Why do you believe?

The video on this site loads really slow but I didn't immediately find a better copy anywhere else. Don't read the article, it just summarizes the video.
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/The_Daily_Show_lambastes_Cheney_secret_0626.html

I have no faith in them at all. This is farcical black comedy and has been for I dunno, decades, centuries, since the beginning of history perhaps.
Remember in Alice in Wonderland how the Jabberwocky went away when she refused to believe in it?
Yeah.
Louis Carol wasn't just tokin it up when he wrote that.

Challenge em.....one.

I came up with this idea a while back but never posted it anywhere - didn't really know of any place to post it, still don't really, so it's going here because I may try to write this myself at some point.

The Replacement Fic - It goes like this. Take the characters/actors from one fandom and put them in the roles of characters in another fandom. I'm sure it's been done before, but I haven't read much of it I don't think. For instance, the one I kinda wanted to do was the LotR cast in the roles of CSI: Vegas characters. Both relatively large ensemble casts, thought it might work out kinda interestingly. Or for something smaller-scale, take say, Dom and Bill and make them Jay and Silent Bob. Dom and Silent Bill? That was another I was thinking about.
The idea was really just to get the creative juices going again because I haven't written anything substantial in over a week I think, but I think it could prove to be fun to write too.

So since I don't get too many visitors here I guess it's just a challenge for myself unless I find a place to post it, but, if you happen across here and want to take a stab at it, I'd love to read what you come up with.

Shaun of the Dead - a Motivational Poster

Hubby and I created this tonight. We'll both be working from home soon and we decided we needed some motivational posters for our home office.

bold the one's you've seen

"Citizen Kane" (1941)
2. "The Godfather" (1972)
3. "Casablanca" (1942)
4. "Raging Bull" (1980)
5. "Singin' in the Rain" (1952)
6. "Gone With the Wind" (1939)
7. "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962)
8. "Schindler's List" (1993)
9. "Vertigo" (1958)
10. "The Wizard of Oz" (1939)
11. "City Lights" (1931)
12. "The Searchers" (1956)
13. "Star Wars" (1977)
14. "Psycho" (1960)
15. "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968)
16. "Sunset Boulevard" (1950)
17. "The Graduate" (1967)
18. "The General" (1927)
19. "On the Waterfront" (1954)
20. "It's a Wonderful Life" (1946)
21. "Chinatown" (1974)
22. "Some Like It Hot" (1959)
23. "The Grapes of Wrath" (1940)
24. "E.T. -- The Extra-Terrestrial" (1982)
25. "To Kill a Mockingbird" (1962)
26. "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1939)
27. "High Noon" (1952)
28. "All About Eve" (1950)
29. "Double Indemnity" (1944)
30. "Apocalypse Now" (1979)
31. "The Maltese Falcon" (1941)
32. "The Godfather, Part II" (1974)
33. "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975)
34. "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937)
35. "Annie Hall" (1977)
36. "The Bridge on the River Kwai" (1957)
37. "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946)
38. "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948)
39. "Dr. Strangelove" (1964)
40. "The Sound of Music" (1965)
41. "King Kong" (1933)
42. "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967)
43. "Midnight Cowboy" (1969)
44. "The Philadelphia Story" (1940)
45. "Shane" (1953)
46. "It Happened One Night" (1934)
47. "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951)
48. "Rear Window" (1954)
49. "Intolerance" (1916)
50. "Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" (2001)
51. "West Side Story" (1961)
52. "Taxi Driver" (1976)
53. "The Deer Hunter" (1978)
54. "M*A*S*H" (1970)
55. "North by Northwest" (1959)
56. "Jaws" (1975)
57. "Rocky" (1976)
58. "The Gold Rush" (1925)
59. "Nashville" (1975)
60. "Duck Soup" (1933)
61. "Sullivan's Travels" (1941)
62. "American Graffiti" (1973)
63. "Cabaret" (1972)
64. "Network" (1976)
65. "The African Queen" (1951)
66. "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981)
67. "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966)
68. "Unforgiven" (1992)
69. "Tootsie" (1982)
70. "A Clockwork Orange" (1971)
71. "Saving Private Ryan" (1998)
72. "The Shawshank Redemption" (1994)
73. "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969)
74. "The Silence of the Lambs" (1991)
75. "In the Heat of the Night" (1967)
76. "Forrest Gump" (1994)
77. "All the President's Men" (1976)
78. "Modern Times" (1936)
79. "The Wild Bunch" (1969)
80. "The Apartment" (1960)
81. "Spartacus" (1960)
82. "Sunrise" (1927)
83. "Titanic" (1997)
84. "Easy Rider" (1969)
85. "A Night at the Opera" (1935)
86. "Platoon" (1986)
87. "12 Angry Men" (1957)
88. "Bringing Up Baby" (1938)
89. "The Sixth Sense" (1999)
90. "Swing Time" (1936)
91. "Sophie's Choice" (1982)
92. "Goodfellas" (1990)
93. "The French Connection" (1971)
94. "Pulp Fiction" (1994)
95. "The Last Picture Show" (1971)
96. "Do the Right Thing" (1989)
97. "Blade Runner" (1982)
98. "Yankee Doodle Dandy" (1942)
99. "Toy Story" (1995)
100. "Ben-Hur" (1959)

A bit meoldramatic, but it has it's merit

http://www.wikiprotest.com/index.php?title=A_Phone_Call_With_The_Federal_Reserve


Makes me want to go panning for gold.

So this was interesting.

I've had this thing - that I do. I've been doing it for years but I never understood why. Can't say I completely understand it now either, but at least this was a small insight.

Sent an email to this guy I dug up on a website somewheres. Ask a psychologist. Kinda like ask a ninja, but more psychological and less deadly.

Read on...

To: just-ask@counsellingresource.com

I have a peculiar problem. I asked a psychologist about it once before but not only did he not have an explanation for me, he said it was the weirdest thing he had ever heard. A psychologist said that. The problem is this. I am a writer by habit. I write every day, fiction, mostly. Sometimes I only write a little bit, but some days I will sit at the computer for hours and pound out page after page. It's usually during my most productive, most creative times that it happens. When the creative juices are flowing, and I find myself in a zone where I can write fluidly and free associate words to the wanderings of my imagination, I sometimes start to sniffle. Then my eyes start to water, and my nose itches and I have to sneeze. I have to sneeze BAD. I hold it off as long as I can because this is my best writing, when I can barely see the screen and I'm blowing my nose over and over just to stave it off for a few more seconds. But eventually I start sneezing. And I don't stop until I get up from the computer, walk away, blow my nose a few million times and try not to think about what I'm writing for ten minutes or so. Eventually I get it under control and I can sit back down, but then that lit fuse of creativity is extinguished and I can't get it to return without the same effects. It's not an allergy. I've had this for over ten years, in four states, it can happen in any season, any room of my house, with or without a cat on my lap, but it only happens when I am able to turn on the writing juice. It didn't happen while writing this, and it never happens while writing anything I have outlined or planned out, only when writing from the cuff, when i can actually feel the gears in my brain switching. It would be really nice if I could just write without some bizarre function of my brain sabotaging me - never mind that such a thing shouldn't be possible. Any ideas?

The Dr's Reply:


A: Wow...what a great question. This situation may require a detective who
is part psychologist, part neurobiologist, and even part computer geek.
Some conditions that might cause this:

- Psychogenic sneezing: a form of conversion reaction (in psych terms)
where your intense need to write is expressed in physical symptoms - in
this case sneezing. It's like wanting to hit someone so hard that your arm
freezes.
- Allergic reactions: You don't have to have allergies to have allergic
reactions or to respond to irritants in the environment. We all sneeze if
we try to look at the sun, but that's not an allergy.

Based on your description:
- You are experiencing a histamine release. That's what produces the
entire symptom package of watery/itchy eyes, itchy nose, and urgency to
sneeze. Histamine is the target for many allergy medications - giving us
antihistamines.
- You experience this in two distinct situations - when you are "in the
zone" writing and when you are writing on the computer for a prolonged
period of time (while in the zone).
- You don't experience it during boring, calm, organized writing activity
or activity on the computer that is brief.
- You probably don't have a consistent allergy status based on what you've
said - although I'm not an allergy specialist obviously.
- Your sneezing appears directly linked to accessing your creativity. It
doesn't occur (as far as I know) in other situations where you might be
stressed or anxious.

My theory:
- Anyone who has ever been "in the zone" will tell you it's a special,
neurochemical event involving hyperfocus, fluidity of thought, high
organization, excited tension, etc. It's a heightened state of arousal and
awareness that increases productivity and facilitates highly effective
functioning.
- From a psychophysiological (whew!) standpoint, being in the zone is
actually a release and increase in arousal-related neurochemicals,
typically norepinephrine, dopamine, and...here it
comes..histamine<

. The release of these neurochemicals
produces your sense that your circuits are switching in your brain. In your
"zone" process, your body is increasing the production of these chemicals
and what you are experiencing is the gradual increase of histamine -
producing the allergy-like symptoms you exhibit. This is why it doesn't
happen during "calm", noncreative, or nonaroused states such as outlines,
email, or even non-writing stressful situations. Obviously, you are
getting into a Big Zone here to have this much neurotransmitter release.
Similar situations are found in long distance runners ("runner's high"),
partygoers (second wind), etc.
- This is also why, after dealing with the histamine release, the "zone"
disappears. I don't mean to sound kinky, but the entire process is similar
to a sexual release which goes from arousal to intense release to
relaxation in simple terms.
- There is one other possibility. You can experience a histamine release
with prolonged exposure to your computer. Computers, by nature, attract
dust, pollen, etc. due to their electromagnetic fields. After many hours on
the computer, you may be experiencing a histamine release due to exposure
to these substances, eye fatigue from the monitor, etc.

