Warnings: A bit of straying from canon since I'm entirely ignoring any girlfriends or significant others these two might have had at any time during the events of this story.

Disclaimer: I don't know anything about the inner-workings of the LotR casting. I don't know these people and this did not happen. This isn't even speculation � it's just straight-up fiction.

Beta: My grammar masters Jeanette and Robyn. Thank you as always.

Back-story: For those not overwhelmingly steeped in the lore of the LotR, Stuart Townsend was originally cast in the role of Aragorn. He went through two months of training with the other actors in New Zealand and then was let go the day before filming began. For a time, the studio cited "artistic differences" and the story became that Stuart was difficult to work with. Now, the official story from Peter Jackson and Newline is that Stuart was simply too young to play Aragorn and the fault was entirely theirs.

Dedications: Written for the lovely Reisling for long-ago favors of the Ned Kelly variety. This is hardly a fair trade for the treasure that is Joe Byrne, but this is the finest currency I have to offer and it is yours. And happy birthday, my good friend. It is my distinct privilege to know you.

Blue-grey smoke drifted from Stuart's lips, obscuring the star- dotted sky stretched overhead. He stared out into the wide, flat expanse of Australia, sitting on a bench illogically placed as if a bus might come roaring through the brush to take him wherever he wanted to go. He blinked, the stars and smoke disappearing for a long, black instant. It was probably for the best that no such bus existed. Stuart had no idea where he wanted to go.

"Stuart?" Elijah's call overcame the loud music pulsing through the open door of the Oasis pub. Laughter thrummed through the walls with the tinkling din of glasses and mugs. Revelry. Stuart felt further away from it than the simple one hundred feet it took get to his bench.

"Stuey?" Stuart recognized Dom's roughhewn tones.

He didn't move and didn't reply, nor did he make any effort to conceal himself more fully behind the dense, thorny bushes lining the back of his bench. If they saw him, they saw him. If they didn't, they didn't.

"Maybe he went to the loo," Dom suggested.

"He'll show up when he wants to." Stuart unconsciously stiffened. That voice was Orlando's voice. "Come on. Billy's almost talked Sean into that second shot."

Dom and Elijah laughed and ducked back into the pub. The door closed and the music became muffled. Orlando was still outside; Stuart could feel it, could almost sense dark eyes searching for him. He closed his eyes, blew smoke from between his lips, and left it to chance. The music pulsed again as the door opened and Stuart knew Orlando had gone back inside.

He felt a bit of filter paper on his tongue and spat it out with more force than was truly necessary. Anger bubbled in his gut. He was working on that and had been for months; the disappointment, the rage; learning to process the emotional fallout of all of this. The anger was coming along nicely, but the regret was not nearly so pliable.

And now, that regret was here in bodily form not two hundred feet away when Stuart thought he'd left it all � every bit of it � behind him in New Zealand. He didn't miss anything about Lord of the Rings. He didn't miss the long days of training, Elvish language lessons, costume fittings; he didn't miss the beauty of New Zealand or the crew. He sure as hell didn't miss Peter, Barry or any of the other prats who had no fucking clue what they were doing. He missed nothing. Except Orlando. He recalled now that first time in bed with him and realized he'd felt the sort of peaceful contentedness that can only be appreciated and understood when it's gone. He felt happy with Orlando; they had been on their way to becoming amazing friends. And he'd fucked it up. That, more than anything else, was his biggest regret. Having Orlando near again brought the memories near, and all Stuart wanted right now was forget. So he hid out on illogical benches in the sparse brush of Australia and tried not to think the only thoughts his mind would let him have.

For his first two days in New Zealand, he never saw Orlando. Unpacking, getting settled, and costume fittings kept them steadfastly busy and out of each other's paths, but Stuart heard Orlando's name and heard comments like "Orlando's great" from Billy, who was, for the first day anyway, considered the resident expert on Orlando by virtue of having come over with him on the plane. Once or twice, people would swear Orlando had just been there moments before Stuart arrived and they would tell involved stories about things he had done or said, attempting to illustrate in a handy anecdote just what sort of person Orlando was when, really, they didn't even know themselves. He was a phantom, a person all of hearsay; he was a ghost. It wasn't until the first script reading that they met.

