Title: Musings in the Dark  
Author: Carole  carole@bitstream.net  
Pairings: Aragorn/Denethor, Aragorn/Arwen, Aragorn/Boromir  
Rating: NC-17  
Summary: 'And poor Aragorn?  Agreeing one more time with 
his all-knowing mentor that a bit of whoring on the part of 
the heir of kings was just the thing to stave off the 
downfall of the West?'  
Disclaimer: Not mine, wish they were.  
 
 
Gandalf, Gandalf, I feel the loss of your counsel most 
keenly in this moment, as I sit silent watch beside the 
heir of Denethor, who sleeps in a most private glade of 
Lorien’s woods.  Not private enough, of course, to hide us 
from the grandmother of my betrothed, if she chose to turn 
her will in our direction; but her will is altogether 
elsewhere tonight, centered on the ring bearer and the 
mirror.  
 
Private enough though, that none of the fellowship would 
guess, private enough that he could let me strip his heart 
naked as I did not strip his body – I took him with his 
clothes on Gandalf, soldier-fashion, as men do in the 
field, sliding those smooth leather breeches down smooth 
warm flanks and pushing him forward to brace against a 
tree.   Fire and shadow Gandalf, that first time standing 
was my inventing.  All *you* said was ‘from behind, and 
don’t remove his clothing’.  
 
Was it good inventing, you old pander?  Did I see into his 
needs with more than just your coaching?  Will it bind him 
to me?  If I have done things rightly this night and truly 
given Boromir the long secret desire of his heart, will it 
serve the destiny of the heir of kings?  
 
“You are the heir of kings,” you said to me, from my youth 
onward, always and always, again and again, before each 
battle I must fight, each privation I must endure, each 
mission I must accomplish, each time my will threatened to 
flag.  And I felt such pride, after every battle, every 
privation, every mission: I had acted the heir of kings.  
 
There was no pride though, the times you told me I must use 
the desires of my body in the service of that cause.  Was 
it Denethor?  My mind turns back to Denethor this night, 
for obvious reasons. Was that the first time I said them – 
those words that became a jest between us Gandalf, and a 
sick jest in my heart.  Was Denethor the first time I said, 
“You tell me not to be the heir of kings, but the whore of 
kings?”  
 
Was it Denethor, or was it Arwen who first provoked those 
words?  I loved her, Gandalf, when I was twenty.  You saw 
that: the love of a boy for an elf-woman, high and pure and 
beautiful, who barely noticed him.  But thirty years later, 
when her fascination with me had grown with each new 
meeting and she spoke of betrothal?  By then Gandalf, even 
I could see into her heart far enough to fear it; but I 
came to you for counsel and you said, “Bind her to you 
Aragorn; you are the heir of kings and much good will come 
of it.”  
 
I remember pacing as we spoke, and nearly shouting.  “What 
good can come of it, Gandalf?  I may be the heir of kings, 
but she has the life of the Eldar – and would give it up to 
play Luthien-and-Beren with me in some mad, one-sided pact 
of death.  In the name of what love I still bear her, what 
good can come of this that is worth her life?”  
 
And you spoke calmly, persuasively, “You have seen some of 
her heart, Aragorn.  Her choice is not now between your 
love and the life of the Eldar. She rejects the immortality 
of the elves, the immortality that could not save her 
mother to be with her.  She keeps to honor.  We need not 
fear the self-wielded knife or the deadly drug; but she 
courts death with terrible risks.  She rides alone, far 
beyond the borders of Imladris, no armor, no distance 
weapon, no companions.  A fast horse, a light sword, and 
whatever magic the elves may yet conjure from the land – 
these are all that protect her.  Elvish males do not do 
such.  Her reckless brothers do not do such.  At least if 
the two of you are troth plighted and someday wed, she will 
have renewed purpose.   Her death will come long years from 
now, and her life will have gone for something.”  
 
“For what Gandalf; for what?”  
 
“For uniting the long-sundered branches of the half-elven, 
for giving you heirs of your body whose blood will renew 
the glory of the kings of men – for giving you a queen who 
will help you stand outside the internecine politics of the 
noble houses of Gondor.”  
 
I did as you bade me Gandalf; and though I went seldom to 
her father’s house, when I did she claimed me.  Yes, 
claimed me.  Surely you did not think that *she* lay 
beneath me in our infrequent couplings?  Did you never look 
into *my* mind?  Her rescue of Frodo in the wild was not 
the first time my heart raced and my loins thrilled to the 
feel of elvish steel at my throat and the sound of that low 
mocking voice.  
 
