Eikasia, RPS HL/RSL Section 2, Pt 1
RECAP: http://nakannalee.livejournal.com/27477.html
Section 1 (4/4):
Pt 1: http://nakannalee.livejournal.com/27660.html
Pt 2: http://nakannalee.livejournal.com/28332.html
Pt 3: http://nakannalee.livejournal.com/28537.html
Pt 4: http://nakannalee.livejournal.com/28722.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SECTION TWO, PART ONE
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Robert kissed Hugh’s neck where it met his hairline, just behind his ear, and brought him slowly onto his side. Hugh pushed back against him so their bodies slid together, back to chest with legs fitting along one another’s in a warm, sloping v-shape. He felt Robert’s knees touching the back of his own. An encircling arm worked its way across Hugh’s hipbone and stroked his thigh reassuringly; Hugh lifted his hand and moved it backwards to thread through Robert’s hair, pulling his mouth more securely against his neck and ear. A murmur broke out; heat rushed damply across his skin, chased by Robert’s tongue.
Moving carefully, Robert slid down his boxers to his mid-thigh with his free hand and scooted closer. Hugh shifted back again when Robert’s hand caressed his buttocks, then slowly began preparing him. It took longer, since Hugh was rarely bottom and still unused to penetration. The fingers stopped every few moments when Robert touched himself, and each time Hugh shook at the solid rub against his lower back and the loss of pressure within him. Robert inhaled sharply, neck craning backwards so his chin knocked against the back of Hugh’s head and into his hair. Hugh wanted to see his face as Robert writhed and tried to regain control.
The rush was to get near, not to achieve immediate pleasure. Once inside Robert stilled for a minute, longer. He gasped sharply into Hugh’s ear, cutting himself off before burying his nose and mouth into the crook of Hugh’s neck with a sob. Robert’s bangs fluttered against Hugh’s skin.
“You okay?” Robert managed tightly.
The distorted words dappled in and out from long distances, swelling, morphing, taking shape of a pain that hovered but would soon recede. Hugh wasn’t afraid of being hurt, he trusted Robert enough for that; but it was such an intensely personal thing, being submissive, allowing Robert to actually take and control how things worked. He felt as if Robert were tapping in to aspects of his body he himself was unaware of. Marginally, his mind expanding and blanking at the pressure of being filled, he pushed himself back further so Robert was entirely in him, with him. Robert trembled with restraint. Hugh turned his head towards the pillow to muffle a moan.
* * *
It was an interesting concept, lying to someone for an hour and then paying the person for believing it.
Granted, that wasn’t ideally how a therapist wanted the session to run, but Hugh had gone to the same one for the past three years; he knew how his own expression could be read and could alter it, giving the impression that his biggest concern at the moment were Fratterdays and his lack of sleep.
He supposed he could have cancelled, but since he attended every week, it would have been suspicious.
Therapy hadn’t been his idea originally. From a distance it seemed part of the same family tree confession hung from, and if there was one thing his childhood had taught him, it was suspicion of religion.
It wasn’t until Stephen’s disappearance twelve years ago that he got another perspective on the therapist issue. After authorities had finally found Stephen living under a pseudonym in Belgium, Hugh talked him home and accompanied him to a session a week later.
Support and familiarity were important for the healing process, doctors advised. So Hugh had sat alongside Stephen, trying to be reassuring while his eyes roamed the therapist’s clean, bright room, half-expecting repressed childhood memories to leap out from corners and attack, perhaps reminding him of that adolescent penchant he had for platform boots with brass skulls on the ankle, or his deft ability to succeed in being both thin and fat at the same time. They didn’t. At first the calmness of the setting unnerved him, but this wasn’t about him. Hugh listened as Stephen talked eloquently as ever about loss of privacy and identity, critics’ power to strip the self, and how inauthentic he felt as his own person.
At the time Hugh was finishing up a small role in Sense and Sensibility and looking forward to continuing the fourth season of A Bit of Fry and Laurie. He was the first to assume he’d be doing those kind of second-handed comedy roles the rest of his career, and people like Stephen Fry-stunningly intellectual and charming and witty-would flourish in far more rounded pursuits.
