Popslash. Captain and Admiral
Title: Captain and Admiral
Fandom: Popslash.
Characters: Chris/Joey
Word Count: 3,073
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Chris and Kelly have an agreement. Joey doesn't know.
Author's Notes: This was written for DWNOGA 2007, for JackieB, who asked for Choey so I was very, very happy to deliver. Betaed with speed and efficiency by otherdeb.
It had all started as a joke.
Well, Joey thought it had been a joke, but in the end he wasn’t that sure. In fact, he wasn’t exactly sure how it had evolved the way it did. But he was glad for it since, in the end, it all had worked out.
They had been in Joey’s house, way before *N Sync really was, before the fame and the fans, hell, even before Lance, and Kelly had been visiting. Back then, she and Joey were still officially dating, not the on-and-off thing that they did years later, and Kelly was unofficially considered as one of the guys.
That day, he and Chris had been alone. Justin had some errands to do for his mom, Jason had decided to take a day off from the band, and JC had a sore throat, so they really had nothing to do. Which was why Chris had declared it was videogame day and so they had ended up Joey’s house playing Playstation.
Until Kelly arrived and, seeing that Joey had a sort of free day, asked if they could go to the movies.
“Sorry, Kel,” Chris had said before Joey could get a word in edgewise. “I’m the Captain of the *N Sync ship, and I decided today was the day for videogame relaxation.”
“Well,” Kelly answered quickly. Her wit and humor were two of the main things why Joey had fallen for her, and she and Chris had become fast friends. They were pretty alike, all things considered. “You may be the Captain, but long ago Joey made me Admiral of his heart so I outrank you, by far, Chris. And the Admiral wants to go to the movies.”
In the end, they had agreed on a plan, and Kelly had kicked Chris’s ass in Street Fighter II, and later the three of them had went to a movie. And that had been it, as far as Joey was concerned.
But two weeks later, Kelly had asked Joey to tell the Captain that he was invited to dinner with them. On the other hand, Chris never asked about Kelly, he called her his Admiral. Soon the two nicknames stuck.
The funny thing was that no one except Chris called Kelly Admiral, and the only one who called Chris Captain, much to his chagrin, was Kelly.
But Joey never imagined it would last as long as it did.
* * *
After Joey caught Lance sitting on the lap of his then boyfriend, he came to two realizations about himself.
The first one was that, thankfully, he wasn’t homophobic. He had always said that he had no problem with whatever someone decided to do in their private time, and joked a lot about how hot was to watch two girls kissing, but until he had actually walked on Lance kissing his boyfriend and didn’t feel anything except the same sort of embarrassment he had felt when he walked on Justin and Britney during a very heavy make-out session, he realized that it was not just lip service. He honestly didn’t care, one way or the other.
The second thing he realized was that he had to convince his friends to close room doors when they decided to start making out. That, or he had to start knocking on doors before walking into rooms.
But what really worried him was remembering the panicked look in Lance’s eyes when he had walked in. In that moment, Lance had made all sort of excuses for what Joey had just witnessed, but Joey knew the truth. And finally, Lance had given in.
“You won’t tell the others, will you?”
And that was what was eating Joey. It wasn’t fair that Justin could ask any of them for advice on what to give Britney for her birthday while Lance had to keep silent about everything he really wanted. And, while he understood why Lance didn’t want to tell everyone else about his real preferences, he thought that at least his bandmates should understand.
So, trained after years of living in a house with a lot of relatives, he went and asked for advice from the oldest one in the group. Chris.
In hindsight, he should’ve gone to JC.
“Say, Chris, can I talk to you for a moment?” Joey asked one night when they were lucky enough to share a room. He didn’t want to have that conversation where the others could hear.
“Sure, Joe, what’s wrong?” Chris took off his earphones and smiled. They had many reasons to smile now, as the lawsuit was finally over and they were working on their new tour. Lou was a thing of the past, once and for all.
“See, I have a friend who has a problem,” Joey began, realizing that it was a bit lame. “And he doesn’t know what to do.”
“What’s your friend’s problem?” Chris asked, sitting up on the bed. He was really paying attention to Joey, for which made was feel grateful.
“Well, see, he’s… in this job that requires that he has a girlfriend. Because he has to take her to… well… job dinners and stuff. But he doesn’t have a girlfriend,” Joey continued, tripping over his words.
