private dancer

after a slow beating between them
more about the video here

//
JC's been living in New York for almost six months and as soon as Lance leaves him alone, he usually gets lost. He had the car drop him off on a corner where a blue-tinged light hung from the side of a building, because he had this idea that maybe the air would be cooler or somehow sweeter underneath. It wasn't really, just louder. The light hummed sixteenth notes in the key of D.

There are a lot of warehouses on the old cobblestone street and he walks over to where he thinks he's supposed to be. He's way over in the West Village, right across the highway from the river, but there aren't any numbers on the buildings. Three doors on this block all have the same logo on them, but none of them has a ringer. It's almost five a.m. and the only people around are the boys staggering home from bars and some girls over on Ninth with their shirts pulled down under their breasts, who wiggled at the cars that drove by. JC waved and they waved back.

He looks at his directions and finally starts pounding on one of the metal doors. He doesn't want to be late for his first video shoot. When the side of his hand is red and sore from all the banging, a guy in glasses with heavy black frames comes out of another entrance twenty feet down. He kicks a phone book out to prop open the door and lights a cigarette. He frowns at JC but JC has no idea what else to do, if he calls Lance he'll just wake him up, and so he goes to talk to the guy.
Before he even gets a word out, the guy says, "You're cute, but we're working on something, man, I don't have time right now."
"Oh," JC says. "Okay." He shakes off the offer of a smoke and shuffles his feet. "Do you, um, know where I'm supposed to go for this video thing?" The guy squints at him and when he takes a step closer, JC hands over the printout with a shrug.
"Shit," the guy says. "Your manager's been freaking out, you're late." He throws his cigarette to the curb and claps JC on the back, pulling him inside the warehouse.
"There were a lot of doors," JC says.
//
Lance wakes up around eleven and it takes him a few minutes to remember JC's already gone. They don't spend every night together, just most, back and forth between his place and JC's. He's not really sure why they're not living together. He has plenty of room and with the raise he's able to afford it now on his own, so he wouldn't even have to kick out a roommate. And JC is doing okay, better than okay because he's kind of cautious, almost cheap, and Lance is even more conservative with advice for other people's finances than he is for his own.
Plus he helped Georgina, the senior VP whose office he covets so much he feels he should be asking the Lord's forgiveness, talk JC into a manager and an agent, because there are just some things that are better left at work. This way he can give his opinion and hang out backstage and not have to spend all goddamn day worrying that he's too close to make JC do something he doesn't want to just because it's good for sales.
Marina's a good manager, tough when she needs to be but the kind of friendly JC responds well to. She found a good director for JC's video, and had the good sense to run that and all the other big hiring decisions past Lance to see what he thought before signing the deals. And she's got a solid lineup of tour dates for JC starting next month. Of course the downside to letting someone else be in charge of JC's career is that he has to step back a little. He probably won't get to go on the road. He can't miss that much work when he has to take care of his own clients, not if he wants a corner office of his own.
His phone rings and he finally drags himself out of bed. JC's phone is sitting next to his on the dresser, which means that if he hasn't managed to find the studio no one will be able to find him. JC is the only artist Lance has met who genuinely needed someone to follow him around with all his stuff long before he ever had a record deal. He catches the call just before it goes to voicemail. It's his friend Jon, who he has seen alone exactly once since he started dating JC, and who has moved past understanding to something very close to bitter. Lance doesn't have anything until a late work dinner, so he agrees to a day of boy-watching in Central Park. He can still watch.
//
They spend half the day out and about the city, JC pushing through crowds of tourists and a dozen or two hired extras who change their clothes a lot and bump up against him as they cross back and forth. The director carries the camera himself, and three people are always in a little circle around him, too, holding lights on retractable poles and long electric cords like bridesmaids with a wedding dress train. A woman with a garment bag slung across her chest like a messenger bag grabs JC by the collar every few takes and makes him change his shirt or his tie. He's always wearing a jacket, heavy black felt in the middle of a hot September day. Welcome to being a pop star.
