Every Last Little Light In New York City

by The Brat Prince

Kendall is an aspiring song writer with a quick temper and too much pride. James is a spoiled wannabe superstar who just can't catch a break. They both live in the neon wash of Manhattan's electric lights, with the starless sky and the neverending pulse of life. There's no better place to start a fairytale, which is what Kendall thinks it is when they meet. But he could be wrong.

Every Last Little Light In New York City

A/N: Riiiight. So this is my bigtimebang submission. It's finished, but it's not finished. By that I mean this fic will have a second half/sequel, BUT this first half can stand alone. You just have to ignore the first two/three paragraphs of intro. What this also means is that I don't give a damn if you think I should have posted in chapters. That's not how a big bang works - you get it all at once, or not at all. Deal.

As a warning, if you're jonesing for the sequel: there will be other pairings including James/Kelly, James/everyone, Kendall/Lucy, prescription drug use, character death, etc. Also, grad school is a bitch, so it's going to take me a little while to finish (I have like, 5k of it rn). Now. This fic is entirely based on Hit List, the fictional play that they produced in NBC's Smash. Hit List is GR9. Literally, it is my favorite thing. I highly recommend hunting down the songs, some of which I appropriated for the purposes of this fic. All lyrics belong to their respective owners. AND I just found out Hit List is apparently being made into a rl play. WOOOO. I am excite. breila_rose, we're going. jblostfan16 gets all the kudos for being the best beta and head mod BTB could have asked for. This one's for you, baby.

---

This story starts with a gun.

Newer model. Sleek and deadly. There are flashing lights – strobes, too white, they hurt Kendall's eyes – and screams – the crowd, or is that him?

There is blood. Pulsing in the crevices between his fingers. Under his fingers. Both.

This is an end when it was supposed to be a beginning, the last wavering notes of a song still ringing in Kendall's ears. He's falling, baby, through the sky, through the sky…

Security is closing in, pushing, shoving, yelling. Their uniforms are revolver dark. In the audience, it is mayhem. Kendall has lost sight of the silvered glint of light off the black barrel. He can't decide if it matters.

There is a mouth against his, wet, metallic tasting. This kiss is gore, goodbye and tears; suited for a story that starts with a gun – no, wait. He's getting ahead of himself, trying to rewrite everything in his head.

The real beginning was quieter, less violent. There wasn't a gun. But there was a kiss. A happier one. A better one. It involved less crying. Where this story really starts is there, with that kiss, and the way it sizzled through Kendall heart with all the intensity of a bullet.

---

Kendall's twenty four years old and utterly lost.

Literally. He has no fucking idea where he is right now, because he fell asleep on the subway. Again.

His knee twinges, an old hockey injury berating him for staying curled so long in one position. His neck echoes the pain sympathetically, cricked at an angle just left of comfortable. The spiral edge of his notebook cuts an imprint into his palms.

Kendall tucks it into his back pocket with care. Blearily, he blinks the grit from his eyes and stumbles off the train, ignoring the judgmental glare of the Transit Authority cop that shook him awake. The subway station smells like piss and mold. The doors of the train hiss closed behind him.

Nothing is familiar. Kendall trudges up the stairs, one by one, shoving his way past a homeless man in a parka that might once have been a color other than black. The pre-dawn air hits his lungs hard, sending Kendall into a coughing fit that wracks his entire exhausted body.

"Come on, come on," he mutters through gasps, searching out a street sign. He comes up empty. Kendall didn't even know the city had anything like suburbs.

Unless he accidentally hopped the PATH to Jersey. Shit. He didn't think to check.

The first rays of the sun touch the horizon, a spotlight of dizzying gold that will soon scare the night away. If Kendall doesn't get home before that happens, Logan's going to skin him alive. He'll tell Katie, and she'll do that thing where she worries, which only ever manifests itself in the form of yelling.

Kendall's not all that fond of that scenario when he's sober. The idea of dealing with it when his buzz is performing a slow metamorphosis into an agonizing hangover is completely unappealing. He takes a couple of steps towards a red brick house, falters, spins around. The subway entrance has dropped out of site, swallowed by a hedge or a shed or the sunny façade of someone's brownstone.

Seriously, where even is this? Is it Brooklyn? This better not be Brooklyn.

At random, Kendall picks a direction and marches forward, resolute. Five blocks later and he thinks he's seen at least fifty living, thriving trees, which is a record for New York City outside of Central Park. He is so not in Manhattan anymore. Brilliant.

Birds chirp. The electric lights hum. Kendall's thoughts have gone quiet, their constant nag dimmed to a distant chatter, for once. The world is bathed in light and shadow.

Laughter shatters the illusion.

Up ahead, he spies a group. Straightaway he can tell what they are. Thoroughbreds. The kind that have won the trifecta – looks, money, and egotism. They're handsome, rowdy, and in the center of the guys stands their evident king. The sunrise crowns him in red, orange, and gold. His friends obscure the view of the shadowy angles of his body, but his smile jolts through Kendall's system, adrenaline-intense.

That smile isn't for Kendall. He isn't on any of these guys' radar, even as they give him a wide berth on the street. They stare straight through him, even as they walk his way. Boys like these inherit the earth.

He hates them.

He hates them.

He hates them. They are stupid and shallow and fake.

The corners of his notebook dig into his ass, reminding him that he's not powerless. He's going to show everyone, one day, exactly what they are. He will correct the tragic injustice of the world with the beauty he creates. He will make music that swells so big and so loud it carries everyone whoever hurt him or ignored him away in its tide. The words he pens will permanently ink themselves on America's heart.

Or maybe Kendall will just crash and burn, but either way, he holds his head up defiantly. He glares the lemmings dead in the eye, even if they don't acknowledge his existence. And then he walks on, renewing his search for the fucking street sign, fighting the sneaking suspicion that he's somehow gotten himself stranded in Brooklyn.

A lecture from Katie is nigh.

---

Song writing was an accident. Kendall was going to be the Next Big Thing in the NHL, because he'd always been a rockstar on the ice. Then he tore the ligament in his knee.

Presto, magic. His dreams were shot.

At the hospital he lost it, a little bit. Maybe a lot. They told him he had a problem with anger, like there was a teenage boy in the world that didn't, and put him in these touchy-feely classes. Every session blew harder than the last, but there was this assignment. They were supposed to keep a journal, to funnel their rage into something productive.

Kendall's never been great at organizing his thoughts. His essays were total stream of consciousness bull. Only one day he was lying on his bed, working on a page about how much he hates his dad and getting nowhere. He was bored out of his skull. So he picked up the bass his old man left behind, strummed his fingers over it the way he always did when he needed to make noise and he wasn't allowed to scream.

But he found the words. They were there, all along, waiting to be spoken out loud.

He imagined his dad's face, the way it would look if he heard what Kendall had to say. It felt good. It made him feel strong. And looking back, on every page he saw it. His stream of consciousness essays, in reality, were songs. Songs that, with a little fine tuning, weren't half bad.

Compared to half the crap on the radio, they were downright brilliant.

Kendall wondered how hard it would be, to get radio play. To simultaneously get his life back on track and strike out at every single person who ever kicked him while he was down.

Not as difficult as joining the NHL, surely.

Kendall failed anger management, but hey. It wasn't so pointless after all.

Granted, trying to make it as a songwriter in New York City was a bit more difficult than he'd anticipated.

---

The stage creaks beneath his boots.

He notices as he walked off, to the sound of scattered clapping.

The creaking is loud. Of the thirty or so people in the bar, only about five paid any attention to his set. One of them was Logan, who has already abandoned his applause to chat up this blond dude near the beer taps.

Whiskey. Whiskey will solve this night. Wearily, Kendall charts a course to the nearest bartender. He tramps down the stairs, only to be interrupted midway by a solid block of Emporio Armani. The fabric of the manbeast's t-shirt and the heady scent of expensive cologne tell Kendall everything he needs to know.

Curses spring to his lips. He peers up at the guy's face.

Every word he's ever known dies a slow death in his throat.

The most beautiful things Kendall has ever seen include:

Storm clouds swallowing the empire state building, crazy light slanting in every direction as the city wavered in the mouth of chaos.

Graffiti love poems on the sidewalk outside his job, bright slashes of red and asphalt grit concealing words about heartbreak and healing.

An endless field of lilac back home in Minnesota, purple trembling in the breeze and everything smelled of home.

And.

His baby sister on the day he met her, staring up at him like he was her entire world.

These are the things that flash through his mind as he takes in this boy's face, the desperate and absolute devotion he discovers there. If love at first sight was a thing Kendall believed in, he'd be able to identify exactly what it is he sees, but he doesn't, so he can't. All he knows is that something pricks beneath his breastbone, twinges like internal bleeding.

The boy says, "Your songs are the most amazing thing I've ever heard."

The boy says, "I'm James."

"Charmed," Kendall replies, because James's legs are eight miles long and his face was very possibly crafted by angels. Besides, who is he to turn down the affections of a brand new rich-bitch friend? Even though he will inevitably turns out to be a complete jackass, Kendall decides he's got a lot to bring to the table. Mostly in terms of cash and nudity. He dons a winning smile, dimples and all, and tells James, "My name's Kendall. I'm a Scorpio. We get thirsty a lot."

Not at all surreptitiously, he cuts his eyes towards the bar. James takes the hint.

Kendall lets James buys him a drink or five, because he's smitten, and it's not like a guy wearing William Rast jeans can't afford it. They take turns flirting with the lone bartender, a gorgeous woman edging the line between thirty and mid-life. She's not at all impressed by their suave lines, but she doesn't appear repelled by their attention, either. In between attempts, Kendall peeks at James from the corner of his eye and wonders what the hell his goal here is.

An hour in and he decides he doesn't care. Long legs and a tight ass are two of Kendall's only prerequisites in, uh, just about anybody. James is rocking both with the casual confidence of a dude who knows he's blessed. And his smile's disarming, bright and strangely vulnerable. Kendall wants to see it again and again, to find new angles and adore them all. There in the flickering neon buzz of beer signs, the tarnished bar mirror and the surround sound chatter of strangers, he finds himself entranced by this boy and his broken-edged grin. Their glasses click together, cheers, and James holds his liquor pretty well for a rich boy.

Around midnight, the crowd picks up, college students searching for a good time and the bridge and tunnel crowd downing one last shot before embarking on the last train home. The hassled bartender, with her cat-eyes and exposed midriff, doesn't have a minute to spare for the talent, so Kendall reaches behind the scratched mahogany countertop and produces a whiskey bottle of his very own.

James is scandalized. "You can't do that."

Kendall takes a swig straight from the neck. "And yet, I just did."

James narrows his eyes and throws down a few twenties, prompting Kendall to protest, "It's Maker's Mark, not ambrosia. Besides, Minerva would've put it on my tab."

"Minerva?" James asks blankly, at the exact moment the bartender whisks by.

She pauses just long enough to say, "You ask me out and you don't know my name? Poor form, Pretty."

Kendall grins cheekily. "Meet Minerva."

James has the gall to pout, to jut out his lower lip and go at it instead of demonstrating a trace of embarrassment. It's appallingly endearing, along with every other thing he's done so far. Kendall's about sixy:forty on his preference for girls over guys, but as far as he can tell, this dude is barely even mortal. "Where's your entourage, anyway?"

"Pardon?" James's forehead furrows attractively.

"Don't guys like you usually travel in packs?"

"What kind of guy do you think I am?"

"The kind that will buy me another drink?" Kendall asks hopefully. He waggles his eyebrows near independently of one another, each thick and blond and ridiculous. Kendall practices that move in the mirror a lot. But hey, it works.

Snorting, James informs him, "You drink a lot."

"You make it sound like a character flaw."

James's lips press together, ever-so-attractively – Kendall really wishes he'd stop being so pretty. He says, "It's only a flaw if it makes you unhappy. Are you unhappy, Kendall Knight?"

Kendall shrugs, rocking his barstool onto its hind legs. "As long as you're footing the bill here, I'm ecstatic."

"Me too," Minerva cheers from behind the bar, delivering another round of shots.

From the corner of his eye, Kendall spots Logan sneaking out the front door of the bar, sans the blond from earlier. He waggles his fingers at Logan's back in goodbye and is summarily ignored. God, Logan's been in a mood, ever since Kendall came home late last week. It's not his fault he boarded the train to hell; how was he even supposed to know the city had a line that went there?

He returns his attention to James, who is watching him with suitable measures of adoration and amusement. Yeah, he's totally going to take this guy for all he's worth.

What?

Sure, James is astoundingly gorgeous, but he can't be all that different from those guys Kendall saw the other morning. Heck, he could have been one of them. People with faces like James's and the good fortune to be loaded usually are card carrying members of the Douchebag Club. And that means it is Kendall's civic duty to work this glitch in the system to his advantage, before James remembers himself and books it back to his mansion in Valhalla.

"What else do you like to do for fun, other than get hosed?" James inquires earnestly.

Kendall considers it. "I like sex."

He probably could have been a bit more subtle, there.

James manages to keep a straight face, hmming appropriately and following up with, "With any one particular person, or-"

"With anyone." For the first time in the conversation, Kendall nearly falters, because wow, that is not how he meant to say it at all. "Um. I mean, I'm not picky – wait, no, that's not-"

James is full on laughing now, this deep-bellied thing that echoes through Kendall's bones. Instead of making him feel mocked, it warms him from the inside, and that is how he decides that rich prick or not, James will be coming home with him tonight.

Between chuckles, James intones, "Anyone includes a lot of people. How many people in this city have you nailed, exactly?"

Kendall plays along. "You know, about half. Why, is that unusual?"

"Only if you're STD-free."

"Har-dee-har-har. Funny. You can never go wrong with jokes about venereal disease." He pins James with a look that suggests it was a low blow, one that can only be assuaged with more liquor and maybe a kiss. James doesn't bite. "Safety first. As long as everyone's having fun, where's the harm."

"Laissez-faire sex. Rad." James pauses. In the burnished gold light of the bar, his eyes shine like fire opals. "Not sure how well that attitude matches up with those pretty love ballads of yours. Are you sure you wrote them?"

He's been herding Kendall around the edges of this topic all night, but Kendall's been evasive. Sure, he's not above dropping a line like, "I'm a song writer," to get laid, but actually discussing the melodies and lyrics feels weirdly intimate. He basks in the flattery and squirms beneath the scrutiny. He's been lucky so far; no one else has ever much cared to talk about it.

James, though. James is not so easily deterred. Reluctantly, Kendall confirms, "I wrote them." Then, because he feels the warning is warranted, he says, "Don't go all schmoopy and romantic on me because of it."

A half-bark of laughter is James's immediate response to that. Then, straightaway he shepherds Kendall into this conversation about music, about Kendall's process, like he has one. Set a notebook in front of him and he's sharp as a razor's edge, spinning intricate webs of words across the blank, white page. It's the closest thing Kendall's ever felt to magic, but there's absolutely no fucking way he'll ever say so out loud. Uncomfortable with James's interrogation, he mentions all the half written shit he has languishing around in his loft, the words slipping from his mouth without his accord.

James lights up brighter than fireworks on the fourth of July, and Kendall decides to take him home, because what else is he supposed to do?

"Bye, Angel." Minerva flutters her fingers at Kendall, making kissy faces when she thinks James can't see.

He does.

"You're pretty friendly with the staff here."

