Of Secrets Kept
By Tyellas
Summary: Very strongly Silmarillion-based. When a secret that Turgon must keep comes up in discussion with Fingon, he vouchsafes another secret to make amends. A story written for Ithilwen's birthday: Turgon on request!
Story Warnings and Notes: Slash (sort of) and het (sort of) – I can't decide which it is, but it's NC-17.
Disclaimer: These characters and Middle-Earth are the copyright of the Tolkien estate and this fan fiction is not meant to infringe on that copyright in any way.
Praised be the beta readers, Suzana and Aayesha!
“It came to pass that Narogthrond was full-wrought (and yet Turgon still dwelt in the halls of Vinyamar), and the sons of Finarfin were gathered there to a feast…”
Of the Noldor in Beleriand, The Silmarillion
The sons of Finarfin were indeed gathered in the newly-hewn halls of Narogthrond to feast. The eldest of them and the lord of the hall, Finrod Felagund, had sent the invitation far and wide, and the tall chambers of the caves were filled with fair faces and mirth. Among the guests were a company from the halls of Vinyamar, where Turgon ruled, and Turgon had journeyed with them, for Finrod was his friend.
Turgon watched his cousin Finrod with a wry smile. The wine and mead were flowing freely. The feast was just past its peak. Finrod was doing what Turgon himself always did in his own hall when the hour grew both late and merry. He was stepping down from the high seat, clearly intending to retire to his own chambers. This would release those of the revelers who had had their fill so that they could go to their rest without giving offense. It also gave those who remained license to get well and truly besotted without embarrassing themselves before their host. Turgon, as a guest this night, was free to choose as he would.
Turgon looked into his silver cup, tactfully letting his dark locks fall around his face. He knew his somber mood showed. The wine that had been poured for him was from the bottom of a carafe, and had some of the lees in it. He elevated the cup slightly, silently mouthing a name: Elenwë. There was, he thought, no revel where she was not; and she was dead. After this unspoken toast, he drained the bitter mouthful and took his own leave from the bright hall.
Finrod had progressed more slowly to the door. By the time he had extracted himself from well-wishers, it happened to be the moment when Turgon was also departing. “This is well, my friend,” Finrod declared. “Everyone else seems intent on drinking in the dawn. Walk with me a time!”
Finrod dismissed his hovering esquire, who went back to the feast with evident relief. With his easy smile made even more ready by the wine, and a hint of a flush over his handsome face, Finrod looked back on the feast he was leaving. “What do you think of my great hall?”
Without a trace of envy, Turgon said, “Magnificent. Truly a mighty refuge. I have not seen its like in Middle-earth; and it is definitely more splendid than Vinyamar.”
Finrod, evidently pleased by the compliment, made a modest gesture. As they left the revels for peaceful passageways, he said, “‘Tis little compared to the halls of Menegroth, where Thingol rules. What about you? I hear of movement among your people. Have you, too, found a deeper refuge for your followers?”
Quietly, Turgon said, “Yes.”
Silence followed this.
Finrod’s wine-buoyed ebullience faded as the silence stretched. Finally, he said, “It is your right to not speak of it to me.”
“You are the first to whom I mention this; no other lord in the hall knows of it. I feel the fate upon the place binds me to silence of it. And it is an awful weight, speaking to you, my closest friend. All I can say is that the eagles of Manwë will help us; and if you ever need my aid, you will have it. Can you forgive me?”
Finrod smiled again. “I will, if you drink your pledge with me in a toast. There is wine in my chambers.”
“That, I can open my mouth for, and gladly!”
The pair went on. By long halls and winding stairs, they came at last to Finrod’s chambers. Turgon took as much pleasure in these rooms as he had in the deep, intricately carved hall. More, even, for at one end of Finrod’s suite there were some tall windows, cut out of a cliff, shielded with vines. He gravitated to them and peered out on the waters of the river Narog far below. Finrod followed him into the room, which happened to be the bedchamber. “Here, the wine.”
Turgon looked approvingly at the view. “May we speak our pledge here, in view of your lands?”
“Agreed!” Solemnly, Turgon repeated his words. Each drank, both draining their cups halfway. Then Turgon exchanged his cup for Fingon’s, and Fingon took up Turgon’s, and each finished the other’s wine.
