Fire and Rain
by Betty Plotnick

just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone Suzanne, the plans they made put an end to you I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song I just can't remember who to send it to -- James Taylor * Justin's whole life is about sex, in a way that kind of takes the fun out of actual sex. He spends most of his time being poked, prodded, and positioned, laid out for the camera, dressed and undressed, and they're always telling him sexier, sexier, come on, sweetie, give us more, don't be shy. He's been turned into calendars, posters, websites, and even centerfolds. He's gone from sitting still and smiling agreeably through questions about his underwear and his first kiss all the way to sitting still and smiling through questions about who he's eaten out, and there's not that much difference, not when it creeps up by degrees. Everyone wants into Justin's pants, and if it's not because they find him attractive, it's for the nasty thrill they get from the way they remember him back when he was a virgin. Some people love Justin, in their way, and some people want to degrade him to get their power back, and there's not that much difference. Not when it creeps up by degrees. * JC is not good at being queer, never really has been. He's all right at looking it, with his vinyl pants and his fresh-cut flowers in every room and his expensive spa facials. He's all right at the nitty-gritty, the part with his tongue deep in some boy's mouth and a cock thrusting in and out of his tight, slick fist. At least, he never gets complaints, although that could be because that's just how things are in Hollywood, you're never supposed to criticize your betters, or at least not where you can get caught at it. He hums the song while he scrubs his brushes clean. Everybody comes to Hollywood.... Springs creak, and JC turns his head in time to see Carlos roll over, automatically adjusting the paint-splattered drop-cloth that started out life as a sheet, and sometimes becomes that again when they want one up here in the attic. JC turns on the sink and rinses the brushes, and the room smells faintly like turpentine, and faintly like sex. "When did you know for sure, though?" JC asks, for the millionth time. He knows he'll never get an answer, but it seems important to keep asking. "Always," Carlos says . "I don't know, I just knew." "But, was there one time when you....?" "No," Carlos says, soft and sated and amused. "There was no one time. It was always, since always. Since birth." JC nods and shuts off the water. He's painting a picture of wildflowers by the side of the road, but he doesn't know yet what it's really about. Resiliency? Fragility? The journey? He's not jealous of anything Justin has right now except for the road. He misses that part fiercely. He turns and looks at Carlos's sturdy thigh, dark against the sheet that doesn't quite pull far enough forward to cover it. JC isn't good at painting people yet, but in his mind's eye he sees the picture, not even and technical but smudged and textured, looking almost like he did it with fingerpaints. It would be sensual, like JC pressed his hands into the cool paint and then ran his fingers over the canvas until it cried out, until it came for him. That's what his portrait of Carlos would look like. JC has never been good at this. He's a private person, and it seems like there's something inherently naked about being queer. To lose your head around a beautiful woman, that's just a cliche. To be whatever JC is, that's like throwing yourself wide open. Even if you never tell, even if you hide it and never commit it to words or paint or pronouns, people are still thinking things that strike you blindly. Names. Judgements. Assumptions. Sometimes JC tosses and turns at night, feeling broken and exposed, even though hardly anybody knows at all. At least, hardly anybody compared to the population of the earth. "You want to go to bed?" JC asks. "It's not that late. You want to go out?" Absently, Carlos scratches his thigh. His smile blooms slowly, and JC knows they'll stay in, and that his wildflowers will watch him get fucked, held down and fucked while he claws the sheets loose and begs for more. He is blushing already, and he wants to be invisible, and he wants, he wants, he wants everyone to see him like this. So real, so honest and full of joy and in love. JC wants to paint about that, sing about that, but he does wildflowers and anonymous club sex and bides his time, because he's getting better and better at this, and someday soon he'll be ready. There's no radio in the attic. JC kept one here, an XM satellite radio like the ones in the kitchen and the main bathroom, but Carlos took it out. He doesn't seem to mind the noise when they're in the rest of the house, when they twine against each other to the noise of the stereo in the bedroom or the living room, to the sound of whatever is unspooling slowly in the studio, to the stop-and- go of voices on MTV. He doesn't mind the music, except when they're up here in the attic, cool stale air and the slick smells of wet paint. Up here, he shushes JC, presses JC's hands gently against the narrow mattress and mouths quiet and don't to him when he tries to tell Carlos how good it all feels. It's easier to talk about it than to be it. It's easier to sing for it than to give it away. He kneels on the bed over Carlos and smiles down at him. Carlos slides his hands lazily up JC's thighs. The bed creaks under his knees, the only sound in the room, and JC bites his lip and closes his eyes so he doesn't spoil it. * There's the thrill of uncertainty, of opening his eyes every morning and seeing him and being just a little bit surprised. Not very surprised, since it's been almost a year, but there's a moment, that very first bleary morning moment when it's like an unexpected gift. Lance runs his finger along the furrowed lines on his forehead, a fresh-sheets soft touch that wakes him up slowly and patiently, and he opens his eyes and smiles his broad smile, and they're pleasantly surprised by each other for just a minute, until they kiss with morning breath and it's all familiar again, as familiar as pillows and breakfast and the tinny beep of the six-thirty alarm on Lance's wristwatch. Lance expects it to disappear. Every morning he feels his eyelids open, and he's already thinking about Freddy, and he thinks, this time it will all be just normal, boring real life, just me and him together like always. But it's not. So far, every time, it's a fraction of a second of wondering, a single weakened heartbeat, and then the sleep clears from his eyes and it's Lance and Freddy together, unpredictable, unprecedented, a minor miracle. If it does disappear, Lance thinks, if it mellows into routine, that's all right, too. Lance has never been with anyone long enough to feel that, but he's seen what it looks like, and the people who find the right kind of routine, they have this way of wearing it well. His parents, who seem to hold each other in their eyes even when they're apart, even when they were an ocean apart because of Lance's traveling schedule. Joey, who can say any outrageous thing to any woman in the world, but the secret in his smile that's there for people who know him as well as Lance does is that he knows what's a game and what's real, and what's real is Kelly. Trace, who can set Justin's whole crazy world completely right again just by kissing the top of his head. This thing with Freddy, eleven months last Thursday, it's still in its infancy by those standards, but Lance has seen enough marriages not to be afraid of what this might grow up to be. Eleven months last Thursday, and it's forever compared to what Lance used to mean when he said "boyfriend," but it's still a mystery that doesn't solve itself through repetition. Maybe it's because they don't spoil it with a lot of talking, in spite of the relationship books Justin keeps trying to push off on him, books that make the whole endeavor seem like a whole hell of a lot of work, and boring work, at that. That may work for Justin and Trace, but it doesn't fit Lance and Freddy. It's not who they are. Lance and Freddy are morning breath and snooze buttons and the peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches that Freddy made him in Russia on exactly the days when Lance was shoved closest to the edge by homesickness and fear. They're Friday night dates at Golden Corral because they both like Golden Corral, and World Cup soccer on television and Corona Light, even though it's only Freddy who really likes the former and Lance the latter. They're minor compromises and peaceful silences and they don't analyze every little thing to death, and maybe that's why it sometimes seems like it's something out of nothing, a rabbit out of a hat. They don't even say it's love, and Lance suspects that might be why he wakes up every morning amazed and delighted to be in love with Freddy. He should write a book. Or maybe it's just Freddy. He's like that, full of surprises. Maybe Lance first gravitated to him because he seemed a lot like Joey, always smiling, always throwing his arm around whoever was nearest, a comfortable person to lean up against, and a person who wouldn't even know how to judge you. And hell, maybe he is a lot like Joey, and maybe that's why Lance loves him, but it's not a weird, fucked-up thing; it's just that Lance needs a little extra push, sometimes, to be happy and stay that way, and he likes being around people who can get him there. He thinks he wasn't always like that. He even has his mother's sworn word on it; he was a happy child. It's just that now, everything is a lot of work -- everything -- and Lance has to cope with everything in terms of budgeting his time. Freddy subscribes to a joke-of-the-day e-mail list, and only about half of the jokes are funny, but that doesn't matter. What matters to Lance is that jokes of the day matter to Freddy, that he factors them into his schedule, and that happiness is part of Lance's schedule now, too, because he's with Freddy. * She knows what he's come to say, and that takes all the fun out of it. Chris can't even yell at her for very long before he starts to feel like a moron, so he stands there in her office and glares at her, and she smiles back at him, smooth and well-groomed and making Chris want to kill her, Monica Downing in her Manolo Blahniks and her UCLA diploma on the wall, whose teeth are white and whose hair is ironed straight and who makes a very nice living off of boys who are sweaty and sloppy and tired all the time, who make music night and day, who always knock off early if it's Chris who's calling to ask, who are dumb enough to fall in love. He wants to hurt her, and he can't. She works in PR; that's not a job you take if you want people to like you. He hates her, and she smiles. He calls her a bitch, and she knows it's what she gets paid for, so what does she care? Ever since she came into their lives, the way people feel doesn't seem to matter anymore. "You're sweet," she says when he's run out of breath and dignity. "All of you, you really are." The silence hangs, because Chris can't ask what he wants to ask. He can't be the first to say it. Finally he says, "So, is it over? Are you finished yet?" Because it was hard enough when it was Lance, who hates to show weakness and slaps a greasepaint smile over his loneliness and says, Well, these things happen, guess it wasn't meant to be. And it was harder when it was JC, who did cry, who dug pointy fingers into Chris's neck and hung onto him and cried the same way he used to sing, like it was turning him inside-out. God, that was hard to stay through. Chris needs it to be over. He can't -- not for Justin. He can't. "That decision hasn't been made yet," she says. "Or at least, it's not carved in stone." "You won't win," Chris says, and then, to show that he's being honest and not macho, he says, "All you can do is fuck everything up. You can do that, but it's not going to look good on the resume, is it? You don't know Justin. The things that worked before won't-- You don't know them." She opens a binder on her desk and leans back in her chair, sliding it comfortably onto her lap, like some college girl going over her notes before the test. "Juan Ayala III," she says. "Third. Tres. That's cute, I like that. But really, tell me, what is it with you 'N Sync boys and your Latin lovers?" "I slept with Howie Dorough in college," Chris snaps. "Is that going to be a problem for you?" "Not at all," she says, with a smile. "You don't think this is some personal anti-gay crusade of mine, do you? You can all sleep with men, women, with hookers, diplomats, or Michael Jackson for all I care. I only care about keeping it out of the papers, and you're not the one making that hard for me." "You don't know them," he says. Chris does. He's known them for nine years now, and they're the whole reason that he still believes in falling in love and staying there. "They'd fucking die for each other, okay? You don't have anything to work with -- you can't give them anything they don't have already, and you can't threaten them with anything, because it defeats the purpose for you to sabotage his career. What are you gonna do, have Trace killed?" "That's not funny," she says. "That's a terrible thing to say." * When he was fifteen, Justin was experienced at a lot of things, but sheltered from a lot of other things, and he was in a video he was proud of, for a song he really loved, and it pissed him off that none of his friends seemed to think it was as cool as he did. They shot him narrow, measuring looks and murmured behind his back where they didn't think he could hear, and nobody would really look at him over their pizza in the hotel room that night, until Lance finally said, "Are we just not going to talk about whether or not Justin's ready to be a porn star?" Justin's stomach dropped straight out of him, and he couldn't eat any more that night, because it hadn't been like that in his mind, and now it was, and he hadn't been that before, but now he was. He still feels like a porn star. He still tilts his head down instead of throwing it back when Trace goes down on him, tilts his head down and looks up through his eyelashes, because he's been told so many times that it's sexy that he does it now without being told. He doesn't know how to stop. He doesn't know what he naturally does when he feels sexy. He only knows how to lie there and let everyone get the best shot. "Do you think I'm sexy?" he asked Trace when they were sixteen, lying side by side on the back porch of Justin's grandma's house, mud-splattered and sweaty from riding dirt bikes all day. Trace squinted up into the sun thoughtfully for a minute and then said, "Yeah, kinda. Sometimes. When you're not being a total fucking dork." "Real nice," Justin said, like he was offended, when really he was smiling and relieved for some reason he only sort of understood back then. "You're a crappy boyfriend, you know." "Yeah?" Trace said. "Then how come you love me?" How come Justin loves him is because Trace is not a crappy boyfriend at all, really. He's always there for Justin, and he bites his tongue and never complains about the things Justin does and says because he's told to, not because he feels them. He's sweet to Justin's dogs even though he doesn't like dogs. He's a big flirt, but when Justin gets jealous it's not like a sickness, but thrilling somehow, like a haunted house, because you know it's all illusion. He uses Justin's toothbrush and razor, and he doesn't get intimidated even when Justin tries to pull rank on him; he just shoves Justin and says, "Seriously, get help." He's a really slow reader and he gets pissed when they're sharing a copy of Sports Illustrated and Justin tries to flip the pages over too fast, but he always wins at Scrabble. He gives Justin the pickles off his hamburgers and the whipped cream off his desserts. He's supportive when Justin is calling his personal trainer a sadistic maniac instead of sanctimoniously reminding Justin that's why he hired him, like everybody else does. He let Justin pick when they lost their virginity, even though Justin waited until he was almost nineteen. "How come?" Trace asked when he was sure what Justin was trying to do, where he meant to go. He put his hand firmly in Justin's curls and pushed his head back so he was looking up at Trace and said, "How come now?" Justin licked his lips. Sexier, sexier, that cocksucking mouth of his all shiny and wet, and he wished he didn't know that, had never overheard Chris say that about him when he was drunk, but it was too late to unthink the thought. He closed his eyes against Trace's stare and said, "How come now is because it should've been a long time ago." The reason it wasn't earlier, it didn't have anything to do with Trace. There was just never enough time alone to unwind, and Justin's working days were too full of people who thought they owned him, who reached out to touch him without asking just because they could, who stared at him because they could, who would fuck him if they could, who imagined him naked and doing things he wasn't so sure he even knew how to do, without even asking, like he didn't count for anything, like he was their blow-up doll, their jack-off fantasy, their whore. He wanted to make love with his boyfriend, the only love of Justin's whole life, like it was special, like they were sharing something totally unique, and with every day that went by, it felt more and more like there was nothing about Justin's body that was still his own to give away. Justin has always been just a little bit melodramatic. It wasn't all that traumatic at all, as it turned out. Actually, it was pretty great. * There's a note on the refrigerator door in Freddy's handwriting that says "Wed/tomorrow 11:00," with a downtown address, someplace on the fifteenth floor. Lance checks his Palm Pilot, and it doesn't match anything in his schedule -- in fact, conflicts with his 9:30 with the person who's supposed to help him decide whether or not it's to his advantage to sell the Floribama house that he's barely ever in anymore. He holds the note up over his shoulder as he hears Freddy coming inside with the dogs and says, "I have to cancel this, and I don't even know what I'm canceling." "You're not canceling anything," Freddy says, taking it out of his hand. "This one's me." "You?" Lance knows he sounds startled, but he thinks he has some reason to be. Freddy. There's always something new. Freddy swats him on the ass and says, "What, I can't have important business meetings?" "Sure you can," Lance says. He can't think why Freddy, of all people, would want to, but he can. Lance doesn't point out that Freddy doesn't particularly have a business to meet about. Lance reads Suze Orman; he knows that even people without small personal fortunes should think about things like investing, and anyway it's probably just tax season coming up. It's a surprise, though, Freddy surprises him again that night, because he doesn't talk to Lance, won't even look at him. He's angry, Lance realizes, and that's sweet for some reason, makes Lance melt a little. Because it's been eleven months and he's just now seeing the way that Freddy fidgets and won't meet his eyes when he's angry? Or just because he's mad but he's here, he came back here because it's his home, too, it's where he and Lance live. Lance stands behind him while he slices tomatoes for his salad, and he slides his hand up against Freddy's neck. "Hey," he says, tipping his head against Freddy's. "You're not talking to me?" "Oh, you want to talk now?" Freddy says, arch and falsely innocent. "What do you want to talk about?" "You're angry." "I'm not," he says shortly. "I'm just.... Damn, Lance." It's a surrender, and he gets less rigid and lets Lance wrap his arm around Freddy's chest. "I want you to talk. I want you to be okay to talk to me." "I am. I mean -- what's going on with you?" It sounds somehow accusatory, not the genuine invitation that it is. For the first time, Lance thinks it might be a mistake, not reading any of Justin's books. Freddy turns around, and Lance puts his hands on the edge of the counter, his arms brushing the solid heat of Freddy's body. Freddy still can't quite look him in the eye. "I know you think I can't understand, but I do understand. It's not easy to be -- who you are, and you're not crazy to be scared of -- of things. You should be scared. I mean, you shouldn't. But it's okay that you are. Some people, they would be like that, they would take advantage of you." "I'm not scared." He's not. God, he's not, he's so not afraid of this. He kisses Freddy, and everything fits and he loves it, loves the way it feels, loves this man. Freddy pushes him away, not roughly. He puts his hand under Lance's chin and lifts. His fingers are callused from the weights at the gym. Lance feels alive, shivery all over; he feels wide open and vulnerable, not scared but breathless and amazed. "People have lied to you," Freddy says clearly. "I can't tell you that people won't lie to you again. I can't ask you just to trust me. But if you can't even come to me, if we can't even talk about things like this, then -- I mean, what's going on between us, if we don't have that?" The house is quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator, no music and no television. Freddy's eyes, Lance can't look away. He'd agree to anything right now. He's dazed and aroused and he wants to say abrupt and graceless things about first love and so sweet and I'm yours. Instead, he shakes his head and says, "Freddy, seriously. I don't know what you want me to talk to you about. Is everything okay?" "I met with this woman from your PR company this morning. She said she was -- authorized to write me a check. If I'd move out. She asked me how much I wanted. It's not like there's not such a thing as gold-diggers, I know that, I don't blame you for being cautious, but Jesus, come on. She talked to me like -- God, dragging me all the way across town to sit in some fancy office and get talked down to like I'm some kind of whore. I felt like a whore, and I haven't even done anything wrong." "What?" It's not quite surprise, hasn't even gotten that far yet. What Freddy is telling him sounds like some alien language. Freddy's chest rumbles with nervous laughter. "Baby, are you telling me-- ? You really didn't know, did you? You don't know anything about this." "No, I - no, what? She asked you to, to what? To leave me?" "Yeah, apparently I'm too high-profile. I'm not good for your career. I thought you were...testing me." "No," Lance says. "I didn't know anything about this. You have my word." "I believe you." He moves forward, and Lance gives way. Freddy puts his arms securely around him and boosts him up onto the kitchen table. Lance lets himself be laid on his back, holds on to Freddy's shoulders as Freddy leans over to nuzzle his cheek. "I believe you. I should have known, but -- she said she was authorized. I thought.... I'm sorry, I should have known." "It's okay. It's okay, it's not your fault. I'll fix it. You don't have to -- I don't want you to move out. I don't." He smiles, broad and white. "I knew that. I thought you were testing me, though. And just in case you're curious? Star-fuckers generally like to be kept in LA, or maybe someplace Carribean. They don't usually sign on to go to the steppes of Russia for six months." "I'm sorry," Lance mumbles, his hand cradling Freddy's face. "I'm sorry, I know, I wanted you there, I didn't want to be by myself." "Don't be sorry. I wanted to go." He grins and kisses the inside of Lance's wrist, rubbing his thumb against Lance's nipple. "I liked being with you, just the two of us. I like you. I don't care about the money." Lance arches up toward his touch. "I know," he says, and for once, there's no surprise. He knows. He's sure. He closes his eyes and knows for sure that Freddy will be there when they open. He opens them, and Freddy is smiling at him, running a finger over Lance's bottom lip. It's routine, and Lance doesn't mind at all. * "I don't understand the album," Carlos admits to him in bed, while they're holding each other hard and moving so soft in no particular rhythm. "I watched you, I saw you pour your heart into it, and then I hear it and...I don't understand. It's sexy and it's wild and I love it, and I love you, God, I love you." He gasps on it, his short, neat fingernails on the back of JC's neck, and his dark eyes dig in on JC's face in just the same way. "Tell me where you are in it," he begs. "Tell me what it means." JC thinks about mouthing comforting words. The album has love songs on it; he could say that they came out of his own happiness, although they didn't. He could say the rest of it has to do with his sexual awakening, although it doesn't. It's not a personal album. He reached deeper than that to get to it. "I didn't make it to have some message," he says instead, which is sort of true. He listens to it himself and tries to read the signs, searches out the messages in it. Sometimes he almost thinks he finds them. "No, no," Carlos pleads, and for a moment JC thinks it's just a sex-noise. "No, I know, but it's a piece of you anyway. Just, can't you tell me?" "I'm not good at that." "Once," Carlos says. "This one time, tell me where to find you." JC runs his fingers over Carlos's hairline and closes his eyes. "Have you ever gone dancing," he says slowly, "and just danced until your brain flew apart? Until if someone asked you, where's the floor, where's the ceiling, what's two plus two, what do you do for a living, you wouldn't have the answer? Have you ever gone so far out that even the simplest things aren't simple anymore, until you don't have the answers?" "Yes." Carlos puts his hand on the back of JC's thigh and hikes his leg up higher around Carlos's body, higher and tighter and both of them breathing into it, and what goes up must come down, but not now, not yet. Not them. "It's about that," JC says. It's like skydiving, he wants to say, but that's the part that makes it hard for people to understand JC, the way he spins over it and around it and waits for them to focus their eyes on what he's not saying, and then at the same time hopes a little that they won't see, that they'll let him go quietly by instead. He's hard to live with, JC knows. He doesn't try to be. "It's about, everyone thinks they have the answer, you learn that you do this and it's sex, you do that and it's sexy, because that's what's natural, that's the real, the right answer. And everyone thinks that, but then there can be this thing that pushes you further, like you dance so hard you fly out of your mind one night, or you see something, or you meet someone, or it can be music sometimes. I just wanted to show people what it feels like to lose your mind, show them that it's okay to fuck like you're dancing, like you don't know what it's gonna do to you but you don't care." JC hides his face in the crook of Carlos's sweaty neck. People make fun of him when he tries to say things, because the kind of things JC thinks about, things like chaos and fear and euphoria and silence and desire, those things are the opposite of words. He feels like he's been born into the wrong species, that he was supposed to be able to communicate through scent or pictures or ESP, and he's stuck using words instead. He wouldn't try this hard, except for Carlos. They dance together like that, skin against skin, and Carlos kisses his face all over and pulls out soft strands of JC's hair and JC doesn't mind. They probably ruin the sheets and JC doesn't mind that, either. He stares at the dark ceiling when it's over, too exhausted to move, and the room is spinning but he doesn't feel sick. He feels something else. He's so light he thinks he might rise up off the mattress, if Carlos wasn't there holding him down. "You," Carlos says, the tip of his nose brushing JC's, the tips of his fingers tracing JC's eyebrow. "You're so special. The things you say, the way you think. There's nobody else like you." JC smiles so wide his face hurts and says, "You mean I'm a freak." Carlos smiles so wide, and it looks like it hurts different somehow. "I mean I love you." "Love you, too," JC says. He raises his head to kiss Carlos's cheek, and his eyes are closed before his head hits the pillow again. He wakes up for just a second when Carlos slithers out of his arms in the dead of night. "Where you going?" he mumbles, and Carlos pets his messy hair and says, "Bathroom. Don't wake up." So JC doesn't, really. * On the night that they hear about Carlos's disappearance, Justin and Trace are lying in their king- sized waterbed, with Santana on the stereo and their ceiling fan turning lazily overhead. They're not fucking, haven't that night so far and don't really have plans to. When Justin hangs up the phone, he sighs deeply and lingers for a few moments with his lips on Trace's cheek. "I should go over there," Justin says. It was possible to avoid Lance from the other side of the continent, but this time it's JC, who lives right across the street, and Justin can't come up with a single excuse. He really should go over there. "Okay," Trace says. "I'll go with you." * Carlos is his personal assistant. That's a different Carlos, though, the office-hours