Green Dark by shegollum -- Part 14/?
Oct. 22nd, 2005 01:01 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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rugbytackleThis is a dark ride. -- Shegollum
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Title: Green Dark by shegollum -- Part 14/?
Author: shegollum
Pairing: Viggo/Bean; includes Orlando, too.
Rating: R - NC17
Summary: Morning after the night before...where are they in this strange new space?
Warnings: Angst; mental cruelty/instability; possibly non-con; cutting; substance abuse -- you name it...we've probably got it.
Disclaimer: No truth in it at all.
Archive: Viggo-Cursive and rugbytackle eventually
A/N: Not beta'd. All errors are completely mine and mine alone. Thank you very much for letting me know you're interested and reading. It has meant a lot. -- Shegollum
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Banner by the wonderful Amanda (![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
legomyarrow). :-)
Ch 14
Sean stopped where he was, not quite sure what he’d heard or what it meant in this odd new context between them. His pulse was pounding so loudly in his ears that he couldn’t be sure if the word was repeated or not. He slowly turned and saw that Viggo was standing, the expression on his face one that juxtaposed concentration and distraction in a way that was entirely unnerving to see. It seemed as though the other man was almost not really there in his own skin at all, at least not with Sean in the here and now. He was bothered even more by the faded and tired look evident in Viggo’s face, the way he moved past him and toward his studio at the end of the hallway with such resignation. Sean moved to follow but was waved away as the other man mumbled that he would be right back.
“Viggo?” asked Sean, not at all sure he wanted the other man to isolate himself behind a closed door. He seemed so very weary.
Viggo looked at him in response to the query and he even smiled faintly, a shadow of what tried to be reassurance on his face.
“Stay here. Give me just a minute, okay? Then you should go.”
Sean nodded mutely, too confused to form a response that made any sense. He turned as Viggo left, trying to busy himself with something, anything around him. He heard the studio door open and then immediately close again and he was alone. He moved restlessly around the messy room, aware all at once of how different the house was from how he remembered it. The clutter everywhere – books and newspapers and old travel itinerary envelopes -- was normal enough, but he now realized that window shades and doors normally kept open were closed. Lights were off throughout most of the common area. No music or recorded poetry played through the many speakers as it so often had.
Looking back down the dark hallway, Sean realized that the closed door bothered him a great deal. A great deal. “Fuck Viggo!” he thought with frustration. He wanted to know what the fuck was going on.
He strode down the hall and pushed quietly into the studio, instantly stopping short at what he saw on the other side of the door. The room was full of evidence of a mind ablaze with ideas; there were canvases and photos everywhere, paints of every color in tubes, pots, markers and buckets, notebooks and bits of ideas on scraps of paper scattered to and fro. "Scrib-scrabs" Viggo called them. Sean’s gaze was drawn to everything all at once and then rushed to go back over each piece one by one, more carefully taking in specific colors and subjects.
As a whole, the work was stunningly raw and direct. Sean felt what he was seeing and he was startled to realize that these were the ideas coming forth Viggo in recent days. While fantastic in quality and expression, it was painful to see the suffering captured here and to know it must have been done in complete solitude. Darkness and sorrow and anger could be felt all around the room and he found himself looking for evidence of some relief, some break in the despair engulfing him.
He started a little as he heard Viggo rumbling in the shelves and cabinets at the far end of the L-shaped room, but his presence remained undetected. The work surface in the middle of the room caught his eye then and he moved closer, circling the table to view it from the side where the artist had been working.
It was a large mixed-media piece similar to many Viggo had made before. Yet it was very different as well. Darker than many of his pieces, the color was splotchy and scattered and far less saturated than it was in many of his works. The canvas was painted in black and rust and ochre with scratches and scrapes of white and gray interrupting and impeding the swaths of color. A photo of a rocky coastline overlapped another of wooden slats and a third – a delicate close-up of a thin, intricately embossed leather belt or strap. Rust-red marks were scattered here and there on the images and more so in the stiffened strips of ruched burlap that infiltrated the collage in places. The effect was unsettling and uncomfortable and oddly incomplete. Other photos must still be under consideration for the empty space at bottom left. Sean reached to pick up a small collection of prints just under the edge of the canvas, moving an empty beer bottle and a rusty utility knife to get to them.
