[fic] Until The Devil Turns To Dust - 2/3
Title: Until The Devil Turns To Dust
Author:
garnetice
Part: Two of Three
Previous Parts: 1
Pairing: Kendall/Carlos (end pairing), Kendall/James (very prevalent), James/Logan, Carlos/Logan (what?), Kendall/Jo
Rating: M
Word Count: 9,435 (Part Two)
Warnings: Bad words, love triangles, angst, sex, homophobia, badmouthing a marine, really, really long, and probably a myriad of other things
Summary: Love does not exist for boys like Kendall Knight.
Author's Notes: This is the companion piece to A Song You'll Regret (Found Here: Part 1 , Part 2, Part 3) and And Our Time, And Our Blood (Found Here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). Mega thanks to jblostfan16 for the beta and breila_rose for putting up with my nerves.
---
10.
Carlos spends a lot of time feeling like a sidekick.
He resents it, resents the idea that he’s silly or unnecessary or someone extraneous to the dynamic of their group. He was here before any of them, before James or Logan ever even knew who Kendall Knight was. He hates it and he hates them, hates that James and Logan are forcing him into the background of their friendship. But then Kendall will sling his arm over Carlos’s shoulder and all the resentment will vanish.
He is still the one that Kendall loves best.
That’s what he thinks until the day he walks into the Knight’s house unannounced. He goes straight up to Kendall’s room because that is what he’s always done. Only, right before he walks through the door he hears, “You look stunning.”
Carlos skids to a stop, holding onto the doorframe for balance.
“I look like Kenneth Cole just threw up on me,” Kendall replies, and Carlos can hear the grimace in his voice.
He can also imagine how James’s face lights up when he exclaims, “Ha! But you know who Kenneth Cole is now.”
Kendall laughs, a little muffled. “You are so easy to please.” And then, “Can I take these clothes off now?”
Carlos wouldn’t think anything of it, except for the way Kendall’s voice spikes low, is almost husky. He peers around the doorframe and sees that Kendall has roped James in close, arms at his waist. He is rubbing his hands up and down along James’s sides, his slim hips and the definition of his abs. Carlos imagines those fingers against his skin. He watches, breath held, feeling like an intruder. He’s not sure why; as far as friendships go, the four of them have always been on the touchier, feelier side. But something about the way Kendall and James are standing, angled towards each other, caught in each other’s gazes, makes Carlos feel awkward and uncertain and a little bit innocent.
“I think you should keep them on,” James says, “You look good. Better than you do in that plaid travesty.”
Kendall shakes his head and noses at James’s cheekbone. He says, “You are a giant ball of queer, and you are trying to roll over me.”
“I’m trying to stop you from committing fashion suicide,” James argues, and it’s only when he bridges the distance between the two of them, sighing into Kendall’s open mouth, that Carlos gets where all of that anxiety is coming from.
His instincts are quicker than his brain, apparently.
In that moment, all Carlos feels is angry. James always gets what he wants with that winsome smile and his too-pretty eyes, variegated greens-gold-browns like Nevada Lapis. Carlos thought that he knew what hate was before, minutes ago, but really that was nothing. It was mild irritation. It was simple jealousy.
This new thing that blossoms in his chest burns.
He goes to Logan’s house, finds his friend bent over a textbook, crunching numbers through his head like it’s easy. Carlos stands over him and demands, “Aren’t you with James?”
Logan’s head snaps up, math all forgotten. Carefully, he asks, “What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. You guys are sleeping together.” Logan blinks. Carlos adds, “I saw you.”
“Once,” Logan says, and he looks a little shy in admitting it. “We slept together once. Why, uh. Why are you asking about that now?”
“James is -“ Carlos feels bile in his throat. He takes a deep breath, tries again, can’t think of how to finish the sentence other than in rude words.
A Slut.
A Whore.
A Skank.
He shuts his mouth.
Logan seems to get it anyway. Quietly, he says, “James is complicated.”
Carlos bites out, “Dude. There’s nothing complicated about instant gratification. He’s a-“
“Don’t. What he is is my best friend. Yours too. James is James. Let it go.”
“Doesn’t it bug you that he sleeps with anything that moves?”
Logan shrugs. There are lines of pain written across his face, and Carlos can read them more easily than any book.
“He can do what he wants,” Logan says steadily.
“You love him,” Carlos accuses, understanding that it’s true only as the words tumble out. “You love him, and you’re letting him step all over you.”
“It’s not like that.”
“It is,” Carlos insists. His anger grows. “I can’t believe you. I can’t believe any of you.”
“Either,” Logan corrects automatically.
“What?”
“You’re mad at James and me, right? So it’s either.”
Evenly, Carlos states, “I mean what I said.”
Logan may be content to be a side note in James’s life, overlooked and underappreciated, but Carlos will not be that in Kendall’s. This is just an obstacle, a thing that he needs to overcome, desperately.
Garcias are hardy. That’s what his mom always says, and it’s true. Carlos is resilient. This is really just like all those songs his dad and his brother used to listen to, southern twang and cowboy hearts.
Does it even count as love if it doesn’t hurt?
---
11.
Kendall’s not stupid. He knows that what’s happening is wrong. He loves James; he loves the way their bodies fit together like puzzle pieces and the way he feels sharper, cleverer, clearer whenever James is around. He loves the way James makes him want to sing, the joy that bubbles up in his chest whenever he’s near. He loves how his heart starts to race when they’re sharing the same space and how James frustrates him, challenges him, and in the end, makes him into a better person than Kendall ever thought he could be.
But James doesn’t love him.
James loves Logan, or maybe just himself; who even knows? He goes on dates with slutty girls and slutty boys and has plenty of slutty sex. Kendall’s relationship with James is better than he thought it could be, a kind of punch-drunkenness that never goes away, but that awareness is always there.
No matter how much solo-time James spends with Kendall, it doesn’t mean they don’t hang out with the other guys. Carlos is still one of the most important people in Kendall’s life, and despite all his misgivings about what went down between Logan and James, Logan’s still his best friend. He tutors Kendall through chemistry and helps him figure out plays for the team. They have monster-movie marathons and scrabble play offs (that Kendall always loses) when James and Carlos are off being individuals. One time Kendall even talks Logan into getting plastered off the peach schnapps his mom keeps on the highest shelves in the kitchen, and they spend the night in a heap on Logan’s floor, talking about the things they want from the future.
Kendall has heard people say that Logan is cold because he likes science and numbers better than people. But Kendall knows that Logan loves the three of them more than any mathematical theory or scientific hypothesis. And that’s why it bugs him so much that he can’t forget one pivotal fact: sometimes James looks at Logan a certain way, and Kendall feels like his bones have splintered, piercing right through his heart.
Kendall wishes that James would just let him go already.
He knows he’s a little jealous. Maybe a lot jealous. Logan’s got this perfect, happy little life, where both his parents are around. They love him to pieces, and so does James, and why doesn’t anyone love Kendall like that? His mom tries so hard, but she works all the time, and Katie stopped liking hugs when she was about two, and just…okay, Kendall’s really, really jealous.
He wants to be like Logan, like all the people out there who are whole and happy and who have never had their heart broken. Problem is, he will never, ever be one of those people. He’s been fucked up since he was six years old, and it’s not just his dad or Carlos or James.
It’s Kendall.
He is pain.
He is loss.
He is grief.
But he is also strong. That’s what he’s been told his whole life; that he is ridiculously, magnificently strong. So he will not be pain, or loss, or grief. He will be better than that.
Maybe not today, or tomorrow, or the next day, but one day, Kendall decides, he will be happy.
If only it were as simple as a choice.
Being better is hard. Sometimes, even when he’s together with James, it’s bad, so fucking bad. Like when Logan and Carlos are sleeping upstairs, and Kendall gets that James is toeing a line. There is space between their mouths, James dipping close and then moving back, teasing, and he obviously wants Logan to hear.
Kendall isn’t comfortable with this, until he is. Until he’s lost in it, lost in James, and he thinks, fuck it. He doesn’t care if Logan hears.
Maybe he even wants him to.
But then other times, James comes to Kendall’s house, and when they are together it’s like time turns to molasses, thick, golden, and slow. He can’t break free, even when he tries. It is good, so fucking good, when James sheathes himself on Kendall like he belongs there, and the after parts too, when they lay tangled together beneath the paisley print sheets of a sheet-fort, laughing.
“Hey,” James says, and Kendall knows what’s coming before it actually happens; he knows the second James’s fingers tangle in his hair, the second he pulls him in close for a kiss. “Why are you so perfect?”
“I’m not,” Kendall says, swallowing. The idea of perfection makes him feel uncomfortable. Untouchable, when all he wants is to be touched and understood.
“Yeah you are,” James argues. “You’re perfect for me.”
Kendall waits for the unspoken but, because this isn’t a fairytale. There has to be a but.
It never comes, though. James is still smiling, still planting tiny kisses on his lips, and it makes no sense, because he’s the perfect one. Sometimes it’s like James is the only one who sees Kendall- the person he is beneath the façade of leader and best friend- and even when Kendall knows that what he feels is dangerous, it’s enthralling. Being seen.
Of course, the bad parts don’t go away, don’t leave when they fight, raucous and loud. More than once Kendall tells James he’s donedonedone with this, and James says quietly, “I’m not going to leave you. So stop trying to drive me away,” like he understands.
Kendall wants to believe him. He really, genuinely does. But the next day James is out with some girl who has hearts in her eyes, his hand slipping up her skirt, and oh, Kendall thinks.
He can’t breathe.
He has to breathe.
He forces himself through it, the same way he always does when things get hard. He pretends he is invincible, because that’s what people expect from him.
And then it’s good again, like when they are slipperywet, bodies sliding together, catching moisture between them. James’s hands move with ease, like the two of them have been greased, and Kendall feels raw and oversensitized from the hot water. His heart is in his throat, his skin flushed red. Droplets cling to his eyelashes, his philtrum, and track down the planes of his stomach. They glisten between the ridges of James’s knuckle as he strokes over them both.
In a soft voice, James asks, “Can I fuck you?”
He can, and Kendall says so, and he watches the way James’s eyes flicker open and closed, the barely restrained bliss and the part of his lips, wet, wet, everything’s so damn wet. The water is getting cold, the tile even chillier against his shoulder blades, but James is hot, buried inside him, and Kendall can’t concentrate on anything but that. He is breaking into pieces, coming undone. And after he has the solid weight of James’s body against his, his frigid feet searching for warmth against Kendall’s calves, his bony knees an insistent press against Kendall’s inner thighs. James mumbles for him to stop squirming, to stay still and be warm, and Kendall laughs, the smell of James’s toothpaste and his hair products in his nose.
So yeah, Kendall isn’t sure what it is that they’re doing, but he knows that he wants this for as long as he is allowed to have it; James’s laughter rumbling against his skin, the wet slide of his mouth and the crazy tilt of his smile.
Besides, it’s really hard for Kendall to keep his hands to himself when James is around. Whenever they are alone, Kendall pulls him in as close as he can, like maybe if he tries hard enough, they’ll assimilate each other, become one person, two hearts, never ever beating alone again. He doesn’t trust anyone, not with his feelings- stupid, dumb, moronic feelings- but he makes a conscious decision to trust James, to ignore every sign and choose him.
Sure, there’s every chance that James is lying through his teeth. But Kendall is just so sick of not trusting anyone with his heart. He wants to try.
Good things don’t happen unless you try, right?
That’s what Kendall thinks when James’s hands hover over his hips and he whispers, “It’s you. Just you. Only you.”
Kendall closes his eyes and pretends that he means it.
This is the thing he’s always feared. All his reason, all his strength; it’s slipping away. And he lets it.
