Title: Where I first called out his name

Author: Crimsonsenya

Pairing: Viggorli, implied VM/OB/EW

Rating: R

Warnings: too little m/m sex, sap, character death, AU

Summary: “I still like our voice,” the man says when he calls for the second time.

Beta: Nimlothriel, Jazzyjean and Margaret. Thank you, you beautiful people, for using your time and energy to help me!

A/N: The concept of this story is ripped off from a short story/film script Le Navire Night by my favourite French author Marguerite Duras. The dream Orlando sees near the end is inspired by a photomanip made by Eccentrica.

Disclaimer: The characters of this story are fictionalised celebrities. I don’t claim to know anything about their real lives or sexual preferences. This story is purely fictional, created by my perverted, demented and schizotypal mind. The line “Met by a lake near the sun” belongs to Viggo Mortensen.

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When love is not madness, it is not love. Pedro Calderón de la Barca

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”How could you tell her? You fucking cunt, I thought I could trust you! Are you going to have a fucking press conference? Shout the results from the fucking Eiffel Tower? I’ve always done what you’ve wanted. Was it too much to ask? The one bloody thing I’ve ever asked from you, and you couldn’t keep it, one bloody secret…” The man pauses to inhale and the monologue is interrupted by a low throaty voice on the other end of the connection.

“Nothing hurts more than a friend, who betrays you. Friends are supposed to be loyal. When you lose trust, you lose everything, right?”

“What the fuck?” A surprised exclamation. The man is angry, but not at this stranger. There is a short silence, charged with electricity, while the man calms down. He can hear a sensual chuckle in his ear.

“You must have the wrong number.”

“Oh,” the man mumbles. For a second, he forgot what he was doing, because he was listening to the most agreeable voice he had ever heard. “I… I mean… I’m sorry, mate…”

“It’s alright. Sometimes, you need to get everything out. Is there anything I can do for you? A betrayed trust hurts like hell, I know.”

“I apologize. I really didn’t mean to… Yeah, it hurts. I wish I could… You’re American, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am and you’re British, I assume.”

“But you live in Paris?”

“Yes, I do.”

“This is fucking insane!” The man almost laughs now. “I call someone in Paris to flame her ass off. I get the wrong number, but the person, who picks up is the one person in France, who understands English. Damn, I’m very sorry.”

“Hey, I’m OK. No harm done. I’ve had bad days too, you know. Now you can call your friend and talk sense into the backstabber.” The stranger’s laughter vibrates in the air.

“Thanks, mate. I can’t say I’m sorry for the wrong number anymore. I really owe you one.”

“No apologies needed. You did nothing wrong.”

For a short moment, there’s a silence. The man thinks the voice he hears is most charming, unforgettable.

“I… Did you know you have an interesting voice? It’s very impressive. You could work in a radio.”

“Be careful, you’re making me blush. Everything’s forgiven, no need to flatter me.”

There’s another silent moment and then the man says, almost reluctantly:

“Thanks. Have a nice day, mate!”

“You too.” The voice keeps resonating in his head after the conversation ends.

*******************************************

“I still like your voice,” the man says when he calls for the second time.

“What is your name?”

“Would it be enough for you to know that it begins with an O?”

The stranger says that if the man calls him V, then they’re even. They’re both happy to speak to each other again. V likes the letter O. It’s a perfect circle, the symbol of eternity, the zero where everything either ends or begins.

They start talking. O asks him, what he was doing. V says he was mixing paints, that he’s an artist. O wants him to tell about his studio. V describes the patch of the sun on the wall, the huge blank canvas, the first strokes of the brush, the plants on the windowsill, the Maté tea he drinks while he paints. V asks, what O does. There is a long silence. Finally, O says he can’t say, but that he’s kind of an artist too. Then would he like to do something else, if he could? It was silly, but O would have liked to be a boxer too. In his opinion, there was something almost spiritual in the discipline and austerity required to become a champion. The sweat, the pain, the rush of adrenaline in the blood, the release. Very much like sex.