one, who's upbeat and always calm, who sorts JC's mail and returns most of JC's phone calls for him before JC is even up in the mornings. He stumbles downstairs with nothing on his mind but a muffin and the hot shower there's no point in having before he works out, and there's Carlos in the kitchen, talking on the phone with JC's planner open in front of him and JC's sandals dangling off his toes. They wear the same shoe size, and Carlos has this habit of borrowing his shoes and then shedding them during the day, so that JC finds them days later in odd rooms. Carlos waves at him with his pen between his middle two fingers, and JC knows that in an hour when he's ready to hear about it, his day will be laid out cleanly and sensibly ahead of him. When JC hired Carlos, it wasn't on the Trace principle -- the one where, why hire some stranger to keep you comfortable when there's already someone who would die to make you happy. JC and Carlos had already slept together and broken up and sort of gotten back together again, but that wasn't how the personal assistant thing happened. They talked about the job over sushi, and JC chewed on the end of his chopstick and said, low-voiced even though he suspected that nobody seated anywhere near them spoke any English except for Lonnie, "You know, this isn't about. I'm not assuming, one way or another. If we want to keep on -- or not -- but the job is. It's separate from that." "Aw," Carlos said. "So you're not going to make me suck you off to prove how bad I want the job? Because that would be hot." "Carlos," he said sternly. "Listen, I'm serious." Carlos had been a secretary for a veterinarian's office and for the oncology wing of a hospital, and when he met JC he was in the human resources department of some business somewhere. He was organized, responsible, and JC thought he had pleasant, legible handwriting. He wasn't offering the job because of the handwriting. It was nice, though. "I know you're serious," Carlos said. "It's a great job. If it's just on, if you're asking just on the merits, you know, I'd be crazy not to take it." JC thought that settled things, probably, pretty much. "Okay," he said. "Do you still love me?" JC put his chopstick down and took a drink of water. They shouldn't be talking about this in public, but he didn't have the heart, this one time, to say so. "I never said." "I know you didn't, but. I listen to that song every day. I don't know how else to take it, except that you did when you wrote it. Maybe you don't still, but...." He held up the final decision on the track list for two weeks; he's lucky he doesn't ask for very much, that he usually just lets them pick whichever of his songs they want, however many they want, and doesn't argue. He had favors he could call in while he finished writing it -- just another day, a couple of days, it's almost ready, you'll like it, please, it's important, I swear you'll like it. When he was done with it, with the demo he recorded himself, his voice shifting back and forth instinctively to show where he would sing and where it would be Justin, he said, "We can arrange it however. I mean, you guys can. If we want it." He usually didn't care if they hated one of his songs; he had others, plenty of others. But that one was different. He needed them to want it. Lance said he liked it, and immediately started dividing the tracks they'd already chosen into lists for definitely keep, probably keep, and maybe replace. Justin and Chris bent their heads over Justin's guitar and were swapping harmonies quietly already. Joey leaned in and kissed JC's cheek, and it made him blush, because Carlos was kind of, sort of a secret before that, not his existence but the way he made JC feel, and now everybody was going to know, not just his friends but complete strangers. They would put the CD on in their bedrooms and sing along, sing "in a room full of people, you're the only one around," at the top of their lungs, and it wouldn't be Carlos's face in their heads, but it would still be JC's life on their lips. "I just want you to have the job," JC said. "You're qualified, and you're -- I trust you." "Okay," Carlos said. "I'm not stupid. I'll take the job." So it was always meant to be like this, with the Carlos who keeps JC's life in order distinct from the one who runs his thumb up and down the side of JC's face while JC goes down on him, the Carlos who presses his forehead to JC's with his arm around JC's neck and mumbles soft words in Spanish against JC's lips, the Carlos that JC can hardly stop stroking and nibbling long enough to let him go to sleep at night. He has the sweetest smile while he's pushing JC away and groaning, "Honey, honey, you're killing me." If Carlos would just take naps during the day like a normal person, he wouldn't always need to be asleep by four. That's JC's philosophy. * Justin gets out of their waterbed in southern California, under the slow ceiling fan, Santana on the stereo, and his feet sink into the carpet, and the world feels solid underneath him. He still has little panic attacks sometimes, walking from one end of a tour bus to another, because it feels like there's just a couple of boards under his feet and a cheap carpet nailed on top. He saw a movie once, and he can't remember what it was or if it was funny or not, where somebody rented a cheap-ass bus, and a guy's leg went through the floor and got stuck, half in the bus and half under it, rushing down the highway. Justin doesn't mind being on the bus, as long as he can sit on a couch or in his bunk, but it's the touch of those thin floors on the soles of his feet that freak him out. His house feels like a monument. Monumental. It's going nowhere. Justin fucking loves it almost as much as he would love a person, like he loves Paul or Johnny or Lance. Like the people he doesn't necessarily get all sentimental with, but that he counts on anyway. Justin used to send people across the bus to get things for him. He'd keep his own feet tucked up safe under a blanket, and people made fun of him, like, Yes, your majesty, but of course, but Justin never told them the real reason. He just said bite me if it was one of the guys, and if it was Trace he made his best helpless eyes and said the floors of the bus made his feet cold. Trace spent years thinking Justin's feet were always cold, and he still just out of habit tucks Justin's feet in between his when they crawl into bed, wherever they are. Trace always goes and gets whatever Justin asks him to, and usually he's glad to do it, but if he's tired himself or in the middle of something else he brings it and drops it in Justin's lap and says, This is how come you can't live without me, and Justin says, Yeah, man, this is how come I'm all yours, thanks. * They don't stay long at JC's house, and when they get home they go straight back to bed, Trace curled against Justin's back like their king-sized waterbed is just another bunk with a thin curtain to filter out light if not sound from the outside, and Justin bends his knees so that Trace can fit his feet around Justin's for warmth, even though it's not cold. Trace puts his hand up under Justin's t-shirt, over his ribs and drums his fingers there for a couple of minutes, until finally he says, "I know you're not gonna sleep until you've talked, so talk." "There's nothing," Justin says. "I don't have anything to say." "Yeah, but you have, what are those called? Feelings or whatever? I bet you anything you have some of those." Justin smiles like he's supposed to. "How come?" he asks, and Trace makes a disapproving noise. "No, really," Justin says. "I don't think we should talk about them. I think we should talk about this. How come?" "Okay, okay," Trace says. "How come I love you is because...you keep all that yarn crap that my grandma buys you for your birthday." "Buys me? She doesn't knit all that herself?" "Craft sales." "Shit, all these years, I've been picturing her sitting around all winter, knitting for me." Trace laughs softly, his breath against the back of Justin's neck. Justin reaches back and slithers his fingers in between Trace's, locking them together, and then jostles their hands impatiently. "Come on," he says. "How come?" "Okay, jeez," Trace says. "How come I love you is because...you don't even carry a wallet, but whenever I can't find my lighter, you have one on you." Justin pulls their hands forward and raises them, pressing his face lightly against the shallow curl of Trace's palm. "How come I love you is because you would never, never leave me," he says, and he's not very far from tears. Trace crooks his index finger and brushes Justin's cheek gently, petting him. "How come I love you is because you know that," he answers. * Lance rolls over in bed later that evening and leaves a message for Justin. He's smiling when he hangs up, because there's nothing Justin enjoys more than taking on these high-handed bastards who think they can intimidate 'N Sync into playing nice and speaking only when they're spoken to. So he leaves it for Justin to handle, and he hears the story later, filtered down from Justin to Chris to JC to him. Her name is Monica Downing, and she's some kind of specialized troubleshooter that Jive hired just to deal with them. She does this full-time, making gay celebrities look less gay. She arranges fake dates and things like that, of course, like all of them do. She's famous for buying off boyfriends. When Justin says, You don't seem to understand how things work yet, she says, You don't seem to understand for whom I work yet. They can't fire her, but they can ignore her, and they all agree to do just that. It takes something like ninety seconds of conversation during a conference call, and that's as much time as they devote to worrying about Monica Downing. They've all got better things to do. Freddy keeps getting letters, and Lance thinks he gets phone calls, too, because of the way he looks frustrated and tired a lot of the time when he checks his voice mail. Lance puts his hands on Freddy's shoulders and rubs them while Freddy carefully checks the caller ID on every call before he decides whether to delete the message or listen to it. "You did talk to her, didn't you?" Freddy asks. "You know, no matter how official she tries to sound, she's completely powerless here. What can she really make you do, you know?" "Have me killed," Freddy says with a little grin. Lance laughs and puts his head on Freddy's back. "I'll protect you." Freddy sighs and pulls Lance's arms around his waist. "It's not that she can do anything. It just wears on you. The way I know they're all thinking that about me, that I'm just someone who's holding out for a better offer. They just make things feel so sordid. So...you know, Hollywood." He laughs his beautiful, rich laugh and says, "Boy toy to the stars. Can't you just see that about me?" Lance grins, because he can't. Freddy is so normal, so grounded. He's from a boring suburb in Arizona, and he has a business degree and belonged to a fraternity in college. He's getting to that age where his metabolism is slowing down and he's starting to notice that he can't just eat six burgers a day and look like he did at twenty-one. He quit smoking when he met Lance. The first time he met Lance's friends, he took almost five thousand dollars off of Justin playing poker, and he looked shocked when Justin tried to write him a check. He said, "Come on, come on, we're just having fun. I can't take that kind of money from you." Justin laughed until he collapsed into JC, and when he caught his breath he said, "Been a few years since I played for M&Ms." "Yeah," Joey said, and got him in a headlock. "And you used to lose back then, too." The only person he ever asked if Lance could help him meet was Scott Bakula, because Quantum Leap is still his mom's favorite show. He loves dogs and reality TV and Girl Scout cookies, and he sticks Thin Mints in rings around the edge of his ice cream. Lance can't imagine Freddy ever really fitting into the Hollywood scene. He loves it that when he's with Freddy, he thinks of himself as a person who wouldn't fit there, either. "I know who you are," Lance tells him. "Them saying things -- whatever they say -- it can't make you something you're not." * There's a lot of sex on tour, not always Justin personally having a lot of sex, but it just goes on constantly around him. There's a carnival atmosphere to touring, the Greatest Show On Earth coming through town, and people want to party and they want to get laid. Justin, too. Maybe four nights out of five he's tapped out from performing and promoting and just from all that inner energy it takes to focus himself completely on the show, to bring his A game, but then at the most unexpected times he'll wake up from his afternoon power-nap and even before he opens his eyes, his head will be full of the tastes and smells of making out, the rhythm of the fuck. Those are the days he goes through in a kind of dream, like he's half possessed, and everything he sees turns him on all over again. He can eat a slice of pizza, and the slippery feeling of the hot cheese sliding off the sauce and into his mouth can set him off, let alone the tight, smoothly limber bodies of his dancers, the deft, callused hands of his musicians, the energy of a crowd that's all wound up for him, decked out in their favorite clothes and buzzing and caught up in his music. Those are the nights -- tonight is the night -- when Justin understands why sex is something that you can always make a profit selling, why people will never get enough of it, will never be full. He's easily led on nights like this, so it's good that people are looking out for him. No matter which erstwhile friend slides in to take him in hand, no matter where they steal him away to go dancing or to be danced for, and whatever they set him up with in a shot glass or dissolving under his tongue, Justin goes with the flow, unafraid. Nothing bad can ever happen to him, because none of his people would let it. He knows just enough not to lay a finger on Trace when he's like that; he tries hard not even to look at him. The way he feels about Trace is his secret, the secret, the one that dominates Justin's life. He has room to commit certain sins, and he does commit certain sins. But what he can't afford to do, not ever, is to drag what he and Trace have out into the killing glare. Justin knows the bright lights have damaged him in some ways. He knows they damage everything, sooner or later, one way or another. Not many people realize that Justin would fight harder than any record company ever would to keep this one thing a secret. Trace watches him, though, and it's Trace's job to feel when the weather changes, when the fucking around he does in play starts to drift into fucking around, when the hands on his thighs move too high and his lips wander too low, because by that point Justin's too out of his head to know what he wants. Trace signals the entourage, and Justin goes home surrounded by the thick, warm barrier of bodies that get him safe from place to place, and when he slides into bed wriggling out of his clothes, Trace slides in on top of him. Justin looks up at him with blackened eyes, dilated pupils taking in too much, seeing so sharply it hurts, and he whimpers a little to get Trace to fix it. Trace kisses him slow, and Justin's eyes go closed in relief. This, this is what he's needed all night long; he's like an old, starved dog chained up in the backyard. He's become not much more than just his hunger. "Did you have fun?" Trace says, his voice rough and a little bit mocking as he strips off the remains of Justin's clothes. Justin nods and opens his eyes just enough to see Trace smile, not quite fond and not quite mean. Hungry, just like Justin. "Yeah, you looked like you were having fun," Trace says with a sharp tip of mockery. He kisses Justin again, harder, biting sharply at his lip, and Justin moans. "You're a slut, Justin," Trace tells him conversationally. "Underneath all that fucked-upness, you really are a total skank." "I love you," Justin says, suckling lightly on Trace's lip and tongue. "I'm not, really, I just love you so much. And I think I'm on something, I don't know what." Trace puts his fingers on Justin's jaw and peers hard into his eyes for a second. He smiles and shakes his head and says, "I think you are, too." "You're with me," Justin says serenely. "Everybody's with me, I'll be fine, I'm fine." "Yeah, you're fine," Trace says, making it a double entendre with his voice, making it almost a purr. "So fine." He's such a good boyfriend, so loyal and so positive and so warm, and Justin can't help but think about Carlos, who took care of JC like Trace takes care of him, and it's all so unfair, it's all so wrong. Whatever happened to love conquers all, whatever happened to happy endings? Justin doesn't even know who the good guys are anymore. "I'm so bad," he says. That's not the word he's thinking of, but he can't get his head or his tongue around the right one, so he fumbles and goes on. "I didn't, that girl, I shouldn't, I don't know why. I don't even like it that much, I just, sometimes I'm not, it's like I'm not me. She didn't have anything. She was just there." "Justin, hey. Justin. I know she was just there; they're all there. Like, right there, right? Look, hey." Trace cradles Justin's head in the palm of his hands; he's so close, and Justin can smell the heat of the Bloody Marys Trace was drinking at that club, mingling with the remains of some girl's Glow perfume that won't come off Justin's skin. "Hey," Trace says, and he gives Justin that smile that Justin can't help but trust completely. "You're pretty fucking special, you know that, but you're not like an alien or anything. You're a human being, you're a guy. You're rich and good-looking, you get all these opportunities, and yeah, sometimes you're gonna be curious, and sometimes you're gonna just want it because it's there. You know I fool around sometimes too?" Justin nods. Everybody knows. Justin hears about it all the time, typical tour gossip, but he's never seen the girls, and that's the way he likes it. That's not real, even though it is. Trace would never do it in front of Justin, not like Justin does in front of Trace. "I don't care about that," he says. "I know, me either. You know what I mean? That's just...fooling around and shit, that's, whatever. You and me, man. We're it. You and me." "Cradle to the grave," Justin says softly. "Cradle to the grave," Trace agrees. "And you know I don't -- I mean, you do, right? You know I don't fuck anybody but you?" "I know," Justin says quickly. He knows that just by instinct, the way he knows he could never be that exposed to anybody but Trace. He'd go insane just wondering what they were thinking about him. It would be hellish. With Trace he already knows for certain sure, as Justin's grandma would say. He knows for certain sure what Trace is thinking when Justin's letting him all the way in, nothing held back, and it's amazing. * Justin doesn't know how long his nerves can take the complete radio silence from Jive, from Monica Downing. It seems to stretch back indefinitely, so that he feels like he's been waiting his whole life to hear whether or not they're coming for him next. He tries not to be scared -- cradle to the grave -- and he's not scared, really, not of losing Trace. Justin just hates it when people want him to do things that he has to say no to. He hates that way that handlers look at him when he's being difficult, like he's a problem child, like he can't step up the way he's supposed to. It makes him feel so small, and then it makes him pissed off at himself for letting it get to him like that. It's all just a fucking mess, and he'd like to get it over with and get it behind him. But nobody calls, and nobody calls, and nobody calls, and Justin is tied up in knots because it can't be this easy. There's always been more pressure on him than on any of the others, and the idea that he'll be let go when Lance and JC had to pay like they did, that just turns reality on its side in a way that Justin hates. He knows the rules. He knows he can't do the things he does. He knows he's had it all for much too long, and now he's reaching for more, and it's going to be too much any day now. Every day, this might be the day he's gone too far. He finally sees her at the juice bar of his gym in LA, and it's such a fucking relief he almost wants to hug the bitch. She buys him a protein shake and sits down with him by the glass that overlooks the racquetball court, and she says, "How's JC?" Justin loves how much he hates her in that moment, how easy she's making this. "Like you fucking care," he says. "I honestly like you, Justin," she says, and Justin grinds his teeth, because he wants to believe that. That always feels so good to hear, and he knows he's pathetic, a fucking trained puppy dog who doesn't have the damn dignity to go tell her to fuck herself, because she likes him. He's not sure when he'll ever be done with this, when they'll say do it and he'll say no, when they'll say baby, baby, sexier and he'll walk out the door and not care that there's a dozen guys waiting in the wings to replace him. If the world's appetite for what Justin has seems insatiable, then so is Justin's appetite for what he gets in return. And that's how he got where he is right now. He doesn't know who the good guys are anymore. "And I like Trace," she continues blithely. "Frankly, I think he's good for your image. You're too powerful too young, you're self-indulgent, and you're badly overexposed. You have all the same image problems that a diva does, and you need to be handled in the same way -- if it were up to me, I'd give a lot of other people Traces. Jennifer Lopez. Britney. They're almost totally dehumanized by now for their audience, and their publicists should be taken out back and shot. I went to bat for the two of you, Justin, I really did. I think you've shaken off the inevitable gay rumors as well as anyone ever really does, and I think there's an advantage to being closely tied to people outside the business that normal people understand better than industry people. Unfortunately, I work for industry people." "What are you telling me?" He leans across the table so he can lower his voice; he's too fucking ashamed to talk about this out loud. "We had a deal, Monica. I did exactly what you asked me to." Her well-groomed eyebrows go up in stylized amazement. "That was never intended to be a quid pro quo. You and I both know I didn't make any promises. I asked you to do the right thing, and I told you that I would do everything I could to make your case to my superiors." That's not how Justin remembers the conversation, but he can't figure out which part of what she's saying, exactly, is a lie. "It wasn't the right thing. I shouldn't have...have done anything. I shouldn't have listened to you." "Why did you, if you thought I was wrong?" There's bad news and worse news, and the bad news is, Justin doesn't really think she was wrong. He knows that Jive has never been totally comfortable with the idea of a second solo album coming out of the group, especially not an album they couldn't even figure out how to promote. If JC's album is an embarrassment -- not that Justin thinks it will be, but if it is -- then that's another year or more they have to push back another bite at the 'N Sync apple, unless they want the press to say that Justin is trying to carry the other four. They'll turn Justin's life's work into some kind of crazy vanity project for him, and the whole joke will hinge on JC's failure, JC's incompetence, and they won't be able to work like that. The balance is delicate enough, when it's work and not just love that binds JC and Justin. There's always enough rope to hang them when they're working together, and Jive would rather not tie the noose. That's all he said to Carlos, and he said it because he knows she's not wrong. They would leave that album to starve and die in the vaults on a moment's whim. All they need to decide is that JC is too weird, too iconoclastic, too unpredictable. Too uncontrollable. They won't lose a single night's sleep, and if anybody in the world can appreciate how much JC will be losing, it's Justin. She's not wrong. The worse news is, that's not really why Justin agreed to talk to Carlos. Goddammit, though, if JC were just a little more like him, if he'd make the occasional show of submission, grant a favor now and then, show that he's willing to help out-- If JC could do that the way Justin does, then it wouldn't have come to this at all. Monica Downing is an important person, and now she knows that Justin is reasonable, that he's willing to give a little to get a little, and that's the way the game is played, that's why Justin has friends everywhere he goes. This is what I do, Justin thinks, staring into his protein shake. This is how I've always done it. And it's taken Justin as far as you can go, to a place where there's almost no further up he can rise to, and it's all he knows how to do. "This is going to be a matter of compromise," Monica is saying from what sounds like a long way away. "This is a very different situation, and everyone understands that." Then she talks about sending them in separate directions for a little while, about girlfriends for both of them, about how it's been too long since Britney and how he polls better as a boyfriend than as a player. "Maybe I don't care," he says softly. "Maybe if they don't like -- if they don't like where I go or don't like that I'm single or -- I mean, maybe I don't need this anymore." "Your fans, you mean?" she says in that same voice, that arch voice of fake surprise that Justin can't fucking stand. "No, the-- You don't understand what you're asking. It sounds easy, but it's not." When he was dating Britney, he was fragmented into so many different people. He had to fall in love with her at least a little bit; he said it so much, he was with her so much. He started buying his own bullshit, and then even worse, it all started to sound like a lie, like he couldn't even say I love you to JC, to Chris, to Trace without feeling like it was a talking point, a thing that he was required to say every so often. This tour will be more intimate, the album title is more about making fun of ourselves, we've met the guys from O-Town and they seem like really nice guys, and by the way, I love you. The whole thing is a quagmire of distortions and lies, and Justin doesn't think he can go back to that. As much shit as he has going on in his life right now, it's all so much easier to deal with now that he has his focus back, now that he's on his way to knowing for sure who he is and what he's all about. And she made Trace jealous as hell, just by being all the places he couldn't be, like a golden, shining spotlight pointing out exactly where Trace wasn't capable of giving Justin what he needed. "Meet me halfway," Monica says, sounding so reasonable, sounding like someone who wants to be his friend, to do business with him. Justin's head is full of all the reasons that those two things can't always be the same, but it's still hard for him, it's so hard. He closes his fingers around the pale strip of skin on his wrist where his watch usually goes, when he hasn't just finished working out. He presses hard enough against the bone to clear his mind and then says, "This isn't what I want. For me, for my career. You know, I think they're wrong about this. I don't think I need this kind of help anymore, and I'm not going to do it. Not right now." She looks at him for a long minute and says, "You're not as sure as you used to be, though, are you? I remember the first time we spoke, and you were all fire and brimstone. You told me exactly where to go and how to get there, and now you're dithering around -- I think, I don't think, not right now. You're not sure." Justin smiles slightly. "That was back when I thought I could make you go away," he says. * In the end, of course, he gives in. That's what Justin does best. It's not bad, Justin tells everyone, with his best centerfold smile. It's cool. He's hung out with Cameron before at parties and things, and he really does like her; she's rowdy and makes dumb jokes and laughs too loud at them, and she's graceful but she doesn't seem it, always seems like she's about to fall down or break something. She kind of reminds him of Chris, only tall and skinny with a rack. They watch sports together and go shopping and there's nothing at all between them when they kiss, which is kind of a relief. He doesn't want to get himself back in a position where he's doing that and liking it, not like before. There's only so much that even Justin can juggle all at one time. They find a girlfriend for Trace, too, and Justin wonders if that's just good business, or if maybe Monica is for real sometimes, if maybe she kind of likes him and wants to make it up to him somehow. Justin knows how pathetic it is to want that at all, but part of him does no matter what. Monica calls him up out of nowhere and asks would Trace like to go out with a girl, this girl who's on a tv show and wants to break into movies, and Justin says okay before he thinks of asking Trace. When he does, Trace shrugs without pausing in his channel surfing and says, "Whatever you think. You're