All the Small Things
by Betty Plotnick






over my grave

Chris is playing Halo when the noises start up in the back of the bus. JC is asleep on the couch behind him, one leg over Chris' shoulder, and neither Chris' elbow knocking against his ankle nor the muffled bang, thump, smack coming from Justin's direction is anywhere close to waking him up. Chris doesn't even know why he bothers to mute his videogames.

Limp Bizkit being played at eleven, on the other hand, will wake up even JC. JC's foot jumps, and Chris' whole game is shot, and he hasn't saved nearly recently enough. "Is that Justin?" JC mumbles. He pulls his torso up off the couch and stays that way, like a check mark, and Chris hates all of them, with their abs. It's a fucked up world, a fucked up place, Fred is informing them. Everybody's judged by their fucked up face....

"That's Justin," Chris confirms.

"Smells like -- cleaning stuff."

Comet, actually, is what it smells like. Justin is scouring something in the bathroom, which is worse than the Lemon Pledge smell of dusting, but not as bad as that carpet foam. Carpet foam is the worst. "Yup," Chris says.

"Should we say something?" JC says timidly.

"Whaddaya mean we, white man?" Chris says, but JC just stares at him and shakes his head, either to indicate that he doesn't get the joke, or just to flip the hair out of his eyes. "We'll say something when he winds down." Chris doesn't mean *we* any more than JC did. "You'll miss him when he's gone," Chris adds.

"Whoa," JC says quietly, and Chris glances over his shoulder. JC's eyes look wide and dark, the color that's called midnight in Crayola boxes, even though Chris never thought midnight was anything much fancier than plain old black. "Cat just walked over my grave, man."

"Spaz," Chris says, but he feels guilty. There are certain words you can't use around certain people, like *hurts* around his mom, and *gone* around JC. Because, you know. It never hurts, and no one ever leaves you, and the little forest animals eat sunflower seeds out of your open palm. La la la.

JC slides sideways off the couch and wedges himself in behind Chris, long legs folded up with his knees nudging under Chris' arms. Chris bats at him, but his game is already ruined, so whatever. He leans back against JC and promises, "He's fine. He'll be fine."



Lance got therapy and JC got Reiki and ayurveda and better weed and Chris got a prescription for little orange pills and Justin will get...something. Justin will get something, because there's always a cure, and it may seem sometimes like Chris has given up, but only because it's one in the morning and he's tired.

He hasn't given up.

Some days Chris can't wait for this break they all talk about with the same sense of wonder and dread that preachers talk about the Kingdom of God. Some days it's hard to wrap his mind around the idea that he doesn't know exactly what he'll be doing this time next year.

He lets the tv go to blue screen and lets JC's arms wrap around his chest and wonders if there will even be a next year, or if this is his last week on earth, the last night of the world.



everything goes with him

"God, this place is fucking disgusting," Justin is saying. Chris can say it along with him by now. Blah blah live like this, blah blah kill you to fucking pick your--

"-- shit up every once in a fucking decade."

Typical Justin, or at least typical Justin when he's in one of these phases. He gets better, and then he gets worse, and Chris does whatever he can, because he's a good big brother, because he's a friend.

JC's knuckles brush his beard. He handed off responsibility for Justin's phases years ago; JC figures the best way he can be Justin's friend now is to be Chris'. It's an okay system, most of the time, and as friends go, you could do a lot worse than C. He doesn't make Chris ask for anything, even the weird, embarrassing things like someone to touch his face and never say anything about how it'll get better soon. Blind optimism is Chris' department, except on the second and fourth Sunday of every month, and the first Monday after the full moon, and Arbor Day.

He hears Justin behind him, riffing on a theme. "-- y'all have that's my shit, fucking turn it over, okay? God, I swear, I have like half a suitcase here, and I fucking well know I owned more than that when I got on this bus."