V guesses O is younger than him and he says a number or two. After a short hesitation, O acquiesces. V is right, but O thinks V is at his best age. This elicits a chuckle from V that makes shivers run down O’s spine. In that instant, O becomes overwhelmed by the urge to know what V looks like, but V is faster and he asks what colour are O’s eyes. They’re dark brown, his hair is dark too, curly and hanging at his jaw. He’s medium built and quite lean, but then O demands to know in turn. Somehow, V is embarrassed. Grey-blue eyes, dark blonde hair. Too soon it will be greyer than V’s eyes, he laughs. They are about the same height, but V has such a long legs that his ex-wife calls him Longshanks. O decides to come back to the ex-wife later and asks instead, if there were any other particular features that would come up in V’s police record. A scar runs above his upper lip and there are a couple of tattoos, a tangled barbwire bird and a moon.

“Do you believe in fate?” O asks, and V can hear a sharp inhalation.

*********************************

“I’m scared of death.” O reveals to him. O calls him everyday now, but V never knows at what time. He has moved his phone to the studio. A long serpentine wire runs up the stairs. O calls him from his cell phone. V could probably find out O’s number, but he doesn’t. O is busy and has lots of engagements. V has deduced that he leads a very irregular life. However, he knows O goes regularly to the hospital for treatments.

“I’m afraid if I die now, I haven’t really lived yet.”

O had just been diagnosed with a possibly terminal illness. He wants to keep it secret from his family as long as possible, but the person he was calling on the night he dialled the wrong number had revealed the secret to O’s sister. O loves his sister, but he knew she’d be devastated. V didn’t ask who was the unreliable person, because, secretly, he was grateful to her for having lead O to him.

O explains that he has half a dozen people around him all the time, and still, he feels alone. Sometimes, he has to excuse himself to the bathroom and bite his knuckles to keep from screaming aloud in public. When he goes home, he walks his dogs to a patch of trees by the river and lets everything out. He shrieks animalistic cries in order to put on a serene face or a cheerful smile when he’s in the spotlight again. He owns a villa in Neuilly, right outside Paris. The river Seine is near and there is an iron fence closing in a well-kept garden and the stone house. He stays there as often as possible. O says his every move is watched and analysed by the press. There are days O would like to shove the cameras down their throats or up their arses. He doesn’t want the press to know about his illness. Yes, he fears death, because he doesn’t feel like he has lived yet.

He hasn’t even been in love yet.

V makes O promise to call him the next time he feels like screaming. V is worried about O. The worry gives his voice a distinct timbre that soothes O like his mother’s hand. V asks, what he can do to help.

O wants V to take him away.

“Met by a lake near the sun…” V begins. He’s also a poet. He weaves together words as spider weaves her web. The words slip into O’s ear, slither down his throat, warm his heart and start burning in the pit of his stomach.

“I think I want to be loved by you,” O says, beguiled. V orders him to unbutton his shirt, slowly slide his hand from his neck to his nipple. The dark husky tones of V’s voice become the hand and the fingers that graze O’s skin. They touch him until he bucks and moans.

*********************************************

O didn’t know one could learn desire through someone else’s relish. He learns to covet the fruit V bites, the wine he drinks, the sunshine that kisses his skin, the paint he spreads, the music that fills his ears. O learns to crave the desire V has for him. He wonders, how peculiar it is to desire with all the other senses but sight.

After a while, O starts setting up dates with V whenever he’s in Paris. These dates are always cancelled by O. He has too many previous arrangements. Something always comes up and he has to reschedule. V holds to their appointments every time: he walks along the Avenue des Champs-Elysées to the Arc de Triomphe, he listens to the street musicians at the Centre Pompidou; he admires the stained-glass windows of Notre-Dame and he lays a rose on Oscar Wilde’s grave at the Père Lachaise cemetery. Afterwards he relates to O in detail what he saw and what he experienced, and O sets up a new date that gets called off again.

Their conversations over the phone extend for hours, sometimes they fall asleep: V with the earpiece on the pillow beside him and O with the smooth screen of his mobile against his cheekbone. The one who wakes up first listens to the steady breath of the other. In the morning, V describes the colour and the bitterness of the coffee O drinks, the texture of the toast he eats, the melting of the butter and honey in O’s mouth. V tells how he wants to lick and bite them away from O’s lips. Their breakfasts together are orgasmic.

O remembers a childhood holiday in Greece. He had found a cave on the beach while collecting seashells. The cave had been empty and the rough walls seemed so lonely and bare that his heart had been filled with an inexplicable sadness. There he had screamed for the first time. The echo had responded and with a conspicuous certainty, he had known that somebody would always answer.

