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.
"What happened to you?" Justin asked, pointing, as he stood at the side of the bed pulling his shirt off.
I'd had a t-shirt on by the time Justin came home, so he didn't notice my chest until later, when he came up to bed. I was propped up in bed, the pillows behind my back, wearing only my boxers with the sheet pulled up to my waist. I was reading, waiting for him to come up from the studio, because I wanted to see him alone at least once today without the severe head pain I'd been suffering through this morning. After dinner, during which Justin had told us about his day while JC put the flowers Justin had brought me for being sick in a vase, the two of them had vanished into the studio for another few hours of work. Unlike last night I hadn't tried to follow, and when JC tried, haltingly, to include me again, asking Justin if maybe I wanted to listen, too, I'd waved them off, offering to clean up dinner and load up the dishwasher.
It didn't bother me this time, Justin's casual decision that I wasn't part of that, even though it had left me so bitterly resentful the last time that I stewed about it for hours. Tonight, though, things just seemed different. Talking with JC had put things in perspective for me, somehow. Hearing him talk about what he'd lost, and how he'd thrown it away for something stupid and pointless that he didn't even really want to do, I realized that for the past few days, since we had moved into Justin's house, all I had done was focus on all the negative things that Justin did to me. I'd stopped looking at the way he looked at me, or the little things he did to make me happy and show me he loved me. I'd stopped thinking about the way he sounded, or his cute little annoying habits, or anything besides what he did to piss me off and make me feel slighted. I'd stopped thinking about all the reasons why I loved him, and how special I was to have him love me.
Yeah, it sounded sappy, but that's what it boiled down to. I didn't want to end up like JC.
Instead I let Justin draw that line, and decide where and when I should be. I knew that he tried to include me in his other life whenever he could, but what it came down to was that it was his life. I was wrong to try to force my way in, so now I would just let them go work on their stuff, and I would patiently wait until they were done. It was easier said than done, but each time I started to feel pissy and left out I remembered JC again, sitting by the side of the pool, crying and telling me about how he'd broken Justin's heart. I didn't want to do the same thing. I remembered the way Justin had been when I met him, even if it was only a couple weeks ago, and I didn't want to be responsible for him feeling that way again.
That wasn't the only thing that had changed, either. The whole dynamic in our house had shifted, and even Justin seemed to sense it. A few times during dinner I saw him looking speculatively from JC to me, sensing the difference. I couldn't define all of it, not exactly, but I could say that there wasn't any more tension between JC and I. In short, he wasn't perfect anymore. He was still gorgeously handsome, and polite, and soft spoken, but he'd somehow lost the power to intimidate me. He'd fallen off of his pedestal, and become human. For his part, JC looked at me with actual warmth. He'd been civil and considerate before, but now he was actually friendly. He and I were having discussions separate from Justin, even if they were just about what we'd watched on television or stories on the news, and when I caught Justin looking, he actually seemed happy about it. I hadn't realized it before, but Justin had spent the past few days walking on eggshells whenever he was around the two of us, and now that our tension was gone, his was, too.
It was a real turning point for the three of us.
I didn't realize until later that it was the calm before the storm.
I'm skipping ahead, though.
After I cleaned up the kitchen, I called Michelle briefly at the store to check in again, reassuring her that things were much better with Justin now than they had been the last time I called her. I told her that I was making friends, and that I was seeing more of the area. She told me that one of the two new kids she'd hired to split the shift wasn't working out and had already quit, because it was "just too much like work", and she'd moved the remaining new kid up to full time since he was working out so well. He was only seventeen, this was his first job, and apparently I was just going to "love him to death" because Michelle did. I rolled my eyes and told her not to get too comfortable running things, because I wouldn't be gone forever.
I had been settled into bed, reading and waiting, for maybe a half hour when Justin came up, yawning and rubbing his eyes. We smiled at each other, and he went into the bathroom to brush his teeth before wandering back into the bedroom and starting to undress. He kicked off his shoes, pulled off his socks, and was tugging off his shirt when he looked at my bare chest. I'd already forgotten there was a mark there, since it didn't hurt, but the little purplish smudge of a bruise really stood out against my pinkish skin. He frowned as he asked me about it.
"I don't know," I lied, looking down at it rather than meeting his eyes.
"It looks like a bruise," he said, kicking his pants off. "Does it hurt?"
"Not really," I answered, shrugging. I prodded it gently with a finger. Yeah, it hurt if you touched it. Fucking Kevin. "I must have walked into something."
Like a lovers' spat in the middle of the house, for example.
