Frodo was tired all the time. He slept a lot, taking random cat-naps in the oddest of places throughout the white city. Dinner, the ordering of arms, Gimli's tale of the passage through Rohan, all had been events interrupted by the soft snorts Frodo made in his sleep. Pippin had often looked up from some random task to find himself staring at the mop of black curls resting against folded arms, pale pointed ears poking out comically.
Once Pippin had come back late from guard duty and found Frodo asleep in their little garden, curled into a tight ball on the hard ground with his head roughly pillowed by a misshapen pack. When Pippin shook him awake, demanding quietly that he come in to the warmth and a soft bed, Frodo had grinned bashfully and complied. 'Sorry,' he apologized, indicating his sparse bedroll. 'Force of habit.'
He dozed on horseback while they rode through the grasslands of Rohan, curled up on the ground close to the fire at night whenever they stopped to camp. While visiting the Lady Eowyn he seemed more apt to end up on the hard stone floor than in bed, something Pippin observed with growing alarm. Even in Rivendell his nightly rest was broken with nightmares and he seemed to nap more easily on hard benches and the occasional corner in the vast expanses of corridors.
Yet despite all this random sleeping he grew more wane and sick, the shadows under his eyes darker with each passing restless night. A tiny voice which Pippin preferred to ignore thought that perhaps Frodo was doing this to himself, purposefully seeking out pain instead of comfort. Try as he could to reverse this, his cousin just sank further and further into himself, only even barely responding when Sam, no matter what part of Middle Earth they made camp in, came to carry his too-thin form back to a proper bed.
This continued even they were in Hobbiton, and when Merry and Pippin finally left for home the young Took had to resign to himself that nothing would ever change, Frodo would never allow himself the comforts he so truly deserved as the Ringbearer.
Thus it came as some surprise when, upon visiting Bag End a few months after Sam and Rosie's marriage, Pippin witnessed Frodo willingly preparing for bed and retiring early (with the proper apologies, of course), to the master chamber, emerging the following morning refreshed with cheeks glowing in health. Only when this happened every night for several nights was he convinced it was not some ruse, and he sought answers from Rosie one morning at elevencies.
'How did you do it, Rosie? How did you convince our stubborn Baggins to stop being daft and sleep on a mattress like a proper hobbit?'
She smiled at him across her tea, her eyes twinkling in mischief. 'It was hard work, getting him away from that rock of a cot he insisted on sleeping on, but Sam and I are very stubborn ourselves and would never let the master not sleep in the biggest and best bed in the house.' Frodo chose this moment to return from the kitchens carrying a fresh loaf of surprisingly unburnt bread, and Rosie grinned wickedly at him. 'Besides, I do believe that Sam and I can be very convincing when it comes to who sleeps in what bed. Don't you agree, Frodo?'
The master of Bag End blushed the color of the strawberry spread and sat down quickly, hands coming to rest in his lap. Pippin exchanged a rather wide eyed look with a quietly smirking Merry while Frodo stammered in response to Rosie's and Sam's light kisses on either cheek and decided that it wasn't such a bad idea after all.
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