Okay, so this was meant to be a one-shot. But I've fallen in love with my gambling rangers... Also (as Borys noted) it takes a very anachronistic attitude towards sexual morality, but what the hell, this is sheer, self-indulgent wish fulfillment on my part, so I'm going with that. And the language will be anachronistic too!

Éowyn let the golden sunlight warm her body. Even the wooden planks on which she lay seemed to have soaked up the heat, and despite their hardness, she felt almost as though she luxuriated in the feeling seeping up. It was the first truly warm day of spring. She rolled onto her side and propped her head on her hand, looking at Faramir beside her. He lay, dozing, flat on his back.

The wooden platform was a lookout hidden high in one of the trees about five leagues from Henneth Annun. Faramir had explained that it was modelled on the descriptions he'd found in an ancient book of lore – a book describing the wooden flets Elves made on the outskirts of their domain. Supposedly, they had been keeping watch, but the day had been warm, the woods quiet and the temptation just too great to resist.

Now languid and relaxed, Éowyn took the opportunity to study her lover. His figure lay there, stretched out before her. The sunlight through the leaves above left dappled patterns on his skin, contrasting patches of cool white and glowing gold. Smiling, she focussed her attention on his face. Long, dark lashes lay on pale skin beneath a broad brow. She thought of how a few tens of minutes earlier, she had brushed her lips along his high cheekbones and angular jaw. At the moment, he had a short, slightly untidy beard. When he had time, he preferred to shave, but Éowyn found that she rather liked him with a beard. The roughness was one of the contrasts she loved – so different from the soft silken dark hair that currently lay spread across the wooden boards.

She followed the line of his neck, down to deceptively broad shoulders – deceptive because there was not an ounce of fat anywhere, and his lean build led many a man to underestimate his strength. She almost stretched out her hand to run it across his chest, for she loved to feel his hair beneath her fingertips, but resisted for fear of waking him. Instead, she settled for letting her eyes follow every line of his body instead – the taut muscles of his belly, the trail of hair, the V shape of the muscles in his hips, all pointing towards... She felt a smile spread over her face. Definitely a favourite body part.

A sleepy murmur drew her gaze back to his face. Faramir opened one eye, then squinted as the sun got in his eyes. He lifted one hand to shade his eyes, and caught her looking at him. One dark eyebrow was raised in query. His eyebrows... How could I have forgotten to inventory his eyebrows? Éowyn found her smile broadening into a grin.

"Admiring the view?" asked Faramir, the hint of an answering smile playing round his lips.

Lips too – just the right shape for kissing. But out loud, Éowyn contented herself with saying, "Perhaps. But I shall deny the possibility vehemently if questioned. I wouldn't want you getting vain."

"Even if questioned very persuasively?" Faramir shifted slightly, raising his knee to tilt his body slightly towards her.

Oh gods, his cock – the way it lies there, so heavy looking. Just the right size to wrap my hand around it. To feel it come alive and upright beneath my touch. Éowyn swallowed. "Perhaps I need practice in resisting these torture techniques. You know, so I'm prepared for the worst..."

"The worst?" Faramir's left eyebrow managed somehow to rise even further towards his hairline.

"Definitely the worst. Absolutely terrible. I was reliably informed by my brother before I left that it was a fate worse than death."

The quirk of a smile disappeared from Faramir's face and he rolled onto his stomach, elbows on the wood, chin resting on the backs of his hands. "That's something we've never really talked about, is it, you and I? How your brother would react?"

The mood gone for the moment, Eowyn rolled back to rest against the warm wood once more. "He would go berserk. Probably kill both of us."

"Oh." There was a long silence following this. Eventually Faramir managed to say something else. "I suppose I couldn't really blame him for killing me – after all, he sent you here in part so I could protect your virtue. He told me about Wormtongue, you know."

Éowyn felt a shiver travel across her body. "Don't. I don't want to be reminded." She let her head turn so she faced Faramir, only a handspan or so between their faces. "But this is completely different. He threatened to take me by force. You and I... Well, we do what we do because we both want to. And I always thought of my virtue more as a nuisance and a vulnerability than anything else." She felt her cheeks burn. "Besides which, I'd lost my virtue before..." She ran out of words, looking at him with an anxiety she hadn't expected to feel. Surely he must have realised, that first day in the cottage, all those months back... What if he hadn't? What if he? She couldn't even frame the thought properly.

He reached out with one hand and gently stroked her cheek. "Surely you know me well enough by now to know I wouldn't give a damn about that. All that matters is that you allow me to be yours, here and now. Not what happened before."

There was a long silence. Éowyn stared back up at the green leaves and flashes of blue sky between, the colours so vibrant they almost hurt. Then Faramir spoke again, a little hesitantly, his words an echo of hers a few moments earlier. "Is this just something we do because we want to? For you, I mean?"

