That Girl
by stubbleglitter

~..~

She's not stupid.

Okay, so she doesn't speak in fifteen-syllable words--or even three-syllable ones. Okay, so she can't recognize the name of every single musician who's ever cut a record. Okay, so she uses words like "funner" from time to time.

That doesn't mean she can't see what's going on in front of her.

"You guys looked great out there," she said politely when the boys came tumbling backstage, smelling high with sweat and adrenalin and the adoration that was still clinging to their matching tracksuits. JC grinned wide and gave her a twirly bow and Britney giggled, because JC was still the same nice, talented guy from MMC who had been kind to the younger kids. Joey grinned big at her too, but she stayed just a bit frosty with him and made sure his gaze didn't stray down to her tits.

Lance wrinkled his nose and Britney did the same back. They understood each other, Lance and her, in a strange way that nobody else could fathom and that her and Lance didn't want to explain. He wasn't Justin, of course-but then, nobody was.

She'd had a crush on Justin for two weeks during the Mouse Club, because all the girls had floating crushes on the boys. Christina, who wanted so badly to be different and special, had always chosen the uglier boys and declared passionately that they had deep eyes or a thrilling voice or were so smart.

Britney never bothered with that and just went on crushing on whoever was the star for that moment. She'd already crushed on Tony and JC and all the older guys by the time she got to Justin.

And here she was, still crushing on Justin. The good thing, Britney realized as Justin loped laughing off the stage, the darkness of his eyes sparking something hot and twisty down deep in her belly when he looked at her-the good thing was that now he was something really worth crushing on.

"Hey, Brit," Justin said, his voice roughened and burning from all the singing. He pulled himself up short out of a gallop and shifted next to her, laying his long wet fingers along her bare arm and making all the little hairs there riffle upward. Britney smiled, turning her face up to his and leaning into the touch.

"Hi," she breathed, putting slow heather honey into it, feeling her breasts press and swell under her tank top in a way that made her slide her hips restlessly, brief and shocking against the tautness of Justin's body. He licked his lips and had just opened his mouth when Chris came shooting offstage, barrelling into both Justin and Britney but locking his arms around Justin so he wouldn't fall down.

"Hey!" Chris exclaimed as Britney staggered, pinwheeled her arms, regained her balance. "Watch it there!"

"Yeah, thanks," she said sourly, and smiled bright at him. Chris smiled back the exact same way, with his arm still around Justin's waist.

~..~

When they started dating, she learned a few things about Justin.

Like his idea of romance, which consisted of hearts and flowers and all manner of things along those lines. He enclosed very long, very earnest letters with every gift, and when Britney read them she got the same feeling she'd gotten when she was thirteen and read a Christmas-edition Harlequin novel with three different “charming” stories in it. When Justin lit their hotel room with dozens of vanilla-scented candles, she was Yancy the free-spirited Victorian miss. When he abducted her from rehearsals and they went on a whirlwind drive in search of a 7-11, she was Carolinna the hard-working aerobics instructor. When he spelled out her name in rose petals on the bed, she was Edwinna the spunky frontier lass.

Justin called her up after he’d read Britney’s latest magazine interview, and didn't even say hello when she answered the phone. "If you thought the rose petals were corny, you could've just told me," he said quietly, and Britney could practically feel the hurt reaching through the phone to smother her. "Instead of the magazine. You coulda just told me."

She took a breath and considered, just for a minute, saying Nearly everything you do for me is corny, Justin. Why don't you stop trying to be the Perfect fucking Boyfriend and actually pay attention to what I want?

Instead, she made a soothing noise and in her best contrite little-girl voice, "I'm sorry, honey...I didn't mean it like that. Y'know how these interviewers are like." Which of course won him over, because he'd been misquoted a few times himself, and it was easy to make up lies to tell Justin. He never really saw them coming.

"Just let me know if you ever do want something different, okay?" he said before he hung up. Britney sang, "Okay, baby--love you!" and wondered, if she really said i want you to stop being such a goddamn gentleman and fuck me in dirty nasty ways that we're too young to know about, what he would do.

The ceiling was pink, Britney thought dazedly as the tobacco smoke siphoned down into her lungs, giving her a pleasant feeling of vertigo as she lay on her back on the huge hard hotel bed. Pink.

Justin’s lips had been a swollen, wet pink where they stretched and slid back and forth on Chris’ cock, and Chris’ mouth had been an open, panting darkly shaded pink as he tipped his head back against the wall. Britney had frozen in the doorway of the dressing room, half-choking as she swallowed her cry of greeting, and had just…watched. Watched her boyfriend on his knees in front of his best friend, sucking and moaning with a wild slutty intensity that she’d never seen in him before, never guessed at from his gentle inquiring kisses and careful caresses.

