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In a cottage in Oxfordshire there lived a rent boy.
It was a very nice cottage, not one of those broken-down moldy dens with too many cats, nor was it fetishistically rustic with exposed beams and dried flowers hanging uselessly over the sink. No, this was a modern cottage, which meant central heating, a proper chef’s kitchen, and an electric fireplace framed tastefully at the center of a plush parlor. This is where the rent boy received his guests.
To call him a ‘boy’ at this point may perhaps be a misnomer, as the man was comfortably set in his 40s. He would certainly have objected to the title, seeing himself as a man of leisure (not just other people’s), the inheritor of his family’s fortune and a gentleman as far as any of his neighbors were concerned.
But the days had tended to drag when there was no longer any excuse to linger in university without picking up a doctorate and the dreadful onus of teaching, and there was only so much fussing about with dusty volumes that even the most dedicated book collector (or his nose) could suffer. Traveling to other countries had lost its appeal long ago, and why leave the comforts of his own home, his kitchen, and most importantly his clients just to go jaunting off to other people’s foreign parts? He did not have a passport, and he was quite proud of that fact.
But where are my manners? I have not told you the rent— that is, the gentleman’s name. If I told you it was Bilbo, you might snigger, as it seems far too convenient for a rent boy’s profession. However, I must insist, Bilbo Baggins of Bag End was from such a respectable old neighborhood that they do not even have numbers on the houses, but rather everyone knew Bag End and the queer little fellow who lived there. Just how queer likely escaped even the most sordid imaginations.
As I was saying, there was only so much respectability Mr. Baggins, Esq. and future Escort could stomach in his life before one day something snapped. It occurred while he was half way down a bottle of truly excellent port, of which he had only intended to have a glass but, to put it indelicately, bugger that. He was a confirmed bachelor, the master of his own fortune, and could do whatever he liked, including getting stinking drunk in front of his own fireplace for no reason at all, thank you very much. His skin was toasty warm, his cheeks flushed, and his hand just drifting lower to finish the night much like he’d ended many others in the privacy of his own home; when something unusual and wholly unexpected happened.
Bilbo realized he was bored.
Now this gentleman— as he still was unequivocally at that point— was quite accustomed to feeling bored. He rather liked it. Boredom was expected, comfortable. It meant you had exactly the dinner you wanted at exactly the right time every day, all one’s books were in perfect order, and one need not see anyone they did not want to, except at the weekly farmer’s market. But that night his comfortable boredom felt cold and, I daresay, a bit lonely, and his hand very unsatisfying.
He remembered the computer he had purchased during one of his brief fancies of becoming a professional book dealer, now gathering dust in his desk drawer. It was furnished with a webcam, which all the latest models had these days, and enough built-in software that Master Bilbo Baggins, Esq., for all his technophobia (he did live in a cottage in a small village in Oxfordshire, after all) had it up and running within the hour.
By the second hour, he was a professional cam boy, having received a sum of £4. There was much hemming and hawing, and not a little panic as he juggled the webcam and his own attempt at disrobing, so that his face only showed once or twice (at not very flattering angles). Identity safe as far as he knew, and laptop humming away, Bilbo was soon set up before the camera with himself in hand and one or two people who may have been bots on his channel. What they would find appealing about a slightly overweight Englishman in his 40s clumsily wanking off to a poorly-calibrated screen, he could not have said at the time, but someone must have liked it because he was the proud owner of the aforementioned £4 by the time he finished.
But lest you should think our hero was entirely hopeless, or that this was the end of his career, we did mention that he was a rent boy, not a cam boy, and in fact quite a successful one at that, to his own surprise and probably that of his neighbors had they known.
However, they did not know, because around the time Mr. Baggins' subscriptions reached the triple digits on a weekly basis, and certain other lonely sirs began to inquire into a meeting, Mr. Baggins rediscovered his love of academics.
This newfound hobby necessitated that he have strapping doctoral students from Oxford and other local schools over to his house on a frequent basis to instruct them in their studies. Occasionally their professors stopped by as well for, as it happened, Mr. Baggins was quite an expert in his little topic of…well, no one was exactly quite sure what. Perhaps linguistics. There were, on occasion, some very unusual sounds coming from Bag End which could have been the practice of strange foreign languages shouted at irregular volumes at odd hours of the night. Yet Baggins' newfound hobby was so respectable in nature, and his own nature so very dull for so many years, that none of his neighbors could have even begun to suspect the truth.
Mr. Baggins now had a thriving business. A cottage industry, if you will.
Thorin did not need to unwind.
More specifically, Mr. Thorin Thrainsson, CEO of Erebor Industries— who was essentially bankrupt and facing what was a now decades-long legal battle with FireDrake Consulting, not to mention various missing, dead, or just simply crazed close family members— did not need to unwind.
It was entirely normal to have muscles so tense it sent masseurs screaming for the hills (if they could pin him down long enough to threaten him with one). Grinding one’s teeth was also perfectly natural, and it was hardly his fault that the FireDrake receptionist had fainted at the sight of him. He had not been glaring, just… staring off into the distance. Perfectly normal. Maybe it had been a bad day, but days where he had to go to the office of his enemy at FireDrake usually were.
He did not need to unwind. What he needed was an assistant, one who was skilled in accounting, law, multiple languages, breaking and entering, and quite possibly therapy. All skills his own family members were uniquely bad at, which was why they were now in the 20th year of a failing lawsuit.
But that was all about to change. Dr. Gandalf Grey, a longtime friend of the family (though how Gandalf knew them was always a bit mysterious) had recommended to him just the man, and Thorin now stood before his door, clutching the scrap of paper with the address in one hand, and his briefcase in the other.
He was not in a good mood.
Who in the world didn’t have numbers on their houses these days? What sort of backwater, country pit was this village, and why did the prospective assistant live here?
