[kiss]

kiss

by cimorene
Crack crossover ficlet written on the occasion of Justin Timberlake turning legal 31 January 2002.

Orli's mother has threatened to get rid of the cat, because it has destroyed her favorite carpet and her couch. Orli doesn't think this is fair, because he gave her the cat for a present, and you shouldn't give away a present, especially not to the person who gave it to you. And even more especially not to the pound. The cat is cute, besides, and he isn't afraid of it. He doesn't know why his mum has to be so unreasonable. He suspects she can tell he's not exactly happy about it, but he doesn't say anything to her. It is her house.

And it was her couch.

So now he is going to get an apartment in London, because he was always going to do that anyway; only now it is going to have to be an apartment where you can have cats. Preferably, says Orli's mother, "one without a single carpet in the whole blasted place."

If he has an apartment-warming party, he won't have to move all his furniture in by himself. He calls Dom. "What's up, 'Sblomie?"

"Uh," says Dom, sounding just a little out of breath, "not much, mate. Why?"

"I've got a new apartment in London. 'M moving in Monday, I think. Want to come to the apartment-warming party?"

"Wow, that's fantastic! What's the place like?" But Dom sounds rather distracted.

"You'll see on Monday. Coming?" Orli persists.

There's a pause before the voice says, even more out of breath than before, "You can bet your scrawny ass. Er--but if that's all..."

Orli is amused as well as very curious. "But don't you want to know how to get there?"

"Oh. Right."

"Dom, what the fuck is going on over there?" He finally demands, exasperated.

There's another pause and a muffled noise. Something moves over the mouthpiece, and he thinks he can hear people talking beyond it. Then Billy's voice says loudly, "Orli! How are ya, mate?"

"Hi," says Orli, grinning from ear to ear. "So. You coming to my apartment-warming party?"

"Move it back a few days, invite the whole Fellowship," Billy suggests cheerfully. He seems to have much more presence of mind while being molested than Dom (Orli assumes). Or perhaps Dom has left the room. "Haven't seen Lij and Sean in ages."

Invite the whole Fellowship. Orli's first impulse is "yes," and his first coherent thought blanches away from that to a weak "no." He hasn't seen Lij and Sean for a long time, no, and he hasn't spoken to Viggo for several months, actually. He misses his friends. But Orli has mixed feelings about it, which is to say, he's scared of how fast his pulse picks up when he thinks of seeing Viggo.

He's afraid of what he might do.

He calls everyone else as soon as he hangs up, and most of them agree to be there. Sean can't come because he is filming, but Lij can. Sean Bean can make it easily. Sir Ian seems either amused or flattered that Orli has invited him, but he accepts almost solemnly. Or maybe he was laughing about something else. So then Orli calls Viggo. He has deliberately saved him for last; maybe having had the other little sessions of small talk will loosen him up.

Orli looks at his hands clenching tight at his sides and forcibly relaxes them, leans against the wall. He wishes for a cigarette, but he doesn't have any on him. "Hello?"

"Hi, Viggo," he says, trying not to sound nervous or adolescent or eager. And especially not love-sick.

"Orli," he says in a voice whose effects Orli has somehow managed to forget, "this is a surprise. And a pleasant one. How are you?"

God. Everything about him is sexy. "Fine," says Orli. "I'm getting a new apartment."

"You're finally getting that apartment in London," says Viggo softly. "How is it?"

Orli shrugs, "Well, to tell the truth, it could be better. But they do let you have cats."

"Cats?"

"Yeah. My mum was going to get rid of her cat, so I've got to save him." Said cat, who is very fat, is sleeping on the floor under the table half-rolled onto his back, with one eye slitted open. Orli can't tell if he's being watched or not.

"Oh."

"But listen," says Orli, fumbling in his pocket for a cigarette, then realizing again that he has none. "I'm having an apartment-warming get-together for the Fellowship. Everyone but Sean A and John is going to be there."

The upshot is that Viggo's son has some very important baseball-related thing going on on that weekend, and Viggo can't come. Orli feels something inside him collapsing hollowly. This may be because of relief, but it doesn't feel good at all. "But," says Viggo after a little pause--cautiously for Viggo, who tends to be even and calm in any circumstance--"But I would love to see your apartment."

"Really?" Orli asks absently, still occupied with attempting to feel whether his diaphragm is present and functioning. He thinks it is; perhaps it's his stomach that's vanished. Meanwhile, another thread of his attention has caught the slight emphasis on "love," the hesitation before the word, the lovely round sound of the word "your" in Viggo's mouth. That part of Orli is busy, too, now, picturing Viggo saying it and going giddy and light-headed with desire.

Talking to Viggo always makes him annoyed with himself.

He couldn't stop, though.

"Yeah," Viggo says, "So I was thinking--I've got a few more days of shooting after that to finish up--but if you're still around after that, I could come out and see it--?"

Orli has surely walked into another dimension.

Things like this don't happen to him, he thinks dizzily. "That would be great," he says casually.

London, again, cold slimy wet London. Chris has put up with so many places that cold and slimy are just wearying, now, and he hardly notices the gray smog, the wet streets, through his normal preoccupations. A European tour is just starting, and they're not back into the swing of things yet. Lance keeps having to remind them of where they're supposed to be and yesterday, Lance even lost his planner. Justin has been boisterous lately, but they all know how long that will last. Chris is the only one who can sense the reality of his mood seething under the surface.

Or perhaps this is ego, or wishful thinking. Maybe everyone else knows.

"I just want to sleep," says Joey incongruously as they zip their coats, pull on their hats, in the van between airport and hotel. Chris watches JC pluck at the bottom of his jacket. Recently JC has wanted to start biting his nails again, and he's trying to prevent himself.

"You just want to sleep?" Justin grins, turning his head quickly. His hair had grown out so much before the tour that he got it cut again and now it's short and bristly. Chris likes it this way, but he prefers the little, unbleached curls that were starting to form. He liked to touch them, when Justin would let him. Sometimes if you were careful you could pick your finger up and the edge of one would twine around your pinky before it sprang back.

"Shut up," Joe groans. "Yes."

Lance yawns, and doesn't cover his mouth with his hand, which is a sign of just how distracted he is. Chris, interested, looks to see if he will wince at his rudeness, but he doesn't. Tireder than Chris thought, then.

JC's knee is bouncing, and he's staring out the window. So he still has some energy, perhaps, but his hands are relaxed in his lap, and it looks like all the bone has gone out of his neck. His head's tipped all the way back on the seat.

"So no one will go out with me?" Says Justin with somewhat affected dismay, looking around and seeing all the same things Chris sees.

"I will," says Chris, "as long as we don't have to go to a club."

Justin looks considering; he's getting too subtle to pout. "Why?"

"Too fucking tired." Chris stifles a yawn as well as the impulse to stare at Justin as the Lonnie pulls the door open and muffled sunlight falls in with the cold fog, turning his tanned skin translucent, his lips rose, his eyes oceanic. It sculpts the planes of his face out of darkness, unmarred like a digital image from some film, like a drawing.

They are recognized in the airport, which Orli seems to be more used to than Viggo will ever comfortably be. He turns with an utterly charming smile to a young woman, and asks her name in his elegant British accent. Something about the way he drops his chin in concentration, balancing the paper on his knee when he signs it, is too poignant for words. Orli is like a work of art, his slim shoulders and his trim hips hugged in drapey slacks, his muscular buttocks outlined in the same clinging material. The little crease between his eyebrows. There's also the way he smiles a little, looking up from under his lashes, as he finishes and hands the paper back to the girl. Viggo is almost surprised when she wants him to sign too.

