It had started off as a joke, a late-night distraction on the whiteboard when the rhythms just wouldn't come together in their headphones, but after a couple of days, when they needed the space, JC had quickly written down the twenty-three ways they had already come up with. After that, the list had lived on paper, with everyone from producers to engineers to girlfriends contributing. They'd fiercely debated every addition, and had a tequila party when they hit a hundred. Even if it was only a stupid scribbling of the hundred ways the song didn't list, the tattered piece of yellow legal paper was special to JC, a twisted yearbook of the making of Schizophrenic.
Which was why, he told himself, he was enraged at Justin's waving it back and forth like a cheap carnival prize. It was late, they'd been working far too many hours for far too many days, and JC had long ago lost any patience with the practical jokes Justin and the other guys delighted in.
"Oh, man, this is priceless." Justin doubled over with laughter.
"Give it to me."
"No way, man. Do you know how much I could get for this on eBay?" Justin twisted away from JC and danced across the small recording studio. "Hell, forget eBay, do you know how much Bass would pay for this?"
"Fucking give it back!"
Justin feinted right, then went left and dodged around JC. "For free? I don't think so, Joshua."
"If you even think that I'm going to pay you for something you stole out of my notebook--"
"Hey! Nobody stole anything; I found it on the floor." There was a nasty undertone to Justin's words that matched the frustration JC had been fighting for weeks. "But it is gonna cost you to get it back. Call it a finders fee."
"Justin--"
"Let's say... Number sixteen?"
"What?" JC was gaping; he knew he looked stupid but he couldn't close his mouth.
"You heard me. Six.Teen. Want me to read it to you? It's--"
"I know what it is," JC snapped. "What I don't know is what the hell kind of a stunt you think you're pulling."
Justin's smile was pure evil. "No, stunt, man. Just checking to see if you can walk the talk."
JC looked at Justin leaning against the wall, six feet plus of insolent grace and studied sexuality, and quite deliberately told his good sense to fuck off. "Fine," he said out loud. "Strip."
As he crossed the room to push close to Justin, JC took a savage satisfaction in seeing that it was Justin's turn to gape. "C'mon, man. Walk the talk."
Justin arched up off the wall and met JC halfway, growling as their mouths met in what was less a kiss than a snarl. Later that night in the shower, and again alone in his bed, watching the sun rise on another perfect California day, JC would think that that was the exact second when he threw a lifetime of careful control to hell.
Sex on the undoubtedly filthy floor of a recording studio was not something JC was ever going to be proud of, no matter how incredibly hot it had been to have had Justin pinned to the floor beneath him, to feel Justin push deep inside him, to jerk himself off, fast and rough, while Justin still shook from the force of his own climax. He was even less proud of the way he'd snatched the paper off the floor and left without a word.
They had the studio booked from three until midnight every day for the foreseeable future, until they could put the next NSYNC album to bed, and JC couldn't remember a time when he'd dreaded going to work more.
---
Justin was already hunched over the soundboard when JC walked into the studio. He didn't look up when he said, "Chris is due in an hour; there's something off about the stuff he laid down last week."
JC nodded, hearing the unspoken, So we better have our shit together by then. He tried not to look at the scratch that curved up from the collar of Justin's t-shirt and started pulling up the tracks they were going to need.
---
JC wanted to say something, had firm intentions to apologize for his part in the mess, but for the first time in band history, Chris Kirkpatrick showed up at a recording studio early, and then they were all busy listening for the burr that had crept in on the higher frequencies. Chris left, but the engineers had a list of stuff they wanted to go over, and when they were finished and JC looked up, Justin was shrugging into his leather jacket.
He paused in the doorway to say, very quietly, "I, uh, I'm pretty sure I'm clean, and I get tested every couple of months, but. Uh, I called the doctor this morning and I'm sorry I have to bail but this is as late as he can stay, and I just thought I'd let you know."
Justin closed the door behind him, and JC dropped his head in his hands and thought shitshitshit. Because, of course, Justin was right. JC had torn the studio apart the night before, dumping out drawers and cabinets until he'd found a bottle of hand lotion someone had abandoned, but a condom had never even crossed his mind, and just, shit.
With a sigh, he pulled out his phone. While he waited for the receptionist to see when she could work him in, he wondered who had cleaned up the mess he'd made the night before.
