Love Song, part 1 of 4

[watersword]

Title: The Love Song
Author: Élizabeth de l'Epée et du Mot de l'Eau watersword
Fandom: RPF
Pairing, Characters: Viggo Mortensen/Orlando Bloom
Series: Love Song
Rating: R
Archive: Only if you ask, please.
Warnings: Angst, explicit homosexual coitus, Kate Bosworth, nonlinear narrative structure.
Spoilers: Assorted interviews and commentary.
Timeframe: Oh god. Go to individual parts for that, okay? Please?
Summary: What might have happened; what might be happening; what might yet happen.
Disclaimer: This work is complete and total fiction. The author does not know Viggo Mortensen, Orlando Bloom, or any other person mentioned herein, and is making no claims about their sexualities or relationship(s). No money is being made and no disrespect, copyright, or trademark infringement is intended. The poem used is "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," by T. S. Eliot, copyright 1927, quoted without permission, but with complete respect and admiration. Again, no money is being made and no disrespect, copyright, or trademark infringement is intended.
Crossposted to: watersword (friendsfiltered post) and vigorli.
Notes: Many thanks to hija_paloma for assistance and encouragement A and B the C of D.

Timeframe: Early in the filming of Lord of the Rings.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;

"C'mon, let's go," Viggo would say.

"Go where?"

After a while, it became like an incantation—c'mon, let's go, go where? c'mon, let's go, go where? c'mon, let's go, go where?

They could go anywhere, there so far from home. Evening in New Zealand felt sapphire and stretched; l'heure bleu, the French call it, when the very air is a deep, hovering azure. Light is draped over the tops of trees and nestled in beside the hospital.

It wasn't always the two of them, in fact, almost never just the two of them. Various permutations of the cast and crew would come along, and Viggo taught dozens of people the constellations of the southern hemisphere, from childhood memories of Argentina, until Orlando found the public library and figured out that half of Viggo's constellations were made up.

Orlando began making up his own constellations the night his back was spasming in waves, and the painkiller blurred the world around him without softening the velvet-hard ache, while he was slumped against his kitchen table, looking at the sky upside down.

But planets have no up or down, and neither does the sky.

---

Timeframe: Early during filming of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question...
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

Orlando's sense of direction goes one way—down. He feels gravity more sharply than anyone else he knows. He can always find the ground. But he couldn't find his way out a paper bag with a map, his mum claims, and although he hates to admit it, she's right. So when he takes the wrong turning, leading Viggo to the bar one night, he's not really surprised. Annoyed, embarrassed, yeah, but not surprised.

Viggo doesn't seem to mind. He takes Orlando's hand, and in London, Orlando would snatch his hand back, but here, where his job is playing make-believe, he notices first the calluses on the other man's palm, and then the warmth of his skin, before thinking, holy shit. He's holding my hand. And his fingers fit so perfectly between Viggo's fingers, that when he glances down fast, in the dim light, he can't tell which are his, and which are Viggo's.

The little alley they've ended up in is almost empty, and the light from the neon sign of the escort service on their left and the warm beery light of the backpacker's hostel on the corner ahead of them falls on Orlando's face, casting strange shadows. Viggo's fingers twitch against his wrist.

The air is cool and damp, smells of rotting leaves and car exhaust, and suddenly aches with questions. They're lost, and they don't know where they're going. Orlando's mouth is full of saliva, and his tongue feels slick against his teeth. He doesn't know what to say, and thinks that maybe now's the time to crack that lame joke Elwood made on Tuesday about whorehouses and aphrodisiacs. Viggo shakes his head as if he can hear what Orlando's thinking, and in this moment, in this country, in this man's hands, Orlando wouldn't be surprised if he could. Orlando feels as though Viggo is about to crack him open, look at all the slippery organs, glistening with visceral juices, throw his head back and swallow, muscles working in his throat, and there he'll be, cuddled up whole inside Viggo's skin, warm and safe, with his hard skin shed and crunching underfoot.

Viggo pulls him close to his side and looks across at Orlando, their eyes level. His breath smells like toothpaste and oranges. Orlando looks right back, right up until Viggo tilts his head and his breath, surprisingly, doesn't taste like anything but water, which should taste of nothing.

---

Timeframe: at the Troy premiere.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

Car door slams. Noise from outside the theatre fades; bottletop cracks off, carbon dioxide escaping into the slightly-too-cool-for-comfort air. "He looks like —"

"A sculpture," Aleen said, nodding. "Like something from the Renaissance."

"I swear, it's like someone gave Michelangelo's David bedhead!"

"Can't you just imagine what would produce that kind of look?"