“I’ve been calling out your name ever since”, O says, softly and confidently with the voice of a child. “Ever since that cave I’ve been shouting ‘I love you, V.’ over and over again in the night.”

O says he loves V.

O has never loved anyone else. He could not have loved anyone else. He didn’t know about love or desire, about life or death, before he called out V’s name and V responded to him. V’s voice on the phone grazes O softly like a hummingbird touches the petals of a flower.

*****************************************

One day, V tells he has painted O, and O laughs that V hasn’t even seen him. V calls him a liar. The portrait of O is swirls of colour and light meshed with slow sensual caresses of velvet night. Never before has he been this productive. V has finished so many new pieces in such a short time his agent wants to arrange him a special exhibition.

O goes to the gallery to see V’s art. He calls to say he knew he loved V’s soul when he stood before a huge canvas displaying red and white flames of energy. O says he can’t stop thinking of V. He is passionately, wildly in love with the man. At work, he recites all his lines about love to V. This is how V finds out O is an actor.

For the first time, V demands something from O. He demands to know, who O is and what he does. O is a fast-rising movie star; he’s even been selected as the hottest man of the year. There are pictures of him in the magazines every month. People recognise him on the street: teenagers squeal, married women ask for his autograph on their breasts and other body parts. Often he needs a bodyguard. Everything he says and does or who’s he with is recorded on film and in black ink. He doesn’t own the man, who appears in the pictures. O says he’s not an image; he’s a voice – a voice that belongs to V.

O has a girlfriend, who’s famous too, a model and an actress. In the press, they are the golden couple, but O says he has told her about V. She knows O loves another.

V wants to be angry, he wants to tell O to stop calling him in the night, in the morning, at the afternoon tea, but V understands. After all he has another life too. He has a son, not very much younger than O, an ex-wife, casual affairs with young and beautiful women who come to see him at the gallery or at the poetry readings. All V wants is to know O’s given name, he wants to whisper it in the dusk of his bedroom.

O stands for Orlando. V loves the name. It begins with the purr of a lion and ends with a boat cradling on an ocean. V says he recognised the name at once. If he’d been given ten names from which to choose, he’d immediately known the right one. No matter how many lives he lived, he would always recognise it. Orlando. The name crosses the distance and darkness between them and V cries, gasps and roars it when he comes. V repeats the name to O’s ear until he can make O hard just by saying it.

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They decide to meet at a café near the Sacré Coeur church. O sees V from the car. His driver drove the Audi past V several times, O tells V on the phone. O describes V to prove this. V was sitting outside, apart from other patrons, a glass in his hand, scribbling down in his notebook. V’s hair glistened in the sun; he wore a grey striped button down shirt. Two upper buttons were unfastened, revealing a slightly haired chest.

But O had stared at his hands. V had his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and there were two spots of blue paint on his wrist. For a moment, V had gazed up from what he was writing, just as O was passing by. He had held his breath, wondering whether V was going to notice him or not. There were two spots of blue paint on V’s wrist and O saw the colour of V’s eyes matched them. That moment turned O’s desire for V into an irrevocable fate.

“My love for you can not be quenched anymore. Now I will never stop loving you.” O says.

“I couldn’t come to you. She, my publicist and my sister made me promise not to step out of the car. They made my driver promise not to stop. I couldn’t put him between a rock and a hard place.” O is almost mad with desire. He comes every night faster and harder than ever before. O says now he also sees the skilful hands stroking him, the strong body pressing against his back and penetrating him. The heat and rapture scorch him. Every night he wants to die in V’s arms.

V could have seen O’s face, too, if he wanted. He could have checked the posters at the cinemas, but that Orlando isn’t the same that the one he talks to on the phone. V is very curious, but he can’t bring himself to look. When he passes by the ads, he fixes his stare on the pavement.

O’s sister calls V. She begs him not to insist on meeting O. She understands their romance is inevitable. Her brother has never been truly happy in his life, only assuaged. Now he is happier than ever, but restless and bewildered. She says her brother is in love and the heart of love is pain. She says she won’t try to cut off their phone connection or discourage her brother, but V can’t see O. The press can never find out. O suffers from a grave illness. He needs hope, not emotional turmoil.

