[fic] In Fair Verona - 6/?
Title: In Fair Verona
Author: garnetice
Pairing: Kendall/James, Kendall/Mercedes
Rating: M
Word Count: 5,530 (part six)
Part: Six of ??? (probably ten)
Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
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: Sexy sexy sexy timessss. My eternal love to jblostfan16 for the beta.
---
On a night as dark and still as this one, Kendall remembers the world ending.
Or, no, that’s not accurate. Kendall remembers being seven years old, huddled beneath nylon fabric with a flashlight and James, Logan, and Carlos, telling a ghost story that was mostly plagiarized from the Amityville movies, which were just about the scariest thing he knew at the time. He remembers Logan rolling his eyes, ever-skeptical about anything make-believe, Carlos’s gape-mouthed awe and fear, thin arms wrapped around his knees. And he remembers James.
James, who didn’t care much about ghosts either way, real or not, because he was fully confident that he could take on anything with his best friends by his side. James provided all the spooky sound effects for Kendall’s tale, for as much as they bickered like brothers, he was always happy to be Kendall’s partner in crime. Together they terrified Carlos and Logan, with all his practical skepticism, right into the fetal position, and that night Kendall fell asleep with James’s smile mirroring his own, the red of their shared high five still stinging his hand.
When he woke up, curled in his sleeping bag, the world was a different place.
“Kiss me,” James repeats, smile identical to the mischievous thing it was at seven, at nine, at eleven, thirteen, and fifteen. It is a dare and it is a death sentence.
It is all he wants.
They crash into each other, and it is noisy and messy and not at all nice. James’s mouth is hot, dry, brutal, and it’s never been like this before. Kendall’s never kissed anyone like he might not get another chance to do so. James cages Kendall’s face with his hands, long fingers lying flat against the curve of Kendall’s cheekbones, tips brushing the delicate cartilage of his ears. He pants into Kendall’s mouth, draws the oxygen from his lungs, and fuck, fuck, fuck.
It’s different then Mercedes, not only because of the telltale bristle of scruff against Kendall’s chin, but the angles and the strength in James’s arms, the way Kendall’s definitely not even a little bit in control. He feels like he’s standing at the end of the world all over again.
Back then, he couldn’t do a thing. Governments tear apart like tissue paper, and it’s shocking how little it takes to instigate a riot. People claimed to abhor violence, but really, to four little boys in Minnesota, it felt like everyone was just waiting to reclaim the caveman days. Once the end came, it took a handful of weeks for civilization to deteriorate completely, the carefully constructed rules of society falling by the wayside at the mere prospect of the apocalypse.
If people didn’t let panic control them, fear drive them, maybe it would have been different. Maybe America, North, South, and Central, could have rebounded. But only very smart men and women understand that people are inherently selfish, and only the most powerful had the means to do anything about it. Being people, and rather inherently selfish themselves, those in power chose to create bastions of safety.
Verona.
Marseilles.
Antium.
Bohemia.
Navarre.
And so many more, all these places and strange new names, where the privileged could while away the rest of their days. They could’ve attempted to get the country back on track, but no. Those left on the outside fell victim to all the things that take so many fledgling civilizations before they start; hunger, disease, and the monsters that live inside human beings. Teeth and claws only stay hidden as long as there’s a significant authority to say that they must. The medieval ages fell upon the twenty first century like they never even left.
That’s why the Reproduction Initiative with its public executions and anti-sodomy laws clicked into place so easily. All these former futurists wanted a modicum of safety and control back in their lives, and they were willing to give up free choice to get it. Even Kendall, even now; losing control is fucking terrifying.
“Hey, I know that face. That’s your thinking face,” James nips at his lower lip. “You’re not allowed to wear that face when you’re this close to me.” He cups Kendall’s chin and draws him into a gentler kiss. Soft, plush, slick-wet with saliva. He tastes just like home, and yeah, okay, Kendall knows all the reasons he needs to stop this before it goes any further. But James captures starlight in his eyes. It swims inside of him, sets him alight, and Kendall right along with him.
“If Logan comes back-“
“He won’t,” James promises, like he can actually know that. “He won’t.”
“Carlos could-“
“Kendall.” In James’s voice there are reassurances of safety and security, things that Kendall hasn’t believed in since his life began putrefying around him. Moonbeams permeate James’s skin, turns his cheeks the color of bone, but no light can wash away the certainty of his words. They spin off his tongue, honey sweet, but poison, fuck, because this could end everything.
Kendall might be hyperventilating. Just a little bit. He squeezes his eyes shut, tight, and waits for the touch of James’s mouth, but it doesn’t come. Kendall cracks an eyelid and sees James watching, amusement dancing across his features. “Are you okay?”
“I’ve never been so scared in my entire life,” Kendall admits, but his voice is surly. “And you’re making fun of me.”
“I’m not.”
“James.”
“I’m not,” James insists. His hands move to fist in the collar of Kendall’s Hawaiian shirt, crumpling exotic flowers, a sacred heart bleeding across his knuckles. He yanks forward, knocks their foreheads together and warns, “Look, I know this ends in a hail of bullets. I know we should stop.”
“We definitely, definitely should,” Kendall agrees, hissing when James licks out, flicking wet against his lower lip. Kendall’s eyes flutter closed, and is he breathing? He needs to breathe.
He can’t remember how.
“Kendall?” James’s voice is shakier than it should be, more uncertain that Kendall ever remembers hearing it. “I don’t want to stop.”
“I-“ Kendall doesn’t know how to finish that sentence, because everything he wants is skewed, jumbled, and it will all come out sounding like a whimper. His hands hover over James’s waist, and James arches forward until they are touching, until Kendall’s fingertips press into his skin.
It isn’t enough. Not by a longshot.
James kisses him hard and rough, moves from the corner of his mouth to his jaw. He tongues his name against Kendall’s jugular, bites down until the word turns to a bruise. He works his way south, traces the skin stretched tight across Kendall’s collarbone, and that is when Kendall hears a noise.
It is the crunch of a footstep out in the alley, and it makes his spine go stiff with fear. Kendall’s gun is in his hand before he even knows what he plans on doing with it, because for all his training with marksmanship, he has never, ever, ever been so hyperaware and terrified in his life. If someone sees them, god, it would be apocalyptic, and this is an awful idea, a terribly horribly awful idea and-
James’s hand lands heavy on his shoulder and Kendall has to force his finger not to startle on the trigger.
“There’s nothing out there.” James says it quietly, like he’s talking to a skittish animal. Kendall lowers his gun, but he doesn’t release his grip because James is not omniscient. He strains to see out, into the darkness, feet squared on uneven concrete. The breeze coming in from the ocean is colder than anything Kendall’s felt in a long time, dancing chilled fingers across his shoulder blades, and it’s too dark to sight anything other than the empty sockets of window-eyes, the familiar silhouettes of office furniture across the alley as inanimate and non-threatening as ever.
Kendall is still tense.
And then James drops to his knees.
