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vigorli2004-11-28 03:51 pm
gairid.livejournal.com) wrote in vigorli2004-11-28 03:51 pm
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A little post Thanksgiving fic and a birthday dedication for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sakurazukalori. Cross-posted to several communities.
Title: Shadows
Author: Gairid
Fandom: RPS
Pairing: OB/VM
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Takes place just after the L.A. BtS premiere
Acknowlegements With all love and thanks to my musebebe_avide
Obligatory Disclaimer: It could have happened, you know? But I don’t claim that this is real or that I know anything about the pair…this is written for love, not money.
Shadows
by Gairid
My eyes open to a dark bedroom…dark outside, as well, because the curtains had been pushed aside earlier to let the November sunlight slant itself across the bed. No sounds of gentle breathing, no comforting body warmth, the familiar weight of your legs over mine, missing. Light coming from outside, though. The barn. You’re out there, then. The thought makes me smile. I can see shadows moving on the wall across from the window from my place in our bed.
I’d been in this bed alone for a few days, waiting for you to finish up filming in Canada, and that wasn’t a bad thing, though I missed you even more in these surroundings than I had in Los Angeles last week.
This is a good place here, tucked into long, rolling hills and a sky that overwhelms in its boundless enormity. There is no one here to watch, no one prying, and the phone rings only rarely. It’s a place that invites reflection, and that’s not something I am not prone to…at least it never used to be.
Your voice from the stillness outside, low and rough, and the soft thud of hooves on grass. Uraeus’ large shape and yours beside him in the yellow square of light streaming from the barn; you look small because he’s such a big animal. An enquiring nicker from within, and again, your voice, low and resonant. Uraeus’ feet are louder on the concrete floor of the barn.
It’s cold now, not like the last time we were here together, a few stolen days in high summer. The wind is restless and insistently probing and the last of the leaves have fallen from the trees around the house.
*****
My appearance in the barn as you emerge from the tack room does not surprise you in the least. That mad grin; your arm hooks around my neck, pulling me close for a deep kiss.
“Why’d you get up? You knew I’d be back.”
“Saw you out here from the window. Shadows on the wall up there. You and the horse and the tree.”
You nod as though my words make a good deal of sense to you. I look at Uraeus, watching us from where he’s tethered. He tosses his head imperiously and your grin stretches. TJ bugles from the other end of the barn.
“Got them all stirred up, I guess.”
We flank Uraeus and he bends his neck to snuffle your hair. When he’s back in his stall, you look into my eyes.
“You’re shivering. Let’s go back to bed.”
“Only if you’re finished here.”
”I am. You usually sleep longer than this.”
Teasing note. I sleep best when we’re together. When you arrived to find me here, your first remark was about the fatigue you saw in my eyes.
“I was only dozing.”
“Right.”
*****
Wound around you again. The world has once more shrunk deliciously to this room, this bed; your smoky voice and the taste of your skin. There’s endless time, and not enough time and I don’t know how that can be, I only know that it somehow is. Why do things seem so much clearer here? Easier? It’s not like that when I’m in one place and you are in another. When I’m alone I don’t even know who I am half the time.
The rasp of day-old beard on the inside of my thigh; god, how I ache for you, how I always, always ache for you. Your mouth on me drives away coherent thinking. I can only gasp your name and the shadows dance on the wall, shot though with the same light that branches through my body.
After, you lie with your head on my belly, arms tight about my waist and your breath is warm on me, your skin warmer still, almost feverish, though you never rush, you never hurry, even when I know your need is fierce.
It’s fierce now, I can feel it in the corded muscles in your arms, in the tension of your shoulders…God, I can smell it on you, the want. It’s a scent in your sweat, sharp and unmistakable. In spite of these signs, indicators that are clear and familiar to me, your hands move slowly on my back, thumbs circling and kneading without haste; utterly loving.
If I could move, I would assuage you, but it feels right to lie, still trembling, fastened to you like this. It doesn’t work that way with us anyway; I learned that years ago. You said once that love was not a race, not a means to some ending, but an ongoing process. ‘We do what feels right when it feels right, Orlando.’ And so we have, from that day to this.
You have given me so much…your love and strength, your humor and your own brand of wisdom. Another of your gifts is time. Not that you can conjure more of it where it doesn’t exist, but what time we do have together is spent focused, moment to moment looking under the layers, seeing around the edges. Sometimes your patience itself is the thing that tries me, tests me.
