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Halbrand Maia won’t stop looking at her.
His gaze burns through Galadriel’s skin, sending splotches to her chest that burn hotter than the California sun overhead, thanks to her brother’s decision to raze the canopy of trees just beyond his studio gates.
“Who gives a shit about destroying city property when you can just pay the fine and move the fuck on?” Hal muttered in the car that morning on their way to picket. “Whatever it takes to fuck over everyone who works for you.”
“That is the Noldor way,” she’d chirped, incapable of hiding her irritation.
“Most union members don’t make enough from acting to qualify for SAG health insurance, you know. We’re doing this for them, not us.”
“Spare me the lecture, Halbrand— I’m not interested. Pull over up there,” she said, anxious to avoid being seen together, “I can walk the rest of the way.”
“What is going on with you two?” Nori whispers now, though it’s audible to anyone within a three-foot radius.
Heat stings Galadriel’s cheeks. “Do we have to talk about this now?” Her eyes are wide, she speaks through gritted teeth. “He’s right there.”
Nori ignores this, standing on her tiptoes to better scrutinize the man with one hand pressed to her brow like a visor to block out the sun. “This is the third night this week, Gal,” she hisses.
Galadriel rolls her eyes. “Yes, thanks Nori— I can count, you know.”
“Why do you always go to his place? You’ve got the nicest house I’ve ever seen.”
Galadriel doesn’t know how to explain that this isn’t exactly a selling point when it comes to Halbrand. She gets enough sarcastic remarks as it is without adding that to the mix. “I don’t know,” she lies, “I like it there. It’s comfortable.”
Nori raises a brow, lips curled into a disapproving pout. “And does he keep you inside the whole time?”
“What?” Galadriel blinks, shaking her head. “I don’t know. We go out for a drink sometimes.”
“Before or after?” Nori asks, fingernail tapping her bottom lip as she thinks.
Galadriel furrows her brow, shoulders curling in a little, though it’s a difficult task thanks to decades of dance and yoga. “Usually before, I think.” It’s always before— she tells herself that alcohol makes the situation more palatable, but in truth it does little to calm the nerves that begin to fray just at the thought of the man. “And sometimes we get food.”
“Take out or eat in?”
“Does it matter?”
“Of course it fucking matters,” Nori says, pitch jumping to a high screech that attracts more attention than Galadriel can handle.
“Take out,” she mutters, unable to meet her friend’s gaze. “Then we go back to his place and watch movies and…” She can’t complete the thought.
“And he fucks you,” Nori finishes for her.
A throat clears above the pair, shrouding the girls in sudden shade. Galadriel doesn’t have to look up to know who it is. “Who’s fucking who now?”
“Hi, Hal,” Nori chirps, practically twirling her hair. “I was just telling Galadriel all about—“
“On second thought,” he starts, green eyes laser-focused on the center of Galadriel’s forehead— she can feel it as readily as she hears the smirk in his voice, despite her downcast stare, “I’m not interested.”
It emerges like a wholesale dismissal of the girl herself.
“Oh,” Nori whispers once he’s out of earshot, “it’s so much worse than I thought.”
Galadriel cuts her blue gaze toward her friend, eyes wide with alarm. “What do you mean?”
“He came over here as soon as we started talking about sex, right?” Nori’s expression is too gleeful for Galadriel to find any sense of comfort in this extended conversation. “An obvious attempt to check that you haven’t let some other guy get his hands on you, because as soon as he thought it was about me, Hal couldn’t give less of a shit.”
“I’m not so sure that’s the case,” Gal mumbles, unwilling to elaborate.
“So he is into you— in a mean, weirdly possessive way that’s so fucking hot,” the girl continues, speaking at her usual breakneck pace, “but you’re not dating him.”
“Definitely not,” Galadriel confirms too fast, rolling her eyes like she’s disgusted by the thought.
Nori snaps her head up so fast, eyes wide. “Is he sleeping with anyone else?”
“I don’t know,” Galadriel shrugs, playing cool despite the new heat fizzing beneath her skin— it’s not envy, there’s no fucking way she’s jealous, so she blames it on the weather. “We don’t really talk about all of that.”
She decides against mentioning the night last week where she paused the movie— some foreign film from the sixties that Hal swore was an anticapitalist classic, whatever the hell that means— for a bathroom break, only to catch him swiping on Raya when she returned.
“You could at least wait for me to leave,” she muttered, slipping back beneath the blanket.
A rough huff of air— not quite a laugh, but the closest approximation he can muster while sober, at least off the clock— slipped out as he slung his arms over her shoulders, phone still clutched in one too-large fist. “Careful there, Noldor,” he murmured, breath warm on her ear. “Back when we began this whole arrangement,” the word rolled so slowly from his tongue Galadriel wondered if he could taste the letters, “you promised me you weren’t the sort of girl who gets all attached and needy.”
“Right,” she nodded, leaning back into his chest to stare up at those nauseatingly green eyes— fans dedicated an entire thread to solving the mystery of whether or not he wore colored contacts on the subreddit for their premium cable show, though it was locked by moderators when conversation grew too heated after less than a day. “Remind me, Hal— was that before or after you swore this would be just a ‘one-time thing, no repeat engagements’?”
