Again
by Helen
"I don't work out, 'cause I'm a fat lazy bum."—Joey
In between times, JC dates models. Tall girls with bony hips, boys with perfectly ridged abdomens. He doesn't bring them around to introduce them much, not like Chris and Justin, who bring their girlfriends to rehearsal like they're garage band groupies, or something, who are going to sit around in sunken broken springed armchairs and roll joints, and wait for their slacker boyfriends to finish band practice so they can go smoke up and make out. It's lot like that, actually, Joey reflects, especially Chris, who can't just date normal chicks, but seems to gravitate, instead, toward, like, extreme snowboarders who call him 'Kirkpatrick' probably even when they're fucking.
"What's up with that chick?" Justin says once, when the latest has gone to the bathroom.
"What?" Chris says, picking his teeth with a toothpick.
"She's kind of. big. don't you think?" Justin says, because Una is a head taller than Chris, and has long thick hard thighs, and shoulders nearly as broad as Justin's. The tip of her nose and her cheeks have been sunburnt every time Joey has seen her.
"so?" Chris says.
"So. don't you think you should date hot chicks? since you can and all."
"You don't know shit," Chris says, but he doesn't sound angry.
"I'm just saying," Justin says, "why not date pretty girls?"
"I'm just saying," Chris says, smirking slightly, "why not date a girl who can wrap her thighs around your waist so tight you think you're gonna pass out, and eat cheeseburgers with her after."
Dani was tiny and rock star girlfriend hot, but Joey realizes now that that was just a coincidence. Walking out, in the hallway, Chris' hand is tiny on the small of Una's back.
If it were Chris, Joey thinks, he would just slap his ass and say "more of you to love, Fatone." But it isn't Chris, of course, and it never will be. It's JC, who shows up at his house two weeks before the tour starts and watches half a Newhart re-run with him before twining his arms around Joey's neck, and kissing him warmly, and Joey thinks, not again, and does it anyway.
Two weeks before the tour, JC is a hot bony collection of muscle, and his hipbones leave bruises.
The first time, JC was actually quite tactful. Supportive and everything. He cooked Joey dinners with rice and chicken and vegetables, and hung around while Joey lifted, which was boring, and ran on the treadmill, which was awful. He gave him blowjobs, and slid up behind him on the couch to rub his shoulders. It wasn't enough.
He's expended enough time and thought on it that it should be some sort of byzantine process, but really what happens is this: about halfway through the tour, he gets bigger, again. JC stops sleeping with him, again.
He wonders sometimes if JC ever wishes it were Justin, who gets cranky if he can't go for a run. When he broke his arm, he learned how to do one handed push-ups. "Justin's athletic," JC says in an interview. Of course he does. That's one of the things that was on the prepared sheets their publicist used to give to them, back when they only had one publicist. You'd think they'd stop saying those things, now that they don't have to. "Chris is crazy," Lance says dutifully in an interview. "JC takes things really seriously," Joey says. "He's definitely the serious one." It's hard to break old habits.
At the end of the tour, those last two weeks, the pace is frantic, and they're exhausted. Lance's face takes on an angular quality that worries them all. That last week, and because there's a time lag, the first few weeks of being at home and doing nothing, JC wants to be with him. JC used to say "I love you," all the time, but he stopped, because Joey stopped, because whenever he told JC he loved him, and JC said it back, he could hear it, unspoken, "I love you, but". Better just not to say it.
It's not fair, he thinks, again, that just because JC's fucked up, he should be too. He is already, though, what with taking JC back every time he shows up, every time he's somehow thin enough. Thin enough for what, exactly, he's never sure. Justin thinks they should only be seen with pretty girls, but it's not like anyone would ever know that he was fucking JC, so it must be some personal thing. JC dumped a girl once when Justin, casually, just in passing, said he didn't think she was pretty.
He can't talk about it with JC. He should, of course, but he can't, just. can't. Which is maybe the reason that he can't get that angry at JC that first time when he corners him against a wall somewhere, and waits for an explanation, and JC looks miserable, and closes his eyes, and tells Joey he can't.
At the weight he's supposed to be, the pants he's supposed to fit into, the number of pounds all the publicists ask for patiently, kindly, he's hungry all the time. Hungry and tired; his parents will call him up to ask if he's coming down with something
The others know and don't know. It's impossible, on tour, to keep a secret like that, with JC coming in and out of his hotel room, and JC on the bus, the fact that JC is affectionate, and wants to sit next to Joey when they watch tv, and occasionally whisper dirty things in his ear that the others can't hear, except one time when they're all drunk, slumped in a booth in some club, and JC forgets to whisper quietly, so they all hear it when JC says "want you to take me back and fuck me." and then licks his ear. Chris has seen them a couple times, even, seen him carrying JC into his room, because JC will squirm up and wrap his legs around Joey.
Chris knows the most, but even he doesn't say anything when they stop fucking, and then pick back up four months later. He can't bring himself to tell Chris the real reason.
"You got no fucking self-respect," Chris would say. Chris would be pissed.
Those last few nights, they do it with the lights turned off. He knows it's near the end, and he's long since stopped going to JC. He only does that at the beginning, when he knows it's okay, learned that lesson the hard way once, JC turning away from him, mouth pinched together in something like disgust, so now, at the end, he just waits, sitting on his bed, room dark, because they always do it with the lights off at the end.
JC comes in the door and closes it carefully, and is usually already hard by the time he's in Joey's lap, and it would be one thing if JC weren't hot for him anymore, but that's not it, because those nights are always the best, and he knows it turns JC on that he's so much bigger, from his excited breathing, the way his hands circle Joey's arms and run down his back, the way he always wants Joey on top of him, at the end, holding him down. "Joey, Joey," he whispers, and when Joey's hands brush his knees in the darkness, they fall easily open, and JC is so hard for him, straining up against him, making soft entreating noises in his throat. Joey draws it out, makes it last, kisses JC for as long as he can, fucks him for longer, holding himself above JC until he knows he'll be sore in the morning, his hamstrings, his back, his shoulders. It doesn't matter.
In the morning, JC is gone.