"Ahh," Merry and Pippin said simultaneously, then clanked their tankards together. It took them several tries.

"Him an' that Noakes wench."

Merry clucked sympathetically and patted Frodo on the hand.

"You're takin' this hard, Frodo," Pippin observed.

Frodo frowned. "Well, how'm I supposed to take it? The hobbit I love is keeping company with a lass who refers to me as 'that poncy Brandybuck slut.' No, shutup, 's not funny. How'm I supposed to take it?"

Pippin and Merry looked at each other with a speculative gleam in their eyes that would have set off alarm bells in Frodo's head had he been sober; drunk as he was, it only piqued his interest.

"I have an opinion on how he should take it," Merry informed Pippin.

"I think he wants cheering up," Pippin answered.

"I think we're just the ones to do it."

"Come on, Frodo," Pippin ordered, setting his tankard down with a thunk and weaving to his feet.

"Where're we going?" Frodo asked, then nearly sent ale down the front of his shirt as he made a game effort to drain his tankard.

"You'll see," Merry told him. "Up you go, then."

Frodo shrugged, giving himself over into the hands of Fate - or Merry and Pippin, one of the two - and hoisted himself to his feet. "All right. But no raids on Farmer Maggot's mushrooms. Those dogs of his'll kill me on sight."

"No mushrooms for you, Frodo my lad, unless you have them in your pantry," Merry said cheerfully. "We're going back to Bag End."

Frodo frowned. "That doesn't sound like much fun. I thought you were going to cheer me up."

"Oh, we are. Aren't we, Merry?"

"We have a game we want to teach you, Frodo. I think you'll like it."

"Ah. That's all right, then," Frodo answered, and let himself be led out of the Green Dragon.

They hadn't gone more than fifty feet toward the Bywater Bridge when they nearly bumped into Sam and his sister Marigold, flanked to either side by Ivy Noakes and Tom Cotton. Sam's hands were stuffed into his pockets, and Ivy's arm was wound around his; Marigold and Tom, unabashed, were holding hands like children. Frodo schooled his expression to impassivity as best he could as they drew near.

"Good evening, Sam, Marigold," he said formally. "You remember my cousins, don't you?"

Sam blinked and frowned a little. "We've known your cousins for years, Mr. Frodo. They're in and out of Bag End all the time."

For some reason that made Merry nearly convulse with snorts of laughter. Frodo smacked him amiably in the back of the head. "Well, then, there's no need for me to do introductions," he said airily. "We'll leave you to your, um, come on, gentlemen, the Baggins homebrew awaits."

"Mr. Frodo," Sam said in a pleasant but firm tone that reminded Frodo uncomfortably of his governess.

"If it's about those flowerbeds under the study window, Sam, I really can't be arsed at the moment - oh, Sam, I'm sorry, that was horribly rude of me, will the pair of you shut up before you burst something! Really, I didn't mean..."

Sam turned to his sister. "You three go on, Mari, I'm going to see to it that Mr. Frodo gets home all right."

Pippin drew himself up to his full height, assumed some drunken approximation of his rarely-used "I am the future Thain, kindly do not cross me" expression, and slung an arm around Frodo's neck - nearly sending both of them face-down onto the cobblestones. "You will do nothing of the sort, Sam. You're going to go on to the pub with your relations and friends of relations and relations of friends who think our Frodo is a poncy slut -"

"Pippin! " Frodo yowled.

" - and who think that 'Brandybuck' is an insult, and Merry and I are going to see that Frodo gets home all right."

Sam had gone ashen. "Mr. Pippin, I don't -"

"Pippin," Frodo pleaded.

"And we may just keep him," Pippin went on relentlessly. "Now Bilbo's gone he's got no excuse not to come home where he belongs."

Merry clapped Frodo on the back, sending him staggering against Pippin. "You go on down the pub, Sam. We're taking Frodo home. Off we go, Frodo."

That was easier said than done, Frodo realized, given that Pippin had wound his arms around Frodo's waist and was pressed so close against him that a move in any direction would inevitably result in tripping over some part of Pippin's anatomy. "Um," he began.

