[fic] This Boy's Life Among The Electrical Lights - 1/2
Title: This Boy's Life Among The Electrical Lights
Author: garnetice
Pairing: James/Kendall
Rating: T
Word Count: 5,732 (this chapter, 10,245 total)
Warnings: Some bad words and non-graphic sex talk, basically. It's really the low end of the T spectrum.
Summary: James Diamond can sing. He builds his life on that foundation, on the belief that music lives in his blood.
Disclaimer: Don't own BTR, obvs.
Author's Notes: Uh, so I think around Valentine’s Day last year, Courtney (breila-rose) asked why no one had written about James and singing (which actually Liz has done since then, oops). I was like MINE GIVE ME NOW, because I am bossy. So. For you, bb. Much thanks for the awesome beta by jblostfan16. Title is from the song Mass Romantic by The New Pornographers.
---
James Diamond can sing. He builds his life on that foundation, on the belief that music lives in his blood. Because he has to.
He is always causing trouble. That’s what his mom says.
He looks like a little girl. That’s what his dad says.
He is not very athletic. That’s what his nanny says, usually after he’s tripped down the stairs for the eightieth time, and according to his
teachers, he is not very bright. His classmates say…well, that James cries. A lot.
They might be right.
But despite all that, he can sing. His voice is beautiful. That’s what everyone says.
And that is how James knows that singing is what he will do with his life. Other first graders want to be veterinarians, firemen, astronauts, and teachers. James wants to be a popstar. Singing is the one thing that he’s never had a reason to doubt.
Then he meets Kendall Knight.
The first time James hears the voice, he falls off the monkey bars. It is a short fall, but the transition from dangling in the air to landing in a crumpled heap on the ground isn’t fun. James cries, because that is his automatic reaction to everything, especially scraped, bloody knees and bruises on his elbows.
Furious with himself, he wipes at his face, but he’s got sand and dirt on his fingers, and it just makes it worse. He looks towards the blacktop, towards the sound that distracted him in the first place, eyes watering. He peers past the white chalk lines for hopscotch, past the lonely basketball hoop with no net, past the clusters of friends sitting on metal bleachers with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but he can’t find the source of the song. James spins to the left, and then to the right, calming a little. He listens, for real now, trying to pick up on the strains of twinkle twinkle little star, first close, then far, then close again.
Realization strikes lightning quick; there, at the edge of the sandbox, on the swings. There is a little boy that James has never seen before, kicking his legs back and forth, swinging higher and higher and higher still. He has skin as white as snow, lips as pink as candy, and hair as golden as the sun. He is the source of the music, belting out lyrics at the top of his lungs as he flies up into the air like a songbird. James’s chest squeezes tight.
For the first time in his life, he understands what people mean when they say something is so beautiful it takes your breath away. This boy, he is brilliant. He is blinding. And he is showing off for the girl that James kind of maybe likes.
She is sitting in the next swing over, flaxen curls flying in the wind, her laughter spiraling off in all directions as she tries to drag her sneakers in the sand and skid to a halt. Her name is Carmela, and James has known her since kindergarten.
He’s never made her smile like that.
She claps her hands for the boy, absolutely beaming. He hops off the swing while it is arcing through the air, landing lightly on his feet. It’s like he really does have wings. Smirking, the boy executes a tiny bow, and that is when he and Carmela both notice James standing there, little fingers bunched into fists inside his pockets.
“James,” says Carmela, and she rolls her eyes a little, but she’s smiling wide. “This is Kendall. He’s new.”
“Hi.” Kendall waves. His grin is gap-toothed between the stretch of his pink lips.
James nods, curt, abruptly jealous. His knees sting.
“Did you hear him sing?” Carmela asks excitedly.
James nods again, biting the inside of his cheek.
“Isn’t he awesome? He might even be better than you!” The friendly smile Kendall is wearing drops completely off his face. He mimics James, stuffing his hands into his pockets and watching Carmela a little disapprovingly. She babbles on, “Miss Lauren is going to be so happy. I’m going to go tell her.”
Miss Lauren, their chorus teacher, will be ecstatic, James knows. He has always been her star pupil, but this songbird of a boy will outshine him, easy.
James is pouting, a little, his lower lip trembling from the idea of it. He watches Carmela’s back recede as she runs across the blacktop, but Kendall remains. His hand is on James’s shoulder, and he asks, “Hey, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” James snaps, because the last thing he wants is for the school’s new superstar to call him a crybaby.
But Kendall isn’t daunted by James’s ferocity. He blinks and asks, “Are you sure? Just. You’re bleeding.” Kendall points to James’s knees and winces. “That looks like it hurts. Wanna go to the nurse’s office?”
“I’ll go,” James says stiffly, sure that he’s being dismissed.
Kendall brightens. “Mind if I come? That girl’s weiiiiird.”
“Weird?” James bristles a little, because hey, that is the girl he’s going to marry someday.
Kendall wrinkles his nose, falling into step alongside James as they cross the playground. “I mean she’s nice, but I don’t want to join chorus.”
Uncertainly, James asks, “You don’t?”
“Nah, I’m going to be in hockey. My dad is taking me to sign up after school.”
“Hockey,” James repeats.
Kendall nods, lighting up. He guides James through the double doors leading into the school hallway, fluorescent lights flickering cheerily overhead. “Do you wanna play? You should come join. I don’t know anyone. Being new sucks.”
“I, uh. I don’t know how,” James says, reluctant, because suddenly he is looking at this Kendall kid in an entirely different light. Like maybe he could be a friend.
James doesn’t really have any of those.
“They teach you!” Kendall replies eagerly, his sneakers squeaking off the hall tile. “And I can help! You’re tall and stuff, you’ll be really good.”
Good isn’t something James has ever been at anything, except singing. He’s been okay with that for a long time now, but. Maybe it’s not enough. If there are people like Kendall out there, people who can make a song sound that amazing, what chance of being a popstar does James really have? It’s high time he learned a new skill.
“Doesn’t stuff come like, flying at your face?” He asks, a little fearfully.
“Yeah, but it’s awesome! Come on,” Kendall begs. “Pleeeease. Say you will.”
On the one hand, James is really fond of his face.
On the other, he can’t shake the image of Kendall, swinging high up in the air, holding one long, perfect note, illuminated by sunlight with his white skin and his pink lips and his gold, gold hair. No one ever wants to be James’s friend, because he is rich and spoiled and not very good at much of anything. No one, especially not golden little boys who look like they can take flight at any moment.
Of course James has to say yes.
The second he goes home, he asks his parents to sign him up for hockey.
And singing lessons, because James Diamond can sing, but now he knows there is always room for improvement. No matter how cool hockey sounds, singing is still his dream.
---
Across the table, she licks her ruby lips, her teeth all white and shiny and sharp. She is a wolf in the middle of James’s kitchen, wrapped up in a red coat. The light from the wall sconces pierces her diamond skin, turning her ephemeral and bewitching.
James does not want to sit across from this woman anymore. He does not want her to eat from the cereal bowl that should belong to his mother. She cradles it in her palm, and what big hands she has.
James does not want her blood red lips to touch that glass of orange juice, leaving behind a lipstick stain. She smiles, after, and what big teeth she has.
