After an early evening meal, Éowyn and Éomer set off into the centre of town to see how their respective bikes were getting on at Farouk's garage. Éomer was insistent that his was far and away the more important of the two. Which was how Faramir came to be sitting at the table in the tavern – the "pub" as his new friends called it – trying to make conversation with Jane and Theo. He listened politely as Theo told various anecdotes about his work, and Jane talked about how she and a friend were trying to set up their own cleaning company, but really his mind was entirely on Éowyn. She had said she and Éomer would arrive later, but the whole trip felt pointless without her. Then, finally, the door swung open – and Faramir's jaw just about hit the floor.

Éowyn walked in. Thanks to his cousin Lothíriel's riding antics (she had a habit of borrowing her brothers' breeches when it was just family around), he was already used to women in trousers. He had got used to the idea of women in short skirts; other lands, other customs, he told himself. But nothing could have got him used to this.

Éowyn's hair flowed like a golden waterfall about her shoulders. She wore a plain black top with a high neck and long sleeves, which should have seemed modest and sober – except that it was of some sort of shiny, almost iridescent material which clung to her. The brooch with the hand clasping a sword hilt hung as a pendant on a slender gold chain about her neck, nestling just above her breasts.

Faramir swallowed, even though his mouth had gone dry. Small, but perfectly formed breasts. He found that his treacherous imagination was already conjuring up the feel of them in his hands. Valar save me, I'm lost. They would fit perfectly… I really should not be thinking of such a noble hearted lady in such a way. She wore a swirling red skirt which swung and swayed as she moved – and stopped a handspan above her knees. Her legs – long, long legs – were clad in clinging black hose, but sheerer than the sheerest silk from Harad. The bits of her legs which were visible, that was. Those legs… such images in my mind they conjure… To the knee her extremely shapely calves were encased in black leather boots with a high sheen even his drill sergeant would have deemed acceptable back when he first started his military training in his teens. Completely lost. And I don't care.

Jane leant over and whispered in his ear. "You might want to shut your mouth and stop staring before Éomer notices and punches your lights out." Faramir came to, and turned to look at Jane, who seemed most amused. Rather hastily, he collected his thoughts.

"My apologies, Mistress Jane. I meant no disrespect." He added, unable to stop himself, "She looks so beautiful."

Jane laughed. "Makes a change to see her make the most of herself. Normally she doesn't bother." She fixed Faramir with a gimlet eye. "You do realise it's for your benefit, don't you? You'd damn well better make sure you treat her right, or I'll punch your lights out."

Before Faramir could formulate an answer, Éowyn spotted the table they were sitting at and waved cheerfully, then nudged her brother and sent him to the bar. She walked over and sat down on the stool beside Faramir.

At first Faramir was uncharacteristically tongue-tied. But he relaxed as the family chatted happily (his greater ease also aided by beer). If you'd asked him afterwards what the conversation had been about, he wouldn't have been able to tell you; he just knew that he felt supremely happy.

Éomer spent quite a lot of the evening propping the bar up. It seemed he was quite taken with the barmaid. Éowyn explained that the two of them had some sort of on-off relationship. If he came home and the barmaid had a boyfriend, he'd just be cheerfully friendly; if on the other hand she happened to be single, well, it was possible to be "friends with benefits." Other lands, other customs, Faramir thought yet again. But I want to be more than a friend who comforts her bed sometimes… I want to be her everything, just as she is all to me.

~o~O~o~

Éowyn looked on with amusement. It transpired that Kaz, the barmaid, was currently going out with someone, so Éomer's romantic overtures had come to nothing. Nothing daunted, he'd turned his attention to another old school friend of his, and was currently snogging her in the corner. No prizes for guessing whether he'd be coming home tonight.

She was on her way to the bar to get a round in when she almost collided with Faramir (returning, she guessed, from the loo – she wasn't going to ask – a tenner said he'd be quite a private sort of person about that kind of thing). To her amusement, the archway under which he'd paused, mid-stride, so as not to collide with her, was the one whoever had done the Christmas decorations had chosen as location for the mistletoe. Faramir, ever quick on the uptake, spotted her upward glance.

