Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

That was a crazy night.  But before I can properly reflect on all that I have seen and heard, I have to pinch myself and awaken to my new reality - I now work for one of the most famous men on earth.  Is this even a good thing?  Maybe there is danger involved? Crazy fans stalking him, paparazzi jumping onto the hood of his car?  I’ve always been one for peace and quiet, a cup of lemon-ginger green tea with wildflower honey and a good book, curled up in yoga pants and a hoodie, with my little Freckles nestled in between my legs.

But I needed a job, and my college roommate put me - literally pushed me - onto a plane saying, “This is perfect for you, you are perfect for this. You are going to England.”

And now my new employer has fallen fast asleep.  Supposedly, I am the guardian of that fragile, fragile sleep. That was one of the first requirements I took note of when I was hired. He said, “I’m having a bit of trouble sleeping lately.”

Sleep has often eluded me as well. I didn’t want to go off on a whole long manifesto about my theories of sleep, so I said in my most professional tone, as if I were a therapist, “I completely empathize.” And I added, “You have to get good sleep.” I tried to imply in the strongest possible terms that I would fend off the hounds of hell to protect his sleep. But...I didn’t actually say that, cuz that would have sounded kray-kray.

I peer into his bedroom, trying so hard to respect his privacy...but I can’t help it. Something seems amiss. I see him sprawled out on the bed on his tummy. He was so tired that he was barely able to undress himself before face-planting on the bedspread. His pants are down around his knees. One leg on the bed, one leg dangling off; his shirt is untucked and the buttons undone, but one long, slender, porcelain arm is bare, whilst the other is still sheathed in a tuxedo shirt sleeve. The sheets are a tangle around him, and a swath of ridiculous ginger curls help me locate his head.

He still has one shoe on, I notice with a giggle.  The other is upside down on the floor where he kicked it off.  He looks like a cross between a drunken frat boy and a five-year-old who fell asleep among his toys.

I feel it is intrusive, but I can’t help myself.  Hovering on the threshold, I am still a new hire, a temp...but once I cross into his bedroom, we are intimates. I might see things that, in his view, I could sell to a gossip magazine. But moreover - when was the last time someone was in MY bedroom. It just won’t do. Only friends and lovers should see your bedroom.

But he’s not moving.  I stare hard at his back until my eyes water - he might not be breathing! After what seems like a half hour of gnashing my teeth (Is he breathing? Is he dead? What will happen if he is dead, and I am the last person who saw him? Besides the fact that a terribly talented and lovely young man has DIED, what will I say to his MOTHER? And oh, the tabloids! My name will be anathema among his fans worldwide. They might even put out a hit on me! After being excoriated in the press for allowing the glorious actor in his prime to die, I'll be grinding away at the drab drudgery of the only clerical job I could find, or I'll be making sales calls to gullible old ladies, or I'll be adding a side of fries to your order when the four teenaged assassins cosplaying as Molly Hooper approach...)...

After fretting for what seemed a Biblical eon, I tiptoe into the room and peer over his preternaturally still form. After what seems like entirely too long - 10 seconds? 20 seconds? - I see him take a huge breath. His back rises like a giant ocean wave nearing the shore.

Only the most sisterly feelings wash over me. I surprise myself. I thought I would want him sexually, and I do, but not in a ferocious way. I feel the utmost tenderness, looking at him now, sleeping helplessly, hoping only for a few moments of peace, and quiet, and calm. Of course I would love to climb in beside him, intertwine my limbs with his, feel the entire long elegant length of him, smell the aroma coming off his neck, his belly, his inner thigh...anyone would want to...he is so scrumptious, so delicious, so perfect in every way.

But right now this super-talented, overworked young actor doesn’t need a fuck-buddy. He needs a nanny. He needs a team of kind professionals. Smutty thoughts, be gone!

He might have sleep apnea, I note to myself. When I know him better, I will suggest he gets it checked out - but for now, any sort of medical advice would be most unwarranted and altogether too forward. I step closer to the bed and yank off the one errant shoe, and free his feet from the twin tourniquet of his socks. I cannot tell you how tempted I am to smell them - yes, smell them! Half of me thinks they might smell like bunny-breath and daffodils.

No...I’m not going to be a creep and invade his privacy in that way. The poor man - how hard it must be to find trustworthy people with whom to surround yourself. I take the socks and roll them together so I can throw them in the laundry - if I can find it. But I’ll bet anything, they don’t smell all that bad.

One quick whiff - who will know? I slowly raise the socks closer to my face. They hardly smell at all - just warmth and leather and a bit of soap! But it's hardly surprising - just look at him - he gleams - even after a night of schmoozing, making the rounds, and glad-handing. He must have learned to scrub his neck like a soldier while at that boarding school. They probably had five minute long cold showers every morning and learnt fast how to scrub one’s entire body ‘til it shone.

I look around the bedroom - what if there are hidden cameras? I just smelled his socks! What a fucking weirdo! He will think I am entirely insane! Well, if there are cameras, as of tomorrow, or whenever his people review the security footage, I will no longer have a job. Oh, well. I sort of wanted to go back to the States. I miss my dog...and I suppose I could go back to teaching (oh, God, no, let me please keep this job!).

Now that his feet are free from their restraints, I feel better about his prospects for a good night's sleep. His pants are another issue - halfway down his legs, constraining his ability to move his legs or even bend them - that can’t be comfortable. It might even be dangerous. He could have the circulation cut off. My mother always raised me to be cautious about sleeping in tight-fitting clothes--people get blood clots that way. He is so exhausted, and he has at least one drink in him (even though he nursed that one whiskey that Fassbender foisted on him all night, he did manage a few true swigs). And if he got up in the middle of the night and started walking to the bathroom - I could just see it with my mind’s eyes - splat on the floor, he probably would fall smack on that gorgeous face - and not only would that be a damned shame, this is his career we are talking about. He might even have a clause in his contract to avoid injuring or changing any aspect of his face during the run of a show...and then there's the tabloids. A black eye just would not do.

I’m nervous to just yank his pants off with the belt still on because the buckle might catch on his...his junk, and, boy, if he’s not awake now, he would be then! So I gently remove the belt first, hoping this won’t disturb his sleep.

As I ease the belt, snakelike, out of the loops - I feel like a spy. A Mata Hari. I could get very good at this. Perhaps too good. If he is cast as James Bond (and not Fassie, McAvoy, MacGregor, or Hiddles), maybe he could cast me, as, as what? The belt remover? I'm an idiot. But in the midst of my casting call for the re-reboot of James Bond, he groans, and I freeze - I should stop now. After a few bouts of fidgeting around and burrowing into his bedcovers in the attempt to find a more comfortable position, he is still once again. Only a soft rise and fall of his back lets me know he still hasn’t suffocated in those luxurious pillows.

I feel obligated to whisper something, if only for the walls. “I’m sorry, boss, but this is for your own good.” I take his pants by the cuffs and ease them over his impossibly long feet. Jesus, if what they say is true, based on these giant feet….I shake the thought out of my head - must not think of my employer’s schlong (how big is he?) must NOT think of one’s employer’s wee willy winkle (is he circumcised?) cut it out (what color is his…?) stop, stop, stop!

Then I pull. The pants do not budge. This is going to be harder than I thought. I am going to have to get down on the floor beside the bed for the best angle.

Okay, this will work. I’m on the floor, sitting cross-legged as if I’m about to meditate, right next to where one of his legs is hanging off the bed. Looking up from this view, all I can see is one long leg and a bit of underwear-clad fanny. Briefs (oh, Buddha, I shouldn't have noticed that!) I hope there are no cameras, because this looks a little date rape-y. Now that I’m on the floor though, I can make short work of his pants. Once they are off, I get back to my feet, shake the day off of the pants, and lay them neatly over a chair, taking care to fold them so that the crease stays intact and not the other way (why on earth would someone throw their pants over a chair in such a way as to create a second schlubby crease?).

I back out of his bedroom and make a speedy exit through the living room - noticing for the first time, the details of his apartment - the books, piles of scripts, a trumpet case in the corner, the personal photographs - past girlfriends? Past boyfriends? Current ones? This is none of my beeswax, and I shouldn't even be here, looking at his things when I should have gone home by now. I turn out the lights and quietly leave. Halfway down the stairs I realize I forgot to set the alarm. Fuck, fuck, fuck! This would not bode well on my first day as his PA. Aaah shit...I’m not even sure I remember the code!

I head back up the stairs, tiptoeing, and make to quietly re-enter his apartment. But He is standing right there inside the open door. His tall, quiet form fills the doorway. He exudes cologne and sleep and warmth and every heavenly thing imaginable - like a big, giant baby, an overgrown teenager, really. I want to nestle my face in the soft pale skin on the crook on his neck. I want to see if he smells more like a boy or a man. Did he use cologne or aftershave this evening - I always wonder how men decide which to use. Did he chase that whiskey with champagne, or beer? Did he kiss anyone, and could I tell by kissing those lips, the famous Cupid bow lips, full and fleshy? What does his tongue feel like, deep inside your mouth. How hot is it? Does he kiss tenderly, or forcefully, or playfully.

“Uh…” he looks past me out into the hallway, as if he is confused as to why we are standing at the door. “Why are you leaving?” he asks.

“Because, Mr. Cumb….”

“Ben,” he interrupts, shaking his head, so tired of reminding people. "Just Ben.". Then he scratches his fanny. For the first time he looks down and notices he is half-dressed. But he doesn’t say a word, just widens his eyes.

“Mr. Cumber...Ben......you’re asleep, or you were asleep! You need to go back to bed.” I maternally take him by the shoulder, turn him around, and attempt march him back to bed like a five-year-old.

But his slenderness belies a true, masculine hardness. “I’m not asleep,” he protests. “I have to go to makeup!”

“Okay, that proves to me that you really are actually asleep right now!” It is almost three in the morning, and he certainly doesn't have to report to makeup.

“You’re asleep, you, you’re the one.” He mutters and stops dead in his tracks. As I try to push him, move him, and grab on to all different parts of his body, I can’t get a good hand-hold. He deflects me like a Tai Chi master, and he is determined to be as unmoving as a statue. Half of me thinks he is faking it - this is exactly and no different from how a toddler who doesn’t want to go to bed behaves.

Instead of complying with my best efforts to get him to move towards the bedroom, his sleepwalking rant continues. “Why are we asleep? We have an exam! Aw, Jesus Christ we’re going to flunk! Did you study? I don’t even take engineering. What the crap?”

An involuntary snort escapes me. “Engineering? Okay. Back to bed. For realz this time.”

All of a sudden, my actor-boy softens. The hard lines of his well-trained body become wobbly and pliable. My hand barely encircles his rather large forearm, and I gently lead him back into the living room. Somehow he finds my hand, and our fingers intertwine. His fingers are so soft, and firm and lovely. I lead him back to the bedroom, and make him to sit on the bed, facing me. Happily this affords me the opportunity to take his shirt off entirely. While I pull one still-clothed arm out of his shirt, he looks up at me without seeing me, not even understanding what is happening to him. Exhausted. Trusting. His face is expressionless, devoid of passion, guile, posing, sarcasm, or even charisma. It is his real face, fresh and new, like a child’s. His eyes (blue? green? grey?) cut into me deeply, like a knife made of the purest ice.

I cock my head to look at him.

“If I had had my child, and not lost it...he wouldn’t be quite as old as you...but still...you are adorable.” I swallow a lump in my throat. “Your mother, the people that love you, they are very lucky.”

Suddenly his eyes widen, and he blinks several times. I understand immediately - he is now, suddenly awake, but still quite drunk. I feel the need to explain myself.

“Um...you fell asleep with all your clothes on...that didn’t seem like a good idea...so, yeah, I, like, helped you out of them….okay, well, goodnight then!” I say, mustering all of my chipper professional perkiness.

As I turn to walk away, I feel him grab my wrist. A thrill shoots up my arm and into my entire body. If he had literally grabbed both of my breasts - really grabbed them hard, with both hands - I could not have been more turned on.

“No...don’t go.” I turn and face him. His eyes are pleading. “Why don’t you stay here with me, tonight.”

“I don’t like couches.”

“Didn’t say anything about the couch.”

“Wow, that was inappropriate!”

“My bed is really big and I won’t touch you...it would help me sleep…I’m so tired of sleeping alone.” He said this not with lasciviousness but like a petulant teenager who is tired of doing their homework ("I’m tired of Algebra!").

“Just sleep by me..right by me…”

"That would be wrong. And you and I both know it.”

“No one will know. You smell pretty good, you know.”

"Hey, that is a terrible pick up line, just for future reference!" Do I want to take advantage of this nubile, beautiful, sexy person before me? Of course - do I have ovaries!?! It was like being in the presence of a flipping Greek God, oozing with sex and cologne, and a bit of sweat and a bit of androgyny, very hard biceps...no body fat...ridiculous auburn curls…feminine gracefulness...this stupid little feature I’m quite sure no one else in the world has noticed, how his teeth seem a bit small for his mouth, so there is this gap between his lips and his teeth, only on one side, only when he smiles, and oh, when he smiles...you want to stick your tongue right in there, in that silly little gap.

If he and I make out, one, I will feel like a cradle-robber. Two, I will certainly lose my job. He would have no choice. He would wake in the morning, make himself some coffee, have some orange juice, and as the memory of our late night snogging crept back into his mind, he would be repulsed that his new PA of one day’s employ had stuck her tongue down his throat, fondled his cock (albeit chastely, through his undies), and dry-humped him like a teenager. It just would not do.

All these thoughts are racing through my mind, when Ben whispers in his deepest voice, “I’m lonely.”

I want to tell him, “Oh, Ben. Don’t be lonely. Don’t you know half the world would give anything to make love you?”

But I don’t say that. I think it might be better to use humor to dispel his mood. “You’re not lonely, my sweet, sweet boy. You’re blasted off your gourd.”

He says in a sing-songy voice, “Just a quick one, I swear, and then to sleepy-time we go…”

“Uh, you are not 17, and neither am I, and this is not the night of the prom.” I push him down, and he falls over like a stone.

“Oh, come ON! Just one quick one!” I grab his quite heavy legs - they are so long - and hoist them up onto the bed.

“No one is fucking anyone tonight!!”

“Don’t be crass!" he said in his Alan Rickman-esque accent. I don't want to flurghurg...fwawk...f-f-f-..what YOU said...I just want to smell your hair!” Suddenly he is upright again, and grabbing at me with hands like tentacles.

“Oh, good Lord,” I say, extracting myself from the somewhat insistent grip of his hands, which easily find new hand-holds on my hips, my elbows, my upper arms, and again my hips. I must admit it is turning me on just a bit. He is grabbing at my clothes, not in a scary way, but a sort of clumsy way, like he is looking through his sock drawer!

“Uh, boss, I’m starting to feel a bit manhandled, and although many would eagerly trade places with me…”

“You don’t think I’m attractive - admit it! I’ve noticed! I’m just a means to an end for you - a paycheck!

“Ben, come now.”

And all of a sudden it hits me - I’m dealing with an actor - and this is an audition - this is the language he speaks. This - all of this, could be a charade, a test to see if I am a professional or just some fangirl.

I push him, literally push him backwards onto his bed, where he lands flat on his back with a whoompf.

“You’re drunk, buddykins. Obviously you’re as hot as hell, and to quote Melissa McCarthy…”

“I love that girl,” he interrupts from his prone position. “I’d love to make a comedy with her.” This abrupt change of subject leads me back to the conclusion that he is, in fact, actually plastered. “I think I’d be good in a comedy. You people just don’t know...you typecast me. I’m more than a posh, Shakespearean, Sloaney...I have range...hey...you don’t think I’m attractive.” He had come full circle.

“To quote, or rather to paraphrase Ms. Melissa McCarthy, before I was so rudely interrupted...”

“By your boss!”

“Interrupted by my boss - if you weren't paying me...if I were not in your employ, I’d climb your tree like a spider monkey!”

“What does that even mean?” he asks, rolling over so that his head finds the nearest pillow.

“Oh, I don’t even know!! I guess...I guess it means, you’re a tall drink of water...you’re lanky. Your arms and legs go on forever. It's a challenge. A sexy challenge. Women want to climb up your body and dry hump you until they have a screaming orgasm, I guess. Something about those lips, those eyes, those ridiculous curls, all atop a body that should be clad in shining armor, sitting on a white horse.”

He was already snoring into his pillow. Piles and piles of silly strawberry blond locks were all that was visible of that elegant, regal head. He was asleep, and at least, he didn’t fancy himself lonely anymore.

After a few moments listening to that genteel little snore, I whispered, “Oh lordy, Ben--you’d kill it in a comedy.”

I go back into the living room and find my purse to look for aspirin. Although I didn’t draw the line at watching him sleep, stripping him down to his underwear, cursing like a sailor, and wrestling with my half-naked boss on my first day of work, I did draw a line at looking through - or even hazarding to guess - what might be in his medicine cabinet. Scrounging through the packets of chewing gum, hand cream, and receipts from my first full week in the capital of the British Empire, I finally found my bottle of...Pamprin. Well, it will have to do.

I set the bottle of feminine painkiller and a water pitcher from the kitchen on his night table. There was already a wastebasket by the bed, and sweeping my eyes across the room, I ensured he had a clear path to the bathroom, unobstructed by anything that could cause him to trip and fall flat on his face.

His beautiful, chiseled face, silky skin like cream, eyes like every bright burning star. Eyelashes like a little boy.

***

On the cab ride home, I berate myself mercilessly.

I have to do better...it is not professional…I’m going to lose my job...I need this job…why can’t I just act like a normal person, oh, Zeus, Buddha, Isis, I smelled his socks! But I meant him no harm, truly! I just want to pick up dry cleaning, open mail, and book plane tickets; I just want a genteel, quiet, calm work day, working for and with one or maybe two people...why can’t I just stick to the job description given me...

The glamour of London at night flashed unnoticed past my eyes, and I barely remember what route the cabbie took to my hotel.

I arrive the next day...thankfully he has already left for the gym. I smell coffee already brewing. Even though it’s not in my job description, I strip his sheets and make him up a fresh bed. I still haven’t found the washer.

He’s a tidy sort of fellow, but still, I gather his clothes from off the floor, place his shoes neatly on the shoe rack, stack the books even more neatly on his nighttable.

I go to the kitchen where my makeshift office is for now. As I prepare to check the answering machine and try to make sense of his appointment book, I notice a clean empty mug next to the coffee maker. And there’s a note.

“There are lots of odd responsibilities in this job. These include (but are not limited to): Determining which fan letters are charming and pleasant as opposed to frightening and disturbing. Color matching hair dye from salon to salon. Running lines with me. Making sure I always have clean underwear. Booking seemingly impossible travel plans that have me in Kuala Lumpur one day and Scotland the next. Juggling the demands for meetings from agents, lawyers, decorators, and a very, very strong-willed woman who means the world to me. She goes by the name Wanda. Mom to me, Wanda to you."

I burst out into laughter, as I read his descriptions of his chaotic, globe-trotting, but ultimately fulfilling and delightful life, peppered with names like Brad, Angie, Zack, J.J., Mom, Sissy, Papa, Lupita, Tom, Mark, Loo, Mandy, Martin, “the Stevens” (McQueen, Spielberg, Moffat - “keep ‘em straight, learn their voices ASAP!”). His life is hectic - more so than I had even imagined, but he is on the cusp of all great things, and I wanted to be along for the ride.

So we are going to have that kind of relationship - bantering, jokes, a cordial, congenial...congeniality.

"As I stated at first," the note continued, "there will be lots of assorted tasks both delightful and dreadful, to keep me afloat."

"But just so you know, climbing my body LIKE A SPIDER MONKEY is not one of them."

Aah...Shit! My mind reeled.

I flip the paper over - “Yet.”

Chapter Text

"About the other night."  

I was sitting on an dove-grey upholstered chair in his living room like a student in the principal's office, feeling as if I am about to get suspended from school for clogging the toilets with paper towel or smoking pot in the woods.  I didn't know what to expect - was I about to be fired?  Castigated?  Scolded?  Berated?  Arrested?  Would he speak to me in a cold voice reserved for underlings, which I, in fact, was?

Since the drunken-undressing-grappling episode, he had been out of town auditioning, and I had not heard from him for a few days.  Suddenly I got a text.

Come to apt 2day.  PLZ.

So I quickly paid for my coffee, made haste down the busy street. He didn't specify a time but I immediately got on the subway (tube? subway? tube?) and made my way to his place...