O’s publicist calls V. She orders him not to contact O. Her client has a career, a fiancée and an illness to fight. O feels better –for the moment– but the doctors can’t tell for how long. V asks, how is it possible to cut the contact, when he doesn’t know O’s number or address and O calls him. The publicist tells him to hang up, when O calls him the next time. V does so, but then O keeps calling him again and again and cramming his answering machine with messages, until V picks up. V never hangs up on O again, because V has fallen in love too, blindly and madly.

O becomes jealous. He wants to know there is anybody else for V. He says he has hired someone to follow V. It’s springtime, and every morning, V rides a bike to Neuilly. He looks for O’s house. V reports to O, what he finds: a grove, an iron fence, a garden, a house by the river. There are too many houses by the Seine and V has to wait for some sign that would indicate, where his lover lives. O retells what V has done during the day, where he’s been, what kind of liquor he drank in the afternoon. Sometimes, O must have been following V himself. He mentions details he couldn’t have known otherwise.

V starts feeling O’s presence, but he never turns to look. He just rides home to Montmartre and waits in the shadowy portico of his apartment building, his whole body shaking with anticipation and unfulfilled desire. He bites his lip, until he tastes the copper in his mouth from trying not to cry out in lust and need. O’s phone call wakes him up in the middle of the night and O makes him explode by telling how he would take V repeatedly: slow, hard, fast, on V’s bed, in the kitchen table, in the shower, on the back of O’s Limo. O adds new, deliciously filthy details to his story every night. V can’t remember the time when O didn’t call him. The time that passes leaves trails of wings in the air.

**************************************

O has to travel abroad to work, to Spain, to Morocco again. He doesn’t call for a while. O told V once that Elijah is the only true friend he has. They worked together in O’s first big movie. They were friends before O became famous. Elijah. To V that name also sounds like music. When he hasn’t heard from O for the longest time ever. Elijah calls V and gives him an address. V rides his bike across Paris to meet him. Elijah’s apartment is decorated with a tasteful mixture of high tech and Japanese Zen styles. Elijah pours him white tea, and somehow, they feel comfortable in each other’s company right away. V has seen Elijah before, his face looks familiar. O has told V that Elijah became famous before O, even though he is younger. V admires Elijah’s apartment and Elijah says that when one leads a hectic life, one needs something permanent to hold on to, something apart from the glitz and fake glamour. Every famous young actor needs a calm eye in the storm. Zen is Elijah’s lifeboat, Elijah confesses and gazes at him. V understands what is left unsaid. He is O’s shelter.

Elijah has an envelope from O. V opens it and pulls out a photograph: a lonely young man holding out his hand to stroke a horse that has been set in front of a carriage. The hair under his cap is dark mahogany; his body is lean and the curve of his lips exquisite. Orlando. V sits on his knees before a Japanese tea table, holding the picture in his hands. The sun filters through the bamboo blinds, and the young man opposite to him melts into a heart-warming smile. There’s a cleft between his teeth. V perceives all the sensations at once and his senses go on overdrive. He is stunned.

V is obsessed. He buys a stack of those glossy magazines he wouldn’t have dreamed of purchasing before. He browses through every picture looking for O. V finds out O’s surname, but the man in the pictures isn’t quite Orlando. Soon he changes the magazines to cheaper ones filled with scandalous headlines, paparazzi shots and not-so-reliable gossip. There O is, wearing caps, scarves and sunglasses, carrying shopping bags, walking his dogs in a park and drinking Evian. V organizes the pictures he cuts out from the magazines meticulously by date in a scrapbook. He puts the photograph he received from Elijah on the wall next to his bed. Elijah is not allowed to give him O’s number, but he gives V his own number instead. Soon Elijah calls him again. V adds the second picture on the wall next to the first. V starts seeing Elijah every week. They drink tea, they chat and Elijah has an envelope with a new picture from O. In return, V starts giving him an envelope for O with a picture V has taken during the week.

After what feels like an eternity, O calls V again. He has been to V’s poetry reading.

“When your voice filled the auditorium and you stood there alone in the spotlight, I reached out my hand and touched your face. As your head turned you kissed my fingers, I thought I loved you more than my life.”

