Quiet
By Lois

Those times on the bus when things were nice and quiet, and the Playstation was turned off and the television dark, and everyone was engaged in an overdue dream or letter-writing or reading or staring at the walls blankly, and maybe outside it was raining, it often occurred to Joey that he would someday have to figure out what to do with the rest of his life.

There was a special brand of insignificance felt that came with being as famous as they were, and it liked to hop on them at the most unwelcome times. One minute he'd be fine, just fine, super-fine, and the next he wouldn't, he'd feel wonky and wrong, and tiny. Really, really tiny, because the thing he was part of was just so much bigger than him. It would feel like an ant farm, and he was just one of the bugs in it.

So he'd sit there, in the big round seat with the leopard upholstery that he liked, and try to dwell on the good stuff, like being on stage and all that, and how much he loved their costumes and the glow sticks and the lasers that came out of everywhere before "Space Cowboy". He loved it. He loved touring, the exhaustion and the food and the bus and the boredom. He loved the hokey fervor of the audience.

Onstage he was an eagle, and the kind of bliss people found in God, he found in performing. He loved it as much as he did members of his family, or the other four. Those quiet moments on random highways, when he could hear them breathing or snoring or peeing or singing along off-key with their Discmans amplified how much he loved them.

Especially -that- one.

The one sitting across from him, bunched up in the seat and writing something in a Garfield notebook that might have been Lance's. That kid - couldn't really call him that, he was that tall - with the habit of writing maybe three or four words then frowning at them and then starting over on a new sheet of pristine, college-ruled paper.

"What're you writing?" Joey asked. His voice sounded really loud, because the bus was really quiet, and it was something like 2:06am. Justin looked up for a second.

"Letter," was all he said. "But I keep screwing up. I can't spell. How do you spell 'corresponent? Or is it correspondant?"

"That one," said Joey, smiling, and Justin rolled his eyes. He didn't really -roll- them so much as blink, look at the ceiling as if saying to God, "See what I have to put up with?" and then looking back down at his paper and frowning at it again.

"I'm trying to tell my grandma that I'm a lousy correspondent/ant/whatever." He shook his head. "She called my cell the other day and left a message and I never called back."

"We've been busy," said Joey, reassuringly. "We had the MTV thing, and then two shows right after that."

"A minor technicality," Justin grumbled. "I have no excuse. I suck. The end." He tossed the notebook aside, leaned back and regarded Joey with lazy interest. "What were you thinking about, before? I saw you, you had your think-face on."

The fact that Justin could tell that he was thinking, and had assigned to him a "think-face," made Joey want to climb on him, mess with him.

"Just stuff," he said, like how his friends were forging ahead in life and having babies and buying houses, and building gazebos and koi ponds in their expansive backyards. "Stupid shit." Like how he was sitting on a bus to a city he forgot the name of, talking to a nineteen year old who was wearing thoroughly-BeDazzled jeans.

A nineteen year old whose BeDazzled jeans Joey just wanted to remove, maybe only with his teeth, because it covered up the important bits of Justin that he just wanted to lick at.

"That's cool." Justin stretched until his back went pop! and then launched himself across the aisle, into Joey's personal space and draped himself there, half on the leopard seat, half on Joey. He yawned, and rested his head against Joey's neck. "Tired," he mumbled. "But I can't sleep. I was thinking about stuff, too."

Joey pet Justin's hair because he just -had- to, it was so soft. "What stuff?" he asked, thinking it might be stuff like Britney, or Tennessee's chances for the Superbowl, or whether there was any more Fruitopia in the fridge.

"Really random stuff," replied Justin. "This bus gets too quiet sometimes, and the weirdest shit pops into your head, you know? Like, one minute I'm wonder what Brit's up to, and the next thing I know I want to go find out if the Titans won." He giggled, and Joey thought about how Justin was the only man he knew who giggled unapologetically. "Then I wanted to go take a shower," he went on. "But I saw Lance go in there and I think he had a hard-on, and now I just -don't- want to go in there, for a while."

Joey laughed, and pinched his earlobe. "What're you doing looking at Lance's hard-ons?!" he asked. Justin squirmed.

"I wasn't LOOKING, I was. No, they're hard to hide, Joe, when you have to, like, squeeze past the dude."

"Sure, Justin."

Justin made a soft noise. "Look," he said, hoarsely. "You can't hide the one you got, right now. I don't even have to look, 'cause I know it's there."

Joey looked down. Shit. "Shit."

"Just what kind of stuff -were- you thinking about, over here, Joe?"

He gave Justin a pained look. "Nothing, just... you know, stuff about what I'll do after this is over. Junk like that, touring, being onstage-"

"Me."

"You," Joey sighed. Justin smiled up at him. "Yeah, you. Alright? Shut up."

"I will not shut up! You were thinking about me, and... I did that!" Justin motioned toward Joey's crotch. "You probably weren't going to say a thing about it, were you?"

"Probably not," said Joey. "Not on the bus, it's too quiet."

"JC is asleep," said Justin. "Lance is in the shower. Chris is listening to Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello and I know that because he has it up all the way to 11." Justin smirked. "It's quiet enough where nobody'll hear." He reached down and stroked Joey through his jeans, just once to make him gasp so he could kiss him, and get his tongue in his mouth.

Joey said yes, and let himself be led back toward the bunks. The fact was that he wouldn't always be a singer or a dancer, but he would still be able to feel the same way, like an eagle, exhausted and in love, because he was with someone who knew what it meant to have to need that, all the time. He could always just say yes to Justin. That was something he could do, for the rest of his life.

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