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In the Houses of Healing, Aragorn stands at the door and he looks into Boromir's room.
Boromir has been quartered here separately from the Houses' other inhabitants, first on Denethor's orders and then on Aragorn's, though Aragorn's requirement of it has invoked nothing of the kind of superiority of both asker and occupant that he's told their former steward's did; he's simply aware of the need for privacy where Boromir's treatment has been concerned. He has treated others in the open - Merry, the lady Éowyn, Boromir's own brother, and a great many more besides - but treatment of a different kind has been required to heal Boromir's wounds. He wouldn't wish to embarrass him by it.
However, today he has arrived to find the door is open and inside the room, Boromir is sitting up, resting back against the headboard. The windows have been flung wide open, too, though the gauzy curtains are still closed and so billowing gently with the breeze. It's a warm spring day outside, and the room is full of muted light, and Aragorn is certain that the faint chill in the air will do Boromir no harm now he's come so far. He's been so unwell for so long, but Aragorn understands the colour in his cheeks means that he's turned a corner. And he's pleased, but he can't help but also feel a little rueful.
"Your majesty," Faramir says, and he rises from the chair at his brother's bedside. Aragorn overheard them talking from several strides away, their voices echoing down the corridor, and he paused there where they couldn't see; he heard Boromir say he was grateful to their king for his attentions, and the twist he felt like a knife to the gut was almost shameful. He hasn't done what he's done for his gratitude. He's told himself since the very first day that he's done what he's done only to save him, because he'd known he could, and he'd felt there was little that Boromir's courage did not deserve, but now...
"I believe our king is here for my treatment, brother," Boromir says, and there's a wry twist to his mouth that Faramir does not see. Faramir might be the best man that Aragorn has ever known, better than Boromir or himself, far better in the end than his father was, and he nods and steps back from the bed.
"I'll leave you, then," he says, and he picks up his sword, but Aragorn reaches for his shoulder.
"Your brother has no more need of my treatment," he tells him, honestly. "What he requires is rest and a little exercise and the kind of care the healers can provide. He'll be well soon. If he listens."
"If he listens," Faramir echoes, and he glances back at Boromir; they each of them know he can be wilful. "Thank you, your majesty. If you--"
"Weren't you leaving?" Boromir says. Faramir frowns, first at Aragorn and then at his brother. "You were leaving, brother."
"I--"
"Faramir, please leave." He doesn't say it unkindly, and Faramir eventually takes it in the spirit it was intended; he gives Aragorn a brief bow, shakes his head at his brother, and then leaves the room by the open door. "Were you born in a barn?" Boromir calls after him, and Faramir calls back, "If I was, then so were we both," but he does briefly return to close the door behind him. He leaves them alone, as Aragorn supposes they shall never be again, but he can't find it in himself to be sorry for what he's done.
"Aragorn," Boromir says. No king, no majesty, no Elessar.
"Boromir," he replies. He takes a breath, full of clear spring air. He frowns. "I should go," he says.
Perhaps he didn't save his life, because Boromir had still been living when they arrived in Minas Tirith, but he knows he brought him back into the world. And the world would have been the poorer for him leaving it, so he doesn't regret what he's done. He doesn't regret Boromir's recovery. But he regrets that this is coming to an end.
Boromir has been in this room for the large part of seven months. For the first three, the Fellowship presumed him dead; they'd seen him die at Amon Hen and set his body on the river over Rauros, yet there he was when they arrived in Minas Tirith. There was no time until the war was won for much to be done about that but wonder, and regret, and keep the hope that he might recover, but then Aragorn returned to the White City when Mordor was defeated and he stood by the side of his bed. The poison of the Uruks' arrows had mimicked death but had not killed him, and so there was a chance that he could still be saved.
He used athelas, of course, and it did some measure of good; Boromir stirred in the bed from time to time, and the healers told him that was more than they'd seen him do in all the months before. Sometimes he murmured, things that were almost but not quite words, almost names, almost apologies, and Aragorn pressed a cool cloth to his burning brow and told him that the war was over, and there was nothing to forgive. He visited as often as he could for several weeks, morning and night at the very least and often in between. Their people understood, Faramir told him; they, too, prayed for Boromir's recovery.
And then, one night, exhausted, tired down to his bones after a day of fine clothes and pretty speeches, a too-long ride and a volley of petitions, Aragorn came to Boromir's bedside. He stripped those fine clothes down to his undershirt and dropped them to the floor in a haphazard pile he was too drained to neatly rearrange. He strode the breadth of the room to walk some of his agitation off, but that did nothing for his weariness. And Boromir's bed was large, much larger than he needed, so Aragorn pulled off his boots and lay down on it beside him. He told himself he'd rest his eyes just for a few moments, but he woke up in the daylight, with Boromir's eyes on him.
"Good morning," Boromir croaked, and a smile tugged the edges of his dry lips.
