The Spaces Between Stars

A/N: Entourush Part Deux. Fort those that don't know the original story: one day on Twitter, I announced that the boys are going to grow up to be the dudes from Entourage (which is apparently a viewpoint shared by James Maslow, based off interviews that came loooong after I wrote the original fic). After discussing the wonderful world of possibilities with eviljellybean88 and breila_rose, I kind of proceeded to let myself get talked into writing Neither Tarnished Nor Afraid, the precursor to this. And theeeen I got talked into writing this sequel. Which I'm not super pleased with, but ehhhh. I'm sick of looking at it. You don't actually have to know anything at all about Entourage to read this. Promise. You, uh, might want to have read the original story, though, or the crack and the sex game references might get a little lost. The title is a reference to a Raymond Chandler quote below. Mucho thanks to my favorite homebitch jblostfan16 for the beta and the super spiffy banner she made.

"I was as hollow and empty as the spaces between stars."

There are nights when you're restless.

It's this feeling under your skin like a pull, like a push. It's your bones trying to escape your body.

You used to stave it off with cocaine. Sometimes it felt like starlight in your veins, like everything you did was huge, gigantic. There could never be anyone bigger, better, or shinier than you. You remember that feeling, that high where you thought you could own the world.

You remember other times, too, when the edges of reality went blunt and dull. When you felt numb to everything and everyone. Like nothing you did could ever be good enough, big enough, shiny enough.

Nothing could ever be enough.

The lows were bad, but they were never so horrible that they made the euphoric highs any less desirable. That's what you're thinking tonight; all it would take is a tiny packet of white powder to make the push-pull of indecision, of unspent creativity vanish. You're not giving it any serious thought, but the idea is a seed in the back of your mind. The party you're at is packed to the brim, and you know that somewhere in that crowd there are people riding that high, blissed out and dazed.

Once upon a time, you think just living gave you the same damn feeling. Back when you first came to California, you felt it; walking in the golden sunlight on beaches full of white sand, palm trees like spindly skeletons looming against pastel skies. You remember the days before you hit it big, climbing over latticework bricks surrounding adobe houses and scraping your fingers just to reach an avocado tree so that you'd have something to put in your fridge other than cheap beer and leftover pizza. Everything was an adventure. There were languid beach days where you and the boys would explore rocks piled high like secret caves and eat Manhattan clam chowder that burned your lips. Driving up north, you would walk along the coast on pebbles slick and wet with slime, sand that crushed like brown sugar between your toes. There were drunken nights of blue jungle gyms and overly chlorinated swimming pools, and laughing, laughing, laughing like teenage boys are supposed to.

When you were sixteen, you were sure that you could own the world, that conquering everything was completely within your reach. Now you're still so young, but the world is huge. How can you ever conquer it all?

You miss Minnesota. It's been a long time since you last stepped foot in your hometown, but you're not sure if you feel time the same way other people do. You've lived in California nearly as long as you lived back home, and yet it still feels like yesterday that you walked onto the plane to LAX. Like you saw your old hockey team ten minutes ago. You know if you ran into one of them, they wouldn't feel the same way. There would be awkward conversation, small talk. The feeling you've drifted apart. But you care about them every bit as much as you did the day you left, and you don't like it; that you aren't able to let things go.

Things and people and places. They crowd your heart. They crowd your memories.

Your childhood is at your fingertips tonight as you ghost in and out of the crowd, searching for familiar faces. You think about hiding with Carlos beneath circle clothes racks in Marshall's and climbing under rusted fences onto golf courses with Logan, just to steal lost balls.

You think about playing Pac Man with James, your best friend, who you thought would one day be more than that. Even if you didn't understand yet what more than that meant. You think about sitting on the flat rug in the den of your house, watching illicit TV shows and wondering if maybe one day you'd drive around and go to malls and have cool high school friends. Weirdly, you think of wearing stretchy, shiny, slippery outfits for Halloween and standing very, very still as mom painted your face. It's a strange mishmash of memories that have nothing to do with anything, but they're poignant and they hurt.

That's the way with homesickness. It's a physical ache, a double edged sword. You know that even if you fled back to Minnesota, you'd still feel it. Minnesota isn't home anymore, and it'll never wholly be home again. Maybe no place ever will.

