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He tells himself as he runs toward the sound of that horn, toward danger, toward him, that he would do the same for any of their company.
And he would.
He tells himself he would fight as fiercely, too; that the extra jab of his sword into the felled beast of an Uruk-hai is necessary—wasn’t that a slight twitch of the monster’s bow-fingers just there?—and not a side effect of seeing him on the ground, shot through three times and slick with crimson but somehow still breathing.
Praise Eru, he’s still breathing.
But even deep in Aragorn’s rational mind, there’s no explanation save one for the quake in his knees just before he drops to the ground beside Boromir; no hiding from himself or the other man how his eyes mist over well before Boromir has uttered a farewell and honored him with titles from Captain to King.
“No,” Aragorn murmurs, his hands seeking Boromir’s as he rebukes not the titles, but the idea of facing what lies ahead without the Gondorian captain’s steady presence beside him, of what he’s just now starting to admit to himself too late, of all that will remain forever unspoken between them. “No, no, no…”
Boromir’s breaths become heavier. He’s fading, his sword-callused hands already growing cold beneath Aragorn’s touch.
The Ranger’s world narrows to the single point of that now-familiar face, to sweat-slicked sandy hair and keen grey eyes grown dim, Legolas and Gimli hovering nearby becoming little more than shadows. He knows that he should hand Boromir his sword and afford him the dignity of a passing befitting a warrior of his renown, one who fought bravely and well.
Yet, again: “No!” This time he screams it to the trees, ringing out toward the backs of the marauding band of uruks already gaining distance from them.
He refuses this end. If he is to be a king someday, a great leader of men because there is no one else who can see the light through shadows quite like he does, when it isn’t even what he wanted for himself—fine, then, he shall. But then let this be his first decree: these will not be Boromir’s last breaths. Because ever since he first laid eyes on the captain in Rivendell, he’s been sure of one thing: light lives in him. The light he’s fighting for. The kind of light that spurred him onward even through the thickest darkness of Khazad-dûm, and after their great loss, when he could see little else.
A hand flutters gently down to his shoulder, soft as a leaf settling on the forest floor. “Aragorn,” Legolas breathes; the would-be king can hear the hopelessness in his companion’s voice, and shakes his head in defiance.
“Help me,” Aragorn chokes out. “Please. These arrows…”
It’s the 'please' that strikes a concerning chord with his elven companion. Legolas kneels beside him, the hand on Aragorn’s shoulder becoming an arm wrapped snugly around him, as if the elf senses so much more than Aragorn has voiced here. “Even if we can remove them and stop the bleeding, he’s not likely to last the night,” Legolas cautions. “We don’t know what kind of poison was on them. Why put him through—?”
“We have to try,” Aragorn insists before the elf has even finished, shrugging out of that embrace and reaching for the first arrow as Boromir’s fading eyes become glassier. He snaps the shaft, wincing in sympathy, though Boromir is too far gone to react. “He’d do the same for any of you,” he adds, unable to keep a bite of urgency from his voice as his companions look on, motionless.
There comes an answering thud of someone else dropping to their knees.
Gimli, on Boromir’s other side, looks unusually grim as he reaches for the shaft of the next arrow. “This is going to sting, laddie,” he cautions the unresponsive man.
“Legolas—we need Elvish medicine. Athelas,” Aragorn pleads as he works the last of the arrows free; its passing from Boromir’s chest is met with a fresh gush of blood, the metallic scent clawing its way down Aragorn’s nose and throat so forcefully that he wonders briefly, deliriously, if he’ll ever be able to smell anything else again.
The sharp-eyed elf, already on his feet, begins to scour the forest as his companions work together to staunch the bleeding with Aragorn’s cloak.
Boromir’s eyes have fallen closed.
Is that a good sign, or bad?
“You’ve got to breathe, damnit,” Gimli growls; Aragorn dimly wonders why the dwarf would bother compelling an almost-dead-man to do anything when Gimli’s hand grips his wrist, and he realizes his companion is talking to him.
Aragorn runs his tongue across his dry bottom lip and nods. And breathes.
And remembers, with the clarity that breath brings, a twilit morning rendezvous with Arwen back in Rivendell in which she’d pressed two things into his hands: the Evenstar, which now hangs from his neck like a promise, and a small flask of liquid that smells strongly of cherry cordial. Miruvor, the healing draught of the elves. He’s known it to ease pain and fight a fever, but perhaps it can do more. What better time to test its limits?