He missed the conversation when she told Orli her name--"How lucky I found you both here," she burbles.

She is sweet and disarming. Viggo feels his focus waver from Orli, softening, and smiles at her too, gently. It is a good thing he's one of the few people who can read Orli's writing. The inscription is to "Louise." Viggo writes a little note about the airport and that's it; she tucks the paper in her purse with a happy look that can't decide which of them to settle on at first, but ends on Orli. Of course.

The people in this airport move like currents, like great masses, as if there were only one mind for all of them. Viggo can almost feel it, sweeping him along down the hallway and guiding him around other people. It's bursting with life under the high ceilings and artificial light. When someone jostles into them Orli falls into Viggo's shoulder, off-balance, and he is warm through two layers of shirts. Viggo smiles a little again.

London is crowded, hungover with rain and fog that sticks to the streets like curls of cotton candy. It wreathes Orli's car from a distance, and when they're inside it, they can suddenly only see a certain distance ahead of them before things fade away gradually into the mists. Orli must be used to driving like this, since he lives in England, though not, perhaps, in such heavy traffic.

He seems to be in a hurry to reach the apartment. Sitting beside him--on the left, since the driver's and passenger's seats are reversed in England--Viggo is reminded of their all-Fellowship road trips back in New Zealand, where the cars are also like this. There's a red light, and Orli waits till he's well out in the middle of the intersection to slam on the brakes. A silver Audi honks at them, and he ignores it. Then he makes a right turn (which is like a left, of course, because of the sides of the streets being reversed) while the light's still red, swerving a little. The car hums happily along, unaware of its peril. Viggo is not so sanguine. He can't pry his fingers out of the plush of the car seat next to his legs.

This is why, after a few trips, Orli was never allowed to take the wheel.

Viggo thinks it might be safer with him driving, or it might even be safer if they drove on the wrong side of the road. He is joking, but only just. "In a hurry?" He says, with an attempt at being casual.

"No," Orli laughs, "why?" And the car whisks around a corner without a turn signal, without slowing and without, Viggo is pretty sure, all four wheels on the ground.

Squealing on the street is not a noise that makes Viggo happy when the road is wet, as it is now. He can't prevent himself from asking Orli, "Have you ever heard of hydroplaning?" Even though sarcasm is wasted on him.

Orli just turns and grins cheekily at him. "Oh, kinky," he says, and doesn't turn back to the street for long enough to make Viggo uneasy about their safety--to say nothing of the more predictable effects of locking gazes.

Viggo forces his fingers to unclench. Holding on to the seat probably won't help if they're in an accident. He is wearing a seatbelt.

Besides, he can't die when he hasn't even seen Orli's apartment.

Justin has gotten really tired of vacations. He's tired of everything, really, and it's not that he doesn't like vacation. He'd be happy for two more days of vacation at home, but he's sick of "we can work in another day or two, so let's give the boys the day off in London!" It feels exciting at first, but then at the end of the day off, you just feel cheated because it was too short and too hectic to be a real vacation. He tries to stay level-headed about all of this. After all, everyone is doing their best and working really hard for them. Justin knows he is lucky. He knows other people would be pissed to hear him complain about a day off in London.

He's determined to enjoy himself. "Chris," he says, bouncing into Chris's room at ten. There is no Chris, just a lump completely buried under blankets. Justin bounces on across the room and onto the edge of the bed, determinedly cheerful, because he's not going to let his throat close up at the sight of Chris lying there, and he's not going to crawl fully dressed under the covers and wrap his arms around his best friend and go back to sleep. For one thing, he doesn't need to get a hard-on now, and that's probably what would happen, he thinks. For another thing, one of the other guys might walk in.

It's not like they would say anything.

But he's not going to give them anything to not say it about.

Still, he doesn't bounce onto Chris's bed, exactly, just sits down and tugs back the blankets cautiously. First there's a delicate white wrist--so small! Justin can wrap his thumb and finger around it, and he has before, but it makes Chris mad sometimes--and the swell of his forearm. Then a tuft of black hair, aha! He pulls it all the way back, and at the sunlight suddenly hitting his face, Chris's nose wrinkles. Justin catches his finger back from smoothing the wrinkles out, then from brushing through the hair, which is flattened and sticking up and totally stupid looking.

Justin likes it like that.

"Hey Chris! Good morning!" He says.

"Hmmm... go 'way."

"No, it's our day off. You can't waste it."

"Justin." Without opening his eyes, Chris bats at Justin with one hand. Justin easily catches the hand in one of his. He could use that grip to pull Chris up, but he's not that mean.

He's meaner. "Chris..." he says pitifully.

Chris can't resist that. His eyes squeeze shut, then crack open. "For God's sake," he groans, "what time is it?"

"It's ten," says Justin. "Come on. JC won't go anywhere and Joe already left. And you know Lance is going to work. Please?"

Chris sits up in bed and scowls at Justin. "I am getting up," he says, "but I swear to God, you're going to regret it."

"Sure thing, Shorty," says Justin, and gives into the temptation to ruffle Chris's hair.

Two hours later, he is still waiting for Chris to be ready, and Joey is back from the toy store. Justin regrets it. He knows, just knows that the delay is because Chris is mad at him. Grrr.

In the end he and Lance and Joe go out. Hopefully by the time they're done with lunch they will be able to pry Chris out of the hotel to go with them. "Where are we going?" Justin says when they're standing on the street. Bodyguards roll their eyes.

"What about W.H. Smith?" Says Joe. "I was just there, buying toys. But, like, they have a CD department you could get lost in. And we can always move on from there."

They've left the bookstore--Justin almost bought a book for Chris that looked funny, but then he remembered he was mad--and are walking to Portobello Road, even though they're not sure if it's close enough from the directions the cashier gave them. Then someone yells something; this doesn't register at first. Justin only realizes it afterwards, when Lonnie beside him has tensed and turned sharply, moving to put himself between Justin and a man who's trotted up to him and grabbed his arm.

He sounds exasperated, but what he's saying makes no sense: "Orlando!"

Justin puts his hand on Lonnie's arm, takes a step back, looks at the guy quizzically. What do you say to that--yes, I live there? Do you want a nutcase like that to know where you live? And he doesn't have a British accent.

In fact, he's looking into strong, chiselled, classically handsome features, a prominent cleft chin under a straight nose and wide, delicately-shaped mouth. High cheekbones, deepset eyes, green and almost as intense as Chris's black ones. Dark hair, though not quite Chris's midnight color, in loose waves around the sides of his face, shaggy. He looks familiar. Justin freezes, on the edge of remembering how he knows him.

That's when the guy gets a good look at his face, and steps back, perplexed. "Oh, I'm so sorry," he says. "I mistook you for someone else."

Justin hasn't heard that in a long time. Huh? He blinks, but the guy is still there. "You look so much like him," he explains with a smile, not appearing to notice Lonnie's disapproving look. There's something about the smile, too. It's sexy, but it's--soft. It's like--Chris. Maybe not quite, but the feel is there. He likes this guy.

