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TITLE: Possibly Permanent
AUTHOR: MSilverstar (rm @ msilverstar.com)
ORIGINAL STORY: Temporary Absentee by chaosmanor
PAIRING: Viggo/Orlando
RATING: R (mostly language)
SUMMARY: Five drabbles: four that go wrong and one that goes right. (Please, read the original first.)
NOTES: Merci beaucoup and more to anatsuno who stayed up late late late to coach me through this in my day of need. Also to theantimodel for the swift and reassuring beta, and to chaosmanor who can write the same two characters in harmony in a thousand different stories and never get dull: I will happily read every one.

DISCLAIMER: The author makes no claims or inferences to reality or truthfulness. Moreover, this story is based upon the work of another author and recognises their creation.

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One
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The fine spray from the fountain cooled Viggo's skin in the late afternoon warmth. Across the water a splendid young man -- boy -- was lying on the stone rim, olive-skinned and dark-curled. He smiled. Desire spread through Viggo, blooming in him for the first time since the divorce.

Viggo took a step towards the boy, framing a photo in his head. He wasn't looking at the fountain itself, but even if he had, he'd never have escaped the wind that dumped forty litres of water on his head.

The boy laughed as Viggo swore, checked his camera anxiously and sloshed away.

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Two
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There was something familiar about Viggo, in the confident way he dealt with the maître d'. Orlando couldn't put his finger on it, but he'd seen the bloke before, whatever kind of painter he was. It made Orlando twitch. In a magazine? Orlando flipped through them when there was nothing on the telly, but he'd rather watch a film.

Film. Watching Viggo walk back from the loo, Orlando knew it had to be film. He looked with a makeup artist's eye. If Viggo had a moustache...

Orlando grinned. He was dining with a filmstar. Carpe diem, his mum always said.

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Three
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Orlando couldn't possibly be that loud, and what did they care? Viggo felt like he was on fire, Orlando was trembling under his hands, and it had been weeks since Viggo'd been laid. He damn well wouldn't stop. It was too good.

Orlando's crescendoing moans hadn't prepared Viggo for the sound of an actor projecting, “Fucking hell! Fuck, fuck, fucking hell!” into his ear, and on into the rest of the couchette, and the whole train.

When the guard came to throw them out, Viggo made sure Orlando, at least, got to sleep the rest of the way to Paris.

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Four
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Orlando knew he was talking too much about acting and film and what he wanted to do with his life. Pot did that to him sometimes. When he did that at school, his mates just laughed, but Viggo was listening and nodding. "You shouldn't take me seriously," Orlando said, and went on to tell the stories of all daft the things that he'd done while stoned. All the walls and monuments he'd climbed, in loving detail, even the times he'd bungie jumped.

It was too much. Viggo was looking away.

Orlando had lost him.

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Five
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Viggo figures he should be excused for not knowing. In the rush and confusion of the whole thing, did anyone even tell him all the names?

Orlando had become such an icon to him, dabbed in memory in a thousand brushstrokes. Even the sound of his name had become more music than language. It was all mixed up inside Viggo, where reality metamorphosed into art, like Van Gogh's bright colors.

And five years changes a boy more than a man. More than Orlando's hands: the lithe satyr that Viggo remembered was gone forever.

What never changed were Orlando's laughing eyes.

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