Sean had never had patience for gardening as a kid. Tending to things living but unmoving things--that would never show appreciation for your care, would just grow up and live and die, no matter how hard you took care of them and no matter how beautiful they could become... that just seemed so dull to him, so useless, because it would always be like that, it would never change, and what was the point?
His mum used to keep their garden, working on it whenever she had time, trimming bushes, branches, leaves; planting seeds, planning flowerbeds, tending to vegetables and flowers. She would spend hours on her knees, in the sunlight and sometimes even in the rain, with her soft yellow rubber gloves and her gardening tools, talking quietly to the green growing plants as if she were talking to herself.
Sean and his sister used to help her when they were little kids, especially during summertime, handing out clips and filling water cans, learning the names of flowers and vegetables and the right times of planting from garishly coloured seed packets, fascinated by the wet black soil crawling with bugs and pale blind worms, even by the tiny green parasites clinging to the underside of leaves, infesting the nasturtium that climbed all over and around their doorstep and
making it look yellow and sickly.
A few decades later Sean would look back at those times and then he almost couldn't believe whole years had passed like that: too brief years, that back then had seemed eternal, made of Sundays spent in their little garden, with black dirt under his nails and old jeans green-soiled on the knees, the buzz of bees and flies lazy in the early hours of still summer afternoons.
He recalled his sister as a little girl, with her hair tied in a tight golden bun on the top of her head, catching grasshoppers between her hands and sneaking up on him with the tiny green insect trapped between her palms, ready to spring on him--because Sean hated the jumpy little buggers and that amused her no end.
Unchanging Sundays, filled now with a muted sense of peace unlike any other peace he recalled ever feeling.
Things had changed, though, when they had grown up: Sean had his mates, then his girlfriends; the pub, the parties, working in his dad's weldshop and then marrying--and then that had changed, too. His acting classes at RADA. London, the West End, a little flat shared with his new best mate and no space for a garden. Life had been so different from before, it'd made his head spin, for a while.
He hadn't know he missed something until he'd found himself in class one day, thinking he had to remember to water the potted ficus a girlfriend had left to his cares while out of town, maybe replace the ugly black plastic pot with a terracotta one. He would go home and talk to the little bugger as his mum had used to do with her roses, and couldn't care less if his mate heard him and took the piss. He'd been called worse, and less fondly.
Melanie gave it to him when she came back, because it was obvious he cared about it so much more than she did; and maybe because he missed his family, but he started considering a lot of things he'd never given much thought to before.
Like marrying, and more than that, staying married; buying a house, a big house with a big garden; having children. Making things grow, taking care of them.
And while he mulled those things over, he took up gardening--it was relaxing, it made him calm and happy, and everyone needed a hobby, after all. Even though sometimes it felt like it was something more than just a hobby.
In the end he chose the house way before proposing to Mel. They lived there for a couple of years before he finally asked. The house wasn't that big, but it had a large garden, though not large enough to be considered a small park of its own; but it had patches of grass, and thick bushes, and a few trees. He could grow vegetables near the south wall and plant flowerbeds in the front lawn. He and Melanie could make love in the orchard, under the cherry trees, sheltered from the street and the neighbouring houses.
Afterwards, every time he was home--as rare as that was--he would teach Lorna, and later on Molly too, the names of trees and flowers. The girls would cling to his arms and legs and giggle repeating his words aloud, trying to throw him down onto the grass, happy to have him all to themselves.
Life was good to Sean then. He felt like it could go on forever the way it had always been.
It was years later, two marriages later, that Sean found himself at the other end of the world, farther from home that he had ever been, in a place that didn't look as if it needed gardens because the whole sodding country was like a giant garden, endless green and sky and blinding colours everywhere he looked.
Sean learned early on that Viggo didn't care much for gardening: he preferred nature as it was, growing where it could, wild, not planned by people, taking over the world. Viggo would kneel with him in Sean's little garden and help him tend to the plants, watching him work, planning colours and lines and shapes in his mind as Sean planned pruning and cross-pollination and efflorescences.
They were patient men, both of them, though their patience had a different quality to it, and was for different things, different times, different tides.
