Disclaimers: 1. Whoever owns The Lord of the Rings must necessarily have huge amounts of money. 2. Eggo Waffles does not have huge amounts of money. Ergo: 3. Eggo Waffles does not own The Lord of the Rings.

Faramir woke the following morning with the memory of his pharmaceutically-fueled dream still fresh in his mind, his stomach roiling with hunger and his brain troubled by the presence of watermarks on the hardwood flooring, and so when he opened the pantry door and found Boromir hanging upside-down from one of the upper shelves, he was not nearly as surprised as one might suspect.

Of course, he still dropped the jar of raspberry preserves he was holding and let out a bloodcurdling shriek that succeeded in touching an octave he hadn't hit since his prepubescent days, but he managed to not to faint or do anything similarly silly. This, he felt, showed vast levels of self-restraint.

Boromir opened one eye blearily and winced at the thin sliver of sunlight that had been allowed into the dark space by the partially-ajar door.

"Would you shut the damn door already? I'm trying to sleep, you know."

"This is my pantry!" sputtered Faramir.

"All the more reason not to come barging in when someone's having a nap. It's not hospitable."

"The rules of hospitality," declared Faramir peremptorily, "extend only to guests. You are not a guest. I didn't invite you here, and I certainly didn't give you permission to sleep in my pantry."

"You let me in, didn't you? Doesn't that make me a sort of... guest-by-default?" ventured Boromir, shuffling along the bottom of the shelf to avoid the light.

Faramir opened the door wider. "It makes you an intruder," he said. "Besides, you're dead. I don't allow dead things in the larder."

"Tell that to this can of albacore tuna," replied Boromir, nodding to a can near his head. "Then again, I've never been entirely convinced that that stuff is real. Imrahil's a sneaky bastard. Did you know that all the collection bins from his rubber-recycling program go straight to his fish-processing factories?"

Faramir glared at him. Boromir sighed.

"I can't come out, Faramir."

"Why not?" demanded Faramir.

"The sunlight. It... bothers me."

"I'll get you a bottle of sunscreen."

"That won't do. Close all the curtains and shut the doors, and I'll see what I can do."

Grumbling, Faramir shuffled about the kitchen, pulling drapes closed as he went. As the door to the foyer (which, Faramir noticed with some irritation, was not flooded at all) snapped shut with a dry click, Faramir called out, "Well? Is that better?"

"Much," said Boromir, emerging from the closet and standing easily in the center of the room, much more relaxed now in the renewed darkness. "Nice kitchen you've got here."

"My wife would be very pleased to hear you say that. I personally could have gone for fewer spice racks and a beer fridge," replied Faramir. "Well, since you're here, I might as well make you breakfast. What do you want? Eggs? Waffles?"

Boromir waved his hand dismissively. "Never mind. I already drank."

"Liquid breakfast for you, huh?" replied Faramir. "Well, if there's anything stronger than cranberry juice in this house, you'll have to tell me where it's hiding. I certainly haven't had a whiff of it since Aragorn's coronation. And I needed quite a lot after his acceptance speech."

"No, no, I didn't mean alcohol," clarified Boromir. "I just nipped down to your kennels. The bloodhounds, as their name suggests, were especially good."

Faramir, who was in the process of popping a waffle into his toaster, turned around very, very slowly. "Do you mean to say," he said in a low, deliberate voice, "that you... ate... my hounds?"

"Oh, no, not at all. Just their blood," replied his brother quickly. "It didn't do them any harm, I promise. Actually, you may very well be thanking me later. Their tracking skills will be very much improved, and as for their teeth"—and here he smiled broadly, and Faramir noticed for the first time that he now sported extraordinary long, sharp canines—"well, let's just say that I pity the next thief who tries to break into your chicken coop."

Teeth. Blood. Bite marks. It all clicked suddenly in Faramir's mind.

"The horses... the rabbits! That was you all along!" he cried accusingly at Boromir. "You... you... do you have any idea how much trouble that whole business has cost me?"

