Notes and disclaimers: This is so made up, parts are based on internet gossip blind items and you don't get farther from actual truth than that. Fiction fiction fiction. Thom Yorke quote from the movie Meeting People Is Easy which I saw in the middle of writing this, but was very apropos. Thanks to Missy, Kel, Katie and Younger.

A ROOM OF OUR OWN

It's a complete headfuck, isn't it? - Thom Yorke.

You've got

Lance told the story to Chris when he was drunk, staring out over the backyard like it was a more impressive vista. He only told Chris once, a few days after, and then pretended he didn't remember. Lance said:

He'd gone to Justin's hotel room to say hi, to check on things and Justin was just sitting in a big brown chair. Justin looked pale, his face blank and clammy. Cameron was stamping around the room, whirling on Justin, screeching. Justin just followed her with his eyes, not reacting at all. She got angrier and angrier, talking about how she wanted to go out, do something, have some fucking fun. Justin didn't say anything.

She threw a shoe at the wall and went into the bathroom, slamming the door. Justin closed his eyes and put his hand on his stomach. He said, "I'm the one who's nauseous, and she's the one who's throwing up." He didn't move from his chair and he didn't look concerned at all.

Lance looked more shaken than Chris felt. But Chris thought Lance was always more surprised about things like that.

It's not like they didn't all know anyway and Chris had asked Justin two days later what was up. He said, "She was having a bad weekend. Big movie doing badly and she's about to be 31 in the wrong business to be 31, she needs to be super thin but not too thin and she works and works and you know, I think she just wants all the fun stuff to balance out the pain of everything else."

Then he said, "You know, you walk out and people look at you, they look at you and you don't know them but they know you and they want and want and you want that. You want to be looked at and there's this part of you that's totally dreading when no one looks at all or only one person does and then there's this part of you that thinks that's so fucked up, worrying about whether people look at you. You have to be fucked up to want this enough to get it and for every person who's fucked up enough there's ten thousand who are fucked up enough and never ever get it.

"So I cut people slack."

Justin, light and dark. Chris picked at the reference until he remembered where it came from. Six Feet Under, that crazy woman Rachel Griffiths played. Lance had given him the box set of DVDs and Chris had only gotten about halfway through. Lance had given them to everyone, he really loved that show.

Justin wasn't always broody and deep. Two days after he said all that to Chris, he called and talked for twenty minutes recounting every move he made in some epic game of Halo. He bounced on his heels when he saw Chris in person and tied Chris's shoelaces together when he wasn't looking.

But he was still fucked up in his own way.

You got

Nobody told Chris this, it happened right in front of him. There was no JC, light and dark, JC was the entire spectrum. A rainbow, maybe, only not just shiny pastel colors.

JC was on the phone, lying on his bed in his hotel room. Chris had been sitting on the floor, playing solitaire with a deck he knew was missing three hearts. It made the game extra hard. The phone call was an interview and when Chris looked up, somewhere after JC said, "Oh, yeah, totally, it was the greatest thing to get to work with people like that, people you really admire and vibe with," JC had unbuttoned his jeans with one hand and shoved them down to his thighs.

JC winked at Chris and then went back to staring at some point on the wall right above the TV while he answered question after question in his bright and bored voice and wrapped his hand around his dick and jerked off for ten minutes.

JC came while the reporter was asking a very involved question or he just didn't answer for two minutes and made the reporter wait. He didn't make any noise at all.

When the interview was over, JC hung up, changed the channel from CNN to ESPN and said, "I need to shower." He grinned and walked into the bathroom, closed the door.

Chris looked down and realized he had lost again after only ten cards played.

Chris had been in love with JC since 1995. Chris fell in love with men when they were nineteen and women at every age. Something about nineteen and the almost but not quite jaded part of the age, the end of being a teen, Chris just looked a lot more. He liked women who were smart and hot and funny. If she made fun of him, he would stay with her forever. Or until she dumped him, which always came first.

He'd somehow missed Joey and Lance when they were nineteen, they just slipped by him. He was preoccupied with Dani and JC, probably. He didn't miss Justin.

honey

Chris lived in one of three medium sized houses in different parts of the country and even when he wasn't there, the houses were always occupied. He had relatives and friends and sometimes other people's ex-boyfriends staying in his places. People asked, he said yes. No one looked twice at the people coming in and out of Chris's houses.

