Shut Your Eyes - Chapter 20
Title: Shut Your Eyes
Authors: goten0040 and garnetice
Chapter: 20
Rating: M
Ship(s): Kendall/James, Carlos/Stephanie, Logan/Camille, maybe more.
Summary: Future!Fic. Kendall returns to L.A. six years after Big Time Rush disbanded. James has been missing for years. Imagine how things change when James reappears in his life. And he needs help.
Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19
---
“You are drunk.”
I found that statement profoundly offensive.
“I’m not drunk, you’re drunk.”
James nodded, “You might be correct. But you are also drunk.”
He was humoring me. He had like, two drinks and as far as I could recall, a very high tolerance for alcohol. But it’s not fun being drunk by yourself, so I chose to pretend. Things were fuzzy and I was blitzed and the world was wonderful.
“Well you, you- You broke my guitar.”
“I was starting to think you didn’t care,” James laughed.
“Of course I care. Never touch a man’s guitar. It took me years to learn how to play that thing.”
“I know. I helped teach you,” James rolled his eyes, “Anyway, you have like, zillion more, and that was like- this morning. You really need to learn how to let go.”
“Right, because you’re excellent at it. Teach me your ways, oh Master.”
He made a face at me, “You’re not very nice when you’re drunk.”
“You broke my blender.”
“Did you even know how to use it?”
“No. I was planning on learning. I was going to read the instruction manu- ha, okay, cannot say that with a straight face. But I would’ve taken a class or something. Probably.”
“Liar.”
“I will have you know that Mama Knight doesn’t condone any lying from her children. I do not lie.”
“And that is a lie.”
I laughed, “So it is. You probably should not have let me drink so much.”
James stopped walking. We’d left the restaurant side by side, but he had long legs and was already several paces in front of me.
“Because I had the power to stop you,” he said skeptically, “You were drinking like a man with a mission. Did you even eat anything?”
I frowned, walking past him, trying to remember why I’d had so much. And then I did remember, and didn’t want to think about it. But it was rude not to answer James, wasn’t it?
“I had a bad day,” I finally said, tasting the words, trying to decide if they were right. I was having an awful lot of bad days.
He was behind me now, trying to catch up. He sighed and said, “Why are you so sad all the time, Kendall? Because you’re gay?”
My steps faltered, and I felt his body thud against my back, long and lanky and much too skinny. I almost fell forward, I was so unsteady on my feet, but James’s hands caught at my hips, my bicep, keeping me from landing on my face.
“I’m not sad,” I said, forcing a smile.
I tried to turn, to show it to him, but he kept his hands where they were, and even though he was so damn thin, he was still strong enough to hold me there. I could feel his breath on the back of my head, ruffling my hair, making the skin on my neck tingle.
“You’re really an awful liar.”
James would know.
No matter how much he insisted he didn’t want to be my best friend anymore, he knew more about me than my own mother.
From the first day we met, he became the person I’d tell everything to, until the day I grew up without meaning to, the day I learned to keep secrets. He knew almost all the fears I had about my dad, about the huge crush I’d had on my fifth grade English teacher, and every horrifying detail about the first time I’d had sex with a girl.
Or at least, he used to. I didn’t know how much he remembered, and I was sort of scared to ask. I didn’t know if drugs were something that affected the brain cells where people store up all that stuff, the things friends tell them in confidence. They probably didn’t.
But I also didn’t want to hear that James didn’t care enough to remember.
“It was so easy for you?” I asked, trying to change the subject, “Figuring out you were gay?”
“It wasn’t any big thing,” James shrugged, “Sex is sex, with a guy or a girl.”
“Can you- tell me?” I could feel James stiffen behind me, feel his careful deliberation, feel it when he decided. His forehead rested against my hair, and he breathed against the knob of my neck.
“Sure. Okay. It- It was when we first got to LA. There was this intern, this guy at one of the modeling jobs I landed. He was prettier than me. I didn’t like it,” James laughed, dry and humorless, “But I liked his eyes. He had these green eyes, like fucking emeralds. We started talking, and we ended up going out to catch some concert at the beach, and it was only when he started dancing too close that I realized he thought it was a date.”
I didn’t like this story.
I didn’t know why I asked; maybe I wanted reassurance that I wasn’t the only person in the world who had ever had an identity crisis. I didn’t really believe James had taken this huge revelation in stride. It was impossible to believe, when all I could remember was the burning shame every time Chris yanked his hand from mine.
But now I realized that if James talked about when he’d first decided to get it on with a dude, I’d have to listen to James talk about getting it on with a dude.
Who wasn’t me.
Jealousy was slicing though my stomach as hot and sick as nausea, and I didn’t want to hear anymore, not with James’s words against my spine, not in such an intimate position. Only, I couldn’t bring myself to interrupt.
“And then I thought, I don’t know, fuck it,” James laughed again, but this time he actually sounded amused by the memory. He said, “I was kind of proud of myself; I was so fucking hot even guys wanted me. And he was- his eyes were really beautiful. I let him kiss me.”
“What happened after that?”
I didn’t really want to know.
“Nothing. I met some girl, and she had bombastic legs, and I ended up dating her for six weeks. I totally forgot about him.”
“That’s it?”
I could feel the huff of James’s exhalation, the way he was a little bit irritated with my questions, but mostly kind of soft and fond, like he’d maybe wanted to tell this story for a long time.
“I met this guy on tour. I think we were in New York. He let me fuck him.”
And there was that jealousy thing again. I felt bile rise in my throat.
“It was good. So I let the next guy I meet fuck me. And on and on it went,” James sighed.
“Were there- a lot of guys?”
It wasn’t the kind of question I should have been asking. It was something teenage girls grilled their boyfriends about. It wasn’t something a twenty nine year old man should even have been thinking.
“Kendall,” James said softly, “You don’t really want to know that.”
He pulled away, his hands leaving my skin, my neck cold from the loss of his gentle exhalations.
“Come on, let’s go home.”
“No, but I really do want to know.”
“Wonderful. I am not going to tell you.”
“Don’t you know?” I asked, and his eyes flashed.
“I’m not a whore. We’ve had this conversation. Several times.”
“I didn’t mean-“
“I know what you meant.”
“I thought- the drugs make it easier, to have meaningless sex?”
“Life makes it easier to have meaningless sex,” James said. He sounded tired.
“It’s just- Joseph said-“
“Don’t listen to Joseph. He exaggerates.”
It shouldn’t have mattered as much as it did; this thing with James was casual. But it didn’t feel that way. I’d never once gotten jealous over a casual fuck.
I figured it had to be because we were friends, because I had all these stupid friend like feelings tied up with whatever it was we were doing.
“Do you sleep with Joseph?” I asked. He didn’t answer.
I was fucking trashed, but I was still coherent enough to know that was the second time James had avoided the question.
“Tell me about you and Chris,” he commanded gently, changing the subject. My mouth tasted abruptly sour. It might’ve been the tequila coming back up on me. Or the vodka. Or the fucking whiskey.
“Why?”
James shrugged, “I’ve been thinking about it.”
“You knew him, right?” I wiped at my mouth.
“I did,” James agreed, still a few paces behind me.
“You never,” I felt my stomach clench, “You never slept with him, right?”
James laughed, “God no. What is with your avid interest in my sex life all of a sudden?”
I croaked, “Gee, it probably has something to do with how I’m a part of it, now.”
I turned to face him, because his footsteps had again thudded to a halt. He was standing there, backlit by the neon signs of a few seedy adult video stores, blinking, eyes going a little wide, like a forest creature in car headlights.
Then he said easily, “Yeah. I guess you are. Weird.”
Okay, that was what I’d been saying. It was nice to hear someone else acknowledge it.
