Riddle
by KD

~..~

I. what is showing up in her smile

Justin knew Britney's smiles as well as his own. One of them was his smile, or his was hers, he couldn't tell which. It looked different on her face, tempered by the feminine lines, but it was the same, bright and sunny. A Star Search smile, one that really meant "I'm freezing to death in this costume and my shoes are pinching" while it said "look at me, I'm cute, I'm happy." He remembered practicing it in the mirror in his bathroom, back when his life had been a seemingly endless stream of auditions.

He studied her photographs and interviews when he couldn't be with her, looking at pictures while he talked to her on the phone, more often than not the only contact he had with her while they were both on tour. He knew them all, and always saw what he was expecting and nothing more, so he wasn't sure why he kept looking. He wasn't sure what he was looking for. He just knew he had to keep looking.

The PopOdyssey tour ended, and he thought he had the answer. He went home just long enough to remind himself he had a house, then joined her tour. It was strange being in the routine of touring, but not performing, and he attributed his faint uneasiness to that. He was happy to be with her, happy to be able to feel her in his arms when they talked at night, happy to kiss her for real instead of blowing kisses over a patchy mobile phone connection.

He was with her for a couple of weeks before he realized he was still doing it, still studying every smile, paying more attention to her expression than her words. He felt like there was something he was missing, wasn't seeing. Some mystery hidden in the reveal of chemically-brightened teeth and the curve of perfectly colored lips. He felt certain there had to be, and couldn't say why he thought that.

"Are you happy?" He asked one night while she lay warm in his arms.

"Yeah, baby. Can't you tell? I'm smiling."

She was, bright in the dim light from the street lamps slipping past the bus windows, her eyes glittering with it.

He made himself smile back, and felt lost.

Justin left the tour a few days later.

Britney complained, but he wanted to be at home for a while. He was hoping familiar surroundings would make him feel better, but his big house just felt empty.

He called Trace and they hung out, shooting hoops and drinking beer, watching porn and being normal guys. It was a distraction, but when there was a lull in the activity, he still felt it. Eventually, Trace went home, and he was left in the echoing silence.

He turned on ESPN, and was working his way through the rest of the beer- not drunk, but close, when someone started pounding on his front door. He wandered to the door, still carrying a can, and opened it without checking. It had to be someone on the list, or they wouldn't've gotten into the community.

It was Chris, carrying an oil-stained paper bag. He pushed past Justin into the house. "Fucking couldn't find my key. What's the idea, not telling us you were back from Brit's tour?" Justin trailed after him to the kitchen, the scent of Chinese food strong in the air. Chris's voice bounced off the sleek plastered walls and glossy polished floorboards. The house didn't feel empty anymore.

Chris camped out in his guest room and wouldn't leave for days, and Justin thought he should probably tell him to go, but then he'd have to explain why, and he didn't know how to do that. Chris stayed.

Chris dragged him out on the motorcycles, ran him around his basketball court with a skill that belied the braces on both of his knees, and played PS2 marathons with him until he gave up and asked Chris what he wanted. "According to Lance's little calendar, you're still on tour with Britney. And yet I hear rumors you're back in town without telling anyone, and here you are. What's up?"

Justin shrugged. Chris moved closer, so his leg was touching Justin's and Justin was blocked into the corner of the couch. Justin sighed and looked away. "It's just- have you ever thought that maybe you don't know someone as well as you thought?"

He had to look back when Chris was silent. Chris's mouth was curved in a half-smile, but the emotion in his eyes was sadness. "Oh, J." Chris said, and reached out a hand.

Justin knew it was meant to be comforting, but it burned. He couldn't look away from Chris's face, from the way expressions layered to hide thoughts and feelings. He knew why he was always staring at Britney when she smiled.

The first time Justin realized how much Chris hid behind his smiles, they were in Europe, staying in crappy hotels, working hard, every single one of them homesick. They'd taken to sleeping together when that happened, all curled into a pile of blankets on the floor, or the beds if they were big enough to share, the warmth and bulk of another body helping to ward away the loneliness. Still growing and one of the leads, he'd frequently been exhausted, and slept longer than everyone but JC, so that even if he fell asleep tangled with Lance and Chris, he woke up alone.

One morning, some random thing had woken him early, so early that Joey was still a solid snoring lump behind him, and he'd opened his eyes to see Chris looking down at him, something strange in his expression. Chris had quickly pasted on a smile, but the look in his eyes had lingered. Even then, Justin had known what lust directed at him looked like, and he'd known what love looked like all his life, and what glittered in Chris's eyes was neither, and both.

Chris blinked, and Justin smiled back, and the look was gone, but from then on, Justin was intrigued. He'd watched for it, catching brief glimpses whenever Chris didn't expect him to be looking, and somehow it'd turned into learning to read Chris better than anyone else. He could still remember the thrill of seeing that glint, feeling like he knew something no one else did, that it made him special somehow.