“What’s the problem? He’s butt ugly?” Chris joked as Joey shook his head frantically. “Then he should get a girlfriend. Easy as that.”
“But what if… he doesn’t want a girlfriend?” Joey continued, blushing. He was a terrible liar. “What if… he actually wants a boyfriend?”
“He should get one. It’s that easy,” Chris laughed. “Nothing to lose sleep over, Joey.”
“But… his job doesn’t allow for that. He sort of needs to go out with girls, even when he doesn’t want to. And he’s afraid, you know? Because he thinks that if his friends… his coworkers… find out, then well, they’ll all lose their jobs.” Joey continued, not noticing his little slip of the tongue.
“Joey,” Chris tried to interrupt him, but Joey paid no attention.
“And not only that, but if anyone even suspects that he’s gay, then the whole group… company will be shunned, and everyone else will be guilty by association.”
“Joey!” Chris tried again, without much success.
“And that will ruin everyone’s careers… jobs, so he’s deadly afraid that anyone even gets a hint of what he really wants. So I don’t know what to…”
Finally, Chris got fed up of trying to interrupt Joey and planted a deep, sensual kiss on his lips. At the first contact, Joey froze. The last thing he expected was for Chris to kiss him like that. When Chris’s tongue made contact with his, he felt his insides melt and rearrange themselves in different and unique ways. And when Chris’s hand caressed the back of his neck, the only thing he could do was lean on and continue the kiss, forgetting everything he had said until that moment.
Maybe Lance wasn’t the only one in the group with different tastes.
“Better now?” Chris asked, smiling, once he let Joey go. They were both sweaty now, and for some reason, Chris no longer had his shirt on. Joey didn’t remember if he had taken it off, or if Joey had ripped it off.
He was really confused.
“I… What was that?” Joey asked, still confused.
“A kiss,” Chris said, looking warily at Joey. The problem was that Joey could see Chris’s lips shining and he knew it was because of his own tongue, and he wanted nothing more than to nibble that lip and get back to what they were doing. Part of his brain told him it was a very, very bad idea, but Joey was used to working on instinct. And his instinct at the moment was yelling at him: “Chris, there! Take!”
Which really sounded like a good advice, at the moment.
“But… why did you kiss me?” Joey asked again, licking his lips. They tasted of Pixy Sticks, and Joey wondered if the kiss hadn’t been a secondary effect of all that sugar.
“You didn’t want me to kiss you?” Chris frowned, now looking confused instead of amused. Joey quickly replayed their conversation in his mind to see if he could figure out where they had taken a left turn to Albuquerque. “But… I thought…”
“I wasn’t talking about me!” Joey said, when he realized what misunderstanding had occurred. Of course, everyone knew that ‘a friend’ was a stupid way of saying ‘I have a problem’, and he had totally forgotten because this time, it really was a friend’s problem. “I’m not gay!”
“Oh,” Chris’s face fell at Joey’s words, and Joey couldn’t help but feel bad. True, he wasn’t gay. He loved Kelly, he loved being with Kelly, but Chris’s kiss had felt so good, and at the time, he and Kelly were not really dating, since she had decided that they were better as friends if he was going to be touring all the time, and Chris’s lips were just beckoning him.
“I think I’m bi,” Joey said and without pause, he grabbed Chris’s neck and let his instinct take over as they kissed again.
* * *
After that, Joey’s life turned quite weird. He and Chris became friends with benefits. Chris had recently broken up with Dani, and he claimed he didn’t want to enter another serious relationship so soon, and that sort of suited Joey. Whenever he and Kelly went on again, Chris simply faded into the background with no hard feelings at all.
It worried Joey a bit, so one night when they were again sharing a room, he asked Chris if he was jealous of Kelly when Joey was with her.
“I’m the Captain, she’s the Admiral, she outranks me,” Chris explained, kissing Joey deeply before Joey could ask for more clarification.
Finally, and reaching the end of his tether, Joey decided to talk with Kelly. He wasn’t exactly keen to admit that he had been sort of not really unfaithful to her, but he felt that he was being torn in two. He loved Kelly with all his heart, but he also was falling in love with Chris and there was no way he could actually give up either just like that.
“Kel, I’m so sorry,” he said after he explained to Kelly all that had happened. They were at his house in Florida, right before the tour started. He only had a week with her, which meant they would be ‘off’ again, and Joey knew very well that that meant that sooner, rather than later, he would end up in bed with Chris. “I never meant for it to happen.”
