Obligatory warnings and disclaimers:
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If reading this is in any way illegal where you are or at your age, or you don't want to read about male/male relationships, go away. You shouldn't be here.
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I don't know any of the celebrities in this story, and this story in no way is meant to imply anything about their sexualities, personalities, or anything else. This is a work of pure fiction.
Questions and commentary can be sent to "writerboy69@hotmail.com". I enjoy constructive criticism, praise, and rational discussion. I do not enjoy flames, and will not tolerate them.
That said, we now continue.
"The way I see you?" I asked. "What does that mean?"
He sighed uncomfortably, the same way he had at the doctor's office, and then stood up. I waited, unsure of whether I should stand, too, and watched as Justin walked over to the garbage can and threw the rest of his ice cream away. He stood with his back to me, looking down at his hands.
"Justin, if I'm hurting you," I began, wanting to ask him about it, wanting to help. He turned, and his eyes were serious, searching for mine from under the brim of his cap. He'd taken his sunglasses off, but kept the baseball cap on. It didn't really seem to matter, since there was no one else at the ice cream stand and Tiny was right nearby, but someone could pop up any time.
"You're not hurting me!" he said sharply. I frowned and he hurried back to the table and sat down next to me. I wanted to reach out to him, but couldn't, and he knew it. "I didn't want to talk about this here. I wanted to wait until we could be better, until, I don't know, at least until we could hold hands and hold each other and I could reassure you and everything else I'm supposed to be doing. I wanted to wait until there was a good time, until it was the right time to talk about this."
"Then we can wait," I said simply, licking my cone again. It was almost gone.
"No," Justin said, shaking his head. "We can't wait anymore. I keep waiting for the right time, and there never is one, and I don't want you to think the whole time that you're doing something wrong, because you're not."
Every word out of his mouth seemed in direct disagreement with the previous one. I felt completely lost, and hoped that he knew where this was going, since I didn't. First he said I was hurting him, then I wasn't, then it wasn't the right time to talk about it, and then there was no better time. I wanted to settle him, to rest one of my hands over his as he fidgeted in the middle of the table, the fingers on one hand drumming absently while the other, balled into a fist, thumped out a counter beat. I waited, seeing the tension in his jaw, the way he clenched his teeth and pursed his lips and tried to look anywhere except at me.
"None of this makes sense to me," I said quietly. "I don't understand what you're trying to tell me."
"I know," he sighed, turning to me. His mouth was turned down a little, matching his drooping eyebrows, and his bottom lip was pushing out in that pouty, almost trembling way that made me want to grab him and kiss him and do whatever else was needed to cheer him up and bring his smile back. "None of this is coming out the right way. I'm not saying this right, and I don't want to make anything worse."
"Then stop and think about it, Justin," I said, as if it was the simplest thing in the world. Justin smiled at me finally, his eyebrows perking as his face lit up.
"You're right," he said. "I'm making this a lot harder than it needs to be. What I'm trying to say, and what I was trying to say in the doctor's office this morning, it's just kind of hard. I don't want to upset you, but I just keep making you think you're doing something wrong, and you're not. You're doing exactly what you should. You comfort me, and you take care of me, and you show me how you feel. It's not you that's the problem. It's me."
"This is starting to sound suspiciously like a breakup talk," I said evenly.
"It's not," Justin said quickly, smiling. "It's just, I'm not sure why, I mean, how do you see me? Don't think about it, just answer."
I finished chewing up a piece of my cone and swallowing.
"Well, you're cute, verging right on full out handsome," I said, grinning. "You're bright, and funny, and smart. You're graceful, too, probably from all that dancing. You have a lot of talent, and also a lot of heart."
I paused, but his expression hadn't changed.
"OK, and you're great in bed," I added, shrugging.
"That's all?" he asked skeptically, and I wondered if I left anything out that should have been there. "You only listed good things, and, you know, I'm really close to perfect, but I'm not completely. Please, Chris, I want you to be honest with me."
"If we get in a fight at an ice cream stand over this," I began, and he held up a hand.
