Justin never changed.
With Justin, everything was static. He did things because they were easy, and he kept at them because of that. He dated Britney because it was natural, because it was what people wanted to see, for the most part. He never loved her, but he said he did, because it was what she wanted. He liked her because she was unassuming, because her body was hard where others girls' were soft, because she made things work.
He would have dated her forever, because she was a constant, and when things were going so well, there was no reason to change. Except that she wanted to.
Kevin was older, a lot older, because life did that to a person. He looked tired and drawn, but he was full of something Justin had never seen before, something Justin had always thought was missing in himself. Something like fulfillment and satisfaction.
Everything Justin had wanted and never got, because he didn't know how. Maybe he hadn't been trying hard enough.
He would have stayed with the group as long as it lasted, and he did. It wasn't that he wouldn't have liked to embark on his own some day, but the group was comfortable, and home, and though people may have disagreed, it was really quite easy to be a pop star, once you got used to it. He fell into routine easily, and while he didn't always like it, it gave meaning to his day, to his life.
"You're like a fucking machine," Lance told him once, near the end. And Justin agreed. He just didn't see what was wrong with it.
Even machines break down.
Most of the time, he didn't know how he got where he was. He was undeserving, he knew, but sometimes it was because he deserved more; others, because he deserved less.
He did a lot of aimless wandering without ever moving.
Nobody had time for him anymore, because they had lives that went places and did things. Justin's remained stationary, looking neither to the future nor to the past. It was lonely, he thought, coming home to an empty house and going to sleep in a cold bed, when all the lights in the neighbourhood were still on.
He could feel everything turning and moving and happening around him, like he was the steady anchor of the world. It was only after he stopped being Justin Timberlake that the world revolved around him.
Kevin came in when Justin stopped going home, when home stopped being home.
He was strange and out of context, simultaneously new and old, foreign and familiar.
Justin met him for what seemed like the first time in a bar he shouldn't have been in. It was dirty and dark and smelled musty, and the sort of place Justin liked best.
It reminded him of what he had become.
Kevin was dark and exotic and mean-looking. He had a split lower lip, hair dreadlocked by lack of washing and not for style, a shine to his eyes that showed he didn't belong here, or anywhere.
Justin fell in love with him before he knew his name. And that wasn't right, because it meant something had changed.
When they landed in Orlando, home from Germany for the first time, Chris said, "you've changed," and smiled. Justin looked uncertain, and Chris added, "in a good way."
Justin smiled, said, "Thanks," but he didn't mean it.
In some ways, Justin thought he would always be eighteen.
Kevin always dressed the same. Kilt, black shirt, green fatigue jacket, none of which was ever in good condition, none of which was ever clean.
Justin didn't care.
Because it didn't matter; everything was destined to end happily ever after, because things happened that way, and nothing ever had to change. Except one night, Justin got drunk and Kevin punched him, and he fell in love, and everything was perfect.
Justin looked the same for as long as he could remember. He didn't age; he wouldn't even know how old he was, were it not for the dates on the newspapers he had delivered but never read.
He cut his hair short, and he hated it. He grew it long, and the guys hated it. He cut it off, and Britney hated it. He grew it into a shag -- "you look like a dog," Chris said -- and everyone hated it, which didn't even surprise him anymore. He was used to being hated. It was easier, to do and to achieve, than to be loved.
He deserved what he got.
Justin didn't know a thing about Kevin.
Kevin, who said, "Don't touch me, Timberlake," before Justin could introduce himself.
Kevin, who eyed him with disdain and said, "Not good enough for you, huh."
Kevin, who knew everything about him.
Kevin, who was forty-something and still beautiful and mystifying, even though Justin couldn't remember that he could be compared to anything. Justin, whose definition of the word beauty had been skewed for so long that when he said the word, he knew no one heard it the way he did.
Justin, who said, "I think you're beautiful," and really, truly did; who knew immediately that everything and nothing could change and he would never notice.
He knew a lot more than he let on.
Kevin was angry a lot of the time that Justin saw him, which was often. He drank straight shots of rum at the bar and lit cigarettes that he never smoked, letting them run down until they burned his fingers. He wrote half-formed, cynical phrases on beer-stained napkins, and hummed tunelessly under his breath. Justin used to ask him about himself, about where he came from, what he did, but Kevin always answered with dirty looks and and sometimes, "don't you fucking ask me that," but never the truth.
Eventually, Justin just stopped asking.
Justin had been in love for an hour, a day, a month, a year, forever; he didn't know anything about Kevin, or anyone, or anything.
"Look, you shit," Kevin said to him, once. "Stop fucking coming around here."
"I can't," Justin said, because it felt natural.
"No one appreciates your fucking Timberlake charm anymore."
"No one ever did," he said.
Kevin looked at him, eyes hard, and leaned across the bar to touch Justin's face, almost reverently. His hands were rough and callused and his nails were bitten off raggedly. And his mouth twisted in a sneer. "Get the hell out," he said.
And Justin felt himself move without thinking, without even moving. He felt the world tilt and right itself, and everything was upside down.
He was used to being rejected, because in everything he did and said, there was an underlying expectation, a barely spoken "no" that kept him in reality. Britney rejected him at first, and then she rejected him at last. He rejected his friends, and then they rejected him. He sent everyone and everything away and waited for feedback, and nothing came, because he was too busy looking the other way, inside instead of out. And the universe continued its course without him.
But then Kevin leaned in and kissed him, and it was dynamic, changing so fast that it seemed nothing had changed at all. Something flowed out of Kevin and hung in the air, and Justin recognized it as satisfaction, love, beauty, everything he had never had. "No" changed to "yes", and suddenly Justin was aligned, moving.
And everything was wrong.
"My name is Kevin," he said, after, "and you know me." The worst part was that it was true.
Justin went home for the first time ever, because it was only after that, after everything, that it felt like someplace he belonged. He thought maybe inertia wasn't so bad after all.
When he walked away, he wasn't in love. Not with Kevin, not with anyone, not anymore. It ended happily ever after, and it was perfect. It didn't change.