But to Joey surprise, Kelly didn’t get angry. Instead, she smiled. “It’s only Chris, right? I mean… he’s the only man.”
“Oh, yeah,” Joey laughed, half relieved. “I wouldn’t… I don’t really look at other men.”
“And other women?” Kelly teased him, touching his nose playfully.
“Never,” Joey promised. And it was the truth. While in the clubs he flirted and joked around, he never took the next step. Why should he, since he had such a wonderful part-time girlfriend like Kelly, and a friend as hot as Chris? Between the two, he didn’t need anyone else. And that’s why he felt so worried about the situation. He honestly didn’t want to lose either of them.
“Then it’s okay, I don’t mind,” Kelly said cheerfully, kissing him.
“Wait? What?” Joey asked, confused. “I tell you I’m two-timing you, and you’re fine with it?”
“You’re not two-timing me if you tell me before hand,” Kelly pointed out. “And it’s with Chris. It’s all right.”
“I don’t follow you, Kel,” Joey admitted, thoroughly lost. The conversation had not gone at all as he had expected.
“Let me put it like this. Would you get mad at me if I slept with Chris?” Kelly asked, teasing.
Joey didn’t answer immediately, as his mind provided him with exactly that mental image. Kelly, naked in top of an equally naked Chris. It didn’t help that he knew exactly what both of them did in bed, what both of them liked. It was a highly arousing image.
“I see that you have no complaints,” Kelly joked, as she leaned in for a kiss.
Joey really had no complaints, he realized. That night was the most passionate they had in years.
Nine months later, Brihana was born.
* * *
When Kelly told him she was pregnant, Joey told Chris immediately. And, to his surprise, the first thing that Chris did was to pick up his cellphone to congratulate his Admiral.
For one brief second, Joey thought everything was going to be fine.
“Joey, we have to stop having sex.” Until Chris uttered those words.
“What?” Joey asked, feeling blindsided. “Why? I told you, Kelly was okay with us!”
“Yeah, I’m sure she is. But a baby changes things,” Chris explained, smiling sadly. “You can timeshare between the group, Kelly and me. But the baby? She’s going to need all your time. So I’m bowing out. It’s better this way.”
“But… Chris, I…” Joey didn’t want to say ‘I love you’, but it was that what he was feeling. The simple idea of not having the freedom to hug Chris, to kiss Chris, to… be with Chris, was enough to freeze his blood.
“Look, you didn’t know what we were doing when we started,” Chris explaining, smiling. To Joey’s relief, he wasn’t moving away. “Look. I am not disappearing from your life. We’re just stopping having sex.”
“And I don’t get a say in this?” Joey asked, angrily.
“Trust me, you’ll thank me later,” Chris insisted, shaking his head. “Let’s do this. Give your kid five years. If when she is five, you still want me… I won’t put up any resistance.”
And that’s how Joey had his first real off time with Chris.
* * *
Time passed, and things really changed. A six month hiatus suddenly turned into a real break up. Joey’s first attempt at Broadway turned out to be more than just one shot at theatre, and, after doing a couple of honestly crappy movies, he asked Kelly to marry him.
Through all that, his friendship with Chris really didn’t change at all. Sure, there was no sex, and no stolen kisses, but other than that, it was as if they had never broken up. And Chris’s friendship with Kelly hadn’t changed either. The two of them were as close as ever, to the point that sometimes, Joey wondered how come Kelly agreed to marry him instead of Chris.
But even when he was happy, not everything was fine. There was a huge Chris-shaped hole in his heart, and every time he went to bed alone when Kelly couldn’t be with him in New York, he felt it ache.
It didn’t help matters that Chris decided to become a hermit and disappear from view for a couple of years. In fact, although he went to Joey and Kelly’s wedding, he missed Brihana’s fifth birthday party. Both Brihana and Joey were heartbroken.
But Chris couldn’t keep himself hidden for long, and when the chance came to work as temporary DJ with Chris in the Doc and Johnny’s show, Joey jumped at the chance. He needed to talk to Chris, and the sooner, the better.
He managed to last the three days without saying anything, but when they had finished the last show, he cornered Chris.
“We need to talk,” Joey said, not giving any hint of what he was really thinking. “Can I go to your house or do you have guests again?”
