I do not own actor Viggo Mortensen, I am in no way related to him and this story is a sheer fabrication of my mind.
Rating: PG-13.
Copyright of Mena.
Song credits: Tori Amos, 'sweet the sting'.
I have always loved this song to bits, it is so deliciously naughty and poetic, and, well, this is the scene it always evoked to my mind. A girl can dream, right?
Enjoy, and thanks for reading!
Sweet the Sting.
Viggo’s POV.
“They are looking at you!” someone nudges me on the side, and I follow the pointed finger to look at a table near the right end of the scarcely lit pub, where three or four girls are sitting together. I am not so fool or vain to take it for granted they are looking at me, but sure enough, they are staring in our direction, because when I turn towards them they promptly hide their faces down, turning away to whisper to each other, like petals of a flower closing.
All I do is smile a little smirk as I follow my younger colleagues, and friends, across the crowded space, nudging and pushing a pit to keep in line towards the only vacant spot, the bench running all around a platform stretching from the low stage to the middle of the room.
As we pass them by, the five girls don’t raise their heads; actually they keep them skillfully low, far too low for someone who is not desperately avoiding to cross the stare of a stranger. Only the two facing the line of people passing them by sense our presence, I can tell it even in the smoky light of the club, from the way the blonde nudged the redhead, softly, and her friend’s forehead quivered, just a bit, up her furrowed brow.
But the remaining three are giving their backs to us, and when the line stops a couple of guys ahead of me I find myself still quite close to their table, close enough to catch what sounds like a heated discussion, in the sudden and odd void between the performance of a karaoke singer and the next.
“I am just saying that when water touches your butt you learn to swim, that’s all!” a brunette screeches, flailing her hands out with a loud ring of bracelets.
“Go tell Lily!” another girl with dark locks laughs, pointing at the redhead across the table, who shivers openly,
“So basically, Blythe, you’re saying that under pressure you can do anything?”
“Yes!” the first brunette nods convincingly, and the redhead and the blonde nod with her, “It’s all about adrenaline pumping in your blood.”
“I don’t know,” the second one ponders aloud, “ it’s not that if you’re in danger you suddenly turn into a superwoman. Oh, Nyla, Lily, stop nodding like that!” she slaps the outstretched hand of the redhead, who gags,
“We all know you don’t need adrenaline to get wild! People like you totally lack inhibitions, danger or not. What do you think, Ruby?”
The fifth girl didn’t spoke so far. She sits there, between the two dark-haired girls, and all I can see is a knot of ginger hair moving slightly from left to right as her eyes probably follow the discussion.
“I agree with Blanche,” she says sweetly, “some people can react to pressure and some don’t. Personally, I find that fears and pressure just block me. I think all I could do if the brakes of my car didn’t work would be staring jaw-dropped at the tree as I crash against it.”
“Oh, Ruby!” The first brunette, Blythe, reaches a hand to slap her shoulder, “you’re so frigging self conscious that I could bite you for that.”
“Viggo, let’s go!” my friend whispers from behind me, slightly pushing towards a couple of vacant seats on the bench, and as I move on the owner of the pub appears on stage, taking the microphone from the last amateur singer.
“Thank you, thank you!” he cheers, “Now, who is our next performer for tonight? Come on, any volunteer?” his eyes scan the crowd under the stage, and when they frame me, a sudden, childish impulse takes over me, and I wave a hand in the air. Quickly I catch his attention, and point a finger at the table of the quarrelling girls, who are still too absorbed in their little debacle to notice my move.
“The redhead,” I mouth to the man, “redhead in the middle.”
As soon as I speak, two members of the band leap off the stage and stride towards the table. Only then the girls raise their heads and exchange quick, confused glances.
The voice of the host resounds in every corner, amplified by the mike.
“Give it up for our new singer!” he roars when the two men practically clasp the redhead by both arms and lift her from the chair. For a moment she looks on the verge of fainting, while all around her four friends curl in one genuine, delighted spur of laughter.
“What’s your name, dear?” the host screams from the stage and someone shoves a microphone before the face of the girl.
