After idly contemplating this and that for a moment, he sits up and leans close to the glass, letting the cold seep through and caress his cheekbone and the bridge of his nose. The plume of breath from his nose has put a mist in his garden. Sam tilts his head back and exhales steadily over his designs, effacing them. A smudge of fingermarks remains, like an afterglow. Through the window, the sky clings to what blue it can, though the sun has long collected its colors and gone home for the night.

A sprightly knock from the front of the smial sends Sam scampering for the vestibule. He heaves open the round door, fighting a too-playful wind that whips around the Row and dances waltzes with the snow lying thick about the Shire. His guest stands at the threshold, holding high a large lantern: his fine, precise face seems too small to contain his smile. "You'd never think it took so long to get from my door to yours!" he exclaims giddily, as full of exuberance as cold, dry air.

"Come inside, quickly, Mr. Frodo!" Sam clucks his tongue. "No sense waitin' outside all th'while, like." The other hobbit heeds him with cheerful alacrity, and Sam pushes the door back into its frame. Frodo hangs his lantern upon a nearby hook and pinches the wick. When he turns back to Sam, all the snowflakes in his hair have melted, crowning his black curls sure as any weave of silver.

"When did your family leave for your uncle's?"

"This mornin'," Sam replies, stepping forward, ostensibly to take Frodo's cloak. A flush-warm hand cups his jaw, and he receives a kiss instead. When they draw apart, Frodo's eyes are gleaming.

"Thank you for having me in your home, Sam."

For the first time, Sam feels a touch of bashfulness rise in his cheeks. "Well, 'tonly seemed right, havin' you over here for once, 'stead of up at Bag End. I know 'tain't as grand and fine as Mr. Bilbo keeps--"

Frodo drops his cloak over a peg on the wall and turns his smile back on Sam. "It's the longest night of the year. Fond as I am of Bilbo, I think your company wins out."

They wrap themselves in one blanket atop the bed in the spare room, murmuring this and that and sharing things. Frodo learns that Sam keeps a sprig of dried blossoms hanging from the walls of his room all year long, until he collects a new branch; Sam learns that Frodo's eyes slip shut and then spark open when he traces flowers on Frodo's skin and mingles them with kisses. The hours pass more quickly than is fair, and a light begins flickering through the window.

"Frodo," Sam whispers, running his fingers through the tousle of dark hair resting atop his chest. "Frodo, it's dawn. The sun is coming up again."

Frodo does not want to leave the warmth he's found nestled in Sam's body. He rolls his neck, his lips sweeping just beneath Sam's collarbone, and lies there for a few minutes listening to his heartbeat. Almost reluctantly, he opens his eyes and lifts them skyward. Sam feels Frodo's body tighten, and he frowns. "What's the matter?"

Nothing is the matter. Frodo turns his face back to Sam's, and a rare sort of smile shines. "It's not the sun, Sam. We've a few hours yet." He sits up, half-draped in the warm woolen blanket, and stretches one arm toward the shirt piled upon a chair.

Sam sits up as well, his brow still furrowed. "Well where're you... you goin' then?" he asks.

Frodo slides his britches on in one quick snapping motion and bends over Sam to kiss him again. There are fireworks of a sort going off in his eyes. "Get dressed," he tells him. "We can take them off again when we get back."

There had never been a time when Sam had properly believed Frodo spent so much time living in Buckland with those wild relatives of his. Now that blood seemed to be rising in him again, as he playfully wraps Sam in scarves and tries to hurry him out the door. The cold doesn't slow him down a mite: he dashes out into the dry, powdery snow, kicking it up and watching their sparkle as the flakes scatter. "Look at that!" he cries, craning his neck. "I saw that once while I was out with Merry. Isn't it beautiful?"

Sheets of silent color sway and flare in the light-leeched sky. They seem to go on for hundreds of miles up, like very tall ladies swishing their petticoats during a flirtatious dance. Sam barely feels Frodo's arms enveloping him from behind, is hardly aware of the whisper of hot breath against his neck. "Doesn't it just make you feel like chasing them?"

Their tracks weave ribbons in the blank layer of snow: long continuous lines of vines and stalks and petals. They settle into the cushioned earth, wrapped in each other. Sam calls Frodo a silly Brandybuck; Frodo pokes his stomach and grins in reply. He then flips onto his stomach and gazes up at the sky again. Sam crawls a small distance until they're shoulder to shoulder once more.

"You'd never see this on a warmer night," Frodo remarks, his blue eyes still magnetically connected to the flickering of celestial fire.

Sam rests his head on Frodo's shoulder. "But it is as freezin' as it feels out here an' that's no mistakin'. Let's say we get back beside a fire: there'll be a good plenty more nights to get acquainted with the cold."

Frodo smiles. "No." And then Sam is on his back and the aurora silhouettes Frodo's head and the whole of his field of vision is just aglow with color. "No," Frodo repeats softly, and surveys the field of white. "It's half-over now. Before you know it, this will all be cherry blossoms."