It was only a handful of pictures. A much-loved and worn-edged photo of Viggo and Henry, the small son nestled against the unclothed torso of his father who gazed down at him with nothing less than wonder on his softly smiling face. An oddly remote shot of Viggo looking in a mirror, barely a face at all as he was obscured almost entirely by the camera he held before him. What looked like a news photo of another anonymous massacre, the specific focus of this one a bird perched daintily on a dead soul’s face as it made a meal of what was left there.
And then there was a photo of Sean himself – one that made his breath catch in his throat as he recalled the day on the set in New Zealand when it had been taken. The two of them were sitting across from each other at one of the wobbly food service tables, their knees bumping against each others beneath it, their hands almost touching over the book they shared on top of it. Viggo’s body was canted toward him slightly as he angled himself to read what Sean pointed to on the shared page.
“Here,” said a rough voice behind him and Sean was pulled out of the warmth of the past and into the cold confusion of the present.
Viggo handed him a book -- the book from the photo. Sean took it immediately, knowing and remembering it, allowing his hands to feel the worn brown leather from another century, his fingers to run across the dips and ridges of embossed and faded letters.
He looked up at the other man, questions racing through his mind, scattershot. Yet all of them were instantly stopped by the sad desolation with which Viggo continued to look at the book he’d given up, his eyes then moving on to the photos Sean still held. His expression did not change and he did not look up, not even when Sean gently spoke his name. Reaching slowly to touch Viggo’s arm, Sean was immeasurably saddened to see him twist to the side and step back, eyes still cast downward. As he moved, Sean noted abstractedly that, just like always, Viggo had paint all over the shirt and jeans he wore, rust-red smudges all down the length of one arm and here and there on the other. All was painfully normal on the surface and heartbreakingly not underneath.
“You should keep that, Sean. Take it.”
Sean’s first, uncensored response was an agony of pain-shielded hurt. He felt like screaming out his rage, but somewhere in himself, he knew that any hostility directed outward at the gentle and somber man now before him would foster his ability – and apparent desire – to retreat again. Viggo seemed somehow to be diminishing himself by his own volition, negating his presence, denying past connections and trying desperately to erase himself from memories that didn’t belong to him alone.
Sean swallowed hard at the bitter knowledge that he had somehow so misread Viggo and whatever had transpired between them. Something was going on that he’d never discerned before… and he silently, vehemently vowed to continue until he knew what it was. And how to help.
When he spoke, it was very softly and with words not intentionally directed at Viggo. He just offered his words out to the air, knowing he would have said them even if the other man had not been there with him. There was sadness and melancholy in them, yet they also recalled for him the most pure, simple joy as well.
“This book, Viggo… did I ever tell you how I found it? I told you it was for your birthday that year but I didn’t even know when your birthday was then. We’d only just met really! But it was something I brought back specifically for you. And your birthday was a perfect time to give it to you. Drove Orlando mad, it did. When I flew home to deal with me divorce, I’d gone on a walk about town. All over the place… into parts I didn’t know all that well. I was just seeking a bit of time alone – somewhere, anywhere to have a quiet pint and figure out how I’d fucked it all up again so badly. And instead of a pub, I found a book shop – seemed like just your run of the mill place but with a tucked away section for rarities and antiques in the back. I went in to get a paper and have a quick look about and I ended up roaming the aisles thinking of you and what you’d come to mean to me. I wanted nothing more than to be back in New Zealand and I finally understood that I felt that way because of you. Because that’s where you were.”
Viggo had turned and was picking at items on a shelf behind them, but he’d moved no further away and appeared to be listening. He kept his gaze focused elsewhere though and did not display any discernible reaction as Sean continued.
"And then I saw this notebook – Spanish and English poetry and art by someone I’d never heard of. I don’t know – were you ever able to find out if he’d been published or known at all?”
Sean’s heart surged with hope and concern as Viggo responded directly to him. He carefully shook his head side to side, offering the very briefest of blue glances to scrape across the Englishman’s eager face.
“It didn’t matter though did it, Viggo? It was as though you’d lived before and I’d found this proof in the form of notes and scribbles and watercolors. I knew you’d understand why. Knew you’d know why I couldn’t leave it there and why I needed you to read it and share it with me.”
A faint frown was on Viggo’s face now, his forehead dimpled with anxiety. Sean moved closer again and this time Viggo did not step away to avoid the touch of a hand to his shoulder.