"Oh, yeah, baby. Wouldn't even mind morning breath with that mouth!"

---

Timeframe: October, 2002.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening.
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

London. Nine at night, two in the morning in Morocco, one in the afternoon in California. A real old-fashioned heavy London fog, and Viggo's been restless all evening. He's drunk two glasses of milk, one with whiskey added in, called his son, called his mother, for no reason whatsoever. He leans against a streetlamp and lights a cigarette. A dog barks in the next street, and Viggo whistles a little cadence-coda softly. The windows around him glisten with the damp. A drainpipe in an alley nearby gurgles. It's always raining in England; makes Viggo wonder how Orlando and Sean and Dom survived growing up in this country with smiles as easy and irrepressible as theirs are. Fate, he thinks sometimes—fate, everything, he's never had any choice, especially about whom he loves.

Where is he now?

He's been to London before, can handle it fairly well, but doesn't recognize this street. Doesn't matter. Once he finds the Tube station, he can make his way back, and he's pretty sure he remembered his cell phone, and he can always call the hotel and ask for directions. He doesn't need them yet, though. It's a nice neighbourhood here, actually—Georgian houses, small front gardens, cast-iron railings on terraces.

Viggo watches the fog drift through the halo of light from the streetlamp. Someone has built a fire nearby. Viggo throws his head back and inhales the scent of the smoke. He wishes he had his camera, and then stops thinking altogether. The air is still and surprisingly warm for October; wet, but – Viggo turns his jacket collar up. That'll do. He rolls his shoulders. The bones creak solidly, and he belongs in his own body again. A wave of fatigue washes over him. Yeah. He can probably retrace his steps.

---

Timeframe: During filming of Kingdom of Heaven.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;

"Fame is fleeting," Jeremy said across the room. "What's the assembled company going to do when we lose it?" The babble of talk always present when there are almost a dozen people in a room jumped several decibels—sleep with someone who's famous; become a con artist; finish university; garden; fritter all of one's earnings on blackjack and five-card stud.

"Go back to London," Orlando thought. "Go back, and find out what happened to my home whilst I wasn't there. Sit and drink a cup of tea with two lumps of sugar all afternoon. Watch the greasy streaks on the Thames through my own window. Find that mews in Canterbury that fills with fog in the morning and glows from the streetlamps next to it, but only if you watch the sunrise through it. I'll do all that, when I'm gone."

---

Timeframe: During the filming of Alatriste.

There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

"Getting into character is a process a lot like falling in love. It's never instantaneous. There's the initial infatuation, and the slow arrival at understanding, with all its attendant annoyances and stresses and minor catastrophes, with all the discomfort associated with trying on a new skin — who am I when I'm with you? and without you? — and then, finally, coming to a peaceable resolution."

(Cluttered bottles of "they're not makeup, jesus" next to the shower curtain, the twitch of the upper lip to keep the moustache out of morning coffee.)

"That's the best way to do it — a long process of discovery, of preparation, that leaves you with a foundation," and suddenly Viggo wasn't sure which he was talking about anymore.

---

Timeframe: During filming for Troy.

There will be time to murder and create,

"Seriously, the draft two drafts ago was good. And it's, you know, a good story, all the desperation and need, and people being so human it breaks your heart from all that time away, but this — jesus christ, Vig, it's bollocks!"

"You don't have script approval."

"Yeah, catch me doing that again when it's, like, a blockbuster, you know. Bollocks. Bean's furious, dunno why, at least he has a good part. They've taken all the interesting bits out, and left me with this twelve-year-old pretty boy!"

Viggo snickered. "Sorry. I know you're not twelve."

"Viiiiig."

"I said I was sorry. And Paris is supposed to be fair of face and form beyond the, uh, ken of man, isn't he?"

"Isn't that, I dunno, Milton?"

"Whatever."

"You've never read Milton."

"Might've done."

"Gone and murdered my character, and my boyfriend won't cheer me up from across an ocean," Orlando grumbled.

"Called you beautiful."

"You're my boyfriend, you have to think that, and anyway, you didn't."

"Did so."

"Not."

"I made up Milton for you, and look, do what you can with this, and get it over with, and come back to me, okay? Explore fear with the guy, remember what it felt like to be afraid, to risk everything for being in love, doing something phenomenally stupid, and the relief when it turns out perfect, and then watch it all fall to pieces around you, and it's your fault, and you can't do anything to stop it, everything you do makes it worse."

"See, that's the part I wanted."

"Make it happen."

"Hard work."

"Worth it."

---

Timeframe: During filming of Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest.

