[fic] How To Tame Your Hockey Player - 1/2
Title: How To Tame Your Hockey Player
Author: garnetice
Pairing: Dak/Logan
Rating: K
Word Count: 4,454 (of 9,099)
Warnings: None
Summary: Dak never wanted a roommate. So he's really confused about Logan's presence in his house.
Disclaimer: BTR is not mine.
Author Notes: New story! New story that comes with a story. Right, so a looooong, long, long time ago, like, pre-Big Time Moms, I wanted to write a story where BTR broke up and James and Kendall were poor(ish) and living in a beach bungalow, surfing all day and serving coffee to locals and busking for cash. I may have mentioned this once or twice. Anyway, that fic only exists on the privacy of my computer, because it's not done. This beast here grew as a prequel for that, because I needed a way to explain why Dak and Logan came over for dinner dates. Why is that important? Mostly because there are some throwaway lines in here mentioning Kendall and James sharing an apartment. Also relevant: this is another spinoff of this same universe, if you are ever tempted to read about kames and their christmas tree. The main fic getting those two together will probably go up...er...one day. Other random tidbits: as mentioned, I began this a long while ago. Dak is a bit...er...grumpier than I'd write him now. Yes. Let's put it that way. (At this point, this is one of those stories I hate so much I can't look at it without cringing. So here, have.)
---
When Dak tells the guys of BTR to hit him up if they ever need anything, he doesn’t actually mean it. It’s something to say, to make his new label-mates feel welcome and to preserve his nice guy rep. It is not an open invitation for the four hockey players from Minnesota to drift in and out of Dak’s Toluca Lake mansion whenever they please.
At least, it wasn’t meant to be.
Dak might need to work on his elocution, because the next thing he knows, he’s got James, Kendall, Logan, and Carlos making a mess of his private cinema room during Terminator marathons, using and abusing his Jacuzzi, and drinking the soy milk he’s imported from Tokyo straight out of the carton. They still spend most of their time at the Palmwoods, or on tour, or in the studio, but the second Dak thinks he’s safe, they show up toting paint ball guns, clearly intending to drive Dak insane.
Dak’s a good guy, a friendly guy, but he is not exactly great with sharing. He nears his breaking point with amazing speed, and gently tells security not to let the four nuisances into his sanguine gated community without an invitation.
Failing that, he tries again, less gently, and with more curse words.
It does not work. Bribes change hands, possibly involving jerky, and apparently Dak’s fame carries little weight in the face of dried beef. He still ends up with a boy band on his couch at least once a week, putting their dirty tennis shoes all over his pristine cushions while they shout obscenities at ESPN Classic on Dak’s big screen.
On one memorable occasion, they even bring company. Katie Knight walks into his house, plops onto his couch, and then stares at Dak’s face without blinking. It is extremely unnerving.
Rather unsympathetically, Carlos laughs for ten minutes straight. The staring does not stop. Eventually, Kendall has to forcibly drag Katie away by the elbow, glaring all the while, as James gives Dak a dirty look that clearly says don’t you dare.
Dak does not want to dare. Katie is like, twelve.
The only person who offers Dak an ounce of sympathy is Logan, shrugging as if it’s no big deal and offering up one of Dak’s game controllers. He’s less obnoxious than his friends. More unobtrusive, Dak notes, settling cross-legged beside the smaller boy.
They spend about an hour killing virtual aliens before Dak is forced to recant that mental gold star. Logan does not handle winning well. His ingrate victory dance sends a foot straight through Dak’s glass-top coffee table.
“That was from Bangalore,” Dak informs him, certainly not pouting.
“I’ll buy you a new one at Ikea,” Logan replies. He’s flushed red, clearly mortified, squeaking like a frightened chipmunk. “It’ll be, uh, sturdier.”
Dak doubts that.
Directly after Katie-gate, he decides to try a few other things to get the band out of his life, but restraining orders don’t work like they used to, and he is forced to settle in for the long haul with his new…friends. He wearily suffers the loss of half his expensive hair products (James), the destruction of his fine art (Carlos, accidentally), his DVR being overrun with crappy medical dramas (Logan), and a broken window in his Benz (Kendall, with a hockey puck, not so accidentally). Every time he’s on location somewhere not in California, he has a minor panic attack about the state of his mansion, certain as he is that keggers are the definition of a party in Minnesota. Worse, whenever he is home, he worries that he might commit homicide.
So basically, when Big Time Rush breaks up some odd five years later, it is the best thing that has ever happened to Dak Zevon.
The break is amicable, as far as Dak knows, but he hears that Carlos lands an acting job on location in Australia, that Logan is going to medical school, and that Kendall and James are getting an apartment somewhere not in Hollywood. Dak gets the implications.
No more house invasions.
No more sharing his organic produce.
No more fart contests in his pool.
The wolf pack will not be gracing Dak’s stoop any time soon, ever again. Yes.
Dak throws a ninety second dance party, breaking out the Britney Spears and his favorite fedora. His utter glee lasts an entire week, right up until Logan Mitchell shows up at his door, toting a duffel bag and wearing a face better suited to lost puppies and kicked kittens.
“What do you want?” Dak demands, eyeing the All-Stars label on the outside of the sack.
Logan shoves the bag in Dak’s hands and announces, “I need a place to stay.”
Oh hell no. Logan may be the mildest, most innocuous of the band formerly known as BTR, but Dak has never stopped resenting him for recording over his home makeover shows with Grayson’s Anatomy. Mustering up his best apologetic smile, Dak prepares to tell Logan that he does not want a roommate, and if he did, it certainly would not be this Midwestern catastrophe of a popstar.
Only, he hesitates.
The thing is, Dak’s never seen Logan on his own before. He looks taller without the guys at his back, but also thinner. Paler. Sadder.
Against his better judgment, Dak lets him inside.
That is how he makes the worst decision of his life. Good Samaritan-ism: it does not pay off.
See, Dak doesn’t do roommates. He doesn’t even share a trailer on location. He’s great at being a people person. As long as those people aren’t invading his home turf, setting up shop inside what can only be described as his sanctuary. When they do, Dak gets…tetchy.