Recommendations:

- First, clean and vacuum your computer frequently. Keep it in a
well-ventilated place. I didn't have the impression you were hand-writing
when in the zone so you need an anti-histamine computer as much as possible.
- If we proceed with my theory, the more intense your "zone" becomes, the
more likely the release of histamine. If you feel a "zone" approaching, you
may want to try taking an over-the-counter non-drowsy antihistamine in an
attempt to block the histamine release or minimize it.
- While in the zone, shift from computer to a voice-recorder to get away
from the computer enviroment (less dust, less eye strain, etc.). Dictate
and pace in the zone for a while, then return to the computer. Alternating
may help keep you in the zone while burning off some arousal energy.
- While creativity is arousing, remembering creativity can also be
arousing. Read what you have written, try to jog your memory and return to
the zone for shorter periods.

I think what you are experiencing is very real...a bit weird, but hey,
that's one of the costs of being creative. I suspect this is a normal
physiological response that you'll need to manage by trial and error. It
can be worked out.

Hope this reply is helpful.

Dr. Carver

ETA: Here is the article - http://counsellingresource.com/ask-the-psychologist/2007/06/20/psychogenic-sneezing/
wheeee I'z publishjd!!! Not rilly.

I remember betting you that I could climb the disco wall using only me lips...

Oy. Dizzy. Last night was fun. Chinese food and rum. And Tommy Chong is MY HERO. Steven too.

I ALMOST DIED

SO my friend Loni took me out horseback riding today. She's been riding a long time, has a degree in equine medicine etc. She knows her stuff and I trust her to keep me, as an inexperienced rider, safe while I'm with her horses. She had this tiny little horse for me, Jazz, not her horse, but one she knows well enough. She's had other people ride him and he's a little spunky, but settles down after a bit, so she says.
Jazz was pawing and chomping at the bit long before I got on him.
When I did finally manage to get on him, after pulling the saddle down and having to put it back on and his girlfriend in the paddock whining at us and the other gelding kicking at the gate - he took off with me. He starts riding the fence back and forth through a tiny path, more like an obstacle course around fence posts and wood piles and other hazards, kicking, dancing, rearing. I haven't been on a horse in years, and never on one performing that kind of nonsense. I just kinda held on for dear life and tried to be adamant as possible when he started acting like he was going to try to jump a low spot in the fence to get back to his girlfriend.
A small FOREVER later, my friend got hold of him from the saddle on her own horse, and I jumped the fuck off of him.
Then it got interesting.
She asked me to hold her horse, who is reliably gentle and nonchalant about most things, and SHE took Jazz. Took her ten minutes to get on him, kept trying to kick her. All the while she swears, he's not usually like this. She finally gets on him and rides him around, and he is bucking and kicking and snorting and then rears like a fucking giant stallion vertical, and she just barely stayed on the saddle that time, was a hair's breadth from tipping over backwards, shit you not, then came back to Earth and tried to kick the horse I was holding, or me, or both, who knows.

BAD PONY.

I stayed home from work today

Why you may ask? TOO. MUCH. POLLEN.
I woke up feeling like I had pollen caked on the inside of my skull - like I had some kind of nocturnal honey bee's nest in my head and all night the workers were out collecting pouches full of allergens and delivering them to my sinuses.
I never used to have allergies.
At all.
Now my list is like
Anyway.
I blame the govt.

OMG more funny music

The good: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVFn5wpu4Tc
The better: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0hQeRf_IqM
The best: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-s2hYxuonk

Hot Fuzz

Pegg and Frost cannot possibly pretend for even a moment that they don't adore each other. I'd seriously like to see them play adversaries just once. Or not, cuz they wouldn't be able to pull it off.

The new movie, despite how it looks like a really ridiculous comedy/horror movie about cops in a rural British village, is actually just an allegory of how they met and fell in love.

And sometimes I forget how cute Simon is until I see him in something. Then I was to smush him. Then maybe tear his clothes off, smear apricot jam all over him and let...I dunno...say, Cillian lick it off of him. Yeah. That'd be cool.

What is it with me a British boys?

science again!

Found this at ellielabelle's LJ. It seems I've earned some merit badges and didn't know it.


One long grueling year as an environmental chemist wherein I worked with all kinds of poo.
Again, a year as an environmental chemist wherein I boiled lots of poo in concentrated acid.
And, less obvious, a year as an environmental chemist wherein I was always in a labcoat and looked the part, but was actually, in fact, a pirate the entire time, as I remain to this day.

I can die happy having seen this

My favorite band playing my favorite song - weird only because my favorite band didn't write my favorite song.
And that isn't Dave Mustane. That's Russel Allen from Symphony X, another band high on my list of favs. GOD I WISH I HAD BEEN THERE TO SEE THAT. And how did I miss this? Gigantour was ages ago. I don't know who the other guy is that was singing horribly. Doesn't matter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiH_yDpyRDU

some things to watch

wow. Music. Better than the original.

wow. Laughing. So sad it's gone.

wow. Music and Laughing. Lol, Popeye.

OMGOMGOMGOMOMGOMG

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117966320.html?categoryid=13&cs=1

I think I fixed my ankle

I went running last night despite how much it hurt. Ankles, knees. Ow. Took some alieve before I went, and somehow I think it fixed it. Either the alieve worked or else the running did.

hmm..

Did Livejournal just implode or something? Did the bible thumpers thump so loud they killed all the afeart LJ servers? Did God strike them down for being spineless and greedy? Prolly not, but it's interesting to imagine since I cannae seem to get to ye old flist right now. Maybe I'll actually write sumthin'.

>:(

I've screwed up my ankle again somehow. I started jogging again after several um..years of naught, and I started slow. Walking mostly, then jogging more and more over the past few weeks. I was doing well. Then one day my ankle hurt, felt like a mild sprain. So I stayed off of it for a week. This is week two and WALKING is painful. Running, impossible. I'm fatter now than I have ever been in my life. And it seems that my one avenue to curb the trend is now gone, no word on when it might return.

perfect sugar free strawberry daquiris

perfect sugar free strawberry daquiris
18 packets of splenda
1 c rum
~6 c strawberries
1/2 packet of unsweetened strawberry koolaid
fill with ice in Blender, blend until smooth. Will be thick, might need to push the ice/strawberries down a little with a spoon, careful!!!

So there we go

Fic. Indexed!!!

Its beautiful. It all shows up in the correct order and everything and it's searchable thanks to the miracle of Google. And it didn't take forever to do it, a few quick format changes, copy and paste from LJ to Open Office to Blogger, and it all looks relatively uniform and not too frickin' bad if you ask me. All available over there on the right >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Even after my journal fills up with not-fic stuff. And they're all tagged too. YEY. I'll admit it's a might lonely over here but then - looks at new user name - I'm ok with that. I have you all on Google Reader. Also available over hnyah on the right >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

TRIGUN: VtS/NW: Two Beds

Title: Two Beds

Author: herm42

Fandom: Trigun

Pairing: Vash/Wolfwood

Rating: Porny and strange

Length: ~ 4,000 wds.

Sum: Wolfwood wants it. Vash is game, sorta.

A/N: For theonebedficathon. A little PWP for you. It's been years since I last saw this series, but I was looking for something different to do. Any apocryphal or just plain stupid flaws are due to the fact that I am not an expert of any kind regarding, anime, Trigun, or even ironing my own clothes.

"You're kidding me right?"

Wolfwood just stands there as still as if he were drawn on paper.

"Where are you going to sleep?"

Wolfwood, very casually, slowly crosses the small room and sits on the edge of the remaining bed. Then he toes off his shoes, letting them gently tap the wooden floor.

Vash growls. "I PAID FOR THE ROOM YOU DO NOT GET TO OCCUPY BOTH BEDS YOU FREAKY PRIEST HOODLAM!"

Wolfwood is unmoved by the outburst except for a breezy lock of hair. He reclines then, crossing his ankles and placing his hands beneath his head as if sunbathing rather than sleeping.

Vash makes a grab for the end of the mattress, meaning to tip him off the bed, perhaps launch him out of the tiny window too. As soon as he is bent over, leverage springing through his legs and curled back and his fingertips are dug into the flimsy pad, he hears two double clicks in succession, and stops. He looks up. Wolfwood has two barrels aimed down Vash's nose. He could easily take off that nose and probably Vash's lips as well at that angle.

Vash glowers. "Where am I supposed to sleep?"

"Wherever you want, Clown Boy. Take the other bed."

Vash looks at the other bed a scant foot and a half (too close) to the one Wolfwood is occupying. Punisher lies tucked in under the covers, top on the pillow, two pillows, it's arms overwhelming the skinny mattress and making the bed frame actually appear stressed in the middle. It creaked like a million year-old rusty door when Wolfwood laid it there moments ago.

"Fine," Vash says and ambles cheerily to the other tiny bed.

"Move it and die, Spike."

Vash spins around and lashes his tongue at the stubborn man again. "Well what am I supposed to do then? Sleep on top of it? Under it?"

"It's really not a bad bed partner. I usually sleep with it right next to me, but," and Wolfwood creaks as well and stretches just a little with lazy discomfort, "these beds are so small. Doesn't seem practical."

Vash levels his brow at him and lets his arms dangle like a sloth. He realizes that trying to argue the idea that Punisher should give up its bed for Vash would be a waste of breath.

"Well, I'm beat," Wolfwood says and rolls up and off the bed. He turns his back and shrugs out of his big collared shirt, then the pants, and everything gets hung neatly over the foot board

Vash is in his bed. In the three seconds he was out of it, Vash has cocooned himself in the thin blankets and his face peeks out of a tiny space, smiling maniacally.

"Vash, I will remove your head from your neck."

"But I don't want to sleep with the punisher."

"It is not 'the punisher.' It is Punisher."

Vash remains.

Wolfwood pulls off one sock, then the other, balls them up into his shoes and then climbs into the bed next to Vash and turns out the light.

"Give me some blankets."

"Get your own."

Wolfwood yanks briskly at Vash's cocoon and acquires half or more of the scant covers for himself.

There is a long silence in which neither man moves or speaks. Outside, a rattling carriage can be heard stirring up dust in the road, and through the walls Vash can faintly hear Millie's voice from the room next door. Vash wonders if Nicholas is asleep.

