[fic] Goddamned - 2/6
Title: Goddamned
Author: garnetice
Part: Two of Six
Previous Parts: 1
Word Count: 9,320 (of 51,011)
A/N: See Pt. 1 for author's notes, disclaimer, and summary!
---
Kendall’s life for the past few weeks has become a blur of walls and strange places, but now, even though Shane never expressly agreed to take Kendall to camp, the Diamond twins are a part of it.
Kendall doesn’t ask about their godly troubles, and in turn, James and Shane don’t interrogate him about his. They move pretty quickly between towns on foot, and Kendall’s never really sure if they’re ducking actual monsters or homeless vagrants with hideous fashion sense, but he follows James and Shane’s lead all the same. Whether they talk about it or not, they seem to have a handle on this whole demigod issue.
Shane is smart, like, scary smart. He knows weird factoids about the solar system and physics and the entire population of countries Kendall has never heard of.
James is fun. He is constantly rattling off songs or talking about this celebrity couple or discussing what he’s going to do when they don’t have to run anymore. (He’s going to be famous, he says, and Kendall doesn’t doubt him for a minute).
Kendall gets used to having them around, from the wake up routine where Shane forces Kendall to hunt down the nearest source of coffee before he can form real, English words, to how James sits pretty at wherever they’re calling home, primping until he’s presentable. They make their way across city line after city line, busking for cash. It’s not all that different from what Kendall’s been doing, only now, every morning, James sits cross-legged, tapping out a bongo beat on Kendall’s guitar case as he tunes up, while Shane slides from one foot to the next in a shuffle dance that displays all his nerdy glory.
The whole gig doesn’t make them much money, but it’s weirdly fun, having company.
And at night, they all fall asleep together, like puppies in a pile. When Kendall tries to think of a word for it, his mind lands on weird, strange, bizarre…but in the end, the word his brain inevitably chooses is…
Nice.
---
Kendall attempts to work up the courage to call his mom and Katie. He can’t quite bring himself to dial the number.
---
Shane forages them up some clothes at community center lost and founds. Or, he tries. He’s voted off clothing appropriation when he brings James a carebears t-shirt.
“We are not actually related,” James exclaims, horrified.
Shane actually appears to be hurt. He pouts, “Fine. Next time, you go.”
James turns to Kendall, who is pretty happy with his Rainbow Brite sweater, thank you, and sets about trying to pry it from his hands, moaning, “I thought it couldn’t get worse than plaid.”
“She defeated the King of Shadows and brought color back to Rainbow Land, okay, hey, let go, it’s mine!”
---
James decides that Kendall is a gigantic dork. Which is fine, because Kendall is a gigantic dork. Back home Katie attests to it frequently and with great volume.
Sure, he’d rather not be a gigantic dork around James, but it’s cool, it’s fine. Kendall isn’t interested in James that way anymore.
Probably.
---
They wash in public restrooms, from McDonald’s to the local YMCA. Sometimes they get to take their time, but more often than not, it’s a race against the clock.
The sight of James naked makes Kendall’s mouth go dry.
---
Of course, it shouldn’t take a month to get anywhere, but not many people are keen on hitchhikers, and making enough cash for three bus tickets is harder than Kendall thought it would be. Especially with the Diamond twins’ vices.
“Coffee. Coffee,” Shane emphasizes through a grumble, making grabby hands at Kendall.
“You know, this stuff will stunt your growth,” Kendall says, handing over the cup he bogarted from the church next to their newest squatter’s nest.
Shane makes a face, “Shut it, short stuff. Ugh, this tastes like piss.”
“Then give it back.” Kendall holds out an expectant hand.
Shane snuggles up against his cup and retorts, “No, it’s mine.”
“What’s yours? The coffee?” James rubs at his eyes, just coming into wakefulness. “Good idea. Let’s go get some more.”
“More,” Shane murmurs happily, licking the rim of his cup.
That is so not natural. Kendall makes a face. “Uh, you know your brother’s chemical addiction to caffeine is driving us straight to the poorhouse, right?”
James just smirks sleepily. That is not fair play at all.
“More,” Shane prompts into the half-full coffee cup, and Kendall sighs.
“Do we really have to? The church smells like mold. And feet.”
“Yeah, duh,” James mumbles, gaze narrow, the last remnants of sweet dreams clinging to his eyelashes. “Don’t lead me on.”
Kendall’s more flustered than he has a right to be, dragging his fingers across the denim of his filthy jeans. “I’m not leading-“
“C’mon. Why do you build me up, buttercup, baby?” James croons in his ear, passing by on the way to the door. Where he’s probably going to take a leak, so it shouldn’t make Kendall’s heart flutter in that really unbecoming, non-manly way.
“Fine, whatever, junkies.” Kendall retorts, watching the strong line of James’s shoulders. He’s just about made it to the door when Kendall notices something glittering in the corner of the room, over near Shane’s stuff. Shane’s inhaling the sensuous aroma of shitty, free coffee, and James is mostly distracted by his bladder, probably, so Kendall doesn’t exactly expect the reaction he gets when he reaches down to grab the whatever-it-is.
Gold, maybe? A tiny, gold nugget that gleams pretty in the darkness of the abandoned house.
“Ooh, shiny,” Kendall decides, about to scoop it up.
“Don’t touch that!” James and Shane yell at the exact same time.
James is standing rigid in the doorframe, while Shane has actually managed to spill half his cup all over his lap. It’s steaming hot, but he doesn’t even seem to notice. Kendal freezes, hands less than an inch away from the pretty-sparkly. His throat works over a sudden lump, clicking when he swallows.
“Uh. Why not?”
They do that thing, that twin thing, where they appear to be talking without words, and Kendall is intensely jealous of how they can communicate like that across a room. If he ever tried it with Katie, she’d probably ask if he was constipated.
“It’s, um. Okay, don’t freak out,” James says, remaining stock still, and has there ever been a good answer that started with don’t freak out? Kendall regards the gold nugget warily.
“Is it like, a demon roly poly?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Shane snaps. “It’s just, you know, cursed.”
“Cursed?” Kendall snaps up straight. “There are curses now?”
Shane sort of folds in on himself, shoulders creeping up near his ears, knees tucked into his stomach. “I guess you could say it’s my superpower?”
“Cursing people? That’s a fucking shitty superpower, man.”
“Hey.” James’s voice is harsher than Kendall has ever heard it, protective, even. Kendall cringes, because he never wanted venom like that directed his way. Not from James. “It’s not his fault.” Kendall waits, still frozen, until James continues, “It’s our dad’s.”
“James.” By contrast, Shane speaks softly. He meets Kendall’s gaze, leonine eyes that are not quite the same as his brother’s, too dark at the center, too hard, too flecked by old gold. “Cursing people isn’t- it’s called geokinesis. And it’s not our dad’s fault, exactly.”
“Is too,” James harrumphs, hand twitching over the door knob.
Kendall says, “I don’t understand.”
“Our mom, she’s…really young. You might have noticed, um. Yeah. No one was good enough for her, back in the dark ages, right? And…when she met our dad, he said he’d grant her one wish.”
“So obviously she wishes for the stupidest thing possible,” James interjects. He is rumpled and unhappy, and Kendall thinks he can see all the songs that have died on his lips.
“She asked for all the riches of the earth, ‘cause you know, diamonds are a girl’s best friend, and she was young, and her company was just getting off the ground and-“ Shane pauses, squeezing his knees together. He spares a mournful glance at his now empty coffee cup and takes a shuddering breath. “When I was born, she figured out I could do this, and it was great, at first, I guess.”
“What exactly is this?” Kendall gestures at the nugget, and Shane’s lips tick up at the corners, humorless.
“I can bring up all the riches the earth has to offer.” He is watching Kendall like he expects him to run, but Kendall has nowhere to go, and no plans to leave. “Except, there’s a catch. It’s all fucking cursed. Bad things happen to the people who touch that,” he waves a hand at the gold, and his tone turns meek. “So, so, just…don’t, okay?”
As far as requests go, it’s not exactly the hardest thing that’s ever been asked of Kendall. James is glaring at Kendall, like he’ll say no, but Kendall shrugs. “Don’t touch the cursed shiny, check.”
That’s pretty much that. James goes to take a leak, and when he comes back, they get more coffee. Kendall is sure to check the ground for suspicious earthly wealth, and he figures they’ve fallen back into this whole unspoken agreement where they don’t talk about who they are or where they came from.
It should be fine, because Kendall’s still got mixed feelings about this whole concept of gods. On the one hand, his mom said it was true, so he believes her, and there’s no reason not to, really. He’s met his fair share of monsters at this point, and who’s to say that gods aren’t next?
On the other hand, demigod or not, Kendall has never felt anything more than painfully human. As far as he knows, he doesn’t have any otherworldly anythings to deal with, and for all the joking he and Katie did, he’s glad for it.
He has to ask though. He can’t just go back to total ignorance, not when there are things like curses floating around in the world.
They’re standing in line at the church, Shane back to normal, bouncing up and down on his feet eagerly as he waits behind a lady in a flower print muumuu for coffee.
Kendall leans over to James and asks quietly, “Can I ask, who is your dad, exactly?”
James gives him a dark look, and Kendall feels like he hasn’t been forgiven yet for something he isn’t even aware he’s done. But he answers, just as quietly. “Hades.”
Hades. Like the god of the underworld, Hades.
Yeah, okay, Kendall’s life is officially fucked.
He can see James waiting for some kind of response, an exclamation of no way or a fuck this, I’m out. Instead, Kendall glances at where Shane has just knocked over an entire pile of napkins. He says, “Maybe we should wean him onto tea.”
“I heard that!”
---
It turns out James, at least, doesn’t have any powers, unless eating a ridiculous amount of pie counts. He makes them stop at every diner and fresh fruit stand across America, spending the half of their cash that isn’t devoted to Shane’s coffee habit on peach or blueberry or custard or rhubarb- rhubarb, which, “Gross man,” Kendall comments, nose wrinkling as he spits out the mouthful of pie on the damp concrete.
“You’re gross,” James retorts, but then, because he’s actually a really nice guy, he tacks on, “Okay not really, but rhubarb is delicious and I want to lick it all over.”
“That’s weird.”
“S’not weird. I’d lick you all over if you were covered in pie,” James replies happily.
No, bad, Kendall thinks at his dick, and like always it dutifully ignores him. They’re huddled at a bus station, James cradling his pie protectively and Shane sipping from a styrofoam cup, coming back with a foam mustache.
Their set for the day ended with James barging in on the end of Kendall’s thrilling rendition of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, harmonizing the hell out of the very last well that’s one thing we’ve got. He takes a bite of pie and mumbles, “Y’know, we rocked it today. Were you ever in a band, dude?”
Kendall glances up. “Nah. Music’s just…a hobby, I guess.”
James relaxes his hold on his pie plate a little to rest his hand against the neck of Kendall’s guitar. “No one who plays like you do should call it a hobby.”
Kendall isn’t sure what to say to that. His tinkering has never exactly been encouraged before, not even by his mom. He always thought it was because it reminded her too much of his dad - stepdad, whoever - but now? Kendall has no idea. And he’s never really been told he’s good at anything other than hockey, but the way James is staring at him - so open and earnest - makes Kendall think that he means it. His fingers slip over strings. They twang in protest.
James straightens, withdrawing his hand. He says, “You’re an amazing singer, too.”
“Now I know you’re fucking with me. I sound terrible.”
“If you sounded terrible, I’d say so. Tact is for cowards.” James grins, wide and toothy.
Shane apologetically inserts, “He would. He’s kind of a primadonna.”
Kendall shakes his head. “I guess it must be true then. James knows talent, right? Because he’s got it.”
James beams.
Then he promptly buries his face back in his pie.
Shane says slowly, “So do you. You have talent.”
Kendall smiles fondly at James. “Yeah, no, but…your brother is something else.”
Shane’s eyes narrow. After a pause he says, “Right. He is definitely, definitely something else.”
---
Kendall wakes up near three in the morning, judging by the track of the moon in the sky. They’re sleeping on the hard cement floor of an office building that’s still mid-construction. The night watchman isn’t super thorough in his rounds, but Kendall is certain that he’s heard a noise.
