The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (2/5)
Title: The Greatest Man That Ever Lived
Pairing(s): Viggo/Orlando
Genre(s): Romance, drama
Length: 4379 words (+20 000 in total)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: The ever-changing love between two men throughout the years, as they grow together in both age and emotional maturity.
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Chapter 2
“No.”
“Orlando.”
“No!”
“Orli, you have to get up.”
“But I don’t wanna go. Please, Vig, can’t I stay? Pretty please?”
Viggo sighed, sinking into the bed beside the small lump beneath bedcovers. “I also wish you could stay,” he replied sincerely, stroking the top of the boy’s head, sighing as the dark brown curls tickled the insides of his fingers. “But this is for your own good. Besides, it’s your very first day of school. You should be excited to set foot out of the house all by yourself for once.”
“I don’t like school,” Orlando pouted. “Billy told me that the bigger kids give wedgies to the new students! I don’t like wedgies!”
The caretaker stifled a laugh. “Billy doesn’t know shit.” Viggo had long given up on cleaning his foul mouth in front of the children. He figured that there was no point in pretending to be sinless. “Now get up and get dressed. You’re going to be late if you keep dragging on like this. Come on, on your feet.”
Orlando harrumphed but obediently did as he was told, throwing the dark blue bedcovers aside before groggily trudging to the bathroom to brush his teeth. Viggo chuckled to himself as he busied himself with making the boy’s bed and choosing Orli’s school clothes. The seven-year-old, no matter how hard-headed he attempted to be to others, was docile as wet clay when it came to Viggo. He did just about anything to please his beloved warden whom he obviously adored more than life itself, following him around the mansion like a second shadow whenever he could.
In other words, nothing changed all too much during those beautiful seven years of little Orli’s life. Other than the fact that he was finally potty-trained and grew out of the habit of eating long-legged spiders, he was still pampered by both his career-focused mother and Viggo, he still smiled for at least ninety-five percent of the day, and he was still loved by everybody he met. The boy was handsome, that was for sure. Baby fat still clung to his cheeks, granting him an adorable boyish look, and his thin layer of hair grew out to become a lush tuft of curls that framed his face. His dark brown eyes always had some mischief in them despite the innocence found everywhere else. At the age of seven, he stood at a meter and a half, no longer a baby but a young boy. Once he had finally learned to speak in full sentences, he became a fast talker and made an interesting conversationalist with his naive bluntness and innocently snide remarks. Viggo loved listening to the boy talk about pirates, for instance, because Orli thought that anybody wearing an eye patch automatically became one; the servant did not bother to correct him. Orli was also known for his gullibility. Dom and Billy (and less often Samantha) loved feeding him with ludicrous information, usually frightening for a kid his age, and Orli believed them every single time. The only time he was immune to their theories was this one time when he almost forced himself to stay awake the whole night because Dom told him that for every dream he had, he took away five years of his whole life. He decided against it in the end, however, when he weighed the options and realized that dreaming about Viggo was most certainly worth taking away even more than five years of life.
When Orli emerged from the bathroom and reentered his room, he was wrestled onto the bed with tickles, and soon enough both he and Viggo were red with laughter and grinning from ear to ear. His arms started to become tired, so Viggo pushed the boy deeper into the mattress by his shoulders to assert his masculine power, grinning devilishly as Orlando thrashed below him. With a playfully competitive growl, the younger boy pushed his large hands away and lunged at Viggo and switched their positions so that he was practically sitting on Viggo’s chest. The older man feigned surrender, lifting his hands above his head as Orli smiled smugly above him, revealing his missing front tooth.
“Alright, enough fooling around,” Viggo lifted his ward off his stomach and stood up, ignoring the indignant you started it! in the background. “Change, eat your breakfast, and I’ll convince the driver to let me drive you to school.”
“Okay,” the boy chirped, getting right onto it while Viggo exited the room to pack his lunch and sort out his textbooks. He sighed heavily as he neatly zipped up the boy’s backpack and swung it over his shoulder; he missed Orli already. Already being so used to having that constant companion around, he could not fathom knowing that in a few minutes, the routine would be no more during the weekdays. Quickly he informed Sir McKellan that he would be the one driving Orlando to school just for the day, sir, and quickly grabbed a coat and slipped on his shoes just as little Orli came bouncing down the stairs and into his outstretched arms.
“Whoa, slow down there!” Viggo laughed, ruffling the boy’s hair.
“Am I late?” he asked innocently, eyes twinkling.
Viggo made a huge show of checking his watch and then clicked his tongue. “You won’t be if we walk out the door right this instant. Come along.” He helped Orli tie his sneakers and together they walked out of the house to the grey BMW parked nearby. Just this once, he let the boy sit in the front seat, which delighted him to no end.
“Viggo, what is school like?” Orli pondered aloud.
“School is a place where children from different places meet each other and learn things together.”
“What kinds of things?”
“Well,” Viggo started off, sighing as he recalled his own schooldays of endless bruises and ongoing corruptions. Not many of his friends made it through high school not to mention university, some because of drugs, some due to poor grades or laziness, and still others because they were adamantly against abortion. “You learn lots of things. Math, science, languages, those kinds of stuff,” he answered eventually.
“Oh,” Orlando’s mouth made a perfect capital O shape. “Then, are the people there nice? Will they give me wedgies like Billy said?”
