Disclaimer: I don't own the Hobbit (book or movie) or the BBC's TV series of Sherlock Holmes.

A/N: What are you doing here, you weirdo? Reading Hobbit/Dragon fiction, pfft. No, but seriously, why have I got the feeling that I ship the weirdest things? ;u;

Anyway, if you read this please keep in mind that I expect you to have read the Hobbit, watched the first movie as well as seen BBC's Sherlock series. There. If you haven't (wtfwhyhaven'tyou?) then I take no responsibility if you fail to understand things or spoil yourself.

Aside from that, I hope you enjoy the ride. :)

However unexpected, the matter between Bilbo Baggins and his thirteen dwarf friends was not that complicated an affair. They don't expect much of him the first time they meet, and even Bilbo himself does not prepare to face any less than a complete disaster when he decides to join them. Yet they all find themselves surprised, because while the hobbit might not be quick to draw his sword to fight, his quick thinking is more than capable of getting them out of the need to do so in the first place. Once, twice, thrice Bilbo saves the skins of his companions, and they in turn bow down to him in promise to be forever at his service with their ever growing beards.

And that is the gist of it, of anything in life, really. You give or preserve something of value and gain gratitude for it whether you like it or not.

The matter with the dragon, however, is another story entirely. They are at the end of their journey when Bilbo meets the notorious Smaug that has made it its right to dwell in the mountain which his friends want to reclaim. He sees it sleeping among all of its gold and silver and precious stones, looking like it won't notice a thing, and in a bout of arrogance Bilbo has the idea to steal a piece of its treasure.

He has signed up to be a burglar, after all.

A great two-handled cup, as well as the right to brag about it to the dwarves, is his price for endangering his life. A worthwhile treasure if one wanted to live in comfort for most of their lives. A small gain when the wrath of Smaug resonates through the mountain, spreading dread to their bones and fear in their eyes.

And curse them dwarves for accepting his proposal to sneak back into the dragon's quarters to see what it was on about like it was brilliant an idea! It should be against his nature, against all the rules of self-preservation to near a dragon willingly –with or without a magic ring.

But in Bilbo goes, and this time, Smaug meets him with wakefulness.

"I smell you, thief," it says to him, its voice a low grumble that makes the stone walls of its lair shudder. "I feel your air and hear your breath. Come on in, help yourself."

And Bilbo does help himself. In fact, he does his very best to help himself out of this mess and to save his own skin for a change. And that is the difference between his association with the dwarves and this monstrous creature.

For saving the lives of Thorin and his company he got a vastness of gratitude. For saving his own life he gets the dragon's immortal curiosity.

"I am Ringwinner and Luckwearer; and I am Barrel-rider," Bilbo finishes his list of suitable titles he had gathered along the way.

"Lovely titles, but pray tell, what is your actual name," the dragon murmurs in impatience. "No, never mind the irrelevance of a name, what are you?"

"Nothing compared to you," Bilbo answers, making the dragon both sated and annoyed.

"You reek of dwarf, but that is not what you are," Smaug says after a while, making Bilbo's heart skip a beat at the thought of his friends' intrusion of the mountain being found out by this creature. "The Barrel-rider who is neither an elf nor a human. Fascinating."

"Well deduced." The sarcasm in his voice is involuntary, and for a moment Bilbo is ready to face a fiery death, but Smaug only seems overly pleased instead.

"Of course! I have categorized the smells of many a creature in my memory. Yours however I have never come by," the dragon says, sniffing the air in a manner of superiority. "Now show yourself, little thief, lest you want me to torch you and your thirteen dwarf friends."

Now, Bilbo could have chosen to hare off in the hopes to outrun fire and wrath, but he thinks of his friends and does not want to lead ruin to them if he can help it. Smaug has presumably already had every opportunity to take his life, but it hasn't, and Bilbo has plenty of words left to perhaps talk his good self out of this deep, deep mess of a situation. So he takes off his ring of invisibility, and steps into the range of the dragon's sight.

Only to be laughed at. "And so he steps into the light! Oh, look at you tiny thing, I would have expected a thief more bright than one so ready to reveal themselves to me."

"Bright I would have been indeed when you'd have set me on fire as was promised had I not done your bidding!" Bilbo growls displeased all over. It is one thing to be threatened, but insults he would never accept as they came.

