Work Text:
The night is disturbed.
His sword unsheathes, but his gaze falls onto no orcs, only the dumb and still figure of trees and the pale moonlight on his companion’s face. A finely sculpted pipe is lit in Aragorn’s hand, smoke unfurling from his lips and dissolving into a thin haze.
“Keep your blade. It was only a fox.” Aragorn says. “Rest assured that these woods are safe.”
He looks well-rested for a man who has ridden for hours and walked all the more, for the paths of the Ithilien forests are arrayed with odd groves and glades. Cloaked against the chill and dressed in his leathers, it’s as if a change has come upon him, dispelling Isildur’s heir and reducing him to a wayward ranger once more.
Boromir laughs breathlessly, still shaken despite the knowledge that their enemy had all been driven south and beyond. He sits up in his bedroll to hopefully assuage sleep, eager to spend more of the night with his companion.
“Sometimes I think you’re more elf than man with how you trust the woodlands. It’s not a good look for a king to keep safe his steward.”
Aragorn, who does not care much for the conventions between the stewards and the kings, shrugs. “We have come for respite, but I now doubt that you will get any.”
“Worry not about me, for I am here of my own will.”
“Do you wish me to put out the fire? It is not too cold to do that tonight. ”
An intimate question, but Aragorn looks so far away asking it from across their fire. He sheds his cloak, has his arms crossed over his chest. For a captain of the North, he is somehow, always, holding himself against a chill breeze.
Boromir hides his amusement at this fact and declines. The air smells of the floras of the forest and the burnt fog of the pipe weed.
The scent of a campfire is nothing akin to his father's pyre, he takes care to remind himself. Yet his mind weakens sometimes, allowing his murky uneasiness to seep in. When all is obscure and lost, he tries to think of what has passed on the day, what he has done and what there is left to do.
The steward had ridden with his king past the ruins of Osgiliath, past the sparse newly established settlements. Their duties were left to his brother, as agreed, if only for a few days. The townsfolk would be none the wiser that their king had gone away under the guise of a drab traveller. As far as they knew, two queer travelers had left the walls of Minas Tirith as soon as the sun rose.
Aragorn had smiled, if only a little, as he nodded to the folks on the road, tradesmen or travelers who were not too hasty to where they were bound. With his hair loose in the wind, he looked free on the green fields and newly made ways. With his cheeks flushed under the sun, he looked lovely.
And yet now, beyond their campfire, Boromir sees the passing heartsore on the wise face barely hidden by a downward glance.
“We shouldn’t have left Minas Tirith.” Aragorn says.
“We rest only for a few days. Our citadel is befitting of a ruler, but it is no place for a wayward ranger.” Boromir says.
Many were wounded and orphaned from the war, many negotiations and concords had to be made in the grand yet oppressing halls that his father once governed. All the months and years it would take to rebuild their realm are delicate work.
It is always the little tales that tell the most, the tense line of Aragorn’s shoulders, the absence of a shine in his gaze, the way he paced around his studies as if a caged steed among his many piles of leather-bound books of texts and laws. The walls of the throne room seems to shrink in, the very confines under the marbled pillars seem to color the king out from his realm.
“You deem the king of Gondor wayward at his throne?” Aragorn jests.
“You once told me that your home lies in the North with the Dúnedain, but it is not there that you sing of.”
Aragorn’s gaze suddenly sharpens in the dark. “Perhaps it is merely the language that draws me to the lays of the elves.”
Boromir has wondered of the cause before.
It is a strange thing still to hear the elven dialect echo from his king’s chamber, too quiet for anyone but the stones and himself to hear.
“Nay,” he argues. “elven words are fair to the ears, yes, but it is not beauty that you seek from them. It is as my soldiers would sing of their kins on the eve of battle.”
At his silence, Boromir continues. “You sing as one sings of home, Aragorn. Gondor is a place dear to me, but her greatness troubles the minds that tend to her. I merely wish to ease yours.”
His companion makes a face. Perhaps, it is more of a grimace than a smile that Boromir sees. “To have a friend ride beside me on a trip as aimless as this is remedy enough.”
They are sitting too far, he thinks. Too much impersonal distance between them for the matters of one’s home and heart that they’ve been discussing. And so Boromir walks to the other, sitting down beside him under a great tree. The fire wanes, so he fuels it with the dry woods they’ve gathered. Aragorn helps quietly, only leaning his cheek on his shoulder once the flame finally grows.
