Casual 21-30/30

Fandom: LotRips
Pairing: Marton Csokas/Viggo Mortensen
Rating: pg
Notes: Hours 21-30 of the drabble marathon. That's it now. Really. No. More.
Disclaimer.

All Marton could do was listen carefully to the unhappy scrape of chair leg against floor. The sound grated as it perforated the stillness, and Marton couldn't bear to listen to anything else.

Viggo stood with cruel placid calm, compassion, and understanding written clear. He stood in front of Marton all fearless and brave, the archetypal hero, and Marton thought he might hate him at that moment.

Viggo broke as Marton watched, and his face rippled and fell apart, bell-broken in laughter. The sound scythed deep curves out of the room, and Marton couldn't bear to listen to anything else.

***

There is a certain relief to be found in chaos. Marton found it as he caught Viggo and the confusion rushed cyclonically through his mind, hissing in its sudden dispersion.

Marton hadn't known what to expect when he said those words. In fact, he hadn't a clue he was going to say them until he actually did. Every bit of terror, unjustified, and he understood at that moment that he wasn't supposed to have known. Guilty insecurity to be forever forgotten.

Who could have predicted this? A Viggo in hysterics, mirth stealing his breath and bending him over crippled, wheezing.

***

He sat Viggo down, and he carried on laughing. Incapacitated.

He thought maybe if Viggo explained the joke he could laugh too and they'd laugh, and it would be together and laughed out. But Viggo can't breathe steadily for long enough to help with the requisite enlightenment.

Marton got Viggo a glass of water, and sat it patiently on the table for him. Viggo ignored it, and Marton thought that maybe he should start getting worried.

He tried introducing an orange drinking straw, but again Viggo ignored it. Marton gave up and poured the water over Viggo's mop of hair.

***

The water droplets clung, suspended to thin clumped tendrils of mouse dark hair. They caught on the daily grime that Viggo accumulated, and hung as miniscule baubles stuck with natural body oils and industrial hair products.

The rest of the water lay in pools and splashes, wasted and lost, glistening even as it vanished into the air.

Viggo had spluttered, then caught his breath, and gradually come down from his unhealthy high.

He wiped the coalescence from off his face, a combination of tears and sparkling shock of splatter, and apologises as he flicks out the creases around his eyes.

***

Annoyance rang loud in his ears, but it wasn't directed at Viggo. Not entirely, and not relating to now specifically. Marton had sat on his anxiety for months, and Viggo had obviously been teetering at just past endurance for far too long. So Marton could wait.

Absently he wondered what the hell Peter was doing to them.

He ushered Viggo into the bedroom and closed the blinds as the other man undressed himself and crawled onto the covers. He went to turn the light out as he left, but Viggo pulled him down to him, and he let Viggo sleep.

***

They ate breakfast at four in the afternoon on Viggo's living room floor, sparse refrigerator emptied onto plates. Luxury fruit juice supped from unaesthetic mugs in a ritual so personal it almost felt routine.

Marton sat leaning against the sofa, legs unfurled and relaxed. It would have been easy to leave the dramatics far behind, as an unamusing recollection. No, they weren't about to do that, but it was really Viggo's turn to open the evasive topic.

"I'm not in love with you either, you know."

"Well I rather figured you weren't after yesterday's debacle."

Viggo grimaced. "Sorry about that."

***

Daytime light rested sheet-like over a mussed bed.

They lay lazily in bed, trading affection and conversation.

"So what are we then?" Marton planted a delicate leaf of lips just below Viggo's ear. "We're not lovers, are we?"

"We could try it if you wanted, but I don't think it would work."

"It wouldn't." Kiss, lick, squirm.

"Don't get me wrong, I love you. It's just not like that."

Marton didn't even have to think before he agreed. "So are we, what, just casual?"

Viggo looked skeptical. "It doesn't feel very casual."

"No," Marton agreed. "Not very casual at all."

***

Marton stood in front of the steamed bathroom mirror, squinting at a foggy reflection. Folding cloth over on itself, knotting and adjusting.

"Sean asked me today if I was bringing you to the dinner."

He looked up in surprise. "Viggo, you said they'd stopped snooping."

"Apparently, never to be."

The jacket was a dark blur in the mosaic the condensation played over the glass. A pale smear of face between collar and hair, features lost.

"They know you're coming. Said we're not together, though."

"We're not, apart from arriving and leaving."

Marton wondered if his hair would ever look presentable.

***

There were new cast members that Marton hadn't met at that particular event. They chatted over sophisticated drinks and a reseau of gentle jazz as he stood by the bar, his right elbow leaning against the polished veneer wood, glass in hand. Exact.

Something flickered, and there was a face, captured with a blink at the corner of his vision.

The world never melted; Marton never remembered any bleaching colour or lost dimensions. The sound slurred, discordantly, and was gone. Leaving broken laws of physics and buzzing in his ears.

He barely remembers Viggo's teasing smile and knowingly prompting words.

***

It took longer than he thought it would, if he's honest. Viggo and he, however innocent and reformed, were never going be even remotely convincing to a suspicious mind.

He knows some people who yet need to learn to mind their own business that enjoy blaming Viggo. They tell him that indulging in casual relationships is what ruins the worthwhile ones, and that at the very least Viggo should have stopped calling.

If Marton thinks about love, to love, to be in love, and he thinks about what he's lost, then he smiles. Wouldn't change a second.

Anything but casual.

Posted by Missiedith at February 28, 2004 6:12 PM | TrackBack