Ben answered the door in jeans and a schlumpy, white, short-sleeved t-shirt.  His hair was freshly dyed jet black.  I sort of froze. 

Although his natural auburn is lovely and makes him look exceedingly fresh-faced and boyish, the black...really...does it...to me.  Black hair, blue eyes like agates embedded in ivory.  Echoes of a young Warren Beatty.  Pierce Brosnan babette.  I started salivating.  A jolt of electricity raced down from my eyes straight into my...uh, lady-business.

He invited me in.  "Uh, right. I'm a bit distracted right now so you have to forgive me."  He left the door open behind him and resumed padding around the hardwood floors in his bare feet, looking for something.  A script, perhaps.  He was overturning every pillow in the place, pulling books off the bookshelf.  

"Can I help...you?"  I felt I should sort of act like an assistant.

"Have a seat," he said, indicating the grey chair to his left.  I hazarded to bring up the last time I had seen him ("About the other night...") but he ignored me, picking up a brown wicker basket filled with magazines and dumping it out on the floor.

Finally he just stopped in the middle of the room and grabbed his hair with both hands as if to violently pull it out.

"About the other night,"  I repeated, more slowly and quietly this time.

"We'll not mention it."  

A wave of emotion passed through me - gratitude, relief, embarrassment - but also bewilderment - how could you not mention it? I undressed you!!

He paused his hunt, and with his back to me, hands on his hips, sighed a big long sigh.  

"I can't find my fucking keys."

***

We hunted high and low for the keys.  Under green pillows.  Behind silver-framed photos of Mum, Dad and Olivia.  In a basket that corralled paper clips, rubber bands, batteries, and an ink cartridge.

"Oh, I know!"  He disappeared into his bedroom.  

His living room was immaculate.  After halfheartedly looking under the couch cushions, I was at a loss as to anywhere else the errant keys could be hidden.  I started opening random books on the off chance that one might be one of those boxes meant for hiding valuables.  Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  A real book.  Shakespeare's Sonnets.  A real book, very real, very well-worn.  Keats: A Life. Real.

I wandered into his bedroom.  All I could see was Cumbertushy.  His very handsome fanny was sticking up in the air as he searched under his bed.  Then he wriggled back out from under the bed, stood up, looked back at his own bottom, gave me a cursory smile, and departed for his study.  

I made his bed and checked between the headboard and the wall.  No keys.  He came back in, looked at the bed, cocked his head to one side.  I must have made it up wrong.

Grasping for something to say, I muttered, "Boy...I'm parched."

"Uh..." pointing towards the kitchen, "Have some water."

"Do you mind if I..."

"No...do...go..right now!"  He meant it, so I wended my way to the kitchen, cautiously opened his fridge and saw his keys on top of a bag of lettuce.

"Oh, my!"

He came flying into the kitchen and stood next to me by the open door of the refrigerator.

"Okay, whatever.  I'm losing my mind."  

I handed him the keys.  He took them sheepishly.  "Thanks for that."

"S'my job."

"Still...you didn't know you'd be working for a CRAZY PERSON....um, so, right.  So, don't make my bed."

"It took two minutes."

"Don't make my bed."

"It took...three milliseconds."

"Don't make my bed.  Don't make my bed, don't make my bed, don't make my bed.  'Cause I love repeating myself ever so much."

"I can't help it."

"That's not why you're here." Answering the unspoken question 'so why am I here?"

"Listen, I'm not debating this. And I need some things from the store."  

I gathered my purse, and made a beeline to the door.  As I put my hand on the doorknob, he caught up with me and grabbed my arm to stop my leaving.  

Being so close to him was hard - I'd have to get over how intensely sexy he is.  Must think of unsexy things, like something nasty.  Hard to see anything nasty about him. But they say when you need to end a crush on someone or have broken up with your boyfriend and need to get him out of your mind, think of his farts (ew!).  His toejam (double ew!!).  His nail clippings that inexplicably landed in your jewelry box (vomitrocious!).

I couldn't do it - I couldn't imagine nasty things about him.  Because he is made out of butterfly wings and goose down, that's why.  

Because he smells like coconut soap and speaks in complete sentences.

He quickly let go of my arm. "Sorry, didn't mean to grab your arm - I'm not normally grabby."

"I know."

"I don't want to treat you like a minion. I don't do that.  To people," saying the last bit in his lowest tone.

I'm quite sure you don't do that, I thought to myself. To people, hearing it in his lowest tone.  His voice.  In my head.

"I'm happy to get whatever you need," I offered.  "I mean, I'll get whatever you need.  I'm neither happy about it nor annoyed by it.  I am neutral."

He looked unconvinced, so I elaborated.  "I am zen-like about it."

He coined a puzzled look, squinting at me through one eye, the other half of his face screwed up in a bunch to one side.

"You know  - chop wood, carry water and all that."

"Okay, so you fancy yourself a Buddhist."

"Fancy myself?!"  I exclaimed, sort of in a huff (actually in a huff).

He retracted.  "I'm sorry, I mean, you are a Buddhist.  I'm sorry!  I really can be a bit of an ass sometimes, and you'll just have to get used to it...I mean, if you don't mind.  You don't have to get used to anything; you're a free human being.  We live in a Western democracy....oh, fudge it."

"Whatever do you need?  Or, you can text me on the way there."

"Whatever do I need...I need yogurt.  I would get it myself. It's just..." he trailed off and moved towards the window.  Easing the chocolate-brown drapery aside, he peeked out the window.  "I don't like feeling trapped in my own house."

I looked out the window.  There's a bearded oaf in disheveled clothes, a camera hanging around his neck, a second camera in his hand, pacing our sidewalk.  Waiting, watching.  Something in me rises, my murderous side.  Someone is stalking my bear cub.

I whipped back around to The Boss.  "Do want me to kill him?  I can do that."  I try to say this in my "auditioning for Bond Girl" voice.

His stone expression shattered into a grin.  "Maybe.  Not today. But just maybe."

We looked at each other conspiratorially.   

"So you would murder for me...as in...end someone, destroy someone, as in...end a human life?"

"I'm not saying I would NOT murder for you.  Let's just leave it at that."

"That's dark."

"Well, the line between good and evil cuts across every human heart."

"And who said that?"

"Dosteovsky.  Duh!"

"You're hired."

"Yes, you said that four days ago."

"Yogurt, then. Yes, yogurt. And cinnamon chewing gum. And coffee, I'm shit out of coffee."

***

later

I'm trying to make sense of his so-called calendar (an unholy amalgam of scraps of paper, a bewildering attempt at a computer spreadsheet, a wall calendar, something with Powerpoint) when he pops his head in.  

"I have to do some scene study, and..." looking at his watch, "at three, I've got a meeting with Mr. Fancy Producer."

He seemed a bit discomfited.  "So the kitchen, it's all right for you to work in?"

"Sure...it's sunny, and relaxed.  I like it."  He nods, the faintest smile on his face, backs out, then turns on his heel and disappears.

I can hear him sighing.  Occasionally, a page turns.  The scritching of pencil marks.  Before me, a tiny round white table. A pot of coffee close at hand.  The honking of cars, some trucks pass by.  I have a very softspoken, kind, good-looking boss who spends his days reading Shakespeare.

Time seems to stop.  This might be what peace feels like.

He storms into the kitchen.  "Why are you sobbing?"  

I look up at him wide-eyed.  Tears are streaming down my face.

"I'm jet-lagged...jet lag...is what I have."

"Hmm.  I've never had quite that reaction before."

"I heard something sad on the radio."

"The radio?"  He whips his head around.  No radio to be seen.  

"Not radio, I mean, the internet."

He pats his pants, first his back pockets, then his front; he reaches into his front left pocket, pulls out a handkerchief and hands it to me - not a tissue, an actual cloth.

"An actual handkerchief!  What are you, Prince Lancelot?" More tears.  "I guess I'm really in England now."  

He sighed hugely.  "When you're quite done sobbing your eyes out, we have my whole week to go over - still - and I need tickets to Dubai, and a hotel, and a car, and I have to somehow to schedule the fitting for the tux for May 23rd, and I need you to send a thank you card to Steven for the birthday flowers - I wrote it myself but I would be very grateful if you would mail it god knows where my address book is, probably in the bread bin no here it is and of course you know from the non-disclosure agreement you signed on Tuesday that all this is very personal and private and if you disclose any of this confidential information I will personally murder you...and the decorator is coming tomorrow."

I gazed at him as he ran down the exhaustive list of tasks that needed to be done, just so he could go and be the greatest actor of our generation.  It seemed crazy.  Why couldn't he just....act?  And then I realized - that's what I am here for.  To pick up dry cleaning water the plants make the coffee buy the coffee get things tailored pick up scripts drop off scripts answer the phone find lost luggage remove stains organize parties decline invitations read first drafts fend off photographers maintain order....

All so he could act.  

Looking at this tall.  Gorgeous.  Porcelain-skinned.  Soft.  Gentle.  Brittle.  Enigmatic.  Person.  I kind of started to realize that I am working for one of the greatest artists of our time.

He waved his hand in front of my face.  "I'm sorry; your eyes have glazed over - are you bored?"

I shake my head.

"Angry?  You didn't know it would be this...all these boring little tasks."

"No...not angry.  I am..." I paused to take in a huge breath, "filled with bliss."

"Wow, sarcasm will get you everywhere."

"No, truly.  I...love..." a sob escapes me, "...boring."

"Oh, love, come here," standing me up, pulling me close to him and wrapping his arms about me, "is that why you're crying again?"

"No, don't hug me!" I burbled through his white cotton t-shirt, "I'm happy!"

"Yeah, right - you seem so happy."

The thing is, I was.

(And I made a mental note to get Him some more t-shirts, as this one was quite threadbare....)

Chapter Text

"Oh, Mr. Cumberbatch, you are quite the handsome devil."

"Who are you and why are you in my house?"  

It's our thing.  For a month I was like a ghost, and then he started acknowledging my presence.  

Typing revisions to his screenplay.  "Why are you in my house?"

Sorting through dry-cleaned shirts.  "Why are you in my house?"

Sitting at the kitchen table opening fan mail.  "Why are you in my house?"

On the phone tracking down lost luggage.  "Why are you in my house?"

Researching traditions of stage combat in productions of Shakespeare's "Richard the III."  "Why are you in my house?"

Booking tickets to Los Angeles, Vienna, Moscow, Vancouver, Capetown.  "Why are you in my house?"

Every morning for the past month, at least, every morning he's in town, he transmutes his voice into facsimiles of Alan Rickman, Hugh Jackman, Sean Connery, Snoop Dog - an endless array of characters.  I never know who will greet me when I hear his footfalls approaching.

He schlumps barefoot into the kitchen, wiping the crud out of his eyes, the ties on his pale blue pajama bottoms dangling loose, a white t-shirt  thrown on hastily for modesty.  He mutters something about a State dinner and a script missing a page.

And then he mutters, "Who are you and why are you in my house, darling?"  Today he is Keith Richards.  Sometimes I think he has genuinely forgotten!

His hair is in disarray, some dark brown curls stand straight up, some stick out to the side.  The dye job is growing out and some auburn traces catch the morning sunlight.  The novelty of him in pajamas has just about worn off.  Not entirely though.  

He leans in and gives me a peck on the cheek.  This was new, something from the past few days.  I attributed it to actorly dramatics, a behavior that would probably fade.

I pretend to be made dizzy by the feel of his lips on my cheek.  With a sharp intake of breath, I stammer, "Oh, I'm your biggest fan…"  All the while, I don't stop clicking my mouse.

He murmurs something unintelligible and sleepy.  Maybe an awards show?  A Lord's doe?  Some shad roe?   I'd have to ask him again later.

"Coffee's done, Benito.  Want me to pour you some?"

He waves me and coffee and silliness away with his hand.  "I don’t like Benito,” running his words together.

"Blueberry it is."

"I have a name.  It is Ben."

I check my Blackberry.  "You are very busy this week.  Flower show, reception with the royals.  Dinner with J.J.  Lunch with Salma.  Tux fitting.  Rehearsals." 

He leans against the counter and pours himself coffee into the mug I've left out for him, looks in the fridge for cream.  He never takes sugar.

"I think I’m going to start having it black,” he mutters, rubbing his tummy through his t-shirt.  “Dairy.”

"Yeah, ‘cause you’re so, so fat.”

He sits down on a stool, sips the coffee and is awake.  He does that - he goes from asleep to awake instantly.  Ben is here.

“So why am I a handsome devil?”

"Look at these pictures from last night," pushing my laptop towards him.

There he is in all his glory - white tie and tails.  Tuxedo shirt starched within an inch of its life.  

"Geezus Ben, you are so unattractive. You really need to go to charm school or something."

He looks at me over his coffee cup, his grey-blue eyes as cold as popsicles.  Not sure if he is going to kill me...or kill me. For a split second I'm genuinely scared.  Just a millisecond.  One could imagine  - just imagine, mind - what it would be like to have his big hands around your throat as he chokes the life out of you, not before mashing your lips with a dry, hot, angry kiss....

"Hello?  Is my assistant here?"  I guess I zoned out imagining him hate-fucking me.  When his words snap me back, he is still shooting daggers at me, probably deciding whether or not to fire me.

"That’s a good look on you," I remark.  "Save that for when they cast you as the insane megalomaniac in Bond 27."

"Why are you in such a foul mood?"

"Well, it's just...the world gets to see you looking like David Niven and Pierce Brosnan** had some sort of weird and sexy tryst that resulted in a baby, all tuxedos and perfection and polish and not a hair out of place.  Blindingly beautiful."  He snorts.  "Skin scrubbed as clean as an operating table," turning my laptop towards him.  "You could eat off of that face."

"And you get to see me like this?"  He stands up and makes a tada expression.  We both shout "Jazz hands!"  

He prances from the counter to the island on an imaginary catwalk.  "You're saying I look like hell in the morning?"  He strikes a pose.  "Thanks!"

"The bloggers are calling you a Disney Prince.  Hey, that's an idea - a live action Disney movie - could make a lot of money.  Tell your agent to cast about for that...."

"I need a car for tonight," says, ignoring me.  "I've been asked to to this thing, it's for charity, I know, I know I forgot to tell you.  It's hard for me to relinquish so much control."

I quickly jot down the task.  Extract address from Ben.  Hire car.  Pay for car.  Cash for tip?  "Why don't they send you a car," I mumble...

"It's...for...charity!"

"So how was the gala?"  I try not to be too nosy about such things, but I want to just make conversation.  Maybe I can get the address for the charity function without igniting his grumpy side if I come at it sideways.

"Who cares; it's over, right?"

"You're going to pretend you don't care?  Ho hum, Beyonce, Jay-Z, Maggie Gyllenhall, Anna Wintour.  I call bullshit."

"Same as it ever was - a lot of extremely gorgeous women in psychotic clothing."

"Oh, do tell."

We gather around the laptop like a campfire. 

Ben clicks on the first slide.  A woman attired in a hazmat suit twirls for appreciative onlookers. "Look.  At.  That."

"Next," Ben barks.

"She looks like a circus tent covered in vomit."  

He stares at me aghast.  "Don't say vomit before 9 am."

"She looks like a circus tent covered in vomitus."

"Still sounds a lot like vomit."  Yawning, he clicks the next slide.

"Emesis."

"Big word.  Okay," he pushes the laptop away.  "We're not doing this, this is dumb oh my god look at that crazy whore."

"That crazy whore just inked a deal with Dreamworks for 150 million."

"This is awful, terrible, wrong."  He is waving his hands at the screen in protest.

"Yes…we should be writing poetry, or...saving a whale."

"No, I mean that dress - no one should be allowed out of the house like looking like a skinned octopus."

"Wait," I cursor over the stunning actress with glossy brown skin, round doe eyes, and eloquent arms.  "She looks very good, even with...what is that - a lampshade?  She is literally wearing a lampshade, I think."

"She always looks good."  He sighs wistfully.

"Maybe you should go for her?"

"Nah...I don't think I’m her type."

I look at him incredulously.  "You’re an idiot.  You’re Everyone’s type."  Hot, lean, hot, young, hot, tall, hot, eyes like the ocean, big hands, cheeks that could cut diamonds, Cupid's bow, Cupid's bow, Cupid's bow....I am only 95 percent sure that I am not saying these things out loud.  

"You see," his mood turning, "that's what I don't like...don't fawn over me; I don’t want a sycophant."

"Becalm yourself!  I’m just stating facts.  Besides, I’m not claiming you’re perfect," my voice dropping to a murmur, "which you are most certainly not..."

He raises an eyebrow.

"...and as soon as someone got really involved with you, I’m sure they would find you just as dump-able as the next person…"

"Wow...all this..." looking around the kitchen wildly, "and it’s only 8:30!!  I don't have time for this; I have shit to do."  He stomps over to the fridge to forage for anything to eat.  

"We might have to reconsider mornings," he says, opening the fridge.  There are hard-boiled eggs; organic, freshly made oatmeal with cut up pieces of organic apples, walnuts, pomegranate seeds, soy milk, and cinnammon.  An organic grapefruit halved and drizzled with agave nectar.

"Oh...what's all this?"

"Thought you'd might like something for breakfast."  I'm blasé.  "If you don't eat it, I will."

He mumbles something about eating it and thank you and do I just pop the oatmeal into the microwave and for how long.

"So..." I ask nonchalantly, "...was He there?"

"There were lots of 'He's' there. Whomsoever do you mean?"  He pours another cuppa.

"You KNOW who I mean."

"Say it, come on, say it."

“Fassbender!” I hiss, spitting it out.

Ben almost chokes on his coffee, laughing.  “Why do you have it in for him?  You've never even met him!"

"Totally don’t have it in for him."

"You have it in for him, and it’s ridiculous."

"We have to stop saying ridiculous all the time."

"You first.  So why do you have this ridiculous dislike for Michael Fassbender."

"He just rubs me the wrong way.  I have no idea why. There is, like, lesion on my brain, and he lives there.  I hate him.  There is no logical reason."

"So what you mean to say is you want to fuck him six ways to Sunday."

"No, I mean I really can't stand him.  And that's a pretty disgusting expression.  Six ways to Sunday..." I shudder.  "Ew!"

"He’s actually quite shy and lovely."

"Shy," I repeat, disbelieving, remember his full frontal exploits in Shame.

"Painfully.  And lovely."

"Hmpf...I doubt you.  Very Much."  

I pull up his agenda.  For now I'm just using Google Calendar.  I’ll have to come up with something better soon.

“You're free until call.  You should leave early, there’s that construction on the Waterloo Bridge."

"No press, no...?"

"No, nothing," I confirm.  "You’re free.  Except studying.  Oh, wait, you have something in your eye...here just..."

"I have a mother."

"Who’s trying to be your mother? Come here and just let me..."

"No!" sweeping my hands away.

"I’m going to get it out."

"STOP!

We start wrestling.  He is very strong, but I will not be stopped....besides I am quite sure that if he really wanted me to stop, given his superior weight and strength, I’d be pinned against the wall or on the floor or on the kitchen table or under him on his bed, or....I start to get dizzy.  

He is a man, and I often marvel at the size and strength differential between any given man and any given female.  I don't just mull it - I say that out loud.  "I often marvel at the size and strength differential between any given man and any given female.  It's a wonder more of you don't use your strength to get your way."  Almost an invitation.

"We have been highly trained, my dear."  He grabs both my wrists and pulls my arms rather forcefully down from his face.  He is holding my wrists and twisting them just a bit.  He pulls my arms back behind me to demonstrate his superior skills.

"Oh really, how 'trained'...?"

"From an early age.  Open doors, say 'please' and 'thank you.'  Don't use our substantial size differential to get over on women. "  

I'm trying to wriggle my hands free and he mock whimpers, "Get off...of...me."

"Get off of you - who is manhandling whom now?"  

"You are up on my bod like white on rice.  I'm merely defending myself."  

"With Hollywood Karate."

"It seems to be effective against the likes of you."  He pulls my wrists down again as I try to break free.

"You have a hair stuck in your eye - I am ...getting..it ..out."  I wrest my arms free but don't let him wriggle out from under me.

"Stop, no...no," he protests.

"Ben!" I yell, dropping my hands.  "Your eye is red!"  I resume my ministrations.

"Get the fuck away from me!"  Can't tell if he is serious.

"I am quite sure if you wanted to be away from me you'd be away.  You outweigh me by at least...ten pounds.  And you're a dude, so you have more muscle on you...."

