Bowstrings of the Heart by Elwin Fortuna  

"Tell me a tale, if you will, Master Elf," Gimli said late one evening, sitting with his pipe on the balcony of the house they shared in Minas Tirith, as May wore into June. All the rest of their company was sleeping, or about their own affairs; the hobbits had just gone to bed, all of them still recovering from their respective trials, and Gandalf was off about his own business, probably in the Archives of the city.

Aragorn, of course, was nearly completely occupied with organising the city's recovery, and Gimli cast a regretful glance up at the palace, two levels above them. Legolas was standing at the other end of the balcony, eyes fixed on the plain below as if he was watching for something he could not quite see, but at Gimli's words he turned, giving him a warm smile.

"What shall I tell you of?" he asked, and walked over to Gimli, dropping down gracefully into the chair next to Gimli's and turning in it slightly to face him."Tell me of the customs of your people," Gimli said, almost surprising even himself with those words. "Perhaps something about the Lady Galadriel, if you will."

Legolas looked as surprised as Gimli thought he would to hear that, but tilted his head and considered, his glance lighting on his bow, which had been laid down on the table nearby, then finally smiled. "I will tell you of Elvish bowstrings," he said at last. "Do you see what my bowstring is?" Gimli looked over, and then back up at Legolas.

"It is hair," he said.

"Yes," Legolas said, and there was a hint of something faint in his tone at that word, something significant that Gimli could not quite grasp.

"Whose hair?" he asked, feeling that in this fact lay the mystery. But Legolas waved a hand, almost dismissively. "It is my own, by this point. And yet your question is most appropriate, and leads me into my tale."

Legolas took a long breath and folded his legs underneath him, turning almost to face Gimli, who shifted himself as well, to meet Legolas' eyes and watch his expressive face and hands. 

"Long years ago," Legolas began, "before the peoples of the Elves were sundered from each other, we developed the art of the bow and arrow to hunt our food and defend ourselves. And we always strung our bows with hair, for no other material was so easily found and yet so perfect for the use. Over time, the tradition became that lovers or family would give each other locks of hair to use as bowstrings, as a token of affection. This expanded into various idioms and metaphors, so that eventually to ask for the hair from someone's head became a way of telling them you loved and desired them."

Gimli shifted uncomfortably. "Do you mean...?" he began, but Legolas raised a hand.

"Wait! I know what you are about to ask, but let me tell this tale in the right order, and then you will have the answer you wish for."

Gimli laid a hand over his breast, where in an inner pocket three strands of bright hair rested, but nodded, letting Legolas continue.

"In Valinor, so the tales say, was born Fëanor, greatest smith of the Noldor of old, forger of the Silmarils, and also his kinswoman, who you know as the Lady Galadriel. But her name was not Galadriel then, but rather Artanis, and she was the youngest and most beautiful of the House of Finwë, the ruling house of the Noldor. In her hair was caught the light of the Two Trees of Valinor, silver and gold."

Gimli watched as Legolas' hands gestured in the dim light. "Fëanor, one day, asked her for a tress of hair from her head, loudly and in public without care for the consequences, saying he would make a most beautiful gem that would capture the light of her hair within it. The tales, although they say he meant nothing improper by it, for they were close kin, and he was wed already, suggest that the linking of hair to desire arose within the mind of all who heard it, including Artanis'. It is true that Fëanor would have known very well of the implications of what he was saying, and it is also true that he simply did not care, for all his will was bent on fulfilling the desires of his craft. In any case, Artanis refused it. But Fëanor did not stop at that, and asked twice more, and twice more she refused him, ever more angry and cold toward him."

"She felt that he was pursuing his own desire without regard for her thoughts and feelings?" Gimli asked, pondering the ways of Elves, and the puzzle of their hearts. "I can see how that would go ill for him. One cannot work unwilling stone."

"As you say," Legolas said, and then continued. "And now to answer the question that I bade you not ask: you did not offend when you named your gift in Lorien, or she would not have given it. She knew well that unlike Fëanor, you did not know the implications of what you asked, and that you also meant nothing improper by it. But there is more than that to it."