---
To fully reinforce the negative consequences of his stupidity, JC let them schedule him for the first appointment of the morning. He listened, really listened, to the lecture the doctor delivered, especially the part about putting others at risk with his unsafe behavior, and smiled weakly at the nurse when she came to draw his blood.
Once they were done, he still had hours before he needed to be in the studio. Without thinking, he found himself at Joey's. Briahna shrieked with joy when she saw him, inviting him into the pool with her, not caring that he had no bathing suit. She loved it when he picked her up and jumped into the water, JC in his regular clothes and Bri in her pajamas. They spent the morning making up stories of wild-animal-taming princesses on desert islands for her Barbies and eating chocolate chip pancakes on the patio.
When Joey came out to haul a protesting Briahna inside for lunch and a nap, JC just as reluctantly pulled himself out of the water and found a towel. Joey came back with a t-shirt and some jeans JC had left earlier. "Not that me and Kel don't appreciate any opportunity for a little spontaneous morning fun, but... Do I want to know what the hell you were doing out of bed before nine in the morning?"
JC shrugged. "Had things to do." He ignored Joey's snort and went to change clothes. His underwear was wet, but he didn't think anything about wearing the jeans alone, not until hours later when the engineer went out for a smoke break and Justin looked up at him through stupidly long eyelashes and said, "Thirty-seven;" and then he was just happy that there was one less layer of clothing between his skin and Justin's mouth.
---
Every morning JC stared at the mirror and told himself he would say something and every night he walked back into his house without having said the words he'd rehearsed. He fell asleep with the list dancing in his head, and the best thing he could say about his behavior was that at least he wasn't checking off numbers. Not on the paper anyway.
Somewhere, in some stupid interview, someone must have asked JC about what his perfect life would be. He knew his answers: creating music that would live forever, and having someone to love and who loved him, and wondered who thought it was funny to twist them until it made him sick to think about it. Every day, he went into the studio and listened to things fall into place with an ease that was frightening, and knew he'd never want to listen to this album again, because every day, Justin would raise a mocking eyebrow, and throw a number at him, and no matter if it was a sneer or a whisper or a challenge, it was impossible to walk away.
JC was appalled at the risks they were taking, even when it was only the guys and the engineers and the band around, but when Justin passed him a note that simply said 4, and then casually announced to Pharrell and Chad, "Twenty minutes, yo," all JC could think was that there was no way in hell Justin was going to last that long, not if he had anything to do with it. He clicked the timer on his watch as he slipped into the janitor's closet and was gratified to see that he spent less than six minutes on his knees. They didn't usually kiss, not unless there was biting involved, but JC made an exception this time, holding Justin's head firmly to let him taste himself while JC took his time grinding against Justin's hip. Even without rushing himself he was back in the studio within the twenty minutes. Justin was a little late, but he'd had to clean himself up after JC finished.
JC stopped keeping track of the scratches and bruises and bite marks he found every morning in the shower. He stopped looking for them on Justin, too. In fact, he stopped looking at Justin, period. It was easier if he focused on a point over Justin's shoulder when he had to talk to him. That way, he wasn't looking to see if he could still see where he'd bitten Justin's lip hard enough to draw blood, or wondering if Justin was wearing long sleeves because JC had left ten perfectly spaced bruises on his upper arms.
---
Lance's house was always welcoming. Even when a half-dozen people were crashing with him, his housekeeper kept the place immaculate and functioning smoothly, a mini-oasis with a fully stocked bar and real food in the kitchen.
Lance was pretty welcoming, too. He didn't ask why JC had shown up unannounced, just found a Trading Spaces marathon on his satellite dish and produced two plates of grilled fish and veggies. He let JC eat in front of the TV, and murmured perfectly innocuous comments about Hildi being on crack and Frank needing to curb his kitsch factor.
After the fourth episode, when he knew damn good and well that Lance couldn't stand the show, JC asked, "Am I really that pathetic?"
Lance didn't pretend to not understand. "Baby, I don't know what the hell is going on, but you look like somebody just shot your best friend."
JC muttered, "Close enough," and curled into the corner of the couch.
---
Clive flew in with an entourage for a first listen, and JC worried himself to the point of nausea wondering if Justin would dare, knowing full well that he wasn't going to be the one to back down, but Justin was in full Golden Boy mode, proudly showing off what they'd laid down and doing his best sales pitch of what was yet to come. JC watched him closely, and knew that only the other guys or Lynn would notice the act. Even Johnny bought it, and Clive was nearly pissing himself over what he was hearing, but JC saw the way the winning smiles never touched Justin's eyes, and Chris actually reached up and slapped Justin's hands away from his mouth once to keep him from tearing at the cuticles.