“Still with me?” Your voice is muffled in my flesh.
”That’s a funny question, old man. You’re a breath away from getting me hard all over again.” Disentangling yourself from me and from the sheet, you move to lay your head on my shoulder.
“Not quite a breath,” you say, “And I know that wasn’t what you were thinking about.”
I haven’t said anything about last week, the premiere. The phone call I made to you on my way there, rushing because I’d lost track of time, lost track of days, reminded only when Robin called me in consternation, furious because I was late and had not checked my voicemail. I haven’t said anything, and I probably won’t, at least not right now when I am delirious with the simple joy being with you gives me. If there’s anything that tries us, it’s some of the choices I have made and your almost passive acquiescence to them.
“It wasn’t,” I say into your hair, fragrant with cold wind and horses. “But it can wait.”
It can wait because I want you and you want me, and though that isn’t all there is, here now in the darkness it might as well be. When I move to kiss you the mood shifts again, something primitive is sparked and gentleness flees. Bruised lips, hungry mouths; grappling embraces that are meant to spur need, goad lust.
Sucking; always my neck, my shoulders, your teeth and your tongue avid and intent.
There are no more words; there is no finesse, for we are beyond that now, you on your knees behind me, fumbling with the little bottle. Fingers, yeah, and your mouth on my back, my side, teeth scraping my ribs. No words, just shifting limbs and occasional interrogative grunts answered with moans or sighs and that fierce need I felt in you crests as you press into me.
Sharp, gasping pain, over as fast as it telegraphed itself into my brain. My own tension was the cause, but we are well used to one another…my body accepts yours. The break in your voice when your say my name, that break is a lance in my heart. It always has been, just the way the look on your face has always wounded me so sweetly. I can’t see you, not with my face mashed absurdly into the pillows, but I know how you look. My own voice breaks, too, when I try to say your name.
*****
The room is lighter, the shadows dimmed, fading away with the approach of the dawn. You are heavily asleep with your face pressed to my neck, one arm across my chest. The wind has stilled for the moment, giving the passing minutes a more breathless air; I am waiting for you to stir, to lift your head and gaze at me with sleepy green eyes.
I feel like the shadows on the wall much of the time, insubstantial and somehow not quite real, and I suppose that’s what happens when you live the life that I live. So much of it is façade, exteriors with nothing behind them except a frame to stop it toppling over. Lying here in the quiet, all that slips away like the fading shadows and it’s a relief to know that you are beside me, a solid reality.
Reality has questions of its own. I can ask you these things, I often have, but I know you will tell me that the decisions are mine to make. I know that’s right, I know it’s the truth: you always give me the truth, but there’s a part of me, a childish part, that wants you to just tell me to come and stay here with you and forget the rest of it. A part of me that is impatient with your somehow passive waiting.
You could do it. You could walk away from it all without a backward glance and live here with the horses and the huge sky and your cameras and paint and the stacks of newspapers and such that you cull through for images and scraps of words, ideas and inspiration. You have a passion for ideas that I can’t quite follow, can’t quite see.
‘What we do? It’s good, sometimes it’s even meaningful, but a lot of it’s just bullshit Whatever happens, Orlando, don t ever make the mistake of taking it all too seriously...it’ll just fuck up your head..’ You said that to me once, one night lying together under the stars in New Zealand.
I think about that sometimes, when everyone else around me is taking it all so seriously, schedules and dailies, paparazzi and reviews and money. Always the money. Some of it does seem serious…getting into a character feels serious, at least at the time, it does, but at the end of the day when I’m waiting for you to call me back after you have been waiting for me to call you, well, then I know you were right, it’s mostly bullshit. Pretty much like my sham of a life, really.
I didn’t see this coming, back when we were first together. It was you who would fret about just these things, the prolonged separations and the conflicting schedules. It makes me wince a little to think how blithely I brushed all that away, never really considering just how sheltered we were in that particular place with those particular people. No one knew most of us, the press had not yet taken an interest, and God help me, I never imagined to what lengths things would actually go afterward.
