Dreaming in Real Life, 34/34 Epilogue to follow
Author: melacita
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Through interviews, clips, quotes, photos, cast diaries, poetry, and video, the story of ViggOrli tells itself.
Disclaimer: I have taken well-documented facts and filled the large spaces in between with stuff I have extrapolated, deduced, and plain old fabricated.
Previous Chapters HERE
Orlando surveyed his empty house, wandering through rooms now bereft of everything that had made it his. From entry to lounge to kitchen he wandered, looking for things he may have missed in his frenetic attempts at packing up a year and a half of memories.
He was still slightly hung over from the wrap party the previous night, where Peter had shown gag reels and made toasts and the remaining cast members had been presented with their farewell gifts.
Sure enough, Viggo had gotten his sword. And Orlando had gotten his bow. For the meantime, both would stay with WETA, since they would likely be needed for reshoots in the years to follow.
His favorite gift, though, was a comforting weight on his finger.
Orlando had given Viggo his own gift the day after Viggo gave him his ring. He gave the man a large Hei-matua bone carving on a necklace. The mythical carvings were said to represent authority and respect for the sea. Orlando couldn’t think of anything more representative of New Zealand to give to Viggo.
Viggo had loved it, sliding it over his head immediately after Orlando gave it to him.
Lost in the memory, Orlando continued through the house, finally sliding through the kitchen door to the deck where he would sometimes watch the dolphins in the bay below.
No dolphins, today. The air was damp, and cool, and the sky overcast with low clouds.
Viggo was outside, his own apartment packed and cleaned already. He had less space, and many of his belongings had long taken up residence in Orlando’s house. He stood, hands steepled against the railing. He turned slightly at the sound of Orlando’s footsteps, and smiled.
“Shitty day, huh?” Viggo asked.
“Yeah,” Orlando sighed.
The pair stood together in comfortable silence for a long moment.
“I don’t know what I was expecting, really,” Orlando began. “If this were a movie, the dolphins would come out to say goodbye, or a big rainbow would spread across the sky all of a sudden.”
Viggo clasped Orlando’s hand and rubbed it between his own before bringing it to his lips.
“With this cast around, who needs rainbows?” Viggo asked.
Orlando snorted. “I actually signed “over the rainbow” in my autograph to Harry,” he said. “I know coming out and being public isn’t possible now, for you or for me, but sometimes I just want people to know. To figure it out already. Do you think they will?”
Viggo cocked his head. “People will see what they want to see. And we have to let them.”
Orlando pursed his lips and leaned more heavily against the rails. “That sucks.”
“Not really. No matter what they think they see, underneath that we know what is. What people will see is no more real than the stories we’ve put on film.”
“Liv told me to get a publicist.”
Viggo nodded. “It’s not a bad idea. They’d be able to control what parts of you people get to see.”
“You don’t have one,” Orlando pointed out.
“I’m old, and I have Henry,” Viggo shrugged. “I can prove I’ve fucked a woman. That gives me a lot of leeway.”
“I’ve fucked women,” Orlando pouted.
“You haven’t married one or knocked one up been rumored to be fucking your costars, though.”
“I am fucking my costar!” Orlando protested.
“True enough,” Viggo conceded. “But I don’t think a publicist would be too keen on that information being shared,” he said with a wink.
“Maybe I will just blurt out in an interview one day that I am completely in love with you.” Orlando turned to brace his hip on the railing so he was facing the older man.
Viggo’s eyes crinkled as he grinned. “You don’t have to do that. I already know it, and that’s more than enough for me.” He slung his arm around Orlando’s waist. “Now, what was this you said something about fucking your costars?”
“Yeah, know where I might find one? I’m getting a little horny,” Orlando joked, ducking out of Viggo’s reach. Viggo caught him up again, and they wrestled into the house.
“You know, Vig,” Orlando gasped from where he was pinned. “I don’t think we’ve bid the kitchen a proper farewell yet.”
Viggo pushed Orlando’s wrists down on the tiled floor, on either side of his head. “Well, let’s do something about that, shall we?” he invited with a toothy grin and ran his hand over Orlando’s denim-clad groin.