Merry pushed and Pippin pulled, and somehow Frodo found himself stumbling toward the bridge. Just as they set foot on it, Frodo heard Sam calling his name. Balancing delicately against his cousins' forward momentum, Frodo turned to see Sam coming up to them, looking thoroughly troubled.

"Oh, Sam, I -"

Merry and Pippin grasped his shoulders and turned him firmly back around. "Forget-me-nots, Sam," Merry called back over his shoulder. "Nice dark ones, to match Frodo's eyes. Good night."

They were all the way to the other side of the bridge before Frodo managed to stop his cousins. "What is the matter with you, the pair of you?" he demanded. "You were horrible to Sam."

"We'll apologize when he starts keeping better company," Merry answered firmly. "'Poncy Brandybuck slut' indeed, and her no better than she should be."

"You can't possibly be a slut anyway; you haven't had enough practice," Pippin pointed out as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world. Frodo stared at him for a moment, then leaned his forehead on Pippin's shoulder and laughed breathlessly until he couldn't have stopped if he'd tried.

Pippin's long fingers were cool on the back of his neck. "There now, that's better. Come on, let's get to Bag End before we sober up and have to start all over again."

"Mind you don't set yourselves alight," he said contentedly, stretching his feet out toward the sputtering almost-flames.

"How many times have you, then?" Merry asked over his shoulder.

"What, set myself on fire?"

"No, smartarse, bedded someone."

Frodo lifted an eyebrow and did his best to look repressive. "I haven't tallied them. Not many."

"With how many partners, then?" Pippin wanted to know.

"Peregrin Took, what possible business -"

"Oh, step off your indignation and answer the question, Frodo," Pippin retorted so cheerfully that Frodo laughed.

"All right, then. Three."

Merry gave an ah of satisfaction as the fire burst into life. "How many of them were lasses?"

"What in the world has gotten into the pair of you tonight, and why should I tell you?"

Merry shifted and slid his hand onto Frodo's knee, pillowing his chin on his fingers. "Just tell, Frodo. It's part of the game."

Frodo looked at him thoughtfully for a minute, then lifted his hand to run his fingers lightly through Merry's loose gold curls. "Just one. The second one."

Pippin slid over to loop an elbow over Frodo's other knee. "Two lads, then, eh?"

"Very good, Pip," Frodo answered dryly. "If you have three apples, and I take away one apple, that leaves you with two apples."

Pippin threw a burnt-out matchstick at him.

"Which do you like better, then?" Merry asked.

"Mm, I never really thought about it," Frodo replied, eyes drifting closed in an ale-induced haze of contentment.

Pippin poked him in the thigh. "Don't you dare go to sleep, Frodo Baggins."

"I'm not, I'm not," Frodo answered hastily, opening his eyes again. "I'm a bit dizzy, that's all."

Merry snorted amiably. "A bit drunk, you mean. And so are we, and mean to go on as we've started. Now answer the question."

"What question?"

"Lads or lasses?"

"Which one do I like better, you mean? Lads. Now tell me how this is part of the game."

Merry and Pippin grinned at each other, and Pippin answered, "It's a bit of a preliminary. Just wanted to be sure you'd want to play."

Frodo looked at them with lively apprehension. "What exactly is it you want to play?"

"Come down here and we'll show you," Merry ordered, tugging on Frodo's arm and bringing him tumbling down out of the chair almost on top of his cousins. Over Frodo's mild remonstrations Merry maneuvered the three of them onto the hearthrug so that they were sitting in a tight circle with their knees touching. Cousins settled to his satisfaction, Merry rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a handful of hard toffees, spilling them onto the floor.

"The rules are quite simple. I put one of these toffees in my mouth -" he suited action to words, " - and you have to take it out and put it in your mouth. Then Pippin takes it out of yours, and so on around the circle."

Frodo wrinkled his nose and rolled up his sleeve. "All right, but if you bite me I'll -"

"Without using your hands," Pippin said smugly.

Frowning, Frodo peered at Pippin. This was becoming a bit more complicated than he could manage in his current state. "And what am I meant to use, then?"

"Your tongue."

"My what? "

Pippin rolled his eyes. "Your tongue, Frodo, that thing you've been using all night to push ale down your gullet and into your head. Here, Merry, let's start this way round and give Frodo a demonstration."

