By: Dana
Summary: "I was wondering if you'd ever come home."
Characters: Pippin, Diamond, Faramir Took
Pairings:: Pippin/Diamond
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Author's Notes: A Christmas-ficlet for Caroline.
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.

"I was wondering if you'd ever come home," Diamond says, and she wonders - like she sometimes does - if he knows that she means it, more than she should have to mean it, how each time he goes off riding, she's left wondering if he'll be riding back.

(Even when he's with her, she's not always so certain that he's really, truly there.)

Pippin just grins - because he just doesn't know - with little Faramir against his hip. He isn't so little now, though, but maybe that's just what Diamond wants to think - he'll be three, and then he'll be six, and before she knows it, he'll be coming of age.

Pippin's voice leaks back into her conscious stream of thought, colour against white and grey, " - and I was thinking maybe we could all go out for a picnic, and get away from the Smials. Do you like the sound of that, Farry-lad?"

"Well, his mum does," Diamond says, and laughs.

"Good," Pippin says, and burying a kiss in copper-tinted curls, he lets his son down; Faramir, quite proud of himself, toddles over to Diamond, on uncertain, baby-fat legs. Pippin, quite proud as well, and his eyes - sometimes leaf-green, sometimes faded like the sea, right now flecks of brilliant gold mixed with lighter green - his eyes are shining so that she knows that he's here.

Diamond scoops Faramir, giggling, up into her arms, and Diamond smiles over his curls at Pippin, as Pippin smiles back. Then, when Pippin steps closer, and hugs them both, wrapping them both in the warmth of his arms, Diamond turns her head, tilting it up so that she can kiss Pippin's cheek.

"I love you, you know."

"I know, and I love you."

(Is it sea-spray, she wonders, or salt-tears, that I taste on his skin?)