Vidae et Mors. This makes my heart ache every time I come back to it.
Title: Vidae et Mors: The History of You and I
Author: Sel selene_vidae
Pairing: Sean Bean/Orlando Bloom, Eric Bana/Orlando Bloom
Summary: This is where their story leads them.
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 3,240. Written for the Lovers (23) prompt. For those just tuning in: Eric and Orlando have been together forever but one phone call changes everything. Eric is gone and Orlando's left behind. Sean picks up the pieces because he's always loved Orlando. Together, they build a life out of the remnants of all the broken pieces but another phone call changes everything all over again.
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
Moments after Dreaming
When he awoke, the space beside him was empty and there was a feeling that surged up inside of him, unnamable for the precise reason that he did not wish to name it.
Orlando’s hand reached out, fingers stroking sheets cool to touch, smoothing out whatever imprint that was left behind. He pulled his hand back, shifting over so he could lie on his side, facing the balcony. A sliver of sunlight peered through the gap in the floor-length curtains and he watched the dust motes it revealed dance to their own rhythm.
He and Sean had gone back to bed after watching the sun rise, Sean’s arms wrapped around him as they lay side by side, listening to each other’s heart beat. There was a whispered promise to guard his dreams, which was the last thing he remembered before he once again drifted off to sleep. It was a promise he’d heard before, one that Sean kept again and again, each time he made it.
In the time they’d been together (together but not) Orlando had always relied on Sean to guard his dreams - but he had given his heart to Eric for safe-keeping. Given it long before he knew he did.
He wondered now if Sean had ever felt cheated, in some way, in any way. After all, they were the ones who had known each other for so long, the ones who’d shared heartaches and sorrows and triumphs, shared ice cream and dreams and a rickety cot in some god-awful bed and breakfast in Northumberland.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“Suck it up, Orli. It’s not that bad.”
“Sean, when you said we were ‘going on a peaceful retreat from the hustle and bustle of the fast-paced London lifestyle’, I thought you meant we’d be going to a spa.”
“Orli, you are such a girl.”
“Shut up, you wanker! What is this place? It said rustic on the brochure, not dilapidated!”
“Will you calm yourself, princess? I’ve been here before. You’ll love it.”
“Sean, there’s only one bed and to even call that thing a ‘bed’ is pushing the limits of believability. It’s an effin’ cot.”
“We’ll share.”
“How? Half my arse and half, no, one-fourth of yours?”
“Right, I’ve had it. You can have the floor, princess, and do make sure the bugs don’t devour you as a midnight snack.”
“I could just murder you in your sleep and take the bed then.”
“Don’t you mean cot?”
“You honestly better sleep with one eye open.”
They had history, in a way that he and Eric never had. It was a history measured in laughter and tears and pints at the pub. Measured in the distance they drove whenever they felt like getting into the car and simply driving till they ran out of petrol or until they reached a dead end, and even then they’d simply fill the tank up or make a U-turn and start all over again. It was a history measured in the times they’d fought and made up and realized that they could never not have one another in their lives.
They’d woven themselves into the fabric of each other’s life. How could he live without Sean right there beside him? Without Sean, his entire life would have been lived differently, the paths he took untaken, untravelled.
Sean was the one who convinced him to break up with his psychotic ex-boyfriend, the one who firmly told him not to take the psychotic ex-boyfriend back, the one who put him back together again when he went back to the psychotic ex-boyfriend anyway and had his heart (and wrist broken) in the process, the one who made sure the psychotic ex-boyfriend never went within a hundred miles of him ever again.
Sean was the one who said he was an idiot when he took up snowboarding, the one who held his hand and refused to leave his side in the hospital after a bad spill, the one who learned how to snowboard just so he’d have someone to watch over him.
Sean was in every memory of his adult life - even when Sean wasn’t there, he somehow was. Every moment, every experience tinged and colored by presence, non-presence.
Someone once teased them about living in each other’s pockets and he only laughed because it rang true.