No one is smart about love.
---
12.
Carlos lives stolen moments and secrets.
Sometimes he will stare at Kendall across the kitchen table, blatantly.
Look at me, he’ll think. Look at me. Look at me.
Kendall never does. He’s always caught somewhere between Logan and James, between jealousy and desperate love. And Carlos hates him for ignoring his presence, but simultaneously, he feels bad.
The entire time Kendall stares at Logan and James, they’re only ever looking at each other. He thinks that Kendall is going to let James rip his heart straight out of his chest, and Carlos doesn’t know how to stop it.
He also does not know how to deal with the loneliness, or the vague idea that his best friends are leaving him behind.
Telling James after hockey practice one day, “I want you to fuck me,” probably isn’t the best way to cope with that.
James takes one wide eyed look at him and concludes, “No.”
“What? Why? You’re doing Kendall.” The words taste bitter in his mouth.
James’s jaw sets in a line. “That’s different.”
“How? I’m not good enough?” Carlos doesn’t mean to sound so wrecked about it. Every second he spends with James is like poking at an open wound, but it is also a kind of wonderful, because James is fun and spontaneous and surprisingly sweet. It’s not all that hard to see why Kendall and Logan trip all over themselves when James is around.
Carlos holds his love in one hand and his hatred in the other, and sometimes it’s hard to tell which emotion is which, because they are both strong and deep and unyielding. James is his best friend, whether he likes it or not. He can’t wave away the summers they spent together at Camp Wonky Donkey, or their time on the hockey team, or the pizza parties and sleepovers and time spent bouncing on the gigantic trampoline in James’s back yard. Or the pranks or the late night air guitar jam sessions or the countless lessons on girls.
James is his best friend, but he is also an obstacle, and it’s hard to reconcile those two ideas. At least it would be easier if James would just let him be a part of this tragedy too. But James just stares. “That’s not- you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know you can fuck Logan, and you can fuck over Kendall, but you won’t fucking do anything with me,” Carlos retorts with more venom than he knew he had. “How is it different?”
“It just is, okay?”
Carlos feels an inkling of fear, ice cold, dripping down his insides. What if James really does love Kendall?
James says, “I’m sorry, but…you should do it with someone you…you know. Love. I guess.”
Did you? is what Carlos wants to ask.
He keeps his mouth shut. James stalks out of the locker room, looking troubled.
“I’ll do it.” His head snaps to the right, and he sees Logan. His heart kicks up like a bass drum.
“What?” Logan shrugs, looking nervous. “Were you listening?” He nods, slow, deliberate. His eyes glitter in the dim fluorescent lighting of the locker room. Carlos asks, “How much did you hear?”
“I already knew. About Kendall. If that’s what you’re asking.” Logan shifts from foot to foot, looks away, looks back, and Carlos is caught in the goldstone color of his irises.
“Why would you-“ Carlos sucks in a deep breath “-want to do that for me?”
“If you’re so desperate that you’ll go to James, who knows where else you’ll be willing to go?”
“I’m not like you all.” Carlos waves his hands, tries to bat away the bitterness in his voice. “I wouldn’t just get it anywhere.”
“I know. So. Do it with me.” And just like that, Logan kisses him. It’s not terrible. Logan isn’t unattractive, and he’s got the general idea of how to kiss down. But. Carlos can feel his body trembling and he pulls back. Apologetically, Logan says, “I’ve, uh.” He flushes. “I’ve only done this once.”
With James, Carlos knows is the thing left unspoken. “Why are you doing this?”
“You’re my friend.”
“That’s not a good enough reason,” Carlos insists.
Logan’s eyes close. “Do you want to have sex or not?”
“You’re not exactly putting me in the mood, dude.”
“Fine. You’re doing this to get back at Kendall, right?” Logan says, and the words make Carlos cringe.
“No. I’m sick of being the only one who doesn’t know what it feels like.”
“So why don’t you do it with a girl?”
“I’m not in love with a girl,” Carlos says steadily, holding his ground. Their words echo off the metal lockers around them, and he kind of really hopes no one else is lingering. He thinks of Jesse, of the vile things he says about gay guys, and winces.
But Logan’s face softens. “Neither am I.”
“You could have James, you know. If you wanted him.”
“He doesn’t want that. He’s…” Logan waves a hand in the air, trying to convey what James is. He probably means different things than the nasty words that flit through Carlos’s head.
“Are you agreeing to fuck me because you think it will hurt Kendall if he finds out? Or James?”
For a terrible moment, Logan is silent. Carlos turns to walk away, his duffel a heavy weight on his shoulder.
“Carlos, wait. James is right. Your first time should be with someone you love. Mine was.” Logan isn’t this blushing, delicate flower now; he’s completely earnest, vulnerable. He’s a shadow of the man he’s going to become one day, and Carlos finds himself strangely intrigued by it. “I’m not…I don’t…it won’t mean as much as it should, but I love you like a brother. I’ll- we can do this. If you want to.”
“It won’t be about Kendall or James,” Carlos says stubbornly. “It has to be about us or it’s not worth anything.”
“Carlos.” Logan folds his arms around himself. “I can’t promise that. I’m lonely. And I think about him all the time.”
He doesn’t have to say which him he means.
“Me too.” Carlos says quietly. Kendall’s face flashes into his mind, eyes are the color sea glass, worn at the edges, bruised blue beneath blond lashes. Lately he’s been looking tired to the point of sickness. Because of…
Oh, fuck it. Carlos steps up into Logan’s space and says, “Okay.”
They go back to Logan’s house, and it is awkward, relearning the shape of Logan’s body without his clothes. But it’s also kind of nice. Carlos always figured that like most of the guys in town, he’d lose it to a pretty girl in the back of his dad’s car. Hiding out beneath the covers and a constellation of glow in the dark stars in Logan’s house is somehow better and worse at the same time.
Better because it’s Logan, because Carlos can brush the awkward away when he needs to, when he needs to let himself feel the way they move together instead.
Worse because he knows the how and the why of what they’re doing, and he knows that it will never happen again. It can’t, because it would be one more tragedy on top of this clusterfuck of tragic they’ve all been building, and Carlos refuses to contribute to that any more than he has to. They’ll always love each other like brothers, but anything else is impossible. Fledgling love can’t grow under the weight of Kendall and James; they are too brilliant, too beautiful, too much. They are walking, talking gorgeous catastrophes, and in their shadow Logan and Carlos spend a lot of time feeling extraneous.
That’s why it’s so tempting.
“We could…” Logan trails off, once it’s over. “We could be with each other instead.”
He tucks the comforter up under his chin, hiding his nakedness. Carlos shoves it back down and plops his head on Logan’s shoulder. Into the skin of his collarbone he mumbles, “No we couldn’t.”
“Can we pretend?” Logan asks softly. “Just for a little while?”
Carlos props himself up on one arm and says, “Okay.”
He kisses Logan’s lips and tries not to feel hollow inside.
---
13.
It is not all pain and tragedy.
There are times when Kendall and James are best friends, and there are times when they are perfect lovers and there are times when they are the epitome of domestic bliss. They bicker over remote controls and share breath while they make love and they epically fail at concocting pancakes for Katie’s birthday. They play hockey and they laugh and they check out models in magazines. They compete over silly things and they think up zany plans and they watch as they bring each other off in the hush of the night.
There are countless moments where Kendall and James are perfect for each other.
It does not negate all the moments where they are not.
Kendall puts an end to it one night in early winter, when snow is spiraling from the sky, cold white lace that’s too pretty for the misery Kendall is feeling. James comes onto him with bright red lipstick smeared on the corner of his mouth, and Kendall can’t. He’s got enough pride and enough fiery anger to find strength in the pit of his stomach, to clutch it close and tell James it’s over.
And for a while, it is. James leaves him alone, fucking with everyone in the whole wide world except for Kendall.
Then California happens.
Gustavo Rocque wants Kendall, and okay, maybe it’s a little intoxicating to be chosen by this big time record producer, a kind of affirmation Kendall’s dad has never been able to give. He’s smug about it, vindicated, somehow, and he is also pissed as hell that the guy was able to treat James like a cockroach scurrying underfoot. People who recognize Kendall’s talent are automatically beneath him somehow, and it’s the ones who do not fold like a deck of cards that he wants to win over, but this time around, he tries his damndest to win Gustavo over.
For James.
It doesn’t even matter that they’re not fucking anymore. Kendall will do anything he has to if it means James will stay close, will keep on looking at him with that mixture of wonder and adoration, like maybe Kendall actually deserves something as grand and terrifying as his friendship, his devotion.
And of course, that backfires. Kendall gets James exactly what he wants, and next thing he knows, they’re lying sweaty and naked in the back of Mr. Diamond’s SUV, all that horsepower a quiet hum beneath their bodies, legs intertwined.
Kendall swallows down James’s gasps, is pinned by the thick pressure of his dick moving inside of Kendall, forcing stars behind his eyelids. The car quakes.
Outside, powder falls in a hush; nearly March and the world is still a snowglobe.
When it’s over they are limbs and a racehorse heartbeat, one person with too many arms and legs. James rakes his fingers through Kendall’s hair, pushes his sweaty bangs from his forehead and says, “God, you’re amazing.”
“I thought you hated me.”
The sweat cools against his skin, making him shiver, and he burrows against James’s body like he can steal away his heat. James rolls his eyes, hugs him in close to his chest, one hand on the back of Kendall’s neck and the other right between his shoulder blades. “I did. And then you had to be all stupid and noble, again. How do you always end up doing that?”
“I did it for you, dude.” Kendall kisses the closest patch of James’s skin he can find, somewhere between his sternum and his pectorals. He murmurs, “I’ll do anything for you.”
James smiles then, more brilliant than anything Kendall has ever seen, and it turns his bones molten and hot, makes him want and yearn and need. He pecks James’s lips, and then again, draws him into a kiss that turns into something more, and the world is theirs; it consists solely of James and Kendall and the car and the night and the snow.
California will be good for them, Kendall thinks.
There’s nothing like a grand romantic gesture, like a cross country move and dreams surrendered to bring two people closer together.
---
14.
Carlos loves California. He wasn’t actually aware being in love with a state was something that could happen, but it does, he is, and he’s having the time of his life.
Of course, it’s exhausting, being a superstar, and sometimes he gets tired. On a muggy day near the end of spring, he convinces Kendall to take him to the beach. He tries to invite Logan and James along too, but Logan’s off dating or not dating or whatever he’s doing with Camille, and James is trying to land a modeling gig, so. It’s them. They hire a car on Rocque Records’ tab and drive straight to the coast where the air smells swampy, thick with condensation and the salty scent of low tide. Carlos can taste lightning on his tongue.
It’s not really an ideal beach day.
Kendall doesn’t seem to give a damn. He kicks off his shoes and falls back in the sand, sending a puff of it up in the air, sparkling in the dim sunlight before it settles again. “Let’s just come here every day.”
“I am totally down with that,” Carlos replies. Kendall laughs, his gaze green as aventurine. Carlos can feel the sound of it in his bones.
They build a sand castle, a fortress, really, complete with turrets and a drawbridge and a moat. It takes an hour of careful craftsmanship, and when it’s done, they stomp it under their feet, destroying all their hard work. Kendall carries Carlos on his back, crashes them both through the surf like a gallant steed, until one foul beast of a wave takes them down.
Kendall is gorgeous, shining. He glows like stained glass beneath the slate gray sky. He laughs reckless and wild and carefree, the same way he’s been laughing since Carlos first met him.
He steals Carlos’s breath away.
In that moment, with the ocean churning around them, Carlos wants to wend his hands around Kendall’s soaking wet body and kiss him. He wants to twist his fingers into the short hairs on the back of Kendall’s neck and slide their bodies slick and wet together.
