"Hey, so. What do you think?" JC said.
Chris fingered the weapon, and spread it out on his lap - chicken scratch on line paper; boring. "Uh, yeah. Great."
"Oh, fuck you."
"What?", Chris said, and tried to look outraged, except he was kind of too tired.
"Never mind," JC said, and drew his eyebrows in a little, as if he was going to repeat what he'd said, but had forgotten it himself.
"Fine," Chris said dramatically.
JC tilted his head back on the couch, craning his neck in a way that must have been uncomfortable and painful. "Justin's really gay, isn't he," he said, breaking into a smile.
"Yeah," Chris chuckled. "He's... What the fuck?" He whipped his arm back to hurl the ball over JC's neck. "Uh, no.
"Sure, whatever you say," JC said, and giggled.
Justin was so not gay, because he had a girlfriend, and he'd never helped a bit when they were trying to convince Lance that it wasn't nasty to give a rim job and, really, it wasn't worth dumping a boyfriend over. And he certainly should have looked a lot less scarred.
Except...sometimes when Britney was around, he got a little too preoccupied with her, in a way that went beyond the role of an attentive boyfriend. He squealed -- though, well, squealed wasn't really the right word, or at least, it shouldn't have been -- over her stylist, and her new shoes, and her new hair products, and when he thought nobody was looking, he kissed at the air next to either of her cheeks, and said, "hi, darling," in the way of greeting, which boyfriends just...didn't do.
But that didn't necessarily mean anything, right? So maybe for a straight guy he did take too much of an active interest in shoe shopping and getting his nails done, but Lance didn't really like either of those, and he was probably as gay as they came. So it didn't make sense to Chris to say that Justin was gay, because that was basing his views on stereotypes and that was wrong.
And then he saw it - blue eyes swinging down to arc clearly across their waiter's ass.
So he thought, then, maybe he'd just ask.
"Um." Chris scratched the back of his neck, and tried to look shy and sensitive or something. "I'm gay."
Chris thought, probably, Justin would say something like, "Me too!", but instead he choked on his water.
Chris didn't knock, because he never knocked, but he nodded to Joey before plopping beside JC on the bed. "Okay, you're right," he said. "Totally gay."
JC was going to say something, but Joey's voice blanketed the mumbles. "Who?"
"Oh. Justin. But, dude. I think-"
"Yeah, I could see it," Joey said, and Chris huffed a little, because they already knew that, and continued.
"And he's so gay, right? Gay like that one friend of yours, Joe - the one with the pants and the, yeah. But he's clueless, man. We should, um." He tilted his head onto JC's shoulder, and tapped a little tune into his thigh, leg twitching in time. "We should do something."
"What?" JC laughed, and tugged on Chris' fingers. "We don't need to do anything. I was just saying."
Chris coughed. "So what if, hypothetically, someone had already done something."
Joey's face cleared and sharpened. "What did you do?"
"Nothing."
Chris didn't even really know where to start, if he was to hypothetically do something else. He wasn't sure how to gay-act, since he'd spent the better part of his life straight-acting, and it had become second nature. He'd tried to press the whole gay thing again --
"Look, J, I really am gay," he said, and Justin said,
"Great, I'm happy for you," and didn't sound like he believed Chris at all. --
and decided that pressing wasn't so much the right way to go about it, as was shoving.
Raiding JC's area of the bus had proven fruitless, because anything he owned that was brightly colored was a small or an extra-small or girls' clothing, and Chris couldn't fit into that, and was sure he wouldn't have wanted to, even if he was able. Finding a dearth of anything even remotely flamboyant in his own wardrobe, he wandered into the lounge where Justin was watching baseball (surely Justin didn't even like baseball?) and made a show of calling Lance.
"Lance, honey," he said, when Lance grunted from the other bus. "I need you to take me shopping."
"Shopping?" Lance said witheringly.
"Yes, darling," Chris said. "Just you and me! I really think I need a makeover, don't you?"
"Um," Lance said, "no?"
