Love Song, part 3 of 4
Dec. 10th, 2005 03:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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vigorliTitle: The Love Song
Author: Élizabeth de l'Epée et du Mot de l'Eau![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
watersword
Fandom: RPF
Pairing, Characters: Viggo Mortensen/Orlando Bloom
Series: Love Song (I, II)
Rating: NC-17
Archive: Only if you ask, please.
Warnings: Angst, slightly explicit homosexual coitus, Kate Bosworth.
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 ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
vigorli.
Notes: Many thanks tohija_paloma for assistance and encouragement A and B the C of D. Thanks to mari_yagami for help with translation.
When Viggo arrived for the eleven-o'clock meeting, his contact was running twenty minutes late. "I'm so sorry," the wide-eyed receptionist said, her red lipstick a slash of blood on naturally pale skin fake-tanned to a deep bronze, "there's been a mix-up, and this actor wouldn't leave, and wouldn't leave, and just…it all, like, snowballed from there, you know?"
"Yeah," Viggo said politely. "I know." I know about snowballs, he thought. Ice crystals on woollen mittens, the satisfying crunch of packing the ball of snow tighter and tighter til it stings on flesh, pyramids of snowballs ready to be hurled at any invader. Oh, yes. I know about snowballs.
The young woman, clearly just out of college, if that, was wearing a dress with red birds on it. Her perfume was nothing floral or tropical, it was probably marketed as a perfume for the modern, urban woman. Probably overpriced. Not that Viggo would have known any of this. All he thought about her perfume was a vague intimation that it didn't match. He's never paid much attention to women of that type, nor they to him until recently.
The damn perfume was distracting, because it didn't match, or maybe it was the woman who didn't match, as hard as she tried with the fake tan, and the discreet rhinestones. Whatever it was, he could not concentrate, for the entire thirty minutes he had to wait, but couldn't pinpoint why. The article in Rolling Stone was one Orlando would understand, not him, and he nearly reached for his cell phone to call and ask what the hell kind of band had that for a name, and there Orlando was again, in his head.
He'd been trying to stop thinking of Orlando. It was the damn perfume—usually the people around him, the women, didn't bother with perfume, and this stuff was distracting him. Or maybe it was just Orlando, who wouldn't get the hell out of his head.
Orlando, hungover, head on his kitchen table, arms out to the side like Christ, dissolved into Orlando, hugging Liv, her wrap's slippery fringe twined in his fingers, and faded to black. When the receptionist, whom he probably should have called something else, said, "You can go on in now," her smile bright and her teeth the color of clouds, he nearly told her to change the way she wanted things, to change from wanting things altogether, to begin to want desire itself, or at least an incarnation of desire (doubtless she wanted his own incarnation of longing, the way yearning gleamed in his mind, how lust looked to him, all wrapped up in long lashes and a slightly crooked smile; even if only casually) – but even a crazy poet can't get away with that. It would have been an invasion of the worst kind, to suppose he understood her, just because she made him think of the feeling of sunburned scalp under his fingers and the prickle of new hair against his palm.
And would he have told her that he was in love, and how could she have understood him, and if she had, what would or could she have said? How do you say something important?
So Viggo simply nodded, and smiled back, and followed her limp-wristed gesture into the room with Paul Klee prints and pale grey carpet.
You. have. reached. four. nine. seven. one. please. leave. a. message. "I hate leaving you messages. God knows I do it enough, but I still hate it. I never know what to say. You know all the obvious stuff — I love you, I miss you, I'm coming home soon, I hope you're having a good day, call me, I love you." Beep.
Hi, it's Orlando. I can't answer my mobile right now, but if you leave a message, I'll call you back. "You could tell me about your day. It's nearly full dark here, even with daylights savings time, and after dinner, with Henry doing his physics homework, poor kid, I took the dogs out for a ramble. They didn't really need it, cause they spent most of the day when I was out running errands —" Beep.
Hi, it's Orlando. I can't answer my mobile right now, but if you leave a message, I'll call you back. "— They were in the back yard and he took them out for a walk before breakfast, but I had nothing better to do, and there's that little section with all the stucco houses crammed together and the overhanging windowsills almost touching overhead, and I thought it was as good a place as any to be when I can't be in your arms. There was a guy wearing a shirt that had a faded picture of the Rocky —" Beep.
Hi, it's Orlando. I can't answer my mobile right now, but if you leave a message, I'll call you back. "— Rocky Mountains on the shirt, this deep blue, faded at the neck. He waved hello, and I thought of you, so friendly to strangers. So friendly, always. I remember the first time we met, and how you hugged me hard, and I felt your fingertips pressing along the line of my shoulderblade and thought, there you are, hello. He was smoking a pipe, the way my English teacher in Watertown did, smoked a pipe and talked —" Beep.
