Joey still remembers the first time it happened, all the way back in Europe. He was sitting down, eating half warm potato salad and a sandwich he didn't feel like examining too closely, when last night's girl walked by. He smiled and winked, not too friendly, but not so cold that she'd tell her friends what an asshole he was.

"You're such a slut, man." Justin's voice almost cracked when he squeaked out the words.

Justin obviously didn't know that sluts were high school girls, the ones that Joey remembered as being cheaply perfumed and lush and far too available. They were the ones their mommas hustled to Saturday confession, their knees reddened from kneeling through the rosaries they earned. Justin didn't grow up with an Italian Catholic background, so he couldn't really understand.

There was awe on Justin's face and Joey let the admiration in his voice drown out the sting of the words.

A few months later, Joey was heading toward his room, a girl tucked under each arm. Everyone was laughing, one of the girls whispering obscene promises into his ear, and Joey's cock was already stirring. Lance wandered out of his dark room, obviously bored.

"Hey man, sorry. J's already asleep and I was just looking for something to do." Lance blushed and stared at the ground, reminding Joey exactly how young he still was.

He detached the blond from his right arm and kissed her on the cheek. "This is Lance, sweetheart. How's about you make him some promises." She pouted, just for a second, before turning to Lance with a welcoming smile.

Lance stepped back, horrified. "Joey, you whore. I don't want your women."

He'd shrugged, yanked the girl back, and avoided Lance for the next three days, until everything seemed to be forgotten. Their lives were moving so quickly that no discomfort could ever be resilient enough to withstand a few days.

JC didn't understand Joey, as much as he tried to. Joey could tell that he wanted to, because sometimes JC asked questions, the ones that no one else would even think of broaching.

One morning JC saw Joey ushering a slim androgynous boy into Lonnie's disapproving grasp and he wandered into Joey's room, forgetting whatever had lured him out of his room in the early morning hours.

"Why, Joey?" JC tilted his head to the side in that way he had, almost like he were waiting for music, not answers.

Joey shrugged. "Boys are just... different, sometimes it feels better." He'd felt lost then, unwilling to explain exactly what it took to become jaded to someone as romantic as JC.

"I wasn't questioning gender." JC looked contemplative and calm. "Just why there were so many." He'd waited for a minute or two, for Joey to say something before he wandered away again, leaving Joey disquieted.

Joey soaped himself twice that morning in the shower before he realized that he wasn't really dirty at all.

It was Chris who shoed up on his doorstep after the tabloids started blaring out news of paternity suits and random personal accounts of "My Night With NSYNC's Wildman, Joey Fatone."

Joey could tell that Chris didn't know whether to be disgusted or to feel sorry for him. It was written on his face, like all his emotions were. So he brought Chris a beer and sat down next to him, waiting.

"Joe. What the fuck. What the hell are you doing?"

Joey could only shrug. He didn't know, didn't know any of it, like how to deal with his longtime girlfriend hanging up on him, or his mother calling him up and cursing him out on the phone. There weren't answers, just...

"Why not?"

It was Joey's philosophy, honed through too many years of being charming and cuddly and so very good at whatever he did. It was his response when he lost his virginity to an older girl that he couldn't quite remember, and again when a strange solemn boy propositioned him in broken english, one night when the attraction of girls paled.

"Why not? I'll tell you why not! There's gotta be a limit, man." Chris's arms were windmilling around and Joey watched in fascination, the kinetic energy breathtaking.

Joey smiled at Chris, promise in his eyes. "Calm yourself. It'll all work out." The sting of Kelly's rejection, of his mother's admonishments to get his sorry behind to Mass, all faded into the haze of wanting, a familiar syrupy feeling in his stomach and legs letting him know that he had new ground to conquer.

Leaning toward Chris, Joey wondered why this magnificent possibility had never occurred to him before. Dropping his voice to a whisper, one of his secrets to ensure that whoever he was seducing would lean in, spellbound. "There *are* no limits." Then he kissed Chris, light and teasing, waiting to be found irresistible again.

Chris stared at him for a second, and Joey could taste the possibilities, feel himself begin to lengthen and want. Then he was sprawling on the floor, his jaw flashing with pain.

Joey looked up, shocked, and Chris was leaning over him. "You need to find your limits." He sounded sad. "Otherwise, you're nothing but the fucking slut everyone else thinks that you are."

When he heard the gentle click of the door, Joey thought that Chris really should have slammed it.

The next day, Chris acted normal and Joey was relieved. Lance looked at him kind of funny, but everyone else was exactly the same. Joey nursed a grudge for a day or two, told himself that he wasn't a slut exactly, just sort of... free. He didn't quite know how to tell the others that, then he thought that maybe it wasn't quite something you could tell.

Still, things that were funny before, even expected, suddenly weren't. Chris's nudge to Justin when Joey started to talk to a girl; Lance waiting until Joey picked his prey for the night before he chose because "Really Joe, who wants to compete."

Joey suddenly cared that they looked at him like he was some sort of dirty joke, predictable and just this side of vulgar. So he stopped going clubbing, stopped selecting girls or boys to dribble his nights away with.

His restraint didn't change anything. Justin made jokes that he was taking a break because he was raw and Lance just kept giving him questioning looks. On the other hand, Chris made it a subtle point not to be in the same space as he was, and that hurt more than it should have, considering that they hadn't been exactly close for some time.

JC was the only constant, predictable in his vagueness. He was gentle, his sweetness almost protective, like while you were coated in his aura nothing could be wrong. Joey loved to watch JC when he was absorbed in his music and the half-baked ideas that dissipated before they could be expressed.

It wasn't quite so good when JC started watching him back. Joey looked up from his magazine, one night when all the others were out, and JC was looking at him with an intensity that he was rarely capable of. He didn't feel like talking, so he scrunched down, trying to regain the quiet peace he usually felt around JC.

"Joey?"

Reluctantly, he looked up, unnerved. "Yeah?"

"Are you happy?"

Joey thought that only JC could take such a meaningless question and make it real. He didn't know what to say, so he just shrugged. "Yeah. Sure. Who wouldn't be?"

"Yeah. Cause you don't seem to be." JC thought for a minute. "No offense."

"Just a little lonely, maybe."

JC moved closer, sitting on the couch next to him, and Joey suddenly wanted to kiss him, not because he was another conquest. Just because he was JC, sweet and understanding and maybe enough in the way that the others never were.

Joey looked down, not willing to make the same mistake again, and then he felt JC's hand rub across the back of his neck, light and soft. Joey couldn't resist leaning into JC, surprised when arms wound around him and tugged him closer, JC's breath in his ear, "I think you've been lonely for a while."

Joey thought that JC's words should have sounded like a very bad pick up line, but instead he just sounded earnest and sincere. There was electricity crackling when JC's hand smoothed down his back, the kind that Joey should have used without hesitation, but it wasn't right so he pulled back.

"Yeah. But I think maybe I need to be." It sounded too serious, and Joey wished that he could take it back, crack a joke, but JC was nodding.

"I can wait." And this time, when JC hugged Joey it felt right.

~end~