"Oh, come now," Chris cooed, and Justin turned so sharply to look at him that he almost fell off the couch. "What colors are in this spring?"
"It's the middle of July, you stupid fuck."
"Even better!" Chris cried. Justin was looking at him ambiguously, his jaw quivering. Chris looked pointedly away and gestured uselessly at the TV. "What do you think? Am I a winter or a summer? Cool or warm? I was thinking of looking into --"
"Chris," Lance said, very loudly and very calmly, "I don't really care. I'll go shopping with you, but I don't know if you're a winter or a hot or whatever the fuck you want. I'm not that gay."
"I'm that gay," Chris said.
"Good," Lance said, and hung up.
When Chris climbed back on the bus, he had more bags of assorted clothing and what Lance had called "girly hygiene products he'd probably want" than he'd ever wear or need or use. Justin poked his head out of his bunk when Chris ambled down the narrow hallway of the bus, and his eyes widened visibly as Chris passed.
"Whoa, man," he said, and quickly withdrew back into his bunk.
"Sorry I didn't invite you along, Justin," Chris said, sweetly.
"That's okay," Justin mumbled.
"Maybe next time, right?" Chris shoved the array of bags into his bunk, which turned out to be full of napping JC.
"Oh, hey, the fuck," JC yelped.
"Oh! Darling, I'm sorry," Chris said, and quickly pulled his bags back to him. "I just-- I thought-- I didn't hurt you, did I, honey?"
JC drew the curtain open and poked his head out, looking quizzically up at Chris. "No," he said. "But, um. Chris?" He dropped his voice, almost conspiratorially. "What the hell are you doing?"
Chris' pasted smile slipped a little, but he said, "Would you like me to model my things for you?"
"No, I would not like you to model your things for me," JC said, taken aback. He slid out of Chris' bunk and dashed past Chris, into the lounge.
"Well!" Chris exclaimed. "I simply cannot work under these conditions."
"Chriiiis," Justin announced, "shut up."
Chris started laughing.
So, actually, Chris had been even more wrong that he usually was.
It was really very easy to be gay.
He'd always prided himself in having an opinion on everything, and that seemed to be pretty much exactly what being gay was all about. Except now he let his brain zip in all sort of directions that it had never gone before, like shoes and hair and rugs and bed spreads and skin tone and anything thing else that he could see and judge as pretty or not. The trick, he decided, was to think even more really unimportant thoughts.
And probably try to say "fabulous" a lot.
"You wanna, like, go get our nails done or something, " Chris said, because that nice smooth feel, when he stroked the back of his hands over his stomach, had gone away.
Justin's eyebrow twitched a little, but he grinned. "Get our nails done?"
"Well, if you don't want to..." Chris slid fingers down to pry his cell phone out of a tight pocket, so he could pretend to call Lance - who was being a total bitch about pants that were god awful anyway, and would never seriously flatter either of their hips - and actually call Joey. Joey would tag along, and bring a game boy, because it wasn't as if he had anything better to do.
"Hey, no. I want," Justin said, and laced his left arm through Chris' right. "Lesa Marlene? Or Stila's"
"Oh, hell no," Chris said, "They pinch the fuck out of my cuticles."
JC woke up when Chris broke out the Javex on the bus at an ungodly hour.
"I'm trying to sleep, here," JC said, stumbling into the kitchenette, where Chris was efficiently scrubbing at the chrome sink.
"Oh!" Chris said, looking up, eyes wide. "Did I make too much noise, hon?"
JC blinked at him and made a face. "Noise? No, it fucking smells of bleach and I can't breathe."
Chris made an exasperated noise. "Well, I'm sorry, princess, but I just can't stand living in these conditions!"
"What conditions?"
"Je-he-sus!" Chris expelled a little breath, as if JC was really wearing on his patience. "This bus is filthy, darling. You can't possibly think it's healthy to live like this."
JC clamped his hand over his mouth, and gingerly plucked the cap off the counter, and screwed it back on the Javex. "Chris," he said carefully, around his palm, "it's six in the morning. Six. In the morning. And you cleaned the bus last week. The fumes are making me nauseous. The bus does not have to be immaculate, and hey, weren't you the one bitching at me when I insisted on a monthly cleaning of the bus, because once a month was too much."