Viggo laughed. “Orli, I already told you: Billy doesn’t know shit. You won’t get wedgies just as long as you are nice to everybody and everyone likes you.” He may have been biased, but Viggo had no doubt that the seven-year-old would have no trouble making anybody adore him. “Just be yourself and everybody would want to be friends with you.”
“Really?” the little face immediately brightened.
“Sure of it, buddy. Sure of it.”
“Okay. Can I promise you something, Viggo?” Orlando looked up at him with those beautiful expressive eyes, only continuing with his train of thought when the young driver nodded. “Out of all the friends that I ever have or ever meet, I promise that you will always be my best friend.”
Those were innocent words, no doubt, words that should be thrown to the side and overlooked as soon as possible because really, what could a seven-year-old know about these kinds of relationships? Viggo knew that everything was constantly in flux, and in life the word always rarely existed. However, those sincere words-Orlando’s promise-made him fraught with indescribable emotion and hold the steering wheel just a bit tighter, unable to form words in his presently unresponsive mouth.
“We’re here,” Viggo uttered out eventually when he parked in front of the school. “Do you want me to go in with you? Just to show you where your classroom is?”
Orlando nodded eagerly, but his smile lacked enthusiasm. He clambered out of the car and pushed the door shut. He ran to Viggo’s side and pressed his head into the man’s outer thigh as they walked towards the school entrance. Viggo noticed the mixture of fear and curiosity on his ward’s face, and gently stroked the child’s face with the pad of his thumb. They walked briskly through the hallways, Orlando almost trotting to keep up with the speed of his guardian’s long legs, until an open classroom door came into view. A little girl’s scream was heard from inside, making Viggo laugh while Orlando seemed to be petrified inside and out. The two entered the classroom and Viggo made his way up to a stocky bearded man with a paper crown on his head. “Excuse me, are you Peter Jackson?”
“The one and only,” the man replied, a toothy grin on his face. “And you are?”
“My name is Viggo and this here is Orlando, one of your students. Orli, meet Mr. Jackson, your teacher,” Viggo softly told the boy, but the little one only buried his head into the former’s hip, refusing to meet the stranger’s eye. “Sorry about that, he’s a bit shy.”
“No problem at all,” Mr. Jackson waved the apology off with a flick of his hand. “We have the whole year to get acquainted. Now, Orlando, do you like coloring?”
The boy nodded, curiosity getting the best of him as he allowed one of his eyes peek out from behind Viggo’s sleeve.
“We have a coloring session over there,” the teacher pointed to the round table where a dozen or so children were laughing together as they held crayons in their fists. “Do you want to join in?”
Orlando bit his lip in uncertainty and looked up at Viggo. “Will you be back?”
Viggo smiled gently. “Once school is done, I’ll be waiting for you outside.”
“Really?” he asked with a childish hope in his eyes.
“Definitely.”
One could literally see the relief wash over the little boy as he finally summoned enough of his seven-year-old courage to let go of Viggo and approach the enticingly lively coloring table, where he immediately grabbed a red crayon and a piece of white construction paper. Before long he started talking animatedly to a little girl with long black hair. “Please take care of him,” Viggo almost pleaded to the teacher as he watched Orlando stick his pink tongue out from the corner of his mouth in concentration while the girl beside him chattered on. “He has never been in a school environment before.”
“He’ll be in fine hands here. Your son is a lovely boy.”
“Oh, he’s not my son; I’m his caretaker,” Viggo blushed. But caretaker or not, when he arrived at the school entrance a good ten minutes in advance just in case school was let out early, the first person out the door was Orlando, who practically threw himself at Viggo the moment he saw him, limbs relaxing the moment he was in his arms. At first the older man was worried out of his mind, believing Orli hurt either physically or emotionally, but then when he started to bombard the boy with concerned questions, Orli only smiled knowingly.
“I love school,” he said. “But I also hate it because I cannot be with you.”
Viggo kneeled down to Orlando’s height and gathered the little boy into his arms, pressing him against his chest. “Don’t say that,” he whispered fondly, stroking the top of Orli’s head in the same manner as when he was still a baby. Picking him up, Viggo placed him into the front seat of the car and drove him home. “How was your day?”
“It was cool!” Orlando brightened, practically bouncing in the car seat. “There is this really nice girl named Liv. She’s really good at drawing-the best in the class! She is really good at soccer, too, and some of the boys cannot run as fast as she does! She’s the only girl who is not afraid of the ball. She’s really nice to me and told me that I am her official best friend. Mr. Jackson is really nice, too, he has so many cool toys and cool games to play! They were so much fun and we also-”
The man behind the steering wheel smiled contently as he half-listened to Orlando prattle happily about the space toys that Mr. Jackson made or the size of the slide in the playground. The boy didn’t stop chattering even when they pulled into the parking lot, and his excitement continued to flourish as he ran around the whole house to tell anybody who would listen about how great school was. Dom, Billy, and Samantha arrived from school an hour or so later, and the four shared their stories in much enthusiasm, as typical from boys during their liveliest years. Sean and Viggo caught bits of their childish conversation and almost burst out laughing during Billy’s retelling of running a particularly mean teacher into a tree (not that it meant that they encouraged such conduct, of course).
