Method Acting [Mark Pellegrino/Chris Pine]
METHOD ACTING;
Who: Mark Pellegrino/Chris Pine
What: Chris Pine tries out for a part on Being Human. Mark Pellegrino teaches him a thing or two about method acting.
When: Some time during the shooting of Being Human US season 1.
Word Count: 3,600~
Warnings: R; language, RPS, sexual situations
“You don’t look like a vampire.”
“That’s because I took my fangs out.”
Removable Fangs
In half an hour he’d know.
Chris had tried out for an opening on the new American version of Being Human by the insistence of his good friend Zach (who’d worked with a guy named Milo Ventimiglia, who’d worked with a guy named Sam Huntington, who was currently starring on the series - hellooo Kevin Bacon) and now he was anxious to see if he’d gotten the part. He skittered his fingers across the knee of his jeans, not quite nervous but not entirely comfortable either.
His silent twitching was interrupted by the gentle creak of the waiting room door. (They’d not stuck him in a room for an indeterminable amount of hours with the promise of an answer that same day, but his agents had assured him that if he hung around the studio long enough, they’d get back to him with some good news, so he’d found a seemingly unused waiting room and had decided to set up base, as it were, until he was given the go-ahead to high-tail it. It wasn’t standard procedure, but he sort of liked the solitude.) A tall, lanky form edged through shortly after the door pushed open; first a streak of sun blonde hair, then a dotting of crows feet to settle around icy blue eyes.
Chris blinked.
“Um. Hi.”
The newcomer paused, tilted his head in a curiously familiar manner, then slid away from the entrance and closed the door with a gentle click.
“Hello.”
It took Chris all of five seconds to recognize the face. Pellegrino. He knew him from his work on Lost, and a few odds-and-ends movies scattered throughout Hollywood. He’d never met the man in person, but from what he’d seen, he’d always admired the other’s work.
“You’re Mark Pellegrino,” he pointed out, only without the actual pointing.
Mark’s face was a perfect slate of blank when he replied, “You’re trespassing.”
Chris sputtered, the air suddenly going thick.
“I, uh- it’s not- what makes you say that?”
“I haven’t seen your face around the set,” the almost imperceptibly taller man said, stepping further inside the room and making his languid way towards an empty (though washed) coffee pot sitting unobtrusively on a tabletop. In his left hand, he clutched a crumpled up bag of coffee grinds. He set to work making a pot of coffee (there was a sink on the far side of the room to pull water from), seemingly unconcerned with the stranger currently occupying the same space as him.
“You see every face around the set?” Chris shot back.
“I try.”
Something he couldn’t argue with.
“I’m Chris,” he said, offering his hand. “Chris Pine.”
Mark wiped the stray droplets of spilled water on his jeans, then shook.
“Mark Pellegrino. So do you crash TV sets often, or…?”
The tone sounded endearing, but his eyes were cold - what seemed to be a natural trait rather than the result of some deeply hidden emotion.
“Oh, no. No,” Chris said, drawing his hand back and using it to scratch at the back of his neck. “I just tried out for a part and I was told to hang around for a little while.”
“Ah. So your idea of availability is sleuthing in the shadows?”
It was as much of a rhetorical question as Chris had ever heard, but he still felt the uncanny urge to dispute it. Mark, however, didn’t give him the opportunity.
“What part did you try out for?”
The gurgling sounds of the coffee pot broke any awkward-silence-seedlings into tiny pieces.
“It was a vampire. Didn’t have a name on the script, so he’s probably not gonna be a permanent part.”
Chris could feel the other’s eyes on him, then, as solid and obtrusive as a fire poker jabbing through his ribs.
“Vampire?” Mark leaned in close, ignoring all sense of personal space. He’d just gotten back from shooting a scene, and so he was still trying to shake off the last vestiges of his character before interacting with the rest of the world. It was the reason he’d chosen to go to that secluded area instead of meeting up with the other actors at the heart of the set.
His eyes narrowed a bit before he straightened up.
“You don’t look like a vampire.”
“That’s because I took my fangs out.”
Chris was proud of himself for being able to throw back such a quick retort when his heart was currently pounding away in his chest.
“You should never take your fangs out,” Mark chastised, a playful smile quirking up his lips. “You never know when you’ll have the urge to bite.”
Hair Dye
In the end, there was only one problem (which wasn’t really a problem, per say, because that implied a certain level of difficulty in ridding oneself of the particular nuisance): his hair.
