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“See you on Saturday!” Galadriel yelled as she tried not to fall out of the Uber, her pretty if impractical heels in one hand and her keys in the other. She barely got three steps down the gravel driveway, though, before a discordant chorus of replies started up, each one hitting her retreating form like bubbles filled with love.
“Happy Birthday!”
“Remember to drink a glass of water!”
“I’ll text you in the morning!”
Reaching her front door as the car continued to idle - on Elrond’s instructions, no doubt - she turned to wave goodnight, Camnir’s giggles reminding her of another night in another city.
Though back then it had been seven of them, not just six.
Deep down she hadn’t really expected Halbrand to be there for any of it tonight. He’d only just started a new job ten thousand miles away and he couldn’t exactly drop everything two weeks in to come back for her birthday. Still, it hurt that he hadn’t arranged a time to call or sent a message she could wake up to - Goddamnit, Hal, just send a text - and no amount of Elrond fussing with dinner reservations, Mirdania and Rìan setting up a spa day or her brothers deciding that paintball and burgers at the rugby were what she really needed to mark the big 3-0 made up for the fact that Halbrand hadn’t even remembered to send a card.
For the first time ever.
It would have been one thing if over the years they had drifted apart, but their friendship had never really waned - despite university leaving them on different sides of the border. She wasn’t exactly unhappy at any point after choosing Edinburgh, lazing on sunny days in George Square Gardens and learning how to spot a lost tourist at twenty paces, but a part of her had wanted to be playing drinking games with Halbrand in Liverpool instead of conjugating Old Norse verbs well into the night. At least until she’d finished settling into halls and the worst of her homesickness had passed.
However, like he could read her mind, somehow he always knew when those tides were flowing. Halbrand quickly fell into the habit of sending her loud, drunk voicemails in the middle of the night or photos whenever he found something she might enjoy. She started returning the later half of the favour without thinking, swapping tales of squirrels for ones about city centre swans, and at Christmas, after realising that most of their class was already losing touch with each other, they had agreed to let their under 25s rail cards take a beating on any weekend they didn’t have society commitments. Her first year flatmates minded him crashing on their sofa about as much as his did - which was to say not at all - but they did have questions.
“Is Halbrand coming up this Saturday?” Arien had bounced up to her in the shared kitchen one Wednesday morning right before Easter break. Fresh from a run, her strawberry blonde ponytail was still swaying like a metronome, like a part of the archeology student always had to be in motion.
“No. He’s got an away game Friday night so I’ll not see him again before my birthday.”
“Oh,” she replied brightly, grabbing a cup and pouring herself a coffee from the cafeteria Galadriel had just filled. For herself. “Okay.”
“God, just ask her straight, Ari,” Uinen drawled from the corner where she was painting her nails in the overstuffed love seat they'd gotten from a charity shop for less than a tenner. Reupholstered it looked nearly as good as new, and while Galadriel could have bought a hundred of them direct from the manufacturer with the money in her current account, she was trying to budget appropriately this semester. Like someone who hadn’t put on a ‘fucking champagne reception before our leavers ball.’
“Your birthday is the 19th?”
“Day before,” Galadriel frowned, pushing her eggs more vigorously around the pan as if they had offended her. “Why?”
“We need to know which day to decorate.”
“And?” Uinen prompted with an unmistakable eye roll, shaking the bottle of bright purple nail varnish - which matched her long hair perfectly - she was trying to get the last drops out of.
“And I was thinking about asking him out, okay? But only if you two weren’t a thing in high school. Or now.”
“Me and Halbrand?” Galadriel had almost laughed, the taste of something bitter at the back of her throat preventing the sound from escaping. “Have you seen him?”
“Yeah.”
Arien, or anybody else for that matter, absolutely didn’t need her permission to approach Halbrand. Being protective, although never possessive, of her friends didn’t mean anything and just because none of the girls she’d been placed with could be brought into that circle yet, it didn’t mean they wouldn’t be in the future.
“Can you maybe wait,” Galadriel started, uncharacteristically tentative all of a sudden, turning off the heat before her breakfast burned and reaching for a fork from the drainer. “Until after Easter?”
“Really?”
“Really really. We’re just friends.”
As far as Galadriel knew neither of them had ever questioned that; they had known each other since they were small enough to go into school on any given day and just decide to be friends with the kid in the seat next to them. In fact she could vividly remember being all of seven years old and walking up to the gangly, freckled new boy - Halbrand hiding on the wooden pirate ship in the yard because some older kids had been mean to him about his hair colour - and telling him that she was looking for a first mate.
What she got instead was a best friend, somebody who had stuck by her even when it felt like there wasn’t a single soul out there who wasn’t against her, and somebody she hadn’t hesitated to throw a few punches for.
“But I don’t know if he’s seeing anyone on his course.”
“You don’t?”