"We're not going to get in a fight, I promise," he said, shaking his head. His face was very serious, and I could tell that this was something important to him. "Tell me the rest."
"OK," I said, resigned. "You're stubborn sometimes, and you don't always react well when you don't get your way, but I do the same thing. It's not like you're the only one. You're also dealing with a lot of stress, and a lot of issues with who you are and the way you are, but I think you're doing a really good job with them. You just need a little extra support, which isn't a bad thing."
"But that's what's bothering me," Justin said, looking down.
"Needing support?" I asked. "It's natural, Justin. People need help sometimes. No one should have the shoulder all their burdens alone, especially not when they have people around them who care about them and want to help."
"It's not the needing support," he said, turning back to look at me. "It's, I don't want you to think I'm too needy."
"I never said you were too needy," I said, wondering if he had overheard me on the phone last night. I hadn't come right out and said he was needy, but if you only caught parts of the conversation, it could have sounded like it.
"I know," he said, shaking his head. "It's not something you said. I'm worried about everything that's happened to us, because I need you. I know you know it, and you're about to say it's ok, but I just, I feel like the only time you see me is when I need you. I don't want you to always think about that when you look at me. I don't want that to be the only reason you love me, because you think I need someone and you're willing to volunteer."
I wasn't sure what to say to that, but Justin interpreted my silence as confusion or something, and kept going.
"I mean, since we landed here, I feel like all I do is cry, and hang on you," he said, shaking his head. "That's why I wanted to talk to Lance myself this morning, and that's why I didn't want to tell you what was wrong at the doctor's. I don't want to be weak in front of you so much. I feel like I've just been, I don't know, this big drain or something, and that's why I took you out to eat, and gave you that watch, and why I thought maybe you wanted to come get ice cream. It's not just because I love you, but because, I don't know, I want to balance things. I want to give you something happy to think about when you think about me, not just this little kid who latches onto you and cries and needs to be hugged and comforted all the time."
Despite the setting, and the fact that anyone could walk by at any second, Justin reached over and took my hand, holding it tightly for a second. I could tell that saying all that had been hard for him, and I could read in his eyes that he was afraid, honestly scared, that I really did see him that way.
"I want you to need me, too," he said quietly, letting go of my hand. I grabbed his hand before he could, and he looked at me, wide eyed.
"Hey," I said, a little sharp to get his attention. Self pity didn't look good on him at all. "I do need you."
He looked at our hands, swallowing, and squeezed mine tightly before he let go again. I understood. We needed to be close, but we were in public, and pushing it already.
"Justin, I need you to keep me from withdrawing again," I said, shaking my head. "I need you to be yourself, to smile and laugh and everything else, because it reminds me that it's ok to be happy. I need you to not let me dwell on things, or close myself off. You're changing me, Justin, and if you can't see it, I don't know how to explain it, but I need you, too."
"It's not the same way I need you, though," he said, shaking his head.
"It doesn't have to be, babe," I said, shaking my head. He still looked serious, but he was hanging on my words, and I wondered again what kind of relationship he and JC had. Justin wanted to be away from JC, to be a different person, then was he worried about me thinking he was too needy because JC thought he was? "Being equals in a relationship doesn't mean we have to feel the same things at the same time. That's not what it's all about. It doesn't mean we have to agree on everything, especially since God knows you and I don't. It's about the way we treat each other and the way we see each other, and I don't see you as weak. Maybe you need to lean on me sometimes, but you're strong in so many other ways, and you're there when I need to lean on you."
Justin swallowed, looking at his hands again. When he looked up at me, he was still a little unsettled, but his face was smoothing out. He still seemed a little troubled, though.
"What's wrong?" I asked, waiting.
"This was all really stupid, wasn't it?" he asked, fidgeting. His hands were tapping out a rhythm on the tabletop again. "This was just some stupid little kid thing that was bothering me and it wasn't bothering you at all."
"It doesn't matter," I said, shaking my head. "It wasn't stupid if it was bothering you. Equals, Justin, like I just said. If anything is upsetting either of us, then we listen to each other, and that's that. Now, do you want to go home?"
