As the days grew short and the rebuilding of Erebor began, Thorin found himself relying heavily upon the builders and planners of Dáin's retinue, and the delicate political tensions of balancing much-needed help with his reborn nation's independence kept Thorin exhausted, both mentally and physically. He threw himself into his labors; he bore them gratefully, earning his name as a dedicated and tireless lord, and as his reward each night he fell into his bed exhausted beyond thought, too weary to dream.

For the dreams haunted him, dreams of white smooth skin and silver hair, vivid memories of touch. At first he had considered keeping the rope that had bound Thranduil's wrists as a trophy, a token; but soon the mere thought of that night became a torment, and he concealed the rope in a great-chest in his personal armory, and set his hand to the duties of kingship with unfettered dedication.

Long had he ached; long had he lashed himself with regret. He had not wished, after seeing Thranduil so undone and so vulnerable, to grant his enemy the satisfaction of seeing his release; and he had thought, when the tent-flap closed and he fell back upon his bed (redolent with the scent of armor-oil and Mirkwood flowers and Thranduil's come), to take himself in hand and find his completion in privacy with the image of the Elvenking fresh upon his eyes, as he had so often in his youth. It would not have taken but the the space of a moment, a few purposeful strokes of his hand; and yet the shadow remained, the hallowed scent, the image of his foe. Twice he had raised his hand, and rested it upon his length; and twice he had groaned and let his hand fall, aroused to the point of pain, too heartsick to let go the moment.

At last his cock subsided, leaving a deep and bitter ache in his ballocks, and he slept for a few fitful hours and awoke fiercely hard and wretched in his agony. The elves had been rescued, the wargs slain, and Thranduil had gone in the night. Thorin bound himself up in his breechcloth and gone out to greet his men, his kingdom, with the throb and ache of desire still humming in his flesh.

As it had ever since, months upon months, awaiting him in the dark and piercing him every morning. In the beginning he would stroke himself, rolling his thumb across his leaking slit, rewriting his own memories: in this false history he was not compassionate, he did not see the fatigue in Thranduil's face, and he thrust himself into that perfect mouth until tears ran down the Elvenking's face.

Each time, the thought inflamed him until his ballocks tightened and his thighs tensed; and each time, the true memory painted his vision, and in desperate longing for that vanished opportunity and in the agonizing pleasure of holding himself in that same unsatisfied state, he would let his hand fall, let his swollen cock lie pounding with his pulse and twitching upon his belly, and lie in a profound stupor of thwarted lust until sleep took him and he fell into feverish dreams.

The only relief he found was in the deep swoon of utter collapse, which drowned his memories and his lusts in deep oblivion, and stole upon him swifter than his thoughts.

And upon the mountain, crocuses breached the snow with swollen purple heads, and implacably spring approached.

_

The equinox came, and passed, and there was no sign of Mirkwood. Thorin governed his lands with an ever-grimmer hand, at once anticipating war and fearing a move by the Necromancer, and at night a hollow despair came over him until he took up sleeping with war-hounds upon his bed to ward away the lonesome silence with their whuffing breath. The sun approached its zenith without a word, without a rumor; until there came a single elf, clad in warrior's green with thin determined lips and a bow on his back, calling himself the Prince of Mirkwood (though no-one had seen Legolas for seven hundred years and there was no living voice in Erebor to call it truth or lie) and pleading that Thorin send a contingent of wary wilderness-trained fighters to aid him, to rescue and free his father.

"The Elvenking captured by orcs? Why was no word sent before?" Thorin heard himself say the words, but the hall had filled with a ringing hum, a hollow knell of rage that would overtake him in a few moments.

The messenger answered with a wry quirk of his lips, the faintest inclination of his head (and Thorin caught the shadow of his father's face upon him, and knew him for Legolas in truth): "Doubtless the word of our predicament would bring many well-wishers, and the hall of Mirkwood is ill-prepared for guests without its host."

"You fear the meddling of other nations, and yet you come in person and alone to ask the King Under the Mountain for his aid?"

"King Thorin, you are known for your just and merciful spirit; surely my father would not have aided you in the Battle of Five Armies had you not opened your ancestral coffers to the bereaved lands of Esgaroth so generously after the fall of Smaug."

The subtle implication- that without Thranduil's alliance, far greater losses would have befallen the dwarves of Erebor- was not lost on Thorin, and indeed by the surge of his blood he knew that his decision was already made. Yet he was a king, and he must not show over-eager, and so he replied: "Credit for my generosity, Legolas, I must lay at your father's feet; for had I not seen him at the fall of my grandfather's throne, and known afterward the hardship of poverty and the decades of labor that his aid might have spared me... perhaps I would have looked upon Esgaroth with harder eyes."