Hi, it's Orlando. I can't answer my mobile right now, but if you leave a message, I'll call you back. "— He talked about Allen Ginsberg like some kind of prophet, with those jackets with the presewn leather elbow patches on, and he'd take it off, and roll up his sleeves if he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, but he usually wasn't, usually he had on short sleeves, even in the winter, and fuck it gets cold in Watertown in February. The guy I saw today had on a short-sleeved shirt, but I told you that already, didn't I? He looked so lonely —" Beep.
Hi, it's Orlando. I can't answer my mobile right now, but if you leave a message, I'll call you back. "— But that was probably why he smiled at me. Nothing better to do on a gorgeous spring evening than smoke and watch a mostly empty street. No worse than me, I guess, with nothing better to do than leave you phone messages and walk the dogs. I guess I could watch TV, but the news is all depressing, and I hate sitcoms, they're only funny when you make fun of the acting —" Beep.
Hi, it's Orlando. I can't answer my mobile right now, but if you leave a message, I'll call you back. "— I'd love to get that episode of whatever-it-was that Johnny was on and see if you can make fun of that, cause you always say that he can't act badly. There's always phone sex, but that's kind of hard to have with a machine. And it's hard to have phone sex when I'm so tired, you know that? Just getting older, the body falling to pieces, thin at the edges, ragged. I miss you. You heal me. If you were here, I'd be sitting here at the table —" Beep.
Hi, it's Orlando. I can't answer my mobile right now, but if you leave a message, I'll call you back. "— I'm sitting here anyway, but you'd be bouncing in your chair, talking about your plans to go surfing this weekend, talking about the article in the National Geographic about the ocean floor and the igneous rocks that keep being formed there because of the volcanic vents and the coldness of the waters —" Beep.
Hi, it's Orlando. I can't answer my mobile right now, but if you leave a message, I'll call you back. "— So the lava hardens much faster than it ever otherwise would. They found a new species of crab or something last week, I don't know if you saw, it lives way deep under the ocean, and it has claws bigger than the rest of itself, two pairs of 'em, walks on one and uses the other to catch things with and switches which it uses for which, kind of like using your feet or your hands —" Beep.
Hi, it's Orlando. I can't answer my mobile right now, but if you leave a message, I'll call you back. "— Whichever limb you feel like. Do you want me to save you the article? And I'd be looking at you, and the smudge of chili on your cheek, that's what we had for dinner, and I'd crook my fingers and you'd look at me and grin and lean over. And I'd lick your cheek, and tell you that's what was wrong with dinner, it didn't have you flavoring it, and you'd say, you know, I could —" Beep.
Hi, it's Orlando. I can't answer my mobile right now, but if you leave a message, I'll call you back. "— Could make a truly tasteless joke right now but you'd be horrified, and I'd say try me, and you'd shake your head and say I can use my mouth for something better even than Orlando-flavored chili and I'd know what you were talking about, oh god would I know, and I'd kiss you, and it would be better than the chili because it would taste like you all the way you, and I'd be breathing in your scent, you left —" Beep.
Hi, it's Orlando. I can't answer my mobile right now, but if you leave a message, I'll call you back. "—you left a scarf of yours here, of course you did, you hardly need it there, but it smells like you and the ranch, the stable, in Idaho because it's actually my scarf, you just stole it, but that's okay, mi casa es su casa, eres mi corazón, and last night when I found it, it smelled so much like you I was rubbing the front of my jeans before I realized —" Beep.
Hi, it's Orlando. I can't answer my mobile right now, but if you leave a message, I'll call you back. "— what I was doing. I'm doing it again, just thinking about you here, because you've been here and you're coming back, and you're going to be at the table again, smiling at me, and kissing me with the kisses of your mouth, and it'll be your hand right there, just exactly right there where the edge of everything is, where I am, where my fingertip —" Beep.
Hi, it's Orlando. I can't answer my mobile right now, but if you leave a message, I'll call you back. "— where the nail is bruised, is dragging, and everything around me is you, your hand and your eyes and your breath on me, oh god, listen to me breathe just the way I do when you touch me, when you look at me, because it's you touching me, you pressing just below, you not moving your fingers, damn you, my jeans still mostly on, your hand trapped in the folds, the zipper leaving marks on your hand, the pressure —" Beep.
