Title: Festival Dancing
Section: 2 of 3
Pairing: Rosie/Sam/Frodo
Rating: R
Categories: slash, canon, het
Author's name: Ruby Nye
Summary: A festival dance entangles Rosie in the truth of Sam and Frodo's relationship.
Rosie stood before the round green front door of Bag End, clenching her fingers in her skirt. She had dressed carefully; her first impulse to wear her best had been crushed by the realization that she couldn't tell her family of this invitation. Her mother would likely go with her as chaperone, or send Tom, and besides they'd want to know why even an eccentric gentlehobbit such as Mr. Frodo would want to have tea with Rosie, and that she was not going to explain to them.
So, she told them he'd asked her to do some work for him, and worn her newest working-dress, and laced her bodice as tightly as she could, and hoped she looked like something other than, well, what she was.
The door opened, and Mr. Frodo stood there, smiling as if she were a guest. "Mr. Frodo, sir," Rosie said, curtseying.
"Miss Rosie, come in." He bowed in greeting before her wide eyes, shut the door behind her, and gave her his arm. Gingerly, careful not to be too forward, she took it, and they walked to his dining room.
Rosie hadn't known what she'd expected, but it certainly wasn't this. Mr. Frodo sat her down and refused to let her fetch anything, and even served her a cup of tea and a plate of cakes and summer fruits. Rosie looked at the beautiful food on the beautiful plate, and the teacup like a painted eggshell, and the polished table, and the polished gentlehobbit sitting across from her, and felt her mouth dry up and her stomach clench. The world felt topsy-turvy.
"Rosie? I've never seen a hobbit resist strawberries before." Mr. Frodo smiled at her, and she took a deep breath. "I'm sorry, Mr. Frodo. It's just, this is all so lovely and rich. I'm not, I'm not a gentlehobbit, sir, I'm not used to this. Nor to you."
Mr. Frodo's smile tilted wryly. "Sam used to say that. All the time." He laid his hand on the table, palm up; Rosie looked at it, at the dabs of ink staining the fair skin, the slenderness of fingers whose cleverness she remembered well, and blushed, and laid her wide small rough hand in his. "You used to be used to me, when you were small."
"I remember, sir." She did, those days when she was a child, making Mr. Bilbo's tall young cousin laugh and learning her letters from him and drinking in his stories; other children drifted away, but she and Sam kept returning, till she was too grown for her parents to let her go. Sam had never stopped. "I remember those days, and loved them, but�when I was small I didn't have to behave proper."
Frodo sighed at that, and nodded, and squeezed her hand. "I suppose I'm lucky enough to have won through propriety to have Sam. It would be more luck than one hobbit could have�the tea is growing cold. Can you eat anything? You should at least try a cake. Sam made them for you, you know."
Rosie looked at the sly cheer in Mr. Frodo's expression and couldn't help but smile; then she looked at her plate again, picked up a cake, and took a bite. It was predictably delicious. And, after all, she was a hobbit; that bite led to others, and before she knew it her plate was empty and full and empty again, and she felt better, and she and Mr. Frodo were talking again and laughing. Eventually, Mr. Frodo had gone back to the kitchen for more tea; Rosie smiled, laughter still echoing in her ears, and picked up a redcurrant. It popped on her fingers, and she giggled and licked them just as a flash of movement caught her eyes.
Mr. Frodo stood in the doorway, looking at her. He smiled, and she realized she was sucking on her index finger, and blushed redder than the redcurrant. He grinned at that, with the mischief she knew of old, and suddenly she giggled, and they were laughing again, as merrily as when she'd been young enough to ride on his shoulders.
"Oh, Mr. Frodo," Rosie said, holding out her hand again, and he set down the teapot and took her hand, stroking the back of it with his thumb. "Oh, I should have known, really, how Sam would love you."
That earned her a blush from his pale cheeks, and a smile that was almost shy. "Thank you, Rosie. He also loves you, you know."
"I know." Rosie smiled at that, the pleasure of hearing it bittersweet but undeniable. "We talked, when he brought me your note. I had been wondering why he hadn't spoken, since he came of age. I'd not ask, but I had wondered. Now I know, and I---I'm glad to know."
