Beauty's Gentle Pleasures
     by Julad.

     Y'all can blame or thank Wax for letting me out of mprov duty to finish
     this. <g>

     * * * * *

     "Nuh uh.  You can take that stuff," Chris said, pointing an accusing
     finger at Marie and backing slowly away, "and shove it up your ass."

     "Just following orders, okay?  Lou said you need it."  The look on her
     face was unsympathetic.  She had, Joey noticed, very thin eyebrows.

     "Just do it," JC said.  JC had had a five-minute haircut and was done.

     "Fuck off," Chris told him.  "I bet it hurts like a bitch."

     Lance put down his magazine, and wiped his nose.  The peroxide always made
     his eyes water. "Stop such being a fucking girl," he said, and coming from
     Lance that was kinda funny, especially since his eyebrows were fine and
     curved, and he was pretty as a canary in a tight t-shirt with yellow
     flowers on it, and had red, swollen, leaky eyes from the fumes. But he
     wasn't complaining.

     Chris glared at him and threw himself in the dentist's chair thing.  Marie
     tipped his head back and combed a bit and then smeared the red stuff
     everywhere, and said, "this'll sting a bit," and then ripped the wax off.

     "FUCK!" Chris shrieked and shot out of the chair, holding his eyebrow.
     "Jesus *fuck*."  He hopped around the room on one foot, squealing.

     "Get back here," Marie ordered.

     Chris paused, genuinely surprised, a pretty stupid look when he still had
     one foot in the air and a big row of the red stuff clinging to his left
     eyebrow like a shiny caterpillar, and his right eye was glowing hot pink
     and blinking furiously.  "Fuck *off*," he said, but Marie was unmoved.

     "It's on there now and the longer you leave it, the more it'll hurt."

     Lance shook his head sadly.  "She speaks the truth, man."

     "I'll wash it off."

     "You can't," Marie informed him.  "It doesn't come off, Mister."

     "Then let me do it myself."

     "It hurts worse that way," Lance said, sniffling again and rubbing his
     nose in annoyance.

     "I fucking *quit*," Chris said, and sat down again.  Marie gripped his
     chin and ripped off the rest of it, and didn't let go when Chris kicked
     his legs and slapped at her arms and called her a sadistic pox-ridden
     cunt.  She pulled out tweezers and started plucking, and from the grim
     line of her mouth and the vicious jerks of her elbow and the way Chris
     kept going "ow fuck ow *fuck* ouch FUCK woman," Joey guessed she hadn't
     liked that.

     "There," she said eventually, and let him go.  Chris, hand across his
     eyebrows, got a pack cigarettes from his bag and headed straight for the
     door.

     "I'm telling Lou on you," Justin said, because Justin was young and stupid
     and all hoity-toity about smoking.

     "Lou can go to hell," Chris said, as JC said, "don't provoke him, you
     dick."

     Marie took her hands off her hips, consulted her memo, and pointed to
     Joey.

     Joey felt his stomach flip awkwardly.  "*Me*?"

     "Yes, you," and Joey thought about objecting, and arguing, and refusing.
     He really, *really* wanted to do those things, but he'd seen where it had
     got Chris, so he got up and sat down in a chair which now *really*
     reminded him of the dentist.

     "Can you do it gentle?" he asked, and Marie shook her head.

     "You don't need much off," she said, not unkindly.  "Close your eyes and
     hold the chair arms."

     And it was hot and gooey and sort of tingly on his skin, and he could feel
     it kinda *solidifying*, then she scratched it with her fingernails and
     said "deep breath" and *ripped*, and it was like a thousand wasps had
     stung his eyelid.  He was vaguely aware of his tongue between his teeth,
     and weirdly, his hands flew up and clawed his chest, and then there was a
     scratching somewhere in the red-hot-painful vicinity of his eyes and then
     the pain redoubled.

     "Oh, god," he found himself saying, and there were a few more bee stings
     which faded into a quiet burn and then she said, "you're done."

     Joey staggered out of the chair and touched his own face, gingerly.  His
     eyes were watering like mad, the room blurry and twisting a little.