"Your choice to obey does not prevent the fiery fate that awaits you, Barrel-rider, it only prolongs it," tells the dragon, puffs of black smoke venturing from its nostrils before it cackles in a way that makes Bilbo's skin crawl. "But do come down from there, for I still have no clue as to what you might be. I must examine you."

"First you laugh at me for revealing myself to you, then you tell me my inevitable fate. You will excuse me, o Smaug the tyrannical, if I seem hesitant to near you willingly," Bilbo points out dryly, still a bit miffed at being laughed at by a giant reptile.

"Is it my outer appearance that frightens you so?" Smaug questions almost innocently. "If yes, then the one compromise I can make is to turn into a resemblance of a man to lull you into a false sense of security. Maybe then you would be more eager to present yourself to me, well and proper?"

Bilbo only stares for a while. "That's not possible, is it?"

"What?" The dragon's giant eyes narrow with thinning patience, its heavy intakes of breath grumbling in its throat.

"For you, being the size that you are, to turn into a man. It's not possible."

"You infuriating little-! Fine then, it is not my preferred form because it makes me look something akin to you, but I'll show you, if not to kill your disbelieves, then to fit into that tiny tunnel of yours to kill all of you little mice that hide there."

Having said that, the dragon starts to change shape, the glow of its fire waning as it shrinks out of sight and into the growing darkness. Soon there's nothing left to see or to hear, as even the breathing that had filled the room before disappears.

Bilbo waits quietly, afraid to produce a sound other than the rapid beat of his heart which he cannot halt for obvious reasons. Then he spots a breath of fire in the distance, seeing it catch something that starts to burn and bring light to its surroundings.

"Come to me, thief," comes a voice from the darkness, still rich and deep though not as heavy as before. "Or I shall come to you."

Hearing the amused threat made Bilbo's feet move almost without his consent, and he stumbles in the dark, falling down, stepping on and bumping into all sorts of unforgiving objects. "Just hold on a minute," he mumbles more to himself that he does to the dragon, drawing out his sword as he approaches the fire.

On top of a mountain of gold he finds the creature, long abandoned torches which it had lit to help Bilbo find his way illuminating enough for the hobbit to see that it was no more a dragon that greeted him, but rather a dragon who attempted to look like a human.

It has a dark mop of curls for hair, and aside from its high cheekbones and piercing gaze, Bilbo could not label its face unusual. But it also has huge, heavy wings on its back that make the dragon fight for its balance every time it moves them in this unused form. It has its tail also, and a body that is alive with indecision, shifting and reshaping, either pale, porcelain skin or a fiery red of the dragon's scales.

There is a spot, however, which remains unmoved even amid all the restlessness. On the left side of its breast is a patch of human skin that stays as it is, a little bruised, vulnerable and just above its beating heart.

Bilbo swallows and does not let his eyes linger.

"Well now," the dragon says, reaching out with its hand to touch Bilbo in some way. Bilbo flinches and clutches his sword a little tighter.

"I went through much trouble trying to be your size, and yet you are very small still," Smaug laughs, retreating its hand without having its touch land when Bilbo swished Sting to make it very clear that he was not comfortable receiving it. "Do you honestly think you can hurt me with that thing of yours?"

Bilbo looks between Sting and the smirking dragon and scowls despite his situation.

"It gives me courage and I need every bit I can get right now." He says, lowering his weapon despite his words. Because Smaug is right, isn't it? Folk like him would never have what it takes to slay a dragon.

"And why would you be in need of courage? Does my form not comfort you?" Smaug continues with its questions, its voice growing tones of amusement and curiosity.

"You may be smaller in size, but it does not mean your ways to kill me have grown any lesser," replies Bilbo, eyes every now and then taking a look at the creature's chest to make sure it remained a weakness.

"Not entirely true," comes a laugh. "I now cannot step on you or eat you whole, even though you are such a small... whatever you are. Come now, you must tell me what you are."

"I am what I am," Bilbo says and doesn't think it wise to reply with anything more informative.

"Annoying is what you are. Maybe I ought to just kill you, hmm?"

It is not something Bilbo would agree with, passing onto legend as the burglar who as his last deed managed to annoy a dragon. So he does what he does rather well, and thinks as fast as he can.

"But then you would never know what I am," he blurts out. "You are so proud of your collection of scents yet you would not be able to put a name on the one that stole a piece of your treasure."

Smaug narrows its eyes at his words, but doesn't say anything. It shifts and it breathes, humane expressions dancing on its face like the scales and skin do on its body. It looks angered, it looks like it doesn't care, then there's boredom and finally just the need to know.

