[fic] In Fair Verona - 9/13
Title: In Fair Verona
Author: garnetice
Pairing: Kendall/James, Kendall/Mercedes
Rating: M
Word Count: 4,176 (chapter nine)
Part: Nine of Thirteen
Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
Warnings: Drinking, sex, guns, death, swords, violence, homophobia, sexism, a lot of isms.
Summary: "What are we doing?" Kendall asks, taking a shaky breath. His hands hover over James's abdomen, and James arches forward until they are touching, until Kendall's fingertips press into his skin. "I don't know. But don't stop."
Disclaimer: BTR is not mine. Nor is William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet or the original R&J.
Author Notes: Camille and champagne. What more could anyone need?
---
Bubbles sparkle in the sunlight, golden, shimmering things that dance around the tips of Camille’s fingertips. She twirls her glass with easy grace, holding it up in a salute.
“What is it they say in the language of your people? Let’s get crunk, bitches?”
Camille grins wide, her mouth soft and pink and laughing. She’s too damn proud of herself, tipsy and off-key in the middle of the afternoon.
Kendall tells her, “You’re flagged. I am flagging you down.”
“I’d like to see you try.”
“It’s my fiancée’s stolen alcohol; I can do whatever I want with it.” Lazily, he makes a grab for the bottle, but Camille’s quicker than he is. She always has been. Kendall pouts, “My champagne, my rules.”
It’s completely ineffective.
“Where do they even get this stuff? Hop a plane over to France?” Camille quits spinning her glass and starts turning the bottle, searching out an identifying mark and coming up empty.
“I think the valleys north of Mantua are still operational. Kind of.” Kendall sips at his own drink, gone bitter with age. “But I grabbed this from Griffin’s cellar. I think it’s just really, really old. And sour.”
Camille smirks. “It’s still better than L’Amour’s ‘shine. Pretty sure Lucy’s started mixing in gasoline.”
“Nah, that’s just the taste of her disdain.”
Kendall turns on his stomach, the sun warm car hot through his thin t-shirt. The sky is bright and blue and endless in every direction, and in Camille’s presence, he feels calm, happy.
Safe.
“Every time she shoots James down, my heart grows three sizes. She’s my spirit animal.” Camille peers up through thick, dark lashes, her caramel eyes reflecting the sky and the sea. “He knows he has no chance, right? James?”
Aiming for nonchalant and landing somewhere near awkward, Kendall replies, “I don’t think he cares either way. It’s all about the thrill of the hunt.”
Camille snorts. “For Lucy, it’ll be about the thrill of stabbing him in the eye socket, one of these days. Although…James has been different lately. You all have.”
Kendall does not flinch away. He’s scared of Camille finding out, but he’s not scared of Camille. Not her. Never her. “I know. We all grow remarkably more handsome by the day.”
Dramatically, Camille presses her hand to her chest and says, “It’s already happening. The narcissism of the rich is seeping into your pores.”
“And here I promised I’d never lose myself.” Kendall flails a bit, sloshing his champagne. “Maybe I should cancel the wedding.”
The last part comes out more seriously than he intended.
It must, because Camille hurries to say, “Don’t do that. Mercedes is nice. Wrong, a lot of the time, about a lot of things. But nice.”
“Hey, you’re supposed to be my friend. Mine.”
“I am. Jerk.” She punctuates the insult with a slap of her hand on the back of Kendall’s thigh. It stings, but not enough for him to do much more than glare resentfully in retaliation. “But this wedding’s going to be good for you. For all of you guys. It’d be nice to see you worry less.”
“I knew you cared,” Kendall retorts. The soft rhythm of the waves fills the momentary silence, everything sun-soaked and perfect.
“Of course I do.” Camille beams, the soft curls of her hair spun red and brown and gold. “How many times have I saved your ass, Knight?”
“One, that I recall.”
“What about that time with the-“
“I had that handled.”
“Okay, and the time with the-“
“It wasn’t that bad.”
“And the thing in the-“
“Okay, maybe you helped out with that one.”
“Baby, you’re growing up,” Camille coos, patting his cheek. “I’m proud.”
“Yeah, yeah. How goes it guarding the gates of hell?” He asks lightly, because yeah, Camille has saved his ass a lot more times than one, two, or three. “Are you growing horns yet?”
He makes to check the top of her head, but she stops him with a glare, warning, “I could make it so no one ever finds your body.”
Kendall has no doubt that she could.
Camille leans back, the sunlight white-washing her pale, pale throat. She never tans, but neither does he; California seeps beneath both of their skins, flushing through their veins until they are red, red, red.
But that’s okay. It’s nice to burn.
Or it will be until later tonight, when Kendall whines and moans and forces Logan to administer a heavy coat of aloe vera.
Camille says, more seriously now, “I’m tired of working the wall. It’s like this war never ends.”
“War?”
“War can be many things.” Her eyelashes are long and dark, and they feather across her cheeks as she sighs. “I wish I’d never had to know any of them.”
“So quit,” he offers, knowing even as he says it that it’s an impossible prospect.
Camille smiles, the tug of her lips contagious, but self-loathing. “As if.”
He doesn’t know what to say to that. But helplessness and futility are not on the agenda today, no way, no sir. He raises his glass in the air, watching the champagne glitter and fizz.
“Yeah. Hey, did I tell you I ran into Jo?”
“Jo told me you ran into Jo,” Camille replies.
“You still talk to Jo? I didn’t know that. Traitor.”
“She was my bud way before you, Knight.”
“Then you know what she’s up to? The whole,” he waves his hand in the air, vaguely, “Crazy.”
Camille frowns, “I try not to think about it.”
