[fic] Every Last Little Light In New York City - 3/3
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 (6,714 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: See Part 1 and Part 2.
---
“The best cure for a hangover is more alcohol,” James reminds him, as Kendall stares at the literal jug of beer in absolute horror.
“I’m going to puke.”
“Don’t you fucking dare.”
“My stomach might dare.” Kendall attempts to wet his lips, his tongue a dry, shriveled thing. James let him sleep through nightfall, but his kindness was obviously a ploy to cover up his latent sadism. “Please don’t make me do this.”
“Man up.”
“I said please,” Kendall whines, head and stomach throbbing in time.
“You brought this on yourself.”
“Oh, you think so, do you?” Gritting his teeth, Kendall strives to shoot laser beams from his eyes. Tragically, today is not the day he gains mutant powers. Settling back in his seat, he says, “In reality, this is all your fault.”
“Mine?” James has the nerve to look genuinely startled. “You didn’t invite me to traipse off on your little adventure.”
“Your fault,” Kendall repeats adamantly.
“What even happened? I bet it’s a hell of a story.”
No way is Kendall planning on regaling him with the tale of how standing at the border of puppy-lovesick and in-complete-denial made him antsy and uncomfortable. How he got a little wasted with Minerva at work, called up the last girl he ever loved and, when she declined to pick up, how he let the underage coeds flirting with him at the bar show him a good time. The part where he decided to play Truth-Or-Dare with them was especially irresponsible; after he emerged from the former Sound River and found most of his clothes missing, the juvenility of it all sank it. He’s not proud. He’s definitely not telling James.
“It was a grand adventure,” he replies, and takes the damn shot. His stomach, predictably, mutinies, but Kendall’s got enough experience
binge drinking that he manages to keep it down.
James says, “Fine, sure. Don’t tell me.”
He’s wearing this pinched expression, like it genuinely bothers him that Kendall’s keeping secrets. In turn, that bugs Kendall. As if James has the right to know every part of him at this early stage in their - not relationship. That’s not what this is. Of this, Kendall is certain: relationships involve way more dick than what he’s been getting.
“Are you-“ Kendall swallows around the burn in his throat, wishing he’d never even heard of alcohol. “Are you mad right now?”
“No. Yes. I don’t get you, man. You come out of nowhere with all the ferocity of a sidewinder and you’re - fuck, you’re brilliant. You are fucking resplendent. And you don’t even see it. All that talent, squandered. Dumped in the East River.”
“It’s not like I died.”
The excruciatingly bright sun straining in around the blackout blinds that shade the bar’s windows outlines James in soft white light. He’s washed out and foreign, someone Kendall’s fooled himself into believing he knows. And then the tension floods from his shoulders. He signals the bartender for more shots and grins. “Nope. You’ve gotta have a guardian angel on your side.”
“I’m the luckiest sonofabitch out there,” Kendall agrees, even though he’s spent a huge chunk of time since college convinced he’s anything but. Life isn’t so bad. He’s feeling marginally less pukey, his headache dulling at the edges, and he’s in a bar with a beautiful boy. Who’s kind
of a jerk, but also incredibly hot, and hey, he’s shallow.
He grabs for one of the shots and raises it in the air, clinking his glass with James’s. “Cheers, man.”
“Cheers,” James agrees. “Here’s hoping some of your luck rubs off on me.”
---
“You got us kicked out,” Kendall declares, profoundly offended. He’s never met anybody, ever, with a capacity for troublemaking as big as his own. Even Logan, his best best best friend, quails in the face of danger. Which leads him to the realization that, “I like you. Fuck. I really like you.”
Kendall might be drunk. Again. A little bit.
“Duh,” James replies, with the slightest of slurs. “Now shush. I’m going to take us to a room with a view.”
They hop in a cab, because James has a wad of cash in his pocket that he doesn’t bother to explain. Kendall figures - when he bothers to think about it at all - that James swallowed his pride and called up his ‘rents. He’s vaguely envious, but it’s not like James isn’t sharing the
wealth.
He leans back against a worn leather seat and watches as the city winks by. The cabbie’s smoking a thick, cherry scented cigar. It floods the car with cloying fruitiness, but they’re both too buzzed to care, bickering with increasingly high volume about hockey, sci-fi, and the notes and lyrics and melodies of music. Kendall gets stuck on this one line in a song he’s working on, fleshing his ideas out the way he only ever
manages to do by his lonesome or in Logan’s surly company. When James chips in with an assist, he doesn’t mind. Which. He’s not sure what
to do with that.
So he barrels on, “I dunno about that word though. We think always has no meaning, because it is said ceaselessly, pervasively, inaccurately.
But it’s actually a bit beautiful, isn’t it? Always. All the ways, in every way, no matter where life goes.” Kendall laughs, drink bubbling in his brain. “I’m not making any sense.”
“No,” James tells him quietly. “I’ve never heard you so clearly.”
Kendall throws him a reckless smile, flagrantly drunk, carelessly vulnerable.
James says, “Words are important. Knowing how to use them and what they really represent, underneath the tarnish of everyday conversation, and how to set them to melodies, that’s what defines a lyricist. You’re remarkably talented, dude.”
Kendall laughs again, hoarseness edging the noise. “According to the poor little rich boy with the lungs of a superstar. You should talk. If I could belt music like you, I wouldn’t have such a hard time trying to sell myself.”
“The songs,” James corrects idly, his face a canvas of pink and orange and red, along with the sky and the setting sun. Kendall doesn’t know how he scored this opportunity, but he thinks he’s been wasting it long enough.
Leaning in close, he says, “No, I meant what I said. I’m selling the whole package, you know.”
He extends a graceless hand down the span of his chest, mocking and offering in equal measure.
James takes the bait. “Oh yeah? How much do you cost, Kendall Knight?”
“For you? For you, I’m a bargain.”
He’s relatively certain he would have scored right then and there, if only the cabbie hadn’t plead, “Get out. Please,” waving the embers of his cigar at them all the while.
On the sidewalk, Kendall shoves his hands in his pockets. “Why are we in LIC?”
“The universal question.”
“I’m not getting existential, jackass. I’m freezing.”
He shivers for emphasis, but all he gets from James is a dirty glare. “Residual hypothermia. That happens when you jump in the East River in the middle of September.”
“Whatever. September’s a dumb month to live in New York anyway.”
It’s true. Half the days are so achingly stuffy that Kendall can barely breathe, while the other half are sodden and wet and filled with the
promise of winter. Today’s the latter, so chilly they’re both breathless with it. At James’s final destination, briskness lashes out across the tiny, choppy waves that broil offshore, nipping at their flushed cheeks and bitten lips until they’re both quivering with its bite.
They hit up a deli around the corner from James’s new, exciting, spectacular idea, which Kendall knows now, and all he can hear is Logan’s voice in his head, calling him a complete and utter moron. He kind of agrees.
Gantry Plaza State Park is colder and emptier than the main streets, the pasture-green grass brown with the coming winter. Slides jut from the hulking shape of a blue-and-yellow play monstrosity that kids’ mothers forced them to abandon as the Northern winds began to prowl. The sky bleeds lilac and indigo; the last dying gasps of sunset dissipating into the black velvet crush of night. Amidst that, the city is coming to life, the white-gold-yellow of electric lights animating the darkening landscape of skyscrapers. James and Kendall are reanimated too, a red cast to their skin, teeth, and eyes.
“We’re going to get arrested,” Kendall fusses as James throws him an ice cold can of beer.
James whisks all that naysaying away with a single declaration of, “Faithless. You’re never going to get anywhere with that attitude.”
His face is a dare, all challenge and impishness and too pretty to be real. Kendall swallows.
“Caution isn’t a bad thing.”
“Yeah. If you’re boring.”
No one in the history of ever has accused Kendall of being boring, so he scrambles up after James, the two of them vaulting a few perfectly serviceable benches on their way to the iconic Pepsi-Cola sign, a New York City landmark. Based out of Long Island City, the sign’s a Manhattan landmark, glimmering on the edges of the East River. It’s freestanding, unprotected, ready to be Facebooked or Instagrammed or whatever the kids are doing these days. Kendall’s smart phone is prehistoric, and not especially smart. He couldn’t download an app if he tried.
The point is, the only thing standing between them and climbing the stupid sign is gravity and the watchman patrolling the park, who James clocked at a local burger joint, watching the Giants on a grainy television.
“In case I wasn’t clear on the subject, I enjoy living.” He makes this solemn oath while pulling himself up on one of the very, very thin, flat bars that support the massive sign, like a billboard constructed of flimsy metal. They’re not incredibly high off the ground or anything, and the dessicated grass would probably cushion a fall, and it’s not even like Kendall’s scared of heights - but if he doesn’t act beleaguered, James will think he’s having fun.