It would have been a storybook happy ending if they’d found their way out of each other’s pockets and into each other’s hearts - but life wasn’t a storybook and there were no princes or princesses, no happily-ever-afters that stopped at that one point and forgot all about the days that extended long after those three words.
Orlando had always loved Sean. Every beat of his heart echoed that truth, but every beat of it likewise told him that Sean had always loved him more.
Always.
The rain fell down from the sky in torrents, their surprised yelps a useless reaction to the fierce downpour. Sean wrapped his arm around Orlando’s waist and they ran blindly, knocking into and brushing past passers-by who had the foresight to bring umbrellas.
It began to rain harder, the drops of water falling like jagged pieces of ice, and Orlando yelled over the din of the rain, “Let’s find shelter!”
A moment later Sean pulled him into a shadowed alcove, large enough to protect them both from the rain. They looked at one another, Sean opening and closing his mouth like a guppy, Orlando’s curls plastered to his face - and the laughter tumbled free, both of them clutching to each other’s sodden form as their laughter proved even louder than the sound of the rain slapping onto the pavement.
“We’re a sight,” Sean wheezed, as he fought to regain his breath after laughing so hard.
“I like the wet look on you. It’s tres chic. You don’t look like a drowned rat at all,” Orlando teased, the smile on his face brightening the dimness of their surroundings.
“How you can tease me while most probably suffering from hypothermia is beyond me.”
“Don’t be silly. I’m okay. It’s not cold, not really.” But the shivers that wracked his frame belied the dismissive words.
Sean frowned and pulled him closer, towards the relative warmth of his body. “We’ll just wait for the rain to ease up a bit and then we’ll make a run for it.” He brought his hand up to tuck a sodden lock behind Orlando’s ear, his words nearly lost to the rain and the wind, “We’re almost home.”
Orlando tilted his head, leaning into the gentle gesture, the look in Sean’s eyes one he’d seen before but it was one that always flitted away before he could truly think on its meaning.
“Almost home, Orlibabe.”
If he’d seen it sooner, if he’d put a name to it earlier, he couldn’t help but wonder if things might have been different. If the lack of any storybook ending might have been replaced by an ending that was theirs and theirs alone. By a story that was theirs and theirs alone.
Orlando slowly sat up, eyes scanning the room till they landed on a piece of paper lying on the desk. He threw the covers back and got out of bed, the carpeted floor scratchy against the bare soles of his feet.
It was a note written on hotel stationery, the pencil used lying beside it.
I couldn’t sleep. Went out and decided to explore for a bit. I’ll be back soon but if you need to reach me, I brought my mobile. Don’t forget to eat breakfast.
Sean didn’t write his name because there was no need for it.
Sean didn’t tell him that he loved him.
There was no need for it.
He checked the clock on the desk and saw that he could still reach the dining area in time for the breakfast buffet. Taking a quick shower and dressing in a pair of jeans and the first shirt he grabbed from his bag, he made his way downstairs. Apparently, it wasn’t tourist season because he didn’t encounter many other guests and none of them were foreign nationals like himself. Which was completely fine with him. He wasn’t in the mood for company anyway.
When he reached the dining area, he could see that there were free tables on the verandah. As he seated himself, after having put bread and fruits on his plate, he decided that this was the right place to sit, shaded as he was from the morning’s sunlight but open to the breeze that brought in the scents of an unfamiliar city.
He wasn’t hungry, despite skipping dinner the night before. Knowing Sean would ask whether or not he’d eaten and considering how he’d never been good at lying to Sean in the first place, he nibbled on the bread, forcing himself to chew and swallow, chew and swallow. The slices of fruit were easier, although he still had no appetite.
“Can’t eat?”
Orlando looked up, the Welsh accent surprising him as much as the sight of the man standing by his table.
“I don’t have much of an appetite either.”
He was about to ask who the other man was when things began to click into place.
The accent for one. The stranger was also the only other foreign tourist he’d seen so far.