He went to the house in Orlando and his mother was watching a movie with Michelle Pfeiffer on his big screen. Michelle's perm was awful. "I could get you a TV this big, you know."

She smiled and went back to the movie. "Yeah, you could. But then I wouldn't come visit you. You know it's all about the TV." She tugged him close and made him sit next to her.

"Why are you watching this?"

"Because it's a funny movie. Married to the Mob." She started to explain it.

Michelle Pfeiffer was the innocent girl from the Bronx who married a mobster and tried to get away from the life by moving back to the city and getting a job in a hair salon. Or something. Matthew Modine was stalking her except he wasn't because he was a cop of some sort. It went on like that. Chris's mom liked to talk over movies, explaining things he might have missed and pointing out parts she liked or thought were funny. Sometimes it made Chris want to drive a knife into his eye, but mostly he liked it.

"The mafia's a way of life," she said, "you can't really run away."

Chris said, "Like being rich and famous."

"Except no one gets shot and you're not making your money off people's misery." She hit his knee. "Don't talk about your job like that. You don't hurt people."

"I ran over a kid once."

She hit his knee again. "Don't make jokes about shit like that. You never did."

"Still, it's the kind of work where you have to be crazy to be successful." Chris watched Michelle in her red robe and her tears while Matthew Modine got into bed with her.

"You think so?" She sounded skeptical. She generally sounded skeptical when she talked to Chris.

"Maybe you start out screwed up."

"Maybe that's a rationalization. Maybe you're just justifying not acting like a person." She squinted at the screen. "I like her hair when she cuts it short."

She talked about the movie all the way to the big happy ending. Then she said, "You're a good person, Chris, even if you are screwed up. And it's not because you're rich and famous, dickhead. That's just where you live."

He didn't believe her, but he thought he should.

Beer

JC looked over the balcony and then leaned and leaned, almost halfway bent. He said, "This is not for you." And pointed at the ground. Justin pulled him back in and they sat on the balcony, backs to the sky. Joey lay on the bed and Lance and Chris sat on the floor inside the room.

They did it once a month or every six weeks with breaks, when Justin was in the UK or Lance was in Russia. They met in a hotel room and made sure no one knew and no one had pictures. They drank a lot. JC said, "This is not for you," again and Chris smirked.

JC started singing. " I don't want to take what you can give... I would rather starve than eat your breast..."

And Chris sang along, grinning at JC. "All the things that others want for me, can't buy what I want because it's free, can't be what you want because I'm meeeee." Of course, only JC and Chris could sing Pearl Jam off the top of their heads. Justin leaned his head against JC's shoulder and nodded along.

Joey said, "You guys, you're so pretty." Joey had had a lot to drink.

"See," Justin said, "This is the part where we all get really drunk, like Joey is, and have wild sex."

Lance and Chris looked over at JC and Justin. Chris was pretty sure his expression of want was the same as the one he could see on Lance's face. Lance said, "Yeah?"

Justin said, "You fucking pervs, of course not." JC laughed.

Then Justin broke out the board games. He went over and deliberately sat on Lance's lap, smiling innocently. Because in private, Justin's third favorite game was teasing Lance, after pretending to be stupid and making light of things he actually cared about. Winking at Chris and making Lance squirm. He never did anything else, not before this time.

Three pitched games later, and much more beer and Justin stood up. He took Lance's hand and pulled him onto the bed while saying "Okay, night's over, y'all get out." Lance's eyes were half closed and he fell onto the bed like he'd been drugged. Maybe not so drugged, given the way Lance grabbed at Justin's shirt and pulled him closer.

Chris glanced at JC as they left, but JC had his hand in Joey's back pocket and was whispering in his ear. It was almost mean, because Joey hadn't even made like he wanted that. You'd think, really, want would bring some reward. But it made him laugh as he walked to his own room, it was just the sort of perversity he expected from JC and Justin and he didn't even take it personally. Though it was, really, personal. Sort of.

Overpriced

Chris hated the phrase 'tapping that ass.' He didn't want to tap, he wanted to be inside all the way, he wanted to get himself inside. Tapping was teasing, tapping was Justin and JC's idea of fun. Chris wanted penetration.

Chris divided all music into bullshit and not bullshit. Bullshit was music made from no emotion or made from greed or terror. Music made not to express but to exclude, that was bullshit, too. Their first album was laced with bullshit, the real thing only coming through in places, four parts terror and two parts pure greed. Plus, he thought, Riddle was one of the crappiest songs he'd ever heard in his life. And he'd heard the first songs JC and Justin wrote before they even thought of getting things on an album.

