Part I
London, 4 October 2012
He couldn’t count how many beers he’d had. He couldn’t count how many whiskeys he’d had either. Sean threw his head back and laughed, sharp and loud. The joke wasn’t particularly funny. In fact, he hadn’t even heard it. But someone was talking to him, and the best response was to laugh. His heart was beating in his ears, drowning out all other noises. Da-dum-da-dum, he was sick of the sound, so he drank even more, drowned them all out. The burn of the whiskey, the bitterness of the beer. Sean didn’t care for the taste of either. If there was a way of piping alcohol into his veins via a needle, he would do it.
I don’t have any mirrors in my house anymore.
Thinking. He was still thinking. Sean laughed again and threw another shot of whiskey back. He had a friend with him, and that friend had a hand on his arm, trying to talk to him, trying to tell him something. But Sean waved his hand away and gulped down another half a bottle of beer. Around him, he could hear cheers. More alcohol pressed into his hand. He remembered something: asking the waiter to keep them coming. That was a good decision.
This is pathetic.
The more he drank, the softer the voice spoke. Drowned out by his own breathing, drowned out by his laughter. Even his heartbeat faded. There were cheers around him, people taunting him that he couldn’t possibly drink anymore. He liked this place. The people here, they didn’t ever try to stop him drinking.
You can’t drown me out forever.
Yes he could. He always could. Alcohol, work, his daughters. Sean had perfected the art of forgetting. It wasn’t denial, because denial meant something existed. Nothing existed. If he said it didn’t, then it didn’t. If it refused to go away, it just meant that he had to work a little bit harder at it. Sean knew all about working hard. He wasn’t a slacker; that much everyone around him knew. First to the set, last to leave. No director had ever blamed him for being busy. Sean drained the last of that bottle of beer.
Last to come home, first to leave. Isn’t that why-
There was another bottle of beer in his hand but the world was moving. He couldn’t hear his own footsteps, much less feel his feet. He didn’t need to. He’d brought a friend; a good friend, a good man, a hand on Sean’s elbow as he steered him out of the bar. London was always so bright, so full of lights- no, that was not a streetlamp. That was a camera’s flash. Flashing camera. Someone was looking at him. He remembered:
Laughter, sweeter laughter, not tainted by drink. Glass surrounded by black, glinting off the light that came shining down between the leaves of the trees. Blue eyes, a dimpled chin, white, almost-crooked teeth. Laughter.
His throat was hot. It wasn’t the alcohol. Sean drained the bottle and tossed it to the ground. He pulled his elbow out of his nice friend’s grasp. His heart was roaring in his ears. The world was moving, but he could hear own his feet. Slamming on the pavement. It was almost familiar. His legs burned. His hand. The wavering little figure with that piece of shit camera had disappeared. There were more cameras.
Sean covered his eyes. It was the only thing he could do.
Story of your life.
No. No, the story of an alcoholic’s. A role that Sean received. Benny... Benny... the one time he wanted his mind to start working, it didn’t. Never mind. Sean wasn’t an alcoholic. He lived without alcohol when he was working. Not a single drop until the director called ‘cut’ and sent them all home. Not that there was anything wrong with taking a drop. Plenty of actors do it. Pete... God, Pete was a glorious man. Always had a drink in his hand.
He’s researching for a role the fun way. Not Method. He wasn’t a Method actor. That was a technique for-
Viggo
-someone’s name he couldn’t be bothered with remembering right now. It didn’t matter.
***
Toronto, September 2012
Something new. More work. Sean loved to work, loved his work. There was a difference between those two statements that he wasn’t particularly interested in investigating right now. A new project, his agent had told him. He had always wanted to be in a cowboy movie, and here there was one being served up to him on a plate. Too bad there weren’t horses.
Or that was better, really.
He loved Toronto. The people were polite and were far less prone to rushing up to him and asking for his autograph, or whispering loudly about him hoping that he would hear and punch them so they could earn some money from selling the story and suing him. Less people who would recognise him. That was less of a problem nowadays, outside of London. He wasn’t very much recognisable anymore, was he? That was a good thing, he decided. A damn good thing.
