Casual Sex
Copyright © 2001 Em

It wasn't that they really planned on these things, and Joey supposed that was pretty much the point. He simply didn't give it much thought most of the time; who he slept with, who he saw afterwards, who he never saw again--

"--a Jedi thinks not of these things," he said sagely, when Kelly joined the tour for a few stops to see him.

Chris threw a buttered roll at him. "Craves not, you dumbass."

"And it's excitement and adventure," JC added.

"Yeah, and the analogy wouldn't've worked, then, would it?" Joey tossed the roll back.

It gave him a sense of freedom unhindered by awkwardness, enabled him to live in the now and focus on the moment.

Kelly understood that about Joey, and that was why he supposed he'd loved her; no one who didn't understand him would have stuck around for so long, anyway. He tried very hard to remember that whenever Kelly came to visit him on the tour, but ultimately she was only on the road with him for a week, week and a half tops, and the tour sprawled out endlessly before him, a month already behind. And when it came down to it, Joey simply forgot a lot. Casual sex was hard-wired into his brain.

It wasn't supposed to end with a phone call weeks later, either, with long, late-night conversations with Kelly and his family and hastily-organized meetings with the group. It wasn't supposed to end in fatherhood; not when he'd played by the rules, not when he'd scraped by so many other times. It wasn't supposed to end, period.

"If the press starts asking, you say 'no comment'," Johnny kept instructing him, as if he were a parrot, and Joey merely shrugged: he was going to say it was none of their fucking business if they asked. Maybe he'd even wear the shirt and ask them, politely, to read it.

Mostly, Joey spent a lot of time in his bunk, thinking about things like fatherhood, and the price of college in twenty-two years, and trying to estimate if he'd be around to see the baby's first steps if they toured again next fall, and whether he wanted a boy or a girl. He spent the rest of the time acting like he didn't think about it at all, or thought he did, until JC caught his eye over the dinner table one night and shook his head sadly, saying, "dude, you suck at acting normal, man."

Joey forced a grin. "Shut up -- you're sayin' I'm not normal?"

JC shrugged. "About as normal as a red-hot ice-cube," he suggested, and bent over his chicken kiev.

Joey thought about that a lot in his bunk on the bus afterwards, while Steve fell asleep to the television and he heard Lance's distinctive footfalls move around the bus, settling for long moments and then relocating. When he grew tired of that -- and what the fuck did JC mean, anyway, and as if JC weren't moody enough himself -- he came out into the aisle and found Lance at the table in the lounge, laptop perched its surface, face slack with concentration. He looked up at the sounds of Joey's approach and smiled. "Hey," he said.

"Hey," Joey responded, and sat down across from him. Gesturing at the laptop, he asked, "what are you up to now?"

Lance folded his mouth into a frown. "Just. lookin' over some stuff Wendy sent me about a movie." He looked up over the laptop at Joey. "I'm not busy," he said.

"Do you think," Joey began, his eyes on the panel of the table ahead of him, on the back of Lance's Toshiba, on Lance's ringed hand where it lay on the table next to his glasses. "I've been acting," he waved a hand. "Weird, or whatever, lately? Like JC said? Have I been really out of it?"

"Do I think..." Lance paused to consider. "You've got a lot on your mind, I guess," he said. "I never really thought about it. You've been keeping to yourself a lot," he added. "If that's what you mean."

Joey nodded slowly and steepled his fingers, bringing them to his mouth. "Yeah," he said. "I guess that's pretty much what I meant." He sighed. "I'm kinda freaking out about this baby," he admitted.

Lance reached out and tugged on Joey's fingers until his palm lay flat against the table, then pressed his own palm down over it. "It's okay if you freak out," he said solemnly, and Joey wanted to cry because he knew Lance meant it, and because he knew Lance was aware of how upsetting this had to be.

"I mean, I just. I wanna be happy," he said, "'cause hey, it's a kid, it's a new life and all, and that's, you know, that's," and Lance kept cutting him off with hushed words like

"--okay, it's okay, shhh," when Joey hadn't even realized he'd been babbling, and then Lance was there, on his knees beside him. "Come'ere," Lance said, and Joey turned and leaned into the hug, returning the slaps on the back that Lance gave him and squeezing tightly when Lance said, "so what if it was earlier than you planned? That's like, a whole little person that's gonna love you more than anything, Joe, and that can't ever be a bad thing."