Legolas shifted his weight, lifting his chin and clasping his hands before him as though they rested upon the hilt of an upright battle-axe; a martial stance, by no means defiant, but courageous all the same. So different from his son, Thranduil had been, tall and graceful where Legolas was warrior-slim, and yet so similar...

"I cannot deny my father's insular nature," acknowledged Legolas. "And yet once, after the battle in which we fought as allies, my father came to you and offered his plea, and you sent your men to save the lives of my brothers, and of myself, when we lay prisoners to the orcs. I live by your mercy; and I ask you now, though my own father's counselors urged me to be silent: will you, Thorin Oakenshield, King Under the Mountain, dispense your mercy once again?"

Thorin stood abruptly. "Let this Legolas, prince of Mirkwood, be given bread and hearth and all respect, and in an hour I shall meet with him to plan my assault." Saying this, he turned and left the dais quickly, so that Bofur and Balin who stood beside him would not see his hands shake.

_

Before dawn they departed, Thorin and twenty of his staunchest dwarves, with Kili at the head of a host of five archers besides, and Legolas tall at their side. The year approaching midsummer, the roads were dry and welcoming, and their pace held swift until they came to the boundaries of Mirkwood, where they tracked their prey far west- almost to the shadow of Dol Goldur, of which Legolas spoke in hushed tones- and came upon the orcs at last, and slaughtered them by the score.

The dwarven wounded were borne back to the forest-hall, with the elves who had joined them in their quest, and Thorin remained with two or three of his own men and the best trackers of Mirkwood, seeking the place where the filth of Gundabad had hidden the Elvenking.

For a full day they sought him, until by night one of them caught the glint of a silver thread at a distance; and away the elves rushed into the night, vanishing so swiftly that Thorin was left quite alone in the dark.

Torch in hand, Thorin wandered, cursing his ill-luck and the gratitude of elves, watching the dark tangle of branches about him with dark memories in his heart; and thus he lost his footing and tumbled, pack over bootheels, into a narrow ravine almost twenty feet deep. At the bottom was a low fire, with stinking carrion laid by in heaps, and a shallow sheltering cave where an arch of stone had flaked away into rubble; within that, he found a wattle cage, scarcely five paces from end to end, within which lay in perfect and elegant repose the white naked form of Thranduil.

After so long, after such intolerable recrimination and such pounding fear, the sight of the Elvenking- whole and living, though as Thorin looked at him he saw the silver threads of scarring upon his back and buttocks, and fresh stripes upon the breadth of his shoulders- nearly felled Thorin where he stood.

Thranduil did not move, though his face lay to the wall of his cage and his back open to the chill night air; but he said, in low and measured tones: "You are no orc, or else I have gone mad."

"I am no orc," choked out Thorin, and at that Thranduil did turn, his delicate face unguarded in its astonishment- and then in horror, with a cry of warning, his eyes strayed beyond his rescuer, and Thorin turned to find an orc-sentry upon him with a jagged sword.

Thorin was unarmed, but the first stroke he bore upon his gauntlet, and though it jarred his wrist to the bone he flew upon his foe in bestial wrath, biting and tearing. At last the orc caught him against the wall of the ravine, pressing him with the flat of his blade while the point dug into his shoulder, and howled in his face with rage and glee; and Thorin took the blade into the flesh of his arm. Wounded of his own will, he raised his hand and thrust his gloved fingers into the orc's mouth, caught it by the flesh of its cheek with his thumb borne hard into its lip, and ripped away the muscle and fat from fang to ear with a single wrench.

Stunned, the orc fell away from him, the jagged curtain of its face sloughing away to dangle upon its shoulder; and Thorin leapt upon the creature, heedless of black blood spurting and bare teeth gnashing, and with his great fist he stove in the thing's face, and struck again until the bone was pulverized and his own red blood smeared across the black ruin of the orc's skull.

In the space of that brief battle, the sky had opened up, and a torrential Mirkwood rain descended, sluicing the foulness from Thorin's face and beard. Behind him, he knew, Thranduil waited; and yet he could not bear to turn just yet, so he raised his face to the storm and let the water blur his eyes while he stripped away his gauntlets with mechanical fingers. He wanted to savage the orc's remains, to burn it and defile its ashes; wanted to burn down the whole of Mirkwood and himself with it, to escape the agony that he knew awaited him, the torrent of emotion. He could not bear, just yet, to meet Thranduil's eyes; and so he finished with his gauntlets, unshouldered his pack, and started in on his studded jerkin.

The rain washed him until it ran clear from his hair and beard, and his back and shoulders glistened as he stripped to his waist, and behind him Thranduil made no sound, though Thorin could feel the Elvenking's eyes burning into him.

