We Are All Embers

By: Jondy Macmillan

A/N: Okay, so don't get excited. I haven't jumped ships. It's just, Logan's is the only perspective I hadn't touched at the time I started writing this thing. I ended up posting A Song You'll Regret first, but this was written before that, mostly. And while I think Logan's cute with all the boys, I also think I'm incapable having a story not focus on Kendall. That said, I STILL had no ending for this thing until I saw the episode Saturday night and remembered my figure skating meta (see also: Lots of People Say). That sort of kicked me in the butt and got me moving on the rest. SO, have the kogan fic I never thought I'd finish. Also, my science is shoddy and poorly researched, for which I apologize in advance. You'll see what I mean. ALSO, jblostfan16 put aside her fervent hatred of kogan for one night to beta this, and as a result I owe her the world. CHRIS, YOU ARE MY FAVORITE. :):):) The title is from the song Embers by Just Jack, which is fab. Check it.

At the equator, the Earth spins on its axis one thousand thirty eight miles per an hour. It orbits the sun at a velocity of about eighteen point five miles per second. And all the while, the sun, pulling the Earth along with it, is hurtling through the Milky Way galaxy at over four hundred and eighty thousand miles per an hour.

Think about that.

Logan does.

All the time, he thinks about how fast the ground beneath his feet is moving, and how he can't feel it. He's secretly hoped, since the moment he first stepped foot in California, that he'll get to experience a real, live earthquake. That even for a second, the Earth will move beneath his feet; and sure, it won't be a fraction of what's actually happening, but it'll be something.

Of course, he knows, on an intellectual level, that earthquakes are bad. Dangerous. Sometimes, they kill people.

It doesn't stop him from wanting.

His whole life, just, wanting.

Logan knows all about wanting; about need. He knows the subtle flavor of it on his tongue. The way his body can burn with it; the way it builds beneath his ribcage and spills from his chest like an aura, a wave of unexpressed desire reaching towards the unattainable. Logan knows how it makes his fingers twitch at his side, how he has to strain to keep from grasping for whatever it is that drives his thoughts.

Logan wants so many things; knowledge and to be helpful and to make his parents proud, and on top of it all a boy who shines like the sun.

A boy he can never have.

The place where Logan grew up is quiet; rich color and texture beneath sheets of dust, the air hanging thick with stories, told and untold. Tragedies and romance all tied up so that he can breathe them, breathe history like oxygen. It's the place where Logan learned what it was like to yearn, to be a thousand thoughts but one single action; to wait, wait, wait for a chance that will never come.

California's nothing like that at all. The air is arid and the sky is too blue, the ocean too deep, the lawns a perfectly manicured green. Everything is oversaturated or bleached, like the only choices colors have are to become too much or not at all enough.

The people are the same. It's all instant gratification, all the time, and no one ever waits for anything. In Hollywood, if someone can't have what they want, they jump to the next project and then the next until they get what they came for in excess or they just fade away, like the transients on the street; pale ghosts who become less, every day.

Logan tries the former at first, jumping from cute girl to cute girl, all the while secure in the knowledge he doesn't really like girls at all. But he can't aim for the one thing, the one person that he wants the most, because that is not what he learned in his quiet house, among mahogany and the saffron orange of his father's tapestries; the rich brocade of the frivolities his mother allowed herself to keep.

His mother taught him that good things come to those who wait, and so Logan does. Even in the ever-busy, ever-moving streets of Los Angeles, Logan can't shake the idea.

She's a buttoned down woman, his mom; her tiny little frame hides beneath off the rack suits, and no one ever guesses what her real passion is. She likes the illusion of it, the mirage of the working woman as she goes about her day; lost in fantasies of swashbucklers and scruffy chinned cowboys, lips gone a kind of rancid sweet from tobacco. She tries to replicate the façade inside the house, but sometimes she forgets and brings home fanciful things that better fit her personality; replicas of woven medieval unicorns with blood tipped horns or burnished fertility statuettes. His dad doesn't help. Mr. Mitchell collects his stories from around the world, from places Logan's only ever read about in the worn pages of travel books; places with unpronounceable names that feel majestic, like they can hardly be whispered lest their magic disappears. He collects trinkets from each trip, things he hoards like treasure to distinguish himself in the doldrums of Minnesota.

Logan's room has always been the plainest.

When he was little he had glow in the dark stars arranged in the shapes of the constellations on his ceiling, dog-eared books covering every surface, and faded posters advertising scientific discoveries and the mysteries of the universe. He tore most of it down the older he grew, feeling too childish to tolerate the vibrant colors; too ashamed that at fifteen he hadn't made a discovery of his own quite yet.