"But you are, like, on my body - get the fuck off me - my legs are going numb."

"Just relax!!"

"You sound like a rapist."

"I.  Am.  Fixing You!"

"Still sounds like a rapist."

"Resistance is futile."

"Hmm?"

"Resistance is futile, resistance is futile, resistance is futile.  Nothin'?"

"Doesn't ring a bell."  Alan Rickman is back. 

"The Borg?  Come on.  The Borg.  'Star Trek: Next Generation.'  THE BORG!!!!"

Nothing.  He does 'blank' very well.

"Seriously?  You were in a 'Star Trek' movie, but you're gonna double down on 'I know nothing about Star Trek.'"

"I'm not doubling down on anything, and I don't talk about past roles, especially with my assistant.  I'm all about the future."

"Said Buddha."

There is a moment of calm, a silence, and then his frantic grappling resumes with renewed vigor.

"Schtop ...it!"  He waves his hands about like a cloud of wasps is attacking his head.

"Geezus, Ben, you’re acting like a fucking toddler.  Becalm yourself.  Calm.  The Fuck.  Down.  I’m helping you...I’m...helping..you..."  

His breathing slows from hyperventilating to normal.  He goes limp; every muscle relaxes, and he allows me to extract the long hair that is literally wrapped around the visible part of his eyeball.  How on earth does he manage to smell like sandalwood candles so early in the morning when most people smell like stale broccoli?

He stares straight into my eyes, glowering almost.  His irises shift from grey to blue to green.  This color-shifting always signals the moment they are about to bore little eye-shaped holes right into my soul, and he is so close I can smell his cinnamon oatmeal breath.  

He is about to ask me a very serious question.  

Will you let me make passionate love to you right here in the kitchen?  

Will you allow me to suckle at your teat until heaven and earth merge into one glorious porridge of delight?

Will you move in with me and let me rock you gently, so gently to sleep every night, while I sing lullabies in your ear in the register of the lowest notes of a church organ?

He frowns and leans his head back, away from mine, and his eyes widen in mock horror.  "Are you smelling me?" 

Just that moment, the sound of the door opening.  Someone walks in, but I don't turn to look - it's probably the maid.  I know it might look odd.  Ben is leaning with his back against a counter, his arms limp at his side, hands open in a supplication of mercy.  His eyes are both wide open, his mouth is agape.  I have him pinned against the counter using my forearms to keep his torso in place as I extract the hair.  For all the world it looks like I am an alien sucking his brains out through his eye with my fingers.  

Ben turns his head as much as he can while I am seemingly dry-humping him.  He gulps, and opens his mouth to speak to the visitor.

"Hi, Mum!"

Chapter Text

Ben emerges from his bedroom.  His hair is gelled into a sculptural masterpiece.  Even with headphones on, I hear him puttering about the living room, and then suddenly I smell his cologne, like a Nascar track, pungent with gasoline, burning tires, and beer and motor oil and men hard at work.  

He is behind me looking over my shoulder.  "Whatcha doin?"

"Nothing!"  I close the browser and start typing random letters into an open Microsoft Word document.  

"Okay, so when you're done pinning pictures of me while listening to slow jams..."

"Not doing that."  I click the red X that closes the Youtube tab playing Unthinkable by Alicia Keyes and lower the lid on my laptop.

"Okay...when you're done doing quote-unquote nothing," he says, making quotation marks with his long, elegant fingers, "get me a car.  Please.  And then you can open your laptop and keep pretending to work."  

I pick up my cell phone and began loudly punching on the keys.  "Car's on the way."

He opens the fridge and, his back to me, asks, "So...how I do look?"

He looks so good I want him to pour beer all over my tits and lick it off.  Instead of telling him that, I shrug and mumble, "I dunno."  

"But really."  He strikes a pose like he's modelling for the cover of GQ.  So serious.  Moving panther-like about the kitchen.  He smooths the pants pocket over his left buttock.  I get a bit dizzy.  And then his signature move - he pops his cuffs.

He knows he looks like sex on a stick, even in those ridiculous cargo pants and that idiotic grey long-sleeved t-shirt that's been washed about 500 times.  

I sigh and turn to him.  "You are wearing a pink corduroy jacket (which I didn't even know could exist in a man's size), a purple tie with skulls on it, and a t-shirt that is so threadworn it has turned to vapor. It is no longer a solid - it is gaseous."

"You just don't get it."  He holds his long arms out in front of him like a Russian aristocrat admiring her opera gloves.

"Get it?  Oh, you mean your 'aesthetic?'  How do you even wear a tie with no collar?  What universe are you from?"  We had had this conversation before.  We had had lots of conversations like this of late.

"Right...you being from the States and all, you wouldn't understand...."

"You don't think we have our fair share of hobos in the U.S.?

"I'm not dressed like a hobo!"

"No.  You're dressed like someone's teenaged son is trying to make a point.  You don't control me!"  I whine, adopting the voice of an aggrieved adolescent boy.

He looks into the reflective front door of the microwave and preens one errant ginger curl back into place.  “Anyway, you're not my stylist."  He sighs when I have no response.  "I’m going out for drinks.”  Alan Rickman.

I keep typing.

“With Tom...”  Still Alan Rickman.

Keep typing.  Keep typing, keep typing, keep typing.

“...Hardy.  And..."  His normal voice.

“Don’t care," I interrupt.

"Two Toms."

"Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, I can't hear you!"

"Hardy...and..."

"I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy!" I sing-scream.

"Hidd....."

"Oops, I did it again," grasping at any moronic song I can to drown out his voice.

"...les....

"If you like pina coladas!"

"...ston.  Tom Hiddleston."

"Don't care."

“Yes, you do, you really do.”  He looks at me sideways and narrows his already reptilian eyes.

I sigh heavily and keep typing.  “Why do you want me to be interested in your boring life?”

“Because that’s your job!”

“No, my job is booking PLANE TICKETS!  Besides you're a fucking liar.  Tom Hiddleston is in L.A.  Probably auditioning for Bond."

He raises his eyebrows, then furrows his brow, turns on his heel, and marches out the kitchen.  The door slams.  The door opens again.  He sticks his big horse head back in.  “Really need to reconsider evenings.”  Slams door.

The silence in the house is lovely.  Now I can get some work done.  It takes a shockingly long time to book decent hotel rooms that don't suck, don't look out on a brick wall, in hotels that guarantee privacy and safety.  I can't work with him looking over my shoulder...even if I was pinning pictures of him to my board, "If Ben-Addiction Is Wrong I Don't Wanna Be Right." [that Pinterest board name is too long, you really should prune that down - just some thoughts.]

But I probably went too far with the Bond thing.  That really is a sore point for him.  But he is full of sore points, all over the place, prickly here and there, I'm always offending him and irritating him.  He's always staring at me like I'm an idiot.  

I mutter, “Besides, you have a big giant head like a horse.”

“I heard that.”

What the fuck - he had not left yet!  

"You know, a lot of people would have fired you by now," he muttered from the other room.

"Not Michael Fassbender."

"You said you hated Michael Fassbender."

"I never said that."

"Many times - with your mind."

"And you said you didn't want a sycophant.  You said to stop making moon eyes at you and just do my job."

He storms out of the house, this time for good. 

***

We had had quite a to-do.

He had been out of the country for weeks filming Black Mass with Johnny Depp.  Before that weeks, months of busyness--flower shows, literary festivals, garden parties, charity events, rehearsals, readings, lawyers, agents.

When he got back, we had quite a row.  Quite a throw down.

Because he missed me.  Or I missed him.  One or the other.  Still sorting that out.

Chapter Text

"Look at me!"  He grabbed my face with his free hand.  "I want you to really look at me when I’m fucking you."

"I am looking at you," I protested.  He was sliding in and out of me, gently, calmly.

"No," he said angrily.  "I mean really look at me, and don't look away.  Look in my eyes."  His thrusts became slower, and more insistent, deeper, sharper.  "Don’t...look...away."

"Why would I look away, your eyes are just, so..."

"Why are your eyes watering.  Oh, for God's sake, don't cry.  Just look at me."  He smelled delicious, like corrector fluid and permanent markers. So wrong, but so right.

"Your eyes are too blue.  They're so blue they're black."  [My eyes are grey.  Get it right!]

He withdrew, grabbed me by my shoulders, sat us both up, so that we faced each other, and he grabbed my face with both hands, forcing me again to look deeply into his eyes.  "I want you to really see me, no, really see me.  Not just what I look like on film."

"Of course, I see you!"

And then he placed me in a glass bubble and rolled me down a hill.  Like something out of a dystopian television show circa 1965.  Everyone dressed in white jumpsuits, assigned numbers instead of names.  He rolled me down toward the river.  I was trapped inside the bubble, and he had a smoke.  And then it cut to commercial.

Chapter Text

"Whatcha doing?" Him - adorable.  Blue khakis, barefoot, ginger hair sticking out in every direction like Sideshow Bob.  As he brushes past me, his right hip grazes my shoulder, and I'm not sure if the physical, almost intimate contact means if he is now finally, after all these weeks, indifferent to my presence.  Or, if he is like any man, who will use any excuse to feel any part of any woman's body....

He rummages through the bag of Chinese food and pulls out an eggroll.  I make a mental note to get some healthier options in the house for late night munchies.  Suddenly he is looking over my shoulder, smelling like cinnamon chewing gum and wet puppies.  "Whatcha doin?"

"Taking a quiz on which character you have portrayed that should I date. I know I am saying that wrong.  It's a quiz on the roles you have done with whom I am most compatible...and should date."  I pause. "There is no way to say this that doesn't sound bat-shit crazy."

The eggroll stops just before his open lips.  "Okay, I am officially no longer surprised by anything about me on the internet."

"Oh, you should save that revelation - I'm sure there are lots of surprises left in store."

"And?"

"There are too many fucking questions, and I’m getting bored.  But I can tell by the way I'm answering that I will end up dating your socks, or your wallet.  I'm just that boring."

"Uh....no...by 'And' I meant, 'And my plane tickets?'"

"Oh, thank the sweet Lord in heaven, I’m done - and now it’s calculating."

"So, now you can get my plane tickets now."

"Yeah....right."

~ 5 hours later ~

Ben has fallen asleep at the table to the gentle purr of my computer's over-taxed processor.  I've taken the opportunity to sneak into his bedroom and sort his t-shirts into piles: Despicable; Tolerable; Not Fit To Be Worn by the Homeless.  

When I make my way back into the kitchen, Ben suddenly sits upright and rubs his eyes.  "Who are you and why are you in my kitchen?"  He notices the laptop.  "Okay, so what 'me' do you date."  He is very tired.

"It’s still calculating.  I think it hijacked my computer and is harvesting all my data."

"You mean all of my data. I need plane tickets.  Like, now.  I have to be on a plane tomorrow!"  He bangs the kitchen tables with both hands.

"It says I should date...Captain Martin Crieff, whoever that is."

"What?"  He grabs the computer and reads aloud:

"It says: Wonderful!  Although not the most famous of Ben's roles, Martin Creiff will make a fine boyfriend for a certain type of stay-at-home, girl-next-door.  A hard worker and a good provider, Martin certainly won't make your evenings exciting, but you can count on him not to kill you, deduce you, or die of a degenerative disease.  Not the sharpest tool in the shed, but, hey, neither are you.  And what a perk- frequent flier miles!"

Ben is silent for a hot minute.  He screws up his mouth, and then mutters, "Yeah, that won't do. Try again."

"Plane tickets, Ben."

"Try. Again."

"Well, who am I trying for?"

"Khan at least!" he yells.

"Not the rape-y guy from Scandal?"

"You mean...why do you keep calling it Scandal - it's not Scandal.  It's Atonement."

"Yeah, that's what I said," rolling my eyes.

"It would completely not kill you to become a teensy bit familiar with the work I have done."

"How do I get Khan?" Ignoring him.

"I don't know. Be a badass."

"You mean, like, fuck it, I'm not even finishing this quiz!"

"Yes. Like your normal day-to-day attitude!  Should get you Khan."

"My day-to-day brattitude!"

"Yeah."

"Say your day-to-day brattitude."

"No.  I'm not saying that."  He gestures towards the laptop.  "Finish your fucking quiz so I can get my plane tickets!!!"

"Oh, I got those while you were asleep."  I gestured towards the manila folder with his boarding pass.

"You bitch.  I'm going to bed.  Get out of my house."

I get up to leave.

"I was joking!  Sit your ass back down here and finish your quiz!"

"Oh, look, while you were cursing me out it came up as Stephen Hawking."

"Shut up.  Let me see."

I swing the computer back around.  "I dunno, I rather like that.  He's smart.  He's witty.  When the aliens come, they will probably collect him, Malala, and most of the dolphins before blowing up the planet..."

He stares at me like I am bat-shit crazy.  "Well, why can't it just have you date me."

"Me who?"

"Me Benedict."

"Oh, Mr. Cumberbatch," I say with my most British-y British accent, "I can't date you cuz I don't date tall, young, clean, well-groomed, rangy, blue-eyed millionaires."

"Grey."

"Yeah, grey, blue, s'all the same."

"No?"

"No...just not my thing."

"So who do you date?"

"Not my boss."

He smiles, "That was awkward.  I was just kidding, and you made it, like, all realio."

"Who brought it up??"

"You brought it up!"

And thus we argued until the wee hours of the morning, as he packed his suitcase and I made final arrangements for his trip to Japan to film a car commercial.  

Chapter Text

Happy birthday, Boss. - First Lieutenant Sulu

No answer.

Did you have fun at the ballgame? - She Who's In Your Kitchen

No answer.

I didn't mean to call you a horsehead. - Sancho Panza

No answer.

Have fun at the party. - Your PA

No answer.

***

I turned off my phone and rolled over in bed.  A welling up of emotion, impossible to fend off, rose from my belly, burbled up through my heart and lungs, and erupted at my lips.  I tried to fight it off for quite some time, but I began to sob into my pillow.  

What was I doing here in England?

I sat upright in bed and mentally chastised myself.  I am doing a job.  A job for which I am being paid. I am a paid subordinate, to paraphrase Charlotte Bronte.

I dragged myself out of bed, stumbled to the bathroom, and stood in the mirror, allowing the harsh overhead lighting to reveal every flaw.  My face is sagging; I have dark splotches and dry skin.  On a good day, my hair looks like a witch's broom.  [I rather like your hair].

Any cuteness I may have once had was a memory.  Now I am lucky if I can manage "acceptable."

"Appearances, cuteness, beauty - these are not your strengths," I told my reflection.  "Organization, attention to detail, persistence with vendors - this is why you were hired.  To get shit done."

I sighed a big sigh  Now that that was resolved, I re-committed myself to providing my employer with a high quality of service.  Perhaps one day when he grew tired of me he would give me a decent recommendation.

Still, it would have been nice to go to the party.

No Pinterest tonight.  No collecting images of him and categorizing them by hair color (Gingerbatch, Blondbatch, Brunettebatch).  None of that nonsense.

I dug out my boxed set of Game of Thrones and fell headlong into the world of Westeros.  Later, I would dream not of being a damsel in distress, but of slitting throats, chopping men in half, gutting my enemies...

A kingslayer.

Chapter Text

Headphones on, so I only see London, I don't hear it.

Skipping across puddles in my ballet flats, black skirt that hits me below the knee, pink V-neck t-shirt, black scarf about my neck.  Tote bag in one hand, bag of groceries in the other, a bunch of yellow self-pity roses under my arms.  A cliche of everything I've ever wanted for my life- a single woman trying to make it in a European city, if you can count London as Europe.

A collision of impressions.  A cab nearly splashes water on me, but I evade it and in just that moment I catch the scent of jasmine perfume as a well-heeled woman (lawyer? banker?) brushes past me.  A homeless dog skitters into an alleyway and everything in me wants to chase him, have him, love him, feed him.

Corinne Bailey Rae, whining in my ear:

Just like a star across my sky,
Just like an angel off the page,
You have appeared to my life,
Feel like I'll never be the same,

I'm not thinking about the Boss.  I'm missing my dog.  

If I were thinking about my Boss, I would wonder what he thought of the guy who jumped naked into a penguin pool the other day, and does he like the smell of jasmine, and does he like Corrinne Bailey Rae or find her just a teensy bit insipid, and will he get Bond and will he take the role of Bond, and will he ever get married, and will he invite me to his wedding if he ever does get married and will I ever get married and will they ever find those Nigerian girls and what bright or sad futures lie ahead...for all of us.

Sitting in a cafe, nursing a green tea.  I had stopped looking at my phone for days, and when I finally check it, there were twelve texts. 

I'm back.   - BC

Going to wax museum.  They are making a Wax Me. - The Boss

Could use some help. - The Boss

They are removing my head like in a sci fi movie - help! - BC

Get on the tube.  Pleez - need help.  And bring my grey t-shirt.  The one you claim to have thrown away. - Ben

And a soy latte, no foam.  Papa needs caffeine! - Me

And so on.

***

When I arrive at the wax museum, such a flurry of activity  I've never seen.  Two men hold giant calipers to his head as if they intend to remove it to a biohazard room and blast it with radiation.  

A box of eyeballs sits on a table nearby, and a young woman is carefully sorting through them.  As I pass her, I whisper, "I'll bet you're having a helluva time finding the right one."

She says, "Yeah, I know.  It doesn't exist.  We're going to have to make them from scratch.  His eyes are just that unique."  

For some reason, this makes me catch my breath.  Indeed - it is his eyes that are so...impossible.  

I lean over the eyeball sorter and peer into the tray of plastic orbs.  I point out that his eyes are rimmed by the thinnest line of black; it is not a hard line, but smudged; and that his eyes are essentially grey but have navy blue streaks, well not really streaks, but mottling, like granite, but that the grey that undergirds all of this is very soft, like goosedown, and it's not grey but the palest blue imaginable - an overcast sky and the sun is just beginning to break through the clouds -and of course there are splooches of the purest gold sort of surrounding his irises, but not symmetrically - each eye is unique - it's very important to capture this.  One of the patches of gold has a tiny black, non-symmetrical ink splatter.  The overall impression should be of falling out of a spacecraft into the gravitational pull of a gas giant, falling deeper into the cloud cover.

The eyeball sorter is staring at me.  She raises her eyebrows to indicate how crazy she thinks I am and says, "Yeah, I think we'll do grey."

He of The Impossible Eyes notices me coming in and reaches out for the latte, but a handler swats his arm down.

He sits perched on a stool, rigidly, unable to move his head or neck for fear of incurring the Wax People's wrath.

His eyes follow me as I approach him with his caffeine fix.  

"So how do I look?"  

His skin is glowing - probably just had a facial.  The hair stylist did a good job at recreating what has become his trademark style - "Disney Prince."  A big swirl of locks lacquered into place in a curlicue above his forehead.  Almost as iconic as "The Sherlock."

He frowns at my silence.  "I look okay...?"

I catch my breath.  I cannot say he looks like heaven, like sex, like the only man I can imagine spreading myself wide open for, fucking me into the bed, grinding his hips into my....

"Um...."  He is staring at me sideways as the wax people paint white dots on his face.  

I come back to reality.  "Like Jesus juggling kittens."

"Is that a good thing?"  He looks at me with puzzlement, and 'it's a puzzle that becomes him.'  I look away, unwilling to meet his eyes.

"So, I have to go back to Boston tomorrow, so...I want to speak with you."

"Yeah, yeah, tickets, a car..."

"No.  I mean, yeah, I need all that...but I also just want to...speak to you."  He drops his eyes, and a wax person lightly smacks him under his chin to get him to bring his head back up to position.

I shrug.  "Sure."  Ordinarily I would be anxious, and hopeful, and excited that he wanted to just talk to me, and also a bit worried.  But right now, something is amiss- with Him.  I reach up and swoosh my hand though his hair.  I've never touched his hair before.  It is surprisingly normal.  I didn't get a thrill that raced down my arm to my lady business.  Just hair.  Still, very silky and... I wouldn't mind doing that again.  He is staring at me but not seeing me.  Modelling - he is modelling.  Maybe even "acting."

Everyone in the room freezes.  

The hair stylist runs at me with a hairbrush.  "Why the fuck did you do that? Do you know how long it took to get those buggerdy curls to conform to my wishes?"

I am resolute.  This is my last stand.  If I get fired, I get fired.  Glaring at the stylist, I calmly state, "He looked like a cartoon." 

