Justin tilts his head to the side and studies himself in the mirror, mourning his face and his genes and the fact that he can’t do a thing to change any of it. Every time he begins a new film they groom him until he’s cover-model perfect, so he should have learned to expect it by now. He covets jobs that don’t lean on his good looks, but those jobs never seem to pay as well as the others, which brings him to where he’s at right now.
This isn’t like the other films he’s done. The money isn’t good, and no one gets special treatment. Every morning Justin shows up at seven sharp and sits with a cup of coffee he poured for himself in the trailer he shares with two other people.
When he’s done looking at his reflection, he settles onto the small sofa and takes out today’s schedule. After looking at it for a moment, he takes a deep breath and a long sip of coffee.
This movie is different in other ways, too.
*
The room smells of something old and mechanical, more like a garage than a bedroom. But entertainment is all slight-of-hand, so Justin tries to buy into the illusion that he’s stripping down to his underwear in his own bedroom, and that there aren’t two sound guys and a camera crew hovering and squinting critically at everything he does.
The best actors are always method actors, so Justin focuses on becoming his character even though he would never own a scratchy polyester bedspread like the one he’s looking at now. He breathes deeply and climbs into the bed, pulls the covers up over his waist, and it’s ridiculous the way his heart is hammering so wildly. If they go in for a close-up he’s completely fucked, but that’s not for a few minutes, so he lies back on his pillows and watches Nathan undress and slide between the sheets, his thigh pressed lightly to Justin’s.
He’s done love scenes before. This isn’t even technically a love scene, just two men in bed getting ready to sleep, but his brain is suddenly overriding all impending dialogue with a snowballing panic that doesn’t belong here. There’s only the muscular thigh pressed against his beneath the covers, his own erratic breathing, and far worse, behind it all, a crushing sense of déjà vu.
Nathan is smiling fondly, which means they’re still rolling film, and it figures that now when Justin is clearly having a breakthrough in his acting—because what else could this be?—he can’t remember anything he’s supposed to be saying.
Somehow, Justin croaks out a line, but there’s no one to say whether or not it was right because everything flies into chaos when the sound of crashing metal drowns out even the director’s shouting. Everyone rushes to see what happened and Justin is left lying in bed, hard between his legs and desperate to hide it.
“You okay?” Nathan asks. He’s already fishing his clothes off the floor.
“Yeah,” Justin replies hoarsely, and keeping the covers on his lap, swings his legs off the side of the bed.
*
It was just a hard on. There’s no reason for Justin to even think about it, except for the fact that it’s been ages since he had trouble controlling that sort of thing. He’s done love scenes, has rolled around half-naked with a topless woman in bed, and the whole time the only thing that spiked his heart rate was the worry of getting in some bad lighting.
And yet, all he did today was slide under the covers—cool, stiff sheets that still smelled of bleach—and something had given way. Exhilarated nostalgia had coursed through him too quickly to stop, and even hours later, he can’t stop feeling as though he’s been ripped out of his current life and thrust back to a time where he’d been perpetually, terrifyingly confused.
But he’s not fifteen anymore, he reminds himself as he pours himself a drink. He’s an adult and even though he’s earned the right to so many things, he still doesn’t have the right to—this.
Even if he did, he’s sure he doesn’t want it. What is he supposed to do, just call JC--
Justin frowns down into his glass. Up until now, he hasn’t let himself think about JC in the context of what’s happening, and he shoves the thought away again, angry with himself for dragging up a phase—a stupid childish phase—he’d promised himself he’d never go through again.
It was just a hard on and it doesn’t mean anything, but Justin is still thinking about it later that night when he drains his glass, and then pours another.
*
He calls from the couch because a couch doesn’t have cool, white sheets and doesn’t remind him of anything unpleasant. A couch is not a bed.
He dials with gin-slow fingers and pauses, a bit surprised, when JC picks up on the first ring. Neither of them say anything, and for a moment it’s just JC’s sleepy presence and Justin’s labored breathing. When Justin shuts his eyes, everything spins; a slow, spiral slide that almost lulls him into sleep before JC’s voice cuts through the fog and nicks Justin with its sharp, unexpected immediacy.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” Justin says, and rolls onto his back. “Did I wake you?” he asks, the words coming from a store of mindless, generic phrases to act as placeholders until he can get at what he really means to say. He doesn’t care if he woke JC.