“But you know. You knew. When we saw her cronie at the fair? Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Down, boy. I honestly didn’t know if you’d want me to, the way you’d been carrying all that baggage she left you with.”
He can’t deny that logic. “What do you think of it?”
“Think? I still don’t think grace is lighting anyone’s way, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Kendall stifles a laugh. Because, “I’m scared for her.”
“I am too. But you know Jo. There’s no talking her down once she’s convinced she’s right. Trust me. I tried.”
As casually as he can muster, he asks, “Do you think she’s right?”
“About…what, the body politics and legislation? Sure. Of course she’s right.” Camille laughs, “But as a venture, it’s destined to fail. Verona isn’t what Jo thinks it is. The people here aren’t what she thinks they are. I see you all come and go, through the damn wall. Like I said before, we’re living in a warzone. Everyone is too tired from that for a real revolution.”
Camille’s eyes are as hard and shiny as Tiger’s Eye, striped through with rust and gold.
Subject change. Kendall thinks it is definitely time for one. “So. What I asked to meet you for-“
“It wasn’t just to share the hooch? I feel so betrayed.”
Kendall laughs, because it was that, a bit. Splitting his time between James and Mercedes hasn’t left much time for the two of them to hang, and he misses her. “I need your help.”
“You’ve got it.”
He explains the finer details of his scheme, emphasizing the stealth bit, because Camille does sneaky like a pro. That’s a big part of what built their friendship; she’s exactly Kendall’s type. Fucked in the head and cute to boot.
Although he’d never tell her that last part. Her guns are sleek and black, peeking from a hand-stitched leather holster that seats them each comfortably under her arms. The badass and scary is at odds with her frilly red sundress, but so is the knife strapped to her thigh. She is extremes, dangerous and girly, and Kendall thinks, the best friend he has. He can’t imagine what Verona would be like if he’d never met her.
Probably slightly less sassy. “Why are your plans always so complicated?”
“It’s not - how is that complicated?”
“We can cut, like, five steps from it.” Camille pauses, because she’s also much too perceptive. “You want to do all this for - James. Not
Mercedes?”
Kendall shrugs, not sure what to say. “He’s my best friend, and he’s been through a lot.”
“We all have.” Camille takes one last sip of champagne, draining the glass. “I think it’s sweet that you guys are so close.”
He waits, because it’s clear that she has more to say.
“It makes people talk, you know.”
“Talk how?”
“In a way that you don’t always want people talking.” She re-crosses her legs, the base of the knife winking metal between leather and the hilt.
“Some people, they’re jealous they can’t have what you have.”
“A sparkling personality?”
Camille snorts. “Guys like Dak? Yeah. They don’t understand it. They hate it.”
“So what you’re saying is, Dak’s the one who’s been talking.”
“Dak is always talking. What worries me is the people who are listening.”
That’s what worries Kendall, too. He thinks about Griffin, and everything he’s given him so far. He thinks about everything Griffin could just as easily take away.
Maybe doing this, planning something so extravagant for James, is a bad idea. He bites his lip, worrying. Kendall feels like he doesn’t know what it is not to worry anymore.
Camille catches on. She always does. “Dak’s an insect. He’s the one who fucked up his relationship with Mercedes, but he can’t help blaming it on you, because then he’d have to wear his grownup pants.”
“I didn’t know he’d been running his mouth about it.”
“He’s not the only one. Kendall, you’re nobody-“
“Gee. Thanks.” Kendall frowns and refills his own glass of champagne, because that one kind of stings, coming from her.
“Please, you know that’s not what I mean,” she huffs. “You came out of nowhere and swept Mercedes off of her feet, and guys like Jett and Dak and so many others worked and plotted and connived and all of that fell through for them. So now you’re on top, and they want to knock you down a peg or two.”
“Okay. But…It’s not what they’re saying about Mercedes and I that’s worrying you, though, is it?” It can’t be, Kendall thinks, because there’s nothing really wrong with being the underdog. Camille wouldn’t have brought it up if there wasn’t something wrong.
“No,” she admits. She looks decidedly uncomfortable. “You guys haven’t been coming to L’Amour as much. You and James, I mean.”
“We’re there nearly every night,” Kendall protests, although now that he thinks about it, he hasn’t been to the bar in a week.
Camille inclines her head like, maybe so. But, “James hasn’t picked up a girl in months.”
Kendall has nothing to say to that.
She continues, “Maybe he’s just tired, or maybe he’s got something going on the side, but the thing is, whenever people see him, the two of you are attached at the hip.”
“What are you asking me, Camille?”
“I’m not asking you anything. I’m telling you that this thing with James…Kendall. People are noticing how much time you spend together.”
“I spend just as much time with Logan and Carlos.”
“You don’t. But they’re not exactly paragons of manliness. Carlos spends half his time in a skirt, for Chris’sake. I’m just saying that…that you’re lucky Mercedes is in your life, is all.”
He clutches the stem of his champagne glass so hard he’s surprised it doesn’t crack. “Because if she wasn’t…?”
“Then someone might do more than ask questions,” she says, but she’s quick to cover. “Look, maybe Dak’s getting in my head. I know you and James have always been crazy close. I remember the stories you told me, about what you all went through on the other side.”
Quietly, Kendall asks, “What kind of rumors is he spreading? Is he saying James and I are-”
“Nothing like that. It’s more…insinuated. He says that Mercedes is unhappy with the engagement. That you’re not performing. That maybe there’s a reason for that.”
Kendall swallows against a combination of bile and guilt, because what Dak’s saying is all true.
“It’s like you said, he runs his mouth, particularly when he’s drunk, which is all the time lately.”
