JuC Day '06 Offering - Part 1
Happy JuC Day, everyone! It's that cherished holiday once again! And I have a long one to contribute/share today.
It started out as a short, sweet, fluffy thing......and then grew to be a longlonglong lots-of-everything-included-in-here thing. Still plenty of sweet-n-fluffy, though. I didn't lose sight of that. So I hope you like it. :)
For tons more JuC goodness, please take yourselves over to juc_day where this is being cross-posted. And indulge!
Big hugs and kisses to Bianca westchester_777 for her fast and expert beta turnaround. She's as important to me as my muse. Thank you, babes.
I warned you now. Longlonglong with some sweetandfluffy added in. Rated: TVMA.
ETA: I have to post it in two parts because LJ is being a shitty bitchface today and won't accept the full monty all in one swallow. Some LJ's kids, I swear. Argh.
By Micki Bailey
If I were the king of the world
Tell you what I’d do
I’d throw away the cars and the bars and the war
And make sweet love to you
Sing it now...
Joy to the world
All the boys and girls now
Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea
And joy to you and me
- Three Dog Night
“Well, then put on your pants, and let’s dance, Chasez!” Chris says with a wicked smirk he can make perfectly with his dark eyes alone. And maybe even enhance it a little with a surly twitch of the corner of his mouth. “You’re such a jet-setting hot-shot playa now and all, man. Can’t even flip on the ol’ laptop these days without getting slapped in the face with new pics of you getting your swill on with some RFBs, somewhere on the globe.”
“Dude. That’s exactly what I’m talking about! First, he’s down in A-town with Dallas, kicking it southern-style and chilling in the studio and making the party scene with the local radio station gigs and I don’t know what else. Then he’s up in N-Y-C, mooching folkez VIP seats at Fashion Week runway shows and such and bumping uglies on TV with that queen Isaac Whateverhisnameis at the wax museum. Then he’s out doing Vegas up right, night after night, hitting the strip and whooping it up at birthday parties for pseudo-celebrity little boys like Gallagher. Ah, and let’s not forget how he got all pimped-out and hot-looking for Oscar, strutting around in his tux that night with - what was her name? - Vanessa the Mannequin. Okay now, C, talk about fake girlfriends, dawg.”
Chris giggles with Joey. “Yeah, Chasez. That one looked straight out of the box, man. Probably still had that vinyl new-doll smell, didn’t she? You really go for those blow-up variety of girlies, don’t ya?”
Joey lets out a wild, over-reactive laugh and high-fives Chris, squinting across the table that separates the two of them from JC, and reaches for the square chunk of cue chalk. “Having a good ol’ time, are ya, C?”
JC rolls his eyes at both of them, sighing as his gaze slowly turns to Chris, rewinding the conversation backward a few seconds. “RFBs?”
“Real Fine Bitches?” Joey takes a stab in the dark, laughs.
“Rich, Famous, and Beautiful, man,” Chris answers, ignoring the guess.
“Oh, yeah. Such as myself,” Joey chuckles, twirling the long skinny stick between his fingers.
Lukewarmly, Chris blinks, chugs from a bottle of beer. “Such as Chasez’s little entourage, man. It’s like a status symbol in the hob-nobbery Hollywood circles he runs in. Dig?”
“Yeah, man. I dig. He rubs it out with the A-listing elite now, doesn’t he? The Purty People,” Joey laughs again, nonchalantly blows chalk residue off the tip of the stick. “Come to think of it, I can’t believe the dude let us bottom-feeder nobodies in his house without a little plastic door-check wristband. Know what I’m saying?” He snickers and winks at Chris.
Coolly, JC eases around the smooth edge of the large rectangular oak pool table without making contact with his friends again. He’s concentrating, casing his next shot: nine ball off the four and then straight into the corner pocket. Slick. It will work.
This is what they do, he and the other guys, when he comes home to Orlando. They gather at one of their houses one afternoon, drink beer after beer after beer, catch up on life, and shoot pool. Oh. And rag on each other as if they were 10 years younger and out on the road touring again. It’s how they roll.
Since JC’s been away the longest this time, it’s his home - his newly remodeled and refurnished post-hurricane-damage game room - where they meet up today. And it’s him they give the most hell to because he’s been the most “visible” in the public world lately. He doesn’t mind. He’s missed these dudes madly. Although he’d never actually say so to them. No way. No need to. They already know. He’s dead-sure.
“Glad to hear you bottom-feeder nobodies are still keeping such a close eye on my social comings and goings. Hmm. Stalk much? I heard that’s for losers. Hello. And what’s it cost to join my fan club nowadays, dudes? Since, obviously, you’d both know,” he says quietly, slowly, snarkily, stopping to lean down over the table with his stick poised under and over a few of his fingers.
“Yeah, that’s funny, Chasez. Watch me bust a gut laughing,” Chris quips back, reaching out to smack JC’s ass with an open hand as he passes by. “Speaking of your ‘comings,’ how’s The Brat doing?”
“Ask Fatone. He was the one mugging for the paparazzi with Justin last weekend. And now here he is standing over there breaking my balls for being in a few photos. Damn. You know what they say. Same. Old. Shit.”
JC raises up again, straightening the perfectly fluid curve his body had been forming. Pleased that the nine ball had just clinked against the four and then rolled down to a soft thud in the laced leather pocket near Joey. Pleased that the cohesive - okay, cozy - fraternal bond between them all never seems to weaken, even after all these years.
Joey shrugs, half-leaning on his pool stick, still grinning. “Yep. Me and J hooked up in LA and had some grub and some cocktails, got all caught up and stuff. I hadn’t seen the kid in ages. It was loads of fun. And yeah, I told Kirkpatrick all about our little powwow.”
“And Justin told me all about it too,” JC snorts, eyeballing what possible shot Chris might have next. “Sorry I missed you when you breezed into town, man. I sort of figured you and Lance might show up and crash at Elton’s Oscar bash, but I didn’t see yas. Crawling drunk by then, eh?”
Joey shoots a bird, sneers, and then Chris chuckles. “So. Where was the queen of sweet-n-gentleness Camselot during all this male bonding and whatnot?”
Joey hunches his shoulders again, makes a like-I-care? face. “Don’t know. I didn’t ask.”
“Gone.” JC says it, the single syllable, casually, tilting his head and narrowing his eyes at the arrangement of the balls on the table.
Chris and Joey hold their breaths. Anxiously. Hopefully.
JC hears this collective, sharp silence and glances up at them. “Away filming. Don’t get too excited.”
“Aww, man,” Chris’s curling lips say. “I was totally about to break out the champagne.”
“Yeah, me too. Too damn bad,” Joey concurs succinctly and rolls his eyes. “Uh, just disappointing.”
With the air and the attitude of someone who’s learned to separate what’s important from what’s not, JC monotones, “Your shot, CK. Lock it down, dude.”
Dismissing the subject (and gladly), Chris scans the table wordlessly. His nose twitches a little, and he slaps the small end of his stick against his palm. “Chasez, um, this is gonna sound really, um, bad when I say it out loud, but I gotta, bro. What’s up with this ungodly-blinding FUCHSIA felt on this damn pool table, man? It’s fluorescent pink and can probably be seen by the residents of fucking Pluto!”
JC’s slow-blinking gaze moves from Chris to Joey, who is dramatically shielding his eyes with a cupped hand from the allegedly brilliant glare coming off the table. He smirks, sure. But he loves this, this familiar camaraderie, this tough-love affection he gets from them. He expects, looks forward to it. From Chris on this coast. From Lance on the west coast. And from Joe on both coasts.
“Blow me, Kirkpatrick.”
“Sure, man, sure. I see how you are. You offer now, but I go to take you up on the deal, and you pussy out. Talking about how Timberlake would kick my ‘ol’ grandpa ass’ and whatnot if I even looked like I planned on blowing you. Humph. You’re a bona fide PT, Chasez. And that means ‘prick tease,’ ‘case you’re confused again.”
JC grabs his bottle of cold beer from the bar’s counter behind him, flash-rolling his eyes but smiling at the whole ridiculous mental scenario Chris had just laid out. “That fuchsia cloth had to be custom-ordered, man, for your 4-1-1. Took two whole months to come down from Toronto. And it wasn’t cheap either. So if it’s paining your sensitive little eyeballs, then run right along on over to Fatone’s crib. Dig?”
“Fatone doesn’t have a pool table,” Chris whines.
JC turns to him again, swallows some beer, and raises an eyebrow. “Exactly. So shut up and put up, dude.”
Chris snickers along with Joey. “Fine. I see, said the blind man. I’ll just have to adapt.” He flips his mirror-silver sunshades down off his head and over his eyes as he bends toward the table and lifts his stick. “Desperate situations call for desperate measures. But if you’re down with the pink, then knock yourself out, Chasez, babe. Roll with it.”
“I’m down with the pink. Or else it wouldn’t be here. Now roll with your shot, CK, like sometime this year, man.”
“Dude, don’t rush me. Hold onto your panties.”
“And I’ll bet some big bucks that Timberlake wouldn’t be so wild about a fuchsia, screaming-gay pool table felt in his house,” Joey chirps from the corner of the room and smiles coyly.
JC slides him a dry, withering look. “Well, this isn’t his house, now is it, Joe? Besides, he’s my boyfriend, not my daddy dearest.”
“He says you two shack up together, mostly at his place, when she isn’t around.”
JC smiles without intending to, remembering. “Yeah. True, that.”
Chris straightens up again after not even coming close to nailing his target six ball in its side target pocket. “What did you love birds get each other for Valentine’s Day, Chasez? Or is it too XXX-rated to even talk about? Say some heart-shaped chocolates with gooey centers and matching silk boxers with rainbow kissy imprints on them?”
“Maybe Lance got ‘em a sweet deal on a pair of flaming hot-pink dildos and other boy-boy sex novelties,” Joey chuckles.
“No, wait. J got you a new man-purse, didn’t he, Jace? That was his thing this year. And Louis Vuitton had a buy-one-get-one-free sale going on that day, right?” Chris cackles.
JC laughs too, although he’d planned to sneer. “Congratulations to you both. You’re officially the most hilarious goobers on the planet. The Dorkwad Twins That Never Grew Up. Dumbasses.”
“So how’d you two really celebrate, C? Something romantic and juicy? Candles lit, all soft and flickering in the shadows, around the steamy hot tub, some sexy Usher ballads purring from the stereo, a little Cristal for two chilling on ice, the two of you making waves in that warm water, say, Brokeback Mountain style? Hmm?” Joey winks as he saunters over, speaking quietly, glancing at a potential angle to shoot from.
JC hoists his cue stick up and pokes at Joey’s arm with the tip. “Man! Shut up! No, that is so not how things went down at all. I mean we’re not chicks, for chrissakes.”
“Oh, really? Sure ‘bout that, Chasez? I suggest you check again.”
Another playfully sharp glare comes from JC’s eyes, along with a grin he can’t tame. “Ass clown.”
“Yeah, CK. What he said. Ass clown.”
JC shakes his head at both of them. “No. None of that sickeningly sweet romance stuff on V-Day for us. Since you’re both so insanely interested. We’re dudes. Not mushy chicks. Dig?”
“So. Stop hedging, man. We’re all on the level. What did go down then with you and J? Well, besides the two of you going down on each other?” Joey snickers. And Chris looks amused, like he always does, pumping his beer up and down in his fist a little, thumb covering the top, so as to produce that frothy foam he adores so.
JC shrugs. It’s a little hard to explain to these guys - or maybe to just remind them - how February 14th has never been an especially momentous day for Justin and himself like it is for lots of other couples. Sure, it’s the traditional day for lovers to celebrate and all that jazz. And sure, he and Justin are lovers - have been for about a decade or so of Valentine’s Days now.
But traditional couple? See? No. No way. Not him and Justin. Never. In fact, so completely out of the ordinary were they that they had always figured they needed to pick a different day of the year - one all their own - to celebrate what they have, what they are to each other. And, well, it had usually been a random day during the year they decided on - one when they were both not busy working and could meet up somewhere to be alone together. But, the past couple of years, the day had been chosen for them - by a few of their fans - a red-letter day with a special quirky significance that appealed to them both. And, without disclosing (or exposing) this guilty little pleasure to hardly anyone else, they had taken to making sure that particular day was cleared completely and set aside for each other.
It’s their day. And it’s coming up this weekend. He’s looking forward to it like crazy, as anxiously and as hotly as he knows Justin is too.
Yes, it’s a little difficult to stand here in the lower level of his house and try and explain to his long-time buddies in front of him that exquisite, secret rush of anticipation that makes him feel jittery inside. Maybe they wouldn’t understand. Maybe he doesn’t want them to.
“What’d we do? Hmm. Let’s see. The usual. Quiet dinner at my place, bottle of wine in front of the fireplace. We talked and laughed and then……..well, you know.”
“And the Chimaera? She was……..?”
“Away. Filming. J left the next day to hook up with her in London.”
“So she got sloppy seconds. Like always. Nice.”
Joey’s expression wrinkles. He’s puzzled. “Back up. The what-the-fuck? I never got why you call her that, Kirkpatrick. ‘Splain, please, dude.”
“The Chimaera. It - no, she - is a mythical, well, creature. Google it. You’ll see the major resemblance immediately, man. Snake, goat, lion. All in one body. Breathing fire, slaying innocent photographers right and left, can’t be beat down by even the mightiest, the whole works.” Chris shudders at his own words. “Yeah. Scary. Trust me.”
