The return of Vidae et Mors
So...more than a year later, it is back.
Back to your regularly scheduled angst-fest.
Title: Moments after Dreaming
Author: Sel selene_vidae
Pairing: Eric Bana/Orlando Bloom; Sean Bean/Orlando Bloom
Summary: Sean's always guarded Orlando's sleep. He's always been the protector of Orlando's dreams. So the instant after dreaming has always been a curious thing.
Rating: PG13.
Disclaimer: Not mine. If they were, do you think I'd only be writing about them?
A/N: Big table here. Words total to 2,020. Written for the Lightening (68) prompt. And this series...it got away from me. Gods, I will never be able to stop saying that.
Previous installments:
Coming and Dying
Leaving and Living
Christmas Silences
Living for Him
Spaces Between
Better and More
What to Ask
That Was How the Heart Worked
The Art of Understanding
Tendrils of smoke drifted lazily upwards, the smell of cigarettes dispersed by the vastness of the starry, arching sky in front of him. He rested his hands on the metal railing, eyes gazing over the unfamiliar surroundings, his silent form surrounded still by familiar feelings.
The foreign city was sleeping, lost to dreams that were real in the moments they were dreamt.
As he breathed in deeply, the acrid taste lingering on his tongue long after he breathed out, Sean couldn’t help but wonder about the moments after dreaming. Did anyone really care when dreams faded bit by bit, slipping away faster and faster the harder someone tried to hold on to them?
The harder he tried to hold on to them?
Someone once told him that the only way to take the dreams back was to let go.
“What if letting go means the dreams never come back?”
“Have you ever thought that maybe they’re not supposed to come back?”
“Why let go then? Why not fight?”
“Shouldn’t you be asking why people try at all?”
No, he shouldn’t.
And he didn’t, because Sean knew the answer to that. There might have been questions that completely escaped him, answers that he lost along the way and perhaps would never find no matter how hard he looked, but Sean knew why people tried. Why he tried.
People had to. He had to.
They couldn’t not try.
This was an answer that was buried under his skin, under the whorls and swirls of the lines on fingertips. An answer that he breathed out but breathed in even deeper.
With one last drag, Sean flicked away the cigarette butt, his eyes on the glowing embers of it until it was lost like everything else eventually was. He turned away from the sight of the sleeping city and made his way back inside, the sweat that formed on the bare skin of his chest cooling in the chill of the air-conditioned room. A shiver came and went, and there was a robe on the chair next to the bed but he ignored it.
He went to stand beside the sleeping figure lost to dreams that he’d never know the reality of.
There was something about the way Orlando slept that he couldn’t keep his eyes off.
It didn’t matter if he was tired or if the utter stillness outside told him everyone else was asleep. It didn’t matter if he barely got any sleep or if the alarm clock still had an hour left before ringing. It didn’t matter if Orlando lay on his stomach, his side, flat out on his back. It didn’t even matter when Orlando hogged all the blankets and left Sean with none. After all, whatever Sean had, he would give - Orlando didn’t even have to ask. Blankets seemed like such a little thing when Sean had already given so much else.
“I don’t suppose you even know.”
He reached out and brushed an errant curl away from the face lax in slumber, letting his fingers linger a moment too long.
Orlando stirred, murmuring a name that wasn’t Sean’s and Sean could only smile.
What else was there to do? Orlando was never going to be his.
“It’s okay. You’re always going to be his, aren’t you?”
There was no answer from the sleeping figure but Sean hadn’t expected one. All he had to do was look around the familiar, but always unfamiliar room and his answer was already there. In the picture frames and the assorted keepsakes - an ivory elephant, a music box with a dancing bear in a tutu, an assortment of tiny brass gongs. His answer was in the half-open closet and the clothes that littered the room, clean, slightly used, smelling like Orlando and not smelling like Orlando but someone else.
The answer was in the empty space on the bed and how Sean never really fit just right.
It didn’t matter if he’d lain next to Orlando first.
Blanket-hogging, denying-he-snored, drooling-a-bit, beautiful, perfect Orlando.
It didn’t matter if years had passed since the first time he climbed into bed with his best friend, tickling and maybe a pillow fight they both denied and then unbroken sleep until Sean had realized that Orlando was sleeping next to him and he couldn’t sleep anymore.
