FIC: All Tomorrow's Birthdays 1/4
Oct. 25th, 2002 04:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lobelia321Happy birthday, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
demelzagirl!! Late but long! ("*How* long?") With loads of love, from your fan-in-crime, lobelia321
demelzagirl!! Late but long! ("*How* long?") With loads of love, from your fan-in-crime, lobelia321[Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<font="+3">') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.]
Happy birthday, <lj site="livejournal.com" user="demelzagirl">!! Late but long! ("*How* long?") With loads of love, from your fan-in-crime, <lj site="livejournal.com" user="lobelia321">
<marquee><b><font="+3">Happy birthday, Demelza!!</b></font></marquee>
Title: All Tomorrow's Birthdays
Series: Not a series but same storyverse as "Olives in Brine and Artichoke Hearts" and "Life After Virginity" (both on my website). Chronologically, it is set between those two stories.
Part: 1/4
Author: Lobelia; lobelia321@aol.com
Website: <a href="http://www.geocities.com/lobelia321/">My niche: http://www.geocities.com/lobelia321</a>
Pairings: Dominic Monaghan / Bernard Hill; Dominic Monaghan / Derek Benfield; Dominic Monaghan / Karl Urban; guest appearances: Alan Hansen / Gary Lineker.
<lj-cut text="FIC: All Tomorrow's Birthdays, 1/4">
Rating: NC-17.
Category: Birthday fic. Weird pairings. Crossover (in part).
Summary: Dom has a thing. It's not the sort of thing one would want to advertise to all and sundry but it's making him hot and hard.
Feedback: Yes, please, I would love feedback! Anything, even if it's only one line, one word!
Content/Warnings: RPS. Elderly gents (quinquagenarians and sexagenarians). Threesome.
Spoilers: RotK.
Archive Rights: Beyond the Fellowship, Something Changed, my niche. Anyone else, please ask.
Disclaimers: This is a work of amateur fiction. I do not know these people. I am not making money. The events described in this story did not happen. Quotations are taken from J.R.R. Tolkien, *The Return of the King*, Book 5, Chapter II.
Author's Notes: Who is Derek Benfield? He is the lovely Mr Wainthropp in "Hetty Wainthropp Investigates". Find out more here: <a href="http://www.geocities.com/evillittlefandom.html">http://www.geocities.com/evillittlefandom.html</a> (incl. pics!).
Delicious Bernard-pic here: <a href="http://www.geocities.com/lobelia321/bernardandjohn.html">http://www.geocities.com/lobelia321/bernardandjohn.html</a>.
*Have a very happy birthday, dearest Demelza!!!* (in retrospect!) May the slashy goodness rain down upon you all of next year (and all sorts of other goodnesses as well). With thanks for all the tears of mirth and euphemistic acronyms, for yummy iconage and wondrous txts!! And for inspiring nearly all of the plot bunnies contained within this fic, *g*. *hugs and kisses!*
-------
Dom had a thing.
It wasn't a thing many people knew about. It wasn't the sort of thing one would want to advertise to all and sundry, especially not to sundry and certainly not to all. And Dom hadn't. Advertised it, that is. He'd kept quite quiet about it. He'd kept this thing close to his chest and tucked into his groin. He only let it out now and again, late at night, when alone with himself and his hand and the mattress. Then he let it out, like one might take one's pet ferret for a walk, for a brief outing, catch some air, maul some mice, and back into its cage it goes.
Dom's thing was about older men.
Not just a little bit older. Not just, say, almost ten years older, like Billy. Or even almost twenty years older, like Viggo. No, Dom had a thing for hoary-haired, saggy-eyed, craggy-browed, wizen-cheeked, rusty-voiced and lusty-fleshed men. Men with thinning temples and intent desires. Men who placed their liver-spotted hands around Dom's slim torso and their bristling lips around Dom's pert nipples. Men who just went ahead and *did* things to Dom, and all he had to do in return was moan and writhe, dig his fingers into their grey-streaked pubes and into their worldly arses and...
