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fellowshippers2005-05-21 03:20 pm
pecos.livejournal.com) wrote in fellowshippers2005-05-21 03:20 pm
BDL6: Empty Arms
TITLE: Beyond Design Limitations
CHAPTER: Six – Empty Arms
AUTHOR: Pecos – PecosPhil@sprintmail.com
WEBSITE: http://www.chimerafic.com
BETA: Gloria Mundi - viva_gloria@livejournal.com
RATING: Varies by chapter. This one is PG13
DISCLAIMER: I don’t make the toys, I’m only playing with them. No money made, nor disrespect intended. This is FICTION
WHAT IS IT?: RPS / AU Sequel to ‘Prophecy: Destiny & Design’
WHO’S IN IT?: Sean Bean, Orlando Bloom, Johnny Depp, Viggo Mortensen and other actors from ‘The Lord of the Rings’, ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’, ‘Hidalgo’ and others
TITLE: Beyond Design Limitations
CHAPTER: Six – Empty Arms
AUTHOR: Pecos – PecosPhil@sprintmail.com
WEBSITE: http://www.chimerafic.com
BETA: Gloria Mundi - viva_gloria@livejournal.com
RATING: Varies by chapter. This one is PG13
DISCLAIMER: I don’t make the toys, I’m only
playing with them. No money made, nor
disrespect intended. This is FICTION
WHAT IS IT?: RPS / AU
Sequel to ‘Prophecy: Destiny & Design’
WHO’S IN IT?: Sean Bean, Orlando Bloom,
Johnny Depp, Viggo Mortensen and other
actors from ‘The Lord of the Rings’, ‘Pirates
of the Caribbean’, ‘Hidalgo’ and others
FEEDBACK: remember the golden rule, (please!)
ARCHIVE: I’d be honored, just tell me where
PAST CHAPTERS: ‘Prophecy: Destiny & Design’
can be found on my website, Chimerafic.com
and other stories can be found on my LJ at:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/pecos/
NOTE: Please forgive any intentional or
unintentional abuse of facts or history.
NOTE 2: Although based on a real place, there is
no way that a clone of Orlando Bloom is
hanging out at Wat Khow Krailat, so should
you ever be lucky enough to go visit
there, please be respectful. Some details
drawn from Ayun Halliday’s book No
Touch Monkey! Research assistance from
my lovely Thai friend, Jenna (Hithluin)
Beyond Design Limitations
Chapter Six: Empty Arms
Mickey
Waking up in the resort in Hua Hin, Mickey drew a deep breath of tropical sea air and was glad to be alive. After all those years of shooting at and people and being shot at, he was damn lucky to still be breathing, and he knew it. He showered and dressed, deciding to dine with the tourists, and went down to a proper meal featuring a good old-fashioned English fry-up alongside a delightful selection of Thai dishes. The hotel’s clientele were mostly wealthy holidaymakers from Europe and Australia, a few Germans, and a couple of hardy Americans who seemed oblivious to the current political climate, or were willing to show their faces abroad anyway.
“You going to beach today, Sir?” asked the boy who warmed his coffee.
“I’m going to a monastery,” he said, taking a last sip before getting started.
The boy studied him for a moment, and then seemed to decide something. “You are not farang. You seek real thing. You know place?”
“I do,” he admitted, and rose, smiling at the handsome young man.
“You ask Nayne for blessings and wisdom,” the boy whispered, then hurried away.
‘Interesting,’ Mickey decided. He walked out of the hotel and got directions to a local bus stop. He had the bit of paper with the monastery’s name on it, in English and Thai. “Wat Khow Krialat?” he asked the driver, who nodded. It was a long ride, with many stops, but eventually they pulled to the side of a dusty road. The driver turned to point at him, smiling, then took the fare, a pair of small coins from his outstretched palm. Mickey’s feet hit the ground and he looked up to see red tiles glinting in the sun high atop a nearby hill. He started hiking. Eventually he reached a flight of stairs that seemed to go up forever, and Mickey was muttering about his age by the time he’d gotten to the top, completely winded and more than a little bit ashamed about it. He pretended to admire the view until he could move again.
The compound comprised several small buildings with beautifully sweeping red roofs and elaborate wooden verandas. Four of them were built on stilts over a small pond. Frangipani and flame trees surrounded the area, dropping petals into the still water. Mickey paused outside the nearest building, hoping that the abbot would have heard him puffing up the steps, but all was silence in the compound. He detoured to a nearby enclosure where a couple of statues of the Buddha were residing in faded glory, their gold leaf flaking away. Fresh flowers decorated the Buddha’s feet, a carpeting of fragrant pine boughs nearby. Mickey thought about leaving a donation at the shrine, but he wasn’t sure that it would be appropriate since he’d come here on a mission rather than pilgrimage.
“You have finally arrived,” said a soft voice, and Mickey turned to find a young man standing in the sunshine, dressed in the simple orange garment of his office. “I am Kosiya. If you come with me I’ll let you rest while I inform the abbot that you are here.”
“I’ve come looking for a young Western man,” Mickey started, but Kosiya had already begun walking away. They crossed a low wooden bridge and entered one of the cottages over the water.
“I am sorry this is so humble,” the young monk said as they stepped over the high sill and into a darkened room with only sleeping mats and a few candles attached to the exposed roof beams.
“I’m a simple man,” Mickey lied, immediately suspecting that he shouldn’t have said it. The monk gave him a single sharp glance and left again, padding silently on the wooden floor. Feeling a little claustrophobic, Mickey stepped back out onto the verandah and made himself comfortable sitting on the edge, looking down at the flowers drifting atop the water. He remained there for a very long time, trying to remember to not look at his watch. He finally took the offending instrument off his wrist and slid it into a pocket. Good thing he’d had such a substantial breakfast. The sun slid into afternoon, and the shadows shortened. He could occasionally hear sounds of distant motors, from the road so far below and from planes crossing the cloud-strewn sky.
If anyone was eating lunch they were doing it somewhere else. The monks would have walked the streets of Hua Hin early that morning collecting offerings and alms from the generosity of their neighbors. Excess food would already have been redistributed to the poor. Mickey only heard soft voices around him, and an occasional glimpse of dark skin and orange cloth, seen only out of the corners of his eyes. He heard children laughing a few times.
There were mosquito larvae squirming in the water, and small fish darted in to gorge on them. He was becoming very relaxed here. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad place to spend the day after all. He knew better than to barge around, demanding things and acting like an typical American. If he really was in the right place, he would know in time. If he wasn’t, then he had more chance of finding what he was searching for by embracing the calm.