"Mistook you for someone else?" Joe says, grinning all across his face. "Holy Hell, Justin. Didja hear that? Lance, man, where's your planner? Write it down!" Annoyingly, Joey almost doubles over laughing, and even Lance is grinning and chuckling a little. Even more annoyingly, even all of this doesn't seem to tell the guy who he is. Admittedly he's a little old, but... his face is blank, and he's looking at Justin but not, frowning faintly. Justin gets the feeling he's really looking at someone else.

"And then," says Orli, sighing resignedly, "the water wouldn't come on."

Viggo raises his eyebrow. Orli wonders if he can make Viggo do it again.

"So, at your apartment-warming party, you spent the whole time trying to fix it?"

"Not quite," Orli says wryly. At least Viggo isn't laughing at him yet, he thinks in one second, and then in the next, yes, but doesn't he want to see Viggo laugh? "It only took half an hour to figure out the heat. And I still don't know what was going on with the water. It worked fine a few hours later." He pauses, struck with memory. "Wait... I think Sean Bean got the phone book and called someone for me." He shrugs sheepishly. "Don't remember much of that bit. I was rather smashed at the time."

Viggo laughs then, but just a little. This might be because he doesn't want to hurt Orli's feelings. Or it might be just Viggo, not wanting to laugh at other people's foolishness. The cat, with great difficulty, has heaved itself to its feet under the table, and it wobbles out on its tiny little pencil-stub legs to rub against Viggo's leg with a hoarse meow.

Orli doesn't want to be further from Viggo, but he edges back a little just the same. In the last two weeks of living with the cat, he has become a bit more wary of it. It's a tricky little beast; it likes to pretend it wants to be petted, and then turn around and sink its fangs into your wrist when you do. Sometimes it sort of lunges forward from wherever it is to bat at you with one little paw, without actually crawling anywhere.

Incapable of being afraid of animals. Viggo gets upset when the cat bites him because he's sorry that he has hurt its feelings, and he obviously doesn't mean it when he says "no." No self-respecting cat would obey a "no" like that. Now he puts one hand down to pet it. "Hello, there, Piewacket," he says to it (Orli's mum named it).

To Orli, it has always been "the cat." Maybe it can tell, because it seems to like Viggo a lot more than it likes him. Viggo's been here for four days now, which is nearly as long as Orli was there without him. There was no point coming for a visit that was too short when the airfare is so much, they had reasoned, while Orli's stomach did somersaults.

He doesn't know what he will do when Viggo leaves.

On the other hand, what can he do if Viggo stays? He's going to get reckless. Too much Viggo--evidently not impossible after all. Viggo looks up from petting the cat and meets Orli's eyes briefly, grinning warmly as if he could share whatever the special thing is he gets from petting Piewacket with Orli, as if he would if he could. As if he wanted to.

A gift.

And Orli can feel it, and he feels his mouth smiling without his consent. He's terrified that the smile looks like "Oh Viggo, throw me down on the floor right here and shag me senseless" and not "yeah, what a cute cat, huh?" But he can't do anything about it.

Viggo has already looked back down before the concern has had time to penetrate Orli's mind.

Orli is free to watch him for a little while longer, but he knows he's going to have to get out alone, soon.

The final straw is the dream. Actually, that is the second-to-last straw, if there's such a thing. The dream is an erotic one confusingly mixed with a nightmare, that starts with Orli locked alone in a little laundry room somewhere, carpet on the floor, a rumbling washing machine against his back. He remembers crying about it, the door firmly shut, pressing himself against the wall and sitting huddled on the floor. His eyes are wide open--he keeps looking for Viggo when he's alone.

Then Viggo is there, sitting next to him, silent and strong in the darkness, unperturbed. It is like they were in New Zealand again and Viggo were fishing or walking on the beach in the middle of the night (both of which Orli knows he has done)--he seems to be meditating as much as anything, and Orli can breathe again. And when he reaches for Viggo and clasps his arm in the dark, Viggo laces their fingers, and lifts Orli's hand to his mouth and--

Turns it over, lips burning on the palm and the pad of his thumb and the suddenly-racing pulse in his wrist that jumps to meet Viggo's warm damp lips, the breath gusting over his super-sensitized skin with gentle amusement. Orli is hard in a shocking instant, his eyes wide-open in the darkness. For the first time he notices a sliver of light sneaking under the door, and from that he can see a few of the features of Viggo's face before he presses close and Viggo's arms wrap around him and he's drowning in sensation and heat.

Orli remembers pressing his hips up, bucking importunately into a callused hand. He remembers Viggo's jeans against his hand, with an erection straining under them. He remembers the rigid cords of Viggo's stomach under his fingers.

In the dream it is the next morning, and he is walking outside alone in the rain. At first he thinks he is walking with Viggo, but then he looks to find Viggo is not there, and the rest of the walk he spends looking for Viggo. His throat is closed with terror and he can't call out for Viggo, so he keeps looking, getting soaked in the rain and freezing cold. He can't stop shivering. In the dream's wan angry morning, gray coldness wraps around him even as his body can't stop burning with arousal and desperate memory.

He wakes up still hard, pushing into his own hand, breathing harsh and uneven. It has all been a dream, but that doesn't make the disturbing quality of it go away. He rolls over to press his face into his pillow.

Sleep will not return.

So the final straw, then, is when Orli gives in to the promptings that tell him to get out of bed though it's barely 4:30 am. He goes into the kitchen, to make coffee. The floor's chilly on his feet, even the distant chafe of matted carpet in unidentifiable almost-beige. He pulls a jumper from the back of his chair in the kitchen and pulls it over his head, pushing his arms into the sleeves and going to get a coffee filter without looking where he's going. This is his downfall: the cat is in the way, and he steps on its tail. While he's still pulling his foot back and squashing the ridiculous urge to apologize (it's a cat, for God's sake), and still unable to see with the sweater not yet properly on, there's an outraged croaking hiss and it turns to swipe at his foot.

Oh, pain! Orli finishes pulling the sweater down and backs away. Four parallel red lines curve over the arch of his foot. Blood is starting to well in little crimson spots from one of them already. He curls his foot against the pain and flexes it again, but that avails nothing. Dammit, dammit, dammit.

Orli bites his lip. He'll make coffee, then he'll rinse the cuts and put some antibiotic on them. What a lousy day--but when he turns around from measuring coffee into the filter he's no longer alone in the room. Viggo's leaning on the doorjamb, dressed but with his hair untidily just shoved back from his face. The tantalizing merest hints of a smile linger around his mouth, and Orli wants to thread his fingers into that soft shiny hair and kiss them all away until he's utterly beyond pain. Viggo keeps taking his breath away, again and again. He wonders what his face looks like. It feels numb. He could be smiling or frowning; his mouth could be open, for all he knows.

You wouldn't've thought it could have gotten worse, but then an eyebrow arches and the amusement on Viggo's face is more evident. "Are you torturing the cat just for fun or because this is all part of a subtle plot to get me to take him off your hands? Because you should know animals have to be in quarantine for six months to be taken overseas..."

Orli grits a smile between sticky teeth, "I stepped on him. By accident."

Viggo's eyes drop and he comes into the room. "I'll make the coffee," he says abruptly, "sit down; you're bleeding."