Mouth full of egg whites, she shook her head. It was just something they had decided not to talk about. Not now or then and only very briefly back when they finally ended up in the same form class at the start of high school. She knew Halbrand well, better than he knew himself sometimes, and she would very much like to avoid watching him take the same missteps as her brothers - and hurting her own heart in the process. Before Fin and the twins had settled down they hadn’t been shy about bringing girls home for dinner, and over the years she’d loved and lost too many potential family members through their casualness. So, until Hal was convinced he’d found the one, Galadriel didn’t want to meet - or hear about - anyone he was dating.
“So what are you always texting about?”
Galadriel glared down at her fork. Wednesday was the only day that semester she had a 9am lecture and she didn’t have time to eat, change out of her pyjamas and play twenty questions just because Arien needed to switch to decaf. Like yesterday. “Uni, my brothers, his mum, what we want to do over the summer. And birthdays.”
If Arien had gone one step further that morning and had asked ‘why birthdays?’ Galadriel knew in her bones that she would have lied and said she didn’t really know, too much happening since they’d met to sum up things in a neat little breakfast table soundbite.
She was still trying to play down how much birthdays mattered over a decade on, more to herself now than any of her friends or acquaintances, though her boss had always been curious as to why she requested the same few days off mid-April and late October every year. Staring at her no longer twenty-something face in the mirror now, carefully taking off her make-up and surveying the twelve step skin routine Mirdania had just gifted her, the mess that had been her nineteenth suddenly wasn’t the only memory flickering through her mind like they were choices on her For You pages.
The first birthday she and Hal had celebrated together was his eighth. Marked by an afternoon of bouncy castles and ice cream sundaes in his back garden, Halbrand’s mum, dressed like every film good witch rolled into one, had made all the treats from scratch herself. Sending every kid home with a little bag of brownie or blondie bites, a jammy sandwich biscuit and an iced cupcake, Galadriel would never forget how her nanny allowed her to choose one thing to eat in the back seat and then made her throw the rest away, sugar suddenly now the devil in the Noldor household.
And then dairy. Then anything the scary lady with the silver BMW said wasn’t good for them.
By the time she got to take a handful of friends to the zoo for her own birthday the following spring, Galadriel was aware there would be no cake to mark the occasion. She’d be lucky to steal a bite of Halbrand’s surreptitiously purchased ice cream bar without anyone noticing. Growing ever more uncomfortable zipped into a brand new dress and teetering on the edge of a tantrum she should have outgrown - expecting that would only lead to a telling off which made her want to fight all the more - Hal had done his best to make her laugh from across the room while an artist her mother had paid hundreds for tried to coax half a dozen children into producing more than just pictures of the monkeys they could see from the window.
Lions and tigers and bears or even just the bunnies they had paused by on the way in.
Wise beyond his years in this and this alone, her friend clumsily tried to smooth over rough edges, and with every passing second of laughter she couldn’t hold back Galadriel was reminded that there could still be fun even in things she hadn’t been looking forward to.
She had been on a mission to make his next birthday ‘the best ever’ for the rest of that year, saving up her pocket money for a present only for both his party to be cancelled and their back up plan to be called off because of bad weather. Storming in from the garden to tell Finrod that it wasn’t Hal’s fault his mum was sick, her brother had eventually agreed to go pick up the Smith-Maia children so they could spend the rainy day working through a pile of DVDs instead. Unable to decide on just one, the afternoon was taken up with the adventures of Indiana Jones and Mulan and The Goonies, Fin breaking rules that felt more and more like they only applied to her and ordering them all a pizza halfway through.
Birthdays became something special - no, sacred - between her and Halbrand after that.
It didn’t matter if they were big or small celebrations, if his mum or hers were involved in the planning or not, even when they hit the awkward stage where she wanted to hang out with his sister more than any boy - Melian only ten months younger than him and in the same year as them both - Hal was still invited to all her parties.
Including the one Galadriel wished she could erase from the memory of everybody who was there.
Time had snatched away some of the finer details, like who’s idea it was to play the kind of games they’d seen on TV, or which of their mean-ish classmates had suggested Galadriel, as the birthday girl, was given the first spin of the Diet Coke bottle. It hadn’t, however, taken away the feeling of having eight pairs of eyes all focused on hearing the answer to Thuri’s question.
“Of course I’ve kissed a boy before,” Galadriel had insisted, only just fourteen and feeling like she was already falling behind. Flicking her glance between the bottle and the sandy haired boy it had landed on she then, unbidden, glanced back at Halbrand, praying he would at least back up her lie. “I had a boyfriend last summer at riding camp.”
“Then what are you waiting for?”
Galadriel didn’t realise until many years later that the sick feeling which filled her stomach as she marched towards the empty wardrobe hadn’t been nerves or excitement, but regret.
She had picked up other regrets since then, things she should or shouldn’t have said in the heat of the moment, burned bridges that couldn’t be rebuilt, but dropping her plans for his sixteenth so fast the fancy glasses shattered on the patio wasn’t among them. Galadriel still didn’t know how long she had sat silently by his side and held his hand after Yavanna was blue lit into the hospital, the rollercoaster of emotions she apparently regularly rode hitting a dip so low that neither Hal nor his sister could pull her out of the approaching quicksand.
