We Could Take To The Highway
Chapter Five
By: Jondy Macmillan
James woke up to the scent of coffee, biscuits and honey, and a stream of whitewashed sunlight pouring across the room. It looked even seedier in the light of day, the paint of the ceiling peeling overhead and the carpet threadbare and worn. Kendall was sitting at the little pitted wood table by the window with a tray full of their free continental breakfast.
It looked like he'd already eaten most of it.
He was facing the wall, eyes distant, all the way back in California for all James knew. Though the thin material of Kendall's old, faded t-shirt, he could see the proud lines of the blond's back, the tense set of his shoulders, the way he held himself with a sort of confidence that most people interpreted as arrogant self importance.
Hell, maybe some of it was. Kendall had a certain air of entitlement that came from growing up a Knight. The whole clan was driven, ambitious, and could get anything their hearts desired; Katie, Kendall's mom- geez, even Kendall's grandparents were kind of frightening that way.
"Hey, man," James groaned, sitting up in a nest of rumpled sheets that looked like they'd seen a night of wild, crazy animal sex. Which felt close to the truth, even if the previous evening had only culminated in a blowjob.
Only a blowjob. James shook his head, still cobwebby with dreams, trying to wrap his mind around the fact that he'd gotten that much, so much more than he'd expected. It felt like an impossibility, even now that it had happened, even now that James had Kendall imprinted on the back of his eyelids. Every time they flickered closed he could see his friend, lips wrapped around his cock, imagine the warm, wet heat of his mouth. And fuck, he'd only been awake for two minutes and relived it eighty times.
Kendall turned to face him, the movement fluid, "Morning, sleepyhead."
James suppressed the urge to run his fingers through his hair, to make sure he looked good for this gorgeous, amazing guy. Like Kendall hadn't already seen him at his worst, over and over again.
"I, uh- that smells good," James croaked, not sure how to act, what to do when he could still feel the brush of Kendall's fingertips against his hips, the phantom touch haunting him.
"It's all for you," Kendall waved a hand over the plate magnanimously, like what remained wasn't a congealed, sad looking egg and a crumbly muffin, but an honest to god feast.
"Great."
James clambered out of his linen labyrinth, getting his legs tangled and nearly falling flat on his face. The only thing that saved him was Kendall's quick reflexes; strong hands on his stomach, perched on the small of his back, "Steady there, buddy."
He sounded like he always had, the same Kendall James had known for the better half of the last decade. But that didn't stop James's body from reacting, a rose colored flush heating his skin. He wondered if Kendall could feel it, if his sudden shyness was burning his best friend's palms, but before he could ask, Kendall snatched his hands away.
"I called home, checked in with Logan, Carlos. Mom. I, uh-" Kendall bit his lip, the flash of teeth on pink flesh hypnotizing, "After you eat, we should get a move on."
"Sure," James shrugged. Something felt off, but he was still half-caught in a dream world. He rubbed sleep from his eyes and settled into his meal, which vanished in something like three bites. God, he was fucking starving.
Kendall watched him with quiet intensity, as if he was studying a wild animal in its natural habitat. James knew a normal person would hate it, would be uncomfortable with such scrutiny, but he was born to live in the spotlight. He liked attention; it didn't matter if it came from thousands of screaming girls or a boy he'd known forever and a day. Although, yeah, maybe he could silently admit that he preferred the latter.
It was Kendall after all.
Once he'd finished up, he went to brush his teeth, all the while watching Kendall don his jeans over his boxers out of the corner of his eye. He wondered in this fleeting, freakish way if those were the same boxers Kendall had slept in, still stained with slight traces of James's cum from when he'd wiped his hand off, at the very end. That train of thought called up memories of the popping sound Kendall's mouth had made when he'd finished, letting James's dick fall limp while he swallowed- and well, yeah. That didn't help anything. James accidentally jabbed himself in the side of his mouth with his toothbrush. Fuck.
He went through his usual routine, ending in a five minute stare off with the mirror that his friends all said was just proof that James couldn't pass a shiny surface without trying to seduce it, but which today proved a helpful aid in examining a certain Knight boy without his knowledge, gathering his nerve and trying to act put together.
Finally, James let go of the sink, where he'd gripped so hard his knuckles had turned white. He slipped on a pair of jeans, a black t-shirt and some motorcycle boots that made him feel sexier than James Dean and zipped up his suitcases, car keys jingling in his back pocket.
"You ready?" he asked, and he still felt bashful, a little awkward.
"Let's go," Kendall nodded his head, leading the way out of the room and onto the filthy, sun bleached sidewalk, all the way to the hole in the wall lobby for checkout. After handing back their keycard and a brief exchange with the weathered old dude who manned the desk, they fled outside, for the car, for the sunlight.
