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“Are you awake?”
The side of the tea mug very nearly burns Curufin’s knuckles by the time he pushes the door open, letting the cone of light from the corridor into the bedroom. The bedside lamp is on, and in the yellow light the shadows under Finrod’s eyes look more brown than purple – the eyes themselves are lucid when they turn to look at Curufin, if not as bright as they used to be. The smile that tilts the pale pink lips upwards is still enough to light up his whole face – and enough to make Curufin’s heart clench with all too sweet pain.
“Is it late?” Finrod murmurs tiredly, stretching his long thin arms above his fuzz-covered head and arching lazily up from the bed. “Did I sleep long? That smells nice – lemon?”
“Lemon. Your sense of smell is returning.” Curufin smiles as he lowers the mug on the bedside table. “You shouldn’t sleep with lights on.”
“I got too used to it in the hospital. There was a lamp post behind the window if you remember.”
“Also blinds. You had blinds , Ingoldo.”
“I like the light.”
Curufin falls silent at that, averting his gaze as he lowers himself to sit on the bed, the mattress dipping under his weight. When he looks up his cousin is wearing a rather petulant look completed with a slight pout, and despite everything the expression makes Curufin chuckle a little. Some things never change.
Finrod smiles and leans back against the pillows, lacing his fingers over his lap. He’s like a bird under the massive, thick blanket, and evokes such a fierce desire to protect that Curufin nearly can’t take it. He knows he’s fucked when he knowingly and willingly hurts himself like this. He knows he’s fucked when he doesn’t want to be anywhere else even if once upon a time all the blank pieces of his life were perfectly in their places and he never had to worry about anything but his own performance, his own success. Somewhere along the line Curufin learned to nurture the cracks and stains and see them as parts of the bigger picture. It doesn’t have to mean he has to like it. It doesn’t mean he understands it.
“What are you thinking now?” Finrod asks quietly, and Curufin knows he’s been silent for too long. He pulls himself to sit more straight, rolling his stiff shoulders under his black shirt. Fuck . He’s really going to talk about this.
“Remember when we went to see the Frick Collection last summer?” Curufin starts, rolling the edge of his cuff between his fingers.
“Of course I do. I dragged you there by your hair during lunch hours.” Finrod smiles at the fond memory.
“We were looking at this painting, St. Francis –”
“St. Francis in Ecstasy?”
“Yes. You said something about its age and how paintings from that period tend to crack, the paint gets darker and duller, and that renovation is balancing between authenticity and respect. How cracks and stains are part of a piece, part of its story.”
“Curvo, this sounds like you’re about to make a real life anecdote and it worries me.”
Curufin tips his head, bemused. Finrod’s eyes twinkle in a way that’s achingly familiar, but he says nothing and sighs instead, resigning to his fate.
“I thought I could live through my life without a single crack or stain. That I’d be better for it. But… but it isn’t so. We aren’t like cars and clothes. We are meant to dent and crack.” He says it like he doesn’t quite believe it still. Mortality has always been his enemy, an old foe Curufin has inherited from his father. With it, fragility of mind, the narrowness of his scope that he’s spent over twenty years expanding and still it’ll never be three-sixty. For a while he hated himself for adhering to his heart, for weeping for his poor Finrod, for his own poor fate, for their tortured souls. Heart, in its metaphysical, figurative sense is an abstract, romantic concept that has no part in science, but still that perhaps makes up for the last few degrees left in his blind spot. Fate and the possible existence and state of his soul he’ll leave for theologians and priests to dread over – and to Finrod, since he likes that kind of things.
“And mend over those hurts, Curvo, don’t forget,” Finrod says softly, making Curufin stifle a bitter laugh.
“I almost did, Ingoldo. I almost did.” Somehow, this is still too hard to talk about, like talking about things with their real names would bring all those problems back. But Finrod merely looks at him, and for once a shadow doesn’t pass over his features, and the room remains warm and calm and comfortable. Curufin reaches for Finrod’s arm, smooths down the paper-thin skin. Blue veins stand out like exposed roots of a tree, lines drawn between constellations. Taurus. Virgo. Pisces. Curufin thinks back to his father’s observatory – he has some happy memories from there, lying under the skylight, listening to the steady hum of the telescope. Someone had mocked Fëanáro for his stargazing hobby – he had responded with words that still remain with Curufin like a tattoo in the inner lining of his cranium.
‘If you have the means to see far, why would you choose not to.’
Curufin now understands that he’s been looking too far for all of his life. He traces the most prominent pale indigo line with a fingertip. Lupus. Ursa Minor. Finrod’s fingers flex when Curufin takes his hand and turns it palm side up.