JC's neck itches but everyone's been saying over and over how they only have a few hours to get these shots right, so he just tries to concentrate on looking appropriately intense and sometimes singing the same three lines from the bridge over and over again. At first he'd been singing aloud to the playback, which is coming from a boombox strapped to the back of an intern on rollerblades, but then Charles, the director, said it was too real, and that JC should just mouth the words so the match would be blurrier. JC's not sure what the point of singing along is if it doesn't look real, but then again what does he know about making videos. The things he knows something about, like producing the songs he'd written, he'll fight till he bleeds. But this is all make-believe. The closest he got to a video for the first song was a commercial he hated. But he can't properly release a single without a video, everyone says. So here he is.
His hair is thick with plasticky gel, defying gravity and a decade of fashion. He has to keep reminding himself not to touch it. He's not allowed to touch himself at all, not his hair or the kohl smudged at the corners of his eyes or the hat he's wearing in some of the shots. Marina's assistant hands him a bottle of Gatorade and makes him sip through a straw, and the make-up chick pats his forehead dry again. He doesn't mean to sweat so much, but Marina and Charles and this guy maybe named Jules who works with Lance just keep telling him he's doing great and to keep it up.
He wishes Lance were there so he could have some idea if he was really doing this right or if everyone was just kissing his ass because they were paid to. But they've talked about this. Lance has a job that involves kissing other musicians' asses and JC has a job making himself a star, and if they try to mix the two there will be some kind of insane explosion and everyone will end up heartbroken and in rehab.
They had this whole conversation about boundaries and expectations and when JC tried to tell his mom about it she laughed and said it was funny how some things weren't any different than she'd always expected after all. But the point was that JC had to be sure he wanted this for himself, not just so Lance would look at him like he was famous. JC's still not sure about that part, but he's promised both his mom and Lance to try it out and see how it feels. That means letting these other people he's supposed to trust tell him what to do and how it's going and what's coming next.
Marina squeezes his shoulder. "Two more takes," she says, shaking out her long black ponytail in the sticky late-summer heat. "And then your air conditioned chariot will take you back to Industria and we'll shoot the interior stuff, okay?" He nods and she laughs. "You don't have to act like this is fun, sweetie. That's my job." He smiles and she helps the wardrobe lady pull his tie over his head without messing up his hair.
//
"I don't know, just...different," Jon tells Lance, leaning up on his elbows. Lance's bare feet are hanging off the blanket onto the grass. This is fabulous. He works way too hard, and when he's not working he's with JC, which isn't work but isn't just stupid lying in the East Meadow with the sun on his face, either.
"Different how?" he asks again, rolling over onto his stomach.
Jon purses his lips like an old queen. Which he kind of is, not that Lance would ever use the word old anywhere in Jon's hearing, not if he valued his life. "You seem calmer," Jon says finally. "And a little oblivious. That boy over there with the Frisbee has been trying to pick you up for an hour."
Lance grins. He interned for Jon's publicity firm the summer before his senior year in college. At a release party, Jon tried to buy him a drink and Lance was so proper saying no thank you that Jon squeezed his cheek and said anyone who could be so polite and still so pretty was going to go far. Then he turned around and introduced Lance to his boyfriend, Scott.
"And now you're not even doing anything about it!" Jon sighs and flings up his arms. "Did I teach you nothing?"
"Don't shit where you eat," Lance says, and laughs.
"Well, you're failing miserably at that one."
Lance sits up. "I am not. I have to meet guys somewhere. It's not like I'm holding his water bottle or something. He's doing his thing and I'm doing mine."
Jon stares at him hard. Lance knows that Jon likes JC, but also that Jon doesn't think it's the wisest idea to use JC being gay as part of the album marketing strategy. Lance tried explaining at first how it wasn't like JC had ever not been out, but now he's just decided it's an age thing, that Jon may have built his reputation promoting discos and divas but he'd never trade someone's privacy to make a buck. Jon and Scott have lived together for twenty years and he still introduces Scott as his friend when Lance's mom is in town and they all go to see a matinee. All the same Jon's usually right. Lance has come a long way by listening to what Jon's trying to tell him.
"Are you still hungry?" Jon asks. Hungry means getting in early and leaving late, being ruthless when it's called for and gracious on the rare occasion when it's not. Hungry means not letting one good find go to your head.
Lance nods. "Starving," he says.
