DEDICATION: To Diebin. For writing the best Logan/Rogue angstfic the X-Men Movieverse fandom has ever witnessed. The fic was called "Can't Stop The Fall", and the final two lines of this story are used with her full permission. Diebin rocks my world. She is an original Angst Grrl, and a writer whose talent I have always admired and been inspired by. Read her story.

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And frankly, fuck him.

Fuck his righteous, upright, moral sensibility. Fuck his stupid, romantic, artistic bent. Fuck this distinction between love and lust and fuck - fuck - that look in his eyes.

Fuck him.

He'd repeated it like a litany. It was the prayer of the hour. Midnight. The witching hour. The hour for driving too fast and too angry. He'd been slamming the door of his house closed barely an hour after being left, aching, in the front room of the small beachhouse.

Yeah, and fuck him for that too.

Orlando didn't dream that night.

By ten next morning he was awake. Sitting in his kitchen drinking coffee the same taste and temperature as his anger. How poetic. Would Viggo fucking like that, d'ya think?

He heard the car pull up outside but didn't bother moving. Didn't have to; the back door opened onto the kitchen, and no one ever used the front door at Orlando's place. A minute later, voices and footsteps. He looked up from the newspaper as the door swung open.

"You should've come!" Dominic first through the door. Elijah and Sean laughing. Billy closed the screen door behind him. Dom slapped his hands down on the newspaper, snapping it flat. "Waves were bloody spectacular."

"I told you -" Orlando started.

"Yeah, yeah," Elijah interrupted, opening the fridge, "you had things to do. Where's the damn juice?"

"You drank it all last time."

"And you haven't got more?"

"Who the fuck do you think I am; your mother?"

Billy sat on a stool by the kitchen counter, smiled as Elijah swore. "So, Orli, did you get those things done?"

"No." Finished his coffee in one last gulp. Dregs were the worst part, and his favourite. Didn't get the things done. Things didn't want to be done.

"See? You should've come with us."

Things didn't want to be done. And why the fuck not? Why not in the firelight and warmth and kissing him like pure sin?

God, that kiss. Like everything. He'd lived his entire damn life with Viggo's mouth on his. Lazy summers, freezing winters, the rush of freefall and the mind-wiping pain of his back. Everything. And half of it had been the fucking potential. That kiss -

Fingers snapped in front of his face. Blinked up into Sean's grin. "Earth to planet Orlando. You coming?"

"Sure."

Fuck him. That was what he wanted; fine. What the fuck did Orlando care?

He didn't dream that night, either.

They were back filming the next day. Viggo said nothing, so neither did Orlando. Hadn't precisely been chatty beforehand. It hadn't been in the words. It had been in the eyes. But when his gaze touched Orlando now, it was mere drift. Disinterested. Distant.

Until.

They'd given him Legolas' knives, finally. The two blades fit his hands perfectly. He hefted them to get the balance. Grinned at the feeling. 'Ninja Elf', Sean Bean called him, and laughed. Orlando posed to please, spun the hilts in his palms. Couldn't resist one of the moves they'd done in training; a spin, a double slash, blond wig flaring. When it settled, he'd been facing Viggo, and he'd seen.

The eyes. Unchanged in the same face but intense. Heavy. The weight of them settled on him. Gazes locked for a stretched instant.

And fuck him, because Orlando dreamt that night. Starting back in the beachhouse and a kiss like sin and not finishing until he woke up, damp and cursing.

He sat on the edge of the bed, head in his hands. Pressed the heels of his palms into his eye sockets with a grimace. And he repeated the prayer but it lacked the same fire. Now petulant.

Fuck him. Who the hell did he think he was pushing him away - moving with him like heaven for an instant and then pushing him away - only to look at him like that. Watched him and kissed him and turned the fuck away from him and then looked at him like that.

Like that. Fuck that. Orlando wasn't going to fucking stand still for that. Wasn't going to fall for that. Fuck him.

Orlando could play this game too. And he'd win.

He knew it. Remembered and watched and saw and knew. He'd win.

They hit the pub at the end of the week, the usual crowd. Splintered into blurred-bordered factions. Orlando rampaged with the hobbits around the pool tables, raucous and obnoxious, hurling peanuts and abuse. Turned away, affronted, but just a cover, anyway. Turned to look at a table where the laughter was more moderate. Sean Bean was holding forth, Cate disputing, and light-coloured, intense eyes were fixed upon him like the intervening space was nothing.

