Disclaimer: I don't know NSync personally, I don't know if they sleep with other guys or each other, and I don't mean to imply that they do. I just like to write about 'em doing fun stuff like that. Don't sue, ok? I'm poor.
BEFORE THEY WERE ROCK STARS By Lois Lane
He was a scrawny kid when I first knew him, with a gap-toothed smile and scorching blue eyes that regarded the world not as something he lived in, but as something to conquer. He wasn't in Orlando for a day before we crossed paths thanks to some mutual friends. He turned up where I usually went to hang out after school, tagging along with a friend of mine who was also a friend of his.
At first, I wasn't sure about the guy. He was hyper, a bundle of energy that couldn't hold still, and intense about everything. He was a singer, Dale told me, and had joined the Mouse Club cast a week or so before moving down to Florida. Dale felt he had to act as tourguide, and part of his job he said was to make sure this guy made some friends.
"Joe," he said, when he arrived at the Del Taco we frequented after classes or, occasionally, during them. He gestured toward his companion, a tall and remarkably skinny guy who smiled warily. "This is Josh."
I put out my hand, and he grasped it, firmly. At first I thought he might have a few years on me - when I was thirteen I was pretty short, and everyone towered over me - but up close I could see the youth in his face. He couldn't have been much older, if not younger, than I was. "Hi," I said.
"Hey." Where I still sounded Brooklyn, he possessed a drawl I couldn't place. Dale later told me it was Maryland, and I remembered my mother telling me that my accent would probably fade with time. For a moment, I felt compelled to assure Josh of the same, but didn't. "Nice to meet you."
Formalities over, Josh sat down at our booth and proceeded to inhale seven tacos and a bean burrito, and I decided he was definitely cool. As the year went on, and we hung out together just about every day, it amazed me that he could eat so much and stay such a twig. Whereas my ass had started approaching it's own zip code, according to my idiot brother.
Josh - he was known as JC on the Mouse Club, and it wasn't long before the nickname caught on with our group and mutated into simply "C" when we felt lazy - went to my high school along with Dale and a lot of the other Mousers, and by junior year we considered each other close, if not best, friends.
It sounds a little girly to call him my best friend but he was. It turned out that he was a little older than me, so naturally I gravitated toward him during every typical teenage boy crisis - and the not-so-typical ones. I asked him about girls, and what to do if you liked them, and then what to do if you didn't.
That problem came up when I was sixteen, and he was the first person I came out to. He sat outside my house with the engine running in his 1990 Ford Escort - why do I remember that - when I told my parents, and drove me to the same Del Taco where we met, to sulk over milkshakes while my parents tried to figure out where they went wrong.
He drove me back when they finally - mercifully - decided that they hadn't gone wrong at all, and that I was the same kid they'd raised and I always would be. Which is what JC had told me they'd do. That's when I figured out that JC was almost usually always right, about everything.
Then the Mouse Club got cancelled, and one afternoon JC announced that he was going to drive to Los Angeles and try to kickstart a music career. I was, to say the least, a bit miffed.
"You're shitting me?" I asked, studying him, waiting for that lopsided grin that would tell me he was only kidding and I could throw lettuce and packets of hot sauce at him, for being an idiot. He didn't smile. He looked at the other people in the restaurant with an expression I couldn't read, something between sad and indifferent.
"You could come with me," he said, quietly, knowing the answer before I could say it. I was not yet seventeen and still in school. He'd already graduated, and his eighteenth birthday had passed. He was free to go, start his life wherever he wanted, but there was no way I could go along. I was stuck, left behind. I found myself missing him even though he was sitting in front of me.
I rose, scowling. "Well, I'll see you around, then." I knew I was throwing a fit, but I didn't care. It wasn't fair, that the one guy who really seemed to comprehend me, who could look at me and know me for everything I was and could be, was going away. I ignored his pleas for me to sit back down and walked out of the Del Taco.
He left three days later, and that was the first time I was ever heartbroken.
He was gone for almost two years. We sort of kept in touch. He sent me some postcards, and then letters, and finally I got off my high horse and answered them. We corresponded off and on while I finished high school, turned eighteen and moved out of my parents' place. I couldn't help thinking that these were milestones he should have been present for, in person, not just in paper.
