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The Strangest of Dances (NC-17) 
Written by Eora17 March 2013 | 19768 words
Author’s Note: Many apologies for the delay in updating; this chapter is longer than the last, which should hopefully make up for my tardiness :)
Chapter 3.
“Ithilien?”
“Yes, you know, that fiefdom you made me a prince of some while ago.”
“I know what Ithilien is.”
Oh, our blessed, blessed war! Let it never be said that the high king Elessar Telcontar and his steward, the lord Faramir, prince of, yes, Ithilien, were not wordsmiths of the highest pedigree! How I loved his barefaced belligerence, though it was always gentle, teasing, fondly bandied. There he was before me, leaning against the edge of my desk with his arms folded and I wanted to pull him to me and never let him go. Instead, I sat down in the chair before the fireplace, crossed my legs and gestured to him with my hand. “Go on then.”
“I’m having a house built in Emyn Arnen. It won’t be ready for a few months yet, but I will probably be wanting to live there- Aragorn?”
I must have gone white, or looked at him very oddly for he was now looking at me very oddly, tilting his head and smiling as if I were some half-wit in need of reassurance. He was expecting me to say something; congratulate him somehow, or at least be interested. Instead, I blurted “You’re leaving?” like some love-sick fool, which, of course, I was.
“Not for a few months yet,” Faramir repeated slowly, amused no doubt by my ineptitude at normal conversation. “And I shall be going back and forth; you need all the help you can get.”
It was a joke, and I tried to laugh it off but whatever noise I made fell flat and Faramir frowned. I stood up.
“I’m feeling unwell,” I said, though the cause of my wanting to die was not through any sudden affliction but due to the fact I’d chosen that as my excuse for solitude. I thought of swaying slightly on the spot for added authenticity, though I really would be half-witted to think that for a moment Faramir was fooled by any of this, but Faramir himself prevented such theatrics by pushing away from the desk, stepping to my side and putting his hand on my shoulder.
“What has come over you?” And I knew he wasn’t talking about sudden onset playacting. I sighed.
“There’s something I really need to tell you, Faramir.” Here we go, I thought. Again. Luckily for me, I’d heard that Faramir would soon be moving to Emyn Arnen and I wouldn’t have to deal with the fallout to my proposed confession for too much longer.
“The thing is,” I said, and I wished his hand would leave my general proximity.
“For a long time now,” I continued, and he only watched me, concerned for once in lieu of banter, kind eyes shining. I looked at him squarely, trying to be kingly about this.
“I’ve been falling in love with you.” I swallowed. “Fallen, really. I mean, I think…no, I’m quite certain that I love you.”
For a moment my wish came true; Faramir lowered his hand from my shoulder, and I was now free to disintegrate into infinite, mortified motes of dust and be blown hither by whichever breeze came first; either that or flee the room, I wasn’t too fussed on the particulars of my escape. But I was a fool to think myself so easily off the hook; Faramir’s hand curled around mine and he said, as my heart exploded; “I know.”
And then I said, stupidly (I promised I’d get back to this, remember?); “You do realise I mean love love, don‘t you?”
He laughed, and the fingers that were somehow already interwoven with my own tightened their grip briefly “Yes.”
I was at a loss. “You know?”
“Admittedly, I didn’t know until you confirmed it now. But I had suspected something was going on; your gaze isn’t too unwelcome but it’s also rather obvious.”
What was happening? “What is happening?” I said, and my voice seemed to be getting higher with each twist of this unlikely tale. “For I do believe I have just offered my heart to you and here we stand, hand in hand.” Such sweet poetry, but not sweet enough to halt the change of Faramir’s expression from gentle mirth, and dare I say it, flattery, to one of delicate sadness, as if he were about to reject that freely offered heart, albeit with such tact that I would be hard pressed to ever find fault in him for it. And that is exactly what occurred next.
