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Title: Sleeping Beauty. (Entrapment.)
Chapter: 5/?
Author: Arden Elear
E-mail: thedarkvoice@hotmail.com
Rated: PG to R.
Pairing: Viggo Mortensen x Sean Bean, Orlando Bloom
Disclaimer: They're real. This is not.
Warning: RPS; Real person slash. Don't read it / do read it. Make an adult decision.
Feedback: Nice, but not required.
Archive: No.
LiveJournal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/arden_elear/
Summary: It takes some people a long time to wake up. Especially to themselves.

“He hasn’t said anything?”

“No. Not a word.” Sean swallowed convulsively, trying to keep a rein on his emotions. There was still half a day’s work to get through before he was free to go home and wallow.

His feeling this fucking miserable had to be some kind of record. He’d not known what reaction to expect this morning, but pretending, ignoring last night, was the last thing he’d have expected from Viggo. But that’s what he was getting.
The same ‘Hello’ as every other day, the same placid face and general conversation. It was as if it had all been wiped from the face of the earth.

Orli confirmed that he had delivered the flowers. ‘Bucket-loads of the fucking things, Sean.’

Christ! That made it even worse. As soon as Peter had called the lunch break, Sean had taken off, finding a spot behind the trailer he and Orlando shared with Viggo, looking for a little private space in which to think. To brood.

Orlando had found him, or followed him, and the two of them were sitting on the grass, leaning against a pile of tarps.

“He’s had second thoughts.” Sean finally said aloud what he’d been thinking all morning. Watching Viggo working, standing close to him, having to look at him, interact with him, had been a slow descent into agony as the morning wore on and it slowly dawned on him that his friend was going to say nothing.

“No.” Orli shook his head. “I don’t believe that.” He opened his mouth to say something else, but Sean cut him off.

“Maybe I misread. I thought . . . I imagined something that wasn’t there. Because I wanted it so badly. Needed it to work.” He sighed. “I blew it Orli, let’s face it. Either that or he thinks I’m just screwing around, making a point over that stupid debate about romance! Doesn’t matter.”

“Boy, your brain has been working overtime, hasn’t it.” Orli got up onto his knees so that he was facing Sean. “You look shitful, Sean. Come on. This isn’t over.”

“Leave it, Orli.” Sean growled. Enough was enough. He’d tried, and he’d failed. Time to let it be.

“I’m just gonna salvage what I can from this mess and try and walk away with a little pride left, okay?”

Orli grabbed him by the shoulders and shook. “Sean! Stop it. It’s not what you think.”

Sean looked at him in surprise. What was that supposed to mean?

“I mean, it can’t be. Can’t be that bad.”

Orli sat back on his heels and let his arms drop from Sean’s shoulders.

“Look,” he went on in a much softer voice. “You’re swinging from one extreme to another here. Think about it. If Viggo had second thoughts, he’d tell you. He’d say something, Sean. Not leave you hanging. Vig’s not like that.”

“Maybe.” Sean shifted his shoulders, rolling them. Orli snorted. “Okay. Yeah. You’re right.” He grumbled.

“And if he thought it was just a . . . prank or something, he’d be all over it, giving you heaps. So you can forget that little half-assed theory as well.”

“Still doesn’t explain his behavior.” Orli had some good points there, damn him. But Sean was not about to let some vain hope rekindle in his heart, he’d rather be miserable. It saved time.

“All right.” Orli was speaking again. “Here’s what we do. I’ll meet you when we wrap and we’ll go out for a couple of beers. Thrash this out, okay? Who knows, maybe we can come up with something. If not, at least we get a couple of pints out of it. What do you say?”

“Yeah, all right.” He could hear work resuming in the distance, Peter calling for his cast. Time to return to Torture Town. He stood up and brushed himself off. “I’ll meet you back here after.”

Orlando remained behind, still busy combing grass seeds off his costume.

“Fucking hell,” He muttered to himself as he pulled another one off. “This is hard work.”

**

It was pretty late when Sean pulled into the drive. Almost midnight, that moody time of the evening that was neither today nor tomorrow. That could either be very comforting or very melancholy. Sean chose melancholy.

Orlando had kept him at the pub for far longer than he’d intended to stay. He’d hardly even mentioned their conversation earlier in the day, seemed he preferred to spend his energy trying to make Sean feel better.
Joking, gossiping, and insisting on a quick game of pool that had turned into a best-of-three against a couple of the WETA guys.

He did feel a little better. Orli was hard to resist when he was that determined.
Still, he was glad to be home; peace and quiet at last.

He mounted the steps, reaching in to get his keys out of his pocket. Something caught his eye, a flash of white on the mat. Leaning down, he picked it up. A card. It looked like the card he’d given Orli to take with the flowers.

To be sure, he opened it up.

Tis not. It was his handwriting. Same card, definitely. Sean looked around.

Nobody. Nothing.

Viggo must have returned the card while he and Orli were at the pub. Why?
That kind of subtle rejection was not something he could imagine Viggo doing.

Sean felt even more confused.

He slipped the key into the lock and went inside.

Then he switched the lights on and froze.

“Jeezus!”

Every available surface, every spare corner, every-fucking-where. Flowers!
Not just flowers, his stunned brain eventually registered. Potted plants! Ivy, cacti, even bagged roses. Were those vegetable punnets? Surely not.

They were.

Sean wandered around his living room-cum-conservatory, touching. There had to be over a hundred pots in here! Fuck! How?

He knew who, but how had he gotten in here?

How did he know that Sean was at the pub with . . .

Orli.

“I’ll kill him.” The maniac grin was back, he could feel it. “I’ll tear his spine out through his nostrils and ream him a new arsehole with the pointy end!”

“Double-crossing little shit.”

Sean dropped down onto the couch, the only available free space, legs suddenly weak.

“It’s not what you think.”

Orli. So certain.

“I mean, it can’t be. Can’t be that bad.”

He’d been backpedaling. Frantically. He’d known! Something! All-fucking-day.

“You are mine Bloom.”

Sean whispered the promise to a room full of . . . intentions? Invitations? Acknowledgements?

Didn’t matter which really. Any or all of the above was just fine with him.

Sean’s chest hurt. But it was a good kind of a hurt; the kind that feels like it’s going to explode outwards and make starbursts and fireworks all over the sky. Like it’s too big and too amazing to stay inside.

The hall clock was ringing its way into the new day.

It was already tomorrow, he thought, which was good.

Meant he didn’t have too long to wait.