Disclaimer: what makes you think anyone in their right mind would sell LOTR to me?

A/N: this is for those of you who can't seem to get enough of How to teach a Dwarf to Swim and other things, and who asked for more about Frodo's…er…predicament. Sequel to How to teach a Dwarf to Swim and other things so you should read that first. (No offence to Son-Of-Durotan, but I personally think How to teach an Elf to Rock Climb was a bit of a let down and I am truly sorry about that. I honestly didn't know he was gonna write it like that! Cross my heart and hope to die, and if I'm lying I will go to hell where…(for the full list of horrible things that will be inflicted upon me, see Aragorn's apology in chapter one of DTS (that's Dwarf To Swim, and I'll be using it cos it's too much bother to write out the whole thing)

Another A/N: Yes, I'm perfectly aware that most of you think that slash is sick and twisted and disgusting and wrong, but I've also heard it described as 'the source of all non-chocolatey goodness in the world' and even though I don't like it quite that much, good slash fanfics are funny and especially if one of the characters ends up getting pregnant, as with my fic. I like watching them suffer all the bad things about being a woman with none of the benefits. Mwahahahaha!

Warning: anybody who can't stand reading about either Frodo or Aragorn or both being bagged, put down and ridiculed should not read this fanfic. This is an honest warning, so take notice of it and don't flame me for it. You chose to read it, if you don't like it the close button is located in the top right-hand corner of the screen. Rest assured that I'm not going to go into the full details, it's bad enough reading fics like that (not that I do, of course), it's gotta be a helluva lot worse writing them! :-(

So…yeah. Enough with the AN's, I should probably start writing the story.

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Their faces said it all: disbelief, horror, confusion, uneasiness, and even slight hysterics. Disbelief, however, was the main drag, mixed with a 'how on earth are we going to sort this out?' look.

"I can't believe it. I simply don't believe it. How on earth did this happen? How on earth could it have happened?"

A sigh. "I don't know, this seems like a strange dream. It's amazing though, isn't it? It seems impossible, but…well, you know what they say, love can do anything."

"I'm scared of how he's gonna react when I tell him."

"You mean you haven't told him?"

"Of course not! That'd be a nice thing to come home to: 'hi, this is completely unheard-of and not to mention going against everything I've known, but I've just found out that I'm pregnant and you're the father. How was the rest of your day?'"

"You have to tell him."

"Why? He might dump me as soon as he found out. It's not exactly something we'd planned."

"Do you think we planned on any of this? Of course not, but it's happened and now we have to work with it. And the first step is breaking the news to him. He is the father."

"What if he hates me?"

"I guarantee that if he does end up hating you, which I doubt he will, he'll hate you a lot less than if you didn't tell him and everybody else knew. The least you can do is tell him yourself what's going on. Or would you rather he heard it from the local gossip?"

"No! No. I have to tell him, don't I?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"Sooner rather than later, is my advice. Now would actually be a good time, I think he's just got in."

"Now? But…but…oh god, what'll I say?"

"You'll be fine. Good luck."

There was the sound of someone treading on the stairs. Him. The father. It was all so strange.

"Hi."

"Hi."

There was a very awkward silence.

"I need to tell you something very important. Very, very important. But please stay calm when I tell you."

"Sure. What's the big news?"

"I'm pregnant."

"WHAT?! You mean…you and me―"

"Yes."

"Oh god."

"If you're gonna leave me just do it, okay? I want to get it over and done with."

"Leave you? Oh no, no, no. This is wonderful."

"You mean…?"

"I love you, you know that? I'll always be there for you. We'll get through all this, and everything will be just fine."

"LIAR!!" A near-empty chocolate box was thrown in the direction of the person in question. It fell onto the tv and slid off, leaving several brown smears on the screen.

Frodo groped around and found another box. Opened it. No strawberry creams, just more blasted toffees. Ooh! A hazelnut! He chewed thoughtfully on the morsel, and went back to watching the antics of people so beautiful as to be ugly, speaking in strange, half-sobbing voices, and all of whom seemed to be going by the names Ridge, Thorne, Brooke, Skye and Taylor. Otherwise known as a soapie.

After the initial shock of being told that he was going to be a mummy in eight months' time had worn off, Frodo had migrated into the living room, emerging out of it only to inform people (namely Sam) that he had run out of suitable food, and to use the bathroom and even then only in the early hours of the morning when nobody else was awake. This arrangement had been in effect for exactly one week, during which Gandalf had, with many disgusted looks, retreated into his rarely-used bedroom that doubled up as a ground-floor attic so he could watch something on tv that didn't consist of people dying, giving birth, being born, marrying, divorcing and shagging. Over and over again. He had solved the problem of all the things cluttering up the room by shoving most of them into the middle of the hallway. These various things had formed a dangerously-teetering tower with only a small space between it and one of the walls, which was rather difficult for Sam, Merry and Pippin to get through and impossible for Legolas and Aragorn. And since it formed a barrier between them, the kitchen and the shower, the situation was getting rather desperate. Trying to have a shower in the backyard using a garden hose is a cold, sanity-and-patience-testing business at the best of times, combined with a notable lack of privacy. Water restrictions don't make it any easier.

Things were definitely not looking good in the house of the Fellowship.

