Growing Room: Regarding Henry

[rainweaver13.livejournal.com]

Title: Growing Room: Regarding Henry
Author: Rainweaver13
Pairing: Viggo/Orlando
Summary: Viggo and Orlando arrive back in LA after the Costa Rica trip

Rating/Warnings: PG-13 for language/concepts. AU in that this takes place "now," but blithely refuses to take into account current realities. Deal.
Disclaimer: Don't own them, don't know what they do in their private lives; wouldn't want to - they are their own. This is fond fiction.

A/N: Viggo's son Henry is a character in this story. I know nothing about Henry except what I can surmise from his photos in Viggo's books. This version of Henry is, therefore, a total fiction. I don't even really know what he looks like. I've seen pictures, but kids can change drastically in ridiculously short periods of time, so... This is my imagination at work. If it doesn't agree with yours, I'm not offended if you choose to picture your version instead.

This is a followup to a longer fic, Breathing Room, which can be found here:
Breathing Room Look under Personal Fics




January 2005, Back in LA


Rain fell. It came down in buckets, in wash tubs, in wading pools. Southern California wasn't used to such rain. Hillsides slid down over houses, roads, beaches. Holes opened up in unexpected places. Power lines were torn loose. Phone lines got shoved to the breaking point.

A lot of pampered people got very cranky.

Viggo and Orlando arrived back in LA in the drenching rain and weathered it well. Orlando, after a few hours of feeling ill at ease in Viggo's home again, finally settled down and started grousing about everything being damp as fucking England. Viggo went outside and stood in the rain, arms outspread, face to the sky, and laughed until Orlando stood in the door and called him a crazy cunt. Then he laughed even harder and hauled Lan out into the rain as well.

It was good to be home.

-----
"Henry'll be here tomorrow night for dinner," Viggo said lightly, stealing a shrimp from Orlando's plate with his chopsticks.

"Get out of my food, y'bastard," Orlando said automatically, but his stomach tightened and he suddenly didn't feel very hungry any more.

Which was why Viggo had waited until they were almost finished with supper to make the announcement. "What do you want to have?" He continued to finish off his spicy vegetables and rice.

"Shit, I don't know. I won't be able to eat a thing." Orlando clattered his chopsticks down and sat back with a released breath.

"Pizza, then." Viggo nodded. "The ultimate back-up plan."

"Do we have to do it so soon?"

Viggo lifted an eyebrow, a carrot chunk balanced in front of his mouth.

"Oh, I know, I know."

"He's not gonna hurt you. He's very pacifistic."

Orlando dropped his head into his hands. "God."

Viggo ate the carrot and waited.

"What will I say?" Orlando's muffled voice asked from behind a screen of hair.

"You might try apologizing," Viggo said mildly.

"Y'know, sometimes I really don't like you very much."

Viggo nodded thoughtfully, although Orlando couldn't see it. "But sometimes y'do, right?"

"Bastard."

"Charmer."

"Fucking cunt."

"Sweet-talker."

Orlando's shoulders had started shaking slightly and Viggo grinned. "I have no idea why I would want to spend my life with you."

Viggo scooted his chair back and dove under the table. "Never boring?"

"Jesus Christ!"

"No, just Viggo."

-----
The next day, it rained. Big surprise.

"Hey, Lan!" Viggo called mid-morning from up the narrow staircase at the back of the house. "Gimme a hand?"

"Just a sec!" Orlando put down the small handful of papers he was sorting for his visit to Lynne later in the day and took a sip of water before heading toward the summons. The staircase was new since the last time he'd been at Viggo's. It led to Henry's new room, which had been bumped out of the attic for his 16th birthday, giving him more privacy, Viggo said. It also provided a small storage area in the cramped attic, and Viggo had been poking around up there for an hour or more.

"Whacha need, Vig?" Orlando looked up from the bottom of the staircase, seeing nothing but Viggo's legs in faded jeans.