"I... I don't know." Éowyn saw a look of hurt cross Faramir's face, quickly chased away and replaced by what she thought of as his "commanding officer, give nothing away" look. She was at a loss as to how to explain her feelings. "I haven't really let myself think about it. I don't know how to think about it. The future is all so uncertain, this is such a strange time and place to find ourselves as..." Why was uttering the word so embarrassing? "As... lovers. I mean, we're both soldiers, holding the last line of defence against an enemy so horrible that... On any given day, either of us could be killed. So I try not to let myself think."

Faramir nodded. For a moment, she saw another flicker of hurt in his eyes. Then, shifting his line of attack, with a sense for the coup de grace she recognised so well from the practice ring, he said, "You say you try not to... but when you can't help but think? What do you think then? Those moments when ignoring your feelings doesn't work?"

He knows every inch of my body, has touched and tasted every inch of my body – why is it only now that I feel completely naked before him? But the practice ring had also taught Éowyn a thing or two: she knew when to counter attack: "What do you think?"

"Do you have to ask, Éowyn?" The way he said her name left her feeling as if she was unravelling completely. He still didn't touch her, but the intensity with which his eyes met hers was almost tangible. Then, as if the intensity was too much to bear, he looked away, gazing up into the canopy. His voice was a whisper when it finally came. "Éowyn, I..."

"Captain Faramir!" The yell echoed up through the trees. Mablung's voice. "Orcs, sir, a largish troop, about a league to the west. Damrod's got the main company assembled in the clearing near the bracken spring."

"Shit." The word was muttered under Faramir's breath. Then, "We're just coming, Mablung." And the two of them scrambled for their clothes.

~o~O~o~

"Permission to speak frankly, sir."

Cursed cock of a kinslayer, what now? Faramir pulled himself together, and said, as casually as he could manage, "Ah, every commanding officer's favourite phrase. Would you care to let me know exactly what manner of monumental cock up I have either perpetrated or am teetering on the brink of perpetrating, Damrod?"

Damrod swallowed. That bad? Faramir thought. His second-in-command turned scarlet. No, clearly even worse...

"It's about you, and your patrols... Your patrols with..."

Faramir waited, one dark eyebrow cocked. Gods, this was worse than bad, it was... excruciating. But, Faramir reflected, if there was one thing any CO worth his salt learned early on, it was to wait in silence for your subordinates to dig the trench by themselves. Dig it, and hopefully bury themselves too.

"Well, actually sir, the problem is more the non-patrols with..."

Oh Valar, Damrod knew! Faramir struggled to keep his face impassive.

"You see, the area's dangerous, and we do need it patrolled. And if we know... erm... what you're doing, you and, erm... And, uh, it's not really patrolling, is it sir? And, well, you see, if we know, someone else could work it out. And I'd imagine you'd both be sitting ducks in that hut." Damrod was warming to his subject matter now, the embarrassed flush subsiding. "If 'sitting' is quite the right word, maybe..." Damrod paused, perhaps sensing a line that he should not step over. He continued, his words coming out in a bit of a rush. "And, erm, without wanting to be forward, sir, but, erm, well there's no other way putting this: I'd guess you wouldn't be wearing your armour." Fararmir could have sworn he saw the glimpse of a smile on his lieutenant's face, only a flicker and quickly suppressed. The bastard's enjoying this! Damrod's voice cut through his thoughts, Obviously he was taken with his previous phrase. Either taken with it, or so embarrassed he was repeating himself: "And so you would be, well, sitting ducks, so to speak. Or maybe lying ducks." Definitely a smirk, the insubordinate sod. "And then we'd be without a CO, sir."

Now it was Faramir's turn to swallow. "I see. And what precisely would you suggest as a solution, Damrod?"

"Well, Sir, maybe for the time being, you could do your patrols with young Anborn, and I could patrol with the lady." He flushed again. "I mean, really patrol, that is. Obviously."

"Obviously indeed, Damrod," said Faramir, dryly. Actually, he was quite pleased with the tone of voice he'd somehow conjured up. Cool, collected, as if he had this sort of excruciating conversation every day and wasn't in the slightest bit excruciated by it. But... But it would mean the end to lazy afternoons with the sunlight casting dappled patterns on her bare skin. Faramir gave himself a mental shake. Pull yourself together and stop thinking with your cock.

"Sir, you could always just move her into your quarters. Then you wouldn't need to take risks sneaking around like this."

Oh fuck. So much for cool and collected. Damrod's reading my mind. "I don't think that would be wise, do you, Damrod? Chain of command... favouritism..." Faramir's voice trailed off. Buggeration, I can't even form a coherent sentence any more.

Damrod looked at him with something which, to Faramir's chagrin, seemed uncomfortably like pity. Or perhaps a certain fatherly understanding, which might just conceivably be even worse. Not that Faramir was entirely sure what fatherly understanding looked like, and certainly couldn't by any stretch of the imagination imagine his father extending it in these sort of circumstances.