Soft footfalls, and her turned to see Kosiya approaching with a tiny old man, who must be the Abbot. He looked like Yoda. Kosiya acted as interpreter for the abbot, saying, “We have been expecting you, young man. Please come now. I’ll take you to Nayne Phi.”
Phi! He hadn’t even changed his name! This just had to be one of the missing clones. “Thank you, Laong Pau,” he said respectfully. The Abbot led him across two more bridges to the last cottage in the compound. It was as bare and simple as all the others, with a couple of lit candles and a smoldering mosquito coil nestled amongst the incense sticks in a large flat bowl on the floor. The Abbot spoke softly to the figure sitting cross-legged in the shadows of a back corner, and then made to dismiss himself.
“Thank you, Ajan,” said a familiar-sounding voice. “Hello, Mickey. Please sit down.”
Rollie
“Don’t know why I’m doing this,” he mumbled to himself, long legs quickly eating up the sandy ground, stepping around bits and pieces of foliage and downed coconuts, either green or ancient. The surf crashed just on the other side of the rise, hissing along the sand on the pull-back and complimenting the rustling sound of the palms above. A rooster was crowing far away. The noise of the town had faded as soon as he’d rounded the point. He wasn’t going as far as the luxury hotel on the next headland, so this was about as quiet as you could get here on St. Vincent and still be able to get to the water before your beer went warm – assuming you liked it cold. The movie crowd called it the Titty Beach. He’d passed one of the crewmen coming back, still wet and happy, crusted with sand, so Rollie assumed he was on the right path.
“Oh yeah, know the place. That beach is shit for surf,” Johnny Depp had told him dismissively. “Leeward side, you know? But the swimming’s great, as long as it isn’t the tide change, then there’s supposed to be a pretty good rip. Orlando sneaks off there to sun his unfortunate English dermis and splash around without anyone ogling him.”
Rollie hadn’t bothered to mention that Orlando had about the nicest skin he’d ever seen, and as a sometime makeup professional he’d seen a lot. ‘Unfortunate’ was not a word that came to mind. Golden, maybe...money in the bank, definitely. Tyler was a surfer himself, but he knew that Orlando’s contract with Disney undoubtedly forbade anything nearly that dangerous, even in the placid Caribbean. Hell, the guy was probably banned from even driving a scooter into Kingstown, an admittedly dangerous undertaking considering the state of the island roads, as well as the state of a lot of the other drivers.
He spotted white sand through a break in the undergrowth, and could see some assorted junk piled at the high-tide mark, evidence of some entrepreneurial soul who’d tried to make a living off renting gear for fun in the surf. They’d either given it up or gotten bored and gone off somewhere else, because Bloom clearly had the beach to himself. Rollie paused at the edge of the trees to admire the view for a moment before announcing himself. He’d come all this way just to ask Orli what the hell had happened the other night, and knowing that he was likely going to get told off, he was trying to phrase his question to inflict the least intrusive way.
Orlando was indeed catching some sun, stretched out on a bright orange towel that could only have come from their hotel for the color-blind, sunglasses on and an ugly hat tipped low. He had pulled up the legs of his baggy swim shorts to expose lean and muscular thighs, and tugged down the waistband to below the crescents of his hipbones.
Trying out a couple of casual-sounding greetings, Rollie was wondering how to proceed with this perfect specimen of the flighty and unpredictable ‘Actor Personality’ when Orli sat up with a sigh and chased a crab off of his shin. Leaning on his elbows, Bloom looked out to sea, and then around to where a small cooler had been left in the shade of a broken palm trunk. He reached out like he was ten feet closer to the eskie than he was and opened his palm.
The lid tipped back and a bottle of something came out of the cooler, moving through the air quite quickly, and met his palm with an almost audible smack.
Rollie’s jaw had to have dropped. He could hear his pulse throbbing in his ears over the sound of the ocean and over the cry of the distant rooster. He forced his mouth to shut, thinking that he must have been blinded by the light on the water.
And then Orlando passed the drink to his other hand and reached again. A wrapped sandwich followed the same path, flying clearly about a foot above the uneven sand as if it was moving along an invisible wire. Bloom sat up fully and started unwrapping the sandwich, and suddenly gulls and terns started dropping from the sky, landing around him in a wide circle, immediately venturing closer.
Shaking himself, Rollie blinked as birds continued to descend from what he’d thought was an empty sky. Orlando opened the bottle and took a long drag. Another crab scaled the precipice of his thigh, as aggressively intent as an Angelino in an SUV on an open stretch of pavement. Orli shooed it off. He tore most of the crust off the sandwich, throwing it to the birds. They fought nosily over the crumbs while he ate, staring out to sea and rubbing the sand and salt off his legs.
Rollie had completely forgotten what he’d come out here to say to the young man. He faded back into the trees, concentrating on everything he could see about the beach and the way things had been seemingly dropped here and there. After all, there had to be an explanation. There had to be. Shit didn’t float through the air. You didn’t just reach out and have stuff come to your hands.
Nope...there had to be a trick to it, and tricks were Rollie Tyler’s trade – he would figure this out.
“Thought I’d just join you,” said a voice behind him, and Rollie jumped so hard he almost fell over. He staggered in a circle to find Johnny Depp grinning up at him. “Telling you how to find the place reminded how quiet it is here,” Depp explained. “Didn’t think I’d find you perving over Orli from the trees though, Tyler. And here I thought you were dead fucking straight!”
Rollie was tripping over his tongue trying to explain himself, but Johnny just laughed and pushed past him, running out onto the hot sand in bare feet. He darted nimbly over to where Orlando was eating and jumped onto the end of his towel, scattering the birds with a huge commotion of wings and squawking.
“Oi!” Orlando shouted in mock indignation, and Rollie came out onto the beach to announce his own presence.
“Mister Turner! You’re absent without leave!” Johnny proclaimed haughtily, swaying a bit as he assumed his character, chin up. “You will have to be punished for this indolent lazing about when there’re decks to be swabbed, masts to be mizzened, swashes to buckle!”
“Fuck off, Minnow!” Orlando dryly instructed, taking a last bite and throwing the rest to a persistent tern. “Oh, I mean Sparrow,” he amended as Johnny huffed hysterically.
Depp suddenly dropped down to straddle Orlando’s thighs and knocked him back onto the sandy blanket, then started tickling his ribs deftly. Rollie had nearly reached them by then, and he had a fine view as Orlando became completely unhinged with squirming and laughter. Very ticklish guy, apparently.
“It’s Captain Jack, Bitch!” Depp kept yelling. “Captain! Captain! Captain!”