James really, really does not want to watch his dad bend over backwards to please her. She thanks him for it, and what strange power she has.
She is James’s new stepmom. Or she will be. James isn’t totally sure of the details. All he knows is that his mom hates this girl, with her flash looks and her crass attitude. All he knows is that his dad is completely infatuated with her.
All he knows is that she is a stranger and she is ruining everything.
When she sits in James’s kitchen, she eats up every mention of his mother, like Brooke Diamond never even existed. James glares at his own orange juice and wonders if maybe he can drown himself in the glass. He is screaming inside, his heart bleeding out through his ribcage.
That’s when Kendall shows up. His lanky body doesn’t quite fill out the doorframe. Light spills in over his shoulders, illuminating his eyes, his skin, his hair. He glows with it.
Kendall wears a grin on his pink lips, pulled tight against his gap toothed smile, but when he looks across the kitchen at James, it doesn’t reach his eyes. It’s like he can hear it; the beast that rages inside of him. Maybe he can. They’ve been best friends for close to two years.
“Hey, little man!” James’s dad cheers at the sight of Kendall. He ruffles his hair, hands still wet from dishwashing. Blond strands go every which direction, and James’s dad laughs, “That’s a good look for you.”
Kendall tries to peer up, to see what exactly has been done to his golden hair, snorting, but James’s dad is already carefully shaping it into a fauxhawk with his wet hands. He steps back and whistles. “Much better. You should let me put some gel in that. James never lets me mess with his hair. Or anyone else.”
He gives James a disapproving look.
James scowls even more fiercely at his OJ. His dad is always doing this.
He likes Kendall better than James. That became evident about five seconds after he met him at James’s first hockey game, when James’s dad introduced himself to Kendall by saying, “So you’re the kid who made my son grow a pair.”
Ever since then, he’s treated Kendall like he’s going to grow up and inherit the earth, which makes James hate Kendall’s stupid smirky face sometimes. But then Kendall, to his credit, says, “Thanks, Mr. Diamond, but I was wondering if I could steal James for a couple of hours?”
“He’s all yours, kiddo,” James’s dad says benevolently, without even bothering to check if James wants to be all Kendall’s.
He does. James will do anything to escape the cage his kitchen has become. He follows Kendall out onto the porch, a bit guiltily, because even though he’s happy to see Kendall, he doesn’t really feel up to doing much other than hiding beneath his covers. He asks, “What did you want to do?”
“I don’t know.” Kendall offers up a sheepish grin. “I didn’t actually, uh, have anything planned. But you’ve been having a rough- um. I thought maybe you needed me.” Kendall ducks his head, embarrassed. “I can leave. I just…didn’t want you to be lonely, I guess.”
James bites back his initial reaction, which is to lie and say that he’s not lonely, not even a little bit. Tentatively, he asks, “Can we go to the fort?”
And even though there’s not a whole lot to do out there, in the woods, Kendall says, “‘course.”
The fort is really just a shoddy lean-to they made one day when they were bored. It’s situated in a bed of dead leaves that will probably turn to mulch sooner rather than later. Kendall’s tucked a fleece blanket in the hollow of a tree. It smells gross, like rain and mold, but they sit cross-legged on it all the same, staring up at the canopy of trees. They’re not far in, close enough to town that anyone could find them if they came searching. The sound of cars crunching pavement is near, the yells of kids who sound happier than James even closer.
They watch the wind play through the budding spring leaves for a while, the quiet comfortable in a way that James never knew it could be.
Eventually, he thinks he’s up to talking.
He starts small. “I can’t believe you let him mess with your hair.”
“Does it really look good?” Kendall asks immediately, touching the already wilting strands.
“Yeah,” James admits reluctantly, because it does. Kendall’s idea of styling usually involves a precursory pat down after he rolls out of bed, so the carefully arranged fauxhawk adds a dash of charm to his otherwise sloppy idea of fashion.
Which doesn’t mean James likes it.
He thinks about messing it up, running his fingers through Kendall’s downy hair and turning him back into the boy James is used to. He doesn’t want his dad to have anything to do with who Kendall is.
But Kendall’s beaming, and James doesn’t want to chase that smile away.
He ends up doing it regardless, while they’re laying tangled together, humming little made-up songs to each other. It’s a game that never really ends until James goes, “Kendall?”
“Hmm?”
“My parents aren’t getting back together, are they?”
There is silence, the kind that is absent of crickets or the crunch of tires on gravel or the low buzz of the phone lines outside. It consists of James’s held breath as he waits for Kendall to come up with an answer, one James already knows, but will feel realer if it comes from his best friend’s mouth.
“I don’t think so.” Kendall runs his fingers through James’s hair, and see, James’s dad is wrong. He lets Kendall touch his hair, because Kendall is safe. Kendall doesn’t break up families or make fun of James when he cries, like he’s doing now. He just pulls James in closer when he sees the first tear on his cheek and tells him, “It’ll be okay.”
James can’t help the tears. He’s eight years old, and still very much a crybaby.
“Jamie,” Kendall says, and he sounds like his heart is breaking. James burrows into his scrawny chest, trying to hide his face in Kendall’s skin because it is as comforting and familiar as James’s own pillows. Kendall takes over their little nonsense songs, crafting them into melodies. In between notes, he murmurs again and again and again, “I promise, you’ll be okay.”
---
Less than a month later, Kendall’s dad is arrested for fraud.
James isn’t allowed to go to the trial, but he waits for Kendall on the Knight stoop, watching day turn into evening. He wants to be there for Kendall the same way Kendall has been there for him, to soothe all his worries and fears.
But it’s weird. Kendall never cries. James sits with him in his room that night, curled beneath Kendall’s comforter, watching his very dry cheeks as Kendall hums them both to sleep. James waits and he waits and he waits, but nothing happens.
The one thing Kendall does let James do is hold his hand. Even though he’s strong. Even though he is brave. James almost thinks it’s a concession made more for his own sake than Kendall’s.
He decides that night that he will be strong and brave too. The next time he’s sad, instead of crying, James begins singing himself lullabies the way that Kendall always does. His voice is his solace, now.
No more tears.
---
Sheet music consists of complicated curlicues and bold black bars. Clutching a stack of songs and a flashlight beneath the covers, James pretends like he is reading his own secret language that nobody else can understand.
He tests a note or two on his tongue, breathes through the negative space marked by white on his page. It soothes away the restless anger that’s simmered in his belly since earlier that day, when Kendall announced that he was finally joining choir.
It was the first day of sixth grade, a fine time to really stick the knife in James’s back.
Kendall stood there, flanked by Carlos and Logan, happily explaining that he was about to make James miserable. He said it is so they can spend more time together, but there’s no way that’s true. They already spend like, ninety percent of their day with each other, between class and hockey, homework and video games.
Kendall’s consistently better than James at all of those things.
Choir is the one and only thing James has that’s his own, the one thing he’s better at than anyone else in their school, and Kendall wants to take it from him.
A small, guilty part of James’s conscience whispers that his best friend would never try to cut him down that way, but the larger part of James cannot figure out why anyone would want to be with him one hundred percent of the time. He’s growing bigger, taller, handsomer, but it’s not like he’s quit being James Diamond. He’s never stopped acting like the baby-faced brat that no one other than his teammates wants to be around, even if he has noticed girls giving him these long, weird looks lately.
