#jhasgd

♗: Your muse falling asleep with their head in my muse’s lap.

It’s three in the afternoon. Bilbo should, by all rights, be preparing himself for afternoon tea rush. By five, he would have been fending off a headache as his poor brain trudged through all the gossip that would take over the bakery, and likely biting his tongue to keep from saying something truly horrid to Lobelia. As it is, he doesn’t think anyone but her will terribly mind that he closed shop early today.

And, perhaps more importantly, Bilbo could care less whether they do or don’t.

Theo had showed up around lunch time today and, instead of taking his usual seat by the window, had taken one look at Bilbo and told him in no uncertain terms that he was to close up shop and have lunch with him on the hill. 

Now, Shire is surrounded by many hills. But there is one in particular that has always been Bilbo’s favorite, and that Theo seems to have quickly become rather fond of himself. A few minutes’ walk off the edge of town, on one of the larger hills that look down on the pastures and the fields, stands a very old oak tree.

And this is where they find themselves now. Sitting in the shade of this sturdy oak, their food long gone, and a couple glasses of wine that Bilbo had seen fit to drink for no other reason than because he could. He’d brought a thermos with tea for Theo, and a bottle of water that now rests by the man’s hip where he lies comfortably on the grass.

The wine has left Bilbo leaning sleepily against his oak tree, loose-tongued and soft-limbed as he tells Theo of all the games he used to play on this hill—the many adventures he’d orchestrated from his wooden fortress, and in the little forest just on the other side of the river. 

Somewhere along the line, when he’d seen Theo crane his neck uncomfortably to look at him from where he’d been lying down, Bilbo had scoffed and all but ordered him to move closer—too tipsy to bother with overthinking—, until the man’s head rested on his lap.

Now, as he recounts the tale of Lobelia’s missing ribbons, and how they’d mysteriously ended up on the tallest tree in the woods, he looks down to find Theo fast asleep. He looks younger like this, the frown lines that so easily mark his brow all but gone. The wine has mostly lost its claim on his actions by now, but Bilbo is more than happy to keep blaming it for succumbing to the urge to brush an errant strand of hair from Theo’s forehead.