The thing with Kate…it gets harder and harder to keep up the front. I don’t know what other people saw when the pictures from her recent L.A. premiere came out, but all I can see is my apathy and her impatient disappointment. Robin says it’s fine, it’s great, and I think to myself that she’s just not going to let go of the idea that I’m doing Kate’s career some good until Kate actually comes out and says she’s sick of it, sick of me, and she can sink or swim on her own, thank you very much. She’s said such things to me a time or two and I am reasonably certain she’ll have something to say the next time we show up where there happen to be several strategically placed people with cameras and questions. I can’t bring myself to care much, though.
You shift in your sleep, muttering something unintelligible as you roll onto your back. Your eyes move, following some dream; whatever images your mind might be calling forth. Am I there? Dreams are funny things. I pull the blanket up to cover your chest and shoulders.
*****
“Look, I’m not asking you to tell me what to do; I’m asking what you would do.”
Riding beside you in the steadily blowing northwest wind, I can’t read your face because you’re wearing your bland look, the one you use when you’re fighting some emotion. The look does nothing for the knot in my stomach, the one that’s there often enough lately that my appetite has all but disappeared.
“How do you feel right now?” you ask, head inclined toward me, lips, tightening.
“What?”
“How do you feel. Right now.”
“Fine.” I say warily.
“No, I don’t mean your health…how do you feel emotionally.”
You slow Uraeus to a walk and I follow suit.
“I’m glad to be here with you. I’ve felt good since I got here.”
“How do you feel when you’re working?”
“Viggo…”
“Just tell me, Orlando.”
“I like working. You know that.”
A nod as you scan the rolling terrain.
“I know you like working. But when you’re working how do you feel?”
“Engrossed. Focused. At least most of the time.” I say thoughtfully. “And the down time is usually pretty good.”
“Lots to talk about, stories to share. Drinking and dancing.” you offer.
I smile a little. “Yeah. You know.”
Another nod. “How do you feel when you meet Kate for another photo op? All the trappings. Dogs. Lunch. The accompanying drivel they print all to hell and back?”
I suck in a breath and wish for a cigarette. I left them in the kitchen, thinking I’d have enough on my hands riding Kenny.
“It gets worse every time.” I mutter. We ride a while in silence. “Feels worse.” I amend. “For me. Definitely for her. I’m pretty sure she’s furious with me and with Robin right now.”
“Well, then. There’s no room for doubt about how that part of your life is affecting you, is there?”
“Would you have done it differently?” I ask defensively.
“I’m not you. Besides, there’s no comparison, is there?” Your rusty laugh. “You’ve seen some of the stuff I worked in when I was your age.”
“Well, what about now?” I persist.
“What about now? I’m not the one who’s miserable, Orlando.”
There is a terrible gentleness in your voice and I know if I look into your eyes, and see it there, I won’t be able to stop myself from weeping or screaming.
“You would have. You do everything differently.” I say, shifting my weight in the saddle.
“We approach things from opposite sides sometimes, that’s all. You already know what you want to do, Lamb.”
That name, one I usually hear when I’m drifting off to sleep beside you, that’s the thing that makes heavy tears spill over, dried on my skin almost immediately by the wind. I feel like I am choking.
“It shouldn’t matter!” I say loudly, and the sensation of choking is blessedly gone.
“No, it shouldn’t. But it does.”
Stated so baldly, so simply somehow makes it irrefutable.
“It doesn’t to you.”
“Not so much, no. I never did give a rat’s ass what people thought about me. Rings gave me freedom of a kind I had not thought to see, but my aims were never very high as far as acting as a career. I needed a way to pay the bills and it was something I could live with, something that felt okay, sometimes even more than that.”
It’s not a judgment, but it feels like one in my confused state of mind. I wonder how it is that things seems so clear to you. That infinite patience thing again.
“You’re angry.” Stated so mildly.
“No.” I say, meaning yes. I finally turn my head to look into your eyes and your swing Uraeus’ head to move in closer to me.
“Hang on to that. Anger’s not always a bad thing.”
Your thigh presses against mine and then Kenny dances off to the right.
“God. Can we just drop the fucking platitudes for now?” I say irritably, working to pull Kenny in a little.
“As opposed to the fucking charades?”
Ah, at last, some reaction. The heat in your voice makes me feel better, somehow.
“You asked what I would do. I can’t answer that because I wouldn’t have gotten into the position in the first place, no matter what roles I had. I’m just not Teen Cosmo material, not then and not now. It wouldn’t have been suggested, see?”
There’s some anger, then, because I can see the blood climb your neck. We ride in silence for a time and after a while you speak again.