But it was the shadows in dark brown eyes that Orlando recognized.
He’d seen them enough in his own eyes.
“Why don’t you sit down?” he asked, gesturing to the seat beside him.
When the other man did so with a grateful, if tired smile, Orlando offered his hand, “I’m Orlando Bloom.”
“Ioan Gruffud.” They shook hands as Ioan added, “I know who you are, actually. I was at the Caritas HQ when you arrived.”
“Oh. You saw that then.” His breakdown. Orlando lost count of how many he had, how many he’d continue to have until---
Until this was all over.
“It was hard not to,” Ioan replied quietly, but the smile lingering on his lips was less strained. “You probably don’t want to hear this but I do know what you’re going through and I can understand why you reacted the way you did. I did my own yelling at Peter.”
Orlando offered a thankful smile in return, shaking his head as he said, “No, I don’t mind hearing that. Coming from you, I don’t mind at all. The truth is you do know what I’m going through - you’re the only one who does.”
Ioan nodded and looked away as he confessed, “I thought that finding someone who knew exactly what I was going through would make it easier somehow. Make the pain less. I don’t know - something like that. I thought that if I could commiserate with someone, if someone finally understood, I wouldn’t feel so alone.”
“But it doesn’t work that way, does it?”
Their eyes met as Ioan murmured, “No, it doesn’t.”
Silence came after that statement, a silence that connected them as much as it separated them, leaving them to thoughts that were similar, to memories that weren’t, to emotions that ran the gamut from similar to dissimilar, familiar to unfamiliar, namable to unnamable.
“Just talk to me, Orli.”
“I don’t know what you want me to talk about.”
“Anything you want. Anything at all. I’ll listen.”
“What’s the point in listening, Sean, if you couldn’t possibly understand?”
“Orli,” a world of hurt in that one word, in the whispered utterance of his name, “I know that I could never understand what you’re going through but can’t you see that---”
“Can’t I see that, what?”
“Orli, please. Just talk to me. Don’t keep it bottled up.”
“What is there to talk about? How much I miss him? How much I love him? How much I want him to be here? Is that what you want to hear?”
“It doesn’t matter what I want to hear. What matters is what you need to say.”
“I’m tired, Sean. I’m tired of crying and having nightmares, of waking up and not finding him beside him. I’m tired and I’m tired of being tired because I feel like I shouldn’t be tired because it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter at all how tired I am. I should cry and I should have nightmares and I should wake up and not find him beside me because I love him and I miss him and all that I just said makes it real.”
“Orlibabe…”
“What? What? Was that good enough for you?”
“Talking about it just makes it more real, doesn’t it?”
“I…”
And there were only tears after that, more tears than anyone should ever have to cry in their entire lifetime, or in all the lifetimes after.
“Can I ask you something?”
Orlando looked up from his intent perusal of the unpeeled banana on his plate. “What is it?”
Ioan opened his mouth, closed it and tried again. “The man with you. Sean Bean, right? Is he your---” He suddenly laughed, the sound wry and self-deprecating, and shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’m so nosy sometimes. Clive… Never mind. It’s none of my business.”
“No, it’s all right,” Orlando murmured. “Sean’s…” He trailed off, suddenly at a loss for words.
Sean was his best friend. The one who said what needed to be said, the one who didn’t sugarcoat his words because he believed, he knew that Orlando was strong enough. Sean was his confidant. The one who kept his secrets, who knew secrets of his that even he wasn’t all too aware of.
Sean was more than a brother, more than family.
Sean was the one who helped keep him and Eric together through all their fights, the one who watched over him when Eric was on a mission, the one who put him back together again when he lost Eric.
Sean wasn’t Eric, not in any way.
Sean was Sean and he loved that about the other man so much that there weren’t any more words for it.
“Is he your lover?”
In all the time they’d been together, in all the nights they’d spent together, with every kiss and caress exchanged, Sean was never his lover. Even in that, Sean was more.