"Need to get this box down." Viggo twisted and leaned enough to get a large cardboard moving box wedged barely through the staircase opening. "Not too heavy, just awkward. Can you catch the bottom?"

"Sure." Together they wrangled the box cautiously past the narrowest parts of the staircase and then set it down in the hallway. "What is it?" Orlando asked, curious.

Viggo gave it a once-over, then grabbed one edge and turned it over. The label, in black marker, was large, emphatic and unmistakable: FUCKHEAD'S CRAP!

Orlando stared at it, then cleared his throat. "Mine?"

"I do believe so."

"This your opinion?"

"I came back from one of my shows last year and everything of yours was gone." Viggo watched Orlando. "I never asked."

"Henry, then."

"It's his handwriting."

"God, he must hate me."

Viggo shrugged philosophically. "He could have thrown it away. Burned it. He kept it. That's something."

"I suppose."

Viggo stepped around the box and caught Orlando's chin gently, leaning over to kiss him tenderly. "It'll be okay," he murmured.

"I want him to like me again," Orlando said, resting his hands on Viggo's shoulders.

"He will." Viggo stroked Orlando's hair gently. "Just be patient. Remember that you hurt him. Apologize. Give him time." He rested his face against Orlando's. "Prove yourself."

"Not like that's much," Orlando said despairingly.

"You're a man," Viggo said. "You can do it."

He stepped away and grabbed one flap of the box. "C'mon, wanta have Santa Claus before you go see Lynne?"

Orlando barked a little laugh and grabbed another flap. "Sure. It'll keep me from puking up my porridge."

They dragged the box up the hallway and into the living room, settling it near the couch. "Don't be so worried about seeing Lynne," Viggo said, pulling the top of the box open. "She's a good person. She's there to help you."

"Not like Robin?" Orlando reached into the box and started pulling out clothes he'd forgotten he owned. Jeans, track pants, shorts, tees, sweatshirts - all comfortable, easy clothes.

"It's a different approach, that's all." Viggo picked up the clothing as Orlando dumped it on the couch and folded it roughly into categories. "Lynne's more low-key, but she absolutely knows what she's doing. She'll take good care of you."

"I know she will." Orlando held up a blue and yellow print shirt and smiled. "I wondered where this went. Always liked this shirt."

Viggo glanced over at it and chuckled. "That was your coming home shirt, remember? You always wore it the first night you were back here."

"It's a wonder it's still in one piece."

"It's a sturdy piece of work, that's for sure."

Viggo finished folding the jeans while Orlando sat and looked at the soft shirt in his hands. He'd given up so much, and so stupidly. Sometimes in the past few days, comprehension had hit Orlando like the proverbial load of bricks, and left him breathless and almost nauseous at the thought of how close he had come to completely fucking up his own life. He could feel the beginning tentacles of panic setting in and brought the shirt up to his face. It smelled musty from long storage, but he could still faintly smell laundry soap.

Viggo stood quietly and sat on the arm of the couch beside Orlando, sliding an arm around his back. "Breathe, babe. Deep, slow breath. Good. One more." He rubbed Orlando's back gently, soothing soft circles against the tightened muscles there. No need to mention that little bit of panic. He'd watched Orlando deal with it during the past week, and knew it was getting less frequent. He'd be free of it soon. Today was just a rough day.

"Something you might want to ask Lynne about is getting you a PA," Viggo said, as if the brief panic hadn't happened. He moved around to the box and started pulling things out again. A few books, a couple of scripts.

"You think I need that?" Orlando carefully folded the blue and yellow shirt and reached into a massive corner collection of toiletries, pulling out each bottle for inspection before setting some aside for disposal.

"Couldn't hurt. It'd take a lot of pressure off you. And Lynne could help you find somebody with experience, who wouldn't become part of any problems."

"I'd be willing to give it a try. Robin did a lot of that stuff for me before."

"Except she made the decisions for you, instead of letting you make the decisions and her handle the details."

