What You Want
The words tumble out of his mouth before he can stop them, spilling all over the floor as he tries desperately to pull them back. Fuck.
“What?” Lance asks, his eyes wider than usual.
Suddenly, the scuff on the toe of JC’s tennis shoe is demanding all of his attention. He looks up and meets Lance’s eyes, opens his mouth to try and save himself, but no words come out. He lets out a lungful of air he hadn’t known he’d been holding in when the adjoining door flies open and Joey bursts in.
“Dude, there’s a freaking full bar in here!” Joey’s eyes are twinkling so brightly with excitement that JC can’t help but return his grin. “Even if we can’t go out in this town, we’re gonna have some fun tonight.” He’s waving a small bottle of Southern Comfort around. “And there’s a soda machine down the hall, for those of you who like girly mixed drinks.” He winks good-naturedly, oblivious to the thickness in the air.
JC throws a glance back at Lance, catching once again the hurt look in his eyes, before jogging off after Joey to check out the stock.
::::: :::::
“You told him?” Justin asks quietly, his eyes locked with JC’s.
JC nods miserably, pulling at a plastic thread that’s coming loose from the bedspread. He traces the quilted pattern, runs his hand across the scratchy material. He wonders for the millionth time if these things are ever washed. He thinks they may not be, which is really gross.
“What did he say?”
“Nothing.” JC shrugs, like it really was nothing, but his eyes give him away. He wraps the thread around his finger, watching the tip turn purple. When he unwinds it, his skin is white where the thread was cutting in. The color comes back slowly.
Justin watches him until JC squirms under his intense gaze and finally looks up to meet his eyes.
“What?” JC asks, his head still tipped downward a bit.
Justin raises one eyebrow and waits.
“Say something,” JC says, fidgeting.
“Like Lance did?” JC wishes Justin would let that one eyebrow down. He looks away.
::::: :::::
JC knows Justin’s not mad at him. But he also knows Lance is.
He’s taken to sighing a lot, and doodling in his notebook. He can’t even write, because the weight in his chest has put a serious cramp in his creative process.
JC sighs again, and pushes off the couch. They’re home now, but that hasn’t changed things. He can hear the guys outside, laughing. The sun is bright and the sky is so blue it looks like a postcard. They’re playing basketball, he can see through the window, two-on-two. He sets his notebook down on the picnic table as he strolls out into the yard, shielding his eyes from the sun.
“Hey, what’s up?” he asks, squinting and smiling. The air is thick and warm, and it wraps around him like a hug. This is why he loves Orlando, and why he loves these four men. This makes him happy. At least usually.
Lance stops in the middle of the court, just stands there looking deflated as Justin tries a lay-up around him and misses.
“Hey!” Justin says, lunging after the ball. Joey tackles Chris, and their laughter does nothing to stop the pain in JC’s chest when he catches the look on Lance’s face.
::::: :::::
JC thinks things should be more awkward around Justin, but they’re not. That’s just the kind of relationship they have. He’s glad.
So. Things are normal. Except that he and Lance aren’t talking. It’s not like they’re giving each other the silent treatment or anything, because that’s really juvenile. They’re just not saying more than is necessary. JC hates it.
Then, on the third Thursday since this mess started, there’s a knock on JC’s door. “Yeah,” JC calls, not looking up from his notebook. He’s been writing again. It’s mostly crappy stuff, but just making himself write feels good.
“Hey.”
JC looks up and Lance is standing before him, looking timid. His cheeks and the tips of his ears are pink.
“Hey,” JC says, putting down his pen. “What’s up?”
“I, um. I kind of wanted you to take a look at something,” Lance says. He steps with one foot, leaning close enough to slide a piece of paper onto the table JC’s working at, and then steps back to his original position.
JC picks up the paper and reads the first few lines. It’s a song. Or, it’s trying to be. “What’s this?” he asks.
Lance’s ears turn pinker. “It’s just something. I was kind of working on.” He shrugs and jams his hands into his pockets. “It’s probably really stupid. Forget about it.” He reaches out to take the paper back, but JC holds it out of his reach.