JC somehow found the energy to match Justin's show, deflecting the compliments and ignoring the "suggestions," and politely declining to plan marketing until the album was complete, but agreeing that they needed an entirely different strategy than in previous years.
When Clive finally left to go torture some other artist--and JC couldn't even wish him on Backstreet--JC stayed behind in the small conference room for a few minutes of quiet before they tried to pick up the threads of the interrupted day. When the door opened without a knock, he was ashamed of the disappointment he felt when he saw it was only Chris.
Chris closed the door and crossed the room to lean a hip on the table next to JC. "Whatever the fuck is going on, you need to fix it. Now."
JC shrugged. He wasn't surprised Chris knew; Justin couldn't keep anything from him, not for long. "It's just the push and pull of recording. It's nothing."
Chris pushed JC's sleeve off his wrist. The bruises had faded a bit from the spectacular stage of a few days previous, but were still unmistakable. "This is not nothing, JC. Not when the two of you can't even fucking look each other in the eye. You want to slap a collar on him, you want him to lead you around on a leash, I don't give a rat's ass, but only if it's making the both of you happy."
"We're fine. It's not affecting the album." JC dared Chris to contradict him, because it was true, the music was great, it was somehow a blend of all five of them, like they'd never been able to find before. It didn't seem to matter that if they weren't in the middle of fucking, JC and Justin didn't speak to each other.
"I don't give a flying fuck about the album. And yeah, for whatever reason, shit is sounding better than any of us could have hoped for, but if you don't think Lance and Joe and I won't sit down with the suits tomorrow and go over those goddamned contracts with a fine-tooth comb to find a loophole so the two of you can have some breathing space, then you're more messed up than I thought."
JC let the silence stretch out around them until Chris sighed, and gently wrapped his hand around JC's wrist. "Josh. What is this? Because it's not making either of you anything but miserable."
"This?" JC lifted both hands off the table so Chris could get an unobstructed view. "This is twenty-three," he said. "A quick fuck over a table. J's hands are bigger than yours, y'know? He can get both of my wrists in one and jer--"
"Jesus_Christ_, JC," Chris said, tightening his hand around the bruise until JC hissed with the pain.
"I'm fi--"
"No, you're not." JC jerked his head up at the desperate tone in Chris' voice. "You're not fine; he's not fine. Tell me what you need from me. Or Joe, or Lance. Because I honestly don't know how much longer the two of you can do this--this--whatever the fuck it is, but I'm not going listen to you blow smoke and tell me you're just having fun."
"Okay," JC whispered. "I won't tell you that."
---
JC stayed in the conference room for a long time, trying to find whatever he needed to do what he hadn't been able to do yet. When he finally left, the building was quiet and the parking lot held only his car and Justin's bike. JC expected Justin to be in the studio, but found him in the small kitchen area, staring out the grimy window at the fading light. He glanced up at JC, but dropped his eyes after a second, and stayed quiet.
After all the weeks of thinking and trying to find the right words, JC could only manage, "We need to stop."
"Yeah."
JC waited for Justin to say more, to say something, anything, but Justin apparently was finished with him, so JC turned to go.
He hesitated, but then said, "I'm sorry."
If the silence hadn't been so absolute before, he would have missed Justin's almost inaudible, "I'm not."
He jerked around and stuttered, "Wh--what?"
"I said, I'm not." Justin looked up, actually looked at him, and JC was struck by how drawn and pale he was, and how, in the dim light of the kitchen, Justin's eyes were nearly black. "I'm not sorry. At least when we were fucking, I knew you were seeing me."
JC stared back at Justin, random thoughts racing so fast he was dizzy, and felt something ease inside him. His brain was a jumble of things he wanted to say but for the first time he realized how much he'd grown to hate the building, how closed in and claustrophobic it made him feel, as though the negative energy of the past weeks was smothering him. He said, quickly, before he could change his mind, "Come home with me?"
"I thought we needed to stop," Justin said. JC wanted to scream at the lifelessness in his voice. Justin's voice was never dull; it invited you to share in the humor, or made you want to smack him, or tempted you with things you'd never known you wanted.
"We do." JC kept his voice calm. "Will you come home with me anyway?"
