A little mathom from me--
--for my birthday.

And with especial thanks for all of you lovely friends who made me feel so special. Several posts, because it's not too terribly short.

And yes, there will be a morning after.



SYMBIOSIS


A soft thump. A rustle.

"Where did I put…?"

The voice was soft, terribly slurred, but nonetheless all too familiar. As was the growling dwarvish curse that followed, with another sharp thud. Then a satisfied mutter. A depressive sing-song began to fill the consequent silence.

"All… that I had left to give…" A small hiccup of breath, then another burst into slightly flat verse. "Was what I never… bugger." The tune lost itself. "What was the next phrase? And where did my… my… where is it?"

Samwise Gamgee hesitated, his hand still on the doorknob he had just twisted, the door half open, one ginger-furred foot over the sill and the other still on the coping stones of Bag End's step. A frown marred his brow; he sucked in a breath to query the less-than-tuneful singer.

"Mister Frodo?"

The utterance was quiet, yet should have carried through the darkened hall—everyone was gone, the Party long done, and nightfallen Bag End as quiet as the abandoned fields below. But it stood no chance against the next outburst of muttered verbiage.

"I know… know I left it somewhere…" The words were getting slower, more slurred.

Laying his forehead against the green door with a barely-breathed curse, Sam closed his eyes. Frodo had been drinking. Moreover, Frodo was not merely tipsy. From the hard stitch in his breath, the choice of maudlin 'death or heartbreak' verse and the high quaver in his voice, Frodo was spectacularly and phenomenally drunk.

Much earlier, Sam had tried to get back from making the rounds and helping the lads do the final quick pick up from the evening's party. He'd seen the look on Frodo's face when mister Bilbo had disappeared, and known it boded something of this sort. And that look: disbelief, then stunned realization, then pleading quickly strangled into denial… and all of it wiped with disquieting efficiency as Frodo was literally beset on all sides by questions, amazed speculations and outright hostile demands. Yes, Frodo had swallowed it all, put on his boldest, most playful face and covered for his rascally uncle yet again.

But Sam had seen that first look. And as much as Sam had loved old mister Bilbo, he was furious with the old hobbit, no matter that he'd always dreaded this day, always known it was imminent. Bilbo was gone—Sam knew it—up and gone and never returning to the Shire. And once Frodo had finally escaped the party and fled up the Hill—hoping again hope, Sam had known with a choke in his throat—Sam had stayed in his place of directing clean-up, glad that at least mister Gandalf was in residence at Bag End.

The clean up had been considerable, yet Sam kept his mind occupied with thoughts of how he'd been prouder of his Frodo than ever. Within an amazing amount of time, Frodo had changed the mood of the party from insulted and injured to amused and pleased. He'd cut the enormous cake, toasted his guests' health, ordered more food and drink—and that last had settled them all and right quick. Sam was sure that everyone, saving Frodo's close friends—and the Sackville-Bagginses of course, seeing as how the legalities of such concerned them greatly—had all but forgotten it was Frodo's birthday as well. And with a manner suiting the new Squire of the Hill, Frodo had reminded them he was now come of age with a gentle grace and light laughter.

Yes, all in all before he'd retreated up the Hill, Frodo had worked the crowd in a manner that would have pleased Bilbo no end. Sam, however, knew that the piper would be paid for it. Eventually.

Then Pippin Took had flitted by, cleaned of powder soot, full of ale and song, and leading three handsome ponies. He'd asked Sam where Gandalf had gone, so bristly and in a hurry, whipping up his little cart horse like it was like some harness racer and disappearing down the East Road. It had taken Sam half an hour to get disentangled from what he was doing, and he'd felt every second of that time like a brand laid to skin.

And now here he was, leaning on the door to Bag End, almost afraid to enter.

An enormous bang and crash heralded his indecision and ended it. Sam bolted forward into the dim entryway, rounded the corner and stopped in his tracks.

Frodo was sprawled on his backside, the rug tangled up between his knees and about his feet, still holding onto the table corner. A long shadow darkened his face and down his shirtfront, then Sam realised as Frodo looked up at him, that it was no a lack of light that darkened his chin and chest, but a crimson, wet stream.

"Sam?" he asked a bit bewilderedly. "I… I think I hit my chin."

