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“Frodo-lad, you can't have your nose in those books all the time, you know.” Bilbo had said once when Frodo had spent dawn to dusk in the study, and many more times after.
“I'm learning, Uncle.” Frodo had replied, a little testily, peering at him with the fierce glower of a kitten over the cover of the book in front of him. “Haven't you always said the Shire would be so much more interesting if the people in it learned about what was outside their farms and ale mugs?”
Bilbo had cleared his throat and looked ruffled, not unlike an old owl, having just had his own words justly thrown back at him. “Frodo, you know that's not what I mean. You can learn all the Elvish tongues you like and all their forefathers and the greatest heroes of the world, but tell me, is that really living, do you think? Your memory's good for a lot more than musty old books all about dead people.”
“Lord Elrond features in a fair few, and-”
“FRODO!” Bilbo wasn't truly angry, just growing testy in typical Baggins fashion. (That was one similarity he uncomfortably acknowledged he shared with the Sackville-Baggins.) “You young rascal, you know exactly that's not what I mean. You can be as reserved as you like, but take it from someone quite a good many number of years your senior, life is not in books. Life is in people, and made in the time you spend with them.”
Frodo lowered his book just enough to reveal the sour, tight-lipped grimace on his face. “What people ought to make my life then, Uncle?”
Bilbo sighed. He hadn't expected Frodo's transition from living at Brandy Hall to Bag End to be without a few remaining thorns he'd grown to protect himself, but there were times he wondered if he were really the best hobbit to soothe them away. “The sorts of people that enrich your life, so thoroughly you can hardly imagine your life without them. The sorts of people you realize make you a better person than you were without them. The sort-”
With the minute tightening of Frodo's features, Bilbo became more and more afraid he wasn't getting through to his nephew, but his words and concerns stopped short when a freckled face peeked into the study, and the eyes of both Bagginses turned to the door. “Er, beggin' your pardon, Master Bilbo an' Mr. Frodo, but,” the lad shyly held the study book Bilbo had given him against his chest, “t'is 3 o'clock, but if yer too busy, then-”
“Ah, no, my lad,” Bilbo instantly softened, and from the corner of his eye, he saw Frodo's features dull their edge, “no no, you're just in time. Come in; I'm sure Frodo would love to help you with your letters today.” Frodo glared over the top of Sam's head as the lad came into the room, and Bilbo could not help flashing the fastest of smug grins. The best medicine often tastes the worst, he thought, but it is the best for you in the end. It took me too long to learn the living you can touch are better company than the dead that are now only ink and paper. It took me too long to learn that, Frodo. And I hope you learn it long before you reach the age I did.
Frodo did. He was not fifty, as Bilbo had been when the lesson had truly begun to take root in his mind. He was thirty-five, and it was as fine a Lithe morning as a hobbit could ask for. The early morning sun filled the room with intangible gold, comfortably warm but far from hot. Birds sang a merry tune out in the garden, from which also came the sweet smell of the avidly-blooming jasmine. Frodo turned over sleepily in the mussed sheets, musing of this and that over properties and accounts, when suddenly he beheld the nightstand and the vase of purple irises, gardenias, and amaryllis, fresh, surely from that morning. He paused, and smelled breakfast being prepared in the kitchen, and he paused, in a moment recalling everything about the person that had made these things come about.
Sam had always been a quick learner, from his letters to etiquette when he witnessed gentlehobbits come to visit, and even the few gentry parties he was welcomed to attend as a guest. His memory was expansive, too, which once had surprised Frodo, thinking it was only good for knowledge and care of plants. Then, he learned it was a near-inexhaustible well just waiting to be filled with wisdom from anywhere about anything. He drank up stories told to him as if they were the very essence of life, and learned plant-lore until the point his expertise nearly exceeded his father's when he was only eighteen; and he had learned people exceptionally well. What things they interpreted as compliments or slights, their passions and hatreds, and how best to treat them as Sam judged they deserved to be (to the delight of both Frodo and Bilbo, he had learned the subtlest insults to the Sackville-Bagginses, that they wouldn't realize they'd been slighted until a week later).