“Why lately?”
Camille sighs. “Mercedes, and…there have been a few incidents at the Wall. We’ve had to put down more refs than I can count, lately.”
She looks unhappy about it. Probably because unlike Dak Zevon, she has a soul. Kendall touches her shoulder and murmurs, “It’s bad out there, hunh?”
“It’s bad in here. Forget about it. I shouldn’t have said anything. If Dak causes any more scenes, I’ll take care of it.” He feels like she’s even more worried than she’s letting on, but if there was serious trouble, Camille would say something, right?
She would say something. He’s sure of it.
Kendall gulps down the rest of his champagne, squeezing his eyes shut. He and James have to be more careful, James in particular. He thinks about the talk they’ll need to have, and dreads it.
He must look traumatized, because out of nowhere, Camille announces casually, “I had a crush on you one time,” pouring herself another glass of champagne. The bottle’s contents are dangerously low.
“Did you?”
She laughs. “No. Logan was pretty much it for me.”
“I’m sorry he’s…who he is.”
“If he was anyone else, I never would have fallen for him,” she replies ruefully. “I don’t love him despite his flaws. I love him because of them.”
Kendall starts. “You still love him? I thought you guys were-“
“Caput.” She claps her hands together, the noise harsh and echoing in the empty street. “Over. Totally. That doesn’t mean I ever stopped.
Just. Some things are more important than love.”
“That sounds miserable.” It’s as honest as Kendall knows how to be. “When I was a kid, I thought love and loyalty were the only things that matter.”
“Yeah, well. No one says, when I’m older I’m going to be exactly the same, only a little smarter and a little sadder.” Camille smiles a smile that isn’t a smile. “We change. Although I guess the smarter and sadder parts still apply.”
“Camille-“
“I’ll help you out. With the James thing. Give me until the end of today, and it’ll be ready first thing in the morning.”
“You’re the best.”
She smiles, and this time it is real, a brilliant, cunning thing that outshines everything around them, from the sun to the rusted metal of the car they’re seated on. “You know it.”
It’s the last thing he will ever hear her say.
---
This is how an idea catches fire.
It starts out as nothing more than the smallest of embers, smoldering in the back of Kendall’s mind. And then, every time he acknowledges its existence, it grows bigger, a fanned flame.
Soon enough, it becomes a raging blaze, something impossible to deny.
This is how an idea catches fire, and this is how Kendall has fallen in love with James.
He doesn’t know that, completely, not really. Not until he makes his way into their busted up apartment later that same afternoon and hears his best friend singing languidly above his head. Stretched across the sunwarm tiles of the rooftop, James is all arms and legs, a starfish boy.
He brightens the second he hears the scrape of Kendall’s shoes against brick. The flash of his teeth is automatic, like he can’t even help it, and Kendall’s heart skips a beat.
To cover, he asks, “Laaaazy. Is this all you’ve been doing all day?”
James shrugs, golden skin moving over slick muscle. Every inch of him is exactly what he always wanted to be as a kid; a messed up mystery, and Kendall doesn’t know how to walk away. So he doesn’t. He stays, settling himself next to James’s prone body.
James asks, “How was work?”
“Gustavo nearly burst a vein yelling at our new artist, so that was a fun thing that happened.”
“How was Camille?”
“Feisty as ever.”
“Did she like the champagne that you wouldn’t let me drink?” James pouts, rolling to face Kendall. Their noses are nearly touching, but there’s no urgency to kiss him. He knows it will happen at some point, and he knows it will be great, but for now, he gets to drink in the way the sun colors James’s eyes gold-gray-brown, all leonine and lovely.
“I told you, I wanted to ask her for a favor.”
“You never liquor me up for favors.”
“You’re easy.”
James cocks his head a bit and laughs. “True. What did you talk about?”
“None of your beeswax.”
“Fine. See if I care.” He lolls his head to the side, a bit miffed but still smiling. His hair is ruffled and sticking in odd directions, so un-James-like, but even sweeter for it. He looks like maybe he’d taken a nap, or had just spent the entire afternoon analyzing the shape and size of the clouds.
Kendall hates himself for what he’s about to say. “There are…uh…some things that I think you need to start caring about.”
“Such as?”
“Camille mentioned…erm. People are noticing that, uh…”
“That I’m rakishly handsome?”
Kendall fists his hand in the material of his shirt, red-blue and covered in sacred heart iconography. The shirt James gave him. He wears it all the time, now.
“That you aren’t fucking anyone.”
James blinks, slowly. “I’m fucking you.”
“That’s what I’d like people not to notice, thanks.” Kendall is vaguely aware that his voice is getting pitchy and a little scared. His throat feels scratchy, slick with sweat on the inside, and he can feel the frayed threads of thick rope slipping and sliding against his skin, and oh god, for a fantastically, horrifyingly clear moment he thinks he can see James’s face, bloated and dead, dead, dead-
“Hey!” James shakes him, hard. He’s on his knees, blocking out the sun, and Kendall wonders when he moved. “You’re freaking out, man.”
“You aren’t.”
“What do you want me to say? That sucks?” He purses his lips. “Life sucks, sometimes. We’ll deal with it.”
“I know we will,” Kendall agrees. “Tonight, at L’Amour, you’re going to pick up a girl, bring her back here, and-“
“No.”
“What?”
Enunciating, James says, “N. O. No.”
“James,” Kendall tries, but before he can finish, James strips his blue t-shirt over his head, his movements deliberate. His eyes glow topaz with the sun at his back, lines of gold illuminating the barest traces of hair on his arms, his thighs, and the flat span of his stomach. Kendall’s mouth goes desert-dry.
