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“Are you fucking kidding me? What part of ‘stay put’ did you not understand?”
Galadriel lifted her head from where it had been resting on the kitchen table. Technically she was meant to be avoiding stress for the foreseeable future, bed rest threatened if she didn’t slow down, but a week after the midwife had doled out that diagnosis she was already feeling a little stir crazy. Checking in with Lorien’s Board of Directors over lunch had seemed like a good compromise if she wasn’t going to be visiting her office for a while, instead spending too much time rattling around his - now their - penthouse apartment, angry not just at the way her body was starting to betray her. Halbrand - who’d been the sole driving force for her third trimester move across town, unable or unwilling to take ‘no’ for an answer when it came to protecting the mother of his child - had disappeared again first thing. Though not before moving her dozing form from the sofa - where she’d finally fallen asleep in the small hours of the morning - back to his bed, tucking her into the warmth he’d left behind and instructing his staff to keep an eye on things whilst he was out doing god knows what with god knows who for Morgoth.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she snapped as he continued to cut his eyes at her, forcefully closing her laptop. The meeting had ended up being a complete waste of time, feeling more frustrating than helpful. “This is all your fault.”
He folded his arms over his chest at the sound of her sigh, his rolled up shirt sleeves tight around his elbows, leaning a now amused shoulder against the doorframe. “Keep telling yourself that, sweetheart. I wasn’t the one begging for it that night.”
Cocky bastard, she pouted, too tired to fight back properly and also protect herself from any barb he might throw out in the process. They were both right, both wrong, both still adjusting to this newest, monumentally life changing, shift in their long agreed upon dynamic. Galadriel kept refusing to call it a relationship, despite having gained intimate knowledge of his thousand thread count sheets well before their daughter was even a thought in either of their heads, stubbornly blinkered to the fact that they had been moving towards something more than a series of intense one night stands for years.
“Was it worth calling in?”
“What do you think?” she huffed, blinking away the tears that wanted to fall all of a sudden. Her moods were becoming as unpredictable as the wild spring weather. “Apparently the dinosaurs who work for me find the fact that I’m having a baby distracting now.”
Halbrand’s smirk stretched a little wider then, stepping into the kitchen to take a better look at her. She’d tried so hard to do everything properly - to tick every box, dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’ - that she had squeezed herself into a dark blue dress that definitely fit only a fortnight ago to meet with the Board today. For all the good it had done her.
“I don’t know what you want me to say. I’ve always found your boobs distracting.”
She scoffed at that notion. There had been nothing but irritation and disdain between them the first time they’d laid eyes on each other, at a conference right before she’d taken over the day to day running of Noldor Industries’ public relations department. Galadriel hadn’t believed in fate or destiny or any of those words others used to make sense of a world they didn’t actively engage with, but she thought she could live a thousand years and still remember the details of that weekend, like everything really had happened for a reason.
If only the role she’d fought so hard for hadn’t just been presented to her as a stop-gap - something to tide her over until she got her head out of her ass and accepted Celeborn’s proposal - then perhaps she wouldn’t have stormed into The Belegaer that Friday night ready to do whatever it took to prove she knew more than anyone her cousins thought they could replace her with.
Maybe it had been her growing doubt that the tech prince of Doriath would view her needs as important once he got a taste of true success that stopped her giving the answer everyone expected. Or that whatever she achieved with a ring on her finger would automatically become a shared prize that made her wonder how love, pride and ambition could coexist. Though whatever it was that stayed her tongue in actuality, Galadriel had only known she wasn’t ready to follow in her mother’s melancholy footsteps at twenty-five. She’d grown up well aware of who and, more importantly, what she was.
Unfortunately, with just one look, Halbrand managed to figure it all out, too.
