[fic] Patrón On Ice - 1/1
Title: Patrón On Ice
Author: garnetice
Pairing: Kendall/James/Camille
Rating: T
Word Count: 8,038
Warnings: Underage drinking, a lot of awkward
Summary: James doesn’t get it. He doesn’t do this. He’s never anything but charming and awesome. Those are his default settings. So what even?
Disclaimer: BTR is not mine.
Author's Notes: Prompt fill for queenitsy , who is pretty much one of my all time favorite authors in this fandom. She wanted: Kendall/James/Camille, (awkward) first date as a trio. :D? This probably doesn't quite fit what she asked for...um. I hope she likes it anyway? I'm a little eh on the middle parts, but you can only stare at a story for so long before throwing your computer at the wall seems like a better alternative to posting. I love my laptop. Therefore, I'm posting. Many, many thanks to the lovely, fantastic breila_rose for beta-ing this for me and assuring me it's not completely awful. Titled for the song Whatever You Like by Anya Marina. Or by T.I., if you're a purist, but the Anya Marina version makes me think of threesomes.
---
“Getting ready for your date?”
James frowns at Kendall’s reflection in the mirror, still in the midst of deciding between shirts. He feels like the lime green is better for summer, and ice blue makes his complexion look nice, but he’s always amazing in black. It’s a definite toss up, here. He doesn’t have time to focus on Kendall’s stupid smirky face right now. But-
“It’s not a date.”
“Then you should probably tone down the manspray. Either way.” Kendall wrinkles his nose and says, “You don’t want to drown the poor girl.”
“Hey. I smell delicious.” James emphasizes his point by aiming a spritz of Cuda at Kendall’s face. He dodges, easily. “And it’s not a date.”
“So you keep saying.” Kendall takes a seat on the edge of James’s bed, propping his elbows on his knees. He asks, “But aren’t those your date jeans?”
“I don’t have date jeans.” Girls have date jeans. James is not a girl. Therefore, he doesn’t have date jeans. And people say he’s bad at logic.
“Excuse me. Your gonna-get-lucky jeans.”
“Don’t have those either.”
That is a blatant lie. James knows exactly which outfits make girls want to put their hands all over him. But he’s not going to tell Kendall that. It would make him right. James hates when Kendall is right. It happens far too often.
Kendall grins, swatting at James’s butt. “Pretty sure that you do.”
James shifts. He knows he’s supposed to be okay with brotherly affection like that, but all he can really think now is that Kendall touched his ass, and he’d like a repeat session, thank you very much. Preferably with less clothing involved.
He doesn’t say that out loud either, because that’s not the kind of thing you tell your best friend.
James is physically attracted to a lot of things; pretty girls, shiny surfaces. Himself. Adding Kendall to the list isn’t a huge deal for him, but he thinks it probably would be for Kendall. He’s a lot better at things like monogamy and fidelity than James has ever been, so a relationship between the two of them would likely resemble a car crash. James doesn’t fool himself into thinking that he’d ever be able to avoid a collision.
He doesn’t know if one person will ever be enough, even if that one person is Kendall, who’s everything that James has always aspired to be.
It’s a moot point anyway. History shows that Kendall doesn’t dig cock.
Unfortunately.
“Logan gives you his blessing, you know.”
James glances at Kendall’s reflection again. He’s still leaning on his knees, but his line of sight seems to be trained somewhere on James’s back. It kind of looks like he’s licking James’s spine with his eyes. That can’t be right. James has never been good with things like angles.
“I don’t need his blessing, because this isn’t a date.”
“Okay. But if it was, Logan’s totally cool with it. He won’t find a way to creatively murder you and hide your body in the Pacific.” Kendall bites his lip. “I think.”
“That’s nice to hear, but I would never go on a date with Logan’s ex. That’s against bro code.”
“You’ve dated my exes,” Kendall says with an arched eyebrow.
“You’re not my bro. You’re a jerkface.”
“That explains everything,” Kendall agrees, but it isn’t like the insult has really fazed him. Mostly he just seems amused.
“It’s not a date,” James says again, because Kendall does not look like he even comes close to believing what James is trying to sell here. “It’s a- business meeting. We’re going to talk about business.”
“Oh, yeah? What kind of business?”
“Being in the industry. Acting. You wouldn’t understand.”
“You’re probably right,” Kendall muses. James can feel his gaze on the back of his neck, and maybe he’s not imagining wrong angles after all.
To ward off any potential awkwardness, he spins around and says, “Choose a shirt.”
“Black,” Kendall replies immediately. “You look sexy in black.”
James’s heart pounds. He chokes out, “I don’t need to look sexy. It’s not a date.”
“Fine.” Kendall crosses his arms, leaning back on the bed, and yeah, James kind of wants to pin him down. “If it’s not a date, I’m coming.”
That stops his sudden fantasy in its tracks.
“You’re what? You’re not invited.”
“Because it’s a date?” Kendall raises an eyebrow. James hates it when he does that. He always looks so snarky and sexy and-
“No! Because- no one invited you.”
“I invited me.” Kendall shrugs. “Got a problem with that?”
“No. See if I care.”
“You care.”
“I do not care, shut up.”
James really doesn’t care. Much. But Camille kind of does. She’s standing in the lobby; gorgeous in this ice blue dress that rides high on her thighs and hugs every single one of her curves.
Obviously, she does not realize that this is a business meeting. You do not bring your cleavage to a business meeting.
“You brought- Kendall.” Camille frowns at him. Which is not fair.
It isn’t like James invited Kendall.
Or Camille’s cleavage. Although he probably would have if he’d known it was an option.
“Kendall brought himself.” Kendall declares, swinging an arm around both of their shoulders. James finds himself pressed up against his side, and from the expression on Camille’s face, she’s pretty much in the same situation. Brightly, Kendall adds, “And he is starving. Where we going to eat?”
“Uh.”
Camille chose the restaurant, which is this candlelit French-Asian fusion steakhouse that has a hostess in five inch stilettos and waiters in dark suits. It is filled to the brim with famous actors and actresses. It’s elegant and classy and perfect. Just walking inside makes guilt creep up James’s throat.
He asked Camille to dinner, as friends, three days ago. He nervously stuttered over the question because James is good with girls, but Camille’s not really like any of the other girls he knows. When she’d smiled at him, blinding bright, James had maybe been hoping that she didn’t really want to go just as friends.
And this? This doesn’t really look like the kind of place you take your friends. So maybe they were on the same wavelength. James wants to kiss Camille for being so amazing and thoughtful. But- he looks at Kendall and thinks better of it.
This really isn’t a date.
“Romantic.” Kendall whistles appreciably, hands shoved deep in the pockets of his jeans. It’s his favorite fuck you stance, and the only indicator that he’s even remotely uncomfortable amidst all this elegance.
“Shut up,” James mutters under his breath.
Politely, James edges around the table and pulls out Camille’s chair. Camille grins up at him, all sweet and soft. James can feel Kendall’s eyes boring into the back of his head, and he turns to make a quick rude gesture. Unfortunately, James isn’t the quickest on the uptake, and he accidentally drags the chair along with him. Camille saves herself from falling flat on her butt by catching hold of the table cloth. She yanks it clean off the surface of the table, along with the silverware and a glass candleholder that shatters on contact with the floor. Once she’s regained her balance, all three of them still, cringing.
The entire restaurant is looking them, famous actors and all.
A bus boy hurries over, assuring them not to worry about it, and that accidents happen. It doesn’t really stop James from being completely mortified.
Kendall’s not really helping anything. He snickers.
“Smooth.”
James glares at him, trying to convey that Kendall’s attitude is not appreciated. He hopes that his point is made. He’s not sure if it is. Kendall can be really dense sometimes.
They settle down at the table while it gets remade around them by a flurry of penguin suited waiters and bus people. Camille checks twice to make sure her chair hasn’t escaped before she sits.
“It’s a nice night, isn’t it?” She asks cheerily, and it’s kind of a lame question, because it’s pretty much always a nice night in Los Angeles, but James appreciates the effort. Someone needs to dispel the awkward here, and it obviously isn’t going to be Kendall.
“Yeah-“ James starts, and he has this vague idea about telling Camille how pretty she looks, but Kendall barrels right on over his small talk.
“Oh, is that what people talk about at romantic business meetings?”
“Business meetings?” Camille repeats blankly. James silently groans.
He really wishes he’d made Kendall stay home and watch hockey reruns. It would’ve taken some effort, but he’s sure that if he’d enlisted Katie’s help, he could have successfully kept the blond tied to the couch all night. Probably with real rope.
“’Cause. You know.” James fumbles, “We’re here to talk business.”
Camille arches an eyebrow. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah,” James says. He hates himself.
They make awkward small talk until the waiter comes over and asks them what they’d like to drink, and oh, do they need a minute to look at the menu? They don’t. All three of them have had their faces buried in the small hybrid-English scrawl since sitting. Few things capture James or Kendall’s attention quite like food.
Camille’s apparently of the same mindset, which automatically boosts her miles above the other girls James has not-dated, too concerned about their weight to actually consider eating a viable option.
Camille speaks in perfect French to the waiter, who mostly just stares at her, gape mouthed, for a moment before turning to Kendall and asking, “Dude. What?”
Kendall holds out his hands in a no idea gesture and says, “I think she said we’ll all take the steak. Medium, please.”
“I did not say that. I’m a vegetarian.”
“Since when? You love red meat,” James protests.
“For a role.” Camille’s shoulders slump. “You have no idea how much I would kill for a burger.” She frowns at the waiter. “Can you make me something out of vegetables that doesn’t taste like rabbit food?”
The waiter rolls his eyes and tosses out a sarcastic, “Oui. I’ll check.”
“Not too concerned about his tip, is he?” Camille laughs, unconcerned. She has a really pretty laugh.
“Vegetarian, huh? That’s a shame. I’ve heard the steak here is awesome,” Kendall says, and he sounds weirdly vindictive, “Hey, Camille, have you ever tried, you know, not method acting?”
Camille stares at Kendall like he’s the one speaking in tongues.
James is a little uncomfortable by the time the appetizers arrive. Kendall and Camille keep eying each other like they might be considering using their dessert forks as projectiles. James tries to think of things to talk about; hockey scores for Kendall and acting jobs for Camille. Anything that will avert a silverware war.