"Well, ex-cuse me for needing sustenance to survive, little brother," said Boromir, rolling his eyes again behind his green-tinted goggles.

"But... blood! Why blood? Why can't you just settle for cornflakes like everybody else? Why do you have to be so difficult all the time?" Faramir complained, gesticulating furiously with the container of syrup he was holding. "And what's all this about 'survival'? You don't need to 'survive'. You're dead."

"And yet here I am in your kitchen."

"Much to my chagrin."

"I would've thought you'd be happier to see me. After all, we are—were—rather close, you know."

"Close is one thing. Bursting into a man's house in the middle of the night and sleeping in his pantry and drinking his livestock's blood and Valar-knows-what else is something else entirely."

"I didn't exactly 'burst in', did I? After all, you opened the window."

"A decision I'm increasingly beginning to regret." Faramir sighed discontentedly. "Well, go on and explain. There is an explanation, I trust?"

"Of sorts. I was dead for a while," said Boromir, perching himself on the edge of the counter. "I came down the river in a boat..."

"Yes, I saw you. Thanks for that, by the way; it was a real treat being the one who had to deliver that piece of news to Father."

Boromir's expression became exasperated. "You're right, Faramir. I got myself shot into a pincushion with poisoned arrows and then floated myself down to Osgiliath for the express purpose of making you miserable."

"It's nice to hear you to finally acknowledge that."

"My pleasure. To continue," said Boromir, "the Anduin carried me all the way to the Bay of Belfalas and out to sea. I was sort of semi-conscious of everything that was happening, but it didn't feel like it was happening to me, if you know what I mean—like those dreams you have where you're yourself and somebody else at the same time."

"I'm almost convinced I'm having one of those right now."

"So I was buffeted around in the Sea for a while—I'm not sure how long, maybe hours, maybe years—and when I finally woke up, I was in Aman."

Faramir gasped. "You woke up in Aman?! The true West? The Undying Lands? Eressëa? Elvenhome?"

"Yes, Faramir," said Boromir in a dull voice. "Elvenhome. The Home of the Elves. I suffered and died and floated all the way to a country full of Elves. Elves prancing. Elves singing. Elves reciting poetry. Elves singing poetry about other Elves prancing. Elves, Elves, Elves, Elves, Elves, Elves. Everywhere. Elves."

"That sounds wonderful!" cried Faramir rapturously.

"I hated it," said Boromir flatly.

"You what?"

"I hated it. It was like being back in Rivendell for the Council of Elrond, only about ten thousand times worse. I couldn't get away from the pointy-eared fiends. They were everywhere, like some kind of lavender-scented pestilence. There was only one other Man in the whole damn place, and he turned out to be Elrond's grandfather, of all (censored)ing things!" Boromir buried his face in his hands, as if caught in the grip of some traumatizing memory. "I tried to kill myself three times, actually, but apparently that sort of thing doesn't work when you're already dead. So, finally, I applied to Mandos."

"Mandos?!"

"Yes," said Boromir, "Mandos. I didn't have a song-and-dance routine worked out like that trollop Luthien, but apparently I made a fairly compelling argument. As it turns out, I was sent to Aman to atone for my sins."

"Your sins?"

"For failing the Fellowship. Apparently my deathbed apology to Aragorn didn't cover the bill. It was decided that Elvenhome was the place where I would be the most miserable, and so, instead of being sent to the sweet hereafter, I got shipped there instead. But Mandos apparently has no great love for Elves, either—mincing nancy-pantsed pansy-faced tree-(censored)ing freaks that they are—and I managed to convince him that my so-called crimes didn't warrant the punishment. So he arranged this instead."

"And what exactly is 'this'?" asked Faramir curiously. "What are you? Are you alive or dead?"

