The fact of the matter was, and Sam felt it was best to be very clear on this point, that he was in love with Rosie Cotton. It wasn't just that they'd been friends all their lives, or that she'd gone hunting for frogs with him once in the pouring rain when her brothers were too worried about getting all wet to set foot out of doors, or that her curiosity about his gardening was genuine and gratifyingly insatiable. It was her eyes, her hair, the fact that in recent years she'd filled out in all the places that girls were supposed to; the fact that she'd acquired that smooth, strange grace that made lasses so different from lads. It frightened him a little, that burgeoning strangeness, but that was only because he was shy. Not, and Sam was very clear on this point, because he was not entirely sure that his own reaction to that strangeness was quite all that it should have been. He loved Rosie; and dreams dragged unwilling from the depths of his brain when he was asleep and couldn't control what said brain did meant nothing, nothing at all. Of all the points that he was clear on, he was clearest on that one. Dreams meant nothing at all. "Good morning, Sam," Frodo said cheerfully from behind him, and Sam started so badly that he ran the point of his pruning shears into the side of his hand. "Gmd mnng, Mifr Fro'o," he answered around his hand, and tasted blood in his mouth as Frodo, looking guilt-stricken, dropped down onto the grass beside him. "Sam, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to startle you. Here, let me --" Frodo pried Sam's hand out of his mouth, pulled his own shirt out of his pants, and clamped the spotless white linen over the wound. "Nononono, Mr. Frodo, it's fine," Sam protested, watching as blood seeped through the cloth. "You'll ruin your shirt --" "Sam, really," Frodo said in fond exasperation. "Which do you think is more important, the shirt or your hand? No, don't answer that. Your hand is." Sam dragged his gaze away from Frodo's shirttail, which happened to be sharing the line of sight with a slim expanse of white silk skin, and up to eyes the color of the summer sky. Mesmerizing, those eyes; but only, only, because they reminded him of Rosie's eyes. Not because they were ringed by lashes that put any lass in the Shire to shame -- Including Rosie, some treacherous part of his mind piped up, and he squashed the thought with far less mercy than he would have shown a slug that threatened his Mr. Frodo's beloved roses -- no, wait, not his Mr. Frodo, his Mr. Frodo's roses -- Oh, bugger, Sam thought, and very nearly said it aloud. "Sam, what's wrong? You look as if you can't decide whether to be white as a ghost or red as a beet," Frodo laughed. Now, there was a good and clear reason why Rosie could hold Sam's hand by the hour and never send such a jolt of lightning through him that it felt like the hair on his feet would straighten out and stand on end, and that reason was. Erm. No, wait, yes, the reason was that holding hands with Rosie was good and comfortable and right, whereas having the Master holding his hand as if it were his job to do for Sam instead of the other way round was an unnerving inversion of the natural order of things. "I'm fine, Mr. Frodo, sir. It gave me a start, that's all." Frodo lifted his shirttail and dabbed at the cut, directing an alarmingly sober attention to it and seemingly deliberately not looking at Sam. "I do wish you wouldn't call me that," he said quietly. "Call you -- which?" Sam asked in alarm, thoughts racing back over what he'd just said to be sure that he hadn't inadvertently called the Master something that he had, being very clear on yet another point, never even considered calling him. "Either. Sir or Mr. Frodo either one. I wish you'd just call me Frodo." "I'm your gardener," Sam pointed out, reminding the both of them, as if he himself needed reminding. Because he certainly did not. "You're my friend, Sam. I don't have so many of them that I can afford to insist that they all remember their relative places in the social hierarchy. Even if I did, I wouldn't ask it of you." If it were Rosie tending to his cut like this, she might have lifted his hand to her lips and pressed a slow, soft kiss into his palm. "If the Gaffer ever caught me getting that far above myself, he'd have a few things to say and no mistake." Brilliant blue eyes flicked back up to his, filled with rueful humor. "Don't you ever do anything that you don't tell your Gaffer about, Sam?" Things like, for example, pulling Rosie to him in the middle of some hypothetical garden, kissing the shadow of melancholy out of her face, making love to her right there in the open air and bright sun? "N-not really, Mr. Frodo, no." "Interesting household you must live in, Sam. I think your hand's stopped bleeding." "So it has." And any moment now Frodo was going to take his hand away, which would be completely fine, but it wasn't really Sam's place to draw back first. There was a moment's silence before Frodo sat back on his heels and said, "Well. I should be getting back inside. I have things to do, and I'm interrupting you." Sam opened his mouth and then closed it again, unsure what to say. Frodo drew his hand back slowly, and it was surely pure accident that his thumb slid around to stroke lightly over Sam's palm. "Will you come in for lunch?" Sam cleared his throat and looked up at the sun, checking the time. "If you'd like, Mr. Frodo." "I'd like. I'll let you know when it's ready." Frodo rose, dusted off his trousers, and headed inside. Sam sighed, returned to the pruning, and thought rather dismally about how desperately in love he was. With Rosie. Back to the fanfics page Back to the home page