"Yeah, well." Kendall shoves his hands deep into his pockets, grateful for the change of topic, but wondering how much he should cop to. They always say the truth will set you free, right? "I, uh, work here."

James purses his lips. At first, Kendall's worried he might leave, but then he says, "Wait, you mean that whiskey was eight bucks a shot with your employee discount? This city, man."

Kendall echoes the sentiment, less jaded, way fonder. In his opinion, New York City is the greatest place on Earth. There are monsters and models lurking on every corner, back alley speakeasies open all night, three am falafel runs and the best tiramisu outside Italy. Movie theaters lit up as bright as Times Square, gleaming metal stands hawking chicken and rice, tourists aiming cameras in every which direction and the easy apathy New Yorkers assign when approached by nearly everyone.

Every light. Every sound. Every strange-sweet smell and the brilliant, dangerous night – Kendall wraps them around himself as he leads James down the block to the nearest subway station, steps dogged by the Manhattan lullaby. The city sparkles, the skyscrapers tower, the taxi drivers honk loudloudloud. Guys who look like James walk up to perfect strangers and call them amazing.

What more could a man honestly want?

---

"This is where I live."

"It's a sty," James says in absolute wonder.

"Thank you," a voice pipes up from the couch, Logan making himself known. He's hidden beneath a pile of mismatched quilts their mutual grandmothers handcrafted with care, a gigantic paperback book balanced on his lap. "I've been telling him that forever." He doesn't move to get up, regarding James suspiciously. "I saw you before. At the bar."

Beaming, James says, "Hi."

"Are you trying to date my best friend?"

James doesn't flinch. "Would that be terrible?"

"No, but good luck. Kendall has about as much time for love as he has for cleaning."

"And yet he's had time to get naked with half of Manhattan," James replies before Kendall can object.

Logan smirks. "It's a marvel, isn't it?"

Kendall frowns. "Logan, stop being a bitch."

"It's my natural state of being. Do you want me to cease existing?"

"Is that an option?"

"You'll miss me when I'm gone. Now shut your face, I'm trying to read Shantaram."

"That's a book?" James asks wondrously. "It's the size of a shoebox."

"Careful," Kendall warns, taking James by the crook of his elbow to guide him out of Logan's line of sight. "He might throw it at your face."

Logan sniffs, "I'd never disgrace the book that way."

James tells Kendall, "He's charming."

"Charm is for vagabonds and ne'er-do-wells. Brutal honesty is the scientific way."

James blinks at Kendall, telegraphing help with those big, luminescent eyes of his. Kendall takes a smooth step to the left, pulling James along with him. "Right, Logan, you show that book who its boss is. James and I are going to go, uh, anywhere that's not here."

Kendall heads towards the ladder that leads up towards his lofted nest, but on second thought, yeah, no. Logan doesn't appear interested in retreating into his bedroom any time soon, and it's a bit early in Kendall's relationship with James to ask if he'd relish an audience.

"Let me give you the nickel tour," he suggests, "Starting with my favorite place in the building."

"The building has a bar?" James jokes, but he isn't being mean. Once they're out of Logan's earshot, he says, not disingenuously, "He seems nice."

Kendall shoves his hands in his pockets and tries to figure out whether or not James simply does good poker face. "He can be an acquired taste."

Without missing a beat, James replies, "Nah. I like 'im."

After a few more seconds of careful study, Kendall decides he isn't lying. Weird. The last person he'd brought home who hadn't minded Logan's unique brand of tactless conversation ended up sticking around a lot longer than Kendall meant her to.

He beckons James to follow him out into the dark hallway, up to a door with peeling paint that barely passes for red. Inside the stairwell, the crumbling brick tile steps to the top level of their brownstone apartment building end at a rickety metal ladder.

James evaluates the rungs with a measure of foreboding. "I'm not sure about this."

"Don't be a pussy." Kendall grabs the metal, rust flaking off against his hands. "It's fine."

"Are you sure, though? I like my insides on the inside. They give me comfort, placed as they are."

Kendall rolls his eyes and begins the short climb up to the roof. The hatch on top of the ladder is propped up with an old book, leather bound and dented down the middle. With one well-muscled push, Kendall hefts the hatch-door aside, revealing a dusky, dark square of New York sky, peppered through with barely-there stars. He makes his way straight to the ledge edging his building, plopping down on top of it with practiced grace. His sneakers hit the brickwork on the other side, the five story drop below dancing in and out of his view.

James whistles low when he joins him. "Nice setup."

"I like it up here," Kendall says, smile wry. "Everything in the city's so big, piled on top of you. Sometimes I miss the fresh air."

"You're not from New York?"

"Minnesota."

"Really?" James's head snaps up, honest surprise marring his features. "No way."

"Yes way."

"No, but – me too."

Kendall's mouth gapes open. "You're shitting me."

James shakes his head. "My mom's Brooke Diamond. I moved here to, uh, escape."

Now Kendall knows this has to be a joke.

"Brooke Diamond the cosmetics lady? From the embrace your sparkle commercials?"

"Yep." James ducks his face against the wash of neon lights. He mutters, "One and the same."

He doesn't sound particularly enthused, talking about his mom, but Kendall doesn't fault him for it. He gets tetchy whenever anyone tries to dig into his past, too. Doesn't stop him from telling James, "Man, you're Middle American Royalty."

"What about you?" James challenges. "Why'd you run away?"

"Who says I ran away?"

"Everyone in this city's running from something."

"Or towards something." Kendall shifts, ignoring the twinge in his knee. "Wanted a change of pace."

"Got to be more to it than that," James needles, like he can already read the darkness that flashes cold across Kendall's face.

Frigidly, he replies, "There's not."

Crumpling a little, James says, "Oh-kay. If you don't want to tell me, that's fine-"

"Seriously? You look like I kicked your puppy and then ate its liver. Mind your own business."

He's harsher than he needs to be and not even a little bit sorry about it. Not even when James manages to fit hurt and defiance into a single grimace as he inches away from Kendall on the ledge. "You don't need to be a dick about it."

Name calling. Great. Beset upon, Kendall attempts to count to ten in his head before the pressure and rage overwhelms him, the way it always does. He snaps, "Who's actually being a dick here?"

"Um, you," James replies, his irritation clear.

"I'm not the one being a pushy asshole," Kendall corrects, seething. "Fine, let's fucking get to know each other. I moved here because I lost my scholarship at MU, and I couldn't bear community college because my stepdad's a douchecanoe and everyone there is a moron. Is that what you wanted to hear?"

He actually yells the last few words, cockblocking himself forever and after. James settles his weight back against his palms. This is the moment, the exact minute he's going to walk off, and all of Kendall's careful flirting will amount to nothing.

Whatever, it's not like it's the first time he's missed out on a great piece of ass, and it probably won't be the last.

Only, James's anger dissipates. Lips quirking, he says, "Yeah. That about rounds it out. The story of you. I like it."

It's been a while since anybody managed to surpass Kendall's admittedly low expectations of them. Wealthy trust-fund fucks especially. He doesn't know what to say, so he waits until James continues, "I wouldn't have pinned you for a scholar."

"Hockey. It was a hockey scholarship." Kendall adds defensively, "It's the American pastime, you know."

"Baseball's the American pastime. We bogarted hockey from Canada. That's sweet, though," James says. "The varsity jock thing. How very traditional of you. Were you a boy scout too? Were you raised on cornbread and the flesh of bald eagles?"

"Absolutely. My family arranged hunting parties in the mountains and only ever feasted on banquets of the freest and freshest, in the name of our greatest ancestor, George Washington."

James stretches across the ledge until he's closer to Kendall again, sharing the same airspace. He asks, "What happened, really? You were a hockey superstar and then you decided not to be?"

They're back in waters Kendall would prefer to avoid. All he wants is an easy lay, not a new best friend. But something about James has him admitting, "Some tool from Ontario took me out. My teammates should have been there, to block it, but Logan wasn't quick enough and there wasn't anyone else."

Kendall remembers hitting the ice, the edges of his vision going black as his knee twisted painfully to the left. He told the doctors he could hear his ligament as it tore, even though it was impossible over the slice of metal blades against ice, the scream of the fans, the crack of stick-versus-puck.

Impossible, but he still remembers the sound.

Subdued in his pity, James tells him, "I would have pounded him into the glass before he even reached you."

Kendall swallows. He doesn't know how to reply to that. A part of him wishes it were true, that everything actually happened that way. That he'd known James, growing up. Logan is a champ, but he's never been able to handle Kendall when he flies off the handle, when he gets so mad he can't stand it. Five minutes ago, James took it in stride. He's the first person Kendall's not related to who has managed not to back down in the face of his fury.

It's been a long time since he's had that, someone who can test and soothe him in equal measure.

Kendall huffs, "Sure you would've. You're an insufferable brat," but he's gone all warm on the inside.

"You're a cranky sourpuss," James prods right back. "But you write music like nobody I've ever met and I'd dig the chance to see you naked, so I'm going to let your anger management issues slide."

Kendall chokes on his own laughter.

Knowingly, James grins. "You're not the only one who likes sex."

"Yeah? Do you want to tell me more about how great I am? Because that would really put me in the mood."

Rolling his shoulders back, he tells him, James leans his head against Kendall's shoulder. His skin is warm. His hair smells good. "I was thinking it's about time you started singing my praise. I'm fairly fantastic, you know."

Kendall presses his mouth closed against a smile. "Hidden talents?"

"Not so hidden. I sing."

"Professionally?"

"'Course not." James frowns up at the smattering of dim stars trying to peek through the stratosphere. "Trying, but. No one takes me seriously."

Kendall can't quite tamp down on his initial reaction, which is unadulterated scorn. What he voices out loud is a neutral, "Oh?" because he's an ass, but he's a horny ass.

James shrugs. "The best art comes from the people who suffer for it. I haven't suffered a day in my life, at least, that's what everyone thinks."

"I smell a story."

"Not much of one." James has no problem with the honesty that came so difficult to Kendall moments before. He admits, "I wanted to be a pterodactyl when I was a kid," accompanying the confession with a little flap of his arms. "And then a NASCAR driver, and then a sea lion trainer. I settled on superstar when I was ten. I guess my parents expected me to grow out of it. They paid for voice lessons, for dance classes, for whatever I wanted, because it was a phase. When they finally figured out it wasn't, they cut me off. They said if I wanted to be a superstar, I could do it on my own dime."

"How's that working out for you?"

"It's really not," James confesses, peering up at Kendall from beneath his dark, sooty eyelashes. He's so damn pretty, too pretty. "I've got no hook. None of my songs sound like yours."

This moment, right here, should be a warning sign, maybe. Outlined in bright red and flashing lights. It flies right over Kendall's head.

He says, "Let's hear what you've got," utterly unaware that there's no going back.

"If you start the party, don't end up leaving early, 'cause I've been waiting for you all night long," James begins, and Kendall can't help himself, his mouth stumbling on way ahead of his brain.

"No, what are you doing, stop. That's a terrible song." The lyrics aren't bad for a pop ballad, but the melody is all wrong, and James's voice is somehow lost in the crossfire.

James huffs. "Thanks, I wrote it myself."

Oops.

"Er-"

Wryly, James asks, "How 'bout this?" He gives Kendall the humblest smile, and when he opens his mouth, the words that come out don't belong to him. "Over. I can't believe it's over," he sings, starting slow. "I can't believe the love I lived to show some other day…"

He shouldn't know these words, having only heard them once, shouldn't be able to shape them so beautifully, but he does. His voice calls up sweetness in the pit of Kendall's stomach, this fluttery thing that soars on every high note and shivers through his bones.

When James reaches the bridge, his voice booms louder, better. If a sound could dazzle, this would. "Golden, all the love you gave was golden-"

It blacks the edges of Kendall's vision, sharpens his focus, reverberates inside him. It sends shivers of pleasure down Kendall's spine, makes his toes curl inside his boots. The melody spilling from James's lips shines light everywhere inside of him.

He never knew another person could sing like this.

"Oh, music. You made me hear such music," James sings, and Kendall watches him wrap his lips around the words that he wrote and sees them change. They are better, stronger, more passionate. They are heart-wrenching and lovely in a way they never have been tumbling from Kendall's mouth. James has that magic quality, the ability to give life to music, and that's great, that's wonderful, and it's also scary as fuck, because he is exposing each and every one of Kendall's open wounds without even knowing they're there to poke at.

Kendall knows then; the two of them, together, would be brilliant. They could conquer the world with music so honest and raw. He cannot stand it.

Roughly, he cuts James off mid-solo. "C'mere."

His lips touch James's rough, chapped, and needy. They both taste of sweetsharp, mouths soaked in whiskey.

Kendall tucks his hand behind the curve of James's neck and tugs him closer, angling to lick the words he wrote off of this strange, handsome fey boy's skin.

Overhead, the moon is shy. It peeks from behind the towering monoliths of buildings, its soft glow kissing the blue glass fronts of every empty office in Manhattan. It does not spy while Kendall kisses James, slow and soft and meaning every minute of it.

This is the beginning, and neither of them knows it.

Their mouths slide against each other, fractured starlight on their tongues, humming through their throats and their veins. Against the too-sweet tang of James's lips, Kendall murmurs, "Sorry I, uh, dissed your song."

"You're not the only person who thinks it's terrible." James pulls back and wrinkles his nose, pressing his forehead to Kendall's. Up close, his eyes are flecked with gold. "I auditioned for some execs this morning. They didn't say it blew chunks, but…that's probably because they didn't say anything."

"They're idiots," Kendall says, and he's fairly certain they are.

Outlined in starshine, James is magical, the echo of his voice still resonating against all of Kendall's nerve endings. Kendall leans in to kiss him again. And again. And again. They kiss until James's mouth is blood-red and plump, shiny with spit, and Kendall's relatively certain he must look the same. When they pull back, Kendall's jeans are tight and the city's too hot, every blaring taxi horn and ecstatic, drunken whoop from below pulsing beneath his skin.

He's ready to invite James downstairs, right up until James opens his big, fat mouth.

"You're-" he says softly, starting and stopping with the sweet shyness of a teenager before abruptly changing tacks, like he's too embarrassed to actually fess up to what Kendall is. "And this view is, wow. Do you ever think about jumping?"

Kendall glances down at the city streets, dizzying so far below them. His feet sweat in his boots. A chill lances up his spine.

"Never."

"Really?" James's eyes drill holes into Kendall's skull, trepanning for the truth. "You've never wanted to end it all?"

"Nope," he lies, the word chalky and thick in his mouth. "Way to kill the mood."

"Sorry. I just. I have."

"You've –" Kendall fumbles for English, because what even is happening? He gets kissed breathless and suddenly he's the suicide hotline? "Thought about jumping?"

"Sure," James tells him, as if it's no big deal, telling a complete stranger his shit. "I want to get out of this place. Hit it big, run away. And sometimes I feel so completely stuck. Not now, but. I've been to the dark place."

Despite himself, Kendall asks, "What kept you from doing it? From jumping off…whatever?"

He's got no idea what kinds of things tower around James from day to day. The Brooklyn Bridge? The Chrysler Building? What high things has he ever considered taking a nosedive from?

James considers. "Look at Zwagger."

"I'd rather not," Kendall says, horrified. Zwagger is this two bit popstar that burst onto the scene three years prior, equipped with redonkulous outfits and a bevy of popular musical numbers about embracing your true self. Kendall doesn't know who Zwagger's true self actually is, but he seriously doubts it's a guy who enjoys wearing suits made out of Beanie Babies.