“I’m alone now,” Chris said, not sounding exactly happy. It hurt Joey, but he was ready to make sure he erased that look from Chris’s face.
The ride to Chris’s house was made in silence, as Joey waited until they were inside, away from any curious onlookers -because, no matter what Chris said about no paparazzi hidden in his bushes, one never knew- to speak up again.
“Brihana is five years old now,” he began, hoping that Chris remembered his promise.
“Joey…” And in that resigned tone, Joey knew that Chris not only knew what Joey was talking about, he was also looking for a way out of it. “Things have changed.”
“What do you mean?” Joey asked, frowning. “You said that when Brihana turned five, I could ask you to come back. And now…”
“And now you’re married.” Chris’s tone didn’t left room for discussion. “And I’m not going to let you ruin what you have with Kelly.”
Joey stared at Chris, dumbfounded until he remembered that while he had assured Chris that Kelly was okay with them sleeping together back when they were touring, he had never explained to Chris what Kelly’s position on the whole matter was.
Or what his own feelings on the subject were.
“Chris, Kelly is fine with this,” he began. “In fact, she had the day after Brihana’s party marked in our calendar as ‘the day Joey talks with Chris’.”
“I am not following you,” Chris shook his head. “You mean your wife is fine with you having a gay affair? No way.”
“Actually…”
“No,” Chris interrupted. “There is no way you’re going to convince me of that. I know she was fine with us, but this is a whole different matter. And I’m fine with it. I always knew you loved her.”
“And I also love you,” Joey pointed out. “And she knows it. And she said that if we both were happy, she was happy. In fact, her exact words were that she wanted her Captain to be happy.”
“Her Captain?” Chris smiled, and for the first time, Joey felt that he was getting through his stubbornness. “She actually called me her Captain?”
“She has never stopped calling you that,” Joey said.
“And how are you supposed this is going to work? Because it seems that you and Kelly have everything planned out.”
“It’s only fair, after you and Kelly planned most of our weird threeway relationship back when we were touring,” Joey shoot back, moving forward to hug Chris. It felt right, having him back in his arms. “And there’s no real plan. We just keep going forward, and figure out things as they come along.”
“I can work with that,” Chris said, smiling, as Joey leaned down to kiss him for the first time in five years.
The End.
Fandom: Popslash.
Characters: Chris/Joey
Word Count: 3,073
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Chris and Kelly have an agreement. Joey doesn't know.
Author's Notes: This was written for DWNOGA 2007, for JackieB, who asked for Choey so I was very, very happy to deliver. Betaed with speed and efficiency by otherdeb.
It had all started as a joke.
Well, Joey thought it had been a joke, but in the end he wasn’t that sure. In fact, he wasn’t exactly sure how it had evolved the way it did. But he was glad for it since, in the end, it all had worked out.
They had been in Joey’s house, way before *N Sync really was, before the fame and the fans, hell, even before Lance, and Kelly had been visiting. Back then, she and Joey were still officially dating, not the on-and-off thing that they did years later, and Kelly was unofficially considered as one of the guys.
That day, he and Chris had been alone. Justin had some errands to do for his mom, Jason had decided to take a day off from the band, and JC had a sore throat, so they really had nothing to do. Which was why Chris had declared it was videogame day and so they had ended up Joey’s house playing Playstation.
Until Kelly arrived and, seeing that Joey had a sort of free day, asked if they could go to the movies.
“Sorry, Kel,” Chris had said before Joey could get a word in edgewise. “I’m the Captain of the *N Sync ship, and I decided today was the day for videogame relaxation.”
“Well,” Kelly answered quickly. Her wit and humor were two of the main things why Joey had fallen for her, and she and Chris had become fast friends. They were pretty alike, all things considered. “You may be the Captain, but long ago Joey made me Admiral of his heart so I outrank you, by far, Chris. And the Admiral wants to go to the movies.”
In the end, they had agreed on a plan, and Kelly had kicked Chris’s ass in Street Fighter II, and later the three of them had went to a movie. And that had been it, as far as Joey was concerned.
But two weeks later, Kelly had asked Joey to tell the Captain that he was invited to dinner with them. On the other hand, Chris never asked about Kelly, he called her his Admiral. Soon the two nicknames stuck.
The funny thing was that no one except Chris called Kelly Admiral, and the only one who called Chris Captain, much to his chagrin, was Kelly.
But Joey never imagined it would last as long as it did.
