The sleek British sports car has become a familiar sight on the streets of the little cowpoke town where most modes of transport have four legs rather than four wheels. Familiar to Viggo at least, for whom its clean lines and popping engine conjure up a wealth of happy childhood memories.
At first it was only the car itself that caught his attention. Only later did he notice the driver. And just who the driver was. He’s not quite sure which he’s more excited about.
Viggo travels by two wheels rather than by four legs or indeed four wheels, so most times the sleek British sports car whizzes past trailing fuming clouds of glory and all too brief glimpses of its occupant.
But comes the day at the little cowpoke town’s one and only red stop-light where two worlds collide in observance of the law.
Viggo slides to a halt alongside, gazes longingly, finally dares to speak.
‘1959 MGA.’
The driver is obviously surprised yet apparently happily so.
‘Yeah... Yeah you bet! Christ I’m surprised anyone round here would even know what an MG was!’
‘1600 mark 1, yeah?’
‘Fucking hell, how d’ya…’
But then fate and a green light intervene and the sleek British sports car is forced to pull away. Viggo pedals hard, but all the will and leg-power in the world won’t allow him to catch up.
Cruising past the gas station though he hears a shout and a honk of a horn, glances aside to see the sleek British sports car being filled up and the driver offering him a friendly wave. Viggo executes a perfect 180º turn and accepts the invitation.
‘Hi!’
‘Hello again. Sorry ‘bout that, back there, at the lights. So… Come on! How the fuck does someone in a place like this know about a car like Maggie?’
‘We had one when I was a kid. In Denmark. My dad’s pride and joy. Lots of long straight roads to really let rip on.’
‘Denmark?’
‘Yeah, Denmark. Lived there for a while when I was a kid. Broke dad’s heart to leave it behind when we moved back over here. Never forgotten the look, the smell, the sound. Err… Did you have her shipped over here from England?’
‘Nah. Found her here, amazingly. Had to have her. Always wanted one and there she was waiting for me. Had to be had.’
‘Yeah. Fate, or whatever.’
Viggo isn’t quite sure how long he can talk about cars about which he doesn’t actually know a great deal, not being a driver himself. It’s just incredible luck that this is the same model as he knew years back. But he certainly doesn’t want this conversation to end just yet.
‘I’m Viggo, by the way.’
‘Erm, hi, and I’m, erm, Sean.’
They shake hands and Viggo uses the opportunity to look the driver full in the face and offer up the best he has going in open friendly grins. Sean has the most mesmerising eyes he’s seen in a long time.
‘Amazing colour.’
‘British Racing Green.’
‘Incredible. Really beautiful’ though Viggo isn’t entirely certain just what he’s referring to.
He can’t resist running a careful hand over the shining paintwork, shaking his head at the memories that come tumbling back.
‘Never thought I’d see one again. We had good times in our little car, me and dad!’
'They get to yer, these things. Once bitten, well, you know what it's like!'
'Sure do!'
It’s clear that Viggo's admiration is genuine, and it's shared things like this that can bring strangers together, make them take chances they perhaps wouldn't otherwise have done.
‘Look, erm, Viggo… Would yer, well, would yer like to come for a spin sometime?’
‘Spin?’
‘Yeah, spin. A drive. Come out for a drive wi’ Maggie an me?’
Viggo can’t quite believe his luck. Things like this just don’t happen to guys like him. He does his best not to fanboy.
‘Hey, yeah! You mean it? That’d be amazing. Like Denmark all over again!’
‘Can’t get over the fact you know about MGs or that you’ve lived in Denmark of all places.’
Viggo shrugs and does another one of those speciality grins of his.
‘Why Maggie?’
‘Mag, really. M-G-A, M-A-G. Mag. Maggie.’
‘Ah, yeah, Mag. I see. So…’
‘So… Well… What about Sunday? How’d that suit yer?’
‘Sunday? Yeah, great! Fantastic! I’ll see you then!’
Viggo regains the saddle and begins to pedal away.
‘Hey! Viggo!’
‘Yeah?’
‘You’d better give me yer address!’
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That first drive together turns into a second, the second into a third, and after the third the counting doesn’t matter any more because by now they’ve found an unexpected friendship based upon far more than a sleek British sports car.
Going back to Viggo’s place for what he calls tea and his new friend describes as a travesty reveals a small but eclectic book collection that Sean could happily spend the entire summer exploring. And books – with or without a good cup of tea – lead to conversation, conversation to common ground, and common ground to England vs. Argentina (occasionally Denmark, never the USA) on the patch of rough red earth alongside Viggo’s little white house.
