The green-eyed monster which doth mock, in LOTRIPS Remix 2008

Author: frisbyg
Original Story: Untitled by hermit9
Pairing: Viggo Mortensen/Bernard Hill, Orlando POV
Rating: 14A
Summary: As Viggo and Bernard fall into each other, Orlando falls apart.
Notes: Things can look very different from another point of view.
Post-reveal Notes: many thanks to loveflyfree for the last-minute beta.

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Orlando hates everything about fishing. He loathes wriggling mucousy worms and the smell of shucked fish scales in the sun. He detests the gaping mouths sucking desperately at useless oxygen, the shape of the fish bonker, never mind the sound of it.

Orlando jumps on Viggo's back and Viggo oofs but does not buckle. Tranquil, unflappable Viggo simply bends his knees a fraction to lower Orlando's feet to the dirt, and carries on neatly packing and prodding camping and fishing accessories into the box of his truck. Bernard stands by looking bemused and scratches his back against a side-mirror.

Orlando frowns in Bernard's general direction, bumps up against Viggo's ribcage and slides a long arm around his shoulders, breathes hot in his ear.

"Please take me with you," Orlando says, and his eyes crinkle at the sound of his own whinge.

Orlando's arm is still around Viggo's shoulders but he cannot stop looking at Bernard, who in turn cannot seem to stop looking at Viggo.

Viggo slides out from under Orlando's arm to grab a box of tackle. Orlando can hear the sinkers and hooks sliding around in their little metal drawers and the sound sets his teeth on edge.

All three men by the truck look over in time to see Dom grab the air in front of his crotch in a violent jacking motion.

When Orlando turns back, Bernard is chuckling, but Viggo is looking slightly ill.

Orlando's skin crawls when he thinks about tagging along anyway, rolling behind like that proverbial third-wheel. However, he feels positively sinful when he decides simply to follow them, and not in an obvious, matey-mate, surprise-here-I-am sort of way. No, Orlando hurriedly borrows a grip's Volkswagen throwback and chugs out, catches up fast on the open road -- open save one blue Holden truck, silver strip glinting, a kilometer or so ahead at all times.

Orlando tells himself it is only two friends on a trip together and then tells himself directly that he is a liar. He stops short of calling himself anything else, however, namely coward, deranged, voyeur.

Orlando sleeps in the car after watching Viggo and Bernard disappear between the tinted sliding front doors of a modest three-level hotel near the waterfront.

A thirty minute drive back down the road he had sat scrunched down in the driver's seat at the back of a diner parking lot, eating a Big Mac with one hand as he watched Viggo and Bernard laugh over coffee through dirty windows. He had wondered what was so damn funny. He wanted to be in on the joke. He worried that he was the joke.

It takes him an hour and forty minutes to fall asleep, and only then after every horrible coupling possibility has winged its nasty way through the dark recesses of his mind at least twice.

The rear side window of the Volks is missing glass and the heavy-duty plastic once taped securely over it is now tattered from Orlando's at times somewhat high-speed pursuit. The plastic makes a flapping noise against the frame of the window like slapping fins and lets in cool puffs of sea air. Orlando breathes and shivers and dreams of being hooked aboard a boat by Viggo only to be tossed back.

By mid-morning, the novelty -- or perhaps the insanity -- wears a bit thin. Orlando does not follow them fishing. Instead, he finds a waterside park and eats halibut and chips from a large piece of newspaper -- the closest he wants to get to the catch of the day, thank you very much and extra tartar sauce.

He is being silly, he decides, like a child who loans out a toy and then wants it back as soon as the item has left his sight. Perhaps there is nothing to the trip at all. Perhaps it is all fun and games, everywhere besides the bedroom.

Orlando turns his face into the sunshine and feels good, feels rational. He will surprise them at dinner tonight, wherever they happen to go, and they'll all have a good laugh. And if the laugh turns out to be at his expense, he will at least be laughing with them.

Bernard and Viggo return to the hotel in the late afternoon. Orlando is looking at brochures for river-rafting in the lobby, mostly concealed behind a large plant and enjoying the air-conditioning. He hears them more than sees them; flashes of denim and toothy smiles between the jade leaves.

Good catch, Orlando figures, but does not quite know whether or not he is talking about fish.

He steps outside and moseys across the parking lot to the Volks, cracks the driver's door and sits sideways on the seat so he can stretch his legs out into the last of the day's rays.

Orlando follows them at a short distance to a seafood restaurant. The sunglasses almost fall off his face at the head tilt of his disbelief. He is certain Viggo's head twitches slightly in his direction at his guffaw, and though he means to reveal himself to them, out of habit Orlando clams up.

Then there's a hand on Viggo's back, brief but Bernard's, and suddenly Orlando does not feel so hungry anymore. His stomach seems to have descended somewhere in the vicinity of his shoes, and he knows he will sit in a back corner and watch, as the beer bottles line up beside him.

An hour or so later, after only hearing murmurs and chuckles from several tables away -- Orlando wonders if the noise of the kitchen is so loud only because he is listening so hard -- Bernard raises his wineglass and declares, Young people can fuck off! Orlando frowns and expects Viggo to as well, on principal, as a show of faith in young humanity the world over, something dutifully magnanimous and wholly Viggo...

The Volkswagen gets a flat on the way back to the set and Orlando stands on the side of the road and kicks the useless tire a good seventeen times before he collects himself enough to pop the trunk and replace it with the new tire without incident.

Orlando is young but he is not an idiot -- well, not completely. For example, he is wise on what will be occurring back at that shitty, sea-blown hotel. A room that has heard its share of moans, has muted its share of cries, has collected its quota of semen samples will be getting another good dose.

Orlando thinks about the flat wet of Bernard's tongue in the shadowy places of Viggo's body and his beers come back up on him.

Legolas is calm and serene and Orlando is nothing of the sort. He knows how out-of-place negative emotions look on his face when he is all blonde and pale and earthy, but he is too exhausted today to make an effort anywhere but in front of the camera. No one seems to notice, except Viggo. Viggo will not stop shooting lingering glances at him and Orlando cannot think of anything else to do but keep up the status quo.

So when Viggo sits down to brunch after their morning shoot, Orlando hauls up a chair behind him and perches on the back like a bird. Viggo is picking pickles off his sandwich, and Orlando reaches over Viggo's shoulder to pick them off the side of his plate one-by-one and pop them into his mouth. Orlando can feel Bernard's eyes on him from across the table, but he does not look up. Instead, Orlando focuses his eyes on the back of Viggo's head and twists his pickle fingers into a few strands of hair.

There is a hollow plastic knocking sound as Bernard gets up from the table -- everyone else is cloth and hair and giant foam feet.

Bernard is grinning right at him and Orlando hates the preternatural automatic twitch at the corners of his mouth at the sight. Bernard has pulled Ian -- blindingly white as the second-coming of Gandalf -- snug into his side and reached out with his other hand, like Hamlet without his skull.

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The green-eyed monster which doth mock

LOTPS Remix Home | 2008 Remix Listing