Orli

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.

Previously . . .

The shock echoed through my brain, rolled around in my eyes, thundered down into my stomach and churned that all up, bounced around my legs for a minute and jarred into my feet, which took a second to try and regain some control, gave up the ghost and covered their eyes as they did some kind of drunken Irish jig and sent me careening into the seats. As I fell very-nearly face-forward (thank you, elbows) onto the seats, the face that had made my body literally fold over registered with my brain and I got a big, honking name in my head.

Shit.

My celebrity co-star was Orlando Bloom.

ORLI

Chapter Two

'Oh! Matty, are you all right?' Nina, being lovely and caring. Ah, Nina. My very best friend in the whole of the play. Which, admittedly, only has five parts.

'SOMEBODY CALL AN AMBULANCE! HE'S DEAD! MY ACTOR IS DEAD!' Clea, being a big bundle of neuroses and shouting. Her two favourite pastimes.

'Clea, shush, he just fell over. He's Matty. He does this all the time.' Grr. Natasha. Being all bitchy, as per. Like it makes a difference I'm always falling over? It doesn't make this one all boring and unspecial.

In fact, it was so much more special since Orlando Bloom was watching. Nestling my face in the back of the chair I'd fallen into (mm, minty fresh) I realised that he wasn't saying anything. Well, he was probably laughing at me. Great. A world-famous superstar, the guy playing my brother in Clea's play, and I'd fallen over in front of him. Within seconds of meeting him. This is what happens when nobody warns people they're about to meet a celebrity.

'Why isn't he moving?' I heard Nina's voice, still no closer.

I suddenly realised that I'd been having this monologue in my head real-time, and that it had been nearly a minute since I'd fallen over, making it look a bit like I legitimately had some kind of a condition. I quickly weighed up whether I'd rather be taken to hospital with an asthmatic problem or embarrass myself in front of Orlando. Before I had chance to make up my mind, I was hauled backwards, a hand gripping the left side of my chest and pulling me up before another reached round and stood me upright.

'Thank you,' I said graciously, then promptly had to sit on the edge of the seat I'd just been smushing when I realised it was Orlando himself.

OhmigodhejusttouchedmeinthechestIfeelsowarmandtingly.

I was so going to have to get over this whole 'fall-apart-at-the-first-sight-of-Orlando' issue.

'You OK now?' asked Orlando, tilting my head up and looking into my eyes, checking I was focusing, I guess.

Now what I really wanted to say was 'homina homina', but that wouldn't have looked very professional so I said, 'Oh, yeah, sorry about that, I sort of lost my footing and then I thought I saw some coins down the back of the chair but then it turned out to be some kind of sweet wrapper, which-which is weird because they don't normally allow food in the auditorium, I-I guess I wasn't thinking straight.'

'Well, you know, nuzzling a chair. Not good for the brain,' he grinned at me. 'There's certainly better things you can nuzzle.'

'Orlando, Matty. Matty, Orlando, it's a pleasure for the two of you, I'm sure,' said Clea, barging up while I tried to figure out whether Orlando was actually flirting with me or whether he was just being friendly. The common sense in the far recesses of my brain weakly bonked me with a hammer in an attempt to bring me back to reality: in which Orlando was straight and I was a man. Damn my penis!

The rest of the cast (the aforementioned Nina and Natasha, and also the third girl who played Orlando's character's girlfriend, a sweet girl by the name of Katie, who as far as I knew only spoke when she was in character) came strolling up, having spent the entire period of my embedded-in-chairness worrying about me from afar as opposed to actually helping me. I threw them a look that may have conveyed either this or extreme bladder pain, I'm not sure because my looks invariably come out wrong and invoke embarrassing conversations.

'Now, because Orlando is a STAR,' dribbled Clea, 'he's already learnt his lines and knows most of the directions, so all we're going to have to do over the next few weeks is to fit him in with the rest of you and make sure your interactions are all smooth, kay? Since he's gone to the trouble of learning his lines, the rest of you' - here she coughed loudly while repeating the word 'Matty' over and over again, which I didn't think was very fair as, OK, I knew about half my lines, but hey! That was half more than I knew before I'd started! - 'could do well to catch up, hmm? There's no rehearsal today' - blatant speaking-over of my protestations at aforementioned coughing incident - 'but I just wanted Orlando to put faces to names. Nina, Natasha, Katie, you can go, Matty, I want to speak to you and Orlando for a moment.'

The girls left, Nina flashing me the 'call you' sign as she went, and I turned to face Clea. 'OK, I'm really sorry I'm late, I'll pay if the seat is damaged, I'm going to learn all my lines, that's a beautiful scarf, and I'm sorry if I forgot to say sorry for anything. Sorry.'

Clea looked slightly nervy. 'Matty! Darling! Why would I say anything about that? You know how laidback I am! Darling! Ahahahahaha!' Translation: Don't let Orlando know I'm a fucking bitch or I will fucking fire you till you can't remember your fucking name, you fuck. 'No, I just wanted you to know there's been a couple of mild alterations to the way we're going to be working.'