"What am I going to do with you?" Justin asked, grinning. He stood on his side of the bed, smiling at me, and I could see that his cock was full, pressing against his briefs, but not hard. "Briefs on, or briefs off?"
"What do you want to do with them?" I asked, smirking up at him as I marked my place and set the book down on my nightstand. Justin lifted the sheet on his side and slid under, briefs still on.
"I think we'll start out with them on," he said, flicking off the light on his side. He started shifting toward me. "And then we'll start making out, and I'll see if I feel like keeping them on."
"Sounds like a good plan," I said, flicking off my light. "Come here, sexy."
He did. Eventually, the briefs came off.
"Good morning," I greeted JC the next day, patting his shoulder as I walked by on my way to the coffee machine. He'd already set it up and turned it on for me, which I greatly appreciated.
"Hey, good morning," JC answered, smiling over a plate of some sort of failed breakfast dish. "Justin up yet, or did you somehow manage to disentangle yourself?"
"He's in the shower," I said, shrugging as I poured. We'd managed to shower together without turning it into a sex fest, although there was a lot of touching and groping and kissing, but he'd wanted to stay in when I wanted to get out, so I'd left him up there. I wondered for a second if JC had used the pillow trick I'd perfected for escaping the bed on the mornings when Justin slept in. "What are you eating?"
"I'm not sure," he answered, looking at the newspaper. He poked the lump of food with his fork. "I was making an omelet, and then I thought I wanted some home fries, and I had this idea that you could save pans if you cooked them together, but the omelet didn't hold, and it all kind of collapsed on top of each other. There's some left in the pan if you want to try it. It's still warm."
"Is it good?" I asked, contemplating.
"Kind of," JC answered, shrugging. "I didn't want to waste it."
"Yeah, because you guys can barely afford to put food on the table," I snickered, rolling my eyes as I went to the cabinet for a plate. Breakfast turned out to be kind of interesting, texturally, but it still tasted good, much better than it seemed like it should. JC and I were eating and reading the paper to each other, pulling out the interesting tidbits of stories and sharing them, when Justin came down.
"Hey guys," he said, patting JC on the head, messing with his hair. JC brushed his hand away, smiling, and Justin leaned over to kiss me quickly on the lips as I looked up at him. "Anything good in the paper?"
"Not really," I answered, knowing none of the stories in my section would interest him. JC wordlessly pushed the sports page over to Justin's seat, where it waited patiently while Justin sliced up a banana and dumped it into his cereal. When Justin sat down I smiled at him, watching the simple grinning pleasure he took in Captain Crunch. "So, what's on the plate for today?"
"You and I and Tiny are going to the grocery store after breakfast," Justin answered, glancing toward JC.
"I made a list and left it on the fridge," JC said, jerking his head toward it. "We had some stuff, but we need meat more than anything. I'll start on the rest while you're gone."
"What are we doing?" I asked. The two of them must have planned something while they were working in the studio last night.
"The guys are coming over for lunch," Justin said, smiling.
"We're going to have a big barbecue, and then a meeting," JC continued.
"Planning, video stuff, you know," Justin finished. "We want them to hear what we've been working on, so we can get the ok and start working out stuff for the tour, too."
"Cool," I shrugged, not sure what else I should say. Counted out of the studio sessions, I wasn't sure what my place should be if they were going to talk business. "You want me to go somewhere, to a movie or something?"
"No," they both said together. Justin squeezed my hand for a second. "Can I see you out in the hall for a second?"
I got up without saying anything, and Justin led me out into the hallway. I wasn't sure what he wanted, but figured that it better not be to tell me they wanted me to stick around so I could serve the food.
"Chris, I've, well, I've been kind of a jerk, and I haven't really explained it," Justin said finally, taking my other hand. He was looking down in that guilty way he had, but I held his hands as he stood across from me. "I'm not trying to freeze you out, or, I don't know, put parts of me in a box and tell you it's not allowed. I just, well, you and JC seem to be getting along really well all of a sudden. I'm not explaining this really well, am I?"
"Not really," I answered, smiling. "But you're trying, and I appreciate it."
"I guess, well, I didn't mean to make you feel stupid, or like what we were doing was just completely above you or something," Justin began, trying again. "I know that it hurt you to be pushed out like that, and I'm sorry."
"Apology accepted," I said softly, leaning in. He looked up, smiling a little, and I gave him a quick peck on the mouth. It settled him, a little of the uncomfortable tension dropping out of his shoulders, and I thought that would be the end of it, but he spoke again.
"Chris, it's the only thing I really have left with JC," Justin said softly. "The music, it's the only place left where we connect that's not, that doesn't have anything bad associated with it. Working with him for the past couple days, I think it's helping us, and I don't think either one of us could really get anything done with you there."