You grab a glass from a tray, something dark and golden and slippery in your hands. You're not supposed to drink, because there's this looming fear that an addict will replace one vice with another, but you do it anyway. Sober isn't sexy; it's boring, and you're not even a real addict. You had a cocaine problem. Besides, James, Carlos, and Logan watch your alcohol intake like hawks.

"This party blows." It's a voice behind your ear, and James is always doing that, always sneaking up behind you and whispering near and intimate, like it doesn't make you want him more.

You turn to face him, and he's close, so fucking close. Heat rises off his body, and his eyes are bright, might as well be an illuminated manuscript for all the intricately woven colors and light. James leans his chin on your shoulder, breathes against your skin, totally intent on invading your personal space. It's like he wants to drive you insane.

"Rooftop parties aren't supposed to blow," he continues. You think about stepping forward and folding yourself into him, kissing his neck and slipping a hand down his jeans. His mouth curves into an easy grin, and you think about cumming on those lips, painting white across James's face.

There are hollow places in your stomach that vibrate whenever he's around.

You'll never be able to do anything about it, though. Even if you weren't in public, you've been friends forever and a day. And more; there's a billboard looming high over your heads with your own smiling face on it. You ignore it, but you know that it's there the same way that James does. And you know that it is the rift between you, always there, even in the middle of a party or on quiet mornings, when you find James flipping through back copies of US Weekly, searching for a glimpse of his own visage.

Every time he spots a picture of you he grimaces and flips forward.

You try not to take his obvious disdain for your face in print form as an insult. Really, you wish he'd just get back into singing. He'd be huge. Maybe not as huge as you, but he'd definitely be big. You want James to be back on top, where he belongs, but whenever you broach the subject he acts like the two of you have signed a noncompete agreement or something. He insists that he's going to stick to acting, and maybe he'll even land a musical.

If Dak Zevon can do it, why can't James Diamond?

So despite the days when you allow yourself to think that James might fathom getting together with you, you know that he's too vain and too proud to ever overcome the fact that your name is lit up in bright lights and his…isn't. It's sad, frustrating as hell, but it's also life. You try not to let it get to you. Besides, James has been around a lot lately, keeping an eye on you. He senses the restless energy bouncing around inside your body now that the third album's done. He's a good friend that way.

You hate being between projects. You're not good with endings. The months you're going to spend between the album's packaging and release make you feel aimless, like you haven't achieved anything in so very long, even though you know it's not true. You've got eighteen songs of achievement; eighteen songs that they're saying might land you all kinds of awards.

"You want to get out of here?" You ask, full of promise, hoping the answer is yes. You want to go for a drive, pedal to the floor as you scream down the freeway.

Or no, maybe you want to go for a run, sweat pooled on the small of your back and the places your collarbone dips, wind in your veins.

Or no, maybe you want to go for a swim; you want to jump headfirst into the Pacific, taste salt on your tongue and feel it burn in your lungs.

You want to do a million things, and you want to do them all with James. His lips part, pink and wet.

"You aren't going anywhere. You have an interview."

The drink is snatched out of your hand and you turn, glare, and say, "Aw, come on, Logan."

He gives you this look that means you're not supposed to drink. Like that's ever stopped you before. He acts like you're a wayward charge of his, but god, you haven't even had alcohol poisoning since your early teens, when the four of you spent nights blackout drunk and trying to put your lives back together in the morning.

Guitar Dude's behind Logan, shifting from one foot to another. The corner of James's lips turn down the second he spots him, but before anyone can notice, James's gaze goes to the floor. He stares at the tile like it's an issue of People, like it's an article on fifteen ways to build up his biceps.

He hates Guitar Dude. You get it. Kind of.

Guitar Dude's music career never really lifted off. He went into producing, and you guys lost touch for a long, long time. Then, when you went solo, you ended up working on your second album with him. That's the one that went straight to hell, but you don't blame him. Much. He helped you come around with the most recent drop, the one everyone's calling a hit. He's a sweet guy.

A sweet guy who also happens to be the first guy you ever fucked, but whatever.

"This is a party, not a press junket," you tell Logan.

"A party you want to leave," he replies pointedly. "Where's the harm, Kendall? Fifteen minutes. That's all it's going to take."