Hercules. Pegasus. Curufin wants to strip Finrod naked and look for more. He glances up and isn’t at all surprised by Finrod’s knowing, thoughtful smile – ‘what’s going on in that head of yours?’ it seems to ask. He inhales, closes his eyes.
Spica. Zavijava. Porrima. Auva. Vindemiatrix. Heze. Zaniah. Syrma. Rijl al Awwa.
Breathe.
Spica. Zavijava. Porrima…
Curufin opens his eyes. Finrod’s expression hasn’t changed. His kind, patient Finrod. He doesn’t even comment. Finrod is golden like that.
“Father justifies ordeals we experience by saying we become stronger for it, that if we study the darkness which nearly broke us thoroughly enough, it will be the strongest base to build. But I… I didn’t think I could first bring all that misfortune upon myself and then have the universe shit on me on top of that. I kept hurting the same spot while all the seams were cracking without me realising. I was way too focused on that darkness to see the base crumbling beneath, and I don’t think it was made as solid as I wanted to believe. My paint was cracking, but the picture was shit, anyway.”
“Curufinwë, now you’re being too harsh on yourself.” Finrod’s fingers lace with his, thin and knotty and cool. It’s easier to look at that hand than his face. “You are not a painting, either. In all honesty, you should probably refrain from using metaphors, you’re pretty bad with them.”
Curufin looks up, too hasty to wipe the frown from his face, but can’t bring himself to tear his hand away from Finrod’s clutch. It comforts him beyond measure right now even when his wounded pride bristles at him. “It might not be best-seller poetry but it’s easier to talk about it like that.”
“Fair enough. You should talk about it.”
“It’s late. You should drink your tea and sleep.”
Finrod sighs and takes the mug from the nightstand, breathing in the scent deep before taking a careful sip. His eyes close, and Curufin stares at him. He knows he could escape this without further interrogation, but somehow that something wants to come out, and he soon gives up holding it in even when the words tangle together like a jarful of dried worms.
“I just wonder…” Curufin starts and then stops, glaring at Finrod until he lowers the mug from his thinned, pale lips and gives him his full attention, “…am I just painting over the crap right now, pretending something I’m not for the sake of pretending to be happy? Is it just going to crack again?”
“Aren’t you happy?” Finrod asks, his voice a quiet rasp, and he’s quick to hide his mouth behind his mug. His frown still lives in the tiny lines in the corners of his eyes. “Do you feel fake?”
“I guess I’m trying to justify being happy. Everything’s gone to hell so bad and I feel like I don’t have the right to, not just yet.”
“When then? Isn’t happiness supposed to be in the moment? The only thing that’s lasting is ephemerality, the fact that nothing lasts forever, and that’s the beauty of life.”
“You just say that because we can’t know about the future, Ingoldo. That fucks me up.” Curufin’s never been good at living in the moment. A project can put him there, the perfect momentum when his focus becomes singular and sharp like a needle-point diamond, but always – always there is a goal, and beyond that, another goal, and all his life he’s been surfing on that wave in an endless wormhole loop.
“Curvo, we couldn’t have been sure even if I hadn’t got sick. We could have planned the world and lost it. Now we have something, at least. It’s more than I dared to hope for.” Finrod’s voice is too matter-of-factly to speak about this. Curufin wonders how Finrod can sound like that when he’s supposed to be the vivid idealist here. When Finrod had yammered about Heaven and reincarnation and soulmates while weak and hurting and high from morphine, Curufin had wanted to tear his head off – how dare he . How dare Finrod try and find positives in that god-awful situation they had been trapped in. How dare he sound like a weather forecast reader now that there is hope, no matter how reluctant Curufin is to accept it, how desperate he is to grasp it. How dare he trust so blindly . How dare he smile and say he loves when all he does is tear Curufin into tiny pieces.
How angry he had been.
How grateful he is.
“I’m more and more starting to think you settle with too little.” Curufin’s words are a tired, quiet sigh that barely disturbs the air in the room. The declaration makes him deflate, mentally and physically.
“If that was true, I wouldn’t have wooed you for months and months to get to live under your roof. Trust me, it was never about the lack of choice. I had cocks and pussies lining up to take your place.”
“Fuck you, Ingoldo, stop being so brutal.”
“Thing is, I look like a deep space potato, so I’m stuck with you now.”
“Asteroid. You mean asteroid . ‘Deep space potato’, fuck’s sake. Where were you during science classes?”
“Asteroids killed dinosaurs. You should be careful, Curvo.”