He thinks maybe it’ll be okay with Logan, who is all harmless with his quiet nerdittude and his adorable dimples. And at first, it is. Logan spends his days studying, like, endlessly, and mostly stays out of Dak’s way. But as the months wear on, the truth is revealed.
Logan Mitchell is a pain in the ass.
Sure, he looks innocent beneath those sweater vests and pocket protectors, but really, it’s all an act. Logan is a complete and total hockeyhead.
No, seriously. He’s disgusting. He puts his feet all over the furniture and leaves hair in the shower drain and he thinks gas is just about the funniest thing in the universe. Dak prides himself on being a cool, hip young star, but he outgrew all of that when he was about six, so for the most part he’s at a loss for what to do here. Logan is constantly making him lose his cool.
What Dak needs are some guidelines, probably. Some rules, about the care and handling of jocks, and what to do when they’re ruining your life. Sadly, no one’s published that book yet. Dak has to live off his own, limited knowledge.
Which, okay, did he mention it is limited? This is what Dak knows about hockey players:
---
1. Anyone who rushes face first into a puck is clearly psychotic, and has no place bossing Hollywood’s Number One Tween Mega-Star around.
---Oh sure, Logan appears sane on the outside, with his charming, corn-fed smirk and his fascinating ability to complete crossword puzzles in less than ten minutes. He knows big vocabulary words, like homogeneous, and he gave Dak the Heimlich once when he was choking on cauliflower. No one knows doctoring like Logan, which should be a bonus, having a genius medical student in the house.
Mostly it feels more like Dak is babysitting an oversized, hypochondriac child with impulse control issues.
Dak becomes intimately familiar with phrases like avian bird flu, candiru, and toxoplasma gondii, none of which he ever wanted to know. (Penis fish. There is a fish that can crawl up a person’s penis. Dak had nightmares for weeks.) He’s discovered Logan practicing sutures on various fruit products more than once at his kitchen table (Dak swears he can still hear the watermelon screaming), and most irritating of all, Logan steadfastly refuses to let Dak go to a shoot in Ecuador until he’s been immunized against eight different kinds of exotic parasites that no one’s had in the past century. Dak hates needles.
But Logan doesn’t stop there with the weird. He brings really, freakishly bizarre things into Dak’s pristine home, like a pet metal detector (because they’re not just for eighty year old men anymore), a microscope to examine the mold growing on Dak’s shower tiles (there is no mold in Dak’s shower, damnit), and a monstrous calculator that may hold the answers to every mystery the universe has to offer (judging by the amount of time that Logan spends staring at it). He constantly hounds Dak to help him with his exam flashcards when Dak has much more important things to do, like go on dates. And once, after Dak returns from one of those dates, Logan forces him to watch a slideshow detailing the various shapes and forms of STDs. With pictures.
This cannot stand. He’s Dak Zevon, Hollywood’s Golden Boy. His smile causes preteen girls faint and just the thought of his abs makes tabloid reporters drool. He’s got endless strings of friends and parties, admirers and movie offers. What he hasn’t got is the patience to put up with one neurotic Future Doctor of America. If Dak wants to contract something icky and sexually transmitted, it’s his prerogative, damnit.
He means to tell Logan that, he does, but then Logan institutes Wednesday Night Hot Cocoa Parties and Sunday Afternoon movie marathons and begins acting like he and Dak are actual friends. This is behavior that Dak intends to discourage immediately. If only he weren’t such a very busy man.
Besides, it’s hard to tell off a doctor-in-training when he’s cradling a cup full of fluffy marshmallows and beaming at Dak like he’s the most fantastic thing on earth. Dak is obviously growing soft in his twenties.
That’s the only explanation for how Logan gets so comfortable in their new dynamic (that Dak does not approve of in any way, shape, or form). He begins operating under the assumption that it’s alright to deliver lectures on Dak’s posture and sleep habits and starts buying all these weird, scented soaps so that they can create a germ-free environment. Dak almost buys into his bullshit - despite the fact that he has a well-paid physical trainer and extremely stern physician who have spent years telling him the same thing - if only because it’s easier to keep
Logan’s neuroses at bay. So he washes his hands eight times an hour and pays even more attention to his posture, and yet, when Dak comes home from filming The Prince Diaries 2: Royal Revenge, Logan’s forgotten all his own cardinal rules.
He’s sitting sprawled on the floor, munching on a bucket full of tacos wrapped in salmonella soaked wax paper from the street vendor three blocks down, covered in what appears to be dirt.
His hypocrisy is utterly inexcusable. The part where he looks exactly like a little boy, with his ear to ear grin and his mussed hair and his mucky fingers is downright rude. Dak immediately quells the impulse to whisk Logan into one of the ten Swedish showers lining his many halls, to scrub him down with soap and then tuck him into bed, away from bad elements.
Said bad elements are flanking Logan’s sides, equally filthy, happily licking hot sauce off their fingers. Dak notes that Kendall and James aren’t on the receiving end of a dissertation on clogged arteries or colon health. Dak must be the only one who gets those.
The idea is inexplicably grating, as if Logan doesn’t respect his life choices. The grapefruit diet was once, okay, once. Dak snaps, “Aren’t you two supposed to be somewhere that isn’t here?”
Kendall and James blink. Logan’s good humor does not vanish. He explains, “International flights make him cranky.”
Dak’s annoyance grows. He is not an infant. He doesn’t get cranky. He perches on his couch, which is shockingly free of caked earth, daintily tucking his shoeless feet under his body. He really prescribes to the Eastern method of leaving one’s grime at the door, but he notices that Logan, Kendall, and James are all digging the treads of their sneakers into his carpet.
Again.
Damnit. “Why are you all here?”
Ooh, that probably still sounded crabby.
Through a mouthful of meat, James explains, “Missed our bro,” which actually explains nothing.
“There was a kangaroo,” Kendall adds unhelpfully. Logan smiles at them both, all starry eyed. Like…like Kendall and James are the greatest guys in the universe, doing the greatest thing in the universe. Which so isn’t true.