Hi, it's Orlando. I can't answer my mobile right now, but if you leave a message, I'll call you back. "—steady and there and there oh god just there, more please, more, I can feel every pump of my heart, every rush of blood, my hands feel swollen and my heartbeat is painful, the rasp of cloth, on my fingers, on my cock, I can't keep still, but my jeans are bunched up and I don't have enough room to move my hips, I need more pressure, more, oh god god please, oh, oh, tóqueme, tóqueme, cogeme, —" Beep.
Hi, it's Orlando. I can't answer my mobile right now, but if you leave a message, I'll call you back. "— jesus, drowning, drowning, ahogando, Orlando, please, I can’t…" Beep.
You. have. reached. four. nine. seven. one. please. leave. a. message. "Oh. My. Fucking. God." And then a gasp, a series of them, and silence, and a slow, soft sigh. Beep.
Viggo's house has no clocks in it. Almost none, anyway. There's one in the darkroom in the basement (with only a second hand), and a timer in the kitchen, and a broken pocket watch that Henry bought at a garage sale three years ago, and that's all.
Orlando should be unnerved that he doesn't know how much time he's spent here, but he can't bring himself to care. Late-afternoon autumn sunshine warms the floorboards, or at least it was still shining the last time he opened his eyes to check. Maybe by now, the light has faded into twilight, or even darkness. He squirms a little, his back protesting at the way his spine jabs into the bare boards, and then slows his breathing carefully until it matches the cadence of the man's next to him: easy and deliberate, in control, and occasionally it hitches in dreams.
Orlando's jeans are draped over a stack of notebooks and sketchbooks (smudged with dirt, pages marked with playing cards and pieces of grass) under the painting on the north wall. Viggo's shirt, the pale red one with the Marianne Moore poetry inked on the left sleeve and the marijuana leaf silkscreened on the back, is bunched under his head.
The floorboards are as hard as he has been told, and cannot believe, he must become; pine is supposed to be the softest wood, but he remembers the rough scrape against his palms the last time they were here, the sticky bite of the bark into his skin, and the damp of Viggo's breath on his shoulder.
It was warmer then, warm enough to fuck outdoors and not worry; Orlando's back always sparkles with cold, a line of white fire-ice along his spine, tiny pulsing pinpricks of remembered agony and present ache. It was warm then. He was warm; he was hot, his skin tight with sun and desire, the pale mark on his left wrist faded. No wristwatches, Viggo had said, the first morning they woke up, tangled together in pale-green sheets in Idaho. No time here. Orlando didn't ask whether he meant that this place is timeless or that they had no time to be there.
Now, the sky is bleached from the summer's vanished heat, and the horizon gleams with the promise of cold.
Orlando worries sometimes that the world's going to end.
"V?"
"Yeah?"
"…I love you."
"Right back atcha, querido."
It may not be what I meant to say, may not even be close to what I need to say, what needs to be said, but it needs to be said just as much, maybe more, even though it isn't enough anymore, our small leaf made of truth, when it's floating on such a vast lake, hell, call it what it is, a damn ocean, of lies and fakes and – shut up. He's the poet, and this, what is it, a metaphor, a simile?, doesn't even make sense.
Nothing makes sense. I don't know why he loves me, why he goes on loving me, and I don't know how to ask. I can't tell him to stop, I can't lie to him that much, and I can't believe he's going to go on. I couldn't go on if I didn't love him, but I can't believe that's enough anymore.
But to say it now, crumbs still in the corners of his mouth, bergamot still under my tongue, puddled sweet, coloured water drying in the spoons, would be cruel, and though I'll have to do it sometime, now isn't sometime, now is now.
There are prices that must be paid. I've learned that. There's a balance to everything: you get what you get, what you deserve, sometimes, but you always pay in the end.
He never knew that the first time I let him in, let him fuck me, tears seeped, unbidden, from between my shut lids afterwards. Ignorance has a heavy toll on it; he never knew, I never told him. I wouldn't even now.
He doesn't need to know, he needs to pay.
There were so many meals we skipped in favor of sex. Hash browns gone soggy and greasy and cold because I chose the hard, slick, warm slide of his cock between my lips instead; sandwiches fallen apart on the paper plate for the ants to devour because he wanted to pry me apart, slide his fingers into the channel of my ass and open me up; we were starving for each other and didn't give a thought to the children in Africa.
We were worshippers, and his skin tasted like salt sometimes; I never asked why. I knew. Knowledge, too, has a tax.
I should have known better. I would pay that price gladly, if I had been right. But I had never done this before—oh, I don't mean been with a man, I'd done that. But Orlando's body was a new country, a new experience, and I could not reconcile the receipt marked paid in full in my heart with this new love affair.
