Arwen is just a cocktease. Though it probably has a nicer ring to it in Elvish. This is the last coherent thought Sean remembers having, somewhere around the time he dropped The Fellowship of the Ring down the side of the sofa.
When the phone rings at eight am, he's curled up on his side with his face against the carpet, inhaling the scent of Pine-Fresh Shake n' Vac and taking sloppy swallows of whiskey. He's not all that sure how long he's been down there, but long enough to know by heart the geometry of the rug, and the inside of his arm, the naked, softest part where his elbow folds.
But this isn't bad drinking, he tells himself, this is necessary pre-flight medicinal drinking. That's a whole different thing. For days before even a short flight, Sean won't read the papers or watch the news because of the mentions of death. He has his rituals to quiet the fear, but the main one is this, drinking himself into submission before getting to the airport and keeping topped up on duty-free so that the hangover doesn't kick in until after he gets there. When he is flying from London to New Zealand, as he will be in less than four hours, it needs to be planned like a military campaign, so he doesn't come to stone-cold sober and screaming like a banshee at thirty thousand feet.
Today it's not working very well. Even though he's gradually slid down off the beat-up leather armchair onto the rug, he isn't getting as tight as he needs to be.
Drinking in the morning doesn't work. The daylight filtering through the curtains is all wrong, and so is the sound of school kids passing by on the street. It doesn't help that Sean's London house is a slab of dead air, unwarmed by skin or cooking, unloved by presence. The cleaner has gradually moved all his stuff around to suit her own tastes. Apart from his clothes spilling out of his cases, there's no sign of him at all. He's been feeling like a burglar all week, and now he just feels like a burglar who's raided the drinks cabinet.
Around five am, he'd given up trying to sleep, came downstairs and got out Viggo's copy of The Fellowship of the Ring. He'd soldiered on into book two, but his heart wasn't in it.
The way he's feeling now, the beginnings of drunk and more than usually paranoid, even every whiter-than-white character has a seamy hidden agenda. Galadriel has probably just finished dabbing stale baby's blood from her fangs before doing a spot of weaving. The hobbits have a necrophiliac porn ring back in Hobbiton. Gandalf was recently and unwisely freed from a padded cell.
And Sean can't read about Aragorn without calling up the sunless pallor of the inside of Viggo's thighs, spread out on Sean's bed, with Sean's knees nudging them further apart and his teeth ripping open the condom wrapper. So he shouldn't dangle impossibilities in front of himself, like a caged-up lab animal.
But then Sean is a habitual doer of things he shouldn't do, that shouldn't in all conscience be done. He shouldn't for instance have travelled two thousand miles with, wrapped in a plastic supermarket bag, a tee-shirt of his that Viggo had worn in his bed one night, and that still smells faintly of his skin and sweat. And if he is pathetic enough to have done this, then he should resist taking the shirt out and burying his face in it. He should at least have that decency.
But alcohol, even if it's not getting him properly pissed, is having a ball prising up his memory's eyelids in its most inconsiderate way. It's leaving him at the mercy of past turbulence, windshear, bad landings, and the stinging particular need to feel Viggo's skin again.
Then the phone rings.
It'll be the hobbits, is what he thinks first. They already phoned him, drunk, from a someone's hotel room party a couple of days after he got back to London. They did their It's a Wonderful Life impression:
"Aaaaw, the good ol' Building and Loan!'
"Good ol' George!'
"ZUZU'S PETALS!'
It had sounded like someone was having giggly, growly sex close by the phone. It sounded like those animal behaviour documentaries featuring copulation and growling and mothers licking their young, all rolled into one. With an overdub of added giggles. It was entirely possible that the hobbits are twisted enough to get off on phone group sex while doing Jimmy Stewart impersonations.
"You realise it's seven am here, you little fuckers?' He'd been happy to hear them, but you'd never have known.
"I swear, you are such a downer, Bean.' Lijah sloughed James Stewart, was back to nasally Californian.
"There are viruses breeding in African rivers that have better public images than you.' Billy's laugh was like a maniacal cement mixer.
Then they'd sung "Jingle Bells' until someone hung up. It was April.
This morning, Sean sits up and looks at the ringing phone for a while.