Halbrand Smith had been the hottest of Valinor’s junior hotshots; the smartest, the sharpest, and the only one who saw through her Noldor issued entitlement to the fiercely ambitious and highly capable woman she was beneath. Everything about him challenged her in a way nobody else had ever dared to, guarded about his own background but unafraid of being on the receiving end of her infamous temper, giving just as good as got as that first night together became one disagreement after another. She’d been unsuccessfully courted by Valinor senior year, gaining too much first hand experience of their pleasantly stifling M.O. in the process, though watching Hal grow more and more agitated when one of their competitors’ started to pick apart plans for citywide solar panels made her feel like he must have also skipped the obligatory orientation.
One of Valinor’s finest relying on violence to problem solve at such a high profile event would have been a public relations nightmare, but not something Galadriel should have allowed herself to be bothered by. It wasn’t as if he meant anything to her at that point. Her conscience would have stayed clean had she chosen to walk away from The Belegaer’s ballroom and never looked back. Still, despite having strangely felt torn between heading up to her room to prepare for a busy day talking to investors and putting herself in the middle of the ridiculousness, in the end she hadn’t needed to do anything when instead of throwing the first punch he’d bought drinks for the whole table of almost strangers, diffusing any tension in the space of a handful of words.
Halbrand was still good at that, talking his way out of trouble, though not so much when she was involved, her tongue just as torturously talented as his.
“Asshole,” she muttered as Hal came close enough to pull at the fancy zip running down her back, waiting until she took a couple of deep, unrestricted breaths before making his way across the room to open the fridge. Of all her old habits, that was going to be the hardest to break, especially when she’d had to watch him strut around looking like a cat who’d gotten all the cream since the truck had shown up full of things she needed to make her temporary stay more comfortable.
“Brat,” he batted back without turning around, seeming focused on finding what he needed to make more of the green juice she’d been desperately craving almost as much as his cock since she had stopped throwing up in the mornings. What had once been growled in hotel suites up and down the country was now said just as softly as any other term of endearment, like he knew what was in her heart and wouldn’t want her any other way. All his darlings and sweethearts were starting to pale in comparison and Galadriel hated that she’d allowed it to happen, slowly at first and then all at once.
The Belegaer turned out to be the centre point of a crossroad she hadn’t expected to find herself at. That week marked the very last time she’d let Celeborn believe there was a future where marriage would make them both happy, her recurring dreams of what might have been had she done more than reluctantly sit down for lunch with Mr Smith before returning home sealing all their fates. And at work she began to see things with fresh eyes, too, realising her days were numbered at the company when even those closest to her began to drop hints that marketing would be better handled from one of the satellite offices out on the west coast.
Galadriel had always planned to jump before she was pushed, but if it hadn’t been for the other suggestions being aimed her way - suggestions that she was only feeling disgruntled, dissatisfied, dissentient because she was missing the only man who wanted her - then maybe she would have waited longer to break the ties that had become a double edged sword somewhere along the way. Eighteen hour days were the norm while she sold off her five percent share in Noldor Industries piece by piece, passing on every public speaking engagement and after work drinks event that she wouldn’t be welcome at anyway, watching quarter two become quarter three but feeling no closer to her goal.
She hadn’t wanted to join the team heading out to the prestigious Númenórean RnD retreat - especially not after Hal had just assumed he would see her there, smirking as she’d finished the rest of her sandwich in three bites to cut their conversation short - but Elrond signed them both up, promising it would be fun to put the environmental science part of her degree to use again, to stretch her brain in a different way than usual. Her friend couldn’t have predicted that every one of those clever, coherent thoughts would have been screwed out of her head before she got to share a single thing, though. A coffee on arrival had somehow turned into a heated debate on nineteenth century water wheels over dinner, and then into Halbrand scratching an itch Galadriel hadn’t known she’d been living with, at least not until the morning after rolled around and she found herself stomping through the hotel to shower and change in an otherwise unnecessary room.
It would have been easy to claim he took advantage of the loneliness or heartache she was supposed to be feeling, but she sought him out again following her panel on renewable energy, stone cold sober and in need of answers after learning he was about to switch sides. His new bosses - Morgoth - were more than friendly competition, the men across the river were the enemy, looking down on the rest of the world from the top of their triple spire skyscraper while their operatives destroyed everything they touched and she couldn’t bear to think of Halbrand like that, too. She’d made it her mission at sixteen to plant entire forests just as fast as Melkor Bauglir tore them down, caring less about the tax breaks or excellent publicity her teenage temper tantrum was producing and more that she became an irrepressible thorn in the side of the company who had tried to bankrupt her brothers.
