old fic: the royal we (popslash)
by request from morgana_st, two stories from the popslash archive, no matter what i may think of them now! (in separate posts for length.)
The Royal We
*nsync GSF squared
What's your fantasy?
[Chris]
New album, new tour, new round of endless fucking interviews and the same goddamned questions like anyone really gives a shit what my favorite color is this week or they'd notice if I changed my answer so late in the game. Hot sun through the window and a thousand girls screaming when Justin twitches an eyebrow and it's some kid in the back, a guy I can barely see until he steps out from behind all the teased bangs, who asks the sixty-four thousand-dollar question.
"What's your fantasy?" he asks, no shame about it and you gotta respect him for that even if he is wearing this necklace with Lance's face on it. Okay, maybe you gotta respect him a little more for that.
"Oooh," Carson says, mocking but I'm never sure who his target is. That kid's life has gotta be hard enough without Carson giving him shit to boot.
So I say, "You are, Carson, you're our deepest darkest fantasy dreamboat," and he says something like, "You bet your sweet ass," and goes to the next video. And that's it, it's over, another life saved, another PR crisis thwarted by the deft moves of Chris Kirkpatrick.
We come back after they clear out the kids, tape some footage for a couple different specials, and it's dark outside the corner studio so all you can see is your reflection and beyond it neon and billboard spotlights. Shoes, clothes, soda, sex.
Everybody's selling something. Everybody's selling us, some piece of us, some idea of who we are and what we like, and I think we all realize that if they really knew, we might not sell quite as well.
I get now that it's not as easy as saying you could always go back to doing something else. Maybe it's like how you could always stop being a hooker, sure, you could work graveyard at an all-night diner making two bucks an hour plus tips and get your ass slapped by truckers and, sure, sure, it would be an honest living or whatever. But you'd be pulling down twelve grand a year and never see the kids, and if you just fuck that guy you met last week again it's a hundred bucks a pop and you're there when the youngest boy gets off school.
We all said we'd be willing to walk away before it came down to that, got plenty in the bank and no obligations, nobody holding us down. We'd each need a special soundproof shack in the middle of fucking nowhere so we didn't hear all the where are they now bullshit, but, sure, we could always stop. I could always stop, I could take my bitter old man act one step further and self-destruct or just tell MTV to kiss my shiny white ass. I could.
But I know what my time is worth now, or at least what little girls are willing to pay for it. Even split five ways and ten percent here and recoupables there and top bracket taxes, even so. And I still don't take it for granted. Not the big things we all know are special, but things like knowing if one of the girls wants to go to Harvard and not Penn State we can make sure she gets to. So I swallow and smile for the camera when they let me and it's another day, another fuckload of dollars. Sometimes I'm so full of pop saccharine I could just fucking choke on it.
If I'm gonna choke, I'd rather have it taste good. I think, sometimes, that Justin might be enough, might make it all easier to swallow. It's maybe not out of the realm of possibility. We've all kissed, drunk and partied out, sober and bored to death. It's never a big deal even when sometimes it's more serious than we'd ever cop to under the most extreme water torture. Keeping it real means keeping it low-fi, no-pressure, all fun and games or we never would've made it this far. And we all know that. I know that. Justin knows that, and last time he put his hand on my chin and kissed back like there were rules he wanted to break. I've never been a big fan of the rules and god knows he's known me long enough to know that I've never needed much excuse to say fuck 'em all.
If I'm gonna break the rules I want to do it right. I'd fuck Justin bent over the edge of a pool table and, like, photograph it. I'd buy billboard space in Times Square so that every time anyone flips by MTV they can look out and see it hanging over Carson's shoulder. And you'd be on Broadway with Aunt Judith on your way to see The Music Man and that look Justin was making the time I caught him whacking off would be ten stories tall in your face. Call Herb Ritts back, tell him we got a real exclusive for him and all his "just a little more lip gloss, honey" makeup assistants.
I'd like to do a PrimeTime special about the sound Justin probably makes when he's close, when he's holding back so I can catch up cause he might be Justin fuckin' Timberlake but that doesn't mean he's a total asshole. I'd like to have PR flaks giving me talking points and synonyms for orgasm. There should be DVD extras where you can choose your own Chris and Justin adventure, all 360 degrees of it. I'd look Diane fucking Sawyer in the eye and say, "You think he was the first fourteen-year-old in the history of the world to want it up the ass?"
Yeah, like that. Like that, in my fantasy, Justin always wanted me like that and I said no, no, of course I'm not interested in him, they're all like my brothers. I know the difference between fantasy and real life, you ass. If I was actually gonna do it, I'd call it a plan.
The thing, the fucked-up thing about plans. Is when they don't work. Cause Justin was never supposed to be the piece of meat that brought home the bacon. Fuck the billboards, what I'd do is nail the picture to Lou's door, one last fuck you to the fat chickenhawk so it's clear he didn't get the better of that kid's ability to know a good touch when he feels one.
That part kind of obscures whatever shiny, sexy yarn me and my priceless fucking wit might spin. Not even in my fantasies do I see the Justin we've got left thinking it's fun to throw all that in someone's face. Not even Lou's. And none of that's really the kind of fantasy guy-on-guy action that keeps you hard. Doesn't keep me hard, for sure.
In my head, I'm always hard. Always. It's my fantasy, it shouldn't be a tough request. All the groupies have a sense of humor and can quote Bob Dylan and JC looks at me like I'm Lance. Like I'm a mystery, not scenery. I wouldn't talk about JC on national television, no way, no fucking how. If I got that, it'd be all for me. All mine, my mark on him like a dog collar and it's so juvenile, it's so damn needy but I don't think I could share a single piece of that. JC would be my take-home, the percentage that makes selling out worth it and then some.
Home and upstairs and quiet and no one can get to us there and I let him do what he wants, whatever kinky shit he's got up his sleeve that day is fine by me as long as I play a starring role. You name it and some lonely night JC's done it to me or I've done it to him, A to Z on the joy of gay sex and really I'd take a fraction of the goddamned Dewey decimal system if it meant I knew for sure what he tasted like the morning after.
It'd be easier, I guess, if I could quit thinking about things so fucking much. Just be another dumb blonde like the kind Joey's got in every corner, content to close my eyes and rub my hands up and down his arms and let him fuck me in some bathroom like it's gonna be the best night of my life, like when I'm fifty I'll still have a story to tell. Joey loses himself in moments like that, he always has, and I gotta think sex to death, always. He'd have me up against some stall door and I'd be cracking jokes, laying odds on the chances we get caught, taking it back cause if anyone's an expert in the art of the sly fuck it's a player like Joe. He could have my dick in his mouth and my ass in his hands and I'd be talking about how if I were paying for the pleasure I'd be docking a few bucks for the way he did that thing right there, that, with the finger, cause no one agreed to that up front.
Lance knows what kind of whores we are. Lance and me, we decided a while ago if you gotta sell yourself you might as well get a piece of the cut, get in on the supply-side of the economics equation that makes our life the freakshow it is. You gotta spend money to make money, he always says that and he's right, even if I think maybe it's a little easier for him to front the sweat. By the time I get to Lance I'm less pissed, less desperate to prove I'm no tool of the management. I'm less desperate. By the time I get to Lance I get hard watching him balance his checkbook and if he actually came anywhere near my accounts I'd probably sink to my knees and blow him right there, cameras or not, safe and sound at home or not.
When I'm not overthinking the sixty-four thousand dollar question, when I cop to actually liking the new car I bought with my own pound of Justin's flesh, I know the only thing he deserves from me is open arms, not some whacked revenge scenario. Yeah, when I get my head that far out of my ass for longer than about five minutes in a row, I'll let you know.
Meantime, there are reasons not to quit, reasons to punch in every day and admit that I make a hell of a lot more than some poor mom bumping and grinding to put food on the table. We make a fuckload of money, and we make it being together, and when we're not sure of the rest there's still that. Legally bound for a while longer, anyway, and maybe on the other side of that there's something worth waiting for.
[Justin]
I like to watch myself. Not like you think. Not like I think I'm so beautiful that I don't even need another person to fuck. This isn't an ego trip, yo. Quit nodding at me. I know what you say sometimes, just like all the rest of 'em. Fuckin' Timberlake and his motherfuckin' ego the size of Texas. You think that, I know.
We both do.
And, yeah, I'm gorgeous. I know it. You know it. We're a pretty boy, and some kind of multimillion dollar industry of lunch boxes and teen magazines and hair products probably depends on that.
But I think you know why I like it like this, just us, just me and my reflection and a bottle of hand lotion. It's our time alone. It's the only time alone.
If someone's breathing hard or screaming like they've seen the second coming, it's not a faceless voice in a crowd. It's just us. No one else gets to touch. No one else gets to smell or taste or say my name like it belongs to them. Like cause they got a piece of my ass they got a piece of me. Like I didn't learn a real long time ago to keep the two separate. Like I didn't get down on my knees more than once to make sure we didn't miss out on the chance of a lifetime, really, kid, this is make it or break it time, you and your pals wanna be famous, right?
Right. But I don't mind if you watch this. I don't mind if any of the guys does. Do. Whichever. Shut up.