The giggling was reaching absurd proportions, and then Johnny allowed himself to be unseated. Rolling over in the sand, he wrestled his baggy shorts off and abruptly stood, stark naked, and struck a pose. “Behold the impressive figure of the man who is Captain Jack Sparrow!” He flexed a couple more times, then started strutting into the surf like a conquering hero, penis swaying as proudly as the rest of him, a jaunty little snap to the roll of his hips. “You may applaud,” he said over his shoulder.
Rollie wondered for a moment if maybe he’d gotten one of those coconuts on the noggin back in the palms, and was hallucinating all of this.
“I’ve seen better, you know,” Orlando shouted after his co-star, still trying to get his breath back and appearing embarrassed. “Uh, hello Rollie.”
“But you’ll never know if I am better,” Johnny teased, finally reaching enough depth that he could slip out of sight beneath the water.
“I doubt it,” Bloom said. He clambered to his feet and started into the ocean behind Depp, without the stripping. Rollie flopped down onto the abandoned towel and thought to himself that he wasn’t likely to get an answer to his question that afternoon. He turned to study the bottle, and the cooler. They showed absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Rollie got up and helped himself to a beer and pondered possible explanations for what he’d witnessed.
Dominic
The music thrummed against his chest like a spectral presence, as if it were trying to force its own beat onto his heart. He pushed through the packed bodies dancing in front of the banks of speakers and found the stairs that lifted him above the mass of seething humanity. There was a line of people outside on the sidewalk who now officially hated Dominic Monaghan for having a card in his back pocket that had gotten him right through the door of The Church. That same card had a sticker on the back that got him past the burly guy half way up these stairs, who nodded at him disinterestedly, and let him finish his climb to where Craig Parker was watching the crowd below from the ‘celeb lounge.’
Dom passed Craig the beer he’d fetched, and they tipped their bottles together, clinking. There was a waitress assigned in the lounge, but she was moving exceptionally slowly for anyone but the television actor holding court with his posse at a table in the back. Tonight was supposed to be about getting pleasantly drunk and shooting the shit, as the Yanks would say.
“This ‘gay’ scene sure attracts a lot of straights,” Craig commented dryly.
“That’s one reason Elijah likes this club,” Dom said, shrugging. They had to talk a lot louder than he liked to be heard over the music – which was another reason that Elijah frequented The Church. Loud usually equaled good in the Wood universe.
“How’s Doodle doing these days?”
“He’s good...really good. They’re doing location filming in New York.” Dom sipped his beer, and thought to himself that he actually had no idea how his boyfriend was faring. He hadn’t seen him for weeks.
“Wanna dance?” Craig asked.
“No.” Dom realized how final that had sounded, and quickly forced the well-used ‘cheeky monkey’ grin onto his features. “Not right now, at least. Haven’t seen anyone I fancy, you know? So many posers and wannabes....”
“Then this isn’t the right club. Let’s go somewhere else,” Craig offered. “Somewhere we can talk, all right? I’m told that L.A. is a gay buffet. There has to be something that you’re hungry for.”
“You’re the guest,” Dom allowed, bowing.
“No I’m not. I’m family, Master Hobbit, and don’t you forget it! Now stop making that stupid face and let's hit the sidewalk. Let someone get in who actually wants to be here.” Craig clasped his hand and led him back down the steps.
After a couple more clubs and more walking than Craig had planned on, they finally ended up at a restaurant. Tables were set into little alcoves with drapes all around in a harem setting, and it was private and quiet. “Some date you turned out to be,” Craig said with a smile. “I’m not even blindingly drunk yet. They’re going to revoke your Hobbit card.”
“Hey, even Hobbits have to recharge their batteries occasionally.” Dom ordered a couple of items off the enticing menu.
Craig had pretty much exhausted his supply of updates on how everyone was doing back in New Zealand. He caught Dom up on the general plot twists of Mercy Peak and griped a little about the dearth of work since ‘Rings’ had finished. Dom smiled bitterly and confessed that the two roles he’d actually filmed since then had been far from anything he’d brag about. They fell to speculation about their cast mates.
“Orlando’s going to become an incredibly big star,” Craig said assuredly.
Dom shrugged, looking into the bottom of his glass. He knew things about Mister Bloom that no one would guess in a million years. “Yeah, probably. He’s certainly got the right look.”
“It’s more than just looks, you know,” Craig said. “He’s got the training, the talent, and the luck.”
“The luck is the important part. I think that by the time the last movie comes out Viggo’s going to be the biggest name in Hollywood.”
“And that’s not going to change Viggo one iota.”
“Nope. Have to agree with you there, Craigers. But I can see Viggo turning down the next big monster movie hit because they don’t have dolphin-safe tuna in the canteen.”
“Or because there’s something in the script that’s insensitive to albino Polynesians.”
Dom was smirking. “Maybe he’ll only agree to do movies with dialogue in Eskimo.”
“That’s First Peoples, Dom. God, you philistine! Viggo announce that he’ll only do sepia-tint movies about Himalayan explorers with leprosy....”
“Who’re blind....”
“...as long as there’s a sword fight....”
“...and he can sing on the soundtrack.”
“Badly!”
“But on purpose badly, because it’s artistic!”
They both started laughing, and it took a moment to wipe the tears from their eyes. “I’m a little worried about Astin,” Dom admitted.
“Not getting offers?”
“No, he’s getting them, but he still seems a little hung up on who got paid how much and what got cut out of ‘Two Towers’ and how his ‘image’ will be affected if we never get an Oscar for Best Picture out of the Trilogy.”
“And ‘does my ass look big in these Hobbit pants’?”
“Oh yeah, mate. And I was the one with the fake gut! I told him to write it in a fucking book, since he’s so misunderstood and all!”
Parker smiled fondly at some memory. “Billy doing all right then?”
“What do you think? He’s got a speaking part in a fucking Russell Crowe movie.”
“Doesn’t mean anything.”
“Yes it does. You don’t see anyone casting me in a fucking Russell Crowe movie. I get scripts titled ‘Raised by Bats,’ ‘Cabin Killer’ and ‘Scream Spree Summer’ part IV.”
“Hey, you’ll never be able to top part III. That was a classic, dude.”
“Yeah. That’s why I turned it down, ya know?”
Craig nodded sagely, waiting to speak again until the waiter slipped another dish onto their table and left. He reached out suddenly and caught Dom by the wrist as he reached for the plate. Turning his hand over, Craig slid the leather cuff up a few inches, exposing the ugly marks of cigarette burns on the pale, vulnerable skin inside Dom’s wrist. “Let’s talk about this, shall we?” he said lightly – though his tone was anything but.