"Fine then, you have my curiosity," the dragon growls, a smirk quick to grow on its face just afterwards. "You may return to your dwarf friends. Though do tell them to camp outside my mountain. I don't like the reek of them."

Bilbo stares and blinks. "You- you are just going to let me go?"

"Indeed I am."

"Just like that?" He asks for confirmation, looking over his shoulders as if there would be a crowd ready to laugh at his naivety.

"Yes," says the dragon, settling to lie on its belly among all of its gold.

"Right then," Bilbo hesitates, taking backward steps until he feels the riches beneath his feet start giving away and falling towards the ground. "I'll just go now, shall I?"

"I will see you later, little thief," the supposed farewell follows him down the golden pile, and Bilbo turns to look back even though it was the last thing he thought he ought to do.

"See me later? You expect me to come back?" He asks with a little laugh that is just a bit desperate.

"Oh, don't be dull, Barrel-rider. Of course you will return. You are here for my treasure, after all."

"I might give up on that," Bilbo says up to the pile where he can see nothing but the waning light of the torches. "I might run away."

"And I might enjoy the chase," says the dragon, to which Bilbo finds no reply other than to leave back the way he came from.

The dwarves don't take the news he brings very well. Granted, Bilbo doesn't go into much detail about the conversation held, only telling that were they to run, there would be chase, and were they to attack, they would most likely end up being beaten and eaten.

They do, however, pay a keen interest when Bilbo tells them about the possible weakness in armour on the left side of the dragon's breast. The ravens around them listen well and fly away when the dwarves pat Bilbo on the back and encourage him to go spy on the dragon some more.

"Running would be foolish, not that we'd ever choose to do so having come this far," Bofur smiles to him. "So best we can do now is to gather as much knowledge on it as possible. And you, my friend, have proven to be excellent at just that!"

Everyone but Bilbo agrees with this, and so there is little else to do but to return into the dragon's lair.

"Welcome back, thief," Smaug says smugly, still lying on its belly on the exact same spot even though Bilbo had managed to put off his return for two days.

"I half expected to find a dragon here," Bilbo says as a greeting, taking a seat somewhere near the creature, not bothering with pleasantries as he was still quite miffed with the dwarves for having sent him on such an errand.

"It takes an effort to change shapes," drawls the dragon lazily. "An effort which I see no reason to make."

"Right." Bilbo agrees. "So what shall we talk about today? The weather, perhaps?"

"Weather is dull; it has no effect on me. But I would have you tell me your reasons for being here."

The dragon turns its body so that it would be easier for it to scrutinize Bilbo as it ponders on. "I suppose they promised you a share of the gold, but how are you to take it home, I wonder? You have one, a home, is that not right? So why follow a company of dwarves who have not got one into this certain death that you have now arranged for yourself? Where is there a gain in that?"

"There is no gain," says Bilbo quietly. "No gain other than over thirteen friendships and stories to tell."

"And what are those friendships and stories worth when you die for nothing?"

"A lot more than all of your gold when you die alone!" Bilbo snaps, not liking how his every uncertainty is being spoken out loud.

The dragon stares and stares, wonder growing on its features as it props itself to lean on its elbows.

"Are you that selfless?" It asks like it's the first time it sees Bilbo. "Are you what they call golden hearted?"

"No," Bilbo denies, growing a bit uneasy by the sudden wonderment. "I am a burglar."

"How many chances did you have to walk away? And how many of those did you fail to take even while knowing that there is nothing for you at the end of this journey? No, you are here because valour and loyalty would not let you be anywhere else. What a treasure for me to have!"

With that, Smaug is on its feet, jumping towards Bilbo and trapping his tiny body underneath its resemblance of a human form. Bilbo doesn't know which hurts more, the dragon's iron grip on his arms or the precious metals pressing against his back, but it all seems so irrelevant when Smaug has an uncontrollable look of greed in its eyes and the back of its throat glows like an oncoming flame.

"Gold with a beat of its own! I want it! Show me your heart!"

And Bilbo tries his best to struggle when there's a clawed hand on his chest, ready to tear him apart.

"I can't show you my heart! That would kill me and you should know better than anyone that there is nothing but blood and gore when you rip someone to pieces!"

He doesn't tell the dragon that the treasure it yearns is just a figure of speech, even amidst all of his panic, for surely every interest he can rouse in the dragon lengthens his lifespan.

