Joey Bear
Indigo
***
"Give it to me, JC."
"NO."
"JC, give it to me NOW."
"No WAY, Lance."
"Come on! Now, JC, now!"
"NO!! Get your own!!"
A sigh. "Dude, that doesn't even make sense. Dammit, Joey ALWAYS lets me have the remote." He leaned back on the couch.
JC sat up straight and turned to him. "Why don't you go share a bus with JOEY then, huh Lance?!?" He was joking...at least Lance hoped he was.
Another sigh. "JC, I DO share a bus with Joey. YOU'RE the one who decided we needed to spend some quality time on the road together. Which, truly, I'm amenable to, as long as you let ME have the damn remote and we don't have to watch the freakin' Fashion Channel all night!!"
"But Lance, you KNOW how much I enjoy seeing the new Fall 2001 lines!!!" He began to pout, not in the girly-prissy way people usually pouted, but in a way which made Lance want to grab him and kiss him, hard. Which he DID, right after hitting him upside the head.
"Ouch! Mmpphh..." Whatever insult JC was going to throw at him was halted by Lance sucking in his breath.
Lance let go and grinned as he watched JC trying to hide his pleasure. "JC, sweetie, honey, darling, could you BE any more gay? Man, and I thought the tight leather pants were the height of it..." He trailed off, waiting for JC to voice his irritation.
"You bitch! You said you LIKED it when I wore leather pants!" This time Lance was SURE he was joking.
A chuckle, barely audible. "Oh I DO, Jayce, I really do. And you just answered my question. After calling me a *cough cough* BITCH, the answer is no, no you could NOT be any more gay. Thanks man." Another grin as JC went at the pouting a second time.
"I hate you."
"Well, that's a shame, because I absolutely love YOU."
***
"So what do you think they're doing in there?"
Justin raised an eyebrow, pretty much surprised that Joey would even have to ASK. He decided the sarcastic route was best. "Oh I don't know, Joe, knitting sweaters? It DOES get so chilly on the East Coast in the fall..."
"Shut up, infant. I was just trying to make pleasant conversation. What the hell are you doing, anyway?" Joey couldn't stay quiet for more than five minutes, and since Chris was catching a nap...
"I'm trying to get through this book. I do read, you know."
"Yeah? What's the book?"
"You ever read The English Patient? Same guy wrote this...Anil's Ghost. It's pretty good...'bout a government conspiracy in Sri Lanka, archaeological digs..."
"Ok, this is where the pleasant conversation ends."
"Tss. Ignoramus."
"Dumbass."
***
After being resigned to watching Dolce & Gabbana's Fall Fashion show (he couldn't bear to change the channel, they were JC's favorite designers...JC DID so love their beaded pants...) Lance promptly fell asleep on JC's shoulder, melting into a dream about Broadway and colored feathers. He knew something was wrong when the room started shaking and he felt something wet on his forehead.
"Eww, Jayce, that was slobbery."
"Hah. What am I, a DOG? That's it, that's the last time I try to wake up MY sleeping beauty with a kiss."
"You can do it, just try to keep the slobbering to a minimum, k?" He woke up fully, enough to give JC a proper kiss on his ear. "Did you enjoy the fashion show, Josie?"
"Shut up. That's not even the feminine form of Joshua, you know."
"Close enough. I'm gonna go grab a beer."
"Get me a Dr. Pepper, you lush you. And hurry back, we can make out!" He said this last line in the cheerful, childlike tone of a kid asking for ice cream. Which he was, in a weird, twisted sort of way.
Lance gave a sort of grunt in reply and disappeared into the small alcove they called the kitchen.
After about half a minute..."Hey Lance, we're on TV!"
He reappeared, beverages in hand. "We're on TV every day. You really are your mother's son."
The comment flew right over JC's head and landed somewhere on the couch cushion. "Look, it's a rerun of that E! show...the one where there's a clip of us launching Celebrity."
Lance sat back down and watched as his five favorite people in the world faced the flashing lights of the cameras. "Hmm...you and Joey are lookin' pretty close right there..." It was more of a passing comment intended to fill the air, but JC didn't see that.
"Whoa, what? What do you mean by that, Lance?" He looked pretty upset. Upset enough to have muted the TV, something JC hated to do.
Whoops. "Nothing, Jayce, nothing. I was just saying."
"Just saying that there's something going on between me and Joey!" The pout had been replaced by angry JC, with furrowed brows and everything.
"Whoa, now look who's saying things! I never said THAT, Jayce, never. What's UP?"
JC just shook his head. "I just can't believe...after everything...that you'd even THINK--"
"That's the point, Jayce, I WASN'T thinking. It was just a natural reaction to--"
"What, that was a REFLEX?? Oh my god! Oh my god, my boyfriend thinks I'm cheating on him! I think I'm going to cry..."
Lance tried not to laugh out loud as he said: "Jayce, stop acting like a queen and calm the heck down. You are WAY off tangent here."
What was meant to be soothing actually provoked tears. "He just called me a queen! The love of my life just called me a freakin' QUEEN!!" He burrowed his face in his hands and shook off Lance as he tried to pet his head.
"Man, Jayce...Jayce? Oh come on, you can't be serious."
"I AM serious. I'm...I'm seriously in love with you!"
This time Lance couldn't stop from laughing, if only a little bit. "Oh..my...god...*choke*...I can't believe you just quoted a line from Legally Blonde..." That being said, he lost all composure and dissolved into fairly unmasculine giggles.
Which seemed to do the trick of bringing JC back from the edge of sanity. He dissolved too. "Shit Lance...you..." After about three full minutes they sat up straight.
"But really, JC, where did that come from? Why so sensitive, my little butterfly?" He waited for what proved to be an interesting answer.
JC took a deep breath. "You know, ever since management told us to stay away from each other in public it's been really bothering me. I mean, we LIVE off fan sites dedicated to our relationship because we feel like at least we get to share US with SOME of the world, even if that small part doesn't quite know for sure." Another deep breath. "And now that our...public affection's lessened, the comments we thrive on have too...and now they're being replaced with ones about me and Joey."
"Are you serious?"
"Yeah...and that upsets me. It's YOU I should be next to in pictures, not him. It's YOU I should be hanging off of when we walk the carpet...and when we do interviews. All that...well, management's taken away every real thing we have, even the secret stuff. And I'm just angry because...because... because yes."
Lance smiled at his wonderful boy's inability to finish a sentence. But he had an answer, and it was a really good one, too. "Hey. Hey, Jayce..." and he hugged him like a little brother, "Come here. They haven't taken away EVERY real thing. We have THIS, you know? We have moments like this when we're like, the only people in the world. And when we fight, we know we're both kidding but we do it anyway. And when we sleep...even when you wake me up with your dog kisses--"
"Shut up!"
"What I'm trying to say is, there's this...and THIS is the most real thing there is. 'Kay?"
"'Kay."
"And I'm sorry if I can't give you hugs the way the Joey Bear does but this will have to do."
"I hate you."
"I love YOU."
***
fiction