JC laughs, free and loud, laying his head back languidly and crinkle-closing his eyes. He’s heard pretty much all of their lovely terms of affection for Cameron. Joey is fond of “Vampirella on Steroids.” Lance uses “The She-Demon.” Chris has several “pet” names he likes to go with, although he’ll tell you straight up that you can’t call them “pet” names since his theory is that Ms. Diaz isn’t house-broken enough to actually qualify as a “pet.” Even Justin himself has referred to her as “The Wife” in public before - with far more bitterness than endearment, JC had heard in his tone that day they were hanging out together at the basketball game and the damn press had somehow caught up with them.
JC is still chuckling. It’s fun sometimes to hear their disapproval and dislike of her seep out in the guise of their jokes and teasing. It’s healthy too, to release it. Because she doesn’t really bother them, see. Any of them. They don’t really give much of a damn about her and her well-documented snooty contempt for them at all. It’s a reciprocal sentiment, he knows. She’d prefer to pretend none of them exist either. He knows this too. She’d especially prefer to pretend that he didn’t exist. Him and the part of Justin that is his alone, the part that she’ll never reach, never sink her greedy, hateful fangs into, never even see, let alone have for her own.
JC smiles now, turning his beer up again. None of that - her - eats at his soul any longer. Nope. He got off that go-nowhere highway about 19 exits ago. No more letting it hurt. No more wasting misery and jealousy on it. Not even any more heated arguments with Justin about it that never resolved anything but just brought more pain and suffering. He’d simply moved on, put it behind him, closed his heart to its monstrous persuasions. Indeed, learned to separate what’s important from what’s not.
These days, he just sticks to referring to her as “What’s-her-ma-call-it” or maybe “Camera” or “Carmen,” which he knew from Justin that she absolutely detested, or maybe whatever trips off the end of his tongue at the moment. When he must refer to her at all, you see. Indifference sure felt tons better snuggling around the ol’ heart muscle than 24/7 loathing did.
“Kirkpatrick, you kill me, man! That’s harsh, but I love it! Get your own Showtime special, dude. Sometimes you are seriously funny.”
Chris sidesteps the off-hand compliment. He has an agenda. “So? No lovey-dovey stuff last month for you and Timberlake then? Not even after the lovey-dovey holiday, like when he got back from across the pond? No gifts or anything?”
JC sighs weakly, feigning exasperation, loving it all. “Dude! What the hell about ‘no’ are you not comprehending? For his big 2-5, I got him all kinds of things he’s been lusting after. He liked every one of them. He was satisfied. You can trust me on this one.”
“Yeah. I’ll just bet,” Chris smirks and rolls his eyes, swimming in typical sarcastic flair. “So for V-Day two weeks later, he gave you nothing? Nothing Don Juan-ish and amorous? You’re his boyfriend, last time I heard.”
JC looks away, blushing pink, just a little. “Give it a rest, CK. He doesn’t need to give me heart-warming sentimental gifts and shit to lemme know how he feels.” He drops his voice to a soft murmur, without realizing it, talking to the carpeted floor rather than to his friends. “Besides, I’ve got all I need and want, ya know……except maybe putting down the final vocal touches on that song he’s helping me out with……for my new record. I could really go for that.”
“So light a fire under his ass, C!”
“No, man. No way. He’s busy with lots of other projects. His own record, the acting thing……He’ll get around to it when he has time. I know.”
The other two barely hear JC. They’re scrutinizing the pool table, plotting game strategy.
“So your boy’s not the sentimental-fool type, eh, C?” Joey says distractedly, shaking his head as if this revelation is a damn crying shame. “Damn crying shame, that. Tsk, tsk. So tragic.”
Chris laughs a shrill laugh, and JC knows they’d be slapping more mid-air high-fives if they were on the same side of the table now. He huffs, squint-glaring at them.
“Hello? Maybe you missed the first 76 kazillion times I said it! There was no awesome, grand display of romance for us. No. I mean not like the sappy, trite stuff you’re both going on and on about. And that was perfectly fine with me. We don’t need all that crap. It’s not like we haven’t been together, like, for- what?”
“Forever,” Chris and Joey chime in unison.
Then they laugh. They’re just messing with JC. Their friend. It’s unspoken among them all. As long as things are tight and good between him and their other friend, Justin, then they’re okay with whatever else might be going on and getting fucked up in the rest of the universe. And, Chris and Joey can sense here, their buddies are fine with each other. Maybe not physically together as much as they once were, but still fine with each other. Still so much in love.
“Just make sure you keep it that way too, man,” Chris says “sternly,” furrowing his brow.
“Yeah, dude. Same as I told J last weekend back in LA,” Joey adds in agreement, adopting his for-Brihana-only tone and pointing at JC with his beer bottle. “You two always had a good thing working. Keep it real. And don’t let shit that doesn’t mean anything come between you and make you lose sight of each other, C. Dig?”
JC half-smiles, half-swallows back a warm thick lump that’s just propelled itself up out of his gut into his throat like that mysterious gloppy stuff in a lava lamp. “Gotcha. Both of yas……J and me, we’ve come this far. We’ll keep it going strong if I have my way about it. Bet your last nickel on that one, baby.”
~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~
Justin doesn’t hear this conversation taking place down in Winter Haven among some people in his life who are all quite close to him. He’s out in the greater Los Angeles area, enjoying the warm days of sunshine, enjoying his freedom while Cam is off doing another movie over in the U.K. or wherever the hell she is now. Doesn’t matter. Not to him. She’s got her “people” around her now to deal with her, to listen to her, to try and put up with her and her zero-to-completely-unreasonable-in-5.2-seconds. Let ‘em get a taste of how explosive rage and frightening insanity are just two more everyday, uncompromising moods for her. Let ‘em earn those big-ass personal-assistant salaries. It was their nightmare now. Not his. At least for a few more sweet, peaceful days.
No, he misses out on the chatter/banter going down between his friends and his boyfriend. But that certainly doesn’t preclude him from knowing the gist of what they’re all saying. Oh, yeah. He’s aware. He’s heard it before. From Joe and Chris. Most recently from Lance. When he and Lance had hooked up for a discreet (hopefully) lunch at a side-street sushi house down in the valley a couple of days ago.
“I want to go all out, man. The works. Something over-the-top, no-holds-barred romantic for him. ‘Cause, see, it’s been a long time since we went down that road. We just don’t do that shit anymore, and I want to bring it back. Know what I mean?”
“Went down what road, J?” Lance repeats a little absently, as if he hasn’t been listening carefully. “The honey-sweet, starry-eyed, lovesick romantic one?” What he is doing carefully is selecting and dipping with his chopsticks.
“Yes. Exactly.”
“Okay. Cool. I hear ya. You want to breathe a new pulse back into your love life, huh? Revive the old magic? That it?”
Justin frowns and shakes his head, flustered. He hasn’t explained himself well enough. “No. Not when you put it like that. It’s not that we’re stagnant or dead or anything like that.”
Lance looks up, stops him with a cool, green stare. “Wait. You’re talking about you and JC, right? Not you and her?”
Justin has to chuckle. “Right. I said ‘not’ stagnant and dead, didn’t I? Gimme a break. So anyway. He and I, we’re not. Dead or stagnant. I just want to spice up the romantic side of things for us again. I want to surprise him with something really sweet and affectionate, something deep-felt and thoughtful, something loverly, something he totally won’t be expecting from me, to express how much I care about him……Man, it’s been so long since I just let go and did something sentimental and mushy for him like that, you know, just for the sake of sentimental and mushy. He probably gave up thinking I ever could or would again.”
“Something ‘loverly’?” Lance glances up from his meal again, raises eyebrows.
“C’mon, Lance. You know what I mean.”
Lance taps a square saucer with his chopstick, chewing at the inside of his lip. “Something ideally enchanting, music from the heartstrings, as it were. To show him, front and center, how totally smitten and boy-crazy you are with him. Still.”
“Yes!” Justin lights up, blue eyes shining, encouraged and thrilled that Lance is “getting it.”
“To let him know, even if it’s borderline silly and syrupy sweet, that you can be Casanova and Romeo all rolled into one tall, lanky glob. Just for him.” Lance smiles with puffed jaws, after plopping another chilled pillow of grade-A salmon between his lips.
“Now you’re talking, man! That’s totally where I’m coming from! Don’t you think he’ll like it? Hokey or not? He’s such a romantic at heart, Lance, deep down. Really, he is. He’s always doing nice, sensual little unnecessary things for me when I’m least expecting them. Like, for my birthday, he sent me the most adorablest Yahoo! e-card message to my cell phone. It had the sweetest note on it. I swear almost made me cry.”
“Oh. Those retarded things. Aren’t they, like, free? Cheap bastard.” Lance’s eye roll is quick and subtle. He’s reaching for another piece of nigiri with his chopsticks.
“Lance! So what if they’re free? Back off!” Justin screeches in a whisper but eventually smiles. The memory catches him, warms him. “It was a sweet thing to do.”
“It’s the thought that counts, I guess,” Lance answers dryly.
“Well, the ‘thought’ that he wrote it especially for me, man. It was all mine. From his heart. And that means more to me than all of that other expensive stuff he gave me combined.”
Across the low lacquered table, Lance is examining, as best as he can in the restaurant’s dim lighting, one of the paper napkins the waiter has just laid down for them. It’s off-white and decorated with brightly colorful cartoon images of desserts - ice cream cones, slices of pie, cupcakes, milkshakes, chocolate covered strawberries - all with weirdly giddy facial expressions, as if they’re overjoyed to about to be eaten. He snorts.
“Well. Sounds like an awesome plan, J. JC loves surprises. And it seriously gets him going when somebody does something neat especially for him. Like he thinks he doesn’t deserve it or whatever. But you know. You’ve seen it. I don’t have to tell you how humble and modest the dude is.” Lance savors another sauced bite off the tips of the sticks. “But, um, wasn’t Valentine’s Day, like, last month?”
Justin huffs a little impatiently, but that stoked enthusiasm inside never falters. “It’s not for Valentine’s Day, man. We’ve got our own little private day coming up. Like this Saturday. You know?”
Lance lifts his eyes again to look at Justin, and the vivid emerald-ness of them is slightly hooded. He waves the napkin of animated foodstuffs between his fingers and shakes his head skeptically.
“See this? Yeah. Classy joint here. Very Japanese too. Nice choice, J.”
“C’mon, Lance. Help me out here. Will JC really enjoy something like that or not, man? You’re his friend. You know him.”
“He will, man. I told you. He’s got lots of romantic bones in his body. But hey. You’d know that better than me, J. So hit it. Rock his socks off with some hot-for-ya sexy, sentimental, gushy surprise present of affection. My guess is that it’ll go over like fireworks.”
Justin’s practically squirming in the dark booth with churning anticipation, with tingly pleased-with-myself excitement. This is exactly what he’d wanted to hear.
“Fantastic. So you’ll help me come up with something unprecedented and worthy then?”
Lance rolls his eyes again, more pronounced this time. “What? Do I look like the romantic type to you, dude?”
“Lance,” Justin purrs. “Pleazzze.”
“What’s Saturday again? Refreshen me on the details.”
Justin licks his dark-pink lips and raises his hands from off the table to help him explain, anxious and willing to dish the scoop. Pardon the bad pun on those god-awfully tasteless napkins.
“March 18th. Our special day. Me and JC. Or, for short, JuC. Sometimes Joshtin, depending on your particular preference.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard all the quaint little ‘pairing’ names, thanks. My particular preference is JC and Justin.”
“You’re such a cynic, Lance. And, hello, buzz kill.”
“Sorry. For you. So go on. What’s so special about that day, if I may be so bold and cynical as to ask?”
Justin grins, happy for the green light to proceed. “Our birthdays, like, mixed together. The 31st - mine. And the 8th - his. Three-one-eight.”
Lance purses his lips and eyes the sushi platter again, contemplating, choosing. “Dude, those Internet fans of yours are all kinds of clever, aren’t they?”
“More like brilliant, I say. I mean they don’t even really know that we are real. Our couple-y-ness or whatever you want to call it is like a myth to them. They’ve got no actual proof. They just believe in us being together so much ‘cause it’s how they truly want reality to be. It’s totally amazing, Lance, all the stuff they work so damn hard on and then bring out to show on that day. To show appreciation for a love between two dudes they hope is really there. Know what I’m talking about? It takes days, I’m saying, to read, watch, and listen to it all. You should check it out, man, when you’re not busy, you know, dicking around with MySpacing and crap.”
“Thanks and all. But I’ll pass. You and C knock yourselves out. ‘Kay?”
Justin wriggles in his seat again, biting at the edge of a fingernail but forgetting about the spread of sushi entirely. “Yeah, we will. We always do. So. Now I’ve gotta think of something cool to give him Saturday. Something……” Justin’s cheeks bulge with his pushed out breath. “Perfect”
“Something romantic?”
“Yep. Got an ideas to toss out?”
Lance sighs, reaches for his cup of sake. “Again. What’s up with making me out to be the personal trainer of romance here, Timberlake?”
“Well, you’ve always got a hot boyfriend in your corner, dude. Must be doing something right.” Justin smiles over the table, subtle and challenging. “Okay. With the exception of Hernandez. Yuck.”
“Hey. Don’t be busting on Freddy. He likes you.”
“Whoa. Congratulations to me.”
Slowly, with the edge of his tongue, Lance dabs at the strong, bitter residue of alcohol on his lower lip, gazing across the dishes of food at his friend. Somewhere, in the back of his memory, he’s pretty sure he’s heard JC say those exact words before. Man. Those two.
“And you’ve always got the same hot boyfriend in your corner, man. So maybe I should be hitting you up for romantic secrets.”
Justin laughs, feathery, free, easy. Then the sound, his whole smooth face, simmers down to an emotion-driven smile and a lyrical whisper.
“I love him, Lance. With all my heart. Always and always. And I don’t ever want him to forget that.”
