So I was reading about all these stories of blacksmith Thorin pleasuring women in his youth (and my oh my some are really steamy!), and wondering how that would really work with all that thing about dwarves loving only once, in a realistic but still Tolkien-infused kind of canon.

And so here I come with a story of young Thorin discovering romance – but is it love?

I intended it to be a one-shot but since it seems I can't write things short there should be a chapter or two more, though the story shouldn't become a +100,000 words monster.

It's romance, so you can bet there's going to be some lovemaking. It's the first time I'm writing something like that, and I hope first that it works and second that I've calibrated it well enough for the rating. If not I'd love to post it to AO3 but now you need an invite...

The timeline is mostly from the LotR appendices, with a few tweakings because the dwarves I'm seeing in my mind are Peter Jackson's. So Thorin was twenty-four when Smaug entered Erebor, but Dwalin is about his age and Balin is older.

I'm still not a native speaker and still would welcome any kind of constructive criticism. I really don't know if I'm making this kind of present-tense writing/strict third person POV work and my eyes are crossing with all the times I wrote the word "and". Please let me know what you think!

-oOOOo-

Thorin son of Thráin son of Thrór reaches forty the day before they enter the town. There's nothing momentous in that. That makes him of age, but still very young for a Dwarf, and who cares; he's been on the roads since he was twenty-four, and in these sixteen years he's learned that a name can be a curse as well as an honour, that no heirloom holds a higher price than the bread of the next day, and that pride in one's craft is nothing if they don't let you work.

They're a band of ten Dwarves, among them Balin and Dwalin. These two Thorin calls friends; and he knows that in the eyes of his father they're still his guard, though Dwalin is but one year older than him and Balin not that experienced himself. Yet no one in this Dunland town could tell the ward from his guardians: they all have dirt ingrained deep in their nails and the crevices of their hands and the pores of their skin; their hoods are of rough homespun, and what leather they still wear is what a workman needs, and it's scraped and tattered and old; what metal still remains on their clothing has been picked back up a thousand times and carefully sewn back in place, a few more pieces lost each time. What weapons they have they keep mostly hidden, for fear of scaring their potential employers. The whole of them are here to find work: anything that will pay above what they need for their meals, clothing and some ale in the evenings. What they can save they'll take back to Thráin, who's trying to settle down and get a small forge going – how could he move as they do on the roads with Dis still so young, Thrór who sometimes won't hide his pride and other times will not curb his helpless greed, and Thráin's wife, maimed sixteen years ago and now so frail that Thorin all but knows while he's away she'll one day find her rest in the stone?

There's work in the town. The mines are in need of small stout dwarves who won't fear the dark and will know the good stone. Balin, small even for a dwarf, nimble and well-versed in gems lore, volunteers and takes with him most of the group. The town blacksmith asks for three workmen with strong arms to hammer at iron, nothing fancy and especially nothing crafty: he's the master and he's the one with the skill, and Thorin thinks it's all right because the wages are in coin and so he goes with Dwalin and another. They'll stay for one season, one year or maybe two, and then as always there will be rumours or jealously or they'll just have enough of it and go elsewhere.

The work is thankless – it always is. Dwarves are renowned for their dedication to their task and everyone expects them to keep at it as long as there's something to be done, so the days off are few and far between. Yet there's an inn and they find themselves there most evenings, each of them nursing one lonely pint of ale and earning a reputation of misers. They bring makeshift music instruments, a drum or a flute or a crude lute and they'll often sing, and then the Men will stop and listen. Thorin sings as often as the others and tries not to fall back to the sagas and great airs of his royal childhood, but he can't shake the sadness from his songs.

There's a girl who will serve them their pint more often than the others maids, and one day as she sets his ale in front of Thorin she calls him my Dwarf Prince. She's jesting, Thorin can hear the mirth in her voice, but when he looks up the smile doesn't reach her eyes, and he tries to discourage her by looking back down at his grimy hands.

The next evening she's back with his pint and she calls him that again, and again the evening after. So Thorin begins to hide more into the group of dwarves, and he sings less often and tries to remain inconspicuous, but he still goes to the inn in the evenings and watches her. She has her honour, this one; she's a maid, not a whore, and she'll swiftly discourage all the roaming hands, physically if needed. But it doesn't look like she is particularly regarded by her fellow Men, some girl alone in the world and already made hard. She's tall, of course, tall like a child of Men and Thorin couldn't say if she's taller or smaller than what her race is used to. Her hair is dark brown and her skin swarthy like most of her people, but there's something peculiar that Thorin notices: yellow-green eyes, clear with a darker ring of grey. He finds himself wondering if there's a gemstone somewhere that mirrors their colour, thinks of amber and some hues of cat's eye but decides finally that her eyes are too alien, never dwarvish, too earthy and vegetal in colour to be compared to a stone.