I like to think about Lance sometimes, when I'm thinking like that. Maybe cause Lance was this weird sexy thing on the periphery before either of us were really sexy for real. He's sexy now, and I look at old pictures and he wasn't then, but he sounds the same.
And it's not like I really want to. I know whatever fixation I had on that quiet, too-pretty boy only exists in what Chris always calls my over-fucking-active imagination. I know he's not like that anymore, if he ever was. And anyway, of anyone, it wouldn't be Lance.
But Lance has actually seen me do it. Or, well, heard me. You don't put two teenage boys in a hotel room or three hundred for that long and not learn to close your ears after dark. I like to think maybe he came home a couple times and saw me when I wasn't trying to hide, when I wasn't trying to be quiet or keep from pressing my face into the pillow, kissing and moaning his name cause he was the only other one who seemed half as confused.
So maybe he's come back from extra rehearsal or dinner with his mom or whatever. And I'm there in that jacked-up sleazy ass hotel room, hand on my dick, sheets up to my neck cause it's nothing like Florida in the winter. Maybe my eyes are closed, and I'm all thrashing around like the hyper little kid I was. Am. Yeah. I've got a thumb and finger inside me and I'm arching off the bed, not even faking like there's anything in the world I'd rather be doing, because no one's there anyway.
Or maybe I know better. My eyes are open and the nightstand light is still on. I see Lance's mouth make a perfect O and curve my fingers around my dick to match. He makes this startled caught in the headlights sound and falls back against the door. It's fucking hot, and as soon as I'm sure he's not gonna bolt I throw back the covers so he can see for real.
His hand rests on the hip of his jeans and he's breathing fast. I take a coupla quick yanks and have to close my eyes cause it's all so much, but then without him there it's less hot so I look again. He's got one palm cupped over his crotch and he doesn't meet my eyes, so I grunt out his name and he flinches, actually fucking twitches, but glances up and pants heavily and undoes the top button. It's so fucking hot I jerk harder than I mean to and gasp again and he's not close enough, he won't be close enough until he's fucking on top of me, in me, fucking me. Fucking us. Fucking Timberlake.
But that's not, not anytime soon, he's not ready for that yet, so I say, "Do it," short and bratty like he already thinks I am, and he thumbs down the zipper and pulls himself out. And then it's like a race, it's a hundred-yard dash on track and field day in sixth grade, everybody trying to finish first.
I let him win, like it's all happening back when I still thought a good handjob was the coolest thing in the world. Before I knew what else was possible. Before the others started looking good, too.
With Joey it's like we're watching porn or strippers or some shit, except that never works cause it's not like Lance, it's not all misty-eyed fake flashback. With Joey I want to fuck him, want to see how far he can bend backwards at the hip. Flip top Joey. I'd sit through a month of his stupid-ass videos if I thought it would do the trick.
I'm not sure there are enough strippers in the world to make Joey get fucked. Willingly. Maybe if -- but it'd never be like that with Joey. He's too fucking nice. Like he'd decide to let me if it was that damn important, J, go ahead, and then it wouldn't be hot at all. It's not show friends, it's show business, and if I'm gonna finally wreak some havoc of my own I don't want anyone cutting me slack. I want to give as good as I've always gotten.
Chris maybe gets that. Chris might let me just reach over and grab him. Might try to plead out on account of age and knowing better. But maybe not. Maybe this time it's me walking in on him, and he holds up his hands like he got caught with a paw in the cookie jar. I don't move till he crawls over on his hands and knees -- but, the thing is, he doesn't beg. Chris has never begged for a damn thing in his life.
And that's where I forget that what I wanted was all that I could take, wanted to commandeer him like a Porsche for a car chase, wanted him to be someone to ride hard and put away wet. Somehow it becomes me on the tail end of the workout, and he kisses the back of my neck while he fucks me and -- and then I stop. I always stop there now, because the one time I didn't I came so hard I passed out and woke up with my hand stuck to the sheets and somehow he'd gotten in the room and there was peppermint tea being dripped down my bare chest. And he tickled me and read off the day's schedule in his Mighty Mouse voice, and it was all just fun and games. I think there are some things I wouldn't mind him taking seriously. Like me. Like this. I take this seriously. Me and my thing, doin' our thang.
JC would probably take it too seriously. All candles and flowing curtains and shit. I'd be like, honey, we got to get our groove on and he'd be all, pleasuring yourself is the safest, most divine kind of sex. I don't need to be thinking about that shit when I've got my hand on my dick. It doesn't keep me hard, and he might not need any help in that area but we can't all be Viagra queens.
So I come back to Lance. I come to Lance and ignore Chris' voice in my head, calling that the easy way out, just kids' play, grow the fuck up already, Timberlake. I come with Lance's groan burned under my eyelids, and he sounds the same as he did a billion records ago even if now it takes me weeks after a concert for my ears to stop ringing.
I don't even remember now how we got as sexy as we are, when we started wanting alone time instead of pretty kids with wet, eager mouths and ready hands. I come with Lance, but it's never his name on my lips. It's always ours. Yours. Mine. If it's good, I sag against the mirrored closet door and steam up the glass and splatter the surface and when I come it's with a whisper. And you open one eye into the foggy picture and whisper back.
[Joey]
I don't have to imagine fucking women. You name it, I've probably done it. The women I meet now would do anything I ask, any way I want it, and still thank me as I kick them out of the hotel room at two a.m. with a smile and no promises. You don't know what sex is till you've got a million bucks in the bank and girls lined up ten deep for just the chance at seven minutes in heaven with you, even when heaven means the VIP bathroom at some casino nightclub and you don't know her name cause you never asked. I've got enough real life experience like that to keep me warm till I'm ninety.
Except it doesn't so much, any more, is the thing. Keep me warm. Keep me hard.
Not that I have a problem getting it up. There are only two things I do really well, sweetheart, and being a trained monkey's the other one. And I guess, sure, yeah, maybe that's the problem. Maybe I've spent so long performing, so many hours with the same four guys, it's just gotten all squished, the performing and the fucking. And usually one follows the other, and certainly doing a lot of performing made it a helluva lot more likely I'd get to be fucking on a more-than-regular basis.
But then we're out there, mid-song, mid-thrust, and JC's got his eyes closed like he's coming, and Chris is screaming all growly to rev folks up, and Justin's licking his lips and smiling for the camera, and Lance is just gleaming the way he does when all the rest of us sweat like pigs. I look at them all like that and I see how it all goes together.
On the nights when we'd pile right on the buses and tumble on to the next city, it was just us, just the buildup of fifteen songs and an encore and then, boom, nothing, no girls anywhere. That's how it happened with Lance the first time, and then again, and now it's like back-to-back shows is a gold-plated invitation to let Lance do whatever he wants to me one more time. I mean, we have our own bus. What the hell'd you think was gonna happen?
If we all had just the one bus still, I can see how it might go down, whoever's ready, whoever's willing, one big game of musical bunks. Christ, it was almost like that before, all the pillow fights and movie marathons where we dozed off in a heap, except everything was still too new to boil over into actual sex. So, sure. I can imagine fucking them. I have imagined it, I admit it. I don't have a problem admitting that.
But that doesn't mean fucking like that's how I'd want it to be for real. Part of being able to have anything you want is trying everything once, so maybe it's some late-night wild orgy cause it feels good and we trust each other. It wouldn't be the end of the world for us to do that now, I don't think. It wouldn't ruin things, but it's not who I want to be for them, either. I can get that from anyone, you know. What I want from the guys, what I want to be for them -- those are the kind of fantasies I haven't had about a girl since all this started.
Like, I think maybe if there was good music in the air and we were someplace with a killer view I could get JC to eat three or four meals in a row. He orders pasta to make me happy and some Asian fusion thing that looks like something Johnny had the landscaper do, and a, like, a steak or something, something bloody like that even if it makes him wince.
And, hell, I feed it to him, maybe, arm on the back of his chair or one hand on his thigh, and I make goofy noises as I drive the fork to his mouth and he giggles. He giggles a lot, and makes a token protest or two, just, "Joey, man, but I'm full," and I kiss him and his lips are slick with butter. He tastes like a warm kitchen on a winter night and I spend more time licking his face than I do putting my hands in his pants. I hold the back of his neck with fingers tangled in his hair and blow kisses across his pretty eyelashes and he shivers and giggles some more. We go home and I fall asleep with my arms curved around his waist. I wake up and he's still there.
I think Chris could be a wild fucking lay, mean and rough and hard in all the right places. But I want him to be calm. I want him to stop worrying for ten seconds that it'll all get taken away. I take him shopping, maybe, me and him and a grocery cart with a broken wheel chasing each other down the aisles at Costco. Cause he's had his big house for how long now with all the cupboards half-full, like he's gotta clip coupons or something to make sure he can make rent and still get everybody fed.
I make him buy fresh orange juice and not the frozen cans of concentrate, cause we can afford that now, and there's a reason you got that deep-freeze in the basement, man, so we might as well get some decent fucking steaks this time so I don't gotta grill hot dogs the next time I come over to watch TV. He makes a big deal out of the register total, not all embarrassed like how Lance is, spending made money on something as trivial as food, more like he's spinning numbers in his head to calculate how many meals made of fake cheese and sugar water that money could feed little kids. Except it's Chris so it all comes out like a joke, like, "Good thing I got all those tight-ass Army recruits back at the house to feed cause that type turns on his owner if he's not kept satisfied."