“I know who you are,” V says calmly, his hand brushing his cheek. He can feel O’s heat lingering on his skin. O says he will leave everything, if V asks him to. Now V knows who O is. He will never ask.

Before V travels to the coast of the Atlantic with his son for the holidays, he buys himself a cell phone. He never gives the number to anyone else. O calls him when he walks on the beach at night.

“Do you hear the roar of the ocean?” V asks. “Do you hear, how my pulse joins your soul?” He presses the phone to his chest and O says he feels the beat, and the salt in the wind that kisses him, and the algae that tangles his bare feet. V’s thighs are shrouded by a thin layer of sand and O can feel the grains grinding against his teeth when his hungry mouth covers his lover’s hardness. Alone, on the beach, V’s pleasure hits him like the waves hit the shore.

*************************************

O is hospitalised for treatments and he calls V more than ever. They can’t stay apart. They depend on each other more than ever. Elijah knows now, where V lives. When Elijah is in town, he comes by in the afternoons and they drink wine together. They talk about V’s art, about Elijah’s roles. Ever the loyal courier, Elijah keeps exchanging envelopes with V. They even spend a weekend together fishing in the Jura Mountains. V has taken up the habit of giving Elijah a picture he has taken of the young man each time he delivers an envelope for O. Each time the colour of Elijah’s cheeks deepens a little. V says to him that he’s very photogenic. The slight asymmetry of his face is most expressive. The bone structure is distinct, but delicate and the sky blue of his eyes is full of depth. V sends the best shots of Elijah to O, too.

After he’s released from the hospital, O has to travel a lot again. He has countless public events to attend, but he carries his cell phone with him. He calls V from premieres, awards and charity galas. V hears the screams of the fans and the shouts of the reporters in the background, and when O breaths ‘I love you. I want you.’ into the small piece in his hand, there are pictures of him talking to his phone in the magazines. When O calls V from the premieres, they have phone sex as O walks on the red carpet, and O says he doesn’t wear any underwear. V could come to him, pull his clothes off, find him hard and ready and slicked to take him right there in front of the cameras.

On the floor of V’s studio there is a collection of all kinds of shots: some of O with the girlfriend, the woman-whose ribs-poke-out, and some of O with other men, his fellow actors, other stars. These men have their arms around O and he is laughing. V becomes horribly jealous. His voice is tight and raspier than usual with barely contained anger. V demands to know if O has other men he makes love to, if he’s made love to others before him. There has only been two others, both before O dialled the wrong number and V answered. The first, S, had been during his first big role. It had been over before the shooting finished. The second was E, not Elijah but another. Though married, E had fallen madly in love with O. E would have broken up his marriage, left his child for him. O had ended the affair.

“Why?” V shouts in the earpiece, voice shaking with jealousy and fear. “I am madly in love with you too!” V weeps, he’s upset, desperate. O feels like he’s been shot through his heart. He shouts, too.

“I wasn’t madly in love with him! The only love in me is for you.” They fight and they shout and they make love, but O never hangs up, until he absolutely must. V hears people talking to O in the background. ‘You have to be there at this hour. You will meet the producer. There’s an interview.’ They only fight in order to make up.

*********************************

Finally, it happens. O’s nose bleeds in a press conference and he faints. His illness becomes public. O apologizes to V. It had been their secret, the life and death of O. O is very agitated and anxious, nearly hysterical. V sings him tangos in Spanish to calm him down. Powerful and tragic songs of love and loss. O flees the media attention to England, to his mother’s. V doesn’t know exactly where. O takes Elijah with him before Elijah has to go to film in the States.

The first postcard Elijah sends to V is from London. V tapes the cards on the wall of his studio. In each card there’s an address. V doesn’t know where O is, but Elijah does. He sends self-made cards back to him. The postcards are more like cardboard collages with paint and glued pictures. Verses of his latest poems frame and cross the cards. Sometimes he writes text in mirror image. The poems are about love, his only theme for the years he’s known O.