Merry leaned toward Pippin, lips parting, trying and failing to hold back a grin. As Frodo watched, rather stunned, Pippin's tongue slipped into Merry's mouth and his head tilted so that his mouth was sealed over Merry's. After what seemed like an inordinately long time of varying angles and slowly working jaws, Pippin pulled back, looking triumphant. He turned to Frodo and stuck out his tongue, revealing the toffee sitting on it.

"Your turn now, Frodo."

Frodo shook his head in resignation and leaned forward. Pippin's mouth was sweet and very warm, and there was no sign of a toffee in Frodo's first hasty exploration. He pulled back, frowning. "Did you swallow it, Pip?"

Pippin smirked. "No, but I'm allowed to hide it. Come back here and find it."

Well, Frodo thought, there weren't many places it could be hiding. Pippin's big mouth was more metaphorical than physical. "All right. Come here."

Pippin bent toward him again. "You taste like ale, coz, all warm and golden," he whispered against Frodo's lips.

"Hush and open your mouth," Frodo ordered rather more hoarsely than he'd intended.

He found the toffee this time despite the smooth interference of Pippin's tongue winding around his own, and with some effort and a considerable amount of laughter managed to scoop it into his own mouth. Reeling a bit from a head full of ale and a mouth full of Pippin, he barely had time to turn before Merry's mouth closed on his. Frodo opened to him, and Merry's tongue made a slow, very thorough exploration of Frodo's mouth despite the fact that the toffee was sitting within easy reach.

Laughing, Frodo pulled back. "Careful with that, Merry, you'll knock that toffee right down someone's throat."

Merry shot him a smirk and leaned toward Pippin. "Pip, have I ever knocked a toffee down your throat?"

"No, Merry, don't believe you have," Pippin answered, and it took them even longer this time to pass the toffee between them. Frodo clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back against the chair, watching them, lazily aware of the slow warmth of arousal but too tipsy and contented to feel it urgently.

"Your turn again, Frodo," Pippin announced. Frodo levered himself away from the chair and leaned forward; but Pippin's mouth set in just the wrong way against his own, there was a brief confusion of tongues, and the toffee shot out of Pippin's mouth and straight down Frodo's shirt.

"Agh," Frodo said rather incoherently, pulling the front of his shirt away from his chest and peering down. "Ah, there it is, let me -"

Merry's hands slapped his own lightly away from his shirt. "No hands."

"Rules of the game, coz," Pippin put in. "Play it where it lies."

"You can't be serious," Frodo protested, but Merry was already pushing him back onto the floor. The room swam around him for a moment and then Merry was braced over him on all fours, lowering his head to deftly pop Frodo's shirt buttons open with his teeth.

"Erm, it's right -" he began, and got no further before Pippin put a hand firmly over his mouth.

"No telling," Pippin informed him. "Merry, you should close your eyes. It's like cheating otherwise."

"Quite right, Pip," Merry agreed blithely.

"Wait, I AH Merry that is not a toffee! " Frodo yowled in protest, squirming under Merry's tongue.

A soft breath of air blew across his damp skin as Merry snickered. "Sorry. An easy mistake to make, though, as hard and... sweet as... it is..." Merry's tongue began a slow course down Frodo's side, making Frodo twitch and laugh. "Pip, I think this is a two-person job. There's more area to cover inside his shirt than inside his mouth."

"Hoy, isn't that - Merrythattickles - cheating?"

"Nothing in the rules against two on one," Pippin informed him. He bent and brushed Frodo's hair aside, exploring the side and back of Frodo's neck with warm, light flicks of his tongue

"The rules do say, though," Merry said against the skin of Frodo's stomach, just as Frodo was about to point out that the toffee had fallen down his shirt and not into his hair, "that you have to give us a sporting chance of finding it."

"Meaning?" Frodo asked a little unsteadily; Pippin's tongue-tip was drawing slowly upward behind his ear, and Merry's mouth was moving toward his trousers with alarming determination.

"Meaning," Pippin whispered, lips moving warm and soft against Frodo's ear, "that y'have to let our tongues into wherever it might be."

"Mm," Merry agreed, running his tongue lightly around Frodo's navel. "No keeping your mouth shut, or anything else."

