Chapter Text
When Halbrand agreed to go to Isildur’s party, he didn’t expect it to suck this much. Best case scenario, he thought, he might run into Bronwyn. And he does, though any hope of spending the evening with her fades the second she arrives hand-in-hand with some guy who looks like a cop.
He ducks out for a smoke and a chat with a nursing student — not another fucking nursing student, the last one he went home with had been into knives, he’s still not sure how he feels about the whole thing — only for Isildur to stick his face through the door and shout his name.
Mumbling an apology, Halbrand stubs out his cigarette and shuffles back inside.
“Here he is,” Isildur shouts again, waving him over to join the conversation. Halbrand hesitates until he notices the small woman standing before his friend. He furrows his brow, taking in her golden hair, the same shade as—
“Galadriel,” he breathes, taken aback when she turns around. He’d managed to avoid any run-ins with her for over three years, aside from a freshman seminar he couldn’t get out of, despite all his efforts to charm the administrative office.
“Hello,” she says now, with that smile that still disarms him. “You haven’t changed a bit.” Her blue eyes scan his body in a way unbefitting of a two-term secretary of the chastity club — yes, for real, he explains to Isildur later, it was a religious thing. No, of course I wasn’t part of it, you fucking —
“So you do know each other?” Isildur asks now, a dumb half-drunk grin plastered on his face.
Halbrand nods, cracking open a can of cheap beer. It’s tepid and disgusting, but he swallows it anyway. “We went to school together.”
Her outfit tonight is weirdly reminiscent of their school days, down to the bow she wears in her hair. He has to do a double take, before realizing that the length of her navy skirt would’ve induced mass hysteria back at Trinity, undoubtedly leading to a semester’s worth of modesty assemblies for him to sleep through.
“What are the chances?” Isildur claps them both on the shoulders. The last dredges of his beer slosh around in his red solo cup. “I never run into any old friends at these things.”
“That might have something to do with the fact that you didn’t grow up here.”
“Where are you from again?” Galadriel asks politely.
“Oh God, don’t get him started,” Halbrand mutters. “It’s an island in the middle of fucking nowhere, they’re very proud of their seafood and trees.”
Isildur shoots him an indignant look, and Halbrand shrugs, taking another sip. He’s heard the spiel enough times, he’s got it memorized.
Someone calls Isildur away, leaving Halbrand and Galadriel to silently stare at each other. He’s uncomfortable, but she projects that infuriating image of serenity she’d perfected by age sixteen.
“Galadriel,” he nods, deciding the silence has been awkward enough and craving another cigarette. He doesn't wait for a response before heading out back. The better option would be to leave entirely, but he won’t be the first to blink.
He loses Isildur three more times before he gets sick enough of beer pong to call it a night, but when he rounds the corner toward the door, he collides with Galadriel.
“Shit, sorry,” he mutters, picking up her phone.
“You’re avoiding me.” It sounds like a fact, spoken without judgment or accusation, though he does detect a hint of amusement.
“I wouldn’t call it —” he starts, but she cuts him off with a skeptical head tilt.
“Okay, so maybe I was avoiding you.” He doesn’t know why he’s smiling. “Old habit. Your brothers aren’t here, by any chance, are they?”
“I figured it was because of all that,” she sighs. For a second he thinks she’s going to say something trite like how sorry she is.
She looks up at him and he gets lost for a second wondering if she still cries when she comes.
Then she asks if he wants a drink. His mouth says yes before his head can say no.
It’s a Wednesday in May. They are eighteen.
“—Mr. Doriath, I’m sure there’s a class you’re supposed to be in. Miss Noldor, take your seat.”
Halbrand stays focused on the rough college-ruled paper beneath his thumb, not the smell of warm vanilla beside him as Galadriel slips into the seat beside him.
She does this shit on purpose, having that asshole walk her to class. It’s a game she plays when she’s bored. He refuses to give in, she’d like that too much. Instead, he pretends she doesn’t exist.
