Well. Chris isn't getting particularly drunk, but he has stein at hand and he's ogling the waitresses, who are decidedly not as hot as those back in the States. He's ignoring you, though, because he doesn't say anything whenever you say "can't you just buy me one?" You're vaguely displeased by that, because it's not your fault you can't drink, and it is his fault you're there, and the least he could do is pay attention to you instead of making passes at monolingual, hairy women.
Nobody else is paying you much mind, either. The Germans at the other end of the table are laughing loudly and looking pointedly at Lance and saying things like "schön, schön." You don't know what that means, but by how they're looking at him, you don't think it's very good. Lance doesn't seem too bothered by it, though.
Then again, you aren't sure that he's even noticed. His legal, eighteen-year-old self has been drinking steadily since you got here, and by the gleam his eyes have taken on, you can tell he's far from sober. He's making eyes at Joey, now, and Joey's loaded, too. JC keeps fingering Lance's forearm, slurring words in his ear, but Lance isn't having any of him.
Chris isn't participating, but he's watching.
You wish he'd watch you.
You aren't seeing the appeal in Lance, tonight. You don't know why the Germans at your table are so preoccupied with him. You don't know why Joey and JC seem to want something out of him, and you don't know why Chris is alternately watching them and the waitresses. Lance is just some girly-looking boy with bleached hair that makes him look like an albino, not like a fucking superstar, like your bleached hair does you. You know you're prettier than him, so why is he getting all the attention?
You really want a beer.
The heat isn't really helping, either. It's mid-July, which you think must be the fucking hottest time of the year in Munich. You're in the basement of a restaurant, and at the hub, there's a kitchen with massive ovens that make the place smell of dumplings and salty fish and make it hot as hell. You're sweating down here, and you're stuck nursing a coke and being ignored.
You don't really know how you got dragged into this. It's not really fair, not at all. You're not supposed to be sitting in a crowded hall in a foreign country, where only four other people speak your language, and they're not talking to you, anyway. You aren't supposed to be being snubbed by your best friend - your hot, older best friend, you think, because that's important - because he'd rather watch Joey and JC hit on an albino than buy you a beer and let you get loaded together.
"Will you just buy me a fucking beer," you growl at Chris, when Lance leans across the table and says something to Joey, and Joey smiles and blushes deeply, all of which elicits hoots of laughter from your tablemates.
And then, painfully slowly, Chris turns and looks at you. His eyes don't have that wasted, glazed quality the others' do, though there is something of a flush starting high on his cheeks, and you aren't sure how much he's had to drink. Not much, you think. You wish it was more; you swallow thickly.
"Buy one yourself, Jup. Christ," he says, "are you scared of the waitresses or something? I know they're kinda hairy, man. But really."
You look at him strangely for a minute, and you can feel your lower lip beginning to pout. You want to stop, but then you don't, because you know your pout's kind of cute, and at this point, you'd be willing to do anything to get Chris' attention away from Lance. "I'm underage," you say, and wish you didn't have to.
Chris laughs, then, a rough, low sound you aren't accustomed to hearing from him. He leans towards you, and even though it's already hot down here, you can feel his breath fanning across your cheek, and it's hotter than the room ever could be. "The drinking age here is sixteen, Jup," he says, when his laughs have subsided, and then he's sitting upright again, and not paying you any mind.
You mentally kick yourself for not finding that out earlier, because now you feel like a sulking teenager, on top of feeling ignored and decidedly unattractive. You're glad you can drink, though, because maybe if you get wasted enough, those feelings will fade into numbness.
When a waitress comes by again, bearing steins of beer, you say, "ja, Bier," because that's all you know how to say, and try not to look at the dark pelt on her arms, because that's rather unpleasant.
The beer's got a good head on it, and it's an amber colour, and it's fucking strong, and Chris has to slap you on the back when you cough after taking a sip. It gets stronger, he tells you, the later in the year it gets, and by the time Oktoberfest rolls around, it's so strong it will scald your tongue. You're kind of glad you won't be in Germany by October.