People tried to make the music they liked into bullshit, say it's not for anyone else, but that's just how they used it, not the music itself. Pavement weren't bullshit just because some record store clerk once recognized Chris and refused to sell him Westing By Sextant. Chris liked what he liked, Pavement, R.E.M., Journey and fuck anyone who thought he wasn't allowed.

One of the nice things about Justin dating Cameron was that Justin had suddenly become a big R.E.M. fan. First it was just a few offhand references to her talking on the phone to Michael Stipe and wasn't that cool?

Then Justin was quoting lyrics, or so Chris thought. One phone conversation with Justin singing, "This fame thing, I don't get it." Chris thought it had to be a lyric; Justin would never say that and mean it.

Ron sang him the whole song, or most of it. "See, there's this amazing part," and Ron started singing again. " 'I don't want to disappoint you, I'm not here to anoint you, I would lick your feet, is that the sickest thing?' Dude, it's brilliant. See, it's like, this letter, this letter Stipe wrote to his idol, to Patti Smith? And she sings back up on the song. Can you imagine writing your idol for advice and getting it?" Ron snorted. "Who would you write, man?"

Chris shrugged and rolled his eyes, one big gesture of indifference. He thought he'd write Justin or JC, maybe, but it would be pointless. He didn't think they had real answers, just instinct and defenses.

Weird

Justin slept with him two weeks later. He just showed up and pulled Chris onto the bed, kissed him hard before Chris could say, "Hey, how are you doing, man?"

Justin pushed Chris back on the bed and opened his shirt. He smiled. "You're hot."

Chris said, "And so're you. This is unexpected." Justin had removed Chris's shirt and was now undoing his belt.

"In a bad way?" Justin didn't pause as he pulled Chris's pants down and folded them on the floor.

"Well, of course not. It just seemed like you weren't, uh, interested." Chris sat up as Justin pulled off his underwear and his socks. He folded those, too, and left them on the pile.

"Oh, sure. I'm totally interested." Justin smiled like a wolf. Chris smiled back.

"Good," Chris said. Justin stripped quickly.

Justin didn't want to use a condom. "I know where you've been," he said, sweet smile in place. "I made Lance wear one, man, I almost made him wear one when I blew him. Have you seen the people he dates?"

Chris said, "You don't know everyone I've dated."

Justin pushed himself up. "Are you implying something about Dani? Because I won't hear that shit. She's amazing."

"I've slept with more people than her."

"Yeah, and I've met them and they're all awesome."

Chris thought that was an incredibly naïve attitude about STDs. But he was already tired of arguing.

There was a moment when Justin was naked and Chris had his hands on him that he thought how much Justin had grown. He felt almost fatherly and that was weird and possibly sick. Except he definitely wasn't Justin's father and he didn't have much of anything to do with raising Justin so it was only almost incest. The thought made Chris even more turned on. Speaking of fucked up, he thought.

Then he decided not to think about it.

Justin only slept with him twice. After that, he just said, "Later. You're too important to me."

Yoga

JC was easy to tease because he always did ridiculous things. But the line where his eyes got steely and his jaw clenched kept moving every year, sometimes every month, so Chris should have been more careful. But he liked living on the edge.

He knew he'd offended JC somewhere in the middle of the conversation but since he wasn't sure if it was the slamming of Steve Spurrier and his coaching of the Redskins or the ten minutes he'd spent describing how completely foul JC's new candle smelled, he kept going. Fuck it, he liked JC angry. It was sexy.

JC didn't storm out since, Chris thought, it was his house. Chris was just visiting. But he was staring out the window and his fingers were tapping. Someone less in love with JC would be annoyed, Chris thought. Someone less like Chris might have apologized, tried to smooth things over.

"Am I annoying you?" Chris smirked.

JC tilted his head to one side. He smiled easily. "No. Of course not." He showed his teeth.

"You want to kill me."

"Slowly." JC laughed.

Instead, JC led him upstairs and nearly broke his back fucking him senseless. Chris said, "I have to get you angry to get you in bed with me?"

JC rolled his eyes. "Dude, no. It just struck me as a good idea. It was that or throw you out and you crossed your legs at the right minute." Then JC winked like he was kidding. Chris thought it was probably the truth.