The horror.
It’s not bad up in the metaphorical rafters. Everything glows eerie and strange, the blackness of the descending night all the darker for it. But the beer’s iced and bubbly in Kendall’s throat, the carbonated piss taste of PBR an acquired taste after so many years with little to no funds.
He kicks out his feet and gives James a grin that could be described as marginally impressed. “This isn’t bad.”
“Told you. Pussy.” James dangles his legs so that they’re almost brushing against Kendall’s, jeans and sneakers and boots all blocking anything tangible, but there’s heat between them all the same. Booze sings in Kendall’s blood, bubbling under the surface, and James is a
singular, resonant phenomena beside him. He asks, “When you write, how much of that comes from real life?”
Kendall takes a sip of his beer to avoid answering, the mystery and magic of the universe suddenly lost.
It’s not that he hates talking about music - he’s a big fan of it, himself, and the songs he writes, which is arrogant, maybe, but what’s wrong with a little pride? At the same time, he finds it weird that James likes talking about it so much. Like Kendall’s process is absolutely key to
everything James finds fascinating about him.
Then again, James wants to write his own music, so. Maybe it’s not completely bizarre. It’s even nice to pretend he has a real fanboy. No one’s actually looked up to Kendall since hockey stopped being a real part of his life. He unashamedly wants to bask in it.
Carefully, he replies, “All of it. If you want people to feel something, it’s easier to get a handle on that if you’ve felt whatever it is yourself.”
“But you write so many sad songs.” James hesitates, and then he says, “I could never do that.”
“Why?” A harsh laugh escapes Kendall’s lips, but he doesn’t mean it in a cruel way. “You’ve never been sad?”
“Are you kidding me?” He laughs, high and throaty and nervous. “Sometimes, all I am is miserable. I didn’t expect growing up to be as lonely as it is,” James admits, licking foam from his upper lip. Kendall has trouble really connecting with his sad-on when the guy’s giving him a
boner. “But that, all of it - the older I get, the lonelier I am, and the less I want to talk about it.”
Kendall pumps his legs in the air. He shakes. He shimmies. He makes the whole sign rattle. And he says, too measured, “When you talk about
the things that make you weak, people take advantage of them.”
“Exactly!” James flails his hands a little, like he didn’t expect Kendall to understand. Kendall didn’t expect to be sloshed with flying beer, so they’re even. “I wanna be strong. I don’t want anyone to think I’m like that.”
“Weak?”
“Pathetic,” James spits, and it’s not at all what Kendall wants to hear. He’s been pathetic, once or twice or eight times in his life. He has trouble imagining James - tall, broad, perfect James - being that low. Being anything like Kendall was, when he fucked up so bad that it still hurts to think about.
“James. No one’s ever going to believe that you’re pathetic.” He bumps their shoulders together in camaraderie. “You’ll figure this writing thing out. Some record producer in La La Land is going to go gaga over you, and I’ll be all on my lonesome in Alphabet City, reminiscing about how I knew you when.”
“Or,” James says, darting a furtive glance in Kendall’s direction, a flash of dark eyes rimmed effervescent red. “You could join me out there. Make a name for yourself. Hell, you could call up your sister and go right now.”
“I told you, Katie doesn’t have that kind of pull.” He says it defensively, his guard automatic. “Besides. I don’t want to get my hopes up like that. Calling in a favor - making it all happen. Katie would murder me once I screwed it up.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Most of my dreams crash and burn.” Kendall shrugs, all casual humor and faked smiles. “Sometimes I think it’s better not to have them.”
“I hate that fatalist shit. I hate it when people don’t fight.” Behind his lips, James’s teeth are clenched. Kendall wonders if everyone pisses him off this frequently, or if it’s his own very special talent. “I’m going to be a star. No one’s going to stop me.”
“Like I said, promise you’ll remember me when.”
“You’re making fun,” James snarls.
Kendall bumps their shoulders together, too buzzed to rise to the bait. “No. I’m not. You’re talented. You deserve a chance to show that off.”
“Yeah,” James responds quietly, in a voice salted with guilt. “I really do.”
He’s as moody as a hurricane, switching wistfulness out for mischief in one smooth exchange. “Okay, enough with the beer.” James snatches the can from Kendall’s fingers and hurls it down on the grass. It spins against wet green, silver bits flashing blinding-bright beneath the rising moon. Kendall yelps unhappily at his drink’s loss, but tones the whine down once James continues, “I don’t want you sloppy drunk.”
Wryly, Kendall inquires, “Do you require my dexterity tonight, good sir?”
James sucks in a breath. He retorts, “If I say yes, will you think I’m easy?”
“You know me. In it for the sybaritic fun.”
James grins wide. “You’re right. I know you.”
He’s smug and self-satisfied, and still, it makes Kendall’s heart feel brand new, blood-red and polished, shiny as the surface of an apple. He’s not sure what to do with this, the strange delight of making another person happy.
Kendall doesn’t have a lot to compare it to.
“You know this sign’s been around since 1936?”
“I know that. Why do you know that?” James snickers. The East River is this dazzling, dancing ribbon of glitter and glitz, wending its way beneath the towering skyscrapers, and he stares out at it. His eyelashes are wet with starlight. “You’re really bonding with this city.”
“It beats the hell out of Minnesota,” Kendall agrees.
And then he kisses James, because he can, because patience isn’t his gig and he’s been dancing around kissing James since the very first day he met James. Because James always tastes hot and spicy and dizzyingly good, and he always draws away so quickly it makes Kendall’s head spin.
This time, they’re clutched in the neon glow of the Pepsi-Cola sign. Where the hell can James go?
James’s lips slip against his, cold from the beer, a few leftover droplets fizzing pleasantly in the corners of Kendall’s mouth. He groans and slides his hands inside James’s coat, grabbing for warmth and solid muscle. James, in turn, curls a hand around the back of Kendall’s neck, pulling him closer, kissing him harder. Kendall shifts on the metal support beam, a screw digging into his ass. He wants to climb into James’s lap, but he settles for shoving his tongue down his throat.
In the most eloquent, sexy way possible, of course.
James moans appreciatively, pawing at Kendall’s clothes, tugging him forward even further by the lapels of his thin coat. They’re going to fall off the fucking sign at this rate.
“Time to go, I think,” Kendall says, breathless.
“You’re right.” James’s voice shakes. “I should go home.”
“With me. You should go home with me.”
“I-“
“You’re not going to leave,” Kendall insists, immediately, irrevocably. James can’t, he’s not allowed. He has to stay. Kendall’s pants are tight and dragging mercilessly on his cock, his head’s spinning with stars, and all he wants is to be touched or fucked or hell, he’ll settle for cuddling with this inexplicable, impossible guy. He just needs him not to run away. “You like me, right?”
“I. Yeah.” James sucks his red lower lip, gnaws on it until it blooms redder still. “Yeah. I really like you.”
“You like me,” Kendall repeats. “So show me.”
James huffs out a sigh. “You’re so needy.” There’s bite in the words, something vitriolic and mean that flits in and out of existence, like neediness is something he despises. Kendall nearly stumbles back, away, put off by the onslaught of hate he doesn’t quite understand. But then James’s face grows dark, shy, serious. He says, “This is the second time tonight you’ve asked me to stay.”
“I might like you too. In case you haven’t noticed.”
The wind picks up, rifling icy cold fingers through his hair, down his spine, curling his toes in his shoes. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t blink away from James’s searching eyes.
“Let’s go home. Your home.”
They pile back into a cab, one with a driver that’s not nearly as concerned about the state of his upholstery or James and Kendall’s volume control. He doesn’t say a word when James straddles Kendall’s lap, kissing him slick and filthy, all tongue and the tight pressure of knees at Kendall’s hips.
At one point James shoves back, hands settled against Kendall’s shoulders. He exhales harshly, “Not so fast, god, slow down,” which, no.
“I’ve waited for weeks,” Kendall says, tugging insistently at his shirt, the both of them sliding across the taxi cab’s seats.
James bats his hands away again, countering, “You just want, like an orgasm. I want an experience,” and that’s just plain insulting. Kendall recoils.
“No. That’s not allowed. You can’t nitpick my performance before we’ve even fucked.” He snakes a hand around James’s neck, whispers low and husky, “You have no idea what I want,” for the sole purpose of hearing James suck in a breath.
They reach the apartment too soon, or not soon enough, with every muscle in Kendall’s body wired tight, ready to let go.