There was no use for it. He took his pack over one arm and brought it with him under the shelter of the cave, and without speaking or allowing his eyes to linger he tore apart the wattle of the cage until he stood over Thranduil with his breast heaving from the effort.

"I fear," said Thranduil, "that I cannot stand; they have hobbled me." Indeed, stinking strips of half-cured hide had been wrapped about his ankles until they dug into the flesh, and even when Thorin took out his knife and sawed them away, they would not hold Thranduil's weight. So Thorin made a small fire at the far end of the cave, swept away the foulness of the orcs' habitation, and on the clean stone ground he opened his pack and laid out blankets and food.

Then he lifted Thranduil in his arms, soft smooth pale skin against the wiry hair of his chest and arms, and he bore the Elvenking to the makeshift bed he had built, and gently laid him down.

They spoke very little; there seemed nothing to say that did not already hang in the air between them, like spiderwebs of meaning that would be broken with any incautious word. Thranduil lay shivering; Thorin peeled away the last of his sodden and bloodstained clothing, then settled close beside him upon the blankets, so that Thranduil might be warmed on one side by the fire and on the other by the heat which consumed Thorin from within, burning his skin.

"How is it," said Thorin, once they had both eaten, and his voice would not betray him, "that you have not been slain? How can a company of sixty orcs hold the Elvenking in a cave for the length of a summer, and neither butcher him nor mutilate him nor sell him to their masters?" He did not speak of floggings; Thranduil was an elf, and no whip-scar would last upon him long unless he wished it so, but orc-captives were seldom found without grievous wounds, amputations, disfigurements.

"In taking me," replied Thranduil, settled with unnatural stillness so that only the faintest brush of his hip touched Thorin's thigh, "they disobeyed the order of the Necromancer, who does not wish the elves of Mirkwood to be disturbed, lest we take up arms. They do not... they did not know my name, and the judgement of the Necromancer was that I should be jailed here." His voice was deathly calm, and yet a shiver had begun in him, a flutter to each inspiration that defied his control. "I suspect his intent was that I should be found, eventually, and the disobedient company slaughtered, to give an impression of weaker leadership and smaller numbers than exists in truth."

Even now, naked and blanketed in a cave, Thranduil spoke in strategy and meaning; even now, as his hands rose in swift unison to press upon his eyes with the heels of his palms, he was a king at heart. "They beat me," added Thranduil, "and mostly they left me alone, and I am still alive, and still in your debt." His hands fell away, knuckles brushing against the dark hair of Thorin's thigh and resting against the skin.

"There is no debt," Thorin choked, though his throat parched at the thought.

Thranduil shifted, turning to face him, already growing stronger with the confluence of unbinding and elven waybread from Thorin's pack. "Let me speak to you of debt, Thorin. The grudge I have borne against you and your fathers has been a companion to me for centuries; when I turned my back upon you, I knew that I acted with reason, and yet some dark and secret part of my heart exulted to think of your humbling."

Thorin kept his eyes trained upon his hands, refusing to bend his dignity even for the space of a glance; anger warred within him against other, darker emotions.

"Since that time you have been my foe, and yet for a third time in the space of a year I find myself indebted to you; you have saved my men, and my son among them; you have sought me out when even my own could not muster the strength to rescue me; and once, when I offered you every chance to harm me, you laid aside your knife and bound my wounds.

"And then," he continued, letting the blanket slip down as he raised his long white hand and reached out, gripping the muscle at the juncture of Thorin's knee and thigh in an echo of the way Thorin had held him all those months ago; "and then you visited upon me such dreadful pleasure that I find I can never forgive you, that my body is eternally altered to crave that touch, that I must suffer my desires in silence or else seek out my foe and place myself further in his debt." His eyes darkened, and his hand traced a slow line upward along the muscle of Thorin's thigh, a trail of flame that sent a burning shudder throughout Thorin's body, a threat from which Thorin knew he must withdraw.

"Are you not content to punish me," hissed Thranduil, eyes tight with animosity. "Is it not enough that I suffer in your debt? Must you own me?"

At this, Thorin closed his hand with crushing force upon Thranduil's fingers, which rested dangerously close to disclosing his own desperate arousal. "I did not come to incur further payment," he said, hoping that his voice did not audibly ache with his longing. "I came as the King Under the Mountain, to the aid of an ally. You presume a great deal, to imagine that I would travel all this way and in such risk for the sole purpose of watching you spend your seed in shameless abandon, knowing that what I want of you I cannot have."

"What you cannot have?" There was curiosity in Thranduil's voice, a tilt of his head; and yet darkness grew in his gaze, fear and desire combined, and Thorin remembered the anticipation and the terror in Thranduil's eyes at the sight of Thorin's heavy, unsatisfied cock, and with bared teeth Thorin turned his temper upon Thranduil at last, seizing him by the bicep and rolling him flat, so that Thorin's shoulder pinned one arm and his gripping fist the other, and Thorin's weight crushed the breath from Thranduil's chest.