//
JC gets handed a sandwich and then a second sandwich. Someone makes him a mocha. He reaches for some cash before remembering that all the clothes he showed up in are on a rack somewhere in the dressing room. Hopefully his wallet is still in his pants pocket. The boy with the mocha has platinum-bleached hair and disappears before JC can offer to pay him later.
They did a series of shots earlier of JC arriving at the building, which of course wasn't this building but another one somewhere in TriBeCa. Then they shot him going up several sets of stairs. Charles told him not to worry about singing anymore, out loud or even lip syncing, that he should just say phrases in time if they seem to fit in the moment. Most of the time JC forgets, but sometimes he finds himself hitting a line and opening his mouth and Charles nods and looks satisfied.
They're shooting interiors now. One whole corner of the warehouse is done up in black and white and chrome. There's wild pointy abstract art and a long glass counter that divides the kitchen from the rest of the studio. A fake brick wall has a window cut into it and behind the facade there are lights mounted on the floor, which one of Charles' assistants told him is going to look like moonlight when they're done. A huge iron bed frame takes up most of the space. The crisp white sheets are neatly tucked in, like a bed nobody's messed up, never had sex on. It reminds JC of the hotel where he was staying when he first slept with Lance.
Leslie, the hairstylist, is re-gelling him and the blow dryer is so loud that he doesn't hear Lance until he's talking loudly right into his ear, saying something about flocks of seagulls. JC smiles and turns his cheek into Lance's for a second before Leslie yanks him back and reminds him not to touch his face. "Or let anyone else," she adds, before leaving them alone in one of the corners of the room that's not part of the set.
Lance is grinning, too, and smoothing out JC's sleeves. "You look amazing," he says, finally. "I mean, I saw the photos from wardrobe but I had. Just no idea. You're like a really hot Simon LeBon."
"Simon LeBon was hot," JC says. He had a Duran Duran poster in his bedroom up until he moved out to the garage.
Lance asks him how things are going and JC tells him about how there were Japanese tourists with camcorders filming their film crew in Times Square. He wants to kiss Lance so much, to feel familiar lips when everything about this day has been strange but no one else seemed to think so, everyone acting so casual and almost bored by the whole thing. But he's pretty sure about four people would jump on him the second he let his face near Lance, so he babbles about silly things and links his fingers through Lance's over and over.
"Were you outside today?" he asks finally. Lance's nose is pink. Lance is tracing little circles on the inside of JC's wrist and he is sure most of the time that this music thing is what he wants to do, that he wants to sing all over the country and have people cheer and scream when he opens his mouth, he is almost positive that's what he wants but right now he wishes he was the kind of star who could just make everyone go away so he could lick Lance from head to toe.
"Went to the park with Jon." JC loves Jon, loves his old stories about drag shows in the Village, about running away from a bar raid in size thirteen red pumps and then going around and waking up all his lawyer friends to raise bail money for the old girls too slow to make a break for it.
"Can we have a big dinner party before I go out next month, and have Jon and Scott and everybody over?"
"Of course," Lance says. JC is talking about it like he already lives there and, really, once he goes out on tour there's not much point in him just using his place for storage when there's that huge loft keeping Lance warm at night. He squeezes JC's hand. "Speaking of dinner."
"You have your thing." Lance has been working a lot more recently, which is okay because JC is rehearsing with a real-live band or wandering around buying used CDs from guys with card tables on street corners. He hangs out at museums a lot. His new publicist called him last week and asked if he could do an interview with this German magazine if he wasn't too busy. He's not sure what he should be busy doing. He's still writing two or three songs a week, even though he has no idea what he's going to do with them, because it depends on the single, and the tour, and Lance's boss.
Lance smiles. "Don't worry, it's going great."
"Are you sure there shouldn't be, I don't know. Some girls here? Dancing or something?"
"You like boys," Lance points out.
"There aren't any of those, either."
"Yes there are," Lance says, and kisses JC quick on the lips. "He's pretty hot, too."
Leslie throws a hairbrush at them. "Don't touch his face!" she yells.
//
Lance sits in the back booth at Florent with this guy Tommy, who has chin-length black hair with bright blond streaks. He's wearing heavy eye-makeup and keeps tossing his head back and flicking his lighter because he's not allowed to smoke the cigarette he's rolling between his fingers. He's more talented than he is pretentious, which all told is pretty talented, and if Lance can convince him to ditch his lame band and check the attitude long enough to record a new album, he's got a good shot at all the health code violations he could ever afford.
