FIC: Average 6/6

[lobelia321]

TITLE: Average
PART: 6/6
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.

Forgotten what they look like? Look here.

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11 *Viggo*

I can barely breathe. I am to go over to Kiran's place tonight. I don't know why but it makes me feel breathless and weightless. I feel flustered, full of inner bubbles, like champagne. This is like a roller coaster of emotions. Not the breathless terror of the roller coaster of my nightmare. This is a different kind of wild ride, a ride of joy and anticipation.

I leave the house in half an hour. I dare not... I dare not think of what might be but only of what will be. And what will be is that I will see the door open on his impish smile and that I will see his pensive face as he looks down and concentrates... on what? I cannot imagine.

There are many things I cannot imagine. Dare not imagine. Yet why not? Why shouldn't they be imaginable? The strangest things happen, and are allowed to exist. The other day I saw a woman in a wheelchair kiss a black man, a passionate kiss. Not that it is the same at all, not that it is even comparable, no. I must not entertain such mad analogies. Kiran is... after all, he is just a man. Like we all are.

Just a man.

And then I think of the way he controlled that horse. One minute he was leaning back against me, limber and relaxed, a small bundle of hobbit huddling against my chest. The next moment, he was taut as a bow, every muscle straining, his back rippling against me and his legs flexing against my thighs; he lifted off the saddle, he flicked those reins, and that horse reared up as if commanded by the king himself.

I felt a rush of... of something. I wanted to hold on but I also wanted to let go and fly or fall. I wanted to laugh. I thought that horse might jump straight to the moon. But instead it just came down again, and I was breathless, as I am now. Breathlessly clutching onto Kiran's hips, clutching onto my sense of self but it was all over the place. I had given myself up to the moment and to the horse and to my little Merry.

I am not Aragorn now. I have put on my chequered flannel shirt. It hugs me softly; it will do. It makes me look slim but not too tall. I don't want to look too tall. I don't want to feel tall. I want to feel small, small and humble.

I will leave now, I don't want to be late.

***

I've just come back from Kiran's place.

I am not myself.

No, that is wrong. I have never been more myself. But it is a self I don't yet know. It's a self that I'm only just discovering and that's why it feels as if it weren't my self. My own self. But it is.

Things happened.

Not the ones I wanted to happen but others.

I'll try to collect my scattered wits.

I arrived. Everything was just as I'd wished and hoped. Kiran's smiling face at the door: exactly as I'd anticipated. Kiran's pensive face as he gazed at his map, the topsy-turvy map, as topsy-turvy as my stomach felt as I stood near him. As topsy-turvy as my thoughts and my heart. Kiran's finger on the paper as he traced his life for me, his life on this small earth of ours.

Then he offered me tea, and I said yes. Of course, tea, Indian tea, the leaves of Darjeeling and the slopes of rainforest mountains. But it turned out to be just Lipton's, after all.

"So, you're an expatriate," I said, "just like me."

Just like me. God, how it thrilled me to say those words. And it wasn't only our shared expatriate existence I meant. I must've looked at him with hunger in my eyes and more meaning than even I cared to explain, because he shifted strangely, and then he sat down, sat right next to me on the couch, God, knees touching, and looked up at me, with that tilt of his chin, and said,

"Yes, I'm an ABCD."

"What?" I said. I asked what that meant, ABCD, and he said it means 'African-born confused desi', and that a desi is a native of India but that he, Kiran, sees himself more of a citizen of the whole world, really. Yes, I wanted to cry out, yes, me too, but I found I couldn't speak, and my tea cup shook in my hand, my cup on its saucer.

"Sugar?" he asked. And I thought, yes, sugar, I want to taste the sugar of your lips. But I didn't speak, I only thought it and thought about how I might use those lines in a poem. Sugar of your lips, sweetness of your mouth. Or how I might use sugar in a painting, mix it up with the pigment, make the paint gritty and sticky and sweet, crunch it onto the canvas, smear it around the sides of the stretcher. Sugarsweet.

I asked him something else, I can't even recall what, I just wanted to watch him for signs, signs of reciprocation. And it did seem to me, yes, that he was somewhat breathless, that he was flushed, that he was a shade darker under that wondrous wheaten complexion of his, and a smell of aftershave came off him, like the aroma off a tropical tree, and I drowned in the sensations.

