dig

Thanks to Match, Oreph, and Sandy the Older for beta.

Light
by Hetre Z

The sun is shining. That’s the first thing to remember, the sun shines. Every day it lights up the blades of grass and spins out over the roads and the houses. Over glass windows and fruit trees, over people on the street. The sun paints everything in gold leaf and banana-yellow watercolor, and it stays far, far away from his house.

The second thing to remember is that the sun never shines on him. He lives in table lamps and track lighting, and the sun runs away from the electric blenders and appliances in his house. He gave in to technology before almost all of them, keeping a computer even when he didn’t want one, waiting with it until he did. Sometimes he thinks that’s what keeps the sun away.

Justin was the sun once; his smile was the brightest thing in the world. It touched Lance’s insides and made them glow, tanned his veins and gave him heatstroke where the rest of them couldn’t see. Lance burned when he looked at Justin, lit up from his bones to his muscles to his skin to the very edges of him. He thought he could watch Justin forever, and sink slowly toward him like gravity. He imagined falling and falling until he hit and stayed there.

The third thing to remember is nothing ever happens here. Justin was a friend, he was the sweetest thing and he smiled and laughed, joked and played along. Justin was a friend, and he cuddled and he flirted and he was possibility. He was the eternal beginning, and Lance held his hand out and waited. And waited. Justin is always just a friend.

*

The first thing to know about Lance is that he has a life outside of Justin. He tells himself so every day.

Thinks about his company mostly, or spends time describing the others to himself. Lance likes to file them away in different corners of his mind, watching where they overlap each other from being together seven years, and what they’ve managed to keep all their own. He looks at his friends for signs of himself, and each other.

Chris has brown eyes, and Lance thinks they’re like chocolate. But it’s the tart, unsweetened baking chocolate when he looks at people. He melts up against JC or Joey, or even Lance sometimes, but that’s not all he does. He can sneer, harsh and hot with derision, cook them with it until they’re burned all the way through. And he can be warm, just this side of cuddly and nice, when he’s apologizing.

JC has long fingers that look clumsy enough to tie themselves in knots if he isn’t careful; colts’ legs. They slide over each other nervously and tap little patterns into things, or people. His knuckles skitter against a window or a concrete wall, scraping bloody when he isn’t paying attention. But then he could be singing, or looking at a painting or at Joey, and the fingers fold themselves politely into rows, Catholic schoolgirls.

Joey is Joey, and will be forever world without end.

He likes to watch them sliding through each other, sifting and moving like cranes in some complicated mating dance. They’ve been together for so long that they know each other inside and out, all the secrets and all the boring little quirks. Everyone except Justin, who doesn’t know anything that he doesn’t want to know. But Lance has a life outside of Justin, he does. Really.

*

The first thing to remember about Justin is that he likes food. Likes the sensation of food, he’s said a thousand times, like the weight of it in a spoon or against his fingers. He likes the color and the smell, the sight and taste and sound of it. Justin likes food that makes a statement, like cherries, or Kahlua.

One time Lance bought him cherries. He was out shopping and they were on sale, even though he doesn’t have to worry about that anymore, and he couldn’t keep himself from grabbing hold of the plastic bag and shoving it 007-sneaky into his basket. He looked away while the boy at the register rang it up, and he looked away again as he gave the bag to Justin.

"Oh wow. Hey, thanks. That’s just, wow. That’s great. You want some?" Justin looked so happy at the press of cherries against his fingers; like he was about ready to purr.

Lance said no, but he stayed to watch. He held his palms flat on the table and tried not to stare and failed, but it didn’t matter because Justin never noticed. He picked up a cherry and the juice burst obscenely against his lips. Justin smiled, his face flushed and his mouth painted red.

Lance thought the Formica table was going to melt under his hands. He couldn’t move, couldn’t make himself leave. Justin ate cherry after cherry, and Lance’s temperature rose with every one. Justin scalded him raw.

*

The second thing to remember about Justin is that he’s gorgeous, and he never lets anyone forget it.

"You love me," he tells Joey, Chris, JC, Wade, Johnny, his mother, anyone who’ll listen.

Joey smiles and agrees, Chris just challenges him to a game of basketball or Mortal Kombat, JC says "Oh, yes", like that cactus that sprouts flowers instead of thorns. Justin doesn’t tell Lance to love him, doesn’t even look at Lance when he says it. He just smiles at everyone else and lets them ruffle his hair, lets them pet him and make him feel beautiful. When it happens, Lance knows he’s been ignored. He’s just the regular cactus with thorns instead of flowers.

