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From the very beginning Sam had idyllic ideas of homecoming. A paradise untouched by the horrors they saw, untainted by fear. A paradise where they could simply be themselves again. He clung to that idea so tightly that he could even convince Frodo of it sometimes.
Now that they are actually home, it is different from what Sam had imagined.
It is better.
Frodo wakes slow and lazy, his sleep dreamless. A good night, all told.
Sam is already out of bed but the blankets are still warm. Frodo turns into them, mushes his face into Sam's pillow to breathe in the smell of him. Sun shines on him from the window and he can hear Sam singing in the kitchen, can smell coffee and bacon.
All is well.
His shoulder aches, like it does every morning, but he does not worry about it anymore. It will ache and it will hurt, but Sam has an ointment and strong hands. He said he would massage Frodo every day if that was what it took, and he has kept true to that. Diligent and caring, his loyal Sam.
Frodo dozes happily, thinking of Sam always taking care of him, making sure he is comfortable and well-fed. Making coffee even though Sam prefers tea, accepting with a perfect surety that sharing a bed with Frodo would mean being waken up by nightmares more often than not. Remaining calm and soothing when the nightmares inevitably wreck his body.
Their relationship has changed, of course, irrevocably with their journey. Frodo likes to think it brought them closer together, even though Sam wrinkles his nose when he says so, claims they were plenty close, thanks, there was no need for all that drama.
There are more things they don't speak about now, silently acknowledged between them. Like how Frodo also regrets the Ring finding them, but knows in his bones that there was no other way. How he knows that Sam knows that, too. But they don't talk about it, because Sam likes to keep their home free of such heavy thoughts.
As if smelling Frodo's mind drifting Sam comes through the door, hands full to fill the small bedroom with the warm-rich feel of coffee, with the scent of beans and bacon and tomatoes.
"Morning," he greets, carrying the feast easily.
Frodo pushes himself up to sit, smiling like a fool in love and accepting the first tray of coffee and fresh orange juice, little pots with marmalade and honey. Sam opens the window to the fresh morning air before quickly coming back to bed, slipping under the blanket Frodo holds open for him.
"Morning," Frodo replies, their faces suddenly close.
Before, Frodo might have kissed him now. Would have leaned fully into him and dropped a soft kiss on his cheek, his lips. In thanks and greeting and just because, because Sam was close and beautiful.
But they don't do that sort of thing anymore.
Another topic they don't talk about.
"Thank you," Frodo says, thinking of kissing. "For breakfast."
Bashful Sam pulls his head between his shoulders, smiling sweetly.
It is a calm day—neither of them has anywhere to be, and sun stretches before them warm and idle. Frodo reads, his attention span not what it used to be but whenever he finds he’s losing track, when his eyes drifts over the words and he is not taking any of them in, when his fingers move numb through the book but his mind is long gone from the task—whenever that happens, he finds himself zoning out on Sam.
Sam is gardening, of course. As he is wont to do. Because he can’t just sit about all day and gossip (which is a lie—he totally could; they did before and they will again). So there is Sam, gloriously, talking to the flowers and the weeds and cradling both equally, kneeling in the dirt and grinning like there is nowhere he would rather be. He gives encouraging talks and stern lectures and he gently relocates the snails before Frodo can accidentally step on them. He checks on the tomatoes and the sunflowers and he keeps his hands busy fussing. He wears the straw hat Frodo got him and dungarees but nothing more, because it’s too bloody hot.
Frodo doesn’t mind. He doesn’t make progress in his book but he gets to watch Sam work and that is much better.
He also gets his most brilliant smile, the one that crinkles his entire face up to his eyes. Frodo sees him sweat, realises the book is a lost cause, and goes inside to get the lemonade Sam prepared yesterday. And then he carries it outside, offers some to Sam, and basks in his smile.
It is a wonderful day.
After lunch, Frodo needs to lie down. He gets head aches easily, these days, and nothing helps as well as rest in a cool, dark room.
Well, Sam helps. Actually, nothing helps as well as resting against Sam in a cool, dark room with Sam.
But Sam had friends to see, so there is nothing to be done. Frodo complained a bit, pretended to be dying and very put-out by having to do it alone, and Sam laughed and kissed his forehead and wished him well, so that is almost as good.
The best Frodo is likely to get, at least. Until Sam is back from seeing his family or Rosie or Merry and Pippin or whoever—Sam has many friends, many more than Frodo can stand even contemplating, but Sam has always been social like this. He likes talking to people, and he likes to look beautiful and respectable so they will tell him their secrets (because surely Sam understands) and then he loves to come home and tell Frodo about it and be judgemental and ridiculous and none of the things he could be while smoking or drinking or nodding with all his polite acquaintances that know about gardening and cooking and the gossip from two towns over.
Sam likes coming home and reporting the world to Frodo. And Frodo, nervous where his feet might take him, feels never as safe as when Sam lays out the path for him.
So he doesn’t begrudge him his time going out, but he does miss him. Quite desperately.
Sam will tease him about it later, when Frodo decries his constantly abandoning him in his hour of need. He will laugh and he will blush and he will like it, knowing that Frodo missed him. Knowing that Frodo loves him.
They used to say it, used to say I love you freely and sincerely, but they don’t do that anymore. It feels weighted now, no less sincere but a whole lot less free.
They still do, of course. Love each other.
