Until The Devil Turns To Dust
A/N: Mega thanks to jblostfan16 for the beta and cheerleading and general acceptance of my bitching and whining. This, uh, obviously is not the last part. I sort of let the Minnesota bits get away from me and went over the 10k word count, and as LJ is my main posting ground, I decided that all other sites could get bent and I'd just make a fourth chapter (which will be up later this week).
21.
They are playing a game of who needs who more, and Kendall is losing. Badly.
He does his best to pretend it's not happening. He can be perfect, if he tries harder. He can be exactly what everybody needs. A best friend. A son. A brother. A popstar. A leader. He tries and he tries and he tries.
He has no clue if he's succeeding. Never once does anyone thank Kendall for his efforts. They presume that it comes naturally to him, like these are traits written into the makeup of his genes and not active choices that get harder with every day that goes by.
Kendall won't ever say different, because this too is something that the people he surrounds himself with need; someone to believe in. Someone unshakeable. He will be that person because it is so much easier than being the scared, lonely little boy that lives inside his head.
And that person? He can't keep lying to everyone.
Kendall tells Jo on a night when the Milky Way dapples the sky, "I fucked up."
She deserves better. She's destined for such great things that it makes Kendall dizzy thinking about it, about red carpets and the sweet tilt of her smile. He hates what he's done to her; he always has. Wanting to be loved isn't worth the guilt that's infested his soul, not when she is this brilliant, shining thing that he is irrevocably damaging.
(He hates the word affair. It makes cheating sound like it is some grand to-do, more like a party than pain.)
Jo turns her big brown eyes on him, weary and more than a little wounded. The radio they've set up on their picnic blanket blares, crackles and wails. She answers, "I know."
Two words, that's all, but they echo in the air with cacophonous finality. That is so not what Kendall is expecting to hear.
"You…know?"
Rueful, she kneads her fingers into the plaid picnic blanket, catching clumps of grass through the fabric. "About you and James? I always knew. I've been waiting to see how long it would take you to tell me."
Kendall bites down, tastes copper in his throat. He is drowning, he cannot reach air, and he has no idea how to stop it.
"So then why-"
"I told you I didn't want a boyfriend." Jo doesn't smile. Her acceptance is not forgiveness. "You were never going to be permanent."
He can't think of what to say, because there is no nice way to tell a girl that using her wasn't actually his grand plan. She made him feel alive when he sorely needed it, gave him value when he had none, and none of that makes him any less of an asshole. "I didn't mean for it to go this way."
Jo shrugs one shoulder, her golden curls tumbling back against plaid. She averts her eyes to the sky. "You want to talk about it?"
"Seriously?"
She punches his shoulder. She does not pull her strength.
"No. Not seriously. I hate this. I like you. You weren't supposed to make me like you." Jo's voice falters. She wears sorrow like a veil. "Why James?"
It doesn't sound like a question he's supposed to answer. Kendall does it anyway. Carefully, he enunciates, "In the beginning, after the first time, it was fun. We were happy, I think. Or…I don't know, maybe that was just me. But I thought we were happy, and. I don't know where it all soured."
Jo says, "I'm sorry you're so miserable."
Then she hits him again, for good measure. She doesn't aim for his arm this time.
It's better this way, black eye and all. Messy and sad, but better. It's a lie that Kendall no longer has to live. Once it's over, he doesn't let anybody know that they're through, doesn't tell anyone anything because he doesn't want to ask for help. He occupies himself with other things, with the Palmwoods and the way life gets so crazy.
He's got screaming fans and archenemies and insane record producers to contend with. When everything gets too quiet, the way it always does when he wants it to go fastfastfaster, Kendall spends more time with Katie. With his mom.
With Carlos.
That last one can be hard. Sometimes, he will see something he doesn't expect flicker across Carlos's face, an emotion he can't identify. Kendall decides it must be pity and he's ashamed. He tries not to look so closely. But between Jo and Carlos, he's inspired to regain control. Kendall forbids himself from continuing this farce of a relationship with James any longer.
He forbids it.
That works for about as long as it takes him to figure out that the sex is even hotter because it's forbidden.
On a Thursday afternoon, he sits in a car kissing James, nothing more. He likes it like this, when it's just the two of them, quiet seconds on end and a snatch of serenity. The rise and fall of James's chest and the crash of nearby waves and the relentless cars overhead weave a lullaby. It's a perfect snow globe of peace that Kendall wants to cup in his hands and hold close, forever.
He thinks he could tell the truth here, now, away from all the pressure of home and his friends and the history they've built up between them. "I want you," he says, and James smiles slyly, unbuttons his jeans and shimmies them down his hips.
Only, that's not what Kendall means. But it doesn't matter. The moment is gone.