The suitcase in question lands on the couch. It's the same one that Justin has always had, the one that some uncle gave him for his thirteenth birthday. It's green, tweedy fabric, banded with leather, and the leather is cracked and it's fuzzy with torn white threads, and he brought it with him when he moved into the house in Orlando, and he brought it with him to Germany, and he still brings it on the bus, even though he owns nice sets of luggage, sleek, indestructible navy blue nylon, supple black leather with his initials riveted to it in brass. This is the suitcase that he brings when it counts. When he's really going somewhere and needs to make sure that everything goes with him.

"You're packing?" JC says, like he's confused. Chris isn't confused. He's not sure how, but he knew they were all closer to this than anyone would admit. There's another tour already in the works for the spring -- mercifully, something smaller and involving less little tiny pieces that could potentially come flying apart at any moment -- but things are changing already. The old routines, the three-man bus, the habits and rituals that are supposed to protect Justin but that really define all of them now...they're at the end of that. Chris knows it. They all know it, but it helps JC to pretend he doesn't understand.

"Yeah, I'm not staying," Justin says. It sounds low and gruff, the way that Justin sounds when he's saying something he half-hopes you won't notice he's saying. Chris gets to his feet, his knees pulling like fuck, and starts toward the fridge. Justin keeps talking, dim and desperate. He's hoping no one else will get a word in. He's hoping that he can control this. Chris is willing to let him, if it makes any difference. "I'm just gonna go on my own, meet up with everybody at the next venue. I mean, not alone, obviously not alone. I cleared it, I'll be with Tiny, I just wanna, you know, I want to do it like this, I thought it would be fun."

"Fun," JC says blankly. "Justin-- " he says, and Chris turns around with his Red Bull in his hand, turns around just in time to see JC reach up to grab Justin's wrist as he paces by. Chris wants to throw something. How stupid can you be and still remember to breathe?

"Would everybody just leave me the fuck alone?" Justin pulls his arm out of JC's grasp. It's a sudden movement, and Chris thinks that if he weren't wearing long sleeves, there might be scratches on his arm.

Justin stands, rigid and somehow trapped, even with nothing holding him down. He isn't moving at all, except for his rapid breathing and his fingers twisting the drawstring of his sweatshirt's hood. "Sorry," he mutters, but he can't look at JC.

"Everybody's sorry," Chris snaps. "Look, okay, are we dropping you off somewhere?"

Justin nods vaguely in the direction they're headed. "Up here. I'll be out of your hair."

Hurt, Chris thinks, looking at JC's pensive expression, not at Justin. Gone. Skittish woodland creatures, la la la. He'd give up his big toe to be able to hug his best friend right now, but it's out of the question. Some other time, yeah. Tomorrow night, before the show, sure, and Justin will hug him back, all bone and hot strength and laughter stirring sleepily in his belly, with the muscle and the smooth skin lying over it like armor.

It's just not one of those nights tonight.



if he'd had a say in it

They watch the scenery slow and shift around. It's an exit off the interstate, presumably Justin's up here. JC turns his face away from the window, looking at Justin for the first time in twenty minutes, and he says, "I'm sorry," which of course he is. He knows what he's done wrong, but sometimes JC just can't seem to stop himself. He likes to hang on to people when they're feeling things like doubt and confusion and fear, and it's just JC's bad luck that Justin is wired exactly the opposite.

Justin smiles, a public-appearance smile, an all-right-this-but-nothing-more smile, and he says, "Forget it."

"You don't have to go," JC says, just little pinpricks of desperation marring the surface of his friendliness. "It's just one more week, you know? We all miss the privacy thing -- " although Chris doesn't, really, and he doubts that JC does, either -- "but this could be, you know. I mean. Just one more week to go."

"Until next tour," Justin says, distant but firm. JC nods, and leans his forehead back against the window.

They stop at a diner, and JC says, "Maybe we could get pie?"

"Good idea," Chris says. There's another car in the lot, a convertible with its lights on, standing double-parked. "You wanna go in and find out if they got cherry?" JC doesn't have any money on him, of course, and Chris throws his own wallet at JC's chest and tells him to go crazy, spring for coffee. JC grins at him, but he turns timid again when he looks over at Justin. Justin's hand is on his suitcase.

