Writer's Note: I would like to thank my most esteemed followers on Tumblr for their amazing if dangerous ideas and love of Erynion/Maddie. This prompt was from one of them, and I just couldn't resist. A little follow-up to "Let Me" (the smutty follow-up to "Dorwinion Dancing" you can find on Ao3) involving drunk Maddie and Éowyn. For authenticy's sake, I may have drunk a glass of wine or five.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of Tolkien's writings, and I also don't own "Yellow Submarine" by the Beatles.

Night-Blooming Garden

or

Drunken Excuse of an Outing

Ithilien was a damn beautiful city, I thought as Erynion and I sat down in an outdoor pavilion for lunch with our hosts, Faramir, Éowyn, and surprisingly Boromir, who was on a tour of his homeland as the new Steward. Éowyn and Faramir were all smiles at our arrival, though Boromir looked tired but pleased to see me. The couple carried most of the conversation through lunch and dinner, asking about the Elves and all the beautiful places we'd been. I did all the talking as expected while Erynion only said a word or two when absolutely pressed. Still, I snuck my hand under the table to grasp his own and give it a squeeze. Even if he was a taciturn Elf, he was my taciturn Elf.

Éowyn was watching the both of us with bright eyes, but I didn't see it because I'd been too focused on Erynion. Months after Mirkwood and his every move still captivated me.

Big mistake.

In fact, I missed a lot of Éowyn's knowing looks and stares because I was distracted by Erynion. It wasn't my fault he was so beautiful and doubly so in that tailored formal tunic he wore. It was nearly as hot as a tux, and I found my eyes drawn to the shape it made of him more often than not. (The things I'd do to see Erynion in a tux!)

So Éowyn rather blindsided me that first evening in Ithilien, but I suppose it was only fair in retrospect, since she'd been equally absorbed in Faramir after their marriage.

"We're not married!" I said, swallowing my mouthful of wine loudly. I hurriedly glanced around at my outburst, but we were quite alone in this private garden. Everyone else was long since asleep. However tonight Éowyn had appeared at my doorway insisting we girls see a night-blooming garden together for old-times sake. Erynion had let us go without a word, and Éowyn hadn't even quite closed the door when I saw no less than three wine bottles resting behind her.

Yeah, there was no two ways about this evening. She wanted details, and the gigglier and therefore drunker we were the better.

"But have you…" she wiggled her eyebrows impatiently.

"There might have been a garden or two," I admitted, laughing at her expression. "And it was only the two of us all the way here you know."

"She-devil!" she cried, tipping backwards on the bench until we both scrambled to right her. "You laid with a man not your husband! Though he's as good as is, I'll warrant! I've only met Erynion once before, but I'm quite sure he's besotted."

"He better be!" I retorted, laughing. "When I saw those Elven women I was terribly jealous you know. Beautiful, starlit eyes, moonlight pale skin, all that nonsense in the poems."

"You're beautiful Maddie," Éowyn admonished, her arm immediately going around me. I appreciated the comfort as I recalled the lovely Lothlórien Elleths. "Elves are stunning but all in the same way, but us women…" she trailed off, and we both started laughing and clinked our glasses together at that.

"But you really must tell me," she started after we'd both taken deep draughts. It wasn't Elvish wine, but we were a bottle in and couldn't care less. "What was it like?"

I hummed as I sipped. "Well, I think I understand now why the Elves are so enamored with the stars. I'm pretty sure I've seen them up close quite a few times now!" Erynion was a very thorough lover, needless to say.

"So did he…" Éowyn paused, and I leaned close enough to see the flyaway hairs in her braids. My hair had long since fallen loose, and now was almost long enough to touch the bench where I was sitting. Erynion had been horrorstruck when I'd proposed cutting it.

"Did he what?"

"Know all the… pleasure points?" she giggled embarrassedly into her wine, but as a modern woman it was going to take a lot more than that to faze me.

"He did! But he had damn well better if he had a thousand years to learn them—wait! Does Faramir know them?"

Éowyn turned bright red, or maybe that was the wine, but surely someone had whispered in her ear about this before her wedding night. Or well, without the internet who knows?

"Tell me you know!" I said immediately, suddenly worried that she hadn't been enjoying her time with Faramir. Sex was about both people after all.

"Faramir is a wonderful lover!" she said staunchly.

"Well he'd better be a generous one! Tell me he does something special for you, and only you." I wiggled my eyebrows, or well, I tried, but I'm fairly sure I'd had too much wine to create the desired effect.

Éowyn was creasing her brows though. "What do you mean?"