It was then that I spilled some of my tea. It must've been my hand, shaking with emotion. I felt... I wasn't curled up any more. I felt connected on all levels. I felt immersed, submerged, at one with the world, as if the world was throbbing through me. The churning of my stomach was mimicking the revolution of the earth as it turned upon its axis, gravity was making my heart heavy, the pull of the moon was swelling the tides of my blood.

Tea, tea everywhere. A big hot stain on my thigh. Soaking in, spreading through the cotton fibres. And Kiran... Kiran who fetched a cloth from somewhere and who started wiping my thigh, with his cloth. With his hand. Saying something but all I could take in was the feel and sight of his hand, a strong capable hand; small yes, but the hand of a man, with creases on the knuckles and a vein snaking its delta-way across the back and a network of tiny lines knitting the skin together. A mature hand. A hand my age. A hand that's touched things.

"Kiran," I said.

He stopped wiping and looked up but he didn't take away his hand. Oh no, he left his hand on my thigh, just left it resting there, his fingers digging into my flesh just ever so slightly. He looked at me and lifted his eyebrows, wrinkling his forehead in the process. I looked at his eyebrows, at their curves echoing the smooth curve of his upper lip, the lines at the sides of his nose like an invitation.

I don't know who initiated it but our lips touched, and then I was kissing Kiran.

His lips were on mine, and my lips were on his. Sugarsweet. His hand continued on my thigh, and I had to bend down to get at him properly, but then I wrapped my arm around his waist and sighed, and he kept one hand on the side of my neck, and that's how we stayed for I don't know how long. Forever, I could have stayed like that forever, kissing and kissing, and then kissing some more.

And what a sweet thing is a kiss. What a beautiful, pure moment of joy it can be. What a multitude of tastes and flavours and emotions it may release. It may release the entire world. The whole world was contained in our kiss. I stopped feeling isolated. Kiran's kiss ripped me open. The carapace tore asunder, everything came spilling out, everything I'd been curling up within myself. I could feel it spilling into Kiran and into the world, and the world came spilling into me. I wanted to laugh, but I didn't want to give up the kiss. Instead, I just opened my mouth and swallowed his tongue. Our tongues played with each other. Oh it is indescribable what we did.

Kiran moved, at one point; he climbed into my lap, he knelt over me, with his legs on either side of my waist, and I leaned back against the couch, and that way we fitted together perfectly. Perfect bodies. Different yet the same, exactly the same, as I drank in the spices of his mouth. Exactly the same urges. Two men pressing against each other, pressing their hot, hard selves into each other's bodies.

Kiran kisses beautifully, both tentatively and adventurously, all rolled into one. And I, I barely knew or remembered how to kiss, my body was doing it all for me. He had his arms around my shoulders, his palms on my neck, and I spread my fingers, feeling how much of his torso I could span with my hands.

How long it went on, I don't know. A second. An eternity. Until we broke apart, breathlessly.

And until Kiran said, "You'd better go."

"What?" I cried. "Why?" I was filled with anguish. What had I done wrong? Or am I simply wrong? The wrong sex? The wrong race? The wrong religion? The wrong, oh God, the wrong height?

"Kiran," I said. "Can't I stay? Just a little bit?"

"No," he said, and he seemed agitated, so agitated that hope resurged in my heart.

"Please," I begged, "please don't throw me out." And I asked him what it was, was it because of my sex? My race? My height? In what ways was my body wrong?

But no, he said, no, no. "I have been with men before," he said. And, "I have been with white people before." And, "I have been with average-sized people before."

Average-sized! Average!

Average but not enough. Too average. *Almindelig.*

"What then?" I pleaded and clutched at his hand. But he was already sliding off me and clinking the tea things together and moving his hand through his hair in that way he has.

"It's nothing to do with you personally," he said.

Nothing to do with me, nothing to do with my person. While I wanted it to have everything to do with me.

"You mustn't think that anything's wrong with you," he said. "Really. Otherwise, well, otherwise I wouldn't have given in to you like I did just now."

Given in! I loved the way he said that. And he said more. He said, "I found it very hard to resist you just now. Impossible, in fact. So I didn't." He grinned sheepishly, and hope surged again. "But really, now you've got to go."

"Why?" I cried again.

"We'll see each other tomorrow," he said. "Not long."

"I don't want to go," I said.

"But you have got to," he said. "You see, I am expecting somebody else."

Somebody else! I wanted to look at the time but I don't wear a watch and there was no clock but I'm sure it was late, it was way past dinner time. "This late?" I asked. I still didn't understand. I thought he was inventing an excuse.

"Yes," he said and gave me a meaningful look. "This late."