     "Come here," Lance said, and Joey followed the sound of his voice and the
     smell of peroxide, and let Lance lower his head into his lap.  "This makes
     it feel better."  He stroked Joey's eyebrows gently, and Joey didn't have
     the heart to tell him not to fucking touch it.

     He closed his eyes against the tears which wouldn't quit.  "I can't
     believe you do this voluntarily."

     "That's because I have, like, an inch-thick monobrow," Lance said, and
     Joey realised that Lance's fingers were soft and sweet and soothing on his
     burning skin.  "You've seen my grandfather, right?"

     "Ew," Joey said faintly.

     "Yeah, ew.  All the kids at school called me Goliath.  My mom waxed it so
     I'd *really* have something to cry about."

     "Your mom's a real bitch, isn't she."  It was an effort, but Joey opened
     his eyes and blinked and smiled up at him.

     Lance grinned, and raised an eyebrow.  He probably did that a lot, Joey
     thought, but now he couldn't help but notice it.  "My momma don't take no
     shit from some whining thirteen-year-old," he said cheerfully.  And Joey
     thought maybe the Fatone family slogan was probably "food, guilt,
     togetherness", but the Bass family slogan was definitely more like, "suck
     it up, dude."  Well, he couldn't imagine Mrs Bass telling Lance to suck it
     up, but in that house if you didn't like something, you shut the fuck up
     or you did something about it, and if what you had to do about it sucked,
     well, you shut the fuck up about that, too.

     "Feeling better?" Lance said eventually, and to Joey's surprise, he was;
     the pain which had seemed so unbearable a minute ago was just an awkward
     tingling.  But he didn't say so, and Lance kept touching him with cool,
     steady hands until Marie yelled and Lance got up without complaining and
     sat down to have his hair rinsed out.


     * * * * *

     Sharing a bus with Lance, Joey learned a lot about pain and beauty.  He'd
     wake up to find Lance's eyes streaming tears, and purple goo on his
     eyebrows.

     "It's the fucking blond hair," Lance said, trying to make coffee nearly
     blind.  "They don't want my eyebrows to give it away, which is fucking
     bullshit, because they show roots after a week."

     Joey took the coffee from his hand and sat him down.  Lance wiped his eyes
     and swayed with the rocking of the bus, and said nothing but a calm
     "thanks, man," when Joey put his mug down in front of him.

     Later, though, when Lance had washed off his face, and the sun beamed onto
     him through the bus window as he read, Joey couldn't help thinking how
     radiant Lance was, young and pale and golden with some kind of exotic
     mystery implied in the pinkness which rimmed his eyes.


     * * * * *

     "Here," Lance said, taking the tweezers from Joey's fingers.  "I'll do
     it."

     Joey let himself be maneuvered back onto his bunk.  "I'm *trying*," he
     whined, feeling vaguely pathetic and useless.  "But it still hurts."

     "You could go back to Marie," Lance said gently, but Joey shook his head.
     "Okay, no, that's fine," and Lance disappeared into their tiny bathroom
     and came back with a wet cloth.  "Close your eyes," and the cloth was
     surprisingly hot on Joey's face.

     "Lance, what the hell--"

     "It hurts less," Lance explained, climbing up to straddle Joey's waist. He
     put one cool, heavy hand on Joey's forehead, and stared intensley down as
     he plucked, thumb smoothing the wrinkles from Joey's brow as fast as they
     could form.  Joey felt himself twitching spastically between Lance's
     gripping thighs, but it was over in a few minutes, and then the cloth was
     back, cold with relief.

     "Thanks," Joey mumbled.

     Lance licked his thumb and use it to smooth across Joey's eyebrows.  "Not
     a problem."  He licked his thumb again, and Joey stared at it, pink
     wetness reaching out and laving pale skin which descended again to his
     face, and Joey closed his eyes and let Lance touch him until the bus
     pulled into a rest stop somewhere south of Atlanta.

