For torch, as part of Don We Now Our Gay Apparel
How can we say forever?
I knew that it was now or never
JC has a tendency to get swallowed up by the acute embarrassment of a moment, whether it's happening right then or is just playing out in worst-case scenario Technicolor in his mind. Garish neon Technicolor, with surround sound and a laugh track like some '80s sitcom, like how when they were first in Germany they had to hold up signs to get the crowd to sing and clap along. The vast majority of JC's most uncomfortable moments have occurred in front of a live studio audience, so anything that cuts through the haze of awkward anticipation is kind of a gift.
Like Richard Marx. The song isn't a gift so much as it's like his good luck charm. It got him on MMC, but also he hears it all the time, all over the place. Mostly right when he really needs to know things aren't as bad as they seem, when he's just standing there, biting his nails and hoping he doesn't fuck something up.
Like the time on the way to their second meeting with the lawyers, when Justin made them stop at a gas station to buy a pack of gum, because he was convinced it was the only way they'd keep their mouths shut during the difficult parts. The song was playing on a cheap radio the clerk had behind the counter, and JC hummed it to himself all through the other guys' depositions.
And in the New York hotel lobby where they waited for No Strings to drop, when they stayed up to watch everyone buy a copy at midnight. Johnny wouldn't let them sit at the bar because Justin and Lance were still underage, so they were stuck out by the piano player in the main lounge.
And in the speakers in the cab on the night two weeks later when he and Lance sneaked out of a nightclub and kissed in the backseat as if they had the protection of tinted windows. For a long time, JC thought the song was about Lance, about the two of them and how no matter where they were, no matter if they were pressed together in a crush of bodyguards or spooned up in bed, they were still oceans apart. Lance was always right there waiting for him to get his shit together, to finally be sure of himself and what he wanted. Before, when he'd thought the song was about him and Bobbie or him and Nikki, he was always the one doing the waiting.
After he and Lance were over, JC stopped thinking the song was about him, or for him, at all. It's taken Lance being actual physical wet oceans away for everything to be okay between them. He doesn't need reminders when he's filling out forms at the dentist, too. So for a while, Richard Marx feels less like a gift than this thudding headache that shouts at him for all the things he didn't do. That's familiar, too, though.
The song officially stops being his good luck charm around the time he spills half a glass of wine on his new Gucci shirt at the Rachel Harrison MOCA opening on Melrose. He doesn't flinch when the jazz quintet hits the opening bars, even though the bass player misses a note and JC is kind of ashamed for him and then for himself for noticing, like somehow that makes it partly his fault.
He jumps because this blond guy he'd picked up at a party a few weeks before is wandering around in a tux, serving swordfish on little metallic skewers. He fucked a caterer. He'd thought the guy was at the party because he was, like, at the party.
"Smooth move," Carlos says at his elbow, and JC watches the stain blossom and bleed and the way it spreads across his cuff makes it look like he slit his wrists.
"I'm such a fucking klutz," JC says.
He fucked a caterer who he thought was taller but isn't, based on how he's standing with a tray in one hand next to this weird sculpture that looks like slabs of concrete, like Stonehenge. He fucked a short caterer and the art is weird and kind of ugly, which is what some people call art for art's sake and JC finds pointless and sort of mean, because he doesn't appreciate feeling like he needs to be told when something is pretty. And on top of that, now he looks like he had a total freak-out and has some cutting issue or something. He wants to leave.
"Let's go," he says.
"Don't you want to buy something?" Carlos asks. Carlos likes to help JC spend his money. JC doesn't mind particularly because sometimes there are things he should buy and doesn't because he doesn't like to have to spend money to get things.
"I don't think you can buy things at this kind of gallery," JC says, crossing his arms. The wine is smearing on his chest but at least it's a little more hidden that way. "I think you're just supposed to, you know, donate."
"Do you want to make a donation?" It's not like Carlos carries JC's wallet or anything but he does have JC's business manager's cards in his coat pocket and if JC wanted to make a donation, he knows Carlos would go arrange things.
"I just want to go somewhere dark enough that no one will think I have a hole in my lip," JC says, and so they go, he and Carlos and this guy Michel they met at some industry thing. Michel is a glorified drug dealer who calls JC by his last name, which he can actually pronounce, and tells really funny jokes. It's kind of like having Chris around, except JC always has to pick up the tab.