He glances around, wildly, before he feels James’s hand against his cheek. “Sorry. Did I wake you?”
“I-“ Kendall stops. “What?”
“I was humming,” James explains. “Bad habit.”
Kendall’s heartbeat slows to something manageable. “Couldn’t sleep?”
“Nah. I have dreams about motel rooms, you know. Real beds,” James makes an obscene noise.
“Motel rooms have bed bugs,” Kendall replies, because Shane’s been giving them the statistics on that for days now. It hasn’t exactly made the Motel Six they passed a town before look any less appealing.
“And you probably have fleas. Let me fantasize.”
“Okay,” Kendall agrees, hyperaware of James’s hand on his face. “You fantasize. I’ll…sleep.”
James snorts, pushing his fingers back until they tangle in Kendall’s hair. Shane makes a noise between a snort and a grunt behind them both, but it is familiar now. It is comfort. Kendall whispers, “What were you humming, anyway?”
James nuzzles in close, his eyes luminous, all black and gold. He says, “Something old,” and it is old, it is ancient, it is a song that Kendall remembers from his grandmother’s collection, back before she passed away. James hums the half remembered melody of Moonlight Serenade, and Kendall drifts off, off, off, back into his dreams.
---
Shane asks Kendall point blank who his godly parent is.
“Oh, uh, I don’t know.” Kendall is embarrassed to admit it out loud. The only answer that pops into his head is Triton, King of the Sea, and that would probably involve confessing how many times he’s actually seen The Little Mermaid.
Plus it brings up memories of Katie snickering at her own merman jokes. It’s been nearly seven weeks since he left home, and he misses her and his mom like crazy.
“You don’t know? I thought you said your mom told you about this whole demigod thing,” James inserts, because Kendall had managed to slip that much into conversation at one point or another.
“She did.”
Shane scowls. “And…you didn’t ask?”
“When you put it that way, it sounds dumb of me,” Kendall objects. He thinks about calling his mom for the eight zillionth time, but then for the eight kajillionth time he remembers that he is for all intents and purposes a runaway. Bad idea.
He’ll call her when he gets to Camp Half-Blood. That is the plan. He is going to stick to it, damnit.
James shoves a plate in Shane’s face, distracting him from whatever mean thing he was about to say. “Try a piece of this.”
Shane does, obediently, allowing his brother to shovel it in his mouth.
He immediately coughs and splutters, clutching at his lungs like it might help. “That is vile and toxic and why would you poison yourself like that?”
“I think it’s yummy.”
“Yummy? That is blasphemy to everything coffee flavored ever, that’s what it is, how could you? Traitor to your bloodline! Traitor!”
Kendall devolves into a fit of laughter when Shane futilely attempts to tackle James and his coffee cake straight to the ground, all flailing limbs and a bright, light thing that spreads through his chest.
He misses Katie and his mom, sure, but this is good too.
---
There’s a lull in their mostly undecided set, while James flirts with the music enthusiast who dropped them a whole five bucks.
Kendall uses the words music enthusiast lightly, because the girl obviously could care less about their thrilling rendition of Wonderwall. It isn’t exactly a surprise when she’s completely, one hundred percent focused on James.
James is…well. Exactly the same as Kendall remembers.
Which doesn’t mean anything.
Just because he harbored a stunningly massive, impressively ill-advised crush on the boy a few years back doesn’t mean that he’s going to leap into his arms now. That would be dumb, and ruin things, and Kendall doesn’t want to ruin this.
He likes James. As a friend-type-person. He even sort of likes Shane, too. And it’s awesome, because Kendall’s never had friends he instantly clicked with before. He’s never had friends that felt like family.
So really, Kendall doesn’t even mind that they haven’t made it to Camp Half-Blood yet, because he’s got them both, and there’s a kind of freedom on the road that he’s never had before, every broken white line on the asphalt a new frontier. He can maybe put up with this whole partial god thing if it’s going to be like this.
Shane stands awkwardly off to the side, nursing a froufy latte while Kendall tries to master a chord he keeps fucking up - it has nothing to do with James’s flirting, mind you, it fucking doesn’t okay- and eventually the awkward just gets to be too much.
“He is so obnoxiously charming,” Kendall confides, glaring at the twenty something who is peering coyly through her eyelashes at his friend.
Shane nods his agreement, expression wistful. “I have no idea how he does it. The only things I know how to sweet talk are computers.”
The confession catches Kendall a little off guard, because while Shane hasn’t been cold, he hasn’t exactly been especially chatty either. It’s almost like Shane is warming to him.
Kind of. He can dream.
“I hear geeks are going to inherit the earth,” Kendall says consolingly.
“Maybe. The last girl I dated said I spent more time with my motherboard than with her. Girls are weird.”
“So weird,” Kendall agrees.
There’s a comfortable silence punctuated by James’s admirer’s twittering laughter and James’s sleazeball lines. Kendall figures this is about as close as he and Shane are ever going to get; bonded by their mutual lack of understanding of the fairer sex.
---
Late one evening, just east of Ohio, James drags Kendall on a walk.
“For exercise,” he explains cheerfully, and it’s easy for him to say, with his rippling muscles and washboard abs and lickable everything.
“I feel like we get enough exercise,” Kendall protests, because they really do. Just yesterday, they had a rough and tumble game of ultimate flying disk that ended up with Shane’s nose bleeding profusely and everywhere, and the day before that, Kendall totally spent a good half hour of his day battling off a monster that vaguely resembled an amorphous jellyfish.
Or Scarlett Johansson, in some lights.
…Gerard Butler in others.
There’s also the thing where they’re runaways. It’s in the freaking name. Run-away. So yeah, see, Kendall gets plenty of exercise, and totally resents the implication that he’s growing pudge.
James ignores his sulking, guiding Kendall by the crook of his elbow down empty suburban streets. The leaves lift their faces to the sky, and James points and says, “That means a storm’s coming.”
“How do you know that?”
James lifts one shoulder in the air, trying for nonchalant but mostly succeeding in miserable. “When your uncle is master and controller of lightning and basically despises your existence, you learn to spot the signs.”
“Uncle? Oh. Right. Uh. Zeus, yeah?”
James’s lips twist. “The one and only.”
“Cool. I guess. Have you met him?”
“Nah. He’s not a big fan of his nephews and nieces. I think he tried to hit me with lightning once.” James glares up at the sky and tells it, “Thanks for that.”
Kendall’s not sure how to respond. “Wait, you mean they can actually, like, control the weather?”
“They’re gods, Kendall. They control all kinds of things.”
Kendall wonders if he’s been thinking about this god thing too abstractly. In theory, yeah, he gets that Shane and James are Hades’ kids, but outside Shane’s sparkly curse, he doesn’t really know what that means.
“Um. James?”
“This is going to be an awkward personal question, isn’t it?” James asks, scuffing his sneakers against the sidewalk. He’s giving Kendall these serious eyes that are more suited to Shane.
“Maybe. Do you ever…see…your dad?”
“I’ve met him. Once.” His face shutters completely. “He can go fuck himself.”
“I see you feel strongly about this, okay, I’ll shut up.” Kendall curses himself, because James probably hates him now and, and, gods, when did he get this insecure? Throw six feet of blazing hot studmuffin at him and he turns into a total child.
James grunts caveman-style. “No, it’s- it’s fine.”
It sounds anything but fine. Kendall keeps his mouth firmly shut.
James says, “I hate my dad, but I’m not like Shane. It doesn’t mean I don’t want anything to do with Olympus.”
Tentatively, Kendall asks, “Are they all bad? The gods?”
“Every demigod I’ve ever met says that their parents treat them like chattel, and every single one of them accepts it because they want them to be proud.” The wind picks up, whipping James’s hair across his eyes. “I get it. They’re our parents. We can’t help it. But Shane and I don’t want to live like that.” James spares Kendall a rueful smile, all lip and no pearly white teeth. “It’s enough trouble trying to impress my mom. Or it was.”
“Do you miss her?”
“All the time. We’d be home if it weren’t for the monsters. They never let up.” James stares at the cracks in the concrete, deftly avoiding each in an attempt not to break his mother’s back. “I hate putting people in danger. It was better when I didn’t know, and I could just play hockey, fool around…hanging out with you.”
“We didn’t hang out that often,” Kendall replies.
Firmly, James answers, “We should have hung out more.”
Kendall flexes his fingers and tries not to let it get to him. James has a silver tongue. He knows exactly what to say to make a person fold into the palm of his hand. It’s part charm, part manipulation, and who even knows how much of it is truth? Kendall thinks James is real with him. His instincts say that he is, but.
Better not to hope.
“What are you going to do when we get to Camp Half-Blood?”
James’s mouth gapes open, stunned.
“I don’t know,” he admits awkwardly.
The wind howls. Kendall can’t think up anything nice to say. “Chattel. That’s a big word. I’m impressed.”
“Shut up. Doofus.” James slings an arm around Kendall’s shoulders and they keep on walking. “You’re mean.”
“Your face is mean,” Kendall retorts, because this, banter, is easy.
“No, my face is pouty because you’re mean.” James squeezes him closer, and even when the storm hits, big fat drops of rain that splat across the bridge of their noses, he doesn’t withdraw his hand.
---
James is eternally unhappy with their set list because James wants to have more solo parts.
Which Kendall is actually fine with, because he wasn’t kidding around when he said his voice sucked like a Dyson vacuum, but what James seems to keep forgetting is that their set list is less a set list and more a list of songs that Kendall has taught himself on the guitar. He’s open to diversity and everything, but without a computer or a cellphone or access to the whole wide world of the internet, he’s basically learning everything by ear. It just so happens that James hates all the songs he’s learning.
“There’s a solution here,” James announces one day, in the midst of dissecting a pumpkin pie. His smile is a thief. It steals Kendall’s breath away.
“Yeah, we could break all the coffee machines in town, but that would probably hurt us in the long run,” Kendall replies, thinking James is referring to the pile of Shane on the counter in the corner, drooling pathetically at the waitress with her carafe of caffeine.
Kendall almost can’t blame him; he’s developing an unhealthy coffee addiction of his very own. He’s trying to cut back, but it’s hard. Kendall focuses on his French toast, sopping with maple syrup, and there’s comfort there. French toast has pretty much tasted the same at every diner across America. Come to think of it, most of the diners have looked the same too, with faded beige paint and linoleum counters and this whole fifties chic thing that actually is not chic at all. Even the clientele is familiar, from the college kids to the old timers that frequent the same booths like a favored barstool.
“Not that,” James directs Kendall’s attention back to his pretty face, and for a second Kendall thinks that James is watching him with hungry eyes.
That can’t be right. He chocks it up to his own reflection, swimming against the black sea of James’s pupils.
“We should write some songs,” James continues, and Kendall chokes on his toast. “Give me your hand.”
James is brandishing a black felt-tip pen. Where the hell did he get that? He twirls it in the air, slumping back against the booth, and he is inelegant, sloppy, splayed legs and mussed hair, and these are the things that make him so very dear.
Kendall hides his hands beneath his thighs. “What? No.”
“Hey, I’m trying to be a serious song writer, here,” James says. He catches hold of Kendall’s upper arm, tugging it forward until he’s freed a hand, and then begins to scrawl what must be lyrics across Kendall’s skin.
It tickles.
“What are you doing?” Shane asks, settling down beside Kendall with three cups of fresh coffee.
“Song writing. Apparently,” Kendall deadpans.
“Oh. Yeah, James is good at that. If he were ever going to market a talent, it would have to be that one.”
Without looking up, James says, “That’s Shane’s condescending way of saying I’m too stupid for anything else.”
“I am not.” Shane objects mildly. “Sure, no one ever calls song writers smart, but they have such a huge impact on our lives. A physical product is better than a metaphysical one, or at least it’s easier to justify paying for in cold, hard cash. Still, I don’t think it means that one is less than another. William Gilbert and Jimi Hendrix are both heroes, in their own way.”
James actually blushes. “Well. Um.” He lifts his eyes to Kendall, rather than acknowledge Shane’s intensity. “That was a good speech. …He likes being the smartest person in the room.”