“And those times we spent talking about the things in this book, Viggo, those were the very beginning. Our beginning. I won’t take this back. Not if you mean for it now to be our end.”
Viggo looked up at him then, the stark openness of his blue eyes somehow startling to Sean. He could see the man he'd known in them for the first time in a long time. With a gaze that was almost frantic, his eyelids fluttering, Viggo scanned and searched Sean’s face – his eyes – for something. He acted as though he expected that whatever he sought was about to be snatched away from him no matter how great his desire or need. Sean tried so hard to hold his gaze for longer than an instant, to connect with him, needing so badly to understand.
But Viggo blinked slowly, then keeping his eyes closed for a long moment, and when he opened them again he’d pulled back. He straightened his spine and stood up taller, swiveling his head slowly as though to ease tension in his neck.
And that was it.
When he looked directly at Sean again, he was more composed and the Englishman was swept with fear and frustration. He turned abruptly, stepping away from Viggo and going back to the canvas on the work table. The rusty red marks and the sporadically stained burlap caught his eye again and he stared at it all as he considered what to do next. The edges of the unframed canvas were marked with red, too, he noticed – fingerprints and smudges all along the sides where no one would ever see them. That was odd. Blood red. Oh, gods. Bloody. Fucking. Red. Like the rusty edge of the utility knife that he could now see was clotted with dried red matter, but not rust. And the ‘paint’ sunk into the many pieces of burlap. The splashes on the photos. All of it a dark, somber red.
He spun around, shock and sorrow etched on his face as fragments of ideas and emotions fought for space in his brain. Only the single most important one spilled forth from his mouth, a soft and worried whisper laced with such fear.
“Are you all right, Viggo?”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Title: Green Dark by shegollum -- Part 14/?
Author: shegollum
Pairing: Viggo/Bean; includes Orlando, too.
Rating: R - NC17
Summary: Morning after the night before...where are they in this strange new space?
Warnings: Angst; mental cruelty/instability; possibly non-con; cutting; substance abuse -- you name it...we've probably got it.
Disclaimer: No truth in it at all.
Archive: Viggo-Cursive and rugbytackle eventually
A/N: Not beta'd. All errors are completely mine and mine alone. Thank you very much for letting me know you're interested and reading. It has meant a lot. -- Shegollum
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
legomyarrow). :-) Ch 14
Sean stopped where he was, not quite sure what he’d heard or what it meant in this odd new context between them. His pulse was pounding so loudly in his ears that he couldn’t be sure if the word was repeated or not. He slowly turned and saw that Viggo was standing, the expression on his face one that juxtaposed concentration and distraction in a way that was entirely unnerving to see. It seemed as though the other man was almost not really there in his own skin at all, at least not with Sean in the here and now. He was bothered even more by the faded and tired look evident in Viggo’s face, the way he moved past him and toward his studio at the end of the hallway with such resignation. Sean moved to follow but was waved away as the other man mumbled that he would be right back.
“Viggo?” asked Sean, not at all sure he wanted the other man to isolate himself behind a closed door. He seemed so very weary.
Viggo looked at him in response to the query and he even smiled faintly, a shadow of what tried to be reassurance on his face.
“Stay here. Give me just a minute, okay? Then you should go.”
Sean nodded mutely, too confused to form a response that made any sense. He turned as Viggo left, trying to busy himself with something, anything around him. He heard the studio door open and then immediately close again and he was alone. He moved restlessly around the messy room, aware all at once of how different the house was from how he remembered it. The clutter everywhere – books and newspapers and old travel itinerary envelopes -- was normal enough, but he now realized that window shades and doors normally kept open were closed. Lights were off throughout most of the common area. No music or recorded poetry played through the many speakers as it so often had.
Looking back down the dark hallway, Sean realized that the closed door bothered him a great deal. A great deal. “Fuck Viggo!” he thought with frustration. He wanted to know what the fuck was going on.
He strode down the hall and pushed quietly into the studio, instantly stopping short at what he saw on the other side of the door. The room was full of evidence of a mind ablaze with ideas; there were canvases and photos everywhere, paints of every color in tubes, pots, markers and buckets, notebooks and bits of ideas on scraps of paper scattered to and fro. "Scrib-scrabs" Viggo called them. Sean’s gaze was drawn to everything all at once and then rushed to go back over each piece one by one, more carefully taking in specific colors and subjects.