Every part of her had wanted to rebel, to gallop away from that sad little waiting room, so many hours spent waiting for and watching over her eldest brother on the children’s ward that the smell of disinfectant now made her nauseous, but for Halbrand she would turn herself to steel. Be that sword or shield or whatever else was needed most to bring back his smile.
The only thing, it turned out, he needed that night was a lap to lay his head in and a promise she would never use his tears against him.
“Why would I want to do that? I’m your friend.”
“Just… thanks for picking up.”
She fought the urge to stroke his hair, to get a better look at the gold ring that was now through his left ear, to see what his freshly stubbled jaw would feel like against her palm. “I brought you a cupcake, too. It’s in my bag.”
“From the same place you got the Christmas cakes?”
“No. I made these ones.”
He turned his head just far enough so that she could watch him open one eye. “You and whose army?”
“Fine,” she huffed. “It’s out of a box but I mixed it all together. The caterer made a proper cake but I wanted to do something.”
Considering the weight of her words, Hal rolled his shoulder to look up at her properly, bending his knees so his legs wouldn’t hang over the end of the row of uncomfortable chairs they had co-opted. “Did I ever tell you that-“
He didn’t get a chance to finish that thought though as Melian had come back from ringing around their relatives then, their dad once again off on a craftsman’s retreat and uncontactable for at least another week. Galadriel had been about ten seconds away from pulling a ‘don’t you know who I am’ and calling the Health Secretary for the last half hour, the nurses not completely happy about leaving a fifteen and sixteen year old home alone for a potentially extended period of time.
“Our aunt won’t be able to get here until fucking Tuesday,” Mel hissed as she collapsed down into one of the empty seats opposite them, her pretty face twisted up with rage. “Why do these people care now when Mum’s been like this forever?”
“You could always come and stay with me,” Galadriel blurted out, mentally kicking herself for not thinking of it as a solution earlier and then again when Halbrand pushed himself back up into a sitting position. “We’ve got loads of room since the twins moved out, but Fin’s staying with us until the renovations are done at his new place. He looks vaguely responsible and he’ll sign whatever form that nurse needs.”
“Your mum and dad would be okay with that?” Halbrand asked through a yawn, already leaning more and more of his bodyweight against her shoulder as he lost the battle with the adrenaline leaving his veins.
With the hours they were currently keeping at their respective Downing Street offices, she hadn’t seen either in about ten days. “As long as we don’t make too much mess, I bet they won’t even notice.”
“Loser buys lattes?”
“Loser buys lattes,” she agreed, reaching out to shake Melian’s hand just as the dulcet sound of Halbrand snoring reached her ears.
It turned out she was wrong, but whatever punishment her parents had dished out after Hal and Mel went home, missing every party and event for the rest of the year was worth it. Galadriel would have been lost going into exam season without her closest friend by her side.
On the other hand, perhaps the countless times she was called into the blue and white formal living room the week after, having to swear blind that they’d been supervised throughout and nobody went near her dad’s home office was too much of a price to pay. They really should have been more concerned about her actual boyfriend, but, like her parents had just realised she’d been a teenager for a while now and needed attention again, Galadriel wasn’t allowed to have Halbrand over any more unless they were studying at the dining room table with all the doors open.
Which was fine. Even the night they had sat up and watched episode after episode of Game of Thrones in her bed they hadn’t been doing anything wrong. Though the less said about the fact that they could have moved into either of the ground floor living rooms or the attic private theatre at any point the better.
If only she had known that the worst part of her ongoing contrition was still to come.
Encouraged into seclusion for all six of her school’s sanctioned revision period - just like the other members of her class who had private tutors - it was also, suddenly, expected that she would hand the care of her horse over to the stables until she’d sat her final GCSE paper. Galadriel had many words to say on the subject, though none were listened to. And, after gaining the privilege of being one of the only people in school to gain top marks across the board, the tactical retreat was then requested of her again two years later. A life with no distractions was supposed to help keep her eyes on the prize that might even get her a five minute segment on local evening news: the confirmation of yet another Noldor joining Cambridge.
Never mind that only Halbrand and Melian knew she hadn’t ever planned on applying.
But despite feeling like a fairytale princess locked in a tower, her friends did their best to keep her in the loop. However, in the weeks leading up to her eighteenth, after the Michelin dinner her family took her to but before her belated no holds barred party, Halbrand became persona non grata at school. His most recent growth spurt - pushing him a full foot taller than her - had apparently turned him from interesting to gorgeous and at least one of the girls in her circle had manufactured some drama or other with him. Unwilling to listen to their complaints, she had carefully weighed up her options and decided to hand deliver his invite anyway.
It wasn’t until she got back from an impromptu catch up lunch with Mel that she discovered Halbrand had been thinking of her as she’d been thinking about him again, driving by hers on his way to work and putting a card through the door promising that when her hair got long enough to climb down, anything you fucking want was on him.