Chris liked his hair. It was nice and rich and full and, so help him God he thought he’d never use this adjective when describing something so inane as that mop of unruly locks that sprouted from his head, young.
Which was why irony only saw it befitting that he had to dye it white.
He’d gotten the part, alright. He’d gotten the part, and a swift kick to the ass to boot.
Still, he’d complied. It wasn’t too big of a deal - he’d done more for less - but he would never hear the end of it from Zach. Never.
His first day on set wasn’t bad. They’d signed him on for a couple episodes, and though none of the actors or crew knew exactly where the storyline for his character was going, there was a lot of speculation that the writers were going to kill him off. So he didn’t have any grand aspirations on getting very buddy-buddy with the other people working on the show, but Huntington’s infectious attitude and Rath’s unparalleled charm mixed with Witwer’s lazy smile and knack for quirky accents (vaudevillian, what the hell?) made him feel right at home.
The only person who didn’t seem positively ecstatic that he was there was, in fact, Mark Pellegrino. Which was okay at first, really, except they had a lot of scenes together, and yeah, their characters were at definite odds with one another so on-screen the tension was magnificent, but off-screen it just got painful. Everyone assured him that that was just Pellegrino’s way. He got ridiculously in-character, and sometimes it just… bled through.
Chris wasn’t buying it. Bullshit, the whole thing.
The weeks blurred by and the uncomfortable feeling beneath his skin that had started as a mere scratch shifted and evolved into an outright plague of pox. After debating on what to do for a good couple of weeks, and coming up with nothing, Chris decided to keep ignoring the cold shoulder until his time on Being Human had passed.
So it was a shock for him when Pellegrino got him alone after a shoot and told him they needed to talk some things out, do you have some time, how about the back room after you get cleaned up? A whirlwind of motion later, and Chris was right back where they’d started, in the rarely-used break room with an empty pot of coffee to greet his punctual nature.
Mark was a minute late, but that was due to a discrepancy with his wristwatch.
Chris crossed his arms and waited for Mark to start.
“You came,” was the first thing that passed between them. The voice was still chilly, cold enough to send a shiver down Chris’ spine.
“I did.” When nothing else was said for a moment too long, he continued, “Why’d you want me to come?”
“We have some things to discuss…” Mark trailed off, his eyes oh-so-obviously lingering on Pine’s bleached white hair. “… looks good on you.” He was lying.
“Yeah,” Chris replied. “Almost makes me look as old as you.”
Mark’s eyes flashed, something dangerous and playful and wholly dead in that freakin’ zombie-gaze of his. It was like his body language spoke in a monotone.
“Your character.”
The change of subject was abrupt and jarring.
“My character.”
“Is shifting from enemy to ally in the next episode.”
Oh. Oh. So the bastard was here to talk logistics, was he?
“Yeah,” Chris said, uncrossing his arms and staring at the wall on the other side of the room, chanting over and over in his head, I am not pouting, I am not pouting, I am not pouting.
“And I think,” Mark continued, either oblivious or just unconcerned, “the sudden change in attitude is due to something physical.”
“Physical,” Chris repeated. “What, like my guy’s sick?”
He doubted a cold would make his character suddenly fall for Bishop’s convoluted way of thinking.
“No,” the older man said, shaking his head. “Physical.”
“They came to an agreement?”
Mark quirked a brow.
“They… got in a fight?”
Chris wasn’t stumped, he was just a little disbelieving.
“Or, what? They jumped in bed together and had sex?”
“Exactly.”
Oh. Well. That was a little odd, but whatever. If it helped Pellegrino go through the motions of playing his character, then so be it, no harm done.
Except, Chris thought suddenly, then found he was unable to swallow past the lump in his throat, Mark is a fucking method actor.
Oh. Shit.
Method Acting
It's times like these that Chris was glad he had balls of steel.
"You're kidding."
"I'm not."
Chris spun on his heel, which really wasn't a good idea because, hey, you probably shouldn't turn your back on the guy propositioning you for research sex, but he was incredulous and insulted and he wasn't thinking right.
"This is ridiculous."
Mark propped his hip against the wall, arms crossed, watching as Chris paced the room. Bishop's last dying remnants were clinging to his personality and tainting his body language, forcing a sneer out of what might have been a reassuring smile.
"It's necessary."
"For you, maybe, but I'm not sleeping with someone just for the sake of inquiry."
Pellegrino's laughter was the only thing keeping him from busting down the door and retreating from the set, because what in the goddamned world was so goddamned funny?
"What? What?"