"She asked me what I would do with such a gift," Gimli said. "And now I think I begin to understand why this was."

"Yes," Legolas said. "And you said that you would treasure it in memory of your meeting with her, and that it would be a symbol of goodwill between the Mountain and the Wood. You valued it not for what you could make from it, but for the memory of the one who gave it to you."

Gimli nodded. "Whereas Fëanor would have used her hair to make something beautiful that he would then call his own creation."

"Yes," Legolas said, and smiled with delight, reaching out his hand and placing it over Gimli's. Gimli glanced down at the fair hand of the Elf over his own, and then back up at Legolas' face. But Legolas continued speaking, just as if he had not stopped, his breath coming a little more quickly. "It is less the question that matters, more the intentions of the heart. For as we say, hair strings bows, but spirit fires arrows." Legolas abruptly stood up, taking a deep breath, and turned away from Gimli for a moment, staring out over the city.

"Legolas?" Gimli asked.

Silence fell between them for a few heartbeats. Then just as abruptly Legolas turned back again, dropping to his knees before Gimli.

"Might I," he said, and Gimli could see him twitching with repressed emotion, "beg of thee a tress of hair from thy head?"

The change in mood was so sudden that Gimli felt badly shaken. Within the space of a few minutes he had gone from having a pleasant conversation with a friend to hearing a lover's pleas.

"Are you...?" he started, and was utterly confused, almost too confused to finish the sentence, "...illustrating the method by which lovers ask for hair?"

"No!" Legolas said, eyes snapping up to meet Gimli's. Then he sighed. "Well, yes, but I am also asking you. I desire you, Gimli. I do not know how else to say it." He looked flustered, blushing prettily, hands clasped against his chest.

"Give me your knife," Gimli said, and without a word or gesture save a sudden hopeful widening of his eyes, Legolas handed it over.

Gimli pulled one of the longest tresses of his hair forward, and delicately severed it. There were at least ten hairs in it, carefully cut, and very long, easily long enough to string Legolas' bow. He lay the knife down on the table beside his chair and bent forward, close enough to Legolas' kneeling form that he could feel the little puffs of air the Elf was breathing out.

"You are the forge I always wish to work upon," Gimli said softly, handing across the hair to Legolas. "String your bow with me, and let me hammer at you, and we shall both be satisfied."

Legolas, taking the hair in his hand, pressed a kiss to it, before folding it up and placing it into an inner pocket of his tunic. Then he bent toward Gimli again, bright intent in his eyes.

Gimli was waiting for him.

In later years, he would say that kiss was the stuff of songs and poetry, but in the moment it was sweet and slow, a meeting of mouths, hesitant exploration. The smoothness of the Elf's beardless chin, the sweetness of his mouth, the tentative touch of his tongue to Gimli's, were all what Gimli would have liked to expect, if he had ever had any hope that his secret desires would be fulfilled.

He wanted to lick the Elf all over, wanted to probe into him and taste every part. Legolas moaned into his mouth, and at that, Gimli broke away, panting.

"To bed?" he asked hopefully. Legolas, seemingly speechless, nodded, and gave Gimli his hand, rising gracefully from where he was kneeling.Gimli had no memory of shedding their clothing, but it must have happened in fits and starts between long kisses that drugged his senses, and ever-increasing groping, for there both his and Legolas' clothes lay, in a mingled heap of the floor of Legolas' bedroom (chosen because it was the closest), and there they were, on Legolas' bed. Legolas sat against the headboard, legs spread, and Gimli knelt between them. They were roughly equal in height this way, close enough that their cocks could rub against each other in Gimli's broad hand, close enough that they could continue to kiss.

Legolas was flushed, gasping with every brush of Gimli against him. "I knew your beard would feel good," he said, "but ah! this is maddening." His hands stroked down the length of Gimli's back and came to rest on his buttocks, pulling him closer. "I love the feel of you against me." The whisper was hot, and Gimli pressed kisses and bites to his throat, worrying lightly at the pale skin of the Elf until the blood came to the surface. When he pulled back to see the effects of his handiwork, Legolas tipped his head back, and Gimli could see slight beard burn on the Elf's chest and throat.

