Work Text:
Forget, forget, she wanted to forget. Wanted fuzzy maybe-dreams to be mulled and giggled over, wanted to carry on. But some things seemed impossible to forget.
On Monday, she almost managed it. In the light of day, in the regalia of their costumes, their personas, Orlando in full Legolas mode, elf-aura drawn aloof around him, it all seemed so distant. So impossible.
Then, in the middle of a scene with Viggo, she looked up into his eyes and saw it. The same light that had glimmered in Orlando's eyes.
And she knew.
"Liv!" Peter, spitting out her name like a curse. "You've lost it again."
She blinked, clearing her mind of weird light, dark hair and pale hands. "What?"
"Elf! Elf!" Peter gestured. "You're a bloody elf. Act like it, will you?"
So she'd clenched Liv, and all her sudden questions, into a small ball, buried her deep, and become Arwen.
That night, she remembered that glimmer, and felt a shiver she could not explain.
On Tuesday, she found her eyes following Orlando's costume-blond hair, Viggo's concentrated stillness, automatically seeking one or other, searching for both. Sitting at lunch, she had been watching them in the line for a full minute before she even realised her idle eyes had turned that way.
They were speaking, easily, moving along the line. It was like a beautiful dance, she realised, their interaction. Perfectly natural, the give and take of it, the way each moved around the other's space. Unselfconscious, but with elegance, and beautiful, unusual symmetry.
She watched Viggo lean behind Orlando to reach something, the latter not moving away, hips brushing, an arm trailed along his back, and felt the shiver start in her stomach again.
"Liv!" Elijah, stretching her name in a whine and punctuating with an elbow jabbed at her. "God, you're a space case these days. Is it that time of the month or something?"
"Elijah!" Dom admonished, backing it up with a hurled carrot.
Liv ignored the food fight, dwelling on the memory of a shiver.
On Wednesday, she lingered on the fringes, even though she didn't have a scene until the afternoon. Loitered behind the technical crew as Peter put the Fellowship through their paces in one of their interminable fight scenes.
Watched their eyes find each other in sliding, hidden glances. Watched them orbit each other from afar during breaks, somehow together, complementary, even without looking, even with the entire length of the set between them.
Watched them move, the one with lightquick agility, youthful energy, the other with smooth certainty, experienced poise. Each elegant, each fluid, each capable of quickening her breath alone.
Liv wondered how they moved together.
She was expecting the shiver this time, let it ripple through her.
That afternoon, she was Arwen, and felt Aragorn's grip on her arms, his warmth with her.
She wondered if he thought of clear brown eyes when their lips met.
On Thursday, Liv dreamt.
Seeping out of the velvet black of oblivion, a pale hand stretched forth, elegant, bony wrist, fingers flexed, splayed, now clenching in shaggy hair, now smoothing down, running with tactile delight over stubble long enough to soften. Face to face, he was shaded, intense, he was boybright, they were circling, sinuous, lips parted, so close, sharing breath...
She surfaced, twisted, subsided.
...he reached behind, stretched against, the longest movement of the world, a sliding caress against the other's back. Slipping behind him, fitting together like a jigsaw, moulding, cradling arms and shoulders, drawing him closer. Sliding searing hands over an arching body, muscles shifting under sword-callused fingers. Head falling forward, teeth seeking collarbone, lips parted on the softest of moans...
She murmured, rolled over, sank once again.
...hands again, always hands, gripping, questing over skin. Bodies twisting together, perfect in space and time, so perfect. Names whispered on the breeze, urgency, yearning, knowledge. Mouths meeting, lips and teeth and saliva-slick tongues. Breathing hard and synchronous, musical, rattling...
She awoke, tangled, twisted, damp with sweat. Shivering.
By Friday, it was too much. They were everywhere, together, apart but never alone. They were linked, the one necessarily engendering the other, so obvious Liv wondered why everyone couldn't see it, it was tearing at her eyes, her mind.
"Have you noticed anything...?" she asked Dom.
He squinted at her. "What are you talking about?"
She joined the spectators at the filming of another Fellowship scene. Blessedly, mindlessly, watched the rhythm of the action. But then Legolas laid a hand on Aragorn's arm.
...and curved up his arm, curled over the shoulder, wicked smile mirrored, echoed as a firm hand on his waist drew him round, closer, hand gripping the back of the neck, pulling down for a breath-stealing kiss...
She blinked, and they were apart, business-like, listening to Peter's directions. It came, the shiver, and she hated it.
A hand waved in front of her face.
"Earth to Liv?" Cate, grinning and distant. "We're going for coffee; want some?"
Come Saturday, she was trying to avoid them. She couldn't function like this, jumpy and vague, feeling as though her brain was disconnected from her body.
But they were everywhere, impossibly there every time Liv turned around. Orlando rampaging with the hobbits, or Viggo talking with Peter, but still so indelibly linked, even though apart.
Every glance drew them together, every gesture was sensuous, every touch spiralled out of control in her head, and she shivered, teeth clenched, turning her head away, wishing, hating.
She sagged at dinner, head in hands, willing the tears not to come. A creak in the chair next to her, but she couldn't look up, because she'd see them. She knew exactly where they were; Orlando one table over, between Dom and Billy, in raucous good humour and Viggo, the table behind him, talking earnestly with Ian.
"You OK, Liv?" Male voice, but Australian accent. David. Safe.
She looked up carefully, smiled wanly. "Just drained. I'll be fine."
"I know what you need." Miranda, sitting down opposite, with a big smile. "Night out of the town. Bunch of us are heading out to that big club in town tonight. Coming?"
Go out, dance, blow away the cobwebs, get blasted out of her head on Absolut and try to wipe her mind clean. Liv thought she'd never heard a better idea in her life. "I'd love to. Do I have time to shower first?"
She fled under the spray, letting it drum down against her shoulders, her head, refusing to think at all, living for this blessed free moment and the suds swirling around her feet.
As she shut off the water, there came a hammering on the door to her room. Almost immediately, it was followed by the sound of the door opening, and Liv tensed a moment before Miranda's accented voice called out: "Liv? You there?"
"Yeah," she called back, wiping water from her eyes, slicking the excess from her hair.
"Meeting downstairs in half an hour."
"OK."
The door closed, and Liv slid aside the shower curtain, stepping out onto the mat. The mirror was fogged over, and she wiped a patch clear. She leaned forward to stare at herself, examine her face, her own eyes.
A weird light glimmered in them, deep beneath the blue.
"Snap out of it, Liv," she said firmly.