“You know,” Viggo started once Sean picked up the phone. “I’ve met you in London for far too many times to count by now, and I still haven’t seen your house.”
Sean squinted at his phone. He wondered if he had stepped into some kind of alternate world where he was in the middle of a conversation with Viggo, and his alternate-self had landed in his world, where his life was perfectly normal and incredibly depressing and didn’t involve any sudden, mid-conversational phone calls from Viggo.
Probably not. He sighed, and placed the phone back to his ear.
“Sean. Your house. I want to see it.”
“Vig, normal people start phone calls with ‘hello’.”
“You have caller ID, right? It doesn’t make sense for me to introduce myself.”
Sean sighed. He wiped his hands on his pants; it was a good thing he wasn’t doing anything embarrassing. “What are you doing in London this time, Viggo?”
“I ran screaming away from San Francisco all the way across the Atlantic, and I landed in Heathrow.”
“…Might be a stupid question, Vig, but what were you doing in San Francisco?”
“Filming On the Road. The one adapted from Jack Kerouac’s novel. The cast is just a whole bunch of young actors and I felt like a fossil the whole time.”
“You are a fossil,” he shot back automatically. At the back of his mind, he wondered what it was with Viggo and his obsession with roads. Down the line, in the background, there was the sound of a car honking. “Vig, are you driving?”
“I’m wearing a handset.” There was a pause. “Is London’s traffic usually this complete shit, or does the city hate me?”
“It’s Christmas Eve. In London. Of course it’s complete shit. How much time are you taking per inch?”
“Half an hour or so.” There was another pause. “I really should have walked from the airport. I landed ages ago.”
“… Vig, Belsize is twenty miles from ‘eathrow, and over several ‘ighways. You wouldn’t ‘ave made it.”
“I’ve hiked longer distances.”
“You’ve gotten lost within three miles of a 7/11. And a quarter mile of yer own ‘ouse.”
“I navigated Iceland just fine!” Viggo declared, sounding completely indignant. Sean didn’t believe a single whit of it; the man was a damn fine actor.
“If you walk left long enough in a forest, you’ll eventually find your way out. Or off a cliff,” Sean intoned.
“Fuck you, Bean,” Viggo said, sounding far too affectionate for his words. Sean heard a door slam. “Anyway, is your house a big honking monstrosity with a Range Rover in front?”
“Bloody hell,” Sean swore. He practically sprinted to his bedroom door, pulling it close and locking it. Then he grabbed his house keys and shoved them into his jeans pocket before he strode to his front door. “Can’t a guy get a warning before you drop in on him?”
He twisted the lock open. Viggo was standing outside, his manic grin visible even through the fine dusting of London-grey snow on his hair. His car was a beat-up Hyundai, and it would be anonymous if not for the fact that it was painted neon green. The colour looked vaguely like some of the highlighter pens that Evie owned. Sean blinked at it. What the hell?
“You have white stuff on your hands,” Viggo said. Then: “Are you going to let me in?”
Sean threw open the door. “… What would you ‘ave done if I wasn’t in?”
“Oh, I knew you would be,” Viggo said. He grinned as he dropped his small suitcase—seemed like the guy still packed very light—onto the hallway floor. “I called Mel and your ma and asked.”
“Wot. How—”
“Got it from your agent, and he gave it to me because you’re moping around the house,” Viggo continued, and his grin was reached shark-levels. Sean blinked at him. “Besides, Henry decides to go gallivanting on a road trip with his college mates and his girlfriend, and his dad isn’t cool enough to follow anymore.”
Sean stared at him. He tried to find the link between the two sentences, and he couldn’t. Mentally, he shrugged. Might as well just go with it.
“I told him that it’s my mission to cheer you up. And you owe me.”
“I do? Since when?” Sean cocked an eyebrow.
“You promised to show me your house and garden the last time I was in London for the Empire Awards, and you never did.”
“Vig,” Sean said, slowly and deliberately, as if speaking to a small child or a man who just went completely starkers in front of his very eyes. He clapped him on the shoulder, spreading white all over Viggo’s pretty decent shirt. Well, the man probably had at least one other. Sean had hope. “We’re in the dead of winter. The garden is covered with snow. Everything is dead.”
“Oh. Damn.” There was a pause. Viggo licked his own finger, and stroked it down the back of Sean’s hand. He put it into his mouth. Sean’s breath caught, just a little.
“Icing sugar?”
“Yeah,” Sean said, and he ducked his head down. He would have rubbed the back of his neck if his hands were clean. “I’m makin’ cupcakes and cookies. Stuff fer the girls; I’m seeing them tomorrow. All three of ‘em together. Evie’s spendin’ Christmas with her sisters ‘cause Abby and Mel bonded over not liking Gina very much and laughing over me idiocy.” His smile was a little too wide and entirely too sheepish, and he shrugged a little.
Viggo was staring at him, the tip of his finger between his lips. He drew it out with a soft pop. “I didn’t know that you bake.”
“Just messin’ ‘round, really,” Sean said, and he headed back to the kitchen. “Gina moved out in August, and I ‘ad some extra time since my next film is shooting ‘round ‘ere. I get ta come ‘ome every night. Then Evie starts talkin’ ta me about her baking classes, and I thought why not. So I got Lorna to print out a couple of recipes ta start with.” He paused, and laughed to himself. “Evie said it ain’t fair that I’m better at it than she is.”
“Well,” Viggo said, poking him on the wrist. “You have big hands. All the better to knead with.”
***
A couple of hours later, Viggo munched on gingerbread cookies while half-leaning, half-sitting on Sean’s dining table. He was worried enough about Sean ever since he read the papers about the separation and the divorce, until the only time he wasn’t thinking about Sean was when he had sunk deeply into the mind of Old Bull Lee. Even then, it wasn’t exactly that long. Lee had no problems thinking about attractive naked men. He wrote a whole book about them.