“So I know you’ll come back to me,” Arwen had said as she wrapped his fingers around the little silver flask, the best friend anyone—future king or mere farmer—could ever hope for. “Use it only when your life hangs in the balance.”
He hastily reaches into the pocket of his blood-soaked cloak, fumbling with the cork as Gimli looks on with parted lips and a curious gleam in his eye.
It may not be his life in the balance, but if Boromir leaves them here, now, Aragorn isn’t sure he’s coming back whole, anyway. Arwen will just have to understand, like she already understands a great many other things about him.
Aragorn tips the contents of the flask to Boromir’s lips as Gimli lifts his head off the ground; together, slowly, they ease the contents down the captain’s throat until it’s empty.
After, Gimli draws back, but Aragorn lingers with his cheek nearly pressed to Boromir’s lips, feeling the scant breath that occasionally gusts over his skin to help pass the seemingly endless minutes until Legolas returns triumphant, with a cluster of tiny white kingsfoil flowers clutched in one pale fist.
The elf and Gimli hastily make a fire and brew the useful plant into a hot liquid for tea and poultices while Aragorn—his fingers tightly gripping Boromir’s wrist as if he can feel a faint pulse there (not convinced it isn’t entirely wishful thinking)—talks with them at last of the fate of four very important hobbits.
“We cannot abandon Merry and Pippin any more than we can give up on Boromir,” Aragorn declares to sound agreement from the others. “And every moment we delay, our friends get further from our aid." At this, he feels a sharp pang of guilt twist deep in his chest, none left over for the empty flask of miruvor he shoves back into the pocket of his stained and sodden cloak. “Legolas, Gimli—you must give chase. Tonight. Now. I can finish dressing Boromir’s wounds myself.”
Gimli rises at once and begins gathering their things, but Legolas hesitates by the fireside, leaning toward Aragorn to say lowly: “And if you are alone out here come nightfall?”
Boromir’s labored breathing makes Legolas’s point for him.
“Then I will make haste,” Aragorn answers, much as he’s loath to consider the possibility, “and see you sooner than I will if I’m traveling with an injured man at my side.”
Legolas’s blue eyes narrow a fraction, not out of doubt, but concern. “I worry you underestimate the weight of grief, and how that might slow your steps when you need us as much as Merry and Pippin do.”
“Save your worry for the hobbits, my friend,” Aragorn insists, digging his fingers a little deeper into Boromir’s wrist in search of a flutter of life. “And go now. We’ll see you soon.”
Soon Aragorn is alone with his thoughts and the gathering dusk.
After he finishes dressing and binding Boromir’s wounds, he finds a creek a short distance away and washes his cloak, along with most of Boromir’s clothes. It’s a mild evening, though he still leaves Boromir’s chilled skin covered with his own arguably cleaner garments, most of the stains there being dried mud and only a small amount of blood.
Bare to the waist, everyone’s clothes as scrubbed as they’re going to get, he takes a moment to splash some water on his face.
It’s cold; so cold it stings. He does it again, and again, and finally dunks his head under for good measure, trying to numb himself to whatever could await him when he returns to the fireside.
Once again, he kneels beside Boromir and turns his head so that the captain’s breath can blow across his cheek, if there’s breath yet to give.
And there is.
Aragorn’s heart kicks hopefully against his ribs.
He lays alongside Boromir then, cups the captain’s pale face on either side with his frigid palms, thinking to warm him as effectively as the fire that washes over them. He imagines—not for the first time—those bloodless lips just inches from his seeking to close the distance between them and brushing against his.
“I don’t want to be king of anything,” he admits out loud. It’s easy, talking to this Boromir, one whose eyes are closed rather than gleaming with inscrutable judgement. “But when I make myself consider it, I don’t picture myself with a queen. Not even Arwen, though I love her like a soul twin; like a sister, one I trust above all others. The chance for that life doesn’t excite me. I imagine instead a consort at my side, strong and brave and secretly tender, easily bored by politics. He used to be faceless, but ever since we set out from Rivendell with Frodo…” Aragorn pauses, swallowing thickly as a well of emotions vie for space in his throat at finally voicing the truth aloud: “…most of the time—actually, all of the time these days—he’s you. And I want to tell you, when the time is right. I don’t want to waste the rest of our lives, however brief they may be, on anything but the truth. Especially not after today. And the truth is, I want you. But I fear you won’t understand, and worse, might turn away from me altogether, as companion or king or anything else; in Gondor, I know such things are frowned upon at best, and your father…”
He falls silent as Boromir’s eyes blink open and stare blearily into his.
