Author: Tiffany Rawlins
Credits: Sandy the Older, for letting me, and for creating a canon that's consistent enough to make it worthwhile. Sandy the Younger was forceful at all the right times, and Jae W watched my back. Lance quotes third-hand from Julian Barnes. Joss Whedon still rocks. Anne Carson always breaks my heart.
More: My stuff's now all at http://tiff.wearemany.net.
Feedback: tiff@wearemany.net

LIKE IT IF YOU DARE

To stay human is to break a limitation.
Like it if you can. Like it if you dare.

-- Anne Carson, The Beauty of the Husband

They go from crying and sex to weddings and trials. It would be fucking hilarious if it wasn't so pathetic.

All of them stand shoulder-to-shoulder under the vaulted marble ceilings, and Joey's hands shake when he reaches for the rings but he doesn't drop them. JC tears up during the vows and then cries through the reception. Chris's mom sits on his left and she squeezes his hand and his knee between alternating bites. JC sniffles and Chris drinks too much and puts his arm on the back of JC's chair.

After dessert he drags JC into the bathroom and kisses him up against the sink, thumbs brushed against wet eyelashes, and JC hiccups and wraps his arms around Chris's waist. All this and it's like it takes people being happy in public to push them over the edge for real. Chris runs his fingers through JC's loose curls and whispers in his ear until JC smiles bashfully and laughs and kisses Chris on the nose. He's the prettiest boy in the world even with red-rimmed eyes and a runny nose and for about thirty seconds Chris lets himself think that maybe things are finally okay. Thirty seconds is a long time. It's the longest yet.

They come back and Lance is clinking a spoon against his wine glass and Joey puts his forkful of cake back down on the plate and looks nervous again.

"Well, it took y'all long enough," Lance says, glancing down at the table but grinning wide. Chris rests his hand on JC's back and decides the publicists can fucking deal with it. Joey's gotten married and things might be okay. The rest can come later. Justin catches his eye from across the room and winks, beams over at Lance.

"We used to, um, we used to joke about Joey being on the installment plan," Lance says, like someone's told him that part of the best man's job is to humiliate the groom. "But I guess it says somethin' that he's been the butt of years' worth of jokes and still wound up first down the aisle." JC sniffles again and Chris props his chin on JC's shoulder.

Lance coughs and clears his throat. "So, um. Kelly, Joey. You always did things your own way, no matter what people said or what they assumed about how things would end up cause of where you'd been before. So." He holds his glass up and they all do the same. "This isn't, it's not something I wrote, but it's what I want to say." Lance's eyes flick to Justin, dance across Chris, and then go back to Joey. "Love won't change the history of the world, but it will do something much more important. It will teach us to stand up to history. Y'all are gonna make your own history, and I guess it turns out we all learned something from you about how to do that right. Congratulations."

People cheer and kiss and Chris puts his hands in his pockets and goes to hug his mom because if he stays near JC he'll do something the publicists can't take back. Brianna runs around singing "Here Comes the Bride" except she's saying "my mommy" instead. Lance scoops her up with one arm and plays with the ribbons in her hair as he tells Steve Kmetko and a crew from Celebrity Weddings that Justin's doing just fine these days.

*

Weddings and trials. The first part of the court stuff's over, they're found guilty and no one's surprised but still Chris finds it kind of rough to watch the defendants' moms crying for Court TV. All that's left now is the sentencing.

For a while it looks like the third kidnapper, the one who didn't roll over to save his sorry ass, might not even be eligible for the death penalty. That's what some reporter tells Chris, anyway. But the guys were too stupid to realize that cutting off that much skin might kill Justin, and then too stupid to leave him for dead when he wasn't really. Not quite. Not like they thought, for sure.

So they were scared at having fucked up and no ransom to show for it, and it turns out they had a bunch of dope stashed in the trunk when they crossed state lines, which means they committed a capital offense. Now all that's left is the judge settling on a punishment and then, everyone says, this whole thing will be over. At the worst, two guys are getting life in prison and one gets ten years on death row. At the worst. At the best. Whichever. Somebody's mom is bound to cry.

