We Could Take To The Highway
Chapter Eight
By: Jondy Macmillan
A/N: Oh my god, I made the biggest mistake in one of the old chapters and no one called me out on it and now I'm kind of incredulous that I mixed my meta like that. I am rectifying it immediately, along with a few spelling errors, and if none of you noticed it, then I refuse to say what it was. SHAME ON ME. SHAME. Also, uh, if anyone's tried to PM me in the past few months, or reply to a review reply from me, I probably most likely did not get it? There was a period between October and December where I wasn't even getting notified when someone faved/alerted/reviewed, and then I found out ffn disabled all my notifications, but I guess I missed the PM one? So I just re-enabled it, and um, if I didn't reply to something you guys sent me, then I am really, really sorry. Please try again?
James woke up feeling burnt out, half dead. He had partially formed memories of Kendall standing guard over him all night long, but he couldn't tell if there was any truth to them at all, or if it had been part of the twisted landscape of his dreams.
He glanced around. Even if they hadn't been the only two people in the room, James would have recognized Kendall by scent; by the way he exhaled when he smiled. He'd mapped every nuance of his best friend's behavior since the day they met, until his presence became unmistakable, whether he was a silhouette across a concert hall or just soft breath on the back of his neck and a warm body pressed against his skin. Right now Kendall was curled up in an incredibly uncomfortable looking chair near the foot of his bed, passed the fuck out. He looked about five, smooth-faced and serene.
James sighed. They had a day or two left before everything ended. Before they reached Minnesota, and Kendall ran off to live his dream. The idea of Kendall not being a part of his life anymore felt like the end of the world.
He wondered why the end of the world felt like such a relief.
They'd had a good day yesterday, except for the- sneezing and coughing and burning high temperatures. A really, goddamned good day. It had been fun. More than fun.
Which was one more nail on the coffin lid. Whatever Kendall felt about him, they could still have days like that, and they could still be the best of friends. Everything and nothing could change. Fine and good and great. But James wasn't totally ready for a new kind of normalcy. He'd spent most of the trip steeling himself for a clean break or a new start; not for friendship purgatory. That was exactly what he'd been trying to avoid by Not Talking to Kendall, but it seemed like it wasn't so simple anymore. Whether they talked or didn't, fuck, it didn't change the fact that he'd had Kendall's mouth on his dick, that he'd practically swallowed Kendall's tongue on more than one occasion. They obviously weren't going to get together. They obviously weren't going to call it quits. And their old relationship was broken. Really, they only had one option left.
A regular friendship. Which he'd wanted all along, really, but James had been so scared that everything would change, had been so desperate to keep it all normal, that he hadn't even considered the consequences of normalcy.
It felt like now they could become the kind of friends who had something amazing and lost it. The kind that were close and just- drifted apart.
Because that was what this was all leading up to. James could tell. He saw it in the stars, in every curve in the road. Kendall would stay in Minnesota and be fantastic, because he always was. He didn't know how to be anything else. He'd play for the Wild and get ridiculously famous, and one day he'd wake up and realize that he hadn't heard from James or Logan or Carlos in years.
That was what being normal meant; moving on.
James pressed a hand to his forehead, but he couldn't tell if the cool smoothness of his skin was typical or significant. It could have meant he was turning into a fish or something, for all he knew. He was really kind of terrible at taking care of himself.
He pulled on a pair of dirty jeans and wandered outside, without even bothering to button them. He just needed to breathe.
The mountains stood silent and still in the distance. Their snowy caps glowed a bruised purple-blue in the early twilight hours. His eyes traced the intermittent faded yellow stripes painted on the asphalt, the deserted road panning out in either direction in front of the motel. Desolate.
It was a really fucking great metaphor.
His life was a series of crisscrossing highways, it felt like. The one his parents, his real parents, had died on. The roads to the airports, the wind tunnels and turbulence from Los Angeles to Tokyo, London to Sydney to fucking Reykjavik. This one, with Kendall, stretching longer and longer before him. And each of them growing steadily emptier. He was driving towards the horizon, but he felt like he'd never reach it. One by one, the people he'd traveled with had disappeared, until he was all alone. Just him and a static radio.
And the world was too big to handle alone.
His phone buzzed in his pocket, the soft vibration against his leg jarring him from that massively depressing thought.
It was Carlos. Carlos and a dirty joke that James probably could have lived his entire life without reading, but Carlos all the same. He thumbed back in his inbox and saw he hadn't actually checked his phone in days. He had a whole stack of messages, all from the two people he and Kendall had left behind.
Maybe he wasn't so alone then.