He wants to see what it’s like, to have all that brilliance, all to himself.
But he can’t because Kendall is with James.
Still.
Carlos saw it himself, their first week there. He was restless, homesick, walking through the lobby with the vague idea that he’d take an illicit night swim. He just needed to stretch his muscles, and besides, pissing off Bitters has the added benefit of being fun. The moon was huge, lighting up the whole sky, making the palm trees into skeletal silhouettes.
And it turned the outline of Kendall and James in the pool, shinywetnaked clear as daylight.
Now Kendall stands in front of him, still shiny, still wet, but not Carlos’s to undress, and the idea makes him want to lash out.
That’s what no one ever tells you about love. They say not to hurry, that if you wait, things will work out. No one ever talks about how, when you love someone so much that it aches, you start to hate them. With every inch of your being, you despise them for making you hurt so bad. Even now, here, in the middle of this perfect day, love turns sour in Carlos’s stomach. It becomes a dark, bitter thing.
It makes it easy to hate the world too, until, by the end of the day, he can’t see the ocean or the sky or anything past the thin veil of despair and self-loathing that covers his eyes.
As they leave the beach he thinks, Kendall’s like a country song.
Kendall is heartbreak.
---
15.
On the fourth of July, everyone wears red white and blue, and no one gets more into all the patriotism than Kendall. It’s the one day a year he lets his pride shine through, forgives his dad for caring more about a country, about a thing, than he does about his son and daughter.
This fourth of July, Kendall fucks James behind the palms in the middle of a campfire jam. It’s fast and it’s awkward, James’s jeans shoved down around his thighs while Kendall pumps into him. They come to the soundtrack of teenagers cheering, whooping, screaming, supporting each other and their country and drowning out the symphony of moans right behind them. It’s dirty and it’s good and it’s exactly what Kendall needs.
James is exactly what Kendall needs.
California is everything that he hoped it would be for the two of them. They sing together, they joke around together, they spend practically every second within reach of each other’s fingertips. Hell, they even learn to surf together, or, well, James picks surfing up with the same ease and grace with which he takes to anything. He’s practically a pro in a week. Of course he decides that Kendall needs to try, and Kendall doesn’t exactly charm the sea into submission.
He’s frustrated, but before he starts beating his fists against the lifeguard station, James’s hands wrap around his middle, balancing Kendall on the surfboard.
“I’ll teach you,” he murmurs into the skin of Kendall’s throat. “Don’t you trust me?”
“Always," Kendall replies, sinking into his arms and the heat emanating from his chest. James nips at his earlobe, and he shivers against the lick of his tongue. Together they waste away the day, sun kissed and golden, trying to conquer the ocean, trying to melt into each other.
That night, Kendall rests his hand against James’s chest, listening to the steady rise and fall of his breath, feeling the thumpthumpthump of his heart. He can’t fall asleep, but he thinks maybe he doesn’t want to. Maybe he’d rather just do this, stay up well into the wee hours of morning, memorizing the rhythm of James’s body; the speed of his pulse and the slow tempo of his inhaleexhale. Kendall wants to exist forever in the space between each breath James takes.
He whispers into James’s shoulder, into muscle and skin, “Please, just…I trust you. Be careful.”
James makes a snuffling noise and turns his head towards Kendall, chin resting on Kendall’s hair. Kendall smiles, pulling him closer. What is he even talking about?
Of course James is going to be careful.
Or, at least, that’s what Kendall hopes. It’s not like he’s exactly given up on being so…James. One morning Kendall finds him walking around the apartment in nothing but his boxers, and he can see the red-blue of hickeys that stand out against his throat and his chest. James is still seeing people on the side, still dating girls and boys, and one time even the casting director of a commercial, and ugh.
Every time it drives Kendall to the edge, possessive jealousy coiling in his chest. But James has never done well with enclosed spaces or relationships. Kendall won’t be the one to force him into one.
He cares too much about James to try to tie him down.
Kendall hates thinking about that part of their relationship. It brings him down, down, down until he’s drowning in self-pity, wallowing, and Kendall hates wallowing. He lets Carlos drag him out to the beach that afternoon, even though the ocean unnerves him. It makes Kendall feel like he’s standing at the end of the world, right on the edge of something. He just can never figure out what.
He doesn’t let that shake him, though, messing around with Carlos in the pale light of a slate gray day. The beach is empty, but Carlos is bright, brilliant, a beacon.
Of course.
Since they were eight years old, there has always been this one constant in Kendall’s life; Carlos makes everything better. He kicks his feet through the water, the weak sunlight reflecting off his eyes. His gaze is dark as obsidian, but the smile on his lips is radiant. “I love it here, Kendall.”
“Me too,” Kendall agrees, even though he’s not so sure.
He’ll never voice that out loud. The guys, all of them, treat California like it’s the holy land. Kendall knows that he shouldn’t let other people dictate his happiness, but he doesn’t know how to live entirely on his own. He is tragically unequipped to deal with life without the buffer of James, Carlos, and Logan standing between him and the big, bad world. At least when he focuses on them, he can forget himself, the places he came from and the sadness that worms its way through every memory he has. If they like California, he’s resolved that he will too, and besides, if he says that he has doubts out loud, Carlos will look at him like he’s kicked a puppy.
Kendall can’t do that to Carlos. He can’t even think of it.
Carlos stretches, body long and golden-brown, where Kendall’s is practically the color of a sand dollar against all the Hollywood tans. Carlos splashes Kendall in the face and laughs until Kendall flicks it back, and they’re wrestling in the surf, sliding together wet and warm and rough.
Carlos is so…
Kendall shuts down the thought, the same way he’s been doing since he was eight years old. He doesn’t think about the past because the past is dumb. He’s got his best friends and a reasonable amount of success and James, James who says that he’s perfect. Usually, that’s enough to keep Kendall moving forward, to keep him from looking too closely at the fissures and the cracks that make up his life. If he lets himself stop, if he thinks about all the shadows, he’ll break down. There’s anger and hysteria that live in the back of his mind, this sullen resentment that’s existed for as long as he can remember, and whenever he’s forced to reflect on things that don’tshouldn’tcan’t matter, it builds up in his bones, toxic.
That day, that kiss; it’s one of those things he tries really hard to avoid thinking about. There are times when he thinks about what it would be like to kiss Carlos for real, teeth and tongue and saliva, tasting him, making him beg, but it’s almost an absent thought, something Kendall recognizes as an idle fantasy so far from reality it’s not even worth entertaining. There’s not even the ghost of a chance there, and besides.
He pictures James’s face, imagines him instead, and the thought of it is heat blooming inside of his chest.
When they get back to the Palmwoods, Kendall slides into James’s bed, regardless of the black and blue and red against his throat. James looks at him, all sleepy and sweet. His eyes are a kaleidoscope of green-brown-gold, changing patterns every time Kendall blinks.
He’s so fucking beautiful.
Sometimes Kendall wants to ask James why he keeps coming back. When he tries to voice the question, his mouth goes dry. His throat closes up. Instead they end up fucking, which is their go-to alternative for talking.
Kendall keeps waiting for the day that sex with James becomes routine, becomes a way to get off instead of his favorite thing to do, ever. But it never stops meaning as much as it does. It always feels important, like they are creating history between them. It’s not always perfect, and it’s not always comfortable, but he loves James so damn much that the flaws and awkwardness that occasionally arise are trivial.
Really, he loves him more and more every goddamned day.
Kendall knows it’s completely inadvisable, but it’s Kendall’s heart against his head, his common sense against the way his nerve endings come alive whenever James is around. It’s too hard to fight.
His heart beats for James.
---
16.
Kendall’s watching a hockey game, and no matter how hard Carlos tries, he can’t get his attention. He wants help on these stupid new lyrics that Gustavo had couriered over, and Logan isn’t around, and when he popped his head into James’s room there was a girl and a lot of skin and really Carlos just doesn’t want to know. And now Kendall’s ignoring him.
Carlos is frustrated and annoyed and he feels dumb. He hates feeling dumb. He’s not. He’s just got concentration problems, sometimes. Which. Whatever. Thinking about it irritates him even more. He punches Kendall in the arm, because he needs to take it out on someone, but he barely even gets a blink and a half-hearted swat in return.
Maybe that’s why Carlos gathers up the courage to ask, finally, after months and months of waiting and wondering. “What’s going on with you and James?”
He sort of figures Kendall won’t even hear it.
Kendall hears it.
The remote drops to the floor. “What?”
Slowly, Carlos repeats, “What’s going on with you and James?”
Kendall squirms. He keeps his gaze fixed attentively on the TV, a blush crawling up his neck. “I’m not really sure.”
A little bitterly, Carlos says, “Maybe if you two tried keeping your pants on and I don’t know, talking, you could work that out?”
Startled by the malice in his voice, Kendall gives Carlos his full attention.
It’s nice to know he ranks somewhere above crappy sports reporters in Kendall’s esteem.
“We talk.”
“Ooh yeah baby right there harder faster isn’t a conversation.”
Kendall’s cheeks burn red. “That’s not all we talk about.”
“Could have fooled me.”
Kendall sighs. “Look. Me and James are- we-“ He stops, and Carlos can actually see his resolve strengthen. “Just stay out of it, okay? Can you do that?”
“No!” Carlos bursts, and he’s fully mad now. “He’s got a girl in his room, right now, and you want me to butt out?” Kendall stiffens, fingers digging into the couch cushions. Carlos continues, “How are you okay with that?”
“I…it’s his business.”
Carlos doesn’t believe that for a second. Kendall may have systematically ousted Carlos from his inner circle when James came along, but he knows some things. He knows that Kendall believes in love in this dangerous, desperate way.
Because he has to.
Because if he stops, what else is there?
And Carlos thinks that’s every bit as risky as refusing to believe in love’s existence, like James pretends at so very well. Because actually, love doesn’t always conquer all.
“Look, James is my brother. You know that, right?” Carlos squeezes Kendall’s thigh. He gets a tiny shrug in return, a chin jut that’s barely even an acknowledgment. “But- he’s not worth what you’re doing to yourself. Don’t let him tear you apart.”
Kendall slumps. He gives Carlos a weak smile and says, “I’ll be careful. Promise.”
Carlos wants to believe him, but if there’s one thing he knows about Kendall by now, it’s that he thinks promises were made to be broken.
---
17.
Be kind. Be honest. Don’t lie or cheat.
These are the things that Kendall tries to hold to.
He doesn’t always succeed.
Kendall gathers the sheets around his hips and tries not to look at the empty spot in his bed, where James used to be. Waking up naked and alone is getting old.
Really.
Fucking.
Old.
It’s probably why he ends up making a mistake.
James and Carlos and Logan mean the world to him. Loyalty and trust aren’t just words to Kendall. They’re visceral, deep in his gut. And it’s a fatal flaw. He can’t help the way that every betrayal cuts at him. So when Jo Taylor comes to the Palmwoods, Kendall pursues her. Why wouldn’t he? Jo is beautiful, and she looks at Kendall like he’s the only person standing in a crowded room.
She looks at him the way Kendall wishes James would.
He knows it’s wrong. He knows his mother raised him better than this. But he also knows his mother doesn’t know what she’s talking about. She still misses his dad.
Kendall’s seen her cry, now. When she does, it is violent. It is sadness like a tidal wave, like a thing that crashes and crushes and destroys, and a sound like a funeral dirge. It makes Kendall’s heart compress in his chest. And most of all, it makes Kendall wonder, what does she know? Love hasn’t left her without scars.