“The only person I’m taking home is going to be you.”
Kendall opens his mouth.
“The only person I’m making love to is going to be you.” James begins unbuckling his pants, his eyes never leaving Kendall’s face, and how is he supposed to argue against this?
“James,” he tries again.
James pushes his mouth up against Kendall’s cutting off the protests on his lips. And Kendall kisses him back, drowning all the worry and dread that’s towering in his bones, brought on by Jo and Camille and this fucking place. There’s only so much a person can worry before they lose themselves completely, and if he’s going to do that, he wants to do it in James, in the hot pant of his breath and the movement of his mouth over Kendall’s and the way that his hands tug fervently at the stupid jeans that form a barrier between them.
He begs, “Can I?” And Kendall lets him, because oh hell, what else is he supposed to do?
He lets himself be stretched open there, in the naked daylight, where anyone who thinks to look can see, but who on earth would look on top of a squatter’s roof? No one, Kendall hopes, Kendall thinks, but Kendall’s not really thinking at all, because he’s biting down against cries, against the pain and the ecstasy of James’s fingers inside of him. And then it’s not fingers and makeshift lube moving against him, but something bigger, more pressure, and James’s stomach is flat against Kendall’s spine, sweat forming puddles between them.
Their position on the roof is precarious, all shifting shingles and the whole of Verona laid out before, them; or it would be, if their view wasn’t blocked by the run down office building. But as James’s boots and Kendall’s knees slip against the tar and tile, the blocked beauty of that view is also their safety, looming empty windows passing no judgement at all.
James bites kisses into Kendall’s shoulderblades, kisses bitemarks into his neck. He’s rough and gentle all at once, his big hands imprinting the skin of Kendall’s skinny hips while these sparks shudder through their bodies.
“Kendall,” James pants, “It’s you. I don’t want to do this with anyone else but you.”
Kendall groans and keens and can’t seem to find the words that leave on the breaths James is punching out of him.
James buries himself so deeply in Kendall that they could be one person and these words tumble out of his mouth, these words that end the world, and remake it into something more, “Fuck, love you. Love you. Not anyone else. Just you.”
Kendall’s entire body stills, and James pleads, “Don’t make me take it back. Love you so much. Don’t want to take it back.”
He moves to emphasize it, moves and moves, and Kendall is so close, and this is all too much, too good, too fast.
“Don’t,” he gets out.
But James misinterprets it, and he stops the relentless pace of his hips. He’s completely silent, barely even breathing, although Kendall can feel the rise and fall of his chest against his spine. So Kendall reaches back, fumbling for James’s hand, and when he finds it, he squeezes it tight.
“Don’t take it back.”
For a second, Kendall thinks he’s said the wrong thing. James is pulling away, a long slow withdraw. Then James’s hips slam forward, and everything explodes into stars.
---
He doesn’t know that at the same time as James is fucking him sweet and hard on the roof, every soft push of their hips jolting all the way down to his toes, Dak Zevon’s at L’Amour, badmouthing Mercedes and Kendall to anyone who will listen.
He doesn’t know that when he’s biting hard against James’s knuckles to choke off his own groans, Lucy is cutting off the ‘shine in a desperate attempt to get ahead of his wasted rage.
The mason jars lining the bar and the big, rusted mirror reflect back all the ugly inside of Dak, too much to be contained as even the people deep in a billiards game stop to watch. So, Kendall doesn’t know that Camille steps in, ordering, “Straighten up soldier. You’re on duty in an hour,” but he wouldn’t have been surprised. It’s who she is.
Because the thing is that Kendall doesn’t need a hero, but it’s never stopped Camille from being one. From being his knight in shining armor, since the very first day she saw him at the fence-line, starving. Dying.
She is the bravest, most noble person he knows.
In her frilly red dress, Kendall does not know that Camille is facing down Dak, stupid Dak with his black uniform and his shiny Hawk badges.
He calls her a weakling, he calls her Kendall Knight’s faghag, and she loses her temper. She taunts him back.
Camille has never met a witty retort she didn’t like, and she wields them like knives. Soon enough she’s got Dak swearing with rage while
Kendall is sweating, prone and ecstatic under the weight of James’s body. Dak tells her he’ll kill her for the indignity of it all.
And Camille, being Camille, asks if he wants to put his money where his mouth is. She is tiny and fierce, too dangerous to mess with, but her guns keep resting in her hand-stitched holsters, because the bar is filled with civilians, and a hand to hand fight is clearly what she has in mind.
She’s fair. That’s one of the things people have always said about Camille; that she’s fair, and she’s kind. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t see it coming.
James’s come is flooding inside of Kendall when Dak’s bullet pierces Camille’s chest, blood blossoming out, blending in with the fabric until it’s impossible to tell where the dress starts and the wound begins.
If there’s a speech on her lips about Verona and hell, a pox on anyone’s house, or maybe just one final goodbye, nobody hears it. Camille dies, instantly, is how everyone tells it.
Camille dies, and Dak gets one more drink at the bar before he flounces off to work the Wall, and all of this happens while Kendall lies there, in James’s arms.
Not knowing.
James smiles bright and tender, murmuring, “I love you.”
For the first time, Kendall says it back, low and raw, like a secret he’s held inside himself for much too long.
They hear the sound of footsteps below them, Logan or Carlos, home early. Handing Kendall back his shirt, hand fisted in the middle of an orange-blue flower, he says, “This is paradise. Right here. Right now. Remember that.”
The world is beautiful, he’d told Kendall once.
James is beautiful, Kendall thinks.
There’s so much neither of them know, so much they don’t understand, but this, right here, is the last perfect moment they’ll ever have.