"Do Lance and Joey-- ?"

"No, it's spur-of-the-moment," Justin says shortly. "Fucking God, who really fucking cares, C, honestly? I'll see them tomorrow, I'll see everyone tomorrow. Just back off."

JC look to Chris for advice. Now JC wants advice. Chris would've made him shut up a while back, if he'd had a say in it. Chris nods toward the door. It's okay. They'll all see him tomorrow, and he'll be their Justin again. "See you tomorrow," JC says in a tone that means goodbye, and he goes.

Justin starts to go, too. "Not so fast, Laverne," Chris says.

"What part of 'back off' do you not understand?" Justin mutters, and tries to skirt around to the side of the bus, to bypass Chris, who is near the door but not near enough to block it.

The part where you tell me what to do, Chris thinks, but it's his Justin that he can push around, not this one. With this Justin, there's only one advantage that counts, one note that's worth trying to hit, out of Chris' whole range. "Sit down, Jup," he says. "Please. C'mon."

Justin hesitates. He frowns. He's stuck and he knows it. He makes a snarling sound and faces the door like he's going to move for it again, but he won't, Chris knows. This is posturing, maybe wishful thinking at best.

Chris sits down cross-legged on the floor, leaving plenty of room in front of him for Justin. Justin glares bullets at him, but he sets the suitcase down. "You are a fucking pain in my ass," he says as he sits down, mirroring Chris' posture with a cautious four inches of space between their kneecaps.

Chris doesn't dignify that with a response. Sure, he may be that, even on their best days he's probably that, but squirm and snap and resist as Justin can when he's on the hook, the truth is that he loves Chris, and so Chris will always win.



sentimental moments come and go

"Up," Chris orders. He raises his hands in front of him, like Justin is a campfire. A muscle in Justin's jaw twitches. He's not getting any crazier as he gets older, but he is getting more stubborn, so sometimes the crazy is harder to punch through. It amounts to the same thing. "Up, up, up! Damn, child."

Justin rolls his eyes and puts his hands up in front of Chris'. "There," Chris says. "Okay? Okay?"

"Okay," Justin says, exasperated. "Okay."

Chris lets his eyes half-close. Justin's body, dancer-trained, is already settling into the pattern of following a lead, and his eyelids lower without him even realizing. "There, see?" Chris says, softly. "You're okay. I'm right here, and you're completely fine. Nobody's going to do anything to you." He can feel Justin's overworked energy pushing against his hands. He wonders what his nearness feels like to Justin. He's done this so much that it's almost diagnostic now. It's like taking Justin's temperature. Justin is tense and frightened, and there's something shivery and prismatic about him, something Chris has felt before, but not for a while. It's good, though. It feels like it should be there, like it's okay for Chris to leave it, if he can just get rid of the rest.

He tests, moving his hands slowly forward. Justin moves back, keeping the same distance between them, but he doesn't jump, he doesn't throw up his arm to block Chris. It's not that bad this time. Of course, sometimes Justin lets Chris touch him, palm to palm. So it's not that good this time, either. "I'm right here," he says again. "Nothing you don't want. Okay, you get it? Nothing you don't ask for, but I'm still here." Justin nods, and Chris says, "Are you breathing?"

"I'm breathing."

"Are you cool?"

"Baby, I'm the coolest," he says with a tired smile. "I'm good."

"Okay," Chris says. He opens his eyes and puts his hands down on his knees. Justin picks it up like a cue and does exactly the same thing. "Okay, so fill me in on this road trip you have cooked up. Just you and Tiny? He driving?"

Justin rubs a thumb over his fresh-shaved jaw. "No. Nick's driving."

"Ahhhh," Chris says, making his eyebrows do quirky little tricks that always make Justin smile. "Suddenly your passion for the open road is making more sense."

