"Well, Sam!" I read from page ninety-seven, my voice higher and lilting with the half-British Frodo accent. "What about it? I am leaving the Shire as soon as ever I can—in fact I have made up my mind now not even to wait a day at Crickhollow, if it can be helped."

"Very good, sir!" Sean shot back, his whole face changing with the eager and loving Sam expression.

"You still mean to come with me?" I added in the questioning look that the book's description didn't provide.

"I do," Sean said, and his eyes glazed over.

"It is going to be very dangerous, Sam," I said, staring at his eyes before looking back at the book. "It is already dangerous. Most likely neither of us will come back."

"If you don't come back, sir, then I shan't, that's certain," he read. I imagined this part impassioned and stalwart...a servant declaring his dedication. But Sean was reading it softly—and yes, there was passion, but it was the secretive kind. "Don't you leave him! they said to me. Leave him! I said. I never mean to." He smiled. "I am going with him, if he climbs to the Moon, and if any of those Black Riders try to stop him, they'll have Sam Gamgee to reckon with, I said. They laughed."

We were lying on our bellies on a pile of pillows, heads nearly touching over the books in our hands. I skimmed through all the post-its he'd so dutifully plotted for me and pointed. "Ooh, that's a good one. Page four-fifty-three. Sam, at the bottom."

"Where? Oh, there." He paused. "Begging your pardon," he read. "I don't think you understand my master at all. He isn't hesitating about which way to go. Of course not! What's the good of Minas Tirith anyway? To him, I mean, begging your pardon, Master Boromir. Now where's he got to? He's been a bit queer lately, to my mind. But anyway he's not in this business. He's off to his home, as he always said; and no blame to him. But Mr. Frodo, he knows he's got to find the Cracks of Doom, if he can. But he's afraid."

I watched his face change; tried to appreciate the skill and the love there. But I was stuck, finally, with my eyes glued to his mouth. My breathing bottomed out. I let myself become transfixed by how close we were and how easy it would be.

"Now it's come to the point, he's just plain terrified. That's what his trouble is. Of course he's had a bit of schooling, so to speak—we all have—since we left home, or he'd be so terrified he'd just fling the Ring in the River and bolt. But he's still too frightened to start. And he isn't worrying about us either; whether we'll go along with him or no. He knows we mean to. That's another thing that's bothering him. If he screws himself up to go, he'll want to go alone. Mark my words! We're going to have trouble when he comes back. For he'll screw himself up all right, as sure as his name's Baggins."

He stopped and coughed, then laughed, lifting his head and looking at me. "I think that's one of Sam's longest speeches. Damn. Kind of glad that didn't make it to script." He caught me looking at him. "Has my masterful reading of Tolkien left you mute?"

"What about the boat scene?" I smiled and turned the page; knowing full well what I could do with my eyes and tone of voice when I wanted, knowing that I had just done it and that his cheeks were suddenly pink.

"After the near-drowning or before?"

"After."

"Oh, Mr. Frodo, that's hard! That's hard, trying to go without me and all. If I hadn't a guessed right, where would you be now?"

"Safely on my way."

"Safely! All alone and without me to help you? I couldn't have a borne it, it'd have been the death of me."

"It would be the death of you to come with me, Sam, and I could have not borne that."

"Not as certain as being left behind." He stared up at me again, lightly touching my cheek with his free hand.

"But I am going to Mordor." My accent slipped a little.

"I know that well enough, Mr. Frodo. Of course you are. And I'm going with you."

"Now, Sam," I breathed, and my cheeks were hot. "Don't hinder me! The others will be coming back at any minute. If they catch me here, I shall have to argue and explain, and I shall never have the heart or the chance to set off. But I must go at once. It's the only way."

He smiled, broke character to chuckle, and rested his fingers on my neck as he read ahead. "Last two lines."

"So all my plan is spoilt!" I read. "It is no good trying to escape you. But I'm glad, Sam. I cannot tell you how glad." I let the love flood my throat. "Come along! It is plain that we were meant to—" be, I thought "—go together. We will go, and may the others find a safe road. Strider will look after them. I don't suppose we shall see them again."

His fingers lightly touched my cheek again, and he wasn't looking at the book. "Yet we may, Mr. Frodo. We may..."