This is the third meeting he's had with Tommy, and by now he's heard the life story of each of the losers in Tommy's band, guys who have been leeching his talent and local fame since they were all juvenile delinquents in a small town on Long Island. Lance doesn't say much, just asks pointed questions and makes him a better offer and waits for Tommy to slowly come to his own conclusions about why being a solo artist is a great idea.
This is what he does. This is what he's always wanted to do, he thinks, and so he understands why Jon is a little frustrated with him, why it might seem like maybe he hasn't been as ambitious this year as he used to be. And he's nowhere near close enough to having made it to stop working his ass off. He knows this. He's a little worried about it, because even now when he knows exactly what he should be doing -- and he's doing it, mostly, even if with only about half his attention -- he's having trouble not thinking about JC.
He could be there at JC's shoot. He could quit this and work at Marina's firm and manage JC and maybe a couple other acts and figure out the rest, except everyone he knows who's ever tried to make that work got divorced long before the greatest hits album. He loves JC like crazy, and he loves what he does, and he's going to find a way to have both, he is.
Right now, though, he's thinking about JC belting out Tina Turner in the shower last week, working his way through all the hits until he came out of the bathroom still half-wet, toweling his hair dry and standing at the end of the bed, singing Private Dancer and looking at Lance like Lance had already conquered the world and this was his reward.
"I wanna go over to that new bar on Ninth," Tommy says, breaking his forbidden cigarette in half and letting flakes of tobacco scatter all over the table. Lance pays the bill and leaves a big tip for the mess, smiling apologetically at the busboy, who has a shiny red sticker in the shape of a heart on his cheek. He winks at Lance as they leave. Lance talks Tommy into walking by Industria so he can let JC know he'll be late, and so maybe Tommy can get an idea of how it feels to have ten people picking up after you all the time.
They walk upstairs and someone pauses the playback in the middle of the second verse. JC is standing in the middle of the apartment set, pulling up his pants. "So, um, slower?" he asks the director.
"You're not in any hurry," Charles says. "All that's waiting for you is this fantasy, right? So you're going to, you know, almost delay the inevitable, because you know you're alone and you can have this whole idea in your head but your boyfriend's never gonna show up. Okay?"
JC looks over and Lance waves.
"Okay, JC?"
"Oh, yeah, okay." JC waves back to Lance and then turns back to the cut-out window.
"Slower," Charles warns. "Slooower." They roll the playback and JC stares pensively through mini-blinds at nothing but a pale blue light. The camera tracks around him and moves backwards as JC's fingers work the button of his pants, then his zipper, and then slowly, slowly, push the slacks off his hips. He's wearing little white briefs, and then he starts to push those down, too. Signing off on storyboards did not prepare Lance for this. Sleeping with JC has barely prepared Lance for this.
He's trying to be cool, Tommy struck dumb by his side, his boyfriend bare-assed in front of a dozen crew members and two cameras and, Jesus, he's turning around. Tommy chortles, and Lance blinks and exhales because, okay, JC's wearing some kind of flesh-colored thong thing, what the fuck is that, my goodness. JC takes three slow steps towards him, no, towards the camera, Lance realizes, not him, and then Charles yells cut and the playback squeaks to a halt and a few people giggle nervously.
"Looks good," Charles says, and JC beams. "Too bad we're only using the waist up on most of this."
"What kind of video you making here exactly?" Tommy laughs, elbowing Lance and turning to leave.
Lance swallows and smiles. "Whatever kind you want, Tommy. That's how it works when you're the star."
//
JC's lying on his back on the big bed, sheets slung low across his waist. He's taking a break from pretending to jerk off. He can't really do it, can't actually touch himself because it's a sexy song but apparently not allowed to be that sexy. But he's still supposed to look like it, just like he's supposed to look like he's singing, sort of, and like he knows what the hell he's doing, which he doesn't.