Yeah, going after Jo is wrong, and yeah, Kendall is a dick for using her. He resents himself for it, and he resents Jo, a little, but most of all, he resents James for trying to win the Palmwoods’ Most Valuable Player award. When they’re alone, together, James is a love song, sweetness with a bitter twist. But when they’re apart?
Kendall is starting to hate him.
He hates the way their bodies fit and the way James owns all of his thoughts. He hates his traitor heart and the way it races at James’s proximity, and he hates the way James makes him think things are okay when they’re not. They’re not okay.
He hates the way James frustrates and challenges him, the way he makes Kendall a better person when Kendall doesn’t want to be better; he just wants to stew in the hate.
And most of all, Kendall hates what James does to Logan.
The morning Logan figures out what’s going on between Kendall and James is one of the awkwardest of Kendall’s life. But he thinks that’s the end of it, thinks that that thunderstruck night between James and Logan when they were fourteen can finally be put to rest.
Kendall prides himself on being an awesome friend, but he won’t give this up. Just once, he wants something that he can have for himself, and he thinks that finally, finally he can.
Only that’s not that end of it.
Kendall tells James, “Logan knows,” and James’s face turns ghost white. He looks terrified, in a way he’s never been around Kendall, not once.
Not ever.
That evening, James goes to talk to Logan, to sort things out.
He doesn’t come back.
Kendall doesn’t freak out. He doesn’t. Sure, he’s worried, and sure, it’s not fair. But so what if Logan has known James longer? That shouldn’t matter. It’s not like falling in love depends on proximity. There are more important things; pounding hearts and an ache as wide as the Grand Canyon in a person’s chest and-
Kendall buries his head in his hands. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t fight the feeling that he’s fucked.
Totally.
Royally.
Undeniably.
Fucked.
---
18.
Carlos is moping, feeling like a nobody. There’s been some kind of weird standoff between Kendall, James, and Logan all day, this thing he’s not a part of. This thing he doesn’t entirely understand. He’s feeling lower than low, antisocial and blue.
Other people are jagged edges. Their smiles are prickly sharp.
That’s why he hides out with Katie, losing badly at poker and wallowing in his own uselessness the second they return from the studio. He can’t take the cold war outside, and he can’t fight the feeling that something awful is going to happen. He’s not even surprised when, in the middle of kicking his ass at cards for the millionth time, Katie asks casually, “Do you know what I think is really stupid?”
“What?”
“You all love each other. You all love each other so much, and you don’t even see it.”
She won’t say anything else on the matter, won’t open up no matter how much Carlos pries.
But he agrees. The way they treat each other?
It’s so fucking stupid.
---
19.
When he finds out that Logan and James are screwing, it’s like something dies inside of him. Logan walks out of James’s bedroom clad in nothing but a pair of boxers. There is a mark on his neck, like a thumb print, and on his collarbone there is a red-blue tattoo in the shape of James’s mouth. Kendall’s fingers clench into fists, his posture titanium-rigid, a metallic taste on his tongue.
Anger punches a hole in Kendall’s heart, a gaping wound the size of an avocado pit. He says he has a pool date with Jo, even though Jo is stuck on the set of New Town High for the foreseeable future. James calls after him, sounds worried, even, but what is there to worry about?
He’s made his choice.
Kendall shouldn’t even be shocked. He’s known since he was tiny that this is what love does. It destroys you.
He tells himself it’s over, it’s over, it’s over, but then James comes to him that night. Kendall doesn’t even want to let him in, but James forces his way into the room, tells Kendall he’s sorry, says that it’s him, really, it’s only Kendall.
Only a moron would believe it.
Kendall is not a moron. But he is desperate. He wants to say I love you, wants to ask James never to leave him, but if he says those things out loud, and James leaves anyway, won’t it make him weak?
He lets James kiss him. It feels foreign, and it’s only halfway into it that Kendall realizes he tastes the way that Logan smells, like spice and pine, clean and fresh. He wants to shove James away, but he pulls him closer instead.
“Please don’t,” Kendall mumbles into his skin. “I need you, please,” and he doesn’t mean it like it sounds, like get naked, like fuck me; it’s supposed to be more.
Why can’t James ever hear the things he tries to say?
Why can’t he just listen?
James maps the contours of his body. He straddles Kendall’s hips, backwards, like he can’t even bear to look at Kendall’s face. All Kendall can see are the flex of his shoulder blades and the dip in his spine, the swell of his ass pressed up against Kendall’s navel. There’s this slick sound, and James’s arm moves, like he’s actually sitting there, touching himself, treating Kendall like furniture. But then James scoots forward and wraps his hand around Kendall’s dick, holding it up against his own.
It’s not just sex.
It’s an apology.
Kendall knows it’s time to let go, but there are two versions of him; the sweet little boy who was taught to hold onto things like magic and fairytales and impossible loyalty, and the bitter realist. Kendall will fight against the latter copy of himself until his dying breath.
That is what he thinks.
That is why he decides to keep believing in James, even though it’s the most idiotic decision he’s ever made.
Besides, isn’t suffering like, the human condition or something? Kendall’s positive he read that somewhere. He decides that he will suffer through this. What exists between him and James is static, sometimes a white noise that pulls them both in, sometimes meaningless fuzz that Kendall can’t make sense of, but through it all, Kendall decides he will perfect a smile that gives nothing away.
And it’s going really great- really spectacularly less than great, actually, because Kendall’s conscience is a chatty little thing- when Logan confronts him.
He sort of knew it was coming, saw the razor sharp glares Logan directed straight at him for weeks on end. One day Kendall accidentally uses Logan’s physics text as a coaster, and the next thing he knows, he’s got the kid up in his face, screaming. He storms into Kendall’s room, thunderclouds and brimstone. He calls Kendall names, tells him he’s reckless and stupid and doesn’t know how to respect other people’s property.
It isn’t really about the text book. They both know that.
And Kendall accepts it, because he also knows what it’s like to be hurt and alone and unhappy. He doesn’t enjoy the process, inwardly wincing through his martyr act, but he doesn’t put a stop to it, either. He lets Logan run out of steam, and then he tries to soothe him. All the while Kendall’s thinking it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay. He’s fine being the bad guy, as long as he has James.
“You’re not going to get away with this.” Logan says, at the end. “I won’t let you.”
Kendall bites the inside of his cheek, keeps himself from saying all the nasty words that bubble inside of him, slick like bile in his throat. He stares at the shiny silver doorknob of his room and wills Logan to go away, before something breaks between them that Kendall won’t be able to fix.
It’s not like he and Logan have never fought before. They’ve spent years in close quarters with too much testosterone. They bicker on a regular basis. But this is different. This matters.
Kendall feels black and blue inside.
Logan smiles at him, his incisors sharp as shark’s teeth. It is feral, not friendly. He says the first honest thing in the whole damn fight. “You don’t even deserve James. If you loved him-“
“Stop!” Kendall bursts, holds up a hand, tries to keep it from bunching into a fist. “You don’t know anything about how I feel, so just. Stop.”
“I know that you’re a dick,” Logan retorts.
It’s like he can’t see how Kendall feels this conversation like a physical blow, how every vicious word trembles through his body and pierces him like an arrow. Kendall keeps ramrod straight, tries to remember that this is one of his best friends. Carefully, he replies, “You’re reading this situation completely wrong.”
“Yeah?” Logan sneers, and he looks like he’d rather like to punch Kendall repeatedly in the mouth. He mutters, “Then why don’t you explain it to me? You’re using James.”
Kendall doesn’t know how to say that it’s the other way around, doesn’t know how to say that he would never, that sometimes James feels like the only reason he has the strength to keep his head up and keep going. It would be so easy to tell the truth, to force Logan to carry this ridiculous weight with him.
But.
That’s not fair. Kendall doesn’t want Logan’s pity, and he doesn’t want Logan to agonize over this any more than he already is. It’s not like Kendall is the only person James is fucking. He’s walked in on more than one of James’s trysts with girls and boys alike. But Kendall is the one who gets the brunt of Logan’s anger, and he accepts that.
It’s not like he doesn’t deserve it.
Kendall will take all the blame, if he has to, if it keeps everyone together. He tries to launch into an inspirational speech, one of those things he’s supposedly so fucking good at. He tries to comfort Logan.
It doesn’t work. He storms right back out of the room with all his lightning and thunder and gunmetal demeanor. Right before the door swings shut, he gives Kendall this look, this dagger glare that Kendall recognizes from countless hockey games and science fairs.
It means the competition’s on.
It means that Logan is going to try to take James away, for real.
Kendall flinches. To the empty room, he whispers, “Please don’t.”
Because Logan can.
Logan will.
And even if Kendall tries to fight, there is nothing he can do to stop it.
---
20.
Carlos senses it the second things change. Logan begins acting happier, smugger, and the line of Kendall’s shoulders turns rigid.
One day they’re at the studio, on break. Kendall is fooling around with one of Gustavo’s guitars, strumming up a song that sounds sweet, like maybe it could be something. Then Logan saunters by, pulling James by the hand, and the pretty notes change. The guitar cries beneath Kendall’s fingers, shrieks with pain, but Kendall does not. His face is stone. He begins humming, forming lyrics and channeling them into the angry song, and Carlos thinks of that time when they were kids, when he stood by Kendall’s side at the lake. Lately, he can’t fight the idea that every time Kendall wants to scream, now, he sings. That’s all he can ever do, keep singing, keep shaping every feeling, every spark of hatred and lust and love and a thousand other fleeting emotions that scramble for his attention into a song, into words that take on a life of their own.
He has nothing else.
He has no one else.
Except Carlos.
Carlos, who doesn’t let it stand this time. He says, “You need to stop whatever it is you’re doing.”
Kendall perks up, cocking his head like a dog. “Why?”
“Because James doesn’t want you.”
Kendall cringes away from the words. He folds his head into his lap, into the safety of the guitar, and says, “I know.”
“So why? Why do you keep forgiving him? It’s pathetic,” Carlos spits the word.
“You think I don’t know that?” Kendall shoves his hands through his hair, fingernails digging into his scalp. “Fuck. I don’t want this.”
“So walk away.”
“I can’t.”
“What do you mean, you can’t. Kendall, you’re the strongest person I know-“
“I’m not! I’m not strong, okay? If I was strong, I could walk away from this. But…it’s James, and I love him, and I can’t. And I know it’s pathetic, but I don’t care.” Kendall squeezes his eyes shut. “I want him, okay? For a long time now, Carlos. All I’ve wanted is him.”
Carlos feels tired. “He’s all Logan’s wanted for longer.”
“Logan gets everything,” Kendall says quietly, and it sounds like there’s some kind of history there, something that’s happened that Carlos doesn’t know about.
“So put a stop to it. You’re Kendall Knight. If you want James, you can take him.”
Kendall’s eyes crinkle at the corners, half laughter, half pain. “I could try. But what kind of friend would that make me?”
“James would get over it.”
“Logan wouldn’t. He holds a good grudge.”
Incredulous, Carlos demands, “You’re actually worried about him?”
“I hate him.” Kendall says evenly. “But. He’s my friend. Of course I’m worried about him.”
“Worry about yourself!”
“You don’t think I am?”
“I know you’re not. If you don’t hate Logan with everything you’ve got, you’re not worried about yourself.”
“How do you know that?”
Carlos doesn’t know what to say. That he hates James? It would be true.
Saying so out loud would be pretty effed up, though.
“Look. I’m sorry,” Kendall says, his voice soft. “I’m sorry that we’re fucking everything up.”
Carlos frowns. He reaches across the space between them and smacks the back of Kendall’s hand. “Don’t apologize for being in love, dumbass.”
He lets Kendall go back to his song, but inside he thinks that this is worse than he first thought.
This is how love will wreck a dynasty; piece by piece, until they are scattered in the wind.