"Oh, yeah," Justin says, rolling his eyes. "Real fucking romantic, just the two of us and Tiny. Come on, dude, I'm gonna sleep the whole way there. I just -- I thought it would make him feel good to do something for me. Or at least like I haven't, you know, totally forgotten that he exists."

If Lance were here, he'd say something bitchtastic, like you can always leave him your credit card to remember you by, I'm sure he'd appreciate that. But then Lance is a hard-edged motherfucker who figures you always pay for it one way or another and only ever demands honesty anymore. Chris, now. Chris' sentimental moments come and go, but he's seen the way Nick looks at Justin when Justin's not looking back. Like he still can't believe Justin grew up hot and smart and funny and famous -- or maybe like he can't believe Nick Chastain grew up unstupid enough to be able to grab at a second chance. Nick knows how to spend money, no denying it, but for whatever it's worth, that kid is ass-over-elbows in love. It probably does make him feel good, being asked to play chauffeur for Justin.

"I'm not going away," Justin says.

"Sure you are. Good on you, too. Won't kill you to learn how to back off from something."

"I'm not backing off of us!"

Chris scrubs his face, and leaves his hands over his eyes for a minute. He's the bipolar one, but Justin is the one who never understood in-betweens. In or out, for or against, together or alone, and so of course he can't just see that yes, he's going away and no, he's not going away. No, he's not one-fifth of 'N Sync, and yes, he is, he is forever. Justin's brain doesn't have that space in it, that place where realities like that live. It's crowded up with key changes and NBA statistics and how many fucking stitches are in the hems of his shirts. Justin counts things, memorizes things, lists things, saves things, and knows things, but he never leaves room for things to change on him.

When Chris moves his hands away, Justin is still sitting right there, his face still and his hands raised up in front of him.



and see things you never imagined

Nick stands on the lowest step to the ground, Justin still firmly inside the bus. There might as well be a velvet rope between them, and Chris feels sorry for Chastain, he really does. If it's still hard for the people who do live here to understand Justin, imagine what it's like if you only ever get to visit. "Do you, um." Nick pauses and scratches his neck. He shakes his head and says, "Do you not want to do this? It's probably better for your back if you sleep here, anyway, and I can just meet you. It's okay, you know, if you want to do that."

"You don't understand," Justin says with the quiet serenity of someone who's much too sure of that. "I do want to. I want to be with you."

"Okay," Nick says, letting the word trail away dubiously.

"I just need more time. A few minutes to get my head together."

"Okay. Well, whenever. I mean, I'll wait in the car."

He's down on the ground again, on the pavement, when Justin says, "Wait, Nick, wait. I do want to, okay? I want to ride with you, I want to, you know, I want to be with you, it's just -- fuck! I wish I could explain."

"Am I asking you to explain?"

Chris can't see him anymore. He can only see Justin's back. "Do you remember Germany?" Justin says, and for a second Chris thinks Justin might be talking to him.

"I've never been to Germany," Nick says.

"Well, no, when I was. I used to write you, right?"

"Yeah," Nick says, and Chris can hear that tone creeping into his voice, that wistfully fond tone that people tend to take on when they think about Justin at fourteen, wide-eyed and hopeful and shy everywhere except on stage. That was the Justin that Chris first met; he wonders if Nick has any clue when and where he first met Justin. That whole Tennessee crew, they act like they were all just whelped together, in the same freaking litter. Chris can't imagine what it must be like, to have no life at all, pre-Justin. "You sent me matchbooks from like a million German hotels. Everyplace you stayed."

"I had a crush on you, you know."

"Yeah," Nick says. "Duh, Justin."



Chris remembers that, too, the mythical Boyfriend Back Home that Justin had broken down three weeks into Germany and admitted was sort of not actually his boyfriend, but definitely a friend, and they were, like, really close, and if Justin hadn't had to leave again and go back to Florida for the band, he would have been, he totally would have been. And then a week after that, drunk on JC's smuggled Jagermeister, how Justin put his head on Chris' shoulder and cried and said he was just a friend, nothing but a friend with soft brown hair and he didn't want Justin at all and probably had forgotten him already, or else was glad that Justin wasn't around bugging him anymore, and still Justin couldn't stop, couldn't stop missing him, thought maybe he was in love with him. I thought he answered all your letters? Chris said. All that mail you get. Justin snorted messily against his shirt and said, No, I lied about that, too. Those are nothing, they're just letters from Trace.