Blood rushed around the ugly swollen thump of my pulse in my ears as I realized how close we were. The dim lamplight cast its mix of illumination and shadow over us. It was one of those moments when you forget about the expression on your face.

He dropped his hand to the pillows and my stomach turned heavily and then sank. I could all but hear the moment ending. A desperation, instinctive and visceral—it can't end there, it's not going to be like that maybe ever again, that was the moment—caught and held me.

He seemed bashful; but maybe that was just me projecting what I wanted to see. When he next looked up, the moment stirred. He swallowed. I inhaled. My eyes went from his eyes to his mouth, all propriety forgotten. Back to his eyes, and I couldn't tell you what I saw there. I was past reason and past seeing and his face swam huge and beautiful in front of mine. He inhaled; swallowed again. The sounds of breathing and movement of lips were magnified in the tiny space. The universe revolved around the three inches separating us.

He smelled like soap and was giving off an inviting heat. His eyes, normally a green-tinged hazel, had gone entirely hazel-brown. His top lip overhung his bottom, and between them was a shimmering dampness. His eyelashes would be silky to the touch. He had four, primary, accented laugh lines coming from each corner of his eyes. All this observation would come to me later; it took seconds to notice it all and years to process it coherently.

I was hot all over and my stomach had lodged itself firmly under my pounding heart.

Two inches. Inch three was his victim. Oh, God. We wobbled towards each other, then moved away. Lurch in my stomach and chest and the feeling exploded with the quality of an implosion—a mixture of defiance and carelessness.

I pushed forward on my elbows and pressed my face, tilted and careful, into his; our mouths collided decisively. Beat of stillness as the hot sudden nature of it flooded my body—gentle tides of glittery tingle, borne on a rhythm of timed, unbearable heat—and I was pulling away before returning again to make the mash a kiss. My mouth parted, top lip pressing between his lips, softly smacking a kiss on his bottom lip.

Back; and again, because it works when the other person kisses you back, which he was. Because he tasted like coffee and salt, because we hadn't yet worked out the right angle to really kiss, because he was breathing against me and the warm puffs of air excited the nerve endings at the corners of my mouth—and the tingle that was my blood spawned a second generation in record time.

He made a small noise between two kisses and my throat returned the call. The kiss lined itself with slickness, and I slipped my tongue into his mouth, touching it to his (please?) and he shivered and hesitated and then licked his tongue along the tip of mine (god, yes). Our teeth clicked and there was a quick, embarrassed movement to avoid that accident happening again.

A frenzy to get as close with lips and tongue as we could—the kiss demanded and had its orgasm—I was holding his face between my hands—and then a sudden rush, painful and hollow, as he pulled away. I opened my eyes, lazily catching up with the action that I was supposed to be co-writing. He stared at me, his mouth pink and wet, his pupils dilated.

"Oh God." More a thought in the form of breath than intentional words.

I licked my lips, chest drawing in with my own breath, and I closed my eyes briefly. "Oh God, Sean..."

He closed his eyes just as I opened mine again, looked to be trembling, and drew his lips inward. Don't was the implication, and I bit down on my bottom lip to shut myself up. A slow cold just under my skin bantered with the heat there. Icy bile. I was going to throw up if he kept looking at me the way he was.

We stared at each other. The moment where he might've grown angry had passed. My body squirmed at the uncomfortable mix of positive and negative feelings running through it.

His shocked, confused expression faded. He sighed and looked away. When he looked back, his palm was smoothing down my cheek and neck, but the regret written there was just as noticeable. "I'm sorry."

Cold flashed quickly through my veins, licking merciless barbs down my sides and back, and stabbing its finality with a definitive plunge deep into my chest. My heart crawled its way up my throat, sinking clawed, ropy fingers deep into the tissue there. I was going to die; and it was really un-fucking-fair, because I wasn't sure whether it'd be death by embarrassment, death by fuck up, death by disappointment, or a colorful arrangement of all of the above.

The movement of his limbs that left him standing perplexed me. The movement of his legs that took him out of the room struck me paralyzed. There was nothing to say. We both knew that; but the knowing had started with him. I was forced to adapt to it.

I continued to lie there, minutes after the noise of his car was gone. I let my forehead touch the floor with a soft thunk and closed my eyes, intently ignoring the burning behind my eyes and staunchly keeping them dry.