His apology felt sincere even though he’d had no involvement in what had occurred a decade ago, her confession as to why she was done at Noldor equally so, and they had parted ways after he’d taken her apart in a storage closet with Galadriel expecting to draw a line under the whole thing. Morgoth went after military contracts and bored billionaires with dreams of seeing the stars while she wanted her new company, Lorien, to take flight winning over hearts and minds, communities more important than corporations. Besides, they were nothing more than ships passing in the night, and now her curiosity had been satisfied her dreams would be able to shift back to strictly business matters. She’d seen and felt and tasted what Hal was hiding underneath his well fitting clothes and that was that.
It should have been enough, she’d told herself over and over again as days became weeks and weeks became months, that finally learning how good it could be with someone who knew what he was doing meant it was enough. She wasn’t the type to sleep with the enemy. Even if that enemy did things with his tongue that her ex-boyfriend had turned his nose up at.
Galadriel had signed up for two further conferences, a recruitment event and agreed to fill the empty spot in a lecture series at her alma mater before the fiscal year ended. It didn’t matter if Halbrand turned up to any of them, too, Lorien needed her to be fighting fit and out on the road, what she’d already done with him was absolutely enough.
Feeling her tired mind jump from thing to another, unable to settle on which choice brought her to this moment quickest, she listened to Halbrand start to mutter now as he took in the virtually spotless black veined marble countertop, plucking at a single silvery blonde strand from beside the stove. “If you’re going to shed all over the place, the least you could do is try and clean up after yourself.”
Galadriel almost reminded him that he had people to keep things tidy so his guests didn’t have to, his team small and unoppressive - chef, personal trainer, housekeeper with a nanny to be added - even if she’d had a front row seat over the last week to watch all the cooking and cleaning he did when the staff had been sent home for the day. Besides, all she’d done was make a cup of tea before her meeting, having to find something to stand on to get a mug down from a shelf that was at his eye level and well above her head, tempted to rearrange the whole set up just to see the look on his stupidly handsome face.
“You’re going right back to Angband?” She didn’t wait for an answer, already knowing his schedule as well as her own. “You have to go past my apartment so your driver can just drop me there on the way.”
“So I can watch you work yourself into the hospital? That’s not going to happen.”
“Hal, please.” Galadriel felt the tears start to pool furiously all over again, biting her wobbling lower lip as if the stab of pain would dry her eyes before everything - all her rage, all her exhaustion, all her fear - could come pouring out. “You don’t have to keep doing the right thing if you don’t want to. I’ll… hire another PA.”
“Darling, I’m not doing this-“ he started, knowing full well that there were only a handful of people she could handle seeing her vulnerable and he had only joined their ranks accidentally. She’d fired her last assistant the day morning sickness had completely smacked her on her ass, only moving from the bathroom floor after Elrond and Halbrand both showed up. The latter had ran her a bath while the former offered to hold her hair back until she felt better - just like old times - dryer warm clean clothes, ginger tea and dry toast waiting for her downstairs afterwards.
She shouldn’t have tried to hide the baby from either of them. She’d always known Elrond cared but Hal’s spikes of concern always seemed to surprise her. Or royally piss her off.
Watching him turn around as she failed to swallow her first shaky sob, not having the words to explain why what they were doing was feeling more dangerous by the day, like they were setting their crotchety daughter up for heartbreak before she was even born, Galadriel noticed those same worry lines creasing his forehead. He opened his mouth to continue whatever half-truth was meant to placate her, to make her stay, but as he did his elbow knocked a forgotten watermelon off the counter, the crunching splash when it hit the floor making them both wince.
“Shit,” he exhaled, looking down at the wet mess spreading across the tiles and then back to her. “Living room. Now.”
“Don’t you want to clean-?”