Sean
He was in the middle of a monologue when he thought he saw a familiar face in the second row. Macbeth stammered over a line, and Sean did not dare to look back into the audience. He muddled through to the end of the passage, forcing himself to see the words before him like a spectral teleprompt, denying any recognition of the people filling the seats in the Albery Theatre.
The tortuous scene finally ended, Sean trusted his luck enough to glance back again. Nothing there but a pair of matrons and a pretty young blonde college girl with too much makeup and not enough dress. No riot of brown curls and sparkling dark eyes gazing up at him with adoration.
Viggo
He sighed and hung up the phone. Four tries now to reach Orlando’s cell phone, and nothing but that annoying message that his mailbox was full. The kid clearly wasn’t carrying his phone, or he’d lost it again, or he was just plain ignoring it. Any of those could be possible. Not much of a surprise really, since Viggo himself wasn’t very sympathetic to the communications industry, and only conceded the need for a phone on the grounds that he had a teenage son.
Orlando’s manager in L.A. had told Viggo that he would be arriving in town for some specialty work in a couple of days, but by then Viggo would be on in Morocco. Damned rotten timing. Aleen was happy to pass on any contact information he’d like to leave, but she wasn’t about to promise that her client would be in touch. She rather smugly mentioned that she had a box of scripts for Orlando to look through. Just what the kid needed, with the difficulties he had reading, thanks to his dyslexia. Orli would feel obligated to wade through them. Viggo almost asked Aleen about Orlando’s health, but decided not to start anything that he wouldn’t be around to fix.
He reached for his bags, which had been packed and were waiting by the door. There was a slip of paper tucked under the handle of his carry-on. Probably a note from someone on the crew: a good-bye maybe, or a last minute autograph request for a friend of a friend. He unfolded the paper and blinked in surprise at the single symbol printed there. It was a very old-fashioned image from the distant past. It showed a drawing of a bush with an open eye at the roots, speared on the tip of a dagger. Rays fanned out below the bush and a single star above. The image had been embossed on the paper, not just drawn or printed. The paper was clearly parchment, probably hand-pressed. Viggo crumpled it.
“Well, fuck,” he sighed.
Orlando
Johnny had walked back to the hotel with him, saying that he wanted to talk to Gore before morning. And then Depp had followed him up to the second floor and stood outside his room admiring the view, whistling something odd and clearly waiting for an invitation inside as Orlando fiddled with his key. “I’ve got stuff to do tonight,” Orlando said, using his fingertip to chase one of the lizards up the wall.
“Uh huh,” Johnny commented agreeably, and then followed him through the door.
Orlando was still just too star-struck by Johnny Depp to tell him off, even though the last thing he wanted that evening was company. “I’ll just be a minute,” the Brit apologized, slipping into the toilet and closing the door behind him. He started running water in the sink to cover the sound of his frantic tidying up, hiding the pill bottles under a stack of clean towels and the condoms and lube behind the toilet. He was pretty sure that Depp wouldn’t care that Orlando wasn’t straight, strictly speaking, but he didn’t want the issue to even come up. He didn’t want anything unfavorable about him to ever even occur to Johnny Depp.
Washing his hands frantically, Orlando finally returned to the other room in time to find Johnny stretched out on the bed, thumbing through the complimentary travel magazine, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. “Hope you don’t mind...you don’t, do you?”
“No, not at all,” Orli said quickly, pulling back the drapes so the smoke could get to his open windows.
“Seen any good movies lately, Orli?”
“Uh, no. ‘Two Towers’, maybe. We had a premiere for that in December.” He was squirming.
“You’re just being too polite to tell me to fuck off, right?”
“Uh, I am, rather. Sorry. I’m English, ya know? I hate to apologize again, but I really do have a lot of work to do tonight.”
“Is that ‘English’ for fuck off?” Johnny asked.
“Well...I...it’s just....”
“And after I stripped naked for you on the beach and all!” Depp’s bottom lip stuck out in an unmistakable pout and he scrambled to sit up. He propped the burning cig on the protruding lip.
“Well, yeah. It’s hardly a red-letter day when you strip, after all. On Monday you showed up for wardrobe in just a robe and nipple clamps. You danced naked on the beach at Mac’s birthday party. And you stripped at a script reading last month. I’m starting to think that you rather like being naked.”
“Smart boy,” Johnny said with a sly grin. He stood and crossed to the door. “Okay, then, I know when I’m being evicted. You don’t have to light a fire under me. I’ll just go talk to Gore. Going to suggest that he find a way to get the two of us into a scene together. Naked. Yeah, naked and covered in gold dust! How’s that for a pirate treasure?”
“DISNEY movie,” Orlando reminded him, and not for the first time.
“Boring twat,” Johnny snorted, letting himself out. “Boring, boring, boring,” he called through the closing door.
Orlando crossed the room to lock the door, closed the drapes, and then scanned the room intently. He set about arranging his few personal things in a slightly different order. Then he went through the closet and made sure his dirty laundry was ready to go. He ate the banana he’d saved from breakfast because it wasn’t quite ripe then, and he looked over his script pages for tomorrow...three whole lines for Will Turner. He practiced those a couple of times.
He went back into the bathroom and got the lube and condoms, looked at them for a while, and then threw them in the trash. He looked at the hotel phone. He wondered where his cell phone had gone. He looked at his script again. He tried saying his lines in Jack Sparrow’s voice. Orlando plucked up his courage and rescued the lube and condoms from the trash, hiding them in the drawer with the bible. He looked at the bible, then put it back in the drawer upside down. He took off his clothes and said his lines naked. He caught sight of himself in the mirror and immediately turned out the lights.
Orlando sat for a long time in the dark, alone, and listened to the overhead ceiling fan ticking. He heard laughing voices on the sidewalks down below, and then a thunder of footsteps on the stairs. He jumped as someone pounded on his door. “Lights out already, Orli?” Johnny called loudly. “Jesus, ya fucking Nun! Orli? Orlando? You asleep in there?”
He waited in the dark, holding his breath, as if Johnny could hear him through the heavy wood of the door.
“He’s gone out, Johnny!” Gore yelled from somewhere below in the garden. “Quit bothering decent people.”
“No decent people in this hotel,” Depp laughed, and he thundered back down the stairs. “That boy ain’t quite right,” Johnny complained loudly enough that Orli could hear as the two men left. Orlando scrubbed at the wetness on his cheeks and swallowed hard. After a while had passed he got up and got himself some water, then he got into bed for real.
He got up to take the lube and condoms out of the drawer and throw them back in the rubbish bin. Nearly an hour later he got up again to fetch his Orli-bear from the dresser and took it back to bed with him.
At long last, he fell asleep.
