One day while it was storming outside and Rosie was napping, Sam was making his way down the main hall of Bag end when he spotted Frodo standing utterly still in the parlor doorway, his hands lightly gripping the golden wood of the frame. There was something about the stiff line in his back that rang familiar warning bells and made Sam pause in his journey to the kitchen. Careful to make enough noise so as not to startle him, he approached Frodo from behind, wrapping one tan arm around thin shoulders and using the other to similarly grip the door frame while he nuzzled the hair at the back of his neck.
“What’re you looking at?” he whispered, bringing his head up to peek over one shoulder and into the room.
Outside of mealtimes, it wasn’t very often that all fourteen children gathered together in one place long enough for anyone to realize just how many fourteen was. When the rain had forced them indoors, the children had, out of necessity, converged together in the largest room in the big smial, and even then they nearly filled it to the corners. Elanor and a grumbling Rose were sitting on the sofa with a basket of colored wool thread between them, winding it into balls. At their feet Primrose has stolen a loop of it and is patiently showing Ruby the beginnings of a Cat’s Cradle. Merry and Pippin were enjoying a rather loud and crude game involving a lot of spitting and the hot embers of the fire, and Frodo-lad looked up from his letter to Meli and Molly to smile at their laughter. Goldilocks sat in a dainty backed chair practicing her posture, sighing contentedly over one of her many suitors and brushing the ringlets of her hair. Sam-lad had been gazing glumly at the raindrops sticking to the window until a vibrant Daisy had roughly whirled him away into a game of tag-and-seek with Bilbo and Robin. Tolman, now Tom, who had recently learned to speak, was busy making squealing toddler responses to the light tickles and squashed faces Hamfast was making.
Frodo had been quiet so long, and Sam so caught in observing the little scene, that when he did speak it came as a hushed surprise. “The babes are near grown up, Sam…”
There was a little quiver in his voice and a shiver to his shoulders, and Sam pulled him back into the darkness of the hallway for comfort. But when Frodo turned to look at him, he saw that yes, those blue eyes were rimmed in red and yes, there were streaks of warm saltwater down his cheeks, but the smile curling subtly at the corners of his mouth and the shimmering sparkle of his eyes told Sam that these were happy tears.
“The babes are nearly grown,” Frodo whispered again, his quivering voice concealing awe and gratitude. “Oh Sam, I thought I wouldn’t live to see any of it…”
~