Author: Mirrordance
Title: For Every Evil
Summary: Legolas is a policeman in 2004. His colleagues start to wonder why the 10-yr veteran doesn't age & more trouble ahead after he runs across the Fellowship & some friends in modern incarnations, resurrected along with a new world-threatening peril.
2: Birthdays
(Legolas)
Los Angeles, Early 2004
He had a curious pair of ears, longer than the usual.
Not that very many people noticed, for there was a host of great things that were unusual about him. His eyes were a stunning frosted blue, and looked at things and people sometimes warmly, sometimes imperviously. He'd win a staring game by a mile, as if he had all the time in the world (because he did, actually). His hair was spun gold, his face was chiseled by what surely must have been a pair of godly hands. His voice was even and melodious, carefully accented in this particularly high-brow British way. It was a thrill to most women— though not so much to the tough-built ones in the station— and made his job speaking to female witnesses and complainants much easier. It was, however, more inconvenient during his first year at the station (way back in '96!), when his comrades jauntily referred to him as Prince Wills. It was also a cause for grave confusion when, shot on the leg a couple of years back, he was assigned to manning a desk rather than being on the field and, answering the phone, the American callers suddenly wondered if they indeed were calling the L.A. police station or some wrong, distant number instead.
Legolas jogged from the parking lot toward the building, greeting the sergeant who manned the door a good morning as he passed. The keys to his car clinked just inside his pocket as he wove his way across the crowded aisles and around the busy cubicles, bearing two cups of steaming Starbucks on an eggshell holder in one hand, and a thick batch of folders on the other.
He stepped into his painfully neat office, smiling at the sight of the doughnut on his desk poked with a single, short, slim candle. He released his armload upon a chair, and looked up as a batch of colleagues appeared by the door and sang him a happy birthday.
He blew on the candle and laughed as they ended on a particularly sour note (the rest of the song was not much better). While he missed the almost-obsessively constructed elvish version of singing, this effort was certainly no less endearing or touching.
Even if it wasn't really his birthday…
"Doesn't anyone work here?" he asked them mildly.
Detective Rafael Montes, a particularly well-built man in his late thirties, pushed his way past the dispersing crowd he all but dwarfed. There was an open kindness to his face, a light that his imposing features-- olive skin, dark piercing eyes, dark hair, dark brows and haphazard shaving— could not mask.
"Aren't you a thankless bastard," Rafael told his partner coolly, eyes teasing.
Legolas picked up the doughnut, removed the candle and took a healthy bite out of it. "A doughnut, Rafe? Really, how typical can you get."
The man laughed, and shamelessly picked up one of the Starbucks cups that he was certain belonged to him. Years of working together and with the Hispanic veteran detective always taking his partner's brewed fare taught Legolas to always buy two, knowing that if he got just one, he'd be the one to end up without any.
"Captain's gonna tell you to bug off," Rafe said to him, "Today's not a very hot day, you don't use your leaves, you over on your overtime… save him the saliva and step out before he sees you. You know, Leland, I'd hate to break it to you pal, but if you take today off, there'd still be some crime to fight tomorrow, eh?"
"I suppose," Legolas conceded, glancing at his door, knowing their stern captain will be appearing at any moment. Truth was, he'd rather stay. He didn't take his paid leaves because he didn't have anything to do with them.
"If I could have your leaves, pal," Rafe said, "I'd take 'em and run. You know how it is. The missus is busy too, there's this PTA or some weird trip for any one of my fifty million children…"
"How's Julianna?" Legolas chuckled.
"She says she wishes she married you instead of me," Rafe said with sham bitterness, "She's wondering how far our partnership goes and if you'd take over all my other active duties if I should get hit by a slug one of these days and die."
"Tell her I'd be happy to," Legolas laughed, just as the precinct Captain, a man in his early fifties with a stern countenance and persistent eyes, stopped by his door.
"Happy birthday, Greene," he said to Legolas tersely, "Get the hell out of my building."
"Thank you sir," Legolas called after him as he walked away in a rush. In a resigned manner, Legolas looked at Rafe and sighed. "That's my exit. One day without me, my friend. Do try and stay alive."
"'Do try and stay alive,'" Rafe mocked him, adopting the accent and raising the pitch of his voice, "No sweat, Queen Mother." He lifted the other cup of coffee. "Hey, can I have this too?"
"Back so soon, Detective Greene?" this was a different doorman, the elderly fellow who manned his apartment building.
"It's my birthday, Jacob," Legolas sighed, "And they told me to go away and have some fun."
"There really ain't nothing wrong with that sir," said the doorman, "The boys and I will grab some drinks after my shift later if you want."
"I don't like drinking," Legolas chuckled as he walked toward the elevators, "It makes me too honest."
"Ain't nothing wrong with that either!" Jacob pointed out as the notoriously mysterious tenant headed up toward his home.
The apartment was a stylish and expensive one. The white marble floors were polished to a keen reflection, and antiques from all over the world (and some from beyond it!) artistically melded with mixed-medium modern pieces like the white leather sofas of his living room, and the rattan and spun black iron of his dining room.
Naturally there was a rather significant infusion of nature too. He took great pains to have a fountain installed in his living room; it was made of an irregular, artistically jagged glass backdrop that cascaded water down to a shallow pool lined with dull-colored rocks. It dominated the wall across from the ornate and oft-unused fireplace. His wide balcony was also liberally adorned with flowers and grasses. Some plants grew in this apartment in the middle of the city that which could not grow anywhere else in the entire country, following his uncannily powerful green thumb.
The place might have been ostentatious; but as an elf, he would have tired out in a concrete wasteland. As a modern 'man,' he also found it wise to invest in real estate. Simply as Legolas, though, he always did love to be surrounded by beautiful things.
He remembered the first time his partner of eight years stepped into the high-rise. Rafe gawked and said the place was so clean he could eat off the floor of the bathroom, and asked Legolas—or Leland, as he was known here-- with a rather serious expression if he really was some kind of royalty that he wasn't talking about.
The Prince of Mirkwood, from a long and noble line of elves that stretched across ages and toward a place beyond the circles of this world, laughed and said his family was in the-- he remembered he was nervous and scrambling for a good lie— the family was in the… uh… fertilizer business.
Legolas walked to his answering machine and let it run. There were several messages, as always. Mostly associates, some women, just before the clever and surprising sound of a voice from too long ago.
"You're a very hard person to find, Legolas," the voice said. The elf prince's heart stopped as he listened more closely.
He could hear the jaunty smile in Elrohir's voice. "Or should I say Leland, mellon-nin? Call me at this number please. Fabulous, invention, this caller I.D." He paused, "Oh and um. Hm. If this really is Detective Leland Greene who has no connection whatsoever with this certain buddy of mine, kindly ignore." The message ended.
TO BE CONTINUED…
MASSIVE THANKS TO ALL WHO READ AND ALL WHO REVIEWED!!!
THANKS TO: Platy, Tsurug-chan, Templa Otmena, Barbara, Elliroc, Sabrina, Tychen, Aranna Undomiel, Lady of the Twilight Woods, LOTRFAith, Star-Stallion, Joee1, Ainu Laire, Lady Laswen, ShadowHeart6, specialfeel, Kirsten (thank you for recommending me, I'm honored. And if you do get around to a translation, I'm sure you'd do a great job :)) and Chris :)
The Next chapter will see our three elves getting together for some latte!
'TIL THE NEXT POST!!!