(Logan usually looks at Dak that way.)
Dak frowns. He’s not sure what the feeling in his chest is. Maybe gas? He purses his lips and stares at the top of Logan’s head, dark hair shiny and gel-less, soft and touchable.
He’s gotten a bit careless with his looks since enrolling in UCLA. His only concession to fashion the constant presence of a sweater vest, if one could call that fashion with a straight face, anyway.
Dak does not touch Logan’s hair. Even if he maybe wants to. He demands of Kendall and James, “Can you maybe miss Logan somewhere else? I want to rewatch my demo tape for the Magnificent Man audition.”
James shakes his head, a grin breaking over his features. He’s too pretty, too perfect. His teeth are the same unnatural white as Dak’s. It’s irritating. “No can do, buddy. I’ve got dibs on the remote.”
“Dibs?” Dak is appalled. He knows better than to argue; this is not the first time the guys have tried to pull him into their middle school
hierarchy of mineminemine, but he tries his luck anyway. “You can’t have dibs. This is my house.”
He’s shot down immediately, of course, Logan casting him a wounded look and going, “It’s my house too, now.”
Dak refrains from telling him that his name is not on the lease, but only just. The intensity of Mitchell’s Bambi-eyes is a powerful thing.
He settles back while James forces them to watch the worst example of reality television that Dak has ever had the misfortune of seeing.
Kendall and James heckle the screen, James kindly rooting for the show’s actors, Kendall firmly against their every decision. Logan leans his head back against Dak’s knee, just far enough that Dak’s fingertips are brushing the soft fluff of his un-gelled hair.
In retrospect, there are worse ways to spend a Tuesday night.
---
2. Hockey players eat. Everything.
---
Like much of young Hollywood, Dak is really into keeping his body fit, carving it into a well-oiled machine. Logan’s advice about fad diets notwithstanding, Dak is actually pretty great at taking care of himself and he has been for a very long time. He gets all his servings of fruits and vegetables in, takes a multi-vitamin, and doesn’t consume anything that isn’t fair-trade or organic.
He’s tried all the tricks; gluten-free, meat-free, carb-free, and on, and on, and on. One thing Dak’s nutritionist emphasizes is that he should keep healthy snacks everywhere, and he does, munching throughout the day while his metabolism works through all the physical rigor he puts it through. What he finds, however, is that Logan has no compunctions about snatching up Dak’s nutria-grain bars or probiotic yogurt on his way out the door. This is irritating on two counts, the first being that Logan barely ever visits the grocery store himself, and the second consisting solely of the fact that he’s touching Dak’s stuff.
As a joke, Dak replaces his normally wholesome shopping list with a whole lot of junk food - potato chips and fruit snacks and soda pop and not an ounce of Vitamin C or D anywhere in the lot -because he figures Logan will be aghast, his doctorly eat-right instincts forcing him to deliver a fire-and-brimstone lecture about Dak’s new buying habits. Instead, Logan cheers in triumph over the Doritos, crying, “Real food!” and then dashes off with the three packs of them to do lab work.
Dak really should have been able to predict this, after the whole street-taco incident. He is left feeling like he’s been buying his pet dog gourmet kibble when any old chow would do.
When Logan returns from a half hour study stint with all three empty bags of chips crumpled at the bottom of his man-bag, Dak is horrified. He was the cover model for Healthy Lifestyle magazine, and he’s done commercials about proper food portions. It is his job to rectify this.
At first he takes the subtle route, re-introducing his snacks packed full of nutrients. Logan grabs a whole grain muffin without complaint, so Dak figures that his common sense has kicked back in. Then he spies Logan in his room, poring over a gigantic medical text book with two double doubles from In-N-Out carelessly dripping animal sauce all over his bed spread.
Dak’s red-meat free this week, making it a particularly macabre offense.
He tries to talk to Logan about it, but only gets about three words in before Logan exclaims, “Dak, I’m okay! I’m premed, don’t worry. I eat fine.”
“Then what is that?” Dak jabs a finger at the burger in consternation, worried it might jump up off the bed and smear its fatty patty all over his designer jeans.
Logan snorts, hiding the sound behind his ginormous textbook. “Not everyone’s into trendy diets.”
“Refusing to eat red meat is not a trend, it’s healthy,” Dak objects loudly. He is standing his ground. He’s being a role model. Healthy Lifestyle magazine would be so proud.
Rolling his eyes, Logan replies calmly, “It’s a good source of zinc, iron, and protein. Cool your boots, I don’t need you to police my dinner.”
Dak isn’t used to crashing and burning like this. He’s usually quite persuasive. He stares at the dark circles beneath Logan’s eyes and decides to try a different tack. “Come to yoga with me tomorrow morning.”
Logan probably doesn’t need yoga - he’s got a pretty great butt for someone who never works out excepting the occasional friend-forced game of hockey. Dak’s actually convinced he’s sneaking gym time on the side, because no way all those psychotic back flips into the infinity pool aren’t the path to a perky ass. But he wants to be sure that Logan’s doing something to ward off aortic hardening, so a few closely observed asanas couldn’t hurt.
Logan’s mouth opens comically wide, stuffed full of chewed meat. He says, “Look. It’s not that I don’t want to do yoga with you. It’s just that yoga is lame.”
“How can you even say that? The health benefits alone are phenomenal,” Dak retorts, cocking a hip, and he could swear Logan follows the movement.
“That’s true.”
“But?” Dak asks incredulously, because Logan still does not sound sold.
“But it’s still lame.”
“You are so unenlightened.”
“The pants are stretchy,” Logan protests resentfully, swallowing.
His throat bobs with the motion. Dak snorts and decidedly does not notice.
“Oh, well that’s not a problem. I do naked yoga.”
“Youdowhatnow?” Logan’s eyes bug out of his head. “Dak,” he says, but he can’t seem to come up with more than Dak’s name.
Which is pretty flattering, actually. Dak knows he’s got all kinds of talents, and that he’s not stupid, but no one would accuse him of being a genius either. Short-circuiting one feels like an accomplishment.
He cocks an eyebrow. “So, yoga?”
