Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Looking at the message thread with his father feels to Melkor like falling into a grave.

It’s been a year and a half since they last talked. March 6^th, the last text from Eru is dated. Manwë and Varda are coming over tomorrow. You and your girlfriend should join us. I have been patient, Melkor, but my patience is now coming to an end. I must meet her. That is the only appropriate way for this relationship of yours to progress.

Melkor scowls at his phone. The flat feels too big for him this Friday night, Mairon having temporarily relocated to Thuringwethil’s for a movie marathon. His scowl deepens. He reaches for the hair tie on his wrist. Pulls it taut, lets it snap down, a sting against his skin.

Tevildo meows at him, winding through his legs where he’s plopped down on the sofa, and he shushes her—rather ineffectively, it must be said. She can wait a couple more minutes for dinner, the greedy beast. There’s something he needs to do.

I’m getting married, he tells his father, thumb finding each letter and viciously jabbing at it, the empty message box not so empty anymore.

His head hurts. A pounding ache just behind his eyes. How long has he been staring at his phone? Minutes? Hours? Lifetimes?

He deletes what he’s just written. Hovers over the keyboard. His bottom lip is raw where he’s been worrying at it with his teeth. Tevildo springs up on the sofa and starts yowling in earnest. He pushes her back to the floor.

Mairon and I are getting married, he tries again.

Mairon and I.

Mairon.

That’s what matters here. That’s what he wants his father to know. Mairon. Not a girl, never a girl.

There’s a split in his lip. Blood in his mouth. The pain behind his eyes makes him want to be sick.

His thumb touches the keyboard. Moves across it, a blur, like the smallest hurricane. The wedding’s next week. You’re not invited.

He sends the message. Lets out a breath that empties his lungs.

“Meow,” Tevildo supplies to this momentous occasion.

Melkor reaches down to stroke her long, sleek back.

“You’re right,” he tells her, clicking his phone off and chucking it into the nest of cushions that Mairon left at his end of the sofa. “Let’s go feed you. You’re more important than my bastard father.”

*

I understand, Eru writes. I wish you a beautiful day, and a long and happy marriage. Send me a list of costs, please, and your current bank details. I would like to pay for the wedding. My gift to you and your lovely fiancé.

The message comes later that night when Melkor is dozing in bed, half-listening to a true crime video on YouTube. He grabs at his phone, thinking it’s Mairon, opens the notification without paying too much attention, and then the message is right there in front of his eyes and his father’s words ring their death knell in his mind and it’s too late to stop this thing he’s started.

He snatches Mairon’s pillow, puts it over his face, and screams till he’s sure he’ll suffocate.

*

“I don’t need his money.”

His jaw is set and his voice is edged with steel and deep within his chest, his heart is breaking.

“It’s not about the money,” Mairon points out, kindly, gently; he’s sitting cross-legged on the sofa, facing Melkor, and the phone—the message—is cradled in his lap. “It’s an apology.”

“Too little, too late.”

“It is.” One of Mairon’s hands finds his thigh. Touches him, lightly, a reminder: I’m here; you don’t have to do this alone. “But it can also be a start. A new page. If—and this is a very important if—that is what you decide you want.”

Melkor screws his eyes shut, so hard that lights pop behind his eyelids. He wants to take something into his hands and break it into a thousand minuscule pieces. Something. Someone. Himself.

“I’m so angry,” he spits out, and hurt, that’s what he means, he’s hurt and hopeful and confused and mistrustful.

“You have every right to be.”

He wants his father. Doesn’t want him. Wants the father he should’ve been. Wants to cast his arms wide and welcome him back into his life. Doesn’t want to have to put in all this work to make it happen. Doesn’t think it’s him who should put in the work. Wants it sorted, wants it made easy, wants the past to die and stop fucking haunting him.

He slumps, spine bending, elbows digging into his thighs and face buried in his hands.

Very quietly, as though uttering a sin, a crime, he asks, “Do you think I should’ve invited him?”

“No.” Mairon, his Mairon. His rock, his reason. “Maybe in ten years’ time when we renew our vows. But not now. Let’s start with baby steps.”

Baby steps. He sucks in a breath. Uncurls his spine. Remembers that there are people in this world who smile when they see him, who aren’t afraid to hold him tight.

He plucks his phone out of Mairon’s lap.

I’ll send you the details ASAP, he types, and turns the phone so Mairon can see.

“Like that?”

A smile; a firm nod. “Exactly like that.”

Whoosh, the message goes. Sent. Received.

It’s not gratitude, it’s not forgiveness, it’s not knees scraped raw in the dirt as he begs his father to see him, love him, I’ll be good this time, I’ll make you proud.

It’s an outstretched hand clasping another outstretched hand. A tacit agreement, adult to adult. A relearning of who they can be around each other.

*

“I’m gonna fucking cry.”

“What?” Mairon stops daubing glitter onto his eyelids and glances up at Thuringwethil in the vanity’s mirror. “Why?”

They’re in a room the size of a small flat and the crisp October morning shows golden through the latticed windows. It’s a castle that they’ve chosen for their wedding, an old, forgotten place in the Highlands where the ivy grows thick and the corridors still echo with the whispers of sovereigns and courtiers.

Thuringwethil has parked herself on the armchair directly opposite the vanity. She’s hiked up her dress—the one she fell in love with all those months ago, all cloud and shadow—to throw her legs over the armrest for an optimal lounging position.

“Why?” she echoes, looking over to Gothmog for commiseration. “Why, he asks me… Because you look jaw-droppingly gorgeous, you twit.”

Gothmog, who’s loitering by the window with a glass of bubbly in his hand, grunts his approval.

“Mm.” Mairon tucks a daintily curled strand of hair behind his ear, assesses the effect with a critical eye, then tugs it back out. “You reckon?” he asks Thuringwethil’s reflection.

It’s unusual for him to doubt himself like this. He knows he’s beautiful; he knows that he knows how to make himself look beautiful. His make-up today is subtle, faultless, a thing of dreams, soft and glistening and heartbreakingly lovely. His hair spills in gentle waves down his back, left unbound so that it might catch the sun, so that when night falls and flames are lit in the castle’s braziers, it might gleam richest red, like blood, like wine. His jewellery is gold and diamonds, rings, necklace, earrings, a shining circlet that threads through his hair and holds up his veil and rests pretty and regal upon his forehead. And his gown, commissioned from a designer, taking months to make—it is white splashed through with crimson, a decision he and Melkor made together, Melkor exploring his culture, his heritage, all the things he’s never had the chance to claim, and Mairon supporting him every step of the way. The bodice is in the shape of a suit jacket that plunges open to the sternum, a ruby-red sash separating it from the skirt which cascades to the floor in layer upon layer of tulle. And atop the tulle sit blushing roses that cluster more and more thickly the lower down they go until the hem seems dusted in the fallen petals of years beyond count. A fairytale gown. A gown plucked out of stories where life is magicked and love knows no ending.

Thuringwethil was right: he is gorgeous. He knows it, rationally he knows it, but today is a day of vows, a day when futures are made, when forever glimmers like the fire of a new dawn on the horizon. Everything must be absolutely perfect. He must be absolutely perfect. He will not risk any blemishes, any derailments. Not today. Not today.

With much huffing and puffing, and foul cursing when her dress gets caught under the heel of her boot (it will be a cold day in hell when she trades her boots for any other type of footwear), Thuringwethil gets up and marches over to him.

“Do you not have eyes?” she asks, shaking him lightly by the shoulders. “You are stunning. Superb. Sublime. I would marry you.”

“Slight problem there.” One ginger eyebrow creeps up. “I’ve seen your type and I’m not it. I can’t grow any taller, for one, nor do I have any intention of chopping my hair off. Also, I’m really quite attached to my pointy nails and I’d rather not keep them short for the rest of my life.”

“Oof. Okay, in that case, it’ll have to be a sexless marriage.”

Mairon fiddles with the stray curl of hair again, loosely securing it with a bobby pin so it falls across his forehead in a striking brushstroke of red while staying out of his eyes. There. He gives a pleased little toss of the head, flashing himself a grin in the mirror. He looks good. Feels good. New-minted and morning-bright, filled with lovely things like hope and happiness that flutter with a thousand gossamer butterfly wings in his belly.

“Sexless?” Very affectedly, he pulls a displeased face. “I’ll have to pass, I’m afraid.”

“Yeah, Thu, perish the thought,” Gothmog pipes up, guzzling some more of his bubbly. “Remember how insufferable he was back when he and Melkor weren’t fucking? No one wants a repeat of that.”

Thuringwethil groans low in her throat. “Oh God.”

“Those were dark times.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Mairon retorts lightly. “I am a delight. A pleasure to have in class, that’s what my teachers always said about me.”

Gothmog shuffles over to him and bends down low, as if whispering a secret. “They were lying.”

In retaliation, Mairon wrenches the glass of bubbly out of his hand and necks it in one long gulp. Then, with a smile sweet as honey, he returns it.

“Oi, I was enjoying that!” Gothmog grumbles. In an undertone that rings all too loudly between the room’s stone walls, he adds, “Bloody bridezilla, you are.”

“Bridezilla?” Mairon presses a hand to his heart, his mehndi standing out bold against the white of his gown. “You wound me.”

Gothmog looks at Thuringwethil. Thuringwethil looks back at him. Exasperation stretches long between them.

“How many times,” Thuringwethil begins, “have you called the florist to make sure the flower arrangements meet your particular—”

“Your insanely particular—”

“Specifications?”

“You cannot hold that against me,” Mairon protests, trying not to laugh and then not trying, letting it come, letting it spill silvered and joyful from his lips; his friends are here and the golden light of autumn hangs jewelled in the air and everything, very suddenly, feels so deeply, incredibly easy, like reciting the alphabet. “If there’s anything that has to be perfect, it’s the flowers. My mother knows her flowers. I don’t want her tearing down the arrangements and redoing them all herself.”

And just like a spell, his talk of his mother seems to summon her into the room.

“Oh, my darling, I would never.” Yavanna is here, having breezed in without stopping to knock. She is dressed in lush moss-greens and burnished oranges, more autumnal than autumn itself, and the smile on her face is like a light that has never known darkness. “Unless they’ve done something horrendous, that is,” she adds, “like leaving the hydrangeas out of water. In that case, I’d have a duty of care to the poor plants. It’d be less tearing down the arrangements and more rescuing the abused dears from their inept florist.”

“See?” Mairon says to Gothmog and Thuringwethil, flinging out a hand towards his mother as though she were evidence in a criminal trial. He’s enjoying this, enjoying himself, relishing this opportunity to have some banter and, pardon his French, be a dramatic bitch. It’s what he does best. “Sometimes,” he declares loftily, “being a bridezilla is entirely justified.”

Silence trickles in, a glacier’s worth of it, huge and slow and dense with unsaid thoughts.

With a last glance at his reflection (all pretty, all pristine), Mairon spins round on his stool to face his inquisitors.

“By all means,” he deadpans, “don’t stop reassuring me. Yes, you’re perfectly justified, Mairon. Yes, planning a wedding is a very big, very important thing, Mairon, and it’s nice to have everything exactly as you want it.”

