FIC: The Other Trailer 2/3

[lobelia321]

Title: The Other Trailer
Part: 2/3
Author: Lobelia; lobelia321@aol.com
Other details: See Part 1/3.
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Back in the main space, the overhead light casts a fitful glow. Dead moths line the skirting. There's a kitchenette, hideously utilitarian. There are some tall, narrow cupboards, fitted ship-style into the walls, sporting ornamental plastic metal-look-alike handles. There's a double bed, and there's a couch.

Orlando's lying on the couch, on his front, a sheet draped over his bare back. He's reading a book. He's got a Bakelite beaker with water wedged in the corner between metal frame and mattress. A pair of running shoes trails irregular laces onto the floor. A bag is open on the counter. A moist towel is draped over the top of one of the cupboard doors. A script, a paperback, a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, some socks, some rings, some necklaces and a diary with multi-coloured Post-its between the pages are all piled onto the window sill. Spreading and spilling himself into the space.

The double bed at the far end, however, is untouched. My bag waits neatly at its foot.

Orlando looks up, sees me, and quickly looks down again. I feel strangely naked. Well, I *am* strangely naked. Why did he look away? Is my dick still at half-mast? No, it's down. It's behaving itself. So what's the problem? Damn prudish Brits.

The double bed is covered in a mucus-coloured counterpane. Small white-and-yellow daisies are crocheted into its geometric design. It is an expanse of machine-made meadow. There's a hillock at the top end of the mattress, and a hollow from which Orlando must have pilfered his pillow.

"You know," I say, "I don't need such a large bed. You should sleep there."

"No, no," says Orlando, turning a page of his book. "I'm fine here. You have the big bed. Go on."

"I don't really care where I sleep."

"If you don't care, you might as well sleep in the big bed."

"Well," I say, "okay." And after a few seconds, "Thank you."

It's difficult to continue feeling irritated with someone who's just given you the only comfortable bed in the room. Who's lying there, quite still and peaceful, not fussing around. Whose touch still lingers on my scalp and whose haircare product fills my nostrils with its pharmaceutical smell.

"I used your shampoo," I say. "Is that okay?"

"Of course," he says, without looking up.

Well, I'm not about to start feeling shy just because he is, so I walk over to my bag and pull out my bathroom things. They don't take up much space. Unlike some, I don't need to take an entire drugstore of personal-hygiene merchandise with me on location shoots. My stuff fits into one small plastic bag, thank you very much. I dig out my loofah-bristled toothbrush and my homeopathic seaweed toothpaste. Also my Japanese tongue scapula.

On the way to the bathroom, I look at Orlando out of the corner of my eyes and see him looking at me out of the corner of his eyes. I then bump into the corner of the kitchenette counter. Shit. I sneeze. "Bless you," says Orlando.

The toothpaste produces its usual sharp ocean tingle on my gums. I say "aaah" to my reflection and scrape the white coating off my tongue. I run my tongue along the roof of my mouth. Always feels funny when freshly scraped. I put the damp toothbrush and the scapula and the toothpaste tube down among Orlando's things. They nestle into the unfamiliar trove.

When I get back out, Orlando's still lying on his front. He's still quiet. He's still pretending to read. I know he's only pretending because... Well, I don't know, actually. I'm guessing. But when I look out the window, I don't see the lights of the other huts and trailers; I see Orlando's face reflected behind me. Rain streams down the pane, and behind the vertical stripes is Orlando's face, hovering in the blackness, and behind Orlando's face is the dark forest, and deep in the dark forest are the glints of two pupils. Orlando's pupils. Orlando's eyes looking at me from behind.