"Yeah, I do," he answered, smiling finally.
Justin surprised me by asking Tiny if he would mind driving, and then climbing into the back of the car with me. As I worried about him not wearing a seatbelt and whether or not Tiny had signed one of those agreements (I assumed he had, since Justin didn't care), Justin slid across the seat and nuzzled against me, laying his head on my shoulder and wrapping his arms around me. I wondered if he needed anything, but he seemed only to want me to hold him close. As we drove away I wrapped my arms around him, and paid close attention as he pointed things out, his lips right up near my ear, almost kissing me as he whispered.
We were stuck in the lunch hour rush, so our path through the city was extremely slow, and I realized that Justin had a story about every single place we went past. That was the spot where he had gotten the first tank of gas in his car the day he bought it. Over there was a restaurant where he and Joey had lunch the day before Kelly went into labor, and in that store he'd spent an entire afternoon trying to convince Lance to buy an outfit that Justin thought was perfect for him and Lance thought was just a little bit too flashy. In the end Justin had lost the argument, but ended up buying the outfit for himself and letting Lance borrow it when his girlfriend complemented it on Justin. Justin was trying to show me his world again, trying to help me feel connected to his background and the people he knew and loved, and I was doing my best to pay attention when his phone rang.
Justin sighed as we both looked at his hip.
"Maybe I shouldn't answer," he said, rolling his eyes.
"It could be important," I said, even though I didn't want him to answer it, either. It could be a harmless business call, but it seemed extremely likely that it was, instead, so sort of horrible news, or maybe a call from his mother. Wait, weren't those the same thing?
"You're probably right," Justin sighed, pulling the phone off of his belt. He glanced at the screen and his eyes bulged, his face going pale. Damn, I was right. "It's JC."
I tensed a little, almost as a reflex, and felt Justin tense as well. I reached for his hand, wanting to ask if he was ok, and if he wanted to talk to JC, but Justin was already opening the phone. I guess he was fine.
"Hello?" he asked cautiously, looking out the car window. "It's, uh, nice to talk to you, too. Yeah, Chris is with me. We're kind of stuck in traffic. We're moving, but it's really slow. Yeah, it's just like that time, actually. I forgot about that."
Justin laughed, and I could just hear the faintest sound of JC's voice as he reminded Justin of some long ago stuck in traffic story that the two of them had shared. If his smile was any indication, the conversation wasn't bothering him any, but I had to guess since he was looking away from me. I shifted, moving away from him a little, not wanting to intrude, and his head snapped toward me. I don't know what he saw in my face, but he reached out and took my hand, holding it to his chest.
"No, we were at the doctor's office," Justin said. He focused on me again, his eyes narrowing. "Was there something you needed? No, no, I'm not mad you called. Chris and I were just, you know, in the middle of something, that's all. We're, well, um, maybe twenty minutes? Yeah, ok. That would be fine, I guess. OK. OK, sure, I'll tell him. Yeah. Bye, JC."
Justin clicked the phone closed and snapped it back onto his belt, one handed, because he was still holding my hand with his free one. He raised it to his mouth and kissed the back of my hand, watching me, and my eyes met his over my knuckles. He kept lightly kissing my hand, waiting for me to speak, but I was waiting for him. It wasn't exactly jealousy that I felt when Justin got along with JC, when they talked and he was ok. Instead it was just that sense that they connected on entirely different levels, that there was an entire relationship there that I wasn't part of and couldn't hope to be. I wasn't envious. I just wasn't included.
"Justin, what are you doing?" I asked finally as I felt the soft press of his mouth on my hand again. Justin's lips, always soft, had started out a little dry, but now there was just a little hint of wetness creeping through as he turned my hand lightly to the left and the right, kissing it over and over. He was still watching me, but he was smiling now.
"Reassuring you," he answered. I blushed, but he kept kissing my hand, turning it now and gently rolling my fingers open so that he could nuzzle my palm. I felt a shiver go through me as nerve endings I didn't even realize I had melted under his lips. "When I talk to JC, I'm still thinking about you."