CHAPTER: Six – Empty Arms
AUTHOR: Pecos – PecosPhil@sprintmail.com
WEBSITE: http://www.chimerafic.com
BETA: Gloria Mundi - viva_gloria@livejournal.com
RATING: Varies by chapter. This one is PG13
DISCLAIMER: I don’t make the toys, I’m only playing with them. No money made, nor disrespect intended. This is FICTION
WHAT IS IT?: RPS / AU Sequel to ‘Prophecy: Destiny & Design’
WHO’S IN IT?: Sean Bean, Orlando Bloom, Johnny Depp, Viggo Mortensen and other actors from ‘The Lord of the Rings’, ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’, ‘Hidalgo’ and others
TITLE: Beyond Design Limitations
CHAPTER: Six – Empty Arms
AUTHOR: Pecos – PecosPhil@sprintmail.com
WEBSITE: http://www.chimerafic.com
BETA: Gloria Mundi - viva_gloria@livejournal.com
RATING: Varies by chapter. This one is PG13
DISCLAIMER: I don’t make the toys, I’m only
playing with them. No money made, nor
disrespect intended. This is FICTION
WHAT IS IT?: RPS / AU
Sequel to ‘Prophecy: Destiny & Design’
WHO’S IN IT?: Sean Bean, Orlando Bloom,
Johnny Depp, Viggo Mortensen and other
actors from ‘The Lord of the Rings’, ‘Pirates
of the Caribbean’, ‘Hidalgo’ and others
FEEDBACK: remember the golden rule, (please!)
ARCHIVE: I’d be honored, just tell me where
PAST CHAPTERS: ‘Prophecy: Destiny & Design’
can be found on my website, Chimerafic.com
and other stories can be found on my LJ at:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/pecos/
NOTE: Please forgive any intentional or
unintentional abuse of facts or history.
NOTE 2: Although based on a real place, there is
no way that a clone of Orlando Bloom is
hanging out at Wat Khow Krailat, so should
you ever be lucky enough to go visit
there, please be respectful. Some details
drawn from Ayun Halliday’s book No
Touch Monkey! Research assistance from
my lovely Thai friend, Jenna (Hithluin)
Beyond Design Limitations
Chapter Six: Empty Arms
Mickey
Waking up in the resort in Hua Hin, Mickey drew a deep breath of tropical sea air and was glad to be alive. After all those years of shooting at and people and being shot at, he was damn lucky to still be breathing, and he knew it. He showered and dressed, deciding to dine with the tourists, and went down to a proper meal featuring a good old-fashioned English fry-up alongside a delightful selection of Thai dishes. The hotel’s clientele were mostly wealthy holidaymakers from Europe and Australia, a few Germans, and a couple of hardy Americans who seemed oblivious to the current political climate, or were willing to show their faces abroad anyway.
“You going to beach today, Sir?” asked the boy who warmed his coffee.
“I’m going to a monastery,” he said, taking a last sip before getting started.
The boy studied him for a moment, and then seemed to decide something. “You are not farang. You seek real thing. You know place?”
“I do,” he admitted, and rose, smiling at the handsome young man.
“You ask Nayne for blessings and wisdom,” the boy whispered, then hurried away.
‘Interesting,’ Mickey decided. He walked out of the hotel and got directions to a local bus stop. He had the bit of paper with the monastery’s name on it, in English and Thai. “Wat Khow Krialat?” he asked the driver, who nodded. It was a long ride, with many stops, but eventually they pulled to the side of a dusty road. The driver turned to point at him, smiling, then took the fare, a pair of small coins from his outstretched palm. Mickey’s feet hit the ground and he looked up to see red tiles glinting in the sun high atop a nearby hill. He started hiking. Eventually he reached a flight of stairs that seemed to go up forever, and Mickey was muttering about his age by the time he’d gotten to the top, completely winded and more than a little bit ashamed about it. He pretended to admire the view until he could move again.
The compound comprised several small buildings with beautifully sweeping red roofs and elaborate wooden verandas. Four of them were built on stilts over a small pond. Frangipani and flame trees surrounded the area, dropping petals into the still water. Mickey paused outside the nearest building, hoping that the abbot would have heard him puffing up the steps, but all was silence in the compound. He detoured to a nearby enclosure where a couple of statues of the Buddha were residing in faded glory, their gold leaf flaking away. Fresh flowers decorated the Buddha’s feet, a carpeting of fragrant pine boughs nearby. Mickey thought about leaving a donation at the shrine, but he wasn’t sure that it would be appropriate since he’d come here on a mission rather than pilgrimage.
“You have finally arrived,” said a soft voice, and Mickey turned to find a young man standing in the sunshine, dressed in the simple orange garment of his office. “I am Kosiya. If you come with me I’ll let you rest while I inform the abbot that you are here.”
“I’ve come looking for a young Western man,” Mickey started, but Kosiya had already begun walking away. They crossed a low wooden bridge and entered one of the cottages over the water.
“I am sorry this is so humble,” the young monk said as they stepped over the high sill and into a darkened room with only sleeping mats and a few candles attached to the exposed roof beams.
“I’m a simple man,” Mickey lied, immediately suspecting that he shouldn’t have said it. The monk gave him a single sharp glance and left again, padding silently on the wooden floor. Feeling a little claustrophobic, Mickey stepped back out onto the verandah and made himself comfortable sitting on the edge, looking down at the flowers drifting atop the water. He remained there for a very long time, trying to remember to not look at his watch. He finally took the offending instrument off his wrist and slid it into a pocket. Good thing he’d had such a substantial breakfast. The sun slid into afternoon, and the shadows shortened. He could occasionally hear sounds of distant motors, from the road so far below and from planes crossing the cloud-strewn sky.
If anyone was eating lunch they were doing it somewhere else. The monks would have walked the streets of Hua Hin early that morning collecting offerings and alms from the generosity of their neighbors. Excess food would already have been redistributed to the poor. Mickey only heard soft voices around him, and an occasional glimpse of dark skin and orange cloth, seen only out of the corners of his eyes. He heard children laughing a few times.
There were mosquito larvae squirming in the water, and small fish darted in to gorge on them. He was becoming very relaxed here. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad place to spend the day after all. He knew better than to barge around, demanding things and acting like an typical American. If he really was in the right place, he would know in time. If he wasn’t, then he had more chance of finding what he was searching for by embracing the calm.
Soft footfalls, and her turned to see Kosiya approaching with a tiny old man, who must be the Abbot. He looked like Yoda. Kosiya acted as interpreter for the abbot, saying, “We have been expecting you, young man. Please come now. I’ll take you to Nayne Phi.”
