Laws and Customs by AdmirableMonster  

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Of the Úmanyar

Pengolodh asks Elros to help him explore his Sindarin heritage...ifyouknowwhatImean.

Potentially-spoilery chapter warnings at chapter end.

Pengolodh paced back and forth in the corridor, trying to burn away the restless energy.  The Fëanorian was dead.  He had seen her severed head himself.  Gil-galad had offered, and Pengolodh had accepted.  Vengeful, perhaps, but it wasn’t only that.  He needed to know that she was far away.  She couldn’t touch him from the halls of Mandos.  Maybe now the repetitive, vivid nightmares that had stalked his dreams on and off since his return would stop, or at least diminish in frequency.  But there was something else he was going to try as well.

He wiped his sweaty palms on his handkerchief to save his formal robes.  He’d approached Elrond earlier to ask if his twin would be returning to the stronghold soon, and Elrond had given him his most polite look, then gone vague for a minute, then said, yes, he thought Elros might in fact be back this evening.  A little earlier than Pengolodh had looked for, but he wasn’t going to wait.

When Elros did arrive, he looked refreshed and at ease, as if he’d already dined and maybe had a glass or two of wine.  Pengolodh suspected Elrond had told him who might be waiting for him, because he didn’t look at all surprised to see him.  He just leaned sideways against the wall, gave him a smile, and said, “To what do I owe the pleasure, Pengolodh?”

Pengolodh had put together a very nice little speech.  All of it fled out of his head, and he said, instead, “I’d like you to go to bed with me.  If you’d like to.”

He got a startled blink for that, but then Elros gave him a considering look, then a thoughtful nod.  “Walk me through what you’re looking for, but I’m interested.”

A very reasonable request.  Pengolodh tried to gather his scattered thoughts.  “It’s the nightmares and the memories and all of it,” he said, knowing he wasn’t perfectly coherent but determined to express as much as he could.  “They’re dead or gone, and I know that.  But the Fëanorian—” He paused.  As much as it made his hackles rise, he wouldn’t do the same thing to her that she had done to him.  “Nordowen,” he corrected himself, spelling the name letter by letter, “She was right about one thing.  I’m not a Noldo.  Maybe that’s—why I didn’t die.  Maybe I should take the heritage of my mother as a sign of strength.”

Elros nodded, waited.  He was very good at attentive waiting.  Unlike his brother, who seemed to disappear when he was listening, Elros maintained his own presence.  Only in that attentive, waiting silence did Pengolodh discover what else he was trying to say.

“I don’t want rape to be my only knowledge of physical intimacy,” Pengolodh said.  He shook out his hands, which had started to cramp.  Too tense. “And I trust you.”

The last four words sat there in the stillness, true and sincere.  A bashful little smile crept up Elros’s face; he tucked an errant curl behind one ear, turning his face down and to the side for a moment.  Then he looked back, speaking to Pengolodh clearly with both lips and hands.  “I’d be honored,” he said simply.

* * *

In the end, they decided to take the evening into Pengolodh’s own room.  It was where he would be the most vulnerable but also safest.

“Would you believe I haven’t slept with an Elf before?” Elros said, a little abashed, as Pengolodh invited him over to his own cozy little bed, tucked beneath a wide glass window that looked out into the courtyard.  “Men and women, yes, but—”

Pengolodh cut him off by lifting the crystal decanter of wine he had thoughtfully procured earlier in the day and gesturing with it towards two glasses set out on his small reading table in the center of the room.  Elros nodded in thanks, and he poured wine into both and offered one to Elros.  Then he took a long swallow from his own and set it down to reply.

“Most of the Elves you’ve known were Noldor.  Exiles even?”

A nod.  “Yes.  Elrond and I were raised that way.  Elrond is…much more Noldorin than I am.”

Given Pengolodh’s unfortunate awareness of the relationship between his king and his king’s favorite herald, he wondered exactly how forthcoming Elrond had been with his twin brother.  But then, there were barriers to a king’s marriage that there might not be for anyone else, so perhaps it was not inconsistent. 