There is silence.  Ben is stony-faced and a bit bored.  The Madame Tussaud's representative circles him slowly.  The hairstylist scurries at Ben with seven tools, a can of spray and strangely, a chopstick, prepared to do battle with The Curl.

But the Madame Tussaud representative body blocks the stylist and yells, "No!  Don't touch him!  It's perfect!"

Chapter Text

"Da fuck is this?" Ben, attired in ripped jeans, an over-sized white tux shirt badly in need of tailoring, and barefoot, holding a carton of milk at arm's length, practicing his "American gangsta."

"That would be 'milk,'" I explain and return to pinning pictures of Ben whenever he appears in the same frame with other British actors...but especially Fassbender.

"No.  This.  This!"  He stabs the word "Whole" on the carton.  "Whole milk.  Whole!?!?"  He has very eloquent fingers.

I shrug and go back to my real work - a thank you note to the woman who helped coordinate the auction of his hand-designed Christmas card.

Placing the milk right in front of me, he continues, "You do know what I do for living..."

"Remind me.  Something with data entry....marketing, maybe?  Podiatry?"  I keep typing, my arms around the milk.

"I take off all of my clothes in front of hundreds of people...and then it is broadcast worldwide."  He's referring to Frankenstein, brilliantly directed by Danny Boyle, but which I had not seen due to...sadness issues.  Too, too tragic.

"Sometimes you take off some of your clothes.  Like, once every couple of years."  

"Be that as it may, I would like to not make people upchuck their dinner when they see me."

"You are too skinny, boy."

"Yeah, you've said."

He grabs the milk, brushing my chest in the process, and begins to drink from the carton, some of the milk spilling from his mouth and cascading down his neck - like porn for women. 

When I wake up from that erotic dream, my head is resting on my folded arms - I have fallen asleep on the kitchen table, and the smell of burning autumn leaves and sandalwood alerts me to his presence.  He is awfully close I should say.  I turn my head and stare up through my own tangle of hair.  He is leaning right over me, looking at my computer screen, and I could have sworn he had his arms outstretched as if he had been typing something.  He hastily puts his hands on his hips.

"Huh.  Yeah.  When you are quite done pinning pictures of me in tuxedos..."

I sleepily protest.  "Not tuxedos.  Suits!"

"Okay, whatever, I need to pack."

I keep sleeping.

"So help me.  We've talked about this, right?"

"Oh! Sorry!"  I sit upright like a dead thing reanimated by lightning.

We had, in fact, had a discussion about how I was to focus more on his personal needs and allow the stylists to choose clothing; let the agents do their thing; the lawyers - leave them be; don't assail his production partners with ideas for movies, like male Jane Austen characters as super heroes, which I still think is a good idea); and after the wax museum episode, no more touching of the hair.

It was a long discussion.

I stand up, and we both amble into his bedroom.  I have absolutely no qualms about being there anymore (but boy, would I like to push him down on the bed, rip his shirt off, jump on his body and go to town!)....

Ben runs into his closet, grabs a suitcase, and flings it onto the bed.  "Why did I even bother unpacking!  I can see now how in a few years it might be nice to just have a tv show.  I mean, a regular, weekly show.  Or direct some plays.  I'd like to stay in London for a few weeks!"

"Well, later this year...Hamlet."

"Right....right..." he sighs.

"Let me help you."  I grab a few tees and begin folding them.  Ben grabs some as well, but he just starts cramming them in.  

I swipe his hands out of the way.  "You go get your hair stuff - I'll finish the clothes."

"I'll have you know I am perfectly capable of packing myself, and have done for twenty years now...."

"Yeah, yeah.  I'm sure."

"But I have to be on that plane in like, thirty fucking minutes."  He races to the bathroom, and I hear the clamour of toiletries being thrown into a case.

"Okay - I've got a list."  I unfurl a long sheet of paper, two pieces taped together end to end, and pull a pen out of my ear.

"Oh, wow - you've actually been, like, working!"

We go through his toiletries, not that he can't just get whatever he needs once he's there...although he'll be awfully busy.

"Sunscreen?"

"Check."

"Plentiful underwear?"

"Check."

"Seven gallons of hair goop?"

"Fuck you."

"Seven gallons of hair goop?"

"Check," he mutters.

"Plane tickets?"

"Check."

"Passport?"

"Check."

"Hideous grey t-shirt that should be thrown in the dust bin?"

Silence.

"Crazy-hat."  

He gives me such a look - may have gone too far with that one.

"You know, if you really want to blend in, just wear a baseball cap."

He glares at me in a way that suggests some of his skill at portraying evil characters is derived from an inherent potential for violence.  The next moment seems to be filled with the sexy possibility for death.  Mine. His jaw is clenched and one side of his face twitches. Shit, he is really mad!

"Just saying," I mutter, adding, "baseball cap...very American...very unnoticeable..." whispering now,  trailing off.

He inhales his lips, making them disappear in a sour lemon face.  "That sounds awfully like a styling suggestion."

He closes the suitcase.  It won't close.  He waves his hand to indicate "would you do the honors."  I maneuver my ass on top of his suitcase, and bounce up and down a bit while he zips it closed. I can't help but get a thrill when his hand has to pass under my leg to zip that section, then he puts his hand in between my legs to zip a bit more, and then finally reaches around my torso to finish zipping. Nothing erotic about that, I say to myself, growing dizzy with lust. The smell of his hair...his neck....  

"Thanks."  He has forgiven me for remarks on his millinerial choices.

"Glad my massive heft can be put to good use."

We drag his suitcases to the door and down the hall to the lift.  I help him get them out to the street where a car is waiting.  Normally I'd drive him, but he had not mentioned that, so I called him a car while he took one last tinkle.

After we get the last suitcase in the car, I go to hug him, saying,"Okay, Boss, so, have a good trip."  

"No, you're coming with me."

"Okay."  I hop in the car.  I figure he has some last minute notes for me to take. Something with dry cleaning and letting the maid in. Water the plants and such.

He says hello to the driver and then says, "Yeah, take us to XXX Street.  Please."

I almost do a spit take.  "Hey, that's my address."

"Right, like I said - you're coming with me.  And you need to get your passport."

It is such a cliche, but my mouth drops open exactly like a ventriloquist's dummy.  

Turning to the Boss, I whisper, "Shut! The Front! Door!"

Chapter Text

Running for the airplane, sweat rolling down his neck.  This skinny little British boy has got some serious speed.

Me, I'm out of breath, huffing and puffing.

I unzip my purple hoodie with one hand and tie it around my waist, never dropping one piece of luggage.  My overnight bag is on my arm, and I'm pulling one of his cases behind me.  I’ve got a backpack on my back as well with my laptop.

He's faster than me (so flipping fast) and all I can see is his legs pounding the ground in front of him.  But then I remember I used to run track in high school (or I thought about trying out for track), and I crank up the speed.  I determine that I will pass him, even if my knees give way, even if my heart bursts open from the effort, even if it is for just one brief, shining moment of glory.

For one moment, we look like a racing scene in Gallipoli.  Mel Gibson in his first major role, before he went crazy, and some other dude.  Two gorgeous boys in the full blossom of youth trying to out-do each other, not realizing that their race is a premonition of disaster to come.

I overtake him and we briefly lock eyes.  “Take that, Cumberbatch!”

But he passes me.  “You’ve got to go faster than that if you want to beat me.”  He cranks up the speed and leaves me several paces behind.

We are running so fast I’m shocked airport security hasn’t body-slammed us, pulled our arms behind our backs, and cuffed our asses.

The sounds of the airport recede and all I hear is his breath.  Every so often he grunts with the effort.  I wouldn't mind if he backed off on the speed a bit.  “If we go any faster we’re going to end up in security, and I am not in the mood for a body cavity search.”

“Are you ever in the mood for that?”

I almost choke.  “Depends on who’s asking!”

“Slut," he barks, just as we pass a shocked grandmother from Essex.

“You’re just trying to make me slow down.  But I will beat you.  I will!!”

We run up to the ticket desk and then realize that we don’t have to do this, so we run to the gate, this time in slo-mo.

When I beat him to the boarding gate, I do a little victory dance.  The White Stripes are my back-up band.  When Ben catches up, he leans on Jack White's shoulder and rolls his eyes.

***
“Hey.  Hey!” Ben is shoving me, sort of brutally.  “Time to board!”  He grabs his carry-on and mine as well.

I wake up and sleepily look around.  

“What were you just doing?" he asks, "Were you making what just happened into a music video?

"Yes."  Unapologetic.

Chapter Text

As we amble onto the plane, I am a bundle of excitement.  “I’ve never flown first class before.”

“And you’re not this time, either,” he says quietly, finding his seat.

I look at him with moon eyes.

“Get over yourself,” he says, almost too loudly.  “I'm not sitting next to you for eleven fucking hours.”

"You say 'fuck’ so much lately!”  The stewardess glares at us both, as if to say, ‘I don’t care how famous you are, shut the hell up!’

“It’s her bad influence,” he murmurs to anyone who will listen.

***

So I’m sitting next to him because he was just kidding about the not wanting to sit next to me for eleven hours.

He unbuckles his buckle, pops his top pants button, and slumps a bit in his seat.

I open a packet of sugar, stir it into my hot tea, and say, “I think it’s interesting you invited me to go at the last minute and expected me to be able to do that.”

“I think it’s interesting you already had a carry-on fully packed and ready to go.”  He sips his wine.  White.  Pinot Noir.

As the lights dim and we fly into the darkening gloom, the engine noises and gently clinking glasses and people talking softly in every language lull me to sleep.  When I wake up from that brief nap, I open my eyes, but can’t move my head because an oddly-shaped bowling ball is pressing on my upper right skull area.  Even though he has ample room and plentiful alternative resting options, Ben has chosen to lay his weary head on mine.

As much as I adore him, I want to shove him off of me like no one’s business.  Awfully uncomfortable.  I’m getting a massive migraine.

***

Somewhere in the middle of the flight I am sobbing silently to myself because I know we are flying over my dog, who I had to leave behind, and Ben asks why didn’t you just bring him to London, and I want to punch his lights out because he is usually so down to earth, and I can’t be bothered to explain to a millionaire how much it costs to ship a dog, not to mention the fact that I would never want to expose my sweet boy to the trauma of an overseas flight ('he's only 13 pounds, he's just a little thing, and what would he think about being stuck in a box, in the dark, for hours and hours and the roaring noise and him just going crazy with grief and loneliness and sadness!') and just the thought of animals in the cargo hold right now makes me sob until I feel sick, and I have to apologize to him for being such a wreck when travelling.

"I get very philosophical," I feel compelled to explain.  "All of life's big questions assail me."

"I'm sure the animals are sedated and asleep," he offers.  I am inconsolable.

To get my mind off of it, he offers to tell me funny stories.  "Would you like that?  Me, telling you, about my life.  Like I said I never would?"

I nod my head in assent and my sobs begin to abate.  "Tell me about prep school," I whimper.

"Okay, we don't call it prep school.  But I'll forgive you that.  And I met some of my best friends there, people I'm sure I'll be friends with for life, but yeah, things could get rough.  For starters, my nickname used to be Bendy-Dick Come-on-my-Baps."*

I spit out my tea.

"Come on my what?"

"Yeah, you heard it right."

"That's dreadful."  I stroke his hand.  "Poor baby."

"Teachers can be so cruel," he adds.

Second spit take on my part.

"I can't claim that one," he demurs.  "Alan Carr said that - quite smart rejoinder, that."

"Now I'm going to have dreams about that."

"About Alan Carr?"

"No...about your nickname."

"Oh, really?"

"Yeah..."  I trail off.

"Tell me about it, tell me details of such a dream," is the last thing I hear him say, but I am getting genuinely sleepy, and it is airplane cold, so I snuggle down even further into the blanket and he snuggles into his blanket.  I would love so much if he were to lean into me, and make one warm cozy space with our two blankets, and then maybe he would forget himself and lean to kiss me, a kiss that would just happen, not because we were going to embark upon a relationship, but because we happened to be two fine people, cuddled up against a mechanical chill, trying to mimic the warmth of a campfire as we hurtle through space on a death box suspended against all the laws of common sense over the Atlantic Ocean...

...and his arms find their way behind my back and around my torso and his mouth is pressed against neck and then my cheek and there is no comfortable position and certainly not with the armrest, so that has to go, and then he is just basically lying on top of me and using me as a pillow but I protest that I will be dead by the morning, crushed by his limbs "which are everywhere, goddammit Benedict, do you have seven arms?!?!" I whisper-scream, so he reverses the set-up and makes me lay on him after putting a bunch of pillows under his back and he draws the blankets over the both of us so that I am curled up like a puppy dog nestled in the crook of his body, my head on his chest....and he murmurs, 'now, that's much better''...

I have to remind him - twice - not to touch even one breast - even as a joke - and if he puts his hands between my legs again it will come back a bloody stump.....but really, I want him to try again just one more time, 'cause I might let him leave it there, just resting, as long as he didn't move it (which he did at first!), but just left it there so the warmth of his hand - his motionless hand, Ben! - would seep though my yoga pants and comfort me, not in an overtly sexual way (but, yeah, sort of in a sexual way)...

...but he is already softly snoring and the whole plane is asleep except for one little French girl whose endless prattling is actually very sweet and comforting...she being so happy just to be alive and me needing any reason to feel that way...and it's a good thing he didn't put his hand back there because I'm not sure I could have resisted squirming against his fingers....and then where would we be....groping under blankets like teenagers at a movie...

 ***

"Wake up."

"Wake! Up!"  It's The Batch, yelling at me.

Ben is a blur of blue t-shirt, carry-on bags, a wallet, a phone, hands running though dark ginger locks.  He pads his pants looking for chewing gum.

"We're here!  We've landed!  I need a mint.  Come on!  I think I'm already late.  Fuckity-fuck, fuck, fuck!"  

"Said Hugh Grant in Four Weddings."

"I'm not sure he said 'fuckity-fuck, fuck, fuck.'"

"But he said something like it," I counter.

"Yes, Hugh Grant did make it seem acceptable and even adorable for the upper class Englishman to be heard cursing like a longshoreman who stubbed his toe on a rusty nail."

As I gather my bag and wipe the sleep from my eyes, I notice him staring at me, pretty intently.  I look up and off to the side.  We both have the notion to say, "What happens on the plane stays on the plane."

And then there's a beat and we both yell, "Jinx!"

As make our way down the aisle, I look back fondly at out blankets, tangled together, the warmth of our bodies still intermingling, the ghost of a passion that did not happen.

Chapter Text

"Where am I staying?"  I look around the glamorous hotel lobby, tastefully appointed in cream damask, dove-grey velvet, and what appears to be real mother of pearl.

Ben ambles up to the front desk in order to check in.  

"I dunno," he says.  "Where are you staying?"

It takes a few moments of back and forth for me to realize that he is not joking and that he honestly does not know where I'm staying.  He is claiming that a few days ago, he had he told me to book myself a room at "a nice hotel"; he claims I forgot because rather than listening to him, I was pinning pictures of him in various hats, although I don't know how he would know that unless he was snooping over my shoulder, sans cologne, making him olfactorily invisible so that I didn't know he was there.  And is that really fair play?

While the concierge taps madly at her computer to access Ben's information and prepare his electronic room key, my lip starts to tremble.  "I’m not st-st-st-staying here?" 

"No!" He doesn't even look at me.  "You’re not staying at a five-star hotel on my dime.  I have to save money for my retirement.  I'm not Jay-Z!"

I spend a good 30 minutes calling frantically all over Los Angeles - everything is booked.  I find Ben in the hotel bar relaxing over a cup of hot black tea.

He looks up at me expectantly.  "I'll be sleeping on the streets...of Los Angeles!” I sob.

"Well, my PA was supposed to book herself a room!"

I must have registered a look of horror, because he grabs my face as if to keep it from cracking into its constituent parts.

"Oh, all right!  Stop worrying, we’ll figure out something.  Just...come with me."  He puts his arm around my waist.  "See, this is why you stay in London, and I go around the world.  Without an entourage..."

When we get to his room, it’s not even a suite.  There’s just one large, albeit gorgeous room.

"Um, yeah," Ben mutters, poking the only bed with one long finger.  "This is entirely inappropriate.  Maybe you can stay with the Firth’s. They always book a ton of rooms."

"The who what now?"

“Colin,” he mutters.  Then he looks around, feigning interest in an orchid, a pile of maps on the desk, the mechanism of the blinds.  

Quietly, he adds, "Firth.”

***

When I come to, Ben is kneeling by my prone body, blotting an ice cold wet washcloth onto my face and neck.

"Are you okay?  You fainted!"

"No, no, I'm fine!"  And as tempting as it would be to milk the moment for all the care and worry he was lavishing on me, I remembered that it was my job to worry over him.  "I need to get you ready for Comic-Con.  We have to meet with your publicist, and the agents, and you haven't had coffee, or fruit."  I lumber to my feet.

"Right, but before that I have lunch with Colin."

When I came to the second time, Ben is holding my lolling head in his lap while slapping my cheeks.  My eyeball is pressed against a highly inappropriate part of his anatomy (his junk!).

"Love, are you alright?"  He gives my cheek another soft tap.  "I'm sure this is not about Colin Firth, right?  The flight, jet lag, the seventeen bags of peanuts you ate, the sushi?"

"No, no...it is about Colin Firth!" I reassure him.  Ben is not "reassured."

"Okay, look, right, so you’re un-fainted now.  We need to talk about that.  There is an off-chance you may see Colin Firth - hold steady, now! - in addition to a whole lot of so-called stars, and Colin in particular doesn’t do fan-girl.”

“Okay,” I squeak, trying to stifle the bubbles and fireworks and forty-five monkeys jumping around my stomach.  It’s only Mr. Darcy, after all.  It’s not like I would lay down my life to hear him say, “I must tell you how ardently I admire you….”

When I come to for the third time, Ben is sitting down across the room checking his email.  He looks over, notices I am conscious and says, "I am clean. I smell good.  I suggest you do the same."

After I take a fast, scalding shower, we gather our things - wallets, hotel room keys, phones - and make to go downstairs to the lobby.  In the elevator he grins his widest, fakest smile.

I know the drill.  In a monotone, I inform him, "Yes, Ben, your teeth look beautiful."

He silently presents his neck and I stand on tip-toe to get closer.  "You smell like an orgasm factory."

And then sticks his hands out as if to say 'ta-da!'

I give him a thumbs up.  

"But how do I look?"  Not satisfied.

"Fine."

"But how do I look?"  More insistent.

I start shooting invisible bullets at him.  "Bam!  I'm pregnant - that's how you look."  He nods, and is satisfied.

"I’m meeting That Individual Whose Name I Can't Mention Lest You Faint for lunch.  Go take a tour of something.  But if I need you to come back and hang with us, absolutely no smelling...Colin Firth.”

I gulp.  I hadn’t even thought of that.  But it is such. A good. Idea.

“No.  No.  It is not a good idea,” he psychically answers me.  I’m not even sure he said that out loud. [I did not.]

Chapter Text

"So...it's been a little bit crazy, actually, a whole lot of crazy."  I'm talking on the phone to my mother while going up on the hotel elevator.  

"Some things happened at Comic-con that bring a tear to my eye.  Well, Mom, the cameraderie, the Girl Power, the inclusiveness.  Oh...'Girl Power'...uh...it's a thing, I'll explain another time.  On the flipside, there are things I wish were things I could unsee...forever!"

My mother wants to know what a Comic-Con is, so I explain as best I can.

"So remember me and my friends in middle school?  Yeah, now imagine all of us have a lot more money, and....it's a swap meet.  And...a sleep-over.  It's Halloween for smart people.  It's..."  

I gave up.

"No, I didn't see much of him the past few days."  I don't mention to my mother I am staying in the same room as my employer.  "This is a real job, Mommy!  He pays me quite well.  Well enough to live in London!  In my own apartment! No, I'm not shacking up with him! He's my boss!"  

I silently mouth an apology to the elderly couple from Des Moines who are trapped on the elevator with me.

After enduring the usual chastisements about childlessness and 401Ks, I ask her to put my dog on the line.  I remind him that he is the best dog in the whole world and wipe away a tear brought on by his whimpering.  Time to wrap this up.  I'm almost at my floor.

"No, Beh..."  I cast a glance to the Iowans and lower my voice, "...the Boss is still at Comic Con and is driving back tonight.  He rented a sportscar and wanted to enjoy that feeling of driving through the hot desert air...well, I don't know why - English people, you know..."

