Not dead, and here's a story to prove it
Aug. 20th, 2004 12:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solafiammaI'm not coming back empty-handed, though. I've just uploaded a new story to my website, and, unlikely as it is, I will actually be able meet the Sunday deadline for my cross-dressing challenge story (a momentous occasion for me, since it's the only writing deadline I've been able to meet to date.
Part of today's story started out as my submission to last year's Shake the Disease challenge, but that started to veer into angst (which doesn't exactly meet the criteria for a happy!fic challenge. I abandoned that story, but borrowed a few threads of the idea to write something for that kind soul who bought me some lj time a while ago (and who is probably wondering why they bothered, at this point), and the result is this -- a story that probably actually would have met the happy!fic criteria. Just one of life's little ironies.
Anyway, this one's for you, lj fairy. Hope you like it.
Under My Skin
by Sola Fiamma
Disclaimer: Fiction ahead, people. Not a word of truth.
___________________________________________________________
“Terrific, Lance. Thanks, that was just great. Do you mind stepping outside for a few minutes while I have a few words with the guys? We won’t be long.”
Lou waved toward the door, and Chris watched as the kid smiled his tentative, polite little smile around the room before leaving. Dork, he thought to himself in irritation. Quite possibly the dorkiest looking kid Chris had ever seen.
“So.” Lou turned to face them, rubbing his hands together and looking as pleased with himself as if he’d just invented waffles or crotchless panties. “What do you think? A little rough around the edges, I know, maybe even a bit -“
“Hickish?” Chris supplied helpfully. “A bit of a rube, perhaps? A good ole down home dork?”
“Hey! Shut up, Chris!” Justin had bumped into Lance in the foyer before the audition, and they must have done some secret-handshake teen bonding or something because now he was treating Lance like he was his own personal discovery instead of some gooby little wannabe boybander whose mama was probably paying sizeable kickbacks to Justin’s old vocal coach to get her baby on stage. Jesus wept. “I thought he was great. Way, way better than any of the others. What was wrong with him?”
“Can’t dance worth shit,” Joey said, “but his voice is perfect. Just what we’re looking for.”
“He’s, like, twelve years old, for Christ’s sake.” Chris glared around the room. “Jesus. What are we, the frickin’Osmonds?”
“He’s older than me,” Justin said. “Are you saying I’m too young for the band? Is that what you’re saying? You want to kick me out, too?”
“Yeah, kinda. Would you fuck off, please?”
“Fuck you, Chris.” Justin spun his chair until he was facing away from Chris, folding his arms across his chest and sticking his lower lip out in an irritated pout.
“Fuck you back, you big baby.”
“He is older than Justin, though,” Joey said. “I don’t really think age is an issue, is it? I’m more worried about the dancing. He kind of sucks, and he’d have some mega catching up to do. And he seemed a bit shy, maybe. That could be a problem.”
“Who the fuck dresses him? I mean, what the hell, man. Did Erkel die and leave him his wardrobe or what? He looks like the by-blow of an unfortunate encounter between Opie and the farmer’s daughter.”
Justin giggled, then wrinkled his brow and looked at JC. “Um. What’s a by-blow? And who’s Opie?”
“A by-blow’s-“ JC started.
“When you get your cock sucked by some dude who does chicks, too.” Chris finished.
“Chris!” Lou was turning that spectacular shade of purple that always made Chris feel like he’d accomplished something important. “May I remind you there are minors in the room? Can we keep this professional, please?”
Chris just grinned at him. Lou was such a hypocrite. He swore like a sailor with a bad case of crabs himself, but he liked to think “his boys” had mouths as clean as Ivory soap.
“That doesn’t make sense, though.” Justin narrowed his eyes at Chris. “What you said. It doesn’t make sense.”
Joey gave Justin’s hand a patronizing pat. “Chris just meant he dresses funny, that’s all. We’ll explain the big words later.”
“Asshole. Fuck off. Sorry,” he mumbled, glancing at Lou. Justin hated being thought of as unprofessional.
“What Chris means,” Chris said, “is that the kid is an embarrassment, a total fucking emabarrassment. How could we possibly perform in public with something that looks like him? We’d be laughingstocks. I can’t even understand why they let him out of Mississippi. Aren’t there laws against exporting natural disasters across state lines?”
