Disclaimer: I do not know Orlando Bloom or any other celebrities who may or may not appear in this story. It's a work of fiction, that I made up. Although, my birthday is the same day as Orlando's. I don't know how that affects anything, but I just like to tell people. I have no idea of Orlando's sexuality, but this story is not implying anything about it. Again, I say, FICTION.
This story isn't going to be all sexy, all the time. It'll probably get steamy, but you'll have to give it a while. It's like soup. It needs to simmer before it can boil. However, any eroticness you do read, is going to be homosexual man-on-man action, so if you're under 21, 18 or however the hell old you have to be where you are, go and have a sandwich. If the thought of guys doing 'stuff' offends you, you might want to go and have a snack also.
Well, I think that's about it. Oh, no, hang about. If you steal my story I will be very angry. E-Mail me before you post it anywhere else, or ooh, I'll be cross.
ORLI
Chapter Eleven
'Aaaaaaaaand a walkin' and a talkin' and a somethin' and a somethin' and a dobedo, a dobedo, a doobledibbledoobledibble thingy thingy wah,' I sang contentedly as I bopped about my dressing room, my iPod securely strapped to my waist and Steriogram playing loudly in my ears. I had no idea what the words were so I was making them up. Was it obvious?
'Whoo, my walkie talkie man! Lala, lalalalalala, do do - walkie talkie -'
My happy song was disturbed as a hand clamped down on my shoulder. I grabbed it in my left hand, twisted it at a painful angle, threw my body to the side and using my hip as leverage threw Mean Mr Intruder Man to the ground, where I moved into an aggressive stance and yelled 'Heeeeeee oh Lordy McFuckpants' as my aggressive-sounding battle cry morphed into the realisation that the attacker I'd just thrown to the floor was my lovely boyfriend.
Orli blinked up at me, looking ever so slightly confused as to why I was hurling him round the room (which, being honest, he'd known me for long enough, why was he seeking explanations now?), and his lips moved as though they were forming words, but all I could hear was
'Bright pink fluoro jacket!'
which confused me slightly until I realised that I still had Steriogram playing. I reached for the pause button on my iPod, forgetting as usual about the stupid touchy-sensitive clicky wheel thing, blasted the volume to a sufficient level to liquefy my brain and finally managed to hit the pause button, my head vibrating like a tuning fork as I pulled the headphones out of my ears.
'What was that for?' asked Orlando, but he sounded distorted, like he was standing at the end of some kind of tunnel. I put my hands to my ears again and removed the covers off the headphones, which meant that all of a sudden I could hear again, leading to me rejoicing inside my head in the manner of a miracle man, while my outside tried to look very serious and apologetic.
'I'm sorry,' I told Orlando sincerely, 'I thought you were a murderer.'
It took Orlando about three seconds before he started actually laughing at me, at which point I sulked until he leapt for me and grabbed me by the waist, rolling me onto the floor and tickling me mercilessly, resulting in a not-entirely-successful attempt by me to remain sulking while at the same time shriek with laughter.
We finally calmed down enough to stop rolling, and I lay my head against his, my nose pressing against his face like I was Tigger and I'd just bounced him, when the door to my dressing room swung open.
No big deal, except our heads had managed to position themselves directly in the space the door was rapidly starting to fill.
Orlando, reacting with reflexes honed from several days of being around the disaster area that was me, gripped my waist tightly in his strong (ooh, lovely strong grip) hands, and rolled me rapidly away from the door, the two of us rolling along the length of my dressing room like a badly-rolled carpet as the door came to a halt and Katie's head appeared from behind the door. Just her head. Like she was in one of those shows where a man pretends his head's bouncing around behind the curtains.
She stared at us for a minute, opened her mouth, thought better of it, said, 'Clea said can you see her before you leave' very quickly and quietly, and left, shutting the door behind her. I was really proud of Katie, she'd started speaking outside of rehearsals and everything. Orlando kept spinning this nonsense that I was some kind of miracle worker with her, but I just laughed it off and made him kiss me a lot.
In the week since our little confrontation-type thing in the park, my relationship with Orlando (or 'Orli' as he'd begun insisting I called him - apparently it was something all his friends knew him by. I wasn't sure whether I'd ever really get used to it, but I was giving it a try) was moving forwards in leaps and bounds. It didn't feel weird anymore, didn't feel like a fling with a celebrity, or even a fling; it had taken on a life of its own and I was starting to have dreams in which words like commitment kept getting bandied around, sometimes with fish attached (my dreams: gotta love 'em).