As I exit the elevator and amble down the hallway, I try to imagine Ben driving through the desert.  For some reason I see him with a scarf wrapped around his neck, like Grace Kelly, even though it is 500 degrees, and he most certainly does not have on a scarf!

"The English, they think driving is glamorous 'cause they've never had to drive from Florida to Maine in one weekend with four screaming children, a dog, and a soon to-be-divorced couple.  Yeah, I'll get over it one day.  Bye now, Mommy."

Swiping the electronic hotel room key, I'm actually grateful that he probably won't be staying here tonight.  And I really don't want to know where he is staying.  I can just enjoy this luxurious, opulent, decadent room all by my-..."

I walk into the room, flip the light and promptly begin to lose consciousness as my brain cannot compute what my eyes are reporting.

As the blackness closes in from all sides, I hear someone who sounds awfully like Tom Hardy say, "Oh. That did not go as planned."

When I come to, the dude from Pushing Daisies is standing over me, fanning me with a Comic-Con program.  Someone who looks too much like Tom Hiddleston is madly chattering into his phone. "Yes ma'am, we have a medical emergency.  I don't know...some woman.  No, I don't know who she is.  I can assure you we are not violating her!  I don't know, ma'am...did she bump her head?"

Tom Hardy's look-a-like kneels down right next to me, pries my fluttering eyelids open with his thumbs and yells into my face, "DID! YOU!  BUMP! YOUR! HEAD?"

A Michael Fassbender impersonator is sitting in a chair across the room with a bottle of champagne in either hand.  Mistaking my complete and utter astonishment for annoyance, he explains, "Belated birthday....party..." he mumbles before shutting up.

"What is this," I gurgle, "The League of British Actors?"  Lee Pace looks down and coughs.  "And Lee Pace.  Sorry."  He waves his hand to forgive me.

The Michael Fassbender impersonator walks right up to me, leans over and after close inspection (his steel-blue eyes meandering over my laugh lines, stomach rolls, giant boobs, knock-knees, and crown of untamed hair) announces,  "I don't think this is his girlfriend."

"Well, that is only vaguely insulting!" I huff.

The tall skinny guy pretending to be Tom Hiddleston politely lets the 911 operator know they can cancel the ambulance.  "Why, yes, ma'am, I am British.  No, I'm not married," he chuckles.  "Don't you have other calls to take?  Why, yes, I would mind if you called me back at this number....No, no...that would not be appropriate.  Bye, ma'am.  Well, I can't hang up on you because that would be rude!"

"Fassbender" sets the champagne bottles down on the nearest table, circles me one more time, and starts jabbing his finger in my direction.  "This is his Pee-Aye!"

I follow him with my eyes and pronounce, "You are a lot shorter in real life, 'Michael Fassbender,'" I sneer, making extra-sarcastic quotations marks with my hooked fingers.

"It is her," he chortles.  "The one who hates my guts!"

I frown and push my way upright so I am sitting on the floor, leaning back on my forearms for support.  "Who said I hate your guts?"  

 All four of them answer at the same time:  "Ben!"

Chapter Text

The guy with a striking resemblance to Thranduil, King of the Elves rolled his eyes.  "It's been real, but I'm outtie."  He grabbed a cardboard pastry shop box and headed for the door.

"Leave the cupcakes!" barked the Tom Hardy double.

Lee paused.  "You coming with?"

"Naah." The dead ringer for the man who so unerringly portrayed the notorious, brutish British criminal Charles Bronson gingerly rescued the white box of cupcakes from Lee's grasp.  "We're staying 'til Cumbie gets back."  

"Fassie" and "Hiddles" nodded in agreement.

As my eyesight resolved itself from my fainting fit, I realized these were not body doubles, nor were they stuntmen, nor celebrity impersonators.  But for some reason, perhaps due to exhaustion or jetlag, I didn't care.  Didn't care that I was surrounded by Actual...

British.

Superstars.  

I stood up, dusted myself off, and walked over to the fridge.  "Well," I asked, kicking into World's Greatest Personal Assistant-mode, "Are you guys hungry?"

Hiddles rubbed his tummy.  "We're actors - we're always hungry."  I finally noticed him, noted that he was indeed really skinny, skinnier in real life, if that was possible.  How could he have ever been considered for the role of Thor, I'll never know.  He was a beanpole.

Michael waved his hand.  "Naah....I'm on a program for a role.  If I don't eat exactly what my trainer tells me to I might get fined!"  Then he jumped up and marched right over next to me by the fridge.  "Unless you have any protein," he added under his breath.

"Well...I have some eggs."

The Academy Award nominated actor looked skeptical.  I pulled out a bowl of hard-boiled eggs.  "I peeled them already?  Organic?"  Michael hesitantly took one.  "Thanks," he muttered, biting into it gratefully.

Hiddles bolted across the room.  "What the hell is in here?"  He pushed me out of the way and poked his head into the fridge.

I stared at him disapprovingly.  

"Well, I'm not on a program," he protested.  "I have to gain weight!"  He looked at the others.  "My next role is a fat dude And you know that's going to be hard for me, because, well, look..." he added, swiping his hands down around his long, lean, rangy body.

"Well," I said, rummaging through the fridge.  "I've got organic fruit, chocolate ice cream bars - organic, of course - with real chocolate, not that propylene glycol crap they put in everything.  You have to be careful about that..."

Tom Hardy grumpily mumbled.  "Wait, I'm hungry, too!  And all we have is cupcakes!"

"Don't look at us - cupcakes was your idea!" muttered Michael.

I thought about this - how was I going to feed all of these men.  And even though they were all very fit, they were big guys.  Calories, calories, need more calories....Racking my brains, racking my brains.  "Well, I have a frittata."

Fassbender spat out bits of plain, unsalted egg white.  "A who what now?"

 ***

They all sat on the floor, with plates in their laps like good little boys.  I cut a slice of warmed frittata for each of them, but Michael looked up at me with concern.  

"Don't worry, I picked all the potatoes and carb-y things out."

Fassbender took his plate over to the bed, kicked his shoes off and made himself very comfortable.  

"Look...what is all this?"  

He held his plate with one hand and with the other inspected the little bottles, boxes, and toiletries on the hotel night table.  

"Lavender candles...and is this massage oil? "  Fassie chuckled.  "He must have been getting ready to bring a chick back here."

"No...that's my stuff."  I said through a mouthful of egg, potato, green peppers and sun-dried tomato.

Michael's eyebrow went up.  "Whad'ya mean?"

Tom's fork paused at his open mouth.

"Well," I explained.  "Ben gets neckaches, so I just rub a little sesame oil onto his neck, but first I scent it with lemon verbena and sandalwood..."

The Real Tom Hiddleston closed his mouth and put his fork down on his plate.

"And then, these lavender candles...I just like to pack these in his luggage to make his hotel room smell like home..."  

I got up off the floor and opened the fridge again.  "And he needs to eat more fruit - don't we all - but he is pretty picky, so I got up early the other day and found a farmer's market that has organic mangoes, which are impossible to find..."

Tom Hiddles was staring at me like he was going to kill someone.  Me.  Ben. Who can say.

"It's not such a big deal to find a farmer's market, you just go on Yelp."

Hiddles continued to stare at me uncomprehendingly.

"The internet?"  It's this thing, that people use!  Anyway," I continued as I drizzled some olive oil and lemon juice over the the salad greens I had just added to the boys' plates, "it can be a little tricky to manage all this in a hotel room; still this one is better than most and the kitchen staff let me use some space down there to cut up these berries...even let me use their knives...and borrow some porcelain bowls....cuz plastic, ew!"

Tom Hardy opened a can of organic coffee that I had left on the small mini-bar, sniffed it and rolled his eyes.  "This is the best smell I have ever smelled in my life."

"So, Love," Hiddles began, "...like, I was just sort of wondering - and this is very good fritatta, by the way, scrumptious, actually - um...how much does he pay you?"

"Pay?" I ask.

Their mouths fell open.

"Just kidding!" I yelled.  "Gotcha!"  

The three boys cracked faint smiles and resumed eating.  

"But seriously, that's a little private, don't you think?" I scolded.

"Yeah, I know it's rude to ask how much someone makes," Hiddles ventured, "but I was just wondering...just making sure I pay my PA enough...."

Michael jumped up.  "Ah, no, Tom, I got here first!"

Tom dropped his plate and fork on the rug. "Whad'ya mean got here first?" [Yeah!  What DO you mean got here first?  There will be no getting with my PA!!]

"I walked into the room first, if you don't remember."

"So what?"

"I know what you're up to."  Michael turned to me.  "How much does he pay you?  I'll double it."

"He who?"  I laughed.  "Oh...you mean Ben?  20 million!"  I retorted, spooing some berries and mango into my mouth.

Michael slammed his plate down on the night table, paced over to me, parked himself right in front of me and crossed his arms.  

"I'm not kidding."

Chapter Text

Where are you and why aren't you in my house? - BC

I'm on a subway that for some reason has stopped. - Me

Tube. - Your Boss

Subway. - Me

Whatever.  Please come soon.  - BC

I don't control the subway. - me

Understood.  Please come soon.  Need U - Ben

I got a little dizzy reading that.  I imagine him silent mouthing the words "Need you" with those unreasonably luscious lips, wind disarraying his ginger - (no, black!, no, blonde!, no, ginger!) - curls every which way, the sound of angels opening the gates of heaven, a flock of birds evacuating their roost, him pushing me down on his bed with one hand and holding a book of sonnets in the other while Niagara Falls flows down around us, somehow leaving us untouched by the torrent....

Did you just get dizzy reading that? - Ben

No - I got dizzy because the pungent aroma of Eurotrash teenagers who refuse to bathe is filling this SUBWAY car and how did you know I got dizzy? - me

Cuz. - BC

 ***

I finally wound up back at his place.  While rummaging through my purse for his keys, he opens the door, but blocks my path.

Looking me up and down, "How many black t-shirts do you own?"

"Enough to wear one every day and still smell good."  I push past him him with a cup of coffee in each hand.

"You look like a PA for the Viet Cong."

"I know you didn't come up with that, so who did?"

"Gatiss," he admits, sheepishly.

"Nice."  I set the coffee down on Ben's new work desk, taking care to shield the marble top with a magazine.  "Tell him to cast me, and I won’t exact revenge upon him."  

"I’m never gonna do that."  Staring at me with eyes so blue.

"Horrible, horrible revenge."  I want to ask him does he control the color of his eyes, like a chameleon.

"The point being," he says, circling me with his chin in his hand, "maybe wear some color."

"Because I’m your concubine?"

"Oh, Sweet Fancy Moses, we're back to this?  Negotiating the terms of our relationship.  I don't have time."  

He hands me a stack of fan mail.

"Isn't this what your publicist is for?" I complain, leafing through the pile with return addresses like Taiwan, Korea, Nebraska and Barcelona. 

"She doesn't have time for this anymore.  And, I need..."

"The dry cleaning..."

***

"Whatcha doin'?  Pee Aye!  Pee Aye? Where's my Pee...Aye?"  His voice booming like thunder from the other room.

"Cleaning out the vacuum cleaner."   I'm picking the hair and dust and lint out of the filter.  Sort of scared to find very, very long hairs, not off of my own head...I shove that thought away.

He's behind me.  Eucalyptus and, oh, I don't know, he just always smells so good.  

"I have a maid."

"And she does a crap-ass job, so I’m cleaning out the vacuum cleaner." 

"No, no, you're not."

He grabs the vacuum cleaner from my hands.  Taking me by the shoulders, he marches me to the kitchen.  "You, My Lovely, are answering fan mail, getting me tickets to see Martin in Richard III, making reservations for me and my mum and my dad for dinner on Thursday..."

"Your maid sucks."

"Well, everyone says they're the best with confidentiality and all that.  I don't want to see my toenail clippings on Ebay."

"Wow, I really should start a business - I will actually clean your house and not disclose your deep, dark secrets that must never see the light of day.  What are you so afraid of, that The World might discover the fact that you use cinnamon gum and brush your teeth forty times a day."

He sniffs.  "I’m an actor," defensively adding, "I have to have 'Hollywood' teeth."

"You will wear your gums away," I shout after him as he shuffles back to the living room. "Entirely away."

 I keep working on the pile of fan mail, but soon the scent of chickens cooking in white wine and prunes sneaks up on me.

"So....yeah, uh...did you have fun in L.A.?"

"Yeah..." I keep typing, ignoring his looming presence just off my left shoulder.  I was wondering when he was going to ask about that.

"And, uh, yeah, so, did you enjoy the room?"

"Yeah..."  I was worried.  Was there something weird on the hotel bill?  I never get to see the bills - those go straight to the accountant.  Did Michael order up some porn?  Did the Toms follow through on their threat to order a call-girl if I didn't put out?

Ben, sits down, begins polishing his glasses, his black, thick-rimmed nerdlinger glasses.  Not understanding why he was so adorable.  "And you understand why, I, sort of had to...go..."

"Yeah, Ben, I don't care.  Whatever."  Keep typing.  I don't even know what I'm typing at this point.  Random-ass shit.

"So...you had fun in the room, right? I mean that was nice, right.  To have a fancy hotel room for the evening?"

"Yeah, Ben.  Thanks - it was nice!"

"Okay."  He jumped up, wheeled around and walked back to the living room.

I breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed my shoulders.  I had not yet told him everything about that night....

[I already KNOW everything about that night!!  You deceitful little...]

Chapter Text

"So what did you do in the hotel room?"

"What hotel room?" I ask, pretending not to know what he was talking about.

"In Ell...Aye..."

I turn to him and meet that steely grey gaze.  His lips purse together.  His jaw is set like so much granite.  "I think I've answered this on numerous occasions - 'nothing.'"  

"I'm sure you didn't do nothing."  He was getting suspicious.  "That I'm sure of.  You at least did some girly stuff like get a manicure."

"Well...a bunch of your friends came over."

"Oh, did they?  Who...exactly?"

"Oh, no one special.  Tom Hardy.  And Tom Hiddleston."

He chuckles, pours himself some hot tea, pulls up a chair, turns it around backwards, and straddles it.

"Oh!  Tom Hiddleston.  The very handsome Tom Hiddleston."  Sipping his tea.

"Yes...and some dude named Lee Pace.  And..."

"And…?"

"Michael."

"Michael.  Caine?  Jordan?  Gambon?" he offers, trying to anticipate me.

"Fassbender," I say nonchalantly.

Ben spits out his tea.  “Fassbender?  You are funny!”

"Yes...Michael Fassbender...and we ate fritatta and danced to Britney Spears and Madonna and Mariah Carey, while they rubbed their boners up on me."

"They rubbed their who what now?"

"They rubbed their hard-ons on my leg...well, Michael and Hardy...Hiddleston is so flippin' tall he was rubbing his against my armpit."

"Thank you.  Ew.  I really did not need that image.  Not in this or any lifetime."

I raise and drop my eyebrows, hoping that was all for today.

"No.  Keep talking.  This is very funny."

I sigh.  Sometimes you can hide in plain sight, so I tell him the truth.  "And...we watched Youtube videos."

"Yeah?  You hung out with Tom Hardy, Hiddles, and Fassie and cuddled up in bed and watched the telly?  Hmm.  This is not even a little bit unplausible."

"And then I kicked them all out."

"Oh!" he says incredulously, sipping his tea.

"Except Fassbender."

"Right..." mumbling into his cup.

I look at him and realize that it would not occur to him in a million years that his fancy actor friends would find me sexy.  But to disabuse him of that belief could mean trouble on the job.  To tell him everything would spell disaster.

I decide to leave him with the certain knowledge that I had had a very chaste night that evening.  "Yeah...I have an active imagination," I yawn, leaving the room.

"Very active...imagination," he yells after me.

***

"Hey, Nana, wazz my name, wazz mah name, wazz mah name?"

Tom wound his snake hips towards me, sidling over, gradually traversing the room, and then began grinding on my torso. 

I shoved him away, all 6 foot 3 inches of him.  "For the last time get the fuck off of me.  Or at least buy me dinner!"

Turning to Hardy, I yelled, "Turn that shit down!"  He meekly complied, lowering the Bose stereo's volume to a decent level.

Michael edged ever closer to me, looking over me, his eyes lingering on my distinctly over-sized, unmodel-like boobs.  "I'd bet you'd make a really delightful....Pee Aye."

"Don't you have a date, with a supermodel, or a co-star, or something of that...nature?"  I proffer.  Trying to let him know how under-impressed I am.

"Oh.  So you're not impressed with me?" 

"Not a bit.  Less than a bit."

"Why?  'Cause Ben told you to hate me?"  Michael tried to drill holes into me with his blue-beyond-blue eyes.

"Ben has defended you at every possible opportunity," I said.  "For some reason."

"Oh, I know the reason."

"And so do I.  Because he's just that kind of person."

"And what kind is that?"

"Lovely."

I changed the subject because the verbal sparring had grown rather confusing.  "When are you people leaving?  Your company has grown tiresome." [Yes, my darling, my own - tell those buggers to bugger off!]

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Tom Hardy snooping in Ben's hotel closet.

"Where...are...his...clothes?" he muttered, sliding hangers from one side of the dowel to another.

"That's it.  What you see there.  And stop that!"

"Whatdya mean?"

"He owns three t-shirts."

They are all silent for one moment, and then communally, on cue, bust out into guffaws.

"No, I'm not kidding.  At any one time he has three t-shirts.  Okay, so I might be exaggerating a bit.  But I swear he only brought one pair of shoes on this trip.  I think he was glad to not have wear tuxes and suits."

"Is this one of the three?"  Tom Hiddles held up a fraying blue Grateful Dead tee.

"Hey, that's not very nice!"  I lunge at Hiddles.

"Oh, look," Tom, crossed his arms, grabbed his own shirt and in one quick motion pulled it off.

"Oh, no," sighed Michael in mock horror.  "Don't undress...again..."

"Oh, yes," he grabbed the tee shirt and tried it on.  Then he began walking an imaginary catwalk.  "Look, I'm Bendy Dick Come on My Baps!  I have a big horsehead.  I think I'm going to be the next James Bond."

"That's not nice," I scolded.

I heard muffled choking sounds, turned to find Tom Hardy and Fassbender on the floor, snot rolling out of their noses.  

"I can't breathe!" screamed Michael.

Michael jumped up, unbuttoned his shirt and tried on another of Ben's shirt.  "Look at me!  I'm popular.  Everyone loves me."  

Michael minced across the room.  "Teenaged Japanese boys write gay fan fiction about me.  I'm Sherlock Holmes!!  I'm Khan!"

I stared at the spectacle of grown men rummaging through another man's luggage.  "Jealous much?"

"Ouch," said Hiddles.  "That hurt!"

"Hey, let's reenact the thing where he crushes Khan's head." [See, that just proves you're an idiot, Fassbender.  Khan doesn't get his head crushed!]

"Let's not," I counter.

"Okay, I'll be Khan," Hiddles trumpeted.  You," turning to Fassbender, "you be Peter Weller."

"Uh, no, I will be Khan, and you can get your head crushed.  Pee Aye!"

"I have a name..."

"Pee Aye - be Alice and scream like your intestines are being ripped out through your nostrils."

"You guys are being assholes."  They refused to stop.  Tom Hardy lunged at them both and wrestled them to the ground.  At one point their twelve arms and legs were indistinguishable from one another.  Finally, Hardy stood up triumphant, Fassbender's head between his hands, and shouted, "Khan!"

We heard a knock at the door.

"Do I need to get out my UK translator?"

I pulled out my phone and began mock-typing as if it were a 25th century universal translator from a sci-fi series.

"Halt.  You bloody, buggery, bastard..."

They immediately froze.  "Whoa,  she's pissed off!"

Chapter Text

"Yoga pants.  Where are my yoga pants?  I'm doing this thing.  I need yoga pants."  

For some reason hearing a voice that was midway between Alan Rickman and Richard Burton muttering about yoga pants was not at all surprising to hear in my ear at 6 o'clock in the morning.

"Dresser.  Middle drawer, left side, rolled into a sausage."  I yawn, shift the cellphone to my other ear, and rummage through a box of granola bars.

"So, I’m doing a thing today."

"'Kay."  I keep stirring sugar into my tea.

"So don’t come over for a while."

"'Kay."

"And you want to know what that is."

"Not really."

"Yes.  You do."

"No."  