the one who understands this stuff." So she comes around on the tour, too, and she's a fake blonde who's even shorter than Trace, and Justin tries to pretend she doesn't exist, which is easy, because she's very quiet. She sits in with Justin and Trace and Lynn and Cameron and whoever else when they play board games on the bus, and she reads scripts and doodles in the margins of her engagement calendar and doesn't look anyone in the eye. "I don't like her," Justin admits to Trace. "She acts like she's being forced to be here." "Dude, she is being forced to be here," Trace says. "You think this is her dream come true or something?" Trace is always nice to her and puts his arm around her a lot, and sometimes she seems to relax against him. Looking at them, Justin thinks they understand each other somehow, and he's glad Trace has someone around to talk to, and he's glad that Trace is getting to go places sometimes, places where he can enjoy the party without having to remember to keep his distance from Justin. It takes Justin a while to get it, maybe because he's not really trying, but one day he just looks at Elisha, at this pretty girl with her sad eyes looking out the window, twisting the pendant on her necklace around and around, and he gets up and moves closer to Trace and asks real quiet in his ear, "What was her name?" Trace follows the flick of his eyes toward Elisha and waits for a beat, then says, "Allison. Why do you ask?" "No reason," Justin says. He wonders if Allison is on some terribly remote Carribean island somewhere, drinking mai tais with Freddy and Carlos. Expatriates. Justin thinks that's what it's called. * JC keeps a suite of three connected bedrooms for the others, even though they rarely stay at his house. He likes the idea that they could if they wanted to, they could all be there together banging back and forth between rooms like they used to in hotels, invading each other's privacy, interrupting each other's sleep. He imagines that someday they'll all be there to do that; maybe Joey and Lance will share a bedroom, like they used to share a bed on their bus, or maybe it'll be Joey and Kelly in one room, Justin and Trace in another, and Lance and Chris plotting to stir up shit from their home base. JC has all these ideas about what it would be like to have them all there, pieced together out of memories of touring that have fermented over time into some sweet, sentimental liqueur. They don't get to be all in the same place at the same time much anymore, and those rooms go mostly unused. One day he sees a stack of towels that the housekeeper has left outside one of those closed doors, and Carlos hooks his thumb toward it and says, "I think we have a stowaway." JC stands in the hall and knocks three times before he tries the door. It's not locked. "Go away," Chris says when he comes in. "I'm dead." "You sound alive," JC says, and sits cross-legged on the foot of the bed. Chris does look a little bit dead, actually, and JC can smell his breath from two feet away, beer and seafood and something else unappealing. "When did you sneak in?" "Last night." Chris hauls himself up by his elbows to a sitting position and runs both hands through his hair. "Sorry," he says. "Don't be sorry." It's flattering, really. Chris takes these needy moods where he can't stand to be alone in his own house, but it's not usually JC that he goes to. Of course, Justin is out of the country, and Lance isn't exactly up to entertaining, since Freddy left. "I miss your snoring," JC blurts out. It's beside the point entirely. But he does. Chris looks at him for a second, puzzled and pleased, like he always is when JC says something he didn't expect. Chris thinks he has everyone figured out. Chris maybe does have everyone figured out, except for JC. "Well, heck," he says. "Next time I'll just crawl right into bed with you guys and serenade you." "You might want to shower first," JC says. He kind of likes the image, though -- Chris wedging his way in between him and Carlos, like a dog or an oversized five-year-old. It suits Chris. "You can go back to sleep if you want," JC says, standing up. "You can -- I guess do whatever you want to do." Chris reaches out and takes hold of JC's wrist, and instinctively, JC grips back, holding Chris's wrist the same way, like he's pulling Chris back onto a bridge in an action movie. "The worst thing is," Chris says, almost like they're in the middle of a conversation that they haven't started yet, "there's never gonna be a fourth album." "Don't say that," JC says. So of course, Chris does the opposite, says it again. "There's never going to be a fourth album. They ran Freddy off for the sake of a career that Lance doesn't even have anymore." "It's not over," JC says. "We have so much left to do." "Aw, Chasez," Chris says, and he almost smiles, but his voice is so sad and his voice is even sadder. JC wonders how long Chris has been attending this particular funeral. "If I had it left in me to do again, you know I'd do it for you." "You shouldn't say things when you're hungover," JC says. "You don't mean them later on." But later that day, while he's tinkering in the studio with a song that isn't going to be on his album, JC catches himself wondering what it is Lance does for a living. He almost catches himself wondering what it is he does for a living, but then he opens his hands and lets go. * At some point, Justin thinks, the tour ends. He's pretty sure he has the date written down and everything, but somehow it's like he's caught in a loop, and he's not recording an album or promoting one and he's not on tour, but he's still going, planes and hotels and passports and hotels and it's a little like a nightmare, where you have to do one thing over and over for no apparent reason, except that he's not afraid. He loves it and he hates it and he doesn't know what day it is or how long this will last, but he smiles and he lets everybody get their shot, and he blurs it down, blunts the tension with the pills that people bring him for his headaches that Justin is pretty sure aren't Tylenol. He talks on the phone to all his friends, and when he hangs up he already can't remember what anybody said. He goes everywhere in a limo, and he holds Trace's hand in the dark backseat, hard, hard, until one time it's too much, and Trace bumps him sharply with his elbow and says, "Fuck, Justin, you're hurting me. Don't." They're hustled so fast between cars and buildings that Justin isn't even sure if it's fall yet, if there's a chill in the air or if it's still July, heavy and oppressive, stealing his breath away. People ask him how he feels. They ask him all the time, and he says, busy, as if busy is a feeling. What he really means is, he's so busy that he doesn't know how he feels. There are only a few things that make time slow down for Justin: when he puts his head in his mother's lap and lets her stroke through his curls, he knows he feels tired and stretched too thin and terribly fragile. When he's performing, an hour-long set feels like sixty minutes, not too fast or too slow but every second of it full and thorough, and he knows he feels lucky to be here, still, and he knows he'd be even more miserable without this than he is with it. When he falls asleep with Trace's lips kissing a gentle line over his shoulder, he knows he feels loved. "How come?" he murmurs, and he's too tired to hear what Trace says, but it's his voice that matters, saying sweet things in his ear about how he makes Trace laugh, makes him hard, makes him feel like he's home again, like he never had to leave at all. * Nothing can change who and what Freddy is, except for the thing that changes everybody -- which is everything. Freddy -- it's not anything big, but Lance can see the changes. They stop going to Golden Corral. They stop going out to eat almost altogether, because Freddy thinks that people stare at them when they do. Lance doesn't think so, but he's so used to ignoring that kind of thing that he can't be sure. They still go out, but only to clubs, to places where it's dark and crowded and there's a lot of security and a lot of drinking and people who are too cool to pay attention to anything at all. Sometimes Freddy will still hold his hand, at places like that, or run his fingers down Lance's back and smile his old, adoring smile. Sometimes. Lance is good at adjusting. He's had to make a lot of adjustments in his life; someday he thinks it would be nice to have something that doesn't slide and morph under his feet every twenty minutes, but mostly he thinks it keeps him sharp, in fighting trim. So instead of Golden Corral, he starts bringing their dates home where it's safe, and they order in and eat picnic dinners by the pool, with tiki torches casting patterns of gold fanning out to blue over the dark surface of the water. He feeds Freddy spoonfuls of hot fudge sundae, even when Freddy tries half-heartedly to say that he's watching his weight. He wraps his legs around Freddy's waist in the water where it's easy for Freddy to hold him up, and Freddy's eyes end up bloodshot because of the chlorinated water that Lance drips into them, and Lance ends up with bruises on his thighs where Freddy holds him while they fuck. He stops reading the joke of the day to Lance. When Lance asks if he still gets those, Freddy frowns at him for a second like he can't remember, and then says yes. Lance invites him to New York for a launch party for some clothing line owned by somebody he met through...somebody, he can't remember, but he left himself a note saying he'd promised to go. Freddy presses his lips together and doesn't really answer. "Why not?" Lance says, trying hard to be patient. "It's the fucking fashion industry. You're not exactly going to be scandalizing anybody there." "Maybe we need to get used to things being like this," Freddy says. "Maybe I don't want to." "What do you see when you look ahead? When there's another album to promote and another tour and another movie? It's too hard to analyze every fucking party and interview and premiere and figure out which ones it's okay for me to be at and which ones it's not. I'd rather just-- If there's nothing wrong with having our private life be private, then let's just let it be like that. Let's stay private, and then when it's public stuff, let's just let that be you." "Tell me what I can do. Please." Lance is a problem-solver by nature. It's just that he hates knowing that snooze buttons and peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches have turned into another problem to be solved. Freddy is his minor miracle, and somehow it's bedraggled now, patched up and not that magical at all. Just one more thing that he has to make fit with everything else. Freddy shakes his head and says, "Nothing. It's probably my fault. I've never dated anyone who wasn't out before. It just really feels like I'm doing it all wrong." Lance melts on the spot. He kisses Freddy's palm and says, "It's not you. There's no way to do it right." * Justin doesn't like coke; he feels overstimulated all the time, and if he's going to take something, he thinks it should be something like valium or painkillers, something that helps him settle down, and anyway it reminds him too much of Britney. But he takes some at a party, because it's offered, and he feels sure someone is going to stop him before he actually snorts the line that someone whose name he doesn't remember who's a friend of a producer he's never worked with is carefully cutting for him. Nobody does stop him, and that shocks Justin almost as much as the rush of sensation to his brain. He wanders through the party for a long time, and a million people talk to him but their words won't arrange themselves in Justin's head to make any sense, so he just smiles and laughs. People are usually trying to entertain him at things like this, so that's probably the right answer. He bumps into somebody that he recognizes, sort of, someone who smells like something that Justin remembers, and he blinks a bunch of times, very fast, but he can't make the face come into focus, so he just smiles and laughs. "Look at you," the man says, and Justin thinks, no, don't, I look awful. From the tone of his voice, the man thinks Justin looks awful, too. He laughs again, but it sounds ragged. Whoever it is, he touches Justin's face, and he has small, calloused hands and dark eyes. "Where's your crew, dirty?" he says. "They let you run out by yourself now?" "I don't know," he says. "Around. They're around." He puts an arm around Justin and says, "We'll find your Cowboy, what you think about that?" Justin nods and lets himself be moved. That sounds nice to him. Trace isn't looking for him, doesn't even seem to have noticed that he's gone off on his own. He's with Elisha, his arm around her shoulders and her fingers wrapped in his, and it's strange how tall Trace looks like this; it's not often that Justin sees him right next to somebody shorter than he is, and anyway, Justin's sense of distance and perspective is all spiky and twisted. Justin's heart is pounding, and his skin prickles with sweat, and they're beautiful like this, sized to match each other, her shaggy platinum hair and his hair that he's growing out its own natural color, thick and dark, and they smile so widely and it looks so real, and Justin feels like the fucking stupidest person on earth for ever thinking that this was put into play because Monica likes them. This was supposed to hurt, and it does. The world rocks and the floor seems to splinter under him as he walks, but it's a straight line and Justin can still hit his marks well enough. He can still go straight to Trace. Justin shoves him hard, right into the wall. His arm is across Trace's chest with one hand knotted in Trace's shirt, and his other hand presses the wall by Trace's head. "You bitch," Justin hisses, and his teeth feel sharper than usual in his mouth; he's afraid he'll slice through his own tongue, but he can't keep his mouth still. "Don't you fucking do this to me." "Get your fucking hands off of me right now," Trace says, harder and sharper than teeth, than fangs, "or I promise I'll make you sorry." Justin is hot-air-balloon high, but he still knows that he's no match for -- well, for most anyone, really. Justin, you just tap him once and he falls right over, that's his whole problem. He lets go and steps back. Trace straightens up away from the wall, and Justin thinks he's trembling for real, it's not just Justin's vision going all funny. "It's time to go," he says. Trace puts him in a car, but then he starts to shut the door, with himself still standing out there on the street. Justin puts his arm out to block the door and says, "I thought this is what you wanted, isn't this what you always wanted? You want to tell the whole fucking world. You always did." Trace's jaw clenches, and he grinds his wrist in little circles, his hand gripping the top of the car door. When he speaks, he's too still, too controlled, and he doesn't even sound like Trace. "I want it like this," he says. "Like this? Of all the things I've ever wanted in my whole fucking life-- " He breaks off like he's winded, and he takes in two hard breaths and then says, clearly and coldly, "This was never for one minute what I wanted. Move out of the way." Justin can't even tell if he waits to see if Justin is moving before he slams the door shut. * He doesn't see Trace until the next morning, even though Justin tries to call him, tries to call his cellphone and gets nothing but the voicemail, even tries to call Trace's room at the hotel, except he can't remember the room number and when he calls down to the front desk, he can't make them understand what it is he wants. He doesn't even know if Trace comes back at all that night, except that when Justin sees him in the limo the next morning, he's showered and changed clothes and is reading the paper. "Hey," Justin says. He kisses Trace's cheek. "You okay?" Trace asks. He doesn't look like he's getting ready to kiss Justin back. "Of course I am. I'm fine." Trace nods and keeps reading. He has the comics, but he doesn't look like any of it is making him even a little bit amused. "I'm really sorry?" Justin ventures. He doesn't mean it as a question, exactly. He just doesn't know if that's what Trace wants to hear. "It's just, do you want to fuck Elisha?" he says, and he knows that's not what Trace wants to hear, but fuck Trace, anyway, for just sitting there and not even acting like he cares at all that they had a fight and Justin wants to make up. "Because if you do, you know, if you want to, I think we should talk about that, even if you're not going to do it." After a pause, Justin tacks on, "I'm not saying you're going to do it. Or that, you know. That you would do it." Trace flips his paper over. "Right now, J, seriously," he says, almost pleasantly, "I can't think of anybody in the whole world that I want to fuck. I just want to finish what I'm reading, if that's okay with you." Justin settles back against the seat and prepares to wait out the ride. He wonders if it would be rude to get his phone out and call someone. He doesn't care who, really, just someone who's still speaking to him. They've been stopped in traffic for at least fifteen minutes when Trace finally puts the paper down and sighs impatiently. He looks out the window, away from Justin, and says, "Look, I know you don't pay me to tell you how to do your job, but okay, I care about you, and I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I'm just going to say it." "Yeah," Justin says quickly. "You can say whatever you want to me. You know that." "I know you don't have to do everything the same way you used to, you don't have the whole teeny-bopper thing on you anymore. But you still can't be -- you can only be who you are, right? And I know you're not -- you're just not, you're not Mick Jagger or Jim Morrison or whoever, you can't pull that off, and -- and I don't want you to. Justin, you're a nice guy from Tennessee who loves his mom and his annoying little dog and has a copy of A Course in Miracles on his tour bus. That's how come I love you. Whatever you're trying to prove with the pills and the blow and all this shit, you need to stop it. It's not who you are, and I know I'm not one of your handlers, but your career can't take it, I know that much. You don't have to be some kind of angel, no one's asking you to be perfect, but do you really think people are going to be cool with it if you get caught like this?" "Other people get caught. Other people -- go to rehab, even. I'm not an addict or anything, but I'm saying, even if I was-- " "And I'm saying, no you couldn't. You're going to sit there and say you could get away with it because people love you, and no, you couldn't. You fucking know this, Justin. You split with Britney over exactly this. You said she wasn't good for you anymore, that she was going to keep spinning out, and you'd look bad by association." "That was years ago," Justin says. It feels like it was years ago. "Justin." He turns abruptly toward the thin, almost frightened sound of Trace's voice. Trace touches his cheek, and Justin bends his head down to put his forehead against Trace's. "I know you're not an addict. I know, but I swear to God it looks like you want to be one, and this isn't how I want it to end for you. I don't want us to go home like this. Because of this." "I'm not," Justin says. "We won't." "Good," Trace says. "Because I'm just saying. Whitney Houston is like a legend and everything, and look at her now. People may like her for what she was, but she's still a crackhead whose album nobody wants." "Okay," Justin says, grinning. "I get it. I won't be Whitney Houston. You couldn't have said Bobby; I had to be Whitney." Trace kisses him, quick and hard. "You're every woman in the world to me," he says sweetly, and he gets away from Justin's punches by rolling off the seat, still laughing. Justin chases him down to the floorboards and then lets himself get caught. * Chris calls him that night from New Orleans. Justin doesn't know why he's in New Orleans -- if Chris really goes anywhere for specific reasons anymore, or if he just goes where he feels like going. Justin doesn't feel like going anywhere except to sleep, even though it's only ten minutes to ten; he's been in bed for half an hour already, fighting the way the sound of the shower lulls him, the way he wants to close his eyes and just fucking sleep for once, straight through a whole night. It sounds like there's a party where Chris is. "Guess who called me to complain about his tweaked-out, screaming queen of a boyfriend last night?" Chris says. "Well, he shouldn't have done that," Justin mutters. "We worked it out already, all by ourselves, thanks anyway." "Good," Chris says. "So what's wrong with you?" "Nothing. Listen, I had my little intervention already, you're too late. Don't do crack, it's a ghetto drug. I got it." "Yeah, I wasn't talking about your half-assed little drug habit, which by the way, barely qualifies as a very special episode of Charles in Charge, let alone some kind of actual drama. I mean between you and Trace? You two never fight." Justin tosses restlessly. He thought they were maybe going to have make-up sex tonight, so he's naked even though the room is chilly and his feet really are freezing for once, and by the time Trace gets out of the shower it's going to be New Year's fucking Eve. "I don't know," Justin says, keeping his words quick and low to the ground like he doesn't want to get caught. He doesn't. "I should be above it and whatever, but it's driving me around the fucking bend. She's a nice girl, it's nothing personal -- Christ, I don't know what it is, it's just something about the two of them. He thinks she's talented, she thinks he's funny, blah blah blah. It's like -- it wasn't supposed to be real, and it is now. They're not a real couple, but they like each other, that part is real, and I'm a jealous bitch or a screaming queen or whatever the fuck you want to call me, but I'm not okay with any of if being real. Jesus, Chris, have you seen this chick? She's so goddamn beautiful. You'd have to be an eyeless robot not to notice how beautiful she is. You'd have to be, I don't know. Made of snails." "Made of snails?" Chris repeats. "Excuse me, let me just clean out the wax in my -- made of snails?" "Well, you know what I mean." "Snips and snails and puppy dog tails, and I gotta tell you, J, if you're waiting for me to tell you she's not as fine as you think she is, you're asking the wrong little boy." "Not snips and snails," he says, "snails. They reproduce asexually. Whatsit, like, hermaphroditically. So they don't care about-- Shut up, we saw it on Animal Planet. Don't you remember?" "You'll never make me confess. Okay, so you've got it all out of your system now. You want to scratch Elisha Cuthbert's eyes out. Do you feel better?" "Maybe," Justin says. He doesn't, but he thinks not feeling better is the high road, and he wants to be petty just for a little while longer. "Good. This is your second intervention of the day. Do you know how many times the rest of us heard this same whiny little rant from Trace about Miss Britney Jean?" "No," Justin says. "Zero," Chris says, and he's not joking, now. He sounds cold. He only sounds like this when Justin has really stepped over the line. "Pay what you owe. Do this right." "Yes," Justin says meekly, and barely catches himself before he calls Chris sir like he does Johnny when Johnny has had it up to here with him. "I will." They're back to the usual, nagging each other about who's not making enough of an effort to see who, when Trace slides into bed beside him and puts his hand on his shoulder. Justin shifts automatically so that the phone is between them and Trace can listen in. It's just the usual, but Justin likes it that way, and he thinks Trace does, too. It's comforting. "Listen, I have some sleep to catch up on, and it sounds like you've got stuff to do," Justin finally says. "Come see me, for God's sake, I fucking love you." "I love you, too," Chris says. "And I just want -- Shit, J. I want you to quit being so, every time I see you, you just look so fucking frail. Will you just eat a hoagie and stop acting like you can't keep your shit together? I know you can. I never met anyone stronger than you." "Thank you," Justin says, even though he's not so sure that it's true. It's a sweet thing to say, regardless. When he hangs up the phone, Trace pulls him close and brushes his hand over Justin's eyes to close them, like they do to the corpses on television. "Sleep," he says. He's warm and comfortable now, snuggled up in four layers of blankets and one slightly damp boyfriend, but he can't come down that fast, not after so long. It's been days, weeks, maybe more, since he went to bed like this, intentionally, counting on sleep. Usually, Justin just falls where he lands, sleep punctuating his days in desperate bursts that have to do with need, not with pleasure like this. It's strange. It's so quiet; all he can really hear is the sound of Trace breathing. "How come?" he says. It's so quiet. Has it ever been this quiet before? "Justin, no," Trace says. "I don't-- " Justin turns to face him, wrapping an arm and a leg around Trace and nuzzling into his shoulder. "Yeah, please," he says. "It'll help me fall asleep." "No," Trace says, "I can't. I don't want to, not any-- Not for a while." He raises up on one elbow, trying to see in the dark, to read off Trace's expression why he's saying this. Trace puts a hand on the back of his head and drags him firmly back down, and his heartbeat under Justin's ear is as quick and nervous as Justin thinks his own must be. "I used to think it was just this little game," Trace says. His voice is a whisper, like they're talking someplace they're not supposed to be talking, like during a meeting, or at church. "You know, this thing we did. But. You know. Since the -- thing with Freddy and Carlos, since that stuff's been going on, you act like you and me are something -- like you're working at us the way you work at everything else, and it's just getting. Okay. I'm not good at this." "Hey, hey," Justin says, rubbing Trace's shoulder gently. "Just take your time." Trace takes him literally, and for a few minutes he doesn't say anything at all. Justin can feel his tension, can almost feel him thinking things over. "I don't want to be giving you notes," Trace finally says. "I mean, as a boyfriend. It's not like I sit around going, okay, it was cute when he did that, but this other part could use some work. This isn't like recording or doing a tour, you know? I don't want you...storing up the stuff I say and working on your act." "It's not an act," Justin says, and then swears at himself. It's hard enough for Trace to open up and talk to him like this without Justin making it worse by cutting in to argue with him. "I'm not saying it's fake," Trace says slowly. "But neither is your music, and you work at that. Sometimes it feels like you're working at us, and I don't like -- I don't like that you think you have to. It seems like you're trying to save our marriage, and you know, since when has it been in trouble?" Justin laughs a little, but it's shaky. "People do put effort into their relationships. That's okay. It doesn't mean things are in trouble." "No, I know it doesn't, but. Look, it's just not how things really work, okay? You say, you know, how come you love me, and I say, well, because of this thing you do that's dorky and cute or because you're this way or that way or because you're sexy when you're whatever. And I'm glad that -- you know, that I can make you smile when I say things like that, that it's one of these things I can do to make your life a little easier for you, but the truth is, J, I'm just making shit up. Those things, they're not how come I love you. They're just cool things about you, cool things you do, and I just want to make sure you know.... You do know the difference, right?" "Sure," Justin says. He has no earthly idea what Trace is talking about. * JC calls Lance several times the weekend he finally hears about Freddy leaving. He and Lance are close, in their way, in a deep and special way, but Lance is private like JC is. They understand each other; they understand each other so well that neither of them ever has to feel guilty when the other is the last person they tell. Still, once JC does finally hear, he calls, and they spend time on the phone together, with a little bit of talking and a lot more silence. It's the way he and Lance like things. "Do you think now that they're finished with Lance and Freddy, they'll come to us with some kind of offer?" JC asks Carlos that night, while he's tracing the Pisces tattoo on the small of Carlos's back. "Do you really think they haven't come to me yet?" Carlos says, turning startled eyes to meet JC's. "Oh," JC says quietly. "You never...said anything." Carlos shrugs. "It never seemed important." JC touches his lips to the tattoo. Privately, he often wonders why people have such a need to interrupt perfectly beautiful skin with all kinds of false colors and voluntary scars, but Carlos's tattoo is different. It's tasteful, it's discreet. And...it's Carlos. So no matter how often JC wishes he could hold Justin and Lance down and scrub them clean, it's better