“No, no! I could fix him!” Justin was bouncing up and down with excitement. “I could! I totally could! I’ll show him what to wear and how to dress, and I’ll teach him how to be cool and shit. I really want to! Please, Lou, can’t we keep him?”
“We’ll buy you a Barbie. Now shut up. He’s too shy.” Chris looked to Joey for support. “Like you said, Joe. You gottahave chutzpah to do what we do, right? I don’t think he’s got it. No guts at all. He’d flake out at the first sign of pressure, and then we’d be right back at the beginning.”
“Well, though,” Joey said, “He did come all the way out here to audition, knowing he was gonna have to dance, and he must have known he was shitty at it. That takes guts, I guess.”
“His mom made him. You can totally tell. He’s a mother fuckin’ mama’s boy.”
“Justin’s a mama’s boy.”
“Shut up, Joey! I am not!”
“And you’re a mama’s boy too, when you get right down to it, Chris.”
“Yeah, well, you’re a stupid twat, Fatone. So what?”
Lou sighed and turned to JC. “You’ve been pretty quiet. I suppose it would be too much to hope that you have something useful to add to this discussion?”
“Mm.” JC glanced at Chris, shrugged and looked back at Lou. “Well. Justin and Joey are right. He’s got the voice. He catches on quickly. And he doesn’t think he knows it all. The rest will come. He’s in.”
“Hey!” Chris shrieked in outrage. “You don’t get to make that decision, Chasez! Who the fuck said it was your call?”
“He’s got the voice, Chris, and we need someone right now. I’ll teach him to dance. Justin said he’ll help him figure out how to dress. You’re just being an asshole, dude. What’s your problem?”
Chris glowered at him for a couple of minutes, then looked down at his knees. He kind of wanted to yell some more because, what the hell, who did JC think he was, anyway, but JC was right. All the problems Chris raised were probably fixable over time, and they could work around them in the meantime. There was something, though, something just not right about Lance. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he could feel it tickling his guts like bad seafood, and he knew deep, deep down that the kid was going to be a problem.
He looked up at the guys, and they were all looking back at him, waiting. If Chris was really set against Lance, he knew the others wouldn’t insist, not even JC. They’d be mad as hell, but they’d go along with his decision, because they knew this was something they all had to agree on. It had taken a lot of time and effort to start feeling like a group again after Jason had left, and nobody wanted to mess that up.
And maybe that was all this was. Maybe he was just afraid that a new person would upset the delicate balance they’d found. Maybe he was just feeling grumpy about having to go through another round of adjustment and fine tuning.Maybe.
Whatever. JC was right. There really was no justification for rejecting Lance. They had a gig booked in a couple of weeks, more after that, and there just wasn’t time to dick around with more auditions.
“Yeah, okay, fine. He’s in. Just don’t blame me if he turns out to be some baby-faced, deep south, serial killing maniac, and you guys start to disappear one by one.”
JC reached over and patted his knee. “I think you’ll probably be the first to go, man.”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Lance settled into the group like a river over rocks, the transition so smooth and effortless and unobtrusive that within a couple of weeks his absence would have been far more jarring than his presence.
He wasn’t as shy as they’d first thought. In fact, Chris didn’t think he was shy at all, just maybe not as in love with the spotlight as the rest of them. For the first couple of weeks, he was quiet and polite, not volunteering much information about himself, but answering most of the questions put to him agreeably enough.
He wasn’t a baby about being teased, which surprised Chris because he’d totally had Lance pegged as one of thoseweinery victim kids who’d run crying home to mommy whenever the big boys got too mean. The first couple of times Chris let loose on him, Lance didn’t react much at all, just blinked his eyes and smiled a small, pensive smile. By the end of the first week, though, he wasn’t taking shit from anyone. Especially Chris. And the boy knew how to fight back, you had to give him that. He’d match Chris insult for insult, and even if his comebacks weren’t too quick and were often pretty lame, Lance and Justin always seemed to find them vastly amusing. When Chris took things too far, which he always managed to do, Lance never thumped him like Joey did or got that incredulous hurt look on his face that JC did or threw a tantrum like Justin did. He’d just narrow his eyes, call Chris an asshole in a voice cold enough to freeze spit and leave the room. A couple of mornings later, when Chris sat down at the breakfast table, fifteen spiders would leap out of the Fruit Loops box and into his cereal bowl. Or he’d come home late at night, slide into bed and find himself lying in a congealed mess of baked beans and scrambled eggs. Lance could be a real shit that way. It was one of the things Chris liked best about him.