He feels itchy, like his skin is on too tight, and he’s not sure why. He hasn’t felt so uncomfortable in his own skin since the one time Mrs. Mitchell got really drunk on James’s mom’s secret stash of Pinot Noir and hit on him at his sixteenth birthday party. There’s no reason for it. Or maybe-
James glances between Kendall and Camille and thinks that maybe there is one reason.
Other than the glaring, Camille is perfectly poised. She’s a pretty chill girl. If she’d rather be staring longingly into James’s eyes over the table, she hides it well. But James still feels awful, like he’s disappointed her.
He wishes he’d figured out how to swallow his pride; how to just tell Kendall no.
James is so busy wallowing in his own pity part that when he feels Camille’s ankle knock against his jeans, he nearly jumps out of his skin, apologizing. Then he spends ten minutes silently chastising himself.
James Diamond is supposed to be the epitome of all things cool. That was not cool.
He can’t help it though. Having Camille and Kendall together, all to himself; it’s driving him insane.
James likes Kendall. He likes the way he knows everything there is to know about the blond, from the way he does his waffles in the morning to his secret neuroses about his dad. He likes the way Kendall’s always scheming up new, zany plans for fun. And he certainly likes the way Kendall looked when he steps out of the locker room showers back home or how completely edible he is up on stage, during a concert.
Thing is, James also likes Camille. He likes how she always goes with the flow, even if she’s asked to do something that is legitimately psychotic. He likes how she can slip from one character to the next in the space of three seconds. And he really likes the way her hair is always so shiny, and the little mole above her lip.
And therein lies the problem. He likes them both.
He has trouble with fidelity.
“James, this caprese is fantastic,” Camille breathes, fork hovering in front of her mouth. Her eyes are closed in something like bliss, and James’s mind flashes to the way she looked when he kissed her. “Try some.”
James has just enough time to realize he’s been worrying in a really unattractive way before Camille shoves her fork into his mouth. James actually feels it pierce the back of his throat. Or maybe he imagines it.
Either way, the next thing he knows, Kendall has his arms wrapped around James’s middle and he’s getting the Heimlich. He has to flap his arms frantically to get Kendall to loosen his grip enough so that James can croak, “I’m fine. I’m fine!”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” James wheezes. Everyone at the stupid restaurant is staring at him. Again. Great.
Their waiter goes so far as to shoot him a really nasty look from where he’s serving some other customers their drinks.
Like James is attention whoring on purpose.
Camille tries to smooth things over once the salads come. She’s talking about movies, or film, or some kind of role, and James is kind of zoned out by the complete and utter humiliation he just experienced, but he does catch, “The more eclectic my resume, the better chance I have at getting hired for good roles. On the other hand, yeah, playing a serial killer’s probably a little too creepy. Not by my standards, but first impressions stick, and it might bar me from the pretty girl roles.”
Kendall is nodding along like he actually cares. James knows from experience that he does not. Kendall’s distaste for acting is huge. Legendary, even; especially since Jo ditched him for that movie about demigods.
James spares a few minutes to think about how shattered Kendall was after Jo left, and how nice it is to kind of see him all whole again. He tunes back into the conversation to find that Kendall has become an active participant. He’s telling Camille about the time James was six and he-
What the actual fuck?
James clamps a hand over Kendall’s mouth, hard. He hisses, “You promised never to talk about that.”
“Mmphowkast.”
James has no idea what Kendall is trying to say, but he doesn’t feel secure enough to remove his hand from Kendall’s mouth to find out. Kendall glares at him over the ridge of his palm.
“Behave,” James orders. Kendall rolls his eyes.
When James moves his hand, Kendall rubs his fingers against his (very red) lips and says, “Geez, I thought you wouldn’t mind. You need to loosen up.”
“Yeah, James. It was a cute story,” Camille tells him. Which. No.
“You didn’t hear the end,” he says, scandalized.
Kendall gives James this long suffering look that is obviously meant to convey a lot of exasperation, but mostly just makes him seem douchey. Then he asks, “Did you meet James’s mom when she was at the Palm Woods?”
James tries to cast a meaningful moms are out of bounds look Kendall’s way, but the blond is ignoring him. He seems almost gleeful about the topic, actually. James thinks about all the things Kendall knows about his mom, and how she has truly terrified any girl that James has ever actually liked. Sometimes she scares them so much they flee across state lines. One girl even went to Canada.
This conversation cannot be allowed to happen, either.
Like Kendall can hear his thoughts, he says, “Yeah, Mrs. Diamond’s a real classy lady. But here’s an interesting bit of trivia. She’s a member of the NRA. She owns something like three shotgu-“
James elbows him in the gut. Kendall nearly goes flying. He catches himself on the edge of the table, knocking half of his silverware to the ground.
“Again?” The nasty waiter demands, cradling champagne in one fist and looking like he actually wants to beat Kendall over the head with the bottle of Dom.
Actually, he’s eyeing them all like they’re something nasty on the bottom of his shoe.
“Sorry,” Kendall wheezes, clutching his gut.
Camille has this expression on her face that James has never seen before. She says, “You guys have been friends a really long time, haven’t you?”
“Forever,” Kendall gasps, and now he’s just being dramatic. James didn’t hurt him that bad.
“Oh. Did you know we kissed once?” Camille asks. James is confused. He doesn’t see the correlation between the two topics. But he’s not really that bright.
“How could I forget that?” Kendall mutters, none too pleased.
James is struck by the sudden, awful sensation that he’s done something wrong. He just doesn’t know what.
It’s right about then that James feels a bare foot on his leg, creeping up to his knee, toes scraping soft against the underside, and damnit that tickles. Kendall, still rubbing his ribs, is smirking at him, and he’s known that is James’s most ticklish spot since they were four and were as fascinated by the differences between each other’s bodies as they were with mud and bugs and hockey.
Kendall is so obviously trying to ruin the da- The thing.
He’s trying to ruin the business.
Dinner.
Thing.
James kicks the foot edging up his knee, really needing Kendall to stop fucking with him now, please. Except then Camille yelps, “Ow!”
Oh. Uh. Oh.
James freaks out a little bit.
“Sorry. I’m- oh my god. I’m sorry.”
“It’s- okay,” Camille says through gritted teeth, trying her best to smile.
Kendall very obviously doesn’t know whether to yell at James or to laugh. He’s kind of settled on something between the two, drawling, “Douchebag move,” while choking down his laughter.
James ignores him. Softly he orders, “Let me see.”
Obediently, Camille lifts up the hem of her dress so that James can see the pale skin of her calf. He plucks a piece of ice from his water glass, pressing against the red mark he made with his shoe. Camille squeaks. “Cold.”
James runs the ice in soothing circles along her skin, feather light. He watches the goosebumps it raises on her smooth leg and he thinks about getting down on his knees and pressing a kiss to the place he kicked.
Then stupid Kendall clears his stupid throat. “Soup’s here.”
James pulls back, and the moment is gone.
Camille is a trooper. She tries to get back to the conversation they were having before James physically assaulted her. When it doesn’t work, she allows James to take over. He tries to keep both of his friends interested, but he gets to the point where he’s having trouble keeping topics straight. He accidentally asks Camille instead of Kendall about her high score in Call of Duty, and ends up questioning Kendall about his favorite hair care products. They both give him blank looks before launching into a conversation between themselves about BTR’s newest single. James sighs.
He wants to put his head in his hands, because this is not working.
James doesn’t get it. He doesn’t do this. He’s never anything but charming and awesome. Those are his default settings. So what even?
Camille starts talking about the costumes for one of her sets and how they’re so much nicer than the last show she worked on. James feels like he hasn’t said anything constructive for at least ten minutes, so he jumps in with a contribution.
“Oh, you mean the witch costume? I thought you looked really great with all those warts.” He sees Kendall shaking his head at him frantically, but James doesn’t get what he’s actually saying. “They really enhanced your bone structure. And that dress was hideous-“
“James. You mean last week?”
James nods.
“Those weren’t warts. Tyler gave me chicken pox. And that was my robe. You think it’s hideous?”
Oh.
“Um. No. Of course not. I. Uh. It’s gorgeous. You’re gorgeous. We’re all- gorgeous… “
James trails off, because Camille is giving him a look he’s not used to receiving. It’s the kind of look people reserve for the smelly weirdos you meet on public transportation.
James is not a weirdo.
He hasn’t taken public transportation since he moved out of Minnesota.
And he certainly doesn’t smell.
Trying to be surreptitious about it, James sniffs the crook of his arm, just to check. Personally, he thinks his skin has a hint of eau-de-fantastic, like sunlight and sea salt and Cuda.
“What are you doing?”
“Oh. Um. I. I was checking to see if I spilled some soup.” James licks his forearm. “I did. All better now!”
He makes a little face because Cuda doesn’t actually taste as great as it smells.
Now Camille and Kendall are both giving him the look, and James realizes that he just licked his arm in a candlelit restaurant full of famous people.
This is terrible. Worst date- no, worst outing that is not a date ever.
Camille does this slow turn away from James and asks Kendall, “So has anyone ever gotten trampled at one of your concerts?”
“Is this research?” Kendall looks mildly disturbed. And frightened. “You’re not going to trample me are you?”
Camille laughs. “I’m thinking of going out for a groupie role, and I want it to look realistic.”
Great. Now they’re not even paying attention to him, because he is a freak who licked himself like a feral cat in the midst of a five star steakhouse. He’s turning into Carlos.
James pouts, clenching his hands in the table cloth. He’s not used to bombing this hard. He feels worse than he did that time Logan stole all his swagger with his stupid magic geek voodoo powers.
He’d really wanted tonight to be perfect. He really wanted Camille to smile that smile she gives him sometimes, the one that makes his him feel like a superstar, with spotlights and cheering crowds and everything. Instead she’s making a face at Kendall’s gruesome tale of that time that this one fan accidentally got pushed into a drainage ditch.
Kendall has no idea how to talk to girls. Doesn’t he know he’s supposed to be all charming and sweet? Not regaling the lady with stories about raw sewage?
And, to make things worse, he’s tossing a roll back and forth between his hands like a baseball. Classy.
James glares at him, trying to bore holes in the side of his face with his eyes. Seriously, this is all his fault.
