Chapter Text
Bilbo Baggins, burglar extraordinaire (if Gandalf was to be listened to), trotted along at the heels of Thorin & Co. as they swaggered off to pick up chicks.
He was rather regretting going with them. He had his own shit to do, damn it, that could be comfortably done at home, sitting in a chair with his laptop by the fire, instead of following this group of total thots around town cruising for women. He didn’t even like women.
But Gandalf was Gandalf, and there was no saying no to him. Besides, he consoled himself, it wasn’t so bad, anyways. At least he got to stare at Thorin’s perfect ass under those black leather bike pants.
They coagulated at a table in a seedy bar. Fili and Kili, the bastards, ordered several shots for Bilbo that had him coughing like his life depended on it.
Over at the bar, Thorin, Bifur, and Bofur were flirting with three rather large ladies that also seemed to be rather interested in them. Bilbo just kept knocking back shots, hoping it would somehow get better. The three bikers left with the three ladies. The three biker dudes came back.
“How’d it go?” Kili called to Thorin.
Thorin made a disgusted noise. “Trolls. All of them.”
Bilbo winced in sympathy, despite himself.
Totally wasted, it was all he could do to avoid tripping and falling flat on his face as Thorin deposited him in the sidecar of Bofur’s quote “sick ride” end quote. The Company drove around town aimlessly for a while, leering at female passerby, until they eventually ended up at a place called Imladris.
Now, Imladris was a nice bar, full of well-dressed, well-mannered people. Thorin & Co. were the last people Bilbo thought he’d ever see in such an establishment. It showed, too- all of them highly at odds with the environment. Thorin was hostile, Fili and Kili wouldn’t stop wisecracking, Bombur was a glutton, Dwalin accidentally hit on a guy, and Balin (plenty of “he be ballin’” jokes there) did his best to keep them all under control.
If anyone bothered to ask Bilbo’s opinion, he’d say the man did an excellent job. But of course nobody really cared, except maybe Bofur, so he wasn’t asked about anything. Bilbo contented himself with stammering awkwardly at the fashionable people who approached him as he sat, in all his short glory, at the bar, legs swinging off the stool in a rather embarrassing fashion.
After a while, the owner of the establishment appeared, wearing a rather nice set of formal robes with a nametag that read HELLO MY NAME IS ELROND that Bilbo was pretty sure had gone out of style a few centuries ago, but also carrying a Samsung Galaxy 6s in his hand, so maybe the dude wasn’t completely behind the times. He exchanged a few terse words with Thorin and handed him something. Well, Thorin was terse. Elrond was perfectly chill about the whole thing.
Having picked up his mystery package from the (land)lord of Imladris, Thorin gathered his company plus one and loaded them all onto their bikes.
“To the mountain pass,” he shouted.
Bilbo, in Bofur’s sidecar, started. “Wait, I never agreed to going on a road trip with you guys!”
“Too late, laddie,” said Bofur, in his charmingly thick Irish accent with a twinkle in his eye. “You’re part of the Company now.”
“I barely even know you guys,” Bilbo protested. Nobody listened.
After about thirty minutes, he became aware of an issue. “Where’s Gandalf?”
“Oh, he’s staying in Imladris for a bit,” said Bofur. “He’s got to catch up with Elrond.”
“Well, fuck,” said Bilbo.
The Company continued on into the mountains. By nightfall, they’d reached about the middle of the pass, and everybody was too tired to keep going, so they broke out their sleeping bags and parked their bikes out by a nice little cave on the side of the road.
Bilbo sat awake until he was pretty sure it was midnight. Then, as quietly as he could (which was pretty damn quiet), he snuck out to the front of the cave, where lo and behold! Bofur was keeping watch. Just his luck.
“Dude, listen,” he said. “I just want to go home. I don’t belong here, on a road trip, with a bunch of people I don’t even know. I’m not even straight. I don’t even like women.”
Bofur sighed, but nodded. “Alright, then, laddie. If that’s what you really want.”
“Thank you,” said Bilbo, and then the ground opened up and swallowed them whole, as a flash of bright light seared his retinas better than the steak he’d eaten three days ago.
As it turned out, this was all a trap set by a rival biker gang. Bilbo, being small and quiet and relatively inconspicuous and also not one of the Company, was passed over, as Thorin and the others were shuffled towards a central podium, where an enormously fat biker dude lounged on an armchair and ate chips.