He engaged with the more salient point. “I was raised that way, too.  Gondolin wanted very badly to be Tirion.  And it’s hard to criticize a home that was lost—that way.”

A shaky breath from Elros.  He took a long drink of his wine.  “Yes.”  He set the wine cup down, jaw working slightly.  “What do you remember of Sirion?” he asked abruptly.  It seemed to cost him something to look into Pengolodh’s eyes, but he did it.  “I’ve read what you wrote, but there’s not much.  About the place, I mean, what it was like to live there…”

It was a question that cut Pengolodh to the quick more than anything else Elros could have asked about, including the rape.  He hadn’t really thought of Elros and Elrond as children—as people—in conjunction with Sirion much.  He had been too busy making sure to write a history that would absolve them of complicity with their foster-fathers’ sins.  But the history of Sirion had been deliberately dry and distant.  What do you remember of Sirion…

He took another drink of the wine to fortify himself.  “The cranes,” he said.  “We followed the cranes to Sirion.  They used to dance there—to marry there.  Dírhavel showed me.”  He shut his eyes, thinking of grey feathers in a twilight-orange sky.  “There were very beautiful.  The dances were very intricate.”  His hands shook slightly.  “Your mother had the Silmaril brought to the top of the tower whenever she wanted to welcome the mariners home.  She did it for us, too.  When the light went out—”

Gentle hands stopped his words, and he opened his eyes to find that Elros had claimed his wrists.  “I’m sorry,” he said, the Fëanorian lisp very pronounced.  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked you that.  Not now.”

Pengolodh took a shaky breath and waited a moment before freeing his hands.  “I’ll give you my notes,” he said in a rush.  “You can copy them and give them back to me.  There’s much that I couldn’t—use.”

“Thanks.  I would very much appreciate that.  Um.  We were talking about Gondolin, though.”

“Yes.”  Pengolodh finished his wine and laughed.  All the homes he’d lost, one after another.  “Yes, we were.  Gondolin wanted to be Tirion, but—it wasn’t Tirion.  My mother was Sindarin.  She had lovers before she married my father, and it never bothered either of them.  She spoke of many of them fondly.”

He took Elros’s hands back, holding them between his own now, leaned forward over the wine, and kissed him soundly.  “There,” he said, sitting back flushed and triumphant.  “I’ve never done that before.”

Elros chuckled, his nose scrunching up and his tongue flicking out.  “Do you want to go to bed then?” he asked.  “Only—sex can get complicated without words—um, sorry.  Spoken words, I mean.”  He gestured awkwardly at his ear.  “I want to know if you want to stop or keep going even if your hands are doing other things.  I mean, stop the sex, or stop what we’re doing—either one.”

It was a reasonable concern, if clumsily expressed.  “Don’t hold my left hand,” Pengolodh said.  “I don’t think I’d want you to anyway. Then if I pinch three times—” he demonstrated on the back of Elros’s hand, “—we stop.  And I tell you whether I mean stop entirely or something else.  If your left hand’s free, you can do the same, though I’ll have an easier time reading your lips.”

“Oh, I’m easy,” Elros said, then flushed.  “I mean—you’re right, though.  It shouldn’t just be for you.  Thanks.  Should we undress?”

He was more hesitant than he had been when he was taking care of Pengolodh’s injuries after—after the rape.  Which made sense, Pengolodh supposed.  He didn’t need the other person to be strong now, and Elros knew that, so he was letting Pengolodh see more of himself.  Pengolodh thought he liked what he was seeing.

“Let’s undress,” he said.  “Come with me to the bed?”

