The Road to Valinor (Frodo/Sam, Mild R)

[teaselfiction]

The Road to Valinor

by Teasel

This story can stand on its own, but follows the events of Heat Wave.

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"Surely you're not leaving us already, then?"

"Aye, mam, I am at that," said Sam, swinging his cloak around his shoulders. He kissed his mother on the cheek and glanced at the contents of the pot over the kitchen fire. She had left enough porridge for him. Only just enough; why, last winter he wouldn't have called it half a breakfast for a starved rat. But this winter was another thing. He looked back at the table where two of his sisters were still eating, their faces ruddy in the dim light of the flickering oil lamp that hung from the ceiling. It looked as if their portions too had been meagre, smaller indeed than what was left for him, and when that was done there would be no more. Scarce enough to keep them on their feet, Sam thought.

It would be a cheerless Yule this year at the Gamgees. Oh, they had food enough for now, but whether they had sufficient in store to last the winter was a fine question. A fine question indeed. And while food enough to spare was close at hand, his father would not, this winter, accept anything from that source. Frodo Baggins might be feeding half the families in Hobbiton in this long cold season after the drought, but not the Gamgees, no matter how hard he tried. Not this winter. So his mother was right to keep the portions small, when much of the Shire's harvest had turned to dust, and only ready money could buy what little food was to be had.

"Sam," his mother said, indicating the pot. "There's porridge kept hot for you."

The room was silent except for the clink of spoons on plates and the crackle of the fire. At the head of the table his father sat in shadow, saying nothing. Scarce any light came through the window this early; the belated winter dawn had not yet come. "No, thankee, mam," Sam said. "M'not hungry."

"Sam!" she said. "A fine strapping lad in his tweens can't go without something to warm himself in the morning."

"Just a cup of tea for me, then." He sat gingerly at the table as far from his father as possible, and poured the tea himself from the porcelain pot, a gift of old Mr. Bilbo's that was one of the Gamgees' prize possessions. It bore a delicate miniature landscape painted in blue glaze on a background pale as fresh cream. When Sam had been a little lad he would stare at the teapot all through his breakfast, for its picture was the first he had ever seen. Tiny blue people stood before a blue house with more windows than Bag End even, and there were cows in a meadow and great trees fading into the blue distance. Sam could remember looking at the world in the picture and wondering if he could ever enter into it somehow -- perhaps shrink like a lad in one of Mr. Bilbo's magic tales and fly from his place at the table into that marvellous far-off country. He would run all through the meadow, and touch the cows -- would a blue cow feel different from any other? And he'd wander away beneath the blue trees, far away, far enough to see the Elves perhaps.

Then, when he was a little older, he tried to stop dreaming those dreams, but he did ask himself why the hobbit who'd painted such a fine thing had done it all in blue. Surely the world had more colours than that?

His mother brought him back to the present by placing a bowl of porridge before him on the table.

"No, mam," he said quietly, not looking up at her.

"You need your food, lad," she said.

Please, mam, don't make me say it, he thought. But no, better to have it out in the open. "Save it for the girls, mam," he said, weary of this argument, weary of it as he'd been the day before, and the day before that. "I can eat at -- "

"We can feed our own," the Gaffer interrupted, his voice lower and more gravely than usual; he'd been laid up with an ague for nigh on two weeks now. If there's any of us who needs the porridge, it's you, Sam thought. But he had not reached the point where he would say such things to his father out loud. Not yet.

Sam downed his tea in a gulp and stood. "Well, I've got to be going," he said to the room in general. He picked up the bowl his mother had given him and divided the porridge between his two sisters. When he looked at Marigold, she jerked her head down as if to study her plate for flaws, but then she found her courage and looked up again. He winked at her, and she flushed in the lamplight.

"We can feed our own," his father repeated, staring into the fire.

"Aye, you can at that," said Sam. "And I'll be breaking my fast at Bag End." He closed his cloak up tight, for he knew the morning chill would sink into his bones even in the short walk that lay ahead. He nodded to the Gaffer, who returned the gesture with only the slightest flicker of his eyes. "Sir," said Sam. They both stiffened at the formal title, the Gaffer to hear it said, and Sam to hear himself say it, but Sam could think of no other way to speak to his father just now. He kissed his sisters, yanking Marigold's braids, and was rewarded with a repressed giggle.

His mother walked him down the bare polished hallway to the front door. She adjusted his cloak for him, and he let her do it even though they both knew it wasn't necessary. "Ah, Sam," she said, as he smiled down at her -- down, for he was the taller one now -- "you're such a handsome lad." Then she frowned, as if she had said something that troubled her.

He kissed her soundly. "Don't you go turning my head, now," he said, "or you'll start me strutting and crowing like a jackdaw in the woods afore some lad brings him down with a rock."

"You strut and crow? Now that I'll never live to see," she said with a laugh. "I only wish," she said, more sombrely, "that you didn't have to be leaving so early, seeing as -- seeing as how you came back so late last night."

