Title: Explorations
Fandom: The Hobbit
Challenge: Hungry
Bingo Prompt: Explorations
Rating: G
Length: 1140
Content notes: Not a crossover.
Author notes: Thanks go to Zana, Morgynleri & Athena for encouragement & sanity-checking.
Part of the Iron and Light series. Happens not long after 'Light in Darkness'.
The poem is from the Star Trek novel "Dreadnought!" by Diane Carey, (see this wiki page) but I am using it as an idea separate from that universe.

"This is the sixth element,
time crossing time
until all stands still
and we may think.
Study, but touch.
Learn, and later know.
Tame the craggy agonies of toil's time.
Memory and memoring comes late,
comes shattery, scattery.
When all is done, it is not
to die--
It is to die well."

Summary: Thorin reads a poem with new perspective.



Someone had left a book on the reading table in the alcove that had become somehow Thorin's without anyone (Balin, Ori, Nurath, Taelin, not even Eitri the tiny Silverlock child) ever saying anything. It was a slim volume, neatly but simply made, the hand it was written in un-elaborate. Some few of the margins bore constellations, the stars picked out in metaled inks, but it was not a book of astronomy or physic, navigation or portent. In fact it was a thing difficult to categorize, containing as it did poetry, tales, riddles, recipes, formal essays and seemingly random musings all together. Even the author was ambiguous: Liras -- or was it Lyras? -- Dwarf or Elf? Man? One of the lost Istari? Not that the authorship truly mattered, though there had been notable arguments over it in Thorin's youth, and apparently long before.

'Explorations' by Lyras. (Copies in Westron — of which this was one — used the 'y', as did those in Sindarin, and were usually scripted in Tengwar. Khuzdul and Adûnaic, scripted in Cirth, used the i. No one apparently knew or had recorded what the original had been written or scripted in.) But that hardly mattered either. There would be no sudden test on the subject, no pointed glare and barked question from Master Kinrakh to make Thorin want to flinch or freeze, whether he knew the answer or not. It was not a book Thorin had thought about in years. He was surprised he remembered the details at all.

Unsurprisingly, the book fell open to a well-remembered poem when Thorin picked it up. One line in particular caught his eye.

Study, but touch.

He groped for the chair and sank into it, breath caught, seeing not the page, but Bofur, Making love with Dwalin. Bofur was entirely comfortable with touching, learning people with his hands, his body. Thorin was not. Had never been. But since he had awoken from the Sleep Under Stone it was as if layers of (iron, armor, mineral, dragon…) scale had peeled away, scoured off, leaving tender skin that found every sensation new, whetted nerves that jumped, sparked, hungered, burned. It seemed he had felt more in the last months then he had in all the years in Ered Luin and before. Not necessarily a bad thing, though there were obvious drawbacks.

Thorin had been studying his entire life. In many subjects -- smith-craft, weapons-craft, leadership, kingship, more simple things like writing or mending -- he had considerable practical skill as well as understanding, even mastery. But not in this. Not in the arts of intimacy.

Gently (Taelin would tilt an eyebrow at him, Thorin was sure), he traced the letters of the poem, the ink a barely perceptible thickness on the nap of the vellum. Time, think, touch, know.… Shaping the letters more slowly as he reached the later, more difficult lines. shattery, scattery, done, die.

It is to die well.

He had, to all intents, died on the ice of Ravenhill. Had it been well? He had at the least taken Azog down fully and finally, as he should have more than a century earlier. (That was still a bitter thought. Thorin pushed it away as more than useless, positively unhelpful. He was not going to dwell on past that could not be changed. Neither distant nor recent.) Waking again he could not but believe was well, very well, however strange or difficult. But that was the usual reading of the piece: honor, life, battle, death; expounded upon endlessly in lecture and discussion. Reading it with Bofur in mind, hearing the words in Bofur's voice, revealed a different interpretation: intimate, earthy, erotic, and immediate. Different indeed, but not wrong.

The memory of warmth curled low in Thorin's belly; not desire, but an echo of it. Possibly a precursor. Thorin shivered, aware of the weight of wool and linen, leather and metal against his skin. He wanted. He wanted to want. He wanted to know, to understand, to feel, touching and being touched.

(He wanted Dwalin too, in ways he knew no more how to articulate then he had that long ago evening in that Mannish inn. But he did not know enough yet, in this, of himself, of what Dwalin might want, of what was even possible for the two of them let alone amongst the three of them. Nor did he wish to hinder what was between Dwalin & Bofur alone. They had all been hurt — he would not add to that.)

Did Bofur know this poem? It hardly mattered. Bofur already understood intimacy, knew the Making of love, was skilled in the craft of sex. What he did not have -- and this Thorin did well grasp -- was the kind of trust in Thorin that he did in Dwalin. Not without reason. Affection, desire (now that Thorin knew to look, it was plain to see), clear-eyed loyalty (a quality rarer than mithril, and far more valuable — in that he had not been wrong, speaking with Balin in Bilbo Baggins’ comfortable underground home), and a still-surprising ability to see Thorin himself, not just the persona, the king, were there in measure. Kindness, and caring.

His mind seemed to be skittering on the surface of the ideas, for all their unexpected newness. As if avoiding his own thoughts and reactions. Was not poetry about that, though? What was he avoiding, not letting himself see?

With Bofur, exploration, (study, understanding, self-knowledge, (letting his naked self be seen by other eyes, touched by any hands at all…)) might be possible, did he ask, did he not flinch from opportunity. (Did he manage not to panic, to not ruin everything…)

He spread his hands flat on pages, as if his fingers could take up the words, learn what he needed, wanted, desired to know, by contact, contagion, bypassing too-busy brain and far too well practiced defenses, — an breathed. Just, breathed. Dust and paper, ink and stone and leather. Linseed-oil and hide-glue, cared-for books and clean air. There was a fluttering tightness low in his belly that refused categorization, and an … awareness … of his yet quiescent parts. He realized with a kind of wonder that he trusted Bofur in this as he did Dwalin. Certainly in heart and his mind. As for his re-Awakened body, unfamiliar even to himself - well, that was part of the point of this exploration, was it not?

But he did not know how far Bofur trusted him. Trust was an entirely different thing than loyalty. He did not know if Bofur knew that Thorin trusted him (it seemed unlikely, since Thorin had not known consciously himself until now, though his actions had reflected it. He hoped. Had to trust himself in that.

Ask, show, trust, hope. Because for any of this to work, privately, publicly, Kingship or partnership, knowledge and trust were the foundation stones and the keystones.