Phi! He hadn’t even changed his name! This just had to be one of the missing clones. “Thank you, Laong Pau,” he said respectfully. The Abbot led him across two more bridges to the last cottage in the compound. It was as bare and simple as all the others, with a couple of lit candles and a smoldering mosquito coil nestled amongst the incense sticks in a large flat bowl on the floor. The Abbot spoke softly to the figure sitting cross-legged in the shadows of a back corner, and then made to dismiss himself.
“Thank you, Ajan,” said a familiar-sounding voice. “Hello, Mickey. Please sit down.”
Rollie
“Don’t know why I’m doing this,” he mumbled to himself, long legs quickly eating up the sandy ground, stepping around bits and pieces of foliage and downed coconuts, either green or ancient. The surf crashed just on the other side of the rise, hissing along the sand on the pull-back and complimenting the rustling sound of the palms above. A rooster was crowing far away. The noise of the town had faded as soon as he’d rounded the point. He wasn’t going as far as the luxury hotel on the next headland, so this was about as quiet as you could get here on St. Vincent and still be able to get to the water before your beer went warm – assuming you liked it cold. The movie crowd called it the Titty Beach. He’d passed one of the crewmen coming back, still wet and happy, crusted with sand, so Rollie assumed he was on the right path.
“Oh yeah, know the place. That beach is shit for surf,” Johnny Depp had told him dismissively. “Leeward side, you know? But the swimming’s great, as long as it isn’t the tide change, then there’s supposed to be a pretty good rip. Orlando sneaks off there to sun his unfortunate English dermis and splash around without anyone ogling him.”
Rollie hadn’t bothered to mention that Orlando had about the nicest skin he’d ever seen, and as a sometime makeup professional he’d seen a lot. ‘Unfortunate’ was not a word that came to mind. Golden, maybe...money in the bank, definitely. Tyler was a surfer himself, but he knew that Orlando’s contract with Disney undoubtedly forbade anything nearly that dangerous, even in the placid Caribbean. Hell, the guy was probably banned from even driving a scooter into Kingstown, an admittedly dangerous undertaking considering the state of the island roads, as well as the state of a lot of the other drivers.
He spotted white sand through a break in the undergrowth, and could see some assorted junk piled at the high-tide mark, evidence of some entrepreneurial soul who’d tried to make a living off renting gear for fun in the surf. They’d either given it up or gotten bored and gone off somewhere else, because Bloom clearly had the beach to himself. Rollie paused at the edge of the trees to admire the view for a moment before announcing himself. He’d come all this way just to ask Orli what the hell had happened the other night, and knowing that he was likely going to get told off, he was trying to phrase his question to inflict the least intrusive way.
Orlando was indeed catching some sun, stretched out on a bright orange towel that could only have come from their hotel for the color-blind, sunglasses on and an ugly hat tipped low. He had pulled up the legs of his baggy swim shorts to expose lean and muscular thighs, and tugged down the waistband to below the crescents of his hipbones.
Trying out a couple of casual-sounding greetings, Rollie was wondering how to proceed with this perfect specimen of the flighty and unpredictable ‘Actor Personality’ when Orli sat up with a sigh and chased a crab off of his shin. Leaning on his elbows, Bloom looked out to sea, and then around to where a small cooler had been left in the shade of a broken palm trunk. He reached out like he was ten feet closer to the eskie than he was and opened his palm.
The lid tipped back and a bottle of something came out of the cooler, moving through the air quite quickly, and met his palm with an almost audible smack.
Rollie’s jaw had to have dropped. He could hear his pulse throbbing in his ears over the sound of the ocean and over the cry of the distant rooster. He forced his mouth to shut, thinking that he must have been blinded by the light on the water.
And then Orlando passed the drink to his other hand and reached again. A wrapped sandwich followed the same path, flying clearly about a foot above the uneven sand as if it was moving along an invisible wire. Bloom sat up fully and started unwrapping the sandwich, and suddenly gulls and terns started dropping from the sky, landing around him in a wide circle, immediately venturing closer.
Shaking himself, Rollie blinked as birds continued to descend from what he’d thought was an empty sky. Orlando opened the bottle and took a long drag. Another crab scaled the precipice of his thigh, as aggressively intent as an Angelino in an SUV on an open stretch of pavement. Orli shooed it off. He tore most of the crust off the sandwich, throwing it to the birds. They fought nosily over the crumbs while he ate, staring out to sea and rubbing the sand and salt off his legs.
Rollie had completely forgotten what he’d come out here to say to the young man. He faded back into the trees, concentrating on everything he could see about the beach and the way things had been seemingly dropped here and there. After all, there had to be an explanation. There had to be. Shit didn’t float through the air. You didn’t just reach out and have stuff come to your hands.
Nope...there had to be a trick to it, and tricks were Rollie Tyler’s trade – he would figure this out.
“Thought I’d just join you,” said a voice behind him, and Rollie jumped so hard he almost fell over. He staggered in a circle to find Johnny Depp grinning up at him. “Telling you how to find the place reminded how quiet it is here,” Depp explained. “Didn’t think I’d find you perving over Orli from the trees though, Tyler. And here I thought you were dead fucking straight!”
Rollie was tripping over his tongue trying to explain himself, but Johnny just laughed and pushed past him, running out onto the hot sand in bare feet. He darted nimbly over to where Orlando was eating and jumped onto the end of his towel, scattering the birds with a huge commotion of wings and squawking.
“Oi!” Orlando shouted in mock indignation, and Rollie came out onto the beach to announce his own presence.
“Mister Turner! You’re absent without leave!” Johnny proclaimed haughtily, swaying a bit as he assumed his character, chin up. “You will have to be punished for this indolent lazing about when there’re decks to be swabbed, masts to be mizzened, swashes to buckle!”
“Fuck off, Minnow!” Orlando dryly instructed, taking a last bite and throwing the rest to a persistent tern. “Oh, I mean Sparrow,” he amended as Johnny huffed hysterically.
Depp suddenly dropped down to straddle Orlando’s thighs and knocked him back onto the sandy blanket, then started tickling his ribs deftly. Rollie had nearly reached them by then, and he had a fine view as Orlando became completely unhinged with squirming and laughter. Very ticklish guy, apparently.
“It’s Captain Jack, Bitch!” Depp kept yelling. “Captain! Captain! Captain!”
The giggling was reaching absurd proportions, and then Johnny allowed himself to be unseated. Rolling over in the sand, he wrestled his baggy shorts off and abruptly stood, stark naked, and struck a pose. “Behold the impressive figure of the man who is Captain Jack Sparrow!” He flexed a couple more times, then started strutting into the surf like a conquering hero, penis swaying as proudly as the rest of him, a jaunty little snap to the roll of his hips. “You may applaud,” he said over his shoulder.
