FIC: Shadowing My Dreams 1/5 (Lotrips, Viggo/Orlando, G)
Shadowing My Dreams 1/5
Author: padawanhilary and telesilla
Fandom/Pairing: Lotrips, Viggo/Orlando
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 2,036
wtf27 prompt 09/27 -- Supernatural (creatures)
Disclaimer: Not RL; didn't happen. If you think this has anything to do with the real actors involved, then you need to put down the crack pipe.
Summary: Orlando inherits more than just a very nice house from his uncle.
Notes: Because we love us a nice cliche, we've decided to try our hands at a Viggo/Orlando ghost fic. The title is from the song "Ghost" by the Indigo Girls.
Orlando unlocks the front door of the house, which is just large enough to be very nearly a mansion. It's a little amazing that he's received this; his uncle always was a bit nutters--no, when one's wealthy, it's eccentric. Still, the place is all dark and Gothic-like, and even less than understanding how he ended up with the place, he doesn't get at all how a man as chipper and bouncy as Uncle Dex ended up with a place that looks like it's been haunted for decades.
He grimaces as he steps in, marking the chill of an unused house and the film of dust on the floor. Hell, it looks as though old Dex didn't even live here. Wandering in past the foyer entrance, he heads for the sitting room, examining the tall, nearly-cliched oils on the wall, all commissioned portraits of aunts, uncles, Mum, Dad...he runs his hand over the mantle, thoughtful, and comes away with a palmful of dust.
"Ugh," he sighs, dusting his hand off on the thigh of his jeans. "I don't think I make enough money to get this place cleaned, Uncle Dex," he says to the tallest painting. "What've you saddled me with?"
The feeling of someone inside the house is more than enough to wake Viggo out of what he thinks of as his dozing state; neither truly asleep nor awake, he often drifts like that for years. Even decades at one point, after Lucy died.
Now, however, there's someone here and he makes his way to the sitting room and hovers in the corner, watching this newcomer. The boy looks a little like Dexter, although when Viggo stares at him closely, he realizes that "boy" is the wrong word. Well it's correct inasmuch as everyone I see is younger than I am.
It takes Viggo a moment, but then he remembers a time in the past when Dexter brought his sister's family to see the house. There had been a boy then too, a boy who, along with his sister, had run all over the place peering into rooms and sliding on banisters and generally making the old house feel alive again.
Viggo wonders if this is that same boy, grown up now.
Orlando sighs, glancing around; he thought he heard something soft, like a rustling or perhaps a breeze. Need to get all the window joints checked, he reminds himself, and probably check for rats, as well. He leaves the sitting room and heads for the stairs, a broad, curving set of them with a mahogany banister. He smiles to himself. God, how Mum used to bark at him for scooting down it. He loved to do it backwards best of all. Somehow, not seeing where he'd end up made it all the more thrilling. He stands at the bottom where Uncle Dex used to, waiting to catch him. They'd tumble over together, shrieking with laughter while Mum clucked and shook her head and threatened.
"But Uncle Dex doesn't mind," Orlando murmurs to himself, his defense whenever Mum piped up, and she would sigh and shake her head and glare at Dex. Orlando grins, shaking his own head--what, he's talking to himself, now.
Intrigued, Viggo follows the boy--Orlando, that's his name--to the stairs. He assumes that Dexter is truly gone now and that he left the house to Orlando. That Orlando talks to himself is a good sign as far as Viggo's concerned; the house is too often quiet and dark, and Viggo finds himself hoping that Orlando will make things interesting again.
Orlando peers up the staircase, then starts to climb it, footsteps echoing oddly against the planks. It was a feeding frenzy, Uncle Dex's will-reading was, and Orlando supposes that was intentional. Dex always knew who'd be after what; the family was never subtle like that. In a fit of perversity, he opted to have it all parceled together, sold wholesale in a warehouse to the highest bidder--so Bedelia couldn't have the crystal without getting the rug, and Martha couldn't have the rug without getting the Victorian chairs, and Alex couldn't have the chairs without getting the dusty old out-of-tune Grand. Brilliant, really, and annoying to the last. It was Dex all over.