I thought they were in different currency. I was wrong. Error is no excuse for nonpayment.
I didn't pay, and didn't pay, and I'm still not paying: he's paying. I know. He can afford it, you say. You're wrong. No one can afford this.
Love—I did love him—is no excuse for leaving the bill to him. I should pay it, I knew it'd come, and pretended, even to myself, that I didn't know, that it would never come. Lying has a steep price.
I've paid that price myself, a dozen times over, a thousand. All these bills have come due in my life, so I should know them, but I didn't.
I should have known, but I didn't. I didn't know, I promise you that, and I know the price for the truth. I'll pay that gladly now, for saying this: I did not know what the price would be. I did not know what Orlando would have to pay. For me, for him, for our love affair; I don't know what the bill's marked for, but it's meant for us.
If we were together, we would have enough to pay, but the bank account of my heart is empty. So sorry, Mr. Mortensen, but we can't give you a loan. We are not together, and so the price is steeper, and so I should not care.
No account to me. Doesn't affect my balance.
Orlando knows he will not always be popular. He has accepted that. He has tried to, anyway; listed all the ways his life will better without fame, celebrity, fangirls, the whole shebang. He doesn’t really believe it, but he has accepted it.
He even says so. If you say it enough, it becomes true. I won't always be this kind of star, I've accepted that. They're my family and I love them. We're very happy together. If you say it enough, you can make it true. Will is a powerful thing. So is speech.
If you – I – only say it once, it doesn't count – can't believe – can't be believed – how much this is going to make me sound like I'm in love with the guy.
He's older now. He's a little longer in the tooth. He’s got a running bet on with himself over who will replace him in the public mind; he stands to win a lot of money off himself, no matter who it is.
Thank god for the wool lining on his trenchcoat; a raw rain is sluicing down the windows, and he knows that the two drinks he's had won't keep him warm for much longer, if they're doing that at all. Someone kisses his cheek, and he weaves past the dull grey and navy suits to the coatcheck, shoving his hands in his pockets as he goes.
The bloke behind the gleaming, waxed walnut counter looks like a skull. This is what happened to the gay community as he grew up: walking dead amongst the living, a reminder of the danger of love. This is why he doesn't say anything that means anything about anyone who means something.
His head hurts when he thinks like this. He tips the guy extra and smiles, hoping that that "Orlando magic!" will give him that one extra white blood cell, jump his T-cells a tiny bit more. The death's-head grimace he gets in return makes him swallow hard as he drops a dollar (this is America, right? Not Japan? Not Morocco?) into the discreet cup.
He donates anonymously. Always anonymously, but he donates. He doesn't think that's enough, and rages silently every time he goes to an environmental fundraiser instead of a gay pride or an AIDS benefit, but he was gay-bashed when he was sixteen and that's why his nose is crooked.
Crooked. Nothing about him is straight. Nothing about him is normal. Nothing. He is nothing.
"Make sure this is what we both want," Viggo says. "Make absolutely certain, because we can't go back."
He says it, like a mantra, whenever Orlando isn't there, to remind himself, that this is what they want. They've talked about it a thousand times, over cups of cocoa-with-whiskey-shots-added in Idaho; when Orlando's mouth was sweet and bitter and tasted of oranges all at once at breakfast; when Bean was in the kitchen, adding obscene amounts of sugar to his tea.
When he and Henry had gone to the Getty Museum, he found himself eerily drawn to the china display while his son rolled his eyes and went off to examine Klimt's jewel-like, frightened women. He stared at intricate, feathery patterns of paint, feminine detailing on parrots and flowers until they blurred before his eyes and coalesced into possibilities—what he had had, what he did have, what he could have, and that was where the possibilities splintered into thousands.
When they talk about it, he does mean it, every word. Even over the phone, he means it when he tells Orlando that he's fine, that it makes him happy to know that Orlando is enjoying his work so much. Orlando drops the issue when he says that.
Feedback would be adored, treasured, worshiped, and clung to.
Part 4
Author: Élizabeth de l'Epée et du Mot de l'Eau
waterswordFandom: RPF
Pairing, Characters: Viggo Mortensen/Orlando Bloom
Series: Love Song (I, II)
Rating: NC-17
Archive: Only if you ask, please.
Warnings: Angst, slightly explicit homosexual coitus, Kate Bosworth.
