Title: Barleywine
Author: Ailei  (ailei@texas.net) 
Rating: mild NC-17 
Pairing: Merry/Pippin 
Disclaimer: Untold corporations now own LOTR...I'm not one 
of them. 
Summary: Sometimes safe and ordinary isn't all it's cracked 
up to be. 
Notes: What can I say? They're too sweet for words. Thanks 
to Khirsah for the title, the beta, and the summary. 
Feedback: Oh, yes.  
 
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"I don't like girls." 
 
"Too responsible." 
 
"Too serious." 
 
"Too *fertile*." 
 
"I don't want a house bursting with bouncing bairns." 
 
"Nice bit of alliteration there, Pip." 
 
"Thanks, Merry. I've the very soul of a poet." Pippin 
wriggled on the soft, dewed grass, kinetic and restless and 
probably just a hair too drunk to properly appreciate 
stargazing. 
 
"Be *still*, Peregrine." Merry rolled on his side and 
captured his friend, pulling the squirming body close. "We 
are being cultured and erudite." 
 
"We are?" Pippin grumbled, turning into Merry's broad 
chest, breathing in his familiar scent. New-mown hay, 
lingering summer and woodsmoke autumn. And the sweetness. 
Oh, that *dangerous*, *tempting* sweetness. Always, forever 
clinging to Merry's skin, wrapping around Pippin, soaking 
into his pores. A boy shouldn't be that sweet. It *changed* 
*things*. 
 
That treacherous scent made Peregrine think wrong things. 
Un-hobbitish things. Wives and children, peace and quiet. 
He didn't want those things, Lady help him. 
 
He wanted Merry. 
 
Pippin let Merry soothe him, settle his jitters and 
fractious mind. Large, callused hands smoothed his mop of 
brown curls, shaped the back of his neck, his strong 
shoulders. 
 
"Yes, we are." The syllables ruffled his hair, tickling and 
teasing. "Or are you too drunk to remember that we are 
supposed to be making up grand tales about the pictures we 
see in the sky?" The amusement threaded rich and sleepy-
warm through Merry's voice. 
 
"Not too drunk. I'd just rather talk about other things." 
Pippin exaggerated the soft whine, burrowing, child-like, 
further into his friend, who obligingly tightened his arms. 
 
"Like girls, then, I suppose?" Merry kissed the top of his 
head, and Pippin allowed it. It wasn't a question of *over* 
familiarity. It wasn't familiar *enough*. He doubted Merry 
even remembered the only time they'd kissed, but it had 
been the one time, possibly the *only* time Pippin had been 
sober when Merry wasn't. 
 
"No. Yes." Pippin sighed in exasperation. "Sort of." 
 
"What was that about poetry?" The smile on Merry's face was 
fond. Pippin knew that, even if he couldn't see it. 
 
"It's just that...after our next birthday, they'll start 
looking for wives for us." Pippin made it sound like a 
death sentence. 
 
"Of course they will. We'll be grown hobbits, and it's time 
we take up our duties." The line was delivered flatly, 
without enthusiasm. 
 
"Maybe...maybe we can marry sisters, or something. So we 
can live close by and still see each other all the time." 
Pippin tried for hopeful, but he feared he fell rather 
toward desperate. 
 
"I'd like that. Very much." Not that anything was far from 
anything else in Hobbiton, but the idea of spending most of 
every day without seeing each other was frightening, and 
foreign, and it just felt *wrong*. 
 
"We could even live together." The quiet, hushed tone of a 
wish voiced after long desiring. 
 
"Ah, now, Pip. Can you see any hobbit lass wanting to share 
a household?" 
Merry's rejoinder was gentle. 
 
"No...no, of course not." Those would be fighting words. 
Girls were raised from birth to run a house, trained and 
prepared and taught that it was the only thing worth 
having. It would be cruel, to deprive one's wife of a 
life's goal. Pippin wasn't a cruel boy. 
 
And Merry was the sweetest boy there'd ever been. 
 
"I wish...I wish we didn't have to get married." Pippin's 
shock at Merry's quiet declaration must have registered in 
his body, because his friend immediately launched into 
explanations. "It's just that there's no girl I fancy, and 
no girl that fancies me, and I just don't want to be apart 
from you." 
 
"You don't? Want to be apart from me?" Pippin cursed his 
usually silver tongue its abysmal failure in his hour of 
need, but barreled on stalwartly. 
"That's good, because I don't want to be apart from you 
either. Not *ever*. I...you...you're my very *best* 
friend." 
 
"Yes." The tenderness, the *sadness* in Merry's tone forced 
Pippin to do the single bravest thing he'd ever done. He 
looked up, into his beloved's face, almost expecting to 
find it shuttered. But no, Merry was being brave, too, and 
he wasn't hiding anything. 
 
"You're everything to me." Pippin murmured, soft but 
distinct, and he 
watched with delight as Merry's eyes lit up. Let them have 
hobbit holes and cozy kitchens and plump lasses. This was 
all the hearth fire he ever wanted. 
 