"Oh, no." After staring numbly for half a second, Sam galvanized himself into action. He ran into the kitchen, grabbed a towel, ran back over to Frodo and tried to pull him gently away from the table. It was no small task, because Frodo seemed to think that he needed to hold to it, no matter what.

"Sam," he said quite seriously, gouting more blood from his lip as he spoke. "I can't let go—I'll fall."

"Frodo, me dear, you've already fallen," Sam murmured. "Hold to me, instead—that table hasn't helped you one whit now, has it?"

Let go, for pity's sake, you're bleeding all down that table leg and I can't see to you this way…

Frodo frowned as if he thought to disagree, and Sam girded himself for bodily pulling his master from that blessed table if he must. Then the dark head bobbled assent. "If you say so, Sam."

Surely there wasn't as much blood as it looked. Sam felt a strange crawling sensation in his gut as he pulled Frodo back from the table and applied the towel rather gingerly. Surely it wasn't that bad. He spooned Frodo back against his chest, settling him between his thighs and cupping a towel-wrapped palm to the split lip. Sam's stomach twittered further as the small cloth started to streak with crimson.

"Sam?" A soft call from the front corridor. "Sam, is everything all right? I saw you pelt up the hill as if there was a dragon on your…" Merry Brandybuck rounded the corner and stopped dead. For seconds Sam could see everything mirrored in Merry's darkened eyes: Frodo sprawled in Sam's lap, all over blood, and Sam holding him tightly, and the desperate look in the gardener's face that met Merry's own.

In two seconds Merry was kneeling beside them. "What on earth? How…?"

"Merry?" Frodo blinked, looked up, pushed the towel from his mouth, tried to sit up and didn't succeed. Sam gave a grunt as Frodo smacked back against him. "Hullo, Merry. How'd you get here?"

"He's drunk," Sam informed Merry a bit unnecessarily.

"I am not drunk," Frodo firmly insisted. "I was looking for… for…" He scowled, ran a hand up his blood-soaked chest to his lip. "What is…? What hit me? Who…?"

"He fell on the table. I'm afraid he's all but bit his lip in half," Sam said urgently as more blood started to flow from Frodo's lip. He clapped the towel back over Frodo's mouth; Frodo protested, muffled by thick fabric. "Mister Merry, if you'd be so good as to get me a pan of water from the…"

"Ice." Merry said firmly. "There's ice in the party barrels—it's in straw, and hopefully it's not all melted away by now." And he was gone.

"Merry?" Frodo queried, a bit muffled.

"Sshh." Sam situated the dark head into the crook of his arm, nestled his chin into Frodo's curls. "He'll be back. We'll take care of you."

One slender hand came up, pulled the towel away. Frodo's eyes peered at him, made of dull, storm-clad clouds. "Bilbo's already done that," he said, slurred through blood and drink. "He's taken care of me, all right. He's left me everything. I'm Master of Bag End, did you know?" More blood, and tears suddenly falling over rusty-stained cheeks and chin.

"Mister Frodo, don't be speaking of this right now…"

"He's left me nothing. Nothing. I don't want it. I don't. I want him back, Sam."

Sam closed his eyes, held Frodo close, and cursed a litany upon not only Bilbo Baggins, but every individual that had ever abandoned Frodo beginning with his parents, and was made angry anew at how far-reaching that list was.

"I didn't think he really meant it. Not so soon. I mean… Why didn't he tell me? Why did he just…" A choke, a cough onto the towel. Red sprayed, and Sam realised, looking about, that he would have a nasty detail of clean-up later.

"Shh," Sam told him. "I know. Please don't talk." Frantically he wondered how to keep his master quiet—and with that sizeable gash on his mouth, why Frodo wasn't in too much pain to talk Sam had no idea. Probably to do with the amount of pain-killer he'd imbibed—Sam could see two discarded bottles.

One thing was sure. Between bottom lip and emptied bottles, Frodo was going to be seriously hurting come morning.

"Bag End is too big f'r jus' me." Frodo was mumbling, now, settling himself further into a fine, sodden snit. "I don' wan' to…"

Feet padding quickly on the entry stones, and a grunt of anxious breath, and Merry came running back with a huge chunk of ice held in his hands.

"Hoy, but are my hands frozen!" he panted. "Couldn't find a bucket, couldn't find anything, but found the ice at least." Striding into the kitchen, he grabbed up two more tea towels; one he wet under the pump, the other he used to wrap the ice in, then gave it a solid whack against the floor.