After dinner and after the kids were sent to their respective rooms, Sean offered to do the dishes and clean up, which gave Viggo a very much needed extra hour of sleep. Peeling off his socks and pulling the shirt over his head, he theatrically yawned and fell backwards onto the bed, not even bothering to pull up the covers.
“Viggo?”
His eyelids shot open and he sat up abruptly. “Orli, everything alright?”
Orlando nodded sheepishly as he stood at the doorway in his pajamas. “Can I sleep with you tonight?”
Viggo knitted his eyebrows together. The little boy had never had any problem sleeping in his own room before. At first it was evident that he was reluctant to move into a room by himself, but until now he had never even hinted at a complaint about it. “Bad dream?” he asked.
The child shook his head. “I just want to sleep here. Please?”
It should not have been too hard to send the boy off. Just a few gentle words of pacification and several pats on the head and Orlando would have tiptoed back to his room without any trouble. Nonetheless, the words fell off the cliff that was Viggo’s tongue, and instead he just pulled up the bed covers and motioned little Orli over. The boy’s eyes lit up as he ran towards the edge of the bed and clambered on, making himself comfortable pressed up close against Viggo’s bare chest. The older man sighed and draped his arms around the boy’s thin frame, soft brown curls tickling the bottom of his chin as he held him close, protectively, tight but not tight enough to cut off blood circulation. Orlando was fast asleep within a few minutes, Viggo within a few hours. They woke up in the exact same position, Viggo’s strong arms still encircling the little boy as if they were a fence to ward off all harm.
The first thing Orlando said to him after his eyes adjusted to the sunlight was: “Viggo, what does it mean to have a crush on somebody?”
Viggo almost choked on his saliva with laughter. “Why do you ask?”
Orli blinked, confused at his guardian’s reaction. “Well, I told Dom and Billy about my friends, and Dom says that Liv has a crush on me. I don’t know what that means.”
“Well, that means that she really likes you,” the caretaker explained, a wry smile on his face.
Orli wrinkled his nose in puzzlement. “Does that mean that I have a crush on Liv as well? I really like Liv because she’s one of my friends.”
“If you like her enough, you may very well have a crush on her.”
“Oh. So does that also mean that I have a crush on you?”
Viggo really choked on his saliva again, but this time but not from laughter. “Why do you say that?”
“Liv is cool and I like her a lot, but I like you better.”
The older man smiled discreetly. “Orli, I think you are missing the point.”
“I don’t think I am,” the boy insisted, eyes signifying the epitome of earnest.
Viggo heaved a sigh and pushed the covers away from both of them, making Orli squeak from the sudden wash of cold air. “Hurry up and change. You have school.” When met with gentle yet insistent resistance, he ended up driving the boy to school again as well as promised to be right in front of the school to pick him up. Sir McKellan had a feeling that his job as driver was going to be postponed for quite a while.
“Quite a while” ended up to be a little more than three years, and probably the only reason why it ended was Exene.
Viggo met her at a bar while he was on break, half-heartedly screaming into the microphone with her mop of streaked black hair. She was not exactly beautiful in conventional standards, but what she lacked in beauty, she made up with charisma and charm. Exene was a guest punk performer that day as well as a friend of a friend (Sean probably knew her brother). She ended her shift and took a seat beside Viggo, bitching about how meager her paycheck was. Viggo had laughed openly at one of her wittily snide remarks, and from there, comfortable conversation emerged. They exchanged numbers and went on their first date the next day, during which they spent mostly talking and laughing like close friends. He drove her around town and waited with her in front of the school five minutes before the bell rang. As per usual, Orlando was out in a flash, now a tall lanky eleven-year-old boy with a boyish face and lean limbs clad in simple gym shorts and oversized t-shirt. He crashed into Viggo, the top of his head just barely reaching past his caretaker’s shoulder.
“I made the soccer team!” he announced ecstatically. “Front offense!”
“Like you said you would,” Viggo rolled his eyes, ruffling the preteen’s head. Then he turned his head towards the lady beside him. “Orlando, meet Christine Cervenka, my girlfriend.”
Christine smiled toothily while Orli just stood there, blinking in sheer bewilderment. “Call me Exene. So glad to meet the famous Orlando Bloom that I keep hearing about! Want a piece of advice? Don’t end up like Vig here; he’s the devil from hell.”
“I am not!” Viggo roared impishly as he pinched his girlfriend’s shoulder. “Orli, don’t listen to her, she’s completely crazy.”
They climbed into the car, with Exene taking the front seat and Orlando in the back, and Viggo drove his girlfriend home before heading back to the Bloom mansion. He was in high spirits, that was for sure, and smiled contentedly as he played reruns of Exene’s jokes in his head. The woman had spunk, no doubt about it, and Viggo liked what he saw even if most of it was not physical. He pictured a life with her, a life with children and quiet evenings and picnics and family outings, and almost felt his heart burst with joy at the thought.
A timid Viggo? made him snap out of his dreamland. He looked into the rearview mirror and saw a pair of dark chocolate-brown eyes staring back at him, hesitantly sorrowful. Viggo almost frowned at the sight. In all the three years of driving him around, he had never seen Orlando from that angle before, for the young boy had always occupied the front seat right beside him-where he belonged. “Yes, Orli?”
“Do you love Exene?”
Viggo blushed heatedly but nodded. “I do like her.”
