Nearly Tomorrow
[ Merry/Pippin . dedicated to Magickalmolly on her birthday ] G
"It's nearly tomorrow," Pippin said.
Merry looked up from where he sat on the turned down bed, undoing the cuffs of his shirt with fingers still sticky from raspberry jam. Pippin was standing in the center of the room, peering at his hands with an expression of both wonder and mild dissatisfaction. "Nearly tomorrow and my birthday shall be over." When Pippin looked up towards Merry, he could see the care collecting in the basin of Pippin's pale green eyes.
When Merry beckoned him with the flutter of an outstretched hand, Pippin came without hesitation and sat down beside his cousin on the bed. Pippin appeared older in the flickering orange glow of the candle; it deepened the shadows that traveled across his face and deepened the wrinkles that collected at the corners of Pippin's eyes when he smiled.
In his heart, Merry feared the day those lines would no longer be ones of mirth or laughter, but rather the slow accumulation of worry upon young Pippin's face. Merry never told Pippin this, however. Instead, he carried the fear with him silently; he buried deep it within the soft brown earth of his soul, where it waited for the day to take root and push through the soil, blossoming into truth. Terrible and beautiful were the fears that visited Meriadoc Brandybuck during the dark hours of the night as he lay beside his sleeping cousin, but he would never share them.
In the dimness, Merry searched Pippin's face with his eyes and fingers, each of them finally resting upon the rise of Pippin's left cheekbone. The trace of a scar, faded with the passage of time, glistened faintly there, and Pippin's lips threatened a smile when Merry touched it. It had been ages ago, it seemed, that day in late summer. They had both succeeded in obliterating the apple tarts Aunt Eglantine had made for his uncle's birthday celebration later that night. To escape reprimand, Merry suggested that they climb into one of the large oak trees down the path.
They spent hours amidst the sweet scent of its shiny green leaves and when they reluctantly began to climb down, Pippin accidentally slipped and fell to the ground upon his hands and his face. Before turning home that night, Merry used the sleeve of his shirt to wipe the tears from young Peregrin's cheeks and clean the wound with water from a small stream-all the while cooing delicate reassurances and round words into Pippin's hair.
The memory made Merry smile with the fondness of it, and he laughed the kind of laugh his mother used when she talked about her distant youth. "Sometimes I fear you will be the undoing of me, Peregrin Took," Merry said, and Pippin's eyes suddenly flickered wider and brighter. The shadows across his face seemed to retreat as his expression opened at Merry's words.
"Then come undone, Merry," he whispered, drawing both of his legs up onto the bed. "Come undone, and we shall bind ourselves back together again before the morning rises." Pippin moved closer and leaned in towards Merry, who could smell the day's revelry still clinging to Pippin's skin. It smelled of sun and honey, like the spring rain that would fall upon Buckland without clouds. "Let's bind this day up with something grand, Merry," Pippin said, and touched his hand softly to Merry's chest.
Above them that night, the wooden beams creaked as the wind outside pressed down upon the walls of the burrow. The wind continued through the listless boughs of the sighing trees and into the darkness. As it traveled down the opaque stretch of the Brandywine, it bent down to gently kiss its glassy surface and carried all traces of Peregrin Took's twenty third birthday away with it.