"Mr. Frodo's expecting a guest," Sam said, not quite meeting her eye. "His cousin, Mr. Merry. He'll be here by elevenses and then staying on for a day or two. Mr. Frodo needs me to help him make ready." Sam reached for the door.

"Sam, lad," she said, putting her hand over his. "Will you be coming back home tonight?"

It was a rare thing for her to ask such a question directly, though she must have wondered about it often enough in the last few months. Well, thought Sam, reckon she deserves an answer, then. He took her hand between his larger ones; it seemed fragile and bony, as if he were holding a baby bird. "No, mam," he said. "I've been here two nights now, and I'm thinking I need to be getting back to him." Sam did not have to identify the him.

"Must you -- " she swallowed hard, her eyes fixed on the floor. Even in the dim light Sam could see the flush on her face, so dark it was almost purple, as she worked up the courage to continue. "Must you -- does he make you -- stay -- whenever he asks? Even at Yuletide?"

"Mam!" Sam roared, outraged.

"Hush, lad, the girls . . ."

"It ain't like that!" Sam said. His unsuccessful attempt at a normal tone emerged almost as a hiss. "How can you say such a fool thing of him? How can you even think -- "

"There's times as I don't know what to make of it all. I want to think the best of him, a Baggins and all, but Sam, it's hard . . ."

"Well," said Sam, too angry for the moment to hide any more, "he don't ask. He don't need to ask. Frodo Baggins need ask me for naught, not as long as I live."

She looked at him, uneasy, clearly unable to decide whether what Sam was telling her was better than what she'd been thinking or worse. "Is that the way it is, then?"

"Aye, mam, from the day he came to Bag End."

She looked doubtful.

Well, thought Sam, still angry, if they want to turn a dove into a wolf, there's naught I can do or say to stop them, seemingly. He gave her a last kiss on the cheek and unlatched the door. "Don't you stand so close, now," he warned, "or you'll be catching a chill sure as the sun will rise." And he closed the door behind him, leaving a blast of cold morning air in the hallway.

Outside, Sam took a deep breath and felt the cold enter his lungs, so harsh it was almost painful. But there, the feeling passed; the first breath was always the hardest and then it was easy after that. He exhaled, and warm steam swirled before his face.

Breathe, he thought, aye, just breathe, and as he did the morning's conversation began to drop away from him like an cast-off cloak. The air smelled of ice and of the smoke from the kitchen fires of Bagshot Row. To his right the first red glow of dawn shimmered on the horizon and lit the underside of sullen grey clouds. Ahead of him and down the Hill, the houses of the village were still mostly dark shapes in the mist rising off the Water.

Scattered lights twinkled in a few windows and smoke rose from a few chimneys, showing that the Gamgees were not the only early risers in Hobbiton. Sam hoped that the talk around other breakfast tables had been happier this morning. Though all the hobbits knew they were in for a harsh winter, most could face down short commons at Yuletide with resolute good cheer. Not so the Gamgees, though; not now. The Gamgees had been hungry before, but Sam had given them a new problem, or so they clearly thought.

Sam shrugged unhappily, turned from the village, and headed north across the field that lay between Bagshot Row and Bag End. He tried not to see the sad reminders of the drought that still marred the land: hedges and saplings that had died; empty, silent stalls in the outbuildings of Bagshot Row where young animals should have been. For a nightmarish moment Sam could not stop himself from remembering the lambs on the Cotton farm that summer, rickety little things that sat quietly on a bed of straw in the dark barn, panting in the heat, until one by one . . . But they were gone now, vanished into the cold earth that stretched before him. Sam pushed the image from his mind and looked ahead, where the broad slope of the Hill rushed to meet the sky. He would not have far to go, and with every step his heart grew lighter.

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Bag End. The Gaffer had first brought him there when he was no more than five. Take off yer cap, Sammy-lad, and say hello to Mr. Bilbo, the Gaffer had said. Hello, sir, Sam said, looking up at the old gentlehobbit whose face curled into a thousand kindly wrinkles as he smiled and knelt to look Sam in the eye. So this is Master Samwise. I'm delighted to make your acquaintance. I'm sure we shall be great friends, you and I.

Old Mr. Bilbo had kept his word and given little Sam the run of the smial. Sam was happiest when he was outdoors, but Bag End both mystified and enthralled him all the same: all those dark rooms for one old hobbit living all alone, with not another living creature in them anywhere before young Mr. Frodo came. And the rooms were so different from the ones in Bagshot Row. Soft carpets covered the floors, and nothing was bare or plain. Indeed there were so many gee-gaws scattered about that you could scarce find the space to put down a cup of tea. In the hallway amidst this clutter stood a great clock, taller than Mr. Bilbo even, with a door in the front made of glass. Sam could peer through and see shining wheels and gears turning slowly within, and strange indeed it was to see a thing of wood and metal turn and move like the innards of a live thing. The clock had been made by the Dwarves themselves, and Sam sometimes wondered whether they had thought of it as alive, as they worked so clever-like deep in their cold stone halls away in the mountains to the East.