You feel like a tool when you drink, sucking on a half-litre glass of beer you can barely stomach. Even girly Lance can drink this stuff, and so can JC, who has no stamina whatsoever. Joey's really knocking it back, but you aren't really surprised. It's making you feel inferior again; you aren't being lavished attention like Lance, you aren't pretty like Lance, you can't drink beer like Lance, you're not older like Lance, you're not a flirt like Lance, you just aren't Lance.
You probably shouldn't be feeling petty jealousy towards him, because he looks like a girl and you're Justin fucking Timberlake, for god's sake, and yet you can't help it. You aren't feeling much like Justin Timberlake tonight, he who captures girls' hearts, all of Germany over. You're more like Chris' little brother Jup, who doesn't want to be here, and who isn't wanted here, and while you don't really care where you are, you just want it to be anywhere but a beer hall in Munich.
By the time you've finished your first beer, you're pretty damn blitzed, and the eyes you're making at Lance aren't anything like the eyes Joey is making at him.
Outside the beer hall, JC and Joey have abandoned Lance for each other, and Chris is walking behind all of you, with the one bodyguard you have between the five of you, because nobody really cares about you this late.
Lance is with you, and you hope he doesn't come onto you, because even though he's girly and blond and pale, and not your type at all, you probably wouldn't be able to resist him with all this alcohol coursing through your veins. One of his arms is wrapped around your waist, but it's not erotic, and it's just there because you wouldn't be able to walk otherwise, right?
"You're making it obvious," Lance says, at one point, in hushed tones. He sounds like he's about to impart some kind of wisdom upon you.
"Wha?" you manage to say, and you have no god damn clue what he's talking about.
"If you're going to come onto him, just do it, 'kay?" he says, and you don't know how the hell he can be so coherent after so much of that July beer. Again, you don't really want to think about October beer.
"Who?" you ask, and think maybe you should have been thinking about that before, instead of beer.
"Chris," Lance says, and he yawns. You're almost at the hotel, now. You're glad when Lance abandons you again, and Chris joins you.
When you get back to the hotel, it's well past midnight but still a long way before dawn. You don't have to be anywhere in the morning, you don't think. Your eyesight is blurry, and you can't really walk straight, so Chris is holding your elbow and guiding you into a cramped elevator. His palm is cool on your skin, and it gives you goosebumps. You think it's a pretty good indication of how drunk you are, but your thought process isn't going much further than "chris-hand-cold-arm-hot-chris-hot-chris-touching-me-hot" at this point.
JC and Joey are both draped over Lance, but you can't tell them apart, just two dark-haired figures on either side of a platinum blond. You think Lance might be kissing Joey on the mouth, and JC's arm is wrapped around Lance's waist, or it could be the other way around, but as it is, the fucking girly albino is getting some play, and Chris still isn't paying you much mind. You've half a mind to punch Lance, but at your current mental capacity, half a mind isn't enough even to form a fist, you don't think.
When the elevator dings and the doors open, it's in slow motion, and the atonal sound hurts your ears. The doors can't open fast enough, you can't get away from Joey and JC and Lance and Chris soon enough, but you don't want to, but you do, and then suddenly Chris' hand is on your elbow again, and you're outside your hotel room door with him and Lance and you hadn't even noticed you'd gotten out of the elevator.
"I think I'm gonna room with Jayce and Joe tonight," you can hear Lance saying, but his voice is distant and detached, and out of the corner of your eye, you can see Joey and JC kissing by the elevator doors. You aren't sure why you're not inside yet.
"Yeah, sure," Chris says, and you lose your balance and fall backwards. "Careful, Jup," he says, and you can hear the smile in his voice and only wish you could see it, and realise that you're on the floor in the doorway between the hallway and your room, and were you leaning against the door when Chris opened it? You must have been, because now Chris is stepping over you, and it occurs to you that you're going to be rooming with him alone, tonight.
Funny how that is, you think.
