Title: Cum Angelis

Author: Crimsonsenya

Pairing: V/O

Rating: R

Genre: the usual sadness

Warnings: too little m/m sex,

Summary: Not much happens, except they are finally out, and Orli has been to rehab. Takes lace few years in the future. Cum angelis et pueris, fideles inveniamur (we shall find the faithful in the

company of angels and children) is an antiphon of the Palm Sunday mass.

A/N: Written to a plot bunny Elfinobsession gave to me, after twisting it to my wicked purposes.

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The raindrops were heavy, yet they fell surprisingly gently on the paved path that ran across the front yard of Viggo’s house, from the steps of the porch to the wrought iron gate, turning the stones into a slick opaque river. The lights of the city were reflected in the torn, frayed clouds that appeared much paler than the dark patches of the night sky, dotted with dim stars that couldn’t be further away from the ones cemented on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It was late autumn, and Orlando’s bare toes were cold on the wet wooden step. Letting the familiar shapes of his charms thread through his fingers had an intensely calming effect on his rushing blood that still pounded with adrenaline in the aftermath of his panic attack.

The laughter, chatter and music coming from the backyard drifted to his ears as if from some remote celebration held in another galaxy, even the usually loud rush of the cars swirling by a block away sounded muted. Out there, there was a whole world of people who lived their day-to-day lives, shifting from point a to point b, full of purpose like ants, being part of the big machine that constituted the intricately embroidered canvas of ordinary life. One night –it might have been the previous winter– Orlando had realized he hadn’t taken Sidi out alone for walk in a long time. He had strolled along the boulevards and past palm trees that stood in solemn rows, watching at the gentle rain caress their sharp, persistent leaves. Strangers had gone by him, and he had observed the variety of their faces, old and young, roughly pretty and intriguingly reserved, with unparalleled keenness.

The long, straight black hair of the Mexican guy at the burrito stand had been pulled back from his prominent, youthful face. Orlando had stared at the shiny strands and imagined how the man washed his own hair, instead of a hairdresser doing it for him every morning on set. Or maybe, –Orlando had thought– the man had a girlfriend, or even a boyfriend, who helped him to rinse off the remains of shampoo foam, the way Viggo had sometimes done to him, gentle fingers massaging his scalp. When the man had handed out the pork and pozole burrito, he had smiled to Orlando, a polite warm smile that reached and filled his eyes, crinkling the corners in lines that grounded the man in the forcible stream of time. The enchilada sauce had burned Orlando’s shrunken stomach, but it felt like he had never tasted chile and garlic before. He had wandered on, and when he had returned to Chateau Marmont, Aileen had already been there to pick him up for the morning shoot, and his hands had started to sweat and his pulse quicken at the thought of all the people who would stand around him in a suffocating circle, appraising him while he said his lines and moved to his marks.

Should he feel remorse for leaving the people who worked for him out of job? They would have another client soon, said the small voice in his head that only wanted to rest. In fact, his PR firm already had other rising star clients who got several more job offerings than he had gotten at any point of his career. Orlando had said it out loud in many interviews along the years: “The next big thing is waiting just around the corner”. “Seize the moment when you can, don’t let it crash your world when it ends”, had been Viggo’s advice.

In the end, there hadn’t been much left of Orlando for Viggo to gather, a heap of bones and two black patches under his eyes, glowing from a paper-thin skin.

Orlando had started to call them often, the friends he had once been close to, his co-stars in films he had done years before. “Dom, do you remember how we went to the beach and we smoked pot to lure Viggo in the water with the board? He never forgave us the black eye, did he? For two weeks, he had called Eric every day, not caring what hour it was, babbling mindlessly about the time they shot Troy, how he had still been learning the profession from the best actors in the business, until Eric, annoyed and worried, had called Sean, who had finally called Viggo.

The front door opened behind him, and the planks creaked weakly under Viggo’s feet; his stride, light and fluid, never failed to mesmerize Orlando. There was a glass of Cabernet Syrah in his hand, and his jeans tightened around his long, taut legs when he sat down next to Orli. Viggo didn’t ask –as he knew already– why Orlando was sitting alone instead of joining in the barbeque at the party tent, along with people from Perceval Press, the kind bohemian couple from the neighbourhood, Henry and his latest girlfriend, people, who actually listened to Orlando and talked to him without him having to guess whether their smiles and interest faded as soon as he turned to pick up another beer. Before sneaking out, Orlando had chewed obediently the corncob, grilled tomatoes, and the lamb chops on his plate under Viggo’ s (and Henry’s) watchful eyes, and after the first bites of meat, he had actually realized how hungry he was. But at the parties, he couldn’t follow Viggo around all the time like his dog did. Orlando had agreed with his therapist that he shouldn’t be glued to Viggo, no matter how much safer he felt that way.