     * * * * *

     Joey stared at the tiny heart-shaped patch of fine brown hair, in the
     center of Lance's chest, and felt vaguely like it would be killing baby
     animals.

     "You don't *have* to..." he insisted.  "Nobody has ordered you to, or
     anything."

     "It's okay, really.  I. uh. Ikindoflikeit," Lance confessed.

     "Say *what*?" but Lance didn't answer him, just said,

     "do it before it cools down," and put the spatula in his hands.

     Joey got the tub of wax and scooped it up and smeared it on, and Lance
     looked down and said, "no, thinner" so he smeared it more, spreading it
     downwards and upwards and across the subtle lines of Lance's pecs, and
     then Lance said, "the paper, quick," so Joey picked it up and smoothed it
     right down the sticky centre of Lance's chest until it stuck, and then sat
     there, looking at it ripple as Lance breathed in and out.

     "Grip the bottom of it," Lance ordered, "and you're pulling it
     *backwards*, right? Straight back up so it's kind of folded in two as you
     pull up."

     Joey got his fingers around the paper, shifted them till he had a grip. He
     could see the smushed up hairs through the wax and paper, and his eyebrows
     were stinging with the memory, and there had been a girl the other week
     who was called Marie and who didn't seem so sexy after he found her name
     out.  "I can't do it," he confessed, and sat back. 

     Lance sat up and grabbed his hand and put it back on his chest.  "It sucks
     when I do it to myself.  Just-- do it.  Breathe in, rip, breathe out."

     Lance's skin was warm, his voice soft and urgent.  Joey breathed in and
     got a grip and twisted his shoulder so he had the right angle and closed
     his eyes and... ripped.

     Lance hissed under him and Joey opened his eyes to see a yellow hairy bit
     of paper dangling from his hand, and screamed, and dropped it.

     "Oooh, fuck," Lance gasped, blinking rapidly.  His chest had a huge red
     stripe up the middle of it now.  He flopped back on the couch, stomach
     fluttering as he breathed shallowly.  

     Joey picked up the paper by the corner and dropped it in the bin.  "You
     said you *liked* it," he accused.  

     Lance smiled dreamily, still panting.  "I do.  Not the pain, but-- Not at
     first, but now it's kinda... nice." He ran his fingers down the stripe,
     and shivered.

     "Christ."  Joey shook his head and fumbled for the aloe-vera gel.  "Do you
     want--"

     "Mmm.  Yeah."  The skin was incredibly hot under his fingers.  Hot, and
     smooth, searing up through the gel.  "That is *so* nice," Lance whispered,
     arching up under him.

     "I--" Joey said, and Lance lifted a lazy arm up and gripped the back of
     his neck, and pulled him down.  The gel tasted bitter, and the skin was
     salty, but the wax was incredibly sweet.  "What--" Joey asked, confused.

     "It's sugar wax," Lance said, and held up a sticky finger to Joey's lips.
     "Sweet," he said, a deep throaty sigh, and Joey lowered his head and drew
     the finger into his mouth.

     "Smooth," he mumbled distractedly, wrapping his tongue around a manicured
     fingernail, trailing his hand across perfectly velvety bare skin.


     * * * *

     Lance threw the last bottle onto the wastepaper basket.  "I want a
     ceremonial burning," he announced.

     "Dude, that's so toxic," Chris said.  "The *fumes*."

     Lance stared at him, face vaguely disdainful.  "No fucking *shit*,
     Sherlock," he sneered.

     His radiance was gone with the baby blondness, Joey mused, but the dark
     roots had brought with it a different kind of beauty, a New Orleans-like
     lushness gone wild, an old-world feminine beauty sprawled haphazardly
     across a new and savage land.  

     "Put it on me," he found himself saying.  

     "Put what. the *bleach*?" JC said, surprised.

     Chris fished out the bottles and looked them over, shaking one absently.
     "What for?"

     Justin shook his head.  "I keep telling you he's a natural blond."

     Lance held out his hand and Chris handed him the stuff.  "You'd look
     awful," he said, sizing Joey up with his eyes.  "Let me think about it."

