Archive of Our Own

“The last pages are for you, Sam.”

Sam peered down at the thick book in his hands.

He was with Frodo in Bilbo’s old study, surrounded by old maps and other papers strewn about like leaves in the fall—haphazard, crooked, and always somehow underfoot. In the months since their return to the Shire, Frodo had been quiet, often closing himself away in this room and writing for hours. While Sam gardened, he would sometimes see Frodo through the window, staring out into space, his chin in his palm and a quill between his fingers, leaving a little black spot of ink on his cheek.

Frodo had dusted around the desk, so that the wood gleamed in the morning light, but the rest of the room was still coated in a thick layer of dust. Sam had cleaned most of the rest of the house over the couple of months they’d been home, but Frodo had spent so much time here that Sam hadn’t found the opportunity. It didn’t seem like Frodo wanted company when he was writing, for when he did it, a shadow seemed to fall over him, as if he wasn’t here so much as he was back in Mordor, shrouded by ashen clouds and breathing like a dying creature through a parched throat, clinging to sharp rocks with cut hands.

Sam stared at Frodo for a moment, searching his face.

Frodo’s expression was an odd combination of tense and resigned. It didn’t bode well.

“Mine, Mr. Frodo?” Sam asked, fingering the thick pages, and opening the book to the last few pages. The book wobbled in his hands, set off balance by the sudden shift of so much of its weight. “Your story can’t be finished yet.”

“It is, Sam,” Frodo said quietly. That wasn’t good either, that gentle, certain tone he took just there.

Sam glanced down at the pages, clean and blank, yellowed only slightly at the edges. Looking down, he could see in his peripheral vision Frodo’s hands in the pockets of his overalls. Closed and small. He looked up. “You can’t know what will happen to you,” he protests. “How can you have written your story when you don’t know the future?”

A fluffy cloud that had been drifting over the sun swept away, lighting the blank pages so brightly, they were blinding. Frodo cast his gaze outside, towards the sun, his eyes solemn. When he turned his face to the sun like that, Sam could almost see the Frodo from what felt like a lifetime ago, the one that had left the Shire. The dark circles Frodo always had around his eyes now faded, and he could imagine Frodo bounding through the grass, beaming and laughing, climbing into the low branches of trees to read and write and draw. Perhaps Sam had always found Frodo pretty, the way he found Rosie Cotton pretty, but over the quest, he had come to find Frodo beautiful, and then something else took hold, something alluring and sweet.

Love, he’d realized. True and unbreakable, he’d fallen in love. He could feel it especially in moments like these, when Frodo turned his face to the sun.

“It’s time for second breakfast, Sam,” Frodo said, still peering outside into the light, “Let’s not miss it.”

Sam thought about pointing out that Frodo hadn’t answered his questions, but every time he considered asking Frodo to talk about something that might bring him pain, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. This seemed like it might be one of those subjects, for Frodo was clearly avoiding answering. He was carrying enough, and Sam wouldn’t demand any more of him, even something as weightless as answers. “I don’t plan on missing another second breakfast ever again,” he joked instead, hoping to get a spark in those darkened eyes.

“I hope you never will.” Frodo’s mouth curled slightly, not quite a smile, but closer to one than Sam often managed to get, and he looked over at Sam with a warm appreciation. That little thing made Sam lose his breath. “I’ll go put on some tea, shall I?”

Frodo stepped out of the study, papers rustling along the floor in his wake.

Sam placed the book back on the stand Bilbo, and then Frodo, had used to write upon, his fingers lingering on the last pages, blank.

The last pages are for you, Sam.

Slowly, he turned the pages backwards, looking for the last page with writing.

The last page with writing was half-full of Frodo’s neatest writing, the ends of the letters curling elegantly. Sam could pick out his own name peppered among the words. Samwise Gamgee the Brave, Frodo had written a couple times.

Sam ran his finger over those words, slightly embarrassed. Samwise the Brave. It seemed so silly, mythologizing him as a figure he didn’t fit.

He remembered, though, trudging through young green woods, and Frodo smiling over his shoulder. Don’t poke fun, he said, I was being serious, and Frodo had gazed at him with a reverence Sam couldn’t understand and said, So was I.

As he pulled his hand away from the pages, his eyes fell down to the last paragraph Frodo had written. It didn’t say the end. Just like he’d said, Frodo was leaving the story open for Sam to finish.

The last words Frodo had written were: As for Frodo Baggins, he had found that the Shire could never be what it once was for him. He took an Elvish ship, following the migration of the elves, into the Undying Lands, where he lived out the rest of his days at peace.

Sam stilled.

He pulled his hands slowly away from the book and took one step back, then another, until the smooth lettering faded into black squiggles on the white paper.

“The Undying Lands?” he said, and turned to follow Frodo to the kitchen.

Frodo had put the water on to boil and was plucking dried leaves for tea, filling the air with the faint scent of tea leaves when Sam stepped in. He lifted his head, a gentle light of greeting in his eyes, but his hands slowed when he caught sight of Sam, finding something in his eyes.