James slides Kendall's t-shirt over his head, hands tan against the pale jut of Kendall's ribcage. He flicks his fingers against the pink-brown of Kendall's nipples, sucks one between his lips to graze over it with his teeth. Kendall's entire body reverberates with the flick of James's tongue, tremors like a chord fingered over on a guitar; James plays him the same way. He knows exactly what he has to do to make Kendall fall apart.
James's eyes are shiny brown matte in the too bright sun, glossy and smooth as a wet pebble. His mouth tastes like the spice of the peppers he just ate, burning hot against Kendall's lips when he deigns to catch them again. Kendall groans and growls.
There is an animal living inside of his chest. It has teeth and claws. It wants to rip James apart every time he gets too close.
His hands palm over Kendall's ass and he says, "You'll let me, right?"
Like saying no to James is even a thing Kendall remembers how to do anymore.
There, amidst the smell of burgers, beneath heavy concrete and the thunder of cars roaring across the overpass, James gathers Kendall in his lap and fucks him senseless. It's broad daylight, they've got their jeans rucked down around their thighs, and anyone could look in. A stray paparazzo wouldn't have any trouble at all taking a picture that would end everything, but neither of them care. All that exists is the rattle of tires and the rasp of their breath and the way that sunlight turns them both to gold.
"James," Kendall whimpers when James hits him just right. He rakes his fingernails over sweat-slick skin, tries to get closer, needs to get closer. Even once it's over, Kendall can feel James's fingers still, wrapped around his heart, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing.
Afterwards they munch on fries and talk about all kinds of things, the new song James wants to write, Kendall's dad possibly flying out for a visit a few months from now. James narrows his eyes and through a mouthful of potato demands, "Are you okay with that?"
"I don't have a choice."
James squeezes his shoulders and throws out a smile, big and cheerful and worried as hell. "I'll be here."
Kendall leans into his touch, searching for a way to ask if he means it.
He never finds one. The subject changes to an interview the day before, where they were told how amazing they were, and that's when it hits him. The accolades of other people mean nothing if Kendall's not happy with what he's doing.
And Jo's right; Kendall is really, really, really unhappy.
22.
Nowadays, Carlos hates being in 2J. Like school on the graduation day or a bar after last call, everyone is there but no one is really present.
He wishes he was like Logan, who follows his head when the rest of them follow their hearts, but Carlos cannot separate the tangled web of what he feels. He cannot exist without wanting to strangle his best friends. He breaks, time and again.
"It must be nice to be the casual observer in all of this," James says over a sandwich, munching away with careless, sloppy cow lips.
Carlos can't imagine ever wanting James's mouth to touch him, can't figure out why this single boy has managed to breed civil war into their happy-go-lucky lives. He grits out, "Yeah. Nice."
And then he tries really hard not to smash James's pretty, selfish face. He heads to Kendall instead, tells him, "I thought you were going to do something."
Kendall is sulking into his pillows under the guise of taking a nap. Carlos invented that maneuver, back when they were kids and he didn't want to go to school. He is unfooled.
Kendall's golden head shifts. "I don't want to talk about it."
Carlos stomps his foots, because it helps, and because he can. "Dude, I get that, but you can't not talk about it. You're imploding."
"That's my business," Kendall moans, clutching his pillow tighter. He doesn't see the way Carlos's face falls.
Rather pitifully, Carlos inquires, "Since when has anything you do ever not been my business?" He does not wait for an answer. It's since James, of course. Carlos doesn't even need to hear it said out loud. "Just stop already."
"I told you, I can't," Kendall spits mournfully, rolling onto his back. "I'm a total joke."
"No one thinks that."
"Oh yeah? What does everyone think."
"That you're sad. Because you are. I can tell. Katie can tell. Your mom can tell. If you'd stop being angry all the time, James and Logan would be able to tell, and then-"
"Then what?" Kendall demands, lifting his head. His hair is in total disarray, spun gold going in every which direction. "Then they'd know that I'm sad. And pathetic. And a joke," he tacks on annoyingly.
"You don't get to be a coward. Not right now. Not when you've spent your whole life being brave. You're strong, Kendall. Be strong."
"Being strong sucks." Kendall says dully, dropping back to his pillow. He's staring out the window of their apartment, hollow-eyed as he watches the sun shine. He is such a world-class sulker.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean…no one's strong because they choose to be, Carlos. You do it because you have to. Because you have no choice. I'd rather be weak and loved than strong and abandoned any day, okay?"
Carlos is so over this. It's like these lights in his life keep going out, with nothing new moving to replace them. Is this how it's supposed to work? Everyone lined up like birthday cake candles, extinguished one by one until there's nothing but darkness? He doesn't want to see the dead surrender in Kendall's eyes. He's not going to take that.
His stomach flips with angry, buzzing hornets. They sting at his throat and they numb his gut. He tells Kendall, "Dude, no one's abandoning you. Man the fuck up."
He slams the door behind him, the loud echo of wood and plaster screaming all these things he can't.
