[fic] In Fair Verona - 5/?
Title: In Fair Verona
Author: garnetice
Pairing: Kendall/James, Kendall/Mercedes
Rating: M
Word Count: 6,500 (part five)
Part: Five of ??? (probably ten)
Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4
Warnings: Drinking, sex, guns, death, swords, violence, homophobia, sexism, a lot of isms.
Summary: "What are we doing?" Kendall asks, taking a shaky breath. His hands hover over James's abdomen, and James arches forward until they are touching, until Kendall's fingertips press into his skin. "I don't know. But don't stop."
Disclaimer: BTR is not mine. Nor is William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet or the original R&J.
Author Notes: Logan has a tiny personality! Jett Stetson makes an appearance! James and Kendall enact their own version of the balcony scene! Gracias forever to jblostfan16 for the beta.
---
It’s not that Kendall is avoiding going home. It’s just that he’s keeping some distance from the apartment. Because distance is a good thing. Distance means clarity and being away from the narrow eyed hurt that floods James’s gaze whenever Kendall comes near.
Kendall can’t take that look, that mixture of disappointment and anger that mostly makes him feel distressed and desperate to fix it.
Only distance also means that Kendall has to find a way to occupy the time that’s not filled by his work at the studio or wedding plans, and there’s only so much of the day he can spend drowning his sorrows at L’Amour. It’s weird how much time he wasted away with James, just sitting on the roof of their crashpad, soaking in the sun or joking about girls or bickering over shit that no one else would even give a damn about. Kendall tried skulking around with Mercedes and her lemmings for a few days, but that was disastrous. He prefers that Mercedes never gets a chance to threaten him with something sharp and pointy ever again, because he actually has no doubt that she really would introduce his esophagus to his nuts.
So now he’s on his fallback plan, which is harassing the fuck out of his other best friends.
The apothecary creeps Kendall out. It smells like plants and soil rot and mold. There’s not a whole lot of light in the front room, and the old prior keeps a shelf lined with skulls; from human to coyote to gulls to cougars. Kendall doesn’t know if they are trophies or if it is just a shrine to death. Neither would surprise him.
Logan is in a corner, bent over a row of glass jars that he is filling with something that looks a lot like parsley. He moves with the kind of precision that demonstrates he knows exactly what he’s doing, but it’s not shocking. The kid’s read every medical text book he could get his greedy hands on. If he’s not an expert by now, he’s pretty damn close.
Shadows play over his face, and for a long minute all Kendall can think of is Nevada and the puffy swell of Logan’s cheekbones where bruises blossomed over his skin, black-blue beneath a bright red stain of blood. He rubs the heel of his palms against his eyes, trying to chase away the memory, but it’s always there. Life on the road was a kind of freedom, but there were also times that it was hellish.
Kendall doesn’t like to think about that. “Knock, knock.”
Logan glances up, his face unmarred by anything except surprise. “Kendall, hey.”
“Hi.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Uh. Visiting?”
Logan’s eyes crinkle with fondness. He inclines his head and prompts, “And to what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I can’t just visit my best friend in the whole world?”
Logan snorts. “Not on a normal day, no.”
“What are you concocting, there?” Kendall pokes one of the glass jars, watching it teeter precariously in its stand. Logan bats his hand away.
“Not something you should be touching.”
“Aw, come on. No one’s gonna see. Where’s the old man, anyway?”
Automatically, Logan replies, “He hates when you call him that.”
“Really? I thought he was too stoned to care.” Kendall doesn’t dislike Doc Hollywood, exactly. He’s just a wee bit past the border of nutty, and being around him makes Kendall feel like he might lose it too.
Also, one time he tried to treat one of Kendall’s paper cuts with a butcher knife, so can anyone even blame him for being uneasy around the dude? He’s not sure how Logan manages to put up with him. Obviously Logan’s got a psyche of iron after dealing with Kendall, James, and Carlos for so many years.
Logan gives him the stink eye, but then he says, “It’s good you’re here. I’ve been meaning to talk to you.”
Kendall doesn’t like the sound of that. Talks involve feelings and emotions and solemnity, and he’s not in the mood for any of it. He totally should have visited Carlos instead.
Straight to the point, Logan says, “You should stop fighting with James.”
“I’m not…fighting…with James…” Kendall replies lamely. Logan is not even close to fooled. One of the many downsides to being besties with someone since the tender age of eight.
“He’s worried about you. So’s Carlos. So am I,” Logan adds a bit ruefully. “This wedding thing is…”
“I thought you thought it was a good idea.”
“In theory it is. If you marry Mercedes, we’re set for life. No one will come after us for anything. But. I’m not sure that matters if you’re miserable.”
“Why is everyone so convinced I’m miserable?” Kendall complains, propping his elbows up on the big wooden table and making the entire thing shake, glass clinking, tinkling throughout the store. “Do I look that upset?”
“Kendall. We’ve known you forever. We all remember that sappy romantic crap you used to go on about when you were a kid.”
“I never-“
“You used to think you were going to marry the Princess Bride. This…I mean, Mercedes is great. And you obviously like her a lot. But.” Logan chews on his lip. “Can you really, honestly tell me that you’re going to be happy being tied down to her for the rest of your life?”
Kendall doesn’t know what to say. The situation’s not ideal. Marriage will change a lot in his life. He won’t be able to spend as much time with the guys, for one. No more kicking around at L’Amour or whiling away lazy nights at the beach or on the rooftop of their apartment. No more listening to Logan or Carlos or James’s breath-sounds right before bed. It will take away that far off, distant dream he’s been harboring of making something more of himself, of becoming integral to Griffin and then worming his way out from under the man’s thumb. Kendall knew from the second he landed his job at the studios that this was it, that this was his life. But the impending wedding closes all his avenues, takes away any slim chance he ever had of finding something better. Like he mused the day that he and Mercedes were caught, he still wants more. Just, Kendall isn’t sure what exactly more is, or what it can be.
Power?
A safehaven?
James?
The thought is white hot, unbidden. It makes him bite down hard on his tongue, blood flooding the back of his throat. No, not James. That’s not even in the realm of possibilities.
Basically, he knows that ‘til-death-do-we-part isn’t what he wants from life, but the problem in saying that out loud is that he isn’t sure what it is he does want. Carefully, Kendall replies, “So what? You want me to hold out for true love?”
Logan winces. He tries to cover it by busying himself with the weird plant he’s slicing and dicing. The flickering candlelight plays over his face, making him look chiseled, like a storybook prince. Very, very slowly, he responds, “Maybe. I don’t know. I just don’t want you to be unhappy. Even if it means us being safe, I-“ He swallows thickly. “I know you guys don’t always like rules and I know I’ve been pretty dickish about following them. I just want us all to be okay. You know that, right?”
“Hey, hey.”
Kendall’s got a hand on Logan’s shoulder, invading his personal space. He doesn’t like the melancholy tone in Logan’s voice, doesn’t like the pinch of his lips or the rigid set of his back. Logan makes a choked sound, and immediately Kendall engulfs him in a big, rib-crushing bear hug.
“Duh,” he breathes into Logan’s hair, and he’s thinking of Nevada and blood, blood like the red clay cliffs drying, crusting off onto an unfinished wood floor. “I know. And Carlos knows. And James knows. You keep us out of trouble, Loginator. You keep us safe,” he promises, an oath, because it’s what Logan needs.
In Nevada, they spent a couple of days crashed out in a roadhouse off the main highway. It was nothing but desert and brush for miles, and they had a stash of guns and whiskey and a huge supply of bar peanuts. It wasn’t a bad place to sleep off some of the exhaustion and terror that had set into their bones.
Logan wandered off in the middle of the day, after a four-way fight that had sort of been inevitably building after months and months pressed up against one another, caged in and terrified that this was all they’d ever have; fear and each other. He wanted to walk his anger off, Kendall guessed, and if the world was still a safe place, that would have been a good idea.
They didn’t find him until two days later, curled around the base of a cactus, lips cracked with dehydration and dried blood. He had a broken arm, bruised ribs, and a slew of new cuts and scars. Not all of which Kendall and James and Carlos could see.