He rolled his eyes, muttering something under his breath— to Galadriel’s ears, it sounded dangerously close to ‘spoiled little brat,’ though she couldn’t say for sure— and hit play.
“Of all the actors you could’ve slid into a situationship with, what on earth would possess you to choose Halbrand fucking Maia?” Nori groans.
“I’m sorry,” Galadriel sputters, blinking in a furious effort to process the girl’s words, “I’m in a what with who?”
“A situationship,” Nori says again, like that’s sufficient to clarify things for her friend.
Galadriel simply continues to gape.
“Jesus, Gal, it’s like you’re a thousand years old or something,” Nori mutters, blowing hair out of her face with a long exhale. “You’re in a relationship— at the very least, a sexual one— but without the labels or, more importantly, the expectations, of old-school dating. I mean, it’s not like it’s just a booty call, or he wouldn’t be seen with you in public at all. You’d just fuck and then— well, fuck off, really.”
“Isn’t that just friends with benefits?” Galadriel asks.
Nori frowns, nostrils flared for an instant before she dismisses the thought entirely with a shake of her head. “It’s all blurry, that’s the entire point of it. Basically, you’re together sometimes, but never together-together. Does that make sense?”
“Sure,” Galadriel lies, more lost than ever.
It begins with a party at Chateau Marmont and a series of drunk Instagram DMs.
@halbrandmaia: should’ve known a spoiled nepo baby like you wouldn’t let a picket line get in the way of her fun
@halbrandmaia: but god did you look good crossing it
@halbrandmaia: hope the night’s worth the twitter backlash, princess
Galadriel peers at the screen, certain she’s reading the username wrong— award ceremonies are infamous for their dangerous combination of free-flowing booze and limited access to food and water, so there’s a solid chance this is nothing more than a champagne-induced illusion. But no matter how many times she blinks or reloads the app, the name remains the same.
“Who are you talking to?” Finrod asks when he catches her eye.
She shakes her head, tapping out a reply. “No one important.”
@galadrielnoldor: ohh, that’s what that was? huh. you learn something new every day.
@halbrandmaia: i forgot you only give a shit about things that directly impact you.
@halbrandmaia: here’s the tl;dr, on the off chance you’ve grown a fucking conscience— the hospitality union’s been boycotting that hellhole for two years. not sure how that slipped your radar.
@galadrielnoldor: last time i checked, the only union i’m beholden to is SAG, so idk wtf that has to do with me.
@halbrandmaia: jesus, blue really is your color.
@galadrielnoldor: are you lecturing me or sliding into my DMs?
A response comes within thirty seconds.
@halbrandmaia: i’m surprised you’re still replying
@halbrandmaia: the party’s really that boring?
@galadrielnoldor: goodnight asshole
@galadrielnoldor: i’d better not see this convo on deuxmoi in the morning
@halbrandmaia: might have an alternative proposal, if you’re up for it.
@galadrielnoldor: i’m listening.
It’s not at all close to what she meant to type, but her prefrontal cortex went dark hours ago.
“Think I might head out soon,” she mumbles to her brother when he passes again.
He’s only in Laurel Canyon.
It’s a minor detail her brain can’t quite let go of, running over it like a pebble until it’s worn smooth, erased of all sharp edges that might otherwise make her think better of responding to a late-night proposition from a former co-star.
It’s not even the first one he’s offered.
She rolls her eyes in the car, recalling a memory from four years ago— Hal let himself into her trailer, dropped onto the couch and cracked open her last Diet Coke with no fanfare. “I just think if we got it out of us, we could move past the obvious tension and keep it all professional from here.”
She threw him out before it could evolve from suggestion to possibility, and made a mental note to refuse to work with him again, but still the question remains, recalled to life with the faintest glint in his green eyes each time their paths cross.
What would it be like?
And could it really be as simple as he makes it sound? Just one night, for better or worse, and then she would be free from the agony of rumination, the ‘what if’s, the humiliating pattern she’s fallen into of collecting details about the man— the crinkles by his eyes when he smiles or laughs, the soft suggestion in the upward flick of his brows, his habit of wetting his lips with just a hint of his tongue at the most inopportune of moments— to store up and revisit in the safety of her dreams?
But as soon as the heavy door of his home swings open and she’s faced with those hypnotic eyes, she begins to second guess everything.
“I didn’t think you’d actually show,” he says, like he’s impressed.
No, she realizes as he scans the line of her form, revealed by the clingy cut of her dress— jesus, blue really is your color— gaze lingering on the deep v-neck (and the exposed skin between), impressed is too imprecise a word to describe the way he’s taking her in.
This is hunger.
“Less of a conversationalist without someone to script it out in advance for you, hm?” he says, and her face falls before she can stop it.
She shouldn’t care what he thinks of her, but she does, and the humiliation of this knowledge— that she’s somehow already lost what little esteem he afforded her— is overwhelming.