The thought that had been nagging at the back of his mind finally surfaced and Frodo lifted his head, frowning suspiciously down at Merry. "Erm," he said as Merry's mouth began a slow course down the fine line of hair that ran from his navel into his pants.

"Hm?" Merry asked. Pippin moved downward and shifted Frodo's arm out of the way, running his tongue along Frodo's ribs and making him squirm.

"What exactly are the two of you doing?"

"Looking for the toffee, of course," Pippin said innocently.

"Yes, well, it didn't, Merry, didn't fall down my trousers so kindly stop sticking your tongue... oh. Ah."

"Mm?" Merry answered, and butter might not have melted in his mouth but Frodo was about to.

There was a rather dizzying shift from beside him and Pippin moved, upside-down, into his field of vision, smiling rather lewdly. "I think he still has it in his mouth after all," he announced, and proceeded to examine the inside of Frodo's mouth very thoroughly with his tongue, somehow managing not to bump his chin against Frodo's nose. Frodo ran a hand into Pippin's hair and pulled him closer, giving up even the pretense of the game; but his cousins were, it seemed, not prepared to abandon it quite so easily. Pippin pulled away just as Merry's tongue slipped out of the waist of Frodo's trousers, making Frodo wriggle and protest.

"Steady on, Frodo, we'll find it eventually," Merry said, not doing a terribly successful job of hiding a snicker.

"Yes, I know it must be terribly difficult for you to lie here and let us lick you all over, Frodo," Pippin observed in between trailing kisses down toward Frodo's chest, "but you did want to play, and the rules say quite clearly -"

"I don't for a minute believe that this game even has rules," Frodo answered, rather distracted. At some point in the proceedings Pippin's shirt had come unbuttoned, and his steady downward movement was drawing an increasingly interesting expanse of skin through Frodo's field of vision. "And how do you know when someone wins?"

"Process of elimination," Merry answered, pausing in his apparent attempt to see if the toffee had lodged in Frodo's navel. "Eventually the candy melts, or someone swallows it..."

"...and that person loses that round..." Pippin put in, lifting himself on elbows and knees above Frodo, one elbow to either side of Frodo's ribs. He bent his head and began doing rather wonderful things to Frodo's nipple with his tongue.

"And?" Frodo managed, running his hands up over the smooth skin of Pippin's back.

"And then they have to play the next round naked," Merry informed him, making Frodo whoop with laughter and nearly jolt Pippin off from him.

"Last person with his clothes on wins," Pippin said absently, and crawled down a little further to meet Merry's mouth with his own.

Frodo tilted his chin up and traced a soft line of kisses over Pippin's stomach. "And suppose it falls again? Would you really want to lick it off my... um, my leg or something?"

Pippin disconnected his mouth from Merry's and informed Frodo rather explicitly of just where he would prefer to lick it off from, if it was all the same to Frodo, and that was enough to set all three of them laughing until they collapsed into a gasping, snickering tangle in front of the fireplace.

"Speaking of which, Frodo," Merry managed finally. "I do believe you've lost this round."

"Hoy!" Frodo protested. "Pippin's the one who dropped it."

"Did not," Pippin informed him, twisting a finger idly in Frodo's braces.

"You're outvoted, m'dear," said Merry. "Off with the clothes."

"I'm not taking my clothes off right here. The floor's cold."

Pippin sighed in mock regret. "Such a delicate flower, our Frodo is. Good thing your bed's big enough for all three of us. Come on, then."

"You start the fire, Pip. I'll head down to the cellar and fetch us some wine."

Frodo lifted his head and peered dubiously at his cousins. "We're not drunk enough, do you think?"

"Not nearly. You can't hold your liquor, Frodo, that's all." Merry struggled out of the pile and staggered in the direction of the cellar stairs.

"Good thing you can't, too," Pippin said, heaving himself up on his hands and knees and crawling back up until his mouth hovered above Frodo's. "Makes you very easy to get drunk and take advantage of."

"I am not drunk," Frodo informed his cousin with considerable dignity. "I'm just..."

"Drunk," Pippin whispered, and slowly licked Frodo's lower lip. Frodo hummed approvingly and pulled Pippin down to him, opening to that nimbly exploring tongue.

"Pippin! I said the fire!" Merry's voice floated up from the cellars.