Justin was bitterly disappointed when Lance declined his offer to become his personal shopper. Lance listened attentively while Justin described at length the transformation he had in mind and enumerated the essential items currently missing from Lance’s wardrobe, but when Justin finally subsided, Lance just shook his head politely and said, “Oh, thanks, but that won’t be necessary. Lou’s already given me some suggestions. But thanks anyway.”
There was no fault to find with his work ethic, either. Lance worked himself to the point of exhaustion to catch up on the choreography, going over and over the moves for hours on end with JC or Justin.
In spite of all this, and in spite of the fact that he was actually starting to like Lance, Chris still felt a vague flutter of unease about his presence in the group. There was something not quite right about him, he was sure of it, even if he couldn’t quite pin it down. Mostly, though, he didn’t think about it a great deal, what with trying to hold down two jobs and rehearsing every day. It wasn’t like there weren’t plenty of other things to distract him. It was always there, though, slapping away in the back of his mind like a moth at the window, something to ponder late at night when he was still too keyed up from the day to sleep.
Lance wound up sharing a room with Chris just because Jason had and nobody really thought to change the arrangement. He was almost always asleep when Chris got home, which wasn’t surprising given how late that usually was and how hard Lance had been working. Feeling like a burglar, Chris would sneak into the bedroom in his sock feet and tip toe over to his own bed where he’d sit and study Lance in the warm half light of the table lamp. In sleep, as in so many other things, Lance managed to surprise him. Chris would have picked him for a curl-up-in-a-foetal-position-huddle-under-the-blankets kind of guy and was always a little bit startled to find him sprawled, sometimes on his back and sometimes on his stomach, usually on top of the covers, limbs outstretched to claim the maximum possible surface area.
Once in a while he wore pyjamas, even though Chris mocked them mercilessly, but mostly he preferred boxers and a t-shirt. He should have looked cute or endearing, like Chris’ sisters did when they were asleep, like Justin did. He should have looked vulnerable, like somebody waiting to be tickled and, faced with those accessible armpits and ribs, Chris should have felt an irresistible compulsion to oblige.
But Chris didn’t want to tickle him. Well, maybe a little bit, but not nearly as much as he would have expected. He couldn’t understand it at all. If it had been Joey or JC or Justin lying there, armpits so invitingly exposed, he would have tickled them by now, no question. What made Lance so different?
This was the kind of question he puzzled over as he sat on his bed and stared at Lance. Whatever was bothering him, whatever was inherently wrong with Lance, he was pretty sure it had to be tied somehow to this untickleability.
One night, after a fruitless half-hour of watching Lance without arriving at any satisfactory answers, it occurred to Chris that perhaps he was approaching this problem from entirely the wrong direction. What if, instead of asking himself why he didn’t want to tickle Lance, he should be asking what he did want to do with him. Did he want to put gum in his hair, maybe? Roll him up in the carpet and set him out on the front porch? Hit him? Tie his ankles together so he’d fall flat on his face when he rolled out of bed in the morning?
None of these things seemed quite right, but there was promise there. He was getting closer, he could feel it. He stood up and crept toward Lance’s bed, squatting down when he was only a few inches away.
As if sensing the disturbance in the air around him, Lance twitched and made a soft noise in his throat, something between a sigh and a groan, but also a little bit like dice rolling into each other in a felt-lined box. A funny little noise.Lance made a lot of funny little noises when he was sleeping, and Chris had become quite adept at recognizing which sounds indicated a shift toward waking, and which just floated out of his dreams like intermittent flakes of mental dandruff. This one wasn’t a waking noise, though, so Chris relaxed back onto his haunches. Lance lay in his usual untidy sprawl on top of the bed, the blankets beneath him undisturbed as though he hadn’t even had the energy to make a pretence of climbing under them. He was wearing a white t-shirt and a pair of vivid yellow boxers patterned with little black ducks -- stupid looking, Chris thought, much like every other item in Lance’s wardrobe.