"I'm sweating." Vash says and thinks he hears Wolfwood grumbling internally. He sits up and unbuckles his coat. The buckle makes a little metallic noise, and then clunks rather loudly as he drops the whole coat into a small pile on the floor with his shoes. Vash pulls off his shirt, then slips his pants down under his thighs and kicks the legs off by flapping his feet rapidly until they too land in the heap by the bed.

The light flickers on, and Vash turns to look at Wolfwood who still has his hand on the light. Vash is looking over his own shoulder at him, not looking any place in particular, though not looking him in the eye. Wolfwood isn't looking at Vash's eyes either. More sort of his back. But his eyes don't seem to be tempted to trace his scars. They just look blankly, almost dead. Maybe he is just really tired and that's why he's being a bastard.

Vash looks at Wolfwood's chin, pointy. Points down. Vash won't trace that either. He can see his bare chest, but he's not going to look at it.

"Are you getting up?" Wolfwood asks.

Vash blinks. "No."

"Oh." Wolfwood looks at him expressionless for a moment more, then moves gently, conservatively turning and reaching for the light. Vash slides under the blanket.

He must have been asleep a little over an hour. The last of the summer sunset is long gone and the tiny window glitters with grimy stars. When he wakes it's to that faint starlight and dim candlelight from within the room, not enough light to wake him from a dead sleep. And it wasn't the light that woke him but the touch. Wolfwood is there next to him with that same vacant destitution on his face, his head propped up on an elbow, and with two fingers he is tracing the outline of a burgundy scar on Vash's chest. They're not so much scars as just places where his skin has gone missing and has been replaced with something thinner and temporary, like his body thinks that maybe someday that skin will come home. They feel rather a lot for being scars. He doesn't mind him touching them. It's kind of nice actually. Not many people seem to want to investigate them or Vash too closely. When Vash pokes them himself they feel like he doesn't have any skin at all there. Like he's just poking directly through to his insides. It makes him squirm just thinking about it and he hopes Wolfwood won't think to poke them like that, or to place his finger over a thin spot and move the skin over the muscle like a thin glove prodding an open wound. It doesn't hurt, it just...

Wolfwood's eyes flick up to meet Vash's for a moment, acknowledging that he is awake and aware and not protesting, but then they return to following his fingers, guiding them as they skate the perimeter of the patch across Vash's right pec.

Vash looks down and follows the finger too and discovers that his right nipple is hard and pointing at the ceiling. Funny. He hasn't had any feeling in that nipple in a few years. Nipple seems to be enjoying it even if Vash has no particular opinion.

Wolfwood's middle finger traces the jagged saw-tooth pattern from top to bottom until he can't easily reach it any more.

Vash smiles wide then and turns over on his side too. This accomplishes two things. It brings his flank within easy reach for Nicholas, and brings Nicholas within easy reach of Vash's hands as well. Vash looks at him, hand poised, and then stops. No scars. None to speak of anyway. Maybe if there was more light he'd be able to see a few, but as it appears now, Wolfwood's skin is brown and lightly freckled and relatively unscathed.

But Vash touches him anyway. He knows his own scars well enough he can trace them on someone else. Wolfwood halts as Vash's fingers come to rest on his side. He looks Vash in the eyes but says nothing with them. Vash mirrors his pose on the bed with the exception of his face. He is still grinning. Wolfwood can undoubtedly read the mischief in Vash's eyes even if Vash can read nothing in his. Then Wolfwood's eyes return to his own hand and the fingers keep moving, down his flank around the bottom of the huge scarred mass, then back up and over his pec again. Vash's fingers follow the same path over Nicholas' perfect skin, over the flank and up the chest, tracing the invisible sawtooth line. Wolfwood closes the circuit around the shape, then lifts his finger directly to Vash's shoulder and another place where the flesh is red and raw and angry looking. With a light fingertip, almost light enough to tickle, he draws the shape there, a fat lightning shape, and Vash notices that his eyes flick, just once, to his own shoulder where Vash has followed him, a living mirror. Their arms hang in the air together as if they were dancing on the wall.

Wolfwood stops, his finger poised and bluntly poking the normal skin just on the outside of the scar on Vash's arm. He looks frustrated a moment, and the smile slips from Vash's face. He thinks he may yet get tossed out of the bed.

Instead of tossing him though, Wolfwood anchors himself in the sheets with gripping fists, and pulls the rest of his lax body up, forcing Vash back down to the mattress by proximity. Then he keeps going, turning over Vash slowly, with some sort of dark malice in his eyes. Vash only has an instant to guess at what is happening when Nicholas is an inch from his face and the tension in his eyes is released under sinking lids.

Vash's own eyes pop open and he gasps a little, it sounds girly in his own ears - but never mind that. Vash melts, and he barely gets his limp arms over Wolfwood's back before he loses all conscious control over his body. A hot wet tongue is in his mouth and it tastes like a warm bath feels. Slick lips slide over his own, one down one between, then apart and one up one between, shallow dips into his mouth. Wolfwood's head pivots and it makes Vash's head spin because that was his ground his whole world for a moment there, those lips, and it's moving now. Nicholas pulls up further, slinking his body over Vash's to slide between Vash's legs. Vash hears himself moan as Nicholas very gradually settles his weight there, aligning them side by side between their bellies. He does it again when Nicholas sucks his lower lip, then nibbles, then bites it. Vash finds his strength again and grabs Wolfwood's head and pulls him down hard to delve into his mouth deeply.

Vash has a long tongue. He knows this. He isn't sure, though, that Wolfwood has noticed it before now. One way or another he has been made aware as he makes a funny surprised noise, a flinch from his gut that moves down his spine to rock his hips forward.

Wolfwood sucks Vash's mouth hard and Vash starts to go limp again like he's on some sort of flying ride where the gravity keeps going up and down above and below normal, compressing him down and making him nearly lose consciousness, then sending him floating up and out of bed. Wolfwood pulls back then and Vash grapples to keep hold of him but can't quite do it.

Nicholas's mouth comes away loudly and Vash watches and swallows as Nicholas sucks reddened lips into his mouth, licking with a live wriggling tongue. He looks at Vash for a moment, and Vash realizes that that expression he's been wearing all night, the vacant, defeated, almost angry face, it isn't any of those things really. It seems to be what passes for arousal for Wolfwood. Maybe not just arousal, but rather abject, pent-up, stashed away, hidden, imprisoned and clawing at the walls bodily need. Vash's attention is drawn downward. Wolfwood's cockhead is purple and poking through his shorts.

"Fuck me," Nicholas growls lowly and Vash feels his own eyes widen to unusual proportions, feels his mouth go a little dry, and his brain just sort of clunk to a halt for a moment before whirring back to life like an interrupted movie projector. Pent up lust he understands. Vash has certainly had enough of that. The ladies aren't exactly beating down his door. He'll take what he can get from whomever, but historically that has meant that he's the one getting fucked. Physically and metaphorically.

He'd better check to make sure. "You know, I'm not expert on Christianity, but don't they kinda frown on this sort of thing?"

"Shut up and take your shorts off."

Wolfwood is panting leaning over him. Vash doesn't move. Then Wolfwood looks down at their bodies notched together, his legs between Vash's, and says, "Oh," and moves off.

Vash pulls his shorts off with difficulty. He's shaking like he's been running from death all day. As soon as they're off though, Nicholas is on him and Vash calls out loud, earning him a hand over his mouth while Nicholas dives onto his cock. So slick and burning hot, rippling ridges like tidal waves, Vash tries not to make any noise, but just seeing his cock disappear into Wolfwood's mouth makes him groan loudly under his hand. The hand in question smushes Vash's face a little more in response.

He's fast, and brutal. That mouth had been so soft and even gentle when it kissed, Vash is a little overwhelmed by the ferocity of it's work on his cock. Then again, maybe he's getting what he deserves, what he asked for when he shoved his tongue down Wolfwood's throat. He's pretty sure someone has called him impulsive once or twice. He tries to just enjoy it, and fights off the urge to get what he wants by grabbing his head and bucking until he comes. That would be great, he thinks, and the fantasy makes his cock twitch dangerously against Wolfwood's teeth.

Nicholas pulls up and wipes his mouth with the heel of his hand before Vash can really get a look at and appreciate the smear of saliva on swollen lips.

"Fuck me," Nicholas says again.

Stupidly, Vash is talking again instead of just doing as the man says. "Did you plan this?"

"What?"

"This. You know. This." Vash gestures with his eyes.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh. Umm..." It's hard to think with a sex addled brain, but Vash does really want to know how this happened. Sometimes such details are important. Like in the morning when they leave and have to act normal around each other.

"Vash."

"What?"

"Later. Now, you need to fuck me before I go insane."

Vash just stares at him a second. Nicholas has his fists clenched and braced on his legs and Vash's cock twitches. "Ok," he says quickly.

Wolfwood rolls over and takes his shorts down. Vash, slightly numb and dizzy, climbs on top of him as he lays down on the mattress in the warm spot Vash had left. He's there between his legs and his cock just sort of knows where to go and points there. Wolfwood fidgets and shrugs into the pillow, concentrating heavily on Vash above him and taking his thighs in his hands. Vash has never seen him looking so exposed. Well, obviously, but he never expected to see him this way either. Not in a million years.

Vash strokes his own cock. Then makes a move toward Nicholas, then hesitates, changes his mind, does it again, stops, then strokes his cock again. Then Vash brings his hand to his mouth, first licking his fingers, then putting them in his mouth and trying to slick them up. It's hard when your mouth is dry though.

Vash puts the tips of his fingers down, but they feel cold already, evaporating, and he puts them back in his mouth.

"Vash."

"Yeah."

"Hurry."

"I am."

"Just do it."

He means fuck him. He's still a little shaky but he's not sure why. He scoots up closer, a little closer, so his bent and spread knees are under Wolfwood's thighs. He presses the head of his cock there, rubs a little. He watches as Wolfwood's eyes slip shut as he cranes his neck back over the pillow once, a stretch. They they flutter back open to look at Vash. With that intent stare on him Vash stops again, falters, then starts to move his shoulders around in circles. One up and over, then down, then the other. He licks his lips a few times and watches Wolfwood nervously.

Nicholas scowls "Vash, what are you doing."