Frodo had supposed Sam knew before he did, that he was infatuated with Sam. Frodo could remember the first moment he had walked out into the garden, in his thirtieth year, and realizing the garden had shifted from what it had once been in his earlier tweenhood, from so exclusively Bilbo's desires to a good deal more of Frodo's, as Sam's role in the garden had grown to replace his Gaffer's. All of Frodo's favorite flowers arranged in the most attractive fashions, and vases of them left scattered throughout the smial from day to day.
Then Frodo had begun to find his quills freshly cut and with unparalleled precision one day, and his ink pots cleaned and polished. The library was progressively dusted with immaculate care and obvious love for the books- and... and on, more than Frodo could name, and as it had gone on, and knowing the source of it, but then hardly the depths of why, Frodo's affection for Sam grew.
Sam had come to him in the quiet grief of the end of his thirty-third birthday, knowing Bilbo was gone for good. They reminisced and in a way, mourned for him, together, though they knew he was only gone away. Away down a road they could not follow, at least not yet.
Sam had stayed, and held his hand, and revealed a promise that Bilbo had asked him to keep minding after Frodo after he had gone, and Sam in kind asked permission that he might. Frodo had laughed sweetly with joy at finding Bilbo's final act care now revealed, then sobered to see the somber look on Sam's face. Frodo gave his blessing, and said, “For all you have done and still do for me, Samwise, I couldn't bear the thought of sending you away.”
“An' I couldn't bear bein' sent away.” Sam blushed and looked abashed as he said it, then hastened to say, “Beggin' yer pardon-” but Frodo stopped him with a shake of his head.
“You don't need to beg my pardon. There's nothing you could do that would find me in a need to forgive you for anything.”
Sam's blush deepened. “I don't rightly know about that.”
“I do.” said Frodo, and he knew then that this was the most assured thing he had yet said in his life. “You have always enriched my life for all the things you've always done and the way you've always been. As long as you remain true to yourself, I shall find no warrant to admonish you.”
“I-I'll, I'll do that, Sir.” he ducked his head, and murmured, almost to himself, “You do the same for me, at that.”
They didn't kiss that night, though Frodo had found a sudden temptation grip his heart, which he fought off for another night. It was at Yule they kissed at last, a little drunk, perhaps, but under mistletoe Sam had strung with care, beneath the archway of the hall where Frodo had always insisted it was most sensible. Not long after, Frodo found, in the same way one passes an unsuspecting puddle but does not notice or acknowledge its true depth, his life was almost inextricable from Sam's. To be parted left him missing a part of himself, and not just that he did not find a hot cup of tea waiting for him in the mornings, or a lover's hair to wash adoringly in a shared bath. When Sam was away for days or weeks at a time, as he sometimes was to help with harvests or the Tighfield rope-walk, Frodo knew his heart was still beating, but it held little and less joyous rhythm of life.
This Lithe morning, he realized the depth of the puddle at last, and that it was not a puddle at all, nor a lake or a sea. It was an ocean, and deeper than he could ever fathom.
Sam came in with a tray laden with toast and butter and eggs and bacon, and Frodo sat up, still tousled with sleep and caring nothing about it. To Sam's surprise he directed the platter be laid aside for a moment, and Frodo rose and kissed Sam long and deeply. “My Sam,” he said when they broke apart, “I would trade you for nothing in this world.”
“I know,” Sam's cheeks turned pink.
“I mean it,” Frodo held his lover's face between to firm yet gentle hands, and searched his eyes and found the same infinite depth of this newly-realized ocean, “your mind and your heart have taught mine more than you could ever know. And I value you more than mountains and mountains of dragon-treasure, or a field of prize-winning vegetables, or the moon or stars if I could hold them.
“I love you, so very much. Were we ever parted and could not reunite, my heart would not break, for it would be no more at all.”
Sam stared, quite overcome with this revelation over what he believed was otherwise any other ordinary day, but after a few moments, his eyes misted, and he held Frodo in a tight embrace. “I wish I had words that were as grand and fine to say all the same and more to you.” he said. “Just know that I won't be lettin' such a dreadful thing happen, not ever. 'Cause I love you, too.”
“I know. I thought I had truly known for a long time, but now I think I do.”