"If I touch you again," snarled Thorin, "I will despoil you as you have not imagined possible; I will defile your mouth, I will bruise your lips, I will spread your legs and fill you until you have lost the voice to beg. It will cost me very much, O Elvenking, to lay down my pride and be satisfied in your flesh, the flesh of my enemy, and I will take every coin of that cost from your body before I am through."

Thranduil's lips parted at this, and his eyes flared black and hungry. "Have I not been telling you this whole time," he demanded, "that I cannot bear to live longer in your debt? Do you think there is a price I will not-"

But now Thorin's mouth covered his, devouring, suckling Thranduil's tongue up into his own mouth as if he would tear even the voice from Thranduil's throat; and Thranduil gave up his voice in moans and gasps, and let his own despoiling begin.

Still Thranduil held some measure of reticence. If his mouth opened easily for Thorin's use, and if he clung to Thorin as best his captive arms could; he also shied from the burning weight of Thorin's cock where it pressed into his hip, and his legs scissored- though he broke the kiss as his abused feet cramped- as he attempted to draw himself up the slope of the cave floor, to regain some semblance of dominance.

But if Thranduil was in his deepest heart a king and commander of elves, Thorin was not inexperienced in tactics, and though the sinuous motion of Thranduil's body proved a cruel distraction, Thorin knew that Thranduil sought to use his height to advantage, to force Thorin to crane his neck up to be kissed; and he recognized the flinch of his skin, the longing to escape from his vulnerable position, to remove the threat of Thorin's weighty cock against his hip and all the promise and danger it implied.

Thorin had no intention of lying upon the Elvenking's breast like a sighing maiden, waiting to be kissed.

As Thranduil twisted his head and shoulders, gaining purchase upon the blanketed earth, Thorin grappled him, until he sat astride the base of the Elvenking's breastbone, crushing strong thin white wrists against the ground with his gripping hands, feeling the panicked heave of Thranduil's breath beneath him.

Once Thranduil stilled, though his pulse beat in his throat like that of a cornered beast, Thorin shifted himself until he lay along Thranduil's torso, a confining weight, and spoke low and forceful in his ear: "I may have carried you from your cage, elf, but until the morning brings your flighty folk to save you, you are my prisoner, and if you crave any boon from me you will submit to me."

Thranduil lay under him, drawn tight as a wire; but he lowered his eyes from Thorin's gaze, and turned his face aside, abashed in his dismay. Thorin mouthed his throat- gently at first, enjoying the shiver of sinew and flesh, Thranduil's willingness tested to its limit; then with terrible hunger, lips and teeth crushing white perfect skin like a king's seal marking soft wax.

The scent of him was a drug, the fragrance of wood-sap and herbs, a memory from that first night as potent and toxic as it had ever been; it pooled upon Thranduil's skin like honey, spilled out with every breath and every small anguished sound, and it set Thorin's blood to burning. Groaning into the line of muscle which plunged from Thranduil's clenched jaw to the pit at the base of his throat, Thorin rolled his hips in a long lazy stroke that left reflexive, jerking echoes in Thranduil's own body.

And yet... he would not allow Thranduil the pleasure of friction, would not risk expending his prisoner's lust without his own satisfaction once again; so with an effort of will, he drew himself upright, until he stood over Thranduil's body with his feet at the level of Thranduil's hips. Below him, Thranduil twisted half-sitting, resting upon one elbow to rub at his throat with the other hand, his eyes downcast and his breath coming quick and rebellious through clenched teeth. The length of his rosy cock lay exposed to the air, the slight dark silk at the base of it shocking against the pallor of his skin. Sullenness shaped his lips, and a faint flush mottled his throat and collarbone.

Too beautiful, still undefiled for all that Thorin had marked him. "Kneel," said Thorin, and Thranduil startled and met his gaze, wide eyes apprehensive; but he obeyed, and with a liquid motion he set himself kneeling, sitting back upon his heels with his head bowed.

"Look at me," commanded Thorin, and Thranduil's eyes dragged up to meet his own, though they lingered for a split second upon Thorin's cock. And Thorin smirked at him, took his own cock in his hand and hefted it, asked: "Have you sucked a cock before?"

Thranduil's lips parted; the color drained from his face. "No," he whispered, and Thorin heard it all in his voice: the distress, the anticipation, the knowledge of his own impending debasement, and the faraway hope that his greatest fear might yet go unaddressed.