They carried him back to the roadhouse that night and wrapped him in blankets and did what they could. None of them knew squat about medicine, but the bar had an old first aid kit, and Carlos had enough experience breaking his own bones as a kid that they muddled through. When they were finally able to get Logan conscious, they couldn’t goad him into saying much more than that he’d run into some guys who hadn’t liked the look of his face. After that, he clamped up the second anyone brought it up. And he got real, real particular about how badly they all needed to be safe.
The idea of what might have actually happened makes Kendall’s blood boil. In a way his imagination is probably worse than the reality, but no matter how much he pries, Logan won’t ever ‘fess up to the details. Still, at least Kendall understands why Logan just wants everyone to follow the rules and keep their heads down:
Don’t wander off track and you’ll always, always be okay.
It doesn’t justify all the bullshit he pulls, sometimes, especially when it comes to Camille, but Kendall gets it. He hugs Logan tighter to his chest until some of the tension has left his muscles.
Logan says into the cloth of Kendall’s button down, “If you decide you don’t want to marry her, I’ll help you get out of it.”
“How?” Kendall asks his hairline.
Logan pulls back and gestures around the shop. “Doc Hollywood’s got a lot of strange shit. You’d be surprised what some of these mixtures can do. We can get out of the city, go somewhere else. Mantua, maybe? I’ve heard they’re building walls. We could all go; the guys, Camille, fuck, bring Mercedes if you want and-“
“Logan. We’re not leaving. Mercedes is great,” Kendall says, and she really is. “I’m fine.”
Mostly. The only specific person upsetting him right this minute is a boy with tiger eyes, waiting in the wings, and Kendall’s not quite ready to confront that yet.
“But-“
“Let me protect you this time,” Kendall says soothingly. “You just get really smart and irreplaceable, and one day the four of us will own this town.”
Maybe there’s still a way to have more, Kendall hopes. Maybe marrying Mercedes will be a good thing. He’ll be more powerful. Griffin will be an ally. And between that and Logan’s rising star at the apothecary, life won’t turn out exactly as Kendall imagined, but it won’t suck. That’s something, right?
Kendall hangs around the apothecary for an hour and a half, pestering Logan about what this herb does and what that pill’s for and will these two things explode if you mix them together? Logan finally grabs his hands, stilling the hyperactive energy that trembles through them. He says, “I don’t want to kick you out or anything, but. Work. I have it.”
Which is how Kendall ends up taking advantage of his future fiancée. Again.
As he walks to Mercedes’s, a blood orange sunrise reflects against the water, giving the ocean a crimson glow that is very, very biblical. Kendall isn’t big on religion or god, but he knows what a plague is. He knows what it feels like to be cursed.
A piece of bright yellow paper crunches under his foot. Another execution, scheduled this Wednesday. Spectacular. Kendall can barely contain his excitement. He scowls at the asphalt, and then at the blazing sky. Almost despite himself, his feet turn in the opposite direction.
He doesn’t venture away from the ten block radius that encompasses his apartment, the main drag, the studios, the beach, L’Amour, and Mercedes’s very often. The city Verona used to be encompassed miles, and still does. There are streets that are empty and dark from disuse. There are places where no one goes unless they want to get their throat slit. And then there is the huge chain link and red brick monstrosity that keeps the refugees from walking in unattended.
Kendall can smell the fences before he reaches them, metal breaks in Verona’s high walls that allow him to see out into the darkness, where the refugees gather. Foulness emanates from the trench that acts as a place to piss, less than half a mile off, but lone refugees won’t even wander that far for fear of losing their place in line. The whole stretch of land beyond the fences reeks like an outhouse, and more.
The stench of death is there, thick and cloying.
Kendall steps off the curb and into the street. He can see them, now, refugees in single file, waiting until their turn is called. It’s cruel. People travel for thousands of miles to reach the city, braving all kinds of danger, and then they are told to sit and wait their turn, to survive hunger and thirst and cold nights and the outbreaks of disease all on the hope that they might gain admission into the city. A few people leave, trekking out into the wasteland of the surrounding towns in search of food.
Sometimes they come back.
Sometimes they don’t.
Kendall nearly died a whole handful of times out there, looking for something for them all to eat while James and Carlos and Logan held his place in line. After all they’d gone through to reach Verona, Kendall would not let them passively starve. He walks along the length of the fences now, reminiscing, trying to ignore the cold faces of Hawk’s militiamen, watching him suspiciously.
At a break in the long, snaking line on the other side is a fire, and there are drums. A girl is dancing, wending her body left, right, forward, in time with the drums. The firelight makes her look otherworldly.
Kendall remembers this. In the months they spent sitting outside the fence he was able to count the jut of his ribs beneath his skin. He could hear the sound Carlos’s stomach made when it was beyond empty. And in the midst of that, there was no entertainment at all except for what they made for themselves. It doesn’t seem like such a big thing, boredom, when you’re so hungry you can’t see straight. But back then, the distraction was what kept them sane. James would dance, sometimes, shifting from one move to the next, as capricious and captivating as wildfire. It was impossible to look away.
It still is, when he’s swaying back and forth in L’Amour, holding some girl in his arms. James doesn’t know how to be anything but enchanting.
Kendall scrubs a hand over his eyes, trying to drown out the image of the engagement party, the memory of James’s fingertips against his skin. He’s not sure why he thought coming here would invite any kind of clarity. All it does is make him miss James and Carlos and Logan. He wants to run back home and press his fingers to their ribcages and make sure they’ve been fed, that they’re as healthy and alive as he remembers from this morning, this afternoon. Emaciation wasn’t a good look for any of them.
The drumbeats get louder. Hawk’s men bang the butt of their rifles against the fence. They yell at the refugees to simmer down. They laugh when they crush a child’s fingers.
Kendall hates them.
Camille is the only exception to that rule. The night he met her, James was dancing while three corpses rotted in a heap less than twenty feet away. They were kids, younger than Kendall and the guys. They tried to scale the fence.
Hawk’s enforcers hadn’t appreciated their efforts.
The stench was disgusting, and the smoke of the fire, fueled by old newspapers and whatever wood they could scavenge from nearby homes burned something awful, black billowing clouds thick in Kendall’s nose. The silhouette of James’s body wove in and out of the haze, sinuous, hypnotic. Carlos sashayed next to him, drawing his hands over his head in beckoning motions, like he was trying to draw water from the cracked earth. Kendall alternated between trading comments with Logan, who was trying to inventory the few constellations they could make out in the sky and talking casually with one of their neighbors in line; a man so sick with disease that small gnat like creatures nested in his wounds. They turned to fat white maggots his loving wife tried and failed to pick out. Kendall recalls eyeing one of the squirming creatures, disgusted by his entire existence. The past year of his life had been lousy with the kind of poverty stricken conditions he’d only ever seen on the news. He’d thought maybe they would die out there, waiting for admittance beyond the walls of a city he’d never seen.
Then he spotted Camille through a break in the fences, watching James dance. She beckoned Kendall over and struck up a conversation.
The rest is history.
Kendall stares at the smoke of the fire, at the girl with her belly-dancer charm. The catcalls of the enforcers are turning hard, dangerous. It reminds him of the night those kids died.
He all but runs to Mercedes’s house.
---
He is safe.
The wind rustles sheer curtains, fluttering white like smoke against the night sky. The chimes Mercedes keeps outside her window tinkle, metal hitting metal, creating a pretty little melody. And of course, the radio crackles with white noise, static that settles across Kendall’s skin before a song starts up. Here, in this safe haven of a place, Kendall does not have to think about death.
Mercedes runs her fingers across Kendall’s chest, her smile wicked, her mouth soft. Kendall pulls her against him and kisses her deep, bruising. He wants more. He needs more to erase all the terrible things that are haunting him, the ghosts at his heels.
Only Mercedes is soft in all the places that James was hard, and Kendall feels guilty for even thinking it. He pulls her lower lip between his teeth, ruts up into her heat, and tries not to think of the way James’s hips pressed against his, hothardwilling- shit.
Kendall rears back, putting as much distance as he can between himself and Mercedes until the white silk sheets stretch like miles between them.
“Kendall?” Mercedes asks, her mouth gaping open, like she’s still half locked inside that kiss.
“Shit,” he breathes. “Sorry.”