Chris watched until his ankles started to cramp, waiting for a revelation, waiting for the right question to come to him. Did he want to dip Lance’s fingertips into a glass of water and hold them there until he peed? Maybe, a bit. Did he want to find a black felt marker and write “My heart belongs to Mommy” all over Lance’s pristine white t-shirt? Well, sure, sort of. Did he want to shave off one of his eyebrows? Yeah, well, who wouldn’t, really? Did he want to pinch Lance’s cheeks? Actually, yes. Quite a bit. Chris felt a ping of excitement. He was definitely on the right track.
He nodded happily at Lance’s sleeping face. Yep. Those cheeks could sure use a good pinching. He could feel it in the tips of his fingers, the satisfaction of skin between thumb and knuckle. He could picture Lance’s eyes flying open in shock. That would be nice, too. Lance’s eyes would be huge, pale green and eerie in this dim light, they’d take up almost his whole face. He’d be shocked to find Chris right there, so close, less than a hand’s reach away, and he’d probably leap backward towards the wall. Chris would anticipate this, though, he’d grab hold of Lance before he could move, just reach out and wrap his arm around Lance’s waist to hold him in place, and Chris’ wrist would be there, right there against that narrow ribbon of exposed skin. The skin would be smooth as silk, hot against Chris’ pulse, and Chris would maybe slide his arm a little higher, maybe up under that white t-shirt a ways, until his whole hand was enveloped by the heat trapped beneath it, or maybe a little lower until his fingers were an inch or two below the waistband of Lance’s dorky duck shorts. And, yes. That was it, that was what Chris wanted to do to Lance, that was it exactly, and.
Oh. Fucking. Hell.
Chris reared back so suddenly he lost his balance, and the next thing he knew, he was looking at the ceiling with a thudding pain in the back of his head and his heart slamming like a ball peen hammer against his ribs. There was an odd, high-pitched wheezing sound coming from somewhere in the room that turned out to be his mouth. When he felt something pointy poke him gently in the stomach, he actually screamed.
“Chris?”
“Fuck.”
“Chris? You okay?”
“Fuck. Fuckety bejesus, holy, fuck me, fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“What are you doing down there? You okay?”
Lance’s voice was deep and throaty, rough with sleep. It hung in the air like something tangible, slid into Chris’ ears and shimmied its way straight down to his dick.
“I. Uh. What? Go back to sleep, dude. I’m just. Uh. Callisthenics. Shut up. You should just shut up and go back to sleep. And use a blanket, for fuck’s sake. You’ll freeze your nuts off. Which, just for the record, I don’t care if you do. It’s just. Anybody could walk in here. They don’t need to see this. Those boxers are, like, totally stupid. What are you, ten?”
Lance’s eyes wouldn’t shut. He kept goggling like Chris was the most entertaining program he’d ever watched, and it was just unnerving.
“Go to sleep, god damn it.” Chris stumbled to his feet. “I’m gonna. I need to. Oh, fuck off. Go to sleep.”
He lunged for the door, wrestled it with it for a few frantic minutes before remembering that it opened inward, threw it open and propelled himself into the hallway like a spitwad off an elastic band. He shot himself out with such force that he rebounded off the opposite wall and back into the bedroom, before he finally managed to achieve the safety of the hall.
A little voice in his brain was chanting, “oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, fuck, fuck,” in steady counterpoint to another, increasingly insistent voice, that was starting to chime in with, “Booze. Now. Booze. Right now.” He headed straight for the kitchen and the bottle of whiskey Lynn kept stashed underneath the sink, next to the Drano and the Comet. There was an unspoken agreement between the two moms and Chris, Joey and JC that, while any beer or wine left in the fridge was pretty much fair game, Lynn’s private stash was absolutely hands off. This was an emergency, though. Lynnwould understand, not that he’d ever tell her. And he’d replace it tomorrow. If Lynn and Diane had already polished it off, he was going to have to set their toes on fire.
But no, there it was, a bottle of Johnny Walker red label, which, who could stand the stuff really, except it was there and 80 proof, so yeah. Beggars and choosers and all that shit. Chris poured a couple of inches worth into a water glass, considered it critically for a few seconds and topped it up with another inch. Medicinal. For his impending coronary. Lynnwould understand.