"Good morning," Aragorn replied. He returned that smile. And when the back of Boromir's fingers brushed against his, his chest filled up with sudden warmth. It almost seemed he might recover, then and there. But by that evening his usual stupor had returned, and Aragorn could make no sense of the situation. It wasn't until Ioreth told him the only difference was your presence that he understood.
Of course, the issue was that he simply couldn't sleep each night in Boromir's sickbed when his duties as king demanded otherwise, and so he devised a plan: if the duration of their time together could not change, then its quality must change instead. When he touched his bare hands to Boromir's face, he could almost have believed he smiled. When he intertwined their fingers on the mattress, he felt Boromir give a slight, weak squeeze. And when that did not appear enough, he took over duties from the healers: he tilted his head to allow him to drink, fed him soup, brushed his hair. Then he stripped him down and washed his skin, because king or no he'd have done much more besides.
First, he used a cloth. He wet it and then wrung it nearly dry again and he cleaned him, slowly, everywhere he could. When Boromir stirred long enough to look at him and catch his wrist in one weak hand, he set the cloth aside and pressed his palm flat to his bare chest.
"Am I alive?" Boromir asked.
"Yes," Aragorn replied. He sat down by Boromir's hip and he took his face in both his hands. "Yes, you're very much alive."
"The others?"
"Yes. All of them, alive."
"The Ring?"
"Destroyed."
Boromir's smile broadened. His eyes closed. And the following day, when Aragorn settled on the bed to wash him, once he'd patted his skin dry with a clean cloth, he set his hands down at his bare shoulders. Boromir stirred.
"You again," he said, with a trace of a smile.
"It is," Aragorn replied.
"I'm pleased. Will you come again?"
"I will, for as long as you need me to."
And then Boromir closed his eyes again, and slept.
Aragorn returned that night, then the following morning, again, again, and each time his skin touched Boromir's, it was as if the life that had been taken from him that day on Amon Hen seeped back into him, like water into soil. Boromir didn't always speak; sometimes he watched him, laughed a little when Aragorn's cloth brushed the soles of his feet, let his eyes close as Aragorn's fingers combed his hair. Sometimes he sat still, hands flat against his thighs, as Aragorn stropped the razor and then shaved his face, letting himself be turned this way and that as the edge sheared his beard. Perhaps he could not have struggled if he'd wished to, but Boromir's wishes were clear: when he rested his head back to stretch out his prickly throat and let him put the blade against his skin, it wasn't just his beard that he entrusted to him.
The following morning, Aragorn washed him. He did it slowly, his fingers brushing Boromir's damp ankles, calves, his parted thighs. When he brushed the damp cloth against his manhood, he felt it stir under his palm, for the first time in so long that he very nearly couldn't name the months. He set the cloth down against Boromir's abdomen, over one of many scars from his long-healed arrow-wounds, and slowly wrapped his hand around him. The shaft stiffened quickly at his touch. Boromir shifted.
"Do you visit every day?" he asked.
"I do," Aragorn replied. His gaze flicked up to Boromir's gaunt but still familiar face, then back down to his own fingers wrapped around his cock. He drew a breath. His eyes found Boromir's again.
"Aren't you king here?" he asked. "Don't you have duties to attend to?"
"I am," Aragorn replied. "And I have. One of those duties is to you." But then Boromir's gaze sharpened. With a clench of his jaw, with a struggle that seemed to exhaust him very nearly utterly, one of Boromir's hands came down to wrap around his wrist.
"Don't touch me out of duty, Aragorn," he said. "I'd sooner die than that."
The following day, when he wrapped his hand around him, when he stroked, he looked him in the eye. "It's not duty," he said, when he saw his sharp and warning look, and then he took Boromir's hand. He pressed it down between his own thighs, over the erection already straining there. Boromir's sudden smile lit his grey eyes like the summer sun and he laughed, low and rich, though it quickly turned breathless. His cock stiffened. And once Aragorn had made him come, when he reached for the cloth to clean him off, Boromir shook his head.
"Now you," he said, with an obvious glance. And so Aragorn did as he was bidden: he freed his hard cock and he stroked himself, sitting there beside him, under Boromir's avid, watchful gaze. When he came against Boromir's skin, against his abdomen, it was a simple matter to clean both their seed away almost as if it hadn't happened; the way Boromir smiled at him, flushed-faced and satisfied, he couldn't doubt it had.
Boromir's health has been improving day by day. The healers find that improvement miraculous but Aragorn understands, because Ioreth said it herself: the hands of a king are the hands of a healer, and he is Gondor's king. But he hasn't only used his hands in all this time. What ailed Boromir has required so much more.
A week ago, he came to the room where he'd been so many times before by then. When he went inside and closed the door behind him, Boromir woke; when he approached the bed with water, soap and cloth, Boromir threw back the sheets. He was naked beneath, and already half hard, a fact that made Aragorn smile to himself as he set his things down - he didn't ask what it was that he'd been thinking of in advance of his arrival. Then he told him, "Turn over. Let me wash your back."