The rest of the cast knew about us. Nina, obviously, had known already, since after the dramatic events of last week I'd run to her place and embellished the story to the point where if I'd said that Orlando lifted me up in a swirl of light and a chorus of heavenly voices she would have believed me. Katie, being Katie, said almost nothing, but smiled and said very sweetly that we were the perfect couple.
Natasha was furious. She told Nina that it threw off the dynamics of the whole play and that having two actors who played brothers getting involved in a relationship with each other was disgraceful. As Nina put it, 'the frigid cow's too much of a bitch to get any, so no wonder she's jealous.'
And Clea, bless her heart, said, 'Ahahaha! That's lovely! Now AREN'T you just SO HAPPY together! You're both so lovely! Ahahaha!' Translation: You fuckers can fuck each other all you like, just don't fucking fuck up my fucking play.
Speaking of Clea . . .
'Shouldn't we should go see what Clea wants?' I asked Orli from my new vantage point lying underneath him on the floor of the dressing room.
'Before we leave, Katie said,' he grinned back. 'But right now we're busy.'
'Busy? Busy doing what?' Orlando's lips closed on the edge of my neck. 'Oh. Oh, oh. Ohhhh.'
Thirty-five minutes and a shower later, Orlando and I walked down the little corridor that connected the dressing rooms to the main rehearsal area. Fortunately, Clea had been working on one of Natasha's monologues and hadn't noticed our tardiness. From the look she gave us as we walked through the door, though, it was a pretty safe bet that Natasha had, and she wasn't happy about it. Orlando noticed it as well, and gave my hand a quick squeeze before Clea turned round.
'Oh, Matty, Orlando, LOVELY to see you, SO sorry to delay you in getting home, but there's just a few teensy points I need to discuss with you, if that's OK? OK? OK? OK? OK? O-'
Worried that she was about to spontaneously combust, I interjected with 'OK!' and she continued in the direction her original sentence had been going, finishing with a breezy 'That's all, Natasha darling, see you here sharpish on Wednesday for the dress rehearsal?'
Natasha muttered something unintelligible, glowering at me and stalking out of the room.
'Well, that's terrific,' carried on Clea as though Natasha had actually spoken English, 'it's only a couple of things, boys, don't start panicking! Ahahaha!' I crossed my fingers in the hope that she really meant it, and she wasn't covering up a fuck-filled rant about how crap I was.
'It's, uh, it's just . . . ' Clea started, before stopping, looking decidedly as though she was feeling unwell. I blinked at the torn expression on her face, unsure what I was more surprised about - the fact that she was torn or the fact that she was experiencing emotion - and was just wondering whether to give her the Heimlich or something when she continued, turning her head away, 'Orlando, I'm incredibly grateful to you for lending your support to this project, we couldn't have done it without you, and Matty, you're one of the finest actors I've ever worked with, it's been a pleasure working with you. Out! Out! I have work to do! Out!'
And with that, she scuttled off into the depths of the rehearsal space.
I turned to Orlando, only to find him looking as confused as I felt. 'Did . . . did Clea just compliment us?' he asked, sounding like the shepherds may have done 2000 years ago when they said, 'Did an angel just descend from heaven to speak to us?'
'I think so. I'm worried about the implications that may have on the world, though, I mean the consequences of such a planet-altering event could be terrible.'
Orlando chuckled slightly and we turned to leave, delayed in our quest to get to the door by my tripping up and, in my usual graceful way, float like a leaf to the floor.
Oh, all right, flap with my arms and legs like an epileptic ostrich and knock over five chairs on my way down.
Orlando had just knelt down to help me up and was halfway through some hilariously amusing comment about how I always fall over when a pair of feet landed in front of me. Well, when I say a pair of feet landed in front of me, I mean one foot landed, followed by the other, and there were legs attached. So, someone just stood in front of me, really. But, you know, dramatic license.
We both looked up, feeling like the hobbits in Lord of the Rings, to find Natasha standing over us like a harpy ready for her latest meal. I could feel a disagreement coming on, and so, it seemed, could Orli, who continued to help me to my feet and slipped his arm protectively round my waist. Ooh, I love having a manly boyfriend. All warm and snuggly and hard and muscly and . . . ahem. Where was I?
'I hope you two are happy.'
'Who two?' I asked.
'We two?' Orlando queried.
'Me two?' I asked Orlando.
'You two?' he replied.
We are SO funny.
Natasha didn't think so.
'I don't think this is funny,' she said.
See?
'You're putting this production in very great jeopardy,' she said in her best schoolmarm voice. 'How can you two ever possibly hope to portray brothers with any level of realism when you're . . . dating?' She said the word like it was poison. 'It's like incest!'
'Natasha,' said Orli gently, 'you know that we're not actually brothers, right?'