on Carlos. "I love you," he says. "Sweetheart, that's why it never seemed important." * Justin could probably get in to see the Pope easier than he can get a meeting with Britney Spears anymore, but he tries anyway. Even after they split up -- Justin thinks of it as splitting up, not breaking up like they were lovers, but splitting up like they used to be a comedy team or dancing partners, Fred and Ginger -- they visited each other a few times, and it was strained and nervous in parts, and then they would forget themselves and something would make them laugh and Justin would think they were still friends. They're not, really. Justin knows whose fault that is. He tries for weeks, patient and humble, and he feels like he's making good progress when he graduates from Fe putting him off to Bryan putting him off, and he's thrilled when he finally gets Brit on the phone, even though he fully expects her to say, Justin, why are you stalking me? Instead, though, she says, "Hi, honey." "Hi," he says, startled, and then forgets what else he called to say. "We should talk," she says, and Justin finds himself flying to Louisiana, rehearsing his apology. He wonders if he's the only person in the world to be working the twelve steps without having a drug problem first. * His parents don't understand, and her parents definitely don't understand, but Kelly does, and that's all that really matters to Joey. She's always been all that really matters to him, and he never once thought she wouldn't understand. Kelly has him in her hand, knows him and everything about him. Of course she understands. Joey comes in carrying their sleeping daughter, and Kelly is folding laundry and listening to her mother on speakerphone, going on again about a wedding date. Kelly grins at him and makes a beak-like motion with her hand, the universal sign for she won't shut up. "I'm sorry, baby," he murmurs when it's quiet and they're alone. She's on his lap, and he puts one hand on her hip and the other on the sweaty back of her neck where the little curls of hair don't fit into her upsweep. He kisses her shoulder, his arms wrapped around her, but it's really Kel who's wrapped around him, who's always been able to hold onto him. "Joseph, don't you dare," she warns. "If you start thinking that my mom speaks for me, I'll have to get angry." He laughs and runs a hand up and down her arm. She's so real, so warm and solid, with her face flushed and no makeup on, with no bra and her tits sagging under her t-shirt, smelling like Johnson's Baby Shampoo, and Joey's met a million girls in his relatively short life, actresses and models and model-actresses and dancers and singers and actress-model-dancer-singer wannabes, but Jesus, it would be a dark planet without Kelly on it, without his girl. He wants to marry her. He's never wanted anything else the way he wants her to be his wife. She kisses his forehead and says, "You are a good man, Joey Fatone. You'll do the right thing." "I just can't do it," he says. "Not this year. I can't ask them to come to my wedding." "Do I look like I'm in any hurry?" she says. He can't ask them to come and see him get married -- Lance and JC, and even Justin and Trace, who may be invincible, but who are still invisible, who will never have it as good as he does. They've been together so long, Joey and his friends, brothers as deep as blood or deeper, and it was never Joey's choice to have so much that they don't have. He never wanted them to have so many reasons to envy him. They've gone through so much together, but now they're so far apart - - Joey the family guy, Chris footloose and fancy-free, Lance and JC fighting out their broken hearts alone, and Justin bearing up under so much pressure that Joey thinks he'll be able to hear the snapping sound from here when he breaks. Joey is so grateful to God for what he has -- the work he loves and the rewards he's proud of, the woman in his life and the girl. But he never imagined how much baggage happiness could bring with it. Survivor's guilt. "What are we gonna tell Bri?" he asks out loud, even though he knows she doesn't have the answer. "What are we gonna tell her when she wants to know why it has to be like this?" "We'll just...tell her it's not fair," Kelly sighs. "We'll just tell her the truth." * Britney has an estate in Louisiana -- that's the only word for it, not just a house. It even has a name, Serenity, and Justin wonders if she named it after the Serenity prayer, which he thinks is a twelve-step thing, too. That would be pretty fucking amusing. He gets out of the car, and she's waiting for him on the porch, and Justin isn't prepared for the rush of emotion he feels when he sees her, looking all fresh and charming in her wispy little tank top and her ballet slippers with her hair extensions tied back in ribbons. She's Britney, and nobody knows better than Justin that the very air she breathes is dark and sour with lies, but she's still real somewhere inside. She has to be, doesn't she? He doesn't know; he was never able to peel Britney open. He shouldn't even care at all, but he knows he'll go to his grave wishing he could have managed it. Justin doesn't give up on a project easily. She squeals when they hug, and she sounds just like her mother when she says, "Oh, my God, let me look at you!" She puts both hands on his chest, and he can almost hear the snap of cameras going off as she holds him, framing him with her eyes. She smiles lazily, and Justin knows what she's thinking. She's thinking that she looks better than he does, that he looks scruffy and underfed. He smiles and lets her get her shot. Then he notices the other thing she wants him to see. He takes her hand in both of his and looks at the ring carefully; it's big, and pink, and square-cut. Of course it is. Justin knows diamonds, and this is the exact one that Britney would want. It's the one he would have bought her, if he'd been willing to let things go that far. He lets her hand go without saying anything about it, just to watch her pretend she's not pissed off. They've been in each other's company again for all of two minutes, and already Justin can see how this is going to go. Neither of them will ever win, and neither of them will ever quit trying. There are sweaters and videotapes littered across her lushly designed living room, just enough to make it look lived-in. Just enough to make it look like she didn't have the place cleaned just for him; Christ, she's good at this game. She perches on the arm of the sofa and looks up at him, waiting. Justin leans against her piano. He's at a loss for what to do with his hands. This whole thing is awful, but he guesses it's supposed to be. "I wanted to tell you I'm sorry," he says. "For the way things ended with us. I wanted to tell you in person." "Oh," she says, easy, sliding words, those too-bright eyes and that lushly designed smile. "For smearing my name in front of five billion people just to sell your little single? You're sorry for that?" "That's not." He licks his lips. "That wasn't really why, but. Yes, I am." "Oh," she says again, a hint of surprise around her trimmed eyebrows, "you didn't have to come here and make a fuss just over that. I'm not mad or anything." He waits for the other shoe to fall. He knows Britney pretty well. "I'm a little pissed off by the quality of my replacement." Justin winces a little and rubs both his hands over the back of his head. "I wish you didn't think of her that way. You know, I like Cameron and all, but she's not really your.... I know, I know it looks like that to other people, but." "But it was different with me?" she says, lazy sarcasm, only sharp if you run your hand backwards over it. "You know it was," he says. It sounds stupid now, the way things are now, but things...weren't always this way. "We did love each other, once," he says. "I think it's pathetic that you think that," she says, almost cheerfully. "You got rid of me so goddamn fast once you didn't think I was worth anything to you anymore. Is that what you think it's like to love someone?" "No," Justin says sharply. "I don't think that's what it's like, and I didn't -- it wasn't easy for me." She rolls her eyes, and he can't blame her for that. That doesn't make it not true, though. "You wouldn't, I tried to help you, remember? I wanted to help, but you can't make somebody do things they're not ready to do, and I didn't know.... I didn't know what else to do." She stands up and spreads her hand out, gesturing around her. "Well, you see, you didn't have to worry about me," she says. "I'm doing just fine." It's all Justin can do not to let his jaw drop open at that. Is this what Britney considers just fine? He never goes looking for news about Britney, but he'd have to be living in Fort Knox not to know what everyone is saying about her, how bad things have gotten. "I'm -- I'm glad," he says. "I'm glad you're happy." "I am happy," she says. "See, that's the difference between you and me, Justin. You can say whatever you want about me. I don't care what people think, what they think they know about me. Do you want to know why I'm not mad at you? Because every time I think about what a slimeball you were, then I think, you know, it's really me who has all the power, isn't it? Because you can say whatever you want about me, and I really don't care. But you do. You care a lot. Justin, if I wanted you to be sorry about what you did, believe me. You would be." He doesn't know if he's supposed to thank her now, or what. "Well," he says slowly, "I am. Whether you want me to be or not, and that's just, that's all I came to say. I'm not sorry that we -- split up, because the way things were wasn't healthy for either of us anymore, but I'm sorry I didn't tell the truth about -- well, not the truth, but." "God, no, not the truth," she laughs. "Are you really getting married?" he says. Talk about the quality of a person's replacement. Justin never for one minute understood what Britney saw in Jason. He's not that smart, and he's not good at anything in particular, and he laughs at things that aren't jokes and doesn't get the things that actually are jokes, and he doesn't even spend that much time with her; he goes to school, which Justin thinks is a sign that somewhere deep down even Jason knows the relationship won't last. But it's lasted -- God, years, Justin has lost track of how many years. Enough that Jason takes her for granted sometimes, just ruffles her hair and calls her baby and seems not to notice that she's her and he's him. But she still smiles at him with a smile that Justin has never seen on her when Jason's not around, and Justin thinks if he could figure out why the hell she likes him so much, maybe that would be something close to figuring Britney out. She beams like someone flipped on a switch inside her. "Yeah, but shh, don't tell. We're going to elope. Nobody knows yet, not even my parents." Justin starts to ask why the hell she's telling him first, and then he gets it. He's the only person she can tell, the only one who can be trusted not to do a damn thing to stop her. "Congratulations," he says flatly. She can't keep up the smile, but she does her best. It crumbles away slowly, and she replaces it with a fake one and says, "Don't worry, I won't tell anyone that he was my boyfriend for all those years you were supposedly screwing me. I'll just say it was a big, romantic whirlwind courtship." "I'm not -- God, this isn't about me. Just, what do you want me to say? You know it's a huge mistake, or you wouldn't be hiding it from your own family." "It's not a mistake," she says. "This is what normal people do, Justin. They fall in love and get married, they make it real." He doesn't know if she means for that to hurt or not, but it does. "A fucking diamond isn't what a marriage is about," he says. "That's not what makes it real. And anyway, you're not just normal people." "I'm of age," she says. "Nobody can stop me. They'll pitch a fit, but I told you already, I don't care what other people say. I love Jason, I want him to be my husband. If I want us to be just a little, tiny bit normal for once in our lives, what's so wrong about that?" "Sometimes you should care what people say. Sometimes they're trying to get through to you. Sometimes people besides you are right." "Thanks, honey," she says, smiling. "If I ever need lessons in how to let everybody else run my life for me, you be sure I'll know who to call." "So how's Brit?" Trace asks when he gets home. "Same as ever," Justin says. * "I just don't want them talking to Carlos," he tells Justin on the phone. "Can't you do something?" "No," Justin says tersely, "I can't. What the fuck do you think I can do?" His voice softens then, and he says, "Don't let the bastards get you down, Jayce, okay? You guys have been together forever. He loves you. He's not Freddy." "I know. I know that, but I just don't want.... It's about privacy. You know, privacy?" "It rings a bell," Justin drawls. "I think I had it on a spelling test one time." "Okay," JC says softly. He's supposed to be inside the club. He's supposed to be making an appearance, maybe getting photographed. They call it laying the groundwork for his solo career, which hangs on an album that still doesn't have a release date yet. Everyone says they love it, but there's no release date yet. Instead, JC is out in the alley by himself. The smoke inside stings his eyes and Carlos is home with a head cold, which JC is maybe coming down with himself. Or else it's just all that smoke. "I'm sorry. That was a hell of a thing to say to you." "No. You're right. It's harassment, is what it is, and they shouldn't be able to get away with it. I'll talk to her, okay? I don't promise that -- I mean, I don't know how much pull I really have in this department, but all I can do is try. Love you stupid, stupid." "You're the reason," JC says, surprising himself. He's never told Justin this before. Justin mostly doesn't like to get a lot of compliments from his friends; he gets embarrassed. "You're the whole reason I can -- could -- do this at all. Seeing how brave you are about it." There's an awkward pause, and JC smiles briefly. He can picture exactly how Justin looks, flushed and almost sullen, the way he used to look when his mom would fix his hair in public for him. "I'm not brave," Justin says. "I'm pretty much as deep in the closet as you fucking get." "I don't care about that. The publicity thing, I don't care about that. It's the way you never let it. Well, inside. The real things, they don't change even when you, when what you do changes. I mean. Who you are. You know. You two." Justin laughs. "Um. Okay, thanks." "You understand," JC says serenely. After all these years and even though their lives have drifted so far apart in so many ways, Justin is still the first best friend he ever had. "I understand you have crap taste in role models, but I guess if something I did helped you, then good. You know I'd do anything for you." * Later on Britney does get married, and Justin tries to call her, but every number he has seems to be off the hook. By the time he gets through, she's not married anymore. He's in a hotel in some city he can't remember the name of, and he locks himself in the bathroom with his bottle of Scotch and the cordless hotel phone, because he thinks Trace accidentally left with Justin's cell in his back pocket; anyway, Justin can't find it. He's sober enough to be thinking, breathe, breathe, breathe, and he wipes fiercely over and over at his eyes, which feel bloody, and hopes he doesn't sound like he feels. "What are you doing?" he says. "What are you fucking doing?" "Justin, leave me alone," she says, and she sounds weak, wrung-out. "Why are you listening to them? Why are you letting them do this?" "It's just not the right time for this. After I come off tour, then we'll maybe-- " "Don't," he says. "Don't give in. I thought you didn't care what anybody said?" He didn't really think that, of course. Britney cares in subterranean ways, deep and invisible and hard like veins of iron. Everybody cares, don't they? "Shut up!" she says, her voice piercing. "I don't need this right now, okay? Things are complicated." "No, they aren't," Justin says. "No. You love him. That's not complicated." Britney hangs up on him, and Justin smashes the phone down on the edge of the bathtub. Then he does it again. The plastic cracks, but he can't tell if there's any lasting damage done to it. He lets go, lets it slide down the side of the tub and skid around the smooth, clean basin until it comes to a stop. When he finally drags himself up to his feet by the edge of the sink and goes back out to his room, Justin leans against the bathroom door and watches Cameron. She's lying on his bed in her underwear -- not lingerie, just plain old cotton panties and a matching bra, light blue -- and giggling into her phone, kicking one foot in the air, the red mark of a needle still fresh on her arm. Justin spends a lot of time with her, but he doesn't know her well, except that she's bright and lively and does funny voices and seems happy. She seems happy. He doesn't see how she can be, but he doesn't know her well enough to say that she's lying. "Hey, kiddo," she says, pulling the phone away from her mouth. "Have you been crying?" "I don't know who the good guys are anymore," he says. She giggles, then makes a sympathetic face and waves him over to her, and he goes. He lies down on the bed beside her and lets her worm her arm under his neck, around his shoulders. "He gets sensitive when he drinks," she tells whoever she's on the phone with. "It's awfully cute." * Lance won't talk to anyone, so they all end up talking about him behind his back, like he has a terminal illness or something. Chris gets his regular updates from Justin and Joey -- what Lance is eating, how much he drinks, when he goes out and what he does, who he's with day and night. They do everything but cast his horoscope and check his stool. "Look," Chris says to him, "are you doing okay? Do you need anything?" "Don't start," Lance says, and that's as close as they ever come to confronting Lance. He golfs with Chris sometimes. They play blackjack in Vegas, and they wind up making Charlie Sheen an even richer man than he was before. A couple of times, Chris tries to fix Lance up with a guy, but it never works. On one memorable occasion, Chris somehow ended up sleeping with the guy himself, which is weird, because Lance's taste in men -- big, dark, easygoing and slightly stupider than Lance -- is not Chris's taste in men -- artsy and androgynous and arrestingly pretty. He picks them out to suit Lance, but Lance is one crafty motherfucker, and, yeah. That was a whole weird thing. Chris gets so sick of Lance's unwillingness to be looked after that he comes to the end of his rope and tries kissing Lance himself. Lance lets him do it for just a second, and then pushes him away with one hand, laughing. "What do you think you're doing?" he drawls. "What am I doing?" Chris repeats. He didn't really want to get it on with Lance or anything, but he's still not that down with being laughed out of the room, which is a ridiculously overdecorated bathroom in the house of a video director who's desperate enough to break into movies that he might even work with Lance. "What are you-- Why can't you be normal about this? Why can't you just be all broken-hearted and shit like you should be?" Lance turns away and puts his hands on the counter, slouched over like he's tired. It's as much defeat as Chris has seen him show in weeks. "I'm just going forward," he says, staring through their reflection in the mirror. He straightens up and smooths the sleeves on his jacket. More firmly, he says, "The only thing that's gonna help is just to go forward from here." "That's the way love goes?" Chris says, a little nastily. "Please, Chris," he scoffs. "Like I'm really going to stand here and talk about love with you. You don't have the first fucking idea what it feels like." He almost argues, but when Lance gets talking like that, all high and mighty, it's hard not to believe whatever he's saying. Maybe Chris doesn't know what it feels like. Maybe it doesn't feel like any of the things that he's been calling love all his life. One time, Chris said something like that to Justin, ages ago -- You're just a kid, what do you know about love? -- and Justin rolled his eyes and said, Whatever. He didn't even argue back like he always did when Chris called him too young for something, that's how obvious it was to him that Chris was full of shit. Lance calls him a couple of days later and says, "I do miss him, you know? Some days more than others. Some days I think I'm kind of still in denial. I'm so fucking pissed at him, but I love him, too." "Yeah, man," Chris says softly, like he understands, and it seems to be enough. That's as close as he ever comes to comforting Lance, but it might be enough. * Cameron is gone by morning, and Justin doesn't know when she left. He's still in all his clothes, with a sour taste in his mouth and red dots in front of his eyes where the sun is just too bright. Trace brings his cereal over to him and rubs that spot high on his forehead that hurts when Justin is hung over while he eats. "You're taking all this pretty hard," Trace observes. That's called active listening, that thing where you just say what's going on and don't judge it, hoping the other person will open up and tell you more. Justin is the one who taught Trace how to do that. Justin's eye falls on a stack of tabloids. Britney is on the front of the top one. He's willing to bet she's on the front of all of them. "Did you pay money for those?" he says with his mouth full. "Yeah," Trace says lightly. He reaches over and picks up the whole stack, settling on the bed next to Justin to flip through them. "I've been trying to figure, do you think they're getting out because it's bad for her career, or do you think he took a payoff? I've been reading, and some of them say one thing and some of them say the other, and you know somebody has to be getting it right, but you never can tell who." "You shouldn't read those things," Justin says. "I don't think he took any money. That doesn't sound like Jason." "It didn't really sound like Freddy and Carlos, either, did it?" Justin snaps. "Maybe it wasn't," Trace says, and then stops awkwardly. Justin lets his spoon clatter against the edge of the bowl and folds his arms across his chest, foolishly, like a little kid threatening to hold his breath until he dies. "Just go ahead and say it was my fault. Not Freddy, maybe, but Carlos was. Everybody knows it, so just say it." "I don't think that," Trace says steadily. "You just said how you thought things were; he didn't have to do anything he didn't want to." Justin snorts. "Come on. You have any idea how many people have sat me down and told me how if I really care about what's best for you, I'll back off from you? You're just lucky," he says, slipping his arm around Justin's waist, "that I don't actually care all that much about what's best for you." Justin doesn't want to laugh, but he can't help it. Trace kisses his shoulder and says, "Nobody makes people do anything, J. People do what they want to do, Carlos included." "I think he took the money," Justin says. "Jason." "Of course you do; you never did like Jason. But he's always been sweet to Brit, you gotta say that for him." "It changes things," Justin says. "You don't really know a person until he smells the money. You don't know until then what kind of person they really are." "Maybe that's what they told Britney," Trace says dreamily, leaning his head on Justin's shoulder. "That would be pretty smart, if they told her that they paid him, and he went away. Maybe he really wants to see her, but her folks and Fe and all them are keeping him away and telling her that he hasn't called or anything. That's what I'd do, if I were trying to put a stop to Jason and Britney." "That's great," Justin says flatly. "You have a career in PR ahead of you." Trace is quiet for a minute, and then he says, "It just sounds better, you know? Better than Britney throwing him out because it got hard, or him just running out on her. It's just. If they can't be together anymore, at least it's cool to think that maybe something else happened, and not just, not just that they didn't want it enough anymore." His voice drops softer, and he says, "It gets hard, watching everybody else end up just changing their minds sooner or later. I'm sick of seeing people start off in love and end up giving up on it." "Since when did you get so fucking romantic?" Justin spits out. He hasn't been in a very fairy- tale mood for a while now. Trace shakes his head a little and gets up. He was in the middle of packing when Justin woke up, and he goes back to it now, but not quite the same as before. He's throwing things more roughly into the suitcases, not bothering to fold them the way he knows Justin likes, not paying attention to what he knocks over when he snatches things off the table and the desk. Justin has time to finish his cereal before Trace finally says, "Sometimes it seems like you don't even fucking know me, you know? Like you don't even fucking try." Justin looks up. Trace is standing still, looking out the window. "You're not the only one under pressure, okay, Justin?" he says, quiet and strained. "You're just so fucking self-- It's not just you. It's hard for other people, too, which you'd notice if you would even bother to look." Idly, Justin wonders what he decided not to say at the last second. Selfish? Self-involved, self- centered, self-pitying, self-indulgent? Not that it matters. He's just curious. "I know," he says. "I'm really sorry. I just get...caught up in stuff. I know it's hard for you, too." They never used to fight. Chris was right about that. Now, Justin seems to be apologizing a lot. He's not sure if he's getting to be more of an asshole, or if they're just further apart somehow and things are getting lost in translation that used to pass quick and flawless between them, just on a look. * "Don't, don't come any closer," Carlos warns, holding up his arms. They collapse back to the bed as if they're too heavy for him to keep up any longer. "I have tuberculosis." "I think you just have a cold," JC said, clearing off a spot on the bed and sitting down beside him. Carlos has had all day to build up a nest of magazines and CD cases; he's just sick enough to be miserable and just well enough to be bored. "It has to be pneumonia, at least. At least give me pneumonia? Nothing that's not potentially fatal should suck this much." "Don't joke about that." JC tests his forehead and his neck with the back of his hand. He's hot to the touch. "You're not dying." "How was the club?" JC shrugged. "Good, I guess. It was fun." "You should sleep somewhere else." "I'm already exposed. If I'm going to catch it, it's done." JC takes off his clothes and slides under the blankets without even brushing his teeth first. He smiles against Carlos's shoulder, wondering if Justin is even aware that there are people in the world, outside of mental institutions, who don't necessarily brush their teeth for five minutes every single night. "Missed you," he said. "Aren't you sweet?" "You smell like cough syrup. A lot of cough syrup. You know there's an approved dosage for that stuff, right?" Carlos giggles. "Oh, but you don't get a buzz if you just take what it says on the bottle. I'm joking," he adds after a second. "I know, "JC says, trying to act like he knew that. He's gullible, though. Everyone says so, although some people are nice about it and say that it's beautiful that he still trusts people after all these years. "When did you know?" he asks softly. "Always." Carlos sighs and leans back against him. He presses his palms against JC's. "Even before I knew there was a word for it." After a long silence, he asks the question that JC always knows he'll break down and ask, one of these times. "When did you?" JC folds Carlos's hands together and holds them both in between his. "I was -- I'm not sure. Too old." "Don't say that. Nobody should tell you what the right time is, for anything. Honey, honey, querido. You think too much, okay? You try to make sense out of things that really don't need to make sense. This is good, life is good. It doesn't matter how I got here, how you got here. Just be my JC, and everything's fine." He sneezes, suddenly and explosively. "Also, I'd like a really nice funeral." "The nicest," JC promises, and he sings Carlos to sleep with "Love Changes Everything." He still thinks Andrew Lloyd Webber is the devil, but Joey wore him down a little, and after Carlos he just hasn't had the strength to fight it anymore. The thought makes JC grin blissfully against Carlos's hair: he never wishes anymore that he could have fallen in love with a woman, just with a Sondheim fan. He is now officially very gay. * Like everybody else in the universe, Justin forgets about Britney because of the Super Bowl. There's just one little glitch, and all Justin plans to do is laugh it off; every choreographer he's ever worked with has said that when things go wrong on stage, half the time if you act like it was nothing people won't even notice. He's a little embarrassed by it, but he figures not as much as she is, and he smiles and shrugs