Title: Anti-Angsti Author: Eykar (much assisted by A Lady) Author’s email: holdfast2004@yahoo.com Pairing: Frodo/Sam Rating: NC 17 Summary: Frodo and Sam have had enough of their fans’ insatiable sexual demands. Illustrates or is illustrated by Solarfall’s In Love (http://home.tiscali.nl/solarfallsartwork/Images/InLove2_verz.jpg) Warnings: Humorous angst. Angsty humor. Shamelessly romantic. Disclaimer: I don’t own them and I don’t get paid to write about them. Anti-disclaimer: Get over your cheap self, New Line! You know you love it. Feedback: Please, including critical, at holdfast2004@yahoo.com Author’s note: Thanks to The Very Secret Diaries for strawberry bubble bath and for “If he tries anything, Sam will kill him.” Thanks to Bill the Pony for a few details I couldn’t resist repeating. If anyone is bothered by the fact that horses don’t have a rutting season, they have my permission to assume that Middle Earth horses do. ******************************************* “When Sam awoke, he found that he was lying on some soft bed. . . . He stretched and drew a deep breath. ‘Why, what a dream I’ve had!’ he muttered. ‘I am glad to wake!’ He sat up and then he saw Frodo was lying beside him. . . .’Is everything sad going to come untrue?’” -- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King ******************************************* Frodo and Sam were alone at last, after all their friends and well- wishers had departed, sitting side by side in the rather large tent that Strider – now King Elessar - had assigned them on the Field of Cormallen. It was the first night of their unexpected, renewed, Ring-free lives. They should have been tired enough to sleep, but the day’s stirring events, along with the giddiness of still being alive, kept them up talking by the wavering light of a single candle. At first they spoke only of the day just passed: The unforeseen and somewhat embarrassing honors lavished on them, their delight at seeing their friends still alive, and their confusion in trying to sort out exactly which friend had lived which adventure. They finished with a midnight snack of leftovers from the king’s table, feeding each the other tastiest bits. It almost felt like being back home. Sam absently cradled Frodo’s bandaged hand, as if to shield it from bringing back memories neither cared yet to face. Frodo brushed Sam’s face with his slightly sugary good hand and their eyes locked in a tender gaze. “Sam?” Frodo asked uncertainly. “Does this feel at all familiar to you?” “Well, yes and no, Mr. Frodo, love. It was often much -- rougher, if you get my meaning.” The air in the tent seemed to chill and turn darker. Without thinking, they moved closer together. “Yes, in Mordor it would have to be.” Frodo spoke the name in a sort of grating whisper, close to Sam’s ear. “Why would those writers ever expect us to do it there?” “They shouldn’t have made us,” Sam agreed grimly. “We were in no condition.” “They kept telling us we were going to die and had best get it over with,” Frodo sighed bitterly. “Liars.” “They knew all the time, they did. It weren’t fair.” Sam’s eyes pricked with tears, for himself and even more for Frodo who had been much harder used on their journey. * Orcs! Why did they have to let the orcs - * “Fans, they call themselves!” He bristled. “I’d like to get my hands on some of them fans.” “I’d like to get your hands on me,” Frodo said hopefully, brushing a finger over Sam’s lips. “That, too.” Sam gathered him in. Frodo sighed again, happily, breath warm on Sam’s neck. The candle seemed stronger now. Their bodies fit with the ease of long, if not always voluntary, familiarity. Frodo nestled into Sam’s arms, enveloped in his musky scent, and smiled up at him. “You always believed we would make it, didn’t you?” “Oh, we were making it all the time!” Sam snorted. “Rivendell at least made sense; we thought we were free of the stinking Ring.” “But Ithilien -- we were being watched all the time there. And to think that they made us let Gollum join in!” Frodo shuddered. “Made him easier to kill in the end.” Frodo swallowed his regrets about that, as it was done and couldn’t be changed. “How could they insist on Lorien, with Galadriel spying on all our thoughts? Ugh!” “What about Moria? We were cold, hungry, lost and sleeping on rocks!” Sam hugged Frodo fiercely and kissed his curls. “Double for Emyn Muil,” Frodo said, starting to unbutton Sam’s shirt. “It was decent of them to at least let us keep each other warm.” *Oh, everyone kept you warm, they did!