“You say it shouldn’t matter, but you know it does. You know that the way things stand right now, you’re stuck and that’s what makes you angry. That and that you agreed to take this route in the first place. It’s already done, so can we just drop it? You’re here now and what are we doing? Going over this again when there’s nothing that can be done to change it, at least not today.”
“I made the choice and now I have to live with it.” I mutter sullenly.
“Yeah. That’s the way it works. You have to live with it and so do I.”
“We talked about it when Robin brought it up two years ago, Viggo...” I begin.
“We talked about it and I told you it was your decision. It was…it still is. My decision is to live with it…deal with it. I’m doing that, but you don’t make it easy when you second guess how I feel or when you start talking about what I would do.”
A glance in my direction and the anger fades almost immediately, replaced with the familiar look of love in your eyes.
“Let’s go back to the house.”
“What do you mean by that?”
You look at me, honestly puzzled. “By what?”
“Second guessing your feelings. What does that mean?”
“Remember when you called me last week? On your way to Kate’s premiere?”
I nod, watching distractedly at the way the wind lifts your hair, the way the tips of your ears have reddened with the cold.
“You were rushed and not too terribly coherent, but you said something about me not having to deal with ‘all this’, the unfairness of it.”
“I remember.”
“Orlando, you know me. You know me. Why would you think I would ever mistake your public face for who you really are? The only reason any of it bothers me at all is because I can see the toll it’s taking on you.”
There’s emotion on your face, in your eyes, complexities that I can’t read, too many things tangled together. It’s a fight to hold back the panicked, fluttery feeling welling up in my chest because I do know you and the fact that I feel like I am missing something right now is alien and unfamiliar.
“All the publicity…”
“When do I see it? When have I ever paid any attention to it? It’s smoke and mirrors, all of it…what’s real is right here in front of us, around us…inside us. You have to go to London Tuesday, and you think it’s another disappointment…Orlando, it isn’t. The day isn’t the thing; it’s that whatever time we have together is real. We can go Friday or next week or next month. Kate or no Kate, we’d be apart frequently anyway and if that’s what you can’t deal with then that’s what we should be talking about.”
“It’s not the scheduling. It’s not being apart, even. You work, I work…it’s what we do.” I say, suddenly filled with a feeling of urgency so great I feel like I must say it all or burst into pieces. “It’s that it’s a secret but it isn’t. That we can’t even go have dinner someplace without worrying that the tabloids will find us out because there’s one waiter there who has someone’s number and is sick of not being able to make the rent. Or, God help us, the money shot. The fucking money shot, that phrase that makes me feel sick every time Robin says it. Money shot.”
I look at you miserably and watch you lean forward.
“There is no money shot. Not here. No one’s here but us.”
*****
When we get back to the house there is no rush to the bedroom, though that simmers warmly in the molecules that separated us while we move around the kitchen fixing dinner.
‘No one here but us.’ you’d said, and it fell into place a little bit. Wasting the time we do have together is the closest thing I can think of to a grievous sin. You watched my face and I know you saw the penny drop because you smiled a little and flicked your eyes back toward the house. We wheeled around and rode back at an exhilarating full gallop and in that time and the time after, walking the horses to cool them down, it was simple again, easy the way it’s supposed to be.
The food is good, it has taste and texture and I feel nourished and sustained. It’s the first meal in weeks that that I have actually eaten with something approaching real hunger. Even better is your presence o near to me, the smell of your skin and the brief, gentle touches; your hand at the back of my head or mine on your hip or on the small of your back.
After we eat, we sit outside on the wide porch, drinking tea with whiskey in it and watching the sweep of stars, picked out in sharp relief against a cold, black sky. I murmur to you that I wish I could stay longer and you murmur back that the ranch isn’t going anywhere. Later still, you are groaning beneath me, sweat gleaming on your back. When I come, it’s like living without having to breathe, weightless but still part of you, and later than that, tasting your drowsy, sated kisses, I wonder how I’ll ever be able to tear myself away from here, away from the shadows on the walls seen past the curve of your bare shoulder.
FIN
28 november, 2004
(Next part: Clouds)
sakurazukalori. Cross-posted to several communities.Title: Shadows
Author: Gairid
Fandom: RPS
Pairing: OB/VM
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Takes place just after the L.A. BtS premiere
Acknowlegements With all love and thanks to my muse
bebe_avideObligatory Disclaimer: It could have happened, you know? But I don’t claim that this is real or that I know anything about the pair…this is written for love, not money.