By this stage in the fantasising, Dom had usually come, so he never had the chance to think much about what might come after the pubes and the worldly arse. Not that he didn't know. Not that he didn't have his own little store of experience. Tiny, true, compared to the stocks hoarded up by the older men of his late-night fever dreams, but still. Tiny, tremendous and his.
So, what with the thing and what with the real oldsters off filming somewhere else and what with the general upheaval of location-shift and new hotel and new landscape and new script and new actors to act with and the thrill of just having heard from his brother that England was doing well in the run-up to Euro 2000 and the ecstatic strains of having heard the news today, oh boy, four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire -- what with all of that, was it a surprise that he nearly fell off his lemonade-green canvas chair when Bernard Hill walked into the briefing tent?
Bernard Hill. Saggy-eyed, craggy-browed. Jaunty of hip and white of beard. Piercing of eye and bristling of brow.
Dom had just enough presence of mind left quickly to arrange the shooting script decorously across his lap. Then the fantasies crowded in unbidden.
He looked at Bernard's hands and they looked strong and gripping and full of capabilities. He looked at Bernard's broad shoulders, curving roundly inside Bernard's corduroy jacket, and at Bernard's soft-leathered sensible shoes, and at the mean sweep of Bernard's whippet lips, and then he looked at Bernard's eyes.
And Bernard was looking right back.
Dom dropped his shooting script. Ruffle, puffle, went the pages along Dom's jeans. Thonk, went the plastic spiral binding on Dom's foot. Plock, went Dom's elbow as he hit the wooden armrest on his way down to retrieve the splayed sheets.
When he straightened up, Bernard was still looking at him.
Dom gave what he hoped fervently would pass for a friendly, how-de-doody smile.
Bernard raised one eyebrow and cracked a grin that was neither friendly nor how-de-doody but scared the shooting script straight back to the ground again.
Dom bent down and stared at the laces on his trainers. He studied the hem of his jeans, the way the stitches walked along the hem like a tidy row of ducklings, the way part of the hem hung down in tattered threads, the way his ankles protruded from the jeans and the hairs on his ankles from the skin.
When Dom looked up, Bernard was *still* looking at him, *still* raising his eyebrow at him and *still* grinning at him in that no-good way. That no-good all-too-good terribly troubling way.
Dom gave a small smile. Not friendly this time, not how-de-doody. Just a tremendously tiny smile, curved at the edges and laced with late-night breathlessness.
After the briefing meeting, there was the pub and the crowd and everyone shouting and yahooing and generally being excitable on account of location-shift. Dom was borne away on a tide of Orli and only caught glimpses of Bernard out of the corners of his eyes. Bernard wiping foam off his beard. Bernard *licking* foam off his beard. Bernard leaning forward and listening to something that Karl was saying. Bernard picking up something from the table, some pub snack, olive peanut anchovy, and slipping it in between Karl's lips.
That's all Dom remembered later that night, when he lay awake in his hotel bed, alone with his hand and the mattress.
He didn't remember anything about the meeting. The meeting seemed to have passed him by in a swoon of nervous agitation.
Except his unconscious must have picked up invisible vibrations at the meeting. Because still later that night, once the mattress and his bodily fluids had made their thorough-going acquaintance, and once Dom, his dick and his digits had all fallen into a dreamful slumber-- later that night Dom was transported back to that meeting.
-----
Everyone was sitting round in a loose horseshoe arrangement, just as they had been in real life, on their lemonade-green canvas chairs, with their shooting scripts in their hands or on their knees or on the floor between their feet. Peter was waving his arms about, just as he had been that afternoon. And Richard strutted about in the middle of the gathering, demonstrating something with a sword. And everyone else was paying various degrees of attention.
Everything was just as it had been that afternoon. Except not quite. Except that now, everybody was naked.
Stark naked. Nude as the day they'd been born. Bare-arsed, shiny-cheeked, dimpled, freckled, wrinkled. All there on show for Dom.