“It’s not just the flowers.”

Gothmog’s voice, unusually small.

Mairon turns to him, cranes his neck to catch his gaze. Gothmog pretends to find the cool blue sky with its straggly wisps of cloud suddenly and irresistibly riveting.

“I didn’t quite catch that,” Mairon bites out.

“You said you were fussing over the flowers because of your mum,” Thuringwethil carries on in Gothmog’s stead. “No offence, Mrs Aulendil.”

“None taken,” Yavanna says brightly.

“But there’s all the other non-flower things that you were also extraordinarily picky about.”

“Like the menu,” Gothmog offers.

“The drinks too, and the seating…”

“Don’t forget the colour scheme.”

“And the vows!” Thuringwethil says. “How many late nights did we have writing and re-writing your vows?”

Too many. Mairon bites his lip then promptly stops, remembering his carefully applied lipstick. He’s got the vows right here, handwritten on a neat little square of paper, in a pocket hidden amid the tulle of his gown. He touches the smooth paper, grazes it with his fingertips as if it were a living thing, easily startled. The words did not come willingly to him. It was like moving boulders: hard, thankless work, seemingly everlasting. He was left feeling drained after each attempt, each amend, bruised and battered and bleeding, with a sour, swirling frustration in his gut that would last long into the following day. He’d thought he’d be better at it; he’d expected it of himself. Naïvely, perhaps, but the expectation had been there, stitched together of love songs and romantic movies and the Janes and Mr Rochesters strewn across the pages of books. If his love were true then surely, surely—

But no. Thuringwethil’s talked him off that particular ledge so many times that he can hear her voice in his head with perfect clarity, reminding him that feeling a feeling and saying that you’re feeling that feeling are two very different things. Two very different skills. He’s never been open about his feelings. Never forthcoming with the private counsels of his heart. Doing so for the first time when he’s getting married, in front of an expectant registrar and equally expectant wedding guests, would be a tall order for just about anyone.

Still, it rankles, this one blip in his plans, this one niggle in his perfect day. His vows are nowhere near where he needs them to be. They’re stilted, formal, forced, and somehow, at some point, the love fell through the cracks between the letters and was lost. A marriage is a contract between two people… Like any contract, there are terms and conditions… I vow to be faithful, to be there in sickness and in health, to cherish you for the foreseeable future…

His lip curls, mood dimming. He’s never been quite who he’s wanted to be. Always falling short, always stumbling at the end of the road, a mountain climber so distracted by the shining promise of the summit that they place one foot wrong and slide hundreds of metres into the abyss, never to be seen again. He’s perfect, that’s what Melkor always tells him, which means imperfect but deeply loved, deeply, irrevocably wanted, even flawed and human as he is, even stubborn and knife-tongued, with too much ice in his veins and too many walls around his heart. And that’s great, that’s fabulous, makes him feel all warm and gooey on the inside, all of that. But Melkor deserves better. His spouse deserves better. Deserves the fullness of his love, at the very least.

Which he just can’t find the damn words for, no matter how hard he tries.

What does that make him? A half-husband? A husband that should never have been?

“If you’re not going to be helpful,” he snaps, “then I will finish getting ready on my own.”

He feels the tension in the room, feels them wanting to look at each other, roll their eyes with a stifled groan. There Mairon goes, being an uptight arse again. And he is, he is, how can he not be? He wants this, wants it with a fierceness that burns, that scorches and chars, blackens, ruins, consumes. He’s planned everything to a T, down to the tiniest details, down to the pattern of the dust on the floor, all so that it’d be easy for people to just show up and slide into their allotted places, smooth as clockwork. He needs them to cooperate, see, he needs people to do what they’re supposed to do so this thing that’s only lived in his head for the past months can be made real and tangible, undeniable, indestructible, his.

Sometimes, if he shuts his eyes too long, he starts to worry that when he opens them again it’ll all be gone. No wedding, no engagement, no living together, no relationship, no sense of belonging like dislocated bones returned to their rightful sockets. No Melkor. A fever dream, all.

He’s been struggling to fall asleep, lately. He’s taken to lying there awake, listening to Melkor’s breathing, peering into the dark for a glimpse of his chest rising and falling. Proof, solid proof.

Why is it that the deepest dreams also instil the deepest terror?

In the here and now, in this sun-drenched room in this castle that has seen thousands of suns, Thuringwethil reaches out and gives him a gentle pat on the head. Half apology, half reassurance.

“You are ready,” she tells him, and she speaks it as fact, a sturdy skeleton for him to drape himself over. “You’re the readiest you’ll ever be.”

She starts to leave, beckoning for Gothmog to follow. And he goes, but not before thumping Mairon soundly on the shoulder.

“We’ll see you out there.”

As if this were rugby and Mairon a player on the light-flooded pitch waiting for the kick-off whistle with his pulse thundering and anticipation squeezing his stomach.

He’ll go out there and pin Melkor in a tackle, tussle him to the floor as their guests cheer them on. No vows, just mild violence.

The mental image nearly breaks him open. Nearly makes him cackle with all the loud, throaty unloveliness of a villainous witch.

Maybe he should do the opposite of what he’s supposed to do. Take all of his meticulous plans, tear them to shreds, and chuck the shreds out the window so they fly like little paper doves. Plans are static. Limp, lifeless. Behind them, in their gaps, in their forgotten crevices, that’s where love blooms and surprises.

After all, wasn’t Melkor always planned to be a client, just a client? Not a partner. Not a husband.

And look where they are now. Look how far they’ve come.

“Cheers, guys,” Mairon says, tries for a smile, finds that it curls his lips and then is quite happy to linger. He lifts a hand in a wave as Gothmog and Thuringwethil leave the room.

“My dearest darling.”

Yavanna drags a chair over to the vanity with a scrape of wood on wood and sits down next to him.

“Hey, Ma.”

“Wedding day jitters?” she asks kindly.

“Wedding vow jitters,” Mairon clarifies. He takes them out, takes out the little square of paper and unfolds it, mindful not to let his mother see. Contracts, terms and conditions… He tuts softly to himself. “They’re still not right.”

Yavanna takes a moment to think. When she speaks again, it is slow, considered, like the notions dreamed up by rocks during the long years of their erosion. Like something Aulë might say.

“There’s no right or wrong where vows are concerned. They just have to be from the heart.”

“That’s the problem.”

He wants to give all of himself to Melkor, like a priest in worship. But the priests of old had it a lot easier, didn’t they? They tried to love in a time when gods were cruel, swollen with power, and would rip out hearts with a flick of their divine wrists. He doesn’t have the luxury of a god to do all that dirty work for him.

“How do you capture exactly what you feel?” he asks not only his mother but the room too, the ghosts of its history, the craggy Scottish landscape on the other side of the window. Anything that might have an answer for him. “The entirety of what you feel?”

“You don’t,” Yavanna murmurs. She finds Mairon’s hand, the hand not holding the vows, and takes it within her own. Her touch warms, comforts. “You can’t. There will always be more things you could’ve said. Should’ve said. Life is full of not-quite-perfect moments. That’s part of its charm.”

And Mairon remembers something similar she told him many years ago, when he was a child and his sticky little hands found their way into her orchard, plucking apples off laden branches. The sun was high in the sky and the summer heat hazed across the horizon and Mairon thrust a small, lumpy apple into his mother’s face and asked if it was still good to eat.

Why wouldn’t it be? she asked him in return. It doesn’t look perfect, true enough, but perfect hasn’t got much to do with anything. Something that’s not perfect can still be good.

The memory’s been lost to him for a very long time. They tend to be, these memories that don’t fit in with who we think we are.

But he’s been thinking a little differently of late. He holds his mother’s hand and focuses on breathing nice and deep into his belly and imagines his billion or so worries floating away down a deep river of cobalt blue, just like he practiced with Thuringwethil.

“So I should stop fretting and just show up, is that what you’re saying?” he asks.

“That is precisely what I’m saying,” Yavanna replies, and the smile that she gives him is soft and fond and proud. “Give in to this moment. Yield to it. See where it takes you.”

Hasn’t this whole journey been a collection of moments to be yielded to? Surrender in increments, except it’s never truly been surrender, never loss, never a chiselling away of vital parts of himself. Growth, that’s what it has been, and change, lessons learned and walls unbuilt. He stands just that little bit taller, now. Wears his skin with just a little bit more ease. Likes what he sees when he takes a peek at himself through Melkor’s eyes.

This day doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to be theirs.

And, with a giddy rush of feeling, he realises that it already is.

“I can do that,” he says, and finds that he means it.

He puts the vows away. Not in his pocket, but on the vanity.

“I know you can.”

And his mother makes to take his cheeks between her hands and give him a smooch, but he flaps at her, shooing her away, because he’s just spent what feels like half a lifetime putting on his face and yes, the idea of perfect imperfections may have started to resonate with him, but applying it to his make-up is, quite frankly, a step too far.

*

“Fucking—”

“Ow,” Melkor grumbles, trying to wiggle away from Ungoliant’s vicious fingers; it doesn’t work. “Stop strangling me!”

“I have to strangle you, otherwise I can’t get the thing through the other thing!”

“Didn’t you say you knew how to tie a tie?”

“I did, I did say that.”

“And?”

Ungoliant glares at him. Straight on, her heels making them nearly of a height.

“Well,” she snaps, “obviously I was lying!”

She drops her gaze back to the tie, pulling, yanking, tugging, and Melkor feels it grow tight about his throat, and damn it, this is not helping the nervy, twitchy restlessness that’s tunnelled a home for itself beneath his skin—the very reason why he asked for help with the tie in the first place.

“Ugh. Stop, just fucking stop.” He grabs at the tie and jerks it free from round his neck, throwing it onto the otherwise unused vanity. “Who needs a fucking tie anyway?”

He starts to pace, a diagonal between the door and window, useless as a bear in a cage. The past couple of hours have felt like millennia in their wearing. It only took him a few minutes to put on his very nice and very expensive suit, and then he spent the rest of his morning obsessively checking the time, obsessively checking his messages for anything last-minute from Mairon, and obsessively checking his pockets to make sure that the scrap of paper he’s written his vows on hasn’t magically come alive and decided to desert him.

Digging his phone out, he checks the time—again. Five minutes to go till the ceremony. Fucking fuck. That tie needs to be neatly knotted and on his person yesterday.

He makes no move to do so. His pacing takes him to the window. He stops, stares up into the sun, forces himself not to blink even as his vision starts to blur.

“Mate,” Ungoliant says, and he hears her, he does, but the sun burns brightest gold in his eyes and her voice seems to come from so very far away. “Oi, mate,” she tries again, stomping over to him and poking him in the ribs; that just about manages to get his attention. “You’re stressing so bad that it’s making me feel stressed.”

“Stressing? I’m not stressing.”

“You’re like a fucking thoroughbred, mate. You look like you’re about to leap out that window and run into the trees and then keep running till you fall into the sea or some such shit.” She grabs his wrist and hauls him over to the vanity. “Sit. Breathe. Give me your phone.”

