You Have to be Kidding
Sean stood, mug of tea in hand and moodily surveyed the flat roof of his London house. He had made such plans to turn it into a terrace garden, modestly and tastefully screened to cater for Viggo’s taste in al fresco fucking.
He had wanted something Italianate, with plenty of trailing greenery draping over classical urns and statues, amid which, Viggo could recline on a marble couch, his glorious nudity awaiting Sean’s pleasure. Of course, Italian weather would have helped, but if the two or three days of real summer in the UK managed to coincide with one of their precious assignations, his dream would have been realized.
It was originally to have been a surprise for Viggo’s birthday, but there had been the usual delays on the part of the Borough’s Planning Committee, so time had ticked on. Now, those pen-pushing wankers had bowed to pressure from the snooty neighbours, who had objected to his planning application and it had been turned down.
As luck would have it, Viggo was actually going to be in London for his birthday weekend this year, while promoting his Argentinean film, Todos Tenemos Un Plan, a coincidence which would have been perfect, or
¡Perfecto! as Viggo would undoubtedly have said. Of course, it would have been a little chilly for running around stark bollock naked in late October and the goose pimples would have detracted from the smooth lines of a nude Viggo, but knowing Viggo, he would have been undeterred.
Sean’s mouth turned up in an affectionate grin. “Daft bugger!” he said out loud and suddenly a pang of longing hit him in the gut like a sucker punch. He needed to hear Viggo’s voice and he went back into his house, mentally working out where in the world Viggo actually was at this moment and what the time was likely to be there.
It was hard to believe that in spite of a relationship spanning 13 years, he still found it difficult to pin down the most important person in his life, apart from his girls. He was as sure as you can be of anything that Viggo loved him as much as Sean loved Viggo, yet their relationship had been one of short, passionate liaisons in their various homes in London, Yorkshire, LA, Idaho and Madrid featuring warm greetings, hungry, frantic sex and sad goodbyes, which left a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. There had also been the snatched moments in a variety of featureless hotels all around the world, telephone calls at all hours of the day and night, precious scraps of poetry, little sketches on everything from the backs of envelopes to pieces of vellum and off the wall, quirky, yet always appropriate gifts.
He’d kept up his side with postcards and sketches from various locations and tried to match Viggo with gifts. That was relatively easy, because Viggo took an almost childlike delight in found objects and he had so many interests, that there was always something Sean could find to please him.
Sometimes, though, the constant movement and feeling that they were always either arriving or leaving, wearied him and he longed for a proper, domestic life with Viggo, with roots down in one place, unlikely as that seemed, with his footloose lover. They’d talked about it often. The nature of their work made a certain amount of travel necessary, of course, but sometimes Viggo seemed an obsessive and compulsive traveller.
Sean put on his reading glasses and went to check on the computer. He’d not had a film to promote in Toronto this year, so had missed out on a possible rendezvous there, as Viggo had been promoting his Argentinean movie. He envied that bastard, Urban, who had been there promoting Dredd and had the chance to hook up with Viggo. He felt a pang of jealousy, even though he knew there was nothing between them except friendship.
He searched and the first stuff, which came up, was all about Toronto. He read an interview with Karl, where he talked about the friendships from LOTR, which had endured over the years and nodded his head in agreement. That had indeed been a special time. He read the next bit and threw his head back in a guffaw of throaty laughter. That Karl was such a joker. Wait until he managed to get hold of Viggo!
Now he found what he was looking for and it all came back to him that Viggo had told him in a long and rambling stream of consciousness about starting to shoot The Two faces of January and how they’d got permission to shoot at Knossos. *Crete, then, so a couple of hours ahead of London time*. Sean glanced at the clock and decided that Viggo would probably have left the set for the day by now, so went in search of his phone.
As if by telepathy, the phone rang as he stretched out his hand to touch it and he grinned, when he saw Viggo’s name in the display.
“You must be psychic. I was just going to call you. What’s your weather like?”
“Sean, you are sooo British. They should coat you in bronze and make you into a national monument. Isn’t there a spare plinth in Trafalgar Square? We haven’t got together in a couple of months or spoken in a few days, I am here all throbbing and ready for phone sex and you want to talk about the fucking weather?”
