By: Dana
Summary: In the dead of night.
Characters: Estella, Pippin, Merry, Diamond
Pairings: Merry/Pippin/Diamond/Estella, focuses on Pippin/Estella
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Polyamory, slash
Author's Notes: For Aralinde's birthday - enjoy the hobbits, and happy birthday, dear!
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.

Estella wakes (it's a slow and steady thing), drifting up out of dream veiled like fog and mist and shade, and into an almost smothering heat. She gasps, drawing in breath, and her eyes open slowly; she blinks, groaning, yawning, shifting, feeling the ache of sleeping muscles as they begin to come awake, feeling the smooth-but-rough pad of fingertips as they rub circles on her bare hip, too.

No, it isn't heat that smothers, something more comfortable, instead.

"Pippin," she exhales, face half-buried in pillow, bodies touching, warm from the top of her head down to the tips of her toes. "You shouldn't be awake."

Pippin's laugh is soft (it ought to be, because the bed might be big, but there are hobbits close enough that he'd not want to wake, and Estella knows as well as Pippin just how cranky Diamond is if she's woken early, and Merry is quite the same), and he kisses her shoulder, and then her neck, letting his palm curve against her hip, fingers dipping and sliding to press against her thigh, then back up, like they're writing out a story (maybe it's their own tale). "How did you know it was me?"

"Your hands," Estella mumbles, almost unintelligible through sleep, but somehow achingly clear. "I know your hands."

"Oh," he exhales, and nothing else, and she groans again, softly, feeling heat where his fingers slide, his palm pressing hard enough against flesh so she can feel it in the bone, and his breath is damp against her skin and it prickles slightly, a rush of warmth when he exhales that is then claimed by sudden cool.

"Go back to sleep."

"Maybe I already am," he says. "Maybe this is a dream."

"I think not," she says, yawning, and Pippin draws her closer, curving against her, and Estella shifts until she's comfortable, and they fit, and the heat of his body is matched by the heat of Merry's at her back; and Estella can feel Diamond's arm, where it curves over Pippin's side but now her hand is pressed against Estella's stomach, and Diamond is incredible heat, too.

Estella is liquid, flowing, melting, in this comfortable, all consuming heat, and she falls back into sleep, and dream, with Pippin's kiss flaring suddenly white hot against bare skin, promising things she never thought possible.

This world where she is so amazingly loved and in love.