Justin shrugged, but stood up and followed JC out to his car. They inched along through traffic, silently, and JC appreciated that Justin had remembered that he liked to clear his head after a day with the headphones on. He thought he should stop and get something for dinner, because he knew there wasn't anything in his kitchen, but when he glanced over to ask Justin's preference, he was asleep.
By the time they made their way up and out of the canyon, and into JC's driveway, the sun had set and the long summer twilight was easing toward night. JC picked up the phone to call for take-out, but Justin handed him a note off his refrigerator. "Shut up and eat, and don't think I'm not checking your trash," JC read, and opened the door. Inside, the shelves were full of white catering boxes, neatly stacked according to their color-coded labels.
JC smiled, for the first time in what felt like forever, and looked at Justin. "Lance. He's convinced I can't take care of myself. He's worse than my mother."
"Chris has every phone in my house programmed for take-out. It pisses Trace off 'cause he erases all of Trace's favorites every time he crashes with me, but they're taking turns shoving food at me."
It was the most Justin had said to him in nearly a month; JC felt vindicated in getting away from the studio. He looked at a couple of the cartons, and said, "Uh, more my kind of food than yours, but I can call for a pizza if you want."
"Doesn't matter. I can eat whatever." Justin wandered out of the kitchen, leaving JC to decide whether he would rather eat green curry shrimp or Thai chicken with sesame noodles or penne arrabiata. In the end, JC heated all three and carried them out to the deck.
"Okay, then," he said, handing Justin a fork. "Eat whatever."
Justin took some of each and pushed it around on his plate, exactly like JC remembered him doing when he was eleven years old and confronted with strange, non-Southern food for the first time.
JC looked at the lights of the city. "I never thought I'd ever be okay with living here." He kept his eyes on the darkening horizon. "By the time I left the first time, I was so humiliated, I felt so stupid, I could barely stand to look at myself."
Justin moved restlessly, and JC hurried to finish before he could interrupt. "It's been like that again, lately. Too ashamed to look at myself, too guilty to look at you, and, God. We, it needs to stop, but Justin, I've never not been able to stop seeing you, not when you're being an annoying ass in the studio, not when you were so in love with Britney it hurt, not even when you were fifteen and I told myself I had to fucking stop looking--"
"Shut up," Justin hissed, standing up so fast his chair crashed over. He backed away from the table. "Shut the fuck up. You can't tell me this now, not now, why didn't you tell me this before?" His voice was raw, and it hurt JC to hear it, but it was better than the lifeless voice from the kitchen.
"Because I thought you knew," JC said in a rush, afraid that Justin would reach the door and bolt. He forced the words around the tight hurt in his chest. "I thought everyone knew. Lou used to tell me after every interview to back off on telling the story of how I lived with you after LA, to stop talking about you and what good friends we were. He made it sound so sleazy, but I figured if he could see it, everyone could."
Justin shook his head. "If I knew, why--why would I have even started all this?"
JC shrugged. "People get tired of having to deal with emotions they don't return. It's an easy slide into contempt, especially when you're living and working on top of each other and you never get a break."
"I would nev--you can't actually believe I'd..." Justin's voice trailed off uncertainly. "You did think it."
JC shrugged again, helplessly. "I thought you'd known for years."
Justin stood very still, and then sighed. "Jesus_fuck_. No offense, C, but I don't know who's stupider. More stupid. Whatever." He shook his head. "We're stupid."
"Yeah," JC said. The silence stretched out around them, but unlike the ones in studio, JC could still breathe.
"Yeah. So, um. Where does that leave us?"
"In fucking LA, of all places." JC wasn't trying to be funny, but Justin snorted, and that set him off; and if there was an edge of hysteria to their laughter, JC thought that they were maybe entitled to it.
"Where do you want it to leave us?" JC asked when he could breathe again.
"Someplace where you can look at yourself again. And me. Someplace where you can look at me," Justin said slowly. "Someplace where I'm not watching myself be selfish and manipulative and not being able to stop."
"I think we're there," JC said. "Or almost."
"What, what about you? Where do you want it to leave us?"
JC thought about what he really wanted, not what he'd always told himself he could have. "Someplace where I'm not afraid that my touching you is going to end up with both of us bleeding."
"We can be there."
