[fic] In Fair Verona - 12/13
Title: In Fair Verona
Author: garnetice
Pairing: Kendall/James, Kendall/Mercedes
Rating: M
Word Count: 4,563 (chapter twelve)
Part: Twelve of Thirteen
Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
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: MAJOR. CHARACTER. DEATH.
---
Kendall’s been in Mantua for over a month, loneliness a constant pulse in his bones.
Then it happens. He hears James’s voice, like a dream, floating from the wireless radio on a Wednesday. It’s so unexpected, so incredibly welcome, that Kendall stops in his steps. He lets the sound wash over him, sweet and loud, the words familiar from quiet, candlelight nights splayed across the threadbare sofa back home, Logan performing cutting board alchemy, Carlos practicing his dance moves, and James the backtrack for it all.
James, who has written a million, billion songs since Kendall first met him, each leaving his lips like a secret spilling into the world.
James, who deserves to live his dream more than anyone else.
Kendall wonders what disguise James wore to get past Gustavo. He wonders if there were hijinks involved. There had to be hijinks involved, but the idea of them going forward without Kendall hurts. Maybe there were no hijinks. Had James walked in there with his forged signing license in hand and demanded to be put on the air?
The strawberry fields are covered with low hanging, evaporating mist. Through it, the sun is breaking the world into spot-lit pieces, a gorgeous, brilliant thing. Smiling to himself, Kendall hums along to the radio, harmonizing with James’s voice without even trying.
He doesn’t know it, but that moment, that song, is the last time he’ll ever feel at peace.
---
The dream that haunts him, electric crosses vibrant blue, the corpse flesh of a face that is both dear and loathed, wakes him before the dawn. Kendall’s heart is throbbing in his chest, beating against his rib cage so hard it feels like it might break free. He gasps for breath, James’s name on his lips. He dreads climbing out from under his threadbare blanket, and he doesn’t know why.
For moments on end, Kendall stares up at the tin roof of his trailer, the heat of early morning already beginning to bake through. He breathes through his nose, trying to calm down. It doesn’t work.
With a sigh, he heaves himself up from the thin futon, his back aching, his knees popping. Kendall’s getting old, he thinks, or maybe depression is just making him exhausted. Either way, his body’s rebelling, and he hates it. He pulls on a pair of jeans, hands fumbling over his belt. His dumb Hawaiian shirt and a dark hoodie follow suit, but the shakiness in his fingers still belies how much the dream freaked him out.
That feeling sticks with him, too, all the way across the barren, dusty stretch of land, the entire walk to the fields burgeoning green and fragrant. He beats most of the workers there, although a head or two bobs amongst the leaves. Griffin would be so proud.
Kendall immerses himself in the fields, talking to the trickle of people he finds, helping where he can. The earthen scent of the farmlands is still a foreign thing, a kind of paradise compared to the world outside the protected sanctuary of Mantua, of course, but unfamiliar all the same. The ocean is so far away.
He’s caught up in remembering what the waves sound like as they roll into shore when he realizes there’s another noise splitting the air.
The phone in the overseer’s office if ringing, shrill and sharp. It rings, and rings, and rings endlessly, until Kendall can’t help but march up the rickety wooden stairs, each creaking unhappily under his sneakers. He’s not expecting anyone, he thinks. Mercedes isn’t due to call for another week. That same dread from earlier pools in his belly. He swallows and keeps going.
The overseer’s office is one of those temporary jobs, four walls slapped together and a card table as a desk. The phone’s an old rotary, black handled and burnished with age. It makes the table vibrate with each angry ring.
Hesitantly, although he doesn’t know why he’s hesitating at all - it’s probably Griffin - Kendall picks it up.
“Hello?”
All that fills the line is the soft pant of someone else’s breath.
“Hello?”
He doesn’t expect the only voice in the entire world that he actually wants to hear. “Kendall?’
“James.”
A thread of stunned silence stretches between them.
Then:
“Something’s happened,” James says, short and panicked. “Kendall, something really bad has happened. Carlos-“
He breaks off in a sob, and Kendall doesn’t know what to do, what to say, his throat constricting with fear. It tastes sharp and metallic, coating his tongue. He can barely hear himself as he stutters out, “I-is Carlos okay?”
“No. Nononono, Carlos is. Kendall, Carlos is-“
“What?”
James’s breath shatters, splinters in a way that hurts Kendall’s ears. He’s never heard him sound so ragged, so wrecked. Kendall urges, “James.”
“I can’t. You have to leave Mantua,” he says in a rush, and then there’s a noise, another voice, something like a shout. James yells, “Get out. Kendall, you have to get out!” But Kendall can’t hear the rest of what he’s saying because the phone flatlines, leaving him with a long stretch of dial tone and James’s warning echoing in his ears.
The way his voice pitched up, the edge on his words…It sounded like he was in pain.
Something hot and sharp twists in his stomach. His mouth tastes dry.
Someone is hurting James.
---
He walks until he can’t anymore. The oxygen outside Mantua tastes thinner, ashier. His kicks stir up dust that sticks to the ankles of his skinny jeans. Kendall’s got a map he swiped off one of the migrants in the field, faded and speckled, white lines creasing the aged paper like the strange, wrinkled veins of a flower petal.
When he finally collapses, he’s got no idea where is, except that the clouds are blazing like they’re on fire. Kendall wonders if maybe they are. His throat is as dry as the dirt road, drought-parched and empty.
Carlos is okay. James is okay. Logan’s okay, Kendall thinks, a constant mantra, a drumbeat in his head. He remembers Carlos the last time he saw him, blue wig askew, tight leather skirt, bare chested, bleeding internally. He remembers Carlos as a kid, helmet securely on top of his head, skateboarding into a slapdash pile of cardboard boxes that he called the dragon’s lair.
