The Clash
by Jim Morrison
Interlude II
Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of
"Come as you are, as you were,
As I want you to be
As a friend, as a friend, as an old enemy
Take your time, hurry up
The choice is yours, don't be late
Take a rest as a friend as an old memoria"
— Nirvana
egolas watched Boromir and Aragorn exit the room with a mixture of apprehension and despair.
On one hand he was glad that the two of them where finally going to talk to each other. After all, things had been screwed up and assumptions had arisen because of the lack of communication.
"Finally, things will get cleared up," he muttered as he scratched at the tape that held the IV in place.
He was glad, he could totally admit that. He was happy that everything was going to be sorted out and hopefully, by then, things would get back to normal within their little group.
"And if things work out, where does that leave you?" a small, nasty voice asked in his mind.
"Shut up" Legolas whispered as he laid down and stared at the ceiling of his crappy hospital room.
"Why? You know that I am right in asking that,." his mind taunted him, making him growl in frustration.
"I said shut up!" Legolas hissed back before he rolled over onto his left side, careful not to tangle himself up in the IV lines.
He knew that he should be totally honest with himself and admit that, yeah, he was worried about the outcome of the conversation. After all, if Boromir and Aragorn did work out all the snarled loops of their relationship, he would be left out in the cold.
"Just like Mir. Maybe you can try again." The thought made a growl rise in Lee's throat. His inner voice could be a fucken bastard sometimes. Christ on a fucken skateboard!
The truth was, he did miss the younger man. After all, he had truly loved him. But his reaction to being a father had really cut him deeply. And when Boromir had stepped into the breach, he had to admit that he was glad that it had happened.
Even though he may have thought that it was wrong and that they were nothing but a couple of sneaks for doing that, it just felt right. For as long as he could recall, he and Boromir had always just been that way with each other. If things went bad, they had always banded together to face all the obstacles that life had thrown in front of them.
"Admit it. He is the only one that you want and you're going to be alone if he goes back to Estel."
Legolas nearly growled again as he rolled over to his right side. He was seriously getting pissed off at the little voice in his head. Not only was it a crappy time for it to perk up and start pointing out all of his fears, it was also being obnoxiously smug about the whole thing.
"Truth hurts don't it? Especially after you have been hiding from it for five years." Lee closed his eyes and clenched his fists.
"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" he hissed as he fought to keep the tears from spilling over, pulling the blankets over his head. "Leave me alone." Even though he knew it was nothing more than a childish gesture that wouldn't solve anything, it still was comforting to do that. To grasp the small bit of a childish security he hadn't really had time to fully enjoy.
But that only lasted for a couple of minutes. Even if he was hiding from his pissy mental voice, he wasn't willing to suffocate himself with the chemical stench coming from the rough bed-clothes. Besides, there had to be better ways to die, he groused as he ran a hand through his hair and winced when his fingers met a nasty tangle.
"Fuck you." He was pissed at fate now, he decided. He really was, he decided as he glared at the ceiling above him.
"Fuck you too, Keebler elf."
Lee's eyes widened at that. No one had called him that ever since his days at St. Vic's. So that meant that.... He turned his head and made the effort to actually sit up in bed when he saw who it was standing in the doorway.
Duo, Trowa, Yohji, Ken and Thom Yorke stood in the doorway, all of them smirking as they looked at him. Between them, they held the biggest bouquet of white and yellow roses he had ever seen in his entire life, the entire thing held together by a wide yellow ribbon.
Seeing that huge bouquet and the amused looks on their faces only made him laugh softly. Only those guys would do something like that, he mused as he recalled the big red and white bouquet that they had gotten together for Boromir once he had woken up from his coma.
Flashback
"You really make a guy feel loved." Lee recalled Boromir saying, his face a deep pink after Yohji had given him a chaste kiss on the lips and had presented the flowers to him.
Yohji had laughed and ruffled his hair affectionately before sitting down on the edge of the bed and giving him what looked like a bone-crushing hug. "Only the best for you, babe! Only the best!" Yohji had drawled before he nuzzled his face into his hair, making Boromir's face turn a bright red at this.
"Back at you, mutherfucker," he replied cheerfully, glad to have someone else in the room to talk to apart from the psycho voice in his fucken head.
"How you doing, Blondie?" Thom asked as they entered into the room and surrounded the bed.