He downed half of it in one dazzling swallow that seared his throat and made his eyes weep but it helped his pulse rate slow to an acceptable level. Trying very hard not to think at all, he carried the glass over to the kitchen table and sat down. His whole body felt weak and shaky like he’d been running for hours, and he was cold all over except in his throat and gut where the whiskey fire kept up a steady burn.
Christ. This was so unbelievably fucked up. How could he have missed this? How could it possibly have escaped his notice that the reason Lance made him uncomfortable was that Chris wanted to screw him into the middle of next week? Holy hell. He couldn’t have figured this out sooner? Like from the moment he’d met him? Because even JC would have had to agree that letting some not even hot kid that Chris apparently wanted to fuck into the band would be a pretty stupid idea.
Chris swallowed another burning mouthful of whiskey and, when that didn’t help, banged his head twice against the top of the table. What was he going to do? It was way too late to kick Lance out now. They needed him, and besides, Chris didn’t event want to anymore. He liked Lance, they all did; Lance belonged to them now.
Somehow he had to discover a way to not find Lance hot, which he totally wasn’t anyway, he really wasn’t, so what was the big deal? He stared at the Formica table top for a few minutes, chewing his fingernails and sipping his whiskey. His eyes fell on a notepad on the table that either Diane or Lynn had been using to start a grocery list. Hamburger Helper. Ground beef. Kraft Dinner. Pop Tarts. Lynn, then. He pulled the notepad over, flipped to a fresh page, and wrote:
Why I Don’t Like Lance (that way):
1. He’s sixteen.
2. He’s not even hot, just a bit pretty. Sort of.
3. He wears stupid clothes. Really stupid clothes.
4. His jokes are even lamer than Justin’s.
5. Diane would kill me.
6. JC would castrate me. Joey and Justin would probably hold me down.
7. I’d castrate myself. He’s only sixteen.
8. He likes country music. The really bad kind.
9. I’m not a pervert.
10. He’s probably not even gay, and even if he is and even if we did something, it would just be a passing thing for him because he’s only sixteen and then he’d dump me in two weeks which I wouldn’t really care about because whatever, and he’s not even hot, but still.
When he’d finished, Chris scowled at his list and then read it back to himself three or four times, committing it to memory. He tore the page out of the notepad, tore it into narrow strips and tore all the strips into tiny little squares. He did the same to the next three pages as well, just to be on the safe side, and then gathered all the little scraps and shoved them deep into the bowels of the trash can. If he’d had a match on him, he might have lit the whole thing on fire, but as it was he settled for upending one of the potted plants into the can and pouring a couple of cupfuls of grape Kool-Aid on top.
Perfect. Problem solved. Lists were like magic, he’d discovered
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
No matter how hard Chris tried to convince himself to the contrary, the list didn’t make any difference. Not one bit.
He was still on edge around Lance, but now it was even worse because he knew what was causing it. Lance was like a bad rash that no amount of calamine lotion could get rid of. It didn’t help that, as the months went by, Lance didn’t get any uglier. His dorkiness, on the other hand, seemed to increase exponentially, so things really should have balanced out. Except they didn’t. No matter how many times he reviewed his mental copy of the list, Chris had to admit that in spite of the fact that it made no sense whatsoever, he had it bad for Lance. Obviously, if there was a god, he hated Chris, and you just couldn’t fight that kind of thing.
It could have been worse. Chris had worried at first that any physical contact with Lance would be awkward, which would never have worked because Chris touched people a lot. What with the pinching, slapping, wrestling, and tossing people across rooms, not to mention the dancing, he found his hands on all the guys a good portion of each day. It would have looked weird if he just stopped touching Lance. People would have noticed. As it turned out, it just wasn’t an issue. When he knocked Lance’s feet out from under him and tickled him till he shrieked, or sat on his stomach and pushed handfuls of cold Spaghetti-Os into his mouth, or crept up behind him and yanked his boxers down in the hallway, he didn’t even think about taking it any further. He did the same thing to all the guys when the opportunity presented itself.