Logan smiles crookedly, cheeks dimpling, sunlight winking across his dark eyes. There is a blush creeping along his collarbone, but he straightens his shoulders and offers up a genial surrender. With cherry red cheeks, he squeaks, “Okay, okay, yeah, yoga. With clothes. Definitely with clothes.”
Dak cannot help purring, “Are you sure?” because Dak is a bit of a dick.
Logan nods his head forcefully, “I’m positive.”
That’s a shame, Dak thinks, even though he has no intention of running around anywhere naked unless he’s getting paid for it. He doesn’t mind imagining Logan’s eyes on his ass, though. Too bad.
Anyway, that is the story of how Dak convinces Logan to take yoga with him.
It doesn’t fix the larger problem at hand. Logan eats his mesclun salads when he’s having candlelit dinners with Dak (the candles are for atmosphere, alright), but the second his friends come over he’s all fishsticks and cheese fries. His plebian tastes are completely offensive and also, Dak worries Logan’s going to bankrupt him every time he picks up a few hundred (or five) breakfast burritos at Del Taco.
Dak briefly considers that the level of concern he has for Logan’s eating habits might be the problem, but he dismisses that thought immediately. He’s simply being a really kickass friend.
---
3. Hockey players stick together.
---
Logan might have mentioned that Kendall and James rented a beach bungalow somewhere South of the Valley, which is to say a place that does not exist on Dak’s mental map.
Kendall, unable to pursue his once-promising career in hockey, is working a minimum wage barista job while he figures out what to do with his life, funneling most of his band cash towards his little sister’s education and his mom’s early retirement. James, meanwhile, has been looking to start a solo career.
Logan gave Dak the impression that it hasn’t been going well. James runs through different producers when he can, and in his free time he’s been reduced to giving impromptu concerts on the boardwalk for spare change. The way Logan tells it, James doesn’t need the money, but the notoriety drives him onward. Keeping busy helps him avoid heading home and running his mother’s company while he searches for his second big break, and Logan claims that is a good thing.
As far as Dak knows, neither James nor Kendall have ever asked for anything from Rocque Records, but the details on that one are very hush hush. Big Time Rush’s divide was cordial, but their breakoff from the label maybe wasn’t.
Still, Kendall and James don’t seem to be all that unhappy. Dak doesn’t understand how they can live so simply after tasting superstardom, but Kendall appears to enjoy it, and James…well, James appears to enjoy Kendall.
Dak always thought there was something going on between those two, even before the band broke up. He can’t really see someone like James Diamond giving up a sweet, high-tech apartment closer to all the music studios for the love of anyone else, but it’s not Dak’s place to ask.
Unfortunately, it is apparently Kendall and James’s place to ask all kinds of things about Dak.
Dak’s walking on the boardwalk with a date, a pretty young actress that his studio really pushed for him to get along with. He’s amped up the wattage on his patented superstar smile for this girl, even though she appears to be way more interested in her phone than his existence. But Dak’s bored out of his mind. He wishes he was back home, where Logan is cramming for midterms with this single minded focus that only breaks for snacks and the occasional smoothie. Dak likes making smoothies with Logan. It’s relaxing.
He grits his teeth and tries to suffer through being ignored by his not-date, managing really well right up until the two of them stumble upon half of what used to be Big Time Rush by the seaside.
Kendall’s playing guitar, cross-legged on the splintered wood while James - standing - sings. They’ve got an open hard case in front of them.
Dak stumbles to a stop, tugging on his new lady friend’s arm.
“Hold up, I know these guys.”
“You do?” The girl manages to lift her head for about five seconds from her phone screen. She takes in the guys and asks, aghast, “This is what your friends do? Busk for cash?”
Dak frowns. “They’re doing this for fun.”
He’s not really sure why he’s defending the idiots, except for how he thinks Logan would want him to. His performance ends up scaring his date and her super interesting text conversations away, but Dak sticks around, waiting for the set to end.
James and Kendall crowd in on him immediately once it’s over, demanding, “Who was she?” and “Where’s Logan?”
Both boys cast tall, tall shadows against the planks of the boardwalk. Dak thinks about the way Logan looks slotted between them, squished between their shoulders and ribcages, egos and long legs. He’s tiny there, but without them, he is the largest, loudest, brightest thing in Dak’s mansion, demanding all of his attention.
Dak likes him better that way, he decides.
“She was my date,” Dak replies, indifferent to their posturing. “And Logan’s in class.”
James scowls, crossing his arms. Kendall is more aggressive, snapping back, “Does he know you had a date?”
“Why would he care?” Dak is genuinely bewildered.
It’s just his luck that his version of confused sounds a lot like most people’s versions of sassy.
Kendall grinds out, “If you hurt him-“
“Why on Earth would I hurt Logan?” Dak steps into Kendall’s personal space, challenging, “And how would it be any of your business, anyway?”
Kendall, to his credit, doesn’t back down even an inch. He says, “It’s my job to look after him.”
“Your job?” Dak cocks an eyebrow. “Does it ever get lonely up there on that pedestal, chief?”
Kendall retorts, “Wouldn’t you like to know?” oh-so-maturely, but Dak can tell that he’s bothered by the idea, that he doesn’t want to be anything like worshipped.
He doesn’t find that surprising at all. Knight has never been the type for show business. He’s the kind of small-town dreamer that gets crushed in Hollywood’s jaws, too unassuming for the fake-n-bake crowd to tolerate for long. Meanwhile, Dak thrives on the kind of attention and adoration that Kendall is so quick to ignore, and he gets it, but he also does not. At all. If Dak had friends who looked at him the way Logan, James, and Carlos look at Kendall, he’d be different.
Better, maybe.
James steps between Kendall and Dak, playing the pacifist. The role obviously sits uncomfortably on his shoulders. He shifts from foot to sneakered foot, his jeans tugging too-tight at his thighs. “Why don’t we all, um. Get along? For Logan’s sake.”
Kendall backs off, shifting into James’s shadow. Dak wants to ask why he got so mad in the first place. But that might start the fight right up again, and James is right.