23.
Logan's picking a fight with him. Again. Over cereal. He wants Lucky Charms and all that's left are Honey O's, and somehow it's Kendall's fault that no one thought to pick up another box.
Which, whatever, everything's Kendall's fault these days. He doesn't rise to the bait, because at this point bickering with Logan about stupid shit is becoming a routine. They can't even function together in the studio, and no matter how much Kendall tries to just make them work again, it's like jamming a square into a circle shaped slot. They're cracked where they used to be whole, and Kendall has no idea how to fix them without letting go of the one thing that will break him.
So he listens to Logan bitch, munching on the last of the Lucky Charms, when Logan says, almost like a joke, "Maybe we should just sleep together. I'll have nailed all of you, and you'll have gotten that stick out of your ass."
"Dude, seriously-" Kendall begins, grossed out in an utterly visceral way, because Logan-dick needs to be nowhere near his. Then the implications of what's been said hit him. He nearly chokes on it, rage that is bigger than anything he's ever experienced before, so much that he can't keep it in. "You'll have what?"
"You heard me," Logan says, and his voice has gone totally flat. He's got his miscalculation-holy-fuck-huge-miscalculation face on, spoon hovering in the air, but he is not backing down. The days where he used to worship the ground Kendall walked on are long, long gone.
What he's saying is completely impossible.
"I heard you lie," Kendall manages, folding his arms over his belly to keep all his vital organs from spilling on the floor. Words aren't supposed to cut like knives, so how come more often than not, they do?
Logan's ears burn red. "I'm not lying, ass fuck."
"Right, I totally believe that you-" Kendall can't even say it, his stomach churning sick. He bites down on his lip. Draws blood. Bites harder. The illness and anger still make their way out, vicious words fleeing his mouth before he can clamp them down. "I can't believe you're making this up, just because you want James. If James wanted you, he'd take you, okay? But I gave him this." He gestures around the kitchen and hates the arrogance in his own voice. He may have enabled James's success, but a record deal and a shiny crib don't entitle Kendall to anything. He knows that. He does. "I gave up everything, for him. What the fuck have you done?"
A muscle in Logan's jaw spasms. A vein in his jugular throbs.
"Not enough, probably." He takes a bite of his cereal, munches for a few beats, and then says steadily, "I would never lie to you."
The implication is there, clear as day. How can you think I would?
But Kendall no longer cares about the edge of kicked-puppy that lurks in Logan's gaze every time their eyes meet. He's got a hell of a lot of violent scenarios involving Logan and blood cycling through his head right now; he wants to break the juice carafe over his skull or bash his head into the TV. Why is it that fucking know-it-all Mitchell keeps getting to partake in everything that Kendall's worked so damn hard for?
It all comes so easy for him. Carlos didn't shove him away and say it's gross.
Kendall squeezes his eyes shut and tries to breathe. One exhalation, and then the next, and then there is a hand soft against his shoulder, scared to touch.
Logan asks tentatively, "Are you okay?"
Miserably, Kendall replies, "None of this is okay."
He finds Carlos by the pool, kicking his feet in the water. It's the first place Kendall thought to check, because it's where Carlos always is these days. He doesn't do tension or awkwardness, and that's pretty much the status quo in the crib twenty four seven. Kendall doesn't blame him.
He slips out of his shoes and settles down beside Carlos. His toes slip through Caribbean blue, rippling out to touch the kids splashing and screaming, the girls floating on their backs and the boys threatening to topple them with a well-placed wave. Lightning The TV Wonder Dog paddles laps through the center of the pool. Kendall watches him swim, his tail wagging happily. He says, "Hey. I was thinking. It's been a while since we worked on the whole girlfriend thing."
Carlos makes a noncommittal noise, shoulders slumped. Kendall frowns.
"I thought you were really desperate for experience."
"I'm not as inexperienced as you think," Carlos replies darkly, refusing to meet Kendall's eyes. "I've done stuff."
"Oh yeah?" Kendall cocks his eyebrow and nudges their sun-warm knees together. He tries not to let on that this is the exact information he's been digging for. "With who?"
Carlos grimaces, separating their wet skin, shrinking into himself. It's such an un-Carlos thing to do, eerily reminiscent of him and Logan only an hour or so before, and Kendall has to wonder. When did they all get so scared to touch each other?
"None of your business," he blurts, squeezing his eyes shut, like he doesn't want to see if Kendall is upset.
Kendall is upset, because Carlos tells him everything, or at least that's what he always thought. But he remembers Carlos begging him to talk things out, just a few nights – or was it a month? – ago. Turnabout is very fair play, and everything is changing faster than any of them can keep track of, these days.
"Fine. Just, Logan said-"
"Logan said what?" Carlos's entire body has gone tense, alert. Kendall's stomach bottoms out in his chest.
