in your face, space coyote
What!? I wrote some popslash. I was starting to think that would never happen again, apart from fic challenge-duties!
Anyhow. Here goes. First link is website; second is lj-post.
. down he came: some messes don't need to be sorted.
down he came
The reporter's wearing a sly, insinuating grin when he says, "--so it's kind of like you're hookers, isn't it?"
The question hangs in the air for a minute before JC says, "um, no," and the reporter, itching to corner them, demands, "So what's the difference?" Joey rolls his eyes and Justin leans into the mic and says distinctly, "Well, a hooker doesn't get off on fucking you."
That's it for the interview. There's no repercussions, not really; they have good enough PR that all their messes get mopped up right straight. Johnny only yells at them over speakerphone, not in person.
The only reason it's really even important at all is because Chris uses that moment to mark exactly when he fell out of love.
...
He crawls back onto the bus right on the shell of morning and sits in his dirty shoes at one of the tables, eating a thing of pudding. It's vanilla because for some reason they always get vanilla, butterscotch, and chocolate, and then only want to eat the butterscotch and chocolate. Vanilla keeps turning up in the cabinets nontheless. Chris spoons it down dully, lets it sweeten and smoothe the bourbon still prickling his tongue.
JC comes along and sits across from him with a glass full of ice and maybe three tablespoons of water. JC has brutal insomnia every now and again. He lies in his bunk with his jaw clenched until the sky's that unsettled muddy colour outside, then gets up and drinks a glass of ice as it slowly and painfully melts, one miniaturized glacier at a time. It's the sleeping pills, Lance once told Chris in confidence; they work poorly for JC if at all, and just wring him out so he wanders around like a zombie in the middle of the night.
"V'nilla," JC mutters with real hatred. Chris scrapes at the cup with his spoon; the plastic makes a weak noise and he wishes for the old cans with the ring-pulls that pudding used to come in.
"Speaking of," JC continues. His left leg waggles at irregular intervals. "I told you."
"Gonna have to give me a little bit more than that, C." Chris licks his tongue around his mouth and decides that Jack Daniels and vanilla pudding together taste kind of like eggnog, which is poor consolation. He's not real big on eggnog.
JC leans forward and scrunches one side of his face as he unsticks his hand from his icy glass. "Told you it would never work out." He notices Chris's lip starting to curl and hurries onward. "I mean, we kind of -- are all friends, and we work together. That's two never-nevers in one go, man."
"How are you supposed to date somebody if they're not your friend first?" Chris gripes. Mostly to stall, but JC gives him a flat look and says, "I never date anybody who's my friend first." He drinks a couple sips of frigid water with great satisfaction and Chris (not for the first time) wonders why he ever forgets that JC is all steel pins and an iron column that serves as a spine.
"It's no big," Chris says, and ignores JC's inelegant snort. "I'll deal with it. It'll be cool." He can't help but feel kind of pleased to say this, to actually feel the words in his mouth; he's been on the receiving side of the big dumpola so many times it's a relief to be wielding the business end for once. JC is regarding him curiously, but his eyes have too much white around the coloured parts and Chris knows his next words will be--
"Bed for me, man." JC lurches up. There's relief in his voice, too, and Chris feels sorry for him. He hopes that JC falls asleep, so deep and hard his only dreams will be ones that make no sense because they're too much like being awake.
...
Justin kisses Chris awake in the morning, and his mouth is scrupulous with clear mint toothpaste. Chris has pointed out that when Justin does this, Chris's mouth is all dragon-breath; but Justin's fine with that -- as long as he's secure in his own freshly-scrubbedness, the state of Chris's breath is incidental at best. "Sabbah-el-khair," Justin says with aplomb, smiling as he crouches down next to Chris's bunk.
"Turkish," Chris guesses, and Justin shakes his head and claims another kiss as his prize.
"Arabic," he corrects as he flaps a couple of folded-up pages at Chris. "That's the eighteenth language on here, done."
Chris levers himself up. His t-shirt feels soggy at the neckline and in the small of his back. "Eighteen, huh? But are you retaining them at all? Do you remember how to say good morning in, uh ...." He casts about to remember, mornings and mint sugar kisses before. "Tamil?"
"Vanakkam," Justin says promptly, then licks his lips. This is a sign that Justin wouldn't mind being fucked, or would be willing to give Chris a strong, fast blowjob if prompted. Chris spreads his fingers and touches Justin's face, two fingertips on the flat crest of each cheek; his fingertips press in deeper than he expects, every time. Justin has unsettlingly oily skin. Your touch sinks in like in oleo.
He pushes, and scrambles off the bunk in an ungainly way. One heel catches Justin in the collarbone and Justin grabs Chris's ankle and rubs his hand hard around the skin, leaving a burning anklet.
"Fine, go shower," he says. "You need it. I'm making omelettes. What you want in yours?"
"Cheese, ham, and banana peppers," Chris tells him. "And put it in a tortilla." Justin makes a face as he straightens up.