They’re Kendall’s brothers. All of them, even James, weird incestuous connotations and all. They kept him going when his mother and Katie faded into memory. They kept him breathing when all he wanted to do was die. If anything happens to them, to any of them, Kendall doesn’t know what he’ll do. He doesn’t know if going on after that will even be an option.
He thinks about Logan, the way he wrapped himself around the base of that cactus in Nevada, the blood between his lips and how very frail he looked.
He thinks about James, naked and bathed in starlight. Then, in flashes, the James of his dreams, pale, lifeless. James with a black eye after a bar fight at L’Amour. James’s body pressed against his as they danced around Griffin’s ballroom.
James is okay.
Carlos is okay.
Logan’s okay.
They have to be.
---
He knows the unrest around what he did to Dak hasn’t died down enough for him to return, but he still hops a produce wagon to Verona about thirty miles outside of town. Kendall’s got his transit papers, carefully penned by Griffin. His return date was left blank, the paper already well worn, yellowing with age and abuse at the corners. Kendall smooths his thumb along the wrinkled surface of Griffin’s signature. Home is an ache in his heart.
They get through the gates without a hitch; Hawk’s militia only performs a precursory check of the cart, and their papers, the solider on duty skimming over the cursive of Kendall’s name. It helps that they’re one in a line of hundreds, bustling to get inside Verona’s towering walls.
The familiar fortress swallows them in darkness before they emerge back into a misty noon. Kendall hops off the wagon with a grateful nod, keeping his head down and his hood up as he dissolves into the fog. He sticks to alleyways until he can’t anymore. The apothecary is closed up tight, his crashpad has guards blocking the passage, and Carlos’s club is dark in the light of day.
Damning the guards, Kendall takes the back way towards his place. He sneaks into the apartment as skillfully as he can manage, but the risk is for naught. It is woefully empty.
He can’t find his friends.
He can’t find his friends.
Every step jolts through his frame, vibrates in his ribcage and his hipbones and his knees. The jangle of his hoodie’s zipper hitting the buckle of his belt is loud compared to the muted sound of rubber soles on concrete. Even though it’s midday, the persistent fog (just like the morning he murdered Dak in cold blood) refuses to lift.
Even though he’s careful to keep his head ducked into his hood, the people he meets on the street are few and far between. It’s like the whole town is on lockdown.
Kendall’s not sure how he ends up where he does. Maybe it’s that he has nowhere else to go.
He breaks off from slightly damp asphalt into cobblestone, the rough, weathered cracks between stones twisting at his ankles and calves and thighs. And up ahead, where he expects the long beam of timber, the looming skeleton of it in all its neck breaking glory, there is something new. Town square is no longer where the Gallows lives, singular. It’s where a whole row of them exist, proper platforms and frayed rope, and more bodies hanging in a row than Kendall has ever seen.
Mercedes told him about the doctor they hung in the square a few weeks back, but she had mentioned nothing of this scale. Kendall stares. He rocks back and forth on his toes, his nerves from this morning magnified to ridiculous proportions. He whispers, “Red ribbons and witch hunts.”
The bodies sway in the wind, creaking wood and the hush of death the only thing heralding their presence. They vary aesthetically, in levels of gruesomeness. Some of the men’s necks are twisted at unnatural angles, skin red-purple from internal bleeding that is long since staunched. Some rest their chins sweetly against their chests, an illusion of sleep ruined only by the azure tint of their lips.
Kendall recognizes one or two of them in a vague, distant way. He registers their familiar faces with weary acceptance, disconnected, numb. No one should ever acclimate to violence, not ever, but it’s been thrown in his face for so long, so much, that he can’t help the desensitization that has settled over him.
The corpses sway in their eternal rest, buffeted by the sluggish breeze, too exhausted to move the dead or the mist very far or very fast. The creak of the ropes is punctuated by the scurrying feet of rats, the rustle of pigeon feathers, the buzz of flies. The mist-turned-rain wraps him in a choking hug.
Kendall watches the skirts some of the men wear, sequined or ruffled or sewn of taffeta, flicking and swishing against unshaved thighs. There must be fifteen in all, a long row of silenced laughter and glazed, milky eyes. Something about their dress, the skirts mixed in with jeans, half carefully styled like women, half still in street clothes that sets off alarms in his head, cutting through the haze, but he can’t place why.
Then he sees it. Cerulean blue flutters against limestone, fluttering feather-soft in the wind. He freezes, dread melting molasses slow against his spine. With dawning horror, Kendall places the faces he’d seen further down the line.
Carlos’s coworkers. From the cabaret.
All of them are, actually. Everyone in the line of bodies worked at Carlos’s club. Which means…Kendall’s gaze is pulled up, to the left, towards the flutter of blue. He takes in bloated flesh, teeth peeking from behind blue, thrush coated, dead lips. Blow flies burrow tunnels into browned skin, and a splay of black lashes peek out from under an electric blue wig.
For a single instant, Kendall’s mind is static. White noise.
He vomits in a secluded corner of the Square, heaving until he’s coughed up his stomach lining and more. It must be more. Because when the convulsions stop, he feels empty.
Wiping his mouth, Kendall sags against filthy pane glass and brick, an empty store front. The Square is still empty but for his limp companions and their half-closed, lifeless eyes. On the phone James had said, “Carlos is-“
Now, slumping to his knees, Kendall stares up at the body before him, the leather skirt, bare chest, glitter and blue wig. He quietly finishes the sentence.
“Carlos is…dead.”
---
In another life, only weeks before, he would have run to Camille. He would have broken down her door and demanded her help, and because she is - was - Camille, she would have given it without blinking. But now Kendall doesn’t know what to do. He can’t go to L’Amour. Lucy won’t help him; she’d probably kick his ass for even daring to come back. And he doesn’t have anyone else.
