Disclaimer: Course I don't own it. Come on.
Author's Notes: Though I'm partial to the books, this scene sprang up on me after watching Return of the King for the millionth time. I love Merry x Pippin, and I don't care who knows.
The Kissing Way
"Merry."
It was midnight, or some time past – at any rate, long hours had waned since the quiet submission of the sun. Peregrin Took did not like the way Minas Tirith felt after dusk; there was a silent still-lingering thrall of death on the back of the wind, and the noiseless blue moon shadows made the vast stretch of corpse strewn earth that lay below the city look like the spoils of some child's macabre toybox. It would not be possible to clear the myriad dead who lay rotting between Osgiliath and Minas Tirith; they would decay where they had fallen, and in a few weeks time the men of Gondor would be swimming in the stench of the price they had paid for freedom.
One did not have only to look outside to see the evidence of war and the scars it left on this city of Men. Just outside this quiet hallway, where Merry was sleeping, a great chunk of stone and mortar crumbled into the walkway, leaving a yawning gap for starlight and moonlight and none too fragrant breezes off the fields of Pellenor. Time and labor, time and labor, they would see this city shine anew, though the young Took didn't particularly care if he was there to see it. Frodo was safe, Aragorn was King, and Pippin was tired of being more than a Hobbit.
"Merry," said Pippin again, blinking against the darkness and the faint sway of alcohol. Some time during the raucous tumble of the post-wedding-after-reception-midnight-feast, Merry had dissappeared, and Pippin had not realized it until just now, when someone commented that his other half appeared to be missing in action. This was surprising, because since their reunion after the battle of Pellenor, Merry and Pippin had been again what they always were, very much a cohesive unit and perfectly inseperable. With Merry's absence Pippin felt that perhaps he was falling down on his promise, and he had begun to worry that perhaps Merry wasn't completely healed, and what if he was collapsed somewhere under a very distant cold crumbling staircase, drunk and alone? Pippin hadn't meant to drink quite so much, and so if his head had been a bit clearer he might have remembered hearing Merry mutter something about exhaustion not an hour earlier.
Extracting oneself from a very large, very drunk crowd of well-wishers is not a terribly consuming task, especially not for one who was just pushing three foot eight. Pippin had not encountered much resistance as he elbowed through the throng, though some sense of urgency still nipped slyly at his heels, even after he cleared the party and was almost-running up the slightly treacherous stairs to the room he and Merry shared.
There were two beds, both positioned beneath tall sloping windows that offered a view of the country below, a view that might have once been prized in its commodity. But Merry didn't like looking out over a graveyard any more than Pippin did, and he had wisely drawn the heavy curtains shut, so that the only light in the room came when Pippin pushed the door open and whispered frantically in the quiet.
A Hobbit-sized lump stirred underneath the covers at Pippin's third and most urgent Merry, and the movement sent the irrational warmth of relief through the younger Hobbit's bones. He shut the door behind him and wavered hesitantly in the dark, letting his eyes adjust to the blackness before hazarding a further venture into the room.
"Merry, you left the party," Pippin said, not meaning to sound accusatory, though the statement came out that way without a thread of intention. Worry did not sit well on Pippin's shoulders, and he wore its weight like an ill-fitting robe.
"What?" Came Merry's muffled, indignant reply. Pippin cleared his throat and picked his way over to the bed and sat down on the side of it, further unsettling his cousin's rest as he made himself comfortable against the headboard.
"You left the party. You didn't tell me you were leaving the party." Pippin chewed thoughtfully on his bottom lip, wondering at the unleavened darkness. He waved his hand experimentally in from of his face, catching only the faintly outlined blur of his fingers moving against the shadows.
"I did so tell you. I told you twice. You looked right at me and said 'Alright, you old Brandybuck, I've had enough of you anyway.'" Merry turned his face over and stuffed a pillow over his ears. "I'm not going back. I'm tired."
"I did not say that!" Pippin crowed, prying the pillow away and poking at Merry's jaw with his finger. " Did not say that," he repeated, though a little more slowly this time, because just then he did remember saying that, and he felt very silly. "Well, if I said it, I didn't mean it."
"I don't give a Bracegirdle's beard if you did mean it, Pip. I'm trying to sleep. You go drink all you want, and dance with all the girls who don't mind you stepping on their feet." Merry reclaimed his pillow and buried his face in it again, but not before tugging the covers out from under the younger Hobbit's legs and dissappearing completely under the down quilting.
"Bracegirdles don't have beards," Pippin said automatically, and then he sighed heavily, a sound he was not too accustomed to making, and a sound Merry was not too accustomed to hearing, leastwise from his cousin. Merry drew the blanket down a bit and would have eyed the Took if it hadn't been so dark.
"I was just worried about you," Pippin said, feeling rather foolish, which was something to which he was quite accustomed. Merry snorted, but not ungently.