"Never anything normal," he sighs. "Thank God for C." JC will want spinach, tomato, and feta cheese. JC never puts anything else in his omelettes; once Joey made a set of them all fat with buttery, slippery-chewy mushrooms and JC never let him hear the end of it. After that Joey refused to cook eggs for anybody but Lance, who has a secret intense love for edible fungus of all kinds. Chris is pretty sure that the one time Joey and Lance hooked up was after a late supper of mushroom omelettes and toast, which he finds pretty fucked-up but then he isn't really one to judge.
The water feels satisfyingly heavy and Chris takes his time, scrubbing behind his ears and between his toes until bits of him feel a little bit abraded. Pleased, he briskly towels off and gets dressed, relishing the feeling of still-damp skin turning warm under dry clothes. It feels good. He feels good.
"Everything's coming up Milhouse!" he proclaims as he bursts into the kitchen area. Justin's leaning against the counter eating toast with a crumpled-up forehead, and he throws it down on his plate and lurches toward Chris just as Chris notices JC on his cell phone, nodding and murmuring.
"Something wrong--" Chris starts at the same time that Justin holds his arm and urgently whispers, "Joey's uncle got hit by a drunk driver. He's okay, but he's in the hospital."
"Shit," Chris says, and goes and sits next to JC, shaking Justin's fingers off. Justin looks slightly put-out but it goes away fast, and Chris knows that Justin's telling himself that Chris is just rattled by the bad news. "Tell him we're all rattled," Chris tells JC, "by the bad news." JC ignores him and does more of that milk-mild comforting noise into the phone. When Chris looks back at Justin, he's eating his toast again, and Chris is suddenly ravenous.
...
Joey insists that they go on with the shows and interviews and appearances and whateverthefuck else, because there's nobody like Joey when it comes to balling up emotion and shoving it deep down. Chris thinks Joey might be best at it out of all of them, and he wonders what the hell Joey does to vent. He doesn't throw himself into organization like Lance, doesn't go out partying until he's exhausted like JC, doesn't get moody and withdrawn like him or hyper-sensitive like Justin.
"He's okay, seriously," Joey assures them all as they hang around in the Quiet Room. He's wearing his monk robe for no good reason, except that it lends him a definite air of serenity and adds weight and truth to everything he says. Chris isn't sure if Joey was conscious of all that when he put it on, but he wouldn't put it past the fucker. "Fractured tibia, the doctors say -- it'll just take a little longer to heal because he's old and has high blood pressure."
"As long as you feel okay about it," Lance says, "that's good enough for us." He looks around at the rest of them emphatically, and JC and Justin nod as though they'd rehearsed this cue beforehand. Chris folds his arms and presses his lips together and rocks his weight from foot to foot, and Lance glares until he's tired of it and turns his attention back to Joey.
"Thanks, guys," Joey says, but he's looking only at Lance and not smiling. That in itself is kind of weird because Chris has seen Joey smile like a reflex despite being pissed off, scared, nervous, in pain. As Chris watches, Lance's throat bobs and he slowly turns pink high up on his cheekbones, and -- fuck, Chris thinks. so that's how it is.
He grabs Justin when they're piling into the car after the concert, keeping him outside while JC sprawls over the seat inside. "Do you know anything about Joe and Lance?" he asks. Justin nods and shifts so his hip is curved into Chris's hand, leaning close to lowly say, "Been like that since Sacramento." He presses the tip of his nose behind Chris's ear and then slithers into the car, leaving Chris there shuddering. "You getting in, or running behind?" JC's tart voice enquires from the car, and Chris takes the hand that one of them extends to him.
...
They fuck that night because JC is dead to the world and doesn't give a good goddamn what they do, and so Justin pulls Chris into the back lounge and climbs into his lap, licking Chris's mouth open and pulling really hard at his hair. "mmmm," Justin purrs, then again in a lower register. His whole body rearranges itself in Chris's lap -- hips spreading wider and limbs tight against himself -- and he presses his face against Chris's and mutters in an odd deep voice, "i'm lance and you're joey," and Chris would say that Justin's a pretty strange kid sometimes if it weren't for the fact that his dick is saluting that idea with extreme enthusiasm.
"Okay, yeah," Chris says slowly, and then gives a startled laugh because Justin levels a cross look at him that's a ringer for the way Lance does it. He clears his throat and throws his head back, letting his eyelids drift halfway down and putting his hand on the back of Justin's head. "Let's get a little more comfortable, babe," he drawls, his voice crackling a bit at the edges, and Justin's eyes spark with excitement. He yanks open Chris's jeans and sprawls halfway onto the ground to swallow Chris's cock, two, three, four long hard sucks before he's back in Chris's lap with one hand jerking Chris off. "Oh, hell, yeah, Joey," Justin growls in his weird deep voice, and uses the pressure of his body to push Chris down on the sectional.