“Are you naked?”
“Of course.”
“Must be warm then, not that it necessarily follows with you.”
“Christ, if you must know, it’s dropped to around 25 now, from a high today of 30.”
“So that’s about 77 in old money, down from 86. It’s going to be a sticky night. I hope you have air conditioning.”
“So now you want to discuss the a/c? Yes I do have that, thank you, but in case you also want to review the plumbing, you still can’t flush paper down the pan here. Satisfied now?”
“Thank you, yes, that was very comprehensive. I could have done without the bit about toilet paper, but I’m pleased that you won’t be wilting in the heat tonight.”
“Never mind the heat, I think I already wilted from this conversation. It was standing proud, when I called you, but now, not so much. I think I’ll put my pants back on.”
“Don’t do that, I’m going to take mine off.
--------------------000--------------------
Half an hour later, Viggo remarked,
“Seems that it’s going to be a sticky night after all!”
“Get in the shower, you dirty bugger! Hey, by the way, how was that bastard, Urban?”
“He was good. How come you’re thinking about him, when we’re still in the afterglow?”
“I was reading what he said in that interview. I thought you were daft, but that stuff he came up with about you and the goat farm was priceless! The interviewers bought it too.”
Sean laughed heartily and waited for an answering maniacal cackle from Viggo’s end. When there was only silence, he tapped the phone on the end of the couch.
“You still there?”
Viggo’s voice came back slowly and Sean detected something odd in his tone.
“Karl spoke about goat farming?”
“Yes. He didn’t tell you what he’d said? I thought you’d have had a good laugh about it, when you got together.”
“Well we did talk about it, but it wasn’t actually funny…”
Sean felt his jaw drop.
“So it’s not a joke? You have bought a fucking goat farm in Spain?”
“Segovia.”
“You bought a fucking goat farm without telling me?”
“Well I was going to tell you when I saw you for my birthday. I was brought up around farms and it takes me back to childhood. There are olive trees and vines and around 1000 goats. We make wonderful cheese there and I’ve been helping with the process. It’s great, Sean, we…”
“Viggo, does this mean that you’re going to live in Spain permanently?”
“You’ve been wanting me to put roots down somewhere for years.”
Sean felt himself flushing in anger and bile rose in his throat. He was aware that he had started shouting, but he couldn’t stop himself.
“I did want you to slow down and settle, but I’d kind of hoped it would be with me and that we’d discuss where and when. Since when do you make unilateral decisions about stuff like this?”
“I didn’t mean to do it this way. I heard about the place and drove out from Madrid – it’s around an hour’s drive. I fell in love with it and the goats and I figured you’d love it too, once you got used to the idea. It wasn’t something I thought I could explain over the phone. I wanted us to talk face to face, when I come over in October.”
“You wanted to talk me into it, you mean,” Sean shouted accusingly. “You always think you can manipulate me by talking me to a standstill and then using sex as a weapon... Well this time it won’t wash! There’s no way I am going to move to a stinking, fucking goat farm in the back of beyond…”
“Only an hour from Madrid, Sean!”
“In the back of beyond. No, Viggo.”
“See, this reaction was exactly why I wanted to tell you in person. I think you’re being a little unreasonable here…”
“Unfuckingreasonable? “ Sean leapt off the couch and paced up and down his living room, still naked from the waist down, aware of the autumn chill that had crept into the room and the tightness of the drying semen on his belly.”
“I’ll tell you what’s unreasonable. Stringing people along for years with the promise that one day you’ll settle down with them. With me, Viggo, somewhere we can both live.”
“I know you’ll love it if you just keep an open mind and you’ll love the queso de cabra, I promise.”
“The only cheese I like is cheddar and I am seriously pissed off about this.”
“I can hear that and I’m truly sorry. Look, we’ll talk about this, when I come over; when we celebrate my birthday.”
“Fuck you and fuck your birthday! I won’t be here, so don’t bother coming over.”
Sean ended the call and turned his phone off. He missed the days, when you could actually slam the phone down. He stomped over to his land line and switched off the answer phone, then grabbed his cigarettes and lit one with a trembling hand.
