A Changing of Ways
Jan. 31st, 2006 10:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
auntiemeeshWell, my plan was to revel in an orgy of fic reading, and I did manage to read one or two things, but mostly I spent the evening hammering out chapter three of 'A Changing of Ways'. Boy was it stubborn! I've finally wrestled it into submission and so, all unbetaed, here it is.
Chapters one and two
Chapter three
Pippin listened without moving until the last faint sound of galloping hooves faded into the distance. Only after deep silence had returned to the house did he bring one trembling hand up to lightly trace over his lower lip, where a warm tactile memory of Merry’s kiss still lingered.
For one sweet, wonderful moment everything had been right in Pippin’s world and then it had all gone awry. What had he done wrong, Pippin wondered wretchedly as he remembered the change that had come over Merry’s face. Why would Merry kiss him in the first place if such a thing were so horrible, and if the kiss itself wasn’t horrible, then what had made Merry break away? Finally, unable to solve the riddle of Merry, and tired out by the trying, Pippin lay back on his pillows and watched the stars wheel in the night sky, waiting for morning and an end to the silence.
***
Frodo awoke with a start, heart pounding. He lay still, listening, and heard it again, a loud insistent knocking on the front door. Throwing on his dressing gown, he hurried down the hall, wondering what emergency could possibly have called someone out at this hour.
“I’m coming,” he called, hoping to calm the frantic knocking, to little avail. Finally reaching the door, he pulled it open, nearly receiving a rap on the nose for his efforts. Before he could do more than discern a cloaked figure on his doorstep the figure had brushed past him and entered the smial
“Sorry to wake you, Frodo. I would have camped out till morning, but it’s bloody cold out there for this early in September.”
“Merry?” Frodo asked, sleepily trying to make sense of what was going on. “I thought you were in Whitwell. Has something happened? Is something…” Frodo petered out, staring in amazement as Merry quite calmly shed his cloak and proceded to the kitchen.
“I’m just going to get a snack and then turn in, if you don’t mind, Cousin,” Merry said, as though he’d only stepped out for a moment, rather than arriving unexpectedly in the dead of night.
“Meriadoc Brandybuck,” Frodo said, rather firmly, “what are you doing here?”
Merry halted and turned around, not quite meeting Frodo’s eyes. “I just decided to come a few days early. I didn’t think you would mind.” A touch of well-practiced hurt sounded in his voice and Frodo leveled his young cousin a stern look, refusing to take any guff this early in the morning.
“In the middle of the night? You decided to pack up and leave your aunt and uncle’s in the middle of the night, because you just couldn’t bear the thought of being away from me for another minute?”
Merry flushed but didn’t answer. Realizing that this was getting him nowhere, and wanting to get back to his nice, warm bed before it got too cold, Frodo softened. “Very well, Merry. Of course you’re welcome here at any time, as you well know. Help yourself in the kitchen and then get some sleep. I’ll talk with you in the morning.” Giving in to a yawn, Frodo started back down the hall to his room and then stopped. “One thing, Merry. There are no servants here, as I’m sure you remember. Please hang your cloak up before you go to bed.”
Returning to his room, Frodo tiredly wondered what sort of tween drama was going to play itself out in the next few weeks. Merry was usually such a level-headed fellow that it was easy to forget sometimes that he was still only in his twenties.
***
Eglantine watched her youngest child surreptitiously over breakfast the next morning. Pippin was pale and subdued, with dark circles under his eyes. He was clearly upset by Merry’s absence, although he said nothing to that point. Indeed, he said almost nothing at all, beyond please and thank you. He didn’t eat, either, and that was a worrisome sign. Eglantine, herself, was rather worried by Merry’s absence. She knew her nephew well enough to know that he would only have left the way he did if he was greatly upset about something. Judging by the behavior of both lads yesterday afternoon, she guessed they’d had a falling out about something, and it must have escalated later in the evening, but Pippin evaded her eyes and would not be drawn into conversation. He needed to be pulled out of himself a little before being put to the question, she decided.
