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There has not been a formal dance in the halls of Minas Tirith for years. 

It’s Faramir who brings it up— his courting and subsequent engagement to the Rohan shieldmaiden is going well, and he writes to Boromir in late summer, petitioning a formal gathering that will give him a chance to announce his intentions for a wedding to the people, however indirectly. The people of Gondor do not know all that has happened in Rohan, and the sons of the steward do not want for suitors. 

Neither, it seems, does their king, after his lady elf has boarded her grey boat and sailed off into the setting sun. Lovely slender wood elves with tanned skin from days in the sun, proud dwarves with complex braids worked into their thick hair, daughters of men in fine wools and linens; all come to kneel before the throne, and the castle bustles with feminine courtiers. 

It would be different if Aragorn had shown some deep sadness at Arwen’s leaving— if he had disappeared into grief after he had stood at the docks and seen her boat vanish into the horizon —and it is true, he had suffered, for he had smiled rarely for the first year, and spoken less. Boromir had not pushed him, not into matters of state or council, for the task of a steward is to guard the kingdom, and at its heart the king, and he guarded Aragorn as fiercely as his own heart. But gradually, Aragorn had come awake again. 

One of the first things he had done was order plans to take about the height of a man off the top of the throne dais, so that he might be closer to the people of the court. Boromir had it done within a week, and then more plans had followed. 

Aragorn had begun to talk with Boromir of the rebuilding, of the people and their needs, and Boromir had seen with satisfaction that Aragorn is indeed the kind of king he had hoped. They walk out together among the guards, among the merchants in the markets, and of course among the laborers at the walls, and Aragorn speaks kindly to the courtiers, seems pleased by their presence in his hall. 

Boromir knows the people are waiting, watching the king for a sign, something to show them who they might look to as a queen. Now, three years after the war’s end, would be the time for him to begin to choose a wife, to ensure the stability of his kingdom, to ensure a line of heirs. But now, a problem arises, one that does not have a simple answer. 

Aragorn, son of Arathorn, ruler over Gondor and Arnor, High King Elessar of the White City, is attended by the fairest left in Middle Earth, and yet, Boromir thinks desperately, he shows no favor. 

It is the steward’s job to judge the possible queens, which would be made considerably easier if Aragorn would actually do his damn job and pursue them. But no, the man sits remote as a mountain even on the lowered dais, and Boromir sits only slightly beneath him in the steward’s chair and despairs. 

They are out at the second wall when Boromir mentions Faramir’s idea. 

“Elessar,” he calls, using the name Aragorn was crowned with, and Aragorn shakes himself and looks up from where he’s consulting with the stonemasons, hands spread on the rough wooden table overflowing with plans for the crumbling base of the city, still scarred by Sauron’s orcs and not well maintained for years besides. 

The king seems unmovable, so Boromir comes, stands close. “My brother Faramir has appealed to me with a petition for you. Would you hear it?” 

Aragorn straightens. The circlet of silver he wears instead of the high crown most days catches the light, as do his eyes and the sweat of his brow. “Faramir is a dear friend, and your brother besides, and I would not refuse him. But there is much work to be done here, and these men must speak with me about their trade.” 

Boromir inclines his head, taking the dismissal in stride, and makes to step away, but Aragorn catches his hand, and suddenly all is silent. Kings do not generally touch people. 

As Boromir lifts his eyes and meets Aragorn’s, he is reminded that Aragorn is not most kings. 

“Steward,” Aragorn begins, hesitating, “Boromir. Would you dine with me tonight?” 

Boromir is somewhat breathless. “I usually do, my king.” 

A craftsman coughs in a startled manner and is suppressed instantly by his fellows. 

Aragorn’s eyes are doing that odd thing Boromir suspects has something to do with him being Dunedain, or maybe some Elf blood has rubbed off over the years. His eyes sometimes…shine, like pools of pure water reflecting the sky. “Privately. I would hear your petition then.” 

Boromir blinks hard and tries to remember the appropriate thing to say. “Of— of course, my lord. I am honored.” 

Aragorn smiles, a rare sight indeed when he is out among the people. “Truly, my steward, I am the one honored.” He claps Boromir on the shoulder, and it’s as if the world starts to turn again, sounds and smells rushing in all at once, and Aragorn turns back to the drafting table. 

Boromir hovers for a moment longer, trying to steady himself from whatever that was. He directs the men for the rest of the afternoon, sometimes pulling the ropes with them, great slabs of stone rising overhead. 

The work is hard and dirty, but good, dust covering his clothes and sifting out of his hair when he shakes his head. He has not worked like this in a long time, nothing but brief training with the soldiers and guardsmen, and before that the journey for the Ring, and before that endless battles in the rotting fields of Osgiliath. 

When he rises at the end of the day to accompany Aragorn back to the citadel, the masons gather to watch them pass. Boromir keeps a watchful eye on them, making sure they bow respectfully at the king’s leaving. He follows, nodding at the workers, and suddenly a whisper goes through the crowd and the men are bowing again, not in the cursory manner that befits a steward, but deeper, longer. The whisper circles, just out of his hearing, but as Boromir hands Aragorn up into his saddle, it turns into a pleased murmur, and Boromir catches glimpses of the men smiling out of the corners of his vision. 

He doesn’t know what he’s done to earn the gesture of respect, but as he mounts up he raises a hand in acknowledgment to the gathered crowd, then spurs his horse into a trot to catch up with the figure of Aragorn, already riding away into the streets. 

When they get back, Boromir has about a quarter of an hour to sit down in his chambers before his chambermaid, a wickedly smart and sensible lass named Irena, pokes her head in the door and makes a horrified noise at the state of him, then ushers in several footmen with buckets of steaming water to start filling the bath in the adjoining room. “Lord Steward, I’ll regret asking this, but have you been rolling in the road? Before dining with the king?” 

There’s a peculiar inflection to her voice, like eating with Aragorn is somehow significant. As if anything could be more significant than watching Aragorn’s blade flash through the bowstring before it could loose the arrows that should have stopped his heart. As if anything could matter more than how his hands had settled the crown onto Aragorn’s brow. Aragorn’s cape flying as he ran out breakneck towards the Black Gate. Aragorn always behind his shoulder, his low voice filling the room.

Boromir shakes himself out of memory and goes to bathe. 

When he comes out there’s a deep bronze tunic on the bed, the raw silk fabric dotted with slubs. Only elves have nimble enough fingers to weave smooth silk, but Irena knows that Boromir favors the texture of fabric woven in Gondor; richer for all its imperfections. He’d visited the mills and the weaving-houses with his father when he was young, part of his education as the heir to the Stewardship. 

Denethor had been brighter that day, two years or so after Findulias had died. The head of the weaving-houses was a sharp-faced woman with strong hands, and Denethor stopped to speak to her as Boromir wandered into the racks and racks of bolted fabrics. Now, he knows that Denethor had been a frequent visitor there because he had doted on his wife, having fabrics woven just for her wearing, so that she would stand out among the courtiers like a jewel in the hilt of a sword. Somewhere in the citadel, there is a wardrobe where those gowns hang. Somewhere in the storehouses, there are silent bolts of fabric that wait for his mother. 

Boromir shrugs on a polished leather vest, black as the vambrace he carries on his left arm always. The other one is waiting for him on Aragorn’s right. 

He’s about to be late for dinner. 

-----

The door to Aragorn’s chambers is open, and there are low voices coming from inside, the curl of a dwarven accent. Boromir is suddenly irritated at the prospect of someone intruding on the king’s private dinner, and purposely steps loudly on the flagstones as he enters. 

There is an admittedly lovely dwarf rising from a kneel beside Aragorn’s chair, her hand in his. Boromir nearly trips over himself. 

Aragorn looks up. “Lord Steward, I apologize. Lady Mhoida came to me urgently with an offer from Erebor in service of Gondor. Please, be seated.” 

Well, he had wanted Aragorn to favor someone. Boromir sits, feeling as though he’s been hit quite sharply over the head with a plank. 

Lady Mhoida flushes, bowing deeply to Aragorn, and then oddly again to Boromir. “My deepest apologies, lords, I did not mean to intrude upon your meal.” 

“It’s alright, my lady. Please tell your people we are honored, and wish to accept their offer,” Aragorn says gently, gesturing towards the door. 

The lady nods, looking thrilled, and bows again to them both. “Thank you, lords, and all happiness to you.” 

The door clicks shut behind her and Aragorn sits back hard in his chair, looking a bit startled. Boromir clears his throat. “So?”

“Erebor’s smiths have offered to forge us gates for the lower wall.” 

Boromir looks incredulously at Aragorn. “The dwarves want to forge us a gift?” 

Aragorn suddenly begins pouring himself a glass of wine. “In honor of the king and his steward, to replace the ones destroyed in the Ringwar. Impenetrable, according to Lady Mhoida.” 

Boromir decides he also needs wine as quickly as possible, and takes the pitcher from Aragorn. “But why?” 

The king makes a confused and anxious noise into his goblet. “She said it was for Gondor’s union. I think it would have been worse if I turned her down.” 

They ponder the ways of dwarves through a pitcher and a half of very good wine and several helpings of food. Boromir is slightly tipsy by the time he remembers what he’d promised to speak to Aragorn about. “Ah, my brother sent me a letter.” 

“Mm? How does he fare in Rohan?” 

Boromir sighs. “How he fares, I could not say. The Lady Eowyn, I could write a book about.” 

Aragorn’s eyes narrow with amusement. “It’s going well, then. Tell me, Boromir, what does Faramir need for his lady?” 

Boromir laces his fingers with mock seriousness and stares across the table. “Faramir humbly requests from you, milord, a grand ball at the court of Gondor to announce his betrothal. He requests food, wine, dancing, elves, men, dwarves, and hobbits. I beg of you, hear his plea.” 

Aragorn laughs, a bit hoarse from the wine. “A betrothal in the steward’s house! Faramir is impressive indeed, winning such a rare lily.” He pauses, suddenly quiet, then meets Boromir’s eyes. “There has not been a dance in these halls since your mother’s time.” 

“Yes.” Boromir looks down at his plate, thinking of a tall, blurry woman who held him close in a crowded room. “I was seven, maybe eight years.” 

“What are the arrangements?” 

“Ah… the kitchens must be warned, the guest wings opened— but those are the duties of the steward. The engagement itself will be kept a secret as is tradition until the announcement is made. As the king, you must make an appearance at the ball, and you must dance. Politically, or politely, or otherwise.” 

Aragorn sighs sharply. “Will it go badly if I do not?” 

Boromir squints at him. “The people will think you are ill, the courtiers will be offended. It is the first ball in your time, Aragorn. Why—“

“I do not know the dances of men,” Aragorn interrupts, glancing away, a slight color in his cheeks. “I was not raised by men.” 

And this is the sticking point, the sharp reminder that Aragorn is a wild thing, an elf-raised Ranger of the forests and plains, with sword-calloused hands and scars a hundred years old, that destiny has put upon a throne. The people know him as a proper king. Boromir has seen him with black blood dripping off every square inch of skin. He has heard Aragorn sing in elven speech, heard the birds sing back.

They look at each other across the table, Aragorn shining, shining, bright and noble and fierce, and Boromir says, “I can teach you.” 

-----

Planning for the ball begins the next day. 

Within an hour Boromir becomes aware that he is not the best suited for this task. He has been trained in stewardship of a city at war. He knows how to set guard shifts, how to break through enemy lines, the weak points of a warg. From here to Rivendell, he knows his land, even the crumbling walls of Osgiliath. 

He does not know what flowers are in season, what sweetmeats and breads are acceptable, which wings to open for the elves and the dwarves. He does not know what to do about the fact that he’s offered to teach Aragorn to dance. 

Faramir and Boromir both had been taught by a fearsome old woman, part of their education as what passed for royal sons in Gondor, but she had died some time ago, and Boromir feels as though it is his task to help Aragorn adjust to the role of a king. If he can do it in this way, then he surely will. He hopes he remembers all the necessary dances. 

After attempting to write an invitation draft and breaking two quills, Boromir takes out a fresh page and begins to list female courtiers to interview. He may as well start narrowing them down now, since surely they’ll be champing at the bit to get into the ball once they hear that the king will be dancing, and Boromir doesn’t suffer fools gladly, especially not as marriage prospects for Aragorn. Better to not have them attend at all. 

He hands over the list to a pageboy and tells him to bring the ladies in hour intervals, and then goes and lies down with his hands over his face for a few minutes. He may have drunk overmuch at dinner. 

The ladies of the court are, for the most part, only a little foolish. Only one or two of the oldest and the youngest ones seem outright vicious, and Boromir doesn’t mind viciousness as long as it’s clever and not towards the king. Besides, he doesn’t have enough pull with the court yet to throw the older ladies out, but the youngest ones can’t afford to be as awful as they’re being, and so he politely but firmly suggests their departure. To their credit, they take it with grace. 

He dines with Aragorn again, who doesn’t ask about the courtiers at all. Instead, he looks at Boromir across the table in the candlelight and asks quietly, “Shall you teach me, son of Gondor?” 

Boromir looks up from his wine goblet and raises both eyebrows. “Have you been thinking of it, king of Gondor?” 

Aragorn clears his throat. “I fear there will not be time enough for me to become passable.” It would be impossible to tell if the watcher didn’t know every lean line of his face, but Boromir thinks he might actually be embarrassed.  

Boromir tries hard not to smile. “Then we’ll begin.” 

They start slowly, pacing the length of the dining room. It is sizable enough for their purposes now, but before long they will have to find somewhere with more space. Just one more thing to fret about.

Boromir is admittedly learning himself while they go, for he has not had occasion to take the following role, but he suspects he should probably teach the king to lead. Going forwards comes more naturally to most than going backwards anyway. They are both men who have little occasion to touch; it takes a while simply to learn to be close to one another again, to learn the warmth of a hand at the waist, a hand in a hand. 

It still feels odd, dancing with a king and going to sleep in the steward’s chambers. Sometimes Boromir expects to wake up in a forest again with the sighing sounds of the branches at sunrise, with Legolas or Gimli’s back warm against his, the hobbits piled in a mound across the camp, Aragorn standing tall and looking out into the skies, or more rarely, curled asleep on his side facing Boromir, one hand on his sword even in rest. It had been strange, to see the man so still, but not strange then to be close enough to feel his breath. Now, the room is dim, and the stone floor is polished, and they feel very far from the wilds that had brought them together. 

The first dance is the simplest— Boromir counts, in lieu of music, and Aragorn looks very sharply at his feet, and they learn a simple stepping pattern. Aragorn picks it up almost instantly, of course. “Is it all to be accomplished this easily?” He sounds almost insulted. 

Boromir laughs. “Peace, Strider. You can walk, we have made sure of that. There are far more difficult tasks ahead. When we have music, those will arrive.”

Aragorn steadies him as he nearly trips. “What is your scheme, Boromir, to find us music and privacy both? I do not relish the idea of stumbling alone before musicians late at night.” 

“Doing this backwards is not as easy as it would seem,” Boromir grumbles, shooting Aragorn a look. “I was not taught to follow.” 

“No.” Aragorn steps back, a look of guilt stealing across his face. “You were taught to lead. Boromir—“ 

Boromir realizes suddenly that they aren’t talking about the dance, and cuts Aragorn off firmly. “Aragorn. I would be a poor steward indeed if I could not learn to follow my king. We are learning, the both of us. Now, come here, and let me tread on your feet again.” 

“The price of leadership,” Aragorn sighs, but he is smiling, a quiet smile but a true one. When he comes back within arm’s reach, he pulls Boromir’s hand to his shoulder. “We will both learn to follow, then, and both learn to lead. For the good of the people.” 

There are several ladies who Boromir makes note of. These, he invites back again to some meaningless event; a walk about the grounds, a ride into the markets, a visit to the tapestry hall. All of them are lovely, about the appropriate age, and unwed. And yet, none of them seem able to give a definitive answer about intentions towards the king. 

Lady Colneth, energetic even for a wood-elf, with nut-brown skin and a shimmering mane of auburn hair that falls nearly to her ankles, marking her as a member of a noble house, smiles when Boromir attempts to ask her what she thinks of Aragorn. “I believe Elessar is well-attended on his throne. I am here at court to offer what assistance I may to the king and of course, to yourself. It is not often that I have seen a king with this potential ascend the throne of Men, let alone with one so devoted at his side.” 

Lady Vedis, the only current woman of the royal line of Dale, with her brother's dark hair and grim pragmatism, is a comfortingly sensible and shockingly strong woman who’s carried on the bowman’s practice from her forefathers. Her shoulders are wide and her stance steady beneath her skirts. She laughs long and loud when Boromir inquires of her interest in the king, her dimples showing. “My Lord Steward, I am honored to stand with the throne, especially when a warrior takes it. I wish him the greatest happiness, and for you to find it by his side.” 

Lady Ilcë, one of the few elves from Lothlörien left who has chosen to attend the court, sighs. Her milky eyes flick downwards, though she can no longer see much. She’d been terribly wounded in the war against Sauron, and even elven healing couldn’t restore her poisoned eyes, but she is lovely nonetheless, like moonlight over scarred skin. “Elessar was raised among elves. He has few of his family left in these lands.” Boromir feels a pang, a horrible sense of loss for something he’s never known. He reaches impulsively, putting his hand over hers. It does not seem right to ask her more.

She bends her head in acknowledgment. “I would stay until the end of my time, Lord Steward, to see him safe with you.” 

As Ilcë takes her solemn leave, helped along by a trained fawn who seems to lead her ahead by touch, Boromir rakes his hands though his hair in silent frustration. A full week of discussions with this reticence is unquestionably odd, although perhaps he is not yet entirely accustomed to the language of a court, and is missing hints and inclinations. How is he supposed to steward the damn kingdom if none of the inhabitants will cooperate? 

He’s so irritated that he walks into the king’s private audience chambers without knocking. Aragorn is speaking with several members of the merchant’s council, although it appears to be more of a social visit than anything. He looks pleased to see Boromir, and immediately mollifies his mood by dismissing the merchants and gesturing to a chair. The merchants bow deeply to them both, as people seem to be doing these days, but Aragorn seems not to even notice, so Boromir leaves it aside for now, sitting down across from Aragorn and stretching his legs out. 

Aragorn tilts his head in question. “You look hassled.” 

Boromir waves him away. “Nothing worth speaking of.” 

“As you say. Would you like to eat?” 

There’s a little balcony low on the side of the citadel, delicately placed in a semi-private corridor that passes by the entrance to the courtiers’ hall. It overlooks the training yards, and the sounds of metal and men drift up through the open lattices of the railings and screens that break the wind. It’s a common breakfasting place, with three little tables, but of course no one would dare to come sit with the king and the steward uninvited, and so they are alone there, though the door is open and people walk by. 

The meal is very good, especially prepared for two on short notice. Aragorn licks sauce from his thumb. “Boromir?” 

Boromir looks up from the king’s mouth, absentmindedly turning his knife in his hand. “Hm?” 

“Do you have duties at sunrise, the day after tomorrow?”

“I... not that I know now.” 

The sun falls across them through the lattices, making patterns on the marble floor, spilling into the hallway and flashing across the skirts of courtiers who walk past. Aragorn has let his hair fall loose today, into the open collar of his wine-dark doublet, more of a formal style to meet with those merchants. He reaches across the table and traces the rim of Boromir’s wine goblet. Boromir’s eyes catch on his fingers and cannot seem to let go. 

“Will you come spar with me, then? I am sadly out of practice.” 

Boromir snorts, flicking his eyes up at Aragorn. “Out of practice? You, called Strider, Walker of the Wilds? Who rode at the head of the White Army?”

Aragorn looks at him intently. “I have not had a moment to walk, nor ride, nor swing a sword in too long. Have you not felt the same?”

“No,” Boromir concedes, “I have missed it myself. And I have no duty that morning.” He reaches for his goblet, and Aragorn’s hand is familiar under his from nights of dancing.

Aragorn does not move, but his eyes flutter slightly. “So.” 

“Yes, Aragorn,” Boromir says, far too quietly, but he is strangely afraid to startle either of them away from the other. “We shall spar, then.” 

There is a rustle of fabric at the door, and both of them turn to look, Boromir hastily taking his hand back. A pair of serving girls scamper away from the drapes, giggling as they vanish into the hall. 

“Hm.” Aragon is hiding a smile very badly. “Steward, your staff are running wild.” 

