[fic] Every Last Little Light In New York City - 1/3
Title: Every Last Little Light In New York City
Author:
garnetice
Pairing: Kendall/James, Kendall/Logan, past Kendall/Jo
Rating: M
Word Count: 24,538 (8,336 this part)
Warnings: Sex, bad words, AU.
Summary: Kendall Knight is an aspiring song writer with a quick temper and too much pride. James Diamond is a spoiled, idealistic wannabe superstar who just can't catch a break. They both live in the neon wash of Manhattan's electric lights, with the starless sky and the neverending pulse of life. There's no better place to start a fairytale, and that's what Kendall thinks it is when he first meets James - the beginning of a love story. Or is it?
Disclaimer: BTR and Hit List are not mine.
Author's Notes: Riiiight. So this is my bigtimebang submission. It's finished, but it's not finished. By that I mean this fic will have a second half/sequel, BUT this first half can stand alone. You just have to ignore the first two/three paragraphs of intro. As a warning, if you're jonesing for the sequel: there will be other pairings including James/Kelly, James/everyone, Kendall/Lucy, prescription drug use, character death, etc. Also, grad school is a bitch, so it's going to take me a little while to finish (I have like, 5k of it rn). Now. This fic is entirely based on Hit List, the fictional play that they produced in NBC's Smash. Hit List is GR9. Literally, it is my favorite thing. I highly recommend hunting down the songs, some of which I appropriated for the purposes of this fic. All lyrics belong to their respective owners. AND I just found out Hit List is apparently being made into a rl play. WOOOO. I am excite. breila_rose, we're going. jblostfan16 gets all the kudos for being the best beta and head mod BTB could have asked for. This one's for you, baby.
---
This story starts with a gun.
Newer model. Sleek and deadly. There are flashing lights - strobes, too white, they hurt Kendall’s eyes - and screams - the crowd, or is that him?
There is blood. Pulsing in the crevices between his fingers. Under his fingers. Both.
This is an end when it was supposed to be a beginning, the last wavering notes of a song still ringing in Kendall’s ears. He’s falling, baby, through the sky, through the sky…
Security is closing in, pushing, shoving, yelling. Their uniforms are revolver dark. In the audience, it is mayhem. Kendall has lost sight of the silvered glint of light off the black barrel. He can’t decide if it matters.
There is a mouth against his, wet, metallic tasting. This kiss is gore, goodbye and tears; suited for a story that starts with a gun - no, wait.
He’s getting ahead of himself, trying to rewrite everything in his head.
The real beginning was quieter, less violent. There wasn’t a gun. But there was a kiss. A happier one. A better one. It involved less crying.
Where this story really starts is there, with that kiss, and the way it sizzled through Kendall heart with all the intensity of a bullet.
---
Kendall’s twenty four years old and utterly lost.
Literally. He has no fucking idea where he is right now, because he fell asleep on the subway. Again.
His knee twinges, an old hockey injury berating him for staying curled so long in one position. His neck echoes the pain sympathetically, cricked at an angle just left of comfortable. The spiral edge of his notebook cuts an imprint into his palms.
Kendall tucks it into his back pocket with care. Blearily, he blinks the grit from his eyes and stumbles off the train, ignoring the judgmental glare of the Transit Authority cop that shook him awake. The subway station smells like piss and mold. The doors of the train hiss closed behind him.
Nothing is familiar. Kendall trudges up the stairs, one by one, shoving his way past a homeless man in a parka that might once have been a color other than black. The pre-dawn air hits his lungs hard, sending Kendall into a coughing fit that wracks his entire exhausted body.
“Come on, come on,” he mutters through gasps, searching out a street sign. He comes up empty. Kendall didn’t even know the city had anything like suburbs.
Unless he accidentally hopped the PATH to Jersey. Shit. He didn’t think to check.
The first rays of the sun touch the horizon, a spotlight of dizzying gold that will soon scare the night away. If Kendall doesn’t get home before that happens, Logan’s going to skin him alive. He’ll tell Katie, and she’ll do that thing where she worries, which only ever manifests itself in the form of yelling.
Kendall’s not all that fond of that scenario when he’s sober. The idea of dealing with it when his buzz is performing a slow metamorphosis into an agonizing hangover is completely unappealing. He takes a couple of steps towards a red brick house, falters, spins around. The subway entrance has dropped out of site, swallowed by a hedge or a shed or the sunny façade of someone’s brownstone.
Seriously, where even is this? Is it Brooklyn? This better not be Brooklyn.
At random, Kendall picks a direction and marches forward, resolute. Five blocks later and he thinks he’s seen at least fifty living, thriving trees, which is a record for New York City outside of Central Park. He is so not in Manhattan anymore. Brilliant.
Birds chirp. The electric lights hum. Kendall’s thoughts have gone quiet, their constant nag dimmed to a distant chatter, for once. The world is bathed in light and shadow.
Laughter shatters the illusion.
Up ahead, he spies a group. Straightaway he can tell what they are. Thoroughbreds. The kind that have won the trifecta - looks, money, and egotism. They’re handsome, rowdy, and in the center of the guys stands their evident king. The sunrise crowns him in red, orange, and gold.
His friends obscure the view of the shadowy angles of his body, but his smile jolts through Kendall’s system, adrenaline-intense.
That smile isn’t for Kendall. He isn’t on any of these guys’ radar, even as they give him a wide berth on the street. They stare straight through him, even as they walk his way. Boys like these inherit the earth.
He hates them.
He hates them.
He hates them. They are stupid and shallow and fake.
The corners of his notebook dig into his ass, reminding him that he’s not powerless. He’s going to show everyone, one day, exactly what they are. He will correct the tragic injustice of the world with the beauty he creates. He will make music that swells so big and so loud it carries everyone whoever hurt him or ignored him away in its tide. The words he pens will permanently ink themselves on America’s heart.
Or maybe Kendall will just crash and burn, but either way, he holds his head up defiantly. He glares the lemmings dead in the eye, even if they don’t acknowledge his existence. And then he walks on, renewing his search for the fucking street sign, fighting the sneaking suspicion that he’s somehow gotten himself stranded in Brooklyn.
A lecture from Katie is nigh.
---
Song writing was an accident. Kendall was going to be the Next Big Thing in the NHL, because he’d always been a rockstar on the ice. Then he tore the ligament in his knee.
Presto, magic. His dreams were shot.
At the hospital he lost it, a little bit. Maybe a lot. They told him he had a problem with anger, like there was a teenage boy in the world that didn’t, and put him in these touchy-feely classes. Every session blew harder than the last, but there was this assignment. They were supposed to keep a journal, to funnel their rage into something productive.
Kendall’s never been great at organizing his thoughts. His essays were total stream of consciousness bull. Only one day he was lying on his bed, working on a page about how much he hates his dad and getting nowhere. He was bored out of his skull. So he picked up the bass his old man left behind, strummed his fingers over it the way he always did when he needed to make noise and he wasn’t allowed to scream.
But he found the words. They were there, all along, waiting to be spoken out loud.
He imagined his dad’s face, the way it would look if he heard what Kendall had to say. It felt good. It made him feel strong. And looking back, on every page he saw it. His stream of consciousness essays, in reality, were songs. Songs that, with a little fine tuning, weren’t half bad.
Compared to half the crap on the radio, they were downright brilliant.
Kendall wondered how hard it would be, to get radio play. To simultaneously get his life back on track and strike out at every single person who ever kicked him while he was down.
Not as difficult as joining the NHL, surely.
Kendall failed anger management, but hey. It wasn’t so pointless after all.
Granted, trying to make it as a songwriter in New York City was a bit more difficult than he’d anticipated.
---
The stage creaks beneath his boots.
He notices as he walked off, to the sound of scattered clapping.
The creaking is loud. Of the thirty or so people in the bar, only about five paid any attention to his set. One of them was Logan, who has already abandoned his applause to chat up this blond dude near the beer taps.
Whiskey. Whiskey will solve this night. Wearily, Kendall charts a course to the nearest bartender. He tramps down the stairs, only to be interrupted midway by a solid block of Emporio Armani. The fabric of the manbeast’s t-shirt and the heady scent of expensive cologne tell
Kendall everything he needs to know.
Curses spring to his lips. He peers up at the guy’s face.
Every word he’s ever known dies a slow death in his throat.
The most beautiful things Kendall has ever seen include:
Storm clouds swallowing the empire state building, crazy light slanting in every direction as the city wavered in the mouth of chaos.
Graffiti love poems on the sidewalk outside his job, bright slashes of red and asphalt grit concealing words about heartbreak and healing.
An endless field of lilac back home in Minnesota, purple trembling in the breeze and everything smelled of home.
And.
His baby sister on the day he met her, staring up at him like he was her entire world.
These are the things that flash through his mind as he takes in this boy’s face, the desperate and absolute devotion he discovers there. If love at first sight was a thing Kendall believed in, he’d be able to identify exactly what it is he sees, but he doesn’t, so he can’t. All he knows is that something pricks beneath his breastbone, twinges like internal bleeding.
The boy says, “Your songs are the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard.”
The boy says, “I’m James.”
“Charmed,” Kendall replies, because James’s legs are eight miles long and his face was very possibly crafted by angels. Besides, who is he to turn down the affections of a brand new rich-bitch friend? Even though he will inevitably turns out to be a complete jackass, Kendall decides he’s got a lot to bring to the table. Mostly in terms of cash and nudity. He dons a winning smile, dimples and all, and tells James, “My name’s Kendall. I’m a Scorpio. We get thirsty a lot.”
Not at all surreptitiously, he cuts his eyes towards the bar. James takes the hint.
Kendall lets James buys him a drink or five, because he’s smitten, and it’s not like a guy wearing William Rast jeans can’t afford it. They take turns flirting with the lone bartender, a gorgeous woman edging the line between thirty and mid-life. She’s not at all impressed by their suave lines, but she doesn’t appear repelled by their attention, either. In between attempts, Kendall peeks at James from the corner of his eye and wonders what the hell his goal here is.
An hour in and he decides he doesn’t care. Long legs and a tight ass are two of Kendall’s only prerequisites in, uh, just about anybody.
James is rocking both with the casual confidence of a dude who knows he’s blessed. And his smile’s disarming, bright and strangely vulnerable. Kendall wants to see it again and again, to find new angles and adore them all. There in the flickering neon buzz of beer signs, the tarnished bar mirror and the surround sound chatter of strangers, he finds himself entranced by this boy and his broken-edged grin. Their glasses click together, cheers, and James holds his liquor pretty well for a rich boy.
Around midnight, the crowd picks up, college students searching for a good time and the bridge and tunnel crowd downing one last shot before embarking on the last train home. The hassled bartender, with her cat-eyes and exposed midriff, doesn’t have a minute to spare for the talent, so Kendall reaches behind the scratched mahogany countertop and produces a whiskey bottle of his very own.
James is scandalized. “You can’t do that.”
Kendall takes a swig straight from the neck. “And yet, I just did.”
James narrows his eyes and throws down a few twenties, prompting Kendall to protest, “It’s Maker’s Mark, not ambrosia. Besides, Minerva would’ve put it on my tab.”