Frodo leapt like a startled hare in Sam's arms; Sam twined one leg about both of Frodo's and held tightly as Merry strode back over and knelt by the both of them. He opened up the towel to reveal several pieces that were more useable for hobbit-grip, and Sam reached out, grabbed up one the size of an hen's egg and held it to Frodo's bloodied lip.

"Ow!" Frodo protested and lifted a hand to pull Sam's away. He had a remarkable grip for a hobbit well-plied with wine, however Sam didn't budge.

"Nay, sir, this'll staunch the blood. You just lie quiet…"

A rather mighty scowl developing about his forehead, Frodo pulled a bit harder. This time Merry ran interference, grabbing both of Frodo's wrists and pinning them.

"Frodo," he informed him, "stop it. Quit being a stubborn Baggins and let your gardener help you."

"Merry," Frodo answered, attempting a sly grin which miserably failed through the miasma of blood, melting ice and torn flesh, "are you trying to seduce me?"

His eyes darting to Sam's and his cheeks flushing, Merry let go of Frodo's wrists. Sam felt a hot burst of raw emotion flood through him. Belatedly he identified it as anger, and turned it on himself for being so stupid—like some jealous little lad that had to share his sweets.

"You nit," Merry said to his cousin, taking the wet cloth and wiping at the tears and bloodied streaks on the pale face. "Like anyone would have you, the way you look. Leave you standing on the road, more like."

"Mister Merry!" Sam protested with soft vehemence. Frodo jerked in his arms, the reaction slight, but telling, and angled his face from Merry's towel-wrapped hand. "Mister Bilbo's gone," Sam furthered, even more quietly but just as vehement, and felt peculiar satisfaction as Merry's face blanched and twisted, realizing that his statement's timing was less than spectacular. But Merry's next words adequately reminded Sam that he was not the only one who cared what this most recent leave-taking would do to Frodo.

"Selfish old sod," Merry muttered, leaning over and resolutely scrubbing at Frodo's cheek. "And what a way to get out of breaking it to you. I'm sorry, love."

The way 'love' was uttered, soft and rather musical, made Sam's stomach flutter oddly; the way Frodo relaxed against him as Merry said it was an even odder sensation.

"But you are a mess," Merry continued, still quietly, "and once you stop bleeding long enough, I think Sam shall have to take you to the rainwater hogshead and dump you in. I didn't think a Brandybuck would spew like this…"

"I'm a Baggins," Frodo said, forlornly about Sam's hand. The ice in that hand was melting to a small lump, and the hemorrhage was thankfully ebbing, no longer pouring from Frodo's lip at an alarming rate.

"That must be why you've been bleeding like a stuck pig," Merry gave with quite tender reproof, still dabbing. "All that thin Baggins stock." There might have been none but himself and Frodo in the room. Sam felt the almost-wistful, definitely uncharitable tug at his sensibilities that watching Frodo with Merry always gave to him. Even now, when Merry was as paired with Pippin Took as any tween was likely to be, and Frodo proclaiming his trust and care of Sam with every word, every touch, every look…

But still there was the silent language between the two cousins, born of history and passion, love and conviction. Resentment tendriled, deep and small, within Sam upon just witnessing it. It wasn't fair, and it made no sense, but there it was.

"I can't feel my lip any more," Frodo informed them both a bit petulantly.

Sam chided himself. Here he sat, Frodo drunk and disabled in his lap, and all he could think about was something he could do naught about! "I'm sorry," Sam answered, peeking at the lip beneath the ice. "Almost put to rights, I promise you," he continued, tossing the nigh-melted ice into the bucket, holding out his pink-stained hands for another one. Without a word Merry gave it to him, once again held Frodo's hand still when he thought to wave it in protest.

"Be still, my dearest. You're more wriggly and uncooperative than Pippin… remember that time he lost a tooth coming off his pony?"

A smile crept crookedly onto Frodo's mouth. "He thought he was dying, there was so much blood."

"Rampant dramatist, that's our Pip. If Uncle Pal disowns him he can always seek his fortune as a jongleur. But it always seems like more blood than it is." Merry directed those last words to Sam, who knew them with his head. His heart, however, was in a swivet since it was his Frodo bleeding out like some game for the table. Merry's calm reminder did much to pacify outraged feelings and settle Sam's uneasy stomach—it also did a remarkable job of distracting Frodo while Sam finished seeing to him. "I think you've ruined your new shirt, dear cousin, and probably your dear gardener's as well, and it remains to be seen whether even Sam's talented sister can get the stains from his breeks or that new waistcoat of yours."