“A-Are you and Exene getting… married?”
The man laughed out loud. “Not at the moment, Orli, but I hope so. One day, when both of us are ready.”
Orlando’s eyes were cast downwards. “When’s that?”
“I don’t really know,” he admitted absentmindedly. “Maybe in several months. Maybe in several years.”
“And then what?”
Viggo shrugged. “I have always wanted a family of my own, with a wife and a kid or two. Start from there, I guess.”
The driver missed the hurt look on Orli’s face. The latter had always thought of Viggo as immediate family, and it was a smack across the cheek to hear that for all this time Viggo did not think the same way. And then there was the addition of Exene, who took up all of Viggo attention that Orlando had no chance to retell his most exciting soccer audition for which he had been preparing for almost three weeks. Knowing that she was going to be a serious part of Viggo’s life was also hurtful. Self-centered as it seemed, all Orlando wanted was to be with his caretaker twenty-four seven and be the one closest to his heart. Orlando had to grudgingly admit, however, that Exene was a woman that would appeal to many men. She had a cheerful personality and a wry sense of humor that broke Orli’s resistance and made him crack a reluctant smile once or twice, and it was almost impossible not to like her. For all he knew, maybe it would not be too bad to have a new Aunt Exene who could give him advice on girls and other female things that he had no clue about (Billy had hinted about those). Then a frightening thought crossed his mind: “Will you move away if that happens? Will you leave?”
“I’ll probably try to get a place of my own, yes, but I won’t leave if I still keep my job.”
Orlando soundlessly breathed out in relief. “That’s good to know.” The rest of the drive was silent, Viggo immersed in elated dreaminess, Orlando buried under dread.
The next day, Viggo, uncharacteristically clueless, decided that including Exene on the drives to and from school could help connect them all even better, much to Orlando's chagrin. The eleven-year-old had to pretend to be his usual smiley self in front of the couple. It was disconcerting in a way. Orli had never needed to pretend in front of Vig before; if anything, he acted the most like himself only when with his caretaker, even more than when with his mother at times. Liv had noticed his unusual glumness, and kept bugging him during lunch break until he spilled the beans.
“I just don't like that Exene woman,” he caved, grumbling as they colored in a drawing together.
“How come? Is she mean and nasty?”
“No, she is really cool and funny. I just think that she is around too much. People need space, you know.”
Liv placed a thin pale finger on her pink lips and frowned. “I don't think that you are telling the whole truth. Elaborate, please?”
Orlando scowled, unable to hide his displease. “She is always hogging Viggo. We used to do everything together, but then she came along and then suddenly I am absolutely invisible. It's just not fair.”
The girl smiled knowingly. “You are jealous.”
“Am not!”
“Are so. Look at you! You are green with envy.” She held up an emerald green colored pencil for good measure. “In a situation like this, I think you have only two choices.”
“And they are?” Orli raised an eyebrow dubitably.
“One, you tell Viggo exactly how you feel, but with no secrets or loopholes, mister. Or two, you start ignoring him the same way he is ignoring you.” Liv tilted her head smugly. “I would go for the first choice if I were you; it's much more straightforward. But if you don't think you can manage that, choose the second.”
Orlando groaned. “Why can't he just stop hanging out with her?”
“Because Exene is his girlfriend and he loves her,” she replied matter-of-factly. “Love can do a lot of things, you know. My mother says that your head goes in the clouds when you fall in love.”
The two looked at each other and started giggling at the image of a person's head detaching from their neck to fly off into the clouds like a stray helium balloon.
That evening, Orlando requested that Sir McKellan be the one driving him, and he was more than crushed to see that Viggo did not look the least bit apologetic the next morning. Instead he was greeted with a distant smile and a distracted pat on the head before the man did his chores and disappeared out the door, coat half off his shoulder. Orlando had wept that night when Viggo failed to return to the mansion, and he slept alone in Viggo's bed, wrapping the covers tight around his thin body as he shivered, cold in every way possible.
Viggo and Exene were married a year later in an grandiose outdoor celebration. Sean was the best man, as expected from the chap who would always be there for his best mate. Little six-year-old Elijah, the youngest son of one of the servants, was the ring bearer who earned himself one too many awww’s as he bashfully walked down the aisle. Dom and Billy, always the clowns, were part of the entertainment crew that had prepared performances that would last well into the night (or in the boys’ case, until their curfew bedtime of ten o’clock). Samantha was one of the prettiest bridesmaids as she smiled behind the altar; she ended up catching the bridal bouquet as Exene tossed it into a crowd of single women. Orlando, feeling forgotten, was a part of the audience of two hundred, fidgeting in his uncomfortable and scratchy tuxedo while his mother sat beside him, sniffling in joy. The wedding had been practically perfect-the wedding march was done without any tripping on Exene's part, the beautifully written vows (by the bridegroom himself) were exchanged articulately, and there were no objections to their union ’til death do them part-but when the priest told Viggo that he may kiss the bride, Orlando had the most unpleasant ache in his stomach and somehow he had the innate feeling that something had gone terribly wrong.
Henry was born a little more than nine months later, and when the news came around, Orlando was not sure if he was supposed to be distraught about the start of Viggo’s “real family” or to be excited to have another little brother. He chose the latter, but the pain in his stomach made him believe otherwise.