“Nah, it’s okay. How’s the movie?” JC asks. Justin can hear him moving around, rustling sounds coming from those dangerous sheets.
“Uh…it’s good,” Justin says. It’s as close as he’ll get to admitting the truth, but he knows JC will get it. “Kind of different, you know? Smaller, I guess.” he says.
“Uh huh.”
JC’s reply hangs between them until it’s an uncomfortable echo in Justin’s ears. He knows better than to do this. “Yeah. So…I guess I’ll talk to you later,” Justin finally says, then presses the off button before JC can protest. As an afterthought, he shoves the phone into the sofa cushions just in case he feels the need to call anyone else.
*
JC shows up on the set the next day, maddeningly offhand about the fact that he’s come to Justin’s job unasked. Justin gives a small wave from the chair where he’s resting with his script, and notices the way JC is somehow softer around the edges than he remembers, in ripped blue jeans and a t-shirt so pink it glows.
Not now, he thinks, but his legs raise him into a standing position so he can hug JC’s narrow waist. At the last second, he forces a smile onto his face because there’s no reason for him to dread the sight of JC. There’s no reason for it, but his stomach tenses with anxiety all the same.
“I thought you wanted…” JC’s smile falters and he presses his lips together in what Justin recognizes as suspicion. “I thought you wanted to talk to me?”
“No, no. I’m just busy, C.” Justin gestures around at the set. “Working.”
JC leans forward and smiles. “You don’t have any scenes until two,” he says, and there’s really nothing left to say, because of course JC wouldn’t have come here without checking first.
“Right. So…” Justin looks around the busy set and then down to the frayed cuffs of JC’s jeans. “Want to get some lunch?”
*
By the time their drinks arrive, Justin has decided that JC’s showing up isn’t such a bad thing. At the very least, he’s someone Justin knows how to be around with minimum effort. JC talks about his new album until he seems to get tired of waiting.
“So…you called?” he asks, a goofy affectation to his words.
Justin puts his fingertips to the water glass at his right, smearing the condensation until his the pads of his fingers are numb with cold. “I…yeah,” he says, then shrugs. “I guess I was just wondering some things.”
“Yes?”
Justin wipes his hands on his thighs when he leans in toward JC, lowering his voice even though no one is around. “It’s just about…sleeping. With people. Not sex,” he says quickly, and then frowns. He’s more articulate than this; he’s a thousand times more articulate than JC, and yet JC is the one sitting here with an expression of patient tolerance. “It’s just,” he tries again, “did you ever…”
JC laughs awkwardly. “I have no clue what you’re talking about.”
Justin sighs and presses his fingers against his eyes. “Neither do I. I just want to know…” but he doesn’t know what he wants. Maybe he doesn’t want to know anything at all. “Did you ever share a bed with somebody?” he asks quietly. “And you’re supposed to be sleeping, but you’re, you’re…”
“What the hell are you saying, J?” JC asks suddenly, arms crossed against his chest.
“Nothing! Nothing.”
“Why did you call me the other night?” JC doesn’t look angry, but his eyebrows are drawn together in confusion—or suspicion; possibly both.
“Just wanted to talk to you.”
“Uh huh. Look, are you accusing me of something?”
A disgusted sound tears its way out of his throat before he can help himself. “No,” Justin assures JC, baffled by the blush on JC’s face that doesn’t exactly look embarrassed. Angry, he realizes with a sinking feeling, and spends the rest of the meal talking about work.
It’s only when JC is gone that it occurs to Justin all the times he’s fallen asleep with the sound of JC’s soft snores on the pillow next to him.
*
The scene was a bust, so they start over the next day with everyone on edge. Justin is pretty sure he’s not on edge for the same reason as the others. He’s already been scolded in makeup for looking tired and puffy, and the questions that have been pressing on him since yesterday are still lurking, an ambush he would do anything to avoid.