“You didn’t realize that?”
“I just hadn’t thought about it. Like that, I mean,” he ducked his head, and now I couldn’t see his eyes at all; just the orange glow of a sign reading Live Nude Girls highlighting his hair. His face was still gaunt, shadowed, but man, he was so fucking handsome. Even though he’d been actively hating on the majority of our shopping trip, suspicion written across his features clear as day, he’d still been incredibly picky about the clothes I bought for him. He still threw around words like skin tone and color palette.
And I wondered what James had thought, all those times I’d wanted to broach the subject the last few days, only to be greeted with hard shoulders and the curve of his spine. I’d sort of been hoping that he was as conflicted as I was about the whole friends with benefits thing, but now I wasn’t so sure.
“You didn’t- I mean, you haven’t been using me. If that’s what you think. Not that I think that’s what you…I liked- I mean, I like it. Doing that stuff with you,” I finished lamely, aware that nothing I said was coherent.
James glanced up, lips a thin line, “You don’t have to-“
“No, I do,” I insisted, “You look…guilty. And you shouldn’t. You don’t have to be ashamed of it.”
“But you are,” James said quietly.
“I’m not.”
“Are you telling me that if I got on my knees, right here, right in the middle of LA, if I sucked you off where everyone could see us, you wouldn’t be horrified?”
“I-“
Actually that idea sounded incredibly hot, but I was drunk, and I’d sat through enough high school health courses to remember that my cognitive abilities were severely impaired, even though I felt fine. Except for how bright everything was. When did things get so clear, like the world was oversaturated with color, and everything was moving at half-time?
Anyway, I knew all that, and I knew that maybe I wasn’t immediately recognizable to the general public if they weren’t sports fans, but-
“I wouldn’t be horrified because of you,” I told him. “Just-“
“You’re so scared of everyone else. You used to be so brave, Kendall. What happened?”
“Nothing,” I stared at my feet, feeling a little bit miserable. I could see the ground with such fucking clarity that I could identify the dirt, the cracks where countless tourists had stood, snapping pictures of the California dream.
It was my turn to try to change the subject.
“You look good, you know,” I said, gesturing to his clothes, his brand new jeans and t-shirt and shoes. He’d let me dress him up like a Ken doll, and before, yeah, it had made me sad. But with the haze of liquor he was beautiful.
“Please,” James tossed his head, “Ninety percent of fashion is not giving a fuck how you look.”
I smiled, remembering the way he used to preen and asked, “If you don’t give a fuck, why do- why did you always spend so much time in front of a mirror?”
James made a noise, an admonishment, “The general public shouldn’t be the only people who get to enjoy all this.”
He waggled his fingers up and down, and if I was sober, I probably would’ve found it sad, ludicrous. But drunk, it was just James being James. I laughed.
He didn’t.
“Tell me about Chris,” he said again.
“Are you sure you guys never-“
“Never. Not even once. He wasn’t my type,” James tugged his fresh haircut and muttered, “He was such a fucking self important jerk.”
I half smiled, because yeah. He kind of was. I remembered how he’d walk into a room and own it, all smiles and charisma. He had swagger. Just like someone else I used to know.
“So what was he?” James continued, “Your first kiss?”
“Funny,” I made a face at him, “No. You think you are very funny, but you are very wrong.”
“I meant with a guy,” James laughed.
“The answer is still no.”
“Wow. Weren’t you the little slut?”
“I would push you if the world was not spinning,” I declared, because it was now, rocking under my feet like the first tremor of an earthquake. Wasn’t there a fault line somewhere nearby?
“Please,” James made a noise, like he was desperate to hear all about the time stupid me got my stupid heart broken.
“He was, I guess he was my first boyfriend.”
James frowned at me. He frowned and frowned and then said bluntly, “You have terrible taste. Terrible, terrible taste.”
“Thank you. I’m acutely aware of that.”
“Did he- what did he do to you?”
“Same thing I did to Jo,” I shrugged, “He cheated on me. Found someone new. Fell in love. It’s kind of hard to hate someone for falling in love.”
I was laughing, even though I didn’t think it was funny. It felt good, all that noise building in my chest, escaping out into the thin air.
James’s hands balled into his fists, or, at least, I thought they did. He shoved them in the pockets of his new jeans and said, “I’m pretty sure I’d be able to manage. Hating him, I mean.”
“Yeah. Me too. I wonder if that makes me a bad person.”
“It doesn’t,” James said, exasperated, “You spend way too much time wondering what kind of person you are. And- if I’d known, I would have knocked his fucking teeth out.”
I was still laughing, still at a loss for what was so fucking funny. And through the laughter, I said, “Yeah. Me too. Hindsight’s a bitch. Is your phone ringing?”
He said, “No.”
And then I said, “I’m going to be sick.”
All that clarity went crashing away as I stumbled into a street lamp, leaned over, and puked my guts out. It was awful, this burning, wet feeling in my throat, my chest heaving uncontrollably, and I felt like I maybe was going to die, but then-
It was just like a memory, like the time I’d gotten too dehydrated during a playoff game, and I’d spent all of halftime puking in a dark corner of the locker room, making James swear not to tell coach while he pressed his hand against my back, the cloth of my sweat damp jersey wet against my spine. Like the first time I’d gotten well and truly drunk at Jenny Tinkler’s annual School’s-Back-In-Session-Let’s-Get-Alcohol-Poisoning-And-Call-Out-Sick-Tomorrow party. James had been there, with Logan, holding my arm so that I wouldn’t fall face first into the toilet.
And now here I was again, bent over a street corner, his warm, callused hands feverish on my skin, brushing my hair from my eyes, not even caring if it all splattered on his brand new sneakers.
“Shh. You’re fine, Kendall. You’re fine,” he whispered.
---
James led me back to my apartment. Every footstep I took felt wobbly and uncertain, and it was only his steady hands beneath the crook of my elbows that kept me from diving headfirst into the pavement. I could feel his palms burning through the thin fabric of my hoodie, and even with the sick taste in my mouth, arousal stirred low in my stomach.
When he pulled out my key, I didn’t bother acting surprised. I let him guide me into my apartment. He propped me up against the counter while he fetched a glass of water.
“Drink.”
I did, even though it tasted like metal. Once I was finished, I set the glass on the counter with a clink and said, “James.”
“You done?”
He hadn’t turned on any of the lights. I think he liked it better in the darkness. I’d noticed that, before, the way he seemed to savor the way things turned colorless and soft.
“Yeah. You- you’re not really drunk, are you.”
He paused, a step away from me, and then he said, “No.”
I heard the soft buzz of his brand new phone and said, “I think you have a call.”
James shoved his hand in his pocket, muting the sound, “No I don’t.”
“Okay, no you don’t,” I agreed, and then I kissed him.
It was probably a little gross; he’d seen me empty my stomach on a random street corner about ten minutes before. But he kissed me back, like maybe he didn’t care how my mouth tasted. I licked into the soft places he offered me, the curve of his lips and the swell of his tongue, the hard veneers of his teeth. I fought him for dominance, but it was a losing battle. Even as a ghost, James was still an amazing kisser.
Without breaking pressure or stride, he guided me backwards, into the bedroom, the pale glow of Los Angeles’s streets the only light we had to see by. His hands against my ribcage felt like thorns, sending a sharp, stinging feeling deep in my chest. He had this look in his eyes, this clear-eyed intensity that I recognized from a thousand hockey games, from concerts with flashing lights and screaming girls. I associated that look with this single minded determination to win at whatever he was doing, with sweat slick on his throat, his cheeks flush with exertion, and the adrenaline rush of victory.
