Hi everyone!!! *waves energetically* Anyways. I hope you enjoy the story! And if it's not too much bother, then can you please review? It'd make my day ^^ Not that i really mind if you don't. I'm one of those people who generally don't review as well, so... Yeah.
Disclaimer: I. Don't. Own. Lord of the Rings. ...Is all this disclaimer stuff really necessary? *sniffles, and eyes pool with tears* Iss not niiiiiice...
Faramir tapped his foot impatiently as he waited for his beloved lady wife to arrive at the kitchens of Minas Tirith for her pre-arranged cooking lesson. Eowyn was the only woman he knew who didn't know how to cook, so Faramir had, in a brief moment of drunken madness, forced her to take cooking lessons with him. He didn't even remember when he had agreed to do it in the first place. That aside, it was definitely not one of his best ideas, as Eowyn didn't even appear to WANT to learn how to cook. In fact, she frequently expressed her utmost delight with the way things were – with Faramir doing the cooking for both of them. How was he supposed to lead an enjoyable life if there wasn't his wife and a piping hot meal waiting at the table when he got home? Now that he thought about it, it was positively unfair that he had to cook their meals just because Eowyn didn't know how, wanted to eat in the privacy of their rooms and didn't want servants around their private quarters. Why-
His train of thought abruptly stopped, derailed and crashed as he noticed the object of his frustrations standing in front of him, having mysteriously appeared out of nowhere.
"You're late," noted Faramir critically, hoping rather fervently that his little jump of surprise and fright had gone unnoticed. No such luck.
"Oh, soooo sorry, Faramir dear," Eowyn gushed, somehow managing to keep a straight face. "Did I surprise you?"
The hard glint in her eyes and the slight, mocking tilt of her lips showed that she already knew the exact answer to her question. Faramir flinched a little. Sure, he loved Eowyn, but sometimes she was just plain scary. Maybe it was a Rohirrim thing.
"Of course not," he lied, creating an affected air of exasperation. It didn't sound convincing, even to himself.
"Of course not," mimicked Eowyn in a warbling falsetto. Faramir's mouth narrowed into a thin line.
Eowyn smirked.
Faramir's eye twitched.
Eowyn yawned.
Faramir exploded. "ARGH! Valar, what do you want from me, woman?!" His only answer was another victorious smirk, patented to annoy and aggravate the loser of the verbal sparring match as much as possible. It worked.
"Let's just get down to business, then," said Faramir in a no-nonsense, professional albeit little sulky tone after a moment of glaring moodily at nothing in particular. He gestured to the eggs laid out on the counter. "Crack those into the bowl over there."
Eowyn just nodded meekly. Faramir's eyes narrowed suspiciously at her surprisingly docile response. "What, no refusals or smart remarks or, um,- " he wracked his brains for something else, "tantrums?" he finished weakly. Eowyn scoffed, obviously not impressed by his evidently absent wit.
"Do you really want me to respond to that?"
"Yeah, why else would I have - oh, okay. Point taken."
Seemingly appeased, Eowyn turned back to the eggs and glared at them, an expression of fierce concentration on her face. Faramir gave a short sigh of relief. Thank the Valar she was doing what she was told. He regretted that thought instantly, as barely a split second later there was a rather gloopy (don't ask me how!) crunching noise. Faramir just stared, flabbergasted.
"How- what- " he stuttered rather pathetically, "how in the whole of Middle-Earth did you manage to get egg over the floor, the counter and yourself in less than a second?"
Eowyn shrugged. "I sat on them by accident. They were in the way," she added lamely.
"Sat on them? They were on the counter! The counter is at - " Here he ground to a halt, gesturing vaguely in the general direction of Eowyn's chest area. "- that level! So perhaps you'd like to explain how you managed to sit on them if the counter is that height and you are this height?" Faramir was babbling now, arms flailing as he attempted to convey the inconcievable depth of impossible-ness in the alleged action. Gradually, he became aware of the his wife's cool, holier-and-a-million-times-cleverer-than-thou gaze. He flinched.
"Is there an-y-thing else you wan-ted me to do, dar-ling?" asked Eowyn, eyebrows raised. Faramir cringed inwardly at the condescending way she enunciated each syllable clearly, as though speaking to an unruly and not particularly clever child. She noticed, of course. She always did. A hint of a smile appeared on her (smug, irritating) face before it was promptly wiped off, to be replaced equally promptly by the look of one who has been pushed past the boundaries of patience and is now beyond exasperated but putting up a brave facade so as not to upset the mentally challenged person who was doing the exasperating.