I cozied into my seat and took a fortifying sip. Compared to some of my friends back home I'd never been the most experienced person when it came to sex, but Erynion was open to a lot of things, and Elves weren't selfish like a certain former boyfriend of mine. (I'd talked it out with Cliff, but the first couple of nights spent together in that relationship were disappointing.)

"A mouth is good for more than kissing!" I declared loudly, and Éowyn frantically tried to smother her laughter and shush me. "See if he isn't willing to… we say 'go down', for you!"

"Go down?" she asked, but I was also pretty sure she knew what I meant. If she was too shy I'd be happy to elucidate.

"Well if your head is up, then if you move down…" I slid a hand suggestively lower, grazing breasts and stomach, and Éowyn's eyes went wider and wider the further south I went.

"Going down to-?"

"Going down on someone," I corrected patiently. This was important English slang that I was introducing into Westron. "Tongues are very useful you know. And flexible," I continued. Éowyn looked perfectly mortified as the meaning of "going down" became clear, but I was on a role. "You can teach Faramir the value of going down on you."

She looked pained to ask, but the wine helped the words escape her. "It's pleasurable when a man… 'goes down' on you?"

"Very," I answered with real confidence. Erynion had surprised me with his knowledge of that on our way to Lothlórien, and if it were possibly he'd looked smugger than Thunor ever did. I hadn't been able to breathe for a good while afterwards, but I'd worked on my gag reflex to show my gratitude.

"It helps to take things slow too you know. Draw out the pleasure and teeeeeease," I added, thinking on one dark night when Erynion had revealed he knew well how to dirty talk when he described my naked body in firelight in elegant syllables rounded out by Elvish. I swallowed another sip of wine to hide my smile. That was a revelation I was keeping entirely to myself.

"Do your people speak so blatantly of such private matters!" Éowyn hissed, but it didn't slip by me the curious glance she shot downwards at herself.

"More blatantly than you do! Did I tell you Erynion sang me an Elvish… now what was the word? Baldy? Badly? Boorly? Boring?" I fumbled for the word but couldn't come up with it and instead drank some more wine. "Well inappropriate song." That word sent a shiver up my spine that had nothing to do with any songs.

Éowyn sat up properly now. "Well tell me about it!"

"Well I think I danced? No, that may have been a different song…" Nonetheless I stood up and drained my glass, which Éowyn graciously refilled immediately while topping hers off. "It was something about an Elven dude," Éowyn politely ignored the word she didn't know, "taking an Elven girl to a hot spring."

"That doesn't sound so bad," Éowyn said with a big smile.

"That's what I said! But apparently it's quite the… inappropriate song."

"And he sang it to you!"

"While drunk!" I added this very gleefully, forgetting conveniently that I too had been roaring drunk. I spun in place, which was maybe a mistake because I lost my balance and flopped back on to the ground. "I wanted to sing Erynion a song that night, but I'm not a good singer."

Éowyn waved her hand at me, too busy drinking to actually say something.

"But maybe I'll sing something now. Ever heard of the Beatles?" Of course she hadn't, but that wasn't the point. "My dad was a fan." I had to work out each line before I could sing it, but it wasn't that hard to translate really. I just changed the word "submarine" to "boat" and went from there.

In the town where I was born

Lived a man who sailed to sea

And he told us of his life

In the land of boats

Éowyn started to clap along as I haltingly sang from the ground, and when I was finished I had an adoring audience of one.

"Well now we ought to go swimming! Don't know where we'll find a band though," she announced, and I was totally on board with that plan, pun unintended.

"Surely Ithilien's got some pond or lake we can swim in!" I said, and we headed out of the garden quite forgetting why we'd wanted privacy in the first place and really only thinking about swimming and where to find another bottle of wine.

"You know…" I said later, as we floated in waterlogged dresses in the water-lily pond of the rose garden, "Erynion's really beautiful."

I'd been thinking about this every since we'd spotted the night-blooming flowers we were supposed to be viewing. It was quite convenient that now I didn't have to lie to Erynion about going to that garden, even if we'd only snuck through to avoid a guard post.

Not that he'd believe the lie anyway, since I'd probably stumble into our rooms later tonight and start groping immediately.

"You two are adorable together," Éowyn said, slurring ever so slightly. The bottle of wine we'd nicked was resting on the edge of the lake. "Do you see the way he watches you when you aren't looking?"

"Well if I'm not looking—"

"Adorable."

"Pretty sure Faramir looks at you the same way. He looked like he'd been struck by lightening when he first saw you." I giggled into my glass and plucked a blossom from the water's edge.