Lance studies him for a soft moment, watches the shades of his eyes change and then change again, even in these shadows, as if what fills him up and burns inside is causing their depths to shift and then resettle again. Then Lance smiles too.
“Justin, man, you are so gorgeous when you talk about him like that. It’s so all over you, inside and out, that your relationship with him is real, is stronger than forever. I see the same thing in him when he’s babbling on about you. It’s, like, undeniable what you’re both feeling, dude. So, you know, maybe your JuC support group or whatever with their special day set aside for you guys, maybe they’ve picked up on it too. Maybe they can see it like I do. Maybe they’re on to you two. Maybe they really do know you’re actually together. And that’s why they’ve got so much time and energy vested in this occasion. That’s why they love making a big deal over y’all like they do every year.”
Justin considers this. He’s considered it before. “Maybe.”
“You’ll think of something cool to give your man. I’ll help you.”
“Thanks, man. I appreciate it like you don’t even know.”
“And Justin.”
Justin lifts his eyebrows into sleek, thick, curved arches, questioning, waiting, listening. “Hmm?”
“I don’t ever want there to come a day when I look at you and don’t see that - that gorgeousness of JC all over you. You got me, man?”
Justin grins, cheeks afire, chokes out a delicate snicker. “Nah, man. Don’t sweat that one. That day won’t ever come. Never. I promise. It doesn’t fucking exist.”
~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~
Justin’s a little nervous on Saturday evening, he has to admit. He’s been a little nervous - and a lot anxious - all day, waiting for the perfectly right moment.
The infamous surprise for JC he’s finally settled on and totally happy with is all his idea - although Lance’s morsels of suggestions had provided the initial inspiration in helping him come to the perfectly right choice. And he’s sure it’s the flawless, the impeccable one. But, still, he can’t help himself. He’s a little nervous.
JC, his boyfriend, is a real romantic, down in there, behind that pretty exterior, even if he wouldn’t admit it and doesn’t always let it out. He can be so gentle and kind and loving in special, unique, very genuine ways - usually spontaneous and unexpected - that come from places inside him where the artist’s soul in him lives. Justin’s always known this. He’s felt it, been the off-guard and overwhelmed recipient of it many times through the years. And not only has he adored and worshipped this beautiful trait about JC, he’s envied it too. He’s longed to make JC’s eyes blaze with that same unsuspecting shock, that same startled amazement at something he’s done all for him, because he loves him so much.
“Unreal, isn’t it, babe? It’s like they threw a big ol’ shindig just for us. Unbelievable,” JC coos against the base of Justin’s throat. It’s warm and light, just like his long body is warm and light resting on Justin’s as they lay together on the wide sofa in Justin’s TV room that evening.
The stereo’s playing something downbeat and relaxing in the background, and the plasma television isn’t even turned on. They’ve got Justin’s new multimedia powerhouse notebook balanced in front of them, still scrolling through and clicking on the many, many links to various “gifts” to them from the tons of people all over the world gathered in this one spot on the ‘Net to celebrate them on this day deemed their day and put aside to love the two of them for how they love each other.
Justin shivers with the silky heat of JC’s words on his neck. It’s the same coo JC had awakened him with this morning - or rather early afternoon - as they’d slept in, all alone together in the huge house, all alone together in the huge bed.
Disoriented and completely vulnerable as sleep had let go of him and waking had begun to dawn in around him again, Justin hadn’t been sure if he and JC had been snoozing all spooned up against each other like this, using only about a quarter of the mattress, or not. But he wouldn’t have doubted that they had. It’s a developed instinct for them now to savor the precious nights they get to spend beside each other.
“Morning, babe,” had been purred and splashed, so sweet and gentle, so hot and sexual, across his earlobe and the back of his neck. Steam from JC’s mouth, making him tremble and writhe backward in the warmth, the firmness of JC’s body wrapping around him like a blanket; the heat, the hardness of JC’s cock pressing against the under slope of his ass cheek; the electricity, the smoothness of JC’s hand slipping over his hipbone and finding his erection, folding flesh around flesh and sliding into the ache beginning to fill out his balls.
“Just what I was dreaming about……you……hard and hot……and smelling so……so good……so come-on-let’s-go-at-it-again.”
“Jace,” Justin had groaned, thick and raspy, squirming under JC’s tight-velvet grip, rocking his hips back against the burning thrust of JC’s crotch. “You’re so……insatiable,” he hisses and grabs at the sheets tangled around them.
“Just wanted to do it all properly today,” JC whispers and grunts at the ridge of his collarbone, grinding hard heat into him. “You know……wake you up the way you oughta be waked up.”
Justin’s brain is groggy, weakened by sleep and by JC’s staggeringly hypnotic effect on him. The man is so limber and warm - and so fucking hard - behind him. He’s not sure he’s heard him correctly. If it even matters.
“Did you say, um, you’re way corrupt,” he moans, sighs. “Because damn. That’s the truth of all truths, sweetness.”
JC writhes against him, fire-born friction on his naked flesh, and laughs with lots of hot breath. “I said ‘wake you up,’ brat. Not ‘way corrupt.’ So damn funny, aren’t you?”
“Wuzzunt trying to be funny.”
It hadn’t been much of a surprise, when his senses had started reviving to reality again, to discover that the room still held that lingering scent of their lovemaking from the night - or even early this morning - before. He hadn’t even counted how many times they’d coupled and taken each other to oblivion.
Also not a big shocker had it been to feel, in the next few sultry seconds, the sweet sensation of JC’s solid cock - slick and warm from a squirt of the lube they must have left laying somewhere on the bed during the night’s activities - shove against his ass cheeks with more urgency, parting them and sliding in between, burrowing into the humid heat there until its rounded head found his opening, easing inside, long and thick, filling him inch by inch, until their bodies had been pressed flush against each other, front to back, warm and vibrating, again.
“Give me s’more of that sexy ass, baby.”
“Ah, fuck……Yesss, Jace……yesss.”
He’d been so hard and aroused that he’d almost shot his load immediately, all over JC’s fist that, ohmygod, stroked up and down his dick as that cock drove into him from behind and brushed his prostate like lick after lick of white-hot fire.
Damn. What a way to start the day “properly” that had been. A few more like that one, please?
Now, JC is stretched out and snuggled up next to him on the sofa here. And Justin knows the man is erect again. He can feel it against his thigh. And he’s not complaining.
They’ve already had to take a couple of necessary breaks from their perusing of this Web site to relieve some of the, um, sensual pressure that keeps building up in both of them. Yeah, put that in the no-surprise-here folder too. JC loves the “porn-lovely” stories, as he calls them, the ones with the graphic erotic detail about them having sex, that these marvelously talented people who don’t even know them have been so kind to write about them.
And Justin doesn’t mind one bit if JC insists on reading them out loud, with his own crackhead-JC emphasis, for the both of them to, well, enjoy……and then pauses the narrative once in a while to re-enact certain favorite hot scenes that have gotten their blood flow revved up and racing.
And, jesuschristdamn, some of the ideas and scenarios these folks have come up with! Just whoa. Damn. Even if he and JC have only done some of this wild sexed up shit in those authors’ horny, perverted little imaginations up to this point, he knows for certain they’ll be trying some of it out tonight. Fuck yeah. His dick, his ass, and his mouth might be so sore they’ll fall right the fuck off come Sunday morning. But it’ll all be worth it.
“You think they know we’ve found this shit, Jace?”
“I think they sure as hell hope we have.”
“Congratulations to us that we did.”
“That’s totally what it feels like they’re trying to say with all this amazing creativity about us, babe. Congratulations to us.”
“They love us.”
“Yeah. In a unique and special way. Because we love each other……And I do, you know……love you, J.” JC shifts a little, against the long, warm body beneath him, turns his face upward to see his boyfriend. “I do.”
“I know,” Justin murmurs because he’s as surprised as he always is by the tender, pretty words and the tender, pretty lips that have formed them. “Love you too, sweetness. And I’ve always, like, celebrated it in my head. Even before these awesome folks made a big, wonderful day for us.”
Rachel had been the guilty party responsible for running across this whole phenomenon. She’d been playing around with her new Dell Axim Handheld she’d gotten for Christmas, surfing, Googling, experimenting. Justin hadn’t believed her at first when she’d called him up and said, sort of excitedly, for her anyway, that she’d found “an entire Live Journal Community devoted solely to this JuC Day thing, March 18th , dude! The background theme picture……everything……all about you and Jace. As a couple. Yeah. No kidding. There’s even a nifty little counter on the homepage to let you know how many days are left. Dude, you’ve got to give it a look.”
No, he didn’t believe. Until he’d seen it for himself. And then shown it to JC, clueing him in on the surrealness of it all too.
“Impressive. How do they come up with all this, man?” JC whispers, staring at the notebook again that’s perched on Justin’s lap, noticing two new contributions that had just been posted in the exclusive online community. “It all looks like they’ve been working their asses off on it for weeks.”
“Or maybe even months,” Justin whispers in return, silver-blue eyes reflecting the images on the laptop screen, long fingers caressing the short bristly hair at the nape of JC’s neck.
“They’re so fucking imaginative and creative. Man. Just wow.”
Among the offerings of celebration were short stories, long stories, chaptered stories (yes, with lots of delicious porny-rotic excess in all three), stories where they were themselves like in real life but also stories where they were regular dudes never in a boy band at all - such as where they were in high school or college, or married to each other with kids, or were gangsters or vampires or even lived in another era in history. There were pictures of them that had been Photoshopped together to look stunningly authentic, collections and montages of pictures of them that were all too real, screen caps and video footage of their tons of interaction with each other over the years, music videos like the ones on VH1 with clips of the two of them edited together and mixed beautifully with a special significant song as the soundtrack. And so, so much more.
“And, hey, look, babe. We’re ‘sparkly.’ That’s what they say. I like that. It’s neat.”
Justin chuckles, moving them both. “You’re sparkly.”
JC smiles. “Fine. Then you make me sparkle.”
“Oh. Is that how it is?”
“That’s exactly how it is.”
It hits Justin then, like a gentle bolt from out of the blue. That sudden euphoric feeling you sometimes get in your gut, the one that’s not a physical tingle as much as it is a warm glow, spreading and enlightening. The sense, the assurance from within, that everything is going to be all right.
“I have something for you, Jace. Something I wanted to give you on this day, you know, of ours.”
JC groans a little as he twists to sit up, propping on his elbow and turning to Justin again. “For real?”
“For real. Well, two somethings, actually. But I’ll hold onto one of them ‘til after dinner, maybe.”
“Wow. ‘Cause you know what? I have a little sum’um-sum’um for you too, babe. Great minds, eh?”
Justin laughs a small, cloudlike, nervous laugh, even though he’s not much nervous anymore. “You do? You weren’t supposed to get me-”
“Shut up.” JC raises Justin’s T-shirt and kisses the taut skin over one of his ribs as he leans across his body and reaches for the Sports Illustrated laying askew on the coffee table - the semi-risqué swimsuit issue Justin had brought home just to piss Princess Diaz off.
He flips open a few pages until he finds the small, baby-blue envelope he’s had tucked away in there. “Here, babe,” he says softly, passing it to Justin and dropping the magazine. “I’m ‘supposed’ to do what I want. Not what you try and tell me to.”
“Sneaky bastard. It was hiding there all along, wasn’t it? Right in front of me.”
“Open it.”
“Duh,” Justin smirks, then smiles, taking the envelope and carefully breaking the seal, breathing easy with the sweet euphoria still fluttering in his abdomen.
~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~
Roses are red
Violets are blue
I might like chocolate chip mint ice cream
But I love making the big bang with you
JC watches him read the corny little verse, follows the eyes that are bluer than the paper the words are written on as they skim the lines, left to right. He grins because he knows his lover will be surprised, flustered, maybe even speechless, and won’t know how to react at first. And he adores this Justin. Caught-off-guard, befuddled Justin is rare and beautiful.
“Okay, Jace. That’s, um, charming,” he whispers with that crooked half-smile of his that smites JC every time. “An original too, I’m sure. Very about sex. Very you.”
Justin glances upward at him then, only his eyes in motion, and silently mouths: Horny bastard.
JC chuckles. “Turn it over. Like it says at the bottom.”
Justin looks at the note again. “Down here? Where it says ‘over’? With this weird crooked little arrow-like drawing thing pointing to the other side, in case I get lost or something?”
“Duh.”
“Ass.”
JC watches again as Justin’s fine fingers trace over some of the crazy doodling he’d done around the edges of the blue sheet - random creative shit that just oozed its way out of his head somehow and down to his writing hand as he was trying to come up with something good enough to say to the guy today. And what he’d finally decided on - after the paper, like a canvas, had been mostly covered with the wild representations from his mind - was pretty much what he usually decided on. Something he truly meant.
No fooling around, babe. You’re the fire in my heart. Always and always.
Love,
Josh
They don’t have to complete the phrase any longer. Haven’t had to for years now. They both know the rest of it: Always have and always will.
That says it all for them.
“Gorgeous, Jace,” Justin whispers again, the rims of his eye sockets a little more full now. “You know the perfect words to use every time. You’re so……well……thoughtful and……loverly.”
JC reaches up to touch his smooth, flushed cheek, smiling. How can he resist? This is his Justin. No one else’s. “‘Loverly.’ That’s a good one. And those ‘perfect words’?……As long as you know I mean ‘em, babe.”
“I do, sweetness. I know.”
~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~
“Damn, J. What the hell have you gone and done here?”
“Hmm. Maybe not so much,” Justin says, a little meekly. “We’ll see. I mean, like, there’s more, something else for later, maybe after dinner, but this is what I was mainly trying to do.”