“Can I ask you something?” Ioan looked taken aback but nodded, even if Orlando hadn’t answered the question asked of him. “How do you it?”
“Do what?”
“How did you survive without someone to hold you? Without someone to get you through the nights and the daylight hours, through every moment in between?”
When Ioan didn’t answer, Orland thought he had crossed the line and he was about to tell Ioan to forget it when the other man said quietly, “Someone isn’t Clive.”
Ioan’s gaze met Orlando’s, the shadows in them receding in that moment, “I didn’t expect to fall in love with Clive. We grew up together. You know, even if he was older than me, he took me under his wing. He paid attention to me. And even then we were so different. He used to drive me mad - he still does, actually,” he said with a chuckle, prompting Orlando to smile as well. “We were oil and water. He was always so stoic, so principled, so intent on duty and doing the right thing. And he had so much faith. I, on the other hand, was brash and impulsive and couldn’t care less about rules. And after all the things I’d gone through, I didn’t understand how anyone could still believe in the existence of God. But he did and we fought all the time because of it.”
There was a lump in his throat because Ioan’s story wasn’t so far from his and Sean’s. They’d started out as friends and the very possibility of their what-if made it hard to breathe. He needed to know though, so he asked, “How did you know then? That you loved him? That you couldn’t live without him?”
A smile found its way on Ioan’s lips, settling there as the other man recounted the events that led to here, to now, “He was on assignment several years ago, in Angola, and HQ lost contact with his group for about two weeks. I was lost, completely lost without him. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t comprehend living without him. That’s when I realized that I loved him, that I’d always loved him. I prayed for the first time in so long and the one thing I asked for was Clive to come home so I could tell him I loved him. And he did. The moment I found out he was all right, the moment I found out that he was alive, I arranged for a visa to get to Africa. I flew to Johannesburg and met up with him there. The moment I saw him I told him I loved him and apparently, he returned the feelings. It was the happiest moment of my life.”
“Oh.” Orlando breathed in deeply. “You’ve been through this before then?”
“Yes, but nothing compares to what’s happening now. That was two weeks. This was… this seems like a lifetime. I think I died a little bit every single day,” Ioan paused, his hand curling around the cup of coffee that was undoubtedly cold by now, “but I never stopped hoping.”
“Neither did I,” Orlando admitted.
Through everything, he’d never stopped. How was he supposed to? Even with Sean---
Because of Sean, how was he supposed to stop hoping?
“Do you love him?”
Ioan didn’t need to add a name for Orlando to know whom the other man was referring to.
Sean was asleep, one of those rare moments when he was the one awake and it was the other man who was lost to dreams that Orlando had some inkling of.
He almost reached out, almost ran his fingers through the sleep-mussed hair, almost leant in to brush his lips against that strong jaw.
But he didn’t.
Sean was always such a light sleeper, especially when it came to Orlando.
“Eric’s alive,” he murmured, still watching Sean sleep.
Eric was alive. Eric was alive.
Eric was alive.
No matter how many times he said it, in the silence of the room or the silence of his own restless, churning thoughts, he couldn’t seem to make any sense of them. Those were the three words he wanted to hear for so long. For so, so long.
“He’s alive, Sean.”
Sean’s chest continued to rise and fall in steady, even breaths, eyelids flickering, sleep undoubtedly ruled by the dreaming of those dreams that Orlando had some inkling of.
“He’s alive.”
He shifted closer, gently, gently resting his head on the bare chest that still rose and fell in even, steady breaths.
Sean stirred once but remained asleep and Orlando loosed the breath he didn’t realize he had been holding.
He could hear Sean’s heart beating underneath him and he closed his eyes, wanting nothing but to listen to Sean’s heart beat.
And it was then, at the brink of losing everything and gaining everything, at that moment that he’d never be able to take back that Orlando whispered, “I love you.”
“Orlando?”
He looked away from Ioan, angling his head to look up into the glare of the sun until he had to close his eyes and sunspots danced beneath his closed eyelids.