One night, sitting in my tiny apartment eating old Chinese food and watching I Love Lucy reruns, someone knocked on my door. I opened it to a very damp, very tired and very much despondent JC, holding a knapsack over his shoulder. Words failed me, so I let him in. He was so wet he made squishy noises when he walked.
As he dried off and changed clothes, he offered a Cliff Notes version of what had made him come back. "You can't trust NOBODY, Joey," he raged, wringing out his socks over the bathroom sink while I hovered in the doorway. "The people in the Business - with a CAPITAL FUCKING B - will FUCK YOU OVER if you're not careful."
"Geezus," I said, moving up to rub his bare shoulder, reassuringly. "Someone burn you, C?"
He shrugged my hand off, and I retreated. He sighed and looked back at me. "I'm sorry, Joe. Yeah... I got burned and... I just don't wanna talk about it. I just wanna sleep. I been driving for, like, three days."
"Sure," I said. I fixed up the pull-out sofa for him, not mentioning that it was actually where I'd been sleeping since I didn't actually own a bed. I had a bedroom, but the only thing in it was a box of my Superman crap and another box of CDs and tapes. I made a nest out of clothes and blankets and slept on the floor, with the door closed, so he wouldn't know.
The next morning, we feasted on cornflakes and Cokes, and watched Sesame Street in the living room. "I gotta figure out what I'm gonna do now," said JC, spitting milk all over the place when he spoke. He snickered and covered his mouth, and I laughed.
"God, eat much, Chasez?" I reached over and mopped his face with the hem of my t-shirt, and he swatted my hand away. "Well... I could see if there's anything going down at Universal." At the time, I worked as a werewolf, in the Beetlejuice show. "You could be, like, a character or just work as a server, or something."
"That'd be great, man. Thanks." JC slurped the rest of the milk from his bowl. "Do you know if there's apartments to rent in this place?"
He was so transparent that I couldn't help but giggle. "Oh. Right, like you're NOT going to stay here."
JC's eyes widened. "Really? You'd let me stay here?"
"Sure," I shrugged. "Half rent, half the other bills, all that shit. Why not? It'll be cool. There's a bedroom, that's mine, and you can sleep out here. Just warn me if you're bringin' any girls home 'cause I'll be sure to NOT be here." I winked, and he flushed red. He was always easy, like that.
"Deal," he said, quietly. "Thanks, Joe. Really. I appreciate this, more than you even know."
Of course, having JC living with me meant he eventually found out about my sleeping arrangements one afternoon, when I wasn't around. I got home that evening to the sound of grunting and curses coming from my bedroom, and cautiously I crept up to the door, peeking inside. My jaw dropped, and I barged in without thinking.
"What is this...?" I asked. JC jumped, startled, and whipped around to face me. He offered a sheepish grin.
"Ta-daa," he said, meekly, waving his hand over a partially-constructed futon in the middle of the room. "Supposed to be surprise but. Well. Surprise."
"You dork." I pounced on him, putting him in a headlock that knocked us both off-balance and onto the unsteady bed. "Ow!" I yelped. "Move your bony little knee, you freak. I NEED that."
"YOU pushed me down!" he said, struggling out of my grasp and vaulting off the futon. "You like it, though?"
I bounced a little, and the bed wobbled. I grinned up at him. "This is so cool."
"Can't have you sleeping on the floor," he said. "I got a little money saved, so. I went to Target and stocked up. Did you see the other stuff?"
He showed me around the apartment, that now looked more like someone actually lived in it. Lamps, curtains, a small but nicer television, and a goddamn throw-rug. Absolutely nothing matched, but somehow, it worked. "Martha Stewart can go fuck herself," I muttered, happily. I ruffled JC's hair. "Well done, young Jedi."
His cheeks pinked, and he batted at me. "Bah." He flopped down on the couch. "How was your day?"
I sighed. "Lousy. Some kid threw ice cream at me. They kicked him out of the park, but not before he could get it down the back of my shirt. Cold. Argh." I sat beside him, kicking my legs up across his lap. He picked at the laces on my sneakers. "But, good news - found you a job."
"Yeah?" JC tapped a beat on my shoe. "What?"
"It's not much," I said. "Server, Planet Hollywood. Seven bucks an hour, and tips. So be your usual charming self and you could walk outta there with, like, $20 a night." I chuckled and he thumped my leg. "Hey! Fine way to treat me, your knight in shining armor."