Shadows
by Gairid
My eyes open to a dark bedroom…dark outside, as well, because the curtains had been pushed aside earlier to let the November sunlight slant itself across the bed. No sounds of gentle breathing, no comforting body warmth, the familiar weight of your legs over mine, missing. Light coming from outside, though. The barn. You’re out there, then. The thought makes me smile. I can see shadows moving on the wall across from the window from my place in our bed.
I’d been in this bed alone for a few days, waiting for you to finish up filming in Canada, and that wasn’t a bad thing, though I missed you even more in these surroundings than I had in Los Angeles last week.
This is a good place here, tucked into long, rolling hills and a sky that overwhelms in its boundless enormity. There is no one here to watch, no one prying, and the phone rings only rarely. It’s a place that invites reflection, and that’s not something I am not prone to…at least it never used to be.
Your voice from the stillness outside, low and rough, and the soft thud of hooves on grass. Uraeus’ large shape and yours beside him in the yellow square of light streaming from the barn; you look small because he’s such a big animal. An enquiring nicker from within, and again, your voice, low and resonant. Uraeus’ feet are louder on the concrete floor of the barn.
It’s cold now, not like the last time we were here together, a few stolen days in high summer. The wind is restless and insistently probing and the last of the leaves have fallen from the trees around the house.
My appearance in the barn as you emerge from the tack room does not surprise you in the least. That mad grin; your arm hooks around my neck, pulling me close for a deep kiss.
“Why’d you get up? You knew I’d be back.”
“Saw you out here from the window. Shadows on the wall up there. You and the horse and the tree.”
You nod as though my words make a good deal of sense to you. I look at Uraeus, watching us from where he’s tethered. He tosses his head imperiously and your grin stretches. TJ bugles from the other end of the barn.
“Got them all stirred up, I guess.”
We flank Uraeus and he bends his neck to snuffle your hair. When he’s back in his stall, you look into my eyes.
“You’re shivering. Let’s go back to bed.”
“Only if you’re finished here.”
”I am. You usually sleep longer than this.”
Teasing note. I sleep best when we’re together. When you arrived to find me here, your first remark was about the fatigue you saw in my eyes.
“I was only dozing.”
“Right.”
Wound around you again. The world has once more shrunk deliciously to this room, this bed; your smoky voice and the taste of your skin. There’s endless time, and not enough time and I don’t know how that can be, I only know that it somehow is. Why do things seem so much clearer here? Easier? It’s not like that when I’m in one place and you are in another. When I’m alone I don’t even know who I am half the time.
The rasp of day-old beard on the inside of my thigh; god, how I ache for you, how I always, always ache for you. Your mouth on me drives away coherent thinking. I can only gasp your name and the shadows dance on the wall, shot though with the same light that branches through my body.
After, you lie with your head on my belly, arms tight about my waist and your breath is warm on me, your skin warmer still, almost feverish, though you never rush, you never hurry, even when I know your need is fierce.
It’s fierce now, I can feel it in the corded muscles in your arms, in the tension of your shoulders…God, I can smell it on you, the want. It’s a scent in your sweat, sharp and unmistakable. In spite of these signs, indicators that are clear and familiar to me, your hands move slowly on my back, thumbs circling and kneading without haste; utterly loving.
If I could move, I would assuage you, but it feels right to lie, still trembling, fastened to you like this. It doesn’t work that way with us anyway; I learned that years ago. You said once that love was not a race, not a means to some ending, but an ongoing process. ‘We do what feels right when it feels right, Orlando.’ And so we have, from that day to this.
You have given me so much…your love and strength, your humor and your own brand of wisdom. Another of your gifts is time. Not that you can conjure more of it where it doesn’t exist, but what time we do have together is spent focused, moment to moment looking under the layers, seeing around the edges. Sometimes your patience itself is the thing that tries me, tests me.
“Still with me?” Your voice is muffled in my flesh.
”That’s a funny question, old man. You’re a breath away from getting me hard all over again.” Disentangling yourself from me and from the sheet, you move to lay your head on my shoulder.
“Not quite a breath,” you say, “And I know that wasn’t what you were thinking about.”