James had been lucky 'til now; really, really lucky. Not everyone got to live out their real life with their best friends in tow. Not everyone got to see the same faces at twelve and ninety two, to map their contours and how they changed. But he did. He would. His best friends had stuck by him through everything, even when he'd thought he was strong enough to do it all alone, back before he'd known how big the world really was. They'd always be there; and it was even more amazing now that he realized how much he needed them. Logan and Carlos would be waiting at home, smiling, arms open wide.
James didn't know if he could handle that. All the love and affection in the world, when he felt like he didn't deserve it. But he'd get it anyway, because he was too much of a coward to turn them away, and without Kendall, god, they were all he'd have left.
He tapped out a quick reply, snapping his phone shut and shoving it deep into his pocket. He almost managed a smile. Because just having Carlos and Logan left? Yeah, that wasn't so terrible.
James peered up at the gunmetal gray sky and shivered. Enough moping. When it was cold, it was hard to feel anything other than really fucking cold. He needed a sweatshirt or an igloo or something. Mostly, he just needed to get back inside.
Kendall woke up a few hours later, and immediately set about trying to take James's temperature in the most preposterous ways possible, hands wandering beneath his clothes. James drew the line when his fingers drifted over the curve of his ass, squeaking, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
The blond tapped his fingers against the waistband of James's jeans, "Don't they have rectal thermome-"
"Stop!" James held up his hands, defensively, "I'm fine."
"You can't know that."
"I can," he insisted, grabbing the back of the smaller boy's neck and knocking their heads together so that Kendall could feel his skin, "Look, no more fever."
Kendall stepped back, his expression doubtful, "If you say so."
"I do. I really, really do."
"Fine," he made a face at James, "You ready to head out, then?"
For a second, James didn't want to say anything. Like maybe if he didn't open his mouth, they could stay there, in a dingy motel in the middle of nowhere. Like the real world wouldn't just continue.
It was ridiculous. Afraid of living, afraid of dying. James wondered if it would be like this his entire life. Taking one step and second guessing himself, weighing the consequences and following through and the immediate tang of regret that followed.
Except then Kendall smiled at him, fierce and reassuring, protective and sweet. In the sunlight filtering through the window, his eyes were the blue-white-gray of an ice floe.
James stopped wondering. It wasn't like he could do anything to change any of it. Not now.
"Yeah. Let's go."
They drove until early afternoon, when the sky turned a light silver gray, clouds looming heavy on the horizon. The whole ride had been a steady stream of friendly bickering and conversation about nothing, but they'd caught a soft rock radio station a few miles into South Dakota, and from there, everything went sort of quiet. Not in a bad way; just companionable silence.
"It's going to snow," Kendall said quietly; the first time he'd said anything in nearly an hour. And snow it did, a few miles later. The soft hush of flakes brushing across the windshield was accompanied by the slap of the wipers obliterating their presence.
"We should stop. Probably," James yawned. Breakfast had been a couple of Twinkies and soda from a gas station convenience store, and when they finally spotted a restaurant that looked half decent, his stomach growled in response. Kendall grinned at the sound.
Inside, the place was a disaster. The décor was a mish mash of red brick facades half devoured by fake foliage and hideous forest green walls, adorned with posters of old Hollywood stars who looked like too many broken dreams had stolen all their glamour away. Off white stained glass lamps with brown and yellow flowers hung from the ceiling. Every antique wooden table was set with burgundy vinyl cloths printed over in a white pattern. There was a pool table in the back and feel good country pop songs blared over the radio.
It was like someone had tried for this aged, old family feel and ended up with…tired.
"Atmospheric," Kendall observed, with a twist to his lips that suggested he meant anything but. A group of rowdy teenagers sat in one corner, yelling and wrestling over the salt shakers. Kendall pursed his lips at them, but didn't say anything. The expression looked weird on him, because it was so out of place.
It wasn't so long ago that the four of them would have done the same thing, tumbling over each other like puppies in a pile to become king of the ketchup bottle. James felt this pull of homesickness, and he'd never realized what a physical feeling it was. It made him nauseous with yearning.
They sat down and ordered up some burgers. The waitress barely spared them a second glance. Kendall checked his phone three times, an apologetic smile on his lips as he explained, "Grandma. She's getting worried."
"It won't be long now."
"No," Kendall agreed, "It won't."
When the Studio first bought the mansion, Mrs. Knight had put up one hell of a fight. She didn't care that it was the norm in young Hollywood to venture out on your own the second you turned eighteen. She didn't care that in six months, if they'd never become superstars, Kendall would've been heading off to college. She didn't even care that they could afford all the private security and personal trainers and chefs they needed.
