Pretty Dead City No one asked anything. Lance sat down on the curb next to Joey and they all sat quietly again. Chris noticed that nobody looked at him. Chris tried, but it was as if his eyes wouldn't stay on Lance long enough to get a good look; they kept sliding off like drops of water off an oily surface. And it was a little like Lance was covered in some kind of oil; there was a faint iridescent shimmer around him, visible in the corner of the eye. It was camouflage, Chris thought, obvious but still effective.
Freaky shit. Chris looked at Justin instead.
"How are you feeling?" he asked, not because he wanted to know - God knows he didn't; Justin looked too-old/too-young and fragile and Chris thought he might be better off not knowing what it felt like to be Justin right now - but because he needed to say something before it was too late to break the silence.
"I'm okay," Justin said. He was lying through his teeth.
"Sure you are," Chris said, and he didn't think he managed to keep the sarcasm down. He touched Justin's white face. The skin, pulled tight over his bones, felt dry, hot, paper-thin.
"I'll be okay," Justin promised, "don't worry," and JC turned his head sharply and glared at him. Chris saw him pull in a breath to say something and said quickly, just to stop him,
"What was the last thing you thought of before...this happened?"
That was right from some hidden place inside him, that one, but it was a good question, he supposed. Maybe relevant. Maybe even important.
Justin blinked and Chris thought he'd have to clarify, but then Justin lowered his eyes and he might have been blushing if he hadn't been so deathly pale - if there had been enough blood left in him to go around. "I was thinking about you," he said, and his stiff shoulders, his refusal to look up gave it away, gave away just what he'd been thinking. Chris, who had been thinking about JC to avoid thinking about Justin, felt guilty and ignored it.
He met JC's cold eyes over Justin's bowed head. He thought: It could have been so easy to unmess this mess. Too late was something he'd rather never think.
"I was thinking about you, too," Joey said. It was Chris' turn to blink, but Joey continued, "--probably not in the same way, though," and he actually managed something resembling a leer. "I was going to kick your ass for that shit you pulled on JC."
JC got up, with strangely jerky movements, and stomped across the street. Chris saw him snap his head to the side and spit on some defenceless gutter stone.
"It wasn't supposed to be like that," Chris said helplessly. Forgive me, he thought, for I knew not what I did. He felt stupid but couldn't stop himself from repeating, "It wasn't."
"I know," Joey said.
"We're sitting here like a bunch of beached whales," Chris said with heat he didn't know he had left in him, "and look around! There aren't any fences here, no guards. We could just--"
"It's a loop, stupid," Lance said, and everyone, even JC from way across the street, jumped.
Chris forced his eyes to accept that Lance existed, rainbow shimmer be damned. Far be it from Chris to iconify Lance, but he looked older now, wiser. Fucking sage, Chris thought and groaned inwardly. Gentle, wise Lance was about as believable as permanently aggressive JC. All bets were off.
"We could walk until the sun explodes and we'd never even find another street," Lance said. His voice had that same shimmer to it, like whatever it was had seeped down his throat and clung to his vocal cords. "But there's, like, a portal."
"How the hell do you know that?"
"I asked," Lance said.
They all really tried to look at him, then. Chris had to give up after a while and watched Joey slump from the effort, Justin shake his head in distress, JC freeze with his back ramrod-straight and his head held high.
"Asked who?" Justin asked, his voice barely a whisper.
"Over there," Lance said and pointed. His arm was a faint outline in swirling colour that made Chris' eyes tear up.
They looked.
"Oh, there," Chris said sarcastically, just to be a pain in the ass, but then he did see it.
He - they - must have been seriously blind. Looking past some big fucking things. I mean, he thought, you normally wouldn't miss a huge, shock-pink fucking gala entrance complete with blinking gold stars and a goddamned red carpet reaching out into the middle of the empty street.
Lance grinned at them, wolfishly, and said, "Yeah, now you see it."
"Wow," Justin said softly and Chris heard his breath coming in short, shallow gasps. He took Justin's hand and held it.
"We don't have passes for that," JC said loudly. "That's not for us, Lance. What did you DO?"
"There's a trick to it," Lance said. "It's waiting for us."
"Okay," Chris said, "okay, okay, this is starting to sound seriously fucked up."
He felt the annoyed glare Lance shot him rather than saw it.
"I guess, um. I guess we should--" Joey said, tentatively. "How?"
"We have to--" Lance started, but he didn't get any further because JC said, loudly,
"NO." They all turned, like the audience at a tennis game. JC had crossed his arms in front of his chest, set his jaw, spread his legs a little. He looked like he was spoiling for a fight. "We're not-- You're not seriously thinking about going in there, are you?"
"It's the way out," Lance said calmly.
"Out of WHAT? To WHAT?"
Lance didn't answer. JC stood where he stood. Chris looked at the pink gate, red carpet, golden stars. The colours were hurting his eyes; they were brighter, more real, more there than anything else in this fucked up city. He thought maybe the city was a dream, but the gates were solid reality. He'd only been so caught up in the haze of the cold, pale hallucination that he'd been looking past the Technicolor reality that had surely been there all along. All along, when they'd walked up and down this street like hamsters running in a wheel.
Justin leaned his head against his shoulder again, breathed softly on his neck; warm, damp air that felt alien to Chris. Not bad, though, just out of place. He wanted more of it, so he turned his head and lifted his hand, touched Justin's pale face, put his mouth on his mouth, breathed warm, damp, used air that felt lighter and sweeter than the dry harsh air around them. Justin moved slowly against him, twined his arms around him neck; long, stronger than Chris had thought they'd be at this point.
"That's the idea, but we need more," Lance said. "We have to, like, share."
"You don't know what you're doing," JC said, "you don't have the first fucking clue."
Lance ignored him. So did everyone else. Chris twisted himself away from Justin and missed the warmth like someone cut it out of him with a dull knife. Justin looked better, though, marginally better. Maybe that's what we've been missing, Chris thought. It would be a really fucking obvious thing to miss. Cold, harsh planet? Share the goddamn body heat. He felt stupid.
"What do we have to do?" Justin asked. Chris thought there was colour creeping up his cheeks, but he might have been imagining it. Wishful thinking.
"Come closer," Lance said softly. He was still hard to look at. Like the gates, he was too bright to focus on but unlike the gates, he looked unreal, half-human. "Closer."
"He's a liar," JC said harshly; it was almost a growl. "Lying piece of shit. Do you want to die?"
"Shut up, JC," Joey said and moved over a little so they could gather round. Chris moved because he couldn't see what else to do. The gates glowed fire-pink in the corner of his eye. He was holding Justin's hand, but couldn't remember taking it. Maybe Justin reached for him.
"What, like a group hug?" Justin said, a little hesitantly. "What should we--"
Lance reached for him, quickly, and Chris saw sparkles fly, the golden oil stuff was sparkling and it was alive, he thought, alive and reaching for Justin with Lance. Oooh, he thought, oooh, aaaah, so THAT'S how it is.
"Far out," Justin said and leaned in.
Far out, Chris thought. This fucked up movie has great special effects.
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