"I'm not entirely sure," said Boromir thoughtfully. "I haven't got a pulse or a heartbeat, and I don't need to breathe. But I have to drink plenty of blood—fresh blood—or I get weak and lethargic. Same thing if I stay out in the sunlight too long—that's why I sleep in dark places during the day and hunt at night."

"Can you get hurt?"

"I can feel pain like I used to, but I don't seem to sustain lasting injuries. I heal quickly," said Boromir. "Truthfully, I haven't experimented with it all that much. I'm afraid that if I kill myself off by accident I might end up back in Aman."

"I don't see how you can think this is better than Aman," replied Faramir, somewhat grumpily. "I mean, you have to live in darkness and obscurity and isolation and live off blood, for Eru's sake! Are there any benefits to this condition of yours?"

"Well, my sense are much sharper—well, all except my eyesight. Hence the need for these," said Boromir, tapping his night-vision goggles explanatorily. "But I can smell and hear much better. And I can hang upside-down from ceilings, like you saw earlier. Oh, and the sex is amazing."

"The what?" cried Faramir.

"The sex. Believe me, the kind of action I get now makes all those escapades of mine they used to gossip about in the barracks sound like kissing games," said Boromir, grinning smugly and baring his fangs again. "I don't know why, quite frankly—you'd think the teeth would put people off or something. It must be the ceiling thing. Would you believe that sex on a ceiling is about three times better than sex on a floor?"

"But you... how can you..." Faramir blushed heavily. "I mean, you haven't got a pulse. How do you... if there's no circulation, how does the blood get to..." He stammered and trailed off. "Oh, never mind."

"You always did have a terrible tendency to overthink these sorts of things, Faramir," said Boromir pityingly. "That's the reason your sex life was never as colorful as mine. Take that one time in that Rohirric brothel, for example..."

"I DON'T want to talk about that," cut in Faramir sharply.

"Fine, suit yourself," replied Boromir carelessly. "I'm just saying."

"So that mob of villagers you mentioned last night," said Faramir, hastily redirecting the conversation. "What was all that about? Someone not like your technique?"

"Actually, some farmer caught me in his henhouse, drinking blood from one of his chickens. It sort of escalated from there." Boromir shrugged. "I honestly don't see what all the hullabaloo was about. Whoever heard of so much fuss over one chicken?"

"Clearly, you weren't around when King Elessar and the Gondorian Board of Public Health put out that Avian Influenza Pandemic report last summer," said Faramir. "I guess I should almost be glad that the whole rabbit affair came up and took everyone's minds off birds for a while. Speaking of rabbits," added Faramir with a frown, "... the animals you bite—that you take blood from—they don't... die, do they?"

"No. That's one of the weirder aspects of my situation," said Boromir. "When I bite something, it takes on all the characteristics of my condition—the teeth, the bloodlust, the aversion to sunlight, the insane copulatory urges. I haven't been able to figure out why."

"So, if you bit, say, me," said Faramir, "then I would become just like you?"

"Are you offering, little brother?" said Boromir, licking his lips. "Because I am a bit peckish, now that you mention it—"

"Certainly not!" exclaimed Faramir, leaping a pace further away from Boromir. "I was just asking a hypothetical question!"

"Well, let me know if you change your mind," said Boromir, sounding a little disappointed. "It might be good for you. Improve your night-life, if you know what I mean."

"I'm perfectly satisfied on that score, thank you very much," said Faramir stiffly.

"Really, now? Is that why you're sleeping out on the couch, then? Wife too busy with her horseback-riding to make time for other recreational pursuits?"

"My wife hasn't been able to do any horseback-riding since you bit all our bloody horses!"

"Well, then I'd think you'd be thanking me for freeing up her schedule, now wouldn't I?"

"You... you are intolerable!" burst out Faramir, overcome with irritation. "Clearly it takes a force more powerful than death or Mandos to endow you with so much as an ounce of maturity!"

"I'm endowed with far more than a few measly ounces of maturity in the one place where it matters," said Boromir wickedly.

"Oh, shut up. You know that wasn't what I meant."