"Can we?" JC was nearly overwhelmed by how much he wanted to believe Justin. "I can't just make the last month go away, J." He couldn't stop his voice from shaking. "I can't pretend it didn't happen, that I didn't act the way I did, that--"
"Wait." Justin crossed the deck to crouch next to JC's chair. "No, you can't, and I can't either, but you can look at me now, right?" JC drew a shaky breath and nodded, and Justin relaxed a little. "And you can give me your hand, okay? Because I'm not afraid, and I can keep being like that for both of us until you can, too."
JC watched Justin for a long time before he slowly took his hand off his lap and reached out to trace his fingertips along the curve of Justin's jaw. Justin turned his face into JC's hand, and they stayed like that until Justin pressed a kiss into JC's palm and stood up, tugging JC up, too, and took him inside out of the cool California night.
---
JC reached for where his cell phone sat on the end table, easing toward it so he wouldn't disturb Justin sleeping on his lap, and hit the speed dial.
"Yeah." Chris answered on the first ring, sharp and alert, and JC regretted not calling sooner. "Do I need to send in the cleaners?"
"You need to stop watching the Sopranos, is what you need," JC said. "We're--"
"If the word 'fine' comes out of your mouth, I will have no choice but to find the keys to one of Justin's obscene fleet of cars so I can drive up there and beat you unconscious. Those fucking Moonmen have to be good for something."
"--better. Okay?"
"I don't know. Define 'better'."
"Talking," JC said. Touching. Not fucking. "Working some stuff out."
"Thankfuckingchrist," Chris said. JC knew he was taking off his glasses to rub at the bridge of his nose; it was what Chris always did when the tension eased.
"I, um, do need a favor though," JC said.
"Anything, you know that."
"Yeah, I do. Thanks." JC stopped for a second to appreciate the luxury of knowing that Chris always had his back, had all of their backs. "This is kind of stupid, but it's been a stupid couple of weeks, so..."
"Jesus, C, just spit it out."
"Can you go clear all of our stuff out of the studio? And cancel the bookings?" JC looked down and saw that Justin was awake, and mouthed Chris. "I just. I don't think I want to go back there. I'll pay for whatever they hit us with for backing out on them, I don't care. We can mix stuff here until we work something out."
"Nah, I'll bring Lansten with me. He can sweet-talk the studio guys and then he can figure out how to make Jive pay for whatever he can't get us out of. You know how much he loves a nice monetary shell game." Chris' voice was indulgent. "Don't worry about it."
"Thanks, man. And, uh, day off tomorrow?"
Chris laughed. "Yeah, I think I can manage to entertain myself at Casa Timberlake, especially with my man Trace knowing all the good strippers. I'll pass the word, and call the engineers."
Justin poked him and whispered, "My bike."
"Oh, yeah. We left Justin's bike at the studio, too."
"Shit, I'm hanging up now, before I end up picking up your dry cleaning and walking the fucking dog you'll get just to give me something to do. Tell J to call me. Later."
JC looked at Justin. "I think your bike's okay..."
"Chris respects the Harley, he'll take care of it."
Somehow, even with Justin's head in his lap, they'd lost the comfort level they'd had before, and JC wasn't sure how to get it back.
Justin sat up and turned around in one smooth, graceful motion, so that they were looking at each other. "I'm sorry," he said. "About the list. About a lot of things. But I know the list meant something good to you, and I'm sorry I twisted it and used it, and I'd take it back if I could."
"I--" JC thought about how happy he'd be to never think about any of this again, and how easy that would be, and how wrong. "It wasn't just you. But. Thank you."
Justin stretched out again, putting his head back in JC's lap. "This is still okay, yeah?"
"Yeah," JC said, feeling the tension ease. "Yeah, it's good." He curved his hand along Justin's cheek, and felt him relax into the touch. "I know all of these things about you that I don't want to know, like what you sound like when you're trying not to come but I'm making you, and how easy it is to bruise you, and how really fucking strong you are." He paused for a breath and fought against looking away, because that was what this was all about, being able to face things, but there were tears in Justin's eyes, and he felt them start in his own. "I know all that, but I don't know what it feels like to kiss you."
"But we're gonna find out, right?" Justin held his eyes steadily. "That's what we're doing now, isn't it? Finding out the things we want to know and letting them balance out the other stuff?"
JC didn't trust his voice, so he nodded and tried to smile.
"Okay then," Justin said, and closed his eyes.
JC stroked his fingers along Justin's face, tracing over cheekbones and eyelashes and mouth, letting the warmth seep into him, and thought One.