The trip up the stairs is rough, full of fumbling touches and panted breath. Kendall nearly falls back on the second floor landing and lets James fuck him right there, but he’s got class, okay. Class and a strict warning from his landlord not to do that ever again. Instead he lets James manhandle him up every step, footfalls heavy with liquor-fueled, clumsy urgency. There’s a steady pulse between Kendall’s legs, his dick or James’s. At this point it barely matters.
Knocking his head back against the threshold of his own closed door, Kendall pants out, “I regret to inform you that I believe you to be a masochist. This is a serious psychiatric condition that you should have checked out immediately.”
“Yeah?” James’s hands drop limply to his sides. Meaning they are not touching Kendall and all is suddenly wrong with the world. “Guess I should go see my therapist right now.”
“Let’s not be hasty.” Kendall grabs him by the waist, pulling their bodies flush. “Think about all that time you’ll waste in the waiting room. You
could be fucking me instead.”
“That was pretty much always the plan,” James agrees, touching their mouths together in a half-kiss, a breath of life that isn’t even close to what Kendall wants.
He bridges the distance between them, kissing James desperate and crazy and somewhat like an apology. He sucks the oxygen from James’s lungs and tries to swallow it down, but all that succeeds in doing is making him dizzy, delirious with the air that they both share.
Stumbling back into the darkness of the living room, Kendall realizes Logan isn’t home. Which is great, but Kendall probably wouldn’t give a damn even if he was. That’s how far gone he is - enough to fuck over a friend in pursuit of fucking. He thinks that’s not okay; he doesn’t want to lose control this early. He draws back for a breather, gets enough distance to flick on a light.
James staggers away, but that’s allowed. He’s not trying to rabbit off. Besides Kendall’s close enough to cumming that he needs to cool his
boots anyway.
Their walls are papered with pictures. James didn’t have much of a chance to look them over during his first two visits, but now he takes his time. He scrutinizes the faded, curled edges of photographs that depict Kendall’s childhood in stages - himself and Logan on a rickety sled, the gentle slope of his mother’s smile, Katie’s pudgy baby face and grabby hands. James runs a thumb over the dorktastic prom photo of Kendall and his friends, myriad, with Logan holding a starring role dead center, and smiles.
“You were popular.”
“I bet you were too,” Kendall replies shrewdly, because no one with a face like James Diamond could ever have gone friendless and sad.
“Sure,” James says mildly, and it’s hard to tell whether there’s any truth in it at all.
Kendall can’t dwell on it - won’t - because there’s the pressure of James’s fingers against the front button of his jeans, and it’s unbearable to think of anything else. Except maybe the puff of James’s breath against his cheek. Except, perhaps, the nudge of his knee.
His hands are feverishly hot.
“You want to see my room?” Kendall chokes out, smoother than butter. But James still follows him straight up the ladder and into the loft that Kendall calls home.
It’s scratched, naked wood floors and a ceiling so low they both bang their heads against it, the thud resonant in the empty apartment. Moonlight spills silver across the shadows of Kendall’s minimalist furniture, somehow brighter when Kendall draws the inside curtains closed, effectively cutting the tiny loft off from the main living space.
“Fancy digs,” James says.
“I like my privacy.”
“I like you,” James replies, and it’s all that really needs to be said.
Or maybe not. He walks back until his knees are touching the foot of Kendall’s bed and commands, “Come here.”
It echoes through the hollows of the room. It echoes in Kendall’s bones.
He does as he’s told.
They fall against Kendall’s sheets in a tangle of arms and legs, burning as quick and as hard as silver nitrate, fire that eats straight through them both. If James cares about the low thread count, he doesn’t say so. Or maybe he voices his complaints in moans and growls, in the reverb of every grunt that Kendall can feel in James’s throat.
Kendall’s used to being in charge, but when James gropes at his ass, he lets him. The hot, smooth pad of James’s fingertip circles the denim that outlines the cleft between Kendall’s cheeks and he trembles, and doesn’t try to stop it. He wants to feel the shape and the weight of James’s cock slipping inside of him, wants to grip him deep and dark and hard with his hands and his body and his stupid, capricious heart.
There’s a difference between losing control and giving up the reins.
Kendall knows that better than anyone.
James shimmies out of his jeans and t-shirt. He doesn’t demur when Kendall murmurs, “Oh, god. Yes.”
He grins, stupid cocksucker, and looks entirely too pleased with himself. Abruptly grumpy, Kendall snaps the waistband of James’s underwear and asks, “Has anyone ever turned you down after seeing all this?”
“Please, look at how hot I am,” James replies breezily, brushing a hand down his own admittedly impressive abs.
“Excuse me?”
The uncharacteristic vanity doesn’t turn Kendall off exactly - he’s no stranger to healthy self-love - but it is bizarre coming from James. Or maybe not - James naked is a revelation. He’s gold and brown and peach and cloaked in shadows, his cock straining beneath his boxers, a focal point that Kendall unabashedly zeroes in on. He’s going to have the absolute best time getting to know the weight of that in his hand, in his mouth, in his ass.
With purpose, he reaches out, pulling Kendall hard against the planes of his body. James’s hands rub circles against his side, his collarbone.
He kisses him too chastely for what Kendall wants. Kendall’s pull back.
“Hold on. I’ve got to find-“
Like most self-respecting guys, he carries a condom at all times. It’s been a while since he’s had a chance to use one, the fortuitous presence of this Trojan more of a plea for luck to the heavens than anything else, but a precursory examination reveals it’s in working order and everything. There’s lube in his makeshift nightstand, and he lays them out on his bed, staying low to keep from concussing himself on the loft’s exposed beams.
“Are you ever coming back here?” James asks lazily, stretching across the sheets. “Or are you staying away to teach me a lesson?”
Kendall throws himself down on the bed, the comforter cool and smooth against his too-hot skin. “Whatever you say, Princess.”
He rolls over onto James, covering his mostly naked body with his own fully clothed one. James growls, nipping against Kendall’s throat. “I told you not to call me that.”
“You did,” Kendall agrees, lacing their palms together, rutting their hips. James keens and squeezes, his fingernails gouging into the back of Kendall’s hands. And Kendall says, “Your hands are art. I’d sculpt them if I could.”
He rubs his fingers against the curvature of James’s knuckles. The texture of his skin sends shivers down Kendall’s spine.
“Instead, I’ll write a song about you. One of these days.”
James’s cheeks redden, the color of maple leaves in the fall, the pink of his lips swollen from Kendall’s assault on his mouth. He asks, “Is there a trick to getting that chastity belt off, or are you going to get naked already?”
Kendall’s never been accused of being a tease. He shucks the defensive armor of his shirt with ease, shrugging it off and over his pale shoulders. His jeans take more work, but James looks a little stunned once they’re down around Kendall’s thighs. Hoarsely, he murmurs, “Worth the wait.”
They kiss because they can, because it builds quicksilver and molten between them. The drag of James’s teeth against the inside of Kendall’s lower lip is sharp; it shudders through his body and jolts his hips forward. Their underwear is victim to what happens next, stripped off and thrown the floor.
Prep takes a few minutes, but it’s okay. James has clever hands. He’s on his knees, leaning over Kendall with less confidence than he started out with. His skin is shot through with starlight, glowing from the inside out. The Milky Way weaves between the indent of his hipbone and the crease of his thigh.
“Are you ready?” James asks, gruff and twisting his fingers inside of Kendall in this way that aches both good and bad, an edge of pleasure curling Kendall’s toes, raw in his bones.
He reaches up and touches James’s cheek. He tells him, “I’ve been ready for weeks.”
The condom takes a second. A second too long. Kendall pants and waits, trying not to beg.
James is rough when he takes Kendall from behind, but his palms are firebrands on Kendall’s stomach and chest; all he wants is more. He whimpers in the manliest fashion possibly when James fucks into him, bigger than Kendall thought he would be, almost more than he could take.
But it’s fine, it’s okay. He surrenders himself to James wholeheartedly, in a way that’s scary as hell. He trusts him when he shouldn’t, when all instincts scream for him not to. He’s just so sick of living in the past - he wants to be here, sinking back against James’s cock like he can’t do anything else. There, in their own tiny universe, James pulls out, all the way to the tip, and then slides forward again, lube easing the way.
He angles into Kendall like he already knows where all his sweet spots are. It’s not fair, but Kendall gives as good as he gets, bucking back against James until their exhalations are practically sobs. His muscles are elastic, every part of him fluid as James takes him, hot and hard and cleaving him apart. Kendall’s got lofty goals; he wants to walk bow-legged tomorrow. He rides James through it the best he can.
“You’re good at this,” James tells him, his fingers curled somewhere beneath Kendall’s ribcage, every breath ragged.
Kendall runs his hands up and down his own body, touching and gasping. He replies cheekily, “Shut up.”