When we've finally got the bags all over the floor and the dogs shut out in the yard so they don't make off with the meat, Chris actually smiles a little, standing in front of the overflowing fridge, riffing on how if we want now we could make leaning towers of Dagwood sandwiches with any of four different kinds of mustard.
I lean down and kiss his shoulder from behind, right where it peeks out of the Iverson jersey he's been wearing three days straight, and he smells like sweat and the freon chill of frozen peas. Down on the tile floor we fuck with stray plastic bags dancing around us like little ghosts, ice cream melting off the edge of the butcher block island in slow liquid drips and I paint endless grocery lists on his chest and lap them up like I'm making some kind of promise.
Maybe we all made some kind of promise to keep Justin safe and happy, but I never have to think about keeping him fed. He does plenty of eating on his own. Took us two weeks to realize that just cause he said he could eat didn't mean he needed to, and even then Chris and me wound up giving him half our daily allowances so he'd quit bitching about how his stomach was cramping from starvation, man, come on already.
A guy looks like Timberlake, you'd think he'd be better at the whole pick-up artist routine. And God knows he's pretty fucking sexy, and he knows it, and he works that as much as he needs to, which at this point isn't much. But as bored as I might be with all girls all the time, Justin's gone from sweetly attentive to scared shitless. One too many random gropes at meet and greets and he's stopped wanting to know their names or really even get too close.
I think I tell him boys are easier, then. Maybe we're watching some action movie, feet up on the coffee table, and he's whining that it's not the same and it's not like teen magazines have ten tips for how superstars are supposed to get cute boys to blow them and not talk.
I rub my hands together like a wicked cartoon character. "It's like this," I say, and he laughs but turns to face me, poised to take notes on an imaginary notepad. He wants this, wants to understand, wants to not be alone when the whole world loves him, and I want like hell to be the one who shows him. "It's all about eye contact," I say. "Great thing about fucking guys is there's a lot less fucking talking. Just don't look away."
Justin rolls his eyes and I grab his shoulder.
"Seriously," I say. "Top of the top ten ways to get a guy to kiss you, look at any one of those stupid-ass magazines. Just keep looking at him."
He stares at me then, eyes bobbing when he blinks, trying so hard to act like he knows what he's doing, cause he's still some kind of kid but he knows a set-up when he sees one. He finally flails out at my chest and sputters, "Then do it already, dammit!"
I laugh and rub a thumb across his cheek. "Nah, the thing is, that's if you're a girl and a guy. What you wanna do is wait for them to try to kiss you. Just try."
I look without flinching, without blinking, and after a long minute like he thinks that's the worst cock-tease I've ever had, he leans in like he's doing me a favor, liquid smooth, all grace even when he's been reeled in like a perfect catch. I dig my fingers into his shoulder and when he's close enough that I can smell the beer on his breath, I push down. Gently at first, and when he resists a little, trying to navigate what's going on, I push harder, and he goes. He gets it now, hands on my belt, on my zipper, on my dick, perfect wet little mouth swallowing me again and again and it's some kind of beginner's luck, it's some kind of fucking gift from Jesus himself that he gets things so right on the first try, that I'm undone and broken before I've ever even kissed him.
I kiss Lance, all the time. He makes it easy. It was easy to blame post-performance high the first few times and now we're kinda past needing excuses other than the right time and the right place, and sometimes not even that. I make it too easy for Lance, I think, given how he's all work-ethic guy, pull himself up by his bootstraps and shit. He generally thinks things aren't worth having if they weren't hard to get.
I wasn't hard to get at all. JC, I guess JC's damn near impossible, and so it's the easy thing for me and Lance to do, to fuck like it's all a convenience made even simpler by the fact that we actually fucking cared about each other to begin with. I fold like a cheap pair of jacks and he knows he'll never have to work for me, and it's probably too late to change all that.
But that's what I'd want, from Lance. Not to start over. But to just be done with all the fucking power plays, to spend a night together cause we want, not cause we need, certainly not cause we fucking have to cause where else are we gonna go out on some highway in the middle of nowhere.
Maybe we go to some Hollywood party, not one of his because he's too nervous playing host to really relax at those. Somebody else's, somebody fun, and we drink and I watch him across the room as he shakes hands and claps backs and says he'll call people cause he's a fucking genius when it comes to that kind of thing. He knows how to give just enough to make them want it, and he always leaves them ready to pay for more. And he looks over from the bar and I wave an empty glass and smile and he comes back with another round and whispers in my ear how he wishes we were alone. So we leave, cause why the fuck not, tomorrow's another party somewhere, and we're not a half mile down whatever curvy road goes back to the hotel before he wants me to pull over.
Out on some bluff, the Santa Anas blew through that day so the air is clear and the downtown lights shimmer like fireflies, he says, like when he was a kid at home. We make out in the front seat and I tell him I never had to fuck in a car in high school cause I was a latch-key kid like everybody else and just did it in my parents' bed before they got off work. He says if he'd known me in high school everything would've been different. And maybe I don't know what he means, maybe I'm not sure, but I hold his face in my hands and kiss him anyway, and when I lay him down in the back seat it's like he thinks I'm Marlon fucking Brando, the way he stares at me and shudders when I unbutton his shirt.
But even if it were like that. Even if he does look at me like that sometimes, never enough for me but more than I probably deserve, I know it's just part of the performance. It's like I'm another audience to win over, and I know it and he knows it and he knows I know it and he can never really love me because I'm still playing along.
I'll play along. These are my guys, day in and day out, wishing and wanting and having all of me even when I'm spent and sore with no defenses left. Because when the performances are done, when that's not enough to get women in bed, I'll still have these guys.
They'll still have me, that's for sure.
[JC]
I like to do it with the lights on. Better yet, lights off because the sun is shining through the open curtains, bright like we're just naked newborns with our eyes screwed up and deep little wails welling in our lungs. I like when the warmth runs from the inside to the outside and back again, and when everything's finally too warm, you fall asleep.
I don't have to fall asleep alone anymore, not if I don't want to. Sometimes I want to. Sometimes I like the pictures I paint in my head better than the all-access pass, boys and girls who do what you tell them. It's not the same when you don't know what they want other than a good story to tell their friends.
I like afternoon naps with the hotel drapes tied back, crisp cool sheets on my back. I like to think one day I'll blink and find Justin there beside me, naked and golden and not worried about photographers rappelling off the roof with telephoto lenses. He looks down through his lashes like he's not sure how he got there either, and then he just smiles and says hi, and I say hi back and kiss him.
He kisses me like wind and I stroke the ridges of his backbone and tell him how when you close your eyes and sing you can't tell how many people are in the crowd. There's something soft stuffed under the pillow, loose and bright and blue and when the scarf is knotted around his head he wants me to whisper in his ear so he doesn't get lost. We do it there, spread for all the world to see, and when he comes he screams like nobody's listening. He sleeps deep and still and sated and when he wakes up he remembers what it feels like to use our bodies without fear of what gets caught on film.
There's a look Chris gets after a long photo shoot that I've always wished someone could capture, the way he comes back into himself after hours of a dead frown, his face posed just so because they never let him smile. He's always angry, after, but he's present, he's reachable, and I think that he's maybe just conserving all that energy for something else. For someone else.
I want a stylist to paint him dark and fierce and pose him half under a car, grease smeared across his stomach where the shirt's ridden up. I come back from washing off makeup and he rolls out on his back and it's just us in the big empty warehouse, high windows set in the concrete walls, late-afternoon sun in long streaks through dusty air. He's got a wrench in one hand and a stained handkerchief in the other. I'm quiet because there's no talking to Chris when he's in a mood like this, we all know it, we've all tried before.
I step over him and lean against the corner of the hood, letting the white dress shirt I'd been buttoning fall from my shoulders instead, catching on my wrists and pooling across the base of my back. Behind me, I can hear the squeak of the dolly and feel the car sag as he pulls himself up by the bumper. Long long eternity of being quiet and watching tiny specks sparkle in suspended sunbeams and then his mouth is on the back of my neck, white hot, and I swallow a moan.
His hand slips around my waist and he pushes the dirty rag into my jeans pocket, paints my pale chest with oil, bites my shoulder. The wrench is cold steel against the tender pocket of my kidneys and he can snap me in half if he wants to. I know he knows I maybe want him to want to. In an instant, fast, because it's always going to be fast and hard with Chris, he spins me and I can taste just how recently the car's been waxed. He yanks the bandanna from my pocket and ties my wrists together so they're stretched out in front of us, bright shocking blood red against my white forearms.
He pushes my jeans down and the vast quiet is punctuated only by the sound of him fingering his zipper and me whimpering. I hope the noises I make sound louder in my head than they are because I think Chris likes it fast and hard and silent and you never, ever talk about it after. He slaps my ass once and, while it's still hot and stinging, trails the wrench up my thigh, tracing the curves like a motorcycle on an ocean road. He lets the cool metal linger between my legs like maybe he'll fuck me like that and then I do moan aloud and he slaps me again, pulls the cloth from my wrists and stuffs it down my throat. It tastes like gasoline, like how Chris smells, flammable and sweet-sour rank, and I breathe through my nose but that just makes the taste ten times stronger.