To Dom's left was Orli, slumped back in his chair and causing a thin crease to fold across his torso. He had his legs stretched out in a devil-may-care manner, his elbows propped on the armrests, his tat there for all the world to ogle, his mouth hanging open as per usual, trailing a thin thread of drool from lip to chin, and his eyes vacant in what could be an intently attentive manner or simply a vacuously vacant manner.
Further on was Viggo, flexing his cleft, idly scratching his balls and fingering his neatly-trimmed little penis. He had his head thrown back and was smarming down his nose in the direction of...
John R.-D., who was his left-hand neighbour. John's bulk loomed impressively in the confines of the chair. The domes of his knees shone in the overhead fluorescent light, the hairs on his chest thrust forth manfully, his pubes curled provocatively around his ruddy sex, and his coalishly sparkling eyes travelled up and down Viggo's body like snails on the rampage.
Then came the stand-ins. Tall Paul for Orli. Squat Brett for John. And little Kiran, the one Dom knew best because he was Dom's very own stand-in. His alter Merry. Kiran, with his smooth, brown skin, his wicked eyes, and his athletic triceps, biceps, deltoids and *rectus femoris*.
And, of course, there was Peter in all his hairy rotundity, and Richard in all his leanness and meanness, with his balls swinging in rhythm to the smitings of his sword.
Those were the people Dom knew. Across from him, on the other side of the tent, sat the newcomers. Actors whom Dom vaguely remembered from training but hadn't seen since.
First, there was Miranda, sitting very straight. Her breasts were white and round, and her nipples pink, pert and sniffing the balmy afternoon air. A rivulet of sweat meandered its way down from her bosom across her belly, around her oval navel, all the way down into the sighing down of her secrecy.
Next came Karl, propped on his chair like a piece of left luggage. His brow was furrowed, possibly in concentration, possibly in deep puzzlement. No hair graced his chest but freckles crawled along his shoulders. He had one leg up on the chair and was rubbing his toes. His jaw was at work: he seemed to be chewing something. Gum? Mint? Artichoke heart? Impossible to tell.
And finally, right at the other horn of the horseshoe, there was Bernard. Sitting just where he'd sat that afternoon. Looking at Dom with exactly the same raised eyebrow and the identical no-good-at-all smile. Showing Dom his broad, white-haired chest and his thick, white-haired pubic thatch, thick and crinkly like those tissue snakes that are stuffed around presents in Christmas parcels. And in the middle of the crinkly tissues was his gift. Bernard's fleshy gift to man. Tall, proud and quivering. Tower-like and shivering. Glistening and promising and priapically come-hithering.
Dom woke up with a screaming hard-on.
He stared into the dark hotel room and smelled the unfamiliar hotel smell. He wrapped his fist round his dick, closed his eyes and thought of Bernard. He thought of Bernard's rusty voice and lusty flesh, and he thought of himself moaning and writhing against Bernard's quivering cock. He went faster and faster. He rubbed the tip of his dick and put his finger into his mouth. He threw his head back and moaned and writhed. He came. He breathed. He conked out.
When Dom tried to stuff the ferret back into its cage, it wouldn't go in. It had grown too big. It didn't fit in the cage any longer. It sat in the middle of Dom's bed and cackled evilly.
-----
The next day, they sat in a triangle to rehearse their lines.
"Go practise together!" Peter had shouted over his shoulder, waving the script with one hand and adjusting his mobile speaker-unit with the other. "In that little tent over there. Page 130, paragraph b. See you in half an hour."
So there they were.
"Right," said Dom.
"Right," said Karl.
"Right," said Bernard, moistened his finger and turned the page. Looked up at Dom, moistened his finger again and turned another page.
Looked up at Dom, moistened his finger *again*, didn't bother turning a page this time, just kept moistening and watching Dom who was moistening himself but then Bernard couldn't know that; Dom was wearing Merry's baggy breeches and they were quite moisture resistant.