“Apologies, my lord.” Boromir casts a sharp look in the direction of the hallway, possibly terrifying two courtiers who had slowed to look into the balcony. “I’ll take them into hand today.” 

A pageboy pushes through the couple in the hall and sprints into the room. “My king, Lord Steward. I have a message from Lady Mhoida, a letter has arrived from Erebor.” 

“I can counsel her now.” Aragorn rises, and Boromir rises after him, bowing and beginning towards the door when he feels a hand in his. 

Aragorn has caught his hand again. It feels as if they are alone in the room, about to step into a dance. Boromir stills.

“My steward,” Aragorn says, and bows deep over Boromir’s hand. “Apologies, I will be busy tonight. Do not forget, the training yards.” 

“King Elessar,” Boromir manages, and then Aragorn is off after the pageboy, long legs carrying him through the drapes and away. 

Boromir sits down quite hard in his chair, his face unexpectedly hot. He thinks he understands what Aragorn feels like, being bowed to all the time and then being swept away to the next person. It will be a full day until he next sees the king, and the hours suddenly seem to stretch before him endlessly. 

At least he has something to do in the time between. He has somehow not yet spoken to the most likely courtier to turn Aragorn’s head. 

-----

Lady Mhoida seats herself on a low couch. She has the curved sturdy build of a dwarf, tattooed hands and arms strong from working in the earth, burns on her dark skin characteristic of the forges. She is the only woman who has been within arm’s reach of Aragorn since Arwen’s departure. 

“Lord Steward.” Her voice is a pleasing rumble. Boromir notes that she is not afraid to meet his eyes, nor is she shifting in her seat. 

“Lady Mhoida of Erebor. I trust you are well?” 

“Yes, milord. Why are you interviewing the courtiers?” 

Boromir has had a trying night, unable to sleep, oddly used to dance lessons consuming his evenings. Aragorn had asked about the ball the previous night, about how his first week of preparations had gone, and he’d had to deflect. Nothing has gotten done, and Boromir dislikes floundering at the beginning of a task for this long. 

Lady Mhoida’s question is frank, a frankness that strikes him particularly because he has not heard such in weeks, and perhaps that is what makes Boromir look up at her and say, “My lady, there is going to be a ball.” 

Lady Mhoida gasps, putting a hand to her chest, and then she leans forward, a knowing light coming into her eyes. “My lord, if I may be so bold…” 

Boromir sags a bit in relief. Boldness has been hard to come by recently, and he has sorely missed it. “Please, speak freely.” 

“Does Minas Tirith often….?” 

“Not since the years my mother held court.” 

“Then,” Lady Mhoida whispers, “Could I offer my help? Erebor holds balls beneath the mountain, though dwarves celebrate differently than men. But we are much the same, though perhaps more brash.” 

It’s as if the whole world grows easier to bear. Boromir seizes her hand and holds it in his. “Please, my lady. I am lost.” 

Lady Mhoida grins, and it lights the room. “It would be my pleasure, Lord Steward, on one condition.” 

“Name it.”

Lady Mhoida hops down from her couch, and goes to the door. She sticks her head out into the hallway, and says something indistinct, and then one by one three ladies enter the room, each bowing deeply in turn. Lady Colneth is grinning just as wide as Lady Mhoida, and Lady Vedis is doing a bad job at concealing her own smile. Lady Ilcë is serene as ever, but her fawn comes right up to Boromir and puts its little head on his knee, big dark eyes looking up at him. 

“My lord, we would all wish to be at your service.” 

Boromir sits back, looking at each of them in turn. He throws up his hands and pulls a parchment closer to him, picking up his quill. “You’d all better call me Boromir, if we will be having more than three conversations.”  

Colneth and Mhoida link hands and hurry over to sit down, giggling a bit with their success. Vedis finally breaks into a smile, and comes to stand behind him, one hand on the back of his chair so she can see what he’s writing. Ilcë folds herself into a chair, and her fawn gambols over and hops into her lap, where she kisses it very delicately on the head and closes her eyes, as if to hear better. 

Boromir, feeling rather as though he’s at a war council, clears his throat. “How do we begin?” 

“It would be best if we knew the occasion,” Colneth says slyly, “that we might advise you on what may be most appropriate.” 

“Colneth,” Vedis warns, making some kind of a face that causes Colneth to put her hand over her mouth and sit back. 

“You are right indeed,” Boromir sighs. Well, if someone is to know the subject of the ball ahead of time if not the identities of the couple, he can be sure that everyone will be more prepared as gossip spreads. “What might be most fitting for an announcement of betrothal?” 

Ilcë opens her eyes wide. 

Mhoida puts her hand on her chest again. 

Vedis gasps behind him. 

Colneth makes a squeaking noise. 

Boromir looks around. “What?” 

“Congratulations, my lord,” Ilcë says a bit more quickly than usual, her smooth voice warm and pleased, “It is a noble occasion, we are all honored to assist.” 

“Yes, Boromir,” Mhoida adds, arranging her necklaces casually before taking her hand from her chest, “But there will be so much to do, we had better start now. Vedis, what do you think about the food?”

Vedis huffs. “We may not have balls in Dale, but we have feasts enough. Let me worry about that, if Boromir will give me leave to speak to the kitchens.” 

Colneth seems to have recovered, and she sits forward. “If it pleases you, Lord Boromir, I will seek out players and bards, Men, Elves, and Dwarves, so that all may dance.” 

Boromir can hardly write fast enough. “What is there to be done about the guest halls?” 

“So you do remember some about hosting other courts,” Mhoida remarks approvingly, nodding. “There are likely records of such things— we will go and fetch them up and look at which halls the courts have preferred.” 

“I would offer my talents,” Ilcë says suddenly, hesitating. “Before… the war, I was gifted with flowers. This, and adorning the hall, I would wish to do.” She grimaces, the first expression of displeasure Boromir has ever seen from her. “I know I may not seem capable, but—“ 

“You are one of the most capable women I have ever met,” Boromir says decidedly, scratching his quill loudly on the parchment as he writes down Ilcë’s name. “Merethrond, our feasting hall, is yours.”

Colneth reaches and takes Ilcë’s hand, and their circle closes further in, Mhoida reaching for her own sheet of parchment, Vedis planting her hand on the desk like a general. Boromir has only been so glad of his companions once before, and then the whole of Middle-earth was at stake.

They write the invitation then and there, and then a proclamation to put up in the city. When Boromir goes at last to meet Aragorn for their lesson, he is so pleased with the work they’ve done that night that he spins Aragorn round the table while he tells him of the wonderful women he’s managed to somehow persuade into standing at his side. Aragorn laughs, the sound music to Boromir’s ears, and keeps up with him at every step. 

-----

Somehow, half the citadel is out in the courtyard by the time Boromir makes it to the training rings. 

The just-risen sun stains the stones and walls a gleaming white, and Aragorn is waiting in a loose, pale golden tunic with a sword held loosely at his side. Across the way, there’s a strip of grass with a fountain and benches, and quite a few courtiers appear to be casually strolling or sitting and talking, regardless of the fact that Boromir doesn’t think he’s ever seen a single courtier in the training yards before this morning. 

He vaults the fence that marks the ring, feet thudding into the sand, and goes to the rack to pick a sword. Aragorn scuffs his foot into the sand pointedly, and Boromir looks up and then to the side, where he spots all four of his planning assistants not even pretending not to watch. Colneth waves before Vedis can stop her, and Boromir gives up and waves back. 

“I take it you did not have the chance to catch those serving girls,” Aragorn muses, and Boromir clears his throat roughly, remembering how he’d had to sit in the balcony for nearly a quarter of an hour to get his head to stop spinning, thinking of Aragorn looking up at him over his hand. 

“Regrettably, my king, I did not.” 

“What’s done is done. We have an audience. Shall we show off?” 

Boromir looks over at Aragorn and grins, letting some sharpness show through, letting the king see how much he’d waited for this. He turns his sword in his hand, inspecting the flat. “A moment to prepare, then.” 

Aragorn grins back with the same relish, and they cross to opposite ends of the ring. Boromir picks up a small, rounded shield, slipping his arm through the straps, and rolls his shoulders down into a starting stance, blade up and shining. 

He remembers what he’s seen of Aragorn fighting, and gives thanks that the man is using a blunted blade rather than Anduil. Boromir rather likes his arms attached. Aragorn turns and falls into his own stance, sword out in one hand as though it’s much lighter than it appears to be. A hush rolls over the courtyard. 

He thinks of how it must appear to the courtiers— Boromir bigger, broader, with sword and shield, Aragorn leaner, slimmer, with only a lighter blade in one hand —and then he must stop thinking at once because Aragorn is moving, starting a traditional slow circling, both watching the other. 

Neither of them is quite used to having time to wait before an enemy is on them, and so they both break forwards at once, and Boromir narrowly turns the point of Aragorn’s blade off his shield, swinging up shallowly into Aragorn’s side and moving out of the way as quick as he’s able, feet shifting the sand. 

Aragorn retreats, something about his steps rhythmic, and Boromir lunges, parries, presses Aragorn back with his shield. They keep just missing each other, and it’s reminding Boromir of dancing, but he watches close, trying to catch the moment when Aragorn will bare his teeth— and Aragorn moves nearly too fast to see and slips right past Boromir’s guard, bright feral eyes coming right for him. Boromir startles and somehow gets his sword up in time, and their hilts are locked. He gathers all his strength and shoves, and Aragorn is pushed back a meter or so. The air is still except for their panting, and then Aragorn shifts his feet, his whole body changing, and Boromir nearly freezes up. 

The man revealed before him holds a sword like an extension of his arm, half between an inhuman grace and a wolf caught stalking its prey. Boromir has half a breath to lift his blade before Aragorn closes distance far too fast and jars Boromir’s whole arm to the shoulder with his first strike, steel screeching against itself. He lifts his sword again, and Boromir desperately ducks behind his shield and takes a running step right under the blade, swinging out the shield like a backhanded slap and knocking Aragorn halfway across the arena.

Aragorn skids, somehow twists forwards and catches himself crouched on one hand, and then he launches himself at Boromir, sprinting full-out. Boromir shouts in surprise, puts his shield up on instinct, the angle crooked but better than nothing, and he feels Aragorn actually plant his foot onto the face of the shield, tilting it, pushing up and over him in a flash of black hair and gold fabric, and then there’s a blade resting on his shoulder quick as a snake striking, cold blunt edge touching his throat. 

“Bastard,” Boromir gasps, and then laughs, joyful to be moving and sweating and fighting in the chill morning air. 

Aragorn is close behind him. “Do you yield, Boromir?” 

The words send a shiver down Boromir’s spine. He lets his weapons fall, says quickly, “I yield.” 

Still there is that silence, like the world is holding its breath. Aragorn does not move his blade. Boromir feels his heartbeat against the metal. He wants something wordless, something he doesn’t understand. They are the only two living creatures in all of Gondor, in all of Middle Earth. 

Aragorn takes a shuddering breath against Boromir’s ear and then is gone, stalking over to the side of the ring and tossing his scraped sword into a trough filled with dented and misshapen equipment. The courtiers are applauding. 

Boromir raises his hand to them again, and this time more of them raise their hands in return. He can see Mhoida’s smile from here. He tries not to watch Aragorn’s lean back, tunic clinging there with sweat, as the king selects a new sword. That breath seems to move against his ear again, raising the hairs on his neck. 

Aragorn turns, and though his stance is easy and his stride is measured, that wild thing has come out from behind his eyes and is shaking itself, hackles raised playfully. It won’t be put away easily, not for a while more yet. “Are you ready?” Aragorn asks, and Boromir smiles, this time letting all his teeth show, purposeful, violent. 

He casts his shield to the side, and adopts a two handed grip, settling into a lower stance. “Come on, then.” 

Aragorn laughs suddenly, clear and happy and vicious, and Boromir is brimming over with it, the glint of steel, Aragorn’s hair falling out of its tie, sand and sweat and satisfaction. 

They spar until the sun is high and the courtiers have long dispersed. Boromir strips his shirt off and so does Aragorn, and when they tire of swords they fight with long knives, close quarters. It’s so good, so simple to see nothing but the next strike, bodies moving in long familiar motions. He hadn’t realized just how much he missed the constant running and fighting, the ache of living through a battle, the smell of dirt. He can tell Aragorn has fallen into the same place, the two of them perfectly matched at last, truly sparring now, not just working out energy. The man is still so fast, but Boromir is learning to keep up, learning where he’ll be a second before he’s there. 

At last, Boromir catches Aragorn’s wrist just as Aragorn snatches his, and their weapons clatter away. 

“Damn,” Aragorn pants, Boromir bracing for a struggle, but instead Aragorn leans forward, rests his damp brow against their joined hands. Sweat drips from his hair. 

Boromir steps in, catches him with one arm under the shoulders, and Aragorn lets himself lean back with a groan, wrapping his own arm up across the back of Boromir’s neck. The courtyard is deserted as they make their way to the water pump, so Boromir just hefts Aragorn up at his side and carries him there the last few feet. 

Aragorn makes a very undignified noise in protest, and Boromir rolls his eyes. “You walk too slowly. I’m dying of thirst.” 

They both drink like horses, and Boromir sticks his head under the faucet, which makes him realize that it’s actually not as warm outside as he’d like it to be, since summer is waning now, and both of them in just their breeches.

Aragorn seems to have revived and come to the same conclusion, and they hurry into a narrow vestibule to hide from the sudden chill. A guard opens the inner door that leads into the citadel, and Aragorn speaks to him quietly. 

Boromir is bone-tired, dog-tired, and he slumps down on a bench, scraping his wet hair back with his fingers and closing his eyes. Opening them, he catches Aragorn watching him, limbs loose, leaning carelessly against a wall. He looks well satisfied, something rangy and bold about his posture that hasn’t been there since he was crowned. 

“M’lord,” Boromir attempts, his voice hoarse, “The summons has been written. Would you approve it?”

Aragorn makes a sort of affirmative sigh, rolling his neck with a grimace. “Later tonight. Rest first, Boromir. We have worn ourselves thin, I fear.”

Boromir nods wearily, dragging himself up from the bench and brushing past Aragorn at the doorframe, close enough to smell the scent of earth after rain. It follows him down the halls until he collapses on a chaise in his quarters and sleeps without dreams, until Irena shakes him awake, and he piles his scribbled papers together and goes to dance with the king. 

-----

The messengers go out the next morning on horseback. 

It is tradition for high noble houses in Gondor that the arrival of an engagement is somewhat of an open secret, only to be spoken of indirectly to the public until an official announcement is made. Of course, one usually could not miss the signs of courtship, and it tended to be somewhat obvious who was being engaged when a large gathering was announced, but Faramir and Eowyn have undertaken their courtship in an entirely different kingdom, and so not even his councilwomen know who is to be engaged, and the formal invitations speak only of a feast and a dance, not of any occasion as such. 

They are dated for high autumn, in several fortnight’s time, but the preparations must begin at once— Mhoida has warned that delegations will begin to arrive in the weeks before the ball, and will expect to stay within the citadel and be entertained. With the scouts go Boromir’s chosen emissaries, each recommended by his little council; elves for the elves, dwarves for the dwarves, men the men. Boromir sends a letter by falcon for the hobbits, and leaves the invitation for Rohan to the side until he can ask Aragorn about going for a few days himself, to complete the necessary traditions and announcements. Rohan, at least, shall know of the engagement ahead of time, and likely do already with how Faramir carries on in his letters. 

He would have sent his faithful ladies out as envoys themselves, if he didn’t have such sore need of them. The criers of Minas Tirith put up proclamations in public squares, and Boromir watches from above as the city comes alive. The citadel is just as lively, and Boromir feels as though he is being whipped about like a banner in the wind. If not for his own little council he thinks he might go mad. 

The actual city council of Minas Tirith is made up of doddering old men who are thankfully delighted by the idea of a traditional ball. They aren’t entirely keen on Aragorn yet, but Boromir has known them since they could hear without ear trumpets, so with his backing Aragorn makes a very kingly speech about the glory of Minas Tirith and Faramir honoring the steward’s line with heirs. The second they’re out of that council, Vedis comes out of nowhere with a small battalion of cooks and cooks’ assistants and demands that Boromir and Aragorn come to a tasting at once. The kitchen staff frantically take notes while Aragorn approves two kinds of cheese, tiny dried sausages, a kind of herb tart, and is about to try desserts when Boromir is snatched up by Mhoida. 

There’s cobwebs in her braids, and he finds out why when she shows him a small room off the steward’s study that he hadn’t even known existed. Volumes are stacked to the ceilings, nearly disintegrating at Boromir’s touch, and within they find an exhaustive account of past courts, down to the specific daily dress and meals of visiting nobility. Mhoida wonders at the handwriting, bold, proper strokes and then delicate writings in the margins, growing shakier as time goes on. Boromir peers over her shoulder and with a small pang recognizes his mother’s annotations. 

They sit on the floor there and are covered gradually in flakes of rotted paper until their lamp gutters and they sneeze their way out into the study with armfuls of scrolls full of notes about things like how the Elf King has his breeches embroidered. Ilcë is waiting primly with a steaming pot, and the two of them lay about on the furniture desperately inhaling tea until the dust at the back of their throats has gone. They lay there a bit longer, and then Mhoida is up and off to speak with the staff, and Boromir follows Ilcë on winding paths through the castle, down to the greenhouses and gardens. 

She’s chosen local plants, plants of the plains and wilds, and promises they’ll bloom by the time the ball arrives. There’s a deceptively fragile-looking vine growing in huge clots all along the greenhouse ceiling, and Ilcë describes delicate white flowers and leaves like lace, twining up along the great pillars of the hall, shimmering fabrics flowing from the rafters, her pale hands sketching shapes in the air. Boromir approves her choices at once, thinking of the beauty of Rivendell, all arching doorways and tasteful greenery. He comments on the similarities, and Ilcë reveals she’d known Aragorn in Rivendell, where he’d been raised. “He would not know me, but every elf in that place knows well of him.” 

She tells Boromir about a sometimes sullen, incessantly adventurous child who pushed every boundary they had and drove Elrond to distraction. “You carried him back to destiny from sworn exile,” she says, smiling at Boromir, “’Tis something none but his lady, Arwen, had done before. You are dear to him, indeed.” 

After countless more duties and meetings and tasks, at last, night falls, and Boromir manages to shamble through the halls to his bed. The next week is one of the most grueling he’s ever experienced, and he once was under siege in Osgiliath for nearly the same time. Morning to night, there is always something to be done, and the inner layers of the citadel grind awake again, shaking off layers of dust and grit as the people remember how to celebrate, how to prepare, how to anticipate something besides war. Picking up the loose ends of decades past has him scrambling for clues, a whole new history of the citadel he’s hardly seen before unfolding as they go along. There’s barely time to eat, let alone time for dancing— and so he sees Aragorn mostly at the ends of passageways and perhaps at opposite sides of a room. Boromir is not ashamed to admit he sorely misses their lessons, not the least since Aragorn looks just as weary as himself. 

He awakens at the end of it to Colneth shaking him by the shoulders, Irena hovering behind her looking incredibly amused. He has greatly missed having merrier folk about, misses his brother and the young hobbits, and Colneth reminds him of that boundless energy, but like before Boromir cannot hope to match it.

“Boromir,” he hears faintly, “Boromir, the bards have come! They are waiting in the hall!” 

He throws his arm over his eyes and groans wholeheartedly. “Arrangements have been made, milady. Leave me in peace, I beg— I have fought new battles and lost many.” 

Colneth laughs, the sound like water running over rock. “And how shall I tell them the steward of Minas Tirith sleeps like a great bear and cannot be woken? Up, Boromir, Son of Gondor. You do them a disservice. How will your people dance?” 

At this, Boromir rises, growling a bit like a bear to make Colneth and Irena flee laughing from his chambers, but his mind is suddenly clear. Music, at last. 

The musicians Colneth have found are skilled, but the groups of Men, Elves and Dwarves have not played together. They will need time to practice, to learn to accompany the traditional songs of all three cultures, and Boromir offers them accommodation, tells them Merethrond, the feasting hall, will be empty in the evenings for their use, to learn the sounds of the space they will play. 

He does not tell them that the curtained balcony walkway will be hiding a king learning to dance, and a steward teaching him. Tonight, he is determined, they will dance again. 

-----

Boromir slips in and climbs the wide stairs to the balcony before the players enter the hall, letting the heavy curtains down from where they’re tied back and settling in to wait for Aragorn. He feels a bit like when he used to sneak up to this balcony with Faramir, to hide from Denethor. The older they got, the harder it had become to escape the long shadow of their father’s mind. 

