The Beginning...
Kym´s POV:
Anne and I found ourselves in Cannes, doing our best to ignore the crush of the tourists there for the annual film festival. Crowds bothered me and I wouldn't have come if Anne hadn't talked me into it. Then again, I’d been doing nearly next to nothing back in the States, since the agency I worked for hadn’t had many assignments for me.
Feast or famine as it were, and since it was now a famine of sorts, I figured I owed myself a small vacation. I’d saved up enough money to afford a round-trip ticket to France, where Anne and I would meet and cycle our way through at least two countries.
Like most creative people, we both preferred hiking and cycling through the bucolic settings of the French countryside rather than that of the urbane hurley-burley of the big cities. Paris was nice, but Avignon was much better.
We also preferred the earthiness of the people in the small towns we’d come across. They’d been friendly, courteous, and in many cases when it came to the men, rather chivalrous.
Here in Cannes though, everyone had money, wanted someone with money, or faked it as if they had money.
Anne and I only had what we’d brought with us – backpacks stuffed to the gills with the essentials (who said women couldn’t travel light) and our bikes, and not much else. Honestly, I was all for skipping Cannes altogether, but Anne's grandmother owned a quaint little cottage on a hill overlooking the Mediterranean and that's where we finally decided to stay.
For three idyllic days we relaxed in the fragrant garden of Anne’s grandmother’s cottage, the scents of verbena and orange blossom a heady perfume. We dozed under the trees or in the rope hammock as the bright summer sun made us quite lazy. Late nights were spent eating crusty baguettes, pungent French cheeses flavored with herbs, sweet fruits and washing the simple meal down with bottles of refreshingly sweet wines as we talked about everything under the sun. Anne was, as I knew she would be, a wonderful companion and for the millionth time I thanked the fates (via the Internet) that we’d met and become friends.
Neither of us wanted to leave the security of our little world to go down to the beach, but we also knew the only way either of us would get a tan - a running joke between us - was to head down to where all the scary people were.
So, grabbing the essentials for a long day of soaking – tanning lotion (I may be dark-skinned, but I like for all of me to be one uniform shade of brown), a book, towels, some fruit and cheese and bottled water - we jumped on our bikes and headed down to the insanity that was the world-famous Cannes Film Festival.
And it was insanity. Traffic was practically at a standstill on the main thoroughfare as people vied to see and be seen. I swear I've never seen that many diamonds outside of the crown jewels of England. It was rather blinding and made me thankful for my sunglasses.
Somehow we managed to pedal our way to one of the best kept secret coves without much incident. There were maybe no more than five or six people laying out and soaking up the bright Riviera sun. It was nice to leave the crowd behind and just listen to the lapping of the waves and the cawing of seabirds.
The Mediterranean was like a liquid jewel, all green and blue and waiting for me to jump in for a brisk swim.
Quickly I shed my top and ran down to the shore and plunged in. When in Rome, do as they do – my family wouldn’t have been too scandalized since they knew I’d always been rather free-spirited – and I have to admit, there’s something about the freedom of being naked. Not to mention how refreshing the cool water felt as it tingled against my bare skin. I swam out a few feet, dove under and came back up, floating on my back as the gentle waves rocked my body like a lover.
A splash near me broke the spell and with some reluctance I swam back in. I did my best to squeeze the excess water from my intricate braids and made the short hike back up to where Anne sat, sketchbook in hand and a big smile on her lips.
So there we were, two adventurous women, best friends who'd first met online, lying back on fluffy beach sheets, soaking up the sun. I took out my book. Anne had begun a sketch of one of the small fishing boats out on the water, but was now resting with her eyes closed.
While she rested, I allowed my eyes to take in the sight of the gorgeous German woman who’d become like the sister I’d always wanted, though the thoughts I’d been having about her since we’d met in person were far from sister-like.
Dammit, too bad I had this oddball personal code of ethics when it came to seducing people I liked. Not that I made it a habit to seduce people I didn’t. It was just that sex tended to muddy the waters when it came to friendships, at least on the part of some. More often than not, I simply accepted the friendship, though if the sex just so happened to come with the package, I did my best to make sure that it stayed light and slightly detached without being callous.