His friends, his brothers, his soul mates - oh god, Carlos - they’re all he’s ever needed.
It’s the only excuse he has for what he does next, pounding on the front door of the Griffin house. Each knock is so hard he feels like he must be warping the wood, but all that really happens is that he breaks skin. His blood streaks the wood.
A sallow faced butler appears from thin air, the barrier of the door gone. He casts Kendall a snooty look. “Yes?”
“I’m looking for Mercedes,” he gasps.
“Miss Griffin is out. Errands.” The man sounds bored. The butler is bored and Carlos is dead and Kendall wraps his cloak of shock more tightly around himself, because he can’t afford to lose it quite yet.
“She can’t be out. She needs - I need to talk to her!”
Staring down his nose at Kendall, the man asks, “Would you like to wait?”
Kendall opens his mouth to say yes, fuck, obviously he’s going to wait for his fucking fiancée when a cold voice interrupts, “That won’t be necessary.”
It’s Griffin. He’s wearing a red suit with a black shirt, fresh off a meeting or something civilized, something separate from the horror that Kendall’s just born witness to. Maybe it’s that contrast that shakes him free of his shell shock. “I don’t know where my friends are. I don’t know where Logan is, or James. I need to find James.”
He knows he sounds hysterical. He is hysterical. He can’t help it.
Griffin stares at him with something akin to distaste - but with absolutely zero surprise - before opening the door more widely, beckoning him inside.
There is something surreal about being ushered into Griffin’s dining room, seated at one end of a long table covered in a snow white cloth and so much shining cutlery. Griffin sits on the other side, half cast in shadows from candlelight. A servant sets out a box of cigars and a bottle of wine.
Kendall stares at his full glass, but doesn’t drink anything. His throat feels like he swallowed sandpaper and crushed glass.
Meanwhile, Griffin has no such problem. He lights up, taking a deep puff off the cigar. Only, he does not ask Kendall what’s happened, or what’s wrong. Instead, he says, “The human race is dying. You know that?”
Kendall nods, because what else is he supposed to do? It’s the same spiel he’s been hearing for years.
Griffin continues, “The plagues and the disasters, the floods and the fires, they take more of us every day. The last estimate I heard, there were less than ten thousand of us out there. Ten thousand people out of seven billion. We’re getting decimated.”
Kendall crosses his arms, kicking the chair back to lean on its hind legs. He is dizzy, off-kilter. Griffin isn’t reacting the way he’d expect because of his outburst; calling up these memories of the first time fire arced in the sky over Minnesota. Kendall remembers, and he does not want to remember. He chooses not to.
“What’s your point? Sir?” The words are petulant. His tone is not. If this is a game, he’s so beyond knowing how to play. A big part of him is still standing in the Town Square, watching his best friend’s body, suspended in mid-air, the thick, frayed rope choking the light from his eyes.
Kendall wonders how long it took him to die.
Unaware of his internal struggle, or maybe not caring, Griffin says, “Crass though it may sound, our only chance of survival is this - people like you and Mercedes, creating lives. Together.”
Kendall doesn’t have a response to that. He stays quiet.
He figures Griffin knows why.
“I’m glad you’re back. It saves me the trouble of fetching you from Mantua.”
“The wedding isn’t for months.”
“I think you know perfectly well there isn’t going to be a wedding. You know, when I was a child,” Griffin pauses, taking a sip of his wine, and Kendall has trouble seeing him as a kid. It’s like he popped out of the Earth fully formed, white-haired and wrinkled, prepared to conquer it all. “There was a boy. He had the nicest blue eyes I’d ever seen…”
He trails off. The silence he’s created is punctuated with the tickticktick of an ancient grandfather clock and the ragged edge of Kendall’s breath, stuttering from his lungs. Griffin finally announces, “I don’t care that you’ve taken up with a man.”
There it is. The reason there was no surprise on Griffin’s face when Kendall broke down in the foyer. He already knew.
Kendall croaks out, “You don’t?’
“But I know plenty of people who will. You’ve humiliated my daughter. You’ve publically dishonored my name. I won’t stop the Council from killing you.”
“I didn’t expect you to.”
“I might kill you myself,” Griffin admits.
Kendall doesn’t plan on dying before he finds James. He refuses to die before he finds James, and he also refuses to think that James might be in another square, dangling off the end of a noose.
Levelly, more measured than he knew he could be, he says, “I’d like to see you try.”
Griffin settles back in his chair. “You cause an abundance of trouble.”
“So I’ve been told,” Kendall replies, almost wry. He can’t muster up a smile, not even a self-deprecating one.
“You’re my daughter’s. You belong to my daughter.”
Griffin’s dark eyes search the street that runs alongside his mansion, half shrouded in hedges, pedestrians in the distance swimming in and out of the mist. Kendall pulls his hood tighter around his face, ducking his head. All the elegance of the mansion doesn’t feel like any kind of protection at all.
Hell, Griffin admitted it wasn’t. He half expects a butter knife to the heart.
It’s the anticipation that makes him blurt, “I’m my own.”
“No. If Mercedes Griffin’s fiancée is - what you are - and making a mockery of everything this city has built, what does that mean for the city?”
“I don’t follow,” he murmurs, because Kendall can’t think what he is that’s so terrible. Gay? A freak? In love? He feels dizzy and sick.
Griffin shrugs. “That was the rhetoric. You know, after you left, there was glass breaking in the streets. There was blood. All because of you, and that Zevon fellow, and that Roberts girl.” He is still watching the road like he can see it, welling up over his hedges. “I’ve spent a long time keeping the peace in this city. I wasn’t about to allow some upstart teenagers ruin everything I’d built.”
“The executions,” Kendall says softly.