“Azog will pay me handsomely for your head,” giggled the fat dude.
Wait. What? That couldn’t be right. Was the fat dude actually going to kill him?
That was no good at all. Bilbo had to do something; he couldn’t just stand by and watch a guy get decapitated.
“I mean, I don’t really know or like the guy, but he has a great ass,” he reasoned with himself. “Nobody with an ass that great should be allowed to die.”
Also who the hell was Azog?
Unfortunately, he was not given any more time to think on it, because somebody had spotted him and was coming towards him with a machete. Bilbo didn’t really know much in the way of biker gang etiquette, but he knew that man approaching with sharp object equals bad, so he churned his stumpy little legs as fast as they would go. The man caught up to him anyways. Bilbo, fully expecting to at least be horribly maimed and not be able to live without the aid of medical magic for the rest of his life, brought his knee up in a last, desperate attempt to defend himself, and actually managed to get the guy square in the balls.
The biker dude squealed in pain. They tussled, Bilbo bit something, and then they fell over the walkway railing, down into the black below.
He came to in a very dark part of the compound. The guy he’d kneed in the balls was dead.
He could go to jail for this.
“It was self-defense,” he muttered. “Besides, you’ve got bigger things to worry about, like where you are, and how to stay alive and hopefully rejoin the Company.”
He felt along the floor, trying to ascertain a direction in which to travel. Suddenly, his hand brushed against something smooth and warm. He picked it up and pressed the button.
“An iPhone 7,” he breathed. “What’s this doing down here?”
It was a glorious machine, equipped with a state-of-the-art display and an unlimited data plan that somebody else was paying for. It already had several games on it: the standard Flappy Bird, Candy Crush, Bubble Witch Saga, etc.
“Well, this belongs to me now,” said Bilbo, and put it in his pocket.
Then he took it back out again, because the flashlight feature was very useful in determining a good direction to go.
After a lot of walking, he came across a really pale, weird-looking dude who went off on a monologue about how much he’d like to eat Bilbo. Judging by the sharp points his teeth had been filed into, and the blood on his mouth, Bilbo didn’t think he was kidding.
“Is there any way I can convince you to show me out?” he tried.
The pale dude considered. “It must play a game of riddles with us, precious! If it loses, we eats it! If it wins, we shows it the way out! Yes, precious!”
“Have you considered talking to a therapist?” Bilbo asked him.
It glared.
“Just curious,” he said, throwing his hands up. “Okay. Riddles, yes? Let’s do this.” This is some serious bullshit, he thought privately.
He was able to guess all of the ones the pale dude gave him, which was at once a great relief and hardly surprising at all. Bilbo was a fucking author, for fuck’s sake. Of course he knew riddles.
The pale dude had a harder time guessing, but he still managed to guess all of them, right down to the very last one.
Which, technically, it wasn’t a riddle, but the pale dude seemed to think it was, and Bilbo didn’t really care to correct him.
Mostly, it was a complete accident. He’d put the iPhone away once he reached the glow of the pale dude’s computer setup, on which a freshly typed comment under the username GOLLUM read: FUCK U BICH UR A BIG FAT RETARD. Then, as he had a habit of doing, he put his hands in his pockets, having forgot about the phone, and went, “What the hell is in my pocket?”
Gollum, of course, could not guess, and was very upset when he lost. Still, he seemed to honor his promise, saying they’d leave as soon as he got something out of his desk.
Which he couldn’t seem to find.
“Curses and trickses!” he bawled. “The Precious is lost!”
“What is it? What have you lost?” Bilbo asked him impatiently.
A gleam of suspicion entered Gollum’s eye. “What has it got in its pocketses?” he muttered to himself, and Bilbo knew it was time to run.
He ran down the first passageway he saw, and then took a couple of lefts and a right, thoroughly surprised when he saw the light of day and an exit right in front of him. However, it was guarded by a couple of the weird rival biker dudes from before!
“Shit,” said Bilbo.
As Gollum approached, he whipped out his new phone. “Want to take a selfie?” he asked lamely.
He was not prepared for Gollum’s eyes to suddenly light up. “Yes, precious,” said the loathsome creature. So he powered it up, opened the Camera app, and took a burst of selfies with the guy who’d been threatening to literally eat him for dinner. It was quite touching. He ought to write a book on it: The Unifying Power of Selfies. They shook hands and parted amicably.