But it was not Arwen; it was Denethor to whom you first 
bade me sell myself. I was Thorongil before ever I trod the 
hill of Cerin Amroth with Arwen.  Did you remember that, 
Gandalf?  Here I have trouble sorting out the memories of 
near a hundred years.  What difficulty must *you* have 
had.  Still, I reminded you.  In Rivendell, in the days 
after the council, when you said to me, “You can bind him 
to you Aragorn, command the loyalty of the Steward of 
Gondor’s heir, distract him from the lure of the ring.”  
 
And I said to you, “It is late to distract him as you had 
me distract his father.  He has seen Narsil re-forged.  He 
knows that Elendil’s heir carries Elendil’s sword.  
Besides, I came away bloody from that encounter with his 
father.  I have no wish to repeat it.”  
 
Look at him sleeping there, content, replete, at peace for 
the first time on this journey.  You can be sure, Gandalf, 
I took him more gently than his father took me; though I 
was careful to maintain for him that sense of being 
mastered that you called his deepest need.  For it was not 
a repetition of my encounter with his father that you 
exhorted me to bring about, old pander, but its mirror 
image.  
 
I was young, Gandalf, and you lectured me like a schoolboy 
before I rode to the white city as Thorongil, to serve the 
Steward Ecthelion whose heir was named Denethor.  I 
remember saying lightheartedly that it could not be so bad 
as Rohan, where the men guard their own virtue as close as 
they do that of the women, and the unmarried must look to 
himself alone for solace.  
 
“No, it is not that bad,” you said, smiling.  “Keep you 
away from the maidens; but married women have considerable 
license when their husbands are away, and it will provoke 
no scandal if a comely youth from the North accepts a 
lady’s discrete invitation after a feast.”  
 
“And what of the soldiers of Gondor?” I laughed.  “I shall 
spend more time in the field than in the city.  Are they as 
closed-minded as the horsemen?”  
 
“Nay, the soldiers of Gondor may lie with one another when, 
as it is seen, they are long afield and their wives are far 
away.  They are even accommodating of the soldier who is 
for men alone, keeping only to his comrades and never 
taking a wife.”  
 
“Well then,” I said, still laughingly, “as I have no desire 
to seduce maidens in their fathers’ houses, I can be as 
free in Gondor as among the Dunedain.”  
 
“No, you cannot.  There is one constraint you *must* 
observe if you lie with men in Gondor.”  
 
“Which is?”  
 
“Which is . . . subtle, and somewhat difficult to explain.”  
 
“Now I am fascinated, Gandalf.  What can the men of Gondor 
possibly do or not do that could be difficult for one so 
very plain-spoken and advice-heavy as yourself to explain.”  
 
“Hush youngster, and listen.  This is vital.  You know that 
when men lie together . . .often . . . one of them takes, 
and the other is taken.”  
 
“That is the polite way of putting it Gandalf.  It is also 
said . . .”  
 
“Never mind how it is said otherwise!  You can do without 
the vernacular of soldiers, boy, even if you cannot do 
without—.  Bah, start again.  Amongst the men of the 
Dunedain, it is not important, except perhaps to the two 
personally, who . . . does which.  A submission in the 
night, or a . . . commanding of another in the night says 
nothing of a man’s ability to command or follow in the 
day’s combat.”  
 
“Of course not,” I said, bemused at the turn of 
conversation.  
 
“In Gondor it is not so.  What is it that is said amongst 
the Dunedain, of a man who . . . takes either role?”  
 
“It is said of him, Gandalf, that he wields the sword left 
hand or right.  It is said of me, as well you know.”  
 
“As well I know.  Well, you cannot do that in Gondor.  Or 
if you do you must pick two different men, and pick them 
carefully.  It would be seen as deadly insult to allow 
someone to take you one night and then suggest turn about 
the next.”  
 
“Explain it to me Gandalf, in such a way that I may thread 
this maze of complexity – else I may have to remain as 
celibate in the field of Gondor as I did in Rohan.”  
 
“Which might not be a bad thing—“  
 
“Gandalf!”  
 
“They are . . . extremely hierarchical Aragorn.  Rank and 
station and standing are all to them.  Gondor has been a 
land under siege, Minas Tirith a city at war for so many 
generations.  What you must understand is that this is not 
to them a rule to be kept or broken – it is a law of nature 
that the greater takes the lesser, the higher of rank the 
lower.”  
 
I had been more than three years in Gondor when you arrived 
in haste, and hastened to closet yourself with me after 
paying your respects to Ecthelion and the heir.  I was 
pleased with myself, knowing I had fulfilled your 
instructions to win the Steward’s respect, to council him 
in the directions where you saw need, and to learn the ways 
of the people I might someday rule.  Our talk was wide 
ranging, and I let it flow easily between us even as I 
waited for that tension in you to resolve itself into a 
disclosure of whatever difficult task you had brought to 
me.  
 
