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Quenching metal hissed and sputtered, and Curufin had just pulled the new sword from the water basin when the rap of knuckles came against his forge's door.
"Enter," he said - after a moment assessing the metal quality; not to be interrupted until the action had run to completion. To skip a step was to invite imperfections - and enough such imperfections had clamoured at his door of late for him to afford any such lapses now.
"My lord," the woman acknowledged once inside. Her head inclined, her torso bent at the waist - her stance read of disquiet, and so before she even spoke of whatever news she'd come to him with, Curufin grew tense himself. His fingers fluttered against the grip of the sword, ran the flat length of the smooth steel blade where it had cooled.
The servant women's eyes were darting; any single second she might buy before she must need to voice aloud her message, and Curufin bit down against the impulse to snap his words and force it from her, quickly, quickly. How strained his patience had been, how much of a twitching child full of nerves…
But finally. "My lord, we've new arrivals at the king's doors - or rather we had; Lord Artaresto has admitted them already, given them welcome in the main hall, and all the lords are gathered there - "
Curufin's patience got the better of him. "Who," he interrupted, before she could spend any longer rambling without a full explanation. "Who has been already admitted to the city?"
"The king," she near whispered, nearly stammered. Her face had grown white. "The king, with a host of captives from the Werewolf Isle."
Curufin's knuckles clenched nearly as white as her face, tightening around the sword grip, before his arm shot out and he set it (nearly dropped with a clatter) back down on his work bench.
"My brother?" he ordered tersely, "Our lords? If they've not been called yet I require you alert them to the situation. Now, quickly, with more efficiency than you've spoken to me." Curufin's throat felt as though it might close up and leave him without air. The woman scurried off; he stripped himself of his smith's clothing in sharp, tense movements that he could barely keep from overshooting each mark he set. Clumsy, clumsy as when he was a child, his mind hissed, and he slammed his hand against the wood in a fit of nerves and frustration so that his thoughts might occupy themselves with anything else, even if it might be pain.
He'd a robe by the door, but not one for kings; no jewels and no pieces to hold together his hair - he'd worn it unadorned, as they all had, since his cousin had walked from the door with his starved-hound followers at his heels and his crown clattered on the floor before his throne. How could he be back - ?
When he swept from the forge, the halls were empty. It was late; Curufin would not have thought this amiss - but now every vacant corridor conjured images of - how many hundreds of people, alerted to the return of their king before he himself had been? By design, surely - he could not help but recall Orodreth appearing entirely unawares in the throne room, not a month past, while he and his brother conducted the kingdom's diplomatic business… Which advisor of the council had planned this; who was loyal enough to Findaráto's nephew that he might mastermind such a scheme, so quickly?
When he reached the throne room, he could barely see aught that occurred, there was such a crowd. And all of them in finery, their hair taken out of their simple mourning styles… Curufin shoved his way through the lesser noblemen, the simple administrative assistants, even common artisans and merchants and others who made up the majority of the city. A split decision - to push all the way through to the front lines of Nargothrond's current elite? They'd see, then, every indicator twisting Curufin's stomach that showed his sudden disfavouring. - But too, they'd see that he was not simply to be brushed aside with no warning and no fight, no promise of vengeance?
He stepped, finally, into the semicircle of councilors immediately before the throne. And there his cousin sat: stiff and pale, half drugged with glassy eyes (neither relieved of pain nor with the benefit of true alertness, he suspected), his old crown set upon hair that now more resembled Orodreth's in colour than his once lush gold. Revulsion twisted with the fear in him, and Curufin could not help but stare.
Finrod stared back.
His cousin's gaze still swam, but the spirit behind his eyes burned, focused fury consuming the remnants of a charred husk - all turned toward Curufin. He stiffened, body rigid, spirit rigid - no. Findaráto would not pin any blame on him, try to make him feel any sort of guilt - it was his fault. Finrod's, not his own. His hands curled to fists - better at least than giving useless intermittent twitches at his sides.
The words Finrod spoke were too clipped, too precise. Such effort it must be costing him, to appear even so barely-composed as he was now - and Curufin could see it, could hear it in the empty content of the language he gave to his assembled court. Nothing to rival the speeches he made in years past, nor his proposals to his council, nor even their idle conversation, fire-edged and sweet, driving him to amusement and irritation and lust.
But even lost of their sharpness, Curufin could still tell when those words turned just to him. A tiny pocket of intimacy, a spark between their matched eyes, before the assembled public of Nargothrond.
I must retire now, Finrod concluded. But I must extend my thanks once more for your warm welcome to me. For your loyalty. For your safeguarding my kingdom in my absence. And I wish you all the health that has been since denied to me.
He shook as he climbed down from his throne, but the gaze he held on Curufin was steady as the city's stone.
----
Bad enough, Finrod's return and the sudden upending of all Curufin's sense of how each day should go. The constant accompanying anxiety that left him irritable and ill-rested. Worse, the never-ending string of meetings - technical dances with a flurry of partners to which he found himself suddenly ignorant of the steps, following along as best he could with frantic predictions so that he would be simply not trampled underfoot.
And now this.