And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me.
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,

One of the best things about their long separations is that they are apart and cannot feel guilty about it. Actually, they can, but they have promised each other that they will not. The worst part of being married for Viggo was that he could never be alone. Not all the way alone, not in the way he needed; but when Orlando is shooting night scenes seven time-zones away, they can't really talk, and he can be alone. Orlando doesn't like to admit it, but it is a relief to have a few day or weeks in which they are not constantly in each other's presence. Thoughts, yes, presence, no. Viggo understands this, even though Orlando’s never said it.

Sometimes he thinks this is a deep flaw in their relationship, sometimes he thinks it's good that they exist separately as well as together. He doodles when he considers either possibility, which isn't often, and the doodles are squares connected at the sides; sometimes he turns them into calendars that show how long until he and Orlando are together again. Sometimes he kinks paperclips until they form most of a question mark, and hooks them together, and stabs them into the tasteless pastries on the paper plate in the catering truck. Question-a-Cupcake, better than a Magic 8-Ball!

Viggo likes having the house to himself. He can stand staring into the fridge, lost in thought, trying to decide between cheddar and Monterey Jack. And then he will always choose mozzarella, because the cheddar is Henry's favorite, and the Monterey Jack was an experiment, bought for sandwiches that never got made.

Orlando dithers over room service menus for longer than he likes to admit when he's alone, but it's not – it's not – he just likes thinking about the possibilities of everything. That's all. He likes changing his mind. He likes that he can choose here. He may be in a hotel room he didn't pick, working on a schedule he doesn't control, with colleagues he didn't ask for, but he can choose what he eats, and he takes so much delight in this that he doesn't like to admit it.

Sometimes, the choices spiral inside his head, and become memories. French onion soup on a menu makes him think of the time he and Dom decided to grill spring onions at Viggo's house, not admitting that it was just because they didn't want to have the scent linger in Dom's kitchen. Anything with tomato sauce reminds him of the time Eric started imitating the defeat of Paris and splattered ketchup across the food tent. He laughed, but he's still not sure if he's hurt. The memory is actually inaccurate; Eric kept the imitation short and it wasn't very messy. A few napkins were enough to clean it up.

---

Timeframe: During filming of Elizabethtown.

Before the taking of a toast and tea.

Orlando insists on a five-minute break every day for teatime; he's English enough for that. It doesn't matter exactly when it is, but sometime in the afternoon, he'll always sidle over to Cam and say softly, "Can I take five?" Cam'll nod, and wave him off.

Teatime makes him think of Sam, and that's when he calls her most often. Of course, it's never teatime for her when he calls, but that's OK. He tells her it's teatime, and she says instantly, "I want Marmite toast and iced biscuits, please."

"You always stole my biscuits," he claims now, though he stole her toast until he was about twelve, when he realized how much he hated Marmite. He choked it down grimly when he was a student, and trying vegetarianism — good source of protein, though much less pleasurable than blowjobs. Foul brown stuff, tastes like shoe polish, he knows now, and it's one thing he'll never miss about England.

"Little liar."

"Fascist big sister."

"You can't even spell fascist, shorty." He learned the word long before he could spell, but it still confuses him — s's and c's look strange together; the word "conscious" will never pass his pen unscathed.

"Taller 'n you are," he reminds her.

"Fuck you," Sam says, but she's giggling, and he hears her shift in bed, under her mound of blankets. He spares a mental moment to hope that there's no one else with her, because, for one, the bloke'll suffocate, and for another — he hunches a little, pressing his mobile closer to his ear. His paper cup of lukewarm tea is propped between his feet.

"You kiss your mother with that mouth?"

"Nope, I kiss yours." The joke comes from their teen years and has a bitter tinge to it, even now. Orlando bites his lip, and hears someone a few feet away swear, quite creatively, in a thick Kentucky accent.

"I love you, you know that, yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Go back to sleep," he says, because her last word was broken off by a yawn. "I'll call you. You're okay?"

"I'm fine. Mum's painted the back garden chairs, don't tell her I told you, it's meant to be a terrific surprise when you come. When are you coming home?"

"Dunno. When I can, I guess. Oh, shit, I have to go."

"G'night, baby brother."

"Sleep well, Sam." He's still not seen the chairs.

---

Feedback would be adored, treasured, worshiped, and clung to.

Part 2

Comments

[sarahphym.livejournal.com]

omg this is so ironic because i just read this poem yesterday in my american lit class! haven't read it yet, i just had to comment like NOW. what a coinkidink.

[watersword]

Indeed. It's an amazing piece, and so powerful. Eliot was remarkable, wasn't he?