Before Kendall can even fully acknowledge what’s happening, James wraps his lips around the slate gray barrel of Kendall’s gun and stares up at Kendall, altar boy innocence belied by the filthy, shiny wet he leaves behind. Kendall’s blood rushes away from his head so quickly that he’s dizzy with it.
“What the fuck?” He asks helplessly, not daring to move an inch. He’s got prayers in his head and his finger still on the trigger, and no idea if it will even matter. Even if Kendall could talk to the Father who art in heaven, and Mary, full of grace, he hasn’t been to church in a long, long time, and his whole body is the kind of tired that makes him tremble and shake.
Or maybe that’s James quaking through his bones, James who is staring up at him like nothing bad will happen, like he believes that god loves no matter what. That’s what Kendall learned when he was small, and the ideas people get as children are hard to shake, like fairy tales and Santa Claus, like pretty boys who kneel all princely but use their mouths all obscene. James’s cheeks have gone hollow, sucking gunmetal and gray, and oh, he lips along the length of the slide deliberately, with purpose.
There is a sound, guttural, low, and Kendall doesn’t realize it’s coming from him until he sees the satisfied crinkle at the corner of James’s eyes. He pops off and circles his tongue around the muzzle, and Kendall reels away so quick he stumbles into a wall. Old brickwork crumbles behind his back, hitting Kendall’s boots like drops of rain.
He says, “You don’t get to do that,” insists it half hysterical, never wanting James to put his life in Kendall’s hands like that. But James doesn’t let him escape, gets a hand on either side of Kendall’s hips quicker than Kendall can blink. He is pressing rough against him, and fuck, Kendall can feel him, a heavy, hot weight on his pelvis, and it makes Kendall want, want, want. It also sends terror skittering through his limbs, and he is caught, frozen, letting James rut against him without giving anything back.
James says, “Don’t do this. Don’t be scared. You face down fear, Kendall. You never run from it.”
He handles Kendall like he might a child’s toy, and Kendall has to swallow hard around the tornado in his stomach, threatening to climb up his throat and assault the whole wide world. He tries to draw a breath, but the wind in his lungs won’t let him get more than a hint of air, and James’s face is so close, too close. He laughs instead, and it is maniacal, it is not him at all, but, “What are you talking about? We ran all the way here.”
James shakes his head vehemently as night bruises the sky, darker and darker still.
“No. We left Minnesota because we had no one left to bury. That wasn’t running. It was letting go.”
Kendall says, “Okay, okay,” and punctuates each word with a soft kiss because he is hot, and horny, and James has a point.
Besides, this is no longer something he can run from.
James kisses him desperate, and Kendall kisses back frantic; the night holds so many secrets. One more cannot hurt. He shoves James’s t-shirt up and over his arms, rough, pressing into the planes of his body, and in return James’s hips mimic the waves rolling into shore, crashing and thunderous. That is also the feeling it sends spiraling through Kendall’s chest, a boom and a roar, chaos beneath his ribcage.
James says on a tremulous breath, “I need you to touch me. Please.”
And at first Kendall doesn’t get it, because he is touching James, running his nails against the short hairs on the back of his neck, marveling at the solid shape of his shoulders, feeling every indent of his ribcage and his spine. What more can he possibly do? But with the next crush of James’s pelvis, he gets what it means, and he pants against James’s collarbone, the question he really wants to ask dying on his lips.
He does not ask how, or why, because James’s hands are everywhere, too close, squeezing painfully around his heart. All that Kendall manages is, “Not on the balcony.”
He is not so far gone that he’s forgotten the night has eyes everywhere.
James walks Kendall into the cheery light of their living room, candle flame making the shadows against their peeling walls dance back and forth, a tangled waltz, like how this all started.
“I should never have danced with you,” Kendall mumbles into James’s mouth, and James hums his agreement, fits their hips tight and keeps jostling Kendall until he’s stumbling through the black, gaping maw of their bedroom.
Kendall gets a whole five seconds to battle off another burst of utter panic, but then James’s hands curve over his ass, squeeze skin and melt his bones. They both crash back against the closest futon, splayed limbs everywhere, and Kendall begins the whole process of relearning his best friend.
There are places on James that Kendall never thought of as vulnerable before, the arch of his foot and the crook of his little toe, the winged place beneath his shoulder blade and the dip at the small of his back. There is the thin skin behind his ear, the knot at the base of his neck, the part of his hairline. Kendall’s lips catalogue each in turn, the pale freckle on his hip and the pert, pink skin of a nipple, and his mouth, that mouth, that completely unbearable, unforgivable, beautiful mouth. Bruised red and rough from kisses, James’s mouth burns against Kendall’s firebrand hot, and oh, god, there’s grace in giving in to it, folding against James and feeling his heartbeat kick out like a drum against his chest.
There is James’s hand heavy at the small of his back. There is James’s nose nudging against his affectionately. There are James’s lips sucking and pushing and giving all at once. James helps Kendall out of his shirt, pushes it down off his shoulders while Kendall straddles James’s thighs. It tangles on his elbows, pools there while heat radiates off his skin in waves, warming the leather pants beneath Kendall’s palms.
He takes a deep breath. Another. It doesn’t help. His lungs are desert dry.
“Were you with Mercedes, today?” James asks, hand pressed tight to Kendall’s skin, counting out his heartbeats, the hard-hitting onetwo onetwo of Kendall’s racing pulse.
“Jealous?” Kendall retorts, and it is a joke, but it is also an honest question, because James so rarely allows himself to feel inferior about anything.
James’s hand grows weightier, his gaze possessive, and he says, “Absolutely, yes, you have no idea,” which, no, Kendall does not have even a little bit of an idea. But the thought of it warms him anyway.
James bites Kendall’s lower lip, sucks it into his mouth and soothes the burn with his tongue. He murmurs, “What did you do with her?” and Kendall knows better than to answer, he does, honest.
Knowing does not stop him from retorting oh-so-maturely, “None of your business.”
If he sticks his tongue out to wet the contour of James’s mouth for emphasis, stealing a kiss that turns rough and filthy, then it’s not like it’s strategic. Just because Kendall knows exactly how to irritate James doesn’t mean he’d do it on purpose, in bed, simply to see how James would react, how he’d grind his body up, obscene, how he’d take all that passion and anger out on Kendall instead of some strange girl.
James tugs at his hair, yanks at his clothes until the seams rip, and his mouth is a burning ember, a lightning strike, an anchor. Kendall can’t do much more than shiver and stay grounded.
James says, furious, “I hate it when you touch her.”
Kendall admits right back, “I can’t stand it when you bring girls here.”
His nails gouge into the skin of James’s shoulder, ragged edges cutting lines, but James doesn’t appear to mind. He kisses Kendall on the mouth and murmurs, “I know.” His candor pisses Kendall off, even as James manhandles his shirt the rest of the way off of him. It falls by the wayside in a flutter of red, blue, and orange.
“Knew you were doing it on purpose.”