"I'm not-" you take a deep breath, hands clenching into fists. You've got a lot of experience composing yourself after all these years in the business, but it's still hard. Somewhere deep inside, you're the same brute of a hockey player with anger management issues and a bone to pick with everyone out there. "I'm not feeling it tonight."

Logan's expression immediately changes. He thinks you're jonesing. Guitar Dude too; he's looking at you with something like pity, and it's not fair. Just because he's a reformed stoner or whatever doesn't mean he understands your pain. You only did coke together once, and it was mostly to see what it was like to get fucked by a guy while you were goinggoinggone from this earth, head somewhere between the heavens and Jupiter, nerves frayed and oversensitive like you'd dropped ecstasy instead of cocaine.

Logan sighs, exhausted. It's clear in the lines and shadows of his face. "I'm trying to help you out, Kendall. Do the interview or don't do the interview. Go home or don't go home. I don't fucking care."

"You're my manager. I pay you to care."

Logan rolls his eyes. You've had this argument a thousand times, and you'll probably have it a thousand more. Hollywood's been hell on your friendship.

"I can handle the interview, man," Guitar Dude says, voice throaty from years of smoking ganja.

"You shouldn't have to- agh. Never mind." Logan throws up his hands and mumbles something about finding some bourbon.

Like he can even drink bourbon. He's too much of a boy still to handle much other than beer. The last time Carlos made him down tequila shots he wandered the streets and made passionate proclamations of love to the neighbors' shrubbery.

"Maybe you should do the interview," James mumbles, and he's in close again, invading your personal space in this way that makes your nerves jangle and your skin hum, the way you feel on a plane before takeoff.

You hope he isn't mad at you. He probably sees things like interviews as one more step in stardom that he's banned from, but you can't sit still right now. Not even for fifteen minutes, to talk about life and all the things you've done right and wrong. You give James this helpless look, not sure what the right answer is. Pushing him away is the last thing you want.

What you want is for him to touch you. You want his hands all over, on your neck and your hips, the planes of your chest and the inside of your thighs. You want his rough-knuckled fingers in your mouth or on your cock; you're not picky. You think you probably should have grown out of this feeling when you turned twenty, when your skin began to fit right and you didn't feel like a hormonal teenager anymore, but here it is, eleven years later, and you're a grownup- they tell you you're a grownup- but the feeling hasn't budged.

"No."

"What's going on with you? I think Logan might cry," James states, mostly amused.

"Maybe I'm not interested in talking about how awesome I am," you reply, and it's a lie, you both know it's a lie; you're always interested in talking about how awesome you are. You love your career, even though it's not the thing that you dreamed about when you were fifteen.

You wanted something then, a scholarship and a chance to go big time, but it wasn't anything more than a vague idea, a goal you set up on a shelf and figured you would get to someday, more interested in puck fucks and the way James looked in his hockey jersey than the big bad future.

"Right. So really. What is it? What's wrong?" James pauses. Time has turned his skin softer and his eyes harder. They glitter at you in the dark, sometimes black, sometimes gold, depending on which way he tilts his head. "Is it- do you-"

You watch his mouth stumble over words, trying to make sense of the thing he wants to say, even though the topic has been hanging thick in the air between you for months now.

"I'm not- I don't need anything," you tell him, real slow, because you have to drive the point home. The drugs weren't a big deal, but no matter how many times you say it, no one ever believes you. You lost control for a little while, sure.

You're not planning on making the same mistake twice.

And it's not like James wasn't right there beside you the first time you tried it, snorting lines off a milky pale thigh while his thumb traced circles against the ridge of your knee. With James at your side you would become a ghost-boy, a skeleton-boy, the universe thrumming in your bones, but you don't miss it, much. You don't miss anything except for the ice cold clarity of Minnesota and the burn of James's fingertips against your skin.

"You just don't want to do it?" James looks up at the sky, at the thick blanket of night that has settled down on Los Angeles and the rare star that dares to peek out from behind the cloak of black and smog. There is so much negative space between those stars.

It makes the night look sinister.

It makes the night look magical.

That's what LA is, after all, supernatural beauty with an edge of danger, like all preternatural things should be.

"Fuck it," James decides. "You don't have to."

"So what do we do?" You step in close, but it's a sham. You won't try anything. James has to make the first move, and as far as you can tell he doesn't know that there's a move to make.

