So the first part to this thing is sort of the backbone to the meat tbh.
It just felt weird putting it all in one chapter. o;

~scurries away~

oOo

When Thorin had first been met with the sight of an elf, he'd been but a lad with naught a hair on his face to call his own.

With his fingers strung tight against the coolness of the wall, and with his breathing forced short, he'd watch.

The elf had arrived into the long walkway of Erebor's mountain with a light of his own etched deep in his presence, smooth like linen against the coarse stone that brought him before the throne of Thror, so tall and so lithe, like a ghost of snow that came through the ice of winter, such outlandish a creature, but with skin as real as silver coins.

And Thorin would watch with a terrible shiver as the elf would tilt his golden head to the side—crowned with tall wooden splinters and with red berries twined—as threads of his long hair laxed like loose threads against the broadness and width of his shoulders.

So came the moment Thorin would come to learn the name Thranduil, last of elf kings, son of Oropher, and sole ruler of Mirkwood, as spoken by Thror and announced to the others.

And if sharp ears and freakish limbs and permanently hairless chins meant what an elf would be, then Thorin would deem them of far less worth than most things he'd seen, but be left a fool on the grounds that he could not possibly cease himself from staring.

And when finally his grandfather had stood on his feet after many long minutes of formal orations, Thorin had noticed with a hint of surprise that the elf and his stooges would indeed be taken to a great feast, a feat seldom practiced with those who were not at least dwarf-sons or kin.

Thorin thought quick to move from his hiding spot then, and placed himself instead in the shadows of the opposite hall where he would be able to see and to count each dwarf and each elf as they walked, one by one.

They strode through the lit shadows of the mountain with an assured confidence that Thorin could not understand, for their bodies seemed frail and malnourished, and their armor pathetic on the grounds that their castings could not possibly hold even the weight of an axe.

No furs and no malachite studs to show for their honor in battle nor for their winnings or glory, and no greatswords or wraps to show for their prowess on the weight of their backs.

So then why, Thorin thought, would Thror revel these creatures so readily, and why would he allow them a seat in dwarven repast?

He made himself small on his haunches against the cold steel of a basin, eyes now narrowed in spite, yet nearly lost the beat of his heart when the echoing sound of Thranduil's boots had nearly passed him, but suddenly stopped.

Thorin froze himself still, unable to move though he desperately willed himself to react.

Many of the elves, Thorin saw, seemed to have questioned their king, though each one had only received a subtle dismissal of Thranduil's hand until none but he and Thorin were left in the emptiness of the candle-lit hall.

Thorin's chest sunk quickly at the creeping suspicion that he'd finally been caught. He held his breath, hoping the drawn shadow of the basin would be sufficient enough to keep him well-enough masked.

"I know you're there," spoke Thranduil to him. "Don't be afraid."

And Thorin could have sworn on Mahal's great hammer that on that day he had heard the bones in him rattle to the echo of such a redoubtable voice. Deep and steady, like the great tide of an imminent storm.

And it was a storm, and its tide had surely been set, but it was Thorin himself who would stand utterly stricken in its stead.

"I'm not afraid," he told the elf.

"Then come out."

So Thorin did, with much reluctance in his legs, until he stood himself as tall as he could go before Thranduil's great height, a height which could indeed tower over him just enough to send a tremble down the length of his spine.

Thranduil, seeming well-pleased, stared him down from beneath the dark hood of his lashes, eyes as cold and as blue as the frost that caked the old northern mountains.

"It would take someone clever to sneak about the darkness of these corridors and fool away your absence," spoke Thranduil. "But you are not just someone. I would ask for your name as a guest in your home, if you would but bequeath me the knowledge."

It took Thorin—young as he was—a moment of grand difficulty to be able to once again figure the right words to respond, or any words at all, a shameful ode to the conjuring of his dwarven courage just so that maybe he could manage the webbed sounds of his name, and only just that.

"Thorin," he'd said.

And Thranduil did not come to mock him, nor did he jest, though the high arch in his brow prosed perfectly his arrant amusement.

"A fine name," Thranduil told him. "Strong, like the king you will make in the rule of this mountain."

Thorin watched, red-faced, as the elf tilted his head to the side almost as he had at the throne before simply leaving Thorin alone in the cavernous reel of Erebor's hall, weak at the knees and with a vegetal scent left in the air that would later swamp Thorin's dreams for the several years that would come quick to claim him.

oOo

When Thorin had first been met with his palm against the flat of his cock, it'd been to the thought of the elf king.