     Later that night, Joey sat at the hotel suite table while Lance combed the
     last of his bleach through Joey's hair, and they talked desultorily about
     Denzel Washington and Andrew Lloyd Weber and Marlowe until Lance scratched
     some off and pronounced it good enough, and packed him into the shower to
     rinse.  When he came back out again, Lance took the bright pink dye and
     rubbed it gently through Joey's hair.  This time, though, they sat in
     silence, and Lance massaged Joey's scalp until he'd drifted off into a
     land of soft clouds and cool hands and strange, unexpected pleasures, and
     Lance's low voice telling him it was time to wake up, baby, you're all
     done now.

     Staggering out of the shower for the second time, blearily wide awake and
     dazed from an endless flood of bright water, and seeing a stranger in the 
     mirror with violent hair and a stained towel around his shoulders, Joey was
     stopped short by the way Lance was looking at him, hungry and vulnerable 
     and adult.

     "You look so pretty now," he blurted.

     "I... yeah," Lance breathed, and stepped closer with dreamlike slowness to
     drape his arms around Joey's neck.  There was a bed under them, and lips
     against his, and smooth, smooth skin, and a building urgency to which Joey
     whimpered his need.

     "You can--" Lance offered, straddling him.

     "That's, no."  Joey rolled them onto their sides, and got his legs around
     Lance's waist.  Lance moaned and shoved against him.

     "It'll hurt you," he gasped, gripping Joey's arms with needy fingers.

     "No, I know," Joey said, kissing him again, hungrier than ever for it.  "I
     want you to."

     "I know it hurts," Lance said again, five minutes later, spreading his
     fingers until Joey was shivering with pain and thrusting himself backwards
     for more of it.  "But it's *good*.  Is it?"

     Joey could only moan his agreement.  And when Lance pressed him down on
     the bed and filled him with a cock way larger than anything Joey could
     have imagined could feel good, it felt better than anything ever had.  

     "God," he found himself saying, as the pain rose up and covered him,
     stroked his spine and spread warmly from his ass through to his limbs to
     his fingertips and toes, "god, that's beautiful."

     "Yeah," Lance gasped, slamming forward, sending lightning across the
     entire surface of his skin, "I know."

     * * * *


     "Want me to hold your hand?" Lance laughed.

     "Shut up," Joey snapped. "I didn't need you the first five times."

     Lance grinned at him, cheshire like.  "You look scared, is all I'm
     saying."

     "Well, not that you'd *know*," and Joey glared at him, "but this is ten
     times worse than a stupid eyebrow wax.  And up the top is, you know,
     cartilege. So it's twenty times worse."

     "Eyebrows don't hurt," Lance said blithely, and Joey looked up to catch
     him checking his eyebrows in the tiny salon mirror.

     "Do so."

     "Do not."

     "So be a man and get yourself pierced then," Joey said, as the assistant
     wiped his ear with something cool and stinging.

     "No way."

     "Chicken."

     "Am not."

     "Chicken."

     "Shut *up*."

     "BWAAAWWWWK, bok bok b- *FUCK*" Joey reached over and gripped Lance's hand
     as the gun snapped loudly and his stomach lurched and the room spun in
     bruise-like shades of red and purple.  "Oooh, *fuck*."  Lance stopped
     laughing and squeezed his hand, and rubbed the back of his neck and
     stroked his shoulders until the pain receded to the tiny patch of his ear
     that felt as big as a watermelon.  "Chicken," Joey squawked weakly,
     blinking back tears.  

     "Fuck you," Lance said happily, brushing the hair to the side to study it.
     "Wow. It's all red and stuff."  The assistant was sort of laughing and
     sort of looked like she was dying to call all of her friends, so Joey
     laughed too, and stood up, and didn't steady himself on Lance's shoulder
     when his knees buckled.  But in the car, Lance whispered "you look hot,"
     and licked it until the pain was gone.  

     A week later Joey was holding Lance's hand, and had to yank on his arm as
     Lance nearly swooned himself right off his chair.