There are a lot of things he’ll do, for Logan’s sake.
---
Part Two
---
Author: garnetice
Pairing: Dak/Logan
Rating: K
Word Count: 4,454 (of 9,099)
Warnings: None
Summary: Dak never wanted a roommate. So he's really confused about Logan's presence in his house.
Disclaimer: BTR is not mine.
Author Notes: New story! New story that comes with a story. Right, so a looooong, long, long time ago, like, pre-Big Time Moms, I wanted to write a story where BTR broke up and James and Kendall were poor(ish) and living in a beach bungalow, surfing all day and serving coffee to locals and busking for cash. I may have mentioned this once or twice. Anyway, that fic only exists on the privacy of my computer, because it's not done. This beast here grew as a prequel for that, because I needed a way to explain why Dak and Logan came over for dinner dates. Why is that important? Mostly because there are some throwaway lines in here mentioning Kendall and James sharing an apartment. Also relevant: this is another spinoff of this same universe, if you are ever tempted to read about kames and their christmas tree. The main fic getting those two together will probably go up...er...one day. Other random tidbits: as mentioned, I began this a long while ago. Dak is a bit...er...grumpier than I'd write him now. Yes. Let's put it that way. (At this point, this is one of those stories I hate so much I can't look at it without cringing. So here, have.)
---
When Dak tells the guys of BTR to hit him up if they ever need anything, he doesn’t actually mean it. It’s something to say, to make his new label-mates feel welcome and to preserve his nice guy rep. It is not an open invitation for the four hockey players from Minnesota to drift in and out of Dak’s Toluca Lake mansion whenever they please.
At least, it wasn’t meant to be.
Dak might need to work on his elocution, because the next thing he knows, he’s got James, Kendall, Logan, and Carlos making a mess of his private cinema room during Terminator marathons, using and abusing his Jacuzzi, and drinking the soy milk he’s imported from Tokyo straight out of the carton. They still spend most of their time at the Palmwoods, or on tour, or in the studio, but the second Dak thinks he’s safe, they show up toting paint ball guns, clearly intending to drive Dak insane.
Dak’s a good guy, a friendly guy, but he is not exactly great with sharing. He nears his breaking point with amazing speed, and gently tells security not to let the four nuisances into his sanguine gated community without an invitation.
Failing that, he tries again, less gently, and with more curse words.
It does not work. Bribes change hands, possibly involving jerky, and apparently Dak’s fame carries little weight in the face of dried beef. He still ends up with a boy band on his couch at least once a week, putting their dirty tennis shoes all over his pristine cushions while they shout obscenities at ESPN Classic on Dak’s big screen.
On one memorable occasion, they even bring company. Katie Knight walks into his house, plops onto his couch, and then stares at Dak’s face without blinking. It is extremely unnerving.
Rather unsympathetically, Carlos laughs for ten minutes straight. The staring does not stop. Eventually, Kendall has to forcibly drag Katie away by the elbow, glaring all the while, as James gives Dak a dirty look that clearly says don’t you dare.
Dak does not want to dare. Katie is like, twelve.
The only person who offers Dak an ounce of sympathy is Logan, shrugging as if it’s no big deal and offering up one of Dak’s game controllers. He’s less obnoxious than his friends. More unobtrusive, Dak notes, settling cross-legged beside the smaller boy.
They spend about an hour killing virtual aliens before Dak is forced to recant that mental gold star. Logan does not handle winning well. His ingrate victory dance sends a foot straight through Dak’s glass-top coffee table.
“That was from Bangalore,” Dak informs him, certainly not pouting.
“I’ll buy you a new one at Ikea,” Logan replies. He’s flushed red, clearly mortified, squeaking like a frightened chipmunk. “It’ll be, uh, sturdier.”
Dak doubts that.
Directly after Katie-gate, he decides to try a few other things to get the band out of his life, but restraining orders don’t work like they used to, and he is forced to settle in for the long haul with his new…friends. He wearily suffers the loss of half his expensive hair products (James), the destruction of his fine art (Carlos, accidentally), his DVR being overrun with crappy medical dramas (Logan), and a broken window in his Benz (Kendall, with a hockey puck, not so accidentally). Every time he’s on location somewhere not in California, he has a minor panic attack about the state of his mansion, certain as he is that keggers are the definition of a party in Minnesota. Worse, whenever he is home, he worries that he might commit homicide.
So basically, when Big Time Rush breaks up some odd five years later, it is the best thing that has ever happened to Dak Zevon.
The break is amicable, as far as Dak knows, but he hears that Carlos lands an acting job on location in Australia, that Logan is going to medical school, and that Kendall and James are getting an apartment somewhere not in Hollywood. Dak gets the implications.
No more house invasions.
No more sharing his organic produce.
No more fart contests in his pool.
The wolf pack will not be gracing Dak’s stoop any time soon, ever again. Yes.
Dak throws a ninety second dance party, breaking out the Britney Spears and his favorite fedora. His utter glee lasts an entire week, right up until Logan Mitchell shows up at his door, toting a duffel bag and wearing a face better suited to lost puppies and kicked kittens.
“What do you want?” Dak demands, eyeing the All-Stars label on the outside of the sack.
Logan shoves the bag in Dak’s hands and announces, “I need a place to stay.”
Oh hell no. Logan may be the mildest, most innocuous of the band formerly known as BTR, but Dak has never stopped resenting him for recording over his home makeover shows with Grayson’s Anatomy. Mustering up his best apologetic smile, Dak prepares to tell Logan that he does not want a roommate, and if he did, it certainly would not be this Midwestern catastrophe of a popstar.
Only, he hesitates.
The thing is, Dak’s never seen Logan on his own before. He looks taller without the guys at his back, but also thinner. Paler. Sadder.
Against his better judgment, Dak lets him inside.
That is how he makes the worst decision of his life. Good Samaritan-ism: it does not pay off.
See, Dak doesn’t do roommates. He doesn’t even share a trailer on location. He’s great at being a people person. As long as those people aren’t invading his home turf, setting up shop inside what can only be described as his sanctuary. When they do, Dak gets…tetchy.
