a high worth chasing by atlantablack  

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a high worth chasing

We were in the gold room where everyone
finally gets what they want, so I said What do you
want, sweetheart? and you said Kiss me. Here I am
leaving you clues. I am singing now while Rome
burns. We are all just trying to be holy.

Snow and Dirty Rain | Richard Siken

☀︎

"No," Finrod says the moment he opens the door, he has moved to close it again before Curufin can even get a word out.

Unfortunately for Finrod, Curufin is faster and very motivated. "Yes," he says evenly as he catches the door, not letting his voice betray him in any way. "We should talk."

Rage goes flashing through Finrod's eyes, lightning heralding thunder. "Talk," Finrod says flatly. "You want to talk." 

“Do you expect me to believe that you have nothing at all you wish to say to me?” he asks, far too much scorn leaking into the words. “Even if I had not already known it to be true, you have now proven it.” 

"What a pleasure to learn that you have not changed." Finrod's voice is perfectly placid, but his eyes are positively shining with fury, and he is as beautiful as he has ever been when Curufin managed to get him to drop his facade of purity.

Curufin wants to kiss him so badly it burns, the want lodging itself in his throat and threatening to choke him. "Perhaps," he returns, taking in the jewels Finrod has adorned his hair with, the bracelets swinging from his wrists. Curufin could make better ones. Will make Finrod better ones. "Or perhaps I have changed, and it is just that in this, I am correct. We should speak."

Finrod's eyes flash down to his mouth, his neck, the snake-shaped armband wrapping around his bicep that perhaps feels a little too much like a concession. "Very well," he says, stepping out of the way so Curufin may enter. "Talk then." He waves a hand at Curufin, voice tight and strained.

Curufin has practiced the words in his head a thousand times, knows what needs to be said to begin to fix this. But what comes out of his mouth instead is, "I'm not sorry." Lie. "I'm not, and I'd do it all again the same way if necessary." Lie. "But I—" and he falters, still unable to push a single truth up his throat. In a way, Finrod is right, he hasn't changed at all.

Finrod is studying him with a resigned air draped about him like a cloak. "Oh, how I hate you," Finrod says softly, fingers loosely curled into fists, and this too sounds like a lie. Neither of them have ever been particularly truthful with each other. Finrod moves in closer, stops only a couple of paces away, close enough that Curufin must resist reaching out to grab him. "Tell me something true," Finrod says softly, his eyes tired and so endlessly, painfully blue that the sight of them strikes through Curufin's heart. "Anything true. Give me even one good reason to put myself through all of this again."

Curufin has already won. Could press and press until Finrod gives in without hearing anything true at all. But he had come here with the intention of being truthful, with the intention of making this work, and not only for a single day. If the want had faded while in Mandos, if it had waned at all, perhaps he could have washed his hands of Finrod and never looked back. 

It had not. 

He has been returned for only a handful of weeks, but it still has not abated in the slightest. The knowledge of how very close Finrod is, alive and well and ignoring him, only a noose cutting into his skin, threatening always to choke him. He breathes in deeply and steps forward, crowding Finrod up against a wall and ignoring the thrill that rushes through him at how easily Finrod lets himself be pushed. He brings both hands up to frame Finrod's face, smoothing his thumbs over Finrod's cheeks, the soft skin that he'd almost managed to forget the feeling of. "I missed you," he admits quietly. The words burn and emerge reluctantly, for all that they are true, but they do emerge.

Finrod makes a noise like he's been punched, his fingers wrapping around Curufin's wrists, nails cutting into the soft skin of his wrist. "This cannot work," Finrod says quietly. "Surely you know this cannot work."

"And why can it not? Is this not a new age? I would not have taken you as one to cling to such a defeatist attitude.”

There’s another flash of rage in Finrod’s eyes at that, the sharpness of it begging Curufin to slice his palms across the edges. Finrod studies him for a while longer, reaching up to press the tips of his fingers to Curufin's cheek, before painfully digging his nails in on the side of Curufin's face. "This is not going to work," he says again, but the tension melts out of him as his body goes loose against Curufin's. "But what is one more fire between us?" He would sound nearly fond but that his eyes are still tired, but for the bitterness hiding in the cracks of the words. 

Finrod's fingers slip into Curufin's hair and clench tight as he jerks Curufin's head back. He allows it, hissing out a slow breath as Finrod's mouth settles on his throat. "Will you rip out my throat as well then?" he asks, amused at the thought even as a rush of heat steals through him when Finrod responds by pressing his teeth to Curufin's pulse.

He can feel Finrod smile against his skin at the obvious quickening of his heart, and it is lust that is wrapped tight around him, this is true, but there is also an awful, disgusting rush of fondness, of relief, of longing that pours through his chest and threatens to overflow.

"Not today," Finrod murmurs, pressing a slow, lingering kiss to Curufin's neck. Finrod pulls back, his grip on Curufin's hair loosening, and he wastes no time in grabbing both of Finrod's wrists and pinning them against the wall on either side of his head. Finrod smiles slightly, shivering when Curufin presses them together fully from heart to hip. "You say that you missed me. I did not think you knew how to miss someone once you'd deemed them useless to your cause."

He opens his mouth, a flippant, biting response automatically poised to fall off his tongue, and then closes it, forcefully swallowing the response down. Must swallow around the words several times before he can force anything even slightly true up his throat. "Your mistake, is thinking that I ever deemed you useless." It is less than what he should say, is more than Finrod had expected if the way his eyes widen is any indication.

"Why are you here, Curufinwë?” Finrod asks, the thinnest thread of tentative hope spun through the words.