I've got

Chris was a Pringles man. JC could take or leave Pringles and Justin thought they were too salty. Chris bought them cheap and stacked the cans in his pantry. He had a year's supply at any given moment. He would never complain about that.

Chris had expensive taste in drinks and cars. For food, he kept a year's supply of Pringles in his pantry and the good old-fashioned kind of Wheat-Thins. He never ever bought store brand soft drinks because they all sucked. He never bought tomato sauce to cook with because he'd had too many rice and tomato sauce dinners when he was younger. He liked the taste of government cheese but he thought it was way too tacky and very fucked up for him to buy it anymore.

Sometimes he bought food just because you couldn't use food stamps to get it, it was too luxurious. He found it generally didn't taste like anything he wanted to eat twice.

Justin's kitchen was stocked by his mother or filled with random things he bought while shopping in bulk. It alternated between food that was healthy and food made in Hong Kong in a factory and stuffed with preservatives. Justin ate both without paying much attention. What Chris found comforting was that Justin still liked the same things he liked when he was fourteen. Chris did, too.

JC had recently developed an obsession with energy bars. He even had ones that were made for women with special vitamins and drawings of women worshipping dogs or something on the wrapper. He bought entire cartons. Chris thought they worked okay as snacks, except for the ones with the granola on the bottom. Those sucked. JC decided he liked the ones that tasted like candy bars best and gave away all the other cartons he hadn't opened to a local homeless shelter. JC was always adding new foods he liked to his list while Chris just wanted more government cheese.

But if he found a way to buy some, it would be a good story, someone would leak it and it wasn't what Chris wanted people to know about him.

And I got

The clerks at the counter of the record store had taken off whatever was playing when they came in and put in some uber indie girl and her indie produced album. Chris knew it was personal.

He listened to the record and quickly got bored. He couldn't hear the words and the ones he heard were interesting enough, but everything was buried. He wondered if the girl wanted it enough to be fucked up, was she as fucked up as JC and Justin? As Chris? Maybe she wasn't.

Maybe she was. Maybe being the uber indie girl the record store clerks used to say fuck you to the browsing pop stars was as much of a burden and a pleasure to her as being his brand of famous was to Chris. Maybe she had rules to follow she hated and fans she couldn't stand and she reveled in shopping where no one knew her. Maybe she hated going to clubs and hid her US magazines when reporters came over.

Chris sometimes hid the magazines he read but he did it just because he didn't want everyone to know and decide it meant something. Sometimes Wired was just Wired.

Justin said quietly, "This album sucks."

JC snorted. "They want you to think that. They put it on purpose."

"I refuse," Justin said, "to feel bad about this. I mean, there's like, tops, ten thousand people who'd be willing to listen enough and closely enough to appreciate this. There's a reason we sell more records, you know?"

"It's not bad," JC said. "It's just aimed at a smaller audience."

"Which I'm not part of." Justin kept flipping through the large section of Stax albums.

Chris liked the record, now that he'd heard more. The third song was cool, he thought.

Justin ran his hands over the albums and looked up at Chris. Then he looked down at the albums and said, "Everyone needs a room of their own." He said it casually and Chris knew it wasn't. Justin would overcompensate so Chris had an out, make it hurt less. The courtesy of it briefly blunted the ache in Chris's fingers.

Chris could be a room. He looked at JC's set shoulders and briefly imagined a room of his own with JC and Justin in it. He wasn't ready to choose either and near as he could tell, he was about to be told he would be getting neither. Maybe he could have both, but that was more fucked up than even Chris could manage.

Chris said, "A room?"

"Like Virginia Woolf," JC said, turning around with an easy smile. "She said, I think, she was like, women writers back then, they couldn't be great until they had a room of their own to write in." He smiled wider.

"That's not exactly what I meant." Justin was grinning, glancing at JC and almost rolling his eyes. "I meant a space of your own. We all need."

JC nodded. He held Chris's face in his warm, dry hands and said, "You're not a room, you're an entire mansion."

Mansions needed upkeep. Maids and taxes and groundskeepers. They were both saying no. Chris didn't want a room of his own, he wanted them. Maybe just one, but not neither. He blinked and JC's hands fell away.

JC and Justin both turned back to the albums. JC was humming along with the song, making up harmonies. Justin was just tapping his fingers on the cd cases, a backbeat the songs didn't have.

But they were both still standing there. They were both pretty young. Chris could wait them both out, until their rooms were suffocating. It could happen.

Chris could wait. He was that fucked up.

THE END.

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