The busboy comes by and asks if they need anything. When James tells him no, he glances at Kendall and Camille and says, “Wow. It’s tough being the third wheel, hunh?”
“I’m not the third-“
The busboy holds up his hands. “Hey, hey. No shame. My roommate and his girlfriend do this to me all the time. At least yours aren’t all over each other.”
James spares a second to think about how amazing that would be. He doesn’t know if he could handle that much combined sexy.
“By the way, you have great hair. How do you get it to flip out at the ends like that? Straight iron?”
And then the busboy is touching his head.
James now needs to wash his hair. Thoroughly. He wants to drown himself in some gazpacho, but his face won’t fit in the bowl. Stupid fancy restaurant with their stupid half size portions.
When James manages to shoo the busboy away, he notices that Kendall’s got breadcrumbs on his fingertips. James thinks about running his lips along Kendall’s knuckles, about sucking one of those fingers into his mouth. But he looks at Camille and figures that would be a bad idea.
Whoever invented liking two people at once was an idiot.
James is in the midst of that profound thought when he accidentally slops gravy onto his pants, the serving spoon clattering to the floor in a really loud, obvious fashion. Camille and Kendall break out of their conversation.
“James, are you okay?”
“Of course I’m okay. Why are you guys asking me that?”
“You’re- jumpy.”
Of course he’s jumpy. He’s bombing so hard that someone might as well be dropping him straight out of a B-52, he was physically assaulted by a busboy, and he totally spilled gravy on his favorite jeans.
Not that they’re his date jeans. Just. His favorite.
He doesn’t get it. He fits with Camille and he fits with Kendall, so why doesn’t he fit with the two of them together?
Then again, he’s not used to trying to impress anybody. Usually he’s impressive without doing anything at all.
“Hey James. Doesn’t that girl-“ Kendall jerks a thumb at a pretty redhead wearing a short, sequined dress, “-Look just like that one chick you dated at the end of freshman year? The one you lost your virg-“
“No!” James squeaks, and he isn’t even lying. That girl looks nothing like the girl he lost his virginity to. If anything that girl looks just like that one chick on that one teen show that he would have liked to lose his virginity to, if he was three years younger and not completely enamored with the two people in front of him for reasons he can’t quite seem to pin down at the current moment.
“Oh. My bad,” Kendall says.
“What are you doing?” James hisses, because seriously, what is Kendall’s malfunction?
“Noting the freaky resemblance?” Kendall shrugs his shoulders all innocent like. James is not fooled.
“You’re purposely sabotaging-“
“I’m doing no such thing. You think too much.”
James doesn’t know whether or not to be offended by the accusation. It’s certainly never been made before.
James is struck by a sudden, horrible thought.
What if Camille and Kendall really do like each other? They’re both all bickery and focused on each other, and James almost likes to look at them all redfaced and angry more than he likes his own reflection (almost), so what. If?
Sexy or not, that cannot be allowed to happen. They can’t just- leave James behind.
“Camille. You have- salad. In your hair. You should- bathroom,” James gasps out. Camille runs her fingers through her curls and then shrugs, getting up to go check.
James is aware that he’s made a huge dating faux pas, telling the girl that she looks anything but perfect, but this is important, okay? James curls his arm around Kendall’s neck and whispers hot and harsh into his ear, “Do you like Camille?”
“What? No.”
James does not believe that for a second. Camille is gorgeous. Kendall has eyes. It does not compute.
“Then why are you trying to make me look bad?”
“I’m not- trying to make you. Look bad,” Kendall gets all shifty, “I’m trying to give her realistic expectations about what she’s getting into on this date.”
“It’s not a date.” Kendall rolls his eyes. James wants to tell him that his face is going to stick that way. “And what kind of realistic expectations? That I’m a whore?”
“You are not a whore. You pay for those.” He considers. “You might be a little slutty. Just a little.”
“I am not. I have an eclectic palate for girls.”
And boys, he silently adds, even though he’s thinking less about kissing Kendall’s face at the current moment and more about whaling on him with one of the serving trays.
“Right. You know you’ve made yourself look like an ass, so far? What’s up with the socially awkward act?”
Socially awkward? That’s a new accusation too. Apparently tonight is the night for those.
“Do we make you nervous?”
Kendall laughs, but the sound dies in his throat when James exclaims, “Yes!”
Kendall reaches out and squeezes James’s shoulder. “Why are you nervous? It’s just me. And Camille.”
That’s the problem, James thinks. Kendall looks at the tablecloth and asks, “Do you want me to leave? It was dick of me to crash your date.”
James can’t think of anything worse than Kendall leaving with that expression on his face.
It would probably ease the tension between him and Camille if he left, but James really, suddenly doesn’t want him to go. He knows that if Kendall stays he’ll just keep trying to bully James into admitting he likes Camille, but James doesn’t mind all the ribbing. Much. He’s used to his friends trying to humiliate him for his own good. He knows Kendall means well. And- he likes having Kendall around. So.
James isn’t the kind of kid who ever needed a safety blanket as a child. Partly because he always had Kendall. And that’s what he feels like now, even though it’s probably the most uncool thought that he’s ever had. He needs Kendall to stick around, to be his safety blanket. James is pretty sure he’s blown things so badly with Camille that there’s no way he’ll be able to salvage them all on his lonesome.
To be fair, it is Kendall’s fault. If he had any honor, he’d stick around to fix this.
Anyway. A taxi back to the hotel would be ridiculously expensive.
What Camille doesn’t know won’t hurt her.
“Guys, there wasn’t anything in my- hair,” Camille says, glancing back and forth between them.
“Stop worrying,” Kendall says softly, breath cool in James’s ear. He shivers. He can’t help it. Camille sits down and crosses her arms.
The main course comes, and it’s not too eventful until Camille decides to ask what James wants for dessert.
“I know you like sweet things,” Camille says, and she starts running the tip of her butter knife down James’s chest. He isn’t sure whether to feel scared or aroused.
“Isn’t that right?” Camille tacks on, “Sexypants.”
His eyes widen.
This is just. Weird. Yeah. That’s it.
Things have gotten weird.
James feels Kendall’s arm at the back of his chair, all casual like, and he jumps up, nearly knocking the entire table over. Kendall stares at him inquisitively. Before he can make up a flimsy excuse, Camille exclaims, “Oh my god, James. Your hair.”
“What’s wrong with my hair?” James asks, bringing his fingertips to his bangs.
“Go look,” Camille commands. James scoots away from the table, hurrying over to the nearest reflective surface so that he can look.
Camille is a dirty liar. His hair is perfect. Crisis averted.
James takes a step towards the table, but then he realizes that Camille and Kendall have their heads bent super close together. He stops in his tracks, trying not to draw attention to himself.
“Sexypants?” He hears Kendall whisper, followed by a whole bunch of other words James can’t hear.
Camille says something about “-mommy issues-“ which James is completely offended by, because he does not have mommy issues, and then he tunes back in to hear Camille retort, “You gate crashed my date.”
He feels guilt swell in his chest, but it barely has time to stir up a real clamor before Kendall exclaims, “You’re trying to bang my best friend.”
“You should be rooting for him.” Camille snorts, and truer words have never been spoken. What the hell is wrong with Kendall?
Also, James very keenly notices that she doesn’t refute the accusation. Meaning there’s still a chance.
“I am. I want him to get laid!”
James doesn’t hear Camille’s sarcastic response to that, but he can tell that it’s sarcastic by the way she tosses her hair. And then he hears, “Unexpected.”
Kendall is saying “-have a chance if you’d stop thrusting your cleavage at him.”
“At least I have cleavage to thrust,” Camille snaps. “Could you have chosen pants that were any tighter?”
“No. I stole them from James’s closet.”
James’s jaw drops open. He hadn’t even noticed. That’s how scrambled this whole thing is making him feel.
“I knew they were too fashion forward for you.”
Kendall’s lips press together. Then he says, “Look. We shouldn’t fight. There is a solution here.”
Camille stares at him expectantly.
Sheepish, Kendall continues, “Just. I have to think of it, okay?”
James decides to drop back into his seat then, because Kendall’s solution will probably involve hiding Camille’s body in a lobster pot.
James tries to start up another round of conversation, but it doesn’t really work. Things have gotten so damn awkward at the table. Camille and Kendall are back to glaring daggers at each other, and nothing James is saying seems to be helping.
Maybe Kendall was lying, and they do like each other.
James feels this inexplicable sadness wash over him. If he was a good friend, he’d let them be together.
He just doesn’t want to be alone. He really hates being alone.
“I’m going to use the restroom,” James says, because he feels like he can’t breathe.
He spends ten minutes leaning against a bathroom stall, hyperventilating. This night is not going how he’d planned. At all.
When he gets back to the table, though, things have changed. For one, Kendall and Camille are no longer there.
“Have you seen my- friends?” he asks the waiter, wondering if the not-date has gone so horribly awry that Camille and Kendall decided to ditch him completely.
The waiter makes a face at him. “They’re at the bar.”
The what?
James is about to tell him that there is no way in hell Camille and Kendall abandoned him for alcohol when he hears, “Jaaaames!”
His head snaps in the direction of the bar. At first all he sees is glass shelving accented by bottles of all shapes and all sizes, fronted by a thick mahogany countertop. And then he sees that Camille is sitting on top of the countertop, a tray of shots lined up beside her. Kendall is sitting on a stool, head on her knees, and he’s wearing a huge, dopey grin.
It’s impossible. He’s been gone all of fifteen minutes. No one can get drunk in fifteen minutes.
James’s hand slips along the table, dragging the cloth and half the plates along with it, steak juice sloshing all over the clean surface.
“I don’t have any more clean tablecloths,” the waiter mutters. “Maybe you guys should go eat out in the desert, with all the other feral animals.”
“Dude. Do you want a tip or not?”
He looks James up and down disparagingly. “You guys can afford to tip?”
“These jeans cost 300 dollars. And I’m in a band.”
“Oh yeah? What’s it called?” The guy challenges.
“Big Time Rush.”
“Never heard of you. Are you sure the real name doesn’t involve the word Mascara?”
“My eyelashes are naturally full and dark,” James splutters.
The waiter rolls his eyes. “If your friends puke on the floor, you’re cleaning it up.”