Orlando liked the way Viggo didn't look away, didn't pretend not to have been watching, was still watching when Orlando stole glances over his shoulder, glances not quick and subtle enough not to be noticed. Not intended to be.

In return, when he moved, he didn't bother hiding behind an excuse. This was not the place for a not-so-subtle stumble or manufactured story. So he simply took his drink and strode over to the table. Pulled a chair up between Cate and Miranda in a shuffle of bodies and second-nature innuendo.

"There's no room for you," Miranda grumbled, as his chair bumped against hers, knees jostling.

"C'mon," he wheedled, cheeky grin in her direction but awareness all across the table. "Just let me slip in. You'll barely notice a thing."

It drew the sort of laughter he expected, and an easy slide back into the conversation. Nudged Miranda with his elbow, smirked into his beer, and then let his eyes rise, find and lock with the only person who mattered. Viggo. But lightly, a flicker, and away.

Only to return a moment, a minute, five, later. Light. Darting. Like fly-fishing, which Orlando had never had the patience for. But now, he thought maybe he understood. The game. The craft. The subtle art and tiny thrills and anticipation of the catch.

A glance, a half-smile, and away.

There were three tables drawn together, chairs crammed around them. The conversation ball was passed from one to another. But time trickled away, and the players dwindled, casualties of the late hour. The survivors drew closer around the last table remaining. Five, and then four, and they leaned in over the table. Decreased distance, lower voices, a cosy air. Sean and David were earnestly discussing cricket - the numerous failings of the English team - and Orlando didn't care, wasn't listening, though his eyes were on them. His interest was somewhere else.

Half a pint in his hand, resting casually with his forearm across the table, towards the fourth member of the table. Casual, his fingers around that glass as he listened idly. Watching Sean with one eyebrow cocked, but knowing...

Waiting...

Feeling the slow brush of a finger along the back of his wrist, a lingering trail.

Orlando let it be. Just a second. Two.

Then lifted his hand away from that touch. Drained the last of his beer and slapped the empty glass back on the table. "That's it for me," he declared, standing to swing his jacket around his shoulders. "Everyone has their limit, and West Indian fast bowlers is mine."

"Brat," Sean tossed over his shoulder and went back to his conversation with David, but that was fine because it meant Orlando could lean against the back of the chair he'd just left. Lean and look, really look, at those eyes he'd been dancing with all evening. Cool, so very still, like standing water you didn't want to disturb. Eyes you could fall into.

Orlando smiled, waited for the answering smile - the barest movement of lips, and those eyes slanted away - before he turned and walked out.

When he awoke the next morning, he wasn't sure if he had dreamed or not.

Viggo avoided him on-set. Orlando had expected him to. Let him be, a corner-of-the-eye awareness; let him settle. Orlando found patience - peace - he hadn't known he possessed. A calmness in the careful stalking of a skittish animal, and maybe this was what hunters felt. The thought made Orlando laugh.

So he gave Viggo his space - no mean feat since they were filming together constantly. After a few days, he allowed himself to linger, watching Viggo going through something, some fight sequence, with Peter. He liked watching him, Orlando realised. The man had grace.

Dismissed himself, Viggo was heading towards him now, the slightest hesitation as he noticed Orlando watching, then he continued on, straight towards him.

"We need to t-"

"The fighting's pretty intense, isn't it?" Orlando noted smoothly, cutting Viggo off. The last thing they needed to do was talk. Talk about that weekend, reaffirm it, fuck him. It had never happened. Orlando forced a smile, that dazzling, free smile, and held up a hand. "Look at those fucking calluses. Delicate elf, my left buttock."

Viggo's face remained blank for a moment, then the faintest of smiles. It didn't quite reach his eyes, but Orlando didn't care. "They're better than the blisters, at least."

They fell into step back towards the trailers, strides almost matching. "I'll say," Orlando noted, keeping his exultation out of his voice. "I didn't think I was ever going to get used to that bloody bow."

"Some things just rub the wrong way," Viggo said blandly. "Maybe you can get used to anything."

He turned without farewell, and the door to his trailer was closed before Orlando could do more than blink.

But he still watched. Orlando would turn - in a scene, in the dining room, at any random moment - and find those eyes on him. Those eyes he knew so well he could picture them in his mind when he wasn't facing Viggo and wondered whether he was still watching, even then.

Sometimes, when he turned into that intense, falling gaze, Orlando would ignore it, carry on, act.

Sometimes he'd smile.

And sometimes, he'd simply stare back.

Sometimes Viggo would turn away. But only sometimes.