Mark wasn't making fun of him -- he really wasn't -- but there was something so incredibly humorous about the assumptions Pine had jumped to. Sure, he'd not eased the blow by, say, clarifying what he meant, or any such nonsense as that, but that the boy had gone from theory to chaos in less than sixty seconds... well, it was outright comedic.
"I'm not going to violate your innocence, Pine," he said, using the bend of his body to push off the wall.
Chris watched warily as Mark stalked closer, not liking any of this one single fucking bit.
"Bishop is a... touchy character." Mark said the words like he'd thought about them a million times over. "He craves physical contact, something he's used to getting from his brood. If your guy is part of the family now, then..." He was close enough to lay his hand on Pine's shoulder, which he did almost carelessly. "... there will be a lot more touching."
Okay, so. So maybe Pellegrino wasn't going to method act the sex. Was that what he was saying? Chris couldn't tell anymore, because the older man's close proximity made him feel antsy. He smelled like powder, and tweed, and really really nice cologne, which was the kind of thing Chris felt he didn't need to be noticing, so he ignored it as consciously as if he were studying it.
He shrugged Mark's hand off of his shoulder, took a few steps forward, then turned around to face the godless eyes staring back at him.
"So what are you saying?"
"I'm saying," Mark said, half-exasperated, half-devious, "don't move."
The older actor took a step forward, and Chris was suddenly reminded that he had backed himself up against a wall, and was now staring up into a gaze that could light ice on fire. (He'd have to ask Mark later if he'd ever tried it.)
Chris was shocked, to say the minuscule least on a tiny slice of the bigger picture. He was stunned stupid and didn't have the mental capacity at the moment to do anything but gape when this older man, with his serious demeanor and patient motives, with his bleach-blonde hair and soul-pricking eyes, leaned down and nuzzled the crook of his neck like it was the only place he ever wanted to be.
"Oh... uh. You--"
"Shh, shh." Now that didn't sound like Mark at all. That sounded like Bishop; all condescending comfort and dangerous embraces that felt more deadly than any monsters anyone might be running from. Pellegrino was slipping into character, everything from his facial expressions (which Chris could feel against his skin, holy fuck) to the tension in his shoulders -- Chris had never been so close to someone while they were literally morphing into another person.
"You've been a terrible little pawn lately," was the next thing out of Mark's mouth, and just-- really? Shit.
The heat of the other's breath dampening his skin was enough to make Chris' toes curl. A very big part of him wanted to push the man off of him and storm out of the room, but a smaller, more curious part demanded he go along with the act, just to see how it all played out.
Curiosity was the victor.
"So sorry I got in the way of your plans," he replied, the hiss of his character coloring his tone.
He felt a pull of lips twitch against his neck, except somewhere in the back of his mind he knew Mark wasn't the one smiling.
A gentle hand sliding up his side startled him, making Chris vibrate in his own skin.
"We'll just have to fix that, then." Soft tone, softer words.
"You can try." Harsh and biting, strong and determined.
"Alright."
Mark took that as an invitation.
His other hand darted to Chris' side, and with both anchored around the younger man's waist, Mark hoisted him into the air and strode a few faltering steps towards the couch sitting innocuously in the middle of the room. The effort left him panting and breathless, a fact that he kept mostly concealed. Hauling in a lungful of air, the blonde stretched out languidly beside Chris (it was a surprisingly wide couch) and grappled with the man until he'd full on embraced the other's torso.
Chris faltered, unsure of what to do in this situation, and nearly dropped his facade, but the gentle pressure of blunt incisors scraping along his pulse slammed into him like a freight train and sent his beating heart all aflutter.
"You will listen to me," Mark was saying, his body a solid wall pressed against Pine's side. "You will listen, and you will obey."
... holyfuckingshit Chris was going to have a friggin' heart attack if Pellegrino didn't let up soon. His pulse hammered in his throat, making it hard to breathe, making it hard to think past, what the hell have I gotten myself into?
***
Was it just him, or did the room suddenly turn into a furnace?
Chris had the unparalleled urge to crack an egg on the floor and see if it started to cook. Unfortunately, he was currently pinned in place by a clingy, grabby, demanding, outright terrifying actor, so he wasn't exactly in a position to make an omelette.
Mark peeked his head up and peered at Chris over the plane of his own chest.
"Are you listening to me?"
Chris blanched and stuttered out, "O-Omelette?"
Pellegrino narrowed his eyes -- ahhh, the infamous squinty-eyed look -- and rolled his hips, causing the stutter to stick in Pine's throat.
