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Celegorm came to him on the second night of Dior’s captivity.
Dior hadn’t slept well. They’d given him the highest chamber of this lonely watchtower on the border of Amon Ereb. It was comfortable enough, with a rag rug and a low wide bed — the Fëanorians had been sleeping here before, but on the first night Curufin had announced that Dior was to have it. “Let it not be said that the Sons of Fëanor are poor hosts,” he had said, and smiled that mockingly courteous smile.
So Dior was comfortable enough, or moreso than he would be in a dungeon. But he hadn’t slept well. The bruises of his capture ached, and wariness kept him alert. Curufin might say that Dior was merely a hostage to trade for Grandfather’s Silmaril, and maybe he even meant it, but Dior knew well enough that to be a prisoner was not to be safe. Even his mother, daughter of Melian and Elu Thingol, hadn’t been safe.
That second night, he was tired, but still awake. The only window in the chamber was an arrow-slit, facing north. It wasn’t wide enough to get through – his shoulders could fit, if he turned sideways, but his head wouldn’t; he’d tested that thoroughly today. There hadn’t even been any glass in it he could break for a blade. So he stood at the arrow-slit, breathing in the fresh air, gazing north across the verdant plains painted silver by moonlight, wondering how much further it was to the borders of Doriath. In the encampment at the foot of the tower, a handful of Noldor drank and made merry around a campfire, some of Curufin and Celegorm’s followers. They’d been a cheerful bunch ever since their lords had come riding in with Dior slung over Celegorm’s saddle-horn.
How much he had shamed his family already, in that failure.
He didn’t hear footsteps approaching. (He hadn’t heard Celegorm in Ossiriand, either, until it was too late to run.) There was no warning. There was just the door opening.
“Trying to fly away, little nightingale?”
Dior spun around, fists clenched. Celegorm stood in the doorway. His eyes gleamed like Grandfather’s in the dimness, but where the light in Grandfather’s eyes showed his wisdom, the glint in Celegorm’s eyes seemed somehow fey. His cheeks were flushed, and he wore a feral smile.
“I wouldn’t,” Celegorm went on. He stepped inside and kicked the door shut behind him. “It’s a long way down, and most of our healers burned in the Bragollach. Will your grandfather want you back as a cripple, I wonder?”
“Better that than to sit obediently in a cell,” Dior retorted. “Or do princes of the Noldor make polite conversation with their kidnappers?”
Celegorm shrugged. “Your mother did. Luthien Tinuviel! You’re only a shadow of her, aren’t you? We gave her Finrod’s chambers, to honour her, and she sat at the loom we brought her and made pretty conversation. Then she took Huan. You can thank Curvo for putting you up here; if I had my way, you’d be down in the cellars. We still have holding cells down there. It would only be fair payback for what your father did to my cousin.”
“My father?” Dior demanded, with a hot rush of rage. “My parents buried King Finrod’s body with honour, after you usurped his throne and sent him against the Enemy, and now you dare to blame that on my father?”
His voice nearly cracked. He had seen in the grief in his father’s eyes so often, heard the story about the golden king who had fought so valiantly against Sauron. Who had died in a dungeon, safeguarding Beren with the last of his strength, when he might have lived, if Celegorm –
Celegorm moved like the Adurant in spate, crossing the space between them in three swift strides and slamming Dior up against the wall. “My cousin,” he breathed in Dior’s ear, “died naked in the dark, under a werewolf’s teeth, for your father’s sake. Because Beren wanted a Silmaril, and he knew that Finrod’s oath compelled him, and even when he knew he was leading Finrod to his death he would not release him.”
Dior punched him in the face.
Pain burst through his hand. Dior barely cared. He swung again at Celegorm, who was stumbling back. Again and again, for everything the elf before him had done to his family, to Dior’s mother and father, to his own cousin –
Celegorm recovered himself swiftly and lunged, and then they were grappling as they had on the banks of the Gelion. Celegorm was older and stronger, perhaps even as fast as Father, but he wasn’t unbeatable. Dior landed several blows, took one in return that snapped his head back, and nearly clawed one of Celegorm’s eyes out before Celegorm caught his wrists, laughing with delight, and forced him down on his back.