Chris puts a callused, rough-heeled palm on the small of my back and holds me down till I quiet, till I still and go slack, and then he drizzles motor oil across my ass and pushes in, slow only till he fits and then fast, deep thrusts again and again. Where my shirt still crosses my back, the scratch of his body is muffled, but where my skin peeks out it screams from heat and friction and I want to push back but he won't let me, he never even lets me come when it's like this but I'm not sure I can't, not when I remember how an hour ago the warehouse was filled with photographers and hairdressers and Chris grunts once and I come, shooting all over the chrome rims and he doubles over me, pulling my arms up so we're both bent-elbowed, pushing against the car like pistons and he digs greasy fingernails into my skin. It's hours before we can catch our breath.
I'm only ever that tired after a show, tired and wired, and post-coital cuddling never compares to the post-performance high. Or even the pre-show hype, all these years and it still starts early in the day, soundcheck through the opening act it just builds like a runaway truck down a steep grade. It's always me and Joey already hyper by four o'clock, we love the fans, love the people but man if sometimes you don't just want to get right to the real deal. The soundcheck is work but for a while Joey takes even the show too seriously, takes all of it too seriously cause there's an adjustment to be made for carrying the weight of a daughter on his shoulders all the time.
It heavies his dancing, slows his footwork and some days I just want to snag him by the sleeve before we go to test our mics. This is supposed to be fun, I remind him, and he nods but doesn't grin, and I say it again. Fun, Joe, remember what that feels like? It's all playful and teasing and when my hand's down the front of his pants, wrapped around him, tugging, I make little choo-choo train noises in his ear because if being silly is what it takes I'll do it, sure I will.
Being silly is what it takes and I tickle his ribs with the other hand till he can't help but laugh and he's lifting me at the waist, holding me up against one of the speakers and Justin's cracking jokes out there and the small crowd is screaming and it's all just on the other side of a half-million dollars worth of equipment. Don't complain if the word Bose is branded to your ass, he says, and I tell him I already checked and worker's comp covers that and he throws back his head and laughs, laughs and pushes and laughs and it's music. We make music.
That's what I tell Lance when he's nervous. We make music, honey, and the rest of it is just static on the edges. Anything they say, anything they ask, we know we get up there to sing our hearts out. He always nods, says, sure, I know, and I put a hand on the back of his neck and feel him nod a second time. One green room after another and even when he's not nervous I do that now, just so he knows. I'm always listening. I'm always there, and he knows that much.
I want it to be that simple, that I could reach out and touch him under the desk when the cameras are in our faces, touch him how I want, my hand in his lap, not on his knee. This question's for Chris and I cup Lance's crotch in my hands, hot like the soundstage lights shining down on us. He's too edgy right now to be mad, maybe too distracted to even really realize what's happening. We're always all up on each other during interviews but this isn't MTV, this is CNN, and if I close my eyes and let the VCR run and just listen to Larry's voice I can pretend that the reason Lance is calm and joking by the end is cause I jerked him off right there.
He's already hard, fifteen minutes with my hand drawing patterns on the top of his thigh, so by the time I touch him for real it's fast. Unzip during a commercial break and I've barely got a few fingers inside his fly before he comes, white knuckles clenching his coffee mug, his answer swallowed until Joey jumps in and finishes the story.
But Lance isn't, he'd never let me. Not like that. Even just my hand on his back is enough that later he won't say goodnight, just walks down the hall to his room with his shoulders hunched. I can't think of a way to touch him that will fix that. I can't imagine he'd let me try.
Of all the things I'd bend over and beg and borrow to fix, none of it really matters next to that, next to him. I just want him to let me try.
[Lance]
I gave up on fantasies a long time ago. A fantasy is like a plan you don't put enough hard work into, and if it's worth having it's not gonna be easy. There are different kinds of sweat, different kinds of back-breaking effort and maybe only some of them leave you bruised in all the right places but those are the kind worth waiting for. Worth planning for.
Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference, sure. Sometimes JC seems worth waiting for. JC's the kind of guy who can have a plan staring him right in the eye, and a hand clenching his shoulder, and, yeah, maybe I'm a little drunk and sick of planning so much, and he'll still never even notice what's come and gone when he says goodnight and goes upstairs cause it's late and he's tired.
I had, at one point, a million plans about how to deal with Justin. The Justin Problem. The Justin Situation, if I was feeling kind to myself. Which, I mean, being easy on yourself never got anyone very far, so I don't waste much time on that. Being around Justin is like being slowly eaten alive by fire ants, and by the time you notice you're covered it's too late. All you can do is lie still.
I don't think Justin includes me in his plans, and that's all right by me. He's not my enemy, he's always at least my friend and I'm happy to keep him close anyway. Used to that by now, for sure. Which doesn't mean that all those years after I got over Justin and my Problem it wasn't nice, it wasn't some kind of coup to stand on the edge of a video set and have him whisper in my ear. "Damn, Bass, you got, like, hot," he said, and for Justin that's all compliment so I let it be. Let him be, though, cause Justin's a hurricane and I got all my houses in a row, finally. No need to blow things down just so what stung at sixteen is anything other than an old scar.
Scars are like a roadmap so next time you know to plan a more direct route from what you want to what you get.
Chris makes his own plans, I can tell. Maybe they include Justin, though it's hard to make any kind of sense out of those two most days. Sometimes I think Chris is kind of like a savings bond, in it for the long haul for real, never gonna give up on the guys he loves no matter what that looks like. He's a punked out squealing little fuck of a savings bond and on anyone else that'd look ridiculous but Chris pulls it off. I can see how of any of us, Justin might need a back-up plan like that most. Chris and his self-sufficient, pain in the ass, watch me look like I'm bitter act, and as back-up plans go, Chris might be the best damn rainy day in the world. I don't think he'll be mine, though. I don't think I want him to be.
When things happen like I might have wanted, if I had spent the time plotting things out, it's almost always by accident. Like Joey. Joey is an accident that just keeps happening and if I'd thought twice before believing him when he said it could just be that one time, it was just for fun, it's just cause what else are gonna do out here with all this energy and no one to spend it on -- if I'd thought twice I probably would've jerked myself off and gone to sleep alone.
Cause now there's a thing, an expectation, and, you know, it's not all one-sided. It's not, even if sometimes I think he thinks that, he thinks I don't really love him, that I'm just killing time. Joey with his arms spread open and stage-lights still refracted in his eyes isn't something you don't enjoy, however you got there. Joey with his mouth on the base of your back, fingers twisting inside of you, Joey humming one-hit wonders from 1957 while you ease his legs up and over your shoulders. Joey. No way not to enjoy Joey when he's like that, and that's the easy part.
It's after, bus growling in the dark and his breath too hot on the back of my neck. It's then that things get hard and not in the way I know how to plan for. Not in the way that makes me want to work more. In the way that makes me run, and if he'd stop saying he understands maybe I'd... I don't know. Maybe I wouldn't even then. Maybe he means it and if my other plans don't work, if there's been miscalculation along the way, maybe Joey'll still be around, maybe be more than the warm body in the back of the bus.
If the other plans don't work. I say that like the other plans are real, like I even admit them to myself except on the worst of the worst days. There are times when it seems like nothing I've lined up is gonna come through, like all of this has been for shit and when it's said and done I'm just a two-bit fag from Mississippi gonna have to crawl home to momma and beg forgiveness for my sins of pride and envy and greed. And lust, yeah. And lust.
It's one of those times now. I can taste morning in the air rushing through a window I cracked open in the lounge. Joey's still asleep and if I close my eyes and just let wind play across my face I can almost breathe normally. It's gonna be a sunny day, which is probably worse, cause on the dark, dank afternoons we spend on flat plains highways I don't expect anything good to come of my plans, and it's not even a disappointment. It's not a surprise to take stock and come up short.
On days like this I think about JC. Out of all of them I think JC's the only one who really looks at me without wanting me to be something different. Something more. But then again, I'm never really sure what JC wants, not at all. JC kind of operates without a rudder. Not without focus, cause whatever's new is gonna catch his eye, it always has. But there's no light on the horizon he's headed towards. Certainly not me.
I more than think about JC, sometimes. Today I hold the back of my own neck with one hand and let myself hear his soft, reassuring whisper sharpen into needy gasps. On days like this fantasies are a comfort, not a disappointment. Not a failure. I close my eyes and JC's hands are on my chest, tugging at my collar, slipping under the buttons and stroking my heart. I skip beats and JC's mouth tastes like a sure thing. Tastes like a missing piece of the plan and everything falls into place, just like that.
Just like that. But it's just a fantasy. It's a mirage, and when I open my eyes Joey's standing in the tiny kitchen with one knee braced against the cabinets for balance and all my fantasies blow away in the breeze.
"What's the plan for today?" Joey says, making coffee, and I blink and run a hand through my hair. I close the window.
All I really have to rely on is a good plan and a hard day's work. That's gotta be enough. It's enough. It's enough.
[END.]
Credits: Inspired by Hth's Lover series.
as i seem to have over-aggressively blocked web archiving, my (lazy) offer stands - leave a comment or drop me a note if there's any old fic of mine you'd like sent by email or reposted.
