Sam wakes just once in the middle of the night, startled and disoriented, thinking that he heard Frodo's footsteps in the hall and waiting for them to come again. For a moment, not quite understanding, he opens his mouth to call out. Then he remembers where he is and why, and he buries his face in the soft pillows of the couch so that he won't wake Merry and Pippin with his tears.   Here, in Hobbiton. Frodo was very firm on that point, as long as he was able to be firm on anything. Not across the Water, not in Buckland, not with his parents. "Why, Mr. Frodo?" Sam had asked, sitting by Frodo's bed and clutching his hand, no longer bothering to hide the tears that seemed never to stop their slow course down his cheeks. Frodo had turned his head and closed his eyes, and in the candlelight his skin had sunk into black wells of shadow beneath his lashes. "Because I can't cross," he had whispered thinly, and then his hand had gone limp in sleep. Sam had no idea what he might have meant, and had had no intention of waking him to find out.   The world has looked different to Sam these last few days. Nothing seems to be quite real, as if the world he knew has somehow vanished in the night and left behind only its shadow etched on glass, and no one has noticed but Sam. He finds himself becoming furious with the roses intemperately blooming at the gates of Bag End, the birds singing in the trees, the thick-blossoming tumble of jasmine in the lich-yard. Even the sun incurs his resentment, rising and falling as if nothing had happened, as if the world were still the same place today that it was a week ago. He hasn't worked since the funeral. For the first time in his life, he has been unable to. He has walked instead, paths both familiar and unfamiliar, and one that is becoming all too familiar. Of their own accord, it seems, his feet draw him to that path; and night after night he has come out of his thoughts to find himself standing beside a simple oaken marker half-obscured by sweet-smelling jasmine. The year is turning, the nights becoming longer, and he catches himself thinking that Frodo will get cold.   There is a storm coming, and the clouds to the west are blazoned deep with scarlet when Sam lifts his eyes from the ground and finds himself at the lich-gate. Deep in thought, watching the clouds, Sam has just passed the small wrought-iron bench by the Water when he stops dead in his tracks. Up the path, at the top of a small rise in the distance, a slight, cloaked figure stands silhouetted against the darkening sky. Sam squeezes his eyes closed. It isn't him, it isn't him, he tells a brain reluctant to believe him and frantic to move. I'll open my eyes and it won't even look like him anymore. He opens his eyes, and a rising wind lifts that distant cloak like wings. The sun sinks below the horizon then, casting the lich-yard into shadow, and the waxing moon gleams from thick raven hair. By the time Sam reaches the top of the rise, the cloaked figure is gone.   Sam. Sam sits bolt upright in bed, heart hammering against his ribs. "Frodo?" he gasps. He never let himself call Frodo anything but "Mr. Frodo," not out loud, and the things he had wanted to say had always caught in his throat. He has thought about that almost incessantly over the last few days; about opportunities lost, afternoons spent laughing and chatting in the garden when it would have been so easy to catch Frodo's hand in his; when, if he'd only had the courage, he might have said: You are brighter than the sun and I love you so much that it stops my breath. Will you have me? Sam wipes tears from his face and rises, pulling his clothes on with dull, mechanical movements. Quietly, so as not to wake the Gaffer or his sisters, he goes into the kitchen and begins to make tea. The moon is bright enough that he doesn't need a candle, not here in the familiarity of his own kitchen. When he has made his tea, he goes to stand by the window and looks out into the garden. There is a deep shadow by the climbing roses; as a child, looking out in the night, Sam had imagined it to be a portal to some fantastic, magical kingdom. He is older now, no child by anyone's standards, but sometimes he still allows himself that small flight of fancy. As he watches, the wind blows the roses, making the shadow ebb and swell in ragged seams around the edges. A sudden gust blows the trailing edge of a cloak out of that shadow for just a moment before the wind dies down again. Sam is outside before he knows he has moved, unsure why or what he expects to find. Halfway across the garden he stops, fear slamming through him in a wave that leaves him breathless and shaking. Don't be a fool, Sam. There's nothing there. Go look. It's you falling asleep on your feet and seeing things, is all. The shadow-well is empty. Sam doesn't know whether to be sicker with relief or with disappointment. Cursing himself for a fool, he turns back toward the smial. Frodo is standing between him and the door, so still that he seems to be nothing more than a sliver of shadow wandered away from the garden wall, and in some dazed part of his mind Sam thinks: Ah. Of course. For a moment they only stand there, watching each other, and then Sam blinks and Frodo is standing in front of him. "Sam," Frodo says shakily, lifting a hand to touch Sam's cheek. His skin is soft and warm and smells of jasmine. Sam reaches out and snares Frodo's hair in his fingers, securing it out of his face against the wind. "Why did you leave me?" he asks, and begins to cry. "Oh, Sam," Frodo says helplessly. "Oh, do you think I wanted to?" "I would have spoken sooner or later. You left me before I could." A thumb traces softly over his lips, and the moonlight strikes cold silver light from tears on lily-pale cheeks. "Speak now." "I love you. I love you. Don't leave me, please." "Smell the air, Sam, morning is coming. I can't stay long." "Will you be back? Please." "Yes. Tomorrow night." Sam closes the distance between them in one quick move and crushes Frodo to him, half-convinced that Frodo will fade from his arms as soon as he does. But he is warm and solid and surprisingly strong, and his lips brush Sam's cheek lightly when he finally pulls back. "Sam, the threshold. I can't pass. Invite me in." "Come in, then. As soon as you can." "Tomorrow night," Frodo whispers, and steps back into the shadow. Suddenly Sam is alone in the garden, and he realizes that the wind has grown very cold.   