"Why?" He asked, pulling the covers down a little more. He could only see Pippin's silhouette and not his features, but with the innate sense of knowing that comes with old friends, he knew that Pippin was not smiling.
"I don't know. I had a dream." Pippin picked blindly at the comforter.
"So did I, and then you came stumbling in and I forgot it," Merry grumbled in return.
"No," said Pippin, a little more harshly than he had intended. "Last night I had a dream I couldn't find you. It was after a party and you had dissappeared. I looked and looked and I couldn't find you anywhere, and then Gandalf told me you were dead, and that I was too late, and that you asked for me and I wasn't there."
"Oh," said Merry, hearing the somber, plainitively innocent sadness in Pippin's voice. "Then what happened?"
"I woke up."
"How come you didn't tell me this earlier?" Merry asked, unearthing his head from beneath the pillow. He moved over to the right and drew back the covers, and Pippin, with some hesitation, wormed his way beneath and lay his head on the pillow next to Merry's.
"It seemed silly earlier. It seems silly now," Pippin admitted. "But tonight when I realized you had gone and I couldn't remember where, I got scared, Merry. Not battle scared, but…you know. Scared. I don't know what I'd do if I really couldn't find you."
"Oh, Pip," Merry said, because that was all he could think to say. He drew an arm over Pippin's chest in the comfortable way they had known since the dawn of the Shire, or maybe before. It felt like that long ago. Instead of relaxing against the bird's weight of Merry's arm, though, Pippin seemed to tightened inside, as though someone with large iron hands had a hold on his ribs and was suddenly squeezing very hard. Merry noted this, just like he noted everything about Pippin, right down to the time he had caught Pippin lying about kissing Amynthe Bofin outside of the Green Dragon some wintry night a thousand years ago. Merry still felt a strange, irrational puff of jealously about that particular incident, a sentiment that hadn't resurfaced until this very moment, when he suddenly realized that Pippin smelled a good bit like woodsmoke and summer. And beer, which wasn't bad at all.
"'S the matter, Pip?" Merry asked, about to poke Pippin in the ribs to make him laugh or at least startle him out of this sudden seriousness, which was becoming tautly uncomfortable. Pippin did not answer. "Pip? Pippin?"
Pippin did not answer because he was crying over a dream-feeling increased exponetially by the amount of beer he had consumed. Merry realized this in the next moment, and was very glad he had decided not to poke Pippin in the ribs.
"Oh, Pippin, it was just a dream," he said, instinct lending movement to his limbs. He lifted his hands and by touch found Pippin's hair and gently smoothed the young Took's curls, letting his fingers greet the tipped curve of an ear. Pippin shivered.
"I know," he said, turning over to his side and drawing Merry closer. He buried his face in Merry's neck and sniffled his apologies. "I'm drunk, you see. A little bit, anyway. I don't want you to go away, Merry."
"I'm not," Merry said. His arm was tightly wound around Pippin's back, and his chin rested squarely on top of Pippin's head. There was some sort of tangle to their legs, but trying to figure that out would have been pointless in the dark, even for Merry, who was not at all drunk. He returned his hand to Pippin's hair, not smoothing this time but combing with four fingers, which might not have seemed such an intimate thing were it not for the fact that Pippin's tear-wet lips were just a breadth away from the place where blood beat in Merry's throat.
"It's just that I love you, Merry," Pippin was saying. Merry nodded, an unseen thing.
"I know, Pip. I love you, too."
There was a long stretch of silence – not because this was an odd thing for two Hobbit-boys to say to one another, nor even that it was an odd thing for Merry and Pippin to say to one another, and not even because it had never been said in the dark, in tears, in each other's arms. I love you was odd because suddenly Pippin was thinking very hard about it, and about the warmth of his very best friend being so close and the feeling of losing him once and finding him, and then the dream of losing him and not finding him at all.
"No," said Pippin. He shook his head, an unseen thing. " I love you, but not in the way I did before."
Merry did not respond at first, because his heart was suddenly hoping for something he hadn't known he wanted. Then finally he said,
"In what way, then?"
"In the…" Pippin paused, thinking. "I love you…in the…in the kissing way, Merry."
They were still for the circle of a clock's smallest hand, which often seems like no time at all, but there, in the darkness, hiding from the death that lay just outside the window, it was enough time to found the world again.
Later neither one would remember if they had actually spoken between the end of the stillness and the shifting of faces. It never really mattered. Merry kissed Pippin's forehead, which was pleasant, and then his cheek, which was even more pleasant, and then his mouth, which was not so much pleasant as it was exquisite. Pippin responded in kind; inexpertly, eagerly, and not at all carefully, which Merry found to be very much inkeeping with his best friend's approach to life in general. Perhaps it was not a careful kiss, but that did not make it a clumsy kiss, and for a moment Merry wondered just how much more he needed to know about Amynthe Bofin and the snowy eaves of the Green Dragon. Then he decided he didn't need to know anything at all, because the softness of Pippin's mouth was enough to make him forget everything before this instant.