But it wasn't just once, and it wasn't just twice, it had been countless the times in which he'd spend to the wish of having his hands against the hairless white skin that had always repulsed him.

And it was only the thought of the elf (if not the continual thought of a maiden) that would drive him to soil his hand, but it was solely the thought of slipping inside him that left Thorin mad and heaving from the aftermath.

And with time, happenstance would tell him that perhaps his pleas as a dwarfling had somehow gone answered, for the heart of the mountain had been found and the stone would demand the payment of homage, no matter the price. No longer would Thorin see the elf only from behind the darkness of walls on the very seldom occasion, no longer would he look up at him as a weak and tongue-tied lad, but as Prince Under the Mountain and by the side of the throne next to his powerful grandfather, and with his father on the opposite side.

With enough years Thorin had grown into the proper bulk of a Durin, and with them, a growing thick beard, but not even with Thorin's newly fledged courage would he dare himself to approach Thranduil closely, nor would he dare to speak to him unless he had no other option.

He'd watch him, instead, in petrified silence, behind the flicker of candles or from the far side of carousing feasts, wary with timings, for if he wasn't, there would be those undeniable and heartrending moments that left him with Thranduil's brilliant blue eyes set on his.

And Thranduil would not look away even once, but rather bring his long fingers to the casual plucking of fruit and cull upon a single red berry to the pink of his lips, watching Thorin as Thorin watched him back while he spread his mouth open enough to place it inside. And Thorin would be left unwillingly stirred in his seat, shifting and swallowing and hoping to nothing that the hardening from in between his legs would simply end.

For it was the way that Thranduil's hair would fall from his shoulders like golden wine spilt that left the thought of him so unforgiving, skin so fair and with the smooth line of his neck discretely exposed like woven white velvet; legs full and distressingly shaped and with the seam of his lips drawn wretchedly wetted—

And even then the elf was also deathless, and he was also king, untouched by age or scarring, an ancient thing that had seen wars and death and maybe worse and lived so long to tell it.

And though his gaze alone mirrored the excess of his self-love and impudent grace, there was also the undeniable fret in the way he would stare through discussions that told silent stories of sorrows and heartbreak.

But Thorin would also come to know heartbreak as fate would intend, pain rooted deep from his young and foolish dream to have someday touched the flaxen strands of Thranduil's hair, for the elf was to come as always on a warm and sunlit hour on the day the dragon came.

oOo

When Thorin had first felt the retch of spite, a wicked scourge would first mark the sky.

From above, a hurricane had ripped through whirls of fire, and Thorin had roared a mighty roar of warning to his father and to all the others that a dragon indeed had come; and in the precise moment that Thorin had come to behold the scorch of death upon the bodies of several dwarves he'd come to know the names of, he'd learn firsthand the grief of loss.

Vast flames and searing squalls from wings so massive soon enveloped the mountain in ash and cindered carnage, and only the vicious snarling of the fire drake known as Smaug would fill the autumn breeze of the Lonely Mountain from that day on.

Many perished and few would live, and when Erebor had all but fallen, Thorin had rushed through in a helpless craze to look beyond the east where the great cliff lay, the cliff in which he knew the Silvan elves must only be, for the equinox had struck on that same hour and the sun had shone and there was a fealty to be paid.

And there were elves there, plenty aligned in saffron battalion with Thranduil on the back of an antlered beast to guide them, crowned high in wooden thorns and with his hair spilling down from his shoulders—lovely and lucid and timeless, last of elf kings—and so Thorin howled his harrowing plea with the screams of the burning marring sharp at his ears, frantic and raving, until at last Thranduil had met his eyes from so far above as he once had the day he'd caught him hiding from within the shadows of the mountain's stone halls.

And relief had almost crossed him—had almost claimed him—the moment the elf had inclined his golden head to the side.

But it was not to be as Thorin would have foolishly thought, for elves were frail and honorless creatures with no sense of valor nor courage nor pride, and of course they would have given their backs.

So Thorin could only just watch with blackened contempt awakened in the pit of his heart as the herd of them fled along into the wood of the drop like a flock of wounded rats, gone into the distance, never to be seen or heard of again.

And Thorin had cursed them from the very core of his lungs until he could no longer shout from the pain of his cries as he stood there amongst smoldering ruins, mad with rage and with his home left in crumbled remains, the blooded wound of betrayal pulsing raw in his chest as he looked all around him, to the torn bodies of his friends and to the charred bodies of babes, and to the sight of an entire kingdom flayed—

He cursed them.

Hated.

And he would never forget.

oOo