Visitation by Haeron

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Chapter 6

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The radio needed tuning but then the white noise was almost a comfort. It was a small and battered old contraption but it had served Erestor well over the years, even if a man could grow tired of hearing the same dozen songs played over and over in varying sequence. It just seemed part of the job, part of the ritual.

 

It was a brisk Saturday morning where the mist rose before the sun and Glorfindel was playing customer, again. He was stood in front of the counter whereas Erestor was stood behind, and he toyed with Erestor’s fingers on his left hand, resting on the wood countertop. The radio crackled. Glorfindel was angling for something - that much was obvious, thanks to his endearingly puerile attempts at garnering Erestor’s attention - but whenever Erestor would relent and look up from his newspaper, Glorfindel just didn’t seem ready to tell him about whatever it was that aggravated him.

 

But there was something, Erestor was certain. Glorfindel would tell him in his own time, he knew, but the reassurance did not assuage the mounting worry that was becoming a leaden weight in his gut.

 

At least with fire-fights you can see the danger.

 

And then Erestor wondered to what stretch of madness he had fallen to be lamenting the gun fights...

 

He almost smiled, but he did not.

 

Glorfindel’s patience was becoming frayed and the static of the radio seemed to exacerbate it and make it a thing to be heard, something that filled the fuzzy spaces of the conscience. Erestor turned his hand on the table to hold Glorfindel’s, palm to palm; a communication that required neither of them to fathom sentences at a time when words seemed stretched thin. The radio sang a crackling song and Glorfindel sighed, stilled at once by Erestor’s touch.

 

Touch. It always worked, and their connection had grown to something deep and knowing. It was understanding, in its dualistic form; it was trust.

 

When the door chimed tinkled its silvery herald, Erestor did not deign to look up right away (there was an article on the local escaped sheep’s journey through the neighbouring town that he was finding worryingly engrossing) though Glorfindel swirled round immediately. Hearing Glorfindel’s relief rife in the airy greeting he called, Erestor looked up to see Elrond, wrapped up warm in a coat and scarf and approaching the counter with something in a bag.

 

Something he passed to Glorfindel, and something for which he received an abundance of gratitude. Erestor watched, not able to quash his natural curiosity - and almost rolled his eyes to see Glorfindel produce a sweet pastry of some kind from out of the paper bag.

 

‘What?’ Glorfindel asked, half a smile playing on his lips.

 

‘I wouldn’t have thought that federal agents were allowed to eat a lot of cake,’ said Erestor, watching Glorfindel tear off a perfectly Erestor-sized piece.

 

‘Where would you get an idea like that?’ Glorfindel cooed, and offered the piece between his fingers to Erestor.

 

It was a memory that Erestor had already lived through, a decision that he had already made in a time that didn’t seem to belong to him anymore. Erestor smiled, aware that he was contemplating the collapse of his collective reality just from being offered a piece of pastry. He hoped it happened to other people, too.

 

He leant forward, over the counter, to take it from Glorfindel’s fingers.

 

Glorfindel made an appreciative noise, low and wicked, that caused Erestor’s eyes to flicker and their gazes to meet. Something electric passed between them; an eternity or a heartbeat but nothing that could have been in-between. Excitement was tremor through the marrow of Erestor’s bones and was only cooled when Elrond reasserted himself into the scenario, giving a comical click of his fingers and saying, teasingly; ‘Boys,’

 

They strengthened up. Glorfindel winked and Erestor, despite himself, could not restrain the smile. He turned his attention back to the article but found he had lost his place. Glorfindel was crinkling the paper bag in his pastry infused endeavours, and it was almost endearing to know that still, after all this time, he had not yet come to understand the fragile tranquillity of the quiet in the antiques shop that rested over everything; relics and staff alike, like a layer of dust.

 

And he is the wind, he is the energy.

 

Glorfindel caught Erestor staring again, and smiled, sweetly, raising a brow that was a silent question. Erestor shook his head, but it was not a harsh dismissal.

 

Elrond had undone the first few buttons of his coat and stepped over to the window, or as near to it as he could get; there was an old Victorian table piled up with even older leather-bound tomes stacked up in front of the glass pane, and Elrond had to reach over to rub a little circle clean. When he brought his hand away, he did not seem pleased at the grot on his fingers; though his concern seemed less an expression of disgust and more an expression of fatigue.

 

The light was heavy and dull, and Elrond stood before it, looking into it - but seeing nothing else.

 

‘Celebrían,’ he said. ‘She’s been moved.’