“What kind of restaurant is this?” The waiter doesn’t answer, already strolling away. James marches up to Kendall and demands, “What did you give her?”
Kendall opens his mouth to answers, but before he can-
“Tequila! Drink of the gods!” Camille cheers, hopping off the counter and wobbling against Kendall’s side.
“Um, I think it’s the drink of the Mexicans.”
“Mexico,” Camille cheers. “Home of the gods.”
James thinks about arguing, but he’s not entirely sure that he could point to Mexico on a map. He shrugs. “Sure. Why not.” Then he turns to Kendall and demands, “You got her drunk?”
“Your date was lame.” Kendall shrugs, but he doesn’t look very apologetic.
“It’s not a date,” James snaps, irritated.
“It’s not?” Camille’s eyes get all wide. “I wore my lacy lingerie for nothing?”
James blinks and files that way for later, because oh god. If Camille ever forgives him for this, James is going to take her on a road trip to a bed and breakfast in Napa or somewhere far, far away from his stupid friends so that he can ravish her. Kendall smirks up at him and James thinks that he has half a mind to do the same thing to Kendall, straight or not, because he is an asshole with pretty dimples. He totally deserves to be ravished and then to never spoken to again.
James realizes he’s mixing his priorities right now.
“How much did you give her?”
“I don’t know,” Kendall says, and from the honey slow way he’s talking, James realizes Camille is not the only one who’s been downing the drink of the gods.
“We had shots! Lots of shots,” Camille chirps, gesturing wildly to a squat bottle of Patrón sitting on the counter. It’s over half empty. James really hopes that it was opened long before they got to it.
“You might have to pay,” Kendall says, forehead furrowing in this adorable way. “It was like, ten dollars a shot, and we had-“
He makes a space between his hands that varies between a few inches and over a foot. Kendall is clearly intoxicated.
James knows from experience that it takes a lot to get Kendall tipsy.
“You drank all of that,” he gasps.
He no longer finds Kendall adorable.
“I thought I just told you that,” Camille looks puzzled.
Then she looks bored with being confused. She hops into Kendall’s lap like it is the easiest thing in the entire world.
Kendall seems content to let her sit there.
James might die from the visual alone. Why did he think them liking each other would be bad again?
Better yet, why does no one have a camera when he needs one? Because this is like- it’s like the hottest thing that James can imagine. The two people he likes best in the world, all over each other. It’s hot like lesbians.
The bartender passes him a bill and yeah. That explains everything. It’s over two hundred dollars. James figures ten shots in fifteen minutes is enough to down any man or woman; even Kendall Knight. How Camille is still alive is beyond him. The girl’s like, five foot nothing.
“You should have a shot!” Camille announces, and James stares at her. Someone has to drive them all home.
“You should,” Kendall agrees, nodding sagely. How he even managed to con the barman into thinking he was twenty one is beyond James. Kendall smiles for emphasis, and there are those stupid pretty dimples again. He’s acting like it isn’t even his fault that they’re in this situation when it so, so is.
James stares at the bottle of Patrón, weighing the cost and his new status as designated driver against the way he cannot really cope with what’s currently happening.
“Yeah, okay,” he agrees.
James is three shots in when Camille launches herself from Kendall’s lap straight onto James. She latches onto his mouth, murmuring, “I’ve been waiting all night for this, idiot.”
James knows it’s a bad idea to kiss her back when Kendall, the guy he likes, is sitting right there, but he does it anyway, because. Well. How can he not? Her mouth his hot and wet against his, tongue slipping past his lips almost immediately. She presses her body flush against his, and fuck, it’s even better than he remembers. He even lets her rake her fingers through his hair, moaning against his lips and-
“It’s like watching anacondas,” James hears Kendall casually tell the bartender. “Do you think one of them can unhinge their jaw?”
“Your jealousy is showing,” James mumbles against Camille’s mouth.
“Really? Can’t have that,” he hears Kendall say. And then, suddenly, there’s this warm, solid weight behind him. He feels fingers sliding into his hair, stronger, longer fingers than Camille’s, and a mouth against his neck. Kendall’s free arm wraps around James’s waist, chest pressed all hard against his back.
There is a very real possibility that James might die where he is standing.
He hears this weird noise, kind of like a dying cat, and it must be coming from him, because suddenly the mouth at his neck is gone and Camille is pulling back, lips bruised red, hair a little bit tousled from James’s fingers.
Oh god, he hopes his hair doesn’t look like that.
James checks his reflection in the mirrored surface behind the bar. Between Camille and Kendall, the three hours he spent carefully styling it are going right down the drain.
“Guys,” Camille says, “I don’t feel so good.”
James groans. He tries to take care of the bill for food, ignoring the confused Are You Guys Swingers? look that their busboy is giving him while Camille hangs from his side. He guides Camille out of the restaurant the best he can, but she is dangling from his neck now; all of her weight, which isn’t that substantial but-
He can feel the tequila burn in his stomach, knees getting weak. Unlike Kendall, James is a total lightweight. The world has gone all sparkly and pretty.
“Whoa,” Kendall says softly, coming up behind Camille, sharing her weight so that they’ve got her sandwiched between them.
“I can’t believe you got her drunk,” James snaps again.
“Your date was lame,” Kendall repeats. And then he stops, turning to face James, squishing Camille in between them.
“Kendall?” James asks, worried that he might collapse on the sidewalk. He’s not sure he’s steady enough to carry both of his not-dates. But then, right there, in the middle of the crowded street, right over Camille’s shoulder, Kendall leans in and kisses James, messy and soft.
James can tell that Camille is watching appreciably, her fingers trailing down James’s side, and he really, honestly has no idea what to do with himself. He’s usually the one in control of these situations; he’s the one with all the experience and the knowledge. But somehow Camille and Kendall have rendered him completely and utterly speechless, the sheer sexiness of their intertwined bodies stealing the oxygen from his lungs.
When he breaks the kiss, he’s panting. He doesn’t even care about how not cool he looks. Camille’s front is pressed against his, and in slow motion she cranes her head up so that she’s looking back at Kendall, head against his chest. James thinks his body has turned to stone, because she can’t be- but she is. She’s lurching up up and kissing beneath Kendall’s jaw, turning it into a suck that will probably leave an uncomfortably positioned hickey.
Kendall doesn’t seem to mind, leaning down into it. James cannot even begin to believe he is watching this.
Both of them seem to feel his eyes trained on them like lasers. They break apart, and Camille asks, “Do you want us to-“ She stops, but then she trades a significant look with Kendall, and oh god. James thinks. The two people he likes best in the world kissing?
That would be the hottest thing ever. Better than lesbians.
It ends up being the most fantastic thing James has ever seen in his entire life. More fantastical than his own reflection, and he feels like that’s really saying something.
James likes the way Kendall tilts his head down, eyes falling closed as his mouth molds with Camille’s. It starts out all soft and dirty, and there is obviously a lot of tongue involved. One of Kendall’s hands fists against Camille’s side, rucking the material of her dress, fingertips scraping against the front of James’s shirt. His other remains wrapped around them both, pressing warm and hard into James’s hip.
Camille arches up on her tippy toes, trying to get better access to Kendall’s mouth, and okay. James is well aware that they’re putting on this show just for him, but they are fucking awesome actors. They both look completely, one hundred percent into it.
Kendall makes this completely inhuman noise, a groan that James feels reverberate in his bones. When they pull apart, the both of them are panting. James wants to pinch himself and double check that he’s not dreaming.
In tandem, they look at James like they might actually devour him. He swallows, ridiculously turned on.
“This was a great plan,” Camille tells Kendall, and James may be a little buzzed, but he is still clear headed enough to realize that she is not slurring her words.
“Plan?” He echoes, because it’s hard to think with the liquor and the lust vying for attention in his blood. Kendall lets go of the grip he’s got on both of them, and their little sandwich of three separates, putting a few inches between all of them. That’s good. Space is good. James needs to use his mind.
Except it’s mostly bad. He misses their warmth. He can’t concentrate when they both look like they need James’s hands all over them.
“I believe Kendall’s exact words were, let’s pretend to be krunked and trick James into hooking up with us.”
“I didn’t say it like that.”
“Exact words,” she emphasizes.
“Um. Why would you think I wouldn’t go for you both sober?”
“Because you kept insisting it wasn’t a date. Jerk.”
“Care to reconsider?” Kendall breathes hot and close to James’s neck, and oh, yeah. He rescinds his previous claim. Immediately. Kendall wins.
Best date ever.
James nods furiously, and Camille smiles, standing on her tip toes to wrap an arm around his neck. She’s like, smoldering at him.
It’s not fair. James is the one who smolders. He’s heard girls say so.
It's right about then that he feels Camille’s hand inching up his leg. She runs her fingers, soft, up the inside of his right thigh, and James jerks back, squeaking. “Camille!”
“What?” Camille bats her eyelashes at him innocently, and James realizes that Kendall is horrifyingly right in what he said, way back at dinner (was that only twenty minutes ago?).
James is thinking too much.
Why is he doing that? He is James fucking Diamond.
Camille may be a masterful actress and Kendall may be fantastic at scheming, and they might both be so hot that they out burn the sun, but if there’s one thing James knows how to do better than both of them, it’s making out.
Determined, he cups Camille’s chin, drawing her close and kissing her soft on the lips. He moves his mouth over hers, breathing in the air from her lungs, tongue gentle and probing until she makes this sweet little noise against James, trying to press her body in close. He allows himself a few seconds to enjoy it, pulling her leg up around his hip before James smirks and pulls away. Then he dances around her and does the same exact thing to Kendall, kissing a little harder, a little rougher, groping at his ass. Kendall pushes his hips into James insistently, hands clawing at his back.
When James pulls back, they’re both staring at him, eyes a little glazed. Kendall’s actually tilting towards him a little, like he wants to sink into James’s body, and oh yeah.
This night is not even close to over.
James slings an easy arm around both of their shoulders and says, “How about we go back to the apartment and you two can pick up where you left off?
He hears Kendall’s breath hitch, and Camille is leaning soft into his side. They’re both staggering for real, now.
Perfect, James thinks.
If the two of them like acting so much, they can put on a special performance, just for him. It will be like interactive theater. Except sexy.
Maybe he can even borrow Logan’s video camera. Yeah. James thinks that he can make this work.