You're not supposed to kiss other boys, Carlos said. It's gross. If what he'd meant was kissing you is gross, why hadn't he just said so? Kendall wants to lash out at little kids that don't even exist anymore, for being naïve, for trusting, for thinking that true love was a thing that happens when people grow up.
"It's true then."
Something about his expression makes Carlos hesitate, even his feet in the water stilling their course. "It wasn't a big deal. I asked him to."
"You…what?" Kendall demands, his voice ringing foreign in the air. He swallows against the lump in his throat. He doesn't get to feel like this. He can't feel like this. Not on top of everything else.
"Don't look at me like that. We were fifteen. It was ages ago."
Somehow, that doesn't alleviate the thing that sits a lot like betrayal somewhere just left of Kendall's heart. His mind flashes with lightning, Logan and James outlined by a storm. James's face turns to Carlos and no. He huffs in a breath, another, trying to figure out when everything got so fucked.
Tentative, Carlos ventures, "Kendall?"
His eyes are smoky topaz, clouded with worry. Kendall is an utter cad.
"It's fine. Bit my tongue," he says, trying to explain his sense of wrongness away. He doesn't want to make Carlos sad. He doesn't ever want Carlos to worry about him. He's fine.
Kendall hasn't actually been fine since that day at the military base when he was six years old, but it's much, much too late to stop pretending.
Carlos pulls an unpleasant grin that has too many pearly-white teeth and asks, "Why do you care?"
The angle at which the sun hits the water sets it sparkling, dazzling bright as a photo-flash. Kendall wavers physically, his heart stopping, his veins constricting. A hot blush works across his face and he mumbles, "I don't want you to get hurt."
Carlos gives him the strangest look then, something confident but bewildered. "Logan wouldn't hurt me." When Kendall doesn't reply, fury simmering beneath his skin, Carlos kicks his feet in the water again, splashing them both. He says, "Okay, I told you to hate him, but he wouldn't hurt me. Tell me you know that."
Mechanically, Kendall says, "I know he wouldn't do it on purpose. I'm not stupid."
"You've been acting pretty idiotic."
Kendall slumps back, hot concrete burning his palm. He stares straight into the sun, because the blinding light makes everything else disappear, dances black spots in front of his eyes and reminds him this isn't all there is.
"Let's do something fun. You and me."
Carlos relaxes, the smile that springs to his lips genuine. "You want to?"
Kendall wants a lot of things. Getting his best friends back is at the top of the list. He can't do anything about James; that battle feels like it will never be done. And Carlos was wrong about hating Logan. Kendall doesn't want to, even if it's easy. Zeroing all his anger in that direction isn't helping anything, other than the jealousy infecting every inch of him. Not that Logan will care if Kendall's taking the high road.
The only person he can make things right with at this exact moment is Carlos, who is eternally in Kendall's corner, even when Kendall is being a little bitch. Carlos, whose smile takes his breath away.
Carlos, who might not want him the way Kendall wishes he did, but is still one of his best friends in the entire world.
Kendall swallows down the knot in his throat. "Yeah. I want to."
24.
"We should write a song."
Carlos freezes, his hands hovering over his wallet and his keys.
Kendall's standing right outside James and Carlos's door, fisting his fingers into the knees of his jeans, more awkward and uncomfortable than he ever usually is. James really does a number on him, Carlos thinks piteously.
"You should write a song with Logan," Kendall decides, in a move that appears to shock him most of all.
James exhales softly. "He doesn't…it's not the same."
"What does that mean?"
Carlos watches as James presses a hand to the center of Kendall's chest and says, "You feel it. You feel it, here, when Logan doesn't know how."
Something bright flares to life in Kendall's eyes.
It's not fair. James uses pretty words to ply him like this over and over again, but they're never true. Hope is a single note of music. Hope is poison.
Carlos walks out into the hallway and asks, "Are you ready to go?"
"Where are you going?" James examines them both up and down, trying to glean a location from their posture and clothes. He comes up blank.
Kendall shrugs and glances away. Carlos pastes on an empty grin.
"Oh-kay," James says slowly, backing away. In the dark of the hall, his eyes gleam black like apache tears. Kendall's are just the same, molten as hematite and glistening suspiciously, but James can't see that. He doesn't bother looking. "I guess I'll…find Logan."
Carlos does not miss the way Kendall winces. He watches James back away and murmurs, "Why did you do that?"
Kendall shrugs again. "Let's go, Carlitos."
He meanders out the door and Carlos watches his ass, the easy lines of his posture. Kendall can pitch a bitch-fit like nobody's business, but when he makes up his mind about something, he's…hot. Really, really hot.
Carlos wants to know what it's like to fuck him. Of course he does. He's only ever been with Logan. Which Kendall knows now. He knows and it pissed him off, although Carlos can't for the life of him figure out why. He wants to ask again, but the whole dynamic of their friendship has changed so much since coming to Hollywood. He's not sure how many of Kendall's buttons he can push before he snaps.