it off and thinks maybe he'll get lucky and people won't really notice. It doesn't seem like it can possibly be as big a deal as people keep saying it is. Somebody finally brings Johnny in to sit him down and explain just how big a deal it's become, because nobody knows the job like Johnny, and Justin can't help but trust him on things like this. When Johnny's done with him, Justin says, wide-eyed, "Well...what am I supposed to do, though?" "An apology might be in order," Johnny says. "What for?" Trace says. "It was a fucking accident, and anyway he already said he was sorry." Johnny doesn't look at Trace. He won't take his eyes off of Justin, probably because he knows it makes Justin a little crazy when people just stare and stare at him like that. "Are you sorry?" Johnny asks. "Well...." Justin says. "Fuck this," Trace says. "He's not gonna spend the rest of his career groveling to some pissed off PTA mom in Kansas." "It's not just Kansas," Johnny says. "And I'm going to get to you in a minute." "I am sorry," Justin says quickly, because Trace is opening his mouth to say something stupid. "No, I really am," he says to Trace's look. "I mean, this is entertainment, this is supposed to be fun for people. I get paid to -- what people like to see, and if they don't -- You can't blame a bad show on anybody but yourself. It was an accident and all, but it wasn't a good show, people aren't glad they saw it, and that's, that's pretty much just the thing. So. Yeah. I'll -- if they don't believe me, I'll say it again. I'll say whatever, just tell me how to do this right." They draw up a little plan, because that's Johnny's thing; he always has a plan. When it's settled, he looks at Trace and says, "You shouldn't talk to the press. I'd like to break them of the habit of coming to you for quotes, especially if you can't think before you go on the record." Trace puts his foot on the front of Johnny's desk and pushes himself back, tipping the chair onto its back legs. He glares, and Justin remembers why he used to think that Trace was tough and sexy, back when they were both seventeen and Justin himself was busy doing everything he was told. "What are you, my fucking father?" Trace says. "You can't tell me who to talk to." "You know, I'd really like to have your job," Johnny says. "The one where you do whatever you want and aren't responsible for any of the consequences." "Hey," Justin says. Trace smiles and says, "Well, I really don't think you would like to have my job, but that's beside the point. The point is, you have your job, and if you're pissed because I'm not doing it for you, then too fucking bad. You're the one whose job it is to tell him what's good for his career, and then that's what he goes and does, so what the fuck are you complaining about? He's gonna do your stupid apology, again. So, you know, keep up the excellent work, but you're not my manager, and you don't get to tell me what to say and who to say it to." Justin apologizes after the meeting is over, once Trace is out the door and out of earshot. "He doesn't mean anything," Justin says. "He's just under stress." "You know I love Trace," Johnny says with a little sigh. "I don't know how to say this.... He cares about you a lot, in some ways, but in other ways I think you have to remember that what's good for him isn't necessarily good for you. I know how that sounds, hearing me say that." "I won't choose," Justin says. "It doesn't have to be him or my career. I can do-- If you think you can ask me to choose between them-- " "No," Johnny says, and sighs again. "I definitely don't think that. I don't know what I'm asking. Just keep what I said in mind." "We're all on the same side, here," Justin says. Johnny raises his eyebrows. "What side is that?" "Well..." He feels stupid saying it. "Mine, I guess." He thinks Johnny's going to laugh at him, but he doesn't laugh. * Joey goes to the Monica Downing meeting even though he wasn't technically invited, because it's a meeting, it's group business. She's younger than he expected her to be. She barely looks at him; Joey isn't completely sure she knows who he is. JC and Justin are on speakerphone; Chris is there in the flesh, and while they all wait for Lance, he tells a long story about the waitress who served lunch to him and Joey, and he tells it in a rambling, incomplete, excruciatingly boring way on purpose, the way Chris does when he's forced to talk to someone he doesn't like. Lance comes rushing in, all jangling car keys and beeping cellphone and apologies. His hair is slicked back like Lance never wears it unless he's desperate to get out the door five minutes ago, and he mutters, "Sorry, y'all. Sorry," and takes his seat, fumbling his phone off after glancing at the caller ID. "Hey," Joey says softly, and cocks his head questioningly at Lance. Lance shakes his head briefly, meaning either I'm fine or not here. Lance passes an envelope across Joey and onto Monica's desk. It's not addressed; it only says "Freddy Hernandez" in Lance's small, dark writing. "Just give it to him," Lance says. "I don't -- whatever. Just get it to him, all right?" She nods and puts her fingers on it, just the tips of them, and slides it toward her. "Would you like to know the dollar amount?" she asks. "No," Lance says, not quite sarcastically. "Thanks anyway." "All right," she says. "But I think you'd be pleased. It's high." The meeting is boring; most group meetings are, except when they have an album to get out by deadline and there's the extra thrill of wondering whether or not JC is going to take a swing at Justin, or possibly vice versa. Parts of it are about how many and which nights Suede is willing to let Joey have the run of the place and who he needs to be inviting, so apparently Joey's presence actually was anticipated. There's some other stuff, too. It's all boring. When they get up to leave, Lance puts his hand on Joey's arm and just gives him a look, a private look that Joey can't describe. "Okay," Joey says quietly. "It's okay." He doesn't know if it is or not, but he knows he has to put his arm around Lance's shoulders, so he does. Chris knows enough to bow out, because this time the look wasn't meant for him. Joey takes him walking outside the building. There's a rotunda among office buildings, a little mock park made of jauntily multicolored bricks and pigeons and trees inside miniature iron fences. There's a fountain, and they walk toward it. Joey chucks in a nickel and wishes for the same thing he always does, world peace. Why not? "So, Freddy moved out," Lance says neutrally. It about had to be something like that. Joey puts his hand on the base of Lance's neck and presses hard. "Man," he says. "That's rough." "I just -- it was all of a sudden, you know? Just...boom. So that's the weird part. Just how it was all of a sudden, and I didn't really get to...." "Say goodbye?" Joey suggests. Lance laughs unsteadily. "Beg him to stay. Is actually what I was thinking, but yeah, say goodbye." Joey squeezes his neck harder, and Lance laughs again, a little gentler this time. "Okay, ow." They sit down on the edge of the fountain. Everyone around them seems to have a suit on except for them, and Tiny, who's standing by a tree the same height he is and not as big around as one of his arms. "You want to come over tonight?" Joey says. "Yeah. Maybe stay a day or two, if it's okay with Kelly." "Done deal," Joey says. Lance trails his fingers in the water, deep enough to make a gurgling sound as they go through. He's wearing a nice watch that's being splattered with falling water, but maybe it's waterproof, or maybe he just doesn't give a shit. "I fucked it up, Joe," he says, his voice falling so low in pitch that Joey has to strain to hear it. "He tried to talk to me, but I think I said the absolute wrong thing, you know me. I think I said.... I just said it badly. I didn't mean there was no future, I meant.... I just didn't have any time to figure out what I wanted to say. He left a letter, so I wrote him back, but. God knows if they'll really send it to him. There was no forwarding address or anything." "There's no excuse for that," Joey says, and he would say it because it's true even if he didn't need to say it just for loyalty's sake. "That's bullshit. He should have left you something, or...given you a chance, more of a chance. You know, you work things out. You don't just disappear. He fucked you over, man, not the other way around." Lance sighs and says, "Yeah, maybe. Maybe." Joey puts his hand in the fountain, too, and splashes back and forth while Lance draws deep underwater patterns. "I just want him to get the letter," Lance says. "That's basically what I really want at this point." Joey hooks his finger around Lance's pinky and hangs onto him. Lance won't look up into Joey's eyes, so eventually Joey looks down, too, at the sharp impact splashes of the water falling into deeper water, at the way it splatters like rain across the backs of their hands. * Trace has a computer in their bedroom, around an L-shaped corner so that it's out of sight from the bed, and Justin sometimes goes to sleep with the windows shuttered so he can sleep late into the day and the only light in the room coming from the strange glow of the screen that he can't see. He can hear the clicks of Trace talking to their friends back home, or the dim, muted gunfire of Unreal Tournament. Trace naps a lot while Justin has to be at things, so their sleeping patterns don't always match up even though their schedules theoretically do. Justin can't sleep, and Trace has been at the computer for what seems like days. There's no gunfire, no typing. Justin gets out of bed and pads around the corner, and Trace says, "Go to bed, man." "What is-- Are you still reading about me?" Justin comes closer, puts his hand on the back of Trace's chair and leans over his shoulder. Trace reaches back to shove him off. "Just ignore it. Go back to bed. You don't need this shit." "I will if you will," Justin says, and Trace smiles grimly, because they both know that in his own quiet way, Trace obsesses just as much as Justin does. He moves over so that Justin can share the seat with him; he knows they both fit in the chair, because this is how they watch together when Trace finds really good porn to download or an interview they haven't had time to catch off of MTV. Justin lays his arm around the back of the chair and braces his foot on the edge of the seat between Trace's legs, and Trace rests his hand gently on Justin's raised knee. Every time he sees something he wants to protect Justin from seeing, Trace clicks backward to something different, but Justin reads a lot faster than Trace does, and the trick doesn't work. Justin's heart is pounding, but he doesn't want to make a noise, doesn't want to say anything, or else Trace will shut it off and not let Justin read anymore, and Justin doesn't really know how to find these things on his own. Trace shuts it off eventually anyway, and the screen goes to their wallpaper, a scan of Justin's autographed copy of Michael Jordan's first Nike ad. Justin stares at it blankly. Trace gives his knee a couple of light pats and says, "You've heard it all before, J. You'll just walk it off; you always do." "Yeah," Justin says, and he doesn't know how to say that this time it's different. He was dumb enough to start thinking, to really start believing that people liked him. That they weren't just waiting for him to make the wrong move. "I just don't really get it," he says, and his voice cracks childishly. "I mean, I was a dick because I didn't, and now I'm a dick because I-- What did they want me to do?" "I don't know," Trace sighs. "They don't know. Whatever, they're writers. They got space to fill up." "Yeah," Justin says again. He puts his hand on Trace's cheek and turns him to look at Justin. Neither of them have shaved lately, and it feels weird when he holds Trace to him, his fingers brushing Trace's beard, his thumb touching his own. It feels like a costume, and the house feels like a stage, and the whole thing feels like they're getting away with pretending to be grown-ups. In Justin's head, he thinks they'll both be seventeen forever. Trace's fingers flex on his knee, and then his hand starts up Justin's leg as he kisses back with that slow smokiness that makes Justin whimper into his mouth. They've done this before, too, watching porn together, and Justin knows exactly how far they can go right here, but he still pulls back and says, "Bed?" Justin does the best he can, but it seems like Trace isn't completely with him. He makes all the right noises, he presses up into Justin's hands and he watches Justin's mouth with glazed eyes, then closes them when Justin's mouth closes around his cock, but Justin can just tell somehow that they both have too much on their minds, that it's not clicking quite right. He wants to think it's good enough for tonight, but he's not really wired to think in those terms, so he's kind of pissed off when they're lying there afterwards, still splintered off into their own spaces. "What are you thinking about?" he asks, pressing his fingers to the corner of Trace's lips to get his attention, even though he knows that Trace feels sort of raw and too vulnerable after sex and he doesn't like Justin's hands all over his face. Sure enough, Trace grabs his fingers and pulls Justin's arm roughly so that it's spread across Trace's waist and out of his way. "Do we have to talk about this?" he asks. "I just don't see why it bothers you so much." "Why it-- What the fuck does that mean? It makes you crazy and miserable; why do you think it bothers me?" "You should be happy. You were right and I was wrong." "That's right, J," Trace says bitterly. "That makes me really fucking happy." Justin struggles to sit up in bed. "Is this your idea of making me feel better?" Trace stays on his back, looking at Justin with fierce, unreadable eyes. "Sorry," he says heavily, in a voice that stings. "Am I on the clock right now?" "Why do you try to make me feel that way?" Justin asks. It's an honest question; he'd really like to know. "I never wanted to -- to hire you, all I wanted was for us to be together. Why do you have to make it sound like something dirty?" Trace doesn't answer him. Of course Trace won't answer him. Justin finally gives up the dramatics and lays back down. They don't speak to each other for a while, and then when Justin thinks that Trace is just tossing around for a comfortable sleeping position, he puts his hand out and strokes Justin's jaw. "I'm not trying to make you feel any way," he says. "It's just, how do you think we're gonna go our whole lives and never fight about this? You love your job, and a lot of the time I really hate it." He thinks about Johnny, can't help but think about Johnny, saying I know how that sounds.... It doesn't make Johnny right, though. He can't be, because Justin couldn't stand for him to be right about this. Justin wants to run, drive, hit something -- really do something to be sorry for, this time. He settles for snapping, "You don't have much of a problem spending my money, though, do you?" "Fuck. You," Trace says, with unarguable finality. * In the morning, Justin comes up behind Trace while he's shaving and runs his fingers over Trace's bare back, bending his head down to murmur, "Last night, man, I'm really sorry." "Yeah, I know," Trace says diffidently. "Why do you think I didn't want you to read all that shit? I knew it would fuck with your head." Justin thought it would be harder than that. "Still," he flounders. "I really wish I hadn't said what I said." Trace reaches behind him and pats Justin's thigh briefly. "Forget it," he says. "It's our money," Justin says. "When you think about it, that's how it should be. Everything should be ours, so that way...what's good for one of us is good for us. You know?" "Justin, I'm really not sweating the money thing. We had a little fight; it's been a long week. Forget about it." He knows Trace can't be bought, not by anyone, not even by him. That used to make Justin feel good, and now it kind of freaks him out. He can't stand it that he's down to that, to looking for a way to bind them closer together, any way at all, when he used to be so sure that it was once and done forever. They've been with each other all along, but they count time from one particular night, seven years ago last February. They were sixteen years old, and an ocean apart, and every time Justin remembers it it's like he's back there again, his hands wrapped so tight around the telephone receiver that they ache, his heart banging so loudly that he holds his breath so he can hear Trace's soft, half-angry muttering over the line saying, I just don't get how come you even think about me at all anymore It's like he goes right back to the beginning, just thinking about it, and however much Justin has changed since then, it doesn't take much to be the same person who answered back How come I think about you is because I'm in love with you, dumbass. Maybe it wasn't too romantic, or the perfect thing to say, but it turned them into what they are now. It's the beginning of them, somewhere between their first kiss and the first time they made love, and it means more to Justin than either of those things, because unlike kissing and sex, taking that jump off the cliff is something that can't easily be repeated. Once and done forever. No other I love you that followed could ever be that terrifying, or matter so much. They were so close that night. Justin thought they'd never get anything but closer. * "If you met me now," Justin asks Lance the next time they're togther, "would you like me?" Lance looks at him, measuring. He chose Lance for this because he knew Lance would take it seriously. "No," Lance finally says. "Well, I probably wouldn't dislike you. But I'd try not to get too involved with you. You're very high-maintenance, and I don't need that in my life right now. I mean, it's all right. It's you. But if I didn't already like you, it might not be worth it." "Do you think I'm sexy?" he asks. He doesn't even know why. It really just kind of comes out. "You'll do," Lance says with a little smile. Justin grins back. * When JC goes out without photographers he doesn't think about the release date, and he doesn't care who he talks to. He dances all night, alone. Not alone, but with a series of strangers. Women, mostly. JC loves women, with the way their lower backs dip at the waistband of their low-rise jeans just enough to put your fingertips in between, the way the sweat beads like jewelry at their hairlines and down their necks, the way they fling their hair and hold their hands when they dance, bent at abstract angles as if they're playing invisible finger-cymbals in some exotic sultan's court. JC slides his hands over their thighs and holds them close and he's the sultan and the whole world is his harem; there's sweat in his eyes, blinding him, and the air smells like flowers and salt and sugar and rum and fucking, and it makes his nostrils flare and his mouth water. He's laughing crazily, filling his hands with feather-soft hair extensions and silicone-firm breasts, and he knows that there are men and women in this club who will masturbate for years to the memory of the way he looks right now, and how they almost, almost, almost had him. Then he goes home and turns on the music, Jimi Hendrix rattling the paintings on the walls, powering the whole house like a 747 engine, and he can see Carlos smile and watch his lips moving, but he can't hear. He puts his fingers against Carlos's lips and dances close to him. Carlos tastes like cough syrup and his fingertips are cold while the rest of him is warm, and he shakes under JC's hands as JC strips his silk pajamas off of him and pushes him up against the rough brick of the fireplace. He hears Carlos crying out his name as JC blows him, that's how loud he can make his lover scream. It's possible that someday soon they'll lose this, because everyone says the passion fades sooner or later. The chemistry of your brain and the texture of your blood changes somehow. People say it's inevitable. JC thinks he's the exception, because all these years, all he's wanted was to fuck the music. He never gets enough of that, and he doesn't think he'll ever get enough of fucking Carlos, either. That's what love means to JC. He comes downstairs in the morning, and Carlos is at the kitchen table, but he's not on the phone. He doesn't wave at JC, just frowns and blows his nose, still glaring sullenly over the top of the kleenex. "What's the matter?" JC asks. He might skip his workout this morning. He still feels sore and limber and invincible from the night before. "I can't do this. I can't, how can I possibly get your schedule all straightened out when I don't even know when the fucking album drops? When am I going to know that?" "When I do," JC says shortly. He doesn't know why Carlos is acting like the whole thing is a matter of his convenience. It's JC's life hanging in the balance, so if he can endure the waiting, you'd think Carlos could, too. "Is this my fault?" he says, and JC looks up from the refrigerator and sees that Carlos's eyes are red. He hopes it's the cold, and not that something he's done, or failed to do, or something that's being done to him, is making Carlos cry. "No," JC says, with his heart in it, as true a song as he can write without music. He kneels down by Carlos's chair and takes Carlos's hand in both of his. "Querido," he says, and it makes Carlos smile. He's always thought that JC has a weird accent when he speaks Spanish. "It's not because of that. It's the album; they don't know what to do with it. It's not something they understand." "You don't know what it's like to watch you go through this." "I can wait," JC says. Carlos shakes his head, and curves his hand around JC's skull. "You're not yourself like this. You've been away from it for so long. Cooped up here where you don't belong." "This is my home," JC says. "I've found -- these things about myself that -- it took silence, and I was never sure until now. I have freedom here." "Do I look like I want to buy that bridge? Honey, I've seen you on tour, I've seen you when you're doing what you do. I've seen you when you were alive for real." JC thinks about wildflowers by the side of the road. Maybe it's a painting about how they stay rooted there and watch the world travel by. "I can wait." "I don't want you to." Carlos bends forward in his chair and puts his head on JC's shoulder. JC strokes the back of his neck with two fingertips and wishes he knew acupressure. "You think too much. You should be singing instead." "I will be," JC promises. "Soon." He doesn't ask who put all these things into Carlos's head. He can't change it, can't stop them, so it's better not to get into the specifics at all. "Nothing in this world could ever bring us down," he sings softly, and he feels Carlos smile against his skin. "Baby, I'll be there, telling you I care...." JC remembers writing the song in seclusion, barricaded into an anonymous motel room because he couldn't focus at home; everywhere he looked he recognized something, and he needed to be someplace that matched his head, someplace foreign and new. The words were easy, but the melody was hard. It started out as a ballad, but every time he thought of Carlos's smile the tempo picked up, and it took a while to quit fighting it. He didn't make any changes at all to the lyrics after the first draft, except at the very end, when he carefully went back over it and erased every "boy," blew away the eraser dust with a long breath, and wrote "girl" into the blank space. He called Justin on speakerphone and said, "It's finished," staring at the black graphite smudges on his fingertips. "Thank Christ," Justin said. "Where in the world are you, anyway?" "I don't know," JC said, because he didn't. "But I'm on my way back in." * Now that the tour is over, life is more like work and less like a party, and Justin almost never wakes up with nothing on his mind except sex. He accidentally lets it slip to Chris that it's been weeks since he got laid, and Chris says, "Lesbian bed-death is a bitch. You should try answering the door wrapped in cellophane or something. Or try porn. Porn is a many-splendored thing." "It's not like that, jackass," Justin says. "We're not bored or anything. I've just been busy. Some of us still work for a living." "Yeah, and some of us are getting some. I'm comfortable with my lifestyle choices if you are." He almost puts the moves on Trace that very night, but then he catches himself and realizes that he's not really in the mood, he's just doing it to prove something to fucking Kirkpatrick, which is wrong on so many levels. So he just lets Trace curl around him instead, like always, and only once, just briefly as he's drifting off to sleep, does he think that it's kind of weird, this long stretch without sex. Usually by now Trace would have been the one to initiate, and he hasn't, not for a long time. Justin's not quite sure how long, but it seems strange to him. He puts it out of his head and settles in, comfortable in Trace's arms. "Do you think I'm sexy?" he murmurs on the edge of sleep. He can't quite make it leave his head -- how long it's been, how Trace hasn't touched him with intent in ages. It doesn't really matter, except that it does. Trace grunts and squeezes Justin closer to him. "J, J," he says. "Sometimes I wish to God I knew what was going on in your head." * The moment that Trace picks, it's like he's been waiting for the worst possible moment. They're on a transatlantic flight, in a first-class cabin with promoters and bodyguards and flight attendants mixing drinks, and it's not like they have anything else to do, but still, every instinct in Justin's body rebels when Trace shifts around under the blanket they're sharing and thumbs open the snap on Justin's fly. He goes tense in every muscle he has and glares hard at Trace. It's dark outside, and even in the cabin the lights are off and on intermittently, dim reading lights and the glow of laptops. They're in shadow where they're sitting, but it's still not private, nothing like private. "Have you lost your mind?" Justin whispers. Trace smiles and pushes his zipper down. Justin wants to struggle away, but he knows the more he moves, the more attention he'll attract. He's too scared even to breathe when Trace slides three fingers inside Justin's fly. "Don't," he grits out. "Fucking don't, Trace. Come on, please." He doesn't know if Trace wants him to beg, or what. He has no problem with begging, if that's what it takes. "Calm down," Trace says softly. He shifts his other arm behind Justin, sliding down the back of his jeans just a tiny bit, against the sensitive spot at the very base of Justin's spine. Justin bites his lip hard, because, yeah, it has been a long time, and if they were just anywhere but this, anywhere at all.... Justin closes his eyes and says, "I don't. They'll see us." "Not if you're quiet. God, you look good like this." Justin grinds his ass down into the seat to keep from pressing up against Trace's hand. He's trying hard to keep his face blank, but he's terrified, and his cock aches and burns under Trace's touch, and he wants to do this so bad, and he already can't even remember why turning his head to kiss Trace would be the end of the world, but he's positive that it would be. "Stop," he begs under his breath. "Not like this. It'll be so much better when we're alone, I swear to God." "No, it won't," Trace growls. Justin's eyes fly open and race around nervously, but people are looking at them and then passing right by, totally uninterested in whatever Trace is whispering in Justin's ear. People are used to the two of them sticking close together. "It'll be better like this. Mine, my baby. Oh, baby...." Justin shudders at the warmth of Trace's breath in his ear. He grabs Trace's wrist as hard as he can, and he makes himself not care that Trace hisses in pain when Justin forces his hand away. He zips himself up hastily and stands up; he feels wooden and awkward as he walks to the bathroom, sure that everyone can tell he's not moving like he usually does. Nobody is watching, though, and he gets behind the curtain and collapses against the bathroom door, eyes closed in relief. He rebels when Trace follows him through the curtain; all he has to do is put his hand on Justin's arm, and Justin starts to shake and fight back. "Stop it, stop it," he hisses. He's ten thousand feet in the air with no place to go, he can't get away from Trace and he doesn't dare let him near. He's trapped, completely trapped, and he's not claustrophobic, but he's going to hyperventilate if he can't think of a way out of this. He tries pleading again, because it's always worked on Trace in the past. He goes limp, slumping so low against the wall that he's barely taller than Trace, and makes his eyes needy. "You're really freaking me out," he says. "Why are you acting like this?" For one brief moment, Trace looks caught and guilty. Then the look goes away, and he looks the way he did before, sharp and hungry and dangerous. He puts his hands on either side of Justin's face and kisses him deeply, possessively, until Justin thinks he's going to just slide all the way down the wall and land in pieces on the floor. When Trace pulls