"Just leave him alone, just leave him alone," Chris found himself chanting mindlessly as he tried to
clear a path through the hall. He tried not to think about how much he must look like one of
those spunky little English shepherding dogs yapping at the heels of large livestock; it was bad
enough when he was just riding herd on Justin and his superstardom (which tended to add another
six feet or so to him in every direction), but trying to run interference between Justin and enough
roadies, stadium security, low-rent journalists, and inexplicable hangers-on that Chris was really
beginning to wonder why they just didn't charge all these people and skip having to sell tickets at
all well, that was just stupid, and possibly dangerous.
Kind of like life. But whatever.
The heat backstage, coming off the press of bodies and the gigantic machinery that kept the show
powered up, was beginning to make Chris light-headed, and he latched onto the first bigger dog
he saw. "Get us out of here," he told Justin's largest bodyguard, hoping the slight tint of
desperation to his voice would make up for his rudeness. "Forget the dressing rooms; just get us
to the car and we'll change back at the hotel."
Justin was still moving wherever Chris nudged him, his face hard and his eyes giving nothing
away. He looked like the key part of him, whether that was his soul or his superstardom, was still
hanging around back on-stage.
He didn't say anything at all until he and Chris had both been packed away securely in the back of
the limo, with heavy doors and darkened windows between them and their viewing public. Even
then, he didn't so much speak as make a pitiful grunting sound and collapse sideways with his
head on Chris' leg. "Fuck," he said after another moment, sounding somewhat calm, all things
considered.
"Yeah," Chris said before he'd really thought about it. Maybe not as supportive as he could have
been. "It wasn't that bad," he said on the rebound. "You sounded okay."
"I sounded like *shit.* I *feel* like shit."
Chris touched his forehead first, and then the side of his neck, which was how he remembered
seeing Lynne check Justin's temperature, years ago. Unfortunately, Chris didn't exactly know
what he was checking for; Justin was warm, but of course he would be, right after a concert. If
he had special mom powers, that would be one thing, but Chris was pretty sure his maternal side
was sorely underdeveloped. "You sounded okay at the end. You were right to have them mike
Joey up so you didn't burn yourself out halfway through."
Justin snorted. "Maybe now he'll shut up about that fucking video."
A concert in Little Rock didn't quite seem equivalent to a music video to Chris, but frankly, he
had a hard-line policy about what would probably always be That Fucking Video to them: he
wouldn't get within ninety-one truck lengths of the subject, not on a bet, not on a dare. Plenty of
other people were worrying about it full-time. "I'll get you something for your voice," he
promised instead. "Hot lemon juice and honey. Not as nasty as it sounds, and it works like a
charm. Little Nyquil, little sleep. You're Mr. Sound-Mind-Sound-Body; you'll slough this right
off."
"I hate this tour. I hate this fucking tour. I want to go home. I'm coming down with something.
We got rained out in Cleveland "
"Look, let's not go there. Shit happens on tour; you know that."
"They hate the new music "
"They do not. They just don't know it. They're absorbing."
"I can't sing. I can't sing. I can't *sing.* What the *fuck* am I good for "
"Shut up, shut up, shut the fuck up," Chris ordered, putting a hand between Justin's shoulder
blades and shaking him roughly. "You're coming *down* with something; you're not thinking
straight. You're just you're getting "
Justin sighed deeply, and it turned into half a yawn. "Maudlin?"
"I was gonna say 'stupid.'"
"Maudlin and stupid."
"Stupidly maudlin. Come on, just relax." His hand moved out of habit to tousle Justin's curls;
funny how long his hands kept expecting to find them there, like they'd just be invisible or
something, but still feel the same between his fingers. The new hair felt like fur, though, satiny
and warm over the solid shape of Justin's skull. It was okay, too, if not exactly tousle-able. Chris
had to settle for petting. "Your loyal fans will learn to forgive you for the heinous crime of
having a head-cold. I mean, sure, it's a betrayal. But after all you guys have been through
together the autographs, the malls, the vanilla-flavored chapstick.... You just don't throw that
away."
"Damn, you're a bitch sometimes," Justin said, laughing helplessly. He shifted on the limo seat so
that his cheek was resting on Chris' thigh and his arm was wrapped around Chris' waist. "You do
throw that away, though," he said, a little sadly. "Eventually you do."
"Well, yeah. Thank God. You ever found chapstick from, like, ten years ago buried in the pocket
of something you never wear? Totally disgusting. You gotta use that shit up or get rid of it."
