By: Dana
Summary: Merry wonders.
Characters: Merry, Pippin (Estella)
Pairings: Merry/Estella/Pippin rather loosely implied
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Slash. Het. Implications. (Threesome itself is implied, but there.)
Author's Notes: Written for Open Challenge #1 on drabble_a_trois, using prompt #1, Realize.
Series Index: Roads Go On and Years Go By (I think).
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.

Merry, hardly concerned on whether it would have been gentlehobbitly or not, found himself wondering who Pippin's first had been. It most certainly hadn't been him – not that he was concerned with that, either. It was sheer curiosity, really, and so he asked Pippin: and Pippin, at a glance a rather well-favoured lad, laughed and grinned, though then he kissed Merry's cheek.

'Well? Who was it, then?'

'I'm not saying,' said Pippin, grinning still. He was being absolutely bothersome, now, and Merry that hardly seemed fair. Well, at least he hadn't said a gentlehobbit doesn't kiss and tell. Pippin, neck-deep in kissing friends, rather wasn't as gentlehobbitly as some others Merry could have named.

'Ask Estella,' Pippin said, after much convincing (and with the promise of all of Merry's desserts, for the next month); and Pippin laughed at him, afterwards, saying: 'Ah, Merry, you should see your face!'

Merry did his best to act unperturbed (really, he was only somewhat out of sorts). He liked Estella well-enough, her older brother's tag-along no more. Rather like Pippin, really, and him having grown to a tween.

So Merry spoke with Estella as soon he could (it meant he wrote her, and her reply took an age in return): and she wouldn't speak a word, written or no, which meant that there was one more Took against him, and not one of them was wanting to play fair.

He should have realised that sooner, if only because there was Took in him, too.