Michel knows one of the bartenders at the Viper Room and this is how it usually goes when JC goes out. They go somewhere, they meet people, they do some drugs, they go somewhere else, someone takes their picture a lot, and eventually JC gets driven home and goes to sleep in his big half-furnished house that reminds him of the mansion in The Money Pit. For a few weeks this summer he had a recurring dream that Shelley Long was his decorator.
The bartender Michel knows kind of looks like a young Sam Malone, actually, if JC squints right. His name is Jacques but he says he's from Ghana and JC misses people whose names he already knows. Jacques takes one look at JC and says, "No weapons in here, mon cherie. No ODs, no fights, those are the house rules." JC just stares at him until Michel slips a cool finger beneath his wristband and shakes his head at Jacques, telling him Chasez's okay, it was just an accident.
JC shrugs and takes off his shirt. It's warm in the club anyway, and he's wearing an extra small white ribbed tank underneath, so he doesn't think he looks too crazy. Carlos takes the shirt out of his hands before he can really worry about whether he's supposed to tie it around his waist or something. He almost doesn't even care that Carlos talked him into paying three hundred dollars for it when he probably could have waited until some appearance and gotten it for free.
It's warm and really, really loud in the club, loud in that metal screeching way, not drum and bass like he's used to. When JC stands up he can see someone, he thinks it's a guy, with a lot of hair and a Flying Z on a leopard fur strap, with backup singers straight out of a Robert Palmer video. His voice isn't bad, actually, high but on pitch with the guitar line an octave below.
JC searches for an open booth but the place is packed, kids with actual mullets and ripped mesh shirts and it hits JC that it's like a theme park. A theme night. Metal heads unite or something. Like an '80s night without any Madonna. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Carlos step on the toes of a guy in chartreuse leather lace-up pants and thinks, we are so going to get our asses kicked. He's pretty sure that's not the pot talking. Pot never makes him feel at ease the way he thinks it will. It's always like "Jack and Diane" without the hand claps.
There are lips next to his ear and JC tenses, sucks in his stomach and hopes he isn't blocking someone's view. "What's a boy like you doing in a place like this?" a voice whisper-shouts, loud and laughing over the music. Loud and kind of familiar and JC turns to find Nick Carter with a sheepish grin on his face.
"Um," JC says. Then he says it so Nick can hear. "Um, nothing, this friend of mine knows this cat who works here, so we're just hanging out, we were at this art gallery but then we left to come here."
He realizes he's screaming in Nick's face. Nick fits in there about as much as he does, wearing three layers of fitted t-shirts with different length sleeves and holey jeans and black Converse sneakers. His hair is not too floppy and he looks good, he looks very all-American or what JC imagines that means when it's how a person looks and isn't about a Hilfiger model. He kind of looks like a model, actually, like someone in one of the photos JC bought last month at a gallery where the art looked like people and not landmarks. Except Nick has this blonde glow to him that wouldn't be as good in black and white.
"What's your excuse?" he asks Nick, nodding at the crowded room. Nick looks confused and JC tugs at one of his sleeves. "You're a little under-dressed. Over-dressed."
"One of the guys I'm recording with said -- it's. I lost a bet. About which Journey album 'Rubicon' is on."
"Frontiers," JC says.
Nick claps him on the shoulder, a slap followed by a light squeeze like how Joey does. "Where were you an hour ago, dawg?"
Spilling things on myself, JC thinks. He pulls at the hem of his undershirt and says, "So this. This was the punishment?"
"He said anyone who thinks Bryan Adams is rock 'n' roll deserved the chance to get his ass kicked over it." Nick shrugs. He touches JC's bare wrist, which is still smudged with wine. "Aren't you kinda cold?"
"I don't know." He's not really cold. He's kind of warm, though, that prickly all-over flush like he's just caught himself sounding stupid. Except he's pretty sure he hasn't said much yet. He tried to explain that feeling to Justin once, how there was a way to feel feverish and dizzy but not in the same way as before or after a show. Justin said, You mean, like how you feel right when you realize how much you're about to get laid? Oh, JC said.
