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vigorli2005-01-25 06:31 pm
rainweaver13.livejournal.com) wrote in vigorli2005-01-25 06:31 pm
Breathing Room (11/?)
Title: Breathing Room (11/?)
Author: Rainweaver13
Pairing: Viggo/Orlando
Summary: Monteverde III
Rating/Warnings: R. All made up. Fiction. There's not a lick of truth in it.
Disclaimer: Don't own them; don't know anything about them - they are their own.
A/N: The general facts in here about Costa Rica, Monteverde and the Cloud Forest Preserve are true. Smaller individual details are just as made up as Viggo and Orlando. AU because Orlando is clearly not in Hollywood doing Golden Globes and Oscar stuff. Also, as far as I know, any drug problems mentioned are total fiction. Feedback would really make my day.
-----------------
Previous Chapters Look under Personal Fics
January 2005, Day 5 of Orlando's stay
Viggo's idea of rest and relaxation, Orlando thought. The man really should be put down as a hazard to humanity.
He'd hauled Orlando out of bed before sunrise, told him to dress in layers ("Be sure to wear a jacket and your boots"), stopped to pick up a loaded knapsack from a bemused kitchen worker downstairs, then hustled a grumbling Orlando into the Land Cruiser. A few miles down the gravel road, he turned off onto a narrow dirt road and wound the vehicle through increasingly thick vegetation until a clearing opened out and Orlando blinked at a tidy farm, with a well-maintained stable and five sleekly groomed horses waiting in a barely lit corral.
As Viggo pulled the cruiser up by the stable and killed the lights, a young man emerged from the house, smiling and greeting Viggo in Spanish.
"There's coffee in the knapsack," Viggo said to Orlando with a smile, before climbing out of the cruiser and greeting the young man, settling in to what sounded like a cheerful conversation as they walked toward the horses.
Coffee. An excellent idea. Orlando hauled the knapsack up from the back seat, pulled out the only thermos and poured himself a cup of the wonderful local coffee. After the first two sips, he dropped his head back and just relaxed, letting the ebb and flow of Viggo's conversation wash over him like a tide.
"Lan- Orlando!" Viggo called. "Come choose a partner for the day."
Bringing the coffee cup with him, Orlando unfolded from the cruiser and ambled toward the corral, breathing deep of the crisply chilled morning air. It smelled green. And horsey.
"Smells kinda like New Zealand," Viggo said as Orlando walked up to the fence. "Early weekend mornings, going out to ride."
"Yeah, it does." Orlando smiled, beginning to enjoy the new feeling of freedom the last few days had brought. "So are we here to look at horses?" Inside the corral, two chestnuts, a rangy bay, a smallish black mare and a strawberry roan ambled around, occasionally coming over to take a sniff at the two strangers by the fence.
"We're going for a ride. Take your pick. Eduardo says they're all reliable. The mare's not in season, so she's fine, too."
Orlando rubbed gently on the nose of one of the chestnuts, which had come over to snuffle him and decided to stay. "Looks like this guy's chosen me." He rubbed the gelding's jaw and the horse whickered softly.
Viggo spoke again to Eduardo, indicating the chestnut and the rangy bay, then laughing as Eduardo moved off with a grin to catch the two horses and take them inside for saddling.
"What's so funny?" Orlando took another sip of coffee and watched as the sky lightened over the surrounding trees.
"The bay's name." Viggo laughed again, that familiar little snicker that did an odd thing to Orlando's insides. "He says it's Hidalgo. Swear to god. I think he's pulling my leg. Maybe he saw the movie." He's still grinning, though, and Orlando watched him sidelong, thinking it was good to see him looking happy.
"How about mine? He have a name?"
"Oh... yeah... Tialoc," he said. "The Aztec god of water. Because of that lightning mark on his face." Viggo shoved off from the fence and crossed to the cruiser, opening the back and pulling out two bedrolls and a set of saddlebags. Watching him, still with that little smile quirking on his face, Orlando realized he hadn't been seeing that smile much in the past five days. It showed up in flashes and left just as quickly, leaving an expression of benign emptiness behind.
"Do I even want to know where you got saddlebags... looks like packed ones... in the middle of nowhere?"
"I have my methods." Viggo gave him a little wink, then walked over to meet Eduardo as he emerged with the horses. They talked for a while longer in Spanish, this time involving much pointing toward the treeline and nodding. As they led the horses to the cruiser, Orlando finished his coffee and screwed the top back on the thermos, stowing it in the knapsack. He gave Eduardo a handshake and a grateful smile while Viggo strapped the bedrolls on both horses and the saddlebags on Tialoc. Closing the cruiser and shoving the keys into his pocket, he swung up on Hidalgo and gestured for Orlando to hand him up the knapsack. Once Viggo was settled into the knapsack and Orlando was mounted, they turned for the treeline, Viggo calling out a few final words to Eduardo.
Within moments, they were on a narrow path, just wide enough for two horses, leading along the edge of the vast dense jungle. After a few minutes, when the stables were out of sight and there wasn't another soul in sight, Orlando cleared his throat.