One day, Carlos is going to have to peel layer upon layer from Kendall's skin to see if there is someone underneath, if there is a brand new boy hiding inside of him or just an empty shell, the husk of what James has left behind.
Kendall pauses in the hall, cranes his head so that the fluorescent lights highlight him in orange-gold. He calls, "Are you coming?"
Carlos trips over himself to follow.
In the elevator, they run into Jett Stetson, who takes a single look at them both and asks, "Are we angsting?" Jett pins on his most serious face. "I'm a spectacular angster. I won a Razzie for angsting."
"I…don't think that means you're, er, good at it," Carlos tells him, never quite sure what to do with himself when Jett's around.
Jett brays with laughter. "I'm good at everything."
Kendall says, "It doesn't matter. There's no angsting here."
"There's not?" Carlos asks dubiously.
Kendall pins him with the heat in his quicksilver eyes, fondness playing across his lips. He says, "I told you. We're going to have fun."
Carlos knows it's naïve to be the boy who hopes endlessly. He doesn't know how long he'll last if he keeps holding onto this crazy, reckless yearning. But when Kendall stares at him like that, he can't keep it from festering.
Hope is poison.
25.
James comes to him in the night and asks, "Where did you go today?"
Kendall grins, thinking back on it. "It's a secret."
"We don't have secrets," James says, pressing his lips to the jut of Kendall's hips. He peers up at him, pupils glowing red as garnets in the last shreds of sunset. He is crafted of shadow and light.
From this angle, his spine curls in on itself like a spiral of ammonite.
James takes Kendall on his bed, pressed up against Kendall's headboard, hot and thick and hard when he floods Kendall with come. Kendall isn't finished, isn't even close to sated, and his fingers scrabble against the wood and the wall because he's got James's hands on his dick, his pretty lips pressed against the rim of his asshole. James licks Kendall clean of every drop of himself, tongues inside him until he's sobbing with it and James is ready to go again. They fuck slower this time, drawing it out until Kendall loses it across the threadcount of his pillows and the pump of James's hips goes discordant.
He shudders and cries out, bites the meat of Kendall's shoulder so hard that it's sure to be a permanent brand. Kendall sags back against him, rides him through it until they collapse backwards on the bed.
James asks, "Will you tell me now?" and Kendall can't remember what the question was until he murmurs into the sweat of his hairline, "How can you keep a secret from me?"
Raggedly, Kendall replies, "All we have are secrets, James."
26.
"When we're old," James begins, staring at the stars that stretch high above Hollywood. "Do you think people will remember us?"
He doesn't ask if they'll all still be friends. He takes it for granted. He takes them all for granted, time and time again. It's not just Kendall, not just Logan. It's Carlos too. James is certain of them all, and he shouldn't be.
But no one tells him that.
Carlos stares off into the dark shapes of birds of paradise and wonders what the point is of having best friends if all they do is make him feel lonely. It builds like a scream in his chest, but he swallows it down. "I dunno, man. I hope so."
James switches tacks all too easily. "You know, I could set you up with a girl."
He's completely oblivious to everything ever. He misses the way Kendall's hands clench into fists, the thinness of Logan's lips, the crackle of the fire chipping away at the seconds on end Carlos takes to answer.
James Diamond is the last person in the entire world that he will ever want relationship advice from. And yet, he can't say it that way, sword-sharp and poised to wound. For all that James is an utter douchebag, he is still Carlos's friend.
"I think I'm good, thanks."
"But-"
"He said he's good," Kendall provides helpfully, thumping his sneaker against James's. That turns into an impromptu game of footsie not-so-cleverly disguised as kicking the shit out of each other.
Abruptly, Logan says, "I think I'm going to call it a night."
James jumps to his feet, and, sparing a guilty glance towards Logan's retreating back, asks, "Kendall, you coming?"
Just out of James's line of sight, Carlos mouths, don't go.
He is asking, begging, pleading with his eyes. And he almost wins. He can see it, blessed indecision, wavering in Kendall's gaze. He glances from James to Carlos and back again, and yes, Carlos thinks with all his might, listen to me.
Then the set of Kendall's shoulders solidifies, turns stiff and unyielding, and it turns out it isn't a victory after all. Kendall clambers up and follows James, the night a little bleaker for his absence.
Carlos remembers when he was younger; his dad's country songs and his mom's telenovelas. Somewhere along the line, he got this idea that being brokenhearted was tragically romantic. Now he has to wonder if he orchestrated this, somehow. If he took his big brother's advice about suffering and maneuvered himself into a position where there was no chance at all that his heart would ever stay whole.
No matter what Carlos does, Kendall won't ever listen to him. Even as his insides are ripped raw, a gaping wound, Kendall won't even try to do anything about it, so why should Carlos? This all passed the thin line between devoted friendship and torturing himself a long time ago.