“You’ve your mother’s fire,” he said breathlessly. It seemed to be a genuine compliment. Dior bared his teeth at him. Celegorm’s smile grew broader. “She and I would have been well-matched, you know. Perhaps you and I will be as well.”
“Give me a sword and you will see how well we are matched,” Dior hissed.
Celegorm let out a burst of laughter. “I might take you up on that later, little hawk.” He leaned forwards, putting his weight on Dior’s wrists. His body was a solid weight, heavy and corded with muscle, and warm through Dior’s thin shirt. Celegorm pushed a knee between Dior’s thighs and lay deliberately on top of him, and Dior felt a strange stiffness pressing against his belly. “I should like to try you with a blade. But before that – ” His hips moved oddly, grinding their bodies together. “—I’ll take what your family owes me.”
Then he pushed their mouths together, warm and shocking.
For a moment, Dior was too stunned to react. He was a man, and Celegorm was a man, and Dior had just struck him, he didn’t understand – Then Celegorm nipped his lip, licking at the seam of Dior’s mouth, and Dior bit him.
Celegorm snarled into his mouth, and Dior bit down harder, hot with shock and fury and realisation. He dug his heels into the floor and tried to buck Celegorm off, kicking hard. It almost worked; Celegorm reared back, and Dior felt a moment of triumph at the sight of the blood on his mouth. He yanked on his hands, tried to twist out of the hold while the other elf was unbalanced, but Celegorm rode out the movement like Dior was an unruly horse and shoved him down again, forcing Dior’s wrists above his head.
“Yield and this will go easier for you.”
“I will not yield to a craven kinslayer who would have wed my mother against her will,” Dior snapped. How would that even be possible? They were both men. Was Celegorm’s depravity so great that he had forgotten that?
“You may stop me, if you can,” Celegorm said, amused. “You’d have earned it. It’s been too long since I had a proper fight.”
And so saying he pinned both of Dior’s wrists with one hand, and with the other seized his hair and smashed his head down against the flagstones.
Stars burst in Dior’s vision. He was vaguely aware of Celegorm’s weight rising off him, and he tried to roll away, but his limbs seemed too heavy. The world wavered around him. He felt himself hauled to his feet and dragged stumbling across the room, to be thrown down on a soft surface with another sickening burst of pain. Silver flashed in the moonlight, metal pressed cold against Dior’s belly. The shirt his mother had woven tugged against his back and ripped open down the front, exposing his chest to the cool night air.
By the time his head had cleared, his breeches had been cut away as well, and Celegorm was straddling his thighs with one hand fisted in Dior’s hair, his knuckles digging into the sore spot. Dior grabbed clumsily at his wrist, trying to yank that hand away.
And then he froze as Celegorm’s other hand was shoved between his thighs, and Dior had barely half a thought to notice how horribly sensitive he was there without his breeches before Celegorm was pulling his hand up, his fingers weirdly slick, and tracing over his, his stones before his fingers slid into the cleft of Dior’s buttocks and pushed.
Dior meant to snarl, but it left his throat as a howl. Celegorm’s fingers – finger? It had to be more than one, it felt so huge – were inside him, in a place that nobody should ever have touched. It was filthy. The sheer obscenity froze him in place.
And yet Celegorm clearly didn’t find it unthinkable in the slightest. He curled his fingers and spread them with the ease of someone who knew what he was doing. As though he had done this before, and…and this was how Celegorm meant to force him, then. It wasn’t impossible.
Cold fear washed away Dior’s fury.
“Done fighting?” Celegorm asked. He withdrew his fingers with a wet sound and wiped them on Dior’s hip, pushing his face into the blankets and parting his thighs with a knee. “I didn’t think I hit you that hard.”
“Morgoth take you,” Dior rasped.
Celegorm laughed. “Perhaps he will. But not before you have.”
And then something hot and hard pressed between Dior’s buttocks, and his breath caught in his throat.
I will not yield,, he had said, but his body yielded. Despite his best efforts, it allowed Celegorm in. His cock entered slowly, all the more agonising for how agonising it wasn’t. Celegorm was stretching him wide, carving out a place for himself in Dior’s body, making a, a woman of him and it didn’t even hurt.