“R… Ruby.” She croaks, paler at every second, dangerously swaying, but suddenly, one of the two men leans in to whisper something in her ear, and to my big surprise, the girl turns in my direction, her eyes framing me. They widen, and then narrow when a cunning smirk spreads on her traits. She nods at the unintelligible question of the man, who scampers off and jumps back on the stage, that, I notice just now, has no stairs.
Right when I am starting to wonder how the heck the redhead will manage to crawl up there, an expectant silence falls in the room. The only pressing, pitched voice belongs to her friend Blythe, who is now tugging her shirt with so much strength that it almost slips off her body.
“Oh, Ruby, sing Madonna!” she begs, but the redhead scrolls her head, getting rid of the dangling shirt in a sinuous move.
I see her half-turn, untying the knot of her hair with a hand, and I catch the cunning glint in her eye, framed in her bent arm, when she addresses to her friends saying something I am obviously unable to grasp. But I can imagine her words, because, right when the first notes of percussion beat in the room, four pair of eyes dart to glue on my face.
And then, the redhead moves away from her table, swaying her hips under her skirt at the rhythm of the drums, slightly shaking in sync with the tune. But, I realize, she is still looking at me.
“With a strut into the room
With his hat cocked sure defiantly
He said "I, I have heard
That you can play the way I like it to be played..."
I sense myself smirking despite myself, hearing how her voice resounds low and smooth, enlaced with the music. She is still pale, and the hand holding the microphone shakes slightly. Despite it, though, she keeps moving obliquely through the room, and her eyes dances on the faces of strangers, but always come back to cross mine.
“...I said, "I can play, anyway that you want.
But first I want, I want to know
Baby is it sweet sweet
Sweet the sting
Is it real this infusion
Can it heal where others before have failed?”
I lean in, ankle on my knee, to study the girl as she sways through the room, and I cannot help but grin when I notice how all the faces of spectators mirror the same, captivated amazement; she seems to be floating an inch up from the ground, slightly shaking her hips like she was swimming in the smoky air, and as she moves on her voice comes out stronger and yet lower, dangerously enticing.
“If so could somebody
Shake shake shake me sane
'cause I am inching ever closer to the tip of this scorpion's tail..."
She spins around, giving her shoulders to me in a slow pirouette, and locks of ginger hair bounce and dangle on her back. I realize, vaguely and just in a corner of my mind, that the only perceivable sound is her mesmerizing voice, like the whole room was holding its breath, and when, out of the blur of the slow motion the girl turns again towards me, the roar of the blood in my veins increases, pumping in knells that echo in my head like beats of a drum matching her sinuous steps.
Because she is walking straight towards the spot where I am sitting, surging lightly around the tables, and she is looking straight into my eyes.
There is a little smirk on her lips behind the microphone, that open and close to let the voice come out, but it seems to be detached from her and independent from her will; it stretches like a ribbon, twirling around her dancing body, to fill the room and my head.
A huge lump is forming in my throat and I am forced to slightly lift my head, because she is almost towering on me now. She stopped walking, and she is now standing before the bench and me, and her hips swing with an hypnotizing regularity from left to right.
“He said "I laid my weapons
down with my pistol
Fully loaded, a hunted man
To my root, will it end
Or begin in your cinnabar juice?"
The blood in my head thunders so loudly that I cannot almost hear her voice anymore. I am sitting there, paralyzed and looking into her shining eyes, when like in a dream, the girl lifts a heeled foot.
I freeze, unable to look anywhere else but at it, and the point of her sandal probes inside my vital space to gently nudge bent leg off the other, and then, it leans right there, on the bench between my parted legs.
Red locks brush my face, and then…
“Is it sweet sweet
Sweet the sting
Is it real your infusion
Can it heal where others before have failed?
If so could somebody
Shake shake shake me sane
'cause I am inching ever closer to the tip of this scorpion's tail"
Leveraging on the propped foot, using the bench like a step, the redhead pulls herself up, moving upwards past me, and her hip brushes my ear when, with a gracious pirouette, she lands on the bench running towards the stage.
The audience cheers madly, and her four friends jump on their feet and clap their hands, screaming aloud.
I lean back against the bench, panting like I ran a marathon.
