In the dark of Moria Boromir was called to bring up the rear of the group for a time, and Merry would have missed his company with surprising strength if it wasn't that he found himself walking with his cousins and Sam, reunited once more, the four of them.

"Well," he said quietly in the dimness when he realized this was their first time walking together in many long days. "What do you think, then?"

Pippin looked at him, his eyes and the shape of his face barely visible in the dimness coming back to them from Gandalf's light. "What do you mean? I think it's very dark and very miserable in here, but surely you didn't have to ask to know I felt that."

Merry grinned, finding it hard to let the dark dampen his spirits. "No. I mean, about all this. Our fellowship. " Boromir. He wanted to ask Pippin, and didn't know why. What did they think of the kind, strong man who had carried him and Pippin through the frozen ice of malicious snows only days before.

Even in the dark he remembered the sheer strength of the large hand that grasped him to hold him up. How big was that hand, he thought, and the thought caused an odd feeling of sudden melancholy.

Fortunately Sam interrupted his thoughts. "I'll tell you what I think," he said in a whisper, his words directed at Frodo as they always were. "I think it's as fine a group of people as we could hope to have met anywhere, and if it wasn't that I belong at the side of my master I'd say I have no business even being here."

Frodo laughed his fond, gentle, always for Sam laugh. "They are the best the other races of Middle Earth have to offer, and why should you think the representatives from the Shire should be any less so? You didn't stumble into this, Sam. None of you did. None of us, I should say. There's a pattern to all of it, or so Gandalf has told me. Things have been set into motion by stronger powers that hobbits."

"True enough," Pippin answered, sounding more cheerful than he had. "Though Elrond was against Merry and I coming at the least. I wonder if the two of us have foiled fate? And even if higher powers want us here, what would they want us for? One elf, one dwarf, two men, and four hobbits?"

Merry smiled, feeling much less uncertain of why he was there. "Maybe because it takes four of us to equal the two men in size."

The others laughed quietly.

Merry glanced back in the darkness as they walked, but behind Gimli's stout and dark form, Boromir was outside of the light and couldn't be seen. Still, Merry though maybe Boromir could see them, if he was looking ahead, and he smiled out at him in that hope.

It was much later that day when Gandalf gave the short legs of the poor hobbits a rest and let them sit for a while. Legolas was gathering food from the packs to be handed out, and Gimli had wandered beyond the borders of Gandalf's light to...well, Merry wasn't sure. Sing to the stones, or whatever it was dwarves did in caves.

Pippin had fallen fast asleep, and Sam and Frodo sat together silently. Sam's eyes were on his master, Frodo's were on the huddled conference of Gandalf and Aragorn.

Merry was free to go where he wanted, and he drifted like steam being pulled to the lure of a spinning fan straight to where Boromir sat, his eyes shut, his back resting against cold stone.

He sat, though Boromir looked to be sleeping. He took the opportunity to study the man in fascination. So large, even larger than Aragorn. His shirt alone would be passed around as a marvel in the Shire, set up as a tent to hold birthday parties under. He chuckled, mind on the image of Bilbo's last grand birthday, and two heavy, tree-sized sleeves hanging from some large shirt serving as tent.

When he looked to Boromir's face the man's eyes were open and fixed on him, and there was a smile on his face. "Are you mocking my sleep, master hobbit? Perhaps you wonder that the great man of Gondor needs to rest now and again."

Merry laughed, low and musical. "No, no. I was wondering how many hobbits would fit into your clothes. I think you could pack the four of us in and still have room for another."

Boromir laughed, looking down himself as if pondering the idea. "I shouldn't think so. Two perhaps might be enough. Though if we were talking about my boots and not my shirt I think mine wouldn't be large enough for the smallest of you."

Merry's legs were stretched in front of him, and his large, hairy feet bumped together as he regarded them. "The size might be off, but that's fitting. After all, none I think are fit to walk in the boots of Boromir, great man of Gondor."

Another low chuckle, and Boromir shifted to face him. "When I refer to myself as great it is usually in jest, though I'm worthy enough. You ought to be less kind or I'll start to believe the words when I speak them."

"Less kind? I didn't realize it was kindness. All men seem great to me. Probably to all of us hobbits, for we don't know men and so far they're all great enough at least to cause cricks in our necks from staring up at them."

"Master Merry," Boromir said through a chuckle. "You do cheer up the darkness of this miserable place."

Merry smiled, feeling as if he must be glowing. His own name, spoken in that low voice through the tremor of laughter. It was magical, he thought. More than the elf enchantments in the tales Aragorn told and Sam was so amazed by. Magic of a different sort, earthy and mortal and not even a little worse because it wasn't lofty.

Pippin looked up with a snuffle when Merry finally moved back to sleep before his watch later that night. Peering through one half-cocked eye, the young hobbit flashed a tired smile as Merry lay beside him. "Are you done entertaining big folk, then?"

Merry grinned and curled in close to Pippin in the chill darkness of Moria. "For now, I suppose."

Pippin welcomed him closer, tugging at his arm to wrap his hands around as if Merry was a living stove he could warm himself on. "You're very fond of him, aren't you? Boromir?"

Merry's eyes opened and he looked across at his cousin, who despite having eyes shut and face slack still managed to look mischievous. Merry hesitated, then sighed. "I am. He's been very kind."

"And very fair, and very strong," Pippin added, this time unable to keep from grinning. An eye opened to look at Merry.

Merry smiled at him, knowing that though Pip spoke lightly about it with Merry, he'd never speak of it to anyone else. "I don't think I've met a more fascinating person than him, not in any of the races we now know."

"Really?" Pippin's eyes opened fully, and his smile faded. "Merry, you've got that look on your face. That look Sam gets when he watches Rosie out with her brothers."

Merry blushed and buried his face against Pippin's shoulder.

Pip sighed a moment later, and Merry warmed to feel fingers petting through his curly hair. "My poor Merry. Never happy to love anyone he ought to, even though he loves as many as he can."

Merry chuckled at that, remembering long nights of foolish young boasts about kissing girls and dancing and courting and all the other things he enjoyed in the Shire so much. "That's different. That's like playacting. This is...well, it's just fascination."

Pippin lay back at that. "Don't get your heart broken, no matter what it is. He's a Big Person, and a man, and you know nothing about him."

Merry thought about all he knew - a youth growing up with a doting little brother and a distant but strong father, playing and running among seven levels of a glimmering white city, training, fighting, admiring his brother, scared (or so Merry thought) of his father. He didn't feel like he knew nothing. He felt like he knew just enough to make him want to know every other thing that could be learned.

Still, he told himself as Pippin's breathing deepened back into sleep. Pip was right. Boromir was a man, and he hadn't heard anything about men's ways of looking at love. Were there kissing-friends, as young hobbits had? Was it alright for a boy to be with another boy? It wasn't in some parts of the Shire, and in some families it was a terror. He wondered how he might ask Boromir without sounding as if he had something in mind.

Of course, even if Boromir didn't mind his fascination, or his being a boy hobbit...he was still a hobbit. A child in appearance to these men. Foolish and strange.

He wondered, but as he drifted into sleep he heard Boromir's rich voice and rumbling chuckle, and he thought of how his own name had sounded coming from the man's mouth, and he decided to think about that instead.

Wondering was far too draining anyway.