"Joseeeeeee! Mi amigo Joseee!" Chris yelled the second he burst through the door. JC fell off the bed. Highly strung, the poor man. Lance snored on. Justin didn't notice, either, because he was in the middle of explaining why the movie he'd picked (Mission To Mars) was watchable, after all ("it's got a message, dude!" - he'd run out of good excuses for that piece of dreck a while ago).
"What?" Joey said, sharply. You needed to be sharp with Chris, or he'd never let you get a word in.
"There's te-qui-la in da house!"
"What the fuck, Chris?" JC muttered, climbing back up. He looked frazzled and adorably sleep-mussed. He'd been going the way of Lance. Another five minutes, and he'd have been drooling
on Joey's shoulder.
"Hey, gimme that," Justin piped in. He'd noticed his lack of audience.
"You ain't got age, baby boy," Chris said and moved the bottle out of reach of Justin's long arms.
"I got plenty age, come on."
"Just give him a drop or he'll whine all night. We already had to suffer through an hour of this shit," and
JC waved a desultory hand at the unspeakable horror of good actors making complete asses of themselves on the TV screen. Joey nodded. He was not prepared for any more suffering, and besides, he wanted some of that booze.
"Why is he asleep?" Chris stood over Lance with the bottle held high. he seemed vaguely offended that someone
would want to sleep through his party. He might not have noticed that, so far, the party was only in his head.
"He's tired," JC muttered. "So'm I, in fact."
"oh, party-poopers!"
"It's two am, Christopher."
"The best time to get wasted, Joshua."
"Would you two just shut up and gimme that bottle," Joey finally said. It was fun to watch Chris bait JC, but not that fun. And Lance was tired because he'd been up all last night catching up on business. JC was tired because he'd been up all night doing ... whatever JC did when he wasn't sleeping. Joey knew this because they had adjoining rooms, and he'd woken up at five and seen the light under the door. It had been quiet on the other side of the door, though, so no parties or orgies or the like (in which Joey wouldn't have minded joining). JC had probably been writing. He did that. He wrote songs by the bucketload, mostly stuff no one ever saw. Joey had a theory that JC wrote goth poetry in his spare time. Stuff about cutting your wrists with broken glass or shooting up crack in your eyeballs.
He got some glasses from the minibar. He even found a rather shrunken and mummified lime there.
"We're in business," Chris crowed. "Watch me. I intend to have fun, even if we're stuck in the short hairs
of the good Lord's ass on a Saturday night."
Things deteriorated quickly from there. Justin still couldn't hold his liquor, which they all knew, but they let him drink anyway. Lance woke up after Chris' third shot and looked seriously pissed off. He was appeased with a drink. Lance and liquor was usually a good combination. It mellowed him down a lot, and he could sit still, just watching people for long, long periods of time, chuckling softly to himself in that phone sex voice.
"Did I ever tell you about that time I was out and we did sex shots, and I didn't notice the girl wasn't a girl
until I bumped my nose against her-- his adam's apple?" Chris was saying.
"Just every time you're drunk, dude," JC said. His eyes were starting to look a little bloodshot, but he was still pretty coherent. It always amazed Joe, the way JC could put the stuff away. The guy had like, no body mass. He should be on his ass already, but instead he looked annoyingly uninebriated. Uninebriated. Uninebriated. Joey tried the word out, said it aloud: "Uninebriated." Well, hell, he wasn't as drunk as he'd like to be, either.
"What?" Chris had started to slur a little, but then he'd been having doubles for every single Joey had.
"Nothing. I'm uninebriated," he said. "And your trannie story is older than you are."
"It's a good story, though."
"Whatever. I've done sex shots on all sorts of people. I did 'em with this guy once, and I'm not sure how I did it, but I got his beard in my eye and had to wear a patch for a week."
"Liar," JC scoffed. Joey was offended. It wasn't a lie. Well, the eyepatch bit was, but that was just stage dressing.
"It was fun. I'd do one on you."