Chapter 3
Pairing(s): Viggo/Orlando
Genre(s): Romance, drama
Length: 4379 words (+20 000 in total)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: The ever-changing love between two men throughout the years, as they grow together in both age and emotional maturity.
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Chapter 2
“No.”
“Orlando.”
“No!”
“Orli, you have to get up.”
“But I don’t wanna go. Please, Vig, can’t I stay? Pretty please?”
Viggo sighed, sinking into the bed beside the small lump beneath bedcovers. “I also wish you could stay,” he replied sincerely, stroking the top of the boy’s head, sighing as the dark brown curls tickled the insides of his fingers. “But this is for your own good. Besides, it’s your very first day of school. You should be excited to set foot out of the house all by yourself for once.”
“I don’t like school,” Orlando pouted. “Billy told me that the bigger kids give wedgies to the new students! I don’t like wedgies!”
The caretaker stifled a laugh. “Billy doesn’t know shit.” Viggo had long given up on cleaning his foul mouth in front of the children. He figured that there was no point in pretending to be sinless. “Now get up and get dressed. You’re going to be late if you keep dragging on like this. Come on, on your feet.”
Orlando harrumphed but obediently did as he was told, throwing the dark blue bedcovers aside before groggily trudging to the bathroom to brush his teeth. Viggo chuckled to himself as he busied himself with making the boy’s bed and choosing Orli’s school clothes. The seven-year-old, no matter how hard-headed he attempted to be to others, was docile as wet clay when it came to Viggo. He did just about anything to please his beloved warden whom he obviously adored more than life itself, following him around the mansion like a second shadow whenever he could.
In other words, nothing changed all too much during those beautiful seven years of little Orli’s life. Other than the fact that he was finally potty-trained and grew out of the habit of eating long-legged spiders, he was still pampered by both his career-focused mother and Viggo, he still smiled for at least ninety-five percent of the day, and he was still loved by everybody he met. The boy was handsome, that was for sure. Baby fat still clung to his cheeks, granting him an adorable boyish look, and his thin layer of hair grew out to become a lush tuft of curls that framed his face. His dark brown eyes always had some mischief in them despite the innocence found everywhere else. At the age of seven, he stood at a meter and a half, no longer a baby but a young boy. Once he had finally learned to speak in full sentences, he became a fast talker and made an interesting conversationalist with his naive bluntness and innocently snide remarks. Viggo loved listening to the boy talk about pirates, for instance, because Orli thought that anybody wearing an eye patch automatically became one; the servant did not bother to correct him. Orli was also known for his gullibility. Dom and Billy (and less often Samantha) loved feeding him with ludicrous information, usually frightening for a kid his age, and Orli believed them every single time. The only time he was immune to their theories was this one time when he almost forced himself to stay awake the whole night because Dom told him that for every dream he had, he took away five years of his whole life. He decided against it in the end, however, when he weighed the options and realized that dreaming about Viggo was most certainly worth taking away even more than five years of life.
When Orli emerged from the bathroom and reentered his room, he was wrestled onto the bed with tickles, and soon enough both he and Viggo were red with laughter and grinning from ear to ear. His arms started to become tired, so Viggo pushed the boy deeper into the mattress by his shoulders to assert his masculine power, grinning devilishly as Orlando thrashed below him. With a playfully competitive growl, the younger boy pushed his large hands away and lunged at Viggo and switched their positions so that he was practically sitting on Viggo’s chest. The older man feigned surrender, lifting his hands above his head as Orli smiled smugly above him, revealing his missing front tooth.
“Alright, enough fooling around,” Viggo lifted his ward off his stomach and stood up, ignoring the indignant you started it! in the background. “Change, eat your breakfast, and I’ll convince the driver to let me drive you to school.”
“Okay,” the boy chirped, getting right onto it while Viggo exited the room to pack his lunch and sort out his textbooks. He sighed heavily as he neatly zipped up the boy’s backpack and swung it over his shoulder; he missed Orli already. Already being so used to having that constant companion around, he could not fathom knowing that in a few minutes, the routine would be no more during the weekdays. Quickly he informed Sir McKellan that he would be the one driving Orlando to school just for the day, sir, and quickly grabbed a coat and slipped on his shoes just as little Orli came bouncing down the stairs and into his outstretched arms.
“Whoa, slow down there!” Viggo laughed, ruffling the boy’s hair.
“Am I late?” he asked innocently, eyes twinkling.
Viggo made a huge show of checking his watch and then clicked his tongue. “You won’t be if we walk out the door right this instant. Come along.” He helped Orli tie his sneakers and together they walked out of the house to the grey BMW parked nearby. Just this once, he let the boy sit in the front seat, which delighted him to no end.
“Viggo, what is school like?” Orli pondered aloud.
“School is a place where children from different places meet each other and learn things together.”
“What kinds of things?”
“Well,” Viggo started off, sighing as he recalled his own schooldays of endless bruises and ongoing corruptions. Not many of his friends made it through high school not to mention university, some because of drugs, some due to poor grades or laziness, and still others because they were adamantly against abortion. “You learn lots of things. Math, science, languages, those kinds of stuff,” he answered eventually.
“Oh,” Orlando’s mouth made a perfect capital O shape. “Then, are the people there nice? Will they give me wedgies like Billy said?”
