The Fourteen Things that Always Happen to Faramir and Éowyn
Chapter Seven: Faramir's Annoying Father-to-Be Angst

Ttthhhwwwaaaccckkk! went the dented tin of reduced fat haggis on Faramir's bruised, bleeding head. He was lying prone on the floor of the parlour back in the Steward's quarters in Minas Tirith, being savagely tortured by his shrivelled old coot of a father for no apparent reason. The abuse had been going on for nigh on thirty-nine hours and about seven minutes – a rather short time, Faramir noted – and it was becoming unbearable. The agony! The fright! The aching of his tender flesh! Denethor's wrathful, jowly face glinting with sweat as he put all his strength, all his vigour into pounding poor Faramir into a pulpy, bloody oblivion!

"How dare you" –slap!— "and I mean, how dare you" –steel-toed boot to the groin!— "exist, you awful, utter failure" –smack!— "of a son!"

"It's not my fault, Father! It's not my fault!"

"Yes, it is! Everything is your fault! You killed your mother, my wife, you incontinent, goat-faced poo muncher! Boromir would never have done so!"

"I didn't kill Mummy; I was only five! And you only preferred Boromir because he was less like you and maybe, deep down inside, you've always hated or resented yourself or something, so you took your frustrations out on me because you were too dignified or too cowardly to castigate yourself."

"How dare you employ the use of reasonable explanations in a fanfiction, you wizard's pupil!"

"I can't help it! Oh, no, Father, no! No, no, no!" he sobbed as Denethor let off beating him and, grinning evilly, went over to his large collection of cassettes. "Not the Village People! Noooooo!"

Faramir was remembering this terrifying dream as he paced back and forth across his bedchamber and wrung the frilly fabric of his floral, grandmotherly nightgown, just as he had always done in times of distress. It was a fair April night in Emyn Arnen in the last year of the Third Age, when Ithilien was still a pretty desolate and shitty place to live, despite the fact that it won't be in later, more idyllic chapters. It was maybe two in the morning or thereabouts, for clocks didn't exist, I suppose. Faramir couldn't sleep, obviously. He couldn't think clearly. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't live, at least not with the shadow of his loony, abusive pops yet hovering over his wretched life, destroying any semblance of happiness and normality that happened to bless his miserable existence. And said miserable existence, he remembered, was about to get a lot worse.

A Solitary Tear of Sorrow™ snaked its salty way down the Steward's sexy face as he turned towards the bed where his wife – it both cheered him and scared him that he had a wife, of all things, and that he had been married for almost a year now – was tossing and turning in her sleep, dishevelling the Buzz Lightyear sheets as she went. Faramir was crying because Éowyn was about six months pregnant. Was he going to be a terrible father? Did he even love Éowyn and their poor child? Was he somehow, without his awareness, actually and secretly a Tyrannosaurus Rex? He couldn't answer these questions, and it disturbed him very much. He almost desired to die, to be insensibly nonexistent, to have his soul stilled in that great void called the Hereafter, or some profound poetic drivel like that.

"Why hello there, guv'nah," came a deep, seductive voice from somewhere behind him, just for the purpose of breaking up this oppressive angst.

The aforementioned voice belonged to Elrond, who stood there eyeing Faramir, clad in nothing but a silky magenta loincloth and – Faramir recoiled at this most disagreeable sight – the slightly rotted halves of a hollowed-out cantaloupe, shoddily held together by dental floss, for a bra. Faramir wept a bit inside, fearing for his life; that cantaloupe had been meant for Éowyn, who, of course, was craving shit that probably didn't exist in Middle Earth, and was most certainly not in season if it did. Anyway, Elrond's massive breasts spilled out over the tops and sides of his makeshift garment, for he was too well-endowed for the perhaps DD-cup cantaloupe halves. Faramir felt like vomiting.

"I… I… I thought you went to the Undying Lands?" he stammered.

"Indeed I did," Elrond replied, absent-mindedly massaging his mammary wonders, "but I have since returned, for I very much wish to purchase a bogtrotter at discount price. Say, my Lord Steward, have you got about tree fiddy?"

Faramir groaned and handed Elrond £3.50. "Now leave, mind you. I was brooding in peace."

"PIP PIP CHEERIO, OLD CHAP!" Elrond exclaimed in his best retarded Cockney accent, clapping Faramir on the shoulder. And with that, Elrond sped across the chamber, jumped off the balcony, and absconded into the bleakness of the night.