"Justin," I sighed, unsure of what to say. He blew lightly across my palm, and I shivered again, my fingers curling involuntarily as his mouth kept them from closing.
"You don't have to say anything," he said, still watching me. "I know how you feel, and it's ok. I'd be worried about us if you didn't feel that way, at least a little."
I pulled my hand away from him and caressed the side of his face with it, letting his chin rest in my palm as he nuzzled against me. My fingers slid along the ridge of his cheekbone, tracing his contours. He closed his eyes, and I ran my thumb over his eyebrow and around the edge of his eyelid. I smoothed it back across his temple and into his hair, and he kept his eyes closed, leaning into me, trusting me completely as I trailed along the top edge of his ear and then around to his earlobe. He sighed, and then those bright blue eyes slowly, languidly opened and fixed on my green ones as he took my hand again and held it between both of his.
"JC wants to talk," Justin said carefully. I gave a little nodding shrug sort of gesture.
"Are you going to meet him somewhere?" I asked. "I can take a cab back to Joey's, or I can wait in the car or something."
"No," Justin said, shaking his head. "I wouldn't make you do that, not with my friends. There are already too many places where I can't take you for me to invent more. You misunderstood me, though. He wants to talk to both of us."
"Why?" I asked, surprised. "What does he want to talk to us about?"
"I have no idea," Justin answered, shrugging. "He's going to meet us at Joey's though, so I guess we'll find out soon."
We were holding hands as the car pulled up at Joey's, and sure enough there was an extra car by the garage. I remembered JC's Jaguar from Johnny's house yesterday, and mentally compared it in my head to my Jetta, which Michelle and Pete referred to as my lunchbox. I blinked, reminding myself that I needed to stop comparing the two of us, since Justin allegedly wasn't. As I followed him out of the car, though, listening to him tell Tiny that we wouldn't need him for the rest of the day, I wondered if Justin really was telling the truth when he said that he didn't weigh JC and I against each other. How could he not? Wasn't it part of human nature? How could he look back and forth between JC and I and not run down our differences?
We walked into the house, nodding to the bodyguard on duty, and I wondered where everyone else would be, or if we should just wander the house looking for them. Kitchen? It was just past midday, and Bri would have eaten already. Pool? Maybe JC and Joey, because Bri would be down for her nap. They could be in the rec room watching television or something, but it was hard to make a guess. Lance's car was gone, so at least we wouldn't be dealing with a rehash of the morning or spending a tense afternoon dancing around each other and pretending nothing was wrong. Instead we could spend a tense afternoon dancing around JC, as soon as we could figure out where he was.
"Do you know where JC and Joey are?" Justin asked the bodyguard. God was I stupid. Either that, or just nervous, and not thinking straight. Justin was still holding my hand, and I tried to focus on that.
"They're out back," he said, gesturing. "Joey has some kind of new toy or something."
Justin and I looked at each other, trying to figure out what it could be now. These guys played on a whole different level from normal people. As we approached the backyard I could hear Joey and JC arguing about something, not angrily. JC was reading directions of some sort, and trying to explain to Joey that he was doing something wrong, while Joey was insisting that it was right, and that he knew exactly what he was doing.
"This is such a bad idea," JC said, resigned to something. We had gone out one of the side doors, and were walking around the house, enjoying the sunshine and the breeze.
"Look, it's going to work," Joey said excitedly. "Come get behind this with me."
Justin and I looked at each other, baffled, and both jumped as we heard a loud bang.
"Was that an explosion?" I blurted as the two of us charged around the side of the house, our feet clattering over the tiles in the walkway.
Obviously Kelly had to be at work for the day, because there's no way this would have happened if she had been home. The patio furniture was all pushed off to the sides of the main area, hastily moved to clear a space. In the center was a large black scorch mark, and tiny black pieces of smoking paper were floating down to the ground. There were pieces of varying sizes all over the patio, mixed in with tiny pieces of metal and plastic and other stuff I couldn't identify. On the far right side of the patio the big rectangular table was turned up on its side, and as Justin and I tried to take in the whole scene Joey and JC's faces, eyes wide, appeared above it as their fingers curled over the top, both of their mouths hanging open as they stared at the scorch mark. They looked so much like Calvin and Hobbes, or Bart and Milhouse, that I almost burst out laughing. Beside me, Justin was equally speechless.