He thinks maybe it’ll be okay with Logan, who is all harmless with his quiet nerdittude and his adorable dimples. And at first, it is. Logan spends his days studying, like, endlessly, and mostly stays out of Dak’s way. But as the months wear on, the truth is revealed.
Logan Mitchell is a pain in the ass.
Sure, he looks innocent beneath those sweater vests and pocket protectors, but really, it’s all an act. Logan is a complete and total hockeyhead.
No, seriously. He’s disgusting. He puts his feet all over the furniture and leaves hair in the shower drain and he thinks gas is just about the funniest thing in the universe. Dak prides himself on being a cool, hip young star, but he outgrew all of that when he was about six, so for the most part he’s at a loss for what to do here. Logan is constantly making him lose his cool.
What Dak needs are some guidelines, probably. Some rules, about the care and handling of jocks, and what to do when they’re ruining your life. Sadly, no one’s published that book yet. Dak has to live off his own, limited knowledge.
Which, okay, did he mention it is limited? This is what Dak knows about hockey players:
---
1. Anyone who rushes face first into a puck is clearly psychotic, and has no place bossing Hollywood’s Number One Tween Mega-Star around.
---Oh sure, Logan appears sane on the outside, with his charming, corn-fed smirk and his fascinating ability to complete crossword puzzles in less than ten minutes. He knows big vocabulary words, like homogeneous, and he gave Dak the Heimlich once when he was choking on cauliflower. No one knows doctoring like Logan, which should be a bonus, having a genius medical student in the house.
Mostly it feels more like Dak is babysitting an oversized, hypochondriac child with impulse control issues.
Dak becomes intimately familiar with phrases like avian bird flu, candiru, and toxoplasma gondii, none of which he ever wanted to know. (Penis fish. There is a fish that can crawl up a person’s penis. Dak had nightmares for weeks.) He’s discovered Logan practicing sutures on various fruit products more than once at his kitchen table (Dak swears he can still hear the watermelon screaming), and most irritating of all, Logan steadfastly refuses to let Dak go to a shoot in Ecuador until he’s been immunized against eight different kinds of exotic parasites that no one’s had in the past century. Dak hates needles.
But Logan doesn’t stop there with the weird. He brings really, freakishly bizarre things into Dak’s pristine home, like a pet metal detector (because they’re not just for eighty year old men anymore), a microscope to examine the mold growing on Dak’s shower tiles (there is no mold in Dak’s shower, damnit), and a monstrous calculator that may hold the answers to every mystery the universe has to offer (judging by the amount of time that Logan spends staring at it). He constantly hounds Dak to help him with his exam flashcards when Dak has much more important things to do, like go on dates. And once, after Dak returns from one of those dates, Logan forces him to watch a slideshow detailing the various shapes and forms of STDs. With pictures.
This cannot stand. He’s Dak Zevon, Hollywood’s Golden Boy. His smile causes preteen girls faint and just the thought of his abs makes tabloid reporters drool. He’s got endless strings of friends and parties, admirers and movie offers. What he hasn’t got is the patience to put up with one neurotic Future Doctor of America. If Dak wants to contract something icky and sexually transmitted, it’s his prerogative, damnit.
He means to tell Logan that, he does, but then Logan institutes Wednesday Night Hot Cocoa Parties and Sunday Afternoon movie marathons and begins acting like he and Dak are actual friends. This is behavior that Dak intends to discourage immediately. If only he weren’t such a very busy man.
Besides, it’s hard to tell off a doctor-in-training when he’s cradling a cup full of fluffy marshmallows and beaming at Dak like he’s the most fantastic thing on earth. Dak is obviously growing soft in his twenties.
That’s the only explanation for how Logan gets so comfortable in their new dynamic (that Dak does not approve of in any way, shape, or form). He begins operating under the assumption that it’s alright to deliver lectures on Dak’s posture and sleep habits and starts buying all these weird, scented soaps so that they can create a germ-free environment. Dak almost buys into his bullshit - despite the fact that he has a well-paid physical trainer and extremely stern physician who have spent years telling him the same thing - if only because it’s easier to keep
Logan’s neuroses at bay. So he washes his hands eight times an hour and pays even more attention to his posture, and yet, when Dak comes home from filming The Prince Diaries 2: Royal Revenge, Logan’s forgotten all his own cardinal rules.
He’s sitting sprawled on the floor, munching on a bucket full of tacos wrapped in salmonella soaked wax paper from the street vendor three blocks down, covered in what appears to be dirt.
His hypocrisy is utterly inexcusable. The part where he looks exactly like a little boy, with his ear to ear grin and his mussed hair and his mucky fingers is downright rude. Dak immediately quells the impulse to whisk Logan into one of the ten Swedish showers lining his many halls, to scrub him down with soap and then tuck him into bed, away from bad elements.
Said bad elements are flanking Logan’s sides, equally filthy, happily licking hot sauce off their fingers. Dak notes that Kendall and James aren’t on the receiving end of a dissertation on clogged arteries or colon health. Dak must be the only one who gets those.
The idea is inexplicably grating, as if Logan doesn’t respect his life choices. The grapefruit diet was once, okay, once. Dak snaps, “Aren’t you two supposed to be somewhere that isn’t here?”
Kendall and James blink. Logan’s good humor does not vanish. He explains, “International flights make him cranky.”
Dak’s annoyance grows. He is not an infant. He doesn’t get cranky. He perches on his couch, which is shockingly free of caked earth, daintily tucking his shoeless feet under his body. He really prescribes to the Eastern method of leaving one’s grime at the door, but he notices that Logan, Kendall, and James are all digging the treads of their sneakers into his carpet.
Again.
Damnit. “Why are you all here?”
Ooh, that probably still sounded crabby.
Through a mouthful of meat, James explains, “Missed our bro,” which actually explains nothing.
“There was a kangaroo,” Kendall adds unhelpfully. Logan smiles at them both, all starry eyed. Like…like Kendall and James are the greatest guys in the universe, doing the greatest thing in the universe. Which so isn’t true.
(Logan usually looks at Dak that way.)
