1: the bone of contention
Showing up on the bus with a fat, discoloured lip and a bruise vaguely the shape of Jamaica crowning a cheekbone, you are prepared for the worst. You have a good story.
You are sharing a bus with JC this morning; usually, you'd be riding with Justin and Joey, and spend the day fighting over the PlayStation, but you cornered Lance in the elevator and made him switch. Lance seemed dour and unrested, and didn't even look at you, so no questions to dodge. You are thankful. Your head feels twice as big as usual. You haven't called Dani. You aren't going to.
JC looks bright and shiny and awfully awake. He takes one look at you and makes a scary bug-eyed face. You close your eyes and try to think happy thoughts. No luck. You just see Justin's wet, accusing eyes. Joy.
"What happened to you?"
"Fight. Some Eminem-digging dork had to shoot off his mouth."
You open your eyes in time to catch JC's eyebrows almost touching his hairline. "Johnny's gonna freak."
"'s okay. Slap on the foundation, and no one'll notice a thing."
He is looking suspicious. "I thought you took Justin back early?" he says. You have a moment of free-falling panic before you catch himself and mutter,
"Curly wasn't much help. I bet he can't even remember me getting my ass kicked all over downtown wherever-the-hell-we-are."
"He was pretty wasted," JC says and picks up his scuffed, road-worn notebook. He's wearing his tortured face. You figure he's having some inner artistic struggle. He doesn't seem terribly concerned about your face, and you are almost disappointed. You worked so hard on your story. JC only glances at you, and says, distractedly, "did you piss him off?"
"What?" you say, too quickly, and you're happy your voice is naturally squeaky.
"You shouldn't fight with Justin," JC says, already riffling through his little book. "Not when he's drunk. Think sometimes, Chris."
"Uh..." but that's it, JC has left the building, faded out. He has this infuriating way of tuning people out, mid-conversation. It drives you up the walls on a regular basis. You spend a lot of time coming up with annoying stunts just to make JC pay attention, usually until someone (Joey seems to have been appointed this position by some sort of general consensus) finally lifts you up by the scruff of your neck and shakes you a little to shut him up. The good part about this is that all the shaking and ragging and squealing tends to finally draw JC's wandering attention. You aren't overly blessed with dignity.
Today, you're just relieved.
There's a meet and greet scheduled at eleven am. You get off the bus. You stay behind JC, trying to make yourself look small. You figure it shouldn't be too hard.
Justin comes around the other bus and stops dead. He gets a look on his face like he just saw something simultaneously unspeakably disgusting and unbearably sad - like a week-dead kitten, maybe.
Then he quickly turns on his heel and disappears behind the bus again. Joey shows up in his place, waggling his eyebrows at you.
"Who pissed in his Cap'n Crunch?"
JC looks over his shoulder at you. His expression is reproachful, but he doesn't say anything. You shrug and trudge on. You are a grown man. You can deal.
Inevitably, Joey brings it up at the first moment he gets you alone. You're in the lounge of some radio station. You're getting water. Your hangover is a persistant one, despite the nice, relaxing time on your own you had after you were nixed from the meet n greet. Apparently, there was not enough make up in the world to cover up your shiner. Thankfully, the next show is three days away. You think you might get sick of the constant reproachment.
"What is up with Justin?"
Justin's been avoiding you all day. You have been avoiding him right back. You're both acting like children, and Justin is the only one of you who has the excuse of actually being a kid.
You don't want to talk about Justin with Joey. You use the standard evasive action: stumble on your own - conveniently untied - shoelaces and end up throwing your waterglass into Joey's lap. A tussle ensues, and when it's over, Joey's wet and exasperated and laughing breathlessly, and has forgotten all about Justin's mood swings.
Things settle down from then on. You are the master of obfuscation and evasion, and you make sure not to spend too much time in the same room as Justin. Justin stops looking at you like you are a dead kitten. He stops looking at you altogether. You know that sooner or later, someone is going to make someone talk, but you're happy for any respite. You call Dani. You don't sound as shaky as you feel when you talk to her.