Jesus H. Christ, Chris thought, turning his head to the side to hide his shock from the man currently staring at him for any hint of emotion. Mark could keep his composure under any circumstance, couldn't he?
"Need I remind you," Mark said with another push of his hips, every word rumbling in the tenor-tone center of his chest, "of your place in this family?"
"What family?" Chris barked out, his voice hoarse from (ohgod no, fucking no no no) arousal.
Pellegrino either was oblivious to this new development, or, more likely, fully intent on exploiting it.
The latter point was confirmed without a moment to spare.
Chris didn't think Mark would go there. He was nervous and edgy about the whole thing, sure, but he'd been fairly certain that the other actor wouldn't ever actually go there.
Until a hand reached between his legs and groped him.
Instead of doing the appropriate thing and punching Mark in the goddamned mouth, Chris ended up biting his lower lip instead. And with every last breath in his shuddering ribcage he would deny even the tiniest sliver of a possibility that he'd let anything like a low whine grumble past his throat.
His eyes fell half-lidded as he stared up at the ceiling, faltering between fighting off the sharp, pleasurable sensation, or giving in to it.
Mark barely gave him a choice.
His hand was a solid weight kneading the front of the younger man's jeans, taunting him with the promise of pleasure.
After a few minutes of this continual torture, Chris finally got up enough energy to say something.
"Get off of me," he grit out, but it sounded more like his character than himself, and he was still left undecided on what he really wanted.
Mark must have heard something entirely different, because, though the hand that had been steadily rubbing pleasure into his veins had in fact vanished, the man himself decided to swing a leg over Pine's torso and straddle the younger man, effectively pinning him in place.
Chris opened his mouth to protest again, but a sharp jerk of Pellegrino's hips was an effective interjection. That simple, silent challenge shattered Pine's misgivings, causing him to thrust up into the heat and solidity of the man above him, because goddammit it felt good, and goddammit he was way too fucking hard to pass up this opportunity.
"Not so snide now, are you?" was the smooth taunt, but Chris found it surprisingly easy to say fuck it and grind up into the other man's groin despite the snarky Bishop-like attitude.
Something flickered across Mark's eyes, and for a moment Chris was slammed back into his own reality when he saw the surprise and softness looking down at him from above.
Pellegrino had jumped out of character.
Pellegrino had jumped out of character and seemed surprised to find himself humping his coworker like a feral dog.
Chris could practically taste the hesitation as it dripped off the older man's skin, but holyshit he'd made it this far and he wasn't about to back down -- wasn't about to let Pellegrino back down, either.
The first thing he did was make a noise. Which he wouldn't have done normally, but it was the only thing he could think to do that would get Mark's attention back on him. It worked, immediately, and Pine shuddered when those cold blue eyes settled on his panting form.
The next thing he did was trail his fingertips down the other man's waist, stop at his hips, and jerk Pellegrino forward until their groins ground against each other in just the right way. Something guttural and dark moaned out from between Mark's lips, and it had Chris aching to hear that noise again. He dug his heels into the cushions of the couch and used that leverage to hoist his lower body up while Mark thrust down. It didn't take long for them to get into a rhythm of sorts, a choppy sort of motion that had them panting into each other's neck, sharing delicate nips and soothing licks when fevered flesh was bit too hard.
"There," Chris would say on an up stroke.
"Mmm," Mark would groan on a down.
It was a primitive sort of coupling, but it got the job done. When the intensity magnified, when they bit and clawed and ground and thrust and grabbed and pulled their way ever closer to each other, the end result was a climax of heat and good and fuck the likes of which neither of them could have imagined.
There was no time for an afterglow.
Mark was off of Chris in an instant, searching the room for tissues and allowing the man a few moments to gather his composure.
Chris was trying to piece together the little shattered shards of his reality, and it took everything within him not to float away on an orgasmic high. Because godfuck that was good, and he wasn't even going to bother denying it. He'd never felt dominated in the bedroom before, so to be beneath another man, engulfed in someone else's presence... it was both terrifying and heady.
After a few deep breaths, Pine rolled onto his side and stretched out languidly on the couch, watching Pellegrino waltz about the room and clean himself up.
"You better be saving some for me," Chris said, waving a hand towards the paper towels Mark was using.
Mark looked up and grinned.
"If I was a cruel man, I'd make you walk around like that."
"You're saying you're not a cruel man?" Chris quirked a brow.
Mark shrugged, a chilly sort of brightness dancing in his eyes.
