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Closer (PG-13) Print

Written by Geale

22 November 2012 | 1114 words

Summary: If he allows himself to pretend, you are so very close.
Pairing: Faramir & Aragorn
Rating: PG-13, I think… because of one single sentence.
Warnings: Slash
Disclaimer: All characters belong to J.R.R. Tolkien
A/N: Because long, cold winter nights exist.


Closer

The candle goes out with not even a sigh. The wick simply slides into the warm puddle of wax that fills the bottom of the cracked glass jar. And so the room sinks into a misty wintry darkness, and he rolls over onto his belly.

He listens to the silence, can almost breathe the stillness. Only he has the power to disturb it now and that knowledge is heavy in the soft darkness.

If he would lift a hand he might even touch the invisible strands of yearning that he unconsciously has woven across the room, only by being. They hold him captive in their secret embrace, and they fill his soul with longing.

He raises his head and reaches. Guarded by the night, he need not fear discovery.

So he lifts his head and pulls the pillow closer, and need wins over embarrassment and he closes his eyes and buries his face in the pillow, and finds the smell of you.

It is the sweetest shock. You are there, somewhere, in this gentle sea of feathers and linen, and he can almost pretend that your hair tickles his cheek, or that he is spooning up behind you and leaving sleepy kisses on your warm shoulder. For you are strong and calm, and you are safety and reassurance, but still you like to be held. And he loves to hold you.

He cannot understand how you can be so warm, you know. His own feet are cold already after a moment spent upon the white marble floor of the bedchamber. And he must pull on a shirt as soon as he rises to the new day. But you let the morning light wash over your bare chest and – even more inconceivably – you do not mind breaking your fast clad in only leggings, while he huddles, as close to you as he dares, under a blanket, while the first snowflakes swirl by outside.

He once told you that this is not how Kings do it, but he did not mean to protest or for you to change. He was secretly relieved when you only smiled at his nonsense about tradition. As if this novelty was nothing to be alarmed at. As if time had finally moved on.

Sometimes you look at him as if you care. As if you truly care. And not like his friends look at him, but as… as a lover might – as if the lover had… as if there were something more.

He turns his head to the side and the velvety night protects his secret as he seeks your scent anew. He shifts, dips his nose deep into the pillow and draws a long breath. And one more.

His hopes have led him into this. It is a land that requires courage to navigate, and he only has a little and he fears that you will never notice how he struggles to not shy away.

And he so fears that you will see this and speak words that he will only barely understand. Words that he knows exist but never were meant for him before. Yet he longs for them.

The linen is warmed by his breathing and your scent dissolves into the air. He moves again, presses his face into the blankets on your side of the bed. There are traces, imprints, shadows. He chases them and pretends to himself that you are there beside him again. Your skin, still somehow bronzed by the sun though it’s nearing midwinter. Your hair, soft to the touch like a maiden’s. Your stubbly cheek and your lips that brush his neck when you bend over him, so gentle even as you slide into him from behind. Those kisses, on his neck and his shoulder, they give him goosebumps.

If he opens up his heart just a little… If he dares to believe, then he knows.

Aye, you get along well, the two of you. You work well together. You laugh together. You are like of mind and taste and this is all good. You like each other.

But if he opens up his heart just a little – it need not be much – he knows that he loves you.

He comes to lie in the middle of the bed, on the threshold between himself and you. He pulls the blankets up to his chin and curls around a wish.


The winds are whining among the stones but the chill of the empty night is discouraged by the heat steaming from the braziers. Aragorn watches the shadows play on the canvas and wonders how far the moon has sailed across its blackened sea. If it is dawn soon. If they can move on.

A camp is never quiet. Not really. Men snore, horses whinny, and fire crackles. He resists the desire to pop his head out of his tent and have a look at the sky, but where he lies on his bedroll a familiar urgency gnaws at him from within.

He lifts his hand in the semi-darkness and flexes his fingers. If he lets everything else go, if he focuses, he can almost pretend his fingertips are slowly drawing invisible patterns on a bared chest. He smiles to himself, recalling how the fine hairs on Faramir’s arms would stand on end at the lightest of touches.

His hand falls back to his side and he closes his eyes. It is true that he never liked pretending. As soon as he was come of age and learned what fate awaited him for the single reason of being of the blood that he is, Aragorn son of Arathorn preferred the truth. He came to favour the sharp contours of absolute fact.

But times change. If he lets things slide he can almost feel the caress of moonlight filling the sky above his childhood home. He carries it with him, somewhere close to his heart, and it tells him that he can catch his dreams.

Soon enough this campaign will come to an end, he knows this. And once more he will turn to face the white walls of Minas Tirith and the treasure they harbour.

He shifts onto his side and stares out into the dark night tinged with the gold that spills from the burning coals. If he lets everything else go, he can almost feel Faramir wrapped around him.

Aragorn wishes for this.

End

NB: Please do not distribute (by any means, including email) or repost this story (including translations) without the author's prior permission. [ more ]

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6 Comment(s)

Wow! Lovely! sigh

A dreamy story.

— Laivindur    Thursday 22 November 2012, 18:56    #

Again, what a skillfully woven language! I love the atmosphere, like a dream slipping through your fingers… so beautiful!