She had ended up messaging him at midnight, unable to sleep as time flipped her from child to adult and struggling to put names to the stars in the sky.
What if I want the moon?
Then I’ll get you the moon.
At eighteen and two months old she took him up on the offer and almost threw up on his shoes after one and a half gourmet gin and tonics. Bracing herself for the fallout, Halbrand had only chuckled at how much of a lightweight she was and bought her chips on the way to the next pub so she was no longer drinking on an empty stomach.
If he’d been anyone else but her oldest and closest friend, that might have been the moment where Galadriel finally understood why so many girls in her class had fallen a little bit in love with him.
The next few years had become a blur of late nights and early mornings, but, at twenty-one, with a quarter of her trust fund suddenly opened up, she could clearly remember calling in a favour from a friend with a private plane and taking her friends away for a long weekend. Working their way down the hotel’s cocktail menu, she’d ordered anything that she even vaguely liked the name of - and was subsequently carried back to the penthouse she was sharing with an ex-boyfriend who had now faded from her memory like snowfall on spring streets. Strangely, what had stuck with Galadriel most from that trip was Hal asking her the next morning - at a very, very late brunch - if she knew anybody with a spare room up in Edinburgh, having finally signed on the dotted line of a masters loan. The sheepish smile on his not even slightly hungover face had said that he wasn’t ready to be an adult when so many of his childhood friends still had a year left of their undergraduates and she’d only needed a single glance around the table before Elrond was extending a hand in welcome to their new housemate.
Living with him again was both better and worse than she had expected. For one, Halbrand kept the place cleaner than any of the boys and most of the girls she had ever lived with, determined to help get them every penny of their deposit back. On the other hand, she couldn’t shake the idea that every night he didn’t come home after work, every Arien type incident that she learned about later, was pushing them towards a point of no return where Hal outgrowing their friendship was the only outcome.
The shriek of her doorbell then stopped Galadriel from dredging up more painful ghosts of birthdays past. Dwelling on the reasons why she had started celebrating with just a nice dinner or wine tasting in the years immediately after finishing uni hurt like a knife between her ribs looking back. Her former fiancé - Celeborn, a tennis pro who had once reached the third round of Wimbledon and was now coaching rich old women to hit a better backhand - had always told her that he didn’t like big parties, and for a while she’d been happy to oblige and limit her trips to Santorini or Amsterdam to the summer, but after the prettiest five fucking years of her life Galadriel had finally figured out that he’d only ever meant ones where he wasn’t the centre of attention.
Another insistent ring made her check the time on her phone - not quite half eleven - and she quickly braided her hair out of the way with the intention of heading back through the flat and down the stairs, collecting her purse from where she’d thrown it earlier on the way. She might not have worked in customer service during uni but most of her friends had, and while it didn’t feel like the done thing anymore, Galadriel hadn’t stopped tipping in cash. It was far easier to pocket a fiver than it was to wait for pay day and hope your tips had been added up correctly. Or so she’d been told.
The drivers who brought her Thai food once or twice a week certainly never complained, her favourites showing up like clockwork ever since Hal had worked out exactly which night she would most need UberEats. It wasn’t as if he had the monopoly on midweek dinners either, the box of actual groceries she used to send in return always managing to arrive when there was nothing but condiments in his fridge. Though if he’d tried to order her food from Australia tonight, his credit card was definitely going to get marked for fraud.
A third ring had her clutching the bannister to keep her balance, and then rather than just leaving the food on the step, she heard an all too familiar sound.
“Galadriel.”
She couldn’t get to the door quick enough.
Throwing it open with enough force to hear the glass panels cry out in complaint, Galadriel found she needed a second to catch her breath at the sight of Halbrand standing on her top step in a black suit and shirt, his top two buttons undone. Holding out a garishly decorated cupcake with a single flickering candle - likely lit with the beat up lighter he still carried despite quitting smoking some years ago - he blinked twice and then beamed down at her. “Happy Birthday!”
“Halbrand!” she cried out, shock pitching her voice into the right range to piss off her downstairs neighbours. Deciding any notes through her door was a problem for her future self and momentarily forgetting the length of her striped sleep shorts and bare feet, Galadriel galloped into the early spring night, needing to check that she hadn’t fallen asleep on the sofa and dreamt the last half hour up. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Asking you to make a wish?”
“No, I mean… fine,” Galadriel stuttered, her thoughts too busy competing with each other to allow any single one to dominate. Stretching up onto her toes to end her birthday on an unexpectedly high note, the only wish she could come up with on the spot was more than a little selfish.
Please stay.
“So… what did you wish for?” Halbrand smirked just as the smoke around him had finished dissipating into nothing. Seemingly unbothered by the unpredictable breeze, his hazel green eyes never stopped sparkling with mirth while she bit the inside of her cheek and successfully fought off a shiver, both of them still taking the other one in.
“If I tell you that, it won’t come true.”
“You told me when we were seven.”
Because they had wanted the same things when they were seven. Apart from when she had wished on every star and blown out candle for a pony.