How he knows, after five days, where Orli's mum put the clean dishrags (which Orli, on his own, would never even have thought to buy), is beyond Orli, but the one he wets in warm water and dabs with soap is dark-colored so the blood won't stain it. He crouches, knees apart, on the floor before Orli and cups his heel with those careful callused fingers.

Orli watches, with, he suspects, wide eyes. "It still hurts a little," he mutters. Why argue? --When he doesn't want to? The fingers are so gentle, though the soap stings and the terry cloth drags a little against the torn edges of the cuts. Viggo's head is bent, hair falling over his forehead around his ears striping his cheeks in curving shadows, making the early-morning light in the window into a sort of accessory for the dramatic shapes of his face.

When he looks up, afterward, Orli has been trying very hard not to watch him, and fighting a losing battle. He traces Viggo's bent back with his eyes and mentally bends it back the other way, arching up from the floor or a bed, turns him around, strips the flannel from the planes of shoulderblades and replaces it with his own mouth. Unfortunately, he cannot imagine the taste. So when Viggo looks up their eyes meet, and he can't read anything in Viggo's, but they're open and bright and he thinks he could just look at them long enough to count every eyelash.

Even if he can't read Viggo's eyes, he is afraid Viggo will be able to read something in his.

There's no chance that he won't eventually give in to Justin and go wherever he wants. If Justin asked in the right tone, Chris would follow him anywhere, from Paris to a country line-dancing club to the bottom of the ocean. And he would do it anxiously, worrying, because he doesn't really believe that anyone else can watch Justin and look out for him right. He wants to be alone, though, so he sneaks out, early, the next morning.

The bodyguards don't care as much about Chris sneaking out because he's not in as much danger as Justin, and he hasn't done it for so long that they hardly pay attention. It's not hard.

He's used to the clammy cold of London in general, but they haven't been there in a while, so it still takes him by surprise, the way it creeps up the backs of his hands and down his neck to get under his coat, and plasters itself like a mask on his face, like chill sweat. Chris hugs the jacket shut and wishes for another layer, but he doesn't even seriously consider going back. He wishes he had a bad habit to indulge, like smoking.

Justin doesn't count.

Two British girls with incomprehensible accents and tall platform shoes pass him on the street, chattering, and don't spare him a glance. It makes him feel better, and he doesn't regret his sunglasses so much even though they make it kind of hard to see, on a day so overcast. Walking between the shadows of tall damp buildings, it could be any city, if not for the London noise, the cars on the wrong side of the street, the mist at the end of the block where he has to cross the street.

When he licks his lips, they feel dry and cracked, frozen with the kiss of dirty cold air. London, he thinks, has smelled bad for two hundred years, and isn't about to stop just because he doesn't like it, but goddammit, if only they could have had this vacation in Barbados or Hawaii, some shit like that. Taipei. Chris could deal with Taipei as long as no one mugged him.

The contrast between cool and warm is a dizzying gust in the revolving door to Herrod's when he walks in. The floor is black and white tiles, marble, and he is satisfied to not look like the kind of person who belongs here in its stately British old-ness, though it's crowded as Hell and there are plenty who look even worse than him. He can lose himself in this crowd and indulge the bad habit of thinking and thinking. When Chris lets go of his thoughts they turn to Justin more often than not. Racks of fluffy towels make him think of the way Justin leaves dirty laundry all over the tour buses. Those little ceramic toothbrush holders make him think of all the vacations he has spent in Justin's house because he didn't want to live in his alone, and Justin, bless him, never wants to be alone at all, though he doesn't like to admit it.

For some reason, the stationary department affects him the most. He wonders what kind of paper you use to write the kind of confession he would give if he ever confessed to Justin. Chris mutters ironically to himself that it should be written in blood, and tries to close his ears to the sounds of British pop music from the store's loudspeakers. There are little dayplanners like Lance's and sheets of stickers, the kind his sister Molly coveted and tried to collect, but never had enough money to buy. There are expensive pens of the kind Johnny carries around, that would be heavy if you picked them up and write in the kind of rich dark blue that stains your fingers if you touch it before it's dry. Like blue blood, perhaps? He imagines his own handwriting in that blue pen on the back of a torn slip of paper from his pocket tucked in the corner of Justin's mirror: I'm in love with you.

Then, he foolishly imagines in Justin's sloppy scrawl, the same pen, stark on white paper--hotel stationary, maybe, Justin doesn't write on ragged slips of paper--I'm in love with you too, moron. The words blur in his mind's eye. Justin wouldn't write that; what would he write?

He wouldn't, Chris thinks, but his imagination persists in writing Come and get me, I'm waiting.

He feels like shit, and stuffs his hands in his pockets so they can't shake. Chris has even started to regret leaving, and missing whatever time he could have stolen with Justin today, because no matter how long he's with Justin he never gets tired of him. And the worst thought of all is that Justin might have looked around and wanted him and he won't have been there. Chris knows he is responsible for spoiling Justin, kind of, but it doesn't make a difference. Justin may throw tantrums, sometimes, but he'll still tell Chris point-blank if he's being an ass, and spend a night hanging with JC if he's in a weird mood, and--

Biting down on the thought, trying to shake himself out of it. It's starting to get warm enough that Chris considers taking off his jacket. He looks up, slowly. He's standing in front of a rack of composition books labeled in French and English. Some time has passed with him standing there, he thinks. Chris turns away blindly and starts to walk.

It's not surprising he would hallucinate Justin in the crowds of Herrod's under the circumstances. He has had waking fantasies of Justin often enough--hot mouth cool skin warming under his hands, Justin's cheeks pink and his eyes closed and you can see the veins in them, and his ear fits in the palm of Chris's hand moaning saying Chris's name and his face wet with tears, legs falling open around Chris's hips hugging him tight--but never like this. Strange to hallucinate the back of Justin's head. Justin appears and disappears and slips through the crowd, but he doesn't vanish, doesn't turn around and run to meet him with a kiss. Chris frowns. A strange fantasy. He follows Justin anyway, like he always has, at a short distance, because he doesn't feel up to saying anything.

Finally he can't stand it. Justin is looking at, of all things, pet supplies, and Chris can see his bent neck, his shoulders muffled in black leather, through shifting crowds of people. The first chill doesn't come until he's almost there, but he shakes it off without recognizing why it's come and puts his hand on Justin's arm to say, "I'm sorry about this morning."

Justin turns his head inquisitively. Chris's eyes are met by brilliant brown eyes over a nose a bit too narrow, lips sculpted and not so full as Justin's. It's not Justin. Chris can only stare. This beautiful boy looks like a sculpture of Justin done by a more delicate sculptor, with a finer touch. He is prettier than Justin, and that is saying a lot. There are still the striking square lines of dark eyebrows over deepset wide eyes, long-lashed, the short dark hair. The stranger has a prominent widow's peak.

Chris takes a little step back. It is not Justin, and that's when he realizes how desperately he has wanted it to be.

His eyes won't tear from not-Justin's face. His lips shape the words "I'm sorry," but maybe not-Justin doesn't hear him. He is looking at Chris searchingly.

"Who," says the beautiful boy, his eyes sharp and intense, "is Justin?"

A short bark of laughter before Chris can stop it. "Don't you want to know who I am?"

"Who are you, then?" Says not-Justin agreeably, again in that pretty British accent. Chris thinks it is not a London accent, but doesn't know much about these things.

Chris's mouth firms. "I'm Chris--who are you?"