And in that startling, terrifying moment, I realized James wasn’t high. He wasn’t even drunk. I was the one who was buzzed out of my brain. His lips were burning hot against mine, and the skin of his face was still smooth from his shave and my heart was pounding dizzyingly in my chest. And I thought maybe, maybe it would be okay if I tried to touch him.
Maybe he’d let me get away with it if I was the one who wasn’t completely in control.
My fingers drifted down the front of his chest, down to his jeans. The second I touched the shape of his cock, he stiffened, pulling away.
“Kendall.”
“Let me,” I said, begging, already unbuckling his belt, “Please, let me.”
He stared at me, long and hard, and it was only when I began pulling his belt from the loops that he nodded.
Selfish confession time? I hated giving blowjobs. I mean, they were boring. All that work, with no payoff at all for me, especially now that I was nearing thirty. Unless I was getting it on with a younger guy, someone with actual endurance, reciprocation wasn’t high on my list of expectations.
But here’s the thing. With James, I was one hundred percent positive it wouldn’t be boring. Watching random strangers get off, while mildly hot, didn’t really do much for me anymore. Watching James, though?
Yeah. I figured that was something I could really get into. I wanted it more than anything.
One hand still fumbling with his belt, I used the other to push him back against the bed. The liquor made me weak, uncoordinated, but James stumbled a few feet and then, obligingly he sat, laying back, gaze never leaving my face.
Awkwardly, I climbed up on the bed, pushing him back until his head hit my pillows. In the dark of my apartment the whites of his eyes glowed. His teeth too, I saw, when I pulled a little too roughly on his zipper and he winced. He didn’t say anything though. He didn’t once tell me not to rush or to be careful.
I shoved his jeans and boxers low around his knees, enough so that he could move his legs apart but had limited movement. It kept him from having control. He didn’t get that. Not anymore.
I raked the tips of my fingers over the shape of his hips, the jut of bone and the place where my palm fit, flat against the barely-there contour of his stomach. His dick twitched, and he said, “You’re a tease.”
Being a tease sounded like fun, actually.
I scooted back down his legs, where the denim of his jeans crumpled. Slow, soft, I kissed the skin on the outside of his left leg, feather light, darting over to the inside of his knee. As slow as I possibly could, I moved up his thigh, kissing, licking, sucking. I used my teeth, at some points, nipping at his skin, lathing my tongue over the places I bit to soothe them. He made a soft noise, squirming. Every inch or so, I’d pause; spell out my name with my tongue or suck until he arched into my mouth, into the lightly blossoming bruise I was creating. My hands moved up his other leg, tracing nonsense designs, light as I could manage.
The closer I got to his dick, the rougher I got, sucking a mark high onto the inside of his thigh. Right before I reached his balls, I ducked back down, doing the other leg, leaving a trail of red-purple up the inside of his right thigh, mouthing a line from his knee to his hipbone.
James was rocking his hips up into the air, looking for friction. Panting, saying, “Kendall.”
I was already hard in my jeans, and he was so, so gorgeous. Making a decision, I spit on my hand and took hold, fingers curling around his cock. It was always weird, different; another man’s shape. The weight of James in my palm made me bite my lip. God, I fucking wanted this. I leaned down, tonguing the tip of him. My mouth stretched around the head of his dick, and I licked along the underside until my lips hit my hand.
His legs strained against the confines of his jeans. I could feel him shift restlessly under me, urging me to speed up. It took a few minutes of slow, fumbling slides before I built up a rhythm, but once I did James made this amazing strangled sound. I thought maybe it was supposed to be my name.
Vaguely, in the back of my head I heard my high school health teacher’s voice telling me to use condoms, even for oral sex, even if I trusted my partner. I did it with the few random guys I actually engaged in foreplay with, but latex tasted gross, and besides, this was James. He’d trusted me enough to put his mouth all over my body, no protection needed, even after I told him that my little sister hooked me up with an escort. And maybe it was really stupid- no, definitely, it was really fucking stupid, trusting him after Guitar Dude told me how many guys he’d tracked back and forth through their shithole of a home. But I didn’t care. Because this was James, and maybe I didn’t actually trust him not to run away, not to inadvertently kill himself with drugs, not to steal anything in my apartment that wasn’t nailed down. But not to hurt me, if he thought there was a chance he could? In that, I trusted him implicitly.
I tried things that felt good when I was jerking myself off, twisting my wrist when I stroked him, flicking my tongue out across the head of his dick intermittently. He made these noises that bordered on obscene, and I did whatever I could to make them louder, to make him fall apart.
“Kendall, fuck.”
I tried to make suction, to pull at the length of him with my lips, my lungs, my breath. His hips worked with me, his fingers laced at my hair, pulling, telling me when to go faster, when it was okay to be rougher. When he began to chant my name, I knew he was close, and I worked my lips around him to the rhythm of, “Kendall, Kendall, Kendall.”
He came in my mouth with a whimper. The taste of him burned down my throat, hotter than anything I’d drank that night.
---
I woke up near four in the morning, mouth dry, with a pressing need to pee and a buzzing sound in my ears. And then I realized it wasn’t in my head at all; James’s phone was lit up on the nightstand, vibrating over and over again. I glanced down at him; he was dead to the world. Trying to be careful, I reached across his body, fingers fumbling for the phone. I pressed the button on the side that would make all the noise go silent until the call went to voicemail, but I couldn’t help catching the name on the display. Joseph.
I fell back asleep with the taste of James on my lips, my mind turning over and over again.
---
James wasn’t around when I woke up the next morning. This petty part of me wondered if he’d ran back to Guitar Dude, but this other, huge part of me was more concerned about the pounding in my head. I downed like, three aspirins, because I was a total pussy when it came to hangovers. I wanted to stay in bed for the rest of the day, but I’d already made plans, and besides, curled up beneath my covers I kept thinking about James, and the sounds he made, and all the stupid calls he’d been ignoring all night.
They were all from Joseph, I’d have bet. Back at the Palm Woods, I never had a problem with Guitar Dude. I liked his relaxed, stoner vibe. Logan had practically idolized the kid, which I was almost positive had something to do with the way they smoked pot behind the shed every month as a recreational activity.
James put a stop to that, eventually, when he figured it out. He was convinced the smoke would be hell on Logan’s lungs.
“You’re already a little pitchy,” he had warned. Logan eventually quit just to shut him up.
But now? If Guitar Dude still had a guitar, I’d fucking break it. Not the same way James did to mine, the neck all in pieces, wires splayed across the frets in curlicues. No, I’d bash it over his fucking head.
And okay, maybe I wouldn’t actually do that, but the thought cheered me up.
I did the first thing on my list, which is to call Gustavo, but the second he figured out it was me on the line, he hung up. So, yeah, no, that wasn’t what I was hoping for.
And it left me with my second choice option, which involved actually taking a shower and throwing on a pair of clean jeans. I ended up taking a cab to Wainwright Productions and waiting in the lobby for half an hour before a sour faced secretary informed me that meetings with the president were by appointment only. Lucky me, it was at that exact moment that Kelly walked into the lobby, all classy business suit and towering stilettos.
I called her name. When she turned, she kind of looked like someone shot her favorite pet in the forehead.
“Kendall! Wow! Hi!” Kelly punctuated each word with high pitched surprise. She waved off her mean secretary and ushered me into her office, obviously dealing with the shock in her own way.
“Hey, Kelly.”
“Long time,” she mused, and finally she relented and gave me a huge bear hug, rivaled only by Camille’s, “You never visit.”
“I visit,” I said, and it felt strangely like the conversation I’d had with Gustavo a few days before.
“No you don’t.”