“I want you to go with your father when he drives in to the Great Smials this morning,” she announced after a moment’s thought. “There are some things I need and Pal won’t have time, he’ll be with Thain Ferumbras most of the day.
“Yes, ma’am,” Pippin replied, poking at his eggs with a knife, but not eating anything.
“And while you’re there, I’d like you to call on your Aunt Letty. I think it would do her good to see you.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Pippin answered again, sighing deeply. Eglantine spared him a sympathetic smile. Aunt Letty had moved home to the Smials just a few months before, after her husband died. She was still in deep mourning and tended to break out in tears over the most unexpected things. Eglantine knew that Pippin hated feeling like he’d made her cry, but it would distract him from his own problems.
“And Pippin?” she added, waiting until he was looking at her before continuing, “I know that you will be on your very best behavior today, and no one at Smials will be able to tell that you are pouting, hm?”
“I’m not pouting,” he immediately objected. Eglantine snorted in disbelief and a corner of his mouth lifted in a half-smile. “Fine, then. No pouting at the Smials. I’ll save that for here.”
“Good lad. Now give me a kiss and be off.”
Watching him go, she sighed and hoped that they would be able to hold on to him for a little longer, at least. It was only a matter of time, she knew, before he was off, traipsing the Shire with his cousins or on his own, exploring and testing the boundaries of his life. Thank the heavens she’d only one lad. The one was enough.
***
Merry slept until late in the afternoon. When he woke, his head ached and he felt sluggish and tired still. Remembering the events of the day before, he moaned and pulled the blankets up over his head. He couldn’t possibly face the world today. He would just hide in here until the everyone had forgotten him.
His plan was disrupted when there was a quiet knock at his bedroom door and it was pushed open. He listened to the footsteps crossing his room and hoped that Frodo was just leaving fresh towels or a tray. No such luck, however. His blankets were stripped off him and he found himself blinking in the bright sunlight streaming through open shutters.
Eyes adjusting to the light, he stared up at Frodo uncertainly and the older hobbit sighed and sat on the edge of Merry’s bed.
“You haven’t run away from home since you were sixteen years old, Merry. What happened?” He spoke compassionately, but his expression stated as clear as words that he wasn’t leaving this room until he had received a satisfactory answer.
“I didn’t ‘run away from home,’ Frodo,” he muttered, propping himself up on his elbows. “I left Whitwell a little earlier than planned, that’s all.”
“Yes, that’s what you said last night. It wasn’t convincing then, and it’s even less so now. What happened?”
Merry looked away, avoiding Frodo’s gaze, feeling himself to be at a distinct disadvantage in this conversation, still in bed and undressed, while Frodo, tidy and neat in russet breeches and coat, commanded an air of being completely in control.
“I … did something. I crossed a line and I can’t ever go back,” he answered sadly. “Pippin will never forgive me, and neither will Uncle Pad and Aunt Teenie, if Pippin tells them what happened.”
He clamped his lips together then, afraid of saying anything else, and turned to stare stonily at the wall.
“Merry, Pippin loves you.” Frodo spoke gently, reassuringly, as he had so many times when Merry was a small child and had gone to his beloved Frodo for help and comfort. “No matter what you’ve done, he will forgive you.”
“Not this time.” Merry could feel Frodo’s gaze measuring him, but he refused to turn around, afraid of what Frodo might see.
“Tell me about it, then, this horrible thing you’ve done.”
“I can’t,” Merry muttered again, desperately wanting Frodo to just let it lie.
“If you’ve done something so terrible that Pippin and his entire family should hate you for it,” Frodo said, apparently not receiving Merry’s silent messages, “then I suppose you think I’ll hate you as well, if you tell me about it. But somehow, I don’t think it’s as terrible as you think it is. And even if it is, even if you’ve really and truly done something unforgivable awful, I could never hate you and I will always help you.”
It was too much. Frodo’s unconditional support pushed Merry over the edge and he began to sob, heartbroken cries shaking his body. He felt himself being gathered up in strong arms, and unable to resist, he clung to Frodo until the storm had passed.