"Right." Orlando reached into the box and came up with a handful of framed photos. "I can't believe I didn't miss these." He studied the photos of himself and his mother, Sam, a family group, a group of pre-fame friends, several informal cast shots from New Zealand, even his dogs. "Look, here's one from that night we camped out for the sunrise shoot."

Viggo looked over at the photo and smiled. "You bitched like crazy."

"I never."

"You did. You were cold. You were hungry. You were thirsty. There were bugs. There was dirt. There were sticks." Now Viggo was laughing, blue eyes twinkling.

"I was fucking horny," Orlando laughed back at him, conking him on the head with the picture frame. "And this stupid fuck of a ranger would not put out for me."

"You will never know how hard it was for that ranger to keep from dragging you off into the woods and making you scream."

"Amazing willpower."

"Yeah, and I had one helluva strong right arm by the time we left New Zealand, too."

Orlando fell back against the couch, laughing. "All kinds of sword practice, you're saying?"

"All kinds."

Orlando rolled his head over to look down at Viggo where he sat on the floor, cross-legged. "I know set gossip said I laid just about everybody on the cast, including you."

"Yep, that's what the gossip said."

"Did you ever wonder?"

Viggo considered him thoughtfully. "I knew the part about me wasn't true. Didn't spend much time thinking about it otherwise." It wasn't much of a lie. Viggo really hadn't spent a lot of time thinking about who Orlando might or might not have been sleeping with in New Zealand. Not to say it didn't cross his mind, now and then.

"Did you? Sleep with anybody?"

"On the cast? No." That was one on-set rule Viggo was pretty damned adamant about. Just the thought of it messed with his concentration.

"Crew?"

"Damn, you're nosy."

Orlando shrugged, still fingering the photo from the campout. "You took just about everybody out to dinner, and gave gifts like crazy. It's hard to say if you might've taken it any farther with anybody."

Viggo studied Orlando thoughtfully, wondering why this need to know, suddenly. "I slept with one of the lighting techs one night when I'd had too much to drink. It was a mistake. It almost always is. Other than that, I had a few dates with a bookstore owner in Wellington who was good company. But that's all."

"Both women?"

"Yep."

"Did you ever think about Sean?"

"Bean?" Viggo laughed, then grimaced. "Surely to god you're not talking about Astin."

Orlando snickered. "No, no... not Astin. Beanie."

"If there lives a more heterosexual human than Sean Bean, I've yet to meet him," Viggo said with a goofy grin. "Love the guy, though. Couldn't ask for a better friend." He paused thoughtfully for moment. "Although I hate him right now. But I'm getting over it."

"I guess I did sleep with a few people," Orlando said carefully, placing the photos down on the couch and leaning over to pick up a razor and toothbrush from the box. With a wrinkled nose, he placed the toothbrush in the discard pile.

"You have to find what works for you," Viggo said, lifting out a wooden box of jewelry. He opened the lid and stirred the contents around with one finger, idly.

"It was only because I couldn't have you."

"You don't have to explain yourself to me, Lan. I wasn't your keeper then. I'm not now."

Brown eyes studied blue in the quiet living room while outside the rain picked up again, pounding against the windows. "I'm with you now, Vig," Orlando said finally. "I won't be with anybody else."

"I think you know how I feel about that, but let me say it anyway." Viggo put the box of jewelry down atop a pile of shirts and laid both hands on Orlando's knees. "You're who I need. You're who I want. There's nobody else for me, Orlando. That's the last thing you have to worry about."

"I don't want you to worry, either." Orlando laid his hands over Viggo's, clasping them gently. "I know... sometimes I haven't given you a lot of reasons to trust me."

"We're moving on from that. New beginning."

Orlando blinked hard, looked away, then back. "Christ, if I do anything to hurt you this time, just shoot me, okay?"

Viggo turned his hands up and grasped Orlando's, with a crooked grin. "Maybe I'll hire it out."