"He's asleep. Want me to wake 'im?"

"N-no. That's good. I...I don't want—Bill. Don't tell him."

"Calm down, man. You crying? What's going on? And why can't I tell Dom?"

"Shut up and listen."

"Right."

"I kissed Sean."

"You kissed Sean."

"And he k-kissed me back."

"Kissed you back."

"Billy, I fucking kissed Sean."

"Well. Never thought Beanie was your type, but alrigh'."

"For the love of Christ."

"What?"

"Astin. I kissed Astin."

"...Oh. Shit."

"He fucking kissed me back. And then he fucking left. The fuck was I thinking?"

"Hold it a minute. You like blokes?"

"Yeah."

"Was there a memo about that?"

"You missed it."

"Right."

"Billy. I'm fucking s-stupid."

"Alright, alright. Don't start blubbering again. Christ, man. Don't know what to say. I mean—fuck. But he kissed you back?"

"Definitely."

"Always thought it was just a joke with you two."

"Yeah."

"Want me to come over?"

"No. Dom'd ask questions."

"Why're you so worried about that?"

"I don't know. Just don't, okay?"

"Fine, fine. But you're over here tomorrow night, you hear me?"

"Yeah. Yeah, that's—I will."

"Right. Get some sleep, y'daft cunt."

"'Night, Bill."

"Mm."

"Billy?"

"Mm?"

"Thanks."

"Any time."

"Freezing." I did a little dance to stay warm.

"So I've noticed." He watched me, smirking.

We hadn't spoken about the kiss, and every beat of silence that rang around the topic rendered our time together more and more fake. It had gotten to the point where even the act of beginning a conversation seemed like one big avoidance tactic; the thought sickened me.

Was it easier for him to sweep it under the rug? Did he think it was fine and dandy that the cast was forced to watch he and Christine get tangled around the unspoken something or other that was suddenly there between them? He wasn't just avoiding one issue; he was avoiding several. And it was so unlike him that I honestly worried where his head was.

But all this was not the sort of thing to tackle while standing in a snow drift and waiting for a ride back to our temporary housing on South Island.

And looking at him with his hunched shoulders and back to me, I felt oddly guilty. I was a part of it, after all. I was able to decipher the tangled layers of silence and denial better than anyone involved and could maybe understand where we'd all gone wrong. Knowledge I had to keep to myself. So the guilt went around again, looping.

I stepped up behind him and wriggled my fingers through the gaps between his arms and sides, slipped my arms around, and laced my hands over his stomach, pulling him back against me. The squishy padding of his black jacket felt nice against the similar padding of mine.

"Mm," I sighed, feigning boredom, and put my chin on his shoulder. "Your collar's wet."

"You dumped snow down there an hour ago."

"Ooh yeah!" I grinned, blowing a stream of hot breath on the spot. "My bad."

"C'mere." He was smiling and squirming, opening his jacket and then wrapping the flaps around me, encouraging my arms around his waist underneath the jacket where the heat of his body was stifled. "Better?"

I closed my eyes and tucked my cheek against his neck. The seashell curl of his ear branded the side of my face with a combination of surface cold and subsumed warmth. "Yeah." I flattened my hands along his back and sighed. His arms were on my shoulders, fingers playing with the tangles of brown peeking out from under my wool cap.

He tilted his head and suddenly there were his lips, on my forehead, kissing and then murmuring. "I'm sorry."

I stirred. "For what?" Casual.

"These past couples weeks haven't been exactly pleasant."

I closed my eyes. His mouth stayed there, breath warm on my skin. "It was my fault."

"We both..." He sighed.

"I started it."

"Not just...that." He pulled back, looked me in the eye. "I mean this...this pretending. Sticking my fingers in my ears and acting like it didn't happen."

"It was...I dunno. We were reading and you were looking at me and I just." I tore my gaze away from his face. If I kept on looking at his liquid hazel eyes, eyes fringed by long sable-brown lashes, I wouldn't be able to resist breaking the rules again. (What are those again, little Hobbit?)

He smiled a little—amazing to me that he could even continue looking at me that way—and his fingertips lightly touched my hair again. "Is that all?"

"Shit, Sean, don't start," I laughed, despite the weight of his question; trying desperately to remain myself in a situation where I was being forced to hide things.