The next morning, he goes to James. "About that girl…?"
He gets ready for his date thinking that if he could do it all again, he'd go back. He'd tell himself the most important thing he's learned; that being brokenhearted feels exactly like having no heart at all.
27.
The problem with loyalty is that it is impossible to give up.
Kendall's stuck in one big endless repeat episode of no-one-wants-you, where he is always second best. When Carlos and some new girl of the week start dating, even though it's only for a handful of days, he wants to put his fist through a wall. It's one more emotion in a whole fondue pot full of them that Kendall tries not to examine.
He's full to the brim. Kendall is supposed to be the boy who believes when no one else will, but people are so immensely flawed. Once you see that, is there any way to go back?
He doesn't think so. He has nineteen years of disappointment weighing on his shoulders, and maybe that's why, eventually, he starts considering the impossible. Maybe that's why, when his heart cracks and threatens to shatter, he lets it.
Really, it was inevitable. It doesn't matter what he has given up, or even what he feels. It doesn't matter how great a person he is, how good a friend. Love exists or it doesn't. James's heart cannot be dictated by the way Kendall's bleeds, no matter how unfair it is. So, for the first time in his entire life, Kendall Knight gives up. He throws loyalty straight into the wind.
Kendall makes a backup plan, and waits.
And waits.
And waits.
The day his answer arrives in the mail, he is trying to sing, trying to do a song the way that Gustavo wants it, but he can't. His voice is a small thing, afraid to leave his body, and when he hits a high note his voice splinters, cracking like a sob. In seconds he's got four sets of eyes on him, five if you include the sound mixer, and all are filled with concern.
Kendall should say dry throat. Ask for water. Tell them he's fine. But Kendall is not fine, and there's not even a reason to keep up the sham anymore.
James isn't here today. He's got the solos in this song. He doesn't have to lay down his tracks until tomorrow. That makes it easier to say, "I can't do this," and he's about to explain, about to make a scene and do what he should have done in the first place; crush poor, absent James's dreams where they stand. He's going to quit the band. He's actually going to-
Logan clears his throat, steps forward and says, "Actually, yeah, I wanted to talk to you guys. This is going to be our last album." He proceeds to elaborate that he's leaving for school, for the other end of the country, and in that moment he takes even this, Kendall's last opportunity for dignity.
"It's what's best for everyone," Logan says at one point in his speech, sparing a furtive glance at Carlos. "We all want it."
Gustavo confronts Kendall later, once Kelly has chased Logan out of the studio with Carlos on their heels. He says, "I know something's going on with you dogs. Logan wouldn't just up and leave like that."
"You don't know anything about what Logan would do," Kendall retorts wearily. "And neither do I."
Gustavo is not even a little bit impressed. "Fix it."
"No."
Gustavo may be short-tempered, but he is also smart. For once in his life, he doesn't argue. "Fine. Come work for me."
"What? I already work for you."
"Just you, this time. No James. No Carlos. No Logan. No pack, just the alpha." Gustavo's teeth gleam, the line of his mouth stern, but sincere. "On your own, you'll be more famous than Big Time Rush ever could be." He claps a hand on Kendall's shoulder, more fatherly than Kendall's dad and continues gruffly, "It'll be good for you to be alone."
Kendall could take the offer. It would be so easy to make James suffer the same way that he does.
But even if Kendall is spent inside, no longer a boy who believes in fairy tales or magic things, he's not cruel. He doesn't know how to be cruel.
Kendall is more like his mother than he's ever wanted to admit.
"Give a record deal to James. He wants it so damn bad."
It's the smallest comfort, to do something good, even if Gustavo will still make James work for it. Kendall needs good right now, because telling James what's happened is going to be the worst thing he's ever done; he can feel it in his bones. So this, yeah. This is necessary.
This one last time, even if James will never know about it. It's Kendall's one last chance to play at being a hero.
28.
Logan is leaving, James is folding in on himself, and there's nothing Kendall can do. Carlos isn't even sure Kendall wants to do anything. He's back to sulking, in the form of packing his bags instead of hugging his pillows.
"As your band's manager, I'm going to have to ask you to stop being a fuck up."
"Who made you manager?" Kendall asks suspiciously, because Katie has this nasty habit of buying out people's souls.
Katie ignores him, talks over him. "Maybe if you'd just talk to Logan about it-"
"Logan's made up his mind," he replies, steely. Carlos presses a palm to the hard muscle of Kendall's lower back and glares at Katie. She means well, but she's just a kid. She doesn't get it.
"Then talk to James."
Or maybe she does.
Kendall pauses mid-fold to glower at his baby sister. "There's nothing to talk about."
"Really? I heard you screaming at him all the way down the hall."
Carlos wasn't here for that. He was too busy trying to calm Logan down, to convince him this was what everyone – except James – wanted. He'd known the med school announcement was coming. He'd also seen the acceptance letter Kendall got in the mail that day. When Logan came to him, asking advice, he'd known what to do.