He was used to his jokes getting some kind of reaction from Justin -- usually a favorable reaction,
even. Still, it was a little bit...unprecedented, the way that Justin's laugh seemed to propel him
forward, and the way that the angles of his face seemed to be petting up Chris' side in what could
only be described as a nuzzle. His chin came to rest squarely over Chris' kidney, which didn't
seem to affect his kidney very much one way or another, but did set his heart going at a roaring
sputter, like a motorcycle engine igniting. "Chris Kirkpatrick," he said in his familiar, breathy
imitation of some of their loopier fans, "is the funniest man in the *world.*"
"Hey, we can't all be the beautiful people." Chris wondered if that particular joke made any sense
of any kind; it was hard to tell, with the way that Justin's slightly open mouth was traveling up his
torso not quite in a kiss, but more like a...lick without any tongue, which you wouldn't think
would be possible, but here it was. Here they were. Here *he* was, Chris Kirkpatrick, the short
kid from Ohio who would probably have spent his childhood heavily medicated if he'd been born
a few years later, kicking back in a limousine and getting seriously acquainted with the most
profitable pair of lips on the planet. Talk about your...beautiful people....
"Do you love me, Chris?"
"Sure."
"You always say that."
"What were you hoping I would say?" If life were fair, Chris would be getting due credit for
being able to say anything at all right now, but Justin was nothing if not full of high expectations
most of the time.
It was sort of hard to tell while there was no oxygen getting to his brain, but it seemed like Justin
was nibbling on the edge of his collar. At least, the collar felt moist against his neck when Justin
pulled his head back far enough to say, "You could kinda sound like you mean it."
"You don't think I mean it?"
"I know you do. Which makes me wonder why you never sound like you mean it."
"Who cares?" And that he *definitely* meant.
Those lips didn't feel at all the same way on his beard as they did on his chest possibly because
the licking was no longer completely tongue-free. "I'm going to kiss you. So you might want to,
like...prepare."
"To catch your cold? Or for "
Oh. For that.
Sprawled across him, Justin was a winding line of muscle, back and arms and neck under Chris'
restless hands, all of it so unreal that Chris couldn't really make any sense out of Justin's position
in his own mind. The kid seemed to be basically everywhere, wrapped around him like a boa
constrictor, which in theory was kind of a cute thing, kind of adolescent and gropey and cute.
But combined with that mouth, which was thoroughly, thrillingly light and careful and competent
as it brushed back and forth against Chris', it didn't seem as adolescent as it should. It just
seemed to hint at Justin's natural athleticism, along with whatever you wanted to extrapolate from
that about how the rest of your night was going to go.
There was, basically, no preparing. If the last six years hadn't left him prepared and they very,
very obviously hadn't then Chris figured he was pretty much screwed. So to speak.
"You know," Chris managed to say when their slight squirming brought their lips out of
immediate contact briefly, "if you could come up with some really concise and yet enlightening
way of explaining to me what the hell we're doing, now would be the perfect time for it."
"Making out."
"Can't argue with that, I guess."
"Concise."
Chris could feel the smile spreading slowly across his face. "Enlightening."
Motivated by some seriously unexplored impulse toward romance, Chris swept him closer in a
warm embrace, the fingers of one hand fitting neatly in counterpoint against Justin's ribs, and the
other hand fingering lightly behind Justin's ear. Chris silently blessed the wide, comfortable seats
of the limo as he lowered Justin's taut, fidgety, beautiful body down flat on his back. He'd had no
idea, no fucking idea yes, okay, the fact that he wanted to kiss Justin, yes, an idea. But no real
concept of how amazingly sexy it would be, pressed full-body against Justin, pinning him down,
tracing Justin's soft lips with his tongue. Between the semi-darkness in the car and the sweaty
smear of Justin's stage makeup, his eyes were shadowed darkly, an effect that caught Chris so
fiercely with its deliciously goth decadence that he was momentarily frozen by desire. "I love
you," he croaked, his fingers on Justin's throat and his tongue making a wide, unsteady half-circle
around the socket of that hollowed eye, cheekbone to temple to brow.
"Now that " Justin panted, " sounds like you mean it."
"What have I told you about fishing for compliments?"
"Uhhh...no idea. I don't really listen to you, actually."
"Too busy picturing me naked?" Chris joked.
"Yeah," Justin said simply, not like it was a joke at all. "Would you still love me?" Justin asked,
and then kissed him like it was the end of the question, even though unless Chris was totally
confused (possible, at this point), it couldn't be. "If I weren't Justin Timberlake, would you still
love me?" he finally clarified.