He has brought out the package he’s had stashed back in an unused bedroom - the package he’s been anxious and excited about giving to JC all day. It sits on glorious display on the wide coffee table, next to the open notebook that’s been momentarily forgotten.
Justin knows there are probably more contribution posts from those mega-talented fans for their big JuC Holiday. He and JC will get back to them later. Right now, his heart’s racing, a not-so-patient tremor of anticipation for what might happen in the next few moments.
“Well, it’s certainly, let’s say, flamboyant, isn’t it?” JC snickers, reaching out to breathlessly caress the professionally decorated square gift box - wrapped tightly and adorned neatly in heavy, matte sheets of alternating rose-pink and pearl-white paper, topped off with a matching pink and white bow made from what looks to be hundreds of yards of intertwined cascading curly ribbons.
Justin is proud of how elegant and sharp it looks. It’s not a huge box, but it’s big enough. And it’s thick and sturdy too. It’ll last a damn long time.
He exhales deeply, freely, as he sees JC’s gaze scan over it again, admiring and wondering. He’s glad now that he took his time and went all over, first West Hollywood and then over to Melrose, to find exactly what he’d been searching for.
And if he could have 37 hundred thousand more afternoons like this one with JC - alone and just flowing easy together - he knows he might still wish for just one more.
“Well? Go on, sweetness. Open it.”
The piercing heat of JC’s teal-blue eyes grabs Justin and holds him. There’s a sly smile to go along with that heat, melting Justin’s insides completely.
“Duh.”
~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~
“Hmm. Outrageous box, babe,” JC murmurs, carefully placing it back on the table in front of him, now that he’s unwrapped it, as if it’s very heavy, as if he’s not sure what to say next.
Because, see, he’s not sure what to say next. The box isn’t very heavy at all. In fact, it’s as light as a feather. “Beautiful and dazzling, I’m saying……..Even sparkly, as they call us on the Web, eh?”
It is beautiful, the box. A showstopper, for sure. Very eye-popping and captivating, to say the least. A glossy platinum shade with a subtle kaleidoscope pattern, small adjoining circles each of which also glow with color of its own - luminescent shimmers of blues and lavenders, sunflower-gold, and pale crimson that come to life as the box is shifted and they catch the dance of the light, almost like a refractive metallic rainbow.
Justin grins, sighs breathily. “Took me a century to find the right one, the one to go with your, um, rare, one-of-a-kind style.”
JC takes that as the compliment it was meant to be. “Thanks, babe. It really is hot. Can I see what’s inside?” he asks, not missing the shivery squirm of Justin’s reaction to the question.
“Absolutely.”
It’s something lightweight and delicate, JC guesses to himself and refrains from shaking the box for hints. Maybe that new Versace neck scarf he’d been dying for and didn’t get for Christmas. Or maybe a Gummy Bear cock ring Justin plans to slowly devour off him later and drive him insane. Hmm. Endless possibilities for something so weightless.
“Ahh.” He lets out like a soft hum as he lifts the thick lid off and peeks into the shadowy interior. He sees nothing at first. Then, pulling the premium-made, obviously designer-quality box closer, looking deeper……he stills sees nothing in there. Except a soft lining made of taut black velvet.
Justin laughs, but it’s a jittery, high-toned strain that JC hears. A trying-not-to-sound-nervous nervous sound. He glances up at him with his best oh-okay-I-get-it smile.
“Oh. Okay. I get it.”
“Do you?”
“Ah, not really.” But it’s an ass-kicking stunner of an EMPTY box, man. I’ll give the baby that.
Justin breathes in and out slowly, eyes clear and focused on him, intense warmth rolling off him in waves. “I, well……I was going for all-out, wow-you-off-your-feet romantic, see……which I almost never seem to do for you anymore. Like ever. So, hence, this.”
JC is perplexed but patient. He checks out the box again, smiles with a raised eyebrow, and looks at Justin once more. “Tricked-out secret compartments or something? Hidden chambers I havta figure out, right? Like that fucked-up puzzle box in those Pinhead movies?”
Justin giggles, and JC notices it’s a little easier, a lot gentler. “Not quiet, Jace.”
“Should I keep guessing?” he asks, because he honestly doesn’t know how to proceed next. He doesn’t want to rush Justin, to spoil whatever the guy has planned here. He loves, see, that little pinkish flush of anticipation splashed across those lovely cheekbones. He’ll wait. For as long as it takes.
“Nah. Guessing is over. Lemme just end your suspense and clue you in, sweetness.”
“Shoot.” JC’s anxious, caught up in Justin’s giddy, spirited mood, but he tries to stay cool. He smiles while dabbing moisture from the tip of his tongue over his lower lip. “‘Cause this empty-box gift-giving game is a new one on me, man. Can’t wait to hear this one.”
Justin shimmies his butt on the sofa and scoots a little closer to JC as he reaches out to touch the blue and white knit shirt JC wears, maybe for reinforcement. Maybe just to touch some part of him. He grins, features so animated, body movements so punchy.
“Okay. Well. It’s like this……And, just so you know, there’s something else too, but that’s for later, but, well, anyway……The box looks empty, right? But it’s not. I filled it up myself, see, with a million kisses……and a million hugs……a million smiles……and a million I-Love-Yous just for you, Jace. All for you.”
He pauses and sighs, as if that had been a strenuous mouthful. Then he remembers one more tiny detail he’s almost left out. And he meets JC’s bright eyes again. His grin is another planet’s sun.
“Oh. Almost forgot a very important part. Duh. Since I know what a sex-crazed beast you are, ha-ha, this little corner right here? See? Full of breath-taking, mind-blowing, send-you-over-the-moon orgasms of unlimited quantity. From me to you, sweetness. My sum-total and all-inclusive package of sweet-hot romance. All for you. All in this shiny silver box. Surprise, Jace.”
JC lets out a deep breath he’s been building and holding as Justin spoke. He’s surprised all right. He’s overwhelmed, dumbstruck, reeling. Falling in love all over again. For the millionth time.
“Justin……I don’t know what to say.”
And he really doesn’t. He can’t even decide how to react, how to find an expression for his face, how to move, how to breathe, he’s so emotionally floored, so driven to his knees. He glances at the shimmery platinum box again, seeing it in a whole new light now, in a perspective of a different universe entirely.
Then he glances at Justin, suddenly taking it all in, suddenly understanding, suddenly feeling the heat of it all close love around love all around him, suddenly aching to touch him, to hold him, to press his mouth to that warm, red one.
How long has he sat here doing nothing at all? How many damn moments has he just been frozen to this sofa, acting witless, zombie-ish, not responding whatsoever? Oh, man. Oh, fuck.
“Justin,” he whispers his name again, sensing that he’s missed something very important, very sensitive, something he should have been paying closer attention to.
Justin’s not meeting his eyes. The blue-blue ones are darted away from his. Justin is fidgeting with the pink and white wrappings now strewn across the table, silently cleaning up.
“I love it, babe. Talk about wowing me over the edge……This is some kind of knock-me-on-my-ass surprise……”
“That was sort of the point.”
“And it worked. I do adore it, J.”
Justin shrugs - mechanically, absently - crunching the very expensive paper between his palms. “You don’t have to say that. It was just a silly-as-fuck, brainless little idea. Too dorky. Too girlie. Too dumb. I should have known better. Whatever. Forget it.”
Justin’s restrained voice is terse, tense. Not in a key JC is very fond of. Nor can he harmonize to it.
“J, listen. It wasn’t any of that at all. I just……” He just what? Whatthefuck to say now? Wherethehell were all those “perfect words” when he needed them?
“Don’t sweat it, JC. Forget about it. Say, let’s get a pizza. ‘Kay? I’m famished. How ‘bout I order one while you catch a shower? Didn’t you say earlier you wanted to do that?”
“Yeah,” JC mumbles, watching as Justin very deliberately avoids looking at him, feeling the throb in his gut as he mentally kicks himself there over and over. “I did. Don’t worry about this mess. I made it. I’ll tidy it up.”
“Got it. No problem,” Justin spits out in a clipped monotone, jumping up with a crumpled wad of pink and white that had been so beautiful just moments before. Brusquely, he snatches at the bow of ribbons that’s fallen on the notebook and then, as if an afterthought, snaps the screen shut quickly before turning toward the kitchen. “Giani’s okay with you? I’ll call in sec.”
Feeling an icy jab in his ribcage now, JC swallows back calling after him again. He knows it won’t do any good. Not right now. Can’t talk to him when he’s like this. Damnit.
Justin is gone from the room in a cold flash, taking the flow of natural, gorgeous energy with him.
“Giani’s is perfect, babe……I love the gift……I love you.”
“Yeah. Me too,” Justin’s voice echoes back from the kitchen, devoid of emotion. And as vacant as the box had appeared to JC at first.
~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~
Justin grabs for the seat belt, behind him and to his left, as his speed accelerates past 40, up to 45, and then closer to 50. This curvy residential road he lives on, up in the winding hills above LA, has two distinct lanes, one going each way, but he’s not paying very much attention except to try and stay in his own.
He doesn’t even bother pressing the stereo system’s ON knob because 1) he’s not especially in much of a rocking-out or jamming mood right now, and 2) he absolutely doesn’t want to luck out on any lame radio stations in the area rambling on about how they’re “getting busy with some golden oldies from back in the day on a tripping Saturday evening in the Land of Lah-Lah,” and then popping in “Blowing Me Up” or “Cry Me A River.”
Bitch, please. Yeah, just no. He can do without the tunes just now, thanks and all.
He’d ordered the deep-dish pie like he’d said he would - doubled all of their favorite toppings and then piled on extra cheese to boot. He’d used the number block privacy protector on his cell when he’d called, of course. And while he’d rattled off the ingredients with a distinctively rattled voice, he’d suddenly decided to use a fake name and go and pick the fucker up. Something else he most definitely wasn’t in the mood for right now - some hotshot pizza delivery asshole/wannabe celebrity stalker begging for an autographed headshot of him or - a gajillion times worse - of Cameron.
He needs some fresh air anyway, doesn’t he? Walk around, stretch the ol’ legs, clear his head. He’d stop somewhere when he got closer to Giani’s and grab another case of beers too. They’d hardly put a dent in the stash of cold ones he had in the fridge this afternoon - What? A couple each or so? - but he was thinking more and more now that he might just feel like tying one on later tonight. Yeah. A big one. Jot beers down on the to-get list. Absolutely. Maybe a whole backseat full.
JC hadn’t liked his surprise.
In fact, he hadn’t liked it so damn much that he’d been too appalled to even to pretend at first he did like it. Or maybe too embarrassed to.
He’d hated it.
He’d thought it was the dumbest, most fucked-up fucking gift anyone had ever called themselves trying to give a person. It had been so throbbingly obvious in his blank, can’t-say-a-damn-thing-about-this-shit stare. Hell, he hadn’t even been able to look at Justin at first.
And wasn’t that just the greatest emotional indicator of all? That he hadn’t wanted Justin to see in those deep, beautiful windows to the soul how disappointed and repulsed he’d been at the whole concept of that crazy box?
Why, Justin wonders silently, heaping blame on himself and gripping the leather-covered steering wheel way too tightly, had he ever thought it was a cool idea anyway? Why hadn’t he run it by Lance or somebody just for an outsider opinion? And how much of a he-tard had he been to let that fucking box idiocy pass through the security checkpoint in his brain for sane and acceptable? Why couldn’t he have offered something as simple and sweet and still so meaningful as what JC had given him?
What the hell had he been thinking?
Yeah, he’d had to get out of that house, take a drive, watch the sun go down. The entire idea was a mistake that shouldn’t have happened but could be easily forgotten right? JC would laugh it off as just another one of Justin’s little flaky, totally mental quirks, wouldn’t he? He’d call it “hormonal” and tell him he needed some Midol with Lithium, wouldn’t he?
Justin sighs, long and loud. He loves being in the Jeep. The Jeep is comfortable, quiet, spirit-releasing, and easier to handle than some folks may think. He can unwind, here in the Jeep. All by himself. Here in the Jeep. He can forget - or at least pretend to - the horrible ache inside him now that his venture into high-style romance, his sentimental offering to the love of his life had been a total bust. The love of his life hadn’t “gotten it,” hadn’t been on the same wavelength with him, hadn’t given a damn about the stupid gesture at all. That much had been crystal clear.
And it hurts, he can’t deny. He can shovel all the blame for the failure, for even giving it a shot in the first place, on himself, sure. But, deep down, it hurts all the way to his very soul.
And now the Jeep. He’d chosen it after scribbling a quick note and then yanking some sneakers out of the hall closet back at the house. And by now, with the early-evening LA wind from the side window brushing his face and hair with a dry warmth, halfway down this hill, halfway to the pizza parlor, maybe he’s beginning to feel a little better. A little. Isn’t he? Or was that pretend too? He doesn’t even notice the speedometer needle kissing the 60 mph mark.
The next curve in the road isn’t a sharp or particularly twisty one, not even one he particularly remembers being there. But it’s one that beckons seductively and flirts quietly with the pull of the vehicle, one that demands to be hugged with smooth finesse, leaned into coolly for the long haul, one that, to Justin, seems to just keep stretching on and on, seems to keep coming and coming at you without end.
And, mind-out-in-Middle-Elsewhere as it is and eyes stinging with those damn stubborn teardrops that won’t listen to him and get the hell away, he doesn’t feel the vibrating wheel slip in his grasp, nor does he see the tall wooden barrier tucked away there in an alcove off to the left of the pavement……until it’s zooming straight up to meet him, right in front of his windshield.
Way, way too close to his windshield.
Whoa. How the hell did THAT get in the damn road? he thinks, vaguely, as he loses control of the sharp veer, as his head is thrown backward and then forward, and the Jeep’s powerful airbag swells around him like a cloud to soften a blow he never feels.