“I don’t know what I’m doing here,” she mutters, turning to follow the taillights of her ride as it disappears down his winding road.
He smirks, pushing the door a little wider. “Coming inside might be a good start.”
Uncle Fëanor— not actually Galadriel’s direct uncle, the man died in the 1930s for fuck’s sake— began his career as a lowly telegraph operator, and died with over one thousand patents to his name— including one for what he insisted until his final breath was the first motion picture camera, followed promptly by a rudimentary peep-hole exhibition system, the Palantir, that quickly gained traction. In those lawless, pre-Code days, the vast majority of his films were designed with one sole purpose in mind: spectacle. Those early Silmaril films, made in the wild years of an infant industry free from the pressures of the studio system, shifted the landscape of media consumption irreparably, and thrust the Noldor name into the spotlight.
Nearly all of those reels are now lost, thanks to an ill-placed cigarette by Melkor Bauglir, who briefly stole the company from the clutches of the Noldor family— a feat that would’ve been impossible without the generous support of Ungoliant Weaver, who was, at the time, the wealthiest woman in America. While rumors abound regarding why Weaver aided Bauglir in this takeover— and whether or not the producer (and, later, convicted serial sex offender) played a role in the enigmatic socialite’s subsequent disappearance, no evidence has emerged to validate any of the leading theories. What has been confirmed, however, is that the blacklisting of Maedhros Noldor, Fëanor’s eldest son and heir, by the House Un-American Activities Committee, was at the behest of Bauglir, who did not anticipate that Maedhros would simply surrender his controlling interest to his uncle, Fëanor’s much-younger half-brother Fingolfin, nor that his reputation would be rescued just a few years later thanks to the valiant efforts of his cousin, Fingon, who served as President of Silmaril Pictures following his father’s death.
During Bauglir’s tenure with Silmaril, the company split into three— Silmaril Studios was to serve as the live-action production arm of his larger media conglomerate, Iron Crown, with Palantir Cinemas handling distribution and exhibition in an attempt to obscure profits and retain exclusivity rights amidst the rapid move toward regulation and antitrust legislation aimed at curbing the industry’s questionable business practices. The resulting Supreme Court case created the Silmaril Decree, which barred film production companies from owning exhibition companies. This allowed Maedhros and his younger brother Maglor to regain their distribution and exhibition arms, though they failed to match the success of their predecessors, while Thingol Greymantle strong-armed an ailing Bauglir into selling the production company at a price akin to highway robbery, to be absorbed into his thriving Nauglimir Pictures until the late 00s, when the Noldor line at last managed to reclaim it.
Though Fëanor’s numerous misdeeds obscured the family in a gauzy coating of infamy, the legacy lives on through the younger generations, all heavyweights in their own right.
Finarfin Noldor and Eärwen Teleri may have made the Golden House synonymous with box office returns, but their children are the ones who’ve capitalized most effectively on the family’s history, at last dragging it into the twenty-first century. While Angrod and Aegnor have made their own way with a focus on independent production and distribution, Finrod, Galadriel’s eldest brother, keeps a framed photo of Uncle Fëanor behind his desk at the new and improved Silmaril Pictures: a small reminder— at least, according to Thingol, his mentor (and Galadriel’s godfather/temporary guardian) — that once upon a time, the Noldor family were the film industry.
Everyone else is simply a guest.
“I shouldn’t be doing this,” Galadriel murmurs, stepping on the heels of her final word to steal yet another eager kiss. “Shouldn’t be here.”
“Saying it five times doesn’t change the fact that you are.” Hal’s mouth trails down her jaw and throat, fingertips skimming the smooth skin exposed by her dress. “This yours or borrowed?”
She furrows her brow, drifting back half an inch. “Does that really matter right— oh.”
He drags her down the couch, so close she’s practically sitting in his lap. “It only matters,” he explains, voice dark and smooth, “in terms of the damage it can take.”
A shiver rolls down her spine. “Mine.”
“Perfect,” he whispers, and his palms are on her shoulders, shoving down the straps and baring her breasts with one rough tug on a handful of blue organza. “And you?”
Galadriel’s lashes flutter, her breath feels too loud. “What?”
The dim light only draws more attention to the intense green of his eyes. “How much can you handle, princess?”
“As much as it takes,” she mutters, limbs loose and malleable beneath his touch. “just as long as it gets you out of my system.”
“I take it we can skip the whole ‘one-time thing’ spiel.” A series of small pops punctuate this.
She takes her first full breath since being sewn into the dress hours earlier, oxygen floods her body and sharpens her senses. “As far as I’m concerned,” she mutters, slipping out of the skirt and bringing a knee across to straddle him, “this never happened.”
He grabs her ass, hips lifting on their own to press hard against her through the boxers he still wears, and a little moan slips out, unguarded on account of the alcohol still diluting her blood. “You’ve done this before, right?” he says, lifting one eyebrow. “I mean, sure, you had your tits out all the time on the show, but that’s no guarantee you won’t get all clingy and attached if—“
“Don’t flatter yourself, Hal,” she breathes, rolling her eyes. “I’m not that kind of girl.”