This time, when Nathan climbs into bed with him, Justin draws his legs to the edge of the bed as much as he dares. It helps, but the low rumble of Nathan’s voice is enough to jolt Justin to that place he’s trying so hard to forget. Again, he thinks of JC.
JC has absolutely nothing to do with this scene, but Justin is becoming increasingly certain that the thump of his nervous pulse and the memories of giddy young arousal that awaken every time he’s in this place—those have everything to do with JC.
His distracted mind flashes on waking in a tangle of smooth, firmly muscled limbs, and Justin viciously shoves the thought away, drags himself back to the present, to important things like building a movie career and a reputation. He hasn’t thought of those things in such a long time, but the vague, half-buried memory is still there and it feeds the paranoid addiction that’s been haunting him since he began this film.
Somehow, he makes it through the entire scene, which shouldn’t have been an issue in the first place. It’s a short scene, insignificant at best, and Justin wouldn’t be surprised if it ended up on the floor of the editing room. Such a small piece of fiction, and yet he spends the rest of the afternoon pacing restlessly in his trailer.
*
He uses his key on the back door because he doesn’t want to wake JC, Justin tells himself. It’s only part of the truth, but he doesn’t know the rest of it until he’s in JC’s dark bedroom looking down at the bed where JC is sleeping.
The room is shaded with grays, but the curtains allow tiny slivers of light that fall on JC’s bed, his face, the place where his wrist is thrown across his pillow. JC has always been a light sleeper, and it only takes a few moments before his eyelids flutter open. His head merely rolls to the side, subdued and curious, as he takes in what’s happening.
Even Justin isn’t sure what’s happening. The truth is, he’s never felt so out of control, but his movements are still calm and measured as he touches the collar of his t-shirt and hooks his fingers around the edge of the fabric. When the shirt is balled up in his hands, Justin is suddenly aware of his body, his tightened nipples, the scent of his cologne and deodorant.
He looks at JC, whose only reaction is to blink slowly.
Justin continues. He lets the shirt fall onto the shadowed floor, and with JC watching him, it’s somehow easier to unloop his belt, to let his baggy jeans slide down over his hips. For a moment he hesitates, fingernails scratching thoughtfully at his underwear elastic, but he’s not ready to go there. This is enough.
Even in the darkness, Justin can see the sheets aren’t white, but when he lifts them and slides beneath, it’s like ripples of cool springwater washing over his thighs. From JC’s side of the bed, a warmth radiates out toward Justin’s chilled skin and he searches for it with his leg, moving toward the heat until his leg is flush against JC’s motionless, sleep-warm body. It’s just like on set, only—as he suspected it might be—worse. Worse because JC’s bed doesn’t smell of bleach. It smells of warm skin and traces of fabric softener, and it’s also worse because there’s no one around to distract Justin from the slow-building heat that’s centered in his belly and between his legs, exactly where he’d feared it would happen.
When he glances to the side, JC’s eyes are closed, but Justin sees the movement of his throat as he swallows, hears him exhale a long breath through his nose. It’s how JC has always calmed himself. Justin wishes he could borrow some of that serenity for himself, because there’s an alarming buzz in his head and it’s telling him his suspicions are dead on.
He needs to leave.
JC has to be wondering what’s going on, but Justin holds his words inside because he doesn’t trust what they’ll be when they emerge, whether or not they’ll betray him the way his body betrays him. What had happened to him on set is nothing compared to now, with the smooth skin of JC’s naked hip pressed against his thigh. It’s as much proof as he needs, so he carefully climbs out of the bed, mindful to keep his back to JC the entire time.
It seems as though his jeans make a thundering racket when he pulls them on, the belt buckle clanging noisily, the exact opposite of how he’d meant to exit, but JC still doesn’t chastise him. It’s not until Justin is fully dressed and turning to leave that JC leans up on one elbow and calls after him.
“Hey,” he says softly. “You find out whatever you were wondering?”
The question cuts right through Justin’s panic, leaving an icy trail in its wake. “Yeah,” he replies unsteadily, and leaves JC’s bedroom exactly the way he found it.
*
“If you’re uncomfortable with this, Justin, it’s not going to work.”