"Ah, don't be such a wet blanket, Faramir," said Boromir. "Admit it. You've missed my brotherly banter."

"I most certainly have not."

"Yes, you have."

"No, I haven't."

"Have."

"Haven't."

"Have."

"Haven't."

"Have."

"Haven't."

"Have."

"Haven't."

"Have."

"Haven't."

"Have. Oh, and your waffles are burning, by the way."

Faramir turned to check the toaster, and Boromir lunged forward and bit Faramir on the neck.

"Sorry," said Boromir several minutes later, drawing back and wiping his mouth on his sleeve. "I guess I was hungrier than I thought."

"Well, I suppose it was rather stupid of me to fall for the waffle trick," said Faramir resignedly, rubbing his neck. "That was the one you always used to do when you wanted to steal my coffee in the morning."

"Some things never change, eh?"

"Except when you stole my coffee I used to be simply caffeine-deprived, as opposed to transformed into an undead bloodsucking creature of darkness."

"There's actually not a huge difference. You were always unnaturally dependant on your morning jolt."

"Hardy ha ha," muttered Faramir. "So what happens now? I don't feel any different than before."

"It may take a while for you to feel the full effects. Oh, but think of the fun we'll have, Faramir!"

"Drinking rabbit blood and running from angry villagers? Yes, I can hardly wait," replied Faramir, rolling his eyes.

"Well, we could do that. Or," Boromir said, with a meaningful glance, "we could test out the possibilities of your kitchen ceiling."

"What?" exclaimed Faramir, utterly horrified. "I... are you suggesting...?"

"Exactly what it sounds like I'm suggesting."

"But... but that's sick!... and, and wrong... and, and..."

"Oh, come now," said Boromir dismissively. "For crying out loud, Faramir, we're undead bloodsucking creatures of darkness; we're not tied down to those sorts of finicky social constraints. And, after all," he went on, his voice suddenly playful, "it's not as if we're blood relatives anymore!" And then he was clutching his sides in mirth at his own joke.

"You," said Faramir disdainfully, "are such an idiot."

"And you're still a wet blanket, little brother," replied Boromir cheerfully, recollecting himself. "But wet blankets pose some entirely interesting possibilities of their own. What do you say?"

"Even if I was at all inclined to consider your suggestion, which," Faramir said, "I most decidedly am not—"

"Is this because of that brothel again? Because you really need to get over that sooner or later," interjected Boromir.

Faramir ignored him. "—the fact remains that those goggles of yours are the most decidedly unsexy things I've seen in my entire life."

"I could always take them off," said Boromir suggestively.

"You could," agreed Faramir, folding his arms and staring at Boromir pointedly.

"I could," said Boromir again, and took off the goggles, setting them on the counter next to the stove. When Boromir turned towards him again, this time looking more like a human being and less like a large primeval insect, Faramir found that the change impressed him favorably. He smiled broadly, and felt suddenly-long upper teeth brushing against his bottom lip. "Well, how do we get onto the ceiling?"

Boromir gaped. "You're serious?"

"Ah, why the hell not? Might as well take advantage of circumstances as they present themselves. So, what do we do?"

"Well," said Boromir. "It takes a little concentration at first. You have to sort of tense your muscles—"

"Already quite tense, thank you."

"—and imagine you're weightless... extend your arms a little... and—" Abruptly, Boromir shot about twelve feet in the air, collided with the ceiling with a sickening crunch, and fell back to the ground with a

Thunk.

"OUCH! Who put that goddamn (censored)ing ceiling there?!"

Faramir sighed. He could already tell that this was going to be a very, very, very long afterlife.

A/n: Suddenly, there was a noise not unlike ten thousand reviewers simultaneously pressing the 'review' button and furiously typing out the phrase, "What the (censored)ing hell was that?!"

Do review, if you are so inclined. Or, now that I finally have a new e-mail address (available on my profile page), you may feel free to PM or e-mail me instead. ;-)