“Hawk’s favorite way to exert control. Overkill, of course. But necessary.”
Kendall hates this. He hates being told and not shown. He hates that Logan and James aren’t standing in front of him, relaying this story themselves. Where are they?
“I saw - I saw what happened. I saw Carlos.” His voice breaks. “Cut to the chase.”
“We executed everyone who worked at that smut club of your friend’s because they were quick and easy. Not a single riot since.”
Griffin almost sounds proud of himself.
“Where is James? Where is Logan?” The questions rip from his mouth unbidden. “What did you do?”
“You should be proud of your lover. He hid from us for days. Even after we found out what you both were.”
Kendall shoves his chair away from the table, furious. His fingers are clenched into fists, his entire frame trembling. “Where the fuck are my friends?”
Griffin shrugs, too nonchalant for this entire conversation. He is a powerful man. Powerful men don’t rush. They kill as easily as they breathe. He downs the last of his wine and says, “I would recommend the church.”
Kendall waits, watching to see if Griffin will try to stop him from leaving.
He doesn’t. He sits there, smoking his cigar, eyeing Kendall with that same antipathy as before.
Kendall asks, “Am I dismissed?”
“What you do from now on is no concern of mine. Just know, you’ll never make it out of this city alive.”
---
His heart is pounding, racing, trying to break free of his chest. He can hear it in his ears, a roar that mutes everything else; even the slap of his sneakers against the pavement turning to a dull thud. Every footstep is a heartbeat, a splash and a jolt up his spine. It’s his stomach jumping into his mouth, his ribs constricting in this almost painful way.
It’s desperation, and it drives him forward.
He slides against the gravel, skidding to a stop in front of the old church. He has to catch himself against a wall to keep from crashing over the steps, and his body will bruise from the impact, but he doesn’t care.
Someone else does. “Are you okay?”
Like an angel, she’s sitting on the steps of the church, a cup of tea clutched between her pale hands. Jo’s dressed in one of those unflattering brown robes of hers, monk-like and sexless, her face whitening when she sees that it’s Kendall’s apparition appearing from the mist. Her concern turned to something different and strange, she asks instead, “Why are you here?”
“I live here,” Kendall says shortly, using the wall to support his weight. “Have you seen Logan, or James?”
“No. You can’t be here, Kendall. I know what happened, and you can’t. Who brought you back?”
“A wagon full of avocados. From Mantua,” Kendall starts, but before he can say anything else, she cuts him off.
“Get in the wagon. Go back to Mantua. It’s the only way you’ll be safe,” Jo urges, her hair a wild halo of gold and flame.
“I’m not leaving my friends. I’m not leaving James.”
“You don’t have a choice. If you stay, you’ll die.”
Kendall swallows. “You’re the one who told me. We always fight. We always have choices.”
There’s something in those words that makes her back down. The fire and ferocity evaporates. Taking a deep breath, Jo admits, “Yes. We do.”
“This is my choice. Where are my friends?”
Jo’s dark eyes meet his, filled with so much sadness that Kendall feels like he’s swimming in it, drowning, drowning, drowning. She asks, “Why did you come back?”
“James called me. He said. He said something about Carlos.” Kendall stops because he can’t find the words to continue. He feels pathetic. Lost. Helpless. He’s never been the last to know anything about his best friends. He never thought he’d be the last to know that Carlos, vibrant, alive, amazing fucking Carlos wouldn’t be vibrant or alive anymore.
“Kendall.”
He hates that people keep saying his name that way.
She starts, “Things have been bad here.”
“Things are always bad here.” But never as bad as outside. That’s the point. That’s why people give up their freedom. That’s why they flock to Verona and Mantua and towns like them. People are supposed to be safe in this stupid fucking place.
Jo shakes her head, adamant. “They’ve been worse. I miss Camille, you know?”
Kendall knows. God, does he know.
“I saw Carlos. I talked to Griffin. Jo, please. I need to find James and Logan. I need to make sure they’re okay.”
Jo looks down at her hands, the teacup trembling in her lap. “I was an idiot to think I could stop any of this.”
“Jo?” He’s begging, pleading. He’s breaking, right there on the church steps.
“Logan’s in the infirmary. We found him dumped outside your apartment. He hasn’t woken up.” She nods towards the church, adding,
“James is inside-“
She’s saying something else. “Kendall, there’s more. Kendall-” She’s saying something else, but Kendall can’t hear it, or the shatter of the teacup she drops, because he’s launching himself up and off the steps. He pushes through the thick, splintered wooden doors of the church, bolting into the aisle where the first thing he sees is neon. Neon everywhere.
It’s a line of electric blue crosses, leading into the darkness, and there is a shape, a name, something so beloved that he can taste it on his lips.
His footsteps are soft, but still, they echo back at him from the heavy stone walls, and this, this is his nightmare come to life. Thick petaled white lilies and delicate Queen Anne’s lace, gardenia and soft roses burgeon from the pews. The air smells sickly sweet, not just because of the sick in his throat, and below that is the same smell that greeted him in Town Square.
His gun, beneath the fabric of his hoodie, is a lead weight. Wax drips down the side of candles, so many they might as well be fireflies, some of the wicks close to extinct.
This is the part where he always wakes up, where the shiny, broad side of an open casket either startles him into the scratchy sheets of his own bed or, alternately, the whole thing turns into a night terror, Dak and James’s faces alternating in a haunting, awful dance.
But this time, when he climbs the stairs that lead to the coffin, his way guided by gardenias and candlelight, James’s face stays painfully solid, present, there.
He’s dressed in his leather pants, a white v-neck and the familiar jut of his collarbone beneath that jaw Kendall loves to grab when they kiss. He’s still wearing his gun holster, and his hair is a dark fan against a silken pillow. He isn’t moving.