Melkor obediently hands it over and then glances up at her, frowning.

“Huh?”

“Gonna find a YouTube tutorial for tying ties.”

“Oh. It’s fine. I can do it. Just…” He gulps down air until it feels like his lungs might pop. “Give me a sec.”

Ungoliant lets out a sigh. To her credit, she tries not to, tries to swallow it back down, but doesn’t quite manage it.

“Be real with me here,” she says, sinking down onto her haunches in front of him. “What’s crawled up your arse?”

Absently, he kicks his heel back against one of the chair’s legs.

“Nothing.”

She lifts her eyebrows, purses her lips. “Bullshit.”

“It’s my wedding day,” he points out. Wedding day. He wants to laugh, the laugh-scream-howl of an animal, throat bared and voice seizing the sky. “Can’t a man have some slack on his wedding day?”

“You,” Ungoliant declares, wagging a finger in his face, “are nervous.”

“Pfft, nervous? I’m not nervous. I’m never nervous.”

With a grunt of effort, she gets back up to her feet and looks pointedly down at him.

“Don’t fucking lie to me.”

“I’m not ly—”

Her open palm connects with the back of his head—a smack, none too gentle.

“Fine,” he hisses, rubbing at his skull where an ache has started to bloom, “yeah, I am nervous, fucking sue me.”

It’s not nervousness so much as terror, the kind that obliterates utterly, like a warhead: every second spent away from Mairon is another second that a deadly, unforeseen earthquake could strike and crack the ground open so wide that he tumbles right in, or aliens could land in a sleek, lit-up spaceship and abduct him for some demented experiment, or wild beasts could escape from the nearest zoo, wherever that is, and with fang and claw shred him to pieces, or—

“Look at me,” Ungoliant says, loud and firm, as though talking to a child or a particularly dim-witted foot soldier. “At me, not through me. You’re fine. It’s all good. He adores you, yeah? Fucking adores you. Today will go perfectly.”

Melkor sniffs audibly. There’s a draught in here. Bloody castles with their bloody stones all weathered and crumbling.

“Adores me?” He makes an incredulous noise in the back of his throat. “That’s a bit rich, no? Sometimes, on a good day, I think he might—maybe, possibly—like me. Most of the time he just tolerates me.”

It’s not pity in Ungoliant’s eyes. It’s the hard, exasperated glint of someone trying to bite back the words you’re an idiot. Which she’s only doing because he’s getting married today and this is her way of being nice to him—or if not nice per se, then at least less snippy than usual.

“People don’t tolerate you, Melkor,” is what she goes for instead. “They either think you’re the dog’s bollocks or they actively, passionately despise you. You’re divisive.”

He narrows his eyes at her. “That an insult? Feels like an insult.”

“It’s the truth,” she retorts, brutal and unapologetic for it. “Point is, he doesn’t just like you or just tolerate you. If that were the case, he would’ve fucked off a long time ago. He’s here because when he looks at you, he sees a sunrise in the lines of your face.”

“A sunrise?” That took a leap of thought that Melkor can’t follow. “You sure about that?”

“‘Course I’m not fucking sure!” Ungoliant snaps. “What do I know about romance? I’m trying my best here, be grateful.”

“I would be if I actually had something to be grateful for.”

She puts her head back and stares despairingly at the ceiling. “You’re such a dick.”

“What, like you aren’t?”

That gets a snort out of her. She shakes her head at him, but there’s fondness in the movement, and on her lips (black, sparkly) hovers a small smile.

“What I’m trying to tell you,” she says, with surprising gentleness, “is that he’s here to stay. He’s yours. You have him. He’s not going anywhere. There are literally zero reasons for you to be nervous right now. You’ll go out there and put a ring on his finger and bag yourself a husband. And then the rest of your lives can begin.”

Melkor nods to the beat of her words. The rest of their lives. He rather likes the sound of that. The part of the story where all the other stories end: post-‘I do’ and sailing into easy domestic bliss, weeks of it, months, entire years lived in love. He doesn’t need anything extravagant. Not cars, not mansions, not servants and not weeks at a time spent traipsing across the world. All he needs is a hand in his own. Eyes that see him and do not flicker away. Mairon. His Mairon.

“You’re brilliant, do you know that?” he tells Ungoliant who, for perhaps the very first time in her life, blushes a startling shade of pink.

Before she can gather herself enough to reply, a knock sounds at the door.

“Yeah?” Melkor calls out, and is greeted with Aulë’s head poking beard-first into the room.

“It’s time,” Aulë announces in his deep voice, in a tone as sturdy as the castle’s timeless stones.

A burst, fireworks, meteors: Melkor’s insides fizzing bright.

“Now?”

“Aye.”

Oh god oh god oh god oh—

“You all right, son?”

“Me? Oh yes. Lovely. Spectacular. Never better.”

A beat of silence passes, splintered and murky, like old glass.

“You’re going to need a tie,” says Aulë.

“Yes.” Melkor grabs his discarded tie off the vanity. Wraps it round his hand. A silken knuckleduster. Perfectly harmless. “Yes, I suppose I will.”

“Mm.” Aulë’s grunt echoes in his ears and the heavy, creaking tread of his footsteps takes up the whole room and suddenly he’s standing right in front of him, usurping Ungoliant, his hand outstretched. “Let me.”

The tie is round his neck again and Aulë’s fingers are nothing like Ungoliant’s. Deft and brisk, they put a knot in the tie, tighten it just so, smooth it down his chest.

“There you go, son.” Aulë gives his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “A braw look, if ever I’ve seen one.”

Melkor’s vision mists and shivers and he blinks to clear it. He thought he might miss his father today. Might miss the ghost of him. The notion, the concept. He doesn’t. There isn’t enough space for it now that Aulë’s here.

“Thank you,” he says softly.

Aulë grunts his acknowledgement. Beneath his bushy eyebrows, his brown eyes glimmer.

“Come on, then,” Ungoliant says, looking at the pair of them in a quiet, befuddled sort of joy. “Your soon-to-be husband awaits.”

*

It is not a church that the ceremony takes place in but one of the castle’s many rooms. A secular space for a secular wedding. Still, Melkor thinks this is what being in a church might feel like.

The light spilling in through the stained-glass windows up above—some nameless king’s extravagance—seems to gild everything it touches. There is no talk, no movement; even breath is hushed. The quiet between these four grand walls is like the quiet in the void of space: deep and vast, knowing that it will be the last thing in existence just as it was the first. Between bodies, between bones, something holy starts to unfurl.

Sweat sticks to Melkor’s palms. A bead of moisture touches the edge of the paper he’s holding. It spreads, makes flimsy, blurs the black scrawls of ink so ‘I,’ the very first word, lengthens and fades until it could’ve been anything at all. Through his mind runs a single worry in endless loops, that the intricate floral mehndi that he and Mairon got done last night will wash off and leave his hands dripping rust-red dye onto the floor.

He clears his throat. The sound is swallowed up by that titanic, celestial silence.

“I’ve never been good with words,” he begins. Eyes settle on him. Everyone’s. Mairon’s. “I’ve never been good at knowing what to say or when to say it. But today, for you, I want to try.” The paper crunches as he shifts his grip on it. Mairon’s smile is so beautiful it could arrest time itself. “You were unexpected. When I met you, I had no idea that a couple of years down the line we’d end up saying our vows in front of a marriage registrar. You changed my life. That might sound like I’m exaggerating, but I’m not. It’s the truth. I don’t even recognise who I used to be. You make me so, so happy—happier than I ever thought possible. You make me want to wake up in the morning just so I can see your face and hear your voice. You make me want to bring myself, authentically and wholeheartedly, to everything that I do. You make me want to try new things and step out of my comfort zone and never stop growing as a person. For you. So you can have the partner that you deserve to have.” His voice sounds thick in his own ears and Mairon makes a noise that is half-sob, half-laugh, all love. “I promise you forever. My time, my love, my commitment. I promise you trust and respect, care and compassion, support, patience, understanding. The whole wide world. It’s all yours. I’m all yours.”

He puts the vows away. Scrunches up the paper, and slips it into his pocket. His heartbeat is the firing of a battalion. His eyes on Mairon are wide and eager. Blind to everything else.

“Guess it’s my turn now,” Mairon says, looking like he’s just woken up from a dream and carried some of that soft, lulling loveliness with him. “I had them all written out, my vows. I spent hours and hours refining and perfecting them. Just ask Thuringwethil.” He spreads his hands, his gracefully painted and very empty hands. “But I didn’t bring them with me. Or rather, I did, but I left them upstairs. I’m not very good with words either, you see. Not the heartfelt kind. The vows didn’t say what I needed them to say. What you need to hear.” He takes a slow, deep breath. His eyes shine clearest gold. “Melkor. My dearest.”

“Hi,” Melkor breathes, feeling drunk, drugged, dazed.

“Hi,” Mairon laughs. He reaches out, takes Melkor’s hands within his own. “Goodness, what should I say? Okay, okay, here goes. You are exquisitely insufferable and also the best thing that’s ever happened to me. You make me laugh. You make me feel good about myself and about life and about what the future holds. I want to grow old with you. I want to be there for every happy moment, every mistake, everything messy and human and infuriating and lovely. The past two and a half years have absolutely flown by. We’ve made some wonderful memories, and I’m looking forward to making many, many, many more with you.” His fingers tighten. His smile widens, wobbles. A single brilliant tear slides down his cheek. “You have me. All of me. And I vow to you that you always will.”

*

The rings catch the light and glimmer like gold just plucked from a forge-fire.

They fit smoothly, seamlessly: extensions of the body, already part of the fabric of their being.

*

A kiss, short and chaste and sweet. Unremarkable, really, as far as kisses go, save for one thing: it is their first kiss as spouses, as husbands, which means something beyond the meeting of lips to enthusiastic cheers from the guests (mainly Gothmog). It’s prescience overlaid over the present. A moment that says, Savour me. Soak me up so you can tuck me away for later, for a rainy day.

*

Mairon lifts the quaich to his lips and takes a rather liberal sip of the whisky inside it.

He winces. Starts coughing and then keeps coughing, and Melkor takes the quaich from him before the remaining whisky can spill down his lovely gown.

Once he’s done attempting to expel a lung, Mairon turns his Scottish accent even more overtly Scottish and cracks a joke about the terrible shame of not enjoying whisky.

Everyone laughs. Well, almost everyone. Melkor steals another kiss from him, purely because he can’t bear not to.

*

“Stop groping my arse.”

Mairon goes under Melkor’s uplifted arm, letting himself be twirled. The gown’s skirt unfurls about him, a sea of roses and tulle, and for a moment everything seems sugar-spun and weightless under the golden string lights hung up across the great hall like little earthbound stars.

Melkor plucks him out of his spin. Fingers dig into his waist and then slide down and around, returning to the curve of his arse.

“I’m not groping,” Melkor says, like a liar.

There is a swell in the music. It is Maglor who is singing, here as both Eönwë’s plus-one and the evening’s musical act, having contacted Mairon as soon as the wedding invites went out and offered to perform for free—allow me this honour, please; you have been the most marvellous of friends to my treasure and it would be my utmost joy to help you and your betrothed celebrate your love. Up and up and up his voice goes, filling the hall even to the vaulted ceiling high above, like a confession of love to the divine, intimate in its tenderness, stirring in its longing.