James's boots kicked up dirt, and he felt like a renegade. All alone with a guy who meant everything to him, on a dusty desert highway that stretched on forever.
He popped the trunk, although popped might be a misnomer, as he had to manually stick the key in and wrench it open. James liked the nostalgic way it felt, handling the old car, when all the other rides he owned had push keys and start buttons and looked like they might have arrived from outer space.
Kendall threw in his suitcase, letting it land unceremoniously on the duffel bag where James kept his jack, a flashlight, and a first aid kit, pushing it all around so James had enough room to fit his in snugly.
"Why do you have a stack of Vonnegut books back here?" Kendall asked, grabbing for one of the dog-eared novels at random, thumbing through the battered edition of Slaughterhouse Five. James wasn't fooled into thinking his friend was actually reading the book; they were assigned it once, back in Minnesota, and the most use Kendall ever got out of it was as a coaster.
"Logan borrowed the car for that beach picnic with those bikini models a few weeks ago. He didn't want to risk getting his all sandy."
"Only Logan would think books and bikini models were an acceptable combination," Kendall replied fondly, and James felt something hot as lust, but more piercing slice through his chest. He recognized it as jealousy, but smushed it down, away.
The way he always did.
It wasn't a new feeling, really. When he first met Carlos and Logan, James was jealous. Ridiculously so. He'd never had friends with such normal, happy home lives. And he'd never, never had to share Kendall before.
Mostly, he'd managed to overcome it; too confident in himself to let petty envy mess things up for him, and always willing to be the bigger man. Plus, he'd thrown a diva fit about a month into their friendship back in the day, and Kendall had put him in his place but good.
Still, there was no denying that Kendall had a soft spot for Logan. He told him secrets he wouldn't even tell James. He mollycoddled the guy half the time, because he was small and naive and worshipped the ground Kendall walked on whenever he didn't have his face buried in a book. It got annoying.
So yeah, James got jealous time and time again, whenever Kendall mentioned Logan's name with that affectionate tone. One might even say James had a complex. Overcoming it was a work in progress.
But all that was over. He'd won the second Kendall's lips touched his cock…hadn't he?
Kendall was driving, keys in the ignition and warning James to buckle up, but he couldn't stop thinking about what last night had meant, if anything. The landscape slowly rolled past as they hopped on US-89 towards Utah, but James wasn't processing the red rock cliffs or the prickly lone cacti. He was searching for words, for something to say, and failing, hard. Eventually Kendall switched on the radio, where some old cowboy sang about love and heartbreak.
Around eleven they stopped at a gas station for a fill up and snacks. The girl behind the counter with shining eyes asks for an autograph and a picture. Both boys agreed, even knowing that the picture would make all the gossip sites by noon. Everyone was going to be wondering what was up with half of BTR's impromptu road trip.
The breakup rumors would start.
It'd be even worse once Kendall was in Minnesota. Then the rumors will be proven true. But what else could they do? They couldn't deny a fan.
When they crossed the border between Arizona and Utah, James was surprised by how much the landscape stayed the same. He tried to talk, to say something that would get the ball rolling, but the only things he could think to say were idle comments about the weather. At first he toyed with the radio dial in an attempt to gather his courage, switching between static and Christian rock, stations in español and twangy country hits. There was a blip where he caught the tail end of one of their songs, but Kendall smacked his hand away from the console and changed it, quick. He looked guilty, even with his eyes trained on the road.
Any courage James had managed to round up evaporated. He was terrified that if he brought up the previous night, Kendall would admit that it had been a mistake, an experiment, or even a dream. He didn't want to press, to force Kendall into speaking before he was ready. Even if Kendall was usually the person who tackled things head on. James found other ways to occupy himself, anything but talking. He dug a notepad from the dash and scribbled half formed lyrics, thoughts that might not ever see the light of day. Gustavo opened up to their ideas the more time passed, but he had yet to let the band pen their own song. He must've drifted off at some point, because the next time his eyes flickered open, they were rolling into Salt Lake City and it was late in the afternoon. His legs felt cramped, his back knotted. Outside, the cityscape stood in stark contrast to the sky, dusk falling quick and stealthy, creeping in until everything was white lights and stars.
Their hotel that night was fancy; it lived up to every one of James's expectations with modern art paintings and comforters so fluffy he could drown in them. Only, the distance between his bed and Kendall's seemed a whole hell of a lot farther, and the flat screen TV gave the an excuse not to talk until dinner.
They went to a place near the Mormon Tabernacle, deciding that they wouldn't be sticking around in the morning to sightsee. The window by their table looked out onto the building, gray spires that glowed soft ochre under manmade lighting. It would've been almost romantic, if their dispositions hadn't been so damn gloomy.
