vigorli | FIC: Cracks in the Pavement Ch4

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vigorli

TITLE: Cracks in the Pavement
AUTHOR: LenaLove
BETAS:

liriel1810 and

ranmaru *adores*
BANNER: By the lovely

paulabm *grin*
A.N. I should just add for non-UK readers that "NHS" refers to the British National Health Service. They get a bit of criticism in this fic, but it isn't true. I have the greatest respect for our NHS, and do not believe at all that they would neglect to give after-care to a patient suffering from a serious back injury as Orlando does here.
A.N.2: Posting this chapter early to bring you up to date with chapters posted on my journal.

Chapter 4:

London was a beautiful city at night. The place came alive with colour and noise. Gaily dressed young people heading for the pubs and clubs, music drifting out into the street, kids laughing, dogs barking. The city buzzed with activity and life.

At least that’s what the tourist guides said.

Orlando took a long last sip from his bottle of water and gazed out from his perch to the visage laid out before him. He sat sideways on his wide sill, the window opened all the way on a warm night, one foot planted firmly on the faded wood and the other on the floor, head leaning against the frame.

The gaily dressed young people from the guide books were staggering about on the pavement below, already pickled out of their minds before they had even reached the pubs and clubs.

He watched as a middle-aged man in a tatty shirt, opened to the waist and exposing a beer belly and grey vest, walked his wife’s spoilt poodle. The man stopped right below Orlando's window three floors down to let the dog relieve itself on the pavement, then he walked on and left the excrement behind for some poor sod to tread in.

A group of twenty-somethings wandered by, chatting loudly amongst themselves, about what he couldn’t decipher from this high up, but the excited tone of their voices and the click-clack of the girls’ high heels reached his ears. They were obviously a group of friends, the way they interacted with each other spoke of history and easy camaraderie. One of the guys said something to one of the girls walking behind him. She smacked him on the arm and laughed. Another guy shoved the first man playfully and the whole group burst out laughing. Just before the group rounded the corner and disappeared from Orlando's sight, the two young men reached out to each other at the same time and their fingers interlocked.

Orlando closed his eyes and pictured another time when that would have been him heading out for a long night of chatting and flirting and mucking about with his mates on a typical Friday night. He would be slightly buzzed with anticipation of the night ahead, content and relaxed in the company of his friends and relieved that he didn’t have work or school to worry about for two whole days.

A short sharp knock on his bedroom door made his eyes fly open again.

“Orli? It’s me, Billy.”

Orlando looked at the closed door and one side of his mouth quirked up in a fond smile. As if that soft Scottish burr could be anyone else.

“Ye in there, mate?”

As if he would be anywhere else…“Yeah, Bills. I’m here.”

He heard a slight scuffle, a few muffled whispers, then Billy called out again. “Um…me and Dommie are headin’ out in a bit,” Billy called through the wood. “Thought we’d check out that new pub down by the Lambeth Walk way.” A pause. Another muffled whisper. Orlando waited patiently for what he knew was coming next. “We were wonderin' if ye want te come with us, Orli? Just for a quick pint, like. If ye want to.”

Letting the invite hang in the air for a beat, Orlando turned his head back out to the view from his bedroom window. “Nah, Billy. I’m fine here. You guys go on, have a good time.” He hoped he had injected just the right amount of casual indifference into his voice. Not to much, not too little. “I won’t wait up, yeah?”

Another pause. A louder scuffle. A thump and a yelp that he suspected came from Dom. Orlando sighed heavily. It was going to be one of those weekends, he just knew it. One of the ones where his two mates just wouldn’t let him get away with hiding out in his room so easy this time.

“Orlando?” Yup, it was Dom. The blond was just that tiny smidge more stubborn than his beloved Scot. “Can we come in?”

For a second he though about refusing, but then he knew if he did, the two men would spoil their own enjoyment at the pub by worrying about him the whole time they were out or worse still, stay in and deprive themselves of a few drinks out of guilt, just to keep him company.

Casting his eyes to the untidy heap of sketches lying on his bed from his latest art project for the tech, Orlando finally called back in reply. “Just give me second, Dommie.”

