Until Yesterday
Until Yesterday
Part 1
Pairing: JC/Justin
Rating: R (for language, mostly)
Summary: One minute JC is celebrating *NSYNC's NSA triumph with his buddies, the next he's waking up to a massive hangover. Oh yeah, and he kind of slept with his best friend.
A/N: Hi! This is a repost of what I previously posted about a month ago. I added a buttload to it, and I actually sorta know where I'm going with this now, so yay for that. Hope you enjoy! :-)
---------
They sold 2.4 million copies. 2.4 million copies. In a week.
JC felt like he was walking on clouds. It was crazy. They had gone from wondering if they were even going to be able to continue performing … to breaking records.
They walked in a daze for some time, grins branded on their faces amidst the congratulations, numerous pats on the back, and loud celebrations.
“It’s ridiculous!” Joey repeated the phrase throughout the day, incapable of producing any other sound other than pleased, mostly awed laughter. Chris was uncharacteristically silent for some time, sitting in a chair and staring at his hands with wide eyes, until Justin practically jumped on him and started squealing (though he would probably describe it as manly shouting in a pleased manner) after which point they were both obnoxiously loud and bouncy. Lance was not on the phone, choosing rather to chat animatedly at JC (who was totally listening and not spacing because that would be rude and 2.4 million copies...).
It was utter chaos, but it was relieving and JC felt all the hard work they had put in for so many years boil down to this indescribable feeling of complete bliss and victory.
They had won. They beat every odd that had been thrown at them. JC grinned wider than ever, joining his friends in popping champagne and basking in the glow of their accomplishment.
Later that night, the gang convened in JC’s hotel room for a more intimate celebration. Joey brought an insane amount of beer, Chris brought shots, and Lance brought, well, himself (minus the phone that JC supposed had been surgically removed from his ear that day, which was good enough for him). Justin brought “his bad self”, which was Justin-speak for “nothing, because I’m not allowed to buy alcohol despite being ridiculously wealthy and famous.”
Chris made a long, eloquent (for him, anyway) speech congratulating his fellow band mates, all while bouncing on JC’s bed and spilling alcohol all over his pillow. JC couldn’t bring himself to care, gulping down his own shot and giving Justin a sloppy grin when his buddy slapped an arm around his shoulders. Somewhere in the middle, Chris’ speech became a loud duet of what JC thought could be a Whitney Houston song (or else they were just screeching for fun) between him and Justin.
It was three thirty AM when Joey, Chris, and Lance wobbled back to their own hotel rooms. Justin was still exploding with energy, bouncing around the room in a blur of color and talking faster than JC could actually hear after so many hours and far more drinks than he could rightfully handle. From the way he was grinning madly, JC guessed he was still ranting happily about their extreme amount of success and their infinite awesomeness.
“I just can’t believe it! I can’t believe we actually really made it! I mean, sure, we were famous before but now, y’know, we’re really really there!”
And suddenly he was faced with a blinding smile stumbling towards him. Justin’s long arms crushed his shoulders while Justin bounced on the balls of his feet mid-hug, which was an amazing feat in itself after downing so many shots with Chris.
“I’m so. Freaking. Happy, Jayce. You don’t even know. Seriously, man, freakin’ amazinnn’…” Justin slurred with his Tennessee twang, his grin still glowing in the semi-darkness.
JC’s memory started blurring at that moment. The last thing he remembered from that night was Justin turning towards him, lips puckered and aiming for his cheek. It was quite inconspicuous stuff, particularly considering just how wasted they were. Unfortunately (or not, he supposed it was debatable) JC turned his head towards his friend, ready to laugh and push him off, but in a friendly sort of manner, of course .The next thing he knew he was waking up queasy, hung over, and slightly out of breath, which could have been attributed to the curly very male straight best friend and band member head using his chest as a pillow.
Yeah. Awkward.
JC shucked the sheets off of his body and jumped out of bed, jostling the warm body next to him. His eyes darted around the room, locating his pants on the heater across the room and his shirt dangling off of the bedside table. He dressed hurriedly, hopping about the room with only a sparing thought to not wake his bedmate, who somehow hadn’t woken through all the noise and flurry. With a single backward glance at the youngest band member, JC left the room and all but ran to the hotel restaurant.
When he finally sat down in an isolated corner with a menu and a glass of water, he allowed himself to reflect on the last ten minutes. It was a possibility that it was just a huge misunderstanding on his part and nothing sexual had happened, just that there had been gargantuan amounts of drinking last night and Justin had been too wasted to go to his room, instead opting to crash with JC. It was a perfectly reasonable explanation, if only it wasn’t for the nagging feeling of “oh shit, what have you done” deep in his stomach and the tacky feeling of dried sweat… among other things.