James, however, looks absolutely enamored. Kendall's embarrassed on his behalf. "He's said it in interviews – he came from nothing. He faced rejection down a thousand times, and he still made it out the other end. I'm going to be exactly like him."

"That contradicts his message a little bit, don't you think?" Kendall quips, because he can't not. This conversation is so far from the happy kissing of yester-moment that it's driving him a bit insane. He wants more kissing. Why is there not more kissing?

"Maybe." James laughs good-humoredly. "You've got talent, like his. Have you ever considered moving to LA?"

"About as frequently as I think about swallowing cyanide."

Tilting his chin towards the stars, near invisible in the wash of neon lights that dominate the city, James says, "I heard it's easier out there. People are more receptive out west." He darts a look at Kendall, adding, "Less cynical."

"Five minutes ago I had astounding talent and now I'm cynical," Kendall complains. "You city boys sure are hard to please." He drops the act when James lifts one perfect eyebrow his way. "I'm not interested in being a plastic person, thanks."

"They're not plastic," James insists, his expression darkening so quickly that it's like someone took a match to it.

Great. Two fights in one night. Maybe they're not super-special destined boyfriends with great asses. Kendall sighs. "Shows how much you know about LA."

Everything Kendall knows about California comes from bad reality television and Beach Boys hit singles, but whatever. He's as much of an authority as James obviously is.

"Can you hold off with the jokes for three seconds? I'm trying to bare my soul to you here."

"And I really wish you'd stop. You want to enlist in the Stepford ranks, more power to you, but leave me out of it."

"Christ, it was just a question." James shakes his head, scooting back on the ledge until there's some distance between their bodies. "What the hell's your problem?"

His problem.

His problem is that everybody asks that, that everybody he's ever met wants to know why he's like this or so cruel. He thought for an entire millisecond that James was different, that his careful handling of Kendall's earlier tantrum demarcated him as special, but he's exactly like everyone else.

So Kendall treats him like everybody else.

"I don't have a problem. You're the Trust Fund Princess who can't make it in the real world."

Kendall regrets it the second he says it, but just like always, it's too late to take anything back.

This is how he learned to fight, in the shadow of his parents' neglect. Nastily.

(His mom never meant to leave him alone, but she had to work, had to make money, had to provide for him and Katie, and that took time. His dad was a different story, an old story, the man who left.

Why is it always the men?

They're weaker than women, Kendall knows. He can point to his mom or his sister and say, "Look. Look at their strength and then look at mine. See how it differs."

His coping mechanisms are eating away at his insides. But he can't help it; this is how he learned to fight. Alone.)

"Please don't call me that," James grimaces, pained, but Kendall's on a roll. He twists the knife, makes it hurt. Nasty words discourage pity, and from there, it's an easy kill, cutting a person apart.

"You want to be special, but there's nothing special about you."

Eviscerate James and he won't come back, Kendall knows, but maybe that's better. Being alone means no one can hurt you. Being alone is how Kendall survives.

"How do you do it?" James inquires, trembling with rage.

They are a tragedy in motion, their nerve endings on fire, lies on their tongues. Their feet dangle over the edge of the roof, kicking at the empty air, daring gravity to take hold, but it never quite does.

"Look this good?" Kendall counters airily. "Genetics and healthy living, mostly-"

"I mean how are you this much of an ass and still able to write such beautiful things? Explain that to me."

Ouch. Kendall winces, but not so obviously that James will see it. He says, "It's one of the mysteries of the universe. Like Stonehenge, but less ugly."

"I don't know," James disagrees, his own anger flaring, flaming in the night. "The way you were just talking to me was plenty ugly."

He finds his footing on the rooftop, over balancing enough that Kendall has to catch him by the calf, just to keep him from tumbling to his doom. Disgustedly, James yanks his leg away and hops down to the more solid cement of the roof. He's across and to the door in five longs strides.

"Does this mean you're not going to let me suck your dick?" Kendall calls after him. He sounds more harsh than funny, but hey, he's gotten the last word.

Which does him absolutely, positively no good at all. Kendall isn't sure if he's more pissed off at himself for losing out on that ass or for actually managing to sincerely insult James. He might be a rich, spoiled fuck, but he was also endearingly genuine.

There has to be an angle hiding beneath all that muscle; everyone has an angle. But Kendall wouldn't have minded more time to figure out what it is.

Sighing, he heaves himself down the ladder from the roof, taking the steps back to his apartment two at a time. Inside, he tells Logan to shove over on the sofa and props his feet right up on the fat pages of Shantaram. Logan digs his fingers into Kendall's ankles, annoyed, but when it proves futile he groans and asks, "Blew it?"

"With hurricane force," Kendall agrees.

"Forget about him," Logan says shortly. "Chiseled from steel isn't really your type. Besides, he was making eyes at me when you weren't looking."

Kendall snickers, in spite of himself. "That so?"

"It made me acutely uncomfortable," Logan deadpans. "I am not a piece of meat."

Fondly, Kendall ruffles his hair. "And yet everyone keeps using you for your body. Alas."

Logan says, "Both of us striking out in one night. Must be fate."

Kendall's fingers pause, laced in soft brown. His heart gives a panicked, stuttering thudthudthud. He considers pulling his feet back into his own space, thinks about running up to his bed in the loft and cowering beneath the covers until the awkward tension vanishes.

He can't imagine a more perfect way to ruin everything.

Carefully, Kendall says, "I wouldn't give the universe too much credit. I've heard your pick up lines."

Logan's face falls, even as he laughs.

Kendall lets out a slow breath. Can't blame a guy for trying, right? And Logan's been trying for years. His crush on Kendall blossomed somewhere around the sixth grade and has never quite gone away.

It festered when Kendall thought he was one hundred percent straight, flowered when Kendall decided his hetero percentage might be overreaching, and has reared its head in all kinds of uncomfortable moments, ever since Kendall lost his backdoor virginity to a guy from Alphabet City.

"Logan," Kendall starts, and just like always, he has no idea what to say. It isn't that Logan's not completely fine, from head to toe, because he's got this dimples-jawline-surprisingly-fit-physique thing going on. He'd be a pleasure to have spread out and wanting on Kendall sheets.

The real problem is that they're best friends.

They get along like a house on fire. It's feasible that they'd be good together. Or maybe they wouldn't. Either way, Kendall's not willing to take the risk. He loves Logan like a brother, nothing more.

"It's okay." Logan squirms beneath Kendall's steady gaze. "I know I – I just know, okay?"

He shoves Kendall's legs off his lap, delicately fixes the rumpled pages of his novel and snaps it shut. Kendall has this horrible, sinking feeling that he's broken something precious, even though this isn't the first time they've covered Kendall's hesitance to get horizontal.

He's shaken from James's snappishness, half-drunk and crazy tired. He grabs Logan's arm and says, "Wait."

Logan gives him the strangest look. "I wasn't going anywhere."

"Good. That's good. I need you not to."

And then Kendall settles his hand firmly against the front of Logan's pajama bottoms. Beneath his palm, soft cloth separates his skin from the instant heat of Logan, soft, but sluggishly coming to attention.

Startled, Logan asks, "What are you doing?"

Happily ignoring the red alert lights flashing in his head, Kendall wraps his fingers around the shape of Logan's dick and says, "It's what you want, right?"

He's so going to regret this when he's sober.

Logan deliberates, fear and loathing chasing lust across his face. He arches against Kendall's hand with a helpless groan and nods, "Yeah. Yes. Please."

Logan wends his hands into Kendall's hair, tugging him close until he's practically straddling him, book falling by the wayside. He is not nearly as careful as James when he kisses Kendall sloppy and reckless.

Kendall kisses back, uncaring of how this will devastate him in the morning, because this is what he does – wasted decision making and total errors in judgment, and he'd be lying if he said this was the first time he'd toyed with Logan with a buzz on.

There's a reason his endless crush perpetuates.

He loses sight of why it's wrong with Logan's thighs pressing against his knees, the tenting of his PJs brushing insistently against Kendall's stomach. Kendall jerks him through the fabric, probing Logan's mouth painstakingly slow with his tongue. The kiss is as much of a tease as Kendall's thumb against the clothed head of Logan's cock. Both make the other boy whine and buck.

Kendall draws it out until Logan's rutting up against his belly, catching the pre-cum damp of his flannel against Kendall's t-shirt, a growing stain between them. Kendall swallows down the guttural, porn-star noises Logan is making, circles one arm around his back and tilts him forward on the couch until Logan's shoulders hit cushions. On his knees, Kendall hovers over Logan's stocky frame, tonguing down his throat. He plants kisses against Logan's t-shirt, each taunting and deliberate.

Logan pants, "Kendall," and Logan pants, "Why are you always such a fucking cocktease?"

Kendall fondles his balls and, smirking, breathes hot against the cloth above Logan's navel. When he reaches the hem of Logan's tee, he shifts it aside and nips at the flesh of his lower stomach, licks out at the treasure trail of hair leading into his pants. He rests his lips above the waistband and asks low, "How bad do you want to fuck my mouth?"

Logan's eyes go dark, his pupils black and endless. He reaches out, curls his fingers around Kendall's ear, his neck, his skull. Roughly, he commands, "Suck me off. Now."

Kendall's cock aches, tight at the base all the way to his gut. He wants Logan sheathed on his dick, wants the silky, impossibly tight burn of him all around. He could take Logan apart like that, wreck him completely, but even walking the border of wasted, Kendall knows better than to treat Logan like his own personal cum dumpster. He wants Logan to get over him.

Eventually.

Keeping that in mind, Kendall doesn't peer up through his eyelashes as he inches Logan's pajamas down, focusing on the slow reveal of the crown of his dick instead of the black hole vortex of adoration and need in Logan's eyes. Kendall skims his tongue against pink-red ridges, tastes Logan salty and bitter.

A low moan slips from Logan's mouth. Kendall doesn't have to glance up to know he's glaring, quietly urging Kendall to stop messing around.

Kendall brushes the head of Logan's cock with his lower lip, feverish skin smooth against his red, savaged mouth. He turns it into a game, makes out with Logan's cock every bit as wet and messy as he had with Logan's face, dancing his tongue across the underside of flesh and veins, feeling Logan throb beneath him.

Logan's a dirty cheater. He tries to push in, to breach the plush circle of Kendall's lips, but he's met with teeth and hisses hard. "Kendall."

Innocently, Kendall licks out, lapping away the agony. He reaches down in the tight space between Logan's bunched up pants and his sac, tucking his fingers behind soft skin, testing how each touch shivers through Logan's dick. Logan tries to get inside him again, squirms under the play of Kendall's fingers, and this time Kendall lets him, opening his mouth half an inch. Then further, the bitter tang of precum assaulting his taste buds.

"Oh god, Kendall," Logan stammers out, his yelp loud in the empty space of their apartment, "Kendall, fuck."

He scrabbles to get a better grip on Kendall's hair, yanking and relaxing in a rhythm that Kendall takes up, trying to match the frantic desperation. He's not sure how well he succeeds, taunting Logan with quick flicks of his tongue, tiny bursts of suction that turn into longer, deeper pulls. Kendall slides his lips against wet, heated skin and can physically feel Logan's thighs quiver under his palms.

When he comes, he's choking on Kendall's name, the soft K barely audible, the e turned into an i, all the other letters tumbling after. He finishes hazy eyed and pliable, groping against Kendall's crotch until he finds a lethargic tempo.

Even through the layer of his jeans, it feels good, hurts exactly right. Kendall fucks into Logan's palm until his vision goes starry, the black galaxy that lives behind his eyelids laced white with pleasure. He loses all sense of himself there, on their tattered couch.

From his toes to his spine, from his fingers to his bones, all the way down to the dark abyss at his core – that bleak place where he sometimes dares to hope that his heart might be.

---

Three days later, there's six feet of man-boy lurking in the doorway of Kendall's apartment building.

In the light of day, James looks even better than the drunk, handsome guy in Kendall's memories, freshly shaven, his hair carefully arranged to appear as though no one has carefully arranged it. The sunlight cuts him into angles, orange, gold, and white, a glowing silhouette. He's got his fists shoved in his pockets and his lower lip tucked between his teeth, fretting it red.

Kendall exhales slowly, gathering his courage.

"That's cute," he calls out, cocky as he dares, "You're stalking me."

James's head pivots sharply in his direction, brightening. "There you are."

"Here I am," Kendall agrees, fumbling his keys out of his pocket and dodging around James to unlock the outer door. Uninterested in social constructs like personal space, James dogs Kendall's footsteps, ducking inside the building without an invitation.

"I wasn't sure if you were ever coming back."

"I live here," Kendall says mildly. "It had to happen sooner or later."

James laughs nervously. "You're mad at me."

"I'm not mad. I hardly know you." Kendall starts up the stairs, forcing his legs not to launch into a run. He is pissed off, because he lives ninety percent of his life angry at something and James is an easy target. But James doesn't have to know that.

Kendall begins counting to ten in his head.

"I'd like to fix that," James informs him. "I'm a great friend. I like to brunch and I'm always prepared to housesit."

"And you overstay your welcome," Kendall mutters.

One more landing, that's all that stands between him and precious freedom from the one-night-stand that never was. He squares his shoulders and tightens his grip on his keys. Meanwhile, James falters, his boots thudding to a stop in the narrow stairwell. "I forgot you're such a prick."

Flatly, Kendall responds, "Please, yes, tell me about how badly I fucked up. I wasn't aware," before continuing on his merry way. He expects to hear James turn tail and run, but apparently, James has too much courage and not enough common sense.

He says, "You didn't just fuck up, you did it royally. Like, this is the king of all actual fuck ups."

"The king, really? Are you sure it's not just the prince? Maybe even the squire?"

"You own the monarchy."

"I anxiously await my coronation." Kendall comes to a stop in front of the barren wood barricade of his front door. He fits his key into the lock, which much like everything else he owns, is a stubborn asshole of an inanimate object. He has to fumble around the warped metal until it agrees to turn. "Excellent chat. Let's not do it again sometime."

Fully intending to breeze into his apartment and slam the door in James's face, Kendall discovers a hitch in his plan when James kicks his sturdy leather boot in between the door and the frame.

"Are you breaking and entering right now?"

James shrugs, easing back the door so that he can follow Kendall inside. "I haven't broken a thing."

"Lawlessness doesn't suit you," Kendall decides, trying to suss out whether or not punching James in the face is a good idea.

Probably not. It'd be a shame to waste such a pretty face. Besides, his opportunity is lost when James scoots past Kendall and throws himself down on the sofa, completely oblivious to the myriad stains (soda, take-out, come) he's taken up residence upon. "Pity. I had such high hopes for a life of crime."

I don't remember inviting you inside, is what Kendall means to say, because he's had about enough of this guy, with his big ideas and his unattainable dreams. Who asked him to rain on Kendall's pessimistic parade? Not Kendall, no-siree, not him.

But there's evidently a wire loose somewhere between his brain and his mouth, because what Kendall actually does is plop down on the couch beside James and ask, "You want a drink?"

He doesn't have much to offer other than beer, apple juice, and month old Yoohoo, but whatever, James nestles in close to Kendall's side and tells him, softly casual, "I'd rather have you," so he probably isn't going to be checking the expiration date on their chocolate milk anyway.