He cocks an eyebrow and asks, "What do you want to do?" His smile curves like he knows, like he's thinking salacious thoughts, and he probably is; thoughts of big breasted girls riding his dick, or small chested starlets taking it from behind or-

You really shouldn't do this to yourself. Jealousy isn't something you've ever had much of a handle on, and you don't need to go off on James when he's the only one in your corner right now. You say, "I'm tired," and turn to walk away.

"Kendall, wait." James grabs hold of your shirt, fingers digging into skin and bone. When he doesn't say anything, you try to pull free, but he holds tight and finally commands, "Follow me."

Next thing you know you're down in one of the apartments below the roof, in a guest bedroom the size of your whole house back in Minnesota, and James is turning the lock on the door. You think you're in for a continuation of the sober-is-sexy speech, the I'm-always-here-for-you spiel, and you can't stand the idea of James looking sick with worry any more.

"I'm fine," you tell him.

You're surprised when he replies, "I know."

"Then what is this?"

James lifts his gaze, meets yours head on, and suddenly you are very aware that he just locked you both in a bedroom. It's not your first rodeo- hell, you're not even sure the list of people you've slept with is still in the double digits- but you have no idea what to do with the thick air or the tension in the room. You don't know what to say when James asks quietly, "What do you want it to be?"

"Is that a riddle?" You're annoyed, shaky. Your voice trembles. James steps forward and you step back, mirrored choreography that repeats until you're up against the bed, tacky satin sheets and James the only air you can breathe.

It's not fair. You build your walls up, higher and higher until you feel impenetrable, like a fortress. But if you are Jericho, James is Joshua, and it only takes a smile in your direction to make it all come crashing back down. He has you crowded into this corner, and what's worse is that you let him without even trying to put up a fight. You feel twitchy, you feel caged. You feel like touching your hands to his skin and seeing if it burns.

"Kendall." He breathes hot against your lips. "I don't do riddles."

"Then, what? Why are we-"

"Seriously? You're seriously going to play that game? You watch me all the time, dude." James has his bossy voice on, the same one he used when he was five and he wanted you to get a better haircut, but he's big now, intimidating, and you can taste his whiskey-breath on your tongue. Death isn't something you ever really thought about, even when you were toeing the edge every time you did a line, but you think you could die this way; inhaling the air from James's lungs until you asphyxiate.

It's bittersweet to be so close, but so fucking far. James says, "Don't tell me I'm imagining it."

"So?" Yes, you watch. You watch him trying to nail every girl that moves. Sometimes you watch the actual nailing. Sometimes he even watches back; you two have been playing on that chessboard for a long time.

You also watch James watch buses with your face plastered on the side of them, heartbreak in his eyes. You watch him suffer.

You see a lot of things, but you're not seeing the point, here.

"So, all that time you spend looking at me, and you never seem to notice I'm looking right back at you. Idiot." James growls, actually growls, and you're catching on. He's fucking with you, probably, but two can play at that game.

And it is, of course, a game. It has to be.

You press in closer, almost daring him to kiss you, because you aren't going to be the one who crosses the line, even in jest. James and Logan and Carlos are the only thing holding you together, keeping you from breaking off into a million shards of starlight, and you will not risk losing any of them. Not even for a kiss that you want so desperately, that you've dreamed about from every angle like a prepubescent girl instead of a man who's graced the covers of motherfucking GQ and Rolling Stone.

(When you think about hooking up with James, you think it might be like a romance novel come to life, and how humiliating is that?)

James doesn't back away, doesn't flinch, just tilts his head like he's considering the shape and the color and the texture of your mouth. You swallow. He's gorgeous up close, impossibly good-looking, and he is staring at you like you're edible.

Mostly you are just confused by this game. Signals are not supposed to get so mixed. For a minute or more, it's just the two of you, leaning in close, millimeter by millimeter, chicken with lips and hearts on the line. The bass thuds outside, the party on the rooftop still going strong. Guitar Dude's probably bumbling his way through the interview, and Logan's probably pulling his own hair out in frustration, and Carlos is probably charming the pants off of anyone he can, for business or sex or whatever it is he's after right now. But here in the guest bedroom, the music raining down, it's still you and James, still a childhood competition that has gone on too long.

Just like when you were kids, James is the one who breaks first. He kisses you, and it's like coming home.