As a whole, the work was stunningly raw and direct. Sean felt what he was seeing and he was startled to realize that these were the ideas coming forth Viggo in recent days. While fantastic in quality and expression, it was painful to see the suffering captured here and to know it must have been done in complete solitude. Darkness and sorrow and anger could be felt all around the room and he found himself looking for evidence of some relief, some break in the despair engulfing him.
He started a little as he heard Viggo rumbling in the shelves and cabinets at the far end of the L-shaped room, but his presence remained undetected. The work surface in the middle of the room caught his eye then and he moved closer, circling the table to view it from the side where the artist had been working.
It was a large mixed-media piece similar to many Viggo had made before. Yet it was very different as well. Darker than many of his pieces, the color was splotchy and scattered and far less saturated than it was in many of his works. The canvas was painted in black and rust and ochre with scratches and scrapes of white and gray interrupting and impeding the swaths of color. A photo of a rocky coastline overlapped another of wooden slats and a third – a delicate close-up of a thin, intricately embossed leather belt or strap. Rust-red marks were scattered here and there on the images and more so in the stiffened strips of ruched burlap that infiltrated the collage in places. The effect was unsettling and uncomfortable and oddly incomplete. Other photos must still be under consideration for the empty space at bottom left. Sean reached to pick up a small collection of prints just under the edge of the canvas, moving an empty beer bottle and a rusty utility knife to get to them.
It was only a handful of pictures. A much-loved and worn-edged photo of Viggo and Henry, the small son nestled against the unclothed torso of his father who gazed down at him with nothing less than wonder on his softly smiling face. An oddly remote shot of Viggo looking in a mirror, barely a face at all as he was obscured almost entirely by the camera he held before him. What looked like a news photo of another anonymous massacre, the specific focus of this one a bird perched daintily on a dead soul’s face as it made a meal of what was left there.
And then there was a photo of Sean himself – one that made his breath catch in his throat as he recalled the day on the set in New Zealand when it had been taken. The two of them were sitting across from each other at one of the wobbly food service tables, their knees bumping against each others beneath it, their hands almost touching over the book they shared on top of it. Viggo’s body was canted toward him slightly as he angled himself to read what Sean pointed to on the shared page.
“Here,” said a rough voice behind him and Sean was pulled out of the warmth of the past and into the cold confusion of the present.
Viggo handed him a book -- the book from the photo. Sean took it immediately, knowing and remembering it, allowing his hands to feel the worn brown leather from another century, his fingers to run across the dips and ridges of embossed and faded letters.
He looked up at the other man, questions racing through his mind, scattershot. Yet all of them were instantly stopped by the sad desolation with which Viggo continued to look at the book he’d given up, his eyes then moving on to the photos Sean still held. His expression did not change and he did not look up, not even when Sean gently spoke his name. Reaching slowly to touch Viggo’s arm, Sean was immeasurably saddened to see him twist to the side and step back, eyes still cast downward. As he moved, Sean noted abstractedly that, just like always, Viggo had paint all over the shirt and jeans he wore, rust-red smudges all down the length of one arm and here and there on the other. All was painfully normal on the surface and heartbreakingly not underneath.
“You should keep that, Sean. Take it.”
Sean’s first, uncensored response was an agony of pain-shielded hurt. He felt like screaming out his rage, but somewhere in himself, he knew that any hostility directed outward at the gentle and somber man now before him would foster his ability – and apparent desire – to retreat again. Viggo seemed somehow to be diminishing himself by his own volition, negating his presence, denying past connections and trying desperately to erase himself from memories that didn’t belong to him alone.
Sean swallowed hard at the bitter knowledge that he had somehow so misread Viggo and whatever had transpired between them. Something was going on that he’d never discerned before… and he silently, vehemently vowed to continue until he knew what it was. And how to help.
When he spoke, it was very softly and with words not intentionally directed at Viggo. He just offered his words out to the air, knowing he would have said them even if the other man had not been there with him. There was sadness and melancholy in them, yet they also recalled for him the most pure, simple joy as well.