It was easy to smile and talk, as easy as it had ever been. Sean was an actor, and so what if he was always acting nowadays, outside of pubs and bars and when he was alone with a bottle. There was nothing wrong with that. A person had to know how to act whenever they were in a certain situation. You couldn’t be yourself, that wasn’t allowed, not in this business. Actors didn’t only act in front of a camera. Even directors acted. They were all false men (and women) in the end, pretending to be someone better, someone more respectable, selling themselves and their ideas like the most well-dressed of whores. It was a game that Sean had played for a long time.
The name of the film escaped him now. It didn’t matter anyway. His agent would call him and remind him a week before, or send him an email to remind him. Technology was a great improvement upon society, no matter what anyone said. There was a man, once... A boy when he knew him, who hated technology and always said he hated it. Sean knew his name, but names weren’t important. Faces weren’t important. He knew his lines even when they weren’t scripted. He knew how to act; knew how to pretend. He made a whole career of it. Someone once said that actors were paid to be like children, playing pretend. He had mastered that; playing pretend.
So what if he wasn’t particularly good at it at times? There was no one to see him then. The world didn’t care about you when your pictures weren’t splashed across papers for everyone to see.
He goes to see Viggo at his premiere. He takes a seat at the back and wears a baseball cap, pulled low over his face. Perhaps it’s pathetic, acting like he’s some kind of stalker or something, but Sean decides that this is what he wants.
God, but Viggo is beautiful. He’s always been beautiful, but age has deepened the lines in his face and made him even more so. When he smiles it’s not the sun coming out, because that is cliché, but it is the sea that draws away from the shore, revealing white sands, white beaches, far too good to be true. This man is too good to be true. He’s a dream, a dream that Sean watches and listens to and tries to grasp with both hands. But his hands are slippery now, so full of dirt that it has become utterly impossible for him to hold onto anything.
He watches and listens to Viggo talk and categorises every single spot of imperfection that he can see, from the wrinkles on his shirt to the scars upon his hands. It is more of a dream than ever, because it is impossible to see Viggo’s hands from so far away. Memories of a magical place, when Viggo’s hands are on his clothes, his shoulders, his skin. He remembers the scrape of calluses against his beard, and he wonders why the memory is so clear. It is an old memory, from long ago, and he’s not felt the like since.
Strange what a mind does.
Sean liked smooth hands. Hands of people who had never held anything rougher than a pen in their lives. Women who slathered their skins with creams and lotions, with perfectly tapered nails that showed how little they truly had to work. It came down to differences, he thought. Opposites attracting. If women thought exactly like men, where was the excitement?
The bar was a dark place. Sean and his baseball hat and jeans stood out, but the bartender gave him a whiskey and he stopped caring. There was plenty of beauty here; young men with smooth, pale skins who danced like they were trying to fuck the air, shoving their arms upwards and throwing their heads back. Young men, barely men, who stood at the corners with their legs slightly apart and their eyelashes heavy with mascara and eyeliner, little better than whores except they charged not money but dignity.
Sean drank. His hand did not shake. There was a beautiful man on the dance floor, his hair long enough to brush his chin. It was sweat-soaked but there was no product in it. Sean drank. The man danced and danced, and the dim bar lights glanced across his eyes and they were blue, the blue of the ocean just as it crashed against the cliffs. His nipples peeked through the mesh shirt. Sean finished his drink, and ordered another one. His lips were pink and thin, perfect and unscarred, but his pants stretched so tightly across his crotch that Sean could see the outline of his cock. He leaned left.
Sean drank.
“Buy a man a drink?”
The voice was wrong, Sean noted. But it didn’t matter. The hips were close enough, and the legs -- long, slim, clad in leather jeans. He smiled, lifted a shoulder.
“Vodka tonic.”
There’s more grey and silver in Viggo’s hair nowadays. The brown came from a bottle and the gold had long faded, but wasn’t his own hair the same? It is just stubbornness that keeps his roots from showing, but his body betrays him anyway, with little spots where hair used to be. But he’s not here to think about himself.