Dak frowns. He’s not sure what the feeling in his chest is. Maybe gas? He purses his lips and stares at the top of Logan’s head, dark hair shiny and gel-less, soft and touchable.
He’s gotten a bit careless with his looks since enrolling in UCLA. His only concession to fashion the constant presence of a sweater vest, if one could call that fashion with a straight face, anyway.
Dak does not touch Logan’s hair. Even if he maybe wants to. He demands of Kendall and James, “Can you maybe miss Logan somewhere else? I want to rewatch my demo tape for the Magnificent Man audition.”
James shakes his head, a grin breaking over his features. He’s too pretty, too perfect. His teeth are the same unnatural white as Dak’s. It’s irritating. “No can do, buddy. I’ve got dibs on the remote.”
“Dibs?” Dak is appalled. He knows better than to argue; this is not the first time the guys have tried to pull him into their middle school
hierarchy of mineminemine, but he tries his luck anyway. “You can’t have dibs. This is my house.”
He’s shot down immediately, of course, Logan casting him a wounded look and going, “It’s my house too, now.”
Dak refrains from telling him that his name is not on the lease, but only just. The intensity of Mitchell’s Bambi-eyes is a powerful thing.
He settles back while James forces them to watch the worst example of reality television that Dak has ever had the misfortune of seeing.
Kendall and James heckle the screen, James kindly rooting for the show’s actors, Kendall firmly against their every decision. Logan leans his head back against Dak’s knee, just far enough that Dak’s fingertips are brushing the soft fluff of his un-gelled hair.
In retrospect, there are worse ways to spend a Tuesday night.
---
2. Hockey players eat. Everything.
---
Like much of young Hollywood, Dak is really into keeping his body fit, carving it into a well-oiled machine. Logan’s advice about fad diets notwithstanding, Dak is actually pretty great at taking care of himself and he has been for a very long time. He gets all his servings of fruits and vegetables in, takes a multi-vitamin, and doesn’t consume anything that isn’t fair-trade or organic.
He’s tried all the tricks; gluten-free, meat-free, carb-free, and on, and on, and on. One thing Dak’s nutritionist emphasizes is that he should keep healthy snacks everywhere, and he does, munching throughout the day while his metabolism works through all the physical rigor he puts it through. What he finds, however, is that Logan has no compunctions about snatching up Dak’s nutria-grain bars or probiotic yogurt on his way out the door. This is irritating on two counts, the first being that Logan barely ever visits the grocery store himself, and the second consisting solely of the fact that he’s touching Dak’s stuff.
As a joke, Dak replaces his normally wholesome shopping list with a whole lot of junk food - potato chips and fruit snacks and soda pop and not an ounce of Vitamin C or D anywhere in the lot -because he figures Logan will be aghast, his doctorly eat-right instincts forcing him to deliver a fire-and-brimstone lecture about Dak’s new buying habits. Instead, Logan cheers in triumph over the Doritos, crying, “Real food!” and then dashes off with the three packs of them to do lab work.
Dak really should have been able to predict this, after the whole street-taco incident. He is left feeling like he’s been buying his pet dog gourmet kibble when any old chow would do.
When Logan returns from a half hour study stint with all three empty bags of chips crumpled at the bottom of his man-bag, Dak is horrified. He was the cover model for Healthy Lifestyle magazine, and he’s done commercials about proper food portions. It is his job to rectify this.
At first he takes the subtle route, re-introducing his snacks packed full of nutrients. Logan grabs a whole grain muffin without complaint, so Dak figures that his common sense has kicked back in. Then he spies Logan in his room, poring over a gigantic medical text book with two double doubles from In-N-Out carelessly dripping animal sauce all over his bed spread.
Dak’s red-meat free this week, making it a particularly macabre offense.
He tries to talk to Logan about it, but only gets about three words in before Logan exclaims, “Dak, I’m okay! I’m premed, don’t worry. I eat fine.”
“Then what is that?” Dak jabs a finger at the burger in consternation, worried it might jump up off the bed and smear its fatty patty all over his designer jeans.
Logan snorts, hiding the sound behind his ginormous textbook. “Not everyone’s into trendy diets.”
“Refusing to eat red meat is not a trend, it’s healthy,” Dak objects loudly. He is standing his ground. He’s being a role model. Healthy Lifestyle magazine would be so proud.
Rolling his eyes, Logan replies calmly, “It’s a good source of zinc, iron, and protein. Cool your boots, I don’t need you to police my dinner.”
Dak isn’t used to crashing and burning like this. He’s usually quite persuasive. He stares at the dark circles beneath Logan’s eyes and decides to try a different tack. “Come to yoga with me tomorrow morning.”
Logan probably doesn’t need yoga - he’s got a pretty great butt for someone who never works out excepting the occasional friend-forced game of hockey. Dak’s actually convinced he’s sneaking gym time on the side, because no way all those psychotic back flips into the infinity pool aren’t the path to a perky ass. But he wants to be sure that Logan’s doing something to ward off aortic hardening, so a few closely observed asanas couldn’t hurt.
Logan’s mouth opens comically wide, stuffed full of chewed meat. He says, “Look. It’s not that I don’t want to do yoga with you. It’s just that yoga is lame.”
“How can you even say that? The health benefits alone are phenomenal,” Dak retorts, cocking a hip, and he could swear Logan follows the movement.
“That’s true.”
“But?” Dak asks incredulously, because Logan still does not sound sold.
“But it’s still lame.”
“You are so unenlightened.”
“The pants are stretchy,” Logan protests resentfully, swallowing.
His throat bobs with the motion. Dak snorts and decidedly does not notice.
“Oh, well that’s not a problem. I do naked yoga.”
“Youdowhatnow?” Logan’s eyes bug out of his head. “Dak,” he says, but he can’t seem to come up with more than Dak’s name.
Which is pretty flattering, actually. Dak knows he’s got all kinds of talents, and that he’s not stupid, but no one would accuse him of being a genius either. Short-circuiting one feels like an accomplishment.
He cocks an eyebrow. “So, yoga?”