It’s easy enough to ignore her until she starts up her little protests, her pleas for attention. A heavy sigh. Shifting in her seat, the pleats of her skirt crinkling with each movement. Tapping her heel against the linoleum floor just enough to drive him mad.
Stoichiometry can usually hold his interest. He grits his teeth and refuses to indulge her.
With a soft scrape of metal on laminate, she slides her notebook toward him, then taps her purple pen against her teeth with a gentle click click click click —
Beneath the table, a firm press of his left palm to her knee ends the torment.
Halbrand hates the victorious smirk she wears for the remaining thirty minutes of class.
“What the fuck was that?” he asks as soon as she opens the car door that afternoon.
Galadriel bats her eyelashes at him, a picture of innocence. His stomach turns with anticipation and irritation. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Halbrand.”
He slides close to her, reaching behind her to push down the lock. “That little stunt with Doriath before Chem.”
“Careful,” she says, tying up her blonde waves. “I might start to think you’re jealous.”
“Should I be?” He leans down to kiss just below her ear.
She hums softly in the base of her throat, tilting her head back. “Maybe.”
“Why can’t you ever just answer a fucking question?” He untucks her shirt, fingers fumbling clumsily in his haste to unfasten the small buttons.
“It was only a little kiss.” She’s fucking infuriating, especially when she’s aware of the hold she has on him. She pushes him back into the seat and lifts herself onto his lap.
The windows are tinted and no one goes to this part of the preserve. Their cars are the only ones in the lot.
“Show me.”
Her palms slide across the logo embroidered on his chest. “It’s different with you, Hal, you know that.”
She always says this. He doesn’t know if it’s true. “Show me how you kiss him, Galadriel.”
The hesitation in her blue eyes only strengthens his resolve.
Finally, with a nervous nod, she presses a whisper of a kiss to his lips. “Like that,” she mumbles, pulling away only a few millimeters.
His green eyes stay fixed on her, one hand on her lower back as the other cradles her head. “And he’s happy with that?”
She bites her lip. “Not exactly.”
His eyebrow lifts. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” she shrugs, “sometimes he wants more.”
His lips brush her collarbone, tongue tracing the ridge it forms. “Be more specific.”
She guides one of Halbrand’s hands to her bra. He works his fingers underneath the band and up into the cup. “Sometimes he wants to do that.”
“What else?”
Another moment of hesitation passes where she won’t look at his face.
She rises to her knees, takes hold of his free hand, and slides it up the back of her thigh, under her skirt. “Sometimes he tries that.”
Both hands squeeze into her flesh and she takes in an audible breath. “And what do you do?” he mumbles into her cheek as he lays her down on the bench seat.
“I tell him no,” she says, as though it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
“Does he listen?”
She shivers when he nips at her shoulder. “Not at first. He says he can’t help it.”
Halbrand is grateful that she can’t see the eye roll this prompts. “Of course he can’t. How do you make him listen?”
“The same way I— “ she whines as he slides his hand under her skirt. “I—mmm—always do.”
A pause near the top of her inner thigh, fighting back a smirk as her hips lift in search of friction. He presses his palm into the front of her hip, holding her against the seat. “Unh-uh, not until you give me a real answer. Don’t pout,” he whispers, leaning over to kiss her, grazing her bottom lip as he pulls away.
“I tell him that it’s a slippery slope. That once we start, we won’t be able to stop.” Her eyelashes flutter as he indulges her again. “That I’m — God, Hal — saving myself for… for— ”
“Do you let him touch you like this?” The words brush against her mouth as he winds her ponytail around his unoccupied hand and pulls.
She shakes her head the best she can, murmurs of no, no, just you, only you interrupting feverish kisses.
If only the chastity club could see her now.
Galadriel has met him here three times in the past week alone. Halbrand doesn’t know what excuse she gives to her family or her boyfriend. He doesn’t care, so long as she shows up.
She has her rules and boundaries. He pushes them, of course, testing her where he can. She used to try to stop him before he could make her come. Now, she begs for it.
Her only hard and fast rule?
She will not let him— or anyone, really— fuck her.
He is losing his goddamn mind over it.