[fic] Tell Me You Love Me - 1/1
Title: Tell Me You Love Me (Only For Tonight)
Author:
garnetice
Pairing: Kendall/James
Rating: M
Word Count: 2,973
Warnings: Sex. Sex sex dubcon sex angst sex.
Disclaimer: BTR: not mine.
Summary: This is his punishment. He gets to have exactly what he’s always wanted, without ever actually having it at all. James will use him up. He’ll burn Kendall from the inside out, make him beg and plead and curse. Then, with his bereft eyes and angry snarls, he’ll leave.
Author's Notes: I'm so impressed with myself right now. I started writing this as a surprise present for jblostfan16 about eighty thousand years ago and pretty much resigned myself to never finishing it because lord knows, I've put nothing out for ages. I've opened it once or twice in the past year like MAYBE but always ended with NO. And yet tonight, I finished it. How the fuck? Anyway, I know BTR is like barely a thing anymore, and I'm not especially confident in my rusty writing skills, but here, have a thing. (Which remains, as ever, for Chris, even though she fucking disappeared off the face of the earth and I'm insanely mad at her for doing it precisely when my life decided to implode and I needed my best friend/worried as fuck.) Wherever you are, bb, I hope you still like porn.
---
“Strip,” he says.
There isn’t any hesitance in his voice, only steely determination.
Kendall’s heart pounds. He does as he’s told, glaring at James as insolently as he dares while his boxers drop to the floor. James reclines back on the monstrosity of a bed, pillowing his head on his arms. He’s already naked, his pants folded neatly across the delicately latticed back of a chair, a t-shirt laying haphazardly on top of it. Kendall nearly tripped over James’s boots when he first came in the door.
“Nice place,” Kendall says idly, trying to distract himself from how wrong this all is.
“I didn’t tell you to talk,” James replies harshly. His eyes are slitted with annoyance to match his hard words, nothing at all like the velvety sweet tone he takes with girls. But Kendall pretends there’s something vulnerable at the edges of his face, something uncertain and scared.
His imagination’s all he’s got left of the way James used to be.
Undressed and shivering, Kendall waits. But not for long.
James commands, “Make me come.”
Anticipating the game, he spreads his knees apart a few inches, so that Kendall can follow the stretch of James’s skin all the way up his thighs, into dark crevices where he’s not allowed to touch. Kendall licks his lips and tries not to think about all the things he can’t have.
Obediently, he kneels on the bedspread, crawling over James until he’s straddling his hips.
The comforter is down. Feather quills stick at Kendall’s knees.
James reaches around to probe behind Kendall, but Kendall stills his hand. Tersely, he says, “I took care of it.”
James’s eyes boggle. “In the elevator?”
“In my car.”
He thinks of the wet concrete in the parking garage, spreading himself apart and imagining it was James. The old James. The real James. The one Kendall betrayed three years prior. James hasn’t treated him with an ounce of kindness since, but still, Kendall fantasizes about gentle fingers and coaxing kisses.
It’s a dumb daydream. Its dumbness doesn’t stop Kendall from hoping, so endlessly and so hard.
He has to be able to fix what he has done. He has to.
His desperation is laughable. Kendall knew when he quit the band to take up a position in the NHL that James would be devastated. He did it anyway. This is his reward.
This is his punishment. He gets to have exactly what he’s always wanted, without ever actually having it at all.
James will use him up. He’ll burn Kendall from the inside out, make him beg and plead and curse. Then, with his bereft eyes and angry snarls, he’ll leave.
It never stops hurting.
One of their phones buzzes against the hard wood of the hotel dresser. James’s, Kendall thinks. He always tries to make sure his own is on silent, these days.
James knows it, too. He says, “Hurry up.” He says it exactly like a command.
Quietly, Kendall takes James in hand and inches down his dick, never once meeting his eyes. He’s loose from the lube, from stretching himself wide, fueled on by his fantasies. James groans, but he doesn’t move. He keeps his hands folded behind his head instead of gripping Kendall’s waist. He doesn’t thrust up as Kendall rides him, slow. He is indifferent and cold.