The girl bows lightly, twirling the mike-free hand around as she walks towards the centre of the stage. There she stops, right under the white bull’s eye of light, and lifts the microphone again, turning her head to the side.
“Love let me breathe
Breathe you in
Melt the confusion
Until there is
There is u-union…”
I swallow, unable to catch the rhythm of my breath. Coins, money begin to fly towards the stage, and the roar of applause is almost deafening. The redhead is still singing, lightly dancing on the spot to the beat of percussions, and the lights hit her hair and make it glow. In the distance, her eyes and teeth shine.
“Is it sweet sweet
Sweet the sting
Is it real your infusion
Can it heal where others before have failed?
If so could somebody
Shake shake shake me sane
'cause I am inching ever closer to the tip of this scorpion's tail."
A booming applause soaks the last notes in, and like the spell of music broke the hand holding the mike falls by her side, and the other one runs to cover her eyes. She laughs, embarrassed, hiding in her smoldering hair.
Across the room her friends scream and stomp their feet, and, still laughing, she scrolls her head in their direction, hopping graciously down the stage.
I keep my eyes on her when she breezes past me, back to her table, and I swear that for a moment she slowed down her pace to tilt her head down and cross my eyes.
Maybe I imagined her wink and the daring smile she flashed at me, but when the girl finally reached her table, and her four friends were trying to hug her simultaneously, squeezing her hands, kissing her cheeks, smoothing her hair and most of all, laughing together, my hands landed on my lap and touched something.
It was a five-dollars note, probably one of those she was tossed at on the stage. I don’t know how she managed to write on it so quickly, I thought I was looking at her all the time, but apparently I was wrong.
So sweet is the sting of fear.
Across the room, hidden behind her laughing friends, the redhead turns towards me and when I salute with a nod of my head, she smiles back.
The end.
Oh, girly! What a delightfully wicked and teasing shortie! I loved it so much! You are just full of surprises, aren't you? ;-)
| QUOTE |
| they promptly hide their faces down, turning away to whisper to each other, like petals of a flower closing. |
I loved this description. Very pretty!
Also, really liked how you made her fearful at the beginning, then showed her coming out of her shell under the pressure and challenge of Mr. Viggo. :tsk: I love the choice of song, and the way she flirted with him through the music. When she put her foot down between his legs! Brilliance! I would have loved to see his face!
| QUOTE |
friend Blythe, who is now tugging her shirt with so much strength that it almost slips off her body.
“Oh, Ruby, sing Madonna!” she begs, but the redhead scrolls her head, getting rid of the dangling shirt in a sinuous move. |
I can totally picture this as the begging child tone of voice. Oh please, Ruby, please please sing Madonna! :laugh: So very typical of moi.
A very delicious treat for this tiresome night I have been having! Thanks for writing it, babe!
Your brilliance knows no end. Now, you know I love your long fics, but you have a gift witht he shorties. They are always teasing and tantalizing and always surprise me, no matter what.
I know Amber quoted this already...but I just had to also.
| QUOTE |
I am not so fool or vain to take it for granted they are looking at me, but sure enough, they are staring in our direction, because when I turn towards them they promptly hide their faces down, turning away to whisper to each other, like petals of a flower closing.
|
Drawing from our conversation earlier today about Viggo and his photography, I have to say that I liken you to him, with your artistic skills. I mentioned that I am drawn to his photography because he is able to find and capture beauty in the most mundane and ordinary events. You, my dear, do the same thing. Comparing the chattering of women, who quickly lean each other to whisper to each other to that of a flower closing was genius. You managed to find beauty in an ordinary event. Bravo! :bow:
| QUOTE |
Oh, Nyla, Lily, stop nodding like that!” she slaps the outstretched hand of the redhead, who gags,
“We all know you don’t need adrenaline to get wild! People like you totally lack inhibitions, danger or not. |
I had a good giggle over Nyla and Lily just nodding along with everything everyone says.
Oooooh, Ruby, what a little tease. She seems all reserved at first and then turns into a vixen in the middle of the song. Putting a high heeled foot in between Viggo's legs was the best! Way to assert your power and feminitity at the same time. I seriously just want to high five Ruby for that.
Love the song, love the story even more.