Oh.
Nick cocks his head to the stage and plays a few bars of air guitar, laughing and then wiping his hair out of his eyes.
"You wanna get out of here before we get our asses kicked?" JC asks. It's not as bad as whatever it was Nick said to him first, but it's pretty bad.
Nick just grins. "Definitely."
"I gotta go --" JC waves down the bar. Michel is leaning across the counter, licking his way across Jacques' face. "Um, I should tell them I'm leaving."
"Cool," Nick says. "I'll be right here waiting."
JC turns back and grabs Nick's wrist. Nick keeps smiling and JC feels splinters of heat down through his legs to his feet. "What did you say?"
Nick shrugs and leans in until his lips brush JC's ear. "I said I'll wait." And then he -- JC's pretty sure it's, like. A bite. He bites JC's ear and then kisses the same spot, light as angels' wings. JC thinks he should be embarrassed, or worried or something, because they're just there in the middle of this ridiculous club full of people in silly outfits.
But Nick is kissing his neck in earnest now, and JC has his hands on Nick's waist, and he really doesn't want to let go, and at that moment he could give a shit what anyone there thinks, himself included. "They'll probably figure out I took off," JC says, because no matter what other noise he's got going on in his head, he doesn't need a cue card to know what happens next.
JC wakes up to Nick singing "but you gotta have faiiiiiith" in the shower, and then he falls back asleep. When he opens his eyes up again, it's just barely starting to get light, and Nick is standing naked in front of the full-length mirror, toweling his hair dry. He catches JC rolling over in the reflection and smiles so wide it feels like a holiday.
JC props himself up on his elbows, belly to the bed, and watches how every time Nick shifts his weight a little the fold of skin right between his ass and thigh pulls taut. Nick looks back and chuckles, scratching his chin against his shoulder. "You want me to do some kind of dance or something?"
"No," JC says. Not even a little.
"Do guys ever, you know--" Nick turns around and it's all kind of different in the almost-sunrise. JC presses into the mattress and bites his lip. "You ever had one ask you to sing? Like, while you're doing it?"
"I slept with this one chick last year, while we were on tour. She really wanted me to sing 'Gone.' I was like, honey, that's not even my part."
Nick laughs, every time he opens his mouth he's swallowing a laugh and they don't really know each other all that well but JC's pretty sure he hasn't met anyone that content in a really long time. Nick walks back into the bathroom to hang up the towel and JC flops on his back, hands behind his head.
Nick lies down next to him and kisses his throat. "I love your voice," he says. "But I'm not gonna ask you to sing. Unless you want."
People ask JC to sing all the time, but he thinks until he's the one knocking on their door, he's maybe not ready yet. "You're recording right now?" JC asks instead.
"Yeah, out at this place in Encino," Nick says, and he's tracing his fingers up and down JC's body. JC touches the skin on Nick's chest carefully, like he might make it melt. "This thing we're doing right now, you know. I think it's maybe exactly what I wanted."
JC nods, listening, listening better when he follows his fingers with his mouth. But Nick isn't talking now, so JC raises his head and says, "go on."
"It's just this really simple acoustic thing. I don't know. It's probably dumb, but I. There are just all these great, simple great songs, and I think maybe it's easier to do that alone. And if I could just get one thing like that down, I'd be pretty happy."
JC takes a pit stop at Nick's stomach, stretching his neck along the arc of flesh. "Do you have, like. A special song. Or, um. Favorite song. Not a favorite song. Like a good-luck song. Like a song that you hear on the radio or wherever and you, you just know, man, something good is gonna happen." He tilts his cheek so Nick's belly button is beneath his ear.
Nick dips his chin to his chest, smiles sunny and white down his body. "Bryan Adams, man, every time."
"That one from the movie?"
"Nah, that's okay, but not that one." He pulls JC's hands to his mouth and nips at his fingers. "'Summer of '69.'" JC grins and bites Nick's thigh. "If I could, you know, if I could write something anywhere near that perfect, I'd be so fucking stoked."