“You have succeeded with Ecthelion beyond my expectations 
Aragorn,” you said, and that pleased me enormously.  Then 
you changed pace suddenly and asked me what I thought of 
the women of Minas Tirith.  
 
“I think they are very sophisticated, old mentor,” I said.  
Then, laughing at your raised eyebrow and mocking 
expression, I amended, “In that way too; but I meant in 
politics, in knowledge, in the ways of power.  It seems 
strange to one of the North; but the system must have come 
about over all those generations of war.  A man here 
marries as much for the political alliance with the woman’s 
family as for . . . the reasons men usually marry. And when 
a nobleman of Gondor is gone soldiering he depends on his 
wife to rule in his stead, to guard and further his 
interests, as well as the interests of her own family.”  
 
“And it is good you have seen that, boy, so you will know 
in your heart as well as your head that if a man were ever 
to . . . be king in Gondor he would of needs choose a queen 
not merely for the face he would desire to see on the 
pillow in the morning, or the woman he would have as the 
mother of his heirs, but for—“  
 
“Her familial connection and her political acumen?”  I 
laughed again.  “But that day, if ever it would come, 
Gandalf, is far off; until then I can choose the faces I 
see on my pillow without dynastic consideration.”  I saw 
the barest hint of a shadow cross your face at that point.  
It caused me a hasty evaluation of every encounter I had 
had in Minas Tirith; but I had left no woman unhappy, nor 
no woman’s husband or father unhappy on her behalf.  And as 
for the field – I had most carefully taken comfort with 
young men of obviously lower standing, avoiding the 
complicated question of just how a man who pledged his 
sword directly to the ruling Steward might fit into 
Gondor’s rank conscious hierarchy.  
 
“Aragorn,” you said at this point, and I could feel the 
revelation coming, “I was near certain, when I sent you 
here that no tidings had come to the South that an heir to 
Arathorn even existed.  Your father married late, you know; 
and he married a girl so young that she remained in her 
father’s house when her husband went off to war.”  
 
“Indeed,” I said to you, “my mother told me you were 
instrumental in helping them secure permission for that 
wedding.  She thinks you foresaw my father’s early death.”  
 
“I do no foreseeing, Aragorn, as I have told you.  I have 
only the wisdom of long experience; but that was enough to 
make me fear your father’s reckless courage.  And it is a 
good thing they married when they did.  You were but a babe 
when he fell and—“  
 
“And Gandalf the Grey hustled mother and child off to be 
fostered in Rivendell, I said with a touch of asperity.  
“Sometimes I feel that your great occupation as Sauron’s 
enemy has been supplemented by the avocation of breeding 
kings of men as the Rohirrim breed their horses.”  
 
A shadow passed over your face again; and I nearly 
apologized.  For you had been closer to me, more of a 
father to me since I went out into the world, than the high 
and distant Master Elrond had been in my childhood.  
“Aragorn,” you said, “I was wrong.  The news of Arathorn’s 
heir has come out of the North to Denethor; and somehow – I 
wish most earnestly I knew how – he knows, or suspects that 
Thorongil is that heir.”  
 
I mused that such would explain the recent change in his 
attitude toward me. I had thought only that it reflected 
his resentment of Thorongil’s increasing influence over his 
father.  “Nay,” you said, looking as troubled as I had ever 
seen you, “he knows, and his hatred grows apace.  I have 
come to certainty only this day, Aragorn.  He plans to kill 
you.”  
 
In that moment Gandalf, there was no fear.  I felt my mind 
and body responding as the heir of kings – a calm 
certainty, a deep breath, an expansion of physical 
presence, a hand on the sword hilt.  “He could not take me, 
Gandalf.”  
 
“He could not take you in open combat, Aragorn,” you said 
with a strange reluctance, “but he can command the 
assassin’s blade, as often as necessary. You have to sleep 
sometime and I cannot remain to guard you.”  
 
“Then I must abandon my mission with his father?”  
 
“Nay,” you said vehemently, “that you cannot do.  Ecthelion 
wavers, but is near convinced.  You must stay and see it 
through.”  
 
I knew, Gandalf, that there was some solution to the 
problem that you were strangely reluctant to offer; and 
that reluctance, which seemed almost a toying, angered me.  
“Well then, old mentor, I will die if I stay; and I cannot 
leave.  Tell me, do you hope to arrange a hasty marriage 
for me here in Minas Tirith . . . some stolen nights of 
begetting . . . and the bride, when I am gone, hustled off 
to Imladris to be told of her child’s high lineage?”  That 
one hurt you.  I saw the shaft go home.  Again I almost 
begged your pardon for my anger.  But you were speaking 
even as I thought of it.  
 
“Nay, Aragorn, there is a way you can turn aside Denethor’s 
wrath.  You can offer yourself to him.  You can seduce 
him.”  
 