A lone butterfly trundles it's way awkwardly around Kendall's stomach, unsure how to swoop and soar. He hasn't had the warm fuzzies for anyone in ages, long enough that the dizzying sensation makes him vaguely nauseous.

James says, "I shouldn't have stormed off like that before. I can make it up to you."

Kendall regards him warily, firmly not taking in how nice he smells or the way his shirt bunches pretty attractively over what he suspects are washboard abs. Eventually he allows, "Shouldn't that be my line?"

"Let's start over. Come out with me."

"I'd rather stay in."

The joke's easy. The meaning behind it isn't; Kendall's one hundred percent certain he's going to screw this up again, which, no. Missing out on the opportunity to see James naked twice might actually be the death of him.

"There'll be time for that," James assures him, palming his hands across Kendall's hips. In the stark light of day, without a drop of alcohol in his system, James's skin crackles across Kendall's, hot and electric. "You should get to know me. I'm not a bad guy."

"I am," Kendall replies without a second's hesitation. James laughs, not understanding that it isn't a joke. Kendall insists, "I'm the worst. You should get out immediately," but apparently, his voice lacks authority.

James squeezes Kendall's hips a little forcefully and murmurs, "Well, at least you can acknowledge your flaws."

"You call them flaws, I call them charming quirks. We've reached an irrevocable difference of opinions."

"Rad. We'll have something to talk about on our date."

"I didn't agree to go out with you."

James talks right over him, "I'll meet you in Times Square around seven," and it would be incredibly obnoxious if he wasn't watching Kendall so carefully while he does it.

The full force of James's attention is a sun-warm glow between Kendall's ribcage and his spine. He rebels against it. Slumping back against the threadbare cushions and folding his arms protectively across his chest, he complains, "That's so far."

"Make it six thirty," is James's cheerful reply. He extricates himself from the confines of the couch too gracefully. "Don't be late."

"I never said I'd come!" Kendall protests. Besides, "Are you sure you aren't setting me up? I have nightmares about being trampled by camera-toting tourists."

James bares his teeth, pearly white and blinding. "Not a chance. I've got plans for you, Kendall Knight."

He punctuates his words by bending down and brushing his lips against the corner of Kendall's, the specter of a kiss short circuiting his doubts, including the errant voice asking what plans James means.

---

"You look like you could use a hero," a muffled voice proclaims, the owner scooching about a foot too far into Kendall's personal space. He smells boozey and unwashed, and not like anything Kendall wants to touch.

"Cool your boots, Iron Man," he replies, glaring down the costumed man. "Not interested."

This is the third street artist to approach him in the last minute, preceded by a rather shaggy looking Elmo and a cowboy in a gold thong. Kendall hates Times Square.

Iron Man gives him a one fingered salute and totters off to trick other tourists into donating some cash in exchange for a picture, carrying with him the stench of sweat and stale alcohol. Kendall hasn't read comic books in a long time, but he doesn't remember Tony Stark ever being that strapped for cash.

He taps his foot impatiently against glitter-glass asphalt, partitioned off from traffic by concrete pillars that barely come up to his thighs. The nonstop barrage of advertisements is offending his eyes, the pushy Eastern European families on vacation stepping on his toes, and every flash-snap of a camera makes him feel too paranoid. This place is hell on his nerves.

A hand lands on Kendall's shoulder, and he rounds on the perp, shouting, "Look, prick, I told you to take your impotent iron cock elsewhere-"

His words taper off at James's bemused expression.

"You must have me confused with someone else," he announces, loudly enough that all the tourists milling around can hear. James ropes his arms around Kendall's waist, grabbing Kendall by the ass and pushing in close enough to confide, "No one's called me impotent before."

"I strive to be original," Kendall replies dryly. He bounds up on the balls of his feet, pretending to go in for a kiss. He ends up nipping James's earlobe instead, grumbling, "Never make me come to this hellhole again."

"Ah, violent anger and extreme cynicism in the face of our local landmarks. You're becoming a true New Yorker."

Kendall balks, his true-blue Minnesota blood going cold in his veins at the idea of assimilating. "Aren't you supposed to be romancing me? I was promised a whirlwind of erotic passion and ardor, not insults to my honor."

"Here I thought you'd be low maintenance." James squeezes Kendall's butt through the fabric of his back pockets.

He wiggles out of James's grip, lest any random stranger starts thinking they're like, a couple. "Way to make me feel like a toolshed. We're off to a raring good start."

"Trust. I've got something planned."

There's an inscrutability about James's face that doesn't fit, a falsehood that Kendall can inexplicably see through, even though James is playing at keeping it well hidden beneath the twinkle of day-glo bulbs all around them, the ticker tape listing off the Dow Jones and the eight million well-lit Target ads.

Kendall takes a few steps back, jostling a Korean family with his wayward elbows and knees. They scatter like startled fish, gape-mouthed and cursing, probably, but fuck it, Kendall doesn't speak Korean. He tells James, "You don't have to wine and dine me to get into my pants."

"Clearly you've discovered my nefarious design."

"I'm serious."

"As far as I can tell, you're always serious. And never." He shrugs, the broad span of his shoulders slipping beneath his plain, too-tight tee. "You don't go on many dates."

"Presumptuous much?"

James grins, his teeth brighter than the neon billboards outlining his entire body in a white-light glow. "I'm not trying to offend you. I'm trying to tell you that you're worth more than cheap sex."

Kendall falters, the sudden tabula rasa of his mind a clear warning sign that this guy and his not-so-superficial charm is bad news bears. Fuck. How does he say that cheap sex is all he's really prepared for?

He manages, "You're really smooth, you know that?"

"All the girls say so."

Falling into step beside James, Kendall struggles to get his mental flirt factory working again. They dodge and weave between gawping vacationers, speeding cars, and the occasional desperate promoter. Times Square drowns everything in artificial light.

"Girls, huh? What about the guys?"

Unselfconsciously, James replies, "You're the first, so. Jury's still out."

Kendall trips right off the curb.

---

James drags him onto the 3, all the way down to Greenwich Village. He leads the way through the bastion of seething creativity and student-life with his head held high, a part of the dizzying melee in a way Kendall never could be.

The streets are alive. Compact tables littered with heaps of cheap silver jewelry, raggedy scarfs, blown glass bongs, and plastic knickknacks bustle, the cat calls of the vendors trailing them down the street. Freshmen from NYU mill around the glowing white faces of their cell phones, one foot in reality, one captured by the magnetic pull of social media outlets. So and so checked in at Off The Wagon. Look, see, so and so's Friday night is happening.

James navigates the streets without ever stopping to check his position amongst the stars, or with Siri, making a beeline through the milling crowds towards his destination. Kendall's entertaining high hopes for a bar of some kind, but that seems less and less likely as they begin to veer away from civilization.

Their reflections play across the glossy black windows of darkened storefronts like an old-time movie screen. Kendall catches James checking out his hair more than once. He probably shouldn't find that blatant narcissism attractive, but no one ever accused Kendall of being bright.

Intent on being as much of a prick as humanly possible to counteract the pinpoint of warmth in his chest, Kendall bounds up on his tippy toes and ruffles James's hair. The grimace and growl he gets in return warm him in a different way, his blood doing a victory lap in his veins. Brazenly, he tells James, "You look better this way. Less like a mannequin."

Fire snaps in James's eyes, gold blazing bright against tawny brown, but when he speaks, he's mild. His voice is laced with laughter. "Got a problem with perfection?"

"When I see it, I'll let you know," Kendall retorts defiantly, all the while that he is being the opposite of suave.

James's hackles raise and then James's hackles fall. His automatic prissy face levels out into something more controlled, the instant change wrapping as tightly around him as a magic spell. Purposefully, he reaches for Kendall's hand, a double image of them watery in the monochrome glass of a closed boutique behind him.

He says, "Yeah. You will," and Kendall needs a cryptograph to decode all the nuance in those words, the ambition and desire and promise woven so tightly together that none of it sounds like truth.

Not for the first time that night, Kendall wonders at James's motives behind this entire farce of a date. This doesn't happen in real life – you don't get to be a complete jackoff to a hot guy and then have him come back for seconds, unless that guy is say, Logan.

But Logan's got years of history and loyalty tied into his backstory with Kendall, while James has got a few drunken conversations and some pretty insane, if not unmistakable, chemistry sparking between the two of them. That's all there is.

To Kendall, that's all that matters. He's going to get laid if it kills him, and afterwards he's not going to spare even a second of thought to the beguilingly sweet way James squeezes his fingers before letting him go.

Unfairly ignorant of Kendall's internal bitchout, James begins sauntering back in the direction they've been heading in for approximately forever.

"Alright, where are you taking me?" Kendall asks, jogging to catch up. It is the mark of an extraordinarily cruel word that James can walk backwards as gracefully as he can forwards – he spins on his boot heel to face Kendall without ever slowing his pace.

"Mmm, nope. Can't tell."

"What do you mean you can't tell? Do you not know?"

"Oh, I know." James lifts his index finger in midair, deliberately tracing the tip of it against his lower lip, edging it against the plush pink of the top. He goes so far as to lick a stretch of his own skin, the fucking beautiful tease – he's practically begging Kendall to push him down on his knees, right there in the middle of a New York City block, just to see what those perfect lips look like around his cock – before he presses his entire finger against his mouth. "It's a secret."

When he puts it that way he makes an incredibly compelling argument. Kendall swallows. "I'm not sure I have the self-control required to manage an entire date with you, man."

James's delight is sudden and genuine. He quips, "I reward good behavior."

"Define good." He tries to loop his fingers around James's belt, but James dances away.

No kisses for Kendall. Again.

But to soften the blow, James grabs for Kendall's hand, and this time, he doesn't even try to let go.

---

They end up in front of a cement block building with grates on all the windows and a homunculi of a man in tight black clothes standing guard at the door. Kendall searches out a distinguishing sign, but he can't find anything, and the man waves James right on in the door like he's seen him before.

The door leads to a massive, dimly lit stairwell that is equally as concrete and gray. Two flights up, a high, throaty moan echoes across every surface.

"This is an orgy," Kendall says with complete conviction. "You've brought me to an orgy."

"So close," James replies, marching to the next floor faster than Kendall can walk. "Only not."

He doesn't comment on Kendall's ridiculous predilection for sex, but his quiet grin speaks for itself.

On the landing of the third floor, James pulls back an ominous door, spray-painted black with purple construction paper blocking the rectangular viewing window. He smirks back at Kendall and demands, "Are you ready for this?"

Kendall has no idea what this is, but he lives under the impression that he's ready for anything at any time. He says, "I was born ready," and means it wholeheartedly.

Behind the door, there's a big black room, lined with garish green lockers and a single bare black-light bulb. James begins emptying his pockets into the lockers, the sleek flicker of his cell phone screen before he shoves it inside nearly blinding. Kendall follows suit, despite having no idea what's going on.

The only things he has to store are a battered cell, an exponentially more battered and empty wallet, and his lone apartment key, the burnished gold dulled to an ugly bronze in the ugly room. Regardless, he makes a show of arranging them on an empty locker shelf while James unloads an entire apartment's worth of junk from his pants.

Skinny jeans should not be able to hide that much.

Both horrified and fascinated, Kendall covertly stares until James instructs, "Put this on," and hands him what appears to be a plastic chest plate. Flecks of red stain the grooves of black, garish as blood in the dimly lit room.

Kendall blinks, finally sussing out the game. "Paintball is your idea of romance?"

James beams. "Zombie paintball."

"I don't know what that means."

Shoving a big black gatling into his arms, James explains, "It means you shoot when you see zombies. And they, uh, hopefully don't eat your brain."

There's a bang at the door separating them from what is apparently a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Actors groan and moan and hunger for their internal organs or whatever.

Kendall's adrenaline pumps. He loves this shit – campy and fun and thrilling, all at once. Spinning out a smile so big and wide it actually hurts, he tells James, "You've delivered me to an undead horde. I may have overestimated your ability to woo."

"To woo?" James arches his eyebrows. "Nice word, Sir Lancelot."

"I do love it when people compliment my vocabulary," he leers in reply, brandishing his gun in the air. "It's extensive."

James glances pointedly towards Kendall's crotch. "I imagine it's not the only thing."

"Hey, I've offered," he retorts. "No need to imagine."

"Get your gear on. If you survive the night, maybe I'll give you a kiss."

"You're cute when you play hard to get. Just so you know, you're cuter when you're trying to swallow my tongue."

Maturely, James makes a face at him. Kendall returns it too easily. He's not used to flirting this way, caught between slow simmering lust and the cautious recognition of what could grow to be friendship. It's nice.

James is really nice.

Fuck. Whatever, it doesn't change a thing. Kendall hefts his gun and prompts, "Prepared to kick some ass?"

Mirroring him, James slings his paintball gun across one shoulder. "Let's do this."

---

The playing field is an endless stretch of concrete flooring, littered with props. Half a rusted out car, wooden barricades, netting placed strategically across cardboard cutouts of melty-skinned monsters, and scorch marks blackening the walls.

Kendall takes out three actors with decorative face paint in a matter of minutes, two of them zombies and one of them an "insurgent" with a paintball gun of her own, and all he wants to know is how a person ends up getting hired to play paintball all day? He wants this job like burning.

Forty minutes in, he and James are tied for the number of brainless corpses they've taken out. They're taking a breather, hiding behind a lean to that might be papier-mâché when the sound of recorded gunfire to the left startles the hell out of them both. Kendall turns on his heel and James spins right into him.

They go sprawling across the hard floor, Kendall landing on James with the sick crack of plastic and a jarring pain in his right knee. He twists to the left just in time to shoot one of the oncoming zombies in the chest.

"Nice aim," James tells him breathlessly, shifting his weight. He's right under Kendall, his body long and hard, even beneath the added inches of plastic.

Up close, he's every bit as sexy as he is from afar. Another spray of recorded, tinny gunfire rings out around them, but it's distant, background noise compared to the soft pant of James's breath and the relentless thunder of Kendall's heart.

Without Thinking About It should be the title of his autobiography, because that's exactly how it goes when he drops his head to touch his mouth to James's.

It's quick and dirty, tongue-slick and over too quickly for what Kendall wants. But if their first kiss was starshine, this one is shattered galaxies, fractured light that blazes out the edges of Kendall's vision.

Stunned, James asks, "What was that for?"

Kendall sits back on his heels, flushed. His tennis shoes squeak against the gray slab floor. "To say thank you. For all this."

"Right." James squirms underneath him, hands hovering self-consciously above Kendall's waist. "Uh. You're very welcome."

"You still didn't have to do this. This date thing. I'm. I don't deserve it, after how I acted." It's the closest thing to an apology he's ever going to be able to say.

James catches his gaze. His eyes are greedy, devouring Kendall from the inside out, like he can't stop looking. He sounds out, "You deserve a lot of things."

And then he says, "Duck," and the moment breaks, as a flesh-hungry zombie dives in on Kendall's six.

---

They stay out until four. Demolishing zombies turns into bickering about hockey, once they're forcibly ejected from the paintball playing field at closing time.

They carry their argument straight on over to a hole-in-the-wall falafel stand, where James drowns his chickpea patty in so much hot sauce that Kendall can taste it burning on his tongue when they part ways at the subway.

He kisses James deep, his tongue searching, his hands on the roam. It's a kiss about wanting, about taking and giving, and the longer it goes on, the more Kendall feels like the scuffed tile of the station has given way beneath his feet.