If this was Kendall’s fantasy, James would be touching him, gasping his name, clutching him closer. He would crane up to kiss Kendall’s mouth sloppy and open, and when he let go, gasping for breath, he’d be staring into Kendall’s eyes, like he was more precious than the fame or the money or everything he’d lost.
But this is not Kendall’s narrative to control. Except for the contact between their hips, they’re barely touching. They are machines, they are strangers, but Kendall still bites his lip and tries not to moan, because even looking at the canvas of James’s chest makes him harder.
He focuses on other things, like the spindly stalks of the orchids in the corner, wending their way up against plastic rods. Their blossoms lay in shadow; blue, black, and purple silhouettes turning them sinister instead of lovely.
It’s a decent distraction until James commands, “Look at me,” a little ragged, a little off-key. His ribs heave beneath skin. Sweat pools in his collarbone. James fucks up into Kendall with a pained expression, like he doesn’t mean to, and suddenly it’s all so much less mechanical.
Outside, thunderheads bristle with lightning. Hot yellow-white flashes split the sky the way James splits Kendall in halves. His best friend, his worst enemy. Kendall is the one who made them what they are to each other now, breakable things, toys to damage and destroy.
He can’t stand what he’s done, and still, and still, his heart pounds for James.
Kendall swallows thick around a lump of self-loathing, bearing down on James’s cock. In return, James frowns up at him with alien eyes and doesn’t say anything at all. But he’s watching.
Kendall didn’t realize until now that his gaze was so intense, zeroed in on the plush of his lips, the jut of his nipples, the heft of his dick.
Kendall forces himself to slow down, to squeeze around James every time he takes him deep. He watches the flutter of James’s eyelashes and the jumping muscle in his clenched jaw. James wears the weight of galaxies on his shoulders, the great burden hinted at in his eyes - made of starlight - and his arms - straining with muscle, even when he has nothing to carry.
Once upon a time, Kendall would bend over backwards to make things right, but that’s not his job anymore.
Suddenly he’s so upset he can’t bear it. Love screams and howls with gale force winds against his bones, asking why and how and if this will ever end. James so close but so far, distant and uncaring. It’s been going on too long.
Kendall rolls off of James without being told to, the sudden emptiness aching. He collapses back against the comforter, his head down near James’s feet, and announces, “I can’t do this anymore.”
He sounds, in a word, shattered.
“Oh?” James demands, his voice dangerously low, his cock shiny, red, laid out against his belly. Kendall would climb back on him in a second if he thought James would appreciate it.
But that’s the entire point, isn’t it? James hasn’t appreciated a damned thing Kendall’s done since the day he left Big Time Rush. No amount of regret or begging or sexual favors is going to change that.
“This is fucked. We’re fucked,” Kendall tells him, ignoring the catch in his own voice. He’s not a trembling. Trembling isn’t a thing Kendall knows how to do.
If only someone would tell his hands that. He inches his body towards the end of the bed, working up the courage to sit up. It doesn’t take long; he does, because he has to. Because Kendall is brave. Everybody says so.
James isn’t saying anything. His reflection in the window is spun of evening, of the electric light of Hollywood, and even that doesn’t drown out his grimace. Kendall winces, refusing to look at the real thing.
He needs his pants.
Adult conversations are easier to have while wearing pants, surely.
“I’m sorry. We’re done,” he continues, emphatic. He is sorry. He’s so sorry. “I know you probably don’t get it, but.”
“Explain it to me.” James’s voice is husky, scratched as a broken record. He sounds pissed.
What right does he have? They’re best friends. Best friends don’t do this to each other, don’t use each other or betray each other, or.
Oh. Wait. Kendall almost forgot that this whole thing is his fault. James has a right. James has all the rights.
