The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (3/5)
Title: The Greatest Man That Ever Lived
Pairing(s): Viggo/Orlando
Genre(s): Romance, drama
Length: 4438 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 3
Orlando was nineteen when he finally figured out what the relentless ache was. Took him long enough, he figured. Since the wedding, the aches have only increased in power, from a mildly unpleasant churning to a well-aimed punch in the guts, and it was becoming more and more difficult for Orli to spend time with or even be near the man that he adored oh-so-much. Just hearing his voice downstairs could send the teen cringing in pain. The first person who noticed his discomfort was Samantha, always the sweetest and most sensitive person in his life. She had noticed it first during the wedding, but kept quiet with her worries until the time was right, and for that Orli was eternally grateful. After all, Samantha was like that: as his older sister, she just knew what he needed.
She acknowledged her observations at the most perfect moment, when Orlando was the most vulnerable and emotional in his room, lying on his back on his bed with a pair of headphones blasting off at quarter-volume. He was listening to emo songs-songs that he previously discarded as “whiny”-and feeling pretty shitty. Viggo’s presence in the Bloom mansion had decreased steadily throughout the years, and the man had long since given up paying attention to the teen since Henry proved to be as time-consuming as little Orlando had been. The youngest Mortensen followed his father like a shadow, and Orli would have given anything for the days when he was in Henry’s place.
“Orli?” a dirty-blond young woman, now twenty-one, knocked quietly at the door. She was a lovely lady, classy in every way possible, and had a perfect smile and an even more perfect personality.
Orlando sighed and took off the headphones. “Yah, Sam?”
“Want to talk?” she asked, making herself comfortable on her brother’s small bed, the same one he had ever since he was a kid.
He nodded grudgingly, feeling tears well up in his eyes. “It’s just not fair!”
“What’s not fair?” Samantha asked carefully, stroking his back.
“I thought that we were close,” he muttered grimly, his charming smile nowhere to be found on his handsome face. Eight years have agreeably shaped him into a tall and attractive young man with long lean limbs with no trace of baby fat, curly dark brown hair, expressive eyes of the same color, and a carefully sculpted jawbone. He was undoubtedly a beautiful boy, even Dom had to admit that, but in his mellow state right now it was difficult to recognize him at all. “Now he acts like he doesn’t even know me. Is he really too busy to talk to me once in a while? You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if he just doesn’t care about me anymore. He wants his own damn family, the bastard.”
“Are you mad at Dad?” his sister inquired empathetically. “I understand why you would be, but though you don’t know it he loves you. He loves us both; he just wasn’t ready to show it yet. He promised me that he would come back some day. And either way, we have Mom, and she’ll never leave us.”
“What the hell are you blathering about?” Orlando grimaced. “Dad can go to hell for all I care! What gave you the impression that I was talking about Dad?”
“Well, I see you eyeing Henry a lot,” Samantha admitted, shrugging. “He’s a lucky kid.”
Orlando’s face darkened. “‘Blessed’ is more like it. His father is doing a great job raising him.”
“Mr. Mortensen really is an admirable father, isn’t he? He took excellent care of you when you were young, you know; I was always so jealous because my own caretaker was not as nice as him. I mean, he helped you with homework even when it was clear that you were dyslexic. But then you two started spending less and less time together, but I don’t blame him: he has a family to take care of, and those take a tremendous amount of time.” Samantha blinked a few times before the realization hit her. “Oh.”
As a mental picture of the topic he wished anything but to discuss popped up, his stomach felt as if it had been stabbed, and he gritted his teeth in an attempt to assuage the effect of pain. “Don’t say his name.”
Samantha noticed his cringe. “Are you in pain, Orli?”
He nodded, the first tear rolling down his cheek.
Samantha’s worried eyes bored into him. “Where?”
Orlando pressed his knuckles into the crevice between his ribs, several inches directly above his belly button. “Right here. It’s been like that for a long time. Since the-”
“Since the wedding,” Sam finished for him. “I know.”
“Is there something wrong with me?” he asked.
“No!” the young woman answered immediately. “My god no. There is nothing wrong with feeling pain over the impression of the loss of somebody dear to you. I felt the same way when Dad left. I felt betrayed, but also at fault-I thought that I might have done something wrong that might have drove him away somehow.” A sad smile crept onto her pretty face. “But then I realized that, even if I was the reason why he left, it was meant to happen and there was nothing anybody could do about it. And it started to hurt less after time passed because I accepted it. I mean, it would have been different if Dad had stayed, but I was still able to live without him, right? I still have the rest of my family; not everybody is as lucky. But you know what I really regret?”
Orlando turned his tear-stained face towards his sympathetic sister that he sometimes swore came straight from heaven.
“I didn’t get to talk to him before he left,” she said. “I wanted to tell him that I loved him and that although I would never understand why he left, I would be alright without him.”
“And you expect me to do just that? To tell Viggo that yah he has an awesome kid and yah he has a wife to pretty much die for, but that I will be perfectly fine without him?”
“No, I didn’t mean that,” his sister laughed suddenly, a bubbly sound in her pleasant voice. “I just think that you should talk to him. Just a modicum of advice from your big sister that you are, by all means, totally allowed disagreeing with if you so choose.”