---
Author: garnetice
Pairing: Kendall/James/Camille
Rating: T
Word Count: 8,038
Warnings: Underage drinking, a lot of awkward
Summary: James doesn’t get it. He doesn’t do this. He’s never anything but charming and awesome. Those are his default settings. So what even?
Disclaimer: BTR is not mine.
Author's Notes: Prompt fill for queenitsy , who is pretty much one of my all time favorite authors in this fandom. She wanted: Kendall/James/Camille, (awkward) first date as a trio. :D? This probably doesn't quite fit what she asked for...um. I hope she likes it anyway? I'm a little eh on the middle parts, but you can only stare at a story for so long before throwing your computer at the wall seems like a better alternative to posting. I love my laptop. Therefore, I'm posting. Many, many thanks to the lovely, fantastic breila_rose for beta-ing this for me and assuring me it's not completely awful. Titled for the song Whatever You Like by Anya Marina. Or by T.I., if you're a purist, but the Anya Marina version makes me think of threesomes.
---
“Getting ready for your date?”
James frowns at Kendall’s reflection in the mirror, still in the midst of deciding between shirts. He feels like the lime green is better for summer, and ice blue makes his complexion look nice, but he’s always amazing in black. It’s a definite toss up, here. He doesn’t have time to focus on Kendall’s stupid smirky face right now. But-
“It’s not a date.”
“Then you should probably tone down the manspray. Either way.” Kendall wrinkles his nose and says, “You don’t want to drown the poor girl.”
“Hey. I smell delicious.” James emphasizes his point by aiming a spritz of Cuda at Kendall’s face. He dodges, easily. “And it’s not a date.”
“So you keep saying.” Kendall takes a seat on the edge of James’s bed, propping his elbows on his knees. He asks, “But aren’t those your date jeans?”
“I don’t have date jeans.” Girls have date jeans. James is not a girl. Therefore, he doesn’t have date jeans. And people say he’s bad at logic.
“Excuse me. Your gonna-get-lucky jeans.”
“Don’t have those either.”
That is a blatant lie. James knows exactly which outfits make girls want to put their hands all over him. But he’s not going to tell Kendall that. It would make him right. James hates when Kendall is right. It happens far too often.
Kendall grins, swatting at James’s butt. “Pretty sure that you do.”
James shifts. He knows he’s supposed to be okay with brotherly affection like that, but all he can really think now is that Kendall touched his ass, and he’d like a repeat session, thank you very much. Preferably with less clothing involved.
He doesn’t say that out loud either, because that’s not the kind of thing you tell your best friend.
James is physically attracted to a lot of things; pretty girls, shiny surfaces. Himself. Adding Kendall to the list isn’t a huge deal for him, but he thinks it probably would be for Kendall. He’s a lot better at things like monogamy and fidelity than James has ever been, so a relationship between the two of them would likely resemble a car crash. James doesn’t fool himself into thinking that he’d ever be able to avoid a collision.
He doesn’t know if one person will ever be enough, even if that one person is Kendall, who’s everything that James has always aspired to be.
It’s a moot point anyway. History shows that Kendall doesn’t dig cock.
Unfortunately.
“Logan gives you his blessing, you know.”
James glances at Kendall’s reflection again. He’s still leaning on his knees, but his line of sight seems to be trained somewhere on James’s back. It kind of looks like he’s licking James’s spine with his eyes. That can’t be right. James has never been good with things like angles.
“I don’t need his blessing, because this isn’t a date.”
“Okay. But if it was, Logan’s totally cool with it. He won’t find a way to creatively murder you and hide your body in the Pacific.” Kendall bites his lip. “I think.”
“That’s nice to hear, but I would never go on a date with Logan’s ex. That’s against bro code.”
“You’ve dated my exes,” Kendall says with an arched eyebrow.
“You’re not my bro. You’re a jerkface.”
“That explains everything,” Kendall agrees, but it isn’t like the insult has really fazed him. Mostly he just seems amused.
“It’s not a date,” James says again, because Kendall does not look like he even comes close to believing what James is trying to sell here. “It’s a- business meeting. We’re going to talk about business.”
“Oh, yeah? What kind of business?”
“Being in the industry. Acting. You wouldn’t understand.”
“You’re probably right,” Kendall muses. James can feel his gaze on the back of his neck, and maybe he’s not imagining wrong angles after all.
To ward off any potential awkwardness, he spins around and says, “Choose a shirt.”
“Black,” Kendall replies immediately. “You look sexy in black.”
James’s heart pounds. He chokes out, “I don’t need to look sexy. It’s not a date.”
“Fine.” Kendall crosses his arms, leaning back on the bed, and yeah, James kind of wants to pin him down. “If it’s not a date, I’m coming.”
That stops his sudden fantasy in its tracks.
“You’re what? You’re not invited.”
“Because it’s a date?” Kendall raises an eyebrow. James hates it when he does that. He always looks so snarky and sexy and-
“No! Because- no one invited you.”
“I invited me.” Kendall shrugs. “Got a problem with that?”
“No. See if I care.”
“You care.”
“I do not care, shut up.”
James really doesn’t care. Much. But Camille kind of does. She’s standing in the lobby; gorgeous in this ice blue dress that rides high on her thighs and hugs every single one of her curves.
Obviously, she does not realize that this is a business meeting. You do not bring your cleavage to a business meeting.
“You brought- Kendall.” Camille frowns at him. Which is not fair.
It isn’t like James invited Kendall.
Or Camille’s cleavage. Although he probably would have if he’d known it was an option.
“Kendall brought himself.” Kendall declares, swinging an arm around both of their shoulders. James finds himself pressed up against his side, and from the expression on Camille’s face, she’s pretty much in the same situation. Brightly, Kendall adds, “And he is starving. Where we going to eat?”
“Uh.”
Camille chose the restaurant, which is this candlelit French-Asian fusion steakhouse that has a hostess in five inch stilettos and waiters in dark suits. It is filled to the brim with famous actors and actresses. It’s elegant and classy and perfect. Just walking inside makes guilt creep up James’s throat.
He asked Camille to dinner, as friends, three days ago. He nervously stuttered over the question because James is good with girls, but Camille’s not really like any of the other girls he knows. When she’d smiled at him, blinding bright, James had maybe been hoping that she didn’t really want to go just as friends.
And this? This doesn’t really look like the kind of place you take your friends. So maybe they were on the same wavelength. James wants to kiss Camille for being so amazing and thoughtful. But- he looks at Kendall and thinks better of it.
This really isn’t a date.
“Romantic.” Kendall whistles appreciably, hands shoved deep in the pockets of his jeans. It’s his favorite fuck you stance, and the only indicator that he’s even remotely uncomfortable amidst all this elegance.
“Shut up,” James mutters under his breath.
Politely, James edges around the table and pulls out Camille’s chair. Camille grins up at him, all sweet and soft. James can feel Kendall’s eyes boring into the back of his head, and he turns to make a quick rude gesture. Unfortunately, James isn’t the quickest on the uptake, and he accidentally drags the chair along with him. Camille saves herself from falling flat on her butt by catching hold of the table cloth. She yanks it clean off the surface of the table, along with the silverware and a glass candleholder that shatters on contact with the floor. Once she’s regained her balance, all three of them still, cringing.
The entire restaurant is looking them, famous actors and all.
A bus boy hurries over, assuring them not to worry about it, and that accidents happen. It doesn’t really stop James from being completely mortified.
Kendall’s not really helping anything. He snickers.
“Smooth.”
James glares at him, trying to convey that Kendall’s attitude is not appreciated. He hopes that his point is made. He’s not sure if it is. Kendall can be really dense sometimes.
They settle down at the table while it gets remade around them by a flurry of penguin suited waiters and bus people. Camille checks twice to make sure her chair hasn’t escaped before she sits.
“It’s a nice night, isn’t it?” She asks cheerily, and it’s kind of a lame question, because it’s pretty much always a nice night in Los Angeles, but James appreciates the effort. Someone needs to dispel the awkward here, and it obviously isn’t going to be Kendall.
“Yeah-“ James starts, and he has this vague idea about telling Camille how pretty she looks, but Kendall barrels right on over his small talk.
“Oh, is that what people talk about at romantic business meetings?”
“Business meetings?” Camille repeats blankly. James silently groans.
He really wishes he’d made Kendall stay home and watch hockey reruns. It would’ve taken some effort, but he’s sure that if he’d enlisted Katie’s help, he could have successfully kept the blond tied to the couch all night. Probably with real rope.
“’Cause. You know.” James fumbles, “We’re here to talk business.”
Camille arches an eyebrow. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah,” James says. He hates himself.
They make awkward small talk until the waiter comes over and asks them what they’d like to drink, and oh, do they need a minute to look at the menu? They don’t. All three of them have had their faces buried in the small hybrid-English scrawl since sitting. Few things capture James or Kendall’s attention quite like food.
Camille’s apparently of the same mindset, which automatically boosts her miles above the other girls James has not-dated, too concerned about their weight to actually consider eating a viable option.
Camille speaks in perfect French to the waiter, who mostly just stares at her, gape mouthed, for a moment before turning to Kendall and asking, “Dude. What?”
Kendall holds out his hands in a no idea gesture and says, “I think she said we’ll all take the steak. Medium, please.”
“I did not say that. I’m a vegetarian.”
“Since when? You love red meat,” James protests.
“For a role.” Camille’s shoulders slump. “You have no idea how much I would kill for a burger.” She frowns at the waiter. “Can you make me something out of vegetables that doesn’t taste like rabbit food?”
The waiter rolls his eyes and tosses out a sarcastic, “Oui. I’ll check.”
“Not too concerned about his tip, is he?” Camille laughs, unconcerned. She has a really pretty laugh.
“Vegetarian, huh? That’s a shame. I’ve heard the steak here is awesome,” Kendall says, and he sounds weirdly vindictive, “Hey, Camille, have you ever tried, you know, not method acting?”
Camille stares at Kendall like he’s the one speaking in tongues.
James is a little uncomfortable by the time the appetizers arrive. Kendall and Camille keep eying each other like they might be considering using their dessert forks as projectiles. James tries to think of things to talk about; hockey scores for Kendall and acting jobs for Camille. Anything that will avert a silverware war.