The next evening he sits alone with his pipe and when she sets the pint in front of him and still names him a prince, he catches her wrist and asks her why she calls him so. Why, he asks her, when they're all clothed the same, when he hasn't got a coin to his name – which is true, since everything will go to Thráin.

She looks down at him and now there's laughter in her eyes. It's the bearing, she tells him, the bearing and the setting himself apart and also the way he accessorises.

When his eyebrows shoot up she explains more. With a tilt of her chin she gestures to the bone beads at the end of his braids, their pattern matching the one of the leather on his wrists; and to the blue of the string holding the rest of his hair back, which indeed is the same hue as his hood. She says it's always discreet, never gaudy, but always there, and she never notices the same care in the other dwarves; that it looks like he was once used to choosing among a large wardrobe. She ends, laughing, by telling him that he might be a natural at princedom.

Then he smiles, too, and tells her that if that makes him a prince, then she's surely a princess. Because now that she's sitting in front of him him, he notices the same care and taste in her cheap adornments, a simple pendant on her throat that compliments her strange eyes, a thin but well-crafted line of embroidery along her tunic collar echoing the one on the waist of her skirt.

She laughs again and remains a moment with him, until she has to rise up and go back to another customer.

The sitting together soon becomes a habit. One month into it and Balin notices, and when, later in the night, they go back to their lodgings, he takes Thorin apart and asks him about it. Thorin raises an eyebrow and tells his friend that comradeship can be found in the strangest of places, to which Balin looks like he's about to shake his head – but he does not, only smiles a tight smile and goes to bed.

Two months into it and they've begun exchanging stories about their day of work. She'll tell him of her strangest customers and the peculiar mixtures they'll sometimes imbibe; he tells her of the most outrageous breaches of smith lore he sees his master commit. She soon sees that he's much more of a craftsman than his job asks for, and he sees that she has much more care for her fellow men than is healthy for an inn maid. Thorin tells himself that they're a gift to each other, total strangers able to listen to each other's woes and lift a bit of their daily sorrows. But he doesn't speak to her about anything else than his day, and shirks away when she tries to make him talk about older times.

They're three months into it when it first happens. For days, he's been doing the rough work for shaping a plough blade. Ploughs in these areas are spectacular work, made strong and large to be drawn by oxen and to upturn a deep, heavy earth. Thorin is proud of what he gives his master in the afternoon, and it's only to witness the blacksmith botch the finishing. The tempering is badly done: Thorin can see the colour in the iron, knows the temperature isn't right, sees the places where stresses remain. He tries to tell his master, but the latter only silences him with a curt word and an order to set himself at some other urgent work. When the blade is finished, Thorin looks over his shoulder and the weakness in the iron jumps to his eyes; he knows the blade will shatter, knows no dwarf blacksmith would ever think of selling such a misshapen thing. But the master sells it on the spot, and for a hefty price. It's only a plough, but that evening Thorin goes to the inn seething.

She's not here, he's told. She's on water duty, walking back and forth from the river carrying buckets for the baths. So he gets out in the warm summer twilight, finds her and wordlessly helps her. She notices, of course she notices how his lips are drawn thin, how his jaw is set and how his nostrils flare. So she finishes her chores and goes out again, takes him by the hand back to the riverside. They sit there while the night settles and he tells her everything, his horror at the mistreatment of iron making his blood boil again, and she's close to him, sets her hand on his shoulder, then the other on his thigh, talking to him in a soothing voice, trying to calm him, not really understanding, he thinks, why something about a plough should work him into such a state.

But her face is so close to his and her enlarged pupils make her eyes look dark; there's still a bit of pink showing on her lips even in the shadows, and he can feel her breath on his forehead.

And suddenly he finds himself kissing her lips, kissing them with a savage intensity, teeth clattering and strands of hair in the way, his tongue soon thrusting hard into her mouth. There's no tenderness and no care and no skill, he has never done this before, never even really thought of it, but there's urgency and madness and a want right now that needs to be quenched.

But her hands are in his hair, and his on her waist, and she's the one who unbuckles his breeches, and he trusses up her skirt, and there's skin there, his hands are everywhere and they don't even know what they're touching, but her hands are on his and then on his manhood and he's hard oh he's hard and she guides him inside. There's some resistance and she utters a small cry and then there's not and she's warm and she's wet and she's tight and she moves her hips in a broken rhythm that tells him of a desire matching his own, and he thrusts fast and strong and knows he won't last. She moans though he can tell she's trying to keep silent and so he raises his head and takes her mouth again into his and now it's him who groans; but she manages to crook herself down and her teeth are in his beard and how comes it's so enticing and now she's at his ear and her hands are at his nipples and he cups one of her breasts and kneads and fists her hair and then her breath hitches and she shudders violently and he know he's about to spill.

And in one last moves she extricates herself from under him and he comes on her skirt and ruins it, he thinks.