~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~
TBC......
Part 2
It started out as a short, sweet, fluffy thing......and then grew to be a longlonglong lots-of-everything-included-in-here thing. Still plenty of sweet-n-fluffy, though. I didn't lose sight of that. So I hope you like it. :)
For tons more JuC goodness, please take yourselves over to juc_day where this is being cross-posted. And indulge!
Big hugs and kisses to Bianca westchester_777 for her fast and expert beta turnaround. She's as important to me as my muse. Thank you, babes.
I warned you now. Longlonglong with some sweetandfluffy added in. Rated: TVMA.
ETA: I have to post it in two parts because LJ is being a shitty bitchface today and won't accept the full monty all in one swallow. Some LJ's kids, I swear. Argh.
By Micki Bailey
If I were the king of the world
Tell you what I’d do
I’d throw away the cars and the bars and the war
And make sweet love to you
Sing it now...
Joy to the world
All the boys and girls now
Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea
And joy to you and me
- Three Dog Night
“Well, then put on your pants, and let’s dance, Chasez!” Chris says with a wicked smirk he can make perfectly with his dark eyes alone. And maybe even enhance it a little with a surly twitch of the corner of his mouth. “You’re such a jet-setting hot-shot playa now and all, man. Can’t even flip on the ol’ laptop these days without getting slapped in the face with new pics of you getting your swill on with some RFBs, somewhere on the globe.”
“Dude. That’s exactly what I’m talking about! First, he’s down in A-town with Dallas, kicking it southern-style and chilling in the studio and making the party scene with the local radio station gigs and I don’t know what else. Then he’s up in N-Y-C, mooching folkez VIP seats at Fashion Week runway shows and such and bumping uglies on TV with that queen Isaac Whateverhisnameis at the wax museum. Then he’s out doing Vegas up right, night after night, hitting the strip and whooping it up at birthday parties for pseudo-celebrity little boys like Gallagher. Ah, and let’s not forget how he got all pimped-out and hot-looking for Oscar, strutting around in his tux that night with - what was her name? - Vanessa the Mannequin. Okay now, C, talk about fake girlfriends, dawg.”
Chris giggles with Joey. “Yeah, Chasez. That one looked straight out of the box, man. Probably still had that vinyl new-doll smell, didn’t she? You really go for those blow-up variety of girlies, don’t ya?”
Joey lets out a wild, over-reactive laugh and high-fives Chris, squinting across the table that separates the two of them from JC, and reaches for the square chunk of cue chalk. “Having a good ol’ time, are ya, C?”
JC rolls his eyes at both of them, sighing as his gaze slowly turns to Chris, rewinding the conversation backward a few seconds. “RFBs?”
“Real Fine Bitches?” Joey takes a stab in the dark, laughs.
“Rich, Famous, and Beautiful, man,” Chris answers, ignoring the guess.
“Oh, yeah. Such as myself,” Joey chuckles, twirling the long skinny stick between his fingers.
Lukewarmly, Chris blinks, chugs from a bottle of beer. “Such as Chasez’s little entourage, man. It’s like a status symbol in the hob-nobbery Hollywood circles he runs in. Dig?”
“Yeah, man. I dig. He rubs it out with the A-listing elite now, doesn’t he? The Purty People,” Joey laughs again, nonchalantly blows chalk residue off the tip of the stick. “Come to think of it, I can’t believe the dude let us bottom-feeder nobodies in his house without a little plastic door-check wristband. Know what I’m saying?” He snickers and winks at Chris.
Coolly, JC eases around the smooth edge of the large rectangular oak pool table without making contact with his friends again. He’s concentrating, casing his next shot: nine ball off the four and then straight into the corner pocket. Slick. It will work.
This is what they do, he and the other guys, when he comes home to Orlando. They gather at one of their houses one afternoon, drink beer after beer after beer, catch up on life, and shoot pool. Oh. And rag on each other as if they were 10 years younger and out on the road touring again. It’s how they roll.
Since JC’s been away the longest this time, it’s his home - his newly remodeled and refurnished post-hurricane-damage game room - where they meet up today. And it’s him they give the most hell to because he’s been the most “visible” in the public world lately. He doesn’t mind. He’s missed these dudes madly. Although he’d never actually say so to them. No way. No need to. They already know. He’s dead-sure.
“Glad to hear you bottom-feeder nobodies are still keeping such a close eye on my social comings and goings. Hmm. Stalk much? I heard that’s for losers. Hello. And what’s it cost to join my fan club nowadays, dudes? Since, obviously, you’d both know,” he says quietly, slowly, snarkily, stopping to lean down over the table with his stick poised under and over a few of his fingers.
“Yeah, that’s funny, Chasez. Watch me bust a gut laughing,” Chris quips back, reaching out to smack JC’s ass with an open hand as he passes by. “Speaking of your ‘comings,’ how’s The Brat doing?”
“Ask Fatone. He was the one mugging for the paparazzi with Justin last weekend. And now here he is standing over there breaking my balls for being in a few photos. Damn. You know what they say. Same. Old. Shit.”
JC raises up again, straightening the perfectly fluid curve his body had been forming. Pleased that the nine ball had just clinked against the four and then rolled down to a soft thud in the laced leather pocket near Joey. Pleased that the cohesive - okay, cozy - fraternal bond between them all never seems to weaken, even after all these years.
Joey shrugs, half-leaning on his pool stick, still grinning. “Yep. Me and J hooked up in LA and had some grub and some cocktails, got all caught up and stuff. I hadn’t seen the kid in ages. It was loads of fun. And yeah, I told Kirkpatrick all about our little powwow.”
“And Justin told me all about it too,” JC snorts, eyeballing what possible shot Chris might have next. “Sorry I missed you when you breezed into town, man. I sort of figured you and Lance might show up and crash at Elton’s Oscar bash, but I didn’t see yas. Crawling drunk by then, eh?”
Joey shoots a bird, sneers, and then Chris chuckles. “So. Where was the queen of sweet-n-gentleness Camselot during all this male bonding and whatnot?”
Joey hunches his shoulders again, makes a like-I-care? face. “Don’t know. I didn’t ask.”
“Gone.” JC says it, the single syllable, casually, tilting his head and narrowing his eyes at the arrangement of the balls on the table.
Chris and Joey hold their breaths. Anxiously. Hopefully.
JC hears this collective, sharp silence and glances up at them. “Away filming. Don’t get too excited.”
“Aww, man,” Chris’s curling lips say. “I was totally about to break out the champagne.”
“Yeah, me too. Too damn bad,” Joey concurs succinctly and rolls his eyes. “Uh, just disappointing.”
With the air and the attitude of someone who’s learned to separate what’s important from what’s not, JC monotones, “Your shot, CK. Lock it down, dude.”
Dismissing the subject (and gladly), Chris scans the table wordlessly. His nose twitches a little, and he slaps the small end of his stick against his palm. “Chasez, um, this is gonna sound really, um, bad when I say it out loud, but I gotta, bro. What’s up with this ungodly-blinding FUCHSIA felt on this damn pool table, man? It’s fluorescent pink and can probably be seen by the residents of fucking Pluto!”
JC’s slow-blinking gaze moves from Chris to Joey, who is dramatically shielding his eyes with a cupped hand from the allegedly brilliant glare coming off the table. He smirks, sure. But he loves this, this familiar camaraderie, this tough-love affection he gets from them. He expects, looks forward to it. From Chris on this coast. From Lance on the west coast. And from Joe on both coasts.
“Blow me, Kirkpatrick.”
“Sure, man, sure. I see how you are. You offer now, but I go to take you up on the deal, and you pussy out. Talking about how Timberlake would kick my ‘ol’ grandpa ass’ and whatnot if I even looked like I planned on blowing you. Humph. You’re a bona fide PT, Chasez. And that means ‘prick tease,’ ‘case you’re confused again.”
JC grabs his bottle of cold beer from the bar’s counter behind him, flash-rolling his eyes but smiling at the whole ridiculous mental scenario Chris had just laid out. “That fuchsia cloth had to be custom-ordered, man, for your 4-1-1. Took two whole months to come down from Toronto. And it wasn’t cheap either. So if it’s paining your sensitive little eyeballs, then run right along on over to Fatone’s crib. Dig?”
“Fatone doesn’t have a pool table,” Chris whines.
JC turns to him again, swallows some beer, and raises an eyebrow. “Exactly. So shut up and put up, dude.”
Chris snickers along with Joey. “Fine. I see, said the blind man. I’ll just have to adapt.” He flips his mirror-silver sunshades down off his head and over his eyes as he bends toward the table and lifts his stick. “Desperate situations call for desperate measures. But if you’re down with the pink, then knock yourself out, Chasez, babe. Roll with it.”
“I’m down with the pink. Or else it wouldn’t be here. Now roll with your shot, CK, like sometime this year, man.”
“Dude, don’t rush me. Hold onto your panties.”
“And I’ll bet some big bucks that Timberlake wouldn’t be so wild about a fuchsia, screaming-gay pool table felt in his house,” Joey chirps from the corner of the room and smiles coyly.
JC slides him a dry, withering look. “Well, this isn’t his house, now is it, Joe? Besides, he’s my boyfriend, not my daddy dearest.”
“He says you two shack up together, mostly at his place, when she isn’t around.”
JC smiles without intending to, remembering. “Yeah. True, that.”
Chris straightens up again after not even coming close to nailing his target six ball in its side target pocket. “What did you love birds get each other for Valentine’s Day, Chasez? Or is it too XXX-rated to even talk about? Say some heart-shaped chocolates with gooey centers and matching silk boxers with rainbow kissy imprints on them?”
“Maybe Lance got ‘em a sweet deal on a pair of flaming hot-pink dildos and other boy-boy sex novelties,” Joey chuckles.
“No, wait. J got you a new man-purse, didn’t he, Jace? That was his thing this year. And Louis Vuitton had a buy-one-get-one-free sale going on that day, right?” Chris cackles.
JC laughs too, although he’d planned to sneer. “Congratulations to you both. You’re officially the most hilarious goobers on the planet. The Dorkwad Twins That Never Grew Up. Dumbasses.”
“So how’d you two really celebrate, C? Something romantic and juicy? Candles lit, all soft and flickering in the shadows, around the steamy hot tub, some sexy Usher ballads purring from the stereo, a little Cristal for two chilling on ice, the two of you making waves in that warm water, say, Brokeback Mountain style? Hmm?” Joey winks as he saunters over, speaking quietly, glancing at a potential angle to shoot from.
JC hoists his cue stick up and pokes at Joey’s arm with the tip. “Man! Shut up! No, that is so not how things went down at all. I mean we’re not chicks, for chrissakes.”
“Oh, really? Sure ‘bout that, Chasez? I suggest you check again.”
Another playfully sharp glare comes from JC’s eyes, along with a grin he can’t tame. “Ass clown.”
“Yeah, CK. What he said. Ass clown.”
JC shakes his head at both of them. “No. None of that sickeningly sweet romance stuff on V-Day for us. Since you’re both so insanely interested. We’re dudes. Not mushy chicks. Dig?”
“So. Stop hedging, man. We’re all on the level. What did go down then with you and J? Well, besides the two of you going down on each other?” Joey snickers. And Chris looks amused, like he always does, pumping his beer up and down in his fist a little, thumb covering the top, so as to produce that frothy foam he adores so.
JC shrugs. It’s a little hard to explain to these guys - or maybe to just remind them - how February 14th has never been an especially momentous day for Justin and himself like it is for lots of other couples. Sure, it’s the traditional day for lovers to celebrate and all that jazz. And sure, he and Justin are lovers - have been for about a decade or so of Valentine’s Days now.
But traditional couple? See? No. No way. Not him and Justin. Never. In fact, so completely out of the ordinary were they that they had always figured they needed to pick a different day of the year - one all their own - to celebrate what they have, what they are to each other. And, well, it had usually been a random day during the year they decided on - one when they were both not busy working and could meet up somewhere to be alone together. But, the past couple of years, the day had been chosen for them - by a few of their fans - a red-letter day with a special quirky significance that appealed to them both. And, without disclosing (or exposing) this guilty little pleasure to hardly anyone else, they had taken to making sure that particular day was cleared completely and set aside for each other.
It’s their day. And it’s coming up this weekend. He’s looking forward to it like crazy, as anxiously and as hotly as he knows Justin is too.
Yes, it’s a little difficult to stand here in the lower level of his house and try and explain to his long-time buddies in front of him that exquisite, secret rush of anticipation that makes him feel jittery inside. Maybe they wouldn’t understand. Maybe he doesn’t want them to.
“What’d we do? Hmm. Let’s see. The usual. Quiet dinner at my place, bottle of wine in front of the fireplace. We talked and laughed and then……..well, you know.”
“And the Chimaera? She was……..?”
“Away. Filming. J left the next day to hook up with her in London.”
“So she got sloppy seconds. Like always. Nice.”
Joey’s expression wrinkles. He’s puzzled. “Back up. The what-the-fuck? I never got why you call her that, Kirkpatrick. ‘Splain, please, dude.”
“The Chimaera. It - no, she - is a mythical, well, creature. Google it. You’ll see the major resemblance immediately, man. Snake, goat, lion. All in one body. Breathing fire, slaying innocent photographers right and left, can’t be beat down by even the mightiest, the whole works.” Chris shudders at his own words. “Yeah. Scary. Trust me.”
JC laughs, free and loud, laying his head back languidly and crinkle-closing his eyes. He’s heard pretty much all of their lovely terms of affection for Cameron. Joey is fond of “Vampirella on Steroids.” Lance uses “The She-Demon.” Chris has several “pet” names he likes to go with, although he’ll tell you straight up that you can’t call them “pet” names since his theory is that Ms. Diaz isn’t house-broken enough to actually qualify as a “pet.” Even Justin himself has referred to her as “The Wife” in public before - with far more bitterness than endearment, JC had heard in his tone that day they were hanging out together at the basketball game and the damn press had somehow caught up with them.
