TITLE: Heart and Shoulder (18/22)
AUTHOR: Elizabeth (sef7881@aol.com)
PAIRING: Viggo Mortensen/Orlando Bloom
RATING: R
SUMMARY: Harsh reality (Orli's POV)
FEEDBACK: To (badly) paraphrase Boromir: "Bring on the feedback!
This writer is thirsty!"
WARNINGS: Angst. Major angst
DISCLAIMER: If I knew any of these people, I'd be the happiest
girl in the world. But I don't. So that means this is all
pure fiction, and I don't make any claims that these stories are true,
nor do I make any money off of them. This is all just to satisfy
my demented imagination.
ARCHIVE: Help yourself, just let me know where it's going.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Self beta'ed; please forgive any mistakes. This
chapter isn't sweetness and light, but neither is the real world
DATE WRITTEN: July 25th, 2004
"That was *amazing*," Henry gushes as the lights come up in the cinema
where we've spent the last two hours watching 'The Village'. "I
can't believe what a brilliant movie that was! I was really
freaked out by it."
"So it met your expectations?" I ask with a smile.
"It surpassed them. What did you think?"
"I thought it was excellent and scary as hell. Joaquin Phoenix
was phenomenal, as usual."
"Yeah, the acting rocked," Henry agrees. He extends me a hand,
and I stand up to file out of the theater along with the rest of the
crowd. "The only thing that would have made it better would have
been Angelina Jolie," he muses, making reference to his perpetual crush.
"Don't you have a girlfriend?" I tease.
"Jemila understands," Henry tells me. "Just as I understand her
love for Anderson Cooper."
"Who's that? Someone at school?"
He laughs. "No, he's a news anchor on CNN. He's kind of
handsome, I guess, which I say from a totally straight point of view."
I nudge his shoulder affectionately. "You two are a very bizarre
couple."
"Thanks. You're pretty weird yourself."
"Well, I try to live up to your standards."
"And that's not easy," he snorts. "Want any of these before I
toss them?" He holds up his mostly-eaten box of Gummi Bears, and
I shake my head. The box sails into the rubbish can that's
several feet away, and Henry pumps his fist in victory.
"Nice shot," I say with an admiring grin. "That was a risky
move. If you had missed, you would have nailed that granny over
there."
"That would've been just my luck."
"What are you talking about? You lead a charmed life."
"You're one to talk. Look at this – we're halfway out of the
theater and nobody's asked you for an autograph."
"That's because of my brilliant disguise." I gesture to my black
knit cap that's keeping my hair under control and (hopefully) making me
incognito.
Henry snorts. "Dude, you look so ridiculous wearing a hat in the
*summer*. Besides, everybody knows what you look like. The
hat doesn't change anything."
"Oh."
"I'm just amazed that people are courteous enough not to maul you in
here. The last time we went somewhere together, you couldn't walk
two feet without being attacked by your fans. They're *insane*!"
"They're sweet," I counter.
"They're sweetly insane," he concedes.
"You should have more faith in humanity, Henry."
"So says an elf."
"You're not quite human yourself, my friend," I laugh.
"Perhaps not, but at least I'm not wearing a dorky hat."
"I'll have you know that this hat is – oof!"
My very witty reply is cut off by someone bumping into me and shoving
me forward with their shoulder. I stumble for a few steps before
managing to brace myself on the edge of the sweets counter, where I
make sure that I didn't break any bones. Great. All I need
is to draw attention to myself in public.
Behind me, I can hear teenaged laughter that I know doesn't belong to
Henry; I think it's coming from two or three boys. Turning around
with nothing injured except a little bit of my dignity, I see three
boys who appear to be a year or two older than he is. They don't
look threatening in the least, merely like a bunch of tossers.
I pull myself away from the sweets counter, determined to ignore the
boys. Henry is glaring daggers at them, which is somehow quite
sweet, but I don't believe that they even deserve that much. "You
guys should watch where you're going," Henry says to them in an acidic
tone. "You could really hurt someone."
"We'll keep that in mind," laughs one of the boys.
"And you should apologize," he fumes.
"Come on, let's just go," I urge Henry, realizing that we're drawing
some stares.
He sighs. "Fine."
The boys snicker as we walk away, and there's no mistaking the words
that one of them says to me when I brush by them: "Have a nice day,
faggot."
Henry stops dead in his tracks, but I grab his elbow and pull him
along. "Come on," I say again, my voice sounding hoarse all of a
sudden. The only thing I want now is to get out of this theater
and into my car so I can drive home. The other two boys are
laughing at what their friend has said to me, and there's no doubt that
the exchange was overheard by the several people who were staring at us
before.
The hot, early August air assails my senses the moment I walk out of
the building. Perhaps 'walk' isn't the correct term for how
quickly I'm moving, given that Henry is almost running to keep up with
me. I pull the black cap off of my head with a yank, letting my
hair fall around my face in a desperate attempt to hide. There
are so many emotions churning through me – disgust, anger, fear, shame,
fatigue – and I can't begin to process them.