Most wondrous of all in Bag End, to Sam's mind at least, were the pictures that he could look at for as long as he wished: pictures of old gentlehobbits in Mr. Bilbo's family, and of a great crowd of hobbits and dogs gathering before a river -- the Brandywine, Mr. Bilbo said -- to chase after the White Wolves. And scattered about the smial there were a half-dozen pictures of flowers that Mr. Bilbo said came from an old Tookish book. Sam knew most of them at once: primroses and bluebells and columbine, all drawn larger than life, so as a body could see what they were at once even if he was half-blind. But some of the others left Sam out of his reckoning, for he knew of no such things that grew anywhere in the Shire.

At first he thought the painter had made them up out of his own head, which seemed a daft thing to do with so many real ones to choose from. But Mr. Bilbo said these unknown flowers were real indeed, and that they grew far away, to the South and East. And when Sam heard this he stood stock-still, for it had never occurred to him that the great wide world contained so much. So he stared and stared at the strange flowers in the pictures, and repeated their beautiful names under his breath, and he almost wept at not knowing how they would look in the real light of day, or how their leaves would feel under his fingers, or a thousand other things that no picture could tell him. For pictures were but ink on paper after all.

If ink alone could have given Sam his heart's desire, he would have had it soon enough at Bag End, for besides all the other wonders there were books, hundreds of them. When Sam was eleven or twelve or so, Mr. Bilbo took it into his head to teach him his letters, and during the long winter months when the Gaffer could spare Sam from outdoor work, Sam would sit on the red patterned carpet by the parlour fire and puzzle out the words that Mr. Bilbo wrote down. And when the lessons were over for the day, and the frost crept up the dark windows, Mr. Bilbo would ask Sam to put another log on the fire and would tell tales of Elves and Dwarves and kings and dragons.

Sam would sit at his feet and listen, though at times the folk in the tales seemed plain foolish to him. Take these great big Men, now. They'd suffered at the hands of the Enemy many a time, but then they never had the sense not to trust him, did they? Oh, the adventures sounded grand, and Sam sometimes wondered what young Mr. Frodo might think of him if Sam were a hero on a great horse going off into the Wild. But some of the heroes might just as well have stayed home in their beds and slept peaceful-like, if they'd put their minds to it proper.

One of Mr. Bilbo's favourite tales told how the Elves were passing from Middle-earth and sailing, sailing away to the peace of Valinor. Being a practical-minded hobbit even so young, Sam wanted to know exactly where Valinor was and how long it took the Elves to get there, and one winter's evening when he was twelve he made so bold as to interrupt the tale and ask this question. Mr. Bilbo said as how he didn't really know, for the Sundering Seas had removed the lands of Valinor from the circles of the world. Sam frowned on receiving this answer and said, "Is this Valinor up in the sky, then, Mr. Bilbo?"

"Why, Samwise, what an extraordinary question," Mr. Bilbo said, from the depths of an armchair so large that it answered Sam's idea of a throne. He swirled his brandy in his glass, and the firelight gleamed off the dark, rich liquid. "Valinor is over the sea, at least that's what the tales say."

"Well, Mr. Bilbo, is it on the earth or off it then?"

Silvery laughter erupted from across the parlour, as over the back of the couch there unexpectedly appeared the dark curls and dancing blue eyes that had made Sam's world turn from the moment he saw them. It was young Mr. Frodo, and he was laughing at him. "Silly Sam," he said, showing the dimple in his cheek, "it's both, of course."

Sam felt all the blood rush to his face at this unexpected attention from such a quarter. Back in those days Mr. Frodo didn't take as much notice of Sam as Mr. Bilbo did, for Mr. Frodo was always off by himself reading books that Sam couldn't make head nor tail of, some of them in Elvish, even. It was a rare thing indeed for Mr. Frodo to be keeping them company in the parlour rather than brooding off by himself Lady-knows-where. Just my luck, Sam thought glumly, that he should chance to be nigh when I showed I'm a ninnyhammer as don't belong here. On the earth or off it, indeed.

And worse yet, Frodo looked fair ready to launch into one of those flights of fancy that made Sam's head spin. He spilled off the couch where he'd been lying, a lanky and still somewhat awkward collection of arms and legs, and joined Sam down on the carpet. "Don't be so skeptical, Sam," he said.

"Begging your pardon," Sam said stiffly, uncertain of whether he should move aside to give Frodo more room. He didn't yet know what "skeptical" meant, but clearly it was bad.

His young master laughed. "You look as if I'm trying to make you eat spinach and convince you it's cake," he said. "Don't you see, the Straight Road is one of the most beautiful things about the story. Just think of it!" He leaned back on the floor, one arm flung carelessly above his head so that his delicate pale fingers strayed all too close to the fire, or so Sam thought.