I laughed aloud.  The idea was so strange, and so unlikely, 
coming from *you*, who had always counseled more prudence 
in matters sexual than I had wished to heed.  “Gandalf,” I 
said, when I had mastered that nervous laughter, “even 
putting aside the fact that the man does not desire me – 
and believe me, I am one who can tell – a quick tumble in 
the hay is not going to be enough to convince him to 
graciously accept my supplanting of his father and his 
father’s line.”  
 
“Nay, it would not accomplish that,” you said carefully, 
“but an . . . encounter . . . between the two of you, if 
properly handled, could convince him that his source is 
wrong, that you cannot be Arathorn’s heir of the North 
kingdom and Elendil’s heir of Gondor.  You must make it 
clear from the outset, Aragorn, that you are offering to . 
. . submit to him.  If you can accomplish that submission 
he will know – or think he knows – with his body as well as 
his mind, that you *cannot* be Elendil’s heir; for 
Elendil’s heir could submit to no one in Gondor.”  
 
“Gandalf, I suppose I could play the part you suggest, 
despite my feelings toward him; but the deed cannot be 
accomplished with no desire on *either* side.”  You looked 
at me quite strangely then, the old ironic humor overlaying 
a darkness that looked almost like pain.  “You are the heir 
of kings, Aragorn; and sometimes I have thought that there 
is no woman or man who walks middle-earth that you could 
not seduce.”  
 
“Not true, Gandalf; there are men who are for women alone—“  
 
“And Denethor is not such a man.  Moreover he is a man 
whose desires are bound about with issues of power.  If you 
offer, Aragorn, he will take.”  
 
I did as you bade me, old pander.  I offered; and he took.  
I asked him most privately, and most formally, after our 
next meeting in council, if Thorongil might call upon the 
Lord Denethor that night; and I stood before him in his 
private chambers clad in the courtly dress of Minas Tirith 
– with a sword girt at my waist.  “You come before me in 
arms, Thorongil?” he began.  
 
“I come before you in submission, Lord Denethor,” I said, 
going to my knees. I drew the sword slowly from its 
scabbard and presented it to him in proper form for vassal 
offering.  “I would offer you my sword, pledging loyalty 
and submission – that the strife between us might be laid 
to rest.”  His eyes widened, and my heart caught suddenly 
at the risk of naked steel between us; but he took it in 
proper form, and we completed the ceremony.  
 
By the end his wariness was greatly diminished; and when I 
remained on my knees instead of rising with the completion, 
his curiosity was provoked – with the theme of submission 
ready at hand.  For the first time I thought I felt a hint 
of sexual interest from the man.  He rose and walked slowly 
round until he stood directly behind me, and said softly, 
“Would you offer something beyond your sword, Thorongil?”  
 
“Would my Lord Denethor desire something beyond my sword?”  
We were on what felt like familiar ground; and I was 
greatly relieved.  
 
“Rise,” he said.  I rose, but did not turn to face him.  He 
stepped closer; and his hands descended on my shoulders.  
We stood like that, motionless, for several beats.  
Finally, he said, “Remove the sword.”  I unfastened the 
belt and he took it from my hand, laying it on a nearby 
table.  “Remove the tunic and the shirt.”  They went the 
way of the sword; and his hands descended once again to my 
shoulders, stroking this time slowly down my arms and then 
across my back.  
 
Eventually he moved round till he stood facing me, staring 
for a long time at my face and then, with studied 
deliberateness, at my body.  It is nothing between men to 
be shirtless, Gandalf – nothing in the field, nothing in 
the baths – it should have been nothing there.  I had 
expected to be stripped naked while Denethor stood behind 
me, taken, perhaps across the table that held my sword, and 
dismissed with your mission accomplished.  Instead I stood 
shirtless in my breeches before a man who suddenly made me 
feel more naked than ever in my life.  
 
I think he must have read something of this in my face, for 
he said with satisfaction, “Ah, Thorongil, you thought you 
knew the next step in this dance; but it is apparent you 
have not heard what is whispered in the city about my . . . 
tastes.”  His tastes?  This far into the encounter we could 
only be talking about his sexual tastes.  What was there to 
know?  You had assured me he was not a man for women alone, 
even though I knew him to be married; I think there was 
even one child at this time.  
 
One child – Fire and Shadow, Gandalf, the one who sleeps 
here by my side – Boromir, who is nothing in the world like 
his father.  You seemed surprised at the vehemence of my 
reaction to the idea of seducing Denethor’s son.  I covered 
it, pretending that my reaction was all to the 
impossibility of doing so in Rivendell.  That conversation 
was almost farcical.”  
 
“But Aragorn,” you said, “it could solve so many issues.”  
 
