In Fair Verona
Chapter Eleven
Sand squishes under Kendall's boots.
He watches as James traces the letters of Kendall's name over and over again in the sand, etching them deep and bold with the stick. But every time a wave rolls in, the whole thing dissolves, like it never even existed.
"That's okay," James jokes. "It's still written here."
He taps his chest and the gesture's so completely corny that it shouldn't have the power to make Kendall's breath catch in his throat.
"You're mad," he says. The rain hasn't let up, turning to mist as afternoon approaches. It sends visible goosebumps up James's arms.
He replies, "I don't know what I am. I woke up, and you were gone."
Kendall doesn't apologize. He knows that James has already heard what's happened. He can probably see the blood on Kendall's hands.
Kendall can see it himself, every time he blinks. The back of his eyelids are painted with Dak's prone body sinking into the mud, outlined by the chain link fence and the accusing gaze of a dirty-faced child. Even though it was a clean shot, he imagines blood that never flew flecks his knuckles.
"What happened?" James asks quietly, the waves lapping at his shoes.
Kendall had returned to their crashpad at a run, ducking the sentry guarding their front door by sneaking around the back, free climbing old vines to their balcony. It was more dangerous than the time he'd scaled the gutter to get to James, but this time he was more desperate, too.
He'd found James slumped in front of the couch, watching the water make patterns across their grimy window. Logan had ushered Carlos off to the apothecary an hour before, he'd explained monotonously, staring up at Kendall with irises dull as old pennies.
Elbows propped against his knees, wrists dangling free in the air, James had looked precisely like a broken doll, disappointed in Kendall and everything they shared. They'd escaped the apartment the same way Kendall came in, barely managing not to break their necks.
Now they're here, on the empty, wet stretch of beach, and all Kendall can think to say is, "You know what happened."
James squeezes his eyes shut, hiding all that beautiful topaz from sight.
Kendall reaches out, stroking his fingertips against James's face. He says, "I'm sorry."
Catching his wrist, James asks, "Why are you apologizing to me?"
"You shouldn't have to love a murderer."
"That's not what you are."
"It is, James. I killed Dak. You know that."
James nods, slowly. "You should have taken me with you."
"And implicated you in this? Never."
"I don't even know what this is," James tells him. "You killed Dak." He pauses, like Kendall might contradict him. When he doesn't, James mutters, "You killed Dak, and I should have been there."
"Why?" Kendall demands. "Why would you want to have watched that? I can barely stand to think- to think that I…"
"That's the point," James interjects, his voice loud. They are shrouded in mist and clouds; it hangs around their shoulders like cloaks. He continues, "I never would have let you kill him, Kendall."
Kendall opens his mouth to say – something. That Dak deserved to die, maybe, even though he's not quite as solid in that conviction as he was before dawn broke.
James barrels over him, explaining, "I would have killed him for you."
It's not what Kendall expects to hear. "What?"
Earnestly, James says, "You're never going to forgive yourself for shooting that fucking scumbag. I wouldn't have thought twice about it."
"James-"
"No." James grabs for his hands, squeezing them so tightly that it's almost painful. His face is open, honest, passionate. It's everything Kendall loves him. "You're a good person. I'm not. I never have been. I would have killed him for you, in a second."
"Don't say that!" Kendall hates how his voice catches. He's certain in this moment; no one can love James as much as he does. It's not possible. "You are the most wonderful, most incredible person. Don't ever doubt that. Don't ever think I'd let you blacken your soul for me."
James's smile is honey slow and the sweetest thing that Kendall has ever seen. They stand there, shivering in the mist, together, their hearts beating in time. And even though Kendall knows he should feel awful; even though he does, the anchor weight of Dak's death a kind of iron that is dragging him down…he's okay. Right now, tasting James's breath against his lips, he's okay.
He hates that he has to ruin it.
"Mercedes says I have to leave Verona."
"Leave?" James demands, his voice breaking. "Leave for where?"
"Mantua, probably. She's not sending me out there to rot. I'm still her…" He watches the emotions play over James's face, hurt and anger and terror. "Her fiancée."
"I'll go with you," James says immediately.
"You can't. Griffin will find out. He'll wonder. With everything Dak was saying, we can't risk that right now."
Shaking his head, James protests, "He won't know. I'll wait a few days, and meet up with you later."
"He'll still find out. He's Arthur Griffin," Kendall answers, too unhappy to even process what's happening. "Even if he doesn't, what happens when I'm called back to the city? You won't have the papers for leaving. They won't let you back in."
"I don't care," James nearly shouts, all up in his space, pressing their lips together insistently. He's trying to convince Kendall in any way he can, and his desperation is impossible, terrible, heartbreaking in it's intensity.
Kendall breaks away, gasping, "But I do. I'm not anything happen to you. I couldn't take it if anything happened to you."