She’s less certain of this three weeks later, when she runs into him on the Silmaril lot.
Literally.
“Get your head out of the fucking clouds, Noldor,” he says, glowering over her.
“I’d be delighted to, Halbrand,” she counters, licking green juice off her wrist, “just as soon you’ve pulled yours from your ass.”
He goes quiet for too long, staring at her intently like he’s trying to restrain himself.
“Have a nice day,” she mutters, tossing her hair over a shoulder and continuing on, but he steps into her path and she collides with him once more. “Are you fucking serious, Hal? Move, or so help me God, I’ll—“
His fingers lace around her wrist, head swerving to scan the premises as he pulls her back into the building and shoos her through the first unlocked door he finds: a storage closet.
“This never fucking happened,” he mutters, turning the lock before backing her into a shelf and devouring whatever retort she might deploy in another hungry kiss.
Her body lights up with an immediate yes, meeting his energy, clutching at his shirt, helping his stupidly large hands ruck up her skirt without a thought as to whether or not the creases will reveal their actions to any onlookers once they emerge. Thought is secondary, the yes drowns out all else, overpowering her stubborn will and exchanging resolve for single-minded desire.
There’s a stain on her skirt when they’re done— residue from some sort of wax or polish. She only notices when Finrod points it out as she enters their meeting twenty minutes late.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, more concerned by his furrowed brow— it’s too deep-set for a minor clothing issue.
Her brother shakes his head, still slightly lost. “I’ll sort it out,” he says at last. “Fucking writers.”
She nods as though she understands.
“Why were you at Silmaril?” she asks Hal at a bar in mid-April. She sucks down her third tequila soda like water.
He eyes her suspiciously over his amber ale. “What’s it to you, Noldor?”
She shrugs, giving her best performance of placid disinterest. “I didn’t realize you were working again. After the show, you said—”
“That I could finally retire from acting?” A little mirth drifts through his features. “That’s your big takeaway from all the shit that went down?”
“You hate it,” she says simply. “You said if you’d known the fucking show would be so successful, you never would’ve signed on for five seasons.”
“I do hate it,” he laughs, easy and boyish— she has to catch herself before she floats into a fantasy, imagining what his life was like in whatever small town he grew up in. They’ve never discussed it— and she’s refused to let herself google the man— but something about him just screams Midwest, he feels sturdy and solid, though not the least bit dependable.
“Noldor?” Hal snaps his fingers before her face, like he’s releasing her from hypnosis. “Jesus. You didn’t hear a fucking word I said.”
An extended roll of her blue eyes. “You might as well cut to the chase, Hal. We both know why you reached out.”
“Do we?” he murmurs. “Maybe I needed a friendly face.”
There’s no fighting the smile this draws. “You’re full of shit. We’ve never been friends.”
“And now we never will be,” he sighs, affecting disappointment. “Good sex demands so many sacrifices.”
“Not so loud,” Galadriel says, scanning for any interlopers.
His eyebrow drifts a little higher. “People assumed something was going on with us years ago, Noldor. I doubt anyone would give a shit now.”
She dismisses this immediately, shaking her head. “That’s just because we’re good at our jobs,” she mutters. “We had to make it look real.”
He studies her with interest, pressing his lips together like he’s holding back a laugh. “You’re saying that has nothing to do with the fact that you’ve wanted to fuck me since that first chemistry read?”
Tequila burns her nasal passages, but she manages to quell the feeling before it evolves into a full-blown spit take. “If anything, Halbrand, I wanted to punch you,” she says once she’s recovered.
He steals a sip of her drink. “Never said they were mutually exclusive.”
“You know what,” she sighs, tapping her phone screen like she gives a fuck about the time, “I don’t have to be here—”
“And you think I do?” he snorts.
She scans him, up and down, shoving down all thoughts of the muscles in his arms, that little sliver of skin just beneath his jaw, and that fucking—
“Goodnight, Halbrand,” she mutters, rising.
“Galadriel.”
She shouldn’t stop, she shouldn’t look back, but he speaks her name like it’s a song and a rush of heat drops through her, stomach flipping.
“What?”
He digs a bill from his wallet, throws it on the counter and tells the bartender to keep the change. “At least let me drive you home.”
“Heard you got hitched once we wrapped,” Hal says in the car.
She rolls her eyes, covering her face with one hand, elbow pressed into the base of the passenger window. “You did not just hear that, Hal.”
A mischievous twinkle lights his eye. “Never said when, though, did I?”
Why did she come in the first place?
The memory of last time— their bodies pressed close in that closet, his hands scorching her skin, cock shoved so deep inside her she could barely breathe— flickers to life, an answer wound through her grey matter.
No one gets under her skin like Halbrand.
No one gets her off like him, either.
“How long did this one last?” he asks now.
She blows hair out of her face. “Thirteen months.”
He lifts a brow. “And how long did it take for him to move out?”
Another eye roll and a self-conscious mumble. “Ten.”
“Jesus,” he whistles, low and long, “have any Hollywood cliches passed you by?”