“What are you doing here?” she tried again, gulping down a breath although calm still felt a thousand miles out of reach. “You were in Sydney on Thursday.”
Another twitch of his lips forced her gaze down, and then down again to take in the black and white overnight bag he’d had for about fifteen years sitting behind him. “Funny thing about planes, Gal, they take off every day.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.” Folding her arms across her chest, Galadriel scrunched her nose like an exclamation point as she waited for him to break.
“I wanted it to be a surprise,” Halbrand sighed not five seconds later, his childhood hatred of silence coming back around to bite him on the arse again. “I was meant to be here to pick you up for dinner but my delayed connection got cancelled and I had to take the train.”
“You still could have text.”
“I did.” His eyes widened as her gaze hardened. “What? I did.”
Pulling out his phone and flicking past something that caused a furrow to form between his brows, Halbrand sighed. “Fucking airport wi-fi. Look.”
“You’re here now, you don’t need-“
Cutting her off by holding up the screen so she could see the exact time the all-singing, all-dancing message had first been sent, he tapped the warning away. “And you should be getting that right about… now.”
Her phone vibrated obediently from her pocket. “Halbrand-“
“Don’t start. It’s your birthday, I wasn’t going to not see you today.”
“You… You cut your hair.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, offering her another lopsided smile as he scratched at the nape of his neck where his curls used to be. “It’s hotter than the surface of the fucking sun in my new office.”
“I don’t like it.”
Hal pulled a face, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with her, and pointed to the pendant she’d picked out while getting dressed earlier. “You’re wearing my moonstone again.”
Picking the silver set gift up, Galadriel absentmindedly rubbed her knuckles along her breast bone. “My moonstone. It went with my dress.”
“I’m assuming Mirdania will be putting pictures up?”
“If she hasn’t already.”
“Oh, come here,” he said before they could pull on another thread of unnecessarily awkward small talk, putting down the cupcake and wrapping her up in a hug so strong she couldn’t keep her feet on the ground. For three long seconds, it felt like everything was right with the world again. “I missed you.”
“It’s been seventeen days.” And she’d thought about him every single one whether she had wanted to or not. “I missed you, too.”
“Going from Galadriel all the time to no Galadriel has been an adjustment. Like when we went to uni only this time we aren’t even in the same time zone,” he promised, pulling her in even tighter if that was even possible. With his hand now cradling the back of her head and her arms around his ribs, she didn’t have the wherewithal to question how their breathing seemed to fall comfortably into sync.
“You might miss me less upstairs.”
The only part of him that moved was his head, his right hand staying pressed against the small of her back. “I don’t want to upset whatshisface.”
“Since when?”
“Since it’s still your birthday. I didn’t fly back just to start a fight.”
“Then you’re in luck; Celeborn’s not here.”
“I was told…”
The certainty in his voice was enough to make Galadriel break the hug, pulling back and snapping into adversarial mode in the blink of an eye. “What? When? By who?”
“I was told a couple of weeks ago by a mutual friend that you two were thinking about getting back together,” Halbrand said carefully, his eyes dancing across her face like he was searching for something she wasn’t saying.
“We’re not. Never in a million years.”
It was as if Galadriel had flicked a switch with that promise, watching his broad shoulders relax in slow motion and then blowing out a breath herself. All stations stand down, collision averted.
“If he hurt you, I’ll…” Hal started and then sent her a smirk that had pulled lesser women into his bed, clearly thinking of a better option. “Help you bury the body.”
Her brothers had all said similar things, her lack of rage or tears making them all wary, but it felt better coming from someone who had once physically held her back from getting a third hit in. “Do you want to come up now?”
“If I do, I might not want to leave until tomorrow.”
She shrugged, not quite managing to feign nonchalance. It wouldn’t be the first time one of them had crashed at the other’s place without much notice. “Cup of tea? I was just about to put the kettle on.”
“Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?”
“Are you really…? Oh, fuck off, I wore that costume once!”
The brightness of his sudden smile warmed her like the sun making an unforecasted appearance on a cloudy morning. “Once but never forgotten.”
For reasons Galadriel couldn’t recall, the Halloween just after his seventeenth birthday, she had decided to go to the only house party worth being seen at that year dressed as a biblically accurate angel. Wings and all. On arrival, though, she’d immediately felt like the only girl in the sixth form who had thought outside the box, even Melian relying on something from the costume shop with ears and a tail, and once her boyfriend made it clear that he wasn’t impressed with the creativity or effort, Galadriel had spent the rest of the night making sure everyone knew why they were no longer together. Halbrand, in full velveteen vampire splendour, had been put in charge of the music by the kid who’s parents were away, and she could still remember the song that was playing when she started to dance that stupid boy out of her heart and mind.
Turning around now, Galadriel stepped back inside and began to climb the stairs up to her flat - if only to stop herself from asking questions about the dark circles under Hal’s eyes. He hadn’t said anything about not sleeping. “You know where everything is.”
“Only if nothing’s changed, it’s been a while since I’ve been here.”