Chris is the one who's supposed to talk about it, and when Johnny says to call so-and-so at the Post now he doesn't mean Page Six, and most of the time these are reporters with law degrees who know what's what. Johnny comes straight to Chris about those interviews, doesn't put them through any of the publicists. Joey's on his honeymoon, Lance was a material witness and Chris doesn't let Johnny come anywhere near JC when he needs something like this. So that leaves Chris with the grown-up press and a well-prepared, casually neutral stance on the death penalty. He wonders how they found a focus group of fourteen-year-olds to say that a boyband with any real opinion on the subject would drastically reduce the number of hundred-dollar concert tickets sold. He wonders, but he's not surprised. One meet-and-greet after another, every local radio and TV sit-down, it's "Justin's a hundred percent recovered," and "never been better" and they all smile and thank God profusely. If an interviewer tries a specific follow-up, it's "we've been through a very traumatic experience, you know, bound to change us all a little." They've been lying about one thing or another since Germany so it's not hard to do right, it's just exhausting, after a while, when it's a story he likes better than the truth.

The night before the New York Times thing, he goes online looking for a good explanation of what constitutes an aggravated kidnapping and then it's four a.m. and he's still reading about moratoriums and the size of death row cells and it's turns out aggravating circumstances just means use of a weapon or something and doesn't have anything to do with the state the victim gets returned in. "It wouldn't exactly be an eye for an eye," he tells the reporter when she calls at seven, right on time. "Seeing as how we got him back alive." That's not quite what he's supposed to say, but he's the only one willing and available to be quoted, and it's close enough.

He's supposed to testify at the hearing and the four of them are at Lance's, hanging by the pool, beers in hand like it's any other Sunday afternoon. Justin and Lance are chasing each other around the yard, Lance waving a very un-vegetarian hot dog in Justin's face. Justin shoves him back toward the pool and at the last second Lance grabs the hem of Justin's shirt and they tumble in together, fully clothed. JC's stretched out on his stomach and stray drops splash on his back and he flinches gently. Chris watches the guys wrestle in the deep end and then the Justinbot climbs out and does a backflip off of the diving board. One leg comes untucked and slaps the surface hard, splashing. It's close enough.

*

The first night they had Justin back, Chris had stood in the hallway where JC looked green under flourescent light and gone on and fucking on about how better doctors would fix everything. A real hospital, real doctors, this amnesia thing was just some kind of shock, and who wouldn't be in shock about it all. Especially waking up in San Antonio to boot. This was when having money made a difference, and Chris knew it wasn't going to be anything like when he was seven and his mom put a knife through her palm trying to peel a potato and it took four urgent care clinics and two storefront doctors' offices to find someone who would sew her up on the installment plan.

This was what having a safety net was supposed to be about. He'd bounced on the balls of his feet and clapped the neurosurgeon on the back and then he'd gone home and made love to JC like he didn't already know what the crescent of skin under JC's eighth vertebrae tasted like. In the morning JC had smiled before he even opened his eyes and Chris had gotten up like he had to take a leak. He'd shut the bathroom door and sat on the toilet lid, knees under his chin, pulse thudding in his chest, trying to imagine how he'd tell Justin about it all.

And then. Irreversible, the expensive new doctors said. The second expensive opinion was most likely permanent. "Forever," Lynn said in disbelief, and they said, "It's possible," like that was any kind of answer, and Chris didn't hit anything but not because he didn't want to. Things don't change, Chris thought. Nothing ever changed that much, not even with a safety net.

*

The judge says, "Did you think he was dead?"

Chris says, "Yes."

"You were all sure of it."

Chris scrubs at his palm where it rested on the Bible. He says, "I was."

The judge says she'll take the weekend to deliberate. JC holds his hand in the car on the way home. Chris wants JC to ask whether he'd have been so sure if it were JC and not Justin who'd been taken.

JC doesn't ask. Chris says it anyway.

"I don't, I know you and Lance and Lynn and everyone wanted to believe you could tell, but you know I don't, I'm not ever gonna be the guy who says that, and you should know that right now, because that's who, that's what this is."

"Okay," JC says.

"That's who I am," Chris says, jaw clenched, and JC kisses him and says he knows.

Over Saturday morning breakfast, Chris says, "Don't you want kids? Don't, doesn't your mom want you to have a big fucking wedding so she can have a pretty daughter-in-law and grandkids and shit?"

JC sets his egg sandwich back down. "No. And she just wants me to be happy."

Chris isn't hungry after all, and he watches the butter turn brown and burn. When it starts to smoke he switches off the gas. "You don't want till death do us part?" He lifts his eyes from the big stainless steel range.

JC watches him carefully and Chris knows like a clear bright sky that JC can see right through him. "Well, I'm happy with now," JC says, taking another bite. "What did you do to this bagel? It's good."

Chris waves the spatula toward the stove and sighs. "You just, you butter it, after you toast it, before you put the egg and cheese on. Extra grease equals goodness."

