[identity profile] rainweaver13.livejournal.com posting in [community profile] vigorli
Title: Breathing Room (4/?)
Author: Rainweaver13
Pairing: Viggo/Orlando
Summary: Friendship

Rating/Warnings: R. It's all fiction.
Disclaimer: Don't own them; wouldn't want to - they are their own. Wouldn't mind talking with Viggo, though. If I made any money from this, I could buy bigger canvases.
A/N: Feedback would really come in handy right now.
-----------------


2000

"Why don't you ever call me Orli? Everybody else does?"

A soft clink of forks on plates, pasta with mushrooms, the earthy scent hovering over the table.

"I dunno. Just sounds like something that'd be on the cover of some teen magazine, with a big flowery pink heart over the i. Stories about your favorite flavor of ice cream, or what you like to do on a first date with a 12-year-old."

"Jesus, Viggo." Laughing. "You're a fucking lunatic."

Shrug. "Just don't know if that's who you want to be, y'know?"

-----
"Remind me again how you talked me into surfing."

"It's because you'll do anything I ask." A giggle punctuates the sentence, followed by a hasty, guilty, "I'm sorry, really, I never meant-"

"Shut the fuck up," Viggo said, laughing a little, holding ice to the right side of his face, knowing that Orlando has no damn idea of the truth of what he just said. "Pete's gonna kill me."

"Pete won't kill you." Orlando pressed a wet kiss to Viggo's cheek, barely catching a bit of lip. "Pete loves you. You're our king. Everybody loves you."

"Tell that to Exene's lawyer," Viggo murmured ruefully, reaching for the kid's hand. "Take me home, Elf Boy. The old man needs his rest. And I gotta call Pete."
-----

"Here's something to remember, "Lando," idly, late one evening while sipping wine in total exhaustion on the back deck, watching moonlight play staccato on the waves. "You can't control what happens to you. You know that."

"No shit," Orlando murmurs, lifting his bare feet up to rest on the deck rail, draping limp along a battered chair.

Sip. "You also can't control what other people do to you, including what they say about you."

"That's not much of a problem."

"Not yet." A long moment looking out at the moonlight. "But I think it will be, kid. I have a feeling the world's gonna be all over you when these movies come out."

Orlando snorted. "Please. I'll be the last one they see. Barely any lines, and looking like a git."

Amused. "Time will tell."

Another long, comfortable silence. Some unfamiliar night-bird started singing in the distance, the perfect accompaniment to the scattered moonlight.

"What you can control," Viggo said finally, as if there'd been no break in the conversation, "is what you choose to do. Nobody can make you do anything you don't want to do. Remember that, Orlando: You control your own choices."

"Going all Yoda on me, old man?" White teeth flashed in the dim light.

"Just remember, okay. It might be important some day."

-----
At dawn of the 21th Friday of the 700th week of filming Helm's Deep, an exhausted Viggo bummed a cigarette off one of the makeup guys and slumped on the steps outside the Cuntebago, watching the sky change colors.

The door opened and shut behind him and a familiar body dropped to sit alongside. "I didn't know you smoked."

"I don't," Viggo said, and took another drag, polishing the cigarette off. He snubbed it out on the step and dropped the butt in a pocket. "You got any on you?"

Orlando dug around briefly in the front pocket of his backpack and held out a half-empty pack.

"Thanks."

Viggo tapped one out and glanced over to see if a light was going to be forthcoming. Orlando extended a battered red plastic Bic, producing the necessary magic fire.

"So, for somebody who doesn't smoke, you sure look like you know what you're doing," Orlando said, somewhat hesitantly, unable to gauge the odd mood Viggo seemed to be in.

"Acting."

"Ah."

Viggo stood and looked around absently. "I think I might've walked in last night. Don't remember a car."

"I can give you a ride."

"That'd be nice." Wincing a little, he leaned over to pick up his ever-present notebook and camera and glanced at Orli with the ghost of a smile. "Lead on, little brother."

The ride to Viggo's small house was silent. Orlando hesitated to put on any music and kept darting nervous glances at Viggo, who sat perfectly still and smoked, staring out the window. When they reached his house, he climbed out, murmured thanks, and wandered barefoot up onto the porch and inside, never looking back.

Orlando sat for several minutes in stunned silence, just staring at the house and the not-quite-closed door. He thought, after almost a year of working side-by-side, that he'd gotten to know most of Viggo's moods, but this was something entirely new. It didn't feel at all like his vacant "nobody's home right now" Artist Mode, as Bean called it, when you could set his clothes on fire and he'd never notice. That mood was distant but benign. This one ...