It had become less frequent around the time Chris and Dani started dating, and Justin had found Britney. When Chris and Dani broke up, there was so much anger in Chris that it burned away everything else, and Justin had forgotten. He remembered now because he was seeing it again, deep in Chris's eyes, and this time the thrill, the comfort of it, scared him. He didn't like the need in the pit of his stomach, or the half formed desire to see what it would take to bring that glint out of hiding until it showed on all of Chris's face. He needed to go back to Britney.

He went back to her a week after he'd left. He claimed he'd had stuff to do for the upcoming tour, and she looked at him, eyes open and honest, and believed him. He couldn't watch her when she smiled anymore.

He kept looking and not finding what he was looking for. When he had to pretend, he looked at her hair, long and bleached blond, nothing at all like Chris's dark spikes. His mind wandered in the night and he wondered what Chris's stocky muscular body would feel like pressed against his. He had old memories, but he'd been Chris's height then, with a growing teenager's slenderness, and Chris had been thinner, his body still showing the signs of years of always being at least a little bit hungry.

He made himself concentrate on Britney's curves, her body soft and small against him. He stayed awake until he was exhausted so that he wouldn't dream, afraid of what he'd find in them. He started looking at photos of them together, glittering and golden, the perfect couple. They helped him remember what he had in her. He called his mother, and let her ramble on about how sweet Britney was. Whenever Mama Spears called, Britney passed him the phone, and he talked to her, too, let the weight of the collected expectations dam the deep emptiness he'd discovered inside himself.

He tried to convince himself that what he was doing was the right thing and keenly felt Chris's silence on the subject, because Chris hadn't contacted him at all since he'd run back to Britney. It hurt.

Britney let him get away with being alternately withdrawn and clingy for almost two weeks before she tried to talk to him about it. She started off sweet, the perfect Southern lady concerned about her man. When sweet didn't work, she retreated for a couple of days. Justin filled notebooks with songs about love and life that made him wonder if he needed to see a psychiatrist, then burned them.

Her next attempt was seduction, and they had sex with the lights on so he could see her. See who she wasn't. He wanted to cry when in the middle of a blow job he found himself wondering if Chris was better.

"You never look at me when you say you love me." Justin was expecting another ploy, and the raw honesty in Britney's voice startled him. He looked up at her and saw loneliness and hurt. Her voice trembled, but she continued speaking. "You touch me, but it's not me you're touching. You won't tell me what's wrong, and even though you're here to spend time with me, we never do. You're using me, and I can't do that, Justin. Not even for you. There's not enough of me to go around."

He knew she was expecting some passionate denial, some string of excuses. He stayed quiet, because he couldn't think of anything he could actually make himself say. She sighed, and looked past him. "I think you should go home, baby. Call me when you're ready to talk."

She turned and went back to her dressing room to prepare for her next show. He watched her walk away, and felt numb.

Justin got Lance to loan him his beach house in Floribama, and booked plane tickets straight there. He couldn't go home. Chris was there, just down the road, and that was too close to be if Chris was going to stay quiet, and not far enough away if he wasn't.

Part of him wanted to run to his parents, but he knew they wouldn't be the safe harbor he remembered from his childhood. They both liked Britney too much, and would want to know why he wasn't with her, and he didn't have a good answer.

He liked Lance's house, although it wasn't the sort of place he'd ever have bought for himself. His houses were both modern and sleek, and if he had a beach house it would be one of the condominiums further up the coast, all oak floors and white plaster walls and glass and metal furniture.

Lance's house was almost rustic, knotted pine floors and furniture all bought for comfort, not looks. The big beam over the main fireplace was four hundred years old, Lance had told them the first time he'd invited them all to visit, imported from some French chateau that had fallen into ruin. Justin liked it because it wasn't anything like his houses, or Britney's, and he lost himself in the comfort and the sound of the ocean.

He didn't remember Britney's demand until he turned on the TV one morning and caught the end of an interview he hadn't known she was going to do, and that startled him, because he'd had her schedule memorized, he thought. He was getting a cup of tea when he heard his name, and he turned back to see her look down, bite her lip, and then say, softly, "we broke up." He dropped the teacup, and it hit the floor and shattered, pretty rose-patterened china shards scattering over the warm floorboards, dangerously close to his bare feet.

He ignored the mess and checked the time, then found his phone. Britney was number six on his speed dial, after the other guys and his mom, and he hung up when he got her voice mail and called again, then again until she answered.

"What do you want, Justin?" She sounded tired.

"I just saw the interview." He paused. It sounded stupid to ask, but- "We broke up?"

She sighed, then laughed, and in that moment she sounded more like Chris than he'd ever heard her, and for the briefest second he thought maybe all the things he'd been thinking were wrong. "If you were interested in our relationship, it wouldn't've taken you nearly three weeks to call me, Justin. You would've told me what was wrong so we could deal with it together. You broke us up. I just told everyone else."

She hung up on him, and when he tried calling back, he got put straight through to her voice mail. He cleaned up the cup, running on automatic, and realized he couldn't stay any longer. He still didn't want to go home.

His phone started ringing as soon as he turned it on in the Orlando airport. It was Johnny. He listened while he walked from the gate to the cab stand, then cut in. "I didn't know."

