viggorli_xmas | a gift for salable

Title: Encontrar la inspiración

Rating: PG
Author: to be revealed in 2011
Warning: none

Summary: There’s an abandoned camera on the kitchen table, and Viggo might be leaving Orlando for a twink.

****

The camera sat on the kitchen table, where it had been for the last three days. After nearly ten years of dating, Orlando was used to finding Viggo’s cameras and paint brushes and partially-filled notebooks lying around the house. This, though; this was a first.

The camera had sat on the kitchen table unused for the past three days.

Leaning against the kitchen counter, Orlando cradled his mug in his hands and eyed the camera wearily. He'd always been told not to look a gift horse in the mouth and he wondered if looking at a discarded camera was the equivalent.

"What's going on here?" he asked the camera. He wasn't expecting an answer, but on the other hand, it was Viggo's camera, so he wouldn't have been surprised if it responded.

The camera stared back at him, surrounded by half-written Christmas cards and three dying poinsettias.

Sighing, Orlando turned around and dumped the rest of his coffee down the sink. There was a small layer of frost on the window but he could still make out Viggo's figure outside, walking the horses across the snow-covered field. Orlando leaned forward and exhaled on the window, then drew a big heart in the condensation. The next time he went by the window, Viggo would add to the heart; some cherubs, a snowman, a particularly dirty limerick.

"I'm going to get to the bottom of this," he told the camera, on his way out of the kitchen. It wasn't like Viggo to go days without taking a photo and if this was the symptom of a bigger problem, Orlando was determined to nip it in the bud.

*
By late afternoon, the snow that the weatherman had promised all day finally started, large fluffy flakes freshly coating the already white landscape.

Orlando placed another log in the fireplace and stared longingly at the wrapped gifts under the tree. He and Viggo had planned a quiet Christmas at home, just the two of them, so gifts from their family members had started arriving by mail since mid-November. No matter how hard he tried, Orlando couldn't convince Viggo to let him open one. He had resorted to the age-old custom of shaking the boxes and trying to guess what was inside.

He was picking at the corner of an intricately wrapped gift from his sister when the kitchen door opened and closed in quick succession. Guilty, Orlando dropped the present and went into the kitchen, in time to see Viggo and the dogs shaking the snow off their bodies.

"You're all going to clean that up," he scolded, laughing when both dogs scampered by him without a second glance. He didn't need to turn around to know that they were heading for the spot in front of the fireplace, where they'd spend the rest of the evening, occasionally getting up for some food and the odd belly rub.

Viggo stepped into Orlando's space and wrapped him in a hug, slipping cold hands under Orlando's sweater and resting them on his back. Orlando squealed and tried to squirm away.

"That's not nice," he muttered into Viggo's neck. Viggo smelled of hay and sweat and dogs and the strawberry body wash that Elijah had gotten him as a birthday present- a gag gift that Viggo had not seen the humour in, declaring that 'the scent was light and airy and the touch of aloe vera left his skin feeling wonderfully moisturized.'

"But you still love me," Viggo said. It was a statement, a fact, not a question, and Orlando kissed Viggo in acquiescence. Him loving Viggo would never be a question.

"Speaking of love," he segued, as Viggo pulled away and walked past the kitchen table, and the camera, to the fridge. "I notice that you haven't been taking any photos lately." The camera was still in the same spot, an abandoned toy waiting for its owner to remember that it existed.

Viggo finished the glass of juice he had poured himself and shrugged. "Out of inspiration."

Orlando blinked. "Out of inspiration?" he repeated dumbly. He didn't even realize that could happen to someone like Viggo. It had never occurred to him, in all the years that they had been together, that Viggo would run out of inspiration.

"It happens," Viggo said noncommittally. He filled his glass again and walked out of the kitchen, leaving Orlando and the camera behind.

**
"And then he says," Orlando whispered into the phone, looking up every once in a while to make sure that Viggo was still outside with the animals. "Then he says that he's 'out of inspiration'!"

After a long pause, the person on the other end of the line began to laugh.

"It's not funny, Henry," Orlando hissed. It had been two days since Viggo's startling revelation and Orlando was at his wit's end. He had tried leaving inspiring items around the house- random words from magazines, quotes by famous poets, even resorting to playing Spanish songs at all hours of the day- and yet, nothing. Not one picture.

"Sorry, sorry," Henry chuckled, the tone of his voice indicating that he was anything but. "He's out of inspiration; it happens."

