Milo Burrows hadn't actually meant to send Bilbo's mouthful of ale spraying two yards across the green. All he'd done was fix a thoughtful eye on Frodo, decide to speak his mind, and say "That lad wants a tumble and soon, old son, or he's going to get himself into more trouble than the Shire's seen since old Adalgrim had to marry that youngest daughter of his off to the second footman." "Mm, quite," Bilbo had answered absently, his attention fixed happily on a gaggle of laughing Took lasses dancing a round. Milo's comment had caught up with him, unfortunately, just as his ale had caught up with his mouth, and the result was Bilbo dabbing at his weskit and glowering ferociously at Milo. "What in the world are you talking about?" Bilbo demanded. "He's just a bairn yet!" "Not so much as all that. He'll be twenty-two in a couple of months." Milo took a thoughtful pull of his ale. "Besides - you know he's still a boy in a lot of ways, and I know it, but it's fair clear that his body doesn't know it. Well, look at him, for heaven's sake!" Frodo was leaning against a tree across the green, hands stuffed into his pockets; like everyone else, he was still dressed in the clothes he'd worn in the haying field that day, and the dark cloth of his shirt served to emphasize his hair, his eyes, and the fact that the shirt was unbuttoned just one button farther than was really comfortable to see. Reginard Took was leaning over him, one hand braced on the tree beside Frodo's head as he talked animatedly about something or other. Looking mildly amused, Frodo slipped some comment into the narrative flow and then pushed off the tree, brushing against Reginard as he moved past him in the direction of the drinks table. Just as he got there, a pretty dark-haired girl whom Milo vaguely placed as a Baggins - he'd never paid much attention to his wife's relatives when she was alive, rest her soul, and with the exception of Bilbo and Frodo saw no reason at all to pay attention to them now - bounced up to Frodo and flung her arms around him in a friendly, rather tipsy embrace. Frodo looked a bit caught off-guard; his return embrace was rather awkward, but not so awkward that his hand didn't slip flat across the small of her back and pull her closer before his eartips turned a bit pink and he stepped away. Clearly rather pleased at having managed to fluster him, the lass pecked him on the cheek and disappeared back into the whirl of the dance. Frodo watched her go and then turned back to pull himself a mug of ale. It spilled a bit over his hand; Frodo contemplated the froth for a moment and then lifted his hand to his mouth, drawing his tongue slowly up his finger to lick off the froth before sucking the tip of his finger into his mouth, and Reginard might have missed the quick dart of Frodo's gaze in his direction to make sure he was watching but Milo hadn't. Nor, to judge from the rather horrified look on his face, had Bilbo. "Erm," Bilbo said after a moment. "Yes, he's... a bit of a flirt. I don't think I'd noticed it before." Milo snorted and took a drink of ale. "Bilbo, if any of my girls ever flirted like that I'd think it was time for a trip to the woodshed, and then a good long talk with the midwife. Especially if she were a lad carrying around the same load of anger right under the surface that Frodo's carrying; that and tweenage hormones don't mix very well, which you know as well as anyone else." Bilbo sighed and looked down into his ale. "I know," he said quietly. "I was hoping that coming away from Brandy Hall and out of sight of that bloody river would take the edge off that, but it hasn't." "That lad wants someone to take him in hand and show him what's what, and it'd best be someone who'll give him what he needs and not what he's asking for. And you, my friend, had best give thought to having a good long talk with him, because you're probably the only hobbit between Buckland and Michel Delving who's past the Change and not champing at the bit to get into his trousers." "Kindly do not be disgusting, Milo, I prefer to think of my nephew's trousers as quite securely buttoned. And he knows about how bairns are made, and how they aren't; he knew all that when he came to live with me." "Aye, he may know the mechanics well enough, but damn me if he understands the way feelings and needs and a dozen other things can get mixed up with it. If he did, he wouldn't be dangling that pretty little arse of his -" "Milo! " " - just out of reach of Reginard Took, of all hobbits. You know Reg is more balls than brains, and he's already on thin ice with Poppy. Reg won't understand that Frodo hasn't any intention of following through, and Frodo won't understand that Reg doesn't understand, and Poppy won't care - she'll just call off the wedding. It's not as if she hasn't had other offers." Bilbo sighed and rubbed his fingertips across his forehead. "Bugger. I should go rescue Reginard, shouldn't I?" Milo laughed and set his mug down on the bench they were sharing. "Stay here. I'll go, and bring Frodo - ah, wait, maybe Reg won't need rescuing after all." A small bundle of flaxen-haired Brandybuck had caught Frodo amidships just as he started sauntering back toward Reginard, sending his ale flying to very nearly splatter his great-aunt Gardenia's skirts. Frodo laughed and caught - Merry, was it? Saradoc and Esme's boy - up to sit riding his hip, then turned back to refill his tankard, chiding the child good-naturedly as he went. Merry blithely ignored the scolding and chattered away with all the ebullient excitement of a child let to stay up long past his bedtime. "Good with the bairns, isn't he?" Milo noted. "Too bad he looks fair to settle on the lads." Bilbo chuckled. "He's good with his cousins, and doesn't seem to mind that the gardener's youngest lad worships the ground he walks on, though that might well be because he hasn't noticed. He's none too fond of bairns in general - always looks at them like they might turn into Sackville-Bagginses at any moment. Merry, though - he had half the care of that little one when he lived at Brandy Hall, between Merry's parents being busy so much with Hall business and Esme believing that nothing breeds trouble like idleness and lack of purpose. I think it fretted Frodo a bit, wondering who was going to take care of Merry after he left, but Saradoc and Esme found a nursemaid and made sure Frodo approved of her. Ah, here they come; it seems that Reginard is saved from his own foolishness for one more night after all." "Having a good time?" Frodo asked Bilbo as he came up to them, Merry still perched happily in his arms. He glanced at Milo and his face brightened. "Milo, I haven't seen you for ages." "Aye, that's because you spend all your time in Hobbiton with this old reprobate and a gaggle of Sackville-Bagginses." "It wouldn't seem like ages if you'd ever answer letters, curse you," Bilbo grumbled. "Well, I always mean to answer them," Milo said apologetically. Frodo made a face and hooked a stool with his foot, drawing it closer to sit near Milo and Bilbo. "I do wish the Sackville-Bagginses would all move to the deep Northfarthing - or better yet, to Bree. There aren't that many of them, but even one would be more than enough." He settled Merry comfortably on his knee and took a drink of his ale. "Mum says they aren't our sort," Merry informed them. "I don't like Lotho. He always looks like he smells something bad." Milo laughed. "Well, keep your nose that far in the air and you're bound to smell something, I should think." Merry leaned back against Frodo, sleepily pulling a length of string out of his pocket to wind around his fingers. "Da says they don't like Brandybucks, and they don't like Frodo 'cause he's more Brandybuck than Baggins." "There are a lot of reasons they don't like me, sprout," Frodo informed him amiably. "Your mum's calling you." "I don't hear her," Merry said innocently, and almost certainly less than truthfully, given the way Esme's voice carried through a crowd. Frodo laughed. "Well, I do. Be off with you, now. I'll see you tomorrow." Grumbling, Merry climbed down from Frodo's knee and disappeared into the gathering in the general direction of his mother's voice. Frodo smiled fondly after him for a moment and then turned back to Milo and Bilbo. "Milo, what's the news from the Southfarthing? Will we have a good pipeweed crop this year?" Milo pulled a small pouch out of his coat and tossed it to Frodo. "Here, have a taste. It'll be better than last year's, I think, and last year's wasn't half bad." Bilbo chuckled. "Not half bad indeed. Finest pipeweed in the Southfarthing, as I've said before." Frodo pulled a small clay pipe out of his pocket and began to fill it while Milo and Bilbo discussed the finer points of pipeweed-growing. Out of the corner of his eye, Milo kept an eye on the lad; and sure enough, Frodo's gaze roved thoughtfully over him, from sandy hair down across the breadth of his shoulders and chest and further down still. Milo had enough in the way of rangy, sun-browned good looks that he wasn't short of partners despite certain deficiencies in the stockiness area, in which deficiency he and Frodo were at least well-matched; the question was whether Frodo was indeed looking for a tumble or only for another conquest. Once his pipe was filled, Frodo leaned forward and extended the pipeweed bag to Milo. Without actually looking at Frodo, Milo reached absently for the bag and stuck it back in his pocket. With a lass bent on flirting that would have caused at least a bit of a pout; Frodo, on the other hand, showed no reaction at all except to turn his attention back to Bilbo's involved tale of Tobold Hornblower's rather unorthodox solution to a rain shortage that had threatened an entire crop of Southern Star. So that attempt to test the waters had been uninformative. Then Milo realized what he was doing and, exasperated with himself, filled his pipe with a bit more force than was really necessary. He wasn't about to tumble the pampered ward of a very old friend without at least discussing it with said very old friend first - and with Bilbo spluttering as indignantly as any mother over the idea that his charge might be growing up, that wasn't a conversation that was likely to go well.   Whatever else might be said of the Tooks, they knew how to throw a party, and the longer the party went on the better they liked it. When the air began to taste of morning the music and dancing were still going strong, and Paladin had just dispatched several likely-looking lads to bring up some more alecasks out of the cellars when Bilbo set his ale down and stretched. "Well, I think I'm for bed," he said contentedly. "One of the great privileges of being old is leaving before the party's over, and I mean to take advantage of it." Milo snorted and paused in the middle of packing his pipe to give his friend the once-over. "Don't tell me you couldn't go the rest of the night and still be about bright and early in the morning." Bilbo twinkled at him. "I could, right enough, but I don't mean to tonight. Are either of you coming back to the Smials?" "I think I'll have another ale and a pipe or two first." Milo was feeling quite mellow and comfortable, and knew that moving was going to be involved at some point but was happy to put it off for a while. "Frodo?" "I think I'll stay a bit longer too." Frodo was looking rather mellow himself. "All right, then. I'll see the both of you in the morning." Bilbo rose, shooting a look at Milo from under his lashes that said clearly that it had better not be Milo's bed that he had to roust Frodo out of in the morning. Milo blinked innocently back at him. When Bilbo was gone Frodo moved over to the bench, leaning comfortably back against the table rather closer to Milo than Bilbo had been. "The ale's good this year," he commented. "I remember two seasons ago Paladin had that brewer in from Bree and the whole Harvest batch tasted like something had died in it." Milo chuckled. "Didn't stop it from disappearing, though. I remember it was Bilbo gave me my first taste of ale. Fine batch it was, too, prime crop of Baggins homebrew. Got six of us tipsy who were up in Hobbiton taking the leaf to market, me and my Da and brothers and a couple of farmhands. He told us stories about his Adventures for hours, and one of my brothers slid right off his chair and passed out in the middle of the story about the spiders." Frodo laughed. "How old were you?" "Twelve or thirteen, as I recall. Not nearly as grown up as I thought I was. I didn't think I'd drunk much, but I'll tell you the next morning was a misery." "Speaking of ale, I think I'll go get another one. Shall I refill yours too?" "Aye, that'd be fine." Milo began to reach for his tankard; before he could get to it, though, Frodo had leaned across him and caught it up, pressing for a moment against Milo's shoulder. His eyes met Milo's as he straightened, smoky under those long lashes and somehow managing to convey the distinct impression that there was more where that touch had come from if Milo played his cards right. Milo took a deep breath and watched Frodo make his way toward the alecasks, weaving a bit more than was really required to make his way through the crowd. "Aye, you are a firecracker, aren't you, lad?" he muttered under his breath. It was as well Frodo was turning those luminous eyes on lads and not lasses or in another ten or fifteen years half the farm girls around Hobbiton might have been nursing dark-curled, blue-eyed bairns. High time and past for Bilbo to sit him down and have a talk with him, indeed. Neither of them really needed another ale. They had one anyway, chatting amiably of this and that, and by the time Milo found himself out of ale and pipeweed both his head was spinning pleasantly. "I think I'm for bed, then," he commented, stretching. "Mm, bed sounds good," Frodo answered a bit dreamily. "I'll walk back to the Smials with you." "All right, then," Milo said rather against his better judgement. "Come along with you." What with one thing and another, he was not entirely surprised to find once they got into the shadowed trees and away from the party that he had abruptly acquired an armful of wriggly, tipsy, ale-scented Frodo. "And what's this, then?" he asked pointedly. Frodo maneuvered him back against a tree and pressed close. "This," he answered, nuzzling amiably at Milo's ear, "is... well, nice, is what it is." "Nice, indeed, but - mmm." Frodo's kiss silenced him quite effectively, sweet hazy entanglement of mouths and tongues and a hard knot of arousal grinding slowly against Milo's hip. "Mm. Frodo." "Hm?" Frodo asked breathlessly, nipping at the line of Milo's jaw. Reluctantly, Milo caught him by