"Orli!" Henry's fearful yelp brings me back to earth as I step
off the curb and almost get clipped by a humongous sports utility
vehicle. "For fuck's sake, slow down!"
"I just want to go home," I choke out. I turn to look at his face
for the first time since we left the theater, and my heart plummets
some more when I see that he's close to tears. Henry doesn't
cry. He's a teenaged boy, and they don't cry in public. The
anger that I'm feeling intensifies tenfold as I realize how much pain
he's in.
"The car is over there," he tells me with surprising calm. He
points to the area where I parked, knowing that at this point, I'm too
anguished to navigate my way to the car with much success. "We'll
go home. Just try to look where you're going."
"Okay," I nod.
No more words are spoken between Henry and myself, and I suspect that
he's lost in his own thoughts about what just happened inside, just as
I am. I dutifully look both ways this time before journeying into
the car park. This afternoon has held enough drama without me
getting flattened by a car.
And then, when I think that I might have calmed down a tiny bit, that
obnoxious laughter once again filters through to me. Realizing
that the teens have followed us outside, my blood runs cold and I
instinctively turn my head back for a look. The three of them
walk to the curb, about five meters from where we are.
"Go home, queer boy!" one of them yells.
"Yeah, go back to England!" another chimes in.
"Ignore it," Henry whispers, speeding up his steps as we approach our
car.
"Go home, queer! Don't stay here!" all three of them chant over
and over.
Bile threatens to rise in my throat while tears scald my eyes. I
force all of it back, determined not to let any emotion show in front
of these prejudiced arses. All they want to do is provoke me, and
I refuse to grant them that victory. In my mind, I hear Viggo's
voice telling me that we're stronger than anyone who tries to degrade
us, but it's difficult for that to be very comforting at a time when
homophobia is being thrown in my face.
"Silly faggot, dicks are for chicks!" one of the boys cackles. I
can't reach that car fast enough.
"Get out of here, you bigots!" a woman shouts at the boys.
"Fuck you, fag hag!" is the reply she gets.
I hear a man threatening to call the police, but I don't even
care. Henry and I get into the car with one goal in mind: getting
the hell out of here. My pleasant afternoon has been ruined, I've
been humiliated, and my almost-stepson has been brought to tears.
And for what? So some prejudiced teenagers could get their kicks
out of embarrassing me. Life is simply grand sometimes.
There's a thump against my window, and I almost run the car into a stop
sign. "What the fuck?!" I cry.
"That was a water bottle," Henry gasps. "One of those jerks threw
a water bottle at us."
My jaw tightens with anger. "What, yelling at me wasn't enough?"
"We're on the road now, Orli. They're not coming after us," he
assures me. "They just wanted to hassle you."
"But why?" The cracks in my voice begin to show, and the tears
are once again daring to spill over. "What did I do to them?"
"Nothing, but they're idiots."
"I know," I sigh. The first tears escape, slipping down my
cheeks. "I just never thought that something this . . . *ugly*
would actually happen. Even with all of the letters your dad and
I got, and all of the press we garnered after coming out, something
like this seemed out of the realm of possibility."
"Orli, I don't really know what to say," Henry tells me honestly.
"You don't have to say anything."
"Listen, even with shit like this happening, it doesn't change my
support of you and Dad. Actually, it does – it makes my support
stronger," he says in a voice that's thick with emotion.
"Thank you," I whisper.
"That being said . . . I know you well enough to know that you probably
don't want to tell Dad about this."
I wince. Damn his perceptiveness. "All it would do is upset
him. I don't really see the point in–"
"You've got to be kidding. Of course it will upset him, but he
needs to know about it!" Henry sighs and levels me with a
frighteningly mature gaze. "You were there, Orli. You know
that plenty of people saw and heard what happened. I'll bet you
anything that by tonight, it'll be on the local news. Would you
rather have Dad find out about it from the TV, or from you?"
My stomach churns at the thought of today's debacle becoming a news
story, but I know that's exactly what will happen. And I *don't*
want Viggo learning of this through the telly or the newspaper, because
I can only imagine how hurt he would be by my keeping this from
him. So even though the thought of explaining this to Viggo is a
painful prospect, I know that Henry's right; I can't go home and act
like nothing happened.
"Okay," I tell him. "I'll do it."
"Good. Do you, uh, want some help?" he offers.
I have to smile. He is just the sweetest kid in the world.
"Thank you, but I think this is a discussion your father and I have to
have by ourselves."
"Gotcha. Well, if you need me, I'm here for you."
"Thank you," I say again. And I will need Henry's support.
I'll need the support of everybody in my family, and every single one
of my friends. Most of all, I'll need Viggo's support.
While this may not have been something that put me in real jeopardy, it
brought into focus the fact that people with prejudices don't always
stop themselves at writing nasty letters or espousing their points of
view on the telly. Sometimes they decide to get more up close and
personal than that, and that's what's frightening. Despite all
the freedom that Viggo and I gained by coming out, I'm beginning to
feel as if the price we paid for it is getting increasingly higher.
I wouldn't change being Out for anything, but I want my life
back. Is that too much to ask?
Heart
and Shoulder Part 19
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Viggorli
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