Written for the LOTR Community "Summertime Blues" fixed-length ficlet challenge. 272 words.
As a child he’d thought he’d loved Lavender Brandybuck, and he would exchange examples of her name flower and a clumsy child’s kiss for her baking.
As a youth he’d shared increasingly more experienced kisses with Pearl Took, his first serious love, and dreamed of doing more, of sharing his heart and body with her, of bringing forth children to fill the long empty bedrooms of Bag End and to play in its gardens.
As a Hobbit grown he’d been afraid to even seek to kiss Narcissa Boffin, although he knew she loved him desperately and he found himself increasingly drawn to her in return, terrified of what something that seemed a part of him wanted him to do to her.
He’d never dreamed of offering a kiss to those women of the outer world who’d fascinated him—Tom Bombadil’s bright Goldberry, the glassblower’s daughter, the Lady Éowyn, the Lady Arwen Undómiel. Each was already taken, had given her heart into the keeping of another he respected who loved her devotedly. How could he even consider tempting one of these to rethink the love already established before he’d first met them?
When newly come he’d kissed the Elf maiden Livwen as an adult kisses a child, in comfort, in reassurance.
But now the time had come. Livwen leaned over him to kiss him, and at long last he kissed her in return as lovers ever had, heart to heart, spirits entwined, and he smiled into her eyes, just before he slipped out of his fading body to dance with the stars in the vibrant midnight blue of a midsummer night’s sky.