Really, there were large chunks of the day when Chris didn’t even remember he had a thing for Lance. The only time it was an issue at all was in those rare moments when his body and brain happened to be at rest at the same time, and then just, boom, out of the blue, it would hit him all over again. Like in the morning, glancing across the breakfast table, and there Lance would be, all rumpled and bleary-eyed and ridiculously appealing, and Chris would have the urge to drag him back upstairs to the bedroom. Or during a break in rehearsal when Justin or JC or sometimes both of them would be coaching Lance through another set of moves, and the sight of their hands on his body would suddenly startle Chris to attention, and he wouldn’t know whether to hide his eyes or stare until they popped out of his head. The worst times were at night, though, sitting in the bedroom and struggling to ignore Lance laid out like a gift on the other bed.
Fortunately, there weren’t too many moments of rest in Chris’ life, and even fewer once they arrived in Europe. For one thing, they didn’t always share a room anymore. For another, their schedule was insane, a relentless blur of rehearsal, performance, interviews, road trips and lectures from management. It was crazy and exhausting, but exhilarating at the same time. They were really going to make it, Chris could feel it; he’d seldom been more certain of anything.
There were a billion and one distractions to keep his mind off Lance, and Chris had always been easily distracted. After a while, the whole attraction thing became easier to push into the back of his mind. Like a ghost in the basement -- you only really noticed it when you wennt down to look for the toolkit; other than that it was just a vague presence humming away in your subconscious.
It helped also that none of the guys had any idea bout his stupid crush thing, or whatever it was, even Lance. They were used to Chris being weird, and if he occasionally lost the power of speech when Lance bent over in front of him, or had to leave the room suddenly when Lance emerged from the bathroom wrapped only in a towel, nobody thought to question it. If one of the guys caught him staring fixedly at Lance and raised their eyebrows, he’d say, “Just trying to figure out how to get him back for those snails in my coat pocket,” and they’d nod and grin and accept it.
It turned out that Lance was gay. He came out to them after a performance one night in Berlin when they were all getting changed in a dinky, dingy dressing room which, judging by the smell, more than one person had mistaken for a urinal. In the middle of an argument about who was entitled to the last sausage roll, Justin looked at Lance and said, “You don’t talk about girls much. Are you gay?”
Joey choked on a mouthful of water, and JC waved his hand in Justin’s face in a belated shushing motion. Chris thought about turning it into a joke, but before he had a chance, Lance said, “Uh huh” and went back to tying his shoelaces. When he finished, he looked up at them calmly. “That’s not a problem, right? Don’t tell my mom, though. She’s still getting used to me being in a band, she doesn’t need any more stress right now.”
JC gave Lance a hug and said a bunch of sappy stuff about unconditional love and how he himself was actually beyond gender identification, after which he looked pointedly at Chris, who pointedly ignored him. Chris knew he should tell Lance that he liked guys, too, at least as much as he liked girls, but he wasn’t sure he could get the words out without giving too much away. When Joey gave him an encouraging poke in the ribs, gently at first, and then hard enough to make him squeak, Chris just shook his head and tossed in a savage pinch on the thigh to make Joey back off.
JC shot him a reproachful look, possibly for pinching Joey, but probably not. It didn’t much matter; Chris was used to ignoring those looks or deflecting them by doing something mean to JC instead. In this case, he just patted Lance on the head and said, “Yeah, well, whatever. JC’ll fuck anything, doesn’t even have to be animate, so we’re all cool.” The conversation degenerated into a nice safe round of name-calling and roughhousing, and that was that.
A few nights later, Chris and Justin and JC were hanging out in Joey and JC’s room, enjoying a rare night off. Joey and Justin were on Joey’s bed, playing cards and eating chocolate, and Chris was lying on his stomach on JC’s bed, trying not to listen to JC who sat cross legged on the floor engaged in a long, meandering, pretty much incomprehensible monologue loosely inspired by a TV show he’d seen a year or so ago on quantum mechanics, a subject about which Chris knew almost nothing and JC, if the substance of his monologue was any indication, even less.
The bedspread was rough and scratchy, and Chris was toying with the idea of hauling it off the bed to wrap around JC’shead when Lance knocked on the door before coming in. He was odd that way, such nice manners, never forgot to say please or thank you, always excused himself when he left the table or burped, but he’d drop a hot baked potato down the back of your pants without even blinking, and then call you a silly fucker while you screamed.