Blinking at the pink of the ceiling, Britney took one last drag from her cigarette and dropped it in the ashtray on the bedside table. She let her mouth fall open as she flexed her fingers, flicking them before sliding them across her stomach, down across one hip and to the centre of her belly again, dipping under the waistband of her jeans and the thin cotton of her panties. The cigarette burned steadily next to her, coils of pale blue smoke tracing patterns between her and the pink ceiling, her and the pink around Justin’s nose and mouth when he finally pulled away from Chris, her and the pink of Justin’s fingers as he stared up at Chris with enormous dark eyes and unfolded himself back, sprawling out on the floor.

Britney slipped her rosy-nailed fingers into herself and imagined the pinkness and tasted salt and smoke, and she would have laughed if it didn’t hurt so much.

Justin’s fingers felt good on her, when they were teasing her nipples or stroking along her sides or sliding between her legs. He had long fingers and Britney liked it when he put them inside her, and she could press down sometimes harder than he wanted her to and grind herself against his big hand and his strong wrist while he kissed her.

She was surprised to find that she even liked the way his fingers felt now, cinching the soft inside of her elbow so tightly that it was sending shocks up her arm; she liked it so much that she didn’t protest when he swung her into the bedroom, shutting the door before he let go. Britney rubbed the sore spots on her arm, delighting in the shooting pain and hoping for bruises, maybe with Justin’s fingerprints embedded in her skin, so intent that she didn’t notice how close he’d leaned in until he was talking.

“I wasn’t fucking her,” he hissed, and Britney smiled despite herself.

“I know,” she said. “You’re too busy giving it up for Chris.”

He at least wasn’t a coward, she’d give him that. Justin gasped once, hard, before straightening up and rubbing those beautiful long fingers along his bare arms, banding them across the tattoo. “That’s…that’s different,” he murmured, and this time Britney laughed out loud.

“Yeah, I’ll bet!” she barked. “D’you spit or swallow for him, baby?”

Justin opened his mouth angrily and then snapped it shut again, shaking his head, and Britney suddenly hated everything about him-his shorn head, his stupid beatboxing, his pressed-together pissed-off mouth-everything, in one burst of hot vitriolic passion. She pushed away from the wall, clutching her fingers to her bruised elbow, and the pain of it spurred her on when she snarled, “You never treated me right, Justin.”

“What?” He gaped at her, aghast, then glanced down at her pink-nailed fingers and the spreading purple under them, and when he looked up again, there was remorse in his eyes. Britney could have screamed with frustration.

“That isn’t what I mean!” she said, but he wasn’t listening anyway and she could see the regret settle across his face.

“I’m sorry,” Justin said, reaching for her, fingers sending electricity jolting through Britney when they cupped her elbows and slithered up her arms. “I’m so, so sorry, I’ll stop with Chris, whatever you want, honey, please….” She could feel his mouth moving against her hair, on her forehead, breath damp against her skin and the vanilla smell of it was driving her crazy, so she grabbed his head and pulled him down to her, plunging her tongue right in and biting at the soft slick insides of his mouth.

For a moment, Justin pushed back at her with his whole hard body, letting his mouth open completely and growling and sucking at her tongue so hard that she whimpered, and then he was suddenly holding her face with his long pink fingers and pulling away and apologizing, fucking apologizing, and Britney closed her eyes and wanted to cry but just stared at the featureless pink on the inside her eyelids instead.

It’s almost over when they have dinner, but they’re still going out together when they can. Britney isn’t sure why, but it never occurs to her to say no until they’re sitting at the table and Justin’s chewing mouthfuls of food and staring intently at his plate, and by then it’s too late, far too late.

They’re joined by a woman who Britney vaguely knows and who Justin greets like an old friend, and she half-listens, bored and fiddling with her carrots while they talk about mixing and producing and labels and contracts. The woman’s old enough to be their mother and she’s still tossing her hair and showing lots of teeth as if she’s at a fucking club or party or something and picking Justin up.

Britney has to make an actual determined effort to rejoin the conversation and listen to what they’re blathering about, and the woman’s gushing and saying --ironic, really, that you’d be singing a song like that, about how that girl won’t ever--

will never, Justin corrects her gently. will never be mine.

His eyes meet Britney’s over the table, and she can see that he’s finally realized the wet unwholesome heat burning in her, and he finally understands, and it’s too late.