“Sam?” he asked.

Sam worked the knuckles of one hand in the other, unsure what to say. He was never one with words. “There were some berries from the garden I picked this morning, Mr. Frodo,” he said.

Sam fetched the fraying wicker basket of berries, warmed and sweet from the sun, as Frodo stirred in the plucked tea leaves, steam rising and making his skin shine. Frodo cut them slices of sweet bread that they’d baked with oats and bits of fruit suspended in it as Sam put a frying pan over the fire on which Frodo had boiled the water and began to fry them some ham in thick rounds. They were practiced at moving around each other, wordlessly putting together a meal, a little different every day. That was the beauty of being back home—fresh berries from the garden one day, young potatoes, round toasted in the fire the next, rather than two bites of lembas, day after day.

“Sam?” Frodo asked.

Sam started. He’d been pushing the ham around in the pan, but now, blast it, he realized he’d let the undersides brown too much, and there were small patches of black burns when he turned them over.

Frodo, it seemed, had set their places, putting a couple slices of fruit bread on each plate, a pile of berries, and a cup of tea with sugar sitting in a pretty dish between them, a little spoon stuck in it.

“Sorry.” Sam pulled the pan off the fire and fished a couple rounds of ham onto each plate as well, reaching over with his fork to scrape off the burnt part of Frodo’s ham before handing it over.

“It’s okay, Sam,” Frodo said, waving Sam away and taking the burnt ham. “It’s still good. And anyway, I can do it myself.”

“After everything you’ve been through, I’ll be damned if I give you burnt ham,” Sam protested, but he sat down, afraid to upset the tea onto the tablecloth.

Frodo smiled a sort of sad, touched smile. The smile of someone who’s soon to leave. Sam had never noticed before.

“What’ll food be like in the Undying Lands?” he blurted.

Frodo looked up from the ham, his mouth part way open. His eyes always seemed unnaturally wide, but never more than when he was actually widening them, as he was now. He swallowed and put down his fork. “I was wondering when you would read it,” he admitted.

“Will there be any food, or will you just live without hunger?” Sam asked, suddenly upset. He couldn’t quite pin why—he wasn’t upset because of Frodo’s leaving, for Frodo had the right to do whatever he wanted to alleviate the cloud that curled around him, even if that meant sailing into the west. He wasn’t upset because Frodo hadn’t told him yet, because Frodo had given him the book and all the clues he needed. He was just upset. He felt a sort of panic when he thought of Frodo leaving him behind.

It put Sam back in Mordor, the way Frodo spent most of his days in Mordor.

Suddenly, he was right there again, climbing the jagged stone stairs, more vertical than any steps should ever be, his hands sliced open, dirt and dust and small rocks making its way through the breaks in his skin. The air was dry, making his mouth dusty. He hadn’t had food in a few days, but he made sure Frodo didn’t know it. He wasn’t sure there would be enough for the whole journey, especially if they were to make it back, and it mattered more to him—and to the rest of Middle Earth—that Frodo stayed as strong as he could. He was standing on slippery, crumbling black rock and Gollum was brushing crumbs off his shoulder. Go home, Sam, Frodo was saying, eyes brimming with distrust, Go home.

“Sam,” Frodo said, and then warm, gentle fingers curled around Sam’s forearms, stroking his skin. “Sam, are you alright?”

Sam had torn one of the slices of ham in two with his fingers. His fingertips burned with the heat of it, but it appeared that pain didn’t counter his visions of Mordor. Only Frodo’s touch did. He had a delicate touch, Frodo. He always had, with fingers slenderer and more dexterous than most Hobbits, as if part man. Those are no hands for farm work, people would often say when they saw them. They were the hands of a dreamer, an artist, a musician. A writer. That was what he’d become, at least, after he’d become the hero of Middle Earth. Not many people here knew it or believed it though, not the peaceful folk of the Shire. So Frodo was still known to them as a dreamer, full of stories and ideas, seen through the window, day after day, hunched over his writing.

Quickly, Sam dropped the ham onto his plate and wiped his fingers on his napkin, leaving streaks of grease and flecks of black. “I’m alright, Mr. Frodo, don’t you worry about me.”

Frodo withdrew his hand and returned to his seat as he watched Sam hunched over his teacup as he drank, slow and thoughtful. “I will be sorry to leave you, Sam, you must know that.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Sam said again, meeting Frodo’s eye over the teacup solemnly. “Just thinking about how much I’m going to miss you is all.”

Frodo reached over and pressed Sam’s hand where it lay against the tabletop and offered Sam a sad smile, but he didn’t say anything more. Together they sat, drinking this tea and eating their sweetbread and berries, and began to speak of other things. Of who could be the winner of the biggest pumpkin contest they had every year, and of which berries were the ripest.

“The garden is beautiful,” Frodo told him, once again looking out the window, turning his face to the sun. Once again the shadows of his face faded into light and youth, as they once had, and Sam stared at him: the delicate curl of his eyelashes and the downward turn of his lips. All of it. How helplessly beautiful he was. Once again not quite Hobbit-ish, but perhaps Elvish, with pale skin. “You’ve always been a good friend to me, Sam.”