If Galadriel didn’t know better, she’d almost think he seemed impressed. “Got most of them out of the way before I was old enough to vote.”
“It’s not a fucking checklist, Noldor,” he laughs, fingers flicking the hem of her too-short skirt. “But I suppose in your world, there’s no such thing as bad press, right?”
“Not so sure my publicist would agree with you there, Hal.” She shifts closer unconsciously. “Thought you were taking me home.”
“Mm,” with great effort, he drags his eyes back to the road, “doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun on the way.”
“Jesus,” her laugh is short and sharp, her legs drift further apart, “I can see the headlines now.”
A skeptical smirk as his hand slides higher. “Only if we get caught.”
The tiniest shiver rolls through her. “I suppose that takes road head off the agenda, then.”
“Noldor,” his voice drops, his fingers fumble against her wet cunt, “where the fuck is your underwear?”
She bats her lashes, the picture of innocence. “You thought I’d risk VPL in this outfit? No goddamn way. I’d rather get papped sucking your— oh.”
“Good God, Noldor,” his touch is deliberate and overwhelming, “I’ve got half a mind to find somewhere to pull over—”
“Uh-huh,” she pulls the hem of her dress up, laser-focused on the little ripples of pleasure he deigns to offer her, “where— don’t you dare fucking tease me—”
It’s the wrong move.
His hands are back to ten and two before she can even process the loss of contact. “Or what?”
“Excuse me?” she blinks, her throat is too dry.
A dark and devious air finds his eyes. “You heard the question.”
Her fingers float to the laces keeping her neckline in place. She tugs lightly at the fabric, loosening the binds until she’s well within risk of a wardrobe malfunction. “So now you don’t want to fuck me?”
An eye roll. “How many times do I have to tell you to stop playing dumb?”
“I’m just trying to get some clarity here, Hal,” she pouts, running one palm along her chest, her abdomen, veering lower—
“What do you think you’re doing?”
She bites back a smirk, head pressed next to her seatbelt to conceal her face from any passersby. “Might as well— mm— finish what you started.” She slides her hand between her legs, almost surprised by the slickness that greets her. “Right?”
“Jesus Christ.” He shifts in his seat, and a satisfied smirk brews at the corner of her mouth.
“You’re the one who wanted to have some,” air hisses through her parted lips, “fun.”
He prods at the dash to shut off his GPS.
They make it to his place in record time, catching greens in what Galadriel can only surmise is some surreal respite from the city’s routine gridlock. She doesn’t question it— there’s no time. As soon as the gate’s closed and the car’s in park, Hal’s on her again. His lips explore the bobbing flesh of her throat, fingers of his left hand pulling at the ties barring his access to her chest while his right urges her legs apart.
“Jesus, Noldor,” it’s half-laugh, half-groan, “your body’s practically begging for it.”
“Halbrand,” she sighs, clutching a fistful of his shirt, “shut the fuck up already.”
Speech is his trademark, applied with equal gusto in both his personal and professional life.
“The shit you let me do to you,” he laughs against her ear, one hand tugging at her hair as his hips close what little space separates them. There’s a film flickering on his television, yet another anti-capitalist horror that serves as nothing more than background noise to obscure their true intentions.
“I told you,” she wriggles beneath him, reminding herself to breathe, “I— mm— missed a pill.”
“Might be a touch more convincing if I hadn’t hit your IUD last week.” Another laugh, dry and caustic. “Who gives a fuck if the Galadriel Noldor enjoys taking it up her ass occasionally?”
A flutter of panic rolls through her as hypothetical headlines tickle the edges of her mind. “Not a fucking word,” she groans.
The tension on her scalp goes slack, then his fingers fill her aching cunt. “Grow the hell up, you little liar.”
She’s not sure which feels more intimate— the way he carefully cleans every trace from her skin with a warm cloth after, or the proper thanks he bestows on her with his tongue as the credits roll.
A notification lights up the darkened room. She knows it’s Raya before a confirming glance sends a sinking feeling into her chest. “You should probably—”
Hal swallows the rest of her question in a kiss, and all remaining thought evaporates completely.
From time to time, Galadriel recalls their final press tour, the countless interviews undertaken side by side, rephrasing answers for the same twenty questions until they felt like something new. They made a good team— at least while the cameras were rolling— finishing each other’s sentences, laughing at stupid jokes, playing the role of close friends and trusted scene partners, all the while skilfully concealing the truth.
Halbrand stared at her, brow furrowed, bottom lip jutted out.
“What?” Her hands flew to her face. “If something’s wrong, try making yourself useful, rather than just—”
“Why are you so far away?” He’d almost seemed hurt, or mildly affronted.
“I don’t fucking know.” She glanced at the eighteen inches of carpet that separated them. “I sat where they told me to sit. Does it really matter?”
He studied the legs on her chair in thick silence she thought capable of stretching out into forever, then leaned over and wrapped his large palm around one metal support and tugged.
“Halbrand!” Galadriel pulled her feet up, but this only made his task easier.
He draped his arm across the back of her chair casually, like nothing in the world could be more normal. “There,” his smirk sent a rush of molten heat dropping deep within her, “now that’s more like it.”