Sam kept a nervous eye on that hand so he could be ready to rescue it in case, as seemed all too likely, Mr. Frodo should forget himself completely and be burnt, but Frodo rattled on oblivious. "When the ships sail on the Straight Road, they are on the earth and beyond it," he said, staring upwards in such a trance that Sam glanced up too, away from the endangered hand, half-believing he'd see the ships of the Elves sailing across the ceiling. Nothing was there, however, but the shadows cast by the flickering flames, so Sam resumed his post. If Mr. Frodo moved an inch the wrong way, why, he'd lose a finger before he could say another word. Sam wondered if he should say something, or better, if he should just take that soft hand in his own and move it someplace where it would be safer.

But Frodo was still to all intents and purposes at sea. "They sail the grey waters," he intoned dreamily, "and pass as it were on a mighty bridge invisible, through the air and breath of flight, and yet -- and yet, Sam, never once do they leave the waves, and the foam still breaks over their prows when first they hear the music of Valinor drift toward them in the dawn." He craned his neck to peer up at Mr. Bilbo. "I'm right, aren't I?"

"My dear boy, I've no idea where these notions of yours come from," Mr. Bilbo said with a smile. "I don't think at any rate that the ships sail through the sky. Why, in a good storm the Elves would be shaken right out and fall into the sea and drown!"

And the old hobbit chuckled heartily at his own humour, toying with something in his pocket as he took another sip of his brandy. But Sam, who had been guarding Frodo's hand all this while, saw the fingers twitch as if they had been struck with a whip. When Sam looked cautiously at Frodo's face, there were shadows beneath the blue eyes. Whatever Frodo was seeing on the ceiling now, it certainly was not Elves.

Drown, Sam thought, aye, drown like his mum and dad. And he wondered that so great a personage as Mr. Bilbo did not have sense enough to see pain and misery and need when they lay right there before his eyes.

A fierce protectiveness surged through him. "D'you think, Mr. Frodo," he said, "that a body could ever find the start of this Straight Road, here on this earth, if we looked for it?" Sam half-suspected that all this talk of the Straight Road was so much nonsense, but Frodo needed to be brought back to the present, and that right quick.

Mr. Bilbo laughed, but Frodo turned his head to face him, and the smile restored to those eyes pierced Sam's heart in a way that at the time he was still too young to understand completely. "Perhaps, Sam," Frodo had said, "we'll find it together someday, if we look hard enough."

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Sam knew he had found it now.

Oh, he knew too that it was a foolish fancy, worse in its way than anything he'd ever chided Frodo for, and Frodo could still talk nonsense by the hour when the mood took him, for all that he'd come of age more than a year ago. But if the straight path to Valinor was both on the earth and off it, then this winter, for Sam, the walk from Bagshot Row to Bag End was the same: both a tramp across a field and a pathway soaring through the stars. And at the end of it lay everything Sam could imagine wanting from paradise.

Most of Bag End he could gladly do without. Truth be told, Sam wanted nothing of the clock ticking dully in the hall, or of the books gathering dust on their shelves, or of the flowers trapped lifeless and soulless in those sad, still pictures. No. Bag End held only one thing that was truly dear to him: Frodo.

Sam walked -- or floated -- across dead grass stiff with frost, and at one level of his mind he registered the direction of the wind and the colour of the clouds and a half-dozen other things that he didn't need to think about consciously, and he said to himself: Snow, aye, by tea-time at the latest. But another part of him was already with Frodo, and noticed his surroundings only insofar as they could be related to Frodo in some way -- which most of them could, if Sam put his mind to it, from the least blade of grass to the vast sky above.

Take that great tree in the middle, now, Sam thought, its bare branches twisting dark up against the clouds: that tree said Frodo as loud and clear as if it could talk. Folk had called it the Party Tree ever since Mr. Bilbo had given his birthday speech there last year, just before he left Frodo and ran off for parts unknown. But for Sam the tree brought to mind other things entirely. He smiled and almost lost himself in a memory of Frodo leaning against that tree on a hot summer night a few months back, his blue eyes wide with wonder and longing, his lips half-parted and silently begging to be kissed, and the taste of them, the softness, the heat . . . Easy there, Sam Gamgee, he warned himself, or you'll trip on a root and hit your fool head, and then where would he be?

Where Frodo would be, apparently, was without warmth or light. Bag End was a row of dark shuttered windows on the side of the Hill, and no smoke came from its chimneys, not that Sam had expected anything different at this hour. The empty rooms of the smial would be cold.

Unlatching the gate carefully, Sam walked through the kitchen gardens. He shoved his hands in his pockets and put his head down as he passed the sickeningly empty trellises where the rose bushes had died in early autumn. They had been too far gone to be revived by the late summer rains that had broken the drought at last. The roses had been beautiful, but that was not the only reason why Sam felt like a part of him had died with them. In the first confused flush of his love, what he had needed more than anything was some way to make the shadows and doubts disappear from Frodo's eyes, some way to tell him how wonderful, how beautiful, how perfect he was, and how thoroughly Sam meant to make up to him for the loss of Bilbo and his other kin.