 

Nobody said anything else for a time; there seemed to be nothing to add and the quiet was a shared reprieve and a shared requiem. The shop was sombre in that moment, and time clung thickly to the air that swirled slow overhead. Glorfindel stood stoic, looking grimly at the slump in Elrond’s shoulders and Erestor stood equally mute. He thought it for the best, if truth be told, and the less people who knew - the better.

 

He hoped Celebrían would at least have some pictures in her new room, and some flowers.

 

Elrond heaved a sigh that stirred the room. ‘But she’s okay,’

 

‘That’s good news, Elrond,’ said Glorfindel, respectfully.

 

Elrond nodded, did he believe it?

 

Dust danced in the streams of light as they always had, as they always would, and Erestor watched the heaviness drain away. The dust mites went up and up and up, rising to a light until they reached a point where they blended with it, unseen. Light and memory surrounded them in a hazy sort of way - a stasis of three not unlike the stasis the relics were held in.

 

And God, but Erestor did feel like a relic sometimes.

 

Yet there was Glorfindel, trying his best to quietly resume eating the pastry, and when Erestor looked to him - the spell broke, and they exchanged smiles behind Elrond’s turned back. Strange, Erestor thought to himself, watching Glorfindel shoot cautious glances at Elrond as he took a bite of his “meal”, strange to think I once considered stabbing him with a hair pin in this very shop.

 

‘You’ve got your thinking face on again, kitten!’ Glorfindel chirped, quite spectacularly derailing Erestor’s train of thought and reaching to ruffle his dark hair with a (blessedly pastry flake-free) hand.

 

His smile was venom and Glorfindel laughed.

 

Of course, there were still times where Erestor considered giving him a small, affectionate, jab.

 

***

 

Ten minutes later, Glorfindel made an announcement that he was going to hunt down the toilet and bowed out of the shop, disappearing into the staff corridor that led to the staff room (cupboard) and the staff toilet (which was not much more than a cupboard, either). Erestor had been about to finally finish off the article about old wild Dolly the sheep, when Elrond capitalised on the privacy.

 

He tapped the counter with a finger, a gentle call for attention.

 

Erestor looked up at him, feeling altogether too much like a naughty schoolchild about to be lectured on the virtues of team play and the uniform dress code that applied to all students by the kindly head-teacher. Elrond certainly had a mandate of a sort, and Erestor wondered if he and Glorfindel had not coordinated this spontaneous, highly serendipitous chance for a private conversation.

 

Elrond wore an old, blue scarf under the collar of his coat and he smiled, sadly. He hadn’t shaved for a few days and the circles under his eyes were growing almost as dark as Erestor’s - he cast a distressing image of a man worn under the grindstone, but Erestor knew full well that any concern he expressed would be waved away in an instant. He had long since discovered other ways to lighten Elrond’s burden, and most of them went unsaid; odd jobs around the shop, phone calls, visits to the store to pick up fresh milk.

 

‘Is this Glorfindel’s?’ Elrond asked, pointing at a mostly empty coffee cup besides the till. Erestor said it was, and Elrond took a quick swig. ‘He won’t mind.’

 

Erestor laughed.

 

‘Now that, Erestor, is a welcome sound.’ Elrond said, with a brow quirked.

 

It took Erestor a moment to understand.

 

‘And he’s a good man,’ Elrond continued, gesturing with his head in the general direction of the toilet.

 

‘He is, he is,’

 

Elrond nodded, bringing the point to a close. He tapped the counter again.

 

‘Take the weekend off.’

 

Erestor blinked.

 

‘Take the weekend off, as a reward. And no - no excuses this time! You can’t pull the old “oh, I haven’t any distractions” trick now, can you?’ Elrond chucked, and Erestor frowned - though the less than flattering impression of himself had actually been very good.

 

Yet, there was something irking him.

 

Being given an entire weekend off as a polite gesture of thanks in combination with Glorfindel’s erratic behaviour - it all added up, and therefore it didn’t. Erestor narrowed his eyes and Elrond must have seen the blooms of realisation in Erestor’s face. He rubbed his chin, deliberating.

 

‘Have Glorfindel tell you.’ was all he said.

 

Erestor’s heart skipped a beat.

 

‘Fucking hell, Elrond, what is it? Is he dying? Are you dying? Am I?’

 

It was a joke... mostly.

 

Elrond waved a hand and dismissed the thought with a tired laugh. ‘No, nothing like that, don’t be ridiculous.’