“And a good gardener, I hope,” Sam said. He didn’t know what else to say. When Frodo got solemn and thoughtful, it was sometimes hard to follow him there. Hard to tell what he was thinking. He always wanted, in those moments, to press Frodo’s hands between his own, or rub his back, and just feel the rhythm of their bodies together, their heartbeat and their breaths, slowly join in sync so that he was with Frodo again, in some way. “You’ll miss the flowers when you go.”

Frodo stood up and wandered into the study again. How unlike a hobbit to walk away from an unfinished meal, but that was just who Frodo was. He had a couple berries cupped in his palm, that was something. He leaned over and pushed the windows open, then leaned out to look at the garden outside, neatly enclosed by the latched gate. “I see you’ve been planting a lot of flowers.”

Sam hesitated, finding it awkward to be sitting alone at a table set for two. He was always watching Frodo go places, he found himself thinking rather morosely, and soon he would watch Frodo go one last place and never again watch Frodo do anything at all.

He got up and joined Frodo at the window.

“I thought it might be nice.” Sam shifted, leaning against the window frame a little and watching Frodo’s eyes move over the garden. “Something pretty you can look at when you’re writing about all those dark things and all.”

Most of the flowerbeds weren’t actually blooming yet; bulbs and shoots that Frodo could recognize as perennial flowers. Sam wondered if Frodo recognized what kinds of flowers they were, or only that he’d seen them bloom? Sam had picked them out, working off of the things his gaffer used to tell him as a lad as they ate potatoes and pork stew, and smoked pipes while they watched the flowers sway in the night breeze. This one for love, this one for healing and care, this one for hope, and this one for celebration and frivolity. He’d imagined one of two things: Frodo recognizing them, smiling to himself as he looked out the window, or Sam explaining them to him, dirty hands cupping white, delicate petals.

He hadn’t pictured standing here next to Frodo, looking at the green shoots and knowing that Frodo was going to leave him before any of them bloomed.

Well, that wasn’t quite right. One of the rows was blooming, the one closest to the windowsill, peeking up so that only their blossoms were visible from inside the study. Here, leaning out, they could see the broad orange petals and the strong green stalks they stood upon.

“What’s this one?” Frodo asked, following the line of Sam’s gaze and nodding towards the flowers. “What does it mean?”

Sam reached out of the window and gently snapped one a foot down its stem. He whirled it between his fingers, a dusting of pollen drifting lightly up, but settling easily back down on the bloom in the windless air, speckling the petals. “Strength and resilience,” he said, holding out the flower to Frodo. “Orange, you know, like a phoenix, rising from ashes.”

“Me?” Frodo stared at the flower, tucked the remaining berries in his palm into his trouser pockets, and then took it, still staring down at it.

It took several long seconds for him to lift his eyes back to Sam’s face, during which Sam had plenty of time to grow anxious. He hadn’t even really considered what the gesture of handing Frodo a flower might mean, no matter how many times he’d imagined it. Frodo knew Sam hadn’t wanted—well, he did want. But Frodo knew he hadn’t meant to, he must have. It wasn’t that sort of moment, even a fool like Sam could see that.

He was almost about to break the silence and clarify it when Frodo looked back up at Sam. His eyes shone wet in the sunlight. “I didn’t rise myself. You carried me.”

Sam clicked his tongue. “Now, Mr. Frodo—”

“You grew these for me?” Frodo was looking at Sam clear-eyed, more so than Sam had seen him in a long time.

Sam shifted on his feet. “Well, it’s your garden, Mr. Frodo. Why don’t we get back to second breakfast?”

Frodo’s eyes still rested sharp on Sam’s expression, looking for something. But after a second, he gave a half-nod and capitulated. “It’s getting cold, isn’t it?”

“Sam?” Frodo asked as the sun set the next day. “You’ve been quiet.”

He had been. He didn’t know what he was allowed to ask. Whenever he thought of speaking to Frodo, he couldn’t imagine talking about anything other than his leaving. It would feel false. All that came to his tongue were pleas for Frodo to stay, which he knew would come across as trite and insensitive. How could he tell Frodo everything was going to be okay? Because nothing bad would come to the Shire ever again, or because the skies were clear and the flowers were going to bloom, or because soon their friends would throw parties and dance and fill his stomach with cake and ale? Frodo knew all that. The darkness still followed him.

Without anything to say, Sam had redoubled his efforts in the gardens, pressing compost soil around the flowers, pruning the bushes clustered at the sides of the door, brushing the dead grass from the hill that drifts down whenever they open the door to Frodo’s place.

He was just taking a break, wiping his brow, sitting on the wooden bench in the front when Frodo came out and joined him there.

“You can’t much blame me,” Sam said, tapping his dirt-streaked thumbs together in his lap. “I’m about to lose my favorite person in the world.” He looked sideways at Frodo.

