"Famous for Its Weddings"
Chapter 3: Circling thoughts
(PG. Slash. Sam and Rosie talk about Frodo.)
by Princess of Geekland
They were still now except for their breathing, tangled together in the big bed at Bag End. The rising moonlight slanted through the diamond panes. Sam watched it touch Rosie?s hair, lighting it with silver. He suddenly wanted to let in the smell of the garden. It was May, cool and beautiful under the moon. He carefully shifted Rose so that he could get up and open the window. A soft breeze stirred. He breathed deeply, smiling, and when he turned he saw Rose smiling up at him. She purred and curled against him as he slid back under the covers. They could hear crickets.
"What do you think of married life, Rosie," Sam asked, more to hear her voice than anything, caressing her idly.
"Silly question, love. You know I have practically everything I ever hoped for, this minute. Setting up housekeeping in a place as grand as this? With you? It?s too good to be true, having you back, and having Mr. Frodo back safe. I never gave up hope, Sam, but I missed you so much."
Sam shook his head. One of his strengths was his way of staying in today, not looking back or looking ahead much. He was reluctant to go in memory where Rosie?s words took him -- acknowledging how very close he and Frodo had been to not coming back at all.
"We are safe, Rosie. At least mostly. I wonder -- I hope -- surely Frodo will be well again some day."
He inhaled the warm clean smell of her hair, and with it the cool sweet scent of the night. A new thought gripped him.
"It?s not fair."
"What isn?t?"
"I?m not ungrateful, I?m not complaining..."
"Sam, what?"
"Frodo!" he burst out. "I have you -- love -- this beautiful place -- his place -- and night after night he?s in there alone with his nightmares. We?re in our honey moon, and he?s all alone. And all we owe him, all everyone owes him. It?s not fair. He should be this happy. He deserves it if anyone does."
"I know, Sam." She paused, stroking his hip where it pressed against her backside. She snuggled against him, feeling his heat. Already they fit so well, so easily. "Maybe he?ll marry. And surely he?ll get well, given time. Hasn?t there been some lass to catch his eye? Who did he like, before he had to go away? Before all the trouble came, and your journey?"
"No one," Sam answered glumly. "There?s been no one." No one except me, he thought with sudden insight. No one?s been as close to him as I have.
Sam closed his eyes, tightened his arms around his wife. He turned his face into her neck, deep in her curls, as if to ward off the pain that came with the sudden memory. He and Frodo, alone in the terrible dry plains of Mordor. Two small hobbits in a desert of death. For two weeks they had struggled toward the volcano in desperate attempt to destroy the ring, held to their purpose by sheer will. In the cold exhausted silence as they rested, one impossible night after another, Sam had comforted Frodo. They had clung to each other as if to life itself.
His reluctance to remember was useless. The memory was so clear -- the one cloak of Lothlorien that they had left, covering them. Their heads pillowed on Sam?s tattered pack, side by side, lying as close as he and Rosie were now. Her hair smelled like lavender and morning glories and sunlight. Frodo?s hair had smelled like torch smoke and rotting weeds and dust. He smelled it now, felt the sharp lava digging into his side, felt the pain in his feet and in his tormented, waterless lips and throat.
Night after night Frodo had curled against him, back to Sam?s stomach, hugging Sam?s arms to him, night after night using Sam as his protection from terrors without, and from the brutal pull of the ring within.
It was love that had sent Sam there and kept him there -- love stronger than death, love eager to die rather than to abandon his beloved. He knew it at the time, knew it and said it, then and later -- he could gladly talk to Gandalf and to the others about Frodo and how dear he was to Sam. And that was good.
But now he was realizing how much more there was to it ... as if his utter lack of a word like "wife" or "marriage" with which to label it had kept him from understanding exactly what he felt.
He was realizing all this, because Rosie had taught him, and had needed not a word. Because of her, Sam could bypass words entirely, give up all guessing or wondering. Now he knew exactly, expertly, how healing and silly and beautiful the love of the body could be. He was living it, in his bones, in his flesh. On that thought, he pressed his lips against her naked shoulder. His hands loosened and one moved down her side.
Nothing sweeter than this, that no singer, no poet, could ever run out of words for or tire of. Passion so beautiful between two people. And whatever this was, Frodo was part of it for Sam. Like a puzzle piece clicking into place, he suddenly felt the entirety of his love for Frodo, as if revealed to him for the first time. He closed his eyes again and felt, oh, so vividly, how it would be if Frodo were here, now, in Rosie?s place. His smooth, pale skin. His hair, which smelled like lemons and parchment and soap. Sam inhaled sharply.