At least, Merry had been doing a good job of distraction—until this. This, inexplicably, brought a small rash of tears.

"Mister Frodo?" Sam exchanged alarmed glances with Merry as his master tipped his face into his chest, and sobbed. "What in the name of…?"

"I'm sorry, Sam. I'm sorry."

"And what are you--"

"I didn't mean to ruin your clothes. Or make all this work for May. I didn't mean to…" A gasp and shudder.

"Hoy, Sam, how much did he drink?" Merry mouthed almost silently in his direction. Wordlessly Sam jerked his head toward the two emptied bottles, then noticed a third, half-emptied, on the table top. Merry saw it, as well.

"Bugger."

Sam was inclined to agree.

Frodo wasn't about to let up, even with ice still attached to his lip. "Bilbo got me this waistcoat."

"Bugger Bilbo, too," Merry growled.

This all but released the floodgates.

"Oh, bollocks!" Sam muttered under his breath, realised that Frodo's lip had stopped oozing finally, tossed the ice aside and gripped close. "Mister Frodo, it's all right."

"Don't… call me… 'mister'… Sam…" All of the words, punctuated by hiccups of water-logged breaths. "I can't… bear it…"

"All right then, love," Sam said before he thought—and surely he wouldn't have said it had he been thinking straight, not before Merry Brandybuck, of all hobbits.

But Merry Brandybuck was singularly unimpressed—or not listening. "Can you get him up, Sam, from where you're sitting? We need to get him cleaned up, somehow, and then just pour him into bed. There's no doubt he's the estate to see to tomorrow, and too many relatives who'll be hounding him about it."

Well, and Sam knew that, but wasn't it just like the potential Master of Buckland to be pointing it to him, as if Himself was in charge? "Aye, I've got him," he said flatly, and started to louver up, determined that even if it was more awkward than trying to toss a caber on his back, he would by foes and fire get Frodo somewhat vertical.

Whether it was blood loss, two and a half bottles of Old Winyards, or sheer perversity, Frodo was almost legless, and it was amazing to Sam how four stone of normally-agile hobbit could feel like fourteen.

Merry finally had to help him.

The hogshead placed just outside the back entry ended up being the easiest and quickest way to clean Frodo up. They didn't dump him in as threatened, but Sam held him upright while Merry just poured several pans full of rainwater over his head and down his front. Frodo spluttered, twisted, then shot several imaginative and foul epithets concerning Merry's parentage—in Elvish.

"I don't know what you're calling me," Merry said, dumping another gout of water over his cousin's head, "but from the way Sam's squirming, I'd say it's not as sweet as it sounds."

Sam was just glad he wasn't the one who received the threatening glare; Merry seemed nonplussed as he pronounced Frodo somewhat cleaner.

They got Frodo to his little smial and sat him down on the bed; he swayed and looked about, then started to tear up again.

"I don'…" he hiccupped, "I guess this is no longer my room, is it?"

"Of course it is," Merry said bluntly. "You're Bilbo's heir, you're now Frodo Baggins, Esquire, and therefore it's all your room… hoy! Sit up, now."

"He's still got blood down his neck. I"ll get more water," Sam said, and left Merry holding Frodo up by the lapels of his wet shirt.

There were candles lighting the small room—in fact, the entirety of Bag End was lit up as if Frodo were trying to banish night-crawling dragons. There was a candle on the washbasin as well, and water in the ewer, and as he poured a generous amount of water into the basin, Sam found himself peering up at the walls backing the washstand. He wondered if Frodo would actually move into the large room that had been Bilbo's and was now his. A small twinge of regret pinked him—there was so much written here in the walls of this smaller room. So much written in that bed, he realised, flicking his gaze back there. Dreams and illness and passion and grief… Frodo was now of age, and leaving his tween years behind, but Sam found himself, not possessed of those years, reluctant to leave the comfort of these walls.

It had been in this room he'd touched Frodo for the first time—as a friend, long ago, then as a lover, not so long ago. Not near long enough. Frodo was not a tween anymore, and they'd not had enough time, curse it, and Frodo pushing him at Rose Cotton only this afternoon at the party as if in acknowledgement of having to release him…

</i>I don't want you to let me go. Yes, she's lovely and yes, I know the day is coming, but I don't want you to let me go, not yet…</i>

"Come on, Frodo-love," Merry was saying, and the tenderness in his voice brought Sam rather abruptly back to the here-and-now. "Help me, here. I need to get you out of those clothes."