Merethrond, the Great Hall of Feasts, has sat empty for over two decades now, built of the same white stone as the rest of the Tower. It is wider and taller than the throne hall, great beams arching up into darkness, and along the back wall is a wide arched balcony— seemingly just for looks, but Boromir knows that the servants will use the hidden passageways in the walls here to move unobtrusively in and out of the hall with goblets, towels, messages, and even small casks of wine or platters of food, brought straight up from the feasting kitchens. 

It’s dark, up there, but he’s brought a lantern with him, and there are hundreds of candelabras stored here, still with candles half-burned, strangely ornate, gold and silver wings wreathed in dust and cobweb. They must have been used for the hall, in days of peace, and Boromir gets carried away lighting them all and watching them glitter, the balcony filled with soft reflections off the dulled metals. The curtains, he knows from experience, are thick enough to hide even a glimmer of light. 

He hears the clamor of the musicians coming in, and just in time the drapes at the end of the balcony stir, Aragorn pushing his way through and blinking at the sudden light. Boromir beckons him nearer before he speaks, both of them being cautious of alerting the players setting up below. “We shall have to be quiet.” 

“We shall have to be careful not to set ourselves aflame,” Aragorn says dryly, but he is turning fully to look at the forest of lit wings around them, something soft and joyful in his face. “I’ve brought something.” 

“Oh?” 

Aragorn unearths a stout bottle from his vest, the glass sparkling. “I found it in  Elendil’s bookcases.” 

Boromir squints at the dark liquid. “Is that wine or vinegar?” 

“Shall we find out?” 

It is, in fact, an exceedingly strong sort of cordial, nearly black, and exceptionally good. Boromir forbids them to have more than a sip each before the musicians finish tuning, with the defense that a whole week has been removed from his lesson plans. 

The musicians tune, and then there’s a general hubbub as they try to determine who goes first, what songs they’ll need, how to accompany each other, and finally silence. Boromir steps to the middle of the balcony floor and listens hard, and the first notes of a familiar song ring out. “They’re starting with traditional Men’s folk dances. Come here, and I’ll lead.” 

They begin with the step patterns Aragorn knows, matching them to the music, and then Boromir says, “Follow me,” and starts the promenade. 

Aragorn’s eyes go a bit wide, and Boromir grins and turns him, raises their arms, hands clasped, and they stomp, turn, wheel round each other, arms looped on the other’s waist. 

“There,” Boromir says as they promenade back down, “Do you know it?” 

“Once more,” Aragorn asks, concentrating now, and Boromir leads him through another phrase. The other groups of players are starting to chime in now; Boromir hears the elves adding stringed harmonies, the dwarves beating hollow metal drums in time. 

“Alright,” Aragorn says, meeting Boromir’s eyes, determined, and takes Boromir’s hands without falter, switching to lead flawlessly. 

“Very good,” Boromir praises, and Aragorn spins him, and this feels strange and new, to really be dancing, to have Aragorn confidently move them around the floor. 

“I am lucky to have a good teacher.” 

Boromir looks a bit too long into Aragorn’s eyes and has to swallow and look away before he misses a step. “Let me lead you, we are short a part.” 

They dance that song, and Boromir teaches the next, and then a song comes that makes them both nearly pitch off the balcony or knock over a candelabra with the speed of the steps. “How does anyone keep up,” Aragorn pants, his hands warm around Boromir’s biceps. 

Boromir laughs. “With this song, the point is to be stumbling and laughing by the end.”

Now Aragorn chuckles, hanging his head. “And indeed we are.” 

They drink a little to rest, then dance again, then sit and drink while the dwarves take their turn to lead, neither of them knowing true dwarven dances. The candelabras are burning low and flickering by the time the elves begin to play, and Boromir is sat against the wall beside Aragorn, bottle half empty in his hand. Aragorn takes it from him, tips his head back to drink. His throat is sunkissed and strong. Boromir watches him absently, eyes low with wine, not thinking about the strange warmth kindling in his gut. 

An elven singer begins, and Aragorn sighs, smiling. “It has been long since I have heard the tongue of my kin, or seen them dance.”

“You should speak it more,” Boromir suggests, nudging his shoulder up against Aragorn’s. 

“I have no one to speak it to, my steward.” Aragorn turns his head lazily against the wall, blinks slowly at Boromir. He is hypnotic like this, loose with wine, his lean strength smoothed out into languid grace. 

Boromir is aiming to tease, but his voice comes out low and soft, too honest. “I like to hear it, though I cannot understand. I have not heard you sing since before the Riddermark.” 

There is stillness for a moment, the high, soaring voice of the elf below, and then Aragorn, rough and almost startled. “You listened?” 

Boromir clears his throat, looking down at his lap. “You sang often.” He does not say, the first thing I heard when I woke was your voice. I watched you sing to the trees, to the wild creatures and to your horses. Your voice carried me on past Amon Hen. Your voice split the darkness, sunk into my soul. I do not know what I would have done without it. 

The singer below is beginning another verse, and Aragorn coughs, once, and then begins to sing very quietly, a lilting, aching harmony. Boromir leans into him, feels his voice reverberating through his body like falling rocks, like a drop of water into a pond. 

He is back lying curled by the campfire, and Aragorn is singing into the night, hand at his sword, his voice mourning in a language Boromir cannot speak. He is laid close beside Aragorn in Lörien, shaking with grief and fear as Aragorn sings softly to the sleeping Fellowship, offering comfort. He is walking weary in the grass of the Wilds through another sunrise, hearing the first sweet notes of Aragorn singing to greet the birds. They are running, they are riding, and Aragorn is beside him, will always be beside him. 

Boromir opens his eyes. The last notes of the song die away in Aragorn’s throat. 

They are pressed together against the dusty wall, candlelight flickering. Aragorn’s arm is warm against his, and their legs are nearly touching, the heat of Aragorn’s thigh very close. Boromir turns his head. 

Aragorn is looking at him. He is holding himself very still, but Boromir can feel his breath. The candles look like stars in his eyes. Boromir is suddenly very aware for the first time that they are alone here, have been alone in each other’s company every night they have done this. He breathes in Aragorn’s scent and shudders with it. 

The elves are beginning to play again. Boromir prays his voice does not shake. “Do you know these dances?” 

Aragorn’s eyes are— they are very blue. He is not wearing his circlet tonight. He could almost be just another man. “I do.” 

“Will you—“ Boromir has to stop and fumble for the rest of his sentence because Aragorn won’t stop looking at him like that, “Will you teach me, then? As a trade?” 

Aragorn’s expression flickers, something dark and focused fading away, and he smiles.  “Tomorrow night, I will. Tonight, I fear I am too worn.” 

Something taut in the air releases, and they shift away from each other. The wine has slowed them both, and the candelabras are starting to go out. 

The players have begun to make a ruckus about packing up, but Boromir leads them down the balcony with his lantern and into a little alcove where the wall opens at his touch. The passageway is very dark, but clean. Aragorn squints inside with some shock. 

“Servant’s passage,” Boromir tells him, “or perhaps an escape route. We can use this, in the future, but you will have to learn the paths. The city is full of holes.”

“Like a rabbit’s warren,” Aragorn murmurs, sharp eyes taking in the hidden latches. 

They wend their way through the hollow passages, and Boromir leans just so on a wall and thumps at a stone with his elbow and spills out into a hallway near the stairs up to their quarters. 

Aragorn steps out, doing a lovely job at pretending not to be drunk, and offers a hand up. “You and your brother were the terrors of the citadel, I see.” 

“What gave you that idea?” Boromir pants, affecting innocence, and takes the hand so Aragorn can pull him up. He does, with a bit more force than Boromir expected, and has to catch Boromir around the waist to keep them both from pitching over. There is a moment when that tension draws close again, like a bowstring, and Boromir finds himself watching Aragorn’s mouth. 

They both look up at the same time and disengage a bit hurriedly. 

“Goodnight, my King.” 

“Goodnight, Boromir.” 

Boromir waits for Aragorn to go up first, and then takes the stairs with perilous speed two at a time and shuts himself in his rooms like wargs are at the door. He looks down at his cock disapprovingly. The damn thing twitches unrepentantly. 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Boromir hisses furiously at himself, “He’s not even that pretty.”

His body vehemently disagrees. Boromir fervently curses the wine, the balcony, the ball, the players, and himself, a lustful disgrace to the stewards’ line. 

After a few moments of drunken despair, he calms down, and reminds himself that this happens all the time. All the creatures of Middle Earth lose their wits over Aragorn, from elves to dwarves to horses. Of course, being at his side for years would at last cause Boromir to stumble into attraction. To say nothing of the fact that Boromir has never turned his head to watch fine ladies in satin dresses or serving-maids with rosy cheeks go by. 

But as a wave rushes in it must recede, and Boromir has a duty to fulfill. It is necessary that their friendship should reach this peak, and it is also necessary that the way back down be swift and sure. Yes. Certainly nothing can come of it. He stares into the mirror on his dressing table and resolves to be noble, to honor his king and not at all think further about Aragorn’s eyes, or his mouth, or his hands, or the way it had felt to be pressed close against him in the training ring. 

Tomorrow night they will be alone again. 

Boromir lays flat in bed for an hour before he manages to fall asleep, deliberately not at all thinking about Aragorn, or tomorrow night, or Aragorn, or singing, or Aragorn. 

-----

The ladies of his little council are full of vigor the next day, and Boromir discusses color schemes and banquet tables and seating arrangements with an unrivaled focus. 

He only sees Aragorn once, speaking with someone important looking at the side of the throne, but of course their eyes manage to meet. Aragorn smiles, nodding in an appropriately kingly manner. Boromir nods back, and then shifts as quickly as possible behind a pillar under the guise of looking more closely at Vedis’ plan for the ale cask distribution. He has no idea if he is blushing or not. 

The absurdity of the situation drives him to the refuge of his study in the afternoon with the excuse of going over guest lists. Thorin III Stonehelm has abysmal handwriting. Boromir puts his head in his hands for the hundredth time. 

In the dark of his palms he thinks of Aragorn. 

The forest of Amon Hen rises around him again, footsteps muted by fallen leaves. He feels the strain of his lungs, the cry of his horn ringing out, surely to the edges of the sea. The orcs swarm, filthy and snarling, unholy creatures ripped from the womb of the earth. Merry and Pippin are close behind him, stumbling with fear. So small, so precious, not yet swallowed with despair. The Uruk-hai captain rears up across the battle like a mountain, and Boromir falters, seeing the great foul bow, the slick dark arrow of steel. 

He looks his death in the eyes and knows he deserves this. 

The bowstring creaks, audible even above the clash of sword against sword, and fate is crawling cold and steady up his back. 

Like a raptor swooping down Aragorn comes, and snaps the bowstring with one blow of his sword. It lashes like a snake as it flies free, throwing the sword from Aragorn’s grip and striking the orc archer across the face, blinding him, and Aragorn lunges for his throat with the flat savage eyes of a predator, drawing an elven knife as he goes. 

Boromir is fighting four orcs desperately, watching the horrible tangle of black cloak and stained flesh roll across the forest floor, and then Merry shouts and they are overrun. He kills one orc, not fast enough, turns to the next, and then a wretchedly heavy shield slams him against a tree, hard enough that his vision winks away for a moment.

There are rough clawed hands on him, forcing him to the ground, to his stomach, pinning him with horrible weight, and he bucks like a wild creature. A blade cuts sharp across his cheek, his shoulder, the back of his neck, and he shouts, hearing foul cackling and gibbering, turning his head and seeing Merry and Pippin already small figures in the distance, carried bodily away by the orcs. He scrabbles at the dirt, catches hold of a rock, twists and caves in the skull of the orc sitting atop him. 

Boromir follows the thing down, snapping the neck for good measure, and somewhere close Aragorn yells in pain. The blinded archer thrashes and digs in with sharp nails, making deep bloody scratches in the flesh of Aragorn’s shoulder even as Aragorn has it by the throat, refusing to let go like a dog with a bone. It’s too big, too heavy, and Aragorn is beginning to lose his grip when Boromir flies across the clearing and buries a sword between the orc’s ribs. The orc howls, releases Aragorn, grabs Boromir by the front of his tunics and mail, and hurls him against the earth hard enough that Boromir feels the wind go out of him. 

He’s dizzy and gasping, and Aragorn is pulling the sword from the orc and stabbing, blood spattering his face. The canopy above them is orange, like fire. 

“Boromir,” Aragorn says, sounding frantic, knelt beside him. “Boromir.”

Boromir starts awake in his study, face still propped on his hands.  

Mhoida is peeking around the door. “Boromir,” she says again, “May I assist?” 

Boromir sits up quickly and ruffles some papers on his desk. “No, I am doing well enough, my lady.” 

“As you wish,” she says agreeably, and gently closes the study door behind her with a strangely knowing look. 

Boromir slumps into his chair and groans. 

The day goes on, and he creeps out of his study for a meal, stealing back in quickly enough that he sees no one at all. He does his very best to decode the Dwarf-lord’s handwriting, reads an awfully long letter from Gimli and Legolas, and a very brief message from Thranduil accepting the invitation and giving no indication at all as to who will be coming and when. Half the time he spends making firm resolutions about things he is not going to do tonight when he meets Aragorn, and then thinking far too much about how he has already done those things.

Time passes like this, and eventually Boromir is staring into the empty fireplace half-dreaming of Aragorn looking at him in the candlelight, warm breath brushing his face, a strong, sword-calloused hand coming to rest on his. 

A knock comes at the door. Boromir almost falls from his chair. “Enter!”

Aragorn pushes the door open with lanterns in both hands. “Have you fallen asleep?” 

“No,” Boromir says, rising with haste, certain that Aragorn will know all he is thinking the moment Boromir meets his eyes. “I did not mark the hours passing, I am sorry.” 

“Well,” Aragorn hums, casting a glance around the room and nudging Boromir’s shoulder companionably, “Come on.” 

They make it through the passages in time to hear the start of the first song, and Aragorn sets his lanterns down on the dusty floor, casting light across their footprints from last night. Boromir can almost trace their dance from end to end of the balcony. The elves seem to be starting tonight, playing something slow and light to start with, probably letting the men and dwarrows get a handle on their style. Aragorn looks right at Boromir. “Did you still wish to learn elven dances?” 

Boromir coughs. His throat seems to have closed a bit from the dust, or maybe from Aragorn stepping closer with a look of concern. 

“Are you well, my friend?”

“Yes. I mean yes, I am well. And also yes, I would wish to learn.” Mentally, Boromir makes a running jump for the balcony and plunges headfirst to his demise, likely traumatizing the poor musicians. 

Aragorn tilts his head, listening, and nods. “We start at the next song. Until then, I will teach you the steps.” He holds out his hand, shadows playing across his face from the low light of the lanterns. 

Boromir holds his breath and takes it. 

The basic steps are not hard, not in the way Boromir expected them to be, although there are more turns, more backwards steps, and obviously there are pauses for complicated hand movements. 

Aragorn takes him through combinations once, then twice slow, then a third time at breakneck speed. Boromir has to lean against the wall and pant for a minute. “Elven banquets must be exhausting.” 

“Elves are famous for their stamina,” Aragorn says with absolute innocence, putting his hands behind his back. Boromir thumps himself in the chest and coughs again slightly frantically. 

There’s a pause, and then a quick beating of the drums below, obviously signaling something, because Aragorn beckons Boromir hastily. “Up with you, then.” 

Boromir hauls himself up and Aragorn stands him in the center of the floor, circling around to stand back to back. 

“We begin like this,” Aragon says softly into the dark, and gentle drums start, and Aragorn turns and steps out, lifting Boromir’s arm across his chest, his other arm coming around Boromir’s waist. Their eyes are locked, and Boromir follows without looking away, and that warm shadow in Aragorn’s eyes is back again. Aragorn moves them across the floor, steering Boromir to face him, Boromir somehow not stumbling over the steps even as he shifts. 

“No wonder you took quickly to our dances.” 

Aragorn grins. “This is one of the easier elven songs.” 

The drums are growing louder, quick bright strings joining in. One of the men makes their fiddle scream like the cry of an eagle, high and strange, and the elves shout with approval. Boromir has heard enough of Aragorn’s singing to note something different about this song, fast and wild in a way that brings to mind the deadly speed of elves, their hawk eyes and silent steps, the curved blades of their weapons. 

“What does this song mean?” Boromir asks, as they whirl through a series of quick turns, dust rising in clouds at their feet.

Aragorn laughs a little, doing something complicated and switching hands. “What do you mean?” 

“It’s elvish, usually they mean something.” 

Aragorn hums, again sounding amused, and he turns Boromir again and steps close behind him, lacing their fingers and crossing their hands in front. “You are right. This is a song of trust between partners. It is only danced between those closely linked through battle.” 

Boromir looks at their crossed wrists and woven hands. His ears are not turning red, they’re not. “I must be butchering it.” 

“You dance well. Elven dances are some of the hardest in Middle Earth.” 

They are stopped, although the music continues. Boromir feels Aragorn’s nose brush the back of his neck and wills himself not to shiver. “Have you at last tired of me treading on your feet?” 

“These boots are more durable than that,” Aragorn says, freeing their hands and stepping back. “No, I am unused to the music continuing without pause. With certain songs, elvish players will stop and wait for a signal from the center pair of dancers to finish the final phrase.” 

“Why?” Boromir asks, puzzled, and as he faces Aragorn the answer comes to him. “It is a contract.” 

“In a way,” Aragorn agrees, looking down at the dust on his boots. “It is mostly a very loud way of saying something to your partner.” 

“Elves,” Boromir gripes, rolling his eyes to make Aragorn laugh. 

The men start to play a new song, and Boromir perks up. “This is the one Faramir and Eowyn must dance.” 

“So you do have songs that mean things.” 

“Mainly this one. It simply means betrothal between two people of high status, traditional to our line. I hope Faramir has thought to teach Eowyn—“ Boromir stops dead, horror chilling him to the bone. 

Aragorn comes close, puts a steadying hand on his elbow. “What? Boromir, speak.” 

“The summons to Rohan. Aragorn, I have not sent it.” Boromir puts his hands up to his eyes, gritting his teeth. He has lost sight of their goal in his own infatuation—“Eomer cannot find out from another kingdom, it will be a grave insult. I meant to ask you— they should properly find out from me, I should have been riding there already.” 

Aragorn takes his wrists and draws them down gently. “Peace, my friend. You ride out tomorrow at first light.” 

Boromir shakes his head, unable to pull himself away from Aragorn’s touch, furious at himself. “No, Aragorn, I cannot. There is no betrothal gift.” 

Aragorn leads them down the balcony to sit on a low stone bench, keeping his voice calm and holding Boromir’s wrists loosely. It is a greater comfort than Boromir thought possible. “What gift?” 

“A gift for Eowyn, it means that we accept her as Faramir’s chosen wife— I am such a fool.” 

“Boromir,” Aragorn says firmly. “You are not a fool. You have led armies.” Boromir looks over at him and Aragorn squeezes his wrists once, hard. “We will go at once, the both of us. They cannot be insulted by the king showing up on their doorstep. Get up. We are sending a falcon.” 

They take the servants’ passages up to the falconry, Boromir leading Aragorn by the hand in the dark, the lanterns forgotten behind them. Aragorn sweeps into the falconry in a way that makes the guard on watch stand up very straight. The bird keeper is nodding off at his desk, but when Aragorn comes in with Boromir on his heels he sits bolt upright. 

“We need a message sent to Rohan,” Aragorn says urgently, placing both hands on the desk and leaning close in a way that Boromir knows from experience makes one feel as though they could change the fate of Middle Earth. 

The bird keeper is a spindly, scarred man who usually looks like he’s about to leap at you and tear your eyes out, but clearly Aragorn’s lean is working, because he’s practically starry-eyed. “Right away, my lord,” he says conspiratorially, and whips out pen, parchment and sealing wax over a little candle before he goes to the perches to wake a bird. 

Boromir bends over the desk and writes something like;

Faramir— 

Your plan is in motion. 

Prepare for my arrival in four days time. 

The king is traveling with me. 

He approves. 

Boromir scrawls his signature at the bottom and Aragorn snatches the quill out of his hand and adds his own. He folds the parchment, drips the wax over the seam and presses his ring into it, marking it. The bird keeper comes scrambling back and Aragorn says, “The gold cord.” 