“Orlando?”
“Yes.”
Author: Sel selene_vidae
Pairing: Sean Bean/Orlando Bloom, Eric Bana/Orlando Bloom
Summary: This is where their story leads them.
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 3,240. Written for the Lovers (23) prompt. For those just tuning in: Eric and Orlando have been together forever but one phone call changes everything. Eric is gone and Orlando's left behind. Sean picks up the pieces because he's always loved Orlando. Together, they build a life out of the remnants of all the broken pieces but another phone call changes everything all over again.
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
Moments after Dreaming
When he awoke, the space beside him was empty and there was a feeling that surged up inside of him, unnamable for the precise reason that he did not wish to name it.
Orlando’s hand reached out, fingers stroking sheets cool to touch, smoothing out whatever imprint that was left behind. He pulled his hand back, shifting over so he could lie on his side, facing the balcony. A sliver of sunlight peered through the gap in the floor-length curtains and he watched the dust motes it revealed dance to their own rhythm.
He and Sean had gone back to bed after watching the sun rise, Sean’s arms wrapped around him as they lay side by side, listening to each other’s heart beat. There was a whispered promise to guard his dreams, which was the last thing he remembered before he once again drifted off to sleep. It was a promise he’d heard before, one that Sean kept again and again, each time he made it.
In the time they’d been together (together but not) Orlando had always relied on Sean to guard his dreams - but he had given his heart to Eric for safe-keeping. Given it long before he knew he did.
He wondered now if Sean had ever felt cheated, in some way, in any way. After all, they were the ones who had known each other for so long, the ones who’d shared heartaches and sorrows and triumphs, shared ice cream and dreams and a rickety cot in some god-awful bed and breakfast in Northumberland.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“Suck it up, Orli. It’s not that bad.”
“Sean, when you said we were ‘going on a peaceful retreat from the hustle and bustle of the fast-paced London lifestyle’, I thought you meant we’d be going to a spa.”
“Orli, you are such a girl.”
“Shut up, you wanker! What is this place? It said rustic on the brochure, not dilapidated!”
“Will you calm yourself, princess? I’ve been here before. You’ll love it.”
“Sean, there’s only one bed and to even call that thing a ‘bed’ is pushing the limits of believability. It’s an effin’ cot.”
“We’ll share.”
“How? Half my arse and half, no, one-fourth of yours?”
“Right, I’ve had it. You can have the floor, princess, and do make sure the bugs don’t devour you as a midnight snack.”
“I could just murder you in your sleep and take the bed then.”
“Don’t you mean cot?”
“You honestly better sleep with one eye open.”
They had history, in a way that he and Eric never had. It was a history measured in laughter and tears and pints at the pub. Measured in the distance they drove whenever they felt like getting into the car and simply driving till they ran out of petrol or until they reached a dead end, and even then they’d simply fill the tank up or make a U-turn and start all over again. It was a history measured in the times they’d fought and made up and realized that they could never not have one another in their lives.
They’d woven themselves into the fabric of each other’s life. How could he live without Sean right there beside him? Without Sean, his entire life would have been lived differently, the paths he took untaken, untravelled.
Sean was the one who convinced him to break up with his psychotic ex-boyfriend, the one who firmly told him not to take the psychotic ex-boyfriend back, the one who put him back together again when he went back to the psychotic ex-boyfriend anyway and had his heart (and wrist broken) in the process, the one who made sure the psychotic ex-boyfriend never went within a hundred miles of him ever again.
Sean was the one who said he was an idiot when he took up snowboarding, the one who held his hand and refused to leave his side in the hospital after a bad spill, the one who learned how to snowboard just so he’d have someone to watch over him.
Sean was in every memory of his adult life - even when Sean wasn’t there, he somehow was. Every moment, every experience tinged and colored by presence, non-presence.
Someone once teased them about living in each other’s pockets and he only laughed because it rang true.
