Work Text:
Elrond grins, and it’s sharp—the crack of a whip in still air.
"You're a wreck, Ereinion."
Gil-galad shivers as Elrond’s gaze rakes over him, clawing at his skin. What happened to you, he wants to ask, but his tongue lies pinned behind his teeth.
The half-elf clicks his tongue. "What happened to all that kingly composure?" Words thick as tree sap, eyes dark and careful. A snake in the garden.
This is not his Elrond.
"I-I'm—" Gil-galad stutters. "I never meant to—"
"Oh, but you did, didn't you, high king?"
Elrond turns toward him fully, cocksure grin collapsing into something brittle. Manic. His hair is long, Gil-galad suddenly notices—long like it had been when he had first come to court, twice-orphaned and war-hardened, but young. So young.
It falls over his shoulders, now, ink in clear water as he moves. "You were always terribly insecure, weren't you, gwinig?" Gil-galad flinches at the diminutive. "A boy king on a cursed throne. How old were you—fifty? Sixty?"
Fifty-eight. Most of those years a blur of fear and violence, fleeing refuge to refuge. Elrond wouldn't be born for decades.
"Yes, you loved flaunting those extra eighty years." The half-elf's movements are liquid as he crawls across the space between them, hair coiling against cobblestone. "Always so righteous—so justified, though you hadn't a clue what you were doing."
But by Varda, he is beautiful. Always an extraordinarily beautiful child, Maiar blood shining through his skin, his eyes—bright stars against the dark fabric of the universe. Gil-galad had always thought so, but he'd been so young—
"Oh, you liked that I was young, didn't you?" Elrond laughs fondly, plays with Gil-galad's collar. "Pervert.” Sharp nails prick his throat. “You loved having some poor soul younger and dumber than you to control, to groom."
Fingers slide down his chest, iron brands against the thin skin of Gil-galad’s clavicle. His eyes are dark in the low light. Black agates in wet sand.
His slim hand slides down Gil-galad’s chest, presses hard against his sternum. He tongues his lip—it’s split, Gil-galad realizes. Blood spills between his teeth as he grins. “I was a wet dream in leather armor.”
"N-no—" Gil-galad protests, drooling, slurring his words. His body is flushing hot and cold, and his robes are slick, wet with something too thick and tacky to be water.
Elrond leans close, breath scorching his ear. "You should have had him when you had the chance." Then he shoves him back hard, and Gil-galad falls—
—and lands, not on cobble but instead in the squelch of wet mud and grass. The air is suddenly humid, and it smells not like sea air but like swamp.
Elrond grins down at him, teeth too big and too white in his small pale face. "He would have let you." He’s pressing down, now, hips and hands—stones in loose mud. (Agates in wet sand.) "He was lonely enough. You knew his abandonment ran deep, knew he'd bend over and cry for it if you just asked—"
"Stop!" Gil-galad gasps, choking on thick air.
"Shh, shh, shh," Elrond shushes, cradling his face. His fingers are white-hot irons where they press into his cheeks, his temples, reshaping his bones. "Don't cry, my dove."
"What's happening?" he begs, because he knows this cannot be real and yet it does not quite feel as a dream. "Please—"
"Oh, gwinig." Elrond's voice turns tender. "Sweet thing. Look down."
Terrified, he does.
His core has been speared—one of Sauron’s terrible blades twisted between his ribs. Blood runs hot and dark beneath his armor, slick like oil in the mud. It burns, and Gil-galad gasps, and gasps, and gasps—
“Ereinion—” a voice whimpers above him, and he looks up to see Elrond— his Elrond, hair shorn short and curly, plastered to his temples with sweat and blood. His face is caked in filth, rain and mud, but his eyes glint in the darkness like cresting waves on a full moon night.
“Elrond,” he calls, nearly cries, and reaches out with trembling hands. “Vilya—take it, you must—!”
But Elrond recoils. He'd never liked the rings. "Ereinion..."
"There is no time." Though time may mean nothing here. He cannot remember how he arrived in the first place.
“Of course you don't remember,” Elrond voice cuts, and though the voice is soft, it chills Ereinion to the core—suddenly, deeply. “This hasn't happened yet.”
He blinks rapidly, tears blurring his vision, and the image of Elrond shudders; he fumbles to cling to him, despite everything.
"Please—" he begs, then grief and regret crash over him like stones. “I'm sorry,” he sobs, “I’m so sorry for everything, Elrond, I—”
"Shh." Elrond pushes back his mud-streaked hair. "Spare me your apologies, Ereinion. Save it for the real thing.”
Gil-galad parts his mouth, uncertain what he means to say.
He doesn't get the chance. Elrond grasps the blade piercing his chest and twists.