JC is still chuckling. It’s fun sometimes to hear their disapproval and dislike of her seep out in the guise of their jokes and teasing. It’s healthy too, to release it. Because she doesn’t really bother them, see. Any of them. They don’t really give much of a damn about her and her well-documented snooty contempt for them at all. It’s a reciprocal sentiment, he knows. She’d prefer to pretend none of them exist either. He knows this too. She’d especially prefer to pretend that he didn’t exist. Him and the part of Justin that is his alone, the part that she’ll never reach, never sink her greedy, hateful fangs into, never even see, let alone have for her own.
JC smiles now, turning his beer up again. None of that - her - eats at his soul any longer. Nope. He got off that go-nowhere highway about 19 exits ago. No more letting it hurt. No more wasting misery and jealousy on it. Not even any more heated arguments with Justin about it that never resolved anything but just brought more pain and suffering. He’d simply moved on, put it behind him, closed his heart to its monstrous persuasions. Indeed, learned to separate what’s important from what’s not.
These days, he just sticks to referring to her as “What’s-her-ma-call-it” or maybe “Camera” or “Carmen,” which he knew from Justin that she absolutely detested, or maybe whatever trips off the end of his tongue at the moment. When he must refer to her at all, you see. Indifference sure felt tons better snuggling around the ol’ heart muscle than 24/7 loathing did.
“Kirkpatrick, you kill me, man! That’s harsh, but I love it! Get your own Showtime special, dude. Sometimes you are seriously funny.”
Chris sidesteps the off-hand compliment. He has an agenda. “So? No lovey-dovey stuff last month for you and Timberlake then? Not even after the lovey-dovey holiday, like when he got back from across the pond? No gifts or anything?”
JC sighs weakly, feigning exasperation, loving it all. “Dude! What the hell about ‘no’ are you not comprehending? For his big 2-5, I got him all kinds of things he’s been lusting after. He liked every one of them. He was satisfied. You can trust me on this one.”
“Yeah. I’ll just bet,” Chris smirks and rolls his eyes, swimming in typical sarcastic flair. “So for V-Day two weeks later, he gave you nothing? Nothing Don Juan-ish and amorous? You’re his boyfriend, last time I heard.”
JC looks away, blushing pink, just a little. “Give it a rest, CK. He doesn’t need to give me heart-warming sentimental gifts and shit to lemme know how he feels.” He drops his voice to a soft murmur, without realizing it, talking to the carpeted floor rather than to his friends. “Besides, I’ve got all I need and want, ya know……except maybe putting down the final vocal touches on that song he’s helping me out with……for my new record. I could really go for that.”
“So light a fire under his ass, C!”
“No, man. No way. He’s busy with lots of other projects. His own record, the acting thing……He’ll get around to it when he has time. I know.”
The other two barely hear JC. They’re scrutinizing the pool table, plotting game strategy.
“So your boy’s not the sentimental-fool type, eh, C?” Joey says distractedly, shaking his head as if this revelation is a damn crying shame. “Damn crying shame, that. Tsk, tsk. So tragic.”
Chris laughs a shrill laugh, and JC knows they’d be slapping more mid-air high-fives if they were on the same side of the table now. He huffs, squint-glaring at them.
“Hello? Maybe you missed the first 76 kazillion times I said it! There was no awesome, grand display of romance for us. No. I mean not like the sappy, trite stuff you’re both going on and on about. And that was perfectly fine with me. We don’t need all that crap. It’s not like we haven’t been together, like, for- what?”
“Forever,” Chris and Joey chime in unison.
Then they laugh. They’re just messing with JC. Their friend. It’s unspoken among them all. As long as things are tight and good between him and their other friend, Justin, then they’re okay with whatever else might be going on and getting fucked up in the rest of the universe. And, Chris and Joey can sense here, their buddies are fine with each other. Maybe not physically together as much as they once were, but still fine with each other. Still so much in love.
“Just make sure you keep it that way too, man,” Chris says “sternly,” furrowing his brow.
“Yeah, dude. Same as I told J last weekend back in LA,” Joey adds in agreement, adopting his for-Brihana-only tone and pointing at JC with his beer bottle. “You two always had a good thing working. Keep it real. And don’t let shit that doesn’t mean anything come between you and make you lose sight of each other, C. Dig?”
JC half-smiles, half-swallows back a warm thick lump that’s just propelled itself up out of his gut into his throat like that mysterious gloppy stuff in a lava lamp. “Gotcha. Both of yas……J and me, we’ve come this far. We’ll keep it going strong if I have my way about it. Bet your last nickel on that one, baby.”
~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~
Justin doesn’t hear this conversation taking place down in Winter Haven among some people in his life who are all quite close to him. He’s out in the greater Los Angeles area, enjoying the warm days of sunshine, enjoying his freedom while Cam is off doing another movie over in the U.K. or wherever the hell she is now. Doesn’t matter. Not to him. She’s got her “people” around her now to deal with her, to listen to her, to try and put up with her and her zero-to-completely-unreasonable-in-5.2-seconds. Let ‘em get a taste of how explosive rage and frightening insanity are just two more everyday, uncompromising moods for her. Let ‘em earn those big-ass personal-assistant salaries. It was their nightmare now. Not his. At least for a few more sweet, peaceful days.
No, he misses out on the chatter/banter going down between his friends and his boyfriend. But that certainly doesn’t preclude him from knowing the gist of what they’re all saying. Oh, yeah. He’s aware. He’s heard it before. From Joe and Chris. Most recently from Lance. When he and Lance had hooked up for a discreet (hopefully) lunch at a side-street sushi house down in the valley a couple of days ago.
“I want to go all out, man. The works. Something over-the-top, no-holds-barred romantic for him. ‘Cause, see, it’s been a long time since we went down that road. We just don’t do that shit anymore, and I want to bring it back. Know what I mean?”
“Went down what road, J?” Lance repeats a little absently, as if he hasn’t been listening carefully. “The honey-sweet, starry-eyed, lovesick romantic one?” What he is doing carefully is selecting and dipping with his chopsticks.
“Yes. Exactly.”
“Okay. Cool. I hear ya. You want to breathe a new pulse back into your love life, huh? Revive the old magic? That it?”
Justin frowns and shakes his head, flustered. He hasn’t explained himself well enough. “No. Not when you put it like that. It’s not that we’re stagnant or dead or anything like that.”
Lance looks up, stops him with a cool, green stare. “Wait. You’re talking about you and JC, right? Not you and her?”
Justin has to chuckle. “Right. I said ‘not’ stagnant and dead, didn’t I? Gimme a break. So anyway. He and I, we’re not. Dead or stagnant. I just want to spice up the romantic side of things for us again. I want to surprise him with something really sweet and affectionate, something deep-felt and thoughtful, something loverly, something he totally won’t be expecting from me, to express how much I care about him……Man, it’s been so long since I just let go and did something sentimental and mushy for him like that, you know, just for the sake of sentimental and mushy. He probably gave up thinking I ever could or would again.”
“Something ‘loverly’?” Lance glances up from his meal again, raises eyebrows.
“C’mon, Lance. You know what I mean.”
Lance taps a square saucer with his chopstick, chewing at the inside of his lip. “Something ideally enchanting, music from the heartstrings, as it were. To show him, front and center, how totally smitten and boy-crazy you are with him. Still.”
“Yes!” Justin lights up, blue eyes shining, encouraged and thrilled that Lance is “getting it.”
“To let him know, even if it’s borderline silly and syrupy sweet, that you can be Casanova and Romeo all rolled into one tall, lanky glob. Just for him.” Lance smiles with puffed jaws, after plopping another chilled pillow of grade-A salmon between his lips.
“Now you’re talking, man! That’s totally where I’m coming from! Don’t you think he’ll like it? Hokey or not? He’s such a romantic at heart, Lance, deep down. Really, he is. He’s always doing nice, sensual little unnecessary things for me when I’m least expecting them. Like, for my birthday, he sent me the most adorablest Yahoo! e-card message to my cell phone. It had the sweetest note on it. I swear almost made me cry.”
“Oh. Those retarded things. Aren’t they, like, free? Cheap bastard.” Lance’s eye roll is quick and subtle. He’s reaching for another piece of nigiri with his chopsticks.
“Lance! So what if they’re free? Back off!” Justin screeches in a whisper but eventually smiles. The memory catches him, warms him. “It was a sweet thing to do.”
“It’s the thought that counts, I guess,” Lance answers dryly.
“Well, the ‘thought’ that he wrote it especially for me, man. It was all mine. From his heart. And that means more to me than all of that other expensive stuff he gave me combined.”
Across the low lacquered table, Lance is examining, as best as he can in the restaurant’s dim lighting, one of the paper napkins the waiter has just laid down for them. It’s off-white and decorated with brightly colorful cartoon images of desserts - ice cream cones, slices of pie, cupcakes, milkshakes, chocolate covered strawberries - all with weirdly giddy facial expressions, as if they’re overjoyed to about to be eaten. He snorts.
“Well. Sounds like an awesome plan, J. JC loves surprises. And it seriously gets him going when somebody does something neat especially for him. Like he thinks he doesn’t deserve it or whatever. But you know. You’ve seen it. I don’t have to tell you how humble and modest the dude is.” Lance savors another sauced bite off the tips of the sticks. “But, um, wasn’t Valentine’s Day, like, last month?”
Justin huffs a little impatiently, but that stoked enthusiasm inside never falters. “It’s not for Valentine’s Day, man. We’ve got our own little private day coming up. Like this Saturday. You know?”
Lance lifts his eyes again to look at Justin, and the vivid emerald-ness of them is slightly hooded. He waves the napkin of animated foodstuffs between his fingers and shakes his head skeptically.
“See this? Yeah. Classy joint here. Very Japanese too. Nice choice, J.”
“C’mon, Lance. Help me out here. Will JC really enjoy something like that or not, man? You’re his friend. You know him.”
“He will, man. I told you. He’s got lots of romantic bones in his body. But hey. You’d know that better than me, J. So hit it. Rock his socks off with some hot-for-ya sexy, sentimental, gushy surprise present of affection. My guess is that it’ll go over like fireworks.”
Justin’s practically squirming in the dark booth with churning anticipation, with tingly pleased-with-myself excitement. This is exactly what he’d wanted to hear.
“Fantastic. So you’ll help me come up with something unprecedented and worthy then?”
Lance rolls his eyes again, more pronounced this time. “What? Do I look like the romantic type to you, dude?”
“Lance,” Justin purrs. “Pleazzze.”
“What’s Saturday again? Refreshen me on the details.”
Justin licks his dark-pink lips and raises his hands from off the table to help him explain, anxious and willing to dish the scoop. Pardon the bad pun on those god-awfully tasteless napkins.
“March 18th. Our special day. Me and JC. Or, for short, JuC. Sometimes Joshtin, depending on your particular preference.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard all the quaint little ‘pairing’ names, thanks. My particular preference is JC and Justin.”
“You’re such a cynic, Lance. And, hello, buzz kill.”
“Sorry. For you. So go on. What’s so special about that day, if I may be so bold and cynical as to ask?”
Justin grins, happy for the green light to proceed. “Our birthdays, like, mixed together. The 31st - mine. And the 8th - his. Three-one-eight.”
Lance purses his lips and eyes the sushi platter again, contemplating, choosing. “Dude, those Internet fans of yours are all kinds of clever, aren’t they?”
“More like brilliant, I say. I mean they don’t even really know that we are real. Our couple-y-ness or whatever you want to call it is like a myth to them. They’ve got no actual proof. They just believe in us being together so much ‘cause it’s how they truly want reality to be. It’s totally amazing, Lance, all the stuff they work so damn hard on and then bring out to show on that day. To show appreciation for a love between two dudes they hope is really there. Know what I’m talking about? It takes days, I’m saying, to read, watch, and listen to it all. You should check it out, man, when you’re not busy, you know, dicking around with MySpacing and crap.”
“Thanks and all. But I’ll pass. You and C knock yourselves out. ‘Kay?”
Justin wriggles in his seat again, biting at the edge of a fingernail but forgetting about the spread of sushi entirely. “Yeah, we will. We always do. So. Now I’ve gotta think of something cool to give him Saturday. Something……” Justin’s cheeks bulge with his pushed out breath. “Perfect”
“Something romantic?”
“Yep. Got an ideas to toss out?”
Lance sighs, reaches for his cup of sake. “Again. What’s up with making me out to be the personal trainer of romance here, Timberlake?”
“Well, you’ve always got a hot boyfriend in your corner, dude. Must be doing something right.” Justin smiles over the table, subtle and challenging. “Okay. With the exception of Hernandez. Yuck.”
“Hey. Don’t be busting on Freddy. He likes you.”
“Whoa. Congratulations to me.”
Slowly, with the edge of his tongue, Lance dabs at the strong, bitter residue of alcohol on his lower lip, gazing across the dishes of food at his friend. Somewhere, in the back of his memory, he’s pretty sure he’s heard JC say those exact words before. Man. Those two.
“And you’ve always got the same hot boyfriend in your corner, man. So maybe I should be hitting you up for romantic secrets.”
Justin laughs, feathery, free, easy. Then the sound, his whole smooth face, simmers down to an emotion-driven smile and a lyrical whisper.
“I love him, Lance. With all my heart. Always and always. And I don’t ever want him to forget that.”
Lance studies him for a soft moment, watches the shades of his eyes change and then change again, even in these shadows, as if what fills him up and burns inside is causing their depths to shift and then resettle again. Then Lance smiles too.