“Minerva?” James asks blankly, at the exact moment the bartender whisks by.
She pauses just long enough to say, “You ask me out and you don’t know my name? Poor form, Pretty.”
Kendall grins cheekily. “Meet Minerva.”
James has the gall to pout, to jut out his lower lip and go at it instead of demonstrating a trace of embarrassment. It’s appallingly endearing, along with every other thing he’s done so far. Kendall’s about sixy:forty on his preference for girls over guys, but as far as he can tell, this dude is barely even mortal. “Where’s your entourage, anyway?”
“Pardon?” James’s forehead furrows attractively.
“Don’t guys like you usually travel in packs?”
“What kind of guy do you think I am?”
“The kind that will buy me another drink?” Kendall asks hopefully. He waggles his eyebrows near independently of one another, each thick
and blond and ridiculous. Kendall practices that move in the mirror a lot. But hey, it works.
Snorting, James informs him, “You drink a lot.”
“You make it sound like a character flaw.”
James’s lips press together, ever-so-attractively - Kendall really wishes he’d stop being so pretty. He says, “It’s only a flaw if it makes you unhappy. Are you unhappy, Kendall Knight?”
Kendall shrugs, rocking his barstool onto its hind legs. “As long as you’re footing the bill here, I’m ecstatic.”
“Me too,” Minerva cheers from behind the bar, delivering another round of shots.
From the corner of his eye, Kendall spots Logan sneaking out the front door of the bar, sans the blond from earlier. He waggles his fingers at Logan’s back in goodbye and is summarily ignored. God, Logan’s been in a mood, ever since Kendall came home late last week. It’s not his fault he boarded the train to hell; how was he even supposed to know the city had a line that went there?
He returns his attention to James, who is watching him with suitable measures of adoration and amusement. Yeah, he’s totally going to take this guy for all he’s worth.
What?
Sure, James is astoundingly gorgeous, but he can’t be all that different from those guys Kendall saw the other morning. Heck, he could have been one of them. People with faces like James’s and the good fortune to be loaded usually are card carrying members of the Douchebag Club. And that means it is Kendall’s civic duty to work this glitch in the system to his advantage, before James remembers himself and books it back to his mansion in Valhalla.
“What else do you like to do for fun, other than get hosed?” James inquires earnestly.
Kendall considers it. “I like sex.”
He probably could have been a bit more subtle, there.
James manages to keep a straight face, hmming appropriately and following up with, “With any one particular person, or-“
“With anyone.” For the first time in the conversation, Kendall nearly falters, because wow, that is not how he meant to say it at all. “Um. I mean, I’m not picky - wait, no, that’s not-“
James is full on laughing now, this deep-bellied thing that echoes through Kendall’s bones. Instead of making him feel mocked, it warms him from the inside, and that is how he decides that rich prick or not, James will be coming home with him tonight.
Between chuckles, James intones, “Anyone includes a lot of people. How many people in this city have you nailed, exactly?”
Kendall plays along. “You know, about half. Why, is that unusual?”
“Only if you’re STD-free.”
“Har-dee-har-har. Funny. You can never go wrong with jokes about venereal disease.” He pins James with a look that suggests it was a low blow, one that can only be assuaged with more liquor and maybe a kiss. James doesn’t bite. “Safety first. As long as everyone’s having fun, where’s the harm.”
“Laissez-faire sex. Rad.” James pauses. In the burnished gold light of the bar, his eyes shine like fire opals. “Not sure how well that attitude matches up with those pretty love ballads of yours. Are you sure you wrote them?”
He’s been herding Kendall around the edges of this topic all night, but Kendall’s been evasive. Sure, he’s not above dropping a line like, “I’m a song writer,” to get laid, but actually discussing the melodies and lyrics feels weirdly intimate. He basks in the flattery and squirms beneath the scrutiny. He’s been lucky so far; no one else has ever much cared to talk about it.
James, though. James is not so easily deterred. Reluctantly, Kendall confirms, “I wrote them.” Then, because he feels the warning is warranted, he says, “Don’t go all schmoopy and romantic on me because of it.”
A half-bark of laughter is James’s immediate response to that. Then, straightaway he shepherds Kendall into this conversation about music, about Kendall’s process, like he has one. Set a notebook in front of him and he’s sharp as a razor’s edge, spinning intricate webs of words across the blank, white page. It’s the closest thing Kendall’s ever felt to magic, but there’s absolutely no fucking way he’ll ever say so out loud.
Uncomfortable with James’s interrogation, he mentions all the half written shit he has languishing around in his loft, the words slipping from his mouth without his accord.
James lights up brighter than fireworks on the fourth of July, and Kendall decides to take him home, because what else is he supposed to do?
“Bye, Angel.” Minerva flutters her fingers at Kendall, making kissy faces when she thinks James can’t see.
He does.
“You’re pretty friendly with the staff here.”
“Yeah, well.” Kendall shoves his hands deep into his pockets, grateful for the change of topic, but wondering how much he should cop to.
They always say the truth will set you free, right? “I, uh, work here.”
James purses his lips. At first, Kendall’s worried he might leave, but then he says, “Wait, you mean that whiskey was eight bucks a shot with your employee discount? This city, man.”
Kendall echoes the sentiment, less jaded, way fonder. In his opinion, New York City is the greatest place on Earth. There are monsters and models lurking on every corner, back alley speakeasies open all night, three am falafel runs and the best tiramisu outside Italy. Movie theaters lit up as bright as Times Square, gleaming metal stands hawking chicken and rice, tourists aiming cameras in every which direction and the easy apathy New Yorkers assign when approached by nearly everyone.
Every light. Every sound. Every strange-sweet smell and the brilliant, dangerous night - Kendall wraps them around himself as he leads
James down the block to the nearest subway station, steps dogged by the Manhattan lullaby. The city sparkles, the skyscrapers tower, the taxi drivers honk loudloudloud. Guys who look like James walk up to perfect strangers and call them amazing.
What more could a man honestly want?
---
“This is where I live.”
“It’s a sty,” James says in absolute wonder.
“Thank you,” a voice pipes up from the couch, Logan making himself known. He’s hidden beneath a pile of mismatched quilts their mutual grandmothers handcrafted with care, a gigantic paperback book balanced on his lap. “I’ve been telling him that forever.” He doesn’t move to get up, regarding James suspiciously. “I saw you before. At the bar.”
Beaming, James says, “Hi.”
“Are you trying to date my best friend?”
James doesn’t flinch. “Would that be terrible?”
“No, but good luck. Kendall has about as much time for love as he has for cleaning.”
“And yet he’s had time to get naked with half of Manhattan,” James replies before Kendall can object.
Logan smirks. “It’s a marvel, isn’t it?”
Kendall frowns. “Logan, stop being a bitch.”
“It’s my natural state of being. Do you want me to cease existing?”
“Is that an option?”
“You’ll miss me when I’m gone. Now shut your face, I’m trying to read Shantaram.”
“That’s a book?” James asks wondrously. “It’s the size of a shoebox.”
“Careful,” Kendall warns, taking James by the crook of his elbow to guide him out of Logan’s line of sight. “He might throw it at your face.”
Logan sniffs, “I’d never disgrace the book that way.”
James tells Kendall, “He’s charming.”
“Charm is for vagabonds and ne’er-do-wells. Brutal honesty is the scientific way.”
James blinks at Kendall, telegraphing help with those big, luminescent eyes of his. Kendall takes a smooth step to the left, pulling James along with him. “Right, Logan, you show that book who its boss is. James and I are going to go, uh, anywhere that’s not here.”
Kendall heads towards the ladder that leads up towards his lofted nest, but on second thought, yeah, no. Logan doesn’t appear interested in retreating into his bedroom any time soon, and it’s a bit early in Kendall’s relationship with James to ask if he’d relish an audience.
“Let me give you the nickel tour,” he suggests, “Starting with my favorite place in the building.”
“The building has a bar?” James jokes, but he isn’t being mean. Once they’re out of Logan’s earshot, he says, not disingenuously, “He seems nice.”
Kendall shoves his hands in his pockets and tries to figure out whether or not James simply does good poker face. “He can be an acquired taste.”
Without missing a beat, James replies, “Nah. I like ‘im.”
After a few more seconds of careful study, Kendall decides he isn’t lying. Weird. The last person he’d brought home who hadn’t minded Logan’s unique brand of tactless conversation ended up sticking around a lot longer than Kendall meant her to.
He beckons James to follow him out into the dark hallway, up to a door with peeling paint that barely passes for red. Inside the stairwell, the crumbling brick tile steps to the top level of their brownstone apartment building end at a rickety metal ladder.
James evaluates the rungs with a measure of foreboding. “I’m not sure about this.”
“Don’t be a pussy.” Kendall grabs the metal, rust flaking off against his hands. “It’s fine.”
“Are you sure, though? I like my insides on the inside. They give me comfort, placed as they are.”
Kendall rolls his eyes and begins the short climb up to the roof. The hatch on top of the ladder is propped up with an old book, leather bound and dented down the middle. With one well-muscled push, Kendall hefts the hatch-door aside, revealing a dusky, dark square of New York sky, peppered through with barely-there stars. He makes his way straight to the ledge edging his building, plopping down on top of it with practiced grace. His sneakers hit the brickwork on the other side, the five story drop below dancing in and out of his view.
James whistles low when he joins him. “Nice setup.”
“I like it up here,” Kendall says, smile wry. “Everything in the city’s so big, piled on top of you. Sometimes I miss the fresh air.”
“You’re not from New York?”
“Minnesota.”
“Really?” James’s head snaps up, honest surprise marring his features. “No way.”
“Yes way.”
“No, but - me too.”
Kendall’s mouth gapes open. “You’re shitting me.”
James shakes his head. “My mom’s Brooke Diamond. I moved here to, uh, escape.”
Now Kendall knows this has to be a joke.
“Brooke Diamond the cosmetics lady? From the embrace your sparkle commercials?”
“Yep.” James ducks his face against the wash of neon lights. He mutters, “One and the same.”
He doesn’t sound particularly enthused, talking about his mom, but Kendall doesn’t fault him for it. He gets tetchy whenever anyone tries to dig into his past, too. Doesn’t stop him from telling James, “Man, you’re Middle American Royalty.”
“What about you?” James challenges. “Why’d you run away?”
“Who says I ran away?”
“Everyone in this city’s running from something.”
“Or towards something.” Kendall shifts, ignoring the twinge in his knee. “Wanted a change of pace.”
“Got to be more to it than that,” James needles, like he can already read the darkness that flashes cold across Kendall’s face.
Frigidly, he replies, “There’s not.”
Crumpling a little, James says, “Oh-kay. If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine-“
“Seriously? You look like I kicked your puppy and then ate its liver. Mind your own business.”
He’s harsher than he needs to be and not even a little bit sorry about it. Not even when James manages to fit hurt and defiance into a single grimace as he inches away from Kendall on the ledge. “You don’t need to be a dick about it.”