He feels itchy, like his skin is on too tight, and he’s not sure why. He hasn’t felt so uncomfortable in his own skin since the one time Mrs. Mitchell got really drunk on James’s mom’s secret stash of Pinot Noir and hit on him at his sixteenth birthday party. There’s no reason for it. Or maybe-
James glances between Kendall and Camille and thinks that maybe there is one reason.
Other than the glaring, Camille is perfectly poised. She’s a pretty chill girl. If she’d rather be staring longingly into James’s eyes over the table, she hides it well. But James still feels awful, like he’s disappointed her.
He wishes he’d figured out how to swallow his pride; how to just tell Kendall no.
James is so busy wallowing in his own pity part that when he feels Camille’s ankle knock against his jeans, he nearly jumps out of his skin, apologizing. Then he spends ten minutes silently chastising himself.
James Diamond is supposed to be the epitome of all things cool. That was not cool.
He can’t help it though. Having Camille and Kendall together, all to himself; it’s driving him insane.
James likes Kendall. He likes the way he knows everything there is to know about the blond, from the way he does his waffles in the morning to his secret neuroses about his dad. He likes the way Kendall’s always scheming up new, zany plans for fun. And he certainly likes the way Kendall looked when he steps out of the locker room showers back home or how completely edible he is up on stage, during a concert.
Thing is, James also likes Camille. He likes how she always goes with the flow, even if she’s asked to do something that is legitimately psychotic. He likes how she can slip from one character to the next in the space of three seconds. And he really likes the way her hair is always so shiny, and the little mole above her lip.
And therein lies the problem. He likes them both.
He has trouble with fidelity.
“James, this caprese is fantastic,” Camille breathes, fork hovering in front of her mouth. Her eyes are closed in something like bliss, and James’s mind flashes to the way she looked when he kissed her. “Try some.”
James has just enough time to realize he’s been worrying in a really unattractive way before Camille shoves her fork into his mouth. James actually feels it pierce the back of his throat. Or maybe he imagines it.
Either way, the next thing he knows, Kendall has his arms wrapped around James’s middle and he’s getting the Heimlich. He has to flap his arms frantically to get Kendall to loosen his grip enough so that James can croak, “I’m fine. I’m fine!”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” James wheezes. Everyone at the stupid restaurant is staring at him. Again. Great.
Their waiter goes so far as to shoot him a really nasty look from where he’s serving some other customers their drinks.
Like James is attention whoring on purpose.
Camille tries to smooth things over once the salads come. She’s talking about movies, or film, or some kind of role, and James is kind of zoned out by the complete and utter humiliation he just experienced, but he does catch, “The more eclectic my resume, the better chance I have at getting hired for good roles. On the other hand, yeah, playing a serial killer’s probably a little too creepy. Not by my standards, but first impressions stick, and it might bar me from the pretty girl roles.”
Kendall is nodding along like he actually cares. James knows from experience that he does not. Kendall’s distaste for acting is huge. Legendary, even; especially since Jo ditched him for that movie about demigods.
James spares a few minutes to think about how shattered Kendall was after Jo left, and how nice it is to kind of see him all whole again. He tunes back into the conversation to find that Kendall has become an active participant. He’s telling Camille about the time James was six and he-
What the actual fuck?
James clamps a hand over Kendall’s mouth, hard. He hisses, “You promised never to talk about that.”
“Mmphowkast.”
James has no idea what Kendall is trying to say, but he doesn’t feel secure enough to remove his hand from Kendall’s mouth to find out. Kendall glares at him over the ridge of his palm.
“Behave,” James orders. Kendall rolls his eyes.
When James moves his hand, Kendall rubs his fingers against his (very red) lips and says, “Geez, I thought you wouldn’t mind. You need to loosen up.”
“Yeah, James. It was a cute story,” Camille tells him. Which. No.
“You didn’t hear the end,” he says, scandalized.
Kendall gives James this long suffering look that is obviously meant to convey a lot of exasperation, but mostly just makes him seem douchey. Then he asks, “Did you meet James’s mom when she was at the Palm Woods?”
James tries to cast a meaningful moms are out of bounds look Kendall’s way, but the blond is ignoring him. He seems almost gleeful about the topic, actually. James thinks about all the things Kendall knows about his mom, and how she has truly terrified any girl that James has ever actually liked. Sometimes she scares them so much they flee across state lines. One girl even went to Canada.
This conversation cannot be allowed to happen, either.
Like Kendall can hear his thoughts, he says, “Yeah, Mrs. Diamond’s a real classy lady. But here’s an interesting bit of trivia. She’s a member of the NRA. She owns something like three shotgu-“
James elbows him in the gut. Kendall nearly goes flying. He catches himself on the edge of the table, knocking half of his silverware to the ground.
“Again?” The nasty waiter demands, cradling champagne in one fist and looking like he actually wants to beat Kendall over the head with the bottle of Dom.
Actually, he’s eyeing them all like they’re something nasty on the bottom of his shoe.
“Sorry,” Kendall wheezes, clutching his gut.
Camille has this expression on her face that James has never seen before. She says, “You guys have been friends a really long time, haven’t you?”
“Forever,” Kendall gasps, and now he’s just being dramatic. James didn’t hurt him that bad.
“Oh. Did you know we kissed once?” Camille asks. James is confused. He doesn’t see the correlation between the two topics. But he’s not really that bright.
“How could I forget that?” Kendall mutters, none too pleased.
James is struck by the sudden, awful sensation that he’s done something wrong. He just doesn’t know what.
It’s right about then that James feels a bare foot on his leg, creeping up to his knee, toes scraping soft against the underside, and damnit that tickles. Kendall, still rubbing his ribs, is smirking at him, and he’s known that is James’s most ticklish spot since they were four and were as fascinated by the differences between each other’s bodies as they were with mud and bugs and hockey.
Kendall is so obviously trying to ruin the da- The thing.
He’s trying to ruin the business.
Dinner.
Thing.
James kicks the foot edging up his knee, really needing Kendall to stop fucking with him now, please. Except then Camille yelps, “Ow!”
Oh. Uh. Oh.
James freaks out a little bit.
“Sorry. I’m- oh my god. I’m sorry.”
“It’s- okay,” Camille says through gritted teeth, trying her best to smile.
Kendall very obviously doesn’t know whether to yell at James or to laugh. He’s kind of settled on something between the two, drawling, “Douchebag move,” while choking down his laughter.
James ignores him. Softly he orders, “Let me see.”
Obediently, Camille lifts up the hem of her dress so that James can see the pale skin of her calf. He plucks a piece of ice from his water glass, pressing against the red mark he made with his shoe. Camille squeaks. “Cold.”
James runs the ice in soothing circles along her skin, feather light. He watches the goosebumps it raises on her smooth leg and he thinks about getting down on his knees and pressing a kiss to the place he kicked.
Then stupid Kendall clears his stupid throat. “Soup’s here.”
James pulls back, and the moment is gone.
Camille is a trooper. She tries to get back to the conversation they were having before James physically assaulted her. When it doesn’t work, she allows James to take over. He tries to keep both of his friends interested, but he gets to the point where he’s having trouble keeping topics straight. He accidentally asks Camille instead of Kendall about her high score in Call of Duty, and ends up questioning Kendall about his favorite hair care products. They both give him blank looks before launching into a conversation between themselves about BTR’s newest single. James sighs.
He wants to put his head in his hands, because this is not working.
James doesn’t get it. He doesn’t do this. He’s never anything but charming and awesome. Those are his default settings. So what even?
Camille starts talking about the costumes for one of her sets and how they’re so much nicer than the last show she worked on. James feels like he hasn’t said anything constructive for at least ten minutes, so he jumps in with a contribution.
“Oh, you mean the witch costume? I thought you looked really great with all those warts.” He sees Kendall shaking his head at him frantically, but James doesn’t get what he’s actually saying. “They really enhanced your bone structure. And that dress was hideous-“
“James. You mean last week?”
James nods.
“Those weren’t warts. Tyler gave me chicken pox. And that was my robe. You think it’s hideous?”
Oh.
“Um. No. Of course not. I. Uh. It’s gorgeous. You’re gorgeous. We’re all- gorgeous… “
James trails off, because Camille is giving him a look he’s not used to receiving. It’s the kind of look people reserve for the smelly weirdos you meet on public transportation.
James is not a weirdo.
He hasn’t taken public transportation since he moved out of Minnesota.
And he certainly doesn’t smell.
Trying to be surreptitious about it, James sniffs the crook of his arm, just to check. Personally, he thinks his skin has a hint of eau-de-fantastic, like sunlight and sea salt and Cuda.
“What are you doing?”
“Oh. Um. I. I was checking to see if I spilled some soup.” James licks his forearm. “I did. All better now!”
He makes a little face because Cuda doesn’t actually taste as great as it smells.
Now Camille and Kendall are both giving him the look, and James realizes that he just licked his arm in a candlelit restaurant full of famous people.
This is terrible. Worst date- no, worst outing that is not a date ever.
Camille does this slow turn away from James and asks Kendall, “So has anyone ever gotten trampled at one of your concerts?”
“Is this research?” Kendall looks mildly disturbed. And frightened. “You’re not going to trample me are you?”
Camille laughs. “I’m thinking of going out for a groupie role, and I want it to look realistic.”
Great. Now they’re not even paying attention to him, because he is a freak who licked himself like a feral cat in the midst of a five star steakhouse. He’s turning into Carlos.
James pouts, clenching his hands in the table cloth. He’s not used to bombing this hard. He feels worse than he did that time Logan stole all his swagger with his stupid magic geek voodoo powers.
He’d really wanted tonight to be perfect. He really wanted Camille to smile that smile she gives him sometimes, the one that makes his him feel like a superstar, with spotlights and cheering crowds and everything. Instead she’s making a face at Kendall’s gruesome tale of that time that this one fan accidentally got pushed into a drainage ditch.
Kendall has no idea how to talk to girls. Doesn’t he know he’s supposed to be all charming and sweet? Not regaling the lady with stories about raw sewage?
And, to make things worse, he’s tossing a roll back and forth between his hands like a baseball. Classy.
James glares at him, trying to bore holes in the side of his face with his eyes. Seriously, this is all his fault.