"Okay, I guess. How bout you, you fucken psycho?" Lee asked as Ken and Yohji put the bouquet in his lap and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek before they sat down on the foot of the bed.
"Just got out of juvie. The charges got dropped. I'm a free man," Thom replied cheerfully, his black eyes sparkling with the not quite sane humour he possessed.
"What are you going to do?" Lee asked as he scratched at the tape on his arm.
"Get cleaned up. Visit my old man in jail. Get a job. I don't know yet," Thom replied as he tugged on his violently red hair, which for some reason was cut very short but with spiky long bangs framing his pale face, reminding Lee briefly of the Japanese math teacher at St. Ig's.
"Cool. And you guys? Where have you been hiding?" Lee asked the other guys in the room.
"University. I swear I have no time to do anything but to sleep, study, practice and play." Ken replied, his brown eyes twinkling, telling Lee that even though he had so many deadlines to face, he was till enjoying the challenge of being in post-secondary.
"School as always. Boinking like rabbits. The usual," Duo replied blithely, earning him a good smack on the head from Trowa that was so loud, everyone in the room winced in sympathy.
"I so wanted that image in my head, thanks Duo." Yohji shot back disgustedly.
"Oh shut up, Kudoh, and come out of the goddamned closet already. The church isn't a small place, but we can sure hear everything that happens between you and Kenken, you know."
Lee's eyes widened at this bit of news. Kenken and Yohji? Together?
Turboslut and Soccer-hooligan (to use Thom's caustic terms of endearment for them) Together? Did something happen when he was sleeping and he simply missed this little development?
"When did this happen?" Lee asked after a few seconds of embarrassed silence.
Yohji turned bright red and just pushed his omnipresent sunglasses up his nose while Ken kept his eyes trained on the sheets. O-okayäit looked like he wasn't going to get any answer from that place.
The silence was then broken by yet another loud smack to Duo's head by Trowa.
"Subtlety, thy name is certainly not Duo Maxwell." Thom commented after Duo had stopped yelping about getting whacked on the head again.
Thom looked at everyone in the room and shook his head at them. Even though he was the resident nutbar that always had had to be bailed out of every single mess that he got himself into, the way things were going, he was certainly feeling as if he was the only voice of reason left in the room.
"I was going to say that I needed to take a piss or get something to drink to leave the hooligan and Keebler elf alone, but we all know that it's a pile of horseshit. So why don't we all pretend that's what we're going to do and leave them to muddle out the blunder of the century."
Lee nearly smirked at that little aside of Thom's. That guy couldn't find the way out of a euphemism even if someone paid him. It was funny, in a sick sort of way. In what kind of way, Lee himself wasn't so sure, since he was still trying to figure out whether Thom was just a product of his environment or if he really was crazier than a shit-house rat.
"We'll be at the front of the hospital, not smoking at all," Thom continued sarcastically as he pulled Yohji to his feet and ushered a scowling Trowa and Duo out of the room.
"Sorry that it was such a short visit, Lee." Yohji apologized as he was pulled out of the room by Thom.
Lee smiled wryly. "It doesn't matter. I'm glad that you guys showed up. Thanks for the flowers though."
Yohji smiled before he was unceremoniously yanked out of the room. The door then clicked shut, leaving Ken and Lee looking at each other nervously.
"Soä" Ken began nervously, running his hand through his messy brown hair in nervousness.
"Take your time, Ken, I'm not going to strangle you." Lee replied dryly as he shifted slightly. "I—just—well, to tell you the truth, I'm just really surprised. I mean you and Yohji?"
Ken smiled sheepishly at Legolas. "Yeah, I know huh?"
"How?" Lee replied, still trying to get used to the idea of Kenken doing the deerskin shuffle with Yohji! In a freaking Church orphanage too!
Ken's lips pursed as he tried to articulate the reason why things had turned out the way that they had. Hell, even he wasn't sure exactly how things had progressed. He just knew that one day, Yohji had changed. He couldn't pinpoint the exact day, but one day he was the obnoxious, loud, pervy brother that you couldn't help but to like, and then, the next thing he knew they were kissing like crazy on his bed amongst piles of scattered textbooks.
"I don't know." Ken answered, finally giving up trying to explain anything. "Does it seem that odd, for him and I to be together?"
Lee shook his head, not daring to speak, since his mind was in a whirl as he tried to reconcile all the emotions that were plaguing him.