All she knew was that her little boy was growing up, still. Like she'd expected the process to stop after their failed experiment in mansion-sitting.
The only reason she'd caved at all was because Katie wanted to stay at the Palmwoods school, and she had a scary-good puppy face. She made her eyes go all tragic, and Kendall used his best pleading tone, and finally, reluctantly, she'd conceded that they could have their mancave playpen mansion, or whatever it was. Even then, they'd had to promise bi-weekly pit stops at the Palmwoods, so she could make sure they hadn't suddenly contracted the plague or become crackheads or anything weird. Which was fine with them.
Someone had to do the laundry, and any time they paid someone, they never seemed to get James's boxers right.
But Mrs. Knight had not been having any of it when Kendall asked to get an apartment alone in Minnesota. Famous or not, he was still an eighteen year old boy in high school, and she wouldn't allow him to live by himself. Kendall could have argued it. For some people, eighteen was plenty old enough. Hell, even the United States government recognized it as legal. But Kendall and James had been raised to believe that you weren't an adult until your parents said so, and Kendall had way too much respect for his mom to argue with her over something that didn't even matter that much.
Besides, his grandma would totally dote on him.
They talked about hockey stats and the new song Gustavo had been working on for the past month and the time Carlos tried to jump into the Palmwoods pool from the roof. Little things. James was just glad they were talking again, really. He planned on savoring it for as long as possible.
Their food came, and he fell upon it with the all the voraciousness a teenage boy could muster. He was stuffing the last bite into his mouth when Kendall spoke, out of the blue.
"What do you think would've happened if we'd never gone to LA?"
James shrugged, a bit of a shudder running through the movement, "I spend considerable time and effort avoiding ever thinking about that scenario."
"Why?" Kendall asked, shoving a fry in his mouth in his mouth, "S'not like you could go back and change it."
"Thank. God."
Which was really all James had to say on that matter.
"It doesn't seem like a bad idea to me."
"Because you are an athletic genius."
"You're a pretty amazing player yourself," Kendall replied, looking entirely too pleased with himself.
James rolled his eyes, "Alright, I'm good, but going pro was never my dream. I never had the passion for it."
"You always seemed pretty passionate on the ice to me," Kendall raised his eyes to meet James's gaze, and he felt heat settle low in his stomach. Eye contact was one of the first big things they taught you in show business. It's what distinguished superstars from the mundane, separated gods from men. James had caught on quick; how to meet someone's eyes without ever actually looking at them. But with Kendall, it was different. He couldn't not look. His whole being gravitated towards the intensity of his best friend's gaze.
"I love the game. But it's not what I want to do with my life. Even if Big Time Rush never happened, music's everything to me. If we didn't have the band, right about now I'd be doing anything I could to graduate and get the hell out of Minnesota."
Kendall took a sip of his drink, appraising, "And here I am, trying so hard to get back."
James kept his gaze steady, "It's not your fault that we want different things."
"All we used to want was a sturdier blanket fort."
"And for Carlos to stop eating all of the chips."
Kendall snorted his agreement
"Do you-" he made a distressed noise, and James felt like he was perched on the edge of a cliff. There was nothing right about the way Kendall was looking at him, and he was truly, honestly scared of whatever Kendall was about to say. After a beat, the words came, "-think you would have kissed me? If we were still home?"
The words were like an arrow piercing James's skin, flint, obsidian, splintered wood. He imagined he could see the flutter of feathers and beads as it hit its mark.
"Kendall," he rolled his friend's name over his tongue. The feel of it in his mouth was strange. The realization of strangeness was stranger still. He raked a hand through his hair and said, "I don't know."
Kendall groaned, and said, "Why are there so many things we can't seem to figure out? Do you think that changes, when we get older?"
James had no fucking idea. He thought life had been easier when he was young, and he didn't know what wanting was. When the tiny niche he'd carved out in the world was enough. When he took love for granted, because it was so freely given.
"I think if it did, life would get awfully boring."
"Can't have that. I don't know if- I would have kissed you. If we hadn't been in LA. If we hadn't been at that bar. If you didn't have that face-"
"Hey. I've always had this face. You can't blame anything on my face."
"-that get when you're drunk," Kendall finished with a wry grin.
"Oh," James wanted to return the grin, but what Kendall had said was niggling at him, worming its way through his brain. This was all getting dangerously close to The Conversation that Kendall had been trying to have with him for the past week, but he couldn't help asking, "So…you're actually not trying to forget it anymore? The kiss?"
The blond sighed, lowering his chin onto his forearms, leaning on the table like a scolded child, but never breaking eye contact.