Viggo’s voice has not changed. It’s still the same. Not only the sound itself but the rhythm. Sometimes he thinks that he can key his heartbeat to it, force it to beat with every soft rise of Viggo’s voice, in the musicality of his speech. He doesn’t know the words and he doesn’t particularly care. The voice is enough - the voice and the parting of his lips, wet despite the slow-approaching dry chill of Toronto. Pink lips underneath yellow lights, almost obscene. Sharp lines of cheekbones and jaws, as if carved by a sculptor; marble instead of human flesh. He is dreaming again, but he can’t see either of those from here.
(He thinks of Pygmalion. Pygmalion and Galatea, his beautiful creation. Except that his own hands tremble far too much to wield a chisel, and not even a god can breathe life into something without form, something entirely made up of mist and bitterness and wishing.)
He can remember that crooked grin, so close that it seems like a dream. It is a dream. Dreams are his reality and his anti-reality both. Sometimes he wishes he knows the difference, or at least, he knows what he wants.
The lines beside Viggo’s eyes have deepened. Do they taste different from the rest of his face? Does the salt gather better? If he tastes the skin, will it be salt, or his own tears?
Or will it only be ash?
The bar’s bathroom was a dirty place. Sean’s knees ached when he sank down, his hands clinging onto leather-clad hips. He didn’t bother pulling them all the way down, just the zip. He tugged the half-hard cock out with his hand and sucked it into his mouth. Thicker than a fag and far more salty, but the burn and the bitterness was almost the same. Almost; he could deal with almost.
There was a hand in his hair, a wordless groan up top, and Sean opened his mouth wide just as the young man shoved his cock down his throat. Deep enough to choke, but Sean swallowed back the tears and took his punishment, his knees spreading even wider. His cock was pressing against the zipper of his jeans, the rasp of the metal painful against the sensitive tip, but Sean only pressed hard down on it, scraping the metal all along his cock. He shuddered from the burn in his throat, the burn in his groin, the pain in his eyes. He closed them, shoving his mouth in even further, feeling his teeth catch in pubic hair.
It was disgusting. Utterly disgusting and demeaning. Like addicts that snort coke in public restrooms, surrounded by shit and piss and vomit. He was little different. Worse. The come on his tongue was not poison for his body but it was poison nonetheless. Like a little shot of shame. Sean almost laughed when the hand in his hair held him still as the man fucked his mouth. Nothing but a hole; nothing better than a sex toy. He was fine with that. It was what he was looking for.
Gentleness had no place in these dingy, dark bars. They were all the same across all countries. Places of shame and shamelessness both, where people made use of each other. Sean wasn’t wearing the cap any longer but he didn’t need to. It was his mouth that was wanted, not his face. Except this time--
He felt the cock twitch. Almost, almost, he lived his life on almosts nowadays. Almost there but never reaching it, never good enough. He closed his eyes just in time to feel the cock spurt in front of him, come streaking across his face, nose and eyes and hair and chin and mouth. Sean shuddered and shame was like arousal, like adrenaline, little different from either, and he pulled down the zip of his pants just in time to feel the come paint the palm of his own hand.
Little better than a whore, except he was a whore who gave his own money to be used. Reduced to a hole. In his youth there had been places in London. Toilets with holes at waist level to shove cocks into. Or so he’d heard. He’d never been there.
Too late, too late, almost in time. The bell tolled too early and now he was out of time. That was a line for that bastard to write about. Something just perfect for the kind of things he liked to worry about. Sean lowered his eyelids and licked his own hand clean, then licked his lips. He knew that the man whose come painted his face could still see him; could see the way that Sean was dragging his fingers through the white stains, as if rubbing it into his skin, into every crease, every pore.
“Thought a man as old as you would be better at this.”
He ignored the words. Words had no place here either. Around them were the sounds of mouths on cocks, asses on cocks, cocks on cocks. The rumbles of protesting doors and the screams of hinges. Sean slipped his fingers into his mouth and sucked the tips. Come tasted like come. Salt and bitterness and rust - or perhaps the last was just the blood at his throat, the blood on his lip, from foreign cocks and his own teeth.
The door closed. Sean did not turn. Instead, he lifted the toilet seat. Come, piss, shit and vomit.
Everything tasted the same when it all came up.
Like fire. Like hatred. Like shame.
Viggo leaves. He watches his back as he goes before he stands, cap pulled down low. A cigarette in his mouth once he’s out of air-conditioning. He starts to walk.
He needs a drink.