"It's really good," JC says.

Chris runs water and lemon Dawn into the frying pan and stares out the window. At his mom's new house the view to the street is so suburban he feels like Donna Reed. He always washes the dishes fast before he thinks too hard about the future. At his place the kitchen faces the backyard and landscaped green that goes on forever. The sink fills with suds and he dips his fingers in and out, drawing little waves. The only thing near where he'd grown up with that much grass was the city graveyard, miles of crosses dotting a slope of overrun weeds and molding plastic flowers.

He's supposed to call someone at Newsweek in twenty minutes to talk about victims' rights and then JC invited Justin for a Buffy marathon on FX. Chris isn't sure if it's for Justin's sake or his that JC likes to set them up on playdates where they don't have to talk much if they don't want to. Or can't find things to say. That still happens sometimes, Chris and Justin at some ballgame or after a movie and Chris doesn't mean to be a silent brooding asshole but it's not like he and the Justinbot have any real history to fall back on.

JC stacks his plate on the counter and kisses Chris on the cheek. "Thank you for cooking," he says. Chris shakes it off with a shrug and JC reaches across him to turn off the tap. "I'll clean," JC says, and nudges Chris's hip until he scoots over.

Chris's greener than green grass stretches out like a graveyard. He thinks Justin was a better friend than he ever gave him credit for. JC is a better boyfriend than he deserves.

*

"I -- I understand your stepfather committed suicide," she says. The phone in the office has a long cord and Chris ties it around his ankles in a slipknot and closes his eyes.

"One of them, yeah," he says. He's decided she'll have to work for it. No easy answers. No easy questions. No one should get off here without at least a few bruises. She waits, lets the silence stretch out like he's never been up against that trick before. They all seem a little surprised, like he should be so used to softballs from chicks at CosmoGirl or Seventeen that he won't know what they're really after. He waits.

"Can you tell me more about that?"

"I won't," he says. He says it nicely because it's her job to ask, but he's decided it's beyond the scope of his contract to answer. If she's trying to make him mad she'll have to do better than that. He was mad a lot at the beginning. The more he reads and lets words like mitigating circumstances bounce around his brain the more he wonders what kind of justice there is for a crime with such incalculable fallout. He waits.

"Do you, is your age a factor? I mean, do you feel like because you're older than the other guys, you have a different perspective?"

The framed photo of his mom and sisters that sits on the desk is speckled with dust and he rubs it against his shirt, wiping it clean. "I don't know," he says. "I don't actually know how they all feel about this. We're all, we're trying to move on, get back to making music. So it's not like we sit around and say, hey, JC, I like that new song but what do you think about the sanctity of human life?"

"So you think it's a moral question."

"Did I say that?"

"You said --"

"I think, if what you're asking is, I, yeah, I had a rough upbringing. I know people who have died, okay. I know better than to think that because we're pop stars we live in a world where people don't get hurt. Where people don't hurt each other. Do I think executing a guy on a technicality that has more to do with the war on drugs than a celebrity kidnapping is a good idea? Is, what did you say, moral?"

"Sure," she says. Somewhere behind her there are phones ringing and the low hiss of a tape recorder. JC comes into the room and puts his hand on Chris's shoulder.

"I don't think there's any good here," Chris says, holding the cool metal frame against his chest. "There is nothing remotely -- I don't think any of us would say we think something good is going to come out of all this."

He untangles the cord and hangs up. JC kneels in front of where he sits in the big desk chair.

"I wouldn't say it to them," JC says.

*

Justin brings veggie supreme pizza and beer. JC never stays for this part.

"This is about big, epic good versus evil and everlasting love, right?" Chris says around a mouthful of food. The Justinbot nods. He's patient with Chris's Buffy lectures, which almost makes up for the lack of pepperoni. "Except really it's just like other shows. TV writers are big dorks, so girls on TV always go for the losers," Chris says, pointing at Xander and Cordelia locked in a basement, just about to kiss. "It's like, the more lame a guy is, the more the hot girl wants him."

"He's kinda cute," Justin shrugs.

"Dude. Xander's a fucked-up little dork. And Angel's a vamp. Not exactly the guys you bring home to momma, you know."

"I just meant. Look. Oz isn't a loser. He's, like, maybe he's an underachiever. He's not a loser. He's smart and shit, and he still gets the girl."

Justin is earnest and it's not his fucking fault, Chris tells himself for the millionth time. It's not his fault. Chris says, "Yeah, and then it turns out she's a lesbian."