'Oh, OK. Will the rehearsal times change? Because, you know, I have that whole other thing . . .'

'Oh, no, no, honey, don't you worry about that, I'm just, you know, working around it because that's the kind of girl I am!' This last sentence was practically shouted into Orlando's left nostril. 'No, rehearsal times aren't changing. Just . . . You remember that in the play you and Orlando are brothers who have spent most of your adult lives together?'

'Yes . . .' I said slowly, unsure of where this was going and made really uneasy by the way Clea's eyes appeared to be spinning round and round INDEPENDENTLY OF EACH OTHER.

'Well, to adequately represent that I think it would be a good idea if you share your dressing room with Orlando. It's big enough and that way you'll really get an idea of how it feels to be in each other's faces all the time. OK?'

Well, it wasn't OK, because he was gorgeous and we were going to be spending a whole lot of time together anyway, and now I was probably going to see him without his clothes on, which was a) utterly bloody brilliant because he was gorgeous and b) utterly bloody awful because he was gorgeous!

I didn't say this, though. I said, 'Oh, yeah, that's faboo.' Dear Lord, did you just say 'faboo'? Somebody pass me some kind of gagging implement.

'Excellent,' she smiled, and turned to walk away. 'Oh, and you're moving into his hotel. You'll be in adjoining rooms, and I want you two' - she wiggled her fingers between us, in case I thought she meant me and my newly-infatuated chair - 'to spend as much time as possible together. Kay?'

'Sure.' And one . . . two . . . three . . . 'Whoa! What?!' Ah, my brain. Give it a second or two and it'll absorb pretty much anything. 'Hang on! Clea! What? Whoa! Clea!'

'Is this sentence going to end soon, or should I wait till we hit the eye of the storm?' Clea asked drily, throwing Orlando an 'isn't he a trial?' Look.

'OK, Clea, not that I'm complaining but -'

'Matty, I really want you and Orlando to be like brothers on stage. Therefore, you have to spend a lot of time together, I want this to look NATURAL. This is very important to me, I'm the writer and I just want to be happy with the finished product! Don't you?' Translation: If you don't do this for me, you giant fuckwit who should think himself lucky he's IN my fucking play, I will fucking fire you.

'Of course I do, Clea. If you think this is best, then sure, I will move into the hotel. It's not like I couldn't do with the company.' Translation: Please don't fire me please don't fire me that's a beautiful scarf please don't fire me.

Oh, crap, and I've already paid this month's rent.

'Excellent. Then it's settled.'

'Sorry I'm causing you such a shitload of trouble,' said Orlando as the car pulled away from the theatre and headed off towards the hotel, I guessed.

'What? Oh! The whole moving thing . . .' I internally chastised myself for being such a dick. 'I'm sorry about that in there . . . I should've spoken to Clea privately - it's truly, honestly not a problem.'

'Well, you just reacted honestly to some pretty big news, which, you know, is not something to be ashamed of.'

'Doesn't matter how I felt about it, it's generally not the done thing to talk about how much you don't want a semi-roommate when the guy is standing not two feet away,' I said with an apologetic grin. 'I really am sorry about that. And seriously, it's fine, I was getting bored of that place anyway, and as long as you don't, like, have any particular issues with my generally being a one-man destructive force, this should be great!' He smiled as I reached out and took his hand, shaking it firmly and hoping he didn't sense any gayness off it. While the image of a bloodhound sniffing delinquents for drugs wriggled about in my head, a sudden thought stuck me. 'Oh, can we just stop by my place first? I've got, like, my life there.'

He stared at me. 'No, that life is dead now.' He waited just long enough for me to get my itchy panic-feeling in the front of my nose, then laughed and slapped me on the shoulder. 'Course we can, you dolt, we're already going there. What, like you think you'd be living out of my travelling wardrobe?'

'Not like you can't afford it.'

He laughed, and I joined in. Actually, he seemed like a pretty nice guy. This might be fun.

We managed to get into my apartment, with only the minor issue of my walking into the elevator door because of staring at the little girl who was watching Orlando pass with an awestruck expression on her face. I realised as I got in that I hadn't peed since the morning, and told Orlando to make himself at home while I took care of business.

While I was peeing, a sudden thought raced through my head: DEAR GOD I'M GOING TO BE LIVING WITH ORLANDO BLOOM! Hotel or not, this was still a huge deal and at some point I was going to have to process everything. But not now. Now I needed to pack. If I was going to be spending time with Orlando Bloom, I was sure as hell gonna do it pretty. I swung the bathroom door open, and saw Orlando staring into my bedroom. The words 'rabbit' and 'headlights' crashed into my head.

'Er . . . Matty?'

'Yes?'

'Why is there a naked man lying on your bed?'

To Be Continued.

I am an author and live on feedback. It's like Dairylea to me. Tell me what you think! I'm also not averse to including storylines you might want to see. Bribes are welcome.

madi_mcfarland@hotmail.com