Sometimes, they spent the whole day in bed, getting up only for food and to tend to Elanor, diving back under the covers as soon as possible. It was often said that the moon was made of honey for newlyweds, but that seemed like a poor consolation prize compared to the feast of stars and suns they found in the soft secret skin of each other.

They'd done all the work that needed doing, and weren't expected anywhere, but Frodo was having one of his days, which was a real pity. Rosie tried not to feel bitter about the situation, but lying on the bed beside him stroking his sweat-sticky hair off his brow, all she wanted to do was twist all Frodo's pain into a tight little ball and drop-kick it out the door, and make his skin glow with another sweat entirely.

"I'm sorry, Rose. You and Sam should be living a different life to the one I force you to have here in these musty rooms."

"Musty? I'll thank you not to insult my cleaning like that! And don't you start with that garbage, either, or I'll give Elanor two saucepan lids to bang whenever a headache takes you."

Frodo's smile was wan and loving. "I wonder if you're real, Rose, you and Sam. Sometimes I think there's no way you could be."

"Oh, we're real, Mr Frodo, and so are you, but this sickness isn't. It's just aftershocks and memory, and we'll beat it yet," Sam put in as he entered the room, putting Elanor in her crib and joining them on the bed, spooning in behind Rosie.

"I don't think you'd stand for anything else," Frodo pointed out. "I want to touch you both so much right now, but I can barely lift my arms." He sighed. "My blood's made of ice."

"Doesn't feel like that to me." Rosie put her palm on his fevered cheek. "Just you lie back and rest, and tell me and Sam what you'd like to see, all right?"

Frodo nodded, hoisting himself up against the pillows and then panting, the effort of the movement had exhausted him.

"Undo the lowest button on his shirt," he ordered Rosie in a soft voice. "And then the one above that."

Her fingers were nimble, revealing Sam's soft gold-brown skin inch by inch.

"Kiss his stomach." Frodo's voice was barely more than breath. Rosie bent her head down and tongued below Sam's navel, holding her laugh in at the muted gasp she heard from one of them. "Now open the next button."

Her fingers weren't as sure and quick this time. Without waiting for more instruction her hands slipped over the skin she knew as well as her own, the occasional freckle and scar accenting rather than detracting from the smooth expanse.

"And the next button, too."

She didn't even bother to try manipulating the eyelet, wrenching the shirt open with such force the button flew aside with a pop.

"Careful! I won't have any shirts at this rate."

"Maybe you shouldn't wear them in the first place, then," Rosie growled, letting her breath ghost across his chest in the same path her hands had taken, raising gooseflesh. "What now then, Frodo?"

"Kiss him." Frodo's whisper was almost a hiss now, and it sent a shiver up Rosie's spine. She turned to look, but it was no scary phantom, just Frodo with his tired and burning eyes, his fragile and lovely face.

Rosie had spent many hours of her young life daydreaming about Samwise Gamgee's lips, and it never ceased to amaze her how much better the reality could be than any childish fantasy. Summer lived the whole year long in his mouth, hot and humid and alive, like all the laughter in the world was contained and waiting to be released through him.

"Oh." Frodo's eyes rolled closed and his breath evened out, the knot of worry caused by pain softening a little between his eyebrows. Rosie broke her kiss with Sam long enough to plant a lingering goodnight on Frodo's mouth, then turned back to her husband, and carried on with undressing him without the aid of instructions.


~

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