Title: Pipesmoke
Author: HJ Bender (hjbender@bent-halo.net)
Pairing: Merry/Pippin 
Rating: R
Summary: That awkward stage between childhood and adulthood becomes 
much clearer when your older cousin is allowed to do things which you 
still cannot.
Disclaimer: The only thing I own of this story is the idea, and the order in 
which the words are written. Tolkien owns the rest.
Feedback: Flame me, bash me, just don’t leave me alone! Or in other 
words: yes, please, thank you.


* * *


“Life should begin with age and its privileges and accumulations, and end 
with youth and its capacity to splendidly enjoy such advantages.” -Mark 
Twain


* * *


    There really was no written law detailing the age a lad had to be before 
he could take his first smoke of a pipe with the grown-ups; it was a 
collective assumption amongst the old folks that when one reached their 
tweens they were magically endowed with a sense of responsibility and 
were expected to behave more maturely. Little did I realise (and only after 
the War of the Ring did I) that every culture seems to share this 
ceremonial step into adulthood, and though the age may vary from race to 
race, it still represents the same thing: the casting off from the shores of 
childhood and embarking upon a journey into the great unknown world of 
adults.

    There are two cases of “coming of age” that exist in the humble little 
world of my people, the Halflings, though one case is somewhat 
insignificant when compared to the other and is often overlooked in the 
broad scheme of things. This oft-overlooked privilege comes upon 
reaching twenty, when one finally earns the right to sit out and smoke 
pipeweed with the old folks.

    It was almost a ritual, that slow migration out onto the back stoop or 
under the eaves of the veranda after the supper mess had been cleaned and 
the stars were beginning to peep out. They would all sit like statues for 
hours and talk about the day -small talk, never anything too long-winded 
or important- and blow smoke rings, and make comments on the weather. 
If not for the aspect of smoking, it was the dullest thing in the world to 
Merry and I when we were children.


* * *


    When Merry turned twenty that past November and officially became a 
tween, I remember of how happy I was for him at first, before all of the 
attention and special privileges he was honoured with suddenly reminded 
me that I was still only twelve, barely a child. Merry was almost a grown-
up; and there I was, a scrawny, clumsy youngster with scabs on his knees 
and toads in his pockets. The differences between us were at their starkest 
in those years, and though I was with Merry almost every day during that 
time, I never recall being more lonely before in my life. 

    An invisible wall was driven between us; when he went out and smoked 
with the grown-ups I was left to help my sisters clean dishes, or wander 
out into the gardens if I were staying at Brandy Hall. I liked it at the Hall, 
for there were more trees there than in the broad, hilly region of 
Tookland—trees and groves and glades and many, many places where one 
could slip away unnoticed and be by themselves for hours. I did this often, 
and more often than not these solitary sessions ended in frustrated, silent 
tears. 

    Merry would come looking for me after a while, when ever he had 
finished what ever he was doing with the grown-ups, and I never told him 
I had cried. We pretended that everything was back to normal, and we 
would catch fire-flies and linger down by the river until the moon had 
risen and the mosquitoes became too thick for us to endure. Then we 
would return to the Hall, take baths, and perhaps play a game or two with 
Berilac or Merimas ere retiring for the night.

    I always slept in Merry’s bed, ever since I was very young and asked 
him to sing me to sleep to keep the bogey-monsters away. He took to 
curling up with me, even though he missed his own bed; I finally 
compensated by moving into his room, at least for sleeping. It was a habit 
I never grew out of, and somehow I always awoke refreshed and happy 
with Merry breathing gently next to me.

    It was all a game of happy, naïve make-believe, our lives were, until the 
Pipe came out. I grew to dislike seeing Merry pull that long, narrow, 
grown-up object out of the great, big grown-up inside pocket of that dark 
green grown-up coat he had gotten for Yule that was made especially for 
grown-ups. Merry was growing faster than I could keep up with, so I tried 
to make myself act the part at least, using bigger words and forcing myself 
not to skip about like an idiot when I was happy or excited, not wolfing 
down my food at supper or singing silly, childish songs or telling stupid 
jokes. It was almost unbearable; my soul was weeping to act like a child, 
but Merry was no longer a child. And neither was I, I decided, for we were 
one heart beating within two bodies and I was not going to be the one to 
drag him down. 

    I would do anything for Merry, even jump off a cliff if he were going to 
do it, too. We were that close. Or at least we used to be.

    No matter how much I tried to act mature and composed, I always did 
or said something idiotic to expose that I was still a young lad. Merry 
didn’t mind, or he was civil about it at least, in a kind of detached way; he 
would laugh and clap me on the shoulder, or ruffle my hair, or poke me to 
make me smile, and then follow it with something airy, like: ‘O Pippin! 
You silly little sod!’ or ‘Don’t worry, you’ll grow out of it!’ Something 
like what an adult would say. 