Kendall has to have an agenda. He’s going to sing in front of the whole school and steal the show.
Frustrated again, James tries to focus on the page, the black symbols swimming because of the wetness in his eyes.
He’s not going to cry. He doesn’t do that anymore. But he’s just so mad. There is a furious creature in James’s chest that makes his throat woolly, his insides crawl. It huffs and it puffs and it reminds James his entire life is about to be blown down.
The worst part is how he knows Kendall can breeze in and wrack up all the applause. No one other than him even remembers that Kendall is capable of carrying a tune, much less that he’s brilliant at it. Tomorrow, they’ll find out. Everything’s going to change.
And James is going to grit his teeth and pretend to be happy about it, because what else can he do? Losing Kendall isn’t an option. He might be a backstabbing jerk, but he’s also Kendall, and James isn’t ready to give all that Kendall-ness up.
In the hall, this afternoon, he looked straight into Kendall’s too-green eyes and said…Great.
James could have stopped it all right there, but didn’t. He couldn’t.
Kendall was wearing this enthusiastic grin and that stupid fauxhawk, the one he’s sported ever since James’s dad told him it was the epitome of style, and all James could think was about how it looks even better on him now. He’s losing his baby fat, his cheeks hollowing out, his chin thinning. Kendall’s getting sort of really good looking, just to make sure the universe completely rubs salt in all of James’s wounds. But he couldn’t say no, not when Kendall was there, all proud and pleased. If he’d said something, the exultant curve of Kendall’s lips would have vanished, and that made him feel like his throat was closing up.
So he didn’t.
James growls out the words to the song he’s supposed to be learning. It’s the only way he has to express how very irritated he is. He’ll let Kendall have this, he will, but James won’t ever forgive him for it.
One day, probably, this moment’s going to come back to bite them both.
---
James is eating dinner at the Mitchells'. He does this about once a week, because Logan’s pretty cool for a nerd, and because on Thursdays Carlos and Kendall have both consistently shared after-school detentions since the beginning of the year. They haven’t learned that blowing shit up in chemistry isn’t actually what the class is about.
James doesn’t mind though. He’s been friends with Logan since third grade, and sometimes he gets along with him even better than he gets along with Kendall. Like right now, James is piling mashed potatoes into shapes; a castle, a crown, a buttery stallion. If Kendall was here, it would be a competition to see who could build the Great potato Wall of China. But Logan just sits there, minding his own business.
James likes that.
He does not like Logan’s dad.
Mr. Mitchell is a nice enough man, with his coke bottle glasses and his careful, precise movements. He’s a doctor, oh so very clinical, and every time he looks at James, it makes him feel like he’s on the wrong end of a microscope.
Somehow the subject of the future comes up while James is in the midst of the careful construction of a mashed potato starfish, and suddenly Mr. Mitchell is sizing him up like he’s a medical experiment gone terribly awry. “You really think you can make it in Hollywood?”
James drops his fork and wipes his abruptly clammy hands on his jeans, keeping his eyes trained on his peas. “I hope so, sir.”
It’s the wrong thing to say, he knows that even before Mr. Mitchell begins rattling off impersonal statistics about how hard James is going to fail. It’s enough to make James bite down on his tongue, but he does not bite Mr. Mitchell’s head off.
Both because he’s polite and because he’s worried it’s true.
James wishes he was a giant-killer, unafraid to swing at beanstalks or intimidating men, not scared to defend himself in the least. But he is alarmed and fearful, unable to come up with anything but an empty smile and simmering fury that Logan’s dad takes as tacit agreement.
After dinner, Logan approaches with worried eyes, furtively glancing towards where his dad is washing the dishes in the kitchen. “James, he didn’t mean that.”
“Yeah? I don’t see you contradicting him, Logan,” James snaps, and then he tries not to feel like he’s kicked a puppy. It doesn’t work.
He trudges home as dusk falls around his shoulders, bringing with it the buzz of cicadas and the last shrill cries of birds, settling in for the night. It’s almost like a song, but James doesn’t even think about singing along.
Maybe he really is going to fail.
Without music, what kind of future is there? He’s never had any other dreams, except that one time he thought about joining the circus, and that other time he wanted to be a Jedi, but neither of those were exactly realistic goals. Logan’s dad had a point, and if a single, cold-eyed man can make defeat weigh this heavily on James, what will an entire town full of them do?
Hollywood crushes people, and now it won’t have any trouble crushing James. Probably.
James squares his shoulders against the night, taking the steps to his porch two at a time. He’s halfway through the door before he notices there’s already someone in his living room.
“What are you doing here?”
“Logan called.” Kendall’s hopped on the back of the couch, his Vans dangling dangerously over the white cushions. “He said you were Jamesing.”
Yeah, Kendall joining the choir wasn’t the end of the world. James was younger, then. He overreacted. They’re still total bros.
“What does that even mean?”
“It means none of us like seeing you miserable, and your mom let me in. What happened?”
James doesn’t want to talk about it. Which is weird, because Kendall is always the first voice he turns to; his best friend, pale awkward limbs and a crazed smile, always up to something. But what if Kendall, for some reason, agrees with Mr. Mitchell? What if he thinks James will never make it?
Kendall would never say so out loud, ever, because he’s not that kind of guy. But James would be able to see it in his eyes, and that would be pretty fucking apocalyptic.
He shrugs noncommittally.
“Alriiight.” Kendall draws the word out. “Let’s talk about something else. What are you wearing on your feet?”
Kendall makes a face at James’s oxfords, and he has no right to talk about anything fashion-related, ever. James glares at him.
“Fine, okay, something else,” Kendall agrees. “I was going to come over anyway. I need advice. About. Like. Girls.”
The last part is muttered, and even as he says it, Kendall’s turning bright red, embarrassed from the flaming tips of his ears right on down to the quake in his knees.
James grins. This is steady ground. This is not something he ever sucks at. “Oh yeah? Tell the grandmaster what’s on your mind.”
“I hate you,” Kendall says seriously. Then he asks. “Okay. Do girls like, come?”
“Of course girls come,” James sniffs, because hi, stupid question. He’s barely fifteen, but he’s got answers to all the big important sex questions. Ever since his shoulders filled out and his legs got long, James has been popular, and he sure as hell is taking advantage of it.
Impatiently, Kendall tries, “No, but do they, like…?”
He makes a hand gesture that clearly means jacking off, with a little flare of his fingers at the end that James translates as, “Do they explode?
No, god, how would people reproduce if girls freaking immolated every time they had an orgasm?”
Kendall’s burning bright now, utterly humiliated, and it’s sort of nice, the way he’s gone all off balance. Kendall is a bit of a work in progress, James decides, and one day he’ll be the kind of guy that no one can throw. So he enjoys this, being able to see all the strokes that will one day make Kendall into a man. James savors it.
“Sorry I asked, okay, I just thought since you’re all…you know…a floozy-“
“I am not a floozy,” James gasps, outraged.
Kendall is unimpressed. “Since when?”
“Since people stopped saying floozy when women got the right to vote, obviously.”