the shoulders and eased him a bit away. "Frodo. It's not that you're not tempting and all; but Bilbo would flay me alive and have my skin for a new waistcoat if I took you to bed when you were drunk like this, and he'd be right to do it." "Who says he'd have to know?" Frodo's fingers ran into Milo's hair, mussing gently, and his mouth was busy on Milo's throat, and if this didn't stop soon it wasn't likely to stop at all. "You're new at this, aren't you, lad?" he asked, deliberately blunt. "He'd know, all right, and wouldn't either of us have to tell him." Frodo finally pulled back, and even in the dim moonlight Milo could see the storm clouds gathering in those lovely eyes. "What makes you think I'm new at it?" "For one thing, the fact that you don't seem clear on the difference between wanting a tumble and wanting a kiss and a cuddle. I'd bet money it's the second one you're wanting, but everything you're doing says you want me to pin you against this tree and fuck you until you scream." Frodo took a breath and leaned forward again, just barely brushing his lips along Milo's ear. "And suppose," he whispered, "that that's exactly what I want." Great Shire around, but the lad was maddening, in every conceivable way. Well, if he wouldn't be told then he'd have to be shown. "All right, then," Milo said agreeably, catching Frodo to him again and turning so that Frodo was caught squarely between him and the tree. Frodo made a soft, tense sound into Milo's mouth and wound a leg around him, pulling him closer, and for an alarmed moment Milo wondered if Frodo actually did want to be deflowered right there and then. The odds were against it, though, no matter how delightfully that slender body wriggled and ground and panted against his own; and so, resisting the urge to stretch the encounter out a bit, Milo slid his hands down to the seat of Frodo's pants and around to the front to begin popping open buttons. Sure enough, by the time he'd gotten three of them undone Frodo had tensed in his arms, and the sound he made into the kiss now was not entirely happy. "What's the matter?" Milo whispered, nipping at Frodo's ear. "N- nothing, I -" Milo's hands reversed course smoothly, buttoning Frodo's pants back up. "You just bit off a bit more than you could chew, there, didn't you?" he asked dryly, easing away from Frodo. Frodo looked away, face flaming scarlet in the moonlight. Milo sighed. "It's all right, lad. Come on, now, put yourself back together and let's get back to the Smials." "Milo -" "Not tonight, Frodo," Milo interrupted firmly, catching Frodo's hand as it began tentatively sliding around to his back. "When you're a little clearer on what you want, maybe. I have to tell you, though, if you'd pulled this with someone too young or too thick-headed to understand that what you want and what you ask for aren't always the same thing, you'd have found yourself damn sorry for it in the morning, and probably sooner than that." Frodo's hand tightened on his. "You won't..." he began, then trailed off. After a long silence, Milo chuckled. "Bless you, you're trying to figure out how to ask me not to tell Bilbo about this without making yourself sound like a sulky little boy, aren't you?" A slow, abashed smile spread over Frodo's face and he looked up at Milo from under his lashes. "As a matter of fact, I was." Milo lifted their clasped hands and ran a finger down the line of Frodo's jaw. "You are a dangerous one, aren't you?" he asked ruefully. "Listen, Frodo. If I tell Bilbo about this it'll land me just as deep in disgrace as it'll land you, so I won't - this time. But he's my friend, and has been all my life, and I'll not lay a hand on you in any serious way without... well, not his blessing, he won't give that, but at least his assurance that he won't hold it against me forever." Frodo opened his mouth, looking very much as if he would like to protest, and then grudgingly closed it again. "All right. That's fair." "And don't you be bringing the subject up with him, either, he'll have heart failure on the spot. He still thinks you're that wild little lad with skinned knees and pockets bursting with stolen mushrooms who made a hardened old bachelor think twice about never having children." Frodo's face twisted in exasperation. "I know," he said with enough feeling that Milo had to laugh. Then he frowned, looking dubiously up at Milo. "That's not... it's not what you think of me, is it?" "Save us all, Frodo, do you think I'd have let you climb me like an apple tree if I thought of you like that?" "No, but - do you want me?" Sharp enough to know that what was an answer to the first question wasn't necessarily an answer to the second, then - and not any more endowed with common sense than he was with experience. Milo sighed and reached out to cup Frodo's chin, bathing fair skin and remarkable eyes in moonlight. "Yes," he said simply. "A sight more than is good for me. But what about you, then? Your first tumble shouldn't be with someone whose chief attraction is that he's there and willing to give you what you want." Temper flared high and quick in Frodo's eyes. "That isn't how it is at all!" "How is it, then?" Milo asked softly, brushing his thumb over Frodo's lower lip. Frodo took a deep breath and lifted his hand to cover Milo's, turning to kiss his knuckle lightly. "I like you, Milo. You're good company and you've always been good to me." A slight movement of his hand brought Milo's next knuckle under his lips. "And you're lovely. And you know the difference between wanting and needing, and sometimes I don't think I do." Milo drew his hand back and said, "Well. You know your limitations, anyway, that's a step in the right direction. Come on, now, let's get back to the Smials." Frodo squirmed uncomfortably against the tree, and for a moment it looked as if he was going to argue. Milo could sympathize; going home to a cold bed and his own hand wasn't how he would have preferred to spend the evening either, and he silently called down a murrain on Frodo's tipsy state and Bilbo's overprotective nature. Then, with a small, disgruntled exhalation, Frodo moved away from the tree and started down the path toward the Smials. Milo kept pace with him. "Don't get so upset, Frodo," he said softly. "I didn't say no. I just said not tonight." "But I'm not -" Frodo began, then tripped over a root and would have overbalanced completely if Milo hadn't caught hold of him. He clung to Milo's arms for a moment, swaying heavily, and said in a rather distracted voice, "All right, maybe I am." "Maybe you are," Milo agreed, trying hard not to laugh. Frodo's body was warm against his, firm and compact, and soft hair tickled his nose. Sternly suppressing his own reaction, Milo eased Frodo away and back onto his own feet. "But I still know what I'm doing," Frodo informed him as they began walking again - an assertion that rather flew in the face of the night's events, in Milo's opinion. "I think we'd best talk about something else, Frodo," Milo answered gently but firmly. And there was that lightning-quick flash of temper again, and Milo would have bet good money that being told no was not something to which Frodo Baggins was accustomed. Well, he had half a mile yet to get used to the idea. "All right," Frodo said grudgingly. "You never did finish your story about Aunt Dora and the garter snake after Saradoc asked you about the Old Toby crop." "Ah, I didn't, did I?" Milo chuckled. The rest of the way back to the Smials was occupied nicely with the tale of Dora, her cousin Posco, Posco's snake, and Dora's imaginative revenge; and by the time they drew within sight of the lights of the Took's demesne Frodo was snickering with genuine good humor. Great Smials was not so much a place as a series of places. The Smial, referred to as such in much the same way as Hobbiton-dwellers referred to The Water, was a vast warren tunnelled into the largest hill in the Shire, with five stories of windows looking out on every side (and many a hobbit took this business of building one floor on top of another as yet more evidence that the Tooks and Brandybucks had been marrying each other for a while too long). That was where the family lived, in quarters ranging from small bachelor apartments to large suites; Frodo and Bilbo occupied adjoining guest quarters on the third floor. On the townward side the hill broke and scattered into dozens of small hillocks, some of which had been cleared away to make room for the path up to the huge front doors, some of which - the larger ones - had been hollowed out into tiny but serviceable smials for guest overflow, workers, and such family members as found The Smial a bit too busy for their tastes. Eglantine, knowing that Milo got twitchy when he couldn't come and go as he pleased without forty pairs of eyes on him, had put him in one of the far smials. He debated stopping at his own quarters and sending Frodo on alone, and decided against it for a number of reasons. "Are you in The Smial too?" Frodo asked as they drew near to the doors. Milo shivered. "No, that place makes me feel like I'm living in an anthill. I'm back that way," he answered, gesturing back the way they had come. "I could have gotten back myself, you know," Frodo said reprovingly. "Nor did I say you couldn't. I just felt better seeing you back, is all. I've seen Bilbo's wrath before, and I'm not wild about having it turned on me." Milo stopped with one foot on the steps up to the door. "I'll let you go on from here, though. Mind the stairs, you're still staggering a bit." "Are you going home?" Frodo had stopped very close to him, watching him with eyes that looked black in the moonlight. "That I am." And the sooner the better, before you wind up getting your own way after all. Frodo's hand came up to rest flat on Milo's chest, moving slowly up to his shoulder and inward, long fingers curling around the nape of his neck. "Will you be at the party tomorrow?" "Aye, I will," Milo answered slowly. "Mm." The fingertips of Frodo's other hand traced down the inside of Milo's arm to his palm and wound themselves around his. "I don't think I'll be drinking quite as much this time." Milo blinked, trying to figure out which of them had moved enough that Frodo was pressing, just barely, against him. The lad was awfully good at this for someone who'd never taken the next logical step, and Milo felt a pang of sympathy for whoever he'd been practicing on. "That's as may be, but you're forgetting something." "What am I forgetting?" Frodo whispered, nuzzling softly at Milo's cheek. "That whether you're drunk or sober, Bilbo will kill me with a shovel and slop the pigs with my sorry remains if I lay hands on you just like that." "I like having your hands on me." Frodo answered, not helpfully. "I like having your arms around me. It feels good." His mouth brushed over Milo's, just barely, soft as eiderdown and tasting of ale. "I want you to show me what else would feel good." "You," Milo informed him, "are not listening." "You're not saying what I want to hear," Frodo replied, with possibly more honesty than he realized. Any comment Milo might have made to that effect, however, was forestalled when Frodo leaned forward and kissed him, a bit awkwardly but sweet and slow. Well, it began slow. When Frodo's hand began travelling determinedly downward, Milo pulled away, catching the hand in his and trying to catch his breath as well. "Listen, lad -" "Milo," Frodo said in a small, tight, voice. "Please." Milo frowned a bit. They were past tweenage flirtation now, it seemed; this was genuine pleading, needing, and hating every second of it. And oh, how Milo remembered being that age and in these straits, when every nerve hummed like a beehive if the wind so much as blew in the wrong direction and blue balls really seemed like something possibly fatal. He let go of Frodo's hand and leaned to kiss him lightly on the forehead. "I'll talk to Bilbo. All right? That's the best I can do." A flash of rueful humor lit Frodo's face. "What in the world are you going to say to him? 'Ale's good tonight, isn't it, and would you be terribly angry if I took your ward home and nailed him right through the mattress?'" Milo took a deep breath. "Well, I like to think I'd be a bit more tactful about it than that. Run on with you, now. I'll talk to him tomorrow." "Promise?" Frodo asked uncertainly. Doubt and hope merged into an odd, complicated expression on his face. "I promise. Go on, up to bed." "Good night, Milo." Frodo turned and vanished into the Smial, without the kiss Milo had half expected. Milo sighed and ran a hand over his face, stifling a groan. Thoroughly uncomfortable and with no idea at all what he actually was going to say to Bilbo, he set out for his own smial and bed.   He woke before dawn the next morning, with time enough to write to his daughters and loaf about a bit before it was time to head for the fields. For years he and Peony had risen early, before the girls woke, to sit in the kitchen and chat about the coming day. Even when they'd been quarrelling and rose early not so much to chat as to sit at the kitchen table pointedly not paying attention to each other, they still followed that comfortable, homely ritual; and far more often than not, the small businesses of passing cream and sugar and tending to the kettle had led to a bit of talking about errands to be run that day, or how there wasn't any sugar because Myrtle had had a tea party the day before and her stuffed kittens apparently took their tea very sweet indeed, and whatever they'd been quarrelling about would begin to seem small and unimportant. Mad Baggins that she was, Peony had drunk coffee in the morning; Milo had always teased her about it, saying that proper hobbits drank tea and not some mashed-up bean not even fit for the stewpot. Peony had always responded, with great dignity, that one of these days Milo was going to get his leaves mixed up and have boiled Old Toby for breakfast, and then they'd see who had the sense in the family. It had always seemed too short a time before the girls came wandering into the kitchen, rubbing their eyes and climbing onto any available lap, head hair and foot fur both tufting wildly in every direction, and began clamoring for breakfast. But then the sun would rise and the kitchen would be full of light, the sound of sizzling bacon, the girls' voices, and the sound of cats butting their heads against Peony's knees and doing a bit of breakfast-clamoring of their own, and Milo would settle back with his pipe and give a bit of thought to how many different kinds of contentment there were. Or would, at any rate, until Peony chivvied him out of his chair and set him to making pancakes. Well, the girls would be up soon and pestering his sister down in the Southfarthing; and Milo had work to do that wouldn't wait on thoughts and daydreams. Suddenly he remembered that he'd promised to talk to Bilbo today about Frodo, with no idea how he'd go about such a conversation or even if it really ought to be gone about at all, and that was very nearly enough to make him plead illness and stay in bed all day. Upon reflection, however, that seemed like a bad idea - Frodo might well come and find him, and that couldn't possibly be a good thing for either of them, or at least not for long. Grimacing in exasperation at the world in general, Milo drained the last of his coffee and headed out to the fields.   