Only then can you belong to me by elennalore

Mairon had come home early from the celebrations to some alone time, but of course that wasn’t going to happen.

He was in one of the vaults to collect supplies for his latest clockwork project when he felt the all-too familiar presence of an uninvited spirit fill the vault, making the place constricted and stagnant. Mairon wrinkled his nose and raised a candle he was carrying, his gaze scanning the room futilely. The invisible intruder had the nerve to laugh.

“You!” Mairon shouted. “Go away at once or I’ll call Aulë.”

“Aulë is currently at Manwë’s palace, as we both surely know. Besides, you never told Aulë of my last visit, did you?”

Mairon huffed irritably; he was not going to talk about that. The kiss had been a grave mistake.

“Show yourself, then. I don’t want to bump into you in darkness.”

“Oh, but I think you would want to do just that, wouldn’t you?” dared the irritating voice say.

The fallen Vala had a decency to obey him at last; he materialised next to him, a shadowy figure against a dark stone wall. Someone else might have found him threatening. Mairon just shrugged his shoulders, accepting Melkor’s presence in his life for the time being.

“I have work to do,” Mairon commented bluntly and nodded toward a pile of machinery he was carrying.

“Of course, and so have I.”

Mairon, who had already started to climb the stairs from the cellar vault, stopped and turned abruptly.

“Have you?” he sneered. “What kind of – work, if I may ask?” He couldn’t imagine nothing but causing chaos in the world in general, and in Mairon’s life in particular, and he had his own suspicions of which type it would be today.

“Teaching you is hard work. Today, I’m going to give you a lesson on listening to the world. You walk through it like you were born deaf.”

“I hear your words perfectly well, thank you,” Mairon said, but Melkor’s words had aroused his curiosity. He was sure that Melkor had powers unlike others in Arda, and if the Vala had taken an interest in Mairon, he could as well gain from the experience.

“If you insist on improving my education, we better go to my room,” he added as he climbed the rest of the stairs and opened the cellar door. The excess light made him blink, and for a while he wasn’t sure where Melkor was. It was unnerving.

“Show me the way,” Melkor’s low voice said, and there he was, too close, sharp eyes watching Mairon intently.

“Don’t scare me.”

“I can’t promise you that. Breaking your defences might demand it.”

It was hopeless trying to have a meaningful conversation with Melkor. Mairon sighed and led them through the forges and over the inner courtyard until they came to the door that led to the private wing of Aulë’s Halls. There he hesitated; their previous meetings had happened elsewhere. If Aulë learned about this, there would be consequences.

“Do you start having doubts now?” Melkor asked somewhere behind him. He was almost invisible in the light of the Lamps.

“Of course not,” Mairon answered and opened the door to his chamber to prove that.

The room felt too small for them. “I don’t like this,” Mairon muttered, feeling suddenly nervous.

“Indeed. Too much light in this place.” Melkor’s eyes flashed from Mairon to the sole window of the room, a narrow vent close to the ceiling. “Don’t you have shutters, or even curtains?”

“I have no need for them. That’s hardly too much light; it’s just a tiny window.”

Hearing Mairon’s answer, Melkor’s eyes narrowed slightly. “A tiny window, you say. And yet, because of it, you can’t escape the interference with the Lamps even here – that cold unfeeling light. And yet, my next lesson will demand utter darkness. We’ll do it my way, then.”

Melkor’s hand went inside his travel cloak, and a moment later he pulled out a piece of a dark tissue. He let it unfold so that Mairon could see it was a long scarf, black as coal. When Mairon put the fabric between his fingers, it felt soft and light as a feather.

“We’re going to use this as a blindfold,” Melkor said with a crooked smile that might mean trouble, or something even more sinister. “Just for the sake of the lesson, of course. Do you let me cover your eyes with it?”

Mairon hadn’t known that his heart could thump against his chest so rapidly. Melkor held the scarf between his hands, waiting to get Mairon’s permission to tie it around his eyes. And why not? They had come all the way to his room just because of this lesson, Mairon thought. He nodded, his mouth too dry to speak all of a sudden, and next, Melkor was behind him, as close as possible without actually touching Mairon.

“Do it already,” Mairon said impatiently.

He instinctively closed his eyes as Melkor wrapped the soft cloth over them. Melkor’s fingers tied it in the back with a knot, fingertips touching Mairon’s head lightly as he did so. Only when he was finished, Mairon slowly opened his eyes. He could see nothing, not even a trickle of light through the thin fabric. The eerie scarf had created a total darkness around him.

“Turn around, Mairon.” Melkor’s voice was as soft as the fabric covering Mairon’s eyes, and he sounded like he was very pleased with himself.

Mairon did so and felt Melkor’s hands land on his shoulders. He imagined how the fallen Vala’s greedy eyes were currently studying his face, and the mental image made him raise his chin fiercely.

“This is not a mere scarf,” Mairon commented. It bothered him that he could not read Melkor’s intentions, especially now. “Did Vairë weave it?”

Melkor chuckled. “She’s not the only one who can weave.”

“You, then?” Mairon let his lips curve into an amused smile. “I never knew that you were into crafts.”

“Do you still think that I work alone? There are others who have followed me, free spirits I have recruited. They have skills of every kind. I am not alone.” There was suddenly a sharp note in Melkor’s voice, and Mairon’s smile faltered.

“And now you’re wasting your time by trying to recruit me. Do you admire my skills so much?”