It seemed there was going to be no let-up or respite or escape into thespian proficiency. Because no sooner had they all found page 130 paragraph b -- Dom with much fumbling, Karl with much mumbling, Bernard with more moistening --, than Théoden King launched into his first regal speech:
"But come now! Eat and drink, and let us speak together while we may. And then..." Here Bernard lifted his eyes from the page and fixed them on the space where Dom's eyebrows almost met above his nose. "And then you shall ride with me."
The trampled grass ground dropped away from underneath Dom's canvas chair. The Mines of Moria opened up their maws. Balrogs moaned, cave trolls groaned, boulders fell and crumbled.
"Er," said Karl. "Your lines, Dom."
"Yes, yes, sorry." Riffling of pages. Followed by backtracking riffling, because of course he'd had his finger underneath his lines the whole time so riffling forwards just meant losing his way irrationally in Rohan.
"And then," Théoden repeated, leaning forward, "you shall *ride* with me."
"May I?" said Dom and wondered where all his breath had gone. "That would be splendid!"
"Sorry to interrupt," said Bernard. "I mean, I am not at all sure how Peter wants this played but I'm wondering, Dom, whether your Merry isn't sounding a bit too, ah, lubricious here."
Dom wasn't at all sure what exactly 'lubricious' meant and whether it had to do with his lack of breath and his burning nape but that he had to try and get into a more successful Merry-mode, that much seemed clear.
He cleared his throat. "That would be splendid!" he cried out, making the Merry-mouth and rounding out his eyes. There, that was better. It actually helped, being Merry. "I am afraid I'm only in everybody's way," he forged on, "but I should like..." His eyes travelled to the end of the paragraph, read what was printed there, and Merry dropped down that Balrog-hole, going going gone. "I should like," breathed Dom, "to do anything I could, you know."
Bernard raised an eyebrow again but when he spoke, it was with Théoden's booming voice: "I doubt it not."
"Anything," sighed Dom.
"Hang on," said Karl. "That's not in my copy. You say that only once, don't you?"
"Yes, yes, of course, lad," said Bernard and put an indulgent hand on Karl's knee. "You're quite right, as always." He turned back to Dom and théodenned at him: "You shall be my esquire, if you will. Is there gear of war in this place, Éomer, that my sword-thain could use?"
Karl turned into the Marshal of the Mark. "There are no great weapon-hoards here, lord," he intoned, "and we have no mail or sword for one of his stature."
Dom stood up. "I have a sword," he said.
"Ah," said Bernard. "Do you, indeed?"
"Er," said Karl and tapped the page. "That's not here."
"Karl," said Bernard and patted Karl's knee again. "We're just improvising a bit here. Just to get the feel of the scene. All right?"
"Oh," said Karl. "Okay." He blew at a strand of his blond wig and popped something into his mouth, something extracted from a plastic bag secreted within the folds of his costume.
"Dominic," Bernard said, "don't mind him. Please, do go on. And don't forget the actions to go with the lines."
Moria howled beneath Dom's feet but he managed to cross the few feet separating him from Bernard without tumbling into the abyss. He tried to get Merry back up there with him. He needed Merry to get through this scene but Merry had merried off with Durin's Bane and left Dom at the mercy of Théoden, at the mercy of Théoden's stern eyebrows and Théoden's twin furrows above Théoden's imposing nose and Théoden's piercing blue, piercingly true eyes.
Dom was kneeling before Bernard. That's what it said on page 130: 'Filled suddenly with love for this old man, MERRY kneels on one knee, takes THÉODEN's hand and kisses it.'
Bernard obligingly opened his knees. The voluminous pleats of his maroon mantle parted across his thighs. A smell of some sharp, stingy aftershave mixed in with essence-of-honey bathing milk and the usual must of wardrobe rose from Bernard's lap. Dom reached for Bernard's hand.
Bernard moved his hand up his thigh.