It is enough to tangle his fingers in and take advantage of. "Is it not obvious?" he returns in a low voice, purposefully rolling his hips and smirking at the way Finrod's mouth parts in pleasure, eyelids fluttering as he automatically arches up against Curufin.

"The truth," Finrod demands, cheeks flushed with color, wrists flexing where they are trapped in Curufin's fists. He presses their foreheads together, drinking in the bitten-off noise of want that Finrod makes when he tightens his grip.

Curufin could ignore him. Finrod, for all his demanding, would fold easily if Curufin applied only the slightest bit more pressure. And then it circles back around to the core of the problem, for yes, Finrod would fold, but it would fix absolutely nothing. It would end with them in bed and a host of problems and resentment still breeding between them. If Curufin had only wanted a quick fuck he would not have come here.

"Isn't it obvious?" he asks again, quieter this time, all too aware of how disgustingly vulnerable and on display he is, even with how little he has admitted.

“No,” Finrod says, sighing and tilting his face up, nose brushing Curufin’s. “You spoke until my people would not follow me. You watched me leave without a word, knowing I would not come back. Why should anything from you be obvious to me? Even if it were, I would wish to hear it from you.” 

He knows what it is he needs to say. He knows what it is that he wants to say. It is not that Curufin is unaware of what the feelings in his chest mean, of what it must mean for it to have been so fucking long and the feelings still be so painfully present. And he has missed this — the warmth of Finrod’s body against his, the way Finrod is so soft, all his sharp edges hidden until Curufin draws them out. He misses the quiet nights spent wrapped around each other as he listened to Finrod prattle on about court gossip; the game they had played as he picked out which pieces were truly just mindless gossip and which ones were blackmail masquerading as trivial. He misses having Finrod perched on one surface or another in his forge, offering unasked for advice on the composition of his projects. He misses Finrod’s quiet smiles when the suggestions proved useful, misses lecturing Finrod on all the ways he is wrong when the suggestions were useless.

Curufin has just missed him. It is as simple as that. He has said it once, cannot seem to force such a disgusting truth up his throat again. 

They stay pressed up against each other for a long time. Curufin’s hands slowly slipping from Finrod’s wrists, down his arms, over the curve of his shoulders, briefly settling as a collar around his throat, and finally ending up tangled in his hair. Finrod loops an arm around his neck, fingers charting patterns across his skin, his other hand clenches tight in the front of Curufin’s robes, as if scared that he will suddenly change his mind and leave. 

"I cannot give you what you're asking for," he says finally. Defeat tastes bitter, but the words will not come, no matter that he, for once, wants them to.

Finrod sighs, fingers tightening in his robes. “Tell me, what you want,” Finrod whispers. He does not give Curufin a chance to respond before slotting their lips together. 

The animal-raw noise that rips out of his throat is completely involuntary and he wastes no time in deepening the kiss, in coaxing Finrod’s mouth open and re-learning the taste of him. It is intoxicating, the way Finrod tries to press in closer, the way his nails are digging into the back of Curufin’s neck, the soft noises he is making low in his throat as Curufin tries to devour him. And that is all it is for a while — heat and a vicious greed. 

Eventually, the desperation pulls back to a simmer, allowing Curufin to think past the violent desire. Tell me what you want, Finrod had said, handing Curufin a language it is easier for him to speak in. "All of that," he says hoarsely into the razor-thin space between their mouths. "All of that. But also this—" He forcefully gentles his touch, cradling Finrod's cheek in one hand, and kissing him so, so gently. The restraint only makes the desire burn brighter. 

Curufin keeps the kiss as gentle as he can, a lingering pressure from which he pulls away slowly, until their mouths are just barely connected. When he does pull away it is only to press a kiss to the corner of Finrod’s mouth, his cheek, the corner of his eye. He trails his mouth down the side of Finrod’s neck, not biting down even once. Finrod’s breathing has gone gratifyingly unsteady and when Curufin pulls back enough for them to look at each other, he finds Finrod watching him with a dark, terrified want. 

“You will have to use your words eventually,” Finrod warns, fingers already undoing the laces on Curufin’s robes. 

“I know,” he says, pressing another kiss to Finrod’s neck before biting down sharply. Finrod moans so beautifully, the sound sweeter than any song. 

“This is your last chance,” Finrod says, and they both know it’s a lie. 

He still says, “I know,” as he slips Finrod’s robes off his shoulder, following the retreating fabric with his mouth. 

“Tell me something else true, just, anything true.” There is a terrible breathless pleading to the words as Finrod impatiently finishes shaking his robes off.

Curufin kisses him, savoring the feeling of their bare skin pressed together once more, and doesn’t let up until they are both fully breathless. He pulls from deep inside of himself, willing his voice to work one more time, and this time the words emerge as if ripped from him, “I want you, Ingoldo. I want you.” 

Finrod makes the prettiest noise, all ravenous greed and hunger, dragging him into a kiss and biting at his lip so sharply he tastes blood. "This is an awful idea," Finrod says against his mouth, "but let us try regardless."

Curufin cannot yet offer as much of himself as he should, but he offers what he can. "I will try," he promises, the words a little too raw, a little too much like the apology he cannot speak. It is mortifying the depth of the promise, the way he cannot imagine breaking it now that he has spoken it. "That I can give you."

Finrod smiles a little and kisses him. If the smile is still too uncertain, still a little too sad, it is fine, they have time. Curufin is, if nothing else, extremely stubborn when it comes to getting what he wants. And if there is one thing in this new age that he wants, that he is determined to have no matter the cost to his pride—

—it is Finrod’s heart held securely once more in the palm of his hand.

☀︎ 

Chapter End Notes

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