"Some knight," he said, throwing my legs off of him and standing up. "But thanks. When do they need me?"
"Tomorrow? Four to close?"
"No problem." He crossed the room and vanished into the bathroom, and I heard the showed start. I settled back to watch TV, but it wasn't long before I put it on mute. He was singing, the way he did every night when he showered, old U2 songs and stuff he'd wrote but wouldn't admit it.
I put the TV on mute and closed my eyes to listen.
--
"I think we're gettin' a group together," said JC one night. We were sprawled across the living room floor, deeply involved in a heated game of Scrabble. "I was talkin' to this guy, Chris, and-"
"HA!" I shouted, cutting him off. "Check this out: verismilitude. Triple fucking word score. I rock, you suck." I cackled with glee and counted up my points. "Does your ass hurt?" I asked, batting my eyelashes at him. "From the kicking?"
"I don't know HOW you do it," he moaned, frowning at his letters. "Like, didn't you used to be the guy everyone called Dumb Joey in school?"
"It was all an act," I smirked. "I'm really the Whore of Mensa."
"Apparently." JC moved some of his letters around, then finally offered up a word. "Using your V, I can make... 'vat'. Shit. That is pathetic."
"That's not pathetic. It's pitiful AND pathetic." I smiled. "So what's this about a group?"
JC shrugged, still annoyed about losing. "It's nothing BIG or anything, but this guy, Chris-"
"Chris who?" I busied myself arranging my new letters to spell out 'fist fuck' and wondered just what degree of scarlet it would make JC turn if I used it.
"Kirkpatrick," he replied. "Why?"
"I know that guy!" I looked up, surprised. "He works at Universal. He's, like, this big, and he sings like Alvin and the Chipmunks. He's cool, though," I added quickly. "He's starting a group?"
"Yeah. A musical group. Justin told me about it, that kid I was on Mouse Club with? He's in it too."
"Need a fourth?" I gave him a cheesy grin. "I can sing."
"I know."
I blinked. "You know?"
"I've heard you." He smiled, shyly. "In the shower. Elvis songs. Dude, you have a great voice. Really, I don't know nobody with the range you have."
I wondered if I'd started blushing. "Wow. Thanks?"
"Don't sound so shocked. You can sing. And you know what? EVEN THOUGH you're a lousy, stinking cheat at Scrabble, I'm going to tell Chris about you. We could use a fourth voice, like a baritone or something."
"I do NOT cheat," I huffed. "But cool. Thanks. Sounds like fun, even if it, you know, doesn't go nowhere."
"I think it might," said JC, with a shrug. "But we'll have to see." He stood, suddenly, and stretched. "I want a Coke. You want anything?"
"Yeah." I hauled myself to my feet. "Don't worry about it, I'm gonna get some of that pizza from yesterday."
I followed JC into the kitchen and was rummaging around in the fridge when he poked me. "Joe?"
"What?"
"What's that?"
I took my head out of the refridgerator and saw JC pointing at something hanging from the light fixture in the middle of the kitchen ceiling, over our heads. I smiled. "That's mistletoe!" I said. "It's Christmas... baby, please come home." I started singing, but JC talked over me.
"Where'd it come from?"
I stopped singing. "I hung it up. Thought it'd make the place more festive. Didn't you see the wreath on the door?"
"No!" JC made a face. "Was I here?"
"No. You're NEVER here." I twirled my finger around my ear and laughed. "You're always on Planet Chasez. Tell me, what color is the sky, there?"
He nudged me. "Stop it, you. Really, though. Mistletoe? In the kitchen?" His eyes suddenly became narrow, mischevious. "Who you plannin' on kissing in the kitchen, Josephine?"
I glowered. "Nobody in particular, Gidget."
"Gidget?!"
"Gidget." I snickered. "'Cause you're so perky!" I poked him in the nose. "If you want, I'll take it down. If it's buggin' you that much."
"It's not bugging me." JC tilted his head to one side. "But I wonder, is it, like, against the law not to kiss someone under the mistletoe? Because if it is, I ain't about to break it and, like, get Santa all up in here readin' us our rights, or something."