It was one hell of a balancing act.
With women it was even more of a conundrum, because I didn’t want to behave like some irresponsible bi female screwing everything that moved. Bisexuals had to live down that reputation as it was, and I certainly didn’t want to contribute to it. Nor did I make a point of having sex with another woman simply because a man wanted his own version of the ‘Girls Gone Wild’ videos.
But Anne was simply too gorgeous for me not to hope that something would happen between us. Though lightly muscled, she was also a lush, full-figured temptation with creamy skin I longed to taste, a beautiful bow-shaped mouth I wanted to kiss, breasts that I longed to hold in my hands and suckle upon, and thighs I wanted to lie between and lick until I could feel her wet and hot. I wanted to run my fingers through her long silken hair that looked like spun gold in the sunlight.
I wanted to know if those sultry blue eyes darkened when she came.
Reluctantly, I sighed and reined in my wicked thoughts and went back to my book, hoping the story would take the edge off my hunger.
Anne’s POV:
I really hadn’t been sketching so I put charcoal and paper aside and stretched out next to Kym. I tried not to notice how just large her nipples were. In fact, I tried not to notice how seductive she’d looked with the water dripping down her body from her swim, like some kind of bronze sun goddess. I needed something to take my mind off of the dirty thoughts that started racing around my head.
After five minutes of sunbathing with my eyes shut, trying to relax, I said, “Kym, I just can’t hang around like this all day. Need more action.”
“Action?” Kym’s reaction was interesting. She raised an eyebrow, as she drawled suspiciously, “The good kind or the bad kind?”
“Let’s do some rock-climbing,” I suggested with a huge grin.
“Should have known,” she muttered but shrugged her shoulders anyway. “The bad kind.”
Kym knew I was a rock-climber and she always was afraid some day she wouldn’t get around it, but no doubt she had felt reasonably safe here in Cannes.
“We can hire a motorboat and visit the rocks and cliffs further up. There are rocks where you can start climbing right out of the water. It’s even deep enough, so if you fall down there’s just a `splash´ and nothing else will happen.”
Gathering up her things, my friend grinned ruefully, “I don’t know how I ever let myself get talked into these things…just know that me and heights don’t have what you’d call a great relationship.”
Indeed it was almost too easy. We found a quaint little motorboat several yards down, owned by a grizzled fisherman who told us he was waiting for late afternoon, when the fish were hungrier. He wouldn’t accept money, but I was insistent and pressed several francs into his hands.
I couldn’t deny that Kym was an extraordinary adventurous woman. Two hours later we cruised along the shore with our motorboat, looking for a challenge, but not too much of one.
There were little bays and coves between the rocks that jutted out in the ocean, but it was too dangerous to try to get in one of the coves, because boulders and reefs blocked the way and big waves crashed over them, so either boat or swimmer would have been smashed against the reefs. Therefore we didn’t try to anchor at the beach or one of the coves but tied our boat to one of the rocks that rose out of the ocean and climbed right out of the boat.
I had taken the liberty earlier of having brought along my climbing-backpack on the way to the beach (just in case), so we were equipped with two climbing belts, runners and a rope, with “friends” and nuts enough to safely climb up the front wall of the rock.
After explaining to Kym how she could belay me, I climbed up first. Kym followed and did very well. “Just take a few steps over there until you stand safe,” I advised her and she balanced along the ridge. She climbed for the first time but moved with so much grace and skill I almost felt envious.
So much for her fear of heights.
But just as she reached a small platform from where she could look down into the coves she suddenly tumbled and nearly fell over.
I quickly pulled at the rope to hold her in case she dropped over. “Are you okay?”
She was panting. “I’m fine, sweetie…it’s just…” she turned to me and for a person of her skin colour she seemed remarkably pale. “You’re so not going to fucking believe this…come over here.”
I soon as I had unfastened myself from the ribbons I had used for belaying I came over to where she stood, curious as to what had caught her attention.
I looked down left…right…and I really couldn’t blame her anymore. I never had felt so dizzy before in my whole life.