“I do,” I insisted, “But I can’t announce when I swing by. How would I manage to keep you on your toes? I live for the suspense.”
“You think you’re clever, trying to weasel yourself out of everything,” Kelly sighed, “You haven’t changed at all.”
I shrugged, because I wasn’t about to pour my woes into her lap.
“You have though. Look at this office,” I gestured to the floor to ceiling windows, “This is fancy. I thought record producers weren’t allowed to have so much space- the acoustics?”
“Unlike some other record producers I can name, I don’t actually compose anything. No need for sound proofing.”
“Lucky you’ve got a good ear,” I tapped the side of her head, “Or you’d never make it.”
“Please,” Kelly laughed, “I could be tone deaf and still successful in this town, what with the connections I made through you guys. How is everyone? I heard Carlos is going to have a baby.”
“He is. We’re all terrified he’s going to treat it like a trained monkey.”
Kelly laughed, “He’s going to be a great dad.”
“He really is,” I agreed.
“And he’s doing so well. I heard they’re talking Oscar for his new movie, and it hasn’t even come out.”
“He’s a superstar,” I said wryly.
“He’s not the only one. Isn’t your team in the running for the Stanley Cup?”
“How do you know that?”
“Athletes are hot,” Kelly winked, “If you ever want to introduce me to any of your teammates, I wouldn’t have a problem with it.”
I snorted, but I didn’t say anything negative about them. As much as I hated the jokes, the lack of support sometimes, my team wasn’t all bad. I liked a few of them, even. It was the other teams that were always gunning for me.
“So,” Kelly said, “What can I help you with?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“As nice as it is, you visiting, there has to be a reason.”
“Aside from a fervent desire to see your pretty face?”
“Aside from that,” she deadpanned, not fooled in any way.
“Well. I heard there’s a James Diamond demo album floating around out there, somewhere, and I was wondering if you had any leads on it.”
“You can’t just get a copy from James?”
Yeah, no. I already knew even asking him would be a bad idea. I didn’t even have proof positive that there was a second album. Before I’d come out to LA again, I’d heard only vague internet rumors and read a blind item from People. It was Carlos who’d confirmed its existence. I’m not sure if I’d even really believed in it before he said so. But there was no way I could ask James. He would eat me. Or, I don’t know, throw his new belt buckle from Kitson straight at my fucking head.
“James isn’t- he’s not doing so well,” I hedged.
“Oh,” Kelly blinked, and then she said, “There have been rumors, but I didn’t think they were true. That’s- wow.”
“Um. Okay, wait, what kind of rumors have you been hearing?”
“That he’s running heroin for a Mexican drug cartel and hooking up and down La Cienega.”
“Um. What?”
“Perez Hilton,” Kelly said by way of explanation, “When you read between the lines you get- well, he’s really on drugs?”
“Wait, how long have you known this?”
“James isn’t really high on anyone’s radar right now,” she paused, “I think the last time I read one of the articles was two or three years ago?”
“You heard he was on drugs three years ago and you didn’t tell any of us?”
“A- I read it on Perez, not the Skull and Bone Society Newsletter. It’s not like it was some big secret. B- I didn’t actually believe it. Gossip columnists, hell, the news is always getting things wrong. You should know that. When no more articles turned up, I figured they had no proof and thus, there was nothing to worry about. And C- I’m not your baby sitter, Kendall. Not anymore.”
I was pissed that I’d never read anything like that. I’d Googled James’s name eighty thousand times in the past three years since his disappearance. No headlines screaming Junkie had ever popped out at me. Then again, it wasn’t like I read Perez. He didn’t always have very nice things to say about the band, and Carlos was the only one who still made his feed, anymore.
“About the demo?” I prompted, and it might have come out like a snarl.
“Kendall, I didn’t mean it like that. Is he okay?”
“He was gone,” I said, “For a few years now. Just- gone. He stopped calling. Carlos couldn’t track him down. I- we were all worried, but we figured he was sick of the spotlight.”
“And?” Kelly’s forehead was creased, and I knew that despite her harsh words, she was genuinely worried. She’d always treated us like friends. Slightly annoying, somewhat untamable friends.
“We found him a few weeks ago, in a bar. He’s- he’s really sick, Kelly.”
“Kendall. I’m sorry.”
“I’m trying to help him, but-“ I waved a hand vaguely in the air and said, “The, the, um, demo?”
“I’ve got a copy. You know Gustavo went insane when James refused to record the solo album with Rocque Records, right?”
“I thought Gustavo didn’t want to do an album with James?”
“He didn’t, until he realized he couldn’t. And then he did. He was ecstatic when the album bombed; it was crap, and everyone knew it. And Gustavo had looked over some of James’s original songs. He wanted to give it a second go, do another album. His assistant told me.”
“Wait, you’re spying on Gustavo?”
“That- is not important. I wanted James on board. We needed a big name, because the company was what, two years old?” Kelly glanced around her office fondly, “And James is one of the best male pop vocalists out there. Being not nearly as proud as Gustavo, I managed to ask him to come in first. He laid down a couple of tracks, but- he stopped coming back to the studio. A couple of months later I heard he was in talks with another company. Which turned out to be a lie. He really disappeared? Carlos called me, asked if I’d seen him, but he didn’t- he didn’t sound that worried. When I didn’t hear from him again, I figured he’d tracked him down.”
“Must have been early days.”
“I, uh, vaulted the demo. Wainwright Productions owns the copyright to all five songs. Insurance, in case he decided to jump ship.”
“You were going to blackmail James with his own music?”
“If I had to,” she shrugged, “Don’t look at me like that. You know what it’s like to have your talent scoped? It’s expensive.”
“You’re cutthroat,” I told her, but I smiled to let her know I didn’t mean it. We had players stolen from the Wild all the time. If we could buy their moves, make them stay, we’d do it in a second. Business is business.
“My point being, if a single note of this gets out, I’ll own your ass.”
“Kelly,” I said amiably, “I’m pretty sure you could own my ass eight ways until Sunday if you let half the shit I did in BTR get out.”
“Valid argument.”
She took out a tiny key and opened a drawer. Then she began fiddling with a safe hidden inside it. When she opened it up, I could see a few shiny CDs in clear plastic cases. She pulled one from the bottom that simply read, James.
“I’ll burn you a copy,” she muttered, “I used to have all the tracks saved on my computer too, but we keep getting hacked. And the master flash drive’s in the bigger safe, downstairs. This might take a minute.”
She went about the business of popping the CD into her computer, all the while saying, “And how are you doing, with all of this? You were always closest to James. It’s got to be hard.”
I frowned and said carefully, “I’m kind of messed up right now.”
Kelly smiled, “Aren’t we all?”
“I don’t remember you going through so much crap when you were in your twenties.”
“Kendall, you didn’t pay all that much attention to me.”
“I didn’t pay all that much attention to anyone, apparently.”
“True. But for the record, few people like growing up. I’m included in that. It’s hard,” her eyes went distant, staring out one of her huge windows. She was looking in the direction of Rocque Records.
“Gustavo misses you, you know.”
Kelly rolled her eyes, “One of these days he might even apologize.”
“You could bridge the gap.”
“I can’t,” Kelly shrugged, “Then he won’t have learned anything.”
“So what, you’re trying to teach him a lesson?”
“I’m trying to say that growing up is hard, but everyone needs to do it eventually. Even Gustavo Rocque.”
I glanced out the window, towards Rocque Records and then I nodded, “You might be right.”
“I usually am,” she agreed, “It’s a curse. Here’s your album.”
“Thanks, Kelly.”
“Anytime,” she gave me a hug, “Maybe next time you come visit, you won’t ask for anything?”
“Will do,” I promised, clutching the CD and wondering if I was brave enough to listen to it.