Viggo laughed. “Orli, I already told you: Billy doesn’t know shit. You won’t get wedgies just as long as you are nice to everybody and everyone likes you.” He may have been biased, but Viggo had no doubt that the seven-year-old would have no trouble making anybody adore him. “Just be yourself and everybody would want to be friends with you.”
“Really?” the little face immediately brightened.
“Sure of it, buddy. Sure of it.”
“Okay. Can I promise you something, Viggo?” Orlando looked up at him with those beautiful expressive eyes, only continuing with his train of thought when the young driver nodded. “Out of all the friends that I ever have or ever meet, I promise that you will always be my best friend.”
Those were innocent words, no doubt, words that should be thrown to the side and overlooked as soon as possible because really, what could a seven-year-old know about these kinds of relationships? Viggo knew that everything was constantly in flux, and in life the word always rarely existed. However, those sincere words-Orlando’s promise-made him fraught with indescribable emotion and hold the steering wheel just a bit tighter, unable to form words in his presently unresponsive mouth.
“We’re here,” Viggo uttered out eventually when he parked in front of the school. “Do you want me to go in with you? Just to show you where your classroom is?”
Orlando nodded eagerly, but his smile lacked enthusiasm. He clambered out of the car and pushed the door shut. He ran to Viggo’s side and pressed his head into the man’s outer thigh as they walked towards the school entrance. Viggo noticed the mixture of fear and curiosity on his ward’s face, and gently stroked the child’s face with the pad of his thumb. They walked briskly through the hallways, Orlando almost trotting to keep up with the speed of his guardian’s long legs, until an open classroom door came into view. A little girl’s scream was heard from inside, making Viggo laugh while Orlando seemed to be petrified inside and out. The two entered the classroom and Viggo made his way up to a stocky bearded man with a paper crown on his head. “Excuse me, are you Peter Jackson?”
“The one and only,” the man replied, a toothy grin on his face. “And you are?”
“My name is Viggo and this here is Orlando, one of your students. Orli, meet Mr. Jackson, your teacher,” Viggo softly told the boy, but the little one only buried his head into the former’s hip, refusing to meet the stranger’s eye. “Sorry about that, he’s a bit shy.”
“No problem at all,” Mr. Jackson waved the apology off with a flick of his hand. “We have the whole year to get acquainted. Now, Orlando, do you like coloring?”
The boy nodded, curiosity getting the best of him as he allowed one of his eyes peek out from behind Viggo’s sleeve.
“We have a coloring session over there,” the teacher pointed to the round table where a dozen or so children were laughing together as they held crayons in their fists. “Do you want to join in?”
Orlando bit his lip in uncertainty and looked up at Viggo. “Will you be back?”
Viggo smiled gently. “Once school is done, I’ll be waiting for you outside.”
“Really?” he asked with a childish hope in his eyes.
“Definitely.”
One could literally see the relief wash over the little boy as he finally summoned enough of his seven-year-old courage to let go of Viggo and approach the enticingly lively coloring table, where he immediately grabbed a red crayon and a piece of white construction paper. Before long he started talking animatedly to a little girl with long black hair. “Please take care of him,” Viggo almost pleaded to the teacher as he watched Orlando stick his pink tongue out from the corner of his mouth in concentration while the girl beside him chattered on. “He has never been in a school environment before.”
“He’ll be in fine hands here. Your son is a lovely boy.”
“Oh, he’s not my son; I’m his caretaker,” Viggo blushed. But caretaker or not, when he arrived at the school entrance a good ten minutes in advance just in case school was let out early, the first person out the door was Orlando, who practically threw himself at Viggo the moment he saw him, limbs relaxing the moment he was in his arms. At first the older man was worried out of his mind, believing Orli hurt either physically or emotionally, but then when he started to bombard the boy with concerned questions, Orli only smiled knowingly.
“I love school,” he said. “But I also hate it because I cannot be with you.”
Viggo kneeled down to Orlando’s height and gathered the little boy into his arms, pressing him against his chest. “Don’t say that,” he whispered fondly, stroking the top of Orli’s head in the same manner as when he was still a baby. Picking him up, Viggo placed him into the front seat of the car and drove him home. “How was your day?”
“It was cool!” Orlando brightened, practically bouncing in the car seat. “There is this really nice girl named Liv. She’s really good at drawing-the best in the class! She is really good at soccer, too, and some of the boys cannot run as fast as she does! She’s the only girl who is not afraid of the ball. She’s really nice to me and told me that I am her official best friend. Mr. Jackson is really nice, too, he has so many cool toys and cool games to play! They were so much fun and we also-”
The man behind the steering wheel smiled contently as he half-listened to Orlando prattle happily about the space toys that Mr. Jackson made or the size of the slide in the playground. The boy didn’t stop chattering even when they pulled into the parking lot, and his excitement continued to flourish as he ran around the whole house to tell anybody who would listen about how great school was. Dom, Billy, and Samantha arrived from school an hour or so later, and the four shared their stories in much enthusiasm, as typical from boys during their liveliest years. Sean and Viggo caught bits of their childish conversation and almost burst out laughing during Billy’s retelling of running a particularly mean teacher into a tree (not that it meant that they encouraged such conduct, of course).