Mairon presses close to Melkor, body to body, heart to beating heart. His arms are around his neck and his lips tease the shell of his ear and his heels click merrily against the glossy surface of the dancefloor as they sway and whirl.

“Oh, is that so?” he retorts. “Why do I not believe you?”

“You’re a very mistrustful person.”

“Melkor.” He draws the name out, savours the syllables, rolls the ‘r’ on the end just to hear the bastard try not to moan and fail miserably. “Everyone can see.”

“So?” Melkor’s voice is rougher than it was a moment ago. “Let them see. You’re mine.”

How many times has Mairon heard those words? Mine. You’re mine. You are mine. A thousand, thousand times it must’ve been, and still Melkor speaks them as though they held the secret to life and death, creation and the meaning behind it, whole universes shattered and new ones birthed in their stead.

“I am,” Mairon concedes, “but our lovely guests are here to celebrate our wedding, not to watch you molesting me on the dancefloor.”

And Melkor’s voice grows rougher still, guttered with need. It engulfs; it devastates.

“I want you.”

“Yes,” Mairon hisses back, caught between his own storming desire and the dozen or so watching eyes all around them, “I want you too. But we’re going to have to wait.”

“Do you know what it does to me, seeing you like this?” Melkor growls. The hand on his arse tightens, squeezes. Claims him utterly. “You’re so beautiful. You’re a dream. Dressed up in your pretty gown with your pretty veil and your pretty jewellery… Fuck, Mai, I want to touch you, not like this but properly. I’ve been thinking of it, you know. I’ve not been able to not think of it. Tying you up just like this, just how you are now, still dressed up, and making you kneel, making you open your mouth for me. I’ll dirty you up, I’ll leave you sticky with come, your hair, your make-up, your lovely face, all ruined. My filthy, filthy bride.”

“Kinky bastard,” a voice says from beside them—Ungoliant, who is dancing with little Shelob. Thankfully, Shelob is so completely entranced by the lights and the music and the rhythm of the dance that the adults’ conversation seems a dull and tiresome thing, unworthy of her attention.

Ungoliant gives them both an approving smirk; Mairon pins Melkor with a glare.

“Mel, come on. Cut it out. There’s too many people here and I can guarantee that not a single one of them wants to hear your depraved fantasies.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” Ungoliant butts in. “You’ve no idea how many times I walked in on him with his laptop hooked up to the TV just watching porn in the living room. Nothing can shock me.”

Mairon blinks at her. Then, he blinks up at Melkor, who gives him a face that says, Yes, that may have happened, and I have all of these very believable reasons as to why my actions were justified.

“You know,” Mairon tells Ungoliant, and he makes sure that the words come out deadly serious, “that’s the kind of information you would share with a spouse-to-be before they say ‘I do’…”

He regrets it as soon as he’s done speaking. A joke, nothing more, unmeant and unthinking, leaving his lips like a whetted blade because that’s what he does: he takes his words and he takes his knives and he whittles people down to their bare, bloodied bits. But he doesn’t want it to hurt. Not truly. Not now. Not for Melkor. And Melkor is hurting. He can see it in the twisting of his mouth, the way he glances away and then back at him, eyes enormous and unsure.

Some wounds are beyond healing. They will always ache. They will always bleed when prodded. And that’s okay. That’s what it means to be alive, to be human: having a heart that tells a story, which, like all stories, isn’t one thing but many. Tragedy, comedy, romance, horror, mystery, all of them at once or perhaps none of them ever. What happens to those stories in a marriage is this: they are heard and, by being heard, they can come to be loved.

“That wasn’t very nice of me to say,” Mairon murmurs, and they’re not knife words, these. They are gentle; they are words for stories with happy endings.

“No,” Melkor agrees, “it wasn’t.”

“I’m sorry. It was a joke—in poor taste—and not meant in the slightest. I hope you know that.”

After a millisecond—a nod.

In return, Mairon gives him a kiss.

He only intends for it to be a peck, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reassurance. But Melkor melts into him, moans softly, desperately, tongue flicking against his teeth; and Mairon can’t help but indulge him. He meets him halfway, deepening the kiss until their breaths mingle heavy and hungry and the world fades away to an indistinct blur. If the price for Melkor’s happiness is people rolling their eyes and snickering that the newlyweds can’t keep their hands off each other, then so be it. He’d do far more heinous things to put a smile on that dear face.

“You’re such a pest,” he says lovingly once their kiss mellows.

“A sex pest,” Ungoliant adds, helpful as always.

And Melkor cracks a broad grin, looking inordinately pleased with himself.

“I try.”

The song is winding down to a close. Maglor’s voice lingers, floating on the air, a high and clear note. A lull falls over the dancefloor.

Mairon seizes his chance. He leans in for another kiss, no longer than a heartbeat, meant to tease: later, dearest, later.

“I am going to attempt to go to the loo,” he declares as he pulls away, as Melkor watches him with awe, with yearning, with the fierce, unwavering brightness of sworn love, “which will no doubt take ten billion years seeing as my gown weighs about as much as a small car. Entertain yourself in my absence.”

*

Turns out, getting married is hungry business.

While Mairon is gone, Melkor waddles back to his table, his bad leg giving him some grief after several very enthusiastic dances, and proceeds to stuff his face with a leftover lamb cutlet. Of course, it’s Mairon he’d much rather have in his hands, under his tongue; but the lovely bastard—his bride—wants to wait till later and not shag in full view of all their friends and family. Which, though frustrating, makes a certain amount of sense, Melkor supposes now that he no longer has Mairon bodily pressed up against him and can actually form a coherent thought.

In the background, Maglor stops his maudlin songbird warbling and launches into some Guns N’ Roses. She's got a smile that it seems to me reminds me of childhood memories… Instinctively, Melkor starts bopping his head to the rhythm. Huh. Who knew the choirboy had it in him?

All too soon, the lamb cutlet is gone. He helps himself to a samosa off Mairon’s plate. As he chews, he happens to glance up, and makes eye contact with Eönwë sitting at the next table over. That pale face freezes: a deer caught in headlights. Melkor smiles at him, which makes Eönwë twist around in his chair to check if there’s anyone behind him. Finding that there isn’t, he turns back, and shoots Melkor an answering smile—a full-on beam that sets him aglow.

Truth be told, Melkor wasn’t all that keen on inviting him. Nothing personal, or rather, whatever personal reasons he once had for disliking Eönwë have long since lost their meaning. But dislike him he does, or did, or thought that he had to. After so many years, it’s become a habit. There purely because it’s never not been there.

Eönwë is very much Mairon’s friend. They meet up fairly regularly, for coffee, for boozy drinks, for a walk somewhere green and leafy when the weather is nice; Mairon never expects Melkor to join him on these meet-ups, he leaves his engagement ring at home when he goes so not even the faintest murmur of its whereabouts can get back to Fëanor (even today it’s safe in a locked little jewellery box in Mairon’s suitcase), and everyone is happy.

And that’s the thing: everyone should be happy. Eönwë is Mairon’s friend, and this is Mairon’s wedding too; so here Eönwë is and Melkor’s in too good a mood to want to be mean to him and in fact he’s finding it rather difficult to hold a grudge against someone whose partner can do a half-decent rendition of Sweet Child o’ Mine.

My Chemical Romance is next. These are their hearts, but their hearts don't beat like ours… Melkor wonders if Mairon put together the setlist or if it was all Maglor’s doing. Either way, he’s not complaining. He starts humming to himself.

At some point, during a break between songs where Maglor prances off the stage and into Eönwë’s arms, Manwë materialises at Melkor’s side.

“Hello.”

Melkor grunts—half invitation to sit down, half command to fuck off. Yes, he and Manwë may go out for birthday drinks now (enforced by Mairon and Varda), and yes, they may behave in a way that just about resembles civility when they meet to talk business, but that doesn’t mean he wants to spend time with him. It doesn’t mean he finds it easy.

He peers about the great hall for Mairon’s familiar form, mainly so he can call him over and have some back-up. Two against one. It’d mean much better odds for this to be nothing more than a quick and painless hi, how are you, see you again in six months’ time.

But Mairon is nowhere to be seen, presumably still trying to wrangle his gown in the loo.

Well. Needs must.

He kicks at the chair nearest to him, making room for his brother to sit down, which Manwë does with a little twitch of a smile. Arranging himself to face Melkor, he sets both feet neatly on the floor and folds his hands in his lap, looking for all the world like a solicitous shrink. For his part, Melkor remains sprawled in his chair, staring straight ahead across the expanse of the great hall.

“Lovely wedding,” Manwë says affably.

Melkor treats him to another grunt.

“The flowers are absolutely sublime.”

“Yes, well.” A wave of the hand. Not a single glance spared for his brother. “Mairon has a good eye for these sorts of things.”

“And the venue, too!” Manwë tilts his head, looking up towards the ceiling, and delight sounds in his voice. “The stone, the stained glass, the lights… It’s magical.”

That stirs Melkor’s interest. Idly, he follows his brother’s gaze, he takes in the same elegant vaulted arches, the same twinkling little lights that have hung above him for the past couple of hours, and realises that for all his looking, he didn’t truly see until now. It seems enchanted: a sky shadowed and pinpricked with gold; dark-grey stone, ancient and sturdy, warmed by wall-mounted braziers; huge windows whose stained glass shows kings and queens, knights and princes, heraldic devices and rugged Scottish scenery, steadfast witnesses to the passing of the years; a dozen mingling voices, laughter caught by the stones and made echoing, made eternal. It is a night of wonder. These charmed walls hold within them possibility as endless as the sand upon the shores of the world.

“Huh…” Melkor finally turns to his brother and finds him watching not the lights up above but him. “Yeah,” he says softly, “I suppose it is.”

Manwë drops his gaze. He fusses with his fingers, twisting at the skin, plucking at his wedding ring.

“Thank you,” he whispers, addressing his own lap. “For… for inviting me. I’m very happy to be here. I’m very happy to be able to celebrate this moment with you.”

The seconds tick on. Stretch, become lengthened. Time turned to molasses. Melkor half-expects to glance up and find himself and his brother immortalised in one of the panes of glass up above.

He’s the one to move first and break that stupor. He’s the only one who can. This is his night. This is his future being written. And in a place like this, where the stones are laid thick and history murmurs its secrets from every corner, it is easy—it feels right—to do things he has never done before. New things. Momentous things.

He hugs his brother. It’s awkward, what with both of them sitting down. Manwë’s knee jabs into the inside of his thigh. Neither of them knows how to hold the other. They grip too tightly, as though all their lives they’ve held magnets within their hearts and now that they’ve stopped resisting that elemental pull it’s impossible to ever again break apart.

“Glad to have you,” Melkor murmurs, and Manwë clutches to him tighter still, and the breath that he takes is sharp and rattling and convulsive, on the verge of a sob.