They stare at each other for a long moment, eyes hard and mouths severe – then the mug starts to shake in Finrod’s hand as he begins to laugh, and Curufin shoots up to save it before his cousin spills it all over himself.
“Ingoldo,” he warns, but then he’s tittering too and can only barely keep the tea contained. The scent of lemon wafts all around him, the cup bringing warmth to his skin, and for a moment he forgets. “What the hell are you doing?”
Finrod wipes the corner of his eye, wheezing slightly – his cackling has brought colour to his grey cheeks, and he seems more like himself now, efficiently making Curufin’s anger evaporate. “Distracting you.”
“I see.” Curufin gives the mug back, fingers brushing the backs of Finrod’s. He watches him sip his beverage in silence, an occasional pleased sigh leaving the pale lips. “I think it worked.”
“I haven’t lost my touch.” Finrod winks.
“You shouldn’t do that, though. Let me speak. It’s hard enough without you trolling me.”
Finrod puts the mug away and inches closer on the bed, his silken pyjamas hushing against the linens, and then his chilly lips are tracing paths down the side of Curufin’s face, freezing him like a gargoyle in his place. Every tiny shivering breath, mild like spring wind, is a touch of an electrically charged fairy wing, and without thinking Curufin turns towards it, lips parting with a mute sigh – and kissing is good. Kissing is always good.
When Finrod pulls back, his eyes sparkle with amusement and something else, and that look is like a caress of its own. “ Mmm yes. My palate is recovering too.”
Curufin runs the tip of his tongue over his tingling lips, then gives Finrod a lopsided smile. “How do I taste?”
Finrod grins and loops one thin hand behind Curufin’s neck, pulling him in for another lingering kiss, and suddenly good becomes perfect. Curufin can feel the thud of Finrod’s pulse beneath his hand as he brings it to caress the pale neck, fingertips meeting the soft silken plumose at his nape. Finrod tastes of lemon, tongue warm from the tea, and smells like the rich jasmine fragrance of his bath oil. Curufin raises one sleek brow when Finrod withdraws, silently demanding an answer for that ridiculous question.
“Like life,” murmurs Finrod, licking his lips as if to savour whatever he finds there, his thinned mouth still way too capable of deliberate and accidental seduction. When he continues, Curufin is still caught looking at it, his own lips parted by instinct and slowly concentrating desire. “Listen – you’re being good to me. Unreasonably good. You’re exhausting yourself being this considerate. I meant it when I said we need to start fresh. Tabula rasa . We’ll make a pyre out of the old paintings and watch them burn, and paint a new one together. Literally if you want. But by all that’s good and holy, stop putting me on a damn pedestal just so that you can torture yourself. You are not – and never were – unworthy. You have issues but you aren’t your issues. Capisce ? Can you now stop wallowing in the uncertain future and curl up next to me for a while?”
“If it will make you stop that tirade,” Curufin utters back, though there’s a feeble blush on his cheeks and he feels a little too faint – maybe that’s why he fails to get incited by Finrod’s tone. Arguing feels pointless. He wants Finrod to be right in this.
“I will try. If you turn around and let me bury my face into your hair, I might stay quiet.”
“Yes,” says Curufin, pulling his long legs up on the bed and letting Finrod draw him against his chest, one wiry arm coming to hug his middle. He lets himself smile now that Finrod can’t see, and reaches for the lamp to switch off the light. “I like you quiet,” he whispers to the opposite wall, and can’t help a shiver as Finrod quietly chuckles against his shoulder, his arm slightly tightening around him.
“And I like you loud.” Finrod’s voice is hotter than his breath.
“Do you now?” Curufin asks, unable to hide the embarrassing catch in his.
“You have a very extensive, colourful vocabulary – and yet for someone so plain-speaking and generally monotonous, it’s impressive how many tonal variations a simple word like ‘please’ achieves in your use when suitably aroused and provoked. It’s beyond gratifying.”
“ Ingoldo .”
“Yes?”
“ Bite me. ”
“With pleasure.”
Curufin huffs with mock-annoyance and curls his fingers over Finrod’s hand, bringing the thin digits up to splay over his heart. Finrod’s lips curl into a smile against the skin of his neck, soft and wonderful and needed. Curufin suppresses the urge to push the slim hand into his suggestively tenting slacks and melts into the safety of Finrod’s embrace instead, chasing tension out of his lean, tired body. Like that, it’s easier to let himself believe in Finrod’s truth, soak in Finrod’s peace – those thin arms can’t silence all of his demons but they do keep them at bay, and for that alone Curufin’s happy they walked that long, painful road to get here.
This time he manages two full hours of sleep without waking up to check Finrod’s still breathing.