None of that mattered. The first time or the second or the time after that, because it was possible to borrow time. Sean just hadn’t known whom to return it to.
But now he did.
The figure on the bed stirred, mumbled in his sleep, the word too soft for his ears to catch but Sean already knew what was said. He reached up to trace the smile that lingered on soft lips, almost as if he couldn’t believe it was there. Almost.
Orlando stirred again and Sean noticed the slight movement, noticed the furrowed, pinched face and the quickening of breaths. A heartbeat or two passed - his or Orlando’s, it was impossible to tell - and Orlando’s movements became restless and frantic, the words that slipped past sleep-caught lips louder, frightened, familiar---
I love you. I love you. Iloveyou. IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou.
Sean pulled back the covers and carefully climbed into bed, not finding it hard to pull Orlando’s tossing and turning figure into his arms. He made nonsensical, soothing noises, humming a song they both loved, and waited patiently, patiently till Orlando calmed.
He could feel the ache where Orlando’s fists had hit him in all his thrashing. Unintentionally, of course, but it was the unintentional hurts that lingered long after.
And Sean wanted to know if these were hurts that would leave at all. He was not quite sure he wanted them to.
“It’s okay, Orli. I’m here. I’m here.”
How could that be denied? He was always there because that was what best friends did - he put Orlando back together again and again, watched Orlando break himself into pieces again and again, promised to be there when the heartache ended.
Sean never thought that he would be the one causing all the heartache.
“It’s funny how things turn out,” he murmured, pressing a kiss against sweat-damp locks. “I knew I’d love you because it would have been impossible not to love you. I just wasn’t counting on loving you too much. You make people want to give up the best pieces of themselves.”
Orlando slept on, ensconced in his arms, and Sean was grateful that Orlando could sleep through almost anything.
“I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve done this. What I say differs now and then but two things never change - how much I love you and how glad I am you’re asleep.”
There were things he wanted to say but never could because dreams weren’t real after all and anything said in them faded away with the first touch of light creeping in.
A part of him, a very large part, wanted to protest that it was impossible to belong to someone else. While far from being solitary creatures, men were individuals, shaped by their own thoughts and wants and feelings. Standing on their own two feet and all those other over-used clichés.
Love was just a way to romanticize the idea of being with one person for the rest of his natural life - other half, soul mate, missing puzzle piece that fit just right.
There was that small part of him that remembered the argument with Orlando, how Orlando proved him wrong, how Eric, how they both proved him wrong.
And that small part of him knew better, knew the truth and everything that came with it - that small part knew that it was very much possible to belong to someone else.
Orlando belonged to Eric and Eric belonged to Orlando.
Sean wanted to know where he fit in because all of him knew that he belonged to Orlando.
There was no chance to think about belonging to Orlando, no moment to protest such an arbitrary turn of fate, no will to change things.
Sean belonged to Orlando and God help him because he would never have it differently.
A lilting trill broke the monotony of his repetitive thoughts and he took his eyes away from the sight that kept his gaze all night, that kept his gaze in the early morning hours that were too little and always too late.
“Can you hear the birds? It’s nearly dawn.” He glanced towards the balcony doors, closed tight to keep the night air from seeping in. “You’re going to wake up soon and I’m going to have to go because Eric’s on his way home and you’re really far too old to have me sleeping over you like some protector of your dreams.”
He ran a finger down Orlando’s nose, brushed a thumb against soft, chapped lips, placed his palm against the curve of neck and shoulder. “But I’m never going to grow out of protecting your dreams. I hope you realize that.”
Chucking wryly, he murmured, “No, actually, I hope you don’t.”
Because some things were meant to be secreted away, hidden from the lightening of day like the dreams that caused Orlando’s eyelids to flutter rapidly in his sleep.
“Sean?”
Orlando stirred in his arms, in his arms, and Sean could say nothing at first, swallowing around the lump in his throat as he held Orlando in his arms.
“Sean? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” he murmured. “Nothing. Everything’s fine. You just had a nightmare. I saw you through it.”
“You always see me through them,” Orlando whispered, hands coming to rest on Sean’s own clasped pair. “I don’t think I’ve ever thanked you.”