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. Thanks to mari_yagami for help with translation.Timeframe: Late 2003
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
When Viggo arrived for the eleven-o'clock meeting, his contact was running twenty minutes late. "I'm so sorry," the wide-eyed receptionist said, her red lipstick a slash of blood on naturally pale skin fake-tanned to a deep bronze, "there's been a mix-up, and this actor wouldn't leave, and wouldn't leave, and just…it all, like, snowballed from there, you know?"
"Yeah," Viggo said politely. "I know." I know about snowballs, he thought. Ice crystals on woollen mittens, the satisfying crunch of packing the ball of snow tighter and tighter til it stings on flesh, pyramids of snowballs ready to be hurled at any invader. Oh, yes. I know about snowballs.
The young woman, clearly just out of college, if that, was wearing a dress with red birds on it. Her perfume was nothing floral or tropical, it was probably marketed as a perfume for the modern, urban woman. Probably overpriced. Not that Viggo would have known any of this. All he thought about her perfume was a vague intimation that it didn't match. He's never paid much attention to women of that type, nor they to him until recently.
The damn perfume was distracting, because it didn't match, or maybe it was the woman who didn't match, as hard as she tried with the fake tan, and the discreet rhinestones. Whatever it was, he could not concentrate, for the entire thirty minutes he had to wait, but couldn't pinpoint why. The article in Rolling Stone was one Orlando would understand, not him, and he nearly reached for his cell phone to call and ask what the hell kind of band had that for a name, and there Orlando was again, in his head.
He'd been trying to stop thinking of Orlando. It was the damn perfume—usually the people around him, the women, didn't bother with perfume, and this stuff was distracting him. Or maybe it was just Orlando, who wouldn't get the hell out of his head.
Orlando, hungover, head on his kitchen table, arms out to the side like Christ, dissolved into Orlando, hugging Liv, her wrap's slippery fringe twined in his fingers, and faded to black. When the receptionist, whom he probably should have called something else, said, "You can go on in now," her smile bright and her teeth the color of clouds, he nearly told her to change the way she wanted things, to change from wanting things altogether, to begin to want desire itself, or at least an incarnation of desire (doubtless she wanted his own incarnation of longing, the way yearning gleamed in his mind, how lust looked to him, all wrapped up in long lashes and a slightly crooked smile; even if only casually) – but even a crazy poet can't get away with that. It would have been an invasion of the worst kind, to suppose he understood her, just because she made him think of the feeling of sunburned scalp under his fingers and the prickle of new hair against his palm.
And would he have told her that he was in love, and how could she have understood him, and if she had, what would or could she have said? How do you say something important?
So Viggo simply nodded, and smiled back, and followed her limp-wristed gesture into the room with Paul Klee prints and pale grey carpet.
Timeframe: During filming of Troy.
. . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . .
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
You. have. reached. four. nine. seven. one. please. leave. a. message. "I hate leaving you messages. God knows I do it enough, but I still hate it. I never know what to say. You know all the obvious stuff — I love you, I miss you, I'm coming home soon, I hope you're having a good day, call me, I love you." Beep.
Hi, it's Orlando. I can't answer my mobile right now, but if you leave a message, I'll call you back. "You could tell me about your day. It's nearly full dark here, even with daylights savings time, and after dinner, with Henry doing his physics homework, poor kid, I took the dogs out for a ramble. They didn't really need it, cause they spent most of the day when I was out running errands —" Beep.
Hi, it's Orlando. I can't answer my mobile right now, but if you leave a message, I'll call you back. "— They were in the back yard and he took them out for a walk before breakfast, but I had nothing better to do, and there's that little section with all the stucco houses crammed together and the overhanging windowsills almost touching overhead, and I thought it was as good a place as any to be when I can't be in your arms. There was a guy wearing a shirt that had a faded picture of the Rocky —" Beep.
Hi, it's Orlando. I can't answer my mobile right now, but if you leave a message, I'll call you back. "— Rocky Mountains on the shirt, this deep blue, faded at the neck. He waved hello, and I thought of you, so friendly to strangers. So friendly, always. I remember the first time we met, and how you hugged me hard, and I felt your fingertips pressing along the line of my shoulderblade and thought, there you are, hello. He was smoking a pipe, the way my English teacher in Watertown did, smoked a pipe and talked —" Beep.
Hi, it's Orlando. I can't answer my mobile right now, but if you leave a message, I'll call you back. "— He talked about Allen Ginsberg like some kind of prophet, with those jackets with the presewn leather elbow patches on, and he'd take it off, and roll up his sleeves if he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, but he usually wasn't, usually he had on short sleeves, even in the winter, and fuck it gets cold in Watertown in February. The guy I saw today had on a short-sleeved shirt, but I told you that already, didn't I? He looked so lonely —" Beep.