back, he says, "You were mine before you were anyone's. I've been your lover for seven years, so do I ever get to quit being your dirty little secret? I had you first, you were mine fucking first." "No," Justin says. He thought Trace understood this. "You're not my -- I'm not ashamed, I just want it -- I want us to be alone, where we're safe. You know I want you, so bad, it's just better when we're alone, that's all." "I'm so tired of...." Trace closes his eyes and composes himself. He moves away, and Justin is unprepared, almost does drop straight down to the floor. Planes are just shells, like buses, and if this floor gave way underneath him, God. God, it's a long fucking way down. "I'm just tired," Trace says, turning away. "It's been the same thing for a lot of years now, you know? I don't know how you do it, but it makes me tired." Justin doesn't know how he does it, either. He just knows he can't possibly stop. Trace would say that people only do what they want to do, that Justin keeps going because he still wants it more than anything, and he would probably be right. It makes him sad to think that of all the people in the world, Trace is the one that it's easiest to say no to. Maybe that's because Justin trusts him so much, but it still feels like a thing to be sad about. Justin reaches out and strokes his shoulder, lingering on the touch. "We'll get checked into the next hotel and pick this up again, okay?" he says. "Don't do me any favors," Trace says. They take separate cars to the hotel. Nobody seems to notice that Justin and Trace are fighting again, any more than they noticed Justin getting a goddamn hand-job in first class. It's times like this that Justin remembers how disposable he is, the real him. Someday he'll be past his prime, and someone else will take his place, and the Greatest Show On Earth will go right on without him. It won't even slow down. He calls his mom from the car and says, "I don't know what's going on with me and Trace. It's just so hard lately. It's like nothing we do works right, and -- is this just what normal people do, is it, what do you call it, the seven-year itch? Is this what always happens?" "You want me to tell you that nothing is happening to you that every other relationship in the world doesn't have to deal with? Honey...." "I know, I know," he says. "He's just. He's not happy, which scares me to death. What am I going to do if he-- Momma, I can't do this without him." "Sometimes," she says carefully, "it's worth it to try and find new ways of being with somebody." "I don't even know what that means," he says, irritated. She sounds like Diane Bass, for Christ's sake. "It means, there's such a thing as hanging on too tight." "If you love something, let it go, if it comes back to you, blah blah blah?" "Blah blah blah, yourself, smart-ass. Do you want me to come out there?" He thinks about that for a minute, and then sighs. "No. No, I want to handle it on my own, if I can. I think I should try, at least." * When they met, Carlos really was a starfucker. Not for the money or the parties or anything like that, but for the thrill of it, because he used to be a fat kid, because he was Latino when he was with white boys and Chilean when he was with Mexican boys and never quite fit in anywhere, because he's basically a good guy who doesn't smoke and doesn't do drugs and sex was the only rebellion left. He used to have a roommate who was a model, and Carlos got into the scene through him -- exclusive private parties, backstage at clubs, phone numbers passed from hand to hand for quiet, reliable hook-ups. JC is not the biggest name in Carlos's little black book. But they weren't like that. They met at a party, and the party was. Was like that. But JC only went because Lance was going, and because back then, when fame and freedom were still new and none of them really knew if they could handle it or not, it was just understood that nobody went anywhere alone; this was one place where Joey really couldn't be there to take care of Lance, so it fell to JC instead. He met Carlos, and they talked, and knowing that Lance was getting his dick sucked by two guys in the next room made JC incredibly uncomfortable, but Carlos seemed weirdly normal, dropped down in the middle of this penthouse world of E and champagne and beauty and lust, and JC wanted to save him. His therapist thinks it was really Lance he wanted to save, but it doesn't matter now, because Lance is mostly all right, still a lot Lance underneath all the rest of it, and whatever reasons JC might have had for leaving the party with Carlos, he did, and they talked all night in an IHOP and now they're in love. Carlos was a starfucker, but not like the others thought he would be, when they screeched and scolded and called JC an idiot. He's never asked JC for anything. He always worked a full-time job. JC isn't as naive as his friends think he is, and he never so much as kissed Carlos while Carlos was thinking of him as a pop star. JC is stubborn, and he's jealous, and he was never going to be just one more anything, not for one minute. Not to someone like Carlos, who was funny and level-headed and curious and kind and exactly the kind of guy that his mother said had potential, when Heather brought them home. Carlos had potential, and JC had patience, and when they kissed for the first time in the back of a limo, Carlos's hands resting light and nervous on JC's face, JC knew they were doing something real, something he wouldn't be ashamed for his mom to know he'd done. It was in New York and it was raining, but they were sheltered from everything, and Carlos had still never been skydiving, which was the thing JC knew he wanted to do even though he was terrified of it, but JC was doing his. The thing he wanted, the thing that scared him. He was crossing over, flying. That wasn't the end of the song, of course. It wasn't that simple. They had their ups and downs, the days they suspected they might be in love and the days they were sure this would never work out, times when they thought about each other constantly and times where they had other things to think about and they let each other get away. They split up and started over, and that time they fell in love for sure and stayed that way. * They have connecting hotel rooms, always have, since Justin had the power to make things happen over the tight-lipped disapproval of his investors. He gives a little and gets a little; he's never made one tiny noise against getting Trace his own room, as long as there's a door, and that's the way Justin's little universe goes round, one skirmish at a time. When he thinks about it, it makes him tired, too, so he doesn't think about it that much. Justin knocks; he doesn't try the doorknob, because he doesn't want to know whether or not Trace has locked him out. After a second, when Justin is debating whether it's time to knock again, Trace opens the door. He's ready for bed, dressed in boxers and t-shirt, and all the lights are off in his room except for the glow of the television. Everything about him is familiar, the slight crookedness of his thick fingers, the dark hair on his legs, the smell of him, the still, patient look in his eyes when he's waiting for Justin to talk first. Everything Justin feels, everything Justin is, seems to rise up and harden into a lump in his throat, and he wants to fall into Trace and hear him say how come it's still love. Instead he swallows and says, "Do you want to go home? Is that what you want?" "With you or without you?" Trace says, guardedly, like he thinks Justin is trying to trick him. "I can't," Justin says. "You know I can't right now. But I -- you're -- tired. And I never asked if you wanted to go through all of this with me, and you don't have to. I want you to know you don't have to. It'll be different, you know, if you do, more long-distance and everything." He laughs a little and says, "More like the old days. But I love you, and after everything you've done for me, I want to take care of you, too, sometimes. So if you need a break.... Just say. I won't hold it against you." Trace stands there for a long time, just looking at him while Justin sways restlessly from side to side. "Nah," he finally says. "I'm good here." That settles it, and Justin nods sharply. "So," he says awkwardly, "what are you watching?" Trace smiles, just barely, and Justin's knees almost buckle with relief. He knows that smile. It's Trace's watching-Justin-squirm smile. "Samurai Jack," he says. "What?" "It's a cartoon. It's pretty cool. I don't know if you'd like it, though." "I could watch it with you," Justin offers, smiling back. "If it's okay for me to come in." Trace stands back, holding the door wide for him, and he locks it behind Justin once he's inside. They're in for the night. "What are we watching, again?" Justin asks as he peels off his shirt and kicks off his shoes. At the moment, Trace is watching him. "It's nothing, really," he says. "It's almost over." Justin hesitates, not sure whether he wants to push off just his jeans, or his underwear with them. He glances at Trace, still partially dressed, and decides to leave them on. Trace lifts up the covers for him and lets him into bed. It's so comfortable that he's half asleep the second he comes up against Trace's side, Trace's arm draping around him. He never does quite pick up the thread of the plotline, but it's over soon, and Trace starts flipping through channels. Justin closes his eyes, because he knows this is going to take a while; Trace doesn't commit to a tv show easily. When he opens his eyes, he knows that he's been sleeping, but he doesn't know how long. Trace is still right beside him, his arm over Justin's shoulder and pressing against his back, the remote control balanced on his thigh. Justin stirs, rubbing his cheek against Trace's t-shirt. He's watching Matthew Broderick talk straight at him, the end of Ferris Bueller. "You should've woke me up," Justin murmurs, his dry lips sticking against the dry cotton. "I love this movie." "I know," Trace says, "but you looked pretty comfortable. You need the rest." After a minute, he adds, "I like watching you sleep," in a slightly different voice, huskier. Sexier. "What time is it?" Justin asks. "I'm fucking starving." "Almost four," Trace says. "Here. I'm still on London time." "You think they'll send up room service this early?" Trace raises his eyebrows. "To you? Um, yeah, I think so.." Justin pushes up on his elbow. "Come on, give me the phone." Trace passes the receiver across the bed and dials room service for him. When somebody answers after a lot of rings, Justin says, "Hi, I'm sorry to bug you guys so early, but can we get some breakfast? Is the kitchen open yet?" "The kitchen opens at five," the man on the other end of the phone says. "I can take your order and bring it at five, but-- " "It's just, we just flew in from London, so we're all screwed up, and I know it's crazy, but we're hungry now." "The ovens aren't even-- " he begins dubiously. "Oh, that's fine!" Justin says. "I really just want a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios, a large glass of apple juice, and a muffin, banana-nut if you have it, but whatever's fine. And, uh, my friend wants two pieces of cinnamon toast, hot chocolate with extra whipped cream, and a fruit plate, something with grapes. You don't know how much we'd appreciate it." He seems to be floundering around for a reason to say no, but in the end he comes up blank and says he'll see what he can do. "Room 1180," Justin says, and they can both hear the utterly still second when it registers, and after that it's not see what he can do anymore, but we'll have it up right away, sir. "Thank you so much," Justin says. He flicks a look at Trace, and then sings, "Danke schoen, darling, danke schoen-- " Trace laughs once, open mouth and nothing held back, and then joins in even louder than Justin. "Thanks for the joy and pain, darling, danke schoen...." Justin is surprised by how many of the words they both know, but then, they did watch Ferris Bueller an awful lot of times when they were kids. Justin hangs up at the end of the song, before the guy from the kitchen has to decide what the hell to say to them about that. It's stupid, completely stupid, but for some reason Justin still finds it the funniest thing in ages, and he presses his face to Trace's chest, unable to stop laughing. Trace is laughing, too, lacing his fingers behind Justin's head, the rise and fall of his chest jostling Justin so that he has to put his hands on Trace's arms to keep his balance. They wolf the toast and the cereal when it comes, and Trace spoons the whipped cream off his hot chocolate and feeds it to Justin. Justin presses up on his elbows over Trace with the bunch of grapes in one hand and carefully plucks a shiny one off the stem. "You gonna peel me a grape?" Trace asks. "Nope," Justin says. "You'll have to eat the skin and everything." He slips it into Trace's mouth, and he doesn't nip at Justin's fingers or suck on them, but Justin can still feel the softness of his lips, all the more sensual for being such a light brush against his skin. They don't look away from each other's eyes until the grapes are gone and Justin has to turn away to set the bare stem with the dishes. When he turns back, Trace reaches up to him immediately, both hands stroking softly against Justin's face. Justin wraps his fingers around Trace's wrist and holds his hand where it is, cupped against Justin's cheek. He leans into it and closes his eyes, feeling Trace's pulse trip and spark under his skin. They stay like that for a minute, and then Trace scritches gently against Justin's face with his short fingernails. "Whatcha thinking about?" he murmurs. Justin opens his eyes and smiles, slow. He feels shy, somehow. It's been for fucking ever. "There's no one awake yet," he says. * Everybody underestimates Freddy, even Lance. He doesn't know why it's so easy to do. Yes, Freddy is a little scatterbrained, maybe a little too enthused by things like the cotton candy making machine he got Lance to buy or the comedy stylings of Rob Schneider, but when it matters, there's enough of Freddy to fall back on. When the Columbia came down, Lance got it into his head somehow that if he could figure out what happened then that would be a resolution of some kind, as if it would be a problem solved at that point, and not something that was just cruel and meaningless. He might still be sitting in his office, TiVo and internet and cell phone turning out endless streams of information that were nothing really except spikes of names and numbers and more questions being driven through his brain, if it weren't for Freddy. At first it was annoying, the way he hovered, the way he seemed to be trying to keep Lance from getting anywhere with his interruptions and his random memories of people they knew from Houston, what did Lance think they were doing now? "I don't know, leave me alone," Lance finally snapped. "I'm fucking busy." "No, you're not," Freddy said, quietly surprised that Lance didn't know that himself, and then even quieter, "You're fucking sad." He surprises Lance, when not very much can do that anymore. He sees what other people have gotten used to acting like they don't see; he doesn't have much respect for Lance's need to prove that he can do things on his own. It's not always comfortable, but that morning he made Lance cry, and the next morning he was awake before Lance was, already in a suit and ready to go to church without asking or making Lance ask. Freddy used to be Catholic and now he's contentedly unconcerned by the whole God thing, but there's nowhere that he seems to mind going if the alternative is that Lance will have to go alone. He sat by Lance and sang "Be Thou My Vision," his baritone voice unconsciously straining lower to blend with Lance's, and they drove through KFC on the way home and then left the chicken out for the dogs to tip over and get sick on while Lance and Freddy made half-tentative love for hours in the pool of afternoon sunlight that flooded their bed. There's so much more to Freddy than even Lance remembers -- not because of anything he says or even really does, but because of the way that Lance imagines being without him now and it's suddenly all visions of hollow places, so much solitude. He must be something pretty major, to fill up that much potentially empty space. * Justin has absolutely no memory of the first time he met Trace. He was days old, he figures -- maybe weeks, maybe. Their parents don't remember specifically, and so they'll never know if it was morning or afternoon, whose house it happened at, if they were awake when it happened, or if one or both of them went to sleep alone and woke up half of something more. In Justin's first memory of Trace they're already familiar with each other, four years old and eating lunch together in the dining room of the house Justin lived in before Paul came along. It was spaghetti, and Justin tried to stand his fork up and turn it around and around like his mother did when she ate spaghetti, but he couldn't make it work, so he tried cutting it with his knife and fork instead, which was hard work, but Justin has always had endless patience when he sets his mind to a job. He remembers focusing, trying so hard to eat the spaghetti without making a mess, and he remembers looking up and seeing Trace, red sauce all over his face, all over the table around him, watching him and laughing gleefully. In that memory, Trace is already someone he knows, someone he's known forever, as concrete in Justin's mind as a member of the family -- more concrete than his father, who was already gone by then. He remembers the warm noon sunshine, and Trace laughing, and he remembers that everything felt rock-solid and certain sure, Justin's small world and his place in it. He already knew that things could change in a heartbeat for no apparent reason, but that isn't the feeling that this particular memory brings up in him. He remembers being with Trace and knowing, in some child-like, inexplicable way, that this would never change. Later on, Justin would start thinking about things like destiny, and when he says that he was put on earth to be an entertainer, what he always holds back is that he was put in Millington to meet Trace Ayala, and that he knew that secret first, learned it when he was four years old. * It wasn't anything that Justin did on purpose. But it stands out in JC's mind, one of those bitter- hot memories that separate everything into ages of before and after. It is to JC's inward-turned fear and guilt and nameless sadness and neurotic need to hide from the world what rock-bottom is to alcoholism. It's the moment he knew that he was hurting, and why. It wasn't anything that Justin did on purpose. But it's so tied up with Justin that, at the end of the day, it doesn't make any difference. What JC remembers is that Justin is the overture, he's how the song begins. JC remembers the whole scope of the event, not just what he saw but how it all played out. Justin's hopping, dancing, dazzled excitement leading up to the visit, when for three days every sentence started with my best friend Trace, and then the way Chris mocked it when JC drove everyone else to the grocery store to stock up for company. "Do you think best-friend- Trace likes chunky or smooth?" he would ask, holding up jars of peanut butter, and, analyzing the merits of an extra twelve of Icehouse, "Nah, don't want anyone to think we're out to corrupt best-friend-Trace." It was jealousy, a little of it, JC suspected, because he'd felt that way himself early on. Justin had this way of making you feel like you were the most important person in his world, right up until you met the real thing and saw how different it was. So JC murmured, "He's nice. Trace is. You'll like him," and Chris rolled his eyes but nodded. And then he remembers coming back to the house, Lynn's car gone from the driveway and assuming they weren't back from the airport yet, that the house would be empty. But it wasn't, and JC remembers the heat flooding the air even with two fans and an air conditioner on, the roar of cooling systems threaded with deep breaths and the creak of the couch's springs and Justin's silver sweet little whimper. JC still remembers that even after all the times he'd seen Justin shirtless, it looked more obscene to see the half-bared expanse of his back where Trace's hand had his shirt fisted and rucked up high, the other hand palming the base of Justin's spine. "Holy shit," Chris said happily. "See, now I like him." Justin pulled away, blushing but smiling and absently wiping his shiny mouth on the back of his hand. There was no sign of embarrassment anywhere on him as he said, "Oh, you're back! Trace, this is everybody." "Somebody has to talk to him," JC remembers telling the others while they put away groceries in the kitchen. Somebody had to, somebody had to fix what JC could feel breaking. He sat down in a chair with his hand pressed unconsciously to his chest. He just knew this was wrong, broken, disastrous, terrifying -- his Justin, his odd and brilliant, old-souled best friend -- It wasn't supposed to be that way for him. JC's heart was pounding, and his skin sizzled with something he wanted to claw off of him, or rub further in. "Quit giving me the hairy eyeball," Chris said. "I told you guys before, I'm not your den mother. I just work here." "Talk to him like how?" Joey asked. "You mean about sex?" "Oh, my God," JC said. "I told him I'd stay over at your house tonight. I thought they'd want to spend time alone together, but I didn't-- " Chris was laughing at him, and of course what Chris did, Lance had to do too, although with Lance it was more smirking. "Shut up," he told them both. "This is serious. They're too young to be...alone together." "I think you mean...alone together," Chris corrected. "Shut up! I'm serious." "You really didn't know about this?" Lance said curiously. "I mean, you lived with Justin. You're the one who knows them both. This is a total surprise to you?" "Yes, it's a total surprise. You don't think I would have told you if Justin was -- was, if, like that, you know." Lance raised his eyebrows. "Not." "That there's anything wrong with that?" Chris filled in. JC was ready to throw a pepper grinder at him. He even picked it up and turned it over and over in his hand. "I was going to say, not because it's a bad thing, but just because we shouldn't have secrets from each other. Big secrets. Joey," he said, desperate to turn this on someone else. "Can't you-- ?" "Well, I could give him some condoms," Joey said sensibly, munching on a stick of beef jerky. "But if you want me to talk to him about gay sex, I don't think I'm real qualified." "No, I don't. I want you to talk to him about waiting until he's old enough to, you know, understand and appreciate and make mature decisions." Joey grinned. "I don't think I'm real qualified for that, either." "Don't look at me," Lance said, when JC did. "If you guys tell him not to have sex, you're concerned older brothers. I'm sixteen years old; it just makes me a narc. Anyway, heck. Maybe he should be giving me advice; he's the one getting some action." "Looks like it's you, Jayce," Chris said. He was enjoying it all way too much. Justin stuck his head around the door and said, "How long is it going to take y'all to quit talking about us and come back in here? I kinda wanted him to actually meet you." "JC thinks you're too young to have sex," Chris said, then looked at JC and said, "There you go. Don't say I never help out around here." Justin blushed and said, "Yeah, well, duh. I'm not -- we were just kissing." "How long has that been going on?" Lance asked. "Out of curiosity." Justin shrugged, and then grinned. "It hasn't. I mean, just now. It was -- cool to see him again, and. You know. It happened." "You don't think it's a big deal?" JC said. He looked at JC for a minute, not manic like he had been lately. JC's normal, everyday Justin, with his keen eyes and his strategic mind. "I didn't say that. I just don't know what kind of big deal yet. It just now happened, and there's no rush, so don't be such a worrier. I got everything under control." So in spite of his better judgement, JC went ahead and went home with Joey, and he remembered watching movies on Joey's bed for most of the night, and then spending the rest with his arms wrapped around Joey's waist, crying on his shoulder like the sole survivor of an earthquake, like there was nothing left in the world for him. Joey didn't know what to say, so he rubbed JC's arm and let him do it. When JC was cried out, Joey said, "Is it...about Justin? Did you have, is that how you think of Justin? Like, is it a jealousy thing? Because, I mean. That's cool if it is. He's kind of young for you, but he's really mature, and you guys were friends first. If you're worried that any of us would think you were fucked up or something, we wouldn't." "No," JC snuffled. "I don't know what it is. I'm sorry." Joey patted his shoulder and said, "It's okay, man. You just do what you gotta do." But it was a jealousy thing, in a way, because of the way Justin smiled, the way that it seemed to be such a good thing for him, a thing that made him happy. JC didn't like how easy it was for him to imagine closing his eyes and kissing a man whose hands were drawing up his shirt in that slow, gentle way, and even more he didn't like how hard it was to imagine himself being okay with it after. He'd never felt so far away from Justin, from everybody he knew. Justin was the last one to cross over, to walk with that certain swing to his step and that sleek smile in his eyes that came from knowing for sure what he wanted and knowing he could have it. Now there was nobody here on the far side except JC. He couldn't have made the crossing himself if it hadn't been for seeing everything it did for Justin. How Justin let it change him for the better. * Except for the one about how they met, Justin remembers all their other firsts, even the ones that he'd rather forget. The first time they fucked, for example, isn't anything Justin feels the need to hang on to -- or the second or the third time, actually. The first time, Justin mostly remembers that it hurt, that he hid his face in a pillow and cried out, hoping that Trace couldn't tell the difference between a passionate cry and one like this. They did it for what seemed like forever, and Trace was too nervous to come at all, until finally they gave up and jerked each other off like usual. Justin didn't tell him that the whole thing made him feel more sick than sexy, although Trace watched him with worried eyes like he knew. He confessed to Chris and JC one endless night on the bus, his cheeks burning and his eyes on the floor, told them he'd tried it, twice, but the first time it didn't really work, and both times he hadn't liked it. JC leaned back on his hands and looked at the ceiling, his head far away somewhere, murmuring, Well, you shouldn't, if it doesn't feel good, you shouldn't do anything you don't want to do, I'm sure that's what Trace would say, too, and Chris knocked him over on his side and said, Absolutely do not take this man's advice, J, a lot of people feel like that until they get the hang of it, it's kind of an acquired taste. Because that was back when Chris seemed to know a lot more about sex than JC did, before JC got in touch with his inner nymphomaniac, Justin took his advice, and there was a third time that was bad, and then a fourth time, which was not so bad. They were acquiring other tastes right and left, desperate practically 24/7 for the touch and taste of each other, but that one came slow and clumsy, maybe because Justin was never exactly sure how it was supposed to feel. It would have been easier with a photographer there, someone to say come on, baby, make it sexier, don't be shy. Trace never said anything like that. Sometimes he talked a very little bit, said you don't have to if you don't want, just like JC said he would, or he would ask questions, like is this okay? and are you ready? Nothing that would tell Justin what to do. Justin wanted it because it seemed right, seemed like something that people in love should do together; he was the one who kept insisting that they do it until they got it right. After a little while Justin didn't dislike it anymore; he looked forward to it, the overwhelming intimacy of discovering that his body could open up that way for Trace, but it was still a lot of work, and when he tried to get Trace to tell him what was better, on his back or on his front, quiet or noisy, Trace usually just looked away and said, "Maybe this is. Justin, I don't know," with that same worried look in his eyes, until Justin stopped asking. He'd learned by then that sometimes talking too much kind of spoiled the mood for Trace. PopOdyssey was rained out in Miami, a rain so hard that four in the afternoon looked like dusk out the hotel window, and the drops of water sounded violent against glass, competing with their voices until it was pointless to keep talking at all, until they gave up fighting it and just started peeling each other's clothes off instead. Everything seemed to stick to their skin like it was wet, like the walls and ceiling couldn't keep the rain off them. They knelt on the