*

The second thing to know about Lance is that he pays attention to himself, too. When he’s not busy with the company, and his friends, and Justin, he sometimes looks at himself in the mirror and smiles to see his skin lit white and gold from the light. His eyes are dragon scales.

Lance could break almost anyone’s heart, he thinks. He’s got looks, and talent, and everyone wants him except the person who matters. Justin doesn’t notice white gold, and Lance keeps thinking he can break anyone’s heart, but he doesn’t. He thinks it’s hopeless.

The third thing you need to know about Lance is he can’t live much longer like this. He won’t even let Justin touch him anymore, a hug before the shows or fingers running through hair like he used to. That used to burn Lance up you-give-me-fever style, and he felt sexy velvet like a lounge singer, full of waiting for something to happen. But years passed, and nothing ever did happen, and now he feels like he might just shatter if Justin came near him and held him and didn’t fuck him into the wall. So Lance keeps to himself, and he breaks open a little bit more every day.

*

The third thing to know about Justin is he does what Lance asks him to, even when Lance didn’t know he asked. They talk still, though Lance has gotten colder since Germany and the first American tour, when he stayed up every night hoping. They’re good friends. That’s the problem.

"Sometimes I wish I wasn’t famous," Lance says one day.

Justin looks at him, raises an eyebrow and picks at his fingernails. Lance loves watching him. "You don’t like the money?"

Lance can still laugh normally, good thing. "I love the money. I said I wish I wasn’t famous."

"Why? What’s so cool about not being famous? What would you do if you weren’t?"

"I don’t know. Play Frisbee in the park, maybe? Eat takeout behind a bowling alley. God, walk down the fucking street, even. I don’t know."

"You’re so boring, you know that? Fucking takeout." But he’s smiling as he says it.

A few days later he shows up at Lance’s house and knocks. His hands are full of something Lance can’t see through the peephole. Lance is baffled, opens the door, and smells pepper sauce and onions and is still baffled. Justin shoves a paper bag into his arms and drags him to the car. The bag’s hot; it heats him more than it should for how cold he’s been lately.

"Hey, what’s this?"

Justin smiles over his shoulder, golden in the Florida sunlight, and Lance is warm all over and whole again. It’s just for a second, he knows. Justin’ll stop smiling and Lance will turn into the Arctic or something, just like always; but for this one second it’s warm and his chest fills up with pools of light and heat, and everything’s perfect in it.

"It’s takeout. You said you wanted some, remember? It’s Indian stuff; I got it down the block from my house. Now all we gotta do is find a bowling alley to eat behind."

Lance curls up in Justin’s car, wrapped around the bag of takeout and holding it to his chest. He hooks a leg over the armrest, keeping clear of the gearshift, and hunches down. Leans his back against the door to watch Justin’s fingers as he drives.

Justin’s looking for a bowling alley over the steering wheel, clutching tight to Lance’s silly fantasy like he’d drown without it, so he doesn’t notice that Lance is staring. He crows and beeps the horn when he sees one, and parks down the block a ways from it. They walk.

"Oh hey, what’ja get at the Indian place?"

"Chicken, um, biryani. And tikka with masala sauce. I asked the guy, and he said it was good shit."

They hunker down right around the corner from the street, a few feet from the dumpster and out of the sunlight. Lance reaches for a fork, but Justin starts spooning it up with his fingers, humming with delight. The entire street smells like chicken and hot raisins.

Lance can’t stop looking at Justin, who’s getting a yellow stain around his mouth and masala sauce underneath his fingernails and not seeming to care. It’s unbelievably sexy, and he can’t do anything about it so he makes himself look out at the street again. Midday in Orlando; the sun is making heat-pools on the tarmac, sifting through the palm leaves and buttering the sidewalk a nice, golden brown. His eyes start to ache from the light, but it’s not as bright as Justin. He keeps looking.

The fourth thing to remember about Lance is that he really doesn’t have a fucking clue. He knows this, he’s told himself a thousand times, but it always hits him, again and again, how little he understands Justin. How little he can figure out.

That’s why it’s such a surprise, why Lance doesn’t understand a moment of it when Justin breathes hot on is ear. A few seconds ago he’d been three feet away. Justin shoves his face closer to Lance’s, and his breath smells like masala sauce and his lips are yellow-stained and flushed from the hot peppers on the chicken.

That’s why, when Justin kisses him, spicy and raspy and Lance is clutching at Justin’s arms to keep from falling, he doesn’t know what to do. Lance thought he’d shatter if Justin didn’t kiss him soon, but now it’s happening and he’s about to fall apart anyway. It just feels too good, the sunlight against his eyelids and Justin against his mouth; it feels too good to be real. He might snap into little tiny pieces from it.