"Yeah, thanks, man," Joey murmured against Lance's shoulder, because even if Lance wasn't good at giving pep talks, he gave hugs like he meant them, and that counted.

"I'm gonna be happy for you, Joey, and if I never told you before, I'm telling you now," Lance said, and pulled back from the hug and bussed him quickly on the mouth. Nothing new there; they all did it, accidentally or on purpose -- something they'd settled right at the beginning of the group when Chris had responded to having a kiss spurned by Justin, saying

"oh, what? I can't show my love for you this way?" and then pinned Justin down and licked his mouth until Justin relented to the peck.

The second quick brush of lips had been Joey's way of thanking Lance for the first, but Lance had opened his mouth to speak again or something, and Joey caught his upper lip between his own. A tentative flick of the tongue upwards -- because that was what Joey did when he had someone's upper lip between his own -- and Lance let him in, probably for the same reason. When he tilted his head to avoid the crush of their noses, Lance closed his eyes, and under the slick slide of Lance's tongue against his own, Joey laid a heavy hand on Lance's shoulder and followed suit.

They broke apart abruptly when Joey felt a firm tightening in his groin, and he wondered if Lance had felt it, too. "Um," Lance said, his lips still glistening wet from the kiss. "So. I should. Wendy's, um." He pointed over his shoulder at the abandoned laptop.

Joey nodded. "Yeah," he agreed, watching Lance pass his thumb over his upper lip as he stood and sat back down in his spot across the table. "I should probably try and get some sleep, too. You okay with the light here?" he asked, to bring some normalcy to the exchange, and Lance nodded.

"Yeah, I'll just move in back if it starts to bug me," he said, keeping his head bowed over the screen. He waited until Joey had turned his back before adding, "this baby could totally be a blessing in disguise, you know?"

Joey didn't answer him, pretended not to hear him, as he climbed back into his bunk. That was weird, he thought, as in, it was really fucking weird to french-kiss your best friend over something that wasn't a joke or a dare.

Half an hour later he still couldn't make sense of what had happened, and so Joey did what he always did when he couldn't make sense of something. He decided not to think about it.

The more devotedly Lance hunted out a script for A Happy Place's first movie, the more often he left scripts around where Joey could find them; on the bus, in the vans and the hotels and the stadiums, and what he didn't leave behind he carried around with him. Joey never looked much except to glean the basic genre and idea of the scripts: quaint independent films, farcical B-flicks, hastily sketched ideas for full-scale musicals that Joey knew would never fly. He wasn't sure if Lance was trying to communicate with him or if he was just being careless, until Lance starting coming to him with ideas. "If I pitch this to you, will you tell me if it sucks?" he'd say, and that was how Joey ended up getting a script for On The Line.

"I want you to read it over," Lance said. "It's Rod. The best friend role. I really. I mean, it's a good role for you, I think."

Joey took the copy of the script from him, smirking. "Art imitating life. Original."

Lance smiled. "Well, I don't think you'd be as believable as my boss."

It was a good script, Joey thought, and he read it on the bus, and skimmed it during soundcheck, and brought it with him to Lance's hotel room to go over again while Lance worked miracles with his day planner in front of the television. It was a good part, too, and he could see why Lance had asked him to do the role, aside from the best friend angle; it was a broadly comedic role he knew he could sink his teeth into and have a blast doing so.

"Okay, I decided," Joey yelled at him, waving the script in the air, and Lance looked away from the TV at him. "My answer's 'yes'."

"To-- oh. the. You're gonna take the part?" he asked, getting up from the bed with the creaky slow motion of tour-induced sluggishness.

Joey nodded, turning his attention back to the script. "Yeah, this is really... I like it a lot. This looks good."

Weariness gave way to a small relieved grin. "That's really awesome," Lance said. "You haven't even read the whole thing yet."