All that remains there now is a set of striped sheets and some of the stars on the ceiling, the ones he was too lazy to ever fully tear off. There is a half complete model of the Milky Way that spun over his head as he dreamt at night, but now Logan is no longer there to dream. He is here, in California, sharing a room with the one person who makes him think that it is not so bad to act childishly sometimes, the boy who taught him about bravery and love and that they are not just words in books.

The boy who Logan just keeps on waiting for.

He hates him, sometimes; Kendall. He doesn't want to. Kendall's amazing. He's noble, beautiful, untouchable. It's only natural that it becomes an issue.

And it's not about being gay or the loathing people have for things that are different. That's a problem; Logan's not naive. He's known since the day, the hour, the minute, the second he figured his feelings out that being homosexual in a small town is almost like a death sentence. Or maybe not quite that; admitting you're homosexual in a small town is almost like a death sentence. Being gay, well, if you're smart, which Logan always has been, means you duck your head and fake it 'till you can get the hell out of dodge. And if you're lucky, no one will notice and bash your teeth in with a Louisville slugger.

But the gay thing isn't an end-game problem; not something Logan can't overcome now that he's out in California, where tolerance is a word people are constantly trying to assign a higher meaning. Logan knows human beings are not predictable creatures, and no matter what anyone says, animals go gay too. Logan used to have a dog that would mount other dogs every chance she got, and it didn't matter what genitalia they were packing. It was the wild kingdom at its best. So yeah, it's not about that at all.

The dilemma with liking Kendall has always been about more for him. Best friends; like incest. It's like corrupting every memory he's ever had.

And he just can't seem to stop.

Logan met Kendall at hockey practice when he was eight. He'd been forced to join the team by his dad, who wasn't exactly the epitome of masculinity, but liked a rousing Wild game while he nursed a bottle of Heineken. Or at least, he pretended to when his three older brothers were in town. He was obviously kind of hoping that Logan would turn out to have a modicum of macho testosterone; the kind that had passed Mr. Mitchell over and made his childhood a living hell. Logan didn't know how to break it to him that, no, he really, really didn't.

When his dad first pushed him out into the rink, Logan was hugging his stick and hoping against hope that his nose would still be the same shape by the end of the day. He was terrified.

The whole day was sort of this huge wake up call for both of the Mitchell boys. About halfway through, Logan's dad stopped yelling at him to man up and started screaming that he should protect the family jewels at all costs. But Logan? Even though he was kind of scared that he'd die at the very young age of barely-even-nine, he was fascinated by the team. Way more than he thought he would be. He liked the math that went into landing a shot. He liked the adrenaline rush that came with speeding down the ice. And most of all, he liked the team captain; a golden boy with eyes like the moss that grew in Logan's backyard pond, even under the ice in the midst of winter. They were that same pale, clear green that Logan found weirdly beautiful.

Kendall, of course, was already a legend. The way the story went, Kendall burst onto the scene at seven years old, skating with the kind of ease most people reserved for breathing. He made captain after a week, ousting the former leader of the peewee team in a grandiose display of prowess.

Also, he knocked his front teeth out.

Logan was maybe a little bit in awe of him, back then. Later, he would find out that Kendall had been rather active in the figure skating community. He'd hated it with a fiery passion, but his mom liked a good triple axel, and the only thing Kendall hated more than a tight unitard was football; his dad's sport of choice. Compared to that, the skating part wasn't so bad; even if he'd had several adamant arguments with his coach about glitter on his costumes.

Kendall obediently learned how to twirl in the air like a little sugarplum, right up until the day his mom was late picking him up after work. He waited in the stands as the peewee hockey league filtered onto the ice. He became fascinated with the sport in five seconds flat. Kendall told his mom that he wasn't going to be a figure skater, but that he'd help her force Katie into ballet when she was old enough, as a compromise, if she let him join the hockey team. Kendall's dad was all for it, and Kendall took his moves to the team. He enlisted Carlos, an ice dancer, to join up as well, and between the two of them they were the best players out there.

It might've had something to do with all the pent up aggression they'd stored up while twirling to Beethoven.

When Logan found out, he'd never laughed so hard in his entire life. But that would be at least a year from the day he first joined the team, which his dad wanted him to quit after the first try. Mr. Mitchell said there were safer, less violent, still perfectly masculine sports. Like baseball.

Logan didn't want to play baseball. He wasn't very good at hockey, but he thought maybe, with a little practice, he'd get it down. Maybe, one day, he'd even be good enough to impress the captain, the Knight boy. So he worked his butt off.

Logan was an excellent shot, but he had trouble with power and speed. Eventually, he enlisted the help of a kid two blocks down from him, this boy he knew vaguely from neighborhood birthday parties and cookouts. He'd seen the kid, James, playing street hockey by himself a few times from the window of his dad's minivan.

It took three hours of begging and the promise that he'd do a month's worth of James's homework to get him to agree to help. James was a cool guy.