Now Hugh wished the forty-seven-year-old Laurie had been the one sitting beside Stephen Fry back then, during that day in therapy. He probably would have been much more understanding and helpful.
There was a woman therapist Hugh had seen in London when he first began treatment. Her office smelled of oranges and cigarettes because she allowed clients to smoke indoors and then lit up floating candles to compensate. Hugh liked her for the same reason he left her treatment-she was too easy to lie to. He wasn’t dishonest in consciously manipulative way. He lied out of some instinctive urge to protect his own psyche, to convince himself that his problems were not discussion-worthy and so he could fix them on his own.
Stephen told him later that defeated the purpose of seeing a therapist. He was right, of course, as he so often was.
The therapist he was currently seeing in Los Angeles was a man of nearly indistinguishable age; his hair-slightly balding-shared the same length as his beard. As a result of that one detail, he bore a faint resemblance to a Chia pet, but he was saved by going gray in all the fashionable places.
He ultimately gave off the impression that, while he himself had never lived, he’d studied many people who had. He was the kind of sanitized listener a person should trust almost immediately.
It wasn’t a question of trust for Hugh. There were simply issues that were too knitted into one’s personal life that became irreverent and belittling to discuss aloud. Sitting here in the office, lying was the easy part. Hugh knew skipping meals and still living out his suitcases were concerns, familiar ones. But his brain had set itself on cruise control. He’d go to work, avoid Robert best he could, and wait for Jo to visit. And he’d manage his way through this session without prompting alarm.
Hugh was asked if he felt stress from all the media attention that he’d garnered from portraying a gay relationship on television.
“Garnered,” first and foremost, he said, was a wrong choice of word. “Unexpectedly accepted,” much more accurate. And to the question: No, because a disconnect lay there. He was only aware of shooting the scenes, mostly out-of-order, with a general knowledge of the overall arcs and season three’s development. He couldn’t stand watching himself on TV so he never watched the show and saw what was actually chosen as canon. Lisa would supply him with details when he occasionally asked, which is how he did know several more personal House/Wilson moments never saw the light of day on FOX. So, despite how intimate he felt the characters were after acting scene after scene after scene, the more romantic or sexual scenes between the two were often reduced to something vague or less intrusive in the final cut.
“And are you all right with that?”
Hugh said he trusted the producers to edit where appropriate; that wasn’t his job. Again, a lie. If it were up to him, he and Robert would have put together the entire House/Wilson arc to ensure their characters weren’t battered beyond repair at the end of it. He knew a couple writers-Moran and Kaplow, in particular-had a soft spot for Wilson and often used he and House as a pair before season three. Hugh felt better putting House’s fate in their hands than, say, David, who would be tempted to go for the television rating jugular and do something more dramatic that didn’t feel quite right.
“And Bobby. Does he feel the same way?”
Hugh smiled. The question was meant to steer discussion towards a safe spot. His therapist knew how much Hugh had depended on Robert’s friendship since early in the show. But he’d never brought their affair into the session. Telling anyone-even a person who swore discreet confidentiality-was not an option. Telling anyone he missed the strange and pleasing differences of being with a man, being with Robert, the awkward and staggering feeling of letting Robert fuck him-that was a death wish.
He hadn’t yet decided just what he planned to tell Jo, either. He was beginning to think leaving it as an anonymous, transient affair would be best. He’d avoid saying whether it was a man or a woman; he doubted the question would even come to Jo’s mind. He’d never given her reason to assume he would be attracted to the same sex. And he wasn’t, it was just Bobby. To make matters worse, she’d met Robert on one or two occasions over the first season and had liked him, for an American. She’d never expressed jealousy over the House/Wilson arc, either. What little comments she had about it were always in support and encouragement.
He’d tried thinking back on several occasions whether he’d ever considered kissing Robert before Wilson stepped in and put his lips on House’s. He couldn’t remember, which made him assume he hadn’t. A certain part of him couldn’t help but feel as if House and Wilson retained a sort of monopoly on their real relationship. Whatever he and Robert had, it had grown out of the show and never fully broke free from it.
He thought of Robert wanting to talk out how House/Wilson was going to work. They would have to; Hugh just had to gather himself to speak to Robert. At the very least, they now had the opportunity to own and control something that House and Wilson didn’t: the way their relationship ended. The show couldn’t touch or taint or claim that as its own mirror version.