He flips them then, hovers over Kendall and murmurs, “Clever boy,” punctuating it with a hot press of his mouth against the flesh of Kendall’s belly.
“I hate being manipulated, James.”
He sits back on his heels, the muscles in his abdomen shifting under skin. Kendall stares, and stares, and stares some more. He thinks he’s left his shame back on the balcony. Kendall pushes his hands flat against James’s stomach, thumbs framing his navel.
James’s lips part. “You’re shaking.”
“I’m not.”
“Kendall,” James takes hold of his wrist, fingers against pulse points, and can he feel the erratic drumbeat of Kendall’s heart? “I won’t hurt you.”
Kendall doesn’t understand why that’s even a statement that needs to be made. James was there through thick and thin, through all things beautiful and broken. He saw the landscape of hell and the scarred outer wall connected by chain links that once kept them from heaven. He stood by Kendall’s side through the blood and the sickness, the death and the fear. He is the cornerstone Kendall has built his life upon.
He is James, and no, he would not hurt Kendall, not ever.
“I’ll make it good,” James continues, and Kendall believes it because he has to. He unbuckles the sword belt, low on James’s hips. His fingers brush over the front of his ridiculous leather pants, over James, thick and full. He gets as far as revealing the shadowy outline of James’s dick - no underwear, of course, who wears underwear with leather pants, idiot? - before he has to ask.
“What do we do?” He is caught between fear and this ceaseless desire, scraping his stomach raw.
James laughs and takes over, leaning back across Kendall’s body with practiced ease. He hovers over him, the full weight of his cock peeking out from leather, dragging against Kendall’s navel, but James does not appear to care. He stares straight into Kendall’s eyes, all hazel devotion and sweetness and says, “I’ll follow you anywhere, you know.”
But that is Kendall’s line. James is always skittering on ahead, head in the clouds, stuck on infeasible dreams, and Kendall chases after him, trying to make them all come true. They’ve been running circles around each other across America, at each other’s heels even here, at the edge of civilization, and Kendall wouldn’t have it any other way.
“And I’ll follow you,” he swears up and down and horizontally, all for the smile that breaks in sunset colors across James’s face.
James makes a show of removing Kendall’s pants, shimmying his jeans down to his ankles and then straight off. Kendall’s cock bobs flushed against his stomach, but he does not shy away when James stares, openly. He is more daring now, devoted to following through with this. There is inevitability at their backs, steady hands that feel like fate urging them beneath the wings of their shoulder blades.
There are lips somewhere near Kendall’s hipbone, James kissing the protrusion of skin and marrow, his teeth skimming hard-soft and making Kendall buck. He teases, and Kendall isn’t surprised, because James has never liked anything more than showing off. He makes Kendall beg for it, and then he takes him half down his throat, muscles tight and wet and fucking incredible.
James peers up through his eyelashes, his mouth stretched red. His tongue is slick against the underside of Kendall’s cock, moving, probing, and Kendall is very sure he’s never seen anything this hot before in his entire life; James, on his knees, swallowing around him. Every once in a while he will pull back to admire his handiwork, and Kendall can see the pink of his tongue in flickers and half-glimpses, rattlesnake fast before he darts back down to take the head of Kendall in his mouth.
It’s unbearably good, James’s hair tangled between Kendall’s fingers, the green-gold-honey-brown of his eyes cataloguing every move that makes Kendall whine. James turns Kendall to cumulus cloud cover, spread much, much too thin, and he is an unexpected lightning storm, sparking against the surface of Kendall’s skin. It’s nearly over before it begins, but Kendall tugs him up hard, let’s James’s teeth scrape across his belly and the ladder of his ribs before reclaiming his lips. He is dizzy, he is drunk with it. The taste of James’s skin is better than moonshine.
He chokes out, “I want-“
And James guides his chin up, steady. “Since when are you soft-spoken?”
“I want you to-“
He doesn’t know how to finish that sentence, because he’s only got a very, very limited grasp on what it is two men do in bed together. But James seems to know, and his eyes widen and his breath stutters. He promises again, “I’ll make it so good,” and Kendall can’t hold back anymore.
“How do you know you can?”
Embarrassment reddens James’s ears. He screws up his lips and his courage. He says, “I looked it up. Logan’s got all those books on anatomy and human sexuality at the apothecary. I got bored. I read.”
“You read? Like actual words?” Kendall blinks, naked and stretched tight beneath his best friend. He is wound up like a finely tuned string instrument, but he still finds it in himself to state incredulously, “You hate reading.”
James grins, rueful and sweet. He kisses the corner of Kendall’s lips. “But I liked the idea of doing this with you.” He hesitates, then, “It’s all I think about sometimes.”
Kendall had thought he’d seen James’s face from every angle, blue-rippled and water soaked back home, golden in the cornfields of Kansas and pale with dehydration in the deserts of New Mexico, burnt from the harsh sun of Arizona and open, relaxed, and happy beneath the palm trees of Verona, but this is new. This is James, forbidden, losing control faster than Kendall thought possible. He’s got a palm hot against Kendall’s belly, another curved around Kendall’s thigh. Kendall’s dick is thick and swollen between them, its presence unmistakable, aching so hard and hot that Kendall can feel it in his bones. He bites out, “So show me,” and James does, drags a finger down the soft skin of Kendall’s inner thigh, following the path it traces with his teeth.
He bites - pressure and the sharp dent of incisors - he licks wet and textured, and his hand reaches the cleft of Kendall’s ass right about when Kendall is considering begging him not to tease.
He is forced to reconsider, shock a slap to the face, because up until now Kendall hadn’t really thought about what James showing him would entail. Just the idea of it makes Kendall’s dick, still slick with James’s saliva, wilt a bit, and he hisses, “Uh.”
James bares his teeth, caught between amused and unhappy. “Changing your mind?”
Kendall cranes down and presses a kiss against his hairline. He is appalled, but he is also curious, and between the adrenaline and the crushed way that James watches him, he is also a little braver than when he started out. He wants to see everything, the strain of the veins in James’s forearm, the tremble in his thighs, the way he bites his lip when something feels too good to be true. Quietly, he replies, “No.”
The first probing touch of James’s fingertip makes Kendall’s nerve scream out, sharp pain and the agitation of discomfiture. They say it’s unnatural, abnormal, wrong, and yes, absolutely, this does not feel like fun at all, but. But, but, James is giving him a wan, imperfect smile, full of so much anxiety that Kendall wants to go to bat on his behalf, to scare off all the bad thoughts and waiting nightmares. He grabs for one of James’s wrists, kisses the flesh inside the curve and murmurs, “It’s fine. Keep going.”
So James does, he plies Kendall apart with one finger, then two, and it gets easier. The notch of his joints no longer catch, sliding in easily right up to the knuckle. He reaches deeper, and there, oh fuck, oh god, and Kendall is babbling these words outside, swearing in all the ways he knows how. There is a hollow space inside of him, so deep and so secret he never knew it existed until now, until James nudges up against it. Pleased, James tries it again, retracting ever so slow, languid enough that it makes Kendall squirm. He draws it out, twisting his index and middle fingers so that Kendall can feel the imprint of James’s skin on the inside, right up until James is thrusting forward again, hitting him just right.