Dom reached up higher.
Bernard moved his hand again. Bernard's hand was now right up Bernard's thigh. His hand was drawing aside the mantle, and the gown underneath the mantle. His hand crept, inch by inch, ever upwards, until it rested, quite frankly and unequivocally, over Bernard's crotch.
TBC
<marquee><b><font="+3">Happy birthday, Demelza!!</b></font></marquee>
Title: All Tomorrow's Birthdays
Series: Not a series but same storyverse as "Olives in Brine and Artichoke Hearts" and "Life After Virginity" (both on my website). Chronologically, it is set between those two stories.
Part: 1/4
Author: Lobelia; lobelia321@aol.com
Website: <a href="http://www.geocities.com/lobelia321/">My niche: http://www.geocities.com/lobelia321</a>
Pairings: Dominic Monaghan / Bernard Hill; Dominic Monaghan / Derek Benfield; Dominic Monaghan / Karl Urban; guest appearances: Alan Hansen / Gary Lineker.
<lj-cut text="FIC: All Tomorrow's Birthdays, 1/4">
Rating: NC-17.
Category: Birthday fic. Weird pairings. Crossover (in part).
Summary: Dom has a thing. It's not the sort of thing one would want to advertise to all and sundry but it's making him hot and hard.
Feedback: Yes, please, I would love feedback! Anything, even if it's only one line, one word!
Content/Warnings: RPS. Elderly gents (quinquagenarians and sexagenarians). Threesome.
Spoilers: RotK.
Archive Rights: Beyond the Fellowship, Something Changed, my niche. Anyone else, please ask.
Disclaimers: This is a work of amateur fiction. I do not know these people. I am not making money. The events described in this story did not happen. Quotations are taken from J.R.R. Tolkien, *The Return of the King*, Book 5, Chapter II.
Author's Notes: Who is Derek Benfield? He is the lovely Mr Wainthropp in "Hetty Wainthropp Investigates". Find out more here: <a href="http://www.geocities.com/evillittlefandom.html">http://www.geocities.com/evillittlefandom.html</a> (incl. pics!).
Delicious Bernard-pic here: <a href="http://www.geocities.com/lobelia321/bernardandjohn.html">http://www.geocities.com/lobelia321/bernardandjohn.html</a>.
*Have a very happy birthday, dearest Demelza!!!* (in retrospect!) May the slashy goodness rain down upon you all of next year (and all sorts of other goodnesses as well). With thanks for all the tears of mirth and euphemistic acronyms, for yummy iconage and wondrous txts!! And for inspiring nearly all of the plot bunnies contained within this fic, *g*. *hugs and kisses!*
-------
Dom had a thing.
It wasn't a thing many people knew about. It wasn't the sort of thing one would want to advertise to all and sundry, especially not to sundry and certainly not to all. And Dom hadn't. Advertised it, that is. He'd kept quite quiet about it. He'd kept this thing close to his chest and tucked into his groin. He only let it out now and again, late at night, when alone with himself and his hand and the mattress. Then he let it out, like one might take one's pet ferret for a walk, for a brief outing, catch some air, maul some mice, and back into its cage it goes.
Dom's thing was about older men.
Not just a little bit older. Not just, say, almost ten years older, like Billy. Or even almost twenty years older, like Viggo. No, Dom had a thing for hoary-haired, saggy-eyed, craggy-browed, wizen-cheeked, rusty-voiced and lusty-fleshed men. Men with thinning temples and intent desires. Men who placed their liver-spotted hands around Dom's slim torso and their bristling lips around Dom's pert nipples. Men who just went ahead and *did* things to Dom, and all he had to do in return was moan and writhe, dig his fingers into their grey-streaked pubes and into their worldly arses and...
By this stage in the fantasising, Dom had usually come, so he never had the chance to think much about what might come after the pubes and the worldly arse. Not that he didn't know. Not that he didn't have his own little store of experience. Tiny, true, compared to the stocks hoarded up by the older men of his late-night fever dreams, but still. Tiny, tremendous and his.