"JC, what kind of Christmas crack are you ON?" I closed the fridge door and set the pizza box on the stove. "There's no law or nothin'. You don't have to ki-" I caught myself before I said it. "You don't have to do nothing you don't want to."
"Oh no," said JC, shaking his head. "I ain't fallin' for that. How do I know you didn't hang that up in some kinda cahoots with Santa. Like a sting operation or something?"
I rolled my eyes. "Oh, for the love of GOD," I said, and I grabbed JC's shoulders, pulled him to me and planted a kiss directly on his lips. I thought it was going to be quick, a way to shut him up, but it wasn't. The moment our lips touched, I didn't want to pull away. I kept my mouth on his for just a moment too long, long enough for him to start kissing me back.
My whole body felt like a localized hurricane, my head was complete pandemonium. We stood there in the kitchen, my hands still on his shoulders and his slowly coming up over my back. His lips parted slightly, and on instinct I slipped my tongue between them, to meet his.
Good God, he was soft. Hugs and wrestling matches had only revealed his angles, the sharp elbows and knees and bony hips that he liked to bump against mine in jest or to make a point. But as my hands slid down across his arms to his waist I felt how comfortable he was, mutable and yeilding. I wanted to pull him around me like a blanket and get lost in it, in him.
I could taste the Snapple he'd been drinking, sugar-sweet on his tongue. I licked at it, at his lips, drawing in his breath and letting it settle in my lungs. I brought my hand up to the back of his neck, fingering the little hairs their, tickling him so that he would laugh a little against my mouth, sending shivers down my spine, little earthquakes.
Then as quickly as it had begun, the kiss ended. He backed away, and like a deer caught in headlights he looked as if he wanted to bolt but couldn't. He was rooted to the spot, staring at me as if he'd never seen me before. I bit my lip, tangy with his flavor, and ducked my head, sheepishly.
"That was so not supposed to happen," I offered, quietly. "C, I-" I started to apologise, but the idea made me frown. I was not sorry at all. I was ecstatic. I wanted to scream out loud, dance in the streets, paint it on my body and swing from the trees, and let everyone know that I'd kissed my best friend, and it was good.
But the look on his face, the broken expression of a man whose body had betrayed him, kept me quiet and shattered my thrill. I inhaled, sharply, as my eyes suddenly became grainy and clouded. I was going to cry, and somehow, that was too intimate a thing to share with someone I'd just kissed.
Wordlessly, I left the kitchen. I went into my room, closed the door and sat down on the edge of the bed, staring at the floor, waiting.
He didn't follow, and that's when the tears finally came.
--
I heard the door open but didn't look up or open my eyes. I was still sitting on my bed, head in my hands, fingers in my hair. My face had long since dried, the embarrassment and frustration spent. I was calm, but tired, when JC finally let himself quietly into my room, shutting the door behind him.
"Joe?"
"Hey." I spoke to the floor.
"Joe, I'm sorry." The bed moved with his weight as he sat down, and I felt his hand rubbing my back. "I'm really, really sorry I acted like that."
"Issok." I rubbed my eyes and opened them, but pretended to be fascinated by carpet fibers. "Not your fault."
"Not yours, either." The rubbing stopped. "Joe, look at me."
I looked up and was surprised to see his eyes shrouded in pink, the impossible blue they became when he was tired, sick or upset. "Hi," I said, with a small smile.
JC smiled back. "Hi there."
"Look, C., I'm really fucking sorry. It was supposed to be a joke, not... whatever."
"Joe, would you stop apologizing?" JC started massaging my back again. "You're acting like you did something wrong. You didn't do anything wrong, dude. All you did was kiss me."
"Yeah, but-"
"Takes two people to kiss, man," he said, softly. "I kissed you back. You should know that, since you were there and all."
I stared at him. "That's right," I said, slowly. "You did. Did you... uh, want to?"
He made a face. "No, you moron. What do you think?"
"Come on, man. No jokes, for a second." I didn't try to keep the nervous edge out of my voice. "I mean, I didn't think you... you know."
"I didn't, really. At least for a while. Then when I was gone, in LA, I messed around a little, with some people, and..." He sighed. "I figured out a few things about myself that I wish to GOD I'd realised sooner. I don't think I'd have left Orlando if I knew then what I know now." He snorted. "Everything I needed to know, I learned too late. Maybe."