Horror choked him. He lay under his enemy, the monster of his childhood stories, while the monster violated him, and the violation didn’t hurt. It should have been excruciating, it should have been worse than any pain he had ever known, and instead it was only a strange stretch that Dior couldn’t fool himself was any more than the strain of a muscle forced to work past what it was used to.
And then it got worse.
As Celegorm pushed deeper, he nudged something in Dior that sent shivers through him. It was a strange, intense feeling, one that made him feel oddly warm. It made the horrible intrusion of Celegorm’s cock seem almost bearable.
It felt good.
“No,” Dior breathed.
“Begging now, little hawk?” Celegorm grunted, and shoved himself in to the hilt.
That hurt, a sharp too-deep spearing that punched the air out of Dior’s lungs. He managed not to scream. He had a wild thought that if he could at least not scream, he could cling on to something of himself, some shred of dignity that Celegorm wanted to strip from him. He clung to the pain and bit back the sound he wanted to make when Celegorm pulled back – and then he was pushing in again, and the second time it hurt less.
It was nothing like the few uncertain daydreams Dior had entertained of marriage, of taking his wife to bed and discovering the secrets of that greatest compact. Celegorm took him like a stag mounting a hind, from the back, pulling Dior’s hips up so he could move with greater force. It was brutal and frantic, and with every moment of it Dior’s body felt more alive.
And his cock was swelling.
Dior had never before wanted to claw off a part of his own body. He settled for clawing at Celegorm’s hand in his hair, prying at the fingers, digging his nails in. Celegorm’s grip was like iron, but if Dior could just break his hold, get his head free, maybe even break Celegorm’s fingers, then he could end this. He had to.
Sweat was trickling down his back. His vision had gone hazy with tears. His cock was harder than it had ever been in his life. Dior bit his tongue against the groan that wanted to come out and threw everything he had into prising Celegorm’s thumb away.
Abruptly, Celegorm released his hair and crouched low over him, his chest pressing against Dior’s back. Dior could feel the corded muscle under his skin, the long hard ridges that must have been scars. Celegorm’s hair fell past his shoulder like a curtain, gleaming in the moonlight. Celegorm’s forearm was braced on the blankets.
Dior pitched himself forwards and sank his teeth into it.
Celegorm’s snarl ripped wolflike through his ears. It meant success. Dior bit down harder, chewing as though the arm was a tough hunk of bread. Things squashed and rolled nauseatingly beneath his teeth, and then he felt something give way. An unfamiliar taste flooded his mouth, and he knew it was blood. Nausea mingled with triumph.
Then Celegorm bit him in return. His teeth, feeling too long for an elf’s, pierced Dior’s neck between the ear and the shoulder. His tongue was worse, warm and wet on the skin. Dior muffled the sound he made in the meat of Celegorm’s forearm and chewed again, as hard as he could.
Celegorm went rigid. He growled something into Dior’s neck, his hips jerking in savage little thrusts, and there was something warm inside Dior –
“Fuck,” Celegorm mumbled. He licked the wound he had left in Dior’s neck, tongue dragging over the torn skin, then draped himself over Dior’s back and nuzzled into his hair. His free hand slid beneath them, between their tangled legs, and closed around Dior’s still-hard cock.
Dior bit harder – Celegorm hissed – and pulled away sharply. “Don’t touch me!”
Was that his voice, so high and frantic? It couldn’t be, could it?
“If you like,” Celegorm said easily, and let go to wrap his arm around Dior’s waist instead. He rolled them both sideways with careless ease, then settled down behind Dior, sighed in evident satisfaction, and nuzzled Dior’s hair again. Like Dior was his lover, instead of his prisoner; like Dior didn’t have Celegorm’s blood on his teeth. Like it was normal to show affection to someone he’d violated.
Perhaps it was, for him.
Somehow, that was almost as bad as the violation had been. Dior swallowed and shoved at Celegorm’s forearm with trembling hands. His limbs felt like they were made of water, but he couldn’t…he couldn’t lie here with the one who’d just forced him, he couldn’t bear the intimacy, he needed to be away…
There were footsteps on the stairs outside.
Dior abruptly remembered that he and Celegorm weren’t alone in the tower. There was a watch posted on the roof, which must be changing now, and more rooms below, and the camp; there must be a hundred Noldor in and about the tower, and if one of them came in – to bring food, to bring to bring drink, to be sure Dior had not managed to dash his own brains out on the wall – they would see him, and Celegorm. They would see the wreck Dior had been reduced to, and they would know.