At first, Logan thought he was a little bit scary. James had grown up in this cute little Victorian home with his dad, a musician, and his stepmom, who was kind of certifiably insane. His dad spent a lot of time on tour, and his stepmom was always attending like, country club shindigs and garden parties; real debutante kind of shit. And his mom, his real mom, was some kind of high powered business woman who spent most of her time in meetings all across the Midwest; meaning that James had spent the majority of his life figuring out how to take care of himself.

He was fast and dangerous on the ice, and it turned out he was a member of an opposing hockey team. Logan learned James could be a little rough and prickly on the outside, but once he got James talking, he found out that he was kind of this huge, lonely sweetheart on the inside. James taught him the best moves, helped him build up strength and speed and agility, and by the time two months had passed, Logan was the third best player on the team. That's when Kendall began to take notice, throwing him smiles and high fives that made Logan's stomach twist into knots and his body feel all warm.

He almost couldn't enjoy it at the time, because James had gotten all moody and quiet and Logan didn't like that at all; James was sort of becoming his best friend. Logan had never had a best friend before. But then, when James had told him he didn't have to do his homework anymore, and that Logan didn't need lessons, he figured it out.

"But we can still hang, right?" he'd asked, tentative.

"You want to?" James asked, sounding surprised.

"Yeah," Logan grinned, "Yeah, I really do."

And then he'd convinced James to come switch hockey teams and everything. Which was sort of a problem in and of itself, because he and Kendall had some history that included some uncomfortable bruises from some rather vicious games, but James was good. He was really, really fucking good. The rest, as they say, was history. Except it wasn't, really.

Logan still lives it today; lives with the adoration and love and all of it. Every single crazy inch of it, except stronger, now.

Those things he felt for Kendall that first day on the ice; they're still there. They're just so much more powerful. Logan knows love is just dopamine and chemicals mixed and turned to something sparking in his brain, part of a biological instinct to mate and choose the girl with the best features for child rearing, or whatever. The scientific part of him, yeah, it knows that. But Logan was also raised by a real-estate-agent-cum-romantic-erotica-author. He's a bit of a softie, deep inside, and he doesn't like qualifying love with chemicals.

Logan's dad tells him ghost stories, because that's his dad's job; walking tours of their small town and all the tragedies that give it local color and richness and that hint of paranormal mystery that makes life worth living. But anyway, his dad will tell him stories about star-crossed lovers and how not everything turns out the way his mom says; the pirate doesn't always win the princess and get a lifetime of steamy sex. Sometimes love just consumes you, until there's nothing left at all.

Logan gets that.

Before Kendall, living had been easy. When Logan was lonely, when all he needed to hear was a voice; there was music. When he was desperate to learn, he had books to teach him. When he needed entertainment, there was a TV full of people laughing, crying, feeling. When Logan wanted to create something of his own, he would write for hours, until he felt like every idea he'd ever had was splayed out on the pages in front of him. And all of that; it had been enough. He'd had friends, sure, but he hadn't needed them. Not really.

Not until Kendall came along and worked his way underneath Logan's skin, a constant itch with no signs of ever stopping.

It bothers him. For a long time, it's bothered him; this weird, invisible border that represents their friendship stands between them. And Logan's so indecisive; there's a whole world of possibilities out there. How can any person choose just one? But Kendall's always been the only constant variable. Logan falls for girl after girl after girl; flits from mathematical theory to astronomy to thermodynamic physics.

The way Logan feels for Kendall is the only thing that remains the same.

The wall is still there, of course. Logan isn't quite capable of knocking it down just yet, but he's learning to live with the idea of it. It helps that every time he looks at Kendall, the other boy steals his breath away. Sometimes he wonders, if he keeps peering at the blond out of the corner of his eye, will he run out of oxygen? It seems like a kind way to die; basking in the glow of the person he loves.

There's another problem, actually. And that problem is that Kendall has no idea.

Kendall has Jo.

Logan doesn't hate Jo. He can't hate Jo. She's sweet. Just a whole lot of sweet, like hard candy and cupcakes and things with cream filling. She's pretty enough that she has Kendall tongue tied but tough enough to handle the way he constantly jumps from one idea to the next; this huge, bouncing ball of energy in his mind churning out mischief whenever he gets bored. Which is often, and usually results in Carlos breaking a new and exciting bone that no one even knew was breakable. Jo has no problem saying no, and she does it frequently, batting her lovely eyelashes all the while.

Logan doesn't know how to say no to Kendall. He makes weak attempts, sometimes. They don't work very well. But how can he possibly say no to anything their fearless leader asks when he is amazing and all Logan wants is to lay the world at his feet?