Pippin sat on the buckboard of the wagon, immersed in silence. He’d given up trying to figure out what he’d done wrong and had settled for feeling offended. Merry was the one who’d kissed him, after all. It wasn’t like Pippin had thrown himself, all unwelcome, on Merry. But it was Merry who’d turned away. He’d no right, Pippin told himself, to look so upset when he’d been the one doing the kissing in the first place.
He sighed heavily and his father looked at him sideways.
“I reckon you know something about why Merry took off so sudden last night,” Paladin said finally. “Did you have a fight, then?”
“I don’t know,” Pippin answered miserably, “it wasn’t really a fight, but I don’t know what it was. He came to my room last night to … talk, and then all of a sudden he just ran off.”
“You love him, don’t you?” Paladin asked softly, catching Pippin off guard.
Pippin didn’t answer, staring at his father in shock.
“I have eyes, Pippin,” Pal answered wryly. “Your mother and I have known for a long time that you like lads as much as lasses, and it only stands to reason you’d settle on Merry. Besides, you’ve been pining after him all summer, ever since your visit to Brandy Hall this spring.”
Pippin flushed to the tips of his ears at the thought of his parents discussing this between them. “Are you upset,” he asked, uncertain of this whole situation.
“Not upset, no,” his father answered honestly, “but a little concerned. It seems highly unlikely that Cousin Ferumbras is going to have any children at this point in his life and barring an heir of his body, I’m next in line to be Thain and Took. And you will be my heir in turn. You’ll need to wed, Pippin. Oh, not any time soon, certainly, but one day, you will need to take a wife and produce heirs of your own. And the same is true for Merry. One day he will be the Master of Buckland, and he too will need to wed and have children. You know this to be true.”
“Ferumbras never wed,” Pippin objected. “If he didn’t have to, why should I?”
“Pippin,” Pal chided, and Pippin let that line of questioning drop for the moment.
“That’s not really the problem at the moment, anyway,” Paladin continued. “Tell me what happened with Merry.”
“I was upset,” Pippin answered cautiously, “because he said he was leaving early for Bag End, and he came to my room to talk about it.” He paused and then decided to be completely honest with his father. “He – he kissed me, and I …kissed him back, and then he got this awful look on his face, like he’d just done something really terrible, and he ran out of the room.” He trailed off into unhappy silence.
“I see.” Paladin said nothing more for a long while. Indeed, they had almost reached the Great Smials before he continued. “Pippin, you know that Merry loves you. He always has and he always will. But this…this is different, and it’s not an easy thing. I wish I had a set of nice, simple answers to hand you, but it isn’t nice and simple. Not at all. And it’s even less simple for Merry than it is for you.”
***
Frodo frowned down at Merry, finally calm but still holding onto Frodo’s coat like a lifeline.
“Well, I figure you’ve done one of two things,” he finally said, hoping he was taking the right tack with this. “You’ve either beaten Pippin to a bloody pulp, something we’ve all wanted to do at one time or another, or you’ve given him a right good kiss, something else we’ve all wanted to do at one time or another.”
Merry stared up at Frodo in shock, but said nothing.
“’Fess up, my lad, and either way we can work it all out,” Frodo continued, refusing to back down now, “or continue to hide away in here until it’s time to go home, and lose Pippin altogether.”
“But…” Merry trailed off, seemingly unable to coherently formulate a thought.
“What’s it going to be, Merry?” Frodo pressed, refusing to let up until he’d gotten to the bottom of things. “Do you trust me or not? If not, then I have other things I need to be about.”
Merry looked down, picked at his thumbnail for a moment and then looked up again. “I kissed him.”
tbc
I have a technical question for anyone who knows anything about MS Word. I'm having serious spell check problems. Most of my files are fine, but the one I have 'A Changing of Ways' gives me an error message saying that it can't find the spell-checker file or something like that. If I open another file, one that works, and paste the text of Ways in, then suddenly, spellchecker goes out again. I have no idea how to fix this, and really could use some help.
Chapters one and two
Chapter three
Pippin listened without moving until the last faint sound of galloping hooves faded into the distance. Only after deep silence had returned to the house did he bring one trembling hand up to lightly trace over his lower lip, where a warm tactile memory of Merry’s kiss still lingered.