The Royal We
*nsync GSF squared
What's your fantasy?
[Chris]
New album, new tour, new round of endless fucking interviews and the same goddamned questions like anyone really gives a shit what my favorite color is this week or they'd notice if I changed my answer so late in the game. Hot sun through the window and a thousand girls screaming when Justin twitches an eyebrow and it's some kid in the back, a guy I can barely see until he steps out from behind all the teased bangs, who asks the sixty-four thousand-dollar question.
"What's your fantasy?" he asks, no shame about it and you gotta respect him for that even if he is wearing this necklace with Lance's face on it. Okay, maybe you gotta respect him a little more for that.
"Oooh," Carson says, mocking but I'm never sure who his target is. That kid's life has gotta be hard enough without Carson giving him shit to boot.
So I say, "You are, Carson, you're our deepest darkest fantasy dreamboat," and he says something like, "You bet your sweet ass," and goes to the next video. And that's it, it's over, another life saved, another PR crisis thwarted by the deft moves of Chris Kirkpatrick.
We come back after they clear out the kids, tape some footage for a couple different specials, and it's dark outside the corner studio so all you can see is your reflection and beyond it neon and billboard spotlights. Shoes, clothes, soda, sex.
Everybody's selling something. Everybody's selling us, some piece of us, some idea of who we are and what we like, and I think we all realize that if they really knew, we might not sell quite as well.
I get now that it's not as easy as saying you could always go back to doing something else. Maybe it's like how you could always stop being a hooker, sure, you could work graveyard at an all-night diner making two bucks an hour plus tips and get your ass slapped by truckers and, sure, sure, it would be an honest living or whatever. But you'd be pulling down twelve grand a year and never see the kids, and if you just fuck that guy you met last week again it's a hundred bucks a pop and you're there when the youngest boy gets off school.
We all said we'd be willing to walk away before it came down to that, got plenty in the bank and no obligations, nobody holding us down. We'd each need a special soundproof shack in the middle of fucking nowhere so we didn't hear all the where are they now bullshit, but, sure, we could always stop. I could always stop, I could take my bitter old man act one step further and self-destruct or just tell MTV to kiss my shiny white ass. I could.
But I know what my time is worth now, or at least what little girls are willing to pay for it. Even split five ways and ten percent here and recoupables there and top bracket taxes, even so. And I still don't take it for granted. Not the big things we all know are special, but things like knowing if one of the girls wants to go to Harvard and not Penn State we can make sure she gets to. So I swallow and smile for the camera when they let me and it's another day, another fuckload of dollars. Sometimes I'm so full of pop saccharine I could just fucking choke on it.
If I'm gonna choke, I'd rather have it taste good. I think, sometimes, that Justin might be enough, might make it all easier to swallow. It's maybe not out of the realm of possibility. We've all kissed, drunk and partied out, sober and bored to death. It's never a big deal even when sometimes it's more serious than we'd ever cop to under the most extreme water torture. Keeping it real means keeping it low-fi, no-pressure, all fun and games or we never would've made it this far. And we all know that. I know that. Justin knows that, and last time he put his hand on my chin and kissed back like there were rules he wanted to break. I've never been a big fan of the rules and god knows he's known me long enough to know that I've never needed much excuse to say fuck 'em all.
If I'm gonna break the rules I want to do it right. I'd fuck Justin bent over the edge of a pool table and, like, photograph it. I'd buy billboard space in Times Square so that every time anyone flips by MTV they can look out and see it hanging over Carson's shoulder. And you'd be on Broadway with Aunt Judith on your way to see The Music Man and that look Justin was making the time I caught him whacking off would be ten stories tall in your face. Call Herb Ritts back, tell him we got a real exclusive for him and all his "just a little more lip gloss, honey" makeup assistants.
I'd like to do a PrimeTime special about the sound Justin probably makes when he's close, when he's holding back so I can catch up cause he might be Justin fuckin' Timberlake but that doesn't mean he's a total asshole. I'd like to have PR flaks giving me talking points and synonyms for orgasm. There should be DVD extras where you can choose your own Chris and Justin adventure, all 360 degrees of it. I'd look Diane fucking Sawyer in the eye and say, "You think he was the first fourteen-year-old in the history of the world to want it up the ass?"
Yeah, like that. Like that, in my fantasy, Justin always wanted me like that and I said no, no, of course I'm not interested in him, they're all like my brothers. I know the difference between fantasy and real life, you ass. If I was actually gonna do it, I'd call it a plan.
The thing, the fucked-up thing about plans. Is when they don't work. Cause Justin was never supposed to be the piece of meat that brought home the bacon. Fuck the billboards, what I'd do is nail the picture to Lou's door, one last fuck you to the fat chickenhawk so it's clear he didn't get the better of that kid's ability to know a good touch when he feels one.
That part kind of obscures whatever shiny, sexy yarn me and my priceless fucking wit might spin. Not even in my fantasies do I see the Justin we've got left thinking it's fun to throw all that in someone's face. Not even Lou's. And none of that's really the kind of fantasy guy-on-guy action that keeps you hard. Doesn't keep me hard, for sure.
In my head, I'm always hard. Always. It's my fantasy, it shouldn't be a tough request. All the groupies have a sense of humor and can quote Bob Dylan and JC looks at me like I'm Lance. Like I'm a mystery, not scenery. I wouldn't talk about JC on national television, no way, no fucking how. If I got that, it'd be all for me. All mine, my mark on him like a dog collar and it's so juvenile, it's so damn needy but I don't think I could share a single piece of that. JC would be my take-home, the percentage that makes selling out worth it and then some.
Home and upstairs and quiet and no one can get to us there and I let him do what he wants, whatever kinky shit he's got up his sleeve that day is fine by me as long as I play a starring role. You name it and some lonely night JC's done it to me or I've done it to him, A to Z on the joy of gay sex and really I'd take a fraction of the goddamned Dewey decimal system if it meant I knew for sure what he tasted like the morning after.
It'd be easier, I guess, if I could quit thinking about things so fucking much. Just be another dumb blonde like the kind Joey's got in every corner, content to close my eyes and rub my hands up and down his arms and let him fuck me in some bathroom like it's gonna be the best night of my life, like when I'm fifty I'll still have a story to tell. Joey loses himself in moments like that, he always has, and I gotta think sex to death, always. He'd have me up against some stall door and I'd be cracking jokes, laying odds on the chances we get caught, taking it back cause if anyone's an expert in the art of the sly fuck it's a player like Joe. He could have my dick in his mouth and my ass in his hands and I'd be talking about how if I were paying for the pleasure I'd be docking a few bucks for the way he did that thing right there, that, with the finger, cause no one agreed to that up front.
Lance knows what kind of whores we are. Lance and me, we decided a while ago if you gotta sell yourself you might as well get a piece of the cut, get in on the supply-side of the economics equation that makes our life the freakshow it is. You gotta spend money to make money, he always says that and he's right, even if I think maybe it's a little easier for him to front the sweat. By the time I get to Lance I'm less pissed, less desperate to prove I'm no tool of the management. I'm less desperate. By the time I get to Lance I get hard watching him balance his checkbook and if he actually came anywhere near my accounts I'd probably sink to my knees and blow him right there, cameras or not, safe and sound at home or not.
When I'm not overthinking the sixty-four thousand dollar question, when I cop to actually liking the new car I bought with my own pound of Justin's flesh, I know the only thing he deserves from me is open arms, not some whacked revenge scenario. Yeah, when I get my head that far out of my ass for longer than about five minutes in a row, I'll let you know.
Meantime, there are reasons not to quit, reasons to punch in every day and admit that I make a hell of a lot more than some poor mom bumping and grinding to put food on the table. We make a fuckload of money, and we make it being together, and when we're not sure of the rest there's still that. Legally bound for a while longer, anyway, and maybe on the other side of that there's something worth waiting for.
[Justin]
I like to watch myself. Not like you think. Not like I think I'm so beautiful that I don't even need another person to fuck. This isn't an ego trip, yo. Quit nodding at me. I know what you say sometimes, just like all the rest of 'em. Fuckin' Timberlake and his motherfuckin' ego the size of Texas. You think that, I know.
We both do.
And, yeah, I'm gorgeous. I know it. You know it. We're a pretty boy, and some kind of multimillion dollar industry of lunch boxes and teen magazines and hair products probably depends on that.
But I think you know why I like it like this, just us, just me and my reflection and a bottle of hand lotion. It's our time alone. It's the only time alone.
If someone's breathing hard or screaming like they've seen the second coming, it's not a faceless voice in a crowd. It's just us. No one else gets to touch. No one else gets to smell or taste or say my name like it belongs to them. Like cause they got a piece of my ass they got a piece of me. Like I didn't learn a real long time ago to keep the two separate. Like I didn't get down on my knees more than once to make sure we didn't miss out on the chance of a lifetime, really, kid, this is make it or break it time, you and your pals wanna be famous, right?
Right. But I don't mind if you watch this. I don't mind if any of the guys does. Do. Whichever. Shut up.
I like to think about Lance sometimes, when I'm thinking like that. Maybe cause Lance was this weird sexy thing on the periphery before either of us were really sexy for real. He's sexy now, and I look at old pictures and he wasn't then, but he sounds the same.