So no, Logan can't hate Jo. But when Kendall's around her, he forgets which way is up or down or left or right or anything except her sparkly eyes and glossy lips and how very much he wants into her pants. Which is another thing Jo has no problem saying no to, or at least that's what Logan is hoping.

When Kendall is around Jo, he forgets all about Logan.

So no, Logan can't like Jo very much either.

Most days, he can focus on other things. Like today, Logan's trying to figure out how to dance. He doesn't get how the rest of the guys just picked up all this boy band stuff. James trained for it from birth, and Kendall and Carlos seem to have natural talent in droves. But singing is new to Logan, and he constantly has trouble forcing his body to go through all the dance moves. If it wasn't for Mr. X's help and some quick jam sessions with James (in exchange for doing his math homework, of course), Logan's pretty sure Gustavo would have fired him ages ago.

He's standing in the room he shares with Kendall, trying to practice in front of the mirror when Kendall stumbles in. Jo's attached to his lips, and Logan has to force himself to keep down some impending projectile vomit. At first he pretends he's a real scientist. He watches Kendall's mouth mold to Jo's and the pliant way that she folds into him. He watches the short, stuttering breaths they share and the place like a neon sign where Kendall's hand has crept beneath the hem of Jo's skirt, sliding further up her thigh. He watches and pretends his heart has not turned to ash in his chest; that he has not been crushed like Pompeii beneath the ashes of Vesuvius.

If Logan was James or Carlos he would make a snappy, sarcastic comment right about now. He would announce his presence in this clever, witty way that would at least make Kendall and Jo feel a smidgen of the mortification he's feeling right now. But Logan is not snappy or sarcastic. His chest twinges, and oh god, he's having a stroke. Doesn't extreme stress cause cardiac arrest in some cases? Statistically speaking Logan's too young, but statistically speaking Logan could be that one out of however many million that gets struck down too young.

A broken heart is a real scientific thing.

The twinge moves south, into his stomach, and Logan does not have a stroke or say anything clever. What he does is bolt from the room. He sees Kendall's head snap up like a watchdog on the prowl when he shoves open the door, hears Jo ask, "Was that Logan?" but Logan is already halfway down the hall, sliding barefoot into the bathroom and falling to his knees on the tile. His heart is trying to climb up out of his throat, or maybe that's his stomach, or maybe it's just the sushi he shared with James for lunch.

Logan spends fifteen minutes puking his guts out, staring at the colors between heaves and thinking they look just like the faded, muted tones of his mother's favorite Etruscan art. He leans his forehead against porcelain, dry heaving. Outside, Logan hears a door slam, followed by what sounds like moaning. There is Kendall's voice, and then, for a long, long time, there is silence. Logan closes his eyes.

A knock on the door startles him out of his reverie, seconds or minutes or hours later. Logan's stomach feels awful, like a rebellion is going on inside, complete with angry guerillas and shots fired and explosions.

"Come in," he croaks.

It's Kendall. He looks at Logan, long and hard. Then he says, "James has food poisoning. He's not happy."

Kendall crosses his arms. He hates playing nurse maid, and he always ends up having to take care of James. Probably because the last time Logan tried to doctor him, he actually beat James over the head with a can of Cuda. James is not a very good patient. Kendall's got all these internalized maternal instincts, though, and he like, calms James's inner beast.

"I'm not going to check on him," Logan mutters, wiping at his mouth.

"I wasn't asking you for that." Kendall sits down on the tile beside him. "I'm asking if you have it too. Are you okay?"

Logan cringes. He wants to curl into Kendall's warmth, and he wants to tell Kendall to get the fuck away and go makeout with his girlfriend. "Bad sushi."

"I told you guys not to get raw fish from the sketchy sushi cart. Sushi should not come from a street cart."

"Hot dogs come from street carts."

"Hot dogs aren't raw, Logan," Kendall ruffles his hair. His face is close, so freaking close, and Logan's throat closes up because he thinks about closeness like this sometimes. About how one day Kendall will lean over and kiss him.

Hero worship isn't healthy, but Logan wants to worship Kendall in every way possible. He wants to kiss the indents in his knee, suck at the muscle in his thigh, and make him moan Logan's name. Logan wants to pin Kendall down, or have Kendall pin him down; he hasn't quite figured that part out yet. He wants to see if they can make the world move together, if kissing Kendall would be like touching a livewire, like electricity he could taste on his tongue. He wonders if Kendall would taste like an oncoming storm.

But the kiss? It never happens. Kendall pulls his hand away and says, "You'll feel better," and it's not fair. Logan wants his hand back, fingertips hot on his scalp. Logan wants him to stay. If the human brain is so powerful and the world keeps spinning so fast, why can't a person slow it all down, just for a little while? Why can't Logan just make Kendall stay?

Except Kendall isn't leaving. Kendall is asking, "Can you stand?" and helping Logan up to his feet.