“What is there to explain?” He asks helplessly. “I want you so bad. I’ve always - Do you know what it’s like, wanting a person so much? I choke on it,” Kendall says, words cracking like a sob. “I’m drowning in it, I’ve been drowning in it, and it was okay when I knew I could have you, but this is - I can’t. I’m dying, James. You’re killing me.”
Outside, the hills blur, lights haloed and bleeding into each other. James growls, “You can’t say that. You don’t want me-“
“I do!” Kendall swivels on the bed, meets James’s angry gaze because how dare he? “I want you, of course I want you. I want you when I’m playing hockey, I want you when I’m home, I want you when I hear you on the radio, or when I’m singing in my car, or when I’m doing something stupid and dumb and there’s no one I’d rather have by my side. I want you so much I can’t take it, all the time, and especially when we’re together, alone, and James. It’s breaking my heart that you don’t want me.”
He has to duck his eyes at the last part, crushed by the admission, by how much he fucked everything up. If he could take it all back he would, because even though hockey is his life, he doesn’t feel like his life means all that much without James. It’s a stupid, naive way of thinking, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
Love’s like that; innocent in the face of agony, persistent when it’s drowning in despair. Love exists for dreamers and fools, and Kendall will never stop being both of those things. He scoots off the bed and clutches the air conditioning unit, icy beneath his fingers, eyes squeezed shut. He needs the clarity, the cool.
When he hears James’s weight shift across the bed, Kendall figures that this is it. James will leave, exactly like he always does, and next time they’re in the same town, there won’t be a courtesy booty call or even a hello.
What he does not expect are James’s fingers at his sides. He can’t remember the last time James touched him when they weren’t connected at the hips.
That, more than anything, shatters him to pieces.
“I’m sorry,” Kendall pants again, meeker than he knew he could be. “I’m really, really fucking sorry.”
James shakes his head, inscrutable. He says, “No,” and he says, “Stop it.”
“But-“
“I don’t want your apologies. You-“ He takes a breath, deep, calming, completely ineffectual. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Kendall isn’t sure whether the noise that spills from his lips is surprise or dissent. “I left.”
“To chase your dream,” James says, and for the first time Kendall notices the disgust in his voice when he says that isn’t directed outward. “I’m - selfish. And petty. I know that. And you.” James’s reflection looks pretty firmly ashamed of himself, and more earnest than Kendall has seen him in ages. He asks, “Do you remember the first time we…did this?”
He gestures vaguely around the hotel room, in case Kendall didn’t catch his meaning.
Kendall did.
The first time he saw James after leaving, everything was wrong. James wouldn’t react to anything he said, wouldn’t smile, wouldn’t laugh, wouldn’t even shout. He drank his milkshake despondently while Carlos and Logan talked over each other to be heard, and it was like James had faded into a paper-thin shade of the guy Kendall knew.
It escalated later, in the bathroom of this shady diner, aluminum plating and the sun blindingly bright in the windows. Kendall yelled so loud he knew the whole restaurant could hear him, asked what James wanted from him, offered to run the whole of LA in his boxers.
He was halfway to unbuckling his jeans, and something in James’s face changed then, shut down, locked tight. He said, “If you’re going to go naked, you do it for me.”
That stopped him in his tracks. He marched out of the place, seething, but that wasn’t the end of it. A few months after he’d made the lineup for the Wild, he was on his first real vacation since leaving the band, hoarding a handful of days all to himself. His base instinct, the only thing he wanted to do with his free time, was hop a flight to LA.
So he did.
James hadn’t picked up any of his calls since the day he’d left and Kendall’s never been great at letting sleeping dogs lie. He haggled James’s new address out of Kelly via a sushi lunch and a promise to visit Gustavo while he was in town. Bullying his way into James’s gated community was more of hassle, but he managed.
The best part of the escapade was James’s face when he opened the door, slack-jawed and wondering for all of point two seconds before fury overtook the surprise.
They argued. James shoved him. Kendall shoved right back.
He wasn’t entire surprised when they moved from violence to ripping each other’s clothes off, but it was a thing that happened. It was the best thing and the worst thing that Kendall ever experienced. He’d never been with anyone other than Jo, or that one drunken time with Lucy. A guy was new. James was new.
