(no subject)
Challenge Letter D for lotr_step_kids challenge 1
FIC: Bliss in Ignorance
Author: Ylith
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Bloomenhaal
Feedback: yes please! I really appreciate all feedback
Warnings: AU, extreme angst, slight sexual situations
Disclaimer: I don’t own either of these people or anyone else referenced.
Hospitals had always been an uneasy place for Jake, something about their smell and presence unsettling to him. His only previous experience in them was when his grandmother was dying. He’d been eight at the time and all he could recall was the beep of the monitor and the tangle of tubes connected to the frail old woman whose only want was a quick death.
The beats of the machines about him rang in his ears as Jake hastily passed every each room of the Intensive Care Unit. The rooms were in a circle, open like fishbowls to the nurses’ station in the center. The brightly colored uniforms with cartoon characters on the jackets did nothing to liven the mood of the dead, stale, over sanitized air of the hospital unit. The paintings of lavish gardens seemed only promises of what the patients had to look forward to.
315...316...317...
Jake stopped several feet back from the open door to room 318, staring at the entrance as though it were pushing him away, his feet refusing to move.
A blockage built in Jake’s throat, burning as it grew, hard and unrelenting. His eyes watered at un unknown irritation, and he wiped them clear with the heel of his hand.
There was a time when Jake was so happy, when he had everything he had ever wanted and more. What hurt most of all was the knowledge that he could never have that happiness again, and worse still that he almost lost the most important person in his life for a reason that most would have found so innocent.
He was waiting for something, and after a moment Jake realized it was for time to turn back. He had an overwhelming desire to go back to a time when he was with Orlando, and all they had was each other. Now, after this brief time apart, Jake was sure that they would never have each other again.
With a deep breath, Jake willed himself to move, first one foot and then the other. It was easy after the plunge, and with a newfound determination, Jake moved past the threshold of Orlando’s room.
Jake had thought he had properly prepared himself, but the sight before him was something beyond his realm of comprehension. As he took in the form lying before him on the crisp hospital bedding, imaged flooded Jake’s memory of their bodied twined together on the bed they shared, Orlando’s long legs wrapped around him in desperate longing as Jake thrust into him. Jake could almost smell the other youth’s sweat as he entered the room and looked at him, lost in what he found of the man he loved so very much.
“Jesus…Orlando…”
Orlando’s usually pensive face and soulful eyes were now drained of all life, empty as they jerked towards Jake. He looked away immediately, the skin surrounding his bloodshot eyes was red and enflamed, his cheeks gaunt and skin sallow. The head that had once been crowned with inky curls was sloppily shorn, Jake guessed by the other youth's own hand.
Jake was not looking so much at the youth’s pale countenance so much as he was the thick bandages covering Orlando’s arms from wrist to mid arm. Rusty blood was faintly visible through the coverings, showing the range of the deep slashes which had almost claimed the young man’s life.
“Baby…” Jake stepped forward immediately, his hand out to touch Orlando’s slim shoulder. He looked so fragile beneath the hospital gown, the dark circles under his red eyes making them appear sunken.
Orlando turned his head further away, jerking his shoulder from Jake’s touch as well. He took in a strangled breath through his nose, the treat of a sob tainting the harsh sound. He shook his head with a weak nod, the gesture almost desperate to Jake’s eyes. Orlando looked so lost and destroyed, and for the first time in his life Jake felt completely powerless to do anything to help him.
“Orlando please…” Jake said, looking down at those bandaged wrists as heat and wetness filled his eyes. “Why…why would you do this to yourself…it doesn’t have to be this way…” They had known each other since they were children and yet Jake now felt he was speaking to a stranger. “Please, Orlando…” Jake sat next to the young man, his hand finally coming to a shaky rest atop Orlando’s trembling shoulder. “I love you…”
Orlando’s eyes darted to Jake’s face, his arm again jerking away from the other youth’s touch as a look of fear and extreme anguish filled his eyes. “Don’t say that,” he said, his voice small and shaky. “You can’t say that to me…”
Jake leaned forward again, his own head shaking as he attempted to soothe Orlando. He went to touch him again, but this time he could not bring himself to rest his hand on his former lover’s shoulder, instead leaving it to hover over his hospital gown. Orlando was looking away from him again, his eyes shut now as he attempted to block Jake out.
To think that just four days ago they had been in Jake’s apartment, their apartment at that time. It was late, the two more content to spend the morning in bed then to get up and enjoy the sunny day. They had been on their sides, Jake pressed close behind Orlando, his cock fitting so perfectly inside of Orlando like the missing piece of a whole. Their moans had filled the room, their pace languorous but steady enough to bring a light sheen of sweat to their naked bodies. Orlando’s gentle grunts and cries of pleasure had brought a lazy grin to his face, and sent sparks of heat to his groin. He longed for Orlando’s moans, and now could not endure his breathy sobs begging for Jake’s departure.