But without the garden to speak for him, how could he speak at all? Sam felt as if the drought had taken his voice along with everything else. For he couldn't say fine things like Frodo could, and when Frodo lay in his arms at night and murmured love-words so sweet that Sam that felt he must be dreaming, Sam himself could say nothing in return but Hark at you and your fancies now.

Fool, Sam said to himself. He still couldn't pass the trellis without feeling this pain as sharply as if he'd had to cut the dead bushes down yesterday. They were unfinished business to him, business he couldn't even begin to finish until the long dark winter ended and he could speak to Frodo again in the language he knew best.

The barricade of the trellis behind him, Sam quietly let himself into Bag End by the back way. He rubbed his hands together to warm them as his eyes adjusted to the dark entryway. Some grey light leaked in through the shuttered windows, but beyond that the sheltered hallway was pitch black. It didn't matter; Sam could find his way around Bag End with his eyes closed and his legs tied together if need be.

By rights, Sam thought, he should draw water and start the kitchen fire. He paused, though. The ghost of the morning's talk with his family still lurked uneasily in his mind, and without warning a picture of the Gaffer, angry and silent and brooding, came to Sam unbidden. Almost without thinking Sam started down the hall to the one person who could make that picture disappear. Nay, he thought, coming to a stop, that's no way to look after him, to run to him like a calf as has lost its mam.

On the other hand, just as on all other mornings when Sam had been unable to sleep at Bag End, he needed to be sure that Frodo had not been wakened by one of those dreams that plagued him so. So Sam stood in the dark hallway, torn. He'll be needing his breakfast, he thought, looking for some excuse not to run to Frodo out of sheer longing. Aye, but he won't eat naught if he's been awake and laying alone in the dark for hours, another part of his mind answered, and this thought resolved Sam's internal debate and sent him hurrying down the hallway.

He found the right door by instinct and by feel. When he opened it the dim light seemed bright to him: he could make out the bed in the centre of the room, the cedar chest before it, the bookshelves and the desk piled high with Frodo's things. The Baggins clutter was far worse in here than in the parlour and the study, where even Frodo admitted that some sort of space had to be made to allow his guests a bit of breathing-room. Only the bed appeared almost empty: it contained nothing, it seemed, but a heap of quilts and blankets at its centre.

Sam approached the heap. His eyes were sufficiently accustomed to the dark so he could make out its layers. On top, the great fluffy goosedown quilt in white and green; it had been Mr. Bilbo's. Peeking out from underneath it here and there in the general disarray was the yellow quilt, not nearly so fine; it had been Frodo's from his childhood at Brandy Hall.

Two goosedown quilts. The Gaffer would be shocked at such wastefulness even from a Baggins, but Frodo seemed to need them -- though not when Sam was there. On the nights when Sam could stay, only one quilt was needed -- the yellow one. Beneath it Frodo would curl close and warm against Sam in one of the arrangements of arms and legs that they had discovered in the past few months. All were awkward in theory, but in practice they proved to be variations on the theme of bliss: bliss, to have Frodo's back moulded to his front as they lay nestled together on their sides, spoon-fashion; or bliss, to have Frodo's head burrowing into his shoulder, their legs tangled together anyhow, and Frodo's heartbeat strong and sure against Sam's chest.

Sam actually preferred this more complicated sleeping position slightly because it allowed him to watch Frodo's face as he dreamed. The sight was so beautiful that Sam preferred it to sleep, and he would have lain awake all night to watch it if he could. But Sam had another reason to keep watch as well. For sometimes he would wake to a restless stirring against him, and to the sound of strange little sobbing breaths, as if Frodo were choking in his dreams. With his heart aching, Sam would look down at the pale face so close to his and see brows drawn together in a frown and dark lashes glittering with tears.

The first time this had happened Sam had been aghast. He had kissed Frodo awake, unwilling to leave him in the grip of what was so obviously a nightmare. But while Frodo had certainly appreciated the kisses and what inevitably followed, the dreams proved to be such a common thing with him that Sam realized they would neither of them get enough rest if he woke Frodo each time. So Sam had learned to close his arms a little tighter around Frodo, and perhaps to stroke his hair while they both still half-slept, and that alone would do the trick, seemingly. The dream's hold on him broken, Frodo would burrow a bit closer to Sam and sigh, and would perhaps murmur something like Oh, Sam before falling into a deeper sleep. Eventually the quiet rhythm of his breathing would lull Sam to sleep as well. And in the morning, when Sam said, What was that nightmare that woke you? Frodo would stretch and smile and say, There was no nightmare, Sam; I dreamed of you.