---
Authors: goten0040 and garnetice
Chapter: 20
Rating: M
Ship(s): Kendall/James, Carlos/Stephanie, Logan/Camille, maybe more.
Summary: Future!Fic. Kendall returns to L.A. six years after Big Time Rush disbanded. James has been missing for years. Imagine how things change when James reappears in his life. And he needs help.
Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19
---
“You are drunk.”
I found that statement profoundly offensive.
“I’m not drunk, you’re drunk.”
James nodded, “You might be correct. But you are also drunk.”
He was humoring me. He had like, two drinks and as far as I could recall, a very high tolerance for alcohol. But it’s not fun being drunk by yourself, so I chose to pretend. Things were fuzzy and I was blitzed and the world was wonderful.
“Well you, you- You broke my guitar.”
“I was starting to think you didn’t care,” James laughed.
“Of course I care. Never touch a man’s guitar. It took me years to learn how to play that thing.”
“I know. I helped teach you,” James rolled his eyes, “Anyway, you have like, zillion more, and that was like- this morning. You really need to learn how to let go.”
“Right, because you’re excellent at it. Teach me your ways, oh Master.”
He made a face at me, “You’re not very nice when you’re drunk.”
“You broke my blender.”
“Did you even know how to use it?”
“No. I was planning on learning. I was going to read the instruction manu- ha, okay, cannot say that with a straight face. But I would’ve taken a class or something. Probably.”
“Liar.”
“I will have you know that Mama Knight doesn’t condone any lying from her children. I do not lie.”
“And that is a lie.”
I laughed, “So it is. You probably should not have let me drink so much.”
James stopped walking. We’d left the restaurant side by side, but he had long legs and was already several paces in front of me.
“Because I had the power to stop you,” he said skeptically, “You were drinking like a man with a mission. Did you even eat anything?”
I frowned, walking past him, trying to remember why I’d had so much. And then I did remember, and didn’t want to think about it. But it was rude not to answer James, wasn’t it?
“I had a bad day,” I finally said, tasting the words, trying to decide if they were right. I was having an awful lot of bad days.
He was behind me now, trying to catch up. He sighed and said, “Why are you so sad all the time, Kendall? Because you’re gay?”
My steps faltered, and I felt his body thud against my back, long and lanky and much too skinny. I almost fell forward, I was so unsteady on my feet, but James’s hands caught at my hips, my bicep, keeping me from landing on my face.
“I’m not sad,” I said, forcing a smile.
I tried to turn, to show it to him, but he kept his hands where they were, and even though he was so damn thin, he was still strong enough to hold me there. I could feel his breath on the back of my head, ruffling my hair, making the skin on my neck tingle.
“You’re really an awful liar.”
James would know.
No matter how much he insisted he didn’t want to be my best friend anymore, he knew more about me than my own mother.
From the first day we met, he became the person I’d tell everything to, until the day I grew up without meaning to, the day I learned to keep secrets. He knew almost all the fears I had about my dad, about the huge crush I’d had on my fifth grade English teacher, and every horrifying detail about the first time I’d had sex with a girl.
Or at least, he used to. I didn’t know how much he remembered, and I was sort of scared to ask. I didn’t know if drugs were something that affected the brain cells where people store up all that stuff, the things friends tell them in confidence. They probably didn’t.
But I also didn’t want to hear that James didn’t care enough to remember.
“It was so easy for you?” I asked, trying to change the subject, “Figuring out you were gay?”
“It wasn’t any big thing,” James shrugged, “Sex is sex, with a guy or a girl.”
“Can you- tell me?” I could feel James stiffen behind me, feel his careful deliberation, feel it when he decided. His forehead rested against my hair, and he breathed against the knob of my neck.
“Sure. Okay. It- It was when we first got to LA. There was this intern, this guy at one of the modeling jobs I landed. He was prettier than me. I didn’t like it,” James laughed, dry and humorless, “But I liked his eyes. He had these green eyes, like fucking emeralds. We started talking, and we ended up going out to catch some concert at the beach, and it was only when he started dancing too close that I realized he thought it was a date.”
I didn’t like this story.
I didn’t know why I asked; maybe I wanted reassurance that I wasn’t the only person in the world who had ever had an identity crisis. I didn’t really believe James had taken this huge revelation in stride. It was impossible to believe, when all I could remember was the burning shame every time Chris yanked his hand from mine.
But now I realized that if James talked about when he’d first decided to get it on with a dude, I’d have to listen to James talk about getting it on with a dude.
Who wasn’t me.
Jealousy was slicing though my stomach as hot and sick as nausea, and I didn’t want to hear anymore, not with James’s words against my spine, not in such an intimate position. Only, I couldn’t bring myself to interrupt.
“And then I thought, I don’t know, fuck it,” James laughed again, but this time he actually sounded amused by the memory. He said, “I was kind of proud of myself; I was so fucking hot even guys wanted me. And he was- his eyes were really beautiful. I let him kiss me.”
“What happened after that?”
I didn’t really want to know.
“Nothing. I met some girl, and she had bombastic legs, and I ended up dating her for six weeks. I totally forgot about him.”
“That’s it?”
I could feel the huff of James’s exhalation, the way he was a little bit irritated with my questions, but mostly kind of soft and fond, like he’d maybe wanted to tell this story for a long time.
“I met this guy on tour. I think we were in New York. He let me fuck him.”
And there was that jealousy thing again. I felt bile rise in my throat.
“It was good. So I let the next guy I meet fuck me. And on and on it went,” James sighed.
“Were there- a lot of guys?”
It wasn’t the kind of question I should have been asking. It was something teenage girls grilled their boyfriends about. It wasn’t something a twenty nine year old man should even have been thinking.
“Kendall,” James said softly, “You don’t really want to know that.”
He pulled away, his hands leaving my skin, my neck cold from the loss of his gentle exhalations.
“Come on, let’s go home.”
“No, but I really do want to know.”
“Wonderful. I am not going to tell you.”
“Don’t you know?” I asked, and his eyes flashed.
“I’m not a whore. We’ve had this conversation. Several times.”
“I didn’t mean-“
“I know what you meant.”
“I thought- the drugs make it easier, to have meaningless sex?”
“Life makes it easier to have meaningless sex,” James said. He sounded tired.
“It’s just- Joseph said-“
“Don’t listen to Joseph. He exaggerates.”
It shouldn’t have mattered as much as it did; this thing with James was casual. But it didn’t feel that way. I’d never once gotten jealous over a casual fuck.
I figured it had to be because we were friends, because I had all these stupid friend like feelings tied up with whatever it was we were doing.
“Do you sleep with Joseph?” I asked. He didn’t answer.
I was fucking trashed, but I was still coherent enough to know that was the second time James had avoided the question.
“Tell me about you and Chris,” he commanded gently, changing the subject. My mouth tasted abruptly sour. It might’ve been the tequila coming back up on me. Or the vodka. Or the fucking whiskey.
“Why?”
James shrugged, “I’ve been thinking about it.”
“You knew him, right?” I wiped at my mouth.
“I did,” James agreed, still a few paces behind me.
“You never,” I felt my stomach clench, “You never slept with him, right?”
James laughed, “God no. What is with your avid interest in my sex life all of a sudden?”
I croaked, “Gee, it probably has something to do with how I’m a part of it, now.”
I turned to face him, because his footsteps had again thudded to a halt. He was standing there, backlit by the neon signs of a few seedy adult video stores, blinking, eyes going a little wide, like a forest creature in car headlights.
Then he said easily, “Yeah. I guess you are. Weird.”
Okay, that was what I’d been saying. It was nice to hear someone else acknowledge it.