They were soon naked upon the bed together.  Elros lay back against the pillows and showed off, splaying his legs open.  He was well-muscled and the addition of a short, carefully-shaped beard, recently grown, kept his face from looking too much like his twin’s, despite the similarity of his full, mobile lips.  His hair was not so well-groomed, though it was kept shorter, in the Mannish style, and loose dark curls spilled around his sly grey eyes.  Pengolodh let his gaze drop lower—Elros was obviously enjoying the attention, posed and flushing happily.  His compact frame was well-muscled and scarred in several places—one particularly impressive one ran raggedly across the side of his stomach, and he had twin clean straight scars across his chest.  His dark curls appeared again just beneath his navel, forming a thickening trail down to his soft, flushed cock.  Pengolodh reached out curiously, rubbing his hand across it—it was smaller than his and swelled but didn’t fully harden at his touch.

Elros tapped his head once to get his attention.  “It’s not like yours,” he said, unperturbed.  He made no effort to move Pengolodh’s hand but arched lazily against it as he spoke.  “I thought we were the same the first time I saw you, but it looks like yours is a little more—independent.”  He nodded to where Pengolodh was hardening between his legs.  “Which is delightful, because that means you can put it in me if you want.  I like that.”

It had not occurred to Pengolodh that Elros might have a cunt as well, which—changed things.  Of course, he didn’t have to take him up on the offer.  There were other things that could be done, with hands and mouths, but—those ugly memories, nestled away like immovable words on a page.  Like any words, they could be overwritten with others.  I can write my own story.

“Don’t touch my breasts,” Pengolodh warned, feeling a little spurt of nausea as his nipples peaked while he was speaking.

Elros nodded seriously.  “Anything else?”

“I’m going to use my mouth on you first.  You can touch my hair, but don’t—don’t pull it.”

A little hitch of Elros’s hips; his slick organ rubbed against Pengolodh’s hand.  “Ummm.  Right.”

“Good.  Thank you.”  He lay down on the bed, pressing his hands to Elros’s inner thighs before he lost his courage.  

He knew he was clumsy to start with, licking between the folds too awkwardly, too delicately, but Elros only petted his head encouragingly, and he moved upward, getting his mouth onto Elros’s small cock, which twitched underneath him.  Elros made some kind of a noise that arrived at Pengolodh’s lips as a small vibration, but he only moved slightly against his mouth, then widened his stance to give Pengolodh better access.

He tasted salty-sweet with a hint of smoke—much more pleasing than Pengolodh had expected.  After a little while he started squirming a bit.  Pengolodh explored the base of him, and Elros petted his head more, not even threading his hand through the hair with a care that made Pengolodh moan, which wrung a twitch and a sideways jerk out of Elros.  Moving up, Pengolodh got his lips around the head and experimentally sucked, and Elros half-twisted off the bed, hand vanishing from Pengolodh’s head.  When Pengolodh sat back, wiping some of the slick from his mouth, he found that Elros’s hands were both fisted in the sheets, and he was red and panting, chest heaving and cheeks flushed across.

He looked at Pengolodh and for the first time forgot to sign along with his words.  “Please tell me you’re going to fuck me now.”

This was very different from before.  This was Elros, desperate, asking—pleading.  This was a man trusting Pengolodh with his body, scars and all, and willing to be denied.  This was the smell of clean sweat and musk in Pengolodh’s own bed in his own room, where he had opened the door to let it in.  Pengolodh sat back on his heels.  “I’m going to fuck you now,” he said.

Elros’s head tipped back in relief; his mouth parted, and his chest heaved.  He pressed himself back into the bed, opening his legs wider, inviting.  Pengolodh tested him briefly, with a finger—with two fingers—and Elros clenched around them and rocked before opening again, legs and eyes, to give Pengolodh another desperate look.

Hurriedly, Pengolodh lined himself up, panting when his cock brushed against Elros’s leaking slit.  Then, arms trembling a little, he entered him, slow and careful.  Elros looked up at him with lidded eyes, blown wide and dark.  “Can I put my legs around your back?” he asked.  Pengolodh nodded, pressing deeper into the welcoming heat of him, and Elros closed his legs and guided him the last little way.