"The thing about forgetting is that it doesn't work very well when the thing you're trying to forget is all you ever think about. That's why I asked about LA. It bothers me; that I don't know if things would've been different, if we'd never left."
Personally, James thought never leaving sounded horrible. If they'd been home, and this had somehow still happened, chances were they'd have gone through a stalemate all of senior year, and then maybe run away to college, just to be rid of each other.
"I don't know how this works," Kendall explained, his face miserable, "I don't know how you go through your entire life thinking one thing, one way, and then change all of it. Like flicking a switch."
"Don't ask me," James spread his hands open. It felt like a risk, telling the truth, but he didn't know what else to do, "I think subconsciously, I've always felt this way."
"About me?" Kendall looked startled.
"Well, yeah. I mean, you've been the most important person in my life practically since the first time you nearly knocked my teeth out. I guess I don't do things half assed; I couldn't be hopelessly dedicated to you without, you know, falling for you."
"But did you realize it before I-" Kendall paused. James wanted to hear the rest of that sentence, but he wasn't going to push him. The worst thing anyone could do to a teenage boy was pry.
"No. Not completely. Because the only guy I was ever into at that point was you. And I didn't know there was another way to be with you, until you showed me."
"James-" Kendall took a deep breath, and James knew this was it, the thing he'd been dreading, the moment he'd been avoiding with religious fervor, "Why haven't you asked me why I ki-"
At that moment, one of the teenagers made a loud, obnoxious noise, and Kendall turned to face them with a gigantic scowl, like maybe he wanted to shut them up with his fists. James winced; that was the last thing he needed; Kendall dead in a tavern in the middle of nowhere, like some wayward prince lost before his time.
Truth was, James kind of wanted to thank the kid. Of course Kendall wanted to talk in earnest, about what things meant and what their next step would be, but what was the point when James knew what he'd say? He wanted to keep this easy charade of friendship up as long as possible, at least until Kendall was standing on his grandmother's doorstep.
"Dude, let's just go."
"I'm not done with my fries."
James rolled his eyes and grabbed the remaining few, stuffing them in his mouth with all the delicacy of a trash compactor. He mumbled, "You are now."
"Right," Kendall blinked, "Right. So…you want to drive?"
"I'm pretty sure when I suggested that idea yesterday, your exact words were Never. Again," James tried to imitate Kendall's solemn, scary tone, "Which is kind of harsh, considering it's my car."
"I may have reconsidered. Two days on the road will do that to a man."
"You're a man now?"
"Oh yeah."
They paid the bill and walked out to the car. The snow had stopped, and the clouds were beginning to thin, all the way into the distance, to Minnesota. Like they were clearing a path for the two of them.
When they clambered inside the Saab, Kendall propped his feet up on the dashboard, "Try not to run into anything."
"Thanks. Good pep talk."
"I do try," he grinned, cracking the window open.
"Dude, what? It's freezing."
"Oh, come on. Remember when Logan first got his license?"
James did. He remembered that they all climbed into Logan's mom's SUV, her curled up in the back seat with head phones and a novel, giving them absolute free reign. Mostly because she was terrified of her son's abrupt turns and inability to go over five miles per an hour, but it didn't matter. They'd turned the radio as high as it could go, until the music beat through their bodies, beneath their ribs, a second heartbeat. The heat was blasting, but the windows were all down, like they were living in this bubble of extreme heat and cold, the two clashing together in a shivery sensation. They all sang along at the top of their lungs.
"Sure," James said with a fond grin, "I remember a lot of things.
"That so? I thought the only things you could be bothered to remember involved fashion, music, and girls?"
"Hey! That's your opinion of me? Should I be insulted?"
"Nope. That's what you told Logan last week when he asked where you hid the remote."
"Excuse me if I didn't want to watch the Discovery Channel. I swear to god, the only sex Logan's ever witnessed is between elephants in Africa."
"Alright. Pop quiz. Do you remember when we beat the Ravens and almost went to Nationals?"
"Yeah, except at the last minute the ref said our center forward cheated," James snorted.
"Gold star. And I did not cheat," Kendall sniffed, "He was biased."
"Biased? How exactly? Did he get a whiff of your feet in the locker room?"
"He was that one kid's dad."
"Riiight," James arched an eyebrow, "We were twelve. You really need to get over it already."
Kendall said a rude word accompanied by a middle finger salute, "I'll work on that."
"Do you remember when you shoved my face in my birthday cake, and my stepmom was about to beat you down with a wooden spoon?"