It was midday before he had the chance to think about something besides hay and the edge on his scythe; by then the sun was blazing unforgivingly down, sending droplets of sweat stinging into his eyes and trickling down the front and back of his half-open shirt. He felt wrung out, grungy, and in sore need of a bath and about a gallon of drinking water in whichever order he could get them - and so was not best pleased to see Bilbo meandering toward him looking as crisp as a fall morning, every hair in place and his head sheltered from the sun by a large umbrella. "Good morning, lad," Bilbo called, fastidiously circling a clot of mud. Milo straightened and pushed the hair out of his eyes with the back of his hand. "Aren't you meant to give over calling someone 'lad' when he's old enough to have bairns of his own?" Bilbo chuckled. "Not when I remember him sixteen years old and choking on his first pipeweed. Or thirteen and sick from his first overindulgence in ale. Or -" "Aye, well, let's put a stop to the ors before we get to something really embarrassing." "It's not my fault there are so many embarrassing incidents in your history," Bilbo answered primly, eyes sparkling with laughter. "Do you know where Frodo's got to?" Milo glanced around; Bilbo's eyes were still as sharp as his own, but no harm in having a second pair. "No, I don't see him." And touching on Frodo... he should have said and couldn't quite get the words out of his mouth, which upon reflection was just as well. "Did the two of you enjoy yourselves after I left?" Bilbo asked, deceptively mildly, apparently with most of his attention engaged in scanning the horizon to find his ward. Milo looked at him for a moment, and then decided that it was far too hot to be beating around the bush like this. "No, we did not 'enjoy ourselves,' as you euphemistically put it. The lad's good company, and if he weren't your ward and hadn't been drunk we might have, but not as things stood." Bilbo glanced sharply at Milo, then smiled wryly. "He has quite a crush on you." "Does he?" "And his clothes were a bit disarranged." Milo felt his eartips turn red. "I do appreciate that you didn't take advantage of the situation." "Well, Bullroarer's balls, Bilbo, did you think I would?" Milo demanded, nettled. Bilbo lifted an eyebrow. "No, but I do think you need to get out of the sun for a bit before that temper gets away with you. Anyway, I only saw him for a few minutes before he went to bed, but he looked caught between glowing and sulking - it was quite entertaining, really, like watching an indecisive firefly." Milo laughed in spite of himself. "And so you came out here to grill me about how much I gave him to glow about, did you?" "Hm, well, I think I'd as soon be spared the details. I only wanted..." Bilbo trailed off, frowning down at the ground. "I suppose until last night I hadn't realized just how much he's grown, and how much he needs that an uncle can't give him. It frightens me a bit, you know, how deeply he feels things and how easily he can be hurt; and every time he gets hurt he... well, goes away, in a manner of speaking, a little farther and for a little longer every time. I think I'm worried that one of these days he won't come back." Having no idea what to say to that, Milo held his peace, and in a minute Bilbo gave a self-conscious laugh and looked back up at him. "Well, I don't mean to be nattering on. If you see Frodo, will you tell him I'm looking for him? I'll be over by the alecasks." "Got yourself drinks duty, eh? No wonder you're looking so cool and well-pressed." "I am elderly," Bilbo began with much dignity, "and kindly do not snort like that - and being elderly has certain prerogatives. One of them is not having to slave in the hot sun until we drop. And you'd do as well to get something to drink in you too, at the rate you're dampening that shirt." Milo grimaced ruefully and pulled his shirt gingerly away from his chest. "All right, I'll keep an eye out for him." Well, he was due for a rest anyway, he thought as he watched Bilbo stroll back across the fields; might as well go and track Frodo down.   He found him on the other side of the lake, not far from the grove where the day's-end parties were held. Frodo had just reached the end of a row and was wearily rubbing sweat off his forehead, his color rather too high for comfort in this appalling heat. As Milo watched, Frodo laced his fingers together and stretched his hands above his head, extending like a cat all along the line of his body, looking utterly absorbed in the task of pulling the kinks out of every one of his muscles. After a moment he tilted his head back and bent slowly backward until the scythe clasped loosely in his hands dipped below the level of his waist, his body forming a smooth, graceful arch that drew Milo's gaze inescapably along to places it probably ought not to be going. Just as Milo was wondering exactly how far back he was going to go Frodo straightened again and twisted from the waist, angling his torso around to the side. "Hoy, Merry," he called, catching sight of the child making his way painstakingly through the field. Merry waved and came toward him, hopping carefully first on one foot, then on the other, then both and back to one, in what bizarre game of skipping-stones Merry only knew. Milo chuckled and headed toward them. "Be rain by tomorrow night," Merry announced, looking past Frodo. Frodo turned and shaded his eyes with his hands, gazing off in the indicated direction. Milo gave a glance too - there were clouds gathering to the south, and he spared a moment's thought for his own crops. A bit of rain would be good for the leaf and welcome, so long as it didn't overstay. "Did you tell Uncle Paladin?" Frodo asked. Balanced on one leg like a small furry-footed stork, Merry paused, surveyed the ground with a tactician's eye, and made a long hop to a bare patch near Frodo. "He knows. I saw him looking at the clouds. Frodo, have you seen - Milo!" He waved in triumph, and Milo waved back. Frodo turned, his face lighting with a startlingly shy, welcoming smile. Milo flashed him a smile in return before turning his attention to the child hopping industriously toward him. "What is it, runt?" he asked affectionately, and teasingly - Merry was tall for his age, solid and stocky. Merry made a cheerful face. "Da wants you." "Did he say why?" "He wants you to go to Tookbank. We're running lower on ale than we meant to, in this heat," Merry reported in an uncanny imitation of his father. "Saving Paladin's stores for the party, are they?" "I think so. Mum and Da let me have some last night. It tasted awful." He clutched at his throat and made a horrific retching sound. Milo laughed and ruffled the lad's hair. "It takes some growing into, right enough. All right, tell them I'll go." He glanced past Merry to Frodo. Frodo was flapping the front of his shirt ineffectually against the heat, fixing those huge blue eyes pleadingly on Milo like a puppy hoping to be taken for a walk. Milo looked at his color and decided that, ulterior motives aside, it might be best to get Frodo out of the fields for a while. "Tell them I'm taking your cousin too," he told Merry, and Frodo's face brightened. "We'll be back in a few hours." "All right," Merry answered, and hopped off with an impressive turn of speed. "Bilbo's looking for you," Milo said as Frodo came up beside him. "He's over by the ale. Best you go see what he wants before we leave." A small, dubious frown creased Frodo's forehead. "I can go see him when we get back." "Afraid he'll tell you you can't go?" At the sudden, sharp anger in Frodo's gaze, Milo relented. "It may be something that can keep, right enough, but I can't tell him I'll send you along and then haul you off to Tookbank for hours on end. I need to round up a pony cart anyway, and a change of shirt wouldn't go amiss either. Go on, then, and I'll be over by the carts when you're ready to go." Frodo opened his mouth to argue, and then closed it again and nodded. "All right. I'll be right back." Milo eyed him a bit warily, wondering if that easy acquiescence boded ill for something; but Frodo headed in the direction of the alecasks, right enough. Reminding himself sternly that it was none of his business if Frodo actually got to the alecasks and Bilbo, Milo headed for the wide clearing that later would host the dancing but for now held the pony carts. The groom tending the ponies was one Milo didn't recognize, a short, slight lad with fiery red hair and equally incendiary foot fur. On sighting Milo, he gave a pat to the pony that had been eating out of his hand, wiped his palm on his pants, and came over. "Can I help you with something, sir?" Milo looked down at his plain cotton shirt and old pants and wondered briefly if something about him actually marked him out as gentry or if the "sir" was in deference to the fact that he was twice the boy's age. Deciding that he really didn't want to know, he answered, "I need a cart and pony, one that can handle a load of alecasks back from Tookbank." The groom's frown made him look like a worried carrot. "The load-bearing carts are all out on a hay run. If you can wait a few hours..." The sunbeams coming through the overhead branches were already starting to slant from the West. "I'd as soon not. What's the strongest one you have left?" "This one." The groom led him to a sturdy-looking cart. "It's strong enough in the carriage to bear alecasks but the rear strap sits loose in the socket." Milo wrapped the leather strap around his wrist and jerked on it, not hard but firmly. Sure enough, the metal pinning gave more than it ought to, rattling a bit out from the wood of the cart. "Hm. Well, it's better than nothing. Doesn't look like I'll lose much of the load if it gives." "Patch is a good pony, too," the boy observed, patting the animal on the flank and raising a small cloud of road dust. "Not very fast but strong and steady. She'll get you there and back." "Well enough, I'll take this one. Hold it here for a bit, I'll be back in a few minutes." It was theoretically not common knowledge that Paladin kept a stash of clean shirts just off the fields by a small spring, though in point of fact most of his relations did seem to know, with the result that the stash got bigger every year. Paladin was forever complaining that sweat made him itch, which might or might not have been true but certainly suited his fastidious personality, and in weather this hot would have changed shirts three or four times by now. Sure enough, there was a small pile of discarded shirts by the spring and a large pile of clean ones; Milo sorted through until he found one long enough to fit him and then stripped off his own shirt. Dropping it to the ground, he leaned over the spring and sluiced cool water over his arms and face before he pulled the clean shirt on over his head and stuffed the tails into his pants. When he turned to head back to the carts Frodo was leaning against a tree watching him, quite possibly taking ten years off his life. "Bugger and blight, Frodo, didn't anyone ever tell you it's not polite to sneak up on people?" he demanded in exasperation. Frodo grinned. "No, I don't think anyone ever did." "Well, I'm telling you." Milo grabbed another shirt from the pile and tossed it toward Frodo. "Here, change. You can come and claim your own shirt again when we get back." Frodo caught the shirt out of the air and came toward the spring. "I'm sorry. I was going to say something." "And why didn't you, then?" He stopped just a bit too close to Milo, his gaze drifting down the front of Milo's shirt as he colored just a bit. "You're... very distracting," he said softly. "Change your shirt, Frodo," Milo said, just as quietly. Blue eyes flicked back up to his with the quick fire of a challenge accepted. Without looking away, Frodo lifted his hands to his shirt and began unbuttoning it - moving slowly less from any calculated seductiveness than because his hands were trembling. "Nervous?" Milo asked wryly. "It's only fair, you know. You got to watch me." "Yes, but you didn't know I was watching you," Frodo pointed out in a voice that shook just a bit. His shirt was halfway unbuttoned, exposing a long stretch of porcelain skin dappled golden by the light through the trees; unsteady fingers slipped off the next button, then again, and finally got enough of a grip to slip it through the buttonhole. "That's quite an advantage." Milo laughed. "You're right. All right, then, I'll go -" "No," Frodo interrupted, and there was a steely note in his voice that clearly implied that things would go ill with Milo if he tried to argue the point. "No?" "No." He took a deep breath and pulled the tails of his shirt out of his pants, fingers slipping down to the next-to-last button and fumbling for a grip. "I... I want you to watch. I want you to keep looking at me like you were, like you could have me on my knees right now if you wanted -" "Frodo." If this kept up, Milo's conversation with Bilbo was likely to run along the lines of Ouch, bloody hell, I said I was sorry! "This isn't the place." The shirt slipped off one milk-pale shoulder, then the other, and Frodo tossed it to one side without taking his eyes from Milo's. "There are other places." Milo rubbed a hand over his eyes. "Frodo, would the words 'I told Paladin I would go get ale' even register with you right now, or are your hormones rushing through your ears loud enough to drown them right out?" Frodo made a soft sound that seemed composed of equal parts exasperation and unwilling amusement. "You started it, you know." Well, there was some justice to that accusation, he had to admit. "Did I?" he asked quietly. "I'm sorry, then. I shouldn't have. Put your shirt on, then, and let's go." Frodo didn't move. "You said you spoke to Bilbo -" "Not about that. It's a bit difficult a topic to just bring up out of the blue, you know." "Yes, I can imagine," Frodo answered ironically, then blew out a soft, exasperated breath and pulled on the clean shirt, causing Milo no small amount of relief. "But it isn't nice to start things you won't finish, you know." Milo blinked, rather thunderstruck by the fact that Frodo Baggins had essentially just called him a cock-tease. "No, it's not, which you might do well to remember yourself before you get poor Reg panting after you again." Frodo colored, and his hands moved a bit more quickly on his buttons. "You saw that?" "You're bloody lucky Poppy didn't see it. Come on, now, we need to get started before it gets any later. Paladin will have my hide if that ale isn't back here by sundown." Tucking the shirt hastily into his pants, Frodo trailed after Milo in the direction of the carts. "How long will it take to get to Tookbank?" "In this heat, with a slow pony? An hour, maybe, and half again as long to get back." Frodo made a face. "We could walk faster." "Not carrying alecasks, we couldn't." "Well, yes, there is that." Frodo rolled his sleeves up, looking discontent. "Bollocks, it is hot." "It'll be a bit better once we get on the road where the breeze can reach us," Milo said absently. A droplet of sweat slipped down Frodo's neck to his collarbone, leaving a tiny damp streak that took up far more of Milo's attention than it should have. Fortunately they reached the carts before his thoughts could wander too far down paths they ought not to; that, and his thoughts were helpfully diverted by the entirely likely prospect that Bilbo would react badly to Milo's wanting to sleep with his ward, and the equally likely prospect that Frodo would not be willing to take no for an answer, leaving Milo and his hormones stuck squarely in between them. Wondering what he'd done to deserve all this, he looked around the clearing for the groom. "You're back," the boy said cheerfully from behind them. Milo turned around. "As promised. Are the cart and pony ready?" "Ready and waiting." "Up you go, lad," Milo told Frodo, nodding his head at the cart, and deliberately kept his eyes on the pony.   