Justin nods at the director and raises an questioning eyebrow to demonstrate how not uncomfortable he is. There’s one lousy kissing scene in this movie, and he knows everyone is waiting to see how he fares. He knows exactly which ones have been expecting—wanting—him to fail, and it’s that alone that fuels his determination.
“You do look a little weird,” Nathan whispers, but then they yell for quiet on the set and Justin buries his hands in Nathan’s hair just like the script says. When their lips meet, it’s admittedly more of a jolt than Justin would have liked, but he thinks he covers fairly well and even remembers to move his hands. Love scenes are a lot like dancing, he thinks; a series of meaningless motions with the ultimate goal of appearing sexy. He wonders if it’s working.
“Stop,” the director calls. His name is Mike. He’s only a few years older than Justin, and is supposed to be some kind of genius with a decade of experience under his belt. “You need to relax, Timberlake,” he instructs, to the sound of a few titters in the background.
“I am relaxed,” Justin protests, arms still around Nathan.
“How relaxed do you need to be in order to give us some tongue?”
“What?” Justin frowns. “That was a pretty basic screen kiss, right? I mean, it’s what I’ve always done. And, I asked some people…” he trails off, not wanting to commit the crime of dropping names these people only wish they could work with.
“Does this look like a romantic comedy to you?” Mike demands, and then before Justin can reply, continues. “This is not a romantic comedy. This is a story about life, and in real life, lovers kiss with tongue. Tongue,” he repeats emphatically, then motions for everyone to get back to work.
The next time, Justin opens his mouth for Nathan and pours himself into the scene. He imagines what the camera is capturing right now, the wet slide of their lips and the slow, secondary movement of their bodies. There’s some erotic dialogue that’s always felt embarrassing when he practices at home, but it all comes together here in front of the camera. He whispers his lines against Nathan’s ear and wonders what everyone will think when they see him like this. More specifically, he wonders what JC will think.
It feels like a good take, but as always, Mike wants more. It’s easier now, and has been ever since JC crept into his thoughts. By the sixth take, Justin’ lips are used and swollen, and behind closed eyes, he sees their counterpart. JC’s mouth, he thinks guiltily, experimentally, and a small gasp of pleasure rises up out of his throat.
This take is a world apart from the others, from the genuine flush on Justin’s cheeks to the way Nathan’s hands tease lightly at the small of his back. There’s no point in pretending this couldn’t be real, not after last night. With that in mind, Justin concentrates on curling the tip of his tongue in what he hopes is a beguiling manner and dragging it across the curve of his co-star’s bottom lip. A few more minutes of deliberate, breathless making out, Justin is rewarded with a burst of overwhelming victory when Mike yells “Cut and wrap!”
Nathan slumps against Justin, chuckling softly. “I didn’t think you’d pull it off,” he says. “But, uh. Good work. Seriously.”
“I always do good work,” Justin boasts. He stretches his arms above his head and makes a cocky pose, trying to shake off his discomfiture. A moment ago he’d been immersed in the wet, welcoming mouth of a stranger with the weight of everything resting on his performance. Now, everyone is moving on to the next scene, the next set of problems to tackle. At least the noise and bustle do him one favor, he thinks as he watches Nathan walk casually away; it keeps hidden the fact that he has never felt so splayed open in his life.
*
The sick, vulnerable feeling wears off eventually and when Justin gets home just past dark, he’s thrumming with victorious energy. A celebration is in order, but there’s a short list of people with whom he can actually share the cause for celebration.
Hi. I thought of you today, Justin thinks as he waits for JC to pick up. He won’t say it, has never needed to say these things to JC. The problem, he supposes, is that he’s always expected JC to read his mind. It’s JC’s fault for being spookily intuitive ninety percent of the time. The rest of the time, JC is either that oblivious, or he’s just doing what they all do to some extent—keeping part of himself off-limits, for which Justin can’t blame him.
JC doesn’t pick up. Justin frowns, spends a good five minutes scrolling through all the addresses in his phone, then finally gives up and calls his mom.
*
“Baby,” Lynn says, over her third drink. Justin always brings her here when they go out, and she always gets just a little drunk on their cosmopolitans. “You don’t look right. Gorgeous,” she adds, with an affectionate brush of fingers over his buzzed head. “But something is wrong.”