There was also the annoyance of not being able to remember how they had gotten to such a state. JC could remember the drinking bits and random snippets of conversation, mostly Chris shouting inane things about trees… but whenever he tried to delve deeper into his memory, his hangover tripled in viciousness and threatened to pound his head into a mash. His mass of bacon (and side of eggs) arrived right before he could think about how he left Justin in his room, the smell of grease wafting away any remnants of his guilt.
Five minutes later, Joey and Chris slumped into the seats across from him with matching groans of misery and looking like a sadistic truck driver had hit them and then backed up and repeated the process ten times.
“I know this is clichéd, but I am never drinking again,” Chris moaned and clamped down on the bridge of his nose. “Seriously, be good friends and stop me next time.”
Joey managed a wretched shadow of his usual grin and squinted at the menu, “Do you think it’s possible to get a hamburger for breakfast?”
There was a bit of useless chatter in between the whimpering while the two waited for their food. Ten minutes later, Lance showed up and their group brightened up considerably. Justin was still a no-show, though JC was not considering the reasons for that.
“By the way, JC, how was the conclusion of our little shindig last night?” Chris asked and gave him a sharp grin over the menu. JC choked on his water and focused his eyes on the patterns of the tablecloth as he struggled to breathe normally.
“Man, I passed out so fast I can barely recall where I woke up,” he said when finally found his voice. He gave off a high-pitched sound that could have passed for a laugh to anyone else, but thankfully no one commented on it.
“Where’s Justin? Don’t tell me you lost him, C, what are we going to tell his mother?!” Chris shrieked (causing mass wincing from those not quite rid of the jungle drum in their brains) and pressed his palms to his cheeks.
“J’s just sleeping it off right now, all right? Chill out, man, you are way too loud for someone who downed that many shots just a few hours ago.”
“Poor child, he’s probably been deflowered by some strange woman in the room across from him! He was probably taken to her bed and did freaky things all night long!” Chris sobbed and threw an arm over his eyes.
And that just did not make JC feel wrong and awkward at all. He would have protested about being called a woman, but he figured it was less of a deal than the backlash he would receive about having been the one to deflower the baby of the group. So he kept his mouth shut, opting rather for that high-pitched half-giggle again, which finally got him a strange look from Lance. Fortunately Lance chose to comment on Chris’ drama instead.
“Chris… That wasn’t Justin. That was you, freak.”
That prompted a sighed “oh, yeah” from Chris, followed by a faraway stare that no one needed nor wanted to ask about.
Breakfast was finished with loud chatter (most of it from Chris) and JC felt a smile on his face as the feeling of heavy lead disappeared from his gut. Naturally, Justin chose that moment to appear, all shiny and grinning.
“And of course the Princess looks nothing like he’s having the biggest hangover of his life! Why is the universe so cruel?!”
Justin stuck his tongue out at Chris and flung himself in the seat next to JC, throwing an arm behind the back of JC’s chair.
“What are we having?”
“Ha!” Chris smirked. “We already ate, Infant. You were too busy primping away.”
While the youngest and oldest bickered at each other, JC took the chance to steal glances at Justin. Hair: perfect. Smile: shiny. Skin: clear and oh-so-smooth. Eyes: bright. He sighed and leaned back in his chair. Justin was taking it far better than he had. Maybe it was out of spite for the way he left.
“Well, whatever, good ol’ Cap’n Crunch will keep me company in my room. I don’t want your fancy eggs, anyway!” Justin huffed and began picking at his nails.
“I’m surprised J isn’t 300 pounds with all the cereal he consumes,” Lance said and ducked with a laugh when Justin took a swipe at him.
“Please, y’all are just jealous you can’t get a piece of this fine body,” Justin smirked, stroking a hand down his chest, and JC fixed his stare at the tablecloth again.
“Sure, Infant, I want nothing more than to drag you to my man cave and ravish you senseless. Like, gag me with a spoon. Are we done here yet?” Chris said and stood up with a pointed look at the rest of the group.
“Yeah, I gotta go-uh, shower,” JC muttered and stood up, edging past Justin’s chair.
“Dude, C, I didn’t want to say anything, but since you brought it up… you is rank, man,” Chris threw his head back and cackled, drumming his fingertips together. JC half-smiled, mostly to show that he wasn’t pissed off despite how much he might want to smack Kirkpatrick in the back of the head, and sped off with a wave as an afterthought.
Justin was the only one who watched him leave.
JC loved showers. The first thing he did every morning after waking up was to shower. Skipping a shower was a tragedy, really. It was a time for reflection, whether personal or just to go over the day’s schedule. It was a time of peace in his hectic life, a moment of silence to gather his thoughts. Also, he really liked being clean.
Yet the first thing JC did when he got to his room was flop on the bed with his wrinkled shirt and uncombed hair, arms stretched out towards the headboard. He discovered that he really did reek. He didn’t deserve a shower, no matter how much his body ached for one. All he needed now was a shower Nazi; no shower for you!