“’kay, dude.” Strangely for someone originally from Manchester living in London, Dominic fancied himself as a surfer. At least, he often talked like one.

Billy claimed his boyfriend had been brain-washed by spending his adolescence ogling David Hasslehoff in episodes of Baywatch. Dom had looked pointedly at Billy that time and succinctly said that the tall, dark, hairy kind was not his taste at all and that he was more into short Gallic men with no chest hair like David Charvet.

Moving with his usual stiffness from sitting too long in one position, Orlando stood and made his way to the bed. He quickly gathered up his drawings and neatly slid them into the portfolio that lay against the side of the large bed. Carefully he manoeuvred himself up onto the bed, propping himself up against the headboard with his many pillows behind his back and crossing his stockinged feet at the ankles. He lifted a book from his night stand and placed his reading glasses on his nose.

“Okay guys, you can come in now.”

The door opened and his two friends let themselves in, both dressed to the nines in freshly washed jeans and best shirts. Dom had spiked his blond streaked hair up with too much gel, and the smell of cologne from the both of them was overpowering. Orlando watched over the rim of his glasses as his friends both gave him a friendly smile, then parted ways wordlessly at the foot of his bed and took seats on the mattress at either side of his feet, in identical positions of one bent knee on the duvet like a pair of bookends.

Orlando raised an eyebrow at them. “If I didn’t know any better, I would say you were both on the pull tonight.”

Billy grinned disarmingly. “We are,” he stated matter-of-factly, then spoiled the effect by leering at Dom. “The only difference is, we hope te pull each other.”

Dom nodded. “It’s pretty much a given. I heard there was a new place opening down town tonight, half-price drinks until midnight. I heard it was kinda swanky too, so we pulled out all the stops. Don’t want to get turned away at the door for looking like a couple of scruffs.”

With a shrug Orlando turned his attention to his open book and turned a page. “Well, don’t let me keep you back, guys.”

Eyes still on the page before him, his peripheral vision caught the movement of the two men sharing a quick glance. He wondered briefly which one would be first to start the lecture tonight.

“Orli, we really think you should put on your own glad rags and come out with us.” Ah, yes. Dom. Never one to beat about the bush.

Orlando turned another page, though he had yet to read a word on the previous one. “Not tonight, Dommie. I’ve got a project for class to get started,” he stated as convincingly as he could, his voice casual. “You two go on ahead, tell me all about it tomorrow and if this new place is as good as you say, we can go tomorrow night.”

“Sure, man,” Dom replied in the same casual manner. “Then that’ll give you twenty-four hours to think up a new excuse for tomorrow night.”

Orlando froze in the middle of turning the page. So the gloves were off then. No problem, he could handle that. He smoothly lowered the book to his lap and met two pairs of eyes set in two equally concerned faces, one pair green, the other blue. He had been hoping for signs of anger, but if his two friends were going for stubborn understanding, that was fine by him.

“Okay, boys,” he began, struggling to keep his voice calm and even. “I’ll say this again, and I will say it for the last time. I do not want to go out because there isn’t any point. I can’t dance in the clubs, I can’t sit for long in those god-awful hard backed chairs and I can’t drink because I've taken my muscle relaxants for the night!”

He stopped to let them digest that and continued, anger simmering beneath the words. “And I can’t chat up the first bloke I meet and bring him back here for a good shagging because I can’t fuck anybody.” His gaze flicked from one man to the other and back again. “So. Remind me again, why should I go out?”

"There’s more to meeting somebody than fucking on the first date, man,” Dom interjected lamely.

“Yeah, I am sure there is, Dommie,” Orlando snapped back, the end of his tether reached. “There is the wine and the roses and the falling in love, except once a guy realises that I am not about to put out, love or not, he will fuck off as quick as the rest of them!”

His two friends broke eye contact with him and turned again to look at each other, shock and disappointment on their faces. They exchanged a brief wordless communication that he wasn’t privy to; a quirk of an eyebrow, a minute shrug of a shoulder. Orlando could swear sometimes that the bastards were psychic, that they could read each other’s mind. It was spooky.