He wants to ask how much the injured man just heard, but it’s Boromir who speaks first.
“Cherries?” he rasps.
“Miruvor,” Aragorn corrects automatically, his thoughts racing. When he sees Arwen again, he’s going to fall to his knees and kiss the very ground at her feet for this gift. It’s the least he owes her; she’s the only one who knows his desires, after all, who’s protected him and kept his secrets all this time. “You must be thirsty. Don’t move—I’ll get you something to drink.”
“Better not be as cold as your hands,” Boromir manages in a scrape of a voice, and Aragorn realizes he’s still gently cupping the sides of the other man’s face.
He swiftly withdraws them and turns toward the fire, trusting the warm wash of the leaping flames to mask the crimson that creeps up his neck and darkens his cheeks. He has a kettle waiting, and pours some athelas tea into a battered tin mug that he holds to Boromir’s lips.
“Going to…choke if…I drink lying down like this,” the captain points out, a curiously dark expression on his face. “Though it’s what I deserve…I was going to take the damn ring. I’m the worst of them. My father should have…sent Faramir instead, he—”
“Enough,” Aragorn interjects firmly. “I’ll hear no more of this.” He slides around behind Boromir, his bare skin glistening in the firelight as he slips his hands under the other man’s arms and pulls gently until Boromir is reclining against his chest, secured in place on either side by Aragorn’s hands snugly on his waist. “Is this—okay?” he breathes against Boromir’s ear. He tells himself his quickening pulse hasn’t given away his feelings on their proximity at all, though he knows better.
“Yes,” the other man answers; however brusquely it’s spoken, more of a grunt than anything, the word sets every nerve in Aragorn’s body ablaze. He swallows.
“This is the best I can do for comfortable seating, I’m afraid,” he says over the blood pounding in his ears. This is the closest they’ve ever been. Surely Boromir can feel that incessant kicking of heart against rib? Yet if he does, he gives no indication. Somehow, after a moment, Aragorn finds it in himself to continue, “This may well be our sleeping arrangement for the night, too, if you can bear it; our clothes need to dry out before they’ll be any kind of useful as pillows.”
Boromir cuts a glance across the firelight to the makeshift clothesline where two cloaks, tunics, and other assorted garments dance softly in the evening breeze. Aragorn is sure he must be imagining the note of teasing in the other man’s voice as Boromir observes dryly: “Hm. Good at cheating death. Good at laundry, too. Is there anything you can’t do?”
Aragorn’s lips part. He’s entirely unsure how to answer.
But with Boromir busy taking cautious sips of the steaming tea from his mug, Aragorn leans forward, his chin almost resting on Boromir’s shoulder, to address another matter. “You wanted the ring because it promised you something you desired above all else. That’s how it draws its victims. It doesn’t mean you were weak; it means there was something you badly wanted. You sought hope for Gondor; no one could fault you for that, and reaching for that hope was never an evil or a failure. It was love that made you reach, love for your people."
“How are you so sure that’s what I wanted? How can you possibly know my heart?” Boromir challenges. Already, his eyes look brighter from the athelas.
“Because it is as strong as mine, strong in places where mine is not,” Aragorn counters steadily. The blood rushing in his ears intensifies as he wonders if he’s pushed too far, said too much.
Boromir turns his head slightly, and as they breathe hard over each other’s lips, nose to nose, the two captains are at a stalemate.
That is, until Boromir says slowly, “I think…” He pauses, licking a drop of athelas from his lip, “I was wrong before. There is hope for Gondor yet.”
He relaxes against Aragorn, drinking his tea, giving the ranger some time to assess the bleeding seeping through Boromir’s bandages; already, it’s slowed. Legolas and Gimli had been a tremendous help, and Aragorn knows he owes them a debt of gratitude.
