Summary: Viggo needs to go somewhere.

Rated: NC-17

Categories: Actor RPS Pairing: Sean/Viggo

Warnings: None

Challenges:

Series: A Long Journey

Chapters: 9 Completed: Yes

Word count: 30289 Read: 12256

Published: 31 Jul 2009 Updated: 31 Jul 2009

*****

"And hey, what you got to hide?
I get angry too
But I'm a lot like you."

*****

The real shocker, Viggo thought, still staring at the TV screen even though Sean had turned it off, was that it wasn't really a shock at all.

Because Viggo had had time to think, those last couple of days.

He turned his eyes on Sean, saw his closed-off look, the one he knew Sean got when he thought he was about to be forced to deal with something he would rather not--there had been a couple of occasions like that during filming, generally involving flying in choppers and talking over the phone with his soon-to-be ex-wife--and knew he had to say something quickly, or he would lose him.

"Uh," he articulated, cultured man that he was. "That was..."

"It's not..." Sean started, just about at the same time. Then he stopped, worrying his lower lip between his teeth, a sure sign of his nervousness, that he was so off his guard he couldn't act to save his live. He lifted his eyes on Viggo, and something seemed to give in in his look. "Yeah," he softly said. "It is."

This was all it took to make Viggo move, come over to the couch, and sit down next to him--not too close, though.
"What is 'it'?" he asked, his voice as calm as he could muster.

Sean looked down at his hands, clenched tightly between his knees, and didn't answer.

Viggo waited for several minutes, sighed. "Look," he said. "I was going to make some phone calls." He gestured with his hand towards the phone on the table near the living room door. "I'll be in the studio, if you want to... Well."

He got up, looked at Sean, who was still staring at his own hands. In the end, he just walked away. While he passed him by, he had to fight hard to not reach out and touch him.

He had just entered the studio, when he heard the front door opening and then shutting again, Sean's footsteps fading off in the distance.

Viggo looked down at the cordless in his hands, and went to put it back in its cradle.

*****

So, yes, Viggo had had time to think, and he had thought.

He had thought how much it hurt knowing that he could make Sean feel a little better, could make the dead look in his eyes go away--and man, wasn't that just *good*--but couldn't really do much more than that. He couldn't fix things for Sean, so he tried to, at the very least, fix things inside himself.

And the first one was, he had to let go of his anger.

Anger at Sean, of course, because Sean had been with him for most of that day, and the best part of the night--been with him and laughed with him and told him how fucking wonderful it was to be there with Viggo--and then he had gone and fucked a perfect stranger.

A blond, blue-eyed, tall Danish stranger.

Viggo just knew Ian would have something to say about this--fuck, Ian had something to say about nearly everything, really. Especially when it came to Viggo's private life. Sometimes Viggo thought he'd made a mistake, when he had told Ian he had always swung both ways--it had actually been one of the traits Exene had found most sexy in him... or so she'd used to say--but that in later years, since the divorce, he'd found himself gravitating more and more towards men.

You could have walked in on Gandalf the Grey and Strider discussing this to nausea back then, in full costumes during on-set breaks, debating whether or not let the world know you'd rather bed fellows than lasses--shag, he believed was the word the refined British gentleman had employed. Repeatedly.

Ian had a point, Viggo conceded. But it wasn't exactly as if he'd been hiding in a closet... Well, all right, so he declined going to awards and parties mostly so he wouldn't have to ask a lady friend to pretend to be his date instead of taking his boyfriend to them, but what of it?

It wasn't as if he had had a proper boyfriend in ages.

Ian would listen to him intently, then just shake his head, with a "If you say so" kind of look. He wouldn't really press his point, for which Viggo was grateful. He didn't want to hide, yet he didn't want to be labelled, stuck into a box and taken out to become the poster-boy of some crusade.

Mostly, he just wanted to be left alone.

Of course, Ian had had something to say about Viggo's 'obsession' with Sean as well; and of course, he had had strong opinions about that, too--if not even more so--calling Viggo a fool, among other names. But still Viggo had just wanted--or firmly believed it so--to be left alone.

And Boromir had died, and Sean had left.

Viggo had been alone.

He now wondered why he had never really listened to Ian. Well, obviously Viggo could tell there was *something* between him and Sean. The looks. The touching. The way it felt, just being with him. Yet, what of it? He and Sean, they were both grown men, each with his own established life and routines, their families and their kids--all of this, most of the time on the opposite ends of the planet. What could possibly come out of it? They weren't crazy teenagers in love, they couldn't just leave all of that behind and just being together--just like that.

Just, say, like the hobbits had done.

So, what would that leave... a fling? Viggo was all over those. Flings were good. They made you pass the time, keep you busy. They were good.

Not with Sean, though.

Sean was important.

Viggo didn't want to just 'pass the time' with Sean. He wanted... he wanted time. Time to pass with Sean.

Plus, as he had told Sean long ago, romance was *so* dead.

After New Zealand, Viggo had seen Sean again; of course he had. At the Fellowship premieres, doing interviews, even attending a few parties. Cannes. Those two or three times in L.A. They had seen each other often enough.

Not nearly often enough.

And even if Viggo had still just wanted to be left alone--he'd never been really alone with Sean anymore. Families and hobbits and journalists and fans everywhere around them. Viggo had never thought to ask. Sean had never offered.

Yet, like a freaking teenager, he had been thrilled when he'd heard Sean's voice over the phone, telling him he'd be in L.A. soon, and would Viggo like to meet.