"Hi. I'm Orlando," he said, and extended his hand for a shake.

"Ah, you're the ghost."

"Yeah, I'm the � Wait, I'm the what? The ghost? I haven't heard that one before. I thought you were going to say `Elf.'"

As Stuart shook Orlando's hand, calling him "Elf" never crossed his mind. It was too sprightly and dainty a word for someone so substantial. In that instant, Stuart decided he liked the sound of "ghost" and the way it fit with Orlando's willowy frame and the intensity of his eyes; the way it definitely didn't fit with his bright smile and charming awkwardness. He was a spirit all right, but one that was vibrantly alive. Stuart liked him instantly, and he rarely � if ever � liked anyone instantly.

"I like `ghost' better."

Orlando laughed, a disarmingly friendly and uncomplicated sound. "All right, then."

"Okay." Peter entered the room with the quiet, commanding air that would have declared him to be the director even if Stuart hadn't already known he was. "Let's get started." He clapped his hands together and eased back into a chair.

Stuart and Orlando both immediately took their seats with barely a glance at one another. Stuart took an admiring mental note: Orlando put his job above socializing and he didn't make a joke or try to gain favor with the director by preening. He just sat down to do his job; very impressive in such a new actor.

The first read-through of Fellowship took, all told, nearly four hours, calculating in Peter's various descriptions of the special effects and the few scattered laughing fits when someone horribly mispronounced one of Tolkien's tongue-twisting names. Orlando, for one, had a hell of a time with "Crebain from Dunland." As they read through each scene, Stuart kept his acting senses tuned, attempting to detect how he interacted with each of the others. It was an inaccurate test at best, being so early in the shoot and at a lukewarm reading, if not a cold one, but Stuart felt satisfied that he had chemistry where he needed it most. He and Liv worked well and looked good together. Stuart wasn't attracted to her, but he wouldn't have difficulty convincing an audience that he was. He had a promising connection with the hobbits that he trusted would develop as they trained and got to know one another, but that was still a chemistry of secondary importance. Yet, that connection was arguably still more important than his chemistry with Legolas and that, Stuart swore he could feel crackling in the air.

They needed only enough to make viewers believe that Aragorn and Legolas had previously met. Such a distant and undefined relation was not a hard sell. But for the few scenes in which he and Orlando directly interacted, however briefly, Stuart felt the words humming with a palpable energy and that heady sense of `this is going to be perfect'.

"You mean not to follow them," Orlando said lowly, peering at his script through literally rose-colored glasses.

"Frodo's fate is no longer in our hands." Stuart felt verve pulsing in his limbs and he forgot everyone else in the room. He was in the moment; he could feel it. He was in the forest with Legolas and Gimli. Acting never got better than this. When he said his last line � "Let's hunt some Orc!" � it didn't feel silly, as he'd feared it might. Instead, it broke from his adrenaline-gritted teeth like a benediction and he felt like sprinting off into the woods for a hunt.

As Elijah and Sean finished out the script, Stuart raised his eyes to Orlando across the room. Orlando slowly looked up and smiled back, just smugly enough that Stuart knew he'd felt it, too: They would be brilliant on screen together.

Weapons training began in earnest almost immediately after the first read-through. Hour after hour, day after day of sword fighting with stunt men, who were proving to be the craziest people Stuart had ever met (no one should be that excited about potentially diving off a four-story turret, let alone be the one to suggest it), but he loved it, the sheer effort of becoming a character. As his muscles and movements changed, he felt like one of the swords at the WETA workshop being carved and crafted to fit a certain purpose and design. He felt ready for this role � and it didn't hurt that it could very likely be the end of his career obscurity. No more small films for even smaller pay. He wanted a character he could ride out, one that would keep paying. It was a gamble since no one knew how this trilogy would fair, but when it came to his future, Stuart had always been something of a betting man. Especially when he had nothing to lose.