“What’s miruvor?” Boromir asks quietly some time later, as the first stars begin appearing overhead.
Aragorn will never admit that their current posture is beginning to wear on his battle-weary body; this is, he knows, likely the only time he will ever get to hold this force of a man, the one time his arms will contain such strength and goodness.
Instead, he leans forward a little, this time letting his chin rest fully on Boromir’s shoulder while he answers, “Healing draught of the elves. Powerful medicine. Though I’ve known them to use it on occasion in a dessert cordial.”
It takes a second, but Boromir cracks a tired smile at that.
“How about your tea?” Aragorn asks then, trying not to sound as curious as he is. “It didn’t taste like cherries as well, did it?”
Boromir has already had three cups, enough for the ranger to feel confident that they’ll both see the dawn. He likely doesn’t know that athelas tastes and smells differently to everyone, like the things they love most, and the ranger isn’t about to divulge such a secret.
“I don’t know,” Boromir admits at last after some thought. “It’s different than anything I’ve ever had, and—" He pauses, directing his gaze across the leaping flames at the pines on the other side. “Familiar, but also not. It’s hard to explain. Why…?”
“You should get some rest,” is all Aragorn manages to say as his mind races over the possibilities. Could the man have been vaguer? “If you need me, well, you’ve but to say my name.”
Boromir’s eyes drift closed a short time later, but it’s a long time before he truly sleeps.
As Aragorn holds him, he wonders how much the captain really heard earlier, before he opened his eyes and asked for a drink. He tries not to hurt.
Boromir is alive, after all, and the sun still rises. There are still reasons to be glad.
***
Even Aragorn eventually succumbs to sleep; by the time he wakes, he judges it to be late morning. He’s lying on his side near the smoldering remains of their fire. There’s an arm draped heavily over his waist; Boromir is beside him, his head tucked into the crook of Aragorn’s neck, his breathing sure and steady.
Aragorn could stay like this all day if not for knowing he needs to change the man’s bandages and get him back on his feet, well enough to catch up to the others and rescue their brave hobbit friends as soon as possible. Boromir hadn’t taken the news of Merry and Pippin’s capture at all well, and Aragorn worries the stress could impede his healing.
Reluctantly sneaking out from under that warm, secure embrace, he sets about refreshing the fire and cooking breakfast—an easy task, as Legolas and Gimli left him more than his share of the rations.
“Is that…bacon?” Boromir asks wonderingly, his voice rough with sleep, as the meat sizzles away in the pan.
Aragorn turns and smiles. “And breakfast potatoes. Easy there—sit up slowly, lest you pull the bandages. I’ll change them again after we eat.”
“And then we’ll join the hunt for Merry and Pippin,” Boromir says firmly, as if giving the marching orders.
“Not today. If you keep doing better, then perhaps tomorrow, but—no sooner,” Aragorn declares, gentling his voice as he takes in Boromir’s worried gray eyes. “They’ll survive this, just like you,” he adds, softer, as he pulls the pan from the flames.
They eat with their hands right out of the pan in a silence that’s comfortable and warm, the crispness of the morning not once crossing Aragorn’s mind.
Boromir washes down his food with some more athelas tea, and as the ranger begins to check his wound dressings, the Gondorian Captain chuckles a little despite the sharpness of the air on his still-raw skin.
“What?” Aragorn asks uncertainly, feeling he’s missed something.
“The breakfast potatoes were good,” Boromir explains. The corners of his mouth twitch as he adds, “I’m still trying to come up with something you can’t do.”
“Get you to sit still for five minutes so I can change out these bandages, apparently,” Aragorn jabs lightly, and Boromir laughs.
He also takes the hint and doesn’t budge until Aragorn has finished. Then the ranger sets about doing some chores around their camp, bringing over their clean cloaks that can serve as pillows tonight. He can’t quite bring himself to point this out, however.
They pass most of the day talking like never before: about Aragorn’s life in Rivendell, about which Boromir has many questions; about their lives in Gondor, and their favorite places and pasttimes in that glorious kingdom; to Aragorn’s surprise, he and Boromir know a few of the same songs.
“Your voice is fairer than some of the Eldar’s, though they’d never admit it,” Aragorn tells him with undisguised admiration as he stokes their evening fire.
