The Lingerers
Act I: The Morning
Author's note: This story is weird and it is AU. You've been warned. Basically I started writing this as a way to get back into the writing zone after having some issues with one of my other stories. It is a much different and more modern style than I usually write. Hope you enjoy the weirdness.
"When did it start, the grey?" The waitress, a girl with a nose ring, an abundance of tattoos, thick plastic-framed cat-eye glasses, and long fake pink nails, asked as she punched the order into the register. She really had to punch it too, each finger coming down with the force of a hammer, click-clacking over the plastic buttons covered by a yellowed rubber sheet; the nails made it hard for her to type.
"20 or so," Celeborn replied with a polite smile, running a hand through his short silver hair. The girl winked, chewing on the end of a plastic pen, one of those blue bics with the flimsy caps.
"Nice," she said, grinning, teeth still clenched around the pen, "like Anderson Cooper. Looks good on you. $13.99." She snatched at the credit card that Celeborn held out to her with her pink talons, running it noisily through the register before handing it back to him. He slid it back into his wallet.
"Name?" She asked.
"Tiffany," Celeborn said with a grin, gesturing with his thumb towards Galadriel who was standing behind him wearing jean shorts and a lime green racer-back tank top over which she wore a black mesh crop top. It was hot in Alabama, too hot, and the cicadas were still buzzing outside the diner in the early morning. His wife scowled at him, arms crossed over her chest, kicking at the ground with her purple sneakers. He winked and grinned at her.
"Sure," the waitress scrawled 'Tiffany' across the receipt and pushed the ticket back across the counter into the kitchen. "Your girl?" She asked with a grin.
"Yeah," he nodded.
"Relax Tiff," the waitress said a laugh, "he's all yours. Not like I could steal your boyfriend anyway with pipes like you've got." She glanced at Galadriel's legs and winked. "Like your nose ring by the way."
"Thanks," Galadriel said, giving her a smile that ended up as more of a smirk. She'd gotten that when they lived in India during the Raj, passing themselves off as British citizens. That had been nearly a hundred years ago.
The waitress was right about Galadriel's legs, Celeborn noted as they made their way over the sticky tile floor down a row of plastic-cushioned booths, not that he would be allowed anywhere near her legs tonight with the stunt he had just pulled. They stopped when Galadriel dropped her gold leather handbag on one of the tabletops with a thud and slid into a booth, pulling her bag down onto the seat next to her.
"What's in there, bricks?" Celeborn asked. It was a legitimate question. She had enchanted her purse after all; for all he knew she might be carrying an entire house around in there.
Galadriel rolled her eyes and didn't answer his question, reaching up to smooth her hair. She'd finally cut it a few decades back. It had not drawn notice for centuries, but people had started joking about her "hippie hair" in the 1980's and she hadn't liked that one bit. She sighed, crossing her arms over her chest and leaned back, staring at him with dissatisfaction. Her wavy hair was shoulder-length now, cut straight across. "Tiffany?" She said. "That's a stripper name. Seriously Celeborn, Tiffany? That's not my name."
"Maria isn't your name either," he said with a grin, sliding the pepper shaker back and forth across the plastic tabletop from one hand to the other. He slid it towards Galadriel and she caught it.
"Neither is Galadriel for that matter," she said and Celeborn laughed out loud, wagging a stern finger at her.
"That was 15,000 years ago," he said. "And you accepted that name. You can't undo it now."
Galadriel shrugged, feigning innocence, spinning the pepper shaker around. "Accepted," she said. "I accepted it in a hormone driven haze after you seduced me. I was just an innocent girl and you took advantage showing me all of those magnificent jewels and going on and on with your 'Galadriel' and your 'a star shines upon the hour of our meeting.'" She stuck her tongue out at him and Celeborn snorted in laughter. What she had said was so untrue as to be absurd. But he did not refute her, for he had been married to her now for nigh on 15,000 years and he knew well enough how best to push her buttons.
