[fic] The Things That Keep Me Alive (Keep Me Alone) - 1/2
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About three weeks after the singing incident, James goes to a cattle call. It’s for a print ad, selling midrange perfume to buyers enraptured by the idea of old fashioned romance.
Obviously, modeling isn’t his first career choice.
Music means so much to him. It lives in his chest, fills him with a warm glow, like love, and sometimes the things it makes him feel spill over, out into the world, eyes wide, lips parted, like breathing too much, too deep.
But after what happened with Kendall, with Gustavo, he doesn’t think he can handle trying to sing for real, not ever again. A part of him thinks that maybe he just doesn’t deserve to be heard anymore.
Modeling is easier. He doesn’t usually have to do much more than stand there, malleable under the Cyclops eye of a camera, shutter flashing fast. No judgment. No heartbreak. Just a picture that will mean different things to different people.
Only, he can’t seem to land a job. He’s used to being one more face in a crowd of pretty faces now, and he waits, quiet, on one of the uncomfortable beige couches for his turn in front of the panel of people who have made this their life’s work; marketing beautiful boys with beautiful dreams to bored housewives.
He’s still three people behind the line when one of the other models, a blond boy with too-green eyes says, “You should stop that.”
“Stop what?”
“The twirling thing.”
He gestures to the way James’s thumb subconsciously curls into his ring finger on his right hand, spinning a silver band around and around and around, the cool metal smooth against his skin. James stills.
Smiling, the guy says, “It’s the only way I can tell that you’re nervous right now. You hide it well, on your face, but-“ he shrugs apologetically and continues, “It’s a tell. If they think you’re nervous, that’s all they’ll focus on. It’ll hurt your chances.”
James ends up going in before the blond boy. But he thinks about him while he stands in front of a no-nonsense couple in black suits, showing off his strut, saying a few lines from a script. He thinks about the green of his eyes and the way his smile dimpled and wonders what other tells he has.
He wonders if every stranger on the street can read him so easily. If they can see all the guilt and betrayal and hurt bubbling under his ribs, darkening his face whenever his smile slips.
He doesn’t get the job.
---
There was a boy Kendall met in the overgrown parking lot three blocks down from his job, from the hustle and bustle of the supermarket blaring a thousand nineties hits that would eventually make them famous.
He had dark hair and a wicked smile.
It wasn’t a big deal at first. Kendall had plenty of friends. James didn’t think anything of it when Kendall told him the story about this particular kid practicing field hockey alone in an empty lot. This kid with the best slapshot Kendall had ever seen. James had his own friends too, his own string of boys and girls who occupied his time with lips and hands and curved smiles.
Then Kendall began to skip out on their rituals, on Thursday pizza night at Carlos’s house, or Saturday movie night at Logan’s. He skipped out on Sunday afternoon hikes with James; on their weekly day of racing each other to the tops of hills where they would collapse and spend hours staring at the clouds and talking about their future. The shapes and the viscosity of cumulus and dreams.
Kendall finally introduced Mr. Best-Slapshot-In-The-World to them the day before James’s first school play. The one he’d snagged the lead role in after a year and two months of hard work. The one Kendall promised he’d come to.
Slapshot was gorgeous in a way that made James’s stomach clench. He stood so close to Kendall that their shoulders touched. James wanted to punch him in the face.
The next night, James rocked the play.
Kendall wasn’t there.
James never figured out if Slapshot was anything more than a friend to Kendall. They got in a fight about something, and Kendall was in a sour mood for an entire week. James was pushing leftover pizza around on his plate on a Saturday night, wondering if Kendall’s fits of sullen anger had broken yet, or if he was better off spending the evening watching terrible teen movies when he heard a rap on the door. Slapshot stood on his welcome mat, dripping with snow and staring at James so intensely he was scared he might catch fire.
He grabbed the front of James’s shirt and yanked him into a kiss.
James never really figured out what hit him.
---
“You’re coming.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“I don’t think you’re entitled to an opinion. You have to come.”
James sighs. He presses his forehead against the doorframe of his car and stares up at the sky. He just got off the morning shift from the restaurant, and he feels bone tired, exhaustion making his limbs drag.
It’s too bright, and he has to squint against the afternoon light, sweat pooling in the middle of his back.
He loves the sun and the cheer of California, but sometimes, all he wants is a really good storm. He wants the sky to rip open and pour down all its sorrows. He wants flashes of lightning. He wants to scream at the top of his lungs while thunder booms overhead, filling the hills and the valleys and the canyons with noise. But storms are rare in Southern California; something that only happens a handful of times every year. He rarely gets his wish.
He feels like all the sunshine is going to drive him insane.