"You know, Sir, when I was a green recruit, my CO had a bit of a thing going..." Now it was Damrod's turn to look slightly embarrassed. "Erm, way of the warrior, as the phrase has it, that sort of thing – I mean, I know it's illegal and all that, but it does happen sometimes..." He glanced anxiously at Faramir, as if gauging his reaction. Faramir nodded to show that, yes, he had heard of such things before, and, yes, he was enough of a man of the world not to be shocked. Encouraged, Damrod continued.

"And, well, it was happening with him and one of the sergeants. And they were pretty open about it, maybe not exactly sharing quarters, but certainly setting up bed rolls next to each other a way off from the rest of the troop. Thing was, it didn't really affect the chain of command as much as you might think. Because they were both damn good soldiers, so there wasn't any favouritism, because it wasn't needed, they both did their jobs and a damn good job it was too. And, well, you've been our CO for years, and we know what you're like. And she's good too – isn't no-one can best her with a sword, and she doesn't shirk from the hard stuff and the heavy stuff."

~o~O~o~

"So, you see, they all know about us."

There was only really one word which did justice to Faramir's expression: anguished. Éowyn looked at him and nodded gently.

"You don't seem surprised." Faramir searched her face for clues, before continuing, "You knew, didn't you."

Again, Éowyn nodded. Faramir looked at her face, the most beloved face beneath the heavens, and his gut clenched at the thought of what he had to do. Then his gaze lit upon the bruise on her cheekbone, now faded to a dull yellow, a vast improvement on the absolute shiner she had sported a few weeks back when he returned from Osgiliath. A chance blow on the training ground, she'd said.

"Your eye," he said, sudden insight dawning.

She gave a wry smile. "Yes, but you should have seen the other guy."

It all made sense – Damrod's sudden secondment of Daeron to his brother's troop. The two of them must have passed on the road without seeing one another. "What did he do?" Faramir asked.

"He made some cheap remark about us engaging in the way of the warrior, and asked how closely we copied it." Faramir raised a questioning eyebrow. Éowyn made a harrumphing noise, as if to say don't make me say it, then said it anyway. "He asked if I let you give it to me up the arse."

"And managed to give you a black eye into the bargain." Faramir's face showed a cold fury.

"Yes, but I broke his nose and knocked out two of his teeth before I laid him out cold." Éowyn grinned. "Damrod transferred him down to Osgiliath, and put me on shit-shovelling duties for the next four days." But then her grin faded. "You're worried, aren't you? Worried about the other day."

"The orc troop. What if they'd come past the tree we were hiding in, and we hadn't seen them to alert the company. Or they'd heard us and..."

~o~O~o~

"Valar, it's like some sort of cheap mummer's tragedy." Mablung sounded quite put out. The others followed his gaze across the arched cave. In the alcove he customarily occupied while doing paperwork, Faramir sat, idly tapping his lips with the quill he was signally failing to put to use. In the last half hour, none of them had seen him make so much as a single mark on the parchment which was supposedly destined for his brother, bringing him up to date on Easterling and Haradrim troop movements in the area. Instead, his attention had alternated between a melancholic fascination with the inkpot in front of him, and surreptitious, longing glances towards Éowyn, who sat at the other side of the cave.

The group assessed the other protagonist of the mummer's tragedy. She was trying to fletch arrows. It was a task for which she had very little skill at the best of times, and this clearly wasn't the best of times. There was a sudden squeak of pain, followed by a Rohirric obscenity which (having had occasion to ask her about in the past) they recognised as involving an anatomically highly unlikely act between one of her pantheon of gods and the god in question's horse. Her paring knife had slipped and she'd jabbed her finger. Clearly, she was paying about as much attention to her task as her commanding officer was to his. She glanced over towards him, only to find him already looking at her, his attention drawn by her cry of pain. As fast as jerking a hand away from a hot coal, both of them looked away, he to fix his attention once more on the inkpot, she to contemplate the hideously ill-constructed fletches.

"Bloody hell, it's like a succession of wet Mondays," said Mablung. "What in the name of Morgoth did you want to go putting the fear of Manwe into the pair of them for, Damrod?"

"All I wanted was for him to start paying attention to doing proper patrols, not for him to break things off completely. I even suggested he just move her into his quarters and be done with it." Damrod sounded aggrieved that Mablung could hold him responsible.

"Now who's being a twit about it? You know he's a bloody fool for being honourable in all things. As soon as you'd so much as hinted he wasn't doing his duty to the full, of course he was going to leap to the half-arsed conclusion that the only decent thing to do was to break it off with her."

Damrod grunted.

"Was that you admitting I'm right?" said Mablung.

"Go fuck the pack donkey," came the response.

"Still, at least there's one saving grace." Anborn interrupted his two NCOs. "At least you transferred Daeron, otherwise he'd be banging on about how we had to pay him his bleedin' florins."

"And thinking of bets," added Mablung, as he caught sight of another "hot coals" moment between the Captain and the Rohir, "How about we open a book on how long the stupid arse is going to be all noble and decent for? I reckon two weeks, tops. A florin says I'm right."

"Like I said before, he's stubborn as fuck," Anborn replied. "Four weeks. But I stand by my original bet. He'll marry her in the end. Proper job too."