 

They looked at one another in the silence, one knowing and one seeking - and something passed between them that was a resignation of a kind. Erestor did not understand and did not know whether he should be worried but Elrond did not seem like to budge on his stance. Have Glorfindel tell you.

 

Would he be able to?

 

Erestor felt like rubbing his eyes raw.

 

Elrond looked so tired. He leaned forward and Erestor saw the grey of his eyes.

 

‘Just have the weekend off, old friend.’

 

-

 

The fire was alive.

 

Glorfindel and Erestor sat before it on one of the Persian rugs of his living room and at first, when Glorfindel had begun to undress, Erestor had laughed and said they were in danger of recreating a Mills and Boon book cover. He’d earned an attack of tickles for that, but they had quickly turned to something else - tickling did not usually involve the lips. But even for all his jesting - Erestor was lost in the ambience. The lamps were on but the light was minimal, it was dark outside of the window but the curtains were luxuriant - it was a house that was a home, and Erestor could feel himself losing... himself.

 

And yet, at the same time, he felt more than ever.

 

They were sat together, upright, entwined, and Erestor had the two of his hands on Glorfindel’s bare chest; feeling muscle move under his skin, feeling the beats of a heart contained in such a willing vessel. Each was a drum, each was the earth moving, each was his own... Erestor had to close his eyes, the spell of the night was heady and Glorfindel was warm in more ways than one, and the fire, the fire was ever alight.

 

Glorfindel undid the buttons of Erestor’s shirt, as slow as he was able, and he bent to press feather kisses to the curve of Erestor’s neck as he pushed the shirt off of his shoulder. It was a worship, Erestor realised with some alarm that never grew to be anything more than a passing twinge. Glorfindel had pushed his fingers into Erestor’s hair after he had discarded his shirt, bringing them close so that he might whisper a thousand sweet nothings but a hair’s breath away from Erestor’s lips.

 

Sweet nothings. Erestor contemplated them, half-heartedly, as Glorfindel kissed his jaw. If they pass from Glorfindel’s lips, they can never be called nothing, they can never be nothing. He quietened them with a kiss and then another and another until they blended into one, long, slow embrace where Glorfindel kept his eyes closed and Erestor melted into him, by the fire, on the rug.

 

He wondered how his life had reached this stage, he wondered from what star Glorfindel had fallen to find him when he did - and sighed into his mouth, that he might understand. There was no blaze of lust between them as there had been on the night at Yael’s, instead there was something entirely more profound - something that was the physicality of sorrow, and just as soulful, just as divine, just as...

 

Ah!

 

Erestor moaned.

 

He let his head loll back as he felt palms on his bare chest, smoothing a path down his stomach. Glorfindel shifted but Erestor did not open his eyes, half content to let him toy with his body as he wished and half afraid to dispel the charm they wove together; with hands and lips, tongues and touch.

 

Glorfindel was putting butterfly kisses over the soft flat of Erestor’s stomach and Erestor leaned back, just a touch, to allow Glorfindel better access. He kissed his navel, rising the hairs on the back of Erestor’s neck.

 

Possibility sparked somewhere low and carnal in Erestor’s gut, knowing that with a gentle indication, he could steer Glorfindel to lower pleasures...

 

And return them in kind.

 

With interest, in fact, Erestor thought as he smiled lazily, stroking Glorfindel’s neck with an idle hand to feel the soft down of hair at the nape.

 

But no.

 

No, there was a reason they were here, there was a reason Glorfindel had been tapping the steering wheel anxiously during the car journey. Erestor roused himself to the present and it rather felt like swimming to the surface and breaking the water’s edge; the rush of air, the temptation to resubmerge. He opened his eyes and saw the TV, it was on - but muted - displaying the gems TV shopping channel for a bit of background action.

 

He drew Glorfindel up, and Glorfindel took the initiate, hugging him close.

 

Erestor rested against his chest, and there found heaven.

 

‘Tell me,’ he said, quietly, his voice was a husk. ‘Tell me whatever it was you needed to tell me.’

 

Glorfindel almost felt small in these moment when they held one another, not physically, no, but calmer, surer, less concerned with maintaining a front of strength or a smiling shield, and there was an intimacy in that that was also trust. Erestor felt flattered, that he might be the one who got to see the soul of the man.

 

And he let him take his time.

 

Firelight danced behind Glorfindel’s eyes but then it always did, it always had. Light and fire and sun; the warm things that shone - they loved him as their own.

 

Glorfindel took a breath, and let it go again.

 

‘I’m leaving.’

