New Challenge: Epic 80s
This month's challenge features hundreds of fresh prompts from the bodacious decade of the 1980s.

Two years before the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, Húrin and Huor journey from Dor-lómin to Eithel Sirion for a war council with their new allies from the East. A story about the stirring of hope and foreshadowing of woe. Well-peppered with humour.

Sauron has taken Celebrimbor as a prisoner in Ost-in-Edhil. Whump happens.

Fingon returns to Barad Eithel after a late-autumn hunt, finding someone unexpected with his wife. The night takes an even more unexpected turn for all three of them.

A collection of NSFW ficlets for the "Keep It Clean" bingo card of the 2024 Potluck Bingo.

There is shame in it, scathing-hot and heavy. If Makalaurë is honest, that only makes it more of a delight.
Everything in Tirion is holy perfection, white-pure and immaculate. This is just the latest desire of breaking something open, of getting to watch how it bleeds over untainted marble.
Maitimo has been avoiding him. Makalaurë deduces why.

Second Age 3261: Sauron prepares to respond to Ar-Pharazon’s heralds. Maglor doesn’t know how he fits into Sauron's plans.

Blowjob diplomacy.

"Would it help,” Maedhros starts, his tone pensive and his fingers pressing more firmly against Maglor’s jaw. “Would it help if I did not forgive you as easily? If I punished you for what you did not, could not do?”
It takes a moment for Maglor to understand, Maedhros pushing images into his mind—of rope and chains and bruised skin, of pain and pleasure mingling without release.
It makes him shiver, the thrill quickly followed by shame hot enough that he wants to flinch from it.
Maglor is unable to let go of his guilt. Maedhros gets inventive about it.

“A pity,” Fingon says, and his grin looks only a little forced. “Will you dance with me regardless?”
Maedhros first instinct is to say no. Elbereth, he should say no. But he looks at Fingon with his flushed cheeks, the braids coming loose, the banked hope in his eyes. The way the slant of his mouth reveals that he expects a rejection, and how he asks regardless.
Maedhros has always been terrible at denying him anything. It is why he had put half a continent between them, why he knew that coming here was a mistake before he so much as left Himring’s walls.
Maedhros believes that Fingon deserves something better. Fingon disagrees.

His gaze, inevitably, is drawn back to Finrod, the marred beauty of him. It has not been Curufin who ruined him so—had not been Curufin who had dragged him out of Nargothrond and into the wolf’s den, who had let Finrod protect him with his life. And yet.
And yet it feels oddly fitting, that such a ruined thing should be Curufin’s.
Through careful manoeuvring and a few lucky coincidences, Curufin saves Finrod's life without having to admit to anything so humiliating as having emotions. Contrary to what one would expect, this does not make things all that much easier.
Alternatively: Curufin lies, Finrod lives, and somehow they do still manage to figure it out, for better or for worse.

As Númenor convulses in its death throws, Tar-Míriel converses with a friendly soul before she climbs the Meneltarma to her fate.

Maglor comes alive beneath it all the same; is not proud of the noise that makes it out of his throat and cannot bring himself to care, not even a little. He pushes closer, greedy suddenly, so greedy.
They used to do this often, in a time long past; back when the Trees still washed Aman in hallowed light, when their family had been its own world, without running brothers and mad fathers. Back when there were not yet cousins and mountains of guilt between them.
After Maglor loses the Gap, Maedhros offers comfort in the only way he still knows to.

Orcs: a treatise on dissection.

In that time before he had taken himself and his brothers East, taking Fingon back to his bed had been the last thing on his mind. After, in his cold fortress and alone with his thoughts, he had almost been grateful for it, for never having asked. As if this was something Fingon would still want—the ruined body, the betrayals like landmarks etched into it.
A sweltering summer day during the Long Peace, a cool lake, and a revelation; it is enough to bring back together what Maedhros thought lost.

“Show me your hand,” Maedhros says, once he seems satisfied. At Fingon’s frown, he rolls his eyes. “Your finger; you cut yourself before I got here.”
It hits Fingon like a punch. He had forgotten, the pain fading into the background, and now here Maedhros sits, alcohol and gauze in his naked lap because Fingon had cut himself on what was once, long ago, meant to be a betrothal gift.
He is sure that somewhere, some Vala is laughing at him.
In the wake of Fingolfin's death, Fingon's first instinct is to run East. It has been long years since Maedhros' arms meant comfort, and yet, at the end of it all, it may have been one of his better impulses.

Nimruzimir, a natural philosopher recently out of his apprenticeship, hardly considers himself very important to anyone, least of all his colleagues. When his strange, prophetic fits bring him to the attention of the High Priest, however, he may find that his existence is less superfluous than he had originally thought.

Lilóteo, the erstwhile Royal Physician of the Númenorean court, is waiting to be sacrificed when he receives a strange visitor.
Written for the prompt "And the Empire grows, the seeds of its glory, for every five tanks, plant a sentimental story" + manekimi's OC Death and Sauron or others

Ar-Pharazôn takes part in the first ceremony of the new Temple, and Zigûr is there to help him.

Bob and Nob, hobbit servants at the Prancing Pony, prank the famous tavern sign. Meanwhile, the people of Bree worry about minor threats - a dwarf sighting, a wolf's paw print, and the mysterious Rangers, while failing to notice the two extremely dangerous Nazgul who are sitting at the bar, drinking beer.

Maglor, who earned her place in Mirkwood serving in defense of the realm, has a plan for alleviating the queen's stress, and naturally it involves a great many jewels.

As Isildur and Elendil leave Númenor to the Falas, black clouds circle the island. A strange fortune teller makes her appearance in Tar-Míriel's garden, claiming she talks to the rain. A power Sauron does not possess.

Harad, Second Age. Tar-Ardamin's favourite dancer comes back to him.

Orodreth and Túrin's fascination with each other leads them to delight, and then to disaster.

It begins as a game, in their Tree-lit, happy youth: Touch my mind, and draw what I am thinking. Is it an apple, or a pear?
Fingon and Maedhros, thinking for and of each other.