Chris rolled his eyes. "Well, I'm sorry, but you're really going to have to learn to keep up with the times. If I want to clean, I can clean, all right?"
"Chris, Chris, Chris," JC said, and he was pretty sure his eyes were about to start watering. "Just go back to bed before I dump the fucking bleach on your head."
Chris' impatient expression vanished immediately. "And ruin my dye job?" he cried, deadpan. "You -- you bitch! I can't believe you'd even consider that!"
JC's right hand snapped up against his forehead, rubbing circles as it twitched. He sucked in shallow breaths - to get his screaming oxygen deprived brain to shut the hell up.
"You know what?" he said, "You're not here." He slid the hand down over his eyes, and drew brows together tight. "No, really. You're not here. In fact, we've all been having a mass hallucination for the last two weeks."
Chris tittered. "JC-"
"Shut up. Someone kicked over a can of some thing cleanse-y, and it's giving me... weird stuff in my head." JC leaned back against the wall and cupped the hand more firmly against his eyes, skin wrinkling from the pressure. "I'm going to look again, and you'll gone."
He snapped the fingers apart, and opened his eyes.
"You're still here."
"I'm still here!" Chris waved the Javex bottle in the air, swinging cheerfully with his wrist.
"I hate you," JC said, and walked back to his bunk.
"Oh, don't say that!" Chris gasped, his free hand pressed to his chest.
Justin had always been fun - the most fun person Chris knew for about six years now - but there had been fun things about Justin, it turned out, that he'd never known.
Like, Justin had this thing about the heels of his shoes. They had to be exact - to the quarter of an inch - and hell would come to pass if any store did not carry his requirements. The salespeople of Orlando knew Justin, and feared.
"Did you really think," Justin said, hip swiveling, "that I would walk my ass out of this store lookin' all lopsided?"
"Well, sir..."
"Well you thought wrong." Justin's index finger whipped under the man's nose. "Though I shouldn't be surprised, with last season's knock offs on your left wall." He smirked as high heels clicked frantically - the manager rushing to assist. "Oh yeah, don't think I wasn't checkin' the tags."
And when Britney started asking Chris to tag along, movie nights seemed really stupid at first, because they were all about chick flicks, but ended up being hysterical and goofy and shit - because they could throw popcorn at the screen and tell Cher to shut the hell up and date her step-brother already, even though that was kinda 'ew'.
Britney always picked the sappiest movies, and didn't like to cry alone, so she'd poke them and gesture at the screen, and shove the Kleenex box in their faces. So they really couldn't help but cry too - it was moral support. And it was really funny when Justin's nose got all snotty and he was horrified, rushing to the bathroom. Chris threw popcorn at his back, and laughed, because he always looked great when he cried. His cheeks flushed just right.
"Look," Justin would snap, shielding with face with his hand, "it's not my fault. It's my skin, it gets all blotchy." And Chris only laughed harder.
"No one's here to see it, anyway," Britney said.
"You're here," Justin said, and he scurried away so she and Chris wouldn't have to see his blotchy face and red eyes and runny nose.
"For a straight guy," Britney always said at that point, "he sure cries a lot at chick flicks."
Chris thought Britney was probably right.
Justin actually cried a lot suddenly, and not just during movies, as long as Chris was there to commiserate with him. And it came so easy that Chris guessed that he'd always cried this much - just all hidden and secretive.
It wasn't secret anymore.
Justin cried when he chipped a nail, and he cried when he was drunk (and it really didn't take much for that), and he cried when he couldn't find his car keys, and he cried when the bus hit a squirrel while they were passing through the flat states. They weren't big crying fits, of course, because that was unseemly and inappropriate, but just a few stray tears trickling down his cheeks. He seemed to like crying so much that he carried around Kleenex and took great pleasure in dabbing daintily at his eyes whenever he felt like it.