Melkor can’t say he’s missed him. Something—someone—first needs to be cherished in order to be missed. And Manwë… So perfect, so golden, their father’s pride and joy. His enemy. His mirror image. His baby brother by all of twenty-seven minutes. The object of his jealousy, his anger, his resentment.

There was a time he wished his brother dead. A dark time when he was a teenager and the world seemed made to spite him and his thoughts were barbed and full of hate. In the strangling quiet of night he’d lie in bed and imagine himself an only child: his mother’s life spared without the strain of delivering twins; his father’s eyes always on him, full of love and pride and kindness, all for him, all for him without Manwë there to shine brighter than bright and steal everything for himself.

And suddenly, with a feeling like being swept up in the frothing violence of a waterfall, he realises that Manwë knows. Knows what it’s like to be born into grief, to carry it with you, in between your organs, and love it as you would a ghost, or the soft coils of the noose that claims your life. Knows what it’s like to grow up with the weight of mountains, worlds, universes bowing your shoulders; the weight of a father when having a father means earning a father and the earning means waging war upon yourself and losing. Where Melkor rebelled, said bollocks to this and stuck his middle finger up at Eru and his interminable expectations, Manwë fell into line and tried his hardest and in the process had to lock away all the parts of himself that weren’t quite so perfect or quite so golden. Fiercely, fervidly, Melkor hopes that there will come a day when his brother gets to do all the things he’s never been able to do. That he gets to wear dresses and gawp at pretty men on the street and fuck things up. That he gets to unbury himself.

Gently, Melkor eases away from the hug.

“I, um…” Manwë clears his throat. Has thirty-two years’ worth of things to say and doesn’t know how to begin to say any of them. “I heard that Father paid for this. As an apology for…”

He waves his hand, doesn’t say the words. Doesn’t need to.

“He did,” Melkor confirms.

“Good.” There’s a spear-point glint in Manwë’s dark eyes; his words don’t come quickly, but they come steadily. They come wrapped tight in surety. “I’ve been meaning to apologise too. For quite some time, actually. I… I’m sorry, Melkor. I am so sorry for all the times I said the wrong thing or did something to upset you. I’ve always known that you don’t like girls. That… that you’re gay. I could see it when we were kids, when we were teenagers. But I was convinced it wasn’t allowed, and that meant that you… you just couldn’t be. Which is an awful, awful way to think. I should’ve looked out for you like you did for me, in school, but instead I denied who you were and made up a brother who was straight. And no one should ever be denied like that, no one, let alone by a family member. I don’t have the words for how sorry I am. Truly. I didn’t know any better.”

Melkor stares. Stops breathing. Family, he thinks, hotly, desperately. I have a family, I have a brother, and he’s here, he’s always been right here. 

“Well.” He also clears his throat. “You do now.”

Manwë nods firmly. “Yes.”

“It’s all right,” Melkor finds himself saying. The past is littered with mistakes and coloured black by hurt; but the future can be different. “I don’t hold it against you.”

His brother’s face bursts apart. Something, somewhere beneath his skin, has detonated. He looks wounded. He looks like he should be bleeding.

Melkor wants to turn away, avert his gaze, give his brother space, give himself comfort. But he doesn’t. He watches him. A witnessing. A vigil. And when wetness gets caught on Manwë’s eyelashes, he hands him a tissue.

“Tesori miei.”

They both look up. Varda is standing on the other side of the table, glancing between them with raised eyebrows.

“I’m not seeing nearly enough wedding cheer over here,” she chides gently.

Manwë blows his nose into the tissue. “I was just about to ask Melkor if he—and Mairon, of course—might like to pop round ours sometime in these next few weeks. I know you’re off on your honeymoon very shortly, but whenever you’re back.”

“A brilliant question,” Varda says. While Manwë buries his nose in the tissue again, she makes a questioning face at Melkor, subtly indicating her husband, and Melkor gives her a smile, a quick shake of the head. Nothing to worry about. “It’s been too long,” she goes on, reassured. “You’ve been depriving me of my favourite brother-in-law’s company.”

“I’m your only brother-in-law.”

“Still.”

“What’s the occasion?”

Manwë hesitates just long enough to look at Varda, who nods encouragingly. “No occasion. I thought it might be nice for the four of us to hang out.”

Unconscionable. Melkor has never hung out with his brother. They always have a reason for meeting, be it a business matter or someone’s birthday or the peripheral considerations that go into business and birthdays like filling in paperwork or putting up decorations. Something socially prescribed. You show up because you have to, and you put in the bare minimum of face time. To meet simply to hang out, to be social, to be friendly with each other…

Impossible, except it’s not because Manwë has just spoken it out loud and that must mean that he wants it to happen and perhaps that means that Melkor can want it too.

“Okay,” he replies. Baby steps. Just as Mairon said. “We’ll come.”

“We could have a barbeque,” Manwë suggests, a smile flashing onto his face all at once, like a sparkler struck alight. “A bit unorthodox in autumn, granted, but the weather has been so lovely and—”

“A barbeque?” Melkor can’t help himself; he tries to picture it, his brother roasting meat and vegetables on an open flame, and all he sees is a patio consumed by fire. “Have you ever barbequed anything in your life?”

“No.”

“Do you even own a barbeque?”

“No.” Not to be deterred, Manwë adds, “But I could buy one. I could learn.”

“Tell you what,” Melkor says as the idea takes root in his mind—a family rediscovered, remade, reforged through choice—and he decides that he will make it happen, “you get your hands on a barbeque, and Mairon can be in charge of it. He loves barbequing. We have a little one set up in the garden. He’s out there nearly every evening in the summer. I think it’s the fire that he enjoys. Don’t tell him I said this, but he has a bit of a pyromaniac streak.”

And laughter surrounds him, the good kind, the kind that flows from the belly and seems like it will never stop.

“That sounds good,” Manwë says, and Varda nods, and Melkor smiles at them both, a genuine smile, so very soft in the golden light.

“It does,” he says. “It does sound good.”

*

“Dance with me.”

Mairon tugs Thuringwethil to her feet and drags her to the head of the great hall and onto the dancefloor set up there.

“I’m not your husband,” she points out.

“No,” he agrees cheerfully, “you’re not. He’s over there.” He waves at Melkor, who bailed a little while ago after his bad leg started to hurt more than was manageable. Bemusedly, Melkor waves back. “Can’t dance anymore. Sore leg.”

Not waiting for a reply, he throws his arms into the air and starts bopping along to the music. At this point in the night, he’s downed a fair amount of champagne (and wine, and vodka tonics, oh lord) so what he’s doing is less dancing and more flailing, but his vision’s gone soft around the edges and his heart feels full and ripe and sweet as summertime cherries and whatever Maglor’s crooning into the microphone sounds like the most fantastic thing he’s ever heard.

With an indulgent shake of the head, Thuringwethil leaps into the dance with him.

“Are you happy?” she asks him, shouting over the music, which has only got louder with the wearing of the hours.

“I’m drunk!” he shouts back. “I think they’re the same thing.”

“Oh boy.”

“More booze?” He squints around the great hall in search of a waiter. “I say yes.”

“Nuh-uh.” She grabs at him, curling her fingers over his upper arms to prevent him from darting off. “I want you to enjoy your wedding night. Not chunder on his dick and then pass out.”

Mairon ponders this. It comes complete with a vivid set of mental images that make his stomach roil queasily.

“You make a good point,” he concedes.

On a whim, he sinks down in a rather wobbly slutdrop. The world seems magical from down here. Huge and veiled in hazy brightness, like sunlight through mist. He thinks: I’m in love. He thinks: if I were any happier, I might just die. He gets into a comfortable crouch, and decides to stay down.

Thuringwethil joins him.

“Hello,” he says. “Can’t believe this is actually happening. I’m married. Married. To my former client. Is this a dream? Am I asleep?”

Thumb and forefinger shoot out and pinch him right through the sleeve of his gown.

“Ow!”

“Not asleep,” Thuringwethil declares, deeply chuffed with herself.

Mairon tries to slap at her. He misses, unbalancing himself and nearly falling on his arse.

“I’m losing my mind,” he says once he’s recovered. “Kinda want to cry, kinda want to laugh.” He peers through someone’s legs—Eönwë’s?—to try and catch a glimpse of Melkor, and there he is: sitting tall in his chair, face framed by the fall of his night-black hair, proud and utterly self-assured; a king keeping watch over his subjects. His husband. “Kinda want to fuck,” he adds unashamedly.

“Well, hold it in,” Thuringwethil retorts. “You need to do dessert first.”

“Dessert!” He’d almost forgotten. The concept is a delight beyond imagining. From mohanthal and ghari and shrikhand to a tiered cake dripping in chocolate. “I love dessert. Do you love dessert?”

Thuringwethil nods heartily. She takes a deep breath, grasps him by the arm and squeezes, on the cusp of something profound.

And that something is: “Dessert makes life worth living.”

*

“Gothmog!” Melkor beckons him over, nodding towards the dancefloor where Mairon and Thuringwethil are crouched down, deep in conversation. “What’s going on?”

“Oh, that.” Gothmog takes the empty seat at Melkor’s side and drinks deeply of his pint of ale. “They used to do that all the time in uni.”

That’s more mystifying, if anything. Melkor puts his head to the side, regards the bizarre tableau from a different angle, tries to figure out why anyone would be squatting on a dancefloor, of all places. It doesn’t help at all.

“Still not sure what I’m looking at,” he says eventually.

“Right,” Gothmog begins, in the brisk tone of someone used to issuing instructions, “so the way this works is, they do a slutdrop—or start doing one, I should say—but they give up halfway through and just stay down on the floor chatting shit.”

“I… see.”

“Yeah, they’re certified weirdos.” Blithely, Gothmog gulps at his ale again. His gaze skims over Melkor’s arms, exposed now that his suit jacket’s off and his sleeves are rolled up, and he elbows him in what is probably meant to be a friendly gesture but is, in fact, quite forceful. “Nice tats, by the way.”

The compliment is unexpected. It makes Melkor forget to be peeved about the elbowing.

“Thanks,” he mutters vaguely.

He hasn’t spent much time with Gothmog. Not like this, not one-on-one. He sees him occasionally, sure, especially when Mairon doesn’t want to go to one of his house parties on his own.

But this—the sort of light, inquisitive chatter that typically precedes a friendship—is entirely unfamiliar territory.

Gothmog, for his part, doesn’t seem to find it jarring at all.

“Been wanting one for ages,” he says, shares, unprompted.

“Mm.”

Melkor has never learned how to make friends. With Ungoliant it was easy, a spark that arced between them with all the dazzle of electricity. They were so alike that he felt he already knew her, had known her for years and years; talking to her was as natural as talking to himself.

He doesn’t get that same feeling with Gothmog. Instead of flow, of ease, he has to pause and think about what to say, what he’s expected to say. People want to be asked about themselves, don’t they? They want to know that you’re interested in who they are.

“What would you get?” Melkor asks.