Kendall says, “Fuck”, and Kendall says, “More,” and both times it sounds more like a moan. He’s not much for patience; he’s even less a proponent for self-restraint. He persuades James into adding a third finger, stretching him so much that it wavers between pain and intense, total pleasure, an electric spark that curls his toes and locks his fingers tight into the muscle of James’s shoulders. Never one to deny himself more of a good thing, Kendall babbles, “I’m ready, I’m ready, I want you, please.”
“You’re not, it’s too soon,” James argues, his eyes darker than Kendall has ever seen, greedy as they blaze across Kendall’s flushed body.
“It’s not, I am- I’m ready, come on, James, damnit, do it,” he begs, all reckless abandon. He wants James’s fingers in his mouth, James’s dick pulsing inside him, wants to be filled and wants to be fucked. He splays his legs wider in invitation, desperate, cock hard and red and completely on show.
James’s mouth drops open, awe and astonishment written clear as day beneath the arch of his eyebrow, the pucker of his lower lip. He informs him, “You’re a shameless exhibitionist,” and Kendall is not even a little bit sorry for it.
James crawls over him, his knees butting up against Kendall’s, and he’s still wearing those pants, skin tight leather spread open in the front, his dick visible in a way it wasn’t when he was kneeling. It is no longer a shadowy silhouette; this is the shape of the head and the curve of the shaft, pink-red and leaking clear at the tip. It drags against Kendall’s and that’s good, that’s actually really fantastic, but James’s fingers are gone and he’d like them replaced right god damn now please, so he arches up against James and whines, trying to shimmy his pants down his hips. The noise that James makes is obscene, a bitten off moan that reverberates in Kendall’s ribcage, the cold silver of his ring a solid reminder of reality against his collarbone.
James jerks his pants down over his hips, revealing smooth stretches of skin and the defined angles of his hipbones, and Kendall thinks about how he shines golden and beautiful in the sun. He huffs a breath and licks his lips, aches in a way he is not at all used to. James doesn’t bother getting his pants much past his knees, can’t concern himself with the nuisance of tight leather or the tangle of bootlaces. He situates himself between the V of Kendall’s legs, the flesh of his dick bearing down on the juncture between Kendall’s thigh and his balls, and Kendall tries to cant his hips all helpful-like. James hisses and laughs at the exact same time, takes hold of Kendall’s legs and positions them in new and interesting ways. Kendall doesn’t so much mind the contortion of his body, because he can feel James pulsing against him, feather light. He wants that where James’s fingers were, urges him onward, “Please, come on, please.”
Shakily, Jams exhales, and he presses inside of Kendall with the deliberate languor of someone savoring a moment.
Kendall is not savoring anything. Kendall is gritting his teeth so hard that he thinks they might be chipping in his mouth. James entering him is one of the most unpleasant things he’s ever gone through, no wonder its illegal, why would anyone-
James wraps his arms around Kendall’s middle, lips whispering soft against the skin of his throat. “Calm down.”
His voice is in tatters, raw and broken, but he is soft and familiar and still very, very James.
“You’re too tight. You need to relax,” James’s voice spikes with an edge of pain, but his mouth and his words stay tender, soothing, “Let me in.”
Kendall’s heart jumps, a skipping record in his chest, and he can hear that echoed in the ragged edge of his breath. He stills, tries to adjust to the heavy weight of James invading him, and somehow, that works. James slides forward, centimeters at a time, until he is home.
After that, every time he is absent, Kendall feels like razor blades have scraped him empty, a dull ache. When James’s hips stutter forward again it is better than anything he’s ever known.
James’s body is a grenade, a gun, a weapon. He tears through Kendall, destroys him in every way possible. But James is also this; an artist, an architect, a creator. He rebuilds, restructures, smoothes down all the rumpled edges and collapsing dreams. He holds Kendall’s wrists against the flea-bitten mattress and growls against the thin skin of his right eyelid, “You’re going to come so pretty for me,” and Kendall’s knees reflexively lock, grind bruises against James’s ribs, right beneath his armpits. He’s such a creature of habit, and he already knows that James is a habit he’s never going to be able to kick.
Being with him should feel like dying, but instead, it is the first real breath of fresh air Kendall has taken since before, since ghost stories and laughter that trailed off into the night. James is relentless, ruthless, taking him slow, then fast, then slow again, bringing him to the brink of it and then laying back. There are moments of awkward laced in between the brilliance, realignments of their hips that sends a hot red flush creeping up the back of Kendall’s neck, long seconds on end where they are too hot and sweaty and James has to pause in him, still, much too still, unused to the weight of his best friend. Kendall is overheating, sticky with sweat, but also he thinks he might die if James doesn’t move. James’s ring is cool, chain pooled against Kendall’s chest, and he thrusts into him again, picking up the rhythm like it never left. Kendall thinks oh, and Kendall thinks fuck.
He traces his tongue along the compass points of James’s neck; west and east to the hard muscle of his shoulders, South the ridges of his collar bone, and North, true North, right up into his hairline. He kisses everything he can touch, his body expanding and contracting. He feels like a dying star, about to fracture outward in a million, billion dazzling pieces.
Into his mouth, James says, “You’re mine, and you’ve always been mine, and no one can take you from me.”
“Yes,” Kendall breathes, because what else he can say? Between the words and the silky slip of James’s skin inside of him, he is fragmenting, he is gone. He licks into James’s mouth until the friction on his dick, trapped between their stomachs, is overwhelming, the way James fucks up into him more than that, and he is absolutely destroyed.
James comes right after he does, his voice wretched and beautiful and screaming Kendall’s name.
---
Kendall dreams about neon lights, about walking between electric blue lines of crosses. His goal, at the end of an aisle, is barely distinguishable, but he thinks it has a shape, a name, something so beloved that he can taste it on his lips.
His footsteps are soft. Still, they echo back at him from heavy stone walls, and that name, that shape…why can’t he remember? He steps closer and closer still, and oh, there are flowers here, beautiful white lilies and Queen Anne’s lace, gardenia and soft-petaled roses. The air smells sickly sweet, blossoms and something else, something decrepit that is both familiar and distressing. Kendall sucks in a breath, swallows down air like he is not getting enough, and he isn’t. He’s so, so afraid.
His gun weighs down its holster, the leather biting into his skin through the thin layer of his shirt. He sees candles up ahead, stubby wax stumps, the wicks close to extinct. He wants to turn around.
Bravery, or curiosity, or maybe plain abandon drives him forward, speeds his steps, and there is so much white. In some cultures, that means weddings. In others, it is the color for funerals. Which is this?
The question pounds in his head, turns to a lethargic drumbeat in his chest. Which is this? Which is it?