Justin sits back and wipes his mouth, looks away; there’s a yellow mark on the back of his hand. They don’t talk to each other while Justin drives Lance back to his house and then takes off without a looking at him or saying goodbye. Lance can taste cumin and turmeric under his tongue for days.

*

The important thing to remember about the rest of the guys is that they don’t have a clue either. Joey notices when Lance is depressed, but it’s been so long since he wasn’t, according to Joey’s Scale of Happiness, that it doesn’t really register when it gets a little deeper. JC notices, but he can’t say anything to help because he’s never had unrequited anything, not with Joey loving him like he does. Especially not an unrequited that came up and kissed him and drove him home without a word, so it’s not like he would understand if Lance explained.

Chris is Justin’s, so it doesn’t matter if he gets it or not.

They rehearse, same as usual. Every day they can, every day the choreographers can make them. Lance shows up same as usual, but he’s different this time. Sweaty and blushing hot where he used to be cold, he can’t meet anybody’s eyes and he darts looks around the room for the full thirty minutes that Justin’s late to rehearsal.

When Justin walks in the door carrying a shopping bag and not apologizing for the delay, Lance ducks his head and stares at his fingers until the music starts and the others yell at him to get it the fuck in gear. Lance doesn’t get it, so he doesn’t look at Justin for three hours while they practice. He can’t be sure what he’d see.

They break at lunchtime and they have an hour to do whatever. Lance is sitting on the floor against a mirror, watching sweat pool between his fingers and trickle down his wrists. He flinches but doesn’t look up when Justin speaks.

"Hey, guys, you won’t mind if I borrow Lance for a few minutes, yeah?"

They say they wouldn’t. Lance feels a hand on his arm, sliding against the sweat; it grips harder and pulls him to his feet. Lance stares at the tanned arm clutching his all the way down the hall to an unused studio, until Justin shoves Lance in and locks the door behind them. Justin’s managed to shuttle the grocery bag with them without the others commenting. Lance wonders what’s going on.

Justin’s mouth is heat pressed against his, and he opens his own mouth and bites lips and licks against teeth and presses back before he even knows what he’s doing. Justin shoves him against the far wall, scrapes his fingernails over Lance’s arm and rubs hips against him. He’s pushing Lance into the wall, and Lance can’t breathe, but he couldn’t fucking care if he wanted to. He’s melting into Justin, falling against and being held up and slipping into all the corners of Justin’s body without being asked. He fits. He makes himself fit.

Justin’s harsh and scratchy against him; his fingers are rough tugging off Lance’s shirt and pulling at his exercise pants. His mouth is harsh, biting and mumbling nasty things that Lance bets, if he could hear them over their breathing, would make him hotter than he is now. Justin’s arms are rough, the muscles contracting as they hold Lance in place against the wall. He doesn’t know which way is up or why he’d want to go there in the first place.

Justin stops with his hands around Lance’s ass. He looks nervous for the first time since this started, and he’s breathing hard.

"Hey, um, yeah?"

It takes Lance a minute to realize he’s asking for permission, but when he does he nods and mutters "pleasepleaseplease" against Justin’s neck.

Justin pushes a finger in, the lube from the grocery bag already opened and oily smooth against Lance’s skin. A second finger, and Lance sees sparks. They’re chasing him, he can’t breath, they’re cramming themselves down his throat. Justin shushes him; he must be making too much noise, but he doesn’t care.

Justin slicks himself up and slides Lance up the wall, pinning him there. Justin tips his head down and kisses him, over and over, and then. Lance arches up and smacks his head against the wall, and Justin’s already moving before he can even say "please, oh please" again. Justin’s skin grates over his, and he whispers "shhhh, shhhhh" in Lance’s ear the entire time.

The other thing to know about the rest of them is that they’ve all taken enough time out of practice, Chris cutting out at ten in the morning one time when Dani called, and JC rushing off to fix a painting before it dried, that Justin and Lance can just leave without saying anything and they won’t get in too much trouble. Justin drives Lance home and kisses him before letting him out of the car.

Lance can walk fine, but he hobbles over to the couch anyway. It makes it seem more real, he thinks.

*

The fourth thing to remember here is that things change quickly. Lance figures they’re together because Justin comes around regularly and the sex is still amazing. His back aches and he has rugburn sometimes and he fucking loves it. He’s full and complete, he thinks, and it doesn’t matter if Justin still thinks of him as a friend, or a fuck-buddy –– buddy-fuck. It doesn’t matter at all. It’s better than he ever thought he’d get; he tells himself he doesn’t need to need anything else.