He took a deep breath and centered himself, offering the two men a weak smile when they turned their attention back to him. “I'm sorry, guys. I...I don't mean to be such an arse. Just, please…leave it for tonight, yeah? Please?”

Dom was the one to break the embargo. Orlando wondered briefly what they did outside earlier to elect the one to be the spokesman for this evening. Did they actually draw straws or something?

“It’s been three weeks since you got out of hospital, mate. You can’t hide away in here for the rest of your life,” the blond pointed out.

“I don’t intend to, Dom,” Orlando replied. “I’m going to my classes and back to work at Bernie’s next week aren’t I?”

“Yeah, but the rest of the time you’re locked up in here.” Billy finally joined in the conversation and backed up his lover.

Orlando sighed patiently. “Look, I appreciate the concern but I really do need to work on my art project. You two go out and have a good time. I promise you, if my back isn’t too sore tomorrow night, I’ll consider going out with you. Okay?”

Luckily for him, Dom and Billy knew when not to push too hard. They could see he had no intention of going anywhere with them now. With a kiss to his forehead from Billy and a ruffle of his hair from Dom, they wished him goodnight and left him alone. He was still sitting on the bed when he heard Billy call out to remind him not to wait up, then the front door to the flat banged shut and they were gone.

Orlando set his book aside and rolled his neck to ease the tension building there. Those two were worse than his mum sometimes and it was driving him mad. They always nagged at him to get out and about, but since the incident at the shop with Hawkins and his gang they had redoubled their efforts. Orlando suspected that his doctor had had a quiet word with his two flatmates and friends when they came to collect him from the hospital.

The consultant in the hospital had been rather shocked and full of sympathy for the soreness and stiffness he suffered daily now in his back and had told him he needed to exercise more and get out and about. She had advised Orlando to find a good, reputable private physiotherapist who could help him recover some of his former mobility, warning him that his old injury was always going to plague him and that he needed someone who could instruct him in specific exercises that he could do himself. It was with some degree of shame that he had replied he couldn’t afford a private physiotherapist.

His mum had phoned around several private medical companies in the long painful months following his accident and had found all of them far too expensive for them to take on long term. She had canvassed and nagged the family doctor to find her son a therapist on the National Helath Service, but to no avail. All the man had been able to do was book Orlando into a rehabilitation centre for the short term and put him on a waiting list for a therapist.

Orlando hadn’t even gone to the rehab centre half as often as he was supposed to. It was clear across the city in the north and the bus fares had cost more than he could afford on a regular basis.

All his consultant had been able to add then was that he should take up swimming and in the meantime she would add his name to the waiting list of NHS physiotherapists. Orlando hadn’t the heart to tell her that the local council run swimming baths had been burned down in an act of vandalism four years ago and had yet to be rebuilt. He didn’t bother mentioning his family doctor had already put his name forward for physio or that he was still waiting for an appointment, almost two years later.

He had just smiled and thanked her and then limped out of the hospital, one arm in a sling and doped up on anti-inflammatory pain pills, with a prescription of antibiotics for his shoulder in his pocket.

Orlando raised a hand and scratched absently at the scab on his shoulder. There was no point in sitting around his room feeling sorry for himself. It was almost ten o’clock and he wanted to work some more on his art project.

Swinging his legs to the floor, Orlando reached for his folder and pulled it up onto the bed, ignoring the twinge in his back from the effort. His tutor at the technical college had given him an extension of another two weeks to finish the project.

He picked open the ties that kept his folder closed and let it fall open on the bed, then he carefully spread out the compositions he had done so far.

“Mythical Beauty” was the title of the project, and the tutor had instructed each student to search for and capture something they found beautiful, something unusual, something that other people might not necessarily find appealing. The object of the exercise was to learn to appreciate other people’s work and try to understand why certain artists only painted different variations of the same type of scene or subject and why they found beauty in those subjects.