"Aaah, clean up the mess, maybe?" whimpered the once-proud warrior, cursing inwardly at how easily he had been manipulated. He was met with a stony silence. "The mess on the floor?" he clarified, feeling a bit stupid. Faramir did not enjoy feeling stupid. Feeling stupid could get you killed (Again, don't ask me how).
"Can't you clean it up? I mean, I am the one wearing a dress," Eowyn reasoned, reasonably. "And the one who is covered in yolk," she added quickly, catching her husband's rebellious look. "Besides, shouldn't you be assisting me? I am, after all, the helpless damsel in distress. I need to get cleaned up." She watched Faramir's facial expression change from rebellious to undecided to confused and back again, until he finally settled on a look of tired resignation. She grinned triumphantly when he finally nodded his consent.
Faramir sighed as he fetched a towel and got down on his knees to clean up the sticky, congealing egg yolk on the floor, grimacing at the disgusting way it sort of smeared itself all over the place when he tried to wipe it. He was painfully aware of Eowyn's eyes boring into the back of his head, watching his every move like a hawk. A pretty hawk, but still a hawk. Fierce. Beautiful. Free. Deadly. He paused in his cleaning efforts and stared absently into the shadows, lost in memoriesof their sparring sessions. A quick reprimand brought him crashing back into the present. He was just about to resume his seemingly impossible task when he saw a movement out of the corner of his eye. The shadows had moved.
"Eowyn?" he asked, turning to face her. "Did you see that?" He kept the suspicious-looking shadow in question in his peripheral vision. "Look! That shadow over there, it moved just now. Moved!" He was greeted with a blank, uncomprehending stare.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes! There- Look! It moved again!"
Eowyn shook her head. "I didn't see anything, dear," she said gently. "Maybe you're just stressed."
Faramir frowned. Sure, he felt a little tired and stressed-out, but he could have sworn that he had actually seen the movement. It hadn't been the flickering of the lamps, either. The shadows themselves had moved. Deciding not to pursue the subject further, he gave in, sparing one last glare at the darkness and the elusive creature within. All of a sudden, the shadow bulged out and sort of unfolded itself, looming over him before quietly settling down again, as though nothing had happened. He turned to face Eowyn, but the question on his lips died as the saw her already shaking her head.
"I didn't see anything," she told him regretfully. Faramir flinched at her answer.
"You seriously didn't see anything at ALL??? But-"
"No. Nothing at all." He cringed. Faramir had always had a little darkness-phobia. It stemmed from a traumatising incident in his childhood. Tangible, flesh-and-blood foes he could handle, no problem. But throw in an enemy that couldn't be touched? No way. He stood up a little too fast, bumping into a nearby chair as he tried to keep his eyes on every patch of darkness in the room. The impact knocked him off balance and he slipped a bit, arms windmilling wildly as he fought to regain his balance. Before that could happen, however, a well placed kick to his heel sent his foot flying and the rest of him... falling. He landed hard on a puddle of egg.
Eowyn struggled to maintain a straight face as she leaned over him, stifling giggles as her unfortunate husband glared at her upside-down from his prone position on the floor.
"What now?" he snapped, trying to hide his obvious embarrassment. She just grinned.
Faramir swore loudly as he tried to get up and slipped again. "I'm going upstairs!" he announced as he clambered to his feet, trying in a futile attempt to retain some of his wounded, trodden on and destroyed dignity. "You can just stay here and, ah, clean up a bit. Right. Okay, so... Bye!" With that, the warrior fled back to the relative safety of his room, clutching his head in anticipation of the huge migraine he was no doubt going to develop sooner or later, and ignoring all the stifled sniggers directed his way by everyone he passed as they took in his be-egged appearance.
Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, Aragorn stepped out of the shadows. "Good job, Eowyn," he grinned at her, feeling just a tiny little bit sorry for the no doubt traumatized man hiding in his room upstairs. "Next time he'll think twice before pranking me…"
Ta-DAAAA!!! *jumps up and strikes pose, eerily reminiscent of the chipmunk in Enchanted after it did the whole Evil Queen/Giselle spiel with the ice cube as the apple*
Anyways. I hope you liked it. *ignores the fact that she said the same thing twice*