“You sound too surprised that I’m good at something besides waving my sword around,” Boromir says lowly near Aragorn’s ear; surely he hadn’t meant his voice to rub up Aragorn’s spine like that, to tug low in his belly, the breath that whispers over his ear causing him to make a thoughtless moan in his throat before he really knows what’s happened.
“What was that?” Boromir asks, his expression unreadable.
“Forgive me,” Aragorn says quickly, feigning a yawn. “Just a bit of fatigue setting in. We should sleep.”
“Suppose I should rest sitting up again?” Boromir questions with an eye to their nearby cloaks and bedrolls.
“If you’d be more comfortable—" Aragorn says over the quickening of his heart.
“I would,” Boromir cuts in, finishing for him. “The wounds are aching, and I remember falling asleep so easily last night.”
“Very well,” Aragorn agrees, even knowing they would probably both sleep better in their bedrolls. Instead, he gets a second chance to hold Boromir through the night…
…and a third on the horizon, because Aragorn insists after a careful look at those wounds in the morning light that they wait one more day before making haste to join the others.
They take the day to test Boromir’s returning strength by bathing at the creek, undressing the only time in which there’s an awkward pause in their otherwise easy conversations—that is, until Boromir splashes some water in Aragorn’s direction and he fires back with a surge that soaks the Gondorian captain right in the face, and they laugh and laugh as they’re both soaked, a great many years falling away from them as they lay side by side on the bank and let the sun dry them.
Aragorn knows things can’t stay like this, but he traps this day in amber in his mind, perfectly preserved to look back on when faced with the dark days ahead.
After dinner, they attempt to go to bed early, this time each on their bedrolls, the last drop of athelas tea finally drained and the fire banked high in the hope of lasting them well into the night. They plan to leave at first light, after all, to find their hobbit companions who seem to have cut a permanent worry line between Boromir’s brows.
“You have to believe in them, as I believed in you,” Aragorn whispers to the face just inches from his, the troubled eyes open and gleaming in the dark, hoping this will be enough to gentle Boromir’s rest.
“I do,” Boromir says simply. “They’re fighters. I sensed it in them from the start despite myself.”
“Then what’s keeping you awake? Is there any pain—?” Aragorn starts to inquire.
Boromir talks over him before he’s finished. “No. No pain, not from the wounds. But…I don’t give a damn what’s frowned upon in Gondor, or what my father wants, any of it; I want something for myself for once, Aragorn.”
This time, Aragorn’s heart doesn’t race; it just flutters madly, hung up in his throat, a trapped, wild thing he can barely speak around. So Boromir heard everything that first day. He heard, and—Aragorn quickly remembers what he told the captain on their first night here about saying his name. But could that mean—?
“Do you have need of me?” Aragorn finally manages to murmur when he gets enough breath.
“That tea,” Boromir says, no answer at all, really, not to Aragorn’s satisfaction at least; “Athelas, you called it? It smelled like smoke and pipeweed and the scent of the wood that clings to your cloak. I can’t get enough of it.”
Aragorn can hardly believe what he’s hearing. “Why not say something sooner, then?”
Boromir holds his gaze, steady and even. “Because when I said it, I wanted to be well enough to kiss you, if you’d let me.”
Aragorn’s heart unsticks itself; he takes a bracing breath of night air before Boromir leans slowly, carefully forward, their lips close enough to touch. “Aragorn,” he says again, this time an unmistakable plea.
The ranger presses his lips against the other’s, slowly at first, then harder, seeking something deeper, opening his mouth at the slick insistence of Boromir’s tongue, and there it is again—that thoughtless moan tearing from the back of his throat, the strongest desire he’s ever felt.
When they break apart (but not too far) for air, Boromir rasps, “That tea…tasted like you, too.”
This time there’s no hesitation as they come together, Aragorn just mindful enough of Boromir’s wounds to have a care for the way he draws himself closer, his hands sliding under the captain’s shirt to feel the muscles of his back as they get a longer, hotter taste of each other, Boromir’s hands carding through Aragorn’s hair as he breaks back again to murmur, “Do you have any idea what a sight you are? Fairest one in that whole damn valley, haven’t been able to take my eyes off you since I first saw you.”