* Sam kept that to himself, since none of it was Frodo’s choosing. At least . . . he hoped not. . . “I’d have been very satisfied just keeping warm,” Frodo said, as if overhearing the thought. “Comfort wasn’t quite comforting when I had to get off every time you touched me or else suffer agonies trying not to.” His touch was teasingly light on Sam’s bare skin, marking a wandering trail down to the lacings of his breeches. Frodo’s thin face was eager, and reverent. Sam shuddered deliciously. But it was too fast. “Not yet, love,” he said huskily, pulling Frodo back into his arms. “I’ve always wanted to take all night.” Frodo’s lips twitched into a dry half-smile. “During all those rushed, hard first times, when we were both filthy, with rocks under our backs?” “None of them writers was ever taught patience,” Sam murmured against Frodo’s mouth, and licked away the grimace, thoroughly, slowly from outside and in. “No,” Frodo finally softly agreed. “They weren’t. If they ever gave us a proper night, it was likely to have been before the quest and only a memory.” Sometimes he wondered whether they had been in love the first time they left the Shire together. There was no way to tell, since all the departures, as friends or as lovers, seemed to have happened at once - as did all the fallings in love. Only one of dozens of tangled memories . . . . He smiled again suddenly. “But a sweet one.” With the luxuries at last of time and quiet, Sam slowly reached for Frodo’s top button. He relished uncovering each sweet inch of skin, easing the shirt bit by bit from his love’s lightly-muscled chest and shoulders. “I tried counting nights for awhile,” he said between kisses to Frodo’s neck. “For some of those days there were two or three. Sometimes more. I was that worried lest we might never get on with the quest. Makes me right giddy to think on it.” He fell silent, sucking the salty skin at the base of Frodo’s throat, holding it between his teeth. Frodo gasped and arched against him. When Sam let him go, Frodo’s gaze was bright and feral. “You’re what makes me giddy,” he breathed, and then shivered as Sam ran his fingernails down Frodo’s side. After a few long, deep, tongue-sucking kisses, Frodo’s conscience wandered back. “Oh, Sam, it must have been hard for you, living the same night over and over, and always with different combinations. Do you know when it was worst for me? Aside from having to eat the same wretched small cold meal each time! They kept writing me consumed with lust when I’d just fallen down hard or dislocated something. Not sexy at all. Loving you was all that kept me going.” Their bare chests were pressed together so close that Frodo’s heartbeat might have been Sam’s own. Their legs intertwined, letting them feel each other stiffen. Sam tenderly held Frodo’s small firm rear, pressing him closer. This was the way that loving should be, comfortable, with time to grow. “Funny how they never thought the cold might interfere. Or, come to think of it, hunger or thirst.” “Or lack of proper lubricants.” Frodo loosed one arm to scrabble around among the covers. “Ah, here it is. They have very strange ideas about hobbits,” he added, with a look of distaste, snuggling bottle between himself and Sam to warm. “I think they confuse us with stallions in rut.” That made them both laugh, though not entirely happily. Frodo bent to playfully nip Sam’s chest and began kissing hungrily downwards on him, only slightly distracted by Sam’s strong hands unlacing his breeches and by the night air on his bare flesh. Once he reached his goal, he let Sam feel his hot breath where it would matter most, making Sam gasp and squirm with impatience. So delightfully close to one of his own kind, Frodo suddenly found a use for his unasked-for knowledge of how humans differed. The writers were, after all, only human! Untainted laughter bubbled up in him. “None of them ever described this quite properly,” he said, raising his head to grin up at Sam. “The most personal, lovely part of a hobbit! I think that means it’s ours alone.” “I know mine’s yours alone – Oh, Frodo!” Sam moaned as Frodo moved to prove it with mouth and hands. Whether or no they intended it, the writers had given him every chance to learn the perfect ways to touch each and all of Sam’s most sensitive spots (along with those of a small army of irrelevant others.) He almost too quickly brought Sam panting to the edge. Hips rising, hands gripped in Frodo’s hair Sam pushed himself hard into Frodo’s mouth –- though never, of course, as savagely as he might. Frodo heedlessly felt himself quicken, and was rather expecting a wonderful mess when Sam maneuvered a leg between them to push him away. “Don’t finish me yet, love. Get up here.” Frodo quickly, willingly straddled him, and let his beloved make him ready. “Some of them remembered to include food,” Sam reminisced happily, fingers busy. “Ooh! Mmmm. . . That was nice. But they made you give me baths at the most ridiculous times and places. None of them ever seemed to think I could keep myself clean.” “If I ever smell strawberry bubble bath again I’ll probably be sick,” Sam vowed, rolling Frodo beneath himself. “I solemnly promise never to use it.” Frodo slipped his arms and legs around Sam, a moan rising in his throat as they joined. Suddenly tears sprang to his eyes. “How I wish this could be our first time! If only they had let us alone!” “Don’t distress yourself, dearest,” Sam panted, holding him close, fingers twined into his curls. “I don’t see where it matters what they made us do, not if we both agree this one’s for us.” “Oh, Sam! What would I do without you?” Frodo interrupted Sam’s naughty answering laugh. “Don’t answer that, you wicked hobbit! Just kiss me -- kiss me now. For the first time!”