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The kiss on the Dunharrow set? That was done for show, purely, because we old blokes aren't like the young boys anymore. We don't twist into an intricate knot of limbs that begs the question "Where do you end and where does he begin?" in public. No, not like that at all. We're far more civilized.
***
The rise was steeper than Bernard had expected, and up on the plateau the air was cooler, sharper than in the valley and on the dirt road they had travelled. The trailers had been laboriously arranged in a half-circle, "to keep the Wargs away," as Barrie had put it. It was pleasant to sit by the fire, he reflected, and have the heat scald his legs while the evening chill wrapped around his back. The bottles of red wine had been neatly set near the cooking pit, in order to keep the night air from chilling them too much.
As the hours wore on, the light waning and the fire sparking wider, not higher, the conversation transmuted into a comfortable murmur. Anecdotes were traded, the subject matters slowly changing from the merely amusing to the darker follies of youth. Every even minutely sordid confession was greeted with raucous laughter, and he could hear the vast night silence bend with noise. Laughter blended with the woodsmoke curling upward.
Bernard sat on an overturned crate, sharing seating space with Karl. Every time he looked across, over the fire, Viggo caught his gaze. It seemed nothing less than subtle witchcraft. Miranda was buckling under the spell, leaning on Viggo's shoulder with a wide and sleepy smile, her narrow hands wedged into one pocket of Viggo's jacket. Bernard leaned to the side slightly, trying to find a new angle from which to look at Viggo in the way he wanted to, the angle from which he could watch in his own time without being caught. As he shifted, he could feel Karl's muscles tense, and it made him tense up, until it felt as though the two of them were enemies, squaring up before battle. The wine bottle he held was slipping from his grip, the neck tarnished with soot and fat, and he quickly set it down, hearing it clink as it settled on the stone-laced sand. Karl grasped it in turn, bringing it to his lips to drink.
***
"Lhim*," Viggo called, turning to face John and Bernard as they stood on the ridge of the slope, looking down at the river. "A second one."
Viggo was grinning like a happy loon as he held the freshly caught trout in his hands, his cowboy hat cocked at a jaunty angle on his wigged head. Orlando scuffled back and forth in the sand, trying to find a decent angle for a photograph as the rest of the group obediently gathered around to have a look and a laugh and then one by one trailed back to the fire.
"Trust a Ranger to empty the lake of fish," John grumbled in true Gimli fashion, pointing vaguely at either the river or Viggo as they walked down the slope. "You don't suppose he lures the fish?" he added, then laughed. "Maybe he sings to them."
"I think fish are deaf," Bernard tried, then shied back half a step as Viggo walked up to them, still cradling the trout. "What am I going to do with that bloody thing?" he asked, lifting his hands as Viggo made as if to hand him the glistening fish.
"Gut it and cook it," Viggo said, brandishing the fish like a trophy.
"You're the fisherman, you do it," Bernard said, but obediently took the cold-slippery fish and held it while Viggo gathered his gear.
***
"We have proper cooking gear, you know," Bernard said as he watched Viggo carve makeshift spits for the fish.
"Don't spoil my fun," Viggo retorted, stoking the fire. "They taste better like this."
As they divided up the grilled trout on paper plates, Viggo dismissed the plastic fork he was offered, instead picking at the pink slivers of fish with his bare fingers as Aragorn might do.
Bernard gave wry smile at the sight, then went back to listening to a heated conversation between Barrie and Karl concerning horses. The next time he turned to look at Viggo, the younger man was nowhere to be seen. He stood up, brushing stray soot flecks off his trouser legs. "I'll go check that Viggo hasn't managed to blunder into the water and drown himself," he offered by way of explanation.
There was a clear path down to the water, a wide footway where the cast had trundled down the slight slope, trampling the high grass underfoot. The sand had formed strange dunes, as though the river tried to be a sea ringed by mountains. Each constellation was somehow different from the ones he could recall, and there seemed to be so many more stars to see than back in England. On impulse, he sat down in the damp sand, then gave a content sigh and lay back.
The sand rasped pleasantly under his back, the grains dragging at the skin left bare when his shirt slid up. In remembrance of stupid deeds past. He could hear Miranda laughing by the fire, a clear and honest sound. Another sound intruded on the laughter, the sound of sand and grass being disturbed. "Get up, silly fucker," Viggo said, his voice mellowed to a croon from the wine and smoke. "Or do you want me to loudly proclaim old man Bernard has fallen and can't get up?" He shook his head as best he could in the sand, and then stretched his arm out. "Help me up, then," he said, letting himself be hauled to his feet. Standing, he slung his arm over Viggo's shoulders, leaning his weight on the younger man.