In the heat of this most serious of moments, Pippin broke away and started giggling. And then Merry started giggling, and then neither one of them could stop. Merry seized Pippin by the shoulders and rolled him over, here and there giving a kiss or two that only heightened the Young Took's silliness and made him wrestle back until they were rolling around on the bed like two boys discovering a wonderful, just made mud puddle.
Out of breath and still laughing, Pippin ,who was notoriously better at wrestling for reasons of speed and willingness to cheat, had Merry by the wrists and pinned them mercilessly over his head. He threw one leg astride either of Merry's lap and anchored him to the bed with every intent on making Merry make all sorts of promises in order to regain his freedom.
"I win," he said breathlessly, and his eyes still managed to gleam, even in the absence of light. Merry protested and laughed in the same breath and shifted his hips experimentally, testing his friend's hold on him to see exactly how much force it would take to throw him off and call the battle drawn. His intent was lost on Pippin, who in this accidental movement closed his eyes, shuddered warmly, and made a small sound somewhere in his throat. It was a moment before he could speak again.
"Now you have to do what I say," Pippin said, trying to sound wicked, and succeeding only in sounding strained and out of breath. Merry sniffed and wiggled again.
"Do not," he replied. Pippin trembled anew, but persisted because he did not like to lose.
"Do too." This time he returned the favor and rocked his hips gently against Merry's, and was rewarded not only with another wave of belly-seizing warmth, but also with a gutteral hrmph of surprise from Merry.
"Do not." Merry responded, albiet slightly hoarsely.
"Do too."
"Do not."
"I win, Merry, you have to."
"No I don't."
"Do so."
"Do not."
"Kiss me."
"Alright."
Any tentativeness that might have shown itself in previous attempts at kissing was wholly lost now, swallowed by hunger and the eager meeting of mouths in the dark. Merry let his hands settle carefully at Pippin's waist, and there his fingers slipped beneath the younger hobbit's loose overshirt to graze warm skin. Pippin sighed into Merry's mouth, breaking away for a moment to press a kiss to his friend's neck.
"Oh," said Merry. An unexpected shiver took his body. Pippin smiled and repeated the action, trailing his lips a little lower, finding Merry's throat and depositing traces of his mouth all over the newly exposed flesh. Merry let his head rock back, surprised at the pleasure such a simple gesture could offer. He tightened his hold on Pippin's waist, the sharp, winding heat in his groin suddenly painfully evident.
"Merry," Pippin breathed, a note of wonder in his voice. "You're..."
"I know," Merry replied, almost apologetically. "It's your fault."
Pippin laughed quietly and kissed him again.
"What do you suppose I should do about it?" Pippin asked, a low kind of grinding growl inherent in his whisper. He lifted his hand to brush a slightly damp curl away from Merry's forehead.
"Uhm," said Merry, "I…"
"This?" Pippin asked as he ground his hips against Merry's. The bolt of sensation that coursed through Pippin's body was almost enough to make him lose his composure. Merry made a sound that was somewhere between a whimper and a groan.
"Yes," he whispered throatily. Pippin thrust again, a little more forcefully this time. He wanted to hear Merry make that noise again. He was dually rewarded.
"Pi-ip," Merry groaned, arching weakly. "You're tormentifying me. I don't think it's very n-n-aaah."
"Very what?" Pippin asked. He was beginning to feel a little tormented himself. He pressed Merry fiercely down and kissed him thoroughly.
"Very nice," Merry mumbled. Seized with a sudden urge and a burst of energy, he pushed Pippin up and rolled him over so that the young Took was on his back. Before Pippin could argue, Merry worked one hand under his shirt and lay the palm on his friend's belly.
"You too," Merry said. Pippin was quite sure to what he was referring. "Know what I wanna do?" Merry inquired softly. Pippin shook his head.
"Nuh-uh. But I hope it involves…oh."
Merry slipped his hand beneath the waistband of Pippin's trousers, fingertips lightly grazing and incorrigibly warm. And then he grasped, and then he moved – slowly at first, urging Pippin to respond to the rhythm of his hand. The Took's hips lifted off the mattress and his eyes were screwed shut in the throes of terrible bliss.
"K-kiss me, Merry," He stuttered. Merry complied without hesitation.
It was almost over too quickly; at least from Pippin's perspective. The feeling of Merry's mouth on his own, the feeling of his hand in that most intimate of places – after a handful of moments it was too much and he gave a stifled, mournful cry, turning his face into the pillow.
"Mmer…" was all the Took could manage to say. Merry knew what he meant.
There would be other moments, far in the future, and even the next night, where one hobbit or the other might render his companion speechless. There would be moments indeed, but none like this one, for there is nothing more delightful to a hobbit than a new discovery.
Save, of course, a good smoke.
-- Fin --