Mr. Frodo smiled at that, as bittersweet an expression on his face as in her heart, and placed his other hand atop hers. "I had worried, well, so many things. That you would feel I'd come between you, to start with. I feel sometimes as if I have."
"I�if you did, it's because Sam chose to put you there, and�.I told him he couldn't do my choosing for me. I can't do his choosing for him." That last hurt to say, but it was a pain that healed. Even so, Rosie felt her eyes filling.
"Ah, Rosie." Mr. Frodo raised his hand to her cheek, his thumb gently catching the tear that spilled over. "I told Sam I hoped I hadn't made things harder for you two. I want you both to be happy."
"I know, Mr. Frodo. And I want you and Sam to be happy. He feels you need him."
The thumb moved over her cheekbone, catching another tear. "I wish I could say I didn't. But I do. I feel�" Mr. Frodo's eyes unfocused as he looked into space, till Rosie could almost see the thoughts spinning behind his eyes. "I feel as if I have something before me to do. I'm going to be fifty in three years, and Bilbo set out on his adventures when he was fifty." He dreamt for a long moment more, his eyes focused on the unseen, before they turned back to her face. "I wish I could see Sam settled and happy, but I fear I may have filled his head with my moonshine."
Rosie smiled at that. "His feet are still on the ground, Mr. Frodo. And, at any rate, we have time. You'll be fifty in three years, though no one would believe it to look at you, and I'll be thirty-three in two years, so none of this needs to be settled now. For now, Mr. Frodo, Sam is my friend, and, I hope, so are you."
"I am. I very much am. Come here?" Mr. Frodo drew Rosie around the edge of the table to sit on his lap, and wound his arms around her waist. Firmly telling the voice of propriety within her to shut up, Rosie leaned against his shoulder, and they sat together warmly.
"I am sorry, Rosie," Mr. Frodo murmured into her hair, and shushed her when she opened her mouth to reply. "Not for Lithe. Never for that. That was a wonderful night. You're beautiful, you know. And Sam is beautiful. And the two of you together�" he trailed off for a moment, winding his arms more tightly about Rosie's middle, leaving her thrillingly breathless. "Perhaps I shouldn't have pulled you two back to my bed. That took it from a Festival dance that no one marks, to something between the three of us that marked us. But I wanted, I wanted you both in my bed, and I wanted to shut out all the rest of the world. I hope you can forgive me my greediness."
Well, what could be said to that? Rosie leaned back a little, and when Mr. Frodo turned his head to look into her face, she leaned down and kissed him.
He kisses differently than Sam, thought the small corner of her mind that could still think, that wasn't engaged in stroking her hand over a high cheekbone and tangling her fingers in dark curls and parting her lips warmly over his and feeling his hands sliding up her back to wreath themselves in her curls as he pulled her closer. Then those fingers tensed, as he pulled her head back to kiss his way down her throat, and she couldn't think of anything at all beyond the moist heat of his mouth on her skin.
Rosie heard a moan and realized it was hers, and that thought sobered her enough to realize where and who she was. She was a lass, not a lad; even as a tween, there were liberties lads could take that lasses couldn't, and pressures she could not put this wonderful, fragile friendship under. And if she didn't get up soon she wouldn't rise from Mr. Frodo's lap until he picked her up to carry her to his bed.
That she couldn't have, because she wanted it. She couldn't have it with Sam, not when he couldn't promise to marry her and she had agreed not to bind him, and she certainly couldn't have it with Mr. Frodo.
"Sir?" Rosie croaked, trying to sit back and gently pull Mr. Frodo's head up. For a moment he held her tighter still with those surprisingly strong, sweetly bossy hands; then he heard her, and his arms fell away from her as his head came up. "Oh," he blinked, and then smiled, and then blushed as red as she'd ever seen a hobbit. "Oh. Rosie. I-"
Rosie laid a finger on his lips for a moment, then climbed off his lap and wobbled on unsteady feet back to her own chair. "Don't apologize," she said, feeling her smile lopsided, but feeling it true. "I, I liked that. I just, we just can't. Not like this."
Mr. Frodo took a deep breath and smiled crookedly. "Yes, we can't. But I'm glad, Rosie, that you're my friend."
"I am too, Mr. Frodo. I am."