He would have sworn that he wouldn't sleep but he does, and sleeps with unusual heaviness. So heavily that he is disoriented for a minute when the shifting of his mattress tells him that someone has crawled onto the end of his bed and is moving toward him. "Frodo?" he whispers, and his voice wavers and cracks. "Sam," Frodo whispers, and his breath is soft and sweet against Sam's lips. "Darling." It hurts at first, a sharp, searing pain that makes him gasp and whimper; but the pain is gone quickly, replaced by a pleasure that sears though him just as intensely as the pain did; he can't breathe, can't feel anything but Frodo on him, and the sounds of the beginning and end of the world are bound into Frodo's soft, desperate cries of pleasure muffled against his throat. Sam slides a hand down to the back of Frodo's thigh and pulls it against him, a sweet, welcome pressure against the ache of his arousal, and they move together for a minute until Frodo tears himself away from Sam's throat. Even in the moonlight Sam can see that Frodo's mouth is very red and very moist, and he could think about the implications of that if he wanted, but he would far rather focus on the fact that Frodo's hand is on him now. Frodo's mouth is heavy with the rich taste of blood, and his eyeteeth score a light scratch on Sam's probing tongue, and clothes that smell of jasmine and the rich earth fall to the floor like autumn leaves. "Love you, I love you," Frodo gasps, running his tongue again over the base of Sam's throat and bringing a small, brief stab of pain from something there. "Frodo," Sam sobs, and somewhere in the back of his mind he is aware that if he could think he would be terrified; but this is Frodo against him, Frodo's body pressing and rocking against his own in a maddeningly quickening rhythm, and underneath the smell of jasmine the soft scent of his skin and hair is soothing and familiar. He catches Frodo to him and rolls them over, moaning as Frodo's ankles lock around the small of his back, lithe body arching and twisting underneath Sam's. Frodo's head is thrown back against the pillow, moonlight glowing from the line of his throat, gasping in an ecstasy so beautiful that Sam has to close his eyes against it or lose control completely; and as Frodo comes, shuddering and bucking, his teeth sink into Sam's throat again, sending a trickle of blood streaming down Sam's skin. It falls from Sam's body down onto Frodo's chest, dark livid droplets splashing against alabaster skin; and Sam clutches Frodo's head closer into the curve of his neck, smearing living red between them, coming so hard that he nearly screams. "Frodo," he whispers afterward as they lie trembling in each other's arms. "You'll forgive me for bringing it up, sir, but you're… well…" Frodo laughs softly. "Dead? Yes and no." "It seems to me like dead is something you either are or you aren't, Frodo love." "Dear Sam, practical as always." Frodo sighs and nestles closer. "Sam, I can't… I can't come back." Sam really believes that he can feel his own heart breaking in his chest. "Don't say that. If I lose you again it'll kill me." "It will kill you if I stay, my love. You have no idea what it's like, this… this need." His fingers trail up to run gently along the line of Sam's carotid artery. "It was so hard, so hard, for me to keep from touching you before. I can't keep from doing it now. The taste of your blood is all through me, Sam. It fills me, flows with mine, pounds into me like the rhythm of your heart. I can't be near you and not have this." Sam lifts himself onto his elbow and leans over Frodo, looking down at him and smoothing a dark tangle of hair off from his forehead. "Don't go," he whispers. "Don't go where I can't follow." "You don't know what you're asking." "It doesn't matter. I've found that out, these past few days. Leave me again and I'll find you." And his own need feels as dark as Frodo's, and just as relentless.   He doesn't wake until well after noon the next day, looking pale and ill, and his sisters put him promptly back to bed. In their voices he hears fear and the onset of grief like the coming of a long winter, and in the midst of his heartache he turns his head to the window and smiles.   When the first snow falls over the small smial outside Bree, covering a dormant garden that in the spring will be rich with night-blooming flowers, Frodo lights a fire and curls into Sam's arms on the couch, laying a large book open on their laps. Sam has learned to read a fair amount of Elvish but he pretends to know less than he does because he loves to hear Frodo's voice reading in the slow, fluid cadences of Sindarin. They fed well last night and will not be hungry for a few more days, or not with that sort of hunger, at any rate; and Sam runs his fingers into Frodo's hair and thinks that no one in Middle-Earth has any right to be as happy as he is tonight. The snow falls in a thick, silent blanket over Bree, and a hard frost touches the jasmine over the empty graves in Hobbiton.     Back to the fanfics page Back to the home page