"And I get the oils," Orlando sighs, making his way up the stairs. He pulls the skeleton key from his pocket and starts to open the doors in the hallway. It doesn't look right with them all closed.
Although Viggo's not particularly fond of light--direct sunlight makes him feel watery and even more insubstantial than he normally feels--he finds himself approving Orlando's decision to open all the curtains once he's got the rooms opened. He carefully follows Orlando into the master bedroom, hiding in the big armoire when Orlando unlatches and then pushes up the big windows that look over the neglected gardens on the west side of the grounds.
Of course if he keeps doing this, I might have to retreat to the attic until nightfall, but that's a small price to pay for having someone live here again.
"Christ," Orlando huffs as the sun illuminates the huge amount of dust he's kicked up. He stares woefully down at the gardens and decides he's going to have to sell his place in order to manage the upkeep--or sell this one.
"No," he says. "Not selling this one." He waves a hand in front of his face as he moves out of the master bedroom into one of the guest rooms.
If Viggo were still alive and actually breathing, he'd heave a sigh of relief right now. He's not sure what would happen to him if someone without connections to Robert purchased the house, but then he really hasn't got much of a clue about the rules of being a ghost. The idea of some other family owning the house upsets him regardless, and he resolved years ago to make things quite impossible for the house to be sold if it ever came to that.
As Orlando moves through the rooms, opening draperies and windows, he feels...well, oddly safe here. As though he's not alone. Now I'm going as nutters as Dex was. He looks around often, wondering, and finally calls out, grinning, "Uncle Dex? If you're here, start dusting."
Viggo's been following Orlando cautiously--although apparently not cautiously enough, he thinks--and now he almost laughs. As much as he liked it when Dexter lived here, he's glad that he doesn't have to share the house with another ghost. I wasn't this particular about my living space when I was alive, he thinks, remembering two years of sharing a garret in Paris with another artist and his model.
"Well," Orlando sighs at last as the upper rooms air quietly, "I s'pose there's nothing left but to get cleaners in." He doesn't relish the idea of strange people all over the place, but God knows he doesn't have time to do it himself. Still, he can't shake an overprotective sense about the house. Possessiveness. He runs his hand along the banister as he goes back down the stairs, surprised to note that it, unlike anything else in the house, isn't dusty at all.
By the time Orlando is ready to settle in for the night, Viggo feels like he too should be ready for sleep, never mind that, being dead, he never actually sleeps. But Orlando's flurry of activity is tiring: he's dusted a lot, cleaned the kitchen and the master bathroom and brought in his own linens, food and a small television.
Viggo is less than thrilled with the presence of the television, particularly when Orlando brings it into the bedroom; not only does he have a fairly low opinion of what television offers, it also interferes with his resonance and makes him feel nervous and jangly. What's wrong with a phonograph or even one of those CD things that Dexter had?
By the time Orlando's retiring to what he's jokingly referring to as the master wing--the bedroom, master bath and study that make up Dexter's old quarters--he's bloody exhausted. The inspection of the place was nothing next to the cleaning of it, and he's been sneezing so much he has to wonder if Dexter secretly kept a cat.
But bedtime can come early if it wants to, and by the time Orlando has vacuumed the mattress and laid out the sheets and blanket, he feels settled enough that he thinks he might rest. He putters through his evening routine: pajamas, cleaning his teeth, using the loo, last-minute washing-up, and then he settles into the big, old bed with its ornate headboard and turns on the television. It's just a small thing, so he placed it on a wheeled tray right next to the bed so that he can watch the news and maybe some footie before he drops off.
While there's something a little adorable about the sight of Orlando in his pajamas, Viggo is still annoyed with the presence of the television. Bracing himself as well as he can, he stands behind the machine and runs his hand through the back of it, shuddering. It's a bother but he figures he can make Orlando get rid of it the same way he forced that one housekeeper Dexter had back in the '60s to get rid of hers.