Mercedes gets a hold of herself, carding her fingers through her hair. For a second she’s quiet. Then she says, “Look, it’s not that big a deal. It happens to a lot of guys. Not usually guys that I sleep with, but hey-“
“That’s not it,” Kendall groans into her pillow, mortified.
The song on the radio changes, rushing in to fill the great yawning sound of awkward filling the room. Mercedes’s fingertips touch his shoulder blade, cool and small. “I’ve been meaning to ask. Are you okay? I know this wedding thing is…abrupt.” She wrinkles her nose; he can actually hear it. “Daddy’s used to getting what he wants.”
A smile ghosts over Kendall’s lips, and he rolls over to grab a kiss. Against her lips he mumbles, “Like father, like daughter.”
“Hey,” Mercedes smacks him in the arm. She hits hard for a girl, but Kendall’s not even close to surprised by it. Even though Mercedes is one of the only people in Verona he’s ever met who doesn’t carry a gun, he’s got no doubt that she knows how to handle one.
He’s about to make a snarky comment about how gosh darned cute it is that his fiancée punches harder than his best friends when the door swings wide open. There is a guy standing in the doorframe.
“Christ, can’t you knock?” Mercedes demands, pulling the sheet around the both of them. The moonlight is bright enough that Kendall can see the haughty line of the guy’s cheekbones, the impudent jut of his lips. He recognizes the dude, vaguely. The first time he met him, he was sitting behind a solid wood desk, filing his nails and pretending Kendall didn’t exist while Kendall waited to complete his interview with Griffin. The second time was at the engagement party.
Around Griffin, the guy was quiet, a shadow who gave Kendall slightly judgey eyes, but didn’t make a nuisance of himself. Now he is loud, arrogant, and completely obnoxious. “You really chose him? Consensually? His face is bizarre.”
Kendall’s face is not bizarre. He takes serious offense to that comment.
Mercedes is still scrabbling to cover them both up, and the dude drawls airily, “Please, it’s not like I haven’t seen it before.”
“Excuse you?” Kendall demands, wrapping a protective arm around Mercedes’s shoulder.
She shrugs it off, not much for damseling, but she does flash Kendall a quick grin and says, “I’ve got this, baby. Excuse you?”
The guy smirks.
Mercedes rolls her eyes. “What do you want, Jett?”
“Will you believe me if I say the pleasure of your company?”
“No.”
“Smart girl.” Jett folds his arms across his chest. “Your father wants to talk to you about the third quarter report. Something about forecasting and I don’t know, it was dreadfully boring.”
“Great. Get out now.”
“Are you coming?”
There is an edge to Mercedes’s voice that Kendall’s never heard before when she snaps, “In a minute.”
After Jett leaves, she makes no move to get up. She curls into Kendall’s body, relaxing her hold on the sheet.
“Aren’t you going to go?”
“It can wait.”
“But you’ve got big, important things to do.”
Kendall kisses the tip of her nose. He doesn’t mean to sound condescending; he honestly thinks it’s the greatest thing in the world that Mercedes loves what she does. All the same, she stiffens. “Don’t mock it. My job’s about hope.”
He can’t help retorting, “How?”
Mercedes pauses, listening to the music crackling from her tiny radio. After a beat she says, “When you’re listening to a song and you feel like you can’t go on and you reach that crescendo- it hovers in the air, sends chills down your spine, makes your chest feel too full, and suddenly you can keep going…that’s what it’s about.”
Kendall thinks of the string quartet at the engagement party, of the place the song pitched high and made his heart feel close to exploding. He has to change the subject.
He has to.
“Who was that?”
“Dad’s PA. Jett Stetson. He’s an ass.”
Kendall figures assery is a requirement to be personal assistant to Arthur Griffin. “I noticed. Another ex?”
Mercedes scowls, digging her nails into Kendall’s hip. “Don’t give me that look. I don’t judge your love life.”
“You’ve never asked about it.”
“That’s because I don’t want to know. The past doesn’t matter. It’s just us now.” She burrows into his ribcage, nosing along the line of his pectoral muscle. She sucks a kiss into his flesh, trying to change the subject.
Kendall takes a hint. He turns it into a joke. “Yeah, but. The past shows you have horrible taste in guys.”
He feels her lips curve against his skin. “I know. I picked you, didn’t I?”
Kendall makes an indignant noise. The song on the radio changes again. Mercedes lips over the shape of his aureole, tongue flicking out wet against his nipple. Then she says, “In all seriousness? Jett dated me to get to my dad. Just like Dak. And just like all the guys before him.”
He softens, brushing a tendril of blonde from her face. “I’m sorry.”
“Whatever, it wasn’t like I was in love with them.” There’s something hot and tight that crosses her face, almost like pain. Mercedes pecks him on the lips, soft and then hard, turning it deep to hide whatever it was in her eyes. She murmurs, “And they were great lays.”
Kendall’s eyes go wide and mock-wounded. It’s weird how he’s not jealous, not really, of Mercedes’s past. He thinks he should be. He thinks that a person can’t help jealousy when they’re in love.
And that’s the problem. Mercedes is beautiful. Mercedes is a whirlwind. They have fun together. And Kendall loves that. Kendall loves her. The thing he’s only just starting to get is that he’s not in love with her. There are things that are missing, like implicit trust. He doesn’t know how to talk to her. Not about something real.
Abruptly, he asks, “How do you feel about the executions?”
“How do I feel…” Mercedes’s face darkens. “Why the sudden interest in politics?”
“No reason.” Kendall tries to play it cool. “There was a notice I saw on the way here, and I just realized. I don’t know very much about…what you think.”
Mercedes’s gaze goes distant. Like she’s reciting something that Kendall can’t see, she says, “It’s not my place to disagree with the Reproduction Initiative or their bylaws.”
“I don’t follow. Does that mean you do disagree, or you don’t?”
“I have no opinion.” Mercedes props her tan arms against the pillows.
“But…If anyone should have an opinion, it’s Arthur Griffin’s daughter.”
“Individual thought breeds discord.” Mercedes touches his face, brushes her lips against his. “Anarchy, my dear.”
“And that means you…what, don’t think?”
“That means I’m not stupid enough to talk about it in the house. Not ever.” Mercedes glances at her window, at the door. “You’re marrying into a powerful family, Knight. You should learn the golden rule.”
“And that is?”
“You never know who’s listening.” Mercedes hops up out of bed and shrugs on a robe. She hesitates. “Are you staying the night? Again?”
Kendall considers. As much as he wants to, “I should probably go home.”
“It’s not any of my business, but if you’re fighting with your friends…don’t. They seem like really good guys.” Mercedes leans in, giving him one last chaste kiss, and all Kendall can think of is how she’s right.
It’s not any of her business.
---
Kendall stares up at the gold glow of the apartment’s windows and wonders if James has a girl up there.
Logan’s still at the apothecary; Kendall saw the lights switched on when he walked past, and it’s much, much too early for Carlos to be back from work. But the apartment is all lit up. The idea makes Kendall feel vaguely annoyed, his feelings grown jungle-wild inside his chest, pulling at his ribcage, trying to push through his spine. He doesn’t want to walk in on James and his latest naked conquest of the week, half-drunk on shine and more than a little wasted on each other. He actually did just that two days ago, found James fucking slow in and out of a girl in the sanctuary of their bedroom, the door wide open. It took all of Kendall’s self-control not to pull his gun on the both of them, something inside of him slipping, cracking, making him feel like he was losing his mind.
It’s somehow worse, knowing James really is trying to hurt him on purpose, throwing whatever happened at Griffin’s back in his face, on top of the wedding. Like it’s Kendall’s fault that they can’t be…well. He’s not actually entirely sure what it is that James wants them to be, not sure why his lips turned traitor in the first place. He doesn’t want James like that, except for how maybe he does.
His heart thuds, a painful spike in his chest, and he wonders if this is what it’s like, growing up. Everything Kendall thought he knew is turning on its head, gone topsy-turvy, making him doubt, making him want things he never knew he would. Shit was easier when they were kids, when James was just the little boy he used to wrestle with, side by side in the sandbox, playing swords with long branches or battling against each other with a collection of My Little Ponies, Power Rangers, and assorted super heroes, from the Ninja Turtles to Spider-Man. Ten years ago, James was just Kendall’s silly best friend who wanted to grow up to be a popstar.