Viggo waited for Sean a long time, letting the seed grow up and spring from the earth in its own time, in its own way--he had waited until at last Sean had covered Viggo's paint-stained hand with his own green-stained one, curving his fingers around the handle of a brush, warm and alive, acknowledging new times, new hopes, new needs. Only then Viggo's patience had come to an end, and the garden had been a small one with no trees, so different from the one back home, so they would've probably given Sean's neighbours an eyeful--except that that was New Zealand, and they didn't have neighbours around.
So different from home.
Everything was suddenly so different. Viggo loved the ancient trees growing free in the South Island's forests, trees whose names Sean had never heard of. Sean would go with Viggo there, would sit under their shadows watching Viggo fishing in the broad rivers; would feel their bark, rusty and rough and ancient-smooth in places against his back, leaves tangling in his hair, his hair catching in the cracks in the bark when Viggo would press him against the trunk, Viggo's breath hot on Sean's skin, Viggo's eyes wild, his hands... his hands gentle. Caring. Nurturing.
Wild flowers--that Sean didn't think would ever grow in any garden of England, ever blossom back home--and Viggo lying golden and dark among them, the most exotic and intoxicating of all. Sean had tasted their beauty, breathed in their scent, so sweet and dangerous; he had taken what was there to take, Viggo's voice and Viggo's laughter and later on Viggo's sweet, soft moans falling onto Sean as rain on leaves, planting the seed of something Sean had never thought could take root in his heart.
And against his beliefs, and his better judgment, Sean had tended to that seed, had taken care of it and fed it with Viggo's company and watered it with the sight of Viggo and let it grow with every touch, every smile, every shared joke and secret look; he had watched it closely, protecting it from harm and from the coldness of his own heart; he had felt it sprout new leaves with every caress, every kiss, every hungry, sighing "Sean" on Viggo's lips.
For the best part of a year, Viggo's art had found a new, calmer focus, and Sean's garden had grown wild. Even though Sean knew, this time, that life couldn't always go on like this.
In the end they walked away on their respective paths, as it was the only reasonable thing for them to do; but Sean would find himself waking up at night, in his own bed at home--his new home, bigger than the one he and Melanie had shared, emptier--and he would get up and walk in his park, pretending it was an ancient forest with trees whose names he never knew; he would feel bark smooth and rough under his fingertips, laughing at himself, so out of character acting
like a bloody elf; yet the laughter would catch in his throat, for he would see bright yellow light falling green and soft through countless leaves over dirty blond hair, flashing blue as the hidden sky in warm, playful eyes.
And he would know.
Good things. Things that would grow, blossom, be stronger; things like the beautiful wild plant that had taken root in Sean's heart so unexpectedly, yet he was still tending to it, still pausing from time to time to smell its exotic scent, still feeding it with hope and sometimes watering it with nostalgia—but he would protect it from pain and loss and regrets as if from hail and frost. He would protect it, would allow it to grow, to become stronger.
It was difficult work, trying work, and at times it seemed pointless, for things would never hange. Yet Sean's patience had not yet come to its end, because being patient was what Sean was, had learnt to be, and the sapling grew steadily. The roots reached deep, feeding right from some wild, warm place hidden away in Sean's heart, weathering out the seasons, surviving dark winters: his own White Tree sleeping under the snow, it would put out a new flower each time Viggo called and said his name in that way he had, each time they managed to meet somewhere, around sets, in between projects.
Each time Sean would look right into Viggo's eyes for the first time after long weeks of separation and would remember all over again where the pollen--unexpected, unplanned--had come from.
And so in the morning he would start digging into the dark cold British soil, planting new saplings, watching his girls playing among the older ones, little fairies of the wood, and be content, his heart tended and cared for, at peace.
Because life could go on forever like this, and never be as it was before.
Summary: Sean is a patient man.
Rated: PG
Categories: Actor RPS Pairing: Sean/Viggo
Warnings: NoneChallenges:
Series: NoneChapters: 1 Completed: Yes
Word count: 1777 Read: 924
Published: 31 Jul 2009 Updated: 31 Jul 2009