"Yeah, I will," Joey agreed. "But I think I won't change my mind, probably." He waited until Lance had pulled up a chair to sit next to him at the desk, peering over his shoulder, before pointing. "I was just lookin' at this scene," he said, "and I wanted to do it, you know? I mean, I want to do this moment, right here."

Lance put his chin on Joey's shoulder while he read. "That's a good scene," he observed.

"Man," Joey breathed. "We've never had a real heart-to-heart like that, have we? I don't think we have, have we?"

Lance shrugged. "You say that like it's a bad thing," he murmured.

"No, it's a. Statement. Just sayin'." Joey shrugged as well. "I mean, tell me something I don't already know about you."

Lance lifted his chin from Joey's shoulder and rested it on his hands on the desk. "You do know everything about me." He smiled wryly.

"No, I don't," Joey shook his head and pushed the script away, resting his head on his elbow facing Lance. "I hardly know anything about you I didn't learn from livin' around you. You never tell me stuff. Tell me somethin'."

Lance rolled his eyes to the side and pursed his lips. "I'm queer," he said finally.

Joey poked him in the cheek. "Something I don't know, dickhead, something I don't know."

"I know," Lance grinned. "I was testing you. Okay, something you don't know. Something I never told you before is that... " he blew a gust of air that ruffled Joey's hair. "I kinda like you not knowing everything about me."

"How come?" Joey frowned. "You know everything about me."

"No, I don't." Lance spread out his other hand on the desk by Joey's elbow. "But I guess I see it, like, I can't figure myself out sometimes, so why should anybody else be able to?"

"You like to keep some things to yourself," Joey concluded.

"Exactly."

"You know everything about me," Joey repeated.

"You never tell me anything," Lance replied.

"That's 'cause there's nothin' to tell." He shrugged, and Lance's fingers brushed the soft skin on the inside of his elbow. "It's not like I have these deep things I'm thinking on the inside, that I hide from people. It's pretty much all on the outside." He paused. "I'm not good at talking about all that stuff anyway, you know that. I guess I'm just not that complicated a guy."

Lance straightened up so that their faces were inches apart, and gazed at him seriously. "Yeah, you are," he said simply, and shot a look at the discarded script. "Does this count as a heart-to-heart?"

Joey cracked a smile. "Maybe," he allowed, and closed his mouth quickly, finding that he had to shift his focus just to look from Lance's eyes to his mouth. He tucked his chin in a little bit, as though he could put more distance between them that way, but ultimately when Lance tilted his head and stared at his mouth, he found himself craning his neck forward to meet him halfway.

Their lips met with more intent and purpose than they had the time before, and this time when Joey probed forward with his tongue he met Lance's between their joined mouths, releasing the sigh as he reached up and cupped the nape of Lance's neck in his hand. Lance rested light fingers on his forearm, only touching him there, and when Joey opened his eyes Lance's brow was furrowing and unfurrowing with uncertainty even as he licked at the outline of Joey's lips.

They stood somehow, awkwardly, without parting, Joey with his other hand around Lance's arm and Lance grasping him around the waist; Joey wasn't sure how tall he could stand without breaking the kiss, so he just kept his knees bent and his eyes open enough to press Lance back into the wall next to the desk. Something hit the lamp -- either a hip or a misplaced limb -- but there was something driving him, glad to be the aggressor, to finish something that Lance had started rather than seek the reasons why, and Joey banged his knee against the wall when he propped it up for leverage, and kneaded the smooth softness between Lance's neck and shoulder.

Hands slipped from up near his chest down his sides and around to his back, fingers dipping into the gap at the back of his jeans and sliding around again, teasing at his fly without unbuttoning it, and Joey finally moved his mouth to Lance's chin, to his jawline, to encourage the exploration. The feel of day-old stubble against his lips was less ticklish than abrasive, but the familiar smell of Lance was enough to keep him to his travels until he reached the dip where jaw met neck. Lance groaned, then, against his cheek, and pure fire shot down his spine and into his dick; he thrust against Lance, briefly, seeking sweet pressure and maybe a little release.

It was strange, reaching down in front of him and finding Lance hard, having Lance buck slightly into his hand through his jeans, and Joey pulled his hands back and up again, to grasp Lance around the waist. It was more familiar, like the soft but firm waist of a girl just above the swell of her hips. Familiar, only different. Lance's hands faltered at Joey's own waist, and with a moist sound he disentangled their mouths, hair brushing the wall when he looked up at Joey.