Chris laughs lightly, teasing, asking, "You're in that kinda mood, huh? Okay, baby, take it easy -- there's enough to go around." Justin claws Chris's jeans off and pushes one of his legs up, biting the inside of Chris's knee and all up the thigh. "I wanna fuck you, Joey," he mumbles just as Chris's balls touch the bridge of his nose; Chris is about to come right then and there but Justin makes it worse by shifting so he can wrap his mouth over Chris's cock again.
They don't talk much after that because Justin pushes down his own pants and there's some hurried preparation with lube and condoms and Chris can't wait, he's wriggling and making impatient noises, and Justin narrows his eyes and pushes into Chris with a movement that slides him right up Chris's body. "Lance," Chris squeaks, and then Justin's off to the races, banging against him with a solid determination that's nothing like how it usually is but makes purple spots go off behind Chris's eyes. Justin pants against Chris's chest in harsh, low barks, baring his teeth as he sinks deep inside Chris over and over, calling him joey joey joey in a steady baritone stream; when he comes, it's with a strangled bloodhound yowl that sounds like it rips his throat to shit.
Chris waits a few moments for Justin to pull out, and then sits up on the edge of the sofa as Justin flops down onto his knees between Chris's feet. "Yeah," Chris murmurs with his voice honey and heat, holding Justin's head tipped back with one fist in his hair. "Oh, God, yeah, baby, Lance, just like that," as he jerks off with his free fist until he comes, splattering across Justin's half-open mouth and bared throat, only imagining it's Lance a little bit.
In the morning JC wrinkles his nose over his tea and tells them, "I must've been really bagged last night, guys. I totally hallucinated I was on Joey and Lance's bus, and they were getting it on and everything."
"Tsk, tsk," Justin says as he rapidly spoons down cereal. "It ain't healthy to fantasize about your fellow bandmembers doin' the deed, C." Chris is amazed; Justin doesn't even have a telltale smirk in his voice, not a single sly wink in Chris's direction. He makes the joke and is perfectly content for it to be private, apparently not requiring anybody else to enjoy it with him.
This makes Chris more uncomfortable than anything else. Even pretending to be Joey and fucking a pretend-Lance. And how the hell did a person prepare to find himself at that place in his life?
...
They get a little bit of down time between a couple of venues and manage to spend it in a hotel and not on the road; the first couple of days none of them want to see the others at all, but by the last day before moving on they gravitate toward each other and end up in Joey's room drinking and watching an A-Team marathon on tv.
"So I would be Hannibal, of course," Chris says after the fourth episode and twice as many drinks, "and J would be Face and Joey would be B.A. and JC would be the random girl--"
"Hey," JC blurts, but he doesn't really care. "Who would I be?" Lance asks, and Chris flaps his hand and says, "I dunno -- the car."
"That's Knight Rider, dumbass," Joey tells him. "Lance would have to be Murdock."
"I don't wanna be the crazy one," Lance objects. "I think we can all agree that I am the least crazy out of all five of us."
"Yeah, that's some shitty casting, Joe," Justin pipes in, and Chris frowns as his dick gives an agreeable twitch in his pants upon Justin uttering Joey's name. JC sticks his face into a pillow, giggling, but won't tell the others and Chris is kind of glad for it because wow, would that be awkward to explain. "Yeah, being a car seems more like ... Lance," he says experimentally. Justin doesn't even blink, and Chris feels deep resentment. He's putting all the investment into this relationship, he realizes, suddenly affronted. Justin's coasting through on native charm and adaptability, the way Justin coasts through everything; once he's wrung whatever experiences he wants out of Chris, he'll move on to the next more exciting thing.
This seems like the height of unfairness, especially when Chris is the one considering breaking up with Justin. It rankles in him, a little bramble of hurt and panic, and Chris thinks maybe he'll just let it fester for a bit. It might come in handy in the long run.
"I love it when a plan comes together," he announces apropos of nothing, and grins while the others groan.
...
Exactly one week later they're in another hotel and Chris is standing at the mini bar breaking open vodkas and downing them one by one when there's a big loud mad knock on his door, rap rap rapraprap and when he goes over and opens it, it's of course Justin.
"What the fuck," Justin says, and doesn't get any further because Chris cuts him off with, "I am not in the mood, asshole. Just get lost."
He tries to close the door but Justin manages to wedge one skinny knee and a wrist in the space, and Chris lets the door fly open with a good juicy swear word before heading back to stubbornly face his mini bar. Justin slams the door shut and stomps in, his voice reedy with anger when he demands, "What is up with you? You're acting like a bitch to everyone, yelling at everybody all the time -- what the hell are you so mad about?"
"Oh, where to fucking begin," Chris snarls over his shoulder. "Not that you'd understand. That's the last place you'd look to find blame, right? In the fucking mirror?"