To tell the truth, Thorin wasn’t really sure if he was here. He’d already been to more than five doors, frightening the life out of several villagers. But eventually, holding the grubby note at arm’s length towards a startled face had yielded results. A shaky finger pointed down the road to one of many identical cottages, as far as he could tell. Yet this one had “Bag End” written on the mailbox.
Now sweating in his dark blue wool suit, which was entirely unsuited to the spate of warm weather, huffing from several trips up and down the road, Thorin knocked on the door.
It was not a very nice knock. If knocks could speak, this one was only a badge away from declaring everyone in the house under arrest.
It hardly mattered though, because the little man who answered the door— wearing a checkered bathrobe with reading spectacles perched on the end of his nose— looked entirely unimpressed.
“You’re early,” the man sniffed, eying Thorin. “And you look nothing like your picture. Oh well, come in.”
With that, the man turned and strode back into the house, which was when Thorin noticed that he was barefoot, and apparently wearing nothing under his robe. This was not the way an office professional was supposed to behave when they knew they had a job interview.
In this, Thorin was entirely correct.
He set down his briefcase by the door, put his coat on the hook and loosened his tie (after all, he was hardly going to suffer the monkey suit if the interviewee in question wasn’t going to even dignify him with proper clothes). At worst, he could ask for some refreshment, find a way to quickly dismiss the man, and be back to the office in time to give Grey an earful about wasting his afternoon. Nevertheless, Thorin had made it all the way here, down damned cobblestone streets that someone clearly thought were charming, and he was going to at least catch his breath before going back the way he came. He had only just begun to wonder how Mr. Baggins, for that’s what the man’s name was on the file, had seen a picture of him unless Grey had given it to him, when he turned and saw the riding crop.
And the man on the other end of the riding crop.
It was currently pointed at his (not inconsiderable) nose and he stared at it cross-eyed, and down to where Mr. Baggins stood, now in leather pants and little else. Perhaps a bit of harnessing. Thorin barely saw it, because his first instinct was to avert his eyes to the ceiling.
“You’ve been terribly rude, you know, coming in unannounced like that. Why, I barely had time to dress.” The man’s tone had hardly changed since he had let Thorin in, sounding just as put out and unimpressed as when he’d opened his door, only now his words were punctuated with the riding crop sliding down Thorin’s bearded chin, pausing at his throat, before he brought it down with a light thwap against Thorin’s backside.
Thorin jumped.
He may have also yelped.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” Mr. Baggins said. “On your knees, there’s a chap.”
How Thorin found himself looking up at the shorter man, he wasn’t entirely sure. Only there was a vague ache in his knees, the wool of his pant leg was scratching his skin, and there was a strange flush building in his cheeks.
Something had gone unexpectedly wrong.
“I'm here to discuss the position…?” Thorin attempted, because words weren’t exactly lining themselves up in the proper order at the moment. It still felt important to make a note of it, though, just for the record.
“I will be telling you the position, as I recall from our discussion. Just remember the traffic light system, my dear. Red for stop, yellow for slow down, green for go, and the like, and we’ll be right as rain. Don’t be afraid to use it, I intend to put you through the wringer.”
There was very little Thorin could say to that. Well, actually there was quite a lot, or at least there should have been. But someone had rather rudely dug up his most secret, deeply-buried fantasy and somehow managed to bring it to life right before his eyes. Was it his birthday? He was fairly certain he should be annoyed with someone.
He would have to remember to do that later.
It was past midnight when “later” finally came and Thorin collapsed, boneless onto Mr. Baggins’ mattress, having finally been given permission to do so. He was sore, and aching in all the right places, especially from the bite marks, and he was fairly certain he had never been happier.
This feeling of contentment was only strengthened when his Maste-when Mr. Baggins scooted next to him with a contented sigh, and handed him a lit cigarette.
“Professional courtesy,” Bilbo said, for that was his name though Thorin had not believed it at the time. He had found in the course of their activities that it was an apt one, if only for the man’s tool of choice.
“I am not sure how to thank you,” Thorin said, eyes fluttering closed as he took a deep drag of the cigarette, forming a smoke ring despite himself. “The job is yours, if you’ll have it. Though I’m afraid we can only pay commission.”
“And what job is that, precisely?” Bilbo chuckled, as he lit his own.
“Any one you want. I don’t care anymore,” Thorin said, sagging into the mattress. If not for the cigarette, he might have fallen asleep then and there, and it was only consideration for not burning down Mr. Baggins house which prevented him.
There was a buzzing from the the bedside drawer, and as all the various tools and aids had been switched off, Thorin could only distantly assume it was a mobile phone. This was confirmed by Bilbo clucking in annoyance, and straightening up in bed.
“Hang on a mo’, I’ve got a text. Dratted things, always interrupting. It’s been ringing off the hook all night.” Bilbo reached over and pulled out a mobile, the glow of the screen illuminating his face as he murmured aloud to himself. “Something from Gandalf, pah, the busybody… I never respond to those. Oh, and something from you, my apologies for not seeing it sooner…” Bilbo frowned. “Canceled? No, nothing’s been canceled. You’re right… here…” Bilbo said, and looked to Thorin. Then back to his phone. Then he flicked to the message from Gandalf. Then looked back to Thorin.
“Oh.”
“Is something wrong?” Thorin said, propping himself up on his elbows in the face of Bilbo’s expression.
“Oh, nothing, nothing…” Bilbo said with a nervous titter verging on the edge of hysteria. “Let’s just say it’s a very good thing I don’t need the money.”
Thorin’s brow furrowed, and he too sat up, pulling the sheet over himself as he craned to look over Bilbo’s shoulder at the phone. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Well, for one thing, I’m not sure you could afford me.”