James pulls back with a ragged noise, a startled, needy thing that he buries in Kendall's neck. Breathing in, breathing out, he says, "What am I going to do with you?"

"Something scandalous, I hope," Kendall replies, going for cocky and mostly sounding winded.

They're holding each other, James propped against Kendall and Kendall propped against James, balanced like a house of cards. Kendall prefers to continue this arrangement, lest his knees give out and condemn them to catching something icky on the station floor.

Laughter rumbles through James's ribcage and echoes in Kendall's bones. "You have a one track mind."

Tilting his head until his lips are pressed against James's ear, Kendall agrees, "At least I'm honest about it. I want you to fuck me."

He can feel James shudder, taste the way he shakes. All this potential is brewing in the inches between their hips, and James just – flat out refuses to grab the bull by the horns. Or Kendall by the dick.

"Duly noted."

That is not the response to which Kendall's pick-up lines are accustomed. He debates the merits of pointing out that he's never ended a date with one measly goodnight kiss before, but then James murmurs, "See you soon," and it feels exactly like a promise.

---

Logan waves something thin and papery in front of Kendall's face. "Hey. Get dressed. Get up. Katie sent us tickets to the Zwagger concert at MSG."

Kendall groans and buries his head in the crook of his elbow.

"What'sat hafta do wi' me?"

Tugging his well-worn comforter down and away, exposing Kendall's hips to the chilly air, Logan replies, "We're going to go."

"I hate pop."

"You also hate waking up and putting on pants, but too bad. Those are things you're doing."

"Logan," Kendall whines. The blanket inches past his knees and no, that is not okay, it's cold. Irritably, he sneers, "Blow me."

"Okay," Logan says. "But you have to get up afterwards."

That's not what Kendall meant at all, but he isn't about to start arguing when Logan's thumbs trace the waistband of his boxers, dipping beneath elastic to touch the soft skin below. His breath is hot against Kendall's belly button, his tongue licking stripes against a golden treasure trail of his hair, and fuck, fuck, this is not how he intended to start this day.

His traitorous cock twitches against Logan's chin. Logan snorts softly, pressing a kiss through the thin plaid. "When's the last time someone did this for you?"

Kendall's breath hitches in his throat. "You know I'm not going to tell you that."

"Was it last night?" Logan demands, rough. "With that guy? I know you went out with him again. Striking out once wasn't enough?"

"No. Logan-" Kendall starts to sit up, but Logan's stronger than he looks. A firm hand against his chest keeps Kendall pinned while Logan works his boxers down with his teeth.

Kendall makes a guttural noise when the elastic of his underwear catches against the head of his cock, slumping back into his pillows.

"You can't be jealous," he tells the ceiling. "You don't get to be jealous. You know how this works."

"I know," Logan agrees, his consonants sharp and bitten off.

Kendall gets exactly half a second to consider what is going wrong here before his dick's in Logan's mouth, and then he's not thinking about anything but tightwetgood. He bunches his fingers in Logan's hair and tells him ever so eloquently, "Fuck," doubts dying on his tongue.

Logan's got a nice mouth, a great mouth, and he's known how to use it on Kendall since they were fourteen and his tentative crush was growing full-fledged wings. He sucks Kendall off with the kind of enthusiasm that implies there's nothing else he'd rather be doing, lips a tight red ring that steadily grows plumper and more abused. Kendall bucks up and Logan takes it, swallows down around him like an actual pro.

He moans when he does that, the vibration resonant down the thick flesh of Kendall's shaft, turning liquid inside his bones. Hell. Maybe he'd stop letting Logan give him head if Logan stopped being so damned good at it, but Logan is not getting with the problem at all.

While Kendall fucks his mouth, he kneads his knuckles into Kendall's thighs, skims his fingertips across his knees. Kendall groans, an incoherent noise, and Logan fondles his balls. He licks out, his tongue practically flame.

Everything is unbearably warm, a pressure building beneath his skin, and his dick looks so hot this way, disappearing between Logan's lips again and again and again. Everything is skin and warm morning sunlight, the slick of Logan sucking him and the slow circle of his fingertips against Kendall's sac.

It's safe and it's home, Logan the only real barrier against the rest of the world that Kendall has ever known. He comes cradled against his best friend's tongue, held tight in the hot confines of his mouth, and Logan watches him. He shudders and quakes and floods Logan's mouth with bitter, salty warmth and Logan's dark, coffee colored eyes never once leave his face.

Christ, this is bad.

Sitting back on his heels, Logan's neck bobs with swallowing. Dark and guarded, he tells Kendall, "You could fuck me," which.

"I can't," Kendall replies.

He hates himself at fourteen, at sixteen, now, because this is a thing he should have ended a long time ago. Or never even started. But he's helpless to change any of it, helpless to change himself, so he lets Logan jerk off furiously all over his face, until there's cum on Kendall's lips, dripping down his throat, because it's the only way he knows how to apologize.

---

Come out with me tonight, James texts him at 2:45 pm.

Can't. Kendall replies at 2:50. Roommate's dragging me to see Zwagger.

There's a long pause. Long enough that Kendall thinks James forgot all about him. Then, at 3:52 pm: I thought you hated Zwagger.

I do, Kendall says. I don't want to go.

At 4:10 pm, James says, Your life is so hard.

Kendall frowns down at his phone. Is it a joke? An insult? Is James actually mad?

He's a stranger, is the thing. A stranger who clicks right with Kendall, but that means little to nothing. This is not a case of love at first sight, or second, or third, because it can't be. Because Kendall absolutely, positively doesn't believe in that sappy bullcrap.

The one thing Kendall stands by is that using his dick as a compass has never (always) lead him wrong before, and that's what drives him now. He texts James a smiley face and an offer to look him up later, steamrolling right over the niggling fear that he's done something wrong.

In his experience, hurt feelings have never stopped anybody from taking off their pants.

---

Zwagger is the actual worst.

Okay, maybe he's not. His singing voice is oddly beautiful, ringing out across the seats with a strength that seems completely at odds with the short, dark haired boy it comes from.

Regardless…

"I hate pop music," Kendall grumps over the phone.

"Shut your trap and let me listen," Katie barks back, her no-nonsense bite laced through with fondness.

Obediently, Kendall lifts the mouthpiece of his cell higher, so that Katie can maybe pick up a note or three.

"He is! He's going flat at the end of the chorus. I told them-"

"Good for you, baby sister. Can I hang up now?"

Dangling a phone from his ear in the second row of a sold out concert is kind of embarrassing. Zwagger's brood of teenaged fans keep trying to stab him with their crazed side-eyes. A year ago, nobody ever heard of Zwagger. Now he's got a teenaged horde that's way more terrifying than the undead brood Kendall and James fought off at paintball.

Katie snaps, "No," which means there's a very real chance Kendall's going to die. He rolls his eyes at Logan over the opening strains of Reach For Me, Zwagger's biggest hit single.

It's impossible to go anywhere these days without the damned song assaulting your ears; Kendall tunes out instantly, even though the bass thrums relentless through his rib cage.

Zwagger sings, "…at night when the bright stars are burning high over Manhattan, all washed out in neon, and hidden from view. But when the power goes out and you look out from Brooklyn, will you reach for me, reaching out for you…"

"Flat again!" Katie crows. Her glee is completely out of place in the middle of the ballad. The girl on Kendall's left glowers like she can force Kendall to hang up through sheer force of will.

She can't. Kendall's way more scared of his little sister than he is of any random fan, even if she takes to accidentally elbowing him for the rest of the song.

Oblivious to – or plainly not caring about – Kendall's plight, Katie prattles on about her victory. She works as a production assistant at Colossal Records, one of the biggest labels in Los Angeles. Zwagger reigns as Colossal's biggest star, and also the artist least susceptible to any criticism ever in the eyes of the label's musical overlords. He has made them a shit-ton of cash, after all.

But Katie hates it. She thinks invulnerability is a myth, possibly because she lives to exploit weaknesses to her own advantage. This is definitely not the first time she's discreetly sent Kendall and Logan to a show to scout out flaws in Colossal's talent. It probably won't be the last.

"Gloating isn't nice," Kendall chides in an attempt to be a role model.

Katie shoots back, "Really? It feels spectacular."

Drat. Foiled again.

Logan snickers, crashing against Kendall's side. He probably doesn't even have to hear Katie's side of the conversation to know what she said.

It's an unfortunate side effect of letting him practically live with them when they were all younger and less likely to be at a pop concert.

Zwagger's melody weaves together with the laughter of his best friend and his little sister, all of it climbing high on a crescendo that builds and builds, towering over the audience in a wave of sound. For the briefest of moments, Kendall closes his eyes and thinks about being up there, about singing his own songs.

It would be a rush, he thinks. Better than fucking, or liquor, or drugs.

Better than anything Kendall has ever tasted on his tongue, and so outright impossible that it's better not to dream.

---

James is standing at the bottom of the steps, wearing tight jeans and a shirt he must have glued on, looking better than sex, or candy, or both.

Kendall skids to a halt, Logan slamming right into his back. "Hey! What the- oh," he finishes flatly when he sees James. "It's your boyfriend."

"Is that what he's calling me?" James asks, smug as fuck.

"Right now I'm labeling you a stalker, I think," Kendall retorts breezily. "What are you doing here?"

"Whisking you off on an adventure. I hear that's what you do when you're trying to woo."

"Funny. You're a funny man," Kendall tells James and his stupid, sassy grin.

James opens his mouth to retort, probably with something that will tread the line between rude and pleasant. "I-"

"Kendall's busy."

Logan slides an arm possessively around Kendall's shoulders, even though he has to stand on his tippy toes to do it. He's glaring at James with an intensity he must have learned from all those teenage girls flocking inside Madison Square Garden, like he's got literal daggers hiding behind his corn-syrup colored eyes. It's not even a little bit okay.

Kendall shrugs his arm off. "I'm not."

James purses his lips, eyes tracking back and forth between them. "If this is a bad time…?"

"It's not great," Logan responds bluntly.

"It's fine. You're fine. We're all fine." Kendall levels Logan with his best impression of stern.

It might have been more effective if Logan weren't the tiniest, most tenacious person in the world. Absolutely belligerent, he says, "I'm not fine. I am the opposite of fine."

"Cut the melodrama," Kendall replies, before James can jump in with a heroic save and do something stupid, like leave. "Logan."

"Kendall," Logan echoes. Surliness flickers across his lips, pinches his eyes and scrunches his chin. "You're going, aren't you?"

"Out into the city, not Timbuktu. Chillax."

Intent on being the worst at helping, James squeezes Kendall's shoulder and goes, "Nobody says chillax anymore."

Logan's not the only one who used the past two hours to hone their glaring skills. James backs down, quick.

Cupping his hand against his forehead like that might ward off an impending headache, Logan says. "Great. Ditch me. Reinforce my beliefs about the power of friendship."

"No really," James tells the air, because Kendall is sure as shit not paying attention. "I can go."

Beaming at James, Kendall says, "'scuse us for a minute." Then he proceeds to manhandle Logan back up the steps through a steady stream of hurried concert-goers, each more irritated than the last at being jostled. They're barely far enough out of earshot before Kendall demands, "What do you want? No, tell me. What is it, exactly, that you're trying to achieve here?"

Logan rearranges his features with all the precision of an Etch-A-Sketch. It's all there – his irritation, his concerm, sloppy and too-clear. "You're being a dick."

"That shouldn't shock you," Kendall answers incredulously.

"Do you like this guy?"

"I like the way his ass looks in those jeans. Is that a crime?"

Stubborn as fuck, Logan says, "You've been on five dates."

"Three. This would be number three."

"Big difference there. Not." Urgently, Logan says, "Just. You've always been a sucker for pretty faces. So you should, you know, try not to be that this time."

Oh. Right. Logan's doing that thing Kendall hates, where he uses his brain so much it's got to be overheating. He's a thinker, and normally, that's fine. He likes to ponder the mysteries of the universe, like who actually came up with the invention of fire and why anyone ever thought harem pants were a good idea. Thinking is his thing, but so is overthinking, which leads to worrying, and Kendall hatehatehates it when Logan worries about him.

"Why?" He demands, even knowing the reason.

Unflinching, Logan stares him down. Shortstack barely reaches Kendall's forehead, but he's still scary, like a rabid koala or something. He says, "You know why. Don't let this guy break your heart."

Words are thick on Kendall's tongue.

He plays it off with a sassy salute and an agreement of, "Will do, mon capitan," but his smile doesn't quite reach his lips. Logan's eyes are boring into his skull.

Kendall ignores it, because Kendall's really good at pretending nothing is wrong. If denial was a profession, he'd be CEO in a hot lick minute. He bounds down the stairs, marches up to James, and tells him, "Somebody got their hall pass. Somebody being me."

James tangles their fingers together. "Rad. Now I can show you the world."

"Shining, shimmering, splendid?" Sticking his tongue between his lips, Kendall bites the tip and crosses his eyes. "Only you're definitely the Princess in this scenario."

Sternly, James pulls his hand away and replies, "I'm not taking you anywhere if you can't behave."

"Alright, alright. I'll lay off the tiara jokes. Tonight." Kendall grins. "Lead the way. The world is waiting."

He allows James to guide him through the whiz-bang-pop of New York City traffic, every street-crossing a life-threatening thrill. Pedestrians flood all available surfaces, shoulders pressing in on them both, but James holds his head tall and navigates through them with the same ease as the night before, passing untouched through the crowd. Kendall isn't afforded the same grace; he's battered back and forth like a wayward sail.

Reaching the sidewalk is a small triumph. Kendall shimmies his hips and searches out James, the tan skin at the nape of his neck and the strong span of his shoulders and the rich scent of his cologne straight ahead, his compass north. He trips forward and wrangles his arm up around James's throat. "I'm going to guess where we're headed. Is it bigger than a breadbox?"

James bumps their noses together, an almost kiss that Kendall tries to follow through. He's thwarted by James's quick reflexes and his laughing response of, "How was the concert?"

"Katie says Zwagger flattens his high notes," Kendall replies sagely, whisking James off down the avenue. This is New York in starts and stops, every block a new street-crossing adventure.

Together, they step off a sidewalk, James so much less graceful with Kendall hunkering him down. He asks, "…is Katie what you call Logan when you're alone together?"

"Katie's my baby sister." Kendall rolls his eyes, making sure to use one hundred percent more sass than usual. "She works for Colossal Studios."

It doesn't feel like the wrong thing to say, right up until James tenses beneath his arm. He's rigid muscle and simmering unease, and he demands, "Let me get this straight. Your sister works for one of the biggest record labels in LA and she can't get you a job?"

Kendall imitates a wrong buzzer noise. "Incorrect, you fine gentleman. Let me tell you a thing. One, Katie's only an intern. Two, I've explicitly forbidden her from trying, even if she could throw her weight around and bully somebody into giving me a shot."

"Why would you forbid it?" The look James gives him is completely reptilian, colder than Antarctica and tinted envy-green. Kendall falls back a step or three in an attempt to escape it, but the chill never quite leaves his spine.

"Scoring a job through my baby sister is not the definition of living the dream."

"Pride's deadly, you know."

"Pride's the only thing I have left," he replies, too honest, too raw, and James doesn't get it at all. Kendall can tell from the furrow between his eyebrows, every nuance quizzical.

From the way he concludes, "I think you're scared," instead of asking what else Kendall could have possibly lost.

That's okay. James doesn't have to be prescient to look really nice naked.

