irritated that even now, out here, he was listening to Thorin.

Why did he always end up doing that, even when he didn’t want to?

“Did his majesty give any other directions?” he snapped.

Bofur at least looked a little apologetic.

“Umm… the second turn off on the left?”

Bilbo made an irritated noise, and followed the directions, squinting at the road signs to see if he could work out where he was going. The car had now sunken into a sullen silence, and he ignored the way that Bofur kept glancing at him, a little forlorn, until they ended up at the next turning.

“And?” he snapped.

“Right.”

It was to Bofur’s credit that he didn’t respond to Bilbo’s growl of irritation as Bilbo realised where the the turn off lead them - to the local airport. He supposed that anyone else would have been surprised by this turn of events, but Bilbo just couldn’t bring himself to be. This was Thorin all over. He hadn’t even bothered speaking to Bilbo before he had decided that that was a worthless venture and a waste of their time – and Bilbo would be forced to sit through a rather lengthy lecture on how he had to be more responsible, how he had to act like an adult now that he actually was one. It wouldn’t have been the first one that Bilbo had heard, though he had to admit, normally they were directed at Frerin, or occasionally Bofur. But better late than never, and now it would finally be Bilbo’s turn.

“And?” he barked, knowing full well that he probably didn't sound anywhere near as authoritative as he was intending.

Bofur coughed, awkwardly.

“Uhh… the third layby?”

“Bastard,” Bilbo muttered, more to himself than to anyone else, and he pulled up in a parking spot outside, killing the engine and resolutely folding his arms. No doubt Thorin had first class tickets booked for both of them, and was assuming that Bilbo wouldn’t mind abandoning his car. Thorin had always hated the battered old thing anyway, and on more than one occasion had tried to make him trade it in for a better model.

Bilbo felt a surge of irritated affection rise up in his chest, warm despite himself. Because that was Thorin all over, wasn’t it? Heavy handed and a little ridiculous, but always the most sensible, and always looking out for the both of them, even if sometimes he just came across as a bit obnoxious. But he’d learnt to deal with that back when they were both at university – he remembered clearly the moment that he had realised, one day early on in his second year. Thorin had proof-read an essay of Bilbo’s that had been left out, without being asked, and his response had been particularly brutal. He had Bilbo had gotten into a fight about it, Thorin yelling and Bilbo retorting quickly and waspishly, until Thorin had thrown his pen at the wall (it had bounced off, not even leaving a mark, probably not as dramatic as he had hoped it would be).

“I’m only trying to help you get the best, damn it!”

And he was, he really was. For whatever reason, he had always seemed to believe that Bilbo and Bofur could have achieved or acquired anything that they might want or need, if they only put the effort in. Driving around the world for a year would definitely not constitute putting the effort in, not by Thorin’s impossibly high standards. He’d be proofreading Bilbo’s CV before he even knew what happened, if he did go back to London, making sure that he applied to only the best jobs.

Scratch that, he’d be applying to jobs that Thorin would have already picked out for him by the time their plane landed at Heathrow.

 Bofur was still looking at him a little nervously, and Bilbo sighed, deciding to put words to his thoughts.

“If this is just a ridiculous ruse to make us go back then I am going to be so angry at him… oh.”

He had trailed off, not because he had changed his mind, or had some sort of epiphany, but because Thorin’s face had just appeared by the passenger-side window.

An epiphany might have been less strange, actually.

“Shotgun.”

Thorin’s voice was deep, and he was frowning, and this was the first time that Bilbo could remember in weeks when Thorin hadn’t been dressed in running gear or a suit. Good god – were those jeans? He hadn’t even known that Thorin owned jeans.

Mmm, rather nice, form-fitting jeans, actually.

Bofur pulled a face, sticking out his lower lip a little petulantly.

“I already called shotgun!”

The two turned to stare at Bilbo, as they often did when they expected him to resolve whatever it was they were disagreeing with. He remembered, just in time, that they were expecting him to respond, and so schooled his rather gormless expression into a rather unimpressed one, folding his arms over his chest, which had grown slightly pudgier over the last few years.

He shook his head, still wondered what exactly was going on. His response was more automatic than anything else, and lacking the usual acerbic bite. “I’m driving, this is your pissing contest.”

Thorin glared at the both for a moment, and Bofur stared resolutely forward, seeming to sink even further into his seat.

“Fine,” he growled. “But we’re swapping tomorrow.”

Tomorrow? There was going to be a tomorrow in this situation? Because Bilbo was already starting to think that he must have just been in some horrific accident, and all of this was just some elaborate dream that he was having whilst in a comatose state. There was no way in hell that Thorin was really here – no way that was him, trying to get Bilbo’s boot undone, swearing when he couldn’t manage, and eventually shoving a rather expensive carry-on case into the back seat, along with Bilbo’s fifty year old suitcase, the bin bag full of bedding, and Bofur’s huge, scruffy rucksack.

That really couldn’t be Thorin, squeezing into the backseat alongside the bags and pillows and sleeping bags, his knees pressed so hard into the back of the passenger seat that Bofur was forced to pull it forward a little.

“Thorin,” Bilbo said, his voice deceptively calm for how much he felt like screaming. “What are you doing?”

Thorin pulled the seatbelt across himself, scowling as he had to shove the bags aside to clip into in to place.

“I’m coming with you.”

Bilbo was very tempted, for a strange and irrational minute, to start the engine and drive the car straight into the back of the rather large hybrid car in front of him. Only the owner’s obvious regard for the environment managed to hold him back.

“Why?” he asked, his voice tense, his fingers tightening on the steering wheel, over the teeth marks that still hadn’t managed to fade.

Thorin made a rather familiar, dismissive sound.

“As if I am going to let the two of you fuck off and get yourself lost in the middle of Europe. It’ll be me that has to come and find you when you end up wrong-side up in the middle of fucking nowhere.”

It had obviously been a long day for Thorin, but Bilbo couldn’t quite bring himself to feel sympathetic. From beside him, Bofur snorted, seeming to be a lot less taken aback by this turn of events than Bilbo was, which was making him feel slightly suspicious.

“Thorin, you are the most geographically challenged man that I know. Apart from your brother. Possibly. But even then, it’s something of a close run.”

Thorin just grunted, not particularly trying to deny it. His eyes caught Bilbo’s in the rear view mirror, and his expression was peculiar, neither what Bilbo was used to nor what he had expected. There was something hopeful in those eyes, something a little worried, as if –

As if he was really worried that Bilbo was going to turn him away.

“My phone has GPS,” Thorin replied, and his voice was just a little exposed, just enough that Bilbo felt something inside of him cave.

“I’m going for a year,” Bilbo warned, his shoulders slumping. He forgot, sometimes, about that lonely little centre of vulnerability that lingered inside Thorin: he saw it so rarely, after all.

“I know,” he replied, the corner of his mouth twitching upwards a little. “Bofur told me.”

Bilbo shot a glare to Bofur, who smiled angelically in return.

“You can’t afford to take that time off.”

He couldn’t quite bring himself to look back at Thorin when he said that, staring resolutely ahead instead. The hybrid had pulled away whilst they were talking, replaced instead by an old truck, that was belching rather unpleasant smelling fumes through their open windows. He caught the movement of Thorin’s shrug in the mirror despite himself, his eyes drawn to those familiar broad shoulders, the strong lines of his neck and jaw. He knew the sight of both of these men as well as he knew the sight of his own face in the mirror, knew the way that they moved and the expressions that they pulled, the way that they looked when they were laughing and how their hair looked with it caught the moonlight, the sunshine, when it was wet and dripping from the rain.

He had been running away from them, from that familiarity, as much as anything else, hadn’t he? It hurt, to love them both for so very long, to always be so close, and never to touch. And yet here he was, with them anyway, as if the pair of them were his shadows, impossible to shake.

“I’ve literally never taken a day off work,” Thorin replied, after a long slow moment. “I talked to Dis. She said she’d sort it out.”

There was that shrug, again, and Bofur was looking at him too, his face pulled into a worried frown, his eyes warm and caring.

“That’s not a thing!” Bilbo spat, because who was so comfortable in their job, in their line of work, that they could just bugger off for a year? People who had been fired, like him, of course (and there was that stab of resentment again, that certainty, that you weren’t good enough and you never will be); people like Bofur, who only worked as and when they wanted anyway. Thorin worked eight until six every damn day, normally six days a week!

“You can’t just ‘sort it’! That’s not what happens with normal people!”

Bofur was still watching him: there was something knowing in that gaze, something that was making Bilbo feel more and more uncomfortable, was making the already cramped space of the car feel even closer, and now Thorin was looking at him carefully, as if he had finally realised that there was something wrong, and everything was suddenly too warm, uncomfortable, and he wanted to get out and escape but this was his car, damn it, this was supposed to be the whole point of this trip, and-

“We’re calling it accumulated paid holiday,” Thorin said, a little awkwardly, apologetically. It was entirely the wrong thing to say, and he seemed to know it immediately if the expression on his face was anything to go by.

“Thorin!” Bofur snapped, his tone unusually harsh, and the car lapsed back to its same, stifling silence.

“Bilbo,” Bofur began after a while, a little hesitant.

“What?”

“What happened today?”

Bilbo started the car’s engine, resolutely ignoring the pair of them. Bofur was still giving him that gentle stare, the one you might give to someone who was ill and needed help, but were adamantly refusing to even acknowledge that there was a problem.

Which was definitely not the case, thought Bilbo, resolutely.

Nope, not even slightly.

He pulled out of the airport terminal (it was probably about time, too, given the way that the security staff were starting to side eye them), and let out a long sigh as he turned back out into the countryside, away from the city, in the direction of open fields and winding roads. Thorin was already glancing behind them, frowning.

“Most of the hotels will be back that way, you know.”

Bilbo didn’t say anything. Why did he never know when to keep his mouth shut?

Thorin grunted.

“It’s already starting to get dark, it would make the most sense if we settled down somewhere tonight, had a meal, and figured out what the plan is for tomorrow with a beer and something to eat.”

Bilbo actually kind of agreed with that, but right now he didn’t have any desire to admit it.

His silence was obviously starting to wind up Thorin: though he had only been in the car for ten minutes, he was already starting to gripe, and Bilbo was already beginning to regret ever letting either of the pair of them come along. Bofur flicked the radio on, but only found static, the sound grating him.

“Look, I’m not saying this to piss you off.”

Bofur glanced across at him, then back at Thorin.

In the rear-view mirror, Thorin was scowling.

“We need a damn place to sleep, don’t we?”

“He’s got a point,” Bofur chipped in, though he immediately looked as though he regretted it. He turned instead to the radio, twiddling with the dials in an attempt to find a station.

“No, he bloody well doesn’t.”

Thorin made a rather derogatory sound. “Well then where the hell are we going to sleep tonight?”

Bofur was already shaking his head, though by this point he should have gotten used to the way that Bilbo and Thorin’s arguments so often ended up, with sniping and swearing. They’d been this way for as long as they had known each other, always quicker to argue than to agree: in the first week of university they had argued a record number of thirty two times, though they only knew that because Bofur had started to tally them by the end of the first day. He’d shown them the marks at the end of that week, and after that they promised to be a little better behaved, though on weeks in exam season or at other stressful times they often ended up fighting.

“Look,” Bilbo said, finally snapping. “I came on this bloody trip to get away from everything and everyone because I had a shit day and came to the rather shit conclusion that everything in my life also equally as shit.”

He glared in the rear view mirror, as if daring Thorin to disagree. Instead, he just looked a little contrite.

“I’ve never done any of the things that I said I was going to do, any of the things my mother made me promise that I would do, haven’t even bloody left the country since I went to university. I’m thirty five and I’m still renting, still haven’t paid off my student loan – and don’t either of you try and tell me that you understand because I bloody well know that you don’t - I can’t manage to make a serious relationship last because every time I find someone with possibility they end up saying its either them or you two. And no one else ever manages to win when they throw down that ultimatum.

“I had a job that I hated but stuck with because damned if I could ever find anything else that I was brave enough to apply to, and I thought it was okay because even if I hated it at least I was good at it, only it turns out that I wasn’t bloody good at it at all, because the company is having to downsize and apparently they’re letting go of non-vital staff members, and that includes me, because even though I did all the bloody work in our department I never got any of the credit-”

He became very suddenly aware that he was speaking far too quickly, that his chest felt tight, that very soon it might become a little difficult to breathe. Luckily the road was clear, because he swung the car quickly, the old Dodge bouncing up the slight hillock of grass-and-wildflowers that separated the road from a wide field of tall yellow flowers, the field obviously having been left fallow this season.

They came to a sudden stop on the verge and Bilbo let go of the wheel, only now aware of the stitching that had imprinted itself onto his palms.

To their credit, Bofur and Thorin didn’t say or do anything as Bilbo stepped quickly from the car, skirting around the bonnet, striding quickly off into the field.

The flowers skimmed his palms, which were only now beginning to sting, and quite suddenly (and not for the first time today), he wanted to cry.

Instead, he sat down in the flowers, and stared up at the sky.

Thorin had been right, about the evening drawing on. Already overhead the sky was turning that pink-and-gold that he had been waiting for, a few distant clouds hovering around the great molten-orange of the setting sun, only just visible here. He breathed, slowly, in and out, and then he squeezed his eyes shut, letting the tightness in his chest ease, though it took some time for it to do so.

Somewhere, in the distance, he heard the sound of a plane, but closer was the gentle call of some lonely bird, singing out into the twilight. It was a hopeful sound, in its own way, but a lost one too, as if that bird, wherever it was, was trying to find something.

Bilbo sighed. He could relate.