Smaug hesitates, seems to gather its wits and doesn't stop Bilbo when he scrambles away from under it. They stare at each other, one terrified and other still in a daze from having its nature take it over. And in both of their minds lingers forming plans concerning the other's heart.

"Then how am I supposed to have it if not by taking it?" The dragon asks.

"It's not yours to take but mine to give to whom I will," Bilbo answers, quickly continuing when he sees Smaug open its mouth to say something to that. "And don't think for a second that I'd choose to give it to you, no matter all the threats or bribery you'd think of. That's not how it works."

For being denied its heart's desire, Smaug looks infuriated. The fire burning at the back of its throat turns into thick, black smoke that comes from out of its mouth as it glares at Bilbo through hateful eyes. Then it turns its back to the hobbit, slumps heavily down on its gold and doesn't move from there.

"You may go now," it dismisses Bilbo with a moody tone.

And Bilbo doesn't need to be told twice as he's already going, turning back only when he has slid down far enough to feel the rock-hard ground underneath his feet.

"Do you still expect me to come back?" He asks into the dimness, but receives no answer.

So to the dwarves he returns.

It is beyond obvious that they have reached an impasse. The dwarves are too set on their quest to away from the mountain, yet not brave enough to challenge its resident. Their thinning supply of food makes their time limited, and it becomes even more so when the ravens bring news of the restlessness of the humans down by the lake as well as the movements of an army of foul creatures.

Thorin sends out a word asking for an army of his own kin, to which the reply is exactly what the dwarf wants to hear.

In the meanwhile Bilbo performs his duty by spending his days surrounded by darkness. The route to the particular pile of riches becomes familiar to him, because Smaug never seems to move. Every time Bilbo goes to it, it lies where he left it; always half asleep but never off guard.

And they talk about mundane things in order to prolong the inevitable, riddling each other and sharing their knowledge of the world. The dragon has a liking to metal, ash and death, while Bilbo prefers to go on about things that grow, Old Toby and life.

Those are not bad memories to look back on when he's older, Bilbo thinks. He doesn't think many exist who can proclaim having conversed with a dragon in such a casual manner. But at the same time he's growing more fearful, because it's not right, not in any natural sense. His concern is that this is the false lull of security the dragon had promised him. That he is nothing but an insect humouring a bored reptile.

He thinks this even while being unable to keep his hand from touching the dragon's hair softly, letting the curls of it wrap themselves around his fingers while Smaug asks him, "Do you wish to tame me, Master Luckwearer?" while not moving a muscle to stop him, or even opening its eyelids to peer at him with any sort of resentment.

And, "Only your hair," is what Bilbo says to it, completely missing the opportunity to stick something sharp into the heart of Smaug while it lies there, content.

Maybe the both of them were starting to grow a bit delusional underneath the mountain where time seemed to stay still while the world outside kept on moving.

"I don't know what to do," Bilbo confesses to the dragon one day in an attempt to speak over the loudest debater of the moment: his growling stomach.

"About what?" It asks as if already bored with the subject.

"War is brewing," he says, eyes distant as he thinks of the armies gathering on the roots of the mountain. "And I'm no warrior. This might actually be the last time I wish to be back at home."

He smiles sadly at Smaug who observes him from the corner of its eye, listening but not giving much care.

"A war over what?" Smaug wonders absently.

Bilbo considers this, swallowing thickly. The dragon is certainly no fool and should be very aware what motivation an army of any race and size would have to march within the vicinity of its mountain. But it waits for Bilbo's answer, and it makes the hobbit feel like it's in his power to set the inevitable into motion.

"For the land and the right to call it theirs," Bilbo says, pausing before he continues. "Along with the trees and the lake and this mountain…"

"You may say it, burglar," says the dragon unconcerned. "They are coming for my gold."

"Ultimately, yes," Bilbo nods, feeling all sorts of nervous.

"No," Smaug grins lazily as it raises itself to a sitting position, its tail whipping itself against the treasure underneath them as the sounds of the first war drums start to echo in the deep caverns. "They do not come to fight a war against my rule or the right for my gold. They come to get slaughtered."

Bilbo runs as fast as he can. He's surrounded by absolute darkness, still, but the route has become very familiar to him by now, and the closer he gets to the secret entrance, the brighter his sword starts to shine and aid him in navigation. He never makes it to the entrance, not quite, because the dwarves meet him halfway.

