Masterfully Miscommunicated (I)

Bilbo didn't think his satisfaction at running those big lumps out of his kitchen like terrified fauntlings would dwindle any time soon. Even after Fili and Kili helped move the food that had finished cooking and settled on their own seats, he was still very smug inside, even if he didn't show it. So one might imagine his surprise when that self-satisfaction totally popped like a balloon no more than fifteen minutes after he laid down the law. And, as was the case with so very many things, it was all Dwalin's fault.

"Excuse me, Master Dwalin, what?" Bilbo sputtered, freezing in mid-motion from where he was reaching forward to place a tray of smoked beef on the table in the main dining room. "What did you say had become of Gandalf?"

In any other situation it would have been amusing to see the large dwarf sitting so stiffly. "He's been in the room across the hall since he got tired of being harassed by this dam-" Bilbo almost pulled the tray away, and Dwalin cut himself off with a glowering grimace. "Harassed by your home." The dwarf gave the meat a hungry look but thought better than to reach for it. Bilbo could just decide to really reconsider and take it away.

Bilbo focused outward, knowing his eyes would go unfocused, but he didn't care what he looked like now. Images and impressions flittered across his awareness and when he finally had an idea of what he'd missed, he groaned and finally set the tray on the table, ignoring how his guests descended on it like starving beasts. "Oh Eru!" He frowned at the bald dwarf, noticing from the corner of his eye that Balin seemed very curious about the exchange. And not just him. "And you didn't feel it relevant enough to mention?" The hobbit hissed.

Dwalin peered at him suspiciously, looking around nervously while still chewing on a half-swallowed strip of meat. "Wasn't that what you wanted?" He asked, lowly. Lowly for a dwarf anyway. "I thought you controlled everything this house does!" He hissed back.

"I do! But I don't always pay attention! Bag End has its own mind!" The hobbit groaned again, rubbing at his temples. "Here I've been thinking I was a decent host, but now it seems I'm terrible!'

"No don't say that mister Boggi-" The blazing wood in the fireplace crackled like a collapsing tree house and Bilbo's glare settled firmly on the youngest prince's face. "Baggins!" Kili hastily corrected. "You're a wonderful host! Great!"

"Perfect!" Fili hurried to add when his brother elbowed him in the side.

"Marvelous!" Bofur hastened to add.

"Splendid!"

"Attentive!"

"Mighty thoughtful!"

Bilbo rolled his eyes at the increasingly ridiculous and not-at-all heartfelt praises and walked out of the room, knowing Bombur would see to the rest until he had to go check on the roast and pies.

Now that he'd shoved the distraction provided by the dwarves aside, he could sense that Bag End wasn't only gushing over the new creatures anymore. There was something else, which Bilbo would have normally noticed if there weren't 12 dwarves taking up his attention. Something like wariness and, for the first time ever, defiant protectiveness.

That was new, and it made Bilbo frown. Bag End had never reacted defensively before, on his behalf or its own, because there had never been anyone it felt could pose a threat. Had Gandalf unnerved it somehow?

Bilbo went through what he knew of Maia and tried to hypothesize what would happen if one of them and Bag End clashed in a confrontation of will and being.

When he reached the obvious conclusion, he winced.

But Bag End had not felt threatened by Gandalf the previous day, when the rune episode happened. Which meant that something had to have happened over the past two hours for the new wariness to make sense.

Bilbo found Gandalf in the sitting room closest to the entrance hallway. The Wizard was on an armchair, nibbling on his pipe which, Bilbo noticed, was not lit, nor had any pipeweed in it. His eyes were closed, but the hobbit doubted his arrival had gone unnoticed. With a thought, the air outside the room stilled. No sounds would escape that room until he willed otherwise. "Gandalf."

The wizard had not taken his hat off, and the outside light had gone dim, making everything seem shrouded in semi-darkness, but his blue-grey eyes were perfectly visible when they finally opened. "Bilbo." He moved his pipe away from his mouth and favored him with a wry smile. "Come to finally take pity on an old man?" Back when he was a child, Bilbo's mother had often said that despite how aggravating the wizard could be, she could never really stay mad at him for long because he just gave you this look and…

Bilbo sighed explosively, trudged over to grab another armchair and dragged it right in front of the one Gandalf had taken. Bag End made it easy for him to pull furniture around like that.

The hobbit threw himself in the chair groaned in relief. Hosting a company of dwarves was hard work. He didn't allow himself too long a moment, though, before he met the surprisingly earnest gaze of the wizard. "Gandalf." A beat. "It seems I have wronged you. I apologize."

The wizard's thick eyebrows disappeared under the brim of his hat.