It would have been a storybook happy ending if they’d found their way out of each other’s pockets and into each other’s hearts - but life wasn’t a storybook and there were no princes or princesses, no happily-ever-afters that stopped at that one point and forgot all about the days that extended long after those three words.
Orlando had always loved Sean. Every beat of his heart echoed that truth, but every beat of it likewise told him that Sean had always loved him more.
Always.
The rain fell down from the sky in torrents, their surprised yelps a useless reaction to the fierce downpour. Sean wrapped his arm around Orlando’s waist and they ran blindly, knocking into and brushing past passers-by who had the foresight to bring umbrellas.
It began to rain harder, the drops of water falling like jagged pieces of ice, and Orlando yelled over the din of the rain, “Let’s find shelter!”
A moment later Sean pulled him into a shadowed alcove, large enough to protect them both from the rain. They looked at one another, Sean opening and closing his mouth like a guppy, Orlando’s curls plastered to his face - and the laughter tumbled free, both of them clutching to each other’s sodden form as their laughter proved even louder than the sound of the rain slapping onto the pavement.
“We’re a sight,” Sean wheezed, as he fought to regain his breath after laughing so hard.
“I like the wet look on you. It’s tres chic. You don’t look like a drowned rat at all,” Orlando teased, the smile on his face brightening the dimness of their surroundings.
“How you can tease me while most probably suffering from hypothermia is beyond me.”
“Don’t be silly. I’m okay. It’s not cold, not really.” But the shivers that wracked his frame belied the dismissive words.
Sean frowned and pulled him closer, towards the relative warmth of his body. “We’ll just wait for the rain to ease up a bit and then we’ll make a run for it.” He brought his hand up to tuck a sodden lock behind Orlando’s ear, his words nearly lost to the rain and the wind, “We’re almost home.”
Orlando tilted his head, leaning into the gentle gesture, the look in Sean’s eyes one he’d seen before but it was one that always flitted away before he could truly think on its meaning.
“Almost home, Orlibabe.”
If he’d seen it sooner, if he’d put a name to it earlier, he couldn’t help but wonder if things might have been different. If the lack of any storybook ending might have been replaced by an ending that was theirs and theirs alone. By a story that was theirs and theirs alone.
Orlando slowly sat up, eyes scanning the room till they landed on a piece of paper lying on the desk. He threw the covers back and got out of bed, the carpeted floor scratchy against the bare soles of his feet.
It was a note written on hotel stationery, the pencil used lying beside it.
I couldn’t sleep. Went out and decided to explore for a bit. I’ll be back soon but if you need to reach me, I brought my mobile. Don’t forget to eat breakfast.
Sean didn’t write his name because there was no need for it.
Sean didn’t tell him that he loved him.
There was no need for it.
He checked the clock on the desk and saw that he could still reach the dining area in time for the breakfast buffet. Taking a quick shower and dressing in a pair of jeans and the first shirt he grabbed from his bag, he made his way downstairs. Apparently, it wasn’t tourist season because he didn’t encounter many other guests and none of them were foreign nationals like himself. Which was completely fine with him. He wasn’t in the mood for company anyway.
When he reached the dining area, he could see that there were free tables on the verandah. As he seated himself, after having put bread and fruits on his plate, he decided that this was the right place to sit, shaded as he was from the morning’s sunlight but open to the breeze that brought in the scents of an unfamiliar city.
He wasn’t hungry, despite skipping dinner the night before. Knowing Sean would ask whether or not he’d eaten and considering how he’d never been good at lying to Sean in the first place, he nibbled on the bread, forcing himself to chew and swallow, chew and swallow. The slices of fruit were easier, although he still had no appetite.
“Can’t eat?”
Orlando looked up, the Welsh accent surprising him as much as the sight of the man standing by his table.
“I don’t have much of an appetite either.”
He was about to ask who the other man was when things began to click into place.
The accent for one. The stranger was also the only other foreign tourist he’d seen so far.
But it was the shadows in dark brown eyes that Orlando recognized.
