He leans back against the pillows, rolls his eyes again for good measure and attempts to look seductive. Orlando waves a hand randomly in the air. "No, no, you're not Mata Hari! You're waiting for your new husband! Look anticipating yet frightened!"

"Anticipating yet frightened," Elijah says and frowns. Slides his hands over shiny white fabric, smoothing it over his thighs.

"Like THAT!"

He closes his eyes and moves a little uncomfortably. He doesn't know why he's not laughing his head off, but he's not. Not the slightest chuckle. The corset makes it hard to breathe, and it's poking him in the side with something. He has no idea where Orlando got the thing in the first place, and he's not sure he wants to know. He saw it lying daintily on top of the big, white dress and knew nothing good would follow. Orlando was simply not a gracious victor. "I'm not--" he tried, but Orlando was already laughing and picking up the thing, lace and pink rosettes and garters and all.

"Oh yes, you are. Do I have to recite the terms?"

The terms were pretty simple. The winner decides. The First and Only Bloom-Wood Drunken Handstand Tournament had ended in painful defeat for Mr Wood, and Mr Bloom had gone all out for his prize. The camera. The dress. The corset. There were stockings and shiny, pale-pink shoes, too. Elijah squinted at the thin nylon of the stockings. Looked down. His legs, sticking out of worn khaki shorts, were knobbly-kneed and somewhat hairy, and would probably look absolutely ridiculous in sheer hose. Orlando poked him in the shoulder with something.

"Don't worry about that, mate, I've got just the ticker."

"I'm not shaving my legs," Elijah said in token protest, but he'd already admitted defeat.

"Don't fall asleep!" He blinks and squints and sees Orlando stand by the bed with his head cocked and his hand on his hip. He leans the camera against the side of his head, thinking. Elijah watches the little wheels turn, the light go on. "Oh! - maybe you were stood up by the nasty groom and fell asleep on the bed! Lie back down!"

He lies down and closes his eyes. His legs feel strange inside the hose, shorn and confined. He rubs them together and shivers.

Close-ups of his face, with Orlando hanging over him; his reflection in the lens and Orlando's mohawk sticking up just above it. Elijah looks at his fingers on the objective. Long, thin, strong fingers. Orlando knows how to handle a camera.

"Your lipstick is smudged. No, no--" he says quickly when Elijah moves. "--don't touch it. It's good. A touch of debauchery..."

The lipstick was pink, slutty, cheap pink. Elijah nearly asked Orlando if he got it from one of his girlfriends, but decided that was maybe a little too mean.

Orlando painted his face with sure hands, peering intently into Elijah's face. Elijah could almost feel the tiny gust of air as his eyelashes fluttered.

"You're way too good at that, by the way," he said when Orlando finished applying eyeliner and stretched, pretty happy with himself.

"Drama school, you infidel. You don't get a make up artist when you're playing Second Clown in Much Ado About Nothing."

"Well, I didn't have to do my own makeup when I was Video Game Boy."

"Hollywood corrupts. Sad, really. Kids with no job skills."

Elijah licks his lips - they even taste cheap pink - and the flash goes off like a white wall right in his face. "I'll have red-eye," he says.

"Who cares, you look perfect. Oh yes, perfect. Half streetwalker, half virgin." Cocked eyebrow and Elijah watches the dimples in Orlando's cheeks deepen as he smiles. "I could make a fortune selling these."

"I could make a fortune suing you," Elijah retorts and wipes his hand over his mouth, not quite quickly enough; the click, white wall, whirr of the camera catches him.

After that, Orlando stops taking pictures for a while and stares instead. Elijah tries not to squirm and plucks at the soap-soft fabric of the dress.

"What?" he says finally.

Orlando cocks his head. He's not smiling at all now, just staring and pursing his lips. Contemplating. "I really thought you'd look more like a girl, honestly."

He tries to see through that - compliment or insult? Could go both ways with Orlando keeping his face completely straight. "Well. Thank you, I guess--" he starts.

Orlando grins and the flash goes off, lightning-bright in Elijah's face. "You look more like some demented transvestite--"

"Oh, THANKS," Elijah says, testily, rubbing his eyes. The mascara crumbles under his fingers.

Orlando blinks and adds, quickly and still grinning, "--although very cute." He straightens his back. "Don't touch your face! Now, let's move on. You could, like, try smiling. Smile for papa, now! Smiiiile, say cheese..."

Elijah shows teeth.

