Finrod/Sauron + 46? 👀
46. ...out of envy or jealousy (came out sort of a "missing scene" type thing for my fic Opening)
Mairon’s curling fingers pressed into the soft places beneath Finrod’s jaw. He would not be easily appeased: so he told himself. He would have what he craved. He would not allow himself to be distracted or dissuaded: things Finrod was too skilled at by half. He was master of this isle and all who breathed on and under it.
The image of Finrod’s unbound hair, glinting in the torchlight and mantling him as it moved in the dance, returned to haunt him. He had catalogued, distantly, the faces of the human thralls who had gathered with him. With welding-torch vividity he remembered the flare of Finrod’s smile amid a rippling laugh. Sweet had its sound been, sweeter than the crude singing.
“Stand,” he snapped.
Finrod rose with the maximum grace one could expect of someone who had knelt on the rough flagstones at Mairon’s command a day entire. He rolled his shoulders in an unselfconscious way that Mairon still suspected of having been staged allure. He found he could not tell, however, which tempted him to believe it was not. He thought, absurdly, of comforting him. No—Mairon would keep his focus. After all, he was still angry.
“Give me thy hands.”
Finrod frowned, but held them out, palms up. He arched a dark-gold brow, and cast a sweeping glance down across the dirt-stained knees of his flimsy robe. “Has your trust in me declined so precipitously? I confess myself disappointed.”
Oh—he thought Mairon meant to bind his wrists. This expectation annoyed Mairon unreasonably.
He took Finrod’s hands in his own, flickering ones and gripped them. It was only when the Elf flinched that he realized he was clasping them with too much strength. He tugged him nearer none too gently, and himself glided back. Finrod’s bare feet hastened to catch up.
After a moment, Finrod’s lips quirked, and some awareness sparked to life in his light-filled eyes and spirit.
Thinking of that smiling vision, the one before him was almost enough. Enough to whet his appetite, if not to satiate it. Art amused? Mairon might ask. Laugh for me. Laugh.
“Strange have thy desires been of late, Mairon,” Finrod was saying. He spoke Mairon’s name like a caress, and Mairon suspected having shared it he would never hear another ‘lord of Tol Sirion’ from him. “If I were not thy captive, I could almost imagine that we were dancing.”
Caught, Mairon felt his fana contort instantly into a scowl. His grip upon Finrod’s hands scorched, growing clawed and viselike; yet he drew Finrod nearer, and nearer yet. He heard a pained sound, and smothered it with his mouth. He imagined he could draw the Elf’s spirit out through his parted lips, his lush heat. Finrod’s joy was there; inside him like a treasure in a lockbox. At last, unsatisfied, he released Finrod and he fell, short of the air Mairon did not need to breathe.
“Thou wilt remember thou hast offered me obedience,” Mairon spat.
Finrod wiped at his mouth and his knuckles came away red; either hand or mouth was bloodied. “I remember exactly what I owe thee.”