"Scared of begging for favors?" Kendall challenges. He's never worn fear well.

James skids to a halt, right in the middle of an overcrowded crosswalk. Shoulders squared, he retorts, "Scared of fame. Of people knowing what you can really do."

"You're right." Kendall watches the redyellowgreen of a traffic light play across James's cheekbones. "I'm terrified of superstardom. Also, clowns."

"And you're off," James comments softly, "Speeding down the track with enough sarcasm to scare off anyone with common sense."

The asphalt beneath Kendall's sneakers has a pulse, a rumble of oncoming traffic and the beatbeatbeat of Kendall's traitorous heart. He swallows around a golf ball size lump in his throat and tries not to break James's gaze. "I don't see you rabbiting away."

"Common sense is overrated." Huffing a laugh, James conducts a forward march, in the lead again. It's clear that's where he prefers to be, dead center of Kendall's attention. "Come along now."

Hastily, Kendall dodges about eight bajillion pedestrians, falling all over himself to catch up. That's becoming a theme with him and James that he'll have to evaluate sometime that is not now. "You're a big fan of the city scavenger hunts. I see that. Where are we going now?"

"Over, sideways, and under," James hums, and no way Kendall is going to admit that he knows that much of a Disney song out loud.

The gaping maw of Greely Square's subway entrance, limned by wrought iron fencing and the PATH to the side, looms in front of them like a well-tiled sinkhole. James practically skips down into the bowels of Manhattan, taking the steps two at a time.

Too competitive to let that slide, Kendall's hot at his heels. Only, at the bottom, James skids to an abrupt stop. He asks, "By the way, should I be worried?"

Kendall windmills his arms, flailing at bit to keep from collapsing onto him. He pants, "About the number of times you've seen Aladdin? Very possibly."

Benevolently, James lets the insult slide. "About the heart-to-heart you had with your bodyguard earlier."

"You like Logan," Kendall objects, because James totally didn't mind Mr. Sassypants when he dropped by the apartment that first night. Tonight Logan was a mite more abrasive, but that can't change – anything.

It just can't.

"Logan seems pretty dope," James concedes, and something unknots in Kendall's chest. "That's why I want to make sure there're no hard feelings."

"What." Kendall blinks in the face of James's absolute perfection, because God did not create people this nice. "Do you volunteer at soup kitchens and help old ladies cross the street too?"

"Excuse me?"

"Never mind. Logan is. There's a thing." He holds up a hand to ward off James's impending questions. "We don't talk about the thing. But now he overreacts. It's his replacement thing."

James taps his Metro Card out of his wallet and flashes Kendall some teeth. "I'm going to pretend that made sense."

He sashays through the turnstiles like there's a runway underneath them. Kendall has to swipe his stupid subway card three times before it bothers to read. Next to James, he feels about as graceful as a water buffalo, all his athletic prowess leeching away.

Not that he cares about being impressive. It's just irritating, is all. He grimaces at the muck caking the subway rails.

They have to wait five minutes for a Q train to come rattling down the tracks, whooshing over the sodden mess of mud and detritus in a blur of silver, orange, and black. Inside, the cabin's near empty, but James scoots too close on the ugly orange plastic seats regardless.

"I've never volunteered," he offers.

"Pardon?"

"In a soup kitchen. Or anywhere. My mom's not a big fan of charity unless it's theoretical."

"Don't think we covered theoretical charity in Physics 101."

"The kind you can throw money at," James clarifies. "Diamond Cosmetics is a philanthropic organization, you know."

"I think I read that in the pamphlet." Kendall nods sagely. It's sharing time, probably. It seems like sharing time. He tries, "I used to volunteer at a hospital. I never got much out of it, other than an inoculation for gore."

"Why'd you quit?"

"Lack of warm, fuzzy, helping-humanity feelings aside? I." Down the aisle, a college aged girl examines her cuticles as if they hold the secrets of the universe. Two teenage boys leer at her legs while simultaneously bickering over the new Call of Duty. A homeless man settles down against a row of three seats, everyone else giving him a wide berth. Kendall continues, "I was in my last year of high school, and there were parties-"

He hesitates, because wow, does that sound like a selfish reason to give up on charity, even if it's true. The sleeping hobo is judging him from behind closed eyelids. "I had no time. And then…then. I guess, after everything that happened, it seemed like a dumb idea to try to help anyone else when I could barely help myself." Minutely ashamed, he adds, "I don't think I'm cut out to be a grownup."

James touches his knee, fingers warm through denim. He squeezes. "You are. You just have to try harder."

"Your faith in humanity is gripping."

"And your lack of faith makes me sad. We're going to work on that."

Immediately latching onto the sub-textual insult, Kendall retorts, "I'm not a DIY project. You can't fix me up."

Saint James snorts. "'Course not. I like you exactly the way you are. But as a member of the human race, you want to improve yourself."

"Says who?"

"Says everyone. We all want to be better. Doesn't mean we need to be – you're you, and I think you're…" He pauses, expression too earnest, too open, too raw. "I think you're as close to perfect as anyone can get." His thumb traces tiny figure eights against Kendall's knee. It's distracting Kendall from like, breathing. "Only you don't think that. You don't like yourself much, Kendall Knight."

Kendall gulps down air, struggling to suck it in.

"I like myself just fine, thanks."

"Nah," James replies slowly. "You want to be better. So I'll help."

Inside, Kendall's melting all over, and damn. His heart isn't supposed to be subject to global warming. He manages, "I don't know what I'd do without you to slay all my dragons," but there's no bite. James is defanging him.

He says, "You're the knight, Knight."

This isn't going at all like Kendall planned.

At Canal Street, James practically pushes Kendall off the subway, guiding him with long fingers beneath his shoulder blades. The air smells like dumplings and sewage, although that's mostly the grate separating the street from the trains below. Chinatown is alive at this time of the evening, everything gilded gold and blazing red. Packs of humanity mill in front of stalls hawking fake purses, Ray-Bans, and Rolexes, while adept denizens of the area duck and weave in their forward trek. Whole chickens dangle brown and juicy in one window. The next is bedecked in sapphires and topaz. At least three times, Kendall is stopped by storekeepers with increasingly more impressive pitches, but James skips past all the sparkle. He disappears down Mulberry, where the entire landscape morphs; green stacked on white stacked on red, Christmas colors exploding everywhere.

Little Italy thrives off the night. Strings of fairy lights create a canopy of white and burnished yellow, the twinkle outmatching the stars. The soundtrack from La Dolce Vita spills onto the street, echoing out of at least nine similarly adorned restaurants, all decorated with grape leaves and cherubs and tiny placards declaring their food authentic.

James pulls Kendall straight into the center of it, colors flashing bright everywhere he looks, saffron yellow and coral pink, red brighter than a street walker's lips and a blue he wants to dive into, swim in, immerse himself under until he's drowning with it. Penguin suited hosts and hostesses smile too wide and beckon, but James spins Kendall on his toes, tugs him into this dance that neither of them know the steps to, and they're off.

Each step and turn takes them further down the street, weaving through a sidewalk obstacle course of clapboard signs that advertise ravioli, caprese, gnocchi and veal marsala. James's palm hovers over the small of Kendall's back, a warm, steady presence that wavers between tangible and imagined.

Down a side alley, the melody tapers into a softer, more fragile thing, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong crooning a standard about dancing cheek to cheek. James's face looms close, his breath a hot spot against Kendall's skin, and fuck it if Logan wasn't right. Kendall needs to check himself before he wrecks himself, because he's been through enough head-on collisions to last a lifetime.

He steps on James's foot, accidentally on purpose.

It achieves nothing.

Frank Sinatra picks up the tail end of the canned song and James knows every single word. He nuzzles against him and sings, subdued, "You took the part that once was my heart, so why not take all of me?"

Kendall is acutely uncomfortable with all this…atmosphere. Sex. That's all he wanted. Good old fashioned horizontal mambo-type dancing, not the slow tangle of bodies that is happening all up over the asphalt, making his heart thud too hard and his ribcage feel like it's irreparably split.

He says, "James, I-"

"Want the best éclair in town?" James murmurs huskily. "Because that's where we're going."

Kendall gapes, completely forgetting his dick and its mission, insomuch as he ever forgets his equipment. He accuses, "You want me to get fat. You're going to feed me éclairs and croon pretty things at me and I'm not going to fit in my skinny jeans anymore."

"I'll take you jogging after."

"There are better ways to get me all sweaty."

"Probably," he agrees, inappropriately smug for a guy who's turning down sex. Again. "But none of them involve watching you lick pink frosting flowers."

"They can! They totally can!" Kendall protests, "I've got icing back at my place!"

Alas. He is thwarted again. Their second date, much like their first, involves James leaving Kendall at the subway station, half-hard in his jeans and not even a little abashed about it.

He says, "I'll call you soon," and Kendall absolutely does not wonder how long he'll have to wait for soon to arrive. He falls back into routine – he goes to work, he comes home, he bickers with Logan, or Katie on the phone, and he resolutely refrains from mentioning James to anybody. Because.

Because people keep telling him dumb shit, like that he looks happy. Happiness is a ploy Kendall refuses to buy into; euphoria's for suckers. There's no way up and no way out except heartbreak, apathy, or death. Which, in order, are Kendall's least favorite things.

To counteract the onslaught of people celebrating his newfound glow – including a cackling Katie and Minerva, but minus an extremely sullen Logan, because he's eight times the fatalist Kendall could ever be – he resolves to pursue a few ill-advised past-times. All that gets him is a hangover Logan outright refuses to nurse and probably hypothermia. Falling into the East River in mid-winter; not his best plan.

"Are you trying to kill yourself?" Logan grumbles, watching Kendall pull off his boxers with thinly-veiled lust in his eyes.

"Not the actions of a smitten man, right?" Kendall replies cheerfully, shivering in the empty space of the loft.

Logan sighs and tosses a worn, fuzzy blanket his way. Kendall gratefully wraps it around his shoulders, hiding his junk from view. He almost misses the plaintive way Logan replies, "I guess not."

Kendall hesitates, pasting on a carefree smile that sits in total contrast to the throbbing in his head. "We're buds. You know that, right?"

"Buds," Logan repeats dully. "Duh. What else would we be?"

---

Kendall's cursed, or something. Cursed. Because about five minutes after Logan's rapid departure to do future-doctor things, James shows up.

"You look like shit."

Tightening his grip on the fuzzy blue blanket, Kendall beams. Or tries to. He's in a state of unrelenting agony thanks to the kickdrum pounding in his head, which is exacerbated in turn by sunlight, noise, and particularly pungent smells. The long trek from his loft-bed to the door helps nothing. "Did you come here to insult me, or is this visit solely for business?"

"Nope. All pleasure," James replies smoothly, grinning right back. He brought his A-game today, Kendall sees.

"There are these newfangled inventions you may have heard of. Sir Thomas Edison created them. I think they're called phones."

"Yours is off."

"It is not. My phone never dies. It's fucking immortal." Kendall fishes his cell out of the sodden lump that is his jeans. "Immortal, I tell you. It totally is not d – oh. Er. I guess immortality doesn't hold a candle to being like, waterproof. Oopsie daisy."

"On the one hand, I'm really attracted to you all naked and wet. On the other, you just said oopsie daisy." James slinks through the door, his natural, obnoxious grace making Kendall's head throb. "Rough night?"

"You could say that. I just got in."

"I can tell." James pauses. "It's one pm."

"You can't police my schedule. You haven't been to the schedule policing academy."

"Your teeth are chattering."

"That is astute. You have said an astute thing," Kendall mumbles through chattering teeth. As an afterthought, he declares, "I'd like to sit down."

The complete opposite of a gentleman, James plops his fine, fine specimen of an ass down on Kendall's ratty sofa. But then he goes and all sweetly pats his lap, and no way is Kendall turning down an opportunity to nuzzle his dick. He'd gallop over there like a sparkly unicorn if the world wasn't spinning – but his obedient trot is equally as impressive, he's sure.

Kendall sprawls across the couch in a catastrophe of limbs and skin and his face planted firmly between James's thighs, which is not quite as sexy as he'd hoped.

"I think I'm asphyxiating," he tells James's pants.

Helpfully, James frees his breathing-holes from the cage of his legs, turning Kendall on his back with sure, steady hands. "You're a mess."

"You said that already."

"I said you look like shit."

"These are not the compliments a lady hopes to receive," Kendall retorts, sticking out his tongue and then deciding his mouth tastes gross. Kind of salty and garbagey, like he's bathed in the sloughed-off skin of dead mob bosses.

Ew, East River. Ew.

Oblivious to his internal struggle, James strokes Kendall's hair. Pinpricks of heat tremble against Kendall's scalp, warm and gentle and too intimately James. They haven't even fucked yet. Kendall shouldn't have memorized his touch.

He shouldn't have, but.

Softly, James tells him, "You're still beautiful. For a guy who looks like he went through a car wash sans the car. You shouldn't be so beautiful."

Kendall peers up at him, bleary-eyed and skeptical. "Admit it. You only like me for my body."

"Caught me."

"Knew it." Kendall shades his face from the harsh fluorescence of the apartment's lights, cuddling into the hard planes of James's stomach. "Gon' sleep now. You stay here, 'kay?"

"I'm not going anywhere," James promises, and because Kendall maybe possibly is more of a sucker than he lets on, he chooses to happily believe that.

---

"The best cure for a hangover is more alcohol," James reminds him, as Kendall stares at the literal jug of beer in absolute horror.

"I'm going to puke."

"Don't you fucking dare."

"My stomach might dare." Kendall attempts to wet his lips, his tongue a dry, shriveled thing. James let him sleep through nightfall, but his kindness was obviously a ploy to cover up his latent sadism. "Please don't make me do this."

"Man up."

"I said please," Kendall whines, head and stomach throbbing in time.

"You brought this on yourself."

"Oh, you think so, do you?" Gritting his teeth, Kendall strives to shoot laser beams from his eyes. Tragically, today is not the day he gains mutant powers. Settling back in his seat, he says, "In reality, this is all your fault."

"Mine?" James has the nerve to look genuinely startled. "You didn't invite me to traipse off on your little adventure."

"Your fault," Kendall repeats adamantly.

"What even happened? I bet it's a hell of a story."

No way is Kendall planning on regaling him with the tale of how standing at the border of puppy-lovesick and in-complete-denial made him antsy and uncomfortable. How he got a little wasted with Minerva at work, called up the last girl he ever loved and, when she declined to pick up, how he let the underage coeds flirting with him at the bar show him a good time. The part where he decided to play Truth-Or-Dare with them was especially irresponsible; after he emerged from the former Sound River and found most of his clothes missing, the juvenility of it all sank it. He's not proud. He's definitely not telling James.

"It was a grand adventure," he replies, and takes the damn shot. His stomach, predictably, mutinies, but Kendall's got enough experience binge drinking that he manages to keep it down.

James says, "Fine, sure. Don't tell me."

He's wearing this pinched expression, like it genuinely bothers him that Kendall's keeping secrets. In turn, that bugs Kendall. As if James has the right to know every part of him at this early stage in their – not relationship. That's not what this is. Of this, Kendall is certain: relationships involve way more dick than what he's been getting.

"Are you-" Kendall swallows around the burn in his throat, wishing he'd never even heard of alcohol. "Are you mad right now?"