There's a pulse pummelling around in his stomach. He's getting cramps. Viggo is his sole trigger for stomach cramps. He seems to have got involved in Sean's physiological processes without Sean having any say in the matter.
"Vig?' Sean has pounced a little too violently and sends a lamp skating almost over the table edge. "Uh, hello.'
Shit, shit. If it is the hobbits, he will disembowel them and make them eat their own kidneys.
For seven blurry, jet-lagged days he has been wearing his need for Viggo as his own secret hair shirt. It is ridiculous. He is ridiculous.
"Uh, hi.' The feel of Viggo eases close with his breath on the telephone. "What's happening?'
"Um, the usual, I suppose.' Magnificent, Sean thinks. Could you be any more inarticulate? Anyone would know you were an actor.
He has a tick of anxiety in his chest. His mental card-index flickers into unwelcome life.
(A) He wants to talk to you. This is good. But don't get carried away because it's possible that -(B) He wants to re-establish a proper working relationship. (C) He's delaying, working up to something bad.
He begs, but only under his breath, where no one can hear him, so it doesn't count.
Viggo doesn't seem to be reading off the same script, though. "Tell me about your week. We haven't had a good talk in -' There's a pause while Viggo thinks. "Maybe we never had a good talk, come to think of it.'
He is slightly drunk, happy. Sean knows the way his consonants slump pleasantly together, not standing on ceremony. If he were here, he'd be all touchy, all hands, dipping under clothes. Even across this distance, Sean can feel how he'd be, the cling and tease of him.
Sean frowns at his sofa and swirls his scotch up dangerously close to the rim of the glass. "Um, my cleaner has some kind of furniture-moving fetish. I keep kneecapping myself in the dark on coffee tables she's gone and put just inside doors, nice and handy.'
'Ouch.' Viggo says the word richly, like it's some kind of dessert. Distantly, there's the crunch of a ring-pull and the sound of Viggo drinking beer, listening.
"I've read a bunch of new scripts, all wanting me to play the same evil bastard, only with different accents.' Usefully, Sean's face and voice more or less continue to fill the contemporary villain/bit of rough mould. "Oh, and my agent wants me to cash in on my brilliant career as a Hollywood hitman by doing an ad for life insurance in Japan, and didn't get it when I laughed.'
Sean is trying to hide inside his own anecdote.
He doesn't want to be talking to Viggo on the phone. What he wants to do right now is go down on his knees in the sweetest and most sordid of all acts of sexual worship, tongue back Viggo's foreskin and take the full blunt glide of him in, as much as he can of him.
He can hear Viggo's voice round with amusement. "Sucks to be you.'
"Yeah, you laugh. Shit has its own integrity.'
"Gore Vidal.' Viggo's voice burrows through him, comfortable.
"Huh?' Sean is distracted. His tightening prick is making a pressure against his jeans crotch. The warm nubs of Viggo's nipples sing in his palms like the ghost of some old burn.
"Gore Vidal said that.' Viggo has a way of offhandedly mentioning things which would make Sean feel stupid if they came from anyone else. The Viggo Memory Instant Highway. The hobbits call him Rain Man.
"Jesus, Vig, "Sean says, passing over who Gore Vidal might be. "Where I went to school, if you made it to sixteen without impregnating someone, they gave you a medal.'
Viggo coughs into a laugh. "Anyway. You're still getting back tomorrow?'
The unspoken word "home' is in the air now for them to contemplate. And the other unspoken word "flying'.
"Yeah.' Sean lays his hands on the table edge, the receiver hugged between neck and shoulder. There's an uneasiness shaking his breath. "I leave for the airport in around an hour. '
"You okay?'
Clearly Viggo isn't going to go along with the fiction that everything is dandy with Sean and flying. He's not comfortable like that, Viggo isn't, not when you're used to the mild evasions of the average conversation. Every single thing Sean likes and dislikes, Viggo remembers them all. Yes to cock-sucking; no to rye bread. Yes to potato latkes; no to Bob Dylan. And no, no, no to flying. "Just leave it, Vig.' Sean can hear the gluey, defensive edge on that.
"Hey, I only want to help.'
"Vig, I just told you, it's fine. I'm fine.' Sean frowns fuzzily. He can hear himself, woolly, unconvincing and unconvinced.