"I'm Orli," says not-Justin, his face softening, and he smiles a smile that's wistful and full of--Chris has seen that smile before. It is not Justin's carefree smile or his gorgeous smile or his wheedling one--it is the wry smile that Chris smiles in his mirror when he thinks of Justin. It is strange to see his smile on Justin's face. Even on not-Justin's.

Not-Justin--Orli--reaches and touches Chris's arm through his sleeve, and his hand is square, not quite big enough, but warm through fabric, and his grip is strong. "Chris," he states slowly. It is not how Justin says it, which makes it feel better. He is tasting the foreign name on his tongue, savoring. His tongue is pale pink, his lips pink too. "I want to hear about Justin," he says, looking at Chris in that disturbingly penetrating way, "and I'll tell you about--" his voice hitches and stumbles. Orli is hesitating fascinatingly, and when he licks his lips Chris has the odd urge to kiss the not-Justinness of them. "--about my friend," he adds more quietly.

Chris looks back at him. His eyes are sharp, too, he knows. He can see that Orli is somewhat surprised, but he doesn't drop his gaze.

There are so many words that he has never said, that he may never say to Justin. And if not-Justin will listen--"Is there a coffee shop?" He asks.

Orli laughs, then, not a Justin-laugh at all, and his smile is not as dazzlingly gorgeous as Justin's. This just depresses Chris, though. "You Yanks. You can get coffee at the caf� and I'll have tea."

Viggo lets Orli go with mixed feelings. In the early afternoon he writes in his journal, but it's hard to write what he wants when Orli could come back at any time--I know he's not a child, and I no longer can think of him as such. When I held his foot in my hand, it was so strangely beautiful, like all of him is; perhaps shouldn't have been surprised. It was a beautiful morning as well. The impulses that lead me to kiss him, to take him in my arms, are growing stronger, so it's possible I shouldn't have come here. I thought I could trust myself alone with him, but I think I hoped. It was chill and gray, but pretty the way rain often is. Thought of taking photographs, but I did not; the light was poor at any rate. Water on metal, with the reflections of clouds in it, is very fascinating. Orli was wearing a sweater, and I saw him shiver. If I could hold him I would make him warm.

He puts the journal away in the bottom of his bag and sighs unevenly, and pushes his hands through his hair. The coffee is cold, but he heats some of it in Orli's microwave, and drinks it black; it burns the tip of his tongue and the roof of his mouth, but it chases the cold. He rubs his arms through his sweater and sits on the floor. Sure enough, in a moment Piewacket appears in the doorway, watching him cautiously, his eyes luminous. It's dark with the lights off in the kitchen though it's afternoon already, but the beaten-brass color around the wide pupils gathers all the room's light to it.

"Hello," he says coaxingly, and the cat heaves to its feet and staggers across the room, its fat belly swaying as it walks. It's really quite elegant despite being so overweight; he thinks he will take pictures of it before he leaves. It's a rich gray decorated with white splotched on its face and legs and the tip of its tail. It stops in front of him with its tail curved in a question mark, and tilts its head.

"Mrow?"

Viggo offers his hand. "Piewacket," he says gently, "Orli would pet you too if you didn't scare him so much. You know, I have to leave again soon. But for now--"

Extraneous words die as Piewacket accepts by closing his eyes and rubbing his cheekbones on Viggo's fingertips, sitting down next to Viggo's thigh on the floor. Viggo's eyes are stinging as he lets his hand curve around to stroke the back of the neck and scratch the cat's ears and shoulderblades.

He and Orli have not talked about how long he will stay, but of course, it can't be indefinitely. He has already used up some of his welcome quite obviously for Orli to vanish like that this morning and still be gone.

Shadows lengthen, and Viggo goes into the living room looking for something to read. He skims the beginning of Angela's Ashes and starts to reread Walden Pond. (He should have known he might find something like this in Orli's apartment and been prepared, not felt this little lurch in his chest and fallen even more deeply in love.)

Once he has found the teakettle and some tins of Darjeeling and Orange Pekoe and Chamomile and started making tea, Viggo stands in the kitchen debating whether to turn on the light. It's after 5, and he's considering making dinner, though he has no idea what Orli intended. "Mrow?"

He looks down and smiles, "Hi, Piewacket; wait a minute, alright?" And that's when he hears the click of the door opening and stops, and looks up. It's hard to figure out what he feels, because it's all too fast, but all his attention is focused on the kitchen door though he won't move.

Orli's slender frame fills the doorway, seemingly, his mouth tired-twisted like he thirsts for a cigarette and his eyes tireder still.

Viggo smiles at him.

Part of him has sighed and settled back into itself at the sight of Orli there. Viggo worries that he may be dependent on the sight of Orli already--in less than a week.

He drops his eyes from Viggo's and smiles back a little and mutters something about a "minute" and vanishes again down the hall. Viggo opens the refrigerator, intent again on making dinner, but he pauses with the door open and closes his eyes and bends his head.

A seam, narrow and white, showing at the throat of the blue wool sweater Orli wore. His t-shirt had been on inside out. It had not been when he'd left. The door, and a moment later there's the high hiss of the shower, screaming through Viggo's head much louder than he knows it really is. It's like that's all he can hear until he closes the refrigerator deliberately, concentrates on cutting vegetables.

Over vegetable stir-fry, Orli tells Viggo that it was not too cold out and that he went to Herrod's, but he doesn't say anything about his shirt or anyone or why he was out so long. Viggo wonders who he met there and whether he called them first, and if they went to a hotel or the other's apartment. He wonders what happened and what exactly Orli washed off of his silken skin in the shower.

He wonders what sex smells like on Orli's neck, and what his cum would taste like if Viggo licked it off his stomach.

And he wants to know so badly he's afraid his hands will shake, so he puts his fork down on the edge of his plate with a little clatter and wraps his hands around each other in his lap. "But did you have a good day?" Viggo finally asks.

He thinks if Orli says yes he will be happy. Orli thinks for a minute, frowning at rice and soy sauce on his plate. Orli is the kind of person who insists on eating rice with chopsticks. There is a forlorn thread of transparent onion draped over the tip of his chopstick, just brown on the edges, scorched, and the light glistens in the oil Viggo fried it with. Orli says, "It was...different. But--" and the edge of the kind of smile that burns your eyes to look at touches his face, thick with something Viggo can't look at. "Yes." He is not looking at Viggo, who says

"Good" in a perfectly normal voice and reaches for his water. It is empty so he shoves his chair back and goes to the sink to fill it. He turns the water on too hard and it sprays back from the sides of the glass and spatters his hand. Then he sips it before he goes back to the table.

Orli is watching him when Viggo turns around. "Are you alright?" He asks.

Viggo smiles at him--really, he is smiling at the concern, which creases Orli's brow adorably and sits uneasily on his delicate face. "I'm fine." He grabs the back of the chair before he sits down, but he makes sure not to grip it too hard.

Orli says, when they've finished, "It's rather cold in here, isn't it?" And then before Viggo can answer, "Come on. It's warmer in the living room--let's have some wine. I want to tell you a story." There's a little pause before that last sentence that Viggo's conjecture fills with meaning, but he can't allow himself the luxury. He can't believe how Orli rattles him, no matter how he controls himself and his thoughts. Maybe it's more than that; there's an element of choice, isn't there? For all the pain, there's that sweet edge to what he feels when Orli smiles at him and that feeling in his throat when he hears Orli's voice on the phone after a long time.

