The Man Within Me
by Mary the Fan
(livejournal)

Couture by xoverau. Additional thanks to Slimslash, Patchwork Dragon and Betty for read-through.

The first time Nick saw her, she was ducking into the back of a car, face more than half-turned away from him, and it was the long line of her thigh that caught his attention, a leg that went on forever under sheer stockings he could almost feel like smoke against his fingertips. The hem of her stylish black skirt rode dangerously high as she slid into the vehicle like someone familiar with the back of a limo, like someone who belonged there, and, go, Bass, Nick thought admiringly as he watched them slip away from the elite LA restaurant that had, most likely, been picked for its private banquet rooms and back doors. He thought--at the time--that of course Lance would want to avoid run-ins with teenies who might interrupt a popstar more concerned with the hot chick on his arm.

Nick watched as she tucked her bronzed hair behind her ears with graceful fingers, head dipping in an oddly familiar way before she slid across the seat to make room for Lance beside her, and he frowned as he tried to place the gesture.

Later, when he found out she and Lance were nothing more than friends, he would realize that it figured, really, because Bass was a cliché in a lot of ways--he liked his men big and dark, and he liked his women blonde and buxom, and Jessie was neither of those things.

The second time Nick saw her, she was all long lines and glowing heat, caught in golden flashes by the lights on the stage where Bono was belting out Mysterious Ways, her lips moving soundlessly but faithfully along to the lyrics. She tilted her head back, face upturned and hands raised to catch the music like rain, and Nick tasted caramel as the loose collar of her beaded peasant blouse slid to expose more warm skin. He rubbed his hands against his jeans to get rid of the itch in his palms as he watched her sway, soft kidskin skirt molded across narrow hips.

Tall, he thought with some surprise, watching her move to the music, certainly taller than Bass, almost as tall as Nick, himself, even in the flat sandals she was wearing. Her eyes were on the stage, but Lance had his hand at the small of her back, and he leaned in to say something in her ear as Nick caught his eye.

She slanted a look toward Nick, ducking her head, and in another flash of light, he caught her gnawing at the plushness of her lower lip as she lifted a hesitant hand in response to his wave. He also caught Lance's barely perceptible headshake warning him off. He shrugged, turning his attention back to the stage--surely Lance didn't think Nick would move in on his action right in front of him?--but his gaze kept wandering back to the pair, flanked firmly by a couple of 'NSync bodyguards. He caught them slipping out of the VIP section before the encore was even finished, hands clasped, Lance tugging her along as she looked back at the stage.

The third time Nick saw her, he watched from the shadows as she danced, lithe energy surrounded by a cloud of blood-dark gauzy layers slit high to reveal lean thighs. She glittered in the depths of the club, jet stones on her skirt and rows of straight stitching sweeping up her sleeves to her wrists as she moved her hands sensuously in the air, the music coiling around her. He almost jumped out of his skin when Bass' voice rumbled in his ear.

"You can come over and talk to us, you know."

Nick didn't say anything about Lance's earlier strange behavior, but he felt himself being watched and weighed as she hesitantly introduced herself as Jessie, as he gallantly kissed her hand and heard her high, spontaneous giggle, as he bought her a drink. She leaned into him, saying something about the music, the shape of her words lost in the noise and the chaos, but the low, sweet sound of her voice sending a shiver across his shoulderblades. He realized she was looking at him, waiting for an answer, and he stared back at her, cheekbones and jawline and angles in the dark, her face all planes and hollows in the strobing lights of the club, and could only shake his head dumbly. Real smooth, he thought, but she laughed and leaned further in, her breath warm on his neck before she pressed a kiss to the point of his jaw, so he must have passed some kind of test.

The fourth time...last time?...Nick saw her, she was stretched across the checkout counter at Ralph's, 3 a.m., face turned away from him as she laughed at something the clerk said, and he recognized her graceful, loose-limbed sprawl, the curve of her spine where her pink T-shirt pulled up to bare a slice of skin above the waist of her low-slung jeans.

"Jess..." he said happily, walking up to her, and she turned around and smiled, blue eyes crinkling into all-too-familiar half-moons, and disappeared.