Justin reaches out to grab him, turn him around, and that sets fire off in Chris's chest; he lets Justin turn him and then breaks Justin's grip, bending his arm out at the elbow and then slapping him across the face, hard. Justin goes oot!, shocked more than anything else, which is just the right time for Chris to push him down to his knees. That one funny little sound of surprise has made him hard, and Justin reels back at first but then noses forward once Chris has his jeans open. It might be Chris's imagination but the inside of Justin's mouth feels hotter on the side that got hit. He rocks into that tight wet clutch until Justin makes a hungry noise and brings his hands up to Chris's thighs, and then he pulls back and pulls Justin up.
"Chris--" Justin starts, thickly, but that little bramble has tapped its thorns right up through Chris's chest and he shoves until Justin's on the mattress on his belly, long legs dragging off the side of the bed. "Chris, please," Justin says, something desperate in his voice. It makes Chris feel simultaneously sick and greedy to hear it, Justin's voice going, "c'mon, please, I love you." He lets Chris take down his jeans, push his legs open wider and slick him up, hiccuping, "I love you, Chris, oh god, please please," until Chris grabs Justin by the hips and plunges into him.
Justin gives a long, needy moan through clenched teeth and pushes back to meet Chris's thrusts, erratic and vicious as they are, each one making Chris's head hurt. He keeps going, going and going and going, and after a while Justin stops moving and just mumbles into the bedspread in a faint hoarse chatter of nonsense. Chris's head is about to explode, misplaced release, and so he pulls out and hauls Justin upright, yanking his pants up. Justin's too disoriented to realize what's happening until Chris has bundled him out into the hallway, jeans undone and knees ready to buckle.
The smell of Justin is all over the bedspread. Chris drops to his knees, smashing his face against the fabric and jerking off as hard as he can. It takes all of ten seconds.
...
Nothing happens. He stops acting like the world's biggest grouch, Justin plays basketball with him again with only a preliminary "Thank God," and accompanying eye-roll. There's no recriminations, no blame; Justin acts as though what happened was just ordinary everyday sex.
Chris is relieved. He's also aggravated. He's getting pretty tired of these two-for-one feelings. But there's maybe something to be said for being with somebody who really does accept you for what you are.
...
"I'm starting to wonder if I'm wrong," he tells JC one night not long after that, when they're sitting at the table once again and JC's hands are shivering on his big glass of ice. "I might be wrong. It's been known to happen."
"It's been a valid lifestyle choice for you," JC says shortly, but Chris doesn't take it hard. JC's in the middle of an insomnia stretch again, and he's too worn out to observe social niceties when it's two in the morning. Chris sandwiches two Chips Ahoy together with marshmallow fluff and muses, "I mean, how would you know, right? If you're used to having somebody around all the time, how can you tell the difference between love and ... not-love? People go through phases, they get sick of each other, they even think they don't love each other. But that's just normal relationships, right? Only you can't tell because you're together all the time."
JC holds his hands out stiffly in front of him and waves them a little. "And this is Chris, tapdancing as fast as he can," he says.
Chris scowls. "Fuck you," he snaps, mouth full of cookie and marshmallow glue. "Just because you can't find anybody yourself." The awful things he and JC get away with saying to each other, in the shell of the morning. It's crazy shit.
Shrugging, JC rolls his neck and regards Chris through his eyelashes. "You were wrong from the jump," he says. "Getting together in the first place was the dumbest fucking thing either of you could've done."
"Y'know, I don't see you over on the other bus reading Joey and Lance the riot act," Chris points out. "Seems kind of biased, doesn't it?"
"They're not you guys," JC tells him with infinite condescension, as though this should be obvious. "They know how to forgive people for stuff."
"Stuff like what?"
JC picks up his glass, then puts it back down carefully on the ring of icy water-beads it left on the table. "Stuff like problems," he mutters. "Stuff like obstacles." He picks at a hangnail until it bleeds. "Stuff like other people."
Chris perks up at that. "Other people?" he repeats. "You know this for certain?"
There's a long silence as the ice in JC's glass shifts and settles with clear, ringing bell-sounds. JC finally stands up; he's half-turned away from Chris when he says, quietly, "friends and working together. I told you before, it never works out when you fuck with that."
All the ice has slid down into water by the time Chris goes to bed. He needs to be nicer to JC.
...
"Kalimera," Chris says in a bright voice, and Justin scrunches up his face. "Hindi?" he guesses, and Chris shakes his head and leans in to kiss him.
"Greek," he says. "That was pretty easy. I'm surprised you didn't know it."
Justin props himself up on his elbows, looking puzzled. "How am I supposed to know Greek?" he wonders. Chris grins and pokes his shoulder.
"I did a school project once on it," he says. "We had to team up and do presentations on what we learned about our partner's culture. I lucked out -- my partner was up there talking for like half an hour to cover all of my mutt heritage."
Justin cocks his head, smiling. "You never told me that before," he says, playing with Chris's fingers. Chris looks down at their intertwined hands, then up at Justin's familiar, beloved, irritating face. There's no lurch of love, no fluttering of his heart, no wash of affection. He feels a lot like he did at that interview. He feels a whole lot of nothing.