Orli cracked a smile and started laughing, his face finally brightening into the sunshiny happiness that he was famous for. “Thank you, Sam. I’ll take your modicum of advice into account.” And with that, he hopped off the bed and scampered out of the room like he used to when he was still a carefree and unburdened child. Sam sighed wistfully, thinking back to the times when she would watch Orlando bound out of his room while they were still in the middle of a game of Twister because he heard Vig’s deep voice downstairs mingled with the crackling of grocery bags. The boy had idolized the man, and Samantha was certain that her brother still did.
Meanwhile, Orlando did not get far down the hallway before Dom and Billy crashed into him, Sir McKellan hot on their heels. “You two monkeys get right back here!” he screeched, making the dynamic duo look at each other and sprint off, arms flailing. Before long, Orlando found himself sprinting right after them, looking back a couple of times to see a fuming butler shouting out old-fashioned profanities. It took all the focus that Orli had to follow the two boys who were used to navigating the mazes of the streets, and he followed Dom and Billy out of the mansion, down two alleyways, and across three busy streets, almost getting run over by a yellow taxi while he was at it. By the time Dom and Billy stopped, the youngest member of the Bloom family was close to collapsing.
The other two were quite the opposite, cackling as they high-fived each other and did their celebration dance. Dom, twenty, had grown quite a bit, though his childish nature was still uniquely prominent, manifesting itself in subtle ways. His hair was dirty blonde (dirty in both color and hygiene) and he still held that mischievous glint in his eyes that he had ever since toddlerhood. Twenty-six-year-old Billy had grown little since his teenage years and stood merely a hair shorter than his surrogate brother. His outer naïveté endured, however, and with his fine reddish hair and young elfish face, he looked a good ten years younger than expected from a grown man approaching his third decade. Throughout the years, the two have only been separated once for a period of three weeks, when Billy had accepted going on a tenth-grade class field trip to Scotland, his homeland, while Dom had stayed home, atypically quiet and docile. Sean had almost had a heart attack when he witnessed that his adopted son, then ten years old, had not broken, injured, mangled, spoiled, or tainted anything for two days in a row, and most of the Bloom servants agreed that life was easier without Billy in the house as Dom’s security blanket. By the time Billy had come home, Dom was practically a hermit who stayed in his room silently playing video games and whatnot when not at the dining table, where he ate wordlessly. It was a totally different Dom, one that was calm and easy to control, but even the servants had to admit that it was getting really creepy to see Dom not doing anything dangerous on a daily basis. Billy returned home on a Friday night, and Sean breathed out a sigh of relief when Dom “accidentally” knocked over a flower vase as he reverted back to his old hyperactive self.
Orlando was still panting hard by the time the two had noticed him.
“Hey, it’s Orli!” Billy cried out in his high tenor voice. “Hey Orli!”
“What are you doing here, baby brother?” Dom walked over, half a head shorter than his baby brother, much to his embarrassment. “I thought we lost you back there!”
The youngest of the three stuck his tongue out, palms pressed above his knees as he bent over to catch his breath. “Nope, but for your information, I almost died following you! What the hell did you do this time?”
Billy grinned. “We put the mixer on full power. Splattered banana cream absolutely everywhere!”
“You should have seen McKellan’s face!” Dom chortled.
“I did,” Orlando quirked an eyebrow. “And let’s just say that he was not impressed in the least.”
“Whatever,” they both replied simultaneously, spinning on their heels as they strutted importantly down the street though they seemed to have no particular direction.
“We have some stuff to take care of-”
“Very important stuff is what it is-“
“You can come along if you’d like but-”
“You won’t be able to keep up since what we do-”
“Is filled with danger and there are very high risks of-”
“Broken bones, sprains, and in the most lethal case, death-”
“But there’s only a one in ten chance for that, so no worries.”
Orlando’s head spun as he followed the conversation from one jester to the other, and watched in confusion as they jumped over a fence and climbed up the side ladder of a shoe factory. “Where the hell are we going?” he asked as he followed suit, shivering once he noticed how high he was above horizontal ground.
Dom grinned mischievously as he made it to the rooftop, helping the other two clamber on. “Orli, dear brother, let Billy and I do you the honor of presenting our exquisite playground!”
Orlando looked around and only saw a vast expense of cement and the occasional white pole and chimney. “Exquisite?”
“Not all that glitters is gold,” Billy chastised in mock seriousness, waving his pointer finger around. “Shall we enlighten the poor boy, Dom?”
“After you,” he replied cheekily, letting his elder take the lead.