Which.
Is.
It?
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Author: garnetice
Pairing: Kendall/James, Kendall/Mercedes
Rating: M
Word Count: 5,530 (part six)
Part: Six of ??? (probably ten)
Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
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: Sexy sexy sexy timessss. My eternal love to jblostfan16 for the beta.
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On a night as dark and still as this one, Kendall remembers the world ending.
Or, no, that’s not accurate. Kendall remembers being seven years old, huddled beneath nylon fabric with a flashlight and James, Logan, and Carlos, telling a ghost story that was mostly plagiarized from the Amityville movies, which were just about the scariest thing he knew at the time. He remembers Logan rolling his eyes, ever-skeptical about anything make-believe, Carlos’s gape-mouthed awe and fear, thin arms wrapped around his knees. And he remembers James.
James, who didn’t care much about ghosts either way, real or not, because he was fully confident that he could take on anything with his best friends by his side. James provided all the spooky sound effects for Kendall’s tale, for as much as they bickered like brothers, he was always happy to be Kendall’s partner in crime. Together they terrified Carlos and Logan, with all his practical skepticism, right into the fetal position, and that night Kendall fell asleep with James’s smile mirroring his own, the red of their shared high five still stinging his hand.
When he woke up, curled in his sleeping bag, the world was a different place.
“Kiss me,” James repeats, smile identical to the mischievous thing it was at seven, at nine, at eleven, thirteen, and fifteen. It is a dare and it is a death sentence.
It is all he wants.
They crash into each other, and it is noisy and messy and not at all nice. James’s mouth is hot, dry, brutal, and it’s never been like this before. Kendall’s never kissed anyone like he might not get another chance to do so. James cages Kendall’s face with his hands, long fingers lying flat against the curve of Kendall’s cheekbones, tips brushing the delicate cartilage of his ears. He pants into Kendall’s mouth, draws the oxygen from his lungs, and fuck, fuck, fuck.
It’s different then Mercedes, not only because of the telltale bristle of scruff against Kendall’s chin, but the angles and the strength in James’s arms, the way Kendall’s definitely not even a little bit in control. He feels like he’s standing at the end of the world all over again.
Back then, he couldn’t do a thing. Governments tear apart like tissue paper, and it’s shocking how little it takes to instigate a riot. People claimed to abhor violence, but really, to four little boys in Minnesota, it felt like everyone was just waiting to reclaim the caveman days. Once the end came, it took a handful of weeks for civilization to deteriorate completely, the carefully constructed rules of society falling by the wayside at the mere prospect of the apocalypse.
If people didn’t let panic control them, fear drive them, maybe it would have been different. Maybe America, North, South, and Central, could have rebounded. But only very smart men and women understand that people are inherently selfish, and only the most powerful had the means to do anything about it. Being people, and rather inherently selfish themselves, those in power chose to create bastions of safety.
Verona.
Marseilles.
Antium.
Bohemia.
Navarre.
And so many more, all these places and strange new names, where the privileged could while away the rest of their days. They could’ve attempted to get the country back on track, but no. Those left on the outside fell victim to all the things that take so many fledgling civilizations before they start; hunger, disease, and the monsters that live inside human beings. Teeth and claws only stay hidden as long as there’s a significant authority to say that they must. The medieval ages fell upon the twenty first century like they never even left.
That’s why the Reproduction Initiative with its public executions and anti-sodomy laws clicked into place so easily. All these former futurists wanted a modicum of safety and control back in their lives, and they were willing to give up free choice to get it. Even Kendall, even now; losing control is fucking terrifying.
“Hey, I know that face. That’s your thinking face,” James nips at his lower lip. “You’re not allowed to wear that face when you’re this close to me.” He cups Kendall’s chin and draws him into a gentler kiss. Soft, plush, slick-wet with saliva. He tastes just like home, and yeah, okay, Kendall knows all the reasons he needs to stop this before it goes any further. But James captures starlight in his eyes. It swims inside of him, sets him alight, and Kendall right along with him.
“If Logan comes back-“
“He won’t,” James promises, like he can actually know that. “He won’t.”
“Carlos could-“
“Kendall.” In James’s voice there are reassurances of safety and security, things that Kendall hasn’t believed in since his life began putrefying around him. Moonbeams permeate James’s skin, turns his cheeks the color of bone, but no light can wash away the certainty of his words. They spin off his tongue, honey sweet, but poison, fuck, because this could end everything.
Kendall might be hyperventilating. Just a little bit. He squeezes his eyes shut, tight, and waits for the touch of James’s mouth, but it doesn’t come. Kendall cracks an eyelid and sees James watching, amusement dancing across his features. “Are you okay?”
“I’ve never been so scared in my entire life,” Kendall admits, but his voice is surly. “And you’re making fun of me.”
“I’m not.”
“James.”
“I’m not,” James insists. His hands move to fist in the collar of Kendall’s Hawaiian shirt, crumpling exotic flowers, a sacred heart bleeding across his knuckles. He yanks forward, knocks their foreheads together and warns, “Look, I know this ends in a hail of bullets. I know we should stop.”
“We definitely, definitely should,” Kendall agrees, hissing when James licks out, flicking wet against his lower lip. Kendall’s eyes flutter closed, and is he breathing? He needs to breathe.
He can’t remember how.
“Kendall?” James’s voice is shakier than it should be, more uncertain that Kendall ever remembers hearing it. “I don’t want to stop.”
“I-“ Kendall doesn’t know how to finish that sentence, because everything he wants is skewed, jumbled, and it will all come out sounding like a whimper. His hands hover over James’s waist, and James arches forward until they are touching, until Kendall’s fingertips press into his skin.
It isn’t enough. Not by a longshot.
James kisses him hard and rough, moves from the corner of his mouth to his jaw. He tongues his name against Kendall’s jugular, bites down until the word turns to a bruise. He works his way south, traces the skin stretched tight across Kendall’s collarbone, and that is when Kendall hears a noise.
It is the crunch of a footstep out in the alley, and it makes his spine go stiff with fear. Kendall’s gun is in his hand before he even knows what he plans on doing with it, because for all his training with marksmanship, he has never, ever, ever been so hyperaware and terrified in his life. If someone sees them, god, it would be apocalyptic, and this is an awful idea, a terribly horribly awful idea and-
James’s hand lands heavy on his shoulder and Kendall has to force his finger not to startle on the trigger.
“There’s nothing out there.” James says it quietly, like he’s talking to a skittish animal. Kendall lowers his gun, but he doesn’t release his grip because James is not omniscient. He strains to see out, into the darkness, feet squared on uneven concrete. The breeze coming in from the ocean is colder than anything Kendall’s felt in a long time, dancing chilled fingers across his shoulder blades, and it’s too dark to sight anything other than the empty sockets of window-eyes, the familiar silhouettes of office furniture across the alley as inanimate and non-threatening as ever.
Kendall is still tense.
And then James drops to his knees.