You pick yourself up and make a beeline for the bed. Chris closes the door behind you, and suddenly you're trapped. Somehow, you make it out of your shirt, but you have more trouble with your pants, so you pull off your socks instead and climb under the blankets of the hotel bed. You're in the middle of the bed, you realise, and you're going to have to share with Chris, but Chris is in the bathroom, now, and you can hear the water running, so maybe you'll be asleep before he comes out and he won't have the heart to make you move over. Maybe he'll just sleep on the chair, or something.
It's not that you don't like sleeping with him, because you don't really care, because you've slept with the rest of them, too, but that was just sleeping. Tonight, you're thinking, after all that beer and rejection you might want something else out of Chris, because he's your hot and older best friend, right, but in the morning you might feel bad about it.
So it would be a good idea if it could be avoided altogether, and then maybe you could jerk off thinking about him in the morning, and that would be typical, and it wouldn't make you feel guilty.
Chris is fast, though, and he comes out of the bathroom in his boxers, clothes in his arms, toothbrush sticking out of his mouth, and dreads sopping wet. Water is dripping off them, you notice, and beading down his bare back, and it probably wasn't a very good idea, to notice that kind of thing. You curl up more tightly in the blankets, even though it's still kind of hot, but you want Chris to know the bed's off limits, for now. Chris dumps his clothes in an open suitcase on the other side of the room, and wanders back into the bathroom to spit, and re-emerges a few seconds later.
You kind of hope he's going to put a shirt on, because even though it's hot as fuck, so's he, and since he doesn't look like he's going to give up the bed, you don't really want to be tempted by his bare skin.
You think it might be a good idea to close your eyes, now.
Chris sits down at the edge of the bed, and nudges your shoulder. "Jup," he says, and you really wish he'd stop calling you that, "aren't you kinda hot with those blankets, and are you gonna move over?"
Why don't you tell me, you want to say, but that's kind of stupid, so instead you roll out of the blankets and onto the other side of the bed. It's still kind of hot, so you try fumbling with your pants again, and this time you get them off just as Chris sprawls himself down next to you. You can't be bothered to rid yourself of your pants properly, so you kick them to the end of the bed, and your calf comes in contact with Chris', and he's still a few degrees cooler than you, which makes you shiver. Your eyes snap open at the contact, and you sit up and glance over at Chris. He's curled against his pillow, and his dreads are dampening it, and he still hasn't put a damn shirt on, and he's just as naked as you are.
You think you probably shouldn't have just thought about Chris being naked, because even if he is your hot and older best friend, he's still your friend, and you just aren't supposed to do that. Probably not, anyway.
And when it's just not enough that you're getting hard thinking about reaching out to touch Chris' shoulder, or his spine, or his hip, or one of those curves that's there, but not at all girly like Lance, there's an arrhythmic thump-thump-thump against the opposite wall, and you don't really want to think about that. You can hear Joey's voice and Lance's breathy moans, and you definitely don't need to hear that.
Apparently, Chris can hear it, too, because he sits up, and a smile curls across his face. You aren't sure how you caught it, though, because the last you thought about it, you couldn't see much, either because of your blurry vision or the lack of light in the room.
"Lance is some hot shit tonight," he says quietly, but you can hear the mirth in his voice.
"Lance isn't hot," you say, somehow, because he's not. He's effeminate and he hasn't grown into his looks, not like you. You're hot, you think, not Lance, and you don't know why nobody seems to be seeing that tonight. It's discouraging.
"Joey and C sure seem to think so," Chris says, and snickers.
You're kind of glad it's dark, now, because Chris can't see you when you stare at him mournfully. He's leaning back on his hands, fingers clenched around the damp pillow, and there are drops of water on his shoulders, and he has one ankle hooked over the other, and he's smiling bemusedly at the wall across from you. He's hot, you think, and older, but now he's preoccupied by Lance again. And you're still not Justin Timberlake, you're still just Jup, wasted almost into oblivion, if oblivion includes Chris and not much else, and being passed over for something that's better but not better.
And it's still not fair, because Lance and Joey and JC are fucking in the room next door, and you could be fucking in here, but Chris isn't interested in you. The sex sounds from the other room sound like they're out of a porno - a fucking good porno - and fuck, it's turning you on, and so's Chris, because he's still kind of glisteny damp. At this point, you don't really care what you're going to regret in the morning.