"You do have some idea what we're doing, right?"
"Have I ever led you wrong?"
Orlando turned and just looked at Viggo. Just looked at him, until that little grin quirked up at the corner of his mouth. "At least I don't jump off bridges. Or out of airplanes."
"No, you get us lost in the woods, and walk across flooding rivers."
"Those turned out all right."
"So did the bungee jumping and the sky-diving."
"Guess we're even, then. Little day-trip on horseback should be a piece of cake."
They rode the boundary ever upward between two very different lands. On one side, lush green hills rolled away, sloping ever downward, broken by lines of trees and bushes. In some areas, the land was already broken up, lying dark brown and bare to the sky. On the other side, the forest began almost immediately. Even riding the boundary, it was difficult to see more than twenty or thirty feet into the green. The sun rose over the forest and they rode in its shadow, deep in the morning chill. Orlando shuddered.
"Cold?"
"Not too bad."
"Tell me if you get too cold, or hungry. We can stop, find a sunny spot, eat." Viggo glanced over at him, smiled a little. "I tend to forget. You know."
"I know." Another one of those pangs sliced through Orlando's guts, and he decided it was probably the beginnings of hunger. "I'll let you know."
They rode on in silence for a while, peace falling around them like a cloak. The thick carpet of the path muffled the horses' hoofbeats, and the morning song of the forest birds began with a passion. Orlando looked over at Viggo, and the older man was riding along with his eyes closed, letting the horse pick the way, his face lifted to the sky. He looked... hungry somehow. Or dry. As if he were drying to absorb something from the world.
"You can call me Lan," Orlando said quietly.
"Hmm?"
"You can call me Lan. You've done it a couple of times and corrected yourself, but it's okay. I don't mind."
The horses swayed along for a few soft thudding steps.
"I'm not ... I don't know if that's wise," Viggo said finally, still looking at the sky with his eyes closed. "I've invested a lot of energy in... for-... getting..." He stumbled to a stop and just shook his head, finally. "Thanks, though."
Orlando swallowed hard and decided the green fields to his right needed a close inspection. Calling up every shred of acting skill he had, he said, "Hey, no prob. Just a thought."
The path wound around the gentle slope of a hill topped by a patch of sunlight. Viggo nodded toward it. "Look like a breakfast stop to you?"
"Good idea."
Both of them shoved the uncomfortable moment behind them, and a short time later they were seated on the blankets from one of the bedrolls, eating breakfast from the knapsack. Conversation was light and uncomplicated, centering on shared acquaintances and past projects. While packing the remainders and trash into the knapsack, Orlando frowned slightly and dug to the bottom to pull up to items. Turning on his toes, he waved them at Viggo.
"Hello?"
Viggo looked over from where he was restrapping the bedroll and tightening saddles, and looked half-sheepish, half-defiant. "In case you get bored. With silence and ... nature..." He shrugged.
Orlando looked down at his Discman and small travel case of music and thought that he wasn't sure he could survive two more weeks with this man. He'd thought his heart was strong now, hard. Well walled. Damn Viggo. Damn him and his damn fucking thoughtfulness. He shoved the things back in the knapsack, yanked it shut harder than necessary and waited until Viggo was mounted to hand it up to him. Heartbeats later they were back on the back, heading farther into the wild.
---
"After World War II, Costa Rica disbanded its army," Viggo said in that soft low murmur. They'd been within the forest for at least an hour now, drowned in green and a breath-taking abundance of life. "Hasn't had one since. It has a higher literacy rate and lower infant mortality rate than the States or Britain."
"Sounds like they're doing something right."
"Yeah. Maybe in peace is a good way to live."
"Don't talk politics, okay?"
---
"Monteverde was founded by Quakers from North America in the 1950s." Time had ceased to have meaning in the slow rocking movement of the horses through the unending emerald forest. When Viggo spoke, Orlando listened by habit and because he had loved that voice for six years and he could no more ignore it than he could stop breathing. "They liked that there was no army. Got here, started to farm. But they realized that this..." a wave toward the forest, which they were only touching the outermost fingernail of, "... was a treasure. A pearl of great price. So they set aside 26,000 acres of untouched wilderness as the Monteverde Biological Cloud Forest Preserve."
"Cloud forest?"
"Mmmm... Like a rain forest only at a higher elevation. Why it's so chilly here. And the rain doesn't fall, the clouds just lie on the ground. We got a rare clear day so far. Eduardo said there'll be clouds later."
"Viggo, don't take this the wrong way..."
"Yeah?"
"How the hell do you know all this stuff?"
Shrug. "Read a lot. Do homework." A blue-eyed glance over, with one of those little smiles. "I was a real geek as a kid. Reading all the time."
"That's hard to imagine. I always pictured you as one of those outdoorsy kids, always outside exploring, playing games in your imagination."
Viggo chuckled. "Did that, too. Just usually had a book on me. Learned early on that you're never bored with a book."
"So tell me something else about this cloud forest."