“This book, Viggo… did I ever tell you how I found it? I told you it was for your birthday that year but I didn’t even know when your birthday was then. We’d only just met really! But it was something I brought back specifically for you. And your birthday was a perfect time to give it to you. Drove Orlando mad, it did. When I flew home to deal with me divorce, I’d gone on a walk about town. All over the place… into parts I didn’t know all that well. I was just seeking a bit of time alone – somewhere, anywhere to have a quiet pint and figure out how I’d fucked it all up again so badly. And instead of a pub, I found a book shop – seemed like just your run of the mill place but with a tucked away section for rarities and antiques in the back. I went in to get a paper and have a quick look about and I ended up roaming the aisles thinking of you and what you’d come to mean to me. I wanted nothing more than to be back in New Zealand and I finally understood that I felt that way because of you. Because that’s where you were.”
Viggo had turned and was picking at items on a shelf behind them, but he’d moved no further away and appeared to be listening. He kept his gaze focused elsewhere though and did not display any discernible reaction as Sean continued.
"And then I saw this notebook – Spanish and English poetry and art by someone I’d never heard of. I don’t know – were you ever able to find out if he’d been published or known at all?”
Sean’s heart surged with hope and concern as Viggo responded directly to him. He carefully shook his head side to side, offering the very briefest of blue glances to scrape across the Englishman’s eager face.
“It didn’t matter though did it, Viggo? It was as though you’d lived before and I’d found this proof in the form of notes and scribbles and watercolors. I knew you’d understand why. Knew you’d know why I couldn’t leave it there and why I needed you to read it and share it with me.”
A faint frown was on Viggo’s face now, his forehead dimpled with anxiety. Sean moved closer again and this time Viggo did not step away to avoid the touch of a hand to his shoulder.
“And those times we spent talking about the things in this book, Viggo, those were the very beginning. Our beginning. I won’t take this back. Not if you mean for it now to be our end.”
Viggo looked up at him then, the stark openness of his blue eyes somehow startling to Sean. He could see the man he'd known in them for the first time in a long time. With a gaze that was almost frantic, his eyelids fluttering, Viggo scanned and searched Sean’s face – his eyes – for something. He acted as though he expected that whatever he sought was about to be snatched away from him no matter how great his desire or need. Sean tried so hard to hold his gaze for longer than an instant, to connect with him, needing so badly to understand.
But Viggo blinked slowly, then keeping his eyes closed for a long moment, and when he opened them again he’d pulled back. He straightened his spine and stood up taller, swiveling his head slowly as though to ease tension in his neck.
And that was it.
When he looked directly at Sean again, he was more composed and the Englishman was swept with fear and frustration. He turned abruptly, stepping away from Viggo and going back to the canvas on the work table. The rusty red marks and the sporadically stained burlap caught his eye again and he stared at it all as he considered what to do next. The edges of the unframed canvas were marked with red, too, he noticed – fingerprints and smudges all along the sides where no one would ever see them. That was odd. Blood red. Oh, gods. Bloody. Fucking. Red. Like the rusty edge of the utility knife that he could now see was clotted with dried red matter, but not rust. And the ‘paint’ sunk into the many pieces of burlap. The splashes on the photos. All of it a dark, somber red.
He spun around, shock and sorrow etched on his face as fragments of ideas and emotions fought for space in his brain. Only the single most important one spilled forth from his mouth, a soft and worried whisper laced with such fear.
“Are you all right, Viggo?”
no subject
Date: 2005-10-23 05:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-23 01:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-23 02:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-23 02:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-23 08:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-23 01:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-23 08:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-23 01:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-24 05:58 pm (UTC)I think it´s right that you showed Orlando can help them only so far - there is a part of the way they have to do on their own.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-28 12:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-24 07:22 pm (UTC)Bravo, Shegollum! You've found a perfect way to (hopefully) begin their reconcilliation.
*appluads*
no subject
Date: 2005-10-28 01:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-25 07:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-28 01:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-27 10:13 am (UTC)Shegollum, you could be writing about me, spot on! I have just started reading it, like this very much despite the angst (which I usually don't read).
no subject
Date: 2005-10-28 01:04 am (UTC)i am glad you like it. i've written other far less angsty vigbean and viggorli if you'd rather read those. this is my darkest one! perhaps not the best intro!!! *frets*
lol!
no subject
Date: 2005-10-28 05:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-28 05:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-29 02:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-29 10:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-29 12:39 pm (UTC)and yes, please do friend me back. :D
no subject
Date: 2005-10-29 02:32 am (UTC)