Morosely, Sean drew heavily on his cigarette. Viggo was often infuriating, but this was a step too far. How could he have made a big decision like this without talking about it? How come Karl and probably every other bugger from the LOTR cast knew about it - Christ, all the Viggo fans, who avidly followed his activities on line probably knew about it – yet Viggo had not seen fit to do him the courtesy of informing him.
He had been so looking forward to seeing Viggo in a couple of weeks and now he’d told him not to bother coming round. Did he really mean that? He feared that actually, he did. Sean cursed as the half forgotten cigarette burned his fingers. He stubbed it out viciously in a nearby ashtray, one, he noticed with a pang, made from one of the polished paua shells Viggo had brought back from New Zealand. The iridescence winked mockingly at him and he growled as he ground the cigarette to grey dust.
“Nice metaphor for a burnt out relationship. Write a fucking poem about that, you tosser!”
Sean stalked over to the drinks cabinet and poured himself a generous slug of Scotch. The first one never touched the sides on its way down and he poured another, then, tucking the bottle under his arm, he collected his cigarettes and stomped upstairs. A too-hot shower cleansed his body and washed away the evidence of what was surely his last shared orgasm with Viggo. It was clearly time to leave the would-be hippy to his goats and move on.
Sean’s mind was resolute and his jaw was set. He grabbed the shampoo and fiercely massaged it into his scalp, trying to forget the times he had shared this shower stall with Viggo. The bloody stuff must have got into his eyes, because hot, salt tears mingled with the rivulets of water running down his face. He threw back his head and let out a howl of anguish, so that his mouth filled with water as well.
He shut off the taps and grabbed a towel from the rail, rubbing himself dry so hard that it seemed he would flay himself. He stopped, while he still had skin, angry and red though it was. Sean threw himself on the big bed, another place full of memories of Viggo and sternly told his brain to shut them out. It resisted, so he had to batter it into submission with the bottle of Scotch.
--------------------000--------------------
In a hotel room in Chania, Viggo stared at his cell phone in dismay and cursed himself for a fool. He had tried calling Sean back, of course, but his cell was switched off and the calls had gone to voice mail. Viggo had left messages to please call him, with no expectation that Sean would listen to them. There had been something ominously final in his last words. He knew that Sean could only be pushed so far, so what had possessed him to shove him over a fucking cliff?
He tried calling the land line, but Sean was not picking up and it wasn’t clicking onto the answer phone. Viggo sat cross-legged on the bed and pulled his laptop over. He must try to communicate with Sean somehow.
When he had opened it up and connected to the internet via the free Wi-Fi, he found that for once, he was lost for words. This was entirely his own fault. He just got carried away sometimes and when he had been driving through the Spanish countryside, with his camera on the passenger seat, just being present and keeping all his senses open, he had stumbled upon the sign saying that the farm was for sale. He had felt a compulsion to follow the dusty road up to the casa and once there, had fallen in love.
He had been warmly welcomed by the outgoing farmer, an old man of 90, still upright, yet as weathered and gnarled as one of his olive trees. Widowed now and with no sons to take over the running of the farm, he was looking to sell it, with the proviso that he could retire to a small cottage on his land. Of course, he fully expected to be around for a while and would offer the new owner the benefit of his experience and of course, his workers would want to stay on, all of them reliable and hardworking.
He had given Viggo a guided tour of the place and samples of the olives, the wine and most important of all, the queso de cabra. It was all food of the gods and Viggo had been enchanted by the herd of goats grazing in the pastures and the intricacies of the small, surprisingly modern cheese factory. The water supply, a major problem in many areas of Spain was good here. He had not been so besotted that he had forgotten to enquire about that.
By the time he had left, he knew that he had found a place to settle down. Always a wanderer, he felt that now, in middle age, it was finally time to plant roots. Sean would be pleased, because he knew that was something he had always wanted. The thing was, that Sean had probably envisaged them settling in London, or even Yorkshire, because he knew that Viggo had been spending more and more time in Europe. He was pretty confident that once Sean saw the farm he would be charmed too, but he expected that he would have to sell it to him and exercise a little persuasion, to actually get him out there.