***
London, 5 October 2012
What day was it? Why would he care?
The sun was coming in through the window. Daylight then. Sean groaned, slamming a hand over his face. His mouth felt like shit and his head was throbbing. He groped for the nightstand, pulling out the lower drawer. Without bothering to open his eyes, he grabbed for the bottle he kept there just for this purpose, pulling the cap open and dropping it on the sheets. He took a swig, savouring the taste of the whiskey as it slid down his throat.
He’d done something last night. He remembered light. Something about cameras. Some bastard following him around snapping pictures. Sean snorted to himself, half-stumbling, half-pulling himself out of bed. There was a graze on his hand. Dried blood was still encrusted on it. He looked at it before he stumbled over to the bathroom. Upended the whiskey over his hand and savoured in the burn. What was it that Sharpe said? Half-and-half: half on the wound, half in the mouth. He drank more whiskey and shook the droplets off his hand.
The laptop was blinking at him. New emails. There shouldn’t be anything recentl Nothing was coming up. He moved over anyway, squinting as he pulled over the laptop lid. The words were blurry, dancing in front of his eyes, but he knew enough to click on buttons.
Sean, Ian’s email said. I think you might appreciate this.
He shouldn’t click the link. Ian was a busybody bastard, but Sean couldn’t help himself. Or maybe someone else had control of his hand as he pressed the button.
Viggo. Viggo looking absolutely stunning in a cream suit and matching hat that would have looked disgusting on anyone else. Blue shirt, dark blue tie, shoes. Sean swallowed saliva and bile as he zoomed into the photographs. Sunglasses; Viggo was wearing sunglasses. That was good. Sean couldn’t deal with seeing those eyes right now. (Blue, blue and grey, blue with grey amongst filth and crap lighting.) Long fingers and a white pocket handkerchief tucked in perfectly in his breast pocket. Sean’s hands trembled.
He closed his eyes and took another swig of the whiskey. His hand slammed the lid closed, not even bothering to reply to Ian. He drank some more.
The hair of the dog cured the disease.
***
28 April 2012
23:14:21 "You have beautiful eyes. Grey. Changes with the light."
23:22:18 "My eyes are green, Sean."
23:24:02 "Georgie, Georgie. Did I ever mention that I love your tits?"
23:29:01 "Are you drunk?"
23:30:55 "Having a pint with a mate. You can't nag me about it anymore. We're divorced."
23:32:10 "Exactly. So stop texting me."
23:33:15 "I'm complimenting you. You should be happy. New boyfriend know your hair comes out of a bottle?"
23:38:43 "You're fucking pathetic, you know that? Fucking pathetic."
23:41:27 "Ha. I win."
23:43:06 "Win at what? The competition about who is the most pathetic?"
23:43:59 "No. Argument."
23:45:17 "We're not arguing, Sean."
23:47:22 "Then why are you texting me back?"
23:49:36 "Tell me why you texted me in the first place."
23:59:02 "Complimenting you. Suddenly thought of your tits and your arse. Beautiful things, them. Nice big handfuls. You had nice lips and you always look fucking good with my cock between them. Still use the same slut-coloured lipstick?"
00:04:35 "Fuck yourself on a blow-up doll."
00:06:11 “Didn't need to. Had you the last time for that, didn't I?”
00:08:12 “You were never particularly tight, though. Remembered you at the bar. Had a train of blokes waiting for you to spread your legs. You with your red lips and fuck me heels.”
00:10:37 “Still remember you on your knees. Men’s WC, getting your bar apron dirty on the floor when you wrapped your mouth around my cock. Told your new boyfriend yet that your mouth and your cunt had Sean Bean in them?”
00:13:24 “You wore that rubber dress of yours for your new man?”
00:14:10: “Have fun with the coppers tomorrow, darling.”
00:16:05 "Never quit that habit, have you?
***
6 Oct 2012
“Sean.”
“Ian,” Sean drawled. He decided that he would be adventurous this morning, and poured vodka over the ice cubes in his rock glass. Leaning back against the tree in his garden, he yawned as he looked up to the sky through the leaves of the small birch. “What have I done to deserve your delightful company today?”
“Certain worrying reports,” Ian said.
“Yeah?” He clinked the ice against the side of the glass and sipped it.