Another sneeze. Maybe I shouldn't be sleeping naked tonight. I always sleep naked. I don't *own* any pyjamas. I dig around in my bag and pull out a T-shirt. This can be my night-shirt. No shorts, though. I don't bother with those. The body must breathe. The balls must swing loose in the night. What else do I need? Shooting schedule, alarm clock, bottle of mineral water. Yes, there's still some left; it's half full. I take a swig. The clock won't fit on the window sill, it keeps falling off. The bottle almost falls off, too, but I catch it in time -- not fast enough, though, to prevent the lid from rolling under the bed with a plasticky clickety sound. So here I am, on my bare knees, brushing aside the dust bunnies to get at the small green cog of a lid. I screw it back on. I stand the bottle on the floor next to the bed. I stand the alarm clock on the floor next to the bottle. I look for the shooting schedule -- it promptly slides off the bed and spills sheets all over the floor, upsetting both bottle and alarm clock. In fact, setting off the stupid alarm clock which starts beeping monotonously. I wham my hand onto its cocky top.

Orlando chortles.

Yes, true. I am causing ten times more of a ruckus than he is. It's me who's expending the mental energy. I need to regroup. I need to gather myself in. I need to *focus*.

"Okay," I say, "why haven't you got an alarm clock, anyway? You're not relying on me to get you up, are you?"

Orlando digs down behind his pillow and waves his cellphone in the air. He's actually grinning. I think he's laughing at me.

Okay, okay, that's right. Go ahead and laugh at me. Chortle. Mock. Do whatever. Look at me in that stupid way, if you must. Look at me and crinkle your eyes up in that ridiculous fashion. And look away again. Too quickly. And yawn, why don't you. Go right ahead, yawn away. Yawn so that I can see all the way into your mouth, past your pink tongue and your pink throat, all the way down to your freaking tonsils. No need to cover up that yawn, no need at all.

Actually, I'd better get under the covers now. Definitely under the covers. I'm only wearing a T-shirt, after all.

"Shall we turn out the light?" I say.

"Yep," says Orlando. "I'll get it, if you like."

He's up. He's hopping across the floor. The trailer shakes. His shoulders are bare, his chest is smooth, his necklace glints. And he's got something on his stomach, some sort of... tattoo thing. Yes. Ridiculous. Next, he'll be showing me his cock ring. I mean, not that I'm thinking about... Not at all.

The noise of the rain gets louder as soon as the trailer is dark. Everything takes on a blueish-orangey tint. The window is streaked with luminously liquid lines.

"Well," I say. "Okay. Good night."

"Night-night," says Orlando's voice. "Sleep tight. Bed bugs and all that."

I don't like this bed. It smells musty, and the mattress is too springy. The pillow is too fat and feathers poke out its side. I don't need a pillow, anyway. It's not healthy to sleep with a pillow. Cricks the spine. The sheets are tucked in, military-style. I lie straight, and I think of Strider. I think of the hardness of a forest floor, of the mossy bumps and curled-up leaf litter, of the fluttering of tiny insects and the stridulations of cicadas. Of the heavens above and the worm-filled earth below. I think of the comfortable sweaty smell of my sleeping bag, of the rough texture of its insides, the blunt teeth of its zipper.

The air in this trailer is stifling. "Can we open a window?" I say.

"Fine," says Orlando. "Go ahead. I might have known you'd be a fresher, not a fugger."

"A what?" What's he going on about now? First-years at school? Fuckers?

He's laughing again, the son of a jerk. "You Yanks," he says. "Freshers are people who like to sleep with the windows open, freezing their balls off. And fuggers, they like to keep the windows closed and sleep in a warm fug."

"So which are you?" I ask, annoyed. Just what I need, a bedtime lesson in British habits of aeration.

"I couldn't get the windows to open," he says.

Right. I'm kneeling on the bed and it's true, the damn windows won't open. There's a handle, there's a catch, there's a latch, there are all sorts of attachments and adjustments -- but nothing budges. I rattle, I shake, I bang the plastic frame in frustration.

There. The banging seems to have done the trick. One of the windows pops right open. In fact, pops right out. Goes *berdump* and hangs out of its frame, dangling by one half of a hinge.

Orlando is laughing quite shamelessly now. "Did you just smash the window with your fist, Viggo?" he says. "Did you just put your fist through that window and..."

"Oh, do shut up." I'm yanking at the window. No use. It continues to dangle, like a milk tooth hanging by a shred of skin.