The bed creaks, old metal and rusty springs protesting too loud. James’s beautiful, gorgeous, song-worthy fingers reach out to touch the headboard, tan and gold, gold and tan. His other hand takes up residence on Kendall’s cock, stroking until the friction is the best kind of excruciating, his balls tight against every slap of James’s.
He can feel James’s chest, broad and perfect and slick with sweat against his back. He can feel James’s tongue against his ear, his nerve endings are lit up like livewires. The bristly hair at the base of James’s cock brushes against Kendall’s ass when he takes him deeper, and that’s exactly what he wants, to be connected completely with this strange, impossible boy.
Every star in New York City is blinding, shiningtwinklingexploding outside Kendall’s window when he comes. James shudders violently against him half a minute later, a flood of warmth in Kendall’s ass that he barely notices through the aftershocks of his own orgasm.
They play the awkward game of untangling themselves, sweat and cum making it more difficult than it should be. In a pile on the bed, they lay together, the night darker now that Kendall’s vision is clearing of lust.
“Everything you wanted?” James asks, still breathing harshly.
“You weren’t bad,” Kendall tells James fondly, brushing the curve of his cheek with his fingertips.
And then - he falls asleep.
---
“Kendall.” Something hard is jabbing into his ribs. Kendall does not like this hard thing. “Kendall.”
The hard thing is Logan’s finger. It is not a nice hard thing. Kendall bats it away.
“Seriously, did you have to go out drinking two nights in a row?”
“L’me alone.”
“You’re naked,” Logan tells him. “Was that James guy here last night? Kendall?”
His voice gets really high pitched at the last question. Kendall cracks an eyelid for the sole purpose of checking whether Logan is blind or - nope. It’s sunny as hell and James is gone. Which, whatever, it’s not like that means anything. Kendall didn’t exactly expect his newfound boy toy to stick around and cuddle, so he’s not hurt, exactly, that James didn’t stay. He just sort of expected he would. Honor and chivalry and
Kendall asking him twice in one night to stick around and everything.
He sighs. “He’s not anymore. Apparently.”
“Kendall-“
“Logan, I’m trying really, really hard to be a real human. Why do you want to screw that up?”
“That’s not fair. You know I just don’t want this guy to screw you up.” Logan rustles a hand through his hair, a dark, wild thing overtaking his features. “This was taped to our door.”
There’s a postcard in his hands. The picture on the front is of a baby black bear caught mid-yawn. Bold white letters emblazoned over the image declare, “I’m not sorry.”
There’s nothing else on it. No note from James scrawled on the back. Nothing.
“What the fuck is this supposed to mean?” Kendall demands, pulling the sheets up around his waist. He’s wrecked, his muscles all jello. He contentedly thinks that he’s not going to be walking much today.
Logan shrugs, his brown eyes flood with something suspiciously like pity. “I don’t know.”
“I’ll ask James what it means,” Kendall yawns sleepily. “Later. I’m fine. You’re fine. We’re all fine. Now go away. Shoo. Shoo.”
“Kendall-“
Kendall throws a pillow at Logan’s face.
He can’t figure the postcard out. He doesn’t understand either, hours after he wakes up again, when he realizes his sheet music is gone.
It’s not a big deal. He’s got every song in his head, and copies besides, draft after draft of work before he created those finished pieces.
James took them; he doesn’t doubt that. By accident is his first thought, but when he tries calling him, later that same night, Kendall finds out
James’s phone is disconnected.
I’m not sorry.
He supposes that’s his answer.
---
As weeks drag by, Kendall thinks the sheet music must have been a souvenir. Because James likes the songs and not Kendall, or maybe because he simply wants to remember the time he decided to slum it.
This is why he has rules about rich boys. They’re dickholes. Or they just want to use guys like Kendall as one. He thought James was different - he thought James was sweet. But James never calls, and Kendall tries really hard not to look too closely at what he might have done wrong.
That’s the way to a quick and terrible downwards spiral to the thing that Kendall hates to talk about.
Everything was easier when he had hockey. His mind is creeping, crawling, burgeoning with this restlessness that dissipates at the cold, crisp taste of ice in the air. He told James he’d write a song for him, and yeah, song writing helps - he can funnel all that energy into the shape of consonants and vowels, wrapped tight in a melody, but it’s not the same.
When he’s writing, he gets lost in it, touching on backlogs of vocabulary he learned when school was still a thing, drumming up monsters and mayhem straight from his once-rusty imagination. Nothing recedes to white noise, the way it does when he’s got a puck in front of him, a team at his back. And he misses that static, because it felt a lot like peace.
He’s not so great at hiding how much he misses it. Or James. The next three months are made of suck.
Logan asks incessantly, “Are you okay?”
Kendall should be the one asking that. He’s the jerk mindfucking his best friend.
He’s also the delicate porcelain teacup of a boy who spent the entire year before moving to New York in rehab, so Logan doesn’t stop asking.
Worry lines crease his face, and oh. Oh. Kendall is the worst.
After his accident, the doctors prescribed a lot of things. Antibiotics, anti-inflammatory pills, and the really high grade pain killers. He was a
local superstar, an actualfax hero on the ice to anyone within a fifty miles radius. They took really good care of him.
Sometimes he thinks, they were too attentive.
But no, he knows better than to place the blame on anyone other himself.
Every time Logan frets over him, Kendall shrugs and says, “I’m fine.” Logan doesn’t look like he believes Kendall for a second, and he’s right not to. Kendall’s got a former addiction to prescription strength drugs that doesn’t always feel so former, and it never has taken much to make him slip off the rails.
So he puts on his brave face, even though he’s doing a really terrible job at it. One guy isn’t going to destroy him. That’s not who Kendall Knight is.
Not anymore.
---
“Kendall?” Logan’s voice crackles over the landline. The bar’s always had a shitty connection.
“ No, sorry, this is Michael Bolton -“ Kendall divides his attention between the phone and a customer begging for a beer. He pops the cap off a Heineken and hands it over in one fluid motion, receiver balanced against his shoulder. “Dork. What do you want?”
“I’d like it if you worked on your manners, one of these days,” Logan replies petulantly.
Kendall rolls his eyes exaggeratedly enough that one of the college girls perched on a nearby stool chokes against laughter. Kendall winks at
her and intones, “Make it quick, Loginator. Daddy’s trying to bring you home some bacon.”
“That there is a visual,” Logan deadpans.
“You know it, little lady.”
“I’ll make sure to stick a pie in the oven. Listen, dude. I was on my way back from class and I passed one of those bodegas with all the I Love New York shit -“
Kendall begins humming New York, New York under his breath, stretching the phone cord to maneuver around Minerva so he can grab the whiskey. Minerva flips him off, ducking the tangle of beige wire when Kendall moves past her to top off an old-timer’s glass.
Over the din of the bar crowd and Kendall’s mumbled, start spreading the news, Kendall completely misses the rest of Logan’s story, right up
until he announces, “Wait, it’s on again.”
“What’s on again?”
“The song?”
“Oh, of course. The song.”
“You stopped listening to me,” Logan accuses.
“Honeybunch, I’d never.”
“Butt sauce,” Logan says prissily. “Quick, turn on Z100, before it’s over.”
“Sorry, not into Barbie dolls singing canned soup tunes.”
“Kendall,” Logan says seriously. “Turn it on.”
Sighing, Kendall drags the phone with him to the far corner of the bar, where the radio controls sit. He switches off Minerva’s hipster cool playlists of trendy songs no one else has ever heard of and dials over to FM.
Minerva issues a battle cry that starts with a bad word and ends with motherfucker, Knight. Kendall dutifully ignores her in favor of Logan and turning the dial towards New York’s Number One Shit Music Station.
In his ear, Logan’s telling him, “I heard it, and I thought the words were familiar. It took me a bit to figure out why but-“
Kendall stops on the station.
The melody is distantly familiar, like a strained cover version of something he used to love. He instantly hates the backtrack, but god, that voice - it’s beautiful.
A frat boy down near Minerva yells, “Hells yeah, this is my jam,” bounds off his seat and starts like, freaking twerking in full view of the street.
A couple of his friends join in.
“-it’s yours.”
“Sorry, what?” Kendall asks, wondering as one of the guys accidentally flashes some ass crack what exactly he did to deserve this life.
Outside the bar window, a group of girls in skyscraper heels whip out their camera phones, their mouths open in what must be mean laughter.
The song spikes a crescendo before launching into the final chorus. Kendall stills.
This time he listens when Logan informs him, “That’s why it sounds so familiar. The song. It’s yours.”
---
To Be Continued in an as of yet Unnamed Sequel
---
Aaaaand, art, by the lovely teh_emowaffle.