"Yeah, but you're lying. I can hear you. You're not fine and now you're pissed off with me. '
Sean has that cliff-top feeling, the urge to jump. He shuts his eyes and releases a breath. "Did you want something, Vig? Or were you just calling to rub it in because you don't have to get on a fucking plane in a few hours?'
A faintly rushing silence answers him.
Viggo pulls him in, staying quiet like that, like there's no one on the line, except Sean can tell the difference, he can tell he's there. Sean can feel himself slipping into something florid, aggressive, bad. He's going to regret this.
"You want nice American-style sharing? Okay. Flying fucking terrifies me.' His voice is losing its footing. "You're strapped into your seat like a baby. You're listening to those moronic safety announcements. Just how stupid do they think we are? I mean, think of how high the cruising altitude is - how many miles in thirty thousand feet? how long would it take you to fall thirty thousand feet? - and they're telling us about, get this, the illuminated gangway lighting.'
He is obliging Viggo, making more of a fool of himself with each unsteadied breath. His voice scratches and climbs.
"And what I don't get is why everyone isn't thinking this. How they can sit there eating off their little trays and watching the movies, and trusting the life jackets under their seats will save them. Why am I the only one squeezing the armrests into fucking pulp to stop myself climbing the walls?'
Sean stutters to a halt, wipes his mouth. He swipes his fist across the wet on his face. It sometimes occurs to him that he's got quite a knack for turning sympathy into disgust, it's one of his minor talents. He realises he'd quite like to cry now, immediately.
Viggo breathes out worried breaths. He doesn't say anything till sweat has leaked its way the whole length of Sean's spine. Then he says "Jesus.'
There's a pause. Somewhere in Wellington, in the living room of a house with a bald neglected lawn, Viggo is now sitting upright, cradling the receiver.
"If I was there, I could make you feel better.' Viggo's voice falls soft. It's a voice that, when it wants to, can be gentle, something floury or smoky about it. "I'm good at making people not scared.'
Sean's throat dries at the thought of it, but "Yes' and "Sorry' croak through all the same. Shame is dabbing a moustache of sweat on his upper lip. He can see his verbal life deteriorating into a chain of uncomfortable blurts. Maybe he should take a vow of silence.
"Can I tell you something?' Viggo says, his syllables pressing close to Sean's ear.
Sean takes a swallow of whiskey and tries to kick-start his voice. "You know what they say. Tell your secrets to an anti-social bastard and they'll never get round.' Viggo gives a little huff of amusement. "Well, keep this to yourself.' Then he breathes out a shot straight to the heart, to the prick. "Um, there's going to be an international incident if I can't shove my cock into you within forty eight hours.'
Sean is hungry and angry and speechless with gratitude. After a while he clears his throat. "So you're saying I need to get on that plane, like it or not?'
"'Fraid so.' Viggo's voice is close as a kiss beside his ear.
He wouldn't have thought Viggo would be good at reassurance, but as they listen to each other's breathing, he feels something approaching safe.
The connection idles while they think of things to say which won't be too much.
Sean doesn't replace the receiver for a while, because that will officially end the call. He lays it on his stomach while he smokes a cigarette and lets his thoughts pool and eddy, lets himself anticipate, recall all Viggo's small facts.
Then he gets up and goes into the bedroom, reclaims the smell of Viggo's skin, and comes twice, the first time fast, without thinking, his breath barking against his windpipe and his hand rough on himself. The second time exhaustion makes him slow. He allows himself to remember the sounds Viggo makes, the way his hair sticks to his face when he sweats, the lost way he looks after he comes, like fucking has shaken him out of himself.
Later, after he's taken a shower, he catches sight of himself in the sweat of the bathroom mirror. He's mostly just a set of differently flesh-tone smudges but the eyes, looking back at him, are definitely scared.
There are hardly any arrivals apart from Sean.
Flat early-morning airport light jabs in slices. Sean's mouth tastes of rust. He's walking evenly, pushing a particularly delinquent luggage trolley, as if he might spill, because the floor is bulging up like a mattress under his footsteps. He's dunked his face under water in the toilets. In the mirror he was puffy with hungers, with bad eyes and a drunken red-wine tongue and teeth.
