A man of average height, dressed in dark-but not black-jeans and a nice-but not too nice-jacket stood on the sidewalk corner, stained with the comings and goings of city soot. Hazel eyes fixed upon the peak of Oakenshield Security, its blue limned silhouette bold against the night sky. He found it curious that such a stark, masculine, nearly oppressive feat of architecture should be responsible for saving him, or rather that its owner, a man just as stark, masculine, and oppressive, should provide sanctuary. Of course, there were stipulations. The Oakenshield family knew that everything had its price, and capitalizing on their own cleverness, they had orchestrated events so that they would be the ones collecting the price.

Yet, he also possessed a modest amount of cunning, enough, he thought, to be able to worm his way out of the increasingly sticky web weaving itself about him. Given enough time he could get out of any situation, but he knew better than to rely upon capricious time, he could only hope that the spider would fail to notice what it had captured, a spider named Thorin Oakenshield. He had forgotten that it was not in the nature of a spider to love, but rather to ensnare and lull, to strike at the most opportune moment. No matter, he had more important things that needed resolving. Sparing a last glance at the building, he turned his back, hand ghosting over the weight of the pistol in his pocket, and heart hardening to the task before him. Everything had its price, and it was time to cash in, cash in and leave before the spider caught him.

Seven Months Prior

Thorin pinched the bridge of his nose with ink stained thumb and forefinger. Upon reflection, he should have known that spilling his much needed espresso on his brand new Armani tie and having only just made it out of bed ten minutes before he was due at the office were inauspicious omens for the remainder of his day. The paperwork he needed for a possible trade agreement with another security company had, rather mysteriously, been misplaced by his often less than trustworthy nephews, who must also have misplaced themselves for they were nowhere to be found and seemed to be resolutely ignoring his increasingly demanding texts. To make matters worse, as he had attempted to accomplish what little he could find of the requisite paperwork, his fine tipped, silver filigreed pen, had had a brief conniption of nerves, sufficiently cowed by Thorin's steel banded grip, and caused the aforementioned ink stains.

So really, his own bad temper could be blamed for the surprised outrage which flooded his veins upon Dwalin's dour impromptu visit. He had just been informed with all the seriousness of a mortician that his own personal accounts, supposedly the most secure in the world, in addition to several of Oakenshield Security's larger investment portfolios had been accessed by some foreign outside source. In essence, the most prominent and world-renowned security company had just been hacked. And what's worse, it had been publicized.

Thorin let his hand slip from his face. It slumped to his desk with a faint sthunk, leaving asymmetrical splotches on either side of his nose like some faded office supply war-paint. Dwalin opted not to comment, his lips compressed firmly with the gravity of the situation into a single grim line. He instead cleared his throat, the sound echoing in the vast empty space between the President's desk and the office door. Thorin's sharp, aggravated eyes fixed upon him.

"Yes?"

"The company didn't suffer any damage…financially."

"You mean, nothing was stolen?"

Dwalin inclined his head in affirmation. Thorin snorted derisively.

"Of course, the perpetrator just wanted to make fools of us, which they succeeded quite brilliantly in doing, and I'm sure I know just the person who would benefit."

Thorin ground his teeth together, knowing precisely that Dwalin knew to whom he was referring. Smaug, the smug bastard who owned Alliance Protection, a long time competitor who wished to take over the corner of the market that Thorin had for so long begun to monopolize. The scheming slimebag would certainly stoop so low as to utilize such a tactic, and yet, it was still an impressive feat. What rankled him the most was the fact that he had even managed to get past the once impenetrable fortress that Thorin and his hand selected employees had worked so hard and so long to build. Of course, in recent years the company had grown so large that Thorin couldn't possibly give each person the same amount of individual attention that had set his company apart. It was conceivable that one of the newer, greener employees, perhaps with a lesser degree of loyalty, had been blackmailed or paid to give Alliance Protection details on how their servers and networks were designed. The biggest problem here was that Thorin, often hailed as a financial and corporal genius in the business world, knew how to run a company, he did not however know how to build network security, nor did he understand the makings of the various viral, financial, and identity protection programs his company sold. Therefore, the only action that he felt comfortable undertaking to rectify the rather precarious situation he seemed to have woken up to was micromanaging the behaviors of the people with which he worked.

"I trust that you or another will be assessing the staff for any breach of loyalty," Thorin inquired archly of his Vice President.

Dwalin nodded again, taking an earnest step forward.