"I’m doing the ice bucket challenge and my production partners and I came up with a really good idea but I need you not to be there for a while cuz I don’t want it showing up on Pinterest and other reasons so just don't come until later, and maybe not at all today except I need you later to run lines and get some coffee and make, oh, about five million phone calls for me."

"So why are you calling me?  I forgot already."

"Yoga pants." 

***

"Ooh, I have an idea...let's make the Pee-Aye try on Ben's clothes, and then we'll Instagram it, tag him, and..."

"No, we'll Facebook it, then pin it..."

"No.  Instagram, Tumbler and then..."

"How about 'none of the above.'"  I still had not managed to dislodge The Boys from Ben's hotel room, and they were getting drunker and stupider by the minute.  Fassbender was boring holes through my tits with his ice-blue eyes; Hardy had completely denuded the mini-bar of its contents; and Hiddleston had affixed Ben's yoga pants to his head like a brunette wig.

Michael sidled dangerously near my laptop.  "Let’s look at her browsing history."

"NO!"  I screamed in vain.  Michael grabbed my arms while the bewigged Tom launched himself at my computer.

"Okay, Craisglist London...free couches.”  Hiddles turned to me and brushed his long black locks (yoga pants legs) out of his face.  "You don't have a couch?"

"No, not yet..." I murmur.

"Well, dang!" exclaimed Michael.  "Where will I sleep when I spend the night?"

I pretend to gag, although the thought of Michael Fassbender, naked between my sheets doing unspeakable to my equally naked body suddenly flashed through my brain.  It was not an unwelcome thought.

"Oh, we have a couch you can have," Hardy offered between drags on his unlit cigarette.  "Charlotte hates it."

"Oh, my God that would be lovely," I say sincerely.

"What does he pay you?"  Michael bellowed.

"Plenty...I’m just...frugal."  

Tom and Michael rolled their eyes.  [I do pay her plenty!  She makes more than my stylist!!!  That’s a secret – forget you read that]

I looked back over my shoulder at my captor.  "And you can stop bellowing.  I'm right here...in front of you, being held prisoner...by you!"

"Ah, look - Pinterest!"

"No!"  I tried to lunge across the hotel room, but, Michael physically restrains me.

"What's a pinterest?" asked Hardy, lighting up a cigarette and then blowing it out.

Hiddles began tapping furiously into my laptop.  "I'm about to find out.  Okay, so...wow."

Tom ran his hands through his pretend hair.  "Lots of wedding bouquets - how many weddings are you planning to have?  And we've got bulldog puppies - of course, you’re a girl," he casts a disapproving eye at me.  

Hardy looked over Hiddles' shoulder and guffaws.  "And a disturbingly large number of pictures of Ben.  Ben in hats, Ben in tuxedos, Ben making goofy faces, Ben at the Golden Globes, Ben at the Met Gala, Ben at the Hay Festival..."

Michael had me by the arms and struggled to breathe he was laughing so hard.  Tom continues, "What is a Babybatch?  Oh!  Baby pictures of Ben!"  Tom looks at me with increasing dismay.  "Ben looking grumpy, Ben staring at things..."

"You can stop restraining me, Michael.  I'm done struggling!"

"Nah.  I’ll keep restraining you," he muttered into my neck.

"Well, at least stop smelling my hair!"

"Ben with black hair, Ben with red hair...."

We all move in closer to the laptop, huddled around its electronic glow.  

"Ben with blonde hair...oh…"

There is silence in the room.

"Not his best look," we all say in unison.  And then the party started in earnest.  [Party?  What party?]

Chapter Text

"Um...so, like, are you ever going to post here again?

Silence.  I was hoping in my silence he would forget what he had just asked and had been asking for days.  Perhaps his phone would ring; or he would get an idea for a scene and run to his bedroom to read lines into a digital recorder; or he would remember a play he always wanted to do and dash off an e-mail to a director.  

"I mean, if you're going to blog about me, at least keep it up to date."

Silence.

"Like...you've missed a whole lot."  He takes a swig of water, and adds "Emmy."  Trying to be nonchalant.  Failing.

"Yes, sweetheart.  Everyone knows you won an Emmy."

He pushes me out of the way and begins fake-typing loudly and dramatically, reading as he attacks the keys with long, eloquent fingers - even his hands are trained actors.

And then my super hot, sex-god of a boss won an Emmy.  God, I want him to bone me so bad!  With his cock.

I roll my eyes at his juvenalia.  "That's why you should leave the writing to Gatiss...and Loo.  We've talked about this, honey!"

"And James' wedding."

"Don't keep up to date on your social calendar...."

"Yes, you do."

"Cuz, it's booooriing..."

 "....and I've got a girlfriend..." he added in a sing-song voice.

I sniffed, yawned, and kept typing my product descriptions.

"Hitting it on the reg...ular," he sings, his bare feet padding across the floor in what he imagines to be a sexy dance.

"Cool.  For you.  Both."

"Tapping that ass."

"Wow.  So much more than I wanted to know."

"So add that."

"Add what?"

"Blog about how I'm getting some.  Gettin' lucky."

"I'm not blogging about you. Non-disclosure and all that.  Lawyers. Messy.  Not interested."

"Blogging or fan-fictioning or whatever you want to call it."

"It's not blogging!  Archive of Our Own is fan fiction, yeah, like you just said."

"Like it matters."

We were talking over each other at this point.  [You always talk over my son.  Anyone wandering in on your conversations  might think he's your assistant!]

"I know you're still in love with me," he challenges.

"And how would you know that. Not that that is true. Which it is not."

His right eyebrow arches sky high.

"Which it never was," I hastily add, a bit too late.

He pulls out his camera phone, opens a video file, and holds it out for me to inspect.  

"I caught you grinding to Jill Scott while scrolling though pictures of me incarnated as a cupcake."

I sniff at this evidence.

"I look at lots of things in the course of a day.  How do you manage to catch me in the five seconds I happen to glance at a picture of you...as a cupcake?"

"You are obsessed with me.  Just sayin'."

"You must spend your whole day sneaking up on me, as I am quite occupied with other things and have plenty to do besides looking at pouty pictures of you in clothes that cost as much as the GNP of most African countries, scowling, running your hands through that grease slick you call hair..."

"Occupied with other things?  What things?  Oh, your side hustles?"

"Side hustles?!?  That was rather derisive."

'"Cause I don't pay you enough?  'Cause He said I don't pay you enough...." Ben trails off, scowling.

"The calligraphy?  That's not a side hustle.  But I'll excuse you, because ordinarily you are so sweet, and so kind, and so courteous."

"Lies," he mutters through a sideways smile.

"You are sweet, and kind, and courteous.  The anonymous donations, and what you did for James, and making calls on behalf of kids just getting started in the biz..."

"Silence!" he intones moving his arms around my head.

"And all the thoughtful little gestures you do for people who don't even notice or care and mmphh..." but at this point he is behind me and has covered my mouth with both hands.

"I'm choking.  You have hands like dinner plates."  It comes out like "Um mrrking, oo ahv hnzzz ike inner atz..."  But I can't pretend I don't like the feeling of his hands on my face.

He releases my head.  

"As I was saying before you smothered me with those big mitts of yours, my calligraphy is a viable business!  Your mom is ordering some, and James, and Mark."

"Oh.  Three customers!  Where will we store all the money?  'Note to PA.  Call Fort Knox.'"

"You are not ordinarily mean, so I will forgive you.  Very out of character for you."

"And the, what was it...what was your other side...your other gigs?  Oh, the gluten-free soap...for dogs?"

"I am making you some more coffee, because you are acting like an asshole at this time, so you must be caffeine-deprived." 

"Look, I know you've been awfully busy with your boyfriend."

"You don't have to say boyfriend sarcastically and stop making those overly dramatic quotation marks around your ears, " I say, swatting his hands out of the air, "'cause he is my boyfriend and fuck you."

"Second time today.  Quite a mouth on you, sailor.  And about that.  I'm not so sure that's a good idea.  My PA dating Him."

"No one cares who your PA is dating, Mr. Pitt."

He rolls his eyes.

"No one cares who your PA is dating, Mr. Downey, Jr.  Mr. Sheen.  Mr. Bogart.  Mr. Cruise."

"Right, right, I'm a big nobody...." he waves his hands around.  "Well, if you're not going to resume fan-fictioning about me, I'll just get ..."

He lunges at my laptop, types a password, and triumphantly points.

"Missy.  Missy from...Omaha....blogs about me."

"Cool."

"It is cool.  It's very, very cool!"  He followed me to the refrigerator where I found some butter and jam for my baguette, and then followed me back to the kitchen table.

"Look, she says..."

"Who?"

"Missy.  Keep up. She writes, "Oh Benedict, I want you to come all over my tits, as we..." he trails off.

"As we?"

"Nothing."

"No, not nothing, now I'm intrigued.  I want to see it!"

He grabs my computer and dances away from the kitchen table.

"Give me back my fucking computer, Benedict."

"No."  Emphatic.

I stand up, spread my legs wide in a fighting stance, and plant my hands on my hips.  "Benedict. Timothy. Carlton. Put the computer down."

He twirls around the kitchen as I grab at his torso, his legs, arms, everything whirling and spinning out of grasp.  I think he may have actually learned something in stage combat class.

I drop to the ground and sit around his left leg like a toddler pleading to go to Disneyland.

"Don't make me hurt you," I warn, clawing at his rather muscular, handsome calf.

"You wouldn't dare."  

My other arm begins snaking up to his crotch.

"I'm not playing, Cumberbatch."  As my hand inches closer to his treasure trove, his face morphs from disbelief, to surprised pleasure, to a momentary jolt of lust, and then as my hand makes a grab at his family jewels, cold blank terror.

He sets the computer down on the table.  "Fine. Read it," he squeaks.

I scan the first few lines.  "Oh, it rivals Shakespeare." I sit down in front of the laptop, clear my throat, borrow Ben's glasses and read aloud:

Missy and Ben were chained together in the cargo hold of the Cardassian destroyer.  Mr. Spok and James Franco had already sexually attacked them both and Missy was comforting Ben the best way she knew how - by giving him the greatest blow job of his life....

"Enough!" Ben yelled.  "Could you just please write some more?  If people are going to fan-fiction me, I at least want some semblance of reality to infiltrate the atmosphere and dilute the space sex and bondage and...."  

He leans over my shoulder, reads a few more lines of 'Missy's' story, emits a tiny groan, "...and bestiality.  And..." he adds quickly and sheepishly, "my mother wants to know what happened in LA."  [Yes, yes I do!]

"That's all you had to do, was ask nicely."

He jumps over to my side and crouches down next to me.  Perches his elbows on my knee and rests his chin on his hands.

I pat the side of his face, his smooth, porcelain, well-scrubbed, gleamingly clean face.  So boyish, even at 38.

"You like my face."  Smiles that lopsided smile.

"Yeah, I like your face, Cumberbatch.  I'm not sure how long you can rock that pouty, baby-faced, sullen teenager act, but milk it while you can!"

"Type," he commands, pointing to the computer.   

I log in to The Archive.  

"So what's next?"  He rubs his hands together in anticipation.  "My girlfriend?  Redecorating?  Your insane ideas for movies and how I shoot them down?  Richard the Third?  Is it Richard the Third?  It's smoking.  It's how you want me to quit smoking.  It's my girlfriend.  My hair?  It's my hair?  Get to typing!!"

"Hang on!  It's been so long that I forgot my password."

"My boss is a babe.  All one word."

I glare at him.  "Really?  Seriously?"

"My boss is so hot his milkshake brings all the girls to the yard.  All one word."

"Oh, please..." I begin to scold.

"Cumberthotness."

"You must really think a whole lot of yourself.  God, how can we both fit in this same room with that giant ego of yours?  Help!  Help, there's not enough oxygen...."

"Hotbatch,"  he interrupts, in his lowest tone.

I do a spit take.  "That's filthy."

"And that's your password."

Reluctantly, I type the password that he has correctly surmised, hacked, or stolen. 

"Make her pretty.  My girlfriend."

"I'll make her what I want her to be."

"Make her pretty. She's awfully pretty."

"If I want her to be a troglodyte, she'll be a troglodyte.

Ben's new girlfriend was smart enough, and skinny, and well-versed in wines, and poetry, and current events.  Shame about the great big horn growing out of the center of her head.

I type a bit more and then stop.  I look into his eyes seriously.  It is the most honest look I have ever given him.  He still looks impish, so I furrow my brow.  His flexible face flashes seven different expressions ranging from silly, to goofy, to pissed off, to fake angry, to aghast.

I wave my hands at him as if to shock him out of a trance.  "Stop doing that with your face! "

He pulls another mug, so I resort to pissing him off.  "Benjamin?"

His face falls.  "Benedict," he corrects.

"Benvolio?"

"Benedict," he amends.  

"Ben.  Very serious now.  Let me date Him without any further shenanigans from you."

"I don't know of what shenanigans you speak...."

So I remind him of how he erased my boyfriend's phone number off of my cell phone [that was an accident]; called me at two in the morning to get him allergy medicine knowing full well I was sleeping at my boyfriend's flat [how was I to know the impending polar vortext would cause the ragweed count to explode like fireworks across the Heath]; told my boyfriend that I'm a lezzie [you do have those tendencies...just sayin']; and a whole host of other meddlesome intrusions.

After I complete my partial list of his misdeeds, he looks truly crestfallen and repentant.  "No more shenanigans.  I swear it."  He crosses his heart like a good altar boy, then presses his hands together in an ardent prayer.  

I don't believe him.

Chapter Text

Wherein I, a somewhat young man, being possessed of a mild-manner and a modicum of intelligence, attempting to make a living as a theater and film professional, put to my personal assistant very reasonable questions and receive bat-shit crazy answers.

***

"Stop trying to fatten me up!"

"No."

***

"I need cigarettes."

Silence.

"So go get me some."

"When hell freezes over and pigs fly out of my butt, I'll get you some cigarettes."

***

"Stop sending my girlfriend flowers."

"I do what I want, when I want."

***

"You didn't get me my tickets on time and now I have to fly coach."

"So live a little."

"No, seriously, that is not cool."

"Do you honestly think anything I do is by accident?"

***

"Where are you?"

"Getting you some cigarettes - ha!  Just kidding!"

***
"Where are you?"

"Banging your arch-nemesis.  Ha!  Just kidding.  NOT!"

***

"Stop leaving note in my scripts."

"Stop pronouncing 'penguins' 'pengwings.'"

I then was treated to a full afternoon of my supposed mispronunciations of "penguins," (most of which I have never uttered), including peng-lings, penshwings, pushwings, penguish, prenrings, pencilings, rotary fan (!!), doorjamb (?!?), dribble drabble (that's just juvenile), lavender, Thai takeout [oh, how you love to exaggerate], The Electric Light Orchestra, and The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.

***

"Stop leaving notes in my scripts."

"Stop pretending to be James Earl Jones le Blanc."

***

"Stop leaving notes in my scripts."

"Maybe I will, maybe I won't."

***

"What do I smell like?"

Baked beans. [I never said that!]

***

"What do I smell like?"

"Were you talking to me?"

"No, I was talking to the microwave."

"See, I told you you were insane."

***

Chapter Text

[more later today...have been sent out on ridiculous errands.....green-striped socks, a bottle of Pepto Bismal, organic coconut-flavored green tea, and...a carton of condoms.]

Chapter Text

“Dr. Strange?  Oh, Dr. Strange!"

“No.”

“Cumbies….I have something to ask....”

“No," he interrupted.

“Oh, Batch?  Batcheekins? Your Royal Batchness?  Hey there, Batch…”

“No.”

“Why not? It’s cute!”

“Says you!”

“Yup - says me!”

“Because how would you like it if I called you “Head” - which is not even your entire last name - instead of your actual name!!”

I twist my mouth to one side.

“Okay,” I admit, grudgingly.  “By the way boss - congratulations!”

He grinned privately, to himself.  I'm sure he was thinking about her, and babies, and Christmas presents, and grandbabies.....life had finally slowed down enough for him to jump on board.

“Oh, Ben - you are really happy.”  A feeling of maternal joy and bliss came over me.  My baby was finally settling down.  I felt a bit...choked up.

His grin cracked into a glorious smile.  Disappearing eyes,  crooked lips, tongue peeking out, crinkles at the corners of his eyes...his skin gone all taut with glee….

A tear came unbidden to my eye.  “I’m so truly happy for you, boss!”

Chapter Text

"You are killing me."  His deepest baritone.

"Huh?"  I look at him like I always do - like he's bat-shit crazy.  [no, you look at me like you are passionately in love with me, and it's MOST inconvenient.]

He turns to me slightly, inspecting me, his eyes somewhere below my face.

"For instance, right now, at this very moment..." he intones, "that tendril of hair lying against your clavicle like a vein of purest gold..."

"Gold? That seems...dumb. Who talks like that?"

"Or onyx - whatever, can we just get back to the hair and how...how it's killing me?"

He takes one big stride forward, closer to me.

"It is killing me that..."

"Killing?  I mean, seriously?"

"Killing, destroying - whatever!!  It is...ending every hope of happiness I have right now in the world."

He continues to close the distance between us, panther-like, and when he reaches me, he inclines his head and upper body down a bit, lips just barely parted, as if he is about to kiss me.

I don't know where to look.  Should I be looking at his eyes? Into his eyes?  I can't do that! Should I look at his lips.  If I stare at those honey lips I might faint from desire.  My hoo-haa was getting all moist, and I started clenching and unclenching my, uh...my sugar walls...I wanted him inside of me so badly.  Just the feel of his cock sliding in and out of my...uh...love shack...

He breathes heavily in my face, and I can smell his chewing gum. For some reason he will only have cinnamon flavor.  Go figure.

"Except if I were able to touch that tendril, to twirl it between my finger, as I do now..."

He takes a tendril of my frizzy, blow-fried hair between his long fingers. "....To press this rich liquid onyx against my lips, thusly...inhale the delicate fragrance..."

One of our phones rang.

"Dammit!" He yelled and threw the script down on the floor.

"I'm sorry!" I had forgotten to silence my phone.

"That's okay, I'm fucking it up anyway...."

He marched out of the kitchen, and I heard the bathroom door slam.

"I'm sorry, it's just that I'm not an actress, like, I have no idea what you are doing...."

"Don't freak out..." I hear through the bathroom door muffled- "I need to take a piss anyway..."

I hear the water running as he washes his hands. He comes out and we swap places.

15 minutes later, I emerge.

"Did you fall asleep?" he inquires, arching one eyebrow.

"Excuse you?"

He looks at me skeptically.  "Were you making crystal meth in there?  I mean, I know you're a girl, but..."

"I..."  I was not going to explain to him that I was currently experiencing a menstrual cycle worthy of Dante's ninth circle. Didn't he not notice me take my purse in there?!?!  [I did.  I thought you would put on SOME MAKEUP!]

"Whatever."  He takes an imaginary tendril of my hair between his long fingers. "....To press it against my lips, thusly...inhale the delicate fragrance thusly?"

"Thusly?"

He ignores me, shakes his head and continues.  "To press it against my lips, thusly..."

"Who writes this shit?"

"Oh, fuckity, fuck, fuck," he yells, stomping about in a tight circle, knees thrusting skyward like John Cleese doing a Silly Walk.  "Will you stop critiquing everything?"

"Are you done with....whatever you call that?"

"Tantrum, I had a tantrum.  Small one," he sniffs.

"I just mean...'thusly?'"

My boss convulses over in a paroxysm of frustration, shouting silently into his own upper legs.  He comes back up completely straight-faced.  

"Okay, so everyone's a writer - we've established that.  Now, if you can't help me with lines, I will fucking find someone who can!"

"You would fire me?" A bit of a sob in my voice.

"Oh, no, not the doe eyes..."

I gulp, and my face starts to screw up.

"No, honey," reaching out his long, long arms to me, "...no, no..."  He pulls me into a hug, genuinely concerned that he had hurt my feelings.

I start laughing.

"You little cunt."

"Hey!"

"Sorry - it's not such a bad word here."  Knowing he had done wrong, he suddenly finds the seams on the curtains intensely interesting, the crown mouldings fascinating, the bathroom doorknob, the finish on the end tables, the grey pillow that has been on the couch for five years, all enthralling.

"Not a bad word here?  You mean, as in England?!?!  Yes, it is - it totally is!  Michael told me it was..." I trailed off.   Oops.

"Michael...?"