"Yeah, do it, Joey," Chris said, adding, thoughtfully, "fuck, tequila always makes me horny. I could get
all excited from just watching you guys lick each other--" and Justin said,
"What did you say? It does what? It doesn't make me horny," and Chris giggled his nutty, drunken girl-giggle and leaned off the bed so far that he almost toppled off and whispered,
loudly,
"That's cause your balls haven't even dropped yet, infant--" but Joey had stopped listening to them. It occurred to him that he might not be quite so uninebriated after all,
because he actually thought it was a good idea, for a second or so, to launch himself at JC and pin him to the bed and lick his neck in one long slurp. Just for a second, though, because he immediately felt JC go stiff and unresponsive under him. Oops.
Chris was laughing like a fool, holding his belly and spilling tequila all over the bedspread. Lance was giggling - only with Lance, you couldn't call it giggling, because it was pitched so low that it was hardly more than the rumble of distant thunder. Joey crawled off JC and tried to remember whose room this was. Probably Justin's. JC rolled off the bed, still in control of all his limbs. His face was pinched and somehow closed off.
"Fuck you," he muttered and left.
Chris blinked twice, in exaggerated South Park-style.
"What crawled up his ass and died?" Justin muttered from his place somewhere under the bed.
"Um," Joey said. He didn't know.
JC had, predictably, headed for his room. Joey caught up with him as he was turning the corner into the hall.
"hey, JC," he said. JC stopped, but didn't turn. "What's up? What was that all about?"
"Nothing," he said tightly. The tightness was there in his back and shoulders, too. He stood straight and stiff and looked as malleable as granite.
"I'm sorry about that, man. It was just - it was a joke, okay. You know, horsing around? You might have heard
about that. We do it all the time around here."
"don't patronise me, Joey. I'm fine. Go away."
The fact that JC had still not turned around - that JC was talking to the wall, and Joey was left talking to his back - did tell Joey that he wanted to be alone. But something perverse and curious in him (and probably partly due to señor Cuervo, as well) made him take the last few steps up and put his hand on JC's shoulder.
"Don't touch me," JC said, and his voice was still tense and too high-pitched, and he was also lying through his teeth. Joey had known JC for way too long to buy that shit. JC couldn't lie to save his life. His voice always gave it away. He got nervous and shrill and there was a little quiver there that never showed up otherwise. Joey kept his hand where it was. Squeezed JC's bony shoulder a little.
"hey-" he said, a little uncertainly. He had no idea what had brought this on. He just knew that he had ... licked ... and... Oh.
"I'm going to bed now," JC said, and if Joey had been sober, he just knew he would have let him go. But he wasn't, and the tequila burned in his stomach; he remembered JC's strangely small, strangely hard body under his, and he didn't.
Instead, he tightened his grip and spun JC around, quickly so he wouldn't have time to fight back, and pushed him against the wall, pushed him flush against the wall and licked him again. From his collarbone right up to his jaw, and then a quick slip of tongue behind his ear for good measure.
He stood back, feeling like he'd made some sort of point, but not entirely sure what it was. JC had turned
his head away, and his eyes were distant and cold.
"There you go," Joey said. "Go to--"
"Do you want to? You can," JC said. There was no quiver in his voice. He was still staring down the hall, away
from Joey.
"What?" Joey said, stupidly. His head spun in lazy circles, and his clothes seemed too tight and scratchy. "What?"
"You can fuck me. Joey. Just do it. hard," and he lifted his eyes, finally, from whatever intensely fascinating
spot on the carpet down the hall. Joey almost backed away.
"I--"
"What? don't tell me you weren't thinking about it."
He hadn't, he honestly hadn't thought that. But he was now, he was thinking, and he kept smacking into the wall of JC's intense, creepy, freak-ass eyes that were not asking questions or saying no or doing anything but telling him to get his shit together right now or get trampled--
"Work for it, Joey," JC said and pushed him. Hard, right in the chest. Joey reacted like he always did: he pushed back, not too hard. But JC was granite, not moving, just slitting his eyes and hissing in Joey's face, "work for it--" so Joey pushed harder, one hand square in the middle of JC's chest, one grabbing his arm and twisting it, spinning him around and hello to the wall again, JC's face right into the aqua-and-pink wallpaper. Joey thought, this is nuts, and it was, but it was also, not surprisingly, fun, great fun. JC wasn't bending over, wasn't begging him to let go or touch him or do something; he was struggling fiercely, and he was strong and vicious as a small, pissed-off dog, and Joey thought it was also not much of a surprise that JC would want it like this, muscle against muscle, bone against bone, hard and unkind and wild as all hell. JC's romantic streak was not connected to his sex drive.