"Me?" I asked, wondering what I'd done.
"Well, if you were there, JC would get all awkward, or, you know, I thought he would," Justin said. "Now I don't know, since you guys are getting along. And for me, well, if you were there I wouldn't be able to get anything done either. You distract me."
He said this last part with a huge grin, and I had to smile.
"I understand," I said, leaning in to kiss him again. I thought it would be a quick peck, but Justin gently held my face, pressing his lips to mine, sliding his tongue deftly into my mouth. His fingertips rested on my jaw, brushing it, and then one of them slid down, splaying widely against my chest. My eyes closed as he pressed me into the wall, laying his body against mine. My hands were on him, one of them sliding under his shirt to caress his back as his tongue invaded me, forcing my mouth open wider, and when he finally pulled back, grinning, his face flushed, I slumped, wishing it wasn't over.
"That's all I'd be able to think about if you were in the studio," Justin breathed, running his tongue along my bottom lip. I shivered.
"Like I said, I understand," I repeated. "I appreciate the demonstration, though. Let's go finish breakfast and get moving."
Justin pulled me by the hand back into the kitchen, both of us giggling and blushing, and JC rolled his eyes as we settled back into our seats at the table.
"All fixed?" he asked, glancing over at me and then at Justin.
"Yeah," Justin answered, making a little kissy face at me. "Just working something out."
"So what's the plan?" I asked, not really wanting to dwell on this. Just because JC and I were closer and I knew all about his relationship with Justin didn't mean that he had to know all of the ins and outs of ours.
"The guys will get here in two hours," JC said, glancing at the clock. "We can put the steaks and chicken on after they get here, because Chris gets kind of particular about how his is cooked."
"No blood!" Justin squeaked in a mocking Alvin the Chipmunk voice. JC threw a balled up napkin at him.
"But that should still give us enough time to get things together," JC continued as if Justin hadn't interjected, smiling at me. JC's smile, as always, was small, with few teeth, but somehow that worked for him, and was as natural as Justin's toothy smile. "I'll start boiling the macaroni and the potatoes while you're gone, and when you get back we can work on the rest."
"Cool," Justin said, shrugging. I shrugged, too, not really having anything else to do. The guys were coming over, and I was helping with lunch. Great. Maybe they'd even let me serve and do the dishes. Take their coats, bring them drinks, use the side door so nobody saw me. "Chris?"
"Yeah, that sounds good," I said, forcing a smile. Hadn't we just decided in the hallway that I wasn't going to resent this kind of stuff anymore? Easier said than done, I guess. "Let's get going."
When we got back from the store, a harrowing odyssey that involved telling Justin every two seconds to put that down because it wasn't on the list and then relenting and letting him put it in the cart because he rolled his big blue eyes at me, puppy dog style, JC had the kitchen completely under control. A quick glance in the refrigerator as we brought the bags in from the garage showed large bowls of macaroni salad, coleslaw, and two kinds of potato salad, and I could smell something baking. I sniffed loudly, and JC smiled as he looked in the bags.
"Corn bread," he said, looking confused. "Was candy on sale or something?"
"Blame Justin," I said, shaking my head. "The lettuce and tomatoes and stuff are in that bag. What do you need us to do?"
"Justin, you're in charge of the dining room," JC answered, pointing. "Plates, glasses, silverware, make it look nice. Maybe you could do like a centerpiece or something with those flowers you brought Chris yesterday. I'll start mixing up the marinades for the meat, and Chris, if you wouldn't mind, could you get the fryer out of that cabinet and then start slicing up the potatoes for fries? I washed them all while you were gone, and left them in the left side of the sink."
"How come he gets to slice, and I have to set the table?" Justin asked, his pink lips folding into a little pout.
"Because he doesn't have a handful of stitches," JC answered sternly. "Scoot! And listen for the door!"
Justin hustled out of the kitchen, humming to himself, five seconds away from beatboxing, with a stack of plates, so that he could set the table in the little used dining room. This would be the first time I actually ate in there, rather than in the kitchen. I looked around at all the elaborate preparations as I reached into the sink for a potato, noticing that JC had washed plain ones and sweet potatoes.
"JC?" I asked, starting to slice with the enormous knife he'd laid out for me. I guess if lunch didn't work out I could just gut myself with it. "Isn't this a little much for just plain old lunch with the guys?"
He sighed and turned to look at me, his face serious. I was getting a lot better at reading him, although it came by degrees.
"It's not just lunch, Chris," he said quietly, his eyes ticking toward the doorway, checking for Justin. "I didn't want to make either of you nervous, but you're a little more perceptive than he is. I don't mean that in a bad way."
