This is MPREG. Don't like it? Then don't read it.

HORSES FOR COURSES

"Frodo?" Aragorn raised his brows in a way very reminiscent of his foster father and the small hobbit shifted uncomfortably upon the narrow table.

"I was expecting Aldern," Frodo muttered, lacing and unlacing his fingers in the lap of his nightshirt. The thought skittered through his embarrassed mind that within a few months he would likely not even have a lap . . . his stomach would be so big. He had seen Dolly Brownlock at eight months gone and she had looked like a huge puffball, the yards and yards of fabric in her smock billowing like a tent in a high gale as she waddled about her garden.

"Master Healer Aldern has been called away to attend an emergency so I said that I would undertake the examination for him. I thought you would prefer to have someone you know, rather than a stranger."

Huge blue eyes glanced up at the man from beneath a loose drift of burnt chestnut curls. Aragorn had a point. It was bad enough that Frodo, a male hobbit, should find himself in this predicament, without half of Minas Tirith knowing of it. With a sigh, Frodo punched the small pillow into submission and lay back on the hard surface of the examination bed.

If the man noticed that his charge was a little less than gracious about his capitulation he made no comment as he collected a tray and set it upon a small table at the bedside. The covering cloth was flicked aside to reveal basins and other items and Frodo swallowed hard and began to count the cracks in the ceiling. Not that there were many. No self-respecting crack would have dared to scatter plaster dust in somewhere as spotlessly clean as the Houses of Healing.

Aragorn began to wash his hands in one of the basins. He was a little uncomfortable with this situation himself. Even though he had been trained in the many aspects of healing, it was difficult to stay detached when examining a friend. The last time he had needed to tend Frodo the hobbit had been mercifully unconscious and the hands of the King had been his only hope. He glanced at the face before him as he dried those hands.

The Ringbearer had been hardly recognisable then . . . covered in ash and mud . . . his face drawn and his ribs clear for Aragorn to count. He suspected that Frodo would never fully recover but his cheeks now held the palest tint of rose, and large china blue eyes sparkled, even though they held a depth of sadness that had not been there when Aragorn had seen them first, scant months before in Bree. Sensing the man's intense scrutiny, Frodo swallowed and rolled his head upon the pillow to meet his carer's steady grey gaze in query.

Aragorn cleared his throat and set down the towel, slipping a hand beneath Frodo's knees to guide him into the required position for the examination. "Bend your knees and put your feet flat upon the table, please."

Frodo took a deep breath and started to count the cracks again, his tally interrupted by Aragorn's soft voice. "You are hiding from me, Frodo. Move your feet further apart."

A bright flush rose in the hobbit's cheeks as he complied. Feeling fingers beginning to probe his lower regions, Frodo bit his lip, thankful that Aragorn's hands were cold. He may be pregnant like a lass but he was still a lad, and whilst the man's hands were not touching anywhere that they were not supposed to . . . well . . . "Sometimes a lad's body takes off without the mind," as Bilbo had told his nephew one morning, several years ago. Frodo concentrated very hard upon making sure that such a thing did not happen this morning.

Any such thoughts fled, however, when Aragorn slipped a gentle finger into an opening that Frodo had not been aware of before, and he could not help but try to squirm away . . . giving out a small squeak that would have stood any lass proud.

Aragorn looked up in surprise at the reaction, apologetic at once. "I'm sorry, Frodo. Did that hurt?"

Frodo swallowed and forced himself to relax but when he spoke his voice broke like a tweenager. "No . . . no . . . not exactly. I . . . I . . . I just wasn't . . . expecting . . . that." Feeling betrayed by his own body he cleared his throat and went on the offensive. "Are you . . . sure you know what you're doing? How did you learn about childbirth, Aragorn?"

Aragorn tilted his head. "I have travelled in Middle-earth for many years, not always as a Ranger and not always in the wilds."

His curiosity piqued, Frodo continued. "But in the Shire a midwife would tend a birthing. Males are not allowed. It would be too embarrassing for . . . well . . . for both."

Aragorn pursed his lips. "Would you not send for a doctor if there were complications?"

Frodo shook his head and Aragorn's eyebrows climbed higher. "There's little a doctor could do that a midwife couldn't. But how did you come to know so much about birthing? Is it usual for men to help their ladies in these things? I know little about the practices of big folk in these matters."

As the hobbit's inquisitive nature overtook his embarrassment, Aragorn bent to his examination of Frodo's nether regions once more, his finger probing more gently now and his face hidden from his charge by the spread of Frodo's nightshirt, stretched across the hobbit's knees. "The principle is much the same as a horse, is it not?" The finger paused at Frodo's quick intake of breath. The hobbit's usually well-modulated voice rose a notch and his hands grasped the sides of the table, white knuckled.

"A horse! Do you mean to tell me . . . I mean . . . you have only ever examined . . . helped to . . . birth . . . horses?"

The man's face rose above the white linen wall of Frodo's stretched nightshirt and the two stared at each other for several seconds, in silence. It was Aragorn who broke first, his grey eyes dancing with laughter, lips twitching in an attempt to stop the mirth that threatened to bubble forth. Frodo's eyes widened in realisation and then his merry peal of laughter rang out for the first time in many weeks.

"Aragorn!"

The two laughed until tears ran down their faces and both were so exhausted that they had to abandon the examination. Aldern would have to do it on another day.

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Merry leaned back in his chair, propping his feet upon that recently occupied by Arwen. Recognising the hobbit propensity for filling up the corners for hours after a meal, she had excused herself, pausing to brush her lips against her husband's brow on the way. Pippin tossed Merry an apple, taking a pear for himself, and the others picked at grapes and soft yellow cheese while Gandalf helped himself to a glass of rather fine port.

Chewing thoughtfully for a minute, Pippin finally caught Frodo's eye. "So, cousin. Do you think you will have a lad or a lass?"

Aragorn's soft voice slipped into the gap. "A colt . . . definitely a colt."

END.