You're lost in it, in the grand romance of a fucking kiss, of the guy you've been getting hard for since you first figured out what an erection was, and you keep waiting for the crashing crescendos of background music, for the end credits to roll, but they never do.

Instead things take a turn for the sexy, or sleazy, depending on your point of view, because there has to be some kind of record for time lapsed between a first kiss and nudity. Neither of you are kids anymore, and you shouldn't be so desperate to get off, like you don't get laid on almost a daily basis, but you are. You need James in your lungs, in your blood, in your bones. You need to feel him cover the surface of your skin, and more than anything you need him to keep saying your name just like that, needy whimpers of Kendall that make your nerve endings tingle.

He slides his hands along the skin of your hips and he's rough about it, nothing like the way he is with the girls you've seen him screw. This should have happened ages ago, in Minnesota, in the back of James's dad's car, or beneath the school bleachers, in a deserted classroom, or the locker room after a game. It should have happened while you were in the band, on the tour bus or during a quiet night at the Palmwoods.

It just should have happened.

You have so much time to make up for, so much space to fill, and you certainly intend to. You don't know how long you're going to get to hang on to this, if it's just James messing around.

He has your shirt half off, your pants unbuckled, and you're helping out, doing the same thing, fumbling a bit, and that's odd. You're used to being a superstar in the bedroom, too; used to fawning girls and boys who fall on their knees to worship and adore you. Sometimes you let them take control, and sometimes you're the one who proves why exactly it is you shimmer with stardust, but either way you are used to the awe and the adulation.

You are not used to James, to being the one who's gone slack jawed and starstruck at the sight of so much skin. You are tuning-fork nerves and a whirlwind of things that feel too big for your chest, bigger than the world, even. It's scary, and you become pliant, let James sculpt you into what he wants, how he wants, and James is very, very talented at his craft. He plays you like piano keys, ivory beneath his fingertips, coaxes sounds from your throat that you've never made in any album.

You've obsessively over-romanticized what it would be like, writhing under him, and now it is both less and more than what you expected, because James is not actually perfect, but at the same time he is still James, more deity than anything else.

He sets you on fire, whether you want him to or not.

He's got lipstick on his collar, that perfect shade of cocksucking red that always makes women's mouths look a little obscene. James doesn't elaborate on where it came from, and you don't ask. You're sick of playing around with him. It's time for a new board, a clean slate, a better point system than the increased ache in your chest. It doesn't matter who he fucked earlier, not when he's apparently intent on making you his bitch now.

His mouth works over your body like a conquering army, leaving no place unclaimed. When you're ready, when he's got you split apart, his perfectly manicured nails bite into your skin. They press little sliver-moons into your hipbones as he bends you over, and you obey, more than willing. He doesn't do anything, not at first, just holds you there like a piece of artwork, to be stared at or observed. You feel like a science experiment, a Roswell alien, but you also feel like a firework, about to go off, and you need James to do something about it already.

And when he does, you nearly sob with it, with how good it feels. With how good he feels.

He is over you and in you, all his angles and sharp edges. He says the arch of your back is hot, that dip in your spine that you had even as a baby. He feels like starlight in your veins, or no, something better, like sunlight. He is more than any drug, and you are not a ghost-boy, here, you are something burning, something brilliant.

"Waited," James says a little desperately, a harsh breath ripped from his lungs. He stills, kisses your shoulder, draws out in this slow way that makes every inch of you ache, pushes back in even slower. "Waited for you to-"

His hips stutter, and that noise reverberating through the air, that can't be you, right? But it is, you're gasping James and pulling his hands from your hips, entwining your fingers, pulling him down so that you can feel each beat of his heart against your spine.

"Waited for so long," James murmurs into your skin, and the next snap of his hips is a little wild, makes you see white, black, supernova-orange behind your eyes. Sex isn't even close to new, hasn't felt anything like special since Jo, but this is better than anything you ever fantasized in the safety of your own bedroom. You beg him to touch you, needy, completely losing your composure. It just hasn't been this good in a long time, this mind-blowing, but it is James, so you're not even surprised. He excels at everything he sets his mind to, shines without even knowing it.