Logan can stand, but he pretends that it's hard. He feels steady; for all that his stomach is staging a revolt, a quiet little revolution, complete with tanks and grenades.

And Logan's almost upset about that. He likes letting Kendall play white knight, because that is of course what he is. Kendall belongs in an epic. He is a prince, a leader, and a demigod, and somewhere in the cavernous spaces between those concepts he is also Logan's friend, Katie's brother, and his mother's son. He is the boy that millions of girls want to touch, like they could somehow come away with his magic on their fingertips. Logan lets Kendall deposit him safely in bed, copping a feel off of Kendall's chest and his biceps. It's only when Kendall slides into bed with him that Logan groans, "You don't have to."

"Hey, no. I'm not leaving," Kendall says softly. He smoothes a hand through Logan's hair, a fond smile tugging at his lips.

"What about James?"

Kendall pulls the comforter up over their shoulders, snuggling down into the pillows. "James is fine. He's sleeping. You need to sleep."

"But-"

"Turn off your brain." Kendall pulls Logan into the hollow of his arms. His body feels fever hot. Logan wants to argue, but he can't. Not against this. Not against Kendall, who is watching him with intense focus and a crooked grin.

Kendall eyes are a place where Logan can lose himself, if he's not careful.

It's chemistry.

It's magic.

Kendall turns Logan into a living, breathing conflict; numbers and science and facts mixed up with strong arms and corsets and the idea of soul mates.

Logan falls asleep thinking that if he could feel the earth move under his feet, maybe he wouldn't be so preoccupied with something as stupid as love.

When Logan wakes up all he sees is green. Kendall is watching him, head pillowed on his hands. His eyes are luminescent. "Feel better?"

"What time is it?" Logan croaks. He cranes his head, trying to see out the window. It's still dark.

"Early." Kendall's lips twitch.

"You, uh. You didn't go back to Jo? Or, um, James?" He tacks on hastily, because can't forget James. That would make him a bad friend.

"You're more important."

"Than James? Don't tell him that."

Kendall huffs a laugh. "We have to be at the studio in an hour."

"I'll-" Logan starts to sit up. Kendall's hand catches him in the chest, forcing him back down onto the bed.

"No. You sleep. I'll tell Gustavo you and James need the day off."

"But-"

"Just sleep, Logan." Kendall strokes a finger along his cheek. "The studio's still going to be around tomorrow."

When Kendall leaves, Logan crawls into the warm indent left by his body, curling into the space until he's breathing, living, absorbing the last traces of Kendall's affection.

Logan spends most of the day in bed, or puking, or otherwise being miserable. Every time he returns to his hideout beneath the comforter he folds his body into the same place, imagining that he's wrapped in vestiges of Kendall's love.

The next morning, Logan's feeling better; less hazy, less nauseous, and a little more prepared to deal with the world. He lies in bed waiting for a wakeup call that never comes. It's not until twelve that there's a knock on the door, and James's face appears. "Feeling better?"

Logan sits up, gathering his sheets around his hips. "Um. Yeah. Where's-"

"Kendall and Carlos went to meet up with Gustavo in the morning. They let us sleep. But-" James makes a face and says, "I'm bored."

"Me too," Logan agrees. He feels like he's been locked in a sickroom for months instead of a day and a half.

"Want to hit up the studio?"

"Let's."

James shakes his head sadly. "I was hoping you'd say let's go sit by the pool instead. I worry about you, Logan. I really do. One of these days we'll teach you all about fun."

"You're the one who said you wanted to hit up the studio!"

"I was trying to see what it felt like to be responsible. It felt unnatural and wrong. We should play hooky. How about a movie? I like movies. There's always a happy ending."

"Um, you obviously have not seen Dawn of the Dead. And we need to go to the studio. Gustavo's probably ready to kill us."

James rolls his eyes. "Do you always have to be such a downer? Gustavo won't kill us. Food poisoning excuses everything."

"James."

"Fine!" James throws his hands in the air. "Let's do the responsible thing."

He says responsible the same way he would say lame.

They're on their way out when James turns to Logan and announces with a grin, "I know why you really want to go to the studio. You like Kendall. You can't wait to see him."

"Of course I like Kendall," Logan huffs. He's perfected his poker face when it comes to dealing with James, who thrives off of crazy theories and half-bits of gossip. "I like all of you jerks."

"Flattering," James comments, "But not what I meant. You like like him."

"What are you, nine?"

James ignores the question. "So if you like him, why haven't you told him so?"