"I can be."
-FIN-
Who: Mark Pellegrino/Chris Pine
What: Chris Pine tries out for a part on Being Human. Mark Pellegrino teaches him a thing or two about method acting.
When: Some time during the shooting of Being Human US season 1.
Word Count: 3,600~
Warnings: R; language, RPS, sexual situations
“You don’t look like a vampire.”
“That’s because I took my fangs out.”
Removable Fangs
In half an hour he’d know.
Chris had tried out for an opening on the new American version of Being Human by the insistence of his good friend Zach (who’d worked with a guy named Milo Ventimiglia, who’d worked with a guy named Sam Huntington, who was currently starring on the series - hellooo Kevin Bacon) and now he was anxious to see if he’d gotten the part. He skittered his fingers across the knee of his jeans, not quite nervous but not entirely comfortable either.
His silent twitching was interrupted by the gentle creak of the waiting room door. (They’d not stuck him in a room for an indeterminable amount of hours with the promise of an answer that same day, but his agents had assured him that if he hung around the studio long enough, they’d get back to him with some good news, so he’d found a seemingly unused waiting room and had decided to set up base, as it were, until he was given the go-ahead to high-tail it. It wasn’t standard procedure, but he sort of liked the solitude.) A tall, lanky form edged through shortly after the door pushed open; first a streak of sun blonde hair, then a dotting of crows feet to settle around icy blue eyes.
Chris blinked.
“Um. Hi.”
The newcomer paused, tilted his head in a curiously familiar manner, then slid away from the entrance and closed the door with a gentle click.
“Hello.”
It took Chris all of five seconds to recognize the face. Pellegrino. He knew him from his work on Lost, and a few odds-and-ends movies scattered throughout Hollywood. He’d never met the man in person, but from what he’d seen, he’d always admired the other’s work.
“You’re Mark Pellegrino,” he pointed out, only without the actual pointing.
Mark’s face was a perfect slate of blank when he replied, “You’re trespassing.”
Chris sputtered, the air suddenly going thick.
“I, uh- it’s not- what makes you say that?”
“I haven’t seen your face around the set,” the almost imperceptibly taller man said, stepping further inside the room and making his languid way towards an empty (though washed) coffee pot sitting unobtrusively on a tabletop. In his left hand, he clutched a crumpled up bag of coffee grinds. He set to work making a pot of coffee (there was a sink on the far side of the room to pull water from), seemingly unconcerned with the stranger currently occupying the same space as him.
“You see every face around the set?” Chris shot back.
“I try.”
Something he couldn’t argue with.
“I’m Chris,” he said, offering his hand. “Chris Pine.”
Mark wiped the stray droplets of spilled water on his jeans, then shook.
“Mark Pellegrino. So do you crash TV sets often, or…?”
The tone sounded endearing, but his eyes were cold - what seemed to be a natural trait rather than the result of some deeply hidden emotion.
“Oh, no. No,” Chris said, drawing his hand back and using it to scratch at the back of his neck. “I just tried out for a part and I was told to hang around for a little while.”
“Ah. So your idea of availability is sleuthing in the shadows?”
It was as much of a rhetorical question as Chris had ever heard, but he still felt the uncanny urge to dispute it. Mark, however, didn’t give him the opportunity.
“What part did you try out for?”
The gurgling sounds of the coffee pot broke any awkward-silence-seedlings into tiny pieces.
“It was a vampire. Didn’t have a name on the script, so he’s probably not gonna be a permanent part.”
Chris could feel the other’s eyes on him, then, as solid and obtrusive as a fire poker jabbing through his ribs.
“Vampire?” Mark leaned in close, ignoring all sense of personal space. He’d just gotten back from shooting a scene, and so he was still trying to shake off the last vestiges of his character before interacting with the rest of the world. It was the reason he’d chosen to go to that secluded area instead of meeting up with the other actors at the heart of the set.
His eyes narrowed a bit before he straightened up.
“You don’t look like a vampire.”
“That’s because I took my fangs out.”
Chris was proud of himself for being able to throw back such a quick retort when his heart was currently pounding away in his chest.
“You should never take your fangs out,” Mark chastised, a playful smile quirking up his lips. “You never know when you’ll have the urge to bite.”
Hair Dye
In the end, there was only one problem (which wasn’t really a problem, per say, because that implied a certain level of difficulty in ridding oneself of the particular nuisance): his hair.
Chris liked his hair. It was nice and rich and full and, so help him God he thought he’d never use this adjective when describing something so inane as that mop of unruly locks that sprouted from his head, young.