"We saw Smaug take wind under its wings," Thorin says, out of breath and a bit unsettled. "What is going on?"

"It's defending the mountain from the gathering armies," Bilbo answers, pointedly speaking of defence rather than slaughter. "What are we to do?"

There's a moment of fear shared between all who don't have the mind of Thorin. They fear that they are about to be ordered into battle against goblins and men and elves and a dragon. The help Thorin had pleaded for had not yet arrived, and so they would have no strong foothold on the oncoming war.

But the mind of Thorin Oakenshield is set on another perspective entirely.

"We will take this mountain as ours now that the beast is gone," he declares firmly. "We will reclaim our halls and protect them from the unwelcomed."

"What about the war?" Asks Ori, hesitant but not unwilling to follow.

Thorin is already on his way deeper into the mountain when he says the final word. "Let them kill each other and we'll fight whoever there is left to fight."

It is a good plan, the best one their situation could possibly let them have.

But Bilbo doesn't like it. He doesn't like it at all.

There is a sickness growing in Thorin's eyes. The more he sees of the piles of riches laid down on the magnificent halls which his fathers had built, the more detached he seems to become from reality.

His companions aren't doing much better, rejoicing as if this is the end of their journey and nothing in the world stood in their way anymore.

"The Arkenstone! Find the Heart of the Mountain!" Thorin commands, his movements becoming hectic as he lusts for the treasure of treasures. And so they search while stuffing every bag and pocket full of riches.

Bilbo is the one who finds it. There's no mistaking the jewel in his hands for anything less than what it is. He says nothing to the others, only wraps it in cloth and slips it into his pocket before he goes to talk to Thorin who is still set on finding the Arkenstone and hasn't go the mind to think of nothing else.

"You need to prepare to defend your mountain," Bilbo reminds the dwarf. "You still have to fight to keep all this. There's plenty of time to search afterwards."

Thorin agrees reluctantly and starts to give out orders. They head for the main entrance where they plan on building a solid defence from rock and stone. It is from there that Bilbo gets his first look at the dale below the mountain.

And there lies a sea of chaos, goblins and men and elves fighting amidst the fire that Smaug keeps breathing from the sky while clouds of arrows try to bring it down. The sight makes Bilbo feel nauseous, thinking that all of them fight to get the right to stand on the exact spot where his feet now touch the mountain. And he feels even more ill when there is the sound of a horn blowing in the distance, setting a light in Thorin's eyes as he and his companions cheer for the nearing army of dwarves, all of whom have been baptised in battle.

'This is no place for a hobbit,' Bilbo thinks desperately. 'I have no place in this at all.' He goes over in his head what chance of running away he would have and how much of a coward that would make him. And he wonders if it would do him any good to help the dwarves build up their defence and hope for the best in some small crevice inside the mountain.

But he stops to think altogether and runs out of breath when he forgets to inhale. For a crow had flown to a man and told him the weakness of Smaug the Terrible. And the man, though surprised he could understand the bird, took aim and shot his last, trusted arrow as Smaug flew over him. It hits its mark and Smaug screams excruciating howls of pain and trashes in the air as it tries to fly somewhere away where it can land without instantly being hacked to pieces by axes and swords and spears.

What Bilbo does next is insanity.

He disappears from out of sight with the aid of his ring (cowardice). He stumbles down the mountain and into a camp of men where he finds Gandalf, gives him the Arkenstone and tells him to use it against Thorin Oakenshield if it came down to that (betrayal). In the confusion he takes whatever necessary he can from the camp (theft).

And then he runs. Past fire and corpses and continuation of a war, completely ignoring what Gandalf shouts after him.

He had never been in control of this madness, so why try now?

There is a clearing now where Smaug had hit the ground. Trees have fallen down under its weight, some are on fire and some covered in the dragon's blood. Even rocks have given way and have moved or split. But there is not a sign of the dragon itself.

Bilbo breathes heavily from his endless run, the oncoming winter making his exhales evaporate.

Dragon corpses don't just evaporate, however. Smaug must have changed its form, something that only Bilbo knows it is capable of doing. The hobbit finds hope growing in his chest as he takes a better look at his surrounding while wiping the sweat on his brow onto his sleeve.

No one would just assume a dragon has died. Someone would be coming to ensure the slaughter, which would make it wise for Smaug to go into hiding in a less noticeable form. And Thorin, he remembered, had said something about caves and them seldom being unoccupied.