"I told you that was wrong," JC said, waving a piece of paper at Joey. Joey was about to say something but caught Justin and I out of the corner of his eye, and nudged JC, standing. JC stood with him, both of them smiling slightly at us.
"Uh, hi guys," Joey said, as if this was perfectly normal. "What's going on?"
"Maybe we should ask you the same question," I said carefully, waving a falling piece of ash away from me.
"What the hell are you guys doing?" Justin blurted, using his free hand to brush a piece of burning paper off of his shoulder.
"None of this was my fault," JC said quickly, holding up that paper again. "I told him he wasn't following the directions."
JC was dressed pretty casually today, in jeans and a plain sleeveless top, but did he always have to have his arms out like that? Did he have some kind of aversion to covering himself, or did he just enjoy showing off his tanned, round shoulders in the sunshine? I fought with an urge to roll my own sleeves up, and again with the impulse to stop comparing myself to him. I tried to think about what Michelle had said, about how it was kind of all in my head, but there really didn't seem to be a way to stop it. JC was just so damned perfect, and in my head all my own flaws were just emphasized when you stood me next to someone so flawless.
"Where's Bri?" I asked, hoping she wasn't witnessing this. I didn't know for sure what this was, but generally children and explosions were a bad combination.
"She's at my mother's for the day," Joey said, surveying the damage as he walked over to Justin and I. JC followed, his eyes darting back and forth between the scorched wreckage and the instruction sheet in his hand. He was wearing a pair of sandals, and I realized that he had been almost every time I'd seen him. His feet were tanned, too, and also appeared to be flawless. No hairy hobbit toes or ugly fungal nails or anything, damn it. "See, I bought this rocket kit last time I was at the store, because I thought she'd like it. You know, I thought it would be kind of cool. Kelly didn't think it was, you know, age appropriate or something."
"I'd like to point out that it wasn't just Kelly," JC said, holding up his free hand. "There's an age limit on the box, and it has big red letters that say 'Adult Supervision Required'."
"And yet, nobody's here supervising you," Justin said, snickering.
"Anyway," Joey interjected firmly, throwing a mock scowl at JC and then another at Justin. "I thought that since Kelly wasn't here, and JC came over, and I just kinda really wanted to play with it."
He was looking down at his shoes like a little kid, very similar to the way Bri had looked yesterday night when she knocked over a plant in the hallway with the ball she wasn't supposed to be playing with in the house.
"I told him to follow the directions," JC said, mirroring Joey's posture.
"And what?" I asked, looking back and forth between the two of them. "I'm not going to yell at you. It's your house. Burn it to the ground if you want to."
Justin snickered as JC and Joey both looked up at me.
"I'm gonna go look for something to clean this up with," Joey said, giggling as well as he walked into the house. JC, Justin, and I all looked at each other awkwardly for a second before JC turned and started folding the instructions back up.
"I guess Joey won't be needing these anymore," he said, chuckling.
"It didn't really sound like he was using them, anyway," Justin said, glancing at me. We waited for JC to say something, since he was the one who had called and asked to talk to us, but instead he started putting the furniture back.
"Let me help with that," I said, taking the other end of a small table from him. Joey had enough patio furniture to seat a banquet, so I knew that this would keep us going for a while, and wondered how the two of them had moved it all. The fact that much of it was laying on its side in the grass implied that they had just kind of shoved it all out of the way in their zeal to play with Joey's new toy. I bet most of the zeal came from Joey's end.
"Thanks," JC said, meeting my eyes over the tabletop as Justin reached for a pair of chairs and followed us toward the end of the patio. I had a vague idea of where everything went. "Why don't you guys, um, do you want to sit down?"
"Sure," Justin said, looking at me. I nodded, and took the other chair from him as JC walked back to grab another one. Justin and I sat at the table, watching JC walk back, carrying the chair with both hands rather than just scraping it across the patio.
