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COMING SOON
Works-in-progress and the like, which will, hopefully, be finished and posted in their complete incarnations... er... soon. Most of them are untitled, but since all of them are unfinished, I figured what the hell. (Okay, so I actually stole the idea from Willow-wode. Thiefs, precious, yes we are...)
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GEN/HUMOUR |
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COUNTERPOINT 'VERSE |
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Untitled Pre-Quest |
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The light from the moon edging its way through the curtains was just losing its silvery cast and slipping into grey. He was warm and sated and couldn't seem to wipe the smile from his face. It had been too long this time. It was too long every time but this time was just too much, almost past bearing, and had Merry not had so much work to do over the past months, he might have gone slowly insane. It was too much and they were too far apart and here was something that needed fixing. And Merry, in his own humble opinion, was very good at fixing things.
Frodo had curled himself around Merry, Merry's head resting heavily on Frodo's arm, his fingers softly tracing the wide furrow of Frodo's breastbone. He wasn't asleep yet, Merry could tell, but he was getting close. He thought he should probably wait until they'd had at least a few hours sleep before springing his surprise on Frodo but he'd waited quite long enough, he thought, and if he didn't spill it soon, he might well burst and that wouldn't do anyone any good. So he lifted himself onto an elbow, peered down at Frodo, moved his fingertips from their work at Frodo's chest and let them slide down his nose instead. He watched Frodo's nose wrinkle, twitch then Frodo opened heavy-lidded eyes, peered up at Merry.
Merry smiled, asked, "Aren't you going to ask why I've been so anxious to get you here?"
Frodo blinked slowly, closed his eyes again, yawned. "You mean it wasn't for my body?"
"Well, that too," Merry returned through a grin. He traced a path down Frodo's breastbone, fingertips lightly smearing over a thin sheen of sweat, pausing over the slowly-lengthening beat of Frodo's heart. "See, I've been thinking…" Paused, unable to control the grin and feeling a little giddy besides.
A lift of an eyebrow from Frodo and a bit of a smile. "Oh, dear, he's been thinking." He lifted his head, planted a quick kiss to Merry's mouth, said, "I thought I smelled smoke," then chuckled as he plopped back down, yipped as Merry tweaked a nipple. "Ow! Sod." A swift clip to Merry's ear.
Merry snorted, took hold of Frodo's hand and pressed it to the mattress. "All right, enough with the beating on the bedmate, yeah?"
"You started it." Frodo grinned, slow and wicked, turned his eyes to his hand, still trapped by Merry's, then back again. "Do you intend to finish it as well? Again?"
A waggle of those dark eyebrows and Merry snorted again. "Give us ten minutes and I'll see what I can do, eh?"
"Oh, only ten, then?" Now Frodo looked sceptical.
Merry nodded, confident. "It's what you do to me, you know." He leaned down for another kiss, this one longer, and Frodo hummed, breathed deep as Merry pulled back. "There will never be enough of you for me, you know," Merry told him quietly, more serious now. "Once an hour at least, if you'd let me."
"Awww," Frodo said and his tone was somewhat snarky but his expression was soft. "That's quite lovely and… and sort of optimistically smug of you, Merry-lad."
Merry rolled his eyes. "Are you finished? Because this is important."
Frodo gave another tug on his hand. "Dunno," he grinned, leaned up, nipped at Merry's chin. "Am I?"
"Frodo…" Merry paused for a small groan as Frodo's tongue ran wet and hot down his throat. "Come on now, I'm serious. I've something important to talk to you about."
A pause and then Frodo's head dropped back heavily to the pillow and he sighed. "Then why did you wait until now, when it's the middle of the night and you've gone and shagged me stupid?"
Merry had his reasons for that but he wasn't about to share them with Frodo. Instead, he let go Frodo's hand, wove their fingers together.
"I've been thinking."
"So you've said."
Merry ignored him. "Wouldn't it be grand to have this all the time?"
A lift of one dark eyebrow. "I don't know," Frodo answered, his smile smaller perhaps, but just as mischievous. "All the time just might do me in, what with you--"
"I think you should move back to Buckland."
Bugger. He hadn't meant to blurt it like that.
Long silence and Merry could measure the fall of that smile, bit by agonising bit.
"Buckland."
Frodo's voice was flat, his eyes dark as the fire tossed gilt shadow across the bridge of his nose.
Merry took a deep breath, swallowed, tried on a smile.