Shane shakes his head. “You’re wrong, James. There’s always someone smarter in the room. Unless it’s this room.” He grins at the both of them.
Before they leave the diner, Kendall tries to decipher what James has written on his arm. He can only translate one line. “You like my…dimples?”
James beams brighter than the sun. “Yep.” He hops to his feet with easy grace. “Shane’s beating us out the door, we better go make sure he doesn’t drown in his Kona blend.”
Kendall stares blindly down at his own skin and wonders what it means.
---
The problem with James comes down to one word.
Girls.
Girls look at him with this glow in their eyes, something caught between adoration and desperation, and Kendall would be lying if he said he didn’t recognize the expression from his own reflection. Naked want was easier to deal with when he didn’t know James so well, when he didn’t spend nights tucked into the curve of his body and days harmonizing on love songs. It’s hard to stay objective when James insists upon filling all the space at Kendall’s side, chasing away his guilt and shame and the loneliness caused by the conspicuous absence of his family.
Okay, so yeah. He’s fucked. Don’t rub it in.
The point is, it kind of sucks when James actually manages to land a date, despite looking like he’s come off the cast of Lost.
It’s a Saturday night, and Shane is trying to distract Kendall by teaching him how to hotwire a car. Useful life skill, right there.
“And why do you know how to do this?”
“Ah-ah-ah, I never give away my trade secrets.” Shane smiles broadly. Then, “James loved that hockey team, you know. Said it was the best thing mom ever did for him.”
Kendall thinks there’s a deeper meaning, here, so he goes for the shallowest interpretation. “Did they not get along?”
“Are you kidding me? Peas in a pod.” Shane allows himself a small smile. “I was the one who was constantly fighting with her, constantly getting in trouble. Mom spoiled James…okay, she spoiled both of us, if I’m being honest, but James is the baby. She coddled him to death. No pun intended.” Shane winces, kicking a pretty decently sized ruby away from his shoe. “But I think it kind of backfired. James thought he could have the whole entire world, and mom wanted him to stay in Minnesota and run her company. That’s where things got tricky.”
“But what about you?”
“Me?” Shane’s hands fumble over wires. “I was the smart one. I was supposed to go out, spend my talent in the world while James held the fort back home. Only I didn’t want that either. I liked home. Home is safe.” He stares at the ruby out of the corner of his eye. “And that was the problem. Mom said my talent would be wasted on the company, but we all knew the company would be wasted on James. He’s got a different skillset, and different dreams, and I didn’t have any dreams at all. Mom was going gray. Not that you could see it under all that hair dye. I think it was a relief when coach attacked James, when we found out the truth, for all three of us. No more expectations.”
“Wait, coach attacked him?” Kendall asks, outraged, because hey, coach never lifted a finger towards Kendall.
“You must not have grown into your scent yet,” Shane says by way of explanation, and of course he knows exactly what Kendall is asking.
But he doesn’t know what Kendall’s next question is. Kendall isn’t even sure if he’s allowed to ask it, but he’s never been much for inhibitions. “What do you think Hades- uh, your dad- saw in her?”
“Mom? Oh, plenty.” Shane grins. “He probably saw her inner demoness. Evil recognizes evil.” He lets out a laugh, but then softens. “James says it’s because she likes to keep things pretty. Forever. I guess that’s what makeup is about.”
Kendall mulls that over, the atmosphere thick and uncomfortable between him and Shane. Maybe that’s why Shane says, “We could just…drive to Long Island,” his hands still up in the foot well of someone else’s car.
“No we can’t,” Kendall replies automatically, because stealing is a line he isn’t ever willing to cross. His mom would be so proud.
You know, if he called her and told her. He swallows down around bile.
Shane nods appreciatively, like Kendall’s just passed a test he didn’t know he was taking. “No. We can’t.”
---
Later, they manage to confiscate a half empty bottle of vodka from a house party they aren’t actually invited to. It’s not stealing, because some kid they’ve never met before shoves it in their hands as they walk by the lawn and yells, “Shots! Shots for everyone.”
Kendall and Shane just decide to take their shots back to their current nest and get rip-roaringly drunk on their own.
Shane is a very pouty drunk. “Everyone likes James best.”
“Of course everyone likes James. Have you seen his abs? I want to pour chocolate sauce across his stomach and lick it off,” Kendall replies, totally free of, you know, shame. His head is balanced on Shane’s lap, because he’s had so much that it’s getting hard for his neck to support its weight.
“That’s a visual. You’ve made me slightly ill, thanks.”
“No, no, no,” Kendall circles a finger in the air. “You know why girls don’t like you as much as James?”
“Because I don’t go to the gym often enough, clearly.”
“That not it,” Kendall insists. “Confidence.” He’s got this whole speech prepared about why Shane needs to be more confident in himself, but what comes out is, “Shane, I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, but I have wet dreams about offering myself up to your brother on a silver platter.”
“Right, that doesn’t make me uncomfortable at all,” Shane replies dryly, patting Kendall on the head. He sounds less drunk than Kendall. No fair. “You should go to sleep.”
“Don’t wanna.” Kendall kicks out, foot connecting with a sapphire the size of his fist. It skitters across the floor before coming to rest against a wall. Shane makes a displeased noise and Kendall pouts. “Ow. Shiny hurts.”
Shane murmurs his agreement. They sit in comfortable silence for a while, until he brings himself to say, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m glad James has no powers.”
“You and me both,” Shane agrees, nudging a hunk of silver away with the toe of his sneaker. “You know, if you came onto him, he probably wouldn’t say no.”
“Can’t. It’s a hockey commandment,” Kendall replies, a wee bit petulantly.
“What, thou shalt not get naked around a teammate?”
“Was thinking more along the lines of thou shalt not cop a feel, but yeah, that probably applies.”
“Breaking news, genius, you’re not teammates anymore. You’re not even on a hockey team. So, you know, tap that.”
“This conversation grows exceedingly uncomfortable for me with every passing second. Did you actually just tell me to tap your brother’s ass?”
“How do you think I feel? I don’t usually have to talk people into James’s pants, you know. He’ll go for you. James’s sexuality is, uh, fluid.”
Kendall squints up at him. His face swims back and forth between sharpness and blurriness. “Meaning?”
“Meaning you have a chance, if you want it.”
“Really? That’s your pep talk? Have at my brother because he’s not picky?” Kendall quirks an eyebrow, and Shane doesn’t look even marginally ashamed. “No wonder your mom didn’t sign you up for hockey. The grandeur would have been completely lost on you.”
“The head trauma, you mean?” Shane raps his knuckles against Kendall’s skull. “Sure you’re not part Cyclops?”
Kendall would reply, really, he would, except he’s sort of fallen asleep pillowed against Shane’s thigh.
In his dreams, he pretends it’s James’s.
---
James’s date does not go well.
“Girls only like me for my body,” James complains. “Which, don’t get me wrong, is spectacular, but I’m more than a pretty face.”
“Since when?” Shane demands. Kendall elbows him in the stomach, because James has his solemn face on, and it’s a pretty slippery slope from solemn to outright bitchy, so why not let him talk before it comes to that?
James’s bitchy voice is loud, besides, and Kendall’s head hurts.
“My life is tragic,” James replies, glaring at Shane instead of actually explaining.
“Oh, yeah, easy for you to say. People want to lick chocolate sauce off your abs.”
James appears to be entirely unsurprised by this information.
Kendall, on the other hand, is never telling Shane anything ever again. The back of his neck burns sunset colors, embarrassment heating the tips of his fingers and the curl of his toes.
“Traitor,” he hisses.
Shane simply mouths, tap that.
---
What Shane doesn’t know, because Kendall didn’t say it, is that he doesn’t just want to have sex with James. What he wants, what he really wants, scares the living daylights out of him, and there are days when he has to go spend time on his own, desperately, to get away from it.
He never can get away from it for long. James keeps sucking him right back in.
---
“Not to sound overly paranoid or anything-“ Kendall breaks off as James starts belting out Flagpole Sitta, only deigning to cut him off once he’s gotten the, I’m not sick but I’m not well part out of the way, and Shane has added in a helpful, You certainly aren’t well. “Right, lovely rendition, James, but, uh, there’s a giant bird following us.”
Indeed, there is. The bird thing circles overhead, beak gleaming mean in the sun. It could just be a really big freaking hawk, but…
“What are the odds that it’s not a monster?” Kendall asks, deferring to the Diamond twins’ experience.
“Probably about the same as Shane ever getting laid,” James deadpans, supremely unconcerned.
“Hey, you don’t know that. I’ve done serious research on girls,” Shane objects.
“He means listening to a lot of Taylor Swift.”
“Serious. Research,” Shane emphasizes. His glare could cut skin, probably.
“Learned anything?” James crosses his arms.
“Sure. They, uh, they seem to like kissing in the rain?”
“Taylor Swift,” James mouths at Kendall.
Kendall would probably find it funny, except, “You know, you two might be co-presidents of the Junior Monster Hunters’ League, but I have very real concerns here. If a big gold bird eats my eyeballs, I won’t be able to see. I like being able to see.”
James starts, “Dude, did you ever see that video of that Korean chick eating her own eyeball-“
“I fail to see how that’s relevant,” Kendall interjects prissily, even though he did see it, and it was awesome. Also seriously gross, but mostly awesome.
“You used to be fun.” James turns to Shane. “Remember the good old days when Kendall was fun?”
Primly, Shane replies, “Sorry, no, I must have been too busy listening to Taylor Swift.”
James does a great job of completely ignoring that and finally focuses on Kendall. “Yeah, so, it’s probably a monster. Don’t worry. This happens a lot.”
“Really? You’re regularly stalked by furry woodland creatures?”
Shane rolls his eyes. “Welcome to life as a demigod.”
James adds, “Kind of makes you wish your dad kept it in his pants, doesn’t it?”
Kendall very much does not want to think about what is or isn’t in his dad’s pants. He turns the exact same shade of green as his eyes, mouth falling open.
“Don’t be such a prude, Knight,” Shane nudges him, apparently over his addiction to Speak Now. “We’ve got incoming.”
Kendall actually doesn’t need the warning. He’s too busy avoiding what appear to be feathers, raining down over his head like arrows. One slices cleanly through the soft flesh of his inner arm, blood pricking to the surface of his skin much, much too quickly.
“Ow, ow, ow,” Shane is hissing through his teeth, dodging left and right and clutching his knee in this odd little dance.
“Would you stop acting like such a baby for five seconds and focus on the larger picture? Giant eyeball pecking birds!” James flaps his arms frantically in imitation, mostly in an attempt to fend off the thing.
“See, that’s what I’ve been saying!” Kendall protests.
The bird is mean looking, beak glinting metallic in the light, and when James tries to hit it with the meat cleaver of a sword he keeps in his backpack for special occasions - one day Kendall will remember to ask him where he got that thing - it does absolutely nothing.
Kendall goes after it with his guitar case, swatting at the bird ineffectually. It’s pretty intent on all of James’s fleshy bits. Shane starts like, throwing things at it, and if the monsters are going to be so damn vicious Kendall thinks maybe they should start weapons training or take a jujitsu class or something, because Shane’s aim sucks and Kendall’s well placed hits obviously pack little to no punch.
“What. Is. It?” He demands, kicking out at it with one of his Vans.
“That’s your question?” Shane huffs, his breath hard and heavy. He hefts an emerald the size of Kendall’s head, and Kendall’s first thought is where did he? quickly followed by cursed treasure, right, with oh shit, duck at its heels. “How should I know?”
“Little busy here, guys,” James warns, swinging leftrightleft, and Kendall has to jump away to avoid pointy iron.
He pants, “If we knew what it was, maybe it would go away!”
The ball of bronze Shane throws at the bird nearly hits Kendall in the shoulder hard. “Oops. Not a dictionary for monsters, you know.”
“Ack, can you guys shut-“ The knife-sword thing in James’s hand continues to be useless, and when he flails backwards, the bird’s wing hits Kendall right in the stomach.
It’s a big freaking bird, but it’s not a giant, and it shouldn’t be able to knock him off his feet.
But it does.