“We just discovered this place a month ago,” the shortest explained importantly as he continued in his lively gait, heaving himself over a brick ledge to the taller extension of the shoe factory. “All of the buildings have roofs that are basically around the same height, and they are not that far apart if you really think about it. It’s beautiful once you know it well enough. Come on!” Billy took off, sprinting as fast as his little legs could carry him, and pushed off the edge only to land gracefully on the other side over a narrow alleyway onto the roof of a nuclear power plant. Orlando had gasped in admiration and eagerly went in pursuit of him, mimicking his jumps and laughing as he made a safe land (though it was exponentially less graceful, thrashing limbs and all). And the sprints and jumps over buildings began. Throughout the whole experience of jumping between buildings while fifteen feet in the air, Orlando forgot about every worry in his life, and started to understand how his surrogate brothers could be so carefree all the time. With their adrenaline pumping and their sweat glands working like sled dogs, the three flew over roof ledges, only barely making it over to the other side every time. The closest call was when Dom had carelessly took off a few inches too soon, and the only way he escaped the situation unscathed was grabbing hold of the roof ledge with his chapped fingertips at the nick of time just long enough for Billy and Orlando to haul him up again. “Don’t you ever scare me like that again!” Billy had reprimanded. Dom had only laughed and called him an idiot. There was one jump that was obviously too far for any normal human being to survive, but luckily the dynamic duo had discovered connecting pipes a week prior-old rusty tubes that were grainy to the touch-that they used to cross over. After an hour or so, they came to a standard triangular shaped rooftop of a residential house. As if they had been doing it since birth (which was probably true considering their circumstances), Billy adeptly climbed over like an acrobat while Dom revealed very little trouble as he followed suit. Since it was Orli’s first time, he took it slow and carefully maneuvered his limbs so that his center of equilibrium was retained, holding his breath as he heaved himself over the brick summit, heart racing as he took a peek downwards. Together they slid down the negative slope of the roof and launched themselves over to another house, three pairs of hands reaching for the top edge of the triangular prism as if their lives depended on it. As they poked their heads over the tip, however, Orlando’s eyes widened.
“Get down!” he whispered, pulling the ever-inquisitive Billy down by the scruff of his neck.
In the window of the opposite house was a much older-looking Viggo with a deadly calm expression on his face, restraint only evident in his tense muscles. His scraggly brown hair was messy and frayed, and after putting off a much-needed haircut it reached his shoulders. Muffled shouts and the sound of china breaking were heard as the man stayed perfectly still and inert. Exene stormed past, angry tears pouring down her face. Henry was a silhouette in the window above, arms encircling his knees as he rocked back and forth.
“And that, my friends,” the right side of Dom’s lip perked upwards sarcastically, “is why I will never in my sane life get married.”
A lurch in his stomach made Orlando fell, fingers losing grip like butter and he slid off the roof and out of sight. A muffled thump on the lawn below was heard several painful seconds later. Dom and Billy winced and glanced at each other before letting go themselves, both of them releasing a shrill battle cry as they fell down three stories and landed nimbly on their hands and knees before doing several front shoulder rolls to minimize the impact. Mildly bruised and green from grass stains, they found Orlando knocked out, but luckily with neither physical injuries nor any blood (thank the lord; Billy became ridiculously nauseous whenever any sort of blood was involved). A trip to the doctor’s seemed reasonable enough, however, so Dom threw the nineteen-year-old over his shoulder while Billy trotted in front. In spite of their nervous gaits and subtle twitches, they were convinced that it was nothing too serious at all.
Back in his small but comfortable flat, Viggo stood by the windowsill, trying to tune out all of the wounding rants coming from his wife. It really was his fault this time (leaving a bottle of gin in front of one’s seven-year-old child is never a lenient matter), but he was feeling much too terrible about himself already to even think about apologizing. “What if he had drank that stuff?” Exene shouted, rubbing at her temples. “Have you ever thought of that? For Christ’s sakes, he might have had alcohol poisoning, or maybe he could have gotten a peculiar liver infection! He might have died!”
Though he knew that there was only a slight chance that death would ever happen in those circumstances, Viggo pictured his son, his Henry, dead and inactive, and he turned around abruptly, ignoring his wife’s panicked screams. Guilty beyond measure, he did not bother grabbing a coat before stalking out of the apartment, bent on clearing his mind before even attempting to set things straight.
There was a time when Viggo believed that he would have the most perfect life if he had just found the perfect woman of his life with whom he would have the most perfect child. Though he had Exene and though he had his dear Henry, it was far from the most perfect life that he had dreamed about. Exene was wonderful both as an artist and as a mother, and there was no doubt that she loved Henry as much as if not more than he did, but there was something missing, something important that he did not notice until several years into their affectionate marriage: he did not love her. Well, that is untrue in a way, for he did love her, but it was just not that kind of love. He cared about her and saw her as a person who would be part of the rest of his life, but he did not feel that he lived and breathed through her. He did not feel as if she completed him, and he was sure Exene felt the same way. They quarreled constantly over the smallest and most trivial things at times, but that would have been fine if only they knew for sure if their feelings for each other were genuine. Sometimes he looked into her eyes to find an absolute stranger, and it was absolutely terrifying imagining himself spending his whole life with no idea whom he had married.
Turning a corner, he managed to steer clear of a short dirt-covered redhead and his equally short and equally dirt-covered buddy who oddly had a limp boy swung over his shoulder.
“What’s this, it’s Viggo!” the redhead greeted with a smile on his face.
“It’s Viggo!” his cheerful companion echoed, revealing a familiar pair of eyes. “Long time no see, old man!”
“Sorry but we’re kind of in a rush at the moment-”
“Yah, poor Orli here fell off a roof and busted something-”
“So we have to get our asses over to a doctor to make sure that he’s alright-”
“We would love to stay and chat but-”
“As you can see, we’re sort of busy so-”
“Cheerio!” they both saluted and ran off in the other direction before Viggo had the chance to wrap his head around what just happened. It was only about a few seconds later when it all came together.