 

Erestor choked and immediately Glorfindel took him by the chin, gazing at him with widened eyes and shaking his head a little frantically. ‘Not you! No, God, never you!’ he said, his voice a stark call at first and then melted to a molten whisper.

 

He kissed Erestor and Erestor clung to him, exhaling his relief hotly over Glorfindel’s cheek as they broke for breath.

 

And the thought, just for a second, that he had heard Glorfindel say a certain grouping of three words.

 

‘But the country, I’m leaving the country for a training programme. It happens every few years.’

 

Erestor didn’t truly understand but he nodded. Glorfindel was going away and would take his warmth with him; that was the crux of it. It was a childish analysis, but even so, its truthfulness was not diminished.

 

He was leaving.

 

Erestor gently turned his head free, pulling his chin out of Glorfindel’s grasp, and put himself back upon his chest to there rest heavily. Glorfindel held him close as though they might be trapped up a mountain together somewhere, cuddling for warmth.

 

And to Erestor, the comparison was not wholly outlandish.

 

‘Where?’ he asked.

 

‘Germany,’

 

Erestor laughed. It was utterly without mirth, but tinted with a grim humour.

 

‘You poor thing,’ he said, but the jest was hollow. ‘But you’ll be okay.’

 

‘Will I?’ Erestor looked up at him, basked in the hue of fire and low watt bulbs, the gentle buzz of the TV and the blanket of quiet that came with the night, that crept into residential houses and was a siren call on the brow of every man. Glorfindel was pleading. ‘I was fine all the other times I had to go, but then I wasn’t leaving anyone behind,’

 

It was tearing him up. Erestor watched him falter and the words never came, he felt Glorfindel rest his chin atop his raven crown and so placed his hand over Glorfindel’s heart, over the warm skin that burned to be felt under his palm. He splayed his fingers, and stroked a soothing circle, balming the tattered spirit so ill at ease.

 

‘Are you packed?’ he asked. Glorfindel nodded. ‘When do you leave?’

 

The pause Glorfindel left was an ominous as any darkening cloud.

 

‘Tomorrow,’ he said, and Erestor could feel the blade between his ribs. Glorfindel pulled him tighter and Erestor wished to be held tighter still, tighter so they could be for a little while longer - just he and himself. My life has capsized, again and again. ‘I’m so sorry, Erestor, I’m sorry, I thought it’d be easier this way, that I could spare you some worrying if I told you tonight. I just didn’t want this to be hanging over us, I know how much you already worry and I didn’t... I don’t...’

 

Glorfindel seemed to deem his monologue as hopeless, and let the sentiment trail off. Erestor whispered that it was OK and he did mean it, but then perhaps the weight had not fully sunken in yet. It will, soon, and it will be the weight of his absence. He pulled away from Glorfindel’s chest to study his face that was fraught, despairing - but always handsome, always kind.

 

He touched his nose to Glorfindel’s, and bound them together for a new kiss.

 

And it was golden and hot.

 

Erestor let Glorfindel part his lips, they kissed deeply in-between Erestor’s mewls of stirring pleasure, he raised his hands to loosen Glorfindel’s hair from the tie and slides and tossed them aside, one by one, until his hands were full of a silken mane that was pure and gorgeous between his fingers. Erestor let out a low sound, raking Glorfindel’s hair back, hearing him whisper, again and again, a name that he recognised as his own.

 

Glorfindel bit Erestor’s lip.

 

He’s hurting, so badly.

 

The house was a bath of light and Erestor pulled back, cradling Glorfindel’s face between his two hands and brushing his thumbs over Glorfindel’s flushed lips.

 

‘Tell me what else there was, tell me what else you’ve been meaning to say.’ Erestor’s voice was heavy with want.

 

Glorfindel smiled. He lowered his eyes for a moment before matching them to Erestor’s.

 

‘Kitten,’ he purred, leaning close so that the word was a wicked ghost of heated breath.

 

‘Kitten, you already know.’

 

-

 

Glorfindel would not let him go, he held him close and whispered it under his breath - that he was not going to let go. Erestor laughed and made a Titanic reference and only the fact that they were standing in broad daylight in the middle of the Departures zone spared him a tickling attack, though Glorfindel snuck in a few pokes (‘I’m trying to be dramatic and romantic here, you dolt, don’t kill my vibe.’).

 

They were calling his flight. Erestor had memorised the numbers on his ticket during the cab ride to the airport because he could not look out the window, he could not see so much riding past the window and know he would have to see it all again - but without the arm slung around his shoulder and the constant stream of bad anecdotes.