"What the hell are you talking about, man?" I poked him. "Speak English. This is Dumb Joey, you're talking to. Use little words."
JC made a rude nose. "I SUCK at this shit, okay? I'm TRYING to say that I hooked up with a guy in LA, he fucked me over, and I realised I had a good thing back here. Of course, I didn't know that when I WAS here, because I was under the mistaken impression that women were my thing. I still like 'em, but then again, I don't."
I gave him a look. "Are you gay, or what?"
"I'm..." JC paused, but only for a moment. "Yeah. I am. Gay. Yeah." He exhaled. "I have never, ever said it out loud, before. I am the world's worst gay man."
I snorted. "If your fashion sense has any bearing on it, yeah. You are. But Christ, JC. How long were you going to sit on this little revelation before you let someone in?"
"I guess however long it took me to find out if the one person I did let in would actually, like, want to be." He shrugged. "I couldn't read you, Joe. I mean, it's like a guy having a platonic girl friend. How's he supposed to know if you'd be interested or not without, like, making an ass of himself?"
I nodded. "Okay, that's true. I guess I'm just a little... I mean, hello?! World's biggest goddamn flirt on the PLANET, speaking, here." I slapped my own chest and smirked. "I can't BELIEVE that of all people, you couldn't read me."
"That is EXACTLY why I couldn't," he stated, firmly. "You flirt with everything. Girls, guys, mailboxes, my shoes... Dude, I didn't want to, like, act on your signals until I knew they were, you know, all about ME."
"Okay." I leaned forward, suddenly, with the intent to kiss him, and instead our noses collided. "Aigh!" I said, reeling and rubbing my face. "That was, like, not supposed to go like that."
JC laughed, his nose turning a delicate pink. "See what happens when you try to be all 'smoove' and shit? Come here."
I obliged, as he took my face in his hands and brought his lips to mine, carefully. This time, there was no hesitation, and his mouth opened almost as soon as we connected. His tongue darted inside, sweeping across my teeth and dancing gently with mine. I must have made a noise, or whimpered or something, because he laughed, and I felt the same little tremors from before.
JC lay backwards, pulling me down with him, squirming underneath me to find a comfortable spot. With absolutely no grace at all we scooted toward the middle of the bed, only vaguely aware of the creaks beneath us. The only thing I was conscious of was his mouth, how warm and wet and absolutely endless it was.
He shifted beneath me and I moved to allow him some freedom. I felt his hands beneath my shirt, creeping across my back like hot little spiders, ticking my spine with his fingers. They descended, then rose again, taking my shirt with them, and we parted only long enough for him to pull it over my head.
"Nice," he said, slipping his hands down my chest, tracing the spirals of hair. For a second I wondered if he could feel how hard my heart was beating, or the carbonation of my nerves. I knew he could feel me breathing because I breathed inside him, all over him, sucking on his tongue and lower lip. Did he know what he did to me? I could only hope I did half as much to him.
With a growl I sat up and wrenched his shirt open, buttons flying everywhere. He looked down and then back to me and laughed, breathlessly. "I hope you can sew, boy," he muttered. "I liked that shirt."
"Shirt in the way." I didn't want to talk. "Gave its life. Good cause." I wasted no more breath on speaking and dove in again, searching for his spicy taste. I clutched at his hips with my knees, raining kisses down on his mouth, his neck, the little dip just above his chest. I paused, tapping it with my fingers. "What is this?" I asked.
He peered down at me. "What?"
"This." I swept my tongue over the area in question, and his body responded like a heartbeat. "What's it called?"
"Don't... fucking... know." He closed his eyes and dropped his head back. "But do that again."
I did, and JC put his hands against my shoulders in a gentle suggestion. I paused over his heart, resting my ear against the frantic sound for a moment. I closed my eyes and with my fingers traced little circles across his chest, listening as his pulse quickened, then slowed.
Turning my head slightly, I placed a gentle kiss on his nipple and tried hard not to laugh when his chest rumbled, his breath escaping in an almost mournful cry. I lapped at it gently, his heartbeat buzzing against my lips. "Joe..." His voice was barely audible, lost in a gasp. "Good God..."
"You ok, up there?" I asked, nibbling and grinning against his skin. He responded with a squeak, and his hands went into my hair. I reached up to grasp one of them, quickly, then sat up with a smile.