"Uh, SMILE. Not growl." The flash goes off again, click, click, click. He tries to remember if he's ever done a photo shoot with a photographer this annoying. Orlando should thank the Lord that he's cute, he thinks. Without the fucking pretty face, people would kick his ass a lot more.

He gets to jump on the bed - Orlando's bed, broad and comfortable and perfect for jumping in. The springs groan under him and the dress billows like a shiny white sail around his legs.

"Wait, wait," Orlando says, grabbing a tuft of satin and tulle and pulling him down. Then he is pushing up the dress; fingers sliding quick and light over the stocking and then hitting skin - Elijah pulls in a breath - and then Orlando's voice again, now shrill in consternation: "You're wearing your boxers underneath the dress!"

Elijah looks down. "What are you doing?" Fingers on his inner thigh, tickling, pulling at his underwear. "What are you-- Would you--" He giggles, helplessly, and bats at the mass of dress between his hands and Orlando's.

"Get them off," Orlando says and pushes his hand even higher. "We can't have a proper photo shoot without a good shot of creamy thigh!"

"I don't have creamy thighs," Elijah squeaks - he can face it: it was a squeak. "Let GO of my UNDERWEAR, you big freak!"

"Off with them!"

"CHRIST!" he finally yells and falls backwards onto the bed, pulls up his knees - Orlando's hand catches the boxers from the inside and that's just about two layers closer than anyone had intended - and kicks out, almost-panicking through his laughter.

Orlando lets go immediately and sits on the floor with a thud, his hands now clutching his face. He moans, throaty, pained sounds, and Elijah tugs down the dress and holds his aching sides.

"Oooooh, that smarts," says Orlando. "Ow ow ow. You better hope it's not broken."

"Are you okay?" Elijah asks when he finds his voice again. He's still shaking with giggly aftershocks, breathless inside his constrictive whalebone-and-satin prison. "Hey, Orli. Hey, I didn't break it, did I?"

"'s no bwoken, no fanks to you," Orlando mumbles through his hands. Elijah is about to scramble off the bed and offer some sort of dejected apology when he notices that Orlando is actually choking off laughter rather than holding his nose.

"Fuck you," he says and squirms out of his boxers and throws them over the edge of the bed. "Come get your motherfucking creamy thighs."

Orlando's head comes up. "That would sound a lot better if you could keep from laughing," he says, but he heaves himself off the floor and onto the bed, onto Elijah's legs, in fact, with coiled-spring grace.

Elijah fights half-assedly, choking on giggles and fluffy tulle, squirming away from hands and, wait, teeth on his knee? Teeth, tongue, lips, and he squeaks into a mouthful of dusty fabric and beats at the white billows. He turns his head to press his heated face into the bedspread.

"Man--" he pants, "hey, no--"

Lips and fingers. Muffled chuckle and moist breath too, too high up. Elijah's given up trying to close his legs. "I'd say "creamy", yes, maybe with an option on "satiny"."

"What?"

There's a ruffle of cloth and a groan from the bedsprings and Orlando's face appears in his field of vision, framed by white. "Thighs!"

His creamy or possibly satiny thighs feel cold after the heat of breath and mouth, and Elijah bunches his fingers in the skirts and pictures his grandmother's bedsores. It doesn't help to stop the rush of heat when Orlando crawls up his body and somehow gets a strategic knee wedged between his thighs. The cool of fabric and the body heat mingle and Elijah thinks, almost loud enough that it makes it out of his mouth, crap, someone's gonna have to take the fucking dress to the drycleaner's--

Orlando's face, complete with grin and dimples and gently twinkling rascal eyes, hovers over him; Orlando's long body is two inches from touching his, and the knee is just barely rubbing against his groin. Despite the thick fluff of dress in between, he feels naked. Thinks about his abandoned underwear lying somewhere beside the bed like...like...discarded underwear next to the bed in a bridal suite. If he were to undo the garters and slip off his stockings, the impression would be clearer. Orlando wears black jeans and a baggy black t-shirt with an angry face printed on the front. Not exactly what's expected of the groom, but hell, at this point, Elijah is prepared to accept a fucking bunny suit, if it comes with that smile.

No, wait, back up...

He blinks and sees his hands rising unbid. He's even opened his mouth in anticipation of a kiss. A kiss.

He drops his hands and closes his mouth. Lies motionless. Orlando snickers and says, "Now, where did I put that camera - you have a completely priceless look on your face."