Author:
garnetice
Pairing: Kendall/James, Kendall/Logan, past Kendall/Jo
Rating: M
Word Count: 24,538 (6,714 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: See Part 1 and Part 2.
---
“The best cure for a hangover is more alcohol,” James reminds him, as Kendall stares at the literal jug of beer in absolute horror.
“I’m going to puke.”
“Don’t you fucking dare.”
“My stomach might dare.” Kendall attempts to wet his lips, his tongue a dry, shriveled thing. James let him sleep through nightfall, but his kindness was obviously a ploy to cover up his latent sadism. “Please don’t make me do this.”
“Man up.”
“I said please,” Kendall whines, head and stomach throbbing in time.
“You brought this on yourself.”
“Oh, you think so, do you?” Gritting his teeth, Kendall strives to shoot laser beams from his eyes. Tragically, today is not the day he gains mutant powers. Settling back in his seat, he says, “In reality, this is all your fault.”
“Mine?” James has the nerve to look genuinely startled. “You didn’t invite me to traipse off on your little adventure.”
“Your fault,” Kendall repeats adamantly.
“What even happened? I bet it’s a hell of a story.”
No way is Kendall planning on regaling him with the tale of how standing at the border of puppy-lovesick and in-complete-denial made him antsy and uncomfortable. How he got a little wasted with Minerva at work, called up the last girl he ever loved and, when she declined to pick up, how he let the underage coeds flirting with him at the bar show him a good time. The part where he decided to play Truth-Or-Dare with them was especially irresponsible; after he emerged from the former Sound River and found most of his clothes missing, the juvenility of it all sank it. He’s not proud. He’s definitely not telling James.
“It was a grand adventure,” he replies, and takes the damn shot. His stomach, predictably, mutinies, but Kendall’s got enough experience
binge drinking that he manages to keep it down.
James says, “Fine, sure. Don’t tell me.”
He’s wearing this pinched expression, like it genuinely bothers him that Kendall’s keeping secrets. In turn, that bugs Kendall. As if James has the right to know every part of him at this early stage in their - not relationship. That’s not what this is. Of this, Kendall is certain: relationships involve way more dick than what he’s been getting.
“Are you-“ Kendall swallows around the burn in his throat, wishing he’d never even heard of alcohol. “Are you mad right now?”
“No. Yes. I don’t get you, man. You come out of nowhere with all the ferocity of a sidewinder and you’re - fuck, you’re brilliant. You are fucking resplendent. And you don’t even see it. All that talent, squandered. Dumped in the East River.”
“It’s not like I died.”
The excruciatingly bright sun straining in around the blackout blinds that shade the bar’s windows outlines James in soft white light. He’s washed out and foreign, someone Kendall’s fooled himself into believing he knows. And then the tension floods from his shoulders. He signals the bartender for more shots and grins. “Nope. You’ve gotta have a guardian angel on your side.”
“I’m the luckiest sonofabitch out there,” Kendall agrees, even though he’s spent a huge chunk of time since college convinced he’s anything but. Life isn’t so bad. He’s feeling marginally less pukey, his headache dulling at the edges, and he’s in a bar with a beautiful boy. Who’s kind
of a jerk, but also incredibly hot, and hey, he’s shallow.
He grabs for one of the shots and raises it in the air, clinking his glass with James’s. “Cheers, man.”
“Cheers,” James agrees. “Here’s hoping some of your luck rubs off on me.”
---
“You got us kicked out,” Kendall declares, profoundly offended. He’s never met anybody, ever, with a capacity for troublemaking as big as his own. Even Logan, his best best best friend, quails in the face of danger. Which leads him to the realization that, “I like you. Fuck. I really like you.”
Kendall might be drunk. Again. A little bit.
“Duh,” James replies, with the slightest of slurs. “Now shush. I’m going to take us to a room with a view.”
They hop in a cab, because James has a wad of cash in his pocket that he doesn’t bother to explain. Kendall figures - when he bothers to think about it at all - that James swallowed his pride and called up his ‘rents. He’s vaguely envious, but it’s not like James isn’t sharing the
wealth.
He leans back against a worn leather seat and watches as the city winks by. The cabbie’s smoking a thick, cherry scented cigar. It floods the car with cloying fruitiness, but they’re both too buzzed to care, bickering with increasingly high volume about hockey, sci-fi, and the notes and lyrics and melodies of music. Kendall gets stuck on this one line in a song he’s working on, fleshing his ideas out the way he only ever
manages to do by his lonesome or in Logan’s surly company. When James chips in with an assist, he doesn’t mind. Which. He’s not sure what
to do with that.
So he barrels on, “I dunno about that word though. We think always has no meaning, because it is said ceaselessly, pervasively, inaccurately.
But it’s actually a bit beautiful, isn’t it? Always. All the ways, in every way, no matter where life goes.” Kendall laughs, drink bubbling in his brain. “I’m not making any sense.”
“No,” James tells him quietly. “I’ve never heard you so clearly.”
Kendall throws him a reckless smile, flagrantly drunk, carelessly vulnerable.
James says, “Words are important. Knowing how to use them and what they really represent, underneath the tarnish of everyday conversation, and how to set them to melodies, that’s what defines a lyricist. You’re remarkably talented, dude.”
Kendall laughs again, hoarseness edging the noise. “According to the poor little rich boy with the lungs of a superstar. You should talk. If I could belt music like you, I wouldn’t have such a hard time trying to sell myself.”
“The songs,” James corrects idly, his face a canvas of pink and orange and red, along with the sky and the setting sun. Kendall doesn’t know how he scored this opportunity, but he thinks he’s been wasting it long enough.
Leaning in close, he says, “No, I meant what I said. I’m selling the whole package, you know.”
He extends a graceless hand down the span of his chest, mocking and offering in equal measure.
James takes the bait. “Oh yeah? How much do you cost, Kendall Knight?”
“For you? For you, I’m a bargain.”
He’s relatively certain he would have scored right then and there, if only the cabbie hadn’t plead, “Get out. Please,” waving the embers of his cigar at them all the while.
On the sidewalk, Kendall shoves his hands in his pockets. “Why are we in LIC?”
“The universal question.”
“I’m not getting existential, jackass. I’m freezing.”
He shivers for emphasis, but all he gets from James is a dirty glare. “Residual hypothermia. That happens when you jump in the East River in the middle of September.”
“Whatever. September’s a dumb month to live in New York anyway.”
It’s true. Half the days are so achingly stuffy that Kendall can barely breathe, while the other half are sodden and wet and filled with the
promise of winter. Today’s the latter, so chilly they’re both breathless with it. At James’s final destination, briskness lashes out across the tiny, choppy waves that broil offshore, nipping at their flushed cheeks and bitten lips until they’re both quivering with its bite.
They hit up a deli around the corner from James’s new, exciting, spectacular idea, which Kendall knows now, and all he can hear is Logan’s voice in his head, calling him a complete and utter moron. He kind of agrees.
Gantry Plaza State Park is colder and emptier than the main streets, the pasture-green grass brown with the coming winter. Slides jut from the hulking shape of a blue-and-yellow play monstrosity that kids’ mothers forced them to abandon as the Northern winds began to prowl. The sky bleeds lilac and indigo; the last dying gasps of sunset dissipating into the black velvet crush of night. Amidst that, the city is coming to life, the white-gold-yellow of electric lights animating the darkening landscape of skyscrapers. James and Kendall are reanimated too, a red cast to their skin, teeth, and eyes.
“We’re going to get arrested,” Kendall fusses as James throws him an ice cold can of beer.
James whisks all that naysaying away with a single declaration of, “Faithless. You’re never going to get anywhere with that attitude.”
His face is a dare, all challenge and impishness and too pretty to be real. Kendall swallows.
“Caution isn’t a bad thing.”
“Yeah. If you’re boring.”
No one in the history of ever has accused Kendall of being boring, so he scrambles up after James, the two of them vaulting a few perfectly serviceable benches on their way to the iconic Pepsi-Cola sign, a New York City landmark. Based out of Long Island City, the sign’s a Manhattan landmark, glimmering on the edges of the East River. It’s freestanding, unprotected, ready to be Facebooked or Instagrammed or whatever the kids are doing these days. Kendall’s smart phone is prehistoric, and not especially smart. He couldn’t download an app if he tried.
The point is, the only thing standing between them and climbing the stupid sign is gravity and the watchman patrolling the park, who James clocked at a local burger joint, watching the Giants on a grainy television.
“In case I wasn’t clear on the subject, I enjoy living.” He makes this solemn oath while pulling himself up on one of the very, very thin, flat bars that support the massive sign, like a billboard constructed of flimsy metal. They’re not incredibly high off the ground or anything, and the dessicated grass would probably cushion a fall, and it’s not even like Kendall’s scared of heights - but if he doesn’t act beleaguered, James will think he’s having fun.