Kendall’s guitar case hits the ground in a cacophony of noise, strings jarring, sound echoing loudly through the sound hole, Kendall landing right on top of it. And the bird…cringes.
Kendall doesn’t have to be told twice. He unbuckles the sides of the case and takes out the guitar, slamming his hands on the strings, but it’s not even close to loud enough. Shane and James, though, they pick up on the whole theme of noise. Shane gets to put his smartypants street thug cred to use, picking the locks on car doors and fixing them up, which at first Kendall doesn’t get, because hi, James is still in trouble here.
Then the first car radio starts blaring into the open air, and shit, this will attract the neighbors pretty quick, but Kendall runs to help out.
It takes the sound of fifteen car stereos and Kendall nearly breaking the neck of his guitar to scare the bird away. James has cuts all over his body, bleeding shallowly all over the concrete, and people are starting to crowd the streets, cellphones out. They’re calling the police, Kendall knows, but he’s a little distracted, because…There is light.
Everywhere.
“What the hell is that?” Kendall frowns at the green, glowy symbol floating over his head, batting at it with his fingers like that might drive it away.
“You’ve been claimed,” Shane says in the same reverent voice he uses when describing the mating habits of Komodo Dragons or whatever; Kendall tunes out at all things scaly.
“By what?” He pokes the symbol, watching it swallow his finger in a puff of emerald. “Am I Sailor Moon?”
Shane makes a strangled noise of protest, but James, clutching a particularly bad cut on his stomach, says lightly, “You’d look good in a tiara. And you have the legs for that whole school girl thing.”
“Did you just say I have girl legs?”
“I think I said I’d like to see your legs wrapped around m-“
“Gods, save the foreplay for later, you idiots. Kendall, that symbol belongs to your father.”
Kendall wants to care. He does. Honestly.
Only, did James actually just legitimately hit on him?
He thinks about asking, except Shane might murder him, and he’s had more than enough violence for the day. Oh and also James is possibly bleeding out. Kendall scratches the side of his chin and says doubtfully, “It’s…a fork? Does that mean he likes to eat? Are there Sunday brunch buffets in my future? Those usually have good spare ribs.”
Shane opens his mouth to answer, but James teeters on his feet. He splutters, “Hey, we’re cousins!”
“Great,” Kendall replies automatically, glancing at the growing crowd around them. He can hear sirens in the distance. He thought he was used to fear by now, but it is uncomfortable, it clings to his skin like wet clothes he can’t wait to shake.
Shane snorts knowingly. “Oh, don’t worry, we were already related somehow, no matter what. The gods love keeping it in the family, but dude, better than being half-brothers.”
“Gross and grosser.” A very large man is walking towards them. Kendall squeaks, “Never mind, who cares? We need to get James to the hospital. Now.”
---
Fifteen stitches and some really uncomfortable questions from medical professionals later, Shane turns to him and says, “It wasn’t a fork.”
And that’s how Kendall finds out his father is Poseidon.
Guess he wasn’t so far off with the King Triton jokes after all.
---
“Kendall, meet Riptide. Riptide, meet Kendall.” James grins like he’s just delivered the greatest birthday gift ever.
Kendall stares down at it. As far as gifts go, he is not impressed. “Oh. A pen. To write with. Because literacy is fun.”
“Uncap it.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be bedridden?” Kendall asks, pointedly staring at the bandages concealed by his tee.
“Uncap the pen,” James replies breezily. Obediently, Kendall does as he’s told.
Admittedly, he’s not actually expecting anything to happen. The sword that pops out is kind of a surprise.
“Uh. This is a neat magic trick.”
James grins again, bright as the sun. “Cool, isn’t it?”
“Where’d you get Excalibur?” Kendall asks, examining the shaft of the sword. “Wait, not from Shane, right?”
“Har-de-har,” Shane drawls, examining his cuticles in the corner of the room. “We traveled halfway across America with you just so you could touch a cursed weapon. Surprise.”
“I’m interpreting that as sarcasm,” Kendall informs him, even though Shane’s voice is completely flat. He’s been pissy ever since James got attacked. Despite pretenses, Shane is actually a very, very good big brother. “James, sit down before you pull a stitch.”
James, by contrast, is kind of an awful little brother. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You were bird food like, yesterday, and now you’re giving away family heirlooms-“
James sets his hands firmly on his hips, exactly like the sulky toddler he is. “Riptide is not an heirloom. We got it from that guy. With the thing.”
“That’s informative,” Kendall comments idly, swinging the sword slowly through the air. It whistles and hums in his hands, singing to the world that it belongs there.
It totally does not belong in his hand. He doesn’t even know what to do with a sword, even if he has been brandishing a hockey stick like one for the better part of his life.
James says practically, “Dude, it’s yours. It’s been with Poseidon’s kids for like, ever.”
Kendall takes note of the word kids. He has brothers. And cousins, apparently. And a whole family that is not a family, and is it weird if he’s still hot for James? How incestuous is incest if the blood you share is godly?
“Don’t you need a sword?” Kendall refrains from commenting on the efficacy of the one James has been using, because sometimes, late at night, Kendall thinks James takes it out and talks to it. That or he’s been dreaming James having chats with inanimate things, going, good little hellraiser. You are such a good boy.
“Nah, that’s celestial bronze.” James shows some teeth. “My sword is stygian iron.”
“And also a present from daddy dearest,” Shane deadpans. He tells Kendall, “Neither will have any effect on mortals, but they’re awesome for monsters.”
“You got that thing from your da- I mean, um. Uncle Hades?” Kendall asks meekly. It tastes like sand in his mouth.
Shane makes a noise, put off by being ignored. James goes all Bambi-eyed and mournful. “You don’t have to call him that. In fact, please don’t. We’re not like, relatedrelated.”
“Oh, that made sense,” Shane informs him, a little mean, now. He hasn’t had coffee in a full eight hours. It’s obviously getting to him.
“What’s wrong with being related to me?” Kendall jokes. He caps Riptide, which immediately shrinks back down to pen-sized. “I’ll try really hard not to bring anyone embarrassing to family dinner.”
“Kendall,” James says sharply. “I mean it. Don’t. It’s not a big deal. To me.”
“I’m…confused,” Kendall admits, because he knows why he finds it disheartening to hear that their fathers are bros. He has no idea why James would.
“I’m trying to tell you.” James bunches his fingers in his jeans, watches the glow of Riptide in Kendall’s hands and worries over his lower lip with his teeth. “We’re not family. I mean, we’re family, but not family. Not in a way that matters.”
James is actually starting to hurt his feelings. Kendall frowns. Shane makes a noise somewhere between frustrated and disgusted. “I want you to both to know that you’re idiots.”
“No,” James insists, voice catching. He has the needy, frantic expression of a drowning man. “I need you to understand. This. It doesn’t change-“
Kendall can’t take that look on his face. He promises steadily, “James. I get it. It doesn’t change anything.”
“But wait, it gets gayer,” Shane mutters. “Do you guys want the room?
“Problem, Big Brother?” James rounds on him. He tells Kendall, “Shane hates public displays of affection, emotion, and condensation. He is a robot.”
Kendall snorts, bemused. He doesn’t get how what just happened had anything to do with affection, but it doesn’t matter. James is smiling. James is alive.
All’s right with the world.
“Condensation-“ Shane squawks, gearing up to deliver a vocabulary lesson that no one is interested in hearing. James counteracts this by enveloping his brother in a bone-crushing bear hug, which makes Shane wriggle and squirm like a captured puppy. “No, stop, no hugging, James! You’re going to pull your stitches!”
---
Apparently, mortals never notice all the monster fighting with shiny, dangerous weapons because of something called the Mist. Kendall is sorely out of touch with his heritage; he thought he’d avoided getting arrested so far because he is constructed of fantastic. According to Shane, this is not the case.
“The Mist makes mortals see something different than what we see,” he explains with the boring monotone of every teacher Kendall has had in the history of ever. “Instead of a swordfight, they might see a watergun fight-“
“-or a real gun fight,” James adds helpfully.
“-or, I don’t even know, circus clowns.”
“Circus clowns? The cover-our-supernatural-butts fog can’t do any better than circus clowns?” Kendall asks dubiously.
“Clowns are creepy,” James says. “They carry knives.”
“Look, when you’re on the wire, you better hope people are seeing squeaky red noses over a real live sword, or worse. It’s easier for the monsters to eat you in jail.”
“That’s never happened. Tell me that’s never happened to a demigod.”
Shane gives him a dark look.
---
Kendall wakes up in the middle of the night to hands against the jut of his hipbones and James whispering, “Kendall. Kendall. Kendall?”
“Nngha- monsters?” Is Kendall’s eloquent answer. He thrashes around in the sleeping bag, nearly getting Shane right in the face with a misplaced elbow.
“No.” James calms him with a touch, holds his hips down and inquires, “Did you mean what you said? That this doesn’t change anything?”
Kendall blinks. “James. I don’t know that there’s anything to change.”
“But there could be,” James objects, peering up at Kendall through black eyelashes. His eyes are luminescent in the dark.
“What do you mean?”
James shifts closer, and his body is a livewire; he turns Kendall’s veins to powerlines. He hums through his blood, electrifies his bones, and Kendall thinks oh, he is so damn dangerous.
He murmurs, “I could kiss you. That would change things.”
Kendall mouth drops open, a quick inhalation that tells more than anything he could possibly say. He needs words anyway, searches for the right ones and finds himself lacking.
Kendall trembles on the cusp of honor and darkness, where his instincts tell him to take no prisoners, but his upbringing tells him to be irrevocably kind. Shakily, he agrees, “You could kiss me.”
James’s fingers tighten against Kendall’s hipbones, his breathing labored.
He does not kiss Kendall.
---
The day everything changes, they can’t find Shane.
At first, neither Kendall nor James is worried. Mostly because they’re both sleeping, huddled into each other’s warmth with a threadbare blanket stretched between them. Kendall comes into reality with James’s leg a heavy weight across his hip, their fronts pressed together and an ache in his cock. He shifts, James’s arm sliding down the ladder of his ribcage, and James’s eyelashes flutter.
“Mm, stop moving,” he croaks, the order less than authoritative for the rasp in his throat.
“It’s morning.”
It’s not actually, not anymore; the sun has climbed high in the sky, and Kendall’s well rested enough that if he had to guess, he’d say it was around noon. Which is great, but weird. Great because he is not at all a morning person, and weird because Shane, who is, usually kicks them both awake, begging for coffee.
“Morning sucks.”
Kendall bites down on a smile. Shane probably went out for coffee, he thinks, and doesn’t that sound like a good idea? Warm, yummy, delicious coffee? “We should get up.”
James burrows his head deep into the old t-shirt he’s using as a pillow. “Getting up sucks.”
“C’mon,” Kendall coaxes. “We’ve got so much of Pennsylvania to see. There’s like, Amish people and stuff.”
Before James can say something rude about the Amish, Kendall sniffs himself. “Guess what? We smell.”
“Like man musk and peach pie?” James asks of his pillow.
Kendall smiles fondly. “I don’t know, where does one draw the line between musky and unwashed?”
In a huge concession to wakefulness, James deigns to lift the collar of his own shirt, inhaling deep. “Ah. Yeah. Sponge baths at Starbucks?”
“You always proposition me so nicely.”
James lifts his head. Afternoon light dances across the bridge of his nose, his eyes sparking. “When I proposition you, you’ll know it.”
Kendall’s limbs turn molten, the pit of his stomach drawing hot and tight. He blames the hour and the fit of James’s legs with his for what he mumbles next; “That almost sounds like a promise.”
“Maybe it is.” James grins lazily, and it’s unfair, because the idea that James might be interested, even marginally, is a heady one, dizzying Kendall’s brain, clutching hope close to his heart. James says, “Hey, where’s Shane?”
“Getting his fix, I bet. Whaddyou think the chances are of him bring us back lattes?”
“Without drinking them himself? Uh, zilch.” James’s laughter makes Kendall all warm inside, the spike of lust from before turning languid in his veins.
“We better go find him, then,” Kendall agrees, and he does not know that it will be the last thing he and James will agree on for a long, long time.
---
They search for three days.
