Pippin had tired of cloud-patterns and was now lying on his stomach, idly swishing a reed through the river-water. "Aye, she is," he answered, unmoving.

"And Diamond was looking for you earlier," Merry reminded him. "You didn't answer her either."

Out of the corner of his eye, Merry saw Pippin make a face. "I'm not in the mood for girls today."

"Are you ever?" Merry joked – and immediately saw that he'd said something wrong, because Pippin's face tightened and became very nearly guarded.

"'Course I am," he said tonelessly. "I'm twenty-five. I discovered girls… oh, years ago."

Merry turned his head to look thoughtfully at his cousin, who was now poking the reed at a lily as if he were slaying some particularly noisome variety of Warg. "Well, I'm glad you didn't discover them the way Nick Cotton did – his friends never see him anymore, as much a one as he is for the lasses. I'd miss you if you were always off trying to get up Diamond's skirts, or Rosie's."

Pippin opened his mouth for what looked like a hot retort, then closed it again and rolled onto his side to frown at Merry. "Well, what about you? You haven't tried it on with a girl since the end of Spring planting, when you got Hyacinth behind the barn. Pearl'd have you, you know."

Merry wrinkled his nose. "Pearl's too bossy. A man who tangled with her wouldn't be able to call his soul his own within three weeks."

"You're telling me. You should hear her go on if you put your elbows on the table. Oh, I forget – you have."

"Maybe you've discovered the girls more than you're letting on, if you forget that easily that I was sitting right by you at dinner last night, and came in for my share of that scolding myself."

Pippin grinned. "She called you a bad influence."

"A bad influence," Merry snorted. "If it weren't for my influence you'd stick your face in your plate and mangle your food like a hog at a trough."

A reed full of river water smacked him between the eyes, showering him with water and provoking a bout of splashing that didn't end until they were both soaked to the skin and too weak from laughing to do more than roll around on the grass.

* * *

"Merry."

"Hmm?"

"Are you awake?"

"I don't think so."

Pippin prodded him in the shoulder. Drowsy in the warm sun, Merry pried his eyes open and shielded them with his hand, peering out at his cousin from under his fingers. "How can you stay awake in this sun, Pip?"

"I'm hungry."

"We can't go back to the Hall, we're not dry yet."

"What has that to do with anything?"

"I'm only saying that – "

"Come on, we're ten minutes' walk from Farmer Maggot's plum trees."

"I'm too tired to move," Merry complained, but now he was hungry too.

Pippin laughed and caught hold of his hand, hauling him to his feet. Within the appointed ten minutes they were in a small copse of plum trees; and Pippin, wet shirt tied around his waist by the arms, was swinging up into the branches.

Merry watched his cousin clamber up the tree as easily as he would have walked the wide bridge to Hobbiton, and something stirred uneasily inside him.

* * *

"You're getting all sticky," Pippin observed, reaching out to scoop up a droplet of plum juice trailing down Merry's arm. He brought the finger back to his mouth and licked off the juice; and Merry found that his gaze would not budge from that finger until it moved on to tearing a chunk out of another fruit.

Suddenly he realized that some response was called for, so he said, "So are you."

Pippin looked at him with one eyebrow lifted in surprise.

"Sticky," Merry clarified.

Pippin's peals of laughter startled a flock of starlings into flight. "You weren't paying attention. I got off the topic of stickiness minutes ago. The topic of the moment, my dear Meriadoc, is how beautifully Farmer Maggot's plums turned out this year."

"Ah. Beautiful. Yes." Merry watched the sunlight glint off Pippin's dark hair, and the thought welled up irresistibly: And so are you.

* * *

"We have one plum left, Merry. I'll race you for it."

"How far?"

"The bottom of the hill. Go!"

Merry swore and shot after Pippin, sprinting through the field toward the steep downward slope. He had nearly caught up with his cousin when a rock shot out from under his foot, sending him flying into Pippin and sending both of them tumbling down the slope in a tangle of arms and legs. When he finally decided that he had in all probability stopped moving, Merry took inventory: nothing seemed to be broken, he was on his back in a thatch of soft grass, and –

And Pippin was on top of him, startled eyes an inch away from his own.

Merry caught his breath and shifted a little, but the brush of his body against Pippin's made matters quite decidedly worse. The startled expression in Pippin's eyes turned thoughtful; he made no move to get off of Merry, but he did lift his shoulders just a little.

"I won," he asserted casually.

Merry spluttered in indignation. "You did not! I got to the bottom of the hill first."

"How do you know? Maybe I got here first and then rolled on top of you."

"Don't be ridiculous, you irrational Took. If we're being picky, you still aren't at the bottom of the hill. I'm at the bottom and you're on top of me." Merry's voice wavered a little on the last words. He was short of breath for reasons that had nothing and everything to do with Pippin's weight on him.

Pippin lifted himself on his elbows, and the shift in weight made Merry bite down hard on a strangled gasp. One of Pippin's knees had slipped between Merry's legs, his thigh brushing Merry's – far too close and not nearly close enough to what was threatening to become quite a solid erection. "There's only one solution, then. We'll have to share."

Before Merry could protest this heretical deviation from the rules, Pippin lifted the miraculously undamaged plum and nudged it against his mouth. Dazed into obedience, Merry took a bite, then nearly forgot to chew as Pippin bit into the fruit and sent juice cascading down his forearm.

"You're going to cover both of us in plum juice," he noted, wiping a trailing drop from Pippin's arm.