"Yeah, yeah." He was smiling that relentless, nothing-bad-can-happen-while-I'm-here, knee-weakening smile. And his fingers were on my neck and then my face, touching my cheeks, looking silly. His voice lowered. "I missed you. Hasn't been the same."

I smiled halfway and sunk forward again. I rubbed my face into his neck and then just stayed there, letting the cold creep in through my sleeves, knowing it couldn't touch the center of me, knowing that nothing could ever really freeze my heart again, even if this was the only solution we could find.

"Are we done?"

"I dunno."

"What's that mean? You're either done or you aren't."

I grinned. "You're such a guy, Sean."

"Thank you. And you're not?"

"I'm a geeky kid from Los Angeles. We're of a different race."

He stared; didn't even bring up the fact that he was from roughly the same area as me.

"So are we done?"

"Sean!" I went through a stack of jeans, squinted at the tags. "Ooh. Want to try these on first." He groaned, flopped dramatically over the top of a clothes rack. "Come with me. You can guard the door."

"Oh, good. Just what I always wanted." But he followed anyway and crossed his arms, standing outside the not-too-sturdy looking fitting room.

I went inside and wriggled out of my jeans, then pulled on the new pair. The button and zipper was not only annoying—the way all new jeans are—but kind of funny to work closed. I did a quick double-glance and decided I'd get them. I went to take them off, but the zipper wouldn't give. Huh. Chewing my lip, I stared at Sean's sneakers that peeked into view from under the dressing room door. Gave the zipper another rough tug.

"You alive in there?"

"Uh, yeah." I fought down a giggle. "I'm sort of stuck."

"Stuck?"

"The zipper."

He jiggled the door handle. "You break 'em, you buy 'em, you know."

"I'm sure." I mentally tapped my foot; waited for him to decide he had to come in and rescue me. And, three...two...one...

His face appeared just beyond a crack in the door. "Need help?"

"Well, get in, then!" I hurried him inside, closing the door. "People will talk..."

He smirked. "Like you care." His eyes ticked down. "Cool pants." I fidgeted, showing him where the zipper had gotten caught in the material. He pushed my hands out of the way. "Stop pulling, you're making it worse."

I found it amazing that his hands could be so freely brushing my crotch and it was alright, because he was just being Daddy Astin at that moment, and he hadn't realized the possible implications of our closeness.

It was that innocence, that prevailing goodness, that lack of ability in him to corrupt, even when I was having a hard time keeping a straight face—it was that, in the end, that drew me to him. I wanted that simple good-natured honesty.

In a world where everything was different shades of plastic and glitter slopped together, where you could never know exactly what people wanted from you; in that glitzy, spinning top of a world that draped itself with costumes and honey-coated promises of fame—I just wanted something real. I wanted him.

And so what if he was already someone else's, and so what if it was just stupid single-mindedness on my part? Who the fuck cared?

The zipper's teeth came away from the material and he let go. The dressing room felt very tiny around us. He gave me one of those smiles that was more pushing up of the corners of the mouth than actual smiling and reached out, lightly petting the front of my shirt. I put my hand around his arm and looked him in the eye; watched the playfulness there drain away.

My fingers crawled and cupped his elbow; his hand gently brushed my side—shied away—and then touched again. We sank together in an awkward way and when his belly touched mine I shivered, felt the intimacy tingle down and out to my extremities. His eyes filled my vision and all I could see was that gorgeous green-flecked brown, those long lashes—just before we kissed, with all the hesitancy of the embrace, with a slight tremble and placement that wasn't exactly right.

But once our lips touched, everything fell into place; he was warm and giving around me and on me; I could feel his breath and the damp promise of his mouth. I raised my free hand, needing something to steady us, and curled it around the top of the dressing room door. My other hand gripped his arm and then slid up and around his shoulder. His arm circled the small of my back. He pulled away for a second, I felt him breathe, and then he came forward again, kissing my bottom lip and then the crease between.

It hit that building point again, the point where it gets bolder and you want more, and his tongue almost accidentally slipped out. When he came forward next, I parted my lips and brought them together around the tip of it. He sighed, sank forward, and his hand came up, cupping the back of my neck—my head went back with the pressure and I fought to stay forward, kissing him deeper.