“Camille, I don’t think-“
“James Diamond, do not make me come pick you up and drag you into the theater myself.”
“Please don’t.”
“The play’s only doing a three night run. You have to come. You have to, or- I’ll never forgive you.”
She’s joking, but he can tell by the way her laughter goes silent that she knows she’s said the wrong thing. The implication that he can’t afford to have one more person hold a grudge hangs static in the air between their cell phones.
“I’ll be there,” he promises, heart heavy in his chest.
“Good,” she chirps, trying to lighten the mood. “Bring a bouquet.”
“But you’re sure this is a good idea?” he asks in a hush, “They’re- um. No one else is coming?”
“No.”
“You’re positive.”
“I am. Look, worry about problems when they become problems, James,” Camille advises him. “If you don’t bring me flowers, that might be a problem.”
James tries to force a laugh, because that’s what she expects. He hangs up the phone and wonders what kind of person he is.
When Camille first told him about the play it was a pang in his chest, like heartache, like jealousy. Someone’s Hollywood dream is finally coming true, but it’s not his.
He had it.
Then he let it go.
---
When James hooked up with Kendall’s second serious girlfriend, it was an honest mistake.
Things with Slapshot had gotten freaky serious. James liked the way his mouth felt, the brush of stubble against his chin. He liked the friction they created when the front of their jeans rubbed together during a really heavy make out session, and it scared him. A lot.
James knew in a vague, distant way that he was in love with Kendall. He consciously recognized it in glimpses and flashes, laid bare in the images he saw on the back of his eyelids when his hand stroked his cock. But he hadn’t fully admitted it to himself. He thought of it as some nameless thing, pressing on his ribcage when he tried to sleep at night.
All the while he knew that there is a difference between things that are nameless and things that he was too scared to name.
So he understood that Kendall made him feel something, something hot and possessive that made his chest hurt. That he’d felt that way since before he really knew what love was. But the idea of getting off against another boy was completely foreign to him.
He wasn’t sure whether he liked it or not.
So he went out to this party, this football tailgate party where neither Kendall nor Slapshot was invited because the hockey team and the rest of the stupid jocks weren’t all that fond of each other. James didn’t care. He crashed parties all the time; he had an in with most of the female athletes in school.
At this party, he met a girl. She was a sweetheart. He also vaguely recognized that she was a cheerleader. Mostly because she was still wearing her uniform. She was also a total cocktease, with brilliant red hair and a gigantic smile. She flirted with James across the backyard bonfire all night. Finally, when he had enough beer in his stomach turning everything golden, James caught one of her red curls around his forefinger, tugging it gently.
“You’re cute.”
Her lips curved into a grin and she said, “I have a boyfriend.”
He glanced pointedly up and down her body, from the way her maroon skirt fluttered against her pale, creamy thighs to the haughty arch of her neck. “That’s too bad. Beautiful girl like you shouldn’t lock herself away with one guy.”
She laughed, one eyebrow arching. “Oh yeah?”
“No good?” James snorted, not really impressed with his lame pickup line either.
“It doesn’t exactly bring to mind visuals of the kind of guy who’s looking for a monogamous relationship.” Her mouth quirked. “Good thing I’m not looking for one.”
She let James fuck her on the shores of the local lake, sprawled across a picnic bench where families ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. It was exactly the distraction he needed.
Except two weeks later, they had the homecoming dance. Kendall introduced James to the girl he’d been with for a little over a month. James stared at her and remembered the way her blue eyes reflected the starlight. He couldn’t swallow back his nausea, not completely.
They took a limo to the dance, and when Pom Poms hopped out to go join her cheerleader friends, ignoring Kendall’s proffered hand, he turned to James.
“Milady,” Kendall said, eyes crinkled at the corners, sparkling. James let out a bark of laughter and took hold of his friend’s extended hand. It was just a stupid joke.
Except Kendall being Kendall had to take it one step too far. He lifted James’s hand to his mouth, lips pressing soft against the skin of James’s knuckles.
James realized right then that what he felt for Kendall wasn’t vague, distant, or nameless. It was love; intense, awful, and terrifying. It was something he’d been denying since the first day of preschool, since the moment that they met.
And he also began to understand that because Kendall was straight, because Kendall could never love him back, he had been doing his best to make him hurt.
With Kendall’s lips on his knuckles, the guilt James felt for banging his best friend’s girl washed away.
---
Camille’s good in the play. She’s really, ridiculously good.
James is glad she finally gets to showcase her talent to the world. It’s kind of nice to sit and watch, to let himself get pulled into another universe where none of his problems exist. At least, not for him.