Viggo is on the lookout, alert and tense as a cat. He's unsmiling, in grey tracksuit bottoms, with tangled hair scooped back off his face. He has a new half-healed scratch on his cheekbone.
Sean can read the anxious tilt of his shoulders, the shifting, eloquent muscle in his jaw. Only the low glass barrier is between Sean and the waiting nudge of Viggo's attention.
They skirt their way around a uniformed driver holding up a name card, and then there's nothing between them except stale airport air.
Looking at Viggo, Sean can still find American teeth alarming. Sometimes he thinks Americans are a later model of human being, with state of the art, up to date improvements. Sometimes he just thinks Americans are dangerously well evolved for feeding. It makes him feel shabby and European, like rationing ended last week.
"Hi.' He should try that again, it wasn't a convincing sound. Sean can feel his shoulders rise and clench into a small shrug. Viggo doesn't say anything for a moment. Then he says, "Let me take that, or you'll get deported for being drunk in charge of a luggage cart.' His smile is tucked in at the edges like hospital corners.
"What doesn't kill you, eh?' Sean says. His consonants flop and spit. He lets go of the handle of the trolley, and tries to think what to do with his hands, because clearly this is not the place or the time.
"Okay.' Viggo's balance shifts, ready to go. Then he lets out a breath, like he's been hoarding it, and he gathers Sean in, gets one arm, then the other around him, taking in fistfuls of Sean's coat. The good thing about airports is that they're like booze, they let men touch, hug.
They've had hugs before, Sean knows what to do. He lolls into the warmth-field of Viggo's body, snakes a hand up between his back and his jacket. Under cover, he allows himself to stroke the nicely taut slope of Viggo's back. Viggo smells of himself and the privacy of sleep. They lean into each other without moving. Sean can feel the heat of Viggo's skin, the little blink of muscle when he swallows.
Viggo cups his neck, rubbing lightly, gentling, comforting. "You'll be okay now.'
"Safe hands, you mean?' Sean tries to cool his voice against Viggo's shoulder.
They let each other loose, unbalancing slightly.
There's a white dab of birdshit dead centre on the windscreen of Viggo's car. Sean, in the passenger seat, blinks the morning into focus. All the colours look wrong, like seventies Polaroids. Pure tiredness rinses through him.
"You were missed, you know.' Viggo slams the door, flips through his keys for the ignition.
"Missed?' Sean can't handle the seatbelt, lets it snap back.
"The hobbits. They kept saying the set wasn't the same without you stamping around in a permanent bad mood, swearing.' Viggo is edging towards a grin.
"Oh right. The hobbits.' Sean grimaces back, not entirely unhappily.
Viggo pauses for just long enough to please Sean very much. Then he leans over and kisses him, pushing his head against the seatback, taking his time, in the way that invariably removes every trace of Sean's independent will.
Sean reaches down and feels Viggo, but takes his hand away as he starts to thicken. He's drunk, he can do these things. "So you didn't miss me, is what you're saying.'
Contentment is making a shine across Viggo's forehead. "Oh, I can't tell you that.'
"Why not?' Sean eases his arm in around Viggo's shoulders. He feels it when Viggo's breath speeds up, the faster flex and rub of his neck. Viggo's voice is lower this early, or else it has a delicacy to it that is new. "It'd only go to your head.'
"I see. Right.' Leaning in, Sean cups the side of Viggo's face, the warmth of flesh, roughness of beard, the upward twitch of a blink, earlobe, one messy lock of hair fallen forward. In the paint-smelling silence of the car they sound so loud, so unmistakably like kissing, so much like a couple crescendoing towards a fuck, with the best kind of wait between them.
Later, Sean breaks out of a thick crust of sleep in Viggo's bed. It's hot, and it takes him a panicky minute to work out where he is. When he opens his eyes, the blinds are glowing light. When he closes them again, his retinas are painted red.
Viggo is flattened by sleep beside him, on his side with one arm across his face. You can see his mouth, is all, the little gap between his front teeth that his tongue worries at while he's thinking. There's a narrow slick of come low on his stomach, in the pelt of hair. He's slightly risen, slightly hard, in the hollow of his thigh.