* * *
After Joey caught Lance sitting on the lap of his then boyfriend, he came to two realizations about himself.
The first one was that, thankfully, he wasn’t homophobic. He had always said that he had no problem with whatever someone decided to do in their private time, and joked a lot about how hot was to watch two girls kissing, but until he had actually walked on Lance kissing his boyfriend and didn’t feel anything except the same sort of embarrassment he had felt when he walked on Justin and Britney during a very heavy make-out session, he realized that it was not just lip service. He honestly didn’t care, one way or the other.
The second thing he realized was that he had to convince his friends to close room doors when they decided to start making out. That, or he had to start knocking on doors before walking into rooms.
But what really worried him was remembering the panicked look in Lance’s eyes when he had walked in. In that moment, Lance had made all sort of excuses for what Joey had just witnessed, but Joey knew the truth. And finally, Lance had given in.
“You won’t tell the others, will you?”
And that was what was eating Joey. It wasn’t fair that Justin could ask any of them for advice on what to give Britney for her birthday while Lance had to keep silent about everything he really wanted. And, while he understood why Lance didn’t want to tell everyone else about his real preferences, he thought that at least his bandmates should understand.
So, trained after years of living in a house with a lot of relatives, he went and asked for advice from the oldest one in the group. Chris.
In hindsight, he should’ve gone to JC.
“Say, Chris, can I talk to you for a moment?” Joey asked one night when they were lucky enough to share a room. He didn’t want to have that conversation where the others could hear.
“Sure, Joe, what’s wrong?” Chris took off his earphones and smiled. They had many reasons to smile now, as the lawsuit was finally over and they were working on their new tour. Lou was a thing of the past, once and for all.
“See, I have a friend who has a problem,” Joey began, realizing that it was a bit lame. “And he doesn’t know what to do.”
“What’s your friend’s problem?” Chris asked, sitting up on the bed. He was really paying attention to Joey, for which made was feel grateful.
“Well, see, he’s… in this job that requires that he has a girlfriend. Because he has to take her to… well… job dinners and stuff. But he doesn’t have a girlfriend,” Joey continued, tripping over his words.
“What’s the problem? He’s butt ugly?” Chris joked as Joey shook his head frantically. “Then he should get a girlfriend. Easy as that.”
“But what if… he doesn’t want a girlfriend?” Joey continued, blushing. He was a terrible liar. “What if… he actually wants a boyfriend?”
“He should get one. It’s that easy,” Chris laughed. “Nothing to lose sleep over, Joey.”
“But… his job doesn’t allow for that. He sort of needs to go out with girls, even when he doesn’t want to. And he’s afraid, you know? Because he thinks that if his friends… his coworkers… find out, then well, they’ll all lose their jobs.” Joey continued, not noticing his little slip of the tongue.
“Joey,” Chris tried to interrupt him, but Joey paid no attention.
“And not only that, but if anyone even suspects that he’s gay, then the whole group… company will be shunned, and everyone else will be guilty by association.”
“Joey!” Chris tried again, without much success.
“And that will ruin everyone’s careers… jobs, so he’s deadly afraid that anyone even gets a hint of what he really wants. So I don’t know what to…”
Finally, Chris got fed up of trying to interrupt Joey and planted a deep, sensual kiss on his lips. At the first contact, Joey froze. The last thing he expected was for Chris to kiss him like that. When Chris’s tongue made contact with his, he felt his insides melt and rearrange themselves in different and unique ways. And when Chris’s hand caressed the back of his neck, the only thing he could do was lean on and continue the kiss, forgetting everything he had said until that moment.
Maybe Lance wasn’t the only one in the group with different tastes.
“Better now?” Chris asked, smiling, once he let Joey go. They were both sweaty now, and for some reason, Chris no longer had his shirt on. Joey didn’t remember if he had taken it off, or if Joey had ripped it off.
He was really confused.
“I… What was that?” Joey asked, still confused.
“A kiss,” Chris said, looking warily at Joey. The problem was that Joey could see Chris’s lips shining and he knew it was because of his own tongue, and he wanted nothing more than to nibble that lip and get back to what they were doing. Part of his brain told him it was a very, very bad idea, but Joey was used to working on instinct. And his instinct at the moment was yelling at him: “Chris, there! Take!”
Which really sounded like a good advice, at the moment.