The fifth thing to remember is that Lance is good at lying to himself. He did it for seven years before Justin arrived at his door with tikka and masala sauce, and he can do it for another seven years, or until his heart gives out. That might happen sooner than he planned, but he’ll keep going until it does.

So he smiles and tells himself they’re almost together, and that’s enough. Lance has cleared a space in his mind for the two of them, apart from the others and where the band overlaps, apart from FreeLance and his mother and Lou and his anger and, really, apart from everything. Lance keeps almost-him-and-Justin safe from everything; he holds it closest to his heart and watches it grow.

*

The first thing to know about them almost-together is they fight pretty much all the time. Lance was always afraid to fight with Justin before, thinking he’d ruin his chances. Then, after that became the worst possible joke, Lance didn’t have the energy to fight with him about anything. But now that they’re together they go at each other almost as often as they go after each other.

Justin slips into the car after Lance has been tapping the steering wheel for five minutes, and all he has from the early-morning run to the grocery store that he just had to make is a bottle of what looks like muddy water.

"What the fuck is that, and why did you take so long to buy it?"

"Rooibos, it’s healthy tea. JC told me about it. And I took so fucking long to buy it because the store clerk was an idiot who wouldn’t help me find the right aisle."

"Rooibos." He sounds it out, shakes his head. "That sounds stupid. Why not get, I dunno, something you at least know you’re pronouncing right? Besides, it looks like blood or something."

"Hey, don’t knock this, man. This stuff’s healing. It heals you."

"Yeah, yeah," Lance flaps a hand to shush him and pulls out of the parking lot. "What’s it called again?"

Justin reads the label. "Honeybush Tea." He giggles. Lance expects him to make a joke about Britney, or why they broke up, but he just settles further down in the seat and pops the cap off. There’s silence for a few seconds before Justin spits the mud-water onto Lance’s new dashboard. "Hey! What the fuck!"

"It’s gross," Justin chokes. "Tastes like fucking cardboard. I’m gonna kill JC."

"I’m gonna kill you. Wipe that up."

"Whatever. It’s just a little tea, don’t freak out. Oh, hey," Justin’s rummaging in the glove compartment for paper towels, and Lance refuses to feel like a geek for keeping towels there. "Hey, you wanna try it?"

" . . . um, okay."

It tastes nice, he thinks, heavy and thick and slightly sweet. It reminds him of Justin, though he doesn’t say so, and Justin just laughs when he says he likes it. Lance is warm from the sun on the seats, and Justin’s sitting beside him giving off little sparks from his eyes and his skin, and he’s just perfect, slouching down in the car seat. Lance thinks maybe he’s being healed. He doesn’t remember exactly when he got broken, but he’s healed right now and this is the best he’s felt in years.

*

The second thing to know about them together is Lance thought he could be with Justin for the rest of his life, but he might not make it that far. He tells himself he might die first, as if that was an option. As if stopping life before it’s done is the thing to do. As if losing Justin, even a Justin who’s only a friend with benefits, is worth less than anything else in the world.

Lance thought he could make this work, because everybody else does it, gets to have their friend and fuck him too, but he really can’t. He keeps thinking about proposing, maybe, or them buying a house together. He thinks he might even tell the other guys about them; whatever it is there is to tell. Thinks about saying "I love you" right to Justin’s face, to see what would happen. Every day he can’t do that he shrinks farther into himself.

Lance knows he’s a sap. The other guys think he’s romantic in his way, the quiet-pale-hard shark way, like the way his eyes look to the outside world, but Lance knows they don’t get it really. When he likes somebody, he never just likes them. When he loves somebody, he never just loves them. He pushes farther and farther until there’s no difference, until there’s no lines between him and the other guy and they’re almost the same person. Lance knows this probably isn’t healthy, especially not when you’re fucking Justin Timberlake, superstar heartbreaker Mr Glitter Showbiz, but he doesn’t care. He can’t stop anyway, so it doesn’t matter.

*

The third thing to know about them together is that Lance tries to explain. He works up the courage for it almost every day, and he opens his mouth, and it never comes out right. But he keeps trying, because this is something he needs to say if he’s going to keep fucking Justin and pretending it’s nothing. That’s just the way he is.

Justin’s like a child sometimes. He makes Lance buy him ice cream, he tells Lance about the pony he wanted as a little kid, he talks and orders and shuffles his feet until Lance gives in and listens and fetches. Lance thinks it’s the sweetest fucking thing in the world.