And it's not like I really want to. I know whatever fixation I had on that quiet, too-pretty boy only exists in what Chris always calls my over-fucking-active imagination. I know he's not like that anymore, if he ever was. And anyway, of anyone, it wouldn't be Lance.
But Lance has actually seen me do it. Or, well, heard me. You don't put two teenage boys in a hotel room or three hundred for that long and not learn to close your ears after dark. I like to think maybe he came home a couple times and saw me when I wasn't trying to hide, when I wasn't trying to be quiet or keep from pressing my face into the pillow, kissing and moaning his name cause he was the only other one who seemed half as confused.
So maybe he's come back from extra rehearsal or dinner with his mom or whatever. And I'm there in that jacked-up sleazy ass hotel room, hand on my dick, sheets up to my neck cause it's nothing like Florida in the winter. Maybe my eyes are closed, and I'm all thrashing around like the hyper little kid I was. Am. Yeah. I've got a thumb and finger inside me and I'm arching off the bed, not even faking like there's anything in the world I'd rather be doing, because no one's there anyway.
Or maybe I know better. My eyes are open and the nightstand light is still on. I see Lance's mouth make a perfect O and curve my fingers around my dick to match. He makes this startled caught in the headlights sound and falls back against the door. It's fucking hot, and as soon as I'm sure he's not gonna bolt I throw back the covers so he can see for real.
His hand rests on the hip of his jeans and he's breathing fast. I take a coupla quick yanks and have to close my eyes cause it's all so much, but then without him there it's less hot so I look again. He's got one palm cupped over his crotch and he doesn't meet my eyes, so I grunt out his name and he flinches, actually fucking twitches, but glances up and pants heavily and undoes the top button. It's so fucking hot I jerk harder than I mean to and gasp again and he's not close enough, he won't be close enough until he's fucking on top of me, in me, fucking me. Fucking us. Fucking Timberlake.
But that's not, not anytime soon, he's not ready for that yet, so I say, "Do it," short and bratty like he already thinks I am, and he thumbs down the zipper and pulls himself out. And then it's like a race, it's a hundred-yard dash on track and field day in sixth grade, everybody trying to finish first.
I let him win, like it's all happening back when I still thought a good handjob was the coolest thing in the world. Before I knew what else was possible. Before the others started looking good, too.
With Joey it's like we're watching porn or strippers or some shit, except that never works cause it's not like Lance, it's not all misty-eyed fake flashback. With Joey I want to fuck him, want to see how far he can bend backwards at the hip. Flip top Joey. I'd sit through a month of his stupid-ass videos if I thought it would do the trick.
I'm not sure there are enough strippers in the world to make Joey get fucked. Willingly. Maybe if -- but it'd never be like that with Joey. He's too fucking nice. Like he'd decide to let me if it was that damn important, J, go ahead, and then it wouldn't be hot at all. It's not show friends, it's show business, and if I'm gonna finally wreak some havoc of my own I don't want anyone cutting me slack. I want to give as good as I've always gotten.
Chris maybe gets that. Chris might let me just reach over and grab him. Might try to plead out on account of age and knowing better. But maybe not. Maybe this time it's me walking in on him, and he holds up his hands like he got caught with a paw in the cookie jar. I don't move till he crawls over on his hands and knees -- but, the thing is, he doesn't beg. Chris has never begged for a damn thing in his life.
And that's where I forget that what I wanted was all that I could take, wanted to commandeer him like a Porsche for a car chase, wanted him to be someone to ride hard and put away wet. Somehow it becomes me on the tail end of the workout, and he kisses the back of my neck while he fucks me and -- and then I stop. I always stop there now, because the one time I didn't I came so hard I passed out and woke up with my hand stuck to the sheets and somehow he'd gotten in the room and there was peppermint tea being dripped down my bare chest. And he tickled me and read off the day's schedule in his Mighty Mouse voice, and it was all just fun and games. I think there are some things I wouldn't mind him taking seriously. Like me. Like this. I take this seriously. Me and my thing, doin' our thang.
JC would probably take it too seriously. All candles and flowing curtains and shit. I'd be like, honey, we got to get our groove on and he'd be all, pleasuring yourself is the safest, most divine kind of sex. I don't need to be thinking about that shit when I've got my hand on my dick. It doesn't keep me hard, and he might not need any help in that area but we can't all be Viagra queens.
So I come back to Lance. I come to Lance and ignore Chris' voice in my head, calling that the easy way out, just kids' play, grow the fuck up already, Timberlake. I come with Lance's groan burned under my eyelids, and he sounds the same as he did a billion records ago even if now it takes me weeks after a concert for my ears to stop ringing.
I don't even remember now how we got as sexy as we are, when we started wanting alone time instead of pretty kids with wet, eager mouths and ready hands. I come with Lance, but it's never his name on my lips. It's always ours. Yours. Mine. If it's good, I sag against the mirrored closet door and steam up the glass and splatter the surface and when I come it's with a whisper. And you open one eye into the foggy picture and whisper back.
[Joey]
I don't have to imagine fucking women. You name it, I've probably done it. The women I meet now would do anything I ask, any way I want it, and still thank me as I kick them out of the hotel room at two a.m. with a smile and no promises. You don't know what sex is till you've got a million bucks in the bank and girls lined up ten deep for just the chance at seven minutes in heaven with you, even when heaven means the VIP bathroom at some casino nightclub and you don't know her name cause you never asked. I've got enough real life experience like that to keep me warm till I'm ninety.
Except it doesn't so much, any more, is the thing. Keep me warm. Keep me hard.
Not that I have a problem getting it up. There are only two things I do really well, sweetheart, and being a trained monkey's the other one. And I guess, sure, yeah, maybe that's the problem. Maybe I've spent so long performing, so many hours with the same four guys, it's just gotten all squished, the performing and the fucking. And usually one follows the other, and certainly doing a lot of performing made it a helluva lot more likely I'd get to be fucking on a more-than-regular basis.
But then we're out there, mid-song, mid-thrust, and JC's got his eyes closed like he's coming, and Chris is screaming all growly to rev folks up, and Justin's licking his lips and smiling for the camera, and Lance is just gleaming the way he does when all the rest of us sweat like pigs. I look at them all like that and I see how it all goes together.
On the nights when we'd pile right on the buses and tumble on to the next city, it was just us, just the buildup of fifteen songs and an encore and then, boom, nothing, no girls anywhere. That's how it happened with Lance the first time, and then again, and now it's like back-to-back shows is a gold-plated invitation to let Lance do whatever he wants to me one more time. I mean, we have our own bus. What the hell'd you think was gonna happen?
If we all had just the one bus still, I can see how it might go down, whoever's ready, whoever's willing, one big game of musical bunks. Christ, it was almost like that before, all the pillow fights and movie marathons where we dozed off in a heap, except everything was still too new to boil over into actual sex. So, sure. I can imagine fucking them. I have imagined it, I admit it. I don't have a problem admitting that.
But that doesn't mean fucking like that's how I'd want it to be for real. Part of being able to have anything you want is trying everything once, so maybe it's some late-night wild orgy cause it feels good and we trust each other. It wouldn't be the end of the world for us to do that now, I don't think. It wouldn't ruin things, but it's not who I want to be for them, either. I can get that from anyone, you know. What I want from the guys, what I want to be for them -- those are the kind of fantasies I haven't had about a girl since all this started.
Like, I think maybe if there was good music in the air and we were someplace with a killer view I could get JC to eat three or four meals in a row. He orders pasta to make me happy and some Asian fusion thing that looks like something Johnny had the landscaper do, and a, like, a steak or something, something bloody like that even if it makes him wince.
And, hell, I feed it to him, maybe, arm on the back of his chair or one hand on his thigh, and I make goofy noises as I drive the fork to his mouth and he giggles. He giggles a lot, and makes a token protest or two, just, "Joey, man, but I'm full," and I kiss him and his lips are slick with butter. He tastes like a warm kitchen on a winter night and I spend more time licking his face than I do putting my hands in his pants. I hold the back of his neck with fingers tangled in his hair and blow kisses across his pretty eyelashes and he shivers and giggles some more. We go home and I fall asleep with my arms curved around his waist. I wake up and he's still there.
I think Chris could be a wild fucking lay, mean and rough and hard in all the right places. But I want him to be calm. I want him to stop worrying for ten seconds that it'll all get taken away. I take him shopping, maybe, me and him and a grocery cart with a broken wheel chasing each other down the aisles at Costco. Cause he's had his big house for how long now with all the cupboards half-full, like he's gotta clip coupons or something to make sure he can make rent and still get everybody fed.
I make him buy fresh orange juice and not the frozen cans of concentrate, cause we can afford that now, and there's a reason you got that deep-freeze in the basement, man, so we might as well get some decent fucking steaks this time so I don't gotta grill hot dogs the next time I come over to watch TV. He makes a big deal out of the register total, not all embarrassed like how Lance is, spending made money on something as trivial as food, more like he's spinning numbers in his head to calculate how many meals made of fake cheese and sugar water that money could feed little kids. Except it's Chris so it all comes out like a joke, like, "Good thing I got all those tight-ass Army recruits back at the house to feed cause that type turns on his owner if he's not kept satisfied."
