| Impish
Author: Minervacat
The Fellowship, sans Sir Ian and John, is sprawled across Viggo's living room, all pliant and sleepy after a long night of drinking, surrounded by an empty beer bottle representation of the final battle for Middle Earth. "They're Orcs," Lij had slurred from the floor when Viggo asked him if it was okay to recycle his toy soldiers at this point. "But you can recycle them anyway." Viggo is picking up empty bottles and turning off lights, and Billy and Orlando have disappeared together, hands already down each other's pants before they'd gotten out the door. Sean hauled Elijah off the floor and Elijah's drunken giggling echoes through the open windows until Sean's car rumbles off into the night. That left Viggo, washing dishes in the kitchen and singing something vague that might or might not be English; Dom, on the couch with the last lonely beer quickly getting warm in his hands; and Bean. Bean is slumped in Viggo's big armchair in the corner, eyes closed, and the only lamp still on in the living room is shining down on his face. No filming for Sean that day, so he's scruffy, day-old beard catching the lamplight and glinting red-orange-gold, like sunsets. Dom blinks, twice, and Viggo drops a bottle in the recycling bin with a crash, and suddenly it's all very clear: Dom absolutely has to get out of here before he starts thinking anymore romantic, poetic, girly thoughts about Bean's beard. He should leave, at least, but that doesn't mean he will. Entropy and too much beer have glued his ass, possibly permanently, to Viggo's couch. He peers at the beer in his hands instead; the label looks normal enough, but that doesn't mean there aren't hallucinogens in it, either. For all he knows Orli could have dropped something in his bottle before he left, something that's making Dom gaze at Bean like a love-sick teenager instead of a fully-grown almost-entirely-heterosexual man. Dom wouldn't put it past Orlando to have done something like that, either. Orlando's good at heart, but a bit of a cunt all the same. But what the hell, a few more hallucinations of monumentally embarrassing swoony proportions aren't going to kill him, so he tips the bottle upside down into his mouth, spilling warm, flat beer all over his chin. Viggo comes out of the kitchen as Dom's wiping the drips away with his shirt and says, in his best King of Men (And Of Hobbits And Also Of That Wizard Chap, Too, When He'll Let Viggo Get Away With It) voice, "Go home, hobbit. And take our fallen Steward of Gondor with you." Which is when Bean cracks one eye open and says, "I am neither fallen nor the Steward of Gondor, Viggo. And I can get home without the help of someone who sounds like Michael Owen, the ponce, when he attempts a Scottish accent." Dom's not sure if Bean is insulting him or Michael Owen or both of them, but Bean's got a car and Dom's like to end up in a ditch somewhere if he tries to walk back to his flat at this point, so he tells Bean this. "Drive me home." Somehow it comes out sounding more like a hostage-situation demand than a polite if drunken request, but Bean grunts and doesn't say, "Fuck you, you daft wanker," like he does to most things Dom demands of him (and since when is "Bean, stop watching the match on the telly so I can mock Sheffield to your face some more" an unreasonable request?), so Dom assumes that he's getting a nice car ride back to his flat. No ditch-sleeping involved. Dom feels a bit like a puppy, on Bean's heels as they both trip down Viggo's front walk, the living room dark behind them before the door has even shut all the way, but he seems to have stopped gazing adoringly at Bean's stubble, so he counts it as an improvement, at least. It wasn't that he wanted to be walking so close to Bean, but sleeping in Viggo's garden is only slightly more appealing than sleeping in a gutter somewhere in Wellington, and the path is twisty and Bean's shirt is appallingly yellow and easy to see in the dark. So he follows Bean, and tries not to step on the backs of his shoes. Dom was already entrenched on Viggo's couch, directing Elijah in placement of the Fellowship in battle and fending off derogatory remarks from Billy ("You're not as tall as that bottle, mate, stop pretending!"), when Bean arrived, so he's no idea where Bean's car is. But Bean doesn't really seem to know either; they're just wandering up the street in companionable silence and are 50 feet from Viggo's house when Bean stops dead. "Fuck." "The gravel would be awfully uncomfortable, but since you asked so nicely …" Bean's head turns in his direction and Dom knows that if he could actually make out the details of Bean's features in the dark, they'd be wearing the "Do please control yourself, Dominic" look that Bean learned from Sir Ian, so he trails off and stands calmly for a moment. He doesn't stand still and quiet very well, though, so after a minute passes, he asks in his most innocent voice, "Lost the car, mate?" "No," Bean says. "I know exactly where my car is. It's at Liv's. I loaned it to her and Mirry tonight. They dropped me off. Fuck." Dom means to say, "So we're walking, then?" but what comes out instead is "Make sure I don't sleep in a ditch, would you?" Bean's face rearranges itself, Dom can see eyebrows moving in the shadows, at least, and Bean doesn't say "What the fuck are you on about?" like Billy would, but his face shows it pretty