So he had gone ahead and bought the place without consulting Sean. He had a tendency to be real indecisive, but once he made his mind up about a project, he was passionate about it. He had been sure that he could get Sean on board and had intended to work on that once they were together again, which he hoped would be in the fall.
When the shooting schedule for The Two faces of January had fallen so that he could attend the London Film Festival he had known that things were slotting nicely into place. He would be able to spend a few days with Sean and tell him about the new project. God knew, it had been hard not to tell him over the phone, but Viggo had felt this had to be a face to face conversation. With his typical enthusiasm, he’d told Karl all about it over more than a few drinks in Toronto and he’d somehow omitted to mention that it was a surprise for Sean.
Viggo suddenly found words and swore imaginatively and comprehensively in three different languages. He took up his laptop and typed two short sentences to Sean, then pressed ‘send’.
He showered and dried himself off, before wrapping a towel around his waist and going out onto his balcony to smoke a cigarette and watch the sun set over the harbour. Sea and sky were the same shade of burnt umber, with the black silhouettes of moored fishing boats crouching to the left and the harbour wall with its lighthouse running along to the right. A brightly shining gold coin was about to slip down and disappear from sight.
Viggo breathed in the beauty and longed for Sean to be here and share it with him. He couldn’t let Sean simply slip away through his selfishness and stupidity. He hoped that he would read his e-mails and understand the messages.
He went inside and poured himself a sunset coloured shot of Jamieson’s from the bottle on the dresser, but when he carried it back outside, the coin was gone and the sea was dark. Viggo shivered.
--------------------000--------------------
Sean woke at daybreak with a throbbing headache and a mouth lined with the sweepings from a bird cage. His mind still partly asleep, his body stumbled into the bathroom for an early morning pee and on automatic pilot, turned on the shower. Standing under the reviving stream of water, his sluggishly waking brain reminded him that with no roof terrace, he needed to think up another birthday gift for Viggo.
*Viggo!*
The realization hit him as though he had turned off the hot water and drenched himself with an icy waterfall. There was no Viggo any more. Viggo had shown his true colours, he had reacted decisively and Viggo was in his past. This was his first day AV.
He set out bravely to face the day, making the shot of cold water a reality, towelling off vigorously and dressing in old, comfortable clothes. He made tea and drank it, while surveying the garden, coughed through the first cigarette of the day and decided that what he really needed was a good fry up for breakfast.
When he sat down to his eggs, bacon, black pudding, baked beans, sausages, mushrooms, tomatoes and a fried slice *Just the job to see me right!*, he remembered that he should maybe turn on his mobile phone in case the girls, or his agent had tried to call him. He found that the only messages were from Viggo and he deleted them all without listening, but by the time he had finished, he had lost his appetite and he left his breakfast congealing on the plate.
He should have known that the stubborn bastard would be persistent and would not take any notice of anything he was told. Sean had a month free of commitments. What he really needed was to get away from here, before Viggo came over for the Film Festival. After he had scraped his cold meal into the bin and washed the plate and his mug, he went on line to find a locksmith. Viggo had a key to his house, so he wanted the locks changed. When he came round, as he undoubtedly would, he would find Sean gone and access barred. If that didn’t deliver the message, then nothing would.
When he’d called the locksmith and arranged an appointment, he thought he had better check his e-mail. He had expected dozens from Viggo, but there was only one, headed up ‘Goats’. His instinct was to delete it, but curiosity got the better of him.
The message consisted of two lines:
Sean,
“Don’t approach a goat from the front, a horse from the back, or a fool from any side.” Yiddish proverb
“On second thought, I think I am more crazy than my goat.” Remedios Varo
Ever, Viggo
Sean swore in exasperation. Wasn’t that just typical? The bastard couldn’t just say, “Sorry”, not that an apology would cut any ice. It would have been nice, though, but no, the git had to have a smart arse quote for any situation. He should treat this with the contempt it deserved, but no, two could play at this game.
He googled, examined the results and came up with a riposte:
Viggo,
“Put silk on a goat and it is still a fucking goat”. Irish proverb.