“Your problem, Maia Mairon, is that you never pause to listen. You think you are clever and skilful, but you will never reach your highest potential while you’re actively shutting your ears from the true music of the world.”

Melkor’s grip on his shoulders tightened momentarily, and even though the touch left Mairon rather shaky, the feeling was not totally unpleasant.

“And where can it be heard, then?” Mairon had meant it to be a sarcastic comment, but it sounded too much like a genuine question as he burst it out.

“Stop being so stubborn and open your senses.”

A finger pressed against Mairon’s lips, signalling silence. Blindly, he took a step backward, for the proximity of the fallen Vala heavily disturbed his concentration. Then he tried to open his senses as he was ordered to do.

Mairon realised he had no idea how to do it.

He heard his own breathing and the pounding of his heart that echoed in his ears. He heard Aulë’s banners dance in the wind outside, and birdsong from Yavanna’s garden, but that could not be what Melkor wanted him to concentrate on.

He didn’t want to admit his failure yet, so he reached further, beyond the worldly sounds. The music he sought was always present in the background, the music of the Ainur from the beginning of the time. It thrilled him, as it always did, the promise of a perfect world it carried in its melody. Finally sure that he had accomplished the task Melkor had given him, his body relaxed, and he let himself become absorbed by that primaeval music.

“You are listening to the wrong tune. The world is not only about harmony, nor will it ever be.”

Mairon’s mind snapped into focus at hearing those sharp words. For a moment, he had lost himself in the music of the Ainur, but now all he could think was Melkor’s presence and the annoying, impossible task. Frustrated, he wanted to remove the blindfold and be done with the lesson, but that would mean failing it.

“You are too close; you break my concentration,” Mairon grumbled.

“On the contrary, it looks like I need to be much closer for you to succeed,” Melkor answered, and a moment later, Mairon was pulled against the Vala’s broad chest.

And Melkor was made of music. His bones and sinews vibrated with it, his lungs breathed a discordant melody, and his heart beat a rhythm that obscured the music of the Ainur – or remade it. In the bright daylight of the Lamps, Melkor had been almost transparent, and his tune had been suffocated, but against Melkor’s chest, Mairon heard it loud and clear, and it had the power to change things.

It was too much. He pushed Melkor away from him and ripped off the blindfold. The sudden reappearance of light made him blink. The discordant music had already faded, leaving only a memory of cacophony. Melkor was still there, but his form was diminished, and he had backed against the wall, into the shadows of his own making.

“You want to destroy everything,” Mairon said accusingly.

“It is the only way to change things, and to create something new. You, as an artisan, should understand it.”

“The world is perfect, a place of beauty; it doesn’t need you.”

Melkor responded with a short laugh. “There is no beauty in perfection; in no time, it gets dull and uninteresting. I know that you don’t want to become uninteresting, Mairon. Come here.”

Mairon raised his eyes although his heart was again beating rapidly, and he was sure that all his emotions were written all over his face. He wanted to send Melkor away for good – the disturber of his peace – but instead, he found himself taking steps towards the dark figure in the corner. Melkor didn’t try to touch him, and Mairon kept his own hands down. They stood facing each other, very close now, inside the smoke cloud that Melkor had created from nowhere. Mairon briefly thought that he would need a bath afterwards – his hair and clothes would smell of acrid smoke – but it didn’t bother him yet.

Slowly, Melkor leaned forward and kissed Mairon’s forehead. The touch of his lips left a tingling sensation that lingered on Mairon’s skin.

“I recruit only those who understand my music, and what it can create. I believe that you are one of those; I see it in your eyes.”

Melkor’s finger drew a bold line over Mairon’s face, starting from the forehead where he had kissed him and stopping on his chin, and as it retreated, Mairon already missed the touch of it.

“Let me think about it,” Mairon said casually. He was still squeezing the blindfold in his hand. “This belongs to you.”

“I trust that you can keep it secret if I lend it to you for a time,” Melkor said, gently pushing his extended hand away. “You can return it when we meet next time.”

“I’m not sure there will be a next time,” Mairon said, avoiding Melkor’s gaze so that the Vala could not read his excitement in his eyes.

Suddenly, Melkor’s hands were wrapped around Mairon’s, closing them around the silky scarf. The sudden physical contact caused such exquisite pleasure that Mairon blushed.

“Please, keep it,” Melkor insisted. “You can practice true listening while wearing it – it would make me very happy.”

“Go already,” Mairon said in a weak voice. “This meeting is over.”

Mairon wanted to pull his hands away, but that would have made the ending inevitable, and miserably, he lacked the willpower to do so. But he couldn’t stay still; his body leaned towards Melkor, being pulled with a yet unexplained phenomenon because he clearly had no control of his own emotions anymore.

Blindly as if he had put the blindfold over his eyes again, his lips found Melkor’s. The danger and temptation in Melkor’s breath made him feel dizzy, and he paused, suddenly unsure what to do next, but then Melkor answered the kiss, taking the lead.

Melkor’s discordant music was back; Mairon tasted it in his mouth as if he had bitten a rare fruit from Yavanna’s garden. The kiss was full of promise, and although the music soon faded in the light of the Lamps, Mairon’s body continued to resonate with it.

“That was just to help you out,” Melkor said after the kiss had ended. “Your stubborn mind needs to be shaken a bit.”

He had already started to dissolve into the shadows, as was his preferred way to leave, but Mairon knew that he would return.

“Of course,” Mairon answered coolly. “Just for the sake of the lesson.”

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