Now the world has changed around them, but Kendall hasn’t, and the amount that he loves James hasn’t either, not even a little bit.
He gathers his courage and tries the doorknob. It is locked.
Okay, this is an actual problem. Not once in all the time Kendall and the guys have been squatting at the apartment have they ever locked the door. It would be super counterintuitive, seeing as they lack a key and all. Kendall’s first thought is that James forgot. He’s not sure how that could possibly happen, but he gives James the benefit of the doubt. Kendall throws pebbles from the desolate garden adjacent to the place at the windows, his aim off for a few tries. The moon is still bright, but not so bright that he’s one hundred percent certain he’s hitting the glass.
At least not until James storms out onto the balcony, narrowly avoiding getting hit in the eye. He growls, “What?”
“The door’s locked,” Kendall calls, and he’s starting to think the chances of that being accidental are close to none.
“I know!” James yells back, hands on the rusty, wrought iron railing of their balcony. Strains of music drift down, Griffin's pirated radio station still up and kicking. Mood music, maybe? Kendall winces. His mouth still tastes metallic. “Go away.”
Kendall groans. This is not happening. “But I live here.”
“You could’ve fooled me with how often you’ve been home.” James’s eyes gleam, even from two stories high. He looks…wounded.
“Sorry, didn’t want to interrupt you and your skanks,” Kendall bites back, trying to quell his own guilt. So maybe his distance argument is bullshit. Maybe avoiding James has just been easier.
“At least they like being around me.” James retorts in his stubborn, prissy voice, crossing his arms.
“Is one up there now?” Kendall asks, his voice breaking. He refuses to be cowed by James’s answer, no matter what it is.
There is a pause, and then a snotty call of, “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
Kendall snaps. “I’d like you to let me in.”
“That’s not happening,” James rages, anger barely contained. Kendall glares up at him, and he glares right back. Then he says, “You know what; I wouldn’t want you to be all unclean for work tomorrow. Here.”
Something flutters down from the balcony, and it’s only after it lands on Kendall’s head that he realizes it’s one of his plaid shirts.
The ones that James really loves to mock.
“James. I’m not kidding. Let me inside. I want to go to sleep.” A pair of jeans lands on Kendall’s head, and okay, this is getting ridiculous. When he tries to get a good look at the denim he sees that they’re not even his, they’re Logan’s. “Dude!”
“Go. Away.”
James is hurt, lashing out like a feral animal to protect himself. Kendall gets that, he really, really does. But he’s bone tired and not even close to equipped to deal with one of his best friend’s bitch fits. And maybe that’s a problem that’s been happening a lot lately, this exhaustion that settles deep inside his marrow and doesn’t flee, no matter how much sleep Kendall manages to slog through. Maybe if he was a better friend, he would manage James’s fits the way he used to before the world broke to pieces.
Instead he yells, “James!”
“You know what? I’m not even talking to you.” James’s lips thin, his grip on the railing white knuckled. He adds, “We’re staying away from each other, remember?”
“Those are words.” Kendall points out. “Coming from your mouth. And look, I didn’t mean to- we’re still buds, alright? I just-“ Kendall finds himself fascinated by the press of James’s teeth into his lower lip, like he’s been gnawing on it. It’s ridiculous that he can see that when he couldn’t tell if his stupid pebbles were making it high enough before. “Shit. I just needed some space.”
“Space?” James sounds outraged. “Good. I’m giving you all the fucking space you want. I’m out of here.”
He turns to go back into the apartment.
“James, geez, at least let me in first!”
“No can do, buddy. I’m giving you space,” James replies sardonically. He is actually walking off the balcony, actually going to leave Kendall out here all night. At the last second, James scoops up his stupid palm tree to take it inside with him, like Kendall might scale the balcony and steal it or something.
That’s totally the last straw. “James!”
“Go away,” James yells again, clutching his potted palm to his chest.
“Unlock the door, James,” Kendall instructs impatiently. Throwing a rock at James’s head would resolve this more quickly.
Or at least make him feel better.
Kendall goes with the less insane plan of actually trying to scale the balcony. He tries his hand at shimmying up the old plastic gutter that runs from the decrepit garden straight up to their floor. It trembles and quakes beneath his weight, the plastic rickety with age. He can hear it straining against the nuts and bolts that keep it strapped to the brick, can hear the pop when one after another gives.
He is near the top now, barely a foot away from the ancient railing. The gutter gives out.
Kendall does not crash to the ground.
“I’ve got you,” James says, steady, his hand gripping hard at Kendall’s wrist, and Kendall knows. It’s the one thing he’s always known; James would never, ever let him fall.
But whether or not James has his back has never been the issue here.
He lets James haul him up and over the railing, into the golden glow of light from their crashpad. Their empty crashpad. Kendall can’t see any sign of that fictional girl he was so very jealous of. His shoulders sag with relief.
James is still holding onto his wrist. He strokes his thumb along the underside of Kendall’s hand. It’s not fair how good it feels. Kendall chokes out, “Behave yourself.”
James does not know how to. He stares at Kendall, and Kendall stares back, caught by the luminescence of the moon in James’s eyes. He feels like fighting. He feels like fleeing. There’s no option that won’t hurt James, so he just stands there, dumbly, until James pulls Kendall against his hard body, enfolding him tight in his arms. Into the crown of Kendall’s head, the words muffled by his hair, James scoffs, “Space, really?”
Sometimes James is a discordant note, ringing through the air and grating on Kendall’s ears. Sometimes he is perfect harmony. Right now he is a mixture of both.
“Don’t hate me,” Kendall replies into the hollow of James’s throat, the pulse point beneath his jaw. He wraps his arms around James’s back, trying to pull him even closer. “I don’t want you to hate me.”
He half hopes his words are lost in the wind, absorbed by James’s skin, unable to actually be heard.
He isn’t so lucky.
“I could never,” James replies, one hand coming up to cup the back of Kendall’s neck, the other a secure band keeping him in place. “It doesn’t matter how stupid you are.”
Kendall bristles, and it’s good, because he is in way too deep. He’s intoxicated off the scent of James so close after so long, a little aroused by the cool outline of James’s sword belt buckle pressed against the soft flesh of his belly. “Stupid? Excuse me for trying to keep you from making the biggest mistake of your life.”
James actually laughs right into Kendall’s ear, hot breath that warms his skin. “You honestly think this is a mistake?”
“This?” Kendall pushes away, tries to get some space between him and James, but James won’t let go. Kendall is tangled up in his best friend’s arms, mumbling, “There is no this. There was just…that night…and you were drunk. And I was drunk. And we didn’t know what we were doing.”
It sounds like a lie, tastes false on his tongue, and James is quick to shoot it down. “I knew what I was doing. And so did you, don’t even try to pin this all on the alcohol. You kissed me back.”
“I know.” He can’t lie. Not to James. Not to himself. James clutches Kendall tighter, and Kendall lets himself relax. Fighting it isn’t working. He owes it to James to at least try to figure this out. “We just, we don’t do it again. We go back to normal.”
Softly, James tells the curve of Kendall’s ear, “Normal isn’t what I want.”
Kendall squeezes his eyes shut. He inhales, deep, and thinks of the fences. Of Nevada. Of the airy space that is Mercedes’s room and how he so beyond doesn’t belong there. Despite himself, Kendall lets his mouth brush soft against James’s neck for the briefest of moments.
It’s like his lips have missed the taste of him.
James arches into it, pleads, “Just kiss me again. I want you to kiss me.”
Kendall reels back in earnest, frees himself from James’s arms and stumbles back into the balcony railing. “I can’t.”
“Yes you can.” James takes a step forward, and then another. He is back in Kendall’s face, defiant, beautiful. No one has ever been as beautiful as James. “Tell me why we can’t do this.”
“You know why.”
Church bells toll, thunder in the distance. Midnight. On the distant airwaves of their own radio, situated in the living room, a choir begins to sing, one long dulcet note turning into a chorus, filling the air. And Kendall can’t hear anything, too hypnotized by the rise and fall of James’s breath, the crinkle of his clothes, and the nervous catch in his throat.