Life settled back down after that, but not quite as before. Rosie did her work and smiled and minded her parents and laughed. Sometimes she would walk out with Sam, and they would sit together and talk and kiss, but, mindfully, stay at that. Before he brought her back to her door, Rosie would always give Sam two last kisses, one for him and one for Mr. Frodo, and he would smile and cradle her face in his warm hands as she gave them to him. Sometimes Mr. Frodo would invite the families of Bagshot Row over for dinner or for tea and stories, and would smile at Rosie; twice he lent her a book over her parents' protests that such learning was wasted on a lass. When the families left he would kiss the misses' hands, and Sam's sisters would giggle, but Rosie would flush pink and squeeze his hand in return, just for a moment.
Sometimes Rosie would lie in bed in her own tiny windowless room, the privilege and prison of the only girl, and wonder at her contentment when she and Sam were less settled than ever. Except that, as she came to realize, now she knew his mind and his heart. It would hardly have seemed proper to anyone she told of it, but somehow between the three of them it was right, and when she thought of Sam's voice, saying "If I were to marry, I would marry you", her heart grew so warm she was surprised she couldn't see the light coming through her, and she would roll over and sleep with a smile.
Also, twice a year, at Lithe and at Yule, no matter whom she started out dancing with, Rosie would vanish when it was late enough, and so would Sam, and so would Mr. Frodo.
The first Yule, it hadn't been planned. As she was tying ribbons in her hair that morning, Rosie's mother brought her a mug of bitterroot tea and a spoonful of redcurrant jam, and when she blushed and stammered, her mother winked and said, "'Tis one of two times a year you can drink it, my Rosie, with you not handfasted and all, though I do not know what that Gamgee lad is waiting for to ask you." Rosie blushed deeper at that, but all she said was, "Thank you, Mam," and drank the bitterroot down and licked the spoonful of jam to kill the taste.
That night the Yule fire burned hot and sweet-smelling, what with all the herb-charms the Hobbiton tweens cast into it to bring their wishes true in the new year. Rosie danced and laughed, as she always had, but inside she wondered if she shouldn't just leave and go to bed. The bitterroot made her feel vaguely ill, and no one caught her eye enough to tug their hands and dance them away from the firelight towards a warm shadow.
Then she spun in a dance, and someone stumbled towards her, his head flashing golden in the firelight. She reached out to steady him, and felt her hands curl around Sam's strong shoulders. "Sam!" Rosie cried, and he smiled bashfully down at her, already spinning with her in the dance, and suddenly it seemed a better, brighter party by far.
A little more dancing, talking, laughing, and Rosie found herself being gently tugged from the main gathering, and went willingly, though she drew Sam's ear down to hers to doubtfully whisper, "I don't know if there are any free corners." She gently nipped that ear to show that her words weren't a refusal, and delighted to feel Sam quiver beside her; when he turned his head he was smiling, cheeks ruddy, eyes dark. "I know a place," he whispered in her ear, and kissed the spot beneath it. "If you're willing to go there again."
Rosie gasped, knowing her eyes were round with surprise. He couldn't mean, he must mean---! "Oh, but, oh, Sam, yes, yes I am willing. Let's go, before my sense comes back."
Mr. Frodo met them at the mudroom door, smiling a mysterious little smile, and brought them into the smaller parlor, where a large fire had burned down to banks of warm coals. Rosie sat with Sam's arm round her and battled with her sense, which had returned to clamor in the back of her head that this was madness and moonshine, that she should get up and snatch her cloak and run home. Mr. Frodo had stepped out of the room, and Sam was basking with closed eyes in the warmth, so she quietly snuggled into Sam's side and tried to remember the wild warmth of the dancing, when she had thought this all was a good idea.
Mr. Frodo returned with a winebottle and three beautiful glasses held carelessly between his fingers. He poured one full of ruby-red wine and handed it to Rosie; she took a sip and found her mouth full of a warm sharp sunny sweetness, the best of a summertime's fullness of grapes all together on her tongue. It slid warmly down her throat and into her heart and out to the ends of her fingers and toes and the tip of her nose and the top of her head, pushing back the winter's chill, drowning and quieting the nagging voice in the back of her head. Rosie opened her eyes, finding she'd closed them, and took another sip, only with difficulty managing not to drain her glass.