The sense of being a bystander in the midst of incoming fog was returning. He’d be there to greet it with a joke if there weren’t ways of stepping around it.
* * *
A figure stood at his door when he pulled up alongside the flat on his bike.
“It went later today,” Robert noted. He straightened up from his lean against the railing as Hugh approached him cautiously. “You usually get out before noon.”
Hugh felt himself scuffling to retain some sort of privacy, but Robert knew a huge chunk of him that he was never fully getting back.
“Traffic,” he replied. He awkwardly froze on the stoop, keys in hand, until Robert took the hint and stepped further to side so Hugh wouldn’t have to reach across him to unlock the front door.
“I tried calling you but you didn’t answer.”
Hugh absently felt his empty pockets. “I must have left the mobile inside. Habit. Sometimes it’s pleasant to know no one can get a hold of you.” He glanced over to Robert, who thankfully made no move that indicated he’d stopped by to come in.
“I just wanted to let you know, there’s a show tonight, some live band is coming to this club-it’s like a jazz club, kind of mellow, and apparently the music is really good-and if you just wanted some place to relax...” Breaking off, he explained quickly, “Not, you know-” He gestured between them. “We’re going as a group. Ethan’s coming, some of his friends. A couple people from Eikasia.”
“Eikasia?”
“The Stoppard play I’m doing this summer.”
Hugh busied himself with cramming his keys back into his pocket. Even the allusion of New York miffed him. Robert himself was like a hologram, not really there and impossible to touch.
“Actually, Bobby, I-I think I have a phone interview to do this evening. I hope it will be short, but you can never tell with those things-”
“No, no, that’s okay, I understand.” Robert assured him with a wave of his hand. His jacket sleeves’ swishing material cut the air. “I’ll, uh, see you tomorrow then or something.”
They stood looking at one another for a moment before Robert finally backed away down the porch steps and into his Jetta. Hugh turned but glanced down the street before he was completely out of sight. He’d had the overwhelming urge to stop him, keep him near, but every invitation to stay could have ended in what they were trying to avoid.
Hugh forced himself to think of Jo as he stepped inside his flat.
tbc
Section 1 (4/4):
Pt 1: http://nakannalee.livejournal.com/27660.html
Pt 2: http://nakannalee.livejournal.com/28332.html
Pt 3: http://nakannalee.livejournal.com/28537.html
Pt 4: http://nakannalee.livejournal.com/28722.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SECTION TWO, PART ONE
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Robert kissed Hugh’s neck where it met his hairline, just behind his ear, and brought him slowly onto his side. Hugh pushed back against him so their bodies slid together, back to chest with legs fitting along one another’s in a warm, sloping v-shape. He felt Robert’s knees touching the back of his own. An encircling arm worked its way across Hugh’s hipbone and stroked his thigh reassuringly; Hugh lifted his hand and moved it backwards to thread through Robert’s hair, pulling his mouth more securely against his neck and ear. A murmur broke out; heat rushed damply across his skin, chased by Robert’s tongue.
Moving carefully, Robert slid down his boxers to his mid-thigh with his free hand and scooted closer. Hugh shifted back again when Robert’s hand caressed his buttocks, then slowly began preparing him. It took longer, since Hugh was rarely bottom and still unused to penetration. The fingers stopped every few moments when Robert touched himself, and each time Hugh shook at the solid rub against his lower back and the loss of pressure within him. Robert inhaled sharply, neck craning backwards so his chin knocked against the back of Hugh’s head and into his hair. Hugh wanted to see his face as Robert writhed and tried to regain control.
The rush was to get near, not to achieve immediate pleasure. Once inside Robert stilled for a minute, longer. He gasped sharply into Hugh’s ear, cutting himself off before burying his nose and mouth into the crook of Hugh’s neck with a sob. Robert’s bangs fluttered against Hugh’s skin.
“You okay?” Robert managed tightly.
The distorted words dappled in and out from long distances, swelling, morphing, taking shape of a pain that hovered but would soon recede. Hugh wasn’t afraid of being hurt, he trusted Robert enough for that; but it was such an intensely personal thing, being submissive, allowing Robert to actually take and control how things worked. He felt as if Robert were tapping in to aspects of his body he himself was unaware of. Marginally, his mind expanding and blanking at the pressure of being filled, he pushed himself back further so Robert was entirely in him, with him. Robert trembled with restraint. Hugh turned his head towards the pillow to muffle a moan.