James wanted to go out, to explore what kind of night life Utah had to offer, but he didn't want to go alone, and Kendall wasn't in the mood for well, anything. As the hour grew later, no matter how hard James tried to engage him in any kind of conversation; it all just fell flat, stilted. They were both tired and irritable from the long ride, and eventually, he just gave up. Besides, Utah's night life couldn't be all that great; all their liquor stores were run by the state, and they'd only passed one during the entire drive. It was a far cry from Hollywood.
By the time James had dived under his covers back at the hotel for sleep, it was barely even ten. It was the earliest night he'd had since he was sixteen, when his parents split. Back then, mom couldn't take the heat and skipped town, eventually surfacing a few months later working the afternoon shift at a local dive. Meanwhile his dad scored a real cushy job, allowing them to move out of the trailer park where he'd lived most of his life, into a real-live house. He had a new step mom within months, who imposed upon him, of all things, a curfew. Lights out by ten, every night.
James had taken to sneaking out to Kendall's house by the second week. They'd stay up well past two in the morning, playing video games and talking about how much they were going to regret fucking around when they had to get up for school at seven.
But he kept doing it, night after night, because with Kendall, it had always been worth it.
Then Gustavo had come along, and the whole thing became a moot point.
James tossed and turned restlessly for hours. The high thread count sheets felt itchy against his skin, and he was hot, overheating despite the air conditioner on full blast.
Eventually he managed to admit to himself that he was waiting to see if Kendall would pad up to his bed again, breath caught in his throat.
He didn't.
The next day was more awkward than the previous had been. There was definitely something wrong. James had been willing to let the drive through Arizona pass in a lazy haze, but he didn't have endless stores of patience like Logan. At the risk of sounding like a chick, he needed some goddamned closure.
It came to a head outside a rest stop on the way to Idaho.
It wasn't completely Kendall's fault. James had accidentally dumped half of his sub for lunch all over his favorite shirt, leaving a huge, oily stain, and his hair was getting harder and harder to maintain the farther away they got from California's dry heat, and his knee ached from jutting up against the steering wheel too many times. The Saab had this electrical short thing with the seats, and Kendall had played with his adjustments the day before, only to have it all spark out. James couldn't move forward or backwards, and he was lucky the trip wasn't with someone as tiny as Carlos, or he never would've been able to drive.
Anyway, point was, he was more than a little ill-tempered when they pulled over at some shady ass building that looked like it probably housed half of America's serial killers so that Kendall could pee.
"I've got to piss like a racehorse, dude," had been his exact words. So James had stopped, and now he was waiting outside, where the scenery had changed from cacti to sparse brush, but otherwise looked mostly the exact same as it had since they'd left Joshua Tree. Red and brown and sandy yellow; like the beaded dreamcatcher James's mother once hung in the corner of her room.
Kendall emerged from the restroom looking a lot less tense, but still avoiding James's gaze.
He maybe, sort of snapped.
"Alright, what is your fucking problem?" James demanded, his voice loud, reverberating across the open land until the hot sun and the dirt and the boot-brushing scrub ate it up. And, okay, maybe that hadn't been the best way to phrase all his pent up aggression, because the expression on Kendall's face turned murderous.
"My problem?" Kendall turned on him, abrupt and volatile, like he'd been waiting for this moment for eons, "You're the one that's been acting like- like- way clingy and obsessive."
"Excuse me?" James demanded, voice pitching high. Clingy and obsessive was what you called girls when you wanted to break up with them.
"But I guess that's just par for the course with you. One minute you're acting completely normal and the next minute you're- I don't even fucking know, mauling me in a National Park."
"Mauling you? Seriously? It was just a fucking kiss! If that's what you call mauling, what the hell do you call your mouth on my-"
"You liked it," Kendall spat, interrupting his tirade.
"Of course I liked it, it was a blowjob!" James exploded, "What's not to like?"
"Maybe how wrong it was?" and now Kendall's voice was deadly quiet, a serpent waiting to strike.
James faltered. He'd known something was off-maybe he'd even suspected that Kendall regretted what had happened, but he'd been wishing so hard that it was something, anything else. Because that meant the other night would never happen again.
He'd gotten his hopes up for nothing, and now he was just pissed. He sounded lethal when he hissed, "No one forced you to."
"Yeah, actually, you did. With your fucking face and your fucking eyes and you made me feel like I'd kicked a fucking puppy-" Kendall was shouting, voice reverberating all over the empty valley, bouncing off the walls of the filthy restroom and the dusty mound of packed earth that made up the parking lot.
"Stop yelling at me!" James screeched, feeling like everything was spiraling out of control.
"I have to yell, because you're the one who didn't want to talk!"
Kendall emphasized his point with a fist to James's jaw.