I haven’t said anything about last week, the premiere. The phone call I made to you on my way there, rushing because I’d lost track of time, lost track of days, reminded only when Robin called me in consternation, furious because I was late and had not checked my voicemail. I haven’t said anything, and I probably won’t, at least not right now when I am delirious with the simple joy being with you gives me. If there’s anything that tries us, it’s some of the choices I have made and your almost passive acquiescence to them.
“It wasn’t,” I say into your hair, fragrant with cold wind and horses. “But it can wait.”
It can wait because I want you and you want me, and though that isn’t all there is, here now in the darkness it might as well be. When I move to kiss you the mood shifts again, something primitive is sparked and gentleness flees. Bruised lips, hungry mouths; grappling embraces that are meant to spur need, goad lust.
Sucking; always my neck, my shoulders, your teeth and your tongue avid and intent.
There are no more words; there is no finesse, for we are beyond that now, you on your knees behind me, fumbling with the little bottle. Fingers, yeah, and your mouth on my back, my side, teeth scraping my ribs. No words, just shifting limbs and occasional interrogative grunts answered with moans or sighs and that fierce need I felt in you crests as you press into me.
Sharp, gasping pain, over as fast as it telegraphed itself into my brain. My own tension was the cause, but we are well used to one another…my body accepts yours. The break in your voice when your say my name, that break is a lance in my heart. It always has been, just the way the look on your face has always wounded me so sweetly. I can’t see you, not with my face mashed absurdly into the pillows, but I know how you look. My own voice breaks, too, when I try to say your name.
The room is lighter, the shadows dimmed, fading away with the approach of the dawn. You are heavily asleep with your face pressed to my neck, one arm across my chest. The wind has stilled for the moment, giving the passing minutes a more breathless air; I am waiting for you to stir, to lift your head and gaze at me with sleepy green eyes.
I feel like the shadows on the wall much of the time, insubstantial and somehow not quite real, and I suppose that’s what happens when you live the life that I live. So much of it is façade, exteriors with nothing behind them except a frame to stop it toppling over. Lying here in the quiet, all that slips away like the fading shadows and it’s a relief to know that you are beside me, a solid reality.
Reality has questions of its own. I can ask you these things, I often have, but I know you will tell me that the decisions are mine to make. I know that’s right, I know it’s the truth: you always give me the truth, but there’s a part of me, a childish part, that wants you to just tell me to come and stay here with you and forget the rest of it. A part of me that is impatient with your somehow passive waiting.
You could do it. You could walk away from it all without a backward glance and live here with the horses and the huge sky and your cameras and paint and the stacks of newspapers and such that you cull through for images and scraps of words, ideas and inspiration. You have a passion for ideas that I can’t quite follow, can’t quite see.
‘What we do? It’s good, sometimes it’s even meaningful, but a lot of it’s just bullshit Whatever happens, Orlando, don t ever make the mistake of taking it all too seriously...it’ll just fuck up your head..’ You said that to me once, one night lying together under the stars in New Zealand.
I think about that sometimes, when everyone else around me is taking it all so seriously, schedules and dailies, paparazzi and reviews and money. Always the money. Some of it does seem serious…getting into a character feels serious, at least at the time, it does, but at the end of the day when I’m waiting for you to call me back after you have been waiting for me to call you, well, then I know you were right, it’s mostly bullshit. Pretty much like my sham of a life, really.
I didn’t see this coming, back when we were first together. It was you who would fret about just these things, the prolonged separations and the conflicting schedules. It makes me wince a little to think how blithely I brushed all that away, never really considering just how sheltered we were in that particular place with those particular people. No one knew most of us, the press had not yet taken an interest, and God help me, I never imagined to what lengths things would actually go afterward.
The thing with Kate…it gets harder and harder to keep up the front. I don’t know what other people saw when the pictures from her recent L.A. premiere came out, but all I can see is my apathy and her impatient disappointment. Robin says it’s fine, it’s great, and I think to myself that she’s just not going to let go of the idea that I’m doing Kate’s career some good until Kate actually comes out and says she’s sick of it, sick of me, and she can sink or swim on her own, thank you very much. She’s said such things to me a time or two and I am reasonably certain she’ll have something to say the next time we show up where there happen to be several strategically placed people with cameras and questions. I can’t bring myself to care much, though.
You shift in your sleep, muttering something unintelligible as you roll onto your back. Your eyes move, following some dream; whatever images your mind might be calling forth. Am I there? Dreams are funny things. I pull the blanket up to cover your chest and shoulders.