Around my waist, the unbuttoned pants were slipping. When we stopped to catch our breath, I laughed and put my forehead on his. "I just kiss you and my pants fall down."

He blinked quizzically and then looked down, tensing. "Oh! Oh. Sorry..." He actually crouched to pull them back up, but instead ended up bumping into a rather attentive part of my anatomy. I winced and he noticed and froze in place, looking rather nervous and overcome. "Er..."

When he was standing straight and holding me loosely again, he seemed to come back to himself. There was a blotchy splatter of red across his cheeks and nose. I leaned in and kissed the corner of his mouth, and then the space just above his upper lip.

"We should go," he sighed.

"No, we should stay." A gentle whine. I kissed him again, pressed him into the dressing room door. I was desperately holding on to the ground I'd gained. "All day."

He pulled back, creating that hot, breathy space between two kisses, and closed his eyes just as I opened mine. "God, Elijah..."

We were about to start all over again when someone knocked on the dressing room door. My stomach tensed. There was a soft "Oh, sorry!" in a Kiwi accent and then silence. We waited a good three minutes before deciding to go, and put a minute between our exits.

"What's that supposed to mean?" I took a long swallow and got comfortable.

"Look," Billy said. "Two good looking guys. Cut off from their old lifestyle, even if one of them has his family with 'im. Long days, long nights, lots of tension. It happens."

"Just like that." I chuckled. He nodded. "And what if I told you it wasn't just a physical thing?"

He stared at me. "Oh, no." Laughed, then went quiet. "Come now. Be sensible, Lijah. You don't think it's—well, think about it. Once this whole party is over, don't you think things'll be different?"

I thought about it. Tried to wrap my brain around the possibility, if any, there was of Sean having feelings for me. "I'm telling you, Bill, this is. I've never felt this way before."

"Welcome to the land of cliches, my friend. It's the first sign of infatuation."

"I am not infatuated."

"Oh?"

"...and why's that the first sign?"

"'Cause, ya know. You start with the 'oh, I've never felt this way' and the 'it'll never be like this with anyone else' and the 'bleedin' Christ that boy's got a nice arse.'"

I screwed up my face. "Yeah, okay. That last line is more you than me, Braveheart."

He laughed, kicked me in the leg. "What? You don't eye up Sean?"

Squirming, I sighed. "Well. Yeah. Just. I dunno. It's not a shallow...eyeing up."

"It's a deeply meaningful eyeing up?"

"No! It's more of a...wanting kind of...overwhelmed thing."

He watched me for a long moment, then pointed the neck of his beer bottle at me. "You'd better be careful, man. You're worryin' me." There was a small silence. "So what's he sayin' about all this?"

"Ah," I coughed lightly. "We haven't actually talked about it. Not really."

"So it's just been a lot of shagging, then?" His eyebrows went up.

"Oh, God, no. Billy. Jesus." I shifted around. "We've kissed a couple times. It isn't...normal yet. It's really awkward. I mean, once we—it gets good." I paused. "Really good." It felt deliciously forbidden to talk about it.

"It's gotta stop, though," Billy injected. "Or there needs to be a limit, yeah? Christine's a good woman. Y'can't just keep on like this, doing her wrong. I mean, I know y'don't wanna hear it, Lij, but you hafta. It's one thing if it's just to get some tension ironed out. But if you're sayin' it's more...well, then, it's more like an affair, isn't it?"

I sighed. Felt my chest tighten painfully; if seeing Christine in my head every time I thought about just what Billy was saying made me feel ten types of awful, I could only imagine what Sean felt. Hell, I adored the woman. But there was a part of me that just...wanted. Selfishly wanted.

"You're right. And we both know it. But something happens when we're alone. Something...and it feels so fucking right."

"The world is shades of gray, Elijah." Billy leaned back, staring off towards the ceiling and sloshing the beer around in its bottle. "I'm sure Astin's the kind of guy who could love a lot of people at once. But that doesn't make it practical. And it doesn't mean that in the end, it wouldn't break him. So lay your guidelines and make your decisions, but do it soon, before you start doing something crazy like falling in love with the guy."

He patted my shoulder on the way to get another beer and I said nothing, choosing instead to wallow in the numbness that paralyzed my chest.

3/11                                                                                                    5/11