Joey pulled JC's arm higher, making him bend a little at the knees. He leaned in and breathed in JC's ear, whispered, "not out here, though," and he thought he heard a short, disappointed
whimper, but not even JC was that crazy.
He almost had to drag JC into his room by the scruff of his neck. He felt a lot more drunk now than he had when he first ran out of Justin's room. He figured tequila and adrenaline and hormones made for some groovy drug cocktail. He felt far away from his body, like his neck had stretched into a thin stalk. He thought about those women in that tribe somewhere, the ones with the copper rings around their necks. He wondered how they had sex. Very carefully, probably. He didn't need to be careful. In fact, if he tried to be, JC would screech at him like a cat rubbed the wrong way, twist and try to claw him in the face or bend his fingers backwards until Joey had to use his weight to keep him down. He was glad JC was such a skinny little bastard, because he was like a car with busted brakes now, unstoppable. Joey held him down, twisted his arm again, pushed his face into the pillow until JC was red-faced and panting harshly like a dog in a choking collar, and every muscle and vein stood out in a living bas-relief under his sweat-slicked skin.
Working out the logistics wasn't easy, not with JC being about as cooperative as an armful of large snakes, but Joey had been around. Getting jeans unbuttoned and pulled down and
a condom rolled on one-handed was doable. JC laughed out loud when Joey finally got himself lined up and ready, a whooping, insane laughter, and he threw himself backwards, upwards, taking Joey by surprise. He collapsed heavily and drove himself all the way in, all the way home, deep and tight and probably painful as fuck. JC just kept laughing, in short, breathy bursts now.
It wasn't going to be much of a showcase of stamina. Not for either one. Tequila and tension and violence did them in after a pathetically short time. JC shimmied under Joey, arched his
back and humped the bedspread twice, sharply, and would probably have howled loud enough to wake everyone on the floor if Joey hadn't anticipated that through his drunk-sex-crazy haze and clapped a hand over his mouth. He got bitten mercilessly for his trouble, and the muffled holler was half-indignant,
half-triumphant, but he hardly felt the pain in his fingers because just then his own orgasm arrived, clubbing him in the back and making the world lurch and flicker in front of his eyes.
He released JC with a sigh and a wince. JC was soft and pliant as a newborn kitten now, drenched in sweat and breathing heavily, but smiling a dazed, happy smile when he turned around to face Joey.
"That was fun," he said, mellowly. There was a deep rasp to his voice, and Joey hoped he hadn't blown his
vocal chords shouting like that. Probably not. JC knew how to yell without hurting himself.
Joey collapsed back against the messed up bedspread. "Yeah," he said. "Fun. You're a sick puppy."
"You weren't complaining." JC was grinning now, a big, goofy grin. That was the same grin Joey saw on him after the especially good shows, the ones where everything had gone just right, and every note had been pitched just right, and every step had been just right, and the crowd had been right and everything, everything had been right, and that was the grin. JC's I-just-got-laid-good-and-well grin.
Joey had to grin back, even though his hand hurt and he felt limp and quivery like sometimes when he'd overdone a workout. Ridden hard and put away wet. And the booze was starting to
move around in his stomach, reminding him that tequila might pack a good punch, but it left a bruise, too. And sometimes not just that, and he was up and out of the bed on spaghetti-weak legs, stumbling on his and JC's jeans. He just made it to the bathroom.
"No offense, dude!" he shouted to JC when he could open his mouth for anything but the José Cuervo
Especial return elevator again.
"None taken," JC said behind him, making him jump. "I'm not feeling all that daisy-fresh, either."
Joey got up and rinsed his mouth and face. JC stood quietly behind him, naked and sweaty and still smiling
a little.
"You can't hold your liquor. You should just hang out with Justin and stop bugging the big boys."
"Fuck off. I had twice as much as you."
"Had not."
"Had too. You suck."
"Yeah, but I can drink you under the table any day, Fatone," and Joey decided to shut him up by hauling him close and hugging him. No kissing, though, because that was a little too up close and personal at the moment. JC melted and hung bonelessly on him and snuffled a little giggle into his neck. Sex seemed to turn him into some sort of new and interesting puppy dog - mellow and giggly and touchy-feely. Joey figured he'd keep him. |