There. That should adequately convey his desire to connect. And he does want to connect. Wants to get to know this person that is such a big part of Mairon’s life. More than that, he thinks he might like to have a new mate. Someone to go down the pub with and talk (learn) about rugby. Someone who laughs too loudly and doesn’t mince his words and will get horrifically drunk with you but also help you clean up afterwards. People aren’t all bad, he's been finding out. In fact, some of them, a select few, can even be said to be good.

“A rugby ball,” comes Gothmog’s answer. “On my upper arm. Like a sailor’s tattoo, except it’s not the sea that’s the love of my life, but rugby. I know, I know, it doesn’t exactly scream creativity, but if I were a creative person, I wouldn’t be tossing a ball around a pitch for a living.”

Melkor chuckles, feels a certain cheery warmth settle in his chest. He decides that he wants to share a little something about himself too.

“My job’s not particularly creative either.”

Gothmog nods in solidarity. “What is it that you do? Mairon’s never mentioned, funnily enough. All our conversations about you were mainly just him claiming he wasn’t horny while obviously being horny and also being angry about being horny.”

A snort bubbles through Melkor’s nose. “That’s Mairon for you.”

Gothmog lifts his ale in a mock toast. Melkor joins in with his own drink (water—he’s had a good amount of alcohol for one night and doesn’t want to overdo it).

“I’m in property,” he says at length. “Ever heard of Angband?”

“Nope.”

It’s a privilege, Melkor thinks, to only be known for yourself and not for the image you project to the world.

“Fair enough. Guess you wouldn’t have had reason to.”

“You real estate agents?”

“Real estate developers.”

“Huh.” Gothmog studies him for a moment before clinking their glasses together so vigorously that some of his ale slops out over the table. “Good for you. Sounds like a proper grown-up job.”

“Well,” Melkor smiles, “someone has to fund Mairon’s lavish lifestyle.”

At that, Gothmog goes quiet. When he speaks again, it’s not in his usual jovial boom but in an undertone, quick and serious, for Melkor’s ears only.

“I was glad to hear he’s not escorting anymore. He started doing it just like that”—fingers snapping expertly—“on a total whim, has he ever told you? The first few months after uni weren’t pretty. He couldn’t decide what he wanted to do with his life, kept applying to random jobs then withdrawing the applications then kicking himself for withdrawing them. It got to a point where me and Thu were concerned for him, he was just so down in the dumps about it all. So we all got together one night, me, him, and Thu, to try and cheer him up, you know? We got pizza, booze, popcorn, burned through several movies and stayed up way too late. I don’t remember how we got talking about sex work, maybe someone mentioned it or maybe it came up in one of the movies, but we did talk about sex work and then Mai got this glint in his eye and was like, ‘Hey, I can do that.’ It was Thu who told him he didn’t even need to fuck anyone, he could just get men to give him money for the privilege of being in his presence. Next day, the batty bitch went and had a bunch of business cards made. No agency, no nothing. He just struck out on his own.” Gothmog’s broad shoulders rise with an indrawn breath. It comes out as a sigh that seems to leave him thinner, emptier. “I supported him, we both supported him, both me and Thu, because that’s what friends do. But we worried too. I had this gut feeling that I’d turn on the news one day and see him dead in a ditch somewhere.”

Melkor gazes out to where Mairon and Thuringwethil are still hunkered down on the dancefloor. Mairon, his Mairon. Lovely as a dream in his wedding gown, flushed with life and happiness. Melkor suddenly understands the craving for immortality. Not even a hundred thousand years would be enough to soak up the joy of him.

“He would’ve been more likely to wind up in prison for putting someone in a ditch,” he tells Gothmog with absolute conviction. “He can take care of himself.”

“Yeah,” Gothmog says slowly. He follows Melkor’s gaze, stares at Mairon, carefully considering him. Mairon seems to sense their attention and gets to his feet, holding on to Thuringwethil for balance. He gives them both a brilliant grin. “Yeah,” Gothmog says again, more firmly this time, “he can.”

“Random creeps still pester him,” Melkor adds. “They come into his shop”—Mairon’s very own small business, making and selling jewellery and pretty metal trinkets and, occasionally, sex toys—“to ogle him or try and chat him up, but he pulls his knife on them and points to the very real and very human skull on a shelf behind the till and tells them that that’s what’s going to happen to them if they don’t leave in the next five seconds.” He smiles, full of pride for his homicidal gremlin of a husband. “Works like a charm.”

That startles a loud guffaw out of Gothmog.

“Bugger me, he’s crazy!” he declares. “And you’re crazy for being into crazy!” He laughs again, a long bellow of it, and guzzles the rest of his ale so it sticks white and foamy to his upper lip. “Cheers to you, mate, and cheers to a new chapter!”

*

“Look at this place,” says a slightly more sobered-up Mairon as he and Melkor make their way to their room through corridors now draped in silence. His footsteps are a soft whisper of skin against stone, his heels clutched in his hand, and the flames in the braziers leap and flutter, making the shadows seem playful, curious, part of the wedding celebrations just as much as the human guests. “Imagine living here. Imagine being a lord. A king.”                                    

His voice carries, echoes, seeming to swell and fill the entire castle, and beside him Melkor smiles a rich, indulgent smile.

“It’s not hard to do. You’re already wearing a crown.”

Mairon touches his free hand to the circlet at his forehead. A teasing little titter lingers on his lips.

“Just for you, my lord.”

“Oh,” Melkor purrs, wrapping an arm about his waist and pulling him close, “I could get used to you calling me that.”

“I could,” Mairon murmurs. He looks up, catches those dark eyes that gleam like onyx in the flames, and sudden heat rushes through him. “I could call you that. Get on my knees. Swear fealty to you.”

And Melkor laughs, a laugh like a dagger drawn through fabric, leaving the skin underneath defenceless.

“I’ll have you on your knees, all right,” he says, promises, and Mairon sighs out a shuddering breath and quickens his step.

*

“You’re so beautiful, little one.”

From where he kneels between Melkor’s parted thighs, Mairon glances up. It’s a lie, the compliment. If beauty means looking polished and pristine, then he’s currently existing in a parallel universe from it, what with his mouth full of cock and pre-come daubed over his lips and chin. His hair has been mussed out of its dainty waves, a great handful seized in Melkor’s fist and held tight: a not-quite-ache across his scalp, dim but unrelenting. His veil is somewhere on the floor; his circlet glimmers dully from beneath the ruffled tulle of it. His gown, however, he was allowed to keep on; he’s decked in white and crimson, in tantalising contrast to Melkor’s bare, brown skin.

A bride depraved.

Pushed to his knees, hands cuffed behind his back and mouth pried open first by fingers—oh, look at you, with your wet and warm little fuckhole; you were made to be used, weren’t you?—and then cock.

He feels more a whore than a bride, truth be told, and he loves it, lives for it, treasures every moment of it. This is what they agreed on for tonight; for a good long while now, Melkor has made it a point to always sit him down and run him through scenes before they happen, and he of course returns the favour when it’s his turn to Dom. It was a few days ago that Melkor approached him all coy and giddy and asked for his permission to fuck his mouth and come on his face and in his hair while he’s still wearing his wedding gown—among other things. And, nearly trembling with desire, he said yes. The promise of much pampering after, including a relaxing soak in their room’s very modern and very roomy whirlpool bathtub while Melkor washes his hair for him, was also joyfully received.

“That’s it,” Melkor tells him now as he swallows him deep, tongue laving against his underside. “Good girl.”

Girl. Mairon moans to hear it, moans with the soft, gutting feeling that it gives him: something forbidden, stolen, like slipping into a selkie’s skin and becoming other.

Smoothly, greedily, he bobs his head, letting Melkor slide in almost to the back of his throat, suckling at his tip on every upswing. His eyes flicker shut. Right from the start, Melkor’s given him full control over the rhythm, and he’s become lost in it, freed from his own self: this is his life, now, his purpose, his reason. He’s a toy, a thing, a pretty little thing with sloppy holes made for his master’s pleasure. And beneath the layers of tulle, beneath the delicate white lace of his lingerie, his cock, uncaged for this day only, throbs and leaks and drives a maddening pulse of need through the deepest places of his being.

Melkor’s getting close. Mairon can hear it in the stutter of his breath, can feel it in the subtle rock of his hips and the way his fingers clutch wildly at his hair. As much as he’s able, he speeds up. His cheeks, already hollowed, pull in taut. Saliva slicks his lips and drips from the corners of his mouth.

It’s unlucky timing that undoes the moment. Melkor’s already buried deep when his hips snap forward, sudden reflex, and the gagging comes on all at once and with a vengeance.

Mairon splutters, wrenches free, has to take a few seconds to hold his eyes shut and simply breathe through the heaving of his stomach.

“Doing okay?” Melkor asks after a moment. There’s an edge to his voice, something rough and panting, but he speaks kindly and loosens his grip on Mairon’s hair and sits there waiting patiently while Mairon recovers enough to speak.

“Yeah, don’t worry.” Mairon rests his forehead against Melkor’s inner thigh and snorts quietly, mostly at himself. “Too much food, too much drink, I think. No deep-throating for me tonight.”

“Probably for the best. I’d help you clean up if you were sick, but it wouldn’t exactly be my ideal way to spend the evening.”

“Nor mine.” A deep, fortifying inhale. “All right,” Mairon announces, stomach finally settled, “I’m ready.”

“You sure?”

His response is a hum of agreement, a dip of the head so he can lick Melkor from balls to cock to the swollen crown of his tip. He plants a kiss there, right where his pleasure pools fluid and leaves him glistening, and then his mouth opens and his tongue works against velvet hardness and Melkor reaches for him with both hands, one curled over the back of his skull as the other quests lower, into the open cleavage of his gown, fingers plucking at his nipple.

They both shudder. Mairon doesn’t take him in very deep, not this time, but he makes up for it with the swirls and flicks of his tongue, the pressure of his lips dragged over his cockhead. A moan echoes from his throat, his nipple pulled and stroked till he’s burning all over, lava skin, molten belly; and Melkor moans with him, gasps, twitching in his mouth, nearly there, nearly, nearly—

He drags him away by the hair in the last second before orgasm. Come paints him white: his hair veiled in it, his face deluged, forehead, cheeks, nose, lips, sticky, messy. And with his hands bound behind his back, there isn’t a single thing he can do about it. He just about manages to shut his eyes in time.

“Beautiful,” Melkor croons again, and he touches him as he would a pet, a loyal little dog, stroking his hair, his face, rubbing at his own come and spreading it till Mairon’s sure he hasn’t got one single inch of clean skin left. “What do you say, sweetheart?”

Mairon sucks in his lips, licks at them till they feel fractionally less sticky. Tang explodes on his tongue, and salt, so very familiar and so easy to savour.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Very good.”

Hands cup his jaw, tilt his head up and back, and Melkor leans down to meet him, claiming his mouth in a deep, searching kiss. He’s tasting himself, he must be, Mairon’s sure of it; the realisation, the knowledge, makes lust seethe in his stomach and scorch up his spine.

“Please, sir,” he begs in between kisses, needing to be touched, needing those strong, cruel hands to slip under his gown and make him shatter. “Please…”

“What is it, pet?”

“I want you.”

“I’m right here.”