Sean
Pleased with himself, he pressed ‘send’. It was true that he had embellished the original with the profanity, but he felt that it fitted the situation. Viggo might be describing himself as a crazy fool, which was maybe meant to be an apology, but it didn’t change the basic problem. Their relationship just didn’t work and was never going to work in the way he wanted. He really shouldn’t dwell too much on that, because it only made him miserable.
Sean put on a cheerful face to greet his cleaning lady and began thinking about where he should go. He didn’t feel like travelling far, in fact, he didn’t feel like travelling at all. He needed to go somewhere Viggo wouldn’t think of to track him down and he hit upon Spain, relishing the irony. He would avoid Madrid and Segovia and go to Barcelona, he decided. He made a reservation to leave on the 18th, in case Viggo arrived on the 19th, the day before his birthday.
When the locksmith arrived, he told his cleaner that he was changing the locks, because had lost a set of keys and gave her a new set. He waited until she was gone, before roaming around the house with a couple of black plastic sacks and picking up all the stuff that Viggo had left over the years. This was hard, because everything he touched triggered a memory. The paua shell ashtray and a Maori, greenstone tiki pendant reminded him of happy days in New Zealand, the horseshoe nailed over the door of the garden shed reminded him of Viggo’s place in Idaho and riding out together in happy companionship, while the kitsch, I b29; Venice Beach apron reminded him of barbecues, when Viggo was wearing only the apron. There were framed photos and paintings, books, DVD’s and most poignant of all, a pair of ragged, paint-stained jeans and a San Lorenzo sweat shirt from Viggo’s large collection of both.
The cleansing failed to have the cathartic effect Sean had hoped for and after opening a carved Spanish box containing scraps of poems and love letters he found himself curled on his bed in imitation of the foetal tiki, clutching Viggo’s sweatshirt and battling tears, which he angrily brushed away with the back of his hand. He really didn’t know what had come over him, behaving like a bloody schoolgirl. His experience of relationship break-ups told him that what was needed was to immerse himself in hard work, so he dragged the sacks downstairs and loaded them into the boot of his car, with a view to taking them to a charity shop later, put on his gardening boots and set to.
--------------------000--------------------
Two weeks later, with a couple of days to go before he was scheduled to fly out to Spain, Sean realized that he’d not actually got around to taking those sacks anywhere. That was something he really must do before he went away, he told himself. His cleaner had raised her eyebrows at the squares left on the wall by the removal of various pictures, but Sean had told her that he planned to decorate and he had got out the dust sheets and set about painting the walls the very next day. Now they simply looked bare, but he’d remedy that on his return.
There had been no messages either by phone, e-mail or snail mail from Viggo and he felt a sense of relief, mingled with bitterness and disappointment. If Viggo was going to give him up this easily, then maybe he’d been deceived all along about the depth of their relationship. Maybe he’d been a convenient fuck, when Viggo was in town. He had been out on a couple of random dates with willing women, because, God knew, there were plenty of those, but he’d ended up unsatisfied and disliking himself. He had no interest in pursuing men, because there had only ever been one man.
In spite of himself, he wondered how Viggo’s filming in Crete was going and how the goat farm was getting along without him. He called his girls to tell them he was going away for a few days and was evasive, when they asked about Viggo. Lorna had expressed surprise that he was going away during the Film Festival, but he’d managed to imply that it was work related. He met his agent for a liquid lunch and talked about future projects.
When he got home, he knew as soon as he let himself in that Viggo was there.*How the fuck?* It wasn’t just the boots and the discarded backpack he’d nearly fallen over in the hall, or the wet ashtray smell of his foul maté brew, but just the pervading presence of Viggo.
“Veeeggoh!”
“In here, Sean.”
Sean followed the voice into the kitchen, his annoyance rising with every step. Viggo was standing at the counter, barefoot as usual and Sean tried to ignore his high, tight arse in the blue jeans.
“What the fuck are you doing here? I told you not to come. How do you get in anyway?”