And he treated Kendall like he was disposable. Like an escort, or a prostitute, or some guy he picked up off the street and would never see again. The entire time, Kendall was falling in love, but James couldn’t even meet his eyes.
Now, James turns Kendall, lifts his chin until he has no choice but to look up. Their gazes lock, James’s eyes deep, lust-darkened, agonized. “I was in love with you.”
The words burn.
“No,” Kendall replies sharply, shaking himself free. “You didn’t. You couldn’t have.”
“I did.” He’s speaking levelly, measured as anything, regret flooding his voice. “I should never have treated you that way.”
Kendall doesn’t know what to say. It’s not okay, but it is sparking through his veins, making his insides dance.
“How long?” He asks, more tentative than he’s used to being. He’s always second guessing himself around James.
“How long have I loved you?” James laughs, bitter. “Forever.”
“Forever?” Kendall asks, “Forever forever?”
“Since we were kids,” he admits, something new and strange darting across his features. Or maybe not so new, and not so strange. Maybe
Kendall had just never noticed it before. “Since before I remember.”
“That’s-“ Kendall pauses, the words dying on his tongue. “Loved?”
“Love,” James corrects. He steps in closer, inhabiting Kendall’s orbit. “Did you really finger yourself in the parking garage?” He asks in a huff, exertion and wonder playing out over his face.
“Sure,” Kendall replies shamelessly, without thinking.
James groans and buries his head against Kendall’s neck, kissing open mouthed against his throat, the hinge of his jaw, his collarbone.
It’s new, it’s electric. It’s what he’s always wanted.
Kendall knows they have to talk, and he knows that there’s a lot to forgive between them. He knows that kissing James is a stupid, rash decision. But he’s naked and half-hard, and the guy he’s been in love with for years actually loves him back.
He bounds up on the balls of his feet and smushes their mouths together before he can do something stupid, like think about it.
James’s reaction is immediate, irrepressible. He marks Kendall in rainbow colors, black as hate, red as love. His mouth and his hands burn into Kendall’s skin, and even when he’s touching Kendall’s hips it feels a lot like he’s teasing his dick.
And it’s fucking incredible. Up until now, loving James has hurt. It has hurt in his heart, in his fingers and his toes. In his thighs, his elbows, and his bones. It has hurt so long and so badly that Kendall has been exhausted, every waking moment too tired to even function. But now he comes alive, something stirring in his veins, making his blood pump too hard, but this is a better kind of pain.
Sweeter, somehow. Anticipatory.
He kisses Jams until he can’t breathe, until the only thing he can taste is stubble and tongue and the hot drag of James’s exhalations, and then he drops to his knees, because when they’re kissing he can’t think, can’t process, can’t figure out how he’s abruptly become so lucky.
James’s cock is heavy and bitter on Kendall’s tongue, but the growl that tears from his mouth makes it worth it. He runs his tongue along the shaft of James’s dick while he slides his lips over it, sucking him in and then pushing him slowly away.
It works until it doesn’t, until James tugs roughly at his head and says, “Kendall,” in a way that sounds too many kinds of broken.
Kendall understands exactly what he’s supposed to do. He climbs to his feet and turns his body against the breath-frosted glass of the window, now too foggy to see anything but the dim reflection of their naked bodies. He lets James back inside of him, but this time James’s hands are on his stomach. This time, James’s lips are on his neck.
When they come, they come together, with whispered pleas of, “I love you,” and, “I’m sorry,” that don’t quite make everything alright. They’ve been idiots about love, Kendall thinks.
But everyone is. It makes people into liars, to murderers, to thieves. And he knows exactly why, knows what it feels like to burn with it, to drown in it, to live without it ever being returned. He knows how much that fucking hurts.
Only, when love is returned? When the person you fucking adore looks you in the eyes and breathes your name…?
It’s worth it.
“Kendall,” James murmurs, pulling him closer, hugging him tighter, warming him from his fingers to his toes.