Boromir turned, though it took him a moment and stole the breath out of him; his strength has been returning, and he no longer seemed to flag between Aragorn's twice-daily visits, but they both knew he would still have a long recovery ahead. And once he'd turned, Aragorn wet the cloth and pulled off his boots and climbed up onto the bed. He straddled the back of Boromir's thighs. He ran the cloth down the line of his spine. And then, impulsively, he leaned down to press his mouth between his shoulder blades. Impulsively, he moved down lower. Impulsively, he parted Boromir's thighs and knelt between them. He spread his cheeks. He exposed his hole. Impulsively, he touched his tongue against it.
Boromir groaned but it wasn't from any kind of discomfort. Boromir hissed in a breath, but he wasn't in pain. Aragorn knelt there and he held his cheeks apart with the palms of both hands and he lapped at him, hot and wet, teased his rim with the tip of his tongue, pressed against him firmly, and felt Boromir's hips shift down against the bed. He ran one prickly cheek against his arse and made him laugh then licked him again, cutting that laugh off sharply. He eased him open with his thumbs at the edges of his rim, just a little, just far enough to press the tip of his tongue inside him and feel his own cock stiffen quickly in response. It had been so long since Lórien, since the silver waterfall where Boromir had caught him bathing. It had been so long since he'd watched Boromir strip off his own clothes and join him, when they'd looked at each other and understood that everything they wanted was the same. They'd both wanted peace, though they'd disagreed on how to reach it. They'd both wanted each other, too, and their thoughts on achieving that had been very much more aligned.
He licked him. He teased him with flicks of his tongue and light touches of his fingertips, his hot breath, his lips, and he felt how his attention to that most intimate part of him made him shiver and rock his hips against the bed. He pulled back, breathless, took a breath and blew it out against him and the cool air against wet skin made Boromir shiver again, more deeply, and laugh against the pillow. This time, he cut off that laugh with the long slide of his own cock between Boromir's cheeks. This time, he rubbed the length of himself over his hole, squeezed his cheeks together and rubbed himself between them. His own breath caught and he watched himself, the only bare parts of him his hands on Boromir's cheeks and his cock pressed there between them. When he came there, suddenly, duty had nothing to do with it. When he used his own come to slick his fingers and then push them up inside him, when he felt Boromir rock back against them till he came, too, he knew duty had no place here at all.
But now Boromir is well, or at least well enough that he needs no further treatment from his king, such as that treatment is. And though Aragorn knows he would have never given so much for any man as he has for him, this cannot continue; it's miraculous that their transgressions have remained unnoted for so long.
"Aragorn," Boromir says.
"Boromir," Aragorn replies.
"I know exactly what you're thinking." Aragorn raises his brows. Boromir mirrors his expression. Then Boromir pushes back his sheets and inches closer to the bedside; he's dressed in a nightshirt that's rucked up to his thighs and when he rises, shakily, unsteadily, but with great determination, the hem falls down to his knees. Aragorn has helped him to stand numerous times, but he hasn't seen him rise alone; he understands he's been practicing without him and when he asks himself why, the answer is immediate: Boromir knows that Aragorn will seek to stop this once he's well enough, and he's been hiding the fact that he already is.
"What am I thinking?" he asks.
"What's important is what I'm thinking," Boromir replies.
"What are you thinking?" he asks.
"I don't need to stay here."
"You don't?"
"No, I don't."
"Then where will you go?"
Boromir leans against the bed's high footboard. The corners of his mouth quirk up. "The palace," he says. "Your bed."
"My bed?"
"Your bed," he confirms. "Don't you think everyone in Gondor knows the kind of man I am? I've no wife. I've made it clear that I've no wish to take one. Let me make it clear I've a wish to take you." His smile broadens. It's wolfish at the edges. "At least let me make it clear to you."
And Aragorn laughs, yes, but that doesn't stop him moving forward. It doesn't stop him drawing close or kissing him, with Boromir's jaw cupped in his hands.
He makes it sound so simple, and perhaps it is; perhaps the king and his steward can come to an arrangement in their people's eyes, and Boromir knows more about their ways than he does.
For now, though, it matters very little. When Boromir pulls off his shirt and bares himself in front of him, Aragorn knows that he won't give this up; when Boromir takes his hands and tugs him back toward the bed, he knows he'll follow his lead. Boromir undresses him, piece by piece by piece, until he feels more like a ranger of the north again and not a king. Boromir pulls him down and he goes willingly. They have everything they need there in that room to make is easy when Aragorn enters him. And when they're done, when they're lying there breathless, Boromir reaches up to tuck back Aragorn's long hair. He seems stronger now, and Aragorn wonders how it might be to walk out of this room with him, side by side, and make their way to Gondor's throne. But Boromir kisses him and steals all his thoughts away.
He brought him back from the brink of death, and their lives are now entwined because of it. Aragorn cannot regret that.