After dinner and after the kids were sent to their respective rooms, Sean offered to do the dishes and clean up, which gave Viggo a very much needed extra hour of sleep. Peeling off his socks and pulling the shirt over his head, he theatrically yawned and fell backwards onto the bed, not even bothering to pull up the covers.
“Viggo?”
His eyelids shot open and he sat up abruptly. “Orli, everything alright?”
Orlando nodded sheepishly as he stood at the doorway in his pajamas. “Can I sleep with you tonight?”
Viggo knitted his eyebrows together. The little boy had never had any problem sleeping in his own room before. At first it was evident that he was reluctant to move into a room by himself, but until now he had never even hinted at a complaint about it. “Bad dream?” he asked.
The child shook his head. “I just want to sleep here. Please?”
It should not have been too hard to send the boy off. Just a few gentle words of pacification and several pats on the head and Orlando would have tiptoed back to his room without any trouble. Nonetheless, the words fell off the cliff that was Viggo’s tongue, and instead he just pulled up the bed covers and motioned little Orli over. The boy’s eyes lit up as he ran towards the edge of the bed and clambered on, making himself comfortable pressed up close against Viggo’s bare chest. The older man sighed and draped his arms around the boy’s thin frame, soft brown curls tickling the bottom of his chin as he held him close, protectively, tight but not tight enough to cut off blood circulation. Orlando was fast asleep within a few minutes, Viggo within a few hours. They woke up in the exact same position, Viggo’s strong arms still encircling the little boy as if they were a fence to ward off all harm.
The first thing Orlando said to him after his eyes adjusted to the sunlight was: “Viggo, what does it mean to have a crush on somebody?”
Viggo almost choked on his saliva with laughter. “Why do you ask?”
Orli blinked, confused at his guardian’s reaction. “Well, I told Dom and Billy about my friends, and Dom says that Liv has a crush on me. I don’t know what that means.”
“Well, that means that she really likes you,” the caretaker explained, a wry smile on his face.
Orli wrinkled his nose in puzzlement. “Does that mean that I have a crush on Liv as well? I really like Liv because she’s one of my friends.”
“If you like her enough, you may very well have a crush on her.”
“Oh. So does that also mean that I have a crush on you?”
Viggo really choked on his saliva again, but this time but not from laughter. “Why do you say that?”
“Liv is cool and I like her a lot, but I like you better.”
The older man smiled discreetly. “Orli, I think you are missing the point.”
“I don’t think I am,” the boy insisted, eyes signifying the epitome of earnest.
Viggo heaved a sigh and pushed the covers away from both of them, making Orli squeak from the sudden wash of cold air. “Hurry up and change. You have school.” When met with gentle yet insistent resistance, he ended up driving the boy to school again as well as promised to be right in front of the school to pick him up. Sir McKellan had a feeling that his job as driver was going to be postponed for quite a while.
“Quite a while” ended up to be a little more than three years, and probably the only reason why it ended was Exene.
Viggo met her at a bar while he was on break, half-heartedly screaming into the microphone with her mop of streaked black hair. She was not exactly beautiful in conventional standards, but what she lacked in beauty, she made up with charisma and charm. Exene was a guest punk performer that day as well as a friend of a friend (Sean probably knew her brother). She ended her shift and took a seat beside Viggo, bitching about how meager her paycheck was. Viggo had laughed openly at one of her wittily snide remarks, and from there, comfortable conversation emerged. They exchanged numbers and went on their first date the next day, during which they spent mostly talking and laughing like close friends. He drove her around town and waited with her in front of the school five minutes before the bell rang. As per usual, Orlando was out in a flash, now a tall lanky eleven-year-old boy with a boyish face and lean limbs clad in simple gym shorts and oversized t-shirt. He crashed into Viggo, the top of his head just barely reaching past his caretaker’s shoulder.
“I made the soccer team!” he announced ecstatically. “Front offense!”
“Like you said you would,” Viggo rolled his eyes, ruffling the preteen’s head. Then he turned his head towards the lady beside him. “Orlando, meet Christine Cervenka, my girlfriend.”
Christine smiled toothily while Orli just stood there, blinking in sheer bewilderment. “Call me Exene. So glad to meet the famous Orlando Bloom that I keep hearing about! Want a piece of advice? Don’t end up like Vig here; he’s the devil from hell.”
“I am not!” Viggo roared impishly as he pinched his girlfriend’s shoulder. “Orli, don’t listen to her, she’s completely crazy.”
They climbed into the car, with Exene taking the front seat and Orlando in the back, and Viggo drove his girlfriend home before heading back to the Bloom mansion. He was in high spirits, that was for sure, and smiled contentedly as he played reruns of Exene’s jokes in his head. The woman had spunk, no doubt about it, and Viggo liked what he saw even if most of it was not physical. He pictured a life with her, a life with children and quiet evenings and picnics and family outings, and almost felt his heart burst with joy at the thought.
A timid Viggo? made him snap out of his dreamland. He looked into the rearview mirror and saw a pair of dark chocolate-brown eyes staring back at him, hesitantly sorrowful. Viggo almost frowned at the sight. In all the three years of driving him around, he had never seen Orlando from that angle before, for the young boy had always occupied the front seat right beside him-where he belonged. “Yes, Orli?”
“Do you love Exene?”
Viggo blushed heatedly but nodded. “I do like her.”