Which was why irony only saw it befitting that he had to dye it white.
He’d gotten the part, alright. He’d gotten the part, and a swift kick to the ass to boot.
Still, he’d complied. It wasn’t too big of a deal - he’d done more for less - but he would never hear the end of it from Zach. Never.
His first day on set wasn’t bad. They’d signed him on for a couple episodes, and though none of the actors or crew knew exactly where the storyline for his character was going, there was a lot of speculation that the writers were going to kill him off. So he didn’t have any grand aspirations on getting very buddy-buddy with the other people working on the show, but Huntington’s infectious attitude and Rath’s unparalleled charm mixed with Witwer’s lazy smile and knack for quirky accents (vaudevillian, what the hell?) made him feel right at home.
The only person who didn’t seem positively ecstatic that he was there was, in fact, Mark Pellegrino. Which was okay at first, really, except they had a lot of scenes together, and yeah, their characters were at definite odds with one another so on-screen the tension was magnificent, but off-screen it just got painful. Everyone assured him that that was just Pellegrino’s way. He got ridiculously in-character, and sometimes it just… bled through.
Chris wasn’t buying it. Bullshit, the whole thing.
The weeks blurred by and the uncomfortable feeling beneath his skin that had started as a mere scratch shifted and evolved into an outright plague of pox. After debating on what to do for a good couple of weeks, and coming up with nothing, Chris decided to keep ignoring the cold shoulder until his time on Being Human had passed.
So it was a shock for him when Pellegrino got him alone after a shoot and told him they needed to talk some things out, do you have some time, how about the back room after you get cleaned up? A whirlwind of motion later, and Chris was right back where they’d started, in the rarely-used break room with an empty pot of coffee to greet his punctual nature.
Mark was a minute late, but that was due to a discrepancy with his wristwatch.
Chris crossed his arms and waited for Mark to start.
“You came,” was the first thing that passed between them. The voice was still chilly, cold enough to send a shiver down Chris’ spine.
“I did.” When nothing else was said for a moment too long, he continued, “Why’d you want me to come?”
“We have some things to discuss…” Mark trailed off, his eyes oh-so-obviously lingering on Pine’s bleached white hair. “… looks good on you.” He was lying.
“Yeah,” Chris replied. “Almost makes me look as old as you.”
Mark’s eyes flashed, something dangerous and playful and wholly dead in that freakin’ zombie-gaze of his. It was like his body language spoke in a monotone.
“Your character.”
The change of subject was abrupt and jarring.
“My character.”
“Is shifting from enemy to ally in the next episode.”
Oh. Oh. So the bastard was here to talk logistics, was he?
“Yeah,” Chris said, uncrossing his arms and staring at the wall on the other side of the room, chanting over and over in his head, I am not pouting, I am not pouting, I am not pouting.
“And I think,” Mark continued, either oblivious or just unconcerned, “the sudden change in attitude is due to something physical.”
“Physical,” Chris repeated. “What, like my guy’s sick?”
He doubted a cold would make his character suddenly fall for Bishop’s convoluted way of thinking.
“No,” the older man said, shaking his head. “Physical.”
“They came to an agreement?”
Mark quirked a brow.
“They… got in a fight?”
Chris wasn’t stumped, he was just a little disbelieving.
“Or, what? They jumped in bed together and had sex?”
“Exactly.”
Oh. Well. That was a little odd, but whatever. If it helped Pellegrino go through the motions of playing his character, then so be it, no harm done.
Except, Chris thought suddenly, then found he was unable to swallow past the lump in his throat, Mark is a fucking method actor.
Oh. Shit.
Method Acting
It's times like these that Chris was glad he had balls of steel.
"You're kidding."
"I'm not."
Chris spun on his heel, which really wasn't a good idea because, hey, you probably shouldn't turn your back on the guy propositioning you for research sex, but he was incredulous and insulted and he wasn't thinking right.
"This is ridiculous."
Mark propped his hip against the wall, arms crossed, watching as Chris paced the room. Bishop's last dying remnants were clinging to his personality and tainting his body language, forcing a sneer out of what might have been a reassuring smile.
"It's necessary."
"For you, maybe, but I'm not sleeping with someone just for the sake of inquiry."
Pellegrino's laughter was the only thing keeping him from busting down the door and retreating from the set, because what in the goddamned world was so goddamned funny?
"What? What?"