Vash stops and feels cornered. "Just. Trying to be sexy."

Wolfwood blinks. "Vash. You don't need to be sexy."

"Oh."

"What is it? What is it you want? Tell me, we'll settle it whatever it is, then we can continue, hm?"

"Um. I've just. I've never actually done this before."

Wolfwood sits up on his elbows and glares through his eyebrows at Vash. "What are you saying to me Vash? That you're a virgin?"

"Don't be a meat head. Of course not. I've just never....done this part."

"It's not complicated, Vash. Just in and out like in the movies."

Vash is feeling a little woozy and he probably looks it too.

"What the hell is your problem?"

"Jesus Wolfwood I thought you'd know that by now. I don't like hurting people," Vash says dejectedly and looks away.

He glances back as Nicholas smirks and looks down. Then he machine gun laughs. "You're not going to hurt me Vash," he says chuckling.

Vash scowls fiercely at him and crosses his arms in front of his bare chest as if that would in some way protect him with his knees spread as they were.

Wolfwood sighs. "Listen," he says and reaches up to take a big fistful of Vash's mussed hair. "It's not that complicated, Vash. You don't have to be sexy, nobody is going to get hurt, and even you, with your unparalleled good fortune and uncanny grace can possibly screw this up."

"It doesn't hurt you?"

"If it hurts, you're doing it wrong."

"That's what I'm saying! I don't know how! I've never done it!"

Wolfwood replies calmly. "If it hurts me, I'm doing it wrong."

Vash blinks. "Oh," he says again.

"And later if you want, I'll show you how to do it right." He pulls Vash down by his hair so they are nose to nose. He smiles wickedly but genuinely for the first time that night and takes a taste of Vash's lips. Vash gets drowsy-eyed and supple and leans in closer. "Now stop fucking around, spit on it, and fuck me."

Vash groans a little and finds his mouth isn't dry anymore. He wraps a handful of wetness around his own cock, and Wolfwood, still gripping him by the mane pulls him down, down further still into an unnatural bent position until Vash is forced to just lay on him. To his surprise it all becomes much easier that way. He props himself up on his arms and he feels Nicholas's fingers on his cock. Then his body just accepts him and Nicholas groans near his ear.

Nicholas is made of the silkiest heat inside and Vash melts on him again, digging his hands under his shoulders and pressing closer, burying his face in his neck and smelling salt and smoke. Nicholas wraps his legs around Vash and as amazing as that feels, being trapped like that against him, Vash wants to move, and he wants it now.

They begin a struggle then. They each have their own ideas about how they should be moving, how fast, and where, and where the wavelengths of those rhythms mesh they pant and their bodies slap together and the bed frame bounces against the wall, and where they clash, their skin stutters, their muscles twist at each other, sweat breaks out on their backs and the bed creaks noisily. Wolfwood's cock weeps between them and Vash tries to rub against it as he thrusts forward. He can feel the smear on his chest. It's so good inside of him though, there isn't much room for thought to anything else. Wolfwood keeps grunting in his ear every time he drives in like he is pushing the air right out of him. Vash smiles a little at the thought of it, going so deep inside him that he can't breathe. He's having a little trouble himself. Taking great lungfuls at a time from the humid air around them.

Wolfwood pushes him up a bit then and takes a bite out of his mouth. Vash eagerly returns it, sucking and licking at him and nipping at his lips. They're softer than he ever would have imagined, just like Nicholas seems to be everywhere.

Nicholas kisses him once more then breathes fast against his mouth. "Come on," he whispers.

Vash understands, and pushes back up on his tired arms, rotating his hips back and his knees forward. Then Wolfwood leans back, arches, and Vash is pounding at him. Nicholas can't even make a sound or breathe between thrusts because he's going too fast. His mouth is open wide and his arm across his face hides what Vash knows are tightly furrowed brows and clamped eyelids. The bed makes more noise than both of them. Vash wonders in the back of his mind if Millie and Meryl can hear them. Probably.

It feels like running up a slide almost. Running as fast and hard as he can up a slick metal slope. He makes progress with each stride but he slides back almost as far as he moves forward every time. He will make it to the top eventually, he can tell, but the way there is so steep. So close. Wolfwood starts gasping and pulling quickly at his own cock.

A green-eyed black cat surprises Vash as it hops up on the bed next to them. He eyes it suspiciously but he doesn't stop, he doesn't dare. He just keeps sucking in air and expelling the energy into his tired hips and back and arms, trying to nail Wolfwood to the bed.

He takes little notice of the cat after it finds a good seat there next to them where it can see all the action. He is content to ignore it, until it wiggles, then leaps to perch on Vash's bare back, digging sixteen claws into his skin when it immediately lost its balance under his thrashing form. Vash yells out loud and bucks. The cat scrambles and dashes away into the darkness causing the candle on the nightstand to flicker out. And in the solid darkness as Vash whimpers and Wolfwood pants, startled, the bed creaks and groans without anyone moving on it at all. Then a long crack like slow lightning, and Vash digs his fingers into Wolfwood's arms and squeezes his eyes shut.

They fall through two floors. The floor of their own room as the mattress box breaks off the flimsy frame and shatters the dry-rotted and bowed floorboards, through a table in the bar below, then through the floor below that before they drop, screaming, into the root cellar in a massive cloud of dust and splinters.

The two naked men cling to each other for a moment, realizing through peeking eyes, that not only are they still alive, but they are still naked, still alone, for the moment, still joined at the genitals, and still extremely horny. Vash looks at Nicholas for one wide eyed moment and Nick back at him. Then he pumps at him brutishly, hard and fast as he can. He grits his teeth and shakes the dust from his hair. Soclosesoclosesoclosesoclose. Wolfwood pants and the sound of his hand working his cock, slapping and ragged friction, puts Vash up that last step to the top of that playground slide, and he stands triumphantly at the pinnacle for one moment, listening to Wolfwood roar, feeling his come splatter against his chest before sliding down that slippery slope himself and convulsing like a puppet on top of his friend.

Wolfwood coughs a little dust from his lungs and runs a hand up Vash's back. Vash is dizzy in bliss, but he thinks he can hear Millie's high pitched voice approaching. He hopes they'll just go back to bed, but he doubts that considering they just put a ten foot hole through the middle of a hotel. Certainly not the most destruction they've seen in an evening, but still.

The cat appears from nowhere and this time Vash shoves it off the bed. Or what's left of the bed. Vash sits up and looks down at Wolfwood, dirty, filthy, covered in dust and come, and smiling with sleepy eyes.

Vash hears footsteps, many sets, clomping down the stairs, more creaking wood. He hopes the stairs don't collapse too. Then he notices as Wolfwood looks up through the hole that they made and his smile slips from his face, his eyes go painful. Vash hears more splintering wood coming from above but he can not see from where he is.

Nicholas swallows and whispers, "Oh shit. What are you doing out of bed?"

Finis.

LOTRPS: VM/SB MO/OB/KU: Untitled

Untitled
Written for sectret slasha 2005, recipient dropped out however. :(
Viggo/Sean Bean, Miranda/Orlando/Karl;
rated: Adult;
request: "vm/sb, mo/ob/ku. consensual kink, romance, men acting like men. Either AU or not. Plot or PWP.".
A/N: I was so totally unprepared for this assignment it was silly. I'd never written any of these guys before except ob. And as usual I bit off more than I could chew and this got really complicated until I took it essentially back to the drawing board and lopped 60% of it off and tossed it in the bin. Now it's a reality-challenged pwp essentially. I tried.

Viggo got back to his hotel room, already buzzed and with a back-up drink in hand, to find Sean sitting on his couch, reading. Viggo paused in the doorway, and then put his glass down on the end table and sank down next to Sean as if he wasn't surprised at all to see him sitting there, and Sean removed his foot from the cushion in a mechanical motion so he could do so. Sean's eyes never left the book in the time it took Viggo's to slip closed, his head back, finger curled over the cold rim of the glass. Viggo could only hear it as the ice in his drink melted and readjusted, and as Sean finished his paragraph, put the book down, folded his reading glasses neatly and placed them on top, quietly. Like a librarian that Sean. A pornographic librarian. The tip of a smile tugged at one corner of Viggo's mouth.

"So how was your day?" Sean said mildly, and Viggo picked his head up, opened his eyes to reveal them already pointing at Sean.

Viggo gave him a slowly developed incredulous glare and Sean grinned. "Miranda hates me," he said simply and took a gulp of his drink.

"Well that works out. You hate her too."

"I don't hate her," Viggo said, dropping his voice from casual conversational to something more befitting a talk held in a dim room on a couch late at night.

"You don't?"

"No," he sighed, resigned. "It's not her fault."

"You know that is perhaps the most rational and sensible thing I've heard you say in the last week?"

"Sean, we haven't even spoken the past four days. How do you know I wasn't being rational and sensible while you were gone?”

Now it was Sean's turn to look incredulous. "So you like her now."

"No, I just don't hate her."

They shared the quiet for a moment then, nothing to say, broken only by Viggo's occasional sipping at his bourbon. "Four days," mumbled Sean. Viggo nodded absently. "When was the last time that happened?"

Viggo paused and then said, "Never."

"I thought not. There was that time when I was gone for a day and a half with the flu, but as soon as I stopped vomiting I was back."

"Mm. I remember. You looked like shit," he said with a grin. There was nothing like insulting Sean to improve his mood.

"Thank you. Are you trying to go for five?"

Viggo smirked. "You're delusional."

"No I'm just terribly sensitive," he said looking down and away, a barely visibly crease in his brow. If Viggo hadn't been so tired he would have laughed.

"Uh huh," and a half smile was all he could manage.

Sean took Viggo's sweating glass from him and set it down in the ring mark on the table. Viggo almost looked forlornly at it, but Sean took his hand and pulled him up off the couch. So he turned his head briefly and mourned the loss of both his drink and his comfy seat.