Logan smiles crookedly, cheeks dimpling, sunlight winking across his dark eyes. There is a blush creeping along his collarbone, but he straightens his shoulders and offers up a genial surrender. With cherry red cheeks, he squeaks, “Okay, okay, yeah, yoga. With clothes. Definitely with clothes.”
Dak cannot help purring, “Are you sure?” because Dak is a bit of a dick.
Logan nods his head forcefully, “I’m positive.”
That’s a shame, Dak thinks, even though he has no intention of running around anywhere naked unless he’s getting paid for it. He doesn’t mind imagining Logan’s eyes on his ass, though. Too bad.
Anyway, that is the story of how Dak convinces Logan to take yoga with him.
It doesn’t fix the larger problem at hand. Logan eats his mesclun salads when he’s having candlelit dinners with Dak (the candles are for atmosphere, alright), but the second his friends come over he’s all fishsticks and cheese fries. His plebian tastes are completely offensive and also, Dak worries Logan’s going to bankrupt him every time he picks up a few hundred (or five) breakfast burritos at Del Taco.
Dak briefly considers that the level of concern he has for Logan’s eating habits might be the problem, but he dismisses that thought immediately. He’s simply being a really kickass friend.
---
3. Hockey players stick together.
---
Logan might have mentioned that Kendall and James rented a beach bungalow somewhere South of the Valley, which is to say a place that does not exist on Dak’s mental map.
Kendall, unable to pursue his once-promising career in hockey, is working a minimum wage barista job while he figures out what to do with his life, funneling most of his band cash towards his little sister’s education and his mom’s early retirement. James, meanwhile, has been looking to start a solo career.
Logan gave Dak the impression that it hasn’t been going well. James runs through different producers when he can, and in his free time he’s been reduced to giving impromptu concerts on the boardwalk for spare change. The way Logan tells it, James doesn’t need the money, but the notoriety drives him onward. Keeping busy helps him avoid heading home and running his mother’s company while he searches for his second big break, and Logan claims that is a good thing.
As far as Dak knows, neither James nor Kendall have ever asked for anything from Rocque Records, but the details on that one are very hush hush. Big Time Rush’s divide was cordial, but their breakoff from the label maybe wasn’t.
Still, Kendall and James don’t seem to be all that unhappy. Dak doesn’t understand how they can live so simply after tasting superstardom, but Kendall appears to enjoy it, and James…well, James appears to enjoy Kendall.
Dak always thought there was something going on between those two, even before the band broke up. He can’t really see someone like James Diamond giving up a sweet, high-tech apartment closer to all the music studios for the love of anyone else, but it’s not Dak’s place to ask.
Unfortunately, it is apparently Kendall and James’s place to ask all kinds of things about Dak.
Dak’s walking on the boardwalk with a date, a pretty young actress that his studio really pushed for him to get along with. He’s amped up the wattage on his patented superstar smile for this girl, even though she appears to be way more interested in her phone than his existence. But Dak’s bored out of his mind. He wishes he was back home, where Logan is cramming for midterms with this single minded focus that only breaks for snacks and the occasional smoothie. Dak likes making smoothies with Logan. It’s relaxing.
He grits his teeth and tries to suffer through being ignored by his not-date, managing really well right up until the two of them stumble upon half of what used to be Big Time Rush by the seaside.
Kendall’s playing guitar, cross-legged on the splintered wood while James - standing - sings. They’ve got an open hard case in front of them.
Dak stumbles to a stop, tugging on his new lady friend’s arm.
“Hold up, I know these guys.”
“You do?” The girl manages to lift her head for about five seconds from her phone screen. She takes in the guys and asks, aghast, “This is what your friends do? Busk for cash?”
Dak frowns. “They’re doing this for fun.”
He’s not really sure why he’s defending the idiots, except for how he thinks Logan would want him to. His performance ends up scaring his date and her super interesting text conversations away, but Dak sticks around, waiting for the set to end.
James and Kendall crowd in on him immediately once it’s over, demanding, “Who was she?” and “Where’s Logan?”
Both boys cast tall, tall shadows against the planks of the boardwalk. Dak thinks about the way Logan looks slotted between them, squished between their shoulders and ribcages, egos and long legs. He’s tiny there, but without them, he is the largest, loudest, brightest thing in Dak’s mansion, demanding all of his attention.
Dak likes him better that way, he decides.
“She was my date,” Dak replies, indifferent to their posturing. “And Logan’s in class.”
James scowls, crossing his arms. Kendall is more aggressive, snapping back, “Does he know you had a date?”
“Why would he care?” Dak is genuinely bewildered.
It’s just his luck that his version of confused sounds a lot like most people’s versions of sassy.
Kendall grinds out, “If you hurt him-“
“Why on Earth would I hurt Logan?” Dak steps into Kendall’s personal space, challenging, “And how would it be any of your business, anyway?”
Kendall, to his credit, doesn’t back down even an inch. He says, “It’s my job to look after him.”
“Your job?” Dak cocks an eyebrow. “Does it ever get lonely up there on that pedestal, chief?”
Kendall retorts, “Wouldn’t you like to know?” oh-so-maturely, but Dak can tell that he’s bothered by the idea, that he doesn’t want to be anything like worshipped.
He doesn’t find that surprising at all. Knight has never been the type for show business. He’s the kind of small-town dreamer that gets crushed in Hollywood’s jaws, too unassuming for the fake-n-bake crowd to tolerate for long. Meanwhile, Dak thrives on the kind of attention and adoration that Kendall is so quick to ignore, and he gets it, but he also does not. At all. If Dak had friends who looked at him the way Logan, James, and Carlos look at Kendall, he’d be different.
Better, maybe.
James steps between Kendall and Dak, playing the pacifist. The role obviously sits uncomfortably on his shoulders. He shifts from foot to sneakered foot, his jeans tugging too-tight at his thighs. “Why don’t we all, um. Get along? For Logan’s sake.”
Kendall backs off, shifting into James’s shadow. Dak wants to ask why he got so mad in the first place. But that might start the fight right up again, and James is right.
There are a lot of things he’ll do, for Logan’s sake.
---
Part Two
---