Orlando arched up into the touch. “Sounds perfect.”
Like all of the moments of the past few weeks, this one passed too quickly as well. Orgasms faded, leaving menial chores behind like cleaning up, double checking airline tickets, loading luggage into the car for the drive to the airport. En route, Viggo was interrupted once by a phone call from a tearful Jane, Liv’s riding double, who had just gotten the news that Viggo had bought Asfaloth and gave him to her. He had also purchased Kenny and Uraeus, and was leaving them in the care of the stable she worked in until he could make arrangements to bring them over to his ranch in Idaho.
“To think you mock me for my trinkets,” Orlando scoffed, fingering his growing collection of baubles around his neck. “You’re even worse. You collect costars!”
“Only horses and elves,” Viggo promised. He accompanied Orlando through the check in process, and to the gate, where lighthearted ribbing and easy banter gave way to a long, silent embrace. He heard Orlando snuffle a bit against his neck, and Viggo’s own eyes began to water as he stroked the short stubble of Orlando’s scalp.
“I love you, Orlando.” Viggo whispered softly. “Thank you.”
Orlando only hugged him harder, only reluctantly letting go when his flight was called.
Orlando dashed at his eyes. “Bloody hell. This is daft. I’ll see you next week, right?”
“Counting on it.”
Orlando drew Viggo in for one last hug and brief kiss. With a quiet “love you,” he walked to the jet bridge, and onto the plane.
Viggo watched Orlando board his flight with an aching, tattooed shoulder and a heavy heart. Well, perhaps heavy wasn’t the proper word. But not enough time had elapsed for this feeling to qualify as nostalgia. It wasn’t the sharp heartache of two people making a clean break. It was a pang, deep in his gut, and it made him wonder.
Is this what is felt like to know the time of your life was coming to an end?
Is this what those trite songs of glory days and high school graduation and watching your children get married meant?
It was an unfamiliar feeling.
Viggo Mortensen was a man who spent a lot of time in the past, and in the future, when he was alone with his thoughts. What experience had taught him, and what he still wanted to learn. What he had done, and what he still looked forward to doing.
The past few days, amidst the tattoos and parties and revelry that closed the production, Viggo had found himself, for the first time, avoiding thoughts of the future.
He was perfectly content where he was, perhaps for the first time since he was small and made friends out of Argentine ducks and snakes in the fields surrounding his home. He was happy now, in this spring day in December, 2000, with work that excited him, a land that inspired him, friends who understood him, and a man who loved him with an abandon Viggo had never known before. And Viggo knew he loved that man in return with a fervor that bordered on the worshipful.
The thought of leaving…well, that was the reason the future was banished from his thoughts.
Viggo would catch himself in these moments of quiet sadness, reminding himself that Hollywood was small. There was much work yet to go on Rings over the next three years: ADR, pickups, premieres, promotion. This was far from the end.
He had already been convinced to spend a few days in Florida with the hobbits after New Year’s. And while that decision was made mostly for the fact that they would be joined by the elf, Viggo was warmed by the thought that he would have yet another weekend holiday with his friends. He and Dom would mock each other and talk about art; Elijah would tiptoe around him, afraid to unleash the lunatic, and Billy would take the piss and keep Dom from getting too full of himself.
And he and Orlando would create more memories. The first of their new reality, now that the dream was over.
Viggo was a pragmatic man. He knew most things don’t last forever, despite the best of intentions on both sides. But earlier that morning, tangled together on the floor in a room full of boxes and luggage, both had promised each other that they would work together to make that love take the shape of something that could survive.
That was the key to it, after all. Adapt and overcome. Hadn’t that been his motto?
It was Orlando who reminded him of it when they collapsed against each other in the middle of the night, sticky with sweat and come after another round of desperate lovemaking.
Adapt and overcome.
At one point in his life, Viggo would have considered compromising on something as important as love to be an unthinkable weakness.
Now?
Now he wondered if maybe love was one of the only things truly worth compromising for.
Compromises were a part of real life. And on the other side of that flight from New Zealand, Real Life was there waiting for them, full of demands and expectations and injustice.
They would meet it, together.
~FIN~