"Is there something going on between you and Viggo?" Elijah asked him, quietly, in a mid-shooting pause.

Orlando forced casualness, looked up from the boot he'd been examining, leaning against a tree. "No," he stated.

Elijah had shrugged, and Peter had shouted for him. Orlando went back to the faint tear in the seam of his boot. When a shadow fell across him for the second time, he knew just by feel who it was. Looked up through his lashes to Viggo, standing near, staring away. Followed his gaze to where the four hobbits were receiving directions, pushing and shoving a little.

"You stick to the fringes, don't you?" It was out of nowhere, a bald statement, but quiet, meant for his ears alone.

"Don't know what you're talking about," Orlando responded, lightly. Playing the game, mouthing the words.

Viggo turned, still eyes pinning him to the tree. "It defines you. You don't really get involved."

And unexpectedly, Orlando found himself floundering. "Bollocks. They don't come much more involved than me. I'm the life of the party."

"This is the life of the party," Viggo said, pouncing on his words, poking Orlando's shoulder with a jabbing finger. "But you; you stay aloof. You wallow in it and you watch. You laugh and act and never let it get more than skin deep."

Orlando opened his mouth, but there were no words waiting. They were swallowed by eyes almost glaring at him, so intense, and Orlando grit his teeth. He felt...

How the fuck did he feel?

Get a sodding grip, Orlando.

"Not everything deserves to be more than skin deep," he said, kept his voice steady and low.

Something happened in those eyes, something he couldn't recognise and fuck him for that. Fuck him for those incomprehensible eyes. Repeated words gave him strength.

"Vig! Orli! Get over here!"

When Viggo turned away, Orlando could take a deep breath. Followed him to where Peter was placing them for the scene. It was short, uncomplicated. Run from that point over there. Look that way. A handful of lines. Legolas laying a hand on Aragorn's arm.

The instant the cameras cut, Orlando found his wrist caught up in an almost bone-crunching grip. Intense eyes glaring at him again, and they were dark. Dark with a hundred different things. Dark, deep, bitter and Viggo's jaw was clenched and his grip hurt. Orlando took a reflex half-step backwards. Viggo suddenly released him, whipped around and was three long strides away as Orlando stumbled and almost fell.

But even as he nursed his wrist, Orlando smiled. One of the things he'd seen in those eyes had been desire. He'd seen; he knew. He'd win.

When he dreamt that night, he woke with a smile, and started the day with a spring in his step. He was happy. Willing to let Viggo get away with ignoring him today. Willing to spend his time simply hovering at the edge of the other's awareness. Wander over to join the hobbits, excitedly discussing something or other.

"What are you lot plotting?" he asked, slinging an arm each around Elijah and Dom.

Elijah answered, bouncing under his shoulder, full of mischief. "We're having a party at Viggo's place on Saturday."

Orlando blinked. "Viggo's having a party?"

"No," Billy explained with a completely straight face. "We're having a party. At Viggo's."

"He seems really bothered by something recently, so we're going to cheer him up." Dom's eyes were wide and innocent.

Orlando laughed, and supplied: "Or at least give him something else to be pissed off about."

"Whatever works." Elijah grinned, and shrugged carefree shoulders.

Which was how Orlando came to be squeezing his way through Viggo's crowded living room, empty beer bottle in hand. He was grabbed by Dom near the TV, but waved the bottle. "Gotta get a new beer!" And he was past that obstacle.

The kitchen was just as crowded, with people going about the serious business of refreshment, or simply watching. Viggo was one of the latter, standing just inside the doorway with a half-full glass and a bemused expression.

Orlando clapped him on the shoulder as he went past. "Great party, man!" he effused, and they shared a laugh. Looked back over his shoulder at those still, sparkling eyes as he crossed the kitchen, dropping the empty bottle in the box beside the fridge.

By the time he straightened from the fridge with a new beer, turned around, the eyes had changed. Clear skies clouded over. Closed off, glittering with a dark intensity he was coming to recognise, but still no nearer to understanding. That look again. Fuck him; the refrain feeling faded and used, but still kindling a touch of anger. It mingled with the familiar feel of desire in the back of Orlando's mouth as he paced back across the kitchen, eyes locked to Viggo's. The bundle of conversation near the door had moved a little. He had to slide past, turn sideways to Viggo and maybe lean closer than was strictly necessary. Brush along him, the slither of fabric, watching those eyes. Unfathomable deep and dark, a pit to fall into.