They just don’t say it anymore, but Frodo hears it still. All the time, he hears it.
When he comes home, Sam is excited and Frodo’s headache is miraculously cured. (It’s Sam’s smile; the best thing in the whole world.)
Sam is still in his sketchy travel cloak, the one that hides his face and makes him look like a dangerous, possibly violent spy. Or at least a no-good vagrant and wannabe spy.
Frodo thinks it’s endearing.
Sam only wears that cloak to loiter in places of ill repute, to listen in on the more significant talk, to catch a glimpse on the world outside of the Shire. They don’t want to be surprised by the end of the world again. So sometimes Sam puts on a costume, pitches his voice to a ridiculously low level, and tells Frodo not to wait up.
He did not tell him today (Frodo likes to know, usually, because he tends to worry when Sam is out on reconnaissance) but then again—Frodo was sick when Sam left. Sam wouldn’t have wanted to worry him.
Usually, in that cloak, Sam doesn’t smile like that. He returns grimly satisfied, no new shadows rising and the world of men as petty and frivolous as that of hobbits. It’s nothing to smile about but it’s reassurance he needs to sleep.
But today he is smiling. Grinning widely like a mad thing.
“Come on, come on,” he says, barely in the door, the cloak too big on him, his hands grabbing for Frodo. “Sit down.”
Frodo, surprised, buoyed on Sam’s excitement, follows him helplessly.
“Slow down,” he says, tries to laugh, but Sam doesn’t slow down until he has manoeuvred Frodo into the large armchair, kneeling before him and holding his hands reverently.
“Frodo,” he whispers, voice laden with more emotion than Frodo can decipher, his eyes brimming with manic thrill. His lips, though, are gentle when they kiss his hands, and Frodo’s heart stops. (They don’t do this anymore.)
“Frodo,” Sam says again, choked up.
The way he has positioned them, making himself supplicant between Frodo’s spread thighs and clasping his hands—like there is another world-ending threat that only Frodo can answer, and Sam intends to beg him stay. But he is happy, so happy.
“What is it, Sam?” Frodo asks, his own throat tight. Sam’s eyes full of love, his lips trembling like he’s trying not to cry, looking at Frodo like he is his most cherished possession (he is, Frodo knows he is) and he is kissing him again, dropping a thousand feather light kisses on his palms and up his arms, linger over the racing pulse on his wrist.
“I found the cure.”
Frodo doesn’t understand, at first, what Sam is talking about.
But Sam, eyes searing bright and his hands like a vise around Frodo’s, seems unable to stop the words pouring out of him. Like a great swell of relief, speaking frantic and urgent like Frodo must have been waiting to hear these words. Desperate, just like Sam was to say them.
It takes him a while to put the pieces together.
Sam puts on the cloak, it would seem, not just to eavesdrop but also to engage in sinister trading with disreputable people dealing in magic and lies.
He does this, he reassures him, for Frodo’s benefit. Because Frodo is in such pain, because he carries such a weight.
And Sam was determined to find him a cure.
Wounds the Elves could not heal, that Elrond himself declared permanent, but Sam—his dear, stubborn, beloved Sam—thought that was not good enough.
And he did it, he found a cure.
“Isn’t it wonderful, Frodo?”
Frodo, to his great shame, never once thought of himself as sick.
They do, unfortunately, talk about that.
Sam lists a great many of Frodo’s ills—the headaches, the nightmares, the way his hands sometimes shake and how there are foods he can no longer stomach, how sometimes he is scared to leave the house and, most damning, all the things they don’t talk about.
“Don’t you wish to be better, Frodo?”
When he says ‘better’, Sam means ‘like you used to be’. He looks heartbreakingly serious when he says it, his eyes brimming with tears and his fingers gentle on Frodo’s scars, his words so gentle too when listing all his failings.
“I have done my best,” Sam confesses, silently crying now, “but this thing could really help you. Not just treat the symptoms but heal you completely.”
They sleep separately that night, Frodo out in the guestroom because he doesn’t know how to be close to Sam anymore.
Apparently, his shaking nights bother Sam more than he thought.
Apparently, a lot of things bother Sam more than he thought.
The method Sam proposed was simple: through a regrettably painful (but short!) process, one could be induced to… forget. There is to be a fixed point (Sam proposed Bilbo’s 111th birthday party and subsequent leaving) and after that, memory, apparently, can be erased.
Like it never happened, Sam assures him.
(Killing, effectively, the part of Frodo that survived and became unwelcome. Sam did not put it like that, but Frodo understood, finally, what he did not say.)
The procedure is experimental and scary and Frodo does not want to do it, but Frodo also can't forget Sam’s hopeful eyes, the excitement with which he told him.
His utter certainty that Frodo, too, had been longing to return.
Sam brings him breakfast in bed, same as he does every morning. He smiles and pretends like nothing happened, like he is in bed with Frodo like normal and not sitting cold and watchful in a chair next to him, breakfast only for one.
Sam, he assures him, already ate in the kitchen.
“Listen,” he starts, but Frodo cuts him off. He does not want to listen to Sam explain himself. Or worse: apologise.
“No,” he says, clinging to his coffee and not quite able to meet his eyes. “I thought we were happy.”
Sam makes a wounded sound, rushes to reassure him that they were, they were.
“It’s just that we used to be happier,” Sam admits, his eyes on Frodo brave and cruel. “Before.”