He wishes Lance would come back. Lance and his tough-looking rocker boy who JC knows isn't anything special, he's heard Lance bitch about him for weeks. JC wants Lance to like his job, to be alive with the kind of ambitious glow he was when they first met, because JC's willing to take credit for some of that but not all. Lance is really good at what he does and JC wants him to just do it instead of thinking he needs to babysit JC all the time. Apparently JC has a lot of other people being paid to do that, anyway. Most of them are gone now because Charles declared that JC would be less inhibited with only six people in the room instead of a small army.
Charles tells him to turn over on his stomach and casually look back over his shoulder as he humps the bed. If he wants to mouth the lyrics, that would be fine. The thong is cutting into his hip and that's the only thing that keeps JC grounded, keeps him from just forgetting where he is and what he's doing and how much he is thinking about Lance and Lance naked and Lance naked with sweat running down his chest and Lance naked with sweat running down his chest and the dark blond hair on his stomach glistening like it just needs JC's mouth on it and --
Charles yells cut like he's annoyed, like he's been yelling cut for a while, and the lighting guy snickers. JC rests his head on the pillow and closes his eyes until everybody says go again.
//
It's almost three when Lance finally puts Tommy in a cab and walks back to the studio. JC hasn't called, so hopefully that means they're still shooting and not that he's wandered out somewhere or is annoyed that Lance wasn't there all along. Not that JC gets annoyed about things like that. He gets pissy when people try to tell him to sing differently, or act like he's just a pretty face with no understanding of his own music, but basically all the rest of the time he's the nicest guy most people have ever worked with. "He called me honey about fifteen times," Jenny in marketing told Lance last week with an exaggerated sigh. Then she asked whether JC might remember to turn on his phone for his next interview.
JC looks more naughty than nice right now, arms by his sides, face turned into the pillow, totally asleep despite a small hornet's nest of techs and PAs wandering around. One corner of the sheet is turned down, showing off a few square inches of JC's perfect bare brown skin, no tan lines because all summer he laid out on Lance's roof and sunbathed naked. The director is gone, Marina is packing up her stuff and telling Lance they think they got everything they needed, and if not they'll pick it up next week. Everybody else follows her out, except this guy Josh who works for the studio. They shoot stuff there a lot and Josh dated a guy Lance used to share an office with.
Josh is staring at JC's ass. "How did an asshole like you get so lucky?" he asks, not looking away.
"I'm not an asshole," Lance says. He knows JC wouldn't ever put up with that.
"Yeah, man, but you are one lucky motherfucker."
Lance has to grin. "Are you going to give me the keys or not?"
Josh slaps the ring into Lance's palm and pushes his black glasses up his nose. "Don't get distracted and forget to lock up."
"Thank you," Lance says.
"And be out by seven, there's some kind of kiddie street fair outside in the morning and people are coming in to set up."
"Yeah, yeah, you know I'm good for it." Lance pushes him towards the stairs. Josh shakes his head and shrugs, but he goes. This is why Lance learns people's names, so when he has to ask them for favors it's like they're almost friends.
He sits on the bed and presses a kiss to the base of JC's spine. JC starts up, almost knocks Lance on his ass and finally blinks himself awake. "Oh!" he says, and then smiles wide. "You're here."
"I am."
He shakes out his shoulders and his hair and looks around. "Everyone's gone?"
"Yup." Lance puts his hand on JC's bare thigh.
"Am I allowed to touch you now?" JC kisses him sleepily before Lance can answer. "Am I dreaming?"
Lance laughs and JC licks his throat. "No, baby. You'll just sleep through anything."
"It's been a long day," JC protests. "I missed you. What time is it?"
"Three-something."
JC yawns and then covers his mouth. "Can we go home?"
Lance bites JC's shoulder and pushes him down onto the bed. "Not yet." He sits back on his knees and pulls his t-shirt over his head.
"Wait," JC says.
"What?" God, every time JC looks at him Lance is a little scared he's going to leave, that he'll figure out Lance really is the luckiest motherfucker in the world and JC's halfway to being a big star and can have any boy he wants.
"Slower," JC says. He leans back against the rumpled sheets and stares at Lance like he hasn't eaten in weeks. "Do it slower."

////
END.
Credits: Brought to you by major donors meinnim, tavella and without_me as part of fan_the_vote, the best idea since pixie stix. Title and summary by Tina Turner. Beta by Jamie, Ivy and Glace. The closest thing I can find to a picture that captures what JC looks like before his private dance.

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