"I am very cross with you," Bilbo carried on before he could chicken out. "But I never intended to repay your rude actions of the past day with more than the occasional glower. I never intended nor ordered my home to harass you in the matter that has only just been brought to my attention. Had I not been preoccupied with the others, Bag End's actions towards you, or rather against you, would not have gone past my notice-"

"-Bilbo-"

"-TURNABOUT is fair play," Bilbo continued. He was determined to say his piece. "But on that note my own treatment of you would have been sufficient. Especially when I have been going on about my reputation as a perfect host, which I definitely am not anymore now that I have discriminated between my guests in such a loathsome manner. What Bag End has done in retaliation was disproportionate-"

"Bilbo-"

"-regardless of how endearing it was if it was on my behalf, though I am not altogether sure it was on mine, since I haven't mind-melded deeply enough to check yet-"

"-BILBO!"

The hobbit shut his mouth with a dull clamp and pursed his lips, narrowing his eyes at the wizard who'd sat up in his chair, looking aggravated. Gandalf was looking at him as if he'd seen him for the first time and wasn't sure what race he belonged to.

It felt oddly appropriate.

"Interrupting someone is rude you know," Bilbo said in the ensuing silence.

The wizard harrumphed, easing back in his chair. "I think we are both well past the point where we pay heed to such concerns, are we not?"

"I suppose s-" Bilbo jerked in his seat at the rush of caution-suspicion- alarm that came over him.

The hobbit and wizard shared an uncomfortable and heavy silence for a time.

"I assume that was your home warning you clear of me?" Gandalf asked, a touch contrite. "It is not entirely undeserved, I fear."

That admission completely swept away all pretenses. "What on earth happened?" Bilbo breathed, not sure who he was directing that question to.

Gandalf smiled sadly. "Such amazing creatures, Hobbits. You can learn everything about them in a year, and even after so long they can still surprise you."

Bilbo grimaced. "I think we both know I'm not longer a normal hobbit."

"Oh, but you are," And Gandalf sounded totally certain of that. "You just added some extra facets."

"… You'll be grilling me for information then I suppose?" Bilbo wasn't sure how he would react to an interrogation.

"Honestly, no," Gandalf reached up and removed his hat at last, placing it on a counter nearby. He'd probably kept it on until that point because he doubted it would meet a pleasant fate if he left it behind somewhere, out of sight. "I do have questions, but also theories. And I believe I shall find the challenge of putting the puzzle of you together quite refreshing."

Bilbo was actually pleasantly surprised by that. "I think I'm starting to see why mother liked you."

"Belladonna Took was a dear friend." And there was no lie or indulgence in that statement. "Perhaps someday I will be able to call you by a similar title."

Bilbo eyed the man evenly. It was honestly rather baffling that Gandalf the Grey would seek out companionship among the simple folk of The Shire. Or that the wizard seemed so fond and careful of hobbits as a whole. The hobbit knew that the Grey Pilgrim was a significant reason of why the Ranges of the old Kingdom of Arnor still guarded the borders of the Shire from the darkness.

He told Gandalf as much.

The reaction was delight. "Perhaps if you one day call me by a similar title I will share the reasons for that with you." Yes, delight indeed. Delight at the possibility of leaving the Hobbit hanging.

Well, turnabout was fair play.

The Master of Bag End knew he looked like he'd swallowed something sour, but he didn't bother with putting on a performance anymore. "Well, friendship still depends on your explanation of what happened between you and my home."

"I knew something was… strange when I came and found my rune gone," Gandalf started, looking out the window at the rapidly disappearing twilight. "I should have detected the… presence yesterday, but I fear I did your home the same disfavor I did you." Gandalf looked at him again. "Which is to say, I acted on false assumptions. With you it was the brazen assumption that I could steamroll into your life simply based on the fact that I had a very close rapport with your mother. Or perhaps I have grown proud and self-centered in my old age, though it is no excuse for treating you as if I had… as if I felt I should have more say in your life than yourself. It was unsightly of me, and I hope you will one day forgive me."

Bilbo forced himself to nod and not show his stupefaction openly. This sincere apology was not what he expected.

"As for Bag End," Gandalf gestured around them with his pipe. "The… sentience… came to my attention when I stepped through the door earlier, and I fear I acted rather rashly."

Bilbo blinked. "You tried to mind link …" He realized.

The grey-robed wizard nodded gravely. "It was not my intention to appear hostile. I was… merely curious, and until our minds touched I did not think there was any sentience, in truth. I thought it was your mind I was reaching for, and when I did not get the reaction I expected, I may have… pushed harder as I called for you specifically."