“No, you know what?” he said to himself. “If Justin doesn’t care, neither do I. What’s done is done, you know?”
He did know.
So he picked himself up and allowed himself his shower. Instead of quiet reflection, he sang loud enough for his voice to bounce off of the tiled bathroom walls and echo back to him like his own group of backup singers. His alcohol roughened voice jarred him to a stop and he frowned for having been so distracted to allow himself to get to this unkempt state. He desperately wanted to blame Justin for this, to blame the alcohol, to blame Chris for bringing so much alcohol… But in the end he just felt disgust at himself bubbling in his stomach for allowing it to happen and that other people might suffer as a result.
So much for not caring.
He stood in the cooling shower and stared down at his hands. His sprawling fingers creaked open and closed, clenching tight to match his disappointed heart. His hands that had touched Justin’s body last night, stroked down his flustered chest, touched him in places accessed by few but yearned by so many people that would murder him just to be in his place… And yet here he was, cursing his fate. Why? It wasn’t as if he had an issue with the gay part of it; that had been a part of his life for quite some time now (some of the time, anyway). It was the fact that it was Justin, the kid who had looked up to a stupid teenager like he was the most intelligent being in the galaxy; who still looked at him like he has all the answers even when he was as clueless as the rest of them. It was the fact that this would ruin the camaraderie they had so effortlessly picked up over the years. He could hardly be around Justin during breakfast without anxiety leaking from his every pore, how would he manage the rest of his career?
“This is why you don’t sleep with friends,” he hissed at the showerhead. “You can’t have both casual sex and friendship, it’s a freaking rule.”
By this time, the water was pricking his skin with ice rain, so JC shut off his shower and wrapped the scratchy beige towel around his head, shaking the water from his hair so that it stuck up like a half-assed Mohawk.
As he sat on his bed, dripping water all over his still rumpled bedclothes, he decided that he had to tackle this problem head-on, the way he always did. He was not going to ruin a great friendship and a perfectly working group dynamic because of a-mistake. Any protesting that went on in his brain was swiftly and brutally quashed, and he leaned back and watched Oprah for the rest of the hour.
JC stood outside of Justin’s hotel room door, staring at the tiny scratches on the plastic surface as if he could teleport himself through the door by sheer concentration. With a deep suck of breath, he rapped his knuckles on the door and then ran his fingers over imagined wrinkles on his crisp oxford shirt. He could hear shuffling on the other side and a muffled groan and he could just see Justin stretching his body taut to crack his bones, and his shirt was riding up ever so slightly to reveal glorious, golden-
“C! What up, man?”
JC’s eyes snapped into focus on Justin’s beaming face and managed a slight quirk of his lips in return. Justin took his hand and yanked him inside, kicking the door shut behind them. JC looked around, no longer surprised at the neat stacks of paper on the desk and the complete lack of dirty clothes on the floor. Justin threw himself at the bed, lounging on his stomach and flipping through the channels on the TV, then glanced at JC with a nod at the space next to him. JC sat.
“Um, Justin-“JC cleared his throat and stared at his spidery fingers playing nervously with a loose thread on the duvet.
“Uh oh,” Justin said and clicked off the TV. “This sounds like the beginning of one of your serious conversations.” He sat up and leaned his face in closer to JC’s, peering into his eyes as he was wont to do when he was really listening. It never bothered JC before, but the physical closeness made him sweat now; like the pressure had increased because Justin was invested.
“Listen, Justin-J. Um, this is about last night,” JC began and forced himself to look at Justin instead of the duvet that was now coming apart at the seams underneath his anxious hands.
“Last night? Oh, man, I know… but it was like a one-time thing, right?” Justin grinned smugly, as if he knew that it wouldn’t be. JC’s head jerked, literally taken aback.
“Um, yeah, that’s right… But J, don’t you think we should talk about it?”
Justin barked out a laugh, “Talk about it? Like… How awesome it was? Dude, that was like one of the best nights of my life!”
JC paused, if only to be able to comprehend what was going on. Questions swooped through his brain like an information superhighway and no matter how he tried, he just couldn’t hold on to one. He probably looked like an idiot, gawping at his friend as if he had just short circuited.
“Hey man, it’s not a big deal. I mean, I know it’s bad since I’m only 19, but I’ve been doing it since I was like 16. I’m pretty sure you knew this, and you’ve never made a fuss about it before. Did you think it was too much? I thought it might be too, but it was fun, right?”
If life was a cartoon and JC had been drinking water, Justin would have gotten a face full of spit just then. Because-- what?
“WHAT?”
“What? C, what’s up with you today? You’ve been acting really funky since this morning. Did you pull a muscle or something last night? ‘Cuz man, you were gettin’ freaky,” Justin laughed; like what he said wasn’t completely, horrifyingly inappropriate considering JC was about 2 seconds away from a full-blown panic attack.