Sarah, the classic blonde in the class had picked unicorns as her subject. She had taken the project title rather literally. He had seen one of her compositions and had tried hard not to laugh. It was bright pink.

Another student, a guy named Joe, had picked the subject of rare and exotic flowers. Orlando had been impressed with his work; Joe had researched and captured some pretty unusual flora for his compositions, in bright colours with jazzy backgrounds, his final composition promising to be a stunning artwork in the style of Andy Warhol.

With a tentative finger, Orlando reached out and traced the charcoal outline on the page before him, his finger not touching the paper in case he smudged the fine dark grey lines on the sepia paper. He had used hints of outline, suggestions of composition and shape, to capture the face on the page. It needed work on the shading and depth, but the likeness to the face in his mind was remarkable. It was Viggo.

On another page he had drawn the man sitting on the floor; head down and elbows on raised knees, feet solid on the floor, face hidden. Another was a full close-up of his face. The scar on his top lip that Orlando suspected other people wouldn’t even notice. He was smiling, his laugh-lines deep and cheeks dimpled, but eyes dark and mysterious.

He didn’t harbour any hope of ever meeting the enigmatic American again. For all Orlando knew the man had gone back to his ranch in Idaho or wherever it was he said he lived, back to his mountains and his horses and away from his traumatic experience in London. He fantasised about what life was like for Viggo. To live out in the wide open plains with nothing but nature for company, a life of freedom and carefree abandon and the time all your own to do as you wished.

The face captured in pastels on cheap paper was one that had haunted his mind'a eye since that night in the storeroom. He dreamed of that quiet soothing voice, knowing grey eyes and strong hands. Fuck, but he longed to hear that voice again. The rich maturity, the hints at a life well lived.

He almost regretted that Billy and Dom had found them when they did. He wondered what stories Viggo might have shared if they had been locked in the shop longer. The man had certainly gotten him to open up about some stuff, but never got the chance to return the favour and Orlando regretted that lost opportunity. That was what he found beautiful about Viggo’s face. The lines spoke of worries, of traumas overcome, of years lived, of pains healed. How had he gotten that scar on his top lip? What kind of art did he do? What books did he write? What objects or subjects did he find beauty in and try to capture on film with his camera?

They were questions Orlando didn’t know the answers to and almost certainly never would, and it was no one’s fault but his own.

His project was almost finished and already he had a title for it.

"Regret."

*****

Billy took a long swig of his beer as Dom watched him. He turned to Dom, giving his boyfriend a small, sad smile before taking another sip from his glass. Dom nudged him and Billy once more met his eyes.

“You’re worried about him, aren’t you?” Dom asked.

The secluded booth they had managed to grab in the small club afforded them a degree of privacy, and far enough away from the band that they could hear each other without having to shout.

Billy nodded in response, rolling the mouthful of alcohol over his tongue, eyes darting through the crowd. Dom snuck a hand under the table and found Billy's where it lay on his own thigh.

Billy swallowed and linked his fingers with Dom. He met worried eyes. “I’ve never seen our wee Orli so down before, so…I don’t know…defeated? Ye know what I mean?” Dom nodded, gripping his lover’s hand tighter. “He talks the same, about getting the grade in his art thing, about getting out of London and making it big in one o’ the big colleges. But at the same time…” Billy trailed off, looking down at the polished table and drawing spirals in the small puddle of condensation there.

“But what, Bills?” Dom prompted.

“I can see it in his eyes.“ The Scot kept his eyes down and concentrated on his doodles. “He never could keep anythin’ from me. I could always tell when he’s lying to me, Dommie, ye know? Those great big beautiful eyes o’ his always gi’ him away.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean." Dom leaned his head closer, resting his chin on Billy’s shoulder. "He’s given up, hasn’t he?”

Billy nodded slowly, his voice heavy with worry for their friend. “He talks like he’s still chasin' the dream but in his eyes the dream has long gone.”

“Which raises the question, what do we do about it?”

“I really don’t know, Dommie.”

The Scot trailed off as a waitress came over to lift their empty glasses and ask if they needed a refill. Both men declined. Two drinks each was as far as the budget would reach in this place, half-price or not.