Viggo turned and handed Sean a bottle of beer. He looked thinner in the face than last time Sean had seen him, his cheekbones standing out in sharp relief. He was tanned and the touch of grey at each temple suited him. *Damn, but the bastard looks good.*
“Your cleaner let me in before she left. Apparently my key no longer works.” Viggo’s voice was cautiously neutral.
Sean’s throat seemed to have tightened and he took a pull at the beer, before he answered, trying to keep his voice level.
“Your key no longer works, because you are no longer welcome here. Now kindly remove your sorry arse from my kitchen.” He sniffed the air. “What’s that smell?”
“It’s a present.” Viggo picked up what looked like a purple wheel. “It’s called Drunken Goat. The cheese is soaked in red wine. The flavour is amazing.”
“I told you that I hate goat’s cheese. Anyway, we are not having this conversation. You made a decision and so have I. I have cleared you out of my life.”
“I noticed. But, look, Sean, let’s act like civilized adults. Since I’m here, I want to cook for you and we’ll talk. I guarantee I will make you like my goat’s cheese. Wait until you taste it on toast, over my olive tapenade here and bubbled under the grill.” Viggo held up a jar containing what looked to Sean like well-rotted down compost.
Sean was about to protest, when he noticed that one of his casserole dishes on the counter seemed to have straw sticking out of it. He lifted the lid. “Why is this dish full of straw?”
“It’s not straw, it’s hay, Sean. This is leg of kid baked in hay. The sweet scent of the hay perfumes the meat and keeps it very moist.”
“Not content with wanting me to eat the cheese, you expect me to eat the bloody goat as well? You really are crazy.”
Undeterred, Viggo opened the oven door and replacing the lid, bent and slid the casserole into the oven. “It’s tender young goat, milk fed and allowed to graze free. It’s delicious. It’ll take around an hour and a half, so we can talk while it cooks.”
Sean could no longer ignore Viggo’s arse bent over invitingly at the oven. He put down his beer and put his hands on Viggo’s waist as he straightened up. Viggo turned, grabbed Sean’s face in both hands and kissed him fiercely.
“Sean, I was selfish and wrong to go ahead and buy the farm without talking to you. I really am a fool. I would like to convert you to the pleasures of my farm produce and I’d love for you to come with me and visit, but if you really can’t stand the thought of it, then I won’t expect you to live there. We’ll find somewhere else to call home, somewhere we can agree on and I’ll even sell up if you want. What we have truly is important to me.”
Sean shook his head, “No, I don’t want you to sell up. You’re irresistible with that slightly demented glint of passion in your eyes. I was really, really pissed off, mind and we need to lay down some new ground rules. I will come and look at the place. As it happens, I have a flight to Spain booked already. I can change the airport. Now how long have we got before your goat is ready?”
“Around an hour, because I will need to get the appetizer ready.”
“Oh yeah, the cheese on toast. Can I have Henderson’s Relish instead of that black, earthy stuff in the jar?”
“Tapenade, Sean. Sure. I can compromise. I’ll set the timer. Hey, what did you do with my apron?”
“It’s outside in the car. Everything was on its way to Oxfam. I was serious, Viggo. You’ll have to convince me that we’re not just putting silk on a goat.”
Viggo was already taking off his tee shirt and unfastening his jeans. He shucked them off along with his underpants and yelped as Sean pressed him against the oven door.
“Oops, sorry. Wrong kind of toasted buns. Let me soothe that for you.”
When the timer buzzed an hour later, they were still in a tangle on the kitchen floor. Sean groaned as he pushed himself up and leaned down to offer Viggo a helping hand.
“I think we’re getting too old for this kind of thing. Bed next time, but Christ, I have missed you!”
Viggo grinned, standing there naked, but for a pair of oven mitts,
“Put silk on a goat and it may still be a fucking goat, Sean, but ours is one hell of a classy goat.”
Summary: Viggo has a surprise for Sean, who isn't very happy.
Rated: PG-13
Categories: Actor RPS Pairing: Sean/Viggo
Warnings: NoneChallenges:
Series: NoneChapters: 1 Completed: Yes
Word count: 5388 Read: 673
Published: 10 Nov 2012 Updated: 10 Nov 2012