Hi, it's Orlando. I can't answer my mobile right now, but if you leave a message, I'll call you back. "— But that was probably why he smiled at me. Nothing better to do on a gorgeous spring evening than smoke and watch a mostly empty street. No worse than me, I guess, with nothing better to do than leave you phone messages and walk the dogs. I guess I could watch TV, but the news is all depressing, and I hate sitcoms, they're only funny when you make fun of the acting —" Beep.
Hi, it's Orlando. I can't answer my mobile right now, but if you leave a message, I'll call you back. "— I'd love to get that episode of whatever-it-was that Johnny was on and see if you can make fun of that, cause you always say that he can't act badly. There's always phone sex, but that's kind of hard to have with a machine. And it's hard to have phone sex when I'm so tired, you know that? Just getting older, the body falling to pieces, thin at the edges, ragged. I miss you. You heal me. If you were here, I'd be sitting here at the table —" Beep.
Hi, it's Orlando. I can't answer my mobile right now, but if you leave a message, I'll call you back. "— I'm sitting here anyway, but you'd be bouncing in your chair, talking about your plans to go surfing this weekend, talking about the article in the National Geographic about the ocean floor and the igneous rocks that keep being formed there because of the volcanic vents and the coldness of the waters —" Beep.
Hi, it's Orlando. I can't answer my mobile right now, but if you leave a message, I'll call you back. "— So the lava hardens much faster than it ever otherwise would. They found a new species of crab or something last week, I don't know if you saw, it lives way deep under the ocean, and it has claws bigger than the rest of itself, two pairs of 'em, walks on one and uses the other to catch things with and switches which it uses for which, kind of like using your feet or your hands —" Beep.
Hi, it's Orlando. I can't answer my mobile right now, but if you leave a message, I'll call you back. "— Whichever limb you feel like. Do you want me to save you the article? And I'd be looking at you, and the smudge of chili on your cheek, that's what we had for dinner, and I'd crook my fingers and you'd look at me and grin and lean over. And I'd lick your cheek, and tell you that's what was wrong with dinner, it didn't have you flavoring it, and you'd say, you know, I could —" Beep.
Hi, it's Orlando. I can't answer my mobile right now, but if you leave a message, I'll call you back. "— Could make a truly tasteless joke right now but you'd be horrified, and I'd say try me, and you'd shake your head and say I can use my mouth for something better even than Orlando-flavored chili and I'd know what you were talking about, oh god would I know, and I'd kiss you, and it would be better than the chili because it would taste like you all the way you, and I'd be breathing in your scent, you left —" Beep.
Hi, it's Orlando. I can't answer my mobile right now, but if you leave a message, I'll call you back. "—you left a scarf of yours here, of course you did, you hardly need it there, but it smells like you and the ranch, the stable, in Idaho because it's actually my scarf, you just stole it, but that's okay, mi casa es su casa, eres mi corazón, and last night when I found it, it smelled so much like you I was rubbing the front of my jeans before I realized —" Beep.
Hi, it's Orlando. I can't answer my mobile right now, but if you leave a message, I'll call you back. "— what I was doing. I'm doing it again, just thinking about you here, because you've been here and you're coming back, and you're going to be at the table again, smiling at me, and kissing me with the kisses of your mouth, and it'll be your hand right there, just exactly right there where the edge of everything is, where I am, where my fingertip —" Beep.
Hi, it's Orlando. I can't answer my mobile right now, but if you leave a message, I'll call you back. "— where the nail is bruised, is dragging, and everything around me is you, your hand and your eyes and your breath on me, oh god, listen to me breathe just the way I do when you touch me, when you look at me, because it's you touching me, you pressing just below, you not moving your fingers, damn you, my jeans still mostly on, your hand trapped in the folds, the zipper leaving marks on your hand, the pressure —" Beep.
Hi, it's Orlando. I can't answer my mobile right now, but if you leave a message, I'll call you back. "—steady and there and there oh god just there, more please, more, I can feel every pump of my heart, every rush of blood, my hands feel swollen and my heartbeat is painful, the rasp of cloth, on my fingers, on my cock, I can't keep still, but my jeans are bunched up and I don't have enough room to move my hips, I need more pressure, more, oh god god please, oh, oh, tóqueme, tóqueme, cogeme, —" Beep.
Hi, it's Orlando. I can't answer my mobile right now, but if you leave a message, I'll call you back. "— jesus, drowning, drowning, ahogando, Orlando, please, I can’t…" Beep.