"It wouldn't be at all proper if I kissed you again, 
especially since I'm not drunk." 
 
"You remember!" Pippin tried to keep accusation out of his 
voice. 
 
"How could I not? It was the single most reckless thing 
we've ever done, and that's saying something." Merry pulled 
him up onto his chest, till Pippin was lying half on top of 
him. 
 
"You're right, Merry. We'd be disregarding the rules if we 
kissed." Pippin shook his head contritely, unruly curls 
catching in the breeze. "It'd be scandalous." 
 
"Disrespectful." 
 
"Crazy." 
 
"What are you waitin' for, again?" Merry asked, and Pippin 
saw anxiety in his friend's eyes, the shadow of fear, 
covered by bravado. 
 
"For you t'say it, Merry." 
 
"Say what? That I want you to kiss me?" There was a hint of 
exasperation. 
Merry was *very* ready for his kiss, lips soft and open, 
just the smallest bit. "I want you to kiss me. There, good 
enough?" 
 
"*No*. Say we'll always be together. Say we won't let them 
pull us apart, no matter what." Pippin's mouth was so close 
to Merry's he could feel each little puff of hitched 
breath, moist and savory on his lips. 
 
"We'll always be together." A heated tongue nervously 
swiped Merry's bottom lip. 'We won't let them pull us 
apart." The tongue touched Pippin's mouth, triggering a 
full body shiver. "No matter what." 
 
Before he could fully complete the last word, Pippin leaned 
into the finger-span of space between them and claimed his 
mouth in a kiss more fierce than he'd intended. He was met 
with equal fury, the kiss vehement and passionate. A 
relief, a release, an *immense* tease, all rolled together 
in the sort of visceral heat that a proper hobbit should 
shun. This sort of need was unsettling, disquieting. It was 
*not* comfortable. It burned and it ached and it was so 
sweet it made his teeth ache. 
 
Then Merry's tongue was in his mouth, stroking along his, 
and Pippin crawled on top, panting, hips, body restless as 
his hands framed Merry's face, giving back the gift he'd 
just been given. Soft bites to Merry's bottom lip produced 
the most delightful mewl, and when his fingers wormed 
beneath the worn, carefully-tended homespun of his friend's 
shirt and flickered across his nipples, he was utterly 
unprepared for the way the sturdy hips bucked. 
 
Blunt fingers dug into Merry's shirt as Pippin rolled off, 
pulling his 
friend on top of him. Suddenly having Merry's solid weight 
on him was all that mattered. He needed it, though he 
couldn't understand why until he had it. All that warmth, 
that sweetness--it was all around him. And he wanted more. 
 
"What...what do we *do*, Merry?" Pippin breathed, even as 
his ankles met around Merry's hips, bringing their 
erections together in a rush of blood and fire. 
 
Merry tried an experimental thrust, laughing and gasping 
when the sparks shot through them both, leaving them wide 
eyed and wondering. Oh, no. Definitely not hobbitish 
activity. And still, Pippin thought, not *quite* right. 
 
"Wait, Merry." His friend blinked down at him, a look of 
dazed, lazy arousal on his face. Breathtaking, but Pippin 
wanted something. Something very specific and highly 
irregular. Clever fingers reached between them, and moments 
later, their hard cocks brushed together, skin to skin, 
slippery and hot and...*that* was *it*. Merry moaned, a 
deep rumble in his chest, and thrust again, and oh, *Lady*. 
 
Perfect. 
 
Greedy hands wound through Merry's curls, pulling him down 
for another 
searching kiss even as Pippin tightened his legs, bringing 
them closer 
still. Mouths and bodies fused, they came together 
helplessly, shaking and kissing feverishly, messily. When 
it passed they clung together harder than ever, and Pippin 
wished he could just crawl inside his beloved and never 
come out. Never have to face the responsibilities they'd 
spent a lifetime running from. Never have to fight to stay 
children, just so they could be together. 
 
"Bilbo left." Pippin spoke the words right into Merry's 
ear, barely audible. 
 
"And came back, love." Merry nuzzled his neck, kissed 
behind his ear. "He came back in the end." 
 
"He never married." 
 
"No. No, that he didn't." His lover kissed his face, cheeks 
and forehead and lips. "Are you saying you want to leave, 
Pip?" 
 
"If we leave and have Adventures, then it'll be okay that 
we're eccentric." 
Pippin kissed Merry again. "I could get used to the way you 
look after we've been kissing." 
 
That little statement left Merry bemused. "What do you 
mean?" 
 
"You're just...I just love you. Of *course* I like to look 
at you." 
 
"Oh." Merry smiled brilliantly. "I love you too, 
Peregrine." 
 
"So we'll leave, then?" 
 
"After Bilbo's party, love. We'll go, and come back again." 
They separated reluctantly, slowly, laughing at their 
sticky bellies. "And Pippin..." 
 
"Yes, Merry?" 
 
"I like to look at you, too."