This is paradise.
---
Author: garnetice
Pairing: Kendall/James, Kendall/Mercedes
Rating: M
Word Count: 4,176 (chapter nine)
Part: Nine of Thirteen
Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
Warnings: Drinking, sex, guns, death, swords, violence, homophobia, sexism, a lot of isms.
Summary: "What are we doing?" Kendall asks, taking a shaky breath. His hands hover over James's abdomen, and James arches forward until they are touching, until Kendall's fingertips press into his skin. "I don't know. But don't stop."
Disclaimer: BTR is not mine. Nor is William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet or the original R&J.
Author Notes: Camille and champagne. What more could anyone need?
---
Bubbles sparkle in the sunlight, golden, shimmering things that dance around the tips of Camille’s fingertips. She twirls her glass with easy grace, holding it up in a salute.
“What is it they say in the language of your people? Let’s get crunk, bitches?”
Camille grins wide, her mouth soft and pink and laughing. She’s too damn proud of herself, tipsy and off-key in the middle of the afternoon.
Kendall tells her, “You’re flagged. I am flagging you down.”
“I’d like to see you try.”
“It’s my fiancée’s stolen alcohol; I can do whatever I want with it.” Lazily, he makes a grab for the bottle, but Camille’s quicker than he is. She always has been. Kendall pouts, “My champagne, my rules.”
It’s completely ineffective.
“Where do they even get this stuff? Hop a plane over to France?” Camille quits spinning her glass and starts turning the bottle, searching out an identifying mark and coming up empty.
“I think the valleys north of Mantua are still operational. Kind of.” Kendall sips at his own drink, gone bitter with age. “But I grabbed this from Griffin’s cellar. I think it’s just really, really old. And sour.”
Camille smirks. “It’s still better than L’Amour’s ‘shine. Pretty sure Lucy’s started mixing in gasoline.”
“Nah, that’s just the taste of her disdain.”
Kendall turns on his stomach, the sun warm car hot through his thin t-shirt. The sky is bright and blue and endless in every direction, and in Camille’s presence, he feels calm, happy.
Safe.
“Every time she shoots James down, my heart grows three sizes. She’s my spirit animal.” Camille peers up through thick, dark lashes, her caramel eyes reflecting the sky and the sea. “He knows he has no chance, right? James?”
Aiming for nonchalant and landing somewhere near awkward, Kendall replies, “I don’t think he cares either way. It’s all about the thrill of the hunt.”
Camille snorts. “For Lucy, it’ll be about the thrill of stabbing him in the eye socket, one of these days. Although…James has been different lately. You all have.”
Kendall does not flinch away. He’s scared of Camille finding out, but he’s not scared of Camille. Not her. Never her. “I know. We all grow remarkably more handsome by the day.”
Dramatically, Camille presses her hand to her chest and says, “It’s already happening. The narcissism of the rich is seeping into your pores.”
“And here I promised I’d never lose myself.” Kendall flails a bit, sloshing his champagne. “Maybe I should cancel the wedding.”
The last part comes out more seriously than he intended.
It must, because Camille hurries to say, “Don’t do that. Mercedes is nice. Wrong, a lot of the time, about a lot of things. But nice.”
“Hey, you’re supposed to be my friend. Mine.”
“I am. Jerk.” She punctuates the insult with a slap of her hand on the back of Kendall’s thigh. It stings, but not enough for him to do much more than glare resentfully in retaliation. “But this wedding’s going to be good for you. For all of you guys. It’d be nice to see you worry less.”
“I knew you cared,” Kendall retorts. The soft rhythm of the waves fills the momentary silence, everything sun-soaked and perfect.
“Of course I do.” Camille beams, the soft curls of her hair spun red and brown and gold. “How many times have I saved your ass, Knight?”
“One, that I recall.”
“What about that time with the-“
“I had that handled.”
“Okay, and the time with the-“
“It wasn’t that bad.”
“And the thing in the-“
“Okay, maybe you helped out with that one.”
“Baby, you’re growing up,” Camille coos, patting his cheek. “I’m proud.”
“Yeah, yeah. How goes it guarding the gates of hell?” He asks lightly, because yeah, Camille has saved his ass a lot more times than one, two, or three. “Are you growing horns yet?”
He makes to check the top of her head, but she stops him with a glare, warning, “I could make it so no one ever finds your body.”
Kendall has no doubt that she could.
Camille leans back, the sunlight white-washing her pale, pale throat. She never tans, but neither does he; California seeps beneath both of their skins, flushing through their veins until they are red, red, red.
But that’s okay. It’s nice to burn.
Or it will be until later tonight, when Kendall whines and moans and forces Logan to administer a heavy coat of aloe vera.
Camille says, more seriously now, “I’m tired of working the wall. It’s like this war never ends.”
“War?”
“War can be many things.” Her eyelashes are long and dark, and they feather across her cheeks as she sighs. “I wish I’d never had to know any of them.”
“So quit,” he offers, knowing even as he says it that it’s an impossible prospect.
Camille smiles, the tug of her lips contagious, but self-loathing. “As if.”
He doesn’t know what to say to that. But helplessness and futility are not on the agenda today, no way, no sir. He raises his glass in the air, watching the champagne glitter and fizz.
“Yeah. Hey, did I tell you I ran into Jo?”
“Jo told me you ran into Jo,” Camille replies.
“You still talk to Jo? I didn’t know that. Traitor.”
“She was my bud way before you, Knight.”
“Then you know what she’s up to? The whole,” he waves his hand in the air, vaguely, “Crazy.”
Camille frowns, “I try not to think about it.”