Viggo had been more than thrilled that night, but there really wasn't any proper word for it. He and Sean, just the two of them. It had felt so good. He hadn't thought anything of it when he hadn't heard from Sean the day after, figuring he was busy promoting or whatever.

He sure as hell hadn't thought Sean could be waiting in a prison cell for his lawyers to bail him out.
Fuck.

Most of all, Viggo was really, really angry with himself.

*****

Sean had been gone for almost three hours now, and Viggo was getting a little restless--not that he was worried, he knew he could trust Sean to not get lost in the woods, even when upset--so he started dinner, just to have something to do. He began to wonder how much time he should still wait before going out and finding him.

Really, it seemed like all he did these days was wait to go to Sean.

On second thought, it wasn't just these days.

He was so tired of being that chickenshit.

Yet, when he stepped out on the porch, he found out he needn't go very far, for there Sean was, sitting on his chair, kind of slumped down. He didn't move, not even when Viggo came over and sat down on the railing in front of him, much in the same position they'd been the night before.

"It's chilly out here," Viggo said, for wanting of better.

Sean still didn't look at him. "So go back inside."

As if. Viggo watched him a little more, watched Sean's eyes staring into the night and become empty again, dead again. So he said, "I've just had enough," and when even that failed to get Sean's attention, he added, "You know, screwing that guy, that's not really bad. I should think entering your house when you're not there could just about fare worse."

And man, how quick *that* got Sean's attention.

"You... what?"

For a moment, Viggo debated if coming clean would actually be safe. Then decided, What the fuck. He had waited for too long as it was, it just had to be done. And to do it, he had to rid himself of whatever--unfair--advantage Sean was thinking Viggo had on him.

"I think you heard just fine," he said, and what if he could feel his face heating up a little? Sean was looking at him, and his eyes weren't all that empty, after all. Viggo watched as a light went on in them, and felt the heat burning a little into his chest as well, chasing away the cold.

"Candles," Sean murmured, as if to himself. "I *didn't* have candles."

Viggo blushed a little more, remembering the first time he had actually dared to use the keys Sean had given him to get in, instead of just hanging around in the neighbourood and watching from outside. It had been a dark night, and a thunderstorm had found him out on the street, where he had convinced himself it was Mother Nature's way to tell him 'Pray enter, make yourself at home.' So he had done just that, and when the lights had gone out because of the storm and he couldn't find a single candle, he'd decided to buy several ones and stack Sean's drawers with them, thoughtful guest that he was.

Sean was looking oddly at him; which, Viggo suspected, was the only sane thing to do. Viggo was a freak, nothing new in that, he'd always known it. And, he suspected, Sean had known it all along as well.

Because he was looking funny at him, but not *that* funny.

"How many...?"

"Oh," Viggo said, shifting a little on the railing. "Not so many." He shrugged. "Three times. The first was almost an accident. Second time around, was to bring the candles. Third..." and here he halted.

"Third?" Sean prompted softly, not looking freaked out at all, just curious.

So Viggo said, "Third time was after opening night at my exhibit. I went straight from there--took your roses with me."

Sean's eyes were green, dark in the fading light of the day. Pensive.

"Why?" he asked.

And Viggo shrugged again. "It was your place. I missed you." It was really that simple.

Sean thought about this for a while. "Oh," he said in the end.

Viggo nodded. "Yeah." And after a time he asked, "So, why did *you* do it?" and silently thought back at the roses, and wondered if romance--or, the hope of it--was after all really so dead.

When Sean averted his eyes and said, "It was just a stupid thing," Viggo felt romance crumble to dust between his fingers. Much as the roses' petals had long ago done.

*****

It was just so wrong, so damn wrong. There they were, in the middle of nowhere, the two of them alone, after all that time. Alone, just like they had been that last night in L.A.

And just like then, Sean couldn't say it. Couldn't say it to Viggo. Couldn't trust Viggo enough.

Sean couldn't trust Viggo, so he had gone to that Viggo lookalike, his fucking *stand-in* for fuck's sake, to have something Sean obviously thought Viggo couldn't give him. And why did Sean think that?

Because, a voice a little too much like Ian's voice said in Viggo's head, Viggo had never offered.

So Sean had never thought he could ask.

Before Viggo could really think about it, he was on his feet, in front of Sean's chair, leaning down over Sean, his hands braced on the wall behind, one on either side of Sean's head.

"What did he do to you?"

What, he barely restrained himself from adding, that you thought I wouldn't?

Sean looked up at him, startled, confused. Maybe, wondered Viggo, a little afraid?

And following that thought, so sharp it almost cut Viggo's very soul into pieces, was the question--how had Sean looked at that guy? What had he seen? Had he liked it?

Was that all there could ever be?

And still Sean wouldn't tell him.

"I slept in your bed," Viggo suddenly heard himself confess, and how low-pitched his voice had become, how rough. Damnit.

He leaned down a little more, steadying his voice as much as he could, trying to hear himself above the thundering of his heart. "I dreamed of you."

Sean's eyes were wide, and yes, Viggo noted... yes, there was fear in them. Sean turned his head away, but he couldn't really go anywhere. Viggo felt Sean's breath--quick intakes of air--warm on the chilled uncovered skin of his forearm. He lowered his head a little more, saw Sean shiver when he felt Viggo's own breath on the bare skin where his neck and shoulder met, that his shirt let exposed.

"I dreamed of you and me, in your bed."

Sean stiffened, went so still that Viggo could believe he was holding his breath.

"I dreamed it was real."

If only Sean had turned his head, their mouths would have touched.

It would've taken only that much. That little.

Sean lifted his hands, and shoved Viggo away.

*****