It's not exactly slash, but it wishes it was. I wish it was. Timbertrick-ish.




Melancholy

Their love is beautiful in a melancholy sort of way.
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A secret language of half-spoken sentences and thoughtless gestures. Die-and-kill-for-you love. Proof that life isn't fair.

JC writes all of this down.

On the bed, across the hotel room he's sitting in, Justin and Chris sleep. They lie head to foot, Justin sprawled on his back, a large star across the bed with one hand and foot dangling over the edge, and Chris with one arm clutched around Justin's right shin.

Write what you know, people always say, so JC does. He watches the two of them, notebook in hand, and gets words, phrases, sometimes just ideas. Most of them will never even get shown to anyone else, let alone put into a song, but he still likes doing it.

There's a knock on the door, and it's a long moment before JC moves from the armchair he's folded himself up in to answer it, still holding his notebook and pen.

Unsurprisingly, it's Joey. They have less than half an hour until the buses pull out, JC is informed, so can he please wake those two knuckleheads up? It's strange, that he's spent so long here, in Justin's room. Time passes so quickly when he watches them.

JC sits on the bed, next to Chris' head, and shakes Justin's ankle. "Come on, guys. We've got to get ready to leave." He watches them stir slowly, mumbling and blinking and yawning.

Justin rubs his eyes with loose fists like a sleepy little boy. He pushes himself up on his elbows and yawns again, smiling through it as he nods at Chris. "You're drooling, old man."

"It's your fault, young'n," Chris says without opening his eyes, then drags the back of his hand across his mouth and wipes it on the leg of Justin's jeans. "That cheese smell your feet give off made me hungry in my sleep."

Joey, standing at the foot of the bed now, smiles in that way he has, where even the curl in the corner of his mouth and the lift of his eyebrow are suggestive. "Are the lovebirds having trouble in paradise?"

Justin throws his feet over Chris' head and plants them on the floor on the other side of the bed, facing away from Joey. "Fuck off," he says, voice brittle. "It's just a stupid nap."

"I dunno, J. You two look awfully cute together. What do you think, C?"

JC only smiles. It's not the thousand-watt-eyes-crinkling smile he's known for, but small, a little crooked, a little sad. He wishes he could disagree with Joey, but really, they act the way JC's always thought people in love should.

Except they're not in love.

"See," Joey says, obviously taking JC's silence as at least tacit agreement (and rightly so). "You're meant for each other."

JC winces, and watches Justin do the same before his face twists into something like a snarl. "Would ya shut up, Joe?" Justin snaps. "Go bug Lance or something."

"Yeah, yeah," Joey says with a vague wave. "Someone's cranky." He leaves as easily as he came in.

Chris rolls off the bed and shuffles out after him with a lazy wave and, "Later." If he's not completely unconcerned by the conversation, then he's at least putting on a good show of it.

JC watches all of this, forehead wrinkled in concern. He scoots down, close enough to be pressed against Justin from shoulder to ankle. Justin still hasn't moved. "You okay, J?"

"Yeah."

"If it's what Joey was saying, don't worry about it."

"I just..." Justin scrubs his palms on his knees, like he's trying to come up with some kind of excuse--like there's something he has to be excused for, when really, to JC, there isn't at all.

If JC didn't know better, he would almost believe that final leap between friends and more just hadn't occurred to Justin before. He does, though, knows it even before he hears the desperate edge in Justin's voice when he says, "I'm straight." He sounds less angry and more defeated than people usually are when they say that kind of thing. "Me and Chris will never be like that."

"I know," JC says quietly, and strokes his back. "I'm sorry."

Justin looks down at his hands, rubbing his palms together slowly. He laughs without smiling. "People never mention this part when they say it's a choice, do they?" He sighs, stands, and walks into the bathroom, closing the door behind him.

JC waits until he's back in his own hotel room before he opens his notebook again, hand shaking as he forms the letters with slow, deliberate care.

Their love is beautiful in a melancholy kind of way.

He doubts it will ever be used.

__________

TE