Most variations of the *do you love me?* question, in Chris' experience, were purely rhetorical,
especially in the heat of the moment. Somehow, though, this didn't seem to be. It seemed to be a
real question to Justin, and maybe even a pressing one. Which didn't, of course, mean that Chris
had to take it entirely seriously. "That depends. Who would you be instead?"
"I dunno," Justin said, and this thing he had with turning Chris' flippant comments into eerily
meaningful shit was beginning to become a bad habit. "I dunno, who would I be?"
"I can't I don't " Damn Justin for making him try to think right now, anyway. "It's not like
you can ever just wake up one morning and you will have lost who you are."
"You can lose your voice. Lose your faith. Lose a lover. Lose your mind. Why can't you lose
yourself?"
"Because that's why you *have* a self. That's the whole definition of self. That thing you don't
lose."
As familiar as Chris was with Justin's smile, it was easy to pick out the shape of it even in the bad
lighting. "You can lose your virginity...."
"Don't even, Infant. I've told you, I'm taking a moral stand against your bizarre, Clintonian
technical-virgin headspace. I don't know how many thousands of blowjobs you think you can get
and still be a virgin, but I call foul."
"We're not talking *thousands.* Man, what kind of ho do you take me for?"
"First, I would have to care. Your life is your life, bro. Just quit calling yourself a virgin, for
Christ's sake. It's stupid, and I don't need the role model." Belatedly, Chris wondered if he'd
kind of missed the point of that little comment there. Why exactly would Justin pick this
particular moment to bring up the subject of his objectively dubious but personally highly-prized
purity?
Maybe arguing with Justin, at this particular moment, was the extreme definition of being a
complete moron. Maybe if Chris kissed him again, Justin would forget about that.
"Tell me again that you love me," Justin ordered with a complacent little smile, tugging lightly on
one gelled spike of hair and then allowing his fingers to trail down the side of Chris' face.
"Needy little bitch," Chris said affectionately. "I'm not going to start crying when you point at
me, I hope you know."
A sudden beeping sound scared the hell out of Chris, and somehow he managed to push Justin
half off the seat and onto the floor. "Goddammit," Justin muttered. "That's what I need, a cold
and a fucking concussion. Thanks."
The beeping sound was the intercom. "We've pulled up alongside the other car," the driver
informed Chris when he managed to find the button in the dark. "If you roll down your window,
you can talk to them."
"Great, because we're really missing them; it's been like ten minutes today all by ourselves,"
Justin grumbled.
Hoping to sweeten his mood okay, no, just wanting to do it Chris gave him a quick, rough
kiss before rolling down the window and leaning out. "What do you *want?*" he yelled at Lance
and JC, who were leaning out of their own window. Chris felt Justin nudge in beside him to get a
view of the situation, his elbow braced casually for balance on Chris' back.
"You guys just tore out of there," Lance said. "What's going on?"
"Justin wasn't feeling up to hanging around."
"We're starving to death. If we find some takeout, you want us to bring some back to the hotel?"
"I'm not hungry," Justin said.
"Yeah, just don't worry about us." Please. Please, please. "We'll be cool; we'll see you
tomorrow."
JC reached out and pointed at Justin, his arm almost spanning the distance between the cars.
"You were great, J. You pulled through. We love you, man; get some sleep."
"See?" Chris said when the window was rolled up again. "*Everybody* loves you."
Justin folded himself up and leaned against Chris' side, his fingers laced together and resting on
Chris' shoulder. "Yeah. Sure they do."
"Don't get all fucking cynical on me, now."
"No, I'm not being cynical. I mean, I know they love me. But it's easy to love me now."
"Not as easy as you think it is." Especially this tour, but that seemed like more than really needed
to be said.
Justin nudged him with his shoulder, just to let him know the dig had not gone entirely unnoticed.
"I'm *Justin Timberlake* right now."
"It's not about the fucking fame, Justin."
"Of *course* it's not. God, where do you guys get this idea that the fame is all that matters to
me? I'm not talking about the album sales or the Billboard charts or the magazine covers. That's
for *fun.* That just feels good. It's not the *point.* The point is...."
He turned his head and kissed Justin's neck softly. It did feel warm. "What is the point?"
"*Singing,*" he said, and ironically enough, Chris could hear the sharp break of hoarseness in his
voice as he tried to use it dramatically. "The point is that I can sing."
"People would - they would love you even "
"No. They. Wouldn't. Don't lie to me to make me feel better, Chris; I get plenty of that shit from
the rest of the world. People would probably *try* to love me, but everything would be different.
Nobody would stay. Britney, Jace, Lance, Wade they'd try to be nice, but they'd end up
moving on to someone else. It's all about the music, Chris. It's *all* about the music. Except
with you, you know? You're different. You wouldn't give a shit if I never got my voice back,
would you?"
