Title: Home

Author: Majenta

Contains: Frodo/Sam, Frodo's POV

Rating: PG

Disclaimer: No, I don't own them, I just have a little harmless fun with them (and they enjoy it too).

            The sun breaks through a fan of bright leaves on the hillside and spills through the slats over my bed, a ceiling of skeletal ivory lattices and climbing flowers.  The soreness and aching of my shoulder soften and I open my eyes wide into the sun.  I feel Sam's soft curls against my bare chest and I am not dreaming.  I close my eyes again.

            The stillness of the air is foreign and beautiful to me.  There is the hum of waterfalls outside, where the morning air is chilling the dew on the flowers.  There is dew on my lips, and Sam is in my arms at last.  He stirs in his sleep and his lips brush my skin as they part, he snores softly and I cling to him in tired amazement. 

            The feeling of my body naked beneath the sheets is a new feeling to me, and the feeling of his naked body entwined with mine is beyond newness.  It is undiscovered, this feeling.  I stroke his hair and I taste the dew, I taste his lingering flavor on my lips.  The sun breaks clear now and the lattice shadows are cast across the silken blankets like the roads of a map.  They crisscross his naked back and I see the road home between his shoulder blades, along the dip of his spine.  I feel home in his arms, I taste it.

            "Have you ever been in love, Mr. Frodo?"  His eyes were cast down, his hands tangled together.  He sat on the edge of my bed with his legs tucked up beneath him and there was soft singing below our window.  Candles flickered in the trees.  I smiled, "Yes."
            I love him too much already, too much for us to have risked death so many times, and it shouldn't have made me love him more, the touch of his lips, his skin, but it did.  His soft, pink hands on my shoulders, his clumsiness that matched mine.  His inexperience and I think that I'm not nervous, not now. 

            I gaze with eyes half-lidded at the sky and stroke his hair until I feel his eyelashes fluttering against my chest.  He stirs and lifts his head.  When I meet his eyes, there is a look that startles me within them, like a deep well of shadow, and I think he sees that in me as well.  I kiss his mouth and he smiles, rose flushing his cheeks and the tips of his ears.  His knees brush mine beneath the sheets and he looks at me with importance, with a love that, I realize, he has had in his eyes all the time.

            "Morning."

            "Good morning, Sam."  He reaches up delicately and takes one of my curls between his fingers, smiling.  I forget the pain in my shoulder and I forget the half-eaten feeling that the ring has given me, though I have kept it secret, like my love.  He is not the type to leave, he is not the type to regret and I love that about him.  He kisses me again.  

            There is a darkness in me that tells me I will not see the Shire again, not now, and I hide this darkness in myself.  I see our things packed carefully by the door, but I do not see home.  I have found a new place for my heart.

            "You are like home to me," I whisper, "You are like coming home."  The shadows leave the bed, leave his naked back and he is unlined and boundless and I feel, for the first time, that I shall never leave home again.  Home has become unending.