He isn’t breathing.
---
Author: garnetice
Pairing: Kendall/James, Kendall/Mercedes
Rating: M
Word Count: 4,563 (chapter twelve)
Part: Twelve of Thirteen
Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
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: MAJOR. CHARACTER. DEATH.
---
Kendall’s been in Mantua for over a month, loneliness a constant pulse in his bones.
Then it happens. He hears James’s voice, like a dream, floating from the wireless radio on a Wednesday. It’s so unexpected, so incredibly welcome, that Kendall stops in his steps. He lets the sound wash over him, sweet and loud, the words familiar from quiet, candlelight nights splayed across the threadbare sofa back home, Logan performing cutting board alchemy, Carlos practicing his dance moves, and James the backtrack for it all.
James, who has written a million, billion songs since Kendall first met him, each leaving his lips like a secret spilling into the world.
James, who deserves to live his dream more than anyone else.
Kendall wonders what disguise James wore to get past Gustavo. He wonders if there were hijinks involved. There had to be hijinks involved, but the idea of them going forward without Kendall hurts. Maybe there were no hijinks. Had James walked in there with his forged signing license in hand and demanded to be put on the air?
The strawberry fields are covered with low hanging, evaporating mist. Through it, the sun is breaking the world into spot-lit pieces, a gorgeous, brilliant thing. Smiling to himself, Kendall hums along to the radio, harmonizing with James’s voice without even trying.
He doesn’t know it, but that moment, that song, is the last time he’ll ever feel at peace.
---
The dream that haunts him, electric crosses vibrant blue, the corpse flesh of a face that is both dear and loathed, wakes him before the dawn. Kendall’s heart is throbbing in his chest, beating against his rib cage so hard it feels like it might break free. He gasps for breath, James’s name on his lips. He dreads climbing out from under his threadbare blanket, and he doesn’t know why.
For moments on end, Kendall stares up at the tin roof of his trailer, the heat of early morning already beginning to bake through. He breathes through his nose, trying to calm down. It doesn’t work.
With a sigh, he heaves himself up from the thin futon, his back aching, his knees popping. Kendall’s getting old, he thinks, or maybe depression is just making him exhausted. Either way, his body’s rebelling, and he hates it. He pulls on a pair of jeans, hands fumbling over his belt. His dumb Hawaiian shirt and a dark hoodie follow suit, but the shakiness in his fingers still belies how much the dream freaked him out.
That feeling sticks with him, too, all the way across the barren, dusty stretch of land, the entire walk to the fields burgeoning green and fragrant. He beats most of the workers there, although a head or two bobs amongst the leaves. Griffin would be so proud.
Kendall immerses himself in the fields, talking to the trickle of people he finds, helping where he can. The earthen scent of the farmlands is still a foreign thing, a kind of paradise compared to the world outside the protected sanctuary of Mantua, of course, but unfamiliar all the same. The ocean is so far away.
He’s caught up in remembering what the waves sound like as they roll into shore when he realizes there’s another noise splitting the air.
The phone in the overseer’s office if ringing, shrill and sharp. It rings, and rings, and rings endlessly, until Kendall can’t help but march up the rickety wooden stairs, each creaking unhappily under his sneakers. He’s not expecting anyone, he thinks. Mercedes isn’t due to call for another week. That same dread from earlier pools in his belly. He swallows and keeps going.
The overseer’s office is one of those temporary jobs, four walls slapped together and a card table as a desk. The phone’s an old rotary, black handled and burnished with age. It makes the table vibrate with each angry ring.
Hesitantly, although he doesn’t know why he’s hesitating at all - it’s probably Griffin - Kendall picks it up.
“Hello?”
All that fills the line is the soft pant of someone else’s breath.
“Hello?”
He doesn’t expect the only voice in the entire world that he actually wants to hear. “Kendall?’
“James.”
A thread of stunned silence stretches between them.
Then:
“Something’s happened,” James says, short and panicked. “Kendall, something really bad has happened. Carlos-“
He breaks off in a sob, and Kendall doesn’t know what to do, what to say, his throat constricting with fear. It tastes sharp and metallic, coating his tongue. He can barely hear himself as he stutters out, “I-is Carlos okay?”
“No. Nononono, Carlos is. Kendall, Carlos is-“
“What?”
James’s breath shatters, splinters in a way that hurts Kendall’s ears. He’s never heard him sound so ragged, so wrecked. Kendall urges, “James.”
“I can’t. You have to leave Mantua,” he says in a rush, and then there’s a noise, another voice, something like a shout. James yells, “Get out. Kendall, you have to get out!” But Kendall can’t hear the rest of what he’s saying because the phone flatlines, leaving him with a long stretch of dial tone and James’s warning echoing in his ears.
The way his voice pitched up, the edge on his words…It sounded like he was in pain.
Something hot and sharp twists in his stomach. His mouth tastes dry.
Someone is hurting James.
---
He walks until he can’t anymore. The oxygen outside Mantua tastes thinner, ashier. His kicks stir up dust that sticks to the ankles of his skinny jeans. Kendall’s got a map he swiped off one of the migrants in the field, faded and speckled, white lines creasing the aged paper like the strange, wrinkled veins of a flower petal.
When he finally collapses, he’s got no idea where is, except that the clouds are blazing like they’re on fire. Kendall wonders if maybe they are. His throat is as dry as the dirt road, drought-parched and empty.
Carlos is okay. James is okay. Logan’s okay, Kendall thinks, a constant mantra, a drumbeat in his head. He remembers Carlos the last time he saw him, blue wig askew, tight leather skirt, bare chested, bleeding internally. He remembers Carlos as a kid, helmet securely on top of his head, skateboarding into a slapdash pile of cardboard boxes that he called the dragon’s lair.