In the end days, all that will connect the four of them is how much they despise each other.
---
Author:
garnetice
Part: Two of Three
Previous Parts: 1
Pairing: Kendall/Carlos (end pairing), Kendall/James (very prevalent), James/Logan, Carlos/Logan (what?), Kendall/Jo
Rating: M
Word Count: 9,435 (Part Two)
Warnings: Bad words, love triangles, angst, sex, homophobia, badmouthing a marine, really, really long, and probably a myriad of other things
Summary: Love does not exist for boys like Kendall Knight.
Author's Notes: This is the companion piece to A Song You'll Regret (Found Here: Part 1 , Part 2, Part 3) and And Our Time, And Our Blood (Found Here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). Mega thanks to jblostfan16 for the beta and breila_rose for putting up with my nerves.
---
10.
Carlos spends a lot of time feeling like a sidekick.
He resents it, resents the idea that he’s silly or unnecessary or someone extraneous to the dynamic of their group. He was here before any of them, before James or Logan ever even knew who Kendall Knight was. He hates it and he hates them, hates that James and Logan are forcing him into the background of their friendship. But then Kendall will sling his arm over Carlos’s shoulder and all the resentment will vanish.
He is still the one that Kendall loves best.
That’s what he thinks until the day he walks into the Knight’s house unannounced. He goes straight up to Kendall’s room because that is what he’s always done. Only, right before he walks through the door he hears, “You look stunning.”
Carlos skids to a stop, holding onto the doorframe for balance.
“I look like Kenneth Cole just threw up on me,” Kendall replies, and Carlos can hear the grimace in his voice.
He can also imagine how James’s face lights up when he exclaims, “Ha! But you know who Kenneth Cole is now.”
Kendall laughs, a little muffled. “You are so easy to please.” And then, “Can I take these clothes off now?”
Carlos wouldn’t think anything of it, except for the way Kendall’s voice spikes low, is almost husky. He peers around the doorframe and sees that Kendall has roped James in close, arms at his waist. He is rubbing his hands up and down along James’s sides, his slim hips and the definition of his abs. Carlos imagines those fingers against his skin. He watches, breath held, feeling like an intruder. He’s not sure why; as far as friendships go, the four of them have always been on the touchier, feelier side. But something about the way Kendall and James are standing, angled towards each other, caught in each other’s gazes, makes Carlos feel awkward and uncertain and a little bit innocent.
“I think you should keep them on,” James says, “You look good. Better than you do in that plaid travesty.”
Kendall shakes his head and noses at James’s cheekbone. He says, “You are a giant ball of queer, and you are trying to roll over me.”
“I’m trying to stop you from committing fashion suicide,” James argues, and it’s only when he bridges the distance between the two of them, sighing into Kendall’s open mouth, that Carlos gets where all of that anxiety is coming from.
His instincts are quicker than his brain, apparently.
In that moment, all Carlos feels is angry. James always gets what he wants with that winsome smile and his too-pretty eyes, variegated greens-gold-browns like Nevada Lapis. Carlos thought that he knew what hate was before, minutes ago, but really that was nothing. It was mild irritation. It was simple jealousy.
This new thing that blossoms in his chest burns.
He goes to Logan’s house, finds his friend bent over a textbook, crunching numbers through his head like it’s easy. Carlos stands over him and demands, “Aren’t you with James?”
Logan’s head snaps up, math all forgotten. Carefully, he asks, “What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. You guys are sleeping together.” Logan blinks. Carlos adds, “I saw you.”
“Once,” Logan says, and he looks a little shy in admitting it. “We slept together once. Why, uh. Why are you asking about that now?”
“James is -“ Carlos feels bile in his throat. He takes a deep breath, tries again, can’t think of how to finish the sentence other than in rude words.
A Slut.
A Whore.
A Skank.
He shuts his mouth.
Logan seems to get it anyway. Quietly, he says, “James is complicated.”
Carlos bites out, “Dude. There’s nothing complicated about instant gratification. He’s a-“
“Don’t. What he is is my best friend. Yours too. James is James. Let it go.”
“Doesn’t it bug you that he sleeps with anything that moves?”
Logan shrugs. There are lines of pain written across his face, and Carlos can read them more easily than any book.
“He can do what he wants,” Logan says steadily.
“You love him,” Carlos accuses, understanding that it’s true only as the words tumble out. “You love him, and you’re letting him step all over you.”
“It’s not like that.”
“It is,” Carlos insists. His anger grows. “I can’t believe you. I can’t believe any of you.”
“Either,” Logan corrects automatically.
“What?”
“You’re mad at James and me, right? So it’s either.”
Evenly, Carlos states, “I mean what I said.”
Logan may be content to be a side note in James’s life, overlooked and underappreciated, but Carlos will not be that in Kendall’s. This is just an obstacle, a thing that he needs to overcome, desperately.
Garcias are hardy. That’s what his mom always says, and it’s true. Carlos is resilient. This is really just like all those songs his dad and his brother used to listen to, southern twang and cowboy hearts.
Does it even count as love if it doesn’t hurt?
---
11.
Kendall’s not stupid. He knows that what’s happening is wrong. He loves James; he loves the way their bodies fit together like puzzle pieces and the way he feels sharper, cleverer, clearer whenever James is around. He loves the way James makes him want to sing, the joy that bubbles up in his chest whenever he’s near. He loves how his heart starts to race when they’re sharing the same space and how James frustrates him, challenges him, and in the end, makes him into a better person than Kendall ever thought he could be.
But James doesn’t love him.
James loves Logan, or maybe just himself; who even knows? He goes on dates with slutty girls and slutty boys and has plenty of slutty sex. Kendall’s relationship with James is better than he thought it could be, a kind of punch-drunkenness that never goes away, but that awareness is always there.
No matter how much solo-time James spends with Kendall, it doesn’t mean they don’t hang out with the other guys. Carlos is still one of the most important people in Kendall’s life, and despite all his misgivings about what went down between Logan and James, Logan’s still his best friend. He tutors Kendall through chemistry and helps him figure out plays for the team. They have monster-movie marathons and scrabble play offs (that Kendall always loses) when James and Carlos are off being individuals. One time Kendall even talks Logan into getting plastered off the peach schnapps his mom keeps on the highest shelves in the kitchen, and they spend the night in a heap on Logan’s floor, talking about the things they want from the future.
Kendall has heard people say that Logan is cold because he likes science and numbers better than people. But Kendall knows that Logan loves the three of them more than any mathematical theory or scientific hypothesis. And that’s why it bugs him so much that he can’t forget one pivotal fact: sometimes James looks at Logan a certain way, and Kendall feels like his bones have splintered, piercing right through his heart.
Kendall wishes that James would just let him go already.
He knows he’s a little jealous. Maybe a lot jealous. Logan’s got this perfect, happy little life, where both his parents are around. They love him to pieces, and so does James, and why doesn’t anyone love Kendall like that? His mom tries so hard, but she works all the time, and Katie stopped liking hugs when she was about two, and just…okay, Kendall’s really, really jealous.
He wants to be like Logan, like all the people out there who are whole and happy and who have never had their heart broken. Problem is, he will never, ever be one of those people. He’s been fucked up since he was six years old, and it’s not just his dad or Carlos or James.
It’s Kendall.
He is pain.
He is loss.
He is grief.
But he is also strong. That’s what he’s been told his whole life; that he is ridiculously, magnificently strong. So he will not be pain, or loss, or grief. He will be better than that.
Maybe not today, or tomorrow, or the next day, but one day, Kendall decides, he will be happy.
If only it were as simple as a choice.
Being better is hard. Sometimes, even when he’s together with James, it’s bad, so fucking bad. Like when Logan and Carlos are sleeping upstairs, and Kendall gets that James is toeing a line. There is space between their mouths, James dipping close and then moving back, teasing, and he obviously wants Logan to hear.
Kendall isn’t comfortable with this, until he is. Until he’s lost in it, lost in James, and he thinks, fuck it. He doesn’t care if Logan hears.
Maybe he even wants him to.
But then other times, James comes to Kendall’s house, and when they are together it’s like time turns to molasses, thick, golden, and slow. He can’t break free, even when he tries. It is good, so fucking good, when James sheathes himself on Kendall like he belongs there, and the after parts too, when they lay tangled together beneath the paisley print sheets of a sheet-fort, laughing.
“Hey,” James says, and Kendall knows what’s coming before it actually happens; he knows the second James’s fingers tangle in his hair, the second he pulls him in close for a kiss. “Why are you so perfect?”
“I’m not,” Kendall says, swallowing. The idea of perfection makes him feel uncomfortable. Untouchable, when all he wants is to be touched and understood.
“Yeah you are,” James argues. “You’re perfect for me.”
Kendall waits for the unspoken but, because this isn’t a fairytale. There has to be a but.
It never comes, though. James is still smiling, still planting tiny kisses on his lips, and it makes no sense, because he’s the perfect one. Sometimes it’s like James is the only one who sees Kendall- the person he is beneath the façade of leader and best friend- and even when Kendall knows that what he feels is dangerous, it’s enthralling. Being seen.
Of course, the bad parts don’t go away, don’t leave when they fight, raucous and loud. More than once Kendall tells James he’s donedonedone with this, and James says quietly, “I’m not going to leave you. So stop trying to drive me away,” like he understands.
Kendall wants to believe him. He really, genuinely does. But the next day James is out with some girl who has hearts in her eyes, his hand slipping up her skirt, and oh, Kendall thinks.
He can’t breathe.
He has to breathe.
He forces himself through it, the same way he always does when things get hard. He pretends he is invincible, because that’s what people expect from him.
And then it’s good again, like when they are slipperywet, bodies sliding together, catching moisture between them. James’s hands move with ease, like the two of them have been greased, and Kendall feels raw and oversensitized from the hot water. His heart is in his throat, his skin flushed red. Droplets cling to his eyelashes, his philtrum, and track down the planes of his stomach. They glisten between the ridges of James’s knuckle as he strokes over them both.
In a soft voice, James asks, “Can I fuck you?”
He can, and Kendall says so, and he watches the way James’s eyes flicker open and closed, the barely restrained bliss and the part of his lips, wet, wet, everything’s so damn wet. The water is getting cold, the tile even chillier against his shoulder blades, but James is hot, buried inside him, and Kendall can’t concentrate on anything but that. He is breaking into pieces, coming undone. And after he has the solid weight of James’s body against his, his frigid feet searching for warmth against Kendall’s calves, his bony knees an insistent press against Kendall’s inner thighs. James mumbles for him to stop squirming, to stay still and be warm, and Kendall laughs, the smell of James’s toothpaste and his hair products in his nose.
So yeah, Kendall isn’t sure what it is that they’re doing, but he knows that he wants this for as long as he is allowed to have it; James’s laughter rumbling against his skin, the wet slide of his mouth and the crazy tilt of his smile.
Besides, it’s really hard for Kendall to keep his hands to himself when James is around. Whenever they are alone, Kendall pulls him in as close as he can, like maybe if he tries hard enough, they’ll assimilate each other, become one person, two hearts, never ever beating alone again. He doesn’t trust anyone, not with his feelings- stupid, dumb, moronic feelings- but he makes a conscious decision to trust James, to ignore every sign and choose him.
Sure, there’s every chance that James is lying through his teeth. But Kendall is just so sick of not trusting anyone with his heart. He wants to try.
Good things don’t happen unless you try, right?
That’s what Kendall thinks when James’s hands hover over his hips and he whispers, “It’s you. Just you. Only you.”
Kendall closes his eyes and pretends that he means it.
This is the thing he’s always feared. All his reason, all his strength; it’s slipping away. And he lets it.
No one is smart about love.
---
12.