They had only come here to live their own dream for a little while and get lost in the ambience of a place posher than they usually could afford. They probably wouldn’t be back, as places like this usually charged an entrance fee. The door charge been foregone tonight because it was opening night and the proprietors wanted as many of the locals to sample the goods as possible. Even if most of them would be back to their old haunts next weekend, to the dingy little pubs with only an ancient jukebox and portable TV on the wall for entertainment.

The two men gathered themselves up and headed out of the door as a new crowd of arrivals immediately swarmed into the booth they had just vacated. They walked home by the longer route, discussing their separate shifts for the next week in the shop and Dom’s car mechanics course in the tech. Billy was older than Dom and Orli, who only had a month between them in age. The Scot was turning thirty his next birthday and was the only one among the little trio of friends who worked full time in Bernie’s.

Walking casually side by side, not touching, they made the way back to the flat they shared with Orlando. In a new bar, among a relaxed and carefree crowd, it was okay to be gay. It was trendy, even. They knew better than to show they were a couple out in the open in the streets of London at night, though.

A comfortable silence settled between the two men as they neared home, both lost in their own thoughts. It was the dark shape of a homeless man, huddled in the bare shelter of the doors into the large Boots Chemist that prompted Dom to speak up.

“And another member of society falls between the cracks in the pavement,” he mumbled, the words heavy with bitterness.

Billy glanced at the dark shape, pity in his eyes. “I won’t let that happen to Orli,” he vowed quietly.

Dom laughed, the thought too terrifying to even contemplate seriously. “Don’t be silly, Bills. Orli’s too fucking pretty to end up penniless on the streets!”

Billy didn’t even rise to the bait of their usual joke, about the fortune Orlando could make as a rent boy. It was a standing joke between the three of them that if they ever got really down on their luck, Billy and Dom pimp Orlando out on the streets.

Instead, Billy’s thoughts took a whole new turn as they rounded the corner and walked past Bernie’s Mini Mart. “Hey, do you remember that American guy that got locked in with Orli by that bastard Hawkins?” Billy asked suddenly.

Dom was caught short by the change in topic. “Yeah, Wiggy or whatever ya called him. Why?”

“Viggo,” Billy corrected his lover. “His name was Viggo.”

“Okay,” Dom didn’t really care what the man’s name was, he just wanted to get home to bed. It was getting decidedly chilly out. “So what about him?”

“Orlando liked him.”

“Yeah, he took care of Orli that night, didn’t he? He seemed a nice guy, from what Orli told us about him in the hospital.”

Billy grabbed his boyfriend’s arm and pulled him to a halt, turning Dom to face him. “Dommie, love, you’re not gettin’ it. Our wee Orli liked him.”

“What? As in really liked him? Are you sure? Our "wee Orli" hasn’t shown any interest in a bloke since Colin dumped him. You heard him tonight, he has no interest in hooking up with anyone.”

Billy patted Dom on the shoulder. “It was there in his eyes, babe, every time he mentioned the guy’s name. Even when the police came to talk to him, he talked like this Yank was some kind of hero.”

“Okay, I get what your saying, Bills. But wasn’t this guy an actor? Wasn’t he over here to hang out with Sean Bean? The Sean Bean. As in Richard Sharpe!” Dom’s eyes took on a wistful look. “Now there’s my kind of hero…”

Billy cuffed the back of his head. “Focus, ya daft twat!”

“I am focusing.” The look on Dom’s face was now decidedly more lustful than wistful. “I’m focusing on imagining what Bean's arse looks like under that uniform…OW!” Billy had smacked him again, a lot harder this time, then took off down the street at a brisk pace that forced Dom to almost run to catch up. “What the fuck has got in to you, Bills!”

“We've got to encourage our Orli's interest in living,” came the answer as Billy sped up his steps to get home to their friend. "Maybe this American guy is a long shot. He could be long gone back to the States by now, but he's proved that our brown-eyed beauty isn't as uninterested in guys as he lets on. There's hope for our Orli yet."

TBC.