“Gandalf!  We. Are. In. Rivendell.”  
 
“Indeed we are, Aragorn, for the next few days.  Better 
here than on a perilous journey with close camping and 
night watches.”  
 
“Gandalf, think.  Even setting aside issues of propriety, 
you vastly over-rate the stamina of your heir of kings.”  
 
I think I managed to perplex you enough with that statement 
that you gave the matter your full consideration.  
“Propriety, Aragorn?” you said, with that familiar lift of 
the eyebrow.  
 
“Gandalf, no fledgling falls from a nest in Rivendale but 
the tale of it comes to Master Elrond.  I do not think my 
future father-in-law would appreciate the heir of kings ... 
seducing . . . the Steward of Gondor’s son under his roof 
– or in his bushes – or wherever you envision this 
soldierly tryst taking place.”  
 
“That is something I had not properly considered,” you 
conceded.  “Still, how does this relate to stamina?”  
 
“The lady Arwen resides now in her father’s house, 
Gandalf.  You remember, near forty years ago, that *other* 
seduction you bade me undertake?”  
 
“I bade you accept betrothal, Aragorn.  The lady Arwen . . . 
waits not . . . for the marriage?”  
 
“The lady Arwen is with me in the nights, Gandalf, whenever 
I am in Rivendell.  I do not think the heir of kings has 
the energy for daytime seductions as well.”  
 
You seemed genuinely surprised.  Not for the first time, or 
the last, I pondered on your strangely detailed and 
strangely incomplete knowledge of human and elvish – and, 
for all I knew, dwarf and hobbit, sexuality.  I have no 
better answer now than I did then.  I think, Gandalf, that 
you indeed had the ability, very like that of Galadriel, to 
look at will into the hearts and minds of others – but that 
you willed it only at strong necessity.  I will never know, 
now, just how much privacy you granted *me*.  I will never 
know if I hid anything from you about that encounter with 
Denethor.  You saw my back when I returned to my own 
chambers.  You treated and bandaged it, expressing surprise 
and remorse as well as concern.  Did you really not look 
deeply enough into Denethor’s mind to see what sparked his 
desires, at least his desires for men?  Or did you know and 
hide it from me?  I could have forgiven you that, Gandalf, 
easily enough, even then.  But I still wonder if you saw in 
my mind how deep into the dark he took me *after* that 
beating – and how much of myself I recognized there.  
 
And I was freshly recalling that darkness in Rivendell, not 
only, not entirely, because you wanted me to seduce 
Denethor’s son.  The lady Arwen and her fascination with 
glittering steel showed me more of my affinity for the dark 
than I cared to acknowledge in the light of day.  It is not 
for fashion, Gandalf, that I abandon my open throated 
ranger’s garb and take to the high collared elvish mode in 
Rivendell.  
 
Still, while acknowledging that such an encounter with 
Boromir would be impossible in Rivendell, and difficult to 
find privacy for on the journey, you spoke of it whenever 
we were alone.  “Elrond insists he go on the quest, that he 
was sent here to be part of the fellowship.  But I fear 
it.  I see his fascination with the ring, growing day by 
day.  The only thing that counters it, the only thing that 
distracts him from it, is his fascination with *you*.  Do 
you not feel it, Aragorn?  Do you not notice his eyes 
following you?”  
 
“He is a strong man, Gandalf, a lusty man who has ridden 
far alone.  That is enough to account for a few glances in 
my direction.  But you and Master Elrond have proved to him 
that I am your heir of kings, the one who could supplant 
his father and his father’s line.  That should be enough to 
cool his ardor.”  
 
“Nay, Aragorn, you misunderstand entirely.  It is as the 
heir of kings that he is drawn to you.  He begins to 
acknowledge to himself that you alone, of all men, can 
satisfy his long suppressed desire.”  
 
“What long suppressed desire, Gandalf?  He is a man for men 
– a man for men alone, if I read him right – but that is 
not a problem in Gondor.  As the Steward’s son, he could 
have any man in Gondor, and has had quite a few, I’ll 
wager.  He hasn’t the look of a virgin.”  
 
“Indeed, Aragorn, as the Steward’s son he can have any man 
in Gondor – but no man in Gondor can have *him*, if you 
take my meaning.”  
 
Oh.  I took your meaning, Gandalf.  With it came a sudden 
memory of my most recent time with Halbared – the heir of 
kings begging his second in command to do it harder, 
faster, fuck him into the ground – and getting the 
rejoinder that he could take it slow and like it, and be 
grateful in the morning when he had to sit a horse.  Poor 
Boromir, no man in all the rigid hierarchy of Gondor to 
take him in the night and obey him in the day.  Poor 
Boromir, if he has any inclination at all for right hand as 
well as left.  Poor Boromir, with Denethor for a father and 
all Gondor for a responsibility on his shoulders, and the 
ring offering its siren call.  Poor Boromir.  
 