Name calling. Great. Beset upon, Kendall attempts to count to ten in his head before the pressure and rage overwhelms him, the way it always does. He snaps, “Who's actually being a dick here?”
“Um, you,” James replies, his irritation clear.
“I’m not the one being a pushy asshole,” Kendall corrects, seething. “Fine, let’s fucking get to know each other. I moved here because I lost my scholarship at MU, and I couldn’t bear community college because my stepdad’s a douchecanoe and everyone there is a moron. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
He actually yells the last few words, cockblocking himself forever and after. James settles his weight back against his palms. This is the moment, the exact minute he’s going to walk off, and all of Kendall’s careful flirting will amount to nothing.
Whatever, it’s not like it’s the first time he’s missed out on a great piece of ass, and it probably won’t be the last.
Only, James’s anger dissipates. Lips quirking, he says, “Yeah. That about rounds it out. The story of you. I like it.”
It’s been a while since anybody managed to surpass Kendall’s admittedly low expectations of them. Wealthy trust-fund fucks especially. He doesn’t know what to say, so he waits until James continues, “I wouldn’t have pinned you for a scholar.”
“Hockey. It was a hockey scholarship.” Kendall adds defensively, “It’s the American pastime, you know.”
“Baseball’s the American pastime. We bogarted hockey from Canada. That’s sweet, though,” James says. “The varsity jock thing. How very
traditional of you. Were you a boy scout too? Were you raised on cornbread and the flesh of bald eagles?”
“Absolutely. My family arranged hunting parties in the mountains and only ever feasted on banquets of the freest and freshest, in the name of our greatest ancestor, George Washington.”
James stretches across the ledge until he’s closer to Kendall again, sharing the same airspace. He asks, “What happened, really? You were a hockey superstar and then you decided not to be?”
They’re back in waters Kendall would prefer to avoid. All he wants is an easy lay, not a new best friend. But something about James has him admitting, “Some tool from Ontario took me out. My teammates should have been there, to block it, but Logan wasn’t quick enough and there wasn’t anyone else.”
Kendall remembers hitting the ice, the edges of his vision going black as his knee twisted painfully to the left. He told the doctors he could hear his ligament as it tore, even though it was impossible over the slice of metal blades against ice, the scream of the fans, the crack of stick-versus-puck.
Impossible, but he still remembers the sound.
Subdued in his pity, James tells him, “I would have pounded him into the glass before he even reached you.”
Kendall swallows. He doesn’t know how to reply to that. A part of him wishes it were true, that everything actually happened that way. That he’d known James, growing up. Logan is a champ, but he’s never been able to handle Kendall when he flies off the handle, when he gets so mad he can’t stand it. Five minutes ago, James took it in stride. He’s the first person Kendall’s not related to who has managed not to back down in the face of his fury.
It’s been a long time since he’s had that, someone who can test and soothe him in equal measure.
Kendall huffs, “Sure you would’ve. You’re an insufferable brat,” but he’s gone all warm on the inside.
“You’re a cranky sourpuss,” James prods right back. “But you write music like nobody I’ve ever met and I’d dig the chance to see you naked, so I’m going to let your anger management issues slide.”
Kendall chokes on his own laughter.
Knowingly, James grins. “You’re not the only one who likes sex.”
“Yeah? Do you want to tell me more about how great I am? Because that would really put me in the mood.”
Rolling his shoulders back, he tells him, James leans his head against Kendall’s shoulder. His skin is warm. His hair smells good. “I was thinking it’s about time you started singing my praise. I’m fairly fantastic, you know.”
Kendall presses his mouth closed against a smile. “Hidden talents?”
“Not so hidden. I sing.”
“Professionally?”
“’Course not.” James frowns up at the smattering of dim stars trying to peek through the stratosphere. “Trying, but. No one takes me seriously.”
Kendall can’t quite tamp down on his initial reaction, which is unadulterated scorn. What he voices out loud is a neutral, “Oh?” because he’s an ass, but he’s a horny ass.
James shrugs. “The best art comes from the people who suffer for it. I haven’t suffered a day in my life, at least, that’s what everyone thinks.”
“I smell a story.”
“Not much of one.” James has no problem with the honesty that came so difficult to Kendall moments before. He admits, “I wanted to be a pterodactyl when I was a kid,” accompanying the confession with a little flap of his arms. “And then a NASCAR driver, and then a sea lion trainer. I settled on superstar when I was ten. I guess my parents expected me to grow out of it. They paid for voice lessons, for dance classes, for whatever I wanted, because it was a phase. When they finally figured out it wasn’t, they cut me off. They said if I wanted to be a superstar, I could do it on my own dime.”
“How’s that working out for you?”
“It’s really not,” James confesses, peering up at Kendall from beneath his dark, sooty eyelashes. He’s so damn pretty, too pretty. “I’ve got no hook. None of my songs sound like yours.”
This moment, right here, should be a warning sign, maybe. Outlined in bright red and flashing lights. It flies right over Kendall’s head.
He says, “Let’s hear what you’ve got,” utterly unaware that there’s no going back.
“If you start the party, don’t end up leaving early, ‘cause I’ve been waiting for you all night long,” James begins, and Kendall can’t help himself, his mouth stumbling on way ahead of his brain.
“No, what are you doing, stop. That’s a terrible song.” The lyrics aren’t bad for a pop ballad, but the melody is all wrong, and James’s voice is somehow lost in the crossfire.
James huffs. “Thanks, I wrote it myself.”
Oops.
“Er-“
Wryly, James asks, “How ‘bout this?” He gives Kendall the humblest smile, and when he opens his mouth, the words that come out don’t belong to him. “Over. I can’t believe it’s over,” he sings, starting slow. “I can’t believe the love I lived to show some other day…”
He shouldn’t know these words, having only heard them once, shouldn’t be able to shape them so beautifully, but he does. His voice calls up sweetness in the pit of Kendall’s stomach, this fluttery thing that soars on every high note and shivers through his bones.
When James reaches the bridge, his voice booms louder, better. If a sound could dazzle, this would. “Golden, all the love you gave was golden-“
It blacks the edges of Kendall’s vision, sharpens his focus, reverberates inside him. It sends shivers of pleasure down Kendall’s spine, makes his toes curl inside his boots. The melody spilling from James’s lips shines light everywhere inside of him.
He never knew another person could sing like this.
“Oh, music. You made me hear such music,” James sings, and Kendall watches him wrap his lips around the words that he wrote and sees them change. They are better, stronger, more passionate. They are heart-wrenching and lovely in a way they never have been tumbling from Kendall’s mouth. James has that magic quality, the ability to give life to music, and that’s great, that’s wonderful, and it’s also scary as fuck, because he is exposing each and every one of Kendall’s open wounds without even knowing they’re there to poke at.
Kendall knows then; the two of them, together, would be brilliant. They could conquer the world with music so honest and raw. He cannot stand it.
Roughly, he cuts James off mid-solo. “C’mere.”
His lips touch James’s rough, chapped, and needy. They both taste of sweetsharp, mouths soaked in whiskey.
Kendall tucks his hand behind the curve of James’s neck and tugs him closer, angling to lick the words he wrote off of this strange, handsome fey boy’s skin.
Overhead, the moon is shy. It peeks from behind the towering monoliths of buildings, its soft glow kissing the blue glass fronts of every empty office in Manhattan. It does not spy while Kendall kisses James, slow and soft and meaning every minute of it.
This is the beginning, and neither of them knows it.
Their mouths slide against each other, fractured starlight on their tongues, humming through their throats and their veins. Against the too-sweet tang of James’s lips, Kendall murmurs, “Sorry I, uh, dissed your song.”
“You’re not the only person who thinks it’s terrible.” James pulls back and wrinkles his nose, pressing his forehead to Kendall’s. Up close, his eyes are flecked with gold. “I auditioned for some execs this morning. They didn’t say it blew chunks, but…that’s probably because they didn’t say anything.”
“They’re idiots,” Kendall says, and he’s fairly certain they are.
Outlined in starshine, James is magical, the echo of his voice still resonating against all of Kendall’s nerve endings. Kendall leans in to kiss him again. And again. And again. They kiss until James’s mouth is blood-red and plump, shiny with spit, and Kendall’s relatively certain he must look the same. When they pull back, Kendall’s jeans are tight and the city’s too hot, every blaring taxi horn and ecstatic, drunken whoop from below pulsing beneath his skin.
He’s ready to invite James downstairs, right up until James opens his big, fat mouth.
“You’re-“ he says softly, starting and stopping with the sweet shyness of a teenager before abruptly changing tacks, like he’s too embarrassed to actually fess up to what Kendall is. “And this view is, wow. Do you ever think about jumping?”
Kendall glances down at the city streets, dizzying so far below them. His feet sweat in his boots. A chill lances up his spine.
“Never.”
“Really?” James’s eyes drill holes into Kendall’s skull, trepanning for the truth. “You’ve never wanted to end it all?”
“Nope,” he lies, the word chalky and thick in his mouth. “Way to kill the mood.”
“Sorry. I just. I have.”
“You’ve -“ Kendall fumbles for English, because what even is happening? He gets kissed breathless and suddenly he’s the suicide hotline?
“Thought about jumping?”
“Sure,” James tells him, as if it’s no big deal, telling a complete stranger his shit. “I want to get out of this place. Hit it big, run away. And sometimes I feel so completely stuck. Not now, but. I’ve been to the dark place.”
Despite himself, Kendall asks, “What kept you from doing it? From jumping off…whatever?”
He’s got no idea what kinds of things tower around James from day to day. The Brooklyn Bridge? The Chrysler Building? What high things has he ever considered taking a nosedive from?
James considers. “Look at Zwagger.”
“I’d rather not,” Kendall says, horrified. Zwagger is this two bit popstar that burst onto the scene three years prior, equipped with redonkulous outfits and a bevy of popular musical numbers about embracing your true self. Kendall doesn’t know who Zwagger’s true self actually is, but he seriously doubts it’s a guy who enjoys wearing suits made out of Beanie Babies.
James, however, looks absolutely enamored. Kendall’s embarrassed on his behalf. “He’s said it in interviews - he came from nothing. He faced rejection down a thousand times, and he still made it out the other end. I’m going to be exactly like him.”
“That contradicts his message a little bit, don’t you think?” Kendall quips, because he can’t not. This conversation is so far from the happy kissing of yester-moment that it’s driving him a bit insane. He wants more kissing. Why is there not more kissing?
“Maybe.” James laughs good-humoredly. “You’ve got talent, like his. Have you ever considered moving to LA?”
“About as frequently as I think about swallowing cyanide.”
Tilting his chin towards the stars, near invisible in the wash of neon lights that dominate the city, James says, “I heard it’s easier out there. People are more receptive out west.” He darts a look at Kendall, adding, “Less cynical.”
“Five minutes ago I had astounding talent and now I’m cynical,” Kendall complains. “You city boys sure are hard to please.” He drops the act when James lifts one perfect eyebrow his way. “I’m not interested in being a plastic person, thanks.”
“They’re not plastic,” James insists, his expression darkening so quickly that it’s like someone took a match to it.