Silence envelopes them. The other puts his pipe away and the night air hangs undisturbed for a time. He marvels at their closeness, how Aragorn’s dark hair spills onto his shoulder, how their flanks fit together sitting side by side.
Then quietly, Aragorn begins to sing.
His voice curls softly around the delicate vowels of the Imladris Elvish, a secret comfort to Boromir’s mind. A long habit of his, Boromir has come to learn, having chanced upon the other on a night such as this.
Strider sang of old elvish fables, stories of joy and grief alike flowing from his lips like water from a small stream. Boromir didn’t care for many songs, but he’d always ponder of the significance of each one hummed. He’d wanted more but he didn’t know then how to ask of it. And so he observed, spied, rather. The ranger’s likes and dislikes, trying to distill his qualities from both his actions and words.
And so the days passed, Boromir stalking the serene stream trickling down, while the shadow of Gondor waned in the flames of their enemy.
At the end of the song, a sad smile chances upon Aragorn's face. He knows well of the Elves’ departure, their tidings. He seems to always know the lays of places, as well-travelled to the many terrains of middle-earth as he is, and he always seems troubled at the way of things.
“Are you unhappy?” Asks Boromir. Why do you force a smile even when they had all gone to the sea?
“It is not that I’m unhappy.” Aragorn stares into the woods as he speaks, his gaze not so keen on meeting the steward’s tonight.
“Why, then, do you look so forlorn?”
Aragorn speaks in his Elvish, it very much like his own Gondorian dialect but softer, more yielding: “I nesta hain na vanima. Dan i vanima na nêr, a sui hon raeg.”
This place is beautiful. But the beautiful is noble, and so is she difficult.
Boromir replies in kind, “Nai vanima be nêr ar raeg. Ú-chebin le rîdh, ú-velin sui aníron.”
Let the beautiful be noble and difficult. I will not let you go astray, not as I have once had.
These are but foolish words to his friend, he thinks, but they may be more true than any he has ever said before. He waits with bated breath for a reply, or a tell to the other’s mind, but Aragorn’s face reveals nothing of its workings for a time.
“It’s curious, how my worry can turn into assurance from another man’s lips.” His friend’s observation has a lightness to it.
Boromir’s relief comes out in a puff of white. “Aye. For I am no good at songs, I need to find other avenues to spin my words.”
“Faramir did not lie when he said you were once a sly lad.” Says Aragorn, and he can hear the smile from the rare lilt of the other’s voice.
“Tell me more of your ails. I will turn them into fairer things.”
Aragorn turns, so that their eyes finally meet. Flames dance across his face, and surely he cannot look so serene from such a simple promise?
“I thank you, my friend. But you mustn’t let duty compels you into healing another man’s ails.” Aragorn says.
Boromir feels a rise within him, not out of his king's indignity but something far opposite it. “Nonsense! Even if you weren’t my king, you will always be someone who have grown dear to me.”
From his brash words, he didn’t expect Aragorn’s cheeks to flush, or for his eyes to widen in surprise. It’s a strange look on his wise face, the expression too young on a weary ranger and yet it fits him just so. Boromir wonders what he himself looks like, is he as unguarded as the other appears? Is it love or madness that their campfire illuminates to his king?
Before he can agonize more on his words, a kiss is placed on his temple, not out of fealty or parting, but merely affection.
It is an act done among friends, but this one feels different, tender far beyond all the assurances in the world. True to his fashion, the ranger does not linger, the touch already over in the span of a breath.
Aragorn pulls away, and Boromir wants to follow him to whatever lays beyond, the possibilities as endless as the branching streams of the Anduin. He almost shakes from the visions of them, a promise of something new when peace finally lays about their land.
“What if it is not just your words that I seek?” Aragorn asks, his brows knotted, and he’s never seen his captain, his king, look so unsure.
Boromir’s breath comes out in a rush of white. He tries to laugh, but it comes out chaste. Nothing is nearly enough to slow the hammering in his chest, or sway his will as he leans closer.
“Si anírog bain enni.” He whispers into the hollow of Aragorn’s neck, soft and supple beneath his lips. Then you can have all there is of me.
His hand holds onto Aragorn’s torso, firm but yielding enough if the other were to move away. He caresses the worn leathers and their many mendings as if he is touching flesh. Everything about Aragorn is sacred in that moment, a thing to be cherished and loved, a stream to be scattered with the finest blooms of elanor.
Aragorn moves to kiss him, and the air turns endlessly warm when two bodies join.