And poor Aragorn?  Agreeing one more time with his all-
knowing mentor that a bit of whoring on the part of the 
heir of kings was just the thing to stave off the downfall 
of the West?  
 
Gandalf, Gandalf, I know you did not ask it to shame me.  I 
knew it then.  

As a commander, in a cause all but lost, you used the best 
weapon to hand.

I saw your face, Gandalf, though you took care that Frodo 
did not, at that moment in the council when your beloved 
and innocent halfling said ‘I will take it.’  I saw your 
pain, your remorse at having engineered the situation, and 
your absolute determination to use him to destruction, if 
necessary.  
 
Seen beside that, seen beside the men I myself have sent to 
battle and death and maiming, what is a bit of 
embarrassment for the heir of kings?  But it does shame me, 
Gandalf.  The boy in me, learning his high lineage at 
twenty, determined to live up to it, determined to keep it 
untarnished, that boy still wails within me ‘Cannot I fight 
these battles with the sword?’  
 
And I hear you saying, just before your fall, just before 
your merciless use of *yourself* as the weapon to hand, 
“Swords are no more use here.”  Killing Denethor would have 
destroyed my mission to his father, and unleashed untold 
diplomatic horrors.  Arwen?  Our bargain is for afterward, 
if the ring is actually destroyed and any of us survive.  
She gives me the Queen I need in Gondor, and the heirs – 
and I give her the gift of men.  I suppose that last could 
have been accomplished with the sword, but not keeping to 
honor – either hers or mine.  This way is better.  Killing 
Boromir?  I could not have done that, Gandalf, even with 
your permission.  He is a better man than I: not stronger, 
not wiser, but better.  The wisdom born of my elvish 
upbringing and my long association with you, allows me to 
see through the ring’s temptations; and the things the ring 
tempts me with are petty, venal, unworthy . . . compared to 
his temptation to use it to save his people – his people, 
who should be my people.  
 
I have the courage to resist the ring, Gandalf.  Is it 
possible I can learn from Boromir the courage to give all 
to save *our* people?  Is it possible to be Elendil’s heir, 
while not being Isildur’s?  I have had some faint hope of 
that, since the sword of kings was re-forged in Rivendell.  
The sword was Elendil’s, never Isildur’s.  Elrond’s spoke 
of Isildur cutting the ring from the enemy’s hand “. . . 
with the hilt-shard of his *father’s* sword.”  Boromir was 
commanded in his dream to ‘Seek for the sword that was 
broken.’  It is broken no longer.  Elendil carried the 
sword whole, and I carry it whole, and none other of the 
long line between us.  
 
I commanded Boromir, Gandalf, in the snow, on the slopes of 
the mountain, in the matter of the ring, with my hand upon 
the hilt of the sword of kings.  I commanded him – and 
holding the ring in his hand, he yet gave it back to Frodo.  
 
Perhaps I could have continued to command him in the matter 
of the ring without tonight’s deed?  I do not know, 
Gandalf.  I do know that many things conspired to make this 
the time and the place, important things and tiny ones.  
The safety and seeming privacy of Lorien figured into it, 
the sudden realization of actual privacy as Galadriel 
summoned Frodo to their confrontation.  Your fall motivated 
me as well.  The elves sing laments for you, now that you 
are gone.  Legolas cannot bear to take part, and looks like 
a ghost as he listens.  Frodo grieves his small heart out 
for you.  The pragmatic Sam is moved to poetry for you.  
And I – I have seduced Boromir for you.  It was very nearly 
the last thing you asked of me.  
 
Then there was Boromir himself, who, despite the despairing 
claim that he would take no rest here, relaxed enough to 
begin opening his heart to me – talking of his love for the 
white city, his fear for his father, his fear *of* his 
father, his fear and love for the people who were losing 
faith.  Gods, Gandalf, he was heartbreaking – heartbreaking 
and enticing – for the one other thing he had done, the one 
tiny physical vulnerability that called to me, along with 
his vulnerability and openness of spirit.  He was dressed 
in that gaudy tunic that recalled the court dress of Minas 
Tirith, and the practical, though elegantly styled leather 
of the journey; but he must have put them back on after 
laying aside, with his sword and shield, the hauberk he had 
worn, and slept in on the road.  The leather was unfastened 
at the neck, and the high, gold-embroidered collar of that 
tunic was open, and his throat was bared, his throat and 
enough of his chest as I stood above him, that I knew I 
would be able to feel warm flesh through his clothing if I 
put my hands upon him.  I could take him with his clothes 
on, like a soldier in the field, as you had told me would 
serve his need, yet not be thwarted in my love making by 
chain mail.  
 