So, what with the thing and what with the real oldsters off filming somewhere else and what with the general upheaval of location-shift and new hotel and new landscape and new script and new actors to act with and the thrill of just having heard from his brother that England was doing well in the run-up to Euro 2000 and the ecstatic strains of having heard the news today, oh boy, four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire -- what with all of that, was it a surprise that he nearly fell off his lemonade-green canvas chair when Bernard Hill walked into the briefing tent?
Bernard Hill. Saggy-eyed, craggy-browed. Jaunty of hip and white of beard. Piercing of eye and bristling of brow.
Dom had just enough presence of mind left quickly to arrange the shooting script decorously across his lap. Then the fantasies crowded in unbidden.
He looked at Bernard's hands and they looked strong and gripping and full of capabilities. He looked at Bernard's broad shoulders, curving roundly inside Bernard's corduroy jacket, and at Bernard's soft-leathered sensible shoes, and at the mean sweep of Bernard's whippet lips, and then he looked at Bernard's eyes.
And Bernard was looking right back.
Dom dropped his shooting script. Ruffle, puffle, went the pages along Dom's jeans. Thonk, went the plastic spiral binding on Dom's foot. Plock, went Dom's elbow as he hit the wooden armrest on his way down to retrieve the splayed sheets.
When he straightened up, Bernard was still looking at him.
Dom gave what he hoped fervently would pass for a friendly, how-de-doody smile.
Bernard raised one eyebrow and cracked a grin that was neither friendly nor how-de-doody but scared the shooting script straight back to the ground again.
Dom bent down and stared at the laces on his trainers. He studied the hem of his jeans, the way the stitches walked along the hem like a tidy row of ducklings, the way part of the hem hung down in tattered threads, the way his ankles protruded from the jeans and the hairs on his ankles from the skin.
When Dom looked up, Bernard was *still* looking at him, *still* raising his eyebrow at him and *still* grinning at him in that no-good way. That no-good all-too-good terribly troubling way.
Dom gave a small smile. Not friendly this time, not how-de-doody. Just a tremendously tiny smile, curved at the edges and laced with late-night breathlessness.
After the briefing meeting, there was the pub and the crowd and everyone shouting and yahooing and generally being excitable on account of location-shift. Dom was borne away on a tide of Orli and only caught glimpses of Bernard out of the corners of his eyes. Bernard wiping foam off his beard. Bernard *licking* foam off his beard. Bernard leaning forward and listening to something that Karl was saying. Bernard picking up something from the table, some pub snack, olive peanut anchovy, and slipping it in between Karl's lips.
That's all Dom remembered later that night, when he lay awake in his hotel bed, alone with his hand and the mattress.
He didn't remember anything about the meeting. The meeting seemed to have passed him by in a swoon of nervous agitation.
Except his unconscious must have picked up invisible vibrations at the meeting. Because still later that night, once the mattress and his bodily fluids had made their thorough-going acquaintance, and once Dom, his dick and his digits had all fallen into a dreamful slumber-- later that night Dom was transported back to that meeting.
-----
Everyone was sitting round in a loose horseshoe arrangement, just as they had been in real life, on their lemonade-green canvas chairs, with their shooting scripts in their hands or on their knees or on the floor between their feet. Peter was waving his arms about, just as he had been that afternoon. And Richard strutted about in the middle of the gathering, demonstrating something with a sword. And everyone else was paying various degrees of attention.
Everything was just as it had been that afternoon. Except not quite. Except that now, everybody was naked.
Stark naked. Nude as the day they'd been born. Bare-arsed, shiny-cheeked, dimpled, freckled, wrinkled. All there on show for Dom.
To Dom's left was Orli, slumped back in his chair and causing a thin crease to fold across his torso. He had his legs stretched out in a devil-may-care manner, his elbows propped on the armrests, his tat there for all the world to ogle, his mouth hanging open as per usual, trailing a thin thread of drool from lip to chin, and his eyes vacant in what could be an intently attentive manner or simply a vacuously vacant manner.