"There's several burrows along the River you could have for a pittance, you know. Not as large as Bag End, but more suited to you, I think. And there's at least two houses on Hall grounds that are empty most of the year, so selling you one of those wouldn't be any problem, if you'd rather a house."
Another pause then: "A house," Frodo echoed, his eyes narrowed now, and why was Merry beginning to feel a pit open up in the bottom of his stomach? "In Buckland."
Merry nodded, tightened his grip on Frodo's hand, now noting a distinct slackening of Frodo's own grip.
"Right, Buckland," Merry answered. "You know it -- big place, rather a large river running through it. Loud. Full of Bucklanders." He twitched a nervous grin. "Rather like Hobbiton, only fun."
Frodo had gone so still that he almost seemed made of stone. He stared at Merry, face gone smooth and expressionless, and oh, bugger all, what had Merry done wrong now?
"I think," Frodo told Merry slowly, "that you'd best let go of my hand now."
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Untitled (Post-Quest) |
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Sam won't ever say what he hears in the watches of the night. Who would he tell and to what purpose?
He will never speak of the cries that come to his ears in the still of Night's breath, the soft sounds of grief that stir through the tunnels and wend their way, shattering, into root and branch of home and hearth. Won't whisper a word of the tears that he can almost hear hitting linen or the shudders he can almost feel through earth and wall.
Rosie hears, he knows, because he feels her eyes upon him, narrowed in silent command, until he sighs, pushes back the sheets and leaves one bed for the other.
Sometimes it's his own name that slips through darkness unfathomed; sometimes it's another's and that's the worst, he thinks. More hopeless, he thinks, and his mind paws over that thought perhaps too often.
Always, though, it's the audible despair that hastens his steps, the blackness of voice and the silent entreaty within for comfort. And what is Sam, if he is not a comfort to his master? So, he shifts with the shadows through the tunnel, silent as one of their own, and slides himself beside his master, wraps firm arms about him, and sometimes he wonders if his master knows somewhere in his black dreams that the form wrapped about him is not as wide as it should be, the timbre of the soothing nonsense a touch higher than it should be and accented in all the wrong places.
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Untitled (Post-Quest) |
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So odd, how things just seem to fall back into place, even after such trials as they've all seen. Sam wonders why he ever even worried in the first place. Not about the big things, of course -- Dark Lords and Rings and trying to will life into himself and his master with only a few bites of waybread and a sip or two of water when they were lucky. Worry and to spare over things like that. But the smaller things tend to slip from importance when the bigger rumbles through and sometimes they go away entirely, crushed to dust beneath the weight of it all, and you wonder how in the world you ever considered them worth worrying over in the first place.
Not always, though. Sometimes those smaller things just bide beneath the bigger and wait, ready to pounce on you when you think you've finally had done with worries. Like those blasted yellow sun-weeds; one or two and you can almost talk yourself into admiring their cottony puffs of gold, acquiring an appreciation for their almost-bitter scent. It's only when there are so many of them that they turn a lush green lawn to one near-swathed in their yellow heads that you understand you would have done better to dig those first one or two up and made yourself a bonfire because now you're pulling and tugging until your back breaks. And still they tease you, turn from gold to white and spread themselves farther and deeper and if you listen, you can almost hear them laughing as they bob their nasty little heads and sway to the late-summer breeze.
Some of Sam's worries have gone while he was off taking care of bigger ones and he's right glad it's so because he's had about enough of worry to do him for a very long time. He has brushed off the worry over Mr. Merry thinking Sam were sniffing about what's his because for one thing, Mr. Merry himself seemed to have got over that one during his own travels and for another, Sam had seen real jealousy and greed at work and it rendered Mr. Merry's former pique near-paltry in the shade of Its shadow; the Ring was a jealous swain and Its greed was ancient.
Not that Sam had any right or call to worry over what might or might not be going through Mr. Merry's heart or head. But they were two parts of the same whole -- Mr. Merry and Mr. Frodo -- and if you were going to worry over one, you sort of had to worry over the other. And Sam still had plenty of worries over Mr. Frodo.
His master was alive and they were on their way home and for those things, Sam was grateful. He'd done his job proper, just like his Gaffer'd told him. But he weren't well, Mr. Frodo, and he didn't speak on it, so Sam respectfully didn't ask. Well, not in so many words, anyway.
Still, here they were, taking care of one another again, all of them, and that, more than anything else, told him things would take a fair turn.
Any day now.
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