Eventually, when the sky was a little dimmer, he heard footsteps behind him: he didn’t bother turning, trying to ignore the sudden stab of worry that went through his chest when he wondered what Bofur and Thorin might have been saying to each other in his absence.

Bofur took a seat next to his left, throwing himself to the ground without too much concern for his clothes. His worn converse high-tops were unlaced, and stretched out in front of him, as if he had kicked them off for a while, and his jeans were rolled up, baring his ankles. Thorin sat a little more gingerly, his own jeans far newer and cleaner than Bofur’s, a dark indigo that followed the line of his legs beautifully: he was wearing the expensive military-style boots that Dis had given him for his birthday the year before, the ones he had only worn two or three times.

Bilbo looked down, at their legs and three pairs of shoes, resting like that in the evening sunshine, surrounded by a mess of yellow flowers. He was still wearing the neat chinos that he had put on to go to work that morning, his soft old brogues comfortable on his feet.

The three of them looked impossibly different like this.

“Sorry,” he muttered, though he didn’t really know what he was apologising for.

Bofur reached his arm around Bilbo’s shoulders for a moment, dragging Bilbo into his side for a quick, warm embrace.

With a soft sigh, Thorin lay back in the flowers, cracking an eye open to look back up at the other two, who were staring down over their shoulders at him incredulously.

“What?” he asked. “Some of us were at work at six am for a skype conference with our Singapore partners. And then had to ditch the six pm meeting to get on a plane to France. I’m tired.”

He sounded unusually petulant, and more than a little grumpy, but underneath that his tone was laced with that particular warmth that was so rare to hear, and yet so touching when it came out. Bilbo rubbed his hand across his mouth, and tried not to smile.

“Sorry about your job,” Bofur said, after a moment. Bilbo shrugged, Bofur put his arm back around his shoulder, just loosely, just enough. Thorin’s hand came to rest on his lower back, gently, a touch that was barely there.

“S’alright,” he said, quietly. “Hated it there anyway.”

He didn’t cry, but he thought for a moment that he would, the warmth of two bodies on either side of him, the comfort of their touch. He just took deep breaths instead, long and slow, until his ribcage no longer felt as if it was going to collapse inward, crushing him irreparably.

“Kinda figured something was up,” Bofur told him, his voice still quiet, “When you decided to up and skip the country.”

Bilbo bit his lip.

“So,” Bofur continued, tracing circles against the ball of Bilbo’s shoulder idly. “What was your plan?”

Bilbo shrugged.

“Drive. Camp. Eat things I’ve never tried before. Clear my head, you know?”

Bofur nodded.

“You’ve never told us that about your relationships before now, you know.”

Thorin, still lying down, remained silent, but for a moment his hand moved a little across Bilbo’s back, as if had suppressed the instinct to curl it into a fist. But then it relaxed again, his thumb slipping under the hem of Bilbo’s shirt, stroking back and forwards. It was warm, and strangely tender, for Thorin. Perhaps Bilbo should have abandoned his entire life and run away to Europe before now.

He shrugged, realising that Bofur was still waiting for a reply – but how could he ever have told the two of them about the reason that nearly all of his aborted attempts at relationships had failed?

It was the truth: time and time again, Bilbo had started seeing someone, nice guys that didn’t mess him around and that he didn’t mess around in turn. It had started at University: he had been on a couple of dates with a guy from the American football team, with a good sense of humour, that he had met through the LGBT society. They had been fun dates, beer in the Student Union and messy kisses outside the bar, in the dark, down by the university lake. And then he’d invited the guy back, and they’d returned, only for his date to be subjected to a worryingly out of character glare from Bofur, and a coldness from Thorin that, whilst at least more normal, was significantly more frosty than usual. The poor guy had made it about twenty minutes before making his excuses and disappearing: later, he’d told Bilbo over a very awkward phone conversation that he’d signed up to date Bilbo, not his surrogate parents.

He wasn’t sure if Bofur or Thorin was supposed to be his mother, but he’d laughed at the idea, which apparently hadn’t been the right response.

And the same thing happened the next time, and the next, long after they’d left university. Guys took issue with how close Bilbo was to his two friends, how much time they spent together, how protective the three were – because it wasn’t just limited to Bilbo. Admittedly, he knew that his own protectiveness when it came to Bofur and Thorin was not entirely altruistic, but the same couldn’t be said for the other two. Thorin glared with equal venom at the various men and women that Bofur had introduced to them over the years, and the one time that Thorin had actually dated someone for more than one work-related date, Bofur had been outright rude to them.

It always just boiled down to the three of them, time after time after time.

It had been enough for him, for so many years: he had learnt to put aside that ache of want, that ache of need, because he knew, that even if the impossible happened and one of them ended up feeling the same way about him, he would never be able to do it. It would never be fair if it ended up being just one of them – there would always be a part of himself wanting more.

“You didn’t have to come with me, you know.”

That wasn’t what he intended to say, but since he hadn’t really known what he was going to say, he let it slide.

Thorin made a low, amused noise from the ground, and Bofur huffed something close to a laugh.

“We’re a team, remember?”

Bilbo nodded.

“Fine,” he replied, and then took one last deep breath, feeling that little part of himself that had been lost all day slipping back into place. “But since you’re insisting on coming with me, the two of you are using the next wifi hotspot we find to sign up to my insurance. Like hell I’m doing all the driving.”

Thorin did laugh then, a soft and strangely gentle sound as he sat back up, his hand still resting against Bilbo’s back.

“Deal.”

Chapter Text

They got back into the car a little while later, when the light was starting to dim, and drove until they found an open field with a sign up for camping. A man wandered over to take the small charge, at which point they discovered that Thorin had been the only one who had thought to pick up euros at any point along the way, which proved particularly useful when it came to buying food from the man’s small shop. Once they had stocked up, if the bread and ham (which was apparently the only thing that it had at eight o’clock on a Tuesday evening) really counted as stocking up, the man locked up and disappeared, leaving them alone in the field without so much of a backwards glance.

All this had gone fairly well: Bofur procured a bread knife from the recesses of his bag, and began to make them some rather rough sandwiches, whilst Bilbo found the tent and began yanking at the zip of the case, trying to pull out the various constituent parts. Thorin was striding around the outskirts of the empty lot, his phone in the air, attempting to find signal, and yes he might have been grumbling a little under his breath, but that was a fairly common occurrence, and the other two were quite contentedly ignoring him.

In fact, things felt worryingly pleasant. Bofur was singing quietly under his breath, and Bilbo was almost smiling again –

And of course, that’s when things went terribly wrong.

“How’s that tent coming, Bilbo?” Bofur called over cheerily, after a few minutes.

Bilbo said nothing: he just chewed on the inside of his cheek.

Thorin glanced over at them.

“What’s the hold up?” he yelled, from across the field.

“Well,” Bilbo said, before making a low sound in the back of his throat that might have been irritation, or might have been anxiety. “You remember that time we went camping up near Bofur’s parents' place?”

Bofur laughed, rubbing at the back of his head.

“If you’re still looking for an apology, I did warn you both in advance that it rains in Manchester ninety-five percent of the year.”

Thorin snorted, and finally gave up on his phone, striding back over to them.

“There is a reason I never go north of Watford anymore.”

“Mmm,” Bilbo replied, still looking at the piles of fabric, groundsheets and tent pegs in front of him. “Well, you remember when the wind started to pick up and the tent was starting to shift-”

“Do I? Bofur was whimpering.”

Bofur raised an eyebrow, unflustered, and continued to slice his bread, sat on one of the back seats of Bilbo’s car, his legs hanging out of the door, getting equal number of crumbs over the upholstery as he did the grass outside.

“It was disconcerting! The tent was going to bloody blow away!”

Thorin snorted, but Bilbo waved a hand in the air.

“Yes, well. You remember that we were scrambling around in the dark, and we crammed the tent in the boot and drove like maniacs back to Bofur’s family house, soaking wet?” and laughing, clinging to each other, and the three of them had ended up crammed together on the double bed in the spare room, shaking and shivering from the cold and still giggling like children, where they’d fallen asleep – Bilbo had woken up with Bofur’s arms wrapped around him and his nose buried in Thorin’s hair, and they’d laid like that, all wrapped around each other, even when they had woken up, talking quietly, still vaguely hysterical from the shock.

I t had been one of the greatest mornings of his life.

He felt the heat rise up in his cheeks at the memory, but the dark hid him well enough. Thorin and Bofur were both looking at him now, beginning to frown just a little.

“Well it seems that… at some point along the way, we might have left the tent poles somewhere.”

They stared at him, for a long, still moment. Bofur’s eyes were bright from the lights from the car interior: Bilbo rather thought that he was imaging Thorin’s for it was too dark where he was standing to see them properly, but he was affected by their intensity none the less.

“Excuse me?” Bofur said: his voice was some strange combination of incredulous and ridiculously amused.

Bilbo licked his lips.

“Mmhmm.”

There was a moment of silence, as the other two processed this. Inevitably, it was Thorin that broke first.

“I’ve been told by the head of HR that at times I can be… aggressive,” he said, and Bilbo could well imagine the fierce expression she would have shot him exactly as he told him, apparently one of those people who stood for no-one’s bullshit. His voice was oddly mild. “And I am doing my very best to combat this, in the many ways suggested to me by our very well paid HR team. Team building exercises have been suggested. And so it is, knowing this, that I ask you, entirely calmly and not in any irritation: why this has never been noticed, at any point in the last six years?”

“It’s just been sat in my store cupboard,” Bilbo said, miserably. “I swore I’d never go camping again after that nightmare storm.”

“Ah, it wasn’t really a storm,” Bofur commented from the ground in his northern brogue (more Cheshire than Lancashire, but still with that distinctive Mancunian twang). He knocked his old trooper hat from his head as he reached to run his hand through the mess of his hair, the same too-long at the back and shaved on one side that it had been since he had gone freelance (he’d looked damned strange with a smartly cut short-back-and-sides. “More of a drizzle, really.”

Bilbo stood up, throwing the tent pegs in his lap to the ground, rubbing angrily at his nose.

He could feel his own anger at himself, a heavy lump threatening to rise in his throat. He’d had a habit of blaming himself for any minor thing that went wrong since he was a child – he couldn’t count the number of times that he had ended up snapping at his parents, or Thorin or Bofur, after they had tried to tell him that it wasn’t his fault. A bad habit, he knew, but one that he wore around his neck like so many others, aware of it and controlling it most of the time – apart from days like this, days that had been too long, days where he could no longer control himself. A throw back, perhaps, from his days as an only child convinced that he needed to be everything that his two very different parents wanted, a dichotomy he hadn’t been able to cope with as a child - that in many ways, he still had not reconciled with.

There was a part of him that wanted to apologise, and a part of him that resented himself for feeling that he should have to say that he was sorry.

He stared upwards instead, at the sky overhead, an indigo-grey haze, the occasional star just peeking out from behind the thin shreds of clouds.

His therapist had talked to him about calming breaths before: he inhaled slowly, deeply, listening to the thud of his heartbeat in his ears, a little louder than it should have been. He was very aware that he should not be this irrationally angry for a genuine mistake, one that wasn’t even that big a deal when you took into consideration the huge upheaval that his day had taken.

But it had been a damned long day.

He was just about to do something – anything – when something hit the back of his head. In an awkward feat of coordination (that he’d somehow never managed when he was in high school physical education classes) he managed to grab hold of the offending item as it fell down, glancing off his shoulder, falling forward. He glared down at his own sleeping bag, still in its stuff sack, as if it had done something personally to offend him.

Then Bofur’s arm was slung around his shoulder, scattering crumbs across his chest, and Thorin was laughing at his expression, and his frustration disappeared in a sudden wash of exhaustion.

“Have a sandwich,” he said, thrusting one in Bilbo’s direction. It was messy, and a bit dry, but he shoved it in his mouth anyway, chewing resolutely, swallowing down his anger and grief at the entire, ridiculous situation along with bread and ham.

“Guess we’re sleeping in the car then?” Bofur asked, and Bilbo nodded as he swallowed, far too much crammed in his mouth, his body feeling heavy, far too heavy. Thorin’s hand had found its way back to that little warm place at the small of his back again, and he realised they had come up on either side of him, just like they had in the field earlier, as if they were intent on propping him up, in this, their own particular brand of comfort.

He swallowed the last of his sandwich: it was a little painful to do so, and he couldn’t work out why.

“I drove, I get the back seat,” he said, humour creeping back into his voice, and he shrugged away from the warm touch of the two men, slinging himself and his bag through one of the back doors, ignoring the remnants of his tent, left spread out across the grass. That could all be sorted out tomorrow: right now, all he wanted was to sleep.

“You didn’t bring a sleeping bag, did you?” he heard behind him, Bofur’s voice half laughing, and despite himself a smile curled across his mouth, even more amused by Thorin’s grumpy huff that came out, probably without him meaning to. There was something comforting about its familiarity: he started shoving the bags out of the way, intent on creating his own little nest, something warm and cosy that he could curl up into and forget about everything.

“I was assuming that we would be sleeping in hotels, like civilised people.”

Bofur snorted; Bilbo bit his lip trying not to grin at Thorin’s petulant tone, for all the world a six year old told that he couldn’t have another chocolate bar.

“C’mon Thorin, it won’t do you any harm to rough it for a few nights.”

“We’ll see about that.”

Bilbo was done slotting the bags in the gaps between the back seats and the front: with a huff of pleasure he lay the seats back flat and kicked his brogues off, tucking them away in a spare gap before he slammed the door shut, cutting off the bickering from outside. He had his sleeping bag, and his pillow, and his duvet: he had planned to spend a few nights in his car anyway, and right now he was still just about annoyed enough at the entire day to go straight to sleep and end it as quickly as possible. He buried himself in his layers, not even bothering to change, but before he could even begin to feel drowsy there was a knock at the car window.