“Justin, man, you are so gorgeous when you talk about him like that. It’s so all over you, inside and out, that your relationship with him is real, is stronger than forever. I see the same thing in him when he’s babbling on about you. It’s, like, undeniable what you’re both feeling, dude. So, you know, maybe your JuC support group or whatever with their special day set aside for you guys, maybe they’ve picked up on it too. Maybe they can see it like I do. Maybe they’re on to you two. Maybe they really do know you’re actually together. And that’s why they’ve got so much time and energy vested in this occasion. That’s why they love making a big deal over y’all like they do every year.”
Justin considers this. He’s considered it before. “Maybe.”
“You’ll think of something cool to give your man. I’ll help you.”
“Thanks, man. I appreciate it like you don’t even know.”
“And Justin.”
Justin lifts his eyebrows into sleek, thick, curved arches, questioning, waiting, listening. “Hmm?”
“I don’t ever want there to come a day when I look at you and don’t see that - that gorgeousness of JC all over you. You got me, man?”
Justin grins, cheeks afire, chokes out a delicate snicker. “Nah, man. Don’t sweat that one. That day won’t ever come. Never. I promise. It doesn’t fucking exist.”
~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~
Justin’s a little nervous on Saturday evening, he has to admit. He’s been a little nervous - and a lot anxious - all day, waiting for the perfectly right moment.
The infamous surprise for JC he’s finally settled on and totally happy with is all his idea - although Lance’s morsels of suggestions had provided the initial inspiration in helping him come to the perfectly right choice. And he’s sure it’s the flawless, the impeccable one. But, still, he can’t help himself. He’s a little nervous.
JC, his boyfriend, is a real romantic, down in there, behind that pretty exterior, even if he wouldn’t admit it and doesn’t always let it out. He can be so gentle and kind and loving in special, unique, very genuine ways - usually spontaneous and unexpected - that come from places inside him where the artist’s soul in him lives. Justin’s always known this. He’s felt it, been the off-guard and overwhelmed recipient of it many times through the years. And not only has he adored and worshipped this beautiful trait about JC, he’s envied it too. He’s longed to make JC’s eyes blaze with that same unsuspecting shock, that same startled amazement at something he’s done all for him, because he loves him so much.
“Unreal, isn’t it, babe? It’s like they threw a big ol’ shindig just for us. Unbelievable,” JC coos against the base of Justin’s throat. It’s warm and light, just like his long body is warm and light resting on Justin’s as they lay together on the wide sofa in Justin’s TV room that evening.
The stereo’s playing something downbeat and relaxing in the background, and the plasma television isn’t even turned on. They’ve got Justin’s new multimedia powerhouse notebook balanced in front of them, still scrolling through and clicking on the many, many links to various “gifts” to them from the tons of people all over the world gathered in this one spot on the ‘Net to celebrate them on this day deemed their day and put aside to love the two of them for how they love each other.
Justin shivers with the silky heat of JC’s words on his neck. It’s the same coo JC had awakened him with this morning - or rather early afternoon - as they’d slept in, all alone together in the huge house, all alone together in the huge bed.
Disoriented and completely vulnerable as sleep had let go of him and waking had begun to dawn in around him again, Justin hadn’t been sure if he and JC had been snoozing all spooned up against each other like this, using only about a quarter of the mattress, or not. But he wouldn’t have doubted that they had. It’s a developed instinct for them now to savor the precious nights they get to spend beside each other.
“Morning, babe,” had been purred and splashed, so sweet and gentle, so hot and sexual, across his earlobe and the back of his neck. Steam from JC’s mouth, making him tremble and writhe backward in the warmth, the firmness of JC’s body wrapping around him like a blanket; the heat, the hardness of JC’s cock pressing against the under slope of his ass cheek; the electricity, the smoothness of JC’s hand slipping over his hipbone and finding his erection, folding flesh around flesh and sliding into the ache beginning to fill out his balls.
“Just what I was dreaming about……you……hard and hot……and smelling so……so good……so come-on-let’s-go-at-it-again.”
“Jace,” Justin had groaned, thick and raspy, squirming under JC’s tight-velvet grip, rocking his hips back against the burning thrust of JC’s crotch. “You’re so……insatiable,” he hisses and grabs at the sheets tangled around them.
“Just wanted to do it all properly today,” JC whispers and grunts at the ridge of his collarbone, grinding hard heat into him. “You know……wake you up the way you oughta be waked up.”
Justin’s brain is groggy, weakened by sleep and by JC’s staggeringly hypnotic effect on him. The man is so limber and warm - and so fucking hard - behind him. He’s not sure he’s heard him correctly. If it even matters.
“Did you say, um, you’re way corrupt,” he moans, sighs. “Because damn. That’s the truth of all truths, sweetness.”
JC writhes against him, fire-born friction on his naked flesh, and laughs with lots of hot breath. “I said ‘wake you up,’ brat. Not ‘way corrupt.’ So damn funny, aren’t you?”
“Wuzzunt trying to be funny.”
It hadn’t been much of a surprise, when his senses had started reviving to reality again, to discover that the room still held that lingering scent of their lovemaking from the night - or even early this morning - before. He hadn’t even counted how many times they’d coupled and taken each other to oblivion.
Also not a big shocker had it been to feel, in the next few sultry seconds, the sweet sensation of JC’s solid cock - slick and warm from a squirt of the lube they must have left laying somewhere on the bed during the night’s activities - shove against his ass cheeks with more urgency, parting them and sliding in between, burrowing into the humid heat there until its rounded head found his opening, easing inside, long and thick, filling him inch by inch, until their bodies had been pressed flush against each other, front to back, warm and vibrating, again.
“Give me s’more of that sexy ass, baby.”
“Ah, fuck……Yesss, Jace……yesss.”
He’d been so hard and aroused that he’d almost shot his load immediately, all over JC’s fist that, ohmygod, stroked up and down his dick as that cock drove into him from behind and brushed his prostate like lick after lick of white-hot fire.
Damn. What a way to start the day “properly” that had been. A few more like that one, please?
Now, JC is stretched out and snuggled up next to him on the sofa here. And Justin knows the man is erect again. He can feel it against his thigh. And he’s not complaining.
They’ve already had to take a couple of necessary breaks from their perusing of this Web site to relieve some of the, um, sensual pressure that keeps building up in both of them. Yeah, put that in the no-surprise-here folder too. JC loves the “porn-lovely” stories, as he calls them, the ones with the graphic erotic detail about them having sex, that these marvelously talented people who don’t even know them have been so kind to write about them.
And Justin doesn’t mind one bit if JC insists on reading them out loud, with his own crackhead-JC emphasis, for the both of them to, well, enjoy……and then pauses the narrative once in a while to re-enact certain favorite hot scenes that have gotten their blood flow revved up and racing.
And, jesuschristdamn, some of the ideas and scenarios these folks have come up with! Just whoa. Damn. Even if he and JC have only done some of this wild sexed up shit in those authors’ horny, perverted little imaginations up to this point, he knows for certain they’ll be trying some of it out tonight. Fuck yeah. His dick, his ass, and his mouth might be so sore they’ll fall right the fuck off come Sunday morning. But it’ll all be worth it.
“You think they know we’ve found this shit, Jace?”
“I think they sure as hell hope we have.”
“Congratulations to us that we did.”
“That’s totally what it feels like they’re trying to say with all this amazing creativity about us, babe. Congratulations to us.”
“They love us.”
“Yeah. In a unique and special way. Because we love each other……And I do, you know……love you, J.” JC shifts a little, against the long, warm body beneath him, turns his face upward to see his boyfriend. “I do.”
“I know,” Justin murmurs because he’s as surprised as he always is by the tender, pretty words and the tender, pretty lips that have formed them. “Love you too, sweetness. And I’ve always, like, celebrated it in my head. Even before these awesome folks made a big, wonderful day for us.”
Rachel had been the guilty party responsible for running across this whole phenomenon. She’d been playing around with her new Dell Axim Handheld she’d gotten for Christmas, surfing, Googling, experimenting. Justin hadn’t believed her at first when she’d called him up and said, sort of excitedly, for her anyway, that she’d found “an entire Live Journal Community devoted solely to this JuC Day thing, March 18th , dude! The background theme picture……everything……all about you and Jace. As a couple. Yeah. No kidding. There’s even a nifty little counter on the homepage to let you know how many days are left. Dude, you’ve got to give it a look.”
No, he didn’t believe. Until he’d seen it for himself. And then shown it to JC, clueing him in on the surrealness of it all too.
“Impressive. How do they come up with all this, man?” JC whispers, staring at the notebook again that’s perched on Justin’s lap, noticing two new contributions that had just been posted in the exclusive online community. “It all looks like they’ve been working their asses off on it for weeks.”
“Or maybe even months,” Justin whispers in return, silver-blue eyes reflecting the images on the laptop screen, long fingers caressing the short bristly hair at the nape of JC’s neck.
“They’re so fucking imaginative and creative. Man. Just wow.”
Among the offerings of celebration were short stories, long stories, chaptered stories (yes, with lots of delicious porny-rotic excess in all three), stories where they were themselves like in real life but also stories where they were regular dudes never in a boy band at all - such as where they were in high school or college, or married to each other with kids, or were gangsters or vampires or even lived in another era in history. There were pictures of them that had been Photoshopped together to look stunningly authentic, collections and montages of pictures of them that were all too real, screen caps and video footage of their tons of interaction with each other over the years, music videos like the ones on VH1 with clips of the two of them edited together and mixed beautifully with a special significant song as the soundtrack. And so, so much more.
“And, hey, look, babe. We’re ‘sparkly.’ That’s what they say. I like that. It’s neat.”
Justin chuckles, moving them both. “You’re sparkly.”
JC smiles. “Fine. Then you make me sparkle.”
“Oh. Is that how it is?”
“That’s exactly how it is.”
It hits Justin then, like a gentle bolt from out of the blue. That sudden euphoric feeling you sometimes get in your gut, the one that’s not a physical tingle as much as it is a warm glow, spreading and enlightening. The sense, the assurance from within, that everything is going to be all right.
“I have something for you, Jace. Something I wanted to give you on this day, you know, of ours.”
JC groans a little as he twists to sit up, propping on his elbow and turning to Justin again. “For real?”
“For real. Well, two somethings, actually. But I’ll hold onto one of them ‘til after dinner, maybe.”
“Wow. ‘Cause you know what? I have a little sum’um-sum’um for you too, babe. Great minds, eh?”
Justin laughs a small, cloudlike, nervous laugh, even though he’s not much nervous anymore. “You do? You weren’t supposed to get me-”
“Shut up.” JC raises Justin’s T-shirt and kisses the taut skin over one of his ribs as he leans across his body and reaches for the Sports Illustrated laying askew on the coffee table - the semi-risqué swimsuit issue Justin had brought home just to piss Princess Diaz off.
He flips open a few pages until he finds the small, baby-blue envelope he’s had tucked away in there. “Here, babe,” he says softly, passing it to Justin and dropping the magazine. “I’m ‘supposed’ to do what I want. Not what you try and tell me to.”
“Sneaky bastard. It was hiding there all along, wasn’t it? Right in front of me.”
“Open it.”
“Duh,” Justin smirks, then smiles, taking the envelope and carefully breaking the seal, breathing easy with the sweet euphoria still fluttering in his abdomen.
~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~
Roses are red
Violets are blue
I might like chocolate chip mint ice cream
But I love making the big bang with you
JC watches him read the corny little verse, follows the eyes that are bluer than the paper the words are written on as they skim the lines, left to right. He grins because he knows his lover will be surprised, flustered, maybe even speechless, and won’t know how to react at first. And he adores this Justin. Caught-off-guard, befuddled Justin is rare and beautiful.
“Okay, Jace. That’s, um, charming,” he whispers with that crooked half-smile of his that smites JC every time. “An original too, I’m sure. Very about sex. Very you.”
Justin glances upward at him then, only his eyes in motion, and silently mouths: Horny bastard.
JC chuckles. “Turn it over. Like it says at the bottom.”
Justin looks at the note again. “Down here? Where it says ‘over’? With this weird crooked little arrow-like drawing thing pointing to the other side, in case I get lost or something?”
“Duh.”
“Ass.”
JC watches again as Justin’s fine fingers trace over some of the crazy doodling he’d done around the edges of the blue sheet - random creative shit that just oozed its way out of his head somehow and down to his writing hand as he was trying to come up with something good enough to say to the guy today. And what he’d finally decided on - after the paper, like a canvas, had been mostly covered with the wild representations from his mind - was pretty much what he usually decided on. Something he truly meant.
No fooling around, babe. You’re the fire in my heart. Always and always.
Love,
Josh
They don’t have to complete the phrase any longer. Haven’t had to for years now. They both know the rest of it: Always have and always will.
That says it all for them.
“Gorgeous, Jace,” Justin whispers again, the rims of his eye sockets a little more full now. “You know the perfect words to use every time. You’re so……well……thoughtful and……loverly.”
JC reaches up to touch his smooth, flushed cheek, smiling. How can he resist? This is his Justin. No one else’s. “‘Loverly.’ That’s a good one. And those ‘perfect words’?……As long as you know I mean ‘em, babe.”
“I do, sweetness. I know.”
~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~
“Damn, J. What the hell have you gone and done here?”
“Hmm. Maybe not so much,” Justin says, a little meekly. “We’ll see. I mean, like, there’s more, something else for later, maybe after dinner, but this is what I was mainly trying to do.”
He has brought out the package he’s had stashed back in an unused bedroom - the package he’s been anxious and excited about giving to JC all day. It sits on glorious display on the wide coffee table, next to the open notebook that’s been momentarily forgotten.
