Everything You Were Looking For
by Trianne
Pairing: Elijah Wood/Sean Bean; Sean Bean/Viggo Mortensen
Rating: PG15
Summary: Sean Bean has a touch choice to make. Setting: New Zealand, principal filming
Warnings: Bad language, allusions to sex
Disclaimer: No, I just checked my address book and guess what? No listing for Elijah Wood or Sean Bean or Viggo Mortensen. Guess that means I don't know them. Damn! Therefore, I cannot possibly know what they do, what their domestic arrangements are or anything else other than that they are all beautiful and talented.
Sean Bean is in a bad mood. His eyes, normally warm and bright, are just plain dark, and his face is flushed. Uh oh.
For the last hour he has stomped around Elijah's trailer, looking for things that are quite maliciously hiding from him; his pen, his diary, his cell phone, his book….
Elijah tries to keep out of the way but it's difficult; the trailers are large but not that large. Each time he has to get by Sean to do something, to make a drink or use the bathroom, he feels he must make himself as small as possible, take up as little physical space as he can.
If he smiles, Sean thinks he is laughing at him. If he talks, he gets barked at. If he is quiet, he is sulking. If he picks up his game he is childish. If he reads his book he is ignoring Sean.
Finally, after one hour and sixteen minutes of this, he has had enough.
"What is wrong, for God's sake? Sean? Tell me."
Sean just glares. This is not good. Finally, he speaks.
"I am fed up of, of toys and games and, and toys!" he yells, throwing a box of trading cards across the trailer. Elijah sees that Sean's hands are now clenched into fists; involuntarily he takes a step backwards, nearer the door and reaches behind him to turn the handle.
"What are you doing?" Sean asks, exasperated and bewildered. Then he follows Elijah's eyes down to his own hands and when he looks back up there is such sorrow there that Elijah has to walk on over and hold him.
"I would never, ever hurt you. I could no more lay a finger on you in anger than I could a child of mine." Sean is crying softly now and he has never cried before in front of Elijah. Elijah feels he is a little out of his depth. None of his other relationships, albeit few in number, have ever been so intense as this.
"Its alright, its okay." He wipes Sean's face and holds him. They stand for a while, Elijah soothing and Sean rocking.
"Tell me, just tell me. I can guess anyway, you might as well just tell me." Elijah pulls the older man down onto the couch and waits.
But he knows what's coming. It's a discussion they have had before.
Sean takes a deep breath and begins.
"I have this whole other life and I thought I could run it in parallel and I can't Elijah, I can't. I don't want to slink around, lying to the people I love." People. As in plural of person. As in Elijah. And Viggo.
Sean has very lovely eyes, Elijah notes, even when they are teary and sad. And lips that need to be pressed and breathed on. Why can't they just do the good stuff? Why does this bad side have to surface again?
"I just sometimes wonder if I'm not being selfish, taking you along on this ride, Elijah," Sean is saying. He looks so sad and tired. He has stopped crying and looks so lost that, almost, Elijah pleads. Almost but not quite.
"So you're ending it? You've chosen Viggo? That's it?" he asks, trying to keep the panic out of his voice.
"I honestly don't know. I think I should: I owe him and I do love him, but I don't want to give you up. My head says, "go" but my heart says "don't you move a fucking inch". What do I do, Elijah?"
Elijah stands and stares out of the trailer window. He wants to tell Sean to stay but he knows he cannot. If he has to tell him, then what's the point? And therein lies the irony; if Sean didn't agonise about all this, didn't crucify himself over the betrayal, then would Elijah love him? Probably not. Elijah is, if nothing else, impressed by commitment, he just wishes the commitment could be with him.
"Elijah? Oh, man! This is just not fair." From Sean's response, Elijah knows the outcome. From his lookout position, he giggles, nervously. "Hey, Sean. I know the perfect solution – have yourself cloned. Would that work?"
The big man smiles sadly.
Looking about him, Sean finds his pen from under the coffee table, his diary from down the side of the couch, his cell phone from the fruit bowl and his book from the bedside cabinet..
He looks at the bed.
They last made love in that bed three days ago. Three days? Hell, in the beginning they couldn't have gone three hours. Images of Elijah, in that bed, waking up with tousled hair and sleep in his eyes spring readily to Sean's mind. He vividly remembers impaling his young lover in that bed, over and over again. Judging by the stiffening of his cock and the softening of his resolve, his body would obviously like to repeat the experience.
Without warning, however, his imagination betrays him and now he sees Elijah waking up in that same bed with some whole other person; some nameless, faceless young guy with bed head, and lean limbs wrapped in the white sheets. He has to press down the hot bile that is rising at that image or he knows he will never leave.
With an effort, he tears his eyes away from the bed and back to Elijah, the Elijah here and now. His Elijah. For now. For just a few minutes more.
Elijah turns from the window and smiles with his mobile mouth but his eyes give him away. He gestures sadly at the items Sean is holding.
"So, you found your stuff. See, it was here all the time, Sean. Everything you were looking for was here, all the time."
The books and other items are stowed in a cardboard carton and then it's time to go. Sean tries to plant a kiss on Elijah's forehead on the way out of the door but is deflected and his mouth finds nothing but fresh air. He does, however, feel Elijah's hand briefly in his, squeezing gently and then he is being manoeuvred out. Out of the door, out of the trailer, out of life. The door is closed behind him.
In the cool air, Sean considers turning right round and walking back to the blazing lights of Elijah's trailer. But he does not; he just stands there with his carton of possessions - when the only possession he really gives a fuck about is now on the other side of that door, on the other side of the known universe.
Sean can feel Elijah's eyes on his back as he walks to the car. God! Please let this turn out to be the right choice.
Resting the carton precariously on the roof of the car, Sean fumbles for his keys and that's when he sees him. Still and quiet; just standing, watching him.
Viggo.
Sean, flustered, loses his grip on the carton and it falls heavily to the ground, spewing its contents far and wide.
"What are you doing here?" Sean asks, bending to retrieve his things. When he looks up again, Viggo is walking away.
"Wait!" he calls out but it's too late; Viggo has a long and purposeful stride and soon disappears entirely from view, out of the compound. Out of Sean's world.
"Viggo.." Sean says the name aloud and softly as if it is the last time the word will pass his lips.
When Sean turns, as turn he must, all the lights have gone out in Elijah's trailer. Every single one.
The End