“Hey, boys, stop!” he sprinted after them, pleased that his age did not inhibit his natural athleticism.
“Yes?” they answered back simultaneously, already a good few meters ahead.
“I’ll come with you.” And paying no attention to Dom and Billy’s stammers of refusals, Viggo went in pursuit, took the weight off of Dom’s shoulders, and ended up being the only one eligible to check the injured boy into the hospital (insurance cards come in handy, don’t they?). From there, the three idly sat in the waiting room until the doctor came in to announce Orlando’s condition (“Not a serious injury. A cracked rib would only take a few months to heal, and then eventually he’ll be up and running. Pretty good results after falling three stories if you ask me.”) and then they were powerwalking down the hallway to the room three doors from the end on the left, sir. Dom and Billy, both of them intrinsically unable to sit still for more than an hour, were ultimately ushered out of the room by the nurses, leaving Viggo alone with the patient accompanied by the buzzing of overhead fluorescent lights.
That was the first time in almost six years that the two were in the same room together. Since his caretaker’s wedding, eleven-year-old Orlando had found it uncomfortable to be even near the older man, and always found a plausible excuse for his absence no matter what the situation. He refused help with his homework, deciding to figure it out on his own despite his mildly dyslexic condition; he politely declined any outings that Viggo suggested; and whenever he saw his manservant, he turned on his heel and walked in the opposite direction. Unfortunately for their distancing relationship, Viggo hardly noticed the boy’s retreating behavior, too engrossed in his life and responsibility as a “family man” as well as too busy saving up for a place of his own. Two years after Henry’s entry into the world, Viggo had left his full-time job at the Bloom mansion for a part-time one as a waiter at a five-star restaurant. He also took up writing on the side, and continued drawing and painting in his spare time. He found a small but comfortable flat only a few blocks down the street, but no matter how much Orli had convinced himself that it would not hurt just to knock on the door and say hello, he never mustered enough courage and each chance was lost. To make matters worse, Viggo visited the mansion at least twice a month, and during those times Orlando locked himself in his room, berating himself for being such a coward.
Viggo took a meticulous and artistically-trained look at the boy-turned-man he helped raise and almost had his breath taken away at how much had changed. A sharper jawline, strikingly crafted face, and an athletic built suited the boy well. He had heard from Sean that Orli had turned into a beautiful young man, but at that moment, the word “beautiful” was not nearly doing him justice. The waiter thought back to the days when Orlando was still a lanky and awkward child, and sighed in regret when he realized how much time had been wasted between them. There used to be a time when little Orli had played such a grand part in Viggo’s existence that nothing else really mattered anymore, and the longer he stared at the beautiful young man resting among the white hospital sheets, the more he was starting to believe that the boy continued to hold on to a large chunk of his life even with the extensive hiatus of their relationship. Merely watching Orlando’s toned chest undulate up and down made Viggo feel a wave of completeness that had nearly been forgotten after years of dormancy, and he was beginning to question if this-whatever this was, exactly-was what he was missing all along.
Orlando woke up in the hospital feeling like utter crap. But that feeling passed when he saw Viggo’s dark and knowing eyes boring into his own-when he felt a pleasantly nauseous fluttering in his stomach in place of the pain that had burdened him for years. And that was when it hit him. Staring into almost-black and soulful glass orbs, he almost felt the impulse to smack himself in the head, because the answer was right in front of him the whole time. His lips pulled up into a smile, his overwhelming happiness almost tangible. “You look terrible,” he remarked wittily. I missed you.
“Speak for yourself” came his light-hearted response, breaking the ice almost immediately.
From there, the bond between them that had developed throughout Orlando’s entire childhood was rekindled. Knowing that he would be unable to live in a loveless marriage any longer, Viggo separated with a willing Exene several weeks later, and their divorce was official after two years. Ten-year-old Henry was in Viggo’s custody because Exene wanted to develop her already-blossoming career as a musician, but she often visited to continue having a relationship with her beloved son. Orlando, on the other hand, gave up hiding behind lame excuses and instead decided to embrace his true feelings, and as a result his smiles increased in frequency, and Samantha, who had quietly been paying attention to her little brother, was relieved to see that Orli was finally starting to open up again.
Viggo and Orlando commenced a pleasant routine of seeing each other on a daily basis. Sometimes Orlando invited his ex-caretaker to the mansion, where they would discuss politics and the shitty educational system over a cup of sweetened English tea. Now and then they met up at Viggo’s apartment and screamed profanities at the television while a football match was on. Orlando met Henry on a Tuesday after he came home from school, and was pleased to know that the boy liked him enough not to resent him for the absence of his mother. Every second beside Viggo, however, brought on that maddening pain in Orli’s stomach, but he thought it was best to put up with it. Why? For a number of reasons. Because it was most likely temporary. Because hanging out with Viggo was totally worth having a stomach-ache over. Because with pain comes strength (at least that’s what Billy told him, trustworthy aphorism or not).
Because Orlando was in love with Viggo. And during this time he was starting to realize that he always had been.