The horror.
It’s not bad up in the metaphorical rafters. Everything glows eerie and strange, the blackness of the descending night all the darker for it. But the beer’s iced and bubbly in Kendall’s throat, the carbonated piss taste of PBR an acquired taste after so many years with little to no funds.
He kicks out his feet and gives James a grin that could be described as marginally impressed. “This isn’t bad.”
“Told you. Pussy.” James dangles his legs so that they’re almost brushing against Kendall’s, jeans and sneakers and boots all blocking anything tangible, but there’s heat between them all the same. Booze sings in Kendall’s blood, bubbling under the surface, and James is a
singular, resonant phenomena beside him. He asks, “When you write, how much of that comes from real life?”
Kendall takes a sip of his beer to avoid answering, the mystery and magic of the universe suddenly lost.
It’s not that he hates talking about music - he’s a big fan of it, himself, and the songs he writes, which is arrogant, maybe, but what’s wrong with a little pride? At the same time, he finds it weird that James likes talking about it so much. Like Kendall’s process is absolutely key to
everything James finds fascinating about him.
Then again, James wants to write his own music, so. Maybe it’s not completely bizarre. It’s even nice to pretend he has a real fanboy. No one’s actually looked up to Kendall since hockey stopped being a real part of his life. He unashamedly wants to bask in it.
Carefully, he replies, “All of it. If you want people to feel something, it’s easier to get a handle on that if you’ve felt whatever it is yourself.”
“But you write so many sad songs.” James hesitates, and then he says, “I could never do that.”
“Why?” A harsh laugh escapes Kendall’s lips, but he doesn’t mean it in a cruel way. “You’ve never been sad?”
“Are you kidding me?” He laughs, high and throaty and nervous. “Sometimes, all I am is miserable. I didn’t expect growing up to be as lonely as it is,” James admits, licking foam from his upper lip. Kendall has trouble really connecting with his sad-on when the guy’s giving him a
boner. “But that, all of it - the older I get, the lonelier I am, and the less I want to talk about it.”
Kendall pumps his legs in the air. He shakes. He shimmies. He makes the whole sign rattle. And he says, too measured, “When you talk about
the things that make you weak, people take advantage of them.”
“Exactly!” James flails his hands a little, like he didn’t expect Kendall to understand. Kendall didn’t expect to be sloshed with flying beer, so they’re even. “I wanna be strong. I don’t want anyone to think I’m like that.”
“Weak?”
“Pathetic,” James spits, and it’s not at all what Kendall wants to hear. He’s been pathetic, once or twice or eight times in his life. He has trouble imagining James - tall, broad, perfect James - being that low. Being anything like Kendall was, when he fucked up so bad that it still hurts to think about.
“James. No one’s ever going to believe that you’re pathetic.” He bumps their shoulders together in camaraderie. “You’ll figure this writing thing out. Some record producer in La La Land is going to go gaga over you, and I’ll be all on my lonesome in Alphabet City, reminiscing about how I knew you when.”
“Or,” James says, darting a furtive glance in Kendall’s direction, a flash of dark eyes rimmed effervescent red. “You could join me out there. Make a name for yourself. Hell, you could call up your sister and go right now.”
“I told you, Katie doesn’t have that kind of pull.” He says it defensively, his guard automatic. “Besides. I don’t want to get my hopes up like that. Calling in a favor - making it all happen. Katie would murder me once I screwed it up.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Most of my dreams crash and burn.” Kendall shrugs, all casual humor and faked smiles. “Sometimes I think it’s better not to have them.”
“I hate that fatalist shit. I hate it when people don’t fight.” Behind his lips, James’s teeth are clenched. Kendall wonders if everyone pisses him off this frequently, or if it’s his own very special talent. “I’m going to be a star. No one’s going to stop me.”
“Like I said, promise you’ll remember me when.”
“You’re making fun,” James snarls.
Kendall bumps their shoulders together, too buzzed to rise to the bait. “No. I’m not. You’re talented. You deserve a chance to show that off.”
“Yeah,” James responds quietly, in a voice salted with guilt. “I really do.”
He’s as moody as a hurricane, switching wistfulness out for mischief in one smooth exchange. “Okay, enough with the beer.” James snatches the can from Kendall’s fingers and hurls it down on the grass. It spins against wet green, silver bits flashing blinding-bright beneath the rising moon. Kendall yelps unhappily at his drink’s loss, but tones the whine down once James continues, “I don’t want you sloppy drunk.”
Wryly, Kendall inquires, “Do you require my dexterity tonight, good sir?”
James sucks in a breath. He retorts, “If I say yes, will you think I’m easy?”
“You know me. In it for the sybaritic fun.”
James grins wide. “You’re right. I know you.”
He’s smug and self-satisfied, and still, it makes Kendall’s heart feel brand new, blood-red and polished, shiny as the surface of an apple. He’s not sure what to do with this, the strange delight of making another person happy.
Kendall doesn’t have a lot to compare it to.
“You know this sign’s been around since 1936?”
“I know that. Why do you know that?” James snickers. The East River is this dazzling, dancing ribbon of glitter and glitz, wending its way beneath the towering skyscrapers, and he stares out at it. His eyelashes are wet with starlight. “You’re really bonding with this city.”
“It beats the hell out of Minnesota,” Kendall agrees.
And then he kisses James, because he can, because patience isn’t his gig and he’s been dancing around kissing James since the very first day he met James. Because James always tastes hot and spicy and dizzyingly good, and he always draws away so quickly it makes Kendall’s head spin.
This time, they’re clutched in the neon glow of the Pepsi-Cola sign. Where the hell can James go?
James’s lips slip against his, cold from the beer, a few leftover droplets fizzing pleasantly in the corners of Kendall’s mouth. He groans and slides his hands inside James’s coat, grabbing for warmth and solid muscle. James, in turn, curls a hand around the back of Kendall’s neck, pulling him closer, kissing him harder. Kendall shifts on the metal support beam, a screw digging into his ass. He wants to climb into James’s lap, but he settles for shoving his tongue down his throat.
In the most eloquent, sexy way possible, of course.
James moans appreciatively, pawing at Kendall’s clothes, tugging him forward even further by the lapels of his thin coat. They’re going to fall off the fucking sign at this rate.
“Time to go, I think,” Kendall says, breathless.
“You’re right.” James’s voice shakes. “I should go home.”
“With me. You should go home with me.”
“I-“
“You’re not going to leave,” Kendall insists, immediately, irrevocably. James can’t, he’s not allowed. He has to stay. Kendall’s pants are tight and dragging mercilessly on his cock, his head’s spinning with stars, and all he wants is to be touched or fucked or hell, he’ll settle for cuddling with this inexplicable, impossible guy. He just needs him not to run away. “You like me, right?”
“I. Yeah.” James sucks his red lower lip, gnaws on it until it blooms redder still. “Yeah. I really like you.”
“You like me,” Kendall repeats. “So show me.”
James huffs out a sigh. “You’re so needy.” There’s bite in the words, something vitriolic and mean that flits in and out of existence, like neediness is something he despises. Kendall nearly stumbles back, away, put off by the onslaught of hate he doesn’t quite understand. But then James’s face grows dark, shy, serious. He says, “This is the second time tonight you’ve asked me to stay.”
“I might like you too. In case you haven’t noticed.”
The wind picks up, rifling icy cold fingers through his hair, down his spine, curling his toes in his shoes. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t blink away from James’s searching eyes.
“Let’s go home. Your home.”
They pile back into a cab, one with a driver that’s not nearly as concerned about the state of his upholstery or James and Kendall’s volume control. He doesn’t say a word when James straddles Kendall’s lap, kissing him slick and filthy, all tongue and the tight pressure of knees at Kendall’s hips.
At one point James shoves back, hands settled against Kendall’s shoulders. He exhales harshly, “Not so fast, god, slow down,” which, no.
“I’ve waited for weeks,” Kendall says, tugging insistently at his shirt, the both of them sliding across the taxi cab’s seats.
James bats his hands away again, countering, “You just want, like an orgasm. I want an experience,” and that’s just plain insulting. Kendall recoils.
“No. That’s not allowed. You can’t nitpick my performance before we’ve even fucked.” He snakes a hand around James’s neck, whispers low and husky, “You have no idea what I want,” for the sole purpose of hearing James suck in a breath.
They reach the apartment too soon, or not soon enough, with every muscle in Kendall’s body wired tight, ready to let go.