But Justin's hand is warm, and so is the look in his eyes, and Chris squeezes back and thinks, maybe later.
Anyhow. Here goes. First link is website; second is lj-post.
. down he came: some messes don't need to be sorted.
down he came
The reporter's wearing a sly, insinuating grin when he says, "--so it's kind of like you're hookers, isn't it?"
The question hangs in the air for a minute before JC says, "um, no," and the reporter, itching to corner them, demands, "So what's the difference?" Joey rolls his eyes and Justin leans into the mic and says distinctly, "Well, a hooker doesn't get off on fucking you."
That's it for the interview. There's no repercussions, not really; they have good enough PR that all their messes get mopped up right straight. Johnny only yells at them over speakerphone, not in person.
The only reason it's really even important at all is because Chris uses that moment to mark exactly when he fell out of love.
...
He crawls back onto the bus right on the shell of morning and sits in his dirty shoes at one of the tables, eating a thing of pudding. It's vanilla because for some reason they always get vanilla, butterscotch, and chocolate, and then only want to eat the butterscotch and chocolate. Vanilla keeps turning up in the cabinets nontheless. Chris spoons it down dully, lets it sweeten and smoothe the bourbon still prickling his tongue.
JC comes along and sits across from him with a glass full of ice and maybe three tablespoons of water. JC has brutal insomnia every now and again. He lies in his bunk with his jaw clenched until the sky's that unsettled muddy colour outside, then gets up and drinks a glass of ice as it slowly and painfully melts, one miniaturized glacier at a time. It's the sleeping pills, Lance once told Chris in confidence; they work poorly for JC if at all, and just wring him out so he wanders around like a zombie in the middle of the night.
"V'nilla," JC mutters with real hatred. Chris scrapes at the cup with his spoon; the plastic makes a weak noise and he wishes for the old cans with the ring-pulls that pudding used to come in.
"Speaking of," JC continues. His left leg waggles at irregular intervals. "I told you."
"Gonna have to give me a little bit more than that, C." Chris licks his tongue around his mouth and decides that Jack Daniels and vanilla pudding together taste kind of like eggnog, which is poor consolation. He's not real big on eggnog.
JC leans forward and scrunches one side of his face as he unsticks his hand from his icy glass. "Told you it would never work out." He notices Chris's lip starting to curl and hurries onward. "I mean, we kind of -- are all friends, and we work together. That's two never-nevers in one go, man."
"How are you supposed to date somebody if they're not your friend first?" Chris gripes. Mostly to stall, but JC gives him a flat look and says, "I never date anybody who's my friend first." He drinks a couple sips of frigid water with great satisfaction and Chris (not for the first time) wonders why he ever forgets that JC is all steel pins and an iron column that serves as a spine.
"It's no big," Chris says, and ignores JC's inelegant snort. "I'll deal with it. It'll be cool." He can't help but feel kind of pleased to say this, to actually feel the words in his mouth; he's been on the receiving side of the big dumpola so many times it's a relief to be wielding the business end for once. JC is regarding him curiously, but his eyes have too much white around the coloured parts and Chris knows his next words will be--
"Bed for me, man." JC lurches up. There's relief in his voice, too, and Chris feels sorry for him. He hopes that JC falls asleep, so deep and hard his only dreams will be ones that make no sense because they're too much like being awake.
...
Justin kisses Chris awake in the morning, and his mouth is scrupulous with clear mint toothpaste. Chris has pointed out that when Justin does this, Chris's mouth is all dragon-breath; but Justin's fine with that -- as long as he's secure in his own freshly-scrubbedness, the state of Chris's breath is incidental at best. "Sabbah-el-khair," Justin says with aplomb, smiling as he crouches down next to Chris's bunk.
"Turkish," Chris guesses, and Justin shakes his head and claims another kiss as his prize.
"Arabic," he corrects as he flaps a couple of folded-up pages at Chris. "That's the eighteenth language on here, done."
Chris levers himself up. His t-shirt feels soggy at the neckline and in the small of his back. "Eighteen, huh? But are you retaining them at all? Do you remember how to say good morning in, uh ...." He casts about to remember, mornings and mint sugar kisses before. "Tamil?"
"Vanakkam," Justin says promptly, then licks his lips. This is a sign that Justin wouldn't mind being fucked, or would be willing to give Chris a strong, fast blowjob if prompted. Chris spreads his fingers and touches Justin's face, two fingertips on the flat crest of each cheek; his fingertips press in deeper than he expects, every time. Justin has unsettlingly oily skin. Your touch sinks in like in oleo.
He pushes, and scrambles off the bunk in an ungainly way. One heel catches Justin in the collarbone and Justin grabs Chris's ankle and rubs his hand hard around the skin, leaving a burning anklet.
"Fine, go shower," he says. "You need it. I'm making omelettes. What you want in yours?"
"Cheese, ham, and banana peppers," Chris tells him. "And put it in a tortilla." Justin makes a face as he straightens up.