Rollie wondered for a moment if maybe he’d gotten one of those coconuts on the noggin back in the palms, and was hallucinating all of this.
“I’ve seen better, you know,” Orlando shouted after his co-star, still trying to get his breath back and appearing embarrassed. “Uh, hello Rollie.”
“But you’ll never know if I am better,” Johnny teased, finally reaching enough depth that he could slip out of sight beneath the water.
“I doubt it,” Bloom said. He clambered to his feet and started into the ocean behind Depp, without the stripping. Rollie flopped down onto the abandoned towel and thought to himself that he wasn’t likely to get an answer to his question that afternoon. He turned to study the bottle, and the cooler. They showed absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Rollie got up and helped himself to a beer and pondered possible explanations for what he’d witnessed.
Dominic
The music thrummed against his chest like a spectral presence, as if it were trying to force its own beat onto his heart. He pushed through the packed bodies dancing in front of the banks of speakers and found the stairs that lifted him above the mass of seething humanity. There was a line of people outside on the sidewalk who now officially hated Dominic Monaghan for having a card in his back pocket that had gotten him right through the door of The Church. That same card had a sticker on the back that got him past the burly guy half way up these stairs, who nodded at him disinterestedly, and let him finish his climb to where Craig Parker was watching the crowd below from the ‘celeb lounge.’
Dom passed Craig the beer he’d fetched, and they tipped their bottles together, clinking. There was a waitress assigned in the lounge, but she was moving exceptionally slowly for anyone but the television actor holding court with his posse at a table in the back. Tonight was supposed to be about getting pleasantly drunk and shooting the shit, as the Yanks would say.
“This ‘gay’ scene sure attracts a lot of straights,” Craig commented dryly.
“That’s one reason Elijah likes this club,” Dom said, shrugging. They had to talk a lot louder than he liked to be heard over the music – which was another reason that Elijah frequented The Church. Loud usually equaled good in the Wood universe.
“How’s Doodle doing these days?”
“He’s good...really good. They’re doing location filming in New York.” Dom sipped his beer, and thought to himself that he actually had no idea how his boyfriend was faring. He hadn’t seen him for weeks.
“Wanna dance?” Craig asked.
“No.” Dom realized how final that had sounded, and quickly forced the well-used ‘cheeky monkey’ grin onto his features. “Not right now, at least. Haven’t seen anyone I fancy, you know? So many posers and wannabes....”
“Then this isn’t the right club. Let’s go somewhere else,” Craig offered. “Somewhere we can talk, all right? I’m told that L.A. is a gay buffet. There has to be something that you’re hungry for.”
“You’re the guest,” Dom allowed, bowing.
“No I’m not. I’m family, Master Hobbit, and don’t you forget it! Now stop making that stupid face and let's hit the sidewalk. Let someone get in who actually wants to be here.” Craig clasped his hand and led him back down the steps.
After a couple more clubs and more walking than Craig had planned on, they finally ended up at a restaurant. Tables were set into little alcoves with drapes all around in a harem setting, and it was private and quiet. “Some date you turned out to be,” Craig said with a smile. “I’m not even blindingly drunk yet. They’re going to revoke your Hobbit card.”
“Hey, even Hobbits have to recharge their batteries occasionally.” Dom ordered a couple of items off the enticing menu.
Craig had pretty much exhausted his supply of updates on how everyone was doing back in New Zealand. He caught Dom up on the general plot twists of Mercy Peak and griped a little about the dearth of work since ‘Rings’ had finished. Dom smiled bitterly and confessed that the two roles he’d actually filmed since then had been far from anything he’d brag about. They fell to speculation about their cast mates.
“Orlando’s going to become an incredibly big star,” Craig said assuredly.
Dom shrugged, looking into the bottom of his glass. He knew things about Mister Bloom that no one would guess in a million years. “Yeah, probably. He’s certainly got the right look.”
“It’s more than just looks, you know,” Craig said. “He’s got the training, the talent, and the luck.”
“The luck is the important part. I think that by the time the last movie comes out Viggo’s going to be the biggest name in Hollywood.”
“And that’s not going to change Viggo one iota.”
“Nope. Have to agree with you there, Craigers. But I can see Viggo turning down the next big monster movie hit because they don’t have dolphin-safe tuna in the canteen.”
“Or because there’s something in the script that’s insensitive to albino Polynesians.”
Dom was smirking. “Maybe he’ll only agree to do movies with dialogue in Eskimo.”
“That’s First Peoples, Dom. God, you philistine! Viggo announce that he’ll only do sepia-tint movies about Himalayan explorers with leprosy....”
“Who’re blind....”
“...as long as there’s a sword fight....”
“...and he can sing on the soundtrack.”
“Badly!”
“But on purpose badly, because it’s artistic!”
They both started laughing, and it took a moment to wipe the tears from their eyes. “I’m a little worried about Astin,” Dom admitted.
“Not getting offers?”
“No, he’s getting them, but he still seems a little hung up on who got paid how much and what got cut out of ‘Two Towers’ and how his ‘image’ will be affected if we never get an Oscar for Best Picture out of the Trilogy.”
“And ‘does my ass look big in these Hobbit pants’?”
“Oh yeah, mate. And I was the one with the fake gut! I told him to write it in a fucking book, since he’s so misunderstood and all!”
Parker smiled fondly at some memory. “Billy doing all right then?”
“What do you think? He’s got a speaking part in a fucking Russell Crowe movie.”
“Doesn’t mean anything.”
“Yes it does. You don’t see anyone casting me in a fucking Russell Crowe movie. I get scripts titled ‘Raised by Bats,’ ‘Cabin Killer’ and ‘Scream Spree Summer’ part IV.”
“Hey, you’ll never be able to top part III. That was a classic, dude.”
“Yeah. That’s why I turned it down, ya know?”
Craig nodded sagely, waiting to speak again until the waiter slipped another dish onto their table and left. He reached out suddenly and caught Dom by the wrist as he reached for the plate. Turning his hand over, Craig slid the leather cuff up a few inches, exposing the ugly marks of cigarette burns on the pale, vulnerable skin inside Dom’s wrist. “Let’s talk about this, shall we?” he said lightly – though his tone was anything but.
Sean
He was in the middle of a monologue when he thought he saw a familiar face in the second row. Macbeth stammered over a line, and Sean did not dare to look back into the audience. He muddled through to the end of the passage, forcing himself to see the words before him like a spectral teleprompt, denying any recognition of the people filling the seats in the Albery Theatre.