He poked his head out from his nest, glaring.

“You two can have the front seats.”

He ignored the protests, snuggling down, letting the warmth seep through him; he felt the chill of the outside air as the two of them opened the front car doors, washing over him. He listened to the rustle of Bofur’s sleeping bag as he unfurled it, Thorin’s muttered cursing about the chill, grunted as he pulled out his coat from underneath Bilbo: the car doors slammed shut once more, then again, as the two settled in, but Bilbo’s eyes were not open to see anything, the slow weight of fatigue already holding him down. They were comforting sounds, in their own way, familiar ones.

He could drift off like this, quite easily.

Somewhere outside came the call of an owl, winging low over the roof of the car.

Everything felt quite still, for the first time all day.

Bofur made the humming, contented sound he always did when he was trying to get comfortable, ready for him to sleep.

Just a few more minutes, Bilbo knew, and he would be asleep, and this long, horrible day would be over.

Everything felt gentle, and quite still: he was warm enough beneath his layers that he felt he could slip away, as long as nothing disturbed him.

…

“Oh, fuck this,” came a mutter from the front seat, and then the car physically shook as if it were being rocked from the outside by some great monstrous hand. Bilbo stuck his head out from his duvet, alarmed, just in time to see a dark shape appear between the front seats, and feel a heavy weight fall across his legs, before rolling over him, towards the back of the car.

Oh, for fucks sake.

He’d nearly been asleep, as well.

“What the hell are you doing?” he yelped as he felt part of his duvet snatched away from him, and another body press close to his, still safely encased in his sleeping bag.

“It’s bloody cold,” muttered Thorin, his voice surprisingly close to Bilbo’s ear. “Stop complaining, you don’t want me to freeze to death do you?”

Bilbo made a grumbling sound, only just stopping himself from replying that actually he wouldn’t mind if Thorin did freeze, if it meant that he got to sleep, but he did have to admit, he wasn’t any colder for the second body pressed against his. In fact, it was almost pleasant. Thorin’s jumper was a soft wool against his cheek, something no doubt expensive, that smelt wonderfully, comfortingly, like Thorin.

Okay, so maybe this wasn’t so bad. There was room enough for two, and-

“Oof!”

Another set of rocking: another weight on top of him, rolling to the side.

Thorin chuckled, a deep sound.

Bofur’s arms and shoulders were all tucked away in his sleeping bag, one big sausage of cheery mechanical engineer, his breath against Bilbo’s cheek as he caterpillaed over to the other side of the car. Bilbo didn’t bother to open his eyes this time, the shock of the situation somewhat diminished, but he did scowl, even if it was dark enough back here that no one would really be able to see much of it. The back of Bilbo’s car was definitely not built for three men, even with the seats reclined back, doubling the space. The three of them were pressed together, and Bilbo was forced to roll onto his side to make room for them all.

“Sorry lads!” Bofur called out cheerily. “You looked nice and cosy back here, I was feeling lonely.”

Despite himself, Bilbo couldn’t find any room in himself to complain. He just let out a low snort as Bofur squirmed around, trying to get comfortable.

He cracked his eye open as he caught the glow from a mobile phone: he shoved his shoulder in Thorin’s direction in protest, and the light shut off again immediately.

“There’s a Decathlon an hour away,” Thorin muttered in protest.

“Aye?” Bofur asked from his other side, though he didn’t sound overly concerned about getting a response. “We’ll go in the morning, then. Buy a tent.”

His arm fell across Bilbo’s middle: he snuggled back against Bofur, his nose was pressed up against the curve of Thorin’s shoulder still, and only a little of it was to try and make more room for the three of them.

He fell asleep smiling, the last possible outcome that he would have pictured after the day he had had.

The next morning dawned bright and clear:Thorin had thrown himself in the front seat first thing, glaring at Bofur as if expecting him to protest.

(Bofur didn’t, just pulled the backseats up and rolled up the sleeping bags, covers and pillows, whistling as he went, completely amicably. Thorin exchanged a somewhat frustrated look with Bilbo: it was deeply annoying to find that Bofur really wasn’t bothered about something that you had decided was a big deal.)

Bilbo was groggy but he was unwilling to let either of the other two take the wheel without insurance, and so pulled over and the first café he saw to fuel himself with coffee – he had slept well the night before, despite the discomfort, cuddled up with the warmth of the other two men, but he felt right now as though he had not slept in a year, and was in drastic need of catching up.

“Decathlon,” Thorin insisted as soon as the three of them had set off properly, and Bilbo had condescended, letting him direct him to the nearest place. He was willing to admit, despite his stubbornness, that they really did need to go.

“Right,” he said, attempting to be authoritative as they pulled into the car park of the massive store. “We need a tent, and Thorin needs a sleeping bag. We’ll be in there five minutes, okay?”

Thorin nodded. “And something to sleep on.”

“That’s the tarpaulin,” he replied, blinking.

Thorin snorted.

“For a year? Fuck off.”

Bofur hummed, almost as if he wasn’t listening to the conversation in the front seats.

Which he probably wasn’t.

“Something to cover the back windows would be nice, I think. To keep the light out if we need to sleep in the back of the car again.”

Thorin made a noise of agreement.

“Mmm. And maybe a camp stove.”

“Ooh, good idea. I should have brought my camping pans really, shouldn’t I? Mind you, they’re mostly rusted through at this point. We’ll need more, and some plates and cutlery.”

Bilbo blinked.

“And wine, I could do with some wine.”

“I don’t think you can buy wine from Decathlon, Thorin,” Bofur replied, cordially. Bilbo almost replied, but the two of them had already got out of the car, striding off. He stared out after them for a moment, before getting out himself. They were inside the store before he managed to catch up with them, and they trailed after the two of them, already a little resigned, to the middle of the camping section, where Thorin was clutching a rather large bag to his chest, protectively.

“Thorin,” Bofur was saying, “That’s a double sleeping bag. I know you’re getting pudgy in your old age, but you’re not that big yet.”

Thorin glanced down at the bag. He looked a little betrayed.

“I assumed that meant double the comfort,” he muttered. Bofur snorted, and Thorin carried on staring at his bag, before glancing up at Bilbo, looking completely affronted.

“What does he mean, pudgy?”

Bilbo couldn’t help but smile, a little bit.

“Never you mind him, Thorin. You look very comfortable.”

Thorin glared at him, still wasn’t letting go of the sleeping bag, but he caught up with Bilbo as he began to pad after Bofur, who was heading off to another shelf. His face was drawn in a scowl, the little petulant frown that made him look like the eighteen year old that Bilbo had first met all those years ago: his heart swelled at the sight.

“That doesn’t sound like a compliment,” he huffed, just loud enough for Bofur, only a few paces ahead of them, to hear. He turned back to them, and winked at Bilbo.

“Me and Bilbo like comfortable, don’t we?”

His tone was full of insinuation: Bilbo rolled his eyes, amused despite himself.

“I wish I’d left you both in England.”

He blanked out a lot of their trip around Decathlon, which was probably for the best. The poor shop assistants kept trying to approach them to help, but Bofur kept waving them away, grabbing more and more things despite Bilbo’s protestations, giving them to Thorin, until his arms were piled high with stuff that Bilbo could no longer identify. On occasion he tried to protest-

“We’re not buying a blow up air bed!”

But inevitably one of them would argue him down.

“Well, I’m not sleeping on the ground for an entire year.”

That one had been Thorin.

“You’re more than welcome to go home,” had been his response to that, which had only ended up in somewhat inevitable bickering, until Bofur had been forced to intervene.

“Alright kids, enough of this. There isn’t room in the car anyway, Thorin. The foam roll-outs will do us just fine.”

Thorin had snorted.

“We’re not twenty one any more, you know. How do you think your backs will be doing after a month of those?”

Bofur’s eyes had been full of mischief: he had squeezed Thorin’s cheeks, reaching around the massive pile of things he had been carrying, Bilbo cracking a smile despite himself.

“Oh no, I didn’t realise you’d turned into my old Grandad, Thorin. When did that happen?”

Thorin’s glare had been his only response.

“Besides, we can’t buy an airbed big enough for three anyway, can we?”

Neither he nor Thorin had had a reply for that: they’d just trailed after Bofur, as he had planned out the next year of their life in terms of essential supplies.

That trip, and the next one to a close-by supermarket, had taken up far more of the day than he had anticipated. It had been late afternoon before they had finally left the town in which the Decathlon had been located, after a meal and the prerequisite glass of wine that Thorin had been insisting on all day (“We’re in France! I’m not going to drive around France another day without a glass of wine!”), the car loaded with stuff that would, admittedly, make their trip much easier. Bofur had taken the passenger seat this time, and had played with the radio station, trying in vain to find something that wasn’t continuously interrupted with static, until he had given up and searched through his bag until he found a cable to attach his iPhone to Bilbo’s own car stereo, after which they worked themselves through his collection of the Beatles.

It was peaceful: they headed south east, at Bilbo’s rather arbitrary decision, based entirely on the vague memory of the postcards of Barcelona that his mother had kept pinned on her bedroom wall – Spain sounded like a good call, after they had worked their way through France. And why not base a trip based on the memories of his mother’s walls, all places she’d been and places that she had wanted to go? He couldn’t think of a better way to spend a year.

For the most part they drove in silence: on the occasional song they joined together, singing along, their voices low and drifting off into humming whenever they forgot the words, none of them bothered about trying to remember words that they had known when they were teenagers (and wasn’t it funny, the way that songs that had meant the world to them in their youth became nothing more than faded memories the older they grew – anthems became gentle words that made them smile with fond recollection at past feelings).

“Blackbird singing in the dead of night,” Thorin half hummed, his voice low in the dimming light.

The day passed in fields rolling by outside: the whisper of clouds overhead, the sound of the engine all around them.

“Take these broken wings and learn to fly,” came in Bofur, his tuneful voice cutting in over the top, their voices merging softly.

It was all blue skies and open roads in front of them, and Bilbo's finding himself feeling strangely light, as if he had left some weight that he hadn't realised he was carrying behind him in London.

“All your life,” Bilbo sang, his own voice a little hoarse, although he wasn’t sure if it was from emotion or disuse. “You were only waiting for this moment to arise.”

They stopped again as the sun set for the evening, pulling in at the first camp-site they came across as evening drew in, the sun a mass of gold and red in the sky above them, earlier than they had stopped the day before. Thorin cooked up pasta on the brand new camping stove, staring in panic at the bubbling water in the little pan as Bilbo and Bofur set up the brand new tent, the carefully ignored instruction pamphlet fluttering in the breeze. But eventually it did get the thing sorted, despite the two of them staring in confusion at a fair few fabric slots and confusing bits of tangled material, just in time for dinner to be ready.

They ate, cross legged in the long grass, watching the few other groups in the camp-site, laughing a little under their breath at them. As the sun set first one and then every other settled under canvas for the night, the glow of gas lamps and torches shining through canvas of a variety of colours, but the three of them remained still, feeling the earth grow slowly cooler beneath them, watching all this movement happen, sharing a bottle of wine that Thorin had snagged between them, swigging straight from the bottle (despite everything, none of them had managed to remember to get cups).

First Thorin retired, then Bofur, grumbling at the fact that Thorin had settled right in the middle of the tent, in his usual way. Bilbo deferred when both of them invited him to join them, sitting there in growing silence as listened to the two of them brushing their teeth and changing, the rustle of the silky sleeping bag fabric, Bofur’s humming under his breath as he fiddled with his eyebrow and lip piercings, and Thorin’s muttering about things that he felt he had to do the next day.

He sat there until these sounds turned into the gentle noise of sleep, slow breathing, low huffs as they turned around, trying to get comfortable: the ground was distinctly cold underneath him now, but he didn’t mind it so much, not right now. It reminded him of camping, as a child, with his mother, all campfire smoke and the smell of the earth, and he wondered, as he listened to the two men that he loved, whether or not she would approve of him, and all that he had done, whether or not she would have been proud, or worried, had she still been alive.

He missed her with a keening ache right now: her death, and that of his father, the two coming in such close proximity, remained a cold spot in his chest, one that he was not sure would ever really thaw, although now he had learnt to stop noticing it every day.

Above him the stars were a tableaux: it was much clearer tonight, he thought to himself as he stared up at the sky, quite still even as his eyes searched for the North star, finally finding it overhead. He shivered a little as he drew his knees up to his chest, his eyes wide as they swept across the sky. Star-gazing always made him think of his father, and he felt a warm surge of nostalgia as his eyes followed lines that had once been familiar to him. There was the Dipper, which as a child he had always thought looked more like his father’s saucepan, and Orion too, and his mouth was already curling up into a smile as he caught sight of the Seven Sisters, that tiny cluster even further out, and a whole host more of stars that he had no name for anymore, though he thought that at one he might have known so many more, back when his father used to sit him on the big armchair next to him with his celestial atlas open across his knees.

His mother and his father were in this moment with him, and his breath caught in his throat: he could almost feel the warmth of them at his side, and like a child he did not dare to look, for he knew that if he did, he would see nothing. But he felt them all the same in this moment, all stargazing atlases and tents and the feeling of contentment that he had not known since he was a child, that he had never really ever appreciated at the time.

Would the two of them be glad of all that he was, now?

We want you to be happy, darling boy, no matter what.

Was he happy? He wasn’t sure, not really. How could a person ever really know? But the sounds from inside the tent, the gentle sounds of the two men he loved – they gave him a certain sense of contentment, one that he valued, more than anything else.

Was he happy?

Probably not, not really, maybe.

But he had the two of them, and the memory of his parents, and that was enough, most of the time. Happiness was a difficult thing to understand, at the end of the day.