Carlos lives stolen moments and secrets.
Sometimes he will stare at Kendall across the kitchen table, blatantly.
Look at me, he’ll think. Look at me. Look at me.
Kendall never does. He’s always caught somewhere between Logan and James, between jealousy and desperate love. And Carlos hates him for ignoring his presence, but simultaneously, he feels bad.
The entire time Kendall stares at Logan and James, they’re only ever looking at each other. He thinks that Kendall is going to let James rip his heart straight out of his chest, and Carlos doesn’t know how to stop it.
He also does not know how to deal with the loneliness, or the vague idea that his best friends are leaving him behind.
Telling James after hockey practice one day, “I want you to fuck me,” probably isn’t the best way to cope with that.
James takes one wide eyed look at him and concludes, “No.”
“What? Why? You’re doing Kendall.” The words taste bitter in his mouth.
James’s jaw sets in a line. “That’s different.”
“How? I’m not good enough?” Carlos doesn’t mean to sound so wrecked about it. Every second he spends with James is like poking at an open wound, but it is also a kind of wonderful, because James is fun and spontaneous and surprisingly sweet. It’s not all that hard to see why Kendall and Logan trip all over themselves when James is around.
Carlos holds his love in one hand and his hatred in the other, and sometimes it’s hard to tell which emotion is which, because they are both strong and deep and unyielding. James is his best friend, whether he likes it or not. He can’t wave away the summers they spent together at Camp Wonky Donkey, or their time on the hockey team, or the pizza parties and sleepovers and time spent bouncing on the gigantic trampoline in James’s back yard. Or the pranks or the late night air guitar jam sessions or the countless lessons on girls.
James is his best friend, but he is also an obstacle, and it’s hard to reconcile those two ideas. At least it would be easier if James would just let him be a part of this tragedy too. But James just stares. “That’s not- you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know you can fuck Logan, and you can fuck over Kendall, but you won’t fucking do anything with me,” Carlos retorts with more venom than he knew he had. “How is it different?”
“It just is, okay?”
Carlos feels an inkling of fear, ice cold, dripping down his insides. What if James really does love Kendall?
James says, “I’m sorry, but…you should do it with someone you…you know. Love. I guess.”
Did you? is what Carlos wants to ask.
He keeps his mouth shut. James stalks out of the locker room, looking troubled.
“I’ll do it.” His head snaps to the right, and he sees Logan. His heart kicks up like a bass drum.
“What?” Logan shrugs, looking nervous. “Were you listening?” He nods, slow, deliberate. His eyes glitter in the dim fluorescent lighting of the locker room. Carlos asks, “How much did you hear?”
“I already knew. About Kendall. If that’s what you’re asking.” Logan shifts from foot to foot, looks away, looks back, and Carlos is caught in the goldstone color of his irises.
“Why would you-“ Carlos sucks in a deep breath “-want to do that for me?”
“If you’re so desperate that you’ll go to James, who knows where else you’ll be willing to go?”
“I’m not like you all.” Carlos waves his hands, tries to bat away the bitterness in his voice. “I wouldn’t just get it anywhere.”
“I know. So. Do it with me.” And just like that, Logan kisses him. It’s not terrible. Logan isn’t unattractive, and he’s got the general idea of how to kiss down. But. Carlos can feel his body trembling and he pulls back. Apologetically, Logan says, “I’ve, uh.” He flushes. “I’ve only done this once.”
With James, Carlos knows is the thing left unspoken. “Why are you doing this?”
“You’re my friend.”
“That’s not a good enough reason,” Carlos insists.
Logan’s eyes close. “Do you want to have sex or not?”
“You’re not exactly putting me in the mood, dude.”
“Fine. You’re doing this to get back at Kendall, right?” Logan says, and the words make Carlos cringe.
“No. I’m sick of being the only one who doesn’t know what it feels like.”
“So why don’t you do it with a girl?”
“I’m not in love with a girl,” Carlos says steadily, holding his ground. Their words echo off the metal lockers around them, and he kind of really hopes no one else is lingering. He thinks of Jesse, of the vile things he says about gay guys, and winces.
But Logan’s face softens. “Neither am I.”
“You could have James, you know. If you wanted him.”
“He doesn’t want that. He’s…” Logan waves a hand in the air, trying to convey what James is. He probably means different things than the nasty words that flit through Carlos’s head.
“Are you agreeing to fuck me because you think it will hurt Kendall if he finds out? Or James?”
For a terrible moment, Logan is silent. Carlos turns to walk away, his duffel a heavy weight on his shoulder.
“Carlos, wait. James is right. Your first time should be with someone you love. Mine was.” Logan isn’t this blushing, delicate flower now; he’s completely earnest, vulnerable. He’s a shadow of the man he’s going to become one day, and Carlos finds himself strangely intrigued by it. “I’m not…I don’t…it won’t mean as much as it should, but I love you like a brother. I’ll- we can do this. If you want to.”
“It won’t be about Kendall or James,” Carlos says stubbornly. “It has to be about us or it’s not worth anything.”
“Carlos.” Logan folds his arms around himself. “I can’t promise that. I’m lonely. And I think about him all the time.”
He doesn’t have to say which him he means.
“Me too.” Carlos says quietly. Kendall’s face flashes into his mind, eyes are the color sea glass, worn at the edges, bruised blue beneath blond lashes. Lately he’s been looking tired to the point of sickness. Because of…
Oh, fuck it. Carlos steps up into Logan’s space and says, “Okay.”
They go back to Logan’s house, and it is awkward, relearning the shape of Logan’s body without his clothes. But it’s also kind of nice. Carlos always figured that like most of the guys in town, he’d lose it to a pretty girl in the back of his dad’s car. Hiding out beneath the covers and a constellation of glow in the dark stars in Logan’s house is somehow better and worse at the same time.
Better because it’s Logan, because Carlos can brush the awkward away when he needs to, when he needs to let himself feel the way they move together instead.
Worse because he knows the how and the why of what they’re doing, and he knows that it will never happen again. It can’t, because it would be one more tragedy on top of this clusterfuck of tragic they’ve all been building, and Carlos refuses to contribute to that any more than he has to. They’ll always love each other like brothers, but anything else is impossible. Fledgling love can’t grow under the weight of Kendall and James; they are too brilliant, too beautiful, too much. They are walking, talking gorgeous catastrophes, and in their shadow Logan and Carlos spend a lot of time feeling extraneous.
That’s why it’s so tempting.
“We could…” Logan trails off, once it’s over. “We could be with each other instead.”
He tucks the comforter up under his chin, hiding his nakedness. Carlos shoves it back down and plops his head on Logan’s shoulder. Into the skin of his collarbone he mumbles, “No we couldn’t.”
“Can we pretend?” Logan asks softly. “Just for a little while?”
Carlos props himself up on one arm and says, “Okay.”
He kisses Logan’s lips and tries not to feel hollow inside.
---
13.
It is not all pain and tragedy.
There are times when Kendall and James are best friends, and there are times when they are perfect lovers and there are times when they are the epitome of domestic bliss. They bicker over remote controls and share breath while they make love and they epically fail at concocting pancakes for Katie’s birthday. They play hockey and they laugh and they check out models in magazines. They compete over silly things and they think up zany plans and they watch as they bring each other off in the hush of the night.
There are countless moments where Kendall and James are perfect for each other.
It does not negate all the moments where they are not.
Kendall puts an end to it one night in early winter, when snow is spiraling from the sky, cold white lace that’s too pretty for the misery Kendall is feeling. James comes onto him with bright red lipstick smeared on the corner of his mouth, and Kendall can’t. He’s got enough pride and enough fiery anger to find strength in the pit of his stomach, to clutch it close and tell James it’s over.
And for a while, it is. James leaves him alone, fucking with everyone in the whole wide world except for Kendall.
Then California happens.
Gustavo Rocque wants Kendall, and okay, maybe it’s a little intoxicating to be chosen by this big time record producer, a kind of affirmation Kendall’s dad has never been able to give. He’s smug about it, vindicated, somehow, and he is also pissed as hell that the guy was able to treat James like a cockroach scurrying underfoot. People who recognize Kendall’s talent are automatically beneath him somehow, and it’s the ones who do not fold like a deck of cards that he wants to win over, but this time around, he tries his damndest to win Gustavo over.
For James.
It doesn’t even matter that they’re not fucking anymore. Kendall will do anything he has to if it means James will stay close, will keep on looking at him with that mixture of wonder and adoration, like maybe Kendall actually deserves something as grand and terrifying as his friendship, his devotion.
And of course, that backfires. Kendall gets James exactly what he wants, and next thing he knows, they’re lying sweaty and naked in the back of Mr. Diamond’s SUV, all that horsepower a quiet hum beneath their bodies, legs intertwined.
Kendall swallows down James’s gasps, is pinned by the thick pressure of his dick moving inside of Kendall, forcing stars behind his eyelids. The car quakes.
Outside, powder falls in a hush; nearly March and the world is still a snowglobe.
When it’s over they are limbs and a racehorse heartbeat, one person with too many arms and legs. James rakes his fingers through Kendall’s hair, pushes his sweaty bangs from his forehead and says, “God, you’re amazing.”
“I thought you hated me.”
The sweat cools against his skin, making him shiver, and he burrows against James’s body like he can steal away his heat. James rolls his eyes, hugs him in close to his chest, one hand on the back of Kendall’s neck and the other right between his shoulder blades. “I did. And then you had to be all stupid and noble, again. How do you always end up doing that?”
“I did it for you, dude.” Kendall kisses the closest patch of James’s skin he can find, somewhere between his sternum and his pectorals. He murmurs, “I’ll do anything for you.”
James smiles then, more brilliant than anything Kendall has ever seen, and it turns his bones molten and hot, makes him want and yearn and need. He pecks James’s lips, and then again, draws him into a kiss that turns into something more, and the world is theirs; it consists solely of James and Kendall and the car and the night and the snow.
California will be good for them, Kendall thinks.
There’s nothing like a grand romantic gesture, like a cross country move and dreams surrendered to bring two people closer together.
---
14.
Carlos loves California. He wasn’t actually aware being in love with a state was something that could happen, but it does, he is, and he’s having the time of his life.
Of course, it’s exhausting, being a superstar, and sometimes he gets tired. On a muggy day near the end of spring, he convinces Kendall to take him to the beach. He tries to invite Logan and James along too, but Logan’s off dating or not dating or whatever he’s doing with Camille, and James is trying to land a modeling gig, so. It’s them. They hire a car on Rocque Records’ tab and drive straight to the coast where the air smells swampy, thick with condensation and the salty scent of low tide. Carlos can taste lightning on his tongue.
It’s not really an ideal beach day.
Kendall doesn’t seem to give a damn. He kicks off his shoes and falls back in the sand, sending a puff of it up in the air, sparkling in the dim sunlight before it settles again. “Let’s just come here every day.”
“I am totally down with that,” Carlos replies. Kendall laughs, his gaze green as aventurine. Carlos can feel the sound of it in his bones.
They build a sand castle, a fortress, really, complete with turrets and a drawbridge and a moat. It takes an hour of careful craftsmanship, and when it’s done, they stomp it under their feet, destroying all their hard work. Kendall carries Carlos on his back, crashes them both through the surf like a gallant steed, until one foul beast of a wave takes them down.
Kendall is gorgeous, shining. He glows like stained glass beneath the slate gray sky. He laughs reckless and wild and carefree, the same way he’s been laughing since Carlos first met him.
He steals Carlos’s breath away.
In that moment, with the ocean churning around them, Carlos wants to wend his hands around Kendall’s soaking wet body and kiss him. He wants to twist his fingers into the short hairs on the back of Kendall’s neck and slide their bodies slick and wet together.