"Fassbender..." I answered meekly.

"Fassbender?"

"Uh....yeah..."

"When did you meet Michael Fassbender?"  He still didn't believe my story about his friends getting me stoned in LA. [still don't]

"I dunno.  At the grocery store...or something, I guess," I lied. [You're rubbish at lying.  You would make the most appalling actor.]

"Grocery store?"

"Uh...maybe the....gas station....?"

"Gas station?  And what pray tell, were you driving? A bicycle?"

"I drive" I sniffed.

"And he just came up to you - you - and said, "Hi, I'm Michael Fassbender!"  The Boss said that last bit in as douche-y a voice as possible.  Like a used car salesman about to flee the country for tax-fraud.

"Am I that unattractive? I'm feeling very Jane Eyre like at this moment, I must say."

He dropped his voice an entire octave.  "I don't want you going anywhere near Michael Fassbender."

"Why?" I huffed, hands on my hips.

"Because you're the worst assistant in the world, and I wouldn't want to inflict you on anyone."

I dropped my mouth wide open and hoped my expression would read as 'horror.'  At least he was off the subject of...Michael.

"Well, anyone else," he corrected.  "It's fine if you inflict yourself on me...."

"Inflict...myself." I said with tears in my eyes.  "I thought you liked it when I sorted your appalling socks by color.  When I booked rooms for you that face east - always east -  so you get the sunrise.  When I make organic strawberry smoothies for you with no dairy.  When I..."

I began to choke up.  "When I found that laundry detergent that you said reminded me of your gran's house...."

"Well," he said sheepishly,  "I do like those things..."

A timer went off in the kitchen. Ben froze, looked up, found the mantle clock with his eyes, and took both of our scripts under his arm.

"Real Housewives." Ben made busy getting a bowl, the obligatory Smart Food popcorn, and two beers.  He was really planning to carb it up tonight.  I hadn't read today's e-mails yet.  Did the producers of the sci-fi thriller tell him to put on ten pounds?  

I wasn't moving fast enough, so he yelled, "REAL HOUSEWIVES!  Make haste!"

"American translation, please."

"Get yer ass in gear."

"Can't we DVR it?"

"No, we're watching it now. NOW!  Therese is going to tell Jackie off!

***

...an hour later...

He presses an imaginary lock of my imaginary hair into his nose, and breathes in, deeply.  His eyes close slowly and then open again, seemingly transported to a realm of ecstasy.

"Is that patchouli? Do you use patchouli shampoo?"

I look down at the script.  This was not in the script.

"Uh...patchouli."  I am on the wrong page. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I started flipping through the script.

"No."  He grabs the top of my script with both hands.  "It's not in the script.  I mean you.  Do you use patchouli shampoo? Because," and he sniffs an imaginary halo around my head, "you smell like something not quite average.  Quite... extraordinary..."

"No, patchouli...shampoo...just regular shampoo," I said gulped.  Noticing that he had eliminated almost all the open space between us.  "That is just my natural essence."

Through my thin, summer-weight skirt, I felt the warmth of his crotch, almost pressing against mine, and imagined (detected?) the faintest movement under the fabric of his trousers.  Him..moving..for me....I got a bit dizzy...

He grabs my script more insistently.  I hold onto it, a challenge towards his power, but he yanks it from my hand, flinging both our scripts across the kitchen.  We lunge at each other, him grabbing onto my rear end, my back, my arms, me practically clawing his glossy black hair out.

I open my lips just a bit, and unbidden, he basically mouth-fucks me with his tongue a couple of times. One thrust is so deep I almost gag.  He pulls away, just briefly, and then dives back in to lick my face. He shakes his head - that's not what he meant. He presses his closed lips hard against my mouth, more a brutish attack than a kiss, my eye socket, nose, taking my entire nose in his mouth. My ear, which he bites, back to my cheek and neck.  Landing kisses like blows.

Of course this was incredibly heady and giddy-making, but I am quite sure I will have bruises all over my face tomorrow!  

"Ow, ow, enough!"  

He doesn't stop.  And again with the licking. I was starting to feel like an ice cream cone.

I start to shrink away.  "ENOUGH!"

He steps back, puts one hand on his hip, and sinks into deep contemplative thought.

"That was pretty good. But the part where I yank the script. We have to do that again."

"It seems fake to throw it.  Why does she yell 'enough.'   I was getting hot."

His right eyebrow lifted.

 "It! It was getting hot...it....the scene!"

He quickly raises and lowers his eyebrows.

"It's a whole complication...they had a fraught relationship.   What would happen if they didn't stop...let's improv it.  Let's block it out."

He puts both hands on his hips, paces the kitchen a few times, scratches his head.

"So...probably..." he grabs me by the upper arms and maneuvers me towards the kitchen table.  "Probably they kiss passionately...he has her on the floor, maybe." 

"How do they get to the floor?  That seems so cliched, to me."

"Um, maybe like this..."

He pushes me down backwards, and I am forced to brace my own fall.

"Or like this..." He pulls me up again rather violently and then sort of tai chi's my legs out from under me, and again, we're both on the floor.

"That was pyscho.  Is it an action movie?"

"Let me try..." he shoves his arms under my legs and torso and makes to scoop me up off the floor.  Is he going to body slam me this time??

"Uh, no. "  And I make every limb floppy and as fluid as water, like a toddler who does not want to be picked up.

He gives up trying to pick me up.  "Okay, that's not important - they are on the floor now."

He is somehow suddenly laying over me, not really in a sexy way, more like a dead fish or a heavy blanket. [A dead fish?  Thanks!]

"Is he on top of her? " I ask, doubtfully.  "That seems unlikely."

"No," he agrees, pushing himself off the floor.  "Maybe, maybe not laying on top of her," he mutters, and sits himself on my crotch, his legs folded around my hips.  "Maybe straddling her."

I look about me.  My head -my hair! - is on the kitchen floor.  Ew.  And I feel entirely weird and a bit nauseous that a man, even the most beautiful man on the planet, is applying the full weight of his body to keep me in that prone position.

"This seems so rape-y."

"Well," he sighs, "it is what it is.  And he's like this, and this, and this..." kissing my face, gnawing at the shirt pocket over my left breast, investigating my belly with his nose, moving lower, much lower.  I swear he lands a kiss on my crotch, but it's all happening so fast I think I must be imagining that, at the same time I was glad I had taken a shower not 5 hours ago and had recently gotten a Brazilian. [WHAT? you didn't tell me that.]

"Okay, I get it.  Stop now.  You can stop."

He licks my cheek.

"Quit it."

His face is turning red.  It becomes him.  It becomes him very well.

"Quit it, Ben."

He's not listening to me, and he starts to unbuckle his belt with those overly large, expressive hands.  The bulge in his trousers is much more prominent, or it could be my imagination.  This might be getting real.

"That's enough!"

He leans down, props himself over me with one arm bearing his weight...the other hand, reaches towards his own trousers, and he slowly begins to slide the zipper down, just half way.

I impulsively reach out and slap his face.  The barest smirk blossoms on his lips, and his eyes are hooded, glowering.  He seems to rather like it.  [I most certainly did not.] 

After his hand leaves his open zipper, it slowly, slowly, snakes toward to the bottom hem of my skirt.  Is he...inching the fabric...up?

I am frozen because I would like nothing better for him to rip my skirt off, force his hand into my panties, slide his fingers into my wet folds, and finger fuck me six ways to Sunday.

But instead I yell, "Boss!"

"Oh, I'm so sorry, you're not kidding!"

"Geez..."  I sit upright on the floor, buttoning up my shirt in silence.  How - when - did it get unbuttoned?

"You do know I was acting, right?  I thought you were...improv-ing. But I can see you weren't because you look genuinely upset and I am so, so sorry."  

He sits back on his heels, runs his hand through his hair, shaking his head.  He is quiet, his face cast downwards.

"Oh, no, Benny.  Don't be upset."  I reach out to stroke his cheek.  "Don't be sad.  I'm not mad at you."

"Truly?"  he seems to be shifting back into character.

"Truly," I offer, trying to act but not act, but seem like I'm acting but trying to be a good actress which means not seeming like I'm acting...

"Because," he moves in closer.  "I never want to do anything which would cause you to be unhappy whilst you are in my employ."

I gulp. That is definitely not in the script.

He adjusts his seated position scooting right up against me, and leans in.  "Because I won't have that.  I won't have you...leaving. That would never do."  He cradles my face in his hands, and places the most delicate, reverential closed-mouth kiss on my lips.

We both hear the sound of someone clearing their throat.  When we turn our heads at the exact same moment our cheeks are so close together that they touch.   

"Don't you people know how to lock a door?"  His mother.

Ben leaps to his feet in one gymnastic motion.

"Hi, mom!  We were just...improv-ing.  Running lines..."

"For a porno?" she retorts.

He looks at me sideways, his expression indecipherable (anger, frustration, embarrassment, yes, probably that last one).  He walks towards his bedroom, closes the door.

I stand up, smooth out my clothing under the watchful eye of The Mother, and sidle out of the kitchen, not turning my back to her because that would seem impolite.

"I, uh, just have to, he has, things...to do..."

I make my way to his bedroom door, mercifully, temporarily out of sight of the woman who birthed him.

"Uh, so, boss?  You have press tomorrow morning. Samantha...the new stylist...wants you not to wear sneakers. Trainers.  Whatever British people call those rubber things you wear on your feet.  In brief, wear real shoes."

I hear a muffled "No" through the door.  And something being thrown across the room.

"Baby.  Big baby..." I mutter under my breath.  

I turn back to face the living room.  His mother is staring straight at me, none too impressed.  

I gulp.

She looks me up and down.  I cannot help but send my hand to my top shirt button to make sure it is closed.  It is not.  Nor the next two. When did he re-unbutton them??  I do my best Carol Burnett - goofy faces, tossing my head in unconvincing faux-bravado, as if I totally meant to dress that way, with my bra and overly abundant cleavage exposed.

His Mother purses her lips and then lets rip.  "He is a straight man.  Very. Extremely. You do realize that?"

"God, I hope so."  

That is not what I said.  The cheeky part of me wanted to say it.

But I thought better of it.

Chapter Text

I am rummaging around in Ben's bedroom, trying to make sense of his clothing.

The smell of freshly cut cucumbers wafts in behind me.  He is trying to sneak up on me but failing miserably.  I can sense his body heat and his animal magnetism from yards away.  I swear the very air in the room grows more vibrant, more alive, more full of possibility.....  [I wasn't trying to sneak up on you - I don't "sneak up" on people....]

And then I hear the voice of the Devil himself, groaning, "What are you doing in my sock drawer?"

I am frozen to the spot.  Something of a long-ago nightmare, something foreboding, something like a monster under my bed, reaching its hands, its tentacles up towards me, and I can't get away.  My legs won't work.  I am running in place....

In his normal voice, Benedict yelps, "My God, you're trembling!"  He comes up behind me and grabs my shoulders.  I squeak and he turns me around.

"My God, you have...are those.. you have tears in your eyes?  Geezus!"

He clasps me tenderly to his breast as I shudder and quake.

After a moment I am able to stop gulping for air.  "I've told you I don't like the Smaug voice!"

"Well, yeah, you said you don't like it - but I didn't know it would strike you dumb with fear!"

I stare straight into his eyes, trying to alert him of the power he wields.  "It's scary, boss!  It's...truly scary!"

He holds me out at arms length, bends down a bit to look directly into my eyes.  "I'm sorry!"

"Yes, well, okay, then.  One day I might tell you why it scares me so.  In the meantime..." I turn back to his dresser and continue fussing with the contents of the top drawer.  "I am reorganizing your socks based on the principles of this wonderful woman I read about in The New York Times.  She says we have to touch each object we own, mind-meld with it, and ask it whether it wants to stay in our lives, or be set free."

I held a pair of men's yellow socks with red polka dots to my forehead.  "Please release me from this hideous bondage.  I want to be set free!  I want to live!  I used to belong to a four year old girl, and she misses me!"

"I can do my own socks," he muttered grabbing the socks away from me and nestling them lovingly in the back of the drawer.

"Apparently not, because you have been seen in photo shoots wearing the most appalling colored socks like some sort of wizard or transgendered elf."

"Don't say transgendered like that's a bad thing, an insult."

"Au contraire, I think a transgendered elf has way more style sense than..." I trail off, noticing the daggers he is shooting at me with those eyes of uncertain color.  "More style sense than a young, nice-smelling English actor who shall remain nameless"

He shakes his head, rolls his eyes.  As fast as I can remove socks he is taking them from the pile collected in my arms and replacing them.  It is a kabuki dance that goes on for what seems like eons.

***

Later, I'm seated at the kitchen table typing his itinerary for the the New York leg of "The Imitation Game" press tour. 

He kneels down next to me so that our heads on on the same level.

He is staring at me.

I ignore him utterly.

He sighs.  Loudly.

"Still ignoring."

In the voice of long-dead dragons, he intones, "You can't ignore me. You love me."

"Crap!"  I jump out of my seat, arms flailing, knocking him to his butt.  My bowl of popcorn goes all over the kitchen - in the coffeemaker, on the window ledge, all over the table.

Ben is doubled over in half-choked giggles.  

My fists are clenched - literally clenched in fury.  "I'm glad you think my imminent stroke slash heart attack is so hilarious!"

Ben points at me, guffawing. "I've never actually seen someone look madder than a wet hen!!  Are you for real?  What cartoon do you come from!?!"

I growl. "Errr. I could just ball you up in a little ball and..." I make a mad, fumbling crumpling motion with my hands.

He raises an eyebrow.  "And?"  I jump.  That voice again.

"You're not really afraid of me."  He sidles over to me and pokes me in my waist.  I evade his touch.

"Sweetheart.  Love.  It's just a thing I do.  A parlor trick."

I stare at him and see the puppy dog eyes, the little boy, the silly goofy teenager.

"Come here."    I reach out my hand.  "Come here!"

He gently wends his way to me.  He is standing right in front of me, in my personal space.  My eyes drop a bit, and I am calmed, hypnotized by the sight of his chest rising and falling.  

"You have...here...bend over."  

He inclines his noble head toward me, like a great tamed beast, and I pick the popcorn out of his silky ginger locks.

Chapter Text

I fumble for my phone, which seems to be oceans away.  If my life depended on finding something quickly (the leak in the hull of a space shuttle, an oxygen mask in a damaged airplane, my employer's plane tickets when he's late for his flight) I'd be dead.  Long dead.

Somewhere under sheets and blankets, balled up quilts and boxes of tissues, books, books, and more books, I find the phone.

"Where are you, goddamit?"  The boss.  Surly per usual.

 "Sick."  I cough violently into a pillow, hoping that this will suppress the sound of my explosive, mucous-filled hacking.

My misery is greeted with a loud snort.  "So the acting thing - we've talked about this - you're no good at it."

"I know," I sniff, remembering our ill-fated attempt to run lines which ended with me slapping my boss in the face and his mother putting me on notice.

"So quit it.  Get over here.  Now.  You are late."

"I'm sick."

"I have to go back to Ell-Aye for like, half of a day.  I need help."

"I'm sick."

"My PA is never sick."

"You didn't get my texts?"

***

I'm sick.  I can't come tomorrow. - PA

Ha!  Good one! - BC

I've sent tomorrow's agenda by e-mail and I have left a hard copy on the kitchen table.  - PA

See you at 7.  That's AM, by the way. - Ben

I also put one folded up in your wallet.  And your gym bag. - Me

One what? - B

Agenda. - me

I need a ride home. - b

call cab - me, sick

Where are you? - bc

Answer me. - b

Why are you being a snit? - BTCC

You are incredibly fired at this time right now - B

fu - b

My head hurts I need aspirin - bhiddleston jr

I brought him home - Tom H.

We could use your help here - Hiddles

he barfed - sorry, but Im not cleaning that up - TWH

wer u put aspirin - me so drunk

***

 I wait patiently for my boss to recall last night's events.  After a moment in which I can literally hear his brain de-fogging, he seems to awaken.

"Yes, I got your bizarre messages last night.  I was at a party and didn't have time for nonsense."

"My bizarre messages? "  I am incredulous, and need to remind him of the previous evening's shenanigans.  "And I quote, 'Tom hiddles iz adopting me cool, roight?.'"

Ignoring the factual information I have presented him with, he blurts out, "See you in five."

"I'm sick."

"If you didn't have many other intriguing qualities to redeem you, you would be almost fired."

"I’m sick."

"Bring cigarettes - you know what kind."

"Okay..."  I trail off.  Getting a bit woozy.

"Are you sick?"

"Yes.  I said so."

"Yeah, but that was a lie, but then you said you...did I hear right?  You would get me cigarettes?"

"I dunno…sure...you want...them?"

"What about emphysema?  CPOD?  Heart disease? Throat nodules?  Stinky breathe?  The Big C?"

"What kind do you want, sir?"

"Silk Cut Marlboro Lights..."

"Yes, sir.  Right away, sir," I answer meekly.  I am not sure why the President wants cigarettes at 4 in the morning, but I will try....

"You're not getting me cigarettes, so cut the crap."

"No...no...Mr. Obama.  I don't want the pink giraffe, not right now."  I don't know why I said that, but it seemed the right thing to say, given that President of the United States is standing in my bedroom doorway with a huge cluster of pink balloons twisted into the shape of a giraffe.

"Are you stoned?"

"No.  I don't feel so good."

I hear the sounds of rummaging, banging, clanging.  A faint whirring sound.

"Will you stop pinning pictures of me eating, sleeping, yawning?"

"Yes, Mr. Sir, Mr. President, sir."

"Will you stop interfering in my socks?"

"Of course.  Sir."

Silence.

"I’m coming over."

"No, don't do that."

"Why?  You are obviously hallucinating."

I frantically look around my room - there are clothes everywhere.  Mismatched shoes strewn all over the floor.  Books birthing other books.  And I've been upchucking in the bathroom all night.  My couch has a huge tear in it and smells like cats.  President Obama is holding up the garbage pail with one hand and pinching his nose with the other.  

The kitchen is not to be mentioned.  

"Please don't come here," I beg, taking in the humble, genteel shoddiness surrounding me.  

"Already on the way."  I hear a door slam on his end of the line.

"I implore you.  Don't come here.  Ever."

Horns honking, the buzz of traffic.  He is already outside.

"Are you having a three-way with Mark Gatiss and Luke Evans?" And then he quietly explains to the cabbie that he is not, in fact, inviting him for a orgy.

Even in my fevered daze, I get a bit aroused at the thought of two gorgeous, smart, talented, gay British men having their way with me, experimenting on me, trying to determine if they might be - just a little - bisexual, or willing to try.  It's just one of my kinks...

His voice thrums with mischief.  "That got to you didn't it?"

"How do you do that...how do you know my buttons?"

"You sound better.....wait...are you snoring?  I'm coming over."

When I wake up (I guess I fell asleep on the phone), I don't know if it's five minutes or five hours later.  The sky looks a bit darker, blue fading into violet as dusk descends.

It's times like this I could imagine I'm back home, my piano beckoning me to try once again, my friends waiting for me in a coffeeshop (in dreams they are always crowded together at one too small marble-topped table, lip-glossed and manicured, smiling happily, clicking glasses of champagne....and solvent), my little dog curled into a tight little ball beside me, nestling his tiny head into my side....

Oh shit!  I think The Batch said he was coming over!

My boss has never seen my apartment.  It is entirely unlikely he will actually come over, right?  He was just being nice, as is his wont.  But he will get distracted by other things.  The daily grind will overtake him.  He has a photoshoot, a tux fitting, a Sherlock read-through....

I drag myself out of bed.  If he came here....  Mortified.  That's the only word I have.

I strip my bed of the old stale, mismatched sheets.  There's no more room in the laundry basket, so I shove them under the bed.  I scrub the toilet, the tub, the bathroom sink.  I take a five minute break and then mop the kitchen floor and while I'm at it, the bathroom floor, as well.

I gather up all the garbage in one plastic bag, but I don't want to go outside in my pajamas, so I set it on the balcony and try to hide it with some spindly plants. 

I wipe a bit of dew off my brow, my upper lip.  That will have to do.  It is too exhausting to vacuum the curtains, wash the dishes, reorganize all the books and magazines into pyramid-shaped stacks.

Dusting - out of the question.  But I do manage to tidy my night table.  Mr. Obama nods approvingly from his corner, as he sips a cup of Irish coffee.

