something you want
by Helen
"If there's something you want to do," Justin said, "You should say, because—"
"There isn't," Joey said. "or—" he hitched Justin closer to him, one hand sliding lower on his belly. "This is what I want to do."
"That isn't—
"I know what you meant," Joey said. He hesitated. "Is it. something you want?"
"No," Justin said. "No, no."
But later, when Justin was shaking and crying out underneath him, he lifted his arms up, sliding them up the mattress, holding them twined over his head, wrists crossed, long arms extended, hands open, supplicant, and he shivered when Joey touched the soft inner flesh of his arm, slid his hands higher, over the bony curve of his elbows. Justin cried out hoarsely when Joey wrapped gentle fingers around his wrists, and Joey jerked back, levering himself up off Justin.
"What—" Justin said. "What did—"
"Don't make me do that," Joey said. He sat up, leaning down to stare at the floor so he wouldn't have to look at Justin. "I don't want that," he said, and swallowed. The floor was bare and cold beneath his feet.
"I'm not making you," Justin said, sitting up. He crossed his legs underneath the blankets, and was silent a moment. "And you do too."
"Don't tell me what I want," Joey said, sharply.
"I'm not so fucked up that I can't tell the difference between you and—," Justin stopped, and then muttered, "It's just. It's okay, if you want to."
JC and Chris had left the week before.
"If there's a problem," JC had said, at least four times, "we'll only be a day away at most, and—"
"right, I know," Justin had said, each time, trying to look reassuring, because there was a lightness about JC's face; excitement, he thought.
"You'd tell me if it was too much," JC said, and Justin said of course, he would.
He worked long days, longer than Joey, because the borders were ominously quiet, and there was little to do but clean tackle. Joey spent a lot of time in the small dim sweltering laundry room, doing huge loads of laundry, until his shirt was clinging to him, and he was deaf to the constant rumbling of the ancient pockmarked machines. He darned the holes in his socks, and then in Justin's sweaters, replaced buttons, sharpened knives, and waited.
Justin's face looked drawn at the end of the day, but he ate hungrily, bent over his plate, and managed to smile at Bug and Cleo when they had to go back to work, after. He even smiled at Lance, Joey noticed, but it was an impersonal smile, his eyes quiet. Lance smiled back, a peculiar vulpine smile that made him look as though he had lost the ability to smile, and he was merely imitating those around him. He looked worried, and asked twice when JC would be back, as though he had truly forgotten. It was unlike him.
"It's under control," Justin said, the second time, his voice very even.
"I know," Lance said. "It's nothing to do with you."
Justin still wasn't sleeping well, Joey knew. He wasn't sleeping all that well himself. Justin lied about it, burrowing close to him and turning his face up for a kiss, sliding a hand up his thigh.
"You want to—" he'd say, smiling a little, licking the corner of Joey's mouth. Joey always did.