Later, he tried to figure out how he'd been so dumb, so unobservant, and pretty much decided AJ and Howie must have been right when they idly speculated JC'd had some kind of work done on his nose, sometime around Celebrity. Nick had been in enough photo shoots and on enough stages to know what could be done with makeup and shading, but even in the darkness of a stadium or the flashing lights of a club, he would have recognized the guy if he'd been walking around with his, his...birth nose, right? Trying to make sense of the rest of it, he called the other guy he knew who wore skirts, but Kevin wasn't a whole lot of help. He'd never been a whole lot of help explaining why he wanted to wear a skirt, and anyway, he hadn't actually been dressed like a woman when he did it.

The fifth time...first time?...Nick saw her, it took a lot of negotiating. He listened to Lance explain how he got picked for escort duty for JC's experiment because Lance knew how to be a gentleman--well, supposedly, but it was the Southern charm that fooled them every time--and how, if Nick was going to be asking to take over for Lance for however long this phase was going to last, he'd better be polite. Lance's voice got slightly threatening on that last part, and Nick made a face at his own reflection in the window, tucking the telephone into the crook of his neck. What did Bass think Nick was, some kind of monkey or, or...an 'NSync member? The Backstreet Boys knew how to clean up, they knew how to act like gentlemen, their shtick had always been more nice guy than escaped circus freak, unlike Bass' boys. And anyway, even if it hadn't been, Kevin and Brian would have thwapped manners into Nick by now. He knew how to hold doors and pull out chairs and be charming and eat with utensils instead of his fingers, for God's sake.

"If you're so worried about my, what, intentions, why are you even letting me ask her to dinner?" he asked, trying not to sound too bitchy because he needed Lance to vouch for him, after all.

"Because..." Lance paused. "Because of the basketball game."

"What?"

"The basketball game. Back in Germany. When you tripped over your own feet coming down the court so you wouldn't run right over him."

"Maybe I'm just not good enough to get around him," Nick muttered and couldn't figure out why that was so funny.

She...he...she offered to cook dinner, because Tiny freaked out over the idea of her wandering around in public without his backup--more because of the twin fears of discovery and homophobic idiots than because of popstar fame, in that particular instance--but worried about explaining an 'NSync bodyguard being seen with a Backstreet Boy and his date. She had to tell the bodyguards, at least Tiny and Eric, she explained over salmon that Nick suspected was catered and wine he suspected was expensive, but they all trusted those guys with so much already, what was this one more thing? Tiny seemed to think she'd lost a bet, anyway, but that wasn't it at all, she just wanted to know what it was like, what it felt like for a girl.

"You really didn't know?" she asked Nick, rubbing a well-manicured thumb over an eyebrow in a nervous gesture he recognized, now, and he felt his face heat, but she sounded amazed and a little shy, and when he left he brushed a kiss across her cheek. He was right, she was practically as tall as he was once she had on those wicked heeled boots, leather clasping her legs glove-tight all the way up her calves to disappear under the hem of her satiny skirt, and she was solid like he liked his girls, and she was strong where she wrapped her fingers around his wrist when he kissed her.

The sixth time Nick saw her, he took her to the same restaurant where he first spotted her, ignoring Tiny's visible discomfort, arranging for a private alcove where they'd be safe from scrutiny. He dusted off one of the tailored suits he know he could pull off--unlike her bandmates, who looked like tools in their off-the-rack styles, he told her with a grin. He wasn't sure whether he should offer to take the silky knit...scarf...shawl...thing she was wrapped in over the vivid green sheath of her dress--"It's a shrug," she told him, and he rolled his eyes--but when he did, she refused politely but firmly and kept it on.

"It's...I shouldn't...my arms," she said, lifting one shoulder. "It gives away the game."

He touched her hand where it was laying on the table and asked her if she could recommend a good wine. Later, he tried to dance with her, but he wasn't really built for that kind of dancing, so it was a good thing she wasn't delicate or breakable. They ended up hanging on each other and giggling, and he found lipstick on the collar of his shirt when he got home.

Sometime in there, he stopped counting how many times he'd seen her. He wasn't even sure what counted anymore, not since the time they'd been having a casual dinner at a hole-in-the-wall Mexican place, arguing the relative merits of A New Hope vs. Phantom Menace, and Nelly had come by their table, saying "JC, my man!" and pulling him up for the standard industry chest-bump hug. Watching JC emerge and listening to the two patter, Nick had reflected that, fresh-scrubbed and wearing soft teal cotton low-riders and a blouse, Jessie didn't look all that different from JC, if you ignored the skinny thong sandals hidden under the table. Or, well, maybe even then. Nick also wasn't sure if it counted when you were greeted at the door by a long, tall, sexy figure wrapped in faded jeans and a soft suede button-down--unbuttoned down to here and up to there--and you didn't know how to ask if you were taking out the boy or the girl.