"It's the biggest one in the world." The clouds had begun to gather quietly, trails of mist drifting through the trees. The air was thick with moisture, but no rain fell. "Hundreds of varieties of orchids grow here. Some that don't grow anywhere else."
"This is almost like London fog."
"Except cleaner."
"Yeah. Too true, that."
They rode along in silence for a long time as the mist gathered and collapsed the world down to a haunting cocoon.
"I wonder what green tastes like," Viggo murmured softly. "Dark wet green. Like ocean water, all salt and unidentifiable musk?"
"Maybe it'd taste like lettuce," Orlando contributed, shivering a little. "Like it just needs a dollop of dressing and a few croutons and it's good to go."
Viggo snorted.
"Is it true you ate grass at some footie stadium in Argentina?"
"Yes." Viggo sounded a bit defensive. "It was just grass. Jesus, you'd think I ate tarantulas the way people talk about it."
Orlando laughed. "Well, you gotta admit, mate. Grass? That's a little weird, even for you."
"It was symbolic."
"It was crazy. No wonder people think you're some kind of lunatic."
They rode along in silence for a while, before Viggo said, "Sometimes I think it'd be interesting to have synesthesia, y'know? So you could smell sounds and see tastes and hear what things look like."
"Man, you are a complete fucking nutter. And I'm cold. Are we anywhere near a break?"
"Should be ahead," Viggo nodded. "A turnaround pavilian, Eduardo said. Halfway point. And I did tell you to dress warm."
"You didn't tell me to dress for pea soup in the winter," Orlando grumbled.
"Lightweight."
"Sadist."
"Poncy elf."
"Human filth."
When they grinned at each other across the distance between two horses, for a brief moment, it was almost as if five years had fallen away and they were good friends enjoying the best time anybody ever had doing a job they got paid for. Then Orlando looked away, out into the green, and Viggo looked down at his hands on the reins before nudging Hidalgo up to an easy jog. Orlando followed suit and within a half-hour they broke free of the forest onto a clearing with a simple wooden shelter on one end. 'Bout damn time, Orlando thought. He'd had about all the fucking uninterrupted greenery he could stomach for the time being.
While Orlando tied the horses and loosened their gear, Viggo started a fire in the small firepit in the center of the shelter, then they carried the bedrolls, saddlebags and knapsacks inside.
"There should be a little pool out there somewhere, where the horses can drink," Viggo said, unrolling the blankets they'd used at breakfast and spreading them on the dirt floor. "You want to find it, or you want to dig out the food?"
"I'll set the table," Orlando said, not anxious to go back out into the clinging dampness. Besides, he was feeling decidedly unwell at the moment, and he knew what that chewing at his spine meant.
"Be back soon." Viggo straightened, winced a bit as that damn knee bit at him again, then headed out for the horses. Soon Orlando could hear him murmuring to them in Spanish, no doubt telling them that the poncy elf can't be trusted to find water in a space the size of a football field. He watched his hands tremble as he dug out the food and water bottles, placing them on the blankets along with the leftovers from breakfast, He didn't need a watch to tell him it'd been well past six hours since his last painkillers. When Viggo got back he'd have to ask, and damn, he hated to ask.
When Viggo returned, he found Orlando sitting as close as he could get to the fire, holding trembling hands out to the flickering heat. Viggo added another piece of wood to the fire, kicked off his boots beside the blanket and sat cross-legged beside Orlando, leaning over to pull the pill bottle from his pocket. He shook out two, popped one in half and dropped a half back into the bottle, holding the rest over to Orlando.
"Y'did good," he said quietly. "Going on eight hours."
"What's this, though?" Orlando asked, picking up the pills.
"One and a half. Time you went down a little."
"I don't think so. I think I need more time. I'm not ready for this."
"You're okay." Viggo recapped the bottle and slid it back into his pocket, and in that moment Orlando hated him with a pure and blazing fury.
"What the fuck do you know about anything, Mr. Perfect? Goddamn knowitall. Oh, 'I read a lot.' Sure. Like the rest of us are just fucking stupid." Orlando was shaking, arms wrapped tight around himself. "Do you ever get tired of always being right? Do you think anybody really falls for that 'I'm so above it all' routine? Do you think anybody buys your pretentious books because they love poetry or photography? It's because you're so hot onscreen. They just want to own a piece of you, because you're so goddamn perfect. Well I know for a fact that your shit stinks just like everybody else's, so don't try going all Mother Theresa on me, y'hear?"
"Take your pills, Orlando," Viggo said calmly, as every shot fired hit him straight in some vital organ. He felt like Boromir, all bristling with arrows but with no king to swear allegiance to. He leaned over to pick up a bottle of water and handed it to Orlando.
"I hate you, Viggo," Orlando said, shaking with frustration. But he took the water, and he took the pills, and he hated himself even more.
Viggo waited until Orlando had swallowed the pills before he stood and pulled his boots back on. "Why don't you take a nap?" he said quietly. "I got you up awfully early. I'll be back soon."
"Where are you going?" Orlando asked, and despised the needy tone in his voice.