“Look, I’m not asking you to tell me what to do; I’m asking what you would do.”
Riding beside you in the steadily blowing northwest wind, I can’t read your face because you’re wearing your bland look, the one you use when you’re fighting some emotion. The look does nothing for the knot in my stomach, the one that’s there often enough lately that my appetite has all but disappeared.
“How do you feel right now?” you ask, head inclined toward me, lips, tightening.
“What?”
“How do you feel. Right now.”
“Fine.” I say warily.
“No, I don’t mean your health…how do you feel emotionally.”
You slow Uraeus to a walk and I follow suit.
“I’m glad to be here with you. I’ve felt good since I got here.”
“How do you feel when you’re working?”
“Viggo…”
“Just tell me, Orlando.”
“I like working. You know that.”
A nod as you scan the rolling terrain.
“I know you like working. But when you’re working how do you feel?”
“Engrossed. Focused. At least most of the time.” I say thoughtfully. “And the down time is usually pretty good.”
“Lots to talk about, stories to share. Drinking and dancing.” you offer.
I smile a little. “Yeah. You know.”
Another nod. “How do you feel when you meet Kate for another photo op? All the trappings. Dogs. Lunch. The accompanying drivel they print all to hell and back?”
I suck in a breath and wish for a cigarette. I left them in the kitchen, thinking I’d have enough on my hands riding Kenny.
“It gets worse every time.” I mutter. We ride a while in silence. “Feels worse.” I amend. “For me. Definitely for her. I’m pretty sure she’s furious with me and with Robin right now.”
“Well, then. There’s no room for doubt about how that part of your life is affecting you, is there?”
“Would you have done it differently?” I ask defensively.
“I’m not you. Besides, there’s no comparison, is there?” Your rusty laugh. “You’ve seen some of the stuff I worked in when I was your age.”
“Well, what about now?” I persist.
“What about now? I’m not the one who’s miserable, Orlando.”
There is a terrible gentleness in your voice and I know if I look into your eyes, and see it there, I won’t be able to stop myself from weeping or screaming.
“You would have. You do everything differently.” I say, shifting my weight in the saddle.
“We approach things from opposite sides sometimes, that’s all. You already know what you want to do, Lamb.”
That name, one I usually hear when I’m drifting off to sleep beside you, that’s the thing that makes heavy tears spill over, dried on my skin almost immediately by the wind. I feel like I am choking.
“It shouldn’t matter!” I say loudly, and the sensation of choking is blessedly gone.
“No, it shouldn’t. But it does.”
Stated so baldly, so simply somehow makes it irrefutable.
“It doesn’t to you.”
“Not so much, no. I never did give a rat’s ass what people thought about me. Rings gave me freedom of a kind I had not thought to see, but my aims were never very high as far as acting as a career. I needed a way to pay the bills and it was something I could live with, something that felt okay, sometimes even more than that.”
It’s not a judgment, but it feels like one in my confused state of mind. I wonder how it is that things seems so clear to you. That infinite patience thing again.
“You’re angry.” Stated so mildly.
“No.” I say, meaning yes. I finally turn my head to look into your eyes and your swing Uraeus’ head to move in closer to me.
“Hang on to that. Anger’s not always a bad thing.”
Your thigh presses against mine and then Kenny dances off to the right.
“God. Can we just drop the fucking platitudes for now?” I say irritably, working to pull Kenny in a little.
“As opposed to the fucking charades?”
Ah, at last, some reaction. The heat in your voice makes me feel better, somehow.
“You asked what I would do. I can’t answer that because I wouldn’t have gotten into the position in the first place, no matter what roles I had. I’m just not Teen Cosmo material, not then and not now. It wouldn’t have been suggested, see?”
There’s some anger, then, because I can see the blood climb your neck. We ride in silence for a time and after a while you speak again.
“You say it shouldn’t matter, but you know it does. You know that the way things stand right now, you’re stuck and that’s what makes you angry. That and that you agreed to take this route in the first place. It’s already done, so can we just drop it? You’re here now and what are we doing? Going over this again when there’s nothing that can be done to change it, at least not today.”
“I made the choice and now I have to live with it.” I mutter sullenly.
“Yeah. That’s the way it works. You have to live with it and so do I.”
“We talked about it when Robin brought it up two years ago, Viggo...” I begin.