They cannot find Shane.
---
Part Three
Author: garnetice
Part: Two of Six
Previous Parts: 1
Word Count: 9,320 (of 51,011)
A/N: See Pt. 1 for author's notes, disclaimer, and summary!
---
Kendall’s life for the past few weeks has become a blur of walls and strange places, but now, even though Shane never expressly agreed to take Kendall to camp, the Diamond twins are a part of it.
Kendall doesn’t ask about their godly troubles, and in turn, James and Shane don’t interrogate him about his. They move pretty quickly between towns on foot, and Kendall’s never really sure if they’re ducking actual monsters or homeless vagrants with hideous fashion sense, but he follows James and Shane’s lead all the same. Whether they talk about it or not, they seem to have a handle on this whole demigod issue.
Shane is smart, like, scary smart. He knows weird factoids about the solar system and physics and the entire population of countries Kendall has never heard of.
James is fun. He is constantly rattling off songs or talking about this celebrity couple or discussing what he’s going to do when they don’t have to run anymore. (He’s going to be famous, he says, and Kendall doesn’t doubt him for a minute).
Kendall gets used to having them around, from the wake up routine where Shane forces Kendall to hunt down the nearest source of coffee before he can form real, English words, to how James sits pretty at wherever they’re calling home, primping until he’s presentable. They make their way across city line after city line, busking for cash. It’s not all that different from what Kendall’s been doing, only now, every morning, James sits cross-legged, tapping out a bongo beat on Kendall’s guitar case as he tunes up, while Shane slides from one foot to the next in a shuffle dance that displays all his nerdy glory.
The whole gig doesn’t make them much money, but it’s weirdly fun, having company.
And at night, they all fall asleep together, like puppies in a pile. When Kendall tries to think of a word for it, his mind lands on weird, strange, bizarre…but in the end, the word his brain inevitably chooses is…
Nice.
---
Kendall attempts to work up the courage to call his mom and Katie. He can’t quite bring himself to dial the number.
---
Shane forages them up some clothes at community center lost and founds. Or, he tries. He’s voted off clothing appropriation when he brings James a carebears t-shirt.
“We are not actually related,” James exclaims, horrified.
Shane actually appears to be hurt. He pouts, “Fine. Next time, you go.”
James turns to Kendall, who is pretty happy with his Rainbow Brite sweater, thank you, and sets about trying to pry it from his hands, moaning, “I thought it couldn’t get worse than plaid.”
“She defeated the King of Shadows and brought color back to Rainbow Land, okay, hey, let go, it’s mine!”
---
James decides that Kendall is a gigantic dork. Which is fine, because Kendall is a gigantic dork. Back home Katie attests to it frequently and with great volume.
Sure, he’d rather not be a gigantic dork around James, but it’s cool, it’s fine. Kendall isn’t interested in James that way anymore.
Probably.
---
They wash in public restrooms, from McDonald’s to the local YMCA. Sometimes they get to take their time, but more often than not, it’s a race against the clock.
The sight of James naked makes Kendall’s mouth go dry.
---
Of course, it shouldn’t take a month to get anywhere, but not many people are keen on hitchhikers, and making enough cash for three bus tickets is harder than Kendall thought it would be. Especially with the Diamond twins’ vices.
“Coffee. Coffee,” Shane emphasizes through a grumble, making grabby hands at Kendall.
“You know, this stuff will stunt your growth,” Kendall says, handing over the cup he bogarted from the church next to their newest squatter’s nest.
Shane makes a face, “Shut it, short stuff. Ugh, this tastes like piss.”
“Then give it back.” Kendall holds out an expectant hand.
Shane snuggles up against his cup and retorts, “No, it’s mine.”
“What’s yours? The coffee?” James rubs at his eyes, just coming into wakefulness. “Good idea. Let’s go get some more.”
“More,” Shane murmurs happily, licking the rim of his cup.
That is so not natural. Kendall makes a face. “Uh, you know your brother’s chemical addiction to caffeine is driving us straight to the poorhouse, right?”
James just smirks sleepily. That is not fair play at all.
“More,” Shane prompts into the half-full coffee cup, and Kendall sighs.
“Do we really have to? The church smells like mold. And feet.”
“Yeah, duh,” James mumbles, gaze narrow, the last remnants of sweet dreams clinging to his eyelashes. “Don’t lead me on.”
Kendall’s more flustered than he has a right to be, dragging his fingers across the denim of his filthy jeans. “I’m not leading-“
“C’mon. Why do you build me up, buttercup, baby?” James croons in his ear, passing by on the way to the door. Where he’s probably going to take a leak, so it shouldn’t make Kendall’s heart flutter in that really unbecoming, non-manly way.
“Fine, whatever, junkies.” Kendall retorts, watching the strong line of James’s shoulders. He’s just about made it to the door when Kendall notices something glittering in the corner of the room, over near Shane’s stuff. Shane’s inhaling the sensuous aroma of shitty, free coffee, and James is mostly distracted by his bladder, probably, so Kendall doesn’t exactly expect the reaction he gets when he reaches down to grab the whatever-it-is.
Gold, maybe? A tiny, gold nugget that gleams pretty in the darkness of the abandoned house.
“Ooh, shiny,” Kendall decides, about to scoop it up.
“Don’t touch that!” James and Shane yell at the exact same time.
James is standing rigid in the doorframe, while Shane has actually managed to spill half his cup all over his lap. It’s steaming hot, but he doesn’t even seem to notice. Kendal freezes, hands less than an inch away from the pretty-sparkly. His throat works over a sudden lump, clicking when he swallows.
“Uh. Why not?”
They do that thing, that twin thing, where they appear to be talking without words, and Kendall is intensely jealous of how they can communicate like that across a room. If he ever tried it with Katie, she’d probably ask if he was constipated.
“It’s, um. Okay, don’t freak out,” James says, remaining stock still, and has there ever been a good answer that started with don’t freak out? Kendall regards the gold nugget warily.
“Is it like, a demon roly poly?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Shane snaps. “It’s just, you know, cursed.”
“Cursed?” Kendall snaps up straight. “There are curses now?”
Shane sort of folds in on himself, shoulders creeping up near his ears, knees tucked into his stomach. “I guess you could say it’s my superpower?”
“Cursing people? That’s a fucking shitty superpower, man.”
“Hey.” James’s voice is harsher than Kendall has ever heard it, protective, even. Kendall cringes, because he never wanted venom like that directed his way. Not from James. “It’s not his fault.” Kendall waits, still frozen, until James continues, “It’s our dad’s.”
“James.” By contrast, Shane speaks softly. He meets Kendall’s gaze, leonine eyes that are not quite the same as his brother’s, too dark at the center, too hard, too flecked by old gold. “Cursing people isn’t- it’s called geokinesis. And it’s not our dad’s fault, exactly.”
“Is too,” James harrumphs, hand twitching over the door knob.
Kendall says, “I don’t understand.”
“Our mom, she’s…really young. You might have noticed, um. Yeah. No one was good enough for her, back in the dark ages, right? And…when she met our dad, he said he’d grant her one wish.”
“So obviously she wishes for the stupidest thing possible,” James interjects. He is rumpled and unhappy, and Kendall thinks he can see all the songs that have died on his lips.
“She asked for all the riches of the earth, ‘cause you know, diamonds are a girl’s best friend, and she was young, and her company was just getting off the ground and-“ Shane pauses, squeezing his knees together. He spares a mournful glance at his now empty coffee cup and takes a shuddering breath. “When I was born, she figured out I could do this, and it was great, at first, I guess.”
“What exactly is this?” Kendall gestures at the nugget, and Shane’s lips tick up at the corners, humorless.
“I can bring up all the riches the earth has to offer.” He is watching Kendall like he expects him to run, but Kendall has nowhere to go, and no plans to leave. “Except, there’s a catch. It’s all fucking cursed. Bad things happen to the people who touch that,” he waves a hand at the gold, and his tone turns meek. “So, so, just…don’t, okay?”
As far as requests go, it’s not exactly the hardest thing that’s ever been asked of Kendall. James is glaring at Kendall, like he’ll say no, but Kendall shrugs. “Don’t touch the cursed shiny, check.”
That’s pretty much that. James goes to take a leak, and when he comes back, they get more coffee. Kendall is sure to check the ground for suspicious earthly wealth, and he figures they’ve fallen back into this whole unspoken agreement where they don’t talk about who they are or where they came from.
It should be fine, because Kendall’s still got mixed feelings about this whole concept of gods. On the one hand, his mom said it was true, so he believes her, and there’s no reason not to, really. He’s met his fair share of monsters at this point, and who’s to say that gods aren’t next?
On the other hand, demigod or not, Kendall has never felt anything more than painfully human. As far as he knows, he doesn’t have any otherworldly anythings to deal with, and for all the joking he and Katie did, he’s glad for it.
He has to ask though. He can’t just go back to total ignorance, not when there are things like curses floating around in the world.
They’re standing in line at the church, Shane back to normal, bouncing up and down on his feet eagerly as he waits behind a lady in a flower print muumuu for coffee.
Kendall leans over to James and asks quietly, “Can I ask, who is your dad, exactly?”
James gives him a dark look, and Kendall feels like he hasn’t been forgiven yet for something he isn’t even aware he’s done. But he answers, just as quietly. “Hades.”
Hades. Like the god of the underworld, Hades.
Yeah, okay, Kendall’s life is officially fucked.
He can see James waiting for some kind of response, an exclamation of no way or a fuck this, I’m out. Instead, Kendall glances at where Shane has just knocked over an entire pile of napkins. He says, “Maybe we should wean him onto tea.”
“I heard that!”
---
It turns out James, at least, doesn’t have any powers, unless eating a ridiculous amount of pie counts. He makes them stop at every diner and fresh fruit stand across America, spending the half of their cash that isn’t devoted to Shane’s coffee habit on peach or blueberry or custard or rhubarb- rhubarb, which, “Gross man,” Kendall comments, nose wrinkling as he spits out the mouthful of pie on the damp concrete.
“You’re gross,” James retorts, but then, because he’s actually a really nice guy, he tacks on, “Okay not really, but rhubarb is delicious and I want to lick it all over.”
“That’s weird.”
“S’not weird. I’d lick you all over if you were covered in pie,” James replies happily.
No, bad, Kendall thinks at his dick, and like always it dutifully ignores him. They’re huddled at a bus station, James cradling his pie protectively and Shane sipping from a styrofoam cup, coming back with a foam mustache.
Their set for the day ended with James barging in on the end of Kendall’s thrilling rendition of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, harmonizing the hell out of the very last well that’s one thing we’ve got. He takes a bite of pie and mumbles, “Y’know, we rocked it today. Were you ever in a band, dude?”
Kendall glances up. “Nah. Music’s just…a hobby, I guess.”
James relaxes his hold on his pie plate a little to rest his hand against the neck of Kendall’s guitar. “No one who plays like you do should call it a hobby.”
Kendall isn’t sure what to say to that. His tinkering has never exactly been encouraged before, not even by his mom. He always thought it was because it reminded her too much of his dad - stepdad, whoever - but now? Kendall has no idea. And he’s never really been told he’s good at anything other than hockey, but the way James is staring at him - so open and earnest - makes Kendall think that he means it. His fingers slip over strings. They twang in protest.
James straightens, withdrawing his hand. He says, “You’re an amazing singer, too.”
“Now I know you’re fucking with me. I sound terrible.”
“If you sounded terrible, I’d say so. Tact is for cowards.” James grins, wide and toothy.
Shane apologetically inserts, “He would. He’s kind of a primadonna.”
Kendall shakes his head. “I guess it must be true then. James knows talent, right? Because he’s got it.”
James beams.
Then he promptly buries his face back in his pie.
Shane says slowly, “So do you. You have talent.”
Kendall smiles fondly at James. “Yeah, no, but…your brother is something else.”
Shane’s eyes narrow. After a pause he says, “Right. He is definitely, definitely something else.”
---
Kendall wakes up near three in the morning, judging by the track of the moon in the sky. They’re sleeping on the hard cement floor of an office building that’s still mid-construction. The night watchman isn’t super thorough in his rounds, but Kendall is certain that he’s heard a noise.