“Aragorn,” he said, and I knew, even though he never called me my lord or your grace or my king any more, I knew somehow that this use of my given name boded only ill. I decided then, that that was enough. I let go of his hand, and stepped back, blushing to the roots of my hair, no doubt. What a fool I really was.
“Hush now, I will not embarrass you further by letting you figure out how to word what you are about to say,” I remember striding to the door with some purpose, determined Faramir should not see the ugly conglomeration of emotions on my face at that instant. I heard his footstep behind me.
“But-”
“No, no, Faramir, it’s alright, really.” I opened the door. I really was feeling unwell now. Thankfully, Faramir took the hint without me having to actually ask him to leave, something I’d never wanted to do in the first place. Oh gods, why have you laid upon me this unmanageable fate? Not even so much the love part, but the awkwardness I am plagued with?
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Faramir said, suddenly on the other side of the threshold.
“What?”
“At council; tomorrow is the first day of spring.” The dawning realisation that I would indeed see him the next morning, seated beside me as he would be for the majority of the day at spring council made me want to renounce my kingship and take myself away into Eriador, or perhaps see an elf about a westward-bound boat. Instead, I nodded dumbly.
“See you tomorrow, Faramir.”
So, spring council came and went, as did summer council, and autumn, and now the days were short and the nights long, longer to me now because I had no-one seated at my side for the winter meetings; Faramir had been in his new home in Ithilien for almost three months now, and save for the occasional visit to the city I saw him not, though that is not to say we didn’t speak to one another.
Letters, endless letters, and though the snow beckoned and the promise of storms and impassable roads loomed, for now messengers were not hindered on the journey between our two residences and were dispatched almost daily (and you’ll be pleased to know that I was still bathing with equal regularity). In the days that followed my (this time, well and truly heard) confession, the relationship between Faramir and I became a little problematic, the problem being that I, in my attempts to avoid him, so filled with a fury of embarrassment as I was, was only making life more difficult for him; I suppose generally a steward will, now and again, actually need his king for various little things like councils. During that spring summit it was impossible to ignore him or the notes he kept passing me and beneath the table our knees kept colliding and I just wanted to throw my chair out of the window in the hope that the distraction would allow me to slip away unnoticed. But I didn’t, and after a week or so our friendship resumed normalcy, albeit with a little less time spent together, mostly, I think, due to my own self-preservation. I kept away, because I was only going to fall further.
In the end, it was almost (almost) a relief when he departed for the hills of Emyn Arnen. I was sore to see him go, but didn’t stop him; he wasn’t just leaving because he felt like it, as prince of that fiefdom his duties were now pulling him increasingly in that direction. It wasn’t practical to live in Minas Tirith when your work was mostly concerned with what was happening in the woodlands to the south, and I dare say it’s not practical living in Minas Tirith when you know the king is infatuated with you. And the fact of the matter was, however much I may have secretly wished for an excuse to keep him by my side (contrary to my varied methods of avoidance) in reality I had little need of an on-site steward any more; off he went, with guard and retinue and what felt like half my household staff (well, I suppose they were his first).
And then, I realised he was gone. And I missed him, immediately and dreadfully.
And so, our correspondence began. At first, they were just the occasional note slipped into more official letters of state; a vague how are you, how is the pastoral life treating you (mine) or how fares the king without his loyal dogsbody (his). And it was that last missive, laced with his old, familiar cheek that spurred me into action; sarcasm doesn’t usually translate well through the written word but Faramir was a smart one and he (I hope) didn’t take much offence from my tart reply. At least his own returning letter, which arrived a day later, was even cheekier than the first. This went on for weeks, with each note getting longer and longer, until soon they were more essays than anything else, not so laden with brazen disrespect, but now of a fonder tone, our friendship reignited, minus the difficulty physical proximity sparked within me. My day was brightened immeasurably when in the morning I would discover an epistle lovingly (and so neatly) scrawled with ‘Dear Aragorn‘ at the top and ‘yours, Faramir‘ at the bottom. He’d even begun to poke fun at my admittedly sub-par handwriting; my signature at the best of times was illegible and so his became even more fanciful until at one point the flourishing ‘F’ overwrote half a paragraph. I smiled to myself, and consigned to write to him in childish block-letters from then on.