"What's your excuse?" he murmured into Viggo's hair as he gripped the strong neck. "Why are you wandering in the dark, away from the fire?"
"Waiting," Viggo said, not bothering to add subjects or objects to the answer. He canted his head back, shifting lazily but not trying do dislodge Bernard's hold.
"For what?" Bernard knew he was idling, buying time with questions he didn't need an answer to. "The Elf?" he pressed. "True nightfall? Silence?"
"Inspiration," Viggo said, scuffing a circle in the coarse sand with his boot heel. "Try standing in this circle," he went on, walking around Bernard without taking his gaze off the other man.
Bernard obeyed, shaking the last sand off his hands. "Are you sure there's enough light for you?" he asked. Viggo gave a non-committal shrug, as if to say it didn't matter.
He didn't smile or attempt to pose for the camera, because that would only have merited him a telling-off. However relaxed he felt, he still flinched at the flash, suddenly bright in the gloom. He blinked, feeling suddenly rudely awoken from a half-sleep. As he moved, he felt the damp sand drag at his shoes, and he moved away before he got his feet sodden.
Lowering the camera, Viggo stretched in the last rays of dusty sunlight slanting over the ridge of the slope. Bernard could see a thin sliver of bare stomach and the barest of trails downward from the navel as Viggo's jeans dipped dangerously low. Laughter and a shake of his head as he caught Bernard watching. The laughter evened out to a low chuckle as he lit a cigarette, flicking the match out in the water.
"You look like you want to jump me," he said, slowly and with a sleepily sultry lilt to the already low voice. The cigarette smoke billowed from between lightly parted lips in time with the words.
"You'd like that, I imagine," Bernard calmly retorted, leaning in to pluck the half-smoked cigarette from Viggo's mouth. Taking a swift drag, he carefully replaced the battered cigarette between Viggo's lips.
"Try me," Viggo challenged.
Bernard looked at Viggo, a slow smile forming on his face. He stepped in closer, breaching personal space in one confident stride. His hand skimmed the air a half-inch above Viggo's body, over chest and stomach, hip-curve, then along his side, up to his shoulder, and then finally, a feathery caress to the vulnerable hollow of his throat. There was a little sound of surprise from Viggo, something almost like a lungful of smoke inhaled too quickly. The cigarette gave a similar little hiss as Viggo dropped it and scuffed it into the sand.
Viggo tasted of woodsmoke when Bernard kissed him, and of the charred and greasy fish they had grilled over the open fire. Small details, those, and not terribly romantic, just as the trailers jutting on the rise like humpbacked beasts weren't terribly romantic.
He could feel the slight ridge running diagonally over Viggo's front tooth. Their beards rasped together in the kiss, creating a strange friction. Real beards for real men. It was a play of opposites and likenesses.
The sensation was unusually strong, potent and heated, and he didn't know if it was because it was Viggo or not.
"Came around at last?" Viggo asked, idly righting the collar of Bernard's rumpled shirt.
"We're drunk," Bernard said, side-stepping the question and trying to keep from laughing. "And we're too old for this," he went on, leaning on Viggo where they stood in the waist-high grass.
"Nah," Viggo said, leaning in for another kiss. Bolder this time, and clumsier. Their teeth knocked together, once, and then Bernard had the presence of mind to move closer.
"Hair. Watch it," Viggo said, the words garbled by the kiss. Bernard obediently loosened his grip on the long strands of hair he'd been holding, suddenly mindful of the fact that it was a wig.
He brushed the mocha-dark hair behind Viggo's ears, out of harm's way. It was an oddly coy gesture, one he associated with days much longer past. Viggo gave a little laugh, treading the fingers of his left hand through the silken ends, then laced his fingers with Bernard's. Answering the laugh with a smile of his own, Bernard blessed his years of experience as he undid the buttons of Viggo's fly deftly with one hand. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Viggo raise an eyebrow, and he felt his own smile widen.
"Didn't think I had it in me, did you?"
***
We're old, and we're scarred and we like our lager cold and our discussions civil. Although, some of us like the outdoors, and the feel of sand scraping up the bare skin of our back and thighs just like it did when we were an age of the world younger.
When being civilized was what old people were.