They keep asking him the dumbest of questions, like �What part of your body do you think is the sexiest?" or "What's your favourite food?" And all he can do in return is to put up a polite smile before telling them for the nth time how many bones he has already broken and how he almost ended up in a wheelchair. He has come to accept that answering these kinds of questions is part of his job. He has even brought himself to talk, quite businesslike, about his two fathers. Each time this subject is brought up he cringes internally. Family secrets. Covert inside information. God, why do people want to know all this stuff?
He hates talking about his private life. Perhaps because his private life's somehow complicated. The perfect reason to keep it � private.
Lately, however, one interviewer got him flat-footed. "Can you remember a dream you had lately? One that keeps coming back again and again?" the fragile Japanese interviewer asked. Staring at the girl's pearly pink lips, as they produced a quick succession of high-pitched syllables and excited giggles, Orlando, without thinking, blurted out about the tiger.
Afterwards, he cursed himself for it. Why couldn't he have kept his silly mouth shut? The memory of the tiger is something infinitely precious. He doesn't want to share it with anyone. It belongs to him alone.
Realizing the words had already flown out of his mouth, he babbled on about a lion, gesturing wildly with his hands as if he wanted to distract people's attention from what he had said.
The tiger. He dreams about him so often. He is asleep in the dream. Or maybe not really asleep because a part of his consciousness is very aware that he is lying next to a big, warm-blooded animal. Spooning. "You know what spooning is?" The animal's heartbeat pulses through the dream, steadily, yet unobtrusively, like music in the background, like waves rolling up the beach. He can hear it. He can feel it. The slow, steady rhythm passes through his hands, spreading from there through his body. He feels safe. Completely at ease. Nobody wants anything from him. He is only sleeping and the tiger guards his dreams.
The tiger's skin feels warm under his hands, the hair both rough and soft, depending on whether he strokes the animal against the grain or not. This is how the dream normally ends. With Orlando lying spooned up to the tiger, one arm slung over the animal's chest. The tiger purrs low, lost in dreams of his own.
Orlando always feels a sense of consolation when he wakes from this dream, even when he finds himself in the dead of the night in a dark, lonely hotel room, not remembering right away where he is. Tokyo? Paris? Rome?
In his half-wake state he can still sense the animal's calm, powerful presence next to him. His eyelids grow heavy and within seconds he falls asleep again.
This time, for the first time, however, the dream goes on. Burying his head in the tiger's long, graceful neck he feels the hard muscles underneath. At any time, the animal may wake up, turn his head with a quick, abrupt movement and then what? Kill him?
No, Orlando isn't afraid. He knows the tiger won't hurt him. Snuggling up closer to the animal, his hand wanders deeper. Suddenly, in one fluid transition, his fingers touch a man's stomach, lean and flat, a trail of furry hair starting further down.
He knows that this a dream and strange things can happen in dreams. Yet coming into contact with human skin is somehow startling. As if it was more natural sleeping naked next to a giant tiger. He wants to withdraw his hand, but the man doesn't let go. The man turns around. And Orlando eyes shoot open.
"You? You are the tiger?"
Green-grey eyes smile at him. "I've been there all the time. Watching over your sleep. Watching over you. But you knew that, didn't you?"
Orlando laughs, incredulous. �No. I didn't."
He gently lays a hand on the familiar face, touching the skin carefully, anxious it might be no more than an apparition going up into smoke as soon it is touched. "I'm so, so happy to have you back."
"You never lost me," Viggo replies.
Orlando's heart feels like it might explode any minute, so full it is of happiness, of sadness, of desperation and, above all, of such wild desire.
He smiles back, his eyes wandering down Viggo's naked body.
Viggo understands immediately. He mounts him like the tiger would, looming over Orlando, his sex hanging heavy between his legs. They both moan when their bodies touch. Instantly, Orlando is hard, too.
They kiss until they've kissed the air out of each other's lungs, wild tiger kisses, while their hands roam each other's body. They roll on the bed kissing, fighting, pawing at each other like tigers would. But soon all playfulness is gone and there is nothing left but raw hunger.
There is not much preparation, but that's exactly what Orlando wants and how he wants it. The instant a slick, strong push splits him apart he realizes how much he has missed not only Viggo, but this, just this. The tiger's embrace.
Everything's happening so fast now, no time to think, no time at all. Orlando's gasping for air, his head is spinning, round and round and round, as Viggo's riding him. Very soon their rhythm gets more and more frantic. Their bodies slam against each other, sweatslick, perfect, and they find themselves spiralling, oblivious to everything around them, spiralling down a maelstrom that will transport them to the deep blue bottom of the dream.
Viggo's close already, Orlando can tell it by Viggo's erratic gasps and thrusts and he is, too.
Any time. Any moment �
And with his last breath, just before he comes, Viggo says, "Sleep � and when you awake, forget I was there."