The busboy comes by and asks if they need anything. When James tells him no, he glances at Kendall and Camille and says, “Wow. It’s tough being the third wheel, hunh?”
“I’m not the third-“
The busboy holds up his hands. “Hey, hey. No shame. My roommate and his girlfriend do this to me all the time. At least yours aren’t all over each other.”
James spares a second to think about how amazing that would be. He doesn’t know if he could handle that much combined sexy.
“By the way, you have great hair. How do you get it to flip out at the ends like that? Straight iron?”
And then the busboy is touching his head.
James now needs to wash his hair. Thoroughly. He wants to drown himself in some gazpacho, but his face won’t fit in the bowl. Stupid fancy restaurant with their stupid half size portions.
When James manages to shoo the busboy away, he notices that Kendall’s got breadcrumbs on his fingertips. James thinks about running his lips along Kendall’s knuckles, about sucking one of those fingers into his mouth. But he looks at Camille and figures that would be a bad idea.
Whoever invented liking two people at once was an idiot.
James is in the midst of that profound thought when he accidentally slops gravy onto his pants, the serving spoon clattering to the floor in a really loud, obvious fashion. Camille and Kendall break out of their conversation.
“James, are you okay?”
“Of course I’m okay. Why are you guys asking me that?”
“You’re- jumpy.”
Of course he’s jumpy. He’s bombing so hard that someone might as well be dropping him straight out of a B-52, he was physically assaulted by a busboy, and he totally spilled gravy on his favorite jeans.
Not that they’re his date jeans. Just. His favorite.
He doesn’t get it. He fits with Camille and he fits with Kendall, so why doesn’t he fit with the two of them together?
Then again, he’s not used to trying to impress anybody. Usually he’s impressive without doing anything at all.
“Hey James. Doesn’t that girl-“ Kendall jerks a thumb at a pretty redhead wearing a short, sequined dress, “-Look just like that one chick you dated at the end of freshman year? The one you lost your virg-“
“No!” James squeaks, and he isn’t even lying. That girl looks nothing like the girl he lost his virginity to. If anything that girl looks just like that one chick on that one teen show that he would have liked to lose his virginity to, if he was three years younger and not completely enamored with the two people in front of him for reasons he can’t quite seem to pin down at the current moment.
“Oh. My bad,” Kendall says.
“What are you doing?” James hisses, because seriously, what is Kendall’s malfunction?
“Noting the freaky resemblance?” Kendall shrugs his shoulders all innocent like. James is not fooled.
“You’re purposely sabotaging-“
“I’m doing no such thing. You think too much.”
James doesn’t know whether or not to be offended by the accusation. It’s certainly never been made before.
James is struck by a sudden, horrible thought.
What if Camille and Kendall really do like each other? They’re both all bickery and focused on each other, and James almost likes to look at them all redfaced and angry more than he likes his own reflection (almost), so what. If?
Sexy or not, that cannot be allowed to happen. They can’t just- leave James behind.
“Camille. You have- salad. In your hair. You should- bathroom,” James gasps out. Camille runs her fingers through her curls and then shrugs, getting up to go check.
James is aware that he’s made a huge dating faux pas, telling the girl that she looks anything but perfect, but this is important, okay? James curls his arm around Kendall’s neck and whispers hot and harsh into his ear, “Do you like Camille?”
“What? No.”
James does not believe that for a second. Camille is gorgeous. Kendall has eyes. It does not compute.
“Then why are you trying to make me look bad?”
“I’m not- trying to make you. Look bad,” Kendall gets all shifty, “I’m trying to give her realistic expectations about what she’s getting into on this date.”
“It’s not a date.” Kendall rolls his eyes. James wants to tell him that his face is going to stick that way. “And what kind of realistic expectations? That I’m a whore?”
“You are not a whore. You pay for those.” He considers. “You might be a little slutty. Just a little.”
“I am not. I have an eclectic palate for girls.”
And boys, he silently adds, even though he’s thinking less about kissing Kendall’s face at the current moment and more about whaling on him with one of the serving trays.
“Right. You know you’ve made yourself look like an ass, so far? What’s up with the socially awkward act?”
Socially awkward? That’s a new accusation too. Apparently tonight is the night for those.
“Do we make you nervous?”
Kendall laughs, but the sound dies in his throat when James exclaims, “Yes!”
Kendall reaches out and squeezes James’s shoulder. “Why are you nervous? It’s just me. And Camille.”
That’s the problem, James thinks. Kendall looks at the tablecloth and asks, “Do you want me to leave? It was dick of me to crash your date.”
James can’t think of anything worse than Kendall leaving with that expression on his face.
It would probably ease the tension between him and Camille if he left, but James really, suddenly doesn’t want him to go. He knows that if Kendall stays he’ll just keep trying to bully James into admitting he likes Camille, but James doesn’t mind all the ribbing. Much. He’s used to his friends trying to humiliate him for his own good. He knows Kendall means well. And- he likes having Kendall around. So.
James isn’t the kind of kid who ever needed a safety blanket as a child. Partly because he always had Kendall. And that’s what he feels like now, even though it’s probably the most uncool thought that he’s ever had. He needs Kendall to stick around, to be his safety blanket. James is pretty sure he’s blown things so badly with Camille that there’s no way he’ll be able to salvage them all on his lonesome.
To be fair, it is Kendall’s fault. If he had any honor, he’d stick around to fix this.
Anyway. A taxi back to the hotel would be ridiculously expensive.
What Camille doesn’t know won’t hurt her.
“Guys, there wasn’t anything in my- hair,” Camille says, glancing back and forth between them.
“Stop worrying,” Kendall says softly, breath cool in James’s ear. He shivers. He can’t help it. Camille sits down and crosses her arms.
The main course comes, and it’s not too eventful until Camille decides to ask what James wants for dessert.
“I know you like sweet things,” Camille says, and she starts running the tip of her butter knife down James’s chest. He isn’t sure whether to feel scared or aroused.
“Isn’t that right?” Camille tacks on, “Sexypants.”
His eyes widen.
This is just. Weird. Yeah. That’s it.
Things have gotten weird.
James feels Kendall’s arm at the back of his chair, all casual like, and he jumps up, nearly knocking the entire table over. Kendall stares at him inquisitively. Before he can make up a flimsy excuse, Camille exclaims, “Oh my god, James. Your hair.”
“What’s wrong with my hair?” James asks, bringing his fingertips to his bangs.
“Go look,” Camille commands. James scoots away from the table, hurrying over to the nearest reflective surface so that he can look.
Camille is a dirty liar. His hair is perfect. Crisis averted.
James takes a step towards the table, but then he realizes that Camille and Kendall have their heads bent super close together. He stops in his tracks, trying not to draw attention to himself.
“Sexypants?” He hears Kendall whisper, followed by a whole bunch of other words James can’t hear.
Camille says something about “-mommy issues-“ which James is completely offended by, because he does not have mommy issues, and then he tunes back in to hear Camille retort, “You gate crashed my date.”
He feels guilt swell in his chest, but it barely has time to stir up a real clamor before Kendall exclaims, “You’re trying to bang my best friend.”
“You should be rooting for him.” Camille snorts, and truer words have never been spoken. What the hell is wrong with Kendall?
Also, James very keenly notices that she doesn’t refute the accusation. Meaning there’s still a chance.
“I am. I want him to get laid!”
James doesn’t hear Camille’s sarcastic response to that, but he can tell that it’s sarcastic by the way she tosses her hair. And then he hears, “Unexpected.”
Kendall is saying “-have a chance if you’d stop thrusting your cleavage at him.”
“At least I have cleavage to thrust,” Camille snaps. “Could you have chosen pants that were any tighter?”
“No. I stole them from James’s closet.”
James’s jaw drops open. He hadn’t even noticed. That’s how scrambled this whole thing is making him feel.
“I knew they were too fashion forward for you.”
Kendall’s lips press together. Then he says, “Look. We shouldn’t fight. There is a solution here.”
Camille stares at him expectantly.
Sheepish, Kendall continues, “Just. I have to think of it, okay?”
James decides to drop back into his seat then, because Kendall’s solution will probably involve hiding Camille’s body in a lobster pot.
James tries to start up another round of conversation, but it doesn’t really work. Things have gotten so damn awkward at the table. Camille and Kendall are back to glaring daggers at each other, and nothing James is saying seems to be helping.
Maybe Kendall was lying, and they do like each other.
James feels this inexplicable sadness wash over him. If he was a good friend, he’d let them be together.
He just doesn’t want to be alone. He really hates being alone.
“I’m going to use the restroom,” James says, because he feels like he can’t breathe.
He spends ten minutes leaning against a bathroom stall, hyperventilating. This night is not going how he’d planned. At all.
When he gets back to the table, though, things have changed. For one, Kendall and Camille are no longer there.
“Have you seen my- friends?” he asks the waiter, wondering if the not-date has gone so horribly awry that Camille and Kendall decided to ditch him completely.
The waiter makes a face at him. “They’re at the bar.”
The what?
James is about to tell him that there is no way in hell Camille and Kendall abandoned him for alcohol when he hears, “Jaaaames!”
His head snaps in the direction of the bar. At first all he sees is glass shelving accented by bottles of all shapes and all sizes, fronted by a thick mahogany countertop. And then he sees that Camille is sitting on top of the countertop, a tray of shots lined up beside her. Kendall is sitting on a stool, head on her knees, and he’s wearing a huge, dopey grin.
It’s impossible. He’s been gone all of fifteen minutes. No one can get drunk in fifteen minutes.
James’s hand slips along the table, dragging the cloth and half the plates along with it, steak juice sloshing all over the clean surface.
“I don’t have any more clean tablecloths,” the waiter mutters. “Maybe you guys should go eat out in the desert, with all the other feral animals.”
“Dude. Do you want a tip or not?”
He looks James up and down disparagingly. “You guys can afford to tip?”
“These jeans cost 300 dollars. And I’m in a band.”
“Oh yeah? What’s it called?” The guy challenges.
“Big Time Rush.”
“Never heard of you. Are you sure the real name doesn’t involve the word Mascara?”
“My eyelashes are naturally full and dark,” James splutters.
The waiter rolls his eyes. “If your friends puke on the floor, you’re cleaning it up.”
