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Thanks to Jess for the beta. Written for the We Invented the Remix challenge.

Guy Talk (The Look Remix)
by Hetre Z

The boy at the bar last night had three earrings in his ears and a tattoo on his wrist, slipping out of the sleeve of his jacket. His fingernails were long enough to leave marks. He looked like JC. He didn't look like Lance.

The boy's gone by morning. Joey wakes up with his eyelids crusted to the bed, hung-fucking-over, and he doesn't remember how many tequila shots he had last night, or how many times he chased them with vodka and gin, but he remembers the boy at the bar, and his earrings and his smile. There was music playing and he moved to it. He rubs his mouth.

There's orange juice in the little hotel fridge, and plastic cups on top. Everything makes noise. He goes into the bathroom to wash his face, and it's like the light has teeth. They have an interview later in the day, so he cleans his teeth and scrubs at his hair, pulling water into it, and washes his mouth out again and again.

It was just him and Lance at the party last night, and the boy, so Chris and Justin should be awake by now. He picks up the phone.

The boy at the bar had licked his teeth, and Joey pulled back and said, "That's so gross, man."

"But it tastes good," he'd said, and Joey couldn't tell if he was kidding or not, but he sounded like JC, almost, a little. Lance was probably still up in VIP, maybe drinking quietly, maybe talking to someone. Probably talking to someone.

Justin picks up on the second ring. "Yeah?"

"You, ah. Hey." Joey licks his lips, squinting at the sun coming through the curtains. It's too pointy, he thinks. "We have that thing with Carson today, right?"

"Yeah, starts taping at one. Johnny’s gonna get us together at eleven, he said."

Joey moves to shut the curtains. Their wobbling makes him seasick, but the light's gone so it's not that bad. "Did you party last night?"

"You did."

There's a joke in the back of his head, something about bars and ducks and riding sidesaddle. If he were less hungover he'd maybe make it. He says, "yeah," and hangs up.

The boy at the bar had a small nose, but the rest of him looked like JC. Dark hair, big teeth, smile, and the way he danced around Joey, holding his drink above his head and moving his hips. He wasn't like Lance at all, and that was a good thing. Joey calls Chris.

"This better be Ed McMahon or the lottery guy," Chris says. "Fucking pay me to wake up this early."

The boy had said he was twenty-one. He got carded at the bar, and then could buy Joey his third rum and coke. It seemed proven. Joey says, "Hey, Chris."

"Whatever it is, go ask JC."

Joey should follow his advice. Even when Chris is being a dick, even when he's got no fucking idea, he usually knows what he's talking about. "I can’t --"

"Or Lance," Chris says, and hangs up.

It's two doors down the hall to Lance's room, and the boy at the bar didn’t look like him. Joey made sure of it. Last night he pressed Joey into the bathroom door and tried to slide down, but Joey pulled him up again by his wrists, one hand over the tattoo. "I have a hotel room," he said, slurring the words a little.

The boy didn't move, just turned his wrists a little so they slid against Joey’s hands, and stared at him, and he really didn't look like JC at all. His eyes were darker, for one, and Joey wanted to kiss him, for another. He knocks on Lance's door and the sound of it spikes behind his eyes.

No answer. He knocks again, leaning away from the door, and opens it when there's no answer. The lights are off, window closed, and Lance has his head shoved under a pillow. The boy'd pulled him toward the back door by a hand, his tattoo looking like a wire knot in the dim, yellow light.

"Lance?"

"Go. away."

Joey looked over at VIP before he left; it was ten feet from the door. Lance was there, smiling, talking, one hand waving in the air and the other on a girl's leg, looking like it belonged there. He looked perfect, surrounded by people who weren't Joey, and the boy was still pulling his arm and it was okay, this was just fine. Lance glanced over at him and smiled. He raised his glass.

"Look," Joey says, "we have that thing with Carson."

"Aren't you hungover?"

"Sort of," he walks farther into the room. "Drink some water, you'll feel better."

"If you get out I might feel better, too."

The boy had cracked jokes in the limo; stupid shit, Joey kept telling him. "Rhode Island is neither a road nor an island", and "I mean, if you were inbred, wouldn't you be a sandwich?" And it wasn't really important; he tasted nice, and he was quiet and left early, but Joey wishes he could remember better jokes than that. Lance deserves better jokes, he thinks, and wants to say it.

"Listen, I gotta, can I tell you something? You remember last night, that guy I --"

"Yeah, the one that looked like JC." Lance sits up, eyes bloodshot, looking pissed. "Okay, now, you know I love you, but you're kind of an idiot."

"I -- what?"

The boy had leaned over him, smiling, and said "you're an idiot," and it doesn't feel the same. Joey didn't ask why; it didn't seem to matter. He was an idiot getting laid, he could have said. Right now he doesn't know what to say.

"Joey, everyone and their fucking dog has seen you pining over JC the last couple of months. Just get the fuck over yourself and tell him. And let me get. back. to sleep."

He could say anything. The boy had looked like JC, but that wasn't what it meant, and Lance probably took a girl back to the hotel, and smiled at her, and maybe licked her neck. Joey could open his mouth right now and say, no, you're wrong, that's not it.

"Yeah, I’ll, um. I’ll go tell him." He backs toward the door. "Thanks."

The boy had asked, "What's his name," right before he left.

"She doesn't have a name." The alcohol made his veins feel heavy, every beat of his heart pushing him farther into the mattress and trapping him. "She's a desert nomad or whatever, she's a science project locked in a cage at Cornell. They give them numbers there." Maybe he'd sink right through it, and then fall through the floor, all the way down to the basement.

"Do I look like him?" the boy had asked.

Joey looked at him, and his eyes weren't green, and he looked enough like JC that Lance would notice; that anyone would notice. Lance had smiled at him, and saluted, gone back to talking to his girl and that was okay, it was just fine. He knew he'd have a hangover in the morning. "No, you don't look like him," he said.

End