In the car, Orlando snorted softly at his own imagination, as he almost finished the thought... this one felt like Sauron. "I feel a threat and a darkness," he muttered to himself with a crooked grin, then pulled out of Viggo's drive and headed for his own place as the sun broke fully over the horizon.

But even though he fell into his own bed, after a quick shower, exhausted, Orlando didn't sleep well. Maybe it was the knowledge of two precious days off that kept him skimming on the surface of sleep, or maybe he was just too tired to sleep: That had become an increasing problem as Helm's Deep wore on. All of them joked grimly about it over sunset cups of coffee. Took too much energy to sleep; all you could do was just lie there, limp as a wet towel over a fence, unable to turn your mind off or your body on, listening to the hours creep by.

The sun was just starting to touch the horizon, smearing the sky a bloody, bruised red, when Orlando gave up, pulled on fresh clothes, stopped to pick up some takeaway Chinese, and headed for Viggo's place.


The front door was still standing half-open.

Orlando stuck his head cautiously into the opening and peered into the dim living room. "Viggo? You home?"

No answer. He stepped carefully inside, wending his way through the scattered piles of papers, books, sketchpads and assorted detritus that littered the floor. So far, nothing unusual. Orlando had been in Viggo's house plenty of times, for one reason or another, and he knew that it could best be described as creative chaos. Reaching the dining table on the far side of the room, he pushed aside two bundles of feathers, a pile of marbles, several twigs and a small heap of rocks, a Barbie doll (a Barbie doll?), a stuffed toy blue jay, a stack of CDs and three volumes on Norse mythology to make room for the Chinese food. He wandered around the table to check the kitchen. Empty.

Back on the couch was a stack of photos, falling over haphazardly. Orlando leaned over to glance at them, riffling them lightly with a fingertip. They were all photos of Henry, Henry and Viggo, a few with Exene in them as well. Orlando snagged a glass from the floor beside the couch, noting a couple of cigarette butts in it, and gave it a sniff, his eyes widening as he did. Whew. Viggo was a wine drinker, or beer. He almost never drank hard liquor. He'd told Orlando once, in that deadpan rasp, that hard liquor fused his brain cells. Orlando had no idea whether he was joking or sharing a deep truth. But the king was drinking the hard stuff now, or at least had been.

Orlando looked around warily, but there was no sign of Viggo anywhere. He chewed his lip for a moment, then headed into the back of the house. Viggo's bedroom was clean as always - the only clean room in the entire house. There had to be something significant about that, Orlando thought, but now was not the time. The guest bedroom was littered with canvases and miscellaneous junk, but no Viggo. The bathroom sported a tipped-over bottle of extra-strength Tylenol, most of it scattered across a glass shelf, and a half-smoked cigarette dropped in the sink. The room smelled like puke, but showed no visible signs, so any worshipping of the porcelain god must have been successful.

One last room left in the house. If the door had been closed, Orlando would have had a hard time talking himself into going in. Viggo's makeshift studio was strictly sacrosanct: Nobody went in but him, unless invited. But the door was open and the light was on.

"Viggo?" A little louder. No response.

Orlando stuck his head inside, squinting against the bright light after the dimness of the rest of the house. After a first quick scan to register that no, dammit, there was nobody in here, either, he found his attention drawn back to a large canvas centered on the far wall. It was obviously fresh, still glistening wetly in the stark light, and as Orlando stared at it he felt his insides twist into a slow freefall roll.

It was blue, so blue it was almost black, the paint shoveled on so thick that it oozed downward in places, victim of gravity and time. Against the blue exploded bruises of deep purple, vicious stabs of vermilion, ragged slices of gangrenous green, choking gobs of putrid yellow. It hurt and it was furious. It hurt to look at, and Orlando could only imagine how it must have hurt being born. The floor in front of the canvas was pollacked with all the colors from the painting, smeared footprints painting another artwork there.

Blinking away the start of uncertain tears, Orlando followed footprints the color of bruises to the sliding door onto the deck, across the deck and down the steps. A few yards out on the sand, Viggo lay in a sprawl, half on his side, head resting on one arm. A wartorn bottle of Jameson dripped slowly into the sand by his hand, and a cigarette spun thin smoke signals into the darkening sky.

He was barely conscious.

Orlando dropped to his knees beside him on the sand. "Viggo?"

"Oorlaaanddoooo." Viggo tasted the name like rich chocolate and aimed a crooked smile up at him.

"You okay?" Orlando brushed sweaty reddish strands out of Viggo's face, tucking them behind an ear. His hand, with a will of its own, tenderly caressed the ear and cupped the jaw.