“Fine,” she sighed, knowing she wasn’t the only one to recognise how performative it sounded. “I can show you to the shower.”
Thirty seconds later, after directing Hal towards the bathroom to clean up after his long flight, she slid past him into the kitchen, only to end up kicking herself for umming and ahhing over what biscuits to put out - like her best friend was a guest - while listening to him letting out a groan of pure delight at the temperature or pressure of her shower. Ignoring the goosebumps prickling along her arms, Galadriel focused on dusting off an actual teapot from the back of the cupboard and leaving the ‘night time’ tea to steep for the four to five minutes suggested on the box.
“You’ve got Hobnobs?”
“Holy crap, Hal, warn a girl next time.”
The apology fell out of his yawning mouth before she could explain that she’d just gotten used to living alone, having found the quiet and her own company unbearable at times. “Just so you know,” Halbrand continued as he came to stand beside her, the peppery scent of his shampoo or body wash making Galadriel desperate to fill her lungs. Having changed into something softer and more comfortable after his shower, he finally looked like the man she knew when he reached for a cup. “I hate what that piece of shit did to your bathroom.”
“Not as much as I do. The sinks are so small. I keep thinking I’m going to cause a flood washing my face.” Sipping from her cup, Galadriel locked her gaze on the only slat in her kitchen blinds that wasn’t lying flat, trying not to notice that they were both now dressed for bed. She hadn’t had a lot of friends stay over since her ex had redecorated the spare room into an office cum home gym. “I wished that you would stay.”
“Earlier tonight?”
“Yeah.” It felt safer to admit it in the near dark, even though, if she had wanted to, Galadriel could have reached out and touched him without much effort at all. She was close enough to let Hal put his arms around her again and just bask in the warmth of an affectionate friendship that had never made her feel small or useless or wrong. Even when they had disagreed and bickered for days on end, they always found a way to forgive each other.
“I wish I’d asked you to come with me.”
Galadriel would have asked why he hadn’t, but she didn’t need to hear him say what she already knew.
Eighteen months ago when Halbrand had announced that his boss was looking for someone to run their Sydney office and he’d thrown his name into the mix, the thought that she would need to call off her engagement hadn’t yet fully formed in her mind. Even less so that the university she’d trained at would be blazing down a restructuring path and researchers like her and Elrond would be at risk of losing their jobs. The world was changing and while people like Hal had moved and adapted, she’d stayed in the same place for too long and was now getting left behind.
“Do you remember when we were little and thirty felt so old?”
“God, yeah,” he breathed, shooting her an investigative, sidelong glance but going along with the change of subject anyway. “My mum had me when she was twenty-two. I still can’t keep a house plant alive longer than a fortnight.”
“You kept Mel alive when you could barely reach the top of your microwave and got her to school when you didn’t want to go. I think that’s more important than some cheese plant.”
“And look at her now.” She could have sworn Halbrand had gotten closer. Or maybe she’d moved along the deep veined marble countertop without realising. “Saving lives every day.”
“Who knew, out of all of us, your sister would turn out to be someone who gives TED talks.”
“If you’d said that ten years ago I would’ve… hey, do you remember when we were fifteen, Mel was out with Dad and I’d come over to your house to escape the mania at home?”
She took another sip, hiding a smile around the rim of her cup. “You’ll have to narrow that down a bit, Hal.”
“It was the day before Fin’s wedding rehearsal and you were storming about in a daisy print dress showing the flower girl how to throw petals. Is that narrow enough for you?”
To be honest Galadriel had completely forgotten, her lasting memories of Finrod’s wedding week overshadowed by the appearance of a gatecrashing uncle and his attempts to get her alone. “There were so many people in the house I threatened to sleep in the back garden.”
Halbrand shot her another grin like he was getting ready to share a secret. “In the twins Glastonbury tent. Which was fucking disgusting and should have been thrown out or burned on their way back.”
“I don’t know how you survived backpacking.”
“Hand sanitiser and a backpack’s worth of baby wipes.” Despite the unexplainable churning in her stomach, as if they were heading straight for an iceberg, Galadriel laughed at the image. “And then you swiped that bottle of champagne from the canapés table and we went up onto the balcony to watch everything being put together.”
Oh shit. “I asked you to run away with me.”
“You did.” She wasn’t imagining things, Halbrand had definitely gotten closer, the side of his pinky now grazing hers as she rested her hand on the counter. “And if you still wanted to-“
“You would?”
“Yeah,” he said like there was never going to be any other possible answer. “I love you.”
It wasn’t the first time he’d said those words, shouting it over his shoulder falling out of taxis and at the end of dinners instead of goodbye, but there was little of that same joviality in his voice now. It was almost as if he thought tonight might be the last time they were going to see each other for a long, long time, and the idea that after all they’d been through her thirtieth birthday would be the moment their lives started to head in completely different directions terrified her. Feeling as if someone had reached into her chest and closed a fist around her skittering heart, the only thing Galadriel was able to form on her lips was his name.
“Halbrand.”