Frodo laughed. "He knows you rather well, doesn't he?"

"Inconveniently well," Pippin grumbled, and gave Frodo a decided kiss before he rose and pulled Frodo to his feet. "Come on, then."

Merry crawled onto the bed and handed Frodo a wineglass. "Do what often?"

"Seduce unwitting cousins into having toffees dropped down their shirts."

"Not at all," Pippin answered, plopping down on the bed and nearly making Frodo spill wine everywhere. "You don't think we'd do this with Ruby, do you? She's pigeon-toed and has a squint."

"And Everard has freckles all over and hair on his back," Merry put in, and knocked back the contents of his wineglass. "All right, Frodo, off with the clothes."

"Wait, let me -" Frodo gulped down his wine. "I still don't think I lost that round, you know."

"Oh, hush," Merry scolded, appropriating Frodo's glass and setting it on the nightstand. Turning back, he caught Frodo's wrists and pulled him up to a sitting position. Frodo wriggled around so that he was sitting on his heels and lifted his hands to his top button; then he paused, looking dubiously at his cousins.

"Are you two really going to sit there staring at me as if I were the prize pie at the Overlithe festival?"

Merry and Pippin grinned at each other.

"Not at all, love," Merry answered, shifting so that he was sitting behind Frodo. "We'll help."

Pippin settled himself against Frodo's knees with his legs running back along Frodo's sides to press against Merry. "Though that's not to say that staring at you isn't fun. But we might as well make sure it's done properly." He pulled Frodo's shirt out of his trousers and began unbuttoning it from the bottom up.

"How could I possibly not take my clothes off properly?" Frodo protested.

Merry's hands slid around his waist and began unhooking his braces. "In just the same matter-of-fact way that you were about to," he whispered, lips moving lightly on the nape of Frodo's neck. "You might have put a bit of bump-and-grind into it, you know."

"A bit of - I'll have to remember that for the next time you get me drunk and take advantage of me," Frodo laughed.

"Best you do that," Pippin answered, smoothing Frodo's shirt back into Merry's waiting hands. Pippin's hands moved downward, a light caress over Frodo's chest and sides, then settled on his hips and pulled, lifting Frodo to his knees. Frodo found a rather precarious balance, sliding upward as his shirt slid downward to his elbows.

"Mm, very good, you're doing better," Pippin purred, nuzzling at Frodo's stomach.

Merry drew Frodo's shirt down and in, entangling his arms tightly behind him with a deft twist of his hand, and rose to press against him from behind. He slid his free arm around Frodo's waist and nipped gently at the curve of Frodo's throat. "Do get on with it, Pip," he ordered.

Frodo gave up on trying to wriggle his arms out of the entrapping maze of his shirtsleeves and held still as Pippin slowly unbuttoned his trousers. Merry's hand crept upward and circled Frodo's nipple with feather-light fingertips; his warm tongue was exploring Frodo's ear slowly and thoroughly, making Frodo shiver.

"Ah, that's better. Getting a bit confining, were they?" Pippin commented with a rather distinct smirk, easing Frodo's trousers down his hips and over his thighs.

"Just a bit," Frodo managed in a rather unsteady voice.

His shirt disappeared suddenly and Merry moved back a little. "You know, Pip, I think Frodo may have a point about who lost the last round. I think you - merciful Valar, Frodo, your arse is mouth-watering - should get undressed too."

"Never mind what my arse is or..." Frodo trailed off as Merry's hand ran around his waist to slide over his hip and down to the inside of his thigh. "Erm. Wasn't there supposed to be another round of your game at some point?"

"Funny thing, that. We've never made it as far as the second round," Pippin answered, and leaned forward to give a brief, welcoming lick that made Frodo yelp and jump an inch off the bed.

"Usually better ideas present themselves at this point," Merry put in as he reached around Frodo and began unbuttoning Pippin's shirt.

Frodo found himself wriggling back against Merry and reaching to unfasten Pippin's braces, and it occurred to him that he was still quite tipsy. "Ideas such as...?"

"This," Merry said, and somehow managed to trip Frodo forward. At the same time Pippin plopped backward, leaving disconcertingly empty air where Frodo had fully expected a cousin to be.