You don't even know when the fuck the morning is going to be.
You think maybe you should take a cue from Lance, from earlier, because didn't he say something about coming onto Chris? You think he might have. If he did, you can thank him later, if he can even walk, and if he didn't, you probably won't remember it anyway. You hope you won't. And then you hope you will.
And then you lean over and kiss Chris on the side of the mouth, because you can't think of anything better to do.
"What was that for?" he asks, seemingly broken out of his transfixion on the wall.
"I," you say, and pause. "I wanted to kiss you," because you did, and now you want to do it again, and now you want him to kiss you too, and now you want more.
"Oh," he says, and seems satisfied with that answer, because he lies back down, curls around his pillow again. His back is turned to you. You frown, and lie down again, too.
"Please?" you say, though you don't know what you're asking. You kick off the blankets completely, inch closer to him. You run your fingers tentatively over his side, and he's warmed up or you've cooled off sufficiently that his skin is warm to the touch. You think he might have shuddered.
"What?" he asks, muffled against his pillow. "Just go to sleep, will you. It's late. You're drunk. You're sixteen."
You don't really want to be reminded of any of that, but you go to sleep anyway. You think it might be better that way.
You're not really sure what it was that woke you up, because it's eerily quiet, but there you are. It's still dark, and when you squint at the clock, it says 4:56, so you can't have been asleep for too long. You're not really tired at this point, though, just still sort of drunk and hazy-minded, and, you notice, fucking cold. You sit up, but find the blankets have been kicked off the foot of the bed, along with your pants, and you don't really feel like moving to get them.
You cast a glance over at Chris, and he's still asleep, still nuzzled into his pillow, shivering a little. If his hair's not dry, you think, he must be really cold. You frown, lie back. You shift closer to him, nuzzling your face into the crook of his neck from behind, and drape an arm around his waist. You don't really care that he's repeatedly rejected you tonight, you just want some warmth.
Chris moves, then, and grunts incoherently. "Sup, Justin," he says, just when you think you might be ready to fall asleep again.
And then all of a sudden, you're Justin again, and not a kid with an endearing nickname.
"Cold," you say against his neck, and tighten your hold on him slightly. You can feel the curve of his spine against your chest, and his skin is warmer than yours. When you trace your fingers across his stomach, he sucks it in a little, maybe because it tickles, maybe because it's cold, but the skin there is hot, yet, and you want to touch more.
"Mm," he says, and you take that as an invitation for more touching. It's tentative, at first, with your fingers roaming over his stomach and chest and hips and shoulders and you want to touch more, but you don't know if he's going to let you. You're surprised you've gotten this far. He isn't doing anything, though, not touching you and not asking for anything. You want him to touch you, though, so he can warm you up and you can go back to sleep. You kiss his neck, then, right at the base of his skull, under his ear, and his head snaps up.
"Justin, don't," he says, but it's forced. "It's late, don't start something." He rolls over in your arms, and lightly strokes your bicep. He's not looking at you, and seems to find his pillow transfixing. "It's just," he pauses, dips his head under your chin, "you're young. It's not. right. You're sixteen," he repeats, and you wonder if it's actually just your age that's so unappealing to him.
"Just once," you say, because it's not your damn fault you're not old enough. You don't really give a shit about laws, anyway, because it's Chris, and it's not like anyone's going to find out. He starts to say something, but then you kiss him again, like you did earlier, on the side of his mouth. "It's cold," you say, and when you slip your palm onto the small of his back, he doesn't need much more encouragement to kiss you.
His hands are cold on your waist, and you almost jerk away when his mouth meets yours, but you realise his lips are warm and when he opens his mouth against yours, that's just hot, and so's the way his tongue is pushing into your mouth and sliding against yours, and Lance might be competition for Jup, but you, you eclipse him, now.
Chris flips you onto your back, presses you into the mattress, and he's heavy on top of you, but you expected that. His hands are roaming across your back, and he doesn't stop kissing you, not until you spread your legs beneath him because you're fucking hard, so that you're not so much straddling him as you are merely opening yourself up to him.