"Just a little walk. I'll be back soon." Viggo smiled, but it was all artifice, nothing like the real smiles of earlier. "Too hungry to stay gone long."
He strode off across the clearing, hunched inside his baggy field coat, and disappeared into the mist. Orlando watched him go and tried to stoke the fires of his anger, but within a short while he was feeding it straw and toothpicks and the flame was going out. He curled over beside the fire and wondered when he'd become a monster. Eventually he dozed.
He woke to small sounds and a faint smell of food. Viggo sat across the fire, hair wet, ripping off pieces of tortilla and using them to eat beans and rice. He looked so natural that Orlando hated him again for a moment, but this time it was a mild hatred born of envy. The man was so damn adjustable it was downright unnatural. He just fit in. Wherever.
Orlando sat up and stretched, easing his back, wary about looking across the fire. Instead, he set to the food, gathering himself some fruit, tortillas and some of the ubiquitous beans and rice.
They ate in silence broken only by bird song and the soft nickers and whuffs of the horses nearby. Viggo put one more piece of wood on the fire and sat back with a container of pineapple.
"I'm sorry," Orlando said finally.
"No problem. It's the pills talking." Viggo munched on a piece of pineapple, staring into the small fire.
"Yeah, but that was really uncall-"
"It's okay. Honest."
"I hurt you."
Not for the first time, Viggo thought, but had enough sense not to say that aloud. "I'll survive." He offered up a smile and met Orlando's gaze for the first time since the outburst.
"I just- this is - it's harder than I thought," Orlando said, miserable.
"It could be a lot worse," Viggo said almost absently. "You could be puking your guts out 'round the clock, having hallucinations, going into seizures, having to be tied down." He shrugged. "Lucky you caught it before it got worse."
"Lucky you caught it," Orlando said quietly.
Viggo studied Orlando across the fire. He'd grown into his face more, and looked more like a man than a boy, but the eyes were still the same. Except that they were richer now; they had more depth. Their sparkle wasn't just a surface thing; when it happened now it was more of a glow. And there was sadness, tired sadness, which had never been there before.
Viggo put down the pineapple, shrugged out of his coat, shoved his left sleeve up past the elbow and extended his arm to Orlando. Firelight flickered over the exposed skin.
"Hardly anybody ever looks at the inside of an elbow," Viggo said with a rueful smile. "Except cops and doctors. Take a look."
Orlando frowned. He'd been over every square inch of Viggo's body in times past, elbows included, and never noticed anything unusual. But he looked again, eventually grabbing the arm (trying to ignore the pang that the touch caused) and turning it against the light until he finally saw. They could pass for reverse freckles, or simple discolorations, but they were in fact a series of tiny scars. Orlando looked up at Viggo, uncertain.
"Last year of high school, on and off for a decade," the older man said quietly. "I was lucky. Never had a real addictive personality, so I could sorta take it or leave it. But this..." he reached up to finger the scar, invisible under a thick mustache, "...I wasn't drunk. Or... maybe I was drunk, too. I dunno. But I was so gone I didn't know what planet I was on." Viggo had pulled his arm back, was rolling the sleeve back down and staring into the fire. "I could've died from so much. This was New York. I was experimenting with sex every way it was possible. Doing IV drugs. Hanging with the punk scene. It's a miracle I didn't get AIDS." He pulled his coat back on and ran both hands through his damp hair. "A friend caught me. Slapped the shit out of me. Made me really think about what I was doing. Babysat me while I got clean."
He looked up at Orlando. "It wasn't too hard for me, either. Maybe a little harder than for you, since I'd been using longer, but I was a real casual user. But heroin's a bad drug, elf boy. And that stuff you're taking... it's not called hillbilly heroin for nothing."
"I had no idea," Orlando said finally.
"Nobody does. Consider yourself blessed or cursed. You're the only person I've ever told. I'd appreciate it if it stayed between us."
"Of course."
"You had enough to eat?"
"What? Oh... uh... yeah. Maybe I'll just take an apple to eat while we ride."
"Good idea. Look in that other bedroll. Should be a couple of rain slickers in there, maybe a scarf if Hilario believed me."
The fire put out, everything redistributed on the horses, and wearing yellow slickers over their coats (Orlando with a thick orange woolen scarf jauntily around his neck), they set out on the trail back toward the stable. For the most part they rode in silence, each with much to occupy his mind.
------------------------------------------------------
Viggo is a private man. That clashes badly with his job as an actor, which makes him a public figure.
He never had any problems with publishing his poetry or art, even though some people say that his work is intensely personal. He knows it isn't. He knows that his poetry isn't real. If he's lucky, it's true, but it's never real. The photography is closest to real of all his art, the closest to public. But his photography has grown more abstract as he has grown more public. There will likely be no more "Christine's World" photos in his portfolio. Something is lost. He looks for ways to make it a gain.
He thinks perhaps this public figure business may have to go. He ponders sometimes the route of J.D. Salinger, who just couldn't take it and pulled away forever. Would he have the nerve to do that?
Some days that looks like a fine option.