For one sweet, wonderful moment everything had been right in Pippin’s world and then it had all gone awry. What had he done wrong, Pippin wondered wretchedly as he remembered the change that had come over Merry’s face. Why would Merry kiss him in the first place if such a thing were so horrible, and if the kiss itself wasn’t horrible, then what had made Merry break away? Finally, unable to solve the riddle of Merry, and tired out by the trying, Pippin lay back on his pillows and watched the stars wheel in the night sky, waiting for morning and an end to the silence.
***
Frodo awoke with a start, heart pounding. He lay still, listening, and heard it again, a loud insistent knocking on the front door. Throwing on his dressing gown, he hurried down the hall, wondering what emergency could possibly have called someone out at this hour.
“I’m coming,” he called, hoping to calm the frantic knocking, to little avail. Finally reaching the door, he pulled it open, nearly receiving a rap on the nose for his efforts. Before he could do more than discern a cloaked figure on his doorstep the figure had brushed past him and entered the smial
“Sorry to wake you, Frodo. I would have camped out till morning, but it’s bloody cold out there for this early in September.”
“Merry?” Frodo asked, sleepily trying to make sense of what was going on. “I thought you were in Whitwell. Has something happened? Is something…” Frodo petered out, staring in amazement as Merry quite calmly shed his cloak and proceded to the kitchen.
“I’m just going to get a snack and then turn in, if you don’t mind, Cousin,” Merry said, as though he’d only stepped out for a moment, rather than arriving unexpectedly in the dead of night.
“Meriadoc Brandybuck,” Frodo said, rather firmly, “what are you doing here?”
Merry halted and turned around, not quite meeting Frodo’s eyes. “I just decided to come a few days early. I didn’t think you would mind.” A touch of well-practiced hurt sounded in his voice and Frodo leveled his young cousin a stern look, refusing to take any guff this early in the morning.
“In the middle of the night? You decided to pack up and leave your aunt and uncle’s in the middle of the night, because you just couldn’t bear the thought of being away from me for another minute?”
Merry flushed but didn’t answer. Realizing that this was getting him nowhere, and wanting to get back to his nice, warm bed before it got too cold, Frodo softened. “Very well, Merry. Of course you’re welcome here at any time, as you well know. Help yourself in the kitchen and then get some sleep. I’ll talk with you in the morning.” Giving in to a yawn, Frodo started back down the hall to his room and then stopped. “One thing, Merry. There are no servants here, as I’m sure you remember. Please hang your cloak up before you go to bed.”
Returning to his room, Frodo tiredly wondered what sort of tween drama was going to play itself out in the next few weeks. Merry was usually such a level-headed fellow that it was easy to forget sometimes that he was still only in his twenties.
***
Eglantine watched her youngest child surreptitiously over breakfast the next morning. Pippin was pale and subdued, with dark circles under his eyes. He was clearly upset by Merry’s absence, although he said nothing to that point. Indeed, he said almost nothing at all, beyond please and thank you. He didn’t eat, either, and that was a worrisome sign. Eglantine, herself, was rather worried by Merry’s absence. She knew her nephew well enough to know that he would only have left the way he did if he was greatly upset about something. Judging by the behavior of both lads yesterday afternoon, she guessed they’d had a falling out about something, and it must have escalated later in the evening, but Pippin evaded her eyes and would not be drawn into conversation. He needed to be pulled out of himself a little before being put to the question, she decided.
“I want you to go with your father when he drives in to the Great Smials this morning,” she announced after a moment’s thought. “There are some things I need and Pal won’t have time, he’ll be with Thain Ferumbras most of the day.
“Yes, ma’am,” Pippin replied, poking at his eggs with a knife, but not eating anything.
“And while you’re there, I’d like you to call on your Aunt Letty. I think it would do her good to see you.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Pippin answered again, sighing deeply. Eglantine spared him a sympathetic smile. Aunt Letty had moved home to the Smials just a few months before, after her husband died. She was still in deep mourning and tended to break out in tears over the most unexpected things. Eglantine knew that Pippin hated feeling like he’d made her cry, but it would distract him from his own problems.