“No. It’s not stupid, it’s good.” JC smiles, and his eyes crinkle at the corners, and he really does think it’s good. Lance visibly relaxes. JC thinks it’s stupid for Lance to be tense around him in the first place. That’s the stupid part, not the song. The song is good. He reads it again. “Do you have notes to go with it? Music?”
Lance shakes his head, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet. “I think that’s where you come in. Or, maybe I hoped. That you’d help.” He looks at JC like a small child, eyes wide and hopeful. JC wants to reach out and shake him, or kiss him until his knees don’t support him anymore, because it’s ridiculous for them to be acting this way around each other. Instead, he nods. He keeps nodding, his head bouncing like one of those Bobbleheads that didn’t sell out at Best Buy. “Yeah, yeah I’ll help.” JC looks up into Lance’s face. What started as a tense smile spreads into a full-fledged grin, showing teeth and everything, and JC’s glad they’re doing something together.
::::: :::::
They work on Lance’s song for six days. It’s good, like therapy. JC gets excited when he’s in the studio, pushing and pulling at the switches and dials and levers on the soundboard, picking out pieces of melodies on the keyboard, finding the perfect beat to back it all up.
He’s completely in his element, totally at ease with himself and everything surrounding him. He smiles easily and laughs heartily and rests a casual arm across Lance’s shoulder as they listen to the playback.
He knows Lance is a little intimidated by all the equipment. He tries to teach Lance how to find the perfect levels for each layer of sound, how to highlight the vocals and smooth out the synthesizer. He adds a little bit of a song he and Justin had been working on over the chorus to Lance’s song, and it fits. JC’s eyes twinkle when something falls into place like this.
To JC’s bewilderment, Lance gets up and leaves.
::::: :::::
“You mixed my song over Lance’s?” Justin asks, and JC wishes the couch would just swallow him up.
He knows it was stupid. When he gets going, though, it’s hard to step back, to yank himself out of that creative state he’s in, to see the consequences of his actions.
“JC.” Justin’s sitting on the coffee table, facing him. He’s got one hand on JC’s knee, like his father used to do.
“It was just a kiss,” JC says, helplessly. He shrugs, and feels the scratch of Justin’s couch through the thin material of his shirt.
“I know,” Justin says. “I know. So why’d you have to tell him in the first place?”
JC closes his eyes and lets his head fall back against the couch. With his eyes closed, with Justin’s hand still heavy and warm on his knee, he knows exactly why he told Lance. He knows that, in that one moment, it wasn’t just a kiss. In that moment, with the thrill of accomplishment coursing through his veins, when his head was already spinning and the grin on his face was unbreakable, when his heart was pounding against his chest with the knowledge that he and Justin had just roughly finished what was probably the best song either of them had ever worked on in their entire lives, would ever work on in their lives, it wasn’t just a kiss.
The memory of Justin’s breath hot on his face, Justin’s tongue strong and sweet in his mouth, Justin’s hips pressed against his. His hands on Justin’s neck, his mouth moving against Justin’s, hungry.
It was over almost before it started. JC found himself with his back against the studio wall, chest heaving. Emotion was tingling through every inch of his body, and he was laughing. Justin was laughing.
“Shit,” Justin said. “Is this song gonna be as good as I think it is?”
JC’s eyes shone and the swell of pride in his chest was his answer.
Thinking back to that day, a month ago, now, JC still feels the exuberance of the song, but it’s mixed with the pain of the weeks that followed. Still, he’s not sorry he told Lance.
::::: :::::
Lance tries again a few days later. He slips into JC’s studio while JC’s got the headphones clamped tightly over his ears, listening for the thousandth time to the playback of Lance’s song. He lifts one side of the headphones off of JC’s ear and says, “whatcha listenin’ to?”
JC jumps, startled. He hits a button on the soundboard and pulls the headphones down around his neck. “Your song.”
Lance hands him another piece of paper, another song. JC can’t help but wonder when Lance has decided to put away his laptop with its Excel spreadsheets and budgets and plans and business, and try his hand at writing.
