Slasha, Baby 2007

Peace Offering

Recipient: koulagirl666
Author: ocko_okate
Pairing: Viggo/Orlando (if you close the eyes and pretend hard)
Rating: PG-13
Warning: I'm a moron and should be treated like one. Four ficlets.
Author Notes: Dear koulagirl666, this is so not what you wanted *cringes* and the mods could surely tell you stories about it. I truly hope that the pinch-hitter will be able to write something that fits your fic wish better and I offer this really only as a peace offering. Hope you have a happy new year anyway and accept my apologies.


---

Genie in a bottle.... that's how he felt after the play finished in September. And somehow everybody was expecting from him that -- once the bottle was opened -- he will emerge in a magical glow and start doing miracles. But that was it -- he didn't really know if the bottle has already been opened, he didn't even know if there was a bottle at all. Well -- actually -- to tell the truth - on some days he felt like he was the bottle -- but definitely an empty one because the genie was missing. Or maybe there never was one?

And, honestly, what did HE knew after all? The only bottles he was familiar with so far were the ones from beer and alcohol - not forgetting the ones with painkillers. But if there ever was a genie inside he probably already was somewhere on rehab or doing voluntary work on his way to prison.

And so Orlando keeps doing what he is used to do -- getting up every morning and making the best of every day, despite what it may have look like to the onlookers.

Maybe somebody should tell them to bring a bottle opener the next time.


***

Advertising space -- oh, that well-known feeling-- the one that just doesn't disappears no matter what he tries, no matter what he does. It's his hair, his eyes, his very face, even the fuzz he occasionally wears. The way he walks, the way he talks, every smile, the tired looks he gives the paparazzi, all of the spur of the moment answers he gives in interviews, even the bloody way he walks his dog and chooses his clothes -- everything just sometimes feels like advertising space.

But when the billboards get replaced with new faces and the camera stops after the commercial is done; and after all the models have gone home what stays is only one Orlando Bloom, no matter what this special label means to everyone. A guy next door whom his mom taught that when leaving the room as the last one you turn off the lights. And so he does exactly that -- turns off the lights and shuts out the whole world, choosing the clothes he wants and walking his dog the way he likes.

At least until the next camera goes off.


***

Enjoy the silence -- while it lasts. Sitting outside a Londoner café sipping a cup of bloody hot coffee and smoking a cig, he can somehow feel that this is the silence before the storm, those are the last safe moments before the hell breaks loose. He follows the dog with his eyes as the animal plays with a stray bit of paper, disturbing people with abrupt movements and yipping happily as the prey finally yields. And the passer-bys indeed pay more attention to the playful dog as to his owner -- a bundled up lanky guy with a funny haircut, a thick scarf around his neck but sunglasses perched high on the head none the less. With this kind of equipment he looks like he should be armed against any weather -- but he isn't.

Maybe he should find it alarming -- not knowing what kind of storm it will be this time. But there have been many voices in his life already, too many. And now he tries to find his own one.

And until that happens nobody can stop him from enjoying the silence.


***

Wings of a butterfly -- Viggo once called them that. Them -- their whole relationship, the way they were together, the way they just laid in bed back then. He said something about how a single movement of a butterfly wing can change the course of history, a well-known little truth that Orlando already has heard many times from somebody or other. "But" - and with Viggo there always was a ´but´ somewhere in there -- and he continued, lazily drawing a pattern with his fingers on Orlando's naked stomach, his head comfortably laid on Orlando's shoulder, "the truth is that it can never be only a SINGLE wing. Because then the butterfly couldn't fly at all. There always have to be two. They don't have to be strong or large and the change they cause can be only a tiny, little one -- but they have to be together. "

He remembers only how he had kissed him after that, slowly and passionately, not having an answer to an admission as strong as that. They have never spoken about it again, but whenever he needs the reassurance, he thinks of those butterfly wings and how together they can change the whole course of history. And now he also knows what he should have said back then.

That they already have done exactly that -- have changed his private history. And that's all what matters in....

....the end.

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