emsiecat
answered your question
“Frick now I really want to do Hobbit ficlet prompts Specifically…”
Thorin trying to adjust to an easy life in the Shire with Bilbo? Like there’s no Quest, no leadership needed, no scrabbling around to make ends meet; how does he deal with this? Does he get ‘cabin-fever’? Is he just super chill? :3
Long story short? He fixes things 😉
–
“You don’t have hot water.”
Bilbo looked up from his book, “I beg your pardon?”
“Water pumps into the kitchen and bathroom from the well,” Thorin said patiently, as if speaking to a small child. “But it is cold. There is no boiler to heat it. I noticed it when last I was here, before the Quest. You have no hot water.”
“Well, no,” Bilbo said, puzzled. “I just boil it for washing up like everyone else, and extra on Saturday for bath day. I’m not a savage after all. You say that as if it’s odd.”
“Then I will build you one,” Thorin said with all the solemnity of a royal edict, and wandered away.
–
It was the last Bilbo saw of Thorin for some weeks, though he did hear the almighty banging in the in the basement and at one point caught a glimpse of Thorin hauling something that looked like an oversized tub, if tubs had a lid, up from the forge he had set up when he had first come to live with Bilbo at Bag End. Bilbo left Thorin meals in the kitchen, but barely saw him eat them. Rather like a cat, really.
And like a cat, Thorin appeared near the end of the month from the basement as proud as the champion mouser depositing his latest catch on the doorstep.
“You have hot water now,” Thorin pronounced. And lo and behold there was now a second spigot in the bathroom and kitchen. How on earth it had gotten there without Bilbo noticing was a mystery, no less than the wonder of turning it on and nearly being scalded to death by boiling hot water.
“Why… thank you, I suppose, Thorin. This will be quite useful,” Bilbo said, stuttering a bit in his bafflement.
Thorin simply nodded, apparently pleased with himself.
–
It was not the first project Thorin embarked upon, and nowhere near the last. It was the most useful, Bilbo would admit with some exasperation. The forge he had understood because Thorin was a dwarf, the hot water was a staple in Erebor that Thorin no doubt felt deprived not to have in such sleepy village as Hobbiton. But the automatic lock on the door had now trapped him on his own front stoop several times (”You only need to bring your key with you,” Thorin explained patiently. “The house is safer this way.”). Next had been the fanciful engravings that had appeared on every spoon in the house. (”Only the tin ones,” Thorin said. “I left the silver alone as I know you treasure it.” “There’s hardly any of those though!” Bilbo had exclaimed, to which Thorin had admitted “Yes, I suspect your neighbor made off with most of them long ago, I meant to tell you when I first arrived…”) but the mechanical watering device for his garden was the last straw.
“I don’t need a dratted machine to water my garden, Thorin, I like watering my garden!” Bilbo exploded, throwing his hands up in the air.
“You spend hours at it every day,” Thorin pointed out. “It’s a waste of your time.”
“It’s not a waste of my time, it’s a hobby,” Bilbo said. “I like wasting time at it!”
“A what?” Thorin said blankly.
Bilbo’s jaw dropped, as slowly it began to dawn on him what should have been obvious from the start. “You mean, all this tinkering isn’t…? You’ve never…oh dear…”
Thorin held his gaze, expression blank for a long, long while… until finally he broke with an exasperated sigh.
“Yes, Bilbo, I know what a hobby is, what do you think I’ve been doing these past months?” He stood, dusting the dirt off his knees from where he had been crouching with the plans for that infernal device over Bilbo’s prized tomatoes. Then a small, sly grin quirked the corner of his mouth. “But I did have you going there for a moment though, didn’t I?”