Ok, we’d seen practically every film they’d ever done, even the more obscure ones. We’d read about them in newspapers and glossy magazines, and we’d collected hundreds of pictures from the Internet. We’d fantasized about them during the days and dreamt of them in the nights. Ironically, we’d been talking about them last night, since we knew Viggo was in Cannes for the premiere of History of Violence.
If there were any celebrities we would never fail to recognize, should they be mustachioed, bearded, bald, disguised as women or cloaked like desert sheiks, it would be them.
One wore a pair of black bathing shorts and the other man wore Speedos, which left a lot of golden-tanned skin for us to feast our eyes upon.
Sean Bean…Viggo Mortensen, right here.
Of course we were surprised to see them here.
We were not, however, surprised to see them at the same time, having had VigBean slash on our minds 24/7 from the time we’d met online.
We were surprised though, to see them in two different coves, Viggo on one side of our rock, Sean on the other, each one separated by a sheer wall of granite.
“Do you see what I see?” Kym asked, suddenly whispering, though the noise of the waves made even shouting un-audible after a short distance.
“Uh…I’m not sure…would you please pinch me…no, bite me… even better, cut me – or else I won’t believe I’m not dreaming…” I stammered.
“You are not dreaming,” Kym said firmly. “I’m asking – do you know what’s going on here?”
The degree of intelligence in my face proved to be insufficient to make her feel confident I did, and she pointed out patiently, “Look at Sean over there. He’s pacing up and down, constantly checking his watch. And there’s Viggo who’s shielding his eyes, staring up the small path he must have come down.”
“You mean they…”
“They have a date! An honest to goodness freaking date! Sean’s waiting for Viggo and Viggo’s waiting for Sean. But they’ve somehow ended up on opposite sides of the cove.”
“Quite a bad situation they got themselves in,” I mused thoughtfully, doing my best not to drool. “I don’t think either has a clue just how close they are to each other, but even if they did, they can’t swim around the rock because it’s too dangerous; they can’t climb over it because they have no rope. And to walk back up the shore would last hours, and again they wouldn’t know where to look.”
Kym and I locked eyes.
“Well then, let’s make ourselves useful,” I said, always willing to lend a helping hand to the two beautiful men down below. And she gave me a high five, laughing.
“Sean or Viggo?” I asked her then, my eyes full of mischief.
Instantly her eyes lit up with such a bright shine I was blinded.
“Sean or Viggo,” she sighed. “I don’t know, they’re both pretty hot…”
“Excuse me,” I put my hands on my hips, pretending to be upset. “I don’t know what the fuck you are thinking of.” A big lie that, because I knew exactly what she thought because I was thinking the same thing. “But what I meant was which of them would we pick up first. One of them has to climb up here to get to the other side.”
“Oh…yeah, right. Viggo, then I guess. I think Sean is afraid of heights.”
I nodded. “One of us will go down to Viggo and bring him up here. The other one goes down on Sean,” and I blushed to the roots at my not-so Freudian slip as Kym tried not to chuckle. “I meant, climb down to Sean and explain the situation to him. Sean or Viggo?” I asked again, and it had exactly the same effect on Kym as before.
“Sean or Viggo…Sean or Viggo…” She sighed again, and I couldn’t blame her. “What a choice…”
“Kym! Concentrate! The question was…”
“I know what the question was,” she snapped, a little saucy because I interrupted her drooling and swooning. “Since you know the knots and all this other stuff way better than me, I think you should bring Viggo up here like you brought me. Maybe you should let me down on Sean’s side first so I can explain the situation to him.”
That sounded like a plan, but I had to warn her, since she looked a little too enthusiastic. “Kym, don’t you dare start anything down there with Sean until Viggo and I arrive.”
“Who, me,” she asked innocently as she gave me a hard rugbytackle. “Now why would I do something soooo bad…”
Because I would, I thought, gazing down at the objects of our most wicked fantasies.
We made it so. I let her down with the rope. After reaching the bottom she knotted her climbing belt to the rope and I pulled it up because I would need it for Viggo.
Minutes later I was abseiling down to him like some super-heroine from an action movie.