* * *
It was an interesting concept, lying to someone for an hour and then paying the person for believing it.
Granted, that wasn’t ideally how a therapist wanted the session to run, but Hugh had gone to the same one for the past three years; he knew how his own expression could be read and could alter it, giving the impression that his biggest concern at the moment were Fratterdays and his lack of sleep.
He supposed he could have cancelled, but since he attended every week, it would have been suspicious.
Therapy hadn’t been his idea originally. From a distance it seemed part of the same family tree confession hung from, and if there was one thing his childhood had taught him, it was suspicion of religion.
It wasn’t until Stephen’s disappearance twelve years ago that he got another perspective on the therapist issue. After authorities had finally found Stephen living under a pseudonym in Belgium, Hugh talked him home and accompanied him to a session a week later.
Support and familiarity were important for the healing process, doctors advised. So Hugh had sat alongside Stephen, trying to be reassuring while his eyes roamed the therapist’s clean, bright room, half-expecting repressed childhood memories to leap out from corners and attack, perhaps reminding him of that adolescent penchant he had for platform boots with brass skulls on the ankle, or his deft ability to succeed in being both thin and fat at the same time. They didn’t. At first the calmness of the setting unnerved him, but this wasn’t about him. Hugh listened as Stephen talked eloquently as ever about loss of privacy and identity, critics’ power to strip the self, and how inauthentic he felt as his own person.
At the time Hugh was finishing up a small role in Sense and Sensibility and looking forward to continuing the fourth season of A Bit of Fry and Laurie. He was the first to assume he’d be doing those kind of second-handed comedy roles the rest of his career, and people like Stephen Fry-stunningly intellectual and charming and witty-would flourish in far more rounded pursuits.
Now Hugh wished the forty-seven-year-old Laurie had been the one sitting beside Stephen Fry back then, during that day in therapy. He probably would have been much more understanding and helpful.
There was a woman therapist Hugh had seen in London when he first began treatment. Her office smelled of oranges and cigarettes because she allowed clients to smoke indoors and then lit up floating candles to compensate. Hugh liked her for the same reason he left her treatment-she was too easy to lie to. He wasn’t dishonest in consciously manipulative way. He lied out of some instinctive urge to protect his own psyche, to convince himself that his problems were not discussion-worthy and so he could fix them on his own.
Stephen told him later that defeated the purpose of seeing a therapist. He was right, of course, as he so often was.
The therapist he was currently seeing in Los Angeles was a man of nearly indistinguishable age; his hair-slightly balding-shared the same length as his beard. As a result of that one detail, he bore a faint resemblance to a Chia pet, but he was saved by going gray in all the fashionable places.
He ultimately gave off the impression that, while he himself had never lived, he’d studied many people who had. He was the kind of sanitized listener a person should trust almost immediately.
It wasn’t a question of trust for Hugh. There were simply issues that were too knitted into one’s personal life that became irreverent and belittling to discuss aloud. Sitting here in the office, lying was the easy part. Hugh knew skipping meals and still living out his suitcases were concerns, familiar ones. But his brain had set itself on cruise control. He’d go to work, avoid Robert best he could, and wait for Jo to visit. And he’d manage his way through this session without prompting alarm.
Hugh was asked if he felt stress from all the media attention that he’d garnered from portraying a gay relationship on television.
“Garnered,” first and foremost, he said, was a wrong choice of word. “Unexpectedly accepted,” much more accurate. And to the question: No, because a disconnect lay there. He was only aware of shooting the scenes, mostly out-of-order, with a general knowledge of the overall arcs and season three’s development. He couldn’t stand watching himself on TV so he never watched the show and saw what was actually chosen as canon. Lisa would supply him with details when he occasionally asked, which is how he did know several more personal House/Wilson moments never saw the light of day on FOX. So, despite how intimate he felt the characters were after acting scene after scene after scene, the more romantic or sexual scenes between the two were often reduced to something vague or less intrusive in the final cut.
