Summary: This is a five part story, each part being made up of ten 100 word drabbles inspired by ten of the prompts for the seans_50 challenge on LJ

Rated: NC-17

Categories: Actor RPS Pairing: Sean/Viggo

Warnings: None

Challenges:

Series: Fifty/Fifty

Chapters: 5 Completed: Yes

Word count: 5228 Read: 4047

Published: 07 Aug 2009 Updated: 07 Aug 2009

Interview


“So, Sean, looking back at your career as you approach your half century, would you say that your gritty, working class background in Sheffield forged your personality and gave us the true, Sean Bean?”

He notes wearily that the blonde interviewer is leaning forwards to give her tits maximum exposure. She has a knowing look, almost winking at him. They have sent somebody who ticks all the boxes: bottle blonde (check), good legs (check), big boobs –‘he’s a breast man’ (check).

It irritates him that they think they have him neatly labelled and he is not remotely inclined to flirt.

Steel

Sean has never been fond of interviews.

By nature shy, suspicious of journalists and unwilling to let down his guard easily, he often comes over as inarticulate, unless he really clicks with the interviewer. All he wants is to do his job and he accepts that promotional work for films and telly comes into that, but this type of thing, where they come with their own agenda and the questions are designed to reinforce the stereotype pisses him off,

“Ah,” he says,”’forged’, as in steel. That’s really clever and original of you.”

She frowns, but his lopsided grin reassures her.

Rough

The interviewer has been lulled into a false sense of security by Sean’s grin and her professional smile is back in place. She rests her hand on his knee and says coyly,

“Thank you, but going back to my question, Sean, how much did your tough background result in you turning into what has been described as ‘Sheffield’s most exotic piece of rough ‘and The Thinking Woman’s Bit of Rough’?”

He pretends to consider and gives her the full-beam grin, “I would say it was responsible for roughly half of it. What resulted in you turning into a thinking woman?”

Pub

*Christ*

As the interviewer sits back, smoothing her ruffled feathers, Sean looks over at his agent’s astonished expression and shaking head.

When he is pissed off in interviews, he usually becomes monosyllabic and uncommunicative until they give up. Rudeness and sarcasm are not his style. It has him puzzled.

Maybe this looking back is making him regress to the old, rough, angry Sean of his youth – an anger born of frustration and the certain knowledge that the industrial life mapped out for him just wasn’t right.

His refuge then had been the pub and he wishes he was there now.

Smoke

Sean could murder a pint and is craving a cigarette.

It’s these thoughts he is having about his youth and the haven of the local pub. A drinker and smoker from an early age, he fondly remembers how conversation was conducted through a kind of smog. Smoke tendrils curled up to the ceiling, which in daylight looked as though it had been coated in molasses.

With the smoking ban, that’s all gone and you can breathe now, in pubs with pristine white ceilings. It just doesn’t seem the same, though. Depriving a pub of smoke takes its atmosphere and warmth.

Scar

The atmosphere in the studio has become distinctly frosty and Sean succumbs to the beseeching glances from his agent to behave himself and play nicely with the annoying lady. Fortunately, this is not a live interview.

He rubs the scar on his leg through his jeans to remind him why losing his temper is not a good thing. That first time his temper had got him into serious trouble had resulted in blood everywhere and the humiliation of being back in a pushchair.

He turns on his most devastating charm and graciously apologises, inviting further questions about his Sheffield background.

Football

Sean’s interviewer relaxes again, responding to the charm offensive and he goes yet again over those teenage years.

He recalls how he couldn’t really find his niche, having generally mucked about at school and left with ‘O’ Levels in English and Art, how he’d tried the supermarket cheese counter and found it wanting, tried shovelling snow for the Council and finally given in, becoming a welder with his dad.

They get onto football and Sean reminisces about how they used to play outside the factory at dinner break, in their overalls with the goal posts chalked on the roll-down gate.

Blades

Naturally, talk of football leads to Sheffield United. As he talks about his beloved Blades, explaining how he had first been taken to the ground by his dad aged around eight, Sean becomes truly animated and his agent breathes a sigh of relief.

Sean explains how the dark, winter afternoon was transformed by the floodlights, the noise, the excitement, the fellowship of standing in the crowd on the terraces and surging forward as one body, when a goal was scored by his side, who won comprehensively.

He will bear the memory of how good that felt until his dying day.

Earring

The interview is now moving on smoothly, swiftly passing through Sean enrolling at Art College, then finding that drama was what he really wanted to do and covering his time at RADA.

Sean smiles again, remembering how he struggled with the culture shock of moving to London and feeling like an alien at first – how many times he had felt like just packing it all in and getting the first available train back to Sheffield.

He’d coped by swaggering a little and had acquired a trendy earring, which got him ribbed and called a poof by his mates back home.

Couch

Finally released, Sean takes the limo home to find Viggo is lying on the couch, his bare feet propped on the arm. He pulls Sean down and kisses him,

“How did it go?”

“Crap at first. The woman really annoyed me, wanting to trot out all the clichés about the ‘real Sean Bean’ – you know ‘Sheffield steel’, ‘bit of rough’, welding, footie…..”

“But then?”

“Then I started enjoying thinking back, but do you know something weird?”

“What?”

“When they called me a poof for wearing an earring, I wasn’t one, but now I don’t wear one, it seems I am.”