He glances around, wildly, before he feels James’s hand against his cheek. “Sorry. Did I wake you?”
“I-“ Kendall stops. “What?”
“I was humming,” James explains. “Bad habit.”
Kendall’s heartbeat slows to something manageable. “Couldn’t sleep?”
“Nah. I have dreams about motel rooms, you know. Real beds,” James makes an obscene noise.
“Motel rooms have bed bugs,” Kendall replies, because Shane’s been giving them the statistics on that for days now. It hasn’t exactly made the Motel Six they passed a town before look any less appealing.
“And you probably have fleas. Let me fantasize.”
“Okay,” Kendall agrees, hyperaware of James’s hand on his face. “You fantasize. I’ll…sleep.”
James snorts, pushing his fingers back until they tangle in Kendall’s hair. Shane makes a noise between a snort and a grunt behind them both, but it is familiar now. It is comfort. Kendall whispers, “What were you humming, anyway?”
James nuzzles in close, his eyes luminous, all black and gold. He says, “Something old,” and it is old, it is ancient, it is a song that Kendall remembers from his grandmother’s collection, back before she passed away. James hums the half remembered melody of Moonlight Serenade, and Kendall drifts off, off, off, back into his dreams.
---
Shane asks Kendall point blank who his godly parent is.
“Oh, uh, I don’t know.” Kendall is embarrassed to admit it out loud. The only answer that pops into his head is Triton, King of the Sea, and that would probably involve confessing how many times he’s actually seen The Little Mermaid.
Plus it brings up memories of Katie snickering at her own merman jokes. It’s been nearly seven weeks since he left home, and he misses her and his mom like crazy.
“You don’t know? I thought you said your mom told you about this whole demigod thing,” James inserts, because Kendall had managed to slip that much into conversation at one point or another.
“She did.”
Shane scowls. “And…you didn’t ask?”
“When you put it that way, it sounds dumb of me,” Kendall objects. He thinks about calling his mom for the eight zillionth time, but then for the eight kajillionth time he remembers that he is for all intents and purposes a runaway. Bad idea.
He’ll call her when he gets to Camp Half-Blood. That is the plan. He is going to stick to it, damnit.
James shoves a plate in Shane’s face, distracting him from whatever mean thing he was about to say. “Try a piece of this.”
Shane does, obediently, allowing his brother to shovel it in his mouth.
He immediately coughs and splutters, clutching at his lungs like it might help. “That is vile and toxic and why would you poison yourself like that?”
“I think it’s yummy.”
“Yummy? That is blasphemy to everything coffee flavored ever, that’s what it is, how could you? Traitor to your bloodline! Traitor!”
Kendall devolves into a fit of laughter when Shane futilely attempts to tackle James and his coffee cake straight to the ground, all flailing limbs and a bright, light thing that spreads through his chest.
He misses Katie and his mom, sure, but this is good too.
---
There’s a lull in their mostly undecided set, while James flirts with the music enthusiast who dropped them a whole five bucks.
Kendall uses the words music enthusiast lightly, because the girl obviously could care less about their thrilling rendition of Wonderwall. It isn’t exactly a surprise when she’s completely, one hundred percent focused on James.
James is…well. Exactly the same as Kendall remembers.
Which doesn’t mean anything.
Just because he harbored a stunningly massive, impressively ill-advised crush on the boy a few years back doesn’t mean that he’s going to leap into his arms now. That would be dumb, and ruin things, and Kendall doesn’t want to ruin this.
He likes James. As a friend-type-person. He even sort of likes Shane, too. And it’s awesome, because Kendall’s never had friends he instantly clicked with before. He’s never had friends that felt like family.
So really, Kendall doesn’t even mind that they haven’t made it to Camp Half-Blood yet, because he’s got them both, and there’s a kind of freedom on the road that he’s never had before, every broken white line on the asphalt a new frontier. He can maybe put up with this whole partial god thing if it’s going to be like this.
Shane stands awkwardly off to the side, nursing a froufy latte while Kendall tries to master a chord he keeps fucking up - it has nothing to do with James’s flirting, mind you, it fucking doesn’t okay- and eventually the awkward just gets to be too much.
“He is so obnoxiously charming,” Kendall confides, glaring at the twenty something who is peering coyly through her eyelashes at his friend.
Shane nods his agreement, expression wistful. “I have no idea how he does it. The only things I know how to sweet talk are computers.”
The confession catches Kendall a little off guard, because while Shane hasn’t been cold, he hasn’t exactly been especially chatty either. It’s almost like Shane is warming to him.
Kind of. He can dream.
“I hear geeks are going to inherit the earth,” Kendall says consolingly.
“Maybe. The last girl I dated said I spent more time with my motherboard than with her. Girls are weird.”
“So weird,” Kendall agrees.
There’s a comfortable silence punctuated by James’s admirer’s twittering laughter and James’s sleazeball lines. Kendall figures this is about as close as he and Shane are ever going to get; bonded by their mutual lack of understanding of the fairer sex.
---
Late one evening, just east of Ohio, James drags Kendall on a walk.
“For exercise,” he explains cheerfully, and it’s easy for him to say, with his rippling muscles and washboard abs and lickable everything.
“I feel like we get enough exercise,” Kendall protests, because they really do. Just yesterday, they had a rough and tumble game of ultimate flying disk that ended up with Shane’s nose bleeding profusely and everywhere, and the day before that, Kendall totally spent a good half hour of his day battling off a monster that vaguely resembled an amorphous jellyfish.
Or Scarlett Johansson, in some lights.
…Gerard Butler in others.
There’s also the thing where they’re runaways. It’s in the freaking name. Run-away. So yeah, see, Kendall gets plenty of exercise, and totally resents the implication that he’s growing pudge.
James ignores his sulking, guiding Kendall by the crook of his elbow down empty suburban streets. The leaves lift their faces to the sky, and James points and says, “That means a storm’s coming.”
“How do you know that?”
James lifts one shoulder in the air, trying for nonchalant but mostly succeeding in miserable. “When your uncle is master and controller of lightning and basically despises your existence, you learn to spot the signs.”
“Uncle? Oh. Right. Uh. Zeus, yeah?”
James’s lips twist. “The one and only.”
“Cool. I guess. Have you met him?”
“Nah. He’s not a big fan of his nephews and nieces. I think he tried to hit me with lightning once.” James glares up at the sky and tells it, “Thanks for that.”
Kendall’s not sure how to respond. “Wait, you mean they can actually, like, control the weather?”
“They’re gods, Kendall. They control all kinds of things.”
Kendall wonders if he’s been thinking about this god thing too abstractly. In theory, yeah, he gets that Shane and James are Hades’ kids, but outside Shane’s sparkly curse, he doesn’t really know what that means.
“Um. James?”
“This is going to be an awkward personal question, isn’t it?” James asks, scuffing his sneakers against the sidewalk. He’s giving Kendall these serious eyes that are more suited to Shane.
“Maybe. Do you ever…see…your dad?”
“I’ve met him. Once.” His face shutters completely. “He can go fuck himself.”
“I see you feel strongly about this, okay, I’ll shut up.” Kendall curses himself, because James probably hates him now and, and, gods, when did he get this insecure? Throw six feet of blazing hot studmuffin at him and he turns into a total child.
James grunts caveman-style. “No, it’s- it’s fine.”
It sounds anything but fine. Kendall keeps his mouth firmly shut.
James says, “I hate my dad, but I’m not like Shane. It doesn’t mean I don’t want anything to do with Olympus.”
Tentatively, Kendall asks, “Are they all bad? The gods?”
“Every demigod I’ve ever met says that their parents treat them like chattel, and every single one of them accepts it because they want them to be proud.” The wind picks up, whipping James’s hair across his eyes. “I get it. They’re our parents. We can’t help it. But Shane and I don’t want to live like that.” James spares Kendall a rueful smile, all lip and no pearly white teeth. “It’s enough trouble trying to impress my mom. Or it was.”
“Do you miss her?”
“All the time. We’d be home if it weren’t for the monsters. They never let up.” James stares at the cracks in the concrete, deftly avoiding each in an attempt not to break his mother’s back. “I hate putting people in danger. It was better when I didn’t know, and I could just play hockey, fool around…hanging out with you.”
“We didn’t hang out that often,” Kendall replies.
Firmly, James answers, “We should have hung out more.”
Kendall flexes his fingers and tries not to let it get to him. James has a silver tongue. He knows exactly what to say to make a person fold into the palm of his hand. It’s part charm, part manipulation, and who even knows how much of it is truth? Kendall thinks James is real with him. His instincts say that he is, but.
Better not to hope.
“What are you going to do when we get to Camp Half-Blood?”
James’s mouth gapes open, stunned.
“I don’t know,” he admits awkwardly.
The wind howls. Kendall can’t think up anything nice to say. “Chattel. That’s a big word. I’m impressed.”
“Shut up. Doofus.” James slings an arm around Kendall’s shoulders and they keep on walking. “You’re mean.”
“Your face is mean,” Kendall retorts, because this, banter, is easy.
“No, my face is pouty because you’re mean.” James squeezes him closer, and even when the storm hits, big fat drops of rain that splat across the bridge of their noses, he doesn’t withdraw his hand.
---
James is eternally unhappy with their set list because James wants to have more solo parts.
Which Kendall is actually fine with, because he wasn’t kidding around when he said his voice sucked like a Dyson vacuum, but what James seems to keep forgetting is that their set list is less a set list and more a list of songs that Kendall has taught himself on the guitar. He’s open to diversity and everything, but without a computer or a cellphone or access to the whole wide world of the internet, he’s basically learning everything by ear. It just so happens that James hates all the songs he’s learning.
“There’s a solution here,” James announces one day, in the midst of dissecting a pumpkin pie. His smile is a thief. It steals Kendall’s breath away.
“Yeah, we could break all the coffee machines in town, but that would probably hurt us in the long run,” Kendall replies, thinking James is referring to the pile of Shane on the counter in the corner, drooling pathetically at the waitress with her carafe of caffeine.
Kendall almost can’t blame him; he’s developing an unhealthy coffee addiction of his very own. He’s trying to cut back, but it’s hard. Kendall focuses on his French toast, sopping with maple syrup, and there’s comfort there. French toast has pretty much tasted the same at every diner across America. Come to think of it, most of the diners have looked the same too, with faded beige paint and linoleum counters and this whole fifties chic thing that actually is not chic at all. Even the clientele is familiar, from the college kids to the old timers that frequent the same booths like a favored barstool.
“Not that,” James directs Kendall’s attention back to his pretty face, and for a second Kendall thinks that James is watching him with hungry eyes.
That can’t be right. He chocks it up to his own reflection, swimming against the black sea of James’s pupils.
“We should write some songs,” James continues, and Kendall chokes on his toast. “Give me your hand.”
James is brandishing a black felt-tip pen. Where the hell did he get that? He twirls it in the air, slumping back against the booth, and he is inelegant, sloppy, splayed legs and mussed hair, and these are the things that make him so very dear.
Kendall hides his hands beneath his thighs. “What? No.”
“Hey, I’m trying to be a serious song writer, here,” James says. He catches hold of Kendall’s upper arm, tugging it forward until he’s freed a hand, and then begins to scrawl what must be lyrics across Kendall’s skin.
It tickles.
“What are you doing?” Shane asks, settling down beside Kendall with three cups of fresh coffee.
“Song writing. Apparently,” Kendall deadpans.
“Oh. Yeah, James is good at that. If he were ever going to market a talent, it would have to be that one.”
Without looking up, James says, “That’s Shane’s condescending way of saying I’m too stupid for anything else.”
“I am not.” Shane objects mildly. “Sure, no one ever calls song writers smart, but they have such a huge impact on our lives. A physical product is better than a metaphysical one, or at least it’s easier to justify paying for in cold, hard cash. Still, I don’t think it means that one is less than another. William Gilbert and Jimi Hendrix are both heroes, in their own way.”
James actually blushes. “Well. Um.” He lifts his eyes to Kendall, rather than acknowledge Shane’s intensity. “That was a good speech. …He likes being the smartest person in the room.”