 

They were calling his flight, but Glorfindel wasn’t letting go.

 

If Erestor opened his eyes, he could see the flashing signs on the notice board and he recognised the string of numbers there, flashing red. There were tall windows, there were droning engines - it was the precipice Erestor had sensed so long ago and now that he was here, he could feel the ground teetering under his feet.

 

And yet, it was harder still for Glorfindel.

 

Who would have guessed?

 

Who could have guessed that it would be him who had to wipe away errant tears from the corners of his eyes; disguising the heartbreak with a laugh and a joke and a jest at his own expense. Erestor felt his own heart fracture in his chest and felt the spill of fresh heart’s anguish, rife in the blood, and had reached up to hold Glorfindel again.

 

Glorfindel choked.

 

‘For God’s sake, this is ridiculous,’ he whispered into Erestor’s ear, there was no fury there - only a desperate passion of a kind that all those tragic heroes in the plays felt, the ones who ascended so high only to be cast down, suddenly, suddenly... ‘Why do I need to go abroad for this?’

 

Erestor shooshed him, gently, stroking the back of his head.

 

Glorfindel’s passion broke.

 

‘Why?’ he asked, begged, almost.

 

It was not a question for Erestor to answer - but he would try for the both of their sakes.

 

‘You’ve a job, and your skill in that job was what brought us together.’ it had seemed like the apt thing to say, and Glorfindel liked it. Erestor continued in the same vein for a time, praying his words would convince himself, too.

 

Because he could feel it; the call.

 

It’s here. He’s leaving. He’s leaving me.

 

‘I have to go.’

 

The airport was clean and shining in a way the hospital had been. A few families lingered, stood in their protective groups abounding a nascent support, and watched the Departure doors. They had remained to watch the ghosts of the friends, lovers and family, Erestor realised, and dread crept up the straight of his spine. Was that what Glorfindel was to become, too? A ghost?

 

Erestor gave himself a shake. Glorfindel was pulling away from him and trying to smile up at the fluorescent lighting as he dabbed tears away from the corner of his eyes. It set a gloom in Erestor’s heart to see; Glorfindel simply was not the sort of man who should be crying - not a man made out of the very stuff of joy and life and light...

 

But he was all smiles, even now, even saturated as they were.

 

He took one step away from Erestor before he looked back. He choked again, smiling incredulously through the pain. ‘You’re so small!’ he said in a strangled whisper and Erestor almost broke too when Glorfindel took his hands, seized them in a warm grip that would have brought him onto the plane too, if it were possible.

 

No doubt Glorfindel had thought about it.

 

Stay with me.

 

They both wished it to the other.

 

Glorfindel lifted his head, inhaling a lungful. He looked at Erestor and Erestor looked back - it did not seem real that they were stood here, with all of Glorfindel’s luggage, with the prospect of such aching loneliness breathing down his neck, just waiting for him to turn and fall into it.

 

It was terrifying.

 

They kissed, sweetly, a physical goodbye that was a tangible memory of their first hello and all the more bittersweet for it. It hurt when Glorfindel pulled away, it hurt when he stroked Erestor’s face, it hurt when he laughed - and his voice broke.

 

‘Call me,’ Glorfindel said, with his last smile.

 

And then he was walking away and into the Departure doors that, to Erestor, were an ungodly metaphor before his very eyes - and one Glorfindel was walking into and pulling his luggage behind. He felt every urge to run after him, to pounce and claim some breathtaking kiss (like the ones he had read about in the Mills and Boons novels), but to take a step would to be to break from the moment.

 

It would be like admitting it was real.

 

Glorfindel looked back three times as he went, and a fourth before he slipped through the doors marked for passengers only. Erestor watched the heart walk out of his chest and his arms hung heavily at his side, his body was suddenly aware of itself and its cold fragility and Erestor knew then why the families had lingered.

 

It was not hope.

 

It was because there was simply nothing else to do, faced with the option of returning to a normality wherein everything was changed? Where one piece was pulled from the puzzle?

 

It’d be easier to be a heap than a man.

 

But Glorfindel had made him strong, and Erestor bade himself remember that. Even he, a kitten, could pretend to be a tiger every once in a while.

 

Erestor pushed back the hair and the tears and pushed on his sunglasses. He turned, away, and walked into the ghost of past and present entwined that was itself like greeting an old friend.