The tortuous scene finally ended, Sean trusted his luck enough to glance back again. Nothing there but a pair of matrons and a pretty young blonde college girl with too much makeup and not enough dress. No riot of brown curls and sparkling dark eyes gazing up at him with adoration.
Viggo
He sighed and hung up the phone. Four tries now to reach Orlando’s cell phone, and nothing but that annoying message that his mailbox was full. The kid clearly wasn’t carrying his phone, or he’d lost it again, or he was just plain ignoring it. Any of those could be possible. Not much of a surprise really, since Viggo himself wasn’t very sympathetic to the communications industry, and only conceded the need for a phone on the grounds that he had a teenage son.
Orlando’s manager in L.A. had told Viggo that he would be arriving in town for some specialty work in a couple of days, but by then Viggo would be on in Morocco. Damned rotten timing. Aleen was happy to pass on any contact information he’d like to leave, but she wasn’t about to promise that her client would be in touch. She rather smugly mentioned that she had a box of scripts for Orlando to look through. Just what the kid needed, with the difficulties he had reading, thanks to his dyslexia. Orli would feel obligated to wade through them. Viggo almost asked Aleen about Orlando’s health, but decided not to start anything that he wouldn’t be around to fix.
He reached for his bags, which had been packed and were waiting by the door. There was a slip of paper tucked under the handle of his carry-on. Probably a note from someone on the crew: a good-bye maybe, or a last minute autograph request for a friend of a friend. He unfolded the paper and blinked in surprise at the single symbol printed there. It was a very old-fashioned image from the distant past. It showed a drawing of a bush with an open eye at the roots, speared on the tip of a dagger. Rays fanned out below the bush and a single star above. The image had been embossed on the paper, not just drawn or printed. The paper was clearly parchment, probably hand-pressed. Viggo crumpled it.
“Well, fuck,” he sighed.
Orlando
Johnny had walked back to the hotel with him, saying that he wanted to talk to Gore before morning. And then Depp had followed him up to the second floor and stood outside his room admiring the view, whistling something odd and clearly waiting for an invitation inside as Orlando fiddled with his key. “I’ve got stuff to do tonight,” Orlando said, using his fingertip to chase one of the lizards up the wall.
“Uh huh,” Johnny commented agreeably, and then followed him through the door.
Orlando was still just too star-struck by Johnny Depp to tell him off, even though the last thing he wanted that evening was company. “I’ll just be a minute,” the Brit apologized, slipping into the toilet and closing the door behind him. He started running water in the sink to cover the sound of his frantic tidying up, hiding the pill bottles under a stack of clean towels and the condoms and lube behind the toilet. He was pretty sure that Depp wouldn’t care that Orlando wasn’t straight, strictly speaking, but he didn’t want the issue to even come up. He didn’t want anything unfavorable about him to ever even occur to Johnny Depp.
Washing his hands frantically, Orlando finally returned to the other room in time to find Johnny stretched out on the bed, thumbing through the complimentary travel magazine, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. “Hope you don’t mind...you don’t, do you?”
“No, not at all,” Orli said quickly, pulling back the drapes so the smoke could get to his open windows.
“Seen any good movies lately, Orli?”
“Uh, no. ‘Two Towers’, maybe. We had a premiere for that in December.” He was squirming.
“You’re just being too polite to tell me to fuck off, right?”
“Uh, I am, rather. Sorry. I’m English, ya know? I hate to apologize again, but I really do have a lot of work to do tonight.”
“Is that ‘English’ for fuck off?” Johnny asked.
“Well...I...it’s just....”
“And after I stripped naked for you on the beach and all!” Depp’s bottom lip stuck out in an unmistakable pout and he scrambled to sit up. He propped the burning cig on the protruding lip.
“Well, yeah. It’s hardly a red-letter day when you strip, after all. On Monday you showed up for wardrobe in just a robe and nipple clamps. You danced naked on the beach at Mac’s birthday party. And you stripped at a script reading last month. I’m starting to think that you rather like being naked.”
“Smart boy,” Johnny said with a sly grin. He stood and crossed to the door. “Okay, then, I know when I’m being evicted. You don’t have to light a fire under me. I’ll just go talk to Gore. Going to suggest that he find a way to get the two of us into a scene together. Naked. Yeah, naked and covered in gold dust! How’s that for a pirate treasure?”
“DISNEY movie,” Orlando reminded him, and not for the first time.
“Boring twat,” Johnny snorted, letting himself out. “Boring, boring, boring,” he called through the closing door.
Orlando crossed the room to lock the door, closed the drapes, and then scanned the room intently. He set about arranging his few personal things in a slightly different order. Then he went through the closet and made sure his dirty laundry was ready to go. He ate the banana he’d saved from breakfast because it wasn’t quite ripe then, and he looked over his script pages for tomorrow...three whole lines for Will Turner. He practiced those a couple of times.
He went back into the bathroom and got the lube and condoms, looked at them for a while, and then threw them in the trash. He looked at the hotel phone. He wondered where his cell phone had gone. He looked at his script again. He tried saying his lines in Jack Sparrow’s voice. Orlando plucked up his courage and rescued the lube and condoms from the trash, hiding them in the drawer with the bible. He looked at the bible, then put it back in the drawer upside down. He took off his clothes and said his lines naked. He caught sight of himself in the mirror and immediately turned out the lights.
Orlando sat for a long time in the dark, alone, and listened to the overhead ceiling fan ticking. He heard laughing voices on the sidewalks down below, and then a thunder of footsteps on the stairs. He jumped as someone pounded on his door. “Lights out already, Orli?” Johnny called loudly. “Jesus, ya fucking Nun! Orli? Orlando? You asleep in there?”
He waited in the dark, holding his breath, as if Johnny could hear him through the heavy wood of the door.
“He’s gone out, Johnny!” Gore yelled from somewhere below in the garden. “Quit bothering decent people.”
“No decent people in this hotel,” Depp laughed, and he thundered back down the stairs. “That boy ain’t quite right,” Johnny complained loudly enough that Orli could hear as the two men left. Orlando scrubbed at the wetness on his cheeks and swallowed hard. After a while had passed he got up and got himself some water, then he got into bed for real.
He got up to take the lube and condoms out of the drawer and throw them back in the rubbish bin. Nearly an hour later he got up again to fetch his Orli-bear from the dresser and took it back to bed with him.
At long last, he fell asleep.
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I REALLY REALLY REALLY loved ‘Prophecy: Destiny & Design’!!! Really. Alot. :D
And I love this one too! Although I'm worried about Orli - whats wrong with him?! He needs Sean and Viggo!! (although at least he has Orli-bear) And now somebody knows his secret! *bites nails anxiously*
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