When had Orlando lost track of days and hours, mornings and evenings? When had he realized he was lonely even if he was never alone? When had he noticed he wasn’t indispensable even if he did everything he was told to? When had he started to read what he had said on past interviews, rethink with who he had posed in pictures, reconsider the dates he had had? When had his oldest friends become people in his past? When had staying home become way less tiresome than having fun? He had caught himself sitting by the phone, waiting for it to ring. “How’s Viggo?” Dom had asked. “Why don’t you call Viggo?” Sean had suggested. Orlando knew Viggo was there in his house. If he had walked the steps to the door, it would have opened to him. Already for years, there had been a picture Orlando hanging by Viggo’s bed, the sacred image of his naked backside and orgasmic face in a moonlit forest, the ultimate representation of whom any possible future lover of Viggo’s would have to live with. Orlando doubted anyone would want to stay in his shadow, not that Viggo had searched company. He was enviably content with his life as it was. He seemed to have everything he needed. If Orlando missed to answer Viggo’s phone call, he never called twice, and Orlando was always too busy to call back. When had the complicatedness of meeting Viggo outweighed the joy it had brought? Yet, eventually, the memories of Viggo had come back to him with a vengeance, constantly surfacing in Orlando’s mind, even if at that point, he usually forgot to eat, sleep and change his shirt, but words got stuck in his throat and his hand froze in midair whenever he had reached for his cellular.

Orlando’s arms were folded on his chest, and he was huddled in a ball, perched precariously on the edge of the step, like a fragile bird grasping a thin branch in order to keep the wind from taking him. Viggo’s arm descended on his back. It’s heat and weight seemed to sear a hole through Orlando’s damp t-shirt.

“Did I miss anything?” he mumbles, just because he wants to hear Viggo’s voice, the tones that are used to sooth babies to sleep with sweet lullabies.

“Just Henry going bananas with Sidi’s begging.” If Orlando turned his head just then, he would see Viggo’s toothy grin, now he only feels on his cheekbone the move of Viggo’s facial muscles. Orlando imagined Sidi’s treat hustling antics, his enthusiastically thumping tail, his muzzle on Henry’s knee, and his endearing, liquid eyes looking up at Henry, until he had no choice but to slip him a spare rib.

“Do you think I should have…?” Orlando doesn’t finish the question. Viggo enfolds Orlando’s arm from his chest, exposing the vulnerable skin of the inside of Orlando’s arm. There are faint scars on the bend, reminding them of the weeks Orlando spent in the hospital in IV, underfed, anaemic, dehydrated and quasi-delirious from the lack of sleep, and the blood tests he is submitted to almost weekly. The tip of Viggo’s nose feels chilly on Orlando’s skin, and his mouth leaves wet goose bumps in its wake down to Orlando’s wrist. Viggo lifts Orlando’s hand and licks at his fingers gently.

“The barbecue sauce was excellent, wasn’t it?” he says briskly, while Orlando looks at him, in a mix of wonder and disbelief. Their love for one another formed two eerily electric auras –Viggo’s more charged than his– that started diffusing to each other whenever they came into contact. In moments like these, Orlando could not discern which one of them loved each other more, and he loved drowning in the sensation.

When Orlando had first moved in with Viggo, he was clingy, cranky and peevishly demanding. He had constantly tested how far he could go until Viggo would finally loose it. Almost daily, Viggo had walked out of the house and into the car on the driveway, slamming the door behind him, right before Sidi’s nose, who, worried and confused, started to bark and leap against the screen. Usually, after half an hour, Orli heard the garage door being whooshed open and the car being driven inside, instead of out on the street. Before Viggo arrived back, Orlando climbed to the spare bedroom upstairs to chant devotion to the Lotus Sutra before his gohonzon, in an attempt to calm himself down and regain his sense of adulthood and emotional control. He was thirty-two years old, and he behaved like he was fifteen, grumpy and irritated, because of feeling so inescapably uncertain about his own life.

One day, the possibility of Viggo giving up on him had struck Orlando with full force, and he had become almost jealously possessive of Viggo. He had made sure where Viggo was at all hours by making check up calls on his cell phone and demanding to know a detailed schedule of Viggo’s daily activities. Whenever Viggo was home, Orlando would follow with his senses Viggo’s movements around the house, probably even better than Sidi could. It had become like a second nature to him by now. At parties like tonight, he would usually stay at Viggo’s side, maintaining a touching distance, preferably a bodily contact, such as rubbing the crown of Viggo’s bare foot with his toes or slipping his fingers under the hem of Viggo’s t-shirt.