Great. Two fights in one night. Maybe they’re not super-special destined boyfriends with great asses. Kendall sighs. “Shows how much you know about LA.”
Everything Kendall knows about California comes from bad reality television and Beach Boys hit singles, but whatever. He’s as much of an authority as James obviously is.
“Can you hold off with the jokes for three seconds? I’m trying to bare my soul to you here.”
“And I really wish you’d stop. You want to enlist in the Stepford ranks, more power to you, but leave me out of it.”
“Christ, it was just a question.” James shakes his head, scooting back on the ledge until there’s some distance between their bodies. “What the hell’s your problem?”
His problem.
His problem is that everybody asks that, that everybody he’s ever met wants to know why he’s like this or so cruel. He thought for an entire millisecond that James was different, that his careful handling of Kendall’s earlier tantrum demarcated him as special, but he’s exactly like everyone else.
So Kendall treats him like everybody else.
“I don’t have a problem. You’re the Trust Fund Princess who can’t make it in the real world.”
Kendall regrets it the second he says it, but just like always, it’s too late to take anything back.
This is how he learned to fight, in the shadow of his parents’ neglect. Nastily.
(His mom never meant to leave him alone, but she had to work, had to make money, had to provide for him and Katie, and that took time. His dad was a different story, an old story, the man who left.
Why is it always the men?
They’re weaker than women, Kendall knows. He can point to his mom or his sister and say, “Look. Look at their strength and then look at mine. See how it differs.”
His coping mechanisms are eating away at his insides. But he can’t help it; this is how he learned to fight. Alone.)
“Please don’t call me that,” James grimaces, pained, but Kendall’s on a roll. He twists the knife, makes it hurt. Nasty words discourage pity, and from there, it’s an easy kill, cutting a person apart.
“You want to be special, but there’s nothing special about you.”
Eviscerate James and he won’t come back, Kendall knows, but maybe that’s better. Being alone means no one can hurt you. Being alone is how Kendall survives.
“How do you do it?” James inquires, trembling with rage.
They are a tragedy in motion, their nerve endings on fire, lies on their tongues. Their feet dangle over the edge of the roof, kicking at the empty air, daring gravity to take hold, but it never quite does.
“Look this good?” Kendall counters airily. “Genetics and healthy living, mostly-“
“I mean how are you this much of an ass and still able to write such beautiful things? Explain that to me.”
Ouch. Kendall winces, but not so obviously that James will see it. He says, “It’s one of the mysteries of the universe. Like Stonehenge, but less ugly.”
“I don’t know,” James disagrees, his own anger flaring, flaming in the night. “The way you were just talking to me was plenty ugly.”
He finds his footing on the rooftop, over balancing enough that Kendall has to catch him by the calf, just to keep him from tumbling to his doom. Disgustedly, James yanks his leg away and hops down to the more solid cement of the roof. He’s across and to the door in five longs strides.
“Does this mean you’re not going to let me suck your dick?” Kendall calls after him. He sounds more harsh than funny, but hey, he’s gotten the last word.
Which does him absolutely, positively no good at all. Kendall isn’t sure if he’s more pissed off at himself for losing out on that ass or for actually managing to sincerely insult James. He might be a rich, spoiled fuck, but he was also endearingly genuine.
There has to be an angle hiding beneath all that muscle; everyone has an angle. But Kendall wouldn’t have minded more time to figure out what it is.
Sighing, he heaves himself down the ladder from the roof, taking the steps back to his apartment two at a time. Inside, he tells Logan to shove over on the sofa and props his feet right up on the fat pages of Shantaram. Logan digs his fingers into Kendall’s ankles, annoyed, but when it proves futile he groans and asks, “Blew it?”
“With hurricane force,” Kendall agrees.
“Forget about him,” Logan says shortly. “Chiseled from steel isn’t really your type. Besides, he was making eyes at me when you weren’t looking.”
Kendall snickers, in spite of himself. “That so?”
“It made me acutely uncomfortable,” Logan deadpans. “I am not a piece of meat.”
Fondly, Kendall ruffles his hair. “And yet everyone keeps using you for your body. Alas.”
Logan says, “Both of us striking out in one night. Must be fate.”
Kendall’s fingers pause, laced in soft brown. His heart gives a panicked, stuttering thudthudthud. He considers pulling his feet back into his own space, thinks about running up to his bed in the loft and cowering beneath the covers until the awkward tension vanishes.
He can’t imagine a more perfect way to ruin everything.
Carefully, Kendall says, “I wouldn’t give the universe too much credit. I’ve heard your pick up lines.”
Logan’s face falls, even as he laughs.
Kendall lets out a slow breath. Can’t blame a guy for trying, right? And Logan’s been trying for years. His crush on Kendall blossomed somewhere around the sixth grade and has never quite gone away.
It festered when Kendall thought he was one hundred percent straight, flowered when Kendall decided his hetero percentage might be overreaching, and has reared its head in all kinds of uncomfortable moments, ever since Kendall lost his backdoor virginity to a guy from Alphabet City.
“Logan,” Kendall starts, and just like always, he has no idea what to say. It isn’t that Logan’s not completely fine, from head to toe, because he’s got this dimples-jawline-surprisingly-fit-physique thing going on. He’d be a pleasure to have spread out and wanting on Kendall sheets.
The real problem is that they’re best friends.
They get along like a house on fire. It’s feasible that they’d be good together. Or maybe they wouldn’t. Either way, Kendall’s not willing to take the risk. He loves Logan like a brother, nothing more.
“It’s okay.” Logan squirms beneath Kendall’s steady gaze. “I know I - I just know, okay?”
He shoves Kendall’s legs off his lap, delicately fixes the rumpled pages of his novel and snaps it shut. Kendall has this horrible, sinking feeling that he’s broken something precious, even though this isn’t the first time they’ve covered Kendall’s hesitance to get horizontal.
He’s shaken from James’s snappishness, half-drunk and crazy tired. He grabs Logan’s arm and says, “Wait.”
Logan gives him the strangest look. “I wasn’t going anywhere.”
“Good. That’s good. I need you not to.”
And then Kendall settles his hand firmly against the front of Logan’s pajama bottoms. Beneath his palm, soft cloth separates his skin from the instant heat of Logan, soft, but sluggishly coming to attention.
Startled, Logan asks, “What are you doing?”
Happily ignoring the red alert lights flashing in his head, Kendall wraps his fingers around the shape of Logan’s dick and says, “It’s what you want, right?”
He’s so going to regret this when he’s sober.
Logan deliberates, fear and loathing chasing lust across his face. He arches against Kendall’s hand with a helpless groan and nods, “Yeah. Yes. Please.”
Logan wends his hands into Kendall’s hair, tugging him close until he’s practically straddling him, book falling by the wayside. He is not nearly as careful as James when he kisses Kendall sloppy and reckless.
Kendall kisses back, uncaring of how this will devastate him in the morning, because this is what he does - wasted decision making and total errors in judgment, and he’d be lying if he said this was the first time he’d toyed with Logan with a buzz on.
There’s a reason his endless crush perpetuates.
He loses sight of why it’s wrong with Logan’s thighs pressing against his knees, the tenting of his PJs brushing insistently against Kendall’s stomach. Kendall jerks him through the fabric, probing Logan’s mouth painstakingly slow with his tongue. The kiss is as much of a tease as
Kendall’s thumb against the clothed head of Logan’s cock. Both make the other boy whine and buck.
Kendall draws it out until Logan’s rutting up against his belly, catching the pre-cum damp of his flannel against Kendall’s t-shirt, a growing stain between them. Kendall swallows down the guttural, porn-star noises Logan is making, circles one arm around his back and tilts him forward on the couch until Logan’s shoulders hit cushions. On his knees, Kendall hovers over Logan’s stocky frame, tonguing down his throat. He plants kisses against Logan’s t-shirt, each taunting and deliberate.
Logan pants, “Kendall,” and Logan pants, “Why are you always such a fucking cocktease?”
Kendall fondles his balls and, smirking, breathes hot against the cloth above Logan’s navel. When he reaches the hem of Logan’s tee, he shifts it aside and nips at the flesh of his lower stomach, licks out at the treasure trail of hair leading into his pants. He rests his lips above the waistband and asks low, “How bad do you want to fuck my mouth?”
Logan’s eyes go dark, his pupils black and endless. He reaches out, curls his fingers around Kendall’s ear, his neck, his skull. Roughly, he commands, “Suck me off. Now.”
Kendall’s cock aches, tight at the base all the way to his gut. He wants Logan sheathed on his dick, wants the silky, impossibly tight burn of him all around. He could take Logan apart like that, wreck him completely, but even walking the border of wasted, Kendall knows better than to
treat Logan like his own personal cum dumpster. He wants Logan to get over him.
Eventually.
Keeping that in mind, Kendall doesn’t peer up through his eyelashes as he inches Logan’s pajamas down, focusing on the slow reveal of the crown of his dick instead of the black hole vortex of adoration and need in Logan’s eyes. Kendall skims his tongue against pink-red ridges, tastes Logan salty and bitter.
A low moan slips from Logan’s mouth. Kendall doesn’t have to glance up to know he’s glaring, quietly urging Kendall to stop messing around.
Kendall brushes the head of Logan’s cock with his lower lip, feverish skin smooth against his red, savaged mouth. He turns it into a game, makes out with Logan’s cock every bit as wet and messy as he had with Logan’s face, dancing his tongue across the underside of flesh and veins, feeling Logan throb beneath him.
Logan’s a dirty cheater. He tries to push in, to breach the plush circle of Kendall’s lips, but he’s met with teeth and hisses hard. “Kendall.”
Innocently, Kendall licks out, lapping away the agony. He reaches down in the tight space between Logan’s bunched up pants and his sac, tucking his fingers behind soft skin, testing how each touch shivers through Logan’s dick. Logan tries to get inside him again, squirms under the play of Kendall’s fingers, and this time Kendall lets him, opening his mouth half an inch. Then further, the bitter tang of precum assaulting his taste buds.
“Oh god, Kendall,” Logan stammers out, his yelp loud in the empty space of their apartment, “Kendall, fuck.”
He scrabbles to get a better grip on Kendall’s hair, yanking and relaxing in a rhythm that Kendall takes up, trying to match the frantic desperation. He’s not sure how well he succeeds, taunting Logan with quick flicks of his tongue, tiny bursts of suction that turn into longer, deeper pulls. Kendall slides his lips against wet, heated skin and can physically feel Logan’s thighs quiver under his palms.
When he comes, he’s choking on Kendall’s name, the soft K barely audible, the e turned into an i, all the other letters tumbling after. He finishes hazy eyed and pliable, groping against Kendall’s crotch until he finds a lethargic tempo.
Even through the layer of his jeans, it feels good, hurts exactly right. Kendall fucks into Logan’s palm until his vision goes starry, the black galaxy that lives behind his eyelids laced white with pleasure. He loses all sense of himself there, on their tattered couch.
From his toes to his spine, from his fingers to his bones, all the way down to the dark abyss at his core - that bleak place where he sometimes dares to hope that his heart might be.
