FIC: Average 5/6

[lobelia321]

TITLE: Average
PART: 5/6
AUTHOR: Lobelia <lobelia321@aol.com>
WEBSITE: http://www.geocities.com/lobelia321/
PAIRING: Viggo Mortensen / Kiran Shah
RATING: R
SUMMARY: Viggo is adrift. Kiran is in love.
FEEDBACK: Yes, please, I would love feedback! Anything, even if it's only one line, one word!
CONTENT/WARNINGS: RPS. Middle-aged dwarf.
CATEGORY: Weird pairings. Hobbit stand-in.
SPOILERS: *The Two Towers*, *The Return of the King*
ARCHIVE RIGHTS: Beyond the Fellowship. My niche. Anyone else, please just ask.
DISCLAIMERS: This is a work of amateur fiction and poetry pastiche. I do not know these people. I am not making money. The events described in this story did not happen.
AUTHOR'S NOTES, THANK YOUs and DEDICATION: See Part 0/6.

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9 *Viggo*

I went out for drinks with Kiran; he asked me, actually. It's no the first time he's asked me, either. He knows to say just the right things. We didn't talk all that much in the pub; we didn't need to. Maybe it is an Asian thing. Maybe it is part of that Asian folkloric wisdom, about knowing when to speak and knowing when to be silent. About knowing when to centre yourself in that quiet place within your heart. Kiran knows how to do that, and I am learning from him.

I didn't have the nightmare last night. Instead, I had another sort of dream. I'm not sure I can write it down, even in the privacy of this notebook. But I am thinking of it, and I go hot and cold all over with the memory. The dream had Kiran in it, and me, and we weren't wearing clothes.

I keep thinking about him.

I can't help myself. He moves through my brain. Through my waking thoughts. Through my sleeping thoughts as well. I can't help writing about him, writing words and reams in this notebook. Writing his name:

Kiran.

And the way he pronounces it. We had a conversation about pronunciation yesterday. He was very patient with me and said I had got his name almost right. And then he tried saying Viggo the Danish way, didn't get it, of course, noone ever does, but the way he ended up pronouncing it... it just made my insides shake. Vee-yo. He has the loveliest voice.

I ran into him the other day, not on set, but out in the hills. I was there again, walking, without my costume that time, and who should come rounding the corner of the path but Kiran? He was in his tracksuit and sneakers, out jogging. So we walked along together for a bit, very companionably, being silent but also talking about this and that. New Zealand, the world, India. He has never really lived there, only for a brief period when he was very young. He grew up in Africa. But his mother tongue is Gujarati -- I'm not even sure how to spell that or what exactly it is. I know so little about India! I must buy a book or something. I must learn to meditate.

I'm just so fascinated by everything about him. I told him so, too. I finally took heart and a deep breath and told him so. And what he replied, just blew me away. He just laughed, in that low mellow laugh of his, and waved his hand, and said, "I'm nothing special, you know. I'm just an average guy."

An average guy!

But you're not, Kiran. You're not. The very fact that you embrace averageness shows that you're not. You are extraordinary.

Not much surprises me. Sometimes, in these past weeks, I have thought that I could never be surprised again, that the time for surprise and wonder has passed. But he surprises me.

I have written a poem about him. It is the first thing I have written in a long, long time. It feels wonderful to be able to write again.

When you pass, I feel the heat of you
Like a wind from the East
Bringing spices and whispered myths:
A call to prayer, to bend in praise.
Mystical magic; the man from afar
Who rustles like dyed silk in the breeze
And disappears like a song into the air.
Such mystery cannot last.
I think of it still.

I am getting so excited by all of this. Strangely excited. By him, and by what he makes me feel. The tiny flicker of reaching out, the flicker of the world in my heart. And in a strange, in a really strange, unaccountably strange way, I feel also... well, sexually excited. As if getting reconnected to the world has also made me connect in a new way to myself. As if something was being awoken. And he woke it up. And that is not so strange, is it? It is not so strange that our hearts and our minds and our bodies should all be joined up, and that what happens to the one, happens to the others as well.

It is my body that is of this world most. And it is through my body that I will find back to the world.

He is re-connecting me to the world, and what is wrong with my body going along with it? Nothing. How can the soul and the heart and the body be separated? It is all one, and as soon as my heart and my soul started to wake up to the world again, so did my body. It craves contact, it desires communion.

Yet it continues to be a daily surprise to me. Every morning, every evening, I marvel at it and look at Kiran on set, marvelling. I cannot believe the perfection of him, the unusual perfection. Four foot one -- that is his height; he's rather proud of it, it's a kind of professional qualification or job certificate for a stunt double, it seems. To me, it is simply... a magic number. I think about it and about all it implies. I think about how our bodies would fit together, all the permutations, all the possibilities. I remember the feel of him in my arms and then I imagine what it would be like really to hug him. To embrace him. The height of a child but the body of a man. The breath of a man, the hair of a man. The... well, I hardly dare to imagine it but I do, anyway, and it sends shivers through me: the cock of a man. I am shivering right now, just writing it down. Just thinking these thoughts takes my breath away, it gives me a constricted feeling in my chest, and it gives me a hard-on like I haven't had in months. It seems impossibly daring. Yet why not? Why not him? And why not me? And why shouldn't I be able to... touch him? And what would that be like, not like a child, surely? I can't imagine. I simply don't know.