"Willow's a lesbian?" Justin's eyes are kind of wide and it's like he's more interested in the show now because it's kind of gay.

"We're not there yet." Chris thinks variety is important, so he gives JC something by a gay poet about every third book, like Neruda, Anne Carson and then Thom Gunn. JC liked the Anne Carson book about Keats best. Chris wonders if he and Justin could talk about gay writers without Justinbot mentioning Amy and what Amy reads and how Amy used to hang out with Alice Walker in college.

Justin merely nods, turns back to the TV. At the next commercial break, he says, "You're not a loser," with just enough hint of a grin that it's like the last nine months never happened.

"Fuck off," Chris says, but he's laughing, so even Justinbot knows he's not being serious and smiles back.

"And I don't think JC's going to turn out to be a lesbian, man."

"You keep implying I'm a loser and I will kick your ass," Chris says. "I don't care how much brain damage you got already."

Justin laughs heartily but even that sounds a little off, still, even after a tour and all this time. Just like Buffy, Chris thinks but doesn't say aloud. No one ever really dies, they just come back broken.

Justin pokes him in the shoulder. "What," he says.

Chris pops open another beer and says, "Death is my gift." It's almost late enough for obliquity, and that's better than choking on bile, so he says that part out loud and swallows half the can in one long pull.

"What?"

"It's -- it's a quote, it's from later. We're not there yet."

*

Chris is on his third or maybe fourth SportsCenter when JC comes home. Pittsburgh lost and Chris has it memorized in slow-motion. JC's hair is feathered like he's been driving around the whole time.

"The air was too soft to be inside," JC says, kissing him on the top of his head and settling on the couch beside him. "How was Buffy?"

Chris shrugs. "I think he's gonna make me watch West Wing next time, like a tape swap or something. Whatever. I played well with others." JC smiles and Chris pulls him over and onto his lap. "Do I get a gold star or something?" He snips at JC's bottom lip and runs his hands up JC's sides.

JC puts his arms around Chris's neck and curves his back out so he can rest his head on Chris's shoulder. Chris rubs his back and thinks he's not ever going to get over the shock of JC like this, stretched out for him. The prettiest boy in the world straddling him like it's a lap dance and all that it took to make this possible was his best friend getting reprogrammed.

JC stiffens and Chris closes his eyes, tries to will the tension from his shoulders. Lap dance. Pretty boy, lap dance, no whammies.

"This is good, right?" JC asks, voice gentle, almost scared.

Chris pushes JC gently back so they're looking at each other. Such a beautiful fucking boy and Chris twists a knife in his heart and doesn't even notice sometimes. "I didn't mean. I wasn't talking about, you know." JC blinks slow. "You," Chris says.

"We make our own history, right?" JC asks, and Chris nods even though it feels like a trick question. "Then we should make a good one. It's not like we met because of what happened. We'd known each other forever already."

"Yeah, but --"

"Why is it only the bad things that are forever?" JC asks, his lids heavy and eyes wet. "Why isn't this kind of forever a good thing? Shouldn't there be something to balance it out?"

JC kisses him, soft and pretty and as long as it lasts it's like things will be okay. Things are okay. Things will be okay. Chris has been in love with JC since before forever and there are mixed tears on their cheeks, they're crying and there will be sex later, sex and crying and the kiss goes on and on. It's the longest yet and it might be enough to last them through the rest.

*

Sunday night Johnny calls and says the judge gave the lawyer a heads-up on her decision. "Let's do this together," he says, so Chris and JC and their six bodyguards drive to the compound.

"Thank God," Lance says, one hand on his cross. "Oh, thank God. Finally this whole thing can just be over."

Justin looks down at the table and JC squeezes Chris's hand. Joey's on speakerphone from the Bahamas repeating the news to Kelly. Chris thinks he might throw up. There's no fucking safety net and one day he'll stop having to learn that over and over like he's the one without memories to remind him how the real world works.

"So we'll do a press conference tomorrow," Johnny says, "after she's read the sentence. I think Chris and maybe Justin should make a statement and take a few questions, and then we'll do a blackout till we're back in the studio, give everyone a chance to settle down and remember this is about the music."

"Not me," Chris says. Everyone looks at him, except Justin, who's still staring at the inlaid wood of the conference table.

Johnny says, calmly, "You're the one who --"

"You don't want to give me a microphone tomorrow," Chris says, forcing a laugh. "I've been, look. I've done a lot of these, I think it's. It's maybe getting to me or something." JC lays his hand on Chris's thigh and Chris breathes out shakily.