Shane shakes his head. “You’re wrong, James. There’s always someone smarter in the room. Unless it’s this room.” He grins at the both of them.
Before they leave the diner, Kendall tries to decipher what James has written on his arm. He can only translate one line. “You like my…dimples?”
James beams brighter than the sun. “Yep.” He hops to his feet with easy grace. “Shane’s beating us out the door, we better go make sure he doesn’t drown in his Kona blend.”
Kendall stares blindly down at his own skin and wonders what it means.
---
The problem with James comes down to one word.
Girls.
Girls look at him with this glow in their eyes, something caught between adoration and desperation, and Kendall would be lying if he said he didn’t recognize the expression from his own reflection. Naked want was easier to deal with when he didn’t know James so well, when he didn’t spend nights tucked into the curve of his body and days harmonizing on love songs. It’s hard to stay objective when James insists upon filling all the space at Kendall’s side, chasing away his guilt and shame and the loneliness caused by the conspicuous absence of his family.
Okay, so yeah. He’s fucked. Don’t rub it in.
The point is, it kind of sucks when James actually manages to land a date, despite looking like he’s come off the cast of Lost.
It’s a Saturday night, and Shane is trying to distract Kendall by teaching him how to hotwire a car. Useful life skill, right there.
“And why do you know how to do this?”
“Ah-ah-ah, I never give away my trade secrets.” Shane smiles broadly. Then, “James loved that hockey team, you know. Said it was the best thing mom ever did for him.”
Kendall thinks there’s a deeper meaning, here, so he goes for the shallowest interpretation. “Did they not get along?”
“Are you kidding me? Peas in a pod.” Shane allows himself a small smile. “I was the one who was constantly fighting with her, constantly getting in trouble. Mom spoiled James…okay, she spoiled both of us, if I’m being honest, but James is the baby. She coddled him to death. No pun intended.” Shane winces, kicking a pretty decently sized ruby away from his shoe. “But I think it kind of backfired. James thought he could have the whole entire world, and mom wanted him to stay in Minnesota and run her company. That’s where things got tricky.”
“But what about you?”
“Me?” Shane’s hands fumble over wires. “I was the smart one. I was supposed to go out, spend my talent in the world while James held the fort back home. Only I didn’t want that either. I liked home. Home is safe.” He stares at the ruby out of the corner of his eye. “And that was the problem. Mom said my talent would be wasted on the company, but we all knew the company would be wasted on James. He’s got a different skillset, and different dreams, and I didn’t have any dreams at all. Mom was going gray. Not that you could see it under all that hair dye. I think it was a relief when coach attacked James, when we found out the truth, for all three of us. No more expectations.”
“Wait, coach attacked him?” Kendall asks, outraged, because hey, coach never lifted a finger towards Kendall.
“You must not have grown into your scent yet,” Shane says by way of explanation, and of course he knows exactly what Kendall is asking.
But he doesn’t know what Kendall’s next question is. Kendall isn’t even sure if he’s allowed to ask it, but he’s never been much for inhibitions. “What do you think Hades- uh, your dad- saw in her?”
“Mom? Oh, plenty.” Shane grins. “He probably saw her inner demoness. Evil recognizes evil.” He lets out a laugh, but then softens. “James says it’s because she likes to keep things pretty. Forever. I guess that’s what makeup is about.”
Kendall mulls that over, the atmosphere thick and uncomfortable between him and Shane. Maybe that’s why Shane says, “We could just…drive to Long Island,” his hands still up in the foot well of someone else’s car.
“No we can’t,” Kendall replies automatically, because stealing is a line he isn’t ever willing to cross. His mom would be so proud.
You know, if he called her and told her. He swallows down around bile.
Shane nods appreciatively, like Kendall’s just passed a test he didn’t know he was taking. “No. We can’t.”
---
Later, they manage to confiscate a half empty bottle of vodka from a house party they aren’t actually invited to. It’s not stealing, because some kid they’ve never met before shoves it in their hands as they walk by the lawn and yells, “Shots! Shots for everyone.”
Kendall and Shane just decide to take their shots back to their current nest and get rip-roaringly drunk on their own.
Shane is a very pouty drunk. “Everyone likes James best.”
“Of course everyone likes James. Have you seen his abs? I want to pour chocolate sauce across his stomach and lick it off,” Kendall replies, totally free of, you know, shame. His head is balanced on Shane’s lap, because he’s had so much that it’s getting hard for his neck to support its weight.
“That’s a visual. You’ve made me slightly ill, thanks.”
“No, no, no,” Kendall circles a finger in the air. “You know why girls don’t like you as much as James?”
“Because I don’t go to the gym often enough, clearly.”
“That not it,” Kendall insists. “Confidence.” He’s got this whole speech prepared about why Shane needs to be more confident in himself, but what comes out is, “Shane, I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, but I have wet dreams about offering myself up to your brother on a silver platter.”
“Right, that doesn’t make me uncomfortable at all,” Shane replies dryly, patting Kendall on the head. He sounds less drunk than Kendall. No fair. “You should go to sleep.”
“Don’t wanna.” Kendall kicks out, foot connecting with a sapphire the size of his fist. It skitters across the floor before coming to rest against a wall. Shane makes a displeased noise and Kendall pouts. “Ow. Shiny hurts.”
Shane murmurs his agreement. They sit in comfortable silence for a while, until he brings himself to say, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m glad James has no powers.”
“You and me both,” Shane agrees, nudging a hunk of silver away with the toe of his sneaker. “You know, if you came onto him, he probably wouldn’t say no.”
“Can’t. It’s a hockey commandment,” Kendall replies, a wee bit petulantly.
“What, thou shalt not get naked around a teammate?”
“Was thinking more along the lines of thou shalt not cop a feel, but yeah, that probably applies.”
“Breaking news, genius, you’re not teammates anymore. You’re not even on a hockey team. So, you know, tap that.”
“This conversation grows exceedingly uncomfortable for me with every passing second. Did you actually just tell me to tap your brother’s ass?”
“How do you think I feel? I don’t usually have to talk people into James’s pants, you know. He’ll go for you. James’s sexuality is, uh, fluid.”
Kendall squints up at him. His face swims back and forth between sharpness and blurriness. “Meaning?”
“Meaning you have a chance, if you want it.”
“Really? That’s your pep talk? Have at my brother because he’s not picky?” Kendall quirks an eyebrow, and Shane doesn’t look even marginally ashamed. “No wonder your mom didn’t sign you up for hockey. The grandeur would have been completely lost on you.”
“The head trauma, you mean?” Shane raps his knuckles against Kendall’s skull. “Sure you’re not part Cyclops?”
Kendall would reply, really, he would, except he’s sort of fallen asleep pillowed against Shane’s thigh.
In his dreams, he pretends it’s James’s.
---
James’s date does not go well.
“Girls only like me for my body,” James complains. “Which, don’t get me wrong, is spectacular, but I’m more than a pretty face.”
“Since when?” Shane demands. Kendall elbows him in the stomach, because James has his solemn face on, and it’s a pretty slippery slope from solemn to outright bitchy, so why not let him talk before it comes to that?
James’s bitchy voice is loud, besides, and Kendall’s head hurts.
“My life is tragic,” James replies, glaring at Shane instead of actually explaining.
“Oh, yeah, easy for you to say. People want to lick chocolate sauce off your abs.”
James appears to be entirely unsurprised by this information.
Kendall, on the other hand, is never telling Shane anything ever again. The back of his neck burns sunset colors, embarrassment heating the tips of his fingers and the curl of his toes.
“Traitor,” he hisses.
Shane simply mouths, tap that.
---
What Shane doesn’t know, because Kendall didn’t say it, is that he doesn’t just want to have sex with James. What he wants, what he really wants, scares the living daylights out of him, and there are days when he has to go spend time on his own, desperately, to get away from it.
He never can get away from it for long. James keeps sucking him right back in.
---
“Not to sound overly paranoid or anything-“ Kendall breaks off as James starts belting out Flagpole Sitta, only deigning to cut him off once he’s gotten the, I’m not sick but I’m not well part out of the way, and Shane has added in a helpful, You certainly aren’t well. “Right, lovely rendition, James, but, uh, there’s a giant bird following us.”
Indeed, there is. The bird thing circles overhead, beak gleaming mean in the sun. It could just be a really big freaking hawk, but…
“What are the odds that it’s not a monster?” Kendall asks, deferring to the Diamond twins’ experience.
“Probably about the same as Shane ever getting laid,” James deadpans, supremely unconcerned.
“Hey, you don’t know that. I’ve done serious research on girls,” Shane objects.
“He means listening to a lot of Taylor Swift.”
“Serious. Research,” Shane emphasizes. His glare could cut skin, probably.
“Learned anything?” James crosses his arms.
“Sure. They, uh, they seem to like kissing in the rain?”
“Taylor Swift,” James mouths at Kendall.
Kendall would probably find it funny, except, “You know, you two might be co-presidents of the Junior Monster Hunters’ League, but I have very real concerns here. If a big gold bird eats my eyeballs, I won’t be able to see. I like being able to see.”
James starts, “Dude, did you ever see that video of that Korean chick eating her own eyeball-“
“I fail to see how that’s relevant,” Kendall interjects prissily, even though he did see it, and it was awesome. Also seriously gross, but mostly awesome.
“You used to be fun.” James turns to Shane. “Remember the good old days when Kendall was fun?”
Primly, Shane replies, “Sorry, no, I must have been too busy listening to Taylor Swift.”
James does a great job of completely ignoring that and finally focuses on Kendall. “Yeah, so, it’s probably a monster. Don’t worry. This happens a lot.”
“Really? You’re regularly stalked by furry woodland creatures?”
Shane rolls his eyes. “Welcome to life as a demigod.”
James adds, “Kind of makes you wish your dad kept it in his pants, doesn’t it?”
Kendall very much does not want to think about what is or isn’t in his dad’s pants. He turns the exact same shade of green as his eyes, mouth falling open.
“Don’t be such a prude, Knight,” Shane nudges him, apparently over his addiction to Speak Now. “We’ve got incoming.”
Kendall actually doesn’t need the warning. He’s too busy avoiding what appear to be feathers, raining down over his head like arrows. One slices cleanly through the soft flesh of his inner arm, blood pricking to the surface of his skin much, much too quickly.
“Ow, ow, ow,” Shane is hissing through his teeth, dodging left and right and clutching his knee in this odd little dance.
“Would you stop acting like such a baby for five seconds and focus on the larger picture? Giant eyeball pecking birds!” James flaps his arms frantically in imitation, mostly in an attempt to fend off the thing.
“See, that’s what I’ve been saying!” Kendall protests.
The bird is mean looking, beak glinting metallic in the light, and when James tries to hit it with the meat cleaver of a sword he keeps in his backpack for special occasions - one day Kendall will remember to ask him where he got that thing - it does absolutely nothing.
Kendall goes after it with his guitar case, swatting at the bird ineffectually. It’s pretty intent on all of James’s fleshy bits. Shane starts like, throwing things at it, and if the monsters are going to be so damn vicious Kendall thinks maybe they should start weapons training or take a jujitsu class or something, because Shane’s aim sucks and Kendall’s well placed hits obviously pack little to no punch.
“What. Is. It?” He demands, kicking out at it with one of his Vans.
“That’s your question?” Shane huffs, his breath hard and heavy. He hefts an emerald the size of Kendall’s head, and Kendall’s first thought is where did he? quickly followed by cursed treasure, right, with oh shit, duck at its heels. “How should I know?”
“Little busy here, guys,” James warns, swinging leftrightleft, and Kendall has to jump away to avoid pointy iron.
He pants, “If we knew what it was, maybe it would go away!”
The ball of bronze Shane throws at the bird nearly hits Kendall in the shoulder hard. “Oops. Not a dictionary for monsters, you know.”
“Ack, can you guys shut-“ The knife-sword thing in James’s hand continues to be useless, and when he flails backwards, the bird’s wing hits Kendall right in the stomach.
It’s a big freaking bird, but it’s not a giant, and it shouldn’t be able to knock him off his feet.
But it does.