"Now, comparatively speaking," he said, "you were rather easy. Typical Noldorin greed for all things sparkly," he winked, casting a glance at Galadriel's bedazzled iphone case. "All I had to do was show you a few gemstones, give you a necklace or two and off came your…"
"Excuse me!" Galadriel interrupted, pointing a perfectly manicured index finger at him. "I was not easy! And you ought to be thanking your lucky stars. Do you know how many suitors I rejected? Vanyarin princes cried over me, Celeborn, cried!" He laughed at her, shaking his head, twiddling a sugar packet between his thumbs.
"Oh you were proud of yourself for it too, back then," he chuckled. She had been Artanis back then. Artanis, granddaughter of Finwë, Artanis daughter of Finarfin, Artanis princess of the Noldor and the Teleri, Artanis the notoriously proud, Artanis the too-good-for-any-man, Artanis the never-will-be-married, Artanis who spurned all her suitors, Artanis who had been courted by every prince in Arda except one.
It had driven her mad: not having her perfect score. The thought that, while lesser insignificant nobles below her station dared to court her, Doriath's crown prince, the most powerful prince of elves in Middle-Earth, had chosen, had freely elected not to pursue her had caused that pride of hers to burst into full flame like a burner on a gas stove: click, click, click. Boom. He was a hunter. He had set his snare. And she had rushed headlong into it. All he had had to do was wait.
It wasn't until the next morning when she had awoken to find herself in his bed and then had to fish her undergarments out of a decorative koi pond that she realized the depth of the game he had been playing at; and how he had completely and utterly played her. She might have been angry if she had not been so impressed. It was something she would have done. And so the hunter has become the hunted, she had mused to herself. That had been a long time ago.
Galadriel sighed and rolled her eyes. "You've just played me again haven't you," she said.
"Don't I always?" He laughed.
"It took you so long back then," she said, "and I was so impatient."
"What did I care?" He told her. "I could have waited as long as I wanted. I knew you were going to marry me, not them."
"So much confidence from the start," she said, grinning and shaking her head. "Melian told me you were wise. She neglected to mention your arrogance."
"I prefer to call it confidence," he said with a smirk.
"Doesn't Beyoncé have a song about that?" Galadriel asked with a laugh, resting her chin in her hand.
"Got a big ego…" Celeborn hummed the verse, flicking the sugar packet he had been playing with into her cleavage and she gasped, giving him a playful warning look before picking it out and lobbing it at his forehead.
"TIFFANY!" The shout rang out.
"Over here!" Galadriel raised her hand.
"Oooh, what language is that you're speaking?" The waitress was back, smelling of cigarettes and too much curiosity, noisily sliding cheap white ceramic plates loaded with eggs, bacon, and toast onto the table.
"Finnish," Celeborn said, looking up at her with a smile. Galadriel bit her lip to keep from grinning outright. Something about her husband's ability to lie flawlessly without missing a beat had always amused her.
"Exotic," the girl said with another wink as she filled their coffee cups. "Anything else I can get y'all?"
"French fries," Galadriel said.
"Got two dollars?" The waitress asked and Galadriel pulled out her pocketbook, opening the clasp and pulling out a handful of bills.
"Shit," she said, they were Euro. But she thumbed through them all and at last found two dollars, pushing them across the table to the waitress who snapped them up with her pink nails. Galadriel shoved her pocketbook back in her bag as she shoved a piece of bacon in her mouth.
"Gonna eat em with mayonnaise again?" Celeborn asked her, crunching on a piece of toast laden with egg.
"Yup," Galadriel began to wolf down her breakfast. She did not eat at all like people said a woman ought and Celeborn loved her for it.
"The Americans think that's weird," he said with a laugh before downing his coffee black like it was a shot of whiskey.
"Fuck it, who cares," Galadriel grinned at him from a mouth full of bacon and eggs, winking.