They’re Kendall’s brothers. All of them, even James, weird incestuous connotations and all. They kept him going when his mother and Katie faded into memory. They kept him breathing when all he wanted to do was die. If anything happens to them, to any of them, Kendall doesn’t know what he’ll do. He doesn’t know if going on after that will even be an option.
He thinks about Logan, the way he wrapped himself around the base of that cactus in Nevada, the blood between his lips and how very frail he looked.
He thinks about James, naked and bathed in starlight. Then, in flashes, the James of his dreams, pale, lifeless. James with a black eye after a bar fight at L’Amour. James’s body pressed against his as they danced around Griffin’s ballroom.
James is okay.
Carlos is okay.
Logan’s okay.
They have to be.
---
He knows the unrest around what he did to Dak hasn’t died down enough for him to return, but he still hops a produce wagon to Verona about thirty miles outside of town. Kendall’s got his transit papers, carefully penned by Griffin. His return date was left blank, the paper already well worn, yellowing with age and abuse at the corners. Kendall smooths his thumb along the wrinkled surface of Griffin’s signature. Home is an ache in his heart.
They get through the gates without a hitch; Hawk’s militia only performs a precursory check of the cart, and their papers, the solider on duty skimming over the cursive of Kendall’s name. It helps that they’re one in a line of hundreds, bustling to get inside Verona’s towering walls.
The familiar fortress swallows them in darkness before they emerge back into a misty noon. Kendall hops off the wagon with a grateful nod, keeping his head down and his hood up as he dissolves into the fog. He sticks to alleyways until he can’t anymore. The apothecary is closed up tight, his crashpad has guards blocking the passage, and Carlos’s club is dark in the light of day.
Damning the guards, Kendall takes the back way towards his place. He sneaks into the apartment as skillfully as he can manage, but the risk is for naught. It is woefully empty.
He can’t find his friends.
He can’t find his friends.
Every step jolts through his frame, vibrates in his ribcage and his hipbones and his knees. The jangle of his hoodie’s zipper hitting the buckle of his belt is loud compared to the muted sound of rubber soles on concrete. Even though it’s midday, the persistent fog (just like the morning he murdered Dak in cold blood) refuses to lift.
Even though he’s careful to keep his head ducked into his hood, the people he meets on the street are few and far between. It’s like the whole town is on lockdown.
Kendall’s not sure how he ends up where he does. Maybe it’s that he has nowhere else to go.
He breaks off from slightly damp asphalt into cobblestone, the rough, weathered cracks between stones twisting at his ankles and calves and thighs. And up ahead, where he expects the long beam of timber, the looming skeleton of it in all its neck breaking glory, there is something new. Town square is no longer where the Gallows lives, singular. It’s where a whole row of them exist, proper platforms and frayed rope, and more bodies hanging in a row than Kendall has ever seen.
Mercedes told him about the doctor they hung in the square a few weeks back, but she had mentioned nothing of this scale. Kendall stares. He rocks back and forth on his toes, his nerves from this morning magnified to ridiculous proportions. He whispers, “Red ribbons and witch hunts.”
The bodies sway in the wind, creaking wood and the hush of death the only thing heralding their presence. They vary aesthetically, in levels of gruesomeness. Some of the men’s necks are twisted at unnatural angles, skin red-purple from internal bleeding that is long since staunched. Some rest their chins sweetly against their chests, an illusion of sleep ruined only by the azure tint of their lips.
Kendall recognizes one or two of them in a vague, distant way. He registers their familiar faces with weary acceptance, disconnected, numb. No one should ever acclimate to violence, not ever, but it’s been thrown in his face for so long, so much, that he can’t help the desensitization that has settled over him.
The corpses sway in their eternal rest, buffeted by the sluggish breeze, too exhausted to move the dead or the mist very far or very fast. The creak of the ropes is punctuated by the scurrying feet of rats, the rustle of pigeon feathers, the buzz of flies. The mist-turned-rain wraps him in a choking hug.
Kendall watches the skirts some of the men wear, sequined or ruffled or sewn of taffeta, flicking and swishing against unshaved thighs. There must be fifteen in all, a long row of silenced laughter and glazed, milky eyes. Something about their dress, the skirts mixed in with jeans, half carefully styled like women, half still in street clothes that sets off alarms in his head, cutting through the haze, but he can’t place why.
Then he sees it. Cerulean blue flutters against limestone, fluttering feather-soft in the wind. He freezes, dread melting molasses slow against his spine. With dawning horror, Kendall places the faces he’d seen further down the line.
Carlos’s coworkers. From the cabaret.
All of them are, actually. Everyone in the line of bodies worked at Carlos’s club. Which means…Kendall’s gaze is pulled up, to the left, towards the flutter of blue. He takes in bloated flesh, teeth peeking from behind blue, thrush coated, dead lips. Blow flies burrow tunnels into browned skin, and a splay of black lashes peek out from under an electric blue wig.
For a single instant, Kendall’s mind is static. White noise.
He vomits in a secluded corner of the Square, heaving until he’s coughed up his stomach lining and more. It must be more. Because when the convulsions stop, he feels empty.
Wiping his mouth, Kendall sags against filthy pane glass and brick, an empty store front. The Square is still empty but for his limp companions and their half-closed, lifeless eyes. On the phone James had said, “Carlos is-“
Now, slumping to his knees, Kendall stares up at the body before him, the leather skirt, bare chest, glitter and blue wig. He quietly finishes the sentence.
“Carlos is…dead.”
---
In another life, only weeks before, he would have run to Camille. He would have broken down her door and demanded her help, and because she is - was - Camille, she would have given it without blinking. But now Kendall doesn’t know what to do. He can’t go to L’Amour. Lucy won’t help him; she’d probably kick his ass for even daring to come back. And he doesn’t have anyone else.