"Yeah." JC gets that. And that little ledge of hipbone, right there. He gets that too. It tastes like his soap, kind of like licking his own palm, and he really hopes that they get to do it at least one more time before Nick has to leave because it was pretty rushed and not bad exactly, but not all that great, either. And now they're starting to actually be, like, comfortable with each other, guys who have kind of known each other for a long time and finally got around to this.
"What's yours?" Nick asks, tugging him up the bed. He curls his hands into JC's hair. JC preens into the touch and scrunches his face in delight, face to face on one pillow. He loves being rubbed like that. Nick's staring at him, wrinkling up his nose like they're playing at being each other's mirrors.
"Richard Marx," JC says.
"Richard Marx."
"I know," JC says. "We should get someone to make us a time machine so we could go back and be old enough in the '80s to sing those kinds of songs all the time. Maybe we'd do better there."
Nick kisses his nose like a rabbit. "It's gotta be the piano one then, right? 'Wherever you go,' or whatever. You know what I mean."
"'Right Here Waiting.'"
"Right," Nick says, and then, "oh." He kisses JC again, on the mouth, soft and then wet and he puts his hand on JC's tailbone and pulls him closer. "You think those two ever hooked up?" he says, breath hot against JC's mouth, and JC can't do anything but laugh until he's holding his stomach and curled around Nick, the shock of giggles absorbed by each other's bodies.
Then he licks down Nick's backbone, each ridge and valley like the curve of a smile under his tongue, and Nick doesn't sing but he kind of hums in the same key every time JC meets the skin with his lips. He turns Nick gently, progressively, until he's lying face-down, blond hair splayed out like a halo and an unaccompanied medley of moans half-muffled in the covers.
Nick's pretty tan -- "Been surfing some, hanging out on the beach a little," he'd said before, when they were just making small-talk on the drive back to JC's -- but his ass is still white like a baby's, pale and soft and kind of sweet. JC licks down around the seam of thigh he was studying earlier, plush like the underside of a chick's breast except lined with muscle, heavy with some kind of ardent seriousness. He likes knowing he's only there because Nick's letting him. It's kind of like he's been invited to some really private party.
Nick's trying to angle his dick into the bed for friction and lift his ass to JC's mouth at the same time. JC holds his hand at the top of Nick's thigh, pressing his tongue inside. Hold on, he says, except not out loud because his mouth is full of Nick. He wants to laugh when he thinks of it like that, but instead he just pushes deeper, licks, does it again. Nick moans his name and it sounds like one of those really great songs with somebody's name for a title instead of an actual lyric.
Nick tries to move side-to-side if he can't go vertically, spreading his legs, and JC replaces his mouth with a finger and then uses two to hold Nick open while he fucks his tongue in a little farther. He eases back and says, "c'mon, lift up," and Nick holds his hips an inch or two from the mattress, just enough that JC can keep tonguing him and get his other hand around Nick's dick from underneath. It's all kind of awkward and ridiculous and they'd be laughing if it wasn't also unbearably hot, Nick's ass balanced in his hands like that, bare and now a little sweaty and JC can't wait to fuck him again.
He maybe says that out loud, into Nick's skin, because Nick says, "I want you to, yes," high and breathy, and JC all but drops him trying to find wherever the lube wound up after last time.
Nick looks over his shoulder, smiling as JC fumbles with the condom. "No way was Richard Marx ever this hot," he pants, and JC laughs so hard he somehow manages to break the damn rubber before he even gets it on, and then he has to actually get up and go get another box out of the bathroom.
Nick hasn't moved when JC comes back. He's still breathing hard, like he's been running back and forth on a stage, except all he's doing is waiting for JC.
JC bends down to kiss the back of Nick's neck as he pushes in. "Bryan Adams ain't got nothing on you," he says, and when Nick laughs JC can feel it in his knees.
END.
Most self-indulgent credits ever: Georgina and Pet did all the hard work. Torch was blessedly specific about her kinks. kel, Lesa and Younger all read drafts, Glace showed me around town, and Jamie saved the opening from itself. Richard Marx nd Bryan Adams wrote rhyming lyrics. Sparkle Plenty (aka Pb) accidentally provided the summary. VH1 fanned the flames with its '80s retrospective. Oh, and "Who Needs the World" on repeat. For those keeping score, in one draft, Lance talked JC out of buying Richard Marx's piano.