Sean was in the kitchen now, cleaning up. The icing had been made, the cupcakes iced and in the fridge; now all they were waiting for was for the cookies to cool. Viggo had teased him that they could make anatomically correct gingerbread men (and women), and he had gotten smacked at the back of his head and reminded that the cookies were for Evie.
There was something here that Viggo knew he really should think about. That he should have been thinking about since July 2008, when he realised that the colour that had been haunting him was the same colour as Sean’s hair in the bright sunlight. That he should be thinking about it for two years, especially after the sheer irrational rage he felt when Sean went back to Georgina. He still owned that shirt, with its shoulder soaked through with Sean’s tears. He had never washed it. Instead, it was folded neatly inside the box.
He really should be thinking about that box at all. Or the fact that when he was at a loose end he didn’t decide to work on his art, but came to Sean instead.
But at some point in time he realised that there wasn’t really a point to thinking about it. He knew what it all meant a long time ago. Maybe even in New Zealand during principle shooting, on the trip they took to the South island, with just the two of them. He remembered standing at a hill when the sun was about to set, and the rays of the sun—yellow and bright still, but already starting to be tinged with orange—caught themselves in Sean’s hair. It was already written in Sean’s smile then. Viggo knew what it all meant.
But he was a fool and a coward both, and he had never raised a single hand; never spoken a single word. He had only stood back and watched as Sean drifted away. He watched as he got married and divorced. He stood by with his hands in his pockets, and never did reach out.
Exene had always said that he was spectacularly slow. He supposed she was right; after all, she was the one who proposed.
***
“Hey, Vig.”
Viggo was sitting on the couch, staring into space. At Sean’s voice, he shook his head as if he was forcibly yanking himself out of his own thoughts, then blinked and cocked his head to the side.
“Yeah?”
Sean was leaning against the kitchen doorframe, arms crossed. “Come along with me ta meet the girls, Mel, and Abby tomorrow. Maybe me parents too. Don’t know if they’ve decided ta take tonight’s train. They’d call me if they are.”
Viggo blinked. “Are you sure about that?”
Sean shrugged. “I just called me girls. They know you, even though their memories might be fuzzy after so many years, so it ain’t like you’ll be a stranger. They said they’d be fine wi’ it.” There was a moment when he looked uncomfortable, but it was gone so soon that Viggo wondered if he imagined it. “‘sides, what else would you do fer tomorrow?”
“Well,” Viggo said, and he was surprised at how blank his mind went, suddenly. He really hadn’t planned for anything beyond arriving at Sean’s house and seeing him. “Call Henry, I guess. Go to a hotel.”
“Shite, man, I ain’t that bad of a host,” Sean exclaimed. “Yer staying right ‘ere.”
“But—”
“If you want ta earn yer keep or something’ silly like that, Vig, get yer ass here and ice the cookies wi’ me.”
Viggo snorted. “But you won’t let me make them anatomically correct.”
Sean looked at him. “You can give half o’ ‘em dresses and give the rest of ‘em trousers. ‘ell, you can even colour them.”
Viggo punched the air, letting out a loud whoop as he dashed into the kitchen. Sean watched him, and he couldn’t help but laugh, wondering what exactly he had just agreed to.
A couple of hours later, Sean knew exactly what he had, and realised that he needed to do some intervention. He sighed, placing his hands flat on the table. “Vig.”
“Mm?” Viggo sounded distracted, frowning as he wielded a spoon with great dexterity. There was a small splotch of pink icing on his nose. Sean tried valiantly not to giggle like a loon. He also ignored the sudden, strong urge to lick it off.
“Mind explanin’ why the trousers are all pink and the dresses blue?”
Viggo tutted, shaking his head. He didn’t look away from dressing a gingerbread man in a pair of pink trousers. “I didn’t think you’re the type to perpetuate gender norms, Bean. Shame on you.”
“Yer goin’ ta confuse people,” Sean said, perfectly reasonable.
“You can tell them that the pink trousers are girls, and the blue dresses are boys.”
Sean couldn’t help it. He threw his head back and laughed. “Yer daft!”
“Yeah?” Viggo lifted an eyebrow, almost as if he was going to start waggling it. He licked at a thumb. “You love me that way.”
There was a pause.
“I must be an idiot to,” Sean said, turning away and shoving his hands into his pockets. Too late, he realised that his fingers were still covered in icing sugar. He pulled them back out, grimacing. Then he realised that his clothes and skin were almost entirely covered by sugar, flour, and food colouring.
“Go change. Or shower. Either,” Viggo said, and he gave Sean an odd, lopsided little grin. “We’re almost done here anyway, and I can finish them up.”
Sean nodded, starting to head out of the kitchens. He hesitated, “You sure you don’t need help?”
Viggo waved a hand absentmindedly. Sean left the room, started to grumble about dirty hands. He sounded distracted.
Left alone in the kitchen, Viggo sighed to himself. They- he had always chosen to take a single step back when he could have taken one forward, hadn’t he?
He would try again. Christmas wasn’t here yet; even if it was, there would still be Boxing Day, and New Year’s. If he missed those, there would always be next year.
Viggo had learned to wait. He really had.
(If he told himself that over enough time, the words would solidify itself on his tongue, and he could believe in them.)
Summary: There is one secret that Sean keeps from Viggo, and one secret that Viggo keeps from Sean. One day both will be blown open, and they both can't wait for that day.
Rated: G
Categories: Actor RPS Pairing: Sean/Viggo
Warnings: NoneChallenges:
Series: NoneChapters: 10 Completed: No
Word count: 28356 Read: 10268
Published: 30 May 2012 Updated: 30 May 2012