bed, face-to-face, stroking each other with fingers that had suddenly gone timid, lips parted and tongues brushing gingerly at the tips, and instead of You don't have to.... and Yeah, but don't you want...?, Trace said God, you're so beautiful and Justin said Don't stop, please don't stop. Trace rained kisses all over him, and Justin keened softly, two octaves higher than the rumble of thunder outside, and when the guys called hours later with plans for dinner and parties, they were still finding each other, still just feeling their way through. "No, fuck off," Justin said breathlessly. "Thanks. Fuck off." Joey laughed in his ear and said, "Okay. You kids have fun." It rained all night, and that's how Justin remembers the foreplay, too, like a slow warm front, lush and steamy and almost endless. He remembers it so well, all the things they'd done before that suddenly felt like nothing on earth, the way Trace kissed an agonizingly slow trail between his shoulderblades, the way he put his hand against the back of Justin's stripped-bare scalp and pushed his head down to expose the back of his neck for Trace to drag the flat of his tongue over. He remembers watching his own hands do things that nearly shocked him, sliding easily over his own skin, his hipbones and his inner thighs, making Trace's worried look turn to reckless lust, arching off the bed and reaching for Trace's heavy, inert hands, pulling them towards him like he might fall apart if Trace didn't hold him together. By the time Trace was inside him, none of the old rules applied at all anymore, and by the time the storm had passed, they were exhausted and undone, still crackling with static electricity. They were still on top of the covers, naked and shimmering in each other's blurred vision, and even though the room was dark and their eyelids were heavy as stone, they were lost in the sight of each other. "I love you," Justin told him, stroking his arm, and his voice shook when he said it, just like the first time, like it was a jump off the cliff. "Shh," Trace said, and kissed his forehead. "It wasn't ever like that before," Justin said, too tired to do anything other than state the obvious. "It was," Trace said. "In -- in my heart it was." "In mine, too," Justin whispered, and closed his eyes when Trace kissed him goodnight at ten minutes til five in the morning. Their first times haven't always been something to hold onto, but Justin's not short on memories of Trace. He has a lifetime's worth, so why not say to hell with the firsts and remember the best of it all instead? * When they met, Freddy was working for the financial end of some corporation that owned a bunch of media properties, including the radio station where they wound up sharing an elevator. He was wearing a suit and tie and a chunky class ring, and a little rainbow flag pin, because he worked in San Francisco, and sort of in the entertainment industry, but the part of it where nobody cared what you did. Lance remembers being jealous before he took a second and third look and forgot to be jealous instead of interested. When he asked Freddy if he wanted to have dinner while Lance was in town, Freddy blurted out, "You can do stuff like that?" "I've never been struck by lightning yet," Lance said, forcing a smile. They fucked for the first time in an elevator, too, but not the same one. They were on their way up to Lance's hotel room, and Lance hit the stop button and kissed Freddy deep and dirty, taking Freddy by the wrists and slipping his hands between Lance's shirt and his skin. "You're pretty used to getting your way, aren't you?" Freddy said, sounding amused and a little out of breath. Lance leaned back against the wall of the elevator, leather-padded on the bottom half and glassy, reflective black on the top. Freddy didn't hesitate to move with him, his hands already on Lance's belt. "I'm not spoiled," Lance said. "I just know what I like." He likes big, thick men, men like Freddy who give Lance something to wrap his arms around, who feel heavy pinning him to a wall, who sweat and grunt and twist their faces up and aren't always pretty when they come. He likes sex that's a little dirty and has nothing to do with image or appearances. He didn't expect to like it so much afterwards when Freddy kissed his shoulder where Lance's half-unbuttoned shirt had slid aside and drew soft, teasing fingers down Lance's heaving side and said, "Did you not think the evening was memorable enough yet?" "I like to go after-- " " what you want, yeah, I gathered. Those things you know you like, do they ever include breakfast?" And somehow that's when Lance knew, although he's still not sure why. He just knew that breakfast had never sounded like as nice a word before as it did coming from Freddy's warm lips. He felt the desire for French toast and sausage links and something else he'd never tasted before wake up and stretch outward in his chest, felt his heart beating even harder than it had a few minutes before, and he said, "I know I'd like for you to spend the night." And then in case that sounded like his usual brand of dress-for-success bravado, he said it again, honest and awkward this time. "I'd like that a lot." * It's more than two years after Miami and the rainstorm, but still ten to five in the morning, when Justin leans over his lover, his only love, and seals their mouths together in a slow, luxurious make-up kiss, only moving apart long enough for Justin to say, I didn't want you to go and Trace to say, It's so hard sometimes, but you're so worth it. And they have the hang of it now, they fit against each other and move together like the gears of a watch. Justin wants it so bad he could almost cry, wants it now; he can't for the life of him remember why he ever didn't love this. He shifts sideways just a little, runs his hand under the waistband of Trace's boxers and over his hip as he kisses Trace's jaw. "I love you," he murmurs in Trace's ear, and Trace nods. His eyes are already closed, his dick already hard. He'd agree to almost anything right now, let alone something as simple as love. Justin shifts aside again so he's lying on the bed, pressed to Trace's side with one leg over him and his hand doing things that are making Trace's mouth fall open in silent gasps. "What do you want me to do?" Justin asks. Trace's eyes flutter open softly, and he looks at the ceiling, not at Justin. Justin's hand stills, because Trace looks like he's thinking serious thoughts. "Do you think I'm sexy?" Trace finally asks, sliding his fingers over the back of Justin's hand, the fabric of his boxers separating their skin. Justin laughs a little, because it sounds so unlike Trace that he's sure Trace must be making fun of him. Trace turns his head to look into Justin's eyes, and they're dark and beautiful and a little sad. "You don't -- I'm sorry," Justin says. "I'm not laughing at you, I just didn't -- are you asking me seriously?" There's a little pause, and then Trace gives him a quick smile and says, "No, forget it. Forget it, let's keep going with this." "Of course I do. I didn't think you'd be seriously asking me, because of course I do." "You seriously ask me." "That's different." He's not sure how to explain it, but it's different because he doesn't know the answer he wants, but Trace is a normal person who of course wants to hear the normal things. "I've been waiting," Trace says huskily. "I wondered, if I just didn't -- how long it would take you to -- I'm always the one, I always ask you to. I wondered how long, and it was three weeks. It's been three weeks and two days," he says, and his voice is picking up speed, words coming out like he can't stop them, and probably he can't, because Trace doesn't like to complain, "and you didn't until just now, which is because we were fighting, anyway, and you want to be sure you're on my good side, and now you wanna fucking know what to do to make me want you more, and do you ever, or is it ever for any reason except to keep me where you want me? Because you don't have to, Justin. I've always loved you, I fucking loved you when we were kids and if you never, if we never started this at all, I'd still want to spend this time with you, so you don't have to use what a goddamn fucking wet dream you know good and well you are." He takes Justin's face in his hands and kisses the corner of his lips, hard and warm, and his hands are shaking and his face is flushed, and he says, "You don't have to do anything, Justin, you don't fucking have to, okay? It's not because of anything you do, how come I love you is just because I always did." "No," Justin forces out. It's so hard to talk. He's never been the one who had trouble finding words before. "God, no. I do want this." "Then, Jesus, you tell me what you want to do, okay? Okay?" Justin licks his lips. This is so hard. A million things go through his head, things he's seen in movies (the first time he ever remembers getting an erection, he was watching Risky Business with Trace, sitting on the sofa in Trace's basement one summer vacation with their thighs touching and all the lights out because it was a hundred degrees outside) and things people tell him (there were a thousand nights to kill on the bus, and Chris's idea of fun was to out of the blue make some big announcement like doing it doggie-style was demeaning or the G-spot was a myth or spanking someone was more intimate than kissing them, just to wind JC up into an argument while Justin curled against the arm of the couch and listened avidly, wondering if you could burst a blood vessel from blushing too hard) and things that happen in videos (he can't watch the video for "Your Body Is A Wonderland" because John has those same eyes that Trace does, the kind that simmer, dark and melting, the kind that make Justin's sweet-tooth twinge and his mouth start to water, and he feels so raw and needy every time John looks into the camera that he has to turn his head away and hide). There's so much happening inside him that he can't sort out, and all of it mixed up and confused with the business side of things, the job of making people want what you've got. He's so fucked up, and he knows it. Everybody knows it. He may know good and well that he's a wet dream, but he's never understood it, he's never understood why people can look at him and tell that. It's like there's something written on his body that everyone but him is able to read. "I want.... I want to be with you," he says. Trace rolls his eyes. "You are with me. Where the fuck else have you ever been? I'm asking you, does anything we do together turn you on?" "Yes!" Justin says, frustrated with himself for not knowing how to say this in a way Trace can believe. Finally, it just seems easiest to tell the truth, with as little embellishment as possible, not sweet like a lyric but just lying heavy where it falls. "If it weren't for you," he says, "I wouldn't even know what sexy means. You make me forget that I don't know how." Trace's hand cups his cheek, tugging him closer, their lips almost touching. "Let me do this for you," he says. "Let me make you feel good. There's not all that much more to know." "Do you remember Miami?" Justin whispers into the heel of Trace's hand. "Yeah," Trace says. "God, yeah. That was so hot." "Yeah," Justin says, a little amazed at himself. He's so sure of it. Nobody could talk him out of this, because he knows it, certain sure, he knows. "It was. It was really hot. Can we do it like that again?" Trace rolls on top of him, his hips thrusting down against Justin's, and Justin's knees go right up before he has time to think about it and his ass comes off the bed, arching into the weight of Trace's body, the heat of his hard-on. "We can sure as hell try," Trace growls. * Freddy spoons around him in bed, his mouth hot and damp on the back of Lance's neck. "I really do love you," he says, so sadly that Lance actually flinches. "God," he says, and keeping the quiver out of his voice makes him snap, for some reason. "I do know that. Whatever you think you have to prove-- " "Okay," Freddy says tiredly, and shifts against him. "I didn't mean that, but okay, whatever." Lance puts Freddy's hand on top of his stomach and pats it gently. "I love you, too." "Oh, okay," Freddy laughs, squeezing him close. "I like that. This is going very well." Lance finds himself laughing, too. He stretches his arm back, threading Freddy's soft, dark hair between his fingertips. "This is going well. We're such relationship experts. We should really write a book." "I asked you before, and we never really talked about it. What you think you might see for the future." Lance pulls his hand back into his own space. He lays it on the mattress and stares at it, at the way his fingers bend and form an arch even when his hand is lax. He stares at it like it's interesting. "I don't see.... I don't think about it. I don't really want to think about it tonight, okay, Freddy?" Freddy is quiet for a minute. He almost always gives Lance what Lance says he wants, but he seems restless tonight. "Okay, I'm not trying to.... It's just that I'd like to know that I'm doing this for some reason. Do you see what I mean?" "Look. I love you." Lance can't understand why that comes out mean, why it sounds like he's pissed off at Freddy for making him say it. He's said it before. He likes saying it, usually. "I mean, what do you want me to say? Either that's reason enough to do it, or it's not." "It is," Freddy says carefully. "It is, if.... I'm not asking for some big, elaborate promise. I just want you to say that there is a future. I don't think I'm being unreasonable, not if you're asking me to keep tying my whole fucking life into knots for you." "God!" Lance says, and this time he knows why he sounds angry. "Can I just please be allowed to have one goddamn thing in my life without a five-year plan attached? Can't we just do this because it feels good and not make it fit into some kind of little pre-determined box? Because I promise you, plenty of other people have that job, the job where they try to fit my every fucking action into some little box." It seems like, looking at it from the outside, that other people can close their eyes and rest when they're in love. His mother and father. Joey and Kelly. Justin and Trace. It seems like they feel whole when they're together, not tied in knots. Lance reminds himself: there's no way to do this right. It's just going to be fucked up, a little bit, but that's all right. He doesn't have to make anything happen. They love each other, and they're here together right now, and they have this, this is what they have. And it feels nice, Freddy's warm arms around him, Freddy's heart beating against his back. It feels okay. Not a miracle, but nice anyway. "Okay," Freddy says softly, and kisses Lance's hair. "I'm sorry. I'm not trying to change you, I'm really not. I never wanted to be -- just some guy trying to change you. Another one." They love each other, and it's kind of bedraggled, okay, kind of hard to keep it all in one piece when Lance himself is splintered into a hundred projects and a hundred origin myths and Polaroid lies and private surrenders. Lance is holding everything together with scotch tape and safety pins and that might never change, but even if it doesn't, Lance is somebody right now. He's somebody Freddy loves. So that's good. That feels good. * It isn't like Miami again, not exactly, and Justin understands that's because nothing ever can be. It's different, unique. Trace has kissed each of his ribs, one after the other, before and Justin has licked from Trace's shoulder all the way up his neck in one long stripe before and Trace has put his hand under Justin's thigh and pushed his leg up against his body and kissed the bend of his knee before, but this is its own time, its own moment, and Justin thinks it's sexy. This is what turns him on, he thinks, not some airbrushed image that you can cajole somebody into lying back and giving to you, but these moments you can get lost in. Trace's mouth still warm and chocolatey, the sore spot on Justin's forearm where he got hit with a falling mic stand in a radio station three days ago, the way Trace laughs when they're rolling around and one of them steps on the tv remote, snapping on an episode of Rugrats loud enough to wake the whole floor. Justin feels present, completely here in Trace's arms with no place else to go and nothing else to remember. Everything will keep until he's done here. "You look happy," Trace says when he's all the way inside Justin, brushing Justin's forehead with his hand and kissing his jaw softly. He sounds amazed. "You look so happy." Justin smiles and says, "You look like you're in love." "God," Trace says, shuddering and burying his face in Justin's neck. Mine, he murmurs later on, oh, mine...., and Justin nods and doesn't have the breath left to say a single thing, but on the other hand there's not one single thing to say that means more than that. He doesn't even get out of bed before he calls his agent and his publicist and Johnny and Monica Downing and tells every single one of them that he doesn't want to keep seeing Cameron. "I just don't need to," he says when they ask what brought this on. "It's just not a big deal, and it's pointless to keep doing it, so I'm just not gonna." Trace listens to the whole thing with his lips pressed lightly to Justin's back, his arms wrapped around Justin's stomach and holding on. He doesn't say anything, but Justin can feel him smile. Everybody's reluctant, a little bit, because it means another public breakup, and of course everybody is still a little singed from the last one, but Justin is the boss. Except he's not Monica's boss, and she says, "I don't think you're thinking straight, Justin." He snorts a little at the pun, which must not be intentional, because her tone isn't exactly jocular. "Look, I've made up my mind," he says. "It's not necessary, it's just a bunch of stress for no reason, and I've got better things to do with my limited free time." "This isn't the way to go about things," she says. "If what we've worked out isn't working for you anymore, then let's do something different. But you need to take me seriously when I give you advice." "Monica," he says, "you take yourself seriously enough for the both of us." "Let's schedule some time to get together and talk." "I don't really see any point." "The point," she says, clipped and brutal, "is that you think you want to play this game, and you have no idea how much of a mistake it would be. Justin, people are paid to manage your career, serious professionals. Why don't you do what you're paid to do, and let us do our jobs? That way, everybody wins. That's the only way that everybody wins." Justin hangs up on her. It's not like he can't break up with his own fake girlfriend without her help. "What the hell is all this about?" Trace says, and Justin can tell by his voice that he's happy. It's been a while since they were both really happy, and Justin snuggles down, letting Trace's weight press him comfortably and securely into the mattress. "Just about...what you said that one time. That people do what they want to do, and this is what I want to do." He's grinning like a lunatic, which Trace can't see, but Justin thinks it's coming out in his voice. "We need to do a lot more of this." "Fine by me," Trace says. "Only...can I keep things going for a while with Elisha? Because I think it's working out good for her, and I don't want to just leave her hanging." "Sure," Justin says. He feels magnanimous. He actually can't even remember why that whole thing ever bothered him. Everything is good, everything is beautiful. He knows he might be a little brain-fried by the great sex, but what the hell. He'll have this feeling long after Elisha Cuthbert and Monica Downing and the fans and the deals and the celebrity -- long after all of it has gone away. This is the thing he needs to be listening to, because this is the thing that will stay behind when all the other things that mean something to Justin have run their course and disappeared into nothing but good memories. He's sure of that. * Justin comes to visit, alone. Justin is rarely alone, and he looks wrong, standing in JC's foyer with one foot set carefully in the center of a red tile and the other set carefully in the center of a white one. He's small under this high ceiling, thin and still and ordinary in his American Eagle t- shirt and his Levis; other people get lost in crowds, but Justin looks stronger when he has his posse around him. JC hugs him, careful not to press too hard, careful not to break. "I didn't know you were coming," JC says. "I'm right in the middle of something." "Well, can I just hang out?" Justin says. "I have some time." "Is everything okay?" "Yeah," Justin says quickly. "Just, you know. Passing through." He stays all day, alone. He sits in on some of JC's work in the studio, nodding his head to the beat and going over JC's pad of lyrics, scoring dark marks above the stressed words and linking glissades with arcs. Justin does that, sketches out the rhythm of his words when he writes, and JC finds it strange and beautiful, how someone with no eye for art still has to draw what he sings. It's all the same, JC knows, the form of lines and how they work on the eyes, the form of sounds and how they work on the ears. It's all a song. JC finishes up alone. Behind the house, Justin has lit the grill; he's taken charge of the meat, of steak and brats, and Carlos is building skewers of vegetables and shrimp and pineapple to go on the top rack. JC sidles up between them and puts one arm around each; he kisses Carlos's temple and Justin's shoulder, and he says, "Everything looks so good." Everything is good, and JC eats too much and then he falls asleep, lulled by the twilight sounds of insects buzzing around the lights and the clink of dishes as Justin and Carlos clear the picnic table. He wakes up in nearly full darkness with a crick in his shoulder, and he sees Justin and Carlos on the other side of the yard, standing close to each other and talking. They step automatically apart when they see JC coming toward them, Baron following sleepily at his heels. "What are we talking about?" JC asks. Carlos slips an arm around his waist and says, "Nothing. The album." "That only looks like nothing," JC says, with a little grin. "I don't care what he's been telling you, J -- there really is an album." Justin doesn't look at him, just keeps scratching behind Baron's ears. "Don't," JC says. "Don't be -- both of you. Stop worrying about me. Maybe it's better to have to wait for it, you know? Maybe I'll appreciate it that much more." "I have to go," Justin says. "I'm sorry. It's really time." JC hugs him hard. He doesn't know what he was thinking earlier; Justin never breaks. "I love you," JC says. "So much, man. You be careful out there. You have fun." His voice cracks a little by the end. If there's a word for what it's like out there, for the thing that people like him and Justin experience when they're doing what they were meant to do, JC doesn't think that word is fun. But whatever it is, he wants Justin to be having that. He isn't jealous. He is, but. "I'm sorry," Justin whispers harshly. "Jayce. Jayce, I'm so fucking sorry." "It's not your fault. I know you'd. If you could. You just can't, that's all. It's not your fault. I'm learning to trust the process." That's something that Moby said to him once. Trust the process. Justin pulls away. "You're too fucking trusting," he says, and JC leans back from the whip-sting of it. Justin rubs hard at his eyes and says, "Goddamn, Jayce. You can't just go around trusting everyone." He looks at Carlos, wondering if Carlos knows what's going on with Justin. They were over here talking about something serious, JC could tell. Carlos looks remote, like he doesn't want to get involved, at least not here and now. "I don't trust everyone," JC says. "Justin, are you okay? You want me to call Trace to pick you up?" "No," Justin says. "I'm going. Take care of yourself, okay?" JC puts a hand on the back of Carlos's neck. "You know we will," he says. * Justin will always remember Elisha, but not for the reasons he expects to. In days and months and years to come he'll see her in magazines and on talk shows and he won't think, some girl named Allison broke her heart, or snails, man, made of snails. All he'll think is, she was wearing pink that night, pink and cream and a pink barrette in her hair, and she came up to him-- She comes up to him in the VIP lounge of an LA sushi bar, pink and pretty and so serious, and she puts both of her hands around his and says, "Justin, let's go. We need to go." She looks so damn serious, and Justin pulls her around in front of him, wraps his arms around her and puts his chin on top of her head and says, "You need to be cool, girl, come on, we just got here." He's a little drunk. Not very. Not as drunk as he plans on being by the end of the night. "Justin," she says, and digs her fingers into his wrists. "I mean it. Come with me." "Where's your boyfriend?" Justin asks, and then laughs. She doesn't say anything, and he stops laughing. "Where is Trace?" he says again, and she shakes her head once and takes him by the hand to lead him away. "Where's Trace?" he asks again while the valet brings his car around, and Elisha pulls her shawl - - it has a long white fringe, and red roses on it -- around herself, staring hard into the late evening darkness, and he says, "Fucking answer me, Jesus! What's going on?" He opens the car door for her even while he's cussing her out, which would make his mom happy if she were here. Later on, Justin will wonder if everything might have gone down differently, if his mom had been there. Elisha keeps her eyes on him as she gets into the car. "He's been arrested," she says calmly. "We need to go get him." That's what Justin will always remember. The way she sat quietly beside him on the drive to the police station, her knees together and her ankles crossed like a lady in church, her hands flat on her thighs. * Justin doesn't know what normal people do when this happens. He has bodyguards who meet him at the precinct. They open up a back door for him, because there's already press at the front. He goes through concrete corridors, past a lot of doors, and they take him through one and into a room like you see on tv, a room where they ask questions. "Am I in trouble?" he says. "Where's Trace?" There's a detective and a uniformed officer, but nobody will talk directly to him. The detective talks to Lonnie for a second, while Justin waits at the table, and then he leaves, and Justin says, "This is crazy, man! Somebody has to tell me what's going on." "It's a drug charge," Lonnie says. "It don't make any sense." "No," Justin says. "It's obviously a mistake. I mean, if he was holding, it probably wasn't even his, because Trace doesn't smoke but maybe, what, three or four times a year? I don't know, maybe more than that, but he didn't say anything about-- " Justin breaks off, feeling like a fucking idiot, because of course they're watching him from somewhere, and he just said. Fuck. "Not like that," Lonnie says. "It was coke, and a lot of it. They're gonna charge him with trafficking." "That's not -- that can't be," Justin says. He's gone cold all over. It doesn't make any sense. He's too confused to be scared, because it just doesn't make sense, but he's still cold. "I mean, that's just not possible." "I don't understand it, either," Lonnie says. "He needs a lawyer," Elisha says. "You should get him a lawyer, and that needs to be your first call. Who do you trust who might know a good criminal attorney?" "Lance?" Justin ventures. Lance knows an awful lot of people. "Call him," she says. Elisha looks like all of this makes a little too much sense to her. * Carlos isn't there when he wakes up, but it takes JC hours to be sure he isn't there, and it takes him two more days and three conversations with the police to decide he isn't coming back. Everything else is right where it always is, even Carlos's toothbrush. There's nothing missing, not one lamp, not one belt, not one bar of soap or can of peaches, nothing except Carlos. It's not how people go away, JC keeps thinking. He keeps thinking, this isn't how it happens, it happens with fighting and tears and hotel rooms and boxes full of sentimental things sent by courier to the house of a mostly impartial third party, and JC is sure he used to know how things fall, he's sure he used to know the answer to gravity, but this is a whole new mystery to him. He doesn't know who to call, so he doesn't call anyone, or return any calls, either. Carlos was the one who took care of that, first thing in the morning. JC keeps on finding shoes in the wrong room, and he looks around like they mean that Carlos is barefoot and here. He lets the battery in his cellphone go dead. He goes to bed one afternoon, two days after Carlos disappeared, and he can't get up again. He can barely reach the phone, but he does, and he's hungry and confused, and he calls home and can't say a word when his father answers. He just cries. They must send the cavalry, his mother and father. Everybody who's anybody shows up, Tyler and Chris and Tony and Emmanuelle and a million more people, and JC lets them take care of him, but a lot of the time