"Fili and Kili have already begun extensive interviews and Ori and Nori are going through all recorded forms of interaction with potentially suspicious entities made on-site," Dwalin left unspoken that anything untoward which may have occurred off company bounds was, legally, out of reach. This could be as close as the Starbucks down the street from the company's headquarters. Thorin's dubiousness must have been painted plain as day across his face, accentuated by the ink smudges which now dappled his brow from intravenous moments of facepalming, for Dwalin was quick to continue.

"The lads and I have been aware of the situation since around one this morning," Dwalin ignored the venomous glare this earned him, "and have put together a plan not only to improve the company's security to prove our competency, but which will also keep you protected".

"Protected? Our…adversaries may have accessed billions of dollars, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're out to kill."

"And you would take that chance? You think Fili and Kili are ready to run this company, especially during a difficult time like this?"

Thorin cast his gaze to the side.

"Well of course they're not ready, but-"

Dwalin hushed his friend by slicing an emphatic hand through the air.

"No buts. For now, you are the pulse of this company, and we need you strong. More importantly our enemies need to see you remaining strong. So, we've decided it's time we got you a bodyguard."

Thorin gawped briefly at Dwalin, indignation slowly staining his cheeks red.

"I don't need a baby-sitter, for Christ's sake!"

Dwalin reprimanded the President with an arched brow.

"Did I say we were hiring a baby-sitter? No. We have already picked a suitable candidate who has experience in both physical and network security. He should be able to upgrade what we already have and keep an eye out for your well-being," Dwalin allowed a small smug smile to lift the corner of his lips.

Thorin huffed and leant back in his chair, "Well, let's see him then. I presume that's his folder you have tucked away."

The Vice President stepped forward, the clunk clunk of his booted feet echoing in the office. In a single swift gesture, the plain manila file, which until that point had remained pinned between his body and arm, slid onto the desk, framed by Thorin's expectant forearms. And there, printed in glossy high definition color, resided the smiling portrait of one Bilbo Baggins. Thorin's blue eyes widened, aghast, at the image.

"Are you mad?!"

Bilbo stared resiliently at the time clock, waiting with strained patience for the minute to flip, announcing his freedom for the evening.

"S'good for the day to be over," Bilbo smiled in weak acknowledgement of his coworker's small talk. He was flanked on either side by well intentioned, yet dim-witted people, all just as eager to flee the workplace.

"You excited?"

Bilbo started, noting that Jorgan, or Georgie as he was more commonly known, was particularly persistent in engaging him in meaningless chit chat, despite his lack of fluency in English. Bilbo hadn't yet determined if the uncharacteristically friendly Russian was truly stupid, or just didn't know the language. He seemed to have feelings for Bilbo which ranged somewhere in the ambiguous realm of "like". Bilbo, not having the social graces, nor the desire, to eek out what degree of "liking" applied to his coworker's attentions, more often than not found himself either fake smiling and nodding, or simply ignoring him all together. For this situation he chose to incline his head in silent agreement, dredging up the last of his will power to keep the same feigned cheerfulness from slipping into a grimace of annoyance. He quickly looked away from the vapid, yet doggedly friendly grin on the other's face, staring instead resolutely down at the grimy tiles, all the while sinking his aching shoulder-blades against the unforgiving drywall of the fluorescent lit hall.

He hurt. Everywhere.

He shifted his weight intermittently from one foot to the other, attempting in vain to avoid the piercing pain that mimicked the sensation of scalpels slicing through the soles of his feet. His hands stung angrily from the growing collection of cuts and nicks he accumulated while cutting open and stocking box after box of merchandise. He winced as a particularly vicious cut, inflicted by his boxcutter caught in the thralls of a vindictive mood on the webbed skin between thumb and index finger, flared to life with fresh pain while he reached forward to clock out.

The accepting beep of the time clock was music to his ears, and prompted him to ignore the festering pain in his heels in favor of a quickening of his stride as he spun about on his heel to leave. This, much to Bilbo's horror, planted him directly into Georgie's chest.

"Oh, I'm so, so sorry!" Bilbo peered up at his hulking co-worker with apologetic eyes.

The bigger man chuckled merrily.

"It is no problem," he intoned in his deep timber, reaching out a hand to steady Bilbo's flailing attempts to step away into the paths of the other bemused workers. Bilbo cursed his warming cheeks and shuffle-side stepped away, both thanking and apologizing to Georgie, and wanting nothing else than to make his way home. The hand lingering conspicuously close to his collarbone obviously had other ideas. An awkward beat full of Bilbo's stuttering excuses passed, and then Georgie moved on to punch out of work, leaving a convenient opening for Bilbo to flee.

Sometime between leaving the convenience store's entrance and the trek home, Bilbo wondered how his life had so quickly settled into this monotonous routine, where the strangest thing that ever happened was a lingering hand on his shoulder. A year ago, he would hardly have believed that he could live such a…common life.