James squeezes his hands again, electricity dancing between them, and oh. How many cultures use their hands to dance, to sing, to love the way that Kendall wants to every time James is near? He thinks what exists between the two of them is the ideal, the thing that is behind every ballad and poem ever penned.
James is his ever fixed mark.
Miserably, he asks, "How long do you have?"
"An hour," Kendall admits. "Less now, since I've come to see you."
"Then come on. We don't have much time."
Kendall doesn't figure out where they're going until he sees the rainbow of graffiti splayed across the brick in front of them. The Lover's Wall and all its proclamations of forever, of soulmates and silly crushes looms at the end of the block.
"What are we doing here?"
James's fingers haven't left Kendall's, interlinked, but now he squeezes them one last time. Then he lets go, pulling a can of spray paint out of his leather jacket. He trails sand behind him on the cracked asphalt as he marches right up to it, saying, "You're not going to leave this city without ever making a mark on it. I won't let you."
"James, I'm going to come back."
James turns on him with the intensity of a tempest. Kendall's not sure what he's going to do, but he is intensely gratified when James grabs him by the hips, nips at his neck, and gruffly spits out, "You better." Then he straightens, like all the emotion in that last moment dissipating. "But that's not what this is."
Kendall thinks about the bottle of spray paint, how James had it even before he'd known that Kendall was going to leave. "You planned this."
"You thought I was going to hate you because of what happened with Dak."
He says it plainly, without any sort of question lingering behind it. And it's true. Kendall had wondered if that was how his last hour in Verona was going to go.
He couldn't imagine James abandoning him like that; he knew that James would never let their friendship, at the very least, fall to pieces. But…Kendall had also been unable imagine that James could keep loving a monster like him. Not now.
Fiercely, James says, "Before, you called yourself a murderer. That's not what you are. You're Kendall. You're mine. And I want everyone to know that."
On top of a canvas of primary colors, across etchings in chartreuse and neon pink, James sprays an eternity sign that stretches across half the Wall. In between the loops, he inscribes their initials: KK+JD.
When he's done, he squares his shoulders and faces Kendall, all tight leather and leonine pride and ridiculous beauty. He says, "Now you have to come back. You have to, because. You and I are going to fix this place. We're going to change it from the inside."
"How?" Kendall laughs, a short, sharp, but delighted thing.
"I don't know," James breathes, the Wall blazing color behind him. "But I know that we will."
Kendall closes his eyes and tries to imagine it. They could rebuild the world together. He feels it so strongly, deep in his bones.
He feels James there too.
For the first time, Kendall decides that Mantua is not a death sentence. Forever, he thinks, with a kind of steadfast certainty he's never felt before.
He and James are forever.
They pick up Logan and Carlos at the apothecary, the freaky glass bottles lining the shelves glinting odd in the muted, watery daylight. Logan is plying Carlos with salves and gross tasting medicine, trying to make sure he doesn't have internal bleeding.
Carlos, in turn, is trying to make sure that Logan's alright. Rigid-backed and stern-faced, Logan looks completely fine. But his eyes are rimmed with red, and Kendall knows he feels Camille's loss like a knife wound.
Kendall wants to stay. He wants to look after Logan's grief-stricken heart and make sure that Carlos really isn't going to break into pieces. There's so much here he still has to do.
There's just no time. A wagon is waiting for him a few blocks from the same point of ingress where he shot Dak in the heart, ready to conceal him beneath a heap of outgoing trash. Kendall needs to make that carriage; Hawk is due to be out of his meetings any second.
The news of what Kendall has done is spreading through the city, toxic, and soon enough it won't even be safe for him to walk in the streets. Especially not if they're spinning the story, saying that Kendall had anything to do with Camille's murder. She was popular, and it won't just be Hawk's militia men who will come looking for revenge. If Hawk doesn't get the noose around his neck first, anyway.
There's another thing, too. Every moment Kendall stays in the apothecary implicates his friends in his potential death sentence.
He and James explain to Logan and Carlos what happened as best they can, rushed, terse sentences barely sufficient. Carlos says, "You can't go."
And Logan says, "He has to. He'll be dead by morning if he doesn't."
"You don't know that," Carlos objects, but without any real vigor. He's not willing to risk Kendall's life. Not when this can all be solved by his departure from Verona, just for a little while.
"Let's get moving," Logan urges, gathering his things.
They follow him out into the daylight, but just as they're moving towards the place where Kendall is set to meet Griffin's man, James grabs him. "Wait."
Kendall glances at up at him, this boy, the love of his life. He glances up, and then James kisses him, too tightly, too sloppy, too publically.
When they break apart, panting, Kendall feels fear like ice in his veins.
"Why did you do that?" Kendall hisses into his skin. "You idiot."
Unapologetically, James murmurs back, "I love you. I love you more than I ever thought I could."
Logan and Carlos can hear every word.