See? James will always be worth it.
---
Author:
garnetice
Pairing: Kendall/James
Rating: M
Word Count: 2,973
Warnings: Sex. Sex sex dubcon sex angst sex.
Disclaimer: BTR: not mine.
Summary: This is his punishment. He gets to have exactly what he’s always wanted, without ever actually having it at all. James will use him up. He’ll burn Kendall from the inside out, make him beg and plead and curse. Then, with his bereft eyes and angry snarls, he’ll leave.
Author's Notes: I'm so impressed with myself right now. I started writing this as a surprise present for jblostfan16 about eighty thousand years ago and pretty much resigned myself to never finishing it because lord knows, I've put nothing out for ages. I've opened it once or twice in the past year like MAYBE but always ended with NO. And yet tonight, I finished it. How the fuck? Anyway, I know BTR is like barely a thing anymore, and I'm not especially confident in my rusty writing skills, but here, have a thing. (Which remains, as ever, for Chris, even though she fucking disappeared off the face of the earth and I'm insanely mad at her for doing it precisely when my life decided to implode and I needed my best friend/worried as fuck.) Wherever you are, bb, I hope you still like porn.
---
“Strip,” he says.
There isn’t any hesitance in his voice, only steely determination.
Kendall’s heart pounds. He does as he’s told, glaring at James as insolently as he dares while his boxers drop to the floor. James reclines back on the monstrosity of a bed, pillowing his head on his arms. He’s already naked, his pants folded neatly across the delicately latticed back of a chair, a t-shirt laying haphazardly on top of it. Kendall nearly tripped over James’s boots when he first came in the door.
“Nice place,” Kendall says idly, trying to distract himself from how wrong this all is.
“I didn’t tell you to talk,” James replies harshly. His eyes are slitted with annoyance to match his hard words, nothing at all like the velvety sweet tone he takes with girls. But Kendall pretends there’s something vulnerable at the edges of his face, something uncertain and scared.
His imagination’s all he’s got left of the way James used to be.
Undressed and shivering, Kendall waits. But not for long.
James commands, “Make me come.”
Anticipating the game, he spreads his knees apart a few inches, so that Kendall can follow the stretch of James’s skin all the way up his thighs, into dark crevices where he’s not allowed to touch. Kendall licks his lips and tries not to think about all the things he can’t have.
Obediently, he kneels on the bedspread, crawling over James until he’s straddling his hips.
The comforter is down. Feather quills stick at Kendall’s knees.
James reaches around to probe behind Kendall, but Kendall stills his hand. Tersely, he says, “I took care of it.”
James’s eyes boggle. “In the elevator?”
“In my car.”
He thinks of the wet concrete in the parking garage, spreading himself apart and imagining it was James. The old James. The real James. The one Kendall betrayed three years prior. James hasn’t treated him with an ounce of kindness since, but still, Kendall fantasizes about gentle fingers and coaxing kisses.
It’s a dumb daydream. Its dumbness doesn’t stop Kendall from hoping, so endlessly and so hard.
He has to be able to fix what he has done. He has to.
His desperation is laughable. Kendall knew when he quit the band to take up a position in the NHL that James would be devastated. He did it anyway. This is his reward.
This is his punishment. He gets to have exactly what he’s always wanted, without ever actually having it at all.
James will use him up. He’ll burn Kendall from the inside out, make him beg and plead and curse. Then, with his bereft eyes and angry snarls, he’ll leave.
It never stops hurting.
One of their phones buzzes against the hard wood of the hotel dresser. James’s, Kendall thinks. He always tries to make sure his own is on silent, these days.
James knows it, too. He says, “Hurry up.” He says it exactly like a command.
Quietly, Kendall takes James in hand and inches down his dick, never once meeting his eyes. He’s loose from the lube, from stretching himself wide, fueled on by his fantasies. James groans, but he doesn’t move. He keeps his hands folded behind his head instead of gripping Kendall’s waist. He doesn’t thrust up as Kendall rides him, slow. He is indifferent and cold.