"That's the plant Éomer balanced on your head… I am guessing it's got some sort of a significance."

Éowyn willed herself not to blush. "Ah, it's just a silly Christmas tradition. If you find yourself underneath it with someone else, you kiss… You don't have to, of course, not if you don't want to."

"Like this?" asked Faramir, and to her amazement, leant forward and kissed her softly on the brow.

Now she was definitely blushing. She offered up a silent prayer to anyone who might be listening, that the lighting was too low for her blush to show. She tried not to meet Faramir's eye, then failed by glancing up at him. He was looking at her with a faint smile on his face – the same sort of smile he'd had earlier, the smile that was part friendly, part challenge, part… something else.

"Not exactly."

"How, then?" His voice had taken on that slightly dangerous tone it had held that morning, when he'd told her he was ahead on points in their sword fight. A faint smile played about his lips. She had a feeling he knew exactly how. For a moment, she wavered, wondering what to say. How to get out of this awkward situation. If indeed she wanted to get out of the situation. Then she simply thought Ah, fuck it, and reached up and took a handful of his shirt front, pulled him down towards her and kissed him, full on the lips.

Then let go, and retreated half a step. Make or break… how's he going to react?

"Oh, I think I see," he said, so quietly she almost didn't hear him over the music. Then he took her hand and pulled her back towards him, sliding his other hand round the small of her back. His lips, when they made contact with hers, were soft, just a little chapped in places, his kiss gentle… And then suddenly it changed, in an instant, for both of them. She wanted him with an intensity she had never known before, never even come close to knowing before. Hands clutching at fabric, searing heat that could be felt on the flesh beneath, hot breath on fevered skin, lips, tongues. Éowyn was swept away on a tide of sheer need, clinging to Faramir's shoulders, kissing him with complete desperation and utter abandon, while he held her close against him, pulling her against every contour of his body.

Then just as suddenly as it had started, the kiss ended. Faramir moved back slightly and stood, still holding her hands, looking down at her. The slightly cocky, teasing look that had been on his face before the kiss was gone, replaced by one of stunned wonder. She could see his chest rising and falling – he was as breathless as she was. She felt as though there were invisible cords tying them together, drawing them back together, like a magnet pulling on iron filings, or a planet pulling a moon into orbit. He was just beginning to pull her hands gently towards him, leaning into her, when…

"Either get a room, or get me another beer." Éowyn almost jumped out of her skin. Éomer had appeared behind her like the phantom of the bloody opera or something.

"Says you..." she retorted. Faramir rather abruptly dropped her hands and made an embarrassed coughing noise.

Unable to meet his eyes again, especially not with Éomer playing third wheel, she headed for the bar as fast as her legs would carry her, muttering, "Beer… pint of mild, three pints of bitter, cinzano and lemonade…"

As Kaz pulled the pint of mild, she grinned at Éowyn.

"So… that kiss! Remember the scale we used to have at school – how did it score? Romantic or fuck-me-now?"

Éowyn could feel her cheeks flaming. She certainly wasn't going to answer that one. But a treacherous voice in her head supplied its answer anyway. Right now! And tomorrow. And every day for the rest of our lives. And fight with me, and make up with me, and be by my side and… Oh shit. Oh. Shit. OH, SHIT! For a moment she couldn't speak at all. She certainly wasn't going to say any of that out loud. She tried distraction. "Didn't the scale start at 'three day old dead haddock'?"

"Get away! Even from over here, I could see that kiss wasn't dead haddock…"

Éowyn laughed. "Very nice. Let's just leave it at that." While thinking, Oh fuck, I think my world's just been turned upside down.

~o~O~o~

The rest of the evening seemed to take on a dreamlike quality. Éowyn and Faramir sat close to one another but (after Éomer's interruption) felt too reticent to touch. Even so, she could feel the warmth of his body even across the slight gap between them. Theo and Jane did most of the talking – the two young people suddenly seemed tongue tied.