Chris considered that. Of course, he'd be upset. Beyond upset. This group, this music it
sounded cheesy, but it was Chris' life. It was the thing he got up with in the morning and went to
bed with at night, colossal and unvarying. If Justin never sang again - of course everything would
be different, every single thing in Chris' life and for the *rest* of his life. He'd be...devastated.
But because he knew that Justin wasn't really interested in Chris' feelings at the moment, he
chose to answer the real question instead. "I wouldn't move on."
Justin shifted around to face him, and Chris curved one hand lightly along Justin's cheek and drew
him into a lingering, almost motionless kiss. "Look on the bright side," he whispered afterward,
their lips still brushing just barely. "Joey would still hate you."
After a short, shocked silence, Justin devolved into helpless giggling. "Oh, fuck him. Just fuck
Joey. I'm not gonna worry about him tonight."
"Good." It was good. Not just because Chris was hoping Justin would have other things to think
about, but also because this thing with Justin and Joey, it was just exhausting. If Justin was
getting sick of the feud and all the energy that went into it, then he could join the club and
welcome to it.
And it might have worked out just like that, if it hadn't been for those meddling kids and their
dog. But when the bodyguards opened the limo door, there was an utter mob scene in front of
the hotel, arriving in the wake of the two cars that pulled up simultaneously. "I thought you guys
were going out to eat?" Chris demanded as the others climbed out of their limo. He knew he
sounded pissy, and at this point he really didn't care.
"Can we change clothes first?" Lance asked with bland sincerity, almost like he was actually
checking with Chris instead of politely asking him to fuck off. Lance was only a bitch if you knew
what you were listening for, which frankly Chris really admired.
Taking Justin by the elbow, Chris pulled him through the crowd and into the lobby, tightening his
fingers painfully on the bone when Justin tried to hesitate for someone with a camera. "Dog-and-
pony-show's on hiatus tonight. They can get your picture in the morning. Anyway, you look like
hell; you don't want to be immortalized like this." He did look pretty awful, rumpled and flushed
and sweaty.
"Hey, guys! Wait a second!"
Justin groaned, and Chris pinched his arm again. "Hold the elevator, could you?" he said to the
bodyguard, ignoring Justin's desperate expression. Yeah, well, going up forty floors in a small
glass box with Justin and Joey wasn't Chris' idea of a tropical vacation, either, but it was called
keeping the peace.
"How are you feeling? Okay?" Joey asked.
"If I were feeling okay, don't you think I probably would've sung my own parts?"
Well, the resolution not to worry about Joey had lasted through exactly two-point-one seconds of
actually being around Joey. A disappointing score, even considering the judges' low
expectations.
But Joey seemed to be concerned enough about Justin's health that his burning hatred of Justin
had been pushed to a back burner. "Well, you know, you'll catch it on the next show. You're
going to be back in fighting trim by then, right?"
Justin, who had been leaning in the corner of the elevator and staring out at the rapidly receding
lobby floor, suddenly snapped his head up to look directly at Joey. "Oh, yeah, don't worry about
me. Us young guys, we bounce back fast. You won't have to sing any more than you can handle
next time."
Chris tried to covertly step on Justin's foot, but he wasn't in quite the right position to pull it off.
He saw Joey's expression darken momentarily, and then relax into blatantly deliberate friendliness.
"Just let me know if there's anything I can do."
"Actually, there is." Cannot be good, Chris thought. Cannot be good, can only be bad, can only
hope an asteroid strikes the hotel before Justin says whatever he's thinking....
"Justin, I don't "
But he was not destined to be the asteroid in this movie; Justin ran right over him, saying, "You
could trade rooms with me, because I'm on the other side of the wall from Lance again, and I'm
never going to get any sleep that way. You know, it don't bother me that Wade screams a lot
louder than you do, but the way they kick it three times a night over there well, hell, it just
makes me miss the good old days, you know?"
If Justin had been hoping for a reaction, he was out of luck; both Chris and Joey were too stunned
to say anything at all *literally* stunned, kind of like someone had just popped out of a trapdoor
and clubbed them over the head. The bodyguard just looked vaguely tired, which was either the
natural state of all normal people who had to follow *Nsync around or an expression the agency
trained them in.
Oddly, when he recovered his wits, it was Chris and not Justin that Joey turned to. "And you're
just going to stand there."
"What the hell do you want me to do, Joe? He's not fucking *radio-controlled.* If he's gonna be
an asshole, he's gonna be an asshole."
"And you're gonna be on his side, so what does that make you?"
"I'm not on anyone's *side.* I'm not taking sides in this."