“Elbereth Gilthoniel,” he breathed through bloodied lips, and then continued the prayer silently, staring at the blank stone wall. Star-Kindler, let it only be the changing of the guard. Ward me from their sight, please, be with me in this moment.
And then, like a nightmare, the footsteps slowed, and the door creaked open.
“Are you quite done with him?”
Curufin’s voice doused Dior like a bucket of icewater. There was nobody he wanted to see less. For a moment he flinched, shrinking in on himself as if he might hide behind Celegorm’s bulk – and then the words penetrated, and he went still.
Curufin knew.
Not because he’d just found out. Curufin had been poisonously polite from the start, but Dior had never been deluded that the other saw him as anything more than a bargaining chip. But he might still have been outraged to find that bargaining chip devalued, and instead his voice held acerbic irritation and an utter lack of surprise.
He knew. He’d known all along. He had known from the start what Celegorm intended. He had known what Celegorm was doing while it happened, and hadn’t bothered to stop it, as though his brother violating a hostage was a trivial nuisance. And if Curufin had known, did all the Noldor? Were all of them laughing now, pleased to think that one of their lords had defiled Thingol’s grandson?
“For now,” Celegorm said sleepily, oblivious to Dior’s turmoil. His arm tightened around Dior’s chest, pulling him back onto Celegorm’s softening cock. Dior gritted his teeth against the feeling, and jerked away when Celegorm sought to press his lips against his temple. Celegorm only laughed. “Easy, little hawk.”
Curufin came around the foot of the bed. Unlike Celegorm, he might have been dressed for high court, every pin and buckle in place. He studied them both with narrow eyes, then casually reached out and touched the bite on Dior’s neck.
Celegorm snorted. “I know, I know. You wanted him intact to trade.”
Curufin shrugged. “Broken will work well enough. Better, if it makes his mother more eager to get him out of our hands swiftly.”
I’m not broken, Dior wanted to say, but he didn’t think he could get the words out under Curufin’s piercing gaze. He swallowed, and in a shaking voice, managed to say, “So this is what passes for honour among the Noldor.”
Curufin’s eyes glittered. “It seems we both harboured unmet expectations,” he says smoothly. “I, for one, always thought the line of Beren ate no flesh.” He cast a pointed look at Dior’s lips.
That –
There was no reason for the rush of shame that Dior felt. Celegorm had violated him; there was no sin in how he had fought back. But he was abruptly aware that a shred of Celegorm’s skin had lodged in his teeth, and the disgust overtook him worse than the feeling of Celegorm’s cock inside him.
“You have good taste, at least,” Curufin was saying over his head. His voice had turned appraising, and now it lowered. “Very good taste.”
There was a moment of silence. Dior felt a prickle under his skin, and looked up to find Curufin and Celegorm staring at each other, locked in some unspoken communication. Curufin’s eyes were intent, and very dark. There was a considering twist at the corner of his mouth, a furrow between his eyebrows. Dior couldn’t see enough of Celegorm’s expression to read it.
But he felt it when Celegorm began to harden again inside him.
“Do you want him?” Celegorm asked roughly.
“More than I did before,” Curufin replied. His eyes roamed Dior’s skin. “He’s far more tolerable like this.”
“Do you want to share him?” Celegorm pressed.
Curufin smiled.
“What?” Dior whispered.
Neither of them answered him. Curufin raised his hands to the fastenings of his clothes, and Dior tried to yank away from Celegorm. “No,” he said unsteadily. “No.”
Both of them ignored him. Celegorm caught his wrists and pinned them to the mattress, ignoring Dior’s struggles in a way completely at odds with how he’d seemed to enjoy them before. Curufin disrobed methodically, draping each garment over the back of the chair, as though the idea of sharing Dior made perfect sense to him. Dior couldn’t imagine what that even meant, unless they both meant to force themselves inside him at once, and that couldn’t be possible, surely?
“How do you mean to claim your ransom if you tear me apart?” he blurted.
