rugbytackle | Follow-up to THAT Fic (from way back when)

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Title: The Shadow Dance - Fiction
Author: Atanvarne
Pairing: SB/VM
Rating: PG
Archive: Green Opals, Rugbytackle okay. Anyone else, please drop me a comment so I can visit it.
Disclaimer: This is a product of my imagination. No vowels or consonants were harmed during the course of producing this work. Credulity, however, has been twisted beyond recognition. In other words, this never happened.
Author's Notes: A very long time ago I wrote a fic, Shattered, that didn't have a happy ending, unusual for a schmoop0rn addict (I like fluff, what can I say?). It was the darkest thing I've ever written, and because it's not VigBean as I pretend to know them, I friends-locked it after leaving it up for a few days. Now that the boys are talking again, they're feeding me bits about what happened after. They tell me that quite a bit of time has passed between that day and this one and that they're still finding their way. Beta'd by the lovely T.

Companion fic to this.

Viggo couldn't tell you how long it's been since he last saw Sean. He couldn't tell you when he last heard Sean's voice, though their last conversation runs through his mind like a tape loop. He can, though, tell you exactly how long it's been since he last thought of Sean—eleven minutes and 24 seconds.

He once went three days, six hours and thirteen minutes between thoughts of Sean until he stumbled across a 30-inch flat screen computer monitor with a promo photograph of Sean as Odysseus set as desktop wallpaper during a trip to an electronics store. To someone who had resolutely ignored everything related to Troy, it felt like a sucker punch. He'd hurried past the monitors, hoping his reaction remained hidden, not knowing he'd stood in front of it for a full fifteen seconds with Rick Blaine's comical expression on his face.

It was during a one on one interview for The Return of the King that he'd learned that not only was his reaction noticed, it had been photographed as well. To the inevitable question of "Do you still see your cast mates?" he'd answered with yes, he got together with them as often as schedules permitted. "And Sean?" she had persisted. "You two were rumoured to be quite close."

"No more so than with the others, but I haven't seen him, really, since he left New Zealand. It's been a couple of years." It was a lie, but the details of their relationship had not spread beyond close friends and family members. The reporter looked at Viggo with sympathy in her grey eyes, then set down a photograph of a man staring at a computer screen whose face spoke eloquently of pain…and guilt. He'd walked out at that point.

Viggo told no one that he kept track of Sean's movements, that he absorbed every scrap of information he could about Sean's life; whether Sean was eating well or poorly, if he was smoking again and how much, how often he went out carousing and whether he went home with anyone else. Having Orlando working on Troy along with Sean had been a great help, and a lot of information had been relayed through casual conversation—casual to Orlando at any rate, who knew nothing about Viggo's hunger for news but appreciated the occasional calls from his friend and mentor.

Now that Sean was working in the Southland, Viggo went to extreme lengths to ensure their paths didn't cross, especially in circumstances that would require posing happily for the press to keep the myth of 'One Big Happy Family' alive. Naturally, Viggo had no idea Sean was taking equal measures to avoid him as well, though if he'd thought about it at all, he would have come to that conclusion eventually.

Today, though, Viggo had volunteered to make an unscheduled stop at the gallery to deliver more copies of 45301. Ordinarily, Percival would have simply shipped them across town, but since Viggo was approving some galleys and the gallery was on the way home, he said he'd do it. So he'd grabbed a couple of cases of books, tossed them into the truck and stayed for some pleasant conversation with the gallery owner, who was still a bit amazed by the number of people who had come to see the exhibit.

They both heard the gallery door open and Steve got up to give the standard spiel about the artist, the photos, the works that were available for purchase to the blond haired man who had walked in, then returned to the back where Viggo was looking at sales figures and smiling. "Only one visitor this time," Steve informed him as he entered the office, then looked over Viggo's shoulder at the spreadsheet displayed on the monitor.

Viggo glanced up as the shadow of a form wisped past the office and caught a brief glance of a familiar profile before it moved behind a wall. After a classic double-take left him rooted in place, jaw dropping in stunned surprise, Steve remarked, "It looks like you know him. I'll tell him you're here, if you'd like."

"No." Viggo protested swiftly. "No. I'll tell him myself." He rolled the chair away from the desk, rose, and walked softly out onto the gallery floor, steeling himself for Sean's reaction. The only thing he knew for certain was that he would not be greeted warmly. He stood about five feet away from Sean, watching him stare at Miyelo #12 until Sean whirled to look at him as though he were confronting his worst nightmare which, Viggo supposed, he was.

…and choking on hello. The line from the old Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young song rose unbidden to his mind, and Viggo knew exactly what that felt like, what it sounded like, since the "Hello," that escaped his lips perfectly matched that description. He took an involuntary step backwards at what he read in Sean's eyes…not the hatred he anticipated, but anguish.

Anguish swiftly gave way to accusation, and once again, Viggo felt tried and convicted by a pair of sea green eyes. "You weren't supposed to be here," Sean rasped. "You had a meeting at Percival," taking a step backwards himself as dread settled in his stomach. He could feel it, leaden as a winter's day, sending its icy tentacles upward where it showed in his eyes.

"Yeah, well, coming to the gallery wasn't on your calendar either," Viggo replied, deciding to lay his cards on the table as well, nonplussed by Sean's admission. "You're looking well," he ventured cautiously, his blue eyes sweeping over a body that was once more familiar to him than his own.