Boromir nearly bites his own tongue. The seal already marks the message as personally approved by the king, but the gold cord is usually reserved for extremely formal correspondence between royal families, not notes sent in the middle of the night from a steward to his brother. The bird keeper pulls the gold cord from the wall, cuts a length and ties the little scroll to the foot of an extremely disgruntled falcon. “Who shall she find?” 

“Faramir of Gondor,” Boromir says, and the man nods and whispers something to the bird, carrying her to the little window with thick leather gloves and unlatching the shutters, letting her perch for a moment before she’s off into the night. 

Aragorn clears his throat and the bird keeper looks at him. “Your secrecy is key on this night. Do not speak of this to others.” 

The man is, if possible, even more starstruck at this. “Y-yes, my lord. King Elessar. Of course not.” 

Aragorn sweeps out of the falconry, startling the guard again, and walks very purposefully down the hallway for some distance until they’re out of sight before rounding on Boromir. “We leave in the morning. Are there still pageboys awake at this hour?” 

“There is a night shift,” Boromir admits, slightly bothered by how much he’s having to drill sword forms in his head to avoid to avoid doing something entirely embarrassing.  All the sudden kingly authority Aragorn is exuding is very… compelling. “One would be at his post outside your study.” 

“Come on,” Aragorn says, grabbing his hand, and they go back into the walls. 

They pop out inside the study itself, with its great chair and heavy bookcases full of histories. It’s less dusty than Boromir would have thought. 

“I sometimes read in here, when I cannot sleep,” Aragorn says distractedly, rummaging in the desk. “Use the gold-edged parchment.” 

Boromir looks at the king’s letter sheets lying on the desk. “You’re serious.” 

“What else would I be? Start writing, you have to tell your councilwomen you’re leaving them to take over for a week.” 

Boromir sits down in the king’s chair and pulls a sheet closer. “No, I— you used the gold cord on purpose. You knew what it meant.” 

Aragorn puts a quill pen in his hand, uncaps an inkwell. “I am a king. I have a king’s respect. If I can move the earth more quickly with my own hand, for you I will do it, though I may be slow to use my power in all else.” 

Oh, Boromir thinks, stunned. Aragorn would move the earth for him. He feels almost that he should go to his knees with gratitude, and then actually thinks about kneeling in submission before Aragorn and has to bite his lip. 

“Write,” Aragorn hisses, and goes out the door to wake the pageboy. 

Boromir mentally drags himself out of depravity and scribbles down four brief notes to Mhoida, Vedis, Colneth, and Ilcë, with instruction to read that one aloud. He writes to the old councilmen, apologizing gracefully for their sudden departure, and he writes to the head of the kitchens, the head of the staff, and the head of the greenhouses, giving his councilwomen— because truly, that is what they are, and Aragorn had named them well —official permissions to access citadel funds and order around whoever they please in his absence. Finally, he manages to dash off something quick to the stables, letting them know to prepare for a near-immediate departure. 

Aragorn comes back in as Boromir’s pouring on the wax and seals all the messages unrepentantly with his ring. He carries them all to the door and says something quiet and joking to the pageboy, who grins at him and scampers off with the whole stack. 

“It is done,” Aragorn says, shutting the door firmly, “Now sit down, and tell me what we have to bring to Eowyn.” 

They sit on low stools and ponder in silence for a while. Boromir thinks of the usual things, jewelry, wine, fabric, but nothing fine enough is easily found at midnight even in a citadel. There isn’t even a woman here who might have things she could offer to truly represent Gondor, not since his mother died.  

His mother. 

“My mother,” Boromir says out loud, and Aragorn sits forward. “When she died, my father couldn’t bear it. Her things are still in the castle somewhere.” 

“Where?” 

Boromir closes his eyes, scraping up dregs of memory. A room painted with delicate patterns of flowers and birds. A massive wardrobe, mirrors, dressing maids fluttering around at his mother’s side. Looking back through an archway and seeing his father standing by the heavy carved post of a bed, smiling. “The steward’s chambers.” 

They climb the stairs quickly, in the normal halls this time, and Boromir bursts into his own rooms. His wardrobe stands in an odd place on the wall, how had he never seen it before? 

“Help me move this,” he says, and Aragorn helps him heave the great thing out of the way to reveal a perfectly blank stretch of wall. “She had a dressing room,” Boromir explains, feeling around the edges of the paneling. “He must have had it paneled over—“ There’s a click under his fingers, and the panel swings out. A scent of herbs and florals pours out, and Boromir steps through. 

He looks back at the same carved bedpost, on the bed his father had slept in until he died. “This is it.” 

Somehow, there aren’t many cobwebs, or too much dust. His father must have had it near perfectly sealed, a time capsule for his grief to be packed away in. Aragorn comes in with a candle and starts lighting the sconces on the walls, and the room glows suddenly with color. 

Dresses spill from wooden racks in every shade of silk and velvet, and there are small pots of rouge and shimmering paints long dried on the dressing tables. The wallpaper is just how he remembers it, and in a glass-fronted cabinet shines rows of necklaces, earrings, bracelets, rings. Everywhere, there is dried sage and lavender, in bundles that hang from the ceiling and droop from vases. 

Aragorn carefully puts out his candle. “This was all for your mother?” 

“My father doted on her,” Boromir whispers, lost in memories, his eyes prickling.

“Findulias. She was named for an elf-queen.” Aragorn sighs, his accent curling around the name and making it something ageless, something otherworldly. “She looked like you.” 

Boromir turns, startled, blinking away the beginnings of tears. “You were here when she was alive?” 

Aragorn smiles wryly. “I’ve told you, I used to be known here as Thorongil. Your father despised me, and so I left, but I saw your mother arriving to the city, and she had your seriousness, and your smile.” He runs a hand along the wallpaper, tracing a bird’s wing. 

“It is sometimes very easy to forget that you are nearly a hundred years old,” Boromir mutters, gingerly pulling open the doors to the wardrobe with a reverent hand. “Come over here, ancient one, and help me choose something that would suit a shieldmaiden.” 

The wardrobe takes up an entire wall. There are dinner gowns, dressing gowns, filmy sleeping shifts, an insanely heavy coronation gown, and even riding gowns, which they hesitate over for a moment but Boromir has already decided he wants something for her to wear to the ball. They have to go shoulder deep to find the formal gowns, and the weight of fabric is such that Boromir must stand nearly inside the wardrobe to hold the front rows aside. 

Aragorn lingers over a black velvet piece, petting the fabric for a moment, but they both think of Theoden’s funeral and refuse at once to choose something black. A delicate green gown is rejected on the grounds of it being too elven. They both wrinkle their noses at a rose pink satin, which is lovely but doesn’t seem right at all. 

Boromir sees something shimmering in the back of the row and nudges Aragorn with his foot. “Pull that one out. That one on the end.” 

Aragorn has to brace himself and yank, but the gown that spills out is a beautiful grey, shifting to blues and greens in the light. The wide neckline and sleeves are edged by thick bands of silvery material, and silver and glass beading pours down across the fabric in such a way that it could almost be made from metal links.

“Yes,” they both say at the same time, and Boromir goes to the cabinets to find a belt while Aragorn disappears into the steward’s chambers with the gown. 

Boromir digs up a belt made of twisted silver cords and clasped with an opal half the size of his palm, and comes up with a velvet pouch too. He snags a velvet scarf to wrap the gown in, and goes out to his chambers to find Irena folding the dress reverently. 

“The stable boys came and got me up,” she says, fixing Boromir with a look of deep disapproval. “At least you’ve already chosen something nice to bring to the Horse-lord; he adores his sister and this will look well on her. Bring that scarf over here and for all our sakes start sorting yourself out. The king’s gone to the armory.” 

“The armory?” Boromir asks, gratefully surrendering belt, pouch, and scarf and pulling open his own wardrobe. 

“You should be worried about what you’re going to wear to greet your brother and a foreign court after four days on the road to Rohan. Get me that red walking tunic and your better riding boots.” 

In a half hour, Irena’s leaving the room with a stack of clothes in her arms. “I’m going to pack your saddlebags. Go to sleep, Lord Steward, you have to be on a horse in four hours.” 

Aragorn comes in as soon as she’s gone, his tone rather startled. “Is that your chambermaid?” 

“Mmph,” Boromir says from his bed. 

“She’s a valuable ally and I may steal her from you.” Aragorn comes over to the bed and sits down, running a hand through his hair, looking entirely exhausted. 

“You wouldn’t dare,” Boromir mumbles into his pillow. “Aragorn. Go to bed.” 

Aragorn sighs. “There are things I have yet to do.” 

Boromir raises an arm to bat at him. “You have already sat upon a bed. All that needs doing is over.” 

“Boromir…” 

He gets a solid grip on Aragorn’s shirt at last and yanks him down flat, Aragorn making a very unkingly noise. Sleeping in one bed with the king is a terrible idea given yesterday’s realization, but Boromir is too tired to be aroused, and they are both too tired for propriety. 

“Hush,” Boromir grunts, hiding a smile in the sheets and making sure not to let up his grip. “Sleep.” 

Aragorn heaves another sigh and lets himself go limp. Boromir turns his head to the side. They’re across the bed, not even properly on it, but it’s wide enough to hold them both besides. Behind Aragorn’s profile, the new hole in his bedroom wall glimmers, a rosy portal into time, as if his mother is about to come around the corner. 

He wishes suddenly that he could talk to her, ask her what he is to do about this, what to do about his gorgeous and infuriating king. Mothers do that, he thinks, solve problems that seem impossible, tell their sons about what it means to care for another. 

Boromir watches the candles in Findulias’s dressing room flicker, Aragorn breathing deep like the wash of the sea, until sleep takes him at last.

-----

Seeing Aragorn against the sky again is worth every moment of panic. 

The dawn is bright, perhaps overly so for Boromir’s tired eyes, but at least there are no clouds that threaten rain. Aragorn nudges him awake, both of them silent and bleary. They lead the horses down through the city, not wanting to ride at any pace that may cause alarm or wake those sleeping, and the hole where the great gates were beckons. 

Boromir turns to hand Aragorn up onto his horse, and finds he is already on, and a great joy breaks over him. Aragorn looks as though he is hardly holding back, and Boromir mounts up, not even glancing back to the guards, and then they are off. Trotting, at first, and then Aragorn looks at Boromir around his hood and says something in elvish to his horse that makes the mare whinny and break into a gallop. The cloak hiding his circlet and hair blows back, and before them pinks and oranges spill across the whole great dome of the heavens, and Aragorn is something out of a dream, his smile flashing back over his shoulder and cutting Boromir to the quick. 

Boromir swears under his breath, traitorous heart skipping a beat, and coaxes his own horse to a gallop, and then they are both riding full out, wind whipping past.

It is beyond incredible, to be so free. There had been no time to take guards, to bring an entourage, and so finally they are here together, venturing out again. The fields and rivers lay waiting, and the path will be safer now than it has ever been. That joy swallows them both up, the land reaching out with open arms, and even Boromir who loves his city so dearly is glad to fall into the embrace.

Aragorn shouts with pleasure, and Boromir laughs from deep inside his chest. Looking behind for a moment, he spies four tiny figures atop the outer walls, one very short, one with a banner of red hair. He raises a hand, and then as one the two riders turn towards Rohan and are gone into the fields. 

Boromir cannot remember the last time he has been so happy. 

The day is warm and bright and endless, full of life. The mountains rise to their left, the rivers away on the right. Aragorn slows after a time to keep pace with him, and as the sun moves overhead, they talk of things they have seen and journeys they have taken apart. Aragorn speaks for a long time about his years as a Ranger, and Boromir remembers briefly seeing the Hobbits arrive at Rivendell with a hooded, dirty, tousled, shockingly handsome man who was perhaps the most suspicious person he’d ever set eyes upon. He hadn’t even recognized that man as the same one he’d seen there in the moonlight watching over Narsil’s shards.

He describes it, and Aragorn laughs, tossing his head back. “Samwise Gamgee was very near to beating me over the head with a candlestick in Bree.” 

“If I had met you in the halls of Rivendell at nightfall looking like that, I would have beat you over the head with a candlestick without hesitation,” Boromir says mock-seriously. 

“I am glad you did not think of it.” 

They ride hard and fast that whole day and night through to noon of the next, then walk the horses through Firian Wood until they reach the Mering Stream crossing. It is growing dark again, and so they make camp, which mostly consists of tying the horses out near water and grass, and picking a tree without too many roots to lay their bedrolls under. Boromir lays his out first and goes to refill their waterskins, and when he comes back he notices that Aragorn has not laid his own bedroll out head to foot, as two travelers alone may do.

No, tonight he will lay his head down close beside Aragorn’s, as he has done unthinkingly so many times before, and the thought makes him shiver. The man has vanished into the woods, as is his wont, and Boromir makes himself useful by gathering enough sticks and kindling for a small fire. By the time Aragorn emerges out of the shadows with two gutted and plucked field hens, Boromir has a practical little blaze going. 

They eat well, roasting the hens and pulling chunks of bread off a loaf Irena had sent with them, Aragorn using his elven knife to slice cheese off a block. Boromir tells him about his journeys to these fields and woods as a teenager, stealing a horse from the stables to get out from under his father’s thumb and camping here for days until a guard patrol inevitably found him and dragged him back. Faramir had always been so upset when he came back that Boromir would stay for months, until he couldn’t take it anymore. 

“Your brother loves you,” Aragorn observes, and Boromir smiles, not without a touch of bitterness.
“And I him. The people adored him, but he was treated badly in our youth, often by our father, and I did not see it until we were some years older. When Denethor thought me dead, deceived by the palantir, he nearly killed Faramir in his madness. I will always regret that I was not there to defend him.” 

Aragorn stares into the embers of the fire, stirring them idly with the point of his knife, but Boromir can see his jaw clench in distant anger. “I do not believe you should have had to be the shield upon which your father’s blows would fall. It would have been better he had never turned his wrath upon his own children, even in madness.” 

Boromir finds a knot is in his throat, and he blinks hard and cannot speak. 

Aragorn looks up and makes a small noise of startled regret. “I am sorry, I did not mean to speak ill of the dead.” 

“No,” Boromir manages, his voice cracking a bit, “I have felt those words true for a long time now. It is not something I had ever thought to hear from another. But then again, he did not like you much either.” 

“Yes,” Aragorn says a bit grimly, “I felt some of that which Faramir suffered in my time there. But to treat his own sons so poorly… that is something that sits ill with me.” 

“It was different before Findulias died. Yet you are right, it was wrong still.” 

Aragorn reaches and Boromir meets him halfway, their hands holding fast. This hand he feels he may know better than his own, and its owner looks at him seriously in the dying firelight. “I am glad, that you know this. You are ever your own man, brave and true. Would you tell me of your mother?” 

And so Boromir speaks of his mother, of what little he remembers, her height and her smell, the dressing room that he had sat on the floor of when he was small, in the great soft puddles of her skirts. He speaks also in passing of Denethor, how he had been so content to watch and smile down on his wife, and Aragorn softens some, settles to rub his calloused thumb across Boromir’s hand. Boromir hopes what little light is left does not reveal the flushing of his cheeks, but he does not pull away, in part because he fears it will tell Aragorn of his embarrassing infatuation in an instant, and in part because he truly does not wish to. 

Here in the wilderness, their duties and titles seem less real, and Boromir feels again that he can reach out and touch this man who lies quietly by the ashes of their fire, who has put his circlet away into their saddlebags, who is holding his hand almost absentmindedly as if it is something easy and good. When they at last lay down to sleep, Boromir watches the back of Aragorn’s dark head until he is taken by strange dreams. 

He awakes with a start, half-formed words slipping away from his mind, and Aragorn bends over him in the pale dawn light. “Come, Boromir. We do not stop now, not until Edoras is near.” 

The horses splash through the river ford with little difficulty, and then they are riding hard again. 

-----

They come to Edoras across rolling fields, already starting to turn gold with the winds of fall, as the sun is past its peak on the fourth day. In those fields, they stop, and dismount to attempt to make themselves presentable, since they plan to go straight to the hall, and there is no way to avoid the king’s seat upon entry. 

Boromir opens his saddlebags and unearths his second-best court tunic, embroidered with a twisting design of pale roots like those of the White Tree, and the chain of his office he does not often wear, for it has felt cold and heavy on his neck for some time. He looks at Aragorn across his horse and finds Aragorn looking back, making a somewhat wry face. 

“Your chambermaid has packed me a cape.” 

Boromir laughs from deep in his chest, pulling his horse-smelling tunic and shirt off and stuffing them somewhere in his bags. “I suspect we should trust her judgement, then.” The sun feels wonderful on his bare shoulders, and he steps further out into it, stretching his arms and back with pleasure. He hears an odd noise and turns to see Aragorn half turned away and elbow deep in his saddlebags. “Have you lost your crown, my king?” 

Aragorn clears his throat. “No, it’s here. You will have to help me with this cape, I fear.” 

“It is my duty and my honor,” Boromir teases, now somewhat muffled by his tunic going over his head. He gets it on, straightening his cuffs and buckling his single bracer, and then goes to help Aragorn. 

Together they manage to clasp the cape into a semblance of something deliberate, the fabric pouring loose over one shoulder and held back behind the other to show the simple but beautiful trim on Aragorn’s tunic, wings and leaves twining together in deep browns and blacks. Boromir crosses to Aragorn’s horse and retrieves the circlet, going to crown Aragorn and stopping short when he realizes Aragorn has done the same, holding the steward’s chain in his hands carefully. 

“May I?” Aragorn asks, and Boromir nods, holding very still as Aragorn places the heavy thing on his shoulders, reaching behind him for the clasp. He has to look up slightly to see Aragorn’s brow furrowed in concentration, and how has he never quite realized that Aragorn is slightly taller? His blood runs hot, and he knows his lips are parted silently, but he is helpless with Aragorn so close. Aragorn settles the chain in place, smoothing his hands across Boromir’s chest, and Boromir stops breathing for a moment. 

Aragorn looks at him, hands still resting there, warm and strong, and Boromir swallows hard and asks stiffly, “May I?” His heart is racing so that he thinks Aragorn must be able to feel it against his palms, but Aragorn says nothing, only nods the smallest bit. 

Gently, Boromir brushes Aragorn’s hair from his face, neatening the strands, and places the circlet onto his head, tilting it a bit so that it rests higher, shining bright among dark locks. He has done this before in front of thousands, so why now does it feel as if it means more than he has words to say? Here, in a Rohan field, his hands coming to rest on Aragorn’s shoulders, Aragorn’s hands on his chest, the both of them surrounded by golden afternoon light— here, something could happen, while they are very near, looking into each other’s eyes. 

And of course this is how Faramir finds them, seeming to appear out of nowhere, horse and all. “Ho, King of Gondor! Hail, Steward of Gondor! A field is no place to stand about, not while there is a mighty hall waiting!” 

The golden moment breaks, and Boromir hides his jealous little scrap of regret away, covering it with his genuine joy at seeing Faramir grinning brightly down on them. Aragorn steps back casually, creating the appropriate distance between them, and Faramir dismounts and kneels, bowing his head. “My King, I greet you.” 

“I thank you, Captain,” Aragorn responds formally, and then hauls Faramir to his feet and embraces him heartily. Boromir about squeezes the life out of his little brother, and there’s a great deal of backslapping and congratulations and idle threats of embarrassing tales bandied about, and then they all mount up and head off to Edoras, and the great hall Meduseld. 

Faramir sits with ease in his saddle, and Boromir eyes him approvingly. “I see you’re learning much from the Riders.” 

“I have found joy in their teachings,” Faramir admits, and then with a private smile, “and in their Lady.” 

“I am so proud, little brother,” Boromir says gently, and off to the side Aragorn chimes in, “As am I, my friend. We have brought the gifts of acceptance.” 

Faramir looks ahead, utterly glowing with happiness. There is a figure standing on the wide porch of Meduseld just as there had been years ago, long golden hair and skirts whipping in the wind. “Let us go, then, into the hall of Rohan!” 

The city looks well, the houses no longer rotted or dull, and Faramir points out the reconstruction efforts they can see from the top of the hill, distant villages bustling with workers. The people look proud and happy, a far cry from the hostility that had pressed on the Four Hunters and Gandalf when they had entered Rohan on their great quest, and a few of them wave to Faramir, smiling. It does Boromir good to see that his brother is finally well beloved and valued as he deserves. 