“You two seem close,” the interviewer said, minutes before they stopped rolling. “Must be nice to work with someone you trust.”
“Best scene partner I’ve ever had,” Hal quipped, like the liar she knew him to be. “Nobody commits quite like G.”
Heat stung her cheeks. “I learned from the best,” she murmured through an affected giggle with a humble nod in his direction.
The smile he wore seared itself into her hippocampus, overwriting a few misplaced childhood memories in the process.
Two weeks.
That’s how long it took for a fan edit to pop up on her Twitter timeline. Galadriel lost an hour watching it on repeat, before finally muting the word “Haladriel” for the third time in as many months.
It’s unmuted again now— for security reasons, she tells herself. Just to make sure the speculation’s died down, that some eagle-eyed fan hasn’t spotted them and put the pieces together.
If she gives the video an occasional rewatch, that’s her own goddamn business.
Halfway through the summer, the hours spent in each other’s company stretch themselves out— sun-soaked afternoons at a bar bleeding into hotter nights in his bed— though neither of them comment on this.
She picks up pieces of his past slowly, paying attention to the gaps he fills so casually. Like her, he’s a born and bred Californian.
“What?” he smirks when she doesn’t hide her surprise. “Don’t tell me you couldn’t be bothered to read my Wikipedia page.”
She rolls her eyes. “Like you’ve read mine.”
Something sparkles behind those green irises. “And if I have?”
Warmth shimmers through her limbs, but she blames it on the booze. “Not exactly light, is it?” A half-laugh, but there’s a caustic edge to it. “Just a catalog of my fuck-ups from twelve to twenty-one. Rehab, marriage, annulment, rehab again… the story gets so fucking old.”
“Don’t forget the second marriage,” he adds.
She takes a long sip of her ranch water. “And the ensuing divorce.”
His eyes soften slightly— or does she imagine that? She can’t be sure. “You were a club kid with showbiz parents,” he shrugs. “So what? Half the assholes at Crossroads were.”
She blinks at the reference to her alma mater. “Yeah, well,” she picks at her nails, “no one caught any of them chain-smoking on Sunset at seven.”
“‘Caught’ seems like the operative word there.” He fiddles with his rings. “It couldn’t have been easy, having strangers watching your every move from the moment you were born.”
“Gotta love the Noldor curse,” she quips, feigning ease. “Thanks for nothing, Uncle Fëanor.”
“We’ve all got dark shit in our past,” he hums. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you how I started my career.”
“What?” she laughs. “Don’t tell me you sucked off Bauglir.”
He’s quiet for too long. “I thought you said you didn’t read the article.”
She swallows uncomfortably. “It was a shitty joke— Jesus, Hal, I had no fucking idea—”
He shakes his head. “I was just an assistant— got some mild sexual harassment, sure, but it was mostly just a shit ton of anger. Throwing phones, smashing laptops— one time he threw someone’s shoes out the window of a moving car.”
She’s heard the stories of the producer’s infamous chaos and rage, but never firsthand.
“Acting was an accident, but thank fuck for my SAG card,” Hal shrugs again, taking another sip. “It got me out of that hell. And thanks to our,” he hesitates, “generous residual agreement,” she recalls the tense negotiations he’d dragged her into near the end of their show’s run— ‘They’ll cave if you’re with us, Noldor, I fucking know it’— and the life-changing money earned by the core cast as a result, “I never have to spend another goddamn day on set if I don’t want to.”
“Well, do you?”
His response is a wave of incredulous laughter.
Their casual camaraderie slips into something new on an early fall night.
He’s everywhere— so close Galadriel can’t tell where his breaths end and hers begin, body blocking out the light, sending her spinning with each rough thrust. Her hands fumble for purchase, but all she can cling to are his arms, pressed into the mattress and caging in her head. “Hal— I can’t— oh fuck.”
“Look at me,” he breathes, “Look at me or I’ll stop.”
Her eyes snap open, finding his green irises like a homing beacon.
A satisfied smirk unfurls. “There’s my girl.”
“Not your fucking— unh—“
His fingers find her chin, holding her firmly in place so she couldn’t look away even if she wanted to. “Say it.”
“Wha— what?” she sputters, liquid brimming on her lashes. It feels like she’s staring directly at the sun.
“You heard me,” he nods, slowing just slightly. “You wanna come so bad, you’ll tell me whose cunt this is.”
“Halbrand,” she starts, but he eases back out and she tightens, not ready for this to be over. “Yours— I’m yours, now please just—“
“Good girl.” He bottoms out and she sees stars. “You like being told what to do, don’t you, baby?”
A shiver. He’s never called her that before. “No.”
“Your strike’s not over yet, princess,” he laughs, dark and low, teeth grazing her ear. “No acting ‘til then, remember?”
“M’not,” she whines, leaving small crescents in his skin as she adjusts her grip, tilting her hips to take him deeper, desperate for “more.”