Kendall doesn't know what to do, doesn't know if he can stand the way that Logan looks like he might throw up from fear, or the piteous slant in Carlos's stance, like he wants to hug them both. So he does the only thing he can.
He holds his head up high and tells James, "I love you too."
And then, no matter how scared Logan is, he allows Kendall to link their arms together, James to his left, Carlos to Logan's right. They walk the few, meager blocks standing between them and Griffin's man, an unbreakable chain.
It's just like it's always been; the four of them against the world.
Mantua is a giant fucking vegetable garden in the middle of the desert.
A really boring vegetable garden. Kendall sets up shop on Griffin's property, which is little more than a rusted out trailer on a broad stretch of barren land bordering a produce farm that he also owns. There are leafy greens for miles.
Neighbors are few and far between. News of Verona is sparser still.
The sun bakes everything through and through, including Kendall's brain. He feels like he's living in a toaster. Which reminds him of how much he misses toast. And blackberry jam. And electricity, and indoor plumbing.
He has a lot of grievances, is the point.
Kendall spends most of his time directing migrant workers around Griffin's fields, where the air smells like strawberries and kale. Then, in the evenings, he watches the sunlight recede into the dusty, dry land, of which the moon and his trailer are the only occupants. It's a lonely existence.
He misses the crash of the waves. He misses his friends. He misses James.
Kendall has never been away from his friends like this before. Not even when they were kids, and his mom was still around. He, Logan, Carlos, and James have always, always coexisted. Learning how to be alone, well, it isn't something he's enjoying very much.
He wonders how Logan and Carlos are handling the idea of him and James together. Logan has never had a solid handle on his fear, and in the wake of Camille's death, he's probably going off the rails. He remembers the fear in Logan's eyes, after that kiss. Kendall hopes James and Carlos can handle him. Kendall hopes that Logan's not trying to ship James off to a convent.
He has nightmares about that. About James locked up behind stone walls, or worse. About walking down an aisle lit with electric blue and candles, the flicker of fire illuminating James's waxy face. It turns to Dak's, and then back again. The two of them are sides of a coin that flips, flips, flips.
Kendall wakes up gasping for breath.
There's a repurposed payphone in the field's overseer office. Mercedes calls him twice.
Right before he'd fled her place, he'd pecked her twice on the lips and swallowed down the bile-taste of guilt. He thinks about that while she tells him what's going on back home; about the story of a woman hung in the public square, her body left limply swinging for weeks. The rot, she says, nearly beat out the corpses mummification by brine and wind and sunlight.
"It was so gross," Mercedes squeals, "Her skin was practically melting off. There were blow flies everywhere."
"They're death's best friends," Kendall quips, even though he mostly just feels sick. "What did she do?"
"A neighbor accused her of giving illegal abortions." Mercedes pauses, her girly, spoiled tone dropping off. With some regret, she says, "There was no evidence. Only a scalpel. Which, whatever. She was one of Verona's only doctors."
Of course. More and more, lately, it's felt like the Reproductive Initiative is on a witch hunt, executing people for wearing red ribbons. If they care so much about life, Kendall wonders why they keep taking it.
The less than savory elements of the city thrive off the chaos, using the Initiative's lead to justify their sexual violence and murder. Kendall thinks about how many criminals get off scot-free because they were just trying to fuck the queer out of her, or a dead fag is better than none.
He wants to tell Mercedes as much, but her dad's got the Initiative's ear, and he's not entirely sure how she'd handle his rebellious thoughts. And he has oh so many. In fact, in the absence of his best friends' noise, all he can do is think.
The riots that had broken out after Camille's death were opportunistic and quick, injuring Carlos in the crossfire, but getting quelled much too easily. That doesn't mean they're over. Lately, it's felt like Verona boasts a new riot every week. There's too much unrest in the city. It's like a kettle, boiling over.
This is exactly what Jo was talking about when she urged him to be a part of her revolution. People are sick of watching others hang in the streets. They're sick of letting good women and men, like Camille, die, while the perpetrators go unpunished.
Kendall almost wishes he'd taken Jo up on her offer. He would have retreated into the shadows of her church, disappeared off Verona's grid. His engagement to Mercedes would have become a thing of the past. He'd have been better able to protect Carlos, Logan, and James. Life would have been less complicated.
And more.
After Mercedes hangs up, Kendall emerges from the office into a field bathed in dusky like. Gnats buzz through the thickening air, clouds gathering too low to the ground. He glares up at the night sky, threaded with stars that peek through the cumulus.
He thinks about the Lover's Wall, his initials laid out bare, right next to James's. He wishes they had a phone at their apartment. They'd need a special license to get one, and electricity to operate it, and for that they'd have to start paying rent, but. Then James would be right there, on the other end of a line. A word away.
Kendall wants to go home.
More than anything else in the entire world, he wants to go home.