Chapter Text
Frodo doesn’t dance in Sam’s wedding, but nobody expected him to, convalescent as he still is. In some way, it makes Sam wish he had postponed his marriage for a little longer -he had never been a very good dancer, but Frodo was, and he would have enjoyed seeing his best friend moving in rhythm with his gorgeous bride. Still, Rosie and he felt like they had waited for long enough. Not that they would have married any sooner anyway, probably, but the two years he had been away fighting in the war had felt like a decade.
So it’s him that dances and spins Rosie around while sweet and hopeful We’ll meet again sounds in the record-player, happier than he can express to finally be back, after the horrors of the battlefront and war-torn Germany. Just like the song says, it’s a sunny day, and they are all smiling. If Frodo can’t dance, at least he can toast for the groom and bride and deliver a speech that has Sam fighting not to cry. It makes him hug his friend tightly, his throat too closed for him to say all the things he would. Frodo returns his hug as well as he can -too weak, still too weak- and Sam smiles when Rosie kisses his friend’s cheek -too pale, still too pale. But he will heal, and at least he is here, whole and healthy enough to witness Sam getting married and dancing with his wife, ready to enjoy the peace and the victory after so much time of fear and fighting.
With Frodo and Rosie between his arms and the war behind them, Sam thinks this is likely the happiest moment of the happiest day of his life.
*
Sam has always felt grateful for Frodo’s offer for them to go live with him in Bag End. His friend needed someone to properly take care of him, and while he had his cousins living nearby and even old Bilbo, now down there in London, Sam wouldn’t really have trusted anyone else to look after him. Rosie, on the other hand, had a right to expect him to be dedicated to her as well, as any wife would, so living together is the best possible option. It wasn’t how he had envisioned his first years of marriage going, but it isn’t that far away, actually -the possibility of living in his family’s house had always been there, and during war they had all gotten used to the idea of having relatives and friends staying in their homes, even strangers sometimes. Some girls had remarked it would mean more work for Rosie, what with two men to tend to, but both she and her husband had been quick to dispel that notion: his sickness aside, Frodo barely requires any work at all and, in any case, Sam is the one to take care of it. It is his responsibility and, quite honestly, it is also his pleasure to do so.
Frodo is sensitive enough to stay with Pippin and Merry from time to time, just a few weeks that allow Sam and Rosie to spend some time alone together, and for that he is grateful too. He would have been satisfied without it, but after years living in barracks it feels incredibly luxurious to be granted privacy with his wife. Besides, he is quite sure it’s in the first of those absences that he and Rosie conceive their daughter, so the little girl, the joy of her life, wouldn’t be there without that delicacy of his friend.
That’s probably why, in his own mind, he considers Elanor more like the daughter of the three of them, and when Frodo sits in the christening with the baby in his lap, Sam feels very close to tears, once again indescribably happy with his life and family.
*
Frodo had been happy too, or at least that’s what he expects. He had always remarked how well they had taken care of him, how nice it was living with them, and how he loved playing with little Elanor and his new-born namesake. When he left for the coast of southern France, Sam had expected it to be a matter of weeks, months at most, and that was why he had encouraged it. Frodo needed sun and clean air, and Bilbo and his friend Mister Thorin lived there now, so they could look after him.
He still hadn’t particularly worried when Frodo had written to him to let him know he was going to stay for a little bit longer than he had anticipated; he also wrote that his health was much improved, and that was what mattered. Sam had been saddened by his prolonged absence, of course, but he had more than enough to occupy his mind; Bag End was a very busy, prosperous farm, and his family was ever growing.
Weeks and months have started to pile up, though, and when Sam realizes, Frodo has been away for three years, and now he is writing that he will take lectures the Sorbonne for the time being.
Perhaps it was to be expected, in a way. Five years have passed since the war ended, and while he sort of wishes he had Frodo living with them forever, he is also happy to think his friend is beginning to build a life of his own, and healthy enough to enjoy it without his care.
At least, that’s what he tells himself when his absence seems unbearable.
*
Sam has always been rather classical when it comes to music, although not that much; he learned to dance and love with swing playing on the radio, and those are the kind of songs he prefers. Rosie quickly falls in love with that new style that is arriving from the States, though -rock and roll, they call it-, and he certainly enjoys watching her dance to its rhythm while she goes around the house doing her chores. He wouldn’t admit it out loud, but there is something inherently sexual in that music and the way it’s danced that turns him on, and if the mischievous glint in her eyes when she catches him looking is anything to go by, Rosie knows it and enjoys the knowledge.
Not that they need much help when it comes to that. By 1956 they welcome their sixth child, little lovely Goldilocks, and neither of them feel like they are going to stop producing more anytime soon. While Bag End nominally belongs to Frodo, he mostly lives thanks to his parents’ inheritance, and Bilbo and his friend Thorin hardly need any money, wealthy as they are thanks to the first’s novels and the second’s songs. That means they are happy to let him keep all the profit of the farm for himself, so money is not an issue. More miraculously yet, Rosie’s endless energy doesn’t feel diminished by neither the pregnancies nor the work required to take care of their horde of kids, and God knows her good looks aren’t diminished, either -Sam swears his wife gets more attractive by the day. No, Goldilocks is not likely to be their last.
He sometimes wonders if Frodo has a sweetheart, someone who will one day provide him with the same blessed feeling he gets every morning when he wakes up and finds Rosie laying next to him. He has never mentioned anyone in his letters or calls, and Sam thinks they are more than close enough for that. Pippin and Merry have long finished their studies and are now back in Hobbiton, and if they knew of any girl in their cousin’s life, they would likely comment on it. Maybe that’s why Sam never really asks them about it, either.
A little part of him is willing to admit that the presence of such a woman would probably make him jealous; for so long, during the war and afterwards, Frodo was his to take care of, and he knew no one was as important to him as himself. Perhaps he wouldn’t like that to change. But he knows he would be wrong to do so; after all, while Frodo still means the world to him, he has now other seven people that he should name foremost in his affections. His friend deserves that too.
Still, he wishes he would come back to Hobbiton when he finishes his studies, and therefore is disappointed when he reads that he doesn’t plan to. He goes on a trip to Italy and Greece after he graduates, which makes Sam smile; Frodo always had a huge collection of classic authors, and he and Mister Bilbo could go about them for hours. Afterwards he accompanies his uncle and Mister Thorin to Berlin, where Bilbo’s dear friend is from, and they end up spending a year there, where most of his family is back, reinstalled after they were scattered around the world because of the Nazi’s inhuman laws. But then, Frodo writes that they have all been offered good job opportunities in San Francisco, and Sam’s heart breaks. That’s half a world away.
Pippin and Merry go to Berlin for a proper goodbye, but Sam can’t. He is so busy in the farm, and Rosie is pregnant again, even if Goldilocks’s not yet a year old, and much as it hurts not seeing Frodo, he knows that seeing him and knowing he is going to leave for so long will hurt even worse.