"He loves me, he loves me not," I murmured as I plucked the leaves, floating on my back even though my legs were dragged under by the weight of the wet petticoats. Good thing the pond was only two feet deep. "He loves me, he loves me not… he loves me!"

Triumphantly I threw the stem and leaves to the side and splashed over to Éowyn, being careful to keep my wine glass high so I didn't water-down my drink. "Erynion loves me."

"Well yes, of course," she said matter-of-factly.

I gave serious thought to going to find Erynion to deliberately moon over him properly, but thankfully Éowyn interrupted that embarrassing train of thought. (I mooned over the Elf enough as it were.)

"In your home are there any herbs or tricks to help encourage pregnancy?"

"A woman usually ovulates two weeks after their period."

"…What?"

I grabbed Éowyn's hand and laughed, sipping more wine. "About two weeks after you bleed are your best chances. So corner him in every room and every closet during that week or so."

She started laughing hard enough to swallow water, and we waded out of the pond and collapsed by the side still shaking. I'd spilled my wine all over the ground in our mirth, but there was plenty left in the bottle. The summer night was forgiving of our soaked dresses, and we flopped back once we could catch our breath to admire the stars. I'd never forget how many stars you could see even from a city. Light pollution just didn't exist without electricity.

"Will you and Erynion have children?"

"Who knows?" I replied. "But he's awfully sweet on children. One woman in a village two days from here asked if he'd bless her child. Erynion…" I paused, remembering his features soften and turned heart-meltingly beautiful as he held that infant in his arms. It was easy to replace that baby boy with an Elfin child of our own. "I hope he wants them," I murmured.

"I'm sure he does," she said, and we smiled giddily at each other. Éowyn was so going to be my child's godmother.

"Who goes there in the garden!" yelled a startled male voice, and I titled my head back almost painfully far to see someone emerge from the path over to the right.

"It is I! The Elf-lover, and she-who-lights-the-flames!" I yelled with a pronounced slur, and Éowyn and I both started to laugh. The man with the torch approached, and I recognized that frown. "Boromir?"

"Tell me you are not in drink," he intoned.

"Nonsense," Éowyn replied as she picked up the last bottle of wine. She took an exaggerated sip and I started to wheeze beside her. Boromir was not amused.

"If you must take us in irons then I demand to be brought before a jury," I declared, but what came out was garbled Westron and English that everyone ignored. I laughed to myself nonetheless.

Boromir helped us both stand, and we wobbled and leaned on each other as we followed him out the garden and back into the main corridors. He'd confiscated the bottle and our glasses, and neither of us had been able to come up with a coherent argument.

"What were you two thinking?" he finally demanded as we were led into his sitting room. He was still in his training armor with bags under his eyes.

"Éowyn wanted details," I said knowingly.

"She can't keep all the Elvish secrets to herself," she added.

"They're hardly secrets," I admonished, swaying slightly in place. Thankfully Éowyn caught my arm.

"How was I to know if Elves had body hair? Faramir's got some tufts about his—"

"That's quite enough!" Boromir interrupted, and we both started to snicker, which eventually led us to falling unceremoniously on his couch trying to contain our amusement.

"Are you going to call Erynion?" I asked finally when we'd calmed, poking Éowyn gleefully. "Maybe I can convince him to go down on me tonight!"

Éowyn turned bright red as Boromir eyed us, not understanding.

"Maddie! That's hardly appropriate for the ears of the Steward!"

Boromir's eyebrows were creeping into his hairline, and there was definitely a twitch about his cheeks as he answered the knock on the door. Unfortunately Faramir could be more of a downer than his brother with the right push, and drunk Éowyn was it.

"Éowyn!" he cried, pulling her up from the bench and depriving me of a perfectly good armrest. I sort of gracefully collapsed on the rest of the couch until it was more of a chaise really. "What are you thinking?"

"She's wondering how willing you are to experiment," I replied for her, and to Éowyn's credit she only smiled coyly at her husband.

"What is this about Erynion?" Boromir interrupted, sounding annoyed. "What are you women giggling madly about?"

"He and Maddie are married," Éowyn replied blithely, leaning heavily on Faramir for balance. The apples of her cheeks were flushed red and her hair was in wonderful disarray.

"What?!" Boromir yelped, and I giggled from my newfound chaise.

"There's no rings, but a clover-patch did the trick."

I hadn't told anyone about clovers being present at our consummation, but either everyone's minds were in the gutter or Erynion was spreading rumors.

"You—But—Did he ask for your hand?" sputtered Boromir after several starts and stops. He was like my big brother sometimes, and I forgave him for his horror. I would have patted him on the hand, but when I tried I only touched air.

"I was hardly complaining."