Then Bilbo remembered he was walking into a pair of people he didn’t want to be walking into.
“Uhh, want to take a selfie?” he asked, in response to the twin pair of hostile looks.
And just as before, the biker dudes readily agreed, gathering around his phone to snap a couple shots. They shook hands and exchanged phone numbers, promising to chat each other up, and quite forgot they were supposed to be fighting in the first place.
Bilbo toddled along the mountain slopes until he found himself face-to-face with Dwalin.
“Uh, hello,” he said.
“BILBO!” cried Dwalin, and enveloped him in the manliest of hugs. He was passed around to everyone else until absolutely every single member of the Company had embraced him, some of them twice.
He was spat out in front of the one person he absolutely wanted to see at the moment.
“Gandalf!” he cried.
“Wassup my nigga,” said Gandalf, giving him a manly nod and arm-shake.
Bilbo stared. “You’re- you’re not allowed to say that, Gandalf.”
“Yo, why not, fam?”
“You are the whitest person I have ever met, or ever even seen,” said Bilbo. “Not to mention, you’re like, seventy.”
“Dude, that’s racist, yo,” said Gandalf. “Can’t a brotha live his life in peace?”
“Stop,” said Bilbo. “Please. For the love of all that is good and holy, STOP.”
………………
“Wait. He did not actually say that,” Elrond demanded. “Did he really?”
“Oh, yes,” Bilbo nodded, and shuddered. “Yes, indeed.”
………………
After everyone was suitably convinced that yes, Bilbo was fine, and no, he wasn’t angry with them, Thorin ordered the Company on the march, Bilbo still reeling over the sudden amount of rapport he’d unexpectedly gained with these biker dudes and the fact that Thorin was actually glad to see him.
“So, who were those guys, anyways?” he asked Thorin.
“Goblins,” said Thorin. “They’re an offshoot of the Orcs, which are a bunch of racist assholes that ride around shooting people on motorcycles.”
“Oh,” said Bilbo, wondering how it affected this rather non-diverse collection of white guys.
“Their leader is even called the Pale Orc,” Thorin grumbled. “See what I mean?”
Bilbo nodded. That was definitely a clear picture.
“My dad was a politician,” said Thorin. “One day, the Pale Orc gets it into his head that my dad, who advocated civil rights, needed to go. So, he does a drive-by, and the next thing I know, my dad’s dead, and there’s this slimy defense lawyer named Smaug living in his mansion. Incidentally, he’s the same defense lawyer who kept the Pale Orc out of jail. So, I formed the Company to fight these assholes, and go get my house back.”
“What a bunch of motherfuckers,” said Bilbo.
“I know, right?” Thorin grumbled. “Glad you’re with us, Bilbo. It’s nice to know other people care, too.”
Actually, Bilbo had no idea that the Company was anything other than an ordinary obnoxious biker gang that disturbed the peace in his quaint little respectable neighborhood as they pleased. But after hearing Thorin’s rather Batman-esque origin story, he decided that his sympathies definitely lay with this gang of intrepid explorers.
“Speaking of,” said Thorin, “how the ever-loving fuck nuggets did you get out of the Goblin lair alive?”
“I found an iPhone on the floor and took a bunch of selfies,” said Bilbo. “It’s… it’s a really strange story.”
Thorin gave him a weird look, then shrugged, face taking on a ‘not bad’ expression. “Whatever works for you, my dude.”
“Also, a guy died,” said Bilbo. “Are we going to jail?”
“Um, probably not,” said Thorin. “I doubt an obscure gang of bikers that nearly have themselves on a terrorist watch will be reporting a murder anytime soon.”
Bilbo nodded sagely. “Sound theory. I’m hungry.”
“I’ve got just the place,” said Thorin.
They landed on the outskirts of a massive ranch house, smack dab in the middle of nowhere. It was owned by a bear.
He had the bushiest of chest hair, and beard to rival Thorin’s. He wore a black leather BDSM ensemble with a rainbow unicorn horn taped to his forehead.
Taped.
They ate, and slept, and Bilbo stayed up too goddamn late playing flappy bird. Whoever’d owned the iPhone previously had a high score he just couldn’t beat.
Motherfucker, was his last thought as he faded into sleep.