He has no fucking idea what to do.
---
Author: garnetice
Pairing: Kendall/James, Kendall/Mercedes
Rating: M
Word Count: 6,500 (part five)
Part: Five of ??? (probably ten)
Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4
Warnings: Drinking, sex, guns, death, swords, violence, homophobia, sexism, a lot of isms.
Summary: "What are we doing?" Kendall asks, taking a shaky breath. His hands hover over James's abdomen, and James arches forward until they are touching, until Kendall's fingertips press into his skin. "I don't know. But don't stop."
Disclaimer: BTR is not mine. Nor is William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet or the original R&J.
Author Notes: Logan has a tiny personality! Jett Stetson makes an appearance! James and Kendall enact their own version of the balcony scene! Gracias forever to jblostfan16 for the beta.
---
It’s not that Kendall is avoiding going home. It’s just that he’s keeping some distance from the apartment. Because distance is a good thing. Distance means clarity and being away from the narrow eyed hurt that floods James’s gaze whenever Kendall comes near.
Kendall can’t take that look, that mixture of disappointment and anger that mostly makes him feel distressed and desperate to fix it.
Only distance also means that Kendall has to find a way to occupy the time that’s not filled by his work at the studio or wedding plans, and there’s only so much of the day he can spend drowning his sorrows at L’Amour. It’s weird how much time he wasted away with James, just sitting on the roof of their crashpad, soaking in the sun or joking about girls or bickering over shit that no one else would even give a damn about. Kendall tried skulking around with Mercedes and her lemmings for a few days, but that was disastrous. He prefers that Mercedes never gets a chance to threaten him with something sharp and pointy ever again, because he actually has no doubt that she really would introduce his esophagus to his nuts.
So now he’s on his fallback plan, which is harassing the fuck out of his other best friends.
The apothecary creeps Kendall out. It smells like plants and soil rot and mold. There’s not a whole lot of light in the front room, and the old prior keeps a shelf lined with skulls; from human to coyote to gulls to cougars. Kendall doesn’t know if they are trophies or if it is just a shrine to death. Neither would surprise him.
Logan is in a corner, bent over a row of glass jars that he is filling with something that looks a lot like parsley. He moves with the kind of precision that demonstrates he knows exactly what he’s doing, but it’s not shocking. The kid’s read every medical text book he could get his greedy hands on. If he’s not an expert by now, he’s pretty damn close.
Shadows play over his face, and for a long minute all Kendall can think of is Nevada and the puffy swell of Logan’s cheekbones where bruises blossomed over his skin, black-blue beneath a bright red stain of blood. He rubs the heel of his palms against his eyes, trying to chase away the memory, but it’s always there. Life on the road was a kind of freedom, but there were also times that it was hellish.
Kendall doesn’t like to think about that. “Knock, knock.”
Logan glances up, his face unmarred by anything except surprise. “Kendall, hey.”
“Hi.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Uh. Visiting?”
Logan’s eyes crinkle with fondness. He inclines his head and prompts, “And to what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I can’t just visit my best friend in the whole world?”
Logan snorts. “Not on a normal day, no.”
“What are you concocting, there?” Kendall pokes one of the glass jars, watching it teeter precariously in its stand. Logan bats his hand away.
“Not something you should be touching.”
“Aw, come on. No one’s gonna see. Where’s the old man, anyway?”
Automatically, Logan replies, “He hates when you call him that.”
“Really? I thought he was too stoned to care.” Kendall doesn’t dislike Doc Hollywood, exactly. He’s just a wee bit past the border of nutty, and being around him makes Kendall feel like he might lose it too.
Also, one time he tried to treat one of Kendall’s paper cuts with a butcher knife, so can anyone even blame him for being uneasy around the dude? He’s not sure how Logan manages to put up with him. Obviously Logan’s got a psyche of iron after dealing with Kendall, James, and Carlos for so many years.
Logan gives him the stink eye, but then he says, “It’s good you’re here. I’ve been meaning to talk to you.”
Kendall doesn’t like the sound of that. Talks involve feelings and emotions and solemnity, and he’s not in the mood for any of it. He totally should have visited Carlos instead.
Straight to the point, Logan says, “You should stop fighting with James.”
“I’m not…fighting…with James…” Kendall replies lamely. Logan is not even close to fooled. One of the many downsides to being besties with someone since the tender age of eight.
“He’s worried about you. So’s Carlos. So am I,” Logan adds a bit ruefully. “This wedding thing is…”
“I thought you thought it was a good idea.”
“In theory it is. If you marry Mercedes, we’re set for life. No one will come after us for anything. But. I’m not sure that matters if you’re miserable.”
“Why is everyone so convinced I’m miserable?” Kendall complains, propping his elbows up on the big wooden table and making the entire thing shake, glass clinking, tinkling throughout the store. “Do I look that upset?”
“Kendall. We’ve known you forever. We all remember that sappy romantic crap you used to go on about when you were a kid.”
“I never-“
“You used to think you were going to marry the Princess Bride. This…I mean, Mercedes is great. And you obviously like her a lot. But.” Logan chews on his lip. “Can you really, honestly tell me that you’re going to be happy being tied down to her for the rest of your life?”
Kendall doesn’t know what to say. The situation’s not ideal. Marriage will change a lot in his life. He won’t be able to spend as much time with the guys, for one. No more kicking around at L’Amour or whiling away lazy nights at the beach or on the rooftop of their apartment. No more listening to Logan or Carlos or James’s breath-sounds right before bed. It will take away that far off, distant dream he’s been harboring of making something more of himself, of becoming integral to Griffin and then worming his way out from under the man’s thumb. Kendall knew from the second he landed his job at the studios that this was it, that this was his life. But the impending wedding closes all his avenues, takes away any slim chance he ever had of finding something better. Like he mused the day that he and Mercedes were caught, he still wants more. Just, Kendall isn’t sure what exactly more is, or what it can be.
Power?
A safehaven?
James?
The thought is white hot, unbidden. It makes him bite down hard on his tongue, blood flooding the back of his throat. No, not James. That’s not even in the realm of possibilities.
Basically, he knows that ‘til-death-do-we-part isn’t what he wants from life, but the problem in saying that out loud is that he isn’t sure what it is he does want. Carefully, Kendall replies, “So what? You want me to hold out for true love?”
Logan winces. He tries to cover it by busying himself with the weird plant he’s slicing and dicing. The flickering candlelight plays over his face, making him look chiseled, like a storybook prince. Very, very slowly, he responds, “Maybe. I don’t know. I just don’t want you to be unhappy. Even if it means us being safe, I-“ He swallows thickly. “I know you guys don’t always like rules and I know I’ve been pretty dickish about following them. I just want us all to be okay. You know that, right?”
“Hey, hey.”
Kendall’s got a hand on Logan’s shoulder, invading his personal space. He doesn’t like the melancholy tone in Logan’s voice, doesn’t like the pinch of his lips or the rigid set of his back. Logan makes a choked sound, and immediately Kendall engulfs him in a big, rib-crushing bear hug.
“Duh,” he breathes into Logan’s hair, and he’s thinking of Nevada and blood, blood like the red clay cliffs drying, crusting off onto an unfinished wood floor. “I know. And Carlos knows. And James knows. You keep us out of trouble, Loginator. You keep us safe,” he promises, an oath, because it’s what Logan needs.
In Nevada, they spent a couple of days crashed out in a roadhouse off the main highway. It was nothing but desert and brush for miles, and they had a stash of guns and whiskey and a huge supply of bar peanuts. It wasn’t a bad place to sleep off some of the exhaustion and terror that had set into their bones.
Logan wandered off in the middle of the day, after a four-way fight that had sort of been inevitably building after months and months pressed up against one another, caged in and terrified that this was all they’d ever have; fear and each other. He wanted to walk his anger off, Kendall guessed, and if the world was still a safe place, that would have been a good idea.
They didn’t find him until two days later, curled around the base of a cactus, lips cracked with dehydration and dried blood. He had a broken arm, bruised ribs, and a slew of new cuts and scars. Not all of which Kendall and James and Carlos could see.