"We have to stop meeting like this," Lance said, but it wasn't an easy quip; even in the glow of the desk lamp, his face was flushed, the base of his neck hollowing with his breaths.

"I should at least get your number," Joey agreed, and they both laughed, both uneasily, and Joey pulled away entirely, grateful then that Lance hadn't undone a button on his fly after all. He didn't want to adjust himself in front of Lance now, suddenly shy, not wanting to show how Lance had affected him -- though it was probably obvious if Lance were to look.

Lance slithered past him and backed around the desk, his own discomfort apparent enough. "Gotta keep you guessing," he said, doubling over as if he could hide his erection by crumpling in half.

"That's my cue to take the script and go, isn't it," Joey suggested.

"You don't have to if you don't want to," Lance said easily, sitting back down.

Joey wanted to.

Joey made his way up the aisle of their interior-lit bus and placed a hand on the back of the driver's seat, watching the dark expanse of highway that stretched out before them, barely illuminated beneath the bus's headlights and blurred by the steady fall of snow against the windshield. Holding up the sprig of mistletoe he'd procured for occasions such as this one over their driver Bruce's head, Joey leaned in. "Merry Christmas, Bruce my man. Kiss?" he asked, and proceeded to pucker his lips comically.

Bruce shook his head. "Not on this road, man. Maybe when we get to the hotel."

"Nah," Joey protested. "You don't have to even kiss back. See--" he leaned in quickly and pecked Bruce on the cheek, then pulled back. "Hey, thanks, Bruce," he said, grinning, "I love you, man," and he spun, bounding towards the back lounge. "Hey, Lance," he called, when he was in view. "Kiss?" He pinned the mistletoe to the fly of his jeans with his fingers.

"Just how drunk do you think I am?" Lance yelled back in response, downing a shooter of Irish cream, and Joey shrugged haplessly.

"Just drunk enough?"

"Lemme get my camera," Steve smirked, half-rising from the couch in jest. Joey swung the sprig up and over Steve's head, kissing him on the mouth before he could stand.

"Thanks, bro," he breathed, and ran the two steps the rest of the way to the lounge. "Merry Christmas!"

Why they had let Lance choose the selection of festive music for the evening, Joey didn't know. Brenda Lee's "Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree" had been on repeat for no-one knew how long already, and when it started up again as Joey reached the threshhold of the lounge, he grimaced. "Dude, how many times did you program that song?"

"Twenty-one," Lance answered matter-of-factly, "because it's the last year I'm gonna be." He emptied another miniature bottle of Irish cream into a shooter glass and downed it. "Amaretto?" he offered.

"Kiss?" Joey wiggled the mistletoe above his head and held out a hand expectantly, and Lance tilted his head at him and sighed, a smile starting at the corners of his mouth.

"Merry Christmas, loser," he murmured, standing, and pressed his hands briefly against Joey's chest when he kissed him.

Closed mouth.

Joey couldn't help but feel he was missing out on something along the lines of how Irish cream tasted in Lance's mouth and whether the flavor clung to his tongue or his lips the way he imagined it might.

"Merry Christmas," Joey responded, and plopped down in his lap when Lance sat back down. "Got any more of that cream?" he asked, looking back at Lance and gesturing when he unscrewed a new bottle.

"Not for you," Lance said simply, and passed him another bottle. "Amaretto," he suggested again.

"Uh, no," Joey said, twisting in Lance's lap and reaching for the bottle he held. "Irish cream, thanks," he grunted, his fingers closing around it, over Lance's fingers, and Lance didn't even flinch when Joey's mouth came down over his.

He had no recollection of making it to the door, save for Lance's harshly whispered, "lock it," which he did, with Lance pressed up against him, one knee between his legs, hungrily sucking on his tongue, and yes, he noted, the taste of Irish cream clung heavily to Lance, and Joey couldn't get enough. He slipped a hand up under Lance's shirt when Lance's hips collided with his own, and bit back a groan when like met like, giving an answering shove.

