Rating: R
Summary: Aragorn helps a grieving Frodo
Disclaimer: Frodo and all recognisable characters are the property of the Estate of J.R.R. Tolkien. No offence is intended, nor profit made.

Aragorn strode down the winding stone thoroughfare that led from the King’s House and the Citadel downward to the lower levels of Minas Tirith, hood drawn over his masked face. He was clad in his worn Ranger clothes. Nobody recognized him as King. Few people of Minas Tirith had ever encountered Rangers from the North, and his garb was foreign and nearly sinister to them. One hand gripped the hilt of his sword, and he kept his head bowed. In his other hand he fingered something tiny and precious to him. He was a forbidding sight to behold and most people scuttled out of his way, eyeing him with suspicion and wonder.

Aragorn paid them no heed. One thought pushed him onward.

This nonsense will end today.

He breathed in the sweet scent of lilacs and overturned soil. Everywhere the signs of a spring, long overdue to the White City, had come to be. The White Tree bloomed in the Courtyard, children laughed, birds chased and chattered, and all this amidst the hopeful bustle of men rebuilding the City under a spring-warm sun. All that was good, beyond hope, had come to pass.

Everything. Except what my heart desires.

Yes, the nonsense would end today.

Aragorn stopped in front of the cottage where the hobbits and Gandalf had made their home since coming to the City. He pounded on the door.

Too long had Frodo kept himself hidden in shadows, unable to face the sun, or even the moon. Aragorn could not bear to see his friend so grieved, his eyes dull and glassy, nearly lifeless.

He had recently uttered to Sam, “With spring comes all that is fair, but in the end, I fell into blackest night. I deserve not to see the spring.” And concerned, Sam had come to Aragorn, begging him to make his master right again, to do anything to ease his heart.

In Lothlorien it had been different, a world away – it had been winter still, yet in that gilded land the elanor bloomed golden and sweet, and the grass beneath their backs was as soft as a feather bed. Frodo’s eyes sparkled then, although already he had been wounded by poison knife and spear and unspeakable loss.

”Did you lay aside the mithril shirt that I asked ever that you wear?”

Aragorn and Frodo sat in the grass, facing each other at the foot of the hill on which bloomed elanor. Trees loomed over them, and at times silver leaves fluttered down like fairy wings.

“I did.” Frodo struggled to squelch the mischief in his eyes. Oh, he tried hard to look ashamed and a little frightened, just as he had looked at the Prancing Pony when Aragorn had grabbed him and shoved him up the stairs. But Frodo’s heart lay always in his guileless eyes, and he trusted Aragorn far too much to fear him ever again in truth.

“You must be punished.”

“I understand.” Frodo looked down, again struggling for demureness, but his lips twitched. His desire swelled between his legs.

Without warning, Aragorn grabbed Frodo’s collar, so modestly buttoned all the way to the neck, and he ripped it open and shoved it over his shoulders. Buttons broke free, bouncing over the pale grass like ice pellets. Aragorn had longed to do that since Bree, just once. Frodo stared at him, lips slightly parted, achingly vulnerable, an Elvish nymph, pale under the moonlight. Aragorn traced his finger over the pink nubs of his nipples, and his arousal pressed against his leggings when Frodo shuddered delightfully at his touch. Aragorn had seen him unclad before, but never under such pleasurable circumstances -- always when Frodo was injured, his eyes enormous with pain.

But now Frodo sat before him, willing, somewhat saucy, his torn shirt sagging over his shoulders, his nipples erect in the chilly air, clutching his hands together in his lap.

“What must I do?”

“You must endure from me a kiss.”

“If you must,” Frodo said, and he looked down, again with that half smile, lips twitching.

Aragorn clasped Frodo’s cheeks in his hands and kissed him with hungered fervor.

Later, lying in the grass, their bodies singing from love, Aragorn picked up from the grass a stray button from Frodo’s shirt and the moonlight caught it.

“Look at that,” Frodo said, snuggling in Aragorn’s embrace and looking at the button in Aragorn’s fingers in quiet wonder. “A star fallen from the sky. A sign of hope.”

Sam opened the door. He startled and stepped back at the sight of the King dressed in his old Ranger clothes.

“Strider?”

“Where is Frodo?” Aragorn demanded. “I must speak to him at once.”

“He still won’t come down for nothing.”

“If he will not come down, then I shall come to him.”

Aragorn brushed past an astonished Sam and clumped up the stairs. He banged on the door to Frodo’s chamber.

“Open the door!”

Surprisingly, the door opened immediately. Frodo let Aragorn in and closed the door behind him, but he turned away, settling on the edge of his bed, and his shoulders sagged.

Aragorn pushed the hood back from his head and sat beside him.

“Look at me.”

Frodo kept his eyes averted. Aragorn sought in his face any sign of twitching lips or half smile.

“I commanded you come to the feast last night,” he said. “And yet you did not. What say you?”

“I did not wish to,” Frodo said, clasping his hands in his lap.

“You disobeyed your king,” Aragorn said, his voice low and stern.

There. Frodo’s lips turned up just a little, trembling. “I am sorry.”

“Take off your shirt,” Aragorn said hoarsely. Desire surged through him, leaving him breathless, and he shifted his legs against a pleasurable swelling in his groin.

“No…” Frodo’s eyelids fluttered, a flush pinked his cheeks. “I will not.”

“Then I shall rip it off you.”

Aragorn pushed Frodo on his back on the bed, holding his wrists above his head, and Frodo did not resist. He lay still, his arms limp in Aragorn’s grip.

“What will you do?” he asked, holding Aragorn’s gaze.

Aragorn released Frodo’s wrists long enough to tear open Frodo’s shirt, baring his chest, and Frodo let out a startled gasp, barely audible, and there was something poignant and arousing about it, that he could barely stand it and had a desire to crush him, to pound into him until the white hot itch was fulfilled.

“Please…don’t hurt me,” Frodo pleaded in a soft voice, under his breath. And suddenly his eyes flickered, his lips twitched, and all attempt at deference faded, and he began to laugh.

“Oh, Aragorn, how did you know?” he laughed. “How did you know what I needed?”

And then somehow both were unclad, clothes strewn about the room, and flesh pressed against flesh, writhing and grinding. Fire raced through Aragorn and he thrust against Frodo with frantic hunger. He began to peak and then pulled back.

Easy…Easy does it…

He did not want it to end so fast, but when the end came for them both, it was white heat exploding behind his eyes, like thousands of stars falling from the sky, only cooled when, gasping and clutching Frodo, he met his eyes, serene and blue as a lake under a spring sky.

Frodo lay in Aragorn’s arm, twirling a lilac between his fingers.

“Where did you find that?” Aragorn asked.

“It was in the vase,” Frodo said, “beside the bed.”

“The flowers need the sun,” Aragorn said, eyeing the closed blinds. “Or they shall wilt.”

“And they shall see the sun again. I desire to feel it on my skin again.”

Aragorn took from his pocket the tiny item he had treasured during the agonizing weeks when he and Frodo had been separated by war and darkness. “Do you remember this?”

Frodo smiled. “An Elvish star, fallen from the sky. How plain it seems, here in this room, far from the moonlight of Lorien.”

“And yet in my heart it shines ever with hope.”

“Come,” Frodo said. “Let us have a short nap, and then I should very much like to have a walk in the sun. I have missed it.”

Aragorn kissed the top of Frodo’s head, and together they slipped into a content doze.

The End