They carried him back to the roadhouse that night and wrapped him in blankets and did what they could. None of them knew squat about medicine, but the bar had an old first aid kit, and Carlos had enough experience breaking his own bones as a kid that they muddled through. When they were finally able to get Logan conscious, they couldn’t goad him into saying much more than that he’d run into some guys who hadn’t liked the look of his face. After that, he clamped up the second anyone brought it up. And he got real, real particular about how badly they all needed to be safe.
The idea of what might have actually happened makes Kendall’s blood boil. In a way his imagination is probably worse than the reality, but no matter how much he pries, Logan won’t ever ‘fess up to the details. Still, at least Kendall understands why Logan just wants everyone to follow the rules and keep their heads down:
Don’t wander off track and you’ll always, always be okay.
It doesn’t justify all the bullshit he pulls, sometimes, especially when it comes to Camille, but Kendall gets it. He hugs Logan tighter to his chest until some of the tension has left his muscles.
Logan says into the cloth of Kendall’s button down, “If you decide you don’t want to marry her, I’ll help you get out of it.”
“How?” Kendall asks his hairline.
Logan pulls back and gestures around the shop. “Doc Hollywood’s got a lot of strange shit. You’d be surprised what some of these mixtures can do. We can get out of the city, go somewhere else. Mantua, maybe? I’ve heard they’re building walls. We could all go; the guys, Camille, fuck, bring Mercedes if you want and-“
“Logan. We’re not leaving. Mercedes is great,” Kendall says, and she really is. “I’m fine.”
Mostly. The only specific person upsetting him right this minute is a boy with tiger eyes, waiting in the wings, and Kendall’s not quite ready to confront that yet.
“But-“
“Let me protect you this time,” Kendall says soothingly. “You just get really smart and irreplaceable, and one day the four of us will own this town.”
Maybe there’s still a way to have more, Kendall hopes. Maybe marrying Mercedes will be a good thing. He’ll be more powerful. Griffin will be an ally. And between that and Logan’s rising star at the apothecary, life won’t turn out exactly as Kendall imagined, but it won’t suck. That’s something, right?
Kendall hangs around the apothecary for an hour and a half, pestering Logan about what this herb does and what that pill’s for and will these two things explode if you mix them together? Logan finally grabs his hands, stilling the hyperactive energy that trembles through them. He says, “I don’t want to kick you out or anything, but. Work. I have it.”
Which is how Kendall ends up taking advantage of his future fiancée. Again.
As he walks to Mercedes’s, a blood orange sunrise reflects against the water, giving the ocean a crimson glow that is very, very biblical. Kendall isn’t big on religion or god, but he knows what a plague is. He knows what it feels like to be cursed.
A piece of bright yellow paper crunches under his foot. Another execution, scheduled this Wednesday. Spectacular. Kendall can barely contain his excitement. He scowls at the asphalt, and then at the blazing sky. Almost despite himself, his feet turn in the opposite direction.
He doesn’t venture away from the ten block radius that encompasses his apartment, the main drag, the studios, the beach, L’Amour, and Mercedes’s very often. The city Verona used to be encompassed miles, and still does. There are streets that are empty and dark from disuse. There are places where no one goes unless they want to get their throat slit. And then there is the huge chain link and red brick monstrosity that keeps the refugees from walking in unattended.
Kendall can smell the fences before he reaches them, metal breaks in Verona’s high walls that allow him to see out into the darkness, where the refugees gather. Foulness emanates from the trench that acts as a place to piss, less than half a mile off, but lone refugees won’t even wander that far for fear of losing their place in line. The whole stretch of land beyond the fences reeks like an outhouse, and more.
The stench of death is there, thick and cloying.
Kendall steps off the curb and into the street. He can see them, now, refugees in single file, waiting until their turn is called. It’s cruel. People travel for thousands of miles to reach the city, braving all kinds of danger, and then they are told to sit and wait their turn, to survive hunger and thirst and cold nights and the outbreaks of disease all on the hope that they might gain admission into the city. A few people leave, trekking out into the wasteland of the surrounding towns in search of food.
Sometimes they come back.
Sometimes they don’t.
Kendall nearly died a whole handful of times out there, looking for something for them all to eat while James and Carlos and Logan held his place in line. After all they’d gone through to reach Verona, Kendall would not let them passively starve. He walks along the length of the fences now, reminiscing, trying to ignore the cold faces of Hawk’s militiamen, watching him suspiciously.
At a break in the long, snaking line on the other side is a fire, and there are drums. A girl is dancing, wending her body left, right, forward, in time with the drums. The firelight makes her look otherworldly.
Kendall remembers this. In the months they spent sitting outside the fence he was able to count the jut of his ribs beneath his skin. He could hear the sound Carlos’s stomach made when it was beyond empty. And in the midst of that, there was no entertainment at all except for what they made for themselves. It doesn’t seem like such a big thing, boredom, when you’re so hungry you can’t see straight. But back then, the distraction was what kept them sane. James would dance, sometimes, shifting from one move to the next, as capricious and captivating as wildfire. It was impossible to look away.
It still is, when he’s swaying back and forth in L’Amour, holding some girl in his arms. James doesn’t know how to be anything but enchanting.
Kendall scrubs a hand over his eyes, trying to drown out the image of the engagement party, the memory of James’s fingertips against his skin. He’s not sure why he thought coming here would invite any kind of clarity. All it does is make him miss James and Carlos and Logan. He wants to run back home and press his fingers to their ribcages and make sure they’ve been fed, that they’re as healthy and alive as he remembers from this morning, this afternoon. Emaciation wasn’t a good look for any of them.
The drumbeats get louder. Hawk’s men bang the butt of their rifles against the fence. They yell at the refugees to simmer down. They laugh when they crush a child’s fingers.
Kendall hates them.
Camille is the only exception to that rule. The night he met her, James was dancing while three corpses rotted in a heap less than twenty feet away. They were kids, younger than Kendall and the guys. They tried to scale the fence.
Hawk’s enforcers hadn’t appreciated their efforts.
The stench was disgusting, and the smoke of the fire, fueled by old newspapers and whatever wood they could scavenge from nearby homes burned something awful, black billowing clouds thick in Kendall’s nose. The silhouette of James’s body wove in and out of the haze, sinuous, hypnotic. Carlos sashayed next to him, drawing his hands over his head in beckoning motions, like he was trying to draw water from the cracked earth. Kendall alternated between trading comments with Logan, who was trying to inventory the few constellations they could make out in the sky and talking casually with one of their neighbors in line; a man so sick with disease that small gnat like creatures nested in his wounds. They turned to fat white maggots his loving wife tried and failed to pick out. Kendall recalls eyeing one of the squirming creatures, disgusted by his entire existence. The past year of his life had been lousy with the kind of poverty stricken conditions he’d only ever seen on the news. He’d thought maybe they would die out there, waiting for admittance beyond the walls of a city he’d never seen.
Then he spotted Camille through a break in the fences, watching James dance. She beckoned Kendall over and struck up a conversation.
The rest is history.
Kendall stares at the smoke of the fire, at the girl with her belly-dancer charm. The catcalls of the enforcers are turning hard, dangerous. It reminds him of the night those kids died.
He all but runs to Mercedes’s house.
---
He is safe.
The wind rustles sheer curtains, fluttering white like smoke against the night sky. The chimes Mercedes keeps outside her window tinkle, metal hitting metal, creating a pretty little melody. And of course, the radio crackles with white noise, static that settles across Kendall’s skin before a song starts up. Here, in this safe haven of a place, Kendall does not have to think about death.
Mercedes runs her fingers across Kendall’s chest, her smile wicked, her mouth soft. Kendall pulls her against him and kisses her deep, bruising. He wants more. He needs more to erase all the terrible things that are haunting him, the ghosts at his heels.
Only Mercedes is soft in all the places that James was hard, and Kendall feels guilty for even thinking it. He pulls her lower lip between his teeth, ruts up into her heat, and tries not to think of the way James’s hips pressed against his, hothardwilling- shit.
Kendall rears back, putting as much distance as he can between himself and Mercedes until the white silk sheets stretch like miles between them.
“Kendall?” Mercedes asks, her mouth gaping open, like she’s still half locked inside that kiss.
“Shit,” he breathes. “Sorry.”