Pengolodh kissed him, and Elros moaned into his mouth, kissing back messy and eager.  Then he reached out with his left hand to capture Pengolodh’s right and pull it down to the bed, interlacing their fingers and squeezing.  His knees squeezed too, very gently, and Pengolodh gulped and began to move inside him, very slowly.  Each movement outward was easy, each stroke inward deep, less a thrust than a sinking and a joining.

The feeling of desire mounted, and at first, he did not like it.  The way it clutched at his belly and tried to make him thrust faster, and the way it threatened to strip his fëa away and leave him mindless, vulnerable, at the mercy of a host of ugly memories.  But then Elros began to match his rhythm, rocking slow and tender with him, welcoming him inside, and the memories subsided a little.  The too-intense pleasure transmuted into a new feeling, a slowly-building warmth, the desperation blunted by Elros’s easy motions, by the way his mouth moved against Pengolodh’s and his right hand caressed Pengolodh’s shoulder like a benediction.

The breath trembled in and out of Pengolodh’s lungs.  He kept the pace up steadily, and Elros followed his lead.  After a little while, he tucked his face into the junction of Elros’s shoulder and his throat, and Elros pulled him into an embrace.  Chest to chest, the slippery sensation of sweat and heat against his nipples was a gentle additional source of stimulation, and Pengolodh moaned, his pace increasing a little, thrusting deeper into Elros as Elros held him and met him and opened for him.

Elros freed his hand, and Pengolodh hesitated, in case he was about to signal something, but he just slid it down between them to start rubbing his own cock.  His knuckles dug into Pengolodh’s stomach, but the discomfort didn’t seem to matter.  If anything, the firm touch made an interesting contrast with the rest and kept the growing fizzing sensitivity of his skin from being overwhelmingly too much.

He had not expected to start losing time; it was not something that had happened to him before outside of studying and writing.  But the world fell away, and there was only Elros—Elros’s cries reverberating through his flesh, Elros’s hand on his back, rubbing circles in his sweat, Elros’s thighs a secure weight on his waist, Elros’s cunt, hot and slick and drawing him in over and over and over and—

Elros’s nails scrabbled at his back, slipping in the sweat, and his cunt contracted around Pengolodh’s cock, sudden and forceful.  Pengolodh’s hips hitched and shifted, urgency mounting, as soft wet heat spiked in his groin, his belly, his chest—for a moment, he had his face buried in Elros’s shoulder, fucking him desperately, chasing the feeling, which rose higher and higher and then—

He tipped over, shaking, warmth flooding through him, stilling welcomed and held deep within Elros.

It took him a moment to collect himself.  Once he had done so, he realized that Elros was petting him gently, repeated, light, almost imperceptible strokes of a hand across his hair.  Pengolodh looked up and caught his gaze.  “Thank you,” he said.

Elros yawned and smiled.  “My pleasure,” he said enthusiastically.  “Most definitely let me know if you want to do this again sometime.”

There did not seem to be any urgency about disentangling themselves.  Pengolodh found that he didn’t object.  “I will,” he answered, smiling back.  There could be no reason not to be Sindarin in this; they clearly understood certain things better than the Noldor, in any case.

Chapter End Notes

This is the one where I felt that my CWs were going to have to be chapter-by-chapter because we move into a set of things that I've found very much can cause discomfort for people but in a very different way than the earlier chapters. This chapter features consensual PIV sex between an intersex Elf and a (half-Elf) trans man, with the trans man being penetrated. So if you have specific dysphoria triggers it may be as well to tread carefully. That's the primary warning but couple of specifics:

  • brief mention of decapitation
  • use of 'cunt' to describe trans male anatomy, 'cock' for what in more modern parlance would probably be described as 't-dick'
  • despite a relatively careful discussion of consent, zero consideration given to the use of protection; we can presume this has to do with Elven modes of reproduction and Elven resistance to illness but still

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