Viggo reached for the cigarette, missed, tried again and got it, flicking it away. "No," he said, thoughtfully drunk. "Not." He turned his head gingerly, found that gentle hand and kissed it, his eyes closing.

Orlando blinked, then just watched in fascination as a warm tongue began drawing circles on his palm.

"V- Viggo?"

"Mmmm?"

The tongue started working its way up his wrist and a surprisingly strong hand grabbed his. Orlando was suddenly having trouble breathing.

"Vig, we need to get you inside." His voice sounded strangled, even to him. "It'll be getting cold soon."

"Geddinside." Gray-blue eyes opened and looked up at Orlando heavy-lidded and wicked. "Good idea."

Orlando felt himself blush. Good Orli wanted to pull his hand away from that warm calloused grasp but bad Orlando just wanted more. "You're drunk."

Lips closed around a chosen spot on his forearm and that maddening tongue wrote lazy runes in the dark cave for a moment. When the mouth moved away, the resulting cold struck straight to Orlando's crotch. "Yes," Viggo said agreeably and fell back onto the sand with a rumbly laugh. "C'mere." Drifty arms raised toward Orlando, long fingers lazily gesturing him toward the one place he'd been wanting to go for months. "Ah know y'want to."

Orlando glared at the almost vanished sun and had an extensive one-sided conversation with a variety of dieties, involving fairness and honor and just, well, bloody, fucking, damn. He hauled in a deep breath and figured he'd better get some damned big celestial brownie points for this.

"C'mon, Vig," he said, getting a grip on the larger man's shoulders to start pulling him upward. "Let's go inside, eh? More comfortable."

"'Fyou think so." As soon as Orlando moved within range, Viggo wrapped his arms around the boy and breathed in the unique scent of him, herbs and grass and springtime. Together they managed to get Viggo upright, and when a sway brought them together, their lips met as if by fate.

The kiss was surprisingly tender, a trembling, anxious meeting of lips and, slowly, tongues. Viggo's hands slid up to cup Orlando's face and Orlando could feel the long fingers quivering as they slid across his temples. He tasted like whisky and cigarettes, and he kissed with a single-minded intensity that stole what was left of Orlando's heart, tucked it away in a safe place and lost the key.

When they finally broke for air, Orlando was astonished to see that Viggo's face was wet. Blue eyes stared at him with an expression of utter loss for a long moment. When he finally spoke, his voice was so soft Orlando wasn't sure he heard right. "I'm so lonely." He looked down and swayed, then out at the ocean. "Thanks for..." a vague gesture ... "this. I'll be okay."

Wavering, he headed for the house, falling only once on the way up the stairs. By the time Orlando got there to help, he'd managed to pull himself more or less up and offered the younger man a crooked smile, "Not so drunk, huh?" And a little snort.

Orlando, by this time in a daze, not sure what to think or do, simply followed his staggering king with some vague idea of making sure he didn't hurt himself. Viggo made his way to the bedroom, started an attempt at removing his shirt but gave up after one button, and simply fell facedown on the bed.

Orlando blinked, considered the logistics of removing the man's clothes, brushing the sand off him or doing something about his absolutely filthy feet, and decided he was too weirded out at the moment to deal with any of that. Instead, he went to the kitchen to see if Viggo had anything remotely resembling a decent cup of tea.

-----------

Viggo is an angry man.

He doesn't talk about it.

Date: 2005-01-14 03:40 am (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
I like multiple posts in a day, gives me something to do. A little short, but I'll forebear. Nice start, I hope Orlando has some honor though, it would be a wonderful change of pace. Just friends for now, because loneliness can make you do things you'll regret without the aid of alochol. Oh well, you'll do what you'll do I suppose. I hope you continue and recieve plenty of reviews. Simplistic style, but enjoyable. And for a perfectly inane comment: Viggo's a "better man than me" if he can drink Jameson straight from the bottle. Yuck. -SL
(ross8472@yahoo.com)

Date: 2005-01-14 04:32 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] nad-no-ennas.livejournal.com
I'm really enjoying this and wondering where it will go. Viggo does often seem so lonely. Please update often!

Date: 2005-01-14 11:44 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] graffiti-vikat.livejournal.com
hey, just kinda stumbled on this story tonight and am totally luvin' it! the tone, the mood... quite melancholy, especially this part, but so right. i'm definitely interested in finding out more about viggo and hopes orlando can help viggo not feel so lonely ;-)

great stuff and can't wait for the next part!

Date: 2005-01-14 03:10 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cream-and-sugar.livejournal.com
I just read all four chapters, and wow. This is fantasic! I love the exploration of Viggo's solitary nature. I'm really looking forward to more. :)

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