“Dude, where’ve you been?” Justin said. “I bought all this chocolate when I went out with my mom, and there was some for you but it was really good, so we kinda ate it all. Sorry. But where were you?”
“Homework,” Lance explained, rolling his eyes. “My mom thinks I’m falling behind.”
“Bummer. Wanna play cards? Joey’s teaching me how to cheat.”
“Like you needed any lessons, you little bastard,” Joey muttered, glaring at the cards in his hand.
“No, thanks,” said Lance. “I’m just going to rest for a bit.”
The next thing Chris knew, Lance was sliding down beside him on the bed, snuggling in close enough that they were actually touching, and suddenly Chris’ entire awareness had narrowed to those points of contact, to the heat of Lance’s body against his left arm, against his hip and along the length of his leg. He took a deep breath to steady himself, but that was even worse, because now Lance was in his nose, too, and in his lungs, and he could even hear Lance’s heartbeat thumping away like distant drums. Or maybe that was his own heart, he wasn’t really sure. He just knew that he needed some air between them fast or he was going to faint for the first time in his life.
Except now Lance was staring at him, those weird green eyes so close he could lick them if he wanted to, which he didn’t, even if he did wonder a bit what they’d taste like. There were other bits he’d like to taste more, though, lots of them, and they were all right here next to him. Now he knew the heartbeat was his because he could feel it thundering in his brain like an incipient embolism.
He blinked, and when he opened his eyes, Lance was smiling at him. That was nothing new, Lance smiled at him all the time, or whenever Chris wasn’t being a complete dickhead anyway, so at least several times a day. This smile was different, though, sweet and amused and secretive, and Chris couldn’t place it at all in his lengthy mental catalogue of Lance smiles. An anomalous smile, he thought, and then stopped thinking at all as Lance tilted in towards him, closer still, his mouth against Chris’ ear, his breath even hotter than his skin, sending frantic chills all down Chris’ spine.
A tiny little corner of Chris’ brain was distantly aware of the snapping of card against card as someone on the other bed shuffled the deck, and of JC’s voice getting progressively more excited as he rattled on about collapsing waves and indeterminate cats, but those things seemed very far away and unimportant. The only thing in the universe of any significance at all at this precise moment in time was the warm, damp huff of breath into his ear as Lance whispered, “You can sleep with me if you want.”
The words were whispered, but Lance might as well have bellowed them through a megaphone. They slammed into Chris like cluster bombs, each syllable setting off its own chain reaction of shock and heat and blinding panic. He opened his mouth to speak, but the only vocalization he seemed to be capable of was a high pitched whooshing that sounded, at least to his ears, closer to air escaping from a balloon than to any recognizable unit of language.
Apparently it wasn’t any more comprehensible to Lance than it was to him, because those freakish green eyes just kept staring at him, and after a moment or two of silence, Lance’s elbow started nudging him encouragingly in the ribs.Whatever. They could lie here from now until doomsday, and Chris still wouldn’t have recovered from the shock.
This was stupid, just fucking stupid, but he couldn’t think of a thing to say, and even if he could, it wouldn’t matter because his mouth had stopped working, and the only thought his brain was able to muster was Escape! Escape! whichwould have been fine if his limbs weren’t in the throes of hysterical paralysis. He blinked twice at Lance and did the only thing he could think of. He snapped his eyes shut, went very still and pretended to be asleep.
After poking him, tickling him and giggling in his ear for about twenty minutes, Lance finally gave up and slid down to the floor to set JC straight. When he was sure they were deeply absorbed in their argument, Chris managed to slip out of the room.
There was a lot Chris would have given to be able to just pretend the whole thing had never happened, but apart from the complete asininity of thinking he’d ever be able to erase the memory of those words on Lance’s lips and tongue, he very much doubted Lance would be charitable enough to let him. The only way to deal with this was going to have to be quick, dirty and direct, and involve a complete absence of physical contact of any kind. Even if Lance cried. Especially if Lance cried. Fuck. He really hoped Lance wouldn’t cry.