Mairon groans loudly. If his hands were free, he’d have half a mind to grab Melkor by the balls and twist till the bastard dropped this infuriating game. “I want you to touch me.”

“Do you, now?” Melkor smirks. One of his hands trails down to Mairon’s throat and he grabs, he squeezes, just because he can. “And where would you like me to touch you?”

“My, um…”

The hand squeezes harder. “Say it.”

“My pretty little cock, sir,” Mairon chokes out, and for one exquisite moment, as the fingers around his throat do not relent and mounting pressure throbs in his skull and the world cuts out to blurry lights and dancing shadows, he feels perfectly at peace.

Melkor takes his hands off him. “As you wish,” he purrs, retrieving a ball gag off the bedspread. “I am your servant in all things.”

That is patently untrue. Mairon would dearly like to protest, but his lungs are screaming for air and in the half-second it takes him to gulp down a breath, Melkor swoops in. Fingers curl around his jaw, thumb pushing in between his teeth and dragging his mouth open.

“Ah—”

“Quiet,” Melkor snarls, rolling the ball gag through the come streaked down his cheek before shoving it in and buckling it tight at the back of his head. “There,” he breathes, the absolute bastard, and graces him with a beatific smile. “So your screaming doesn’t get too loud. It wouldn’t do to disturb our lovely guests, now would it?”

“Mmph?”

Mairon knows what he’s referring to. He consented to this entire scene, after all. But still, it’s fun to pretend ignorance. To pretend to be an innocent bride kidnapped on his wedding day and put to cruel use. It sparks a thrill in him, a crooning threat of danger, an expectation of pain and how inescapably helpless he will be against it. It promises seduction, abandon. This need to be in control that he’s dragged with him all his life, to be poised and proper and always, always prepared for any eventuality—pulverised, all of it. In a way, to submit is to be free.

“You asked me to touch you,” Melkor says, voice low, smile turned devilish. “You didn’t specify that it has to be nice touch.”

“Mmph!”

“Oh yes.” He stands and stalks behind him, and with fingers tight about his upper arms—Mairon hopes he’ll bruise up nicely by morning—he hauls him to his feet. “I’m going to hurt you. I’m going to take your pretty little cock and your pretty little balls and beat them till they’re purple. And you are going to thank me for it.”

Mairon bleats something behind the gag that has a distinct hint of no to it. The glare that Melkor gives him could make hearts stop and bones wither.

“Was that a no, little one? Do you know what happens to ungrateful little whores who refuse to take what they are given?”

Mairon absolutely does know what happens to ungrateful little whores; and he looks forward to it happening to him very shortly.

“Well?” Melkor presses. His hand drifts up, moulds to his cheek, cradling him as gingerly as he would a porcelain doll. “Will you be good for me?”

Mairon shakes his head. No. No no no n—

Slap.

Melkor’s open palm catches him full across the face. His dirty, defiled face. Pinkening skin underneath streaks of drying white. The impact throbs through his skull, bores straight through the bone and into his brain and kills something there. Some vital mechanism responsible for shaping his thoughts and setting them racing after each other, round and round. They stop, like blackness swallowing up a stage. Nothing exists except them, right here, right now, two bodies that yield and yearn. He breathes hard through the little holes in his gag and looks at Melkor with wide eyes and wishes that this moment might never end.

“You don’t get a choice in this,” Melkor tells him, and he speaks with the tenderness of someone skewering a sword through their beloved’s guts, slowly, so that they might feel it. A lie, of course, as Mairon knows and Melkor knows as well; but lies are potent things, and this one has the power to steal the breath from Mairon’s lungs and leave him aching in a place far below the skin where his wishes live, his wants, his deepest fantasies. “You don’t get an opinion. You don’t get to protest. What you’re here for—all you’re here for—is to be used and hurt and fucked. Nod if you understand.”

Mairon does. He does nod. And when Melkor crowds into his space and puts his hands on him and kisses him so very sweetly upon the gag, he stays quiet. Pliant. Taking what he’s given.

“Clever girl,” Melkor praises; his hand where it cups his cheek makes fresh pain flare up. “You know who you belong to.”

And with that, he seats himself in the middle of the bed, propped up against the headboard atop the towel they laid out earlier to protect the pristine white sheets. Once he’s settled, he drags Mairon down to lie across his lap, grabbing his gown, his arms, his hair, anything within reach that he can manhandle.

“There we go,” he says. He draws his knees up so Mairon’s arse is lifted into the air, and with a rough hand yanks the skirt of his gown up and over his head. “Oh, little one… This is undignified even for you. How about we keep you like this always, hmm? Presented so nicely for me, just like a fucktoy, all trussed up and exposed?”

Mairon simply moans. His world has become shadowy, hemmed with tulle. His breath is loud in his ears. He wiggles his hips, puts on a show, to entice, to tempt, and for his trouble Melkor delivers a sharp slap to his arse.

“’Uck!” Mairon whines, fuck, mangled through the gag, as Melkor massages the skin he’s just smacked.

“Shh. Shh, my sweet. We’re just getting started.”

Fingers tug at his lingerie, nearly tearing the thin fabric—but not quite, no, this is one of the things he asked Melkor not to do, and Melkor is following his wishes to the letter. It is simply manoeuvred aside, the little strip of lace, just enough to uncover him.

“Spread your legs.”

Wide, wider, as wide as he can in this position. He’s bare, feels it, cool air in tender places and his cock lolling swollen and heavy between his thighs. A sigh sounds from above him, from beyond the tulle. Melkor’s sigh, dark with desire, making his cheeks boil.

“You’re so eager for me,” Melkor whispers; his fingers slip down to his underside, wrap tight about the hardness of him and squeeze in such a brilliant flash of sensation that Mairon throws his hips back and grinds against his palm. “Have you been hard all day? Were you leaking through your lingerie when we were saying our vows, thinking of how good it’d feel to be spread open and stuffed full of cock?” A pause rocks through the air, Melkor thumbing at his tip and the piercing adorning it, and Mairon’s reply—no, he’s a deviant, sure, but not that much of a deviant—is lost in a stuttering moan. “Oh, I think that you were, my greedy little slut.”

Abruptly, Melkor withdraws his hand, and Mairon’s left fruitlessly rocking his hips. Another strike lands on his arse, and another, and another—each harder than the last, stinging, making his skin glow with heat. He squirms from side to side, half-trying to evade the next hit, stuck in that torturous interlude between the start of pain and the moment where its edges blur and bleed and the hurt takes on some of the sweetness of pleasure.

“Is it too much for you? Are you a sweet thing, a soft thing?” The smacking stops. Melkor’s hands lose some of their violence; they turn probing instead, kneading him, pulling him open. His gaze seems to burn where it settles on that secret skin. “Oh no, we’re not soft, we’re not sweet, not here. Your pretty cunt likes to be wrecked, doesn’t it?”

Melkor spits on him, and then his fingers are there, two of them, rubbing over his hole. Round and round, in delicate little circles. Mairon doesn’t need this gentleness, this easing in—he does rather enjoy a spot of wrecking, thank you very much—but it makes him feel good, makes him feel so close to Melkor; people touch so they might know each other, and this is touch of the most intimate kind. Eventually, the fingers breach him. A nudge, a coaxing open of muscles, and finally: a sinking, a long, slow sinking deep inside of him.

“Yes, princess,” Melkor murmurs to him as he moans, as he shivers, as he pushes back against him and practically fucks himself on his fingers. “Do you like that? Are you getting wet for me?”

Yesyesyes, distorted through the gag, wild as an animal call. Pleasure rushes beneath his skin, from head to foot it flows in countless brimming rivulets; his cock drips with it, splattering freely over the towel below.

He knows what’s coming next, he knows to expect it; or he knew before Melkor’s fingers filled him and made him forget everything he’s ever been or said or done.

An open-handed blow catches his balls, the underside of his cock. It’s gentle, really, as far as smacks go. More surprise than pain. But instinct cannot be overridden, and from one second to the next Mairon finds himself yelping, legs bowing protectively inwards.

“Ah, ah.” Melkor’s foot sneaks out between his knees and with firm pressure against his calf he makes him splay himself wide again. Open. Vulnerable. Bullseye. “Greedy sluts like you don’t deserve pleasure. They deserve punishment.”

Somehow, Melkor pushes his fingers in even deeper, plugging him utterly. He’d have him hooked if they were at home, a thick metal hook slid inside him and wrenching his hips up and up and up till he couldn’t even pretend at escaping. But they’re not at home, and their suitcases were packed with so many things that they only had room for a handful of toys: gag, wrist cuffs, and a paddle, a little one no bigger than a hairbrush and made of sturdy black leather. Perfectly capable of delivering a resounding whack, despite its diminutive size. And it’s the paddle that Melkor reaches for now.

Tap, tap, tap. A kiss of leather against his balls. A warning, a command: pain is coming; brace yourself.

“Ready?” Melkor asks.

“Mm-hmm.”

“I want you to say thank you after each one.”

“Mmph!”

“Oh, but I love hearing you try to speak when you’re gagged. It is really quite humiliating, sweetheart.”

“Mmph!” Mairon says again, which in fact means I’ll do this to you next time and see how you like it.

But the ball gag thwarts him, and the paddle starts to swing, and all notion of retorting is knocked right out of his head. Thwack—thank you—thwack—thank you—thwack… He thanks Melkor for each blow, like a good girl, a grateful little whore, and he does it brokenly, in splintered words, barely comprehensible.

There is pain. Oh, there is pain, pain that builds, thudding, growing, deepening. He welcomes it. It is him and he is it, between his legs, in his guts, in the marrow of his bones. It unpicks the bounds of his being. Shows him who he is, who he can be: an adult doing impact play in a safe space; a helpless, shuddering animal; a body made of trillions of nerve endings, in awe of itself; a star light-years away exploding in a burst of jewelled fire.

He opens his thighs wider. He clenches around Melkor’s fingers. He grunts through the gag, into the mattress, loudly, and then says thank you, thank you, thank you.

A strike, another one, what might be the tenth or the millionth. And maybe Melkor’s decided to try a new angle or use more force, but the impact this time comes down hard, jarring, cramping through his stomach. It hurts and the hurt is a clawed, ugly, vicious thing and Mairon shoves his face into the bed and bites down on his ball gag and starts to shake, slightly, as though his muscles were attempting to jerk free of his bones.

“Hey.”

He is being touched, not by leather but skin, Melkor’s, stroking over the back of his thigh.

“You’re okay.”

The words should soothe, do soothe; but the ghost of that hurt looms enormous, and the happy, boozy haze in his head is being eaten up by tiredness, and Mairon feels cold, cold and insubstantial, like paper, or frost, or the silk of spider webs.

“That last one was a little too hard, wasn’t it?”

The gown’s skirt is lifted from his head. Sight is returned to his eyes and he blinks, a beast struck dumb by the grandeur of the world.

“Do you want to stop?”

There’s no expectation in the question, no double meaning or hidden behest. If he says yes, then they still stop, Melkor will take him into his arms, and he will hold him as long as it takes for warmth to return to his skin.