Kendall’s guitar case hits the ground in a cacophony of noise, strings jarring, sound echoing loudly through the sound hole, Kendall landing right on top of it. And the bird…cringes.
Kendall doesn’t have to be told twice. He unbuckles the sides of the case and takes out the guitar, slamming his hands on the strings, but it’s not even close to loud enough. Shane and James, though, they pick up on the whole theme of noise. Shane gets to put his smartypants street thug cred to use, picking the locks on car doors and fixing them up, which at first Kendall doesn’t get, because hi, James is still in trouble here.
Then the first car radio starts blaring into the open air, and shit, this will attract the neighbors pretty quick, but Kendall runs to help out.
It takes the sound of fifteen car stereos and Kendall nearly breaking the neck of his guitar to scare the bird away. James has cuts all over his body, bleeding shallowly all over the concrete, and people are starting to crowd the streets, cellphones out. They’re calling the police, Kendall knows, but he’s a little distracted, because…There is light.
Everywhere.
“What the hell is that?” Kendall frowns at the green, glowy symbol floating over his head, batting at it with his fingers like that might drive it away.
“You’ve been claimed,” Shane says in the same reverent voice he uses when describing the mating habits of Komodo Dragons or whatever; Kendall tunes out at all things scaly.
“By what?” He pokes the symbol, watching it swallow his finger in a puff of emerald. “Am I Sailor Moon?”
Shane makes a strangled noise of protest, but James, clutching a particularly bad cut on his stomach, says lightly, “You’d look good in a tiara. And you have the legs for that whole school girl thing.”
“Did you just say I have girl legs?”
“I think I said I’d like to see your legs wrapped around m-“
“Gods, save the foreplay for later, you idiots. Kendall, that symbol belongs to your father.”
Kendall wants to care. He does. Honestly.
Only, did James actually just legitimately hit on him?
He thinks about asking, except Shane might murder him, and he’s had more than enough violence for the day. Oh and also James is possibly bleeding out. Kendall scratches the side of his chin and says doubtfully, “It’s…a fork? Does that mean he likes to eat? Are there Sunday brunch buffets in my future? Those usually have good spare ribs.”
Shane opens his mouth to answer, but James teeters on his feet. He splutters, “Hey, we’re cousins!”
“Great,” Kendall replies automatically, glancing at the growing crowd around them. He can hear sirens in the distance. He thought he was used to fear by now, but it is uncomfortable, it clings to his skin like wet clothes he can’t wait to shake.
Shane snorts knowingly. “Oh, don’t worry, we were already related somehow, no matter what. The gods love keeping it in the family, but dude, better than being half-brothers.”
“Gross and grosser.” A very large man is walking towards them. Kendall squeaks, “Never mind, who cares? We need to get James to the hospital. Now.”
---
Fifteen stitches and some really uncomfortable questions from medical professionals later, Shane turns to him and says, “It wasn’t a fork.”
And that’s how Kendall finds out his father is Poseidon.
Guess he wasn’t so far off with the King Triton jokes after all.
---
“Kendall, meet Riptide. Riptide, meet Kendall.” James grins like he’s just delivered the greatest birthday gift ever.
Kendall stares down at it. As far as gifts go, he is not impressed. “Oh. A pen. To write with. Because literacy is fun.”
“Uncap it.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be bedridden?” Kendall asks, pointedly staring at the bandages concealed by his tee.
“Uncap the pen,” James replies breezily. Obediently, Kendall does as he’s told.
Admittedly, he’s not actually expecting anything to happen. The sword that pops out is kind of a surprise.
“Uh. This is a neat magic trick.”
James grins again, bright as the sun. “Cool, isn’t it?”
“Where’d you get Excalibur?” Kendall asks, examining the shaft of the sword. “Wait, not from Shane, right?”
“Har-de-har,” Shane drawls, examining his cuticles in the corner of the room. “We traveled halfway across America with you just so you could touch a cursed weapon. Surprise.”
“I’m interpreting that as sarcasm,” Kendall informs him, even though Shane’s voice is completely flat. He’s been pissy ever since James got attacked. Despite pretenses, Shane is actually a very, very good big brother. “James, sit down before you pull a stitch.”
James, by contrast, is kind of an awful little brother. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You were bird food like, yesterday, and now you’re giving away family heirlooms-“
James sets his hands firmly on his hips, exactly like the sulky toddler he is. “Riptide is not an heirloom. We got it from that guy. With the thing.”
“That’s informative,” Kendall comments idly, swinging the sword slowly through the air. It whistles and hums in his hands, singing to the world that it belongs there.
It totally does not belong in his hand. He doesn’t even know what to do with a sword, even if he has been brandishing a hockey stick like one for the better part of his life.
James says practically, “Dude, it’s yours. It’s been with Poseidon’s kids for like, ever.”
Kendall takes note of the word kids. He has brothers. And cousins, apparently. And a whole family that is not a family, and is it weird if he’s still hot for James? How incestuous is incest if the blood you share is godly?
“Don’t you need a sword?” Kendall refrains from commenting on the efficacy of the one James has been using, because sometimes, late at night, Kendall thinks James takes it out and talks to it. That or he’s been dreaming James having chats with inanimate things, going, good little hellraiser. You are such a good boy.
“Nah, that’s celestial bronze.” James shows some teeth. “My sword is stygian iron.”
“And also a present from daddy dearest,” Shane deadpans. He tells Kendall, “Neither will have any effect on mortals, but they’re awesome for monsters.”
“You got that thing from your da- I mean, um. Uncle Hades?” Kendall asks meekly. It tastes like sand in his mouth.
Shane makes a noise, put off by being ignored. James goes all Bambi-eyed and mournful. “You don’t have to call him that. In fact, please don’t. We’re not like, relatedrelated.”
“Oh, that made sense,” Shane informs him, a little mean, now. He hasn’t had coffee in a full eight hours. It’s obviously getting to him.
“What’s wrong with being related to me?” Kendall jokes. He caps Riptide, which immediately shrinks back down to pen-sized. “I’ll try really hard not to bring anyone embarrassing to family dinner.”
“Kendall,” James says sharply. “I mean it. Don’t. It’s not a big deal. To me.”
“I’m…confused,” Kendall admits, because he knows why he finds it disheartening to hear that their fathers are bros. He has no idea why James would.
“I’m trying to tell you.” James bunches his fingers in his jeans, watches the glow of Riptide in Kendall’s hands and worries over his lower lip with his teeth. “We’re not family. I mean, we’re family, but not family. Not in a way that matters.”
James is actually starting to hurt his feelings. Kendall frowns. Shane makes a noise somewhere between frustrated and disgusted. “I want you to both to know that you’re idiots.”
“No,” James insists, voice catching. He has the needy, frantic expression of a drowning man. “I need you to understand. This. It doesn’t change-“
Kendall can’t take that look on his face. He promises steadily, “James. I get it. It doesn’t change anything.”
“But wait, it gets gayer,” Shane mutters. “Do you guys want the room?
“Problem, Big Brother?” James rounds on him. He tells Kendall, “Shane hates public displays of affection, emotion, and condensation. He is a robot.”
Kendall snorts, bemused. He doesn’t get how what just happened had anything to do with affection, but it doesn’t matter. James is smiling. James is alive.
All’s right with the world.
“Condensation-“ Shane squawks, gearing up to deliver a vocabulary lesson that no one is interested in hearing. James counteracts this by enveloping his brother in a bone-crushing bear hug, which makes Shane wriggle and squirm like a captured puppy. “No, stop, no hugging, James! You’re going to pull your stitches!”
---
Apparently, mortals never notice all the monster fighting with shiny, dangerous weapons because of something called the Mist. Kendall is sorely out of touch with his heritage; he thought he’d avoided getting arrested so far because he is constructed of fantastic. According to Shane, this is not the case.
“The Mist makes mortals see something different than what we see,” he explains with the boring monotone of every teacher Kendall has had in the history of ever. “Instead of a swordfight, they might see a watergun fight-“
“-or a real gun fight,” James adds helpfully.
“-or, I don’t even know, circus clowns.”
“Circus clowns? The cover-our-supernatural-butts fog can’t do any better than circus clowns?” Kendall asks dubiously.
“Clowns are creepy,” James says. “They carry knives.”
“Look, when you’re on the wire, you better hope people are seeing squeaky red noses over a real live sword, or worse. It’s easier for the monsters to eat you in jail.”
“That’s never happened. Tell me that’s never happened to a demigod.”
Shane gives him a dark look.
---
Kendall wakes up in the middle of the night to hands against the jut of his hipbones and James whispering, “Kendall. Kendall. Kendall?”
“Nngha- monsters?” Is Kendall’s eloquent answer. He thrashes around in the sleeping bag, nearly getting Shane right in the face with a misplaced elbow.
“No.” James calms him with a touch, holds his hips down and inquires, “Did you mean what you said? That this doesn’t change anything?”
Kendall blinks. “James. I don’t know that there’s anything to change.”
“But there could be,” James objects, peering up at Kendall through black eyelashes. His eyes are luminescent in the dark.
“What do you mean?”
James shifts closer, and his body is a livewire; he turns Kendall’s veins to powerlines. He hums through his blood, electrifies his bones, and Kendall thinks oh, he is so damn dangerous.
He murmurs, “I could kiss you. That would change things.”
Kendall mouth drops open, a quick inhalation that tells more than anything he could possibly say. He needs words anyway, searches for the right ones and finds himself lacking.
Kendall trembles on the cusp of honor and darkness, where his instincts tell him to take no prisoners, but his upbringing tells him to be irrevocably kind. Shakily, he agrees, “You could kiss me.”
James’s fingers tighten against Kendall’s hipbones, his breathing labored.
He does not kiss Kendall.
---
The day everything changes, they can’t find Shane.
At first, neither Kendall nor James is worried. Mostly because they’re both sleeping, huddled into each other’s warmth with a threadbare blanket stretched between them. Kendall comes into reality with James’s leg a heavy weight across his hip, their fronts pressed together and an ache in his cock. He shifts, James’s arm sliding down the ladder of his ribcage, and James’s eyelashes flutter.
“Mm, stop moving,” he croaks, the order less than authoritative for the rasp in his throat.
“It’s morning.”
It’s not actually, not anymore; the sun has climbed high in the sky, and Kendall’s well rested enough that if he had to guess, he’d say it was around noon. Which is great, but weird. Great because he is not at all a morning person, and weird because Shane, who is, usually kicks them both awake, begging for coffee.
“Morning sucks.”
Kendall bites down on a smile. Shane probably went out for coffee, he thinks, and doesn’t that sound like a good idea? Warm, yummy, delicious coffee? “We should get up.”
James burrows his head deep into the old t-shirt he’s using as a pillow. “Getting up sucks.”
“C’mon,” Kendall coaxes. “We’ve got so much of Pennsylvania to see. There’s like, Amish people and stuff.”
Before James can say something rude about the Amish, Kendall sniffs himself. “Guess what? We smell.”
“Like man musk and peach pie?” James asks of his pillow.
Kendall smiles fondly. “I don’t know, where does one draw the line between musky and unwashed?”
In a huge concession to wakefulness, James deigns to lift the collar of his own shirt, inhaling deep. “Ah. Yeah. Sponge baths at Starbucks?”
“You always proposition me so nicely.”
James lifts his head. Afternoon light dances across the bridge of his nose, his eyes sparking. “When I proposition you, you’ll know it.”
Kendall’s limbs turn molten, the pit of his stomach drawing hot and tight. He blames the hour and the fit of James’s legs with his for what he mumbles next; “That almost sounds like a promise.”
“Maybe it is.” James grins lazily, and it’s unfair, because the idea that James might be interested, even marginally, is a heady one, dizzying Kendall’s brain, clutching hope close to his heart. James says, “Hey, where’s Shane?”
“Getting his fix, I bet. Whaddyou think the chances are of him bring us back lattes?”
“Without drinking them himself? Uh, zilch.” James’s laughter makes Kendall all warm inside, the spike of lust from before turning languid in his veins.
“We better go find him, then,” Kendall agrees, and he does not know that it will be the last thing he and James will agree on for a long, long time.
---
They search for three days.
They cannot find Shane.
---
Part Three