Frodo stopped his fall an inch above Pippin's nose. Pippin smiled and squirmed happily underneath him, wrapping his arms around Frodo's neck.

"Hello, there," Pippin crooned, making Frodo snicker.

"Comfortable?" Merry asked teasingly, running his hands in slow possessive strokes up Frodo's sides.

There was something a bit off; it took Frodo a second to figure out what it was. "I would be, if my trousers weren't -"

There was a moment of abrupt and uncomfortable disorientation, and then he found himself on his back with his trousers being whipped efficiently the rest of the way off by one or the other of his cousins. "Erm. Yes, that's better. Much," he said distractedly, trying to stop the room from spinning. It suddenly occurred to him that there were some people - Sam, for instance, came to mind - who would feel that letting Merry and Pippin finagle them into bed and out of their clothes was a very bad idea indeed. But if Bilbo could be Tookish, then Frodo could bloody well be Tookish too; and besides, Merry was running a hand up the inside of his right thigh and Pippin was running a hand up the inside of his left, and various parts of Frodo's body seemingly unconnected to his brain were enthusiastically in favor of as much Tookishness as they could get.

"Aren't the two of you supposed to be undressed too?"

"Well, Pippin is," Merry answered smugly. "Get on with it, then, Pip."

"Aren't either of you going to help?" Pippin asked plaintively.

Frodo laughed and tugged at Pippin's knee. "Come here, then," he ordered, maneuvering Pippin to sit straddling his legs. Merry arranged himself behind Pippin, slipping his hands around to Pippin's shirt buttons, and Frodo began to wrestle with the trouser buttons in front of him. A low murmur made him look up to see Merry nibbling on Pippin's neck, causing a reaction that rose quite nicely into Frodo's exploring fingers.

"I think Merry should take off his clothes too," Frodo mused. "It's only fair."

"Fair?" Merry protested, lifting his mouth from the curve of Pippin's neck. "I didn't lose the round."

"Yes, but we've moved on to a new game," Pippin reminded him, shrugging out of his shirt.

Merry tipped Pippin over to land in a heap beside Frodo and pulled off his trousers. "What game have we moved on to?" he asked over Pippin's giggles.

Pippin hoisted himself breathlessly up onto one elbow and buried his face in the curve of Frodo's throat, soft whickering breaths of laughter blowing over Frodo's skin. "The game where we bugger Frodo senseless. I'm fairly sure you have to take your clothes off for that one."

This struck Frodo as utterly hilarious.

Merry snickered and fumbled with his braces. "You're both going to get hiccups," he informed them, which made them laugh harder.

"I think," Pippin whispered, curling his hand around Frodo's groin in a rather intricate way that stopped Frodo's laughter through the sheer expedient of stopping his breath, "we should start without him."

"You'd better not," Merry answered sternly, voice muffled by his shirt as he tried to wrestle it off over his head. "This was my idea."

"Mmm," Pippin said with dreamy absent-mindedness, fingertips exploring in a way that made Frodo utterly lose any tenuous track of the conversation that he'd managed to keep up until that point.

"That's, oh," he said; rather inadequately, but it was the best he could manage at the moment. And then Merry was stretching out over him, warm and bare and somehow devoid of trousers, nibbling a path up his chest to a nipple, and it was possible that Frodo was never going to be able to think again and then who would finish Bilbo's translation of the Lay of Luthien? He began to point this out, but somehow his mouth had become occupied by Pippin's tongue, and really the sweet ale-rich taste of Pippin's mouth was more important than the Elvish subjunctive; and Merry's tongue and teeth were doing truly amazing things to his nipple, and if he arched up just a little he might be able to generate a wonderful sort of friction with Merry's belly. Or not, because Pippin was gripping him a little more tightly now, up and down in long lazy strokes that bid fair to melt him right into the blankets.

A hand on his chin, tilting, and Pippin's mouth was replaced by Merry's, which was just as sweet. The bed shifted beside him and suddenly there didn't seem to be nearly as many cousins as there ought to have been, causing him to make a discontented sound against Merry's lips.

"Shh," Merry whispered, caught Frodo closer, and rolled them dizzyingly until Frodo was on top. "He's gone to get the oil, that's all."