“Nothing,” he insists, and barely resists the urge to tell her every single detail, including his adventure last night in JC’s bed. “Just focused on the movie. I had my big love scene today,” he says with a grin.
“And?”
“And it took a few tries, but we got it. It’s good, mom,” he tells her. There’s no reason to suppress his pride around his mama, and he lets himself swell up with everything he feels. “It’s different, like we wanted.”
She shakes her head slowly and gives a low, throaty laugh as she swirls the liquid in her glass around and around. “You’ve always known exactly what you wanted.”
Justin snorts. She couldn’t be further from the truth. “I gotta use the facilities.” He smirks while she rolls her eyes and waves him away from the table.
There’s a dance floor between the dining area and bar, where Justin and Lynn had danced when they first arrived. He’s an actor now, but he still dreams in terms of rhythm and movement, and his feet still remember all the steps. As he makes his way across the dance floor and toward the restroom, Justin catches a glimpse of a familiar profile, a profile he’d know anywhere.
JC is laughing, and he’s with a group of people Justin has never met. Justin doesn’t want their first meeting since last night’s weird encounter to be in a public setting, so he ducks his head and hurries into the bathroom. He’s always found the world too small when there’s someone to avoid, and tonight is no exception. JC walks in as Justin is drying his hands on a paper towel.
“Hey,” JC says loudly, maybe a little drunk. “Hi. Justin.” He’s definitely surprised, but recovers quickly. Justin waits for him to say something else, but his thumbnail is already in his mouth, chewing like an anxious animal. Last night, those fingers had lain quiescent on the pillow, catching moonlight without even trying.
“I called you.”
“I know. But you’re…I didn’t know what you were going to say,” JC confesses with sheepish smile that squishes his eyes into sweet little half moons.
He looks so casual. Justin doesn’t know how he can be, when everything is so changed. After the week Justin has had, the things he’s discovered—or been on the verge of discovering—it doesn’t make sense for JC to stand here as though nothing has happened.
“I…” He snaps his mouth shut, confused. Last night, JC had seemed so ethereal and all-knowing. Now, he’s just standing in a bathroom, out with people Justin doesn’t know, probably planning to go home and go to bed just like it were any other night.
Because it is just any other night.
Just because his own perceptions have changed, Justin realizes as his hope drains into nothingness, does not mean that anything at all has happened to JC. For JC, everything is the same today as it was yesterday, which is how he can be here with a casual smile, wearing dirty flip flops and ratty jeans.
Trace had said it once during one of their most bitter fights, spat it out like a curse: “Time doesn’t stop for Justin Timberlake,” but the truth is that it does. Or, it did up until this point, and Justin now understands where that bitterness had come from.
“Look,” he tells JC. The wobble in his voice is even more pronounced because of the bathroom acoustics. “The other day. I wasn’t talking about you. I was talking about me.”
“I kind of figured that out last night,” JC replies, and somehow, that’s even worse, because he’d known and he still hadn’t picked up the phone.
Justin turns and leaves the bathroom, careful not to look at his own reflection on the way out.
*
“I don’t feel good,” he tells his mom as soon as he gets back to the table.
In the past, Lynn has been accused of being too much friend and not enough mother, but Justin has never suffered a sickness without her care. He likes the feel of her cool palm on his forehead, and even though he doesn’t have a fever, his skin burns hot enough to make her click her tongue and call a taxi.
He doesn’t have the flu, but there’s a painful knot in his stomach that eases only slightly when his mama brings his head down to her shoulder in the cab, stroking his temples like she had when he was a child. He closes his eyes and soaks in the comfort, his eyes wet and prickly. Maybe he does have a fever after all, a sickness brought on by pure stupidity. Either way, it feels nice to be tucked into bed and promised soup and tea.
Once he’s in his own bed, he gives in to the bitter disappointment, curls under the covers and concentrates on his own self-loathing. It’s not often he allows himself a good wallow, but he deserves it tonight after finding out he’s such a hopeless idiot.