Curufin laughed, laying his braies over the rest of his clothes. It was a wild, terrible laugh, and Dior shuddered at it. “Oh, nightingale,” he said. “Your body can take more than you reckon. But have no fear.” He leaned over the bed, reaching for something behind Celegorm, and his voice turned mocking. “That’s not what we want of you.”
He straightened up with a small earthenware flask in hand. It was stoppered, but Curufin flicked the cork out with a thumb and poured the contents into his palm. It gleamed yellow in the candlelight as he spread it over his fingers, some kind of oil. He put the flask on the table, then set one heel on the bed and reached between his legs.
Celegorm grunted like he’d been punched. “Curvo.”
“Tyelko,” Curufin replied. He flattened his free hand on the blankets to steady himself. Dior snapped at it, and Celegorm let go of one of his wrists to yank him back by the throat. Curufin ignored both of them, his eyes closing slowly as one, then two of his fingers vanished inside him. From his position, Dior could see everything; the way Curufin’s rim stretched around his fingers, the rapid stiffening of his cock, the oil glistening as it trickled down the inside of his thigh. He closed his eyes, but the sight might as well have branded itself on the inside of his eyelids.
And then an oily hand closed around his half-hard cock, and Dior shouted in shock. His eyes flew open. Curufin was leaning over him, a horrible sly smile on his face. Dior tried to recoil, but there was nowhere to go, and the attempt only pushed him back onto Celegorm’s cock. He grabbed at Curufin’s hand, but Celegorm caught his wrist again and held him still so that Curufin could stroke his cock, a slick slide that only felt straightforwardly, sickeningly good.
Dior tried desperately to fight it, but his body would not listen to him. It roused for Curufin as it had for Celegorm, under that hideously careful touch. Curufin touched him in ways that Dior had never dreamed of – a firm tight stroke, yes, but then a twist of his wrist, his thumb flicking at the spot under the head. His body answered. His cock hardened eagerly in Curufin’s hand, as Dior screamed silently at it to stop.
“No,” he heard himself pleading. “No.”
“You really are much more tolerable like this,” Curufin murmured. “Tyelko.”
Celegorm groaned. The next moment he rolled himself and Dior both, so that Dior found himself lying on Celegorm’s chest, staring up at the ceiling. Curufin climbed over to straddle them both, leaning forward to brace himself with one hand on Dior’s chest while with the other he reached between their bodies and guided Dior’s cock to his entrance.
Dior thought fleetingly of Nimloth. He had met her last year, in his grandfather’s court, and had looked forward to meeting her again in the summer. She had a ready laugh and she liked to whistle in concert with the songbirds that flocked about Menegroth, and Dior had started to think about courting her. Had wondered, briefly and privately, what the wedding night might be like.
Curufin sank down on him, and all those dreams blew apart into smoke.
There was nothing holy here, nothing tender. It was sweat and skin and fingers digging into straining flesh, the act of love reduced to bestial coupling. It was conquest wrought in miniature with Dior’s body as the map.
And Dior was complicit.
Curufin was tight and hot inside, a more intense pleasure than even his hand had been. Dior’s hips pressed up before he could stop them, his flesh straining for more, and Curufin let out a breathy laugh as he sat all the way down. His weight settled on Dior’s hips, pinning him against Celegorm.
He would never forget this, Dior knew distantly. If he ever married, this would always lie between them: Curufin astride him, his eyes shining with Treelight and madness, and Dior’s cock inside him.
He had already lost, and yet he could not bring himself to yield. When Curufin leaned forward, Dior summoned all his strength and spat at him.
The flicker of disgust that crossed Curufin’s face was a paltry reward, even before the blow to the face that snapped his head back against Celegorm’s, bringing his headache throbbing back to the fore. Dior felt Celegorm’s laugh as much as he heard it, in the way that the monster’s broad chest moved under him, and Curufin’s frown deepened. He hissed something in Quenya as he leaned forwards, flattening his hands on Dior’s shoulders, and Celegorm responded in kind.
And then they were moving. Celegorm’s hips bucked, forcing Dior up into Curufin, and Curufin rode the movement easily – and then his weight came back down, at an angle, bearing Dior back onto Celegorm’s cock. Dior bit the inside of his cheek to keep from screaming.