 

-

 

Erestor let himself into the shop and the key turned wetly in the lock. The metallic click was an inexpressibly satisfying sound though the rain was loud and bouncing off the window shutters. The door swung open, inwards, and Erestor slipped inside - perhaps he should not have come, but he just needed a place to be for a little while.

 

It was seven o’clock in the evening. It was still early-ish, though the sky outside was already an inky canvas stretched across the vastness over the city. Before Erestor closed the shop door, he looked to the heavens and saw the star field and all the constellations he had once known the names of. Goodnight, he bade them, closing the door behind him and sealing himself into the old antiques shop.

 

It was right, somehow, being here.

 

Where it all started.

 

The quiet that hung in the balance was like that of a church, sanctified and poignant and heavy with night’s strain for hushedness. He looked at the relics under the cloth as he stowed his key inside his coat pocket; his hands were wet and the metal cold - it was a good combination of sensations, apt to the feeling in his breast.

 

Relics under wraps, row after row of them on tables and cupboards all covered in dust sheets - sleeping mementos of the lives of the hands that had once held them and made use of them, and brought them to life by inclusion. Erestor felt a strange kinship with them all, weren’t they all waiting? Waiting for some communion, to fit somewhere.

 

We’ve all be found once before, and now we wait to be found again. It was a strange thought that he could not entirely fathom, but Erestor reasoned he was perhaps not the most stable of souls tonight of all nights.

 

The dark was expansive without Glorfindel. The night was cold and the wind and rain had never sounded so loud.

 

Erestor moved through the shadows of the shop, recalling to him to image of Glorfindel’s tears at the airport - but there were other memories too, hanging just out of frame; his car and his gun, his body under his clothes and the rough skin on his hands, his kisses, his voice, his gentility...

 

Ah, fuck.

 

He was so far away! But somehow closer than ever.

 

It did not make sense, any of it, and Erestor looked around in the dark as though hoping to find him sat behind the counter, eating something sweet and crooning over a new plate he had found with some pattern to make the eyes bleed. But when Erestor peered at the till, shrouded in a gloom, he saw no honey blonde but instead a stack upon the counter. A stack of papers? Erestor did not remember them, and he was drawn to them.

 

To uncover a mystery, and pull at a thread.

 

He padded over to his little corner where he did not need light to know his footing. Streetlamps peered in through the gaps in the windows and Erestor walked through an orange pool, faux and bright, and then, like a blaze, he remembered their first kiss.

 

It was a happy memory, despite his nearly being shot earlier in the day.

 

Strange, how time passes.

 

Reaching the till, Erestor found that the stack of papers was indeed a stack of papers; newspapers. He took a few over by the window, to read them by the streetlamps glower. He frowned. The dates were not exactly recent, and he did not recognise the district label printed on their front sheets - but there were just so many!

 

Curiosity. Erestor flipped through a few pages of one and noted some folded down corners.

 

He blinked in the dark, a coil of confusion winding tighter in his stomach. Had he done this? It seemed a thing he might be likely to do...

 

No.

 

Erestor took another, and then another - half a dozen pages and then some were folded down in each paper, leading him to articles about the most bizarre happenings (and some accompanied by the most ridiculous pictures, that always made him laugh in a dry sort of way). Erestor did not read them but instead flipped from page to page, trying to recall a time when he might have done this!

 

He had picked up another and opened its sheets when he noticed a scrap of paper fall out, and fall to the floor.

 

Like a feather.

 

Time hung heavily in the antiques shop, as it always had. Perhaps the old fossils there attuned themselves differently to the flow of things and watched and waited as only pieces of history would know how. But history was never, and has never, been confined to those spidery writings in the old tomes.

 

Erestor bent to pick up the scrap of paper.

 

He held it in the light, and divined a signature, and a smiley face.

 

Glorfindel - x

 

Erestor clutched at his mouth with one hand.

 

He clutched at his smile.

 

And his sob.

---

Chapter End Notes

Thank you so much to everyone who stuck with this dumb fic throughout its journey, your comments and kudos have meant the world to me and it's been a lot of fun! Feel free to make up your own endings or scenarios for what happens when Glorfindel comes back, as I won't be carrying this on - feel free to write your own ending!

 

I'm working on a new project, and it's a big one. It's going to be like LOTR meets Dragon Age (the stolen throne) meets ancient myth, all mixed up in a fantasy narrative. It's going to be a story about Glorfindel (and Erestor) and how they reclaim their Kingdom, traveling across a familiar land to retake the throne. A larger cast of characters will be involved, a greater romantic plot, and there will be gratuitous femslash involved, too! So stay tuned!