Mark wasn't making fun of him -- he really wasn't -- but there was something so incredibly humorous about the assumptions Pine had jumped to. Sure, he'd not eased the blow by, say, clarifying what he meant, or any such nonsense as that, but that the boy had gone from theory to chaos in less than sixty seconds... well, it was outright comedic.
"I'm not going to violate your innocence, Pine," he said, using the bend of his body to push off the wall.
Chris watched warily as Mark stalked closer, not liking any of this one single fucking bit.
"Bishop is a... touchy character." Mark said the words like he'd thought about them a million times over. "He craves physical contact, something he's used to getting from his brood. If your guy is part of the family now, then..." He was close enough to lay his hand on Pine's shoulder, which he did almost carelessly. "... there will be a lot more touching."
Okay, so. So maybe Pellegrino wasn't going to method act the sex. Was that what he was saying? Chris couldn't tell anymore, because the older man's close proximity made him feel antsy. He smelled like powder, and tweed, and really really nice cologne, which was the kind of thing Chris felt he didn't need to be noticing, so he ignored it as consciously as if he were studying it.
He shrugged Mark's hand off of his shoulder, took a few steps forward, then turned around to face the godless eyes staring back at him.
"So what are you saying?"
"I'm saying," Mark said, half-exasperated, half-devious, "don't move."
The older actor took a step forward, and Chris was suddenly reminded that he had backed himself up against a wall, and was now staring up into a gaze that could light ice on fire. (He'd have to ask Mark later if he'd ever tried it.)
Chris was shocked, to say the minuscule least on a tiny slice of the bigger picture. He was stunned stupid and didn't have the mental capacity at the moment to do anything but gape when this older man, with his serious demeanor and patient motives, with his bleach-blonde hair and soul-pricking eyes, leaned down and nuzzled the crook of his neck like it was the only place he ever wanted to be.
"Oh... uh. You--"
"Shh, shh." Now that didn't sound like Mark at all. That sounded like Bishop; all condescending comfort and dangerous embraces that felt more deadly than any monsters anyone might be running from. Pellegrino was slipping into character, everything from his facial expressions (which Chris could feel against his skin, holy fuck) to the tension in his shoulders -- Chris had never been so close to someone while they were literally morphing into another person.
"You've been a terrible little pawn lately," was the next thing out of Mark's mouth, and just-- really? Shit.
The heat of the other's breath dampening his skin was enough to make Chris' toes curl. A very big part of him wanted to push the man off of him and storm out of the room, but a smaller, more curious part demanded he go along with the act, just to see how it all played out.
Curiosity was the victor.
"So sorry I got in the way of your plans," he replied, the hiss of his character coloring his tone.
He felt a pull of lips twitch against his neck, except somewhere in the back of his mind he knew Mark wasn't the one smiling.
A gentle hand sliding up his side startled him, making Chris vibrate in his own skin.
"We'll just have to fix that, then." Soft tone, softer words.
"You can try." Harsh and biting, strong and determined.
"Alright."
Mark took that as an invitation.
His other hand darted to Chris' side, and with both anchored around the younger man's waist, Mark hoisted him into the air and strode a few faltering steps towards the couch sitting innocuously in the middle of the room. The effort left him panting and breathless, a fact that he kept mostly concealed. Hauling in a lungful of air, the blonde stretched out languidly beside Chris (it was a surprisingly wide couch) and grappled with the man until he'd full on embraced the other's torso.
Chris faltered, unsure of what to do in this situation, and nearly dropped his facade, but the gentle pressure of blunt incisors scraping along his pulse slammed into him like a freight train and sent his beating heart all aflutter.
"You will listen to me," Mark was saying, his body a solid wall pressed against Pine's side. "You will listen, and you will obey."
... holyfuckingshit Chris was going to have a friggin' heart attack if Pellegrino didn't let up soon. His pulse hammered in his throat, making it hard to breathe, making it hard to think past, what the hell have I gotten myself into?
***
Was it just him, or did the room suddenly turn into a furnace?
Chris had the unparalleled urge to crack an egg on the floor and see if it started to cook. Unfortunately, he was currently pinned in place by a clingy, grabby, demanding, outright terrifying actor, so he wasn't exactly in a position to make an omelette.
Mark peeked his head up and peered at Chris over the plane of his own chest.
"Are you listening to me?"
Chris blanched and stuttered out, "O-Omelette?"
Pellegrino narrowed his eyes -- ahhh, the infamous squinty-eyed look -- and rolled his hips, causing the stutter to stick in Pine's throat.
