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Fili received his first collar at his coming-of-age ceremony. It was put around his throat by Thorin and it was meant to symbolise his eternal marriage to the people he would one day rule.
It was made out of a thick band of solid gold; it had to be welded in place, but Fili obediently gathered his hair at the back and held it out of the way, head submissively bent low, as a thick piece of leather was slipped under it to prevent injury, constricting his breathing for a time, and his own bonds were securely, permanently fastened in place.
He felt proud in that moment, privileged even, to have been so visibly marked out as a servant to his people.
Kili hated the thing.
For several years he stubbornly tried to break Fili free, using some more covert or overt methods in what surely had to be more than just a childish rebellion at having lost the exclusivity on his brother and best friend, but was just as stubbornly dismissed as such by others.
“It humbles me,” Fili whispered one night in the darkness, “and reminds me that my life is not my own. I give it all willingly. It helps me –“ he stumbled, as fingers stopped on his neck and refused to touch the metal – “stay in control. I need it, I need to be collared to know -”
He didn’t finish. Didn’t quite have the right words back then.
That I am needed.
That I am restrained to the purpose I pledged myself to.
That I cannot be selfish in what I desire.
Kili stopped after that, and perhaps the fact that Kili would accept it because it was a choice, should have been a clue for Fili.
Let it never be said that dwarves were secretive people. To those who knew how to read them, they were like an open book, honest about their declarations of who they were and what they stood for. The collars were perhaps but one such symbol, as serious and public a declaration as was possible.
What they symbolised was bonds of any and all kinds: common in marriages and unions, among those wed to their craft, between some of the guilds and people of station. And beyond that: any situation where one might offer up some of their freedom, some of themselves, could be signified with a fastening of a collar: close friends might exchange them, or when one owed another their life or good health, they might present their neck for a collar.
To put one on without consent was seen as the greatest sacrilege possible. Dwarves didn’t have slaves.
And they were permanent. A collar once put on was never removed; it was a commitment for life, as enduring for dwarves as the very rocks from which their Maker had fashioned them.
Had the forces of evil forged seven collars instead of seven rings, the fate of the world might have been entirely different.
Fili ripped his collar off after twelve years.
One day, in a filthy settlement of men called Laketown, he’d looked into Thorin’s eyes and saw that he truly meant to leave his brother behind to fend for himself. The night before he’d heard the empty promises offered to simple, desperate people, which he knew his uncle had no intention of ever fulfilling.
He saw the gold lust, and that very same gold sat around his own neck, giving Thorin power and agency to control Fili, force his actions and demand the unthinkable of him.
This was not the dwarf Fili had once admired.
This was not the dwarf Fili would give his life to.
He clawed at the metal, but even the considerable strength of a young dwarf could do nothing more than bend it out of shape.
He saw a flash of triumph in his uncle’s eyes and reached for the knife.
It cut the skin first; the blade dug into flesh narrowly missing the very veins that carried his life, and perhaps it was fitting that he’d pay in blood for ruining himself with this simple action, forever to be known as the ‘honour-broken’.
But the blade also served as a wedge, against which Fili could press the metal, force a weak spot into its structure. He dropped the knife, gasped, wriggled the gold band this way and that with fingers slippery from gushing blood.
Finally, the heavy metal clanked loudly against the wooden boards of the walkway in a declaration more resounding than any words. Around them, the company gasped in horror, frozen in their places as they watched the grim spectacle.
Fili swayed, pressed his hand to his neck to try and stop the bleeding, but remained upright.
“I belong with my brother,” he said, and turned his back on his king, his birth right and the madness that shrouded it all.
Later, many years later, Fili would think that he got it wrong. “I belong to my brother,” would have been the truth.
Fili received his second collar in a small, cozy room in an inn in Gondor.
It was soft, supple leather, with a buckle made out of silver instead of gold, like Kili himself was silver, and a simple rune-symbol of his brother etched deep into it.
This collar would never again cause someone to try to take Fili’s head off to remove it from his body.
This collar would never cause Fili to take a knife to himself.
But it was also quality work, with all the edges sealed to prevent any chafing, and subtly-smelling oils rubbed into it to keep it in prime condition. There was no way Kili made it on the road; instead, he must have travelled with it, Fili realised, must have kept it somehow through all their trials.
The cool fingers slipped it around his neck, just as Fili was helplessly suspended and held one step away from the greatest, most world-altering bliss he’d ever know.
Kili had to know. He had to be aware what it would mean, not just culturally, as a mark of someone ‘honor-broken’ accepted and wanted once more, despite what they’d done, but what it would mean for Fili.
After all those years he’d let himself be shackled and controlled -
“Will you let me do this?” came a low, breathless question, as Kili shifted his hips sinuously on top of Fili, kept them both soaring with the movements of his own body.