Logan thinks about lying. He does. But…Logan knows his insides are atoms and DNA, organs and blood. He's spent a good portion of his life studying the human body and learning about the things that make people tick. Despite that, there are days when he feels flimsy, like he consists of cobwebs and dreams, of long forgotten stories and the thin threads of fantasies. He feels like that today, with the sticky scent of sickness still clinging to his skin. Holding onto a secret that James is already so convinced he knows is dumb. Maybe if Logan tells, if he says the words out loud, they'll feel more real.

Except the words catch in his throat, so Logan settles for giving James his best are you stupid or something look.

"Oh. Jo." James sighs. "I can see how that would be a problem."

"But isn't having a girlfriend a patriarchal label indicative of possession that you don't abide by?"

"If I knew what you just said, I might be insulted."

"I said you don't believe in relationships." Logan rolls his eyes.

"Oh. Well, yeah. Wait; was that a dig about Camille?" James asks, obviously affronted.

"Yes. Yes it was." Logan makes a face, because the thing with Camille still burns a little bit.

"I said I was sorry. Like, a million times."

"You didn't say it a million times."

"Well, I could. Probably." James pauses, as if wondering whether or not he can feasibly count to one million.

"Please don't."

James snorts. "Good call."

As if she sensed they were talking about her, Camille drifts close by in the lobby, throwing them a smile and a wave. She is beautiful; Logan's ex, his former lover.

She also scares him. She is endings.

It isn't completely her fault. Logan cares about her too much to lead her on, and besides, he catches the look she shares with James before they leave the lobby.

James does believe in relationships. He's just too scared to pursue a real one.

The studio is not the fabulous idea Logan initially thought it would be. Gustavo has plans for them. Big plans.

"You want us to write?" Logan squeaks, abruptly terrified.

It's not the first time someone's asked him to pen something. Before Kendall, Logan filled notebooks. He'd written chalk novels on the sidewalk in childish scrawl and told his mother stories like spun sugar off his tongue. He was the son of two story tellers, and writing? It was expected.

"Words are in your blood," his mother would say, and Logan always thought she meant that he was supposed to follow in her footsteps; become a writer. But Kendall changed things, as he's so prone to doing. Logan hasn't written a word of fiction since then; not a song or a poem or a story.

Logan doesn't like feeling like a failure. He told his mother that he'd lost his mojo and she'd laughed at him.

"Words are in your blood," she repeated, and Logan would stay up at night, staring at his veins and wondering if they ran with ink. He skinned his knee skateboarding with Carlos when he was twelve, and he was almost disappointed to see his skin spill crimson, just like everyone else. He wanted to search the sidewalk to see if it had been imprinted with delicate cursive script, but all that was left the next day was a small red stain that flaked away when he toed it with his sneaker.

He told his mom that too, and she had stared at him, charmed by his innocence.

She never understood that Logan had really, honestly lost it; that thread of inspiration that kept his mom locked up in her own imagination, ideas dancing through her synapses like fireflies, fingers snapping over a keyboard as she detailed the anatomy of hard bodied pirates and the soft curve of breasts spilling out of bustiers, lost in a world of harlequin romance that Logan doesn't even want to comprehend.

And now he's got this, this request to find the thread again, and he can't. He could never; the only words he knows now are bits of insignificant trivia about the stars and rare porpoise fish.

"Is that a problem?" Gustavo demands, all loud bluster and intimidating eyes.

"Of course not," Kendall steps in smoothly, saving the day like a superhero. His proximity makes Logan's heart race, but at the same time, he's mad. His friends have this challenge easy; Logan will never be able to make something as beautiful as they will. He's heard Kendall's attempts at lyrics and the melodies that spontaneously burst from James's mouth before and he is jealous of them. He hurts. He wants to make something half as good.

There are moments when the air is still and his confidence is high and he thinks he wants to make something even better. He wants to one up Kendall and James and even Carlos, whose idea of a new song involves drumming with corndog sticks.

Logan wants to prove that he belongs here in California. He wants to create something that will be heard over the crash of the waves and the electric hum of the freeway overpasses.

But so far, he hasn't been able to.

When he gets home, Logan digs a spiral notebook out from beneath his bed; something he's hoarded away. It's full of words; things that don't mean anything at all anymore. He rereads faded script on lined paper and wonders when this stopped being enough. Fiction used to be the way he made sense of the world. Logan used to work things out with plastic keys under his finger or a pen grasped tight in his hand. And he's not sure if it was a careless Words are stupid thrown from Kendall's lips or the need to fit in with some twisted idea of normal or his own insecurity that he'd never be able to say the things he needed to say that made him stop. But he misses it. He feels the indent of the places his pen touched paper and sighs.

Writing used to make him feel strong, like he could build a world with his fingertips. Something that wouldn't be so easy to destroy.

Maybe he can find that again.

Days pass, and Logan tries to write. Sometimes he stares at his fingers, at the blue veins running beneath the surface of his skin, waiting for the words to come out. The older he gets, the more clearly he can see those veins; lacework over his joints, spreading across his knuckles. There is a spider web of them beneath the translucent flesh of his palms.

