He hadn't seen it coming. He couldn't tell when his relationship with the machine had changed. When the casual act of exchanging news with a friend became greed for talking with strangers through the night.
It had all begun when Elijah and Dom told him he should try it, that it would be fun, that he could keep the Fellowship posted on his whereabouts. They themselves were using it all the time, and even Orlando had been converted despite his technology squick. Not wanting to play the old geezer, he checked himself to ask if Viggo had been won over too, and reluctantly let Lij take his computer in hand, install an IRC client and connect it to various servers, listening with one ear to explanations about Netiquette and abbreviations.
At first, he had been dragging his heels, frustrated by his clumsiness before the keyboard. But after several attempts and Lij's persistant encouragements he fell in with the amusing tools, accepted some requests from people who seemed well-intentioned and spent a couple of nice evenings debating the right number of nodes to prune apple trees to or the qualities of some first division football teams. Soon he became familiar with the slight anxiety over finding whether or not someone he knew was already on-line when he was connected. He experienced the annoying passing of hours, which seemed to fly when he was in front of his computer.
Then he began thinking about it during the day. It didn't exactly invade his thought but was there at the edge of his mind, lascivious and reassuring. The deceptive feeling that someone cared, maybe, was comforting him during tough shots and long travels to location. It was his consolation when he was miserable about not seeing his girls. It became his way out when, in the middle of winter, Viggo stopped answering his calls for no reason.
It moved slowly into a more insistent desire, an appetite without suppressant except for his night rituals. Coming home, turning on the lap-top, waiting for the connection, drumming his fingers on the mouse if it wasn't fast enough. Holding his breath until he could discover who was on-line. Then avidly diving into the new social dimension that was offered, wallowing in it to his heart's content.
He couldn't tell what the object of his hunger was. No interlocutor could justify such pangs. Potential trolls excepted, he had met a large amount of nice blokes and girls, but he didn't feel attracted towards any of them. And yet he craved the feeling of being there, being connected to them.
His constant air of longing eventually alerted his current director, who asked him if he was all right on a daily basis, then his agent, who finally sent him home to take a long vacation as soon as everything was in the can. So he was allowed to revel in his lustfulness with no regard to time or work obligations. He could yield to his craving without anyone putting a brake on it.
One day he entered "Denmark+horses+painting+Idaho" in the interests box and found himself talking passionately with a so-called idaho_h_58. The girl could describe sunsets over the mountains and the feeling of whispering in a horse's ear, in a way that threw Sean painfully back into reality. He was alone in his huge flat where no one had been doing the housework for weeks. He couldn't remember his last real lunch. And this idaho_h_58 told the wonders of life the way Viggo had told them to him not so long ago, when they were friends in New Zealand.
Suddenly Sean knew the time had come for him to close the connection and look for another path in his life.
Summary: Sean discovers chat.
Rated: PG-13
Categories: Actor RPS Pairing: Sean/Viggo
Warnings: NoneChallenges:
Series: NoneChapters: 1 Completed: Yes
Word count: 625 Read: 708
Published: 02 Aug 2009 Updated: 02 Aug 2009