---
Part Two
---
Author:
garnetice
Pairing: Kendall/James, Kendall/Logan, past Kendall/Jo
Rating: M
Word Count: 24,538 (8,336 this part)
Warnings: Sex, bad words, AU.
Summary: Kendall Knight is an aspiring song writer with a quick temper and too much pride. James Diamond is a spoiled, idealistic wannabe superstar who just can't catch a break. They both live in the neon wash of Manhattan's electric lights, with the starless sky and the neverending pulse of life. There's no better place to start a fairytale, and that's what Kendall thinks it is when he first meets James - the beginning of a love story. Or is it?
Disclaimer: BTR and Hit List are not mine.
Author's Notes: Riiiight. So this is my bigtimebang submission. It's finished, but it's not finished. By that I mean this fic will have a second half/sequel, BUT this first half can stand alone. You just have to ignore the first two/three paragraphs of intro. As a warning, if you're jonesing for the sequel: there will be other pairings including James/Kelly, James/everyone, Kendall/Lucy, prescription drug use, character death, etc. Also, grad school is a bitch, so it's going to take me a little while to finish (I have like, 5k of it rn). Now. This fic is entirely based on Hit List, the fictional play that they produced in NBC's Smash. Hit List is GR9. Literally, it is my favorite thing. I highly recommend hunting down the songs, some of which I appropriated for the purposes of this fic. All lyrics belong to their respective owners. AND I just found out Hit List is apparently being made into a rl play. WOOOO. I am excite. breila_rose, we're going. jblostfan16 gets all the kudos for being the best beta and head mod BTB could have asked for. This one's for you, baby.
---
This story starts with a gun.
Newer model. Sleek and deadly. There are flashing lights - strobes, too white, they hurt Kendall’s eyes - and screams - the crowd, or is that him?
There is blood. Pulsing in the crevices between his fingers. Under his fingers. Both.
This is an end when it was supposed to be a beginning, the last wavering notes of a song still ringing in Kendall’s ears. He’s falling, baby, through the sky, through the sky…
Security is closing in, pushing, shoving, yelling. Their uniforms are revolver dark. In the audience, it is mayhem. Kendall has lost sight of the silvered glint of light off the black barrel. He can’t decide if it matters.
There is a mouth against his, wet, metallic tasting. This kiss is gore, goodbye and tears; suited for a story that starts with a gun - no, wait.
He’s getting ahead of himself, trying to rewrite everything in his head.
The real beginning was quieter, less violent. There wasn’t a gun. But there was a kiss. A happier one. A better one. It involved less crying.
Where this story really starts is there, with that kiss, and the way it sizzled through Kendall heart with all the intensity of a bullet.
---
Kendall’s twenty four years old and utterly lost.
Literally. He has no fucking idea where he is right now, because he fell asleep on the subway. Again.
His knee twinges, an old hockey injury berating him for staying curled so long in one position. His neck echoes the pain sympathetically, cricked at an angle just left of comfortable. The spiral edge of his notebook cuts an imprint into his palms.
Kendall tucks it into his back pocket with care. Blearily, he blinks the grit from his eyes and stumbles off the train, ignoring the judgmental glare of the Transit Authority cop that shook him awake. The subway station smells like piss and mold. The doors of the train hiss closed behind him.
Nothing is familiar. Kendall trudges up the stairs, one by one, shoving his way past a homeless man in a parka that might once have been a color other than black. The pre-dawn air hits his lungs hard, sending Kendall into a coughing fit that wracks his entire exhausted body.
“Come on, come on,” he mutters through gasps, searching out a street sign. He comes up empty. Kendall didn’t even know the city had anything like suburbs.
Unless he accidentally hopped the PATH to Jersey. Shit. He didn’t think to check.
The first rays of the sun touch the horizon, a spotlight of dizzying gold that will soon scare the night away. If Kendall doesn’t get home before that happens, Logan’s going to skin him alive. He’ll tell Katie, and she’ll do that thing where she worries, which only ever manifests itself in the form of yelling.
Kendall’s not all that fond of that scenario when he’s sober. The idea of dealing with it when his buzz is performing a slow metamorphosis into an agonizing hangover is completely unappealing. He takes a couple of steps towards a red brick house, falters, spins around. The subway entrance has dropped out of site, swallowed by a hedge or a shed or the sunny façade of someone’s brownstone.
Seriously, where even is this? Is it Brooklyn? This better not be Brooklyn.
At random, Kendall picks a direction and marches forward, resolute. Five blocks later and he thinks he’s seen at least fifty living, thriving trees, which is a record for New York City outside of Central Park. He is so not in Manhattan anymore. Brilliant.
Birds chirp. The electric lights hum. Kendall’s thoughts have gone quiet, their constant nag dimmed to a distant chatter, for once. The world is bathed in light and shadow.
Laughter shatters the illusion.
Up ahead, he spies a group. Straightaway he can tell what they are. Thoroughbreds. The kind that have won the trifecta - looks, money, and egotism. They’re handsome, rowdy, and in the center of the guys stands their evident king. The sunrise crowns him in red, orange, and gold.
His friends obscure the view of the shadowy angles of his body, but his smile jolts through Kendall’s system, adrenaline-intense.
That smile isn’t for Kendall. He isn’t on any of these guys’ radar, even as they give him a wide berth on the street. They stare straight through him, even as they walk his way. Boys like these inherit the earth.
He hates them.
He hates them.
He hates them. They are stupid and shallow and fake.
The corners of his notebook dig into his ass, reminding him that he’s not powerless. He’s going to show everyone, one day, exactly what they are. He will correct the tragic injustice of the world with the beauty he creates. He will make music that swells so big and so loud it carries everyone whoever hurt him or ignored him away in its tide. The words he pens will permanently ink themselves on America’s heart.
Or maybe Kendall will just crash and burn, but either way, he holds his head up defiantly. He glares the lemmings dead in the eye, even if they don’t acknowledge his existence. And then he walks on, renewing his search for the fucking street sign, fighting the sneaking suspicion that he’s somehow gotten himself stranded in Brooklyn.
A lecture from Katie is nigh.
---
Song writing was an accident. Kendall was going to be the Next Big Thing in the NHL, because he’d always been a rockstar on the ice. Then he tore the ligament in his knee.
Presto, magic. His dreams were shot.
At the hospital he lost it, a little bit. Maybe a lot. They told him he had a problem with anger, like there was a teenage boy in the world that didn’t, and put him in these touchy-feely classes. Every session blew harder than the last, but there was this assignment. They were supposed to keep a journal, to funnel their rage into something productive.
Kendall’s never been great at organizing his thoughts. His essays were total stream of consciousness bull. Only one day he was lying on his bed, working on a page about how much he hates his dad and getting nowhere. He was bored out of his skull. So he picked up the bass his old man left behind, strummed his fingers over it the way he always did when he needed to make noise and he wasn’t allowed to scream.
But he found the words. They were there, all along, waiting to be spoken out loud.
He imagined his dad’s face, the way it would look if he heard what Kendall had to say. It felt good. It made him feel strong. And looking back, on every page he saw it. His stream of consciousness essays, in reality, were songs. Songs that, with a little fine tuning, weren’t half bad.
Compared to half the crap on the radio, they were downright brilliant.
Kendall wondered how hard it would be, to get radio play. To simultaneously get his life back on track and strike out at every single person who ever kicked him while he was down.
Not as difficult as joining the NHL, surely.
Kendall failed anger management, but hey. It wasn’t so pointless after all.
Granted, trying to make it as a songwriter in New York City was a bit more difficult than he’d anticipated.
---
The stage creaks beneath his boots.
He notices as he walked off, to the sound of scattered clapping.
The creaking is loud. Of the thirty or so people in the bar, only about five paid any attention to his set. One of them was Logan, who has already abandoned his applause to chat up this blond dude near the beer taps.
Whiskey. Whiskey will solve this night. Wearily, Kendall charts a course to the nearest bartender. He tramps down the stairs, only to be interrupted midway by a solid block of Emporio Armani. The fabric of the manbeast’s t-shirt and the heady scent of expensive cologne tell
Kendall everything he needs to know.
Curses spring to his lips. He peers up at the guy’s face.
Every word he’s ever known dies a slow death in his throat.
The most beautiful things Kendall has ever seen include:
Storm clouds swallowing the empire state building, crazy light slanting in every direction as the city wavered in the mouth of chaos.
Graffiti love poems on the sidewalk outside his job, bright slashes of red and asphalt grit concealing words about heartbreak and healing.
An endless field of lilac back home in Minnesota, purple trembling in the breeze and everything smelled of home.
And.
His baby sister on the day he met her, staring up at him like he was her entire world.
These are the things that flash through his mind as he takes in this boy’s face, the desperate and absolute devotion he discovers there. If love at first sight was a thing Kendall believed in, he’d be able to identify exactly what it is he sees, but he doesn’t, so he can’t. All he knows is that something pricks beneath his breastbone, twinges like internal bleeding.
The boy says, “Your songs are the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard.”
The boy says, “I’m James.”
“Charmed,” Kendall replies, because James’s legs are eight miles long and his face was very possibly crafted by angels. Besides, who is he to turn down the affections of a brand new rich-bitch friend? Even though he will inevitably turns out to be a complete jackass, Kendall decides he’s got a lot to bring to the table. Mostly in terms of cash and nudity. He dons a winning smile, dimples and all, and tells James, “My name’s Kendall. I’m a Scorpio. We get thirsty a lot.”
Not at all surreptitiously, he cuts his eyes towards the bar. James takes the hint.
Kendall lets James buys him a drink or five, because he’s smitten, and it’s not like a guy wearing William Rast jeans can’t afford it. They take turns flirting with the lone bartender, a gorgeous woman edging the line between thirty and mid-life. She’s not at all impressed by their suave lines, but she doesn’t appear repelled by their attention, either. In between attempts, Kendall peeks at James from the corner of his eye and wonders what the hell his goal here is.
An hour in and he decides he doesn’t care. Long legs and a tight ass are two of Kendall’s only prerequisites in, uh, just about anybody.
James is rocking both with the casual confidence of a dude who knows he’s blessed. And his smile’s disarming, bright and strangely vulnerable. Kendall wants to see it again and again, to find new angles and adore them all. There in the flickering neon buzz of beer signs, the tarnished bar mirror and the surround sound chatter of strangers, he finds himself entranced by this boy and his broken-edged grin. Their glasses click together, cheers, and James holds his liquor pretty well for a rich boy.
Around midnight, the crowd picks up, college students searching for a good time and the bridge and tunnel crowd downing one last shot before embarking on the last train home. The hassled bartender, with her cat-eyes and exposed midriff, doesn’t have a minute to spare for the talent, so Kendall reaches behind the scratched mahogany countertop and produces a whiskey bottle of his very own.
James is scandalized. “You can’t do that.”
Kendall takes a swig straight from the neck. “And yet, I just did.”
James narrows his eyes and throws down a few twenties, prompting Kendall to protest, “It’s Maker’s Mark, not ambrosia. Besides, Minerva would’ve put it on my tab.”