Pleasure took him like a storm flood. Curufin’s face swam above the haze of it, his shining eyes fixed not on Dior’s face but on a point above and to the left of it, where Celegorm’s breath warmed the back of his ear. They whispered words to each other, Curufin’s voice a low murmur, Celegorm’s a choked gasp, but Dior could barely hear them over the rush of blood in his ears, his own rough breathing as he struggled against the inexorable pleasure. If his body could only listen to him in this…
It didn’t.
He climaxed with his teeth sunk so far into his lip that he tasted blood again, helpless and horrified and overmatched. Celegorm groaned underneath him, hips stuttering in an effort to thrust at a rate that Curufin declined to accommodate. The rhythm between them broke down, and a moment later Dior felt the now-familiar warmth spreading inside him.
Curufin hissed through his teeth. Dior watched through a haze of tears as the other Fëanorian leaned forwards, his eyes narrowing to slits, bracing himself with one hand as he lifted the other away. He pumped himself rapidly for a handful of heartbeats, and then spilled onto Dior’s belly with a sigh. His eyes travelled lazily over Dior’s face, and whatever he saw there brought a smirk to his lips.
He was as inclined to closeness afterwards as Celegorm was, if not quite as heavy.
Finally, Curufin rolled over enough that Dior could squirm free. He slid out from under Celegorm’s arm and pulled himself out of bed, stumbling like a newborn foal on legs that wobbled unexpectedly, like he really was the weakling they thought him. Dior caught at the wall to steady himself, and bit his lip against the feeling between his legs.
He felt Celegorm’s attention settle on him again. He couldn’t bear to look at the older elf’s face. Instead he made his way to the window, leaning against the wall. There was no glass left in the frame; he curled his fingers around the remains of the lead and put his head out.
Dawn was coming. Outside, the sky had turned grey with the approaching daylight, and the Noldor revellers had ceased their merriment and retreated to their beds. The camp at the foot of the tower was quiet, but for an opportunistic nightingale investigating the firepit.
It was peaceful. Normal. Somewhere to the southeast, his mother and father would soon be waking on Tol Galen, his father kissing his mother good-morning before going to start the fire. Somewhere to the northwest, his grandfather would soon be preparing to hold court, while his grandmother held her wards against the Enemy, and Nimloth whistled in tune to the dawn chorus. None of them guessing that Dior had…that Dior…
His mother would have escaped even now, he thought blankly. His mother had escaped Hirilorn, escaped Nargothrond, had defeated Sauron in the seat of his power, had walked into Angband and escaped even that. His mother would have asked the stones to part, or called on the mice and sparrows to aid her. His mother would have found her way to her Beren, even now.
Dior was not his mother.
Despair was as bitter as longing in his throat. Dior closed his eyes, and in a wild spasm of self-loathing he gripped the sill and pitched himself forwards.
His shoulders cleared the space easily. He fell out into empty air.
Someone behind him shouted. Dior cried out, and heard a hawk shriek nearby. He threw out his arms, grasping at nothing, and the air caught him and held him up.
Dior stared in shock.
His arms were wings. His fingers were blue-grey feathers, catching the morning breeze like it was a fluid thing. He beat them and they sent him flying forwards, over the camp and the palisade around it. He could feel the power in his chest as his weight settled into his shoulders. His feet were curled yellow talons beneath a streaked russet belly. He shouted again, and it left his throat as a sparrowhawk’s clear cry.
He dipped one wing and spun in the air, as easily as dancing. Celegorm was standing at the arrow-slit, his eyes wide in shock. The arrow-slit was not so wide, not for one of the hawks that chased sparrows through Doriath’s branches and wove through every narrow space with fierce grace, and Celegorm’s Light-touched eyes would be such an easy target for Dior’s new talons…
To the east, a cloud lit gold with oncoming dawn. It flashed off the distant bright ribbon of the Gelion. His mother and father would be waiting in that river’s tributary, and far to the northwest was his grandparents’ realm where sparrowhawks flew freely through the trees.
Dior met Celegorm’s eyes. Then he tilted his wings and rode the morning breeze up, up, above the roof, above the bleary-eyed night-watchmen and the red pennant snapping from the battlements, up into the clean cool air, and turned east, toward the river.
Let Celegorm come find him again. Let both of them come. Dior would have a sword in his hand, the next time, and things would go very differently, even if Dior had to die himself to see it done.