You. have. reached. four. nine. seven. one. please. leave. a. message. "Oh. My. Fucking. God." And then a gasp, a series of them, and silence, and a slow, soft sigh. Beep.
Timeframe: November 2002, during LA filming for Pirates of the Caribbean: the Curse of the Black Pearl. The filming is 5 days a week, so Orlando has his weekends free in LA. This is an Idaho weekend getaway, to put up storm windows and have lots of sex.
. . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep. . . tired . . . or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Viggo's house has no clocks in it. Almost none, anyway. There's one in the darkroom in the basement (with only a second hand), and a timer in the kitchen, and a broken pocket watch that Henry bought at a garage sale three years ago, and that's all.
Orlando should be unnerved that he doesn't know how much time he's spent here, but he can't bring himself to care. Late-afternoon autumn sunshine warms the floorboards, or at least it was still shining the last time he opened his eyes to check. Maybe by now, the light has faded into twilight, or even darkness. He squirms a little, his back protesting at the way his spine jabs into the bare boards, and then slows his breathing carefully until it matches the cadence of the man's next to him: easy and deliberate, in control, and occasionally it hitches in dreams.
Orlando's jeans are draped over a stack of notebooks and sketchbooks (smudged with dirt, pages marked with playing cards and pieces of grass) under the painting on the north wall. Viggo's shirt, the pale red one with the Marianne Moore poetry inked on the left sleeve and the marijuana leaf silkscreened on the back, is bunched under his head.
The floorboards are as hard as he has been told, and cannot believe, he must become; pine is supposed to be the softest wood, but he remembers the rough scrape against his palms the last time they were here, the sticky bite of the bark into his skin, and the damp of Viggo's breath on his shoulder.
It was warmer then, warm enough to fuck outdoors and not worry; Orlando's back always sparkles with cold, a line of white fire-ice along his spine, tiny pulsing pinpricks of remembered agony and present ache. It was warm then. He was warm; he was hot, his skin tight with sun and desire, the pale mark on his left wrist faded. No wristwatches, Viggo had said, the first morning they woke up, tangled together in pale-green sheets in Idaho. No time here. Orlando didn't ask whether he meant that this place is timeless or that they had no time to be there.
Now, the sky is bleached from the summer's vanished heat, and the horizon gleams with the promise of cold.
Orlando worries sometimes that the world's going to end.
Timeframe: Mid-2003, around the beginning of Orlando's relationship with Kate Bosworth.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
"V?"
"Yeah?"
"…I love you."
"Right back atcha, querido."
It may not be what I meant to say, may not even be close to what I need to say, what needs to be said, but it needs to be said just as much, maybe more, even though it isn't enough anymore, our small leaf made of truth, when it's floating on such a vast lake, hell, call it what it is, a damn ocean, of lies and fakes and – shut up. He's the poet, and this, what is it, a metaphor, a simile?, doesn't even make sense.
Nothing makes sense. I don't know why he loves me, why he goes on loving me, and I don't know how to ask. I can't tell him to stop, I can't lie to him that much, and I can't believe he's going to go on. I couldn't go on if I didn't love him, but I can't believe that's enough anymore.
But to say it now, crumbs still in the corners of his mouth, bergamot still under my tongue, puddled sweet, coloured water drying in the spoons, would be cruel, and though I'll have to do it sometime, now isn't sometime, now is now.
Timeframe: Early 2004
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here's no great matter;
There are prices that must be paid. I've learned that. There's a balance to everything: you get what you get, what you deserve, sometimes, but you always pay in the end.
He never knew that the first time I let him in, let him fuck me, tears seeped, unbidden, from between my shut lids afterwards. Ignorance has a heavy toll on it; he never knew, I never told him. I wouldn't even now.
He doesn't need to know, he needs to pay.
There were so many meals we skipped in favor of sex. Hash browns gone soggy and greasy and cold because I chose the hard, slick, warm slide of his cock between my lips instead; sandwiches fallen apart on the paper plate for the ants to devour because he wanted to pry me apart, slide his fingers into the channel of my ass and open me up; we were starving for each other and didn't give a thought to the children in Africa.
We were worshippers, and his skin tasted like salt sometimes; I never asked why. I knew. Knowledge, too, has a tax.
I should have known better. I would pay that price gladly, if I had been right. But I had never done this before—oh, I don't mean been with a man, I'd done that. But Orlando's body was a new country, a new experience, and I could not reconcile the receipt marked paid in full in my heart with this new love affair.
I thought they were in different currency. I was wrong. Error is no excuse for nonpayment.
I didn't pay, and didn't pay, and I'm still not paying: he's paying. I know. He can afford it, you say. You're wrong. No one can afford this.