“But you know. You knew. When we saw her cronie at the fair? Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Down, boy. I honestly didn’t know if you’d want me to, the way you’d been carrying all that baggage she left you with.”
He can’t deny that logic. “What do you think of it?”
“Think? I still don’t think grace is lighting anyone’s way, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Kendall stifles a laugh. Because, “I’m scared for her.”
“I am too. But you know Jo. There’s no talking her down once she’s convinced she’s right. Trust me. I tried.”
As casually as he can muster, he asks, “Do you think she’s right?”
“About…what, the body politics and legislation? Sure. Of course she’s right.” Camille laughs, “But as a venture, it’s destined to fail. Verona isn’t what Jo thinks it is. The people here aren’t what she thinks they are. I see you all come and go, through the damn wall. Like I said before, we’re living in a warzone. Everyone is too tired from that for a real revolution.”
Camille’s eyes are as hard and shiny as Tiger’s Eye, striped through with rust and gold.
Subject change. Kendall thinks it is definitely time for one. “So. What I asked to meet you for-“
“It wasn’t just to share the hooch? I feel so betrayed.”
Kendall laughs, because it was that, a bit. Splitting his time between James and Mercedes hasn’t left much time for the two of them to hang, and he misses her. “I need your help.”
“You’ve got it.”
He explains the finer details of his scheme, emphasizing the stealth bit, because Camille does sneaky like a pro. That’s a big part of what built their friendship; she’s exactly Kendall’s type. Fucked in the head and cute to boot.
Although he’d never tell her that last part. Her guns are sleek and black, peeking from a hand-stitched leather holster that seats them each comfortably under her arms. The badass and scary is at odds with her frilly red sundress, but so is the knife strapped to her thigh. She is extremes, dangerous and girly, and Kendall thinks, the best friend he has. He can’t imagine what Verona would be like if he’d never met her.
Probably slightly less sassy. “Why are your plans always so complicated?”
“It’s not - how is that complicated?”
“We can cut, like, five steps from it.” Camille pauses, because she’s also much too perceptive. “You want to do all this for - James. Not
Mercedes?”
Kendall shrugs, not sure what to say. “He’s my best friend, and he’s been through a lot.”
“We all have.” Camille takes one last sip of champagne, draining the glass. “I think it’s sweet that you guys are so close.”
He waits, because it’s clear that she has more to say.
“It makes people talk, you know.”
“Talk how?”
“In a way that you don’t always want people talking.” She re-crosses her legs, the base of the knife winking metal between leather and the hilt.
“Some people, they’re jealous they can’t have what you have.”
“A sparkling personality?”
Camille snorts. “Guys like Dak? Yeah. They don’t understand it. They hate it.”
“So what you’re saying is, Dak’s the one who’s been talking.”
“Dak is always talking. What worries me is the people who are listening.”
That’s what worries Kendall, too. He thinks about Griffin, and everything he’s given him so far. He thinks about everything Griffin could just as easily take away.
Maybe doing this, planning something so extravagant for James, is a bad idea. He bites his lip, worrying. Kendall feels like he doesn’t know what it is not to worry anymore.
Camille catches on. She always does. “Dak’s an insect. He’s the one who fucked up his relationship with Mercedes, but he can’t help blaming it on you, because then he’d have to wear his grownup pants.”
“I didn’t know he’d been running his mouth about it.”
“He’s not the only one. Kendall, you’re nobody-“
“Gee. Thanks.” Kendall frowns and refills his own glass of champagne, because that one kind of stings, coming from her.
“Please, you know that’s not what I mean,” she huffs. “You came out of nowhere and swept Mercedes off of her feet, and guys like Jett and Dak and so many others worked and plotted and connived and all of that fell through for them. So now you’re on top, and they want to knock you down a peg or two.”
“Okay. But…It’s not what they’re saying about Mercedes and I that’s worrying you, though, is it?” It can’t be, Kendall thinks, because there’s nothing really wrong with being the underdog. Camille wouldn’t have brought it up if there wasn’t something wrong.
“No,” she admits. She looks decidedly uncomfortable. “You guys haven’t been coming to L’Amour as much. You and James, I mean.”
“We’re there nearly every night,” Kendall protests, although now that he thinks about it, he hasn’t been to the bar in a week.
Camille inclines her head like, maybe so. But, “James hasn’t picked up a girl in months.”
Kendall has nothing to say to that.
She continues, “Maybe he’s just tired, or maybe he’s got something going on the side, but the thing is, whenever people see him, the two of you are attached at the hip.”
“What are you asking me, Camille?”
“I’m not asking you anything. I’m telling you that this thing with James…Kendall. People are noticing how much time you spend together.”
“I spend just as much time with Logan and Carlos.”
“You don’t. But they’re not exactly paragons of manliness. Carlos spends half his time in a skirt, for Chris’sake. I’m just saying that…that you’re lucky Mercedes is in your life, is all.”
He clutches the stem of his champagne glass so hard he’s surprised it doesn’t crack. “Because if she wasn’t…?”
“Then someone might do more than ask questions,” she says, but she’s quick to cover. “Look, maybe Dak’s getting in my head. I know you and James have always been crazy close. I remember the stories you told me, about what you all went through on the other side.”
Quietly, Kendall asks, “What kind of rumors is he spreading? Is he saying James and I are-”
“Nothing like that. It’s more…insinuated. He says that Mercedes is unhappy with the engagement. That you’re not performing. That maybe there’s a reason for that.”
Kendall swallows against a combination of bile and guilt, because what Dak’s saying is all true.
“It’s like you said, he runs his mouth, particularly when he’s drunk, which is all the time lately.”
“Why lately?”