He wants to see what it’s like, to have all that brilliance, all to himself.
But he can’t because Kendall is with James.
Still.
Carlos saw it himself, their first week there. He was restless, homesick, walking through the lobby with the vague idea that he’d take an illicit night swim. He just needed to stretch his muscles, and besides, pissing off Bitters has the added benefit of being fun. The moon was huge, lighting up the whole sky, making the palm trees into skeletal silhouettes.
And it turned the outline of Kendall and James in the pool, shinywetnaked clear as daylight.
Now Kendall stands in front of him, still shiny, still wet, but not Carlos’s to undress, and the idea makes him want to lash out.
That’s what no one ever tells you about love. They say not to hurry, that if you wait, things will work out. No one ever talks about how, when you love someone so much that it aches, you start to hate them. With every inch of your being, you despise them for making you hurt so bad. Even now, here, in the middle of this perfect day, love turns sour in Carlos’s stomach. It becomes a dark, bitter thing.
It makes it easy to hate the world too, until, by the end of the day, he can’t see the ocean or the sky or anything past the thin veil of despair and self-loathing that covers his eyes.
As they leave the beach he thinks, Kendall’s like a country song.
Kendall is heartbreak.
---
15.
On the fourth of July, everyone wears red white and blue, and no one gets more into all the patriotism than Kendall. It’s the one day a year he lets his pride shine through, forgives his dad for caring more about a country, about a thing, than he does about his son and daughter.
This fourth of July, Kendall fucks James behind the palms in the middle of a campfire jam. It’s fast and it’s awkward, James’s jeans shoved down around his thighs while Kendall pumps into him. They come to the soundtrack of teenagers cheering, whooping, screaming, supporting each other and their country and drowning out the symphony of moans right behind them. It’s dirty and it’s good and it’s exactly what Kendall needs.
James is exactly what Kendall needs.
California is everything that he hoped it would be for the two of them. They sing together, they joke around together, they spend practically every second within reach of each other’s fingertips. Hell, they even learn to surf together, or, well, James picks surfing up with the same ease and grace with which he takes to anything. He’s practically a pro in a week. Of course he decides that Kendall needs to try, and Kendall doesn’t exactly charm the sea into submission.
He’s frustrated, but before he starts beating his fists against the lifeguard station, James’s hands wrap around his middle, balancing Kendall on the surfboard.
“I’ll teach you,” he murmurs into the skin of Kendall’s throat. “Don’t you trust me?”
“Always," Kendall replies, sinking into his arms and the heat emanating from his chest. James nips at his earlobe, and he shivers against the lick of his tongue. Together they waste away the day, sun kissed and golden, trying to conquer the ocean, trying to melt into each other.
That night, Kendall rests his hand against James’s chest, listening to the steady rise and fall of his breath, feeling the thumpthumpthump of his heart. He can’t fall asleep, but he thinks maybe he doesn’t want to. Maybe he’d rather just do this, stay up well into the wee hours of morning, memorizing the rhythm of James’s body; the speed of his pulse and the slow tempo of his inhaleexhale. Kendall wants to exist forever in the space between each breath James takes.
He whispers into James’s shoulder, into muscle and skin, “Please, just…I trust you. Be careful.”
James makes a snuffling noise and turns his head towards Kendall, chin resting on Kendall’s hair. Kendall smiles, pulling him closer. What is he even talking about?
Of course James is going to be careful.
Or, at least, that’s what Kendall hopes. It’s not like he’s exactly given up on being so…James. One morning Kendall finds him walking around the apartment in nothing but his boxers, and he can see the red-blue of hickeys that stand out against his throat and his chest. James is still seeing people on the side, still dating girls and boys, and one time even the casting director of a commercial, and ugh.
Every time it drives Kendall to the edge, possessive jealousy coiling in his chest. But James has never done well with enclosed spaces or relationships. Kendall won’t be the one to force him into one.
He cares too much about James to try to tie him down.
Kendall hates thinking about that part of their relationship. It brings him down, down, down until he’s drowning in self-pity, wallowing, and Kendall hates wallowing. He lets Carlos drag him out to the beach that afternoon, even though the ocean unnerves him. It makes Kendall feel like he’s standing at the end of the world, right on the edge of something. He just can never figure out what.
He doesn’t let that shake him, though, messing around with Carlos in the pale light of a slate gray day. The beach is empty, but Carlos is bright, brilliant, a beacon.
Of course.
Since they were eight years old, there has always been this one constant in Kendall’s life; Carlos makes everything better. He kicks his feet through the water, the weak sunlight reflecting off his eyes. His gaze is dark as obsidian, but the smile on his lips is radiant. “I love it here, Kendall.”
“Me too,” Kendall agrees, even though he’s not so sure.
He’ll never voice that out loud. The guys, all of them, treat California like it’s the holy land. Kendall knows that he shouldn’t let other people dictate his happiness, but he doesn’t know how to live entirely on his own. He is tragically unequipped to deal with life without the buffer of James, Carlos, and Logan standing between him and the big, bad world. At least when he focuses on them, he can forget himself, the places he came from and the sadness that worms its way through every memory he has. If they like California, he’s resolved that he will too, and besides, if he says that he has doubts out loud, Carlos will look at him like he’s kicked a puppy.
Kendall can’t do that to Carlos. He can’t even think of it.
Carlos stretches, body long and golden-brown, where Kendall’s is practically the color of a sand dollar against all the Hollywood tans. Carlos splashes Kendall in the face and laughs until Kendall flicks it back, and they’re wrestling in the surf, sliding together wet and warm and rough.
Carlos is so…
Kendall shuts down the thought, the same way he’s been doing since he was eight years old. He doesn’t think about the past because the past is dumb. He’s got his best friends and a reasonable amount of success and James, James who says that he’s perfect. Usually, that’s enough to keep Kendall moving forward, to keep him from looking too closely at the fissures and the cracks that make up his life. If he lets himself stop, if he thinks about all the shadows, he’ll break down. There’s anger and hysteria that live in the back of his mind, this sullen resentment that’s existed for as long as he can remember, and whenever he’s forced to reflect on things that don’tshouldn’tcan’t matter, it builds up in his bones, toxic.
That day, that kiss; it’s one of those things he tries really hard to avoid thinking about. There are times when he thinks about what it would be like to kiss Carlos for real, teeth and tongue and saliva, tasting him, making him beg, but it’s almost an absent thought, something Kendall recognizes as an idle fantasy so far from reality it’s not even worth entertaining. There’s not even the ghost of a chance there, and besides.
He pictures James’s face, imagines him instead, and the thought of it is heat blooming inside of his chest.
When they get back to the Palmwoods, Kendall slides into James’s bed, regardless of the black and blue and red against his throat. James looks at him, all sleepy and sweet. His eyes are a kaleidoscope of green-brown-gold, changing patterns every time Kendall blinks.
He’s so fucking beautiful.
Sometimes Kendall wants to ask James why he keeps coming back. When he tries to voice the question, his mouth goes dry. His throat closes up. Instead they end up fucking, which is their go-to alternative for talking.
Kendall keeps waiting for the day that sex with James becomes routine, becomes a way to get off instead of his favorite thing to do, ever. But it never stops meaning as much as it does. It always feels important, like they are creating history between them. It’s not always perfect, and it’s not always comfortable, but he loves James so damn much that the flaws and awkwardness that occasionally arise are trivial.
Really, he loves him more and more every goddamned day.
Kendall knows it’s completely inadvisable, but it’s Kendall’s heart against his head, his common sense against the way his nerve endings come alive whenever James is around. It’s too hard to fight.
His heart beats for James.
---
16.
Kendall’s watching a hockey game, and no matter how hard Carlos tries, he can’t get his attention. He wants help on these stupid new lyrics that Gustavo had couriered over, and Logan isn’t around, and when he popped his head into James’s room there was a girl and a lot of skin and really Carlos just doesn’t want to know. And now Kendall’s ignoring him.
Carlos is frustrated and annoyed and he feels dumb. He hates feeling dumb. He’s not. He’s just got concentration problems, sometimes. Which. Whatever. Thinking about it irritates him even more. He punches Kendall in the arm, because he needs to take it out on someone, but he barely even gets a blink and a half-hearted swat in return.
Maybe that’s why Carlos gathers up the courage to ask, finally, after months and months of waiting and wondering. “What’s going on with you and James?”
He sort of figures Kendall won’t even hear it.
Kendall hears it.
The remote drops to the floor. “What?”
Slowly, Carlos repeats, “What’s going on with you and James?”
Kendall squirms. He keeps his gaze fixed attentively on the TV, a blush crawling up his neck. “I’m not really sure.”
A little bitterly, Carlos says, “Maybe if you two tried keeping your pants on and I don’t know, talking, you could work that out?”
Startled by the malice in his voice, Kendall gives Carlos his full attention.
It’s nice to know he ranks somewhere above crappy sports reporters in Kendall’s esteem.
“We talk.”
“Ooh yeah baby right there harder faster isn’t a conversation.”
Kendall’s cheeks burn red. “That’s not all we talk about.”
“Could have fooled me.”
Kendall sighs. “Look. Me and James are- we-“ He stops, and Carlos can actually see his resolve strengthen. “Just stay out of it, okay? Can you do that?”
“No!” Carlos bursts, and he’s fully mad now. “He’s got a girl in his room, right now, and you want me to butt out?” Kendall stiffens, fingers digging into the couch cushions. Carlos continues, “How are you okay with that?”
“I…it’s his business.”
Carlos doesn’t believe that for a second. Kendall may have systematically ousted Carlos from his inner circle when James came along, but he knows some things. He knows that Kendall believes in love in this dangerous, desperate way.
Because he has to.
Because if he stops, what else is there?
And Carlos thinks that’s every bit as risky as refusing to believe in love’s existence, like James pretends at so very well. Because actually, love doesn’t always conquer all.
“Look, James is my brother. You know that, right?” Carlos squeezes Kendall’s thigh. He gets a tiny shrug in return, a chin jut that’s barely even an acknowledgment. “But- he’s not worth what you’re doing to yourself. Don’t let him tear you apart.”
Kendall slumps. He gives Carlos a weak smile and says, “I’ll be careful. Promise.”
Carlos wants to believe him, but if there’s one thing he knows about Kendall by now, it’s that he thinks promises were made to be broken.
---
17.
Be kind. Be honest. Don’t lie or cheat.
These are the things that Kendall tries to hold to.
He doesn’t always succeed.
Kendall gathers the sheets around his hips and tries not to look at the empty spot in his bed, where James used to be. Waking up naked and alone is getting old.
Really.
Fucking.
Old.
It’s probably why he ends up making a mistake.
James and Carlos and Logan mean the world to him. Loyalty and trust aren’t just words to Kendall. They’re visceral, deep in his gut. And it’s a fatal flaw. He can’t help the way that every betrayal cuts at him. So when Jo Taylor comes to the Palmwoods, Kendall pursues her. Why wouldn’t he? Jo is beautiful, and she looks at Kendall like he’s the only person standing in a crowded room.
She looks at him the way Kendall wishes James would.
He knows it’s wrong. He knows his mother raised him better than this. But he also knows his mother doesn’t know what she’s talking about. She still misses his dad.
Kendall’s seen her cry, now. When she does, it is violent. It is sadness like a tidal wave, like a thing that crashes and crushes and destroys, and a sound like a funeral dirge. It makes Kendall’s heart compress in his chest. And most of all, it makes Kendall wonder, what does she know? Love hasn’t left her without scars.
Yeah, going after Jo is wrong, and yeah, Kendall is a dick for using her. He resents himself for it, and he resents Jo, a little, but most of all, he resents James for trying to win the Palmwoods’ Most Valuable Player award. When they’re alone, together, James is a love song, sweetness with a bitter twist. But when they’re apart?