He stared at her, hard and unblinking, and Galadriel took the opportunity to stand up and shed her ridiculous dress, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand and leaving the puddle of linen where it fell. She didn’t wait around long enough to see if his desire for her changing body flared back to life, grabbing the shirt she’d slept in the previous night out of the laundry hamper on her way to his - now their - living space.
She’d done something similar the first time he had invited her in, stripped off to get Halbrand to change the subject, though the tears that followed all those months ago were from overstimulation not hormonal confusion. Fleeing before she could do something even more stupid than spend the entire night asleep in his arms, in his home - like staying for breakfast, like they were a real couple - Galadriel needed the lines they’d drawn to stay put while they worked across a great ideological divide.
They might have left The Númenórean with an understanding, but what had begun in one city soon bled over into the one they shared, her new office looking right into the heart of Morgoth’s darkness. She hadn’t gone out of her way to run into Halbrand again though, and certainly not in her favourite restaurant on the same night Morgoth were holding their annual holiday party, sticking to the safety of unfamiliar hotel rooms whenever they ended up in the same place at the same time after that initial slip, fighting their respective corners in public and tearing each other's clothes off behind closed doors.
It had taken more than a full year, but Galadriel eventually made peace with the fact that this was what she did now; snatch every opportunity to promote Lorien as a future clean energy world leader and have mind blowing sex with a gorgeous, argumentative, generous man who shared none of her morals. Their semi-regular workouts took the edge off her work stresses better than any hour in the gym, but six weeks after she had agreed to a game of squash with him in the basement of Morgoth’s headquarters - and the subsequent handsy shower, massage and multiple orgasm marathon on the floor of his executive suite - Galadriel passed the only test she hadn’t studied for. Her birth control shots were scheduled like clockwork, or at least they had been until another former assistant deleted a reminder from her packed diary and then any appointment she could get was too late to make a difference.
He’d just grinned when she’d stormed into his flashy office with the news, asking when and where she needed him, not surprised and certainly not disappointed. And he hadn’t stepped back since; at her side for every doctor’s visit, not minding when she needed him to quench her thirst at one am, inadvertently discovering that all three of them slept better when they were in the same bed. It was the main reason she hadn’t fought him too viciously on the move, knowing that having Hal wrapped around her for at least part of the night, every night - his chin on her shoulder, her hand clutching his bicep, listening to him murmur pretty nonsense as she closed her eyes after he’d made her shudder and scream like no one else could - would feel like a godsend after weeks of insomnia.
“I don’t know what you want to say that you couldn’t in the kitchen.”
“Galadriel,” he sighed, his accent always heaviest when he said her name. Sinking into the couch cushions, he patted the seat beside him. “Come here.”
“No,” she said, almost stamping her foot as emphasis. “Not until you finish what you started.”
His green eyes darkened as he glowered up at her. “I’m not doing this out of obligation. Are you happy now?”
“Absolutely,” she scowled back, stalking across the room and lowering herself in the space he’d left for her, hissing when a tiny foot landed somewhere near her left kidney. “She only kicks when she wants you to keep talking and me to stop.”
“I’m okay with her liking me better.”
Galadriel pressed her lips together. She might have developed a few more than just fond feelings towards Halbrand as a lover, as a man, as the father of her child, but she would always see Morgoth as a stain on the world. She’d never be able to push that aside, the blood money used to kit out the jungle themed nursery in what had previously been his guest room still making her uneasy. “I’m not.”
He reached out to rub his hand over her belly in slow circles, the other arm tightening around her shoulders, pulling her into his lap, her back pressed flush against his chest. “She doesn’t hate you, darling, she’s just impatient to meet us. Isn’t that right, princess?”
“You can’t know that,” she sighed, allowing him to move them into a more comfortable position as their baby calmed, Galadriel letting her eyes flicker closed for a second when he did something that left her feeling nearly weightless.
Halbrand dropped a kiss to the back of her neck then, pushing his nose into her hair and she found herself relaxing further. For all his complaints about where it was now ending up, Galadriel knew he would miss tugging or tangling his fingers in it if she cut it short. “I do. She’s half me and I love you so she has to.”