“But… why did you kiss me?” Joey asked again, licking his lips. They tasted of Pixy Sticks, and Joey wondered if the kiss hadn’t been a secondary effect of all that sugar.
“You didn’t want me to kiss you?” Chris frowned, now looking confused instead of amused. Joey quickly replayed their conversation in his mind to see if he could figure out where they had taken a left turn to Albuquerque. “But… I thought…”
“I wasn’t talking about me!” Joey said, when he realized what misunderstanding had occurred. Of course, everyone knew that ‘a friend’ was a stupid way of saying ‘I have a problem’, and he had totally forgotten because this time, it really was a friend’s problem. “I’m not gay!”
“Oh,” Chris’s face fell at Joey’s words, and Joey couldn’t help but feel bad. True, he wasn’t gay. He loved Kelly, he loved being with Kelly, but Chris’s kiss had felt so good, and at the time, he and Kelly were not really dating, since she had decided that they were better as friends if he was going to be touring all the time, and Chris’s lips were just beckoning him.
“I think I’m bi,” Joey said and without pause, he grabbed Chris’s neck and let his instinct take over as they kissed again.
* * *
After that, Joey’s life turned quite weird. He and Chris became friends with benefits. Chris had recently broken up with Dani, and he claimed he didn’t want to enter another serious relationship so soon, and that sort of suited Joey. Whenever he and Kelly went on again, Chris simply faded into the background with no hard feelings at all.
It worried Joey a bit, so one night when they were again sharing a room, he asked Chris if he was jealous of Kelly when Joey was with her.
“I’m the Captain, she’s the Admiral, she outranks me,” Chris explained, kissing Joey deeply before Joey could ask for more clarification.
Finally, and reaching the end of his tether, Joey decided to talk with Kelly. He wasn’t exactly keen to admit that he had been sort of not really unfaithful to her, but he felt that he was being torn in two. He loved Kelly with all his heart, but he also was falling in love with Chris and there was no way he could actually give up either just like that.
“Kel, I’m so sorry,” he said after he explained to Kelly all that had happened. They were at his house in Florida, right before the tour started. He only had a week with her, which meant they would be ‘off’ again, and Joey knew very well that that meant that sooner, rather than later, he would end up in bed with Chris. “I never meant for it to happen.”
But to Joey surprise, Kelly didn’t get angry. Instead, she smiled. “It’s only Chris, right? I mean… he’s the only man.”
“Oh, yeah,” Joey laughed, half relieved. “I wouldn’t… I don’t really look at other men.”
“And other women?” Kelly teased him, touching his nose playfully.
“Never,” Joey promised. And it was the truth. While in the clubs he flirted and joked around, he never took the next step. Why should he, since he had such a wonderful part-time girlfriend like Kelly, and a friend as hot as Chris? Between the two, he didn’t need anyone else. And that’s why he felt so worried about the situation. He honestly didn’t want to lose either of them.
“Then it’s okay, I don’t mind,” Kelly said cheerfully, kissing him.
“Wait? What?” Joey asked, confused. “I tell you I’m two-timing you, and you’re fine with it?”
“You’re not two-timing me if you tell me before hand,” Kelly pointed out. “And it’s with Chris. It’s all right.”
“I don’t follow you, Kel,” Joey admitted, thoroughly lost. The conversation had not gone at all as he had expected.
“Let me put it like this. Would you get mad at me if I slept with Chris?” Kelly asked, teasing.
Joey didn’t answer immediately, as his mind provided him with exactly that mental image. Kelly, naked in top of an equally naked Chris. It didn’t help that he knew exactly what both of them did in bed, what both of them liked. It was a highly arousing image.
“I see that you have no complaints,” Kelly joked, as she leaned in for a kiss.
Joey really had no complaints, he realized. That night was the most passionate they had in years.
Nine months later, Brihana was born.
* * *
When Kelly told him she was pregnant, Joey told Chris immediately. And, to his surprise, the first thing that Chris did was to pick up his cellphone to congratulate his Admiral.
For one brief second, Joey thought everything was going to be fine.
“Joey, we have to stop having sex.” Until Chris uttered those words.
“What?” Joey asked, feeling blindsided. “Why? I told you, Kelly was okay with us!”
“Yeah, I’m sure she is. But a baby changes things,” Chris explained, smiling sadly. “You can timeshare between the group, Kelly and me. But the baby? She’s going to need all your time. So I’m bowing out. It’s better this way.”
