By: Dana
Summary: Merry wonders how Pippin can still sleep.
Characters: Merry, Pippin
Pairings:: non-slash at a glance, though I did write it with something more in mind
Rating: PG
Warnings: Angst
Author's Notes: A Christmas-ficlet for dreamflower.
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.

Pippin dreams so hard, it's a wonder he doesn't wake; a low whimper, twisting and turning, and Merry watches, like he's the one who dreams, as Pippin's hands twist, as fingers coiling about soft linen. Pippin cries out; surely, Merry thinks, Pippin will wake.

Pippin doesn't, though, calming into deeper sleep, whimpering still, darkness behind closed eyelids. They have taken to sleeping in the same bed, if only because it feels right - goodness, we were separated long enough, and not for our own intentions. The less we are separated, now, the better.

Pippin is right. And Merry, at least, when he can't sleep, can watch Pippin as he, restlessly, does.

Merry could wake him - and he should - but Pippin is tired, a deep exhaustion that Merry knows, himself, like ice and cold and dread, something that remains, that lingers more potent than any memory, wrapping about his bones. Pippin has often talked in his sleep - in a way, this is nothing new.

He can't wake him - at least, not now.

If they were younger, if this world was some other, if they were not in a city of cold stone and tall towers, then Merry would have woke him, would have held him close, perhaps, a story falling glib from his tongue, soothing the darkness, and lulling Pippin back into sleep. Merry is too old - or, perhaps, the world is too changed.

He has forgotten his happy stories, left only with dread and thought.

(Will they ever go home?)

Pippin twists, hard, pulling the covers tight about him. Merry sits back at the edge of the bed, gingerly - that's right, he'd been standing, watching - and reaches out, unable now to resist himself, soothing at the damp consistency of Pippin's dream-sweat-wet curls.

"Pippin - it's time to wake."

Pippin starts - his eyes open, and he blinks, not quite awake, left in that between after sleeping before a mind is fully aware. "Merry," he says, a moment later.

("Merry," Pippin has said, soothing his hand through Merry's curls. "You needn't tell me, cousin. Just know that I'm here."

Merry has had his own dark dreams.)

"Why aren't you sleeping?" Pippin asks though, quite tired, he doesn't rise. "The hour must still be late."

"The air smells of coming dawn."

Pippin closes one eye, and frowns. Then, mouth consumed by a yawn, the other closes, too. Through with that, both his eyes open. It is awful, Merry thinks. Daylight is different, when there is cheer and light, but here in darkness, the chill of spring and shadow biting at his bones, it's never so clear.

"Lay back down with me, Merry," Pippin says, sleep softening his features, "and I'll tell you something."

"A story?"

"Perhaps."

Merry does, and Pippin pulls covers free from where they had been twisted, grunting and turning and then again settling down. He curls against Merry, though Merry is lying on his back. "I thought that I was going to die, Merry," Pippin whispers. "And when I thought that, I thought that you would die, too; it wasn't so terrible, then. We'd still have been together, too."

"Pippin, I - "

Merry turns, and Pippin is looking at him, eyes still open, yes, but perhaps the hold of sleep had been deeper, and Pippin thinks this is nothing more than some other dream.

"You're here with me now."

Merry's heart thumps hard in his chest - Pippin is right, after all, and shouldn't that mean something, with this dread, and this worry? - and Pippin closes his eyes, settling back down into deeper sleep.

Merry closes his eyes, and joins him.