But no words.

He gets encouragement, of course. Kendall builds Logan higher and higher, but every time he sees him with Jo, it knocks him right back down again.

Then Jo leaves, and that's somehow worse. Kendall is broken, and Logan doesn't know what to do.

He remembers asking his mom once, "Hey mom?"

"Yes, honey?"

"Why pirates?"

"What?"

"Why do you always write about pirates and knights and princes?"

His mom bit her lip, looking thoughtful. Finally she said, "The world is a dangerous place. You have to find someone who makes you feel safe."

"Does dad make you feel safe?"

"Always." She had smiled, and Logan had felt warm. Kendall made him feel that way; safe, always.

But once Jo leaves, it's like something inside Kendall switches off. His eyes are no longer electric. He no longer seems strong, and that isn't right. There are elements that make up a man, and Logan has always thought that Kendall is two parts fire, one part steel, with a healthy dose of compassion running deep at the core of him.

Jo takes all of that with her.

It gets bad, for a while. So bad that Logan thinks they'll never get the old Kendall back. One day Logan goes to him and says, "I'm sorry Jo left."

"I'm not. It's a really great opportunity- and. I would have felt awful if she stayed." It's half a lie, but Logan doesn't call him on it. Much.

"You don't have to be so selfless all the time, you know. You're allowed to be sad."

"Oh, I plan on wallowing in it. You are going to chauffeur me to Pinkberry and buy me something with rainbow sprinkles."

Taking Kendall to ice cream stores always ends up being really embarrassing. But Logan figures it can't hurt this once. He drags Kendall out into the sunshine and buys him a whole sundae of rainbow and pink.

And maybe it helps. Because slowly but surely, it gets better. Kendall stops wincing when people say Jo's name. He regains his fire, his steel and his compassion. He drags Logan into zany situation after zany situation, and it's okay, because he starts being Kendall again.

Kendall can ask Logan anything, and he will say yes. Logan will do anything to keep himself in Kendall's favor; to have that wicked, curved smile thrown all careless and free in his direction. Kendall takes advantage of that all the time; he pushes and he pulls and he begs and sometimes he will even break out a puppy dog pout of his own. But Kendall never uses force. He never asks Logan for anything that he doesn't believe Logan is perfectly capable of giving. Kendall believes in him.

It's a little bit intoxicating; having the faith of a boy, a man, who is already larger than life. The problem that sometimes arises is that Kendall has way more faith in Logan than Logan has in himself. Logan thinks that the only real criteria he has for anyone, friend or lover, is that they have to like him even when he doesn't. Because he spends a whole hell of a lot of time not liking himself. But every time he sees Kendall's smile, he finds confidence and strength and this place inside of himself that he didn't know existed.

Kendall makes him better. Isn't that what love is all about?

Logan would write him adventure after adventure if he could, but the words in his blood never seem to want to emerge on paper unless it's to discuss the properties of hydrochloric acid. He's still having trouble with the song Gustavo requested of them, and it's been months.

Gustavo is showing an uncharacteristic amount of patience with this. Logan isn't counting on it lasting.

It's a Sunday when Kendall comes to him, all open happiness and smiles and asks, "What are you doing?"

"I'm trying to write a song. The song," Logan admits after a minute, embarrassed. Kendall's eyes widen. He makes a play for the notebook lying in front of Logan, successfully snatching up the first page.

"That's fantastic. Is it any good-"

"You can't look at it yet," Logan says hastily, snatching back the paper. It's not very good. It's not done. "Don't you have your own song to work on?"

Kendall makes a face. "I don't love words like you do."

"I don't- love words," Logan splutters, because half of it is a lie. He does love words in this desperate way; they are the thing that anchors him when he feels like his sanity might float off into the stratosphere.

"Oh yeah?" Kendall scans the page, devouring the words. He mumbles, "No, no, your writing is way too neat to belong to a doctor. It kind of looks like a girl's."

Logan tries to snatch the paper back; embarrassed, but Kendall sings it then. He sings the words Logan has written back to him.

Logan feels the lyrics in his blood; the way he feels emotion swell beneath his skin when he reads a really, really good book or when he watches Kendall play hockey under a million blazing lights and somehow knows that this boy is the most important thing in the entire world.

In that moment, he realizes that he was wrong. The song is good.

It's the flicker of a candle in the middle of a dark room, firelight in his veins and the idea that there is more. There are entire horizons that Logan hasn't reached yet, hasn't even tried to touch, and he can. He can reach every corner of the world with words like these, with the lyrics and the melody he's crafted.

Why wouldn't he be able to touch every corner of a boy's heart?

Something must show in his eyes.

