By one o’clock, the noises coming from the backseat had Stu gripping the steering wheel with both hands. By two, his teeth were clenched.
“Beloved,” Legless eyed Stu in the light of the dashboard and twisted the knob on the radio station. He’d become fascinated with the voices and noises coming from the stereo speakers and added greatly to the noise in the backseat and Stu’s growing tension.
“Yes, Legs?” Stu didn’t take his eyes off the road or his hands off the wheel. He was afraid if he did either, he’d end up in the backseat with his hands wrapped around someone’s throat.
“You are making very odd noises. Sort of a guttural sounds, like Orc speech.” He snuggled his shoulder against Stu’s warmth.
Legless stopped twisting the radio knob and listened to a song playing on the radio. Stu whimpered softly as strains of ABBA’s Dancing Queen filled the car interior. Legless’ head swayed in time to the disco beat.
“And now you are whimpering, as if in pain.”
Stu bared his teeth. “Driving makes me tense.”
“Perhaps we should get your aunt--”
“NO!” Stu’s right eye began to twitch.
Legless‘ head continued wagging in time to the music. “Beloved, what is a dancing queen?”
Stu cut the elf a side ways glance. Before they’d left, Legless had relocated his missing legwarmer and, in light of the rips in his blouse, had exchanged the damaged one for a fuchsia bell-sleeved tunic type shirt with a scooped and gathered neckline and his newsie cap was snuggled over the remains of his Mo-hawk. He was still wearing the cast off cowboy boots. Stu thought he’d get tossed out of a drag show for lack of taste, but hadn’t the heart--or the nerve--to share those thoughts with the elf.
“Some one who likes to dance.”
Legless smiled. “I like to dance.”
Stu made a strangled sound in the back of his throat.
“Perhaps you could teach me how to dance to this music? I only know elven dances.”
Stu shrugged. “I got two left feet.”
Legless titled his head and peered down at Stu’s legs. “I’ve never noticed any abnormalities with your feet.”
“It’s a figure of speech, Legs. It means I don’t dance.”
Legless sighed and remarked with a certain amount of petulance, “I’ve noticed there are a lot of things you do not do.”
“Well, hell, Legless, I got three kids.”
“I don’t know what that has to do with anything.”
“It means there’s a lot of things I don’t do,” Stu answered.
“This is about Hal-drear, isn’t it?”
“No, the Queen doesn’t figure into this.”
“My feet aren’t hairy enough?”
Stu’s eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets. “No, it’s not that.”
“Did you know that your aunt can take her hair off?”
“She can take her teeth out, too, so?”
“Well, I was thinking. Perhaps if I got hair like that?”
“Why?”
“Glimmergroin thinks the way her hair moves is most attractive…”
Stu took a deep breath and released it slowly. “I hear dwarf women have beards.”
Legless nodded. “I’ve heard that, too. I was thinking that you’d like it better.”
“If you had a beard?” Stu’s voice squeaked on the last syllable.
“Of course not,” Legless sniffed. “Only one elf has a beard. I was talking about the curly hair. Maybe it would remind you of Frito.”
Both men were silent as the noises from the backseat grew momentarily louder before settling back into their normal rhythm.
“Which elf has a beard?”
“Cirdan.”
“Who’s he?”
“The shipwright.”
“Oh.”
“About the hair.”
“No, Legless, you don’t need a curly wig.”
“Aunt Sue said I could get a long, dark one.”
“I would sort of rather you didn’t take fashion advice from my aunt.”
“Your mother said you preferred brunettes.”
“I wouldn’t take advice from her, either.”
“You sleep with your back to the wall.”
“I suffer from paranoia.”
“When I touch you, you jump.”
“I’m ticklish.”
One of the occupants in the backseat grunted.
“When I try to find ways to make myself more sexually appealing--”
“Hell, that would require about twenty grand and a trip to Thailand. I don’t know how in the hell you think you can get a passport. You don’t even have a birth certificate!”
Legless blew out an exasperated breath. “You need to get the Madagascar hissing cockroach out of your ass, beloved. We’re bonded.”
“I was sort of hoping the elves believed in annulment.”
“And we’re staying bonded.”
“Oh, fuck me,” Stu sighed.
“That was the general idea, beloved.”