About half past ten, Eowyn noticed her brother sneaking out the bar with the girl he'd been snogging. Sure enough a few moments later, her phone pinged.

She turned to Jane. "That was Eomer – he wants me to let you know he's staying over at Ellie's tonight."

Jane shook her head. "He never changes. Do you think he'll ever settle down?"

"It's like musical chairs for young blokes," said Theo. "They play the field, then when they turn thirty, they settle down with whoever's on the sofa with them at the time."

"How romantic. Surely you weren't like that with Sue?" Jane said, giving him a sidelong look. (She and Sue had been good friends, back in the day, even though Sue had been ten years or so older. The two couples had spent a lot of time together, before Sue got cancer, and Jane's husband buggered off with that floozy from accounts leaving her with two kids and the money from a part-time job at the Co-op to raise them on.)

"Course not. Last of the great romantics, me. We were the exception that proves the rule," Theo responded with a wink. "You should know that. Champagne and rose petals all the way with me." Jane rolled her eyes. Theo grinned, then added, "Time for one last round, I think."

It didn't seem long before Kaz rang last orders, and they were decanted into the night. It was a cold, crisp night, and Theo and Jane set off at quite a brisk pace, complaining that they'd freeze if they hung around. Faramir and Eowyn set off at more of a dawdle, and soon a gap of twenty or thirty yards opened up. Eowyn wondered if she could manage to brush accidently against his hand and get him to take hold of hers, or better still, jostle his shoulder and end up with his arm round her.

Instead, he surprised her by taking her hand and tucking it in the crook of his elbow, like they were in some BBC costume drama, all crinolines and regimental scarlet and minuets in the ballroom. She almost laughed, then realised it felt rather nice, and snuggled against him. Neither of them seemed to feel like talking; they both discovered that the silence was a comfortable one, and didn't need to be filled with chatter, just enjoyed. After a while, Faramir started to hum wordlessly, almost absent mindedly.

With a start, Eowyn realised it was the song from the radio. Would that my love were in my arms, and I in my bed again. She snuggled a bit closer, and Faramir suddenly leant in and dropped a kiss on her hair. Her stomach did a sort of somersault, which would have felt absurd had it not felt so nice.

Before she could think of where she wanted to go with this, she suddenly found that the two of them had arrived at the front gate. They got inside to find Jane already making a pot of tea before bed, while Theo paid Izzy for the babysitting. Somehow, whatever might have been about to happen got swept away on a tide of domesticity, and preparations for bed. Reluctantly, she inflated the air mattress and spread the sleeping bag on top of it.

~o~O~o~

Faramir burrowed down under the quilt, quite glad of a night without Éomer's snores. But definitely not glad at having said goodnight to Éowyn. If he shut his eyes, instead of feeling himself drifting off to sleep, he found himself re-living every heartbeat of their kiss. And thinking about the walk home. A fragment of one of Mardil's poems came to his mind: So to intergraft our hands as yet/ Was all the means to make us one/ And pictures in our eyes to get/ Was all our propagation… He smiled into the darkness. At least he was merely at the stage of quoting other people's poetry, not trying to write his own. Maybe his case wasn't completely useless, yet.

Suddenly the door opened a crack.

"Are you still awake?" Éowyn, dressed now in pyjamas, slipped into the room, pulling the door to behind her. She switched on the bedside lamp, and a warm glow filled the room. Faramir looked up at her, stunned by her sudden appearance.

She drew a deep breath. "You know you were humming that song on the way home… Was that an invitation?"

Faramir found he couldn't speak. Instead, wordlessly, he lifted the corner of the quilt. Then he found his voice. He managed just one word. "Yes…"

Éowyn smiled, a dazzling smile, then stepped across the room and slid into the bed beside him, and he wrapped her in his arms.

~o~O~o~

AN: As Tom Lehrer put it, "Plagiarise, let no-one else's work evade your eyes, That's why the good lord made your eyes, so don't shade your eyes, but plagiarise, plagiarise, plagiarise… only please to remember, always to call it research." Mardil's words of course are really John Donne's, and the line about comforting someone's bed is loosely adapted from Julius Caesar.