clearly. Or Dom thinks it would show it, if he could see anything of Bean except his tacky shirt and the hazy glint of a reflected streetlight on Bean's beard. Oh, great, Dom thinks. Now we're back to the stubble again. Fuck me. And now he's spent so long thinking about Bean's stubble and Bean's shirt and Bean's facial expressions that Bean himself is another 25 feet down the road from where Dom's still standing, ambling slowly along without a backward glance at Dom. Dom considers himself to be mostly-but-not-resolutely heterosexual. Right bloke at the right time and all that. He's kissed a few in his lifetime, gotten some blowjobs from blokes (and given a few, to be precise about it), but he's always tended more towards blokes like Orli, when he's gone for men - so pretty it hurts to look at them. Not like Bean, manly men who no one would ever consider calling "impish". (His mum's best friend called him that once, and it's stuck with him. Not his favourite personal adjective, to be certain.) That does not change the fact that Bean's arse, ambling away from him, looks pretty damn good underneath the streetlight, and Dom is never one to walk away from a nice arse, so he takes off running after Bean. It is not in Dom's nature to simply run after men - or women, for that matter, he prefers them running after him, thank you very much - so when he gets close enough to Bean, he takes a flying leap, prays he hasn't misjudged the distance, and lands squarely on Bean's back, wrapping his arms around Bean's neck. Bean's stubble is scratchy and soft against Dom's arm, and the chain of the St. Christopher's medal he always wears cool under the spot where Dom's locked his wrists together. Bean startles and twists, trying to get his head around to look at Dom, or shake him off, or something. He's not trying very hard to unseat Dom, who decides - and quickly blames the decision on the beer - that if he can't have a car ride home, he can at least get a ride (and he snickers helplessly at that, only making Bean startle more) from Bean himself. Dom wraps his legs around Bean's waist and settles in comfortably. "I am not," Bean growls, stopping dead in the middle of the road. "I am not carrying you all the way back to your flat, hobbit." And then he shakes his entire body, violently, like he's having a seizure, and Dom is forced to tighten his thighs around Bean's hips or risk being flung into a ditch on the side of the road. Since Dom is still of the opinion that sleeping in a ditch on the side of the road in Wellington, New Zealand is a Bad Fucking Idea, capital letters and all, the thigh-gripping is absolutely necessary. Bean stops thrashing about and Dom sends a sincere message to his brain, about how if he's never forced to think the phrase "thigh-gripping" again, he'll stop killing brain cells with beer on such a regular basis. His brain doesn't answer. Dom rubs his face against the side of Bean's neck like a cat, instead. As his brain has obviously gone on vacation without him, probably off somewhere lovely and warm with Orlando's hallucinogens, he doesn't feel the need to justify his weird behavior. These things happen when you don't have a brain. So do weird things like biting down on that big muscle in Sean's shoulder. Or licking his neck. Bean makes some indistinct snorting noise, possibly to indicate utter disgust with these weird things, and mumbles something about the "fucking King of Men", which Dom really has to agree with - just on general principles, Viggo's a fucker. Then he locks his arms around Dom's thighs and sets off down the road. Dom's flat is only two blocks from Viggo's. He conveniently forgot to mention this to Bean at the outset of the trip, mostly because Bean would have grunted and told him to "just fuckin' walk, then" and Dom really didn't want to walk, but it's less than five minutes before Bean is dumping him unceremoniously on the front stoop of his building. Bean just stands there, glowering at him. "Well, ta, mate," Dom says, and turns to fish his keys out of the pocket of his jeans. "Wait a minute, hobbit," Bean growls. Dom looks up over his shoulder; Bean hasn't moved, silhouetted by the streetlight behind him. He either looks menacing or dead sexy. Dom doesn't have a brain, so he can't really decide. "You owe me." "I'll buy you a pint tomorrow night, mate. G'night." Bean has big hands. Dom's brain returns long enough to offer up the thought, you know what they say about blokes with big hands, before Bean has pinned his shoulders to the doorframe and kissed him. His stubble is surprisingly soft, and his mouth is very wet, and Dom is possibly enjoying this whole evening a little bit more than he should. But just as he gets it in his head to kiss Bean back, rather than just flailing in surprise, Bean's pulled away, wiped his mouth across the back of his hand and walked off, flashing Dom a surprisingly wicked grin. "G'night, hobbit." Perhaps Dom's mum's best friend would call Bean impish after all. If Dom had a Important Research-Type Things I Should Do list in his journal, he'd add "find out if Bean is actually as wicked as he seems" to the very top. He doesn't have a list like that, but as his key clicks in the lock on the front door, he thinks that maybe he'll start one, just as soon as his brain comes back from Tahiti with Orlando's hallucinogens. |
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