Jesus H. Christ, Chris thought, turning his head to the side to hide his shock from the man currently staring at him for any hint of emotion. Mark could keep his composure under any circumstance, couldn't he?
"Need I remind you," Mark said with another push of his hips, every word rumbling in the tenor-tone center of his chest, "of your place in this family?"
"What family?" Chris barked out, his voice hoarse from (ohgod no, fucking no no no) arousal.
Pellegrino either was oblivious to this new development, or, more likely, fully intent on exploiting it.
The latter point was confirmed without a moment to spare.
Chris didn't think Mark would go there. He was nervous and edgy about the whole thing, sure, but he'd been fairly certain that the other actor wouldn't ever actually go there.
Until a hand reached between his legs and groped him.
Instead of doing the appropriate thing and punching Mark in the goddamned mouth, Chris ended up biting his lower lip instead. And with every last breath in his shuddering ribcage he would deny even the tiniest sliver of a possibility that he'd let anything like a low whine grumble past his throat.
His eyes fell half-lidded as he stared up at the ceiling, faltering between fighting off the sharp, pleasurable sensation, or giving in to it.
Mark barely gave him a choice.
His hand was a solid weight kneading the front of the younger man's jeans, taunting him with the promise of pleasure.
After a few minutes of this continual torture, Chris finally got up enough energy to say something.
"Get off of me," he grit out, but it sounded more like his character than himself, and he was still left undecided on what he really wanted.
Mark must have heard something entirely different, because, though the hand that had been steadily rubbing pleasure into his veins had in fact vanished, the man himself decided to swing a leg over Pine's torso and straddle the younger man, effectively pinning him in place.
Chris opened his mouth to protest again, but a sharp jerk of Pellegrino's hips was an effective interjection. That simple, silent challenge shattered Pine's misgivings, causing him to thrust up into the heat and solidity of the man above him, because goddammit it felt good, and goddammit he was way too fucking hard to pass up this opportunity.
"Not so snide now, are you?" was the smooth taunt, but Chris found it surprisingly easy to say fuck it and grind up into the other man's groin despite the snarky Bishop-like attitude.
Something flickered across Mark's eyes, and for a moment Chris was slammed back into his own reality when he saw the surprise and softness looking down at him from above.
Pellegrino had jumped out of character.
Pellegrino had jumped out of character and seemed surprised to find himself humping his coworker like a feral dog.
Chris could practically taste the hesitation as it dripped off the older man's skin, but holyshit he'd made it this far and he wasn't about to back down -- wasn't about to let Pellegrino back down, either.
The first thing he did was make a noise. Which he wouldn't have done normally, but it was the only thing he could think to do that would get Mark's attention back on him. It worked, immediately, and Pine shuddered when those cold blue eyes settled on his panting form.
The next thing he did was trail his fingertips down the other man's waist, stop at his hips, and jerk Pellegrino forward until their groins ground against each other in just the right way. Something guttural and dark moaned out from between Mark's lips, and it had Chris aching to hear that noise again. He dug his heels into the cushions of the couch and used that leverage to hoist his lower body up while Mark thrust down. It didn't take long for them to get into a rhythm of sorts, a choppy sort of motion that had them panting into each other's neck, sharing delicate nips and soothing licks when fevered flesh was bit too hard.
"There," Chris would say on an up stroke.
"Mmm," Mark would groan on a down.
It was a primitive sort of coupling, but it got the job done. When the intensity magnified, when they bit and clawed and ground and thrust and grabbed and pulled their way ever closer to each other, the end result was a climax of heat and good and fuck the likes of which neither of them could have imagined.
There was no time for an afterglow.
Mark was off of Chris in an instant, searching the room for tissues and allowing the man a few moments to gather his composure.
Chris was trying to piece together the little shattered shards of his reality, and it took everything within him not to float away on an orgasmic high. Because godfuck that was good, and he wasn't even going to bother denying it. He'd never felt dominated in the bedroom before, so to be beneath another man, engulfed in someone else's presence... it was both terrifying and heady.
After a few deep breaths, Pine rolled onto his side and stretched out languidly on the couch, watching Pellegrino waltz about the room and clean himself up.
"You better be saving some for me," Chris said, waving a hand towards the paper towels Mark was using.
Mark looked up and grinned.
"If I was a cruel man, I'd make you walk around like that."
"You're saying you're not a cruel man?" Chris quirked a brow.
Mark shrugged, a chilly sort of brightness dancing in his eyes.
"I can be."
-FIN-