“You didn’t realize that?”
“I just hadn’t thought about it. Like that, I mean,” he ducked his head, and now I couldn’t see his eyes at all; just the orange glow of a sign reading Live Nude Girls highlighting his hair. His face was still gaunt, shadowed, but man, he was so fucking handsome. Even though he’d been actively hating on the majority of our shopping trip, suspicion written across his features clear as day, he’d still been incredibly picky about the clothes I bought for him. He still threw around words like skin tone and color palette.
And I wondered what James had thought, all those times I’d wanted to broach the subject the last few days, only to be greeted with hard shoulders and the curve of his spine. I’d sort of been hoping that he was as conflicted as I was about the whole friends with benefits thing, but now I wasn’t so sure.
“You didn’t- I mean, you haven’t been using me. If that’s what you think. Not that I think that’s what you…I liked- I mean, I like it. Doing that stuff with you,” I finished lamely, aware that nothing I said was coherent.
James glanced up, lips a thin line, “You don’t have to-“
“No, I do,” I insisted, “You look…guilty. And you shouldn’t. You don’t have to be ashamed of it.”
“But you are,” James said quietly.
“I’m not.”
“Are you telling me that if I got on my knees, right here, right in the middle of LA, if I sucked you off where everyone could see us, you wouldn’t be horrified?”
“I-“
Actually that idea sounded incredibly hot, but I was drunk, and I’d sat through enough high school health courses to remember that my cognitive abilities were severely impaired, even though I felt fine. Except for how bright everything was. When did things get so clear, like the world was oversaturated with color, and everything was moving at half-time?
Anyway, I knew all that, and I knew that maybe I wasn’t immediately recognizable to the general public if they weren’t sports fans, but-
“I wouldn’t be horrified because of you,” I told him. “Just-“
“You’re so scared of everyone else. You used to be so brave, Kendall. What happened?”
“Nothing,” I stared at my feet, feeling a little bit miserable. I could see the ground with such fucking clarity that I could identify the dirt, the cracks where countless tourists had stood, snapping pictures of the California dream.
It was my turn to try to change the subject.
“You look good, you know,” I said, gesturing to his clothes, his brand new jeans and t-shirt and shoes. He’d let me dress him up like a Ken doll, and before, yeah, it had made me sad. But with the haze of liquor he was beautiful.
“Please,” James tossed his head, “Ninety percent of fashion is not giving a fuck how you look.”
I smiled, remembering the way he used to preen and asked, “If you don’t give a fuck, why do- why did you always spend so much time in front of a mirror?”
James made a noise, an admonishment, “The general public shouldn’t be the only people who get to enjoy all this.”
He waggled his fingers up and down, and if I was sober, I probably would’ve found it sad, ludicrous. But drunk, it was just James being James. I laughed.
He didn’t.
“Tell me about Chris,” he said again.
“Are you sure you guys never-“
“Never. Not even once. He wasn’t my type,” James tugged his fresh haircut and muttered, “He was such a fucking self important jerk.”
I half smiled, because yeah. He kind of was. I remembered how he’d walk into a room and own it, all smiles and charisma. He had swagger. Just like someone else I used to know.
“So what was he?” James continued, “Your first kiss?”
“Funny,” I made a face at him, “No. You think you are very funny, but you are very wrong.”
“I meant with a guy,” James laughed.
“The answer is still no.”
“Wow. Weren’t you the little slut?”
“I would push you if the world was not spinning,” I declared, because it was now, rocking under my feet like the first tremor of an earthquake. Wasn’t there a fault line somewhere nearby?
“Please,” James made a noise, like he was desperate to hear all about the time stupid me got my stupid heart broken.
“He was, I guess he was my first boyfriend.”
James frowned at me. He frowned and frowned and then said bluntly, “You have terrible taste. Terrible, terrible taste.”
“Thank you. I’m acutely aware of that.”
“Did he- what did he do to you?”
“Same thing I did to Jo,” I shrugged, “He cheated on me. Found someone new. Fell in love. It’s kind of hard to hate someone for falling in love.”
I was laughing, even though I didn’t think it was funny. It felt good, all that noise building in my chest, escaping out into the thin air.
James’s hands balled into his fists, or, at least, I thought they did. He shoved them in the pockets of his new jeans and said, “I’m pretty sure I’d be able to manage. Hating him, I mean.”
“Yeah. Me too. I wonder if that makes me a bad person.”
“It doesn’t,” James said, exasperated, “You spend way too much time wondering what kind of person you are. And- if I’d known, I would have knocked his fucking teeth out.”
I was still laughing, still at a loss for what was so fucking funny. And through the laughter, I said, “Yeah. Me too. Hindsight’s a bitch. Is your phone ringing?”
He said, “No.”
And then I said, “I’m going to be sick.”
All that clarity went crashing away as I stumbled into a street lamp, leaned over, and puked my guts out. It was awful, this burning, wet feeling in my throat, my chest heaving uncontrollably, and I felt like I maybe was going to die, but then-
It was just like a memory, like the time I’d gotten too dehydrated during a playoff game, and I’d spent all of halftime puking in a dark corner of the locker room, making James swear not to tell coach while he pressed his hand against my back, the cloth of my sweat damp jersey wet against my spine. Like the first time I’d gotten well and truly drunk at Jenny Tinkler’s annual School’s-Back-In-Session-Let’s-Get-Alcohol-Poisoning-And-Call-Out-Sick-Tomorrow party. James had been there, with Logan, holding my arm so that I wouldn’t fall face first into the toilet.
And now here I was again, bent over a street corner, his warm, callused hands feverish on my skin, brushing my hair from my eyes, not even caring if it all splattered on his brand new sneakers.
“Shh. You’re fine, Kendall. You’re fine,” he whispered.
---
James led me back to my apartment. Every footstep I took felt wobbly and uncertain, and it was only his steady hands beneath the crook of my elbows that kept me from diving headfirst into the pavement. I could feel his palms burning through the thin fabric of my hoodie, and even with the sick taste in my mouth, arousal stirred low in my stomach.
When he pulled out my key, I didn’t bother acting surprised. I let him guide me into my apartment. He propped me up against the counter while he fetched a glass of water.
“Drink.”
I did, even though it tasted like metal. Once I was finished, I set the glass on the counter with a clink and said, “James.”
“You done?”
He hadn’t turned on any of the lights. I think he liked it better in the darkness. I’d noticed that, before, the way he seemed to savor the way things turned colorless and soft.
“Yeah. You- you’re not really drunk, are you.”
He paused, a step away from me, and then he said, “No.”
I heard the soft buzz of his brand new phone and said, “I think you have a call.”
James shoved his hand in his pocket, muting the sound, “No I don’t.”
“Okay, no you don’t,” I agreed, and then I kissed him.
It was probably a little gross; he’d seen me empty my stomach on a random street corner about ten minutes before. But he kissed me back, like maybe he didn’t care how my mouth tasted. I licked into the soft places he offered me, the curve of his lips and the swell of his tongue, the hard veneers of his teeth. I fought him for dominance, but it was a losing battle. Even as a ghost, James was still an amazing kisser.
Without breaking pressure or stride, he guided me backwards, into the bedroom, the pale glow of Los Angeles’s streets the only light we had to see by. His hands against my ribcage felt like thorns, sending a sharp, stinging feeling deep in my chest. He had this look in his eyes, this clear-eyed intensity that I recognized from a thousand hockey games, from concerts with flashing lights and screaming girls. I associated that look with this single minded determination to win at whatever he was doing, with sweat slick on his throat, his cheeks flush with exertion, and the adrenaline rush of victory.