If this was Kendall’s fantasy, James would be touching him, gasping his name, clutching him closer. He would crane up to kiss Kendall’s mouth sloppy and open, and when he let go, gasping for breath, he’d be staring into Kendall’s eyes, like he was more precious than the fame or the money or everything he’d lost.
But this is not Kendall’s narrative to control. Except for the contact between their hips, they’re barely touching. They are machines, they are strangers, but Kendall still bites his lip and tries not to moan, because even looking at the canvas of James’s chest makes him harder.
He focuses on other things, like the spindly stalks of the orchids in the corner, wending their way up against plastic rods. Their blossoms lay in shadow; blue, black, and purple silhouettes turning them sinister instead of lovely.
It’s a decent distraction until James commands, “Look at me,” a little ragged, a little off-key. His ribs heave beneath skin. Sweat pools in his collarbone. James fucks up into Kendall with a pained expression, like he doesn’t mean to, and suddenly it’s all so much less mechanical.
Outside, thunderheads bristle with lightning. Hot yellow-white flashes split the sky the way James splits Kendall in halves. His best friend, his worst enemy. Kendall is the one who made them what they are to each other now, breakable things, toys to damage and destroy.
He can’t stand what he’s done, and still, and still, his heart pounds for James.
Kendall swallows thick around a lump of self-loathing, bearing down on James’s cock. In return, James frowns up at him with alien eyes and doesn’t say anything at all. But he’s watching.
Kendall didn’t realize until now that his gaze was so intense, zeroed in on the plush of his lips, the jut of his nipples, the heft of his dick.
Kendall forces himself to slow down, to squeeze around James every time he takes him deep. He watches the flutter of James’s eyelashes and the jumping muscle in his clenched jaw. James wears the weight of galaxies on his shoulders, the great burden hinted at in his eyes - made of starlight - and his arms - straining with muscle, even when he has nothing to carry.
Once upon a time, Kendall would bend over backwards to make things right, but that’s not his job anymore.
Suddenly he’s so upset he can’t bear it. Love screams and howls with gale force winds against his bones, asking why and how and if this will ever end. James so close but so far, distant and uncaring. It’s been going on too long.
Kendall rolls off of James without being told to, the sudden emptiness aching. He collapses back against the comforter, his head down near James’s feet, and announces, “I can’t do this anymore.”
He sounds, in a word, shattered.
“Oh?” James demands, his voice dangerously low, his cock shiny, red, laid out against his belly. Kendall would climb back on him in a second if he thought James would appreciate it.
But that’s the entire point, isn’t it? James hasn’t appreciated a damned thing Kendall’s done since the day he left Big Time Rush. No amount of regret or begging or sexual favors is going to change that.
“This is fucked. We’re fucked,” Kendall tells him, ignoring the catch in his own voice. He’s not a trembling. Trembling isn’t a thing Kendall knows how to do.
If only someone would tell his hands that. He inches his body towards the end of the bed, working up the courage to sit up. It doesn’t take long; he does, because he has to. Because Kendall is brave. Everybody says so.
James isn’t saying anything. His reflection in the window is spun of evening, of the electric light of Hollywood, and even that doesn’t drown out his grimace. Kendall winces, refusing to look at the real thing.
He needs his pants.
Adult conversations are easier to have while wearing pants, surely.
“I’m sorry. We’re done,” he continues, emphatic. He is sorry. He’s so sorry. “I know you probably don’t get it, but.”
“Explain it to me.” James’s voice is husky, scratched as a broken record. He sounds pissed.
What right does he have? They’re best friends. Best friends don’t do this to each other, don’t use each other or betray each other, or.
Oh. Wait. Kendall almost forgot that this whole thing is his fault. James has a right. James has all the rights.
“What is there to explain?” He asks helplessly. “I want you so bad. I’ve always - Do you know what it’s like, wanting a person so much? I choke on it,” Kendall says, words cracking like a sob. “I’m drowning in it, I’ve been drowning in it, and it was okay when I knew I could have you, but this is - I can’t. I’m dying, James. You’re killing me.”