“You have, lad. You have. You just don’t know it. Those are the best kind of thank you’s, I find.”
Orlando shifted a bit but didn’t move away, movements stilling as the sleep-tinged voice asked, “Do you know what I was dreaming about? I can’t remember it. It’s…right there and I can just…” A frustrated sigh was heard. “I can’t recall it. I can’t help but feel that it was important.”
Sean bowed his head and brushed lips against Orlando’s nape, breathing in Orlando and the hotel soap, the lemon scent of their shampoo back home. His lips formed words against the well-memorized patch of skin, “If it were important, you would have remembered it, lad. Don’t worry about it.”
“Oh. All right.”
Silence drifted between them and it was not the same as the night before - and Sean was glad.
“Sean?”
“Yea, Orli?”
“You and me… Are we… Are…”
When Orlando trailed off, Sean pulled away, disentangling himself with some difficulty from the figure all but seated in his lap. He got out of bed, caught the enquiring, somewhat fearful look on the other man’s face but his lips curved upwards into a smile that he could fully believe was there and held out his hand.
Orlando took it and it was easy to pull the lighter man out of bed, towards the balcony and the view of the city that was slowly awakening, the sky that was slowly lightening as dreams floated in the warming air above them, lost and fading bit by bit.
But it was all right.
They were all right.
The front door creaked as it opened and he didn’t bother to turn around. He knew exactly who it was.
“Sean, hey. Good morning. Orli bothered you with his night terrors again?”
“He didn’t really bother me, Eric. I don’t mind coming over here for him.”
“Well, thanks anyway. You always come through for me. And for him, of course.”
Sean did turn now, hands clasped around a coffee mug that wasn’t his, warming his chilled fingers in anticipation for the cold of holding nothing. “I always keep my promises, Eric.”
“I know.”
Their fingers barely brushed as Sean handed over the mug, Eric’s smile lingering in his thoughts long after the other man left the kitchen and walked up the stairs. Long after he opened and then closed the bedroom door.
Long after he kissed Orlando.
Not long after he kissed Orlando.
No, not long at all.
Back to your regularly scheduled angst-fest.
Title: Moments after Dreaming
Author: Sel selene_vidae
Pairing: Eric Bana/Orlando Bloom; Sean Bean/Orlando Bloom
Summary: Sean's always guarded Orlando's sleep. He's always been the protector of Orlando's dreams. So the instant after dreaming has always been a curious thing.
Rating: PG13.
Disclaimer: Not mine. If they were, do you think I'd only be writing about them?
A/N: Big table here. Words total to 2,020. Written for the Lightening (68) prompt. And this series...it got away from me. Gods, I will never be able to stop saying that.
Previous installments:
Coming and Dying
Leaving and Living
Christmas Silences
Living for Him
Spaces Between
Better and More
What to Ask
That Was How the Heart Worked
The Art of Understanding
Tendrils of smoke drifted lazily upwards, the smell of cigarettes dispersed by the vastness of the starry, arching sky in front of him. He rested his hands on the metal railing, eyes gazing over the unfamiliar surroundings, his silent form surrounded still by familiar feelings.
The foreign city was sleeping, lost to dreams that were real in the moments they were dreamt.
As he breathed in deeply, the acrid taste lingering on his tongue long after he breathed out, Sean couldn’t help but wonder about the moments after dreaming. Did anyone really care when dreams faded bit by bit, slipping away faster and faster the harder someone tried to hold on to them?
The harder he tried to hold on to them?
Someone once told him that the only way to take the dreams back was to let go.
“What if letting go means the dreams never come back?”
“Have you ever thought that maybe they’re not supposed to come back?”
“Why let go then? Why not fight?”
“Shouldn’t you be asking why people try at all?”
No, he shouldn’t.
And he didn’t, because Sean knew the answer to that. There might have been questions that completely escaped him, answers that he lost along the way and perhaps would never find no matter how hard he looked, but Sean knew why people tried. Why he tried.
People had to. He had to.
They couldn’t not try.
This was an answer that was buried under his skin, under the whorls and swirls of the lines on fingertips. An answer that he breathed out but breathed in even deeper.