Mercedes gets a hold of herself, carding her fingers through her hair. For a second she’s quiet. Then she says, “Look, it’s not that big a deal. It happens to a lot of guys. Not usually guys that I sleep with, but hey-“
“That’s not it,” Kendall groans into her pillow, mortified.
The song on the radio changes, rushing in to fill the great yawning sound of awkward filling the room. Mercedes’s fingertips touch his shoulder blade, cool and small. “I’ve been meaning to ask. Are you okay? I know this wedding thing is…abrupt.” She wrinkles her nose; he can actually hear it. “Daddy’s used to getting what he wants.”
A smile ghosts over Kendall’s lips, and he rolls over to grab a kiss. Against her lips he mumbles, “Like father, like daughter.”
“Hey,” Mercedes smacks him in the arm. She hits hard for a girl, but Kendall’s not even close to surprised by it. Even though Mercedes is one of the only people in Verona he’s ever met who doesn’t carry a gun, he’s got no doubt that she knows how to handle one.
He’s about to make a snarky comment about how gosh darned cute it is that his fiancée punches harder than his best friends when the door swings wide open. There is a guy standing in the doorframe.
“Christ, can’t you knock?” Mercedes demands, pulling the sheet around the both of them. The moonlight is bright enough that Kendall can see the haughty line of the guy’s cheekbones, the impudent jut of his lips. He recognizes the dude, vaguely. The first time he met him, he was sitting behind a solid wood desk, filing his nails and pretending Kendall didn’t exist while Kendall waited to complete his interview with Griffin. The second time was at the engagement party.
Around Griffin, the guy was quiet, a shadow who gave Kendall slightly judgey eyes, but didn’t make a nuisance of himself. Now he is loud, arrogant, and completely obnoxious. “You really chose him? Consensually? His face is bizarre.”
Kendall’s face is not bizarre. He takes serious offense to that comment.
Mercedes is still scrabbling to cover them both up, and the dude drawls airily, “Please, it’s not like I haven’t seen it before.”
“Excuse you?” Kendall demands, wrapping a protective arm around Mercedes’s shoulder.
She shrugs it off, not much for damseling, but she does flash Kendall a quick grin and says, “I’ve got this, baby. Excuse you?”
The guy smirks.
Mercedes rolls her eyes. “What do you want, Jett?”
“Will you believe me if I say the pleasure of your company?”
“No.”
“Smart girl.” Jett folds his arms across his chest. “Your father wants to talk to you about the third quarter report. Something about forecasting and I don’t know, it was dreadfully boring.”
“Great. Get out now.”
“Are you coming?”
There is an edge to Mercedes’s voice that Kendall’s never heard before when she snaps, “In a minute.”
After Jett leaves, she makes no move to get up. She curls into Kendall’s body, relaxing her hold on the sheet.
“Aren’t you going to go?”
“It can wait.”
“But you’ve got big, important things to do.”
Kendall kisses the tip of her nose. He doesn’t mean to sound condescending; he honestly thinks it’s the greatest thing in the world that Mercedes loves what she does. All the same, she stiffens. “Don’t mock it. My job’s about hope.”
He can’t help retorting, “How?”
Mercedes pauses, listening to the music crackling from her tiny radio. After a beat she says, “When you’re listening to a song and you feel like you can’t go on and you reach that crescendo- it hovers in the air, sends chills down your spine, makes your chest feel too full, and suddenly you can keep going…that’s what it’s about.”
Kendall thinks of the string quartet at the engagement party, of the place the song pitched high and made his heart feel close to exploding. He has to change the subject.
He has to.
“Who was that?”
“Dad’s PA. Jett Stetson. He’s an ass.”
Kendall figures assery is a requirement to be personal assistant to Arthur Griffin. “I noticed. Another ex?”
Mercedes scowls, digging her nails into Kendall’s hip. “Don’t give me that look. I don’t judge your love life.”
“You’ve never asked about it.”
“That’s because I don’t want to know. The past doesn’t matter. It’s just us now.” She burrows into his ribcage, nosing along the line of his pectoral muscle. She sucks a kiss into his flesh, trying to change the subject.
Kendall takes a hint. He turns it into a joke. “Yeah, but. The past shows you have horrible taste in guys.”
He feels her lips curve against his skin. “I know. I picked you, didn’t I?”
Kendall makes an indignant noise. The song on the radio changes again. Mercedes lips over the shape of his aureole, tongue flicking out wet against his nipple. Then she says, “In all seriousness? Jett dated me to get to my dad. Just like Dak. And just like all the guys before him.”
He softens, brushing a tendril of blonde from her face. “I’m sorry.”
“Whatever, it wasn’t like I was in love with them.” There’s something hot and tight that crosses her face, almost like pain. Mercedes pecks him on the lips, soft and then hard, turning it deep to hide whatever it was in her eyes. She murmurs, “And they were great lays.”
Kendall’s eyes go wide and mock-wounded. It’s weird how he’s not jealous, not really, of Mercedes’s past. He thinks he should be. He thinks that a person can’t help jealousy when they’re in love.
And that’s the problem. Mercedes is beautiful. Mercedes is a whirlwind. They have fun together. And Kendall loves that. Kendall loves her. The thing he’s only just starting to get is that he’s not in love with her. There are things that are missing, like implicit trust. He doesn’t know how to talk to her. Not about something real.
Abruptly, he asks, “How do you feel about the executions?”
“How do I feel…” Mercedes’s face darkens. “Why the sudden interest in politics?”
“No reason.” Kendall tries to play it cool. “There was a notice I saw on the way here, and I just realized. I don’t know very much about…what you think.”
Mercedes’s gaze goes distant. Like she’s reciting something that Kendall can’t see, she says, “It’s not my place to disagree with the Reproduction Initiative or their bylaws.”
“I don’t follow. Does that mean you do disagree, or you don’t?”
“I have no opinion.” Mercedes props her tan arms against the pillows.
“But…If anyone should have an opinion, it’s Arthur Griffin’s daughter.”
“Individual thought breeds discord.” Mercedes touches his face, brushes her lips against his. “Anarchy, my dear.”
“And that means you…what, don’t think?”
“That means I’m not stupid enough to talk about it in the house. Not ever.” Mercedes glances at her window, at the door. “You’re marrying into a powerful family, Knight. You should learn the golden rule.”
“And that is?”
“You never know who’s listening.” Mercedes hops up out of bed and shrugs on a robe. She hesitates. “Are you staying the night? Again?”
Kendall considers. As much as he wants to, “I should probably go home.”
“It’s not any of my business, but if you’re fighting with your friends…don’t. They seem like really good guys.” Mercedes leans in, giving him one last chaste kiss, and all Kendall can think of is how she’s right.
It’s not any of her business.
---
Kendall stares up at the gold glow of the apartment’s windows and wonders if James has a girl up there.
Logan’s still at the apothecary; Kendall saw the lights switched on when he walked past, and it’s much, much too early for Carlos to be back from work. But the apartment is all lit up. The idea makes Kendall feel vaguely annoyed, his feelings grown jungle-wild inside his chest, pulling at his ribcage, trying to push through his spine. He doesn’t want to walk in on James and his latest naked conquest of the week, half-drunk on shine and more than a little wasted on each other. He actually did just that two days ago, found James fucking slow in and out of a girl in the sanctuary of their bedroom, the door wide open. It took all of Kendall’s self-control not to pull his gun on the both of them, something inside of him slipping, cracking, making him feel like he was losing his mind.
It’s somehow worse, knowing James really is trying to hurt him on purpose, throwing whatever happened at Griffin’s back in his face, on top of the wedding. Like it’s Kendall’s fault that they can’t be…well. He’s not actually entirely sure what it is that James wants them to be, not sure why his lips turned traitor in the first place. He doesn’t want James like that, except for how maybe he does.
His heart thuds, a painful spike in his chest, and he wonders if this is what it’s like, growing up. Everything Kendall thought he knew is turning on its head, gone topsy-turvy, making him doubt, making him want things he never knew he would. Shit was easier when they were kids, when James was just the little boy he used to wrestle with, side by side in the sandbox, playing swords with long branches or battling against each other with a collection of My Little Ponies, Power Rangers, and assorted super heroes, from the Ninja Turtles to Spider-Man. Ten years ago, James was just Kendall’s silly best friend who wanted to grow up to be a popstar.