Lance remembers, too, and it's why he doesn't trust Nick now. But Chris, he has those sentimental moments, and actually, he does understand how you might look at Justin now and see things you never imagined you could see in him back when he was fourteen, things that have nothing to do with fame and fortune. Sure. It's very understandable.

"They had them in the hotel lobbies," Justin says, "and I would always get one of those for you, and a copy of the train schedule for that city. And that first night, I'd spend the evening memorizing all the routes and all the times that the trains ran. Not just the lines that ran by the hotel, right? All of them. Because the trains in Europe, they run right on schedule, you know? And if you know how the, how the trains run? It was like knowing -- something -- I don't know, it was like knowing how things were put together. And when we'd get yelled at or a show wouldn't go right or I didn't feel well or whatever, I'd just start listing off all the times on the train schedules in my head. Does that make any fucking sense?"

"Sure," Nick says easily.

"No, it doesn't! It doesn't make any sense at all, okay?"

"Yeah," Nick says, still calm, saying the most reasonable thing in the world. "Sure it does. You're a control freak who didn't have any control. You fixated on shit that wouldn't freak you out. It makes complete sense. Man, I've known you since you used to yell at people for mixing up the fifties and the hundreds in the Monopoly money tray. You think train schedules are going to make me change my mind about you?"

Justin is silent for a long time. Chris isn't looking at them, but he knows there's nothing really to spy on. "It's been a really long week," Justin says. "I want to do this, but I have to do it -- small, okay? If I go too fast, I'm gonna flip the fuck out, and I'm sorry, I know this sounds sad as fuck, but-- "

"It's fine. I'll wait in the car. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step," he says in a voice that's not his normal one. It's sort of feathery and sort of pretentious, and Chris almost spits his soda across the bus when he realizes Nick is mimicking Justin. Justin and his weakness for smartasses, Chris thinks, and wipes his mouth on his sleeve. "Whenever you're ready," Nick says then, in all seriousness.

"I'll be there. Soon."

When the door is closed between them, Justin presses his hand to it and says, "Am I going to fuck this up, Chris? Am I going to be all fucking dysfunctional and lose him?"

"Dunno," Chris says. "He doesn't seem like he's thinking about throwing you back."

"Lance thinks-- "

"Fuck Lance. It's nuts to take advice on your love life from Lance. And nuts in, like, a whole different way from how you already are nuts."

Justin grins.



at my charming best

"So when are you breaking up with Britney?" Chris makes quote-marks with his fingers around the key words, although Justin doesn't notice. He's folding his clothes and re-packing them.

"March," Justin says. "Yeah, March, I think. It'll be fun."

"For who?"

"No, really, it will. We worked out a whole timeline. I get to be Suddenly Available Guy, and she's Girl Gone Wild. I'm sensitive and heartbroken. She's wicked. It's like an MMC sketch, only it'll take about a year and a half."

This is a bad idea, Chris is fairly sure. He and Trace have talked it over, and the potential for wrongness is practically infinite, which is too bad, because Britney is good for Justin, it's always been good for him to have a feminine influence in his life, other than his mom and the fans. Trace thinks Justin will look bad any way it goes -- either he's the loser that Britney dumped, or the asshole who's ruining her good name, or, worst-case scenario, he's the closet-case that she finally wised up about. Chris suspects that Justin will always come out of everything looking good, and that maybe Britney thinks that being the bad girl will be more fun than she's going to think it is in six months. But he doesn't say much. If and when the day comes that Brit and Justin's friendship comes apart over this, Chris isn't keen to be the irritating bastard who told them so.

"Her mom is going to freak," Chris says instead.