“Fine.” Kendall crosses his arms and gnaws on his lower lip. He’s got on a striped polo shirt that is garishly obnoxious, but also accents his broadening shoulders, and James is delighted to have such a good looking friend. “Manslut.”
Satisfied with this terminology, James adds, “And proud. So, why do you want to know how vagina works, anyway? Got a girlfriend?”
He’s teasing, because Kendall doesn’t meet girls without telling James about them. Partly because they’re friends, and partly because Kendall can’t resist a chance to compete. James always has Kendall beat with girls, but that doesn’t mean Kendall doesn’t like to be in the running, and James is forever the first to know.
So he’s kind of surprised when Kendall shifts in his seat and says, “Maybe.”
“Maybe?” James isn’t sure why his anger gets the better of him, immediately. Maybe he’s still broken up over what Logan’s dad said, or maybe he just hates the idea of Kendall having secrets. Or maybe it’s something about the way he sits there, gangly but vulnerable, with his skin lamplit as golden as the sun, lips pinched together into a thin snow-white line, and hair as sunny yellow as lemon drops. He is a songbird caged, uncomfortable, and James wants to know who he is behind it all. “And you didn’t tell me?”
“There’s not anything to tell. Yet,” Kendall shifts awkwardly, red staining his cheeks. He kicks his heels against James’s mom’s couch, leaving tiny black scuff marks that James will get in trouble for later. He meets James’s gaze, daring, unhappy. “I didn’t want to jinx it.”
James sulks, staring at Kendall’s shoes. They are marked over with black and blue, song lyrics and an anarchy symbol and whatever he thinks is cool when he’s bored in class. Around the sole of one, he let James practice his autograph so that there is a ring of James Diamonds scrawled from his toe to his heel.
James says, “I could’ve helped. I can help.”
“I know you can,” Kendall says soothingly, his eyes big and round and so, so green. “But I’ve got to do some things on my own, James.”
That’s basically James’s biggest fear.
Kendall, Logan, and Carlos having their own things, things that they don’t need James for. It’s why he needs Hollywood, and superstardom, and a life that is so big and bright and beautiful that he won’t even notice his friends are missing. It’s part dream, part a desperate wish, and no matter what Mr. Mitchell says, it needs to happen soon. Otherwise, James is going to get left behind.
“James,” Kendall says, well aware that he’s said the wrong thing, somehow. His fauxhawk is in that awkward stage where it’s finally growing out, half spiked in the air, half flopping in front of his eyes. “Come on. Tell me what happened at Logan’s.”
James thinks on it. He thinks about how Kendall’s never been scared to face down giants or intimidating men, how Kendall wouldn’t have put up with any of Mr. Mitchell’s bullshit. He thinks about how Kendall is now keeping secrets, and how maybe James doesn’t know anything about him after all.
Finally James says, “Logan’s dad is wrong, you know. One day I’ll be bigger than this whole fucking town.”
“I know,” Kendall says immediately, without an ounce of doubt. Kendall always believes in James; it’s his own fault for thinking he wouldn’t.
And maybe Kendall isn’t leaving as soon as James thought, either, because from that day on, he tells anyone who will listen with absolute certainty, “James can do anything. He’s going to be a star.”
The first time James overhears it, he beams from ear to ear. He serenades Kendall with an impromptu song about how they’ll be best friends forever, and why not?
Music is the best way he knows to show how he feels.
---
“Did you find him yet?” James shouts across the woods.
Carlos, mid-shamble, pauses with his arms outstretched. His lips twitch out of their horror-movie grimace, working into a petulant pout. “Stop making me break character!”
Near James’s shoulder, Kendall snorts with laughter. “Now you’ve done it.”
He buries his head into the fabric of James’s shirt to hide his smile from Carlos, the heat of his breath warmer than the pale, late afternoon sun, lancing through the thick foliage that edges James’s house. The fort he built with Kendall is long gone, but the picnic blanket lies here still, moldering somewhere beneath wet leaves and grassy moss.
Impatiently, James demands, “Did you find him yet?”
Carlos drops his arms to his hips, irritation turning his posture rigid. “Does it look like I found him?” Directing his voice towards the canopies of the trees, he yells, “Logan! Come out now! You won! And James is being annoying!”
“I’m not being annoying,” James tells Kendall, whose pink lips curve with mirth.
“Nah,” he answers with too much levity. To Carlos, Kendall calls, “Doesn’t look like Logan’s coming out, Carlitos. Onwards, outwards, you’ve got brains to devour.”
Obediently, Carlos resumes his best undead impersonation, clomping deeper into the woods in search of tasty genius brains. Kendall reclines back against the base of the tree trunk they’ve dubbed the CDC, satisfied with his role as lord and master of everything.
He’s got a hole in the knee of his jeans that he picks at, the white skin underneath so pale that it looks like bone. James huffs and sinks his head back down into Kendall’s lap, blocking his access to the ragged edges of denim. “If Carlos ever becomes a real zombie, he’ll never be able to feed himself.”
Kendall’s silhouette is sucking in all the weak sunlight around them, and it trembles gold as he snickers, his face obscured in shadows. “We’d have to tie him up in your basement and make sure he gets three square meals a day.”
“Someone would have to give him sponge baths,” James adds, wrinkling his nose as he gives that some thought. He announces, “Not it,” at the same time that Kendall does. They’re ridiculously in tune, feeding off each other’s stupid ideas the same way they do on the ice, rushing the net where less reckless idiots never would.
There’s a tug at his scalp, and James reaches back, touching the bumps he finds there with muted shock. “Are you braiding my hair?”
“It looks nice. You could be a princess,” Kendall replies cheerfully, even though he’s the one with cartoon eyes and aspirations of leadership.
“A tiara would really bring out the angles of my cheekbones,” James deadpans, because Kendall’s not going to judge him for being ridiculous. Kendall’s favorite color is pink; he doesn’t get a say.
“And the sparkle in your smile,” Kendall answers, cupping James’s cheek critically, molding skin beneath his fingers like he can make those angles and that smile pop, tiara or no.
“If I was a zombie,” James half-mumbles, part of his mouth stretched beneath Kendall’s fingertips, “I would be the prettiest. I’d get all the other zombies to do what I say.”
“Zombies don’t say anything, James,” Kendall drops his hand and tacks on seriously, “Besides, you’re not allowed to be undead.”
“Why not?” James squints up at his best friend, the halo of light around his body so incandescent that Kendall’s face could look like anything - a polar bear or a monster or the god of love.
Kendall asks, “What would I do without you?” Utterly serious, utterly sincere.
James wants to strain up and see the expression Kendall is wearing right then, but his limbs won’t listen to him, acting as if they’ve been warned against it.
No peeking, or the spell will be broken.
Hurriedly, James says, “I’m sure you’d think of something. Hey, you know I’ve been writing a zombie musical?”
“Oh yeah?” Kendall’s head thunks back against bark, his attention no longer one hundred percent focused on James’s face. It is the strangest relief. “Have you already done the songs?”
“Sure,” James answers, sitting up and twisting around, because the press of his head against Kendall’s thighs is actually really kind of intimate. They’re getting too old to be this close.
James begins belting out his new impromptu masterpiece a capella, conveying fire and brimstone and decay through baritone zombie grunts and alto zombie groans. Singing is his smokescreen.