So many things I don't know. So many things I don't know about him.

So many things to discover.

I have to stop writing for now. I need both hands for this.

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10 *Kiran*

Brother-dear

You will be pleased to hear that my car has finally arrived! All the modifications have been made, everything works beautifully. The first thing I did was to go for a little spin just outside of Wellington, up the coast to a place called Otaki Beach. John came along; I wanted to pay him back for all his kind chauffeuring favours. He was very impressed with the way they rigged up the car. It's a good little car, too; it's great on hills, which is important in Wellington.

Soon we are due to leave Wellington and shoot on location in various places. I am looking forward to getting to know other parts of this beautiful country. At some point we will be shooting down in the South Island and maybe there will finally be an opportunity to hook up with the Dunedin people. Really, dada, they are actually starting to be a bit of a bloody nuisance the way they think they own me and ring up all the time, pestering me for this and that. I think they quite like the idea of being connected to someone on the famous movie set but it is really a bit too tedious. Well, you've heard me on the subject before.

Dom continues to be a pleasure to work with. He is fairly easy-going, and it helps, too, that Peter (you know, our wonderful director) likes to shoot scenes in sequence. So, even if it means switching back and forth between Dom and me in a scene, he will film it that way. This means, for example, that if there is a scene where Dom talks to Viggo, Peter will not film all the Dom scenes first and then all the Viggo-and-me scenes. Instead, Dom gets to speak directly to Viggo (while the camera is on him), then Viggo gets to speak to me, and I will be standing in front, with my back facing the camera. It is a good system because it preserves the continuity. The actors all like it, they say it helps them to get into the scene and into the characters. I like it, too, because it really involves us doubles in the action and in the emotion. It is also easier to duplicate body movements or to film retakes, if it is all done in sequence. Remember what a mess *Titanic* was in this respect? That movie was such a stunt nightmare! The organisation here is much, much better.

Something funny happened a few days ago: I was coming out of make-up, just walking along, doing the Merry-walk actually, when I heard a loud yelp. It was Dom! He'd been sitting around, thinking about something else, and when he looked up he got a shock because he was looking into his own face! Not really, of course, because it was only my mask. "Oh, my god," he said, "you really gave me a fright there."

Today, there was quite a bit of horse commotion. We were doing a number of riding scenes, including a few with me and Viggo. I couldn't help but show off a little, it was really for the benefit of Brett and John as much as anything else. They were over to one side, laughing and making remarks, so, with Viggo behind me, I did my Rudolph-Valentino number. I can tell you, that caused quite a stir! But it was assuredly worth it. The wranglers got in a tizz, of course -- they always do.

Anyway, this led to a lot of discussion among the stunts. It was the usual debate about actors doing their own stunts. We scale-stunts don't really have that problem; after all, how are the actors going to do their own stunts if they're about twice as tall as they should be? They couldn't do their own stunts if they wanted to. They're just too big, haha! But there are actors who are not playing hobbits or dwarfs and so do not need scale-doubles, and some of them are very keen to do their own stunts. It is the old problem, and just as controversial as usual. You know my position on this, dada, I don't really care, but then I am not an average-sized stuntman, and they get in a complete lather about it. I think in the really difficult bits, the producers will never allow it but there was a lot of muttering among the stunts today, anyway, about actors getting above themselves and being unprofessional and getting the unions in on this, and so on.

In the end, it looks as if their grumbling was not entirely misplaced because the day ended in an accident. The actor who plays the elf Legolas (I think I mentioned him on the phone, he is another English guy, very young and thinks he knows all about riding) -- anyway, he was having to ride down this gully with Brett behind him. Brett does Gimli, if you remember. And I don't know what happened, we were all there watching but either the horse got over-excited or the guy didn't know how to manage the horse properly or who knows what. In any event, we heard him shouting, "Lean back! Lean back!", and the next thing, the horse was stumbling, and both of the guys just flew off her back and landed on a rock to the side.

There was a fair bit of shouting, and wranglers and people running everywhere. Nothing happened to Brett, luckily, but the other actor broke a rib and had to be taken off to hospital. You can imagine how that accident inflamed the stunts all over again! Now they're all clamouring for tighter regulations and whatnot. Well, it's not as if stuntmen never make mistakes, either! This has also messed up the shooting schedule quite a bit because we are now minus one major actor.

It made me feel a bit bad about doing those horse shenanigans earlier. But Brett said that wouldn't have made a difference -- the horse got out of control.

Thank you very much, also, for the replenished tincture. It has really helped John no end with his allergy problem.

I have written to Chaitan separately but tell him that I would be delighted if you could both come out for a visit around Easter. I will phone about the dates. John will not be here, he is going home to Wales for the break, so you will not be able to meet him.

Finally, I know you think I am skirting around this issue but I really do not wish to talk about my personal affairs any more than I already have. Let me just assure you again that I am perfectly happy with the state of things as they are, and that no, I am not about to pursue any kind of love match and get married, haha. But seriously, I do appreciate that you have been tactful about this; there is no need for the whole family to know, after all. Sometimes I think we make a bit too much of these things in our family. Not every detail of everyone's life needs to be aired and discussed. This particular detail is just about me and the other person involved, and that's it, and that's the way I would like it to stay.

I know that you understand, dada, really, despite all your blustering.

As ever, yours affectionately,

K.

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TBC