2: blatant search for stoned affection
It's the most disgusting sense of déjà vu: you can even smell rum and bacardi. Justin has been seriously hitting the groove tonight, moving like smoke over water, back in form as teen chick-pulling phenomenon. You can just barely see the lucky lady through the throng; Justin is strangely focused, concentrating his efforts on one girl, apparently seriously intending to get lucky. Which is the part that isn't old hat. Far as you know, Justin is usually happy with some hot bumpin' and grindin' on the floor, combined with maybe a couple of kisses and gropes in some slightly more secluded booth before leaving without her.
She's a tiny thing, pretty and dark. Her face is nothing like the bland run-of-the-mill hottie: almost no make-up; a little round; big, black eyes. Trés Janeane Garofalo. Witchy. Justin's type, so far, has run more the way of blond, busty and overproduced, but this is a classy girl. In fact, it's someone you might consider including in your own fantasy album. You see Justin pull her closer and slide his hands down her back, down, down, and yes - cupping her ass. Damn. You get up, not entirely steadily.
"I'm going," you tell JC, hoping that your voice doesn't sound as slurred as it feels in your mouth. "Make sure he gets back without getting-- mobbed. Or whatever."
JC blinks, twice, and follows your gaze to Justin's all-groovin', all-boppin' escapades.
"Are you kidding me? He's in great shape. He should be helping you get back. How many have you had?"
"Just a few, daddy," you say, getting ticked off. You're ready to make your getaway, but you seem to have misplaced your legs. "I'm okay."
"I worry about you, Chris," JC says, and this is just so out of the left field that you have to sit down again. Sometimes JC just exceeds himself.
"You-- what? You're a kid, Josh."
"I know. I know, but you are ... you're--" He waves his hands helplessly. His gesture suspiciously seems to include Justin. You feel cold and queasy. You've been expecting JC to wake up. JC always does, finally, when things get hairy. He might be a space cowboy of the worst degree, but he comes back down out of orbit when he's needed. Sort of like one of those secluded, lone wolf super heroes. Where Justin makes you feel like a dirty, middle-aged lech, JC makes you feel like a snot-nosed toddler with chocolate milk stains on his bib.
"It's all fuckin' relative," you mutter, resigning yourself to the Talk.
"Yeah, it is. This ... thing, with Justin. You have to--" he's picking his nails, clearly dying to just chew them down to the quick, but way too aware of the public location to let his baser instincts rule his behaviour. Sometimes, JC is such a trained monkey that you just want to slap him around until he loosens up.
JC has zoned out, apparently from looking at his fingernails, and you are watching Justin out of the corner of your eyes. The girl is practically climbing down the front of his pants. She looks glistening and breathless. Justin looks ... determined. As you watch - all the while trying to look like you're not watching, no way, not you, not that - Justin stops dancing and begins picking his way through the crowd, hauling the girl along by her hand. She wobbles on her high heels, and you're moved to think that she might not be quite as classy as she looks. Closer up, she doesn't look as much like Janeane Garofalo.
"--ould talk to him. Chris?" and you realise that JC has been talking for a while. But you can't turn away from the sight of Justin's determined face and Justin pulling the pretty girl with him towards the back of the club. He's not gonna-- no fucking way is he gonna-- but it might just happen, the way Justin's been-- shit.
"Fuck," you say.
"What?"
"He's gonna-- fuck. I gotta--" You push yourself to your feet and into the throng of people. "I'll go talk to him!" you yell with forced cheer over your shoulder. JC looks puzzled. You walk on.
It feels like the crowd has doubled, all of a sudden. The music is pounding at you like a living thing; the bass like a second heartbeat in your chest. Justin's curly head bobs into view every other second, and you elbow your way through the jungle of sweaty, grinding bodies.
Shit. He's taking her out back. The emergency exit opens into a long, murkily lit corridor. You stand quietly in the doorway until you see Justin and the nameless girl push through a sliver of pale streetlight. Then you follow, feeling excitement flutter deep in your stomach like seasickness.
