Chapter Text
Billy, when he's not freaking out, spends much of his time in bed laughing.
Or no, that's not really right. In bed, he spends most of his time sleeping, or rather wishing he was sleeping. And alone. Yes. Usually. Which may be pitiful compared to the personal lives of the rest of the cast, but that's how he is and he's come to accept that he'll be sleeping -- or not sleeping -- alone for much of his life. He deals with it with a stack of engaging history books on one side of the bed and a stack of skinrags and handkerchiefs on the other.
But when someone else is there, when "in bed" is just a euphemism for sex, he's usually laughing. Because as much as he adores a good romantic evening, there's something just ridiculous about it culminating in sex. Sex is inherently ridiculous. How can anyone possibly stay serious about being turned on by mushing one face up against another, about walking around with a red swollen erection bouncing against his belly, about the look on a woman's face when she comes, or the sounds he makes when he comes? Once, at a girlfriend's house, he called his home phone from his cell and let the answering machine record until the tape ran out. When he listened to it later, it cracked him up. When he came, he sounded like a particularly ill buffalo. What he imagined an ill buffalo would sound like.
He kept the tape. After Ellen left him, he cried the first time he heard it, but even through the tears he laughed.
He didn't bring the tape with him to New Zealand. He'd thought about it, but imagined trying to explain it to the customs agents, and well. . . he'd left it in storage at his Gran's house with the rest of his worldly goods, and hoped to god she didn't go through those boxes and see the label: "Sex with El".
Occasionally -- usually when he thought that the next killer wave, or next undertrained orc, or god forbid, the next fucking huge hungry shark was going to do him in -- he'd flash to a scene of his family sorting through his things after his funeral and finding that tape along with the rest of his embarrassing secrets. The thought of what the tabloids would make of it ("Pervy Pippin" the headline would read, "Dead Hobbit-man's stash of kinky home-made porn") would lend him that extra bit of adrenaline he needed to survive. And once the immediate danger passed, he'd go aside and laugh and shake for a bit until he had himself under control again.
Peter and some of the ADs thought he had a deathwish after he did that on set a couple times. Scared the hell out of them at first, and then they'd thought it was just hysterics, which Billy thought it wasn't, quite, but he didn't quite know how to explain it. Dom came over once when he was shaking to give him a comforting hug, but the thought of the tabloid headlines ("Pervy Pippin and Mate Merry: Gay Hobbits Frolic Down Under") had him howling with laughter, tears streaming down his face, laughing so hard it'd hurt. And that little episode had cost them nearly an hour's worth of filming time, once he'd calmed down and the makeup people had fixed his face and the eartip that'd fallen off. So now they just let him get through the hysterics on his own, and figured it was one of those things, like Viggo occasionally spouting poetry in some incomprehensible language, or Orli's fashion-crime shirts.
When faced with death, he usually freaked out and laughed. And when faced with sex he usually laughed. Which occasionally caused some misunderstandings with his partners, but except for once, it'd never scuttled the event completely.
Except that very occasionally, he was too busy freaking out during sex to notice that they were being ridiculous. Like last night.