Frodo’s mouth opened, as if he was going to say something, but no sound came out. He gazed at Sam, though, as if Sam was as captivating as the sunset creeping over the rounded hills of Hobbiton. Frodo reached over and took Sam’s hands in his own.

Sam pulled his hands away slightly, reluctant to smear Frodo’s palms with soil. He liked the way their hands looked together, Sam, large and broad, enveloping Frodo’s, strangely delicate. Frodo snagged Sam’s fingers and opened up his palm, his touch cool and deliberate. With his thumb, he brushed away some dry dirt.

It was sweeter than it was effective.

Sam broke the silence, itchy with the intimacy of touch. “When are you leaving?”

Frodo looked up at Sam’s face. It was so much, his gaze, like it could turn the current of the air, pulling all the meaning and magic and weight in the world towards Sam with those deep blue eyes. His lips parted, and then seemed to find the same blockage they had just ran into. He swallowed. “At the end of the week.” His lashes fluttered as he spoke them, as if speaking them had shaken him, bodily.

That soon?

Frodo looked down at his feet. “For all your work in the garden, you seem to never touch these.” He poked a clump of Kingsfoil with his toe, his voice filled with so much fondness it stole Sam’s breath. “You used to rip these out by the roots as soon as you saw them, remember? You couldn’t stand to see them. You thought if you let them be for even a night you might wake up to find the whole garden covered in weeds.”

The Kingsfoil, delicate dark green and tiny white booms, peeked up from the dust at them. There were a lot of those now, everywhere in Frodo’s yard. They climbed up the posts of the fences and crawled slowly around the edges of the flowerbeds.

“Strider used them for your wounds, don’t you remember?” Sam picked one of the tiny, weedy vines and cradled it in his palm. He imagined crushing it between his fingers and smearing it over Frodo’s heart, as if it could heal black feelings as well as it could heal black magic.

“You think they’re going to come back?” Frodo asked, sudden and tense.

Sam opened his mouth.

“No,” Frodo answered himself, brow creased. “No, of course you don’t. They won’t, they’re gone.”

“Yes,” Sam said gently, his chest aching, “They’re gone.”

Frodo leaned into Sam’s shoulder and turned his face into Sam’s neck, his breath feathersoft and warm against Sam’s skin. “Sam,” he said, and nothing more.

Wrapping Frodo up in his arms, Sam pulled them close together, chest to chest and their legs entangled.

“I just can’t rip them out anymore,” Sam murmured, “that’s all.” He rocked them back and forth a little.

Frodo hummed in soft appreciation. “What will you do when I’m gone?” Frodo asked. Sam could feel the words as much as he could hear them, warm vibrations against the side of his neck. Their singular respect for propriety was that they kept their feet tucked under the bench, not touching. It felt like the only place they weren’t touching. Even their thighs pressed close.

A couple young hobbits, Challan and Habble from a few doors away, skipping down the path, shied away from Sam and Frodo as they came across their yard, giggling to each other, sheepish and embarrassed, as if they’d stumbled upon something they weren’t supposed to have seen.

Sam could hardly even remember days before he knew Frodo. What was life without Frodo Baggins in the door of his hobbit-hole, beaming at the garden, leaping over brooks and climbing trees, coming back with trousers that needed patches? “Eat with my gaffer, I suppose,” Sam said, aware that this was an insufficient answer. “That’s probably what I did before you came along.”

“Well, will you marry Miss Rosie Cotton?” Frodo prompted. “Make a nice hobbit-hole of your own? Have children?”

Sam thought of Rosie’s big, blonde curls and apple cheeks. “No.”

Frodo sat back. The air that filled the space between them stung with cold. “No?” he echoed, as if sure he’d either misheard or Sam misspoke.

Sam shrugged and clasped his hands together again, tapping his thumbs. “What would you do, if you weren’t leaving?”

The sun had set now, the last streams of sunlight tickling the sky weakly, unveiling the stars, which winked down at them brightly. How clear the skies, Sam found himself wondering, as he did many nights. It wasn’t the thick smoke of Mordor or a dark canopy of leaves and branches above him, but a velvet sky of diamonds. How lucky they were, alive, safe, tucked once again in the Shire.

Frodo’s brow wrinkled, his face troubled. It was lit only by the lantern that hung on the hook by the door, exaggerating the shadows under his eyes. “I don’t know. No matter how hard I try, I can’t see a future here. I don’t see a life, not like everyone else seems to.” It was clear he was speaking of Sam, Pippin, and Merry. Those who had gone there and back again. He turned away, gazing down the dark dirt path that extended beyond their sight, toward the main road that led out of Hobbiton. “I thought Rosie Cotton would be yours.”

They went to a tavern with Merry and Pippin that week, surrounded by the music of happy hobbits occasionally bursting into song, dancing with thumping feet on the tabletops, and then dissolving into chatter and laughter. The sun had sunk into the hills, and the clear sky had sparkled with stars before they even stepped inside.

Now, about an hour in, Merry and Pippin had probably each had a pint and a half, and sconces held lit flames, lighting the room with a warm, late-night glow. It filled their cheeks with rosy heat and made their eyes sparkle just as much as the ale did.