“Sean,” Ian’s voice sounded sharp. “Are you drinking in the morning? Before eleven o’clock?”
Sean threw the shot back, feeling the burn of vodka mixing with the chill of the ice. It slid down his throat so easily and started a fire in his chest. Oh, it was money well spent alright.
He chuckled, “I’m British, mate. And so are you. It’s perfectly normal.”
“Is it now?”
He leaned over, popping the cap of the vodka bottle and pouring himself another shot. There was something almost defiant about doing this, like he was a teenager again, defying his parents’ wishes, doing what he wanted and nothing less than that. It was a good feeling. He’d missed it.
“Ian, hey Ian,” Sean changed the subject suddenly. “I’ve got a question fer you.”
“What is it?”
“When did you realise yer gay?” He sipped some more at the vodka, releasing his lips from the rim of the glass with a gusty sigh. “I mean, did you just look at a man’s bollocks one day and realised- yeah, I want that. That looks good.”
Ian didn’t answer. Sean didn’t expect him to; he wasn’t finished yet.
“I mean, mmm... look, I played Ranuccio. Stood in front of Derek Jarman half-naked and everything. Even played fucking Tracie and shoved me bits into a pair of panties and a fucking dress. Talked ‘bout thinking of killing meself ‘cause I’m queer.” He tipped his head back and drained the glass, slamming it down beside himself. He wiped his mouth; Ian still wasn’t saying a word. “All throughout, it’s just a bunch of shite. I ain’t even know what it’s like ta want a man. I know how ta pretend all well and good, but it never felt real.”
He said that again, for emphasis, “Never. Hardest part of the job ta get done, you have no fucking idea. And now they are talking ‘bout giving me awards fer pretending ta be a pouf. Why ain’t they giving poufs awards fer pretending ta be straight, eh?”
“I don’t see what’s wrong with that,” Ian said, and his tone was careful, so careful. Like Sean was a bomb that could go off at any moment. Though, given the amount of alcohol that was usually in him at any point of time, that probably wasn’t wrong.
“I’m a fucking fake, Ian. A fucking liar. Part of me job description, but I’ve always been good at pretending that the person I am actually goes through the shite I’m pretending he goes through. But I ain’t even know even now why Tracie sees a pair of balls and want ‘em, you get what I mean?” He poured another glass of vodka and swirled it, watching a piece of ice break away from the main piece and float on top of the clear liquid.
“Are you still down under?”
“For now?” Ian didn’t sound fazed over the change in subject. “Yes, I am.”
“I got a new girl now,” Sean said, and he didn’t know why he brought her up. It must be the vodka. “She’s called Victoria. She curates art and goes ta yer theatre performances. Goes ta other theatre performances too and trashes ‘em sometimes. You’d like her.”
“Why?”
Sean blinked, “Why wot?”
“Why do you like her?” Ian asked, still using that careful, gentle tone.
“She’s pretty,” Sean shrugged, taking a sip of the alcohol with the same nationality as his girlfriend. “Long hair. Nice legs. Small tits, but nice tits. No use telling you that bit. She likes vodka. That’s important.”
“I think,” Ian said, “You have your answers, Sean.”
“I ain’t even got a question.”
“Perhaps not,” Sean could hear the creak of wood as Ian leaned back against something. His chair, most likely. “You're trying to ask me something, but you can't even ask what the real question is. You even have the answers already. You just have to admit them.”
Sean stared at the phone. He sighed, “It's too fucking early ta deal with yer cryptic shite, Ian.”
“But not early enough to abstain from alcohol.” He could hear Ian’s raised eyebrow even from miles and miles away and through the phone.
Sean snorted. He tossed the glass down to the grass and grabbed the vodka bottle. The phone went between his chin and shoulder as he used both hands to open the cap. Then he threw the bottle back and swallowed.
“What the hell else am I going ta do with the rest of me day?”
Summary: There’s nothing anyone can do that is worse than what you can do to yourself.
Rated: NC-17
Categories: Actor RPS Pairing: None
Warnings: NoneChallenges:
Series: NoneChapters: 4 Completed: Yes
Word count: 20548 Read: 2161
Published: 28 Jan 2013 Updated: 28 Jan 2013