He crawled into bed sometime later: Bofur and Thorin were wrapped around each other, and he huddled up against Thorin’s back, searching for warmth, smiling just a little as sleep took him.

After the hours of static that they had suffered through the day before, it had almost been a relief when Thorin had slid behind the wheel the next morning and had deftly tuned the old radio into a station that actually stuck with them throughout the morning and into the afternoon. Bofur had thrown himself in the back seat with a huff, shoving Thorin’s unwieldy double sleeping bag in its sack out of the way, muttering something muttered under his breath about some people having a natural talent for uncooperative machinery. Bilbo found himself smiling as he slipped into the passenger seat at Thorin’s rather self-satisfied smile.

“Where to today, boss?” Bofur asked him, lounging across the backseat, and Bilbo shrugged, scrabbling at the pocket on the back of his seat without looking until he had hold of his mother’s atlas. It took him a while to find the right road that they were on (and okay, he might have peeked at the map on Thorin’s phone to align himself, but he was rather sure that that didn’t really count as cheating anyway.

“Hmm,” he mumbled under his breath as he stared, somewhat blankly, at the map in front of him, wishing that he had bothered to look at an atlas at any point in the last twenty years – he might have had a better idea what he was doing, then.

“I think we’re only an hour or so from La Rochelle,” he said, slowly. “My parents went there on their honeymoon, you know. It might be quite nice…”

“Let’s go,” Thorin said, not waiting for Bilbo to try and validate his choice further, for which he was rather grateful. “Which way?”

“Right,” Bilbo said quickly, relieved, starting a little as he felt Bofur’s hand on his shoulder from the backseat, squeezing just a little, something that wasn’t quite comfort, wasn’t quite pity, but something else entirely. “We just have to follow this road we’re on for a little while, and then we’ll get to a crossroads.”

The road in question was a winding, country one, one that they had found themselves on yesterday afternoon, and it took about half an hour without coming across a crossroad of any description before Thorin started shooting him rather questioning looks out of the corner of his eye. It was another fifteen minutes before his hand started twitching over the gear stick, as if he was trying valiantly not to reach for his phone, tucked away underneath the radio, and the sat nav app that Dis had no doubt installed the moment he had got it, knowing well Thorin’s ability to get lost.

“We’re fine,” Bilbo told him, squinting at the map. “We’ll be there in just a few minutes.”

“How far away was it?” Bofur asked, from the backseat.

Bilbo hummed. “Only a few centimetres.”

There was a pause.

“Okay,” Bofur replied, his voice the very epitome of unconcerned. “And what is the scale on the map?”

Bilbo blinked, then turned back to the front cover, eyes searching for the little black line.

“Bollocks,” he muttered, and caught the twitch of a grin on Thorin’s mouth out of the corner of his eye. But he shook his head, resolute – so what if it had been years since he had last gone anywhere that he didn’t know, since he had last needed a map of any sort? He had been taught how to do all this stuff as a child, out and about with his mother – it was just like riding a bike. It would come back to him in no time.

He glanced up as the car swerved, blinking as Thorin took a hard right down a tiny road that Bilbo had barely even seen. They were in definite one-car territory now, and he was rather worried that they were going to end up coming across another car: as small as his car was, he was not convinced that they would be able to squeeze past without veering into the fields on either side of them.

“Umm,” he said, though he didn’t really know where he was going with that.

“Thorin?” Bofur asked, from the backseat. “I hate to have to back-seat drive you, but we all know that you can’t tell your head from your arse in terms of directions. Where do you think we’re going?”

Thorin grinned: Bilbo blinked at the sight. It was a strange sort of grin, one that was all barred teeth and bubbling laughter and a sudden lightness around his shoulders. Like his petulant pout, he looked all of eighteen again, laughing and dragging Bilbo and Bofur through city streets, to yet another bar; he looked twenty-two and throwing open Bilbo’s bedroom curtains in an attempt to wake him up to go running with him; it was the Thorin that screamed the whole way around on his first ever rollercoaster on his thirtieth birthday; it was the Thorin soaking wet in the rain on a hillside somewhere, laughing at Bofur, who had skidded a good metre down the mountain on his arse. He was the Thorin that only reared his head occasionally, the Thorin who, right at that moment, had forgotten everything important in his life and all the things that he was supposed to be doing, the rare little side of Thorin that was having fun without any conditions.

Bilbo laughed to himself, softly.

“I have no idea,” said Thorin, cheerily. “But neither does Bilbo, and I reckon we’ll come across a sign eventually.”

“You’ve cracked,” Bofur muttered from the backseat. “First Bilbo, now you. Woe is to me, being the only sensible friend left.”

Thorin snorted.

“You’ve never been the sensible one.”

Bilbo glanced over his shoulder: Bofur was beaming, looking far happier than Bilbo had seen him in a long time (and that was a strange thought, really – because Bofur had never looked all that sad, or anything, so how was it that Bilbo suddenly felt that Bofur had not been entirely happy, the last few years?)

“Aye, true enough,” he said, pulling his hat from his head and throwing it onto the seat next to him, working the mess of his hair up into a bun to keep it off his neck. “But at least I can read a bloody map.”

Bilbo threw the atlas at him: the car swerved around another corner, saving Bofur from a direct hit to the face.

“Good job I've got a sense of adventure, but put some bloody Queen on, then,” Bofur said, still grinning, shoving the iPod and cables through to the front seat. “If we’re going to ride off into oblivion I demand to do so singing ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’.”

Bilbo acquiesced, and they had a rather enjoyable morning driving through the French countryside singing along – Bilbo was rather certain that he would never forget Thorin’s rendition of ‘Fat-Bottomed Girls’, not as long as he lived. Ironically enough, they eventually did come across a sign for La Rochelle, just about the only time that Thorin had ever managed to take them in even vaguely the right direction. They all blinked at it for a moment as they drove passed it, joining on to a larger road.

“Well,” Bofur said, after a moment of silence. “I think a celebratory drink is in order, when we find somewhere to park up for the night – this might well be the first time Thorin has ever gone the right direction. That’s due a toast, and no mistake.”

And toasted it was, when they pulled up at a campsite somewhere just outside the town: it was done with a mouthful of a rather furious vodka that Bofur apparently had a bottle of stowed away in his rucksack. It had sat there, forgotten, for some years, contributing to the burn of it, and Thorin had coughed and spluttered afterwards, much to their amusement. They decided amongst themselves that this had only been possible because Thorin had not been trying to find his way anywhere, but had only been intending to drive, and they agreed that next time they wanted him to arrive at the right place, they wouldn't even tell him where he was going, would just set him off in a car and hope for the best. 

It was a night of slightly fuzzy thoughts, and laughter. 

Sleep came easy, later on; he did not watch the stars.

The next day dawned clear: the fabric of the tent was already warm and bright with sunlight when Bilbo woke up, the green-brown fabric golden in this light. Food was eaten, teeth were brushed, showers were taken in the little cubicles provided on the campsite (and complaints were made loudly by both Thorin and Bilbo himself at the state of the tiles and the chilliness of the water, though neither of these things seemed able to dampen Bofur’s spirits – he whistled the whole way through his shower, whilst Bilbo and Thorin muttered and swore in the shower cubicles on either side of him.

But eventually they got underway, moving out into the city proper.

The seaport was bustling, even this early in the day: they drove down to the front, the sea a brilliant blue, perfectly calm, the sight of it unfurling before them like a gift, its wrapping being slowly pulled off, more and more of it coming into view. Something about it seemed to set in Bilbo a strange little peace, the kind that feels as if it might fracture easily, but is real enough for the time being, and he relished in the feeling, smiling to himself.

They drove along the front, passing the marina, huge yachts and smaller pleasure boats jostling for space in the water. They found a place to pull up and park soon enough (though Thorin had a rather pained look on his face when he was forced to parallel-park the car in a rather narrow space) and proceeded on foot to the old harbour.

The sun was beating down, and Bilbo realised that he had not remembered sun-cream: Bofur went a deep nut brown in the sun, and Thorin’s mixed heritage meant that he rarely burnt, but Bilbo could almost feel his nose beginning to peel underneath the onslaught of the sun overhead.

Damn. 

He scowled up at the offending sun, but Thorin bopped him on the chin with a little bottle of sun cream before he had a chance even to blink: the small, travel-sized container that one might buy in an airport.

He wandered off before Bilbo could say anything, and he stared after him, a little baffled – Thorin was the last person to remember to take care of his skin. 

But, never look a gift horse in the mouth. With a liberal stripe of white cream across his nose, he set off after his friends, feeling infinitely more content.

The day was a deeply enjoyable one. After wandering for the rest of the morning they had lazed under parasols, sipping cold beer and eating as much seafood as any of them feasibly could manage, until the worst of the midday heat had passed. Bilbo had insisted on them doing a tour of the great towers that guarded the harbour after that, and the cool stone had done wonders for reviving them from the food-stupor. They had asked the waiter for his recommendations on what to do with the day, and they followed his advice on wandering through the old town, stopping for coffee after a while. The followed narrow, twisting streets in near-silence, only occasionally commenting on something that they saw, and Bilbo couldn’t help but remember what had drawn him to the two of them to begin with: between the three of them there were rarely awkward silences, and the friends with which you can remain in comfortable quiet are a blessing indeed, something that he had learnt early on in life.

He wondered what his parents had done, when they had come here: whether they had walked the same streets as him, if they had padded quietly around the towers, dipped their feet in the water. But he found that it did not leave him feeling better connected to them than before, as perhaps he had hoped – after all, the water in the harbour was not the same as that which might once have cooled his parents. The city was different, he was sure, and though he could well imagine the two of them walking hand in hand through these little alleyways, could almost picture his mother on that little balcony – it wasn’t the same.

But this did not disappoint him, nor did it bring down his mood – rather he faced it with a certain acceptance, and something of a smile, for he knew that his mother would not have wanted him to see, to do, the exact same things that she had.

He had to be his own person, didn’t he? Not his parents, not what he thought his should be, not what he thought Bofur and Thorin wanted or needed him to be. The realisation, as simple as it might have been, struck him very clearly then, wandering through the little streets, and he found himself walking a little taller for it, a little prouder.

Bofur seemed to sense this change in him soon enough, for he slung an arm around his shoulders.

“Alright?” he asked, after a moment or two, and Bilbo nodded, feeling very strangely as if he actually meant it.

“Yeah,” he replied, and his voice was warm with a smile yet unshared. “What do you want to do next?”

Bofur wrinkled his nose, smiling.

“Aquarium!”

Every barista and waiter they had spoken to, every person selling postcards and souvenirs, had told them to go to the aquarium, and so to it they went. It felt a little strange going inside in the middle of a bright, warm day, but he pressed close to Thorin and Bofur none the less, rather grateful for the air-conditioning that kept the place at a moderate temperature. It was an impressive sight, he had to admit - the tanks were huge and extensive, the creatures within them varied and fascinating. They followed the crowd around the different rooms slowly, drifting apart as they did, until Bilbo realised that he had entirely lost the other two somewhere along the way, whether in front or behind him he could not say. He wandered through the next door regardless, and found himself in a room full of jellyfish, the creatures wavering slowly across their tanks.

He paused, letting a group of giggling schoolchildren pass through the room. The place was quite quiet for the time of year – a fluke, he thought, or else indicative of some other event going on in the city – and when he was alone in the room he took a seat on the ground, in front of the tank. His elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands, and he felt like something of a child again. It was rather a pleasant sensation.

The jellyfish paid no attention to him: he watched them, finding an odd comfort in their movement.

One in particular caught his eye, all pastels and undulation, and he watched it move across the glass of the tank, first one way and then another. A jellyfish, he found himself thinking, was no doubt a very self-contained creature, one which would never feel as much of a mess as Bilbo did most of the time. He rather wondered what it would be like to be a jellyfish, but found that he wasn’t entirely certain if he actually fancied the idea of being one. It was as he was musing such things that Bofur caught up with him, startling him rather.

“What on earth are you doing?” he asked, but he was grinning, and Bilbo shrugged.

“Watching.”

Bilbo regarded the jellyfish with one eyebrow raised, and nodded a little.

“Fair enough – want to carry on and find Thorin before he falls into a tank, or gets into a fight with a clownfish?”

He stuck out a hand, and Bilbo blinked at it, for a moment wavering, uncertain of whether or not he did want to move on, or whether he wanted to stay here.

Bofur, intuitive as always, frowned, just a little, and then Bilbo did take his hand, letting himself be pulled to standing, rather regretting it as he lost sight of his little jellyfish friend.

“You can stay, if you want to,” Bofur told him, as he stumbled a little, but Bilbo shook his head. The aquarium was cool and beautiful and so full of a thousand things that he had never seen before, and he knew well that he should be rushing from room to room, entirely excited about the whole thing, but the slow and steady peace of earlier still had not left him, and he felt no need to rush.

Bofur was watching him, quite carefully. His piercings – so familiar that Bilbo barely noticed them - were glinting a little in the strange blue phosphorescent light of the tanks.

“What do you want?” Bofur asked, and it was a strange look, oddly serious for Bofur, nothing at all like his normal, smiling expression. There was something in his eyes, something that Bilbo could not place, as if he were asking a question that he was expecting a very different answer to than anything that Bilbo would be willing to offer him, right now, as if there were another question lingering under those simple words. His eyes were dark, and curious, and stared into Bilbo’s without any wavering, and he found himself swallowing, almost afraid to look away.

Bofur’s eyes were bright in the blue light.