Before Kendall can even fully acknowledge what’s happening, James wraps his lips around the slate gray barrel of Kendall’s gun and stares up at Kendall, altar boy innocence belied by the filthy, shiny wet he leaves behind. Kendall’s blood rushes away from his head so quickly that he’s dizzy with it.
“What the fuck?” He asks helplessly, not daring to move an inch. He’s got prayers in his head and his finger still on the trigger, and no idea if it will even matter. Even if Kendall could talk to the Father who art in heaven, and Mary, full of grace, he hasn’t been to church in a long, long time, and his whole body is the kind of tired that makes him tremble and shake.
Or maybe that’s James quaking through his bones, James who is staring up at him like nothing bad will happen, like he believes that god loves no matter what. That’s what Kendall learned when he was small, and the ideas people get as children are hard to shake, like fairy tales and Santa Claus, like pretty boys who kneel all princely but use their mouths all obscene. James’s cheeks have gone hollow, sucking gunmetal and gray, and oh, he lips along the length of the slide deliberately, with purpose.
There is a sound, guttural, low, and Kendall doesn’t realize it’s coming from him until he sees the satisfied crinkle at the corner of James’s eyes. He pops off and circles his tongue around the muzzle, and Kendall reels away so quick he stumbles into a wall. Old brickwork crumbles behind his back, hitting Kendall’s boots like drops of rain.
He says, “You don’t get to do that,” insists it half hysterical, never wanting James to put his life in Kendall’s hands like that. But James doesn’t let him escape, gets a hand on either side of Kendall’s hips quicker than Kendall can blink. He is pressing rough against him, and fuck, Kendall can feel him, a heavy, hot weight on his pelvis, and it makes Kendall want, want, want. It also sends terror skittering through his limbs, and he is caught, frozen, letting James rut against him without giving anything back.
James says, “Don’t do this. Don’t be scared. You face down fear, Kendall. You never run from it.”
He handles Kendall like he might a child’s toy, and Kendall has to swallow hard around the tornado in his stomach, threatening to climb up his throat and assault the whole wide world. He tries to draw a breath, but the wind in his lungs won’t let him get more than a hint of air, and James’s face is so close, too close. He laughs instead, and it is maniacal, it is not him at all, but, “What are you talking about? We ran all the way here.”
James shakes his head vehemently as night bruises the sky, darker and darker still.
“No. We left Minnesota because we had no one left to bury. That wasn’t running. It was letting go.”
Kendall says, “Okay, okay,” and punctuates each word with a soft kiss because he is hot, and horny, and James has a point.
Besides, this is no longer something he can run from.
James kisses him desperate, and Kendall kisses back frantic; the night holds so many secrets. One more cannot hurt. He shoves James’s t-shirt up and over his arms, rough, pressing into the planes of his body, and in return James’s hips mimic the waves rolling into shore, crashing and thunderous. That is also the feeling it sends spiraling through Kendall’s chest, a boom and a roar, chaos beneath his ribcage.
James says on a tremulous breath, “I need you to touch me. Please.”
And at first Kendall doesn’t get it, because he is touching James, running his nails against the short hairs on the back of his neck, marveling at the solid shape of his shoulders, feeling every indent of his ribcage and his spine. What more can he possibly do? But with the next crush of James’s pelvis, he gets what it means, and he pants against James’s collarbone, the question he really wants to ask dying on his lips.
He does not ask how, or why, because James’s hands are everywhere, too close, squeezing painfully around his heart. All that Kendall manages is, “Not on the balcony.”
He is not so far gone that he’s forgotten the night has eyes everywhere.
James walks Kendall into the cheery light of their living room, candle flame making the shadows against their peeling walls dance back and forth, a tangled waltz, like how this all started.
“I should never have danced with you,” Kendall mumbles into James’s mouth, and James hums his agreement, fits their hips tight and keeps jostling Kendall until he’s stumbling through the black, gaping maw of their bedroom.
Kendall gets a whole five seconds to battle off another burst of utter panic, but then James’s hands curve over his ass, squeeze skin and melt his bones. They both crash back against the closest futon, splayed limbs everywhere, and Kendall begins the whole process of relearning his best friend.
There are places on James that Kendall never thought of as vulnerable before, the arch of his foot and the crook of his little toe, the winged place beneath his shoulder blade and the dip at the small of his back. There is the thin skin behind his ear, the knot at the base of his neck, the part of his hairline. Kendall’s lips catalogue each in turn, the pale freckle on his hip and the pert, pink skin of a nipple, and his mouth, that mouth, that completely unbearable, unforgivable, beautiful mouth. Bruised red and rough from kisses, James’s mouth burns against Kendall’s firebrand hot, and oh, god, there’s grace in giving in to it, folding against James and feeling his heartbeat kick out like a drum against his chest.
There is James’s hand heavy at the small of his back. There is James’s nose nudging against his affectionately. There are James’s lips sucking and pushing and giving all at once. James helps Kendall out of his shirt, pushes it down off his shoulders while Kendall straddles James’s thighs. It tangles on his elbows, pools there while heat radiates off his skin in waves, warming the leather pants beneath Kendall’s palms.
He takes a deep breath. Another. It doesn’t help. His lungs are desert dry.
“Were you with Mercedes, today?” James asks, hand pressed tight to Kendall’s skin, counting out his heartbeats, the hard-hitting onetwo onetwo of Kendall’s racing pulse.
“Jealous?” Kendall retorts, and it is a joke, but it is also an honest question, because James so rarely allows himself to feel inferior about anything.
James’s hand grows weightier, his gaze possessive, and he says, “Absolutely, yes, you have no idea,” which, no, Kendall does not have even a little bit of an idea. But the thought of it warms him anyway.
James bites Kendall’s lower lip, sucks it into his mouth and soothes the burn with his tongue. He murmurs, “What did you do with her?” and Kendall knows better than to answer, he does, honest.
Knowing does not stop him from retorting oh-so-maturely, “None of your business.”
If he sticks his tongue out to wet the contour of James’s mouth for emphasis, stealing a kiss that turns rough and filthy, then it’s not like it’s strategic. Just because Kendall knows exactly how to irritate James doesn’t mean he’d do it on purpose, in bed, simply to see how James would react, how he’d grind his body up, obscene, how he’d take all that passion and anger out on Kendall instead of some strange girl.
James tugs at his hair, yanks at his clothes until the seams rip, and his mouth is a burning ember, a lightning strike, an anchor. Kendall can’t do much more than shiver and stay grounded.
James says, furious, “I hate it when you touch her.”
Kendall admits right back, “I can’t stand it when you bring girls here.”
His nails gouge into the skin of James’s shoulder, ragged edges cutting lines, but James doesn’t appear to mind. He kisses Kendall on the mouth and murmurs, “I know.” His candor pisses Kendall off, even as James manhandles his shirt the rest of the way off of him. It falls by the wayside in a flutter of red, blue, and orange.
“Knew you were doing it on purpose.”