Prior to Faramir’s departure I’d begun to take myself out of my duties if not every day then every other, and pursue some physical activity. It was not that in the days since my coronation my more sedentary lifestyle had resulted in my belt feeling tighter, but since the crown had been placed upon my brow I felt I had hardly held a sword since, and I was out of practise, and, fine, in mild danger of becoming unfit. Helpfully, this gave me ample excuse to concentrate on something other than Faramir and my ailing heart, and I spent many pleasant hours in the practise yards or ahorse, touring the Pelennor when the weather was clement. I mention all of this only because it gives a little context to what happened a while later. (Did I mention at the start that this was a long story? No? Well, as you will have gathered, it is.) The snow had begun one morning, not terribly, but enough to put me off any long rides and any especially prolonged sparring matches out of doors. So, sufficiently diverted from any physical exertion, I threw myself into reordering my study, a sadly neglected task and one that I heartily wished I could thrust upon my steward, though recalling him from the wilds to put my ledgers into alphabetical order was not something I felt he would appreciate, no matter how tidy my calligraphy.
After about half an hour of, truthfully, half-hearted rearranging, there came a knock at my door. The post was late on this day, delayed by the weather no doubt, and contained the usual petitions and invoices and this and that from whomever I was currently not settling a quarrel over farmland boundaries for. In the midst of it all, however, was Faramir’s letter, and I know I should have kept it for last, a reward for dealing with all of the disgruntled farmers but though I have had a long life and plenty of time to learn it I really do not know much of patience and so I sat behind my desk and ran my thumbnail beneath the seal to open it immediately.
Most of the letter was the usual, the replies to some questions I had asked about winter supplies and what his plans were if the storms truly did cut off all travel between north and south. He had practical answers for everything, as always, and I envied him that level-headed knowledge that seemed to come so naturally to him. The last few lines of the letter, however, set alight within me something I couldn’t even name, let alone decide how to react to.
In any case, it is long since I have seen you, and you are yet to visit my home; I know it is winter and travel is not pleasant, but if you might deign (oh, Faramir) to spend a few days as my guest I would be pleased to have you. Far be it for me to suggest that I miss you, but I think a real conversation between us is long overdue.
Please write quickly, before the snow buries us all.
Your Faramir.
Now, first things first. It was not the content of that last paragraph that initially gave me pause, though the invitation was one I was fair tempted to take him up on (and you’ll already have guessed that I did, so there is no point in leaving that a mystery.) It was more the wording he had chosen, specifically in the valediction.
Your Faramir.
I squinted at the script.
Not yours. Your.
I sat there, puzzled for many minutes. My over-active imagination, surely. His hands were probably cold and he mis-wrote. He’s forgotten how to spell, it comes to us all. There was no way in actuality that this was some sort of subtle invitation of a different sort. I had put it aside, surely, my fondness. I was fitter, now, and my hands freshly sword-callused; I had proven that I could forget all about that nonsense.
Write quickly, he had asked. What better reply, I thought, than to ride quickly instead, and show myself as answer. I found myself summoning servants and instructing them to begin preparations for my journey southwards not ten minutes later. It would take a day or two to assemble the necessary retinue, days in which I would throw myself into weapons-practise with vigour never before witnessed; I missed Faramir horribly, but as my friend, and my friend only. I would prove that, and we would sit before the hearth in his home with wine and laughter and watch the snow fall endlessly.
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Oooh! Very good! Magical: so many words and you caught me in a wave of excitement. I like this Aragorn, and the explanation of Faramir. Ahh, sunshine and fun!
— Laivindur Thursday 15 November 2012, 16:52 #