Fili breathed, swept away in a wave of emotion so powerful it almost obscured the love and lust he felt in that moment. He couldn’t answer, couldn’t quite fathom everything Kili offered and was prepared to take from him with this one simple question.
The cool metal of the buckle sat open against his collar bones, and below Fili’s heart pounded wildly, trapped in the cage of his ribs.
He realised that he’d never been asked before.
Kili clenched around him, time and time again, threw his head back, as if on cue exposing his own throat.
Fili would never put a collar on his brother. Kili was wild and free; he wouldn’t be himself without being completely unrestrained, and Fili didn’t want to love anything other than, anything less than his brother.
But for Fili –
“You once said you needed it,” Kili whispered with lust in his eyes and a thousand thoughts in his mind.
“I was afraid of what I might do without it.”
His brother went faster, harder, twisted in a vicious back and forth chasing the drag that could imitate thrusts. “And then -?”
“And then I dared to love you.”
Kili keened at the words and lost it, started coming, surrounding Fili in more sense than one. Fili grabbed at Kili’s pelvis and forced him down, held him there, full but unmoving, his other hand closing around the base of Kili’s cock, staving off his completion.
“Put it on me,” he rasped out, “and then make me yours.”
Kili froze. Brown eyes searched blue, tight from being denied, but uncompromising in the way they scoured Fili’s soul.
“If it ever hurts you again…” fingertips like strokes of feather traced a scar that Fili would wear for the rest of his life.
Fili reached for Kili’s hands, kissed the fingertips. “I know the hands that close it around my neck. I know the soul that I offer myself to. Please.”
He would never forget the hands he’d just kissed, trembling as they slipped the prong through the hole, threaded the leather through the buckle and then the loops, tight enough to stop it swivelling, but leaving enough room to let him breathe freely.
Kili slipped a finger underneath it to test how it sat and Fili felt a delicious tendril of desire run up his spine, felt his pulse jump and his breathing speed up once more. He tilted his head backwards to give him better access, let his hands drop loosely to his sides, and watched, with hooded eyes, as Kili took in this declaration of submission expressed in the simplest of gestures.
He arched up, as Kili surged forward and grabbed the hair at the back of his head almost uncomfortably tight to keep him there. He expected something brutal, knew his brother’s passion and accepted it easily, but instead familiar lips kissed him sensually, tenderly almost, as if Kili was cradling the most precious thing in the world.
“Mine?” Kili asked.
“Yours,” Fili replied and lost himself in the kisses that a moment ago wouldn’t have been nearly enough but now meant the world to him.
He startled when Kili eventually pulled back and off his body, when he grabbed at Fili’s hips and yanked him down to the middle of the bed.
“Turn around,” Kili demanded, licked his lips and gave himself a few measured strokes.
Fili obeyed. He knew what was coming; he’d asked for it. In that moment he wanted to be owned and he wanted to feel it.
Yet again, he was proven wrong. Strong hands spread him wide open and he felt firm, flat strokes of Kili’s tongue across his entrance. It might have been about the ultimate intimacy, about accepting every part of Fili; or perhaps Kili simply wanted to see him wild and spoiled into incoherence – an experience so overwhelming that it blew everything Fili knew out of the water.
Fili made a noise he’d never made before, grabbed at one of the metal prongs of the bedframe with one hand and the bedsheets with the other and held on for dear life.
By the time the slick fingers joined the wriggling tongue, Fili could only feel. They pressed and challenged and took their time stretching him open, as if they hadn’t both been one step away from a spectacular orgasm just moments before. Somewhere not quite connected to where Fili was, a steady stream of words soothed him and guided him: “you’re doing so well, Fee, just a bit more, breathe, just breathe, Mahal, you’re making so much noise…”
It was almost a relief when Kili finally slipped home. Fili felt an arm closing around his rib cage, felt himself pulled flush to a warm body that grounded him, as the impact of that first thrust sent shockwaves through his body. For a moment Kili just held him, nuzzled his face into the crook of Fili’s neck and inhaled deeply what must have been Fili’s natural scent with the feint tinge of almond oil rubbed into leather.
They moved together, as if on impulse, in a rhythm rolling like the sea, slow at first, but building up the momentum among choked off cries and a desperate curling of fingers and toes, because if they were separated now, they might be lost forever. It was both different and the same as the urgent thrusts Fili came to know so well: the same passion, but focussed now and calibrated on Fili, distilled into something new through what he was now: Kili’s.
Somewhere among the enormity of the freedom found in restraints placed upon him, Fili found his completion and Kili followed. It mattered, but it was more of a beginning than an ending.
Later, when Fili lounged half-propped-up on some pillows again, and Kili draped himself in that annoying, yet strangely comforting way little brothers had right across his legs and chest, vows and oaths were whispered into his skin. They followed no sacred formulas, except those known to the language of love and a lifetime of familiarity.
They declared him belonging, not owned; held, not bound; and counterbalanced, not collared.