And in that startling, terrifying moment, I realized James wasn’t high. He wasn’t even drunk. I was the one who was buzzed out of my brain. His lips were burning hot against mine, and the skin of his face was still smooth from his shave and my heart was pounding dizzyingly in my chest. And I thought maybe, maybe it would be okay if I tried to touch him.
Maybe he’d let me get away with it if I was the one who wasn’t completely in control.
My fingers drifted down the front of his chest, down to his jeans. The second I touched the shape of his cock, he stiffened, pulling away.
“Kendall.”
“Let me,” I said, begging, already unbuckling his belt, “Please, let me.”
He stared at me, long and hard, and it was only when I began pulling his belt from the loops that he nodded.
Selfish confession time? I hated giving blowjobs. I mean, they were boring. All that work, with no payoff at all for me, especially now that I was nearing thirty. Unless I was getting it on with a younger guy, someone with actual endurance, reciprocation wasn’t high on my list of expectations.
But here’s the thing. With James, I was one hundred percent positive it wouldn’t be boring. Watching random strangers get off, while mildly hot, didn’t really do much for me anymore. Watching James, though?
Yeah. I figured that was something I could really get into. I wanted it more than anything.
One hand still fumbling with his belt, I used the other to push him back against the bed. The liquor made me weak, uncoordinated, but James stumbled a few feet and then, obligingly he sat, laying back, gaze never leaving my face.
Awkwardly, I climbed up on the bed, pushing him back until his head hit my pillows. In the dark of my apartment the whites of his eyes glowed. His teeth too, I saw, when I pulled a little too roughly on his zipper and he winced. He didn’t say anything though. He didn’t once tell me not to rush or to be careful.
I shoved his jeans and boxers low around his knees, enough so that he could move his legs apart but had limited movement. It kept him from having control. He didn’t get that. Not anymore.
I raked the tips of my fingers over the shape of his hips, the jut of bone and the place where my palm fit, flat against the barely-there contour of his stomach. His dick twitched, and he said, “You’re a tease.”
Being a tease sounded like fun, actually.
I scooted back down his legs, where the denim of his jeans crumpled. Slow, soft, I kissed the skin on the outside of his left leg, feather light, darting over to the inside of his knee. As slow as I possibly could, I moved up his thigh, kissing, licking, sucking. I used my teeth, at some points, nipping at his skin, lathing my tongue over the places I bit to soothe them. He made a soft noise, squirming. Every inch or so, I’d pause; spell out my name with my tongue or suck until he arched into my mouth, into the lightly blossoming bruise I was creating. My hands moved up his other leg, tracing nonsense designs, light as I could manage.
The closer I got to his dick, the rougher I got, sucking a mark high onto the inside of his thigh. Right before I reached his balls, I ducked back down, doing the other leg, leaving a trail of red-purple up the inside of his right thigh, mouthing a line from his knee to his hipbone.
James was rocking his hips up into the air, looking for friction. Panting, saying, “Kendall.”
I was already hard in my jeans, and he was so, so gorgeous. Making a decision, I spit on my hand and took hold, fingers curling around his cock. It was always weird, different; another man’s shape. The weight of James in my palm made me bite my lip. God, I fucking wanted this. I leaned down, tonguing the tip of him. My mouth stretched around the head of his dick, and I licked along the underside until my lips hit my hand.
His legs strained against the confines of his jeans. I could feel him shift restlessly under me, urging me to speed up. It took a few minutes of slow, fumbling slides before I built up a rhythm, but once I did James made this amazing strangled sound. I thought maybe it was supposed to be my name.
Vaguely, in the back of my head I heard my high school health teacher’s voice telling me to use condoms, even for oral sex, even if I trusted my partner. I did it with the few random guys I actually engaged in foreplay with, but latex tasted gross, and besides, this was James. He’d trusted me enough to put his mouth all over my body, no protection needed, even after I told him that my little sister hooked me up with an escort. And maybe it was really stupid- no, definitely, it was really fucking stupid, trusting him after Guitar Dude told me how many guys he’d tracked back and forth through their shithole of a home. But I didn’t care. Because this was James, and maybe I didn’t actually trust him not to run away, not to inadvertently kill himself with drugs, not to steal anything in my apartment that wasn’t nailed down. But not to hurt me, if he thought there was a chance he could? In that, I trusted him implicitly.
I tried things that felt good when I was jerking myself off, twisting my wrist when I stroked him, flicking my tongue out across the head of his dick intermittently. He made these noises that bordered on obscene, and I did whatever I could to make them louder, to make him fall apart.
“Kendall, fuck.”
I tried to make suction, to pull at the length of him with my lips, my lungs, my breath. His hips worked with me, his fingers laced at my hair, pulling, telling me when to go faster, when it was okay to be rougher. When he began to chant my name, I knew he was close, and I worked my lips around him to the rhythm of, “Kendall, Kendall, Kendall.”
He came in my mouth with a whimper. The taste of him burned down my throat, hotter than anything I’d drank that night.
---
I woke up near four in the morning, mouth dry, with a pressing need to pee and a buzzing sound in my ears. And then I realized it wasn’t in my head at all; James’s phone was lit up on the nightstand, vibrating over and over again. I glanced down at him; he was dead to the world. Trying to be careful, I reached across his body, fingers fumbling for the phone. I pressed the button on the side that would make all the noise go silent until the call went to voicemail, but I couldn’t help catching the name on the display. Joseph.
I fell back asleep with the taste of James on my lips, my mind turning over and over again.
---
James wasn’t around when I woke up the next morning. This petty part of me wondered if he’d ran back to Guitar Dude, but this other, huge part of me was more concerned about the pounding in my head. I downed like, three aspirins, because I was a total pussy when it came to hangovers. I wanted to stay in bed for the rest of the day, but I’d already made plans, and besides, curled up beneath my covers I kept thinking about James, and the sounds he made, and all the stupid calls he’d been ignoring all night.
They were all from Joseph, I’d have bet. Back at the Palm Woods, I never had a problem with Guitar Dude. I liked his relaxed, stoner vibe. Logan had practically idolized the kid, which I was almost positive had something to do with the way they smoked pot behind the shed every month as a recreational activity.
James put a stop to that, eventually, when he figured it out. He was convinced the smoke would be hell on Logan’s lungs.
“You’re already a little pitchy,” he had warned. Logan eventually quit just to shut him up.
But now? If Guitar Dude still had a guitar, I’d fucking break it. Not the same way James did to mine, the neck all in pieces, wires splayed across the frets in curlicues. No, I’d bash it over his fucking head.
And okay, maybe I wouldn’t actually do that, but the thought cheered me up.
I did the first thing on my list, which is to call Gustavo, but the second he figured out it was me on the line, he hung up. So, yeah, no, that wasn’t what I was hoping for.
And it left me with my second choice option, which involved actually taking a shower and throwing on a pair of clean jeans. I ended up taking a cab to Wainwright Productions and waiting in the lobby for half an hour before a sour faced secretary informed me that meetings with the president were by appointment only. Lucky me, it was at that exact moment that Kelly walked into the lobby, all classy business suit and towering stilettos.
I called her name. When she turned, she kind of looked like someone shot her favorite pet in the forehead.
“Kendall! Wow! Hi!” Kelly punctuated each word with high pitched surprise. She waved off her mean secretary and ushered me into her office, obviously dealing with the shock in her own way.
“Hey, Kelly.”
“Long time,” she mused, and finally she relented and gave me a huge bear hug, rivaled only by Camille’s, “You never visit.”
“I visit,” I said, and it felt strangely like the conversation I’d had with Gustavo a few days before.
“No you don’t.”
“I do,” I insisted, “But I can’t announce when I swing by. How would I manage to keep you on your toes? I live for the suspense.”