Chapter 4
Pairing(s): Viggo/Orlando
Genre(s): Romance, drama
Length: 4438 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 3
Orlando was nineteen when he finally figured out what the relentless ache was. Took him long enough, he figured. Since the wedding, the aches have only increased in power, from a mildly unpleasant churning to a well-aimed punch in the guts, and it was becoming more and more difficult for Orli to spend time with or even be near the man that he adored oh-so-much. Just hearing his voice downstairs could send the teen cringing in pain. The first person who noticed his discomfort was Samantha, always the sweetest and most sensitive person in his life. She had noticed it first during the wedding, but kept quiet with her worries until the time was right, and for that Orli was eternally grateful. After all, Samantha was like that: as his older sister, she just knew what he needed.
She acknowledged her observations at the most perfect moment, when Orlando was the most vulnerable and emotional in his room, lying on his back on his bed with a pair of headphones blasting off at quarter-volume. He was listening to emo songs-songs that he previously discarded as “whiny”-and feeling pretty shitty. Viggo’s presence in the Bloom mansion had decreased steadily throughout the years, and the man had long since given up paying attention to the teen since Henry proved to be as time-consuming as little Orlando had been. The youngest Mortensen followed his father like a shadow, and Orli would have given anything for the days when he was in Henry’s place.
“Orli?” a dirty-blond young woman, now twenty-one, knocked quietly at the door. She was a lovely lady, classy in every way possible, and had a perfect smile and an even more perfect personality.
Orlando sighed and took off the headphones. “Yah, Sam?”
“Want to talk?” she asked, making herself comfortable on her brother’s small bed, the same one he had ever since he was a kid.
He nodded grudgingly, feeling tears well up in his eyes. “It’s just not fair!”
“What’s not fair?” Samantha asked carefully, stroking his back.
“I thought that we were close,” he muttered grimly, his charming smile nowhere to be found on his handsome face. Eight years have agreeably shaped him into a tall and attractive young man with long lean limbs with no trace of baby fat, curly dark brown hair, expressive eyes of the same color, and a carefully sculpted jawbone. He was undoubtedly a beautiful boy, even Dom had to admit that, but in his mellow state right now it was difficult to recognize him at all. “Now he acts like he doesn’t even know me. Is he really too busy to talk to me once in a while? You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if he just doesn’t care about me anymore. He wants his own damn family, the bastard.”
“Are you mad at Dad?” his sister inquired empathetically. “I understand why you would be, but though you don’t know it he loves you. He loves us both; he just wasn’t ready to show it yet. He promised me that he would come back some day. And either way, we have Mom, and she’ll never leave us.”
“What the hell are you blathering about?” Orlando grimaced. “Dad can go to hell for all I care! What gave you the impression that I was talking about Dad?”
“Well, I see you eyeing Henry a lot,” Samantha admitted, shrugging. “He’s a lucky kid.”
Orlando’s face darkened. “‘Blessed’ is more like it. His father is doing a great job raising him.”
“Mr. Mortensen really is an admirable father, isn’t he? He took excellent care of you when you were young, you know; I was always so jealous because my own caretaker was not as nice as him. I mean, he helped you with homework even when it was clear that you were dyslexic. But then you two started spending less and less time together, but I don’t blame him: he has a family to take care of, and those take a tremendous amount of time.” Samantha blinked a few times before the realization hit her. “Oh.”
As a mental picture of the topic he wished anything but to discuss popped up, his stomach felt as if it had been stabbed, and he gritted his teeth in an attempt to assuage the effect of pain. “Don’t say his name.”
Samantha noticed his cringe. “Are you in pain, Orli?”
He nodded, the first tear rolling down his cheek.
Samantha’s worried eyes bored into him. “Where?”
Orlando pressed his knuckles into the crevice between his ribs, several inches directly above his belly button. “Right here. It’s been like that for a long time. Since the-”
“Since the wedding,” Sam finished for him. “I know.”
“Is there something wrong with me?” he asked.
“No!” the young woman answered immediately. “My god no. There is nothing wrong with feeling pain over the impression of the loss of somebody dear to you. I felt the same way when Dad left. I felt betrayed, but also at fault-I thought that I might have done something wrong that might have drove him away somehow.” A sad smile crept onto her pretty face. “But then I realized that, even if I was the reason why he left, it was meant to happen and there was nothing anybody could do about it. And it started to hurt less after time passed because I accepted it. I mean, it would have been different if Dad had stayed, but I was still able to live without him, right? I still have the rest of my family; not everybody is as lucky. But you know what I really regret?”
Orlando turned his tear-stained face towards his sympathetic sister that he sometimes swore came straight from heaven.
“I didn’t get to talk to him before he left,” she said. “I wanted to tell him that I loved him and that although I would never understand why he left, I would be alright without him.”
“And you expect me to do just that? To tell Viggo that yah he has an awesome kid and yah he has a wife to pretty much die for, but that I will be perfectly fine without him?”
“No, I didn’t mean that,” his sister laughed suddenly, a bubbly sound in her pleasant voice. “I just think that you should talk to him. Just a modicum of advice from your big sister that you are, by all means, totally allowed disagreeing with if you so choose.”