It was cooler on the road, or at least not as stifling as it was under the trees. There was a breeze coming from the west, where the Tuckwater lay like a thin silver band across gently sloping hills and through scattered stands of trees; if Milo listened hard he could almost hear the stream, too narrow still to be called a river but too deep to ford before the ferry crossing at Tookbank. Next to him, Frodo leaned back against the backboard of the seat and closed his eyes, tilting his face up to the sun and looking as contented as a cat; a bit incongruous-seeming, that, as it was fairly clear that neither that face nor any other part of Frodo's body saw the sun on a regular basis. "It's much nicer out here," Frodo said drowsily. "I thought I was going to drop if I had to stay in the fields much longer. I don't know why it seems like so much more work today than it did yesterday." "Because you worked all day yesterday too, and were up drinking well into the night, and unless I miss my guess you were still a bit drunk when you went to bed," Milo informed him with a certainty born of many dealings with hung-over farmhands. Frodo laughed ruefully. "Well, yes, I suppose. It was rather late when I got to bed." His eyes drifted open, narrow against the sun, and fixed on Milo. "And later still when I got to sleep." And if that lad thought for a minute that Milo was going to ask what he'd been doing that he hadn't gotten to sleep, then he was in for a disappointment. This was hardly the time or the place for that kind of conversation. "Well, no wonder you're worn out, then." There was a brief, exasperated silence before Frodo tried another tack. "Did you sleep well?" Milo laughed. "Don't forget, I've nearly as many acres of pipeweed as the Tooks have hay, and it's not all farmhands getting the work done. I'm used to this sort of thing." Frodo wriggled a little closer. "Bilbo says the whole Southfarthing is a wonder during the summer, with all the pipeweed flowering." "Oh, that it is. Southern Star sprouts white at the top until the whole field looks snow-covered, and Old Toby flowers dark blue, and the two of them laid out in fields next to each other look like that patchwork quilt your gran had, that your mum used to set you on in the hopes that you'd like it well enough to stay on it and not crawl off and get into things. Never did work, either, not even after your parents took their eyes off you for five minutes at a picnic and you tried to chew on a skunk's ears." Frodo's smile had started out sad, but that provoked a burst of horrified laughter from him. "I did not!" "Oh, you did, all right. I was there. There wasn't a smellier bairn in the Shire that day, nor a more indignant one." Frodo's ears began to turn distinctly red, and Milo relented. "Anyway, you can always tell when you're passing Hornblower land in the summer because Longbottom leaf flowers yellow and you'll go for miles without ever seeing another color on the ground, except where they've rotated out with rye. Those flowers are a pain in the arse when it comes time to cut the tops off the plants so they'll grow thicker, but they're that pretty I can't fault them for it, even when my girls bring them in and leave them strewn all over so a hobbit can't get from the cellar alecasks to his chair by the fire without wading through a whole field's worth. You should come and see them sometime." Frodo glanced sharply at him. "I'd like that," he said slowly. "Aye, you might not, depending on what time of the year you came. Harvesting hay may be a pain in every part of your body, but so's topping pipeweed stalks from sunup to sundown. We aren't ones for big parties, either, though there's something to be said for a nice relaxing evening with good ale and good company too." He surveyed Frodo critically, noting that more was pink than just his ears. "Especially when you're sore and sunburnt." "I am sore," Frodo said quietly. His hand rose from the back of the seat to drift light fingertips over the shoulder of Milo's shirt. "And sunburnt. And I can be good company." Milo took a deep breath and suddenly felt horribly guilty - for keeping Frodo hanging, for not just giving him what he wanted, for not just telling him no and sending him on his way; for having let himself be maneuvered into a position where any path he took was likely to end in him feeling as if he'd betrayed Frodo or Bilbo or both. Guilty, and thoroughly annoyed with his own hormones for insisting on enumerating all the ways in which Frodo might be very good company indeed. "I know it," he answered gently, reaching up to still the movement of Frodo's hand on his shoulder. "Just living with Bilbo and all his stories, that'd be enough to get you stood a round or two right there, and you're bright as a new farthing besides." Frodo glowed with pleasure and wriggled determinedly under Milo's arm. Milo let his arm ease around Frodo's shoulders, and wondered with weary resignation when he'd become such a fool.   The hay harvest brought the money and trade rolling into Tookbank, and Tookbank's marketplace was out there to welcome it - bright banners and ribbons fluttered from every storefront and hitching post, stock was moved from inside the stores to outside in open displays, stands of every kind had sprung up overnight with varicolored awnings shading them from the sun. It wasn't as busy as it might have been, given that a good portion of the town's able-bodied were out in the fields, but there was enough custom to fill the air with a cheerful babble of haggling, bartering, and general chaos. Milo steered the cart to a halt in front of the alehouse, pulling up short to avoid a pig ambling across the roadway. A small boy with a large stick chased after the pig, shouting at it in a thick Tuckborough burr, and herded it back across the street. The alehouse's proprietress, undoubtedly smelling Took money with the infallible nose of a terrier sniffing out a rat, hastened outside as Milo and Frodo climbed down from the cart. "Welcome," she called cheerily. "And what would the pair of you be looking for on this fine afternoon?" "The Took's sent us to fetch more ale for the fieldworkers," Milo told her. "What've you the most of in stock, Mistress?" She laughed heartily and patted him on the arm. "None of that, now, plain Lily'll do fine. We've just got a shipment in of Brockhouse from Bree, good quality and not too dear. My girls can bring you out a mug if you'd like to try it." Milo cast a glance at the proprietress' teenage daughters, who were huddled in a giggling trio in the door and eyeing Frodo with unabashed interest. Frodo's ears were turning distinctly red, but he was clearly not too mortified to eye them back in a way that made them giggle even harder and caused Lily to cast a rather cool glance in his direction. "Brockhouse is too heavy," Milo said, diverting her attention away from Frodo. "What's your Mugwort's Pale stock like?" "Well, all that depends on how much you were needing. Hoy, girls - into the cellar, the lot of you, and see how much Mugwort's there is down there!" Milo took pity on her and turned to Frodo. "This'll take a bit, lad. You needn't stand here and be bored while we settle the bar tab." Frodo snuck a glance after the departing girls and then turned back to Milo, losing interest in them once they were out of sight. "All right. Come and find me when you're finished." "I'll do that," Milo promised, and turned back to the proprietress, girding himself to wrangle the cheap ale out of her if it took all afternoon.   Fortunately, it didn't take quite that long. An hour later, a solid supply of Mugwort's roped into the back of the cart, Milo set off across the market to find Frodo. He caught up with him at a cloth-seller's booth, clearly finishing negotiations over ten or twelve skeins of fine silky yarn, glowing like seawater in the afternoon light. Frodo smiled up at him, gave delivery instructions to the vendor, and then turned with Milo to amble back toward the cart. "Planning on a gift for those girls at the alehouse?" Milo teased. Frodo shot him a reproving look. "No, it's for Aunt Esme. She likes knitting things." "And she made you feel guilty for not coming back to Buckland to visit more," Milo guessed, and Frodo laughed ruefully. "She misses you, you know." "I miss her. But I like Bag End better than Brandy Hall." "Brandy Hall's big," Milo said. "Easy for one orphaned lad to get lost in." "I didn't feel lost, exactly. I just... never felt that it was mine." Frodo glanced up at Milo, who nodded. "And no one there really wanted to hear stories about dragons and elves, except maybe once a year or so when Bilbo came to tell them; but after he left they always seemed to feel that it was time to put away tales and wonders and the world Outside and get back to the business of bringing in the crops or brewing ale or whatever have you. The only person who seemed interested at all was Merry, and he's too young yet to really be good company." Milo chuckled. "Aye, no question Bag End's better for someone with a head full of tales than Brandy Hall, though Great Smials might have done you just as well. Onto the cart with you, and let's be heading back." Frodo climbed onto the cart and waited for Milo to settle in beside him. "It might have. But it's still better at Bag End. I used to love going to visit Bilbo; everything was so quiet, and there was nothing I wasn't allowed to touch except that old ring he found when he was Away, and he was never too busy to answer questions or tell me stories about all the strange things he has on his shelves. I don't think I've ever been happier than I was when he said that I'd better come and live with him so we could celebrate our birthday together." Milo glanced at Frodo to make a comment, and then held his peace, wondering. Frodo's eyes were fixed distractedly on the middle distance, and a slight frown had gathered on his brow; he didn't look unhappy, exactly, but a shadow lingered on his face. "Bilbo thinks you're the only Baggins worth the name," he said gently after a moment. Frodo smiled wistfully up at him. "I'm glad," he answered, and Milo let the matter rest.   They were halfway back to the fields when the cart strap finally broke, rattling barrels around in the cart but fortunately not dumping any of them out onto the road. With a resigned grumble, Milo steered the cart off to a grove beside the soft rush of the Tuckwater. "What's wrong?" Frodo asked, craning his neck to look back. "Oh, bugger. And we don't have a spare strap, either, do we?" "Don't need one," Milo answered, jumping down from the cart. "It's come out of the socket, that's all. Won't take long to fix, and then it should hold until we get back." He hoped it would, at any rate. "Wait a bit, then," Frodo urged, climbing down after him. "It's hot. Let's go wade in the stream for a bit." He pushed sweat-damp hair out of his eyes and looked hopefully up at Milo. Milo wavered for a moment; but it was hot, and Paladin's ale supply would at any rate hold out until they got back. "All right. But only for a bit, mind." Frodo aimed a dazzling smile at him and caught Milo's hand, pulling him down through the trees to the shallow edge of the river. As Milo settled onto the bank and dangled his feet down, sighing with pleasure as the cool water washed over him and ruffled his foot fur, Frodo jumped down and bent to scoop a handful of water over his face. "That feels nice," he sighed, rubbing a damp hand over the back of his neck. "It does at that," Milo answered agreeably, leaning back on his elbows and closing his eyes against the golden light glinting through the trees. "You should come in," Frodo said after a minute. Oh, no, he shouldn't. Not with that purr in Frodo's voice. "My feet are reaching the water just fine from here," he said reprovingly. "Mm, I know. But..." Milo opened his eyes just in time to see Frodo plant a knee between his own, set his hands to either side of Milo's hips, and hoist himself out of the water. This business of resting by the river began to look like a distinctly bad idea. In a moment Frodo had crawled forward until he was braced over Milo. A stray drop of river-water slid off from his hair and onto Milo's forehead. "You can't reach me," he said softly. "Aye, and that's just as well," Milo said with an energetic attempt at sternness, trying and failing to keep from watching beads of water slip down from the back of Frodo's neck onto his throat. Certainly he had no business even thinking about lifting his head just a little to lick them off. "You could kiss me, you know," Frodo told him, and bugger, did that pout of his have to be so bloody charming? "I won't tell Bilbo. You kissed me before, didn't you?" "Aye, I did, and