"You had best hope," said Thorin, reaching out to cradle Thranduil's head with his hand, threading strong fingers through the silver-white hair, "that you are a quick learner," and he pulled Thranduil halfway off-balance until he was close enough- landing lightly on his hands, graceful even now- for Thorin to drag the aching head of his cock across Thranduil's lower lip.

A thin sheen of liquid left its glossy smear behind; Thranduil licked his lip, shuddered, and held defiant eye contact with his captor as he opened his mouth obediently, and with his cradling hand- his thumb wrapping around, prompting Thranduil's jaw to open wider- he guided Thranduil's mouth onto the barest beginning of his length. His cockhead rested upon the swell of Thranduil's tongue; the Elvenking's breath raced hot across his sensitive skin for a moment, and then Thranduil closed his mouth around the intrusion and reflexively swallowed.

Heat, a burning flood of saliva, a choked wordless exclamation; then, tentative suction, Thranduil's exploring tongue tracing the ridge of him and following the involved softness of his retracted foreskin. It might have been gentle, intimate, had Thorin not been holding Thranduil's head in captive stillness, had Thranduil not convulsively swallowed every few moments as his mouth watered in hopeless defense.

Very well, Thranduil was... willing, and in time doubtless he would learn skill (and the thought of him learning such a skill tensed every muscle in Thorin's body and made his cock jump). And yet Thorin craved much more from him, wanted to see that beautiful mouth stretched wide and tears leaking from those forest-pool eyes, wanted to bury himself in that white throat and thrust until he spent and watch the excess of his seed spill down Thranduil's face. He shifted his hand for a better grip, growled open, pushed forward-

Thranduil's eyes went wide with shock, and he retched, the spasm of his throat and tongue an undulating caress around Thorin's cock; his hands flew up, and he gripped Thorin by the great muscles of his thighs, and to Thorin's utter shock he held himself upon that length, trembling fingers digging into Thorin's skin as he tried to force his mouth and throat to submission.

White heat flared at the base of Thorin's spine, pooled in his belly, drew up his ballocks tight against his groin. He could not help himself; he thrust, and Thranduil choked again, and the slim white fingers bruised upon his thighs and he could not control his body, thrusting again and again, feeling hot tears spill against his palm and thin saliva escaping in streaks upon Thranduil's cheeks.

All that held him back from the brink was the knowledge that if he spent himself now, Thranduil would win; and Thorin had waited for a very long time to see Thranduil on his back, groaning with pleasure and agony as Thorin plowed into him. He could not bring himself to withdraw; instead he pushed, shoving Thranduil back onto the blankets, where he sprawled in terrified disarray, his mouth bruised and red and gasping.

Thorin tackled him, arm about his waist and free hand slipping about Thranduil's hip and under the thigh at the base of his buttock, spreading him and pulling him tighter into Thorin's grasp. Smooth flesh and clenched muscle moved against his gripping hand; Thranduil cried out in wretched desperation and twisted in his arms, and Thorin was hard-pressed to hold him, lithe and panicked as he was.

"I will not hurt you," roared Thorin, but Thranduil still struggled, panting with exertion, eyes black with fright.

Even as Thorin strove to subdue him, as Thranduil's exhausted body stilled to trembling, Thorin understood his fear, and thought for a moment to let him go: he did not relish the thought of blood, and he had borne his desire this long and not perished. He might coerce, he might seduce, he might ravish; but he would not force himself upon his foe while the other begged and wept and took nothing but pain from the experience.

But as his fingertips shifted against Thranduil's thigh and buttock, brushing the faint beginnings of gathered skin, Thranduil gasped, and his cock leapt, pressing for a moment against Thorin's shoulder. "Ah," said Thorin, "you still want this," and he moved his fingers again, until they stroked the twitching crux of the Elvenking's buttocks, and Thranduil cried out in broken desire. "Then you must ask for it," said Thorin, and when Thranduil hesitated Thorin swept his tongue up the underside of Thranduil's cock, incandescent heat that sent spasms through Thranduil's entire body and poured from his lips in begging: please, yes, please.

Then Thorin laughed, a dark hungry sound; and pausing to wet his fingers with his mouth, he set his forefinger at Thranduil's entrance and pressed.

Thranduil opened for him, and Thorin heard the pitiful mewl of his fear and desperation and saw his fingers claw into the tangled blanket; he had forgotten how tight Thranduil was, how he longed for and yet resisted any intrusion. As he pressed, as he stretched at the ring of muscle, Thranduil shuddered and clenched, breathing in deep shaking gasps, resting his head in surrender upon Thorin's hip; then, as if reaching for an anchor to hold himself to sanity, he raised one clutching hand and wrapped it around the base of Thorin's cock, an unmoving palm like the hand of a general upon a soldier's shoulder, a touch that set Thorin reeling with shock.