Sean started at the top of his shirt, undoing the buttons down the line quickly and quietly. Viggo had been so distracted and fatigued, it didn't occur to him to participate until Sean had Viggo down to his shorts and undershirt. Sean flashed him a half smile and rubbed his thumbs into Viggo's shoulders, squeezing from neck to back to chest. Viggo's head lost all its support just then and clunked down onto Sean's shoulder, emitting a low groan as if he was made of wood. Sean chuckled at him and took his hands off Viggo's shoulders far too quickly for Viggo's liking and he made another sound that was intended to be a protest but was too weak to be taken as anything more than a generic inarticulate noise.

Viggo woke himself up enough to lean on Sean's shoulder and get the rest of his clothes off while Sean did the same, and then they slipped into Viggo's bed. It was really too easy to do that. Just slip into bed and let their bodies melt together and snug like a two piece jigsaw. It had been easy from the beginning. And fast. Viggo smiled to himself at the thought of just how fast it had happened.

Viggo, this is Sean. Sean, Viggo.

Hiya Vig.

Hi Sean. Say Sean, is that a two-by-four in your pocket or are you just really thrilled to meet me?

Ok so it wasn't that fast, but it was fast enough. Things were much more relaxed now. They had apparently gotten over the wild kingdom initiative of gulping their prey whole so it couldn't be stolen from them. They weren't so frantic anymore. And they weren't at it every waking moment anymore either. Viggo was almost grateful for that. Almost. Maybe every other day or so now, and once in a night was ususally enough to satisfy too. But man, that first plunge into bed (and Viggo's tired, giddy mind was up to its usual childishness making him giggle inwardly at the word 'plunge' painted on the inside of his eyelids) that had been insane. He wasn't sure why it didn't kill him. They screwed like teenagers. In trailers, in the woods around the set, behind sets and large props. And then tried to keep it a secret. As if it wasn't obvious to everyone. PJ was a little oblivious to the inter-cast politics, but even he had mentioned the “chemistry” between them.

"What are you giggling about?" Sean asked him. Viggo lay there on his back, Sean leaning over him, warm hand brushing through soft chest hair. Apparently he had been tittering out loud as well.

Viggo turned his eyes to Sean's shadowed face, and it was like he very suddenly remembered why they had come together in the first place. Those months came rushing back in a flood of sweat and a crying wind of hot breath and whispered oaths. "Nothing," he said and pulled Sean down on top of him to capture his mouth and legs with his own corrisponding parts. Four days is a long time.

~~~~~

Sean had wanted to devour him hours ago. The second their eyes met over PJ's table and Viggo had stood there trying to stifle his smile. And then later when Viggo had slumped in his chair at the reading looking like a man waiting for his firing squad, like a man who had to spend a good chunk of that day and many to follow with Miranda, all he had wanted was to fuck him into the wall, into oblivion. Wanted to erase that distress from his brow and replace it with need, agony. Need only he could fill, agony only he could quell. Now though, Viggo was supine and pliant beneath him, already relaxed and just, better. Sean wondered when it had gotten so easy to read him, to give him what he needed before Sean even knew what that was. They were coming to the end of this. They both knew it. There would be pick-ups and parties and maybe even more movies, but soon, his time would be over and he would be leaving, and Viggo would stay. But for now, he had to forget that. He had to make Viggo forget it too.

Kissing him, tasting his skin, down his warm neck to hard collarbone, over, to hairy chest and ruddy nipples. Viggo's hands found Sean's hair and back, and Sean could swear he could feel Viggo adjusting, shifting, the pressure in his mind releasing while the pressure in his body, in his senses escalated.

It wasn't often that Sean felt compelled to offer himself up to get fucked. He didn't mind it, he just prefferred to top. And Viggo knew that, and it worked out ok. When Viggo wanted that position, he would ask and Sean was almost always happy to oblige. But he had spent the last four days stuck in a tin can they called a carivan while the sky opened day after day and rained, drumming the metal, chilling everything to the core, ruining shoots before they started. And they said the stuff with him at Minas Tirith would likely get cut anyway. There was some motivation for you. To be freed, to be posessed once again, to have Viggo claim him after being cut off for an unprecedented amount of time since this whole thing started; it suddenly sounded really good. He was just about to whisper in his ear the suggestion that they roll over, imagined the dangerous little smile that would spread over Viggo's face at the words, and he braced himself up on his arms and looked straight down at him. Sean had never seen him looking so needful. Not even when Sean had whittled away at him for hours with his hands and mouth and cock, trying to crack him but not letting him break. It wasn't his expression so much, which was mostly placid, a tint of anxiety still at the corners of his eyes. It was more subtle than that. His lips were gently parted as if to silently bleat, jaw cocked, his eyes glassy and wide, entreating, and yet. Maybe it was the force with which he restrained it behind his face, tried to keep Sean from seeing how much he needed, maybe that was what made him look so hungry, so deprived. Viggo would let it loose when they fucked. Everybody lost it during sex, it was like burping at a Japanese restaurant. If you don't show some enthusiasm between the sheets, you're going to make your partner think he's no good. But outside of that, Viggo was a rock. Well, maybe a really hard clump of clay. Sean smirked down at him. Viggo just wasn't the type to openly need someone else in a way that wasn't transient, like sex. Neither was Sean really, but that was ok too. It could remain unspoken without being forgotten or ignored. Sean wanted possession, but Viggo needed it more right now. Four days was too long.

The momentary pause overwith, the tense, wordless exchange done, Viggo submitted with his posture and deep breathing as Sean covered him with his body, and reached up and covered them both with the sheet. Viggo wrapped his limbs around Sean and kissed his neck, sucking the warm skin into his mouth softly, getting as much of the taste of it as he could, then letting go and finding a new spot to suck. He seemed startled by the rough brush of Sean's thigh on his erection as Sean eased himself down a little to resume courting Viggo's chest, taking his own neck regrettably out of range of Viggo's mouth.

Sean kissed his way down Viggo's body under the warm tent of the sheet and sucked his cock into his mouth. Viggo moaned quite clearly as Sean sunk down completely on him and tried to spread his lips to take in everything he could, holding down hard against Viggo's groin and letting his eyes flutter shut at the salty musk and the tickle of hair against his nose. He bobbed back up and sucked, painting the underside with his flat tongue. Viggo's fingers found his hair again and his whole body writhed. Sometimes Sean just liked to get comfortable down there and suck Viggo slow and long, stroking himself with his free hand, the other gripping tight to the base of Viggo's cock. He could get into a rythm with it, and the weight of Viggo on his tongue and the burn in his jaw and cheeks would lull him, quiet him so that the need in his groin faded to the background. What was truly amazing was when Viggo would come, (it could take forever with the agonizing pace Sean would set for them, but it would happen eventually) the second Viggo's orgasm began to rock his body, Sean would start to come too. That always made for a spectacular evening, but that was not in order either. So Sean pulled himself away from Viggo's cock again, eliciting a breathy whimper from the man that made Sean smile.

Back up head to head above the sheets, Sean reached up and turned out the remaining bedside light and then ground his hips down against Viggo's, feeling him return the pressure from below. Then Sean reached up yet again, (four days and he'd forgotten how to do this efficiently) and produced the lube from the nightstand. A half moment later he was sliding into the pliant and very willing body beneath him, humming his pleasure into Viggo's neck, loving the thick pressure and tight heat, and then the slow drag and riptide of the retreat.

Way too long. And Viggo lost his composure quickly. Sean fucked him hard, and even in the darkness he could see the tight knot Viggo was in, how much he needed to have the burden of the character lifted from him so he could recouperate and bear it better, later. He needed to be taken apart, forced to drop that load and sleep the night without it. Sean was grateful he knew how to do that.

Sean stopped a moment and Viggo came back to his body and seemed to look at him, puzzled and fizzy in the dark. He smiled and slid open the drawer of the nightstand once more. Viggo's eyes got a little big as Sean tightened the cockring around him, and he let out a harsh little breath that made Sean just a little impatient with is own ring. This is defineitly a two cockring night, he thought to himself, nearly chuckling.

He pushed back into Viggo's body and his cock fucking throbbed, massively, painfully, but it would so be worth it, he knew. Viggo was gasping with each inhale and making inarticulate cries on every exhale within just a few minutes and Sean had to fight with him to keep his hands off his own cock, so desperate, so undone, and yet Sean knew he could push him so much further.

~~~~~

Orlando lay prone on his mattress, pretending to read a book. He checked to make sure he was holding it right side up at least, but he wasn't turning the pages. Every little movment of his body set him on fire, and he wondered if you could die from blue balls. A few misty drops of sweat developed on his nose. He seriously wanted to kill who ever thought this would be a good idea.

Karl slouched against the wall behind the other bed with his own book in his hands, ankles crossed. Something Orlando wished was silence gripped the room for another moment or so and then Karl sighed heavily and let his head smack the wall behind him lightly. "Are you sure they're in Viggo's room, not Sean's?"

"Positive," Orlando said, his lower jaw propped up on his fist and his whole head moving with each sylable.

"And is it always like this?"

"Mm. It's a bit louder tonight than usual. Its been four days after all." That sounded nonchalant. Not like he takes down statistics on it, sits there measuring the decibles in the room night after night. Did it sound like that?

Karl rolled his head back and forth a couple times on the wall. "Going to need bloody ear plugs just to get any sleep," he mumbled. Orlando prayed he would just go to bed and decided maybe he could ruse him into it by putting his own book away and feigning fatigue.

Sean and Viggo, two rooms away down the hall were fucking each other's brains out, so hard and so loud, Orlando had no idea which one of them was yelling the obscenities he was hearing, but it didn't really matter. He had had plenty of fantasies about both of them, getting fucked by them, singly or in tandem. It was embarrassing sometimes. He had to work with these people, and between his fantasy life and their moaning, he was amazed he could face them at all. But he had far more fantasies about Karl. Even in the short time that he had known him. Dangerous fantasies that were realistic enough as to be plausable.

Orlando tossed his book away and let his head and arm dangle over the matress. "Why is it those two are the only ones that ever get laid around here?" he said gloomily to the floor.

Karl looked over at Orlando, a movement registered only in the very outer reaches of Orlando's vision. Orlando looked up at him. Karl's big empahtic eyebrows went from low to high in an uneven motion, and then Karl turned out his reading light and turned over in his bed.

