"Bret?" Jemaine's voice rumbled accusingly from above him.
Bret froze. He had been sure that Jemaine had drifted off to sleep.
"Yeah?" he asked as innocently as he could. Which was not all that convincing really.
"Were you wiping your nose on my shirt?" Jemaine continued
"Um, yeah. Sorry," said Bret blushing. He hadn't been wiping his nose on Jemaine. What he had been doing was much more embarrassing and taboo. He had been nuzzling his friend's chest with his cheek. He started to move away from the other man's loose embrace.
"You don't need to move," Jemaine mumbled quickly, "Just use a tissue next time"
Bret settled back against his bandmate, with his head tucked under Jemaine's chin. Jemaine wrapped his arms closer around Bret's waist. They resumed watching the film with enormous intensity as they both pretended that they weren't bothered by the proximity. The Council of Elrond had never been under such scrutiny.
"I like that lady-elf," said Jemaine trying for blasé but sounding more desperate than anything.
"Arwen?" said Bret whose fascination with Liv Tyler had been cut short after Mel tried to kiss him in her costume for the music video. He'd had nightmares about hobbits and lady-elves for weeks afterwards.
"No that one," said Jemaine gesturing at the screen, "we've missed it." He sprang to his feet with alacrity and staggered slightly as his sick body protested at the sudden movement. He searched intently for twenty six seconds (Bret counted), before producing the remote.
After several minutes of fast forwarding, rewinding and sudden violent stabs at the pause button, a still image of several elves was displayed on the screen.
"That one," said Jemaine
Bret squinted at the screen.
"That's a boy-elf, not a lady elf"
"What? Of course it's a lady-elf," Jemaine said panicky
Bret studied the tv for several seconds more.
"No man, it's definitely a boy-elf," he said in a conciliatory tone of voice. It looked a bit familiar actually, now that he looked at it. Maybe the actor was some friend of a friend or something back home.
"But he's too pretty to be a boy," Jemaine said under his breath, "I thought it was a girl. That's not gay, it's a case of mistaken identity"
"I never said it was gay"
"Yeah well, it isn't. Just in case you were thinking it was." Jemaine quietly unpaused the film and sat back down awkwardly. Neither of them were sure how to sit and shuffled about nervously.
"Do you think Gimli thought Legolas was a girl?" Bret asked suddenly
"What?" Jemaine asked bewildered
"Do you think Gimli thought Legolas was a girl?"
"I heard you the first time, I just don't understand"
"Maybe he liked Legolas and then found out he was a boy-elf and was embarrassed. Maybe that's why he was mean to him at first. He was shy"
Jemaine waited for a few seconds to see if what his friend had just said would get any less weird on reflection. Nope, still weird.
"What?"
"I don't know. Maybe he thought Legolas was a pretty lady elf, then he found out that he was a boy and acted all mean so no one would suspect that he'd had a gay crush on a girly boy-elf. It makes a lot of sense really"
"How much of that medicine did you take?" Jemaine asked seriously. Bret didn't seem to hear, or if he did he didn't let it interrupt him.
"Like that time in uni you liked Sarah Fielding and you told everyone that she looked like an aardvark"
"I didn't like her," said Jemaine defensively, "and she did look like an aardvark"
"Why were you kissing her at my birthday party then?" asked Bret sulkily
"She was kissing me. I was just standing there and she came at my mouth with her face like it was an ant hill. I just let her to be polite"
"Huh"
"And I don't see what this has to do with Gimli being gay for elves" Seriously when had this turned into The Return of the Sarah Fielding Saga. It had taken him three years to convince Bret that the party had been a drunken fluke, he didn't want to get into all that again.
"Not elves. Just Legolas," said Bret, more sulky by the minute
"He did like Galadriel a lot"
"Galadriel's a girl. And she's married. Gimli's not like that"
"This is a really stupid conversation"
"I didn't say that when you started on about Sam and Frodo." Suddenly there was a foot of sofa between them and the atmosphere was icy.
"At least they're both hobbits"
"Arwen and Aragorn are different species"
"Yeah but, they're not..." Jemaine trailed off and sighed.
They slumped at opposite sides of the sofa with their bodies facing away from each other for the next half hour. Jemaine looked over at Bret who was pouting slightly at the screen. He cleared his throat loudly in the still silence.
"You know, because elves mostly look all girly and dwarves all look like guys it wouldn't be that gay if Legolas and Gimli liked each other"
Bret smiled and swivelled his torso around to face toward Jemaine. Jemaine smiled weakly back. This was exactly why no one should watch Lord of the Rings so many times.