Only James can’t quite figure out what he needs to hide from.
---
Author: garnetice
Pairing: James/Kendall
Rating: T
Word Count: 5,732 (this chapter, 10,245 total)
Warnings: Some bad words and non-graphic sex talk, basically. It's really the low end of the T spectrum.
Summary: James Diamond can sing. He builds his life on that foundation, on the belief that music lives in his blood.
Disclaimer: Don't own BTR, obvs.
Author's Notes: Uh, so I think around Valentine’s Day last year, Courtney (breila-rose) asked why no one had written about James and singing (which actually Liz has done since then, oops). I was like MINE GIVE ME NOW, because I am bossy. So. For you, bb. Much thanks for the awesome beta by jblostfan16. Title is from the song Mass Romantic by The New Pornographers.
---
James Diamond can sing. He builds his life on that foundation, on the belief that music lives in his blood. Because he has to.
He is always causing trouble. That’s what his mom says.
He looks like a little girl. That’s what his dad says.
He is not very athletic. That’s what his nanny says, usually after he’s tripped down the stairs for the eightieth time, and according to his
teachers, he is not very bright. His classmates say…well, that James cries. A lot.
They might be right.
But despite all that, he can sing. His voice is beautiful. That’s what everyone says.
And that is how James knows that singing is what he will do with his life. Other first graders want to be veterinarians, firemen, astronauts, and teachers. James wants to be a popstar. Singing is the one thing that he’s never had a reason to doubt.
Then he meets Kendall Knight.
The first time James hears the voice, he falls off the monkey bars. It is a short fall, but the transition from dangling in the air to landing in a crumpled heap on the ground isn’t fun. James cries, because that is his automatic reaction to everything, especially scraped, bloody knees and bruises on his elbows.
Furious with himself, he wipes at his face, but he’s got sand and dirt on his fingers, and it just makes it worse. He looks towards the blacktop, towards the sound that distracted him in the first place, eyes watering. He peers past the white chalk lines for hopscotch, past the lonely basketball hoop with no net, past the clusters of friends sitting on metal bleachers with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but he can’t find the source of the song. James spins to the left, and then to the right, calming a little. He listens, for real now, trying to pick up on the strains of twinkle twinkle little star, first close, then far, then close again.
Realization strikes lightning quick; there, at the edge of the sandbox, on the swings. There is a little boy that James has never seen before, kicking his legs back and forth, swinging higher and higher and higher still. He has skin as white as snow, lips as pink as candy, and hair as golden as the sun. He is the source of the music, belting out lyrics at the top of his lungs as he flies up into the air like a songbird. James’s chest squeezes tight.
For the first time in his life, he understands what people mean when they say something is so beautiful it takes your breath away. This boy, he is brilliant. He is blinding. And he is showing off for the girl that James kind of maybe likes.
She is sitting in the next swing over, flaxen curls flying in the wind, her laughter spiraling off in all directions as she tries to drag her sneakers in the sand and skid to a halt. Her name is Carmela, and James has known her since kindergarten.
He’s never made her smile like that.
She claps her hands for the boy, absolutely beaming. He hops off the swing while it is arcing through the air, landing lightly on his feet. It’s like he really does have wings. Smirking, the boy executes a tiny bow, and that is when he and Carmela both notice James standing there, little fingers bunched into fists inside his pockets.
“James,” says Carmela, and she rolls her eyes a little, but she’s smiling wide. “This is Kendall. He’s new.”
“Hi.” Kendall waves. His grin is gap-toothed between the stretch of his pink lips.
James nods, curt, abruptly jealous. His knees sting.
“Did you hear him sing?” Carmela asks excitedly.
James nods again, biting the inside of his cheek.
“Isn’t he awesome? He might even be better than you!” The friendly smile Kendall is wearing drops completely off his face. He mimics James, stuffing his hands into his pockets and watching Carmela a little disapprovingly. She babbles on, “Miss Lauren is going to be so happy. I’m going to go tell her.”
Miss Lauren, their chorus teacher, will be ecstatic, James knows. He has always been her star pupil, but this songbird of a boy will outshine him, easy.
James is pouting, a little, his lower lip trembling from the idea of it. He watches Carmela’s back recede as she runs across the blacktop, but Kendall remains. His hand is on James’s shoulder, and he asks, “Hey, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” James snaps, because the last thing he wants is for the school’s new superstar to call him a crybaby.
But Kendall isn’t daunted by James’s ferocity. He blinks and asks, “Are you sure? Just. You’re bleeding.” Kendall points to James’s knees and winces. “That looks like it hurts. Wanna go to the nurse’s office?”
“I’ll go,” James says stiffly, sure that he’s being dismissed.
Kendall brightens. “Mind if I come? That girl’s weiiiiird.”
“Weird?” James bristles a little, because hey, that is the girl he’s going to marry someday.
Kendall wrinkles his nose, falling into step alongside James as they cross the playground. “I mean she’s nice, but I don’t want to join chorus.”
Uncertainly, James asks, “You don’t?”
“Nah, I’m going to be in hockey. My dad is taking me to sign up after school.”
“Hockey,” James repeats.
Kendall nods, lighting up. He guides James through the double doors leading into the school hallway, fluorescent lights flickering cheerily overhead. “Do you wanna play? You should come join. I don’t know anyone. Being new sucks.”
“I, uh. I don’t know how,” James says, reluctant, because suddenly he is looking at this Kendall kid in an entirely different light. Like maybe he could be a friend.
James doesn’t really have any of those.
“They teach you!” Kendall replies eagerly, his sneakers squeaking off the hall tile. “And I can help! You’re tall and stuff, you’ll be really good.”
Good isn’t something James has ever been at anything, except singing. He’s been okay with that for a long time now, but. Maybe it’s not enough. If there are people like Kendall out there, people who can make a song sound that amazing, what chance of being a popstar does James really have? It’s high time he learned a new skill.
“Doesn’t stuff come like, flying at your face?” He asks, a little fearfully.
“Yeah, but it’s awesome! Come on,” Kendall begs. “Pleeeease. Say you will.”
On the one hand, James is really fond of his face.
On the other, he can’t shake the image of Kendall, swinging high up in the air, holding one long, perfect note, illuminated by sunlight with his white skin and his pink lips and his gold, gold hair. No one ever wants to be James’s friend, because he is rich and spoiled and not very good at much of anything. No one, especially not golden little boys who look like they can take flight at any moment.
Of course James has to say yes.
The second he goes home, he asks his parents to sign him up for hockey.
And singing lessons, because James Diamond can sing, but now he knows there is always room for improvement. No matter how cool hockey sounds, singing is still his dream.
---
Across the table, she licks her ruby lips, her teeth all white and shiny and sharp. She is a wolf in the middle of James’s kitchen, wrapped up in a red coat. The light from the wall sconces pierces her diamond skin, turning her ephemeral and bewitching.
James does not want to sit across from this woman anymore. He does not want her to eat from the cereal bowl that should belong to his mother. She cradles it in her palm, and what big hands she has.
James does not want her blood red lips to touch that glass of orange juice, leaving behind a lipstick stain. She smiles, after, and what big teeth she has.
James really, really does not want to watch his dad bend over backwards to please her. She thanks him for it, and what strange power she has.