"No. Yes. I don't get you, man. You come out of nowhere with all the ferocity of a sidewinder and you're – fuck, you're brilliant. You are fucking resplendent. And you don't even see it. All that talent, squandered. Dumped in the East River."

"It's not like I died."

The excruciatingly bright sun straining in around the blackout blinds that shade the bar's windows outlines James in soft white light. He's washed out and foreign, someone Kendall's fooled himself into believing he knows. And then the tension floods from his shoulders. He signals the bartender for more shots and grins. "Nope. You've gotta have a guardian angel on your side."

"I'm the luckiest sonofabitch out there," Kendall agrees, even though he's spent a huge chunk of time since college convinced he's anything but. Life isn't so bad. He's feeling marginally less pukey, his headache dulling at the edges, and he's in a bar with a beautiful boy. Who's kind of a jerk, but also incredibly hot, and hey, he's shallow.

He grabs for one of the shots and raises it in the air, clinking his glass with James's. "Cheers, man."

"Cheers," James agrees. "Here's hoping some of your luck rubs off on me."

---

"You got us kicked out," Kendall declares, profoundly offended. He's never met anybody, ever, with a capacity for troublemaking as big as his own. Even Logan, his best best best friend, quails in the face of danger. Which leads him to the realization that, "I like you. Fuck. I really like you."

Kendall might be drunk. Again. A little bit.

"Duh," James replies, with the slightest of slurs. "Now shush. I'm going to take us to a room with a view."

They hop in a cab, because James has a wad of cash in his pocket that he doesn't bother to explain. Kendall figures – when he bothers to think about it at all – that James swallowed his pride and called up his 'rents. He's vaguely envious, but it's not like James isn't sharing the wealth.

He leans back against a worn leather seat and watches as the city winks by. The cabbie's smoking a thick, cherry scented cigar. It floods the car with cloying fruitiness, but they're both too buzzed to care, bickering with increasingly high volume about hockey, sci-fi, and the notes and lyrics and melodies of music. Kendall gets stuck on this one line in a song he's working on, fleshing his ideas out the way he only ever manages to do by his lonesome or in Logan's surly company. When James chips in with an assist, he doesn't mind. Which. He's not sure what to do with that.

So he barrels on, "I dunno about that word though. We think always has no meaning, because it is said ceaselessly, pervasively, inaccurately. But it's actually a bit beautiful, isn't it? Always. All the ways, in every way, no matter where life goes." Kendall laughs, drink bubbling in his brain. "I'm not making any sense."

"No," James tells him quietly. "I've never heard you so clearly."

Kendall throws him a reckless smile, flagrantly drunk, carelessly vulnerable.

James says, "Words are important. Knowing how to use them and what they really represent, underneath the tarnish of everyday conversation, and how to set them to melodies, that's what defines a lyricist. You're remarkably talented, dude."

Kendall laughs again, hoarseness edging the noise. "According to the poor little rich boy with the lungs of a superstar. You should talk. If I could belt music like you, I wouldn't have such a hard time trying to sell myself."

"The songs," James corrects idly, his face a canvas of pink and orange and red, along with the sky and the setting sun. Kendall doesn't know how he scored this opportunity, but he thinks he's been wasting it long enough.

Leaning in close, he says, "No, I meant what I said. I'm selling the whole package, you know."

He extends a graceless hand down the span of his chest, mocking and offering in equal measure.

James takes the bait. "Oh yeah? How much do you cost, Kendall Knight?"

"For you? For you, I'm a bargain."

He's relatively certain he would have scored right then and there, if only the cabbie hadn't plead, "Get out. Please," waving the embers of his cigar at them all the while.

On the sidewalk, Kendall shoves his hands in his pockets. "Why are we in LIC?"

"The universal question."

"I'm not getting existential, jackass. I'm freezing."

He shivers for emphasis, but all he gets from James is a dirty glare. "Residual hypothermia. That happens when you jump in the East River in the middle of September."

"Whatever. September's a dumb month to live in New York anyway."

It's true. Half the days are so achingly stuffy that Kendall can barely breathe, while the other half are sodden and wet and filled with the promise of winter. Today's the latter, so chilly they're both breathless with it. At James's final destination, briskness lashes out across the tiny, choppy waves that broil offshore, nipping at their flushed cheeks and bitten lips until they're both quivering with its bite.

They hit up a deli around the corner from James's new, exciting, spectacular idea, which Kendall knows now, and all he can hear is Logan's voice in his head, calling him a complete and utter moron. He kind of agrees.

Gantry Plaza State Park is colder and emptier than the main streets, the pasture-green grass brown with the coming winter. Slides jut from the hulking shape of a blue-and-yellow play monstrosity that kids' mothers forced them to abandon as the Northern winds began to prowl. The sky bleeds lilac and indigo; the last dying gasps of sunset dissipating into the black velvet crush of night. Amidst that, the city is coming to life, the white-gold-yellow of electric lights animating the darkening landscape of skyscrapers. James and Kendall are reanimated too, a red cast to their skin, teeth, and eyes.

"We're going to get arrested," Kendall fusses as James throws him an ice cold can of beer.

James whisks all that naysaying away with a single declaration of, "Faithless. You're never going to get anywhere with that attitude."

His face is a dare, all challenge and impishness and too pretty to be real. Kendall swallows.

"Caution isn't a bad thing."

"Yeah. If you're boring."

No one in the history of ever has accused Kendall of being boring, so he scrambles up after James, the two of them vaulting a few perfectly serviceable benches on their way to the iconic Pepsi-Cola sign, a New York City landmark. Based out of Long Island City, the sign's a Manhattan landmark, glimmering on the edges of the East River. It's freestanding, unprotected, ready to be Facebooked or Instagrammed or whatever the kids are doing these days. Kendall's smart phone is prehistoric, and not especially smart. He couldn't download an app if he tried.

The point is, the only thing standing between them and climbing the stupid sign is gravity and the watchman patrolling the park, who James clocked at a local burger joint, watching the Giants on a grainy television.

"In case I wasn't clear on the subject, I enjoy living." He makes this solemn oath while pulling himself up on one of the very, very thin, flat bars that support the massive sign, like a billboard constructed of flimsy metal. They're not incredibly high off the ground or anything, and the dessicated grass would probably cushion a fall, and it's not even like Kendall's scared of heights – but if he doesn't act beleaguered, James will think he's having fun.

The horror.

It's not bad up in the metaphorical rafters. Everything glows eerie and strange, the blackness of the descending night all the darker for it. But the beer's iced and bubbly in Kendall's throat, the carbonated piss taste of PBR an acquired taste after so many years with little to no funds. He kicks out his feet and gives James a grin that could be described as marginally impressed. "This isn't bad."

"Told you. Pussy." James dangles his legs so that they're almost brushing against Kendall's, jeans and sneakers and boots all blocking anything tangible, but there's heat between them all the same. Booze sings in Kendall's blood, bubbling under the surface, and James is a singular, resonant phenomena beside him. He asks, "When you write, how much of that comes from real life?"

Kendall takes a sip of his beer to avoid answering, the mystery and magic of the universe suddenly lost.

It's not that he hates talking about music – he's a big fan of it, himself, and the songs he writes, which is arrogant, maybe, but what's wrong with a little pride? At the same time, he finds it weird that James likes talking about it so much. Like Kendall's process is absolutely key to everything James finds fascinating about him.

Then again, James wants to write his own music, so. Maybe it's not completely bizarre. It's even nice to pretend he has a real fanboy. No one's actually looked up to Kendall since hockey stopped being a real part of his life. He unashamedly wants to bask in it.

Carefully, he replies, "All of it. If you want people to feel something, it's easier to get a handle on that if you've felt whatever it is yourself."

"But you write so many sad songs." James hesitates, and then he says, "I could never do that."

"Why?" A harsh laugh escapes Kendall's lips, but he doesn't mean it in a cruel way. "You've never been sad?"

"Are you kidding me?" He laughs, high and throaty and nervous. "Sometimes, all I am is miserable. I didn't expect growing up to be as lonely as it is," James admits, licking foam from his upper lip. Kendall has trouble really connecting with his sad-on when the guy's giving him a boner. "But that, all of it – the older I get, the lonelier I am, and the less I want to talk about it."

Kendall pumps his legs in the air. He shakes. He shimmies. He makes the whole sign rattle. And he says, too measured, "When you talk about the things that make you weak, people take advantage of them."

"Exactly!" James flails his hands a little, like he didn't expect Kendall to understand. Kendall didn't expect to be sloshed with flying beer, so they're even. "I wanna be strong. I don't want anyone to think I'm like that."

"Weak?"

"Pathetic," James spits, and it's not at all what Kendall wants to hear. He's been pathetic, once or twice or eight times in his life. He has trouble imagining James – tall, broad, perfect James – being that low. Being anything like Kendall was, when he fucked up so bad that it still hurts to think about.

"James. No one's ever going to believe that you're pathetic." He bumps their shoulders together in camaraderie. "You'll figure this writing thing out. Some record producer in La La Land is going to go gaga over you, and I'll be all on my lonesome in Alphabet City, reminiscing about how I knew you when."

"Or," James says, darting a furtive glance in Kendall's direction, a flash of dark eyes rimmed effervescent red. "You could join me out there. Make a name for yourself. Hell, you could call up your sister and go right now."

"I told you, Katie doesn't have that kind of pull." He says it defensively, his guard automatic. "Besides. I don't want to get my hopes up like that. Calling in a favor – making it all happen. Katie would murder me once I screwed it up."

"Why would you do that?"

"Most of my dreams crash and burn." Kendall shrugs, all casual humor and faked smiles. "Sometimes I think it's better not to have them."

"I hate that fatalist shit. I hate it when people don't fight." Behind his lips, James's teeth are clenched. Kendall wonders if everyone pisses him off this frequently, or if it's his own very special talent. "I'm going to be a star. No one's going to stop me."

"Like I said, promise you'll remember me when."

"You're making fun," James snarls.

Kendall bumps their shoulders together, too buzzed to rise to the bait. "No. I'm not. You're talented. You deserve a chance to show that off."

"Yeah," James responds quietly, in a voice salted with guilt. "I really do."

He's as moody as a hurricane, switching wistfulness out for mischief in one smooth exchange. "Okay, enough with the beer." James snatches the can from Kendall's fingers and hurls it down on the grass. It spins against wet green, silver bits flashing blinding-bright beneath the rising moon. Kendall yelps unhappily at his drink's loss, but tones the whine down once James continues, "I don't want you sloppy drunk."

Wryly, Kendall inquires, "Do you require my dexterity tonight, good sir?"

James sucks in a breath. He retorts, "If I say yes, will you think I'm easy?"

"You know me. In it for the sybaritic fun."

James grins wide. "You're right. I know you."

He's smug and self-satisfied, and still, it makes Kendall's heart feel brand new, blood-red and polished, shiny as the surface of an apple. He's not sure what to do with this, the strange delight of making another person happy.

Kendall doesn't have a lot to compare it to.

"You know this sign's been around since 1936?"

"I know that. Why do you know that?" James snickers. The East River is this dazzling, dancing ribbon of glitter and glitz, wending its way beneath the towering skyscrapers, and he stares out at it. His eyelashes are wet with starlight. "You're really bonding with this city."

"It beats the hell out of Minnesota," Kendall agrees.

And then he kisses James, because he can, because patience isn't his gig and he's been dancing around kissing James since the very first day he met James. Because James always tastes hot and spicy and dizzyingly good, and he always draws away so quickly it makes Kendall's head spin.

This time, they're clutched in the neon glow of the Pepsi-Cola sign. Where the hell can James go?

James's lips slip against his, cold from the beer, a few leftover droplets fizzing pleasantly in the corners of Kendall's mouth. He groans and slides his hands inside James's coat, grabbing for warmth and solid muscle. James, in turn, curls a hand around the back of Kendall's neck, pulling him closer, kissing him harder. Kendall shifts on the metal support beam, a screw digging into his ass. He wants to climb into James's lap, but he settles for shoving his tongue down his throat.

In the most eloquent, sexy way possible, of course.

James moans appreciatively, pawing at Kendall's clothes, tugging him forward even further by the lapels of his thin coat. They're going to fall off the fucking sign at this rate.

"Time to go, I think," Kendall says, breathless.

"You're right." James's voice shakes. "I should go home."

"With me. You should go home with me."

"I-"

"You're not going to leave," Kendall insists, immediately, irrevocably. James can't, he's not allowed. He has to stay. Kendall's pants are tight and dragging mercilessly on his cock, his head's spinning with stars, and all he wants is to be touched or fucked or hell, he'll settle for cuddling with this inexplicable, impossible guy. He just needs him not to run away. "You like me, right?"

"I. Yeah." James sucks his red lower lip, gnaws on it until it blooms redder still. "Yeah. I really like you."

"You like me," Kendall repeats. "So show me."

James huffs out a sigh. "You're so needy." There's bite in the words, something vitriolic and mean that flits in and out of existence, like neediness is something he despises. Kendall nearly stumbles back, away, put off by the onslaught of hate he doesn't quite understand. But then James's face grows dark, shy, serious. He says, "This is the second time tonight you've asked me to stay."

"I might like you too. In case you haven't noticed."

The wind picks up, rifling icy cold fingers through his hair, down his spine, curling his toes in his shoes. He doesn't flinch, doesn't blink away from James's searching eyes.

"Let's go home. Your home."

They pile back into a cab, one with a driver that's not nearly as concerned about the state of his upholstery or James and Kendall's volume control. He doesn't say a word when James straddles Kendall's lap, kissing him slick and filthy, all tongue and the tight pressure of knees at Kendall's hips.

At one point James shoves back, hands settled against Kendall's shoulders. He exhales harshly, "Not so fast, god, slow down," which, no.

"I've waited for weeks," Kendall says, tugging insistently at his shirt, the both of them sliding across the taxi cab's seats.

James bats his hands away again, countering, "You just want, like an orgasm. I want an experience," and that's just plain insulting. Kendall recoils.

"No. That's not allowed. You can't nitpick my performance before we've even fucked." He snakes a hand around James's neck, whispers low and husky, "You have no idea what I want," for the sole purpose of hearing James suck in a breath.

They reach the apartment too soon, or not soon enough, with every muscle in Kendall's body wired tight, ready to let go.

The trip up the stairs is rough, full of fumbling touches and panted breath. Kendall nearly falls back on the second floor landing and lets James fuck him right there, but he's got class, okay. Class and a strict warning from his landlord not to do that ever again. Instead he lets James manhandle him up every step, footfalls heavy with liquor-fueled, clumsy urgency. There's a steady pulse between Kendall's legs, his dick or James's. At this point it barely matters.

Knocking his head back against the threshold of his own closed door, Kendall pants out, "I regret to inform you that I believe you to be a masochist. This is a serious psychiatric condition that you should have checked out immediately."

"Yeah?" James's hands drop limply to his sides. Meaning they are not touching Kendall and all is suddenly wrong with the world. "Guess I should go see my therapist right now."

"Let's not be hasty." Kendall grabs him by the waist, pulling their bodies flush. "Think about all that time you'll waste in the waiting room. You could be fucking me instead."

"That was pretty much always the plan," James agrees, touching their mouths together in a half-kiss, a breath of life that isn't even close to what Kendall wants.

He bridges the distance between them, kissing James desperate and crazy and somewhat like an apology. He sucks the oxygen from James's lungs and tries to swallow it down, but all that succeeds in doing is making him dizzy, delirious with the air that they both share.

