Try
by Tink

He didn’t want to love JC, because who would really want to love someone as weird as JC? All eyes and sharp angles and moodiness.

He wanted to love Lance. He tried to love Lance, he even followed Lance around like a lemming and poked him in the arm a lot and asked him to play Tomb Raider. Lance just smiled softly at him and his eyes were wise and old and he gently deflected the attention.

Then he thought he might want to love Joey, because Joey was comfortable and happy and made good lasagna, and didn’t care if someone borrowed his baseball hat or his old t-shirt or his new CD, even if the CD was in the shiny plastic wrap from the store with the stickers still on it. Joey always wanted to play video games or basketball and he was big enough to carry people piggy back for more than a few feet. It was easy to love Joey, which was why everybody did. So Chris knew he couldn’t love Joey.

Chris pondered Justin for the space of a microsecond before discarding the idea of loving him. Justin was merely Justin, and even with his grown up haircut and grown up clothes and grown up attitude, Chris could only see fifteen-year-old Justin Randall Timberlake and it made Chris laugh like a loon to think of him as an adult. He loved Justin, but he would never love Justin.

So it was back to JC, and Chris got mad and wouldn’t go out clubbing after the Pittsburgh show even though it was his hometown and he knew all the good spots. Chris just wanted to stay in and be mad about loving JC, so he did.

Who in their sane mind would want to love JC?

JC, who had weird floppy hair and jutting cheekbones that didn’t look inviting at all, and who called himself an artist but in fact wrote kind of shitty lyrics.

It made Chris mad.

* * *

When after a few months he still thought he might love JC, Chris figured it was time to stop. JC slept all the time, and who could love someone who wasn’t awake at least eight hours out of every day?

So he pondered Lance again. Lance, who was pretty and quiet but had a fierce business head and a low, maple-y voice that always reminded Chris of syrup. Lance would be easy to love, so Chris tried it.

One night after a show, with the oceany roar of crowd approval still thrumming through his veins, there was a hotel room and beer and Lance. Lance was either too drunk or too nice to refuse, so when Chris mumbled, "love you man" and tried a half-hearted kiss on his neck, Lance turned into the kiss and nuzzled. Lance was nicely firm in all the right places, with no protruding bones anywhere, and he gave Chris some satisfactory head. Chris returned the favor, wondering if Lance could tell he was kind of new at the guy on guy thing, then fell promptly asleep with his arm flung over Lance’s chest but his face turned away on the pillow.

In the morning, Chris still loved JC.

* * *

Chris thought maybe he had been too hasty in discarding Joey as a possible love interest, so before the second leg of the tour started, Chris had Joey over for dinner.

Joey came in big and happy, like always, and he had Corona and ice cream and didn’t care that all Chris was making for dinner was a family size Stouffers macaroni and cheese. He ate two and a half helpings and three beers, and then both of them polished off the Dreyer’s and laughed like morons at Chris’s old Monty Python videos and dripped ice cream on the floor.

When Joey slouched sated and lazy on the sofa and ran his fingers through Chris’s hair, Chris closed his eyes and tried to love Joey. When Joey wrapped a playful arm around his neck and said "com’ere, Kirkpatrick" and squished Chris up in a big, soft hug that smelled faintly of cherry garcia ice cream, and then kissed him loudly on the cheek and winked, Chris tried his very hardest to love Joey.

And later, some time after midnight when Chris was wondering why it took so fucking long to come the third time, because the first two times were always easy but the third time took forever, and he was amazed that someone as big and awkward-looking as Joey could be so infinitely gentle in bed, he really really tried his best to love Joey. Especially since Joey was better at giving a blowjob than Lance, even though he would never tell Lance that because who the hell compared blowjobs? Well, maybe Justin did.

And when Joey was fisting the sheets in both hands and tensing the muscles in his legs and arching up into Chris’s mouth and whispering, "fuck, yes, don’t stop you fuck or I’ll fucking punch you", Chris wanted wanted wanted to love Joey.

But even after Chris finally came for the third time in as many hours, he still loved JC.

* * *

When the tour started again, Chris muscled his way onto the two-man bus and demanded that JC share it with him. Joey shrugged and Lance eyed him suspiciously and Justin scrunched up his face and pouted prettily that he was not the bus-sharer of choice, and then got over it quickly when Joey threw his hackey sack out the window.

JC just grinned boyishly and heaved his duffel onto the two-man bus.

* * *

After nine days of bus sharing, Chris hated JC and switched with Lance.

* * *

After two days of being with Joey and Justin, Chris switched back.

* * *

After three days of skulking around and being pissed off that JC was not noticing him skulking around and being pissed off, Chris sighed dramatically and threw himself across the small sofa.

"I think I love Lance," Chris said loudly. There was a momentary stilling of JC’s fingers over his keyboard.