if you think Bilbo didn't have some pointed words for me on the topic then you'd best think again." Frodo frowned. "What did he say?" he asked, not quite irritated enough to keep from leaning closer and bringing that pretty mouth tantalizingly within range of Milo's own. Milo groaned and slumped down onto his back. The Burrowses made a point of pride of being able to stand up to any amount of hard use, but surely hobbits as a race were not designed to withstand a pouty, dripping wet Frodo Baggins straddling them and wanting a kiss. "He said 'Mark my words, Milo my lad, one of these days Frodo's going to crawl on top of you, drip river-water all over you, and demand that you kiss him. Don't you do it.'" An unwilling smile tugged at the corners of Frodo's mouth. "No, he didn't." "Up with you, now. Time we were heading back." Frodo's face darkened with exasperation. "Milo, he's my cousin. He's not my father." "He's your guardian and my friend." "And somehow that means that he gets to decide who's allowed into my pants?" "Frodo, I explained this already -" With an angry sound, Frodo pushed up away from Milo and slipped back down into the water, stalking away downstream. Milo swore under his breath and went after him. "Frodo! Stop it. Bilbo loves you and he doesn't want to see you hurt, not even by me." Frodo stopped but didn't turn. "And what makes him think you'll hurt me?" Milo hissed in exasperation. "Bloody hell, Frodo, you'll understand this better when you've bairns of your own -" "He's not my father! " "Well, it feels to him like he is, and to his mind it's his job to take care of you, and if there's a hobbit in all the Shire who should know the value of that, it's you. He'll be there -" "Until he isn't!" Frodo almost shouted, finally turning to face Milo. "Until he goes on another adventure or goes away with the elves or the dwarves or the dragons for all I know, and then where will I be?" Milo couldn't give the answer that he wanted to give. He knew Bilbo too well and had known him for too long, and Frodo wasn't a child to be cozened with comfortable half-truths. "He's made you his heir, Frodo," he said instead. "There'll be no more living underfoot in Brandy Hall for you. You'll have a hearth to call your own, and maybe a wife and bairns by then, or some lad you've settled down with. Bilbo won't go before he thinks you're ready, and not before you're of age in any case - he'd have to find you another guardian and I don't think there's anyone he trusts with you or Bag End either one. And most important, he took you to Bag End to keep you from being handed off from one relative to the next like a cuckoo's chick. Bilbo may bid fair to be the oddest hobbit in these parts since the Old Took's time, but he's not daft. He'll not leave you high and dry without your feet under you and with no one to turn to." Frodo took a deep breath and looked away, unseeing eyes turned toward the horizon. "I know that," he said thinly. "I do." "But you're still afraid," Milo said softly. "I'm not afraid." Frodo turned and began walking back toward the cart, balancing effortlessly on the stream bottom's slick stones. Milo sighed and ran a hand through his hair, then caught up to Frodo and caught his elbow. "Frodo. Look at me." Frodo turned cool, distant eyes toward him. Milo gave his elbow a little shake. "No, now, wherever you've gone, come back from it. I've something to say to you, and I can't do it when you're off sailing the wide sea to Westernesse or wherever it is you've gotten to." Frodo looked away and then looked reluctantly back, and that feeling that he'd somehow managed to vanish while still in plain sight was gone. "That's better." Milo rubbed his fingertips across his forehead. The lad was a bit of work and no mistake, and it was starting to give him a headache. "Listen. Maybe you're right and we've been going about this the wrong way." Frodo raised an eyebrow, silently waiting. "You can't have it both ways, though, you know. Either you're bloody well old enough to understand what you're asking me to risk for naught more than a night's tumble with a pretty lad, or you're too damn young to be tumbling anyone at all. Right now you look to me to be well on the 'too damn young' side of that balance. No, be quiet, I'm not finished. This isn't about you not being able to make your own choices. It's about me and Bilbo, and respect, and friendship. Once that's all cleared away, what's between you and me will be between you and me and no one else." "I know Bilbo too, maybe better than you," Frodo answered stubbornly. "He wouldn't react the way you think he would." "That's -" "Not the point, I know." Frodo rubbed a hand across his own forehead. "Milo, I know. I do. And I'm wrong, and I'm sorry. I just... I hate this, this needing, and not even being able to put a name to what I need..." Milo reached out and brushed Frodo's hair away from his face. "I know. And I know what you need, all right, and a tumble's not the half of it. Everyone goes through it at your age, and you've got it worse than most, it seems - and no wonder, with your head all full of tales of journeys and heroes and dragons." Frodo frowned. "Are you sure? Everyone seems so..." "Boring?" Milo filled in dryly. "Stuffy? Grown up? Well, and some of them are, right enough, and some of them have been since the day they were born. But everyone goes through it, at least a bit." "What's so funny?" Frodo asked when Milo stopped and chuckled. "Bilbo, that's what. I said everyone goes through it but I didn't say when, and I'd bet my next year's crop that thirty years of pent-up tweenhood fell on Bilbo's head like a ton of bricks the night those dwarves came and set up camp in Bag End." "I think you're right," Frodo laughed. Then he sobered and reached up to take hold of Milo's hand, rubbing his cheek softly against it. "Milo..." "Hm?" "I was sorry when Peony died. I liked her very much." Tears stung Milo's eyes unexpectedly, and he blinked them quickly back. "Well, she liked you too, right enough. Come on, then, we should get the wagon fixed and go -" Milo stopped abruptly, frowning. Frodo's eyes had gone the size of saucers, and he was staring in rapt fascination past Milo's shoulder. Milo turned to look, and said a word that made Frodo look askance at him for a moment. Beside a huge elm sprawling next to the river, looking as pulled up short as the hobbits, were two Men, armed and clothed for hard travel. After an awkward moment the taller of the two Men - as if they weren't both two feet taller than anyone had any need to be - nodded to Milo. "Our apologies. We had no idea anyone would be here." Milo narrowed his eyes and surveyed them closely. He'd heard very little good about the Big People, a fact not ameliorated by his own occasional dealings with Breelanders looking to trade for leaf; and these two were not exactly harmless-looking, with their dusty leathers and their swords nearly as long as Frodo was tall. They stood straight and met his eyes, though, and if their long dark hair wasn't particularly clean it was at least held loosely back out of their faces by leather strips. "We'll not be here much longer," he told them curtly. "I have repairs to do on our cart and then we'll be off. It'll take a few minutes, if that." A movement out of the corner of his eye attracted his attention - he'd moved instinctively in front of Frodo, but Frodo had moved closer and was peering around Milo's shoulder. Milo considered stepping pointedly on his foot, then decided against it. The two Men glanced at each other. "Do you need help?" asked the one who had spoken; seeing the look on Milo's face, he added, "I am Halbarad, and this is Anardil. We only came to this spot to break our journey for a bit." "I need no help, thank you," Milo answered. As big as they were, they were apt to punch the joint ball right through the side of the cart, and then he and Frodo would be in a mess. And that was the best-case scenario; the worst, if they decided that that cartload of ale was a thing worth having, was one that Milo - veteran of many a tavern fight though he was - didn't care to dwell too closely on. He wondered what they were doing this far into the Shire, where Men didn't often come, and never for any good reason. Well, I might not be able to down either one with a right hook to the jaw but by all the Shire I'll bet I can do their kneecaps a bit of no good, Milo thought grimly, looking the Men up and down. And certainly there were more relevant parts of the their bodies within easy reach of that right hook. Halbarad's face showed a flicker of resignation, and suddenly Milo wondered if he was older than he looked. "As you wish. If you want, we can go -" "No," Frodo piped up, and Milo gritted his teeth and thought wistfully of giving him a ding round the ear. "If you've come from outside the Shire then you've come a long way, and this is as good a place to rest as any. I'm Frodo Baggins, and this is Milo Burrows," he added, and Milo really was going to give him an earful as soon as they got out of this. "Well met," Anardil said in a voice with much the same accent as Halbarad's, clear and clipped and more level in tone than Shire-talk. "Well met," Milo answered. For a moment he had an unpleasant feeling of disorientation, as if he and Frodo had shrunk to the size of children and the cart to the size of a child's toy; out here with nothing but trees to measure themselves against, it was too hard to tell who was the right height. He shook off the feeling quickly - no matter whether the Men were the right size in the world outside, in the Shire they were too bloody tall. "Now, if you'll excuse us..." He caught Frodo's arm and headed for the cart. "Stay up there by the pony," he said softly as they reached it. "Keep yourself not more than a couple of steps from the seat. I'll be done with this in just a minute." "But -" "Do not argue with me, Frodo." Milo deposited Frodo by the head of the cart and went back to the rear. Pulling out his pocket-knife, he grabbed the ball of the strap and began trying to jimmy it back into the socket, and immediately saw that it wasn't going to be as easy as he'd thought; the barrels were pressed back against the other straps, making for a tight stretch for the broken one. "Bugger," he muttered, and gave the strap an irritated yank. It was a good ten minutes before he finally got the strap seated in the socket again. He folded his knife back up, stuck it in his pocket, and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, and realized only when he heard Frodo's voice that he'd been so involved with fixing the cart that he'd neglected to keep track of the lad. "It's very big," Frodo was saying. "I don't think I could even lift it." Milo squeezed his eyes shut in disbelief at the tone of Frodo's voice. Oh, he's not. Tell me he's not. Even Frodo has to have more sense than that. He didn't. Milo looked around the end of the cart to see Frodo very close to Halbarad, standing not much higher than his lower ribs and looking horrifyingly small next to what must have been six feet and thirteen stone of leather-clad Man, running his fingertips up the hilt of that massive sword. His fingers reached the pommel and curved, wrapping around it, then stroked back down as slowly as if he had all day to do nothing but learn the surface of that blade under his hand. Halbarad was holding himself very, very still, with an expression on his face that on a hobbit would have looked like frozen horror, but there was no knowing if it meant the same thing on a Man. Anardil had taken a step back and was quietly coughing behind his hand. Milo was around the cart and behind Frodo in half a dozen quick strides. He caught hold of the back of Frodo's collar and yanked, hard, sending him tumbling shoulder-first against the cart. Not looking back, Milo snapped, "Up on the cart. Now." "What -" "Do as I say or I'll clout your ear for you." Two against one weren't odds Milo cared to face in a tavern fight, let alone out here in the middle of bloody nowhere against two armed Men twice his size; they'd showed no signs of being hostile so far but that was no risk Milo wanted to take. Not when the sheer mechanics of size and leverage meant that if either or both of them decided that Frodo was going to follow up on his teasing whether he liked it or not, there might well be nothing Milo could do about it. Pox rot Frodo anyway, did the lad not have an ounce of sense in his head? "Good day to you, it's time we were getting on," he said tersely. Halbarad opened his mouth to speak, then frowned and shot an irritated glance at his friend, who was now having some sort of sneezing spasm. Just as Milo's neck began to get a serious crick in it, Halbarad knelt in front of him, coming down to eye level. Milo stepped warily back. "My apologies, little Master," Halbarad said in what he probably thought was too low a voice for Frodo to hear. Milo raised an eyebrow sourly. There were many things he was accustomed to being called, not all of them flattering, but "little" was not one of them. "Your... er, your young friend caught me a bit off-balance." "Aye, he does that," Milo answered dryly. Halbarad didn't quite smile, but his eyes flashed with rueful humor. "We mean no harm, to either of you. Nor do I mean offense to the boy when I say that he's too small by an arm's length for me to..." He shook his head in exasperation. "I know that halflings aren't children, truly I do, but it's easy to say that when you're sitting two feet away from one and something else again when one of them is doing suggestive things to your sword hilt." Anardil bent down to retie his bootlace. "Best let them get on, Halbarad," he muttered in Halbarad's ear. "Yon lad's working himself up to quite a sulk." Milo didn't turn to look. He didn't have to. He could all but feel Frodo's dudgeon, radiating against his back like the heat from a bonfire. The Men rose again, heads brushing against the high leaves overhead, giving Milo a moment of uncomfortable vertigo as he watched them. "Well met, master perian," Halbarad said with a wry smile as Milo stepped back toward the cart. "I hope to see the day when Shirefolk won't be quite as wary of Men." "Not bloody likely, until Men get a bit closer to our size and not as likely to do their negotiating with the edge of a blade," Milo answered flatly. "Not to say you've done it, but there are too many that do." "I know," Halbarad answered quietly, his face shadowing. "But you have friends where you least look for them. Farewell!" Milo watched until they were out of sight around the bend in the stream, and then muttered to himself, "Now what the bloody hell did that mean, I wonder?" "Are we going?" Frodo asked