Now Thorin pressed a second finger in alongside the first, and it was a challenge; Thranduil's fist tightened about him, and his hot breath fell against Thorin's hip like a scourge. Already, with the heat from the fire, Thorin's fingers had begun to dry; and he dipped his tongue to meet them where they entered Thranduil's body, exulting in the start and jerk and cry of the Elvenking as hot wet tongue met sensitive skin, and when he had slicked the flesh there he brought his tongue back upward, across Thranduil's faintly downed ballocks and once again up his shaft, not caring if he teased if only he could taste.

Thranduil's broken cry was almost more reward than the oak-leaf taste of his skin; and as Thorin's mouth completed its trail of devastation and lifted away, as Thorin's fingers worked their shallow way into that tight opening (for Thorin would not seek deeper with mere fingers, preferring to save that pleasure for his own cock), Thranduil's mouth fell across the skin of Thorin's hipbone, across the curling hair of his groin, and once again the searing heat of his mouth closed in willing self-distraction around the head of Thorin's cock.

If there was no finesse in Thranduil's suckling, distracted as he was with Thorin's fingers, there was such burning desperation in his touch, such hungry abandon in the working of his lips and tongue, that Thorin was forced to still his hand and bow his head, stricken, until his face rested against the skin at the juncture of Thranduil's thigh and belly, and he groaned against the root of his shaft.

Thranduil jerked under him, moaned around his cock; and when Thorin did not immediately resume his ministrations, Thranduil rocked his hips into the pressure of those fingers, trying to drive them deeper, trying to find friction for his own cock against the slope of Thorin's cheek, against the weight of his beard. Fury sparked in Thorin's breast: even like this, wanton and naked, Thranduil sought supremacy between them, sought to control his own pleasure and divert Thorin with his clever tongue.

Thorin spat, felt the warmth slide over the twitching flesh and across his penetrating fingers, and brought his third finger to bear. His fingers were thick, with powerful tendons, and the breadth of them was almost greater than Thranduil could bear at first.

Thorin's cock fell out of Thranduil's mouth, and his palm slipped flat against Thorin's belly as his teeth bared and his mouth opened wide, his eyes focused sharp with alarm. "I cannot- too much-"

"Lie still," growled Thorin, "and soon you will be able to take whatever you must."

Thranduil strove for breath, his mouth opening and half-closing soundlessly. "I cannot," he managed, and indeed Thorin felt the trembling that began in his thighs, saw the rhythmic tensing and release of his abdominal muscles as his body panicked around this transgression. Thorin's other arm was trapped beneath Thranduil's hip, but he knew his work, and after only a few vicious moments spent watching Thranduil writhe like a fish on a hook, he bowed his head again and, with his tongue, lifted Thranduil's cockhead into his mouth.

He tasted bitterness, the same herbal sharpness of Thranduil's skin, salt and sweet; and though he held his mouth still, seeking to preserve the Elvenking's arousal until he himself was satisfied, he felt with every inch of his skin the leap and settle of Thranduil's body as his nerves aligned and he understood in his bones that this encroachment was desirable, delicious, unbearably good rather than merely unbearable. Then he released Thranduil's cock, and savored the sob that racked Thranduil's body in his absence.

Thorin worked him in this way, wetting his fingers at intervals and stretching Thranduil relentlessly, until the rose-dark skin of his arsehole was intolerably sensitive and every shallow stroke of Thorin's fingers was rewarded with a cry of such profound need and despair that even Thorin ached in resonance. Still he held back from the deeper, aimed strokes that Thranduil craved, and slowly Thranduil seemed to forget that there was some other, blinding pleasure to be had, and his cock strained dusky and dripping for any touch at all, and he contracted helplessly around Thorin's fingers as if the burn and stretch of invasion was the thing itself that he hungered for.

Perceiving this, Thorin deprived him of it, withdrawing his fingers at last with one last circling, soothing stroke; Thranduil arched as he withdrew, and lay back against the stone as Thorin pulled away from him to rearrange himself; his lips begged soundlessly, his eyes closed and brows drawn up in supplication, and though he flinched and his eyes flew open as Thorin spread his legs and knelt between, he let himself be arranged- quivering, gasping- with his buttocks upon Thorin's knees and his thighs splayed about Thorin's hips. One knee brushed against Thorin's side deliberately, a caress that might have been a plea, and as Thorin grasped him about his hips with his fingers sinking into the muscle of Thranduil's buttocks to lift him further, Thranduil covered his face with his hands and groaned in shame and anguish and the knowledge of his own defeat.

Thorin glowered down at him, unwilling to let him escape even for a second, even in his mind; but as he spat in his hand and slicked his own cock, the wet sound of his palm across his skin drew Thranduil out from the shelter of his hands. Quaking, fraught with apprehension and yet breathing as though mere air could no longer satisfy him, Thranduil wound his fingers in the rumpled mess of the blanket and looked down at his captor.

