vigorli

Title: Breathing Room (1/?)
Author: Rainweaver13
Pairing: Viggo/Orlando
Summary: Viggo needs some time alone.

Rating/Warnings: G for now/none yet. Somewhat AU in that I'll be running roughshod over established timelines, but since I'm making it all up anyway it shouldn't matter.
Disclaimer: Don't own them; wouldn't want to - they are their own. Wouldn't mind talking with Viggo, though. If I made any money from this, I could buy bigger canvases.
A/N: This is my first stab at an RP fanfic, so criticisms/suggestions will be welcomed.

"What was that again?" Henry asked, leaving his spoon in the empty blue-brown bowl he'd just cleaned out.

"Tom Kha Gai," Viggo said, spooning up the last of his. "It's Thai."

"Pretty good." High praise from the teen-ager. "I'll be upstairs, then."

"Dishes."

Grumble.

"How many years has this been the deal?" Viggo smiled slightly.

"Whatever." But there was no heat in it. Henry gathered the now-empty bowls and vanished into the kitchen. Viggo gave him a few minutes to get a good start, then shoved back his chair and ambled over to lean in the doorway, watching.

"I'm going out of the country for a few weeks after the first of the year," he said to his son's broad back. God. When did he get so tall?

"Back to Spain?"

"No, I don't go back there til mid-February. I just need ..." Faced with it, what did he need, exactly? "... some time to myself."

Henry snorted, glancing back over one shoulder. "Dad," and his voice said Get. Real. "You spend more time alone than any human alive."

"Maybe so," Viggo murmured, scratching his head absently. But this was different. The last few years, since the Rings movies, had been increasingly suffocating. He'd done three movies, not so many by some standards but a shitload by his, wrapping them around an endless stream of promo tours, poetry readings, gallery openings, work with Perceval, recordings, premieres, interviews, even political meetings with the '04 elections... Even with his turning down far more than half of the invitations he got, he still felt as if he'd lost himself somewhere.

No wonder Henry was suddenly this tall, broad-shouldered young man and Viggo couldn't remember that happening.

No wonder exhaustion was his preferred sleeping pill these days.

"Hello.... Dad?" Henry waved a hand in front of his face.

"Hmmm?"

"Where you going?"

"Oh, I - um - was thinking maybe Costa Rica."

Henry gave him the lifted eyebrow. "Any particular reason? Or did you just throw a dart at a map?"

Viggo shrugged and stood away from the doorframe. "I've never been there."

Henry considered his father for a long, thoughtful moment. In years past, Viggo would have been able to tell what his son was thinking just by watching his face, but that was going now, too. Henry was learning to school his face, to put up the barriers that would let him become his own man in far too short a time. Henry laid a hand on his father's shoulder and slid past him in the doorway, murmuring, "You know I love you, Dad."

For the space of a breath, Viggo was sure he was having a heart attack, the stab of unexpected emotion was so strong. But he was the father of a teenage son and knew better than to let that kind of thing show. "Love you, too, kid," he managed only slightly thickly, then nodded over his shoulder toward the upstairs. "Homework."

"Yeah, yeah," Henry grumbled and slouched off, but Viggo could hear the smile in his voice.

---
Viggo Mortensen is a solitary man. That is the basic formative truth about him, the simplest and most complex of his secrets.

He is not antisocial, particularly. He enjoys being with friends, even parties on occasion. He can maneuver his way through required social events - premieres, interviews, openings, readings, various and sundry appearances - with reasonable aplomb, although he rarely truly enjoys them. With small groups he trusts, he can even let down and be something close to himself.

But he is just as happy being alone. Truth is, in most cases he is happier being alone with his thoughts, or a good book. That's why Henry has the only TV in the house, and why he still, after all these years, regards the telephone as something of a subtle torture. Sometimes that's a hard thing to communicate in a culture that seems hell-bent on entertaining people to within an inch of their lives all the damned time. The hard-won distance, and the ability to observe, help his art. All of his art - the words, the images, even the acting. It's all enriched by that precious distance, that solitude as necessary as breathing.

He needs it now.