Further on was Viggo, flexing his cleft, idly scratching his balls and fingering his neatly-trimmed little penis. He had his head thrown back and was smarming down his nose in the direction of...
John R.-D., who was his left-hand neighbour. John's bulk loomed impressively in the confines of the chair. The domes of his knees shone in the overhead fluorescent light, the hairs on his chest thrust forth manfully, his pubes curled provocatively around his ruddy sex, and his coalishly sparkling eyes travelled up and down Viggo's body like snails on the rampage.
Then came the stand-ins. Tall Paul for Orli. Squat Brett for John. And little Kiran, the one Dom knew best because he was Dom's very own stand-in. His alter Merry. Kiran, with his smooth, brown skin, his wicked eyes, and his athletic triceps, biceps, deltoids and *rectus femoris*.
And, of course, there was Peter in all his hairy rotundity, and Richard in all his leanness and meanness, with his balls swinging in rhythm to the smitings of his sword.
Those were the people Dom knew. Across from him, on the other side of the tent, sat the newcomers. Actors whom Dom vaguely remembered from training but hadn't seen since.
First, there was Miranda, sitting very straight. Her breasts were white and round, and her nipples pink, pert and sniffing the balmy afternoon air. A rivulet of sweat meandered its way down from her bosom across her belly, around her oval navel, all the way down into the sighing down of her secrecy.
Next came Karl, propped on his chair like a piece of left luggage. His brow was furrowed, possibly in concentration, possibly in deep puzzlement. No hair graced his chest but freckles crawled along his shoulders. He had one leg up on the chair and was rubbing his toes. His jaw was at work: he seemed to be chewing something. Gum? Mint? Artichoke heart? Impossible to tell.
And finally, right at the other horn of the horseshoe, there was Bernard. Sitting just where he'd sat that afternoon. Looking at Dom with exactly the same raised eyebrow and the identical no-good-at-all smile. Showing Dom his broad, white-haired chest and his thick, white-haired pubic thatch, thick and crinkly like those tissue snakes that are stuffed around presents in Christmas parcels. And in the middle of the crinkly tissues was his gift. Bernard's fleshy gift to man. Tall, proud and quivering. Tower-like and shivering. Glistening and promising and priapically come-hithering.
Dom woke up with a screaming hard-on.
He stared into the dark hotel room and smelled the unfamiliar hotel smell. He wrapped his fist round his dick, closed his eyes and thought of Bernard. He thought of Bernard's rusty voice and lusty flesh, and he thought of himself moaning and writhing against Bernard's quivering cock. He went faster and faster. He rubbed the tip of his dick and put his finger into his mouth. He threw his head back and moaned and writhed. He came. He breathed. He conked out.
When Dom tried to stuff the ferret back into its cage, it wouldn't go in. It had grown too big. It didn't fit in the cage any longer. It sat in the middle of Dom's bed and cackled evilly.
-----
The next day, they sat in a triangle to rehearse their lines.
"Go practise together!" Peter had shouted over his shoulder, waving the script with one hand and adjusting his mobile speaker-unit with the other. "In that little tent over there. Page 130, paragraph b. See you in half an hour."
So there they were.
"Right," said Dom.
"Right," said Karl.
"Right," said Bernard, moistened his finger and turned the page. Looked up at Dom, moistened his finger again and turned another page.
Looked up at Dom, moistened his finger *again*, didn't bother turning a page this time, just kept moistening and watching Dom who was moistening himself but then Bernard couldn't know that; Dom was wearing Merry's baggy breeches and they were quite moisture resistant.
It seemed there was going to be no let-up or respite or escape into thespian proficiency. Because no sooner had they all found page 130 paragraph b -- Dom with much fumbling, Karl with much mumbling, Bernard with more moistening --, than Théoden King launched into his first regal speech:
"But come now! Eat and drink, and let us speak together while we may. And then..." Here Bernard lifted his eyes from the page and fixed them on the space where Dom's eyebrows almost met above his nose. "And then you shall ride with me."