He flips them then, hovers over Kendall and murmurs, “Clever boy,” punctuating it with a hot press of his mouth against the flesh of Kendall’s belly.
“I hate being manipulated, James.”
He sits back on his heels, the muscles in his abdomen shifting under skin. Kendall stares, and stares, and stares some more. He thinks he’s left his shame back on the balcony. Kendall pushes his hands flat against James’s stomach, thumbs framing his navel.
James’s lips part. “You’re shaking.”
“I’m not.”
“Kendall,” James takes hold of his wrist, fingers against pulse points, and can he feel the erratic drumbeat of Kendall’s heart? “I won’t hurt you.”
Kendall doesn’t understand why that’s even a statement that needs to be made. James was there through thick and thin, through all things beautiful and broken. He saw the landscape of hell and the scarred outer wall connected by chain links that once kept them from heaven. He stood by Kendall’s side through the blood and the sickness, the death and the fear. He is the cornerstone Kendall has built his life upon.
He is James, and no, he would not hurt Kendall, not ever.
“I’ll make it good,” James continues, and Kendall believes it because he has to. He unbuckles the sword belt, low on James’s hips. His fingers brush over the front of his ridiculous leather pants, over James, thick and full. He gets as far as revealing the shadowy outline of James’s dick - no underwear, of course, who wears underwear with leather pants, idiot? - before he has to ask.
“What do we do?” He is caught between fear and this ceaseless desire, scraping his stomach raw.
James laughs and takes over, leaning back across Kendall’s body with practiced ease. He hovers over him, the full weight of his cock peeking out from leather, dragging against Kendall’s navel, but James does not appear to care. He stares straight into Kendall’s eyes, all hazel devotion and sweetness and says, “I’ll follow you anywhere, you know.”
But that is Kendall’s line. James is always skittering on ahead, head in the clouds, stuck on infeasible dreams, and Kendall chases after him, trying to make them all come true. They’ve been running circles around each other across America, at each other’s heels even here, at the edge of civilization, and Kendall wouldn’t have it any other way.
“And I’ll follow you,” he swears up and down and horizontally, all for the smile that breaks in sunset colors across James’s face.
James makes a show of removing Kendall’s pants, shimmying his jeans down to his ankles and then straight off. Kendall’s cock bobs flushed against his stomach, but he does not shy away when James stares, openly. He is more daring now, devoted to following through with this. There is inevitability at their backs, steady hands that feel like fate urging them beneath the wings of their shoulder blades.
There are lips somewhere near Kendall’s hipbone, James kissing the protrusion of skin and marrow, his teeth skimming hard-soft and making Kendall buck. He teases, and Kendall isn’t surprised, because James has never liked anything more than showing off. He makes Kendall beg for it, and then he takes him half down his throat, muscles tight and wet and fucking incredible.
James peers up through his eyelashes, his mouth stretched red. His tongue is slick against the underside of Kendall’s cock, moving, probing, and Kendall is very sure he’s never seen anything this hot before in his entire life; James, on his knees, swallowing around him. Every once in a while he will pull back to admire his handiwork, and Kendall can see the pink of his tongue in flickers and half-glimpses, rattlesnake fast before he darts back down to take the head of Kendall in his mouth.
It’s unbearably good, James’s hair tangled between Kendall’s fingers, the green-gold-honey-brown of his eyes cataloguing every move that makes Kendall whine. James turns Kendall to cumulus cloud cover, spread much, much too thin, and he is an unexpected lightning storm, sparking against the surface of Kendall’s skin. It’s nearly over before it begins, but Kendall tugs him up hard, let’s James’s teeth scrape across his belly and the ladder of his ribs before reclaiming his lips. He is dizzy, he is drunk with it. The taste of James’s skin is better than moonshine.
He chokes out, “I want-“
And James guides his chin up, steady. “Since when are you soft-spoken?”
“I want you to-“
He doesn’t know how to finish that sentence, because he’s only got a very, very limited grasp on what it is two men do in bed together. But James seems to know, and his eyes widen and his breath stutters. He promises again, “I’ll make it so good,” and Kendall can’t hold back anymore.
“How do you know you can?”
Embarrassment reddens James’s ears. He screws up his lips and his courage. He says, “I looked it up. Logan’s got all those books on anatomy and human sexuality at the apothecary. I got bored. I read.”
“You read? Like actual words?” Kendall blinks, naked and stretched tight beneath his best friend. He is wound up like a finely tuned string instrument, but he still finds it in himself to state incredulously, “You hate reading.”
James grins, rueful and sweet. He kisses the corner of Kendall’s lips. “But I liked the idea of doing this with you.” He hesitates, then, “It’s all I think about sometimes.”
Kendall had thought he’d seen James’s face from every angle, blue-rippled and water soaked back home, golden in the cornfields of Kansas and pale with dehydration in the deserts of New Mexico, burnt from the harsh sun of Arizona and open, relaxed, and happy beneath the palm trees of Verona, but this is new. This is James, forbidden, losing control faster than Kendall thought possible. He’s got a palm hot against Kendall’s belly, another curved around Kendall’s thigh. Kendall’s dick is thick and swollen between them, its presence unmistakable, aching so hard and hot that Kendall can feel it in his bones. He bites out, “So show me,” and James does, drags a finger down the soft skin of Kendall’s inner thigh, following the path it traces with his teeth.
He bites - pressure and the sharp dent of incisors - he licks wet and textured, and his hand reaches the cleft of Kendall’s ass right about when Kendall is considering begging him not to tease.
He is forced to reconsider, shock a slap to the face, because up until now Kendall hadn’t really thought about what James showing him would entail. Just the idea of it makes Kendall’s dick, still slick with James’s saliva, wilt a bit, and he hisses, “Uh.”
James bares his teeth, caught between amused and unhappy. “Changing your mind?”
Kendall cranes down and presses a kiss against his hairline. He is appalled, but he is also curious, and between the adrenaline and the crushed way that James watches him, he is also a little braver than when he started out. He wants to see everything, the strain of the veins in James’s forearm, the tremble in his thighs, the way he bites his lip when something feels too good to be true. Quietly, he replies, “No.”
The first probing touch of James’s fingertip makes Kendall’s nerve scream out, sharp pain and the agitation of discomfiture. They say it’s unnatural, abnormal, wrong, and yes, absolutely, this does not feel like fun at all, but. But, but, James is giving him a wan, imperfect smile, full of so much anxiety that Kendall wants to go to bat on his behalf, to scare off all the bad thoughts and waiting nightmares. He grabs for one of James’s wrists, kisses the flesh inside the curve and murmurs, “It’s fine. Keep going.”
So James does, he plies Kendall apart with one finger, then two, and it gets easier. The notch of his joints no longer catch, sliding in easily right up to the knuckle. He reaches deeper, and there, oh fuck, oh god, and Kendall is babbling these words outside, swearing in all the ways he knows how. There is a hollow space inside of him, so deep and so secret he never knew it existed until now, until James nudges up against it. Pleased, James tries it again, retracting ever so slow, languid enough that it makes Kendall squirm. He draws it out, twisting his index and middle fingers so that Kendall can feel the imprint of James’s skin on the inside, right up until James is thrusting forward again, hitting him just right.