Orli cracked a smile and started laughing, his face finally brightening into the sunshiny happiness that he was famous for. “Thank you, Sam. I’ll take your modicum of advice into account.” And with that, he hopped off the bed and scampered out of the room like he used to when he was still a carefree and unburdened child. Sam sighed wistfully, thinking back to the times when she would watch Orlando bound out of his room while they were still in the middle of a game of Twister because he heard Vig’s deep voice downstairs mingled with the crackling of grocery bags. The boy had idolized the man, and Samantha was certain that her brother still did.
Meanwhile, Orlando did not get far down the hallway before Dom and Billy crashed into him, Sir McKellan hot on their heels. “You two monkeys get right back here!” he screeched, making the dynamic duo look at each other and sprint off, arms flailing. Before long, Orlando found himself sprinting right after them, looking back a couple of times to see a fuming butler shouting out old-fashioned profanities. It took all the focus that Orli had to follow the two boys who were used to navigating the mazes of the streets, and he followed Dom and Billy out of the mansion, down two alleyways, and across three busy streets, almost getting run over by a yellow taxi while he was at it. By the time Dom and Billy stopped, the youngest member of the Bloom family was close to collapsing.
The other two were quite the opposite, cackling as they high-fived each other and did their celebration dance. Dom, twenty, had grown quite a bit, though his childish nature was still uniquely prominent, manifesting itself in subtle ways. His hair was dirty blonde (dirty in both color and hygiene) and he still held that mischievous glint in his eyes that he had ever since toddlerhood. Twenty-six-year-old Billy had grown little since his teenage years and stood merely a hair shorter than his surrogate brother. His outer naïveté endured, however, and with his fine reddish hair and young elfish face, he looked a good ten years younger than expected from a grown man approaching his third decade. Throughout the years, the two have only been separated once for a period of three weeks, when Billy had accepted going on a tenth-grade class field trip to Scotland, his homeland, while Dom had stayed home, atypically quiet and docile. Sean had almost had a heart attack when he witnessed that his adopted son, then ten years old, had not broken, injured, mangled, spoiled, or tainted anything for two days in a row, and most of the Bloom servants agreed that life was easier without Billy in the house as Dom’s security blanket. By the time Billy had come home, Dom was practically a hermit who stayed in his room silently playing video games and whatnot when not at the dining table, where he ate wordlessly. It was a totally different Dom, one that was calm and easy to control, but even the servants had to admit that it was getting really creepy to see Dom not doing anything dangerous on a daily basis. Billy returned home on a Friday night, and Sean breathed out a sigh of relief when Dom “accidentally” knocked over a flower vase as he reverted back to his old hyperactive self.
Orlando was still panting hard by the time the two had noticed him.
“Hey, it’s Orli!” Billy cried out in his high tenor voice. “Hey Orli!”
“What are you doing here, baby brother?” Dom walked over, half a head shorter than his baby brother, much to his embarrassment. “I thought we lost you back there!”
The youngest of the three stuck his tongue out, palms pressed above his knees as he bent over to catch his breath. “Nope, but for your information, I almost died following you! What the hell did you do this time?”
Billy grinned. “We put the mixer on full power. Splattered banana cream absolutely everywhere!”
“You should have seen McKellan’s face!” Dom chortled.
“I did,” Orlando quirked an eyebrow. “And let’s just say that he was not impressed in the least.”
“Whatever,” they both replied simultaneously, spinning on their heels as they strutted importantly down the street though they seemed to have no particular direction.
“We have some stuff to take care of-”
“Very important stuff is what it is-“
“You can come along if you’d like but-”
“You won’t be able to keep up since what we do-”
“Is filled with danger and there are very high risks of-”
“Broken bones, sprains, and in the most lethal case, death-”
“But there’s only a one in ten chance for that, so no worries.”
Orlando’s head spun as he followed the conversation from one jester to the other, and watched in confusion as they jumped over a fence and climbed up the side ladder of a shoe factory. “Where the hell are we going?” he asked as he followed suit, shivering once he noticed how high he was above horizontal ground.
Dom grinned mischievously as he made it to the rooftop, helping the other two clamber on. “Orli, dear brother, let Billy and I do you the honor of presenting our exquisite playground!”
Orlando looked around and only saw a vast expense of cement and the occasional white pole and chimney. “Exquisite?”
“Not all that glitters is gold,” Billy chastised in mock seriousness, waving his pointer finger around. “Shall we enlighten the poor boy, Dom?”
“After you,” he replied cheekily, letting his elder take the lead.