At the sight of Thorin, sitting back on his haunches, proud and looming with his fierce black beard heaving upon his breast and his thick cock in his hand, Thranduil's eyes went wide and fixed, and he let his head drop back into the tangled banner of his silver hair, which spilled across the bare stone of the cave-floor in perfect disarray.

Thorin released his cock and took Thranduil's knees, raising him to expose his buttocks, and Thranduil shuddered. "Be still," said Thorin, "and breathe as I go; this will be no easy thing for you, but it will be less terrible if you absolve yourself now of any duty to fight me."

"And if," Thranduil panted, "if it is too much, if I must fight?"

"Then I will fight you," said Thorin gravely, "and I will overwhelm you, and I will be the more forceful for it; but I will be gentle, at least in the beginning, for I have no taste for injured and unwilling flesh."

"I will submit," whispered Thranduil, and Thorin leaned over him, pressed his knees back with his broad shoulders, laid the broad head of his cock against the tormented trembling fundament; and gently he pressed, letting the hot slick gathered skin accept him with fearful slowness. As the narrow cusp of his cock entered, Thranduil shuddered all over and then relaxed, breathing deep in relief as if he had expected terrible pain; but after this there was only broadening, deeper penetration a hairsbreadth at a time, each tiny increment opening Thranduil further. Before long he was writhing with it, as he had striven beneath Thorin's fingers, remembering the flood of sensation and the hunger to be filled, rocking his hips against the incursion of Thorin's cock to force himself further down.

Soon, however, and not before even the crown had passed within him (and Thorin forced himself to pause at the sight, to breathe deep and look up and will himself to restraint), the width had become a challenge again, and the sublime motion of Thranduil's hips became a small jerking series of convulsions; the ring of muscle clutched around him, fluttered like the heart of a bird, and Thranduil made as if to ease back-

-but Thorin's hands gripped his hips like bands of iron, and inexorably the weight of Thorin's cock breached him, and broader and more heavy that length filled him. Thorin exulted, awash with the sensation of velvet-slick skin and spasming muscle, every fraction of an inch a new victory, a new delight.

Thranduil begged, babbling, wordless. His eyes grew wide and then closed in paradox and agony, and his pulse thrummed in his throat and stabbed at Thorin's thumbs where they rested at the corners of his groin; it beat visibly between his ribs and, sweet obscenity, thundered in the heat around Thorin's cock, a hundred hammer-blows in the space of a minute, and still Thranduil arched and spasmed under and about him.

At last Thorin sank into him completely, the quaking flesh of Thranduil's buttocks pressed firm against his thighs and ballocks. Thranduil himself was overcome, undone, wrecked; a shivering mess he lay, full beyond any previous imagining, at last having found the culmination of so many months' fear and desire and now dizzy with bewilderment and with the utter violation of this, which he both deplored and craved.

Thus joined, Thorin slicked the two of them again at their juncture, and rolled forward until he had pressed Thranduil's thighs almost to his belly, utterly defenseless and totally open; then he stretched himself out upon the length of Thranduil's body like steel upon the forge.

Nothing could ever be this sweet; nothing would ever feel this good. Buried to the hilt, absorbing the shuddering tautness beneath him, his beard falling upon the length of that white throat and his prey close enough under his gaze that Thorin could watch the contraction and release of his irises, the spilling bottomless black of his pupils.

"You think now," murmured Thorin, low and aggressive, "that you have taken everything you must, everything you can; but I know my art, Thranduil Elvenking, and I know that you have not yet tasted all the pleasure I can inflict upon your body." He pressed himself upon Thranduil, testing and finding his angle, feeling the increase of pressure below his cock as he bore down and let the anguished muscle around him assist in the careful tilt of hip and shaft, a fulcrum for the lever with which he would move all heaven and earth. "And now that you lie surrendered at last, open and wanton and desolate; now, O King, I am going to fuck you until you are ruined."

Thranduil's head arched as a spasm of horrified pleasure took him, and he groaned in a voice so broken it could never have belonged to the distant sorrowful alien creature that had for so long plagued Thorin's dreams; then, soft and spiteful and still proud even for all his subjugation: "Ruin me."

Thorin could find no mercy for this arrogance; he lowered his weight until Thranduil's cock rubbed against his belly, until his mouth could capture Thranduil's in a wrathful biting kiss; and then he pulled back (and oh, the sound that Thranduil made at that withdrawal) and, trusting his angle, rutted up into him with vicious force.

Thranduil's breath stopped and his mouth went slack; his back arched until his shoulders nearly twisted off the floor, and his hands flew up to push at Thorin's chest, as if he could fight away the surge of bliss and shock of that silent impact. It was the most beautiful thing Thorin had ever seen, and the most maddening.