But that was when Sam could stay. When he had to return to Bagshot Row, matters were different, of course. The first order of business was to find some way to leave that didn't feel like someone was tearing his heart and Frodo's right out of their bodies.

Sam had told his mother the truth when he said that Frodo never asked him to stay, for Frodo said over and over that he understood that Sam had obligations to his family, that Sam had to leave sometimes, that Sam was not free to do as he pleased. But there was asking and asking. Frodo could lie with his lips (Go, Sam: I'll be fine; I'll see you in the morning), but he couldn't lie with his eyes, which went dark and blank whenever Sam made for the door. And he certainly could not lie with his whole body. If Sam had to get out of bed and leave Frodo there alone, Frodo would pretend to be asleep, but his breathing would be ragged and would almost stop. Nor, when Sam gently started to disentangle himself, could Frodo keep from reflexively tightening his hold and then relaxing it with slowly quivering muscles, as if Frodo's body were fighting to make Sam stay, even as his will struggled to let Sam go.

So Sam would ignore the pretence and kiss him and instruct him to get some sleep, and Frodo would smile with his eyes closed and say quite clearly, "I am asleep, Samwise, can't you tell?" Sam would dress hastily in the dark, glancing back every now and then, just because he needed to be sure all was well, and just because he couldn't stop himself from looking at Frodo, not to save his own soul. When he was dressed completely he would return to the bed and kiss Frodo one last time before leaving, although this was dangerous, for on several occasions Frodo had pulled him into a kiss far deeper than the one Sam had intended. A half-hour later Sam would find himself faced with the same problem of how to leave the bed, and he would want to leave even less, if possible, than he had before.

But leave he did at last, one way or the other, though before he did he would take the green and white quilt from its place in the cedar chest and tuck Frodo well into it to keep the cold away. This tucking-in was an elaborate process, since Frodo didn't sleep under a quilt so much as inside it, being unable to rest until all available bedcovers including the sheets were folded securely under his feet. This accomplished, Sam would turn and walk away, trying not to hear the sigh from behind him, and he would think, I hope he can bear this, for I know I can't, not nohow.

Yet he would stumble regardless across the cold field to Bagshot Row, and run the gauntlet of the Gaffer's suspicious stare, and lie in bed listening to his brothers snore, and think, Frodo. His entire body would miss the feeling of Frodo and the smell of him and the warmth of him and the beating of his heart and the music of his breathing. He missed these things so much that it felt as if someone had taken all the air and light out of the world. And in Bagshot Row they all expected him to walk and talk and carry on as always, when he was gasping for breath in the dark.

But then he would find himself here: in Bag End, in this room, in this bed.

Sam rested his hand tenderly on the disordered heap of quilts. Poking out from the top was something that strongly resembled a birds' nest. Sam sighed. Look at you, now, he thought, another restless night you've had, with more of those nightmares as sure as I live and breathe, no matter what nonsense you spout when I ask you, Frodo Baggins. And he knew that under the beautiful eyes there would be circles so dark that they would look almost like bruises, and that the flawless soft skin would be marked by fine lines across each cheek, lines that appeared whenever Frodo was tired or unhappy, as if his soul were united so closely to his body that his sadness could leave scars.

Sam reached for the possible bird's nest, and as he expected, what looked like tangled twigs and grasses resolved themselves into soft dark curls as he stroked them gently. From the depths of the bedcovers came a deep sigh. "Sam?" said a muffled voice.

Sam thought of saying something, of telling Frodo -- what? He thought of the garden outside, barren in its long winter sleep, and of all the words of love that he did not know how to say. Until the spring came he had no choice but silence, and yet silence would leave Frodo drowning in whatever it was that grieved him so.

No, thought Sam, whatever your secret troubles may be, whether you tell me about them or no, I don't mean to let this happen to you. Not to you, not to me, not no more.

The curls stirred beneath his fingers, warm and silky and real.

"Sam?" the bedcovers inquired sleepily.

"Aye, it's me," said Sam. Fine words you have for him, he told himself gloomily, but didn't berate himself further because the bedcovers didn't give him time: not when they moved restlessly and said --

"It's cold."

Sam carefully disentangled his fingers from the curls. "Hush, now," he said in response to the sigh of protest from the bedcovers. He backed away a few steps, only to the other end of the bed, and took off his cloak, then his thick woollen weskit, folding them both neatly and laying them on the cedar chest as was his habit. It was cold. He should build a fire --

"Sam." The tone was hesitant, almost questioning, and the voice was still drowsy. But the meaning was clear. Sam hastily shucked off his breeches and started on his shirt buttons; the shirt itself could come off later, but what was important right now was to get under those covers.

But as he looked at the bed, he frowned. A bit more light was squeezing through the window now, and he could see something in the middle of the bed besides the covers, something small -- an envelope. Was it -- yes, Sam could see it now, the familiar heavy parchment and the thick red wax seal. Sam had seen this here before, of a morning. He didn't know what was in it; the only time he'd asked, Frodo had smiled and said oh, some old thing of Bilbo's, in a voice that Sam had come to know, one that made his heart sink to his toes each time he heard it. It was the same voice that Frodo used when Sam asked him about his dreams: It was nothing, Sam; I dreamed of you.