“But… Chris, I…” Joey didn’t want to say ‘I love you’, but it was that what he was feeling. The simple idea of not having the freedom to hug Chris, to kiss Chris, to… be with Chris, was enough to freeze his blood.
“Look, you didn’t know what we were doing when we started,” Chris explaining, smiling. To Joey’s relief, he wasn’t moving away. “Look. I am not disappearing from your life. We’re just stopping having sex.”
“And I don’t get a say in this?” Joey asked, angrily.
“Trust me, you’ll thank me later,” Chris insisted, shaking his head. “Let’s do this. Give your kid five years. If when she is five, you still want me… I won’t put up any resistance.”
And that’s how Joey had his first real off time with Chris.
* * *
Time passed, and things really changed. A six month hiatus suddenly turned into a real break up. Joey’s first attempt at Broadway turned out to be more than just one shot at theatre, and, after doing a couple of honestly crappy movies, he asked Kelly to marry him.
Through all that, his friendship with Chris really didn’t change at all. Sure, there was no sex, and no stolen kisses, but other than that, it was as if they had never broken up. And Chris’s friendship with Kelly hadn’t changed either. The two of them were as close as ever, to the point that sometimes, Joey wondered how come Kelly agreed to marry him instead of Chris.
But even when he was happy, not everything was fine. There was a huge Chris-shaped hole in his heart, and every time he went to bed alone when Kelly couldn’t be with him in New York, he felt it ache.
It didn’t help matters that Chris decided to become a hermit and disappear from view for a couple of years. In fact, although he went to Joey and Kelly’s wedding, he missed Brihana’s fifth birthday party. Both Brihana and Joey were heartbroken.
But Chris couldn’t keep himself hidden for long, and when the chance came to work as temporary DJ with Chris in the Doc and Johnny’s show, Joey jumped at the chance. He needed to talk to Chris, and the sooner, the better.
He managed to last the three days without saying anything, but when they had finished the last show, he cornered Chris.
“We need to talk,” Joey said, not giving any hint of what he was really thinking. “Can I go to your house or do you have guests again?”
“I’m alone now,” Chris said, not sounding exactly happy. It hurt Joey, but he was ready to make sure he erased that look from Chris’s face.
The ride to Chris’s house was made in silence, as Joey waited until they were inside, away from any curious onlookers -because, no matter what Chris said about no paparazzi hidden in his bushes, one never knew- to speak up again.
“Brihana is five years old now,” he began, hoping that Chris remembered his promise.
“Joey…” And in that resigned tone, Joey knew that Chris not only knew what Joey was talking about, he was also looking for a way out of it. “Things have changed.”
“What do you mean?” Joey asked, frowning. “You said that when Brihana turned five, I could ask you to come back. And now…”
“And now you’re married.” Chris’s tone didn’t left room for discussion. “And I’m not going to let you ruin what you have with Kelly.”
Joey stared at Chris, dumbfounded until he remembered that while he had assured Chris that Kelly was okay with them sleeping together back when they were touring, he had never explained to Chris what Kelly’s position on the whole matter was.
Or what his own feelings on the subject were.
“Chris, Kelly is fine with this,” he began. “In fact, she had the day after Brihana’s party marked in our calendar as ‘the day Joey talks with Chris’.”
“I am not following you,” Chris shook his head. “You mean your wife is fine with you having a gay affair? No way.”
“Actually…”
“No,” Chris interrupted. “There is no way you’re going to convince me of that. I know she was fine with us, but this is a whole different matter. And I’m fine with it. I always knew you loved her.”
“And I also love you,” Joey pointed out. “And she knows it. And she said that if we both were happy, she was happy. In fact, her exact words were that she wanted her Captain to be happy.”
“Her Captain?” Chris smiled, and for the first time, Joey felt that he was getting through his stubbornness. “She actually called me her Captain?”
“She has never stopped calling you that,” Joey said.
“And how are you supposed this is going to work? Because it seems that you and Kelly have everything planned out.”
“It’s only fair, after you and Kelly planned most of our weird threeway relationship back when we were touring,” Joey shoot back, moving forward to hug Chris. It felt right, having him back in his arms. “And there’s no real plan. We just keep going forward, and figure out things as they come along.”
“I can work with that,” Chris said, smiling, as Joey leaned down to kiss him for the first time in five years.
The End.