JC sits on the floor with Justin between his open legs, weaving his hair into rows with less deftness than determination. He and Justin share a magpie-like fascination with shiny ornaments and silky ribbons, neither of which they can safely append to their hair without ending up on somebody's Pride website. So they make a date once a week to do it safely behind closed curtains.
"I feel like an Afghanistan wife," Justin complained once, shortly after Real Fame hit, and JC pinched him for sacrelige because, really, but sometimes, now, he understands. They're permitted so little, less and less with every gold single, but oh they're secure, oh they're safer than ever, their mail screened by guys with gloves and their doors locked with codes the company changes unasked. They lumber out on the town inside a living tank of muscled men with guns.
The other day, Chris hadn't backed Joey's joke about some star's move to a gated community, and JC came across brochures in the rack by the coffee table when he went looking for the latest issue of Premiere. He held them over the garbage for nearly a minute and a half before putting them back.
::We have our music,:: he tells himself. ::They don't have music, but we do.:: The eight notebooks stacked under his bed aren't the same thing, notebooks full of unsung songs that lack the easy, breezy, saleable upbeatness that's so them.
Chris can touch Justin in public, because for them it's an established joke, an institutional relationship. Chris is Crazy and Justin is The Baby. Chris can pinch Justin's ass, pick him up, call him pet names, tease him about love. JC doesn't touch anyone much; it's his role to be the Artist, the Thoughtful One, and the Artist usually thinks alone.
He doesn't mind. He still touches them when they're really alone, like they are now.
He finishes threading the last golden strand through the last close-lying braid. Justin puts his hand up for the dressing table mirror with a little bounce, and JC grins and holds the bigger one so he can admire the back.
"I need quills," Justin says. "So I can look like Sonic the Hedgehog."
"No, you can't dye your hair blue," JC says quickly. "Even though Lance did it. No."
"But I like blue," Justin whines. JC would bet his last dollar that it hadn't occurred to Justin to color his hair anything thirty seconds ago.
"You can't," he says. "The curls are your trademark."
"So what? What if I don't like them? What if I want them cut off?"
Justin's vehemence both does and doesn't surprise him. They don't talk a lot, but more and more often they think the same things.
"I like your hair," JC says, smoothing the little gilded braids. "It wouldn't be as fun short."
"Maybe it'd feel nice. Maybe it'd be soft."
"I couldn't hang onto it when we had sex."
Justin laughs. "One track mind, C. One track mind."
Justin sits on the edge of the couch with the little plastic box of ties and clips and beads, plaiting JC's hair into tails for decoration. JC doesn't feel so trapped by hair-as-image. He remembers waking up between Chris and Justin the night after he planned to die and deciding to let it grow. The long waves still feel like him.
When he's done up in a row of glittering twists that frame his face, he goes to the kitchen for a drink and brings back the chive scissors. They're one of three thousand cooking accessories they never use and no one, even at gunpoint, remembers wanting to buy. They're sharp and small and shiny.
He looks at Justin and holds them up, slicing the air. Justin's face lights up and he bows his head.
Freedom's in the small things, JC thinks, holding the first fallen gold in his hand.