Then there was the time JC showed up on Nick's doorstep to take him out for burgers and beer, and Nick thought it was Jessie. It was the Capri pants that threw him.

It got hard to keep it all straight. Which hadn't been the best choice of words, anyway, he reflected later.

The last time Nick saw her, he flew out to New York while JC...Jessie...JC was there for a couple of days. He pulled some behind-the-scenes strings, scoring a pair of invitations to an art-show opening with a ticket price that included more than one zero, counting on exclusivity to keep them safe from general popfan discovery. He protested his own art cred indignantly when she looked at him in surprise, and he held her hand while they walked around, her fingers woven with his. When they stepped back outside into the chilly night air of a New York spring, he kissed her, for real this time, licking at the fruity tang of wine in her mouth, and, "Oh," she said. "Oh."

When they got to her hotel suite, she tugged him inside, and he leaned back against the door, their legs tangled together and her solid weight resting against him while she explored his mouth with her tongue and he explored the muscled length of her thighs with his hands, pushing his fingers up under the hem of her skirt to trace across her skin. She shrugged out of the light leather jacket she wore--"Tailored," she told him, with one of those squinchy-eyed grins--dropping it carelessly on the floor and pulling on the front of his sweater as she walked backward into the room. He allowed himself to be led, pushed down on the sofa, and then his mouth went dry as she drew her own fingers up her thighs, under her skirt, and there was a soft whisper of silk falling to the floor. He was achingly hard as she walked toward him, and she was naked under there, and yeah, there was a bulge there, ruining the line of her skirt, and her shoulders were too broad, and he didn't know anymore which one of them he was looking at but he put his hands around her waist, drawing her down to straddle his lap. From that position she had to lean down to kiss him, bracing her hands on the back of the sofa.

"Off," he muttered against her lips as she rested her forehead against his, her eyes closed, and he fumbled at the buttons on her blouse with clumsy fingers. "Off..."

She shimmied out of the shirt, and her hands were at his waistband while he pulled at one strap of her tiny padded bra, mouthed the heated skin of her shoulder and ran a hand over the hard, flat chest. He arched up into her touch when she wrapped a hand around his cock.

"I've got..." She leaned away from him, and he peppered her shoulderblade with light kisses while she fumbled in one of the drawers.

She hissed when he pushed a slick finger into her, and Nick froze, wide-eyed, his heart trying to push its way out of his chest, but she petted his face with her fingertips and whispered "Shh...shhh...slow, just...slow, man, OK?" before nipping at his lips, wriggling in his lap, and yes, oh. He felt the length of a hard cock pressed against his stomach through her skirt and heard another indrawn breath that ended on a whimper. Her hands were shaking when she rolled the condom over him.

He had to close his eyes when he slid inside her, afraid the combination of tight heat and the look on her face would send him over the edge. He had to open his eyes when she started to move, and he ran his tongue up the long line of her throat, ran his hands up the long line of her thighs, under her skirt, felt those hard, strong muscles flex and shift as she moved on and against him.

Coming down, he wrapped his arms around her, drew his fingertips lightly up and down her back while he pulled in shuddering breaths. As his panting slowed and evened out, he realized she...he...JC was still hard under the skirt, hips still pushing against Nick's stomach in light, uncontrollable nudges, breath catching like silk on calloused fingertips as Nick pulled out of him

"Hey," Nick said, his turn, now, "hey, shhh, shhh," and he tumbled JC over sideways to sprawl on the couch, legs spread, skirt hiked up, make-up smudged, hair disheveled wantonly around his face. Nick's fingers briefly ached for a sketchpad and a pencil, but he soothed them against JC's skin, pushing the skirt up around his waist and leaning in to nuzzle at the hard planes of his stomach. "Tell me what to do."

"Just, you know, whatever, what you would usually...please..."

"I don't..." Nick said. "I mean I haven't...I've never..." He stopped as he felt JC go still underneath him

"What, never, what, you... What?"

"What?"

"Nick, you're not trying to tell me you've never done this before." JC pushed himself up on his elbows, shoving his hair impatiently out of his face with one hand.

"I...um...no?"

"But, Howie?" JC was wide-eyed.