Viggo sips fruity red wine, sitting on the couch. He is surprised when Orli sits beside him, and reaches to stroke Piewacket, who has immediately claimed Viggo's lap and is flexing his claws with threateningly contented rumbles that suggest all feeling will have left Viggo's feet before he is ready to get up.

"At first I was going to work up to this gradually," Orli says distantly, and Viggo, surprised, turns his head to see Orli's eyes focused fixedly on the opposite wall. "So then I thought about it some more and I was just going to come out with it all at once. I thought it'd be easier that way, but--" he makes a wry face, his eyes changing with memory again, "--I was advised to reach a compromise, because you wouldn't believe me that way. So here's my compromise.

"I'm going to tell the short version, and then if you want, you can still hear the long version later." And as if to himself: "I hope you'll be interested, but perhaps not--right away." And he smiles.

Viggo blinks. When he looks carefully at Orli, he can see that he's getting tense. There are shallow lines etched beside his mouth and there's a pulse leaping in his neck, and a tendon standing out in relief--and if he wrapped his lips around it, perhaps he could soothe it--

"I'm listening," Viggo smiles, with effort. He has been an actor for too long to be unable to find a smile for something like this. Orli, besides, is so beautiful you almost have to smile.

Orli might not have heard, he is so still and silent. He purses his lips. Viggo knows that he heard, though. What he says, when he starts talking, is "It was my idea--and I didn't do it for myself," which totally baffles Viggo. He is patient, though, and Orli rewards him with a guilty look. "Sorry. I know. I just had to say that. So I was in Herrod's today looking at some totally random shit, and. This guy comes up to me and grabs my arm, because he thinks I'm his friend Justin. I saw a picture of him--we look a lot alike." Viggo's mind leaps to the young man he ran into in the street yesterday with his two friends and his bodyguards, and he wonders which of them it might have been. That boy's name was Justin. Holy Hell, Justin, didja hear that? Lance, man, write it in your planner.

Since Orli is talking, Viggo tears his mind back into his custody, to pay attention to the story. It's dark outside and the windows are black with white shapes from the overhead lights reflected in them. Orli's ghost and Viggo's ghost are sitting on a mostly-invisible couch there. It's harder to make out the features of the ghosts, and Viggo can easily imagine that his is staring at Orli's. He wouldn't blame it.

"He's--small, and he has a round face with a pointed chin. Black hair. A goatee, and brown eyes, and a little nose. His hands are tiny. He's quiet at first, but I think that's because he was sad. Then when he started talking it was different. He's--sort of wacky. Different. Making all these bizarre jokes. Sarcastic. But still, he reminded me of you a little." He has to turn to look at Viggo when he says this, of course, and gaze at him narrowly. Viggo tries to endure the look with equanimity.

Viggo raises his eyebrow. "Like me? I know I'm a master of sarcasm--"

Orli laughs shortly. "That's not why, though. It was... something else. The look on his face, maybe. The way he thought before he said something."

Viggo nods.

"His name was Chris. And Justin, who looks like me, is his best friend, and he's younger than him, but he's been in love with him forever. He said he's always felt guilty about that because before Justin was always too young, but now he's twenty-one, and it's just--you know. Their friendship, and stuff. And it just keeps getting worse, he said, and he can't stop thinking about Justin until it was tearing him up. He looked pretty bad. It took him a long time to tell me all of this and it took forever to figure it out because he kept getting out of order. But by the end of this whole thing he was... really broken up. We kept talking a while." A glance at Viggo that freezes him, though he wasn't moving. "I had a few things to tell him too. So...

"We went to a hotel," Orli says, looking down and rubbing his hands over his face.

This doesn't quite seem to make sense with the story, but Viggo can see it. That doesn't mean he likes it, though he really already knew it. He has to open his eyes. He doesn't remember closing them. Orli is looking at him. "Viggo?"

"Yes?" He knew, he keeps telling himself, he knew that already, and Orli is telling him, for whatever reason, but he can imagine trust or.... It seems unfair, somehow, no matter what.

Orli says, "I thought it might help him. About Justin. Somehow. We both sort of--needed--we thought. I don't think it turned out like we meant. It was really hot, but it was too hard to get into it; neither one of us was really there, and. Chris kept crying. I wasn't too happy either. So in the end it didn't help him, even though he thanked me. Except, I tried to get him to talk to Justin. He wouldn't say anything back about it but I hope he'll keep thinking about it and maybe eventually he will. And I." This can't be the end of a sentence, but after he clears his throat Orli doesn't say anything else.

Viggo turns to look at him quizzically. It feels like he is moving in slow motion and his fingertips are tingling strangely. It seems hard to believe. But what Orli has said has raised an exultant sense in him of something. He can't speak. He can't believe, but he does, or perhaps he doesn't.

"I," Orli says to the wall. "And I decided to talk to you. Chris thought I should, and he said he thought--from--well. But I... I'vebeeninlovewithyouforalongtime." And the only sound is Orli's breathing and the beating of Viggo's heart.

There's the light from overhead, too dim, washing dull artificial white on Orli's beautiful skin. Orli's eyes are closed and his mouth is open, just a little. And part of Viggo wonders if he's dreaming as his fingertips settle along the edge of Orli's face and feather over his cheek and his mouth. At his touch Orli lets out a shaky sigh and his lips tremble. Viggo thinks he was going to say "please." No sound comes out, but he turns his face helplessly towards Viggo. His eyelashes flutter--he squeezes his eyelids shut, then relaxes them again.

Viggo says, "I'm sorry." He almost doesn't recognize his voice. "But I think I need you to say that again--"

"I've been" Orli swallows "in love with you for a long time." He can't say it without hesitating, and his voice is still weak, compared to normal. But Viggo can't believe the inside-out color of his veins, like electricity running the wrong way through him, bringing him to life right when he was supposed to be the most tired. It feels like a drink of water after far, far too long. He thinks he would be dizzy if he tried to get up, but he doesn't. His fingers have stolen down around the line of Orli's jaw, cupping its edge in his palm, and now they trace the lower edge of his lip. The pad of his thumb is rough against the papery skin of Orli's eyelid and doesn't slide smoothly over it. When he stops, pushing his fingers through the short bristles of Orli's dark hair, those eyes slowly open.

And Viggo can't stop smiling at him. A deep breath and another and magnetism swirls him closer, but he knows he has to stop long enough to "I think I've never felt quite this unreally happy before" and his mouth touches just the curve of Orli's cheek but he can't savor it at all because he slips insensate, chin tilting aggressively, closer closer to a kiss and their lips fit perfectly.

"Viggo--?" comes an uncertain whisper against his mouth, and when Orli's lips part, he wants nothing more than to dive into the dream-kiss.

But he understands the question. How silly that he could still doubt, but Viggo knows, from the inside, the feeling. "Me too," he says, "I'm in love with you too." And then Orli gives himself up whole-heartedly, his neck going supple and limp, and he bends deliciously back into the couch to let Viggo sprawl over him. Orli's lips open easily under his, inviting the deep thrust of his tongue into hot sweet depth. He's aroused all at once and near-blind with relief. The joy is too great to experience yet, and as for serious thought--no, not now.