"It'll be short," Johnny says. "We'll write the statement before, and you can just read it, only one or two questions from reporters you've been talking to all along."

"Yeah, I don't think that's." He sighs. "Look, I'd rather not. I mean, it's like, I read the answers you guys give me and then I try to come up with something I can say that feels honest. So I wind up finding shit like how in Florida they let the guys on death row choose if they want to be electrocuted or be lethally injected."

"No questions," Johnny bargains.

Chris grits his teeth. "Did you know that their last meal can't cost more than twenty dollars to fix? And that all the ingredients have to be bought locally? And that kidnapping isn't even a fucking capital offense in this state, or, for that matter, anywhere except, like, Idaho and Kentucky?"

JC says his name, digs his fingers into Chris's leg.

"You want me to make a statement?" Chris bites off the words. "I can make a statement."

Lance glares at him, says, "Jesus, Chris, it's really not that --"

"Wait, I have an idea," Chris says, false cheer burning his frozen cheeks. "This is great. This solves everything. How about, how about we have Lance do it. He's ready to throw the switch himself. That's what people like to hear after they've decided to kill someone."

Justin sucks in his breath and it's quiet until Joey crackles on the speaker and says, "Uh, that was just a thing I heard wrong cause of the phone, right?" and then Lance is out of his chair, lunging for Chris and Chris throws off JC and grabs Lance by the shoulders.

"You fuck, don't put this on me," Lance growls in his face, and Chris shoves him and Lance falls against his empty chair and hits the floor. JC's scrabbling at Chris's arm, trying to hold him back, and Lance climbs back up to his feet. His fists are clenched at his sides, the momentum gathering in the pull of his biceps like wind in a sail.

Chris can't wait for Lance to hit him so he can hit back. The little fuck will cry and everyone will fawn over him and it will all be fucking perfect. "Yeah, things worked out pretty well for you, didn't they, Lance?" he sneers, stomach churning. "This is a perfect set-up for you. You get your groove on and still have the moral fucking authority to act like this is what Justin would have wanted."

Lance punches him and then bursts into tears. Chris rocks on his heels, dazed, and holds his cheek gingerly. JC tugs him away. Justin steps between them, puts his arms around Lance.

"Will someone please tell me what the fuck is going on?" Joey says, and Johnny picks up the phone.

Chris slides down the wall and stares at his shoe. Lance didn't even hit him very hard, and Chris would be pissed off about that except he doesn't feel angry anymore. Just really fucking tired. JC sits down crosslegged next to him and Chris says, "I'm sorry," even though he knows it's not JC he owes an apology to.

JC puts a hand on the back of Chris's neck and rubs it gently. "Oh, honey," he says, shaking his head.

It's not quite a rebuke but Chris feels like shit anyway. He loves JC more than anything in the fucking world and it's like things shouldn't even touch him he's so beautiful. Chris tries not to fall into the wrong kind of forever. "I'm sorry," he says again, and JC gathers him up and he cries into JC's neck. His shoulders hitch and JC pets his hair and whispers in his ear, nothing Chris can really hear now, but he keeps the shadow of the words tucked away like a promise. He mouths "I love you" into JC's skin and blinks back more tears.

When he finally looks up Justin and Lance have sat down there, too, the four of them making a little circle on the floor. Chris swipes a hand across his nose.

Lance sniffs. "They, they took him, you know," he says, holding Justin's hand like he'll get lost if he lets go. "They did this to him, and I don't think I'm a monster for thinking they should pay for that. It wasn't just a technicality."

Chris nods, exhales through his teeth. "I'm an asshole," he says. "Your hand okay?"

Lance almost smiles and Justin plants a loud kiss on Lance's knuckles. "Nuthin' some ice won't fix up right quick," Justin says, and he doesn't really look pissed at all.

"Yeah, J," Chris says, and JC rubs little circles on Chris's lower back as he falters. "I didn't mean --"

"Yeah you did," Justin says softly. "But it's, it's okay." He darts a look at Lance. "I think that too, sometimes. I mean, I wonder what he, what I would do. I don't know. But I know you weren't saying it to be an asshole."

"Yeah I was," Chris says. JC pats his back.

"Yeah, well," Justin says. "Don't do it again, then. I hit a hell of a lot harder than Lance."

"I remember," Chris says, and then bites his lip. "Fuck, I. Fuck."

Justin stands up, reaches out a hand to Chris. "You buy the beer on Tuesday and you can tell me all about it."

END.

Onto the conclusion of the series, part 5, You Think That I'm Strong