“And Pippin?” she added, waiting until he was looking at her before continuing, “I know that you will be on your very best behavior today, and no one at Smials will be able to tell that you are pouting, hm?”
“I’m not pouting,” he immediately objected. Eglantine snorted in disbelief and a corner of his mouth lifted in a half-smile. “Fine, then. No pouting at the Smials. I’ll save that for here.”
“Good lad. Now give me a kiss and be off.”
Watching him go, she sighed and hoped that they would be able to hold on to him for a little longer, at least. It was only a matter of time, she knew, before he was off, traipsing the Shire with his cousins or on his own, exploring and testing the boundaries of his life. Thank the heavens she’d only one lad. The one was enough.
***
Merry slept until late in the afternoon. When he woke, his head ached and he felt sluggish and tired still. Remembering the events of the day before, he moaned and pulled the blankets up over his head. He couldn’t possibly face the world today. He would just hide in here until the everyone had forgotten him.
His plan was disrupted when there was a quiet knock at his bedroom door and it was pushed open. He listened to the footsteps crossing his room and hoped that Frodo was just leaving fresh towels or a tray. No such luck, however. His blankets were stripped off him and he found himself blinking in the bright sunlight streaming through open shutters.
Eyes adjusting to the light, he stared up at Frodo uncertainly and the older hobbit sighed and sat on the edge of Merry’s bed.
“You haven’t run away from home since you were sixteen years old, Merry. What happened?” He spoke compassionately, but his expression stated as clear as words that he wasn’t leaving this room until he had received a satisfactory answer.
“I didn’t ‘run away from home,’ Frodo,” he muttered, propping himself up on his elbows. “I left Whitwell a little earlier than planned, that’s all.”
“Yes, that’s what you said last night. It wasn’t convincing then, and it’s even less so now. What happened?”
Merry looked away, avoiding Frodo’s gaze, feeling himself to be at a distinct disadvantage in this conversation, still in bed and undressed, while Frodo, tidy and neat in russet breeches and coat, commanded an air of being completely in control.
“I … did something. I crossed a line and I can’t ever go back,” he answered sadly. “Pippin will never forgive me, and neither will Uncle Pad and Aunt Teenie, if Pippin tells them what happened.”
He clamped his lips together then, afraid of saying anything else, and turned to stare stonily at the wall.
“Merry, Pippin loves you.” Frodo spoke gently, reassuringly, as he had so many times when Merry was a small child and had gone to his beloved Frodo for help and comfort. “No matter what you’ve done, he will forgive you.”
“Not this time.” Merry could feel Frodo’s gaze measuring him, but he refused to turn around, afraid of what Frodo might see.
“Tell me about it, then, this horrible thing you’ve done.”
“I can’t,” Merry muttered again, desperately wanting Frodo to just let it lie.
“If you’ve done something so terrible that Pippin and his entire family should hate you for it,” Frodo said, apparently not receiving Merry’s silent messages, “then I suppose you think I’ll hate you as well, if you tell me about it. But somehow, I don’t think it’s as terrible as you think it is. And even if it is, even if you’ve really and truly done something unforgivable awful, I could never hate you and I will always help you.”
It was too much. Frodo’s unconditional support pushed Merry over the edge and he began to sob, heartbroken cries shaking his body. He felt himself being gathered up in strong arms, and unable to resist, he clung to Frodo until the storm had passed.
Pippin sat on the buckboard of the wagon, immersed in silence. He’d given up trying to figure out what he’d done wrong and had settled for feeling offended. Merry was the one who’d kissed him, after all. It wasn’t like Pippin had thrown himself, all unwelcome, on Merry. But it was Merry who’d turned away. He’d no right, Pippin told himself, to look so upset when he’d been the one doing the kissing in the first place.
He sighed heavily and his father looked at him sideways.
“I reckon you know something about why Merry took off so sudden last night,” Paladin said finally. “Did you have a fight, then?”