Frowning even if he wasn't sure he wanted to know why, Sam flicked a towel from the hook and over his shoulder and grabbed up the sponge and washbasin. He turned back to the bed to see Merry bent over Frodo, hands still gripping his shirt and trying to simultaneously hold him upright and unfasten it at the same time.

"Sam," Frodo said, quite seriously, "I think Merry's trying to seduce me again."

"Hope springs eternal!" Merry said lightly, peeling Frodo's shirt away—he'd already removed the autumn-brocaded waistcoat. "You're either maudlin or amorous when you're drunk; there's no middle ground, is there? And absurd, to boot—for you to think I'd be so churlish as to seduce you right in front of Sam."

"Sam always goes home before dawn," Frodo's voice was suddenly thick with tears again. "Always. You're staying. You'll still be here."

Merry jerked back as if he'd been sucker punched. The basin fell from Sam's hands, hitting the floor in a shattering of water and a hundred fragments.

Frodo twisted, nearly fell—in fact, the only way he didn't splay face down onto the mattress was that he from somewhere found the coordination to brace his arms against it. His eyes, wide with not only the crash, but the sudden realization of what he'd said, met Sam's and hung there. Sam stared back, unable to even form a thought, let alone speech.

Then Sam dropped his gaze, bent down and started picking up the basin's fragments. He could feel Frodo's gaze still on him; he bent his neck beneath it, set his teeth, blinked back the sudden sting in his eyes and refused to look up.

Frodo hadn't intended to say it. Sam knew he never would have said it, were he sober. But it was said, and meant, and Sam'd had no idea… no idea…

"I think," Merry's voice murmured into the absolute stillness. "I'd better go." Dropping Frodo's bloodied shirt on the floor, he started to back away.

"Nay, mister Merry," Sam stood up, shattered remnants in his hands, and managed to force air past his vocal cords. "I'm thinking mayhap I should be the one leaving…"

"No." A slurred-soft demand from Frodo that quickly rose in pitch. "No. I don't want either of you to go, I tell you."

"Frodo," Merry said softly, "you're drunk. And Sam—yes, you are staying, and if for some unfathomable reason you've yet not figured out how much he—"

"This is my room," Frodo insisted, "as you pointed out, Meriadoc. In fact," he gestured about rather wildly, "courtesy of my rich and absented uncle, the entire bloody smial is now mine, to be drunk or be damned in, and that makes it my right to say who stays and who goes!"

Merry stared at Sam, who peered back in abject paralysis. Merry then gave a tiny shake of his head, turned away and walked to the door.

"Merry!"

The hoarse cry struck like a whip; Merry halted with one hand on the door, a candlelit shade in the doorway, his back rigid. From across the room, Sam was frantically trying to find somewhere to look… anywhere, other than that broad, unyielding back or Frodo's equally unyielding expression. It wasn't working. Frodo's eyes found his—dilated and disfocused they might be, but still they drilled holes through him. Sam said the first thing that came to his lips.

"Why didn't you tell me you wanted me to stay?"

Surely Sam hadn't meant to say exactly that into the silence, and seconds later he wished he could bite the words back from the air as Frodo's flushed face went pale as moonlight.

"How you can love him so much," Merry said quietly to the door, "and not know the answer to that, Samwise Gamgee…"

"Mayhap I'm not all-knowing as the future Master of Brandy Hall," Sam shot back, once again spouting before he could even censor his words, "but I'm thinking that I—"

"You're not thinking at all, is what I think—"

"It's no call of yours to be—"

"Stop it!!" Frodo suddenly lurched to his feet. "Stop it this instant! If all you're both set on doing is sniping at each other, then do what you've wanted to do all along and leave! Get out!" He made as if to step forward, listed sharply.

More breakage shattered into the room as Sam dropped the crockery pieces he'd just so carefully picked up and shot to Frodo's side. Merry twisted back to face them both; Sam grabbed Frodo just as he made another faulty step and reeled drunkenly sideways. Frodo tried to shrug him away and just ended up falling against him with a grunt.