Lance is tense, rigid, next to JC. He’s nervous and fidgety. JC misses the days when he could slide up beside Lance on the couch, hook his chin over Lance’s shoulder, and watch him type, type, type. He misses the muscles moving in Lance’s shoulders as he would punch out letters to important people. He misses how easily Lance would smile as he’d review the latest report, JC half-asleep in his lap. He misses the slow, satisfying way Lance would make love to him after they’d both had long, productive days doing what they each did best. Lazy late afternoons in the warm, slanting sunlight were best after Lance had gotten through the conference call and stack of emails, sorted out the budget, and after JC had figured out how to get through the rough spot in the bridge or the weird key change during the third verse.
This Lance is stiff and nervous. This Lance isn’t Lance. Now, even with spending time together, something is wrong. It’s not even the kiss looming over them; JC can feel that that isn’t the problem. He’d told Lance because he’d known Lance would understand, ultimately. So why does he feel like they’re two magnets, flipped the opposite direction?
“What’s going on?” JC asks, leaning back in the chair, twisting around a bit.
“Nothing,” Lance says, picking at a piece of the table where the edge is coming up. “I just had an idea for another song, and I thought I’d run it by you.”
“Since when do you write songs?” JC asks, his eyes wide and wondering. “I mean, not that you can’t, or that you’re not good or anything, because you are. These are good songs, both of them. But you’re the business dude. You keep us together. You do the serious stuff, Joey makes sure we all have fun, Chris goofs off, and Justin and I, and sometimes Chris, we write the music. And I’m not saying you can’t, or that we wouldn’t ever use your songs, because they really are good, Lance. They are. And I’m thinking of running the first one by the guys tomorrow, after I tweak one more spot in the chorus, if you don’t mind. I wouldn’t do it if you didn’t want me to, because it’s your song. But lately, I miss you. I think all that stuff you do usually, all that executive stuff, it relaxes you, and it’s sexy as hell, and I miss that. I miss—”
Lance is kissing him, then, his nose pressed up against JC’s and his lips hot and soft and moist, and JC breathes in sharply. His chair tips backwards dangerously as Lance leans in farther, but he doesn’t notice, because one of his hands is wrapped around Lance’s bicep and the other is on Lance’s waist and electricity is shooting up and down his spine, because it’s been a freaking month since he last kissed Lance.
Lance mumbles something against JC’s mouth, works his tongue in to flick against JC’s teeth, and JC opens willingly. Something between a whimper and a moan comes out, and suddenly his hands won’t stay still. He’s going to hit something on the soundboard, do something that messes up the work he just did on the song, but it doesn’t matter to him anymore. Nothing matters except the fact that Lance is nipping his jaw and Lance’s knee is between his thighs and Lance is sucking is tongue into his mouth and Lance is saying his name over and over and it’s Lance.
JC pushes back gently against Lance’s chest, every nerve in his body screaming for him to do the opposite. “Why?” he asks, breathing heavily. “What’s going on?”
He can’t say anything else because Lance is kissing him again. And then, “I – thought you – wanted – a songwriter.” JC’s out of the chair because he doesn’t want it to tip backwards, and he’s got Lance pinned against the glass, instead. He can’t wrap his mind around Lance’s words, so he lets his hips grind against Lance’s, needing the friction, needing Lance.
“What?” he asks, panting, a moment later.
“Thought this is what you wanted.” Lance is licking his collar bone now, sucking gently and nipping the skin. JC shudders.
“This is,” JC manages.
Lance stops, breathless, and gestures around him. “I thought what happened with Justin, that it was because of this. That what you wanted was a writer. That this…” He ducks his head, “if you wanted me to be a songwriter like Justin, I would be.”
JC closes his eyes. Lance did understand the emotion in the moment, the exhilaration of a great song. But he didn’t understand why JC had told him about it.
“What I want is for you to be you,” JC says softly, holding Lance firmly by the hips. He dips his head again, smiling against Lance’s mouth. This is what he wants.
For Noora's If You Want Songfic Challenge.
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