Orlando laughed a little and seemed willing to let the awkward moment go. Viggo suspected this was an issue they'd revisit again, but for now he was glad to see the end of it. He glanced toward the kitchen clock. "Better get dressed, elf boy. Time and Lynne wait for no man."

"Oh shit!" Orlando jumped up, glanced at the clock, and pelted off down the hallway into the bedroom, leaving Viggo chuckling on the floor in a mess of belongings.

-----
"The taxi's probably almost here by now." Orlando paced just inside the front door, watching the security gate. He worried nervously at the cuffs of the dark blue shirt under a charcoal suit coat, then pulled on a classic raincoat.

"Only you would have a raincoat in LA," Viggo said from the couch, where he was drinking maté and being fondly amused by Orlando's nerves. "I could take you."

"Vig, I barely trust your driving in this city on a clear day. I'm not risking both our lives in this downpour."

Viggo laughed. "'Preciate your concern."

"Do you have an umbrella?"

"Not that I know of."

"Shit."

"Don't worry. You won't be in the rain for long. You have your papers?"

"Right here." Orlando patted his coat front, then darted to the door at the sound of a car horn. "Okay if I let the taxi in?"

"No. I want you to run all the way out there in the rain," Viggo said deadpan.

Orlando blinked at him, nerves having shortcircuited his sense of humor.

Viggo stood and came over to wrap an arm around Orlando's back, reaching past him to key in the code to open the security gate. While the cab made its way through the gate and up to the house, Viggo took Orlando in his arms and pressed a firm, tender kiss to his lips. "It's going to be fine," he murmured. "You'll be fine. If there's any problem, call me. Otherwise I'll see you in a few hours."

Orlando wrapped his arms tight in return and squeezed Viggo hard. "Thank you, lover. You're everything to me, d'you know that?"

"Just enough," Viggo said, brushing his knuckles over that familiar cheek as the car horn sounded again. "Now off with you. Buena suerte."

"See you in a bit." Orlando pelted the few feet out to the back seat of the cab and lifted a hand in a wave as the car pulled out of the drive. Viggo waved back and shut the security gates behind it.

He'd be fine.

-----
The meeting with Lynne had gone great, including some entertaining anecdotes from Lynne's secretary about various communications with Robin during the past week. Orlando had found himself relaxing more quickly than he expected into Lynne's clearly capable handling, and they ended up getting quite a bit done. The meeting also ended up taking longer than expected and by the time he got the taxi to make one quick stop on the way back to Viggo's he was running a good hour late.

Henry would already be there.

The rain had blessedly stopped, at least temporarily, and Orlando was able to get the taxi paid, the gates reclosed, and the door opened in relative quiet. He wasn't exactly trying to sneak in, he told himself, but he wouldn't mind having a chance to get a small idea of what to expect before he walked into the lion's den... or living room, in this case.

Setting the paper bag he was holding down on a table in the small foyer, Orlando shrugged out of his raincoat and hung it up, gradually tuning in on the slightly muffled sound of voices.

"... Washington? It'd be colder and wetter than you're used to, but other than that... "

"I was a kid in Idaho. Cold and wet - no problem."

Quiet chuckle. "True. Seems like we've been here forever sometimes. How 'bout Stanford?"

"Too kiss-ass."

"Mmm... Still considering any East Coast schools?"

"I'm not going to St. Lawrence."

"Did I say that?"

"I read your mind."

"God forbid. How 'bout NYU?"

"I thought I heard a car."

"Good dodge." A scrape of chair on floor. "I'll look..."

Orlando picked up the paper bag noisily and took a deep breath, let it out, and strode into the living room. Viggo and Henry sat across the way at the dining room table, pizza boxes and brightly colored brochures covering the tabletop between them. Viggo stood immediately, with a welcoming smile and a "how'd it go" look in his eyes. Henry stayed seated.

"You made it. We were about to send out the bloodhounds." Viggo's voice was light. The hand he reached out to touch Orlando's sleeve was light. Everything was light.