“More?” He cocks a brow, but he likes it, she can tell from the little shift in the set of his jaw. “You’re such a needy little slut for me. So desperate,” he releases her face, slides his hand down her body, then up under her ass, angling her to his pleasing, “it’s almost cute.”
“You think I’m,” another snap of his hips interrupts her thought, “I swear, Hal, if you stop now—”
“Quit trying to be all big and bad,” his laughter shoots sparks through her skin as he nips at the flesh on her shoulder, “and just— fucking— take it.”
“Fuck,” she mewls, body a shimmering, shivering knot. “You’re right— God, I— I love it, alright? I love—”
“Jesus, Galadriel,” he responds immediately, voice dripping with conviction. “So fucking incredible— the feel of you— you’re being so good for me, baby— taking it so well— My God, I think— I— shit— I fucking love you.”
Her eyes widen, muscles wind impossibly tight, begging for relief.
She can’t have heard him correctly. He loves fucking her— surely that’s what he intended to say. He doesn’t love her, he certainly isn’t in love with her—
“What?” she breathes. “You— oh fuck. Hal— m’gonna—”
She’s not sure if he says it again, or whether it’s merely her imagination that dulls her senses as she comes harder than ever before.
“He said what?” Nori bolts board-straight, back rigid like she’s seen a ghost. “This is Hal we’re talking about, right?”
“People say dumb shit during sex, Nor.” Galadriel shrugs, picking at her salad. “Remember how I got engaged?”
Nori wrinkles her nose. “What happened after?”
“After?”
“After the sex,” she urges, like it’s obvious. “Did you talk about it?”
“Why the hell would we do that?” Panic sends her voice up a steep octave. “Besides, it was late. We sort of just… fell asleep.”
Or, more accurately, Halbrand fell asleep with her half-pinned beneath him— a position that only disgruntled the girl until just before dawn, when, still bleary-eyed, he murmured, “You stayed the night,” and swiftly committed himself to the task of unraveling her once more.
And then again, up against the glass of his shower. They hadn’t even managed to turn the water on. Her every hum and pant reverberated around the hollow space, refracting back on her ears with an overwhelming intensity that only seemed to spur him on.
“You fell asleep with him? In his bed?” Her eyes are saucers. “This is uncharted territory.”
Galadriel waves off her friend’s concern. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
Awareness slowly illuminates Nori’s face. “Do you want it to mean something?”
An uncomfortable beat passes. She sets down her fork, then picks it up before abandoning her meal altogether, but words remain inaccessible.
“Oh my fucking god, Gal.”
She winces. “Stop.”
“You’re in love—“
“Calm the hell down, nobody said that.”
A bemused pulse of her brows. “When are you seeing him next?”
“I don’t know,” she taps her phone like she might’ve missed a text, “he’s got less time now that he’s working again.”
Nori frowns. “But the strike—”
“Apparently he really has retired,” Galadriel mutters with an especially theatrical eye roll, “but I guess my brother has him doing a pass on something for Silm.”
“Like writing?” A low whistle. “That’s hot.”
“God, Nor,” laughter crackles through her voice, “at this point, I’m starting to think the bar is subterranean for you.”
@galadrielnoldor: should i call for a welfare check?
@halbrandmaia: funny.
@galadrielnoldor: gonna need some proof of life here, “hal.”
@galadrielnoldor: photographic evidence will suffice for the time being.
@halbrandmaia: is THE galadriel noldor actually stooping low enough to solicit nudes??
@galadrielnoldor: desperate times, etc. etc.
@halbrandmaia: you know the internet is basically riddled with free porn, right? or for a few bucks a month you can get some dude who sounds scarily like me to whisper filth in your ear on demand.
@galadrielnoldor: maybe i’d rather have the real deal
@halbrandmaia: hang on, i’ve gotta screenshot this for deuxmoi
@galadrielnoldor: go fuck yourself.
@halbrandmaia: there’s an idea
@halbrandmaia: i’ll consider letting you watch if you ask real nice
She doesn’t ask when she arrives, or in the fifteen minutes it takes for them to defuse the lingering awkwardness of their last interaction.
She chokes back the question when he crawls across the couch, draping his body over hers like a thick bolt of fog, heavy and dark as the night, eyes riddled with hypnotic pinpricks of starlight, mouth perfectly primed to swallow her whole.
He stops short, fingers tangled into her hair, thumb pressed to her cheek, and frowns.
“What?” She manages a laugh, but it’s too breathy, there’s too much air for it to sound like anything but desperate panic.
“You’re being fucking weird,” he mutters, thumb tracing a line along her skin. “Weirder than usual, I mean.”
It doesn’t sound like an insult, no matter how she tries to contextualize it. “You could’ve given me a heads up before this little hiatus,” she mutters, failing to affect the lightheartedness she intends.
He smirks into her neck, exhaling a soft groan into her skin. “If you missed me, Noldor, you—”
She rolls her eyes, disguises her shiver as a disgruntled shrug of disagreement. “Don’t be ridiculous, Halbrand,” the words are a touch too breathless, “if anything, it’s your cock I missed— or those hands,” a tiny gasp as he shifts his hips against hers, “mm, maybe that tongue of yours, too—”
“If you were so desperate,” each word feels like a taunt, a little incision he pulls wider, peering into her with a steady certainty that throws her further off balance, “you could’ve fucked someone else, you know.”