    I hated it when he talked like that, like I hated small-talks about the 
weather and the seasons and boring, dull, dry, useless rubbish that all 
grown-ups were made out of. Serious, humourless, awful, horrible stuff it 
was, like great big knots of tools and money and parchment and property 
and everything terrible about grown-ups that ever was. I was terrified of 
Merry becoming an adult but there was nothing I could do to stop it. This 
made me sad, sadder than I had ever been. It was almost as if Merry was 
dying and there was no cure I could give him to make him come back to 
life. 


* * *


    It was thus that I spent several years in mourning after Merry became a 
tween. Indeed, years. I did not cry always, though I remained distantly 
depressed inside. On the outside, things remained almost as they had 
always been save for a few occasions, like the day when Merry folded up 
the quilt that his mother had made for him when he was very young, and 
put it away in a chest to await the day when his own children would have 
it. 

    His own children. 

    Merry’s children. 

    Little copies of Merry running through the halls and laughing the way 
he and I had only a few years before.

    The thought filled me with anxiety. He never spoke about children, nay, 
he did not even seem to be as preoccupied with chasing skirts as some of 
the other boys his age were. Even Estella whom he had known since he 
was a wee scamp expressed a lack of interest in making pretty eyes at him. 
Everyone knew he and Estella were going to get married some day, even I 
knew. But Merry seemed to be indifferent to the comings and goings of 
lasses and lovers and impending wedding parties; it was as if he already 
knew the route of his life and was planning on taking his dear time getting 
there.

    We still played together, but not as roughly. We continued to politely 
filch items from farmers’ fields, and we still snuck out on summer nights 
to play pranks on folks. It was the same as it had always been, only it was 
not as drastic—it never spelt disaster or severe punishment like in the days 
of our youth but I treasured them nonetheless, for if it was all I could get, 
then a beggar could not be choosy.


* * *


    The years passed faster than I had anticipated, and soon Merry was into 
his fourth year of tweenhood and I was following him at sixteen that 
spring. I still disliked the Pipe yet I had grown accustomed to its scent 
(which became one of Merry’s scents now) and I slowly grew into liking it 
somewhat because of its connexion to Merry—Merry my Hero of 
Younger Days, Merry the Singer of Night-a-Bye Songs, Merry the Bogey-
monster Slayer. 

    Those titles were faded now but not lost forever; sometimes they shone 
through in moments when all the grown-up accessories surrounding Merry 
were put away, like the times when I would stay the summer at Brandy 
Hall and wake in the middle of the night to watch him sleep. He shined 
then. Or that summer he taught me to swim and we created a war out of 
trying to see who could splash the other the hardest, and our fingers and 
toes became wrinkled like dried plums. Or when we stole a gigantic melon 
from Old Bobbin’s garden patch and spent hours trying to split it open 
with a dull garden spade, and it was almost too seedy to be considered 
edible.

    Moments like those grew fewer and further between, but it was not my 
place to say anything. I knew I had to make the best of things since I was 
only a little hobbit, and little hobbits are not stoppers of time. Just when I 
was certain that I had seen the last of Merry’s shine, there came that lazy 
spring when we walked out to Woody End one sunny, warm afternoon and 
lay quietly beneath the cool shadows of the trees. 

    Merry had been quarreling with his father recently over his inevitable 
inheritance and the responsibilities he needed to start taking if he ever 
hoped to become Master of the Hall. I was glad that I was still young 
enough to escape from matters where lineage was concerned, although my 
father was beginning to talk his share of Thainship and the dreaded, ugly 
R-word as well.

    We forgot ourselves in the forest and became children again, staring up 
at the open spaces in the canopy of green leaves where shafts of golden 
light spilled down like warm waterfalls. The ground was soft and mixed 
with grass and moss and wild-flowers, and everything seemed to be at 
peace. I could almost pretend that we were never going to grow up, never 
ever never. We would remain Merry and Pippin, the Spirits of the Shire, 
for hundreds of thousands of uncountable years.

    That was before Merry produced his pipe -the Pipe I still did not like- 
from his coat lying nearby and sat with his arms resting upon his drawn-up 
knees, staring between the trees while he puffed away. I noted that already 
he was perfecting the art of smoke-rings, and I felt a hint of jealousy then, 
for Merry would be blowing smoke like the old folks down at the Bridge 
Inn before I was even allowed to carry a pipe. It was somehow unfair, I 
thought, and it provoked me to ask of Merry nervously, ‘Can I try a bit?’

    Everyone knew it was not allowed to let an under-tween smoke your 
pipe, something about growing into the privilege and the sanctity of 
mature age or some other silly rubbish like that. It was not a terrible 
offence if it happened, specially if no one was around to see it, but it made 
folks huffy and cross if they knew it was being done. Merry was old-
fashioned in a sense, the kind of hobbit who would sit aside and allow you 
to get stung when you poked sticks in a hornet’s nest for fun. He was not 
arrogant in this way or even fatalistic, but he believed that some things 
must be learnt by age and experience on one’s own. And as far as I could 
tell, no under-tweened pipe-smoking was a tradition that he followed, and 
one of the few. 