"Yer not," Sean stated, thinking privately that Viggo looked worse now than he had when Helm's Deep had finished filming. Too thin, eyes sunken, hair like carrot coloured straw—what the hell had Viggo done to himself? "You look a right mess." He moved forward and took a lock of Viggo's hair between his fingers, feeling for himself that it was indeed as brittle as it looked, then snatched his hand back as though he'd touched fire, a look of shocked dismay appearing on his face.

Heart pounding, Sean turned on his heel and headed for the gallery door, shaken by his actions. What on earth had possessed him to touch Viggo? He blinked against the harsh Southern California sunshine as he stepped outside and headed towards his rental car, a dime-a-dozen black Ford parked on a nearby side street.

"Sean, wait." Viggo's voice echoed through the narrow alleyway running behind the gallery as Viggo jogged towards the man who had once meant the world to him. "Can I at least buy you a beer? Maybe talk a bit?"

"Whatever it is you've got to say, Viggo, I don't want to hear it," Sean snapped, turning to face him head-on. "A pretty apology won't erase the past—more likely just make it harder to live with. Let the ghosts rest."

"Do you really think they will, Sean?" Viggo asked quietly. "Do you think they'll sleep any easier now that the inevitable has happened? What about you? Think you'll get much rest tonight? Or are you simply going to drink yourself to sleep?"

The freight train of Sean's thoughts slammed hard into that brick wall, steamed on through and derailed on the other side. Orlando must have mentioned it, how Sean was either prowling the streets of Malta and Cabo at 4 a.m. or passed out drunk, normal sleep being a thing of the past. He rubbed his hand over his face, regarding Viggo with a look somewhere between caution and resignation then nodded. "One drink."

"Fair enough," Viggo replied, his expression inscrutable as he squinted against the afternoon sun. "There's a place up the street." He turned and waited for Sean, falling into step next to him as they walked towards the little hole-in-the-wall bar that had absolutely no redeeming characteristics whatsoever, except that it was dark, air conditioned, and sold alcohol.

Sean seated himself at a round table near the back while Viggo bought two bottles of beer; Newcastle for Sean and Corona with lime for himself. After settling himself in the ratty bar chair, Viggo clinked the neck of his bottle against Sean's. "Cheers," he murmured over Willie Nelson crooning in the background and took a long pull.

Sean took a small sip, not having the vaguest idea what he had to be cheerful about, unwilling to invent something for Viggo's benefit and shifted uncomfortably in his seat, remaining hunched over his drink. Were it not for the fact that his shirt collar was opened, he'd be pulling at it. "So…"

"So…" Viggo returned, staring at the bottle as he rolled it between his palms. "I've done everything you wanted. I didn't call. I didn't write. I stayed away." Taking another long swallow, he gazed bleakly at Sean. "Is right now the best I can hope for?"

"Right now is a helluva lot more than you deserve," Sean retorted, his eyes and voice glacial. "Did ye think all you'd need to do is wait long enough and I'd come 'round? That I'd just put what happened out of me head?" His temper, always right under the surface these days, began to flare.

"No," Viggo admitted and drained a third of his beer in two gulps. He stared at a spot on the far wall just past Sean's right shoulder, looking more like death warmed over than he knew. Deep-set eyes made hollow by dark circles permanently etched into his skins turned to gaze bleakly at Sean. "Why'd you come to the gallery?"

Sean knew that question was coming, had even prepared an answer in advance, but now that the moment had arrived, the last thing he wanted to sound was flippant. Some things were bigger than the two of them; Rings was one. "For Peter," he replied softly, without any of his previous acrimony. "For the Halflings and Orlando. For the Fellowship." He stared at his bottle of ale for a moment. "It matters."

Viggo nodded. It was the answer he expected, but he was disappointed to hear it nonetheless. "Yeah. Okay," he replied, rubbing a roughened hand over tired eyes. As he watched, the guarded look returned to Sean's eyes. The silence deepened, took on substance as they both became lost in thought, each man contemplating the nature of his own private hell. On the jukebox, Don Henley was confessing to Stevie Nicks that he, too, wept.

Furtive glances were darting across the table with Viggo wondering why he bothered trying to build a slender bridge between them and Sean wondering if he should. Viggo was wrong about one thing, though. Sean would sleep easier tonight, having faced a rather formidable demon and found it much smaller than he remembered it being. Viggo's suffering had been no less profound than his own and somehow knowing that made moving forward a possibility.

Sean drained the last of his ale. "Thanks for this," he nodded. He had nothing else to say, not at this point, though God knew, there was plenty ready to come pouring out. He stood and extracted a slim, gold pen from the breast pocket of his linen jacket and scrawled a telephone number on a bar napkin. "Call me, yeah? When you're ready to talk?" He closed his eyes and swallowed heavily. "It's time."

With that, he squeezed Viggo's shoulder and walked out of the bar, feeling slightly chilled despite the heat. One question had been answered—despite all that had transpired, despite the passage of time, his life had been far better with Viggo than it was without him. He had no idea whether Viggo would call or not, and didn't know if he should hope he would or pray he wouldn't. Either way, things would be different from this point forward.

Inside the bar, Viggo signalled for another beer and wished that he, too, were comfortably numb.

The arc sort of ends here for the time being.

Current Mood: Angsty-ish
Current Music: Oh darn. Boromir's dying again. (LotR)