“Warming stuff,” Turgon exclaimed. There had been no bitterness in this cup.
“That it is. Ouf! Now that all ceremony is done, I can take my ease.” Finrod’s fingers did not fumble as he stripped off his long robes, in shades of rich, warm green, leaving linen and leggings.
Turgon did not blink. He and Finrod had journeyed far together at times, leaving behind the pomp of their princely rank. There was no shame between these two, as he showed with his next wine-merry words. “Some couch you have to rest upon! Are you sharing it with anyone? There’s room for six.”
Finrod took a moment to answer this, reeling to sit upon the edge of the couch. “No. Unfashionable of me, I know – no Sindar lovely, no handsome boy. Fingon and Maedhros have begun quite the trend. And it’s all right for widowers such as yourself …” He gave his friend a questioning look, raising one tawny eyebrow.
Turgon sat down heavily beside Finrod. “I, too, am unfashionable; nor can I forget Elenwë.” It was a pain, yet a relief, to be able to speak his lost wife’s name.
“It eases me to hear you speak so. Not that I take joy from your sorrow, but that another heart is like mine.” Finrod turned his face away to say, “You say a fate keeps you silent about your realm to be. I, too, have a fate upon me; and I feel I will never have what you have lost. Even without that, I cannot but love Amerie, whom I left behind. We are riven forever.”
Turgon inhaled sharply. He could not discuss his new realm. But he could discuss this, in friendship and penance. “Better to be in your boots, my friend. As for consoling myself with men…I tried once. Didn’t take, frankly. A man’s nothing like. ”
“Nothing like – not a bad thing, but yes, nothing like,” Finrod said, his voice lighter.
They both laughed roughly for a minute. Then Turgon, serious again, said, “More than that. The way a woman feels…”
Finrod sighed deeply, leaning back to lie across the couch. “Ah, yes. Their soft, melting skin…”
“Their waists, narrow for an arm,” Turgon added. The room felt warmer, and he opened his own sea-blue robes.
“Their long hair.” The two elf-men both groaned.
Turgon also reclined, reminiscing. “Elenwë used to crouch over me and draw her hair across my face in a tangled veil.”
Finrod rolled closer. In the lamplight, his green eyes were heavy-lidded from wine and weariness. He took off his lord’s circlet, disheveling the sheaves of his golden-brown hair. “I remember that your Elenwë’s locks were straight. Like a sheet of palest gold.” Gazing beyond Turgon in remembrance, he said, “My Amerie’s hair was richer, like bronze, and so long the weight pulled the curl out of it. It waved like the sea in the light of Laurelin.”
Turgon felt he had had too much to drink; the image of Amerie’s bronze hair seemed to blend with Finrod’s falling hair before him. He turned his eyes to the ceiling to ask, “She let you touch it?”
“Yes. Her hair, and more. We did everything a pair could do and still be unwedded. She had the sweetest tongue and lips – both sets of her lips were sweet, you could say.” Finrod sighed again. “With all that pleasure, we were not in a hurry to wed.”
Finrod’s vivid words roused his listening friend, even to hardness. It was a torment to Turgon, but a welcome one. Finrod had been right. After all the nights suffering his grief and the ache of his denied body, it was good, at least, to not be alone. Aware how his body betrayed him, Turgon went to roll over on his stomach. But the modest move brought him face to face with Finrod. He could not help but glance down to see that Finrod, beneath his garments, was also stiff. Finrod’s words drew his glance back up. “It’s just rousing to talk about it. Perhaps we could do more?” And Finrod met his friend’s mouth in a kiss.
Turgon started at first, then allowed it, weighing how the kiss made him feel. When their lips parted, he tried to be gentle. “Finrod. You are dear to me and fair. But I liked your lips better when they spoke of Amerie.”
Finrod accepted this and drew back. Even half-drunk and fully stiff, Turgon had to admire his friend’s diplomacy. For Finrod saved the moment, saying, “Tell me more about Elenwë. I liked it when you spoke of her, too.” Drawing back a bit from Turgon, his friend saw that Finrod had a hand to his crotch, over the bulge there, both hiding and caressing. “Could you – could I ask you something about you and her?”