"Mister Frodo…"

"You, too. Go on!" Frodo tried to twist from Sam's grip and somehow managed to do so—fury overcoming the amount of alcohol priming his reactions. "I mean it! If you're so buggering resentful of each other that you can't even… can't even…" One foot twisted beneath Frodo and he went stumbling forward—fortunately the bed was right before him and he landed face down on it. Not two seconds later he was lurching over, giving Sam a furious, warning glance that stopped Sam in his tracks as he thought to lend a hand.

"It's all right," Sam clenched his fists and said quietly, almost as much to himself as to Merry. "It's the drink talking."

"No," Merry had not moved from the door and he answered just as quietly, looking back to where his hand was still lain upon the sill. "It's Frodo talking. With the drink unhinging that damned corselet of control on his tongue and his feelings."

"No," Frodo was stiff, shaking with indignation, "it's the both of you, talking over me like I'm some bairn that can't understand. Which, I suppose, is true. At this moment I don't understand either of you!!"

"Frodo," Merry said heavily, "please."

"Please what?" Frodo retorted. "Please you both by continuing to just flat out ignore this little dance you both do about me? I'm tired of pleasing you! Of letting you twitch and avoid each other, and lay me out on another line, tugged between the both of you like some rigged poppet? Of trying to stay quiet and untouched by any of it—as you expect of me!— while the both of you rend me to…!" He suddenly jerked, hunched over with a small hiss. With a grimace he raised his fingers to his mouth, drew it away blood-stained. Frodo stared at his fingers, then his eyes filled.

Merry let out a vicious curse and flung himself out the doorway.

Frodo watched him go, quivering all over, and hesitantly Sam moved closer, reached out even more tentatively. Frodo reacted about as he had expected, retreating and glaring as if to spit out more angry verbiage. Then he paled, and his head dipped, and for moments Sam wondered if Frodo had driven himself sick.

"So, are you deserting me, too?" came the halting query, all fury broken from it.

Sam grasped the taut shoulder. "I wouldn't…" and stopped, realizing it in the wake of what Frodo had said not moments earlier. What he'd said, and not said…

You never stay. You leave me, too. You never stay to see the sun rise in my arms, never hold me through an entire night…

How hard it had been, to creep and away and leave Frodo sleeping for uncounted nights, for Sam to disentangle himself from that slender strength, how when they first had lain together Frodo would always wake and sleepily shore up next to him, hold on when Sam thought to leave. Then as days passed into weeks, how Frodo would wake with a shiver then let him go, turn away with a resigned suddenness that made Sam think of stones dropping into icy water. And now Frodo didn't wake at all—or didn't let Sam know if he was awake—contrivance shored into reality so strong that it had totally convinced Sam. For never once had Sam even dreamed the separation hurt Frodo as much as it hurt himself.

"Frodo," he said, low and puzzled, and seated himself gingerly behind Frodo, who sat, slumped and staring blankly at the old map pinned on the wall above his bed. Sam looked up, saw a brand-new addition to the pins there: one flagged with crimson yarn to stand out moreso than the rest, and placed in Rivendell. Where Bilbo had gone, no doubt. And where Frodo had never yet been.

Frodo had used the map for ages—ever since he'd moved into this little easterly smial and even before, Sam knew—to mark out places he wanted to go. Alarm curled in Sam's belly. Deserting you? Nay, never. But are you thinking of leaving me?

A heavy tread sounded back through the entryway, and they both turned in puzzlement. Merry burst through the door yet again, another piece of ice dripping wetly through his fingers. He marched over, reached out and gave Frodo a swift push in the chest that angled him back against Sam, then another shove that settled them a bit awkwardly on the bed, up against the headboard. Merry sat down before them, laid a quelling hand to Frodo's chest when he tried to sit back up, and laid the ice to his cousin's bleeding lip.

"You would pull the stars down and never see your hands were burning, did the mood take you," Merry muttered furiously. "Hold still, you stubborn thing, before I split the other half of your lip."

No more storm clouds—Frodo's blue eyes were glacial, now. Even from his position at Frodo's back, Sam could see them. But Merry's own gaze was just as unrelenting, something burning behind the indigo, and there were literal sparks hanging in the air between the two cousins, reminders of what had been, and what very obviously still was. Sam thought to speak; instead he fell silent beneath the reality of it, and held to Frodo's quivering frame, and wondered.

The fact that he was wondering about such a thing was not half as daunting as the realisation of what that wonder suddenly made him feel.