He’d seen them enough in his own eyes.
“Why don’t you sit down?” he asked, gesturing to the seat beside him.
When the other man did so with a grateful, if tired smile, Orlando offered his hand, “I’m Orlando Bloom.”
“Ioan Gruffud.” They shook hands as Ioan added, “I know who you are, actually. I was at the Caritas HQ when you arrived.”
“Oh. You saw that then.” His breakdown. Orlando lost count of how many he had, how many he’d continue to have until---
Until this was all over.
“It was hard not to,” Ioan replied quietly, but the smile lingering on his lips was less strained. “You probably don’t want to hear this but I do know what you’re going through and I can understand why you reacted the way you did. I did my own yelling at Peter.”
Orlando offered a thankful smile in return, shaking his head as he said, “No, I don’t mind hearing that. Coming from you, I don’t mind at all. The truth is you do know what I’m going through - you’re the only one who does.”
Ioan nodded and looked away as he confessed, “I thought that finding someone who knew exactly what I was going through would make it easier somehow. Make the pain less. I don’t know - something like that. I thought that if I could commiserate with someone, if someone finally understood, I wouldn’t feel so alone.”
“But it doesn’t work that way, does it?”
Their eyes met as Ioan murmured, “No, it doesn’t.”
Silence came after that statement, a silence that connected them as much as it separated them, leaving them to thoughts that were similar, to memories that weren’t, to emotions that ran the gamut from similar to dissimilar, familiar to unfamiliar, namable to unnamable.
“Just talk to me, Orli.”
“I don’t know what you want me to talk about.”
“Anything you want. Anything at all. I’ll listen.”
“What’s the point in listening, Sean, if you couldn’t possibly understand?”
“Orli,” a world of hurt in that one word, in the whispered utterance of his name, “I know that I could never understand what you’re going through but can’t you see that---”
“Can’t I see that, what?”
“Orli, please. Just talk to me. Don’t keep it bottled up.”
“What is there to talk about? How much I miss him? How much I love him? How much I want him to be here? Is that what you want to hear?”
“It doesn’t matter what I want to hear. What matters is what you need to say.”
“I’m tired, Sean. I’m tired of crying and having nightmares, of waking up and not finding him beside him. I’m tired and I’m tired of being tired because I feel like I shouldn’t be tired because it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter at all how tired I am. I should cry and I should have nightmares and I should wake up and not find him beside me because I love him and I miss him and all that I just said makes it real.”
“Orlibabe…”
“What? What? Was that good enough for you?”
“Talking about it just makes it more real, doesn’t it?”
“I…”
And there were only tears after that, more tears than anyone should ever have to cry in their entire lifetime, or in all the lifetimes after.
“Can I ask you something?”
Orlando looked up from his intent perusal of the unpeeled banana on his plate. “What is it?”
Ioan opened his mouth, closed it and tried again. “The man with you. Sean Bean, right? Is he your---” He suddenly laughed, the sound wry and self-deprecating, and shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’m so nosy sometimes. Clive… Never mind. It’s none of my business.”
“No, it’s all right,” Orlando murmured. “Sean’s…” He trailed off, suddenly at a loss for words.
Sean was his best friend. The one who said what needed to be said, the one who didn’t sugarcoat his words because he believed, he knew that Orlando was strong enough. Sean was his confidant. The one who kept his secrets, who knew secrets of his that even he wasn’t all too aware of.
Sean was more than a brother, more than family.
Sean was the one who helped keep him and Eric together through all their fights, the one who watched over him when Eric was on a mission, the one who put him back together again when he lost Eric.
Sean wasn’t Eric, not in any way.
Sean was Sean and he loved that about the other man so much that there weren’t any more words for it.
“Is he your lover?”
In all the time they’d been together, in all the nights they’d spent together, with every kiss and caress exchanged, Sean was never his lover. Even in that, Sean was more.
“Can I ask you something?” Ioan looked taken aback but nodded, even if Orlando hadn’t answered the question asked of him. “How do you it?”