"Whaaa...?" His eyes flew open. "Why stop? Nooo."
I giggled. "Just a second! Geesh." I rolled off the bed, standing so I could rid myself of the rest of my clothes. I kicked my jeans into the corner and turned back toward the bed, and stopped. "Wow," I breathed.
"What?" JC had shut his eyes again, his chest heaving. He lay on the bed, half-naked and magnificently damp with sweat, gnawing on his lower hip. His track pants did nothing to hide his erection, so after procuring a condom from the box in my dresser I vaulted back on the bed with a resounding thud. I thought I felt something in the bedframe crack, but I didn't care.
"Hey there, remember me?" I snickered. I straddled him, below the knees, and took hold of the waistband of his pants. With a quick tug I pulled them off, and after some fancy maneuvering got them over his feet and tossed them across the room. "Do you, like, wear shorts EVER?" I asked, giving his naked crotch an appraising look.
"It's... a comfort thing..." he said, chuckling a little. I smirked and moved up over him again, trailing little kisses along his ribs, following the light, soft trail of fuzz from the center of his chest to his navel, and below it. His hands were in my hair again, twisting it around his fingers. I paused, and looked up at him.
"Let go of my ears, I know what I'm doing."
He let go, and I kept going, traveling further and further until he twitched, suddenly, when my breath touched the hair at the base of his belly. I knew he was close, with the first tentative lick along the underside of his cock, he was so hard it had to hurt. It could be all over for him the second I took him into my mouth, and as much as I wanted to, I didn't want it to end so quickly.
Mercifully, apparently, neither did he. "Hold on, Joe," he yelped. "Wait. Come here. Come up here, now." He tugged gently at my hair, and puzzled, I obeyed, crawling up his body until our mouths met in a brief, but thorough, kiss.
"What?" I asked, a little breathlessly. Our erections wrestled between us, and the contact was making my heart beat that much faster, my breath that much quicker. Someone had to do SOMETHING, or this was going to be one of those First Times you couldn't recall without a blush of embarrassment.
"Just... got lonely, up here." He grinned. "You can... if you want to..."
"Okay..." I kissed him again, rested my forehead against his shoulder for a moment, before sitting up. I reached across the bed for the nightstand, where I kept a little bottle of Sylk - let him taunt me for having a subscription to JANE Magazine ever again - that he usually pretended not to see whenever he hung out in my room. I chucked it at his head, and he laughed.
"I teased you so much about this," he said, tossing it back to me. "That and that thing you think I don't know about, under your bed."
"That's it, buying a lock for my room." I looked down, then back at him with what felt like a maniacal grin. I hunted down the condom, now tangled up in the sheets, and tore it open, without looking away from him. His eyes widened as I put it on him, slowly and methodically, like a sculptor molding clay.
"Jesus..." he breathed. "Joe-"
Suddenly it was JC who made my heart thrash against my ribs and the air in my throat escape in a single, guttural cry. He took over, shifting his body and guiding my hips up and then down again, entering me slowly with agonizing care. I didn't dare speak, I probably would have forgotten how to. I could only breathe. But just barely.
JC spoke, but mainly in tongues, gibberish and sighs. He began to move, stoically at first, with the natural rhythm of a dancer. Jesus H. Fucking Christ, he moved inside me the same graceful way he crossed a stage, and I felt airborne, weightless and free-falling out into nothing. When his movement became more frantic, as he approached climax, I think I exited Earth altogether.
And then, uncerimoniously, the bedframe snapped and collapsed the short distance to the floor with a loud crash. JC stopped, and for a second I thought he had the wind knocked out of him, but then he spoke. "Jesus," he panted. "C-coitus i-interruptus, anyone?"
I barely heard him. "D-don't you fucking DARE stop..." I hissed.
He laughed, and all at once I came, with all the exploding lights and sirens and fireworks and internal Armageddon that I thought sex was supposed to have, but had never had before. I swear to fucking God, I saw stars. Somewhere in the back of my mind I heard a shout, and felt a thousand explosions, and knew JC had come too. I bent forward and somehow found his mouth, and kissed the rest of his orgasm out of him.