Kendall is starting to hate him.
He hates the way their bodies fit and the way James owns all of his thoughts. He hates his traitor heart and the way it races at James’s proximity, and he hates the way James makes him think things are okay when they’re not. They’re not okay.
He hates the way James frustrates and challenges him, the way he makes Kendall a better person when Kendall doesn’t want to be better; he just wants to stew in the hate.
And most of all, Kendall hates what James does to Logan.
The morning Logan figures out what’s going on between Kendall and James is one of the awkwardest of Kendall’s life. But he thinks that’s the end of it, thinks that that thunderstruck night between James and Logan when they were fourteen can finally be put to rest.
Kendall prides himself on being an awesome friend, but he won’t give this up. Just once, he wants something that he can have for himself, and he thinks that finally, finally he can.
Only that’s not that end of it.
Kendall tells James, “Logan knows,” and James’s face turns ghost white. He looks terrified, in a way he’s never been around Kendall, not once.
Not ever.
That evening, James goes to talk to Logan, to sort things out.
He doesn’t come back.
Kendall doesn’t freak out. He doesn’t. Sure, he’s worried, and sure, it’s not fair. But so what if Logan has known James longer? That shouldn’t matter. It’s not like falling in love depends on proximity. There are more important things; pounding hearts and an ache as wide as the Grand Canyon in a person’s chest and-
Kendall buries his head in his hands. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t fight the feeling that he’s fucked.
Totally.
Royally.
Undeniably.
Fucked.
---
18.
Carlos is moping, feeling like a nobody. There’s been some kind of weird standoff between Kendall, James, and Logan all day, this thing he’s not a part of. This thing he doesn’t entirely understand. He’s feeling lower than low, antisocial and blue.
Other people are jagged edges. Their smiles are prickly sharp.
That’s why he hides out with Katie, losing badly at poker and wallowing in his own uselessness the second they return from the studio. He can’t take the cold war outside, and he can’t fight the feeling that something awful is going to happen. He’s not even surprised when, in the middle of kicking his ass at cards for the millionth time, Katie asks casually, “Do you know what I think is really stupid?”
“What?”
“You all love each other. You all love each other so much, and you don’t even see it.”
She won’t say anything else on the matter, won’t open up no matter how much Carlos pries.
But he agrees. The way they treat each other?
It’s so fucking stupid.
---
19.
When he finds out that Logan and James are screwing, it’s like something dies inside of him. Logan walks out of James’s bedroom clad in nothing but a pair of boxers. There is a mark on his neck, like a thumb print, and on his collarbone there is a red-blue tattoo in the shape of James’s mouth. Kendall’s fingers clench into fists, his posture titanium-rigid, a metallic taste on his tongue.
Anger punches a hole in Kendall’s heart, a gaping wound the size of an avocado pit. He says he has a pool date with Jo, even though Jo is stuck on the set of New Town High for the foreseeable future. James calls after him, sounds worried, even, but what is there to worry about?
He’s made his choice.
Kendall shouldn’t even be shocked. He’s known since he was tiny that this is what love does. It destroys you.
He tells himself it’s over, it’s over, it’s over, but then James comes to him that night. Kendall doesn’t even want to let him in, but James forces his way into the room, tells Kendall he’s sorry, says that it’s him, really, it’s only Kendall.
Only a moron would believe it.
Kendall is not a moron. But he is desperate. He wants to say I love you, wants to ask James never to leave him, but if he says those things out loud, and James leaves anyway, won’t it make him weak?
He lets James kiss him. It feels foreign, and it’s only halfway into it that Kendall realizes he tastes the way that Logan smells, like spice and pine, clean and fresh. He wants to shove James away, but he pulls him closer instead.
“Please don’t,” Kendall mumbles into his skin. “I need you, please,” and he doesn’t mean it like it sounds, like get naked, like fuck me; it’s supposed to be more.
Why can’t James ever hear the things he tries to say?
Why can’t he just listen?
James maps the contours of his body. He straddles Kendall’s hips, backwards, like he can’t even bear to look at Kendall’s face. All Kendall can see are the flex of his shoulder blades and the dip in his spine, the swell of his ass pressed up against Kendall’s navel. There’s this slick sound, and James’s arm moves, like he’s actually sitting there, touching himself, treating Kendall like furniture. But then James scoots forward and wraps his hand around Kendall’s dick, holding it up against his own.
It’s not just sex.
It’s an apology.
Kendall knows it’s time to let go, but there are two versions of him; the sweet little boy who was taught to hold onto things like magic and fairytales and impossible loyalty, and the bitter realist. Kendall will fight against the latter copy of himself until his dying breath.
That is what he thinks.
That is why he decides to keep believing in James, even though it’s the most idiotic decision he’s ever made.
Besides, isn’t suffering like, the human condition or something? Kendall’s positive he read that somewhere. He decides that he will suffer through this. What exists between him and James is static, sometimes a white noise that pulls them both in, sometimes meaningless fuzz that Kendall can’t make sense of, but through it all, Kendall decides he will perfect a smile that gives nothing away.
And it’s going really great- really spectacularly less than great, actually, because Kendall’s conscience is a chatty little thing- when Logan confronts him.
He sort of knew it was coming, saw the razor sharp glares Logan directed straight at him for weeks on end. One day Kendall accidentally uses Logan’s physics text as a coaster, and the next thing he knows, he’s got the kid up in his face, screaming. He storms into Kendall’s room, thunderclouds and brimstone. He calls Kendall names, tells him he’s reckless and stupid and doesn’t know how to respect other people’s property.
It isn’t really about the text book. They both know that.
And Kendall accepts it, because he also knows what it’s like to be hurt and alone and unhappy. He doesn’t enjoy the process, inwardly wincing through his martyr act, but he doesn’t put a stop to it, either. He lets Logan run out of steam, and then he tries to soothe him. All the while Kendall’s thinking it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay. He’s fine being the bad guy, as long as he has James.
“You’re not going to get away with this.” Logan says, at the end. “I won’t let you.”
Kendall bites the inside of his cheek, keeps himself from saying all the nasty words that bubble inside of him, slick like bile in his throat. He stares at the shiny silver doorknob of his room and wills Logan to go away, before something breaks between them that Kendall won’t be able to fix.
It’s not like he and Logan have never fought before. They’ve spent years in close quarters with too much testosterone. They bicker on a regular basis. But this is different. This matters.
Kendall feels black and blue inside.
Logan smiles at him, his incisors sharp as shark’s teeth. It is feral, not friendly. He says the first honest thing in the whole damn fight. “You don’t even deserve James. If you loved him-“
“Stop!” Kendall bursts, holds up a hand, tries to keep it from bunching into a fist. “You don’t know anything about how I feel, so just. Stop.”
“I know that you’re a dick,” Logan retorts.
It’s like he can’t see how Kendall feels this conversation like a physical blow, how every vicious word trembles through his body and pierces him like an arrow. Kendall keeps ramrod straight, tries to remember that this is one of his best friends. Carefully, he replies, “You’re reading this situation completely wrong.”
“Yeah?” Logan sneers, and he looks like he’d rather like to punch Kendall repeatedly in the mouth. He mutters, “Then why don’t you explain it to me? You’re using James.”
Kendall doesn’t know how to say that it’s the other way around, doesn’t know how to say that he would never, that sometimes James feels like the only reason he has the strength to keep his head up and keep going. It would be so easy to tell the truth, to force Logan to carry this ridiculous weight with him.
But.
That’s not fair. Kendall doesn’t want Logan’s pity, and he doesn’t want Logan to agonize over this any more than he already is. It’s not like Kendall is the only person James is fucking. He’s walked in on more than one of James’s trysts with girls and boys alike. But Kendall is the one who gets the brunt of Logan’s anger, and he accepts that.
It’s not like he doesn’t deserve it.
Kendall will take all the blame, if he has to, if it keeps everyone together. He tries to launch into an inspirational speech, one of those things he’s supposedly so fucking good at. He tries to comfort Logan.
It doesn’t work. He storms right back out of the room with all his lightning and thunder and gunmetal demeanor. Right before the door swings shut, he gives Kendall this look, this dagger glare that Kendall recognizes from countless hockey games and science fairs.
It means the competition’s on.
It means that Logan is going to try to take James away, for real.
Kendall flinches. To the empty room, he whispers, “Please don’t.”
Because Logan can.
Logan will.
And even if Kendall tries to fight, there is nothing he can do to stop it.
---
20.
Carlos senses it the second things change. Logan begins acting happier, smugger, and the line of Kendall’s shoulders turns rigid.
One day they’re at the studio, on break. Kendall is fooling around with one of Gustavo’s guitars, strumming up a song that sounds sweet, like maybe it could be something. Then Logan saunters by, pulling James by the hand, and the pretty notes change. The guitar cries beneath Kendall’s fingers, shrieks with pain, but Kendall does not. His face is stone. He begins humming, forming lyrics and channeling them into the angry song, and Carlos thinks of that time when they were kids, when he stood by Kendall’s side at the lake. Lately, he can’t fight the idea that every time Kendall wants to scream, now, he sings. That’s all he can ever do, keep singing, keep shaping every feeling, every spark of hatred and lust and love and a thousand other fleeting emotions that scramble for his attention into a song, into words that take on a life of their own.
He has nothing else.
He has no one else.
Except Carlos.
Carlos, who doesn’t let it stand this time. He says, “You need to stop whatever it is you’re doing.”
Kendall perks up, cocking his head like a dog. “Why?”
“Because James doesn’t want you.”
Kendall cringes away from the words. He folds his head into his lap, into the safety of the guitar, and says, “I know.”
“So why? Why do you keep forgiving him? It’s pathetic,” Carlos spits the word.
“You think I don’t know that?” Kendall shoves his hands through his hair, fingernails digging into his scalp. “Fuck. I don’t want this.”
“So walk away.”
“I can’t.”
“What do you mean, you can’t. Kendall, you’re the strongest person I know-“
“I’m not! I’m not strong, okay? If I was strong, I could walk away from this. But…it’s James, and I love him, and I can’t. And I know it’s pathetic, but I don’t care.” Kendall squeezes his eyes shut. “I want him, okay? For a long time now, Carlos. All I’ve wanted is him.”
Carlos feels tired. “He’s all Logan’s wanted for longer.”
“Logan gets everything,” Kendall says quietly, and it sounds like there’s some kind of history there, something that’s happened that Carlos doesn’t know about.
“So put a stop to it. You’re Kendall Knight. If you want James, you can take him.”
Kendall’s eyes crinkle at the corners, half laughter, half pain. “I could try. But what kind of friend would that make me?”
“James would get over it.”
“Logan wouldn’t. He holds a good grudge.”
Incredulous, Carlos demands, “You’re actually worried about him?”
“I hate him.” Kendall says evenly. “But. He’s my friend. Of course I’m worried about him.”
“Worry about yourself!”
“You don’t think I am?”
“I know you’re not. If you don’t hate Logan with everything you’ve got, you’re not worried about yourself.”
“How do you know that?”
Carlos doesn’t know what to say. That he hates James? It would be true.
Saying so out loud would be pretty effed up, though.
“Look. I’m sorry,” Kendall says, his voice soft. “I’m sorry that we’re fucking everything up.”
Carlos frowns. He reaches across the space between them and smacks the back of Kendall’s hand. “Don’t apologize for being in love, dumbass.”
He lets Kendall go back to his song, but inside he thinks that this is worse than he first thought.
This is how love will wreck a dynasty; piece by piece, until they are scattered in the wind.
In the end days, all that will connect the four of them is how much they despise each other.
---