"Sorry, Vig." Orlando leaned over to brush a fleeting kiss against Viggo's cheek, unsure how much would be acceptable in front of Henry. "Lynne kept coming up with one more thing and one more thing. And then I had to make a stop on the way back."

"Not for wine, I hope." Viggo laughed. "You know there's plenty, especially for us tough guys." He winked.

"No, no... Something more critical than that." Orlando put the heavy bag down on the table and turned for his first direct look at Henry. "Your dad still never remembers the truly important things, sometimes." And he pulled out two two-liter bottles of icy cold Pepsi.

Beside him, Viggo chuckled and might have said something, but Orlando didn't really hear it. He was matching examining stares with Henry. Jesus, the boy had changed. The baby fat was finally melting away, albeit slowly, but it was obvious now that there were cheekbones under there, and a jawline. His hair was a medium brown that might actually be its natural color, and was still worn slightly long but with more shape than the bowl cuts of years past. And his eyes were almost Viggo's. Slightly darker blue, brows and lashes slightly darker, but for the first time since he'd known this little boy, Orlando could begin to see his father in him rather than just his mother.

"Henry," Orlando said at last, and offered a hand.

"Orlando," Henry said flatly, making no move to stand and reluctantly taking Orlando's hand for a lightning shake only after a darted glance toward Viggo.

"Your voice... man, I wouldn't have recognized it." Orlando scrambled for something that constituted an unloaded compliment. "Dropped a little, eh?"

"Dunno. Guess it doesn't sound so different when you hear it all the time."

"Henry." Viggo's voice told the story: love, fear and exasperation in equal measure, all mixed with a hearty helping of hope. "Hey... Pizza's getting cold. Lan, why don't you get more comfortable. Henry, grab us some glasses. I'm hungry."

Henry shoved back from the table and disappeared into the kitchen, and Viggo wrapped his arms around Orlando for a brief, hard hug.

"I'm sorry, babe," he murmured against Orlando's ear. "I don't think he's gonna make it easy."

"Can't say I blame him." Orlando shuddered and kissed the side of Viggo's neck tenderly. "Tell me you love me."

"I love you, Lan. I do. Count on that."

"Then I'll survive."

They stepped apart to shared, slightly weak, smiles. Orlando had laid his jacket carefully over the back of the couch and was pulling his tie loose when Henry came back in bearing three glasses.

"You guys have enough time to smooch?" He put the glasses on the table and opened on of the Pepsis.

"Smart-ass," Viggo grumbled, swatting the back of his head lightly. "There was no smooching."

"Hmmmph." A clearly disbelieving Henry poured the Pepsi while Orlando rid himself of tie, shoes and socks, and opened a couple of buttons. With a relieved sigh, he sat down at the table and reached for a pizza box.

"Are we bothering with plates?"

"Why would we do a stupid thing like that?" Viggo asked.

"Excellent point."

Henry regained his seat and for the next few minutes nobody bothered to even attempt conversation. Fresh pizza and cold cola ruled the world, and all three were men enough to appreciate that fine fact.

"Your ferret's eating your food again, Dad," Henry said idly after initial hunger had been quenched.

Orlando looked up with a raised eyebrow from where he had been absently reading a brochure about Macalester College in Minnesota.

"Oh fuck," Viggo muttered. "Is there a napkin anywhere?"

Henry started laughing. "Maybe you could drown it. Or... like... wash it off with Pepsi."

Viggo was picking up pizza boxes, looking for the random stacks of napkins that tended to appear on the table all the time. Orlando, still mildly puzzled, looked over at Henry. "Ferret?"

Henry, snickering, rubbed his forefinger over his upper lip. "The ferret." He nailed Orlando with a wickedly mischievous look. "I know you've got to be acquainted with the ferret."

"Henry Blake!" Viggo said sternly, finally locating a napkin and scrubbing at his mustache, which had been getting cozy with the pizza sauce.

Orlando felt one of those damnable blushes starting to color his face. Thank god he didn't blush as much as he used to, but now and then. And Henry was right... he was very well acquainted with the ferret.