he's not really listening to whatever they say to make him feel better. He feels like he doesn't have his skeleton anymore, like even though he can get from one end of the house to the other, that somehow he still can't stand up on his own power. That lasts until he wakes up in his favorite chair one day -- or night, he thinks it's dark outside -- and sees Justin standing there, his hand locked firmly with Trace's. Justin looks thin and bare, even though he's wearing layers of clothes. "I'm sorry, Jayce," he says. "I really am." JC stands up. He feels taller than usual. He feels better at this than he usually does when he's trying something new. "Get out," he says. "It's not really something that Justin did," Tony tells him after JC is in bed, stroking his back to get him to fall asleep. "You need to keep your friends around you right now." "I know," JC murmurs into the pillow. But after years of giving Justin maybe too much credit for what JC has become, it's hard now not to give him maybe too much blame. * Monica shows up in jeans and a cardigan, her hair in a braid and no makeup, like she got called out of bed and rushed right over. Justin's fists clench so hard his knuckles ache. He's not stupid. He knows she didn't get caught by surprise tonight. Not like him. He hands his cell phone over to Elisha and says, "Try to get Lance, okay? Tell him what I need. If you can't get him, call-- " He's not sure who else he trusts with this; Chris or Joey would run off at the mouth, and by morning the whole world will know, and JC can keep a secret, but he can't put this on JC. There's family, his and Trace's, but they can't hear about this from someone else. "Johnny, I guess," he says reluctantly, because he doesn't know whose side Johnny is on anymore. A lot of shit has gone down this past year that Johnny has been noticeably quiet about. "Try to get Lance," he says again. Everybody leaves except Justin and Monica, and she sits down with her briefcase in front of her on the table. Justin looks around him at the two-way mirrors, and she says, "It's okay, Justin. This is just between the two of us." "It's okay?" he repeats. "What about this is okay? I want to see Trace. Now." "Not yet," she says. "He's being processed. Don't worry, we'll take care of his bail." "Don't," Justin says. "Don't take care of anything, you just stay the fuck away from him. I'll handle this." "Sit down," she raps out, and Justin does. "You need to calm down," she says. "I'm going to tell you how you can help, and then that's what you're going to do. Are you listening to me, Justin?" "I want to see him." "I don't give a shit what you want, all right?" She takes off her glasses and rubs her thumb into one temple and the tip of her middle finger into the other one. When she's composed herself, she looks up into his eyes, and she looks strangely sad. "Do you think this makes me happy? What do you think, this is my favorite part of my job?" "No, tell me, what is your favorite part of your job?" "Winning," she says. "Please," Justin says. "I need to talk to him." "I've talked to him, he's fine. This is America, for God's sake; he's not having any fun, but he's not being beaten with rubber hoses. He's fine. He asked me to give you a message. He wanted me to tell you he's not guilty." "I know he's not guilty." It hurts worse than anything to think that Trace doesn't know whether or not Justin believes that. God, of course he's not guilty; Trace is no saint, but he's not a fucking drug dealer, either. "I know this is your fault." They stare at each other for a long time, just waiting for someone to blink. For once it's not Justin, and he slumps back in his chair in relief when she shakes her head and looks down to pop open her briefcase. "Jive has already arranged for a lawyer." "I want my own lawyer," Justin says. "I'm contacting one right now." She sounds almost amused when she says, "Trust me, you want our lawyer." She looks up at him, willing him to understand what she's saying. "Our lawyer can keep him out of jail." Yours can't, is what she's saying. Justin doesn't want to believe her, but -- all this has already happened. They've made this happen, and he's sitting here in an LA police station without any police present, talking to a PR rep about how to keep Trace out of jail for selling cocaine, and nothing she says now can make this any more unreal. "When can I see him?" Justin asks. Monica looks down at her papers. "First things first," she says, and she stumbles a little while she's saying it, like she's ashamed. For one yawning moment, Justin is absolutely positive that he'll never see Trace again. He fumbles desperately to remember what the last thing Trace said to him was, and he thinks it was just something like okay, cool when Justin told him where he was going, just nothing. But he shakes it off, because of course he will. Somebody will bail Trace out, and Justin will take him home, and all of this will be bad, horribly bad, but not -- not bad like that. "You both have a job to do," she tells him. "Trace will plead to a possession charge, and he'll be remanded into a rehab clinic." "He'll never -- he won't," Justin says. "He won't agree to that." "He's not the stupid one, Justin," she snaps, and Justin squirms in his chair. He can't believe that she can make him feel this way. Stupid. Like it's all his fault. It is his fault, but -- not all of it. He knows that, but that's not how it feels. "Your job is to sign this so we can send it to the press." "What is it?" Justin asks. His head hurts, and he doesn't want to read all the tiny, dark print. He wants someone else to be here, he wants someone to help him take care of this. He'd do anything to have Lance here right now, or even Johnny, who Justin still doesn't know if he trusts or not. Even Johnny. At least Johnny always has a plan. "Just a statement. It basically says Trace is a close friend and you're very sorry to see this happen, your prayers are with his family, you hope he gets the help he needs. There's a bit at the end about how nobody should be ashamed to ask for the help they need; I wrote that myself, and I think it's very heart-warming." "It basically says he's guilty and he's not my problem anymore," Justin translates. "Well, that is the whole point of this, isn't it?" Monica says. "He's going to plead guilty, so you're covered there, and my job is to distance you from the scandal." "I won't do it. I won't, he needs me right now, and I won't just -- wash my hands, and-- " Monica slams her briefcase closed and says, "Do you not think that your goddamn principles have caused enough trouble already? Look around you! Do the words in over your head mean anything at all to you?" She takes a deep, shaky breath and tries visibly to be patient as she says, "This is called damage control, Justin. This is my job, and you can make it easier, or you can ruin everything I'm trying to do to help you. Listen to me. Listen, I'm making this very simple. If you sign this, if you cooperate, then we're all very willing to go forward like I just told you. Trace spends six months in a fucking spa of our choice, basically a Ritz-Carleton with group therapy, and it's on the record company's dime. It's a week of headlines on page fifteen of Star magazine, and then it's over. There's a couple of years of meeting with a parole officer, and it's over. That's if you're willing to do your part. If you absolutely have to be a fucking child about it, if you want to play selfish diva and handle all of this yourself, then you're welcome to it, and we'll be the ones to wash our hands of the whole thing. But don't think it won't be news, Justin. Don't think for one second that if you go into a courtroom to stand by your man it won't look like you're involved -- and I don't mean it'll look like you're having a gay affair with a drug dealer, I mean it'll look like he's your drug dealer, and I don't think that's what you want. Do you want to deal with that, Justin? Because you'll have to deal with it for a long time; that kind of thing hangs on and on, and you'll be listening to it all by yourself, because your little Valentine will be doing ten years in a California state prison. Is that sinking in on you at all? Are you internalizing this information? You love him, you want to be there for him, and I'm sure he loves you very much for that, but do you think that's the kind of devotion he's hoping to get from you right now? How about a few years down the road, you think he'll still be thanking you on visitor's day? Do you think they get Star in San Quentin? Do you think he'll be the biggest celebrity on his cell block? Because it is LA, so you never know, but-- " "Stop," Justin says. "Shut up." "You've already put your career and his future at risk by trying to play games you don't know how to play," she says. "Let's be done with this. Let's make all of this go away as soon as possible." Justin puts his elbows down on the metal table and rubs his hands over the back of his head.. "Can I just talk to him first?" he says, and his voice wobbles and drops too low even for himself to hear. "What are you going to say, Justin?" she says. He hates the way she can sound gentle when she wants to, like she's trying to soften the blow for him. "You want him to tell you what to do? Don't you think you already know what he'd want you to do? I already told you, I've talked to him myself, and the truth is he's scared, like anyone would be. If he saw you, he'd just have to act brave for you; you know how important it would be to Trace for you to see him being brave. Don't put any more pressure on him. Just sign the statement, and let me go back and tell him we're going to get him a deal." The last thing he wants it to put any more pressure on Trace. This should be on Justin. This should be Justin's to deal with. He touches the pen on the table and rolls it back and forth under his fingertips. "A clinic," he says. "Someplace nice?" He remembers seeing AJ on television, saying how he misses rehab sometimes, because it had been so peaceful and welcoming, full of people who are supportive, how he wants to go back sometimes for the rest. Justin knows how worn out Trace is, how much he needs rest, but of course he'd never say that. He would see it as letting Justin down. "It's called Creekbridge. It's up in Sonoma -- beautiful country, very private, very professional. Justin, this is me. You know I like Trace; I'm not trying to have him locked away with Nurse Ratchet. He just needs to be in an environment where he can look after his own health." "When can I visit him?" She looks down again, busily thumbing the combination lock on her briefcase. "Well, this is a secure facility, and he's going to be remanded there to serve a court-ordered sentence." "So it's a lot like prison," Justin says blandly. "Which proves how much you know about prison," she snaps. "He'll serve six months in a privately run clinic, or ten years with the California Department of Corrections, and if it's the same to you either way, all right, but-- " "No, I'll sign it, I'll sign it," Justin says, before she can get started on some new story, something that will pop up in Justin's nightmares for a long time. When he passes the paper back to her, he says, "Can I at least pack up some of his things and have it sent there for him? Just some clothes and CDs and stuff, just so he -- I mean. Six months away from home is...." "Okay," she says, and for the first time, Justin really does believe it when she looks into his eyes and shows regret. Maybe he just wants to believe it more than ever before. "Sure, I'll see what I can do." * "Kiss me goodbye," Freddy says when Lance leaves in the morning, and Lance bends down where Freddy is sitting on the bed and kisses him, slow and wicked. His eyes are twinkling when he pulls back, willing Freddy to think about slower and even more wicked things, and Freddy smiles back tenderly. "God," he says. "Did you think you weren't memorable enough yet?" Lance shakes his head and keeps smiling and doesn't know what Freddy is talking about, but he's running late. * When Justin gets home after dropping Elisha off, it's after midnight. The police say that Trace will be arraigned first thing in the morning, and when he enters his plea, they'll remand him into the custody of a psychiatrist at the clinic. At first it seemed like Justin should be there, but Monica said, "The last thing Trace is going to want is for you to see him in handcuffs," and Justin gave in very easily. Justin puts up a good show, but he tends to give in very easily. It's after midnight. Justin's big, heavy, solid house feels like Lenin's Tomb, like something you build to show off, when nobody inside cares about things like home. He feeds the dogs first, because they don't care if life as Justin knows it has just stopped dead in its tracks, they're still hungry. He looks for a decent-sized box, and the only one he can find is an empty case of wine from his last party. That seems like kind of a mean-spirited thing to have shipped to a substance abuse clinic, but what the fuck else is he going to do? He doesn't have boxes; he had cabinets built all over the house to store things in, because it looks nicer. He takes the box up to their room. It's like a project, deciding what Trace would most like to have there with him. It gives Justin something to do that involves making decisions and re- organizing the closets. He picks out a bunch of t-shirts, mostly plain, one with a Jack Daniels label on it and one that says Don't piss me off, I'm running out of places to hide the bodies. That one can be for helping him express his feelings, Justin thinks, and he stands there in the middle of his room holding this t-shirt and laughs, thinking about Trace doing fucking therapy and getting in touch with his feelings and things like that, because good luck to Creekbridge and their six-month program; Justin's been at that job for twenty years, with middling success. He chooses Trace's Tennessee Volunteers sweatpants and wraps up a framed photo of Trace's family inside them, with an extra one of Brittany's senior pictures tucked under the glass so it won't bend. He wonders if they'll let Trace have a picture with glass in the frame, or if it'll be that kind of place, all bare and functional with nothing allowed around for Trace to kill himself with. Justin pushes that thought out of his mind, because -- Sonoma, and pretty, and it won't be all cold and sad. It'll be restful, and even though Trace doesn't need rehab, he said himself he was tired. It'll be like a forced vacation, which frankly Justin himself could use right about now. He should be jealous. Justin puts in one of his own UNC sweatshirts, the zippered kind with a hood that Justin never wears in public anymore because it's just such a fucking drag after all that fuss before about the blue. He wears it to bed, though, on tour when it gets cold, and Trace rags him about how the zipper scratches his arms and his face. Justin hopes to Christ that Trace still wants at all to be reminded of old times. He can't quite fit the red afghan that Trace likes into the box, but he can squeeze in Trace's pillow. He's choosy about pillows. There's room left for CDs, and picking them out is even more soothing than the clothes part. Justin winds up sitting on the floor with CDs spread all over the place, like trying to make a mix tape out of whole albums instead of individual tracks. He picks Mobb Deep and Wu Tang Clan and DMX and Nas and Run-DMC, and then some of that more chick-type stuff that Trace doesn't like to admit he loves, Erykah Badu and Fiona Apple and Sophie B. Hawkins. It's harder when Justin gets into the stacks of the collection where most of the classic stuff is, because those are the songs that make him really feel something, even just looking at the album covers and holding them in his hands. Earth, Wind, and Fire. The Isley Brothers -- Justin and Trace used to make out to "Between the Sheets" on the tour bus. Stevie Wonder and Al Green and Donny Hathaway, who committed suicide when he was twenty-five and Justin's not quite sure he's ever forgiven God for that. He throws in a copy of Stripped and a copy of Justified, even though he feels like kind of a dick doing it and is seventy percent sure that one or both of them are going to be destroyed as part of Trace's process of getting in touch with his feelings. All of that takes an hour and a half, and of course none of it is even the part that matters, just a way of putting off the part that matters. He needs to write to Trace, needs for there to be a message, and he doesn't trust anyone to get it there on purpose. That stuff that he used to think was really paranoid and stupid, the things Trace said about keeping people apart by making it look like they didn't want to contact you anymore, that all sounds a lot more plausible to Justin now. He won't risk somebody stealing his letters to Trace and telling Trace there were never any letters at all. He tears a small piece of paper off the pad they use to jot down groceries for the housekeeper to pick up, and he writes on it, I'm so sorry, I love you so much. Then he can't think of what else to say, because this isn't the way he wants to ask for another chance, and maybe it's offensive even to imply they need one. Maybe Trace hates him right now, but on the other hand, maybe all he's feeling is this same dark, empty pit that Justin feels inside himself, and all he wants is to be here in this room with his arms around Justin again. I miss you, Justin writes, which is true even though it's only been hours since they were together, and he ends it with Yours, J. He tries to remember what CD Trace has been listening to lately when he's feeling down; Justin thinks it's The Diary of Alicia Keys, so that's where he hides the paper, tucked inside the liner notes. It's all kind of like that Alicia Keys video, Justin realizes, startled -- the one where she's waiting for her boyfriend, and he gets picked up by the cops, and there's that part where she falls down to the floor of their apartment crying, and this is really pretty much exactly that, that's exactly how Justin feels right now. Like a video about a broken heart, only this won't be over in three minutes and thirty seconds. After he uses almost a whole roll of packing tape to seal up the box, Justin calls Chris in Vegas and says, "I have to take off for a couple of days, can you do me a favor?" "What do you need?" Chris says. "There's a box. I'll leave it right by the front door. Can you come by and get it? It has to go to the office; Monica Downing is going to take it for me. As soon as you can, because I don't want to ship it, I want somebody to take it personally, but I have to...I just have to take off." "Yeah," Chris says. He sounds sleepy and dazed, but not too out of it to be concerned. "Where you going?" "Home," Justin says. "Just for, like, a minute." He knows he can't beat the news back to Memphis, but he needs to get out of the city, and he owes Belinda and Juan his apology face to face. Justin's done a lot of apologizing, but he knows there's no such thing as practice. He knows he's not prepared for this, and that's why he's driving there. Maybe he'll at least get a grip on himself between now and then, even if he'll never be ready for it. "Gotcha covered," Chris says. * It's a week after Carlos when his friends finally get JC out of the house. Chris drives him for hours while JC sleeps in the front seat, and when they get to Oregon it starts to rain. "Well, fuck," Chris says heavily, snapping on the windshield wipers. "Very fucking nice." "'S okay," JC says softly. "It's fine, I don't mind it." "I do," Chris says. "It's depressing the shit out of me." JC smiles a little and says, "It really doesn't bother me." Chris grunts and scratches his nose for a minute and then says, "Okay, so I'll be depressed for a while and you'll feel better, okay? Is that a deal?" He turns the headlights on, and JC can't see the road much better than he could before. "They'll call me with a release date now. That's what everybody thinks, right?" "That's what a lot of people think," Chris says cautiously. "Yeah." "Well," JC says, watching the rain. "I guess that's something to feel better for." * Justin intends to leave right away, and he packs a duffle bag in a fraction of the time it took him to pack the box for Trace. But it's late, and he lies down on the couch for a little power nap before he gets on the road, and he wakes up less than an hour later to the sound of a key scuffling in the lock. Justin sits up, his heart racing, and he's convinced for just a second that it's Trace, that none of this is real, that Trace is just going to come home yawning and be like, what are you sleeping on the sofa for?, and nothing will be wrong at all. The door opens and the light in the hallway comes on, and he can hear Chris's voice over the barking of his dogs. He sits up and rubs his eyes, and Chris says, "Jesus hopping Christ, you scared the fuck out of me." "You were in Vegas," Justin says. "How'd you get here so fast?" "I haven't been in Vegas for a couple of days," Chris says. "I was crashing at JC's." "Oh," Justin says. "At JC's? Why didn't you call me?" Chris doesn't say anything for a second; he stands there picking at his teeth with his thumbnail and not looking Justin in the face, and Justin thinks, oh. He's furiously jealous for a moment, so jealous that he can't manage to breathe without hissing, even though he knows that JC needs -- and that Justin probably owes -- and it's not like Chris picked -- he didn't even know that Justin -- Nothing he thinks makes any difference, though, because he's alone in the dark hanging onto his sanity by his fingernails, and this has been going on and nobody even bothered to tell him, and Justin has never in his life been alone before. But this is what it's like. "I was getting to it," Chris says. "I was gonna give you a call tomorrow. Or, I guess, today. This is the box?" "Yeah," Justin says. "Thanks for...." He chokes on the rest of it. He just can't talk anymore. It figures that his voice would fail him at the same time that all the other things that were always supposed to be on his side are disappearing one by one. "Jesus," Chris says again, real shock rippling through his voice. He's across the room right away, hopping right over the back of the couch, and Justin falls against him, grasping at Chris's shoulders. He's sort of gasping, tears leaking from the corner of his eyes, and it's not quite like crying. He can't quite let go enough for that. But it's close enough. "Tell me," Chris says, running his hands over Justin's head. "Tell me everything, now." Justin tells him everything. When he's done, he feels almost comforted by the fact that Chris is speechless. He's never made Chris speechless before. Chris opens and closes his mouth, and there's not a lot of light in the room, but there's a different kind of brightness in Chris's eyes, and Justin thinks maybe he's going to cry, too. It makes Justin feel less alone. Chris shakes his head over and over, and finally he manages to say, "I can't...I can't believe this. J, is this for real?" "I think it is," Justin says, and he gives a rocky little laugh. "Yeah, I mean. As far as I know, it's not like another hidden camera show or anything. I think this is really happening to me." Justin flinches away from the sound of his own voice, from the clumsy, stupid selfishness of that. Happening to me. "Well...is there anything I can do?" Chris says. "Anything else?" "I can't think of anything. I tried to-- Shit, I don't even know what I can do." "You did everything you could," Chris says, laying his palm along Justin's cheek. Justin closes his eyes. Chris's hands are the same size as Trace's, and with his eyes closed, Justin can pretend that "Between the Sheets" is about to start up and Trace is about to slide closer and pull Justin's face toward him and-- Justin puts his fingers on the inside of Chris's wrist and pushes his hand away as gently as he can. "I don't think I'm one of the good guys," Justin says. "What? Sure you -- what?" He thinks about starting with the part where he wants to drag Chris down right here on this sofa and fuck him because he's always reminded Justin of Trace, because the thought of Chris and JC having each other while Justin has nobody is making him fucking insane, but he can't let himself sink quite that low quite this soon. Instead he says, "Trace told me one time that he gets sick of seeing people start off in love and then give up when it gets hard. Isn't that what I did? Didn't I just quit fighting because they made it really hard for us for a really long time, and finally it was just, I just wanted out from under it so I did what they wanted? I don't think I'm strong like you think I am, man. It's just so hard for me, you have no idea. You don't understand how I feel when -- it's sick how much I want to be -- I can't stand for them to say that that's what I am, I can't be that, I'd rather fucking die, Chris. You can't understand, you're not like I am. You don't need all these things that.... I hate who they want me to be, and I hate even worse that I'm not that person, so I guess isn't that really what I want? Don't people always do what they really want, even if they say it's someone else making them do it?" "Justin, hey, hey," Chris says. "Shh, shut up, okay? I know you feel like shit right now, but this isn't your fault. This is something they did to you guys, it's not your fault. You are the fucking victims here, you hear me? All you did is what you had to do. You did the right thing." "Did I?" Justin says. "What if I didn't do it for the right reasons?" "You kept him out of jail, man. I know it doesn't feel like it now, but you should be proud of yourself." "It's convenient how it happened to be the best thing for me, too, though, isn't it?" Chris pushes him away. Justin didn't expect this, Chris's temper. "You have to stop, Justin," he says, just a little too loud and a little too choppy to sound natural. This is Chris when he's trying to hang on to his control. "Stop. Why are you saying this?" Justin doesn't know the answer to that. His hands flutter helplessly. Chris runs his hands roughly through his hair and says, "You don't understand. You and Trace, I believed in you guys. You can't tell me now that-- " Chris stands up and stalks toward the door. "I can't be listening to this," he says. "I need to believe in something." It's much too much; Justin can't handle the sight of Chris's back turned toward him, the sound of Chris's bitter voice. "Okay, I'm sorry," he says, desperately. "I'm upset right now, that's all. Don't be mad." He follows where Chris has gone, stands behind him and puts his hands on Chris's shoulders. He lets his voice drop to a sultry, late-summer-nights register and says, "I'm worried about Trace, and I guess I'm just freaking out a little. Please don't be mad at me." "Yeah," Chris says, and his voice cracks a little. "Yeah, no, of course you are." He steps away from Justin's hands, toward the box by the door, and says, "I'll take care of this for you." Justin stares blankly at his own hands. What the fuck is he doing? What the fuck is wrong with him? When he looks up, Chris is standing right in front of him, his expression soft and not bitter or angry at all. "It's okay, Just," he says. Justin goes easily into the hug that Chris offers, and they stand there for ages, Chris's wiry, surprisingly strong arms wrapped around him and keeping him from falling. "Everything's gonna be okay." "Thanks, man," Justin says, straightening up. He doesn't know about that, but the least he can do, the very smallest way he can make up for all of this, is to quit asking other people to shoulder everything that he should be going through himself. It's better if Chris can think things will be okay, if he can believe that things will ever go back to the way they were before. "You and Jayce, huh?" he says. Chris shrugs awkwardly. "I know it's stupid, but it just kinda happened. I have no clue what the hell I'm doing, just for the record. Don't even ask me." After a second he says, "How long did you say? I mean, when are you gonna see Trace again?" "Six months," Justin says. He's going to keep saying that anytime anyone asks. He's just not going to talk about that piece of his heart that still knows, without needing any kind of reason for it, that the answer is never. They'll only say, don't talk crazy, Justin, you know that's not true. He doesn't know what's true anymore. He has no idea at all. None of this was ever a part of the world he believed in up until last night. Justin's out of town by ten minutes til five in the morning. Driving has always been good for clearing his head, and he feels better once he's up past seventy miles an hour, even though he knows that the only reason he's still functional at all is that he hasn't finished falling yet. He doesn't really have a game plan, only a short-term. He's only thinking that it would be good if he could make it to Memphis before he hits the ground. Notes: All my thanks to my readers -- Jae, who told me when to keep working on it, Kaneko, who told me when to quit, and of course Mary, who told me many things, a few of which I even listened to. Y'all are the best.

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