They dismount and climb the stairs to the great doors, once dingy and crusted with traces of rain and muck, now gleaming. The doors swing wide, and the hall within is resplendent, nothing like the tomb it had been, and long lines of Riders stand to attention. 

Faramir’s voice rings out. “Aragorn son of Arathorn, one of the Nine Walkers, the High King Elessar of Minas Tirith, Ruler of Gondor, Chief of the Dunedain, comes again to Edoras! May he be welcomed to this hall.” 

“You are welcomed,” the Riders intone, and Faramir continues, “Boromir son of Denethor, one of the Nine Walkers, Steward of Gondor, High Warden of the White Tower, comes also at his side.” 

“You are welcomed,” comes the chant again, and from the end of the hall Eomer rises from the throne. 

He is every bit a king, the golden crown of Rohan on his brow, and his father’s great fur mantle lies across his shoulders. His sister stands like a pillar of light beside the throne. Eomer’s great proud voice is weary but warm. “Indeed, Sons of Gondor, you are welcomed.”

“Eomer King,” Aragorn says, coming down the hall to bow his head in respect, Boromir following behind his shoulder. 

“Well now,” Eomer grins, and the Riders all seem to relax as their young king comes down from his throne to clap Aragorn and Boromir both by the shoulders, his sister on his heels. “It is good to see you both again. Your kinsman has been like a rock among waves to me, and I could not have done without him.” 

Faramir ducks his head a bit sheepishly, but Eowyn beams with pride, coming to stand close beside him. “Nor could I, for he is very dear to me.” 

“Very dear indeed,” Eomer says, waggling his eyebrows at Aragorn and Boromir, “But that is why you are here, yes?” 

“It is,” Aragorn replies, smiling down at Eowyn. 

“We come bearing gifts of approval, in the Gondorian tradition.” Boromir adds more formally, and Eomer thumps his boot against the floor once, calling the Riders back to attention. 

“Men of Rohan, witness this day!” 

Eowyn looks radiant with joy. Her brother takes her by the hand and leads her up the steps of the raised throne platform, Faramir taking his place between Aragorn and Boromir to face her. 

“My sister, Eowyn, shieldmaiden of Rohan, slayer of the Witch-King of Angmar, wishes to wed Faramir, Captain of Gondor, Chief of the Rangers of Ithilien, named by me Horse-friend. What say you?” 

A great cheer goes up from the assembled Riders, and Boromir grins. The people approve of the match, it seems. 

“Then to you I give my blessing, sister, and to you also, Faramir.” Eomer kisses Eowyn on the forehead and Faramir bows deeply. 

“My king and steward have brought gifts, to say that you are accepted also by my people.” 

Boromir steps forward first, soft heavy velvet bundle in his arms. “Lady Eowyn, I offer you a gift of beauty; a fine dress made for my mother, the Lady Findulias, who has long since passed down the river and into the mist.” He unfurls the bundle and the dress glitters like a pool of mithril as it spills across his arms. Gasps come from the watching Riders, and even Eomer widens his eyes at the sheer radiance of the thing. 

Eowyn comes down the stairs at once, taking the gown from him with reverence  and looking up at him with soft eyes. “Lord Steward, I will treasure it. Something of your mother’s must be so precious to you, and to give it to me is a great honor.” She hands it off carefully to a lady who vanishes deeper into the hall, and Boromir blinks back tears, putting a hand on Eowyn’s shoulder gratefully. 

Aragorn comes forward, a pouch held in his hands. “Lady Eowyn, I offer you a gift of strength; a dagger made by the elves, who raised me as a child, and a belt, also made for the Lady Findulias, for you to wear it on.” He draws the dagger from the bag and it glistens like a star, the great opal that clasps the belt glowing like the moon. Eowyn takes the dagger with shaking hands and holds it to her chest, tears standing in her eyes. “Thank you, King. I hope to wear it with valor. I— I thank you, for knowing that I am a sword, not only a shield.” 

“You are as valiant as any man,” Aragorn says gently, and she flies into his arms and embraces him. 

Eomer looks briefly as if he might cry as well, but he marshals himself and stomps his foot once more. “Riders, do you bear witness?” 

“You are witnessed,” the crowd murmurs, and Eowyn turns from Aragorn and goes to Faramir, the two of them clasping hands and bowing low. 

“Then it is done,” Eomer says, and the hall breaks into pandemonium. The Riders swarm forward to pat Faramir on the back and shout congratulations, and a few who have clearly known the lady since childhood pick Eowyn up by the waist and swing her around as she shouts with laughter. Townspeople flood in as well, many of them cheering for the couple. Boromir looks over at Aragorn and grins, and finds the king grinning right back at him. Eomer wades into the scrum and fishes them out, slinging his arms around their shoulders and hauling them up to the platform. 

“Tonight we feast!” Eomer bellows, to another resounding cheer from the crowd, and Aragorn says something into his ear that makes Eomer hustle them back into a little hallway where the noise is not quite so loud. 

“So,” Eomer says, squinting at the two of them, “Tell me about this dance in the White City.” 

-----

The feasting goes long into the night, but Aragorn and Boromir both beg off early to bathe and rest. Boromir is tramping down the hallway to his room, shaking wet hair out of his eyes, and nearly runs into Aragorn standing in his doorway. 

“They seem to have given us a room to share,” Aragorn observes, and Boromir peers around him. 

The room is not large, but it is well appointed, with tapestries and rugs to warm the floors and walls, and its own little fireplace. There is one great carved bed piled high with furs. Boromir’s mind stutters to a halt. 

“Sorry about that,” Eomer muses, sticking his head through the doorway between them and making them both jump. “We have truly only this room left. The hall is not as big as I should like it to be, and the others are being used for storage at the moment.” 

“Do not trouble yourself, Eomer,” Aragorn says cheerfully, “Boromir and I have slept soundly on rock and earth many nights. We are thankful for your hospitality.” 

“Ah, and I am thankful for your company,” Eomer laughs. “I have something for you, Aragorn King, if you would wake early. A gift of sorts.” 

Aragorn begins to protest mildly, but Eomer will not be hearing it. “And for you as well, Boromir, for how could I give to one hand of Gondor while neglecting the other? Come to the fields after dawn’s light.” 

He departs with some speed down the hallway to return to the feast, leaving Aragorn and Boromir to venture into their room. 

Boromir attempts to stave off the tightness of panic in his belly by picking the side of the bed that will be between Aragorn and the door and taking his boots off. He unbelts his sword, leaning it against the bedpost, hauls off his tunic and shirt, puts his horn and chain of office carefully upon a narrow table. Behind him, he can hear Aragorn quietly doing the same. His hands hesitate on the laces of his breeches, and he chances a look over his shoulder. Aragorn’s back is lean and strong and faintly tanned and crossed over with pale scars— Boromir kicks down his breeches and does not look back again. He leaves his undercloth on. 

At his back, Aragorn slides beneath the furs and groans with contentment. Boromir crosses the room and blows out the lanterns. He looks out the window for a moment and knows that he is stalling. Before he does something ridiculous like offer to sleep on the floor he pulls back the furs and clambers into the bed, then yelps when he comes into contact with what must surely be blocks of ice. “Are those your feet?” 

Aragorn is laughing into his pillow. “I am very sorry.” 

“You— it is still summer!” Boromir puts his feet firmly somewhere away from Aragorn’s in the mass of blankets. In the dark he can just make out Aragorn’s eyes crinkling in that wonderful way on the other side of the bed. 

“They are always cold. Arwen could not stand it either.” 

“Very sensible of her,” Boromir grumbles, burrowing down into the mattress and relishing in the scent of clean straw. He realizes with a pang that this is the first time Aragorn has spoken of Arwen in years. They are quiet, and then Boromir blurts out, “Do you miss her?”

Aragorn shifts until they are looking at each other across the bed. “Sometimes.” 

“What do you mean?” Boromir asks, a little knife twisting in his chest. 

“Before we were lovers, we were friends. We grew up together.” Aragorn sighs, his hand going to his chest, tracing the place where the Evenstar would have rested, but had not since Rivendell. “She made her father promise to forge my sword, and we parted well when we last met. I miss her friendship and her counsel, but I do not think we would be lovers again. That time is over for both of us.” 

Boromir can think of nothing to say to that, but the stabbing pain in his heart eases immensely, though he knows it is foolish. Aragorn does not turn away from him, and his eyes look silver-grey in the dark. “Goodnight, Boromir.” 

“Goodnight, Aragorn,” Boromir whispers. 

He dreams in snatches, a misty lake with an elven boat floating silently towards him, a burning pyre in the tomb of his forefathers. Ghostly laughter echoes in his ears, freezing shades pass through him, and then the dream settles into a memory. 

They are riding to Helm’s Deep, the people of Edoras stretching across the land like a river. Legolas’s proud head whips to the east. The howls of wargs split the air. Boromir urges his horse forward with the line of Riders, Gimli and Legolas and Aragorn all at his side. The battle passes in blurred images, his sword lodging in the chest of an orc, kicking at the slavering jaws of a warg, his horse pounding the dirt, and then it is done. Dismounting, he hears Legolas cry out Aragorn’s name, and he staggers, an icy splinter of fear lodging in his heart. Gimli is yelling too, and Boromir scans the battlefield. Even Theoden King seems to be looking, golden-grey hair flying. 

Then Legolas and Gimli converge on a choking orc, and Boromir runs to them in time to hear the creature say, “He took a little tumble off the cliff,” through gargling, snarling laughter. Boromir cannot get to the edge of the rocks fast enough, blood frozen in his veins, and there he falls to his knees and looks down. 

There is a dark shape down there, ragged coat spread wide like wings, body twisted and shattered on the unforgiving stones. He hadn’t been lucky enough to fall into the water. Boromir retches convulsively, then gags on a sob, and he can hear Legolas let out a high, keening sound of mourning, Gimli raging at the sky. There is so much blood, coming from everywhere, trickling down into the river, and that noble face is pale, pale and empty.

“Aragorn,” Boromir chokes out, staring into vacant blue eyes, and then there are hands trying to pull him away, and he writhes. Aragorn is dead, dead, his King is dead, broken and ripped away. Boromir has failed him for the last time. 

“Aragorn—” Boromir gasps, sitting bolt upright in bed, his stomach rolling. 

Aragorn wakes instantly beside him, and in a second he has Boromir’s clammy hands held in his. “Boromir?” His eyes are full of life and worry. 

Boromir breathes shakily, trying not to be sick. “It is nothing.” 

“You were dreaming,” says Aragorn, peering into his face, “It was not nothing.” 

“The cliff, before Helm’s Deep,” Boromir admits quickly, shutting his eyes. “You fell.” 

“I did.” 

Boromir tastes bile. “I dreamt I saw your body, on the rocks.” 

Aragorn blows out a breath full of understanding, lets go of Boromir with one hand to run it back through his hair. “It was hard for all of you. If I could have kept you from thinking the worst, I would have.” 

“You were dragged by a warg, and afterwards washed down the river,” Boromir sighs, sitting back into the pillows, his stomach settling. “You would rather not have gone over the cliff at all.” 

Aragorn sits back as well, the two of them curling nearer to each other without discussing it. They lay in silence for a few moments, and then Aragorn admits, “I dream about Amon Hen. That you bled too much into the dirt, that the orc’s arrow found its mark.” 

“Dangerous days.” Boromir presses Aragorn’s hand where it lies between them. “It is truly a miracle that we all survived them.” 

Aragorn smiles and presses Boromir’s hand in return, their fingers lacing easily. “I am glad of it. Sleep, we have some hours until the sunrise.” 

Boromir’s heart has slowed, and Aragorn begins to hum something soft and lilting into the stillness of the night. It is nothing at all to fall back into sleep. 

-----

The sun wakes them, Boromir blinking unhappily at the brightness of the room. Aragorn makes a sleepily displeased noise, and Boromir buries his nose into soft hair, wriggling closer to warmth without thinking. His brain catches up about thirty heartbeats later and he goes still as the dead. He is in bed with the king. Their legs are tangled together, Aragorn’s feet finally warm, and their hands are still holding fast. Aragorn has ducked his head down beneath Boromir’s chin, and Boromir has his face against the crown of Aragorn’s head, golden and dark brown strands pooling together on the pillow. 

His traitorous body is very pleased with the situation. 

Boromir tries to think quelling thoughts, and as slowly as possible extricates himself from the king’s lovely, warm, firm clutches. Aragorn makes complaining noises in his sleep the whole time until Boromir nearly falls out of the bed stifling his slightly hysterical laughter. Then he does fall out of the bed, making a fairly loud thud. There’s a rustling from up above and Aragorn looks blearily down over the edge of the bed. “Good morning.” 

“Good morning,” Boromir says from the floor, silently thanking every god he knows of that he’d managed not to rut against Aragorn like a stray dog in his sleep. 

Somehow it is not awkward at all; they get up very quickly and eat on the way out the door, snagging sweet rolls from a basket left to cool by the kitchens. Rohan is very beautiful at sunrise, the sun seeming to paint great swathes of the land. There’s something set up in the field to one side of the town, away from the burial grounds. As they approach, Eomer comes running to meet them, without his regalia today. “Hello,” he says, panting and grinning. “Come choose one.” 

A paddock has been hammered into the earth overnight, and inside is a small herd of wild horses. Boromir watches them run laps around the fences, silky coats shining and heads tossing, perfect and free. “Are these—“ 

“These are the children sired by generations of Rohan wild stallions, and they are some of the finest steeds in the land, wild as storms and loyal to death.” Eomer looks them over proudly. “Our own horses are descended from these, and sometimes we catch a new one, release one of our own who is battle-weary, but these we leave to run the plains.” 

Boromir doesn’t have words. A gift of a wild horse, from the Rohirrim. There is no higher honor. Eomer must know, or have guessed, that Brego had been retired after the final battle, and the horses they had brought were simply guard or cavalry horses, not truly belonging to them. 

“Well, go on,” Eomer encourages, waving them towards the paddock, “Choose wisely.” 

Aragorn walks right up to the paddock and leans against it like he can melt through the wood. His whole face is open with pleasure, watching the horses dance and gallop. Boromir tells himself to stop watching Aragorn and focus on picking a steed, or they’ll be there until nightfall. There are coppery coats, black coats, a pale yellow and a grey, horses with spots and horses with white stockinged feet. 

Boromir’s eye catches on one, who looks to be nearly every color of the rainbow, her powerful hindquarters white dappled with dark brown, a pale coppery color at her head, with black feet and a black mane and tail. Another horse intrudes on her space and she huffs, shoving them to the side with her shoulder. She turns, wheeling nimble on her hind legs, and Boromir sees a white splash on her forehead that nearly looks like a tree. “That one,” he says instantly, “the one who has every color in her coat.” 

Eomer hums, nodding. “A good mare. She is surely stubborn, but quick on her feet and strong as an ox. Fine pick.” 

Aragorn is circling the paddock, looking at each horse with his keen eyes. “That one is mine,” he calls out, and Boromir follows his pointing finger just as the horse in question nearly breaks another one’s jaw with a kick. The horse is nearly white, a cream color all over with a perfect silky mane and tail, and black nose and feet. 

“Another mare,” Eomer says, grinning. “Trust Aragorn to pick a fighter. She runs like the wind and bites like a dog, wild as the day she was born. No man has ever tried to tame her.” 

“I enjoy a challenge,” Aragorn says, coming around the end of the paddock. “Let the others loose.” 

Eomer shouts something over to the Riders that have been standing around, and they hop the fences and seamlessly corral the two mares into one corner, opening a gate and letting the rest speed away into the sunrise. The pale mare snaps her teeth and rears, and the Riders barely manage to loop a rope around the neck and nose of the spotted mare and get her out of the paddock before being trampled. Boromir goes over to see her, and she seems honestly relieved to not be near the other mare, trotting along between the Riders without too much protest. He likes her already— he’ll have to think of a good name. 

The single mare is alone in the paddock, pacing the fence with her head down, huffing angrily. 

Eomer beckons him back over. “You’ll want to see this.” 

Boromir turns to him just as Aragorn vaults the paddock fence. They are alone in the circle, he and the wild mare. That mare’s kick had nearly killed another horse not five minutes before. Boromir’s heart jumps into his mouth. 

Eomer begins to speak. “When I was a child, my father told me in his youth he had met a boy who could tame a wild horse in an hour. He said the boy did it by talking, by speaking to the horses in their own language, that he could run one down until it let him ride. I didn’t believe him until I saw the boy grown into a man.”

Aragorn calls to the horse, and she snorts in defiance, pawing the ground. He begins to walk towards her, circling so she can keep an eye on him.  

Boromir tries not to dig his nails into his palms and fails. He cannot take his eyes off the paddock. The mare seems suddenly skittish, unnerved by the man walking towards her, and she spins away and begins to run. Aragorn breaks out running after her, circling tighter so he can stay even with the mare, even as she tosses her head and rolls her eyes. 

Eomer places a steadying hand on Boromir’s shoulder. “When I was 20 years of age, Strider came out of the northwest, alone. I suspect he had left the Dunedain for a time to go wandering, where to I do not know. He came to us only to ask for trade, but I walked out with him, suspicious. My father had already begun his decline, and we were not trusting of strange men.” 

Aragorn is walking to the horse again, his face serious and his mouth moving, half-singing something inaudible to the men where they stand by the fences, but the mare puts her ears up like she’s listening. She’s trembling, standing very still. 

“There were wild horses at the river, and Strider asked if any man were able to ride them.” Eomer smiles distantly, watching Aragorn draw close to the mare, one hand outstretched. “I laughed and told him any man could try. He caught an untouched stallion within the day, on foot.” 

Aragorn touches the mare for the first time, her nose stretching to meet him, sniffing cautiously. He moves slowly, whispering to her, and then suddenly he wraps his hand in her mane and swings up onto her back, and she bucks hard.

“The gate,” Aragorn shouts, rearing back in his seat but holding fast, and the Riders scramble for the gate, swinging it wide. The mare senses freedom and bolts, ears down flat, Aragorn laid out against her neck still murmuring into her ear with his knees clamped around her, dark hair and mane streaming back in the wind as they gallop off wildly, crest a rise and are gone. 

Boromir realizes his mouth is hanging open and closes it. 

Eomer takes him by the shoulder and steers him away from the paddock, walking casually through the whispering grass. He seems to be holding himself differently, resolutely not looking out where Aragorn and his mare had disappeared. 

“You knew him,” Boromir half-asks, something about the way Eomer turns his face away familiar. 

“Yes,” Eomer replies, a wry and bitter twist to his mouth, eyes so tired for one so young. “I knew him. Briefly.”

Boromir stops, his legs like stone, staring aghast at the young king. That is a look he knows well. He has seen it himself, in the late darkness of his own room, in the mirror as he made himself promises he knew he could not keep. 

Eomer had ached for Aragorn, as his sister had, as Boromir does even now. 

Boromir aches for Aragorn, every inch of him, his odd Ranger habits, his voice like suede leather, his bravery and surety and grace. 

He does not know what Eomer sees in his face but the man seems grimly satisfied. “You know him as well, then. I had thought as much.” Eomer turns and begins to walk again, and Boromir uproots himself from the earth and follows numbly, the lightning strike of realization still ringing in his ears. He does not only desire Aragorn, he— it is more. It is worse. His heart thuds in his chest. 

Eomer stops but does not face Boromir, his long blonde hair flowing free in the wind, shoulders hunched as though carrying a great weight. “I would caution you, Boromir, Steward of Gondor.” His voice is hoarse. “There are many that have vied for the heart of your king throughout the years. It seemed his lady elf had succeeded, but she in the end chose to live on and go to her homelands. It is said that elves love truly only once. I do not know if this is true also of Aragorn, but it is plain to me that he captures hearts of men and women at a glance, and also that he does not easily return them.” 

Eomer takes a breath and straightens up, looking back at Boromir over his shoulder. “It is also said that when in love, elves can die of it. For men like us, who are bound by duty, death is not the worst fate. Be cautious, Boromir of Gondor, or love may be.” 

Boromir feels a chill go down his spine along with a spike of anger, part of him rallying in defense of Aragorn while part of him cringes away from the hurt in Eomer’s eyes. He opens his mouth, to say what he does not know, but just then there is a whinny in the distance. 

They both watch Aragorn crest the rise, the once-ornery mare cantering easily under his touch, coming down to them proud as can be to have Aragorn on her back. He pulls her up next to them and slides to the ground. 

“What will you name her?” Eomer asks lightly, as if nothing at all had passed while Aragorn was gone. 