Mairon shifts slightly. Rolls his shoulders in their stiffening sockets, stretches his back to slacken its tightness. Slowly, he becomes aware of his breathing. Air in through his nose, puffing out his chest, his abdomen. Held fast in his lungs, one second followed by another, another, another, and then pushed back out, an emptying. A cleansing.

He’s starting to bulk out. Becoming solid again, and sturdy; rekindled lust fires him up like a rising red sun.

“Uh-uh,” he replies through the gag, as best he’s able.

“So no to stopping?”

A nod. For good measure, he adds, “Mm-hmm.”

“All right. So we’re carrying on with the smacks. Would you like them to be softer?”

Another nod.

“I can do that for you,” Melkor says, and his voice runs deep and warm, so warm that it could surely melt ice caps—ice caps, and Mairon’s heart.

His fingers are still plugging Mairon up. They withdraw now, partway, only for Melkor to spit on him again and twist back in, right in, down to the knuckle. And then the movement comes, easy, tiny thrusts, the angle not quite managing to hit his prostate but oh, Mairon doesn’t need it to; the fullness teases, makes him squirm, leaves him hungry, and the pleasure that crests in his belly drowns out any lingering hurt.

“There you go, sweetheart,” Melkor croons; he continues to fuck into him as he picks up the paddle and flicks it against his balls, a sharp smattering of pain and then a diffusion into bliss, the kind that hypnotises, that cuts loose and sets afloat. “That’s better, isn’t it?”

Breathily, hardly aware that he’s even responding, Mairon mumbles his assent.

“Yes. Not too painful, not too cruel…”

Melkor hits him a little bit harder, just the tiniest fraction, and Mairon curls his hips into the blow, moaning a shameless moan, enjoying the tenderness that feels like a bruise that feels like coming alive.

“Aren’t you forgetting something? A certain something you’re supposed to say?”

Fuck, he did, he did forget. Hurriedly he says it, thank you, throws a sir onto the end of it, and above him Melkor makes a half-choked noise that is approval and delight both rolled into one.

The paddle falls, and falls, and falls.

“You’re so good for me, such a good girl, taking it so well…”

Yes, yes, a good girl, the best girl, praise that stitches itself into his skin like stars in a glowing constellation. He’s sweaty now, glistening with a faint sheen of it, and his thighs tremble each time the paddle connects and his hands behind his back find each other and squeeze tight. It’s on the verge of becoming too much again, the ratcheting pain, but for now it hovers just below that breaking point, delicious in the way of berries grasped between teeth and torn open: sharp-sweet and sating.

And then—an end. Stillness blankets the room. Even the fingers inside him fall motionless.

“My, my…” Melkor sounds for all the world like he has met with the business end of a paddle. Hoarse. Wrecked. His cock, grown stiff again, digs into Mairon’s belly. “You’ve gone so red, my love.”

He cups his balls in the palm of his hand, and Mairon gasps, hips jerking, skin feeling drumhead-tight, swollen, fevered.

Laughter spills into the room, helpless and gleeful. It might even be called a giggle, if Mairon were in the mood to be a bitch.

“Oh, I can feel you clenching around my fingers…”

The fondling continues, making Mairon twitch and tense and curse—largely unintelligibly—from behind the gag.

“Do we want something?”

For a moment, just a moment, Melkor rotates his fingers, changes his angle, and rubs hard against his prostate. Mairon hears a roaring in his ears, then realises that the roaring is him and his cock is soaking wet and his stomach is trembling in that telltale way and oh god oh fuck he might… he might actually…

The fingers pull away.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Melkor chuckles. “Come on, then, my sweet. Let’s get you up.”

He helps him to his knees. Clicks his tongue at him and points to the middle of the bed, as if he were a well-trained pet. Obediently, Mairon shuffles over.

A rough hand between his shoulder blades sends him toppling face-first upon the towel. The gown’s skirt is bunched up around his hips, and the lingerie is fully tugged off him. His back arches. His thighs part. Anticipation gnaws at his stomach.

The sound of the lube being popped open sends his heart tumbling. He wiggles his hips, waits with bated breath.

And he is richly rewarded.

Melkor pushes in slowly, and his nerves sing with the familiar stretch, his body opening, a welcome home, a willing surrender. He pants, his breaths take on a whining edge, and please he murmurs soft and fractured through the gag, and when Melkor starts to thrust he squeezes his eyes shut and sees lights in that sightless darkness, star-fire, white and dazzling.

“My beautiful bride,” Melkor purrs as he rocks forward and his fingers grab at the pillowy curve of Mairon’s hips. “Should I be gentle with you? Fuck you all slow and loving, like it’s your first time?” His thrusts mellow; he stays in deep and delicately rocks Mairon against the mattress, and Mairon moans for him, lulled by the sea-wave movement, his insides glowing with the sheer miraculous tenderness of it. “Or should I be rough, hmm? Pin you down and make you scream? Use you like a piece of meat?”

The tenderness cracks apart and violence bursts through its ruins. Melkor leans over him, braces himself with one hand beside his head and twists the other in his hair, wrenching at his scalp, crushing him into the mattress. He fucks him then, truly fucks him, thrusts that reverberate up through his guts and drive the breath clean out of his lungs. The angle is paralysing, grinding the head of Melkor’s cock against his prostate on every push, every pull, and it’s not fair, Mairon thinks, it’s not fair that Melkor knows him so well, knows his body with its quirks and places of pleasure, knows just how to wring orgasms out of him; he wants this to last, wants it to go on and on for entire epochs and then forever after that, but it won’t, it can’t, his muscles tightening till he feels made of stone and the stone seems shaken by an earthquake, and his cock, oh his cock, gluttonous thing that it is, hardly even touched tonight yet still swollen and aching and hot and desperate.

Suddenly, Melkor hauls himself upright. His warmth, his weight, they vanish; so does the hand holding Mairon down by the hair. For a second, Mairon misses the proximity. For a second, he is still able to do things like missing what is gone. But then fingers wrap around his cock, pump him loosely, once, twice, slippery with his own wetness, and—

He falls.

His orgasm is devouring. He knows nothing, he is nothing. Just a vessel for pleasure. His own. Melkor’s. Both, mingled. He’s empty and Melkor’s there to fill him when he finds his own climax, seconds or minutes or hours later, slamming in deep and rutting against him with a throaty groan that shudders in Mairon’s chest.

Joined bodies. Heaving breaths. Afterglow.

Melkor’s hand finds his back. Rubs him through his gown until his breathing steadies. A feeling like honey, like hugs, like thick, swaddling duvets on cold winter nights. A feeling that Mairon wants to bottle up and string around his neck and wear right next to his heart.

“Easy, love,” Melkor says as he withdraws, as the scrape of his softening cock over raw nerves makes Mairon whimper. “I know, I know… There you are, such a good boy.”

Good boy.

Boy, not girl.

Selves are built on words. Boy, girl, fluid, queer: Mairon in facets, in mirror-maze glimpses. He’s been a boy longer than he’s been anything else. And though the exact kind of boy that he is has changed and is changing and will continue to change, waxing and waning like moon phases, it’s a familiar self to embody. It fits him easily, loose enough so it doesn’t chafe, comforting as only a worn-in self can be.

The cuffs are unclasped from each other. Undone from around his wrists.

“Do you want to come up for me?”

Mairon does, pushing himself up to his knees with arms that ache and prickle from the strain of being bound for so long.

“Hello,” Melkor coos. “Husband.”

Soft, solicitous hands unbuckle the gag, draw it from his mouth all slick and sporting some new bite marks. His hair is brushed back from his face. Melkor’s mouth does something—a smile, love painted across the contours of his lips—and it makes Mairon giggle.

“Hi, husband,” he says right back. His voice comes out scratchy. “Do you think I could have some water?”

“Of course.”

Melkor trundles off, grabbing a chilled bottle of water out of the mini-fridge, and giving Mairon a spectacular view of his backside in the process—if he could get hard again so soon, he would.

“Here. Drink up. I’ll be right back.”

The water is lovely, cold and soothing. Mairon downs almost half the bottle before Melkor returns from where he disappeared into the bathroom, a damp washcloth in his hand.

“Let me,” he says when Mairon makes to take it from him.

He plops down on the edge of the bed. One hand takes Mairon by the chin, so very gently, as with the other he laves the washcloth over his face, rubbing away any remaining traces of his own dried pleasure.

“I think I came on my gown,” Mairon points out. He can’t quite bring himself to mind. The washcloth is soft and warm against his skin. Melkor’s eyes on him feel like being gilded in sunlight.

“We’ll take it to the dry cleaners.”

Mairon gives a minuscule nod. “Did you enjoy yourself?” he asks after a moment.

“Immensely. I’d ask you the same thing, but it was clear enough from all the moaning…”

A slap connects with Melkor’s thigh. Barely forceful enough to make a sound. “Your fault.”

“Quite.” The washcloth is lowered. Melkor’s eyes are not. “I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving you,” he says, heartfelt and completely out of the blue.

There are a great many things Mairon thinks about saying. Sex makes you go all sappy or Sounds like the champagne’s gone to your head or If I wanted declarations of eternal love, I would’ve gone to Maglor next door.

In the end, all he says is, “I love you too.”

It’s true, that age-old saying: there is a first time for everything. He used to think of love as a destroyer. Something that takes you and shapes you and in the process robs you of yourself, or selves, or bits of your selves. Leaving you lesser. I love you meaning I’m giving you the power to mutilate me.

But here he is sat before his husband and those three words hang suspended above them like watchful gods and he finds that they do not daunt him or make him feel any lesser. They cannot take anything from him that he does not choose to give. Nothing can. He is who he is, wholly, imperfectly: a human both sharp and soft, both pretty and not, sometimes kind, sometimes cruel, sometimes yielding, sometimes stubborn as a mule. Himself. Just himself. That’s all he’s ever needed to be.

Melkor stares at him. He looks like he might cry, or keel over, or phase into another plane of existence. All Mairon can think to do is touch him, so he does, leaning in, hands cradling his jaw, lips brushing, tasting, adoring. After minutes—or aeons that feel like minutes—they ease apart.

“I think,” Melkor whispers into the space that opens between their bodies, “that it might be time to get rid of this.”

He tugs at the hair tie on his wrist, flicking it lightly against the skin.

Mairon bites back a smile, saying, “Are you sure? Will you be okay? Do you want us to frame it, or—”

“Shush, you.” The hair tie comes off. It nestles in Melkor’s hennaed palm. “I have a ring now. Don’t need a hair tie to remember that you’re mine.”

Taking it from him—carefully, reverently—Mairon places it on the bedside table. A hair tie that is once again just a ratty old hair tie. Maybe he will frame it after all.

“You don’t need anything, dearest,” he tells his lovely, loving, lunatic husband. “I’m here. I’ll always be right here.”

With a grace beyond words, beyond thought, Melkor takes his hand within his own and lifts it to his lips, dusting a tingling kiss across his knuckles.

“I know,” he murmurs.

And then he smiles, a warm smile, a simple smile. A smile that Mairon can’t wait to see every day, day after day, till night grows endless and the universe goes still.

The future starts here; and it is all theirs.