“We talked about it and I told you it was your decision. It was…it still is. My decision is to live with it…deal with it. I’m doing that, but you don’t make it easy when you second guess how I feel or when you start talking about what I would do.”
A glance in my direction and the anger fades almost immediately, replaced with the familiar look of love in your eyes.
“Let’s go back to the house.”
“What do you mean by that?”
You look at me, honestly puzzled. “By what?”
“Second guessing your feelings. What does that mean?”
“Remember when you called me last week? On your way to Kate’s premiere?”
I nod, watching distractedly at the way the wind lifts your hair, the way the tips of your ears have reddened with the cold.
“You were rushed and not too terribly coherent, but you said something about me not having to deal with ‘all this’, the unfairness of it.”
“I remember.”
“Orlando, you know me. You know me. Why would you think I would ever mistake your public face for who you really are? The only reason any of it bothers me at all is because I can see the toll it’s taking on you.”
There’s emotion on your face, in your eyes, complexities that I can’t read, too many things tangled together. It’s a fight to hold back the panicked, fluttery feeling welling up in my chest because I do know you and the fact that I feel like I am missing something right now is alien and unfamiliar.
“All the publicity…”
“When do I see it? When have I ever paid any attention to it? It’s smoke and mirrors, all of it…what’s real is right here in front of us, around us…inside us. You have to go to London Tuesday, and you think it’s another disappointment…Orlando, it isn’t. The day isn’t the thing; it’s that whatever time we have together is real. We can go Friday or next week or next month. Kate or no Kate, we’d be apart frequently anyway and if that’s what you can’t deal with then that’s what we should be talking about.”
“It’s not the scheduling. It’s not being apart, even. You work, I work…it’s what we do.” I say, suddenly filled with a feeling of urgency so great I feel like I must say it all or burst into pieces. “It’s that it’s a secret but it isn’t. That we can’t even go have dinner someplace without worrying that the tabloids will find us out because there’s one waiter there who has someone’s number and is sick of not being able to make the rent. Or, God help us, the money shot. The fucking money shot, that phrase that makes me feel sick every time Robin says it. Money shot.”
I look at you miserably and watch you lean forward.
“There is no money shot. Not here. No one’s here but us.”
*****
When we get back to the house there is no rush to the bedroom, though that simmers warmly in the molecules that separated us while we move around the kitchen fixing dinner.
‘No one here but us.’ you’d said, and it fell into place a little bit. Wasting the time we do have together is the closest thing I can think of to a grievous sin. You watched my face and I know you saw the penny drop because you smiled a little and flicked your eyes back toward the house. We wheeled around and rode back at an exhilarating full gallop and in that time and the time after, walking the horses to cool them down, it was simple again, easy the way it’s supposed to be.
The food is good, it has taste and texture and I feel nourished and sustained. It’s the first meal in weeks that that I have actually eaten with something approaching real hunger. Even better is your presence o near to me, the smell of your skin and the brief, gentle touches; your hand at the back of my head or mine on your hip or on the small of your back.
After we eat, we sit outside on the wide porch, drinking tea with whiskey in it and watching the sweep of stars, picked out in sharp relief against a cold, black sky. I murmur to you that I wish I could stay longer and you murmur back that the ranch isn’t going anywhere. Later still, you are groaning beneath me, sweat gleaming on your back. When I come, it’s like living without having to breathe, weightless but still part of you, and later than that, tasting your drowsy, sated kisses, I wonder how I’ll ever be able to tear myself away from here, away from the shadows on the walls seen past the curve of your bare shoulder.
FIN
28 november, 2004
(Next part: Clouds)
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This is the first fic I've seen from you, I think. May I friend you?
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Thanks for the dedication, hon ! :D *hugs*
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Thank you for putting together words that describe these two so wonderfully!
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I also want to throw in the towel because I could never write like this.
Glad to hear you liked 'Finding Neverland@ by the way. I loved it too. Cried my eyes out.
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I'm always THRILLED when you write ViggOrli, and this is - again - so beautifully written. Evocative and sublime, both characters ring so true, and then there are all those little details that you're so good at noticing and describing. Wonderful how you've captured the atmosphere, the very special relationship between these two.
I wonder how I’ll ever be able to tear myself away from here, away from the shadows on the walls seen past the curve of your bare shoulder.
Thank you for this treat, darling!
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*hugs*
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