After each rough day, Stuart went out with the hobbits and Orlando for a relaxing pint and if their muscles weren't too stiff, they would raise a glass and drink to Gainful Employment. Stuart enjoyed the hobbits. He liked them. But in those first few days, there wasn't exactly a bond as yet. With Orlando, it seemed the bond had come with the package.

It was hero worship in part since Orlando had seen several of Stuart's films; the rest and the majority were just two blokes who hit it off, clicked, saw eye-to-eye and all the other euphemisms. A world of difference lies between twenty-two and twenty-seven and it's the land between boy and man, no matter what the law and puberty has to say about it. But that expanse didn't stretch between Orlando and Stuart. It had never existed. Stuart liked to think that was because he'd retained his youthful sense of mischief, but he suspected it was actually because Orlando had already shed his boyish sense of immortality and fancy. He was on Stuart's level.

One day, muscles already aching, Stuart walked out to find Orlando sitting on the steps of the training facility, tying the laces of his trainers. "You just leaving?" Stuart asked, shielding his eyes from the setting sun.

"Yeah." Orlando's hands moved lethargically over his laces. "I'm just taking a second." With a long, exhausted sigh, he leaned back, stretching himself out along the steps.

Stuart laughed and sat gingerly beside him. The muscles in his thighs screamed at the effort. His laugh transformed into a hiss of pain.

Orlando snickered beside him. "They're killing you, too?"

"A man can only do so many lunges in a day. I think I'm doing twice that." Stuart positioned his arse on the concrete steps in the manner least likely to strain some overused joint. The sun lowered on the horizon and the golden heat of it still glowed across Stuart's face. He closed his eyes, savoring the warmth and the chance to sit still. He heard Orlando breathe very softly beside him, relaxed. It was here, too, he realized. A tether of energy; it buzzed and hummed between them even now, just as it had at the script-reading. It almost gave him the sensation of destiny, as if his life was meant to come into contact with Orlando's somehow, some way. If he gave any credence to that sort of nonsense, he could have readily believed it. He felt drawn to Orlando.

"Seems like a long time, doesn't it?" Orlando mused. "Fifteen months?"

"Mm-hmm. It does." Stuart nodded, his eyes still closed against the sun. "You have a girl waiting back home?"

"Nah. Broke up a while ago. You?"

"Nah."

"You thinking `bout trying to do some pulling while you're here?"

Stuart let out a long breath. "I don't know. Seems a bit pointless to get something going when we're going to be so busy."

"Yeah," Orlando agreed. His shoes scuffed lightly against the cement as he shifted. "Sex would be good, though."

Stuart opened his eyes to see Orlando prone on the steps, peering up at him with a sly turn in his eye and a knowing smile on his lips. Orlando looked back to the sunset with a smirk and Stuart felt a smile flow across his lips. "Aye, it would be," he said. And that was how the pact was quietly struck.

Stuart didn't often fancy men. He was certainly open to the experience, but it happened rarely all the same, and when it did, it was never personal. The idea of trying to date a man made Stuart absolutely crazy; he couldn't imagine one he could tolerate long enough to make it worth their while. That simply wasn't what he craved in a companion. He liked the frippery and delicacy innate in even the strongest of women; he liked their soft curves and gentle voices. But there was nothing like fucking a man. All hard and slick and wet explosions, and even the most novice guy giving a blowjob did it better than a lass. He liked that he could be rougher with a man, and not just physically. He could swear and grunt and talk dirty with a man, thrusting deep, skin slapping, foul Irish curses falling from his lips. He could fuck a man without making love to him. He supposed he could find a woman who occasionally liked that sort of thing, someday maybe, but he hadn't yet.

Orlando's voice would sound great letting out a string of moaned curses.

