Is there a name for this thing?
Celegorm and Curufin are just being brothers. So, like they are with the other five sons of Fëanor? Well.
I like to think about characters who are neither romantically nor sexually involved — and yet who are absolutely not normal about each other. Characters whose relationships are entirely platonic, but also codependent, jealous, obsessive, and toxic. Characters who bring out the worst in each other.
So, Celegorm and Curufin.
I am fond of the headcanon that they are both aggressively (read: homophobically) heterosexual, and yet every woman who ever entered a relationship with either of them eventually came to realize that there would always be “three of us in the marriage.”
Perhaps young Curvo is one of the reasons Tyelkormo and Irissë never act on their feelings for one another. Of course, they become companions in all their escapades, hunts, and adventures — after all, Curvo is there as well. They build a friendship so strong that eventually even considering romance feels awkward.
Irissë dislikes the model of womanhood and marriage she sees in her mother. She wants to be free, equal, independent — a comrade-in-arms rather than a wife. She does not yet realize that marriage can be that too.
Tyelko is deeply invested in his family. The miniature Fëanáro perpetually trailing after him certainly reinforces that impression.
Perhaps Tyelkormo’s constant presence in Curufinwë’s household eventually makes Curufin’s wife realize that her husband still belongs to his father’s family. Shouldn’t he separate from it, draw boundaries, preserve some privacy for his new family?
But what privacy can there be when Turkafinwë is not exactly a guest in their home? He simply exists wherever Curvo does.
Curufinwë himself does not fully understand that, for spouses, their new family is supposed to come first. He loves his wife. He loves Tyelpë. Yet he remains in constant companionship with Tyelko, planning his daily life and leisure alongside him.
And when Curufinwë swears the Oath, his wife finally understands that he will always be driven first and foremost by loyalty to his father’s house.
Celegorm and Curufin were endearingly close in their youth. As losses, hardship, bitterness, and every imaginable form of trauma-bonding accumulate, they become disturbingly close.
Of course, on the surface this is merely the detached, ironic, poisonous communication of two hardened men united by common purpose rather than by any desire to be together. Men who are practical. Men who do not waste words — where “do not waste words” really means “do not communicate feelings.”
Perhaps because they have been trained on one another like hunting hounds.
They read each other through the tension in a shoulder, the arch of an eyebrow, the curve of a mouth. There is nothing between them that can be identified as abnormal, and yet something dangerous and unsettling hangs in the air around them.
That fierce bond occasionally emerges on the battlefield, when Celegorm searches his brother for wounds with wild eyes. It is visible when Curufin silently places a hand on an enraged Celegorm’s wrist. It becomes almost obvious when they exchange a glance while listening to Finrod — unmistakably thinking the same thing. It turns ominous when Curufin, casually and without comment, dresses and arms Celegorm according to his own judgement. It becomes morbidly intimate when they treat one another’s rooms, possessions, and personal space as shared.
And yet it remains endearing in those rare moments when they comfort one another — pressing their foreheads together, steadying each other by the elbow, sharing brief embraces.