They hadn't fought with fists and limbs and fury since they were thirteen and falling head over heels for the same girl. That had ended in bruised ribs and unshed tears. This was different, more visceral. James stumbled back, body slamming against the wall of the restroom. He grimaced, popped his jaw back into place, feeling the bones grind, the soreness where the joints connected. It was going to be ugly by nightfall, black and blue tinged yellow, like the time he'd fallen off his skateboard one summer when he was seven and eaten way too much asphalt.
Kendall was glaring at him, fist still out, knuckles protruding as his chest heaved for breath, and James couldn't take it. He hurtled through the air, catching the blond by his ribcage and throwing him down against the sand. His friend's head hit the desert with a dull thud, but it couldn't have hurt much because he was already scrabbling to turn the tables, to land James on his back. His elbow caught James in the chest, pain blossoming across his sternum and the taller boy retaliated instantly, pounding his fist hard into Kendall's face. His missed smashing his nose by a fraction of an inch; in the back of his mind he had half formed thoughts about Big Time Rush and photo shoots. They evaporated when Kendall hooked a leg over the back of James's knee, using the larger boy's weight against him so that they toppled to the side, grappling for power.
James threw himself forward, vicious, landing a knee in Kendall's gut, bashing his best friend's head into the ground. If they'd been in a real parking lot, somewhere inside civilization, his skull would have cracked on the concrete, but this place was just loosely packed dirt, and Kendall was resilient. He pummeled James's chest, his face, tangling their legs so that there was no way the taller boy would be able to utilize them, their hips crashing together. James felt wild, untamed, and perversely more than a little turned on.
He caught one of Kendall's wrists, allowing the blond's other hand a glancing blow to his shoulder and twisted, firmly, but not enough to break anything. Kendall winced, squirmed, and that was when James realized that he wasn't the only one getting a little hard. Kendall immediately stiffened, catching the look in James's eye. His face shuttered close, and he pulled his forearm against James's thumb, freeing up his hand so that he could shove James's body off. Kendall scrambled to his feet, limping a little, staring at James like he was some kind of feral stranger.
"Are you gay now?" he wheezed, clutching hard at his chest as he leaned against the car, "Do you want me to be your- what, boyfriend?"
James lay back in the swirling dust, panting, trying to breathe past the sharp pain in his abdomen.
The most fucked up thing about all of this was that when he'd kissed Kendall in the desert, he hadn't been after a relationship. He'd spent so long decidedly not thinking about Kendall that way that when the call had come in, when he'd opened himself up to the possibility of them as more than friends, he really hadn't even considered anything past trying to get their mouths to match up. Trying to recapture a night that had been burned on his lips, the back of his eyelids since the moment it happened.
After Kendall had pushed him away, yeah, he'd thought the boyfriend option had flown out the window, but it hadn't been foremost on his mind. He hadn't been sad about it, or even felt any which way about it because it was just a fucking label, and James wasn't even sure if he was gay. All he wanted, all that occupied his mind was Kendall, and how he didn't want to ruin their friendship, what they'd had up until now. Too late for that.
So, the boyfriend thing was- whatever, and the gay thing? James didn't have a goddamned clue. He'd always been the first to admit when another guy was attractive, in aesthetic, viewing-them-as-competition kind of way. But more than that? He was still figuring it out.
"I dunno," he said, his voice hard to catch, a tumbleweed in the wind. He scrambled up, found his footing, and offered a hand to Kendall.
"No, don't- fucking touch me, okay?"
This wasn't fair. All he'd wanted was to make sense of a memory, and now everything was fucked.
"Kendall-"
"I remember, okay? Kissing you. I remember," Kendall muttered, voice practically breaking.
"But- if that's true, then why-"
"I was trying to forget! I was trying so, so hard to forget. James, I mean-"
"Kendall, I-"
"What do you think this trip was about?" he yelled, frustrated, whipping his hands through his sandy blond hair.
"You. The things you want. And-"
"Don't you dare say it," Kendall was angrier than James had seen him in a long time, the kind of cold anger he usually locked up because it affected his ability to lead.
"Okay," James lifted his shoulders helplessly, "I won't."
"Because that's not what you told me this was," Kendall continued, "You never said this was about me and you."
He hadn't, hadn't even thought it, but now he knew. It was.
"I-"
"You weren't supposed to spring this on me when I was trying- God, I can't do this. Let's just get this whole thing done with," Kendall stooped to pick up the keys that had fallen by the wayside during their fight and tossed them to James, commanding, "Drive fast. Because right now, I can't even stand the sight of you."
A/N: Alriiiight. That turned out a bit more violent than I expected. I mean, I'd written the fight, but the whole 'what do you think this trip was about' speech was originally intended for the very end. I'm still not completely certain it wouldn't be better there, but…I dunno. Now I'm all nervous that it's too soon and you're all going to hate my guts. Which is why it took me so long to post. :( That and my computer was being service for like, three weeks. I promise the next update will probably be quicker.