Author: Rainweaver13
Pairing: Viggo/Orlando
Summary: Monteverde III
Rating/Warnings: R. All made up. Fiction. There's not a lick of truth in it.
Disclaimer: Don't own them; don't know anything about them - they are their own.
A/N: The general facts in here about Costa Rica, Monteverde and the Cloud Forest Preserve are true. Smaller individual details are just as made up as Viggo and Orlando. AU because Orlando is clearly not in Hollywood doing Golden Globes and Oscar stuff. Also, as far as I know, any drug problems mentioned are total fiction. Feedback would really make my day.
-----------------
Previous Chapters Look under Personal Fics
January 2005, Day 5 of Orlando's stay
Viggo's idea of rest and relaxation, Orlando thought. The man really should be put down as a hazard to humanity.
He'd hauled Orlando out of bed before sunrise, told him to dress in layers ("Be sure to wear a jacket and your boots"), stopped to pick up a loaded knapsack from a bemused kitchen worker downstairs, then hustled a grumbling Orlando into the Land Cruiser. A few miles down the gravel road, he turned off onto a narrow dirt road and wound the vehicle through increasingly thick vegetation until a clearing opened out and Orlando blinked at a tidy farm, with a well-maintained stable and five sleekly groomed horses waiting in a barely lit corral.
As Viggo pulled the cruiser up by the stable and killed the lights, a young man emerged from the house, smiling and greeting Viggo in Spanish.
"There's coffee in the knapsack," Viggo said to Orlando with a smile, before climbing out of the cruiser and greeting the young man, settling in to what sounded like a cheerful conversation as they walked toward the horses.
Coffee. An excellent idea. Orlando hauled the knapsack up from the back seat, pulled out the only thermos and poured himself a cup of the wonderful local coffee. After the first two sips, he dropped his head back and just relaxed, letting the ebb and flow of Viggo's conversation wash over him like a tide.
"Lan- Orlando!" Viggo called. "Come choose a partner for the day."
Bringing the coffee cup with him, Orlando unfolded from the cruiser and ambled toward the corral, breathing deep of the crisply chilled morning air. It smelled green. And horsey.
"Smells kinda like New Zealand," Viggo said as Orlando walked up to the fence. "Early weekend mornings, going out to ride."
"Yeah, it does." Orlando smiled, beginning to enjoy the new feeling of freedom the last few days had brought. "So are we here to look at horses?" Inside the corral, two chestnuts, a rangy bay, a smallish black mare and a strawberry roan ambled around, occasionally coming over to take a sniff at the two strangers by the fence.
"We're going for a ride. Take your pick. Eduardo says they're all reliable. The mare's not in season, so she's fine, too."
Orlando rubbed gently on the nose of one of the chestnuts, which had come over to snuffle him and decided to stay. "Looks like this guy's chosen me." He rubbed the gelding's jaw and the horse whickered softly.
Viggo spoke again to Eduardo, indicating the chestnut and the rangy bay, then laughing as Eduardo moved off with a grin to catch the two horses and take them inside for saddling.
"What's so funny?" Orlando took another sip of coffee and watched as the sky lightened over the surrounding trees.
"The bay's name." Viggo laughed again, that familiar little snicker that did an odd thing to Orlando's insides. "He says it's Hidalgo. Swear to god. I think he's pulling my leg. Maybe he saw the movie." He's still grinning, though, and Orlando watched him sidelong, thinking it was good to see him looking happy.
"How about mine? He have a name?"
"Oh... yeah... Tialoc," he said. "The Aztec god of water. Because of that lightning mark on his face." Viggo shoved off from the fence and crossed to the cruiser, opening the back and pulling out two bedrolls and a set of saddlebags. Watching him, still with that little smile quirking on his face, Orlando realized he hadn't been seeing that smile much in the past five days. It showed up in flashes and left just as quickly, leaving an expression of benign emptiness behind.
"Do I even want to know where you got saddlebags... looks like packed ones... in the middle of nowhere?"
"I have my methods." Viggo gave him a little wink, then walked over to meet Eduardo as he emerged with the horses. They talked for a while longer in Spanish, this time involving much pointing toward the treeline and nodding. As they led the horses to the cruiser, Orlando finished his coffee and screwed the top back on the thermos, stowing it in the knapsack. He gave Eduardo a handshake and a grateful smile while Viggo strapped the bedrolls on both horses and the saddlebags on Tialoc. Closing the cruiser and shoving the keys into his pocket, he swung up on Hidalgo and gestured for Orlando to hand him up the knapsack. Once Viggo was settled into the knapsack and Orlando was mounted, they turned for the treeline, Viggo calling out a few final words to Eduardo.
Within moments, they were on a narrow path, just wide enough for two horses, leading along the edge of the vast dense jungle. After a few minutes, when the stables were out of sight and there wasn't another soul in sight, Orlando cleared his throat.
"You do have some idea what we're doing, right?"
"Have I ever led you wrong?"
Orlando turned and just looked at Viggo. Just looked at him, until that little grin quirked up at the corner of his mouth. "At least I don't jump off bridges. Or out of airplanes."