Outside, the hills blur, lights haloed and bleeding into each other. James growls, “You can’t say that. You don’t want me-“
“I do!” Kendall swivels on the bed, meets James’s angry gaze because how dare he? “I want you, of course I want you. I want you when I’m playing hockey, I want you when I’m home, I want you when I hear you on the radio, or when I’m singing in my car, or when I’m doing something stupid and dumb and there’s no one I’d rather have by my side. I want you so much I can’t take it, all the time, and especially when we’re together, alone, and James. It’s breaking my heart that you don’t want me.”
He has to duck his eyes at the last part, crushed by the admission, by how much he fucked everything up. If he could take it all back he would, because even though hockey is his life, he doesn’t feel like his life means all that much without James. It’s a stupid, naive way of thinking, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
Love’s like that; innocent in the face of agony, persistent when it’s drowning in despair. Love exists for dreamers and fools, and Kendall will never stop being both of those things. He scoots off the bed and clutches the air conditioning unit, icy beneath his fingers, eyes squeezed shut. He needs the clarity, the cool.
When he hears James’s weight shift across the bed, Kendall figures that this is it. James will leave, exactly like he always does, and next time they’re in the same town, there won’t be a courtesy booty call or even a hello.
What he does not expect are James’s fingers at his sides. He can’t remember the last time James touched him when they weren’t connected at the hips.
That, more than anything, shatters him to pieces.
“I’m sorry,” Kendall pants again, meeker than he knew he could be. “I’m really, really fucking sorry.”
James shakes his head, inscrutable. He says, “No,” and he says, “Stop it.”
“But-“
“I don’t want your apologies. You-“ He takes a breath, deep, calming, completely ineffectual. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Kendall isn’t sure whether the noise that spills from his lips is surprise or dissent. “I left.”
“To chase your dream,” James says, and for the first time Kendall notices the disgust in his voice when he says that isn’t directed outward. “I’m - selfish. And petty. I know that. And you.” James’s reflection looks pretty firmly ashamed of himself, and more earnest than Kendall has seen him in ages. He asks, “Do you remember the first time we…did this?”
He gestures vaguely around the hotel room, in case Kendall didn’t catch his meaning.
Kendall did.
The first time he saw James after leaving, everything was wrong. James wouldn’t react to anything he said, wouldn’t smile, wouldn’t laugh, wouldn’t even shout. He drank his milkshake despondently while Carlos and Logan talked over each other to be heard, and it was like James had faded into a paper-thin shade of the guy Kendall knew.
It escalated later, in the bathroom of this shady diner, aluminum plating and the sun blindingly bright in the windows. Kendall yelled so loud he knew the whole restaurant could hear him, asked what James wanted from him, offered to run the whole of LA in his boxers.
He was halfway to unbuckling his jeans, and something in James’s face changed then, shut down, locked tight. He said, “If you’re going to go naked, you do it for me.”
That stopped him in his tracks. He marched out of the place, seething, but that wasn’t the end of it. A few months after he’d made the lineup for the Wild, he was on his first real vacation since leaving the band, hoarding a handful of days all to himself. His base instinct, the only thing he wanted to do with his free time, was hop a flight to LA.
So he did.
James hadn’t picked up any of his calls since the day he’d left and Kendall’s never been great at letting sleeping dogs lie. He haggled James’s new address out of Kelly via a sushi lunch and a promise to visit Gustavo while he was in town. Bullying his way into James’s gated community was more of hassle, but he managed.
The best part of the escapade was James’s face when he opened the door, slack-jawed and wondering for all of point two seconds before fury overtook the surprise.
They argued. James shoved him. Kendall shoved right back.
He wasn’t entire surprised when they moved from violence to ripping each other’s clothes off, but it was a thing that happened. It was the best thing and the worst thing that Kendall ever experienced. He’d never been with anyone other than Jo, or that one drunken time with Lucy. A guy was new. James was new.