    And yet Merry always managed to find some way around traditions.

    He smiled and parted his lips, allowing a smooth wisp of smoke to float 
from his breathless mouth like fog rolling in from the river banks. ‘I can’t 
offer you my pipe,’ he said, ‘but I can offer you my smoke.’

    I did not understand, I said to him.

    He just grinned and sucked a few puffs from the pipe, and kept his lips 
closed. He leant over and placed his hand upon the back of my neck and 
drew me towards his face; our lips touched, and when his opened so did 
mine. He sighed a breath of Old Toby into my lungs that was somehow 
sweeter than any candy from my childhood, and more filling than an 
whole Yule supper. I took it in and held it in my body like a miser 
coveting a piece of gold that had been dropped at his feet. It was not 
merely smoke that was inside me; it was Merry. And it was the most 
wonderful feeling I had ever felt before.

    After a moment he pulled away and gazed at me; I held the smoke 
inside until I could hold it no longer, and I let out a thin veil from my lips, 
just like he had. Only after the smoke left me did I cough a few times—as 
soon as I had regained my breath I stared at him and lo, I saw my Merry, 
the Hero of my Younger Days, the Singer of Night-a-Bye Songs, the 
Slayer of Bogey-monsters. My dear, sweet Merry, preserved exactly as 
how I shall always remember him, in moments when my love for him was 
the greatest. He was there like the sun, shining through his grown-up 
clothes and his grown-up pipe and his grown-up smile. I felt my heart 
flutter weakly at the sight of him, and I almost wept then and there. 
Instead, I pretended to be grown-up also, and I told him, ‘Do it again.’

    Merry did not reply, but I knew he would do it. So I lay on my back 
while Merry lounged on his side next to me, one arm propping his head up 
as we shared breaths of smoke and talked quietly about little things that I 
now cannot remember. The birds’ chirps echoed throughout the forest and 
the sunlight filtered down in patches, soaking into the ground. The air was 
golden and sweet and warm and smelt of grass and flowers, and I 
remember the tender almost-smile on Merry’s face each time he bent low 
to offer me his breath.

    I grew dizzy from it after a while; I had never smoked before, save that 
one time when he and I had stolen a discarded pipe from the trash heap 
and tried it out with poor, unrefined weed. It was a horrible experience, 
and I vowed to never smoke again.

    I was surprised at how quickly my mind was changed. That other weed 
might as well have been bark when compared to the richness of Old Toby, 
whose taste I believe was made much more enjoyable by the method in 
which it was given. I quickly grew to like it, then to love it, then to need it.

    And then there came that moment when Merry leant down to press his 
mouth to mine, and he never came back up; I placed my hand upon his 
shoulder and kept him down while I sucked the hot smoke from his mouth. 
Then I pursed my lips. I felt his tongue. I took hold of his shirt. His arm 
came across my chest. Our mouths drew away from each other’s and I 
sighed, releasing the smoke; I looked up and Merry’s face was before 
mine, expressionless and plain save for his eyes, which were like turbulent 
seas in a tempest of bare emotion.

    The air hung heavy and still all round, and neither of us breathed. The 
sound of the birds faded into a warm silence and nothing moved, not even 
the blood in our veins. We stared at each other for the longest time, and 
the world and everything in it stopped for a single moment; there was 
nothing, nothing save the depths of his eyes in which I saw the meaning of 
Life, and the meaning of /my/ life.

    I cannot remember what happened next that brought us to it, but all I 
remember when I became cognizant again was Merry on top of me, 
undoing my breeches while I clenched my fists in his curly hair and 
moaned against his hot, moist neck. Then he started to touch me, and it 
felt so good I almost went mad. I thought I was going to scream, so I put 
my teeth to the tender flesh where his neck met his shoulder and muted my 
cry against his skin; Merry grunted softly and the sound of him blinded me 
with darkness as I shuddered and bucked and all of my muscles became as 
stiff as iron. I thought I was dying, though I recall not caring at all, for I 
had never expected dying would feel so divine.

    Afterwards I remember lying there as still as death, staring at the trees 
above me, feeling the thick wetness in my breeches and listening to Merry 
explain it in a soft and shaking voice. ‘We cannot tell anyone about this,’ 
he said. ‘We must keep it a secret.’

    I would have held the promise even if he had not asked me, for I was 
still childish enough to want to keep that wonderful moment all to myself; 
it was mine, and so I kept it, for years and years to come. 

    And when I at last reached my tweens and earned a pipe of my own, 
sometimes, when Merry and I were alone, and the forest was warm and 
full of memory, I would set aside my pipe and turn to him with a smile, 
and we would share our breath in gentle, smoky kisses.


Fin