"You said on the phone that you were at the doctor's this morning," JC said, sitting down. "Are you both ok?"
"It was for my hand," Justin said, glancing down at it.
"Can I see it?" JC asked, holding out his hand. "Chris told me about it on the phone."
Justin stretched his hand out, and JC took it, turning it over as Justin opened his fingers. I watched quietly as JC looked at the stitching, his mouth pursing a little.
"Does it hurt?" he asked, glancing up at Justin. I remembered the way Justin had played with my hand in the car, and suddenly seeing the two of them like that just seemed to intimate, too close. I couldn't think of anything to do to stop them, though, without sounding like a totally jealous bitch, and maybe JC was just being a concerned friend.
"Not anymore, but it did," Justin said, pulling his hand away. "It hurt a lot when I did it. I had to go to the hospital and everything."
"You've always been touchy about your hands," JC said, nodding. "Are you ok?"
"Yeah," Justin said, looking away. He smiled at me, and reached down to take my hand under the table. "Chris took care of me."
"I'm glad," JC said, smiling at me. "You've always needed someone to take care of you. I'm glad you found Chris, and that you're happy."
Neither of us really knew how to answer that, but Justin gave it a try.
"Is that why you wanted to talk to us?" he asked, cocking his head to the side. He squeezed my hand tightly. "I mean, I think it's great that you're happy for us, but, I don't know."
Justin's voice trailed off.
"I'm sorry," JC said quickly. "I didn't mean to confuse you. I told you, Justin, I really am happy that you're happy. I never wanted to cause you any pain, but I know that I did."
Justin swallowed, and JC looked away, his face a little strained. This was getting more and more uncomfortable, but without knowing where he was going I didn't know how to head it off.
"There's no point in getting back into that again," Justin said, still holding my hand. His voice was shaking a little, and he leaned into me. "You did hurt me. You know you did, and nothing will change that."
"I know," JC said, looking down.
When he looked up at us again, his eyes looked a little watery, and I wondered if he was going to burst into tears and beg Justin to take him back. I don't know where the thought came from, but as soon as it popped into my head I realized that I didn't want it to be true. I'd just started to admit to myself that I needed Justin, and I didn't want JC to swoop in now, not while our relationship was still vulnerable. I looked at JC, waiting, mentally pleading with him to please give Justin and I this chance. Please, JC, please let him go. I could tell he was struggling, and beside me Justin was trembling a little, too. There was so much emotion left between them, so much just under the surface, and I prayed that I wasn't about to get swept away in it.
"I'm with Chris now," Justin said. "And I'm happy with him. I love him, JC."
JC nodded.
"I know," he said again. "I can see the way you look at him, because it's the way you used to look at me. I know that I fucked up, that everything that happened between us is my fault, and I know that I can't take that away. I never meant to do that to you, and I did mean it when I said I wanted you to be happy. If you're happy with Chris, then I want what's best for you, and that's all."
"So you came over to apologize?" Justin said. "You already have, JC, and it's not going to change anything. I'm not going to take you back."
"That's not what I'm asking you to do," he said quickly. I mentally breathed a sigh of relief. "I didn't come over to ask you to take me back. I came over because I've been doing a lot of thinking over the past few days, and especially last night. That's why I wanted to talk to you today."
"You asked to talk to both of us," I pointed out, finally jumping in.
"It was something you said that really got me thinking last night," he said, nodding at me. "One of the things you told me yesterday."
"What did you say to JC?" Justin asked me, surprised.
"He said that you wanted us to still be friends," JC said, and I nodded. "I mean, I know you said it, too, but Chris pointed out how happy we were yesterday, and how well we were getting along, and it got me thinking. I do miss you, and yesterday, well, even if it wasn't the way things used to be, yesterday was nice."
"Yeah, it was," Justin agreed. He smiled at me, and I mentally congratulated myself. Talking to JC had been a smart move after all, if it was responsible for getting him over here and talking to Justin again.
"And that's why I want you to come back home," JC said, giving us a small smile. "I want you to move back into our house, and Chris to come with you."
To be continued.