He always believed in being brutally honest with himself and even though it was a very painful policy to follow at times, he felt that it was better that way in the long run. He would much rather have the pain of knowing exactly what was what, than the pain of having told a lie and live with the fall-out.
He wasn't angry that Ken had found someone else. That wasn't it at all.
"Sort of," Lee replied, as he tried to run away from the truth that was yowling like a cat in heat on a doorstep.
"Why?"
Lee looked into Ken's big brown eyes and bit his lip. "You are certainly flattering yourself if you thought that he was going to always pine after you," his mind hissed at him.
"I thought I was the only one you ever loved." Lee blurted out.
Ken's eyes widened and Lee groaned when he realized exactly what he had said. "Forget that! Forget that!" Lee yelled out as he hid his face from Ken. "I didn't say anything."
Ken only blinked at the strange behaviour of the elf. Never had he seen him so...wacky. Usually, the elf was sarcastic, funny and very dignified. He assumed it was something they were all born with, just like the rapid healing ability and the physical grace he had often envied when they had been younger and residing together in St. Joachim's Orphanage.
Lee had taken Ken's silence as acceptance and was now daring to peek over his hands at his former playmate and boyfriend. To his surprise, he saw that Ken had a very pensive look on his face.
"Ken?" Lee asked, wondering if getting the human's attention was a good idea after he had made himself a total fool in front of him.
"Lee," Ken replied as he turned to look at the elf, his chocolate brown eyes, so like his own that Lee was sort of startled at seeing them outside the mirror.
"Yeah?" Legolas asked, feeling like a complete idiot at not knowing exactly where this conversation was heading.
"I did love you. Very much," Ken told him, his voice low. "I think that day we broke up was the crappiest day of my life. It was up there with the day my father dropped me off at the orphanage."
He made a face when he mentioned that. It had been about ten years ago that his father had done that, but it still hurt. He figured that the pain would never fully go away, despite the fact that it had been the best course of action at the time. "But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense for us to break up."
Legolas' frowned at this statement. "Why do you say that?" the elf asked, clearly puzzled by Ken's remark.
"I say that because the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. No matter how much time we did or didn't spend together, or how much you told me you loved me, I knew that I wasn't the one that you were in love with."
Legolas opened his mouth to object, but Ken stopped him with a raised hand. "No. Hear me out. You were never in love with me. I think, at the most, you loved me as your brother. The only one that has ever had that privilege, it seems, is Boromir Denethorsen. Him and no one else."
Ken looked up at the ceiling then, since he knew that he wasn't strong enough to look at Lee head on when he said the next bit. "I felt it when we made love. Even though your body responded, your soul just wasn't there. It was...frustrating to try and touch someone that deeply and not be able to get that emotion in return. You were never really alive unless he was around. Both of you were the same. Neither of you really existed in this world unless you were together." He shook his head and looked at the elf, his eyes bright with the tears he was trying hard to keep at bay.
Lee's stared down at his hands lying in his lap. He honestly didn't know what to say to what Ken was telling him. He honestly didn't. But it turned out he didn't have to say anything yet, since Ken began to talk again.
"I thought that you guys would die without each other. That you needed each other to survive. I changed my mind though, when I saw him and Aragorn Strider together."
"When? Why?" Lee asked.
"At a coffee-shop by the University a while back. I was there with some friends when they came in. And I was wary at first. I studied them, wondering what had made Satan thaw out so much that he was dating someone that wasn't you. But the more I watched them, the more I understood."
Legolas swallowed hard. He had a feeling he wasn't really going to like what was going to come next.
"They need to be together. Plain and simple. They are equal in both their strength and the way that they care for each other. They can meet each other on a level playing field rather than depend on each other so much that they will lose themselves. I think I was so surprised the first time I saw them together because Boromir looked alive. Wholly alive. And he wasn't with you."
Lee's mouth tightened into a thin line at those words. It was true that he had told Aragorn that he loved Boromir in a different way than he ever would, but it still hurt him deeply to hear that simple comment being directed at him. There were a couple of moments of silence between them before Legolas himself broke it.
"Why did you tell me all of this?" he asked Ken, who was tracing the patterns in the blanket lying on the bed.
"I told you because you need to let him go," Ken replied calmly, his voice steady as he spoke.
End Interlude