“I don’t know,” Pippin answered miserably, “it wasn’t really a fight, but I don’t know what it was. He came to my room last night to … talk, and then all of a sudden he just ran off.”
“You love him, don’t you?” Paladin asked softly, catching Pippin off guard.
Pippin didn’t answer, staring at his father in shock.
“I have eyes, Pippin,” Pal answered wryly. “Your mother and I have known for a long time that you like lads as much as lasses, and it only stands to reason you’d settle on Merry. Besides, you’ve been pining after him all summer, ever since your visit to Brandy Hall this spring.”
Pippin flushed to the tips of his ears at the thought of his parents discussing this between them. “Are you upset,” he asked, uncertain of this whole situation.
“Not upset, no,” his father answered honestly, “but a little concerned. It seems highly unlikely that Cousin Ferumbras is going to have any children at this point in his life and barring an heir of his body, I’m next in line to be Thain and Took. And you will be my heir in turn. You’ll need to wed, Pippin. Oh, not any time soon, certainly, but one day, you will need to take a wife and produce heirs of your own. And the same is true for Merry. One day he will be the Master of Buckland, and he too will need to wed and have children. You know this to be true.”
“Ferumbras never wed,” Pippin objected. “If he didn’t have to, why should I?”
“Pippin,” Pal chided, and Pippin let that line of questioning drop for the moment.
“That’s not really the problem at the moment, anyway,” Paladin continued. “Tell me what happened with Merry.”
“I was upset,” Pippin answered cautiously, “because he said he was leaving early for Bag End, and he came to my room to talk about it.” He paused and then decided to be completely honest with his father. “He – he kissed me, and I …kissed him back, and then he got this awful look on his face, like he’d just done something really terrible, and he ran out of the room.” He trailed off into unhappy silence.
“I see.” Paladin said nothing more for a long while. Indeed, they had almost reached the Great Smials before he continued. “Pippin, you know that Merry loves you. He always has and he always will. But this…this is different, and it’s not an easy thing. I wish I had a set of nice, simple answers to hand you, but it isn’t nice and simple. Not at all. And it’s even less simple for Merry than it is for you.”
***
Frodo frowned down at Merry, finally calm but still holding onto Frodo’s coat like a lifeline.
“Well, I figure you’ve done one of two things,” he finally said, hoping he was taking the right tack with this. “You’ve either beaten Pippin to a bloody pulp, something we’ve all wanted to do at one time or another, or you’ve given him a right good kiss, something else we’ve all wanted to do at one time or another.”
Merry stared up at Frodo in shock, but said nothing.
“’Fess up, my lad, and either way we can work it all out,” Frodo continued, refusing to back down now, “or continue to hide away in here until it’s time to go home, and lose Pippin altogether.”
“But…” Merry trailed off, seemingly unable to coherently formulate a thought.
“What’s it going to be, Merry?” Frodo pressed, refusing to let up until he’d gotten to the bottom of things. “Do you trust me or not? If not, then I have other things I need to be about.”
Merry looked down, picked at his thumbnail for a moment and then looked up again. “I kissed him.”
tbc
I have a technical question for anyone who knows anything about MS Word. I'm having serious spell check problems. Most of my files are fine, but the one I have 'A Changing of Ways' gives me an error message saying that it can't find the spell-checker file or something like that. If I open another file, one that works, and paste the text of Ways in, then suddenly, spellchecker goes out again. I have no idea how to fix this, and really could use some help.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-02-01 07:02 am (UTC)But best off was the scene with Pippin and Paladin. Yay for writing them in a clearly loving and understanding relationship! That is just the sort of thing I like to see. I felt like applauding that bit :D
I hope you update as soon as you can. I really love this story!
no subject
Date: 2006-02-01 07:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-05 02:44 am (UTC)Oh, I love that! You really made me LOL at that frank statement. Such a lovely, lovely fic! I'm so glad you kept this up. Is there more of this, or have I - with my knack for being a day late and a dollar short - reached the end of the fic so far? If THAT'S the case, then damn the torpedos, lassie, full speed ahead!
no subject
Date: 2007-06-05 03:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-05 03:09 am (UTC)