With one last drag, Sean flicked away the cigarette butt, his eyes on the glowing embers of it until it was lost like everything else eventually was. He turned away from the sight of the sleeping city and made his way back inside, the sweat that formed on the bare skin of his chest cooling in the chill of the air-conditioned room. A shiver came and went, and there was a robe on the chair next to the bed but he ignored it.
He went to stand beside the sleeping figure lost to dreams that he’d never know the reality of.
There was something about the way Orlando slept that he couldn’t keep his eyes off.
It didn’t matter if he was tired or if the utter stillness outside told him everyone else was asleep. It didn’t matter if he barely got any sleep or if the alarm clock still had an hour left before ringing. It didn’t matter if Orlando lay on his stomach, his side, flat out on his back. It didn’t even matter when Orlando hogged all the blankets and left Sean with none. After all, whatever Sean had, he would give - Orlando didn’t even have to ask. Blankets seemed like such a little thing when Sean had already given so much else.
“I don’t suppose you even know.”
He reached out and brushed an errant curl away from the face lax in slumber, letting his fingers linger a moment too long.
Orlando stirred, murmuring a name that wasn’t Sean’s and Sean could only smile.
What else was there to do? Orlando was never going to be his.
“It’s okay. You’re always going to be his, aren’t you?”
There was no answer from the sleeping figure but Sean hadn’t expected one. All he had to do was look around the familiar, but always unfamiliar room and his answer was already there. In the picture frames and the assorted keepsakes - an ivory elephant, a music box with a dancing bear in a tutu, an assortment of tiny brass gongs. His answer was in the half-open closet and the clothes that littered the room, clean, slightly used, smelling like Orlando and not smelling like Orlando but someone else.
The answer was in the empty space on the bed and how Sean never really fit just right.
It didn’t matter if he’d lain next to Orlando first.
Blanket-hogging, denying-he-snored, drooling-a-bit, beautiful, perfect Orlando.
It didn’t matter if years had passed since the first time he climbed into bed with his best friend, tickling and maybe a pillow fight they both denied and then unbroken sleep until Sean had realized that Orlando was sleeping next to him and he couldn’t sleep anymore.
None of that mattered. The first time or the second or the time after that, because it was possible to borrow time. Sean just hadn’t known whom to return it to.
But now he did.
The figure on the bed stirred, mumbled in his sleep, the word too soft for his ears to catch but Sean already knew what was said. He reached up to trace the smile that lingered on soft lips, almost as if he couldn’t believe it was there. Almost.
Orlando stirred again and Sean noticed the slight movement, noticed the furrowed, pinched face and the quickening of breaths. A heartbeat or two passed - his or Orlando’s, it was impossible to tell - and Orlando’s movements became restless and frantic, the words that slipped past sleep-caught lips louder, frightened, familiar---
I love you. I love you. Iloveyou. IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou.
Sean pulled back the covers and carefully climbed into bed, not finding it hard to pull Orlando’s tossing and turning figure into his arms. He made nonsensical, soothing noises, humming a song they both loved, and waited patiently, patiently till Orlando calmed.
He could feel the ache where Orlando’s fists had hit him in all his thrashing. Unintentionally, of course, but it was the unintentional hurts that lingered long after.
And Sean wanted to know if these were hurts that would leave at all. He was not quite sure he wanted them to.
“It’s okay, Orli. I’m here. I’m here.”
How could that be denied? He was always there because that was what best friends did - he put Orlando back together again and again, watched Orlando break himself into pieces again and again, promised to be there when the heartache ended.
Sean never thought that he would be the one causing all the heartache.
“It’s funny how things turn out,” he murmured, pressing a kiss against sweat-damp locks. “I knew I’d love you because it would have been impossible not to love you. I just wasn’t counting on loving you too much. You make people want to give up the best pieces of themselves.”
Orlando slept on, ensconced in his arms, and Sean was grateful that Orlando could sleep through almost anything.
“I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve done this. What I say differs now and then but two things never change - how much I love you and how glad I am you’re asleep.”
There were things he wanted to say but never could because dreams weren’t real after all and anything said in them faded away with the first touch of light creeping in.