“Of course.” She swallows as he pulls away, studying her face with an unrelenting sense of ease and serenity. “Because that wouldn’t bother you.
He doesn’t say anything.
“Right?” The word is nothing more than a faint impression in the air.
His brows lower, he studies her collarbone, breaths aligning with the staccato pace of her own. “If this is about what happened— about the night you stayed over—”
Another wave of panic flutters through her, only increasing in intensity with her attempts to blink it away. “Stop being stupid, Hal,” there’s a plea lodged in her throat, “and for fuck’s sake, kiss me.”
He hesitates for so long, she’s afraid she’s turned him off completely, despite the firm pressure between her legs. Then, so slowly, he cradles her head to obey, lips soft and warm, tongue coaxing her into temporary docility her body adopts in an unprecedented act of betrayal. She sinks further down the couch, thighs splaying further apart, legs wrapping themselves around him in an embrace that feels too tender when compared to their usual frenetic energy.
She wants to run from the feeling before it threatens to envelop her completely, but resistance proves more of an ephemeral concept, lacking any sense of tangibility.
“Galadriel, baby,” his voice is warm and soft, an unimaginably gentle edge beneath his typical command, “fucking look at me.”
She opens her eyes, staring into blown pupils rimmed with green.
“I don’t think you understand,” he adopts a confessional tone, but doesn’t back down, undoing his belt slowly, “what exactly you’re doing to me.”
It’s embarrassing how wet she is, considering that he’s barely touched her, but every inch of her feels primed and ready. “What do you mean?” she chokes out, immobilized as he pulls her underwear to the side. “Wait, are we really about to have this conversation with you inside of—“
The last word dies in her throat on a soft moan as he eases his way into her.
“You did say you missed me,” he murmurs with some difficulty.
“Hal,” she manages, hips rolling of their own volition, back arching, cunt aching for more, yes, there, again—
“I know, baby,” he murmurs, timed so perfectly she realizes she must’ve voiced the thoughts flowing through her brain unfiltered, “I know. Shh, I’ve got you. So goddamn bossy.”
It only makes her mewling grow more desperate, streamlining the internal wiring connecting her mouth and subconscious, removing all barriers as her ego goes offline.
“No,” a laugh, dark and husky, rolls from his lips to her temple, “if anything—“ a rougher thrust steals whatever air her lungs had hope of holding onto, “you’ve fucking ruined me.”
Her eyes go wide and glassy, for all his shushing and soothing she’s incapable of monitoring her volume, or cringing at the sense of vulnerability with each sound he draws from her lips. “You didn’t mean it,” she whispers, struggling to catch her breath. “It’s okay. I’m not going to— to get all— oh.”
“Save it for later,” he says, picking up his pace, fingers intertwined with hers as he holds her left fast to the cushion. “After you come for me. You can come on my cock like this, can’t you, baby?”
She nods once, then again, blonde waves stuck to her cheek, legs tightening, tugging at her captured hand fruitlessly.
“Good girl.” A lupine grin, his right arm snakes around her waist, propping up her lower back. “Show me.”
“Close,” she chokes out, sniffling, “don’t fucking sto—”
“Shit,” he snaps his hips into her relentlessly, “I feel it, baby.”
“Fucking love,” a gasp interrupts, she’s spinning too hot, so close to the edge now that she’s nearly abandoned all sense of propriety, “I fucking—“
“Say it.” He doesn’t let up for an instant. “Tell me.”
Something unlatches within her.
“I love you,” she admits, feeling the truth of this echo through her beneath each cresting wave of pleasure he deigns to deliver. “Fuck. I love you.”
“Fuck,” he mutters into her shoulder, “I’m gonna come inside you.”
That first hot pulse in the deepest part of her more than does the trick.
It doesn’t take much for Hal to talk her into staying the night. They both have morning meetings at Silmaril, after all.
“Might as well carpool,” he murmurs, holding her close.
“And after?” she asks, nuzzling into his neck.
He rolls his eyes, a tired laugh slips through. “We’ll see.”
“I’m asking,” she sits up slightly, unwilling to extract herself fully from the warmth of his body, “what are we?”
The reverence in his gaze would be alarming if it didn’t feel so right. “Whatever the hell you want us to be, baby.”
She doesn’t anticipate the paparazzi finding them so quickly when he takes her to lunch in Silver Lake, but three of them are waiting by the entrance, almost like they knew exactly where to find them.
Almost like someone tipped them off.
“You good?” he asks from the passenger door.
But that makes no sense, Galadriel thinks, nodding and sliding out of the car, since Hal suggested it so casually on their way off the lot.
“Halbrand,” she mutters, holding his hand a little tighter, suddenly grateful for the dark lenses shielding her eyes from the flashes popping around them, “did you call Backgrid on me?”
He smirks, sliding an arm around her protectively. “I don’t do soft launches, baby.”