"Was that… Lord Elrond? In a bra?!"

Faramir, sputtering from trying his hardest to not puke in his mouth, spun around to find Éowyn sitting up in bed, looking bewildered and nauseated.

"Unfortunately so. He took the cantaloupe. Sorry about that," he said with a slight groan. "Wait. Why are you awake at this hour? Go back to sleep."

"I can't," she sighed, laying a hand on her stomach. "The baby won't stop kicking." She pouted and glanced at her husband with pleading eyes that seemed to say, return to bed, beloved, and cuddle me and stroke my hair and recite cheesy-ass, fake Tolkienesque poetry to me, and let us indulge in such fluffy behaviours until I fall asleep on your shoulder and until the fangirls emit squees loud enough to disturb everyone during their German literature lectures, where they should not be reading printed-out fanfics instead of Heinrich Heine, but totally are.

Faramir, however, flipped out in a way that was not, 'by the Valar, I'm going to squee and do it soon'. He pouted. He quivered. He was starting to lose it. Éowyn really was having a baby, and it was kinda sorta alive. Holy shitballs!

"Þeorfling, what's the matter? What did I say?"

"Why… why are you pregnant, Éowyn?!" His disbelief of and wonderment at this long-known fact required three question marks and five exclamation points— three question marks and five exclamation points that this website's rubbish document editor refused to acknowledge.

"Because we, as my brother would say, 'did it,' as married couples are wont to do? What the heck kind of question is that, Faramir?"

"But why?" Faramir's voice was raised to something of an impassioned whine now. "Why are you pregnant? Why did we want a child in the first place? Why doesn't Donald Duck wear any trousers? Why do Japanese people sneeze into their hands and not wash them? Why do Raggedy Ann dolls have triangular noses? Why did my father hate me? And why," he added with finality, "am I so much like him?"

"Ah, so this is not necessarily about me or the child, but about Denethor."

Faramir ignored his wife's Legolas-like, very obvious observation. He was trembling ever so slightly, like a wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube man in a one-kilometre-per-hour breeze. "Why couldn't you have blended yourself to death as soon as you conceived?!"

"Because I was enjoying the experience with you, if you don't happen to remember that," Éowyn reminded him. It was incredibly hard for her to remain calm in the presence of such stupidity and angst, particularly with the evil influence of female hormones, but somehow she managed it, though she had no idea how long her dwindling patience would last tonight. Judging from Voldie's own burgeoning impatience, not very long. "Besides, where would I find a giant blender in Ithilien, much less the rest of Middle Earth? And since when is blending oneself into a smoothie an acceptable solution to a pregnancy… that we wanted and welcomed, I should add?"

"It's an appropriate solution to soiling one's knickers more than ten times a month!" Faramir retorted shrilly, his throat beginning to clench and tears beginning to cascade down his ashen face in streams of emotive woe and suffering that could easily rival those of a fifteen-year-old girl at a rather touching My Chemical Romance concert. He felt helpless, so unloved and so unloving! "Asda's probably got them! I'm sure there's a blender sale now on!"

"That is not the issue. Do stop avoiding your problems."

"I am doing no such thing!"

Éowyn's patience had by now been utterly exhausted, and Faramir could have sworn that she was foaming slightly at the mouth. "You are, so let me speak in your stead. You most likely had a dream about Denethor tonight, and it reminded you that he was an uncharacteristically violent, malicious excuse for a father, and also that you consider yourself worthless. As for your present emo fit, you are merely distressed because you think that A, your father still overshadows and influences you; B, you are so much like Denethor that it will destroy both you and the life we've started together; and C, you do not, cannot, or will not love your son, which is, frankly, bullshit."

Faramir blinked, sniffling. "How did you know?"

"Because I've had to endure watching you mope and listening to you muttering in your sleep for the past six months, unfortunately. But no matter; we'll settle this tonight." Ooph-ing a little, she pushed herself to her feet.

"But Éowyn! The baby!" Faramir shrieked, trying to force her back down onto the bed. "Don't get up! You're going to hurt the baby, Éowyn!"

"If you but the baby! me one more time, I will hammer a chopstick up your urethra," Éowyn warned. Faramir winced and let her go. "Not only am I capable of standing, I am also capable of walking and using a toilet, just as well as the author of this fic is incapable of laying off the random italics." Éowyn, seething, went over to some random desk in their chamber and rummaged about in it. After a minute, she seemed to have found what she was searching for, and thrust a paper and a quill into Faramir's hands. "You are going to do this and are going to do this tonight, Faramir."