Aragorn hums, looking sideways at the mare, who stamps in place haughtily as if all this was her idea. “Ringelen, I believe. She and I have discussed it.” He looks at Boromir and something about his bearing changes. “What has—“ 

Boromir schools his face. “What does it mean?” He prays Aragorn does not press further. He does not think he or Eomer could refuse to answer. 

The man’s eyes flick between him and Eomer, and slowly he says, “Her name means Cold Star.” Ringelen shoves her nose over Aragorn’s shoulder, and Boromir is startled into a sudden laugh. 

Aragorn relaxes, and Ringelen whuffs at his ear and blows his hair askew as he croons to her, half-laughing. “She is a proud lady, and beautiful as the night sky. I will leave her with you to learn the saddle, and she will be well-behaved.” He fixes her with a look. “I will know if she is not.” 

Ringelen snorts and eyes Eomer dubiously. 

A shout comes from across the plain, and there are men leading their Gondor guard horses out, watered and fed and packed well for a return journey. “You will be off now,” Eomer says, “for you do not have much time to prepare for our coming.” He clicks his tongue, and Aragorn says, “Go on, mellon nin,” and Ringelen snorts again and trots off towards the city. 

When they make it to their horses and mount up, Eomer catches Boromir’s arm. Boromir looks down at him warily from the saddle, seeing that same bitter pain, but a strange peace as well. 

“I know myself, Boromir,” Eomer says lowly. “He is an old wound for me, nothing but a scar now, but that wound is fresh for you. Take care you do not lose your life.” 

Boromir looks long at him, and nods. Aragorn calls his name like a question, and his stomach rolls even as his heart jumps. 

Eomer steps back, smiling wide with only a tinge of sadness. “I wish you both well! Safe riding, my friends.” 

Boromir looks back more than once, even when they are too far away to see Edoras at all. 

-----

They arrive to a changed city. 

The hole where the gates had been is festooned with banners and ribbons, great swathes of bright fabric and painted banners draping the damaged stones, and the bells ring out across the fields to herald their arrival. People gather to see them pass, little children running and laughing, everywhere a bustle of preparations for the coming festivities. Homeowners are scrubbing ash and age from their stone walls, gleaming white showing through again at last. Flags and pennants and dyed paper lanterns sway on ropes crossing the streets. Aragorn bends down to let one of a pair of girls give him a crown of late summer grasses and leaves, and Boromir accepts a matching crown from the other. 

So they return to the White Tower, with laurels in their hair, riding side by side, and Boromir’s councilwomen are waiting to meet them, with lists and questions and tasks for the both of them. 

The dwarves prefer the lower guest levels, while the elves prefer balcony rooms, not facing the water. They’re adding athelas to the florals, to honor Aragorn. Ale has been ordered, and wine, and there is a storeroom down by the cellars filled with crystal plates and goblets that shine like diamonds. The candlesticks up on that balcony have been fetched down, and a small army of butlers are set to polishing each feather. Every floor must be mopped, every windowpane washed, and how are they going to get someone up into the rafters of the feasting hall to dust? 

Boromir’s days are filled with planning, and his nights are filled with Aragorn. He has not recovered his senses after Edoras— rather the opposite. It has gotten worse over the weeks, until Boromir is driven nearly to distraction. 

He will wake, sweating and shaking, out of tangled dreams, and rise to begin his duties for the day. His appetite is often difficult to find, and when someone speaks to him he sometimes finds himself vacant, staring off into the distance. If Aragorn enters a room, it is like Sauron’s eye upon Boromir— he feels every second like he stands on hot coals, a pull deep in his bones that he cannot ignore, like a compass pointing north. In the evenings, he paces in his study or his chambers, nerves mounting, drilling himself relentlessly to look away from Aragorn’s lips, to keep a distance when dancing, to stop holding his damned hand, and then he goes to their nightly lessons and all dissolves into bliss. 

It is the sweetest torture, to sit with him and laugh and talk and see only each other. He has had to tell his councilwomen that he is meeting with Aragorn about policy every night for surely there is no other time, and thankfully they do not question this. Aragorn pesters him until Boromir teaches him the traditional betrothal waltz, and Boromir cannot keep himself from imagining them dancing on the marble floors of the hall before a crowd of his kinsmen, that Aragorn is his and he is Aragorn’s. In return, Aragorn teaches him his favorite elven dance, one that involves a lot of oddly elegant hand movements that remind Boromir of dancing birds. They talk for long hours, heads bent towards each other, and when they dance now their hands know each other’s bodies. They learn each other from back to front, and Aragorn’s eyes sparkle when he laughs, and Boromir is utterly lost.

Every night, he goes back to his chambers and falls into a fitful, guilty sleep, and then the dreams come. He cannot reach Aragorn in the battle at the Black Gates, and one of Sauron’s trolls crushes him into a broken, gory mass. Aragorn reaches for him in the wilderness and kisses him like the world is ending. Denethor runs flaming into the hall and throws himself atop Aragorn on the throne and they burn to death there. Boromir moans under Aragorn’s weight, that sharp voice whispering in his ear. The dead drag them all down screaming into that sick mountain and eat them alive. He lies in bed with Aragorn in the sunlight and does not even think of pulling away. Aragorn wastes away from the touch of a Morgul Blade, his beautiful face hollow and tortured. Eomer’s voice rings sorrowfully through his mind. 

Boromir gasps awake again and again, reaching beside himself instinctively for a body that isn’t there. His bed feels too large, too empty, despite only having truly slept beside Aragorn once. A fortnight in, he wakes from a dream of his own death at Amon Hen, the false brush of Aragorn’s lips on his forehead, and goes wandering the city rather than trying to force himself back to bed. 

As he passes the weaving houses, he sees a lone spot of light through a dark window, and thinks immediately with dread of the possibility of fire. When he looks inside, the weaving mistress sits there beside a single lantern, her deft fingers flying over a loom. She looks up with shrewd, knowing eyes, and Boromir’s mind calms. 

Her name is Brenia, and she remembers him immediately. She has aged, but her eyes and fingers are just as swift, just as sharp. Boromir likes how blunt she is, how crisply she shows him to the storeroom where racks of pristine fabric stand, covered in ghostly muslins to keep off dust. “These are your family fabrics,” she tells him, “Haven’t been touched in years.”
“Thank you,” he tells her, and she simply nods and walks away through the rows, leaving him a lantern. He wanders, lifting a muslin here and there, and he marvels. There is dark fabric that glints like the wings of dragonflies in the light, beautiful rich tapestry brocades with scenes of history and valor, and a creamy fabric that shimmers gently back and forth from white to silver to palest gold. 

“There are not many who remember the methods used to weave these fabrics,” Brenia says suddenly, moving through the next row, looking at Boromir between the bolts. “Some of them, I invented.” 

Boromir inclines his head to her in admiration. “You have a true talent in those hands, my lady.” 

“Hm,” she mutters skeptically, but he can tell she is pleased. “I had hoped one of your line would retain an eye for fine work. You have inherited the taste of your mother. Come, look.” 

Brenia leads him to the back of the warehouse, where there is a massive wall of tiny drawers, and begins to pull them open and hand them to him. Inside are pieces of embroidery, the finest lace, crystals, corded trims that shine like sculpted gold. 

“These were done by my daughters and sons. Adornments, for what pieces needed them.” 

She hands him a last drawer and Boromir looks down and gasps. He holds a box full of four and six-pointed stars, each one of them tiny and ornate, beaded with great care, perfect as though they fell from the sky. “Your family is gifted beyond belief.” 

Brenia laughs, a rough sound but warm. “So, my lord. What will you have?” 

“I…” Boromir hesitates. Irena’s father, Ferion, is his tailor. That line had dressed the stewards for generations, and now dressed the king as well. He should have something made, for the ball, but he did not come here tonight thinking of himself. 

Boromir remembers Aragorn’s hands lingering on his mother’s velvet dress. “Pull me all of our velvets.” 

In the morning, Boromir goes to the finest silversmith in the city, a doddering old man assisted by his grandson, and pays the first price they ask. As he walks back to the White Tower, he knows that he is a fool. Selfishly, he cannot bring himself to care. 

When the time comes, Boromir will do his duty. Aragorn Elessar will shine like the North Star for all to see, and Boromir will do his duty, and stand aside. There is no other path for him. Eomer has said as much. 

There is a month left until the night of the ball. 

Greedily, shamefully, he will take what he little can before then. 

-----

Delegations begin to arrive. 

Surprisingly, Thranduil and the wood elves arrive first. They come on the backs of great bucks and shining ponies, singing rising from the retinue. Boromir is at the base of the citadel to greet them, and the people of the city rush to the streets as the great bells sound again and the wood elves pass through each level. Thranduil actually deigns to dismount from his massive horse at the Tower and incline his icy head to Aragorn, who looks as if he expected less. Colneth practically skips out to greet them, and her sisters, all with different braids in their fiery hair, cluster around Boromir and talk over each other in sweet ringing voices about how grateful they are for his taking such good care of their youngest sister. 

There are more wood elves by far than the Lothlorien and Rivendell elves, who arrive together. They do not have a great lady or lord with them, as most have passed over the sea in the last year, and many of them look less luminous than usual, though still beautiful beyond belief. Boromir very deliberately does not mention it and Aragorn moves among them with Ilcë at his side, speaking softly in their language and offering hands of support and comfort. Ilcë has told him of the sea-sickness, the desperate longing many elves will feel to go to the sea, and that those who choose to stay are haunted endlessly by it until they make the journey. Boromir makes sure to lead them on the path through the tower that does not offer views of the river leading out to sea, as he had with the wood elves, and Ilcë rests her fingertips elegantly on his arm as they go, her little deer nuzzling against his knee. 

Gimli comes next with a selection of his subjects from the Glittering Caves, and beside him strides a tall, ivory figure. Legolas throws his arms around Aragorn and laughs, his voice like silver bells, as Gimli and Boromir promise each other rounds of ale. Gimli looks well as a lord, complex braids that Boromir recognizes as elven work in his hair capped with angular dwarven beads of light stone, and Legolas looks on Gimli with such adoration, his slender form clothed in the darker colors and furs of the dwarves in oddly elven cuts. The two of them are as much a pair as ever, and Gimli’s dwarven subjects seem very fond of Legolas despite the feud between their races. Thranduil does not even look in his son’s direction. 

The newest lord of Erebor arrives, and he is so young. Aragorn speaks to him of Dain, and Legolas bows deeply and speaks of his namesake, and King Thorin III Stonehelm nods without smiling. His eyes are tired. Mhoida comes to him and at last he smiles, grasping her by the forearm and touching foreheads. With King Stonehelm comes Lady Dis, Thorin’s sister, and Boromir at last meets the remaining dwarves of the Company that reclaimed Erebor. Dwalin, Gloin, Dori, and Bofur are old in the way that their Mountain is old, standing strong through ages, not unscarred but enduring. Gimli is joyfully mobbed immediately upon his appearance, and Legolas nods to them all, some even smiling and nodding back at him. With the delegation of the Lonely Mountain comes Bard II, Lord of Dale, another terribly young and grim king. With this one, however, the grim expression he wears seems to be hereditary, as Boromir has heard tales of his grimmer namesake, the Dragonslayer. Vedis embraces her brother, and Bard rolls his eyes but hugs her back. They both have the same strong arms of archers, as do many of the Men that follow them into the mountain. Their people look worn but healthy, and the two young kings of Erebor and Dale are clearly close friends, the war on their doorsteps forging a deep bond between them. 

Prince Imrahil, the lord of Dol Amroth, comes grinning through the gates in a great winged cape, returning not for the first time, as he has been advisor and guide to Aragorn in many ways that Boromir has not. He speaks of spending much time in Rohan, counseling Eomer and Faramir, and winks at Boromir, giving him a slap on the back. Aragorn grips his forearm and then helps his daughter, Lothíriel, down from her horse. She is dark-haired and quiet with searching eyes, and her three brothers jostle for position behind her as Imrahil takes her under his arm and brags about her brave, lonely defense of Dol Amroth during the War. Boromir has plans to introduce her to Eowyn as soon as the Rohan delegation arrives. 

And at last it does, horses and men coming in a rolling wave over the plains, Eowyn and Faramir riding proudly on either side of Eomer’s great charger. Standards fly in the breeze, and the horns of Rohan answer the bells of Minas Tirith as flowers fall in the streets, and Riders in green cloaks pull laughing children up onto their horses, steadying them for a time and then handing them back down into the crowds. Eowyn looks glorious, and Faramir beams at her as the people cry out in joy to see him again. Boromir blinks back tears and smiles, meeting Eomer’s knowing eyes steadily.

At the back of the delegation come two horses without riders, and Ringelen trots right up to Aragorn and shoves her face against his head. Boromir’s mare is right beside her, snuffling at Ringelen’s shoulder, the two obviously having grown close over the time they’ve been stabled together. Boromir holds out his hand for her and she inspects it carefully, then puts her soft nose into his palm and looks at him with one big eye.

“I’ll name you Astor,” Boromir says softly, and as much as he can tell she seems pleased with that, and Astor lets him lead her off towards the stables.  

As the delegations have arrived over the weeks, they have somehow managed to fit a space for every king or lord or prince into the Tower Hall, with small groups of attendants and Minas Tirith’s own courtiers and officials nonetheless, and Aragorn holds court over them all on his lowered throne, often moving about to speak with the other kings. There are debates and games of strength and performances of poetry and song, and the hall at last feels alive again, ringing with voices of rulers and subjects alike. It is strange but lovely, to watch light and sound come back into the tower, to see at last the glory Gandalf had taught him and Faramir of in their history lessons. 

For Boromir’s part, he must contribute to the final push— Merethrond overflows with people rushing to and fro, carrying chairs and casks and gardening shears, and the head cook marshals his staff like a general and marches them fearlessly down into the depths of the disused feasting kitchens to prepare the space for cooking again. Vedis oversees wagonloads of food being carted in, confirms delivery of enough wine and ale to incapacitate an army, and orders about a small battalion of scullery maids who are busily polishing crystal. Mhoida directs the placement of the long feasting tables, set along the sides to be laden with food and drink, and dozens of smaller tables and benches scattered throughout for guests to sit and rest their feet and their stomachs. 

Ilcë stands in the center of it all, a calm island, and rallies a team of the lightest staff who have been tied up to pulleys over the rafters, lifting great swathes of sheer pale fabrics up to drape over the ceiling and walls. She’s joined by the head of the greenhouses and all the gardeners, who are struggling with coils of wire and twine and ribbons. Colneth has reserved a great square of the floor for dancing, and another outside in the courtyard, for the citizens of Gondor have been invited up to the White Tree for their festivities, and they will simply not be able to fit everyone within the hall itself. The people themselves have been preparing; the seventh level of the citadel has been strung with countless lanterns and banners, food stalls and small busking stages being set up along the length of the streets, so that the festival may be close to the Tower, the courtyard, and the great feasting hall. 

Even Irena has been flitting about, carrying messages to and fro between the councilwomen, though Boromir has become slightly suspicious of the way they all suddenly stop talking whenever he draws near, but he does not have the time to investigate. His opinion and approval is required for absolutely everything, and when it’s not he’s either helping the captain of the guard work out vantage points and rotations or sneaking off to the silversmith and the tailor to see how their progress is going. It’s a miracle he’s actually had the time to appear properly at the arrival of every delegation.

He does his very best to describe what he sees in his mind to the tailor, and Ferion nods wisely and draws a sketch of simple bold lines, pulls silver and gold threads from his racks and makes admiring noises over Boromir’s choices of fabric and beads, remarks at Brenia’s quality of work. Beyond a curtain in the back of the shop, apprentices bustle around mannequins, and Ferion shoos him out before he can get a good look. The silversmith’s grandson brings him into the forge and shows him the delicacy of hammered silver sheets, tiny snips and delicate threads of solder and sharp tools. Feathers are beginning to take shape out of the metal, and the old man bends over a polishing wheel, sparks flying in the dusk. 

Boromir hardly sees Aragorn at all, not even across a room or a hallway. The king has near endless social duties with the court so full, and in the brief times Boromir can snatch a few moments in the Tower Hall, Aragorn is lost in a crowd, probably deflecting marriage proposals from everyone who accidentally looks him in the eye for too long. Night is the only time they are together, and Boromir holds every second close, feeling time slip from his fingers. He learns elegant but powerful lifts for the elven dances Aragorn is fond of, teaches Aragorn where to shift his weight and place his hands to dip a partner who is shorter and lighter than he. They can talk while they dance now, so there is no need to stop except to rest, and Aragorn will bow low over his hand at the end of a song, eyes flicking up, searching. Boromir looks away with a smile and wills himself into stillness. 

The silversmith’s grandson and the tailor deliver his finished orders in secret, and he puts them away into his mother’s dressing table, where Irena won’t find them, setting out the only piece he’s had made for himself on an empty velvet pillow that must have held a diadem or necklace. He dreams incessantly, of a back warm against his in battle, in bed, of a body pressed to his and then shattered and broken under horse’s hooves, of Aragorn, always of Aragorn. He feels himself fraying, and yet he cannot stop. 

The days blur together, and the dance approaches. 

One early morning, Aragorn shakes Boromir awake and leads him to the courtyard atop the great cliff. “Look,” Aragorn says, and Boromir blinks the sleep out of his eyes, looks down at an oddly sparse forest upon the Pellenor Field, seeming to have sprouted overnight. 

There are two little figures darting between the trees, and Boromir realizes all at once. “Merry and Pippin. They’ve brought the damned Ents.” 

They run down through the sleeping city like boys, skidding on the cobblestones, appearances be damned, and Boromir bursts out into the forest shouting for Merry and Pippin, the rumbling amused voices of the Ents all around. The two hobbits take him off his feet, launching themselves at him joyfully, and Boromir tumbles into the grass laughing and laughing. One of them reaches up for Aragorn and he comes down to them, pulled all at once into a tangled pile together there on Gondor’s doorstep, just as they had been on that rocky hill years before, the four of them tumbling over each other like a litter of puppies.

Aragorn and Boromir end up with a hobbit each in their lap, Pippin and Merry talking at incredible speeds while the two men grin at each other over their curly heads. 

“Sam would have loved to come, but Rosie’s about to have their newest little one, and he—“ Merry stops suddenly, and Pippin picks up where he’d left off, his face suddenly drawn with sadness. “He doesn’t do much traveling anymore. Not since Frodo sailed with the elves.” 

They are all quiet for a moment, feeling the absence of the two bravest in their company, and Gandalf besides. Boromir remembers the lessons he and Faramir had with the old wizard, back when he had been grey as ash and a thorn in his father’s side. Pippin’s worn his old livery passed down from Faramir, the black velvet, and Boromir makes a mental note to get him fitted for the new livery while he’s here. Black had been the steward’s color— with the coming of the king, they all wore white now. 

There’s a great creaking, and Boromir looks up to see Treebeard leaning down, his old eyes calm and pleased. They all say hello, very slowly, and by the time that’s done the city is awaking behind them, and Legolas comes sprinting down like a fox to whirl both of the little hobbits about in his arms, followed by Gimli nearly crushing them. Elves and Men and Dwarves alike come wandering out curiously, many of them speaking with the Ents, who seem rather more inclined towards conversation than Boromir remembers. 

“Some of these have been around Hobbits rather a lot,” Pippin explains quietly, nodding towards the Ents, “We’d asked them to come help us undo the awful damage of the Scouring, try and save some of the old forest around the Shire and Bree, and several of them just stayed. I suppose the trees needed overseeing, and you know how Hobbits are. If the big old beanstalks had been able to fit in the houses, they probably would have gotten invited to tea.” 

The news of the Scouring had only come to them after it was all over, and Boromir rather regrets not being able to march Gondor’s army into the Shire with Aragorn at it’s head, but from the sound of it, the Hobbits had done fairly well all by themselves, which makes Boromir swell with pride every time he thinks of it. His two young aspiring swordsmen, rousing their people, calling the Shire to arms! He scrubs his knuckles through Pippin’s curls aggressively and he yelps, bowling Boromir over in revenge until Merry drags the other hobbit bodily off. Aragorn is laughing at him, and Boromir nearly gives in to the impulse of tackling the King of Gondor into the dirt but restrains himself. 

Their little fellowship is here again, Legolas pulling the men to their feet, Merry and Gimli brushing twigs out of Pippin’s hair. The gaps left by Frodo, Sam, and Gandalf are still there, always will be, but Aragorn lets his hand drift over to knock gently against Boromir’s knuckles and Boromir finds a smile easier than he’s been able to in days. 