He likes to try to explain when Justin’s camped out on the bed eating, because that’s when he’s soft and pliant and he’ll listen to anything without interrupting. "So, you remember my audition, right?"

Justin doesn’t even look up. He likes chocolate ice cream, says it gives him a buzz. Whenever he has it he zones out, ignoring everyone and everything and licking the cone until it’s all mushy and there’s nothing left.

"The other guys looked at me like I was just like everybody else. I mean, you didn’t, but you were really short and fourteen so it didn’t matter. I kept looking at you thinking why’s he here, anyway?"

"I was the supastah," Justin mutters to the cone. "I was the front man, you don’t knock the front man." He looks up. "You really thought that?"

Justin has chocolate ice cream on his chin, and it’s so cute that Lance almost doesn’t remember what he was going to say. He leans over and licks it off, feeling stubble on his tongue, tasting salt and chocolate. The lights are off in his room; the curtains are open and the sun is gliding in to hit the furniture. Sunlight cuts the bed in half, Justin sitting on the bright part and Lance in the shade.

"I thought that, yeah. But then the other guys left to talk about me, and I was sitting in the room when you came back in. You probably don’t remember, but you smiled at me and wished me luck. That was. Your hair was really weird, all fuzzy on your head, and you smiled at me and. You know." He takes a breath.

Justin’s finished the ice cream, and he’s starting to focus again. "Lance, what are you talking about?" Lance doesn’t know how else to say it, so he just shakes his head.

He’s tried at other times, too. They all hang out after rehearsal in the little studio, the one with the mirrors on all the walls, and there are a thousand tiny Justins in the mirrors. Sometimes, when he’s feeling floaty with lust and he just can’t help it, Lance points to one or two or all thousand of them and smiles. It’s not enough, even JC doesn’t notice when he does that. But Lance keeps thinking it says important things (I feel this, I feel something) inside him, under his skin and through to his fingertips.

Or they’ll be walking to the car, and Lance will offer to open the door for him, be a gentleman like his mamma taught him. When that happens Justin giggles and calls him Jeeves, but Lance thinks maybe he’s getting somewhere anyway. He knows he’s not, but he thinks he is.

*

The fifth thing to know about Lance is that he’s stuck. Every day he tries to say something, and it doesn’t choke him and it doesn’t slip out of him like the fishes. It just sits there, a weight on his chest that he might never get rid of. Lance stares at himself in the mirror, the pale metallic glitter of his eyes and the wide smile that’s there less and less, the fingers tapping restlessly against the glass.

"You’ll never be able to say it," he tells himself. "You’re never going to leave him," he says also.

The room lights sit there, resting on his shoulders like dead weight, and Lance thinks about how Justin is always moving. Justin breathes, the muscles in his chest shifting, and he moves his eyes and twitches his fingers, and it’s enough. Lance could hop all around the room, swing his arms in wide arcs and yell Gram Parsons songs at the top of his lungs and Justin would sit in a chair and watch him, and still be more alive than he ever is.

He stretches the world, Lance thinks, trying to put a name on it. He never asks, he just is. Lance doesn’t know how to explain.

Justin’s always been able to explain anything. He leans over Lance’s shoulder in the car, or tips his head onto it in the studio, and sighs against his ear, and sometimes talks. Tells the craziest stories, about how Kobe asked him to make a penalty shot at the last game, or Britney’s weird fetish with celery. Lance knows they’re just stories and he laughs when he’s supposed to, breathing warm and happy. He knows when Justin’s lying because his eyes go wide and he smiles tiny over the words, lisping them.

Lance never asks him anything important, because he doesn’t want to hear Justin’s lying-voice answer.

*

The only important thing about them together, Lance thinks, is that they’re together.

Justin shows up at his door with Indian takeout, sometimes once a week and sometimes every day. He always buys the same thing, biryani and masala sauce; he spreads the sauce over Lance’s mouth with his fingers, his eyes hooded and desirous.

This is something he does, like the stories and the early-morning runs to the store. Like smiling into sunlight when Lance first opens the curtains in the morning, squinting, blinded and not caring. Lance watches the waking up and the confusion; the huge yawns and tangled eyelashes. He’s telling himself the truth when he says he’ll never leave. He thinks sometimes that he’ll never want to.

It’s morning, early dawn and the smell of something new. Justin stares up at him; he’s leaning over the bed and smiling and Justin smiles back. It’s morning; the sun is a fuzzy yellow blanket scratching his arms. It drifts lightly onto his skin and warms him.