They hadn’t asked him anything about this trip, this impromptu journey, or the reasons about it since that first ride from the airport: Bilbo had supposed that it would only have been a matter of time until the subject came back up again, but he had rather imagined that it would come up in different circumstances to these. They were interrupted by the arrival of a gaggle of ladies, talking loudly about the contents of the tanks, and it was only when he released it that Bilbo realised that Bofur had still had hold of his hand the entire way through that strange, protracted moment.

They found Thorin soon enough, enraptured beside a tank, and if he noticed anything odd between them as they moved through the rest of the aquarium then he was polite enough not to mention anything, though he glanced from time to time between the two of them, as if uncertain.

The light was beginning to fade when they emerged, though only a little, and they ate a light, early dinner on the front, finding a recommendation soon enough for another campsite further down the coast, one half in the sand dunes. Bilbo had half thought that they might have moved passed the strange moment, Bofur’s insisting tone-

What do you want, Bilbo – what do you really want?

And he knew the answer, didn’t he, knew it as well as he knew that he could not voice it.

But Thorin knew them well, and Bilbo should have known that he was too tenacious to let the moment go by.

“Why did you do this, Bilbo?” he asked when they had found their way back to the car. Bofur was driving, this time, pulling out of the city as the lights flickered on in the light. Thorin was hunched up in the passenger seat, his button-down shirt creased in an oddly endearing fashion; Bilbo could only see it from the back, flopped out as he was on the back seat.

“I told you already,” he replied slowly, stretched out with his feet propped up on Thorin’s suitcase. Outside the window the buildings had given quickly away to fields and grasses, all of which were moving by, too much of a blur to make out – they were just a haze of green and gold, the inside of the car still warm from the day sat in the sunlight, soft music from a radio station that Thorin had finally found winding through his consciousness, sending him slowly drifting off to sleep. That strange peace from earlier was fragmenting, slowly, slivers of broken glass across his mind.

“I wanted to travel.”

He hid a smile, despite himself, already imagining the way that Thorin would be frowning.

“Then why didn’t you just book a holiday?” Thorin asked, and his voice was very quiet, oddly quiet, and almost a little sad, although Bilbo could not quite work out why.

“Because I also just wanted to get away from everything. Indefinitely.”

The road was turning slowly; he closed his eyes against the light as a car’s headlights, already on despite the remaining light, fell against his face. There was a distant smell of lavender, one that he could not quite place, all tangled up with the brine of the sea, still close, still very close.

“I don’t understand,” he heard Thorin mutter, just a little petulant, and Bilbo smiled again, despite himself.

“Of course you don’t,” Bofur chimed in, and though his voice was low, it was almost normal again, lighter than before. “Because you’ve seen hundreds of new places, had experiences since you were young that other people can only dream of.”

“I’ve never been anywhere! I’m always working, and-”

“You spent three months in Malaysia when you were sixteen,” Bofur replied, half-laughing, and Bilbo didn’t need to open his eyes to know that he was grinning that particular smile, the one that only seemed to come out when he was looking at Thorin, the one that was all you’re utterly ridiculous and god you don’t even understand what a different life you’ve lead and it’s a good job I can’t possibly find a way to hate you.

Thorin made a scoffing sound.

“Your family have a second home in Portugal,” Bilbo reminded him, eyes still closed, still relaxed, feeling as normal as he had done for months, despite that growing awareness that the peace was going to shatter, soon enough. “Even if you haven’t made it out there since you were twenty one, the potential always remains.”

“Well,” Thorin said, “potential and childhood holidays aren’t really the same, are they? What I mean is that I have never had an immersive, long-term experience like you planning with this mad trip-”

Bofur cleared his throat, interrupting him.

“You did a year abroad in Hong Kong when we were undergrads.”

Bilbo rolled over onto his side, his seatbelt digging into his side, stopping him from moving too far, but just enough that if he opened his eyes again now he would be looking at the back of the car; the breeze from the windows, opened to let the air in, seemed to have turned suddenly chill.

And don’t I remember it. It was our third year, and Bofur ended up failing all his classes, and I never worked out if it was because he was miserable or because he wanted to come back the next year, when you would be back. And I, well, I finished up, got my 2:1 and graduated, but it felt shit, because you weren’t there. And that’s ridiculous, because we were all on different courses with different graduation ceremonies, but I felt it all the same, the fact that I was leaving and you two weren’t. so I ended up applying for a Masters course, and the next summer we did all finish at the same time, our ceremonies were even all on the same day, so we have the stupid picture of the three of us in our gowns, Bofur in his jeans and me in my poorly fitting suit and Thorin looking out of place in Armani, a gift from his mother, and was still framed in my bedroom until the day I packed everything up and set out on this stupid road trip, but I bet both of you have lost it, haven’t you, along the way. Neither of you have ever cared as much for the sentimental stuff as I have.

He squeezed his eyes even tighter. The two in the front were already bickering again, a sense of normalcy restored, Bofur now listing all the places that Thorin had been sent in the last year alone. “And don’t forget the two weeks in Geneva,” he finished off with, sounding very amusingly self-righteous.

“All right!” Thorin said, sounding defeated. “But it barely counts when all I ever see is the inside of an office and my hotel room. All I’m ever doing when I’m there is missing you two idiots, anyway.”

Bilbo shifted back at that, in surprise, turning to look through the gap in the front seats. Thorin’s face was a little pink, and now he was staring resolutely out of the window, frowning, his arms folded over the breadth of his chest. Bofur caught his eye in the rear-view mirror: his eyebrows were raised, but he didn’t seem to look anywhere near as surprised as Bilbo was.

Feeling strangely wrong-footed, he closed his eyes again, and lay back, listening to the slow melodies of the radio, the low growl of the engine, the sound of the world slipping by outside.

They woke the next morning to rays of sunlight glinting of a sea that was greyer today than blue: there was pink on the horizon still, and a deep and heavy warmth. The sky overhead was a slate grey, clouds building over the sea, threatening a storm later in the day.

Their conversation had turned from the serious to the ridiculous last night, bickering covering any awkwardness that might have come from it, and by the time they had bunked down for the night, their tent pitched at the edge of the dunes. There wasn’t much of a beach, Bilbo thought as he looked around him now, in the light of day, at least not a beach in the way that he thought of them – the dunes stretched for as far as he could see, but the sand itself didn’t seem all that extensive (though he was perfectly willing to accept that his lack of knowledge of the tides might have contributed to that conclusion).

The dunes were beautiful, he couldn’t help but think, all lit with the beams that had managed to break through the clouds, all slate and gold and tall grasses in the view, the sea deceptively still beyond. He took deep long breaths of the sea air as they packed up, and wondered at the fact that the peace that he was beginning to find still hadn’t fractured entirely – enough of it was left, it seemed, that he felt quite content as he chucked the car keys to Bofur as they were packing up the car, before slipping into the front seat.

The day was long, and slow. The trip the day before seemed to have taken the wind out of their sails somewhat, and there was no talk of making another trip today. Instead, they simply drove south, stopping only when they needed food or services. Several people warned them of the oncoming storm as they stopped for supplies, and they nodded and drove on, not entirely sure what else they were supposed to do in this situation.

They spoke little as the clouds gathered overhead, and though for a while he had thought that they might outdrive the storm it seemed that it was impossible. It finally broke as the evening drew in: it began as a drizzle, the windscreen wipers clearing them enough to carry on, the rain at the windows obscuring the view, making Bilbo feel as if they were safe in their own little place, the three of them all alone in the world.

But soon enough the storm grew worse: wind and rain lashed at the car, almost deafening in its sound. Bofur pulled over when the road grew too wet, the conditions too dangerous to carry on all that much longer. Even with the heating running at its highest setting it was already starting to feel chill inside – Thorin had pulled Bilbo’s duvet over him in the backseat before they had even stopped, his head poking out from the lilac covers, glaring at the two of them in the front seat as if challenging them to laugh at him.

Although the sight was quite amusing, Bilbo was feeling more jealous than anything else: he was already starting to shiver himself, his legs tucked up underneath him, the rain cascading down the glass of the side window in an almost constant wave.

“I guess it was as bad as they said it was going to be, huh?” Bofur commented, as he pulled the car into the carpark of a service station, where already a line of lorries had pulled up to stop for the night.

“Yeah,” Bilbo replied, absently, still watching the rain, oddly familiar, strangely comforting. “I suppose finding a campsite is out of the question, isn’t it?”

Thorin was glaring; Bilbo caught sight of him in the rear view mirror, and now he did have to smile, at just how petulant he looked.

“Like hell I’ll be getting outside this car to fuck around trying to put up a tent.”

Bofur nodded, thoughtfully.

“For once, I agree with the purple marshmallow in the back seat.”

“I’m not a marshmallow,” Thorin grumbled, but when the other two laughed he sunk down further in his seat, folding his arms under the covers. Unfortunately for him, covered in Bilbo’s big duvet, this only made him look even more marshmallow-y.

“Sleeping in the car it is then,” Bofur said, idly. “And I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t fancy a cricked neck and sore back from sleeping in the front seat.”

“I told you you’d care about your back soon enough,” Thorin mumbled, but the other two ignored him, casting only a wry grin in each other’s direction.

Bofur turned off the engine: the car’s headlights turned off with it, the inside of the car falling into sudden darkness, lit now only by the distant glow of the all-night service station. The rain sounded even louder now, a steady repetitive drumming on the car roof, a little too loud to be called gentle, but comforting for its consistency. They sat in silence for a long moment, and when Bilbo glanced across at Bofur he saw that his face was drawn into a small smile, his eyes closed against the darkness.

Then Thorin sighed, and began to search among the various bags tossed around the backseat. Eventually he found the stick-on shades that Bofur had insisted on buying, attaching them assuredly and with a certain swiftness to the windows in the back, then two to the back windscreen, cutting off most of the dim light from outside.

“How the hell do you get these seats down, Bilbo?” he complained, struggling around searching for the lever, breaking the silence in the car.

“It’s on the other side,” Bilbo replied, his voice quiet. He could feel a melancholy creeping up on him again, that aching and impossible sadness that he couldn’t explain, the one that seemed to cripple him some days, that one that he could never seem to shake, the one that always caught him after he spent long enough with Thorin and Bofur, that unhelpful mixture of regret and resignation. He had thought, for a time, that he had escaped it, that he might have left it behind him in England, but it seemed that it had followed them all, curling up somewhere in the car, just waiting for the right moment to unfurl and pad quietly over to ingratiate itself in Bilbo’s mind again.

He sighed. Thorin looked back at him, still half tangled in the covers, and for a moment a shade of a frown crossed his face, before he turned back to his task.

Bofur reached over, and squeezed his shoulder, just once, just lightly.

“How’s it looking back there, Thorin?” Bofur asked, his voice suddenly jovial. “Are you having fun playing house?”

“Shut up,” Thorin replied, but he didn’t stop with his battle with the seats. Even when he had finally got them down, he didn’t stop, tucking the various cases out of sight and pulling the three sleeping bags out of their stuff sacks, including his own massive one.

He kicked his way out of his jeans (and really, how had Bilbo not known he had that many pairs of them?), folding them up carefully and stashing them away. It was an oddly warming sight, to see him like this, fussing and putting out the pillows from where they had been stuffed yesterday, plumping them up a little in their old and faded covers. Bilbo glanced away, trying not to look at the long lines of his broad thighs, only to catch Bofur’s eye instead.

His friend waggled his eyebrows.

It might have been meaningful, or it might not have been. It was impossible to tell with Bofur.

The car rocked as Bofur scrambled through to the backseat, shoving Thorin over to the far end of the space with a gleeful laugh. Bilbo didn’t really follow their bickering, just let the sound of it wash over him as they struggled with their sleeping bags and got themselves ready for sleep.

Bilbo shivered, just a little, as a draft from somewhere brushed against the back of his neck. He should really ask the other two to pass them his sleeping bag, should curl up inside it and close his eyes against that strange and heavy sadness that had caught up with him, to fall asleep and let it pass, but right now even the thought of asking seemed too hard.

“Hey, Bilbo?”

He turned, just a little. Bofur had already flopped down on his back, in the middle of the folded down seats, the long line of his body hidden by sleeping back and the big duvet, thrown out across him and Thorin, who was still propped up on his elbow, lying alongside Bofur. They made a strange tableaux like this, barely lit by distant neon, all blue-grey shadows and bright eyes, watching him carefully, as if uncertain of what he was going to do next.

Thorin was smiling, just a little; Bofur’s messy ponytail was loose across one of Bilbo’s pillows.

There was a space next to them, closest to the front of the car. Bilbo’s sleeping bag had been pulled out of it, lain out as if it was waiting for him.

“We managed three of us back here the other night,” Thorin said, quietly, gently, with just a touch of hesitation. “Pretty sure we can manage it again.”

“And Thorin’s very worried about your back, you know,” Bofur added sombrely, before Thorin hit his shoulder.

The weight of sadness was still there, Bilbo thought as he found the corners of his mouth twitching upwards into a smile despite himself, still there and still aching, but he found himself rolling into the backseat anyway, pushing it back and tucking it away as best as he could, for now. There was a sleeping bag and the comfort of his two best friends to be found, the three of them crushed together in the small space as Bofur complained about how the ridge from the hinge of the seats was hurting his back, and Thorin whined about the cold air coming in from the falling apart boot seal, the three of them shuffling around to find an angle and a position in which they could be comfortable.

“The two of you have grown very old and boring, you know,” Bilbo commented, face turned towards the driver’s seat: in the back pocket rested his mother’s old atlas, and he smiled at it. Would she be proud of him? He still didn’t have an answer for that, but right now, it didn’t seem to matter all that much.

Bofur poked him in the side, and he squirmed, still ticklish after all these years.

“You’re horrible,” he told him, and from the other side of the car Thorin laughed, a low and soft sound in the dark.