Jake could tell that Orlando was holding on to any shred of control he still had desperately, despite his obviously exhausted state. The young man continued to look away, his head shaking in tiny little slides from side to side. Though he sickened himself to admit it, there was nothing more he wanted at that moment then to kiss Orlando’s trembling lips, hold his shaking body and promise him that everything would be alright. He knew such a promise could never be made though. Nothing would ever be alright for them again.
Though his mother’s visit had been just as shocking to him, there was a part of Jake that was more than willing to ignore the secret revealed to them. In his dreams, he had created a fantasy world where he and Orlando lived in a place far from this, where no one knew their names or faces, a place where they could live secluded from the world, and once again have only each other. In his dreams he taught Orlando to forget, taught him to bury the truth and live as they once had.
Orlando, however, had taken the discovery much differently, as evidenced by the mangled flesh of his wrists which lay beneath the bandages. Jake remembered his face, the look of pain and betrayal as realization swept over him. He’d been gone before Jake even had time to check on him, the window to their bedroom open to the fire escape beneath. He’d slit his wrists in his step-father’s house, the blood still staining the fixant between the white tiles.
Jake moved to sit on the edge of Orlando’s bed, needing to get through to him in some way. “Listen,” he said, his voice an urgent whisper. He glanced over his shoulder a last time before continuing, not caring that he had caught the attention of a dark haired nurse whose eyes were slanted in their direction from the nurses’ station. “I know you hurt…I do too…I hurt so much Orlando…”
Orlando’s face was still turned away, though Jake could see the salt tears that ran from beneath his sooty lashes down his smooth face.
“Neither of us knew…” Jake said. “It was all so innocent…I don’t know what to do, but please…let’s try…come home with me…”
Orlando was already shaking his head, his eyes clenched tight.
“Please,” Jake insisted, leaning forward and keeping his voice low. He could feel tears raising to his own eyes and he sought to draw Orlando’s gaze to him with his voice. “We could manage…no one else knows…we could…”
“There is no ‘we’!” Orlando shot back, his voice sharp and filled with despair. “Don’t you get it, Jake? There can’t be a ‘we’, there can’t be an ‘us.’ ‘We’ are done Jake, we have to be…”
“Alright…” Jake quickly conceded, agreeing with Orlando to calm the young man. He feared the nurse behind them would try to send him away before he had some sort of a connection made again with Orlando. “Let me help you though…I want to help you Orlando…maybe someday we can be friends again…”
A choked sob broke through Orlando’s cracking shell, his face breaking into a tightly drawn mouth and knit brows as he shook with his sorrows. He leaned his head back against the pillow, too tired to support his neck any longer. Jake watched through wet eyes as Orlando’s body went very still, no longer resisting the gentle touches Jake made to his arms and cheek as he broke before the other youth’s eyes.
“I just want to die,” Orlando whispered, tears falling in steady torrents down his cheeks. His face had lost all color, and he no longer sniffled at the wetness running down from his nose. “I just want to die…”
Jake sat back in his chair, looking down at Orlando’s slight form hidden under the hospital blanket. The young man stared out the window with unseeing eyes, his gaze focused on what Jake assumed to be his own memories.
Jake could feel the buzz of his cell phone against his thigh, but he made no move to answer it. He knew it was mother, and there was nothing she had to say that Jake wanted to hear. The first part of her confession had been jarring enough, that Jake’s own father had been sterile, and more so that Jake’s mother had never once revealed the truth to her husband. It was the second part though that had ended the young men’s seemingly unshakable relationship; when she had explained a cold winter night locked away in a neighbor’s house, a six months before the neighbor had married Orlando’s mother. The babies themselves were only about six months apart.
Jake looked up to see Orlando’s fingers glide over his own, tape covering the needle which kept his IV in place atop his finely boned hand. He looked through tear filled eyes to see Orlando looking at him, those empty eyes now burning with pain. Jake almost preferred that empty stare to this…
“I love you so much, Jake…” Orlando said, his voice tight. “And I can never…ever…be that way with you again…“ Jake could see Orlando’s eyes flicker past him as though he were afraid someone was listening.
The pain of the words stopped his heart, and it wasn’t until his lungs burned with need that Jake took another breath. What hurt more was that he understood, and really began to realize that this was the only way.
His knees cracked as he stood, the chair beneath him screeching against the linoleum floor. He stood on shaky legs, and at first Jake was afraid that they would not be able to contain his weight as he rose to his feet. They held him secure though, as they had for him before and would again.
Drawing in a shaky breath, Jake leaned down. He was grateful when Orlando did not pull away, and allowed him one kiss on his forehead. The skin there was cold, making the youth seem as dead as his memory would have to be.
Jake could hear Orlando sigh beneath him, his eyelids sliding shut and his lips drawn into a pained line.
Jake did not say anything as he turned and walked away, letting the silence speak his goodbyes for him. He’d been ignorant in his bliss, and now longed for the bliss of ignorance once more.
The End