"Never anything normal," he sighs. "Thank God for C." JC will want spinach, tomato, and feta cheese. JC never puts anything else in his omelettes; once Joey made a set of them all fat with buttery, slippery-chewy mushrooms and JC never let him hear the end of it. After that Joey refused to cook eggs for anybody but Lance, who has a secret intense love for edible fungus of all kinds. Chris is pretty sure that the one time Joey and Lance hooked up was after a late supper of mushroom omelettes and toast, which he finds pretty fucked-up but then he isn't really one to judge.
The water feels satisfyingly heavy and Chris takes his time, scrubbing behind his ears and between his toes until bits of him feel a little bit abraded. Pleased, he briskly towels off and gets dressed, relishing the feeling of still-damp skin turning warm under dry clothes. It feels good. He feels good.
"Everything's coming up Milhouse!" he proclaims as he bursts into the kitchen area. Justin's leaning against the counter eating toast with a crumpled-up forehead, and he throws it down on his plate and lurches toward Chris just as Chris notices JC on his cell phone, nodding and murmuring.
"Something wrong--" Chris starts at the same time that Justin holds his arm and urgently whispers, "Joey's uncle got hit by a drunk driver. He's okay, but he's in the hospital."
"Shit," Chris says, and goes and sits next to JC, shaking Justin's fingers off. Justin looks slightly put-out but it goes away fast, and Chris knows that Justin's telling himself that Chris is just rattled by the bad news. "Tell him we're all rattled," Chris tells JC, "by the bad news." JC ignores him and does more of that milk-mild comforting noise into the phone. When Chris looks back at Justin, he's eating his toast again, and Chris is suddenly ravenous.
...
Joey insists that they go on with the shows and interviews and appearances and whateverthefuck else, because there's nobody like Joey when it comes to balling up emotion and shoving it deep down. Chris thinks Joey might be best at it out of all of them, and he wonders what the hell Joey does to vent. He doesn't throw himself into organization like Lance, doesn't go out partying until he's exhausted like JC, doesn't get moody and withdrawn like him or hyper-sensitive like Justin.
"He's okay, seriously," Joey assures them all as they hang around in the Quiet Room. He's wearing his monk robe for no good reason, except that it lends him a definite air of serenity and adds weight and truth to everything he says. Chris isn't sure if Joey was conscious of all that when he put it on, but he wouldn't put it past the fucker. "Fractured tibia, the doctors say -- it'll just take a little longer to heal because he's old and has high blood pressure."
"As long as you feel okay about it," Lance says, "that's good enough for us." He looks around at the rest of them emphatically, and JC and Justin nod as though they'd rehearsed this cue beforehand. Chris folds his arms and presses his lips together and rocks his weight from foot to foot, and Lance glares until he's tired of it and turns his attention back to Joey.
"Thanks, guys," Joey says, but he's looking only at Lance and not smiling. That in itself is kind of weird because Chris has seen Joey smile like a reflex despite being pissed off, scared, nervous, in pain. As Chris watches, Lance's throat bobs and he slowly turns pink high up on his cheekbones, and -- fuck, Chris thinks. so that's how it is.
He grabs Justin when they're piling into the car after the concert, keeping him outside while JC sprawls over the seat inside. "Do you know anything about Joe and Lance?" he asks. Justin nods and shifts so his hip is curved into Chris's hand, leaning close to lowly say, "Been like that since Sacramento." He presses the tip of his nose behind Chris's ear and then slithers into the car, leaving Chris there shuddering. "You getting in, or running behind?" JC's tart voice enquires from the car, and Chris takes the hand that one of them extends to him.
...
They fuck that night because JC is dead to the world and doesn't give a good goddamn what they do, and so Justin pulls Chris into the back lounge and climbs into his lap, licking Chris's mouth open and pulling really hard at his hair. "mmmm," Justin purrs, then again in a lower register. His whole body rearranges itself in Chris's lap -- hips spreading wider and limbs tight against himself -- and he presses his face against Chris's and mutters in an odd deep voice, "i'm lance and you're joey," and Chris would say that Justin's a pretty strange kid sometimes if it weren't for the fact that his dick is saluting that idea with extreme enthusiasm.
"Okay, yeah," Chris says slowly, and then gives a startled laugh because Justin levels a cross look at him that's a ringer for the way Lance does it. He clears his throat and throws his head back, letting his eyelids drift halfway down and putting his hand on the back of Justin's head. "Let's get a little more comfortable, babe," he drawls, his voice crackling a bit at the edges, and Justin's eyes spark with excitement. He yanks open Chris's jeans and sprawls halfway onto the ground to swallow Chris's cock, two, three, four long hard sucks before he's back in Chris's lap with one hand jerking Chris off. "Oh, hell, yeah, Joey," Justin growls in his weird deep voice, and uses the pressure of his body to push Chris down on the sectional.