Camille sighs. “Mercedes, and…there have been a few incidents at the Wall. We’ve had to put down more refs than I can count, lately.”
She looks unhappy about it. Probably because unlike Dak Zevon, she has a soul. Kendall touches her shoulder and murmurs, “It’s bad out there, hunh?”
“It’s bad in here. Forget about it. I shouldn’t have said anything. If Dak causes any more scenes, I’ll take care of it.” He feels like she’s even more worried than she’s letting on, but if there was serious trouble, Camille would say something, right?
She would say something. He’s sure of it.
Kendall gulps down the rest of his champagne, squeezing his eyes shut. He and James have to be more careful, James in particular. He thinks about the talk they’ll need to have, and dreads it.
He must look traumatized, because out of nowhere, Camille announces casually, “I had a crush on you one time,” pouring herself another glass of champagne. The bottle’s contents are dangerously low.
“Did you?”
She laughs. “No. Logan was pretty much it for me.”
“I’m sorry he’s…who he is.”
“If he was anyone else, I never would have fallen for him,” she replies ruefully. “I don’t love him despite his flaws. I love him because of them.”
Kendall starts. “You still love him? I thought you guys were-“
“Caput.” She claps her hands together, the noise harsh and echoing in the empty street. “Over. Totally. That doesn’t mean I ever stopped.
Just. Some things are more important than love.”
“That sounds miserable.” It’s as honest as Kendall knows how to be. “When I was a kid, I thought love and loyalty were the only things that matter.”
“Yeah, well. No one says, when I’m older I’m going to be exactly the same, only a little smarter and a little sadder.” Camille smiles a smile that isn’t a smile. “We change. Although I guess the smarter and sadder parts still apply.”
“Camille-“
“I’ll help you out. With the James thing. Give me until the end of today, and it’ll be ready first thing in the morning.”
“You’re the best.”
She smiles, and this time it is real, a brilliant, cunning thing that outshines everything around them, from the sun to the rusted metal of the car they’re seated on. “You know it.”
It’s the last thing he will ever hear her say.
---
This is how an idea catches fire.
It starts out as nothing more than the smallest of embers, smoldering in the back of Kendall’s mind. And then, every time he acknowledges its existence, it grows bigger, a fanned flame.
Soon enough, it becomes a raging blaze, something impossible to deny.
This is how an idea catches fire, and this is how Kendall has fallen in love with James.
He doesn’t know that, completely, not really. Not until he makes his way into their busted up apartment later that same afternoon and hears his best friend singing languidly above his head. Stretched across the sunwarm tiles of the rooftop, James is all arms and legs, a starfish boy.
He brightens the second he hears the scrape of Kendall’s shoes against brick. The flash of his teeth is automatic, like he can’t even help it, and Kendall’s heart skips a beat.
To cover, he asks, “Laaaazy. Is this all you’ve been doing all day?”
James shrugs, golden skin moving over slick muscle. Every inch of him is exactly what he always wanted to be as a kid; a messed up mystery, and Kendall doesn’t know how to walk away. So he doesn’t. He stays, settling himself next to James’s prone body.
James asks, “How was work?”
“Gustavo nearly burst a vein yelling at our new artist, so that was a fun thing that happened.”
“How was Camille?”
“Feisty as ever.”
“Did she like the champagne that you wouldn’t let me drink?” James pouts, rolling to face Kendall. Their noses are nearly touching, but there’s no urgency to kiss him. He knows it will happen at some point, and he knows it will be great, but for now, he gets to drink in the way the sun colors James’s eyes gold-gray-brown, all leonine and lovely.
“I told you, I wanted to ask her for a favor.”
“You never liquor me up for favors.”
“You’re easy.”
James cocks his head a bit and laughs. “True. What did you talk about?”
“None of your beeswax.”
“Fine. See if I care.” He lolls his head to the side, a bit miffed but still smiling. His hair is ruffled and sticking in odd directions, so un-James-like, but even sweeter for it. He looks like maybe he’d taken a nap, or had just spent the entire afternoon analyzing the shape and size of the clouds.
Kendall hates himself for what he’s about to say. “There are…uh…some things that I think you need to start caring about.”
“Such as?”
“Camille mentioned…erm. People are noticing that, uh…”
“That I’m rakishly handsome?”
Kendall fists his hand in the material of his shirt, red-blue and covered in sacred heart iconography. The shirt James gave him. He wears it all the time, now.
“That you aren’t fucking anyone.”
James blinks, slowly. “I’m fucking you.”
“That’s what I’d like people not to notice, thanks.” Kendall is vaguely aware that his voice is getting pitchy and a little scared. His throat feels scratchy, slick with sweat on the inside, and he can feel the frayed threads of thick rope slipping and sliding against his skin, and oh god, for a fantastically, horrifyingly clear moment he thinks he can see James’s face, bloated and dead, dead, dead-
“Hey!” James shakes him, hard. He’s on his knees, blocking out the sun, and Kendall wonders when he moved. “You’re freaking out, man.”
“You aren’t.”
“What do you want me to say? That sucks?” He purses his lips. “Life sucks, sometimes. We’ll deal with it.”
“I know we will,” Kendall agrees. “Tonight, at L’Amour, you’re going to pick up a girl, bring her back here, and-“
“No.”
“What?”
Enunciating, James says, “N. O. No.”
“James,” Kendall tries, but before he can finish, James strips his blue t-shirt over his head, his movements deliberate. His eyes glow topaz with the sun at his back, lines of gold illuminating the barest traces of hair on his arms, his thighs, and the flat span of his stomach. Kendall’s mouth goes desert-dry.
“The only person I’m taking home is going to be you.”