The ferret.

Orlando flicked a glance over at Viggo and felt all the tension of the day starting to give way into a potentially nasty bout of hysteria. He held it under control, though, thinking serious adult thoughts, and almost made it until Viggo turned to look at him and there was...

"You've got..." Orlando reached out, tentatively, to indicate the still-sauced location, and abruptly the notion of a ferret eating was just too much and he started to shake.

"Orlando?" Viggo asked, not quite sure what this reaction was. Meanwhile, Henry was snickering like a loon - or a 17-year-old boy - on the other side of the table.

"F- f-f-ferret..." Orlando choked out and dissolved into giggles. Oh Jesus, yes, giggles. He giggled. How embarrassing. So he gave up and guffawed.

Viggo glared at both of them, then shoved his chair back and stood. "Fine," he said. "This is a perfectly good 17th century Spanish mustache and I'm not gonna sit here and listen to you Philistines call it a ferret." He fingered the affronting mustache for good measure and gave them a daunting Diego Alatriste stare. It was somewhat hampered by the fact that a small amount of pizza sauce still remained on the ferr- mustache. "Gimme that..." He grabbed the mostly empty Pepsi bottle and a mostly empty pizza box. "I'll be in the studio if you decide to be more civilized."

Orlando and Henry looked at each other and dissolved into laughter again as Viggo grumpily stomped out of the living room and into the back of the house. The laughter continued until they both tired and faded into the occasional chuckle, and finally Orlando reached over to open the second Pepsi and refill his glass.

"How much you wanna bet he staged that?" Henry asked quietly, his voice fond.

"I wouldn't be at all surprised." Orlando sat back with his drink and looked across the table at this young man who used to be a kid the last time he saw him, and wasn't really sure how to start. "It's real important to him that we- find a meeting place, anyway."

"Yeah."

Henry absently began consolidating the leftover pizza slices into one box, then closed both boxes and stacked the partially full atop the empty. The silence spun out in an uncomfortable curtain between them, gaining heft with each passing minute.

Orlando sipped his Pepsi and felt a queasy kinship to murderers on trial, trying to decide what to say and how to say it. He'd almost made up his mind to go for the blunt, straightforward apology when Henry spoke.

"Class act, the way you broke up with Kate. Right there in front of the press. Real nice."

Zing. Score one for Henry. Gloves off, then. "It wasn't my best idea ever," Orlando admitted, refusing to cringe. He had that much pride still.

"So what was the deal with her?" Those blue eyes, so disconcertingly like Viggo's, studied him from across the table.

"She was a beard. You know, a-"

"I know what a beard is." The haughty, dismissive 17-year-old came out in that statement. "Did you fuck her?"

"Henry!" Startled, Orlando sat up straight. "I don't see how that's any of your business."

Henry crossed his arms over a solid black T-shirt with a dark blue infinity symbol on the chest and stared deadpan at Orlando.

Dammit. Dammit all to hell. Why'd he have to be in love with a man with a fucking teen-ager? And why were they talking about Kate, anyway? "Why are we talking about Kate, anyway?"

"'Cause I'm interested. Did you?"

Orlando gritted his teeth and glared at Henry. "Now and then."

"Did you love her?"

"No."

"Did you like her?

"Sometimes."

"You fuck anybody else while you were breaking my dad's heart?" The barest possible hint of a tremor shaded the question.

"Henry, I don't think-"

"That's pretty fucking obvious."

"Dammit!" Orlando banged his half-empty glass down on the table. "You're a 17-year-old boy. What right do you have coming off all self-righteous to me about who I fuck?"

Henry just stared at him for a long moment, the muscles of his jaw clenching and unclenching. "When you crapped on my dad, you gave me the right," he said finally, softly.

Orlando stood and moved around to the end of the table, pulled out a chair so he could sit facing Henry with no table between them. He leaned over and rested his elbows on his knees, propping his chin on his hands. "What happened between your dad and me– he wasn't completely blameless."