“We just discovered this place a month ago,” the shortest explained importantly as he continued in his lively gait, heaving himself over a brick ledge to the taller extension of the shoe factory. “All of the buildings have roofs that are basically around the same height, and they are not that far apart if you really think about it. It’s beautiful once you know it well enough. Come on!” Billy took off, sprinting as fast as his little legs could carry him, and pushed off the edge only to land gracefully on the other side over a narrow alleyway onto the roof of a nuclear power plant. Orlando had gasped in admiration and eagerly went in pursuit of him, mimicking his jumps and laughing as he made a safe land (though it was exponentially less graceful, thrashing limbs and all). And the sprints and jumps over buildings began. Throughout the whole experience of jumping between buildings while fifteen feet in the air, Orlando forgot about every worry in his life, and started to understand how his surrogate brothers could be so carefree all the time. With their adrenaline pumping and their sweat glands working like sled dogs, the three flew over roof ledges, only barely making it over to the other side every time. The closest call was when Dom had carelessly took off a few inches too soon, and the only way he escaped the situation unscathed was grabbing hold of the roof ledge with his chapped fingertips at the nick of time just long enough for Billy and Orlando to haul him up again. “Don’t you ever scare me like that again!” Billy had reprimanded. Dom had only laughed and called him an idiot. There was one jump that was obviously too far for any normal human being to survive, but luckily the dynamic duo had discovered connecting pipes a week prior-old rusty tubes that were grainy to the touch-that they used to cross over. After an hour or so, they came to a standard triangular shaped rooftop of a residential house. As if they had been doing it since birth (which was probably true considering their circumstances), Billy adeptly climbed over like an acrobat while Dom revealed very little trouble as he followed suit. Since it was Orli’s first time, he took it slow and carefully maneuvered his limbs so that his center of equilibrium was retained, holding his breath as he heaved himself over the brick summit, heart racing as he took a peek downwards. Together they slid down the negative slope of the roof and launched themselves over to another house, three pairs of hands reaching for the top edge of the triangular prism as if their lives depended on it. As they poked their heads over the tip, however, Orlando’s eyes widened.
“Get down!” he whispered, pulling the ever-inquisitive Billy down by the scruff of his neck.
In the window of the opposite house was a much older-looking Viggo with a deadly calm expression on his face, restraint only evident in his tense muscles. His scraggly brown hair was messy and frayed, and after putting off a much-needed haircut it reached his shoulders. Muffled shouts and the sound of china breaking were heard as the man stayed perfectly still and inert. Exene stormed past, angry tears pouring down her face. Henry was a silhouette in the window above, arms encircling his knees as he rocked back and forth.
“And that, my friends,” the right side of Dom’s lip perked upwards sarcastically, “is why I will never in my sane life get married.”
A lurch in his stomach made Orlando fell, fingers losing grip like butter and he slid off the roof and out of sight. A muffled thump on the lawn below was heard several painful seconds later. Dom and Billy winced and glanced at each other before letting go themselves, both of them releasing a shrill battle cry as they fell down three stories and landed nimbly on their hands and knees before doing several front shoulder rolls to minimize the impact. Mildly bruised and green from grass stains, they found Orlando knocked out, but luckily with neither physical injuries nor any blood (thank the lord; Billy became ridiculously nauseous whenever any sort of blood was involved). A trip to the doctor’s seemed reasonable enough, however, so Dom threw the nineteen-year-old over his shoulder while Billy trotted in front. In spite of their nervous gaits and subtle twitches, they were convinced that it was nothing too serious at all.
Back in his small but comfortable flat, Viggo stood by the windowsill, trying to tune out all of the wounding rants coming from his wife. It really was his fault this time (leaving a bottle of gin in front of one’s seven-year-old child is never a lenient matter), but he was feeling much too terrible about himself already to even think about apologizing. “What if he had drank that stuff?” Exene shouted, rubbing at her temples. “Have you ever thought of that? For Christ’s sakes, he might have had alcohol poisoning, or maybe he could have gotten a peculiar liver infection! He might have died!”
Though he knew that there was only a slight chance that death would ever happen in those circumstances, Viggo pictured his son, his Henry, dead and inactive, and he turned around abruptly, ignoring his wife’s panicked screams. Guilty beyond measure, he did not bother grabbing a coat before stalking out of the apartment, bent on clearing his mind before even attempting to set things straight.
There was a time when Viggo believed that he would have the most perfect life if he had just found the perfect woman of his life with whom he would have the most perfect child. Though he had Exene and though he had his dear Henry, it was far from the most perfect life that he had dreamed about. Exene was wonderful both as an artist and as a mother, and there was no doubt that she loved Henry as much as if not more than he did, but there was something missing, something important that he did not notice until several years into their affectionate marriage: he did not love her. Well, that is untrue in a way, for he did love her, but it was just not that kind of love. He cared about her and saw her as a person who would be part of the rest of his life, but he did not feel that he lived and breathed through her. He did not feel as if she completed him, and he was sure Exene felt the same way. They quarreled constantly over the smallest and most trivial things at times, but that would have been fine if only they knew for sure if their feelings for each other were genuine. Sometimes he looked into her eyes to find an absolute stranger, and it was absolutely terrifying imagining himself spending his whole life with no idea whom he had married.
Turning a corner, he managed to steer clear of a short dirt-covered redhead and his equally short and equally dirt-covered buddy who oddly had a limp boy swung over his shoulder.
“What’s this, it’s Viggo!” the redhead greeted with a smile on his face.
“It’s Viggo!” his cheerful companion echoed, revealing a familiar pair of eyes. “Long time no see, old man!”
“Sorry but we’re kind of in a rush at the moment-”
“Yah, poor Orli here fell off a roof and busted something-”
“So we have to get our asses over to a doctor to make sure that he’s alright-”
“We would love to stay and chat but-”
“As you can see, we’re sort of busy so-”
“Cheerio!” they both saluted and ran off in the other direction before Viggo had the chance to wrap his head around what just happened. It was only about a few seconds later when it all came together.