There’s a pause in the phone calls again. But when O calls the next time, the experience is one of ecstatic bliss. The call is absolutely orgasmic –for both of them. O begs for V to forgive him for not calling, for wasting precious time they could have spent on the phone. V wastes a little more time by describing how he would trace his tongue across O’s hipbones, over his sun, all the way to his nipples. V says he could waste an eternity mapping every inch of the body he craves so badly he wakes up in the night not able to breath. O says V’s craving is the sole purpose of his entire existence. (The picture of V has been permanently etched on his retina. V sitting on the terrace of some café with his brandy and cigar, writing in his notebook, the wind blowing dark golden hair about his rugged face. And those two endearing spots of blue paint on his wrist O had yearned to lick clean ever since.)

O tells V his condition has been worsening for a long time. V has known this. He’s heard the exhaustion and tiredness in O’s voice; he’s noticed the drained look in the photographs. O has signed a contract to shoot two films at once. He will spend half a year at the Caribbean. The project will be his last in sight. When he comes back, he will take a break.

While he’s on the other side of the Atlantic, O travels to upstate New York and to Argentina. Elijah accompanies him. O wants to see the place where V was born, the field, where he played football as a kid. When O has a Christmas break from shooting, he flies to Denmark to see the farmhouse of V’s grandfather. O tracks down the phone number of V’s mother and calls her. He tells her he’s deeply, desperately in love with her son, who has taught him to live, without whom, there is nothing untainted in him. O is sorry he can’t give her son what he deserves.

Next time on the phone V is even sadder than he is angry. He refuses to believe O could be dying. Not him, not the young man with an unrestrained passion and exuberance, not his beloved with the quiet contemplative heart. Surely, the doctors are mistaken. V cries on the phone, frustrated and helpless. O soothes him, keeps whispering his name and verses of V’s poetry, even if his own hands shake so badly he has to use the hands-free.

*************************************

O is very sick now. He shoots as much as his body lets him and he spends his nights in a private clinic. He refuses to retract his contract. His publicist begs him. V doesn’t. O has to wear a wig, because he’s lost most of his hair. O says he’s covered in bruises. He stumbles around, because he’s so weak now. He says the pleasure he gets from V, murmuring heated words in his ear, is mixed with pain, yet he wouldn’t survive without calling V and making love to him.

Elijah comes by V’s studio every week to bring a gift from O, not photographs this time, but items: a golden Zippo, a snakeskin wallet, a bottle of Jamaican rum, a charm with seashells. Again Elijah takes with him an envelope to give to O; poems painted on paper with pictures V has taken of landscapes and buildings, of a smiling Elijah, walking with him in the park at Versailles or on the boulevards. These pictures, cards and gifts are indispensable. They are the bread and wine of their sacred communion, the life and hope of resurrection of their love turned tangible flesh and blood, paper and paint.

Elijah invites V to his apartment to watch an epic movie, starring O. V is swept away by the ancient story, but he can’t quite connect the sensitive tanned young man on the wide-screen TV to the fierce and passionate man on the phone.

V still lives in denial. O describes to V what he dreamt of while visiting Denmark. He had been alone in his hotel room, terrified of dying, so scared of death. But then he had dreamed of V. O had been somewhere dark and calm, without sounds or shapes. An utter silence reigned like before the creation, and he didn’t even have form himself, not even memory of his existence beyond the liquid world of peace that was one with him. In the comforting dusk he began to discern a single strike of opaque light that morphed into a body. A man lay half covered on the water and the shade around him took the form of a cave or a womb. He shone a dim and pleasant light, and his body was woven of corded muscles, skin, hair and a pair of jewelled eyes, two burning pupils in the core of the darkness and oblivion.

“It was you,” O says. “You wore a crescent moon on your right hip. I don’t fear anymore. I will find you wherever you are.” V believes him now. He believes in death. He believes in love. He has never told O where his moon tattoo was placed.

The filming is almost over. They speak of death without mentioning the word separation.

“How do I want to be buried?” O asks. In response to the question V tells him of a blue-veined marble and red granite tomb, standing beneath the carved limestone vaults of an ancient cathedral or perhaps a temple. There are two still figures laying in an eternal slumber, the flickering shadows of candlelight play on their serene features. The hand of the smaller figure rests upon the heart of the other. The chrysanthemums on the grave never wither, and pilgrims wander from afar to burn incense and pray for the immortal love to seize their souls too. V doesn’t say he wants to die also. O understands it without words. He can tell by the slight change in V’s voice. His sorrowful tone pains O more than the bruises on his skin. V’s suffering is a band of thorns around O’s neck.