"What?"

"You and Howie, didn't you..."

"I...no!" Nick said, and he felt his face go hot. It was one thing for his fellas to tease him about having a crush on Howie, that was the stupid stuff brothers said, but what would make people...JC...think that he really...

"Nick. You lick him, for heaven's sake. In public."

Nick looked at JC, dumbfounded. Sure, he licked Howie. And he kissed AJ, and JC and the rest of 'NSync crawled all over each other. That didn't mean anything.

"You..." JC pushed himself back, pulling down the skirt, sitting up and tugging at the straps of the bra. He looked miserable. "Oh, Nick. I thought you, that you liked...I'm sorry. I shouldn't have let this go this far."

"I don't...why not?" Nick could eventually follow the looping logic JC employed if he was allowed to listen long enough, but he had a sneaking suspicion he was getting ready to get the bum's rush before he could figure out what was going on.

"This was a mistake, Nick." JC had pulled himself into a little ball in the corner of the couch, knees up to his chest, arms wrapped around his calves. "I...don't think we should do this."

"Are you...um, are you breaking up with me?" Nick asked, even though he knew that couldn't be true, because JC didn't like to be the one who did the breaking up. Jessie had told him that.

The first time Nick saw him was in a diner, on the beach road out from Tampa, on the way to the marina. Nick was sitting there, nursing a cup of coffee and savoring the solitude between the early morning rush and the vacation breakfast crowd when the bell over the door jingled and he looked up from under the brim of his cap to see JC...Jessie...JC standing there, backlit by a golden morning haze that haloed his curls, familiar cotton low-riders--a ripe peach color that left Nick with sun-warmed sweetness on his tongue and the feel of soft fuzz against his palms--hanging off his narrow hips to expose a sliver of cinnamon-tanned belly under the hem of a faded blue T-shirt that brought out the sky and the ocean and his eyes.

"I was on the way out to the marina, and I saw your car here," JC said, sliding into the booth across from Nick, and Nick ordered hot tea when the waitress came offering another cup of coffee.

"Aren't you busy not breaking up with me?" Nick asked, and it sounded bitchy, but JC was breaking up with him by attrition, the passive-aggressive fuck. He'd denied it, of course, because he really couldn't stand to do the breaking up, had protested that, no, that wasn't it, exactly, they could still see each other and do friend things, but that was it, exactly, and this was the first time he'd been on the same side of the country as Nick for three months. If this was what it was like to try to date a boy, being pushed away and pushed away in the hope that you would be the bad guy and finally do the breaking up, well, Nick thought it probably was better to stick with girls. Of course, he had enough experience with long and agonizing breakups on that front, too.

"Nick, I'm sorry," JC said, and Nick wanted to reach over and smooth that familiar furrow JC got between his eyebrows when he was worried, but he clenched his hands around his coffee cup instead, feeling the heat from the ceramic sear into his fingertips. "I let the whole thing get out of hand, and it just wasn't fair to either of us. I mean...you know, I knew that it didn't matter to you, all that stuff, like the hugging and the kissing and the dancing--not that it didn't matter in a bad way, but that you didn't worry about it, you thought it was OK--because you did it with your guys. And I thought that's why you were all right with doing it with me, that it was just the same, you know? I mean, it's like Justin, both of you have these boundary issues, or really, lack of them, you're not properly socialized or something, you don't know how guys are supposed to act, not like the rest of us who grew up knowing and just don't care. Or maybe you do--Justin thinks he does, only he worries about it so much. And you don't do that. You don't worry about it. But then, the way you kissed me that night, I thought it meant that it didn't matter in a different way, that it did mean something because you were interested in guys, in, you know, me."

"I. What? JC, I am interested in you."

"No, you're not. You're not interested in guys. You're interested in Jessie."

"JC, I'm not always sure how I'm supposed to tell the difference." Nick winced, because that came out sounding even worse than he'd ever thought it would, but JC only sat back and looked thoughtful, so Nick leaned in, lowering his voice, and added, "Do you really think I would have offered to blow you if I didn't notice you had a dick, dude?"

That set JC off in those helpless, high-pitched giggles, but the sun was burning off the morning mist and Nick was getting impatient, so he set down his coffee cup and slid out of his seat. Held out his hand.

"Come on," he said. "I've been wanting to take you out on the boat."

JC put his hand in Nick's and let himself be pulled out of the booth.