“Hey, boys, stop!” he sprinted after them, pleased that his age did not inhibit his natural athleticism.
“Yes?” they answered back simultaneously, already a good few meters ahead.
“I’ll come with you.” And paying no attention to Dom and Billy’s stammers of refusals, Viggo went in pursuit, took the weight off of Dom’s shoulders, and ended up being the only one eligible to check the injured boy into the hospital (insurance cards come in handy, don’t they?). From there, the three idly sat in the waiting room until the doctor came in to announce Orlando’s condition (“Not a serious injury. A cracked rib would only take a few months to heal, and then eventually he’ll be up and running. Pretty good results after falling three stories if you ask me.”) and then they were powerwalking down the hallway to the room three doors from the end on the left, sir. Dom and Billy, both of them intrinsically unable to sit still for more than an hour, were ultimately ushered out of the room by the nurses, leaving Viggo alone with the patient accompanied by the buzzing of overhead fluorescent lights.
That was the first time in almost six years that the two were in the same room together. Since his caretaker’s wedding, eleven-year-old Orlando had found it uncomfortable to be even near the older man, and always found a plausible excuse for his absence no matter what the situation. He refused help with his homework, deciding to figure it out on his own despite his mildly dyslexic condition; he politely declined any outings that Viggo suggested; and whenever he saw his manservant, he turned on his heel and walked in the opposite direction. Unfortunately for their distancing relationship, Viggo hardly noticed the boy’s retreating behavior, too engrossed in his life and responsibility as a “family man” as well as too busy saving up for a place of his own. Two years after Henry’s entry into the world, Viggo had left his full-time job at the Bloom mansion for a part-time one as a waiter at a five-star restaurant. He also took up writing on the side, and continued drawing and painting in his spare time. He found a small but comfortable flat only a few blocks down the street, but no matter how much Orli had convinced himself that it would not hurt just to knock on the door and say hello, he never mustered enough courage and each chance was lost. To make matters worse, Viggo visited the mansion at least twice a month, and during those times Orlando locked himself in his room, berating himself for being such a coward.
Viggo took a meticulous and artistically-trained look at the boy-turned-man he helped raise and almost had his breath taken away at how much had changed. A sharper jawline, strikingly crafted face, and an athletic built suited the boy well. He had heard from Sean that Orli had turned into a beautiful young man, but at that moment, the word “beautiful” was not nearly doing him justice. The waiter thought back to the days when Orlando was still a lanky and awkward child, and sighed in regret when he realized how much time had been wasted between them. There used to be a time when little Orli had played such a grand part in Viggo’s existence that nothing else really mattered anymore, and the longer he stared at the beautiful young man resting among the white hospital sheets, the more he was starting to believe that the boy continued to hold on to a large chunk of his life even with the extensive hiatus of their relationship. Merely watching Orlando’s toned chest undulate up and down made Viggo feel a wave of completeness that had nearly been forgotten after years of dormancy, and he was beginning to question if this-whatever this was, exactly-was what he was missing all along.
Orlando woke up in the hospital feeling like utter crap. But that feeling passed when he saw Viggo’s dark and knowing eyes boring into his own-when he felt a pleasantly nauseous fluttering in his stomach in place of the pain that had burdened him for years. And that was when it hit him. Staring into almost-black and soulful glass orbs, he almost felt the impulse to smack himself in the head, because the answer was right in front of him the whole time. His lips pulled up into a smile, his overwhelming happiness almost tangible. “You look terrible,” he remarked wittily. I missed you.
“Speak for yourself” came his light-hearted response, breaking the ice almost immediately.
From there, the bond between them that had developed throughout Orlando’s entire childhood was rekindled. Knowing that he would be unable to live in a loveless marriage any longer, Viggo separated with a willing Exene several weeks later, and their divorce was official after two years. Ten-year-old Henry was in Viggo’s custody because Exene wanted to develop her already-blossoming career as a musician, but she often visited to continue having a relationship with her beloved son. Orlando, on the other hand, gave up hiding behind lame excuses and instead decided to embrace his true feelings, and as a result his smiles increased in frequency, and Samantha, who had quietly been paying attention to her little brother, was relieved to see that Orli was finally starting to open up again.
Viggo and Orlando commenced a pleasant routine of seeing each other on a daily basis. Sometimes Orlando invited his ex-caretaker to the mansion, where they would discuss politics and the shitty educational system over a cup of sweetened English tea. Now and then they met up at Viggo’s apartment and screamed profanities at the television while a football match was on. Orlando met Henry on a Tuesday after he came home from school, and was pleased to know that the boy liked him enough not to resent him for the absence of his mother. Every second beside Viggo, however, brought on that maddening pain in Orli’s stomach, but he thought it was best to put up with it. Why? For a number of reasons. Because it was most likely temporary. Because hanging out with Viggo was totally worth having a stomach-ache over. Because with pain comes strength (at least that’s what Billy told him, trustworthy aphorism or not).
Because Orlando was in love with Viggo. And during this time he was starting to realize that he always had been.
Chapter 4