Orlando shook his head. "It happens to other people, Hen, but not to your dad. He's currently living in a freaking winter wonderland. Yesterday, a bunch of deer came out on the lawn and frolicked. Frolicked! And he just looked at them and smiled and nothing. Has this ever happened before?"

Henry's lack of response was all the answer Orlando needed.

"This is his mid-life crisis, isn't it? First it starts with him being out of inspiration, then the next thing I know he's leaving me for some blond-haired, blue-eyed twink fresh out of acting school." Orlando shuddered at the thought.

Henry's laugh was so loud that Orlando had to pull the phone away from his ear. "You do realize that you were a blond-haired, blue-eyed, fresh out of drama school twink when he met you, right?" he asked, humour evident in his voice.

"I was in a costume and, never mind, good bye, Henry," Orlando said, hanging up the phone. He crossed his arms and decidedly did not pout. Legolas was not a twink. He didn't know why he even bothered to call Henry, it was clear that he didn't know anything.

"Come on." He grabbed the camera from the table and stomped upstairs. Desperate times called for desperate measures and all, and Orlando was determined to help Viggo find his inspiration.

***
It had taken him the better part of the day, but the bedroom was finally the way Orlando wanted. He had managed to find enough candles around the house to decorate the room. They cast a warm glow around the room, enough light to be both romantic and bright enough for photographs. Their warm cotton sheets were changed to a silk set that Orlando found tucked in the back of the linen closet, and the bedside tables were cleared of their normal clutter, only a vase of flowers on one and Viggo's camera on the other.

Orlando slipped out of his clothes and settled himself in the middle of the bed. His skin prickled with goose bumps from the coolness of the room, and also from anticipation. Viggo would be coming upstairs soon to get ready for bed and Orlando was nervous, and hopeful, for his reaction.

The bedroom door opened and Orlando watched as Viggo's eyes took in the candles and sheets and finally settled on his naked form. He was embarrassed at how quickly his body reacted to Viggo's gaze.

"What's this?" Viggo asked. He had closed the bedroom door and was now walking towards the bed, his gaze never leaving Orlando's body.

Orlando shrugged and stretched languidly. "Oh, nothing. You see something you like?"

Viggo smirked and ran his hand lightly over Orlando's hip, tracing the sun tattoo with his finger. "I see plenty I like, Orli; that doesn't explain the candles and sheets, though. Not that I'm complaining."

"I don't know," Orlando sighed. Viggo's hand had yet to stop skimming lightly over his body and was currently wrapped loosely around his cock.

Orlando swallowed a couple of times and tried to get his tongue working. "I thought that maybe you'd like to take some pictures, of me, I mean."

Much to Orlando's dismay, Viggo pulled his hand away. His gaze flicked to the bedside table and to the camera, before coming back to Orlando. "You want me to take your picture? While you're naked and hard and looking like something out of a porn film?"

Orlando sat up and sighed. "You don't have to; I just thought I'd help you get back your inspiration."

Viggo opened his mouth, and then closed it. "Wait; is that what the poems and songs were about?"

Orlando nodded, visions of Viggo driving off in a convertible with a nubile twenty year old in his head. "I guess I'm not inspiring, anymore."

Viggo sat on the bed, and grabbed the camera. He turned it upside, flipped the battery cover open, and then turned the camera up. Nothing fell out. "I'm out of inspiration," Viggo said.

Orlando groaned and dropped his head on Viggo's shoulder. The camera was an old Polaroid that used batteries and Orlando had forgotten to buy batteries his last two trips to the store, despite it being written on his shopping list.

"You're out of batteries," he confirmed and Viggo hummed in agreement. "And you're not going through a mid-life crisis and planning to leave me for some blond twink."

"I only go for brown hair, brown-eyed Brits," Viggo said, placing a kiss at the corner of Orlando's mouth. Orlando tilted his head up and melted into the kiss.

"And you still find me inspiring?" Orlando asked, once he'd pulled back from the kiss that left his lips tingling.

Viggo cupped Orlando's face and leaned in until their foreheads touched. "Since the moment I first laid eyes on you. You’re the meaning in my life. You bring feeling to my life."

Orlando’s heart swelled and he pulled Viggo on top of him, camera momentarily forgotten. Tomorrow, he would buy enough batteries for Viggo to take pictures for years.

“Wait a minute,” Orlando said, suddenly, pushing Viggo off him. “Did you just quote a Chicago song to get into my pants?”

Viggo laughed and rolled back on top of Orlando. “Baby, you’re the one for me,” he sang, and then proceeded to show Orlando how inspiring he found him.

****