'Right then,' Bilbo braces himself, setting his jaw and straightening his back.

Smaug lies in a small cavern of dirt and rock. It doesn't have its wings or tail, only a small fraction of its body consisting of dragon scales anymore. It looks more human now than it had ever looked before, pale and gasping for air as it lies on its makeshift nest without clothing of any kind or a stopping to the bleeding on its chest.

Smaug looks fragile. It looks like it is dying.

"Have you come to immortalize your name, Master Dragon Slayer?" It asks with a wheezy breath when Bilbo finds it. Smaug seems calm despite its nearing end, and does nothing when Bilbo kneels beside it.

"I'm not after immortality," the hobbit tells it quietly, observing the black arrow still stuck on its chest.

"Then why have you come?" Smaug questions, staring at Bilbo as he digs into the rucksack he had pillaged on his way here.

"I don't know," Bilbo answers, eyeing the ointments and bandages which he had managed to find, thinking that his patient is a dragon and how he really isn't a healer.

"Why are you here?" Smaug repeats. "What do you wish to gain from this?"

"I don't know!" Bilbo cries, suddenly feeling so useless in his lack of knowledge that he just does whatever there is to do and rips the arrow straight off the dragon's chest in one quick motion. Smaug lets out an indescribable sound that would be sure to draw attention had someone been near enough to hear it, but Bilbo just lets it scream as he presses a cloth down on the wound as hard as he can.

"I don't know why I'm here, and I have no idea what I'm doing!" he half sobs as Smaug writhes underneath him. "I'm just a hobbit and I wish I was back at home, at Bag End where I belong."

"A hobbit?" The dragon takes interest even through the pain. "Is that what you are? A hobbit."

"Yes," Bilbo laughs weakly despite his hands getting coloured with the dragon's blood.

"I fear your methods of healing are of no help to me, Master Hobbit." The dragon says when it sees the way Bilbo's hands tremble from both fear and strain, sounding unconcerned, as if it wasn't its life that was on the line.

"I have some ointments if those would be of-" Bilbo starts, feeling panic rise in him all over again.

"No. Us immortals, we live by different rules and methods. My magic is what is keeping me alive, though it is draining away from me. You can imagine why."

The truth makes Bilbo lean backwards, leaving his hands unhelpful and red as they dangle by his side.

"And what reason do I even have to fight for my life? I will never again have the power to reclaim my treasure. Why would I cling to this forsaken life like a desperate beast?"

"I can't believe you! Man, dwarf or dragon, the ruin of you all will come from your own lust for power and gold! Fine then, please consider this: knowledge can be considered as power if you know how to use it right, and you already are knowledgeable. Why not hoard information which cannot be taken from you even in death?"

The dragon looks surprised, and then suspiciously cunning as it slowly rises to sit in front of the hobbit who has a hard time looking at it in the eye. The rest of the dragon scales merge into human skin and the bleeding comes to a slow end.

"But what of gold? A need to be in possession of a great treasure is in my nature," the dragon says as it stares down at Bilbo whose ears turn red, because he has read tales of the charisma of these creatures, and he feels awfully like he's being driven into a web from which he cannot escape.

"I have no treasure to offer you," says Bilbo, gaze still firmly locked on the ground.

When the dragon doesn't say anything but remains where it is, in front of him and staring on with much more patience than Bilbo has, the hobbit finally gives in to the urges to have his peek. And he sees a pair of ash-grey eyes staring at him with such an unbearable expression that he finds himself almost shouting, "Yes, alright! Fine!"

"You offer it to me?" The dragon asks voice full of both surprised delight and smugness.

"Yes," Bilbo nods weakly, embarrassed, because he likes to think himself smart, but who if not a complete dimwit would have ended up making such arrangements with a dragon? Still, he agrees not because no other choice is given, but because it is the choice he realises he wants to make.

"Even while knowing what we dragons do with our treasure?" Smaug confirms as it leans in closer.

"Yes," the hobbit sighs this time, closing his eyes as the dragon closes its arms around him.

"My golden hearted hobbit," comes a whisper into his ear, one that rattles his core and has his heart beat at a rapid pace.

And there, amidst rocks and dirt and blood, they form an unlikable and unbreakable bond. For a dragon will guard its treasure as long as it lives.

End

A/N: There now! Small omakes might follow.

And since you made it this far, the place to leave reviews in is not far from here. Feel free to leave a comment. :)