Stumbling back into the darkness of the living room, Kendall realizes Logan isn't home. Which is great, but Kendall probably wouldn't give a damn even if he was. That's how far gone he is – enough to fuck over a friend in pursuit of fucking. He thinks that's not okay; he doesn't want to lose control this early. He draws back for a breather, gets enough distance to flick on a light.

James staggers away, but that's allowed. He's not trying to rabbit off. Besides Kendall's close enough to cumming that he needs to cool his boots anyway.

Their walls are papered with pictures. James didn't have much of a chance to look them over during his first two visits, but now he takes his time. He scrutinizes the faded, curled edges of photographs that depict Kendall's childhood in stages – himself and Logan on a rickety sled, the gentle slope of his mother's smile, Katie's pudgy baby face and grabby hands. James runs a thumb over the dorktastic prom photo of Kendall and his friends, myriad, with Logan holding a starring role dead center, and smiles.

"You were popular."

"I bet you were too," Kendall replies shrewdly, because no one with a face like James Diamond could ever have gone friendless and sad.

"Sure," James says mildly, and it's hard to tell whether there's any truth in it at all.

Kendall can't dwell on it – won't – because there's the pressure of James's fingers against the front button of his jeans, and it's unbearable to think of anything else. Except maybe the puff of James's breath against his cheek. Except, perhaps, the nudge of his knee.

His hands are feverishly hot.

"You want to see my room?" Kendall chokes out, smoother than butter. But James still follows him straight up the ladder and into the loft that Kendall calls home.

It's scratched, naked wood floors and a ceiling so low they both bang their heads against it, the thud resonant in the empty apartment. Moonlight spills silver across the shadows of Kendall's minimalist furniture, somehow brighter when Kendall draws the inside curtains closed, effectively cutting the tiny loft off from the main living space.

"Fancy digs," James says.

"I like my privacy."

"I like you," James replies, and it's all that really needs to be said.

Or maybe not. He walks back until his knees are touching the foot of Kendall's bed and commands, "Come here."

It echoes through the hollows of the room. It echoes in Kendall's bones.

He does as he's told.

They fall against Kendall's sheets in a tangle of arms and legs, burning as quick and as hard as silver nitrate, fire that eats straight through them both. If James cares about the low thread count, he doesn't say so. Or maybe he voices his complaints in moans and growls, in the reverb of every grunt that Kendall can feel in James's throat.

Kendall's used to being in charge, but when James gropes at his ass, he lets him. The hot, smooth pad of James's fingertip circles the denim that outlines the cleft between Kendall's cheeks and he trembles, and doesn't try to stop it. He wants to feel the shape and the weight of James's cock slipping inside of him, wants to grip him deep and dark and hard with his hands and his body and his stupid, capricious heart. There's a difference between losing control and giving up the reins.

Kendall knows that better than anyone.

James shimmies out of his jeans and t-shirt. He doesn't demur when Kendall murmurs, "Oh, god. Yes."

He grins, stupid cocksucker, and looks entirely too pleased with himself. Abruptly grumpy, Kendall snaps the waistband of James's underwear and asks, "Has anyone ever turned you down after seeing all this?"

"Please, look at how hot I am," James replies breezily, brushing a hand down his own admittedly impressive abs.

"Excuse me?"

The uncharacteristic vanity doesn't turn Kendall off exactly – he's no stranger to healthy self-love – but it is bizarre coming from James. Or maybe not – James naked is a revelation. He's gold and brown and peach and cloaked in shadows, his cock straining beneath his boxers, a focal point that Kendall unabashedly zeroes in on. He's going to have the absolute best time getting to know the weight of that in his hand, in his mouth, in his ass.

With purpose, he reaches out, pulling Kendall hard against the planes of his body. James's hands rub circles against his side, his collarbone. He kisses him too chastely for what Kendall wants. Kendall's pull back.

"Hold on. I've got to find-"

Like most self-respecting guys, he carries a condom at all times. It's been a while since he's had a chance to use one, the fortuitous presence of this Trojan more of a plea for luck to the heavens than anything else, but a precursory examination reveals it's in working order and everything. There's lube in his makeshift nightstand, and he lays them out on his bed, staying low to keep from concussing himself on the loft's exposed beams.

"Are you ever coming back here?" James asks lazily, stretching across the sheets. "Or are you staying away to teach me a lesson?"

Kendall throws himself down on the bed, the comforter cool and smooth against his too-hot skin. "Whatever you say, Princess."

He rolls over onto James, covering his mostly naked body with his own fully clothed one. James growls, nipping against Kendall's throat. "I told you not to call me that."

"You did," Kendall agrees, lacing their palms together, rutting their hips. James keens and squeezes, his fingernails gouging into the back of Kendall's hands. And Kendall says, "Your hands are art. I'd sculpt them if I could."

He rubs his fingers against the curvature of James's knuckles. The texture of his skin sends shivers down Kendall's spine.

"Instead, I'll write a song about you. One of these days."

James's cheeks redden, the color of maple leaves in the fall, the pink of his lips swollen from Kendall's assault on his mouth. He asks, "Is there a trick to getting that chastity belt off, or are you going to get naked already?"

Kendall's never been accused of being a tease. He shucks the defensive armor of his shirt with ease, shrugging it off and over his pale shoulders. His jeans take more work, but James looks a little stunned once they're down around Kendall's thighs. Hoarsely, he murmurs, "Worth the wait."

They kiss because they can, because it builds quicksilver and molten between them. The drag of James's teeth against the inside of Kendall's lower lip is sharp; it shudders through his body and jolts his hips forward. Their underwear is victim to what happens next, stripped off and thrown the floor.

Prep takes a few minutes, but it's okay. James has clever hands. He's on his knees, leaning over Kendall with less confidence than he started out with. His skin is shot through with starlight, glowing from the inside out. The Milky Way weaves between the indent of his hipbone and the crease of his thigh.

"Are you ready?" James asks, gruff and twisting his fingers inside of Kendall in this way that aches both good and bad, an edge of pleasure curling Kendall's toes, raw in his bones.

He reaches up and touches James's cheek. He tells him, "I've been ready for weeks."

The condom takes a second. A second too long. Kendall pants and waits, trying not to beg.

James is rough when he takes Kendall from behind, but his palms are firebrands on Kendall's stomach and chest; all he wants is more. He whimpers in the manliest fashion possibly when James fucks into him, bigger than Kendall thought he would be, almost more than he could take.

But it's fine, it's okay. He surrenders himself to James wholeheartedly, in a way that's scary as hell. He trusts him when he shouldn't, when all instincts scream for him not to. He's just so sick of living in the past – he wants to be here, sinking back against James's cock like he can't do anything else. There, in their own tiny universe, James pulls out, all the way to the tip, and then slides forward again, lube easing the way.

He angles into Kendall like he already knows where all his sweet spots are. It's not fair, but Kendall gives as good as he gets, bucking back against James until their exhalations are practically sobs. His muscles are elastic, every part of him fluid as James takes him, hot and hard and cleaving him apart. Kendall's got lofty goals; he wants to walk bow-legged tomorrow. He rides James through it the best he can.

"You're good at this," James tells him, his fingers curled somewhere beneath Kendall's ribcage, every breath ragged.

Kendall runs his hands up and down his own body, touching and gasping. He replies cheekily, "Shut up."

The bed creaks, old metal and rusty springs protesting too loud. James's beautiful, gorgeous, song-worthy fingers reach out to touch the headboard, tan and gold, gold and tan. His other hand takes up residence on Kendall's cock, stroking until the friction is the best kind of excruciating, his balls tight against every slap of James's.

He can feel James's chest, broad and perfect and slick with sweat against his back. He can feel James's tongue against his ear, his nerve endings are lit up like livewires. The bristly hair at the base of James's cock brushes against Kendall's ass when he takes him deeper, and that's exactly what he wants, to be connected completely with this strange, impossible boy.

Every star in New York City is blinding, shiningtwinklingexploding outside Kendall's window when he comes. James shudders violently against him half a minute later, a flood of warmth in Kendall's ass that he barely notices through the aftershocks of his own orgasm.

They play the awkward game of untangling themselves, sweat and cum making it more difficult than it should be. In a pile on the bed, they lay together, the night darker now that Kendall's vision is clearing of lust.

"Everything you wanted?" James asks, still breathing harshly.

"You weren't bad," Kendall tells James fondly, brushing the curve of his cheek with his fingertips.

And then – he falls asleep.

---

"Kendall." Something hard is jabbing into his ribs. Kendall does not like this hard thing. "Kendall."

The hard thing is Logan's finger. It is not a nice hard thing. Kendall bats it away.

"Seriously, did you have to go out drinking two nights in a row?"

"L'me alone."

"You're naked," Logan tells him. "Was that James guy here last night? Kendall?"

His voice gets really high pitched at the last question. Kendall cracks an eyelid for the sole purpose of checking whether Logan is blind or – nope. It's sunny as hell and James is gone. Which, whatever, it's not like that means anything. Kendall didn't exactly expect his newfound boy toy to stick around and cuddle, so he's not hurt, exactly, that James didn't stay. He just sort of expected he would. Honor and chivalry and Kendall asking him twice in one night to stick around and everything.

He sighs. "He's not anymore. Apparently."

"Kendall-"

"Logan, I'm trying really, really hard to be a real human. Why do you want to screw that up?"

"That's not fair. You know I just don't want this guy to screw you up." Logan rustles a hand through his hair, a dark, wild thing overtaking his features. "This was taped to our door."

There's a postcard in his hands. The picture on the front is of a baby black bear caught mid-yawn. Bold white letters emblazoned over the image declare, "I'm not sorry."

There's nothing else on it. No note from James scrawled on the back. Nothing.

"What the fuck is this supposed to mean?" Kendall demands, pulling the sheets up around his waist. He's wrecked, his muscles all jello. He contentedly thinks that he's not going to be walking much today.

Logan shrugs, his brown eyes flood with something suspiciously like pity. "I don't know."

"I'll ask James what it means," Kendall yawns sleepily. "Later. I'm fine. You're fine. We're all fine. Now go away. Shoo. Shoo."

"Kendall-"

Kendall throws a pillow at Logan's face.

He can't figure the postcard out. He doesn't understand either, hours after he wakes up again, when he realizes his sheet music is gone.

It's not a big deal. He's got every song in his head, and copies besides, draft after draft of work before he created those finished pieces. James took them; he doesn't doubt that. By accident is his first thought, but when he tries calling him, later that same night, Kendall finds out James's phone is disconnected.

I'm not sorry.

He supposes that's his answer.

---

As weeks drag by, Kendall thinks the sheet music must have been a souvenir. Because James likes the songs and not Kendall, or maybe because he simply wants to remember the time he decided to slum it.

This is why he has rules about rich boys. They're dickholes. Or they just want to use guys like Kendall as one. He thought James was different – he thought James was sweet. But James never calls, and Kendall tries really hard not to look too closely at what he might have done wrong. That's the way to a quick and terrible downwards spiral to the thing that Kendall hates to talk about.

Everything was easier when he had hockey. His mind is creeping, crawling, burgeoning with this restlessness that dissipates at the cold, crisp taste of ice in the air. He told James he'd write a song for him, and yeah, song writing helps – he can funnel all that energy into the shape of consonants and vowels, wrapped tight in a melody, but it's not the same.

When he's writing, he gets lost in it, touching on backlogs of vocabulary he learned when school was still a thing, drumming up monsters and mayhem straight from his once-rusty imagination. Nothing recedes to white noise, the way it does when he's got a puck in front of him, a team at his back. And he misses that static, because it felt a lot like peace.

He's not so great at hiding how much he misses it. Or James. The next three months are made of suck.

Logan asks incessantly, "Are you okay?"

Kendall should be the one asking that. He's the jerk mindfucking his best friend.

He's also the delicate porcelain teacup of a boy who spent the entire year before moving to New York in rehab, so Logan doesn't stop asking.

Worry lines crease his face, and oh. Oh. Kendall is the worst.

After his accident, the doctors prescribed a lot of things. Antibiotics, anti-inflammatory pills, and the really high grade pain killers. He was a local superstar, an actualfax hero on the ice to anyone within a fifty miles radius. They took really good care of him.

Sometimes he thinks, they were too attentive.

But no, he knows better than to place the blame on anyone other himself.

Every time Logan frets over him, Kendall shrugs and says, "I'm fine." Logan doesn't look like he believes Kendall for a second, and he's right not to. Kendall's got a former addiction to prescription strength drugs that doesn't always feel so former, and it never has taken much to make him slip off the rails.

So he puts on his brave face, even though he's doing a really terrible job at it. One guy isn't going to destroy him. That's not who Kendall Knight is.

Not anymore.

---

"Kendall?" Logan's voice crackles over the landline. The bar's always had a shitty connection.

" No, sorry, this is Michael Bolton –" Kendall divides his attention between the phone and a customer begging for a beer. He pops the cap off a Heineken and hands it over in one fluid motion, receiver balanced against his shoulder. "Dork. What do you want?"

"I'd like it if you worked on your manners, one of these days," Logan replies petulantly.

Kendall rolls his eyes exaggeratedly enough that one of the college girls perched on a nearby stool chokes against laughter. Kendall winks at her and intones, "Make it quick, Loginator. Daddy's trying to bring you home some bacon."

"That there is a visual," Logan deadpans.

"You know it, little lady."

"I'll make sure to stick a pie in the oven. Listen, dude. I was on my way back from class and I passed one of those bodegas with all the I Love New York shit –"

Kendall begins humming New York, New York under his breath, stretching the phone cord to maneuver around Minerva so he can grab the whiskey. Minerva flips him off, ducking the tangle of beige wire when Kendall moves past her to top off an old-timer's glass.

Over the din of the bar crowd and Kendall's mumbled, start spreading the news, Kendall completely misses the rest of Logan's story, right up until he announces, "Wait, it's on again."

"What's on again?"

"The song?"

"Oh, of course. The song."

"You stopped listening to me," Logan accuses.

"Honeybunch, I'd never."

"Butt sauce," Logan says prissily. "Quick, turn on Z100, before it's over."

"Sorry, not into Barbie dolls singing canned soup tunes."

"Kendall," Logan says seriously. "Turn it on."

Sighing, Kendall drags the phone with him to the far corner of the bar, where the radio controls sit. He switches off Minerva's hipster cool playlists of trendy songs no one else has ever heard of and dials over to FM.

Minerva issues a battle cry that starts with a bad word and ends with motherfucker, Knight. Kendall dutifully ignores her in favor of Logan and turning the dial towards New York's Number One Shit Music Station.

In his ear, Logan's telling him, "I heard it, and I thought the words were familiar. It took me a bit to figure out why but-"

Kendall stops on the station.

The melody is distantly familiar, like a strained cover version of something he used to love. He instantly hates the backtrack, but god, that voice – it's beautiful.

A frat boy down near Minerva yells, "Hells yeah, this is my jam," bounds off his seat and starts like, freaking twerking in full view of the street. A couple of his friends join in.

"–it's yours."

"Sorry, what?" Kendall asks, wondering as one of the guys accidentally flashes some ass crack what exactly he did to deserve this life. Outside the bar window, a group of girls in skyscraper heels whip out their camera phones, their mouths open in what must be mean laughter.

The song spikes a crescendo before launching into the final chorus. Kendall stills.

This time he listens when Logan informs him, "That's why it sounds so familiar. The song. It's yours."