"Aragorn, Legolas, dinner's ready." Sam crouched next to the gap, holding a saucepan, a ladle, two plates and two forks, and proceeded to dole out large chunks of two-minute noodles (a mixture of chicken, oriental and curry flavours, but under no circumstances beef) onto the plates before passing them through to the other side. To at least attempt to make dinner as normal as possible, Sam, Merry and Pippin also sat in the hall, and anybody who might be able to hear them but not see them would have thought it was perfectly normal.

"How's the gardening going, Sam?"

"Not too bad, but there's this tree that's looking a bit odd and I want your opinion about it."

Legolas choked on his noodles. Sam didn't ask other members of the Fellowship for their opinions about gardening. He'd never asked them, and since Legolas had known him for roughly 5000 years, he was fairly sure Sam hadn't woken up that morning and decided to change this particular habit. Something was going on.

"Er, what sort of tree is it?"

"A…a palm tree."

"Ah, of course, a palm tree."

"Yes."

"That's actually alive."

"Yes."

"In the north of England."

"Yes."

"This early in spring."

"Yes."

"I was of the opinion that the palm tree is a tropical plant."

"Yes, but this one's a…special arctic palm tree. Very rare, them." Sam nodded violently.

"So this is a new type of palm tree."

"Yes."

"Sam, if this is a new type of palm tree, why hasn't it been in the papers? Tv programs? Radio stations?"

"Well I'm not really supposed to tell you, it's top secret and all and we're supposed to be keeping quiet about it in case other people find out and try to steal these special arctic palm trees because they want to say they invented them."

"Oh, of course. Because everybody knows that arctic palm trees are going to be the biggest influence on our lives since sliced bread."

Sam reflected that the amount of sarcasm an Elf could cram into one sentence was nothing short of amazing.

"Well, could you just come and look at it?"

"I don't think I can help you much really, I haven't had any experience with palm trees. Oaks, cacti, magnolias, but not palm trees."

"Yeah, but you're an Elf, you've got that connection. With nature," Sam added hastily when he saw that Merry, Pippin and Aragorn had taken it as a suggestive statement rather than what he actually meant. "Could you just come and look at it, please?"

A defeated sigh noise came from the Elf in question. "All right." This resulted in Aragorn, Pippin and Merry exchanging a lot of 'nudge nudge wink wink' looks and grins.

"Have fun connecting with nature!"

"Or perhaps something else entirely."

"Like what?"

"I don't know, you tell me."

"Oh grow up, you three." Legolas rolled his eyes and followed Sam out into the garden. "So where's the special arctic palm tree?"

"I don't want to talk about the palm tree, I want to talk about Frodo."

"Oh."

"Yes."

"We can't keep living like this."

"What, in a house?"

"Living in a house is fine. Living in a house with a huge pile of junk in the hallway, a hole in the kitchen roof and a lounge room that's been turned into Frodo's 'tissues, chocolate and soapie marathon nest' is not."

"Very good point. What are we going to do about all this?"

"We need to tell Aragorn about Frodo, he's not going to be completely clueless forever, I'm amazed that he bought your story about Pippin's second cousin's positive fat."

"That wasn't a story, that was just some random words that came out of my mouth before I realised I'd said them, and he wouldn't have bought it at all if Merry and Pippin hadn't woken up to what was going on and started a drinking competition before he had time to understand what I was saying."

Sam sighed. "Whatever, okay? We need to get Gandalf to go back into the living room so we can get rid of the stuff that's blocking the corridor, and although I don't relish the idea of sharing a room with Merry, Pippin, AND a pregnant Frodo, I'm not too keen to keep on eating dinner in the hallway for Valar knows how long."

"We need all the help we can get, and that means Merry, Pippin and Gimli."

"Yes, I was thinking that Merry and Pippin can get Aragorn and Frodo out of the house, so you, me and Gimli can get everything back to normal."

For a split second, both Legolas and Sam wondered how they were going to get them out of the house. But they didn't really have to look for an answer, because it had been imprinted on their brains since before they found out about Frodo.

"Swimming," they said simultaneously.

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Hehe, I hope you all liked my first chapter, I've never written slash before so tell me if I'm doing something wrong, won't you? (You can do that by reviewing, and even if there's nothing wrong you can review and tell me that there's nothing wrong.)

And there's going to be lots of appearances by minor characters. Mainly Elves, I think, cos they're quite……………..unusual, and they'll know how to help Frodo and the rest of the Fellowship.

And to those of you who might ask why I've decided to make Aragorn, to quote from Blackadder, 'as thick as a whale omelet', it's because…well…that's the way I'm used to writing about him, and there's a lot of stuff in this fanfic that relies on him being unable to see what's right in front of his nose. I know I bag him a lot, but I just can't resist it! One day I'll try to write a fanfic in which I do not bag Aragorn. At all. I will bag someone completely different, probably Elves, but definitely not Legolas (well, not too much) cos I think I'm allergic to bagging him. He's the object of my affections (not that he'd want to be, I imagine. Too bad, he's stuck with it.)

Please, please, please review! I want at least ten, do you hear me? Ten!

Nine? That's not too much to ask for, is it? One for each member of the Fellowship who's still alive and an extra one cos you're nice?

I'd settle for eight and a half, but it'd be a bit hard to read a review that's been chopped in two down the page. Make life a bit easier for me and make it nine.

Nine for the fanfic writer doomed to do geography…

Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeech!

~Enelya