Kendall says, “Fuck”, and Kendall says, “More,” and both times it sounds more like a moan. He’s not much for patience; he’s even less a proponent for self-restraint. He persuades James into adding a third finger, stretching him so much that it wavers between pain and intense, total pleasure, an electric spark that curls his toes and locks his fingers tight into the muscle of James’s shoulders. Never one to deny himself more of a good thing, Kendall babbles, “I’m ready, I’m ready, I want you, please.”
“You’re not, it’s too soon,” James argues, his eyes darker than Kendall has ever seen, greedy as they blaze across Kendall’s flushed body.
“It’s not, I am- I’m ready, come on, James, damnit, do it,” he begs, all reckless abandon. He wants James’s fingers in his mouth, James’s dick pulsing inside him, wants to be filled and wants to be fucked. He splays his legs wider in invitation, desperate, cock hard and red and completely on show.
James’s mouth drops open, awe and astonishment written clear as day beneath the arch of his eyebrow, the pucker of his lower lip. He informs him, “You’re a shameless exhibitionist,” and Kendall is not even a little bit sorry for it.
James crawls over him, his knees butting up against Kendall’s, and he’s still wearing those pants, skin tight leather spread open in the front, his dick visible in a way it wasn’t when he was kneeling. It is no longer a shadowy silhouette; this is the shape of the head and the curve of the shaft, pink-red and leaking clear at the tip. It drags against Kendall’s and that’s good, that’s actually really fantastic, but James’s fingers are gone and he’d like them replaced right god damn now please, so he arches up against James and whines, trying to shimmy his pants down his hips. The noise that James makes is obscene, a bitten off moan that reverberates in Kendall’s ribcage, the cold silver of his ring a solid reminder of reality against his collarbone.
James jerks his pants down over his hips, revealing smooth stretches of skin and the defined angles of his hipbones, and Kendall thinks about how he shines golden and beautiful in the sun. He huffs a breath and licks his lips, aches in a way he is not at all used to. James doesn’t bother getting his pants much past his knees, can’t concern himself with the nuisance of tight leather or the tangle of bootlaces. He situates himself between the V of Kendall’s legs, the flesh of his dick bearing down on the juncture between Kendall’s thigh and his balls, and Kendall tries to cant his hips all helpful-like. James hisses and laughs at the exact same time, takes hold of Kendall’s legs and positions them in new and interesting ways. Kendall doesn’t so much mind the contortion of his body, because he can feel James pulsing against him, feather light. He wants that where James’s fingers were, urges him onward, “Please, come on, please.”
Shakily, Jams exhales, and he presses inside of Kendall with the deliberate languor of someone savoring a moment.
Kendall is not savoring anything. Kendall is gritting his teeth so hard that he thinks they might be chipping in his mouth. James entering him is one of the most unpleasant things he’s ever gone through, no wonder its illegal, why would anyone-
James wraps his arms around Kendall’s middle, lips whispering soft against the skin of his throat. “Calm down.”
His voice is in tatters, raw and broken, but he is soft and familiar and still very, very James.
“You’re too tight. You need to relax,” James’s voice spikes with an edge of pain, but his mouth and his words stay tender, soothing, “Let me in.”
Kendall’s heart jumps, a skipping record in his chest, and he can hear that echoed in the ragged edge of his breath. He stills, tries to adjust to the heavy weight of James invading him, and somehow, that works. James slides forward, centimeters at a time, until he is home.
After that, every time he is absent, Kendall feels like razor blades have scraped him empty, a dull ache. When James’s hips stutter forward again it is better than anything he’s ever known.
James’s body is a grenade, a gun, a weapon. He tears through Kendall, destroys him in every way possible. But James is also this; an artist, an architect, a creator. He rebuilds, restructures, smoothes down all the rumpled edges and collapsing dreams. He holds Kendall’s wrists against the flea-bitten mattress and growls against the thin skin of his right eyelid, “You’re going to come so pretty for me,” and Kendall’s knees reflexively lock, grind bruises against James’s ribs, right beneath his armpits. He’s such a creature of habit, and he already knows that James is a habit he’s never going to be able to kick.
Being with him should feel like dying, but instead, it is the first real breath of fresh air Kendall has taken since before, since ghost stories and laughter that trailed off into the night. James is relentless, ruthless, taking him slow, then fast, then slow again, bringing him to the brink of it and then laying back. There are moments of awkward laced in between the brilliance, realignments of their hips that sends a hot red flush creeping up the back of Kendall’s neck, long seconds on end where they are too hot and sweaty and James has to pause in him, still, much too still, unused to the weight of his best friend. Kendall is overheating, sticky with sweat, but also he thinks he might die if James doesn’t move. James’s ring is cool, chain pooled against Kendall’s chest, and he thrusts into him again, picking up the rhythm like it never left. Kendall thinks oh, and Kendall thinks fuck.
He traces his tongue along the compass points of James’s neck; west and east to the hard muscle of his shoulders, South the ridges of his collar bone, and North, true North, right up into his hairline. He kisses everything he can touch, his body expanding and contracting. He feels like a dying star, about to fracture outward in a million, billion dazzling pieces.
Into his mouth, James says, “You’re mine, and you’ve always been mine, and no one can take you from me.”
“Yes,” Kendall breathes, because what else he can say? Between the words and the silky slip of James’s skin inside of him, he is fragmenting, he is gone. He licks into James’s mouth until the friction on his dick, trapped between their stomachs, is overwhelming, the way James fucks up into him more than that, and he is absolutely destroyed.
James comes right after he does, his voice wretched and beautiful and screaming Kendall’s name.
---
Kendall dreams about neon lights, about walking between electric blue lines of crosses. His goal, at the end of an aisle, is barely distinguishable, but he thinks it has a shape, a name, something so beloved that he can taste it on his lips.
His footsteps are soft. Still, they echo back at him from heavy stone walls, and that name, that shape…why can’t he remember? He steps closer and closer still, and oh, there are flowers here, beautiful white lilies and Queen Anne’s lace, gardenia and soft-petaled roses. The air smells sickly sweet, blossoms and something else, something decrepit that is both familiar and distressing. Kendall sucks in a breath, swallows down air like he is not getting enough, and he isn’t. He’s so, so afraid.
His gun weighs down its holster, the leather biting into his skin through the thin layer of his shirt. He sees candles up ahead, stubby wax stumps, the wicks close to extinct. He wants to turn around.
Bravery, or curiosity, or maybe plain abandon drives him forward, speeds his steps, and there is so much white. In some cultures, that means weddings. In others, it is the color for funerals. Which is this?
The question pounds in his head, turns to a lethargic drumbeat in his chest. Which is this? Which is it?
Which.
Is.
It?
---