Joey looked at him for a minute, and then shook his head slightly. "You're the only one who
thinks that, Chris. The rest of us can see exactly where you stand."
Joey's room was the first one off the elevator on their floor, which provided him with an excellent
means of exiting dramatically, and as soon as the door was shut, leaving Chris and Justin alone in
the hallway with the staff. "*Why do you do that?* Why do you *deliberately* *do* that, when
you know it's going to piss him off?"
"Because I know it's going to piss him off."
"Jesus Christ, Justin! You've got to quit that! I'm serious, man. Joey's *trying* to get along
with you, and you owe it to the rest of us to at least make some kind of effort while we're on
tour."
"I owe it to the group. I oughta suck it in and be a businessman about all of this, huh? Be a
professional. Well, where the hell was Joey's fucking professionalism? He wanted to take up
with Lance, and we all said *fine,* because Joey's our buddy and we want him to be happy. For
three fucking *years,* they were breaking up and getting back together, and every. Fucking.
Time, we said, *fine,* they're our friends, they deserve a personal life. Then they have this
*huge* fucking blowup, and Joey starts putting out this bullshit fucking story about Lance
screwing around behind his back, which *I* don't believe and *you* don't believe and *nobody
believes,* because that's just not Lance, but Lance doesn't want to call him a liar and nobody
wants to make shit any worse than it is, so we all say *fine.* We do it Joey's way, because Joey's
our buddy and we want him to be happy! And now, *now,* when Lance is happy and Joey's
jealous as hell even though God forbid he could admit that to any of his so-called friends *now*
Joey wants us to be *professional,* which basically seems like it means he wants us to pretend not
to know anything about what's going on in Lance's life so the tour can be all peace and flowers.
If the rest of you guys were really serious about hanging together for the sake of the group, you
know what we'd all do? We'd all corner Joey Fatone and tell him he screwed up with Lance and
now he owes it to *us* to smooth it over. He owes it to us to quit making Lance feel like shit for
liking Wade, and he owes it to apologize for lying about Lance, because you know what? That
pisses *me* off. That fucking pisses me off, because we all promised we would never lie to each
other! You remember that? No games, no lies, no face, no bullshit. The whole rest of the world,
we do what we gotta do, but with each other, we were supposed to be *real.* And now Joey's
lied to us, and he wants us to pretend it's not like it is with Wade and Lance while he's around,
and I just can't take it, I'm fucking *mad about it!*"
Obviously. "This isn't the way, Just. You antagonizing him isn't going to "
"I know it isn't. But I.... If he hadn't lied about it, Chris. If he just hadn't lied to us."
"You're so sure it's not true?"
Justin gave him a wounded look. "Lance wouldn't cheat."
"You're about to." Chris didn't know exactly why he said it, whether he was trying to help the
situation or hurt it now.
"What does that prove?" Justin asked, perfectly cool. "I'm not Lance."
In retrospect, that was exactly what Chris had been wanting to know. Justin's reality often did
not resemble the rest of the world's reality as evidenced by the virgin thing and it was
tempting to let his comfortable definitions stretch to fit you, sometimes. Like...if he didn't
*think* he was cheating on Britney, then he wasn't, and there was nothing for either of them to
feel guilty about.
Except that he did, of course. He did think he was, he *knew* he was cheating. He just didn't
care.
They stopped in front of Justin's door, and Justin brushed a casual hand over Chris' shoulder.
"You're pissed at me now."
"Yeah," Chris said, although it wasn't true. He was a million unnameable things, but not exactly
pissed.
"Still wanna come in?"
Come in and take Justin's mind off of the way he'd failed to give the audience what they needed
from him that night. Come in and feed him Nyquil and catch his cold and be the one who stayed
with him when his voice was gravelly and unbeautiful. Come in and lose himself in Justin, let
Justin's fears and Justin's frustrations and Justin's biases and Justin's needs count for more than
what Chris knew was right and real.
Of course he wanted to.
"I think you really fucked with Joey. I'm gonna go make sure he's okay."
"He brought it on himself, you know."
"He's still my friend."
Justin sighed and rubbed one of his temples with the heel of his hand. "I probably should get
some sleep. Fight this thing off. I feel like shit...."
"I'll have someone bring that lemon juice thing to you."
Abruptly, Justin's eyes locked onto his in that ultra-eye contact thing he did when he was trying to
make sure you never, ever forgot him as long as you lived. "You know how you hate it when I
fish for compliments...?"
"Yeah. And yeah. I do. Still."
"Hate...?"
"Love."
"Thanks."
Chris left without a goodnight kiss.
end