“What will you do at my grave?”

“I will kneel down. I won’t see the golden letters carved on the stone through my tears. Then I will cry out your name to the void, until my tongue dries to my palate and my lungs are torn to shreds.”

“Will there be snow on the ground?”

“Yes, snow like powder, and blood-red roses and my soul will feel as cold as the iced water of a fountain.”

*****************************************

The spring has turned to a summer and all the windows of V’s studio are opened to let the breeze chase away the heat. The thrum of the traffic nearly covers the ringing of the phone. When V picks up, he almost drops the earpiece.

“It’s me. I won’t call you again.” O’s voice sounds husky, but determined. He is not lying. V recognizes all his voices: his flirty voice, his tired voice, his excited voice, his aroused voice, his happy voice, his angered voice, his seductive voice. V knows the tones, hues and changes of O’s voice better than the lines of his own hand. There is a date set for a wedding, but O doesn’t mention the place. O says he loves V more than his life, that’s why he does this. It is over.

The girlfriend calls V the next day. She says the madness has to end. She forbids him from attempting any contact with O. She says O has to stay in the hospital for an indefinite amount of time. She blames V. O should have avoided stress, used that energy to get well. V gets so upset he tells her to go to hell before he slams the phone across the room.

On the wedding day, V is hiking with Elijah in the Pyrenees. They are far away from the media. V doesn’t know, whether Elijah was invited to the wedding or not. He’s brought three bottles cognac with him and they get as pissed as they can in the cabin that night. When V pulls Elijah to him, he realizes the young man fits perfectly against his chest with his head against V’s collarbone. V hesitates, but then Elijah caresses V’s neck and their mouths meet. His lips are soft but persistent and V’s hands slide down Elijah’s back to his bottom. The narrow body beneath him writhes and moans. V remembers a bird he held in his palm as a child. There is pleasure and release, warm sweaty skin rubbing against skin, limbs entwined and urgent touches. The next morning, V says he wanted to, but he didn’t mean to. Elijah says they are friends and friends need each other. Whenever Elijah’s in town, they meet and they drink wine; they travel to Arles to visit van Gogh’s house and they hitchhike to Rouen to tour the cathedral they have seen in Monet’s paintings. They never talk about O. The pictures in the studio and on the bedroom wall stay in their place, they are just not mentioned as if they were wallpaper.

The time moves surprisingly slowly. It’s been about four months since their trip to the Pyrenees. Elijah stands in the doorway. V looks at his eyes and there is no need for words. V could swear he hears a sharp loud crack, the sound of two glass hearts shattering. He wraps his arms around Elijah and draws him near. The fragile bones tremble again under his fingers. Elijah’s chin finds the spot on V’s collarbone and stays there.

V presses the play button of his answering machine. The long beep and then a familiar voice.

“Don’t be angry with yourself for not having been home. I would have hung up. I played your message a couple of times just to hear your voice.”

V sees his has received eight calls.

“Wherever I’m going, I will never forget the sound of your voice. When I forget my own name, I won’t forget the shivers your voice gave me.

When I forget love and pain and all emotion, I won’t forget your voice, and because of your voice, I will always find you.

I am not afraid to die, because you taught me, how to live.

I slept with Elijah last night. I’ve slept with him, whenever he’s come to see me after the wedding. He’s done to me, what you did to him. I’ve done to him everything I want to do to you. You will have me, when you love him. Now I have even more bruises on me. They stamped me at the customs of the final frontier.”

V can hear him laugh, but soon it turns into a cough.

“Elijah loves me and he’s in love with you.

This is the last time I’ll call you.

Yet, I feel the same tingling, the same hot rush as the first time I called you on purpose.

Wherever I go, I will always find you. I don’t think I will ever stop loving you.

I…I don’t think this fire will ever burn out.”

For a short moment, V hears O’s ragged breath and the suffocated sobs. A shuffle and then nothing. The tape ends.

They hear the news from O’s sister. His body will be cremated. It is his last wish.

“Scatter my ashes in Greece, in the cave, where I played with seashells when I was a kid. It is the cave, where I first called out his name. Bury me, where I fell in love with him.”

“Orlando, Orlando.” V cries out the name in the shell of Elijah’s ear and like the echo he answers.

The End