For the longest time, Sansûkh’s Thorin knew nothing of the Ring. It was just a thing Bilbo used now and then to avoid unpleasant visitors, nothing more. 

So when he visited Bilbo through Gimlin-zaram, he would have seen the life Bilbo led in Hobbiton. He diligently applied himself to learning everything there is to know about it, and Bilbo. He was there a lot.

I think that when he dreamed of an everybody lives AU, Thorin would have placed himself into the scenes that he could see before his eyes. I don’t think he would mean to. But the thoughts would rise unbidden, sweet and painful, and he would entertain them for a second or two before banishing them. 

I think he would have wistfully imagined that Bilbo, humming as he mulched diligently around his tomatoes, was fully aware of his presence sitting on the garden bench. That Bilbo might turn around at one point, push his gardening hat back on his head, and say, grinning, “well, if you’re going to be a great lazy layabout, can’t you make yourself useful and bring me something cool to drink?”  And he would a-grumbling go and bring Bilbo his drink, a glass of that light Hobbitish small-beer, and demand a kiss as payment for his errand. And Bilbo would taste of summer and sunshine and sweat.

He could dream that there was a plate in front of the other, empty space at the kitchen table each night at dinner, where he sat. That it was his turn to do the washing up, and so Bilbo might rest tonight. That he really ought to get around to mending that broken leg on the cast-iron stove.

That the crooked squashy red chair opposite Bilbo’s armchair was, in fact, Thorin’s.

That it was a nightly ritual to sit there with book and pipe at the end of the day, quiet and comfortable together in each other’s company, their feet stretched towards the fire. 

And he would sit on that garden bench, and sit at that kitchen table, and sit in that crooked red chair, and know that it looked exactly as it ought to – if only he were alive.