"Ha, and then you threw some at me and it hit one of her collector's plates and she wanted to murder you? Good fucking times. Okay, my turn, would you rather fuck Jenny Tinkler or that one girl, the head cheerleader, what was her name?"
"Who cares about her name, you've seen her boobs, right?"
It went like that the rest of the ride, stories and comparisons and a thousand million memories of things clear and hazy in James's mind. It was weird, the things that stood out, painted in every color and still sharp as the day they happened and what had gotten lost, yellowed and faded like an old photograph. James wondered if one day they'd sit together and tell this story, their road trip across the country, interwoven with high school memories and the tale of their world tour; if one day every mistake he'd made on this damnable trip would be laid bare for friends and family.
He wondered if any of them would look at him with accusing eyes and ask what made James think a thousand miles on the road together with his unrequited crush would be okay.
The second they crossed state lines, James felt his lungs open up, like his body recognized that they were home. He pressed his foot to the gas pedal, taking the car to its limits as the dusky sky settled over the road, fringed by gunmetal clouds.
"Geez, slow down. I feel like you're trying to get rid of me," Kendall joked, and despite their easy banter about the past, James stared out the window, resolutely not answering. His hands gripped the steering wheel a little more tightly.
Couldn't Kendall see how much drawing the trip out was hurting them both? James, because he longed and yearned and never received anything in return, and Kendall because he couldn't seem to decide whether to acknowledge that James felt something that he could never reciprocate, or to pretend nothing had happened at all. Kendall prided himself on being a generally good guy. James didn't want to keep being the person who confused him, who made him feel like utter shit.
Kendall was quiet for a minute, his smile melting away. Then he said, "I can't believe this. Five minutes ago you were in love with me- or something. Now you want to- what? Leave me in my front yard and forget I ever existed?"
"Calm down," James ordered, because wasn't he supposed to be the Dramatic One here?
"I can't calm down when you insist on making no sense," Kendall gritted out, and James knew it wasn't fair. From Kendall's point of view, he was probably certifiably insane. James kept making moves towards him, but he refused to have any sort of meaningful conversation about why said moves were completely unacceptable, he danced around the subject constantly, and then he got mad whenever Kendall actually tried to make sense of it? Yeah. Insane.
Which didn't change anything at all. Kendall was giving him these eyes, these If You Love Me You Will Immediately Tell Me What The Fuck Is Going On eyes, but it wasn't going to work. Love wasn't about being compliant, about bowing down to someone else's will. Sure, James was willing to compromise about most things, and sure, sometimes all he wanted was to make Kendall happy, even if he disagreed with the reasoning. But if all he felt for Kendall was the desire to whisper sweet nothings into his ear, to cuddle and make love like some romantic comedy reject, what was the point? He loved Kendall so much more than all of that, and that was exactly why he wasn't planning on caving.
"You're the one who wanted everything over and done with."
"That was before-"
"Before what, Kendall? Before we had a good day? Before you realized you weren't going to have to deal with me again for six months, soon enough?"
"Before I realized I was acting like a jackass. James," Kendall was staring out the window, watching snow banks melt into the sky, into amethyst and plum and aubergine and midnight blue, streaked with slate gray clouds and the constant, looming threat of an ice storm. There was still the shadow of a bruise on his cheekbone, and James had to fight to remind himself that the punch that caused it only happened two days ago.
Not for the first time, he realized how fucked up all of this was. Things had been so much easier when James wouldn't let himself think.
"James," Kendall repeated, but he didn't actually follow up with other words, and James wasn't sure how to interpret the emotions flashing across his face. So he focused on driving, on reaching a place that he used to call home, and soon enough, he reached it.
His first thought when they reached the familiar exit, was that he had forgotten what winter was like.
The teeth and claws, of course, the way the cold could slice straight down to his bones, creep beneath his skin and nerves and muscle tissue and make him feel like he'd never get warm again. But also the icy clarity of a clear night. The way the lights would sparkle like diamonds, peeking out from under the treetops so that his entire hometown glittered.
It wasn't anything like LA, where the lights always looked the same, in the dead of winter or on a warm summer night; like fireflies dancing in the distance. They doled out savage beauty sparingly out there, like they could control nature.
It was familiar and beautiful and home.
Soon enough, he pulled the car in front of Victorian three story, clapboard painted in a cheery yellow that was more of a burnished gold at night, lit from the pooled porch light. It looked out of place in a neighborhood of red brick and darker palates.
"Well…" Kendall said, looking up at the house, "We're here."
A/N: Ugh ugh ugh forever to write this chapter, FOREVER. Everyone should probably thank goten0040, because she kept encouraging me to write when I was being incredibly lazy. Please review!