The trampled grass ground dropped away from underneath Dom's canvas chair. The Mines of Moria opened up their maws. Balrogs moaned, cave trolls groaned, boulders fell and crumbled.
"Er," said Karl. "Your lines, Dom."
"Yes, yes, sorry." Riffling of pages. Followed by backtracking riffling, because of course he'd had his finger underneath his lines the whole time so riffling forwards just meant losing his way irrationally in Rohan.
"And then," Théoden repeated, leaning forward, "you shall *ride* with me."
"May I?" said Dom and wondered where all his breath had gone. "That would be splendid!"
"Sorry to interrupt," said Bernard. "I mean, I am not at all sure how Peter wants this played but I'm wondering, Dom, whether your Merry isn't sounding a bit too, ah, lubricious here."
Dom wasn't at all sure what exactly 'lubricious' meant and whether it had to do with his lack of breath and his burning nape but that he had to try and get into a more successful Merry-mode, that much seemed clear.
He cleared his throat. "That would be splendid!" he cried out, making the Merry-mouth and rounding out his eyes. There, that was better. It actually helped, being Merry. "I am afraid I'm only in everybody's way," he forged on, "but I should like..." His eyes travelled to the end of the paragraph, read what was printed there, and Merry dropped down that Balrog-hole, going going gone. "I should like," breathed Dom, "to do anything I could, you know."
Bernard raised an eyebrow again but when he spoke, it was with Théoden's booming voice: "I doubt it not."
"Anything," sighed Dom.
"Hang on," said Karl. "That's not in my copy. You say that only once, don't you?"
"Yes, yes, of course, lad," said Bernard and put an indulgent hand on Karl's knee. "You're quite right, as always." He turned back to Dom and théodenned at him: "You shall be my esquire, if you will. Is there gear of war in this place, Éomer, that my sword-thain could use?"
Karl turned into the Marshal of the Mark. "There are no great weapon-hoards here, lord," he intoned, "and we have no mail or sword for one of his stature."
Dom stood up. "I have a sword," he said.
"Ah," said Bernard. "Do you, indeed?"
"Er," said Karl and tapped the page. "That's not here."
"Karl," said Bernard and patted Karl's knee again. "We're just improvising a bit here. Just to get the feel of the scene. All right?"
"Oh," said Karl. "Okay." He blew at a strand of his blond wig and popped something into his mouth, something extracted from a plastic bag secreted within the folds of his costume.
"Dominic," Bernard said, "don't mind him. Please, do go on. And don't forget the actions to go with the lines."
Moria howled beneath Dom's feet but he managed to cross the few feet separating him from Bernard without tumbling into the abyss. He tried to get Merry back up there with him. He needed Merry to get through this scene but Merry had merried off with Durin's Bane and left Dom at the mercy of Théoden, at the mercy of Théoden's stern eyebrows and Théoden's twin furrows above Théoden's imposing nose and Théoden's piercing blue, piercingly true eyes.
Dom was kneeling before Bernard. That's what it said on page 130: 'Filled suddenly with love for this old man, MERRY kneels on one knee, takes THÉODEN's hand and kisses it.'
Bernard obligingly opened his knees. The voluminous pleats of his maroon mantle parted across his thighs. A smell of some sharp, stingy aftershave mixed in with essence-of-honey bathing milk and the usual must of wardrobe rose from Bernard's lap. Dom reached for Bernard's hand.
Bernard moved his hand up his thigh.
Dom reached up higher.
Bernard moved his hand again. Bernard's hand was now right up Bernard's thigh. His hand was drawing aside the mantle, and the gown underneath the mantle. His hand crept, inch by inch, ever upwards, until it rested, quite frankly and unequivocally, over Bernard's crotch.
TBC