She is James’s new stepmom. Or she will be. James isn’t totally sure of the details. All he knows is that his mom hates this girl, with her flash looks and her crass attitude. All he knows is that his dad is completely infatuated with her.
All he knows is that she is a stranger and she is ruining everything.
When she sits in James’s kitchen, she eats up every mention of his mother, like Brooke Diamond never even existed. James glares at his own orange juice and wonders if maybe he can drown himself in the glass. He is screaming inside, his heart bleeding out through his ribcage.
That’s when Kendall shows up. His lanky body doesn’t quite fill out the doorframe. Light spills in over his shoulders, illuminating his eyes, his skin, his hair. He glows with it.
Kendall wears a grin on his pink lips, pulled tight against his gap toothed smile, but when he looks across the kitchen at James, it doesn’t reach his eyes. It’s like he can hear it; the beast that rages inside of him. Maybe he can. They’ve been best friends for close to two years.
“Hey, little man!” James’s dad cheers at the sight of Kendall. He ruffles his hair, hands still wet from dishwashing. Blond strands go every which direction, and James’s dad laughs, “That’s a good look for you.”
Kendall tries to peer up, to see what exactly has been done to his golden hair, snorting, but James’s dad is already carefully shaping it into a fauxhawk with his wet hands. He steps back and whistles. “Much better. You should let me put some gel in that. James never lets me mess with his hair. Or anyone else.”
He gives James a disapproving look.
James scowls even more fiercely at his OJ. His dad is always doing this.
He likes Kendall better than James. That became evident about five seconds after he met him at James’s first hockey game, when James’s dad introduced himself to Kendall by saying, “So you’re the kid who made my son grow a pair.”
Ever since then, he’s treated Kendall like he’s going to grow up and inherit the earth, which makes James hate Kendall’s stupid smirky face sometimes. But then Kendall, to his credit, says, “Thanks, Mr. Diamond, but I was wondering if I could steal James for a couple of hours?”
“He’s all yours, kiddo,” James’s dad says benevolently, without even bothering to check if James wants to be all Kendall’s.
He does. James will do anything to escape the cage his kitchen has become. He follows Kendall out onto the porch, a bit guiltily, because even though he’s happy to see Kendall, he doesn’t really feel up to doing much other than hiding beneath his covers. He asks, “What did you want to do?”
“I don’t know.” Kendall offers up a sheepish grin. “I didn’t actually, uh, have anything planned. But you’ve been having a rough- um. I thought maybe you needed me.” Kendall ducks his head, embarrassed. “I can leave. I just…didn’t want you to be lonely, I guess.”
James bites back his initial reaction, which is to lie and say that he’s not lonely, not even a little bit. Tentatively, he asks, “Can we go to the fort?”
And even though there’s not a whole lot to do out there, in the woods, Kendall says, “‘course.”
The fort is really just a shoddy lean-to they made one day when they were bored. It’s situated in a bed of dead leaves that will probably turn to mulch sooner rather than later. Kendall’s tucked a fleece blanket in the hollow of a tree. It smells gross, like rain and mold, but they sit cross-legged on it all the same, staring up at the canopy of trees. They’re not far in, close enough to town that anyone could find them if they came searching. The sound of cars crunching pavement is near, the yells of kids who sound happier than James even closer.
They watch the wind play through the budding spring leaves for a while, the quiet comfortable in a way that James never knew it could be.
Eventually, he thinks he’s up to talking.
He starts small. “I can’t believe you let him mess with your hair.”
“Does it really look good?” Kendall asks immediately, touching the already wilting strands.
“Yeah,” James admits reluctantly, because it does. Kendall’s idea of styling usually involves a precursory pat down after he rolls out of bed, so the carefully arranged fauxhawk adds a dash of charm to his otherwise sloppy idea of fashion.
Which doesn’t mean James likes it.
He thinks about messing it up, running his fingers through Kendall’s downy hair and turning him back into the boy James is used to. He doesn’t want his dad to have anything to do with who Kendall is.
But Kendall’s beaming, and James doesn’t want to chase that smile away.
He ends up doing it regardless, while they’re laying tangled together, humming little made-up songs to each other. It’s a game that never really ends until James goes, “Kendall?”
“Hmm?”
“My parents aren’t getting back together, are they?”
There is silence, the kind that is absent of crickets or the crunch of tires on gravel or the low buzz of the phone lines outside. It consists of James’s held breath as he waits for Kendall to come up with an answer, one James already knows, but will feel realer if it comes from his best friend’s mouth.
“I don’t think so.” Kendall runs his fingers through James’s hair, and see, James’s dad is wrong. He lets Kendall touch his hair, because Kendall is safe. Kendall doesn’t break up families or make fun of James when he cries, like he’s doing now. He just pulls James in closer when he sees the first tear on his cheek and tells him, “It’ll be okay.”
James can’t help the tears. He’s eight years old, and still very much a crybaby.
“Jamie,” Kendall says, and he sounds like his heart is breaking. James burrows into his scrawny chest, trying to hide his face in Kendall’s skin because it is as comforting and familiar as James’s own pillows. Kendall takes over their little nonsense songs, crafting them into melodies. In between notes, he murmurs again and again and again, “I promise, you’ll be okay.”
---
Less than a month later, Kendall’s dad is arrested for fraud.
James isn’t allowed to go to the trial, but he waits for Kendall on the Knight stoop, watching day turn into evening. He wants to be there for Kendall the same way Kendall has been there for him, to soothe all his worries and fears.
But it’s weird. Kendall never cries. James sits with him in his room that night, curled beneath Kendall’s comforter, watching his very dry cheeks as Kendall hums them both to sleep. James waits and he waits and he waits, but nothing happens.
The one thing Kendall does let James do is hold his hand. Even though he’s strong. Even though he is brave. James almost thinks it’s a concession made more for his own sake than Kendall’s.
He decides that night that he will be strong and brave too. The next time he’s sad, instead of crying, James begins singing himself lullabies the way that Kendall always does. His voice is his solace, now.
No more tears.
---
Sheet music consists of complicated curlicues and bold black bars. Clutching a stack of songs and a flashlight beneath the covers, James pretends like he is reading his own secret language that nobody else can understand.
He tests a note or two on his tongue, breathes through the negative space marked by white on his page. It soothes away the restless anger that’s simmered in his belly since earlier that day, when Kendall announced that he was finally joining choir.
It was the first day of sixth grade, a fine time to really stick the knife in James’s back.
Kendall stood there, flanked by Carlos and Logan, happily explaining that he was about to make James miserable. He said it is so they can spend more time together, but there’s no way that’s true. They already spend like, ninety percent of their day with each other, between class and hockey, homework and video games.
Kendall’s consistently better than James at all of those things.
Choir is the one and only thing James has that’s his own, the one thing he’s better at than anyone else in their school, and Kendall wants to take it from him.
A small, guilty part of James’s conscience whispers that his best friend would never try to cut him down that way, but the larger part of James cannot figure out why anyone would want to be with him one hundred percent of the time. He’s growing bigger, taller, handsomer, but it’s not like he’s quit being James Diamond. He’s never stopped acting like the baby-faced brat that no one other than his teammates wants to be around, even if he has noticed girls giving him these long, weird looks lately.