Justin grins, like he's only half thinking about it. "Man, I think that's half the point."

Chris stares out the bus window, and it looks like JC and Nick and Tiny are eating Chris' pie. He thinks he can see their breath drifting through the beam of the headlights as they stand around Justin's Mustang, and he wonders why the fuckers don't get in the car where it's warmer. "So," Chris says. "Chastain."

"Come on, Chris."

"No, what, what did I say? I'm asking. You're, uh, this is really happening, huh? Like, you ain't lying to me this time, right?"

He likes it when he can make Justin laugh, even a soft little grunt of laughter like that. "No, yeah, this time I'm dead serious. It's good, it's great. I'm thinking when I find a new house, I might ask if he-- "

"I wouldn't," Chris says before he can stop himself.

"Who gives a shit?" Justin says, mildly.

Chris turns around with his back to the window. "It's not that I don't like him."

"Yeah? Because you do a great impression."

"I like Trace. What's wrong with Trace?" Chris loves Trace, actually. He's totally comfortable with his own dorkiness; he can do the whole Dead Parrot sketch with Chris; he mixes the best mudslides on earth; he'd die to protect Justin. He's number eight on Chris' speed-dial. Trace always picks up, and he always tells Chris everything. Also, he's really short, and Chris admires that in a man. He's always had kind of a kink for that -- tall, lanky boy with someone smaller, a thousand miles of arm and leg and waist bent all the way around another body. Chris is man enough to admit that he's jerked off a few times to the idea of Trace and Justin. No law against it.

Justin laughs and looks up at the ceiling. "Oh, Trace, nothing's wrong with Trace. Except for the part where he's turned me down eighteen times over the last five years and I'm starting to think, you know, call me crazy, but I'm starting to think he's not interested."

"Fucking quitter," Chris says. He sort of means it, maybe. He thinks Trace could probably be worn down, but Chris knows from his own experience that getting to Okay, fine, I'll go out with you does not exactly guarantee a happy ending.

"Trace has some bullshit speech about how we need each other like we are. I don't know, ruin the friendship, etcetera etcetera."

Chris wants to laugh, but he'd rather not explain himself, so he controls it. For a few seconds. Control has never been Chris Kirkpatrick's strongest suit. "Does it sound anything like the speech you give me every time you've turned me down for the last five years?" Justin doesn't say anything, so of course, like an idiot, Chris has to keep making noise. "Because, you know, yours is kinda dated, and if you two would, like, confer or whatever. There could be a composite version. All-purpose. You always say you write better when you collaborate, and really-- "

"Okay, that's enough," Justin says sourly. He puts away a pair of pants that look as sharply and tidily folded as something on the new items table at Abercrombie & Fitch. Something that's never been worn. "I'm with Nick. I love Nick. I don't know why you wanna drag up you and Trace and all this other shit, but seriously? I'd rather hear it some other time. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm not at my charming best right now and-- "

"I'm sorry."

"-- I truthfully don't have any fucking thing to say, so I don't-- Yeah. Well, it's okay."



somewhat unique

"You look like you're forgetting something," Justin says. Funny, he has the same look on his face. Small frown, both fidgety hands on the handle of his suitcase. Searching for something, but not with his eyes.

"Dunno, have I?" Chris says. "Should I be giving you, what? Last-minute advice? Look both ways before crossing the street. Never date anyone who doesn't have to contact you through her publicist; it makes it that much less likely she'll have time to drop in and accidentally see how you really live. Floss. Watch out for Lyme disease."

"I'm going to see you at sound check tomorrow. I think I can take care of myself for that long."