The worst part is he’s pretty sure that at one time, he might have had JC. If he’d just acknowledged this a decade ago, then maybe something would have come of it. Now, he’s in a place where he doesn’t know how to ask. Miserably, he stares at his dark ceiling and questions all the decisions he’s made in the past decade until he feels as sick as his mom believes him to be.
When footsteps sound in the hall, Justin’s thoughts turn to soup and tea. He raises himself into a sitting position and leans back on his pillows, but when the door opens, it’s not his mom.
“Your mom said you were sick,” JC says. He stands in the doorway for a second before shutting the door and settling into the armchair on the other side of Justin’s bed. “She said I could come up for a while if I bring you this.”
He raises a glass of water, and takes a long sip before he hands it off to Justin.
“Thanks.”
“So, are you contagious?” Justin can hear the smile in JC’s voice.
“I’m not really sick. Just kind of…tired.”
“Mm hmm.” JC nods. “Mind if I turn a light on?” Without waiting for an answer, he turns Justin’s bedside lamp to the lowest setting.
Justin clutches the edge of his comforter, slightly off-kilter. It’s not clear what JC is doing, especially when he slips his feet out of his flip flops and lifts them up onto Justin’s bed, legs stretched across the small space between them. He’s staring, but Justin doesn’t feel entitled to ask him to stop. Hadn’t he just gone to JC’s room the night before and been a lot stranger than this?
“I know you’re going through a thing,” JC says kindly, while Justin quietly freaks out. His chest is so heavy, maybe he’s having a heart attack. “But, do you get what you’re doing? Do you even know, Justin?”
Justin nods, dry-mouthed. JC’s hand, which has been moving restlessly over his belly this entire time, has begun a deliberate downward slide. His fingers seek out the thick rise where his cock lays beneath his jeans and then while Justin watches, they curve tightly around that length. He’s touching himself through his pants, and Justin isn’t easily shocked, nothing shocks Justin anymore, but his breath catches violently in his throat all the same.
“I just need to know for sure,” JC says.
Justin nods again, and it’s possible that shock isn’t exactly what he’s feeling, because when JC draws his hard, naked cock out of his pants, Justin’s hands clench helplessly in the blankets heaped on his lap. He’s not shocked--he’s ecstatic, and the absolute terror of the situation does nothing to keep the blood from pooling between his legs, warm and heavy and all about JC.
JC looks down at himself, pauses as though considering, then slips one hand down into the front of his pants. With the other, he shoves his pants down in front, just enough that he can lift his balls out into the open. They rest heavily atop the elastic of his underwear, and Justin looks away, shaken by the bolt of excitement that goes straight through him at the sight of JC’s widely spread legs and the genitals between them, completely exposed. He hadn’t expected to see…so much of JC.
And of course JC thinks it’s all right to do this with the sounds of Justin’s mom bustling around the kitchen right there as a backdrop. He probably gets off on it even more, this way.
“Is this what you expected it to be?” JC asks. Justin shakes his head with his head still turned toward the door. JC sighs and keeps talking. “No? Do you like it, then?” This time, Justin does let his gaze slide back toward JC, who isn’t really jerking off at all, as Justin had half-hoped, half-feared he would be. Instead, he’s holding his cock in a loose fist while one thumb skims lightly across the smooth, wet tip.
“Yes,” Justin says, then corrects his defiant tone with a more subdued, “I like it, C.” And he does like it, he decides. He likes it enough that it’s already a concerted effort not to writhe beneath the covers at the sight of JC fondling himself with such unapologetic enjoyment.
“Good,” JC replies, a bit of an edge to his voice this time. “I just had to make sure,” he repeats as his hand squeezes his cock. “You were always so oblivious, you know?”
“You should’ve…”
“No. I couldn’t,” JC says sharply. “But I’m doing it now, so watch, okay?”
“Yeah,” Justin says, and doesn’t mind that his words are bled through with gratitude and something like awe. It’s just that JC’s hand, working up and down his cock, is affecting in a way he hadn’t expected. Every nerve in his body is sensitized, his own cock leaking with sympathy into the bedclothes as JC’s erection is pulled and toyed with by his firm, methodical hand.
“You can, too.” JC lifts his chin toward Justin, an unmistakable invitation.