But if the envelope really was nothing, why would Frodo bring it to his bed in the first place? This behaviour was so strange that Sam had difficulty even imagining it: Frodo getting up in the night, alone and naked and shivering in the empty smial; wrapping himself up in one of his quilts and trailing it along as he padded down the hall to find the envelope in the cold parlour where it was kept.

But Sam had never questioned Frodo about this any further. Sam himself felt strangely reluctant to discuss it, and Frodo never seemed to want to either. He never even touched the thing while Sam was there, and he was always content each morning to let Sam return it to its place in the depths of a great oaken chest. Not just content, more than content: happy, or so it seemed from the way Frodo's shoulders would relax once the thing was gone, and his tiny frown would smooth away as if it had never been. So Sam asked no questions, but silently took the envelope away each morning when he had not stayed at Bag End, careful not to disturb the round hard something -- a piece of jewellery, perhaps? that jiggled and scratched inside the envelope when it moved.

Was it possible to hate an envelope, a folded bit of paper? Sam shook his head, trying to dispel the wholly irrational feeling of loathing that flooded him whenever he saw it. There it was, on the very bed that Sam had torn himself from a few hours ago. Close by Frodo, closer than it would have been on the nightstand. It grew more and more crumpled and worn as the weeks passed, as if Frodo had held it for long time in the night, turning it over and over in his hands. Turning it but not opening it, at least not yet.

Sam squinted at the thing. Yes, the seal was still undisturbed. For some reason this discovery almost overwhelmed him with relief. Well, he thought, it won't do to have the thing lying about where it'll get lost or trodden on, most likely. He sat on the far end of the bed and reached for the envelope; he picked it up by one corner. He wondered what it was.

"Sam?"

At the sound of that voice all Sam's questions lost their urgency, like half-forgotten nightmares in the clear light of day. He didn't care what it was. He didn't even want to take the time, this morning, to put back in its place. That could come later; Frodo needed him now. Sure enough of his own heart, for once in his life, to be careless in small things, Sam tossed the envelope into a dark corner where it fell, unregarded, behind a stack of books.

The bedcovers shifted and Frodo's head emerged from them as he sat up, and oh, what a sight he was; his hair mussed, his delicate skin just as bruised from a wakeful night as Sam had feared, his exposed face and neck ghost-pale in the grey half-light from the window. For a fraction of a second Sam wondered whether Frodo would be angry at him for tossing the envelope away like that.

But he didn't seem angry at all. He looked at Sam, blinking sleepily at him from across the length of the feather bed.

And then he smiled. "You're back," he said.

Suddenly, with no warning, as if he had stepped into another world, Sam felt purely happy. It was morning in Bag End. There was Frodo, on one end of the bed; here he was on the other. Perhaps they weren't drowning after all, however it might feel when they were apart; perhaps when they were together in this bed they would look down and see the stars below them and laugh.

Frodo twisted a corner of the bedcovers in his long pale fingers; he looked at Sam almost shyly through lashes still heavy with sleep. "Good morning," he said. He yawned, trying not to, then laughed apologetically at his own yawn.

"Morning," said Sam. He knew that he was grinning like a fool, and he didn't care.

"Samwise," said Frodo. He had recovered from the yawning fit, and now the smile returned, hovering on his lips as if it were unsure of its welcome. His chest expanded as he took a deep shaky breath, and Sam could tell he was about to say something that he wasn't quite sure he should. What would he --

"You are wearing too many clothes," Frodo said, but Lady help him, Sam thought, though he's said it plain enough, he's blushing.

Sam glanced down at his bare legs and half-open shirt. "I am at that," he remarked.

"Perhaps I can help?" Frodo held out his arms, and the bedcovers slipped from his shoulders, exposing him to the waist. Sam gasped, just a little, though he tried to hide it -- unsuccessfully, to judge from Frodo's widening smile. This was exactly the sight Sam had dreamed of, alone in Bagshot Row last night and every night this winter when he hadn't been at Bag End. And he'd dreamed of it even before that, since -- well, ever since he had been old enough to think of such things. And here was the dream made flesh: that skin so smooth and soft, a silken surface over wiry muscles that had surprised him with their strength. Sam knew those muscles by touch, now: the way they would quiver under his fingers and tongue, then harden abruptly as Frodo pulled him close, then writhe beneath him and turn at last to flowing liquid steel when Frodo threw his head back and moaned Sam's name.

