Couch Potatoes 9: JC and Justin *
"I'll make you so pretty the old ladies will fall over themselves," Chris says. "Just you wait."
"Chris..." he says and lifts his hands reflexively to protect his face from whatever nefarious attack Chris is planning.
Justin sits cross-legged in the grass. Chris and JC are dancing around each other in small circles.
"Just stand still!" Chris has hidden his hands behind his back. JC is laughing in that helpless way he does when he'd like to be all cool and stern but can't pull it off.
"Don't touch me," he says. "Justin, help me out here, man--"
It's kinda funny that JC would call out to him, though, Justin thinks. More often than not, he's in on the practical joke. That's sweet, though, like JC just can't learn, no matter how many times he ends up hip-deep in pie.
"Don't be mean to your brother now, Kirkpatrick," he says. Chris just snorts.
"I'll be mean to you then, boy," he says, but he stops chasing JC around. "Come on, I just made him a daisychain."
He holds out his hands. He does have a daisychain, haphazardly tied. Justin gets up and goes to have a look. "Cute," he says. JC's peering over his shoulder now, keeping a safe distance and Justin between himself and Chris.
"Come on," Chris says. "He's got the long girlie hair and everything. It'll be devastatingly cute, man."
Justin picks the chain from Chris' hands. JC has started giggling again, little bursts of mirth. "I am a princess," he says when Justin puts the flowers on his head. It's a little lopsided. Justin tugs at it carefully. JC stands frozen, with his eyes solemnly lowered, but he's trembling with bottled-up laughter.
"It's too big, yo," Justin says. "You suck at makin' daisychains."
Chris pokes him in the side and hands him a paper clip. "Just, like, fasten it with that."
JC does look like a princess with flowers in his hair. A drag princess, sweet smile and bright eyes. He touches the flowers gingerly and rolls his eyes upwards as if he could see through his own forehead.
*
It's dark, and the lamp on Chris' porch has been dead for weeks. Chris is bad at fixing shit like that. It just tends to not happen until someone bugs him about it, and there's no one to do the bugging here now. Justin thinks he could do it. He could, like, get up and do it now.
But he passes by the couch on his way in and stops in his tracks. JC's conked out there, pretzeled up in the most uncomfortable position Justin's ever seen a man sleep in, but he's definitely asleep. One hand hanging over the edge, the fingers loosely curled. His face is serene. The daisy chain is still in his hair, the wilting flowers caught in the unruly strands.
*
The sun is blazing hot, but a challenge is a challenge, and they said best out of ten. So he plays and sweats buckets. JC sits on the porch steps and watches them gravely, sipping that disgusting Alizé punch stuff he likes and keeping score.
Chris is a fierce adversary, never easy to beat, but hey, Justin's taller, younger and faster. He tells Chris that, and JC has to whistle off the game.
"I think there's a rule against goosing your opponent," he says. He's had more punch than Justin thought, because his voice has a lazy drawl to it; goes a little deeper, too. He's squinting in the sun, and the daisychain is sliding off his hair, into his forehead.
Justin tries to fight Chris off, but somehow they end up stumbling over JC, and they spill his drink all over him and his notepad.
"Oops," Chris says and legs it for the far corner of the lawn.
"Oops," JC says softly. Justin sits next to him. JC is wiping ineffectually at his shirt. There's a smattering of pink stains down the front. "So much for this," he mutters. There's even some on his arm, a little trickle meandering its way down to the fold of his elbow.
Justin grins at him, makes it wide and innocent, and leans in quickly and licks his sticky-sweet skin. JC blinks and stares at him when he gets up again and chases after Chris.
*
He finds a light bulb and tiptoes back through the dark house. He's not sure why he and JC are still up. Why he is still up, he corrects himself, because JC hasn't moved at all. He's curled up with his feet scrunched into the corner of the couch, one hand across his chest. The flowers circle his head like the rings of Saturn.
"Flashlight," Justin mutters out loud, and goes back to find one. He's digging through Chris' cupboards and just finds a candle, which is romantic and all, but hardly useful.
*
"That stuff is icky, though," he says. JC's still working through his punch. He's not usually a big drinker, but he's got a weird fixation with drinks no sane man would ever touch, and he found a bottle of Alizé and some white wine in Chris' bar - Chris swore it was a gift, but Justin figures he just bought it out of curiosity - and had to start mixing. No one else would drink it, so he's stubbornly throwing it back.
"I like it," JC says and takes another hit. He's starting to look a little glazed, but in a genteel way, like a suburbian housewife sipping her little glass of gin and smiling blithely at the dinner guests.
Chris has turned on the TV, but there isn't shit on, just commercials, commercials, crappy TV movies and more commercials. It must be some sort of rule: you're bored, and nothing is on. Maybe even a law.
JC watches with owlish concentration. Every once in a while, he lifts an unsteady hand and touches his hair and the flowers there.
The phone rings and Chris disappears into the kitchen. Justin sits down next to JC and looks at him until he squirms and blushes. "What?"
"Nothing," Justin says. It's just so easy to play JC. He has all these obvious buttons, and no defense at all. Makes it tempting.
"You're staring at me for no reason?"
"You're cute with flowers in your hair," Justin says, cocking his head and stroking his chin in mock contemplation. "You should try that look more often. It would really work on the fourteen-year-olds. It could be a new trend."
"Then you'd have to wear them, too," JC says.
*
He gives up on the bulb-changing. Chris can keep his broken porch light if he can't provide a flashlight at an obvious location. Justin takes the candle and puts it down on the porch railing.
When he lights it, the soft breeze makes the flame dance and spread gentle, golden rays over the porch, and over JC's face. It makes his sharp angles smoother, and Justin has to look closer, because it looks as if he's smiling in his sleep.
He crouches next to the couch. JC is smiling in his sleep.
Justin picks the wilting flowers from his hair, very carefully. The clip catches and pulls a single hair loose, and JC murmurs and frowns.
"Sleeeeeep, sleeeep, sleeeep," Justin chants under his breath and strokes his hair until he smiles again.
Then he goes to sit on the steps in the candlelight and think.
|