You can see your reflections in the glass of the bedroom window, hazy silhouettes of skin reflecting off the black night. Outside, LA sparkles, illuminating the muscles moving in James's thighs as he moves into you, and you can see his gold lion's gaze, focused, intense, and the visual is very nearly your undoing. You tell him, "Stopstopstop, I'm gonna-" and he pauses, half inside of you, breath ragged, and for a few beats that's the only sound you can hear while you lasso your lust, gather it in close and try to calm down. You exhale, ask, "Waited for what?"

"You." James brings your intertwined hands up to your chest, traces the place where your heart thunders with his index finger, and you shiver. He spasms inside you, dick protesting the break, but James has a lot of willpower. His eyelashes flutter against the back of your neck, eyes closed, searching for stamina, and then he says, "I was beginning to think you'd never come around."

There is weight in those words, a cutting edge that chokes you, that makes you feel like maybe this isn't just a new game. You ask with a broken voice, "How long?"

"Years," James admits, and he sounds destroyed.

Maybe, all the times you caught him eyeing your posters and billboards and magazine ads, your fame wasn't the only thing he was coveting. But. No. It can't be.

James licks a stripe up your spine, murmurs soft, sweet nonsense words into your bones, and swivels his hips. In the window-reflection, he is watching you like you are all he wants in this world, his image stuck in a nowhere-land between wrecked and bliss. It can't be, but you think maybe it is. All this time…

You hang your head, pant, "Yeah, that sounds about right. I-" you start, stop, try again. "I-"

He makes a hushing noise, presses tighter against your chest like he is tracking the pace of your racehorse of a heart. "You don't need to say it."

James dips into you slow, and you make this high keening noise, feel him hot and thick and filthy. Words are hard, but you still manage, "I want to."

"But I already know." You can feel him smile. "I've known forever."

You grind back on him then, a little helpless, take him deeper and demand in a growl, "Then why didn't you say anything?"

You would have made a move a long time ago if you thought it would really get you anywhere.

"You weren't ready." James palms over your heart a third time, gentle, like he might break it, fucks forward with the same handle-with-care attitude and again you think about all the time you've wasted. The drugs and the girls and the- oh.

Years. The idea makes warmth spread to your fingers and toes, makes you feel ephemeral, like light. You extricate your hand from his, reach back and cup his neck. Soft, you mumble, "How many years?" the question punctuated with little gasps so that it sounds like how-ah- many –ngh- years, like you're trying to be seductive when really you're just asking.

It's hard to keep anything steady with James rocking into you, trying out different angles, stirring your insides into a knot. You think of white powder, of starlight pulsing beneath your skin and how it turned you into a god. This is better. More visceral, more real, less likely to dissipate. This is James, and the thought is lightning, quicksilver in your stomach. If you hadn't gotten lost, if you hadn't gone off track, perhaps you really could have had this forever ago. But James waited and guided you through it, guided you out, guided you right into his arms.

"Too many." He groans, uses his knee to spread your thighs a little bit further, readjusts and speeds his pace. In the window, the two of you look like animals, but no, he is Polaris; lighting up the sky, always there to show you the way back to yourself.

James is done talking, makes it clear by amping it up, pumping into you while he strokes down your length, and you're beginning to feel it again, that frantic edge. It builds up inside of you with every thrust, and this time, you don't try to stop it. Your orgasm is a flashbulb going off behind your eyelids, and James finishes right on the tail end of it, a wet pulse that fills the places he leaves empty.

"Better than the stupid interview," you say, once you've caught your breath.

"Hell, yeah," James agrees. He kisses each of your ribs, licks over your collarbone, all of his movements lethargic, his expression past sated. You're not much interested in moving, but you do when he presses his lips beneath your jaw, sucks. You've got a photo-shoot tomorrow, and the last thing you need is a redpurpleblue mark, the gesture possessive, his teeth and his tongue pain and pleasure at the same time. But you don't really give a damn about what you need, or how parading around a hickey like an impulsive, lovestruck teenager is probably bad for your image. You let James do it, and when he works up towards your lips, you steal a kiss, steal a breath, steal more of his warmth for a rainy, hazy day, when the edges of reality start feeling blunt again.

There are questions you want to ask, things you need to say, but for now there is James, who obviously wants round two. You think that this time, it is your turn; you will work your own kind of magic. You will rediscover him in the rosy-light of all those warm, fuzzy feelings fizzing around like champagne bubbles in your heart, work new sounds from his throat. You will make him moan.

One day, maybe you'll even get him to sing again.