"Italics, Éowyn!"

She pointed to the paper. "Just shut up and read it. Now."

Biting his lip and ignoring the stinging feeling in his eyes, as well as Éowyn's annoyed glare (would she kill him and then sell his mangled flesh to a local steakhouse? He hoped so), Faramir started reading the directions. Quite simple, really. 'This conveniently available test-quiz-exam thing is to determine how much like Denethor you truly are. There are four questions. Read each question and tick yes or no. Marks are out of one hundred, with one hundred being very Denethorish (if so, please go set yourself on fire, as you have likely already considered), and anything under fifty being a commendable achievement of un-Denethorishness'. Easy enough in theory, but Faramir just went blank, his hands trembling, his mind racing, his heart pounding like the hooves of ten million wildebeests across the plains of wherever wildebeests live (Kansas? Wyoming?). So this was it: the moment of truth, the moment he would ascertain his doom, the moment he would confirm his worst fears.

Are you the Steward of Gondor, or, if not, his son?

Faramir whimpered and ticked 'yes'. Not a promising start, to be sure.

Do you listen to Celine Dion?

He ticked 'no'.

Are you an *insert an offensive cuss word of your choice here*?

The answer, again, was 'no'.

Do you look like a dachshund with lady bits for a face?

He stared at the question for a moment, a bit perplexed, then drew his own box and ticked 'maybe'. Tears welled in his eyes again as he handed over the paper to Éowyn, who scrutinised it as best she could in such dull light.

"Well, my love, it seems that you are only twenty-five percent like Denethor, and only for reasons that can't be helped, unless you feel like giving up your office." Faramir opened his mouth to speak, for surely the results were wrong, but she shushed him. "Now you are going to ask, I'm sure, something along the lines of, 'even if I'm not like Denethor, how can I be certain that I'm not going to be a horrible, hateful father'?"

"Yes. Am I doomed?" he whispered through the remnants of his tears. Somewhere within him he again felt the emo, deep-rooted urge to slice his forearms with a blunted Stanley knife.

"Well, you've not thrown me down the stairs, have you, or put cyanide in my tea?"

Faramir shook his head.

"And you go apeshit if I ever, Illúvatar forbid, need to walk anywhere, as I am oh so fragile?"

"Yes, as demonstrated earlier."

"And you whisper sweet nothings to your unborn child whilst you think I'm asleep but am really not?"

"Naturally," he said, flushing; he hoped she hadn't overheard that rather one-sided conversation about how sexy he thought electric kettles were.

"Then you're fine. Now stop moping, for the love of Eru, before I feel the need to run a sword through your face."

In a sudden change of heart, because the author has neither the time nor the desire to write another chapter or so of misunderstandings and angst, as misunderstandings and angst are not in the least bit funny, and are actually rather annoying because we've all read this fic before, Faramir began feeling loads more positive about the whole situation in a literal, unreasonable instant.

"That's Wizard's chess," Faramir sighed contentedly, wrapping his arms around Éowyn and licking her forehead like some kind of gecko, if geckos had tongues, which they probably do because why wouldn't they? Both Éowyn and the writhing parasite in her gut calmed down in his embrace. "You are so very wise, snuggy wuggy poo poo."

"That's only because I've read this fanfiction a hundred times or more." Faramir made a derpy face. "Don't look at me like that, þeorfling! What else am I supposed to do when your child refuses to let me sleep and you are off whinging in the garden like a lovesick teenager? Would you rather me read fics about Tom Bombadil having homosexual relations with Treebeard?"

"Actually, yes. Sounds hot."

And so Éowyn and Faramir crawled back into bed and drifted off into contented sleep in each other's arms, not thinking of Denethor, Gríma, abuse, angst, or war, but of long, wooden, hard, moss-covered, sexy legs and the strange, yellow-booted spirit who loved them.

A/N: Regarding the blenders: my brother, when he was about nine or so, wrote a series of stories about various Lord of the Rings characters having to blend themselves to death when they soiled themselves more than ten times a calendar month— no more, no less. Elrond died in this manner several times, however that was supposed to work. Why I happened to remember this random inside joke of yesteryear is a mystery.

Thanks to everyone who has reviewed, followed, and/or favourited this wee fic so far. I'm thrilled that people even read it! And angsty!Faramir shall go away and stay away for a very long time, promise. xx