"Logan-" Kendall is looking at him like he is brand new and shiny, like a toy on Christmas morning or a girl who's just stepped foot in the lobby or a question he doesn't yet know the answer to.

Logan has waited his whole life for Kendall to look at him, to say, "I love this," and for his eyes to say I love you. But it doesn't feel anything like he thought it would.

Kendall takes a step forward, and then another, and Logan doesn't want to be a pretty new penny; he wants to be the stolid, loyal friend that has stuck by Kendall's side through thick and thin. He wants Kendall to love him for that; not the words lying dormant in his blood and in his bones.

That is just fear talking. Logan is very, very scared. Kendall is staring at him with his luminescent green gaze, and it's terrifying. Kendall's eyes are a place where Logan can find himself, if he's not careful.

Logan shoves up and out of his desk and mumbles something about the lobby. He wants to run. Logan is good at running.

Except Kendall grabs his arm and says, "Wait."

So Logan does. Because that is what he learned in his quiet house in California; he learned to wait, and to love, and the boy he will always do both for is standing right there. Kendall's hand on Logan's skin is a spot that tingles; atoms moving in a way that he can feel. It's not anything, but it is something. It is the electric flicker in Kendall's eyes and the pounding of Logan's heart.

"For what?" Logan asks. He expects the words to come out in a mumble, but they don't. Somewhere along the way, Logan has learned. Maybe it's California, but Logan knows how to talk to Kendall without feeling like he's swallowed a mouthful of sand, and evidently, he knows how to write a song without feeling insignificant. That counts for something.

In this moment, Logan is not solely composed of meaningless trivia. He is not small or irrelevant. He is a heartbeat and a breath; the spark of an idea that is more than just synapses firing off in his brain. He is a boy who is in love, a boy with words in his blood and more power than he ever thought at his fingertips.

He can be brave. Just this once.

Logan steps forward, and he didn't expect his first kiss with a guy to be some sweet, chaste expression of love. He thought, maybe it would come with time, but on the first go? Teenage boys are hormones and sweat and a helpless yearning for things they don't quite understand, but want all the same; and all of that clashes together, rages. The words 'too fast' were invented for teenage boys.

But when Kendall kisses him, it is nothing like that. It's barely more than a brush of their lips. Kendall breathes into his mouth, soft and sweet, "I never knew how to tell you."

"What?" Logan asks, trying hard not to move, to breathe Kendall's air and not want more than this; the touch of their lips.

"I want you to love me more than words, Logan. More than ink and paper and stories."

Logan isn't sure what to make of that, but he thinks he has an idea. Kendall can be Logan's discovery. Logan can touch the places inside of him that no one else ever has. If he'll let him.

Daring, he says, "Then make me feel something."

The world spins at a velocity of one thousand thirty eight miles per an hour. The average heart pumps sixty to one hundred times a minute. Everything is moving. Everything is charging forward, ready for the next revolution, the next beat. And there Logan stands, waiting and wishing he could never move again.

Kendall whispers, "I don't know how."

"Make me feel something," Logan repeats, and it's an order, because he is already feeling something. How can he not? His insides are all shaky, turning to pudding at Kendall's mere presence, and Kendall wants Logan to love him more? Logan isn't sure it's possible, but he can't say anything. He can't tell Kendall that he's already worth more than any stray bit of science, more than the stars and the sky and the moon. Logan needs Kendall to make the first move, because that's the thing that Kendall does; always, forever. Kendall is the one who makes the first move because Logan is too scared.

But this time, Kendall doesn't.

This time he blinks, sad, and says, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have wasted your time," and then he turns to walk away.

And he's going to leave, he's going to walk out of Logan's life and never come back. Logan knows it, in his gut, the way his mother knows the right words to say to make someone turn to a puddle of mush or his dad knows how to terrify entire groups of tourists with macabre tales of ghosts and zombies and horror.

Logan takes a step forward, and then another, another, after Kendall's retreating back. Logan makes an honest decision.

He can't let this one opportunity get away.

No more waiting.

"Kendall," he says, and his hand is on Kendall's forearm, and then Logan is yanking him, as hard as he can, momentum on his side- and isn't physics the greatest subject ever? Force and momentum and the crash of Kendall's lips into his.

Kendall's tongue is soft but insistent, curving against Logan's. His lips taste like fire.

For the first time in Logan's life, he doesn't want anything, nothing more than this; Kendall's mouth and the world spinning, dancing under his feet. Kendall's arms wrap around his neck, and Logan is at the center of one boy's universe.

He is exactly where he wants to be.

A/N: I fully acknowledge that this could be longer and flow a little more smoothly. Maybe one day I will come back and edit it. But at this point, this thing has been kicking around, gathering dust on my laptop for over a year. IT WAS TIME. Please review anyway?