Turgon relaxed somewhat. To be like this was intimate yet distant, sinful yet not. Finrod’s hands, free over his own body, seemed to give permission. Turgon moved his own hand down as well. “What do you want to know?”
“Amerie and I – we were not wedded. For all the desire we shared, we held back from joining our bodies in the union of marriage.” Voice hushed with reverence, Finrod asked, “What was it like?”
Even lying down, Turgon reeled. Finrod’s hand was evidently busy before his loins, and his hair was tangled in a nest, as Elenwë’s used to get after rolling around on a couch herself. If Finrod had had his fingers stroking a furred valley, instead of handling a fistful of tall steel, Turgon would have broken the laws of marriage then and there to take him. As it was, he thought all the more profoundly of what he missed the most, and found his tongue again – for speech was the only way they could give each other what they most wanted.
“It is the pleasure that joins elf-man and elf-woman for a fine reason. I hungered for it near every night, and my beloved refused me rarely. There was no bliss like it; tasting and teasing her until we both pulsed with need, and then brushing my shaft against her quim. It is hot and sweet to feel a woman’s secret nest with your hand; that it is. But to place your cock against her, even just along the velvet slit of its opening, is searing delight.” Turgon, too, was stroking himself openly now. “And to slide inside, to place yourself inside her, possessing her, surrounded by the luscious heat of her – it is bliss and torment. You feel as mighty as a Vala, as wild as a stag in rut. Even as I rode her, I’d feel her both tight and sliding wet. Ai, how I loved it!”
Finrod whispered, eagerly, “Let me see what you gave her.”
Turgon closed his eyes and, for an instant, took his hand away. He heard Finrod say, “Oh, that’s nice. D’you think I’d please a woman, inside her?”
Turgon looked down at Finrod’s shaft, straighter than his own, a bit less in breadth, a bit more in length. “Very much. You’re well made for it.”
“I wanted to – what you - “ Finrod gripped his shaft again, and closed his eyes – “oh, Amerie, I wanted to…”
Unable to leave him alone with that pain, that desire he knew so well, Turgon inhaled and dove in to kiss him, as Finrod had done to him before. Finrod groaned into his mouth, even as Turgon felt warm wetness nearby, Finrod’s seed. It reminded him of making love to Elenwë, standing up for a moment and returning to her in their shared bed, curled up deliciously in the sheets stained with their recent love. Between the memory and the present, he too came.
The pair were silent and panting for a time. Finally, Finrod said, voice tight, “That was different. Don’t you agree?” Again, Finrod was speaking without looking at him.
“I think…” Turgon brushed the dark hair away from his face, and put a hand on his friend’s linen-clad shoulder. “I think you owe me a tale, now. I know you have something good. You were always more adventurous than I was.”
When Finrod stopped laughing, he looked Turgon in the eye. “Well. This one time, in the tower of Tirion, she and I…” They stayed sprawled beside each other, companionable in their shared lust, as they shared the arousal of another memory.
When midnight moonlight touched the windows, Finrod stood and drew the curtains aside. “The reek of musk…my esquire’s going to think we did what we didn’t do.”
After all these confidences, there was yet more for Turgon admit. “I own that it is good to just be on a couch with somebody. Every night, that is the worst of it, even more than coupling – sleeping alone.”
Finrod smiled and rolled to give Turgon ample room upon the couch. “Then you should stay. If anybody asks, we’ll tell them we’re setting a new fashion.”
The esquire next morning saw the empty cups, rich clothes scattered about, and the two elf-lords awake and talking quietly. Turgon watched the esquire note their conspiratorial glance. Finrod laughed. Turgon only smiled mysteriously. As well, he thanked Ulmo that Finrod, in the morning, respected Turgon’s secret as much as he had the night before. If Finrod had asked, it would have been twice as hard to deny him now.
In the long chaste years that followed, Turgon occasionally thought of that night. He never betrayed Finrod’s intimate confidences, treasuring the trust shared with his friend; the secrets kept, the strength like a tower.
Feedback or comments on this story are welcome - email Tyellas here.