Kendall has to have an agenda. He’s going to sing in front of the whole school and steal the show.
Frustrated again, James tries to focus on the page, the black symbols swimming because of the wetness in his eyes.
He’s not going to cry. He doesn’t do that anymore. But he’s just so mad. There is a furious creature in James’s chest that makes his throat woolly, his insides crawl. It huffs and it puffs and it reminds James his entire life is about to be blown down.
The worst part is how he knows Kendall can breeze in and wrack up all the applause. No one other than him even remembers that Kendall is capable of carrying a tune, much less that he’s brilliant at it. Tomorrow, they’ll find out. Everything’s going to change.
And James is going to grit his teeth and pretend to be happy about it, because what else can he do? Losing Kendall isn’t an option. He might be a backstabbing jerk, but he’s also Kendall, and James isn’t ready to give all that Kendall-ness up.
In the hall, this afternoon, he looked straight into Kendall’s too-green eyes and said…Great.
James could have stopped it all right there, but didn’t. He couldn’t.
Kendall was wearing this enthusiastic grin and that stupid fauxhawk, the one he’s sported ever since James’s dad told him it was the epitome of style, and all James could think was about how it looks even better on him now. He’s losing his baby fat, his cheeks hollowing out, his chin thinning. Kendall’s getting sort of really good looking, just to make sure the universe completely rubs salt in all of James’s wounds. But he couldn’t say no, not when Kendall was there, all proud and pleased. If he’d said something, the exultant curve of Kendall’s lips would have vanished, and that made him feel like his throat was closing up.
So he didn’t.
James growls out the words to the song he’s supposed to be learning. It’s the only way he has to express how very irritated he is. He’ll let Kendall have this, he will, but James won’t ever forgive him for it.
One day, probably, this moment’s going to come back to bite them both.
---
James is eating dinner at the Mitchells'. He does this about once a week, because Logan’s pretty cool for a nerd, and because on Thursdays Carlos and Kendall have both consistently shared after-school detentions since the beginning of the year. They haven’t learned that blowing shit up in chemistry isn’t actually what the class is about.
James doesn’t mind though. He’s been friends with Logan since third grade, and sometimes he gets along with him even better than he gets along with Kendall. Like right now, James is piling mashed potatoes into shapes; a castle, a crown, a buttery stallion. If Kendall was here, it would be a competition to see who could build the Great potato Wall of China. But Logan just sits there, minding his own business.
James likes that.
He does not like Logan’s dad.
Mr. Mitchell is a nice enough man, with his coke bottle glasses and his careful, precise movements. He’s a doctor, oh so very clinical, and every time he looks at James, it makes him feel like he’s on the wrong end of a microscope.
Somehow the subject of the future comes up while James is in the midst of the careful construction of a mashed potato starfish, and suddenly Mr. Mitchell is sizing him up like he’s a medical experiment gone terribly awry. “You really think you can make it in Hollywood?”
James drops his fork and wipes his abruptly clammy hands on his jeans, keeping his eyes trained on his peas. “I hope so, sir.”
It’s the wrong thing to say, he knows that even before Mr. Mitchell begins rattling off impersonal statistics about how hard James is going to fail. It’s enough to make James bite down on his tongue, but he does not bite Mr. Mitchell’s head off.
Both because he’s polite and because he’s worried it’s true.
James wishes he was a giant-killer, unafraid to swing at beanstalks or intimidating men, not scared to defend himself in the least. But he is alarmed and fearful, unable to come up with anything but an empty smile and simmering fury that Logan’s dad takes as tacit agreement.
After dinner, Logan approaches with worried eyes, furtively glancing towards where his dad is washing the dishes in the kitchen. “James, he didn’t mean that.”
“Yeah? I don’t see you contradicting him, Logan,” James snaps, and then he tries not to feel like he’s kicked a puppy. It doesn’t work.
He trudges home as dusk falls around his shoulders, bringing with it the buzz of cicadas and the last shrill cries of birds, settling in for the night. It’s almost like a song, but James doesn’t even think about singing along.
Maybe he really is going to fail.
Without music, what kind of future is there? He’s never had any other dreams, except that one time he thought about joining the circus, and that other time he wanted to be a Jedi, but neither of those were exactly realistic goals. Logan’s dad had a point, and if a single, cold-eyed man can make defeat weigh this heavily on James, what will an entire town full of them do?
Hollywood crushes people, and now it won’t have any trouble crushing James. Probably.
James squares his shoulders against the night, taking the steps to his porch two at a time. He’s halfway through the door before he notices there’s already someone in his living room.
“What are you doing here?”
“Logan called.” Kendall’s hopped on the back of the couch, his Vans dangling dangerously over the white cushions. “He said you were Jamesing.”
Yeah, Kendall joining the choir wasn’t the end of the world. James was younger, then. He overreacted. They’re still total bros.
“What does that even mean?”
“It means none of us like seeing you miserable, and your mom let me in. What happened?”
James doesn’t want to talk about it. Which is weird, because Kendall is always the first voice he turns to; his best friend, pale awkward limbs and a crazed smile, always up to something. But what if Kendall, for some reason, agrees with Mr. Mitchell? What if he thinks James will never make it?
Kendall would never say so out loud, ever, because he’s not that kind of guy. But James would be able to see it in his eyes, and that would be pretty fucking apocalyptic.
He shrugs noncommittally.
“Alriiight.” Kendall draws the word out. “Let’s talk about something else. What are you wearing on your feet?”
Kendall makes a face at James’s oxfords, and he has no right to talk about anything fashion-related, ever. James glares at him.
“Fine, okay, something else,” Kendall agrees. “I was going to come over anyway. I need advice. About. Like. Girls.”
The last part is muttered, and even as he says it, Kendall’s turning bright red, embarrassed from the flaming tips of his ears right on down to the quake in his knees.
James grins. This is steady ground. This is not something he ever sucks at. “Oh yeah? Tell the grandmaster what’s on your mind.”
“I hate you,” Kendall says seriously. Then he asks. “Okay. Do girls like, come?”
“Of course girls come,” James sniffs, because hi, stupid question. He’s barely fifteen, but he’s got answers to all the big important sex questions. Ever since his shoulders filled out and his legs got long, James has been popular, and he sure as hell is taking advantage of it.
Impatiently, Kendall tries, “No, but do they, like…?”
He makes a hand gesture that clearly means jacking off, with a little flare of his fingers at the end that James translates as, “Do they explode?
No, god, how would people reproduce if girls freaking immolated every time they had an orgasm?”
Kendall’s burning bright now, utterly humiliated, and it’s sort of nice, the way he’s gone all off balance. Kendall is a bit of a work in progress, James decides, and one day he’ll be the kind of guy that no one can throw. So he enjoys this, being able to see all the strokes that will one day make Kendall into a man. James savors it.
“Sorry I asked, okay, I just thought since you’re all…you know…a floozy-“
“I am not a floozy,” James gasps, outraged.
Kendall is unimpressed. “Since when?”
“Since people stopped saying floozy when women got the right to vote, obviously.”
“Fine.” Kendall crosses his arms and gnaws on his lower lip. He’s got on a striped polo shirt that is garishly obnoxious, but also accents his broadening shoulders, and James is delighted to have such a good looking friend. “Manslut.”