He hung up and noticed the messages symbol on the screen. He turned the phone off again, and got a cab. They were on his street when he leaned forward and gave the driver Chris's address instead. He didn't know what he was doing, but he knew he had to do something. Even if there hadn't been a tour coming up, he missed Chris.

He felt different around the other man, more comfortable with problems he didn't know how to solve. His problems didn't normally involve Chris, and he thought that might change things, but he hadn't made any progress on his own.

He had a key to Chris's house, but he rang the bell anyway, and waited while sharp barks told him that Busta, at least, was home. Chris opened the door after a minute, sleep rumpled and squinting in the bright midday sun. Something low in Justin's stomach lurched. Busta pushed past Chris to sniff Justin's legs, and Justin knelt down next to his bags to scratch the pug behind the ears. It was a handy way to avoid having to keep looking at Chris. He wasn't entirely sure Chris would let him in.

"J?" Justin looked up. He could tell from the tone of his voice that Chris had heard about Britney. He didn't say anything, but after a moment, Chris stepped back from the doorway. Justin pet Busta a final time, grabbed his bags, stood, and followed Chris in.

The hallway was dark in comparison. Justin felt blind. He put his bags down just inside the door and followed Chris further into his house, until Chris stood in the pool of light coming in a large window, and Justin could see him clearly. Justin crowded Chris, up against the wall.

"What the hell, Justin?"

Justin didn't say anything. He was looking. Under the confused annoyance and a strange hint of sadness, it glittered, beautiful and terrifying. He brought his hands up to touch Chris, cupping his palms over cheeks rough with stubble and beard, so entirely unlike Britney.

Chris moved to push him away, and Justin leaned in and kissed him. Chris's hands were caught between them, layers of jacket and shirt keeping Justin from properly feeling their heat, but he could imagine it. Chris tasted faintly of pizza and beer.

Justin ran the tip of his tongue over Chris's dry lips until they parted and he could slide his tongue in and rub it against Chris's, over teeth that he remembered being imperfect and crooked, and then silver and glittering with metal. They were smooth now, and he liked the pearl feel of them, the way Chris moaned whisper-soft into his mouth when the tip of his tongue touched sensitive flesh. The prickle of beard was the most alien thing, because he did know how Chris felt against him, not like a lover, but close enough, and it was the beard that made him pull back.

His cheeks were stinging with faint beard burn. He released Chris and stepped back, rubbing at the sensitive flesh. The love he'd seen for years, glittering in Chris's eyes was blazing, banked by fear but he knew given the chance it would grow. He shivered and turned away to pick up his bags.

"Same room as always?" He asked, and climbed the stairs without waiting for an answer, because he knew it would be 'yes'.

Chris gave him an hour before he came in. He didn't even bother to knock. Justin was waiting on the bed, fully clothed on top of the blankets. He'd been thinking about how many times he'd slept in the room, and hoping that Chris remembered not to go for the face if he decided to punch him for fucking around with his feelings.

He was steadfastly refusing to put a name to the feelings keeping his pulse rate elevated, and his stomach tight with nerves. He watched Chris cross the room to the bed. Chris watched him back, and for once Justin didn't know how to read what he was seeing on Chris's face.

Chris sat on the edge of the bed, body twisted to face Justin. His hair was damp, his cheeks clean-shaven, and Justin thought his reprieve had more to do with Chris wanting to shower and properly wake up before the confrontation than Chris wanting to give him some space.

"You wanna tell me what that was about? Because I'm sure you didn't mistake me for Brit. I don't have the boobs for it." In spite of the jokes, Chris's voice was serious.

Justin looked at the ceiling. "Yeah." He knew Chris was waiting for more, but that was all he had.

"That's it? 'Yeah'? That's your explanation for that kiss?"

Justin shrugged. He was lost in his own fears. Chris felt like everything he'd ever been told he could find, and was nothing like what he'd been raised to think he should have. Britney was. Had been. He tried to imagine himself going back to her, kissing her, and couldn't. Nothing compared to Chris.

There was nothing even close.

"That wasn't about Britney, was it?"

Justin looked at Chris again. Chris's face was open, but still unreadable. He considered his answer. "Not really."

"It was about us."

"Yeah." Chris looked away, to where Busta was scratching by the door, then back. "You know, then." Chris said, and his eyes were still partially unreadable but it was there again, bright and warm and glittering.

"Yeah."

Chris had been expecting some other answer, Justin could tell. The brilliance dimmed slightly, and there was sadness. It hurt him to see. "So what's the problem, then?"

He could see that Chris expected him to strike out and shatter the fragile beauty. He took a breath and closed his eyes. "I think I've fallen in love with you."

He opened them again, and Chris was looking at him with an odd half-smile.

"That's okay. I've been falling in love with you since the day we met, one way or another."

Justin moved his hand closer to Chris. "I'm scared." he admitted.

Chris took his hand with a hand that was almost the same size as Britney's, but rougher, stronger. "That's okay, too."

Chris smiled, and after a minute Justin returned it, his world slipping around him into something he didn't quite know. He pulled Chris down next to him so he could feel him all along his side, scared but still strangely content, because he'd found what he'd been looking for.

He'd solved the riddle.