Pippin laughed. "When did you get so fastidious, Merry? We can go swimming in the river after. Here, have another bite."

"I'm not complaining. I'm only saying that you will." Merry lifted his chin a little as Pippin held out the fruit. On the side of Pippin's hand was a droplet of juice in imminent danger of falling on Merry; and before he realized what he was doing, Merry tilted his head just a little and licked off the droplet.

Now I've put my foot in it, he thought in alarm, looking up at Pippin. Pippin was looking at him with an unfathomable expression on his face that was partly fear but mostly a number of other things, and as Merry opened his mouth to apologize Pippin said in a voice that shook just a little, "You have juice all over your chin."

Merry could no more have stopped the soft sound that Pippin's mouth on his chin drew from him than he could have stopped his heart from pounding. Pippin's tongue drew a hot, moist line along his jaw nearly to his ear, his lips as soft as down against Merry's skin. When Hyacinth had done something similar it had given Merry thoroughly unpleasant chills, but now it made him ache and shiver, wanting… well, he didn't know exactly what he wanted, but he was quite sure that it involved much closer contact.

After far too short a time Pippin drew back, still with that odd look on his face, and held the plum wordlessly toward Merry.

"I think it's your turn," Merry managed to say.

Pippin grinned. "I think it's yours, but I'll take it anyway." Now the fear was fading, replaced by the glint of challenge; as though he had discovered a fine new game and was determined to win, or at least not to lose.

Almost before Pippin had a chance to finish his bite, Merry plucked the fruit out of his hand and addressed the matter of the juice running down his fingers. The tip of Merry's tongue slid slowly up Pippin's index finger, following the path of a largish droplet. Keeping half an eye on Pippin's expression, he took the finger into his mouth, swirled his tongue around it, sucked lightly at it, and then drew back.

"Now it's my turn," he informed Pippin, took another bite, and swallowed so quickly that he almost choked.

"Juicy plums Farmer Maggot produced this year," Pippin observed shakily.

"So he did. We'll have to send him a note congratulating him. Anonymously, of course."

"It's all over your mouth now," Pippin whispered; and he had no sooner gotten the words out than his mouth was locked onto Merry's, his tongue doing amazing things to Merry's lower lip.

Merry abandoned both pretense and plum and wrapped his arms around Pippin, pulling him closer as their tongues tangled together. The movement brought their bodies together, brushing Merry with a friction that made him see stars and caused him to become acutely aware of Pippin's erection pressing against his hip.

Seeing with palms and fingertips what he had only seen with his eyes was like hearing a much-loved song in a new key: he knew what the delicate points of Pippin's ears looked like, knew the way that the hair curled at the back of his neck, knew the graceful lines of his shoulders and arms, but exploring them with long light caresses made him suddenly feel as if all his life he had been seeing only half of Pippin. And it had never occurred to him that Pippin's mouth might be so warm and sweet, or that those clever fingers were deft enough to unbutton a shirt, blind, in just seconds. The feel of skin on skin above the waist sent sparks through Merry but wasn't quite enough, so he took hold of Pippin's hips and maneuvered him into a better position. As their erections brushed Pippin gasped and bucked his hips reflexively, making both of them whimper with pleasure and need.

"Merry…" Pippin managed as Merry's mouth found his ear.

"Hmm?"

"Merry – this is – I want – "

"What, love?"

"I don't know, just… just more…"

Merry pondered for a moment and then rolled so that Pippin was underneath him. He thrust experimentally, and the breathless cry that Pippin gave convinced Merry very quickly that he was on the right track. The two of them found a rhythm, moving against each other, and no amount of fumbling behind the barn with girls had ever felt as maddeningly, addictively lovely as Pippin writhing and panting underneath him. Pippin reached between them and somehow made cloth and buttons vanish, and oh Merry wanted more of this, wanted to feel the rest of Pippin's body under his tongue and against his own body with no clothing in the way, but that exquisite rhythm was an imperative that would brook no digressions. And then Pippin locked his legs around Merry's waist, dug slender fingers into his back, and arched up against him, grinding hard until he came with a cry that drove Merry over the edge with him.

For a couple of minutes Merry was too weak in the limbs to move and too contented to want to; and besides, Pippin was nuzzling softly at his neck in a way definitely not conducive to moving away.

"Do you know, I think I've always wanted to do that," Pippin said finally, sounding a little surprised.

Merry laughed. "And I've wanted to for, oh, I don't even know how long. Since breakfast at least." He yelped as Pippin bit his earlobe in retaliation.

"Good," Pippin purred. "Then you won't have any objections to doing it again. Though I think we've lost the plum."

* * *

"Pip."

"Hmm?"

"Are you awake?"

"No."

"It's getting dark, love."

Pippin cracked an eyelid and lifted his head a fraction of an inch off from Merry's shoulder before nestling close again with a contented sigh. "So it is. The fireflies will be out soon."

"And we'll miss supper, if we haven't already."

"Not as long as Farmer Maggot's fields are near to hand, we won't."

"Peregrin Took, one of these days those dogs of his are going to bite your kneecaps off. Anyway, supper at the Hall is more than just plums and cabbage."

"Mm."

Merry buried his face in Pippin's hair. "And there's a bed, my love," he whispered. "With a fire burning by it, so you won't get cold no matter how many of your clothes I take off."

"Mmmmm. I think we should definitely go back for supper."

But they stayed a while longer, and watched the fireflies come out.

Back to the home page