The understanding dawned on Bilbo with none of the relief and satisfaction that such an event would normally bring. "You scared it…"

"I did not wish to, I assure you of that." Gandalf seemed to become tired all of a sudden. "But I did frighten it, though it reacted thus more on your behalf than anything else. I attempted to soothe it, but your home had no reason to trust me after I essentially committed physical harm upon it not a day before."

"That didn't hurt it, exactly," Bilbo was a bit bewildered by all these revelations, so he hoped Gandalf would excuse how he latched on the least relevant part of his confession. "I toss knives at walls all the time and the scratches and cuts mend in minutes. Your magic just… felt wrong."

"Invasive," the old man nodded. "I would have tried communicating again, more gently, but your home decided to show its displeasure with me in a more direct fashion, so I felt it prudent to wait until I could clear things up with you."

Bilbo Baggins stared at the wizard until it was almost long enough to be considered rude. "Or you could have intimidated it into submission."

"…"

"I'm not a simpleton, Gandalf." It may have been a touch cooler than he intended, but it was too late to take it back. "I know what you are. I know you could have obliterated-"

"BILBO BAGGINS!"

Bilbo flinched and shut up.

There was a cloud of darkness around the wizard for a moment and Bilbo could feel Bag End straining between shrinking away in fright and reacting violently against the disturbance.

It came to neither.

Gandalf's whole body seemed to suddenly lose all strength. The wizard slumped back in his chair, looking older and more exhausted than Bilbo had ever seen anyone. "I have gathered many names over the centuries." There was a bone-deep weariness in the man's voice. "I do not wish to add bully and slayer of children to the list."

Bilbo felt like he'd been hit in the stomach with the blunt side of a shovel. Once, he might have bristled at the implications, but he was no normal hobbit anymore, nor a young one, so he could tell the remark had not been referring to him. "Gandalf…" Bilbo rubbed his temple. This discussion was a bit heavy for the late hour. Good thing he'd eaten his fill while cooking that feast. Even so, the wizard was probably seeing more things to be guilty of than there really were. "I'm not sure you can apply the same aging conventions to a house as you can a man or hobbit."

Some spark of amusement seemed to come back to life in those old eyes. "And yet your home chose to confront me on its own, and behind your back, by throwing a temper tantrum, no matter how many logical reasons existed for that to be deemed unwise."

Bilbo thought back to that time when Billa Bracegirdle had accepted the marriage proposal from one of the Tooks across the water. Later in the day, when Billa left for the seamstress, her fauntling brother Bruno picked up a trowel and attacked the groom-to-be, declaring loudly that he would defeat him and protect his sister so that she wouldn't be taken away.

Bag End may have realized it was too young an existence and not (yet maybe) powerful enough to take on someone like Gandalf, so it wasn't a reaction born from ignorance. Probably. Let it never be said Bilbo held no loyalty towards his creation. "It wasn't a tantrum." Let is also never be said that Bilbo Baggins was above teasing his own creations. "The way it's been mooning over the dwarves is pretty hilarious and childish though."

Gandalf blinked and smiled, leaning forward. "Oh? Do tell."

Bilbo eyed him askance and made his decision. "I think I have something better." Reaching out with his mind, he treated his house to the best impression of an unimpressed owner and told it to suck up and get over his initial impression. "Try communicating now."

The wizard looked surprised, then reluctant, but after a while he finally placed his pipe (which he'd kept gesturing with through their conversation) into some pocket or other and settled back in his chair. After that, it only took a moment for something new but somehow familiar to connect to the same… node, Bilbo supposed, he and Bag End met in every time they communed like this. All of a sudden, there were three lines meeting in a center, not just two. Bilbo could feel the youngest mind shying away in suspicion, but he coaxed it forward until Gandalf and Bag End finally introduced themselves to each other.

Bilbo, eyes closed, relaxed and smiled at the successful communication. Gandalf was minding his manners and not digging where he wasn't supposed to, which meant that Bilbo and his house could still trade thoughts and knowing without the wizard realizing. Well, he probably could deduce it was happening, but he was not privy to the "discussion" all the same.

Which meant that he didn't know that Bag End only agreed to open itself to Gandalf because Bilbo assured it that old Tom and the river daughter wouldn't stand for anyone harming their grandchild.

Gandalf probably had more of a point than he realized, about children and rash retorts.

After all, Bag End was Bilbo's firstborn, after a fashion.

Once his home finally got over its initial impression and began to tentatively brush its mind against the Wizard's by its own initiative, Bilbo slowly pulled out of the connection and blinked away the haze that always lingered after that deep a communion. Seeing Gandalf sitting back, eyes closed and content, fascinated even, he soundlessly slipped out of the room.

He still had some pies and cakes to finish after all, and that turkey was not going to come out of the oven alone.