— raven22372    Friday 23 November 2012, 10:06    #

Thank you, both of you! I really did aim for a dreamy feel to this one and I’m glad that it seemes to have worked. Thank you so much for reading och commenting!

Geale    Friday 23 November 2012, 13:42    #

This is soooo lovely!

Minx    Friday 23 November 2012, 18:26    #

Oh, oh! How did I miss this? How?! Your F/A stories were the reason I starting trying to write in the first place and this lovely piece is so hauntingly sweet as to be almost beyond description. I do love a short story, I feel you can fit so much more into a vignette-type structure than if you write a longer piece, or at least you can have I think a little more artistic freedom in a way, play a little with structure or create a more dreamlike or memory-like quality. What I loved about this story was the warmth of it, how there is that underlying current of devotion, of gentle love, of that need for the other to be present in such a way that you do do silly things like search for their scent on the pillow or imagine they are lying beside you in the bed. On my first read-through I wasn’t sure whether the first part was from Faramir or Aragorn’s perspective, and on my subsequent readings I think that may be purposeful? (Or, if not, and it’s just my lack of reading comprehension, let me say that it doesn’t detract from the loveliness of the story one bit! In fact, I quite liked the mystery, the way that you can see two slightly different scenes here depending on whether you’re picturing the king or his steward in the bed. (I know there was the line dealing with how kings do it, but again, blame my lack of reading comprehension.))

Aragorn being warm and Faramir cold is a lovely little microcosm of their relationship to one another, especially as one might normally associate Faramir as being warm (he is all green and gold and copper in my mind, autumn hues, late summer sun) and Aragorn, in his kingly velvets, the colder of the two (steely blues and the grey of his eyes, moonlight on lake water- though again his ranger-self is at odds with this, I think there will always be that silent, inner disparateness (is that a word?) within him, Strider versus Elessar…but I digress!) but again, I think I’ve written in one of my stories (or perhaps in the myriad unpublished paragraphs that lurk on my harddrive) that Aragorn is the furnace in the bed, so really they can be quite interchangeable. But I loved that little moment here, the sweet intimate shyness of Faramir’s sitting near to him, trying to recapture his heat while not wanting to sit too close, not yet (not through lack of ‘wanting to’, if you know what I mean, but from a faint fear of Aragorn’s rejecting him even though it’s clear, though Faramir doesn’t know it quite yet, that Aragorn’s feelings lie along the same lines as Faramir’s. As ever, and not in a pathetic or weak way, all Faramir needs is a little self-confidence!)

The fact that Faramir’s private moment in the first half is shown to be the opposite of unrequited in the second is so satisfying to read; the story could have gone in any direction, he might have been merely layering more meaning into his and Aragorn’s relationship than was truly there, but it was delightful to see Aragorn’s understated eagerness to be reunited with him, bitter-sweet delight due to their having to be separated in the first place. Duty before love, it seems, but I’m happy to see that they’re not letting duty stand in the way completely. I can only imagine how Faramir would feel knowing Aragorn is thinking of him also; the story leaves us waiting on the reunion in a way that is not too painful. There is hope and joy there, and a bright future. Faramir wants to be loved and deserves it too, and the magic of these two never fails to weave itself into your writing and enchant the reader to the point of reaching the end and being almost startled that this could possibly have an end…perhaps that was dripping in a little too much poetry there but the spell your stories cast is one I do love to put myself under often :)

Thank you for sharing this jewel of a story; I hope you are happy and healthy, and if we do not speak before then I wish you a wonderfully merry Yuletide (whichever way you celebrate this season) and a prosperous New Year :)

Eora    Monday 10 December 2012, 0:56    #

Minx, good! Glad you like it :)

Eora, thank you so much, sweetheart! As always, thank you for reading and also taking the time to leave such lovely comments!

Now, you have absolutely no reason to worry about your reading comprehension. I confess I had some trouble understanding my own writing when I first re-read the story upon completion – I got so lost in all the pronouns (all two of them!) that I actually lost track myself of who was Aragorn and who was Faramir in the first part. Ehm. But I think I managed to sort it out before posting. But if you’re willing to argue that it doesn’t matter if the reader confuses identities, then I’m sure I can live with that :)

I think you are spot on regarding short stories vs. longer ones. I, for one, certainly feel that I have have more freedom as a writer when I’m only exploring a handful of scenes or moments in time. Could there be a bit of a paradox hidden here: in a way, the less we write, the more we can bring to the story?

As for the happy (happy-ish, happy-to-come ;)) ending, in this case I wasn’t looking for anything else (although it’s intriguing to imagine that Faramir would have interpreted matters subjectively). I am certain that they will have a sweet reunion when the time comes. They may not have fully admitted their feelings for one another, but I am sure they know – on some level at least – that their relationship runs quite deep. And when that is revealed too him, I suspect Faramir will be prudently overjoyed ;)

Oh, and a very merry christmas and a gloriously happy new year to you! 2012 has been somewhat of a turbulent and confusing year for me, but life has finally begun to run more smoothly now and I hope I will have some more time and energy for creative endeavours come… February? :)

Geale    Sunday 16 December 2012, 21:04    #

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