It doesn't take long for Orli to spread his thighs suggestively apart. Viggo settles into the cradle of his hips and their erections press together; Orli's hands come up into his hair and they keep kissing long and deep, and then short and sweet, and then shallow and carefully cautious.

But he can't get enough anyway. There are so many times he's wanted this that he can't count them, and not one time did he give in so far as to imagine this, the tiny little noises Orli makes that he catches in his mouth, the darting movements of Orli's tongue when he's excited. His thumbs never quite still, stroking the sides of Viggo's face while they don't stop kissing. Viggo thinks he must be kissing Orli too hard; he can't stop it; it's run away with him, a whirlwind of emotion turning into something that scalds him like icy sweat and abandoned shivers. If he bites too hard--he thinks he can taste blood and he thinks he did it--Orli doesn't object, though, just moans, and his arms come down and wrap around Viggo's back and he arches up, their bodies pressed gloriously together even through the layers of sweater and shirt and jeans.

"God" says Orli, and "I want" and "now."

"Yes," Viggo says, "yes--" and Orli's hands are fumbling up under his shirt, too cold and shockingly real on his back. "But not too fast," he gasps. They're not kissing anymore.

That is wrong, so he drops his face again and smiles at the dreamy daze of Orli's bottomless eyes before he coaxes his mouth open with the tip of his tongue. And kisses him again. He's content to not move for a long time if only Orli won't pull back. It might be dangerous--this is funny--if they stop breathing because they won't stop kissing, and maybe that's why he is lightheaded but he thinks it is just Orli.

By the time they get up, neither of them is too confident of their feet and Viggo has to wrap his hands around Orli's waist to steady him (only maybe he really wants to do that, of course). Orli leans forward to kiss him again briefly, with the result that when they start walking Viggo backs into a table. It hurts, so he glances down to see where he's going. They make it into the hall and now Orli is going backwards and Viggo can see. It would be easier to just carry Orli, but then he doesn't think they could keep kissing. And Viggo doesn't know that he could stop.

Orli pauses and this makes Viggo stumble. His arms tighten instinctively and they're pressed together all up and down. It takes his breath away for a moment, so he can't do anything, walk or move or think. Orli smiles at him and says "God you're so fucking gorgeous." Viggo has heard this before, of course. From Orli it makes him whimper and kiss him again, looking for a way to make the perfection alright so it won't hurt so much. The edges of it--

By the time they make it to the bed Viggo can hardly remember most of the trip across the room, which has been taken up with the emphatic pulsing pleasure of another kiss. He can't get enough of Orli's kisses, searching, gentle, demanding. It's barely real to him, the kind of sex you you dream about and wake up unable to remember except one thing like black eyes in the darkness or the imprint of hands around your arms like bracelets. Beauty can't begin to describe. And he keeps shaking with shivers that Orli soothes away before they begin.

Relief opens his mouth to let the fire pour down through him. It cauterizes wounds and tears open others he didn't know he had--how it had hurt to see Orli smoking alone outside, obviously in pain, or his smile when it was directed at someone else, which it often was. Sword-sparring, till his muscles were exhausted and he quivered with it, but his blood raced with adrenaline and the unspeakable urges to throw his partner to the ground, tangling the long blond wig with leaves and twigs.

Restraint has defined him for so long. Viggo doesn't want to learn any more about it.

"How can you be so." Viggo says. There is no acceptable ending for this sentence, but Orli's shape touches him, naked, all over, radiant.

Orli just laughs. "How can you," he retorts in a husky whisper and pulls Viggo's face back down till his hair cloaks both their faces and they get lost in the kiss.

Feeling that you are selfish is one of the worst feelings in the world. Justin tries not to feel it. He hates it. He can't help knowing that he really is, though. Impossible to believe for quite some time that Chris isn't there when he wakes up around noon, though really, it's easy to see how Chris could be pissed after the way he dragged him around yesterday. Not to mention getting him up, which he knows Chris hates. Chris is pretty fair, but he will never be convinced that Justin waking him up is the same as him waking Justin up. Maybe it's not. Chris is older and more responsible, right?

Chris comes back pale and tired, with his hair looking as if he's just rolled out of bed. His mouth is tight. When Justin looks at him again he knows it's because he has just rolled out of bed.

There's a lingering liquidity to his movements, and he seems so tired. And he rubs the bridge of his nose, avoiding Justin's eyes, and steps around him to get to his own room, and reaches behind him to touch the small of his back. Justin knows. Chris has gotten laid. With a few more minutes to watch him, Justin would be able to tell whether it was good and whether he was the top or the bottom, but Chris has mostly closed his door and Justin is just staring at it.

He's been awake, what, four hours? No--five. He doesn't need to deal with this.

London. What the fuck?

British girls, with their sparkly makeup and their long jackets, and British boys with their jeans and shoes--Justin almost snarls. Goddammit, who?

Chris isn't his, but Justin is the closest to owning him that anyone is.

He hears the sound of the shower, a rushing patter that masks all other noise. There is no one else in the hall, because Lance and Joey looked at his face and melted back into their rooms. Of course they know. Chris might be the only one who doesn't. Justin's too tired, and the light overhead--tastefully muted British hotel light--hurts his eyes.

Slipping into Chris's room is easy, and the bathroom door's closed, so it's not possible Chris heard. He closes the door behind him and leans on it, watching the door. What happened, and why did Chris look like that--used up? So tired, so hurt. Justin feels that way sometimes, but he never lets it show. No matter what, he can always smile. But now he can't stop thinking about Chris. He looks so vulnerable with his shoulders slumping in his jacket, the cuffs falling down, mostly covering his pretty little hands. His head bent, his straight nose in profile, the way just the tip of it turns up (Justin loves that). His eyes behind his sunglasses weren't all the way open. Justin aches for him. He just wants to sneak up behind him and wrap himself all the way around Chris until he can't be tired at all anymore. If only Chris wanted him to.

When the bathroom door opens, Justin is still waiting there. He hasn't moved. His arms are crossed over his chest, and he's afraid he's started to get a little angry. He's not letting any expression onto his face, but Chris can probably tell.

Stops, in the door, steam wreathing out behind him haloing his hair shining dark wet, his pink cheeks and his perfect white neck above the blue t-shirt. He stares at Justin. Justin stares back.

"It's a conspiracy," Chris finally says.

Justin opens his mouth.

Chris speaks again before he can say anything. "Let me guess: you want to talk." He makes the word sound like it tastes bitter.

Justin doesn't really know if he wants to talk. He doesn't know what to say. So he says nastily, "How was your day?"

Chris's eyes glitter dangerously. "Fucking horrible," he says, "are you happy?"

Happier, maybe, but. Justin says softly, "No."

Chris walks past him into the room and sits down on the bed facing away from him. His back is straight and stiff, but he looks so tired Justin can't stand it. He walks up behind him silently and sits next to him. "I don't know," Chris says. "In theory, no matter how stupid you are, you can always get stupider. It may be that I'm about to prove that's true. Or maybe I'm about to hit rock bottom."

"Maybe you already have," Justin jokes.

Predictably, this makes Chris smile and give a short chuckle. "You don't know what I'm about to do."

No, but he can hope. "So," Justin asks, "how much stupider are you going to get?"

No answer.

"Would it make you feel better if I did something stupid first?"

"Stupidity loves company?"

"I do, so I thought you would," Justin shrugs.