The trip up the stairs is rough, full of fumbling touches and panted breath. Kendall nearly falls back on the second floor landing and lets James fuck him right there, but he’s got class, okay. Class and a strict warning from his landlord not to do that ever again. Instead he lets James manhandle him up every step, footfalls heavy with liquor-fueled, clumsy urgency. There’s a steady pulse between Kendall’s legs, his dick or James’s. At this point it barely matters.
Knocking his head back against the threshold of his own closed door, Kendall pants out, “I regret to inform you that I believe you to be a masochist. This is a serious psychiatric condition that you should have checked out immediately.”
“Yeah?” James’s hands drop limply to his sides. Meaning they are not touching Kendall and all is suddenly wrong with the world. “Guess I should go see my therapist right now.”
“Let’s not be hasty.” Kendall grabs him by the waist, pulling their bodies flush. “Think about all that time you’ll waste in the waiting room. You
could be fucking me instead.”
“That was pretty much always the plan,” James agrees, touching their mouths together in a half-kiss, a breath of life that isn’t even close to what Kendall wants.
He bridges the distance between them, kissing James desperate and crazy and somewhat like an apology. He sucks the oxygen from James’s lungs and tries to swallow it down, but all that succeeds in doing is making him dizzy, delirious with the air that they both share.
Stumbling back into the darkness of the living room, Kendall realizes Logan isn’t home. Which is great, but Kendall probably wouldn’t give a damn even if he was. That’s how far gone he is - enough to fuck over a friend in pursuit of fucking. He thinks that’s not okay; he doesn’t want to lose control this early. He draws back for a breather, gets enough distance to flick on a light.
James staggers away, but that’s allowed. He’s not trying to rabbit off. Besides Kendall’s close enough to cumming that he needs to cool his
boots anyway.
Their walls are papered with pictures. James didn’t have much of a chance to look them over during his first two visits, but now he takes his time. He scrutinizes the faded, curled edges of photographs that depict Kendall’s childhood in stages - himself and Logan on a rickety sled, the gentle slope of his mother’s smile, Katie’s pudgy baby face and grabby hands. James runs a thumb over the dorktastic prom photo of Kendall and his friends, myriad, with Logan holding a starring role dead center, and smiles.
“You were popular.”
“I bet you were too,” Kendall replies shrewdly, because no one with a face like James Diamond could ever have gone friendless and sad.
“Sure,” James says mildly, and it’s hard to tell whether there’s any truth in it at all.
Kendall can’t dwell on it - won’t - because there’s the pressure of James’s fingers against the front button of his jeans, and it’s unbearable to think of anything else. Except maybe the puff of James’s breath against his cheek. Except, perhaps, the nudge of his knee.
His hands are feverishly hot.
“You want to see my room?” Kendall chokes out, smoother than butter. But James still follows him straight up the ladder and into the loft that Kendall calls home.
It’s scratched, naked wood floors and a ceiling so low they both bang their heads against it, the thud resonant in the empty apartment. Moonlight spills silver across the shadows of Kendall’s minimalist furniture, somehow brighter when Kendall draws the inside curtains closed, effectively cutting the tiny loft off from the main living space.
“Fancy digs,” James says.
“I like my privacy.”
“I like you,” James replies, and it’s all that really needs to be said.
Or maybe not. He walks back until his knees are touching the foot of Kendall’s bed and commands, “Come here.”
It echoes through the hollows of the room. It echoes in Kendall’s bones.
He does as he’s told.
They fall against Kendall’s sheets in a tangle of arms and legs, burning as quick and as hard as silver nitrate, fire that eats straight through them both. If James cares about the low thread count, he doesn’t say so. Or maybe he voices his complaints in moans and growls, in the reverb of every grunt that Kendall can feel in James’s throat.
Kendall’s used to being in charge, but when James gropes at his ass, he lets him. The hot, smooth pad of James’s fingertip circles the denim that outlines the cleft between Kendall’s cheeks and he trembles, and doesn’t try to stop it. He wants to feel the shape and the weight of James’s cock slipping inside of him, wants to grip him deep and dark and hard with his hands and his body and his stupid, capricious heart.
There’s a difference between losing control and giving up the reins.
Kendall knows that better than anyone.
James shimmies out of his jeans and t-shirt. He doesn’t demur when Kendall murmurs, “Oh, god. Yes.”
He grins, stupid cocksucker, and looks entirely too pleased with himself. Abruptly grumpy, Kendall snaps the waistband of James’s underwear and asks, “Has anyone ever turned you down after seeing all this?”
“Please, look at how hot I am,” James replies breezily, brushing a hand down his own admittedly impressive abs.
“Excuse me?”
The uncharacteristic vanity doesn’t turn Kendall off exactly - he’s no stranger to healthy self-love - but it is bizarre coming from James. Or maybe not - James naked is a revelation. He’s gold and brown and peach and cloaked in shadows, his cock straining beneath his boxers, a focal point that Kendall unabashedly zeroes in on. He’s going to have the absolute best time getting to know the weight of that in his hand, in his mouth, in his ass.
With purpose, he reaches out, pulling Kendall hard against the planes of his body. James’s hands rub circles against his side, his collarbone.
He kisses him too chastely for what Kendall wants. Kendall’s pull back.
“Hold on. I’ve got to find-“
Like most self-respecting guys, he carries a condom at all times. It’s been a while since he’s had a chance to use one, the fortuitous presence of this Trojan more of a plea for luck to the heavens than anything else, but a precursory examination reveals it’s in working order and everything. There’s lube in his makeshift nightstand, and he lays them out on his bed, staying low to keep from concussing himself on the loft’s exposed beams.
“Are you ever coming back here?” James asks lazily, stretching across the sheets. “Or are you staying away to teach me a lesson?”
Kendall throws himself down on the bed, the comforter cool and smooth against his too-hot skin. “Whatever you say, Princess.”
He rolls over onto James, covering his mostly naked body with his own fully clothed one. James growls, nipping against Kendall’s throat. “I told you not to call me that.”
“You did,” Kendall agrees, lacing their palms together, rutting their hips. James keens and squeezes, his fingernails gouging into the back of Kendall’s hands. And Kendall says, “Your hands are art. I’d sculpt them if I could.”
He rubs his fingers against the curvature of James’s knuckles. The texture of his skin sends shivers down Kendall’s spine.
“Instead, I’ll write a song about you. One of these days.”
James’s cheeks redden, the color of maple leaves in the fall, the pink of his lips swollen from Kendall’s assault on his mouth. He asks, “Is there a trick to getting that chastity belt off, or are you going to get naked already?”
Kendall’s never been accused of being a tease. He shucks the defensive armor of his shirt with ease, shrugging it off and over his pale shoulders. His jeans take more work, but James looks a little stunned once they’re down around Kendall’s thighs. Hoarsely, he murmurs, “Worth the wait.”
They kiss because they can, because it builds quicksilver and molten between them. The drag of James’s teeth against the inside of Kendall’s lower lip is sharp; it shudders through his body and jolts his hips forward. Their underwear is victim to what happens next, stripped off and thrown the floor.
Prep takes a few minutes, but it’s okay. James has clever hands. He’s on his knees, leaning over Kendall with less confidence than he started out with. His skin is shot through with starlight, glowing from the inside out. The Milky Way weaves between the indent of his hipbone and the crease of his thigh.
“Are you ready?” James asks, gruff and twisting his fingers inside of Kendall in this way that aches both good and bad, an edge of pleasure curling Kendall’s toes, raw in his bones.
He reaches up and touches James’s cheek. He tells him, “I’ve been ready for weeks.”
The condom takes a second. A second too long. Kendall pants and waits, trying not to beg.
James is rough when he takes Kendall from behind, but his palms are firebrands on Kendall’s stomach and chest; all he wants is more. He whimpers in the manliest fashion possibly when James fucks into him, bigger than Kendall thought he would be, almost more than he could take.
But it’s fine, it’s okay. He surrenders himself to James wholeheartedly, in a way that’s scary as hell. He trusts him when he shouldn’t, when all instincts scream for him not to. He’s just so sick of living in the past - he wants to be here, sinking back against James’s cock like he can’t do anything else. There, in their own tiny universe, James pulls out, all the way to the tip, and then slides forward again, lube easing the way.
He angles into Kendall like he already knows where all his sweet spots are. It’s not fair, but Kendall gives as good as he gets, bucking back against James until their exhalations are practically sobs. His muscles are elastic, every part of him fluid as James takes him, hot and hard and cleaving him apart. Kendall’s got lofty goals; he wants to walk bow-legged tomorrow. He rides James through it the best he can.
“You’re good at this,” James tells him, his fingers curled somewhere beneath Kendall’s ribcage, every breath ragged.
Kendall runs his hands up and down his own body, touching and gasping. He replies cheekily, “Shut up.”
