Ruth Sadelle Alderson

I'm trying to get this out of my system because while I think it's a nice image, it's not particularly realistic. I'm suffering something of a crisis of disbelief. I'm having trouble seeing Viggo/Orlando as believable at all.

***

I can't breathe. I wonder if this is what a panic attack feels like. I head out of my trailer and toward the set. Someone, Elijah, maybe, speaks to me, but I keep walking.

Sean's running his usual chess game on the side. Viggo's there too today, and that's where I go. I stop before them and silently hold out the box I never put down.

Viggo takes it from my now shaking hands and looks inside. He reaches out and blindly sets it down. It lands in the middle of the chessboard and knocks over a bishop and two pawns. Things must be really bad if Sean's not protesting such a casual destruction of his game.

Viggo's still dressed in his Aragorn costume, still muddy and sweaty. He pulls me down onto his lap and presses my face down onto his shoulder.

I can't stop shaking. He's saying something, trying to make me feel better, but I can't listen to him. His hands are warm on my back, and that's something I can feel. Peter talks to Sean somewhere behind me. As long as I get to stay where I am, I don't care what they're saying.

***

The three of us are the only ones left on the moon dark beach. Everyone else is in the water, or gone home to sleep.

Orlando's half-asleep himself, his legs twined with Viggo's, Viggo's chest to his back, Viggo's hands resting on his stomach. I tease Viggo sometimes about robbing the cradle, about Orlando wanting a surrogate father and not a lover. Viggo just smiles serenely. When they're like this, I understand why. Silent and perfect together, with no need for anything else in the world.

***

I want him. It's a want so deep it burns. 1 Corinthians 7:9. "It is better to marry than to burn." I want to marry him.

He teased me once, "Too young to even drink in your own country." He didn't mean to be cruel.

He doesn't mean to be cruel now, teasingly sitting on Viggo's lap. Viggo makes protesting noises, but he doesn't try too hard to get rid of him. It's not fair. Not fair that I'm too young even though I'm not. Not fair that Viggo's not too old even though he is.

***

I catch him on an interview, Liv at his side, feet tucked under him on the chair. He likes to sit like that. I teased him about it once, all of us watching a movie at the Hobbits' house, Orlando cross-legged on the couch next to me. I told him he was taking up too much space and pulled him over onto my lap. He laughed half a protest and then settled down. His legs over mine, one side of his body pressed all along my chest, my hands at his waist. It reminded me, just for a moment, of holding Henry on my lap when he was younger. But then Orlando grinned at me and kissed my cheek and the memory was lost.

***

"The boy has a crush on you," Sean said to him one night in bed.

He laughed. "He does not."

"He does," Sean said, pressing his lips down on Viggo's shoulder.

He thinks about that conversation now with Orli laughingly draped across his lap. They'd had sex then, wild, explosive sex, with Sean insisting and Viggo denying until they were too far gone to speak coherently.

Orli's breathing is a little too fast, even with the laughter, and Viggo looks up and catches the sadness in Sean's eyes. I want this, he thinks, and he can see that Sean knows the instant he thinks it. I'm sorry, he wants to say. I didn't know. But he doesn't say anything, and his arms hold Orli close instead of pushing him away.

***

Sean's thrusts push him up and drop him back down onto Viggo's lap. He has the wild thought that, despite the unnaturally high bed, this must be murder on Sean's knees. But then Sean does it again, and he decides it's too good for him to care.

***

A dark, secluded corner of some club they'd found. Elijah wanted to "broaden his horizons." Their combined weight tipping the chair the last inch against the wall. Orlando's legs are spread, straddling the chair, straddling Viggo. Orlando's cock against Viggo's, Viggo's hands on his ass.

One of Viggo's hands, big, rough, Man hands, comes up and cups the back of Orlando's head, thrown back in a wordless moan.

Viggo leans forward and scrapes his teeth against Orlando's neck. "You're beautiful when you come." Orlando flushes, still dazed, still rocking slightly against Viggo's hardness. Viggo chuckles. "You need to learn to accept a compliment gracefully." He presses his lips against the slight abrasions left by his teeth. "Say, 'Thank you, Viggo.'"

"Thank you, Viggo," Orlando dutifully repeats. Viggo rewards him with a kiss deep enough to take his breath away.