Clapped his shoulder again when he was nearly past, leaned in close to repeat, just by his ear. "Really great party."

Then he was gone, out of the kitchen and back into the party proper. Slipped easily into groups, into conversations, out again to move along. Laughter, jokes, always a quickfire line and just what they wanted to hear.

Life of the party. Skin deep. Bah.

Orlando drained half his beer and let himself be pulled into the hobbits' drinking game. Didn't look up even when he could feel those eyes, the eyes he knew so well, on him.

Two hours later, the party was beginning to crumble around the edges, and seven beers urged Orlando to beg out of the conversation he was engaged in, and go in search of the toilet. Business dealt with, he lingered in the darkened corridor. Didn't feel like heading back to the party, back to bright, brittle witticisms and insidious innuendo. Instead, he turned and continued down the hallway. The rest of the house was dark and empty. Still.

At the end of the corridor, he took three steps down, and the walls opened up into a large, airy space. Huge windows framed the night sky on two walls, moonlight spilling in. There was little furniture, lots of junk. Viggo's studio, Orlando guessed, running his fingers over the aged wooden surface of a table near the door. A little further on, there were papers scattered across the surface. Sketches of hands, an ear and the back of someone's neck, weaponry, a jar of flowers in sunlight. There was a battered notebook, lined pages filled with slanted words that Orlando didn't read. Brief, truncated paintings too; random assortments of colour, and some that made sense. One landscape that looked a bit like the coast near the beachhouse.

There was a canvas set up beyond the table, turned so that the face would get a lot of light during the day. It was covered with a sheet, but Orlando tugged that aside, let it slip through his fingers onto the floor. A half-finished painting, still rough in places, blank in others. There were recognisable elements from the mess of paper on the table. A line here, a shape there, colour elsewhere. Colours... Moonlight washed them out, but Orlando thought - incoherently, but he was drunk, that was a good excuse - that he recognised them anyway. Even though he knew he probably shouldn't, he raised a hand, traced his finger along the swathes of colour as he named them.

The blue: the sea at the beachhouse, out beyond where the waves were breaking, where it was calm and undisturbed.

Deep red burgundy: pasta sauce and wine and the fringes of firelight.

This dark ochre: the rocks on the beach, where he'd seen Viggo that morning, standing and watching. Letting his anticipation ebb like the waves, out, filled with calm, back in.

Orlando took a deep breath, ignored the faint rattle in his throat, the way the sound shivered across the silence in the studio. That day. That glorious day. It had been...

"Unattainable grace."

Orlando spun on his heel, put a hand on the table to steady himself. "What?"

Viggo was standing at the top of the few stairs leading down into the studio, arms folded, jaw tight. That was all he could see; the other man was out of the moonlight, was all dusk and shadows. "The painting is called 'Unattainable Grace'." His voice was impossibly cold, smooth, controlled. "Do you like it?"

Orlando looked back to the canvas, took a few steps away. Towards Viggo. Pushed his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and why was he doing that? Nervous gesture, distancing gesture. Pulled them out again. "Yeah, I do."

"Good." Voice still as expressionless as if he were buying milk. "Party's down the other end," he noted.

But he wasn't moving. Orlando was, continuing towards him, step by slow step. He wasn't moving, and Orlando was at the bottom of the stairs now. "But you're here." One step up, two; there was room for him on the top step if he invaded Viggo's personal space.

He did.

Then he was staggering back as Viggo surged fowards. Caught up by a vice-like grip at the nape of his neck, strong splayed fingers and mouth on his.

Lips on his.

Lips and tongue and teeth, rampaging and ravening. Hard, demanding, demolishing, blinding, his eyes were closed, hand on the wall for balance but his foot slipped off the step and he stumbled. Almost fell, but Viggo's hand gripped his ribcage, holding him up, pushing him back, pulling him against a hard body, pushing him down the steps, two, one, level floor.

Then the onslaught was over, the storm passed, and Orlando was left breathing in gasps and jerks against a mouth that lingered in impersonal contact, like it had forgotten he was there. Orlando breathed, and smiled, and said the one thing that rang through his veins: "You want me."

"Yes." One word, a low, harsh growl against his lips, inside his mouth. Fingers tightened against his neck, along his ribs. "Yes, I want you."

And then he was pushed backwards, grip released in a sudden, violent burst. Orlando staggered, caught himself on the edge of the table before he fell. When he looked up, Viggo was halfway back down the corridor, swallowed by the shadows only to be spat back out into the light as he reached the far end, stepped back into the party.