~*~

Miranda might have been dripping on him, Orlando. She couldn't be sure. Karl was blocking the view, sadly, but she couldn't really think of a way in which she could get her pie and watch it too, or however the hell that expression went, so she settled for straddling the pretty young Brit who was on all fours on the floor between the beds, with Karl behind him, and Karl's face between her legs. She wasn't sure if dripping on him would be good or bad, considering. She doubted it would change anything for any of them, but she wondered, privately, if Orlando would dissaprove. She really couldn't tell what was going on with him actually. He was so quiet for all of this.

It was ok. She was going to fully enjoy this whether he chose to or not. She did it for both of them, partly because Karl was an ass and didn't deserve Orlando's attention, and partly because, well, just because. Karl was pretty good, she couldn't complain. She balanced herself with her hands on his head as a tremor starting from her groin crawled up her body and made her left leg tremble just a little. She panted and rubbed her thumb across Karl's brow, a silent encouragement, and burried her fingers in his hair. So warm, and Orlando's flanks rubbed against the insides of her legs lightly with his slight movements beneath her. And she wondered why Karl hadn't come yet. Not that she was complaining, but it occurred to her that if she was fucking Orlando and eating her out at the same time, she might have come already, and the mere thought made her momentarily dizzy. Karl lapped at her and made an obscene sucking noise that seemed to ricochet around her skull. He tried to get his hands on her, but he was leaned so far forward he couldn't keep his balance like that. She was wary of it, wary of what he would do with those hands when they got there, but he was so good and she was so far gone, she walked forward a little and he reached up grabbed her bare hips tightly. That was ok. He slouched at the new angle to thrust his tongue into her, and he hummed his pleasure as he did so. It was maddening because all she wanted was for him to keep sucking her clit and licking at it with that wicked tongue, and yet, the penetration was wildly erotic. He moved one thumb over to her shaved lip, tugging at it just a little, and she batted him away testily. He rumbled and sucked hard on her and that was what sent her gyrating and half collapsing on top of Karl. She came with three or four whimpering moans, digging fingernails into Karl's skull, trying to keep him on the spot and tear him away from it at the same time, gasping for breath and keenly aware of the soft flesh shivvering between her knees.

She always laughed a little after she came. She doesn't know why. The other two didn't comment, but Karl gave her a little nervous look, like maybe he was reconsidering the possibility that she was crazy after all. Orlando's head was dropped down, hanging between his taught arms, quiet and breathing. Karl was simply paused behind him, looking like he forgot his line, and she backed off of Orlando and sat on the bed, shameless and open, her hair falling around her shoulders.

“Come on,” she whispered to him, and threaded her fingers through the wetness between her legs. She coated a finger, twirling her wrist around, and ran it through the slit, enjoyed the delicious tickle, and then watched Karl as it dissapeared inside of her. As expected, his hips cocked forward to thrust into Orlando, and she felt like a delightfully nefarious puppeteer. Miranda smiled and slid her finger out again and rubbed a little, just lightly on the spot since it was still hypersensitive, and spread her legs a little more for Karl to see. Two fingers now, they slid in and she watched as Karl's brow knit just a little with want, slack-jaw, and his hips pushed forward. She fucked herself with her fingers slow and easy and watched Karl sink into Orlando and match her pace exactly, thrust for thrust.

~*~

Karl was way beyond disbelief. If you had asked him when he got the part what his plans were for the first couple of weeks on the set, they wouldn't have included a twisted, sick, and otherwise fucked up tryst with his castmates. He wouldn't have told you he intended to develop an unhealthy and gunshot-fast obsession with a lesbian. Nor would he have told you he would break every rule in his own book to attain her. That just wasn't what he was expecting. Nor was he expecting to find himself buggering another man in the ass just to get a taste of her (seemed kind of like going from Melbourne to Sydney via Glasgow when he thought about it) when she had explicitly told him there would never be more than that. And she wanted to watch. That was possibly the most astounding thing. She thought this was hot. It wasn't just another demonstration of exactly how easy it was for her to control him, oh no. She'd already proven that she could make him do just about anything, which was again, a surprise to him. He remembered licking her red boots yesterday in the minute and a half they were left alone. Pointed toes and warm leather. That smell. He did it gladly and his mind still balked at that fact. This was her goal all along. To watch the two of them, and she wasn't hiding it at all anymore.

He could have stopped. It was fucking kinky after all. He liked Orlando. They had been practically inseperable since they met. Karl counted him a friend, and you dont fuck your friends. That was one of those rules he was breaking. So it felt just a little odd using him like that. Not that Orlando had seemed very resistant to the idea. Hesitant perhaps, but who wouldn't be. It was fucking kinky.

Though he did wonder, if it didn't bother him, why he was so quiet. Orlando isn't quiet. It made Karl wonder exactly how meaningful this was to him. If maybe that was the whole thing. If that was why he had an Orlando-shaped appendage lately. If that was why Orlando hadn't been sleeping since Miranda got there and the two of them got railroaded into sharing a room.

That room was starting to feel foggy and very warm. He made her come with his mouth, and she was done but not finished, it appeared. And niether was he. Because as long as she wasn't finished, neither was he, neither was Orlando. She was there on the bed, five feet away from him, not touching him or holding a gun to his head or doing anything that should have had any influence over his own will, and yet he was doing what she wanted. Because she wanted it. Somehow her getting what she wanted was getting confused in his brain with him getting what he wanted. There had to be a crossed wire somewhere.

He watched her, not him. He was fucking him. He was fucking fucking Orlando and that was a little disturbing to consider, because as hot as the kid was, he hadn't even considered it before then. It wasn't disturbing enough though, to tear his eyes off of her salatious tongue at the corner of her mouth and the wet fingers. Her pink toes came up off the floor and touched Orlando's head in an artistic caress that Karl couldn't imagine his own toes being capable of. She smiled serenely at Orlando and seemed to let her eyes smooth up and down his back and the landscape of taught muscles and skin.

It was hard to think with your cock burried in so much heat and wet satin, but it was about then that Karl realized that this had very little to do with him and Miranda. This was about Orlando. Orlando was doing it for him. Why, he couldn't be sure, maybe Orlando was concealing a feeling for Karl a bit deeper than freindship. And Miranda was doing this for Orlando. Twisted as that might be.

Karl had his hands on Orlando's back and a film of sweat glued them there as he continued his slow rhythm. He looked up at Miranda again and that witch doctor look in her eyes told him he was right. Maybe this wasn't as fucked up as it seemed on the exterior. Maybe this did make sense. And myabe this obsession was jsut a little bit misplaced.

Karl leaned over Orlando a little more to take his left shoulder in hand and squeeze and slide his thumb over the hard lump of muscle. Nothing happened really, but Karl was trying hard to communicate his understanding thorugh his hands. He leaned over him some more so that his chest scooped around Orlando's long back, and he folded him up in his arms and pulled him up against him. He slid up into Orlando's body again and hummed a little against the back of his head. With his face over Orlando's shoulder he could see the young man's eyes closed, jaw slack, skin flushed. His body was tight in front of Karl and yet he seemed unstable, so Karl trapped him with an arm across his chest. His pace quickened a little because really, Orlando felt as good as he looked. And he didn't know exactly what he thought he was doing, but he put his lips to the side of Orlando's face and kissed him once. It made sense in his head at least. If you can't kiss your mate while you're fucking him in the ass when can you? But Orlando opened his eyes then and looked at Karl, and Karl looked back knowing he probably looked as pink faced and sweaty as Orlando did. There was a moment there that maybe he should have expected. If you're going to look someone in the eyes while their body is pressed against yours and impaled upon you, there is bound to be something more exchanged there than just fluids and a casual regard.

Orlando's eyes slid closed again as he twisted himself to kiss Karl. Karl found himself smiling just a little as they came together too, and suddenly this was all a little bit hotter, a little more than just a lustful release. Karl canted his hips up and Orlando made the first sound he'd made since before Miranda walked in the door that night, a little huff of air and voice yanked out of him. He started to go slack and Karl tightened his grip around his chest. Their tongues mingled within the heat of their sealed lips until Orlando broke it and let his head fall back onto Karl's shoulder and moaned as Karl slid thickly into him again. Karl smiled and nibbled Orlando's neck.

With his free hand, Karl stroked slowly down Orlando's chest and felt his abdomen quiver as he brushed over it. Orlando sucked in a breath when his hand circled around his cock and gave it a gentle squeeze and a pull. A few strokes and Orlando, with his knees spread over Karl's, began thrusting up and down, rocking between Karl's fist and his cock. Every time he sat down, Karl's cock sank into him and Karl made a painful-sounding grunt, and then he would thrust upward again into Karl's tight fist, releasing the pressure on Karl's cock and eliciting a whimper from Orlando's lips until he came back down again. Karl was getting close and he really didn't want to be, but by the way Orlando was tensing and clutching at him, he thought he was probably almost there too. What he really wanted to do was get him on the bed.

Orlando looked almost panic-stricken when Karl let go of him and slid out of his body. Karl guided him up off the hard floor and onto the other bed on his back and Orlando relaxed and smiled a little up at him. Here, he could go to town, and he did. He eased into a rhythm again and grinned when Orlando gasped a little every time he brushed that perfect little spot and every time he clenched down on him eliciting noises from Karl as well. Braced on his arms over him, Karl kissed Orlando again and started pumping furiously into him feeling the heat wash over his head and the air rush from his lungs. Orlando came with his hands on his own cock between them, tugging at it and crying out over and over, back curled and abdomen tight as he rocked. Karl could only watch him like that a moment before his own body let loose his empathy. He struck into him hard and fast, squeezing wide-eyed little noises from Orlando that rang in his ears and clashed with the sounds Miranda made from her box seat on the other bed as she came again. Everything tightened and the delicious pulsing in his cock counterpointed his pulse until everything began to drain away like thinned paint.