As he always did when he drank a bit, Sam couldn’t keep his eyes off of Frodo. The softness of his hair, which had gone dry and coarse with sweat and smoke, and had now returned to its silky nature, enchanted him most nights. Tonight, though, all he could think to watch for was whether Frodo was going to tell Merry and Pippin.

So often, Frodo would lift his head from his mug, and Sam would think now, now he is going to open his mouth and say, I’m going into the Undying Lands.

Merry would say, What does “undying” even mean? Are you passing into immortality, or into a version of early death?

Pippin would say, you’re not. You’re pulling one over on me, and grin around the table, waiting for everyone to laugh and reassure him yes, Frodo was joking.

But Frodo never said anything. When he lifted his head, it was always to watch Merry and Pippin, as if collecting his memories of them, folding them up to take for the road.

Merry was talking about a small Brandybuck affair coming up soon. “I don’t know, you may not even be invited,” he said dramatically, gesturing to Sam and Frodo.

Smirking, Pippin nudged Merry’s shoulder hard enough it seemed like Mary might topple over. “Oh please. It’s a small affair, not a tiny one.”

Merry puffed his chest out, impressive. “Might be less than eighty.” He lowered his voice confidingly. “Very exclusive, you know.”

Pippin laughed. “You’re invited,” he told Sam and Frodo. “He’s just teasing.”

When was this small affair supposed to happen? Frodo probably wasn’t even going to be there.

Sam cast his eyes about to see if anyone else Frodo might like to say goodbye to was there—Proudfoots, distant Brandybucks, and, of course, the Cottons, filled the tables. He couldn’t imagine Frodo caring to gather any last memories of the Sackville-Bagginses, but they weren’t here anyway, they never were the kind of people for nights of tipsy fun and hearty food. His eyes landed on Rosie Cotton behind the bar, serving large mugs frothing at the rim over the counter.

She was looking back at him, her eyes as bright as ever, cheeks pinker than he remembered them. It was probably the heat of the fire sconces on the wall near her; Sam could still feel the heat of them in his cheeks too.

Glancing away, he found Frodo watching him, the spark of mirth in his eyes—rare as of late—having died out.

“Talk to her,” Frodo prodded him, as he always did, “she can’t stop looking over here.”

“She’s looking at you,” Sam protested, waving Frodo away. He actually didn’t know, and he was unsurprised to find it didn’t much matter to him one way or the other. The flutter she used to give him had completely dissipated in the face of the fire Frodo lit in him, the steady embers that always sat in the pit of his stomach, glowing with the simple memory of Frodo’s presence. “And besides, I—I guess I’m just not—you know.” He shrugged sheepishly.

Merry and Pippin were suspiciously quiet, inspecting each other’s mugs. Merry was accusing Pippin of switching their mugs when he wasn’t looking, sure that he’d had more left than Pippin last time he checked. They used to join Frodo in urging Sam to say something, now they seemed not to notice.

“Listen, now, don’t get me wrong, she’s a lovely hobbit,” Sam said quickly in response to Frodo’s skeptical expression. He was in love with Frodo, that’s all there was to it. “I just don’t think…

“You were just looking over there, is all,” Frodo interrupted, saving Sam from having to stumble through an explanation of why he didn’t want Rosie Cotton. He turned to Merry and Pippin, who were still muttering about the ale. At this point, it was hard to believe they weren’t just leaving Frodo and Sam to their own conversation as politely as they could. “When is the party?”

“Next week.” Pippin tipped the rest of his mug down his throat, Merry still grabbing playfully at it.

Well. There it was.

“I don’t think I’ll be able to make it,” Frodo said, his expression unreadable.

Merry’s jaw dropped. “Unable to make it?” he repeated incredulously. He turned to Sam. “What is this? Sam?”

“I can make it,” Sam promised.

“Well thank goodness for that.” Merry shook his head in astonishment and drank the rest of his ale, too, with the air of someone who had just found his last strawberry to have been eaten by someone else.

Would Sam even want to go? Would he be too sad to leave his hobbit-hole?

What was he going to do once Frodo left?

“Are you going to tell them?” Sam asked at Frodo’s door, as they got ready to say goodnight. Often, they’d speak for an hour outside, both pretending they were just about to leave, but neither making any move to open the door or the gate. “Merry and Pippin, I mean. You leave in two days.”

“Yes, I’d better.” Frodo’s face was lit by the moon. “I meant to tonight, I really did, I just—”

“You meant to tonight?” Sam echoed, remembering the way Frodo watched them, slightly tense. He recognized it there, in hindsight: the way one watched conversation like it was a game of skipping rope, waiting for the right time to jump in.

“Maybe I just—” Frodo swallowed, the motion obvious in the glow of the moon. He had the familiar look on his face, almost worried, that told Sam he was overwhelmed with emotion. He used to think Frodo was always worried, now he knew Frodo was just expressively affectionate. “I’m not sure.”

“Not sure.”