When we've finally got the bags all over the floor and the dogs shut out in the yard so they don't make off with the meat, Chris actually smiles a little, standing in front of the overflowing fridge, riffing on how if we want now we could make leaning towers of Dagwood sandwiches with any of four different kinds of mustard.
I lean down and kiss his shoulder from behind, right where it peeks out of the Iverson jersey he's been wearing three days straight, and he smells like sweat and the freon chill of frozen peas. Down on the tile floor we fuck with stray plastic bags dancing around us like little ghosts, ice cream melting off the edge of the butcher block island in slow liquid drips and I paint endless grocery lists on his chest and lap them up like I'm making some kind of promise.
Maybe we all made some kind of promise to keep Justin safe and happy, but I never have to think about keeping him fed. He does plenty of eating on his own. Took us two weeks to realize that just cause he said he could eat didn't mean he needed to, and even then Chris and me wound up giving him half our daily allowances so he'd quit bitching about how his stomach was cramping from starvation, man, come on already.
A guy looks like Timberlake, you'd think he'd be better at the whole pick-up artist routine. And God knows he's pretty fucking sexy, and he knows it, and he works that as much as he needs to, which at this point isn't much. But as bored as I might be with all girls all the time, Justin's gone from sweetly attentive to scared shitless. One too many random gropes at meet and greets and he's stopped wanting to know their names or really even get too close.
I think I tell him boys are easier, then. Maybe we're watching some action movie, feet up on the coffee table, and he's whining that it's not the same and it's not like teen magazines have ten tips for how superstars are supposed to get cute boys to blow them and not talk.
I rub my hands together like a wicked cartoon character. "It's like this," I say, and he laughs but turns to face me, poised to take notes on an imaginary notepad. He wants this, wants to understand, wants to not be alone when the whole world loves him, and I want like hell to be the one who shows him. "It's all about eye contact," I say. "Great thing about fucking guys is there's a lot less fucking talking. Just don't look away."
Justin rolls his eyes and I grab his shoulder.
"Seriously," I say. "Top of the top ten ways to get a guy to kiss you, look at any one of those stupid-ass magazines. Just keep looking at him."
He stares at me then, eyes bobbing when he blinks, trying so hard to act like he knows what he's doing, cause he's still some kind of kid but he knows a set-up when he sees one. He finally flails out at my chest and sputters, "Then do it already, dammit!"
I laugh and rub a thumb across his cheek. "Nah, the thing is, that's if you're a girl and a guy. What you wanna do is wait for them to try to kiss you. Just try."
I look without flinching, without blinking, and after a long minute like he thinks that's the worst cock-tease I've ever had, he leans in like he's doing me a favor, liquid smooth, all grace even when he's been reeled in like a perfect catch. I dig my fingers into his shoulder and when he's close enough that I can smell the beer on his breath, I push down. Gently at first, and when he resists a little, trying to navigate what's going on, I push harder, and he goes. He gets it now, hands on my belt, on my zipper, on my dick, perfect wet little mouth swallowing me again and again and it's some kind of beginner's luck, it's some kind of fucking gift from Jesus himself that he gets things so right on the first try, that I'm undone and broken before I've ever even kissed him.
I kiss Lance, all the time. He makes it easy. It was easy to blame post-performance high the first few times and now we're kinda past needing excuses other than the right time and the right place, and sometimes not even that. I make it too easy for Lance, I think, given how he's all work-ethic guy, pull himself up by his bootstraps and shit. He generally thinks things aren't worth having if they weren't hard to get.
I wasn't hard to get at all. JC, I guess JC's damn near impossible, and so it's the easy thing for me and Lance to do, to fuck like it's all a convenience made even simpler by the fact that we actually fucking cared about each other to begin with. I fold like a cheap pair of jacks and he knows he'll never have to work for me, and it's probably too late to change all that.
But that's what I'd want, from Lance. Not to start over. But to just be done with all the fucking power plays, to spend a night together cause we want, not cause we need, certainly not cause we fucking have to cause where else are we gonna go out on some highway in the middle of nowhere.
Maybe we go to some Hollywood party, not one of his because he's too nervous playing host to really relax at those. Somebody else's, somebody fun, and we drink and I watch him across the room as he shakes hands and claps backs and says he'll call people cause he's a fucking genius when it comes to that kind of thing. He knows how to give just enough to make them want it, and he always leaves them ready to pay for more. And he looks over from the bar and I wave an empty glass and smile and he comes back with another round and whispers in my ear how he wishes we were alone. So we leave, cause why the fuck not, tomorrow's another party somewhere, and we're not a half mile down whatever curvy road goes back to the hotel before he wants me to pull over.
Out on some bluff, the Santa Anas blew through that day so the air is clear and the downtown lights shimmer like fireflies, he says, like when he was a kid at home. We make out in the front seat and I tell him I never had to fuck in a car in high school cause I was a latch-key kid like everybody else and just did it in my parents' bed before they got off work. He says if he'd known me in high school everything would've been different. And maybe I don't know what he means, maybe I'm not sure, but I hold his face in my hands and kiss him anyway, and when I lay him down in the back seat it's like he thinks I'm Marlon fucking Brando, the way he stares at me and shudders when I unbutton his shirt.
But even if it were like that. Even if he does look at me like that sometimes, never enough for me but more than I probably deserve, I know it's just part of the performance. It's like I'm another audience to win over, and I know it and he knows it and he knows I know it and he can never really love me because I'm still playing along.
I'll play along. These are my guys, day in and day out, wishing and wanting and having all of me even when I'm spent and sore with no defenses left. Because when the performances are done, when that's not enough to get women in bed, I'll still have these guys.
They'll still have me, that's for sure.
[JC]
I like to do it with the lights on. Better yet, lights off because the sun is shining through the open curtains, bright like we're just naked newborns with our eyes screwed up and deep little wails welling in our lungs. I like when the warmth runs from the inside to the outside and back again, and when everything's finally too warm, you fall asleep.
I don't have to fall asleep alone anymore, not if I don't want to. Sometimes I want to. Sometimes I like the pictures I paint in my head better than the all-access pass, boys and girls who do what you tell them. It's not the same when you don't know what they want other than a good story to tell their friends.
I like afternoon naps with the hotel drapes tied back, crisp cool sheets on my back. I like to think one day I'll blink and find Justin there beside me, naked and golden and not worried about photographers rappelling off the roof with telephoto lenses. He looks down through his lashes like he's not sure how he got there either, and then he just smiles and says hi, and I say hi back and kiss him.
He kisses me like wind and I stroke the ridges of his backbone and tell him how when you close your eyes and sing you can't tell how many people are in the crowd. There's something soft stuffed under the pillow, loose and bright and blue and when the scarf is knotted around his head he wants me to whisper in his ear so he doesn't get lost. We do it there, spread for all the world to see, and when he comes he screams like nobody's listening. He sleeps deep and still and sated and when he wakes up he remembers what it feels like to use our bodies without fear of what gets caught on film.
There's a look Chris gets after a long photo shoot that I've always wished someone could capture, the way he comes back into himself after hours of a dead frown, his face posed just so because they never let him smile. He's always angry, after, but he's present, he's reachable, and I think that he's maybe just conserving all that energy for something else. For someone else.
I want a stylist to paint him dark and fierce and pose him half under a car, grease smeared across his stomach where the shirt's ridden up. I come back from washing off makeup and he rolls out on his back and it's just us in the big empty warehouse, high windows set in the concrete walls, late-afternoon sun in long streaks through dusty air. He's got a wrench in one hand and a stained handkerchief in the other. I'm quiet because there's no talking to Chris when he's in a mood like this, we all know it, we've all tried before.
I step over him and lean against the corner of the hood, letting the white dress shirt I'd been buttoning fall from my shoulders instead, catching on my wrists and pooling across the base of my back. Behind me, I can hear the squeak of the dolly and feel the car sag as he pulls himself up by the bumper. Long long eternity of being quiet and watching tiny specks sparkle in suspended sunbeams and then his mouth is on the back of my neck, white hot, and I swallow a moan.
His hand slips around my waist and he pushes the dirty rag into my jeans pocket, paints my pale chest with oil, bites my shoulder. The wrench is cold steel against the tender pocket of my kidneys and he can snap me in half if he wants to. I know he knows I maybe want him to want to. In an instant, fast, because it's always going to be fast and hard with Chris, he spins me and I can taste just how recently the car's been waxed. He yanks the bandanna from my pocket and ties my wrists together so they're stretched out in front of us, bright shocking blood red against my white forearms.
He pushes my jeans down and the vast quiet is punctuated only by the sound of him fingering his zipper and me whimpering. I hope the noises I make sound louder in my head than they are because I think Chris likes it fast and hard and silent and you never, ever talk about it after. He slaps my ass once and, while it's still hot and stinging, trails the wrench up my thigh, tracing the curves like a motorcycle on an ocean road. He lets the cool metal linger between my legs like maybe he'll fuck me like that and then I do moan aloud and he slaps me again, pulls the cloth from my wrists and stuffs it down my throat. It tastes like gasoline, like how Chris smells, flammable and sweet-sour rank, and I breathe through my nose but that just makes the taste ten times stronger.