Chris laughs, because he thinks Justin is kidding. Justin looks serious. He feels his laughter turn uglier. "Whatever, Justin. Like you've ever taken care of yourself a day in your life -- an hour in your life. Like you have any idea how to do it at all." Sometimes he thinks that Justin stays so busy that he doesn't even see what goes on all around him: the constant choreography of defending Justin, of moving him from one place to the next without hitting his panic buttons, of making sure that he doesn't see anything spinning out of control until it's already on its way to being fixed. People move through Justin's life in an orderly fashion, and he seems to think that it's normal, that life is like that. He doesn't see that every single person in his world who knows what to do for him got schooled somewhere along the line: Lynn taught Britney when to touch him and when to leave him alone, Trace explained to JC what was freaking Justin out when the other kids would move things in the MMC dressing room without telling him, Chris personally trains every bodyguard they've ever had in how to know when Justin feels threatened, because making him feel safe is moonlighting, is what you have to do after you've already put in your hours to really make him safe.

"I can handle it," Justin says. Stubborn. He has no idea what it's going to be like, out there without four other warm bodies between him and the chaos, the crowds, the fifty different kinds of pollution that you have to suck up, if there's not someone else with his mouth to yours, filling up your lungs with clean air.

"So go," Chris says, and sweeps his arm toward the door. He folds his arms and waits. Justin takes a step forward, one step, and then he pauses. It's awful to watch, really. There's a whole life out there waiting for him, and he knows it, and yet here he stands.

"Okay, wait, wait a second," Chris says. Justin isn't moving a muscle, so wait might be unnecessary, but it seems like a kind way to intervene. "Do you want my advice, Justin, for real?"

"Sure," Justin says, sounding resigned.

"Back off from this. You don't have anything to prove to anybody. Take a few months off. Hang out with your boyfriend. Maybe...see somebody?" Justin shakes his head quickly at that, so there's no denying he knows what Chris means. "It won't be like you think it will."

"I'm not stupid, Chris. It'll be fucking hard, I know that. Like I've never done anything that was hard before? Okay, you seem to think I'm, whatever, I'm not capable of being on my own, I need to be nursed through everything, but I don't, I just need to do this. One small step for man, detail by detail, the same fucking way I've always gotten everything done. I've worked too hard for too long to quit before I even find out what I'm really capable of."

"There are ways besides just barreling straight into it. Look, hey, we had a deal, remember? I will if you will? And wipe that smirk off your face," he adds. "I'm not talking about hand jobs in the shower."

"That's too bad," Justin says. "I bet that was more fun than whatever you're talking about."

Lots, but Chris isn't willing to let himself get off the subject here. "I'm talking about the doctors, I'm talking about asking for help. I take my meds like a good little pop idol; you owe it to me. It's an honor thing, you owe it to me to take care of this."

"It's not that simple, fucker. There aren't any meds for what I have, and therapy doesn't do shit. I'm not sick, I'm just like this, and I'll always be like this. All I can do is cope with it."

Chris reaches out to touch Justin's face. He doesn't drop the suitcase and he doesn't put his arm up to protect himself, but he hisses as he leans away, long gone by the time Chris' hand touches the place where Justin was. "Yeah," Chris says. "You're coping great."

He knows all about Justin's not-sickness. He was there while some psychiatric specialist rambled on about how obsessive-compulsive personality disorder didn't necessarily have anything to do with obsessions or compulsions and wasn't the same at obsessive-compulsive disorder at all. Justin's case, the specialist said, while Chris quietly hated him for thinking of Justin as a fucking case, was somewhat unique. "It's not a common anxiety disorder for someone in such a people-oriented profession. Most of the time, people who suffer from OCPD are difficult to like. They come across as rigid, unable to relax, unable to tolerate other people's quirks. You're extraordinarily charming, Mr. Timberlake, which is somewhat surprising."

"He's an uncommon kid," Chris said, and at the same time, Justin said, "I'm charming because it's my job. It's not a choice."

Chris asked about that later, everyone in their bunks with JC snoring quietly and Justin's clip-on book light shining through the dark hall as he studied yet another book or article about his brand, spanking new disorder. "What does that mean, anyway?" he asked. "That it's not a choice?"

He didn't think Justin would answer him, but after a minute, Justin said, "I've always known what I wanted to do with my life. I can't afford to be difficult to like."