“If not Rosie—what were you going to do? Before you knew I’d leave?”

Sam sighed. “Look after you, Mr. Frodo, what else?”

Frodo’s expression softened. He placed a hand on Sam’s arm. “You can’t spend the rest of your life just—serving me, Sam—”

“Well I won’t, now, will I?” It came out harsher than Sam intended it to. “And I don’t mean as your gardener, I mean as your friend.” He slowed his speech, softened it. “You said I was a good friend.”

“The best of them,” Frodo confirmed. His eyes shone again, wet. “I…I love you, Sam. You know that, don’t you?”

The back of Sam’s throat stung. “I know, Frodo.”

This got a smile out of Frodo, tender. He squeezed Sam’s arm. “Don’t you forget it, Samwise Gamgee.”

“I love you too,” Sam got out, barely escaping the threat of tears. Nothing felt more like a goodbye than the words I love you. “Don’t you forget it.”

Frodo reached out and clasped Sam’s face in his hands, bringing it gently down. For a heartstopping moment, Sam thought wildly that Frodo was going to kiss him, but Frodo kept bringing Sam down, and carefully pressed his lips to Sam’s forehead.

It felt like it lasted a lifetime, that one moment where Frodo’s lips brushed Sam’s skin. Sam thought he might lose all control and lift his head and kiss Frodo—proper, on the mouth—but instead, he opened his mouth to take in a breath, his nose all stopped up, and a sob escaped him instead. All the effort that he’d been putting into not crying released at once, making his body tremble with the force of it.

“Oh Sam,” Frodo whispered against his forehead, and pulled Sam in for a tight hug, tight enough that it felt as if his lungs were tight, constricted. “Oh Sam.”

They stood like that in the front garden, surrounded by the waving stalks of not-yet flowering flowers, holding each other tight, for a long, long time. The shoulder of Sam’s shirt became damp from Frodo’s silent weeping.

Sam pressed his eyes closed and tried to stop shaking.

The next day, they cooked together. They may have plenty of elf food, Sam had insisted, but there’s nothing like a good hobbit feast.

“You don’t have to bring anything?” Sam asked, cutting the carrots for the stew. “Nothing to pack, Mr. Frodo?”

The cutting boards were old, marked with stripes of old knives, generations of them. The Bagginses were good hobbits, and took good care of their cutting boards so that they passed down generations. How many other hobbits had cooked what meals with these tools, the knives from Bilbo’s great grandfather, and the pots from Frodo’s grand-uncle’s branch of the family which could be traced back farther than either Frodo or Sam had the time for? Had they cut up juicy, fat birds for birthday feasts? Had they boiled porridge for dying grandmothers? Had they sliced oranges for wedding cakes?

Who would get these when Frodo was gone?

Frodo shook his head. “In the Undying Lands I won’t need much.”

Had they ever made a goodbye feast on these cutting boards?

Before them lay cheeses that had sat sweetly aging in the cupboards for longer than Frodo had been alive, fresh breads baked among hot stones, sliced carrots and a weighty, skinned rabbit diced cleanly. They had apples, smoked ham, a hefty bushel of potatoes whose skins curled, golden when they set them among the glowing coals.

“Are you bringing anything at all?” Sam asked. It seemed so unsettling to set off on a journey with nothing but an apple and perhaps a walking stick. Frodo would be leaving tomorrow and it didn’t seem like he was thinking about it as much as he should be.

Frodo looked at him sideways. He’d been gazing at Sam almost all day, hardly looking down to see where his knife would fall. It made sense, Sam supposed. It was the last time they’d ever see each other.

He tried not to linger on the thought.

“Can I take those flowers?” Frodo asked, “The ones you grew for me?”

Sam faltered. “I grew them all for you, Mr. Frodo.”

“I know.” Frodo waved him off. “It’s my garden. But the ones—you know what I mean.”

“I do,” Sam agreed, “I planted all of them for you.”

When Frodo only stared at him, Sam took Frodo by the elbow and led him to the window. The day was bright and perfect, as the weather was so often in the Shire: clear-skies and a light breeze that made the flowers bob and sway. He pointed: love, healing and care, celebration and frivolity.

“That one—” He pointed to the far row, right up by the fence, where fat white flower buds were beginning to form at the tops of the stalks. “Hope.”

Sam glanced over to see if Frodo was following, but Frodo wasn’t even looking out the window anymore. He was looking at Bilbo’s book, which sat heavy on the desk, where Sam had left it nearly a week ago. It had gathered a light sprinkling of dust on its cover, only noticeable when Frodo reached out and turned the cover open, releasing the dust motes into the air, where they danced in the sunlight.

“There and Back Again, by Bilbo Baggins,” Frodo read slowly, “And The Lord of the Rings, by Frodo Baggins.”

“What am I to write?” Sam asked, coming to stand beside Frodo. “And an Afterword by Samwise Gamgee?”