Stuart's radar for finding people of his turn of mind was even more difficult to hone than that of a normal homosexual or a bisexual out on the pull. Not that Stuart had ever been either of those, but he could imagine the comparisons quite well and his was more complex: It required recognizing not only interest, but also quality. It was a rare person who could handle a truly casual fuck with someone he'd see again, day after day. Stuart was one such person, but he'd be damned if he'd ever managed to find another. Most men couldn't pull it off, which had been quite the surprise for Stuart since he had figured that any one of his gay mates would have been all for a hard shag with no strings attached. And yet, after a drunken and rather abbreviated fuck, one had been unable to look Stuart in the eye for a month. Another had disappeared for three straight days, returned with an ominous "we have to talk" and then proceeded to break up with Stuart, despite the fact that they had never been dating. Each one had talked big and puffed out their chests as if a "casual fuck" was the most casual thing in the world, until they had to do it. Stuart would have to admit that, honestly, he was terrible at identifying the warning signs until it was too late.

But not only did he not detect a single warning sign in Orlando, he actually felt, for once, like the pursued. Orlando touched his arm whenever they were close and gave him discreet smirks over a pint. The lad was practically courting him in secret and Stuart found that incredibly sexy. Then, there was the look in his eyes. If there was one skill Stuart had learned from his career it was how to recognize when someone was attracted to him. Orlando was attracted to him, and in an almost strictly carnal way.

They didn't talk about it officially, but something beyond words had been communicated on the steps that day. They could work and be dedicated to their craft; they could give all to their performances and be friends with one another off the set. And they could fuck, no strings attached. They were the same sort of animal.

The last person finally trickled out of the changing area, letting the door shut with a click, leaving Stuart and Orlando alone. "You look good," Orlando said, coming nearer, his jumper rolled between his hands. "The costume suits you."

Stuart met Orlando's eyes as he approached. "And you and Legolas definitely need to trade trousers more often." Just the hint, the suggestion of Orlando's cock through the Legolas leggings made Stuart decide that he might just have to insist upon the honor of bottoming first for once.

Orlando laughed lightly and their eyes locked, almost penetrating in their intensity. Orlando licked his lips and for only a flash, his gaze shot lower, fixating on Stuart's mouth.

"Test run?" Stuart suggested.

"Yes, please." Orlando stepped even closer, his eyes bright and fetching, but his cheeks just beginning to blush red.

Their mouths met, instantly opening to let their tongues sweep against one another. Stuart had been with men before, but not so many that it had lost its spice, that particular flavor of something unusual that made his mind spin almost dizzily with the thought, I'm kissing a man. When they parted, Stuart licked his lips, unable to stop the "Mmmmm" from becoming audible. Delicious. Perfect kiss. Not too wet, not too dry; just the right amount of saliva to lubricate their tongues and let them slip and glide over one another smoothly and sinfully. It'd been a long time since he'd had a kiss that good. Orlando slid his thumb along his bottom lip, wiping away a bit of lingering wetness. The darkness in his eyes was pure lust. Stuart smiled. "This is gonna be good, isn't it?"

"Oh, yeah," Orlando exhaled.

A little over six hours later, Stuart lay flat on his back in bed with Orlando, naked, sweaty and aroused, pumping between his legs. Their cocks pulsed against Stuart's belly and with every thrust of Orlando's hips they rubbed intoxicatingly against one another. Stuart grinned, biting his lip and stroking his hands all across Orlando's shoulders and arms. He slapped to feel how firm the muscles were beneath his hand and let out a moan both at that and the down stroke of Orlando's cock against his. "Oh, god. Fuck." This was what casual sex was all about.

They'd debated it briefly on the drive back to Stuart's place and had both decided they were too sore from weapons training to get into any position to fuck properly; but a good, hard belly rub was entirely within their physical capabilities. A tangle of tongues and teeth and limbs and here they were, blissfully humping at one another like a couple of animals. With a growl, Orlando sealed his mouth over Stuart's and they nipped and licked, bodies still in motion. Then, with a long, desperate moan into the warmth of Orlando's mouth, Stuart popped. Lukewarm fluid shot across his stomach. Orlando followed moments later and Stuart smiled as Orlando collapsed against him, wet chest to wet chest, content in the knowledge that they seemed pretty evenly matched in endurance, too.