Chris laughs lightly, teasing, asking, "You're in that kinda mood, huh? Okay, baby, take it easy -- there's enough to go around." Justin claws Chris's jeans off and pushes one of his legs up, biting the inside of Chris's knee and all up the thigh. "I wanna fuck you, Joey," he mumbles just as Chris's balls touch the bridge of his nose; Chris is about to come right then and there but Justin makes it worse by shifting so he can wrap his mouth over Chris's cock again.
They don't talk much after that because Justin pushes down his own pants and there's some hurried preparation with lube and condoms and Chris can't wait, he's wriggling and making impatient noises, and Justin narrows his eyes and pushes into Chris with a movement that slides him right up Chris's body. "Lance," Chris squeaks, and then Justin's off to the races, banging against him with a solid determination that's nothing like how it usually is but makes purple spots go off behind Chris's eyes. Justin pants against Chris's chest in harsh, low barks, baring his teeth as he sinks deep inside Chris over and over, calling him joey joey joey in a steady baritone stream; when he comes, it's with a strangled bloodhound yowl that sounds like it rips his throat to shit.
Chris waits a few moments for Justin to pull out, and then sits up on the edge of the sofa as Justin flops down onto his knees between Chris's feet. "Yeah," Chris murmurs with his voice honey and heat, holding Justin's head tipped back with one fist in his hair. "Oh, God, yeah, baby, Lance, just like that," as he jerks off with his free fist until he comes, splattering across Justin's half-open mouth and bared throat, only imagining it's Lance a little bit.
In the morning JC wrinkles his nose over his tea and tells them, "I must've been really bagged last night, guys. I totally hallucinated I was on Joey and Lance's bus, and they were getting it on and everything."
"Tsk, tsk," Justin says as he rapidly spoons down cereal. "It ain't healthy to fantasize about your fellow bandmembers doin' the deed, C." Chris is amazed; Justin doesn't even have a telltale smirk in his voice, not a single sly wink in Chris's direction. He makes the joke and is perfectly content for it to be private, apparently not requiring anybody else to enjoy it with him.
This makes Chris more uncomfortable than anything else. Even pretending to be Joey and fucking a pretend-Lance. And how the hell did a person prepare to find himself at that place in his life?
...
They get a little bit of down time between a couple of venues and manage to spend it in a hotel and not on the road; the first couple of days none of them want to see the others at all, but by the last day before moving on they gravitate toward each other and end up in Joey's room drinking and watching an A-Team marathon on tv.
"So I would be Hannibal, of course," Chris says after the fourth episode and twice as many drinks, "and J would be Face and Joey would be B.A. and JC would be the random girl--"
"Hey," JC blurts, but he doesn't really care. "Who would I be?" Lance asks, and Chris flaps his hand and says, "I dunno -- the car."
"That's Knight Rider, dumbass," Joey tells him. "Lance would have to be Murdock."
"I don't wanna be the crazy one," Lance objects. "I think we can all agree that I am the least crazy out of all five of us."
"Yeah, that's some shitty casting, Joe," Justin pipes in, and Chris frowns as his dick gives an agreeable twitch in his pants upon Justin uttering Joey's name. JC sticks his face into a pillow, giggling, but won't tell the others and Chris is kind of glad for it because wow, would that be awkward to explain. "Yeah, being a car seems more like ... Lance," he says experimentally. Justin doesn't even blink, and Chris feels deep resentment. He's putting all the investment into this relationship, he realizes, suddenly affronted. Justin's coasting through on native charm and adaptability, the way Justin coasts through everything; once he's wrung whatever experiences he wants out of Chris, he'll move on to the next more exciting thing.
This seems like the height of unfairness, especially when Chris is the one considering breaking up with Justin. It rankles in him, a little bramble of hurt and panic, and Chris thinks maybe he'll just let it fester for a bit. It might come in handy in the long run.
"I love it when a plan comes together," he announces apropos of nothing, and grins while the others groan.
...
Exactly one week later they're in another hotel and Chris is standing at the mini bar breaking open vodkas and downing them one by one when there's a big loud mad knock on his door, rap rap rapraprap and when he goes over and opens it, it's of course Justin.
"What the fuck," Justin says, and doesn't get any further because Chris cuts him off with, "I am not in the mood, asshole. Just get lost."
He tries to close the door but Justin manages to wedge one skinny knee and a wrist in the space, and Chris lets the door fly open with a good juicy swear word before heading back to stubbornly face his mini bar. Justin slams the door shut and stomps in, his voice reedy with anger when he demands, "What is up with you? You're acting like a bitch to everyone, yelling at everybody all the time -- what the hell are you so mad about?"
"Oh, where to fucking begin," Chris snarls over his shoulder. "Not that you'd understand. That's the last place you'd look to find blame, right? In the fucking mirror?"
Justin reaches out to grab him, turn him around, and that sets fire off in Chris's chest; he lets Justin turn him and then breaks Justin's grip, bending his arm out at the elbow and then slapping him across the face, hard. Justin goes oot!, shocked more than anything else, which is just the right time for Chris to push him down to his knees. That one funny little sound of surprise has made him hard, and Justin reels back at first but then noses forward once Chris has his jeans open. It might be Chris's imagination but the inside of Justin's mouth feels hotter on the side that got hit. He rocks into that tight wet clutch until Justin makes a hungry noise and brings his hands up to Chris's thighs, and then he pulls back and pulls Justin up.