When he looked up, Frodo was gazing at him. Sam was close enough to track every minute movement of Frodo’s gaze and close enough, too, that he couldn’t tell where, exactly, Frodo was looking. His eyebrows? His temple? And then down—his nose? His lips? “Write whatever you want,” Frodo whispered, as if their proximity was a place of worship in which he could only speak in hushed tones.

Then, abruptly enough that it felt as if the air between them should swirl in the sudden vacuum of space, Frodo stepped back several paces and turned away. “Can you—the potatoes are probably done.”

“Right.” Sam put his empty hands in his pockets. “I’ll get them.”

“Thank you, Sam,” Frodo said, and walked briskly out the door.

It was fine, Sam thought. Perhaps he’d been leaning in without meaning to and Frodo had gotten afraid and panicked that Sam would do something untoward. Perhaps it was all just too much for Frodo right now, leaving tomorrow, preparing a feast, learning about all the things in the garden he would never get to see bloom, saying goodbye to the study he had spent so many days in and the book he’d spent so many hours writing.

Frodo was entitled to act a little strange, and he wasn’t obligated to explain himself to anyone.

Not even to Sam.

Who was standing here, worrying about the million different things he could’ve done wrong, including, but not limited to: following Frodo to the study when Frodo may have wanted to be alone, mentioning that he had planted all those flowers for Frodo, planting those flowers at all, plucking them and handing them to Frodo the way a lover might, crying into his shoulder the night before as if Frodo should be the one to carry all his emotions on his back, looking too deeply into Frodo’s eyes when Frodo was gazing back at him just then—the list went on.

It was probably none of those things.

Sam trudged back to the kitchen, picked up the cutting board, and pushed the sliced carrots into the bubbling pot of stew over the coals, then took the potatoes out from the coals, piling them neatly on the now-empty cutting board so that they began to take a pyramid shape.

Frodo had not just turned and left Sam, he had turned and left, and Sam had, probably, happened to be in the place that Frodo was leaving.

And, Sam tried to tell himself, Frodo was not going to leave Sam. He was going to leave a place, and that place—Hobbiton, the Shire, Middle Earth—was a place Sam happened to be in.

It had nothing to do with Sam.

Even though Sam had planted flowers outside the window to make Frodo’s day brighter, and cooked food to remind him of the simple joys of life, and dammit, he’d done his best. And if that wasn’t enough, it wasn’t enough. It was no one’s fault and it was nothing to mourn.

“Sam?” Frodo’s voice called.

Sam turned and started towards Frodo’s voice, in the direction of the front door. He should, he realized, probably tell Merry and Pippin that they were expected to attend a feast tonight, even if he wasn’t yet allowed to tell them what the feast was for. He didn’t want them making conflicting plans unknowingly.

“Oh Sam,” said Frodo, framed by the circular daylight streaming through the front door. He said it much softer that time, tender. He hurried forward, towards Sam. “You’re crying.”

Sam sniffled, wiping at his eyes. Through the welling tears, Frodo became a hobbit-shaped blur, dark hair, pale skin, and dark clothes. “Sorry, Mr. Frodo. I was just thinking I oughta go tell Merry and Pippin, shouldn’t I?”

He moved to go, but Frodo caught him at the wrist.

“Don’t,” said Frodo.

Sam swiped his eyes again with his free hand, clearing his vision, and took in a steadying breath through his mouth. “Don’t? Don’t what?”

Frodo’s brows pulled together tight on his forehead. “Don’t—please—”

Hardly able to believe his own audacity, Sam pulled his wrist free. He just wanted to go, to get away from Frodo Baggins and breathe. “Begging your pardon, Mr. Frodo, but it’s getting late.”

“Sam, please—I’d like to say something.” Frodo, in a flurry of thumping footsteps, cut Sam off on his way out of the door, once more blocking the doorway. He had a hand behind his back, Sam realized. He hadn’t noticed because he’d been crying too much to properly make out Frodo’s figure.

The sun was in the middle of the sky. Sam was shaking. Merry and Pippin were probably laughing, chasing each other around a field somewhere.

Frodo Baggins was standing in front of him, begging him to stay just one more moment.

“Go on, then,” Sam said.

“Samwise Gamgee—” Frodo’s voice trembled, and he closed his blue eyes, his brown curls silhouetted in the door. “Samwise Gamgee, you have been a good gardener and the best friend any hobbit could ever ask for. You stayed beside me when I sent you away, and you saved my life, and you saved the world.”

Sam tucked his dirty hands into his pockets, feeling weak and broken and loved. “Don’t tell me you’ve got a whole speech,” he mumbled, scuffing the floor with his toe.

“I do, and please, if you will—listen to it.” Frodo gazed at him, eyes wet, and stepped closer to Sam. “You took salt from the Shire all the way into the wastelands, where all we ate was lembas and smoke. You saved for the return journey. You carried the pots and pans. You carried me.”

“We all did things,” Sam interjected.