A part of him, a very large part, wanted to protest that it was impossible to belong to someone else. While far from being solitary creatures, men were individuals, shaped by their own thoughts and wants and feelings. Standing on their own two feet and all those other over-used clichés.
Love was just a way to romanticize the idea of being with one person for the rest of his natural life - other half, soul mate, missing puzzle piece that fit just right.
There was that small part of him that remembered the argument with Orlando, how Orlando proved him wrong, how Eric, how they both proved him wrong.
And that small part of him knew better, knew the truth and everything that came with it - that small part knew that it was very much possible to belong to someone else.
Orlando belonged to Eric and Eric belonged to Orlando.
Sean wanted to know where he fit in because all of him knew that he belonged to Orlando.
There was no chance to think about belonging to Orlando, no moment to protest such an arbitrary turn of fate, no will to change things.
Sean belonged to Orlando and God help him because he would never have it differently.
A lilting trill broke the monotony of his repetitive thoughts and he took his eyes away from the sight that kept his gaze all night, that kept his gaze in the early morning hours that were too little and always too late.
“Can you hear the birds? It’s nearly dawn.” He glanced towards the balcony doors, closed tight to keep the night air from seeping in. “You’re going to wake up soon and I’m going to have to go because Eric’s on his way home and you’re really far too old to have me sleeping over you like some protector of your dreams.”
He ran a finger down Orlando’s nose, brushed a thumb against soft, chapped lips, placed his palm against the curve of neck and shoulder. “But I’m never going to grow out of protecting your dreams. I hope you realize that.”
Chucking wryly, he murmured, “No, actually, I hope you don’t.”
Because some things were meant to be secreted away, hidden from the lightening of day like the dreams that caused Orlando’s eyelids to flutter rapidly in his sleep.
“Sean?”
Orlando stirred in his arms, in his arms, and Sean could say nothing at first, swallowing around the lump in his throat as he held Orlando in his arms.
“Sean? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” he murmured. “Nothing. Everything’s fine. You just had a nightmare. I saw you through it.”
“You always see me through them,” Orlando whispered, hands coming to rest on Sean’s own clasped pair. “I don’t think I’ve ever thanked you.”
“You have, lad. You have. You just don’t know it. Those are the best kind of thank you’s, I find.”
Orlando shifted a bit but didn’t move away, movements stilling as the sleep-tinged voice asked, “Do you know what I was dreaming about? I can’t remember it. It’s…right there and I can just…” A frustrated sigh was heard. “I can’t recall it. I can’t help but feel that it was important.”
Sean bowed his head and brushed lips against Orlando’s nape, breathing in Orlando and the hotel soap, the lemon scent of their shampoo back home. His lips formed words against the well-memorized patch of skin, “If it were important, you would have remembered it, lad. Don’t worry about it.”
“Oh. All right.”
Silence drifted between them and it was not the same as the night before - and Sean was glad.
“Sean?”
“Yea, Orli?”
“You and me… Are we… Are…”
When Orlando trailed off, Sean pulled away, disentangling himself with some difficulty from the figure all but seated in his lap. He got out of bed, caught the enquiring, somewhat fearful look on the other man’s face but his lips curved upwards into a smile that he could fully believe was there and held out his hand.
Orlando took it and it was easy to pull the lighter man out of bed, towards the balcony and the view of the city that was slowly awakening, the sky that was slowly lightening as dreams floated in the warming air above them, lost and fading bit by bit.
But it was all right.
They were all right.
The front door creaked as it opened and he didn’t bother to turn around. He knew exactly who it was.
“Sean, hey. Good morning. Orli bothered you with his night terrors again?”
“He didn’t really bother me, Eric. I don’t mind coming over here for him.”
“Well, thanks anyway. You always come through for me. And for him, of course.”
Sean did turn now, hands clasped around a coffee mug that wasn’t his, warming his chilled fingers in anticipation for the cold of holding nothing. “I always keep my promises, Eric.”
“I know.”
Their fingers barely brushed as Sean handed over the mug, Eric’s smile lingering in his thoughts long after the other man left the kitchen and walked up the stairs. Long after he opened and then closed the bedroom door.
Long after he kissed Orlando.
Not long after he kissed Orlando.
No, not long at all.