He was staggered. How was it possible to want them both like this? No one Sam knew had been in such a state; not that he?d ever had occasion to consider it, and Sam rarely worried without an occasion. He was not given to tormented theories. But he could think of no one. Two men? Not in the Shire. Well, that wasn?t exactly right. He could think of relatives and neighbors here and there through the years, but certainly only as a matter of gossip among the tweens that had been his friends.
He felt he might never understand it, but that didn?t matter. It was still true and real. He tasted the beautiful truth again: He loved and yearned for Frodo just as he loved and yearned for Rosie. And as his thoughts came back in a circle, he thought again that no one had been as close to Frodo as Sam, that no two hobbits he had ever heard of in the Shire had a bond as close as theirs -- the bond of love and quest and healing and return. He knew, again without words and without question, that Frodo loved him. And again he was slapped by the unfairness of it all -- that he should now have his heart?s desire, and Frodo have nothing. They had been meant to go on their quest together -- that was certain. And he was sure they were meant to be together now that they were home.
"Sam," Rosie whispered back to him, drawing out the soft vowel, "I can hear you thinking; I can hear the wheels turning in there.... What is it? Corn under the wheel at Sandyman?s mill? Hello," she cooed to him, rolling over, meeting his eyes, running a nail down his cheek.
"Rosie, can you -- do you --"
He frowned into her eyes. He was raving. What was he about to ask her -- his new bride, his legitimate and respectable wife, the only daughter of the solid and well-established Farmer Tom Cotton of Bywater? Madness.
She frowned back, seeking to understand him, as she always did, seeking to follow his thoughts wherever they led.
"Frodo has no one," Sam began again. He went very red. "No one but me. And I --" He blinked. Solid Tom Cotton and the Bywater farm....Another memory, immeasurably better than Mordor, a memory of the Cotton family and the welcome they gave the four travelers, a welcome like summer rain.
"Rosie, remember those days when we first came back? Last winter, that we spent at your Dad?s? You would come. You would crawl in bed with us at night."
They had never talked of it before. There had seemed to be no need.
She smiled. "Dad had put you in their room, because nothing but the best for Mr. Frodo. He put Mother in with me and he bunked with Nibs."
"I had to stay with Frodo then. I couldn?t leave him, the nightmares were so bad. And in the spring they got worse. March is the worst of all.... But Rosie, those nights with all three of us in the big bed at your Dad?s...those were the sweetest times I ever had, until now. Do you see?"
He paused, still less than sure of his sanity and suddenly terrified of her reaction.
"I know you love Frodo," she said slowly. "You stuck with him, and would have died with him. You two passed through something that no one else understands."
"Yes. But it?s more than that." Sam watched her intently -- her expression so open, so loving. Her eyes made him brave, despite how crazy it still sounded out loud, even to him.
"I do love him, Rosie. And now that I have you, I see how it could be with Frodo. I love him, too, and I want him, too. I don?t know what I?m saying. I love you, Rosie -- if anything?s clear, that should be, but what we have....he could share it." His voice dropped. "I could give it to him, I could love him like this."
He closed his eyes as a wave of desire washed over him.
"Yes, I see," she said thoughtfully. "I see how there?s probably enough of you to go around." And she pinched his waist where it bulged over his hip bone, after weeks of betrothal feasts and home cooking. He laughed, desperately grateful she hadn?t burst into tears or struck him, or worse. He hugged her tightly.
"Rose, I?m mad. Raving. I don?t understand what I?m saying. But it?s true. I love you both. So much."
"Sam, Frodo is a beautiful hobbit. An elvishly beautiful hobbit. Anyone can see that. You don?t have to convince me," she said, smiling.
"He is beautiful," Sam agreed, amazed at being able to put this into words with her.
"And I am thinking we could share," she said, smiling and biting her lower lip. "Hmm...Now that?s truly something for me to think about -- me, under one roof with two fine and handsome and strange hobbits as can be found anywhere in the Shire!"
She raised on one elbow and grinned at her husband as she began to nibble on the pointed tip of his ear. She whispered between nibbles, "I wonder if Frodo ... knows how to do this.... I wonder if Frodo?s lips ... are this ... soft."
Sam moaned. His voice clogged. With what fleeting coherency remained to him, he decided his new and respectable wife wasn?t nearly as proper as he had been led to believe. They didn?t speak again for a long time; their mouths had other business.
As the night grew old and they faded into a damp and tangled sleep once again, Rosie murmured, "Sam...You have to promise me one thing."
"Mmmm?"
"You have to promise to forgive me for being the one to kiss him first."
~
Pretty Good Year