Frodo got closer. “You reminded me what I was fighting for when I didn’t know if I wanted to fight anymore. Goodness was worth fighting for—Sam, you were worth fighting for.” He said those words hard, as if he thought the force of them might stamp them straight between Sam’s ribs, into his heart. He said the next words much softer. “Your life was worth fighting for. Your future. I wanted—” He faltered. “I wanted you to make it back home, and marry that Rosie Cotton, and have kids, and a hobbit-hole, and bring your gaffer berry jam fresh from your garden. Sometimes, that’s the only thing left that was worth fighting for.

“And then we won, and there was nothing left for me to do. You could have Rosie Cotton, and your hobbit-hole—”

“I don’t want—” Sam started, but Frodo squeezed his shoulder, and Sam fell silent.

“And Merry and Pippin, they sing and dance like they always have, and steal ears of corn… and I couldn’t see a future for myself in the Shire, the way I could see a future for you all.” Frodo, who had been gazing solemnly into Sam’s eyes as he spoke, closed them again, drawing in a deep breath. Eyes still closed, he said, “And then you—you didn’t want Rosie Cotton, and a hobbit-hole with her.”

Sam thought his heart had stopped in his chest. He couldn’t have spoken if he wanted to, and he didn’t want to. He wanted Frodo to keep talking more than he’d ever wanted anything.

Frodo opened his eyes. “You said—and now I won’t hold you to this, Sam, I’m just saying what you said—that you’d have wanted a life with me. This hobbit-hole. The Baggins’ hobbit-hole. And me.”

“Just you,” Sam whispered, “I don’t give one fig about what hobbit-hole there is, as long as it’s with you. I don’t care if there is a hobbit-hole.”

Whatever force that had been propelling Frodo through his speech gave way as Sam said that, and Sam could practically see Frodo’s body go weak, his brows pulling together even further. “Oh Sam,” Frodo whispered, and pressed a flower into Sam’s hands.

For a moment, this seemed incredibly incongruous with the rest of their interaction, and then Sam identified the flower. Bright yellow petals, broad as the sun, curling upward around a purple center.

Love.

“It… bloomed early,” Sam said dumbly, unable to say anything else.

Frodo took Sam’s hands, in his own, which held the flower delicately between them. They looked at eachother, their breaths mingling.

“I want to stay,” Frodo whispered, without blinking. “If it’s with you, that’s a future I can stay for.”

“Frodo,” Sam said, and couldn’t find any other words in any tongue of Middle Earth. He tried again: “Frodo—”

Frodo blinked then. The hands around Sam’s were trembling. “I’m not—I don’t mean to ask anything of you. I only mean, if you’ll have me—”

Both hands still around the flower, Sam leaned forward and caught Frodo’s open mouth with his. Frodo tasted like berries in the sun, and tea that had been left to cool. His hands disappeared from around Sam’s, and for a moment Sam panicked, suddenly aware of how terribly inappropriate and presumptuous he had just been, and then two delicate hands slid into his hair and over the back of his neck, clutching him close as if Frodo was afraid Sam was going to pull away.

Sam was not going to pull away. He felt Frodo’s nose press into his face and the edge of Frodo’s teeth on the curve of his lip, and he knew that if he could do this forever, he would.

Even when they broke apart, Frodo’s fingers stayed wound in Sam’s hair, keeping their foreheads pressed together.

“Sam,” Frodo whispered worshipfully. His eyes were still closed. Sam studied the curl of his eyelashes. No one, Sam was sure, had ever been or ever would be as lucky as Samwise Gamgee was in this moment.

Half-afraid moving would shatter the vision, Sam brought one hand to the small of Frodo’s back and pressed their bodies close. Frodo didn’t disappear. He pressed in so eagerly, it seemed the pressure of Sam’s hand at his back was hardly there.

There was a sudden, bubbling hiss.

Sam sighed. No one had ever been or would ever be more unlucky than Samwise Gamgee in this moment. “The stew,” he said, “has boiled over.”

Frodo just looked at him and smiled, full and unreserved, like the smiles Frodo used to have before the quest, before Mordor, before everything. Bright-eyed and fond. “That’s okay,” he said, “We have the rest of our lives to get it to boil right.”

They ate the feast by themselves that night, with many left overs. Frodo didn’t want to invite anyone else.

“Merry and Pippin never knew I was going to leave,” Frodo had reasoned, “I can’t—that’s too much to tell them at once.”

After dinner, the breeze had turned cold in the night and they didn’t want to go outside, so they opted for gazing out on the starlit garden through the window of the study again, their feet bumping under the table as they sat on two stools they dragged over.

Frodo, as always, gravitated towards Bilbo’s book eventually, fingering the pages, and then flipping decisively to the end with a heavy thump. He brushed his fingers over the last sentence that he’d written.

Sam still hadn’t written anything.

“This isn’t true anymore,” he remarked, thoughtful. He looked up at Sam and his mouth tugged at the edges, smiling. “Perhaps that’s what the afterword by Samwise Gamgee will clarify.”

Sam started. “This book isn’t about me, Mr. Frodo. You still want me to write in it, even though you’re staying?”

Solemnly, Frodo took Sam’s hand in both of his. “You’re my future, Sam. You get to write it.”