"I know," I said, keeping my eye on my work. It wouldn't do to lop off a finger. "So, what is Justin missing?"
"The guys are going to be watching," JC answered, his voice a low whisper. "They're not going to say anything, unless Chris is a jackass again, but they're going to be watching us really carefully."
"To see if we're getting along," I said, nodding. I got it now. JC wanted everything to look good. We were back to keeping up appearances again, except now it wasn't the five of them against some reporter. Now it was the three of us against the other three.
"Yeah," JC said, closing the containers with the meat and the marinade in them as Justin walked back in and started stacking drinking glasses together. "I'm gonna start on the salad now."
"Sure," I said, playing along. If Justin thought the others were going to be watching him, he'd get nervous, and if he was nervous, we'd get nervous. JC and I had already figured out yesterday that we could play something past Justin if we had to. "I'll just keep slicing these."
Justin bounced away with the glasses, not quite beatboxing yet, but with a definite bounce in his step. I smiled, sure that if we leaned into the dining room we'd see him dancing around the table as he dropped things at each place setting.
"But JC," I began, picking it up as if we hadn't been interrupted, "we are getting along. Things have been quiet all day, and they were last night, too. I don't think we'll really have a problem."
"I just want to be sure," he said, shaking his head. "I don't want to prove everyone right."
I sighed, looking at him again.
"You know what I'm talking about, Chris," he said quietly. "You're not Justin. Pretending that things are one way doesn't mean they automatically are."
I did know what he meant. I didn't want to tell anyone, not even my closest friends, that I was still having doubts about my relationship with Justin, because they had all told me it was a bad idea, and we were rushing, that we didn't know each other well enough, and everything else. I knew exactly what he meant.
"You don't have to listen to them," I said. "I mean, you stood up to Chris the other day, right? That's what you were arguing about when we came in."
I breathed an inward sigh of relief when he just nodded. I'd come dangerously close to letting slip Justin's (and mine as much as I wanted to pretend it didn't happen) eavesdropping on the sound panels. I guess now I knew what his reasons were, after yesterday.
"Yeah, but it's not just what they say," he answered, shaking his head as he tore up the lettuce. "It's the way they make me feel sometimes, the way they make both of us feel."
"Which is?" I asked. Maybe he needed to let this out, too.
"Remember what I told you yesterday?" he asked. "About how good it felt to come out to them and have them be kind of ok with it? It's the kind of ok that bothers me. They're accepting, but they have their own opinions, especially where Justin and I are concerned. I feel like, sometimes, they're judging us, and I don't always like it."
"I can see that," I said, nodding. "I can't remember if Justin told you, but we had a run in with Lance before, when we were staying at Joey's."
"The hate the sin but love the sinner speech?" JC asked, smiling.
"Yeah," I answered, rolling my eyes. Justin bebopped through the kitchen, smacking my butt and collecting the silverware, and I giggled as he danced out again. No wonder it was taking him so long to set the table.
"Lance is a great person," JC said bluntly. I looked at him, feeling my eyebrow go up, and he shook his head, smiling again. "No, it's true. Don't let that give you the wrong impression about him. He's, well, Lance is a stand up guy. He's loyal, and caring. I know if I needed anything that I'd just have to call him, and he'd do that for Justin or any of the others, too. He's bothered by the gay thing, but he really means it when he says that he can be your friend apart from that."
"I don't know," I said. "It just seems like he's asking us to hide part of who we are, like he wants to make us ashamed of it or something."
"That's not it," JC argued, shaking his head. "It's hard, really hard, for Lance to do that, to ignore what we do. He and I have talked about it, and about the way he was raised. Lance is doing his best to meet us halfway on this, and 'The Rules', as Justin calls them, are the way we try to meet him. I think you should give him a chance."
"I want to," I said, shrugging. "But when he said that stuff, it just sounded so judgmental. It's hard to look past that, especially with the things him and Chris say."
"Don't put them in the same category," JC said, shaking his head. "Lance and Chris might seem the same to you, to act the same way, but they have different reasons."
"Really?" I said sarcastically. "Lance thinks we're burning in hell, but he's trying to work around it. I can understand that, I guess, but Chris? I thought it was that he didn't like me, but he doesn't really like Justin all that much, either, so it can't be that."
"He does like Justin," JC insisted, shaking his head as he sliced up the tomatoes and threw them in with the lettuce. "He's just kind of mad at Justin right now, and he wouldn't be so mean to you, either, if things were different."