3: dirty up your mind
You should stop them, you should, this is stupid. In fact, it's not even stupid, cause stupid could not even begin to cover what this is. They're gonna, yeah, they're gonna do it right there in the alley. Way to go, kiddo. Get your rocks off amid the used needles and fermenting vegetables and empty milk cartons. Push her against that filthy, rain-wet dumpster and--
--and he does, the little fucker. You're frozen right outside the door, smelling garbage and puke and exhaust, watching Justin push his hands under the woman's (and it's clearly a woman; you are willing to bet she's closer in age to you than the kid) slinky top, cupping her small breasts; spread her legs with his knees, kiss her in a sloppy, sexy, nasty way that you just cannot mesh with your memory of puppyish, clumsy touches--
It's raining, it's pouring down, but the happy couple down the alley doesn't seem to take much notice. The woman's black hair is turning stringy and lank in the drizzle, but Justin's springy curls only get a new wet look shine to them. It takes a lot more than some spring shower to keep down the 'fro.
She's got a leg up around his waist now, and he's lifting her, pushing her flush against the wall, hitching up her other leg. You are standing right where you are, not quite thirty yards away, but they're so intent on doing what they're doing that they probably wouldn't notice an audience of hundreds.
You should ... by all rights, you should march right up to them, grab Justin by the shoulder and yell 'are you fucking NUTS?!' into his face. You should. But you don't. You just lean heavily against the wall and watch, the seasickness swelling and roiling in your stomach, a tightness in your chest making it hard to breathe, hard to think, hard to move.
They're unbuttoning, unsnapping, pushing aside various items of clothing, revealing flashes of wet skin under wet fabric. Justin is still not fumbling at all. It looks as choreographed and professional as something out of a high-class softcore skinflick: every angle is attractive; every sound is muted and tastefully unintrusive; even the brief intermission when they work out the prophylactic issue looks perfectly staged. You've never had sex like that. You think you might be hallucinating this, making up some fevered fantasy of Justin lifting this black-haired, black-eyed sprite of a girl and sliding home with complete ease. The woman bites her lip and arches her back; Justin has closed his eyes. His face is rapt. He looks like he does when he's singing something slow and heart-wrenching.
You're still feeling sick, sick in every way, but you're trapped in some sort of bubble of unreality and cannot look away. Not even when Justin slowly, slowly, slowly turns his head and your eyes meet and his are cold and angry, but he is pulling in a long breath just like that time and just like that time he shudders and throws back his head and the girl is whimpering and moaning and writhing artistically and she turns her head too and her face is round and pale and her eyes are very dark. You do not look away.
They separate discreetly; there's a moment of detachment when they tuck everything back where it's supposed to go and straighten their clothes, and then the woman is walking away. She doesn't say goodbye, and Justin doesn't look after her. His eyes are on you. You can't read his expression, but the fading bruise on your cheekbone starts aching again.
Justin suddenly wilts where he stands. The back-alley Don Juan disappears and leaves a hollow-eyed, drenched adolescent in his wake. He pushes his hands into his pockets and shudders in the rain. There are drops of water in his eyebrows, eyelashes, running down his cheeks like tears, dripping from his chin. You notice a cold trickle down your own back. It's really fucking pouring, and you're standing here in this dirty alley, staring at each other like the protagonists in some grand guignol megacheese drama. All that's missing is the orchestral score.
"Um ..." you say. Not very smooth, and it breaks the mood effectively. Justin straightens his back and glares at you.
"Leave me the fuck alone," he says roughly, but there's a quiver to his voice that softens it considerably.
"That was stupid," you say, sounding just as stupid in your own ears. You take a couple of steps away from the door.
"What's it to you?"
"Justin--"
"No, really - what the hell is it to you?"
"We're all in this--"
"If you say we're all in this together I'm going to fucking kick your ass again," he growls, and he looks like he might mean it. Your stomach cramps in surprised fear. How did he get so big and scary? Little Justin? The world has moved on.
He must have caught the way you shrunk back, because suddenly he looks contrite and a little scared himself, and maybe he's about to start apologising again, like some wife-beating piece of trailer trash, and you can't watch that happen, not to him. So you beat him to the punch and say, "I'm sorry, Justin."
"What?" He's moved closer, somehow, without making it obvious. He's not down in the alley anymore, he's right up in your face, right there, sex-flushed and rain-wet and so fucking, painfully beautiful this moment that you just want to hit the ground and kiss his oversized sneakers.
Thankfully, the impulse fades before you succumb to it. "I'm sorry," you repeat, and you really mean it, but not just sorry for him, but sorry for you, sorry for Dani, sorry because you are lost, you're drunk and tired again and you want him to push you a little more, maybe even slam you against the rough, dirty brick wall behind you. Maybe hurt you. Maybe--
"Chris?"