He collapsed next to Orlando on the little bed and just breathed for several moments. Off in some distant part of his mind he could hear Miranda gathering her clothes. Then she was leaning on the bed over them, half dressed. She smiled sweetly. “Good boys,” she whispered and bent over to kiss Orlando fully and the two of them looked so insanely beautiful together, Karl was momentarily jealous of both of them at the same time. Then she kissed Karl too and he could taste a little of everything on her, but a lot of Orlando, and suddenly he knew he didn't need to be jealous.

She bounced into her jeans and shut the door quietly behind her, leaving the two of them in the barely lit room before they even had a chance to think about peeling themselves off the bed.

Karl looked over at Orlando and felt the first stirrings of worry. This changed things. Surely this had to change things in some way. Orlando turned and looked at Karl and the high arch of his eyebrows mirrored Karl's, and they laughed at each other. Karl snickered and turned over to pull Orlando to him. Orlando's own mirth died down and he simply smiled as he curled his hands up against Karl's chest and kissed him.

Yes, this changed things.

~*~

“Are you sure they're in Orlando's room? Sounds like they're right next door.”

“Yeah.”

“Sounds like all three of them are in there.”

“Mm,” Sean grunted in acknowledgement, never taking his eyes off his book even as Viggo ran a tempting finger up and down his half-interested shaft. Viggo propped himself up in bed and listened.

“I thought the point of Karl and Orlando sharing a room was so that Miranda could have her own until we got back to Wellington.”

Sean placed a fingertip on his spot on the page and looked at Viggo over the rim of his glasses. “Well if those three want to shack up together, there's no reason Dom and Billy need to share a room too.”

“I'm pretty sure they want to.”

“Oh.”

“They've been apart a few days too.”

“Mm,” he said again and snugged an arm under Viggo, giving him a crooked smile.

LOTRPS: OB/EW: Grow Up In Time

Title: Grow Up in Time
Author: Wichetty G
Fandom/Pairing/Genre: lortrps, ob/ew, Slash
Prompt: Seven of Wands http://img.photobucket.com/albums/0903/telesilla/tarot/wa07.jpg
Rating: pg-13 for naughty words
Warnings: none
Disclaimer: not real made up fiction
Summary: There's chemistry on the set, there's misunderstandings and missteps, but it all works out.
Notes: Meanings: Upright: The ability to "hold one's own" against
adversaries, stiff competition in business, a fight won, a fight one
may have to face soon, victory, energy, courage
Reversed: The threat will pass by, don't let others take advantage,
caution against indecision, patience
A/N: This isn't terribly good, but it's what I came up with. I was going for layers of meaning that might come out with a second read, or a first read if you really want to digest it. Let me know if I come close to that mark at all - or fall no where near, of course.

“This is a long cut. Forty-five seconds. You're just walking along the ridge. At about twenty seconds, I'll cue you and you stop, look back at Pippin. He'll catch up to you and you start walking again. Don't worry about where everybody else is. Got it?” Elijah nods and scratches very carefully through the top of his wig shifting from foot to foot the way he does. Orlando looks away, inward.

They'll spend a day at the beach perhaps. Just them. The other guys will be busy or won't want to go. Maybe it will be raining, it does that often enough, but Orlando will convince him to come out anyway. They can laugh and try to drown each other like usual. They'll surf, badly, then call it a day when Elijah's teeth are chattering and they're too tired to move anymore. Sand-burned, salty, cold, exhausted, dry-eyed. They'll go back to Orlando's place. Why. Maybe Elijah will just want to. Elijah's place is messy and he doesn't want Orlando to see it, or Orlando will just suggest it. He won't ask why. He'll just happen to have a movie that Elijah has been wanting to see. And he'll not have Flipper anywhere in sight. And they'll take a shower. God he wants to do that together, but that's probably pushing it. Maybe it'll happen on the couch. They'll be watching the movie, and Elijah will cuddle up to him like he does. -Orlando can't suppress the smile entirely. It's so easy for Elijah.- He won't ignore him this time, pretend he doesn't even notice like the sad pitiful git he is. He'll smile down at him, the movie playing on but neither of them paying attention anymore. He'll see it in his eyes. That look you see in the movies he wants to be in. Then he'll lean down and press their lips together. And the rest...well.

Not a good idea to take the fantasy to its natural conclusion while wearing tights.

“Ok Orlando, You have ten seconds to get from your first mark to your second. Plenty of time, so take it easy. Just make sure you're standing there by the time Merry looks at you. And don't second guess yourself on that interaction. You have it.” Penny urges him back onto his mark and he glances at Elijah who is standing off to the side with his coffee. He looks like a hobbit but he's concentrating like a surgeon.

People call him immature and childish. People call them both immature and childish. No way. Maybe him, but not Elijah. For one thing, he's been a working professional for as long as Orlando has had pubes. Maybe Dom knows them a little better than that. He's the same age about. Knows where they stand, has spent more time with both of them. Elijah can act like a little kid, has the energy of one, the open mind, and it brings those same things out in Orlando. But there is so much more to him.

Orlando is quickly coming to another realization. He can't hold it in much longer. He hasn't been this star struck since Superman. Hasn't wanted to be near someone, one person and not just in general, in a while. It's killing him slowly and deliciously. He doesn't think he's being obvious. No one here knows him well enough yet for his behavior to seem unusual But they're going to find out sooner or later. And he'd prefer to tell them, to have someone else in on the secret for the exciting parts rather than have them just find out and then avoid the subject.

“Marks!”

~*~

“I didn't tell you so you could fucking...chew my....arse about it.” Orlando growls it, his vision actually fading a little pink around the edges. He feels stupid as he usually does when he's angry. Stupid because he can't think straight enough to form words in poignant and cutting strings when his blood is pumping this fast, and when it would be most useful. Stupid for trusting. Stupid because they're probably right, but he has to defend himself anyway, doesn't he? Because he can't just admit that maybe he's wrong; not now. If he did he'd be stupid for bringing it up in the first place and not just stupid for being inarticulate and young.

“Orlando!” Billy says it as if Orlando was a child caught reaching for cookies he was just told to leave alone. “We're not trying to castigate you.” Castigate. How does he come up with a word like that right now, in the middle of an argument, and drunk besides? “We're just saying that this...could be a very bad idea.”

“Crazy, Orlando. He's American, he's a child star, you know about them, he says things like 'Dood you are such uh fartknockur.', and he's your castmate for chrissakes,” Dominic gruffs. Orlando has begun chewing on his fingernail and trying not to get lost in all the things being said before he gets a chance to rebut. He was excited just a moment ago. He's been excited and floating for weeks. Now he's crashed, betrayed it feels like, and he wants to go back in time just a few minutes and clap a hand over his own stupid mouth before Five-Minutes-Ago-Orlando gets a chance to blow his evening. The other two are still gaping and giving him those cross worried eyes over their pints. He doesn't even want his anymore. “I mean. Bills and me. We may want to shag like rabbits, but we don't. 'S unprofessional.” Dom smiles fondly at Bill who dismisses it with an eye roll and refocuses on Orlando.

“We have months left of this shoot. And then we're going to be together for premiers and appearances and-” And Bill swallows as the enormity of their futures spans out before him. Orlando has looked into it too and shivered with anticipation, fluttering stomach. Feels pretty much the same way when he looks at Lij. “And just everything. We're going to be together for a long time yet and if it went bad, you'd be stuck together and hating it. AND. Not to mention the negative impact of such a thing for both of you if it got out. No. Just, no,” Bill says and shakes his head as if he were the one making the decision.

But that's exactly why, Orlando thinks to himself. And he realizes as soon as he's thought it that those aren't very good reasons when put in Billy's words. The first part, ok. The fact that they are going to be spending the next several months together was a plus not a minus in his mind. If this was a short film, if they were going to be leaving and going their separate ways in a few weeks, Orlando might have been able to resist the temptation to bugger everything up, or, whatever. But the fact that they have time just means that they have a chance where so many others do not. A chance for something real. He blushes as if Dom and Bill could hear the truly immasculine and nancy way his heart is singing at the thought. And the second part, the fact that it's fucking dangerous, well. He's a junkie. He admits it freely. And it's not limited to taunting actual death. Apparently he likes to flirt with career suicide as well. Or so he thinks at the moment anyway. He also thinks every thrill was worth the broken bones he paid with. Only thing that bugs him about it is the little voice in the very back of his head, somewhere spineless and sort of squishy, that reminds him that Elijah doesn't do stupid, risky things like throw himself off of bridges, or houses. He's not the sort to gamble away his career for something that isn't likely to pan out.

Dom is staring at Bill in an odd way that Orlando can't quite chalk up to beer, but neither does it seem to fit. He might even be looking at him the way one watches something sad but expected happen. “Why...?” Dom trails off. It seems like he wanted to define that question a little more but couldn't quite manage it. In that way only, he and Bill differ. As Dom drinks he gets less articulate, whereas Bill can get downright dangerous with his vocabulary when he's pissed. But Dom's not totally gone. His snark and concern has been replaced by honest inquiry now, and Orlando is starting to calm. Another moment and he should be able to extract the essence of words from his feelings and thoughts and get them to his mouth again without sounding like a twat.

He takes a breath and stares into his murky beer. Parts of that question he has answers for, and he knows they do too. 'Why Elijah' is easy. They're all in love with him. Even John has a soft spot for him. Possibly the only soft spot that man has. He might be asking, 'Why now', but that's straightforward too if you give it half a thought. You don't let opportunities pass you by. They may not come around again. Maybe the question is 'Why you'. What makes him so special that he deserves this? Why does he think he has a right to make the attempt never mind hang on to something like Elijah. What does he have to offer?

And Orlando deflates because he doesn't have an answer. “Maybe you're right.” Stupid.

He keeps staring at his beer, but he can hear a little sad relief in Bill's voice. “Really Orlando, I know you like him. We all do. But he's too young, and you both have too much at stake.”

The music and noise in the bar don't match the disappointment that is creeping into Orlando and he wants to go home. “I wouldn't be any good for him,” he mumbles.

Elijah picks that moment to approach, descend, and immediately crash land into Orlando's lap. “Hey!” he says with enormous and bright eyes directed at Orlando; eyes that render him almost completely useless in seconds. He's sweaty and jungle-hot from dancing and drinking. “Beer,” he says and downs several gulps of Orlando's ignored drink. “Are you guys going to sit here all night?”