Mr. Frodo looked over the top of his glass at her. "Do you like it, Miss Rosie?"
Like it? Rosie wasn't sure such an ordinary word could be applied to such a marvellous drink. "It's, it's lovely, Mr. Frodo, what is it?"
"Old Winyards. Bilbo left me a few bottles." Mr. Frodo topped up her glass and Sam's, smiling all the more, and Rosie took another swallow of the best wine she'd ever had. Sam finished his glass and set it down carefully to the side, then put the other arm around her. "How do you feel?" he asked.
Rosie looked up at him, her glass empty in her hand, her head pleasantly light. "Warm," she said, smiling. "Warm and light. I might float away, if you don't hold me."
"We can't have that, now, can we?" Sam slipped one hand beneath her chin, and Rosie tilted her head back as he leaned down to kiss her. Sam kissed Rosie warmly and gently and thoroughly, his hand cradling her face; Mr. Frodo slid onto the seat beside them, hot against Rosie's other side, and she felt Sam's hand leave her waist to take Mr. Frodo's, even as Mr. Frodo's other arm went around both Rosie and Sam. They wriggled closer, and Rosie found herself pressed between them as Mr. Frodo kissed beneath her ear and Sam started unlacing her bodice and who needed a bonfire in all this heat? Rosie certainly didn't, as her fingers began undoing fine buttons and Mr. Frodo leaned forward onto her to kiss Sam and she felt herself moan for the sheer hot joy of it.
"I nearly forgot." Mr. Frodo's voice was husky as he leaned back a bit, his shirt half-unbuttoned, the skin revealed faintly glowing in the candlelight."I've Yule mathoms for you, my beautiful friends." He turned and reached over the side of the seat, as Sam's hands slid gently over Rosie's belly. Fingers over her head in Sam's hair, Rosie idly wondered what they could be; Mr. Frodo had already given Yule mathoms to everyone living on Bagshot Row, he had given her a jar of rosehip jam. What now?
Mr. Frodo turned around again, with a ribbon and a little baked-clay pot in his hand. "This is for you, Rosie," he said, handing her the ribbon; it was bright red, embroidered and edged in gold. She smiled and leaned forward to kiss him, as he handed Sam the pot; the kiss was warm and moist before it ended, but a strange sound from Sam, somewhere between a gasp and a snort, made Rosie turn back around to see a bright red, yet smiling, Sam, staring down into the little pot.
"Sam, what is---goose grease?" Rosie raised her confused eyes to him, but he blushed all the more, and yet smiled all the more; she turned to find Mr. Frodo grinning most mischeviously. "That is Sam's mathom from me," he explained, blue eyes twinkling wickedly," and yours is to see what we do with it."
With that Mr. Frodo stood, blew out the candles, and gave Rosie his hand. Sam, still blushing and still smiling, stood and took Rosie's other hand, and Mr. Frodo led them off to his bedroom.
Rosie came awake slowly this time, knowing full well where she was and so happy to be there she was a little surprised at herself. It was still dark, but a half-moon had risen to cast silver light across the bed. Sam lay on his back, head tipped back, gently snoring; Rosie lay curled around his side, her head on his chest, while Mr. Frodo had snuggled his back into Sam and pulled her arm across both of them like a blanket.
Rosie looked up at Sam's profile in the moonlight, a face always gentle, now innocent in sleep. She looked up and remembered how that face had looked between her hands, trailing kisses across Mr. Frodo's chest and belly, pressing forward over her shoulder to kiss a path up to her mouth....and then Rosie remembered how Sam's face had looked above hers, as she held him in her arms and Mr. Frodo had entered him from behind, kissing his neck, whispering something soft and foreign and obviously loving, and Rosie had just held him, watching in awe. A tear had run from Sam's closed eye, and when Rosie kissed it away Sam had moved his face blindly, capturing her mouth with his own, kissing her harder than he ever had, moaning into the kiss as Mr. Frodo moaned love-words that slid up into a cry of pure pleasure, and a moment later Sam shook all over in Rosie's arms, wet heat bursting out over her hand. Then they both proceeded to collapse on her, but Rosie almost didn't mind; after witnessing that, she almost could have died happy.