His friends, his brothers, his soul mates - oh god, Carlos - they’re all he’s ever needed.
It’s the only excuse he has for what he does next, pounding on the front door of the Griffin house. Each knock is so hard he feels like he must be warping the wood, but all that really happens is that he breaks skin. His blood streaks the wood.
A sallow faced butler appears from thin air, the barrier of the door gone. He casts Kendall a snooty look. “Yes?”
“I’m looking for Mercedes,” he gasps.
“Miss Griffin is out. Errands.” The man sounds bored. The butler is bored and Carlos is dead and Kendall wraps his cloak of shock more tightly around himself, because he can’t afford to lose it quite yet.
“She can’t be out. She needs - I need to talk to her!”
Staring down his nose at Kendall, the man asks, “Would you like to wait?”
Kendall opens his mouth to say yes, fuck, obviously he’s going to wait for his fucking fiancée when a cold voice interrupts, “That won’t be necessary.”
It’s Griffin. He’s wearing a red suit with a black shirt, fresh off a meeting or something civilized, something separate from the horror that Kendall’s just born witness to. Maybe it’s that contrast that shakes him free of his shell shock. “I don’t know where my friends are. I don’t know where Logan is, or James. I need to find James.”
He knows he sounds hysterical. He is hysterical. He can’t help it.
Griffin stares at him with something akin to distaste - but with absolutely zero surprise - before opening the door more widely, beckoning him inside.
There is something surreal about being ushered into Griffin’s dining room, seated at one end of a long table covered in a snow white cloth and so much shining cutlery. Griffin sits on the other side, half cast in shadows from candlelight. A servant sets out a box of cigars and a bottle of wine.
Kendall stares at his full glass, but doesn’t drink anything. His throat feels like he swallowed sandpaper and crushed glass.
Meanwhile, Griffin has no such problem. He lights up, taking a deep puff off the cigar. Only, he does not ask Kendall what’s happened, or what’s wrong. Instead, he says, “The human race is dying. You know that?”
Kendall nods, because what else is he supposed to do? It’s the same spiel he’s been hearing for years.
Griffin continues, “The plagues and the disasters, the floods and the fires, they take more of us every day. The last estimate I heard, there were less than ten thousand of us out there. Ten thousand people out of seven billion. We’re getting decimated.”
Kendall crosses his arms, kicking the chair back to lean on its hind legs. He is dizzy, off-kilter. Griffin isn’t reacting the way he’d expect because of his outburst; calling up these memories of the first time fire arced in the sky over Minnesota. Kendall remembers, and he does not want to remember. He chooses not to.
“What’s your point? Sir?” The words are petulant. His tone is not. If this is a game, he’s so beyond knowing how to play. A big part of him is still standing in the Town Square, watching his best friend’s body, suspended in mid-air, the thick, frayed rope choking the light from his eyes.
Kendall wonders how long it took him to die.
Unaware of his internal struggle, or maybe not caring, Griffin says, “Crass though it may sound, our only chance of survival is this - people like you and Mercedes, creating lives. Together.”
Kendall doesn’t have a response to that. He stays quiet.
He figures Griffin knows why.
“I’m glad you’re back. It saves me the trouble of fetching you from Mantua.”
“The wedding isn’t for months.”
“I think you know perfectly well there isn’t going to be a wedding. You know, when I was a child,” Griffin pauses, taking a sip of his wine, and Kendall has trouble seeing him as a kid. It’s like he popped out of the Earth fully formed, white-haired and wrinkled, prepared to conquer it all. “There was a boy. He had the nicest blue eyes I’d ever seen…”
He trails off. The silence he’s created is punctuated with the tickticktick of an ancient grandfather clock and the ragged edge of Kendall’s breath, stuttering from his lungs. Griffin finally announces, “I don’t care that you’ve taken up with a man.”
There it is. The reason there was no surprise on Griffin’s face when Kendall broke down in the foyer. He already knew.
Kendall croaks out, “You don’t?’
“But I know plenty of people who will. You’ve humiliated my daughter. You’ve publically dishonored my name. I won’t stop the Council from killing you.”
“I didn’t expect you to.”
“I might kill you myself,” Griffin admits.
Kendall doesn’t plan on dying before he finds James. He refuses to die before he finds James, and he also refuses to think that James might be in another square, dangling off the end of a noose.
Levelly, more measured than he knew he could be, he says, “I’d like to see you try.”
Griffin settles back in his chair. “You cause an abundance of trouble.”
“So I’ve been told,” Kendall replies, almost wry. He can’t muster up a smile, not even a self-deprecating one.
“You’re my daughter’s. You belong to my daughter.”
Griffin’s dark eyes search the street that runs alongside his mansion, half shrouded in hedges, pedestrians in the distance swimming in and out of the mist. Kendall pulls his hood tighter around his face, ducking his head. All the elegance of the mansion doesn’t feel like any kind of protection at all.
Hell, Griffin admitted it wasn’t. He half expects a butter knife to the heart.
It’s the anticipation that makes him blurt, “I’m my own.”
“No. If Mercedes Griffin’s fiancée is - what you are - and making a mockery of everything this city has built, what does that mean for the city?”
“I don’t follow,” he murmurs, because Kendall can’t think what he is that’s so terrible. Gay? A freak? In love? He feels dizzy and sick.
Griffin shrugs. “That was the rhetoric. You know, after you left, there was glass breaking in the streets. There was blood. All because of you, and that Zevon fellow, and that Roberts girl.” He is still watching the road like he can see it, welling up over his hedges. “I’ve spent a long time keeping the peace in this city. I wasn’t about to allow some upstart teenagers ruin everything I’d built.”
“The executions,” Kendall says softly.
“Hawk’s favorite way to exert control. Overkill, of course. But necessary.”