Sam wanted to say how beautiful all this was, but couldn't think of the words. He wondered if somewhere in all of Mr. Bilbo's books there was anything, some poem perhaps, that could capture even half of what happened to the world when Frodo smiled like that. But with the living breathing Frodo sitting there so close, the idea seemed all wrong-headed somehow, like one of those flowers in the pictures on the wall. They were fair enough, but only enough to make the heart ache for something more. They had no soft petals yielding to the touch, no delicate trembling motion bending with every breath of wind. They bore no sweet scent to make senses reel and heartbeat quicken: no life, no life at all.

And Sam thought, No. Reckon there ain't no words for this. He cleared his throat.

"Look at you, now," he said. "You're all over goosebumps."

Frodo laughed softly, and his eyes caught Sam's in gaze that heated him to his toes. "So are you," he said. "As I believe I've mentioned, it's cold."

Sam didn't feel particularly cold, not any more. Frodo was right about the goosebumps, but they were caused by something else. Still, the point was hardly worth the arguing. "You're right," he said. "It's fair freezing in here."

"I have an idea about how we might fix that," Frodo said. He shifted his weight, rolling forward onto his hands and knees, and began to wade through the tangled quilts towards Sam's end of the bed. Now the smile on his face made Sam's heart rate double.

But Sam saw no reason why Frodo should have everything his own way before he'd been awake even two minutes. "Shall I light a fire, then?" he asked, watching happily as a slightly messy but utterly beautiful Frodo Baggins, now only half-covered by quilts barely clinging to his waist, made his way purposefully across the bed.

"No."

"Make you bacon and eggs for breakfast?"

"No." The quilts were in severe danger of falling off.

"Fetch all your warm winter clothes and wrap you up in them tight?"

"Definitely no."

Sam opened his mouth to make another, equally silly suggestion, but forgot it when the quilts dropped completely and Frodo kicked them absently to the floor with one exposed leg.

"Sam," Frodo whispered, "you're so beautiful when you smile." Any comment Sam wanted to make was stopped by Frodo's lips on his, cool at first, and almost hesitant, but soon warm and insistent when Sam instinctively took Frodo in his arms.

What a revelation it had been, over the past few months, learning every little curve and hollow of this body. And though Sam did nothing just yet but hold him and let their mouths and tongues become reacquainted, yet he knew from the very first touch how it would be, what they would do. He knew that those dark nipples would tighten under his lips, that Frodo would shudder softly when Sam kissed his way down the flat stomach to the barely visible mole just under Frodo's right hip. He knew that he would pause there, teasing with lips and tongue until Frodo squirmed and laughed and begged, and that he would continue downward only when something in the desperateness of these responses told him that the moment was right, that it had to be now.

Sam lay back, carefully pulling the slim pale body down on top of him, and they melted together into a kiss that went on and on and on. It would probably have gone on all morning if Frodo had been able to focus his attention in any one place. But he couldn't, for as he slipped one hand into Sam's open shirt, he trailed his lips over Sam's face, his neck, his chest, as if he hadn't seen Sam for years and couldn't believe that he really was there.

"Hush now," Sam said, stroking Frodo's back, for there seemed something panic-stricken in this frantic movement, in the too-rapid beating of Frodo's heart against his own.

Gradually Frodo seemed to respond to this treatment, for his kisses grew slower and the tension in his body eased, until at last he thoroughly relaxed. A little too thoroughly, for he broke off the kisses to yawn again, his mouth resting close to Sam's ear. Sam chuckled. "Sleepy?" he inquired of the warm naked creature draped languorously over him.

"No," Frodo protested. He made some minute adjustment to his position, and every angle of their bodies abruptly fit together, perfectly, as if this were their natural state of being. "Sam," Frodo murmured in his ear.

"What?" Sam asked, oddly lulled, despite the growing urgency in his body, by the now slow and steady beating of Frodo's heart on top of his.

"Thank you."

"What for?"

"For this." Soft lips kissed his ear. "For coming back." The lips progressed to his neck. Then Frodo lifted his head so they could look at each other, and said in a whisper, soft but clear, "For finding me again."

They both shivered.

The tiny part of Sam's brain that was not reeling with joy thought, He's cold. With practiced ease he flipped them around so that Frodo was underneath him. "Course I did," he said. But the sentence did not feel finished. So he finished it. "I always will, Frodo-love. Don't matter where you are, neither."

Slowly, he traced the curve of Frodo's upper lip, already slightly tender and swollen with kissing.

Frodo smiled, and for a moment Sam could only look, lost in those dancing blue eyes. Blue: aye, blue. If the world had more colours than that, Sam didn't care, for to him, blue was now all colours wrapped into one. In those eyes lay every field and forest and meadow that Sam had ever loved or ever would love. And he wanted nothing but to wander forever through this marvellous far-off country in his arms.

Perhaps he would, but this was a dream for the vast uncharted future that stretched before him: a clouded pathway, unknown and unknowable, that soared from the familiar things of this earth and rushed into infinite time. But wherever that pathway took him, it started here, with Frodo, now. And the heartaches of the night before, and of the nights to come, were all, for the moment, forgotten.