Still, air was sweet, and they had been amusingly apologetic as they wiggled off her and she gasped and laughed at them and snuggled into Sam's side. .Now she lay beside them, warm in Mr. Frodo's soft bed, drifting back to sleep almost before she realized it.
Sam woke her while it was still dark but for the bedroom fire, gently stroking her cheek till she opened her eyes. "Rosie, we'd best be up and home," he whispered, and she nodded, and leaned forward to kiss him briefly before sitting up. This time her head felt fuzzy but just fine.
"Oh no you don't," mumbled a sleepy heap of coverlet on Sam's far side. Mr. Frodo emerged from the coverlet to stretch like a cat and yawn hugely and reach for Rosie's hand. "This time you can at least have breakfast with me, both of you."
Rosie squeezed his hand, but still protested, "Mr. Frodo, we should---"
"Must you call me 'Mister' even in bed?" Mr. Frodo rolled his eyes, then rubbed them, as Sam chuckled. "It's who you are, sir," he replied, and Mr. Frodo attempted to pretend to glare at him, then gave it up and kissed him instead.
Lit by an assortment of candles that looked positively spectacular to Rosie's frugal eyes, Mr. Frodo yawned his way through being helped by Sam in preparing tea and toast. While he was distracted, Rosie found fresh sheets and made the bed, humming quietly to herself; then she brought her bodice down to the kitchen, and Mr. Frodo laced it for her this time, kissing her as he worked.
By the time they ate the toast with cheese and jam it was just the start of dawn. "Well, I think I like this Yule celebration," Mr. Frodo said, satisfied as a cat in cream, and Rosie blushed and smiled at him, until a memory came back to her. "Mr. Frodo, you told me once that it hadn't been right of you to bring us back here from Lithe. What changed your thoughts?"
"Well, Rosie, would you say that we didn't fill the Yule with warmth?" Rosie had to giggle at that, and shake her head 'no'. Sam put down his teacup, gently as a feather, and held out his hands to Mr. Frodo and to Rosie. "I think I like this way of celebrating, sir."
Mr. Frodo took Sam's hand in one hand, and reached for Rosie's with the other, the question clear on his face. "I do, too," Rosie said, and meant it, and was delighted by both their smiles.
Three years went by, of proper behavior and walks with Sam and two festivals a year. One late spring day Rosie found a pink-purple bruise on Sam's collarbone, and giggled fit to fall over when his blush told her how he'd come by it; that Lithe, Rosie opened dazed, wet-lashed eyes to find that Mr. Frodo had given her a matching mark, high up on her neck where it couldn't be hidden, and her whole family teased her and Sam for it for weeks even after it had faded, marveling aloud that gentle Sam could do such a thing while Rosie and Sam looked at each other and blushed. .When Mr. Frodo went to Tookland for his birthday, he sent Sam and Rosie birthday gifts, honey for Rosie and fine biscuits for Sam, and they curled up at the base of a spreading tree and shared their gifts as they talked and kissed and read his letter together. Sometimes, Rosie would look at Mr. Frodo's ink-dappled fingers or up into Sam's honest brown eyes and feel such wanting she could almost have died of it; more often, she would lie in bed and remember the most recent festival, the last kiss Sam had given her, the last time Mr. Frodo had smiled at her, and feel well content.
One fall day Rosie was hanging the wash and thinking about her last walk with Sam, humming a slow, sad, beautiful song that Sam had said he'd learned from Mr. Frodo, when her mother came out with the next basket, but sat down instead of starting to hang it. "Rosie, I want a word with you."
"Mam?" That tone did not bode well.
"Rosie, it's no secret that every festival you dance with all the lads but the one you disappear with is Samwise Gamgee. It's no secret that you two walk out together. But still, you're not handfasted, and he's three years of age and you come of age in the spring. Did he not ask, or did you say nay?"
Rosie took a deep breath. This was her mother, her wise, loving, sharp-eyed mother, her sturdy hobbit mother. How could she even begin to explain the truth? How could she even think of lying? "Oh, Mam. It's�complicated, Mam. We talked, Sam and I. It's more complicated than that."