The time for adventure is over, he told himself, Now is the time for sensibility and hard work.

Yet, after a bumpy and malodorous ride on the subway which brought him to his own sketchy side of town, Bilbo had abandoned positive, constructive thinking, replacing it with his own misgivings about the unfairness of life. Because life wasn't fair, he had lost his nice upper class penthouse suite, his well-paying career, and even his freedom. Maybe this was Karma's big fuck you, and maybe this was his chance to atone for past sins and embrace a better, albeit boring, path. Even so, two years in prison changes a person, and though, yes, he often wished he didn't live in a neighborhood nicknamed Hell's Asscrack, and yes, he'd prefer it if things like running water and working electricity were constants in his life, but shit happens and you have to clean it up and move on.

Some piles took longer to clean than others, and this just happened to be one of epic proportions.

It was on this cheery note that Bilbo finally approached his flat, fumbling in the dark for his keys to open the dented, city grime gray door. The jangling discordant sound of keys on concrete echoed in the outside hallway, masking the sound of his neighbor's door creaking open.

"Oh, fuck me!" Bilbo hissed under his breath, bending to scoop the keys up, scraping his hand in the process. He spat a few other choice profanities into the foul night air and straightened, finding himself face to face with the wild eyed expression of his neighbor. The woman in question inspected him with suspicion, her pupils blown wide from what he assessed to be some sort of synthetic high.

"Can I help you miss?" His words were cutting, implying that the last thing he needed that evening was to escape the whims of some junkie who looked to be three sheets to the wind.

She didn't respond, but as Bilbo made to slide the key into the lock and shoulder his door open, she let out an unearthly shriek, thrusting a black canister at his face. The contents were released with a kshhhh and the hallway filled with the misted scent of pepper. This melody was accompanied by the agonized screams of Bilbo and the woman's ravings about attempted rape. Bilbo desperately shouldered his way into his flat, pressing a useless hand against his scalded eyes, tears leaking beneath his splayed fingertips.

"HOLY MOTHER FUCK!"

A cacophony heralded his arrival home, the slamming of the door as he mule kicked it close, the pounding of his footsteps as he rushed to the bathroom, accompanied by his colorful vocabulary inspired by the various minor injuries he incurred while bumping into seemingly every piece of furniture he owned on his way. He remembered just in time to side step the hole which occupied a square foot of space just inside the room, shoving his face into the shower to wash away the devilish effects of mace.

He whimpered into the blessedly cool spray of water that spurted from the rusty showerhead, and there he remained for the next hour, leaning forward to press his forehead against the chipped tile when the stinging finally subsided. Today had been the shitty day to top all shitty days for quite some time, and to be honest Bilbo saw it coming beginning at seven in the morning when Georgie's affections had delayed him from clocking in on time. He had spent the majority of the day wishing fervently that the last few years had never happened, that his current situation was something that he would one day easily snap out of, like waking from a hideous dream. And now, as he sat still fully clothed on the leaking porcelain floor of his tub/shower, in the ugliest bathroom he had ever seen, in the shittiest flat he had ever lived in, he wished that things were different, normal, that his fictional fairy godmother would snap her fingers and everything would be right as rain.

Then Bilbo Baggins remembered that wishes don't come true, that he wouldn't know normal if it fucked him up the ass, and that fictional fairy godmothers are, in fact, fictional.

"Hey Bilbo! You up there? You better be up there, cuz I've got some real important stuff to talk to you about. I thought I heard your door close…and a coupla other things too…so you up there?"

With a sigh and an eye roll, Bilbo snapped out of his reverie, slightly annoyed that the pleasant silence had been shattered. He moved to rest his elbows on the lip of the tub, tired hazel eyes peering down through the bathroom hole, the one just inside the door to the left. The hole had not come with the apartment, but rather had been the result of a scuffle with a would-be-burglar. It had been the only time he had felt something resembling gratitude toward the termites with which he shared his home. Since that time, he and his downstairs neighbor had struck up a pseudo friendship, in as much as two strangers who never saw each other, with the exception of the occasional accidental glimpse of both ambiguous and not so ambiguous flesh, could have. Bilbo still had trouble remembering to exit the shower from the other end, knowing only by a sudden stammer and explosive fit of nervous coughing that he had unwittingly given his neighbor a prime view.

"Yeah, Bofur, I'm here," there was a muffled tone of defeat present in his voice.

"Good! Excellent! That's very, very good!"

Bilbo imagined the vigorous nodding that accompanied his words.

"What's so good about it?"