Chris puts a callused, rough-heeled palm on the small of my back and holds me down till I quiet, till I still and go slack, and then he drizzles motor oil across my ass and pushes in, slow only till he fits and then fast, deep thrusts again and again. Where my shirt still crosses my back, the scratch of his body is muffled, but where my skin peeks out it screams from heat and friction and I want to push back but he won't let me, he never even lets me come when it's like this but I'm not sure I can't, not when I remember how an hour ago the warehouse was filled with photographers and hairdressers and Chris grunts once and I come, shooting all over the chrome rims and he doubles over me, pulling my arms up so we're both bent-elbowed, pushing against the car like pistons and he digs greasy fingernails into my skin. It's hours before we can catch our breath.
I'm only ever that tired after a show, tired and wired, and post-coital cuddling never compares to the post-performance high. Or even the pre-show hype, all these years and it still starts early in the day, soundcheck through the opening act it just builds like a runaway truck down a steep grade. It's always me and Joey already hyper by four o'clock, we love the fans, love the people but man if sometimes you don't just want to get right to the real deal. The soundcheck is work but for a while Joey takes even the show too seriously, takes all of it too seriously cause there's an adjustment to be made for carrying the weight of a daughter on his shoulders all the time.
It heavies his dancing, slows his footwork and some days I just want to snag him by the sleeve before we go to test our mics. This is supposed to be fun, I remind him, and he nods but doesn't grin, and I say it again. Fun, Joe, remember what that feels like? It's all playful and teasing and when my hand's down the front of his pants, wrapped around him, tugging, I make little choo-choo train noises in his ear because if being silly is what it takes I'll do it, sure I will.
Being silly is what it takes and I tickle his ribs with the other hand till he can't help but laugh and he's lifting me at the waist, holding me up against one of the speakers and Justin's cracking jokes out there and the small crowd is screaming and it's all just on the other side of a half-million dollars worth of equipment. Don't complain if the word Bose is branded to your ass, he says, and I tell him I already checked and worker's comp covers that and he throws back his head and laughs, laughs and pushes and laughs and it's music. We make music.
That's what I tell Lance when he's nervous. We make music, honey, and the rest of it is just static on the edges. Anything they say, anything they ask, we know we get up there to sing our hearts out. He always nods, says, sure, I know, and I put a hand on the back of his neck and feel him nod a second time. One green room after another and even when he's not nervous I do that now, just so he knows. I'm always listening. I'm always there, and he knows that much.
I want it to be that simple, that I could reach out and touch him under the desk when the cameras are in our faces, touch him how I want, my hand in his lap, not on his knee. This question's for Chris and I cup Lance's crotch in my hands, hot like the soundstage lights shining down on us. He's too edgy right now to be mad, maybe too distracted to even really realize what's happening. We're always all up on each other during interviews but this isn't MTV, this is CNN, and if I close my eyes and let the VCR run and just listen to Larry's voice I can pretend that the reason Lance is calm and joking by the end is cause I jerked him off right there.
He's already hard, fifteen minutes with my hand drawing patterns on the top of his thigh, so by the time I touch him for real it's fast. Unzip during a commercial break and I've barely got a few fingers inside his fly before he comes, white knuckles clenching his coffee mug, his answer swallowed until Joey jumps in and finishes the story.
But Lance isn't, he'd never let me. Not like that. Even just my hand on his back is enough that later he won't say goodnight, just walks down the hall to his room with his shoulders hunched. I can't think of a way to touch him that will fix that. I can't imagine he'd let me try.
Of all the things I'd bend over and beg and borrow to fix, none of it really matters next to that, next to him. I just want him to let me try.
[Lance]
I gave up on fantasies a long time ago. A fantasy is like a plan you don't put enough hard work into, and if it's worth having it's not gonna be easy. There are different kinds of sweat, different kinds of back-breaking effort and maybe only some of them leave you bruised in all the right places but those are the kind worth waiting for. Worth planning for.
Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference, sure. Sometimes JC seems worth waiting for. JC's the kind of guy who can have a plan staring him right in the eye, and a hand clenching his shoulder, and, yeah, maybe I'm a little drunk and sick of planning so much, and he'll still never even notice what's come and gone when he says goodnight and goes upstairs cause it's late and he's tired.
I had, at one point, a million plans about how to deal with Justin. The Justin Problem. The Justin Situation, if I was feeling kind to myself. Which, I mean, being easy on yourself never got anyone very far, so I don't waste much time on that. Being around Justin is like being slowly eaten alive by fire ants, and by the time you notice you're covered it's too late. All you can do is lie still.
I don't think Justin includes me in his plans, and that's all right by me. He's not my enemy, he's always at least my friend and I'm happy to keep him close anyway. Used to that by now, for sure. Which doesn't mean that all those years after I got over Justin and my Problem it wasn't nice, it wasn't some kind of coup to stand on the edge of a video set and have him whisper in my ear. "Damn, Bass, you got, like, hot," he said, and for Justin that's all compliment so I let it be. Let him be, though, cause Justin's a hurricane and I got all my houses in a row, finally. No need to blow things down just so what stung at sixteen is anything other than an old scar.
Scars are like a roadmap so next time you know to plan a more direct route from what you want to what you get.
Chris makes his own plans, I can tell. Maybe they include Justin, though it's hard to make any kind of sense out of those two most days. Sometimes I think Chris is kind of like a savings bond, in it for the long haul for real, never gonna give up on the guys he loves no matter what that looks like. He's a punked out squealing little fuck of a savings bond and on anyone else that'd look ridiculous but Chris pulls it off. I can see how of any of us, Justin might need a back-up plan like that most. Chris and his self-sufficient, pain in the ass, watch me look like I'm bitter act, and as back-up plans go, Chris might be the best damn rainy day in the world. I don't think he'll be mine, though. I don't think I want him to be.
When things happen like I might have wanted, if I had spent the time plotting things out, it's almost always by accident. Like Joey. Joey is an accident that just keeps happening and if I'd thought twice before believing him when he said it could just be that one time, it was just for fun, it's just cause what else are gonna do out here with all this energy and no one to spend it on -- if I'd thought twice I probably would've jerked myself off and gone to sleep alone.
Cause now there's a thing, an expectation, and, you know, it's not all one-sided. It's not, even if sometimes I think he thinks that, he thinks I don't really love him, that I'm just killing time. Joey with his arms spread open and stage-lights still refracted in his eyes isn't something you don't enjoy, however you got there. Joey with his mouth on the base of your back, fingers twisting inside of you, Joey humming one-hit wonders from 1957 while you ease his legs up and over your shoulders. Joey. No way not to enjoy Joey when he's like that, and that's the easy part.
It's after, bus growling in the dark and his breath too hot on the back of my neck. It's then that things get hard and not in the way I know how to plan for. Not in the way that makes me want to work more. In the way that makes me run, and if he'd stop saying he understands maybe I'd... I don't know. Maybe I wouldn't even then. Maybe he means it and if my other plans don't work, if there's been miscalculation along the way, maybe Joey'll still be around, maybe be more than the warm body in the back of the bus.
If the other plans don't work. I say that like the other plans are real, like I even admit them to myself except on the worst of the worst days. There are times when it seems like nothing I've lined up is gonna come through, like all of this has been for shit and when it's said and done I'm just a two-bit fag from Mississippi gonna have to crawl home to momma and beg forgiveness for my sins of pride and envy and greed. And lust, yeah. And lust.
It's one of those times now. I can taste morning in the air rushing through a window I cracked open in the lounge. Joey's still asleep and if I close my eyes and just let wind play across my face I can almost breathe normally. It's gonna be a sunny day, which is probably worse, cause on the dark, dank afternoons we spend on flat plains highways I don't expect anything good to come of my plans, and it's not even a disappointment. It's not a surprise to take stock and come up short.
On days like this I think about JC. Out of all of them I think JC's the only one who really looks at me without wanting me to be something different. Something more. But then again, I'm never really sure what JC wants, not at all. JC kind of operates without a rudder. Not without focus, cause whatever's new is gonna catch his eye, it always has. But there's no light on the horizon he's headed towards. Certainly not me.
I more than think about JC, sometimes. Today I hold the back of my own neck with one hand and let myself hear his soft, reassuring whisper sharpen into needy gasps. On days like this fantasies are a comfort, not a disappointment. Not a failure. I close my eyes and JC's hands are on my chest, tugging at my collar, slipping under the buttons and stroking my heart. I skip beats and JC's mouth tastes like a sure thing. Tastes like a missing piece of the plan and everything falls into place, just like that.
Just like that. But it's just a fantasy. It's a mirage, and when I open my eyes Joey's standing in the tiny kitchen with one knee braced against the cabinets for balance and all my fantasies blow away in the breeze.
"What's the plan for today?" Joey says, making coffee, and I blink and run a hand through my hair. I close the window.
All I really have to rely on is a good plan and a hard day's work. That's gotta be enough. It's enough. It's enough.
[END.]
Credits: Inspired by Hth's Lover series.
as i seem to have over-aggressively blocked web archiving, my (lazy) offer stands - leave a comment or drop me a note if there's any old fic of mine you'd like sent by email or reposted.