He closed his eyes, the day slowly slipping away from him, the rain on the roof beating that plaintive song, and he took a deep breath. Beside him Bofur let out a low sigh, close enough that Bilbo could feel the warmth of him; the car shifted, just a little, as Thorin rolled over, pressing closer to them.

“I am sorry, you know,” he told the dark, without quite meaning to, without quite knowing if he really wanted to say what he was going to. “I shouldn’t have dragged the two of you into this whole mess. And I shouldn’t have tried to leave without saying goodbye, first. That was unfair.”

For a heartbeat, there was no response, then he felt Bofur shuffle even closer, his front moulding to Bilbo’s back, his arm wrapping underneath Bilbo’s own, holding him close. His breath was a warm puff against Bilbo’s exposed neck. Another hand fell against Bilbo’s stomach, having appeared from somewhere on the other side of Bofur – it was large, and warm, and familiar.

“You don’t need to apologise, you know,” came Bofur’s voice, a murmur, so much so that Bilbo more felt it against his neck than heard it.

Thorin didn’t say anything, just squeezed the curve of Bilbo’s side.

“Thanks,” Bilbo whispered, his face half buried in his pillow. He wasn’t entirely sure if the other two heard him or not, but the hands and arms that lay heavy across him didn’t move, not even a little.

Bilbo fell asleep that night warm, the touch of the other two burning him even through the layers of fabric that separated them, the smell of his old car a musty and familiar comfort, his chest tight from the effort that it took not to cry.

Chapter Text

They woke to find that the storm had passed them by, for the most part, leaving behind only a concentrated drizzle of rain that made the service station car park seem all the more unappetising in the cold, grey light of morning. Had the sun made its way from behind the heavy banks of cloud, the huge puddles that littered the empty, concrete parking might have shone, reflecting the blue skies, giving it a more optimistic feel: instead, Bilbo concluded as he wiped the condensation from the inside of the car windows to survey the world around them, everything looked rather dismal.

He had woken first, to the sound of harmonious and muted snoring from the other two occupants, and had slid from the stiflingly warm back seat into the front still in his sleeping bag, only stopping to rub his eyes and wake up a little more once he had extracted himself from the pile without waking them. It was another few minutes before he could bring himself to slip out of the bag, retrieve his chinos from the backseat, and pull them on.

Everything felt strangely still in the dim morning, the car peculiar and insular, as if nothing of the world existed anymore but for this small, warm space suspended in time. The three of them might have been the only people left alive, the last remnants of a suddenly vanished civilisation, alone but for each other in a spreading grey mist that seemed to have settled around the distant world beyond the car park, hiding the distance from him. 

What would it be like, he thought, distantly, if that had happened, if it were only the three of them left? He realised, with a strange sort of grief, that his life would not be all that much the stranger if it did. 

A car rolled through the car park, having pulled off the road. It broke Bilbo's moment of reverie, and with a sigh, he started up the car.

He rather thought that the rattle of the engine would be enough to wake the two in the backseat, but it wasn’t: they did not even seem to stir as he pulled the car around to the entrance of the service station, and he shook his head a little as he pulled on his shoes and darted quickly through the glass doors of a barely-opened building, a rather uncomfortable tightness reminding him that he had not relieved himself before bedding down the night before, and it was with some relief that he found a clean, well maintained set of bathrooms immediately – a welcome relief after so many rather less pleasant campsite toilet blocks. 

Suitably relieved, and cheered by a pleasant fifteen minutes browsing for more up to date road maps in one of the shops (he didn't end up buying any of them, his mother's still battered old atlas too much a warm memory in his mind to want to betray it), and with three cups of coffee secured by plastic lids in hand, he returned to the car. He shook his head a little as he saw that neither of the other two had moved an inch, both still curled up together in the rather cramped conditions of the back seat, neither clearly minding the light filtering in through the windows.

The mist was starting to clear now, he realised: it must have been the last vestige of the dawn, hidden behind clouds and rain, and though the drizzle still made it hard to see all that far, it was becoming very clear that there was more of a world out there, that it hadn't all ended in his sleep. 

He smiled to himself, just a little.

After a long moment, Bilbo settled the cups gently in the passenger seat, propping them up against the back to keep them upright, before leaning very deliberately on the horn.

“Oh, sorry,” he said, sweetly, when they jolted awake at the loud blast of sound. “My arm must have slipped. Coffee?”

Bilbo started driving before either of the other two had really risen properly, still lounging about in the back with their coffees. “Are you feeling doubly comfortable?” Bofur snickered into his own sleeping bag as Thorin protested having to wake, and being forced to do so with such an unpleasant alarm clock. His mumbling sounded very much like that of a teenage refusing to wake, and Bilbo grinned at the road as they continued on.

Thorin’s response was a snort, that couldn’t quite hide his own amusement.

Luckily, caffeine soothes even the wildest beast, and soon enough Thorin had found his good humour again. The back of the car righted again, everyone in their respective seats, they left the central highway to return to narrow winding roads again, taking a slower pace as the rain refused to relent or even lighten: with nowhere determined to go and none of them with any great desire to leave the warm interior of the car Bilbo eventually gave the wheel over to Bofur, curling up in the passenger seat as Thorin once again took over the length of the back of the car, propping his head up on Bofur’s rucksack and dozing idly. The thunder from the day before seemed to have petered out and they saw no further sign of it, but the drizzle left them sleeping in the car again, turning in early after a deeply lethargic day. They lay for a while, curled up a little awkwardly together in the length of the back of the car again, all of them struggling to work up the energy to stick up the shades or even move, talking idly as they tried to identify a winged shape that seemed interested in the car, never quite coming low enough for any of them to identify it properly, though that didn’t stop them trying.

“That was an owl,” Thorin told them, authoritatively.

“Oh right, Mr Nature Expert here,” Bofur retorted, not moving an inch from his reclined position, and not sounding particularly convinced. “Like you’ve ever even seen an owl before. It was a bat.”

“Bats are not that big,” Thorin sniped, though Bilbo could tell that he was trying not to smile.

“You’ve never seen a bat in your life,” Bofur reminded him.

“I think you’re both morons,” Bilbo told them, affectionately.

Luckily, by the next morning the skies were clear again, and Bilbo found himself itching to get out and do something after so much time cramped up without relief. As much as he loved the other two, this length of time in such a small space was not particularly pleasant – nor indeed was the way that any of them smelt after so long without showering or even changing properly. A small campsite provided the showers for a nominal fee, as well as directions to a string of nearby villages, within which Bilbo was determined to find something for them to occupy themselves with.

Testing their earlier hypothesis, they told Thorin to head north-west, knowing that the villages were closer to east of the campsite, and they managed to arrive at the first within half an hour, to Bofur’s obvious amusement and Thorin’s slightly conflicted pleasure. They drove slightly erratically down narrow streets which seemed oddly busy for the time of day and the size of the place, until Bilbo, from the backseat, spotted a sign that he recognised, some facsimile of his high-school language days coming back to him.

“It’s market day!” he cried, so suddenly that Thorin almost swerved into a lamppost which had never harmed anyone in its life, and probably didn’t deserve the long line of expletives that Thorin shot at it for being in the way.

Of course, it was decided that they would join what appeared to be the entire population of the local region, despite the heavy mud that had been churned up underfoot after the long onslaught of rain, and Thorin’s protest that his jeans and boots would be utterly ruined. Bofur had offered to lend him his flip flops (ten years old and, quite frankly, a little disgusting) just to shut him up, but Thorin seemed utterly horrified by the idea, and leaped from the car with little reticence after that.

Oh, but it wasn't a fine day, not in the sense of the weather, but it held everything that Bilbo held dear. His friends at his side, something to explore, the earth damp under his feet and smelling of rain, and new earth, like his father's allotment once had. The market was everything that Bilbo loved, everything that made him feel entirely at home despite the fact that he had never been here before in his life: obviously a regular event, most people seemed to know each other, and chattered away amicably as they wandered through the stalls, both to each other and to those manning the various tables set up under marquees. There was fresh produce, presumably from the local area: tables piled high with crates of apples, with locally-milled flour, others displaying vast quantities of grapes, of cured meats and baked goods, and several stacked with bottles of wine from the nearby vineyards, which Thorin made an immediate bee-line for, quite shocked when he realised that they did not accept debit cards.

"But how is anyone supposed to shop in bulk if they don't accept Visa?" he protested loudly, to the bemusement of the locals. 

Bilbo probably bought more than he should have done, but the huge loaves of bread, still warm, their tantalising smell drifting across the field, overcame him quickly. Likewise the fruit, still damp from the morning mists, seemed to call to him, and when he came across a surprisingly huge cheese stand he knew with some certainty that any attempts to limit himself had gone out of the window. Bofur trailed behind him, laughing at his excitement, quite willing to carry the rather hefty collection of things that Bilbo was buying so that he could continue to dart in and out of the various tents.

The heat within them was stifling, but Bilbo couldn’t bring himself to care too much for that: his back was slick with sweat by the time that they returned to the car, his face flushed, smiling from the enjoyment of the day.

“Are you happy?” Bofur asked, laughing a little as he slid into the driver’s seat, and Bilbo nodded, before catching the seriousness in Thorin’s gaze in the rear-view mirror, the solemn reality of the thought sliding back into place.

“I’m getting there,” he answered, as honestly as he could.

The cottage was the catalyst, really.

He should have known it, when they drove up to it, for it seemed to Bilbo in the golden light of the evening like the sort of place where he would want to retire, would want to live out the rest of his days, and he should have recognised it then for what it would prove to be – the beginning of the end.

But he didn’t. Despite how much they had teased Thorin, they were all rather excited at the prospect of spending a night on an actual bed. The rain had left its mark and the sunlight of the day had done little to fix what it left behind: the mud was thick and unpleasant still, their shoes covered from it from the market, and the longer the day had worn on the more they had all individually reached the conclusion that whilst camping out in the mud was tremendous fun at festivals in their twenties, it also lacked a great deal of appeal to them now. So as the sun’s descent took it low into the sky they followed signs to the last of the string of villages, which proved to be a beautiful little place nestled in among rolling fields and farmland, and they had pulled over off the high street and had wandered off in different directions to see if they could find a place to stay.

It had been Bofur, with the help of a phrasebook that he had kept tucked away in his back pack, who had eventually struck gold: a farmer, with a small cottage on his lands that he rented out to holiday homers, conveniently empty and rentable for a very reasonable price. They had agreed, in the end, to take it for two nights, to give them a chance to recuperate and relax a little, to stock up on supplies, and air out all the camping gear, before moving on.

Bilbo had fallen in love with it had first sight: the old stone, trailing plants and golden-grey light cast at the end of a damp day made the place appear like something from a fairy tale to him, and as he walked up the little path to the front door, breathing in deep the smell of damp earth and the myriad of flowers planted in the narrow garden, he had felt for a moment a terrific sense of homeliness, of peace, wash over him.

This was the sort of place he belonged, he knew that quite certainly, and it was with a happy sort of ache that he decided to bask in the beauty of it for just a short time, knowing full well that though this place felt right, it was not his own.

They had gone out to dinner, that first night, in the village’s only eatery, a small little café-cum-bar that hummed with local chatter. They guessed their way through the menu, ending up with huge bowlfuls of chicken chasseur and mounds of fresh bread, the stew rich and full of tiny, flavoursome mushrooms that, to Bilbo, were quite heavenly. Bofur had laughed at him, eating mounds of food when their cupboards were full to bursting with breads and cheeses and fruits from the market, but Bilbo shushed him happily, before stealing several of his mushrooms.

It had been strange falling asleep that night, Bilbo and Thorin in the little bedrooms and Bofur on the sofa bed downstairs – in just a few days he had grown so used to the sound of their breathing, to the warmth of their bodies next to his, that it was peculiar to lie there, cool and quiet, alone – but not entirely unpleasant, either, because he knew that in this house, here with him, were the other two, not close enough to touch but close still, his friends, who had followed him here despite his initial desire, who cared enough for him to drop their lives to follow.

As he would do for them: he knew that, inherently.

He slept long and peacefully that night, dreaming of warm arms and the soft prickle of stubble, and woke feeling restful and oddly content, long before the other two. They spent the day eating, checking over the gear and washing the sleeping bags, which had been beginning to smell a little musty. Laundry was done and the tent was aired out, at Bofur’s insistence, to keep any trapped morning dew within the fabric from settling in and forming mould.

“After all,” he had mock-whispered to Bilbo, loud enough for Thorin, who was folding laundry, to hear. “We don’t want his highness to have to live with mould when he was so insistent on double comfort, do we?”

Thorin had thrown a balled up pair of socks at him in reply, Bofur laughing and dodging them easily.

"You're never going to let that go, are you?" Thorin asked, not sounding quite half as irritated as he had meant to.

Bofur shook his head, still grinning widely. 

"Not until we're all old and grey and still driving around in Bilbo's terrible car together," he told him, happily. 

Such a pleasant time they had, in fact, that Bilbo even flirted with the idea of extending their stay here even longer, before dismissing it with no little regret. As peaceful as it was, he did not come out here to settle into a new place, no matter how like a home it felt – the car had a full (and overpriced) tank of petrol thanks to the little pump-and-go place just outside the village, and there was still a whole set of places out there that he wanted to see, a whole atlas revealing nothing but interweaving veins of countries that he wanted to travel.

So they made plans to leave the next day, after lunch: they bought in some more supplies, and ate another fantastic dinner, before returning to the cottage for one last night.

“Oh, bed,” Thorin said, with a sigh. “I am going to miss this bed. Small and lumpy it might be, but it feels fit for a King, after so long sleeping on the ground.”

Bofur had nudged him hard from the other side of the sofa as Bilbo had rolled his eyes, amused despite himself.