It got to the point that JC smacked him and handed him a bottle of Visine, saying, "You look and sound like an idiot. Stop it."
And Justin did, because the last thing he wanted was to seem like an idiot in front of JC.
Though somehow with Chris it didn't matter.
Chris kind of liked it, actually, since Justin would come down from his little jags by fiddling with Chris' hair and smoothing it back with his large hands, arranging the strands just so. Justin's hands were really warm.
Justin didn't care, either, if Chris decided he might not want to hit things quite so hard anymore - one broken wrist was enough - and maybe sort of tap them instead. He'd lean into Justin's side and rest his head into the curve of Justin's neck, and press his mouth against Justin's pulse so that it thudded out the ache in his forehead and left everything smooth.
And he was fairly sure all of that was really gay - except he was supposed to be, right? So it was okay.
Gay-acting, he thought, seemed more and more like just doing whatever felt right.
It turned out, when it got down to it, that Justin really had awful taste in music. Sure, he had a lot of R&B and soul and normal pop-y things that weren't in Chris' tastes, but then he also had a lot of compilations, with eurotrash and techno pop, tucked away behind other CDs in his CD books, so no one would see them.
Except Chris did.
"Hey, J," he said, along one especially long stretch of road, when JC had switched over to the other bus, "what's this?"
"Hmm?" Justin asked, looking up from applying a top coat of clear polish on his nails.
"You got some Euro compilations, huh," Chris said.
"Oh," Justin said. "Yeah." He looked back down and wiped a strip of nail polish from his cuticle. "They're good."
"Can I put one on?"
Justin looked up again, and carefully replaced the lid on the nail polish. "Um, sure." He pointed, "put that one on."
Chris slid the CD from its pocket and put it on, muttering in chastisement, "technology!" at the CD player. A heavy techno beat leaked from the speakers, slowly getting louder, and Chris exclaimed, "I know this!"
"It's, yes," Justin said, and flushed a little.
"That's, that's, that's so creepy. And. and."
"I sort of like it, actually," Justin mumbled.
"It's fucking 'Riddle'!" Chris said, but he was smiling.
"I always thought it was sort of good," Justin said.
"It's gay club music!" Chris squealed.
"It's not!"
"It is! I go to gay clubs! I should know."
"You can skip it, you know," Justin said, and he blushed blotchily, and covered his face with his hand.
"But! I like it!"
Justin peered around his hand at Chris uncertainly. "Really?"
"Absolutely! It's fabulous. You sound fabulous, darling." Chris quirked his mouth to the side. "But I don't remember ever hearing about this getting put on a compilation."
"It's not even listed as us," Justin said.
"Oh," Chris said. "I guess they didn't want everyone to know we're all flamingly gay."
"I'm not," Justin insisted.
"Sure," Chris said.
Justin turned to fish out a magazine caught between the sofa cushions, firmly not looking anywhere near Chris' direction.
"You are so queer," Chris said, sighing. "You're queer as a three dollar bill."
Justin's fingers froze in their pursuit, and then, "The fuck?" Justin whirled around, hand on his hip. "What the hell does... that even doesn't make any sense."
"It does too make sense," Chris said, "I saw it in a movie once."
"As a three dollar bill? How is money gay?"
"I-" Chris paused. "Alright, so I'll have to think that over sometime. I don't think queer here actually means-"
"Chris, I'm not." Justin's eyes flicked across his face, and his fingers shook a little as he flipped open the magazine and began to turn the pages.
And Chris thought, the really gay thing would be to say -
"You'll like this."
- and kneel down between Justin's legs, and put hands on his knees, and kiss him softly on the mouth.
Justin jumped a little, and made a choking sound, but parted his lips just the tiniest bit. "I really don't think..," he murmured.
"Yeah, you do," Chris said, and kissed his top lip.
"I do?"
"You do."
Chris kissed the bottom one. Justin pressed into it this time, and licked at Chris' tongue. He pulled back to say, "I think..?", and followed it with a gasp.
"You think," Chris said, and slid a hand up Justin's neck to cup his jaw.