Bits and pieces of Sean's thinking spin off, crumpled. When Viggo lies like this, loose with sleep, with his arm only covering his face, with his throat and body undefended, Sean wants to give him a defence. If anyone hurts you, he finds himself thinking, I will rip out their spinal cord and go skipping down the street with it.
After a while Viggo shifts his arm and says, "Do I owe you money or something?' His eyes are slits in the light, the pupils small as pinpricks.
Sean feels the air unclench. He doubles his pillow and puts it back under his head, lies back flat.
"Someone gave you a bit of a going over this week,' he says. As well as the scratch on Viggo's face, there is a raw line on his forearm.
"Motherfucking orcs snuck up on me.' Viggo stretches. Warm and freshly woken, he makes Sean's skin twitch with appetite.
"Your stunt double hasn't got off his arse in a year, superman.' Sean leans in on an elbow to examine Viggo's scar, and for a moment they could be boys in the playground examining each other's scabs.
Viggo rolls over and runs a skinned-looking forefinger down Sean's chest, testing. He looks thoughtful. "Oh, so that's who that guy is. I thought he was with the caterers.' He scoots down, applies the hot tug of his mouth to Sean's nipple, bites.
His rough hands with their half-healed scars are intelligent, like a blind man's reading braille. They've done this before, they repeat patterns they've learned, they know what works.
After a while Sean's breath is being pressed into fits and starts. "Fuck, Vig -'
"Shhh. Just let me.' Viggo straddles him. They're both greased over with sweat by now.
The rubbery heft of Viggo muscles into him, bit by bit. There's the slow, then faster, wet smack of sex, the smell of Viggo salted with Sean. The bed thumps against the wall.
The phone rings. "Noon call.' Viggo says, then shunts himself further inside Sean, and comes with a violent jerk of his hips.
Two days later, Sean is having a solitary cigarette round the back of the Lorien soundstage and watching some Uruk-hai in half-costume having a kickaround outside Make-Up. It's turned cold again and he should really put on a jacket, but he needs the air.
Billy and Dom trot over, already lighting up, shrugging on coats over costumes.
Billy cocks an eye at Sean. "Weight of the world on your shoulders?'
"Piss off.' Sean is good at ignoring, he can ignore with a flair some people never achieve in full-blown conversation.
Dom exhales thoughtfully. "Don't think of it as acting. More like training in techniques for dealing with boredom.'
Sean grinds out a butt. "Piss off, you thespy little shite.'
"Sometimes, Bean, it's like you want to be unpopular,' Dom says with dignity, as they retreat to a safe distance. At first, Sean thought it was jetlag, or an unusually bad hangover. Now he's not so sure. It's more like he's suddenly had all his skin peeled off. He doesn't want to be like this, he wants his old self back. This is like taking a bath in hydrochloric acid, like there is too much world.
The hobbits have a joke. What goes plink plink fizz? Two babies dropped in an acid bath.
Come to think of it, it is a joke. His situation is ridiculous, laughable, and Sean would like to be able to laugh.
Then he hears a good, comfortable noise. He is absolutely certain without checking that he feels Viggo, and no one else but Viggo, walking up behind him to stand in snug at his shoulder, nicely taut and still. Sean can tell when Viggo is content, like today. He doesn't push at his hair too much, and there's something smooth and muscular in the way he moves, a swing of appetite.
Sean lights another cigarette, watches one Uruk-hai skid in and tackle another. Expectation lashes him open.
There's a brush of fabric and then a shock of cold flesh against his side under his costume.
"Hey, what do you think you're doing?' He manages to hold on to his rollie.
"Warming my hands.' Viggo's voice is low, with amusement spreading in it like dye in water.
"Oh yeah.' Sean shivers suddenly, he can't help it. Viggo moves alongside, opens his coat and lets it rest round Sean as well. "So, do you want me to piss off too?' "Stay if you like. I won't be good company.' "Well, I'm used to that.' They stay there for a while without moving, with Viggo's arm around Sean, not investigating, only resting, slung low on his waist.
Summary: Suspicious!Sean has to get on a plane in order to see Viggo again.
Rated: NC-17
Categories: Actor RPS Pairing: Sean/Viggo
Warnings: NoneChallenges:
Series: NoneChapters: 1 Completed: Yes
Word count: 4097 Read: 1036
Published: 31 Jul 2009 Updated: 31 Jul 2009