tightly. "Get your arse down here, Frodo Baggins, and tell me what in the name of Isumbras' pickled liver you thought you were playing at!" Frodo slid sullenly down from the bench. "I wasn't -" "You tell me you weren't playing at anything and I'll warm your arse for you, and not in the way you've been looking to get it warmed. Do you not have sense enough to come in out of the rain?" Heat, anger, and the lingering tightness of fear had just about sucked Milo dry of every bit of patience he might ever have possessed. "I don't see what's wrong with just flirting a bit," Frodo flared back at him. "I've never seen one of the Big People before, I've only heard stories about them, and I wanted to talk to them. And kindly don't speak to me as if I were -" "What? A bairn? Being treated like you were grown isn't something you earn just by being tall enough to look your grown kin in the eye, Frodo," Milo answered sharply, then sighed in exasperation and rubbed his hand over his eyes. Speaking of grown kin... "Listen. Having you about the place has been good for Bilbo and there's no question he's been good for you, but I'm thinking he's doing you no favors by letting you spend your days holed up in the library dreaming the hours away over old tales. I don't know what the Big People are like in Bilbo's books, but in the real world they're more often than not dishonest louts who won't think twice about using their size as a bargaining chip. They're bigger and stronger than we are, they have reach and leverage on us, and they bloody well know it, and it doesn't happen often but it's not unheard of for hobbits to just up and disappear after a run-in with them." Frodo was looking a little pale. "But these didn't -" "Aye, and you were bloody lucky for it, because you didn't know that when you started giving his sword hilt a handjob. If Bilbo won't tell you, I will - you bloody well watch who you're dangling yourself in front of or you're going to get yourself into more trouble than I or anyone else can get you out of. Being a Baggins and own cousin to the Master of Buckland won't save you from marrying a barmaid at the point of her father's hayfork, let alone from turning over for someone twice your size who wouldn't know a Thain if one bit him in the crotch." Frodo looked away and swallowed hard. "All right," he said quietly. "I'm sorry. It was a stupid thing to do." Milo let out a breath and let the anger drain out of him. He might fault Frodo for not having the sense he was born with but he couldn't fault him for being young, or for not knowing much about the world besides what his books told him. "All right, then," he said tiredly. "Is your shoulder hurt? Sounded like you caught it a nasty clip on the side of the cart." Frodo slid a hand up over his shoulder and rotated his arm. "No. It's only a little bruised." Reaching out, Milo cupped Frodo's chin and lifted it. "You gave me a fright, lad, that's all," he said gently. "Gave that Man one too, unless I miss my guess." "All right, all right, I'll never flirt with anyone again," Frodo answered, his face twisting in annoyance. Milo snorted. "And I'll quit the pipeweed trade to raise flying pigs. All right, up onto the cart with you. Let's get these alecasks back before Paladin starts thinking we've been sampling them along the way." "I wouldn't object," Frodo said wistfully, but he turned obediently toward the cart. With a resigned sigh, Milo reached out to catch his elbow. "Frodo..." Frodo turned and looked questioningly up at him. Milo's grip softened into a caress. "Come find me at the party tonight," he said quietly. "I'll talk to Bilbo before, or find a way to make it right afterward." Hope flared in Frodo's eyes, and then faded into doubt. "Do you mean it?" "Would I say it if I didn't? Frodo, you're a sweet lad but you've no more sense than my four-year-old, and you want taking in hand before you do something so stupid that there'll be no saving you from it. If Bilbo doesn't see that now, he will by the time I get through with him." Frodo frowned. "I'm not sure I want someone sleeping with me just to save me from my own stupidity." There were many answers Milo could have given to that, but he'd always been more a one for actions than for words. Eventually Frodo broke away, gasping for breath. "Oh. Erm... all right." "Save you from your own stupidity, my arse," Milo grumbled. "You know bloody well how mouth-watering you are. Now get up on the cart." "It's a long time until tonight," Frodo said, swiping hair out of his eyes with a quick, impatient movement. Milo lifted an eyebrow. "What do you suggest, then? And before you suggest it, the answer's no. This isn't something you want to rush." He raised a hand to Frodo's chin, rubbing his thumb slowly over that soft, inviting lower lip. "Worth taking all night for, no?" "You're trying to kill me, aren't you?" Frodo asked tightly. "I can't wait that long." "You can and you will," Milo informed him. "And unless you want to walk back to the hayfields you'll get yourself back up on the cart." Frodo made an aggravated noise and stalked back over to the cart. Milo watched him go, then chuckled and headed after him.   "Well," Bilbo said heartily that night, handing Milo an ale and steering him toward two chairs set out of the way in a quiet nook in the trees, with a small table between them. "Did Frodo behave himself?" "I'm glad you asked," Milo answered grimly; and within five minutes Bilbo was sitting with one hand clapped over his eyes, massaging ineffectually at his temples. "He didn't." "He did." "No, really. That was an amusing joke, but now tell me how the two of you really got on." Milo chuckled and took a swig of his ale. "Bilbo, have you never talked to that lad about anything but dragons and elves?" "Of course I have. We talk all the time, about all sorts of things. We've just never talked about... things like this." Bilbo sighed and took a very large drink of his ale. "I've had enough on my hands trying to get him adjusted to Hobbiton, and I thought he had too." "Had a bit of trouble with the change from Buckland, has he?" Bilbo grimaced. "Well, really it's not so much him having trouble adjusting to Hobbiton as the other way around, I'm afraid. You know the Sackville-Bagginses, always stirring up trouble. And the rest of them..." "And the rest of them?" Bilbo sighed and looked up at the stars. "Do you know, I missed the Shire every day I was Away," he said meditatively. "Every day. I used to wish constantly that I was back at Bag End, with a nice warm fire and bacon for breakfast, and hot tea. And then when I came back..." Milo was silent, waiting. "It isn't that I love the Shire any less. It's in my blood and my bones, every field and lake and garden path. But sometimes it seems as if everyone in it lives their whole life with their eyes fixed on their toes, and I want to shout at them to look up." He shook his head and took a swig of his ale. "And every time they look askance at Frodo, or claim he's a Brandybuck and not a Baggins, or whisper about that odd, skinny, bookish child who's come to live with eccentric old Bilbo and has his head in the clouds half the time, I want to shout at them to look up and give them a swift kick in the arse. He's from Buckland, for goodness' sake, not Esgaroth. And he may be bookish but he's hardly a stick-at-home who won't run with the other lads for fear of getting his shirt dirty - hadn't lived in Hobbiton two weeks, in fact, before he bloodied Lotho Sackville-Baggins' nose. I can't see what the fuss is about." Milo lifted an eyebrow. "Bilbo, that lad could ask the fruitseller's wife for a pound of apples and make her knickers catch fire right then and there, and you're wondering why he came as a shock to Hobbiton? Every mother from the Hill to Bywater must have been having fits about how to protect her teenagers' virtue, when she wasn't trying to figure out how to relieve Frodo of his." Bilbo threw up his hands in exasperation. "All right, so I'm a blind old hobbit who can't see when a lad's grown up -" "Now, I didn't say that. But you've never really been one for courting, let alone rolls in the hay whenever the chance arose, and it's not as if he flaunts himself at you. And it's been a long time since you cared what the good folk of Hobbiton thought about you or anything else, or even noticed. But sometimes we're too close to the people we love best to see things about them, and I will tell you for a fact that that lad near to got himself in a damn dangerous situation today. He needs the edge taken off that curiosity before it takes him where it shouldn't, and he needs you to sit him down and give him a good plain talking-to about thinking with the head on his shoulders and not playing cat-and-mouse with other lads just to watch them squirm. He loves you, Bilbo, he'll listen." Bilbo sighed, reached into his vest pocket for his pipe, and began to fill it from the pouch on the table between them. "He misses his parents." Milo's knuckles went white on his tankard. He took a deep breath, brought his thoughts back from the Southfarthing, and pulled out his own pipe. "They were so happy, Drogo and Prim were, and so proud of that lovely little blue-eyed bairn of theirs," Bilbo said softly. "He was always a bit wild, and far too sensitive for his own good, and he had his da's temper right enough; but after they died he built walls of his anger tall and strong enough to keep back the Sea. Saradoc and Esme did their best with him but they had all of Buckland to manage and a son of their own... I should have taken him in sooner, but I kept telling myself he'd get past it and let all that anger go." Milo struck a match and lit Bilbo's pipe, then brought the match back to light his own. "He's a good lad, and has a good heart, which I don't need to tell you of all people. But he's not going to do the reaching-out, not now and maybe not ever again. And he's got a bit too much faith in his own ability to deal with everything that might ever happen to him all by himself." Bilbo was silent for a moment and then chuckled ruefully. "You know, speaking of knickers..." "Oh, my. What's he done?" "Well, there's nothing to say that he did it..." Milo began to snicker. "... but Lobelia Sackville-Baggins' - ah, you remember her, I see - Lobelia's knickers disappeared off her washline one fine day..." The snickers turned into chuckling. "... and reappeared tied to the horns of the Proudfoots' goat herd, trailing along after cavorting goats like so many flags in the breeze." Milo choked on his smoke, eyes watering as he tried to inhale, exhale, and laugh all at the same time. "Frodo and young Fatty Bolger smirked for days, the both of them. And all three of my gardener's lads near to fell on their faces and worshipped at his feet whenever he went by." "And what did the gardener's lasses think of it, or doesn't he have any?" "Aye, he's got three of those too. The two older ones frowned at him for at least a week. Little Marigold kissed him and gave him a huge bunch of daisies." "Bless her heart." Bilbo's laughter trailed away and he looked down at his pipe. "Be careful with him, Milo," he said softly. "He's all I have." Milo was silent for the space of a breath or two, then reached over and laid his hand on Bilbo's shoulder. "I will," he answered. "But who's going to tell him to be careful with me, eh?" The effect of Bilbo's reproving look was somewhat spoiled by his wry grin.   Frodo caught up to him by the alecasks an hour later, after Bilbo had gone off to hold a group of Took lasses spellbound with tales from his Adventure. "Well?" he asked tensely, in between worrying at his thumbnail with his teeth. Milo finished pulling his ale and took a drink. "Well. No one ever said Bilbo couldn't see reason when it was called for." A smile like the first light of dawn spread over Frodo's face. "Can we go?" "Impatient, aren't you?" "Milo!" Milo laughed. "All right. Pull yourself an ale and let's be off." Frodo did as he was told, with hands that were not terribly steady. "Are you sure about this?" Milo asked quietly. "You're allowed to call it off, you know." "No," Frodo almost snapped. "I want to. I've wanted to since we got to Tuckborough." "All right, all right, you know your own mind better than I do," Milo answered mildly. "Come on, then."   He talked idly of this and that as they walked, trying to set Frodo at his ease; the lad was as jumpy as a hare in a dog pen, and if it kept up they were going to have a long night ahead of them - and not in a good way. By the time they got within sight of his smial, he'd had some success - Frodo had stopped chewing on his nails, at any rate, and seemed to be coming a bit more under the mellowing influence of Paladin's excellent ale. That influence lasted until they reached the smial and Milo moved to build up the fire, and heard the distinct sound of Frodo drumming his fingers on his tankard. "What now?" Frodo asked tightly. Milo had to laugh. "You make it sound like there's some sort of list to follow." "I think I might feel better if there were, and I knew what it was." The fire sparked and lit. Frodo was standing tensely by the table, so pointedly not looking at the bed that he might as well have been staring right at it. Milo went back over to him and ran a hand gently up Frodo's arm to cup his cheek. "Well, then, let's see if we can make one," he said softly. "How about if we start by finishing our ale and having a pipe? There's not much to take the edge off a mood like having the better part of a mile between the proposition and the bedroom, eh?" Frodo swallowed hard. From the look in his eyes, whatever edge had been taken off bid fair to be honed again very quickly. "How about if we just finish our ale?" "Whatever you want," Milo said agreeably, tracing his thumb over Frodo's mouth. Frodo closed his eyes and parted his lips to let Milo's thumb slip past them, light pressure of teeth and the soft touch of his tongue on Milo's skin. "Mm, I can show you a few things about that too, if you want," Milo whispered. "But you'll have to mind those teeth - ah, there you go, less with the teeth and more tongue. Good, you don't gag easily, do you? That'll come in handy." Frodo pulled back, and his hand tightened on Milo's. "I don't think I want any ale either," he said hoarsely. "Well, then." Milo ran his fingertip slowly down the front of Frodo's shirt to the first button. "Maybe we'd best find out what you do want." A quick twist of his finger snapped the button open. Frodo closed his eyes with a soft whimper. "All right, there?" Milo breathed into the shell of Frodo's ear, moving his finger down along soft, warm skin. Frodo nodded briefly, not opening his eyes, slipping his hands down to