“What’s today?” Merry asks as they begin the trek back up through the streets, people waving at them as they pass. 

“It’s the day before the celebrations,” Aragorn chides, teasing, “You have almost come late.” 

Boromir’s blood freezes in his veins. He had not realized. 

Tonight will be their last dance. 

He pushes onward, not missing a step, mastering himself. He is Steward to the King of Gondor. 

He will see his duty to the end. 

-----

Dust does not fall when Boromir steps through the servants’ passage, and the balcony is polished to gleaming, their past footsteps wiped from the stone. 

Aragorn stands as if he is startled from the little bench that they have sat on many times by now. He’s wearing a sleeveless doublet Boromir hasn’t seen before, deep green silk over a grey shirt with wide sleeves that gather at the cuff. He looks dashing and kingly and Boromir feels like much less of a fool for choosing his favorite doublet, sea blue with a low lacing at the front. When he was younger and chasing after knights and guardsmen he would wear it with his shirt undone all the way to that lacing, but he is determined not to make an utter fool of himself, and only lets a few inches gap open to show his throat. 

The musicians are having a short rehearsal tonight, since they’ll practice in the morning tomorrow. There is not much time. 

Boromir crosses the floor and takes Aragorn into his arms without a word. The music starts. They dance one song, then the next, and Aragorn switches to lead. Men’s folk songs, elves’ waltzes, country dances that they’d learned as children, all of them pass by in silence. 

When the music finishes they are still, Boromir caught in Aragorn’s gaze. He cannot think of a single thing to say. He cannot think of a single thing that would make him want to tear himself away. He knows he must. 

“Boromir,” Aragorn begins quietly in the silence, taking his hand, “I—“ 

Boromir steps smoothly back, bending at the waist, and slowly, slowly puts his lips briefly to the back of Aragorn’s hand. The feeling of it is like a thousand black-fletched arrows to the heart. “Goodnight, my king,” he says smoothly, somehow managing to straighten back up and smile, “I will see you at the celebration.” 

There’s hesitation in Aragorn’s eyes, but he does pull his hand back and nod. “I— look forward to it.” 

And then it is over. 

Boromir staggers to his bed and sleeps like a corpse, no dreams coming to him at last. He wakes and goes over endless checklists with his councilwomen, gives a briefing for the guardsmen, and all the while he feels those barbed arrows sink deeper, a poison of numb despair rising in his bloodstream. 

In the middle of the afternoon the tower and citadel are subdued, the calm before the storm. Everyone has vanished to prepare themselves for the night ahead, and Boromir does his final checks alone, walking through the halls until the light tinges orange and the sun begins to fall beneath the horizon. 

He goes to his room and withdraws the packages from his mother’s drawers, the faint smell of lavender lingering on the paper as he hands them off to a pageboy with strict instructions to drop them directly on the king’s bed, and not to leave a note. Boromir watches him go and then turns to making himself presentable. Irena has been dismissed for tonight, to ready herself for the celebrations, and to spend time with her family, and so he is alone, for the first time in what feels like eons. He bathes and trims his beard fairly rapidly but has unwisely put no thought into what he is going to wear, and so he yanks open his wardrobe to try and judge his options, and stops dead. 

Something made out of cloth like a sliver of starlight hangs there, pale fabric beckoning his hands, and so he pulls it from the rack and a note flutters to the floor. 

Boromir, 

Don’t be angry at Irena or her father— the blame lies with us. 

We could not bear to see you ill-dressed on such a night. 

Thank you for your trust and care, 

Ilcë, Vedis, Colneth, Mhoida

Boromir looks up at the suit of clothes laid now on the bed, shimmering in the dying light from his window. He should wear something plain, something that lets him fade into the crowds, but he thinks of the packages he’s sent Aragorn, and he sets his jaw and begins to dress. 

His room doesn’t have a mirror big enough for him to see himself entirely, so when he’s done he ventures into his mother’s dressing room yet again. There are mirrors everywhere here, fracturing his reflection around him, and he turns until he beholds himself wholly at last. 

The man in the mirror is surely a prince, someone noble and fair. His doublet fits snugly at the waist and shoulder but falls loose halfway to his knees, almost like a tunic. Gold clasps go all the way up to his neck, a high collar like the ones Aragorn favors giving him an almost militant bearing. There are matching breeches, laced tight at the shin so that they can fit inside his nicest boots, embellished with decorative metal toe caps. His chain of office shines around his neck, for once not feeling too heavy or cold. The fabric is miraculous, a nearly-pure white that glimmers with the faintest hints of gold and silver in candlelight, and he remembers the darkness of the weaving-houses, the cream fabric that had shone in the light just like this. Boromir feels transformed, and then he looks up and meets his own eyes. 

The man in the mirror has a hollow expression. His eyes are pits, the brown sinking to black. He looks tormented, wraithlike. He is like a shadow of himself, the beautiful clothes a mockery. 

Boromir looks at himself and laughs, the sound hoarse and cracking into a sob. Eomer must surely be shaking his head somewhere to see how far Boromir had fallen. All of a sudden he cannot hold back his tears. He closes his eyes and allows himself to sink into despair. 

Aragorn will find a wife tonight. He will open the ball in someone else’s arms, and he will dance every song with an eligible lady. He is a king, and a king must have heirs, and a steward must stand at his side. 

Boromir is in love with Aragorn. The thought nearly brings him to his knees, so fierce is the pain. He is in love with this man, noble and strange and brave and lovely, every inch of him, every sound he utters, and he must watch him go, and live with this sickness in his soul forever, inches away from the one who could be his cure. 

He has no choice. 

There is no choice but duty. 

With numb fingers Boromir takes up the silver bracer from the table beside him, an exact replica of his faithful leather one, and tightens the straps to his arm. It sits shining on his left arm as if it has been there always. 

Footsteps and chatter rise through the halls of the castle. The court begins to move to the feasting hall. 

Boromir takes up a square of linen and wipes his face clean of tears, a great void settling inside him. He has no choice. 

Aragorn does not want him. 

The dance awaits. 

———

He steps out of the tower into a world of color and light. The people have filled the courtyard with great lanterns on poles, wearing simple gowns and tunics of every color and size, candles floating on the water that feeds the White Tree. They bow to him as he passes, and he nods back, smiling a meaningless smile as he approaches the wide open doors of the feasting hall. 

Boromir stops on the threshold for just a moment to take it in. The hall is beautiful, candles gleaming everywhere, feather-light fabric cunningly draped and twisted across the walls and into the rafters, tendrils of vine and sprays of athelas blooming in every corner and hanging down above the feasting tables. Guests are laughing and talking, eating and drinking, waiting for the dancing to begin. He steps in, crowds at every side, and makes his way to where he can see the little knot of his councilwomen at the other side of the dance floor, in the center of the hall.

They see him and gasp delightedly as one, and Boromir spins for them, holding out his arms to show the full suit, reaching to take Ilce’s hand and lay it on his shoulder, so that she might feel the perfection of the cut. He truly is glad to see them, see their work come to a close and see their success. “It is perfect,” he tells them, gesturing to himself, to the hall, to everything, and he means it. 

“Oh, Boromir,” Colneth breathes, her eyes sparkling, and Vedis crosses her arms looking very self-satisfied. 

Boromir bends to let Ilcë’s little fawn nose at his bracer, and Mhoida comes closer to inspect that as well. “Lovely craftsmanship. Professionally done. Who’s the silversmith? I’d like to have a chat with him.” 

Before Boromir can even begin to recall the smith’s address, a sudden wave of silence rolls over the guests. They part in a great corridor, leaving Boromir standing alone, and he turns towards the doors and sees Aragorn standing there in darkest blue velvet, sparkling like a starlit sky, looking only at him. His heart skips a beat. 

“Folk of Middle Earth,” Boromir hears himself say, back instinctively straightening to attention, “I announce the King of Gondor, Aragorn II Elessar.” 

Elves, Men, and Dwarves bow their heads as Aragorn passes slowly, regally, and as he walks through the candlelight the hundreds of tiny four and six-pointed stars beaded and sewn into his clothes glitter, and the brand new crown of delicately entwining silver wings sits easily on his brow, and he is a vision of a king, something from a children’s tale of spirits and fae. 

Aragorn comes to a stop before him, looking at him like there is no one else in the room, and Boromir cannot breathe. The silver bracers on their arms gleam as Aragorn reaches to clasp his hand formally, not a second longer than is proper. 

“I welcome you all to Merethrond, the hall of Minas Tirith,” Aragorn says, turning to the crowd, his short half cape flaring out beautifully from the shoulders of his doublet, just as Boromir had imagined it. “Let there be feasting and music well into the night!”

A great cheer goes up, and the musicians on the side take the cue and start to play something simple, gradually getting louder. The dance floor begins to clear. Boromir beckons slightly frantically to a lady he’d selected ahead of time, a minor daughter of one of the old houses of Gondor, who goes briefly wide-eyed before she composes herself and comes forward, arriving just in time for Boromir to present her to Aragorn. 

“Your opening partner, my king,” Boromir gets out quickly, bowing low, and he can feel Aragorn’s gaze on the back of his head, but he dares not look up. 

There is a long moment of silence. He feels Aragorn take the lady’s hand from his arm, and only then does he raise his head to watch them pace to the center of the dance floor and begin a traditional folk dance of Minas Tirith. They look well together, Aragorn dancing even this simple style with elegance. The king touches her elbow, her waist, spins her easily, and Boromir feels echoes of those sure hands on his own body, and he has to tear his eyes away and cast about for something to distract himself. 

He takes advantage of the room being spellbound by Aragorn to snag a goblet of something thickly, deeply red. “Dorwinion wine,” a dark-haired elf next to him says knowingly, “Our lord Thranduil’s contribution.” Boromir raises his glass in the elf’s general direction and escapes into the applauding crowd just as the music ends, and the ball is officially opened. 

Aragorn does not dance again. He receives offers, from ladies and from the rare bold man, but he declines with a soft smile and moves among the people instead. He is spellbinding, glittering at the corner of Boromir’s eye, and the room turns towards him like flowers to the sun. Boromir leans against the wall at the side of the hall, a hand on the cool surface as if it might keep him tethered there. He feels as if they are at opposite ends of a rope pulled taut— circling without drawing closer. 

He wishes Aragorn would agree to dance with someone, anyone, even just to somehow break this tension, even just to confirm what Boromir knows to be true; whatever has passed between them is his fevered imagination, and it is over now in every sense. There is a pit in his stomach, aching, and he feels it yawn open again hungrily every time he sees a dark head crowned by starlit wings across the great expanse of the hall. Compulsively he puts his hand there, like a soldier who has been gutted, trying with his last breaths to somehow hold himself together, spilling bloody mess all across the perfectly polished floors. 

Hours pass like this, Boromir trying at diplomatic smiles as royalty and friends circle past, watching Merry and Pippin demonstrate a hobbity sort of country dance atop a table, the taste of wine sour and bitter in his mouth. Legolas and Gimli are attached at the hip, and they come to try and cajole Boromir into a circle dance, but Boromir manages to decline. He bumps into Eomer at one point, which is almost a comfort, for he does not have to hide his pain, and the two of them stand quietly together until Eowyn comes by and drags her brother off by the elbow, saying something about introducing him to the Lady of Dol Amroth. 

Aragorn still hasn’t danced with anyone, but he’s certainly making the rounds, talking to people from every corner of Middle Earth. Boromir wends his way through the crowd to avoid Aragorn’s path, and nearly treads on Irena until she steps very sharply on his foot.

“Shit,” Boromir hisses as quietly as he can manage. The pain is good, though— it brings him back into his own body, and the sound of the hall floods back into his ears, his heartbeat fading from a rabbiting ceaseless noise in his ears to a more usual pace. 

Irena sniffs disapprovingly at him. She looks lovely in a muted green gown, and Boromir notes the borrowed jewelry, definitely from Colneth. “I’ve been sent by your councilwomen to fetch you, and I’m not surprised with the way you’ve been running about like a chicken without a head.” 

“Thank you for the clothes,” Boromir says to the back of her head as she leads him towards the high table dais, and she looks over her shoulder with narrowed eyes. 

“You’d be up next to the king in your riding tunics otherwise,” she grumbles, and whirls on him at the last second, reaching up to straighten his shoulder seams and pull at the hems of his sleeves, tugging his chain of office into place. “Hm. Now you look fit to summon royalty. Go on!” 

Boromir turns to mount the dais, and Irena grabs his hand suddenly, squeezing it hard with her smaller one. She looks strangely very young and afraid, and he presses her hand back gently, feeling a strong paternal fondness, and then she lets him go. 

He steps up and looks out over the crowd and the dancers, and he unhooks a small horn from his belt. It’s not his old one that had been cracked and lost to the river at Amon Hen, though he misses it dearly. This is a gold-plated one his father had sometimes used for calling a room to order. It hangs on a little chain from his waist, and he blows it now with a clear high sound. 

Silence falls. The musicians fall quiet, waiting for their cue. 

Boromir takes a deep breath. This will be the first formal engagement of the stewards’ line announced in Gondor since his father had met his mother. He hopes that even though his heart is fractured and worn he can do it justice, if only for his brother and Eowyn.

“I, Boromir, son of Denethor, Steward of the King and Tower, am calling. I call for the people of the city to be summoned, to listen well. I call to the high table, Aragorn Elessar, High King of the White Tower, Lord of Gondor in Minas Tirith, to speak well.” The formal way of speech rolls from his tongue easily, hours and hours of classes with Gandalf rising to the surface. The words are old, storied, and the sound of them draws people close, eyes turning up to watch Aragorn take the dais at Boromir’s side.

Citizens crowd in at the doors, most of them still outside but gathered near enough now to hear Aragorn’s words roll out into the night. “I, Aragorn son of Arathorn, High King of the Tower and Citadel, am calling. I call Faramir, Captain of Gondor, Chief of the Ithilien Rangers, and Eowyn, Shieldmaiden of Rohan, Slayer of the Witch-King, to stand before us.”

Boromir looks at Aragorn before he can stop himself. Aragorn is looking serenely out over the crowd as they make an empty space before the dais, Faramir stepping out first and Eowyn following after. They stand apart and bow low, and Aragorn nods gently down at them both. “You are honored in these halls.”

“Faramir, son of Gondor,” Boromir begins, and Faramir looks up at him with wet, glad eyes. “You have nobly courted Eowyn, daughter of Rohan, these three years. Do you wish to be betrothed at this moment, before the eyes of the people?” 

“I wish it, Lord Steward,” Faramir says, looking over at Eowyn adoringly. 

Aragorn smiles. “Eowyn, daughter of Rohan. You have been courted well by Faramir, son of Gondor, these three years. Do you wish to be betrothed at this moment, before the eyes of the people?” 

Eowyn takes Faramir’s hand. “I wish it, King.” 

“Then I bless your union,” Aragorn says, raising his voice so that it carries throughout the hall, and Faramir and Eowyn come forward to receive a kiss brushed upon their brows. 

“And I bless your union,” Boromir echoes, and bends to kiss their linked hands. He looks up and behind Eowyn and Faramir as he steps back, and sees his councilwomen. Vedis is whispering narration into Ilcë’s ear, looking strangely pale, and Colneth is holding tightly to Mhoida’s hand, who looks ashen even with her dark skin. Irena is with them, her hands knotted in her skirts, jaw tight. 

A flash of panic moves through Boromir’s body, something clearly not right about their expressions, and he steps back a bit too fast and almost stumbles, and Aragorn catches him by the hand and steadies him. Everything else leaves his mind. 

Here, in front of thousands, Aragorn laces their fingers together and pulls Boromir up to stand next to him instead of just behind. A whisper passes through the crowd just outside of Boromir’s hearing and his whole body desperately wants to shrink away. 

“We wish you the greatest happiness,” Aragorn is saying, and that’s the cue for the musicians to begin the opening of the betrothal dance, and the people are clearing a great circle for Eowyn and Faramir, Gondor natives chivvying others who are unfamiliar with the practice back against the walls and tables to watch. 

The music blooms louder, and Faramir takes Eowyn’s waist in one hand. The dance is simple, one of great sweeping circles and subtle, delicate movements, designed to be danced by only one couple at a time, and it is an elegant, dreamy thing to witness. Eowyn looks resplendent in the silvery grey they had chosen, her silken hair falling loose down her back, Findulias’s dress rivaling even the brilliance of Aragorn’s outfit. Faramir is in white livery, crisp and fresh and shining with the emblem of the Tree, and they only have eyes for each other. 

Boromir feels Aragorn’s wrist brush against his, thin soft skin touching, and shudders. He knows the steps of this dance, and so does Aragorn. They have done it together.

He longs to pull away, to take back his place behind Aragorn’s shoulder, but he cannot force himself to let go of Aragorn’s hand, knows this may be the last time he will feel the clever strong fingers between his own. 

The crowd roars with approval, and Boromir comes back to himself. The dance is over, and Faramir and Eowyn are bowing to them, looking incandescently happy. The musicians strike up another tune in the general revelry, and couples flock to the dance floor to join Eowyn and Faramir for something fast-paced and joyful. 

Boromir does not look at Aragorn, cannot bear to, and he pulls away, freeing his hand and crossing the dais to vanish into the crowd. He hears someone call something after him, but if it is Aragorn he cannot say. 

He has done enough to ruin the prospects of this night already, stumbling like a fool on the dais and forcing Aragorn to cover for him, and if he is next to the king surely no one will venture to ask him to dance. Aragorn will have to agree to dance with a lady sooner or later, though he knows not who might turn his head, and he is sickened at the thought of it. Boromir sees someone tall with dark hair appear in front of him and stops short, but it is the elf from earlier, with the wine. 

The elf bows. “Hello, Lord Steward. I wondered if you would do me the honor of joining me for a dance, if your king permits it.” 

Boromir goes cold. Has he been so weak that anyone can see his infatuation? “You are mistaken. It is not for the king to say what I will or will not do.” 

“Is that so?” The elf pushes his dark sheet of hair back, tucking it behind one pointed ear. “Then, my lord, do you permit it?” 

He cannot turn back now. “I do.” The elf smiles, and it is lovely, he is lovely, but Boromir struggles not to recoil at the touch of his hand. 

“Let us dance, then.” 

The song at present is something for partners, not groups, and the elf waits for an opening and then tugs him out onto the floor, taking the leading role. 

“What is your name?” Boromir asks, curious despite himself. 

“Devedir.” They spin, one around the other. “It means to try.”

“And do you? Try?” 

Devedir laughs, tossing his head back. “I do. You should know that well, Lord Steward, since we are dancing together.” 

Boromir is startled into amusement. “A fair point.” He turns Devedir suddenly, switching into the lead, and Devedir laughs again, delighted. 

“That was well done! Now I shall have to think of something to reward you with.” 

“I ask for nothing.” 

Devedir hums. “And yet you yearn for something.” His eyes are too sharp, too dark. The hair on the back of Boromir’s neck rises. He says nothing.

They dance in silence, Boromir looking over Devedir’s shoulder, and his gaze catches on Aragorn speaking quietly to Faramir at the edge of the floor. 

His face must betray something, for Devedir glances back quickly so that he can see where Boromir looks, and a certain clarity comes to his expression. “I see.” 

Boromir does not take the bait, and they dance on, but he can feel those eyes measuring him, prying for weaknesses. 

He dips Devedir, and the elf puts his arm suddenly around Boromir’s neck, drawing him down far too intimately. “He watches you, you know.” 

Boromir straightens up, putting Devedir at a more casual distance. “He watches everyone.” 

“Perhaps.” Devedir leans close, as if to tell a secret, and says, “Here is your reward. They called your king Estel, when he lived among the elves.” 

“And what does it mean?” 

“It means hope, my lord, or perhaps some men would call it faith.” 

“Hope,” Boromir repeats, his stomach fluttering. 

Devedir’s expression shifts into something fathomless, ancient, bottomless eyes gazing through and past him. “Something that many men yearn for.” 

A chill rakes down Boromir’s spine. He is all of a sudden very grateful to Legolas for not staring into his soul overmuch. The music finishes, and Devedir steps back coolly, bowing low again. “It has been a pleasure, Boromir.” 

Boromir does not respond, but Devedir nods as if he has and leaves him standing on the edge of the dance floor. He looks out across the dancers numbly and Aragorn is opposite him. There is a lady on his arm Boromir does not recognize. As he watches, she laughs, and Aragorn does not turn away. 