He's looking at Orlando, waiting for a response, anticipating, hoping. Orlando gives him a tight smile and then pats his leg a little, stiffening beneath him until Elijah slides off Orlando's thigh onto his own seat beside him, waning.

Bill and Dom are looking at each other. Orlando flares up again inside. Betrayal is gone in the dust. This is jealousy. Not light green and just budding, but a fully formed verdant envy, glossy and rooted under their eyes. He wants that. He wants to be able to communicate with some other person like that. To just exchange a look and know what the other is thinking. And he wants to enjoy the process of developing that sixth sense. He looks back to Elijah who's looking at all three of them in turn and all he sees is confusion.

“You guys want another round or something?” Elijah tries.

“I think you've probably had enough, Doodle.” Bill says softly, from somewhere else. Orlando watches as hard angles creep quietly into Elijah's face.

“Well. Then I guess I'm going home. You good to drive Lando?”

“Wait, Orlando,” Dom says, glancing from Bill to Elijah and back, but he doesn't finish the thought again.

Orlando had one pint, and Elijah drank most of it. Dom and Bill, though pretty lucid Orlando can tell, are not drivable at the moment. They still have Bill's car in the parking lot, so they can't all go in Elijah's car, and there is no way he's letting Elijah drive. Ten minutes ago. Ten-Minutes-Ago-Orlando would have jumped at the opportunity. This Orlando realizes that the next hour may be uncomfortable. “Yeah,” he says stiffly.

He has about ninety seconds to get himself under control, he figures. Walking out the door and to the car will take about ninety seconds. In that time he needs to stop feeling elated that he's going to be alone with Elijah for the next twenty minutes on the ride home, and he needs to start putting some distance between them. Right. Ninety seconds. Nice long shot.

~*~

“I know. I just worry about the effect it would have on Elijah. Orlando's older, more experienced than Lij.”

“Yeah, so? How is that a bad thing?”

“He's going to get Elijah caught up in something he's not prepared for and it'll end badly and we'll all suffer.”

“How do you know it wouldn't be the best thing in the world for him? How do you know he doesn't have any experience? Maybe this is exactly what he wants.”

“Orlando thinks he's in love. And I'm a fecking idiot. He doesn't know it, but he thinks he's being martyred now that we've gone and given him his opposition, and it just makes it all that much more attractive to him. He probably thinks Elijah will find it irresistible, too.”

“How do you know he isn't in love?” The pitch of Dom's voice is slowly rising. He can hear it in his head but is powerless to stop it. Rain is swooshing against the windowpane near their table.

“Because. It's Orlando.”

“Well there's a fine bit of logic right there.”

“He's a grown up child. I'm not saying it's his fault. Everybody is like that at his age.”

Dom clenches his jaw once. “Since you have it all figured out Bill, why don't you call up Orlando's mobile and tell him exactly what he thinks and feels. And while you're at it, maybe you can decode me and tell me who I'm not in love with.”

Bill pauses, taken aback apparently, blinks, slack lips apart like he knows now he's missed something, but maybe a little too drunk yet to analyze the situation. “Who are you in love with?” he asks softly, then, “And why are you so testy all of a sudden?” Forgetting again.

“Sometimes Bill, you can be a really thick headed prick. Come on. We're leaving.”

~*~

“What's wrong with you?”

I'm torturing myself. That's all. Orlando rolls his head on the back of Elijah's couch. “Headache.”

“Lightweight.”

“You should talk.”

Elijah pokes him in the head as if to see for himself where it hurts. Orlando shifts his eyes to him patiently, but then he's rubbing chewed off fingertips, round and soft into Orlando's head. Just two fingers moving in tiny circles in one spot and then moving to another. He prods around his temples like testing the freshness of a cantaloupe and Orlando's eyes slide closed. Then Elijah pokes his nose once with a nubby finger and Orlando can't help but half-smile, and his eyes crack open a sliver in time to see Elijah return it. The fingertips gain momentum and seriousness as they go back to the temples and rub in earnest. Orlando can't keep his eyes open, not in the face of this, and the quiet and the touch and the sincerity of the moment are making his pulse race. Furthermore, he wonders if Elijah can feel the speed increase in the vein under his fingers or if he's completely oblivious to the effect he has on Orlando. The idea that he might doesn't help keep his pulse down at all.

He jumps just a little when he feels Elijah's breath on his face but he has no where to go, so the jump is little more than a flinch out of an agog trance, and then his eyes open. He's right there, inches away, and no force in the Universe is strong enough to prevent it, certainly not Orlando's pitiful compliment of willpower. Orlando groans and leans in, catches Elijah's lips, tastes, feels, electrocuted and drugged, once, twice, then groans again and yanks himself away. He needs way more time to get this under control. Ninety seconds didn't do it.

He turns the other direction and mentally wrestles topsy-turvy inside his own head with the want vibrating through him. He's dizzy with it for a moment.

Elijah sighs heavily. “Not you, too.”

Orlando is destitute, but the oddity of that statement catches his attention. He scowls, looks to the audience, and then back to Elijah. “What?”

“Why does everyone think I'm a naïve little child?"

Orlando gapes a little.

“Do I like just give off this vibe like I'm an idiot or something? I don't think I'm stupid...Though I suppose if I was stupid enough I wouldn't know it.” He's looking bug-eyed at the carpet, exasperated.

“You're not stupid.”

“Then why does everyone treat me like I need to be protected from myself?”

Orlando gapes some more. He doesn't know what else to do. It reminds him of school. Of some science class he had. The teacher delighted in asking his class questions that had no answers. Or all the answers were wrong. He knows Elijah isn't a child. Has never felt that way. But he can't deny his own actions either. Once again he feels like a dunce.

“I'm sorry,” he says, for lack of something less lame to say. They sit there a while and Orlando kind of wishes he had gotten drunk at the bar. That would make this all so much easier. Well, harder later, easier now. “I don't think you're a child. If anyone is naïve, it's me. I should go," he says quickly with a shudder in his voice as he stands and leaves.

~*~

Billy and Dom, hobbited from head to toe, have been huddled off in a corner of a rain shelter all morning. Hours they've been there. Their conversation has had peaks and valleys as Orlando judged based on how wide their mouths opened as they spoke and how many hand gestures they got in, but it never stopped all morning. And then, just like the rain, at noon, it stopped. Completely and utterly. They faced opposite directions, sourly, while makeup was reapplied to their wet ears and glue fixed on their calves. They aren't speaking at all now as far as Orlando can tell from a hundred meters or so away, and he can't even imagine what sort of horror could cause a phenomenon such as that. He thought about going over and asking them just that question, break the monstrous fucking glacier that had sprung up between them, maybe a little, but he suspected the joke was just poor enough to glance off it and plop into a puddle. Dom has a mighty furrow between his brows, the kind Merry only wears when Pippin has been an idiot and Orlando finds himself frowning too. Bill just looks too old to be Pippin at the moment, and maybe a little hunched and disgusted.

Elijah, on the other hand, is scarce. Orlando is somewhat relieved to see little of him today, though. Just means he can put off dealing with last night. Of course he knows it won't last, but maybe it will last long enough that they can pretend it didn't happen. He looks around a bit, people are brushing water off of equipment and fixing scenery. Looks like they might just get a few takes in before dark. Then his eyes wander back over to Bill and Dom, and they do so just in time to see a spark of inquisitive hobbit reappear in Dom's face as he looks off to the other side of the set, more or less in Orlando's direction.

Then Elijah is standing right next to him, straight and tall, for a hobbit, script in hand with its rolled pages and yellow notes sticking out of it, including a little scrap of looseleaf with a drawing on it that Orlando had made for him some other rainy day, now stapled to the front cover. It's a loopy-haired stick figure with glasses and “Doodle the doodle” written below in exaggerated child's script.

“You don't look happy, Elf,” he says very softly, so that only Orlando can hear. Funny thing is, he is happy. Right now he is, with Lij there. Nervous as fuck, but happy. He just shrugs though. Elijah scoops up Frodo's cloak and takes a seat on a folding chair next to him, leans on his knees a moment.

He can't keep looking at him. Guys don't do that. They don't just sit there face to face and look at each other. They can sit at right angles or side by side and look away, and still be sitting together, but that's it, so that's what he does. Again he's just a millisecond behind the action because as he steers away as nonchalantly as his nerves will allow, he sees Dom and Bill, no, this is Merry and Pip all the way now, not looking at Orlando or Elijah, not looking at their scripts or Pete or anybody or anything of importance, looking all around, looking at the sky, inspecting their nails. Pip goes so far as to sigh loud enough for Orlando to hear from all the way across the set and then look at him and smile big and wave as if he's only just noticed Orlando's regard.

“I had a talk with Dom last night,” Elijah says.

What is going on? Whatever it is he doesn't think he can handle it, and he thinks about throwing Elijah over his shoulder and running away with him. The thought quirks a smile from the corner of his mouth. He turns to Elijah to find him looking at Bill and Dom too with a similar expression.

Penny is putting new marks on the ground a ways away. Pete is chatting. Ian is laughing with one of the make-up guys, and no one seems to be even slightly interested in what is going on with the elf and the hobbit sitting under the canvas glistening with sunlit raindrops.

Elijah chuckles and Orlando looks back to Dom and Bill who do it again, this time really hamming it up, whistling tunelessly and rolling their eyes around in their heads.

He chuckles once more then leans in toward Orlando. “Hey.”

Orlando turns to him and all he sees is “Doodle the doodle” in his left eye before both his eyes close instinctively and Elijah is kissing him quite soundly behind the very small wall of his script. His small hand doesn't pull, just guides at Orlando's jaw and it all fits so perfectly together. Just them. And Doodle.

It's over way too quickly and Orlando is looking around dazedly and blushing. Then he sees Dom and Bill from across the set again, bouncing and tittering and laughing, their fingers tangling with each others'. Elijah just laughs, squirms in his seat a little and says, “They're such children.”