"Mm, excellent idea," Frodo murmured; and oh, that felt good, that pressure of Merry's hard arousal against his own, so that he couldn't help rocking into it, falling into a rhythm that was ohyesrightthere, and Merry's fingers dug enthusiastically his back and Merry's mouth was hot and eager under his own, and really they were going to have to play this game much more often.

"Well, I like that," Pippin murmured against the back of his neck, nuzzling his hair aside. "I go off for half a moment to perform the invaluable service of getting the oil, and neither of you can wait for me to get back."

"Then come back," Frodo answered, craning his chin around to find Pippin's mouth and tumbling off Merry in the process.

Pippin grinned and caught Frodo's wrists. "Oh, I'm back. Come here."

A moment's repositioning and Pippin was sitting against the headboard, and Frodo was straddling him, grinding down onto him with a whimper of pleasure and licking the tantalizingly suckable point of his ear. Merry's arm slid around him from behind, hand drifting down to caress both of them, and oil-slick fingers slipped against him and over him and inside him, touching a spot that made him gasp Merry's name into Pippin's mouth. The two of them laughed and shifted around him, gathering him closer between them, and where everyone's knees were was more than Frodo would have cared to guess but Merry's fingers were laced into Pippin's hair to pull him into a long, leisurely kiss. Slow again for a moment, a hot tangle of hands and mouths, and then Merry was filling him and Pippin was pushing against him, and Frodo gave a strangled cry and bit his lip to keep from coming.

Merry caught hold of Frodo's hip, stilling him. "Shh, wait a minute," he whispered, and licked behind Frodo's ear. Pippin's hands slid over Merry's, taking firm hold, settling them into a slow rhythm that somehow flowed perfectly; and Merry was hot and deep inside him, and Pippin was supplying the most wonderful friction against him, faster now and harder and more and it was possible that he was going to die but oh, was he going to die happy. He tilted his head back onto Merry's shoulder, clutching Pippin close as Pippin bit the curve of his neck just hard enough to send a jolt through him that utterly took away his ability to think, to say anything coherent, to do anything at all but follow that lovely rhythm as it sped and slowed and sped again, building until he slammed backward against Merry and forward against Pippin and came with a yowl that left his throat aching.

Panting, he hung limply between his cousins for a moment while Merry shuddered in release behind him, then reached down to tangle his fingers around Merry's and coax Pippin into what certainly looked and sounded like an entirely satisfactory climax. For a minute they sat twined bonelessly around each other, catching their breath, and the sudden quiet sounded odd in Frodo's ears, with only slowing breath and the crackling of the fire to tell him that his orgasm had not actually popped his eardrums as it had bid fair to.

"Mm, that was good," Pippin said at length, wriggling sleepily against Frodo.

"It was very good," Frodo agreed, eyeing the pillows and wondering how the three of them were going to get untangled enough to lie down. Sleep was beginning to look definitely desirable.

"You should lose games more often, Frodo," Merry muttered, nuzzling at the nape of Frodo's neck.

"Someone's going to have to move," Pippin pointed out, making Frodo snicker. "I think it's you, Merry."

"No, it's Frodo," Merry corrected automatically.

"Why is it me?"

"Because it isn't me. I'm too sleepy."

"Well, I'm sticky."

"We're all sticky. What has that to do with anything?"

"Yes, but," Frodo began; but Pippin was convulsing with laughter underneath him and really it rather tickled, as well as stirring ideas that he wasn't sure he was up to following up on. He wriggled to the side, dumping Merry off him in the process, and settled in amongst the pillows. "There, I moved. Pippin, go get the coverlet. We kicked it off the bed."

"Why me?"

"You're the youngest," Frodo pointed out with impeccable logic.

"Oh, all right," Pippin grumbled good-naturedly. Still snickering, he hauled the coverlet back up onto the bed and spread it over the three of them.

"Good lad," Frodo said sleepily, holding out an arm. Pippin curled comfortably against him on one side and Merry curled against him on the other, and he couldn't remember when he'd been so warm and comfortable.

As he began to drift off, something tugged at his memory. What was I - oh, yes, Sam, he thought, frowning. And then Pippin shifted against him and mumbled something in his sleep, and Merry sighed and moved his hand down to rest on Frodo's groin, and...

Well. There'd be plenty of time to sulk over Sam in the morning.

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