"I trusted the decency of the Elves when you left with him and—" Thankfully we didn't get to hear the tail end of Boromir's outrage because Erynion conveniently showed up. If he'd heard what the Steward was saying he didn't show it.

"You've been drinking," was all he said as he took me in lying on my side. I made the monumental effort to sit up, because Erynion was worth it, damn it.

"Just swapping stories." I waggled my fingers at him to beckon him closer. Boromir was watching us very carefully.

"How much wine have you had?" Faramir asked Éowyn, who had wrapped both her hands around his waist to hold herself steady. I was just about ready to put my arms around Erynion too as he approached me. We are so far gone, I thought to myself.

"Only one," she said impishly.

"That red wine from the south," I added.

"How many bottles of that wine?" Boromir asked tightly.

"My fingers are blurry," I complained in lieu of answering. I reached out to Erynion and he took my wiggling hand in his and cupped my elbow with the other to help me stand. I was pretty sure he was giving me an exasperated look but I had to squint. "You're beautiful," I told him very seriously.

"We were just celebrating Maddie's marriage," Éowyn complained to her husband and brother-in-law. "And the babies."

Erynion actually twitched a bit, which was rather like a human male falling to the floor in a spasm. I felt the tremor in his muscles because I hadn't pulled my hand away from his abs.

"The cute ones," I clarified, mind stuck on Erynion's expression as he looked down on that infant. It flew right over me and Éowyn's drunk heads how that comment could be interpreted.

Suddenly I was swung up into Erynion's arms, and I wasn't even sure about that until his blonde hair came into shaky focus. "Maddie needs rest," was all he said as he carried me out of the room. I wrapped my arms around his neck and planted a hot, wet kiss on his throat as we walked out the door. I totally nabbed the hottest guy, I thought, not hearing the shocked gasp Boromir let out at our outrageous PDA.

"Is it true?" he asked quietly, and there was some emotion behind his voice I was far too drunk to identify.

"Is what true? Because if you mean if I can wield fire I'm gonna have to punch you."

"You are with child."

"I'm with you," I said stubbornly. Why was he being dumb? I pressed another kiss to his neck hoping to distract him to more fun things.

"You are pregnant."

I pulled back from his collarbone and shot him my best askance look. "No! Well, I don't think so at least." Then my slow, alcohol-hazed brain caught up. "Well, do you want me to be?"

Erynion though was as blank-faced as ever. He was masking whatever he felt. Normally I'd gotten better at seeing through this, but the wine was impairing that ability. "Erynion, do you want children? I've got a time limit you know."

Not for a solid fifteen years at least, but it was the thought that counted.

We passed through the doorway of the room, and I reached up to touch one cheek. "Erynion?"

"I would be honored," he said softly.

Pleased, I gave him a hard kiss on the mouth. "Well we'd better get to work then," I declared. This statement was meant to be deliberate and a prelude to bed games, but Erynion didn't move. I was still in his arms halfway to the bed.

"You desire children?"

"Who's going to ride Thunor's grandkids?" I said in what I thought was a perfectly logical response. I'd always imagined myself having children after I'd settled down in some proverbial future that I'd never quite gotten the details of. Plus, I was betting half-Elf children would be pretty adorable.

He finally set me down on the bed, and I pulled him down for a sloppy kiss. "I love you, you know."

That soft look he'd directed at the child was now at me, and I wondered if I'd see more of that face if I were pregnant. A tempting thought.

At least until something else hit me like a brick.

"I won't be able to get smashingly drunk with Éowyn then."

"Pardon?" Erynion asked from where he was helping pull my socks off my limp feet.

"Alcohol and pregnancies don't mix well. Nine whole months without any wine."

"Only nine months?" he said softly, lips lingering in my hair as he undid the laces. "Elven births require a whole year."

"I refuse to be a whale that long." I'd had one friend become pregnant when I was back home, and for all that talk of "pregnancy glow" she'd been heavy, sweaty, complaining about stretch-marks and craving bizarre things. "What if I desperately want pickles and ice cream?" I asked him suddenly with very real concern. "You don't have ice cream in Middle Earth. Or what if I want curry? Where am I going to get that?"

Erynion ignored my mumbled fears though and kissed me gently but firmly until I'd quite forgotten curry and ice cream. "Our children will come when they come, and all will be well."

"But fun first," I mumbled, too sleepy for sex really except that my mind was still on it.

"Fun tomorrow," Erynion promised, lips against mine and then my throat, and I realized only vaguely I had been undressed to my petticoat in the confusion. Too much drink and too much heady elf.

"…love you," I mumbled.

"Le melin," he murmured as I sunk into sleep.