Statuesque by Brigantine
Summary: Viggo finds an answer, then a question. Now he needs another answer.
Categories: RPS Characters: Sean Bean, Viggo Mortensen
Type: None
Warning: AU
Challenges: None
Series: Novice Chronicles
Chapters: 1 Completed: Yes Word count: 1573 Read: 1589 Published: April 22, 2008 Updated: April 22, 2008
Story Notes:
The Novice Chronicles series: Ian Finds a Man, The Way Dolittle Does It, Kneeling 'or Not, Beneath the Skin, Statuesque, Some Kind of Understanding, Soft boiled, From Push to Shove, Hooligan, Hardware, And the Grail as Well, Terms of Use, Rearranged, How Everything Is, The Ancient Art of Arranging Flowers.

1. Chapter 1 by Brigantine

Chapter 1 by Brigantine
<strong>Tuesday, 1:10 p.m.</strong>

<strong>The Saint Arquette Museum of Modern Art</strong>

Viggo has spent this morning happily wandering, enjoying the color and serenity of Monet one moment, the childlike freedom of Matisse the next, and most recently the unashamed sensuality of O'Keefe. Slow footsteps echo softly on the hardwood floor, couples drifting hand in hand or shoulder to shoulder. A lone teenager pauses before one of Picasso's black and white sketches, takes a step back, tilts his head sideways. Viggo stifles a sympathetic chuckle.

He eases into the next room. One of the security staff ghosts a smile at his familiar figure as he passes. His jeans are torn and paint-splotched, but the red t-shirt is clean, and he has remembered to put on his sneakers. The first time he turned up here seven years ago the museum staff followed him around at a discreet distance, wondering if he was a vagrant or a drug addict. He came here that day for a much-needed break straight from a frustrating turn in his studio, hair sticking up from running agitated fingers through it, and he was wearing battered cutoff shorts, a horrific old green tatter of a shirt, and red flip-flops. He was nearly twenty pounds lighter then as well, though even today Viggo is a lean man. The museum folk know him now, and in turn he tries a little harder to appear respectable.

He passes by a video installation featuring chickens being slaughtered and young men and women wandering through a barren, trash-strewn landscape. Graffiti. Ruined buildings. Someone dancing with an umbrella. Viggo shrugs. He supposes there's a message in there. Maybe he's too slow to catch it, or maybe he just needs to go eat lunch. He wanders into the Chihuly exhibit he visited on his way in. He likes Chihuly's glass work. The finesse required in creating the work is staggering, but when it comes right down to it the pieces themselves are bright, and shiny and don't require a lot of thought to enjoy. Sometimes that's a nice change.

A lone figure in the room brings Viggo up short. The man's back is to him, but there is a certain familiarity about him that speeds up Viggo's heart rate, and he moves nearer, planning to look casual and disinterested if the man turns around and proves a stranger.

<em>Jesus,</em> Viggo realizes. <em>It's him.</em>

Sean. Viggo never expected to see the Englishman again, but he remembers his name. And his voice, his eyes, the way he blushed just a little when he extended a warm hand to take Viggo's in greeting that night when Ian introduced them. Now here he is, blond hair brushing the collar of a crisp blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up, his hands clasped behind his back. He rests his weight on his right hip, and it torques his jeans in a certain way, tilts his body into a shape that emphasizes the narrowness of his hips and goes straight to Viggo's imagination, and the next thing Viggo knows he is standing next to him and looking up at the vast cluster of deep red, oblong glass shapes suspended from the ceiling, and searching frantically for something, anything to say besides 'Hi, I don't know if you remember me, but for the past couple of months I've been fantasizing about you in my bed at night,' and his heart is racing like a teenager's with prom night winding down, and what finally comes out of his mouth is, "Cherubs."

Sean starts and turns warily. "Wot?"

Viggo points at the little gilded glass angel peering cheekily out from amongst the red glass pieces. "Cherubs," he repeats in what he fervently hopes is a normal tone of voice. "Chihuly likes to hide them in his work. Keeps things from getting too serious."

Sean eases back and smiles. "Oh, yeah. Yeah, I like that about him."

Viggo risks gurgling incoherently for a moment. Sean's smile lights up his face, transforming the rugged handsomeness of it into something boyish and remarkably innocent. Only his observation that Sean is blushing faintly behind his outward calm gives Viggo a fighting chance, and he makes it past the danger zone before Sean seems to notice anything wrong. Viggo smiles back. "He's blind in one eye. But I suppose you know that."

