He considers, a finger resting on his lips. “You know, in all my ages of life, I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of seeing octopi mating. It sounds delightful, if what you say is true! But beasts aside…” his hands disappear behind his back, clasping as he leans forward to grin in his cousin’s face, “…I’m very interested in this daydream of yours. You make such a fuss about my proclivities, but obviously you have a few sadistic wishbones in that aquatic skeleton,” he laughs.
“This must be uncharted territory for you– is it not? You have a loving Maia wife with whom you must be sweet and caring, and a loyal Quendi husband with whom you must be exceedingly careful…. Who do you have, Ossë, that can explore the murky depths of desire with you?”
Eyes glint like jewels in the dark. “What is it about this dream that excites you? What part of seeing me helpless makes you short of breath, your teeth clench? Is it imagining the feel of flesh at your mercy; the compress of my windpipe as it gives out and crushes beneath you? The writhing muscles of your victim, struggling to breathe? Would it be, perhaps, my expression in the moment? How do you picture it: Desperate? Pained? Pleading? Filled with awe and terror? Is that what stirs the blue blood in your sea-dwelling veins? Believe me, Cousin…” he bares his throat as if on display, tracing the v-line of muscles down to their nexus at his sternum, “I understand that desire more than most.”Ossë is very good at masking his facial expressions – he has been practicing for Ages, after all. So his arrogant, wicked smirk does not falter. Even when Sauron leans forward with a decidedly confident grin of his own, it does not falter. Even when he hits far too close to the truth to be an accident when discussing his marriages, it does not falter. But he does click low, steadily, a beat beneath Sauron’s words.
Oh, and those words. Sauron is crafty, weaving an image and a story out of what had been intended as a discouraging barb. (It had been intended as such, right?) Clearly his cousin did understand, for how else could he define and display it so beautifully? The feel of delicate flesh yielding beneath his might. The pitiful struggle of prey, destined to lose. The smell of fear and the look of understanding as they gaze upon their end. He growls softly, a rumble like distant thunder.
And to imagine Sauron in that position – no, even then his expression does not falter, but his eyes flash with inner light and markings flare to life over his skin before dimming away. Ossë’s gaze flickers to the proffered throat. He huffs and drops his smirk, snaps his head to look away and find distance.
“You do not understand me,” he hisses, voice dry and crackling. “I am content with what I have; I want for nothing.” (He is content. He is happy. His Pearl completes him and his Elf fulfills him. This passing darkness is nothing a good storm cannot settle.) His eyes shift back to that tempting throat, though, and they flash again like lightning that traces patterns down his form. It would be a simple thing to put Sauron in his place, to just reach out and squeeze all that smug pride from him, to drag him into the Sea and remind him why the Sea was feared.
He does not even realize that two tentacles have sprouted, coiling behind him in anticipation, or that his fins have flared out in display as he thrums steadily.
His cousin is so beautiful in his wrath; all that fine-boned arrogance and twisting kelp hair dripping pearls. It reminds him of the Dawn of Arda when all was wild and fierce and unbound by laws designed to keep fragile lives safe. (It was that spirit Melkor coveted, he remembers, that freedom he sought to restore to Ainur).
Dark water laps at the cave floor, hungrily pawing up the rock as Ossë writhes in power, as if the sea is seeking him. Brooding watersnakes flee their stony hideouts and drop into the lightless pool, seeking the safety of the open ocean waiting just beyond the cavern– he might be wise to find his own refuge, but he has risked more for less gain, and far less entertaining ends.
Instead he drops his collar further, disrobing of his apron and vest, rolling his head back and letting the tips of his fingers trace the contours of his throat.
“You want for nothing, Terror? Where is the ancient stormchild, the wrath of the tide that made the old earth tremble?” He steps into the water, wrapping black and frigid around his knees. He bites his lip hard with the points of his fangs, and lets his blood join the salt of the sea. “Have you ever tasted the flesh and fëa of your own kind, Ossossai? Ever drunk power from another’s blood? There is nothing like it, no food or drink of this earth that compares.”
The water washes past his hips, up his belly, The whiplash tendrils of his cousin’s eerily luminescent form churn perilously close; indignant, wrathful, betraying their master’s vows of contentment as lies. …Lies he aches to rip from Ossës lips, even if it leaves him drowning.
“You want for nothing? Then there is no reason for you to catch me.” He plunges, a streak of shining white and black cetacean skin, teeth and fin, racing for the midnight sea.
MisbehavingMaiar: Tumblr Archive 