Stories swapped over post-match beer fill in gaps – why Argentina, why soccer, why the unusual books. The peripatetic childhood, the not-yet-written novel, the filling time writing the agriculture column for the local paper are traded for acknowledgement of Sean’s identity, the decision to return to his professional roots, the need to escape from it all for a while before going back to basics. Sean’s trust is a rarely given gift, but it builds easily as they slip into this relationship.
And no, there’s nobody else around, Viggo lives alone in the little white house near the edge of town. There was someone, a while back, but he…
A little hint of something offered in return for Sean’s candidness. But there’s no reaction, no response, well, not in the way Viggo fantasises about when he’s alone at night.
Just as well of course. Fantasy is all it can ever be. Especially if he ever gets around to doing what he’s thinking about doing. Sean would never forgive him for that. But he’s seriously beginning to doubt whether he’ll be able to bring himself to take those particular thirty pieces of silver.
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Maggie eats up the miles just as the days eat up summer, and the courage to do and say things somehow never gets found. Maybe for good, maybe not.
Eventually, at the end of a day spent pleasantly doing very little together, Sean finds himself having to speak, finds himself looking at his shoes, out of the window, anywhere rather than at Viggo.
‘When I leave, when I go… Well, I’ll have to find a new home for Maggie. There are a few people I know are interested, but, well, would you like to have her? As a gift?’
Viggo’s looking anywhere and everywhere else as well.
‘Jeez that’s some fucking offer! And thanks, I mean, but… No, Sean. I couldn’t look after her properly, and well, she’d just… No, I couldn’t.’
‘Then I’ll have to sell her…’
‘Not here. Not to someone here. Sell her somewhere else so I don’t…’
‘Don’t what, Viggo?’
‘So I don’t… So I don’t have to see her around with… With someone else… Someone else driving….’
And that’s when all composure breaks down and Sean is faced with small boy Viggo sobbing his heart out.
‘Aw, shit Viggo…’
Folding the man into his arms is the natural thing for Sean to do.
‘I’m sorry Sean, I’m sorry, I’m sorry I never meant to, I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry, didn’t mean to…’
‘Didn’t mean to what?’
‘Oh shit, oh shit… fall in love with you… Shit, I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry, so sorry…’
Sean gently rocks them both, doing his best not to add his own grief to Viggo’s.
‘Hey, hey it’s ok, s’ok Vig. Nothing to be sorry about, nothing at all.’
He strokes Viggo’s long, soft hair as he has so often wanted to do, plants an awkward kiss on the top of his head.
‘Yer not the only one. Love you too, yer know. Both been bottlin’ it up, not sayin’ nowt, bein’ bloody stupid blokes. I didn’t want ter, yer know, get involved when I weren’t goin’ ter be stayin’ long. Didn’t want either of us ter get hurt, but of course that just what’s happenin’ anyway. Daft ha’p’orths, the pair of us.’
Sean leans in for another kiss, aims for the mouth this time but Viggo pulls back, turns to the sink, turns on the cold tap for the sake of something to do.
‘Gonna miss you, you know?’
‘Yeah, I know.’
Sean moves to stand behind Viggo’s still gently convulsing body, slips a cautious hand around his waist. But Viggo takes the hand and moves it away, lets it drop.
‘No’ he insists. ‘You’re right. It’s too late, Sean. If we were going to we should have and we didn’t. Just leave it, leave it at that.’
‘We ‘ad a fantastic summer. I’ll never forget it, Vig. Never.’
‘Me neither.’
‘Yer the best mate I could ‘ave found out here, yer know that. Let me be meself for a while. Right from the start, that day at the traffic lights, wi’ you knowin’ about Maggie.’
‘Oh shit Sean!’
Viggo crumples once more and Sean isn’t quite sure what he’s said or done to make it worse. Then the truth comes blurting out.
‘Yeah I knew about Maggie and yeah she’s a fantastic car and you know that but….’
‘But what?’
‘But, but… But what you don’t know is I was just using her, using her to get close to you. Yeah it was just chance that meeting at the stop-light but I fucking well grabbed that chance when I saw it. I knew who you were well before we met. Wanted my bit of glory, didn’t I? Wanted to get myself a banner headline. Nobody knew where you’d gone, nobody knew you were gonna give up films and go back to theatre.
‘But I did. I knew. Viggo Mortenson of the Northern County Star agriculture and livestock reports. I knew exactly what was going on. Got it all planned. Sell the whole thing to some national rag or something. An exclusive on the elusive Sean Bean. Make my name and bit of money to get me out of here and on my way up. Never meant to fall in love with you. That wasn’t part of the plan…’
This time the hand’s progress about Viggo’s waist is more successful, manages to pull the failed schemer into his arms and hug him tightly.