“Calm down, Grandad,” Bofur told him, grinning. “It’s not like you’ll never see the inside of a house again. And besides, all this sleeping on the ground is doing wonders for your posture – you look taller than ever.”

Bilbo yawned as the two of them began to debate whether or not this was even possible, and took himself away to bed soon after, too tired after a hearty dinner and two glasses of wine to get involved, or to even stay awake any longer, and once again he slept long and deep, far later into the morning than he did normally, feeling far better than he had done even the day before.

He showered quickly, hoping he was not delaying the other two, but when he checked after dressing he saw that Thorin’s bedroom door was still firmly shut, that there was no noise from downstairs, and he smiled as he went down, wondering how late the two of them had stayed up before they had tucked themselves away in their respective rooms.

But as he reached the ground floor, and glanced into the living room, he caught sight of something that made him stop short, that made all of the good feeling that their rest stop had filled him with wash quite suddenly away.

They had not gone to bed, he realised, as he saw them. No indeed – they must have stayed up quite some time after Bilbo had gone to sleep, laughing quietly between themselves until exhaustion overtook them – they hadn’t even made it back upstairs. There they were, the two of them curled together on the rug in front of the now dead fire, Thorin’s head resting on Bofur’s chest and Bofur’s hand curled in Thorin’s hair, their legs entwined, their bodies so close that there was no way that they could have rolled like that in their sleep – they had fallen asleep like that, Bilbo was certain, wrapped around each other, an intimacy that spoke of so much more than friendship. Their faces were close, as if they had been speaking before sleep took them, sharing something between them that Bilbo was not a part of.

The sight of the two men that he loved curled together should have been a beautiful one, but all that welled up in Bilbo’s chest was grief, and the certainty, once again, that he had been left out. The two of them – beautiful, strong, in soft jumpers and jeans still, they looked as if they belonged together.

They did belong together.

Looking at them now, like this, and remembering quite suddenly that day – he was certain of it.

And if Bilbo had not been there, if they had never cemented themselves into one cohesive platonic unit so early one – would they have been together? Would they have shared drunken kisses in the Student Union bar, held each other close as they danced together at relative’s weddings, moved against each other in the darkness of warm beds as they gasped aloud with arousal, whispered their dreams to each other in long and lazy evenings in restaurants, shared golden Sunday mornings in bed together, making love and eating breakfast and doing the crossword together?

Or – perhaps even worse – had they still been doing this, all along, and had Bilbo simply never recognised the signs?

What if, despite their love for him, they had secretly at times wished for him to leave early, to cancel plans, so that they could have time together? What if they had been meeting in secret all these years, laughing with affection and no little pity at their oblivious friend?

He felt sick, suddenly quite violently sick, and he half-ran to the kitchen as quietly as he could, not daring to look behind him again. He leant over the kitchen sink but though his stomach rolled he could not retch, and after a while he found himself staring dismally out of the window above the sink, at the grey permeating early morning mist outside, feeling utterly retched.

He should have known that his good humour couldn’t last.

He was exactly where he had been before his holiday, in third place, separate from the other two, not as successful, not as clever, not as loved.

Certainly more miserable.

He felt, in that moment, as he pulled himself together and began to make tea, pulling three cups from the cupboard, entirely awful, a black cloud falling over him that sunk into his bones and seemed to make his well-rested body feel suddenly exhausted. He had not felt this way, he was quite certain, since Bombur’s wedding.

Or, as he referred to it in his mind: the worst day of his life.

They left in a fog of awkward silence after a late lunch, Bilbo’s mood refusing to lift even as they took to the road, and as the afternoon wore on it still did not shift, bleeding the beautiful landscape around them of its colours, so that he could no longer bear to even look at it. He could not have possibly expected the other two not to notice that there was something wrong when the smell of fresh tea woke them from their tender embrace, but he knew that there was no way to explain it, not that he even really wanted to right now. Bofur was staring at him, they were both uncertain, and he knew that it came from love and care but he did not want it, right now – he wanted to be alone, did not want to have to deal with their emotions when he could barely even cope with his own, and though there was a part of himself that knew that was a little selfish, he couldn’t stop it, and that knowledge only made him feel all the worse for the way that he was acting.

But he couldn’t stop it – couldn’t manage the breathing his therapist had told him to try in such a confined space, couldn’t stop the horrible anxiety worming in his chest, tightening his ribcage until his back hurt and even breathing seemed like a chore, could barely even focus on the road.

“What?” he asked, in the end, fed up with Bofur’s careful and worried glances, with the way that Thorin was leaning forward between the front two seats, as if anxious not to miss anything. He had had enough, quite frankly – had reached his limit early that morning at the painful sight he had been met with in the early hours – and any tolerance he might normally have for their concern was rapidly failing him.

“You look sad,” Bofur told him, frowning slightly, and Bilbo scowled, the memory of the wash of insecurity from that morning sinking back into him, making him clench his fists tight against the wheel.

“I’m not sad, I’m just thinking,” he retorted, with more bite than he had meant. Now Bofur was frowning all the more, still watching him, half turned towards him in the passenger seat, and he was turning the music down, that low and mournful acoustic stuff that had only been making Bilbo feel worse in the last hour.

“What about?” he asked, and Bilbo struggled to regain control, shrugging.

“Nothing in particular.”

But Bofur didn’t leave it – Bofur, who never pushed people, who never badgered and always knew when to leave things alone, seemed finally to have reached his limit, and he shook his head, his face no longer soft and jocular, but hard with determination.

“I don’t believe that.”

“Believe what you want,” Bilbo snapped back, but Bofur was still staring at him, and Thorin was too, and the weight of the two of their gazes was more than enough.

“What?” he asked, angrily, and Thorin opened his mouth to say something, but Bofur got their first.

“Look, we’ve been skirting around this for days,” Bofur said, and his voice was suddenly quite stern. “In fact, I think we’ve been avoiding talking about it for a hell of a lot longer than that. But the point is, Bilbo, we’re you’re best friends, and it is quite obvious that there has been something bothering you for a long time now.”

“What makes you say that?”

“We’re not idiots,” Bofur replied, seemingly unaware of the way that Thorin shifted uncomfortably in the backseat. “Do you think we don’t see the way that you look sometimes? How sad your eyes are, the way that you turn away from us, as if to stop us from noticing? I thought at first that it was something to do with work, or maybe you were lonely, but-”

“I’m not lonely,” Bilbo retorted, glaring at the road.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Well, I don’t care. I’m afraid of being alone, that one day I will be truly lonely, that the two of you will bugger off and I will be left behind, but I’m not bloody lonely, and I’m not bloody unhappy, and-”

“Really?” Bofur asked, his voice full of doubt. “You might not be unhappy, but I’m not convinced that you are happy, either. Happy people don’t run off on some unplanned road trip across Europe. Happy people don’t try to run away from the people that love them.”

If he had been a different man, the fight might have gone out of Bilbo then, but it didn’t. If anything, it made it worse.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Bilbo replied.

“But you have to,” came Bofur’s response, immediate and sure. From the backseat Thorin glanced between the two of them, obviously unsure of what to say or whether to simply not get in between the rapidly escalating conversation. “What do you mean, you’re afraid of being alone? You’ll always have us.”

“Not necessarily,” Bilbo replied, snappily. “I don’t think the two of you would mind that much if it was just the two of you, sometimes.”

“I don’t understand,” Bofur retorted, his voice plaintive, and it looked for a moment as if he was going to say something more, but Bilbo had had enough – his patience had been stretched too thin, his nerves too frayed, and with a final and painful internal snap, he felt his resistance break.

“Alright!” Bilbo shouted, his eyes fixed firmly on the road. “I know that we’re friends, I know that logically you’re never going to leave me behind, I know that we will always be friends, but it isn’t enough! I know that there is more between the two of you than there will ever be between myself and you both – you proved that at Bombur’s wedding. And that makes me worry that one day the two of you will… will go somewhere that I can’t follow.”

There was silence in the car: he didn’t have to turn to see Bofur’s movement, catching him turn out of the corner of his eye to look at Thorin, still cramped in the back seat.

“We… well. We didn’t know that you knew about that.”

“How could I miss the two of you hooking up?”

And hadn’t it been the worst of moments? Two years ago now, the moment that Bilbo had finally resigned himself to this life of hopeless, pointless waiting and frustration. He’d been at the wedding with a date, with a man that Bilbo had actually thought he might have a future with. He had been tall and sweet and handsome, had called Bilbo exactly when he said and had given him shoulder rubs after long days at work; he’d even liked Bofur and Thorin, despite how frosty the two of them were towards him. It had been a good wedding too, and so nice to have a date – he’d held Bilbo’s hand throughout the service, had danced with him, had whispered silly things in Bilbo’s ears to make him laugh, and just for a moment, as they had slow danced in the marquee, under a ream of fairy lights, he had thought perhaps – perhaps.

But then he’d seen Bofur and Thorin slip out of the tent together, drinks in hand and laughing, and he had excused himself for a moment to follow them, to see what was so amusing. He hadn’t been able to see them in the foyer by the time he made it across the landscaped lawn to the hotel, nor in the bar: he’d wandered up to the corridor where their three rooms were, side by side, just in case, and had been about to knock on Thorin’s door first when he had heard it – unmistakable sounds.

He had imagined it all before, of course – Bofur’s heady laughter and Thorin’s low groans of pleasure – but, well.

Never in the context of him not being there.

He’d ran back downstairs, and had cried for an hour in his car, feeling wildly desperate and terribly selfish for never having taking this possibility into account. Eventually his date had come out to find him, had sat beside him in the passenger seat, and the entire story had come out, whilst all the while he had stroked Bilbo’s back and hummed appreciatively in the right places, until Bilbo was sniffing and red eyed and sadder than ever, and suddenly very certain that he did not want to see or talk to anyone right now.

His date had understood, perhaps all too well: he had kissed Bilbo’s cheek, and had hugged him, and had left, advising Bilbo meaningfully that the best thing to do in this situation was probably to talk to the two of them about it.

He’d never spoken to him again, and well, neither had he brought it up with Thorin or Bofur before now.

Neither of them had mentioned it the next day; in fact, they never mentioned it at all. It was as if it had never happened, but for the fact that Bilbo felt as if some deep part of himself had been ripped out, had been torn apart.

The next few weeks he had felt on edge constantly, watching the two of them, certain that something was going on between the two of them – perhaps it always had, but Bilbo had been too stuck in own head to ever notice – but nothing seemed to change. Thorin was as crotchety as ever, just as overly concerned and working too hard, and he still sent Bilbo emails every few days with links attached to the reviews of books that his editorial team had worked on. Bofur still hugged Bilbo and span him around every time he saw him, still teased the two of them whenever he liked, and he still sent Bilbo texts every evening, made up entirely of stupid puns. Weeks continued to pass, then months, and he became more and more certain that Thorin and Bofur were not seeing each other in secret.

Which was, well. Fine. Good, he supposed.

But the problem was, once he had known that it could happen he could not forget that one day it might, and it might become more of a permanent fixture in their lives. And if there was anything worse than the knowledge that he would never have the two of them, it was the knowledge that they might have each other, and be perfectly content, without him.

There was still silence in the car, and right now Bilbo couldn’t bring himself to look at either of them, focusing instead on the road in front of him, on the way that the leather stitching of the steering wheel was biting into his hands from how hard he was clutching it.

“I’m sorry if that upset you,” Bofur said in the end, carefully, cautiously, and Bilbo scowled.

“Of course it upset me,” he began, his voice just a touch louder than normal. “Why the hell wouldn’t it? The two of you – and then neither of you even told me about it, you both just acted like it never happened-”

“But Bilbo,” Bofur cut him off before he could launch into another lengthy rant about trust and friendship and a bunch of other stuff only designed to distract his read pain. “Why does it really bother you?”

Bilbo swallowed.

“It doesn’t, it-”

“Obviously it does, or you wouldn’t be this upset,” Bofur reasoned, and for a moment Bilbo caught Thorin’s eyes in the rearview mirror, eyes that we watching this scene unfold with no small amount of concern, eyes that he had loved for years and that suddenly made him feel impossibly irritated.

“Don’t patronise me!” he snapped, scowling. “I’m upset because you didn’t tell me about it, because you hid it, because neither of you thought I was worth informing that the two of you had this… this thing!”

Thorin had a hand on both of their seats now, leaning forward, still glancing between them, his movements becoming a little wild now, uncomfortable in the middle of this sort of argument.

 “Maybe we should stop, calm down-” he said tentatively, but Bofur shook his head.

“I think we’ve spent enough time not talking about it, haven’t we?”

Bilbo spared a glance for him then, and realised that, perhaps for the first time in his life, Bofur was frowning.

“There’s a reason that we didn’t tell you about it Bilbo, a reason we didn’t tell you everything, and it doesn’t have anything to do with us not trusting you-”

“It’s easy to say that now!” Bilbo cut across, his chest starting to hurt from the bottled up urge to scream.

“Listen, maybe we should pull over,” Thorin tried again, his voice a little pleading now, and Bilbo swung the car off the road without warning, into the field that they had been fortunately driving beside. He pulled it to a sudden stop with a noise that was almost a snarl, furiously unclipping his seatbelt.

“Of course, your majesty. Whatever you want,” he retorted.

“Bilbo-” Bofur started, but Bilbo was done with this moment, with the cramped space in the car and the feelings that he had finally begun to lose control over, after so long.