     "Wooo," Lance giggled, dazed and grimacing, lifting his hand to touch the
     tip of his ear and then jerking it away.  "That really kills."

     That night, though, Joey bit down hard on Lance's ear as he fucked him,
     and Lance shuddered and came.


     * * * * *

     There was something utterly, utterly beautiful, Joey reflected, about the
     way Lance would lie back and sling his legs over Joey's shoulders, and
     say, "quick, fast, do it."  Hair in disarray, unselfconscious nudity and
     unselfconscious need, and sweet eyes closed and then flickering open again
     to stare at him with alien intensity.

     And the tightness, the brutal pressure on him as he pressed in, was a
     beautiful feeling, and Lance's shallow pants were beautiful sounds, too.


     * * * * *

     "Tattoos hurt worst on your shoulder blade," Chris said in a hotel room in
     Belgium, draining his third beer. "Worst pain you've ever had."

     "Yeah?" Lance and Joey said, and looked at one another with darkly-lit
     eyes.

     "God, not again."  JC went a little pale.  "Don't you *dare*."

     "I can think of *plenty* worse places to get one," Justin said slyly,
     chewing on red licorice and playing a toy keyboard one-handed.

     Joey looked thoughtful.

     "Don't you *dare*," Lance told him, glaring.

     "All the hoochies'd notice it," Chris pointed out.  "You could never fuck
     around again."

     Lance looked thoughtful.

     JC fainted.

     "Okay, fine," Joey said, pouring himself another JB.  "Shoulder blades.
     You in?" he asked the others.

     Justin shook his head.  "Y'all can play your freaky games without me,
     thanks."

     Chris hooted. "Hoo, baby, take me along and I'll *watch* it."

     They ended up sneaking out without Chris, in Amsterdam, and went into a
     place in that barely looked legal.  It was in a gay ghetto, though, so the
     guy didn't make anything of it when Lance lay down on the table and Joey
     lay down on top of him, and whimpered right into Lance's mouth when the
     needle buzzed into his skin.  By the time he was done, they were glued
     together with sweat, and gasping, and Joey was shuddering uncontrollably.

     Lance kissed Joey's swollen mouth, and brushed the sticky strands of hair
     back from his wet face, and they rolled over.

     "No, no," the tattoist told them, stopping them halfway, accent dense but
     still somehow camp. "Not like this--damaging new design. This way--"  He
     sat Joey up and spread his legs, and put Lance's head on Joey's thigh.
     After a moment's consideration, he opened a drawer and handed Joey a
     joint, and grinned.  "Even better fun," he said, and touched Lance's ass
     covetously as he set up again.  Lance whimpered and humped the table top,
     but Joey growled low and mean and hurting and hungry, and the guy backed
     off.

     Joey stroked Lance's hair as the needle plunged deep into Lance's back,
     and felt the vibrations of Lance's silent moans echo through his entire
     body.

     When they paid the tattooist, he shook his finger at them and said, "no
     licking.  No licking, one week, okay?"  They bathed together instead, in a
     steam-clouded bathroom and nothing but silence and gentle splashes.  Joey
     let his head tilt back as Lance cupped water and let it trickle down his
     back.  The world was glowing pretty, and his shoulderblade felt white-hot
     and sexy, and Lance rested his chin on his shoulder and Joey turned to
     face him and knew he'd never seen anything more beautiful than Lance's
     green cat-eyes right now, vibrant in a sea of red.

     "Pretty," Lance said, voice raw, and they giggled until Joey slid behind
     him and started licking carefully outside the new outline on his skin, the
     faint electric tang of blood and ink and soap on his tongue.  The shape
     was barely noticable under the mess of skin and scab--an outlined
     pitcher, stylised waves spilling from it.

     Later, as Joey dabbed the antibacterial stuff onto the tattoo, Lance said,

     "So when are we getting them coloured?"

     and Joey laughed into the pillow and said, "soon," and was flipped over, 
     and Lance's lips were on his shoulder, and cool, steady fingers stroked his
     back, right where he knew the bull's horns would be.


     * * * * *
     end