Oh. Suddenly I understood. Yes. He is expecting somebody else. God, of course. Not everything revolves around me. I can see that now. He has a life. He *has* a life. And a love life, too. How did I not notice? Where have my thoughts been?

Well, I know where they've been. Locked up inside my brain. But no longer. They were fluttering all over the room, erratically, desperately. I saw the flush on Kiran's face and the agitation in his heart, and I knew these were not for me.

"Oh," I said, "I'm gone already." And I leaped up.

But at the door, as he was letting me out, I couldn't withstand him. I bent down, I knelt, I knelt before him, and I kissed him again. One last time. One more time. One time. And again, he kissed me back. So he's not completely resistant. Not completely. He is awaiting somebody else, in his bed no doubt, where else, but even as he awaits this other person with a flushed face, he has space in his heart to kiss me.

To kiss.

So I went home and wrote this:

Sadness; I can feel it
Like dried salt on my skin
Like departed sunshine.
You made it leave me
With your lips and moving hands,
But now I sit alone
The cold room unblinkingly empty
And it tastes like darkness.
I kneel and offer you my words:
My power gone, this is all I have.

Now I cannot sleep. But it doesn't matter. It's good. It's not a restless sleeplessness. It's open, it's full of life. I sit at the window, I gaze at the clouds and the few stars that are visible, I feel the earth turning and the moon pulling and the lava deep below churning, all transporting me, transporting me safely through the vast emptiness on my shifting round home.

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12 *Kiran*

Dearest John

I had a wonderful, lovely time last Tuesday. I cannot say how lovely but you know it. I count the days to your return. Filming continues but it is not the same without you, although I am seeing quite a bit of Viggo these days.

I hope your skin is not paining you too much. I enclose a little gift, just some more of that tincture, although you will have to apply it yourself now. I think of you all the time, and about how I will rub your face for you when you come back, and other things, too.

I have never known anyone like you, and that is the truth.

Take care, sweet John, mera dil, don't get up to too much mischief! Let me kiss you, in spirit, on your poor old eyes and on... well, you can guess where.

Much love,

Kiran

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The End.

If you enjoyed this story, please send feedback to lobelia321@aol.com

Comments

[enchanteresse.livejournal.com]

*jaw dropping*

You... *sputtering*

I never, never saw it coming. *speechless*

jaw dropped

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that comment, *g*!!! I sort of suspected that people would be surprised but perhaps not quite *that* surprised, heh!

I hope it still made sense, though... I tried to strew clues! Maybe only visible in hindsight. :-)

Thanks again for reading and commenting!

Re: jaw dropped

[enchanteresse.livejournal.com]

It made perfect sense after the fact, when I mentally backtracked.

Still it was evil. I am quite in awe. *g*

You are going to write more body double slash? *hopeful look* I can't believe I am saying that, but you made me fall in love with that character.

Re: jaw dropped

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Oh happy, happy day: you want *more*! :-) Maybe you can write some, too? Spread the goodness??

Maybe, maybe! Although this fic really took it out of me and one should stop when the going's good. Also, I've so many others on the backburner...

Re: jaw dropped

[enchanteresse.livejournal.com]

There is nothing I like more than stumbling over a wacky pairing, then at the end of the story being a strong believer in it. Why, yes, it always made perfect sense.

But I don't think I would be good at writing it myself. *g*

[gloriamundi.livejournal.com]

I had a suspicion that things wasn't going to go Viggo's way ... but you wrote it so splendidly! I am honoured to have this dedicated to me. And now I am going to lie on the sofa and read the whole thing start to finish so I can do proper feedback. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. And write them down as I go.

and after that I'm going to write a nice happy-Viggo fic. Though really your version is so very credible and beguiling that it seems rather heretical.

marquee

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Oooh, a 'marquee' html! But I *still* haven't worked out how you get it to go pink!

Oooh, hang on, maybe I have!

Anyway, see you tomorrow anyway, but thank you for comment! You don't *have* to love it, you know, just because it's dedicated to you. It's just dedicated to you because it wouldn't have been written without you not because I wrote it specially for you to like. But I trust I haven't been *quite* as mean to him as you'd feared, *g*.

And things can't really go Viggo's way because he himself doesn't really quite know what his own way is for the longest time.

[giglet.livejournal.com]

*Whimper*
The bait and switch worked on me. Argh.

Still... I like it. I like Viggo at the end a whole lot better than Viggo at the beginning. And I continue to adore Kiran!

Thank you!