He looked at me suspiciously as I approached him after unleashing the carabiner out of the rope.
“Hi,” I said weakly, hoping I looked halfway decent, though I could feel a few tendrils of my hair had escaped my ponytail.
His well-muscled arms folded defiantly in front of him, eyes narrowed into near dangerous slits. “I hope you’re not some kind of super paparazzi or something, trained to stalk actors even at places where no one else could get.”
I smiled as bravely as I could – the man was even taller than I’d imagined – hoping to put him at ease. “And just where am I supposed to hide my camera?”
I had a valid point, considering the fact that I was wearing nothing more than a bikini bottom, a halter-top and the climbing belt. It hadn’t occurred to me until that moment I’d been rock-climbing in some rather small wisps of clothing, a fact that wouldn’t have mattered if I hadn’t been standing in front of six-feet and then some of gorgeous masculinity.
“Good point,” he replied, stepping closer and circling slowly around me, giving me a thoroughly all-over, grinning that crazy dirty grin of his. “In your earring, perhaps?” he offered.
“Played in too many mediocre action thrillers, Mr. Mortensen?” I shot back with a saucy wink.
He pouted, pretending to have the sulks. Even with his lip poked out like a misbehaving boy, he took my breath away.
As I quickly explained the situation to him, the happy light in his eyes as I mentioned Sean, waiting for him on the other side of the rock, was not lost on me.
He looked up and down the steep wall of solid rock, horrified.
“So what, you want me to climb up that overhanging big wall as if I was Stallone’s double in Cliffhanger?”
I shrugged. “Well, I don’t care if you do, but I guess Sean would be very pleased if you did, because otherwise you won’t meet him today.”
He stared another minute at the not very inviting looking wall, frowning, his jaw working and chewing.
“Okay, I’ll do it then, for Sean,” he sighed, resolved to death and I almost felt envious as I saw the dedication and love in his face. “By the way, I never got your name, my lovely angel of scaling sheer cliffs.”
Steadying myself and trying not to swoon, I extended my hand. “It’s Anne.”
He took it to his lips and I know I chided Kym about behaving, but that was before I felt those hot, full lips on my skin. No wonder Sean was in love.
“And I’m Viggo…not that, I suspect you didn’t know that already.” He took another look up that cliff wall and breathed deep. “Okay, let’s do this.”
I must admit that Kym did a lot better than he. He wasn’t much of a climbing talent in spite of his muscular build, because he spent too much energy whining and complaining how steep and dangerous it seemed to him, and I half dragged him up.
But for all that he was very proud and happy as we reached the top, embracing me in a grateful hug.
I really would have liked to enjoy feeling his arms around me much longer, but I was a bit in a hurry…
I have to emphasize that I trusted Kym almost blindly. There are very few occasions where my trust could waver, but the given situation – Kym alone with Sean in a cozy cove – was certainly one of them…
I was afraid Viggo’s gratefulness would suffer a serious blow if Kym was fucking his lover when we came upon them.
So I urged him with the abseiling more than I wanted to.
Kym´s POV:
Sean was surprised as I landed my feet on the ground again, after abseiling from the ridge.
Like Anne, I hastily explained everything to him, so that the man wouldn’t think he was being pursued by some insane daredevil paparazzi.
Don’t get me wrong, Sean Bean was definitely worth pursuing, at least in my imagination, but only to a point. In real life climbing sheer rock faces wasn’t worth it, no matter who he was.
That was before that infernal tongue of his licked his upper lip and if the man asked me to give him a blow job right then and there I’d be on my knees faster than a mafia don given the last rites.
Then he looked at me and my voice went south.
“And you came down here how?”
I pointed in the direction where Anne must have been, hopefully arranging the Viggo-transport to this side of the cove, the gesture giving me that needed moment to remember how to talk without squeaking. “It was her idea. I just wanted to hang out on the beach.”
He nodded understandingly. “Don’t like heights meself.”
I knew that about him, but said nothing. Instead I just shrugged. “It’s actually a gorgeous view from there…”
As he turned his gaze upward, I whistled in silent appreciation. Oh yeah, his ass was most definitely a gorgeous view.