“Minerva?” James asks blankly, at the exact moment the bartender whisks by.
She pauses just long enough to say, “You ask me out and you don’t know my name? Poor form, Pretty.”
Kendall grins cheekily. “Meet Minerva.”
James has the gall to pout, to jut out his lower lip and go at it instead of demonstrating a trace of embarrassment. It’s appallingly endearing, along with every other thing he’s done so far. Kendall’s about sixy:forty on his preference for girls over guys, but as far as he can tell, this dude is barely even mortal. “Where’s your entourage, anyway?”
“Pardon?” James’s forehead furrows attractively.
“Don’t guys like you usually travel in packs?”
“What kind of guy do you think I am?”
“The kind that will buy me another drink?” Kendall asks hopefully. He waggles his eyebrows near independently of one another, each thick
and blond and ridiculous. Kendall practices that move in the mirror a lot. But hey, it works.
Snorting, James informs him, “You drink a lot.”
“You make it sound like a character flaw.”
James’s lips press together, ever-so-attractively - Kendall really wishes he’d stop being so pretty. He says, “It’s only a flaw if it makes you unhappy. Are you unhappy, Kendall Knight?”
Kendall shrugs, rocking his barstool onto its hind legs. “As long as you’re footing the bill here, I’m ecstatic.”
“Me too,” Minerva cheers from behind the bar, delivering another round of shots.
From the corner of his eye, Kendall spots Logan sneaking out the front door of the bar, sans the blond from earlier. He waggles his fingers at Logan’s back in goodbye and is summarily ignored. God, Logan’s been in a mood, ever since Kendall came home late last week. It’s not his fault he boarded the train to hell; how was he even supposed to know the city had a line that went there?
He returns his attention to James, who is watching him with suitable measures of adoration and amusement. Yeah, he’s totally going to take this guy for all he’s worth.
What?
Sure, James is astoundingly gorgeous, but he can’t be all that different from those guys Kendall saw the other morning. Heck, he could have been one of them. People with faces like James’s and the good fortune to be loaded usually are card carrying members of the Douchebag Club. And that means it is Kendall’s civic duty to work this glitch in the system to his advantage, before James remembers himself and books it back to his mansion in Valhalla.
“What else do you like to do for fun, other than get hosed?” James inquires earnestly.
Kendall considers it. “I like sex.”
He probably could have been a bit more subtle, there.
James manages to keep a straight face, hmming appropriately and following up with, “With any one particular person, or-“
“With anyone.” For the first time in the conversation, Kendall nearly falters, because wow, that is not how he meant to say it at all. “Um. I mean, I’m not picky - wait, no, that’s not-“
James is full on laughing now, this deep-bellied thing that echoes through Kendall’s bones. Instead of making him feel mocked, it warms him from the inside, and that is how he decides that rich prick or not, James will be coming home with him tonight.
Between chuckles, James intones, “Anyone includes a lot of people. How many people in this city have you nailed, exactly?”
Kendall plays along. “You know, about half. Why, is that unusual?”
“Only if you’re STD-free.”
“Har-dee-har-har. Funny. You can never go wrong with jokes about venereal disease.” He pins James with a look that suggests it was a low blow, one that can only be assuaged with more liquor and maybe a kiss. James doesn’t bite. “Safety first. As long as everyone’s having fun, where’s the harm.”
“Laissez-faire sex. Rad.” James pauses. In the burnished gold light of the bar, his eyes shine like fire opals. “Not sure how well that attitude matches up with those pretty love ballads of yours. Are you sure you wrote them?”
He’s been herding Kendall around the edges of this topic all night, but Kendall’s been evasive. Sure, he’s not above dropping a line like, “I’m a song writer,” to get laid, but actually discussing the melodies and lyrics feels weirdly intimate. He basks in the flattery and squirms beneath the scrutiny. He’s been lucky so far; no one else has ever much cared to talk about it.
James, though. James is not so easily deterred. Reluctantly, Kendall confirms, “I wrote them.” Then, because he feels the warning is warranted, he says, “Don’t go all schmoopy and romantic on me because of it.”
A half-bark of laughter is James’s immediate response to that. Then, straightaway he shepherds Kendall into this conversation about music, about Kendall’s process, like he has one. Set a notebook in front of him and he’s sharp as a razor’s edge, spinning intricate webs of words across the blank, white page. It’s the closest thing Kendall’s ever felt to magic, but there’s absolutely no fucking way he’ll ever say so out loud.
Uncomfortable with James’s interrogation, he mentions all the half written shit he has languishing around in his loft, the words slipping from his mouth without his accord.
James lights up brighter than fireworks on the fourth of July, and Kendall decides to take him home, because what else is he supposed to do?
“Bye, Angel.” Minerva flutters her fingers at Kendall, making kissy faces when she thinks James can’t see.
He does.
“You’re pretty friendly with the staff here.”
“Yeah, well.” Kendall shoves his hands deep into his pockets, grateful for the change of topic, but wondering how much he should cop to.
They always say the truth will set you free, right? “I, uh, work here.”
James purses his lips. At first, Kendall’s worried he might leave, but then he says, “Wait, you mean that whiskey was eight bucks a shot with your employee discount? This city, man.”
Kendall echoes the sentiment, less jaded, way fonder. In his opinion, New York City is the greatest place on Earth. There are monsters and models lurking on every corner, back alley speakeasies open all night, three am falafel runs and the best tiramisu outside Italy. Movie theaters lit up as bright as Times Square, gleaming metal stands hawking chicken and rice, tourists aiming cameras in every which direction and the easy apathy New Yorkers assign when approached by nearly everyone.
Every light. Every sound. Every strange-sweet smell and the brilliant, dangerous night - Kendall wraps them around himself as he leads
James down the block to the nearest subway station, steps dogged by the Manhattan lullaby. The city sparkles, the skyscrapers tower, the taxi drivers honk loudloudloud. Guys who look like James walk up to perfect strangers and call them amazing.
What more could a man honestly want?
---
“This is where I live.”
“It’s a sty,” James says in absolute wonder.
“Thank you,” a voice pipes up from the couch, Logan making himself known. He’s hidden beneath a pile of mismatched quilts their mutual grandmothers handcrafted with care, a gigantic paperback book balanced on his lap. “I’ve been telling him that forever.” He doesn’t move to get up, regarding James suspiciously. “I saw you before. At the bar.”
Beaming, James says, “Hi.”
“Are you trying to date my best friend?”
James doesn’t flinch. “Would that be terrible?”
“No, but good luck. Kendall has about as much time for love as he has for cleaning.”
“And yet he’s had time to get naked with half of Manhattan,” James replies before Kendall can object.
Logan smirks. “It’s a marvel, isn’t it?”
Kendall frowns. “Logan, stop being a bitch.”
“It’s my natural state of being. Do you want me to cease existing?”
“Is that an option?”
“You’ll miss me when I’m gone. Now shut your face, I’m trying to read Shantaram.”
“That’s a book?” James asks wondrously. “It’s the size of a shoebox.”
“Careful,” Kendall warns, taking James by the crook of his elbow to guide him out of Logan’s line of sight. “He might throw it at your face.”
Logan sniffs, “I’d never disgrace the book that way.”
James tells Kendall, “He’s charming.”
“Charm is for vagabonds and ne’er-do-wells. Brutal honesty is the scientific way.”
James blinks at Kendall, telegraphing help with those big, luminescent eyes of his. Kendall takes a smooth step to the left, pulling James along with him. “Right, Logan, you show that book who its boss is. James and I are going to go, uh, anywhere that’s not here.”
Kendall heads towards the ladder that leads up towards his lofted nest, but on second thought, yeah, no. Logan doesn’t appear interested in retreating into his bedroom any time soon, and it’s a bit early in Kendall’s relationship with James to ask if he’d relish an audience.
“Let me give you the nickel tour,” he suggests, “Starting with my favorite place in the building.”
“The building has a bar?” James jokes, but he isn’t being mean. Once they’re out of Logan’s earshot, he says, not disingenuously, “He seems nice.”
Kendall shoves his hands in his pockets and tries to figure out whether or not James simply does good poker face. “He can be an acquired taste.”
Without missing a beat, James replies, “Nah. I like ‘im.”
After a few more seconds of careful study, Kendall decides he isn’t lying. Weird. The last person he’d brought home who hadn’t minded Logan’s unique brand of tactless conversation ended up sticking around a lot longer than Kendall meant her to.
He beckons James to follow him out into the dark hallway, up to a door with peeling paint that barely passes for red. Inside the stairwell, the crumbling brick tile steps to the top level of their brownstone apartment building end at a rickety metal ladder.
James evaluates the rungs with a measure of foreboding. “I’m not sure about this.”
“Don’t be a pussy.” Kendall grabs the metal, rust flaking off against his hands. “It’s fine.”
“Are you sure, though? I like my insides on the inside. They give me comfort, placed as they are.”
Kendall rolls his eyes and begins the short climb up to the roof. The hatch on top of the ladder is propped up with an old book, leather bound and dented down the middle. With one well-muscled push, Kendall hefts the hatch-door aside, revealing a dusky, dark square of New York sky, peppered through with barely-there stars. He makes his way straight to the ledge edging his building, plopping down on top of it with practiced grace. His sneakers hit the brickwork on the other side, the five story drop below dancing in and out of his view.
James whistles low when he joins him. “Nice setup.”
“I like it up here,” Kendall says, smile wry. “Everything in the city’s so big, piled on top of you. Sometimes I miss the fresh air.”
“You’re not from New York?”
“Minnesota.”
“Really?” James’s head snaps up, honest surprise marring his features. “No way.”
“Yes way.”
“No, but - me too.”
Kendall’s mouth gapes open. “You’re shitting me.”
James shakes his head. “My mom’s Brooke Diamond. I moved here to, uh, escape.”
Now Kendall knows this has to be a joke.
“Brooke Diamond the cosmetics lady? From the embrace your sparkle commercials?”
“Yep.” James ducks his face against the wash of neon lights. He mutters, “One and the same.”
He doesn’t sound particularly enthused, talking about his mom, but Kendall doesn’t fault him for it. He gets tetchy whenever anyone tries to dig into his past, too. Doesn’t stop him from telling James, “Man, you’re Middle American Royalty.”
“What about you?” James challenges. “Why’d you run away?”
“Who says I ran away?”
“Everyone in this city’s running from something.”
“Or towards something.” Kendall shifts, ignoring the twinge in his knee. “Wanted a change of pace.”
“Got to be more to it than that,” James needles, like he can already read the darkness that flashes cold across Kendall’s face.
Frigidly, he replies, “There’s not.”
Crumpling a little, James says, “Oh-kay. If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine-“
“Seriously? You look like I kicked your puppy and then ate its liver. Mind your own business.”
He’s harsher than he needs to be and not even a little bit sorry about it. Not even when James manages to fit hurt and defiance into a single grimace as he inches away from Kendall on the ledge. “You don’t need to be a dick about it.”