Finrod, some measure of his health now regained, it seemed, had appeared at Curufin's chambers while he conferred with one of his own lords - and invited Curufin, with no forewarning, to come riding with him. Not a request.
And Finrod had not said a word to him since, either, through several hours now of riding, Curufin growing more uneasy the longer it continued… No doubt precisely his purpose. The knowledge was poor comfort, lacking any means with which to use it.
At a sign from the king, Curufin pulled his horse's reins to a stop, followed Finrod's lead in dismounting… what did he wish for now? A slight clearing in the trees sat beside the path like a bubble of air in a thin silver strand, and Finrod led his horse to the side, tied his lead about the trunk of one of the smaller trees. The horse, at least, seemed content, unaware of any tension between them - he nibbled serenely on the autumn-browned grasses.
Curufin was doing the same with his own mount when Finrod spoke, the first words to him since the night he'd returned to the city. "Tell me, dear cousin - do you sleep well, in such a cold bed? Does it suit your conscience better?"
His voice was a bitter, biting wind, anticipating winter better than did the trees beside them, half their leaves still green. He shivered, slightly, beneath his grey and green robes.
Curufin turned, making the moment precise, his expression composed - mild, mildly curious, hints of - compassion, no, not pity, about his eyes, his mouth, all to sooth his cousin's anger, salve for burns that still stung hot. How often his aim had been just the opposite.
"I sleep much as I have always done," he answered, even, a touch more gravity than he would normally give. "Your absence has been felt, my lord, among all your people. I confess myself well-wishing that respite thankfully from the duties I have adopted since… I hope you shall find my work satisfactory."
He was met only with coldness (quickly rotated his evaluation in his mind, no, not heat, not burns from fire, but from ice). Gusts of snow-laced wind blew from Finrod's eyes, sharp like steel and just as grey - seemed to shudder through the papery skin of his thinned face, hollowed cheeks. Recovered some, yes, but not yet well.
"Are there even friends you hold close, Lord Curufinwe?" he continued, words held in a pocket of deadly calm. "Friends whose loyalty weighs heavy upon your spirit? Their lives, their deaths - anything that might drag your peace of mind from its faithless comfort?"
He'd moved close enough that Curufin gazed slightly upward, now, to hold his cousin's gaze. Awareness of much else had shut itself away; Curufin's costly gift to himself…
"Has your sleep ever been troubled by nightmares of blood, teeth… screams, the stench of death? Does naught ever impress itself upon you?"
Had Curufin not closed some shell about his responses, flattening them all beneath one mild tolerant façade, his stomach might have curled in disgust, sick hurt and a gout of fire erupting in reaction.
"If you look for solace, my lord, there are many places you may find it," he replied instead. Caring, this time. Invested in his well-being. Soft, almost. "And I am your servant, as always, if there is something you require from me alone." He laid a hand against his cousin's forearm.
Curufin's head cracked hard against the ground.
In a fraction of a second, turned upside down and now wracked with varying degrees of pain - quick Finrod, clever Finrod, who had not yet lost what he should have been. Curufin's arm smarted, burning; his chest knocked of air and his shoulders throbbed. Finrod sat atop his ribs, a dead weight smothering the half-choked coughs and splutters as he tried to take in any small breath.
"My servant," Finrod snarled. Wisps of hair had come loose from his braids. "Comfort to me - oh, and would you had been the poorer of one!" He grabbed at Curufin's own hair, at the curve of his skull, forcing his head back and up until his neck burned. "Had you not been such poison in my bed and I drinking at it like a parched fool - "
Air gulped sent a sharp burn through Curufin's lungs, a sharp shame settling with languor in his limbs, twitching sparks - his lips parted, his body spasmed - he bucked his hips and shoved, and rolled Finrod off him and slammed his cousin into the ground himself.
"You will not blame me," he hissed in return, digging his nails into his cousin's pinned arms, the sharp bone of his knee into the soft inside of one spread thigh. "If either of us here shall bear the name of traitor - "
Finrod writhed under him, too weakened still despite his exertion; there was a seeping spot of blood already in his tunic that gave Curufin's senses another certain kick loose. And then a sharp pain burst in his arm - he let go of Finrod's, with that hand, but Finrod held Curufin's wrist tight beneath his teeth.
Curufin hissed roughly. He tugged, thinking - but the force upset his balance, sent him sprawling back into the dirt, scraping his bared arms against the rocks in the soil, until Finrod had reversed their positioning once more - and closed his mouth about Curufin's own, kissing hungrily with a clash of teeth that settled, suddenly, upon his bottom lip, sharp and fierce. Curufin cried out, even as his hips snapped up, and he ground himself hard and wanting against his cousin's leg.
The biting kiss broke with a moan; Curufin took the sudden respite to claw his fingers down Finrod's back, grasp firm handfuls of his arse, pull their hips both together until Finrod whined.
But then his hair was in Finrod's fist again, yanked to expose his neck which now burned under teeth and tongue and lips, his own mouth panting, almost a repeated plea, either aloud or simply in his mind.
When they separated, when Finrod ripped his tunic clean off - they were both soaked with spots of blood, dirt ground into clothes and hair and skin. Curufin reached up, to pull him back.
More blood would flow before they finished.