AN- Written for Asexy April 2014. Between in forty minutes between 12 and 1 in the morning, having never seen the movies and not read the book in at least six years. Enjoy!

Poor Old Bilbo, the neighbourhood sighs, as he turns first forty and then fifty. No one will have him now. He never courted, strange thing- it must be the Took blood. At least he's respectable.

No one ever says such things to his face- but he hears it nonetheless. In quiet conversation in the market, half hidden by parasols and pipe smoke. In that half pitying half resigned look in his relatives faces. Even in the Sackville-Baggin's envy of his ownership of Bag End, he can hear it.

Isn't it such a shame that Bilbo's all alone?

And sometimes, he thinks it is. Sometimes, especially in the Winter months where dark memories and half-forgotten fears keep him indoors, he thinks wistfully of laughing voices and tiny feet racing through the halls of Bag End, of someone sitting in the armchair opposite of him next to the fireplace, perhaps working on their own needlecraft as he crochets. Of a companion, to make the empty halls seem like so.

Sometimes isn't always. He enjoys setting his own routine, barely altering it but knowing he could do so at a whim without upsetting anyone. He keeps his own hours and spends the time between first breakfast and second breakfast enjoying Old Toby on his bench, soaking in the sun and the tranquil business of the Shire. He can spend his time doing pretty much whatever he so pleases, be it gardening or crochet or scholarship, so long as his paperwork for Bag End's properties is up to date.

He enjoys the chances he has to speak with Holman Greenfast, his gardener, and all his neighbours and relatives. He entertains as often as he feels like it, no more and no less. He is the sole Master of Bag End, and he enjoys the peace that position provides. If peacefulness sometimes edges into something more like loneliness, no one is ever completely happy with their lives all the time.

He never wants for a lover, never mourns the supposedly empty space in his heart where the love of a wife should be held. He's never dreamt of sweet kisses or tender touches, never ached for the passion of the marriage bed. He lives happily and contentedly, with no holes in his heart or absences in his bed.

He supposes it is unusual, but after witnessing dozens of his cousins go twitterpattered over tween crushes, a couple feeling down over failed courtships, even a few (but still far too many) near inconsolable over ended marriages, and even his own mother's abrupt fading after his father passed, he supposes he's better off.

And when Gandalf brings a hoarde of dwarves to his door- there is no one to mourn him if he never returns, no heart will break over his decision to leave, and no one else to consider in his race down the lane to the Company. And that's just as well.

He's fairly certain he wouldn't have stayed anyway.