“I-what? 16? Justin-no,” JC panted out, clawing a hand through his hair and down his face. He sucked in a quick breath and blew it out slowly, willing his heart to slow down just a fraction. Justin stared at him like he was growing tentacles out of his eyes, which was absurd because he was reacting rather normally considering.
“Justin… Don’t you see how this could affect us? I mean, not just us, but us like all of us! It’s just… God, I’m so sorry, it never should have happened in the first place, but you have to understand-“
“C… It’s not like we’re gonna be doing it every day, chill out. It was a special occasion, y’know? You had absolutely no problem with it last night, but now suddenly it’s going to cost us our career?”
“I was drunk, Justin! I mean-no, that’s no excuse…”
“Wait, if you were drunk, then why are you making such a big deal about this?”
They both stopped and stared at each other with bewildered eyes. JC figured he was going to die from a heart attack soon, so he should be hurrying to get out his final words, but he just did not understand why Justin wasn’t getting it. How could he be so nonchalant about it? You didn’t just have random, drunken sex with your best friend and expect it not to mean anything, right? At least in JC’s world, sex with someone you cared about couldn’t be meaningless… but maybe Justin’s world was different. He was only 19, after all. Sex was sex. His heart clenched painfully, probably signaling his sad, mortifying demise.
“Justin… Okay, maybe it’s not a big deal for you, but it means a great deal to me. I can’t do this with you,” he should have ended it there, but his mouth kept running ahead of his tortoise brain, “and pretend it’s not going to affect me. I’m not like that. You’re my best friend, J. That means something to me, and I can’t just let that go for a couple of hours of fun.”
Justin kept staring and gaping like he had been just a few minutes before. Maybe it was getting through to him.
“C… Don’t take this the wrong way, but-I think you might have a problem.”
And then JC was storming back to his own room, Justin’s frantic protests fading behind him.
Fifteen minutes later, Chris was standing in his doorway with his hands on his hips, like a superhero coming to save the day. Except this superhero was an angry hobbit with a tendency to yell in high frequencies.
“Justin says you’re making no sense, so I’m here to make sense of you and report back to him,” Chris said as he plopped down on the floor next to JC’s feet. JC was sitting on the bed, hunched over and supporting his head with his hands.
“Go on then, tell me about your feelings and crap.”
“Man, don’t talk to me like I’m a chick,” JC muttered and peered at Chris through his fingers.
“Then don’t act like a chick. Hurry up and talk so I can go back to my room and sulk over my soiled manliness,” Chris smirked at him and patted his knee, supposedly to be encouraging.
“Chris… No offense, but it’s between me and Justin,” JC said. There was also the risk of being kicked in the ass repeatedly by Chris’ protective, big brother side, which was not a particularly pleasing outcome.
“Justin already told me, C.”
Oh, shit, here comes the ass kicking.
“Chris, man… I never meant for this to happen…”
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, C, it happens to the best of us. It was pretty hilarious to witness, though, I gotta say that.”
“You were watching?!” JC shrieked and flew off the bed in a tangle of legs as his survival instinct kicked in.
“Dude, we were all in the room,” Chris simpered, and JC found the rare urge to smash his face.
“Why the fuck didn’t you stop it from happening?!”
“Personally, I wanted to see how it would play out. I figure the other guys were too drunk to do anything but enjoy it. Besides, you were pretty damn persistent. You just would not take no for an answer.”
“Oh my God,” JC choked out, dropping into a chair as his limbs gave out.
“C, c’mon, it’s not that embarrassing. I’ve done far worse,” Chris was grinning again and JC felt white hot rage fill his mind.
“Do none of you understand what a big deal this is?!” he bellowed.
“C, it’s not like we were taking pictures or anything. It won’t end up in the tabloids if that’s what you’re freaking out about. Why are you freaking out?”
“CHRIS! Why would I not be freaking out?! I. Had. Sex. With. Justin!”
Chris finally looked well over the amount of dumbstruck that JC had been looking for.
“You-what?”
Silence filled every corner in the room.
“I-I thought you said Justin told you,” JC finally managed.
Chris licked his lips and looked at the ceiling, and JC wondered if the ass-kicking was still on the table. When finally Chris spoke again, his voice was muted and brusque.
“Justin told me that you were freaking over us having been so drunk last night and possibly the fact that you gave us all an impromptu strip show, but no, sex never entered that conversation.”
And just like that, JC’s brain went over the whole day with Justin and realized that, oh God, Justin had no idea that they had sex.
“Chris-oh my God. Chris…” JC whimpered. “Holy shit, Chris. What am I gonna do?”
The moment the world had been waiting for finally arrived: Chris had no snappy comeback.