I collapse into bed, pull the covers all the way over my head, and fall asleep.  Peace....tranquility...then dreams of apocalypse.  My boss, missing his plane to the Academy Awards.  Me - fired.  Homeless.  Turning tricks on the streets of Essex....

***

"Where are they?"  A shadowy form passes through the doorway to my bedroom.  As I look up through my Laura Ashley lace-edged white sheet, all I can make out is tallness.

"Where are... who?" I ask The Spectre in my room.  

"Mark Gatiss, Luke Evans, Tom Hiddleston, James McAvoy..."

"And Channing Tatum..." I add, not knowing where this is going. But I might as well get my opinion in there.

"And Channing Tatum.  Because if would take all of them furiously snogging you at the same time to justify your not being at work today."

"And Timothy Dalton..."

"You're showing your age."

A lovely dream.  He is next to me, a gorgeous, fair-skinned, blue-eyed man.  (My eyes are green! Get it right!). Tall, lithe, rangy even, kneeling beside my bed, whispering in my left ear.

"Are you okay? I think I'm actually worried about you!"

I reach out a hand from under the covers and pat the side of this man-child's scratchy, unshaven face.  "Beautiful boy...beautiful dream..."

I feel impossibly luscious, pillow-y lips on my forehead.

"I COME BEARING CHICKEN SOUP!"

The resonant vibration rockets through my skull.  Like sonar, going deeper and deeper, the waves magnifying as they plumb the depths of my brain.

"No, thank you, sir..." I mumble, trailing off.

"You must be really sick.  I just used The Voice."

The impossibly beautiful man says something about a voice.  His voice alternates between squeaky and goofy and deep and foreboding.   I assume his is either my guardian angel, or an angel of death.

"Either way," I whisper, "just relieve me of this misery."

He furrows his brows and crinkles his nose so hard I fear it could stick that way.   After letting out a big sigh, The Dream exits my room.  

I hear clanging around in the kitchen.  Is...is The Spectre in there?  President Obama?  Can you check to make sure that the kitchen is presentable?  The last time I was able to clean was three days ago....

The doorway to my bedroom is filled with the tallest man I've ever seen.  He has to duck to come into my room.  He looks around questioningly.

"Were you just talking to someone?  The kitchen looks...fine...."

The Dream is carrying a cup of tea on a saucer.  He sits down next to me and proceeds to spoon-feed me the tea. When I purse my lips tight, he nods his head, tut, tut, there'll be none of that.

I take a tiny sip of the tea.  It's Earl Grey.  

"This is gross."

"Then why do you have it in your house?"

"England and all that...."

I reluctantly sip more tea and then lean back in against my pillows exhaustion.  Suddenly I see.  It's no dream.  It's my boss.   Sitting on my bed.  In my shit pit of an apartment.  Holding a cup of tea in his hands.  Spooning it into my mouth.

"Why are you sweating?  It's 60 degrees in here!"

I squirm in exasperation. "I.  Am.  Sick."

"It’s more than that - you smell like you just did a hot yoga class - but in a good way!  It’s kind of..."

He lifts up my arm, leans too close to my body, and...

"Did you just smell my underarm?"  

"It's kind of - wow, your sweat smells really...good..." he says, taken aback.  "But why are you sweating?  Are you really that sick."

"I cleaned up a bit.  It wore me out."

He looks around.  "This is cleaned up?"  He chuckles as he picks a white bra off the floor and holds it out with one finger.

I let out a sob.  "I did my best....I'm sick."

"No, I'm joking, honey.  It looks really...nice.  It's quite...."

He takes off his blue cardigan, neatly hangs it over the chair that serves as my night table.  

"Can I sit here?"

"No - that's my night table."

"Night table?"

"I free-cycled it," I explain, defensively.

"From a barn?"

Even though he is careful, a few books slip off and hit the floor.  His eyes sweep around my bedroom as if for the first time - there are piles of books everywhere, on the dresser, in corners, stacked half way up the wall.

"You don't have enough books."

I smile weakly.  My eyes are flickering open and closed.  I sense him sitting down on the edge of my bed, facing me, one perfectly shaped buttock and one hard, elegant thigh next to my torso.

He reaches over me and brushes my hair back from my forehead.  I can't help but rise up a bit out of the bed, pressing my head into his palm like a contented cat. His hand is so cool to the touch, and it brings me some relief.  

He frowns anew.  "I’m taking you to the hospital."

I shake my head no.

"You're burning."

"I just have a cold...I’m good.  Nothing a little bed rest won’t take care of."

"Come - when was the last time you ate?"

I mutter something incoherent.

"Come now."  

He urges me out of the bed, grasping my upper arms.  I slip one leg out from under the covers, then the other, and place my bare feet on the ground.  

He assists me to standing and then smiles approvingly.  "Let’s go have some dinner."  

The thought of food makes me quake.  My stomach flip flops.  I swallow back the beginnings of vomit.

He stares down at me with concern,  "My god, you’re trembling.  I’m calling a cab."

"Please, no - let me just die here."  At this moment I am quite serious.  

 "You are literally dripping out of my grasp, like mercury or something." 

I almost faint.  He catches my limp limbs in his arms and hauls me back onto the bed.

He disappears into my bathroom (I hope it's clean enough).  I hear water running, and then he is back at my side, daubing my face with a cold, wet washcloth.

"Why isn’t 'He' over here, feeding you chicken soup and hot tea?"

I look up at him, questioningly.  "He?"

He wipes my burning checks, concern twisting his mouth to one side.  "Flower guy."

Chapter Text

So. "Flower Guy."  He wasn't over it.  He went off to bustle about in my kitchen, heating up some chicken soup, I think.  I can hear him emoting in a stage mutter, where are all the flowers - you are sick, after all, you'd think your boyfriend would....

Here's how it went down....

***

Several weeks ago - I'm not exactly sure when - I heard him use The Voice to order me to get into his office...now!.....

[Dissolve to me sitting at the kitchen table, diligently checking on whether his frequent flyer miles would score him a free ticket to Toronto...]

"Get into my office.  Now!"

Taking no pause in my work, I answered, "Excuse you?"

"You heard what I said."

I stopped hunting for flights to Canada and re-directed my attention to the stationery samples fanned out on the table before me (I had decided he should have custom stationery).

"Get off your fat arse and follow me."

My brain went blank.  I quickly decided not to lunge at him with my talons extended.  Instead, I opted for reason.  

"Benedict Timothy Hofstra Crumbleberry! You must be stoned off your gourd.  The last time someone talked to me like that I got sent to the principal's office, and the other guy went to the emergency room."  I was only half-joking.  I'll let my readers figure out which half.

"Office."

I raised my eyebrows.  "You don’t have an 'office.'"

"You know what I mean."  

"No, actually," placing my hands flat on the table in front of me, "I really don't."

He turned on his heel and stomped out of the kitchen, hissy-fit in full effect.

"'Your office?''' I called after him.  "Is that code for 'your bathroom?'"

I resumed ignoring him.  [Yea...we're going to talk about that.  Add that to the list.]

He blew back into the kitchen.  "I said, 'Follow me.'"

"Why?"

"I’m your boss, that’s why."

I snorted and resumed sorting the stationery by color.

"Again with the snorting."

"I don't have a boss - first of all."

"Well, you have one now."  His voice dropped an octave.

I stood up in one motion, planting my hands on my hips.  

"I am not on a chain gang in Alabama so, no, in fact, I don't have a boss."

"You call me Your Boss all the time in that...that fan-fiction."

"Well that is most certainly meant as a JOKE!"

He muttered something along the lines of like a lot of things you do and say.

"Wow...if I were to look up 'derisive' in a dictionary, the definition would read 'the way Benedict Cumberbatch talks when he’s pissed off.'"  

I remained standing, but leaned over my computer to see if any more e-mail had come in from his agent.  

I looked back up at him.  He was fuming.  His cheeks had turned red, and he was giving his best Chrissy Teitjens, stoic-but-on-the-verge-of-exploding pursed lips face.

I sighed.  "I am so busy.  We're already looking at 2017 travel plans.  Can you just..."

 "Oh, just go back to looking at youtubes of panda cubs frolicking in the snow or whatever it is I PAY YOU TO DO!!"

Mind, none of this was making me mad at him, or even annoyed.  But I did have a vague curiosity about what had sparked today's meltdown.  I turned to him with the maternal indulgence of a toddler having a tantrum.  

"By the way, why are you pissed off?"

"Oh, just you - getting a bit big for your britches."

"Said the pot..." Under my breath.

"What did you just say to me?"  

He closed the distance between us in two strides.  If I didn't know him better, I would have thought he was trying to be menacing.  The idea actually made me chuckle.  This is a man who I've caught sorting his blue shoes into sub-categories of midnight blue, dark blue, and navy.  A man who calls his mother twice a day, and cries when he thinks about hungry children.  A man who so obsessively researches every role he forgets to eat or sleep.  I have to text him to remind him that protein is his friend.  Right now he was shooting steel-grey arrows at my heart, but they were bouncing off.

"Stop changing your eye color," I purred.

"Oh, fuck you..." he spat out, shaking the compliment off like something foul.

"Fuck who? Me?  You wanna fuck with me?  You wanna...fuck me?" My attempt to restore a sense of playfulness to a day that was going south, and quickly.

"Don't," waving his hands, "don't try to flirt with me to get out of this."

"Out of what?  You are acting so crazy today.  Is this a script?  Are we doing lines?"

He grabbed my wrist.  Of course I was offended, but turned on as well.  Is this the moment he drags me into his bedroom, hurls me onto the bed, and shows me just how imperious and British and (gasp) colonial he really can be?

He led me forcefully into the living room.  I felt like I was plunged into Chapter 15 of a Jane Austen novel.  British accents. Ordinarily refined men acting like gorillas.  Me trotting after him like a guileless damsel with no property to speak of.

He stopped when we were right next to the coffee table and turned back to face me, still gripping my wrist.  "Didn’t you hear the doorbell earlier?"

"No."

"Do you have ears?!?!"

He points to a bouquet of flowers.

"Oh, flowers," I exclaim, giddy with delight, forgetting all the nonsense that had transpired up until this moment.  "They are so pretty and my god...these are...I love these..."  My tone grew softer as I noticed some disconcerting flower choices.  "This is a little bit eerie...um.  Well, who are they for?"

The boss was silent.  He looked at me from under a deeply furrowed brow.  I had long ago ceased being inordinately turned on by his "Khan."

Ignoring his attempt to make me fall headlong into his gravitational field, I prattled on.  "They can’t be for you.  We’ve made it clear that in lieu of flowers or other gifts, you want donations sent to various charities, the names of which are easily accessed through your publicist…"

He stared at nothing, saw nothing, although if one were to draw a direct line emanating from his burning eyes, he was lasering a hole in my skirt.  

I fondled the tender, creamy blooms on the narcissus.  "Are they for the neighbor? Maybe they got the address wrong?"

He parked his hand his arm on his hip, and shifted all of his weight onto one foot.

I appraised the giant bouquet in its tasteful, plain glass, bulb-shaped vase, fingering through the greens, the golds, the purples, the delicate stems and the luscious blooms crammed into one overwhelming display.

"This is weird - these are….my favorites...calla lilies, hydrangea....Bluebonnets, do they even have these in England?

He sighed heavily.

"Coxcomb...hyacinth, white roses, purple roses..."  

A tear came to my eye.  "It can’t be…..daisies - these were my sister's favorite..." I whispered.

"Are these for me?" I looked at him with a question on my face.

"They're not from me!" he ejaculated.

"I know they're not from you!"  

And even though he was the one who brought that up, he looked startled, perhaps thinking why would I assume the flowers were not from him.

I continued trying to deduce the origin of the lavish bouquet, which I estimated to be in the range of a two hundred dollars US, or more....

"It's not my birthday...nothing bad happened to me...I'm not sick...no one died..."

"They're from Michael," he muttered, holding out a small, business-sized gold card.

I froze.

"Fassbender," he spat out.

I gulp.  Backed up a few steps.

"Your fuck buddy."  Flicking the card into the air, not caring where it landed.

I stick a finger in the air to explain.  "Not exactly...not quite yet, although we came really close that one time...if you count the tip, yeah, maybe we did it - just once, though!"

He closed the space between us like a panther advancing on its prey.

"Listen," he barked, standing directly in my personal space, so close I was staring at the top buttons of his shirt.  I was afraid if I looked up at him my face would be scorched by his fury.

"I am not going to have you dating my friends, other actors.  Really, really you should be altogether too busy to date….people."

He grabbed my upper arms.

"Oh, Mr. Cumberbatch," I said seductively, "you are so hot when you’re jealous."

"Jealous?"  He looks truly flabbergasted.  And then his expression morphed into something nasty and sardonic.  "You think...I’m jealous?  Of who? You? Or him?"

Unless I’m crazy he started to shake me, just a little.

“Ben!”

His mother had walked in. 

I turned to her with a triumphal smirk on my face.  

"Your son is just manhandling me, per usual."  

He released me in utter shock that his mother was once again privy to his supposedly out-grown tantrums.  I yawned dramatically, stretching my arms up high over my head, grabbed my purse and made to leave. Before I closed the door, I added, “Oh!  Almost forgot something."

I sashayed to the coffee table and grabbed the vase.  I immersed my face in the flowers, breathing in the heady fragrance, taking care to make sure the The Boss saw my expression, which I hoped was somewhere between beatific, ecstatic, and hopelessly in lust.

And I left.

He followed me out the door, leaving the door to his apartment wide open.  He stormed down the hall taking gigantic steps, but when he realized that I had I taken the stairs instead of the elevator, I soon heard hard, angry footfalls behind me.  He grabbed me (again!) by my arm (this was so much like a movie!) and spun me around.

I've never actually been 'spun around' by a hot-headed, jealous man before.  My heart swelled, I became weirdly excited. A rush of blood and heat and desire gushed down to my honey pot (just as it does now, as I recall it, lying in this sick bed, covered in my own drying sweat)...I was turned on, but I was also a bit...terrified, in truth.

He glowered at me.  There is something particularly menacing about a blue-eyed man glowering, and something that made it entirely clear this was not a tantrum, nor was he acting.  I actually felt sick.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" he sighed, unconsciously releasing my arm.

"Like what?"  I gulped.

"Like I'm going to..."

"Push me down the stairs and spit on my dead body and get Hiddleston to help you throw my corpse into the Thames and then later, much later, he will write a tell-all about it and they will dredge the River and find nothing but some bones and a glass vase...."

His eyes became as round as saucers.  He swallowed something awful, something like revulsion, self-loathing.  

"I am so sorry."  

He turned around and began to ascend the stairs, slowly.  But then he turned back and stopped near the top step.

"When did all this happen?"

I looked down at my shoes sheepishly.  "In LA."

"So all that was real.  All those silly stories you told me - about getting stoned with my friend.  Hiddles!  And Tom Hardy of all people.  And letting them grind their...letting them dry hump you."

"I was stoned...and I didn't let them dry-hump me.  They just sort of did!  But it was most certainly uninvited."

Ben snorted.

"And not Tom Hardy.  He's married!  He was very...chaste..."

"Oh, he's married," he parroted sarcastically, brow furrowed, nose crinkled.

"And Hiddles.  He just was flirting.  In the most lovely, Erroll Flynn sort of way."

Ben shuddered.

"We  - all three of us - sat in bed, watched videos of baby pandas, danced to late 80's techno, smoked a bunch of joints, messed around a little bit and watched videos of you being Khan, being Sherlock, being interviewed, wearing crazy clothes....a truly boring evening."

"And that's when you starting fucking Fassbender? In LA?"

"I'm getting uncomfortable with all this potty language.  Besides, we hardly...." I let that thought trail off.

"I don't want to know!"  He stomped back up the stairs.

Turning around one last time, he added, "Just keep it out of my...my life!"

Chapter Text

"Could you please get me a new t shirt?"  Hot breath right against my ear. A searingly British accent, like a very annoyed headmaster.

"What?!?!?" I sat upright suddenly.  And then flopped back down like a puppet whose strings had been cut.  

"Finally!"  Ben leaned away from me, sat back in his chair in a great huff, and turned the page of his oh so boring script with a great sigh.  "Oh, look, Tom, look who decided to wake up."

"It's about time."  A very tall, almost wraith-like figure uncrossed his long, lean, lanky legs and stood up.

"Wait. Who's Tom?"

"Past time." Ben glanced down at his watch. "Quite tardy."

I'm in a hospital bed.  Ben is seated beside me, his legs restless, his hands flipping through the pages of a script.

"So. You're little vacay is over." 

"Vacay?"  I could barely grunt out that almost question. My mouth felt unnaturally dry, completely parched.

On the other side of my bed, I heard Tom Hiddleston's rather more soothing voice explain, "You've been asleep a really long time."

Ben leaned over and made to kiss the side of my mouth with those incredibly plush lips. I tried to back away, but he persisted, planting a gentle touch on the right side of my mouth.

He grimaced, "You need to brush your teeth."

I wanted to say, "So do you," but my head was spinning.  And he didn't.  His breath smelled like clover recently drenched by a rainstorm....

Ben's pants buzzed. I tried to move my head, but everything ached. He checked his phone, emphatically typed a reply, and re-sheathed it in his back pants pocket.

"So I'm married now and I did not win an Oscar and I have a baby and he's completely adorable and the light of my life and I want to gobble up him whole and I met Jennifer Aniston and that was really cool and I did Hamlet....and I'm Dr. Strange.  Marvel Cinematic Universe.  Me."

"Oh."

"That's it? Really. 'Oh.'"

I swallowed hard, and tried to prop myself up on my forearms.  Oh, God, everything hurts.  I flopped back down.

Ben sighed in boredom.  "When you do finally decide to get up, can you please get me the correct cigarettes?"

"Where's Michael?"  I looked around the room, trying to bring the blurry shapes into sharper focus.  Was that a bed pan?  "I'm sure I was supposed to meet him for lunch or....something...."

Ben uncrossed his legs and stretched out cat-like on the metal chair.  "Oh, you mean four months ago? Michael has moved on.  He's in Canada or Scotland filming....Macbeth or something. Who is it now, Tom? A model?   He's on his 3rd model since you....

Tom consulted a clipboard.  "It's an actress, which you know very well, Ben.  That one.  You know...."

"Four months?"  I look imploringly at Tom, hoping, begging him with my eyes to inform me that this is all a dream. 

"Tom is going to be handling everything to do with your care and rehabilitation."

"Four months?" I warbled, a sob welling up in my throat.

"Physical therapy appointments, nurse practitioner visits.  And hair," turning to Tom, "Do something about that, in the name of all that's holy."

"Four months?" I repeated.

"Ooh, it's been more like six total." Tom scribbling, "hair...rehab, manicure...Your schedule is packed."

"Six months?"

"Oh no, darling," Tom smiled.  "He was just teasing.  It's been a year."

"What happened to me?"

Ignoring me utterly, Ben lifted my arm and sniffed my pit.

"Tom. Shower."

"Got it.  Shower."  Tom scribbled the directives onto his notepad.

"Where am I? What hospital am I in?  Is any if this even real?  Why am I in a private room?  I thought that didnt' even exist in England?  This is.... I'm dreaming!"

"Ben took care of everything. Got you a private room and all that."

"T'was nothing. Can't have my PA in with the common herd. They might extract secrets from you, secrets about me and my life."

"You got me a private room?" 

He was staring down at me, a slight grin twisting his mouth to one side. "Oh, do stop looking at me with those big puppy dog eyes. I would have done it for anyone.  And I'll be expecting lots of blow jobs in return!"

"Blow jobs?!?!"

"So many blow jobs...." he sighed.

"Good Lord, Ben, she only just woke up from an eleven month coma, do give her time to re-adjust...."

Ben nodded, and then sat down on my bed, his weight causing a great depression next to me.

"So..." 

"So..."  he mimicked in his lowest tone, leaning into me, brushing a lock of hair away from my forehead.

"Married?"

"Yup."

"Cool!"

"Yup."

"Baby?"

"Yup."

"Cool."

"Oscar?"

"That would be a 'no'...." He stood up abruptly.  "Glad you decided to come back."

I propped myself up on my elbows.  The effort made me break out into a sweat, but I was incredibly tired of laying flat.  "The last thing I remember you were ...I was ...we were in a cab. You took me to the hospital!"

"Yup."

"I had the flu."

"And a little coma.  But that's all over now.  Very dull.  Glad you're back."

And with that he turned on his heels and walked out.