“You think you’re clever, trying to weasel yourself out of everything,” Kelly sighed, “You haven’t changed at all.”
I shrugged, because I wasn’t about to pour my woes into her lap.
“You have though. Look at this office,” I gestured to the floor to ceiling windows, “This is fancy. I thought record producers weren’t allowed to have so much space- the acoustics?”
“Unlike some other record producers I can name, I don’t actually compose anything. No need for sound proofing.”
“Lucky you’ve got a good ear,” I tapped the side of her head, “Or you’d never make it.”
“Please,” Kelly laughed, “I could be tone deaf and still successful in this town, what with the connections I made through you guys. How is everyone? I heard Carlos is going to have a baby.”
“He is. We’re all terrified he’s going to treat it like a trained monkey.”
Kelly laughed, “He’s going to be a great dad.”
“He really is,” I agreed.
“And he’s doing so well. I heard they’re talking Oscar for his new movie, and it hasn’t even come out.”
“He’s a superstar,” I said wryly.
“He’s not the only one. Isn’t your team in the running for the Stanley Cup?”
“How do you know that?”
“Athletes are hot,” Kelly winked, “If you ever want to introduce me to any of your teammates, I wouldn’t have a problem with it.”
I snorted, but I didn’t say anything negative about them. As much as I hated the jokes, the lack of support sometimes, my team wasn’t all bad. I liked a few of them, even. It was the other teams that were always gunning for me.
“So,” Kelly said, “What can I help you with?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“As nice as it is, you visiting, there has to be a reason.”
“Aside from a fervent desire to see your pretty face?”
“Aside from that,” she deadpanned, not fooled in any way.
“Well. I heard there’s a James Diamond demo album floating around out there, somewhere, and I was wondering if you had any leads on it.”
“You can’t just get a copy from James?”
Yeah, no. I already knew even asking him would be a bad idea. I didn’t even have proof positive that there was a second album. Before I’d come out to LA again, I’d heard only vague internet rumors and read a blind item from People. It was Carlos who’d confirmed its existence. I’m not sure if I’d even really believed in it before he said so. But there was no way I could ask James. He would eat me. Or, I don’t know, throw his new belt buckle from Kitson straight at my fucking head.
“James isn’t- he’s not doing so well,” I hedged.
“Oh,” Kelly blinked, and then she said, “There have been rumors, but I didn’t think they were true. That’s- wow.”
“Um. Okay, wait, what kind of rumors have you been hearing?”
“That he’s running heroin for a Mexican drug cartel and hooking up and down La Cienega.”
“Um. What?”
“Perez Hilton,” Kelly said by way of explanation, “When you read between the lines you get- well, he’s really on drugs?”
“Wait, how long have you known this?”
“James isn’t really high on anyone’s radar right now,” she paused, “I think the last time I read one of the articles was two or three years ago?”
“You heard he was on drugs three years ago and you didn’t tell any of us?”
“A- I read it on Perez, not the Skull and Bone Society Newsletter. It’s not like it was some big secret. B- I didn’t actually believe it. Gossip columnists, hell, the news is always getting things wrong. You should know that. When no more articles turned up, I figured they had no proof and thus, there was nothing to worry about. And C- I’m not your baby sitter, Kendall. Not anymore.”
I was pissed that I’d never read anything like that. I’d Googled James’s name eighty thousand times in the past three years since his disappearance. No headlines screaming Junkie had ever popped out at me. Then again, it wasn’t like I read Perez. He didn’t always have very nice things to say about the band, and Carlos was the only one who still made his feed, anymore.
“About the demo?” I prompted, and it might have come out like a snarl.
“Kendall, I didn’t mean it like that. Is he okay?”
“He was gone,” I said, “For a few years now. Just- gone. He stopped calling. Carlos couldn’t track him down. I- we were all worried, but we figured he was sick of the spotlight.”
“And?” Kelly’s forehead was creased, and I knew that despite her harsh words, she was genuinely worried. She’d always treated us like friends. Slightly annoying, somewhat untamable friends.
“We found him a few weeks ago, in a bar. He’s- he’s really sick, Kelly.”
“Kendall. I’m sorry.”
“I’m trying to help him, but-“ I waved a hand vaguely in the air and said, “The, the, um, demo?”
“I’ve got a copy. You know Gustavo went insane when James refused to record the solo album with Rocque Records, right?”
“I thought Gustavo didn’t want to do an album with James?”
“He didn’t, until he realized he couldn’t. And then he did. He was ecstatic when the album bombed; it was crap, and everyone knew it. And Gustavo had looked over some of James’s original songs. He wanted to give it a second go, do another album. His assistant told me.”
“Wait, you’re spying on Gustavo?”
“That- is not important. I wanted James on board. We needed a big name, because the company was what, two years old?” Kelly glanced around her office fondly, “And James is one of the best male pop vocalists out there. Being not nearly as proud as Gustavo, I managed to ask him to come in first. He laid down a couple of tracks, but- he stopped coming back to the studio. A couple of months later I heard he was in talks with another company. Which turned out to be a lie. He really disappeared? Carlos called me, asked if I’d seen him, but he didn’t- he didn’t sound that worried. When I didn’t hear from him again, I figured he’d tracked him down.”
“Must have been early days.”
“I, uh, vaulted the demo. Wainwright Productions owns the copyright to all five songs. Insurance, in case he decided to jump ship.”
“You were going to blackmail James with his own music?”
“If I had to,” she shrugged, “Don’t look at me like that. You know what it’s like to have your talent scoped? It’s expensive.”
“You’re cutthroat,” I told her, but I smiled to let her know I didn’t mean it. We had players stolen from the Wild all the time. If we could buy their moves, make them stay, we’d do it in a second. Business is business.
“My point being, if a single note of this gets out, I’ll own your ass.”
“Kelly,” I said amiably, “I’m pretty sure you could own my ass eight ways until Sunday if you let half the shit I did in BTR get out.”
“Valid argument.”
She took out a tiny key and opened a drawer. Then she began fiddling with a safe hidden inside it. When she opened it up, I could see a few shiny CDs in clear plastic cases. She pulled one from the bottom that simply read, James.
“I’ll burn you a copy,” she muttered, “I used to have all the tracks saved on my computer too, but we keep getting hacked. And the master flash drive’s in the bigger safe, downstairs. This might take a minute.”
She went about the business of popping the CD into her computer, all the while saying, “And how are you doing, with all of this? You were always closest to James. It’s got to be hard.”
I frowned and said carefully, “I’m kind of messed up right now.”
Kelly smiled, “Aren’t we all?”
“I don’t remember you going through so much crap when you were in your twenties.”
“Kendall, you didn’t pay all that much attention to me.”
“I didn’t pay all that much attention to anyone, apparently.”
“True. But for the record, few people like growing up. I’m included in that. It’s hard,” her eyes went distant, staring out one of her huge windows. She was looking in the direction of Rocque Records.
“Gustavo misses you, you know.”
Kelly rolled her eyes, “One of these days he might even apologize.”
“You could bridge the gap.”
“I can’t,” Kelly shrugged, “Then he won’t have learned anything.”
“So what, you’re trying to teach him a lesson?”
“I’m trying to say that growing up is hard, but everyone needs to do it eventually. Even Gustavo Rocque.”
I glanced out the window, towards Rocque Records and then I nodded, “You might be right.”
“I usually am,” she agreed, “It’s a curse. Here’s your album.”
“Thanks, Kelly.”
“Anytime,” she gave me a hug, “Maybe next time you come visit, you won’t ask for anything?”
“Will do,” I promised, clutching the CD and wondering if I was brave enough to listen to it.
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