Kendall opens his mouth.
“The only person I’m making love to is going to be you.” James begins unbuckling his pants, his eyes never leaving Kendall’s face, and how is he supposed to argue against this?
“James,” he tries again.
James pushes his mouth up against Kendall’s cutting off the protests on his lips. And Kendall kisses him back, drowning all the worry and dread that’s towering in his bones, brought on by Jo and Camille and this fucking place. There’s only so much a person can worry before they lose themselves completely, and if he’s going to do that, he wants to do it in James, in the hot pant of his breath and the movement of his mouth over Kendall’s and the way that his hands tug fervently at the stupid jeans that form a barrier between them.
He begs, “Can I?” And Kendall lets him, because oh hell, what else is he supposed to do?
He lets himself be stretched open there, in the naked daylight, where anyone who thinks to look can see, but who on earth would look on top of a squatter’s roof? No one, Kendall hopes, Kendall thinks, but Kendall’s not really thinking at all, because he’s biting down against cries, against the pain and the ecstasy of James’s fingers inside of him. And then it’s not fingers and makeshift lube moving against him, but something bigger, more pressure, and James’s stomach is flat against Kendall’s spine, sweat forming puddles between them.
Their position on the roof is precarious, all shifting shingles and the whole of Verona laid out before, them; or it would be, if their view wasn’t blocked by the run down office building. But as James’s boots and Kendall’s knees slip against the tar and tile, the blocked beauty of that view is also their safety, looming empty windows passing no judgement at all.
James bites kisses into Kendall’s shoulderblades, kisses bitemarks into his neck. He’s rough and gentle all at once, his big hands imprinting the skin of Kendall’s skinny hips while these sparks shudder through their bodies.
“Kendall,” James pants, “It’s you. I don’t want to do this with anyone else but you.”
Kendall groans and keens and can’t seem to find the words that leave on the breaths James is punching out of him.
James buries himself so deeply in Kendall that they could be one person and these words tumble out of his mouth, these words that end the world, and remake it into something more, “Fuck, love you. Love you. Not anyone else. Just you.”
Kendall’s entire body stills, and James pleads, “Don’t make me take it back. Love you so much. Don’t want to take it back.”
He moves to emphasize it, moves and moves, and Kendall is so close, and this is all too much, too good, too fast.
“Don’t,” he gets out.
But James misinterprets it, and he stops the relentless pace of his hips. He’s completely silent, barely even breathing, although Kendall can feel the rise and fall of his chest against his spine. So Kendall reaches back, fumbling for James’s hand, and when he finds it, he squeezes it tight.
“Don’t take it back.”
For a second, Kendall thinks he’s said the wrong thing. James is pulling away, a long slow withdraw. Then James’s hips slam forward, and everything explodes into stars.
---
He doesn’t know that at the same time as James is fucking him sweet and hard on the roof, every soft push of their hips jolting all the way down to his toes, Dak Zevon’s at L’Amour, badmouthing Mercedes and Kendall to anyone who will listen.
He doesn’t know that when he’s biting hard against James’s knuckles to choke off his own groans, Lucy is cutting off the ‘shine in a desperate attempt to get ahead of his wasted rage.
The mason jars lining the bar and the big, rusted mirror reflect back all the ugly inside of Dak, too much to be contained as even the people deep in a billiards game stop to watch. So, Kendall doesn’t know that Camille steps in, ordering, “Straighten up soldier. You’re on duty in an hour,” but he wouldn’t have been surprised. It’s who she is.
Because the thing is that Kendall doesn’t need a hero, but it’s never stopped Camille from being one. From being his knight in shining armor, since the very first day she saw him at the fence-line, starving. Dying.
She is the bravest, most noble person he knows.
In her frilly red dress, Kendall does not know that Camille is facing down Dak, stupid Dak with his black uniform and his shiny Hawk badges.
He calls her a weakling, he calls her Kendall Knight’s faghag, and she loses her temper. She taunts him back.
Camille has never met a witty retort she didn’t like, and she wields them like knives. Soon enough she’s got Dak swearing with rage while
Kendall is sweating, prone and ecstatic under the weight of James’s body. Dak tells her he’ll kill her for the indignity of it all.
And Camille, being Camille, asks if he wants to put his money where his mouth is. She is tiny and fierce, too dangerous to mess with, but her guns keep resting in her hand-stitched holsters, because the bar is filled with civilians, and a hand to hand fight is clearly what she has in mind.
She’s fair. That’s one of the things people have always said about Camille; that she’s fair, and she’s kind. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t see it coming.
James’s come is flooding inside of Kendall when Dak’s bullet pierces Camille’s chest, blood blossoming out, blending in with the fabric until it’s impossible to tell where the dress starts and the wound begins.
If there’s a speech on her lips about Verona and hell, a pox on anyone’s house, or maybe just one final goodbye, nobody hears it. Camille dies, instantly, is how everyone tells it.
Camille dies, and Dak gets one more drink at the bar before he flounces off to work the Wall, and all of this happens while Kendall lies there, in James’s arms.
Not knowing.
James smiles bright and tender, murmuring, “I love you.”
For the first time, Kendall says it back, low and raw, like a secret he’s held inside himself for much too long.
They hear the sound of footsteps below them, Logan or Carlos, home early. Handing Kendall back his shirt, hand fisted in the middle of an orange-blue flower, he says, “This is paradise. Right here. Right now. Remember that.”
The world is beautiful, he’d told Kendall once.
James is beautiful, Kendall thinks.
There’s so much neither of them know, so much they don’t understand, but this, right here, is the last perfect moment they’ll ever have.
This is paradise.
---