"There ain't nothing complicated about it," huffed her mother. "You're a lass nearly of age, he's a lad of age, you care for each other, what else is there? Waiting for the king to come back?"
Rosie snorted at that, and remembered that very turn of speech in another conversation, and laughed as she rubbed her wet eyes. "Oh, Mam. Sam and I will be fine. Please let it be.."
Rosie's mother peered at her, leaning close. "I don't want to see you end up pining away for a lad without sense to speak his heart, Rosie. You deserve better." Rosie nodded and smiled reassuringly, quaking inside, and her mother regarded her for a long moment, then mercifully let it be.
Rosie came of age, and her life kept up its pattern. Her mother gave her curious, sharp glances, and sometimes she wondered herself why she never spoke to Sam about handfasting or Mr. Frodo of his hazy future, but everything was balanced between them, it didn't seem needful yet. That Yule Mr. Frodo went to Buckland, taking Sam with him, and Rosie felt all her family watching her to see who she'd dance with in Sam's absence; laughing hollowly, she spun with all the lads, then escaped to her own narrow hard bed and cried herself to sleep, hating the day she had ever kissed Mr. Frodo and entangled herself in the truth of what he and Sam were to each other. The next morning her brothers all looked at her with wide eyes and her parents looked at her with pitying ones, but no one said anything, and for that Rosie was grateful beyond words.
Two leaden days later, and Rosie was scrubbing the luncheon dishes when her father came back from talking to someone at the door. "You have a letter," he said to her, looking dubiously at the folded paper in his hand.
"Me?" Letters were a gentlehobbit's pasttime. Rosie dried her hands swiftly and took the letter; it did indeed say "Miss Rose Cotton", and her address, both in Mr. Frodo's firm hand, and the return address was Brandy Hall. When she opened it a smaller folded note nearly fell free; under cover of coughing Rosie tucked that into her bodice and sat near the window to read the main sheet. Her father was too stolid to ask what it was, but she heard him tapping his big toe, and said, "it's a list of tasks Mr. Frodo would like for me to do, to ready Bag End for his return." That was true enough.
"And he can't ask the Gamgee lasses?" Rosie's father snorted. "I think sometimes Mr. Frodo spoils you, my Rosie, wasting your time with books and stories. If you weren't Sam's friend, I might think he's courting you, and you know that could come to no good."
Rosie laughed as best she could over the pounding of her heart, and put up a show of stubbornness. "Dad, if he hadn't learned me my letters, no one on Bagshot Row but Sam would be able to read. Haven't I made good use of being able to read for you? Besides, Mr. Frodo's been my friend since I was a small lass."
"Yes, and you ain't small now, Rosie, any more than Sam is." Her father favored her with the same sharp gaze her mother had been giving her for over a year, and Rosie tried to return it steadily as if there were nothing in her heart that her father didn't know. After an endless moment, he shook his head. "Speaking of Sam, Gaffer Gamgee might have more cause to worry than I. Do you think Mr. Frodo is courting him?"
"Who, the Gaffer?" Rosie deliberately misunderstood, and her father's guffaws of laughter hid the false notes in her own giggles. Oh, Sam, she thought, putting on her lightest face. "Dad, I don't know but that Mr. Frodo's courting no one. Wasn't Mr. Bilbo a bachelor before him?"
"Ah, you're likely right, my lass." Rosie's father patted her hair. "I hope Mr. Frodo pays enough for a new party frock for you." Rosie smiled at that, relaxing, and made her escape to put the letter up carefully in her room.
There she pulled out the inner letter, and read it as quietly as she could, barely breathing as her lips moved to shape the words.
Dear Rosie,
I am sorry I neither came back nor returned to you your Sam in time for Yule. We both missed you. I did not intend such a long stay, but my cousins are very persuasive. The outer note said that will be back on the Fifth of January, but we will actually return on the Fourth. I hope you can be there.
Yours,
Frodo
Underneath that, in a scratchier, larger hand:
Dear Rosee,
One day you shuld see the Brandy Hall gardens. Roses for acres. Must be lovely in the summer. Not half as lovely as you.
Samwise.
Rosie folded the letter up again, and tucked it into the crack of the bed beside the invitation, and shed several tears of pure happiness before she pulled her face straight and went back out.