For a while, they sit quietly, watching the last drops of the rainfall. Quick vivid flashes crossed Orlando’s mind of him and Viggo sitting on a step holding hands, knees touching, but in different surroundings: a yellow veranda with a view over an undulating landscape of green meadows, stone steps descending into a patio covered by ornate tiles, an auburn deck by the ocean. The glass ball of Orlando’s heart has been shaken for so long that the furiously whirling, tiny snowflakes have completely fogged the fast figure of the wild fragile boy in the middle. But if Orlando only remembers, the boy is still there, inside, and beside him, there is always standing a kind-eyed, radiant figurine of the man, who is now sitting next to him on the porch, and no matter how hard the icy gusts of the storm hit them, the two figures will remain solid and tenacious.

Orlando pulls Viggo’s hands to his waist, as he slides closer. Even covered by denim, Viggo’s thighs feel molten hot. The titillating heat twines up Orlando’s arms and sluices down his back to his hips. His whole body shudders, as Viggo’s fingertips start scorching tiny holes on the nape of his neck, while his other hand melts in the shape of Orlando’s hard-on. He rubs Viggo’s jaw line with his cheek before letting his open mouth cover Viggo’s lips in a butterfly not-quite-a-kiss. Sometimes, Orlando wishes they could to stay that way forever, frozen in two connected, sentient statues, landmarks of love and belonging.

Viggo lets Orlando initiate the kiss; he is inactive but open, and his mouth yields when Orlando pries his tongue in. He is crouching in the protective space between Viggo’s thighs, the safest place in the world for him. Leaning forward almost aggressively, in a position of makeshift dominance, Orlando takes leverage from the step on either side of Viggo’s hips. For a short while, their mouths battle, Viggo’s rough strong lips and tongue gaining his, and the lust in the pit of Orlando’s stomach expands in a vibrantly pulsating circle. Swiftly, Orlando shifts to straddle him. He clenches Viggo’s shirt in his fists, pressing himself heavily against him, from chest to groins, in an urgent attempt to be as close as possible. If he only could have crumpled Viggo’s skin and dived underneath it. Viggo yanks Orlando’s head back by his curls, giving him just the right tad of stinging pain, and Orlando moans aloud, almost coming to his pants. But they are startled by Sidi’s happy woofing next to them, and the dog’s silky fur and moist nose starts tickling their feet. Viggo’s blue eyes spark with mirth, as they rest their foreheads against each other.

“A bit later,” he says and kisses the tip of Orlando’s nose.

“Teaser,” he giggles back.

Four months after he had moved in with Viggo, when the press junket for The Bodies Never Tell had begun Orlando’s furious jealousy had toned down on a strong simple dependency on Viggo, and he was still suffering from frequent panic attacks. The movie was a supernatural thriller about a profiler tracking down an angelic serial killer, starring Jared Leto as the other leading man. In the media, Orlando had captured all the attention, as he had practically disappeared for months prior to the premiere. The public didn’t have a clue what he had been up to all that time, except a couple of paparazzi pics of him and Viggo leaving Bossa Nova, and a few others of them getting into a car near the place of his group therapy meetings. Only a week before the premiere, Orlando had blurted out with a smile in an interview for E! News, “I don’t need a girlfriend, I’m dating Viggo”. The expression on the Botox-injected face of the blonde reporter didn’t even flicker, but she was cut off from words for five seconds. Orli counted the time, letting the wave of the camera crew’s astonishment wash over him, leaving him blank and inexplicably satisfied. He hadn’t planned to come out; the consequences of being honest simply hadn’t mattered to him anymore.

“Are you serious?” the reporter had asked in a light tone, only partially unconvinced, yet giving him time to back out, even if the shifting of her body showed hopeful excitement, and it was obvious she had known right away about whom he had been talking. “Damn serious,” Orli would have loved to sneer at her “as in ‘I would have probably died without him’ serious,” but he deliberately misunderstood the question.

“I have been in love with him since shooting Lord of the Rings in New Zealand. I think you could call ten years a serious relationship.” Right after the interview, he had called Viggo on his cell phone. After a short silence, Viggo had asked his bodyguard on the phone and told him to bring Orlando straight home. The juicy bit of news had leaked out immediately. In a couple of days, People and In Touch Weekly sported headlines in an elephant-sized print: “The Queers Never Tell”, “The Queer Eye for the Bloom Guy”. Both GQ and Elle had Jared on the cover of their next issue, but the articles were full about Orlando and Viggo dating.