The bed creaks, old metal and rusty springs protesting too loud. James’s beautiful, gorgeous, song-worthy fingers reach out to touch the headboard, tan and gold, gold and tan. His other hand takes up residence on Kendall’s cock, stroking until the friction is the best kind of excruciating, his balls tight against every slap of James’s.
He can feel James’s chest, broad and perfect and slick with sweat against his back. He can feel James’s tongue against his ear, his nerve endings are lit up like livewires. The bristly hair at the base of James’s cock brushes against Kendall’s ass when he takes him deeper, and that’s exactly what he wants, to be connected completely with this strange, impossible boy.
Every star in New York City is blinding, shiningtwinklingexploding outside Kendall’s window when he comes. James shudders violently against him half a minute later, a flood of warmth in Kendall’s ass that he barely notices through the aftershocks of his own orgasm.
They play the awkward game of untangling themselves, sweat and cum making it more difficult than it should be. In a pile on the bed, they lay together, the night darker now that Kendall’s vision is clearing of lust.
“Everything you wanted?” James asks, still breathing harshly.
“You weren’t bad,” Kendall tells James fondly, brushing the curve of his cheek with his fingertips.
And then - he falls asleep.
---
“Kendall.” Something hard is jabbing into his ribs. Kendall does not like this hard thing. “Kendall.”
The hard thing is Logan’s finger. It is not a nice hard thing. Kendall bats it away.
“Seriously, did you have to go out drinking two nights in a row?”
“L’me alone.”
“You’re naked,” Logan tells him. “Was that James guy here last night? Kendall?”
His voice gets really high pitched at the last question. Kendall cracks an eyelid for the sole purpose of checking whether Logan is blind or - nope. It’s sunny as hell and James is gone. Which, whatever, it’s not like that means anything. Kendall didn’t exactly expect his newfound boy toy to stick around and cuddle, so he’s not hurt, exactly, that James didn’t stay. He just sort of expected he would. Honor and chivalry and
Kendall asking him twice in one night to stick around and everything.
He sighs. “He’s not anymore. Apparently.”
“Kendall-“
“Logan, I’m trying really, really hard to be a real human. Why do you want to screw that up?”
“That’s not fair. You know I just don’t want this guy to screw you up.” Logan rustles a hand through his hair, a dark, wild thing overtaking his features. “This was taped to our door.”
There’s a postcard in his hands. The picture on the front is of a baby black bear caught mid-yawn. Bold white letters emblazoned over the image declare, “I’m not sorry.”
There’s nothing else on it. No note from James scrawled on the back. Nothing.
“What the fuck is this supposed to mean?” Kendall demands, pulling the sheets up around his waist. He’s wrecked, his muscles all jello. He contentedly thinks that he’s not going to be walking much today.
Logan shrugs, his brown eyes flood with something suspiciously like pity. “I don’t know.”
“I’ll ask James what it means,” Kendall yawns sleepily. “Later. I’m fine. You’re fine. We’re all fine. Now go away. Shoo. Shoo.”
“Kendall-“
Kendall throws a pillow at Logan’s face.
He can’t figure the postcard out. He doesn’t understand either, hours after he wakes up again, when he realizes his sheet music is gone.
It’s not a big deal. He’s got every song in his head, and copies besides, draft after draft of work before he created those finished pieces.
James took them; he doesn’t doubt that. By accident is his first thought, but when he tries calling him, later that same night, Kendall finds out
James’s phone is disconnected.
I’m not sorry.
He supposes that’s his answer.
---
As weeks drag by, Kendall thinks the sheet music must have been a souvenir. Because James likes the songs and not Kendall, or maybe because he simply wants to remember the time he decided to slum it.
This is why he has rules about rich boys. They’re dickholes. Or they just want to use guys like Kendall as one. He thought James was different - he thought James was sweet. But James never calls, and Kendall tries really hard not to look too closely at what he might have done wrong.
That’s the way to a quick and terrible downwards spiral to the thing that Kendall hates to talk about.
Everything was easier when he had hockey. His mind is creeping, crawling, burgeoning with this restlessness that dissipates at the cold, crisp taste of ice in the air. He told James he’d write a song for him, and yeah, song writing helps - he can funnel all that energy into the shape of consonants and vowels, wrapped tight in a melody, but it’s not the same.
When he’s writing, he gets lost in it, touching on backlogs of vocabulary he learned when school was still a thing, drumming up monsters and mayhem straight from his once-rusty imagination. Nothing recedes to white noise, the way it does when he’s got a puck in front of him, a team at his back. And he misses that static, because it felt a lot like peace.
He’s not so great at hiding how much he misses it. Or James. The next three months are made of suck.
Logan asks incessantly, “Are you okay?”
Kendall should be the one asking that. He’s the jerk mindfucking his best friend.
He’s also the delicate porcelain teacup of a boy who spent the entire year before moving to New York in rehab, so Logan doesn’t stop asking.
Worry lines crease his face, and oh. Oh. Kendall is the worst.
After his accident, the doctors prescribed a lot of things. Antibiotics, anti-inflammatory pills, and the really high grade pain killers. He was a
local superstar, an actualfax hero on the ice to anyone within a fifty miles radius. They took really good care of him.
Sometimes he thinks, they were too attentive.
But no, he knows better than to place the blame on anyone other himself.
Every time Logan frets over him, Kendall shrugs and says, “I’m fine.” Logan doesn’t look like he believes Kendall for a second, and he’s right not to. Kendall’s got a former addiction to prescription strength drugs that doesn’t always feel so former, and it never has taken much to make him slip off the rails.
So he puts on his brave face, even though he’s doing a really terrible job at it. One guy isn’t going to destroy him. That’s not who Kendall Knight is.
Not anymore.
---
“Kendall?” Logan’s voice crackles over the landline. The bar’s always had a shitty connection.
“ No, sorry, this is Michael Bolton -“ Kendall divides his attention between the phone and a customer begging for a beer. He pops the cap off a Heineken and hands it over in one fluid motion, receiver balanced against his shoulder. “Dork. What do you want?”
“I’d like it if you worked on your manners, one of these days,” Logan replies petulantly.
Kendall rolls his eyes exaggeratedly enough that one of the college girls perched on a nearby stool chokes against laughter. Kendall winks at
her and intones, “Make it quick, Loginator. Daddy’s trying to bring you home some bacon.”
“That there is a visual,” Logan deadpans.
“You know it, little lady.”
“I’ll make sure to stick a pie in the oven. Listen, dude. I was on my way back from class and I passed one of those bodegas with all the I Love New York shit -“
Kendall begins humming New York, New York under his breath, stretching the phone cord to maneuver around Minerva so he can grab the whiskey. Minerva flips him off, ducking the tangle of beige wire when Kendall moves past her to top off an old-timer’s glass.
Over the din of the bar crowd and Kendall’s mumbled, start spreading the news, Kendall completely misses the rest of Logan’s story, right up
until he announces, “Wait, it’s on again.”
“What’s on again?”
“The song?”
“Oh, of course. The song.”
“You stopped listening to me,” Logan accuses.
“Honeybunch, I’d never.”
“Butt sauce,” Logan says prissily. “Quick, turn on Z100, before it’s over.”
“Sorry, not into Barbie dolls singing canned soup tunes.”
“Kendall,” Logan says seriously. “Turn it on.”
Sighing, Kendall drags the phone with him to the far corner of the bar, where the radio controls sit. He switches off Minerva’s hipster cool playlists of trendy songs no one else has ever heard of and dials over to FM.
Minerva issues a battle cry that starts with a bad word and ends with motherfucker, Knight. Kendall dutifully ignores her in favor of Logan and turning the dial towards New York’s Number One Shit Music Station.
In his ear, Logan’s telling him, “I heard it, and I thought the words were familiar. It took me a bit to figure out why but-“
Kendall stops on the station.
The melody is distantly familiar, like a strained cover version of something he used to love. He instantly hates the backtrack, but god, that voice - it’s beautiful.
A frat boy down near Minerva yells, “Hells yeah, this is my jam,” bounds off his seat and starts like, freaking twerking in full view of the street.
A couple of his friends join in.
“-it’s yours.”
“Sorry, what?” Kendall asks, wondering as one of the guys accidentally flashes some ass crack what exactly he did to deserve this life.
Outside the bar window, a group of girls in skyscraper heels whip out their camera phones, their mouths open in what must be mean laughter.
The song spikes a crescendo before launching into the final chorus. Kendall stills.
This time he listens when Logan informs him, “That’s why it sounds so familiar. The song. It’s yours.”
---
To Be Continued in an as of yet Unnamed Sequel
---
Aaaaand, art, by the lovely teh_emowaffle.