It’s nice to spend two hours thinking about something other than Kendall or the things he’s done.
Some days it’s a gaping hole in his chest, some days it’s a tidal wave overflowing. A sick nostalgia he can’t fight against. He drowns in it, struggles and gasps for breath.
There’s this one memory James has, that he holds close to his chest. The band had just gone platinum. Late one night, James couldn’t sleep. Turned out, Kendall was the same; too excited by their success. They both had too much energy, too much frenetic happiness to play Xbox for very long. They ended up stealing a bottle of booze from the Palmwood’s room service kitchen. They drank it in the stairwell, halfway between the fifth floor and the roof. It was dark, and the danger of Bitters walking in on them was high, but that somehow made it better. Kendall’s knee was pressed tight to his, their heads bent close, their laughter free flowing.
It’s the last time James remembers being truly happy. He knows he should let it go.
Thing is, people hold on tightest to the memories of the people who hurt them the most. James is the same. He doesn’t know how to relinquish his hold on that sparkling, perfect moment. He can only loosen his grasp for hours at a time, like now, with Camille reciting her lines perfectly in front of him.
After the show’s over, he finds Camille in the lobby, still in costume. Finds might not be the right word. She comes flying at him with a shriek and a hug, crushing the fistful of flowers James brought between them.
“You came!”
He laughs into her carefully curled hair. “I said I would.”
“You did. But I’m still impressed.” She draws back from the hug to look James over, but then, weirdly, her face shifts. She yanks James back into the hug and says, “Don’t freak out.”
The second he hears the words, James freezes.
“I didn’t know they’d be here. I swear,” she hisses out of the side of her mouth. It’s not as inconspicuous as she seems to think. James pulls away, conducting a slow turn.
The first time James sees Kendall again, it’s like teetering on the edge of a cliff, a swift kick of nausea and fear in his stomach. His reaction is visceral, and it shouldn’t be. Just seeing another person shouldn’t be able to make him come undone.
Kendall notices him at almost exactly the same moment, and it’s like his face goes dark. Like somebody shut off all the lights behind his expression.
“At least he recognizes you,” Camille hisses, and James has never even considered that he wouldn’t. But it’s been five years, so yeah, there is that.
Logan’s standing right next to the blond, holding his arm, staring at James with wide eyes; a bunny trapped on the tracks of this imminent train wreck. James can barely muster up the interest to acknowledge him.
He’s hypnotized by Kendall, who looks so good. Better than good. He also looks pissed, but that’s pretty much been his default setting with James for the last five years.
They’ve only had two run-ins since he began his solo career. Once at the Sherwood Market on Christmas Eve, nearly six months after Kendall first stabbed him in the back. James was leaning against his car, wondering if he stared long enough, hard enough at the shopping cart lines, would the ghost of his younger self appear?
Instead he got Kendall, picking up a pie for his grandma. He walked right past James like he didn’t even exist, but James knew he saw him. He watched when Kendall climbed into his car, slumping against the steering wheel. His whole body shook, and James wanted to go to him. He wanted to hug him, but knew he’d only make things worse.
The second time was a party. Carlos’s idea.
Carlos had never really coped with the dissolution of James and Kendall’s friendship. He’d looked up to them both. What had gone down- James was pretty sure it had broken his heart.
The party didn’t work. Kendall walked in, saw James, and walked right back out. That’s all the contact they’ve had until this. Until now.
James stares at his former friend, shining, brilliant. He used to think that what they shared made them indivisible. Now it’s like Grand Canyon stretches between them.
He wants to walk across the opera house and say hi. He wants to run to the bathroom and puke his guts out in peace. Camille’s hand on his arm is stopping him from doing either.
A stranger comes up to Camille with a bouquet of roses in hand. She ignores him.
“James, you probably- shouldn’t.”
James agrees. James wholeheartedly agrees. He should not do this thing that he is thinking of doing. It would be the worst thing he could possibly do. But Kendall’s right there, his green-gray eyes radiant, and the thing is…James can’t not do this.
That would also be the worst thing he could possibly do.
Because he’s been dreaming (hopingwantingyearning) to talk to Kendall again, to hear words from his mouth that aren’t brutal and angry and full of so much blame. Kendall may still hate him. Kendall probably still hates him. But he doesn’t look nearly so fierce, so triumphant, so sad, as that day that he told James why exactly he was taking Gustavo up on his offer.
He can’t scream at James here, in a room full of people that don’t know him as anything other than a superstar. James pulls his arm free of Camille’s grasp, and from a distance he can see Kendall mirror the movement, yanking free of Logan’s viselike grip.
Camille snorts. “You’re a moron.”
