By: Dana
Summary: The days are growing longer. The dreams are not so bad.
Characters: Pippin, Merry
Pairings:: Merry/Pippin
Rating: PG
Warnings: Slash
Author's Notes: A Christmas-ficlet for Shirasade.
Disclaimer: The author makes no claim to owning the rights of anything to do with J.R.R. Tolkien or New Line Cinema. Any and all characters and situations that have been borrowed are for the author's personal use only, and for the entertainment of others.

The days are growing longer. The dreams are not so bad. He is thirty-three, now, and Pippin remembers a time when that would have mattered - has he truly only now come of age? That shouldn't be possible - he feels too tired, too old, for this life.

"What are we doing with ourselves, Merry?"

"I wouldn't know."

Pippin laughs - because he still can - and fixes Merry with his stare. Merry, who is holding back, living a tween's life, when he's old enough to be a husband, and a father, as well.

(Clutching at possibilities. Hoping for something more.)

But there are reasons - reasons - and he's glad that Merry, peculiar or not, is not off and living some other life. - the slight, soft crack of weathered lips - the days are growing longer, and the year is near to turning, autumn grey fading into winter's chill. Perhaps Merry had not meant to kiss Pippin, but if he'd not, it would have been a real surprise, as Pippin kissed him back. No - Merry is meant to be here, at Crickhollow, living out this time that is theirs.

"But when we marry - "

I'd rather marry you.

"Let's not talk of that now."

Pippin longs for summer, for heat - riding out, and across the breadth of the Shire, known and renowned - the almost-touch of Merry's hand, the almost-taste of Merry's mouth. Too many almost-happenings, Pippin thinks. Something that is almost-right, and needs to be real.

Pippin is the one to kiss Merry, not as Pippin had haphazardly thought, and there is little grace, not when the small space of breath between them, dark and warm and quiet, tastes of surprise. "Pippin - " Merry gasps.

"The thought of you will drive me mad, Merry," Pippin whispers, and he knows madness, has seen it himself, growing, burning, in a great Man's eyes. "Of not having you, of letting you slip away, like wind through my fingers, while you could be mine."

Fear or reluctance - no, hope, hope, this must be hope - and Merry clutches Pippin close, as Pippin clutches at possibilities, and they kiss. (How long has he wanted? Waited? This cannot only be now. This wanting, it has had to grow.) Is it odd - peculiar, or strange, or even queer - that he already knows Merry's touch, as well as he knows his own?

(Pippin feels winter in his bones, but the air tastes of spring.)