Orlando leaned against the table. The wood was smooth under his fingers, and his lips stretched in a grin he couldn't control. Lips that still felt the rough edges of rasping stubble, tearing teeth.

He covered the canvas again before heading back down the corridor to the dimishing party. Didn't let himself get drawn in this time, slid past like the water off the duck's back. They barely noticed him as he slipped past. Got his coat. Left.

But one did notice. The eyes, those eyes, that followed him, watched him across the room. Into his dreams.

And they were there the next day, from the minute Orlando stepped onto the set. Always there, dark and still and there was understanding just on the edge of his tongue like a flavour half-remembered. Watched constantly, and those eyes saw through the wig and the costume and through skin and flesh. Orlando felt his muscles shifting over bone as if he was external. He moved for those eyes.

Turned after the final wrap, and met them across the clearing, all the way away, no distance at all. He was barely aware of Dom's hand on his arm.

"Hey, we're going to hit the pub, you coming?"

"No," Orlando replied, not even blinking. "I think I'll stay home tonight."

He stayed home. Sat at his kitchen table as it grew dark outside. Silent save for the slight buzz of the light above him, the regular tick of the clock beside the fridge.

The clock read twenty-three past nine when he finally heard the faint sounds of a car pulling up outside. He didn't move. The back door was open in front of him, just the screen between him and the night, and no one ever used the front door at Orlando's place.

A minute later, there came the faint scrape of feet on the back stairs. Orlando found himself on his feet before Viggo came into view, slowly climbing the steps. Paused on the doorstep, eyes locked through the screen.

And he could almost put a name to the darkness in those eyes.

"Come in," Orlando said, because he needed him closer. Needed him close. Now. Was almost trembling with it.

Viggo opened the screen, stepped inside, let it swing shut with a bang behind him. The kitchen bench was between them, and Orlando walked around it, slowly. Viggo simply stood, eyes following him. And he could almost put a name to it. Almost. He fumbled around it, lost it as Viggo spoke: "You could have let me be."

The edge of the counter was hard against his backside as he leant against it, faced the man he dreamt about. "No, I couldn't." Almost put a name... He needed him. "Viggo..." More than that. How did he shape it in words? "Grace is always attainable."

It flashed brighter in those still eyes and the name slid into his head, only to fly apart under lips on his, tongue plunging into his mouth, body pressing him back against the counter and hands sliding, through his hair, fingers tangling, hard. He was ready, this time. Prepared. Waiting. Wanting. Responding. A kiss that ripped him out of himself. Took everything, gave nothing but what he reclaimed, running his tongue along the line of Viggo's teeth, sinking his own into Viggo's bottom lip. Hands yanking at waistbands, because this was no time for taking time, he knew that. He understood him. Viggo understood him. And he understood Viggo.

The kiss broke, and Orlando plummetted into those eyes for a second before he was turned, pushed down over the counter. A second was enough, because he knew it. Could put a name to it. Had always known it.

Hands on his hips, fingers biting, leaving bruises. Only intensified his trembling, want so strong under his tongue that it spilled out at the first thrust, hissing gasp through his teeth.

Yes, he could name it, name the rhythm Viggo set, hard and uncompromising, name the darkness he fell into.

(Desire.)

Yes.

(But also...)

Oh god.

(Pain.)

Yes.

(Anger.)

God, yes.

And his fingers scrambled for purchase, clung to the edge of the counter, white-knuckled.

(Boiling,)
...yes...
(vicious,)
...god...
(violent,)
...oh, god...
(hatred.)

"Viggo!"

Blinding, splintering release. Grit his teeth against it, the final beat of his hips against the counter. Shuddering, shivering, and there was heavy weight against his back, hot breath on his neck. Words in his ear.

"You win."

A hiss, spat like poison, like razor blades, slicing through him.

Grace was fleeting, taunting. Grace was gone. Grace was unattainable and he was falling, sliding off the counter because Viggo's body was gone, had moved away. Orlando was slipping to the floor, in the darkness behind eyelids he couldn't open, with the sound of a zipper, of a screen door closing, of soft steps. A slow-motion slither, taking forever before his knees hit the floor with a thud and he curled sideways. Cold, hard terracotta tiles underneath his cheek.

And he lay there, in his kitchen, silent save for the slight buzz of the light above him, the regular tick of the clock beside the fridge.

He pried his eyes open. The clock read seventeen to ten.

He could have let him be.

No, he couldn't.

Can't stop the fall.

Shouldn't even try.

END