Justin wants to. He wants it so much, and if JC weren’t here he’d do it. But he knows the most he’ll venture is the hand he’s got hidden in his lap, safely concealed by sheets and blankets and the darkened room. Torn between modesty and maddening arousal, he settles for furtive touches under covers while JC, who refuses to even take his shirt off in public, pumps his erection at an increasing pace, right there in the open. Justin notices how his hips have begun to rise with every downstroke, and he aches to mimic the action, to hump against something, even if it is only his own hand.
He shakes his head as a belated answer, but JC doesn’t notice. His eyes have gone wide and intent, liquid and colorless in the dark, completely focused on Justin’s face. The attention is disconcerting, as is the fact that he can no longer hear his mom downstairs. The only sound that matters is the one in the room with him, the fleshy slip-slap of JC’s hand on his cock, fast and faster, until he slides one palm over his balls to tug at them lightly while he breathes, “now, now,” grunts deep in his chest, and comes in his hand.
He recovers quickly; Justin has to give him that. The final, languid pulses of come are still trickling onto his fingers when he launches himself onto Justin’s bed and grabs Justin’s blanket before Justin can do anything about it.
Futilely, mostly out of instinct, Justin tries to yank the blanket back into place, but JC is quick and Justin really doesn’t have anywhere to go. “Hey, no,” JC soothes, one hand on Justin’s shoulder. “You’re- you’re good, right?”
Justin takes a deep, shuddering breath. He is good, but there’s something about being faced with the evidence of what just happened that just shatters him into a million jagged pieces; the heat of JC’s face and neck, the scent of his sweat and musk, and worst of all, the unmistakable reality of him on the bed, kneeling astride Justin’s right thigh.
JC’s fingers are as hot and sticky as the rest of him when they touch Justin’s dick, which practically leaps into JC’s hand, so full and hard it feels like he might die. Justin’s arms come up around JC until everything is sweat-damp, pleasure melting into Justin’s skin everywhere JC touches him, and Justin tips his head back, lets it happen.
He doesn’t lift his head until JC’s fist reaches the head of his cock. Slick, gliding pressure along the most sensitive part of him, and he arches off the bed with a cry, eyes flying open to meet JC’s gaze. It’s never felt this good before.
“You’re so wet,” JC murmurs. “Justin.” Justin sees it coming before it happens. JC’s mouth descends on his own, gently at first and then hungrily, so different from the JC who nibbles shyly at his fingernails that Justin can barely reconcile the two. They’re both real enough; Justin can taste the real JC, can feel their years of friendship in the kiss. JC kisses open-mouthed with only a bit of tongue, just the way Justin likes it, and they breathe together while JC strips his hand up and down Justin’s swollen erection for an embarrassingly short amount of time before Justin climaxes in shuddering waves that leave him entirely wrung out, hot and trembling in JC’s arms.
The bed sheets are cool when he sinks into them, just like the ones that haunt him, but warm quickly under his and JC’s combined weight. Justin closes his eyes and licks his lips self-consciously. He can feel JC watching him expectantly, no doubt waiting for some kind of reaction.
“I’m fine,” Justin assures him. “Very fine. You’re, uh. Good at that.”
“Yeah? Thanks.” JC stretches out contentedly, pressing a quick kiss to Justin’s mouth. “You’re taking this pretty well. I thought you were kind of losing it, the other night. Thought you were, you know, sneaking in to kill me in my sleep.”
“Seriously?” Justin laughs quietly; he still doesn’t want to be heard. “I was just…checking something.”
“Eccentric movie star.”
“Mmm. I’m not sure if acting is my thing,” Justin admits cautiously. He’s always been afraid of I told you so, but JC isn’t the type.
“Acting is hard. They say it’s like music, but it’s really not.”
Justin sighs in response and curves his body around JC’s. JC is exactly right, because Justin has always used singing as a shield. “No,” he agrees, and the way their bodies move together is like the dancing that sustained him for so many years. Already he is changed. Justin feels a slow turning within, the sensation of being dragged into the present, which when he shuts his eyes against the smooth rise of JC’s chest, looks remarkably like his past.