The future is here, knocking at their door. Carlos told Logan to embrace it.
Now he tries to read the emotions that flick across Kendall's features, too fast for him to read. What did he miss?
"People say things they don't mean all the time, Katie. You should know that."
"Kendall…James isn't dad. I know that's what it feels like, but…if you love him, you should tell him that."
Kendall is trembling beneath Carlos's hand. He mumbles, "He still would have chosen Logan."
"Probably." Katie shrugs, utterly practical. "But at least you would know that you'd tried."
"Don't be cute," Carlos tells her, because Kendall isn't saying anything at all.
"That's physically impossible for me." Kendall rolls his eyes. "Big brother?"
Katie wraps her arms around Kendall's waist, and she's looking up at him with those big brown puppy dog eyes. Kendall makes an mmm of acknowledgement, probably expecting to be hit up for cash for the umpteenth time.
Instead he gets, "How much can you actually hate yourself?"
It's the last thing Carlos expects her to say. From the gobsmacked expression Kendall's wearing, he's a bit blindsided as well. But he doesn't lie.
"A lot. I hope you never find that out." He tugs Katie up under his arm, ruffling her hair.
"Hey!"
Once she's gone, Carlos tells him, "She's right, you know."
"Katie's rarely wrong."
"You should try." It aches to say it out loud, but Carlos does it anyway. "You should tell James."
He doesn't expect Kendall to agree with him; it's not like Carlos hasn't told him to fight at least ninety thousand times before. He's used to being the Greek Chorus in this tragedy, but damnit, it's not selfless; what Kendall's doing. Giving James his record deal, running away. Surrendering him to Logan, if fate wants it that way. Outsiders might mistake it for some kind of martyrdom. But Carlos sees it for what it really is. Kendall's punishing himself and even if Carlos wants this done, he doesn't want that.
Kendall tilts his head down, and in the pale, gold lamplight, he looks raw, looks wrecked, looks beautiful; the way that broken things always do. Carlos waits for him to give the I-can't song and dance he's been spinning out for months.
Kendall says, "I already did."
Oh.
"What happened?"
Carlos is scared of the answer. What if James was overjoyed? Wait, no, Kendall's still packing up. Which means that James…wasn't.
"James basically told me to fuck off." Kendall tells his suitcase, because his clothes are so much more interesting than meeting Carlos's gaze. "Maybe if I'd given in earlier. Maybe if I'd given up, earlier-"
Carlos is going to kill James. He's going to murder him in cold blood. "But then you wouldn't be you. Dude, last I checked, surrender isn't even in your vocabulary."
"It is now," Kendall replies stonily. He returns to his packing with single minded determination. It's…really freaky. He's not freaking out. He's not crying. He got shot down by the love of his life, and he's doing exactly what Carlos told him to a few months back. He's manning up, he's soldiering on.
It's so fucking fake.
"Don't do this. Don't pretend that you're invincible."
Kendall flinches. He says, "You told me to be strong."
"Don't shut me out," Carlos's voice comes out harsher than he means it to, louder too. "Don't act you're the only person who's ever had their heart broken."
"I know that," Kendall says, and he's not even yelling back. What the hell is wrong with him? Kendall never turns down an opportunity to vent when he's well and truly mad.
Carlos is really freaked out. That's how he accounts for it, later on, in his head. That's why he grabs Kendall's face firmly between his hands and kisses him soundly.
Or as soundly as he can when it only lasts a second.
"Carlos." Kendall sets his hands on Carlos's shoulders and pushes him back. He's gentle. Too gentle. His face is a blank slate. "No. You don't want to do this."
"How do you know?" Carlos demands, so angry and hurt.
Kendall's eyes are green as sea foam or a smoggy day, chrysoprase hooded by gold. Carlos can't read anything in them, and it's not right, because there should be something; surprise or betrayal or anything other than flat acceptance.
Kendall says evenly, "I know, okay?"
In that moment, Carlos stops remembering how to be mad anymore. He's just…numb. He says, "You think you're so fucking smart. But really you don't know anything at all."
Kendall sucks his lower lip into his mouth, his mind probably already elsewhere. He picks up a shirt and starts piling it in a heap into his suitcase. He obviously doesn't care that Carlos risked everything he thought he never would.
Kendall's too sad to give a fuck.
29.
He keeps waiting for James to stop him. Isn't this the scene in the movies where the lover vaults security and there is this touching reconciliation? God, Kendall did that for Jo, just to say goodbye when she left for New Zealand. The lingering traces of their friendship meant that much to him, but Kendall thinks to James, he must not be worth it.
The betrayal of James's absence burns longer and harder than simple loss. Even though Kendall knew it was coming. This is the devolution in what they were; James has gone from chasing after him to make sure he's always, always okay to not really caring either way.