Boromir seems to know exactly what he’s doing as he shifts them so they can each feel the hard heat of the other through their trousers as they kiss, rubbing up against each other in waves of dizzying friction that bring Aragorn tantalizing close to the edge even while confined in his own pants, reminding him how long it’s been since he even touched himself; he relaxes under Boromir’s confident touch, still close but not yet riding that high, while he explores Gondor’s finest with his own capable hands, tracing the lines of Boromir’s face and neck, wrapping strands of sandy hair around his fingers—Boromir has never known such gentleness at anyone else’s hands, something the man had realized from the first bandage change. There’s so much care in each stroke of Aragorn’s fingers on his skin that he’s afraid he’s going to burst from a simple palm running down the uninjured side of his ribs, down past his navel, seeking uncharted territory.
“Take off your pants,” Boromir growls into a particularly needy kiss from Aragorn that he answers with a graze of teeth along the ranger’s bottom lip.
Aragorn can’t help but buck his hips in response, grinding against Boromir hard enough to make them both gasp, his body reacting before his mind catches up. “But your wounds—"
“We don’t have to fuck to enjoy each other tonight,” Boromir says with that same confidence, now placing light kisses along Aragorn’s neck that have the ranger straining against his trousers even more than before. “You’ve been doing nothing but taking care of me,” Boromir continues, swiftly undoing his own buckle and buttons to reveal the startling, impressive length of himself. “Let me take care of you.”
Just days ago, Boromir had called him his captain, his king. But Aragorn is always in charge. And he’s so weary. Right here, in Boromir’s arms, is the most alive he’s felt in years, and the most unburdened. Gazing into those light gray eyes, Aragorn gives himself over fully to Boromir’s command as he starts on his buttons and tugs his pants down, his eyes never leaving the other’s. “Yes, my captain,” says the future king as he frees himself, bares himself to the searing heat of Boromir’s gaze and the briskness of the night, only to be taken swiftly into the warmth of Boromir’s broad hand.
It turns out Boromir doesn’t have to strain his wounds to gather both of them in his hand together, making his fingers deliciously tight as he strokes their cocks in a rhythm that makes their breathing ragged. Boromir lets one head or the other pop between his thumb and forefinger from time to time as he pumps faster, but not quite fast enough, until Aragorn groans against the other’s kiss-swollen mouth: “Boromir.”
It sounds a little broken, but his meaning must be clear enough, as Boromir crushes his lips against Aragorn’s to swallow the shouts that soon follow as they both lose control, spending themselves all over Boromir’s hand and Aragorn’s bed.
After, as they lay entwined on Boromir’s (much less sticky) bedroll, still breathing hard, Aragorn gazes up at the stars with his head resting on his captain’s chest and murmurs, still half in disbelief, “In the custom of the elves, do you know what this would make us?”
Whether Boromir knows or not doesn’t seem to matter; there’s a smile in his voice as he answers, “Mine. It makes you mine, and I yours, if you’ll have me. My heart has been yours for some time already.”
Mindful of the bandages, Aragorn slides an arm across Boromir’s waist and holds tight. “I’ll have to consider it,” he teases, turning his head to offer Boromir a swift kiss to the neck that shows it’s only that. “Does being yours mean doing /this/ with some frequency even when we’re constantly facing certain death?”
Boromir runs his fingers through Aragorn’s dark hair, tangles them in it, gently tugging the ranger’s head back so their gazes can lock, his eyes bright and wonderfully alive. “Give me more time to heal, and we can do more things than you’ve ever dreamed of.”
“Then I’m yours to command.” Aragorn leans up for a slow, lingering press of their lips before settling on Boromir’s chest again. “I’ll have you back in fighting shape in no time, my captain,” he murmurs, his eyes drifting closed as Boromir tenderly strokes his hair.
When Aragorn dreams, for once he sees more light than shadow.
***
It’s on the rolling plains of Edoras that the two men finally see their friends’ faces again, their aim of catching up greatly aided by the traveler willing to part with a mule for all the coins Boromir had on him.
“And what’s this you’ve brought us, lad?” Gimli calls to Aragorn as he catches sight of Boromir sitting tall, bandaged, and proud atop that mule.
Aragorn, walking alongside the creature, reaches out and takes Boromir’s hand, threading their fingers together in plain view for all to see. “Hope,” he answers as their friends run toward them.