"Chris--" Justin starts, thickly, but that little bramble has tapped its thorns right up through Chris's chest and he shoves until Justin's on the mattress on his belly, long legs dragging off the side of the bed. "Chris, please," Justin says, something desperate in his voice. It makes Chris feel simultaneously sick and greedy to hear it, Justin's voice going, "c'mon, please, I love you." He lets Chris take down his jeans, push his legs open wider and slick him up, hiccuping, "I love you, Chris, oh god, please please," until Chris grabs Justin by the hips and plunges into him.
Justin gives a long, needy moan through clenched teeth and pushes back to meet Chris's thrusts, erratic and vicious as they are, each one making Chris's head hurt. He keeps going, going and going and going, and after a while Justin stops moving and just mumbles into the bedspread in a faint hoarse chatter of nonsense. Chris's head is about to explode, misplaced release, and so he pulls out and hauls Justin upright, yanking his pants up. Justin's too disoriented to realize what's happening until Chris has bundled him out into the hallway, jeans undone and knees ready to buckle.
The smell of Justin is all over the bedspread. Chris drops to his knees, smashing his face against the fabric and jerking off as hard as he can. It takes all of ten seconds.
...
Nothing happens. He stops acting like the world's biggest grouch, Justin plays basketball with him again with only a preliminary "Thank God," and accompanying eye-roll. There's no recriminations, no blame; Justin acts as though what happened was just ordinary everyday sex.
Chris is relieved. He's also aggravated. He's getting pretty tired of these two-for-one feelings. But there's maybe something to be said for being with somebody who really does accept you for what you are.
...
"I'm starting to wonder if I'm wrong," he tells JC one night not long after that, when they're sitting at the table once again and JC's hands are shivering on his big glass of ice. "I might be wrong. It's been known to happen."
"It's been a valid lifestyle choice for you," JC says shortly, but Chris doesn't take it hard. JC's in the middle of an insomnia stretch again, and he's too worn out to observe social niceties when it's two in the morning. Chris sandwiches two Chips Ahoy together with marshmallow fluff and muses, "I mean, how would you know, right? If you're used to having somebody around all the time, how can you tell the difference between love and ... not-love? People go through phases, they get sick of each other, they even think they don't love each other. But that's just normal relationships, right? Only you can't tell because you're together all the time."
JC holds his hands out stiffly in front of him and waves them a little. "And this is Chris, tapdancing as fast as he can," he says.
Chris scowls. "Fuck you," he snaps, mouth full of cookie and marshmallow glue. "Just because you can't find anybody yourself." The awful things he and JC get away with saying to each other, in the shell of the morning. It's crazy shit.
Shrugging, JC rolls his neck and regards Chris through his eyelashes. "You were wrong from the jump," he says. "Getting together in the first place was the dumbest fucking thing either of you could've done."
"Y'know, I don't see you over on the other bus reading Joey and Lance the riot act," Chris points out. "Seems kind of biased, doesn't it?"
"They're not you guys," JC tells him with infinite condescension, as though this should be obvious. "They know how to forgive people for stuff."
"Stuff like what?"
JC picks up his glass, then puts it back down carefully on the ring of icy water-beads it left on the table. "Stuff like problems," he mutters. "Stuff like obstacles." He picks at a hangnail until it bleeds. "Stuff like other people."
Chris perks up at that. "Other people?" he repeats. "You know this for certain?"
There's a long silence as the ice in JC's glass shifts and settles with clear, ringing bell-sounds. JC finally stands up; he's half-turned away from Chris when he says, quietly, "friends and working together. I told you before, it never works out when you fuck with that."
All the ice has slid down into water by the time Chris goes to bed. He needs to be nicer to JC.
...
"Kalimera," Chris says in a bright voice, and Justin scrunches up his face. "Hindi?" he guesses, and Chris shakes his head and leans in to kiss him.
"Greek," he says. "That was pretty easy. I'm surprised you didn't know it."
Justin props himself up on his elbows, looking puzzled. "How am I supposed to know Greek?" he wonders. Chris grins and pokes his shoulder.
"I did a school project once on it," he says. "We had to team up and do presentations on what we learned about our partner's culture. I lucked out -- my partner was up there talking for like half an hour to cover all of my mutt heritage."
Justin cocks his head, smiling. "You never told me that before," he says, playing with Chris's fingers. Chris looks down at their intertwined hands, then up at Justin's familiar, beloved, irritating face. There's no lurch of love, no fluttering of his heart, no wash of affection. He feels a lot like he did at that interview. He feels a whole lot of nothing.
But Justin's hand is warm, and so is the look in his eyes, and Chris squeezes back and thinks, maybe later.