He turns and makes his way stiffly to the back of the room, people moving in and out of his vision, their eyes fixed on him like he walks through a nightmare. Narrowly he dodges servers and footmen on the stairs, and the balcony’s thick curtain enfolds him like the arms of a friend. The dwarven dances are just beginning, and men and elves leave the floor to make way for the dwarf guests. 

Drums roll like thunder off the roof of the hall, and in the shadows of the balcony, out of the way of the flow of staff, Boromir braces himself against the wall as if the floor may crumble from beneath his feet. 

He had thought that he was strong. 

He has led armies, he has weathered death and loss and dishonor, and yet this he cannot overcome. Fate had put a sword into his hand the day his mother died, but there is no sword that can cut this from him. Boromir feels at his chest and stomach again, convinced he has been leaving a trail behind him, dripping blood down his pristine white doublet into his boots, but his hand comes away clean when he parts the curtains and holds it there to see. He begins to turn away, to close the curtain and hide himself again in the dark, but he looks out into the light and sees the king there. 

Aragorn is watching Merry and Pippin dance with the dwarves, Gimli laughing as he teaches them the steps, Legolas joining in with a surprising deftness. Faramir is standing at his side, his arm around Eowyn as she claps, and his councilwomen are making their way through the crowd to join them, Mhoida forging ahead and Vedis leading Ilcë by the hand, Colneth bringing up the rear. 

It lifts a small weight off his shoulders, to see them all so happy, and then Aragorn turns his head as if searching for someone and his gaze strikes true, across the hall, between the curtains. Boromir sees him, and Aragorn sees Boromir. 

Aragorn looks at him in the horrid waiting of Helm’s Deep, in the depths of Mordor as fire flickers over his face, in the fields that they walked like shadows. Boromir looks back, across campfires, across orcs, in the dark and in the light of day. They meet eyes in that moment over downed soldiers, over laden tables, over time and space. The elven dances have begun now, and familiar strains of music fill the hall, the song Aragorn had said was his favorite. 

Boromir cannot go to him. He should not. 

He has a duty. 

He is in love. 

Someone puts their hand on Aragorn’s arm, and Aragorn looks away. 

Boromir feels something deep inside that has been straining to hold him back snap loose. 

He does not know how he descends the stairs, nor does he know how he makes his way through the crowds. Somehow, he is behind Aragorn, he is striding forward, he is opening his mouth— 

 “Dance with me,” Boromir says, aware of his abruptness, aware of the sudden quiet around them, not caring in the slightest. Everything has been swallowed by the way that Aragorn turns his head to look at him over his dark velvet shoulder. 

“And is this how a steward of Gondor speaks to his king?” Aragorn is teasing, Boromir can tell, but he has no patience for it just now. 

“No, my King,” he says sharply, bowing his head, and then looks up to meet those cool, clear eyes. “But I do not say it lightly, if I am not to dance with you, I’m going to bed, and all of Gondor will have to wonder about it.” 

Someone nearly gasps, maybe Mhoida. Boromir is not thinking of his own body, can hardly think of what his face must be doing, to make Aragorn look at him like that. He might be trembling. 

Everything is very still, the elves circling in the background, music drifting. Aragorn says, “Then for the sake of Gondor,” and puts out his hand. 

Boromir takes it, pulls Aragorn in by the waist, and as they step out onto the floor they are taken by the dance. 

They spin, elven silks fluttering around them, delicate tinkling of jewelry accompanying the music, and Boromir recognizes that he is leading, that Aragorn is following him, looking up into his face as they move, and he thrills with it. The dancing phrase begins over, and Boromir starts the odd, bird-like hand movements, his white against Aragorn’s midnight sleeves, crossing, bending like dying swans. 

They don’t speak. Boromir watches their hands, and Aragorn spins him, a strong flex of a palm on his lower back, pulling him closer. They pass each other’s cheeks by inches, noses almost touching, and the heat of skin makes Boromir dizzy. The center of the floor clears, and they whirl into it, the elves dipping to either side, and Boromir senses his cue, looks into Aragorn’s face and lifts him. Aragorn’s cape swirls, the embroidery catching the light, and he is radiant lifted above the crowd, the dark jewel in the crown of the White City. He is looking down at Boromir, and Boromir feels his breath catch as the music slows. He brings Aragorn down, close, closer, and everyone in the room vanishes. 

They are near, so near that the dance is the only thing keeping them apart, and Boromir wants to catch Aragorn up in his arms and have him here, here on the stones of the hall, swear his fealty in sweat and skin, burning bright. They spin, and Aragorn looks at him like a man starved, a wild hunger alight in his face, their breath mingled, shaking. They step together, and the music beats faster, their hands touching, touching, twining between them, shoulder, waist, wrist, back. Aragorn draws in a breath that is nearly a sound, and Boromir has no breath, his whole body straining towards— 

The music pauses. Their breathing echoes harshly in the vaulted hall. Boromir is frozen, feeling hundreds of eyes on them, the steward and the king, closer than they should be, his hands, the hands of Gondor on the king’s waist, and he realizes that the musicians are waiting for them to close the dance. The center pair ends the phrase. The elves around them are waiting. The crowd is waiting. They are all waiting to see if he will finish what he’s started, what he’s made so obvious to the whole kingdom, that he will suffer no queen by Aragorn’s side. 

Aragorn’s eyes are wide, like a startled horse. 

What has he done? 

Boromir nearly stumbles, pulling himself away from Aragorn as quickly as he can, their fingers wrenching apart. He bows, wordless, turns on his heel and walks off the floor. Eowyn and Faramir rush to him, Legolas and Gimli on their heels, and he whispers a plea to his brother, who nods firmly and urges Legolas out onto the floor. Boromir feels sick with himself that he cannot bear to look back and watch the dance be finished without Aragorn in his arms.

The music swells again, uncertain, and the people are still silent as Boromir pushes his way out through the grand doors and flees into the night of the citadel. 

-----

Boromir finds himself in an empty courtyard somewhere with high walls and blessed darkness. He slams the doors behind himself, pressing his back to the wood and sliding to the floor. His mind is a clamor of hate and shame. 

For him, the Steward, to so publicly make an advance to the King, is unforgivable. He is entrusted with the safety of the city, the wishes of the people, the continuation of the line. He has failed once again to overcome temptation, has failed to uphold his duty, and this time all will know of his shortcoming. Perhaps he has been forever poisoned by the Ring’s whispers. Perhaps he will follow in his father’s footsteps after all; doomed to be mad and treasonous.

His vision blurs and he struggles to hold back tears. It would have been better if he had died at Amon Hen, than live to bring this shame upon his line. To be so bold, to be so shameless, at his brother’s betrothal no less. Faramir must be denouncing him even now. 

Oh, and Aragorn. 

Aragorn, unsuspecting that his steward leered and fantasized. 

Aragorn, who knows nothing of Boromir’s love.

“My lord?” 

Boromir looks up. A figure comes towards him from the far wall, almost running. 

Mhoida takes shape out of the night, and she throws herself down beside him, uncaring of her skirts, and takes his hands in hers.

“Boromir, I am so sorry,” she whispers fiercely, knocking her forehead lightly against his, holding fast to him like he is about to slip away. Boromir cannot speak, only closes his eyes briefly, and she shakes out a scrap of lace from her bosom and swipes briskly at his tears. 

“My lord, we must go.” Mhoida’s face is grey and bloodless, but her brow is set and her voice is determined, and Boromir pulls himself to his feet numbly in response, knowing she will lead him well. She takes him by the hand and pulls him to the wall, where a servant’s passage gapes wide. “You are summoned by the king.” 

Boromir’s feet seem tethered to the stone. He at last knows the bone-deep fear of a rabbit in a trap. He thinks of Aragorn coming at him in the ring, teeth bared, knife sharp. 

“Boromir?” 

No, he will not run from this. He could never run from Aragorn. “Let us go.” 

They wend down through the passages in darkness, Mhoida surefooted, her night-eyes flashing back like opals as they pass through shafts of light, sounds pouring from the kitchens and the sculleries as the revelry continues. Boromir knows where they are going, his heart like a lodestone, pointing ever towards the king. 

Mhoida stops in the passageway just before they emerge. She knocks, twice, and then pushes the wall open. 

The king’s private audience chambers are just off of Tower Hall. Denethor sometimes had taken petitioners into the bare rooms to speak privately, of trade or perhaps of diplomacy. Now, the rooms are a place of some comfort, walls hung with thick tapestries, couches and tables and pitchers of water and wine standing ready. Aragorn sits on a low stool by the empty fireplace, lantern light casting his face into shadow. Ilcë, Vedis, and Colneth are gathered there beside him, speaking in quiet, shaking voices. He reaches out a calming hand, and they all three grasp it in turn, falling silent, and then Aragorn rises. 

Mhoida bows low, and steps aside. 

Aragorn’s face comes into the light. He is still wearing his new suit from the ball, alight with stars, silver wings crowning his dark head. He looks carved from stone, every inch an old king of freezing rage, eyes piercing Boromir to the very heart. 

Boromir’s knees hit the floor without even a conscious thought. “My king,” he half-begs, and always, always those words have been a promise of something, something that may be ripped from him now, and he cannot bear to lose it. He will do what he must, whatever Aragorn commands in penance, all but leave his side. 

He hears the quiet stirring of skirts as the ladies leave the room, and then hands like iron are on his arms abruptly, setting him on his feet. “You do not kneel to me,” Aragorn says through gritted teeth, his knuckles white where his fingers twist into Boromir’s sleeves, clench upon the silver of the gauntlet that matches his own. “Never again to me.”

He releases Boromir as if he has been burned, pacing like a caged animal. “My— no. Lord Steward.” 

The title is like a dagger in Boromir’s flesh. Not his lord steward. Not Aragorn’s. Is he to be banished? “Please, my king. Let me apologize for my indiscretion. The dance— I was not myself—“ 

“The indiscretion is mine!” Aragorn’s voice rings from the walls. He stands for a moment, still, and then he turns slowly, and sinks down upon a chaise, putting a hand over his eyes. “Boromir, I— I did not mean to force this upon you.” 

Boromir blinks in the face of this apparently disconnected information. “Force, my king?” 

“Yes. I—“ Aragorn half-rises, then seems to think better of it and sinks back down. “I have behaved shamefully. I have— I have not made clear my intentions, and you have been bound by duty, and— Boromir, I had thought you knew.” His voice is pained, and it tugs at the knot deep in Boromir’s stomach. Like calls to like. Something is just out of reach, something they are both trying to say. 

“Knew,” Boromir repeats, his tongue thick in his mouth, “Knew what?” 

Aragorn looks up from his hands, and it is all there, has been there all along in his face. “That I favor you.” 

The picture unfurls in his mind, pieces falling into place at last. The public invitations to meals. The kissing of his hand, the bowing of the people, the sparring, the dancing. Their hands touching in the night. Aragorn’s eyes, dark, reflecting hunger, then soft, reflecting love. Boromir puts his hand on the back of a chair for support, his mind scrambling back over the past months, the past years. 

“I know you have a duty to the kingdom,” Aragorn is saying, bitter remorse in his tone, “I should have realized that you feel you cannot disobey me, and instead I forced a courtship on you like a brute. If you wish to leave my service—“ 

“You favor me,” Boromir says, wondering, and Aragorn breaks off. “I have been blind.” 

Aragorn winces. “I did not declare it so boldly before.” 

“My king,” Boromir breathes, “You were bold enough, as was I.” 

The air is strung taut between them. Aragorn rises again, fully this time. He steps cautiously closer, as though he is afraid to disturb a dream. “What do you mean by this?” 

“Aragorn,” and Boromir holds the name in his mouth, savoring it. He thought he would never speak it again. “You truly do not see?” 

Aragorn’s breath catches. Boromir can feel it against his lips. “What do you mean?” His eyes are blown wide. “Boromir, do not toy with me.” 

“I do not,” Boromir whispers sharply, “I would not. I have been yours all this time.” 

“And I yours,” Aragorn murmurs, his eyes falling to Boromir’s mouth. 

Then they are meeting in a rushed press of bodies, and it is real, it is true. Aragorn kisses as if he is dying, the last thing he will do before the end, and Boromir groans and opens to him, putting a hand firmly at the back of his neck to draw him in closer. Aragorn makes a noise that Boromir will dream of forever after and steers them backwards until Boromir’s knees hit a couch and he sits, and Aragorn climbs atop him with his strong thighs spread over Boromir’s lap, still kissing him like he has no need to draw breath. 

“My king,” Boromir sighs, and those familiar words have never before tasted of this, of the warmth of Aragorn’s mouth, the heat of his hands, the silk of his hair. He feels caught between frenzy and disbelief. He has dreamed this— but this is not a dream, for he has need of air when he wishes to go on without stopping, and they both pull away enough to pant into each other’s mouths. 

“Dance with me,” Aragorn says, tracing his thumbs along Boromir’s cheekbones, “The betrothal dance, we can tell the musicians—“ 

Boromir catches Aragorn’s wrists and tries to ignore the way it makes Aragorn’s eyelids drop low. “And steal the night from Faramir, my own brother? No, Aragorn, I will not have it. I have already made a mess of one dance.” He can feel Aragorn try to hide a laugh, this close. 

“We cannot leave it like this, Boromir. The people will think you’ve refused my favor. There will be rioting in the streets—“ Aragorn’s teasing breaks off into a laughing shout as Boromir huffs and tumbles him over onto the cushions altogether, kissing him again through a smile. 

“The people will make their peace. A courtship takes a year, they cannot very well expect a betrothal this soon. And…” Boromir pulls back for a moment, hesitates. He feels like a boy again, joy overflowing, but he knows very well that they are men, and men have duties they cannot ignore. 

Aragorn’s clever eyes search his face. “And?” 

Boromir closes his eyes in resignation. “And we must consider the succession. The security of your throne depends on the people’s knowledge of your stability, your lineage.”

“Did they seem unsure of me, my Lord Steward?" Aragorn's voice curls slyly around the title, making Boromir shiver. "Your own councilwomen thought this ball was to announce our engagement, not your brother's.” 

Boromir blinks hard, then huffs in amusement. "I am glad they approve, at least." 

“They have seen us bleed for them. There is little else any man could do to promise himself to a kingdom.” 

“Yes, but what of the succession—“

Aragorn takes him firmly by the jaw, and Boromir feels his words die out as he takes in the sight of Aragorn watching his mouth, as if he wants to swallow it whole. His voice dips low and rough. “Damn the succession. I will have a child, if that is what the world demands, but I will have you, and no one else, at my side. There is no other place you should be.” 

Boromir’s blood heats in an instant. He is very aware, suddenly, that although he may be bulkier, Aragorn could flip them in an instant and pin him, teeth on his throat. Something new flutters in his stomach at the thought. He opens his mouth to protest and instead says, “We have nine months left of a traditional courtship, then.” 

Aragorn grins like a wolf. “I have been favoring you longer than just these three months, Boromir. I do not know if I can be patient.” 

“But you have not been courting me longer than these three months, Aragorn,” Boromir counters, and kisses him firmly to keep him quiet. 

This goes on for much longer than he had planned. 

At last, Aragorn sits up and they lean into each other, Boromir listening to the crackle of the fire and feeling Aragorn’s hand trace patterns idly on his knee. He is happier than he can remember ever being, to sit with the man he loves by a fire again. Many times, they have done this, and yet the peace he feels now is like a warm blanket, untouched by bitter winds. 

Music drifts to their ears, and Boromir rises, sighing. He turns, offering his hand to Aragorn, who takes it and allows himself to be lifted out of the couch. 

Before Aragorn can say anything at all, Boromir bows low over his hand, lips brushing skin, a mirror of their parting the night before. He lets himself look up at Aragorn this time, watching the breath catch in that elegant throat. “Shall I dance with you again, my King?” 

Aragorn draws him up to kiss him once more, softly, full of promise. “For the sake of Gondor, my Lord Steward, I will dance with no one else.” 

FIN

AUTHOR'S NOTES 

oh hey you made it! time for info dumping :)

DANCE REFERENCES: 

First dance they learn on the balcony is a simple Gondorian folk dance, I used the Laendler from the Sound of Music and also some Regency dances (pride and prejudice 2005) as my inspiration

The elvish dance they do on the balcony is inspired by the dances in episode 5 of House of the Dragon S1 

The betrothal dance is mostly inspired by the waltz from the live action Cinderella, which I know isn’t tolkien-esque at all but I do not care I want Eowyn and Faramir to have their moment 

The final elvish dance is nearly directly paralleling the scene from Anna Karenina with Kiera Knightly, when Anna is dancing with Vronsky and betrays Kitty, which is actually the thing that inspired this fic to begin with? I just thought they would look well dancing this piece together and I love love love this choreography it’s so otherworldly, if you watch the scene you can really tell how directly I ripped it off LMAO but I think you should watch it anyway because it’s gorgeous 

I used this dance in particular because I absolutely love how the scene shows such tension and anxiety and emotion while using basically no dialogue, and I think that Boromir’s longing and guilt is just the same, he’s done something he thinks he shouldn’t in front of an entire room of people and betrayed himself in front of the man he loves but has determined not to engage with, and he can’t even stop himself from making a scene in public 

He’s just so characterized here by this horrible, horrible guilt that he’s betrayed his king, he’s not worthy of his station, he’s failed his family line, he’s ruined his brother’s engagement ball, like, oh my god he’s making a scene 

Boromir is such an overthinker like it’s really bad for him

IS BOROMIR FUCKING STUPID?

Boromir is so deeply oblivious to Aragorn’s advances it seems like he might be dumb, but in my opinion it’s a combination of 

• Aragorn being really hot and flustering the shit out of him all the time but he’s also trying really hard not to think about why that is
• Boromir being very deeply convinced that there’s no way this extremely cool and swag man is interested in him
• He is stuck in this mindset of Aragorn has to find someone to court which is causing him to miss the fact that Aragorn is literally courting HIM
• There is a little bit of heteronormativity in there as well, Denethor I imagine was literally insane about heirs and bloodlines and stuff because he wanted to keep the rule so badly, and he likely talked about like ensuring the succession and having kids as a way to keep the line strong, so Boromir kind of just has this mindset of being ruler = finding someone to have kids with so you can put your kids on the throne after you and continue the kingdom’s stability 
• Aragorn has rejected like thousands of people probably bro is just walking around RADIATING sex appeal I don’t think it’s weird at all that Boromir just assumes he has a crush like everyone else and Aragorn won’t be interested exactly like he hasn’t been interested all the other times 
• Eomer did not help. 

So Eomer assumes that Boromir’s situation is like his— that the love is unrequited, because that has been his and his sister’s experience. He hadn’t seen Aragorn since he was like, 20, after Aragorn rejected him and dipped, and he’s 28 in LOTR (and obviously still very short with Aragorn), so he’s like 31 here— that’s ELEVEN YEARS since the rejection. Aragorn stays making people fall in love at first sight and then very politely rejecting them.

Eomer’s a little bitter, understandably, because he hasn’t met his wife yet (she was stuck at Dol Amroth during the war but he does meet her at the ball) and also his uncle’s dead, he’s stuck with kingship, the war sucked, all that good stuff. He chillin for the most part but he also is bitter and tired, and it makes his hurt from being rejected come across far more strongly than it normally would. Being a young king is hard y’all. He also knows that now because he’s a king, he’ll be expected to continue the line, so he REALLY SUPER can’t be with Aragorn— that’s the duty he’s talking about. He assumes Boromir’s duty as steward is also constraining him, which is currently true, so he’s not wrong. Basically he’s giving Boromir the shittiest pep talk of all time, saying “hey, you should try not to love this guy you definitely love, because I loved him too, but we both have jobs to do, and trust me, it will suck for you if you continue to love him”

He’s trying to be a good bro, but unfortunately in like the most pessimistic way possible, which definitely adds to Boromir’s perception that there is no way he can be in love with Aragorn, and it would be really bad if he did anything about it, and there’s no way it can work out, which is why he continues to agonize while doing absolutely nothing 

WHY DOES LEGOLAS DANCE WITH ARAGORN?

Why does Legolas finish the dance with Aragorn instead of Eowyn or Faramir? Easy— he’s literally the only other person in that small group that came running who knows how to finish the dance. Elven dances, remember? Even if he’s a wood elf and they might have different customs, he can likely do better than the rest of them.