"What d'you want?" he asks, breathy against your cheek, and you have no fucking clue what you want, but you know it's him and you and more kissing and less clothes, and you don't really care what happens after that, mostly because you don't even want to imagine when morning comes.
"Don't know," you say, and kiss him again, and begin to think that maybe getting fucked would be a good idea, because that would warm you up, right? You bring your hands up to curl around the base of his skull and shimmy out of your boxers, and now you just don't care that you're sixteen and he's twenty-five, and you're not sure you ever did. "Can you," you ask, and now you're really cold, "fuck me?"
He stops, then, and you're pretty sure he's going to remind you of your age, and you don't really want that, so you say, "I don't care. Please." You don't even want to consider it if his resignation has more to do with you than your age, but then suddenly he's off you, and pulling you up onto your knees, roughly. He shucks off his boxers, presses himself to you; you can feel his hard cock digging into your thigh, and that's your fault, right, so you can't be all bad. His fingers skim across the curve of your ass, and you didn't notice when his skin got so hot to the touch. You think you might be arching your back into him, because you want more, want his touch so badly you could scream.
"This is going to hurt," he says lowly, breathily, and then he slips a finger inside you, and fuck, it does hurt, it stings like a bitch, but it feels unlike anything you've ever felt before, and it's Chris' finger in you, and that makes it better. You gasp, and he crawls around behind you. He nudges apart your legs with his knee and slips another finger inside, and that stings, too, but it feels better now, and when his fingertips hit a certain spot, you're absolutely writhing against him, and you want to get fucked now.
"Please, just," you say haltingly, and his other hand reaches across your stomach, hooks onto your hip. You're thrusting your ass back against him, fucking yourself harder onto his fingers, and you shiver. He pulls his fingers out, and you can feel his cock against your ass, and it's hot, and suddenly you really don't care about warming up, you just want him inside you.
"Going to hurt," he repeats in your ear, and then he puts his mouth on your neck, where it meets with your shoulder, swipes his tongue across it, and pushes inside you. You cry out, or you think you do, because it's dry and it burns, but when he asks, "okay?" you nod and close your eyes, because already you're kind of getting used to having his cock up your ass, and now you want more. Again. He grinds his hips against you, his thrusts are slow and long and deliberate, and he's repeating "I'm sorry, I'm sorry" with each thrust, and you're not sure, but you think it's probably a reference to your age.
"Harder?" you ask softly, when he hits that spot again. Your back is still arching, and your legs spread farther apart, because you want as much of it as you fucking possibly can get. When his thrusts speed up, your breath hitches and sweat is prickling everywhere along your body, and his hand falls from your hip to your cock, and his fingers are stroking along it in time with each thrust. You're pretty damn sure you're not going to last long, not when he's hitting that same spot inside you with almost each thrust, and you can't really see straight, not any more, because he's so fucking hot and he's older and your best friend and he's fucking you -
- and when you come in his hand, you know you cry out, but you don't know what you're saying. You're thinking "god-chris-fuck-I-love-you-fuck" but you don't know how it sounds coming out, and you don't care, because he grunts when he comes, and from the heat of his body against yours and everything else, you think you might be getting hard again.
He pulls out of you, and you shudder. Without him inside you, you can't really hold yourself up any more, so you collapse back down onto the bed, nudged between the two pillows. You can feel him shifting on the bed, he sighs, and then he lies down next to you. He runs his fingers over your spine, and you shudder, and he leans over and kisses your cheek. Chastely.
"I'm sorry, Justin," he whispers, and his voice is small and regretful. "I shouldn't've. You're sixteen," he says, and then he pulls you over, into a hug, and you curl into his shoulder. His hand is still on your spine, and it's still warm, and you still think he's hot. You're not sorry. "Just this once," he says, and again, "I'm sorry."
"It's okay," you say weakly, but it's not. Again, you wish you were Lance, so you could be eighteen, and nothing could stop you from being with Chris. It's not your fault you're sixteen.