Orlando is just digging his shoulders into the pillow when the telly goes nuts. "Damn," he sighs, scooting half-out of bed to wiggle the antennae, then smack the side of it. "Knew I should've bought extra rabbit ears." It seems to right itself almost magically, and then the instant Orlando's settled again, blanket up to his chest, it goes haywire once more. "Well fuck," he grumps, climbing out of bed again.
He does this particular dance--fussing with the TV, settling back, getting out of bed again to fuss with the TV--three times, and then on the fourth he curses softly and turns the thing off, shoving the little table away from the bed irritably. "Fine," he says to the house at large. "I'll just install a gigantic satellite receiver, see if I don't." Jesus, Orlando, he thinks, appalled at himself, as if the house is out to keep you from watching telly.
Don't make this war, Viggo thinks, frowning a little. I want to like you.
Now that the television is off and out of the way, Viggo can pay more attention to Orlando, and he has to admit that he likes what he sees. It's a pity that Orlando wears pajamas to bed, but still Viggo finds himself wishing he could sketch Orlando. It's the first time in a long time that there's been a lovely young man for Viggo to look at, and he leans against one of the bedposts at the foot of the bed, prepared to watch Orlando for a good long while.
Sighing, Orlando huffs down into the bed, leaning over to turn off the light. Just as he does it he spots something out of the corner of his eye--a smudge of light, a kind of inverse shadow that looks for an instant like a man--and then it's gone when he turns his head to peer into the darkness.
"Grand. Now I'm seeing things." He turns over in a snit, dragging the blanket over his shoulders and burrowing in.
A little alarmed that Orlando had caught even the barest glimpse of him, Viggo backs away, heading for the safety of his own room. Granted it's a bit macabre that he feels most at ease where he'd died, but he does and that fact means that his particular room has always been the last to be assigned to guests on account of it being so cold.
Settling down as much as he can, Viggo lets himself dematerialize even more until he's just a drift of essence. Now that there is actually someone living here--and what a handsome someone he is--Viggo realizes that he'd have to be a little more careful.
-tbc-
Author: padawanhilary and telesilla
Fandom/Pairing: Lotrips, Viggo/Orlando
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 2,036
wtf27 prompt 09/27 -- Supernatural (creatures)
Disclaimer: Not RL; didn't happen. If you think this has anything to do with the real actors involved, then you need to put down the crack pipe.
Summary: Orlando inherits more than just a very nice house from his uncle.
Notes: Because we love us a nice cliche, we've decided to try our hands at a Viggo/Orlando ghost fic. The title is from the song "Ghost" by the Indigo Girls.
Orlando unlocks the front door of the house, which is just large enough to be very nearly a mansion. It's a little amazing that he's received this; his uncle always was a bit nutters--no, when one's wealthy, it's eccentric. Still, the place is all dark and Gothic-like, and even less than understanding how he ended up with the place, he doesn't get at all how a man as chipper and bouncy as Uncle Dex ended up with a place that looks like it's been haunted for decades.
He grimaces as he steps in, marking the chill of an unused house and the film of dust on the floor. Hell, it looks as though old Dex didn't even live here. Wandering in past the foyer entrance, he heads for the sitting room, examining the tall, nearly-cliched oils on the wall, all commissioned portraits of aunts, uncles, Mum, Dad...he runs his hand over the mantle, thoughtful, and comes away with a palmful of dust.
"Ugh," he sighs, dusting his hand off on the thigh of his jeans. "I don't think I make enough money to get this place cleaned, Uncle Dex," he says to the tallest painting. "What've you saddled me with?"
The feeling of someone inside the house is more than enough to wake Viggo out of what he thinks of as his dozing state; neither truly asleep nor awake, he often drifts like that for years. Even decades at one point, after Lucy died.
Now, however, there's someone here and he makes his way to the sitting room and hovers in the corner, watching this newcomer. The boy looks a little like Dexter, although when Viggo stares at him closely, he realizes that "boy" is the wrong word. Well it's correct inasmuch as everyone I see is younger than I am.