“Do what?”
“How did you survive without someone to hold you? Without someone to get you through the nights and the daylight hours, through every moment in between?”
When Ioan didn’t answer, Orland thought he had crossed the line and he was about to tell Ioan to forget it when the other man said quietly, “Someone isn’t Clive.”
Ioan’s gaze met Orlando’s, the shadows in them receding in that moment, “I didn’t expect to fall in love with Clive. We grew up together. You know, even if he was older than me, he took me under his wing. He paid attention to me. And even then we were so different. He used to drive me mad - he still does, actually,” he said with a chuckle, prompting Orlando to smile as well. “We were oil and water. He was always so stoic, so principled, so intent on duty and doing the right thing. And he had so much faith. I, on the other hand, was brash and impulsive and couldn’t care less about rules. And after all the things I’d gone through, I didn’t understand how anyone could still believe in the existence of God. But he did and we fought all the time because of it.”
There was a lump in his throat because Ioan’s story wasn’t so far from his and Sean’s. They’d started out as friends and the very possibility of their what-if made it hard to breathe. He needed to know though, so he asked, “How did you know then? That you loved him? That you couldn’t live without him?”
A smile found its way on Ioan’s lips, settling there as the other man recounted the events that led to here, to now, “He was on assignment several years ago, in Angola, and HQ lost contact with his group for about two weeks. I was lost, completely lost without him. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t comprehend living without him. That’s when I realized that I loved him, that I’d always loved him. I prayed for the first time in so long and the one thing I asked for was Clive to come home so I could tell him I loved him. And he did. The moment I found out he was all right, the moment I found out that he was alive, I arranged for a visa to get to Africa. I flew to Johannesburg and met up with him there. The moment I saw him I told him I loved him and apparently, he returned the feelings. It was the happiest moment of my life.”
“Oh.” Orlando breathed in deeply. “You’ve been through this before then?”
“Yes, but nothing compares to what’s happening now. That was two weeks. This was… this seems like a lifetime. I think I died a little bit every single day,” Ioan paused, his hand curling around the cup of coffee that was undoubtedly cold by now, “but I never stopped hoping.”
“Neither did I,” Orlando admitted.
Through everything, he’d never stopped. How was he supposed to? Even with Sean---
Because of Sean, how was he supposed to stop hoping?
“Do you love him?”
Ioan didn’t need to add a name for Orlando to know whom the other man was referring to.
Sean was asleep, one of those rare moments when he was the one awake and it was the other man who was lost to dreams that Orlando had some inkling of.
He almost reached out, almost ran his fingers through the sleep-mussed hair, almost leant in to brush his lips against that strong jaw.
But he didn’t.
Sean was always such a light sleeper, especially when it came to Orlando.
“Eric’s alive,” he murmured, still watching Sean sleep.
Eric was alive. Eric was alive.
Eric was alive.
No matter how many times he said it, in the silence of the room or the silence of his own restless, churning thoughts, he couldn’t seem to make any sense of them. Those were the three words he wanted to hear for so long. For so, so long.
“He’s alive, Sean.”
Sean’s chest continued to rise and fall in steady, even breaths, eyelids flickering, sleep undoubtedly ruled by the dreaming of those dreams that Orlando had some inkling of.
“He’s alive.”
He shifted closer, gently, gently resting his head on the bare chest that still rose and fell in even, steady breaths.
Sean stirred once but remained asleep and Orlando loosed the breath he didn’t realize he had been holding.
He could hear Sean’s heart beating underneath him and he closed his eyes, wanting nothing but to listen to Sean’s heart beat.
And it was then, at the brink of losing everything and gaining everything, at that moment that he’d never be able to take back that Orlando whispered, “I love you.”
“Orlando?”
He looked away from Ioan, angling his head to look up into the glare of the sun until he had to close his eyes and sunspots danced beneath his closed eyelids.
“Orlando?”
“Yes.”