vigorli

Title: Morning
Author: Élizabeth de l'Epée et du Mot de l'Eau

watersword
Fandom: RPF
Pairing, Characters:Viggo Mortensen/Orlando Bloom, Henry Mortensen
Series: None.
Rating: PG-13.
Archive: Only if you ask, please.
Warnings: None.
Spoilers: None.
Timeframe: Present-day.
Summary: Coffee, tea, and toast.
Disclaimer: This work is complete and total fiction. The author does not know Viggo Mortensen or Orlando Bloom and is making no claims about their sexualities or relationship(s). No money is being made and no disrespect, copyright, or trademark infringement is intended.
Crossposted to:

watersword (friendsfiltered post),

carefullykissed, and

vigorli.
Notes: I don't use betas; any errors are solely and completely my fault. Written for

carefullykissed Gift Basket challenge.

Coffee

He was my cream, and I was his coffee—and when you poured us together, it was something.
~Josephine Baker

Bloody call times. Caffeine is a wonderful thing when Orlando has to be on-set at six and he’s been awake far too many of the past twenty-four hours. Granted, he didn’t sleep because he was engaged in a far more enjoyable activity than sleeping. But it still leaves him blurry the morning after—afterglow can’t replace sleep, much as he wishes it would.

He pours a second cup from the new coffeemaker he got from the Oscars into the souvenir mug from Montauk Point Elijah sent him last year—hobbit, Orlando thinks in the pre-dawn LA-grey, his script for today stacked next to the door with his keys and mobile on top.

Bloody call times. He knocks back the coffee, black, burning his tongue, and heads out. He leaves the coffee percolating for Viggo, and his mug in the sink. Bloody call times. His boyfriend is still asleep. Not fair.

Tea

"You do realise you're compulsive about tea?" Sirius asked, following him into the kitchen.
"I'm English."
"You're compulsive even for an Englishman."
~ Stealing Harry, chapter 12, by Sam Vimes copperbadge

Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas. Sleep with an Englishman, start drinking tea. There’s a certain pleasing rhythm to it that Viggo enjoys; it may not be as familiar as the old proverb, but it makes more sense, god knows. He and Orlando tend to end up with the dogs on their bed, and Viggo’s pretty sure that neither of them actually do have fleas.

But he drinks tea.

He’s not sure when it started, but he’s glad for the year’s supply of better-than-decent tea leaves from Krups now. One less thing to remember while grocery shopping, at least.

He knows how to scald the teapot before pouring in boiling water, and he knows exactly how long to let the leaves steep before it turns stewed. He knows that to put in cream will make weird layers in the water, and even full milk is risky. He knows he doesn’t like sugar, that Orlando likes one lump, that Henry thinks tea is a weird grown-up English thing and goes straight for Red Bull.

Toast

Lots of Toast!
~ from the promotional material of several English boarding schools

Butter, raspberry jam, blackberry preserves, honey, Marmite (Henry makes a face and sets that right beside Orlando’s plate when it’s his turn to set the table), knives, mugs, newspapers (the LA Times and Variety). It is routine, familiar, normal.

Home’s not a bad place to be. Not at all. Not on a Sunday morning in April when everyone’s home and reasonably awake, and he’s gotten into college, and someone (Henry doesn’t know who) has remembered to buy food before they ran out.

His dad is scrambling eggs, but Henry can tell from the way that his gaze has gone unfocused that he’s thinking of something else. Henry likes burnt eggs, so he doesn’t interrupt, crossing the kitchen to get the orange juice. Orlando’s stopped muttering invective against their oven now that he doesn’t have to depend on it for toast in the mornings, and he’s poking the toaster with a fork. “Leave it alone,” Henry says, “You’ll get electrocuted, and I don’t want to have to explain that to the fangirls.”

“Bugger off,” Orlando says cheerfully. “You may like burnt eggs, but burnt toast is an abomination unto the soul.”

“Pretentious bastard,” Henry retorts.

“Language,” his dad and Orlando say at the same time. Henry heaves an exaggerated sigh and leaves the kitchen before they kiss.