Elijah doesn't laugh because he can't find enough breath to do it. He's aware of a growing ache in the place where Orlando's knee is pressed against him. It's getting uncomfortable to lie here stiff as a board, tied into this oppressive piece of medieval torture, pinned under this still body. Orlando is still grinning at him, but he's stopped laughing.

Elijah waits, breathless, but nothing happens. "What?" he says.

"Priceless," Orlando says and the smile drops off his face. Elijah pulls in a small, wheezing breath and feels his lips fall open a little. Then he meets Orlando's eyes and there's a second where he doesn't know which way it will go; maybe Orlando will goose him and hiss, "My preciousssss," and they'll laugh and never speak of this again. Maybe Orlando will open his mouth, too.

Elijah's eyes hurt a little; his mascara is probably running. He feels sweaty and sticky and too hot inside the dress, and he's thinking about that when Orlando drops down and kisses him.

He thinks, did I think I was too hot? If that was hot, what do you call this? He runs out of words around 'blistering' and just lets himself float on it, wild golden-bright rush from his tongue to his groin, from his fingers - flitting over cotton-soft t-shirt, stubbly scalp, smooth, sharp cheekbones - to his toes, curling painfully in the cramped space of too-small shoes.

Orlando's hands are gentle on his shoulders, thumbs skidding softly over his collarbones. He shudders and pushes against them, tries to be discreet about pushing against the knee between his legs. He feels Orlando's lips stretch into a smile right inside the kiss, and the knee is solid, firm pressure and a tiny rocking motion that has him gasping.

Loss of knee, hands, lips; he knows he let out a sound, some sort of muted animal whimper, but hopefully it was drowned out by the bedsprings creaking or the shuffle of clothes as Orlando pulls off his t-shirt and slides down the bed. The shirt lands on Elijah, covering half his face. He thinks about pulling it off and tossing it over the edge to join the underwear, but never gets around to it.

"Ohhh," he breathes, the sound pushed out of him and hovering in the air. Orlando's hands have returned to his legs, undaunted and determined. Then there's a pause. He blinks and raises his head; it feels heavy and his vision is ever so slightly blurred. Orlando is a smudge of light and shadow hovering over the pristine white of the dress. Blink, blink, there he is, unsmiling again.

"Do you mind?" he asks.

"What?" says Elijah, stupidly. "Oh." He flops back down again. Works out the words carefully and forces his mouth to speak without stumbling: "No, go ahead."

He can hear the grin: "That's what I thought."

The skirts come up in a puff of white, and it's all he sees for a while. It occurs to him, just before his concentration is pulled resolutely back down south by wet heat and pressure and the tongue, the fucking TONGUE-- that he must look a rare sight with his smeared lipstick and runny mascara and the white skirts floating around him. His legs dangle over the edge of the bed and he tries not to think about how ridiculous a guy looks in garters and stockings.

It's surprisingly easy to forget about looking like a dork. Harder to fight being an actual loser and coming after three seconds flat. He knots his fingers into fists and tries to dig his fingernails into his palms, but that's a dead end - he doesn't have enough nail to even feel it. He ends up biting his lips and pulling desperately at the smooth bedspread under him, fighting the urge to buck, fighting the urge to get louder and louder. Failing quite spectacularly.

Comes.

He can't think of anything to say. The ceiling curves above him like a swirling mauve dome. He can smell smoke and Orlando's cologne on the t-shirt. His legs can't decide if they're cold or hot. There's a mouth on his thigh, soft kisses wandering over the skin.

Then it's gone, quickly and surprisingly, and suddenly the white wall goes off in front of his eyes again, blinding him with surprise and harsh light.

"The FUCK?" he snaps, almost not-breathless now.

Orlando bounces on the bed next to him, light-footed and laughing. His mouth is red and maybe a little swollen, but otherwise he looks exactly like before. He has the camera in his hand. "Good shot! You look great in white."

His brain refuses to process. He blinks slowly. Orlando falls down next to him, stretches out languidly. Licks his lips. "I'm done, mate," he says. "You can take off the dress now." There's a gleam in his eyes, but how can anyone be sure what the hell he means?

Elijah must have looked suspicious, because there's more laughter and a hand pushing him up, sliding over his neck, looking for the zipper. "Still, though. We must do this again." Lips on his spine, the brief touch of a tongue.

"Yeah," Elijah says and struggles to get into an upright position. The corset pinches him in the side. "Again."