settle at Milo's waist. Another shirt button popped free, and Frodo's hands clenched convulsively around the fabric of Milo's shirt. Milo paused dubiously. Giggling, enthusiastic lasses he was used to; frightened virginal tweenage lads were something else altogether, and for a moment he had no idea whether to keep unbuttoning or call a halt to the proceedings until Frodo had a bit more ale in him. The decision was abruptly made for him as Frodo stumbled back against the table, pulling Milo with him, entangling him in arms and legs and a hard grinding rhythm timed to Frodo's panicked gasps, and even if Milo had been able to collect his thoughts enough to protest, Frodo's tongue in his mouth would have made it difficult indeed. Nor did it seem like sense to, not with Frodo's fever-hot body twisting and rubbing against his own, slender fingers clenched painfully in Milo's hair pulling him closer. Milo braced one hand on the table and slid the other down to the small of Frodo's back, moving with him, losing himself in the building pleasure of heat and hardness and friction until a sharp pain in his lip brought him enough back to reality to realize that Frodo was arching against him, whimpers scaling rapidly up toward a cry. Cursing inwardly, Milo pulled back. "What are you doing? " Frodo wailed, trying to tug him back again. "Listen -" "You stopped!" "Frodo! A grind full-clothed against a table may be a good quick tension-reliever -" "Yes, but you stopped! " Frodo protested. " - but it's no way to do things the first time. Onto the bed with you, now." Frodo swallowed hard and tried, and failed, to look past Milo to the bed. His deathgrip on Milo's shirt eased. Milo took Frodo's chin in his fingertips. "What are you so afraid of?" he asked gently. "If something's not right for you, you tell me and we'll do something else, or nothing at all. You must know your own hand well enough by this age, and you haven't hurt yourself yet, have you? Do you think I'd be any rougher with you?" "I," Frodo began, then took a shaky breath and closed his eyes. "I want... I want you to -" "Ah," Milo sighed. "I thought that might be coming. No." Frodo's eyes flew open indignantly. "What?" "I said no, lad, don't tell me you haven't heard the word before - though I'll wager you don't hear it often." "But why not?" Milo had to laugh. "Frodo, you're that nervous you can't even ask for it outright. For what you're wanting, you have to be relaxed or it will hurt, and not in any way that'd make you happy." He drew his fingertips down Frodo's throat to trace over his collarbone. "Another time, eh? I promise. But not tonight. Nothing will hurt, tonight." Frodo caught Milo's hand and brought it back up to his mouth, nipping lightly at the tip of Milo's thumb. "Not even if I want it to?" he whispered. "Frodo..." Milo began in exasperation, then sighed. "No, not even if you want it to. You're too young and too inexperienced to be playing those sorts of games. Now go on, before I decide that I'm the one who's in over his head." With a reproving look, Frodo moved past Milo toward the bed. Milo caught up to him just as he reached it and stopped Frodo with an arm around his waist, pulling him back against Milo's chest. Frodo was still trembling, pressed between Milo and the side of the bed. "Listen," Milo whispered, bending to nuzzle at Frodo's ear and tracing the opened front of Frodo's shirt with his fingertips. "You've not reached the point of no return just because you get on the bed, or take off your clothes, or anything else. If you want to stop, we'll stop, no matter how far along we are. Understand?" Frodo nodded, and a little of the tension eased out of him. Milo ran his hands under Frodo's braces and slipped them off his shoulders, feeling Frodo shiver at the light brush of Milo's thumbs on the thin cotton over his nipples. Braces disposed of, Milo turned his attention back to Frodo's shirt - or what attention could be spared from his slow exploration of the taste of Frodo's throat - and tugged it gently out of his trousers, drawing a soft whimper. Frodo leaned back against him, tilting his head onto Milo's shoulder. Swaying slowly in Milo's arms, he ground his backside against Milo's groin in a maddeningly deliberate movement; and oh, if that didn't pick Milo's resolve up by the throat and shake it. "I said no, Frodo," he murmured around Frodo's earlobe. Frodo wriggled sinuously out of his shirt and let it fall to the floor. "I heard you. It feels good, that's all." He craned his neck around to regard Milo with a gaze that was just the smallest bit too innocent. "Don't you like it?" "I think you can feel the answer to that, can't you?" Milo slipped his hand into Frodo's trousers, whispering shhh as Frodo tensed a little, stroking his fingertips gently over Frodo's hipbone. His other hand slipped upward to toy with Frodo's nipple, making Frodo moan softly and engage in some very interesting bump and grind as he tried to rub backward into Milo's groin, maneuver his erection under Milo's hand, and press forward into that hand, simultanously. "Can we get to the part where you touch me now?" he panted. Milo chuckled. "Patience, lad. You'll not last more than a minute your first time, let's at least get undressed and onto the bed first." "But I last longer than that when I -" "Aye, I know you do, and maybe I'll have you show me sometime, hm? But this is different." He brushed a fingertip along Frodo's length, smiling as Frodo gave a strangled gasp and jolted in his arms. "See?" "Do that... again..." "All in good time, lad. Let's get these clothes off you first." "And you." Frodo turned in his arms and began grappling with Milo's buttons, cursing under his breath as they evaded his shaking fingers. "And me," Milo agreed, lifting his hands to help. Frodo caught his breath and moved closer as Milo's shirt fell to the floor, tilting his chin up for a kiss and giving a soft murmur of arousal at the slow slide of Milo's skin against his own. Half expecting him to tense up again, Milo dropped his hands to the front of Frodo's trousers and began unbuttoning; but Frodo's trembling was easing a little, and he wriggled out of his trousers and unbuttoned Milo's with equal eagerness. "Still all right?" Milo whispered against Frodo's mouth. "Yes, " Frodo gasped, curling his fingers tentatively around Milo. At Milo's soft hum of approval, he tightened his grip and stroked slowly upward. "You feel so good..." "Up on the bed with you, now," Milo urged. Frodo let go of him and scrambled back onto the bed with gratifying alacrity, tugging at Milo's arm to pull him downward, and Milo had barely gotten himself settled before he found Frodo wound tightly around him. Milo, who had been rather afraid that he was going to have to spend the evening shepherding a lad with a bad case of nerves through every touch and tumble, was not at all displeased to find that he'd been mistaken on that score. "You're bloody determined once you set your mind to a thing, aren't you?" Frodo bit him lightly on the collarbone. "Yes. I like this. Show me what to do." "Mm, you're doing a fine job of figuring it out on your own," Milo murmured, arching into Frodo's hand. Frodo lifted his head and braced himself above Milo, unsettlingly blue eyes smouldering inches from Milo's own. "Milo. I've never done this before, and I want to do it right, and I don't want to wait anymore. I don't want to go slow. If you won't pin me to the bloody bed and fuck me into next week then at least have enough mercy to show me what to do, because I'm so worked up that I think I'm going to die -" Milo flipped Frodo over, pinning him easily to the bed. "Well, now," he murmured, slowly pressing down where it would do the most good. "If I'd known it was as urgent as all that, I might not have spent so much time getting your clothes off." "Milo -" Frodo pushed up hard against him, panting, biting hard into his lip; and oh, he was beautiful, and he also wasn't going to last another five minutes, so best to take the edge off now because Milo had every intention of introducing Frodo to the pleasures of taking one's time. He moved back a little, smiling at Frodo's inarticulate cry of protest, and slipped his finger between Frodo's lips. Frodo grabbed Milo's hand, sucking his finger into a warm and willing mouth, and if Frodo was as enthusiastic about the real act as he was about this small imitation then Milo would be well repaid indeed for taking him to bed. His tongue was hot and slick against Milo's skin, laving upward and then darting back down, rising again to circle avidly as his teeth nipped sharply at the tip of Milo's finger. "That's right," Milo whispered. "Best for you if you get it good and wet." Frodo's tongue stilled on Milo's finger and his eyes fluttered open, meeting Milo's with surprise nearly lost in heat and desire. "The answer's still no, but let's give you a taste of it and see if you'll like it, eh? And do not get used to biting when you're doing that." Momentarily muzzled by Milo's hand, Frodo could only nod. Milo drew his hand back and trailed it down Frodo's chest, drawing a light, damp circle around one nipple and making Frodo whimper, then down between his legs. Slowly, then, slower than Frodo clearly wanted, but this wasn't something Milo cared to rush. Enough for a moment to explore, caress, tease, before - "Ah! " Milo went still. "Hurt?" Frodo shook his head frantically. "No. No. It's, I just, it -" "Hurts," Milo finished dryly. "No. It feels strange, that's all." Frodo wound his fingers into Milo's hair and pulled him back, pressing their foreheads together. "Milo, please. Please. I need this, I need it. Please don't stop." "You're very fetching when you beg," Milo whispered, and whatever Frodo might have answered to that was lost as he wailed and writhed underneath Milo. "Slow down, hold fast for a minute." "I - can't - I'm going to -" Frodo sobbed, fingers clenching tight in Milo's hair. Milo slowed a bit, ignoring Frodo's desperate pleas for more and harder, waiting until Frodo had come just a bit back from the edge before he slipped down and brushed his lips over Frodo's hipbone. "Good?" he whispered. "Yes, please, make me -" With no warning, Milo took Frodo full into his mouth and twisted his finger straight into the spot that would most appreciate it - - and oh, yes, the lad was a screamer, all right. Milo freed a hand and pinned Frodo's hips to the bed as best he could with Frodo's knees clamped around his shoulders, caressed him in slow strokes of hand and mouth that would be as soothing in a moment as they were arousing now, and waited. When Frodo's cries had died down to whimpers, Milo crawled back up the bed and gathered him close, tucking sweat-damp curls into the curve of his neck and running his hand in slow, soft caresses over Frodo's back. Frodo curled closer and clung tightly to him, his breath slowly calming from gulping pants to long shivering sighs. "Liked that, did you?" Milo whispered against a pointed eartip. Frodo swallowed hard. "Oh," he said faintly. Then, in a tone of sudden understanding: "Oh. " Milo smiled and nuzzled Frodo's hair, smoothing gentle fingertips over the back of his neck. "I don't think I have any knees," Frodo said finally. He still sounded a bit dazed. "Are they supposed to disappear like that, or should I be worried?" Milo laughed. "I think they'll come back in a few minutes." Frodo drew back a little and looked up at Milo. "I did like it. I loved it. I want to do it again, and I want you to like it this time too." He ran his hands avidly over Milo's body, following planes of muscle, running his fingers through the thatch of gold-brown curls on Milo's chest. "I want to taste you. I want your mouth all over me. You said it would last longer this time - show me." "Mm, and how could I say no to that?" "I don't know. Don't. Show me." "Come here, then," Milo whispered. And then Frodo was pressed up against him, warm and laughing, offering himself for Milo's touch and touching Milo in return with insatiable curiosity, sighing his appreciation of Milo's slow, thorough caresses. Oh, he was lovely, quick to catch on and more than responsive, hands and mouth and body hot and eager against Milo's skin until finally he wound himself around Milo and pushed up against him with a slow, languid rhythm, sighing with pleasure and whispering in a language that Milo thought might be Elvish. For a moment Milo wondered what he was saying; but it wasn't as though Frodo hadn't said plenty of other things tonight, and Frodo was rocking against him faster, breath beginning to come in jagged gasps. Milo trailed kisses down Frodo's throat and moved harder, faster, as Frodo whimpered and locked his legs around Milo's waist. Frodo began to arch under him, driving up fast and desperately. Milo let him for a moment before he caught Frodo's hip with his hand and held it down against the bed, grinding down slow and hard, and Frodo broke on a long push, burying his face in Milo's throat while he writhed and sobbed with release. He barely had time to get his breath back before he was reaching for Milo, gripping and stroking with hands that were not nearly as clumsy now as they had been an hour ago; and it took no more than a few strokes and soft whispered encouragement before Milo was shuddering in release, spilling into surprisingly strong hands as Frodo bit gently into his shoulder, and Milo still had no idea why Frodo had chosen him for this but he was bloody glad he had. "Slow does have its virtues after all," Frodo noted when he'd caught his breath. "I knew you'd like it," Milo told him, giving Frodo one more brief kiss before untangling himself and sinking back onto the bed. "Mm," Frodo said, settling his head comfortably on Milo's shoulder and wrapping around him with a drowsy, loose-limbed lethargy. "I'm tired. Why does sex make you so sleepy?" "Ah, now, that's one of life's great mysteries. But it's a good thing it does, for it's late and it's been a long day, and morning'll come as early tomorrow as it did today. Go to sleep, now." "You too," Frodo murmured, and gave a huge yawn. In moments his breathing settled into sleep, whispering across Milo's skin with long, smooth regularity. For a while Milo lay staring up at the ceiling, watching the dancing shadows cast by the guttering fire and contemplating the vagaries of Bagginses in general. There'd been a time when they were the most staid, respectable, predictable family in the Shire, rather to the consternation of their Took and Brandybuck kin; then Bilbo went off his head (said some) and off on an Adventure (said others, more kindly), and all of a sudden the line began sprouting hobbits who were full of surprises at every turn, as if it had taken only one good nudge to start them hatching cuckoo's eggs. He'd asked Peony to marry him the day she got a bit tipsy at a berry-harvesting picnic and taught his grandmother sixteen verses of a bawdy drinking song; and possibly the Burrows bloodline had been touched a bit by the Baggins eccentricity too, because he couldn't imagine ever having married anyone else. And then there'd been Bilbo, with his cheerfully erratic habits and easy friendship; and now Frodo, little firebrand that he was, and Milo had never had much in the way of the Sight but he could see well enough that the borders of the Shire were too small to hold either of them forever. Well, it seemed to be Milo's fate to borrow Bagginses for a while and then have to give them back, and he couldn't bring himself to be sorry for it when the alternative was a life devoid of dark-haired, blue-eyed bundles of whatthehellareyoudoing. But he wished he could have kept them, just a little while longer.   