When he bumped into Lance in the hotel corridor on his way down to breakfast the next morning, it took all the restraint in his admittedly limited store to make eye contact instead of ducking his head and racing for the stairs. For a moment Chris thought perhaps the whole thing had been a joke, because Lance was grinning rudely at him, very much not at all like a boy with a broken heart. Okay, so this was good, if somewhat offensive, but Chris wasn’t about to take offence. There was stupid, and then there was stupid.
He nodded at Lance in a don’t-you-dare-laugh-at-me-you-stupid-shit-but-on-the-other-hand-don’t-breathe-in-my-ear-again-either sort of way, which apparently Lance completely misinterpreted because the next second he was right there in Chris’ space, close enough to be a second shirt, and bouncing his low, sexy laugh off the side of Chris’ head. Dumb as a post, obviously, and how fucking annoying was that, because now Chris had to deal with it. If Lance were any sort of a gentleman (which he fucking well should be, being from the south; what the hell good did it do anyone to know southerners if they couldn’t even live up to their damned stereotypes, after all), he’d stop laughing into Chris’ hair and pretend he was attracted to women, or cattle, or JC. Shit.
He backed away, inserting a bit of distance between them, and put a hand up to stop Lance from moving closer.
“Look. Lance. We need to talk. About last night.”
Lance smiled at him expectantly. “Uh huh? Now that you’re awake, you mean?”
“Whatever. I don’t know whether you were just fucking around or what, but I need you to know that nothing’s going to happen. Between us. You and me. Nothing. Got it?”
“Why not?” Lance didn’t look crushed or like he was about to burst into tears, which was a relief. On the other hand, he didn’t look particularly deterred, either. “You like me. I can tell.”
“Because I’m not a fucking child molester, that’s why not.”
“Well, I’m not a fucking child.”
“You’re sixteen!”
“Seventeen. Birthday last month, remember?”
“So the fuck what? You’re still jailbait, and I’m still not interested. That’s it. That’s all I have to say. Now, I’m going down to eat and I don’t ever want to talk about this again.” There. Done. Quick and dirty, always the rejection technique of choice. He started for the staircase, but Lance slid in front of him and stopped him with a hand on his chest.
“Wait. Can I just ask you a question, though?”
“I guess.”
“How old were you?”
“Huh?”
“When you first did it? How old were you? How old was the other guy?”
“That’s none of your god damned business. And, whatever, that was totally different, anyway. Shut up,” he said as Lance snickered. “It was different. My first guy wasn’t, like, in a position of authority.”
When Lance stopped laughing, he shook his head and said, “I’m here with my mom, Chris. I’m pretty sure she can take care of the authority angle without any help from you.”
“Yeah, and I’m pretty sure she’d just be so impressed with me if I started diddling her little boy. Christ. Whatever. It’s irrelevant. I don’t sleep with kids and I don’t sleep with virgins. Ever.”
Lance tilted his head to one side and looked thoughtful. “Well, then. I guess if I want a shot with you, I’d better get busy.”
“What? What? No! Wait! Come back here!”
But Lance was already halfway down the stairs, laughing loudly and waving goodbye over his shoulder.
Well, crap. Maybe Lance was serious and maybe he wasn’t, but Chris wasn’t taking any chances. He had to find Diane right away and tell her to start exerting her authority by keeping a closer eye on her son.
Later, as he glared at Lance across the breakfast table, he borrowed a pen from the waitress and wrote at the top of his napkin,
Why I still don’t want to sleep with Lance:
1. He’s an annoying fuck.
2. He’s just a kid. Still.
3. He’s got weird eyes, I’d probably have nightmares.
4. His mother scares me.
5. It would be bad for the group.
6. Bev would hate visiting me in a German prison.
7. He’s not even hot. Not really.
8. Joey and JC would kill me.
9. It would set a bad example for Justin.
10. I really don’t sleep with virgins. Or kids.
When he looked up, he saw Lance squinting at the napkin, trying to make sense of Chris’ upside down scrawl.
“Piss off,” Chris muttered, balling the napkin up and shoving it into his mouth. It tasted awful, but he chewed it down to a thick paste and spat it onto the remains of his eggs. He was probably going to die from lead poisoning. Mercury poisoning? Poisoning whatever noxious substance they filled their ballpoint pens with in Germany, anyway. And it would all be Lance’s fault.
Part 2 is here.
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Date: 2004-08-23 11:21 am (UTC)