"I said, I THINK I LOVE LANCE," Chris repeated, burning a hole with his eyes in the back of JC’s head.

"I heard you," JC said, partially turning his head toward the couch where Chris lay. "That’s very ... industrious of you."

"What’s THAT mean?" Chris demanded, but JC was done talking.

* * *

Chris decided to love Justin after all, and the night after they fooled around he told everyone about it.

"So we’re in love," he announced in Atlanta at breakfast, and Justin narrowed his eyes at Chris.

"What?" Justin snorted. "No, we’re not."

"Yes, we are," Chris insisted, slanting his eyes to the left where JC sat, nibbling prettily on a biscuit. Chris got mad all over again. Why couldn’t JC wolf down his breakfast like Joey?

Lance laughed, spraying crumbs on the table and then looking embarrassed. "I’m in love with Justin too," he said, sweeping the crumbs up with his hand. "’Cause, I mean, we kissed once."

Joey grinned with a mouth full of eggs. "Oooh, then count me in on that. ‘Member, Jup?"

Justin scowled at all of them. "All of y’all are lame. Shut up. You’re lame."

This was not going according to Chris’s plan to love anyone but JC, because suddenly he found himself decidedly not in love with anyone but JC, and JC was ignoring any and all references to Chris fooling around with Justin. So Chris tried harder.

"So, did we keep everyone up last night?" Chris asked brightly, slinging an arm over Justin’s shoulders. Justin glowered and shrugged it off.

"Quit it, asshole," he said. "Just fuck JC already and spare us."

"I don’t want to fuck JC," Chris said in a loud voice, glaring right at JC who was done with his biscuit and was working steadily on his eggs. "Why would I want to fuck JC?"

"’Cause he’s pretty," Joey cooed, chucking JC under his chin and making him grin. "And because he can suck good dick."

Justin choked on his milk and Lance sprayed more crumbs on the table and Chris stood up and knocked his chair back with a crash that startled them all.

"I don’t want to love JC!" he howled, and received in return a measured look from four pairs of eyes.

"You don’t want to fuck JC," Joey said slowly. "Fuck. Not love. Right, man?"

And then nobody was looking at Chris except for JC, and Chris had always known JC’s eyes were blue but today they were blue like a lake and they shimmered.

"No," Chris said in a little, sad voice. "I don’t want to love JC."

* * *

Chris thought that they had to have done a show, because he knew that there were three nights in Atlanta and tonight wasn’t a night off, but when he was prone on the floor of the bus with the tv flickering, he couldn’t remember one second of it. It suddenly upset him that he couldn’t remember the show and he leapt up in the darkness, pawing through his dirty clothes for the black, sweaty shirt that was always his last wardrobe change, and when he couldn’t find it he began making frustrated noises and scrubbing a hand across his eyes. They burned suspiciously and Chris thought maybe JC had something to do with that.

JC, who was supposed to be sleeping in his bunk because JC was always sleeping in his bunk and it didn’t matter what time it was, was suddenly there next to him, kneeling down by the clothes basket and pulling him up off the floor. Chris got mad because how did JC know that Chris didn’t want to stay on the floor with the dirty clothes? He hadn’t found his black shirt yet and he was sort of freaking out and Chris thought he might want Joey to come over because Joey was good with any kind of freakouts.

But then it turned out that JC knew just what to do with someone who was freaking out, because he had pushed Chris into a corner of the couch and squished up next to him and was running his long fingers through Chris’s spiky hair while Chris tried to catch his breath and thought about not loving JC. Chris thought for sure that JC wouldn’t know what else to do, but JC did, because after Chris started taking long, hitching breaths that made him feel like he was going to choke, JC put his face in Chris’s neck and started murmuring nonsense words and running an easy hand over and over his back.

Chris wondered briefly why trying not to love JC was so much harder than just loving him. And much, much later, when JC was beautiful and lean beneath him, Chris wondered again why he had ever tried not loving JC. Especially since JC was doing the most talented, lascivious things with his tongue to Chris’s dick, and Chris didn’t know his own body could writhe that way.

Loving JC was finally devoid of anger, Chris noted, and when he was kissing the salty sweetness of the curve of JC’s spine, there was nothing but warmth and want and willingness, and JC was making little breathy sounds that Chris had never heard before. And when the sun broke through the window because neither of them had cared enough to draw the blinds closed during the night, and they lay half-clothed and entangled in each other, Chris didn’t want to ever try so hard at something again.

* * *

In Birmingham, at breakfast, Chris announced, "We’re in love," and he touched a finger to JC’s nose.

"Praise Jesus," Justin muttered, and helped himself to another waffle. Joey grinned widely and punched Chris in the shoulder, which made Chris yelp. Lance just shook his head, but Chris saw the smile he hid behind his orange juice.

JC just wrinkled his nose at Chris and sampled his bacon.

~End