"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" I asked, filling up the fryer with oil. It would take a few minutes for it to warm up, so I leaned back on the counter, wondering if I should be doing anything else while I waited. "He'd like me if things were different, and I'm just supposed to nod and accept that? JC, what the hell is his problem?"
JC sighed, looking away, and when he finally answered it was so quiet I thought I heard it wrong.
"Chris is in love with me."
"Table's set!" Justin chirped brightly, bouncing into the kitchen as I felt the world turning beneath my feet. He'd really said that, and now he was slicing vegetables and throwing them into the salad bowl like nothing was wrong. "What should I do now?"
"Why don't you go get everything set in the studio?" JC asked. "Cue up the new stuff so we can see what they think. They should be here soon."
"OK," Justin said, bouncing away down the hall. In his absence I stared at JC's back, waiting for him to say something else, but he was quiet.
"JC, you said Chris is in love with you," I said finally.
"Yeah," JC said, not turning around.
"But he's straight," I said. "Really, completely straight."
"Yeah," JC said, nodding. "It's hard to explain."
"Or believe," I said sharply.
"It's the truth, but he'd never tell you that," JC said, finally turning around. I could tell by his face that he was serious, but it just didn't seem to make any sense. "You know Chris started the group."
I nodded.
"Well, in the beginning when I was supposed to carry us, Chris was really focused on me," JC said, crossing his arms. "We spent all this time together, and he was always checking on me, and asking about me, and stuff. He always made sure that I was taken care of, and if I was homesick, or upset about my family stuff, he was always there whenever Justin wasn't, because this was his dream, and it was riding on me, so he made me his personal project."
"That just means he's your friend," I said, shrugging.
"It's not like the way he treats our other friends," JC said, shaking his head. "Chris, he, it's hard to explain, exactly, but he cares about me more than himself. Chris sees me on this pedestal, like I'm perfect. When he's not like you've known him, when he's regular, he's always going on about how smart I am, and how talented, and gorgeous. He doesn't do it with any other guys. We haven't ever talked about it, but Chris feels something for me that he doesn't feel for anyone else, not any of his girlfriends or anyone."
"So he's closeted?" I asked, trying to understand. "He's so angry because he's in denial?"
"No," JC said. "He's not closeted. Chris is straight. I think if I ever made a move on him, he wouldn't know what to do. I wouldn't do that anyway, because it would upset him, and it would damage our friendship."
"Does Justin know?" I asked.
"No," JC answered. "Chris and I don't even talk about it. It's just, he feels a certain way about me, and I accept it. If I thought it was hurting him, I wouldn't let it go on, but he's not gay, Chris. He's really not. He doesn't want any other guys or feel that way about any other men. Just me."
"So why is he pissed at me?" I asked. "Jealousy of some kind?"
"No," JC answered. "He's pissed at you because you're with Justin, and in Chris' mind you staying with Justin is keeping him from getting back together with me. Chris would do anything in the world to make me happy, and he thinks you're blocking that."
"But I'm not!" I said sharply. "I mean, I am, sort of, but that's Justin's choice, too."
"I know," JC said, shrugging. "So does Chris. Why do you think he's been so pissy to Justin?"
It did make sense, in a weird way. Chris' overbearing nature, the way he vehemently hated me and insisted that I needed to leave, the way he was telling JC constantly that he was better than this. Chris wasn't just JC's friend. He wanted to make JC's life perfect, and Justin and I were thwarting him. Knowing it did nothing to help me, though. How was I supposed to compete with that?
"JC, what am I supposed to do with that?" I asked. "What am I supposed to say to him that will make that go away?"
"Nothing," JC said. "It's complicated. Sometimes, because of the way he feels, Chris gets a little too involved in my life, and I have to slap him away. This is one of those times, and I'm doing it the best I can without really hurting him. I don't expect you to do anything with him. I just thought you should know. I know that I can trust you not to hurt him, and maybe if you understood it would be better for you, so you wouldn't be so frustrated."
"Oh," I said, not really sure what to say. "I, well, I don't know. I guess I'll keep it in mind."
"Hey," JC said, patting my shoulder. "I didn't want to make you feel guilty. With the way he's treated you, I expect you to be mad at him, and it's ok to be. I just wanted you to understand."
"Thanks for trusting me with it," I said sincerely. He hadn't trusted Justin with it, apparently, but he was willing to share it with me. JC and I weren't going to have to pretend to get along, or to be friends.
"You're welcome," he said, his hand still on my shoulder, resting there. His voice was soft. "I do trust you, Chris. Completely."
The intercom buzzed to life, and he dropped his hand as we both turned to look at it, startled.
"Joey and Lance are here," Justin's voice crackled.
To be continued.