Chris really laughs then. "That's so you." When the laugh has spent itself, though, he suddenly turns his head so Justin can't see his face. His hair is still wet. There is something so eloquent about the movement that Justin can't think anything.

He might make a noise.

All he knows is the resistance melting away as he folds Chris into his arms. This must count as his stupidity for the day, but then again, Chris is allowing himself to be hugged. Justin's tucked Chris's head under his chin, where it fits neatly, and he can feel one of Chris's small hands curled on his back. He scoots closer. When they're sitting so close he can really feel how tired Chris is, but he doesn't know how to erase it.

Justin's right leg is folded awkwardly under him and his ankle is going to go to sleep. He's not about to move as long as he can keep Chris.

"Let go," Chris says dully. Yeah right.

Instead, Justin says reproachfully, "What's wrong?"

Usually, Chris's laughter makes him feel better. Not there. Laughter is the last thing he wants to hear. It can't be quite sane. "Do I talk to you?" Chris muses.

"Yes?"

Chris's face is buried in his shoulder, but he sighs at that. Justin thinks he murmurs, "all right" before he pulls back. No! He would say: stay, and we won't talk. But he doesn't.

Chris looks at him seriously from a far-too-wide foot and a half away. His hands curl up tense. "Look," he says, "I'm never going to get over this, and it's getting to the point where it's hard to imagine it getting worse. I think it's because I'm insane, though. Or the stupidity thing. Whatever. Anyway, I--"

Justin interrupts him when he can't stand it anymore. "Anyway you what?"

Apparently it was the right thing to say. It makes Chris scowl at him, evidently forgetting some of whatever his shit was in a flash of irritation. Then he says rather angrily, "I love you, alright?" Of course. And? "Forever--I've been in love with you forever. And I know it really can get worse, but it's so--we just have to live with it. You're used to people being in love with you, right? Usually those people aren't your best friend, and they're also usually not thirty. Oh, God, what am I doing?"

Chris makes everything considerably more complicated then by covering his face in his hands, and Justin, lunging forward across the space between them like his stomach is turning inside out, can't just kiss him endlessly into oblivion like he wants to, but has to catch Chris's little hands and pry them out of the way first. Then, "Chris," he whispers, and smiles and has to stop smiling so he can kiss properly.

Trying to get away is useless, for Chris. Justin thinks he isn't trying very hard anyway, and Justin's got both of Chris's hands in one of his and his other hand on Chris's neck and in his hair at the back of his head, and his hair is still wet. Wet and black. He tastes like--.

Fear. Fear and tears and something stale--cigarettes, and sex, a taste that Justin's going to make him entirely forget forever. Chris doesn't smoke.

"Shhh," Justin says, "sh, Chris." Chris's lips are trembling open under his mouth hot and open red so soft, wet too. "I love you." Oops. Is Justin crying?

Chris smiles against his mouth and runs his hands around Justin's waist under his shirt, and in a blurry tangle, they manage to get out of their shirts and fall back on Chris's bed, which has been made by Housekeeping. Justin fumbles impatiently with Chris's boxers, but he finally gets them off, and Chris seems to have given up on his jeans, so he has to take them off too. Then they're lying together, touching so Justin gasps breathless for shallow hot air. They could touch more. And then Chris pulls the blanket over them.

It's so fast--but they've been waiting for so long.

"Oh God," Chris says again, thickly, his hands finding the curves of Justin's ass, "so fucking sweet."

Justin kisses him firmly. Don't talk, that means. Chris doesn't.

There's moonlight coming in the window on his closed eyelids, and it takes a minute for Orli to adjust to reality. Glowing green in the darkness, there are Piewacket's eyes from the open door. The cat just sits there, watching him curiously. Why?

--Oh. There is--an arm on his chest, a leg draped over one of his. Warm breath on his shoulder. Orli shivers with a smile and turns his head. His lips collide with the top of Viggo's head and he buries his face in the soft dark hair.

A kiss and another.

Viggo smells so good.

He wants to say "I love you," but it's so solemn in the middle of the night, he doesn't want to spoil it with speech. He just smiles again, in Viggo's hair, and presses another kiss in the soft strands, and Viggo's arm tightens briefly around his chest. Orli sighs, and moves his hand while his eyes drift shut. He finds Viggo's hand in the darkness and their fingers twine together naturally.

It doesn't seem possible Chris would have missed anything after almost four years of fantasizing about Justin. How often did he touch himself and bite his lip to keep from saying Justin's name?

How often did he wake up, too late to stop himself?

Nonetheless, in all his fantasy life, he neglected, somehow, to conjure the different tastes of Justin's open mouth, and the salty sweat on the back of his neck, and the sharp pungency of his cum.

The tastes all mingle together in his mouth now, and the bitterness of cigarette smoke from kissing Orli's almost all chased away, he thinks. Not to speak of the other bitterness.

When he comes, pushing deep, beyond concern for hurting Justin, he bites at the golden curve between his neck and his shoulder. Justin moans encouragement and pushes back up against him, even though he's already come and the last spasms of pleasure have faded.

"OK?" Chris says, kissing the short dark hair on the back of Justin's head. When he and Orli were lying spent in the bed after, this afternoon, he had kissed the back of Orli's head, closed his eyes and felt the prickle of the short hair and tried to imagine--.

Justin just turns his head, chasing memory, with a lazy smile, and tempts Chris to another kiss.

Orli wakes Viggo up the first time by hiding kisses in his hair, and the second time by tracing the outlines of muscles in his stomach with a delicate finger. He's not going to get any sleep this way.

The third time Viggo wakes up it's much nearer to dawn by the light, and he's curled on his side, wrapped in warmth and tingling sensation that washes up from his feet and back down in uneven ripples. Orli's spooned close behind him, breathing on the side of his neck under his ear, and murmuring a long series of breathy "mmm"s as a wicked hand wraps around Viggo's cock.

Orli is aroused too, his erection nudging against Viggo's ass. Viggo pushes back against him, and before long they're sliding back and forth in a dreamy fever of bliss, thrusting, rocking together, with Orli's hand pumping him in time. Viggo's mouth is all the way open, panting breathlessly.

The kind of moment that stretches unbroken into forever, bottomless for memory, always just as real as now, and they don't even know how long it takes before they're crying and gasping with their release. Viggo thinks he says "Orli," but he can't be sure. He knows Orli says "Viggo" and some other things.

Almost too tired for sleep, they're not too tired to turn around and curl close together, hot skin on slick sticky hot skin and Orli's elegant hands on his back under the blanket, mouth on his neck and he can't stop raining kisses on his perfect pale face. Let them stay here all day like this, and let it not be any more dawn than this silvery light.

The perfection.

If Justin had to give up everything he knows and everything he believes, he could, if he still had this.

Chris kisses him like he's been waiting to for years, and he has, he has.

He wraps his arms around Chris's slender ribs, thinking he could probably crack them. Chris's skin is so silky and soft, it feels fragile, like the calluses on his fingers might tear it. He smiles against Chris's neck and drops a kiss, another, oh the taste salt sweat sweet. Maybe Chris only tastes like this right after a shower? Or maybe always. He has forever to find out.

Justin kisses Chris back. "Mm," Chris mumbles against his mouth, and something else Justin can't understand, but Chris obviously thinks he'll be able to. Justin laughs, because that's so Chris. Chris doesn't seem to register the laugh.

Again.

They kiss again.

End