After a moment, or hours, I didn't have a fucking clue, we became aware of our sore muscles, sticky skin, and the bed's sorry state. JC looked at me, eyes clear and sparkling, and brushed damp hair out of my eyes. He slipped out of me, and I rolled over to nestle beside him. "Did we break the bed?" he asked, in a soft, weary voice. I nodded, drawing designs in the sparse hair on his chest.
"Yep," I said. I reached down and began to work the remnants of my climax into his skin. "We broke it. Bet the neighbors downstairs are just thrilled to get woke up at-" I peered at the clock on the nightstand. "3:12am."
JC flushed, sheepishly. "Meep." He rubbed his eyes and grimaced. "Good GOD, I'm gonna hurt tomorrow."
"You?" I winked. "I'm thinking of calling in the understudy, 'cause I am so not explaining why I can't do my usual backflip." I snorted. "Though half the guys in the cast complain about it all the time, anyway."
JC laughed, laying back and looking at the ceiling. I rested my nose against his shoulder, taking in his musky, slightly bitter scent, and the deodorant that had yet to wear off. "Did you ever think we'd end up like this?" he asked.
"Is this pillow talk?" I looked up and grinned, and clapped my hands. "Oooh. Fun."
"Just answer the question, Blanche."
I frowned. "Honestly? No. 'Cause I thought you were straight, and that I was an idiot for liking a straight guy."
"Heh. You're the only one who thought I was straight. My sister asked the other day, When are you gonna bring home a boyfriend for me to torment?'" JC rolled his eyes, then looked at me. "But you, know, I thought we might end up like this."
"Really?"
"Well, maybe without the broken bed, though that's SO going to be a great story, someday."
"Not one I'm going to, like, volunteer," I said. "At least not while sober."
"Well, who knows." JC put his arms around me. "Maybe someday we'll be on a tour bus in middle-America, and we'll be some kick-ass singing group and have hordes of fans all over the place, and we'll be sitting just like this thinking back to our first time, and our broken bed."
"Pipe dreams," I sighed, burrowing against his chest. "Maybe we'll never get out of Orlando."
"Maybe. But if I have to be stuck here - and don't stop me - I'm happy to be stuck with you."
"God." I smacked him on the belly. "You're lucky I love you, man, because nobody would let you get away with quoting Huey Lewis. You're hopelessly uncool."
JC blinked at me. "Did I just hear you say you loved me?"
"No. You heard me say you're uncool. Don't go inventing stories."
"Heh." JC grinned. "You love me. Say it again. Come on."
I smiled. "Okay, fine - I love you. Happy?"
"Again!" He rolled onto his side, facing me. "One more time."
"IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou." I made a face. "This feels way one-sided."
JC kissed me, a slow, lazy kiss that I felt in my bones. "I -love- you, like I always did and then some and then some more. Do you get it?"
"I get it." My voice vibrated a little. "And I am NOT going to get all weepy-queeny on you. No. I'm not." I inhaled.
"Maybe I LIKE weepy queens?" he said, slyly.
"Shut up."
"Ah, no." JC nudged me with his elbow. "I like YOU, turkey." He rolled away and stood, awkwardly. "I've gotta go get cleaned up or something, I feel weird."
I snorted. "You're standing there trying to keep a used condom from falling off," I said. "You LOOK weird."
He flipped me off. "See if YOU get any ever again." He waddled off to the bathroom, and I lurched off the bed, kneeling beside it to inspect the damage. One of the legs had cracked and buckled, but it wasn't anything that couldn't be fixed.
"Hey!" JC shouted from the bathroom. "Think we should get a new bed?"
I smirked. "I'm thinking yeah. Neighbors would appreciate that."
"We can splurge. Just think about how we can freak out all the salesmen when we test out matresses. The horror!"
I laughed. "Watch it end up on Before They Were Rock Stars, or something."
JC leaned into the room. "Hey, Rock Star. Come wash my back." He punctuated his request with a leer before disappearing again, and I chuckled. Rising, I started toward the bathroom, whistling tunelessly and kicking at our clothes, strewn across the floor.
Pausing, I turned and looked back at the bed, the tangled sheets and the broken leg, and smiled. I laughed. The scene was so ricidulous, yet so comforting and one I knew I would never forget, not with time or with age.
Not a bad way to start the rest of my life, I thought, looking at the collapsed bedframe. Not with a whimper, but a bang.
-- The End --
loislane@marz.com