DISCLAIMER: I don't know any member NSYNC I also don't know anyone who knows NSYNC. In fact, I don't know anyone who knows someone who knows NSYNC. What follows is a work of fiction, and a product of my (admittedly demented) imagination. It also involves sex, sex between boys, and if that is not your thing, or if you are not old enough to read such things, you should stop reading now.
TOGETHER/ALONE
CHAPTER TWO: What We Have Lost
For what we cannot accomplish, what is denied to love,
what we have lost in the anticipation --
a descent follows, endless and indestructible .
William Carlos Williams Paterson (From Book Two)
JC did not watch Lance go. Instead, JC walked out of the bedroom, down the stairs, and into the backyard. Now JC sat naked on the grass, his legs splayed awkwardly in front of him, his head tilted back like a doll with a broken neck. The words still echoed in his head -- Get out. Get out and never come back -- words he had spit out like a bad taste in his mouth. Get out. Get out. Get. Out.
And because he was in the backyard sitting on the grass, JC did not see Lance get up off the floor, slowly, like a boxer rising from the canvas after a knockout. He did not see Lance put his clothes back on. He did not see Lance slide the ring from his finger and place it on the table next to the bed, next to the photograph taken on the day that JC and Lance had together told everyone in the band that they were in love. He did not see Lance pick the ring back up and put it back on his finger, tears in his eyes, gasping. He did not see Lance descend the stairs, open the front door, pause, and then walk out. All JC saw was the endless canopy of night sky, blurred by the angry tears in his eyes.
JC finally stood and walked back into the house, brushing off grass from where it clung to his butt and the back of his legs. He noticed immediately that the front door was open, and knew that Lance was gone. JC walked to the door and shut it without looking outside. He knew that Lance was gone; he did not need to look, and did not want to.
JC stood for several minutes at the bottom of the stairs, frozen in indecision, not knowing what else to do but just stand there. "I should sleep," he said, knowing as soon as he said it that he would never be able to sleep, never be able to close his eyes. Or at least lie down, he thought, crossing his arms tightly across his chest and tucking a fist in each armpit. Yes, I should lie down and try to rest. That's what I should do. Lie down and try to get some rest.
The clock chimed as JC slowly climbed the stairs. Each step he took was slow and tentative, as if JC feared the stairs might collapse beneath him if he was not cautious. His eyes stared straight ahead, dry and unblinking. His breathing was deep and steady. I will not cry, he thought.
JC reached the top of the stairs and headed down the hall to the bedroom, slowing as he noticed the light spilling from the open door, afraid of what it might reveal. He stopped three or so feet from the door and stared at the blurry border of light bleeding into black, staring at it like it was a pool of unknown depth, like he was deciding whether to jump in and try to swim across.
Closing his eyes, JC plunged into the room. He did not know what to expect except that he knew that the light would hurt his eyes once he opened them. Get on with it, JC scolded himself. Open your damn eyes.
JC opened his eyes and looked at the bed, blinking. Once his eyes adjusted to the light, JC walked to the bed, pulled off the sheets, and tossed them in a pile next to the chest of drawers, not far from where Lance landed when JC had kicked him out of bed -- literally kicked him. After stripping the cases from the pillows, and adding them to the pile, JC pulled the mattress half off the bed and struggled to flip it over. It was a king size mattress and he had never tried to flip it by himself before.
After several attempts, JC succeeded in flipping the mattress, and sliding it safely back into place. He then retrieved a neatly folded set of sheets and pillowcases from the bathroom closet and remade the bed, pulling the sheets so tight that the bed looked almost like a trampoline.
"There," JC said, staring at the bed. "Now I can take shower. Then I can lie down and get some rest."
The sound of his own voice was reassuring; it made JC feel like he was in control somehow, like everything was going exactly as planned. Just keep it moving and everything will be fine, he thought. First shower. Then rest.
JC walked back into the bathroom, trying hard not to look in the mirror. The slate tiles felt cold on JC's bare feet. When they had built the house three years ago, Lance insisted on the slate tiles, JC remembered. Just as Lance had insisted on a slate-tiled shower stall separate from the bathtub and big enough for two people to shower together, for him and Lance to shower together, soap-lathered and laughing, every morning.
JC blinked hard, trying to push this memory away, and failing. When did it stop, he wondered. When did we stop showering together? We did it for years, every morning, even on the road. Not making love there. Not needing to because it was good enough to be washing each other's hair, kissing under the water as lather streamed down our faces, our eyes clenched tight against the sting of soap.