'Yes, of course I know that, I'm not stupid.' A squeeze on my waist prevented me from saying something foolish. 'But I'm just saying, how can you possibly relate to each other as brothers when you're going out with each other?'
'Uh, Natasha . . . we're actors. That's what we do. We pretend,' I told her, fighting the urge to tell her what Clea had just said. 'And anyway, Clea just said I was one of the finest actors she'd ever worked with.' I didn't say I was fighting it hard. And I did manage to resist saying 'Nyer-nyer-nyer-nyer-nyer.'
'That's as may be, Matty, but just wait till this gets out. You'll destroy the credibility of thi show. Will you be happy then?' She stalked out of the room, flouncing off for all the world as though she had the upper hand and was making a dramatic exit. Huh. Because she totally didn't. And wasn't.
Partly because I'd fall over if I tried to make a dramatic exit, but still.
Huh.
Huh.
Etcetera.
Having given Natasha a few minutes to take her soul-destroying Aura of Evil away from the immediate vicinity, me and Orli left the building.
'so, what are we thinking?' I asked. 'We could go for dinner if you like, I've still got plenty of time before I need to be at the club. We could grab a bite to eat and then swing by the hotel so I could change. Or we could just swing by the hotel . . .' I left the sentence hanging with a devilish grin on my face.
'. . . and you could starve to death,' Orli finished wickedly. 'We'll have plenty of time for swining later. First, you need to eat something, you need to keep your strength up for some strenuous singing, right?'
'Right,' I sulked. 'Stupid singing. I mean, lovely singing. But stupid no-sex singing. So where do you think we should eat?'
As it turned out, I never got to hear where he thought would be the best place to eat. His mouth opened and started to form words, but his lips were only halfway through the first word before his eyes shifted slightly until they were looking just past me, widening in alarm.
I turned to see what he was looking at - vaguely aware of Orli reaching for my arm behind me - and suddenly felt like I was in The Lion King. You know, the original one? Where Simba's dad gets hurled off that cliff and squished to death by the big herd of rampaging things? Like that. Suddenly there were about a million people all over me, pressing into the spaces around me as a sea of people approached Orli. I felt his hand briefly brush against my arm before it was dragged away by the weight of someone stepping in between us.
'Orli?' I called anxiously over the noise. 'Orli, where are you?' I wasn't scared, not really.
Fuck that. I was extremely scared. There were people pressing against me and I couldn't see Orli and they were starting to push. I knew that there were steps somewhere and I was trying to find them so that I could get away from the crowd and figure out where Orli had gone but every time I took a tentative step forward somebody pushed again and I was forced backwards, or sideways, I couldn't figure out which way was which.
I bounced off one guy's chest and he looked down at me like he wanted to scrape me off him, giving me a dirty look like I was breaking some kind of law being there. An elbow rammed into me from the side and I feel sideways and away from him.
It was at that point that I really started to panic. I could feel people pushing against me and all of a sudden what had started out as a bit of a crowd situation was turning into something really nasty. I had a horrible suspicion that if these people thought they could get Orli's attention by grabbing me round the neck and hanging me, they would.
I resumed my search for the steps, making more of a concerted effort now to get out of the crowd. I started using my body weight to try and wedge myself between the people and get to the steps but my one pushing form didn't do so much as make a dent in the oncoming crowd. I could see a woman just ahead of me who looked like she was foaming at the mouth and decided to make a concerted effort not to approach her.
'Matty? Matty!' I could hear Orli's voice now, faintly weaving in and out of the voices all around us. He sounded as scared as I was, which scared me even more.
I turned round to call back but just as I did I felt someone ram into me from behind, pushing me to the left. I felt my foot slip out from underneath me and realised with a twist of horror that I'd found the steps - just not exactly in the way I'd planned. I didn't have time to dwell on this because my whole body lurched downwards, my right foot slipping as my left dragged my body weight behind it, pulling me down the steps.
Either my head or my shoulder hit the concrete first - I couldn't really tell, all I knew was that there was a sudden flare of pain in both areas at roughly the same time. I just had time to think to myself 'Maybe some falls are worse than others' before my body rolled down another three steps and came to a crashing halt on a level surface, my head smacking the pavement and then lolling to the side.
Five seconds after that, I didn't have time to think anything to myself, because everything was black.
TO BE CONTINUED.
Well. See. It isn't all laughs!
Again, long time long time, I'm sorry! But I did warn everyone last time (I think) that updates for this would be sporadic - I have lots of other stuff that I have to do as well! It's the summer now so I think the updates MIGHT get a bit more regular but I really don't know, so please just bear with me!
Keep that feedback sliding my way!
madi_mcfarland@hotmail.com
I love you all, and thank you for your patience!
Maddy
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