Name calling. Great. Beset upon, Kendall attempts to count to ten in his head before the pressure and rage overwhelms him, the way it always does. He snaps, “Who's actually being a dick here?”
“Um, you,” James replies, his irritation clear.
“I’m not the one being a pushy asshole,” Kendall corrects, seething. “Fine, let’s fucking get to know each other. I moved here because I lost my scholarship at MU, and I couldn’t bear community college because my stepdad’s a douchecanoe and everyone there is a moron. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
He actually yells the last few words, cockblocking himself forever and after. James settles his weight back against his palms. This is the moment, the exact minute he’s going to walk off, and all of Kendall’s careful flirting will amount to nothing.
Whatever, it’s not like it’s the first time he’s missed out on a great piece of ass, and it probably won’t be the last.
Only, James’s anger dissipates. Lips quirking, he says, “Yeah. That about rounds it out. The story of you. I like it.”
It’s been a while since anybody managed to surpass Kendall’s admittedly low expectations of them. Wealthy trust-fund fucks especially. He doesn’t know what to say, so he waits until James continues, “I wouldn’t have pinned you for a scholar.”
“Hockey. It was a hockey scholarship.” Kendall adds defensively, “It’s the American pastime, you know.”
“Baseball’s the American pastime. We bogarted hockey from Canada. That’s sweet, though,” James says. “The varsity jock thing. How very
traditional of you. Were you a boy scout too? Were you raised on cornbread and the flesh of bald eagles?”
“Absolutely. My family arranged hunting parties in the mountains and only ever feasted on banquets of the freest and freshest, in the name of our greatest ancestor, George Washington.”
James stretches across the ledge until he’s closer to Kendall again, sharing the same airspace. He asks, “What happened, really? You were a hockey superstar and then you decided not to be?”
They’re back in waters Kendall would prefer to avoid. All he wants is an easy lay, not a new best friend. But something about James has him admitting, “Some tool from Ontario took me out. My teammates should have been there, to block it, but Logan wasn’t quick enough and there wasn’t anyone else.”
Kendall remembers hitting the ice, the edges of his vision going black as his knee twisted painfully to the left. He told the doctors he could hear his ligament as it tore, even though it was impossible over the slice of metal blades against ice, the scream of the fans, the crack of stick-versus-puck.
Impossible, but he still remembers the sound.
Subdued in his pity, James tells him, “I would have pounded him into the glass before he even reached you.”
Kendall swallows. He doesn’t know how to reply to that. A part of him wishes it were true, that everything actually happened that way. That he’d known James, growing up. Logan is a champ, but he’s never been able to handle Kendall when he flies off the handle, when he gets so mad he can’t stand it. Five minutes ago, James took it in stride. He’s the first person Kendall’s not related to who has managed not to back down in the face of his fury.
It’s been a long time since he’s had that, someone who can test and soothe him in equal measure.
Kendall huffs, “Sure you would’ve. You’re an insufferable brat,” but he’s gone all warm on the inside.
“You’re a cranky sourpuss,” James prods right back. “But you write music like nobody I’ve ever met and I’d dig the chance to see you naked, so I’m going to let your anger management issues slide.”
Kendall chokes on his own laughter.
Knowingly, James grins. “You’re not the only one who likes sex.”
“Yeah? Do you want to tell me more about how great I am? Because that would really put me in the mood.”
Rolling his shoulders back, he tells him, James leans his head against Kendall’s shoulder. His skin is warm. His hair smells good. “I was thinking it’s about time you started singing my praise. I’m fairly fantastic, you know.”
Kendall presses his mouth closed against a smile. “Hidden talents?”
“Not so hidden. I sing.”
“Professionally?”
“’Course not.” James frowns up at the smattering of dim stars trying to peek through the stratosphere. “Trying, but. No one takes me seriously.”
Kendall can’t quite tamp down on his initial reaction, which is unadulterated scorn. What he voices out loud is a neutral, “Oh?” because he’s an ass, but he’s a horny ass.
James shrugs. “The best art comes from the people who suffer for it. I haven’t suffered a day in my life, at least, that’s what everyone thinks.”
“I smell a story.”
“Not much of one.” James has no problem with the honesty that came so difficult to Kendall moments before. He admits, “I wanted to be a pterodactyl when I was a kid,” accompanying the confession with a little flap of his arms. “And then a NASCAR driver, and then a sea lion trainer. I settled on superstar when I was ten. I guess my parents expected me to grow out of it. They paid for voice lessons, for dance classes, for whatever I wanted, because it was a phase. When they finally figured out it wasn’t, they cut me off. They said if I wanted to be a superstar, I could do it on my own dime.”
“How’s that working out for you?”
“It’s really not,” James confesses, peering up at Kendall from beneath his dark, sooty eyelashes. He’s so damn pretty, too pretty. “I’ve got no hook. None of my songs sound like yours.”
This moment, right here, should be a warning sign, maybe. Outlined in bright red and flashing lights. It flies right over Kendall’s head.
He says, “Let’s hear what you’ve got,” utterly unaware that there’s no going back.
“If you start the party, don’t end up leaving early, ‘cause I’ve been waiting for you all night long,” James begins, and Kendall can’t help himself, his mouth stumbling on way ahead of his brain.
“No, what are you doing, stop. That’s a terrible song.” The lyrics aren’t bad for a pop ballad, but the melody is all wrong, and James’s voice is somehow lost in the crossfire.
James huffs. “Thanks, I wrote it myself.”
Oops.
“Er-“
Wryly, James asks, “How ‘bout this?” He gives Kendall the humblest smile, and when he opens his mouth, the words that come out don’t belong to him. “Over. I can’t believe it’s over,” he sings, starting slow. “I can’t believe the love I lived to show some other day…”
He shouldn’t know these words, having only heard them once, shouldn’t be able to shape them so beautifully, but he does. His voice calls up sweetness in the pit of Kendall’s stomach, this fluttery thing that soars on every high note and shivers through his bones.
When James reaches the bridge, his voice booms louder, better. If a sound could dazzle, this would. “Golden, all the love you gave was golden-“
It blacks the edges of Kendall’s vision, sharpens his focus, reverberates inside him. It sends shivers of pleasure down Kendall’s spine, makes his toes curl inside his boots. The melody spilling from James’s lips shines light everywhere inside of him.
He never knew another person could sing like this.
“Oh, music. You made me hear such music,” James sings, and Kendall watches him wrap his lips around the words that he wrote and sees them change. They are better, stronger, more passionate. They are heart-wrenching and lovely in a way they never have been tumbling from Kendall’s mouth. James has that magic quality, the ability to give life to music, and that’s great, that’s wonderful, and it’s also scary as fuck, because he is exposing each and every one of Kendall’s open wounds without even knowing they’re there to poke at.
Kendall knows then; the two of them, together, would be brilliant. They could conquer the world with music so honest and raw. He cannot stand it.
Roughly, he cuts James off mid-solo. “C’mere.”
His lips touch James’s rough, chapped, and needy. They both taste of sweetsharp, mouths soaked in whiskey.
Kendall tucks his hand behind the curve of James’s neck and tugs him closer, angling to lick the words he wrote off of this strange, handsome fey boy’s skin.
Overhead, the moon is shy. It peeks from behind the towering monoliths of buildings, its soft glow kissing the blue glass fronts of every empty office in Manhattan. It does not spy while Kendall kisses James, slow and soft and meaning every minute of it.
This is the beginning, and neither of them knows it.
Their mouths slide against each other, fractured starlight on their tongues, humming through their throats and their veins. Against the too-sweet tang of James’s lips, Kendall murmurs, “Sorry I, uh, dissed your song.”
“You’re not the only person who thinks it’s terrible.” James pulls back and wrinkles his nose, pressing his forehead to Kendall’s. Up close, his eyes are flecked with gold. “I auditioned for some execs this morning. They didn’t say it blew chunks, but…that’s probably because they didn’t say anything.”
“They’re idiots,” Kendall says, and he’s fairly certain they are.
Outlined in starshine, James is magical, the echo of his voice still resonating against all of Kendall’s nerve endings. Kendall leans in to kiss him again. And again. And again. They kiss until James’s mouth is blood-red and plump, shiny with spit, and Kendall’s relatively certain he must look the same. When they pull back, Kendall’s jeans are tight and the city’s too hot, every blaring taxi horn and ecstatic, drunken whoop from below pulsing beneath his skin.
He’s ready to invite James downstairs, right up until James opens his big, fat mouth.
“You’re-“ he says softly, starting and stopping with the sweet shyness of a teenager before abruptly changing tacks, like he’s too embarrassed to actually fess up to what Kendall is. “And this view is, wow. Do you ever think about jumping?”
Kendall glances down at the city streets, dizzying so far below them. His feet sweat in his boots. A chill lances up his spine.
“Never.”
“Really?” James’s eyes drill holes into Kendall’s skull, trepanning for the truth. “You’ve never wanted to end it all?”
“Nope,” he lies, the word chalky and thick in his mouth. “Way to kill the mood.”
“Sorry. I just. I have.”
“You’ve -“ Kendall fumbles for English, because what even is happening? He gets kissed breathless and suddenly he’s the suicide hotline?
“Thought about jumping?”
“Sure,” James tells him, as if it’s no big deal, telling a complete stranger his shit. “I want to get out of this place. Hit it big, run away. And sometimes I feel so completely stuck. Not now, but. I’ve been to the dark place.”
Despite himself, Kendall asks, “What kept you from doing it? From jumping off…whatever?”
He’s got no idea what kinds of things tower around James from day to day. The Brooklyn Bridge? The Chrysler Building? What high things has he ever considered taking a nosedive from?
James considers. “Look at Zwagger.”
“I’d rather not,” Kendall says, horrified. Zwagger is this two bit popstar that burst onto the scene three years prior, equipped with redonkulous outfits and a bevy of popular musical numbers about embracing your true self. Kendall doesn’t know who Zwagger’s true self actually is, but he seriously doubts it’s a guy who enjoys wearing suits made out of Beanie Babies.
James, however, looks absolutely enamored. Kendall’s embarrassed on his behalf. “He’s said it in interviews - he came from nothing. He faced rejection down a thousand times, and he still made it out the other end. I’m going to be exactly like him.”
“That contradicts his message a little bit, don’t you think?” Kendall quips, because he can’t not. This conversation is so far from the happy kissing of yester-moment that it’s driving him a bit insane. He wants more kissing. Why is there not more kissing?
“Maybe.” James laughs good-humoredly. “You’ve got talent, like his. Have you ever considered moving to LA?”
“About as frequently as I think about swallowing cyanide.”
Tilting his chin towards the stars, near invisible in the wash of neon lights that dominate the city, James says, “I heard it’s easier out there. People are more receptive out west.” He darts a look at Kendall, adding, “Less cynical.”
“Five minutes ago I had astounding talent and now I’m cynical,” Kendall complains. “You city boys sure are hard to please.” He drops the act when James lifts one perfect eyebrow his way. “I’m not interested in being a plastic person, thanks.”
“They’re not plastic,” James insists, his expression darkening so quickly that it’s like someone took a match to it.