He gave it a soft lick by way of apology, but the Elf's skin tasted so good that Gimli could not stop licking him. He bent down to lick at one of Legolas' nipples until it was hard, and then blew cool air over it as Legolas gasped and shivered in his arms.

"I want to taste you," he said, and shuffled backwards slightly so that Legolas could lie down.

Legolas smiled. "Taste me, touch me, have all you will of me," he breathed. His head landed on the pillow, and Gimli slid down his body to take his erection into his mouth.

Legolas by no means was a silent lover: he groaned like old stone, sang like sharp swords, and encouraged Gimli with words that were only sometimes in the Common Tongue, more often in flowing Elvish. Gimli could never get tired of licking him, lips curving over the head of his long, thin, pale, cock, so very much unlike his own very red, short, and stout member. He was easy to take into Gimli's mouth, and tasted faintly of salt and of his own particular body smell, so familiar to Gimli from months on the road, now much stronger.

After a few minutes, he felt Legolas' hand on his shoulder. "If you continue," Legolas said breathlessly, "this will be over ere long, and I would have you find your pleasure along with me."

"How do you wish it?" Gimli asked.

Legolas spread out his arms on the bed. "Hammer me," he said.

Gimli kissed him for that, then broke away with a grin. "So you think you can take my tool, Elf?" he said, and Legolas laughed.

"With proper preparation, I can take anything," he said. "You'll find I'm very pliable." He reached across to the bedside table, and handed Gimli a small bottle. "Linseed oil. I usually use it for oiling my bow." He raised a perfect eyebrow, and it was Gimli's turn to laugh.

"Someday I'd like to feel your bow firing arrows of desire inside me," Gimli said, giving Legolas' cock a good stroke with his oiled-up hand.

Legolas groaned, putting his hand to his head, and Gimli could not be certain if it was from sensation, rather than the pun. He smiled, brushing a quick kiss against the Elf's pale thigh.

Then he bent down, lifting Legolas by the thighs to probe between his buttocks. Legolas put his legs over Gimli's shoulders, raising himself up so that Gimli could lick him even there. He opened him like he had once spoken to Legolas of opening a vein of rock: a tap here and a touch there, slowly easing him open. He followed this up with a clever tongue pressing in, and then oiled fingers. Legolas sighed under him, arching upward, eager and welcoming.

Gimli could have taken all the time in the world to work Legolas open, to delve into him and hear the cries of ecstasy he made when Gimli's fingers encountered places in him that set his nerves singing, but for his own arousal, thrumming through him, too constant to ignore. He lowered Legolas back down carefully, an arm wrapped around his waist, and guided himself inside with his other hand, until they both groaned in unison, and their eyes met.

Legolas bent himself nearly double to kiss Gimli then, and Gimli reached for it, straining against Legolas, driving further into him.

Their mouths met and parted in time with Gimli's thrusts. Gimli would have wanted to pound into Legolas for half the night, to impress him with the steadiness and rigour of the Dwarves, but he found himself lost to sensation embarrassingly quickly, overwhelmed at the inarticulate cries Legolas made. His hips stuttered, his rhythm broke, and he hammered one final stroke into Legolas, then poured himself out into his heat, gasping breathlessly. Legolas was a mere stroke behind him, and Gimli felt more than saw his seed jetting out onto Gimli's belly and chest.

"Legolas," he muttered, unable to move for sated pleasure, and Legolas' arms came around him, easing him down to lie beside the Elf. Legolas pressed lazy kisses to his shoulder, stroked the sweat-damp hair from his face, smiled against his skin, while Gimli could do nothing but try to catch his breath.

Eventually he hooked an arm around Legolas' neck and drew him down, holding him close. "I'm thinking of taking up archery myself," he said, grinning. "I only lack a bowstring."

"If it is up to me," Legolas said, pressing a quick kiss to Gimli's mouth, "you will never want for them."

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