"You're not, though. I mean, you're not. Everyone likes you." Justin keeps everything all mixed up, demanding and criticizing and structuring the holy fuck out of everything that crosses his path, and then seasoning it with jokes and bright smiles and sweetly heartfelt speeches about the things he loves the most. People walk away with bruises, but they walk away in love, too. It would've been scary, if Chris had never seen him fall apart, didn't know how breakable he was underneath all the fast-moving bravado.

"Damn right," Justin said grimly. Chris wondered at the time if the people who liked Justin best were the ones who understood him most, or who were most pathetically easy to fool. He didn't really want to know, though, so he didn't wonder very hard.



completely fine

The bus seems quiet without Justin, even though this late at night Justin is usually in his bunk, listening to something on his headphones or writing. Justin isn't noisy most of the time, but the lack of Justin is still quiet.

Chris and JC play gin rummy and listen to Elvis Costello; JC saved a slice of pie for Chris, mixed berry, not cherry. "Oh, my God, we're playing cards," Chris says as if he is just now noticing that. "Are we turning into Joey and Lance, do you think?"

JC seems to think about that for a minute. "No," he finally says. "Probably not, no. Gin."

"I mean, we're not going to get boring and bring a bunch of animals on the bus and sleep all the time?"

JC thinks a little longer. "I might sleep all the time."

"You already sleep all the time. What about the rest of it?"

"No. I'm not boring." JC smiles at him, scruffy and radiant, and Chris wishes he could bounce back from things as fast as JC does. "And you won't bring any animals on the bus," JC adds slyly, scooping up the discard pile, "because you won't want it all messed up in case Justin changes his mind."

"Justin never changes his mind."

"Rigidity and stubbornness," JC quotes wisely. One time, JC wrote a melody to go with the DSM-IV description of OCPD. They were both drunk at the time, so Chris doesn't remember how any of it goes, except the verse that says is reluctant to delegate tasks or work with others unless they submit to exactly his or her way of doing things. Chris keeps nagging at him to come up with new lyrics for that one, because it really is a fucking catchy tune.

"He'll be fine," Chris says. "He's tough. He'll weather it."

"I know," JC says. "And if he needs any of us, he'll call."

He will, but Chris wonders what he'll say. He has a patter, a routine, and it works okay, more often than not. But when it's a lie? When he isn't really there, and he doesn't necessarily know if Justin is completely fine or not, will it still work at all?

Nick probably doesn't know that trick, the one where you put your hands up and wait to see if Justin wants you to take his hands or prove that his space is his own space. Chris never told Trace that one, figuring, you know, it never hurt to have a couple of secrets up your sleeve, even just small ones. He should maybe tell Nick about it. He needs to be looped in anyway. They need to start sharing everything they know with him, and it occurs to Chris that Nick might develop a trick or two of his own. He might be able to school Chris and Trace and Lynn before long.

"Hey," JC says, brushing his thumb over Chris' beard. "What're you thinking about?"

"Nothing," Chris says. "Think Chastain's going to stick it out?"

"Might," JC says. JC never really answers a question, not without leaving loopholes. "He seems to take it all in stride, pretty much. Didn't even try to kiss Ju out at the car. You know, I think he knows the score."

"Great." Chris starts to deal the cards, tossing every other one at JC.

JC leans forward and cups his hands behind Chris' head. Their knees are touching, and their foreheads, and there are panels over their head with zigzagging neon tubes that bathe everything in a sour yellow light at half their full strength. Chris lays his wrists in the crooks of JC's elbows and closes his eyes while JC says, "I'm right here. You're completely fine. Are you breathing?"

He is, deep and scratchy sounds from his chest. "He's not ready," Chris says.

"Yes, you are," JC whispers back, hardly more than a breath on Chris' face.



The thing you think is insignificant
Provides the purest air you breathe

-- Stevie Wonder



LC helped repair my JC characterization, and Kel got my chronology in order for me. They both deserve much good karma, and I thank them. Written for Katie's Definitive Wonder challenge.

end


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