‘But yer didn’t, did yer? Sell yer story I mean. Yer didn’t ever do it. An’ I’m grateful fer that. Doesn’t make me love yer any less.’
Viggo still looks like a broken ten year old when he finally dares look Sean in the face.
‘Mean that? You don’t hate me?’
‘To be honest, I was always ‘alf expectin’ it, after I found out yer was a reporter. Would probably ‘ave done the same thing meself.’
‘You would?’
‘Yeah!’
‘You bastard!’
Viggo can thump harder than you’d think.
‘Come with me’ Sean asks. ‘I can’t stay 'ere but yer could come with me.’
‘Aw… No. No I couldn’t.’
‘Yer could. Surely cattle are cattle wherever yer go. And it doesn’t have ter be cows. Yer could write about anythin’ once yer got yer foot in the door. Denmark, Argentina, here… Why not Britain? Why not Yorkshire? Finally settle down and write that novel of yours.’
For a moment Viggo looks almost tempted, but then he shakes his head sorrowfully.
‘No. I couldn’t. I’ve been here too long. It’d be too much of a jump. It was different when I was a kid.’
‘Yer was all ready to make the leap to showbiz reporter of the year! What’s the difference?’
‘But I didn’t, did I? Couldn’t do it, didn’t have the killer instinct or the killer pen. Think it’ll always be the cattle pen for me. And anyway when you get back to the bright lights the last thing you’ll want is a third-rate hack stinking of cow shit hanging on your arm.’
Sean can’t think of any reply that won’t make things worse than they already are apart from holding Viggo even closer and tighter, letting themselves cry out their grief for what might have been.
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The sleek British sports car is no longer to be seen on the streets of the little cowpoke town where most forms of transport have four legs rather than four wheels.
Livestock prices fluctuate mildly as they have always done. Dairy products remain stable. The weather behaves. The Northern County Star continues to come out every week, agriculture and livestock reports included.
Nothing much changes.
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Theatre critics, Sean thinks, are just as bad as film critics. Even here in Sheffield, in his hometown, at his theatre come-back at The Crucible. The press conference is nothing more than a sea of clamouring voices and he feels like a cow at one of the auctions Viggo took him to, his agent the eager seller, critics bidding for his very flesh. Right now he’d give anything to go back six months to the little cowpoke town and its not-so-wiley reporter who could so easily have become his lover if only one or both of them had only had the sense to do something about it.
As soon as he can he escapes outside to the carpark for a cigarette, Maggie sitting waiting patiently for him. He never did dare confess to Viggo that he’d had her shipped back to Britain. Couldn’t bear to part with her. Too many memories still sitting in the passenger seat.
But even here they find him. Even here he’s stalked by the press. Press that has the audacity to get into his own bloody car. Shouldn’t have left the top down.
Sean’s growls build into a torrent of abuse as he throws down his cigarette and runs towards Maggie.
‘What the fuckin’ hell do yer think… Fuckin’ nerve! I’ll fuckin’ ‘ave yer fer this!’
‘I seriously hope so. Evening, Sean. Spare a moment, could you? Viggo Mortensen, Northern County Star.’
For a brief moment Sean really does think he’s going to fall flat on his face with shock.
‘Yer fucking kiddin’ me?’
‘Well, yeah, formerly of the Northern County Star actually. Now of the Sheffield Star.’
‘Yer bloody jokin’, aren’t yer?’
‘Nah... I finally realised that cattle are cattle wherever you go, but it turns out that crazy Danish-American via Argentina guy deciding to settle down in the South Riding warrants its own regular column instead. And I get to do the book reviews! Though whether I’ll ever get that novel written is another matter…’
‘Fucking hell! Fucking hell, Vig! I thought you’d never do it! But yer did! Yer fucking fantastic, yer know that?’
‘Well, getting spectacularly pissed on that scotch you left behind and blowing all my savings buying a one-way ticket online did sort of clinch the whole moving thing.’
‘I love yer, scotch! I love yer, internet! I love yer, Sheffield Star! I love you, Viggo, yer daft bugger!’
Viggo reckons that even in this dim light he can see that incredible, beautiful British green shining as bright as ever. He settles back into the soft leather welcome of Maggie’s bucket seat and grins his trademark grin.
‘So, Sean… Any chance of an exclusive?’
Summary: And just who the driver was. He's not quite sure which he's more excited about.
Rated: PG-13
Categories: Actor RPS Pairing: Sean/Viggo
Warnings: AUChallenges:
Series: NoneChapters: 1 Completed: Yes
Word count: 2756 Read: 1142
Published: 02 Aug 2009 Updated: 02 Aug 2009