It takes Viggo a moment, but then he remembers a time in the past when Dexter brought his sister's family to see the house. There had been a boy then too, a boy who, along with his sister, had run all over the place peering into rooms and sliding on banisters and generally making the old house feel alive again.
Viggo wonders if this is that same boy, grown up now.
Orlando sighs, glancing around; he thought he heard something soft, like a rustling or perhaps a breeze. Need to get all the window joints checked, he reminds himself, and probably check for rats, as well. He leaves the sitting room and heads for the stairs, a broad, curving set of them with a mahogany banister. He smiles to himself. God, how Mum used to bark at him for scooting down it. He loved to do it backwards best of all. Somehow, not seeing where he'd end up made it all the more thrilling. He stands at the bottom where Uncle Dex used to, waiting to catch him. They'd tumble over together, shrieking with laughter while Mum clucked and shook her head and threatened.
"But Uncle Dex doesn't mind," Orlando murmurs to himself, his defense whenever Mum piped up, and she would sigh and shake her head and glare at Dex. Orlando grins, shaking his own head--what, he's talking to himself, now.
Intrigued, Viggo follows the boy--Orlando, that's his name--to the stairs. He assumes that Dexter is truly gone now and that he left the house to Orlando. That Orlando talks to himself is a good sign as far as Viggo's concerned; the house is too often quiet and dark, and Viggo finds himself hoping that Orlando will make things interesting again.
Orlando peers up the staircase, then starts to climb it, footsteps echoing oddly against the planks. It was a feeding frenzy, Uncle Dex's will-reading was, and Orlando supposes that was intentional. Dex always knew who'd be after what; the family was never subtle like that. In a fit of perversity, he opted to have it all parceled together, sold wholesale in a warehouse to the highest bidder--so Bedelia couldn't have the crystal without getting the rug, and Martha couldn't have the rug without getting the Victorian chairs, and Alex couldn't have the chairs without getting the dusty old out-of-tune Grand. Brilliant, really, and annoying to the last. It was Dex all over.
"And I get the oils," Orlando sighs, making his way up the stairs. He pulls the skeleton key from his pocket and starts to open the doors in the hallway. It doesn't look right with them all closed.
Although Viggo's not particularly fond of light--direct sunlight makes him feel watery and even more insubstantial than he normally feels--he finds himself approving Orlando's decision to open all the curtains once he's got the rooms opened. He carefully follows Orlando into the master bedroom, hiding in the big armoire when Orlando unlatches and then pushes up the big windows that look over the neglected gardens on the west side of the grounds.
Of course if he keeps doing this, I might have to retreat to the attic until nightfall, but that's a small price to pay for having someone live here again.
"Christ," Orlando huffs as the sun illuminates the huge amount of dust he's kicked up. He stares woefully down at the gardens and decides he's going to have to sell his place in order to manage the upkeep--or sell this one.
"No," he says. "Not selling this one." He waves a hand in front of his face as he moves out of the master bedroom into one of the guest rooms.
If Viggo were still alive and actually breathing, he'd heave a sigh of relief right now. He's not sure what would happen to him if someone without connections to Robert purchased the house, but then he really hasn't got much of a clue about the rules of being a ghost. The idea of some other family owning the house upsets him regardless, and he resolved years ago to make things quite impossible for the house to be sold if it ever came to that.
As Orlando moves through the rooms, opening draperies and windows, he feels...well, oddly safe here. As though he's not alone. Now I'm going as nutters as Dex was. He looks around often, wondering, and finally calls out, grinning, "Uncle Dex? If you're here, start dusting."
Viggo's been following Orlando cautiously--although apparently not cautiously enough, he thinks--and now he almost laughs. As much as he liked it when Dexter lived here, he's glad that he doesn't have to share the house with another ghost. I wasn't this particular about my living space when I was alive, he thinks, remembering two years of sharing a garret in Paris with another artist and his model.