Justin shivered as fingers brushed against the stubble on his chin. "Alright."
Justin was bouncing on the balls of his feet when Joey opened his hotel room door, and a small smile was playing on his lips.
"What?" Joey asked.
Justin swept past him into the room, and immediately sank into the couch. "Chris kissed me," he said emphatically.
Joey closed the door and gave Justin a strange look. "Chris?"
Justin beamed. "Chris!"
Joey frowned and sat down next to him. "J, Chris is straight."
Justin's smile slipped slightly. "No, he isn't."
"He is." Joey nodded sagely.
And this time Justin's smile really did slip. "What? No. I mean. Don't you think he's. like. A little gay to be straight?"
"J, I think I'd know if he was gay."
Justin frowned, making his lips pout a little, because he liked doing it. "Haven't you looked at him lately? Or talked to him? He wears tight pants and flamer shirts! And he has a limp wrist and one of those accents!"
"He doesn't," Joey insisted.
"Okay," Justin conceded, "maybe not the accent. But everything else!"
Joey smirked at him, half amusement and half resignation. "I didn't know you bought into all that stuff. Chris is so straight, man."
Justin huffed and stood up. "Fine! Way to rain on my parade, Joey," he said tearfully, and flounced out of the room.
Justin wasn't going to talk to Chris ever again, except he kind of had Justin's favorite shirt - even though it was too big for him - and Justin was determined to wear it today. He needed the extra pick-me-up, with the having a broken heart and everything.
"You're a lying asshole, and I hate you, and I want my shirt," he said, and strode decisively into Chris' room, throwing open the closet with large smooth movements.
"I'm a what?" Chris said, and slammed the closet door shut, flinching as it caught the tips of Justin's fingers.
"Ow!" Justin pulled his hand to his chest and wouldn't let Chris close enough to inspect. "You told me you were gay," he said, and glared before peering down suspiciously at his throbbing fingers.
"I am gay." Chris made a grab for Justin's shoulders, but he shuffled back.
"No you're not," Justin hissed. "I talked to Joey."
Chris sat down on the bed. "I didn't mean-" He fiddled with his pants leg, tracing the streaks of glitter that curved across one knee. He'd spilled some when he was painting Justin's eyelids with it on Saturday, and liked the look so much that he'd glued it on. He bit at his lip, and kicked a heel against the bed frame. "I wasn't gay, but then... You didn't... I wasn't but, then, I tried it. And, you know, I liked it. A lot."
Justin's throat tightened into an almost choke, and he snorted. "You tried being gay?"
"Yeah, it's-"
"Gay isn't, like, a hobby!", Justin said, and shook his head as hard as humanly possible, because that was just about the stupidest thing he'd ever heard in his life.
Glitter flaked off onto Chris' fingers, and wouldn't come off no matter how hard he rubbed the mattress. He grimaced, but then looked up and smiled. "You make it fun."
Justin slumped back against the wall, releasing his head to whack backwards as well with a dull thud. "You're completely insane. You know that, don't you?" He rubbed at his temples and squinted his eyes.
Chris pushed up to his feet, moving quickly enough to stop Justin's retreat with a firm palm to his shoulder. "You make it feel right." He brushed his lips over Justin's collarbone, and clutched Justin's arm with his other hand as Justin's body jerked and his breath hitched.
"Chris," Justin said, and stopped because he didn't know what to say. The name was bad enough - it felt more heavy on his lips than it should.
"Can I be gay?" Chris whined, grinning sharply. "Please?" He slid his hands to Justin's back, and traveled down until he could push up under the filmy shirt.
Justin's skin turned to goose bumps, and Chris stroked some with his thumb.
"Oh, fine," Justin said, because Chris was just too cute, and had finally learned how to color coordinate, and they were totally love, so how could he say no?
Chris hopped up on his toes to lick at Justin's ear, and then pulled on Justin's neck until he leaned down. He kissed Justin lazily, with wet easy dips and warm open mouths, and didn't stop, except to say "Fabulous".