His throat – such a tiny glimpse of usually hidden, 
vulnerable flesh – and desire was born.  After he finished 
talking, I stood once more, and reached my hand down to 
him.  “Walk with me, Gondor,” I said to him, deliberately 
giving him the land name, his father’s proper title.  He 
let it pass, saying nothing as he took my hand to rise, 
though I saw the acknowledgement of it on his face, and 
perhaps, the memory that he had slipped and called himself 
thus, when he strode forward confidently saying, “If this 
is indeed the will of the council, then Gondor will see it 
done.”  
 
I walked with him through the woods, leading him to a place 
where I knew we would not be disturbed.  Forty years ago, 
Gandalf, in the season following my betrothal, I had 
lengthy and intimate instruction in the location of such 
places in Lorien.  As we stood there, talking easily of the 
white city and the time that we should go there, I moved 
behind him, our bodies touching, but not pressed together; 
and I put my hands on his shoulders.  It is a sign, 
Gandalf, a signal, the first move in a known dance amongst 
the men of Gondor.  One stands thus: doing so is the 
asking; and one waits for an answer.  It is a time when the 
man asked may step away with honor and say ‘no’ – or ‘I 
shall think on it’, or ‘perhaps some other time’.  And, as 
long as he remains there motionless, it is a time when the 
man may be encouraged to say yes.  So, as the time extended 
itself, I spoke to him.  “I am Aragorn, the king Elessar, 
Elendil’s heir – and Gondor is mine for the taking.  What 
say you, Boromir?”  I had his physical consent before he 
could bring himself to speak – a movement back into my 
embrace, a shudder and then a loosening going through his 
tight body.  But he found the courage to make it explicit, 
as I knew he would, “Yours for the taking, Lord.”  
 
I had been afraid, Gandalf, till the moment I held him 
willing in my arms, that the memory of Denethor would 
intrude unbidden – unmanning me with thoughts of my 
submission to him, or worse, urging me to take the son with 
as much brutality and degradation as the father had taken 
me.  But it was not so.  
 
The feel of Boromir, the heat, the intensity, the strength, 
the need – every caught breath and strangled moan as my 
hands and mouth took possession of him and learned the 
responses of that magnificent body, held me utterly in the 
present.  I pressed my face into the hair at his temple and 
the texture and smell of him were intoxicating.  I thrilled 
to his delicious writhing as I worked my way with lips and 
tongue and teeth behind his ear and down the column of his 
neck.  I searched out and found that spot at the neck and 
shoulder joining where a bite can send a thrill through the 
body that suddenly hardens the nipple on that side.  I 
loved his response so much that I searched again on the 
other side, just to have both hard and needy in my 
demanding fingers through the heavy silk of his tunic.  
 
He was pushed back so hard against me that I know he felt 
and thrilled to my hardness against his ass.  As the 
thought of actually breeching that first time tightness 
sent a wave of lust through me and made me fumble at the 
fastenings of his breeches, I did get one flash from the 
past; but it was only Halbared, reminding me that he had 
used enough caution and self control in the taking of *my* 
virgin backside that I’d begged to repeat the experience; 
and I had best pace myself with Boromir, no matter how 
eager he seemed.  
 
With his breeches down about his knees, I indulged myself, 
stroking over hard belly and sleek flanks, sliding a hand 
between the thighs to feel his balls already tight against 
his body in need and readiness, taking that magnificent 
cock in my hand and feeling his hips buck forward.  He felt 
so precipitous, so close that I loosed my hold on his cock 
and murmured, “No more of that till I’m inside you.”  
 
I swear Gandalf, just saying it nearly pushed him over the 
edge.  He ground out between gritted teeth, “Then *do* it.  
Do it before I die of need.”  
 
So I fumbled in my clothing for the container of salve I 
carry for various needs in the field, and shifted so that I 
was more to the side of him than directly behind, one arm 
tight around his waist, and the other hand stroking the 
roundness of his ass.  Finally I took one finger, dry, and 
slid it lightly down his ass crack, from spine tip to the 
root of his cock, causing him to squirm deliciously, clutch 
the tree in front of him, and thrust his behind outward.  
The next finger was coated in the salve, and pushed between 
his ass cheeks.  But I didn’t penetrate him, even with the 
finger; I only stroked its slipperiness over and over on 
the puckered opening – remembering exactly how that teasing 
had felt to me when I wanted to be fucked more than 
anything in the world.  
 
So I took a bit more salve and slid that one finger into 
him.  No flinch at all, his response was a hissed “Yes.” 
and a backward thrust of his hips.  Since He liked one 
finger so much, I gave him two.  And he liked two as well, 
but I could feel a sensible wariness in him as he 
contemplated the unaccustomed stretch of those two fingers 
and thought seriously about the difference between two 
fingers and a good sized cock.  We slowed down then by 
mutual consent, my two fingers sliding in and out, 
stretching him, giving a couple of strokes over that hot 
spot around the roots of the cock as a promise of things to 
come.  
 