"Well," Orlando sighs at last as the upper rooms air quietly, "I s'pose there's nothing left but to get cleaners in." He doesn't relish the idea of strange people all over the place, but God knows he doesn't have time to do it himself. Still, he can't shake an overprotective sense about the house. Possessiveness. He runs his hand along the banister as he goes back down the stairs, surprised to note that it, unlike anything else in the house, isn't dusty at all.
By the time Orlando is ready to settle in for the night, Viggo feels like he too should be ready for sleep, never mind that, being dead, he never actually sleeps. But Orlando's flurry of activity is tiring: he's dusted a lot, cleaned the kitchen and the master bathroom and brought in his own linens, food and a small television.
Viggo is less than thrilled with the presence of the television, particularly when Orlando brings it into the bedroom; not only does he have a fairly low opinion of what television offers, it also interferes with his resonance and makes him feel nervous and jangly. What's wrong with a phonograph or even one of those CD things that Dexter had?
By the time Orlando's retiring to what he's jokingly referring to as the master wing--the bedroom, master bath and study that make up Dexter's old quarters--he's bloody exhausted. The inspection of the place was nothing next to the cleaning of it, and he's been sneezing so much he has to wonder if Dexter secretly kept a cat.
But bedtime can come early if it wants to, and by the time Orlando has vacuumed the mattress and laid out the sheets and blanket, he feels settled enough that he thinks he might rest. He putters through his evening routine: pajamas, cleaning his teeth, using the loo, last-minute washing-up, and then he settles into the big, old bed with its ornate headboard and turns on the television. It's just a small thing, so he placed it on a wheeled tray right next to the bed so that he can watch the news and maybe some footie before he drops off.
While there's something a little adorable about the sight of Orlando in his pajamas, Viggo is still annoyed with the presence of the television. Bracing himself as well as he can, he stands behind the machine and runs his hand through the back of it, shuddering. It's a bother but he figures he can make Orlando get rid of it the same way he forced that one housekeeper Dexter had back in the '60s to get rid of hers.
Orlando is just digging his shoulders into the pillow when the telly goes nuts. "Damn," he sighs, scooting half-out of bed to wiggle the antennae, then smack the side of it. "Knew I should've bought extra rabbit ears." It seems to right itself almost magically, and then the instant Orlando's settled again, blanket up to his chest, it goes haywire once more. "Well fuck," he grumps, climbing out of bed again.
He does this particular dance--fussing with the TV, settling back, getting out of bed again to fuss with the TV--three times, and then on the fourth he curses softly and turns the thing off, shoving the little table away from the bed irritably. "Fine," he says to the house at large. "I'll just install a gigantic satellite receiver, see if I don't." Jesus, Orlando, he thinks, appalled at himself, as if the house is out to keep you from watching telly.
Don't make this war, Viggo thinks, frowning a little. I want to like you.
Now that the television is off and out of the way, Viggo can pay more attention to Orlando, and he has to admit that he likes what he sees. It's a pity that Orlando wears pajamas to bed, but still Viggo finds himself wishing he could sketch Orlando. It's the first time in a long time that there's been a lovely young man for Viggo to look at, and he leans against one of the bedposts at the foot of the bed, prepared to watch Orlando for a good long while.
Sighing, Orlando huffs down into the bed, leaning over to turn off the light. Just as he does it he spots something out of the corner of his eye--a smudge of light, a kind of inverse shadow that looks for an instant like a man--and then it's gone when he turns his head to peer into the darkness.
"Grand. Now I'm seeing things." He turns over in a snit, dragging the blanket over his shoulders and burrowing in.
A little alarmed that Orlando had caught even the barest glimpse of him, Viggo backs away, heading for the safety of his own room. Granted it's a bit macabre that he feels most at ease where he'd died, but he does and that fact means that his particular room has always been the last to be assigned to guests on account of it being so cold.
Settling down as much as he can, Viggo lets himself dematerialize even more until he's just a drift of essence. Now that there is actually someone living here--and what a handsome someone he is--Viggo realizes that he'd have to be a little more careful.
-tbc-