The silken pressure of each stroke, the friction of skin about his shaft as he withdrew and thrust again, obliterated thought and meaning. Thorin groaned with each roll of his hips, slow at first, drinking in the sensation and letting it crash and build within him; then, as Thranduil's convulsions organized and he spread his thighs further to admit his own impalement more fully, Thorin pounded him brutally.

It was no simple task to strike the point of Thranduil's greatest vulnerability, and to find it each time; but Thorin was a master smith, and if he could strike steel a hundred times in a single spot, he could hold the fury and aim of his strokes even in the throes of his own ferocious desire and ecstasy. And the reward was immense- the sight of Thranduil in such extremity, in such abandon, once so proud and so determined to dominate and now so far fallen that he flung his arms over his head, elbows up and palms against the floor, to hold himself braced for each blow.

Certain of his victory now, Thorin rode those white thighs mercilessly, hammering into Thranduil with all his might and purpose of mind, confident in the assumption that he could hold Thranduil upon the precipice of release indefinitely by simply denying him any friction to his cock; and he reveled in it, letting his own arousal and the liquid heat of approaching climax build unfettered in his body, content to torment his foe. Indeed, though a red flush spread across Thranduil's throat and chest, and his glassy eyes stared at the shadowed roof of the cave in appalled ecstasy, and he gasped for each breath as if his body was too filled to admit air; despite all of these things he did not spend, and his cock grew so hard that it thumped against Thorin's belly with each thrust, spattering drops of liquid where it struck.

And yet, despite all this, as Thorin's strokes began to falter and he felt orgasm descending implacably as the collapse of a mountain, Thranduil suddenly convulsed, bared his teeth, fluttered deep within; and Thorin roared, perceiving the moment of crisis upon his foe, the race to satisfaction soon to be lost. He halted his strokes, though his body burned and the torrent of blood in his veins still rose toward crescendo; and thrusting hard against the firm source of greatest sensitivity, holding pressure though his own cockhead could scarcely bear the sensation, he reached between them, took Thranduil's ballocks in his hand, and with a single sustained tug held the Elvenking helpless to achieve orgasm and tortured, lashed with pleasure and misery, heaving with shallow gasps just out of reach of completion.

Still he held him, though Thranduil's cock lay brushing against his forearm, as he resumed his fucking; and with each thrust he struck his target, and he let the throes of Thranduil's excruciation wash over and around him, clench upon him and caress him, milk and suckle him until at last he spent violently, gasping and cursing, bowing his back to curl forward in his climax until his beard brushed Thranduil's chest.

The pangs of it racked him and echoed in his bones; the pent-up delirium of months of obsession, spurting from him in hot pulses, filling and drowning his foe; he came until coming was painful, until he longed for relief from his own satisfaction, until his vision vanished in a humming tunnel of black. Then he came to himself, gasping and bent over Thranduil's jarred and shuddering body, high desperate keening sounds tearing from Thranduil's throat like elf-song heard in the trees.

There Thorin let him lay for minute after long minute, letting himself slacken and grow soft within Thranduil's gut; and Thranduil, aching and sobbing, begging for completion with every breath he managed to take, lay upon the cusp without even the first hint of quelling, without a moment's relief, sweet to Thorin's eyes and beautiful in his agony.

"I should leave you," said Thorin, gloating. "I should leave you to suffer as I have suffered, to be found naked by your rescuers, still hard and pleading for your enemy's touch."

Thranduil only gasped, only moaned with intolerable anguish.

"And yet," mused Thorin, "I think we now are not enemies any longer; I think I have come to your aid, and you to mine, and we have exchanged favors to mutual benefit. Thranduil, my once enemy, now my lover: shall Mirkwood and Erebor be allied, as once they were, with goodwill and fond relations?"

"Ah Tintallë, Varda," pled Thranduil, in a voice hoarse from its distress; "we are allied, we are one; end me, complete my ruin," and Thorin laughed as he withdrew, as he lowered himself over Thranduil and took the length of his cock into his throat, opened for him and swallowed him and devoured him with all his skill and admiration, worship of a worthy adversary even in defeat; and Thranduil cried out, his body contracting like a whip in mid-flight, and spent himself into Thorin's throat in utter and uncaring debauchment.

When the rain ceased and the sun rose, the elves found them at last, Thorin in his armor still black with orc's blood and Thranduil wrapped in blankets and Thorin's cloak; and Thorin bore him in his arms back to the hall of Mirkwood, and would brook no other to touch him, until at last he was laid in his own bower; and Thorin remained at his side until the end of summer, and thereafter the two were closer than brothers, truest and bravest of friends.