With a parting lick across Stuart's neck and a contented, exhausted sigh, Orlando rolled off and settled next to him on the bed. "Ahh," he breathed. "Nothing like a good Princeton Belly Rub."

"A what?" Stuart snickered. "Princeton?"

"You've never heard it called that?"

"No." Arm muscles twitching sorely, Stuart reached over to his bedside table and grabbed up his cigarette and lighter.

"Yeah, mate. That's the term. I guess that's slang, though. Frottage. That's the real word."

The lighter flared in the dim room as Stuart lit his cigarette and let out a puff of smoke. "You know all the terms?"

"A couple. Have to know what to ask for, right?" Orlando stretched, elongating his torso. "I think it's good to know what you like."

Exhaling, Stuart reached over to stroke Orlando's tight, flat stomach. Jesus, but he was a fine thing. Enjoying the feel of muscle, Stuart massaged, working a blend of sweat and semen into Orlando's smooth skin. "What else do you like?" He leaned over to press his mouth to Orlando's, winding their tongues.

"Mmm, I definitely like kissing." Orlando smiled almost boyishly and Stuart felt he caught a glimpse of the confident young man who'd first tried sex and found he liked it. A lot. Orlando plucked the cigarette from between Stuart's fingers and took a drag.

"Kissing," Stuart repeated with a nod, as if making a mental list. And he was. Orlando could prove to be the goldmine he'd been waiting for; he wanted to know how deep the mine would go.

Orlando handed back the cigarette and let out an arching plume of smoke. "Frottage, very good, too, no matter what you call it. Ummmm..." He folded his hands under his head to stare at the ceiling, thinking. "Fucking in general, that's good."

"Top or bottom?"

"Depends on the bloke, I guess. I like `em both. Too much fun to be had, why choose one, yeah?"

"Done anything with toys?"

Orlando shrugged as well he could in his position. "I've messed around with dildos and plugs and stuff, but nothing too crazy. Not gotten into whips and chains or anything." He grinned, teeth white in the dark.

Stuart stroked his palm across a peaked nipple and enjoyed the small tremor in Orlando's breath. "Think you'd like it?" he murmured.

"Can't know till I try it. I don't think I'd like being tied up, though. I have this thing about not being able to move; it freaks me out. Not in a good way." Orlando chuckled self-consciously and rolled onto his side, facing Stuart. "What about you?"

"I haven't been as wild as I'd like. Haven't had the right partner. But I think maybe I'd enjoy whips and chains." He smirked and made great show of pursing his lips to exhale the smoke. He was rewarded by a down-flicker of Orlando's eyes and the eager darting out of his tongue to wet his mouth.

"Would you want to try some of that stuff?" Orlando asked. "Together, here? I mean, not right away, but we've got fifteen months. I'm always up for learning."

"I won't say no." Goldmine, jackpot, and the mine was so deep, it wasn't worth measuring. Stuart leaned over to stamp out his cigarette. "But what I want to know right now is... " Barely giving Orlando a moment to react, Stuart rolled on top of him, lining up their bodies. They both winced a bit at the movement of sore limbs, but Orlando's arms instantly wrapped around Stuart's waist. "How soon can you be up for going over this particular lesson again?"

Orlando's reply was a wicked smile.

Stuart tried very hard not to think about that amazing second go the next day during makeup tests, but he had nothing to do but sit and stare at his own face becoming a rudimentary version of his character, so the memory returned unbidden. Fun, wet, hot, and so fucking sexy, it could redefine several major sins. If he and Orlando could continue to earn those descriptions, he would be very pleased.

That was the first day Peter asked for more grey in Stuart's hair. He asked for more lines around his eyes, too. He asked them to age him.

"Just don't give me laugh lines," Stuart joked. "No one laughs in Middle-earth except the hobbits." Peter chuckled, clapped him on the shoulder and left the trailer, rubbing worriedly at his beard. If he were being honest, Stuart would have to admit that he was terrible at identifying the warning signs of just about anything.