"I'm drunk," Lance informed him, between the removal of their shirts and Joey's clumsy attempt to lift one of his legs, to lower him to the floor before the divan, as though that were an explanation for anything. "Joe," he said, sighing rather than laughing when he landed on his ass. "This isn't gonna work," he said, turning over and crawling towards the divan, away from Joey.

Joey had no doubts that it wasn't going to work, watching the smooth line of Lance's bare back as he moved. It wasn't like he hadn't tried it before, fucking on the tourbus floor, when girls complained that it left their backs hurting. It wasn't like he still didn't sort of want to try. "I know," he said, and crept forward when Lance reached the foot of the divan, tugging on the waist of Lance's unbuttoned jeans and burying his face in the heat there. He licked the swatch of clean skin beneath his mouth and passed his thumb over the wet trail he had left in the dip at the base of Lance's spine, and Lance stilled. Turned back over.

Lance sprawled out then, head tilted awkwardly and arms stretching back to grip on to the divan spread, and Joey settled himself between Lance's legs, kissing his way up Lance's neck while he freed a condom from his wallet. "Are you--" Lance kept squirming away, trying to see what Joey was doing, saying, "is that-- oh, 'cause--" when Joey undid his jeans and slid them down, palming the condom while he worked on Lance's.

Breathing against Lance's cheek, feeling hair bristle against the smooth spots on his chin, smelling distinctly male cologne while he kissed Lance was no longer new; no longer foreign was the feel of Lance's dick brushing his stomach, or the subsequent jerk of Lance's hips. "It's lubed," he whispered in Lance's ear, when he'd got the condom on and Lance had pulled his legs up towards his chest. "It's okay."

"I know, but--" Lance hissed when Joey pushed inside him, but didn't protest. His eyelids fluttered for a moment, mouth open but no sound coming out, clenching warm and tight and smooth around Joey. The CD changed, Brenda Lee having sung her fill, and Mini Pops' version of "Good King Wencseslas" began. Lance laughed shortly, a motion that pulled Joey in further, and Joey fought the urge to jab into him.

When he did anyway, Lance kissed him, arms flexing and straightening behind him where he gripped the divan, and bent his knees over Joey's biceps while they found a rhythm; on a shallow thrust Lance went rigid and gasped, thrashed slightly with his hips. "Oh. Fuck, Joey," he mumbled, "right there. you." and when Joey did it again, Lance began to pant.

Shit, Joey thought, shallow thrusts wearing on his stamina and sweat beading up on his hairline, he wanted Lance like this all the time; hot and tight and rumbling moans that rode over the trite Christmas music filling the lounge, damp upper lip that tasted of salt and liqeur when Joey kissed him. He reached down, curling his fingers around Lance's erection, and Lance pulled his hand away. "Too much," he whispered breathlessly, wrapping his fingers loosely around Joey's thumb as he tugged on it. "It's too much..." and then he came, silently, body curling upwards with shudders and Joey chasing his mouth with kisses.

So this was what it felt like, he thought; muscle rippling around him, panting breaths on his shoulder and Lance's arm coming down to dig fingers painfully into Joey's side, and it was enough. Joey sank deeply into Lance when he came, stifling a grunt against his lips, his arms trembling but elbows locked. Pulling back, he passed a hand over Lance's forehead, where it was feverishly hot, and slipped out of him. Lance sat up slightly.

"Can you pass me my shirt?" he asked, pointing.

He had his jeans back on and was wiping over his chest with the shirt by the time Joey'd disposed of the condom, and Joey wasn't sure whether to be pleased or nonplussed. Celine Dion's "O Holy Night" rotated on to the CD playlist, and Lance rolled his eyes and skipped it, settling back down over his Amaretto when "The Prayer" was next. He ran his hands over his hair, still visibly heated, while Joey dressed.

"I'm gonna go see if Steve wants to do something," Joey offered, unlocking the door. "Wanna come?"

Lance shook his head and lay back on the seat cushion, loose-limbed and agile with sated bliss. Joey took a mental snapshot of the scene before remembering that this was the kind of thing he didn't want to think about in the first place. He didn't allow himself to consider that he'd be seeing it again.

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