Now the world has changed around them, but Kendall hasn’t, and the amount that he loves James hasn’t either, not even a little bit.
He gathers his courage and tries the doorknob. It is locked.
Okay, this is an actual problem. Not once in all the time Kendall and the guys have been squatting at the apartment have they ever locked the door. It would be super counterintuitive, seeing as they lack a key and all. Kendall’s first thought is that James forgot. He’s not sure how that could possibly happen, but he gives James the benefit of the doubt. Kendall throws pebbles from the desolate garden adjacent to the place at the windows, his aim off for a few tries. The moon is still bright, but not so bright that he’s one hundred percent certain he’s hitting the glass.
At least not until James storms out onto the balcony, narrowly avoiding getting hit in the eye. He growls, “What?”
“The door’s locked,” Kendall calls, and he’s starting to think the chances of that being accidental are close to none.
“I know!” James yells back, hands on the rusty, wrought iron railing of their balcony. Strains of music drift down, Griffin's pirated radio station still up and kicking. Mood music, maybe? Kendall winces. His mouth still tastes metallic. “Go away.”
Kendall groans. This is not happening. “But I live here.”
“You could’ve fooled me with how often you’ve been home.” James’s eyes gleam, even from two stories high. He looks…wounded.
“Sorry, didn’t want to interrupt you and your skanks,” Kendall bites back, trying to quell his own guilt. So maybe his distance argument is bullshit. Maybe avoiding James has just been easier.
“At least they like being around me.” James retorts in his stubborn, prissy voice, crossing his arms.
“Is one up there now?” Kendall asks, his voice breaking. He refuses to be cowed by James’s answer, no matter what it is.
There is a pause, and then a snotty call of, “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
Kendall snaps. “I’d like you to let me in.”
“That’s not happening,” James rages, anger barely contained. Kendall glares up at him, and he glares right back. Then he says, “You know what; I wouldn’t want you to be all unclean for work tomorrow. Here.”
Something flutters down from the balcony, and it’s only after it lands on Kendall’s head that he realizes it’s one of his plaid shirts.
The ones that James really loves to mock.
“James. I’m not kidding. Let me inside. I want to go to sleep.” A pair of jeans lands on Kendall’s head, and okay, this is getting ridiculous. When he tries to get a good look at the denim he sees that they’re not even his, they’re Logan’s. “Dude!”
“Go. Away.”
James is hurt, lashing out like a feral animal to protect himself. Kendall gets that, he really, really does. But he’s bone tired and not even close to equipped to deal with one of his best friend’s bitch fits. And maybe that’s a problem that’s been happening a lot lately, this exhaustion that settles deep inside his marrow and doesn’t flee, no matter how much sleep Kendall manages to slog through. Maybe if he was a better friend, he would manage James’s fits the way he used to before the world broke to pieces.
Instead he yells, “James!”
“You know what? I’m not even talking to you.” James’s lips thin, his grip on the railing white knuckled. He adds, “We’re staying away from each other, remember?”
“Those are words.” Kendall points out. “Coming from your mouth. And look, I didn’t mean to- we’re still buds, alright? I just-“ Kendall finds himself fascinated by the press of James’s teeth into his lower lip, like he’s been gnawing on it. It’s ridiculous that he can see that when he couldn’t tell if his stupid pebbles were making it high enough before. “Shit. I just needed some space.”
“Space?” James sounds outraged. “Good. I’m giving you all the fucking space you want. I’m out of here.”
He turns to go back into the apartment.
“James, geez, at least let me in first!”
“No can do, buddy. I’m giving you space,” James replies sardonically. He is actually walking off the balcony, actually going to leave Kendall out here all night. At the last second, James scoops up his stupid palm tree to take it inside with him, like Kendall might scale the balcony and steal it or something.
That’s totally the last straw. “James!”
“Go away,” James yells again, clutching his potted palm to his chest.
“Unlock the door, James,” Kendall instructs impatiently. Throwing a rock at James’s head would resolve this more quickly.
Or at least make him feel better.
Kendall goes with the less insane plan of actually trying to scale the balcony. He tries his hand at shimmying up the old plastic gutter that runs from the decrepit garden straight up to their floor. It trembles and quakes beneath his weight, the plastic rickety with age. He can hear it straining against the nuts and bolts that keep it strapped to the brick, can hear the pop when one after another gives.
He is near the top now, barely a foot away from the ancient railing. The gutter gives out.
Kendall does not crash to the ground.
“I’ve got you,” James says, steady, his hand gripping hard at Kendall’s wrist, and Kendall knows. It’s the one thing he’s always known; James would never, ever let him fall.
But whether or not James has his back has never been the issue here.
He lets James haul him up and over the railing, into the golden glow of light from their crashpad. Their empty crashpad. Kendall can’t see any sign of that fictional girl he was so very jealous of. His shoulders sag with relief.
James is still holding onto his wrist. He strokes his thumb along the underside of Kendall’s hand. It’s not fair how good it feels. Kendall chokes out, “Behave yourself.”
James does not know how to. He stares at Kendall, and Kendall stares back, caught by the luminescence of the moon in James’s eyes. He feels like fighting. He feels like fleeing. There’s no option that won’t hurt James, so he just stands there, dumbly, until James pulls Kendall against his hard body, enfolding him tight in his arms. Into the crown of Kendall’s head, the words muffled by his hair, James scoffs, “Space, really?”
Sometimes James is a discordant note, ringing through the air and grating on Kendall’s ears. Sometimes he is perfect harmony. Right now he is a mixture of both.
“Don’t hate me,” Kendall replies into the hollow of James’s throat, the pulse point beneath his jaw. He wraps his arms around James’s back, trying to pull him even closer. “I don’t want you to hate me.”
He half hopes his words are lost in the wind, absorbed by James’s skin, unable to actually be heard.
He isn’t so lucky.
“I could never,” James replies, one hand coming up to cup the back of Kendall’s neck, the other a secure band keeping him in place. “It doesn’t matter how stupid you are.”
Kendall bristles, and it’s good, because he is in way too deep. He’s intoxicated off the scent of James so close after so long, a little aroused by the cool outline of James’s sword belt buckle pressed against the soft flesh of his belly. “Stupid? Excuse me for trying to keep you from making the biggest mistake of your life.”
James actually laughs right into Kendall’s ear, hot breath that warms his skin. “You honestly think this is a mistake?”
“This?” Kendall pushes away, tries to get some space between him and James, but James won’t let go. Kendall is tangled up in his best friend’s arms, mumbling, “There is no this. There was just…that night…and you were drunk. And I was drunk. And we didn’t know what we were doing.”
It sounds like a lie, tastes false on his tongue, and James is quick to shoot it down. “I knew what I was doing. And so did you, don’t even try to pin this all on the alcohol. You kissed me back.”
“I know.” He can’t lie. Not to James. Not to himself. James clutches Kendall tighter, and Kendall lets himself relax. Fighting it isn’t working. He owes it to James to at least try to figure this out. “We just, we don’t do it again. We go back to normal.”
Softly, James tells the curve of Kendall’s ear, “Normal isn’t what I want.”
Kendall squeezes his eyes shut. He inhales, deep, and thinks of the fences. Of Nevada. Of the airy space that is Mercedes’s room and how he so beyond doesn’t belong there. Despite himself, Kendall lets his mouth brush soft against James’s neck for the briefest of moments.
It’s like his lips have missed the taste of him.
James arches into it, pleads, “Just kiss me again. I want you to kiss me.”
Kendall reels back in earnest, frees himself from James’s arms and stumbles back into the balcony railing. “I can’t.”
“Yes you can.” James takes a step forward, and then another. He is back in Kendall’s face, defiant, beautiful. No one has ever been as beautiful as James. “Tell me why we can’t do this.”
“You know why.”
Church bells toll, thunder in the distance. Midnight. On the distant airwaves of their own radio, situated in the living room, a choir begins to sing, one long dulcet note turning into a chorus, filling the air. And Kendall can’t hear anything, too hypnotized by the rise and fall of James’s breath, the crinkle of his clothes, and the nervous catch in his throat.
He has no fucking idea what to do.
---