“I’m sure it would be even more gorgeous from somewhere closer to the ground,” Sean said gruffly, stepping back closer to me. “Knowing Vig though, the bastard will probably want to take pictures before he comes down off that bloody rock.”
Now, when someone calls someone else ‘a bastard’ it’s seldom complementary. The inflection in Sean’s voice as he spoke of Viggo however, only confirmed what Anne and I (and quite a few others) had long suspected.
Not, that any of them would ever hear it from us.
I laughed. “I know the feeling. Anne will probably want to sketch the vista or something. I just wanted to get a tan.”
Sean cocked his head at that, eyes twinkling. As they say, a joke’s not funny if you have to explain it.
“A yank then, are you luv?”
I nodded, my heart almost leaping through my chest when he said ‘luv’. “Seattle girl born, Cali girl bred, and trying to move to Amsterdam.”
“Amsterdam?”
“A friend and I played this game once. We blindfolded each other and spun this globe around and wherever our finger landed was where we would live. He ended up somewhere in Micronesia and I ended up with Amsterdam.”
Sean smiled again and I did not want to faint or anything typically girly, so I concentrated on re-lacing my hiking boot.
It allowed me to get myself together mentally as well.
Breathe…I’m down here on some secluded cove with the one and only Sean Bean, who’s wearing the tiniest pair of Speedos I’ve ever seen and if I looked too close I could see the outline of his cock and Anne told me to behave but all I want to do is run my tongue over all that naked skin and at least get a taste of that ‘little bit of rough’.
And as I’m leaning over to tie my boot, I feel this warm sensation of green eyes staring at me, but not in a creepy way. Like he was just looking at me and kind of interested in what he saw.
Okay, no false modesty here when I say that I’m interesting to look at. I don’t pretend to be beautiful and I never have, though I do think of myself as interestingly pretty. I do merit a second or even a third glance just from the way I carry myself. The people I’ve always found attractive (and those who are usually attracted to me) are those who have a certain quirky quality about them. I don’t like perfect people, and perfect men scare me even more. I’m tall, dark, and depending on the cut of the clothes wear a size 14 to 16.
I felt the same way about Sean Bean. For most women he wasn’t the Tom Cruise-Brad Pitt-Aston Kutcher pretty boy beautiful. He had laugh lines round his eyes and mouth. His smile definitely wasn’t bright white, as he smoked. Yet, he was the most arresting, the most intriguing man I could think of, along with his lover of course. There was something about the intense green of his eyes, the way he could swallow someone in that gaze. There was this ruggedness underneath all that gentility – the raucous football fan mixed with a poet’s eloquence. He was a bundle of contradictions, a mystery.
And I had no idea what to say to him while we waited for Viggo and Anne.
So I decided to talk about books.
I am probably one of the few people in the world who could get all hot and bothered just from talking about books. And Sean, being just as much the avid bibliophile, well nothing could have been better.
Okay, almost nothing…
If Anne had taken any longer, I might have shattered her belief in my self-control, because he was unconsciously licking that lip of his and it was one hell of a distraction.
Finally Viggo and Anne appeared above us at the ridge, Viggo at once shouting and waving to Sean.
Sean watched in rapt fascination as Viggo with Anne close behind him, scaled down the sheer face, admiration and a sort of almost turning green look on his handsome chiseled features.
Viggo’s grin was wide, like a daredevil child as he took the few steps to stand in front of Sean.
To see the two gorgeous men hug and kiss in happy reunion would surely have been reward enough for our efforts, but after a long-lingering, passionate kiss they both turned to us, remembering they had an audience.
Beaming with joy and just a little mischief, Viggo asked, “Now, can we do anything for you both in return?”
Summary: A meeting in Cannes
Rated: NC-17
Categories: Actor RPS Pairing: Sean/Viggo/OC
Warnings: HetChallenges:
Series: Shameless - Worse than Mary SueChapters: 6 Completed: Yes
Word count: 21981 Read: 4738
Published: 30 Jul 2009 Updated: 30 Jul 2009