Justin knows there are probably more contribution posts from those mega-talented fans for their big JuC Holiday. He and JC will get back to them later. Right now, his heart’s racing, a not-so-patient tremor of anticipation for what might happen in the next few moments.
“Well, it’s certainly, let’s say, flamboyant, isn’t it?” JC snickers, reaching out to breathlessly caress the professionally decorated square gift box - wrapped tightly and adorned neatly in heavy, matte sheets of alternating rose-pink and pearl-white paper, topped off with a matching pink and white bow made from what looks to be hundreds of yards of intertwined cascading curly ribbons.
Justin is proud of how elegant and sharp it looks. It’s not a huge box, but it’s big enough. And it’s thick and sturdy too. It’ll last a damn long time.
He exhales deeply, freely, as he sees JC’s gaze scan over it again, admiring and wondering. He’s glad now that he took his time and went all over, first West Hollywood and then over to Melrose, to find exactly what he’d been searching for.
And if he could have 37 hundred thousand more afternoons like this one with JC - alone and just flowing easy together - he knows he might still wish for just one more.
“Well? Go on, sweetness. Open it.”
The piercing heat of JC’s teal-blue eyes grabs Justin and holds him. There’s a sly smile to go along with that heat, melting Justin’s insides completely.
“Duh.”
~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~
“Hmm. Outrageous box, babe,” JC murmurs, carefully placing it back on the table in front of him, now that he’s unwrapped it, as if it’s very heavy, as if he’s not sure what to say next.
Because, see, he’s not sure what to say next. The box isn’t very heavy at all. In fact, it’s as light as a feather. “Beautiful and dazzling, I’m saying……..Even sparkly, as they call us on the Web, eh?”
It is beautiful, the box. A showstopper, for sure. Very eye-popping and captivating, to say the least. A glossy platinum shade with a subtle kaleidoscope pattern, small adjoining circles each of which also glow with color of its own - luminescent shimmers of blues and lavenders, sunflower-gold, and pale crimson that come to life as the box is shifted and they catch the dance of the light, almost like a refractive metallic rainbow.
Justin grins, sighs breathily. “Took me a century to find the right one, the one to go with your, um, rare, one-of-a-kind style.”
JC takes that as the compliment it was meant to be. “Thanks, babe. It really is hot. Can I see what’s inside?” he asks, not missing the shivery squirm of Justin’s reaction to the question.
“Absolutely.”
It’s something lightweight and delicate, JC guesses to himself and refrains from shaking the box for hints. Maybe that new Versace neck scarf he’d been dying for and didn’t get for Christmas. Or maybe a Gummy Bear cock ring Justin plans to slowly devour off him later and drive him insane. Hmm. Endless possibilities for something so weightless.
“Ahh.” He lets out like a soft hum as he lifts the thick lid off and peeks into the shadowy interior. He sees nothing at first. Then, pulling the premium-made, obviously designer-quality box closer, looking deeper……he stills sees nothing in there. Except a soft lining made of taut black velvet.
Justin laughs, but it’s a jittery, high-toned strain that JC hears. A trying-not-to-sound-nervous nervous sound. He glances up at him with his best oh-okay-I-get-it smile.
“Oh. Okay. I get it.”
“Do you?”
“Ah, not really.” But it’s an ass-kicking stunner of an EMPTY box, man. I’ll give the baby that.
Justin breathes in and out slowly, eyes clear and focused on him, intense warmth rolling off him in waves. “I, well……I was going for all-out, wow-you-off-your-feet romantic, see……which I almost never seem to do for you anymore. Like ever. So, hence, this.”
JC is perplexed but patient. He checks out the box again, smiles with a raised eyebrow, and looks at Justin once more. “Tricked-out secret compartments or something? Hidden chambers I havta figure out, right? Like that fucked-up puzzle box in those Pinhead movies?”
Justin giggles, and JC notices it’s a little easier, a lot gentler. “Not quiet, Jace.”
“Should I keep guessing?” he asks, because he honestly doesn’t know how to proceed next. He doesn’t want to rush Justin, to spoil whatever the guy has planned here. He loves, see, that little pinkish flush of anticipation splashed across those lovely cheekbones. He’ll wait. For as long as it takes.
“Nah. Guessing is over. Lemme just end your suspense and clue you in, sweetness.”
“Shoot.” JC’s anxious, caught up in Justin’s giddy, spirited mood, but he tries to stay cool. He smiles while dabbing moisture from the tip of his tongue over his lower lip. “‘Cause this empty-box gift-giving game is a new one on me, man. Can’t wait to hear this one.”
Justin shimmies his butt on the sofa and scoots a little closer to JC as he reaches out to touch the blue and white knit shirt JC wears, maybe for reinforcement. Maybe just to touch some part of him. He grins, features so animated, body movements so punchy.
“Okay. Well. It’s like this……And, just so you know, there’s something else too, but that’s for later, but, well, anyway……The box looks empty, right? But it’s not. I filled it up myself, see, with a million kisses……and a million hugs……a million smiles……and a million I-Love-Yous just for you, Jace. All for you.”
He pauses and sighs, as if that had been a strenuous mouthful. Then he remembers one more tiny detail he’s almost left out. And he meets JC’s bright eyes again. His grin is another planet’s sun.
“Oh. Almost forgot a very important part. Duh. Since I know what a sex-crazed beast you are, ha-ha, this little corner right here? See? Full of breath-taking, mind-blowing, send-you-over-the-moon orgasms of unlimited quantity. From me to you, sweetness. My sum-total and all-inclusive package of sweet-hot romance. All for you. All in this shiny silver box. Surprise, Jace.”
JC lets out a deep breath he’s been building and holding as Justin spoke. He’s surprised all right. He’s overwhelmed, dumbstruck, reeling. Falling in love all over again. For the millionth time.
“Justin……I don’t know what to say.”
And he really doesn’t. He can’t even decide how to react, how to find an expression for his face, how to move, how to breathe, he’s so emotionally floored, so driven to his knees. He glances at the shimmery platinum box again, seeing it in a whole new light now, in a perspective of a different universe entirely.
Then he glances at Justin, suddenly taking it all in, suddenly understanding, suddenly feeling the heat of it all close love around love all around him, suddenly aching to touch him, to hold him, to press his mouth to that warm, red one.
How long has he sat here doing nothing at all? How many damn moments has he just been frozen to this sofa, acting witless, zombie-ish, not responding whatsoever? Oh, man. Oh, fuck.
“Justin,” he whispers his name again, sensing that he’s missed something very important, very sensitive, something he should have been paying closer attention to.
Justin’s not meeting his eyes. The blue-blue ones are darted away from his. Justin is fidgeting with the pink and white wrappings now strewn across the table, silently cleaning up.
“I love it, babe. Talk about wowing me over the edge……This is some kind of knock-me-on-my-ass surprise……”
“That was sort of the point.”
“And it worked. I do adore it, J.”
Justin shrugs - mechanically, absently - crunching the very expensive paper between his palms. “You don’t have to say that. It was just a silly-as-fuck, brainless little idea. Too dorky. Too girlie. Too dumb. I should have known better. Whatever. Forget it.”
Justin’s restrained voice is terse, tense. Not in a key JC is very fond of. Nor can he harmonize to it.
“J, listen. It wasn’t any of that at all. I just……” He just what? Whatthefuck to say now? Wherethehell were all those “perfect words” when he needed them?
“Don’t sweat it, JC. Forget about it. Say, let’s get a pizza. ‘Kay? I’m famished. How ‘bout I order one while you catch a shower? Didn’t you say earlier you wanted to do that?”
“Yeah,” JC mumbles, watching as Justin very deliberately avoids looking at him, feeling the throb in his gut as he mentally kicks himself there over and over. “I did. Don’t worry about this mess. I made it. I’ll tidy it up.”
“Got it. No problem,” Justin spits out in a clipped monotone, jumping up with a crumpled wad of pink and white that had been so beautiful just moments before. Brusquely, he snatches at the bow of ribbons that’s fallen on the notebook and then, as if an afterthought, snaps the screen shut quickly before turning toward the kitchen. “Giani’s okay with you? I’ll call in sec.”
Feeling an icy jab in his ribcage now, JC swallows back calling after him again. He knows it won’t do any good. Not right now. Can’t talk to him when he’s like this. Damnit.
Justin is gone from the room in a cold flash, taking the flow of natural, gorgeous energy with him.
“Giani’s is perfect, babe……I love the gift……I love you.”
“Yeah. Me too,” Justin’s voice echoes back from the kitchen, devoid of emotion. And as vacant as the box had appeared to JC at first.
~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~
Justin grabs for the seat belt, behind him and to his left, as his speed accelerates past 40, up to 45, and then closer to 50. This curvy residential road he lives on, up in the winding hills above LA, has two distinct lanes, one going each way, but he’s not paying very much attention except to try and stay in his own.
He doesn’t even bother pressing the stereo system’s ON knob because 1) he’s not especially in much of a rocking-out or jamming mood right now, and 2) he absolutely doesn’t want to luck out on any lame radio stations in the area rambling on about how they’re “getting busy with some golden oldies from back in the day on a tripping Saturday evening in the Land of Lah-Lah,” and then popping in “Blowing Me Up” or “Cry Me A River.”
Bitch, please. Yeah, just no. He can do without the tunes just now, thanks and all.
He’d ordered the deep-dish pie like he’d said he would - doubled all of their favorite toppings and then piled on extra cheese to boot. He’d used the number block privacy protector on his cell when he’d called, of course. And while he’d rattled off the ingredients with a distinctively rattled voice, he’d suddenly decided to use a fake name and go and pick the fucker up. Something else he most definitely wasn’t in the mood for right now - some hotshot pizza delivery asshole/wannabe celebrity stalker begging for an autographed headshot of him or - a gajillion times worse - of Cameron.
He needs some fresh air anyway, doesn’t he? Walk around, stretch the ol’ legs, clear his head. He’d stop somewhere when he got closer to Giani’s and grab another case of beers too. They’d hardly put a dent in the stash of cold ones he had in the fridge this afternoon - What? A couple each or so? - but he was thinking more and more now that he might just feel like tying one on later tonight. Yeah. A big one. Jot beers down on the to-get list. Absolutely. Maybe a whole backseat full.
JC hadn’t liked his surprise.
In fact, he hadn’t liked it so damn much that he’d been too appalled to even to pretend at first he did like it. Or maybe too embarrassed to.
He’d hated it.
He’d thought it was the dumbest, most fucked-up fucking gift anyone had ever called themselves trying to give a person. It had been so throbbingly obvious in his blank, can’t-say-a-damn-thing-about-this-shit stare. Hell, he hadn’t even been able to look at Justin at first.
And wasn’t that just the greatest emotional indicator of all? That he hadn’t wanted Justin to see in those deep, beautiful windows to the soul how disappointed and repulsed he’d been at the whole concept of that crazy box?
Why, Justin wonders silently, heaping blame on himself and gripping the leather-covered steering wheel way too tightly, had he ever thought it was a cool idea anyway? Why hadn’t he run it by Lance or somebody just for an outsider opinion? And how much of a he-tard had he been to let that fucking box idiocy pass through the security checkpoint in his brain for sane and acceptable? Why couldn’t he have offered something as simple and sweet and still so meaningful as what JC had given him?
What the hell had he been thinking?
Yeah, he’d had to get out of that house, take a drive, watch the sun go down. The entire idea was a mistake that shouldn’t have happened but could be easily forgotten right? JC would laugh it off as just another one of Justin’s little flaky, totally mental quirks, wouldn’t he? He’d call it “hormonal” and tell him he needed some Midol with Lithium, wouldn’t he?
Justin sighs, long and loud. He loves being in the Jeep. The Jeep is comfortable, quiet, spirit-releasing, and easier to handle than some folks may think. He can unwind, here in the Jeep. All by himself. Here in the Jeep. He can forget - or at least pretend to - the horrible ache inside him now that his venture into high-style romance, his sentimental offering to the love of his life had been a total bust. The love of his life hadn’t “gotten it,” hadn’t been on the same wavelength with him, hadn’t given a damn about the stupid gesture at all. That much had been crystal clear.
And it hurts, he can’t deny. He can shovel all the blame for the failure, for even giving it a shot in the first place, on himself, sure. But, deep down, it hurts all the way to his very soul.
And now the Jeep. He’d chosen it after scribbling a quick note and then yanking some sneakers out of the hall closet back at the house. And by now, with the early-evening LA wind from the side window brushing his face and hair with a dry warmth, halfway down this hill, halfway to the pizza parlor, maybe he’s beginning to feel a little better. A little. Isn’t he? Or was that pretend too? He doesn’t even notice the speedometer needle kissing the 60 mph mark.
The next curve in the road isn’t a sharp or particularly twisty one, not even one he particularly remembers being there. But it’s one that beckons seductively and flirts quietly with the pull of the vehicle, one that demands to be hugged with smooth finesse, leaned into coolly for the long haul, one that, to Justin, seems to just keep stretching on and on, seems to keep coming and coming at you without end.
And, mind-out-in-Middle-Elsewhere as it is and eyes stinging with those damn stubborn teardrops that won’t listen to him and get the hell away, he doesn’t feel the vibrating wheel slip in his grasp, nor does he see the tall wooden barrier tucked away there in an alcove off to the left of the pavement……until it’s zooming straight up to meet him, right in front of his windshield.
Way, way too close to his windshield.
Whoa. How the hell did THAT get in the damn road? he thinks, vaguely, as he loses control of the sharp veer, as his head is thrown backward and then forward, and the Jeep’s powerful airbag swells around him like a cloud to soften a blow he never feels.
~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~
TBC......
Part 2