“Galadriel,” he whispered back, something small and wistful pulling up the only corner of his mouth she could see. “I thought if I could just let go of that feeling, put some distance and perspective on it then I’d be okay with what I’d left behind, but… you’ve known all of this since Elrond cornered me, though, right?”
“No. What are you saying? No,” she spat, blinking away the tell-tale sting of unwanted tears and stepping back from the counter. “You think we… I would have let you just go all the way to fucking Australia if I’d known something like that?!”
“You were getting married.”
“And when he told me to choose between him and you, I picked you! I’m always going to pick you, Halbrand, always.”
The very next second the half full cup was being removed from her hands, a tap on her arm spinning her around so quickly her braid whipped against her shoulder, and then there was nothing in her field of vision but Halbrand.
“You should have told me.”
“Why? When? You’d already made up your mind,” she sniffed, instantly hating how much she sounded like her mother. “And you were happy. I’m your friend, Hal, remember? I wasn’t going to do anything to make your life worse. Much like I didn’t comment when you started sleeping with Mirdania.”
It was almost inevitable that there would be some in group dating eventually, and she and Elrond had certainly been mistaken as a couple more often than either of them liked, but Galadriel would have given her eye teeth back then for Halbrand not to be the one in the middle of it all. She couldn’t do what she usually did when Mirdania - her first and only new friend from work - was involved, too, so she had pushed her feelings down so deep the only thing beneath them was hellfire, in order to try and be happy for them both.
It was the hardest thing she would ever do in her life.
Harder than telling her family that she wasn’t going to Cambridge or her PhD defense, harder than riding a clear round at the BUCS Championship, even harder than making the decision to cut ties with her mother and her ever deepening well of dietary despair. And after spending an agonising night as a third wheel, Galadriel had realised the only way to get over what turned out to be years of bottled up feelings was to put herself out there again. She met Celeborn a month later and the rest was, unfortunately, history.
“Shit, that was what? Right after I finished doing my masters?”
Galadriel nodded curtly as Halbrand clenched his jaw, a muscle in his cheek jumping like a heartbeat. “The Christmas you graduated.”
“Nearly six and a half fucking years ago? When I broke up with Mirdania after three weeks?”
“I already said, yes, Halbrand, what more do you bloody want?”
“For you to stop fighting the bit and-“
“It’s chomping at the bit,” she corrected with a less than fond roll of her eyes, the growl he uttered in reply putting her mind and body at odds with each other. Again. “And don’t compare me to a horse.”
“I-“
A targeted bang from downstairs vibrated across the floorboards and they both froze, a bucket of cold water being thrown over their escalating back and forth. “For fucks sake,” Galadriel huffed as she stamped her feet just like the dressage champion she was riding twice a week, wondering when she’d become so breathless standing still in the middle of her kitchen. “Can’t she take a fucking night off?”
“Gal.”
“All I want to do is tell you that I feel it, too, and that I haven’t been able to get you out of my head since we dropped you at the airport, and I was so mad that you didn’t call this morning I could have killed you. And… and aren’t we meant to have my shit together by this point because I’m-“
“Galadriel,” he tried again and when she still didn’t respond, on a roll less than six inches away, Halbrand pulled another weapon from his arsenal. “Baby.”
Stopped dead in her tracks without warning, confusion unballed her fists. “What did you just call me?”
“What did you just say?”
Taking a step back in unison, for a moment they just stared at each other; Galadriel in her matching aqua blue towelling shorts and button down shirt, Halbrand in grey sweatpants and a t-shirt that was almost as old as their friendship with holes beginning to form around the neckline. “I don’t have my shit together.”
“I know, me neither.” Leaning back against the counter, Halbrand licked along his lower lip. “Before that.”
“Oh,” she exhaled, gathering strength. “I love you, too.”
“I don’t think I heard that, can you-?”
“Shut up,” Galadriel muttered, the need to fight draining from her bones as her face began to hurt from not smiling and her stomach kept flipping over like it was going for trampolining gold. “And just kiss me, Hal.”
She didn’t need to ask twice.
His long legs coming in useful, Halbrand crossed her postcard sized kitchen in one bound. Sliding an arm around her waist, she pushed before he could pull her willing body against his, a breath of a laugh leaving the lips she desperately needed to know were as plush as they had always looked.
“Happy Birthday.”
If there was gravel in his voice, then hers was all velvet. “I’m not taking you as my present.”
“Good, because I’ve got something better for you in my bag.” Languidly moving a stray strand of hair off her forehead, he leaned in and she met him in the middle without hesitation.
Their first kiss was like warm honey running down her spine, the second like the best dessert she’d ever tasted, turning her head to get even closer as Hal clutched at her the back of her shirt, her hip, holding her so tenderly that Galadriel didn’t care that she had forgotten how to breathe. Her right knee started to shake as the tip of his tongue darted and danced around her more inelegant touches and she finally, fucking finally, got her hands in what was left of his hair. The noise Halbrand made when she tugged lit her up like lightning, moaning into his open mouth at how easily he lifted her onto the counter right beside the plate of biscuits, his lips now on her cheek, her jaw, her neck, her thighs tightening around his hips.