Love—I did love him—is no excuse for leaving the bill to him. I should pay it, I knew it'd come, and pretended, even to myself, that I didn't know, that it would never come. Lying has a steep price.
I've paid that price myself, a dozen times over, a thousand. All these bills have come due in my life, so I should know them, but I didn't.
I should have known, but I didn't. I didn't know, I promise you that, and I know the price for the truth. I'll pay that gladly now, for saying this: I did not know what the price would be. I did not know what Orlando would have to pay. For me, for him, for our love affair; I don't know what the bill's marked for, but it's meant for us.
If we were together, we would have enough to pay, but the bank account of my heart is empty. So sorry, Mr. Mortensen, but we can't give you a loan. We are not together, and so the price is steeper, and so I should not care.
No account to me. Doesn't affect my balance.
Timeframe: Mid-2005.
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
Orlando knows he will not always be popular. He has accepted that. He has tried to, anyway; listed all the ways his life will better without fame, celebrity, fangirls, the whole shebang. He doesn’t really believe it, but he has accepted it.
He even says so. If you say it enough, it becomes true. I won't always be this kind of star, I've accepted that. They're my family and I love them. We're very happy together. If you say it enough, you can make it true. Will is a powerful thing. So is speech.
If you – I – only say it once, it doesn't count – can't believe – can't be believed – how much this is going to make me sound like I'm in love with the guy.
He's older now. He's a little longer in the tooth. He’s got a running bet on with himself over who will replace him in the public mind; he stands to win a lot of money off himself, no matter who it is.
Thank god for the wool lining on his trenchcoat; a raw rain is sluicing down the windows, and he knows that the two drinks he's had won't keep him warm for much longer, if they're doing that at all. Someone kisses his cheek, and he weaves past the dull grey and navy suits to the coatcheck, shoving his hands in his pockets as he goes.
The bloke behind the gleaming, waxed walnut counter looks like a skull. This is what happened to the gay community as he grew up: walking dead amongst the living, a reminder of the danger of love. This is why he doesn't say anything that means anything about anyone who means something.
His head hurts when he thinks like this. He tips the guy extra and smiles, hoping that that "Orlando magic!" will give him that one extra white blood cell, jump his T-cells a tiny bit more. The death's-head grimace he gets in return makes him swallow hard as he drops a dollar (this is America, right? Not Japan? Not Morocco?) into the discreet cup.
He donates anonymously. Always anonymously, but he donates. He doesn't think that's enough, and rages silently every time he goes to an environmental fundraiser instead of a gay pride or an AIDS benefit, but he was gay-bashed when he was sixteen and that's why his nose is crooked.
Crooked. Nothing about him is straight. Nothing about him is normal. Nothing. He is nothing.
Timeframe: 2002.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
"Make sure this is what we both want," Viggo says. "Make absolutely certain, because we can't go back."
He says it, like a mantra, whenever Orlando isn't there, to remind himself, that this is what they want. They've talked about it a thousand times, over cups of cocoa-with-whiskey-shots-added in Idaho; when Orlando's mouth was sweet and bitter and tasted of oranges all at once at breakfast; when Bean was in the kitchen, adding obscene amounts of sugar to his tea.
When he and Henry had gone to the Getty Museum, he found himself eerily drawn to the china display while his son rolled his eyes and went off to examine Klimt's jewel-like, frightened women. He stared at intricate, feathery patterns of paint, feminine detailing on parrots and flowers until they blurred before his eyes and coalesced into possibilities—what he had had, what he did have, what he could have, and that was where the possibilities splintered into thousands.
When they talk about it, he does mean it, every word. Even over the phone, he means it when he tells Orlando that he's fine, that it makes him happy to know that Orlando is enjoying his work so much. Orlando drops the issue when he says that.
Feedback would be adored, treasured, worshiped, and clung to.
Part 4
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-12-11 12:17 am (UTC)When can we expect the final installmen, and will we find out what really happened between them, how it ended (or ends, or will end)?
Also, good phone sex. I never thought phone sex with an ansamachine would work, but bloody hell.
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Date: 2005-12-11 04:35 pm (UTC)I have a soft spot for that section. Rather proud of it, I admit.
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Date: 2005-12-12 12:18 am (UTC)I'll hopefully read the conclusion tomorrow.
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Date: 2005-12-12 03:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-12 06:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-12 10:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-17 04:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-17 12:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-17 12:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-17 01:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-17 01:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-17 02:07 pm (UTC)The new saying in our household is "I'd like to be the filling in a Sawyer Sayid sandwich"