Keep Your Secrets by sallysavestheday

Keep Your Secrets

Finrod wakes in the pink light before dawn, panting, with the cool water of prophecy swirling in his veins. Turgon is warm against his back, but that heat makes no difference to the chill. Trouble has settled in his chest. He twists against it, aching.

Turgon stirs and winds his arms tighter around Finrod’s waist, burrowing into his hair and muttering. His broken whispers are fearful, echoing Finrod’s grim mood, and he is shuddering.

Finrod turns in his embrace and kisses him awake, hoping, in soothing him, to find his own solace. They move together in the misty stillness, their small gasps magnified in the odd displacement caused by fog.

The delight of their wandering has faded overnight, another victim of Beleriand’s strange shifts and echoes of Power and loss.

They have meandered without purpose for weeks, deliberately leaving the choice of direction to chance and the weather. Finrod’s notebooks are full to overflowing with sketches and pressed flowers and sweet remembrances that Turgon has written, teasingly, amid his notes as Finrod waded in Sirion’s channels and stalked the butterflies. Turgon’s pack bulges with samples of stone and the woven crowns and flower chains with which Finrod has draped him as they danced bare in sunlit clearings and under the great wash of the stars.

They have loved this way as long as they can remember: casually devoted, untied but tender, coming together in the wilds after long arcs of separate and purposeful work in Tirion or Alqualondë, Nevrast or Dorthonion. Turgon’s seriousness sloughs off in these rovings; he is all laughter and mischief, his swift mind sparkling in poetry and debate. Finrod eases out of the court postures of his dual roles, shedding the weight of those expectations and uncapping the wonder that pours through him like a stream of molten light. They tease and play and sing and ponder the strangeness of the world with airy hearts, tumbling into the grasses or their bedrolls to touch each other with patient affection, rediscovering the familiar contours of each other’s bodies, sharing breath, and peace, and heat.

Each meeting is a little jewel to store away in their hearts: no impediment to marriages or other loyalties, but a source of lingering sweetness to carry tenderly home.

Now Finrod shivers, clammy with the memories of his dream. The looming evil pricks along his arms; he thrums with the urge to find a place of safety and of hidden strength. It is a bitter turn, when they have only these short weeks together, this small breath of grace. He presses Ulmo’s warning back and down. He will not burden his friend with this. Their joy is too fleeting, as it is.

He must find that stronghold, that refuge. Then he will speak. For now, there is Turgon, sighing beneath him. Let them burn away the clinging dreams with bliss.