"Well, see, I was…ah, wondering if, well you know how you're so talented with electronics, like that time you jerry rigged my cable! Or, or the time that you helped Gretchen down the hall with her e-mail even though she practically smothered you with cats? So, I have this…friend who needs some networking stuff, some help with stuff, things aren't going so well for him, and I was wondering if you wanted a job. It pays really well! And it has great benefits, so you wouldn't have to worry about retirement or health care or anything like that! The guy comes across as a little gruff, but he's a good person…fairly decent anyway. So…are you interested?"

Bilbo blinked, taking a moment to register Bofur's string of oddly nervous babble. Bofur was prone to such ramblings, but they were usually spawned from excitement rather than nerves, and Bilbo didn't quite know what to make of it.

"So…you're offering me a job, one that pays enough for rent and food?" Bilbo, though tempted had a, well….a feeling that there was more going on here than what Bofur was telling him, which wasn't a lot.

"Yeah, it pays even better than that! I don't know all the details, but they want to interview you. I'm sure they'll explain everything then."

In hindsight, Bilbo should have found Bofur's laissez-faire attitude highly suspect, but for the time being he remained blissfully ignorant. His face scrunched up in thought as he considered the less than legit offer. Unless your job consisted of hauling dead and outdated components away, tech jobs paid well, really well. He should know, he was once in the business, but part of turning over a new leaf at his minimum wage, deadbeat job was abandoning coding and networking forever. Yes, he adored all things even remotely technological, and yes he had a quick mind when it came to the logic required, but he had his reasons, namely blackmail, for not wanting to return to his passion. Taking a look around his dingy bathroom, Bilbo began to reconsider.

What if?

"This is to be my bodyguard? You're having me on, aren't you?"

Dwalin's demeanor remained stoic in response to the shocked cool blue eyes which entreated him for another answer, any answer, just not the truth.

"He looks more like a grocer than a bodyguard!"

"As a matter of fact, his current place of employment is Shireland Grocery. He stocks merchandise."

"I'm sorry, was that supposed to be comforting?" Cold fury radiated off of Thorin in waves, filling the room with the quintessence of death, doom, and other Hellish things.

"There's no need to be touchy, Thorin. The lad's qualified for the position; he was once one of the most successful programmers around."

Thorin peered at Dwalin with something akin to suspicion, not wanting there to be any promising features to the alarmingly adorable creature still smiling up from his desk.

"If he enjoyed such success, why is he working at," Thorin paused to adopt an appropriate sneer, "Shireland Grocery. Surely someone with these supposed top notch credentials should be able to find a better career."

Dwalin shifted, a shadow of awkwardness falling across his features.

"Well, he had some…difficulties."

Anticipating a juicy argument to use against his VP, Thorin leaned forward.

"Oh? What sort of….difficulties?"

"Well…essentially, a few years ago, Mr. Baggins got his hands on some private documents that did not belong to him. The owner of said documents pressed charges, which resulted in a felony and a trip to prison."

"So…you're telling me that this…Mr. Baggins…who is, apparently, a felon and a hacker, is going to be our salvation from bad publicity by "proving our competency" and "providing protection"."

Dwalin cleared his throat.

"Yes."

"Somehow I'm not feeling reassured," Thorin's voice drawled with sarcasm and a tinge of victory. There would be no baby sitter for him.

"Just give him a chance, Thorin. The lad knows what he's doing, and if need be there are ways we can secure his loyalty. I'm sure Mr. Baggins isn't enjoying his economic demotion either. We've already arranged for an interview, and quite frankly I don't see what other options we have. Smaug, as much as it pains me to say, has in his employment a talented group of individuals, sly and untrustworthy to be sure, but very talented. Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire, and from what Bofur tells me he seems to be a fairly sweet and devoted person," Dwalin's voice cracked with exasperation, falling somewhere between imploring and commanding.

Thorin considered the other man for a moment, noting the lines of urgency that lined his face. Hadn't he mentioned that he had been up since at least one this morning, probably earlier? Dwalin had been one of the most committed coworkers and friends that Thorin had had by his side in his many years of owning Oakenshield Security. He was a welcome constant, someone whose reliable judgment affected the company daily. To date, his advice had always been sound, and it appeared that he had spent a considerable amount of thought on this proposition. Thorin held Dwalin's gaze, eyes sharp, searching for a true fault. When he found none, he nodded slowly.

"Very well, we will see what this little bodyguard can do, but don't expect me to be happy about it," he snapped waspishly.

Dwalin snorted. "Gave up on that years ago, lad."

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed! In the next chapter Thorin and Bilbo will be meeting each other.