Picture Perfect
Recipient: shanalle
Author: valerienne
Pairing: Billy/Orlando
Rating: light R
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“Shite, Orli, how does this work again?”
“You just click the button - it's got an automatic setting.”
“Yeah, all right, I've got it now. God, I don't know how you afford stuff like this.”
“Look, just don't ask what lorry it fell off the back of…”
The first time Billy saw Orlando it was raining, and he looked like a drowned rat. In fact it made Billy swear, because Orli came into the trailer and shook himself, exactly like a dog might, and he sprayed water all over the copy of the Guardian that Billy was reading. And Billy's explosion of Glaswegian expletives wasn't in any way appeased with the casual 'sorry, mate' that he received in return. It made Billy think Orlando was a rude bastard. In fact, he hoped he wouldn't have to talk to him again. After all, it was a short shoot. They probably wouldn't be needed for long, and there were a lot of extras on Wilde. Odds were Billy wouldn't even have to see the arrogant git again.
“Quit your shoving, you wee eejit.”
“Hey, who are you calling wee - I'm a foot taller than you!”
“A foot? I don't think so, you cocky bugger.”
“Close enough, Bills - I can rest my chin on the top of your head…”
So Bill was surprised when, the next morning, waiting for the call, the trailer door was pushed open and a lanky - and, bloody hell, attractive - young man walked in brandishing a bottle of bubbly.
It was over the top, it was impulsive. Buying that sort of gift in recompense for a moment's inattention, and a ruined 40p paper? In fact, it was completely Orli, except for the not being dangerous part, but Billy didn't know that then. And even the dangerous part was probably true, since Orli didn't know Billy. He didn't know his preferences, or his likes or dislikes. When they settled down to drink the bottle, after the day's shoot, with their feet up on an old chaise longue, and Orli leaned over to push his tongue into Billy's mouth, Orli didn't know what would happen. He didn't know anything about him at all. Billy could have decked him, or broke his arm. His karate wasn't that rusty. But Orli didn't know that either.
Billy didn't know Orli was a mad bastard, but he could have guessed.
He never did tell him that it was his birthday.
***
“Did it go off then?”
“I don't know. Did it make the little whirring noise?”
“How the hell am I supposed to know, Orli? It's not my camera!”
“And I thought you knew everything, Billy.”
“Not everything, you shite. Not everything.”
And it was a short shoot, wasn't it? Or it was afterwards, once there was someone to bitch with about the catering services, or the way they were kept hanging about for fucking hours. And Orli was bright, and young, and fuck. He was in drama school, apparently. First year. He had dreams, he wasn't going to be an extra all of his life. And Billy told him about Glasgow, and the book-binding, and the eventual getting completely fed up with his life. About the moving to London to try his luck, and the work he'd got as an extra, and how Liam Neeson wasn't really as nice as he seemed, and how he'd ended up sharing the bog with Tom Cruise that one time.
But he didn't talk about his own drama school application, and about how he couldn't afford it in the end. How Margaret had offered him some money, but he couldn't make himself take it, and how her kids had been so proud of him, but he just knew it wasn't going to happen. Just knew…
Orli was so young, and Billy scrubbed at his already thinning hair, and wanted to swear at life. Watched Orli as he danced like he lived, like a mad bastard, and then took him home afterwards and stretched all that lovely youth and beauty out, and tongued every inch of his skin, before fucking him slowly, just to hear him moan.
But Billy didn't moan, he didn't make a sound.
“That's it then. I heard it go this time.”
“That's it then.”
“Captured for posterity, Bill. Forever and ever.”
“Yeah. That's right. Forever.”
He couldn't be angry with him. He couldn't. Orlando was so excited when he came to tell Billy the news. He'd bounced in - yeah, really bounced, in that long-legged, not-quite-grown-into-his legs kind of a way - and he told him all about how he'd been given a line. An actual line!
And Billy was happy for him, he was. He'd shared the excitement, and he'd punched Orli on the arm in an extremely manly way, and then he'd watched as Orli floated off to wardrobe, to be fitted for his new costume.
He'd smiled through it all, and thought. I could have been an actor too, Orli. I could. I could say 'Looking for someone', just like you.
Looking for someone. I wasn't looking for someone, but you found me anyway.
“I'll miss you, you twat.”
“Yeah, and I'll miss you too. Friends though, right, Bill?”
“'Course. Always.”
“And we'll always have Wilde…”
“Shut up. What are we in - the Ealing version of Casablanca?”
“Nothing wrong with the beginning of a beautiful friendship, Bill.”
So he couldn't even begrudge him his success. Even a handful of years later Billy couldn't begrudge him. Orli was a force of nature. A beautiful, surprising whirlwind. And Billy had known. He'd known from the first mouthful of champagne, how it would be.
So, instead, he went to watch Orli's films at his local fleapit, and he bought himself popcorn, and he was happy for him. He was.
And sometimes, just sometimes, he went back and took out the photos he had. The stupid set of photos they'd taken, that last day of the shoot. Orli with his automatic camera that he didn't know how to use, and his mad grin, and his hair blowing in the wind. Billy looked at him in the pictures, and at himself, as Orli shoved him and leant on him, and dug in his elbows. Billy could almost smell the rain in the wind that day, and feel Orli's stretchy tension as he'd pushed into Billy.
And Orli smiled at him in those photos and Billy couldn't begrudge him anything. Those teeth, and that skin, and that hair. That beauty. Orli smiled at him out of all that celluloid, and Billy smiled back.
Because some things were luck. And some things were meant to be. And it seemed that Orli, the mad bastard, was always meant to be in pictures.