“I’ve liked you since the summer of the blue bikini,” he admitted with such reverence that her cheeks burned, no doubt helped along by the way Hal kept finding the best places to suck and nibble. If she’d wanted - or could keep her eyes open long enough to do so - Galadriel could have counted his fluttering lashes, all golds and reds like a sunset.
She must have tensed or flinched as a nasty little voice at the back of her mind began to sow seeds of doubt because one second Galadriel was enjoying being worshipped by someone who’d had a place in her heart for half her life and the next Halbrand was leaving the masterpiece of a love bite between her breasts half finished to soothingly rub his palms up and down her thighs.
“What’s wrong?”
There was no point lying. “You’re only here for a few days.”
“Three nights. This time.”
Not even long enough to get over the jet lag. “And there’s not a lot of Viking activity in Sydney.”
“No,” he agreed, taking the opportunity to kiss her sweetly as she tipped her chin up to study the gold flecks in his eyes in a way she hadn’t been able to in forever. “But there have to be people who want to learn about them. Maybe more if their lecturer looked like a tiny, angry Valkyrie.”
“You’ve thought about this,” she murmured against his lips, finding it far too easy to be drawn under his spell. “Me, too.”
“Mmmmmm. What… have… you… worked out?”
She wasn’t sure what Halbrand would want to hear about first as he nuzzled a path to her ear; that she could take redundancy from her much loved job tomorrow and never have to worry about money again? Or that Elrond would be happy to flat sit if she wanted to use some of her inheritance to travel the world? Or perhaps that the publisher she’d interned at during uni would be very interested in reading more chapters of the historical romance series she’d sent them?
What mattered most, though, was that she was going out to see him as soon as she could. “I’ve still got three weeks of leave to take.”
“Before or after your Japan trip?”
“After. I bought extra time for that.”
“I’ll be happy to have you come and stay. Or stay and come,” Halbrand purred, though anything else he had on his mind was lost as he fell into yet another yawn.
Reaching up to cup his cheek and smooth out the lines around his eye with the side of her thumb, she took the weight of his head in her hand. “When did you last get any sleep?”
“On the plane,” he promised, pressing his lips to wherever he could reach without expelling too much additional energy. “Most of the way from Hong Kong to Dubai and then again on the train for a bit.”
Which in all likelihood meant very little. Halbrand had been blessed with the uncanny ability to fall asleep anywhere - just not in public unless he wasn’t alone. And as much as she wanted to continue until he was shuddering in pleasure because of her, his eyes going as dark as an autumnal forest at twilight, it felt more important that both of them were fully present and remembered their first time.
“Should we go to bed?” If she was being honest, Galadriel was flagging now, too, her days usually starting before dawn mucking out at a yard just outside of the city. It might have been Christmas, or maybe back in the summer when she and Elrond toasted her changing the locks, but Galadriel honestly could count on one hand now the nights she wasn’t in bed - and asleep - by eleven. “We can pick this up again in the morning?”
“I’m good for another couple of hours,” he said, rolling his hips into the cradle of her thighs to show just how good he was feeling. One, two, three deepening kisses later though, Halbrand broke away to try and swallow a yawn that shook the shoulders she was currently grasping in its intensity.
“Hal?”
“Don’t say it, just lead the way, baby.”
Shuffling to the edge of the counter, Galadriel waited to accept his help to jump down until his pout became a quirk of his eyebrow that said there was plenty more where that came from, and then, and only then, did what she’d been asked. Though it took longer than expected with her turning or being pulled back every other step to give or take a kiss, each one more loving and comforting than hungry now, they made it to the threshold of her bedroom only slightly rumpled and still fully clothed.
“I’ll be right back.”
“I’ll be right here,” he promised, pushing the door open and taking in the mess that her interior designer hadn’t bargained on. “You’ve always liked blue.”
“Don’t start tidying up.”
“Hurry back then.”
Unsurprisingly, Halbrand was dozing by the time she got back from speed brushing her teeth, sprawled out across the right hand side of her king sized bed like he’d been invited in before and already belonged there. Lifting a corner of the duvet, not wanting to practice the Scandinavian sleeping she had done with her previous partners, Hal murmured something to himself as the mattress dipped under her weight. She felt like she was watching a flower seek out the sun as he blindly moved towards her, reaching out and then snuggling in closer.
“Fuck, you smell good.”
“Go back to sleep,” she urged gently, feeling strangely comfortable pinned beneath his outstretched arm. “You’re not going to miss anything, Hal. You’re in my bed.”
“Nice bed,” he agreed. “Love you, birthday girl.”
“Love you, too.”
Laying a kiss in his hair, she wriggled deeper under the duvet and closed her eyes, looking forward to the inevitable talking and fucking that the morning would bring. For now though, as she drifted off into dreams of beach days and book tours lulled by the sound of his steady breathing, Galadriel knew her birthday couldn’t have ended in a better place.
Even if she’d wished for it.