“And are you all right with that?”
Hugh said he trusted the producers to edit where appropriate; that wasn’t his job. Again, a lie. If it were up to him, he and Robert would have put together the entire House/Wilson arc to ensure their characters weren’t battered beyond repair at the end of it. He knew a couple writers-Moran and Kaplow, in particular-had a soft spot for Wilson and often used he and House as a pair before season three. Hugh felt better putting House’s fate in their hands than, say, David, who would be tempted to go for the television rating jugular and do something more dramatic that didn’t feel quite right.
“And Bobby. Does he feel the same way?”
Hugh smiled. The question was meant to steer discussion towards a safe spot. His therapist knew how much Hugh had depended on Robert’s friendship since early in the show. But he’d never brought their affair into the session. Telling anyone-even a person who swore discreet confidentiality-was not an option. Telling anyone he missed the strange and pleasing differences of being with a man, being with Robert, the awkward and staggering feeling of letting Robert fuck him-that was a death wish.
He hadn’t yet decided just what he planned to tell Jo, either. He was beginning to think leaving it as an anonymous, transient affair would be best. He’d avoid saying whether it was a man or a woman; he doubted the question would even come to Jo’s mind. He’d never given her reason to assume he would be attracted to the same sex. And he wasn’t, it was just Bobby. To make matters worse, she’d met Robert on one or two occasions over the first season and had liked him, for an American. She’d never expressed jealousy over the House/Wilson arc, either. What little comments she had about it were always in support and encouragement.
He’d tried thinking back on several occasions whether he’d ever considered kissing Robert before Wilson stepped in and put his lips on House’s. He couldn’t remember, which made him assume he hadn’t. A certain part of him couldn’t help but feel as if House and Wilson retained a sort of monopoly on their real relationship. Whatever he and Robert had, it had grown out of the show and never fully broke free from it.
He thought of Robert wanting to talk out how House/Wilson was going to work. They would have to; Hugh just had to gather himself to speak to Robert. At the very least, they now had the opportunity to own and control something that House and Wilson didn’t: the way their relationship ended. The show couldn’t touch or taint or claim that as its own mirror version.
The sense of being a bystander in the midst of incoming fog was returning. He’d be there to greet it with a joke if there weren’t ways of stepping around it.
* * *
A figure stood at his door when he pulled up alongside the flat on his bike.
“It went later today,” Robert noted. He straightened up from his lean against the railing as Hugh approached him cautiously. “You usually get out before noon.”
Hugh felt himself scuffling to retain some sort of privacy, but Robert knew a huge chunk of him that he was never fully getting back.
“Traffic,” he replied. He awkwardly froze on the stoop, keys in hand, until Robert took the hint and stepped further to side so Hugh wouldn’t have to reach across him to unlock the front door.
“I tried calling you but you didn’t answer.”
Hugh absently felt his empty pockets. “I must have left the mobile inside. Habit. Sometimes it’s pleasant to know no one can get a hold of you.” He glanced over to Robert, who thankfully made no move that indicated he’d stopped by to come in.
“I just wanted to let you know, there’s a show tonight, some live band is coming to this club-it’s like a jazz club, kind of mellow, and apparently the music is really good-and if you just wanted some place to relax...” Breaking off, he explained quickly, “Not, you know-” He gestured between them. “We’re going as a group. Ethan’s coming, some of his friends. A couple people from Eikasia.”
“Eikasia?”
“The Stoppard play I’m doing this summer.”
Hugh busied himself with cramming his keys back into his pocket. Even the allusion of New York miffed him. Robert himself was like a hologram, not really there and impossible to touch.
“Actually, Bobby, I-I think I have a phone interview to do this evening. I hope it will be short, but you can never tell with those things-”
“No, no, that’s okay, I understand.” Robert assured him with a wave of his hand. His jacket sleeves’ swishing material cut the air. “I’ll, uh, see you tomorrow then or something.”
They stood looking at one another for a moment before Robert finally backed away down the porch steps and into his Jetta. Hugh turned but glanced down the street before he was completely out of sight. He’d had the overwhelming urge to stop him, keep him near, but every invitation to stay could have ended in what they were trying to avoid.
Hugh forced himself to think of Jo as he stepped inside his flat.
tbc