Kendall hates this. He hates being told and not shown. He hates that Logan and James aren’t standing in front of him, relaying this story themselves. Where are they?
“I saw - I saw what happened. I saw Carlos.” His voice breaks. “Cut to the chase.”
“We executed everyone who worked at that smut club of your friend’s because they were quick and easy. Not a single riot since.”
Griffin almost sounds proud of himself.
“Where is James? Where is Logan?” The questions rip from his mouth unbidden. “What did you do?”
“You should be proud of your lover. He hid from us for days. Even after we found out what you both were.”
Kendall shoves his chair away from the table, furious. His fingers are clenched into fists, his entire frame trembling. “Where the fuck are my friends?”
Griffin shrugs, too nonchalant for this entire conversation. He is a powerful man. Powerful men don’t rush. They kill as easily as they breathe. He downs the last of his wine and says, “I would recommend the church.”
Kendall waits, watching to see if Griffin will try to stop him from leaving.
He doesn’t. He sits there, smoking his cigar, eyeing Kendall with that same antipathy as before.
Kendall asks, “Am I dismissed?”
“What you do from now on is no concern of mine. Just know, you’ll never make it out of this city alive.”
---
His heart is pounding, racing, trying to break free of his chest. He can hear it in his ears, a roar that mutes everything else; even the slap of his sneakers against the pavement turning to a dull thud. Every footstep is a heartbeat, a splash and a jolt up his spine. It’s his stomach jumping into his mouth, his ribs constricting in this almost painful way.
It’s desperation, and it drives him forward.
He slides against the gravel, skidding to a stop in front of the old church. He has to catch himself against a wall to keep from crashing over the steps, and his body will bruise from the impact, but he doesn’t care.
Someone else does. “Are you okay?”
Like an angel, she’s sitting on the steps of the church, a cup of tea clutched between her pale hands. Jo’s dressed in one of those unflattering brown robes of hers, monk-like and sexless, her face whitening when she sees that it’s Kendall’s apparition appearing from the mist. Her concern turned to something different and strange, she asks instead, “Why are you here?”
“I live here,” Kendall says shortly, using the wall to support his weight. “Have you seen Logan, or James?”
“No. You can’t be here, Kendall. I know what happened, and you can’t. Who brought you back?”
“A wagon full of avocados. From Mantua,” Kendall starts, but before he can say anything else, she cuts him off.
“Get in the wagon. Go back to Mantua. It’s the only way you’ll be safe,” Jo urges, her hair a wild halo of gold and flame.
“I’m not leaving my friends. I’m not leaving James.”
“You don’t have a choice. If you stay, you’ll die.”
Kendall swallows. “You’re the one who told me. We always fight. We always have choices.”
There’s something in those words that makes her back down. The fire and ferocity evaporates. Taking a deep breath, Jo admits, “Yes. We do.”
“This is my choice. Where are my friends?”
Jo’s dark eyes meet his, filled with so much sadness that Kendall feels like he’s swimming in it, drowning, drowning, drowning. She asks, “Why did you come back?”
“James called me. He said. He said something about Carlos.” Kendall stops because he can’t find the words to continue. He feels pathetic. Lost. Helpless. He’s never been the last to know anything about his best friends. He never thought he’d be the last to know that Carlos, vibrant, alive, amazing fucking Carlos wouldn’t be vibrant or alive anymore.
“Kendall.”
He hates that people keep saying his name that way.
She starts, “Things have been bad here.”
“Things are always bad here.” But never as bad as outside. That’s the point. That’s why people give up their freedom. That’s why they flock to Verona and Mantua and towns like them. People are supposed to be safe in this stupid fucking place.
Jo shakes her head, adamant. “They’ve been worse. I miss Camille, you know?”
Kendall knows. God, does he know.
“I saw Carlos. I talked to Griffin. Jo, please. I need to find James and Logan. I need to make sure they’re okay.”
Jo looks down at her hands, the teacup trembling in her lap. “I was an idiot to think I could stop any of this.”
“Jo?” He’s begging, pleading. He’s breaking, right there on the church steps.
“Logan’s in the infirmary. We found him dumped outside your apartment. He hasn’t woken up.” She nods towards the church, adding,
“James is inside-“
She’s saying something else. “Kendall, there’s more. Kendall-” She’s saying something else, but Kendall can’t hear it, or the shatter of the teacup she drops, because he’s launching himself up and off the steps. He pushes through the thick, splintered wooden doors of the church, bolting into the aisle where the first thing he sees is neon. Neon everywhere.
It’s a line of electric blue crosses, leading into the darkness, and there is a shape, a name, something so beloved that he can taste it on his lips.
His footsteps are soft, but still, they echo back at him from the heavy stone walls, and this, this is his nightmare come to life. Thick petaled white lilies and delicate Queen Anne’s lace, gardenia and soft roses burgeon from the pews. The air smells sickly sweet, not just because of the sick in his throat, and below that is the same smell that greeted him in Town Square.
His gun, beneath the fabric of his hoodie, is a lead weight. Wax drips down the side of candles, so many they might as well be fireflies, some of the wicks close to extinct.
This is the part where he always wakes up, where the shiny, broad side of an open casket either startles him into the scratchy sheets of his own bed or, alternately, the whole thing turns into a night terror, Dak and James’s faces alternating in a haunting, awful dance.
But this time, when he climbs the stairs that lead to the coffin, his way guided by gardenias and candlelight, James’s face stays painfully solid, present, there.
He’s dressed in his leather pants, a white v-neck and the familiar jut of his collarbone beneath that jaw Kendall loves to grab when they kiss. He’s still wearing his gun holster, and his hair is a dark fan against a silken pillow. He isn’t moving.
He isn’t breathing.
---