They lie side by side on the grass, one of her naked legs still across his naked thighs, and say nothing. Then she raises herself on her elbows to rise, and he stops her to kiss her again, slow and tender. He feels her smile into his mouth, then she breaks the kiss and sits up, snatches a handful of grass and tries to clean her clothes. He leans over the bank, scoops some water and cleans himself, and then they're both trying to make each other presentable. Finally they both stand, looking each other in the eye but still saying nothing. Then they kiss again, briefly, and part, her to her job at the inn and him to his bed. He can hear the other dwarves singing and realises that the night is young and all that happened took only some minutes – it feels like it was all the time in the world.

Of course he can't sleep that night. Dwarves only love once, or so it was told in the sagas of his childhood and in the chatter of the maids around a young prince – but Thorin hasn't been so sure in his years of exile. There has been precious little love to witness all around, and what the dwarves do on the road with each other isn't likely to be about it. He's found Dwalin, once, his trousers on his ankles and what is strange is that with him was another very male dwarf, and he could just glimpse some rutting and grinding, he thought, before he'd been spotted and everything had halted. Thorin had felt a short pang of jealously, feeling left out and abandoned by his only true friend. He'd asked Dwalin if that was really what he wanted, to bind himself for life to that unknown dwarf, not even of the people of Durin, and in a bound that would always remain secret – Thorin couldn't think of any saga, nor any maid tale, where the two lovers were male. Dwalin had looked at him in a strange sad way and told him that it wasn't at all about that, and there hadn't been a glimpse of that other dwarf afterwards.

So Thorin thinks about what just happened and his hands hovers and he wants to touch himself but he doesn't. Then he tells himself that he wouldn't know. That maybe he'll love only once but this is not it. They're only two strangers finding comfort in each other, and there's no love at all.

The next evening he enters the inn wondering what is going to happen – but it seems that it's only back to normal. She comes with a tankard and sits for a while, he tells her again of the plough and she tells him of a man named Olbel who drinks too much since he lost his right-hand thumb in a woodcutting accident. There's one thing, though: she sits beside him on the bench and not across the table; and he's only too aware of the warmth of her knee against his own. The next day is the same. They only see each other only at the inn, speak of innocent things and Thorin is never quite sure that the way they touch is more than casual or if it's his imagination that makes him see some intent in the contact of their legs or the way their hands nearly touch. He thinks of her in the night, still wanting to touch himself and he doesn't dare because he knows he will moan and wake the others. When he finally falls asleep he dreams of her – a torrid dream and when he wakes he knows he cried out because the others look at him in a strange way. Then he's back to the forge, then back at the inn, and the days stretch into weeks.

Then one late afternoon she's waiting for him in a recess near the forge. He sees her and follows to the backstreets and they nearly can't wait long enough to begin kissing. She stands her back to a wall and bends to him while he's standing on tiptoes and he's really surprised that it doesn't bother him. But then she lets herself slide down to a crouch and their fumbling hands can't work fast enough and he kneels before her and takes her fast and messy against the wall, until at the last moment, like the first time, she rises up and disengages herself and his cock is in her hand and that's when he comes.

It never becomes a routine, because he works hard in the day, she works hard in the evening and both are too tired for anything except sleeping at night. But they still manage to steal a few moments alone, on the river banks or in blind alleys and even once in her small chamber under the roof – there's a bed but they nearly break it and the noise it emits make them vow never to use the place again. Their trysts are mostly the same; he takes her wherever he can, quick and breathless and intense and mostly clothed, no time for exploration or talk, so wild and glorious he can't last long. And there are times when he thinks she doesn't take her pleasure, though he's certain that she matches his desire.

They still meet at the inn, still sit together when the press of customers recedes in the later hours. But now she'll even stay with him when the other dwarves are around. Dwalin is the first to include her in their talk – he's taken Thorin aside at the forge during one of their short rests, has looked into his eyes, smiled in a wistful sort of way, and wished him a measure of peace – and soon the rest of the dwarves take to her. She sings with them, not that Thorin thinks it such an improvement, though she has a nice sense of rhythm, listens to their tales and tells some of her own. After a while, some of the Men notice her mingling with dwarves and she's liked enough that they come nearby, at first listening and later adding stories. The evenings at the inn become warmer as the days outside become shorter and colder.

He certainly can't say they're strangers anymore. He knows her name – Sutho, with that "o" at the end that feels so foreign in a female name. He certainly doesn't try to teach her Khuzdul but he can see she has begun to notice what he can't help shouting in their lovemaking, so that there are a few words she recognises when one of the dwarves takes to cursing and then their eyes meet and it adds a strange sort of intimacy. But though he feels like he wants her and wants her all the time, he looks deep into his soul and doesn't see any wish to bind his life to her nor to build anything with her. Only to have her now by his side or, better, in his arms. Of course, he thinks, he's not in love with her.

It's a strange sort of peace, he tells Dwalin, but it's peace nonetheless.