He hears the rustle of her dress and tissue paper as she grabs the roses from the still waiting bystander and follows James towards his destination, towards the one person he’s alternately run to and from for his entire life.
Logan’s the one who talks first because Logan has this awful inability to keep his mouth shut in awkward situations. And it is most definitely awkward. Kendall is sizing James up, all menacing fury, and James has his hands shoved in the pockets of his dress slacks. He feels himself shrinking under the force of Kendall’s gaze.
“Um, we wanted to surprise you,” Logan tells Camille lamely. “Surprise!”
He shoves a bouquet at Camille. She smirks, accepting.
Kendall is the one who breaks their gaze first. He presses his fingertips into the hollows of his eyelids. James wants to kiss them, kiss the contours of his eyebrow and the flutter of his lashes; press his mouth to Kendall’s.
James also wants to knee him in the gut, steal his breath away, steal his voice; the way Kendall has impossibly stolen his. His hatred burns the same way his love always has.
More so, because somewhere deep inside, James knows that he still loves Kendall, so much he can’t stand it.
“Hi,” James says, because he can’t hold it back any longer. Logan gives him this weak smile, but Kendall- Kendall makes this face, like he’s sucking on his tongue and teeth and the inside of his lips, trying hard not to let anything real show. He squints up at the weak light filtering through the opera house’s chandelier.
He says, “You should probably. Go. Somewhere that isn’t here.”
Camille is quick to say, “James, no,” and now Logan is looking at him with something like pity, cringing sympathy as what Kendall has said bites into him.
James doesn’t like that look, because most of the time he treats Logan and Carlos like he’s lost them in the break up, but he knows it’s not true. He knows if he picked up the phone and called them, they’d answer. All he can remember whenever his finger poises trembling over their numbers, still on speed dial, is the way they looked at him after things had gone down with Jo.
Like he was vile.
Like every bad thing he’d ever thought about himself was actually true.
Kind of like the way Kendall’s looking at him now.
So James doesn’t listen to Camille. He tries to smile, and he shrugs a little apology towards her, even as she tells him, “Stop. You don’t have to- James!”
He’s already walking away. He can hear Camille yelling at Kendall now; something about ruining her play, and he feels awful, but not awful enough to turn back. Kendall wants him to leave, so he’s leaving.
James doesn’t want to challenge him. Not anymore.
During the whole of their friendship, they’d made a game of it. Of pushing each other to see how far they could really go. No matter how many times they crossed the line, they’d always take each other back with open arms.
At least, James would. He always accepted Kendall for who he was, did his best to love his flaws as much as he could. He thought Kendall was part of the game too. He thought Kendall was always going to be standing there, forgiving him.
Sometimes he tries to dismiss what he did as teenage stupidity. But the truth is that it had nothing to do with being young. He’s still young. He forgets, sometimes, because people put so much pressure on twenty somethings to grow the fuck up, to accept age and responsibility and maturity. But he’s still young, barely a sapling in a forest. He has so much life left to live.
And age has nothing to do with the mistakes he’s made; he was just careless. He knew what the consequences of his actions would be, abstractly, but James had never had to deal with that kind of thing in reality. He’d never had to deal with real betrayal or rejection outside of his family, and then it was all just a distant, familiar ache.
When he was finally faced with what he’d done, it was a punch to the face, sharp and stinging. He could still feel it now, years later, burning on his cheekbone, sore in his gut. Until that moment, he hadn’t realized how mistrust and suspicion were building. How Kendall was starting to weigh the pros and cons of their friendship against the impossible idea of ending it.
The day James pushed too far, Kendall pushed right back. And it turned out that, yeah, there was a line James couldn’t forgive him for crossing.
They were both careless. But Kendall could live with the consequences, is living with them. James isn’t handling it nearly as well.
He’s still stupid, still stumbling. With his friendships. With the people who try to get close, who he ends up pushing away, keeping at an arm’s length. Like the girl, the one at the restaurant who likes him. It would be so easy for James to say yes, to go on a date with her. To just lean over and kiss her.
The idea of it disgusts him. And he knows that is a kind of carelessness. Rejecting love when it is so freely given.
James leaves the opera house going ninety miles an hour. His apartment overlooks Mulholland, the winding streets thick with jacaranda and hyacinth, the walkways lined with birds of paradise. He has one huge picture window that lets him look down on the whole of Hollywood, on the greater Los Angeles area stretching out like some great oil spill strung with Christmas lights, twinkling on a shadow.
Taking the streets so fast is dangerous. Stupid. Careless.
James doesn’t care.
He steps on the pedal, turns up the music, and screams at the top of his lungs.
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Part Two