"No, you get us lost in the woods, and walk across flooding rivers."
"Those turned out all right."
"So did the bungee jumping and the sky-diving."
"Guess we're even, then. Little day-trip on horseback should be a piece of cake."
They rode the boundary ever upward between two very different lands. On one side, lush green hills rolled away, sloping ever downward, broken by lines of trees and bushes. In some areas, the land was already broken up, lying dark brown and bare to the sky. On the other side, the forest began almost immediately. Even riding the boundary, it was difficult to see more than twenty or thirty feet into the green. The sun rose over the forest and they rode in its shadow, deep in the morning chill. Orlando shuddered.
"Cold?"
"Not too bad."
"Tell me if you get too cold, or hungry. We can stop, find a sunny spot, eat." Viggo glanced over at him, smiled a little. "I tend to forget. You know."
"I know." Another one of those pangs sliced through Orlando's guts, and he decided it was probably the beginnings of hunger. "I'll let you know."
They rode on in silence for a while, peace falling around them like a cloak. The thick carpet of the path muffled the horses' hoofbeats, and the morning song of the forest birds began with a passion. Orlando looked over at Viggo, and the older man was riding along with his eyes closed, letting the horse pick the way, his face lifted to the sky. He looked... hungry somehow. Or dry. As if he were drying to absorb something from the world.
"You can call me Lan," Orlando said quietly.
"Hmm?"
"You can call me Lan. You've done it a couple of times and corrected yourself, but it's okay. I don't mind."
The horses swayed along for a few soft thudding steps.
"I'm not ... I don't know if that's wise," Viggo said finally, still looking at the sky with his eyes closed. "I've invested a lot of energy in... for-... getting..." He stumbled to a stop and just shook his head, finally. "Thanks, though."
Orlando swallowed hard and decided the green fields to his right needed a close inspection. Calling up every shred of acting skill he had, he said, "Hey, no prob. Just a thought."
The path wound around the gentle slope of a hill topped by a patch of sunlight. Viggo nodded toward it. "Look like a breakfast stop to you?"
"Good idea."
Both of them shoved the uncomfortable moment behind them, and a short time later they were seated on the blankets from one of the bedrolls, eating breakfast from the knapsack. Conversation was light and uncomplicated, centering on shared acquaintances and past projects. While packing the remainders and trash into the knapsack, Orlando frowned slightly and dug to the bottom to pull up to items. Turning on his toes, he waved them at Viggo.
"Hello?"
Viggo looked over from where he was restrapping the bedroll and tightening saddles, and looked half-sheepish, half-defiant. "In case you get bored. With silence and ... nature..." He shrugged.
Orlando looked down at his Discman and small travel case of music and thought that he wasn't sure he could survive two more weeks with this man. He'd thought his heart was strong now, hard. Well walled. Damn Viggo. Damn him and his damn fucking thoughtfulness. He shoved the things back in the knapsack, yanked it shut harder than necessary and waited until Viggo was mounted to hand it up to him. Heartbeats later they were back on the back, heading farther into the wild.
---
"After World War II, Costa Rica disbanded its army," Viggo said in that soft low murmur. They'd been within the forest for at least an hour now, drowned in green and a breath-taking abundance of life. "Hasn't had one since. It has a higher literacy rate and lower infant mortality rate than the States or Britain."
"Sounds like they're doing something right."
"Yeah. Maybe in peace is a good way to live."
"Don't talk politics, okay?"
---
"Monteverde was founded by Quakers from North America in the 1950s." Time had ceased to have meaning in the slow rocking movement of the horses through the unending emerald forest. When Viggo spoke, Orlando listened by habit and because he had loved that voice for six years and he could no more ignore it than he could stop breathing. "They liked that there was no army. Got here, started to farm. But they realized that this..." a wave toward the forest, which they were only touching the outermost fingernail of, "... was a treasure. A pearl of great price. So they set aside 26,000 acres of untouched wilderness as the Monteverde Biological Cloud Forest Preserve."
"Cloud forest?"
"Mmmm... Like a rain forest only at a higher elevation. Why it's so chilly here. And the rain doesn't fall, the clouds just lie on the ground. We got a rare clear day so far. Eduardo said there'll be clouds later."
"Viggo, don't take this the wrong way..."
"Yeah?"
"How the hell do you know all this stuff?"
Shrug. "Read a lot. Do homework." A blue-eyed glance over, with one of those little smiles. "I was a real geek as a kid. Reading all the time."
"That's hard to imagine. I always pictured you as one of those outdoorsy kids, always outside exploring, playing games in your imagination."
Viggo chuckled. "Did that, too. Just usually had a book on me. Learned early on that you're never bored with a book."
"So tell me something else about this cloud forest."
"It's the biggest one in the world." The clouds had begun to gather quietly, trails of mist drifting through the trees. The air was thick with moisture, but no rain fell. "Hundreds of varieties of orchids grow here. Some that don't grow anywhere else."
"This is almost like London fog."
"Except cleaner."