Great. Two fights in one night. Maybe they’re not super-special destined boyfriends with great asses. Kendall sighs. “Shows how much you know about LA.”
Everything Kendall knows about California comes from bad reality television and Beach Boys hit singles, but whatever. He’s as much of an authority as James obviously is.
“Can you hold off with the jokes for three seconds? I’m trying to bare my soul to you here.”
“And I really wish you’d stop. You want to enlist in the Stepford ranks, more power to you, but leave me out of it.”
“Christ, it was just a question.” James shakes his head, scooting back on the ledge until there’s some distance between their bodies. “What the hell’s your problem?”
His problem.
His problem is that everybody asks that, that everybody he’s ever met wants to know why he’s like this or so cruel. He thought for an entire millisecond that James was different, that his careful handling of Kendall’s earlier tantrum demarcated him as special, but he’s exactly like everyone else.
So Kendall treats him like everybody else.
“I don’t have a problem. You’re the Trust Fund Princess who can’t make it in the real world.”
Kendall regrets it the second he says it, but just like always, it’s too late to take anything back.
This is how he learned to fight, in the shadow of his parents’ neglect. Nastily.
(His mom never meant to leave him alone, but she had to work, had to make money, had to provide for him and Katie, and that took time. His dad was a different story, an old story, the man who left.
Why is it always the men?
They’re weaker than women, Kendall knows. He can point to his mom or his sister and say, “Look. Look at their strength and then look at mine. See how it differs.”
His coping mechanisms are eating away at his insides. But he can’t help it; this is how he learned to fight. Alone.)
“Please don’t call me that,” James grimaces, pained, but Kendall’s on a roll. He twists the knife, makes it hurt. Nasty words discourage pity, and from there, it’s an easy kill, cutting a person apart.
“You want to be special, but there’s nothing special about you.”
Eviscerate James and he won’t come back, Kendall knows, but maybe that’s better. Being alone means no one can hurt you. Being alone is how Kendall survives.
“How do you do it?” James inquires, trembling with rage.
They are a tragedy in motion, their nerve endings on fire, lies on their tongues. Their feet dangle over the edge of the roof, kicking at the empty air, daring gravity to take hold, but it never quite does.
“Look this good?” Kendall counters airily. “Genetics and healthy living, mostly-“
“I mean how are you this much of an ass and still able to write such beautiful things? Explain that to me.”
Ouch. Kendall winces, but not so obviously that James will see it. He says, “It’s one of the mysteries of the universe. Like Stonehenge, but less ugly.”
“I don’t know,” James disagrees, his own anger flaring, flaming in the night. “The way you were just talking to me was plenty ugly.”
He finds his footing on the rooftop, over balancing enough that Kendall has to catch him by the calf, just to keep him from tumbling to his doom. Disgustedly, James yanks his leg away and hops down to the more solid cement of the roof. He’s across and to the door in five longs strides.
“Does this mean you’re not going to let me suck your dick?” Kendall calls after him. He sounds more harsh than funny, but hey, he’s gotten the last word.
Which does him absolutely, positively no good at all. Kendall isn’t sure if he’s more pissed off at himself for losing out on that ass or for actually managing to sincerely insult James. He might be a rich, spoiled fuck, but he was also endearingly genuine.
There has to be an angle hiding beneath all that muscle; everyone has an angle. But Kendall wouldn’t have minded more time to figure out what it is.
Sighing, he heaves himself down the ladder from the roof, taking the steps back to his apartment two at a time. Inside, he tells Logan to shove over on the sofa and props his feet right up on the fat pages of Shantaram. Logan digs his fingers into Kendall’s ankles, annoyed, but when it proves futile he groans and asks, “Blew it?”
“With hurricane force,” Kendall agrees.
“Forget about him,” Logan says shortly. “Chiseled from steel isn’t really your type. Besides, he was making eyes at me when you weren’t looking.”
Kendall snickers, in spite of himself. “That so?”
“It made me acutely uncomfortable,” Logan deadpans. “I am not a piece of meat.”
Fondly, Kendall ruffles his hair. “And yet everyone keeps using you for your body. Alas.”
Logan says, “Both of us striking out in one night. Must be fate.”
Kendall’s fingers pause, laced in soft brown. His heart gives a panicked, stuttering thudthudthud. He considers pulling his feet back into his own space, thinks about running up to his bed in the loft and cowering beneath the covers until the awkward tension vanishes.
He can’t imagine a more perfect way to ruin everything.
Carefully, Kendall says, “I wouldn’t give the universe too much credit. I’ve heard your pick up lines.”
Logan’s face falls, even as he laughs.
Kendall lets out a slow breath. Can’t blame a guy for trying, right? And Logan’s been trying for years. His crush on Kendall blossomed somewhere around the sixth grade and has never quite gone away.
It festered when Kendall thought he was one hundred percent straight, flowered when Kendall decided his hetero percentage might be overreaching, and has reared its head in all kinds of uncomfortable moments, ever since Kendall lost his backdoor virginity to a guy from Alphabet City.
“Logan,” Kendall starts, and just like always, he has no idea what to say. It isn’t that Logan’s not completely fine, from head to toe, because he’s got this dimples-jawline-surprisingly-fit-physique thing going on. He’d be a pleasure to have spread out and wanting on Kendall sheets.
The real problem is that they’re best friends.
They get along like a house on fire. It’s feasible that they’d be good together. Or maybe they wouldn’t. Either way, Kendall’s not willing to take the risk. He loves Logan like a brother, nothing more.
“It’s okay.” Logan squirms beneath Kendall’s steady gaze. “I know I - I just know, okay?”
He shoves Kendall’s legs off his lap, delicately fixes the rumpled pages of his novel and snaps it shut. Kendall has this horrible, sinking feeling that he’s broken something precious, even though this isn’t the first time they’ve covered Kendall’s hesitance to get horizontal.
He’s shaken from James’s snappishness, half-drunk and crazy tired. He grabs Logan’s arm and says, “Wait.”
Logan gives him the strangest look. “I wasn’t going anywhere.”
“Good. That’s good. I need you not to.”
And then Kendall settles his hand firmly against the front of Logan’s pajama bottoms. Beneath his palm, soft cloth separates his skin from the instant heat of Logan, soft, but sluggishly coming to attention.
Startled, Logan asks, “What are you doing?”
Happily ignoring the red alert lights flashing in his head, Kendall wraps his fingers around the shape of Logan’s dick and says, “It’s what you want, right?”
He’s so going to regret this when he’s sober.
Logan deliberates, fear and loathing chasing lust across his face. He arches against Kendall’s hand with a helpless groan and nods, “Yeah. Yes. Please.”
Logan wends his hands into Kendall’s hair, tugging him close until he’s practically straddling him, book falling by the wayside. He is not nearly as careful as James when he kisses Kendall sloppy and reckless.
Kendall kisses back, uncaring of how this will devastate him in the morning, because this is what he does - wasted decision making and total errors in judgment, and he’d be lying if he said this was the first time he’d toyed with Logan with a buzz on.
There’s a reason his endless crush perpetuates.
He loses sight of why it’s wrong with Logan’s thighs pressing against his knees, the tenting of his PJs brushing insistently against Kendall’s stomach. Kendall jerks him through the fabric, probing Logan’s mouth painstakingly slow with his tongue. The kiss is as much of a tease as
Kendall’s thumb against the clothed head of Logan’s cock. Both make the other boy whine and buck.
Kendall draws it out until Logan’s rutting up against his belly, catching the pre-cum damp of his flannel against Kendall’s t-shirt, a growing stain between them. Kendall swallows down the guttural, porn-star noises Logan is making, circles one arm around his back and tilts him forward on the couch until Logan’s shoulders hit cushions. On his knees, Kendall hovers over Logan’s stocky frame, tonguing down his throat. He plants kisses against Logan’s t-shirt, each taunting and deliberate.
Logan pants, “Kendall,” and Logan pants, “Why are you always such a fucking cocktease?”
Kendall fondles his balls and, smirking, breathes hot against the cloth above Logan’s navel. When he reaches the hem of Logan’s tee, he shifts it aside and nips at the flesh of his lower stomach, licks out at the treasure trail of hair leading into his pants. He rests his lips above the waistband and asks low, “How bad do you want to fuck my mouth?”
Logan’s eyes go dark, his pupils black and endless. He reaches out, curls his fingers around Kendall’s ear, his neck, his skull. Roughly, he commands, “Suck me off. Now.”
Kendall’s cock aches, tight at the base all the way to his gut. He wants Logan sheathed on his dick, wants the silky, impossibly tight burn of him all around. He could take Logan apart like that, wreck him completely, but even walking the border of wasted, Kendall knows better than to
treat Logan like his own personal cum dumpster. He wants Logan to get over him.
Eventually.
Keeping that in mind, Kendall doesn’t peer up through his eyelashes as he inches Logan’s pajamas down, focusing on the slow reveal of the crown of his dick instead of the black hole vortex of adoration and need in Logan’s eyes. Kendall skims his tongue against pink-red ridges, tastes Logan salty and bitter.
A low moan slips from Logan’s mouth. Kendall doesn’t have to glance up to know he’s glaring, quietly urging Kendall to stop messing around.
Kendall brushes the head of Logan’s cock with his lower lip, feverish skin smooth against his red, savaged mouth. He turns it into a game, makes out with Logan’s cock every bit as wet and messy as he had with Logan’s face, dancing his tongue across the underside of flesh and veins, feeling Logan throb beneath him.
Logan’s a dirty cheater. He tries to push in, to breach the plush circle of Kendall’s lips, but he’s met with teeth and hisses hard. “Kendall.”
Innocently, Kendall licks out, lapping away the agony. He reaches down in the tight space between Logan’s bunched up pants and his sac, tucking his fingers behind soft skin, testing how each touch shivers through Logan’s dick. Logan tries to get inside him again, squirms under the play of Kendall’s fingers, and this time Kendall lets him, opening his mouth half an inch. Then further, the bitter tang of precum assaulting his taste buds.
“Oh god, Kendall,” Logan stammers out, his yelp loud in the empty space of their apartment, “Kendall, fuck.”
He scrabbles to get a better grip on Kendall’s hair, yanking and relaxing in a rhythm that Kendall takes up, trying to match the frantic desperation. He’s not sure how well he succeeds, taunting Logan with quick flicks of his tongue, tiny bursts of suction that turn into longer, deeper pulls. Kendall slides his lips against wet, heated skin and can physically feel Logan’s thighs quiver under his palms.
When he comes, he’s choking on Kendall’s name, the soft K barely audible, the e turned into an i, all the other letters tumbling after. He finishes hazy eyed and pliable, groping against Kendall’s crotch until he finds a lethargic tempo.
Even through the layer of his jeans, it feels good, hurts exactly right. Kendall fucks into Logan’s palm until his vision goes starry, the black galaxy that lives behind his eyelids laced white with pleasure. He loses all sense of himself there, on their tattered couch.
From his toes to his spine, from his fingers to his bones, all the way down to the dark abyss at his core - that bleak place where he sometimes dares to hope that his heart might be.
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Part Two
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