"Hunh?"
"Fuck you." He's almost in your fucking pocket, now, he's so close. "Fuck you! Fuck you! FUCK YOU!" and oh god, oh GOD, his breath smells the same; rum and coke and something sweet, candy hearts and wine gums, and you don't know whether to shrink back until the wall stops you or just push forward and hit the cliff face of him in front of you, wash against him like the tide.
Instead you do nothing at all; let him come to you - and he does; maybe it's inevitable that it should happen like this. His fingers dig into your arms, his strong, young, hard body traps you irresistably against the wall. It's so easy to let him lead.
His mouth still tastes of her - a spicy aftertaste that you don't recognise and instantly resent - but he's still there, underneath it. There's nothing tentative or childish about this kiss: he's giving you exactly what he gave her, and you wonder vaguely if he might be proving some sort of point you didn't know he was arguing. You're soaked to the bone and you can almost feel steam rising off your heated skin. Your arms burn, and you know you'll have bruises. He is not gentle, and he is not asking for guidance. He's taking. Is this still me hallucinating? you ask yourself, dazed and burning. Is this me living out some whacked-out rape fantasy?
You find an unexpected source of free will somewhere hidden under the rubble of desire and guilt and good intentions, and you struggle feebly in his bone-grinding grip. God, the boy seems to have enough strength in his fingers to snap your arms like twigs--
He lets go as quickly as he latched on to you, and you're snapping for air and panting helplessly, leaning back against the wall like you're the only thing holding it up.
He's looking at his feet, awkward again - you've lost count of his mood swings, the way he flips 180 degrees every five seconds - and he mutters, hoarsely and under his breath, "Fuck you, Chris."
"Justin, don't--"
"Stop fucking with me," he says sullenly, and the fire is gone from his voice. He sounds tired and broken. "I'm sick of you fucking with me."
"I'm not--" You want to protest, but you break off and bite your lip when you realise that of course you are; you've been fucking with him since you noticed the way he looked at you sometimes when he was too drunk or punchy or just feel-good relaxed to keep his guard up. You've been teasing him and leading him on and playing with him like he's your own personal life-size, anatomically correct Justin Timberlake action figure.
"All you had to do was say no, man," he says, softly. His eyes are still demurely lowered, but his posture isn't demure at all: he looks like he's holding back a rabid animal. "Just say no before..."
"I know - I didn't-- I never meant--" but you're not sure what it is you didn't mean. You don't know how exactly you got to this ... place, this situation, but you do know you have to get out of it. You reach out, carefully, and and touch his shoulder. It's like putting your hand on a live wire; he's quivering with tension. You say, softly, "Justin."
"Don't say my name," he says, automatically, without looking up.
"I'm taking you back to the hotel," you tell him. His head snaps up and he shakes you hand off him.
"You're doing it again! Don't touch me!" He backs away. Hello again, dead kitten. You start wondering when you became the one begging for more.
"Come on. Let's go back." You're suddenly completely beat, but you're still turned on like nobody's business, and the confusing signals from your body are not making it easier to think. You have a sudden image of sleeping comfortably entwined in a tangle of long limbs, and it hurts, because they're the wrong limbs and it's not just wrong because of that, but because it's wrong in some fundamental, bone-sure way.
"I'm tired," he says, and he looks it. He's stopped looking at you with disgust. You don't think he knows how he feels. You don't know how he feels.
"Yeah, me too. Let's go see if we can round up everyone else."
He looks around, a little distracted, like he just woke up and suddenly realised he's in some dirty back alley in a town he can't even remember the name of. He wrinkles his nose delicately. "It stinks here," he says, as if this surprises him.
"Yeah. Probably something to do with those dumpsters over there, fuzzbrain." Ragging him feels too normal for this situation, and he doesn't smile or punch your arm or tickle you or give you a noogie or any of those million things that used to be the norm before blowjobs came along and muddied the waters.
He shrugs uncomfortably and heads for the door. You follow him.
4: your bedroom eyes and your baby pout
You find JC sitting pretty much where you left him. It is a fact: the man cannot party to save his life. Next to his almost untouched gin and tonic, he's got a little pile of cocktail napkins covered in scribbled notes and snippets of verse. You think he probably thinks he's Rimbaud or someone like that, and you love him for his delusions.