"Oh really?" Henry's knuckles were white where he gripped his upper arms. "Tell me how he hurt you, Orlando. Tell me how many nights you drank yourself to sleep. Tell me how many parts of the fucking world you ran to, trying to keep yourself busy. Tell me how often you checked the answering machine just in case there was a message. You know he's practically fucking allergic to that damn answering machine, but he was obsessed for a while. He'd check it a dozen times a day, just in case. There was never a message, Orlando." He made the name sound like a curse. "Not even a hi, how are you? Nothing."

"Henry... calm down..."

Henry exploded out of his tightly-held position and smacked one of Orlando's arms away, bursting off the chair and lunging into the living room before turning to yell back. "I'm tired of calming down! I've been calming down for a fucking year and a half while Exene goes crazy and Dad ghosts out right in front of me! I'm a kid, for god's sake. I'm supposed to be having girlfriends and getting in trouble at school, not- Shit." He waved the whole thought away and collapsed onto the couch, staring at something invisible on the rug.

Orlando simply sat and looked at Henry for a while, thinking. He hadn't had the absolute most perfect childhood in the world, but he'd had a pretty good one. He'd always had at least one parent he could always depend on. Henry was fortunate in that he'd had two parents who might be flaky and far from most people's ideas of normal, but who loved him and who he could depend on. To suddenly have both of those parents go unstable in the same year must have been hellish. And he, Orlando, had been at least partially to blame.

He stood and walked over to stand in front of Henry, who didn't look up, then dropped to one knee in front of him and placed a hand on the boy's knee. The muscles flinched under his hand, but at least he didn't pull away.

"Henry," Orlando said carefully and clearly, with all the honesty he could summon. "I behaved like a total ass toward your dad. I... I took him for granted. I blew him off. I just never stopped to think how my behavior would hurt him. It was– It was pretty much unforgiveable."

Henry still wouldn't meet his gaze.

"But your dad– Christ, Viggo has such a huge heart. He's given me a second chance. I don't intend to fuck it up this time, Henry. I'm here for the long haul. You listening?"

"Can't help it."

"Okay then. I'm sorry I hurt your dad. I'm sorry I hurt you. All I'm asking for is a chance to get it right this time. I don't expect us to be best buddies. I guess I've screwed up too bad for that. But I hope we can get along. Because we both love your dad, and we both want what's best for him. Right?"

Henry drew in a deep breath and let it out slow, then finally met Orlando's gaze with a cool blue one. "Nice performance. You write that yourself or get it scripted?"

Orlando flinched and pulled his hand away, standing then dropping down on the couch beside the boy. "So it's war?"

"Nah. You get your chance. Dad wants you - I'll put up with you."

"Truce, then?"

"Truce." Henry studied Orlando's face again, intently, and again Orlando was reminded of how much he'd begun to look like Viggo. "But here's the thing... If you mess with Dad again, in any way, I will make your life a living hell. And trust me, I know enough about Hollywood and the internet to do that."

Orlando swallowed hard. He suddenly had no doubt at all that Henry spoke the absolute truth. "Truce, and understood."

"Okay then." Henry stood and stretched, cracking his back. "We'd better go spring Dad from the studio. He can't really hear from in there, but he'll give himself a neck crick trying."

"He's lucky to have you, Henry," Orlando said in perfect honesty, following Henry down the hallway.

"And unlucky to have you. But maybe that'll change."

Only much later that night, lying nestled in Viggo's arms, did Orlando realize that sentence had more than one possible meaning.

Comments

[uinendolothen.livejournal.com]

This was a phenomenal follow-up to an amazing story! The ending was brutal ... but in a good way.

Any chance that there will be more of this?

[rainweaver13.livejournal.com]

Brutal, but in a good way. ::nodnod:: I like that. That's what I was shooting for. ::grin::

There'll probably be more peeks in through this window. I can't let them go just yet. They've gotten under my skin.
Rain