Last Choice Boys (Bury Me, I'm Not Your Friend) | Big Time Rush

× SCENE FIVE ×

SCENE FIVE: "YOU HAVE YOUR SWORD, I'VE GOT MY PEN
MEASURING MIGHT IS A MEANS TO AN END."

Kendall doesn't know what it's like to be truly loved.

He pretends he doesn't care to find out. Too much love is weakness, and he doesn't want to be weak—to keel over and fall cliché victim to something so persistently superficial and short-lived. He doesn't want to get hurt a million times over for what very well could often be nothing, just to have to admit to himself in the end that he can't always do everything on his own.

Kendall can, and he will, if he just stops holding himself back and blaming every explainable shortcomings on pointless whatevers like weakness, like emotional futility, like love.

Yes, it can keep him going, like it has so far, but at what cost?

Well, perhaps it could still be worth the fight just to bring them all together, since Kendall has somehow become the acting leader; not just among their district youth hockey team, but with his faithful gang of friends as well. So he's supposed to be 'strong' and 'brave' and 'decisive' and all that jauntily positive, tooth-decaying, self-serving bullshit one can browse in some discarded pamphlet in a hokey therapist's office (not that he'd know, really). And like a good leader does, he should always be ready to take one for the team, rush through every oncoming obstacle, and no matter how many times he gets slammed through the boards, carry on. Especially without expecting the same level of gratitude and appreciation that he shows.

Because that isn't the intention of a true leader. It isn't brownie points and public presentation preening and being a first place face for everything, it's acting upon things and getting them done whatever it takes, so that others can go on. And more than anything, Kendall really wants his best friends to go on, even if he gets left behind—even if it's without him by their side.

That much, he understands. He only hopes that they do as well.

And anyway, Kendall reckons he plays this role naturally enough. He's always first in line when it comes to giving himself up, and never giving up. He gives James, Carlos, and Logan everything he can and will continue giving him the best of what he's got—even if that meant disguising the very worst for himself—because he wants to. Because they deserve it, because he doesn't. And if they give Kendall nothing but a bitter taste of afterthought charity in return, he'll still swallow it without chewing and pray to god it doesn't get stuck in his throat, and afterwards grit his teeth in a bared grin and say thanks.

Thanks for the morsel. Thanks for nothing much. Thanks because I have to.

Good leaders make for great last choices, and last choice boys never complain. Last choice boys should be grateful to even get picked and should always stay in the shadows, never to be overshadowing anyone. Last choice boys bite their cheek, shut out their useless opinions, and never make a noise if and when they're told so.

Kendall's fine with that. He doesn't know if he's fine, but he's fine with that...isn't he?

Everyone above himself. It's for his and everyone's own good, even if it can feel bad. Kendall needs to think of his family—they'll always love me, I think, at least—and how to help them out, instead of being a shortsighted nuisance getting too absorbed with his own childish burdens. He needs to keep Carlos at bay—and I really want to keep him safe and happy, if never close—despite the dauntless boy flitting rampantly with an incoherent impulse that rares for golden thoughts and dangerous trysts. He needs to be more considerate towards Logan—too sane, too same, smarter and better though he may be than me—still often too wary with intelligent anxiety and cautious iridescence to make it count.

And Kendall really, really needs to stop dying to be someone else—to be someone at all, please—to James. A borne Diamond child, ever so consuming with his impassioned ambitions and ichorous choir-god voice and Man Fashion magazine-special-issue-worthy looks, along with everything else about him far too insidiously abstract to be put into mere mortal words. Yet he's also ever so consumed with his obnoxious, enamoured, muse-like reverence towards Logan—

Great, now Kendall's also starting to unwittingly echo James' terrible habit.

Though likewise, he also can't deny he'd do the same if given the chance. And he'd only ever need one, because a love like this only comes once in a lifetime. Torn lips blood-red with shame, Kendall cannot think about James' name without wanting to say it out loud as much as he can. His contused mouth craves to proclaim it proudly to the entire universe even if it's empty, emptier than his cavernous chest, and no one's left to listen. He deigns to taste every dulcet letter and scream with all the stale air left in his anguished lungs...but James isn't his to breathe. Never his. Nothing's ever his.

Last choice boys don't have a fucking choice.