You never told me, he silently accused, settling his cheek against Frodo's neck and holding tight to him. You never told me, and all along it's me thinking that I'm the one wounded, and Merry Brandybuck so much of the cause because he'd had of you what I never could; being bairns together, and time, and family, and the position--nay, the right--to court you and be your playmate and stay in the fine linens of your bed as surely as belonging there…

How I've thought all along it was something to be kept close and just for us and those who knew us, and naught to be said because we both knew it had to be that way. That I had to return to my family's hole before the night was truly done, and that way they didn't have to take notice of any of it, even though they all knew. That all too soon you and I would be of age, having to put away boyhood things and marry, raise more bairns up after us. That we'd have to put away each other as if our fancy were light as any mathom, and probably only what was proper since there was no way the likes of me could hope to remain with you like I was one of your kin or kind. That mayhap if we didn't wake in the dawn's light all wrapped up and warm about each other, that calling would be made easier…

Did you let me leave you in the night because you thought you had to?

Would you just up and disappear some night just as Bilbo's done, because you think you have to?

And did you give up… this, and him… for me? Because you thought you had to?

Frodo lay rigid in his arms, sullen and resistant, and Merry's eyes were still all but smouldering, but Sam noted that the long fingers holding the ice to Frodo's lip were shaking. Sam blinked, looked closer, and for mad seconds saw not only the brash heir to Buckland, whose sole purpose and intent since their meeting in the winter of Sam's sixteenth year had seemed to focus on making Sam feel common as dirt. There was something else, laid bare and exposed beneath Frodo's vital gaze.

Apropos of perhaps everything, Sam suddenly remembered one vital fact:

Yes, Frodo had been his own first lover. But he'd also been Merry's.

"It's cold," Frodo said, low.

"It's the nature of ice," Merry answered, even lower, "to be cold."

Sam realised that Frodo was actively shivering against him. He wrapped his arms more tightly, hooked a leg over Frodo's. Merry's eyes raised to his, still brilliant with that smudge of unsurety, and Sam found himself meeting the gaze despite his best intent not to.

Merry sat slightly back, and tossed the piece of ice aside. It hit the wall with a small crack. He was still looking at Sam.

Then Frodo reached out, one hand knotting in Merry's shirt and pulling him forward. Both of Merry's hands landed on each side of Sam's hips, his frame gone off-balance and shoving Frodo back. Frodo gave a slight gasp, and sank back against Sam so abruptly that Sam wondered where his own breath had gone. Sam lost his air even moreso as Frodo's other arm moved, as slender fingers sought his cheek, intertwined with his hair.

"I'm cold," Frodo whispered, and Sam wasn't sure if he was talking to himself, or to Merry. "Is it my nature, then?"

"You aren't…" Sam began, trailed off as Frodo's grip tightened in his hair, in Merry's shirt.

"It's cold. It's dark. Please," Frodo's voice wavered. "Please don't leave me. I don't… I don't feel as if I'm here, somehow, and I… I don't want to be cold. I don't want to be alone."

"What do you want?" Merry whispered, and it gave Sam an inexplicable shudder, for there was no question there, despite that it sounded like one.

Slowly, Frodo drew close to Merry and kissed him.

Merry's hands, braced up nigh to Sam's flanks, clutched in the coverlet, shook. His neck tendons went taut, his entire body shuddering as Frodo's mouth touched his, so gently that it seemed feathers would fall and leave more effect. But light or no, the effect was felt, and not only Merry was prey to it. Sam couldn't have moved had he wanted to—and to his own ultimate astonishment, he didn't want to. He watched, drawn with an empty, tingling fascination as Frodo coaxed Merry into the kiss, gentled his mouth open with tiny whispers and the dart of his tongue.

Sam was transfixed. It pooled in his belly, fear and longing and an ache that seeped into his very bones. It made almost made him wrench himself out from under Frodo and run.

As if he could. As if he really, really wanted to…

Then Frodo pulled back, leaving Merry with a ragged breath and turning to Sam, all soft eyes and willing, swollen mouth.

"Frodo…" Sam choked out. "Your lip…"

"Bugger my lip," was Frodo's mutter, and then he was running his tongue along the upper arch of Sam's mouth in that same teasing, compelling touch. "I can't feel it," he whispered. "All I can feel is the both of you…"

Both of you. Oh, save me… both of you…

**TBC--go to next post**