It makes Kendall want to yell and scream and lash out, but there's no one left who cares enough to listen. Even Carlos watches him with guarded eyes, and it's his own fault, yeah, Kendall is completely aware that all the blame is his, but he still wishes there was someone he could talk to.
Only the things he wants to say make him feel sick and humiliated inside. No one wants to know about love once it's turned to rot. He crosses his arms over his chest and shoulders his bag higher, chin up, neck straight. It seems right that he's going home, unable to make it in the world, while James is out there, touching his dreams. Going home is going to suck, in a way, because when Kendall was sixteen, Minnesota was stifling. All he could think of was getting out, getting on a team, getting free of the humdrum of his hometown. But now it feels like the only place he might be able to breathe.
Only, he gets to Minnesota and it's not the refuge he remembers. Kendall thinks that he can taste James in the air, home on his tongue. He sits at the edge of the lake near his house and he does not scream, even though he wants to. If he starts, he thinks he might never be able to stop.
He licks his lips and tastes Carlos too, because he kissed him, and Kendall screwed that up too. It should have made a difference when he's been thinking about it for so long, but Kendall barely recognized the small offer of affection over the steady mantra in his head, of his last conversation with James.
"Logan asked me if I loved you, and I had to tell him no because-"
"Because you don't love me."
Kendall stopped existing right then. He's not sure he ever started again.
The rotten salt stench of dead fish is carried on a fair breeze. He rests his head against the tree trunk and repeats, softly, a sob, a prayer, a wish, "Fuck."
Loss tastes like ash. It's a tremor in his bones, a quake that devastates everything in its path. He doesn't know how much of his relationship with James was real and how much of it was fiction, fantasy he spun from his own desires. And it cuts at him, because Kendall doesn't like the idea that such a large part of his life was a lie.
He sees James everywhere, in the silhouette of the mailman and the carefully arranged coiffeur of a local barista, in the long, callused fingers of a bartender and the dancing eyes of the kids who trample over him on the sidewalk when they run home from school. He hears in him in the hollering of the frat guys at his new university, in the crowds at the hockey games he goes to watch.
Then he starts hearing him for real, on the radio, and that's even worse. It pushes home the way that James has left a James-sized space in Kendall's life, and no matter how Kendall tries to fill it, twisting puzzle pieces this way and that, hobbies and men and women and work, anything and everything to lessen the gap, he cannot. No one can fill the hollow.
Distraction helps, but it doesn't take away the pain. Everyone says it will dissipate eventually. Kendall doesn't believe them. That day at the airport with his dad still hurts as fresh as it did when he was six, and he thinks that this, the idea of James, will still hurt when he's sixty.
He wonders if that's normal, if everyone hurts like that inside and just lies about it, hiding beneath a happy façade like a Venetian mask, because faking it until you make it is the only way to survive the ache. He relives the betrayal in quiet moments, when the golden sun filters through his window in the middle of the afternoon, or when he's hiding beneath the covers of his bed, remembering the tent-forts he and James used to build to create a space of their own. They would run out into the woods as kids and watch the sky, endless, endless blue.
Now the sky is flat. Not endless. Just flat.
And Kendall watches for hours.
There are no stars to wish on, no pennies to throw or magic lamps to rub. He no longer dreams about the future. Kendall thinks he's okay with this; being stuck in Minnesota, working at his university bookstore, studying for something that will never come. He can survive in a state of suspended animation, but nothing else. No one can ask him for anything else.
When Kendall thinks back on the time that he spent together with James, it's never this perfect, clear memory. It's an image of his body, a splash of color against the sheets. It's his hand, long-fingered, fisting against white fabric. It's his voice. James said his name in a way nobody else has ever replicated.
Months stumble past, and Kendall completely forgets what love felt like- shiny and new, like presents on Christmas day he thinks, when he deigns to think of it at all - and he isn't sure he wants to remember. It seems like a thing that is forever tarnished in his head, blackened edges, a memory that has nothing at all to do with him.
Kendall's heart beat for James, but now James is gone. Does that mean his heart simply stops?
Maybe not. Before, he thought the only thing he needed was James, but now he is greedy. He has to have his mother's voice on the other end of the phone, replenishing his sapped strength. He needs to listen to Katie babble on about her latest scam, still a bubbly kid for all her attempts at adulthood. He needs hockey, the cold clarity of the ice, and he needs to watch the news so he can know that there's other people out there with shit going on that's way worse than his own. He needs laughter.
He needs friends, too, but those are kind of in short supply right now. That Carlos continues to stand by him is a tiny little miracle, with what's happened.
The one thing Kendall does not need is love. He's done with that. For good.
Forever.
A/N: Please review. I'd prefer all homicidal rages kept to a minimum, but you know, have at it, make it a party. The next and last chapter is almost entirely written, so it'll be up really soon guys. :)