“What kind of restaurant is this?” The waiter doesn’t answer, already strolling away. James marches up to Kendall and demands, “What did you give her?”
Kendall opens his mouth to answers, but before he can-
“Tequila! Drink of the gods!” Camille cheers, hopping off the counter and wobbling against Kendall’s side.
“Um, I think it’s the drink of the Mexicans.”
“Mexico,” Camille cheers. “Home of the gods.”
James thinks about arguing, but he’s not entirely sure that he could point to Mexico on a map. He shrugs. “Sure. Why not.” Then he turns to Kendall and demands, “You got her drunk?”
“Your date was lame.” Kendall shrugs, but he doesn’t look very apologetic.
“It’s not a date,” James snaps, irritated.
“It’s not?” Camille’s eyes get all wide. “I wore my lacy lingerie for nothing?”
James blinks and files that way for later, because oh god. If Camille ever forgives him for this, James is going to take her on a road trip to a bed and breakfast in Napa or somewhere far, far away from his stupid friends so that he can ravish her. Kendall smirks up at him and James thinks that he has half a mind to do the same thing to Kendall, straight or not, because he is an asshole with pretty dimples. He totally deserves to be ravished and then to never spoken to again.
James realizes he’s mixing his priorities right now.
“How much did you give her?”
“I don’t know,” Kendall says, and from the honey slow way he’s talking, James realizes Camille is not the only one who’s been downing the drink of the gods.
“We had shots! Lots of shots,” Camille chirps, gesturing wildly to a squat bottle of Patrón sitting on the counter. It’s over half empty. James really hopes that it was opened long before they got to it.
“You might have to pay,” Kendall says, forehead furrowing in this adorable way. “It was like, ten dollars a shot, and we had-“
He makes a space between his hands that varies between a few inches and over a foot. Kendall is clearly intoxicated.
James knows from experience that it takes a lot to get Kendall tipsy.
“You drank all of that,” he gasps.
He no longer finds Kendall adorable.
“I thought I just told you that,” Camille looks puzzled.
Then she looks bored with being confused. She hops into Kendall’s lap like it is the easiest thing in the entire world.
Kendall seems content to let her sit there.
James might die from the visual alone. Why did he think them liking each other would be bad again?
Better yet, why does no one have a camera when he needs one? Because this is like- it’s like the hottest thing that James can imagine. The two people he likes best in the world, all over each other. It’s hot like lesbians.
The bartender passes him a bill and yeah. That explains everything. It’s over two hundred dollars. James figures ten shots in fifteen minutes is enough to down any man or woman; even Kendall Knight. How Camille is still alive is beyond him. The girl’s like, five foot nothing.
“You should have a shot!” Camille announces, and James stares at her. Someone has to drive them all home.
“You should,” Kendall agrees, nodding sagely. How he even managed to con the barman into thinking he was twenty one is beyond James. Kendall smiles for emphasis, and there are those stupid pretty dimples again. He’s acting like it isn’t even his fault that they’re in this situation when it so, so is.
James stares at the bottle of Patrón, weighing the cost and his new status as designated driver against the way he cannot really cope with what’s currently happening.
“Yeah, okay,” he agrees.
James is three shots in when Camille launches herself from Kendall’s lap straight onto James. She latches onto his mouth, murmuring, “I’ve been waiting all night for this, idiot.”
James knows it’s a bad idea to kiss her back when Kendall, the guy he likes, is sitting right there, but he does it anyway, because. Well. How can he not? Her mouth his hot and wet against his, tongue slipping past his lips almost immediately. She presses her body flush against his, and fuck, it’s even better than he remembers. He even lets her rake her fingers through his hair, moaning against his lips and-
“It’s like watching anacondas,” James hears Kendall casually tell the bartender. “Do you think one of them can unhinge their jaw?”
“Your jealousy is showing,” James mumbles against Camille’s mouth.
“Really? Can’t have that,” he hears Kendall say. And then, suddenly, there’s this warm, solid weight behind him. He feels fingers sliding into his hair, stronger, longer fingers than Camille’s, and a mouth against his neck. Kendall’s free arm wraps around James’s waist, chest pressed all hard against his back.
There is a very real possibility that James might die where he is standing.
He hears this weird noise, kind of like a dying cat, and it must be coming from him, because suddenly the mouth at his neck is gone and Camille is pulling back, lips bruised red, hair a little bit tousled from James’s fingers.
Oh god, he hopes his hair doesn’t look like that.
James checks his reflection in the mirrored surface behind the bar. Between Camille and Kendall, the three hours he spent carefully styling it are going right down the drain.
“Guys,” Camille says, “I don’t feel so good.”
James groans. He tries to take care of the bill for food, ignoring the confused Are You Guys Swingers? look that their busboy is giving him while Camille hangs from his side. He guides Camille out of the restaurant the best he can, but she is dangling from his neck now; all of her weight, which isn’t that substantial but-
He can feel the tequila burn in his stomach, knees getting weak. Unlike Kendall, James is a total lightweight. The world has gone all sparkly and pretty.
“Whoa,” Kendall says softly, coming up behind Camille, sharing her weight so that they’ve got her sandwiched between them.
“I can’t believe you got her drunk,” James snaps again.
“Your date was lame,” Kendall repeats. And then he stops, turning to face James, squishing Camille in between them.
“Kendall?” James asks, worried that he might collapse on the sidewalk. He’s not sure he’s steady enough to carry both of his not-dates. But then, right there, in the middle of the crowded street, right over Camille’s shoulder, Kendall leans in and kisses James, messy and soft.
James can tell that Camille is watching appreciably, her fingers trailing down James’s side, and he really, honestly has no idea what to do with himself. He’s usually the one in control of these situations; he’s the one with all the experience and the knowledge. But somehow Camille and Kendall have rendered him completely and utterly speechless, the sheer sexiness of their intertwined bodies stealing the oxygen from his lungs.
When he breaks the kiss, he’s panting. He doesn’t even care about how not cool he looks. Camille’s front is pressed against his, and in slow motion she cranes her head up so that she’s looking back at Kendall, head against his chest. James thinks his body has turned to stone, because she can’t be- but she is. She’s lurching up up and kissing beneath Kendall’s jaw, turning it into a suck that will probably leave an uncomfortably positioned hickey.
Kendall doesn’t seem to mind, leaning down into it. James cannot even begin to believe he is watching this.
Both of them seem to feel his eyes trained on them like lasers. They break apart, and Camille asks, “Do you want us to-“ She stops, but then she trades a significant look with Kendall, and oh god. James thinks. The two people he likes best in the world kissing?
That would be the hottest thing ever. Better than lesbians.
It ends up being the most fantastic thing James has ever seen in his entire life. More fantastical than his own reflection, and he feels like that’s really saying something.
James likes the way Kendall tilts his head down, eyes falling closed as his mouth molds with Camille’s. It starts out all soft and dirty, and there is obviously a lot of tongue involved. One of Kendall’s hands fists against Camille’s side, rucking the material of her dress, fingertips scraping against the front of James’s shirt. His other remains wrapped around them both, pressing warm and hard into James’s hip.
Camille arches up on her tippy toes, trying to get better access to Kendall’s mouth, and okay. James is well aware that they’re putting on this show just for him, but they are fucking awesome actors. They both look completely, one hundred percent into it.
Kendall makes this completely inhuman noise, a groan that James feels reverberate in his bones. When they pull apart, the both of them are panting. James wants to pinch himself and double check that he’s not dreaming.
In tandem, they look at James like they might actually devour him. He swallows, ridiculously turned on.
“This was a great plan,” Camille tells Kendall, and James may be a little buzzed, but he is still clear headed enough to realize that she is not slurring her words.
“Plan?” He echoes, because it’s hard to think with the liquor and the lust vying for attention in his blood. Kendall lets go of the grip he’s got on both of them, and their little sandwich of three separates, putting a few inches between all of them. That’s good. Space is good. James needs to use his mind.
Except it’s mostly bad. He misses their warmth. He can’t concentrate when they both look like they need James’s hands all over them.
“I believe Kendall’s exact words were, let’s pretend to be krunked and trick James into hooking up with us.”
“I didn’t say it like that.”
“Exact words,” she emphasizes.
“Um. Why would you think I wouldn’t go for you both sober?”
“Because you kept insisting it wasn’t a date. Jerk.”
“Care to reconsider?” Kendall breathes hot and close to James’s neck, and oh, yeah. He rescinds his previous claim. Immediately. Kendall wins.
Best date ever.
James nods furiously, and Camille smiles, standing on her tip toes to wrap an arm around his neck. She’s like, smoldering at him.
It’s not fair. James is the one who smolders. He’s heard girls say so.
It's right about then that he feels Camille’s hand inching up his leg. She runs her fingers, soft, up the inside of his right thigh, and James jerks back, squeaking. “Camille!”
“What?” Camille bats her eyelashes at him innocently, and James realizes that Kendall is horrifyingly right in what he said, way back at dinner (was that only twenty minutes ago?).
James is thinking too much.
Why is he doing that? He is James fucking Diamond.
Camille may be a masterful actress and Kendall may be fantastic at scheming, and they might both be so hot that they out burn the sun, but if there’s one thing James knows how to do better than both of them, it’s making out.
Determined, he cups Camille’s chin, drawing her close and kissing her soft on the lips. He moves his mouth over hers, breathing in the air from her lungs, tongue gentle and probing until she makes this sweet little noise against James, trying to press her body in close. He allows himself a few seconds to enjoy it, pulling her leg up around his hip before James smirks and pulls away. Then he dances around her and does the same exact thing to Kendall, kissing a little harder, a little rougher, groping at his ass. Kendall pushes his hips into James insistently, hands clawing at his back.
When James pulls back, they’re both staring at him, eyes a little glazed. Kendall’s actually tilting towards him a little, like he wants to sink into James’s body, and oh yeah.
This night is not even close to over.
James slings an easy arm around both of their shoulders and says, “How about we go back to the apartment and you two can pick up where you left off?
He hears Kendall’s breath hitch, and Camille is leaning soft into his side. They’re both staggering for real, now.
Perfect, James thinks.
If the two of them like acting so much, they can put on a special performance, just for him. It will be like interactive theater. Except sexy.
Maybe he can even borrow Logan’s video camera. Yeah. James thinks that he can make this work.
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