“No, you know what, I’m done,” he told them both. “It’s fine. I don’t need to talk about it anymore. It’s just one way that I don’t fit in with the two of you, isn’t it? You’re both successful, and brilliant, you’re both the best people that I’ve ever known, maybe you two should be together, maybe I’m just in the way…

“No, I’m fine,” he repeated, his voice angry, as Thorin and Bofur both reached over at once, trying to comfort but only succeeding in irritating him further. “Really,” he snapped, as he opened the door to the car and stormed across the field, leaving it gaping open behind him. For a moment he had an intense feeling of deja-vu, from the first day of this stupid road trip, and he kicked at the earth as if it was responsible for the fact that none of this had made him feel any better, before throwing himself to the ground and burying his head in his hands.

He hadn’t meant to yell at them, but he had not been able to stop himself, had not been able to control any of what he had been feeling, and it was with a heavy sense of dread that he realised that, whatever happened next, their friendship would be entirely, irrevocably altered by this argument on a non-descript French country road. No matter what he did or how he tried to fix things, to take back his words – if indeed he even wanted to – things were going to change.

He wasn’t sure if he was glad, or devastated.

Things needed to change, he knew that. Deep down, he rather thought that he had known it for a very long time – he couldn’t keep living his life pretending that things were fine the way that they were. He had stagnated, doing that, and he had felt it, deep down to his bones – that was what this trip was all about, in the end – a last ditch attempt to fix something that he had pretended for so long did not need fixing.

But he couldn’t live, constantly pretending, anymore.

He’d wasted so many years, he realised now, waiting for something without ever saying anything, without ever attempting to realise it, or even see if there was anything else out there that might match up.

He couldn’t do that anymore. One way or another, he needed to know.

“We’ll tell you about it,” said Bofur, who had come up behind him, unheard as Bilbo had lost himself to his own thoughts, to his own certain epiphany. Thorin was there too, still looking uncertain, but he lowered himself into the grass next to Bofur, who had sat in turn next to Bilbo, the three of them in a line in the wild grass just as they had that first day. Their shoes, back then, had seemed incongruous to Bilbo: expensive and designer military boots, unworn, next to faded but still neat brogues, alongside battered old converse, the laces fraying.

He looked at them now, again, with new eyes: the shoes, whilst still all different, were now all caked in mud still from the storm a few nights before, were dusty. One of Thorin’s laces, Bilbo couldn’t help but notice, was even starting to fray itself.

“I don’t really want to know the details-” Bilbo began, but Bofur shook his head.

“Not about that, Bilbo,” he told him, firmly. “We need to talk, about the whole thing.”

“We?” Bilbo asked, uncertain, and from the corner of his eye he saw the other two exchange a glance.

“You, and me, and Thorin. All three of us,” Bofur told him, and was that Bilbo’s imagination, or did his old friend sound just a little unsure himself, a little afraid, though he was trying to hide it beneath an air of calm that didn’t seem to extend to his hands, which were tapping nervously against the ground.

“About what?” Bilbo asked, though he already knew the answer, had known that it was all going to boil down to this, to whatever the hell was going on between the three of them.

“Listen, that night-” Bofur began, and Bilbo let out a low and impatient sigh.

“I just said, I don’t really want to hear anything more about it, alright? You didn’t want to tell me about it at the time-”

“There was a reason for that,” Thorin interrupted, and Bilbo swallowed, retreating just a little into himself again.

“What?”

“I’ve not loved many people in my life, you know,” Thorin said, after a short silence, a strange tangent, but one which seemed to make sense in the strange atmosphere that had settled across the three of them, the rolling clouds in the sky above seeming to move more than they.

“I know, Thorin,” Bilbo told him, shaking his head a little.

“Neither have I, not really. More than this constipated idiot, probably, but still. Not in the grand scheme of things. Bombur thinks I’m pretty strange, like that. Apparently by the time he’d met Marie he’d thought he was in love eight, nine, ten times. Something like that.” Bofur’s voice was light, but still a little uncertain.

“What are you trying to say?” Bilbo asked, frowning a little.

“The reason that that night happened-”

“You brought a date to the wedding.” Thorin cut across Bofur quickly, and to Bilbo’s surprise he realised that Thorin sounded afraid, too.

“I’ve had dates before that,” he replied, still frowning. “And what the hell has that got to do with anything?”

“You looked- you looked so happy.” Thorin’s voice was quiet, unhappy.

“The two of you slept together because I looked happy.” Bilbo was confused, despite himself, and more than a little irritated that it seemed as if the blame for this moment between the two of them was being pointed at him, when he had been the one hurt by it, when he had been the one excluded from a new level of bond within their little group.

“With… with someone else,” Bofur whispered, and Bilbo shook his head.

“I don’t understand.”

Once again, Bofur and Thorin looked between each other, both seeming uncertain of how to proceed, of what to say next, but in the end it was Bofur who carried on – always Bofur, always the one of them willing to take the first step, the one ready to plunge into the unknown, the bravest of them, in his own way.

“We’d talked about it before. It- it was my fault, really. We’d been out drinking and you’d gone home already – it was the day before that big press release for that novel, the one with the roses on the front cover, the one you were really proud of.”

“Wake Me Up,” Thorin added, and Bofur nodded, gratefully.

“That’s right, that’s it. I got too drunk and too stupid and told Thorin, came out with it, and he didn’t speak for the longest of time before he just started laughing, and shaking, and everyone in there was staring at us like we were fucking idiots, we had to get out. It was that place down by the river – you remember, it was the only place that sold that gin that was all Thorin would drink for months, and you could hear the water from inside, and it had those flower boxes that you loved?”

Bilbo nodded, despite himself. He remembered it well.

“And we were half running down the riverbank, still laughing, the sky was black and orange from the streetlights and it was bitterly cold, the streets were covered in frost, and Thorin kept nearly slipping over in his stupid work shoes, and then I kissed him, and he kissed me, and we stopped laughing all of a sudden, and made a decision.”

“Oh?” Bilbo asked, having to half choke out the sound around the lump that had formed in his throat at the picture that Bofur had created in his mind.

“That we would wait.” And Bofur was whispering again, his eyes fixed on Bilbo, his hand having found Thorin’s across the grass, some question that Bilbo still did not know how to interpret burning in his gaze.

“For what?” Bilbo asked, something strange settling in his chest that he could not find the words for you.

“For you,” Thorin replied, and for the longest time they sat there in silence, Bofur and Thorin holding hands, watching him, Bilbo quite sure that it couldn’t mean what it sounded like, that after all these years of waiting for an impossibility, it might have finally come to pass.

“I- I don’t understand,” Bilbo tripped over the words despite himself, glancing between the two of them, trying to find an answer in their eyes, knowing that one was there, but not knowing how to read it.

“I love him,” Bofur said, quietly, nodding at Thorin. “He’s grumpy and he spends too much time at work and he’s annoying as hell when he’s worried about us, which is all the time, but I love him all the same. And I love you, too. I have – always have – for about as long as I can remember now. And Thorin -  he loves me, though god only knows why some days, and he loves you, too.”

“What-” Bilbo started, but he didn’t have the words to finish.

“And we both knew, that night on the riverbank, that no matter what we might have between us, it would never be right, not without you as well.” Bofur smiled at him then, and Bilbo’s hand pressed at his chest, feeling the rush of his heartbeat beneath skin and bone, blinking a little helplessly.

“Without me?” he repeated, a partial request for confirmation, but also just trying to make sense of what he had heard.

“Three points of a triangle,” Thorin added, quietly. “The shape doesn’t work much if its missing one of the parts.”

“That- that doesn’t even really make sense.”

Bofur quirked a small smile.

 “It’s always been the three of us, always. And we knew, even then, that it was going to have to be that, or nothing. We’d both come to that conclusion alone, at different times. So we agreed to wait – until you gave us a sign, until you were ready, if ever you would be. We didn’t know, but, well-”

“We hoped,” Thorin finished, and Bofur nodded.

“Yeah. We hoped.”

A moment of silence, a swallow flying overhead, and Bilbo finally found his words again.

“Do you- you never said anything!”

“How do you bring something like that up?” Bofur said, his voice half laughing, but not because he found the situation all that funny. “Hey, Bilbo, dunno how you might feel about polyamory, but both your best friends are actually completely in love with you and totally up for trying to make something work, hope that doesn’t make you too weird if it turns out that you’re not down with multiple partners, or don’t fancy either of us? Can see that going down very well, can’t you?”

“I-”

“That night, we saw you with that guy, saw the two of you dancing and laughing, and we thought that maybe we’d missed our chance, that we’d left it too late,” Thorin said, his gaze turning to the horizon, a frown knitting his brow. “That’s why we went off. I think we thought that if we could make it work, just the two of us, then maybe it would be alright in the end, if you got married or went off with someone else. At least we’d still have each other.”

Bofur smiled, ruefully.

“And then of course the next morning Bifur told us you’d spent an hour crying in your car after breaking up with your boyfriend-”

“I was crying over you two!” Bilbo cut across, his voice louder than he had meant it to be. “Not over him! That was why he left, in the end – I ended up telling him everything, and well, I couldn’t really expect him to stick around after that.”

“Everything?” Thorin asked, and his gaze turned back to Bilbo, who couldn’t help but notice the way that Thorin’s hand seemed to tighten around Bofur’s.

“Everything,” Bilbo repeated. “All of it, the whole messy lot of it. That by the time I went home for Christmas after my first semester at University, I was in love with two idiots, and that it hadn’t ever gone away. That I couldn’t ever really imagine myself being with anyone other than the both of them. That it was hopeless and pointless and that I knew it would never happen, but that I couldn’t let go of it, even if it meant I spent the rest of my life alone, and-”

“Bilbo,” Bofur stopped him, reaching out, as Bilbo’s voice cracked, his arm finding Bilbo’s shoulders and trying to pull him closer, but they were sat too far away, and Bilbo half scrambled over the grass towards them, falling over Bofur’s legs so that he could reach them both, one arm wrapping around Bofur’s neck, the other around Thorin’s, and the two of them leant in, with a unison that spoke of decades of knowing each other as well as themselves, pressing as close as they could in the awkward embrace.

“Bilbo,” Thorin breathed, his face buried in Bilbo’s hair.

“I’m so sorry,” Bilbo choked out, not sure whether he was going to laugh or cry or maybe even start with both. “I’m so sorry I made you wait, I didn’t know-”

“Shut up,” Thorin said, his voice was warm.

“You’re always punctual, it was about time you were the last one to arrive to a party,” Bofur half-laughed, at exactly the same time.

They sat like that for a very long time, until their limbs started to ache from the odd angle and Bilbo pulled his arms back, looking between the two of them, feeling the cool earth beneath his knees and realising, with a sudden clarity, that he was exactly where he needed to be. They did not speak as they pulled themselves up, standing, the light having dimmed with surprising speed, and if Thorin wiped a dampness from his eyes (always the first to cry, and the last to admit it) then neither of the others remarked on it.

“What do we do now?” Bilbo asked, quite quietly, the calm in his chest a surprising wave, one which he was sure, in the fullness of the tides of time, would turn into something quite comforting.

“Whatever we want,” Bofur told him, as the breeze played with his hair, pushing the strands of it across a face creased in lines that Bilbo had watched grow, ones which he knew as well as those on his own palm.

“Keep going, I suppose,” Thorin added, nodding back in the direction of the car, and for the first time in a very long while Bilbo saw that he looked, if not as young as he had been when first they had all met, at least as free and easy as he had been then.

The two of him stared at him in surprise, this having been quite the last thing that they would have expected him to say, and it jolted them from the moment, making everything feel quite strangely and not unpleasantly normal once again.

“I’ve warmed to the idea,” Thorin continued, the corner of his mouth twitching upwards in the face of their disbelief. “Your car isn’t quite as terrible as I thought it would be.”

“Can you actually take a year off work?” Bilbo asked, worrying at his lower lip with his teeth.

“Probably not,” Thorin admitted, and Bilbo felt no real disappointment at that, knew, deep down, that there was a real world out there that one day they would have to re-join, no matter how much they might have wished it to be otherwise. “But… a few months, I don’t think there would be anything wrong with that.”

“You do have a lot of accumulated holiday pay, after all,” Bofur added, nudging him, and Bilbo smiled, a real smile, despite himself.

“I meant, about, well,” Bilbo said, for he knew that he needed to say it now, before this passed, before he had a reason to retreat or lose faith. “This. Us.”

“We don’t need to do anything,” Bofur told him, his voice gentle. “And we can do everything. That’s the way that it works, isn’t it?”

“You’re sounding worryingly philosophical,” Bilbo told him, smiling again now.

“Well, they do say that being happy can bring out all your most obnoxious traits,” Bofur replied, and though there was laughter in his tone there was an undercurrent of seriousness to it, as well.

“I guess we’ll put up the tent,” Thorin said, when Bilbo just shook his head. “And then in the morning we’ll drive some more, and find something to eat. Then the next day, we’ll do the same. And we can keep on doing that, for as long as it takes until we’ve figured it out. Or until your car breaks down.”

Thorin glanced over their shoulders, where said car waited on the roadside, her doors still open to the evening breeze. “I’m not convinced that that isn’t going to happen first, actually.”

“She’s a darling, my car,” Bilbo retorted. “You leave her alone.”

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Bofur told him, quiet again. “If you’re feeling pressured, or this isn’t exactly what you want-”

“No,” Bilbo stopped him, before any doubts could be laid, before anything might be said that could let them believe that his feelings, those heady, irrevocable feelings were not the entirety of his heart.

“This – this is it, for me. This has always been it.”

Bofur and Thorin were still holding hands, Bilbo realised, quite suddenly, as Thorin reached out to take Bilbo’s, too, so that the three of them were in a line, all connected, both physically and by something so much more than that.

“Now come on,” Thorin said, pulling them both back across the field. “The ground’s fucking cold, and I have a double comfort sleeping bag to crawl into.”

The rest of their journey; well what is there to tell?