“You don’t have to say that.”
“I don’t have to say or do anything, darling. But when it comes to you, I want to.”
Galadriel felt that, too, maybe even since he’d found a way to pull her back from throttling an upstart from Uruk at the end of their day at The Tirharad, convincing herself later that night while Hal slept at her side that some concepts couldn’t possibly be the same for him as they were for her. She had no doubts he wouldn’t dote on their daughter, feeling her jolting hiccups ease beneath the weight of his warm palm, but anything else… anything more, anything that would feel like enough between them, could also possibly hurt them in the long run. Especially if she was going to put Morgoth out of business before their daughter grew up.
“Just trust me.”
“I don’t want to,” Galadriel whined, sounding every inch the spoiled brat he’d named her.
“I know,” Hal said, kissing her through her hair again. For anyone else, the way they met at The Belegaer would have been the perfect story to bore all their friends with, but the diverging paths they were walking out where it mattered meant she’d yet to tell it to anyone but Elrond. “But you’re not going to miss anything if you stop charging at every obstacle at a full gallop.”
“Lorien needs-“
He shushed her and she stiffened, her hackles rising in anticipation even if she wasn’t prepared to fight him on this. “Let me deal with your dinosaurs.”
“Halbrand.”
“Don’t start, sweetheart,” he murmured, and she didn’t need to see his face to know which flavour of smile had found a home again along his lips. “I’ll be nice.”
She couldn’t help but snort at the blatant lie. “No you won’t.”
He chuckled, rewarding her insight with another lingering kiss, suckling at a well loved spot behind her ear that had her hips rolling back into his. “No, I won’t. But it’ll get the job done. Tell me what you need.”
“Come and work for me full time.”
The request left her mouth before she had time to think it through, his sudden silence so deafening that she felt compelled to fill it. “I don’t know if we can match your salary but there’ll be other benefits I can offer.”
Galadriel heard him inhale sharply then, heat rising to her cheeks as she realised what she’d just said. Barely letting her finish the thought though, he recklessly added his own layer to the house of cards they seemed to be building, fingers on her chin turning her head. “Don’t go home after she’s born. Stay here. Marry me.”
“That’s not what this is about,” she promised, looking across at him, full of disbelief and longing. She’d been in his space a week. And they had found something to annoy each other about every day of it like they always did. Like they always enjoyed doing. “I don’t want to tell her what you do. We don’t really know each other all that well.”
If Galadriel had seen through his lie, Halbrand saw through hers just as easily.
“That’s where you’re wrong. You know who I am. You like who I am.” He smiled, so delightfully boyish it made her heart ache. “Mostly.”
She couldn’t find a tangible reason to contradict him in the moment. “I don’t know where you grew up. I only found out you have about a dozen siblings this week.”
“Five and what does it matter? It’s ashes now.”
“What matters then?”
“Knowing how you take your tea, what you’re not saying when you scrunch your nose, the words you make up when you sing in the shower.” Hal ran his thumb over her lip, making her wish he’d replace it with his mouth. “I could go on.”
It shouldn’t be enough. But what they’d had before hadn’t really felt like enough either. She wanted too much, even when it had felt like she was betraying every single word on Lorien’s manifesto by staining hotel room sheets with him. “Ask me again in… a year?”
“I don’t see what difference that’ll make.”
And that was why she couldn’t do this with him when he was still trying to burn down everything she held dear. “It will,” she insisted, leaning into his always eager kisses.
Hal lasted six months. Galadriel didn’t care in the end. Not when it turned out all those things she thought couldn’t coexist - love, pride, ambition - worked perfectly when she faced life with the right loving, prideful, ambitious person by her side. And she was right beside his. They married a week before their little princess, Celebrían, turned one.
She still called her husband an asshole whenever his ego threatened to grow too big to fit through their front door though, and she, in turn, was now and forever his darling, his sweetheart, his beautiful, brilliant, fucking incorrigible brat.
Galadriel had never been happier.