"Are you going?" he asks warily, eyeing you, then Justin, then you again through narrowed eyes.
"Yeah," Justin says, deceptively nonchalantly, "you coming?"
"You seen La-- nevermind," because you spot them in the crowd, both Lance and Joey, boogying down to the beat with a gaggle of laughing girls around them. On another night, you might have joined them.
JC comes with you outside. He's probably been waiting for someone to get sick of the place since eleven thirty. He never wants to go home on his own. It's almost like he's in denial about the fact that he really does prefer to stay at home and write sappy lyrics and compose songs that let him and Justin show off their voices. JC is a weirdo, but what can a guy do? He's your brother and you love him.
You sit next to the window, keeping your eyes on the street outside. Justin's damp and hot next to you. He smells like wet wool and cigarrette smoke, and he sits closer to you than he should. Just before the car pulls over in front of the hotel, he leans even closer and whispers in your ear: "Do you hate me?"
You flinch, almost breaking his nose with your shoulder. "FUCK!" he yells and doubles over, holding his face and groaning like his lifeblood is spilling.
"What are you two doing?" JC snaps, getting his arms tangled with mine in our combined efforts to ensure that Justin really isn't dying with bone splinters lodged in his frontal lobe.
"It was an accident," you mutter, and Justin shoots me a homicidal glance. "It was. Sorry."
"You' fuggin' shoulder's 'ike a fuggin' wock!" he whines.
"Come on, it's not broken," JC soothes, stroking his soggy hair and giving him a quick hug. Justin leans back, breathing heavily, but he lowers his hands and stops sounding like a kicked puppy. You are, like you are every time, amazed at how JC instinctively knows just how to handle Justin-in-pain. Maybe you should tell him about the mess you've gotten yourselves in and let him deal with it.
That wouldn't be fair, though. JC isn't the one who's making Justin hurt.
JC gives you an admonishing, outrageously fatherly look before disappearing into his room. You look at his closed door for a moment, shaking your head, and in that short time, Justin has managed to slip away. He's pulling the door shut, and there's a pain in your head that send ice cold tendrils down your back. You direct a couple of sotto voce curses at your own stupidity and raise your voice a little to call his name. He startles, turns back, meets your eyes with stiff defensiveness. He's got his hand clamped on the doorframe like it's about to clamber to freedom down the hall.
"I don't hate you," you say quickly. "Don't ever think I hate you, I could never hate you. You're my--" and you bite down on the 'little brother' that was just about to slip through. He wouldn't appreciate it, and it's not true, anyway, not anymore. You try again, still not sure what you're even trying to communicate. "You're ... you."
That was smooth. He still looks defensive, but he's not holding on to the doorpost like it's his only lifeline anymore.
Okay, there has to be something you can say to make things ... well, if not right, then maybe less wrong, less awkward, less broken. Except for the obvious. Which you can't say, even though it's so clearly true. Not like this, because he might misunderstand it - or alternatively, understand it too well.
There are fifteen yards of hotel corridor between you and him. It only takes a few seconds to walk down it, but you're stomach-turningly afraid that he'll slip away in those short moments.
He doesn't. He stands stock-still, slightly hunched in his doorway. The TV is on in his room; he must have forgot to turn it off before we left. It's CNN. It strikes you as funny, but you can't really tell why.
Another thing that might be funny at some other time when you're not standing in this drab corridor with your heart in your mouth might be how your brain seems to have developed a lag: you don't really know what you're doing until you've already done it. You have no idea you were about to touch him until your hand is touching his face. You didn't know you were going to grab him and push him into the room until the door slams shut behind you. If you'd known you were going to kiss him before you did, you wouldn't have dared take that first step down the hall.
The devil made me do it, you think fleetingly, but he's already opening for you, letting you in, wrapping you up in a cover of wet-wool-boy-smell and eager hands. You have one fraction of a second's worth of time to hesitate, think about coming regrets, other loves, Justin's fists rearranging your face, and then you shrug it off - and it's easy, too damn easy.
And after he's trips you and dropped you half-roughly, half-gently onto the plush chintz sofa, you whisper the truth into his mouth and hope he doesn't hear you.
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