Sean nods, turns back to the sculpture. "Aye. Have you seen his studio, up in Seattle?"

"No." Viggo gapes. "You know him?"

"Nah." Sean looks down modestly, one foot shuffling a bit. "One o' me mates knows him. Took me by when I were up visitin'. Apprentices running about everywhere. Fun to watch. Viggo, is it?"

"What? Oh. Me. Yeah." He might feel like a complete nincompoop just now, except that Sean's smile merely widens at his mental glitch and it seems, in this moment, that nothing might be wrong with the world that can't be fixed. Even if Viggo <em>is</em> a nincompoop, it doesn't matter.

"Danish, yeah?"

"Yes. My father's Danish. But I was born in New York. Grew up in Argentina. And New York." He stops himself before he starts to babble.

Sean's eyebrows arch a little higher. "Seen the world a bit then, eh? Looks like you've, ah, been doin' a bit of painting?"

Viggo glances down at his splattered jeans. "I teach art history out at the university. With Ian."

Sean smiles at him again, a hint of mischief in his eyes. "Aye. I remember."

Viggo is dithering between trying for a suitable reply and the distraction of <em>You remember??</em> going around and around inside his skull when Sean gives an unhappy sigh and says, "I have to go back to the museum, I'm afraid. I'm here on lunch, and I've about wandered as long as I may."

"Museum. Oh. Yes. You curate." His relief in recalling that almost makes up for the nincompoop moment. "That must be fascinating, with all that beautiful old stuff." <em>Old stuff? Jesus Vig, just wear a sign. 'Idiot for sale'.</em> "I mean, the art, and the artifacts, they have all that history behind them." Not his best, but better.

Sean has turned, and they make their way toward the first floor together, Sean not seeming to be in too great a hurry. "I enjoy it," Sean nods, as though Viggo hasn't just referred to his life's work and probably more than one master's degree as old stuff. "Always loved the ancient places and their stories, when I were a lad."

The faint scent of Sean's cologne drifts to Viggo. Something like Bay Rum, but not quite. Viggo can't place it, but finds he doesn't care about that at all when Sean adds, as they descend the stairs toward the museum entrance, "You should come by some time, check over the place. I suppose I may be a bit biased, but we have some nice things."

They stand together in the sunlight outside of the museum for a moment as Sean puts on his sunglasses, suddenly looking to Viggo like a model for adventure tours in a travel magazine. The sunlight shows up a wash of tiny, pale gold freckles across his cheeks. "I'll visit," Viggo promises. "I've been there a couple of times, but it's been a while. I didn't know you were there. When I was there, I mean." <em>Crap.</em>

Sean grins, "Now you do," and turns to saunter downtown toward the museum, leaving Viggo slightly dazed on the sidewalk, eyeing that intriguing sort of soldier's list to Sean's shoulders as he walks away, until he turns the left corner and disappears.

Viggo blinks into the noon daylight and puts on his sunglasses. <em>Yeah. Now I know.</em> Standing here with Sean out of his sight; just staring down the sidewalk as people pass by around him, he doubts his options. An imaginary lover in the small hours of the morning is all very fine, but brute reality has proven itself so far something else.

<hr>

<strong>3:17 p.m.</strong>

"Sean, are you okay?"

"Hm?" Sean turns from staring out the window of his office to find Sally watching him curiously. He gives her a distracted smile. "Oh. Aye. Don't worry, lass. Just thinking."

"Mr. Tolefson wants to talk to you about those pieces from Cyprus. He's on line three."

Sean glances at his desk, where the little green button for line three blinks on his telephone. "Thanks. I'll get it directly."

Sally disappears into her office with a last little frown of concern toward her employer, and Sean looks out the window again, watching a mild breeze pluck at the bright arch of bougainvillea gracing the frame of his window. He really does not want to talk to Mr. Tolefson. There is nothing unpleasant about Mr. Tolefson, but it's just that Sean never thought he'd hear that voice again; the one he heard in the art museum today, and he's been enjoying the remembered sound of it, rough and friendly, going round inside his head. Bright, clear grey eyes. Ridiculous smile  the sort that either frightens people off or gets right under a fellow's skin and stays there. Sean has been doing his best to ignore his brief memories of Viggo ever since Ian introduced them, but apparently the grace period is up on that. He shakes his head sharply. Mr. Tolefson is waiting.
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