“A-Are you and Exene getting… married?”
The man laughed out loud. “Not at the moment, Orli, but I hope so. One day, when both of us are ready.”
Orlando’s eyes were cast downwards. “When’s that?”
“I don’t really know,” he admitted absentmindedly. “Maybe in several months. Maybe in several years.”
“And then what?”
Viggo shrugged. “I have always wanted a family of my own, with a wife and a kid or two. Start from there, I guess.”
The driver missed the hurt look on Orli’s face. The latter had always thought of Viggo as immediate family, and it was a smack across the cheek to hear that for all this time Viggo did not think the same way. And then there was the addition of Exene, who took up all of Viggo attention that Orlando had no chance to retell his most exciting soccer audition for which he had been preparing for almost three weeks. Knowing that she was going to be a serious part of Viggo’s life was also hurtful. Self-centered as it seemed, all Orlando wanted was to be with his caretaker twenty-four seven and be the one closest to his heart. Orlando had to grudgingly admit, however, that Exene was a woman that would appeal to many men. She had a cheerful personality and a wry sense of humor that broke Orli’s resistance and made him crack a reluctant smile once or twice, and it was almost impossible not to like her. For all he knew, maybe it would not be too bad to have a new Aunt Exene who could give him advice on girls and other female things that he had no clue about (Billy had hinted about those). Then a frightening thought crossed his mind: “Will you move away if that happens? Will you leave?”
“I’ll probably try to get a place of my own, yes, but I won’t leave if I still keep my job.”
Orlando soundlessly breathed out in relief. “That’s good to know.” The rest of the drive was silent, Viggo immersed in elated dreaminess, Orlando buried under dread.
The next day, Viggo, uncharacteristically clueless, decided that including Exene on the drives to and from school could help connect them all even better, much to Orlando's chagrin. The eleven-year-old had to pretend to be his usual smiley self in front of the couple. It was disconcerting in a way. Orli had never needed to pretend in front of Vig before; if anything, he acted the most like himself only when with his caretaker, even more than when with his mother at times. Liv had noticed his unusual glumness, and kept bugging him during lunch break until he spilled the beans.
“I just don't like that Exene woman,” he caved, grumbling as they colored in a drawing together.
“How come? Is she mean and nasty?”
“No, she is really cool and funny. I just think that she is around too much. People need space, you know.”
Liv placed a thin pale finger on her pink lips and frowned. “I don't think that you are telling the whole truth. Elaborate, please?”
Orlando scowled, unable to hide his displease. “She is always hogging Viggo. We used to do everything together, but then she came along and then suddenly I am absolutely invisible. It's just not fair.”
The girl smiled knowingly. “You are jealous.”
“Am not!”
“Are so. Look at you! You are green with envy.” She held up an emerald green colored pencil for good measure. “In a situation like this, I think you have only two choices.”
“And they are?” Orli raised an eyebrow dubitably.
“One, you tell Viggo exactly how you feel, but with no secrets or loopholes, mister. Or two, you start ignoring him the same way he is ignoring you.” Liv tilted her head smugly. “I would go for the first choice if I were you; it's much more straightforward. But if you don't think you can manage that, choose the second.”
Orlando groaned. “Why can't he just stop hanging out with her?”
“Because Exene is his girlfriend and he loves her,” she replied matter-of-factly. “Love can do a lot of things, you know. My mother says that your head goes in the clouds when you fall in love.”
The two looked at each other and started giggling at the image of a person's head detaching from their neck to fly off into the clouds like a stray helium balloon.
That evening, Orlando requested that Sir McKellan be the one driving him, and he was more than crushed to see that Viggo did not look the least bit apologetic the next morning. Instead he was greeted with a distant smile and a distracted pat on the head before the man did his chores and disappeared out the door, coat half off his shoulder. Orlando had wept that night when Viggo failed to return to the mansion, and he slept alone in Viggo's bed, wrapping the covers tight around his thin body as he shivered, cold in every way possible.
Viggo and Exene were married a year later in an grandiose outdoor celebration. Sean was the best man, as expected from the chap who would always be there for his best mate. Little six-year-old Elijah, the youngest son of one of the servants, was the ring bearer who earned himself one too many awww’s as he bashfully walked down the aisle. Dom and Billy, always the clowns, were part of the entertainment crew that had prepared performances that would last well into the night (or in the boys’ case, until their curfew bedtime of ten o’clock). Samantha was one of the prettiest bridesmaids as she smiled behind the altar; she ended up catching the bridal bouquet as Exene tossed it into a crowd of single women. Orlando, feeling forgotten, was a part of the audience of two hundred, fidgeting in his uncomfortable and scratchy tuxedo while his mother sat beside him, sniffling in joy. The wedding had been practically perfect-the wedding march was done without any tripping on Exene's part, the beautifully written vows (by the bridegroom himself) were exchanged articulately, and there were no objections to their union ’til death do them part-but when the priest told Viggo that he may kiss the bride, Orlando had the most unpleasant ache in his stomach and somehow he had the innate feeling that something had gone terribly wrong.
Henry was born a little more than nine months later, and when the news came around, Orlando was not sure if he was supposed to be distraught about the start of Viggo’s “real family” or to be excited to have another little brother. He chose the latter, but the pain in his stomach made him believe otherwise.
Chapter 3