Three fingers is cock size, as soldiers say in Gondor; and 
I went with three as well, deeming the stretch necessary 
for a first time.  But three fingers is nothing like the 
feel of the real thing – lumpy and uncomfortable as opposed 
to the smooth, inevitable filling and possession a man 
feels when really fucked.  I wanted that feeling *for* him, 
Gandalf, as much as I wanted his tightness and his need for 
myself.  So I moved as quickly as possible to position my 
cock at his opening and grasp his hips with my hands and 
push slowly, oh so slowly, into him.  He moaned with need, 
and I felt him about to thrust backward, with the deed only 
half accomplished.  I bore down on his hips hard enough, I 
feared, to leave bruises, and said, low and compelling, “My 
pace, Gondor.  You’ll take it slow and like it.”  He moaned 
again – and again, I felt that he was near compelled to his 
climax by my words alone.  
 
When finally I was sheathed in him, sheathed to the hilt, I 
embraced him once more, holding us motionless in that 
moment of completion and possession.  Then, Gandalf, I 
grabbed his hips and proceeded to give him the fucking you 
had said he’d been needing near all his life.  
 
He was so delightful, so needy, so compelling, it was all I 
could do to pace myself enough that he had time to revel in 
the sensations of his first time. When finally I felt my 
own climax approaching unstoppably, I took his cock in 
hand, and, with a few strokes, brought us home together.  
 
He shook with the completion, nearly losing the lock on his 
knees.  I think it was only that tree, Gandalf, that kept 
us both upright.  When I had recovered enough, I slid my 
softening cock carefully out of him, and said, “Come, 
Gondor, help me get us un-entangled from all these boots 
and breeches; and we can lie together sensibly in yonder 
grass.”  
 
So there you have it, Gandalf, my seduction of Boromir.  I 
had done your bidding, and this time it felt right and 
well.  We lay together and spoke together, comrades at 
ease, except comrades who kept smiling with delight and 
reaching out to touch one another.  It was altogether good, 
altogether easy, and when finally the memory of Denethor 
came back to me, it was bereft of its old power.  
 
*Did* you look into my mind, Gandalf, as I lay on that bed 
in my chambers in Minas Tirith, at the completion of your 
careful bandaging of my back –  when I would not let you 
remove my breeches?  I told you then your mission was 
accomplished.  I assured you I had not been foolish enough 
to let him bind me, that I had taken that beating 
voluntarily, as the only way of rousing his desire enough 
to achieve my necessary submission.  I told you there had 
been pain but no damage in the fucking that had followed, 
Denethor easing his own way with oil, but pushing in with 
brutal swiftness.  

And I told you to leave me; I had no further need of your 
care and could manage what recovery was necessary on my 
own, thank you.  
 
Did you know I kept the breeches on to hide the evidence of 
my real shame – not the beating, there on my back for you 
to see, not the fucking that had accomplished your mission, 
and in which I could take a certain perverse pride at 
having fooled my enemy – but, of course, the unmistakable 
sight and smell that showed I had come for him, there in 
the darkness of the joining of his mind and mine, come 
explosively, provoked by the very horror of my own shame 
and helplessness and degradation?  
 
So, if you did not know it then, perhaps you know it now, 
looking down from whatever piece of the afterlife is 
reserved for wizards, as opposed to the separate fates of 
elves and men – looking down, as my whimsy sees it, to 
check on the fate of your latest heir of kings.  
 
Ah Gandalf, if that is so, you saw all of it; and you know 
why I need you here still, to advise me.  I kissed him, 
Gandalf; I kissed Boromir.  Not before the first time – 
that was all manliness, all intensity and mastery – but 
before the last. Was that a mistake?  Strange that I should 
be unsure, strange that in all the cynical and intimate 
advice you have given me over the years you should never 
have mentioned kisses.  Because they are so different, 
Gandalf, women’s kisses and men’s.  For women, kissing is 
courtship, the first barrier crossed; for men it is the 
last.  A man will surrender his mouth to your manhood 
before he’ll surrender it to your kiss.  I kissed him, 
while we lay in one another’s arms, long after that 
explosion of desperate need against the tree.  I kissed 
him, and he opened to me more intimately with his mouth 
than even he had with his body.  I kissed him Gandalf, the 
lure of him stronger than the lure of the ring, and was 
myself undone.  
 
And now I am afraid.  You are no longer here to give 
counsel; but I fear if you were you would say to me, 
“Aragorn I told you to master him, to make him your thrall, 
not your lover.  No good will come of this.”