Milo blinked awake when it was still dark out, feeling warm and comfortable and - yes, that would be why. "Good morning, Frodo," he mumbled around the soft lips moving on his own. "It isn't morning yet," Frodo whispered, leaving a trail of light kisses down Milo's jaw to his neck. Smiling, Milo slid his hands gently up Frodo's back. "Mm, it's not, is it? You're up a bit early, then, aren't you?" "Very," Frodo answered, and wriggled pointedly against Milo. "And so are you." "And so I am. What would you like to do about that?" Milo tilted his head and nipped at Frodo's eartip. The hand that slipped down to grip him was covered in something cool and slick, making Milo jump an inch off the bed. "Let me show you," Frodo breathed. "What in all the Shire is that all over your hand?" "Bath oil." Milo frowned, trying to remember if there had been bath oil among the smial's various supplies. "Where did you get it?" "Someone left it in the bathroom near my room. I didn't take much, just a little." "You are a larcenous little bugger, aren't you? And you brought it with you?" Frodo's face heated under Milo's hand. "I told you, I want you to -" "Aye, I know what you told me you wanted. And if I'm not mistaken, I told you that it was early days to be doing that sort of thing." Oh, but that hand of Frodo's felt good, gripping and sliding on him... "Yes, you did," Frodo answered, leaning down for another kiss. "But you're going to change your mind." "Oh, am I? And why am I going to do that?" "Because you want to. And I want you to." Curse the lad, he was right. "You're awfully sure of that." "If you didn't want to, you wouldn't be teasing. You'd just tell me no, like you did last night." Frodo still sounded a bit aggrieved about that. "Show me what to do." Milo brushed night-dark tendrils of hair out of Frodo's face and sighed. "You're bloody set on this, aren't you?" "Yes. It felt wonderful, what you were doing to me last night. I want more." He was probably giving in too easily. It didn't matter. Milo slipped a hand downward, deftly caressing, making Frodo shudder and moan. "Do you always get what you want, then?" "I - usually - oh, that feels good..." "And what if you don't, eh? I suppose you make everyone's life miserable until you do." "Noyes - wait, I mean, ah -" "I think you were closer to right the second time," Milo whispered, holding tight as Frodo squirmed and whimpered against him. "I think you're a bit spoiled, if you want to know the truth." Frodo made a sound that suggested that he didn't care if Milo thought he was a blight in a bad season, so long as Milo kept doing what he was doing. Chuckling, Milo loosened his hold. "This is a bit of an awkward angle, here, let's -" Frodo gave a strangled gasp and caught hard at Milo's hip as Milo shifted a little. "Noit'snot," he blurted breathlessly. "There is... nothing... wrong with... ah, do that again -" "That?" Milo whispered into dark, sweat-damp hair as Frodo wailed and bucked against him. "Now that, I can tell you sure, will be a bit easier if we move. On your back, now, there you go." Frodo slid unwillingly onto his back and lay there disheveled, panting, and generally looking thoroughly ravishable. "Now, what did you do with that oil?" "It's over there." There was the nightstand, which involved Frodo clambering over and onto Milo to reach for it; and there they were right back where they'd started except that Frodo was full on top of Milo now, one knee pressing into each of his hips. "Milo... please, can't you just -" Milo lifted his head and kissed Frodo into silence. "Frodo Baggins, you are a handful if ever the Shire produced one. Behave or I'll tie you down." Frodo gave him a wicked grin. "Promise?" With an exasperated groan, Milo rolled them over and took the oil out of Frodo's hand, sorting their positions out as best he could with an increasingly slippery Frodo clinging to him and licking his ear. "You'll get what you want, just be patient a minute," he ordered, privately doubting that Frodo and patience had more than a nodding acquaintance. "You like this part too, you know, and you won't be as sore come morning if we go a bit slow." Frodo wriggled in exasperation. "I don't - ah! " "Better?" "More! " More, then, until Frodo was as ready as he thought he was. Over Frodo's voluble protests, Milo pulled away and moved back to sit against the headboard. "Come here, then," he urged, tugging at Frodo's hand. In a moment he had a lap full of wriggling hobbit, looking at him with anticipation, a flicker of nervousness, and no small amount of heat. "Slow," he whispered, kissing Frodo's neck as he guided them into position and pushed up into the tight warmth of Frodo's body. Frodo gasped hard, his fingers tightening around Milo's shoulders, and Milo paused. "We'll not do this if you don't like it." "I... do..." Frodo's whole body was trembling; he leaned forward and nuzzled Milo's cheek, whimpering into his mouth as they slid closer. Milo shifted, back and then deeper, and Frodo groaned, his fingers twisting into Milo's hair at the nape of his neck; and oh, yes, this was looking like a very good idea indeed. "Easy, now." Milo nipped lightly at Frodo's throat in a spot that made Frodo whimper. "Give yourself a minute to get used to it." Frodo gave an inarticulate protest and squirmed against Milo's hold on his hips, then went still with a strangled gasp. "Good or bad?" Milo murmured, licking along the upsweep of Frodo's ear. "Good, it's good, it... don't move, I'm so close..." Milo smiled against Frodo's skin and held still, corralling his own impatience until Frodo took a deep breath and moved against him in a long slow rise and fall that brought a groan from Milo and a soft keening cry from Frodo. "I thought you didn't want slow," he said shakily, because at the moment Milo didn't either, and Frodo's original plan of being pinned to the bed and fucked into next week was looking better every minute. "Ah, you feel good..." Frodo slipped slowly upward again, running his thumb over Milo's lower lip, his gaze locked on Milo's. "I don't want slow," he whispered, and slammed down. And oh, that was incentive enough for Milo, and more than enough with Frodo's fingers digging into his back for leverage and harsh, desperate cries in his ear, and neither of them were going to last at this pace but he didn't care; Frodo felt too good around him, against him, heat and tightness and the taste of his skin stripping Milo of any coherent thought. Milo pulled him closer, moving with him, more and harder when Frodo pleaded for it, and held back until finally Frodo's sobs scaled up into a piercing wail and his fingers dug into Milo's skin hard enough to bruise. A minute more, then, holding Frodo close as he came; and then he neither could hold back nor wanted to, and stroked up into a release that seared through his whole body like a burn in the fields. For a long minute there was quiet, broken only by slowly steadying breath and Frodo's quick hiss of discomfort as he shifted a little. Then Milo collected himself enough to ease them sideways, settling the blankets around them as Frodo burrowed into his arms. "You're going to be the death of me, lad," he sighed. "More sleep now, hm?" Frodo took a shaky breath. "I want you to do that to me a lot," he said, not entirely addressing the topic. "My pleasure," Milo answered truthfully. "But no more tonight." "All right," Frodo said with a reluctance that made Milo laugh. "Good night, Milo." Milo stroked Frodo's hair gently. "Good night, Frodo," he whispered, and was asleep before he noticed that he'd closed his eyes.   Milo woke to two realizations in rapid succession: that he was alone in the bed, and that something smelled burnt. He rolled over and cracked an eyelid. By the dim light of the false dawn, he saw Frodo standing by the stove, trousers slung low and carelessly on his hips, running one hand through sleep-touseled curls and peering dubiously down into the coffee pot. "What in the world are you doing?" Milo asked. Frodo gave a huge yawn. "I was trying to make coffee, but I don't think I'm awake enough yet." "Bloody Bagginses and your coffee," Milo grumbled amiably. "Leave it and come back to bed for a bit. I'll make some in a few minutes." Frodo set the coffeepot down and climbed back into bed, nestling happily into Milo's arms with a drowsy sigh. "Good morning, Milo." "Morning," Milo answered, drawing Frodo closer and caressing his shoulder. "Sleep well?" "Mmmm. Very well," Frodo answered without opening his eyes, his mouth curving in a lazy smile. "Well, you don't seem too sore, anyway." Frodo's fingertips drew slow circles on Milo's chest. "I am a little. Not too much." "Good thing, since you'll be harvesting hay all day. And how in buggery I'm going to keep up my end of the harvest on as little sleep as I got last night, I've no idea." "Are you sorry?" Frodo went still, waiting for Milo's answer. "Not a bit," Milo answered reassuringly, dropping a kiss into Frodo's hair. "You?" "No," Frodo answered so emphatically that Milo laughed. "Milo... can we do this again? Tonight?" "Bloody hell, you're trying to kill me, aren't you?" Milo twined a lock of Frodo's hair around his finger and kissed his forehead softly. "We'll see how you feel after you've been mowing hay for twelve hours. If you still want to, we will." "I will want to. Mm, you're so warm..." "Don't be going back to sleep, now." Milo tried to shift away, intending to get up and make coffee, and found himself so entwined in sleepy, clinging Frodo that it hardly seemed worthwhile to move. Well, surely a few more minutes wouldn't hurt.   "So you've finally decided to join us," Bilbo said in mock sternness. Milo yawned and grabbed a scythe from the cart. "All right, so I overslept a bit." "More than a bit." Bilbo's voice lost its teasing tone halfway through his comment. Milo glanced up into slate-colored eyes and saw all the questions Bilbo would never ask, and all the worries he would never voice. "He's fine," he said quietly. "Burned the coffee this morning and then went back to sleep. I had half a mind to leave him there and let him rest, but he wouldn't hear of it. He's out in the south fields now." Bilbo was silent for a moment, then heaved a sigh and smiled ruefully. "I suppose I've seen the last of him until we leave, haven't I? No, never mind, don't answer that. I suppose you know he's going to be miserable to live with when we get back to Hobbiton and he finds that potential bedmates aren't thick on the ground." Milo snorted. "As if that lad couldn't have anyone he wanted." "Not without consequences he might not want. Things really are different there, Milo. They aren't as likely as the Tooks and Brandybucks to see a tumble as nothing more serious than an afternoon's picnic. They see it as a courtship, or the start of one, anyway, where they don't just see it as tantamount to a wedding." Frowning, Milo tested the edge on his scythe. "Well, he'd have learned that anyway, and maybe with dire consequences, so don't go telling me that I didn't do him any favors last night -" "- which I was not going to do, because you were quite right, even though I don't like it. And if nothing else, you'll have made Esmerelda very happy." At Milo's curious look, Bilbo gave a rueful snicker. "She's always complaining that he doesn't come and visit. Once he finds out that his chances of a finding a nice uncomplicated tumble are better in Buckland than in Hobbiton, she'll have him on her hands more than she knows what to do with, and as long as he shows up for mealtimes with bells on she won't turn too close an eye to where he spends his nights." "But you will?" "Of course I will. He's my charge. And if nothing else, he needs to learn discretion - if there's a hobbit in the Westfarthing who doesn't know where he spent the night last night, it's because they're stone deaf and stayed at home, and it'll do his life in Hobbiton no favors if they think he's likely to tumble their daughters, or sons for that matter, for a week or two on a whim and then go merrily on his way." "You need to be telling him this, not me." "I know. But..." Bilbo grimaced and drummed his fingers against the cart. "But there are things that he won't hear from an old cousin that he might hear from you. I'll talk to him too, of course, I'm not trying to unload my responsibilities onto you. I'd just... I'd be grateful if you'd mention it to him." "I will, then." Milo answered quietly. Bilbo glanced back at him, flashing that quick, mischievous grin of his. "Besides, if you talk to him first it'll soften the blow a bit. I'm afraid that having his ninety-nine-year-old cousin talk to him about sex will kill him from sheer horror, and I'd have a job of work explaining that to Esme." Milo reached out a little to clasp Bilbo's shoulder. "You're a good hobbit, Bilbo. Frodo's lucky to have you." A shadow flickered over Bilbo's face. "I wonder sometimes," he said softly, then shook his head and smiled again. "Now out to the field with you, you lazy sod. If you don't get out there and pull your weight Paladin'll cut you off from the ale no matter how good an excuse you have." "Can't have that, can we?" Milo hefted the scythe and headed out to the fields, walking into the scent of new-mown hay and the sound of hobbits singing, grumbling, and shouting across the fields to their friends as they worked; of Reg and Poppy bickering cheerfully, the eldest Bolger lad serenading the watermaid with a bawdy alehouse tune that made her squeal with laughter, and young Merry leading a stampede of juvenile hobbits on some race of undoubtedly nefarious purpose. A fine excuse indeed he might have, but hay and the Shire sun waited for no one.     Back to Rain Back to the fanfics page Back to the home page