"Yeah. Too true, that."
They rode along in silence for a long time as the mist gathered and collapsed the world down to a haunting cocoon.
"I wonder what green tastes like," Viggo murmured softly. "Dark wet green. Like ocean water, all salt and unidentifiable musk?"
"Maybe it'd taste like lettuce," Orlando contributed, shivering a little. "Like it just needs a dollop of dressing and a few croutons and it's good to go."
Viggo snorted.
"Is it true you ate grass at some footie stadium in Argentina?"
"Yes." Viggo sounded a bit defensive. "It was just grass. Jesus, you'd think I ate tarantulas the way people talk about it."
Orlando laughed. "Well, you gotta admit, mate. Grass? That's a little weird, even for you."
"It was symbolic."
"It was crazy. No wonder people think you're some kind of lunatic."
They rode along in silence for a while, before Viggo said, "Sometimes I think it'd be interesting to have synesthesia, y'know? So you could smell sounds and see tastes and hear what things look like."
"Man, you are a complete fucking nutter. And I'm cold. Are we anywhere near a break?"
"Should be ahead," Viggo nodded. "A turnaround pavilian, Eduardo said. Halfway point. And I did tell you to dress warm."
"You didn't tell me to dress for pea soup in the winter," Orlando grumbled.
"Lightweight."
"Sadist."
"Poncy elf."
"Human filth."
When they grinned at each other across the distance between two horses, for a brief moment, it was almost as if five years had fallen away and they were good friends enjoying the best time anybody ever had doing a job they got paid for. Then Orlando looked away, out into the green, and Viggo looked down at his hands on the reins before nudging Hidalgo up to an easy jog. Orlando followed suit and within a half-hour they broke free of the forest onto a clearing with a simple wooden shelter on one end. 'Bout damn time, Orlando thought. He'd had about all the fucking uninterrupted greenery he could stomach for the time being.
While Orlando tied the horses and loosened their gear, Viggo started a fire in the small firepit in the center of the shelter, then they carried the bedrolls, saddlebags and knapsacks inside.
"There should be a little pool out there somewhere, where the horses can drink," Viggo said, unrolling the blankets they'd used at breakfast and spreading them on the dirt floor. "You want to find it, or you want to dig out the food?"
"I'll set the table," Orlando said, not anxious to go back out into the clinging dampness. Besides, he was feeling decidedly unwell at the moment, and he knew what that chewing at his spine meant.
"Be back soon." Viggo straightened, winced a bit as that damn knee bit at him again, then headed out for the horses. Soon Orlando could hear him murmuring to them in Spanish, no doubt telling them that the poncy elf can't be trusted to find water in a space the size of a football field. He watched his hands tremble as he dug out the food and water bottles, placing them on the blankets along with the leftovers from breakfast, He didn't need a watch to tell him it'd been well past six hours since his last painkillers. When Viggo got back he'd have to ask, and damn, he hated to ask.
When Viggo returned, he found Orlando sitting as close as he could get to the fire, holding trembling hands out to the flickering heat. Viggo added another piece of wood to the fire, kicked off his boots beside the blanket and sat cross-legged beside Orlando, leaning over to pull the pill bottle from his pocket. He shook out two, popped one in half and dropped a half back into the bottle, holding the rest over to Orlando.
"Y'did good," he said quietly. "Going on eight hours."
"What's this, though?" Orlando asked, picking up the pills.
"One and a half. Time you went down a little."
"I don't think so. I think I need more time. I'm not ready for this."
"You're okay." Viggo recapped the bottle and slid it back into his pocket, and in that moment Orlando hated him with a pure and blazing fury.
"What the fuck do you know about anything, Mr. Perfect? Goddamn knowitall. Oh, 'I read a lot.' Sure. Like the rest of us are just fucking stupid." Orlando was shaking, arms wrapped tight around himself. "Do you ever get tired of always being right? Do you think anybody really falls for that 'I'm so above it all' routine? Do you think anybody buys your pretentious books because they love poetry or photography? It's because you're so hot onscreen. They just want to own a piece of you, because you're so goddamn perfect. Well I know for a fact that your shit stinks just like everybody else's, so don't try going all Mother Theresa on me, y'hear?"
"Take your pills, Orlando," Viggo said calmly, as every shot fired hit him straight in some vital organ. He felt like Boromir, all bristling with arrows but with no king to swear allegiance to. He leaned over to pick up a bottle of water and handed it to Orlando.
"I hate you, Viggo," Orlando said, shaking with frustration. But he took the water, and he took the pills, and he hated himself even more.
Viggo waited until Orlando had swallowed the pills before he stood and pulled his boots back on. "Why don't you take a nap?" he said quietly. "I got you up awfully early. I'll be back soon."
"Where are you going?" Orlando asked, and despised the needy tone in his voice.
"Just a little walk. I'll be back soon." Viggo smiled, but it was all artifice, nothing like the real smiles of earlier. "Too hungry to stay gone long."