And he treated Kendall like he was disposable. Like an escort, or a prostitute, or some guy he picked up off the street and would never see again. The entire time, Kendall was falling in love, but James couldn’t even meet his eyes.
Now, James turns Kendall, lifts his chin until he has no choice but to look up. Their gazes lock, James’s eyes deep, lust-darkened, agonized. “I was in love with you.”
The words burn.
“No,” Kendall replies sharply, shaking himself free. “You didn’t. You couldn’t have.”
“I did.” He’s speaking levelly, measured as anything, regret flooding his voice. “I should never have treated you that way.”
Kendall doesn’t know what to say. It’s not okay, but it is sparking through his veins, making his insides dance.
“How long?” He asks, more tentative than he’s used to being. He’s always second guessing himself around James.
“How long have I loved you?” James laughs, bitter. “Forever.”
“Forever?” Kendall asks, “Forever forever?”
“Since we were kids,” he admits, something new and strange darting across his features. Or maybe not so new, and not so strange. Maybe
Kendall had just never noticed it before. “Since before I remember.”
“That’s-“ Kendall pauses, the words dying on his tongue. “Loved?”
“Love,” James corrects. He steps in closer, inhabiting Kendall’s orbit. “Did you really finger yourself in the parking garage?” He asks in a huff, exertion and wonder playing out over his face.
“Sure,” Kendall replies shamelessly, without thinking.
James groans and buries his head against Kendall’s neck, kissing open mouthed against his throat, the hinge of his jaw, his collarbone.
It’s new, it’s electric. It’s what he’s always wanted.
Kendall knows they have to talk, and he knows that there’s a lot to forgive between them. He knows that kissing James is a stupid, rash decision. But he’s naked and half-hard, and the guy he’s been in love with for years actually loves him back.
He bounds up on the balls of his feet and smushes their mouths together before he can do something stupid, like think about it.
James’s reaction is immediate, irrepressible. He marks Kendall in rainbow colors, black as hate, red as love. His mouth and his hands burn into Kendall’s skin, and even when he’s touching Kendall’s hips it feels a lot like he’s teasing his dick.
And it’s fucking incredible. Up until now, loving James has hurt. It has hurt in his heart, in his fingers and his toes. In his thighs, his elbows, and his bones. It has hurt so long and so badly that Kendall has been exhausted, every waking moment too tired to even function. But now he comes alive, something stirring in his veins, making his blood pump too hard, but this is a better kind of pain.
Sweeter, somehow. Anticipatory.
He kisses Jams until he can’t breathe, until the only thing he can taste is stubble and tongue and the hot drag of James’s exhalations, and then he drops to his knees, because when they’re kissing he can’t think, can’t process, can’t figure out how he’s abruptly become so lucky.
James’s cock is heavy and bitter on Kendall’s tongue, but the growl that tears from his mouth makes it worth it. He runs his tongue along the shaft of James’s dick while he slides his lips over it, sucking him in and then pushing him slowly away.
It works until it doesn’t, until James tugs roughly at his head and says, “Kendall,” in a way that sounds too many kinds of broken.
Kendall understands exactly what he’s supposed to do. He climbs to his feet and turns his body against the breath-frosted glass of the window, now too foggy to see anything but the dim reflection of their naked bodies. He lets James back inside of him, but this time James’s hands are on his stomach. This time, James’s lips are on his neck.
When they come, they come together, with whispered pleas of, “I love you,” and, “I’m sorry,” that don’t quite make everything alright. They’ve been idiots about love, Kendall thinks.
But everyone is. It makes people into liars, to murderers, to thieves. And he knows exactly why, knows what it feels like to burn with it, to drown in it, to live without it ever being returned. He knows how much that fucking hurts.
Only, when love is returned? When the person you fucking adore looks you in the eyes and breathes your name…?
It’s worth it.
“Kendall,” James murmurs, pulling him closer, hugging him tighter, warming him from his fingers to his toes.
See? James will always be worth it.
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