A panic attack had taken over Orlando in the London premiere. Somehow, all the flashlights flickered brighter than ever before, the screaming voices and the shouts of the reporters sounded painfully high-pitched, and it seemed the entire Soho had come in to stand along the red carpet with their rainbow-coloured Orlando Bloom banners that were held by dressed-to-kill guppies, instead of the usual teenagers. Although there was an odd bunch of women in their thirties right next to the entrance of the cinema, carrying a huge placate with a picture of him and Viggo underneath the text “There is no love without OV”. First, the noises grew in volume, and then suddenly, they waned. Orlando started to see everything around him through a blurry haze, and his mouth went dry, while his collar seemed to constrict around his neck. He watched with a detached curiosity how his body shuffled forward, his fluctuating limbs moving on their own. As if working on an autopilot, he knew when to stop and turn to the cameras. His clammy fingers dug deep into Viggo’s hands, as he determinately steered Orlando towards the fans that expected him to sign the magazines and shirts Viggo grabbed from them and handed out for him. Whenever somebody lifted a camera, he pulled Orlando close and tangled his curls with his fingers.

At the LA premiere, he could see “God hates fags” banners. He was high on endorphins, as Viggo had blown him at the back of the limo on the way to the theatre –not being allowed take a relaxing drink because of his anti-depressants, even if he had insisted one glass of champagne didn’t count–, but he was still plastered to Viggo’s side as tight as possible. Jared’s salutation was restrained and chilly. They posed at the doorway before entering. Viggo kept his warm hand on the back of Orlando’s neck, and he gave him a light kiss in front of the flashing cameras. Orlando could taste himself, and he remembered the numerous times he had been naked and wanton under Viggo’s ministrations, his thighs shaking and his crotch burning, while his mind moved at light speed across the infinite colourful space inhabited only by Viggo. He imagined how it would have been if –instead of the peck– Viggo would have kissed him long and hard, his tongue deep in Orlando’s throat, gifting the press with pictures of him panting and hot. By the time Viggo had offered him a Lime Tic Tac inside the theatre, Orlando was already smiling as smugly as Mona Lisa.

Orlando’s fingers were still a bit cold as he watched Viggo pull a packet of cigarettes out of the pocket of his jeans.

“You shouldn’t smoke,” Orlando says out of habit when Viggo lights one.

“Maybe you should,” Viggo retorts, softening his blunt words with a small smile.

“Where are you going?” Orlando’s tone became instantly worried, when he saw Viggo stand up.

“I’m an old man. Bad knees and all. I can’t sit down on low steps anymore,” he laughs.

“Viggy,” Orlando pleads quietly, before bouncing on him and wrapping himself around Viggo like a overgrown koala, the way he used to a long time ago, back in New Zealand, when all Orlando could feel was today, and the future only promised a repeat of today’s bliss. For a while, they hugged each other in silence, and Viggo started stroking his hair before pressing a kiss on his temple.

“I’m still here, and you’re still here; and I need you, as much as you need me. Come, let’s join the party.” Viggo takes a drag of cigarette and blows out a vortex of smoke, and Sidi’s nails scrape the blanks of the porch, when he darts after his owners, leaving a trail of muddy footprints behind.

Later, when they are on the bed, and Viggo’s fast asleep, Orlando examines Viggo’s face intently in the half dusk: the dark curves of his eyelids, his straight nose, the scar, the dip on his chin. Orlando presses light dots on Viggo’s cheekbone with his thumb, remembering how fiercely he wanted to become like him, assured and manly, how he was filled with awed admiration and mad glee bordering on ecstasy, whenever in Viggo’s company.

Viggo was absolutely right when he said they needed each other equally. What Orlando had done by coming out hadn’t really been a choice for him; it had been starting to live what he was. In time, his desire to tear apart the paper doll world he had been in would fade. The poignant memory of an existence of merely breathing and moving according to someone else’s script would blur even from his nightmares, leaving him serene, in a state of freedom he possibly had never experienced before. And he knew what he wanted to do. He would disappear in some small West End or Broadway theatre in London or New York, and then, he would go back to Viggo, who craved solitary moments as much as he loved symbiotic co-existence with Orlando. And he would be happy again. Orlando laid his palm on Viggo’s chest, he could feel the steady rhythm of Viggo’s heart beat dance on his fingertips. Both too tired for more, he had brought himself off earlier between Viggo’s warm thighs, rubbing his belly and treasure trail against Viggo’s cock, while Viggo had sucked and bit the cords on Orlando’s neck, literally purring. Orlando was mellow and appeased. Perhaps, he would finally be able to sleep at nights.