Satisfied with this terminology, James adds, “And proud. So, why do you want to know how vagina works, anyway? Got a girlfriend?”
He’s teasing, because Kendall doesn’t meet girls without telling James about them. Partly because they’re friends, and partly because Kendall can’t resist a chance to compete. James always has Kendall beat with girls, but that doesn’t mean Kendall doesn’t like to be in the running, and James is forever the first to know.
So he’s kind of surprised when Kendall shifts in his seat and says, “Maybe.”
“Maybe?” James isn’t sure why his anger gets the better of him, immediately. Maybe he’s still broken up over what Logan’s dad said, or maybe he just hates the idea of Kendall having secrets. Or maybe it’s something about the way he sits there, gangly but vulnerable, with his skin lamplit as golden as the sun, lips pinched together into a thin snow-white line, and hair as sunny yellow as lemon drops. He is a songbird caged, uncomfortable, and James wants to know who he is behind it all. “And you didn’t tell me?”
“There’s not anything to tell. Yet,” Kendall shifts awkwardly, red staining his cheeks. He kicks his heels against James’s mom’s couch, leaving tiny black scuff marks that James will get in trouble for later. He meets James’s gaze, daring, unhappy. “I didn’t want to jinx it.”
James sulks, staring at Kendall’s shoes. They are marked over with black and blue, song lyrics and an anarchy symbol and whatever he thinks is cool when he’s bored in class. Around the sole of one, he let James practice his autograph so that there is a ring of James Diamonds scrawled from his toe to his heel.
James says, “I could’ve helped. I can help.”
“I know you can,” Kendall says soothingly, his eyes big and round and so, so green. “But I’ve got to do some things on my own, James.”
That’s basically James’s biggest fear.
Kendall, Logan, and Carlos having their own things, things that they don’t need James for. It’s why he needs Hollywood, and superstardom, and a life that is so big and bright and beautiful that he won’t even notice his friends are missing. It’s part dream, part a desperate wish, and no matter what Mr. Mitchell says, it needs to happen soon. Otherwise, James is going to get left behind.
“James,” Kendall says, well aware that he’s said the wrong thing, somehow. His fauxhawk is in that awkward stage where it’s finally growing out, half spiked in the air, half flopping in front of his eyes. “Come on. Tell me what happened at Logan’s.”
James thinks on it. He thinks about how Kendall’s never been scared to face down giants or intimidating men, how Kendall wouldn’t have put up with any of Mr. Mitchell’s bullshit. He thinks about how Kendall is now keeping secrets, and how maybe James doesn’t know anything about him after all.
Finally James says, “Logan’s dad is wrong, you know. One day I’ll be bigger than this whole fucking town.”
“I know,” Kendall says immediately, without an ounce of doubt. Kendall always believes in James; it’s his own fault for thinking he wouldn’t.
And maybe Kendall isn’t leaving as soon as James thought, either, because from that day on, he tells anyone who will listen with absolute certainty, “James can do anything. He’s going to be a star.”
The first time James overhears it, he beams from ear to ear. He serenades Kendall with an impromptu song about how they’ll be best friends forever, and why not?
Music is the best way he knows to show how he feels.
---
“Did you find him yet?” James shouts across the woods.
Carlos, mid-shamble, pauses with his arms outstretched. His lips twitch out of their horror-movie grimace, working into a petulant pout. “Stop making me break character!”
Near James’s shoulder, Kendall snorts with laughter. “Now you’ve done it.”
He buries his head into the fabric of James’s shirt to hide his smile from Carlos, the heat of his breath warmer than the pale, late afternoon sun, lancing through the thick foliage that edges James’s house. The fort he built with Kendall is long gone, but the picnic blanket lies here still, moldering somewhere beneath wet leaves and grassy moss.
Impatiently, James demands, “Did you find him yet?”
Carlos drops his arms to his hips, irritation turning his posture rigid. “Does it look like I found him?” Directing his voice towards the canopies of the trees, he yells, “Logan! Come out now! You won! And James is being annoying!”
“I’m not being annoying,” James tells Kendall, whose pink lips curve with mirth.
“Nah,” he answers with too much levity. To Carlos, Kendall calls, “Doesn’t look like Logan’s coming out, Carlitos. Onwards, outwards, you’ve got brains to devour.”
Obediently, Carlos resumes his best undead impersonation, clomping deeper into the woods in search of tasty genius brains. Kendall reclines back against the base of the tree trunk they’ve dubbed the CDC, satisfied with his role as lord and master of everything.
He’s got a hole in the knee of his jeans that he picks at, the white skin underneath so pale that it looks like bone. James huffs and sinks his head back down into Kendall’s lap, blocking his access to the ragged edges of denim. “If Carlos ever becomes a real zombie, he’ll never be able to feed himself.”
Kendall’s silhouette is sucking in all the weak sunlight around them, and it trembles gold as he snickers, his face obscured in shadows. “We’d have to tie him up in your basement and make sure he gets three square meals a day.”
“Someone would have to give him sponge baths,” James adds, wrinkling his nose as he gives that some thought. He announces, “Not it,” at the same time that Kendall does. They’re ridiculously in tune, feeding off each other’s stupid ideas the same way they do on the ice, rushing the net where less reckless idiots never would.
There’s a tug at his scalp, and James reaches back, touching the bumps he finds there with muted shock. “Are you braiding my hair?”
“It looks nice. You could be a princess,” Kendall replies cheerfully, even though he’s the one with cartoon eyes and aspirations of leadership.
“A tiara would really bring out the angles of my cheekbones,” James deadpans, because Kendall’s not going to judge him for being ridiculous. Kendall’s favorite color is pink; he doesn’t get a say.
“And the sparkle in your smile,” Kendall answers, cupping James’s cheek critically, molding skin beneath his fingers like he can make those angles and that smile pop, tiara or no.
“If I was a zombie,” James half-mumbles, part of his mouth stretched beneath Kendall’s fingertips, “I would be the prettiest. I’d get all the other zombies to do what I say.”
“Zombies don’t say anything, James,” Kendall drops his hand and tacks on seriously, “Besides, you’re not allowed to be undead.”
“Why not?” James squints up at his best friend, the halo of light around his body so incandescent that Kendall’s face could look like anything - a polar bear or a monster or the god of love.
Kendall asks, “What would I do without you?” Utterly serious, utterly sincere.
James wants to strain up and see the expression Kendall is wearing right then, but his limbs won’t listen to him, acting as if they’ve been warned against it.
No peeking, or the spell will be broken.
Hurriedly, James says, “I’m sure you’d think of something. Hey, you know I’ve been writing a zombie musical?”
“Oh yeah?” Kendall’s head thunks back against bark, his attention no longer one hundred percent focused on James’s face. It is the strangest relief. “Have you already done the songs?”
“Sure,” James answers, sitting up and twisting around, because the press of his head against Kendall’s thighs is actually really kind of intimate. They’re getting too old to be this close.
James begins belting out his new impromptu masterpiece a capella, conveying fire and brimstone and decay through baritone zombie grunts and alto zombie groans. Singing is his smokescreen.
Only James can’t quite figure out what he needs to hide from.
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