Orlando's giggling. "I never knew it was going to be so entertaining sharing with you," he says. "I thought it'd just be go-to-bed and lights-out."

Rain falls through the open window onto my sheet. I pull the drapes across, crawl around, find my raspy-thin towel and wedge it against the sill. A moist breeze wafts by. Smell of earth, smell of wet grass, smell of dank undergrowth.

Time to go to sleep.

There's a lot of rustling coming from the couch. A pillow is plumped. Sheets are shuffled. A body moves about from left to right. Every now and again, there's a last little chuckle.

"Orli," I say.

The rustling stops. "Yeah?" says Orlando.

How to broach this? "The thing is," I say. I sneeze again. My hair is damp against the sheet. "Orli. I need to meditate tomorrow. I need to meditate before we go on set. Before we go to make-up. First thing."

"Oh," says Orlando. "Okay."

"I mean..." Yes, I am mean. "I mean that I need to be alone. To meditate. I need to be alone for about an hour."

"Oh," says Orlando again. "So: what? You want me to leave the trailer at four-thirty tomorrow morning, one full hour before we actually have to get up, so that you can meditate?"

"Yes," I say.

"Okay," says Orlando. "That's fine. I'll go and wake the hobbits. It'll be fun."

I was wrong before, about wanting to share with Sean or Harry because they sure as hell would never put up with me throwing them out of their trailer at some ungodly hour. Only Richard... Well, Richard would probably be up himself. Richard probably gets up at three a.m. every morning to sew buttons on the orc costumes and dust down the swords.

"I'm sorry," I say. Although I'm not.

"Don't worry about it, man," says Orlando's voice, disembodied in the dark, coming from somewhere beyond my feet. "It's good that you do this. I admire it. I admire how you're so serious about your acting."

Hmph. I sneeze again. There's an itch at the base of my throat.

*Clickety-click click*. I lift my head. Orlando's cell is blinking. He's got it in his hands. He seems to be reprogramming his alarm.

A faint orange quadrangle shivers against the ceiling. Dark dots coagulate in oily slivers. It's the spectral twin of the window above me. Dried lentils roll around in a sieve -- that's what the rain sounds like. Somewhere, somebody coughs. Somewhere, somebody bangs something. Somewhere, something hoots. There's a lot of creaking and scuffling coming from the couch. Scrabbling noises. Rubbing noises. Shoving and shifting and shuffling noises.

"Orli," I say.

"Yeah?"

"You're obviously uncomfortable there."

"No, I'm fine. Really."

"This big bed is bad enough so the couch must be worse. And you've got that back of yours to think about."

"My back's fine."

I sneeze. "Look, just come in here with me."

Silence.

"Look," I say again. This is stupid. I feel stupid. "I feel bad about you being on that couch." Phlegm clogs my throat. I cough. "Why don't you just come in here with me? If you sleep like shit and if you do your back in, I don't want to be the one who gets the blame."

Rustle. Shuffle.

"Anyway, I can't sleep with you squirming around over there so just get your butt on in here."

Orlando laughs. "Okay," he says. "Okay, I give in."

More shuffling, more rustling. Orlando's shadowy shape appears to the side of my bed. The mattress springs on its sprung base.

"I bet you just want to infect me with your cold," he says.

"I don't have a cold," I say. I sneeze. I wheeze.

"Okay," says Orlando. "No cold. Whatever you say, Viggo."

A blanket flops onto my legs, gets pulled away again. The mattress sags. "Don't you want your pillow?" I can hear his jaw click. More rustling, more shoving, more shuffling of feet against mine. "Oops, sorry."

"Is this better than the couch, at least?" I say.

"Ooh, yeah. Very cosy. I've always wanted to snuggle up with a nice filthy Human. Covered in dog shit." He's laughing again, the little... He's laughing at me. I seem to be a one-man amusement generator. Great. And oh shit, now he's rolling towards me. He's going to... No, he's just poking me in the ribs. Well, don't poke too much. Don't poke any lower than that. Because, remember, I'm not wearing any shorts here. Maybe... Yes, maybe I'd better turn over, turn my back to him.

TBC