"Hey," Lance said, reaching over to brush the hair from JC's eyes.
"Hey," JC said.
"Hey," Lance repeated, laughing. "If we're ever gonna do this again, we need to get some better morning-after dialogue, don't you think?"
"I don't know," JC said. "I think talking is highly overrated."
"Only compared to kissing you," Lance whispered, pulling JC's face toward his own and kiss JC with lick-dampened lips.
Lance pulled JC on top of him, wanting to feel his skin -- and the weight of his body -- press down on him.
"Do you wanna shower," JC asked, barely managing to speak through Lance's insistent kissing, breathing the words into Lance's mouth. "We're all sticky."
"Sticky is good," Lance said, and kissed JC again.
"Yeah," JC said. "Sticky is good. Your sticky. But we gotta be downstairs in twenty minutes."
"Yeah," Lance said, resting his head back on the pillow and looking up into eyes filled with a joy he would not have understood had he not so fully felt it himself. "But you have to shower with me."
"Well, Mr. Bass, I thought you'd never ask," JC laughed, rolling off Lance and getting out of bed. "Shall we?"
JC reached out with his left hand and gripped the edge of the thick glass wall that separated the shower from the rest of the bathroom. The sudden intrusion of memory had left his legs unsteady, and JC feared that he might fall. Keep moving, JC repeated to himself, trying again to push away the memory of that first shower with Lance, that first shower that had been followed by hundreds of other showers, each one as good as the first.
"Do you know how happy you made me?" JC shouted, his grip sliding down the shower's glass wall as his legs folded and his knees hit the floor with a dull thud. "Do you know how FUCKING happy you made me?"
JC clasped his hands tightly together, brought them to his forehead, and then leaned forward, as if in prayer, until his hands touched the floor, and his forehead pressed against them. Tears flowed over JC's hands as his body was wracked with convulsive sobs. His back arched and heaved forward in violent and choking waves.
"You made me happy, Lance," JC cried. "You did. But you never believed me. You never believed me. You never believed you could make anyone happy. But I was. I really was. And you never believed me."
JC opened his eyes and saw the shower drain. It was clogged with hair. Raising his head off his fists, JC examined the hair more closely, and saw that it was a knot of brown and blond strands. It was Lance's hair tangled with his own.
JC stood up and stepped out of the shower, feeling suddenly cold and exposed, and walked out of the bathroom. The clothes he had taken off last night before getting into bed with Lance remained in a neat pile. JC reached down and pulled on his boxer briefs, and then his jeans, and then his T-shirt -- the black one with the red number seven on the sleeve -- and then he sat down on the bed. JC thought again of the hair in the drain and suddenly realized that he had made a mistake in thinking that he could make Lance go away, in thinking that mere words could make Lance gone -- really gone.
You're still here, he thought. Still here but not here, not like before.
JC looked at the bedclothes piled on the floor and he knew that, if he looked, he would find where semen had leaked from Lance's penis after sex. JC knew he could bury his face in those sheets and find the smell of Lance's sweat, and maybe even taste it. He knew he could go to the laundry room and rummage through the clothes waiting to be washed, and find Lance's boxer shorts suffused with the rank, pungent scent that JC had smelled a thousand times when he buried his nose between Lance's legs and licked and licked and licked, always delighted that something as simple as having Lance hard and in his mouth could be so startlingly wonderful and could fill him with such joy.
JC also knew he could go to the sofa in the TV room and find Lance's socks where every night shucked them off with his toes and stuffed them barefooted behind a cushion. He knew he could go to the dishwasher and find a dozen spoons with which Lance had eaten cereal every morning -- Captain Crunch, Cheerios, Apple-Jacks, Trix, Wheaties, and Frosted Flakes -- two bowls, one after the other, with milk dripping from his chin, and a distracted smile on his face.
JC knew he could walk back into the bathroom and find Lance's orange-handled toothbrush and, if he licked the bristles, they would taste almost like a kiss. JC knew he could find Lance's electric razor and it would be filled with the very same whiskers that had sometimes scratched his face. He knew he could find the cologne that Lance had worn every day for the entire time that JC had known him, and he could spray some on his pillow and with closed-eyes almost imagine that Lance was asleep next to him.
And then there was one more thing that JC knew. He had to find Lance.