He strode off across the clearing, hunched inside his baggy field coat, and disappeared into the mist. Orlando watched him go and tried to stoke the fires of his anger, but within a short while he was feeding it straw and toothpicks and the flame was going out. He curled over beside the fire and wondered when he'd become a monster. Eventually he dozed.
He woke to small sounds and a faint smell of food. Viggo sat across the fire, hair wet, ripping off pieces of tortilla and using them to eat beans and rice. He looked so natural that Orlando hated him again for a moment, but this time it was a mild hatred born of envy. The man was so damn adjustable it was downright unnatural. He just fit in. Wherever.
Orlando sat up and stretched, easing his back, wary about looking across the fire. Instead, he set to the food, gathering himself some fruit, tortillas and some of the ubiquitous beans and rice.
They ate in silence broken only by bird song and the soft nickers and whuffs of the horses nearby. Viggo put one more piece of wood on the fire and sat back with a container of pineapple.
"I'm sorry," Orlando said finally.
"No problem. It's the pills talking." Viggo munched on a piece of pineapple, staring into the small fire.
"Yeah, but that was really uncall-"
"It's okay. Honest."
"I hurt you."
Not for the first time, Viggo thought, but had enough sense not to say that aloud. "I'll survive." He offered up a smile and met Orlando's gaze for the first time since the outburst.
"I just- this is - it's harder than I thought," Orlando said, miserable.
"It could be a lot worse," Viggo said almost absently. "You could be puking your guts out 'round the clock, having hallucinations, going into seizures, having to be tied down." He shrugged. "Lucky you caught it before it got worse."
"Lucky you caught it," Orlando said quietly.
Viggo studied Orlando across the fire. He'd grown into his face more, and looked more like a man than a boy, but the eyes were still the same. Except that they were richer now; they had more depth. Their sparkle wasn't just a surface thing; when it happened now it was more of a glow. And there was sadness, tired sadness, which had never been there before.
Viggo put down the pineapple, shrugged out of his coat, shoved his left sleeve up past the elbow and extended his arm to Orlando. Firelight flickered over the exposed skin.
"Hardly anybody ever looks at the inside of an elbow," Viggo said with a rueful smile. "Except cops and doctors. Take a look."
Orlando frowned. He'd been over every square inch of Viggo's body in times past, elbows included, and never noticed anything unusual. But he looked again, eventually grabbing the arm (trying to ignore the pang that the touch caused) and turning it against the light until he finally saw. They could pass for reverse freckles, or simple discolorations, but they were in fact a series of tiny scars. Orlando looked up at Viggo, uncertain.
"Last year of high school, on and off for a decade," the older man said quietly. "I was lucky. Never had a real addictive personality, so I could sorta take it or leave it. But this..." he reached up to finger the scar, invisible under a thick mustache, "...I wasn't drunk. Or... maybe I was drunk, too. I dunno. But I was so gone I didn't know what planet I was on." Viggo had pulled his arm back, was rolling the sleeve back down and staring into the fire. "I could've died from so much. This was New York. I was experimenting with sex every way it was possible. Doing IV drugs. Hanging with the punk scene. It's a miracle I didn't get AIDS." He pulled his coat back on and ran both hands through his damp hair. "A friend caught me. Slapped the shit out of me. Made me really think about what I was doing. Babysat me while I got clean."
He looked up at Orlando. "It wasn't too hard for me, either. Maybe a little harder than for you, since I'd been using longer, but I was a real casual user. But heroin's a bad drug, elf boy. And that stuff you're taking... it's not called hillbilly heroin for nothing."
"I had no idea," Orlando said finally.
"Nobody does. Consider yourself blessed or cursed. You're the only person I've ever told. I'd appreciate it if it stayed between us."
"Of course."
"You had enough to eat?"
"What? Oh... uh... yeah. Maybe I'll just take an apple to eat while we ride."
"Good idea. Look in that other bedroll. Should be a couple of rain slickers in there, maybe a scarf if Hilario believed me."
The fire put out, everything redistributed on the horses, and wearing yellow slickers over their coats (Orlando with a thick orange woolen scarf jauntily around his neck), they set out on the trail back toward the stable. For the most part they rode in silence, each with much to occupy his mind.
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Viggo is a private man. That clashes badly with his job as an actor, which makes him a public figure.
He never had any problems with publishing his poetry or art, even though some people say that his work is intensely personal. He knows it isn't. He knows that his poetry isn't real. If he's lucky, it's true, but it's never real. The photography is closest to real of all his art, the closest to public. But his photography has grown more abstract as he has grown more public. There will likely be no more "Christine's World" photos in his portfolio. Something is lost. He looks for ways to make it a gain.
He thinks perhaps this public figure business may have to go. He ponders sometimes the route of J.D. Salinger, who just couldn't take it and pulled away forever. Would he have the nerve to do that?
Some days that looks like a fine option.
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Great way to interconnect the past with the present re: the "addictions"
Thanks for this story! I'm still here reading and loving it!
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it's intense, touching, overwhelming and this viggo.. is too much, too real, too similar to the one I picture in my head..
it's really a great job and I'm loving it!