Bitter and Smiling
     by Julad

     [This owes rather a lot of inspiration to lovely images put in my head 
     by BadBatz, Wax Jism, and Helen.]
     __________________________________________________________________________


     Justin thinks, maybe, he might like Chris, in a way he's not used to
     liking people.  Guys.  Men.  Because Chris might zoom around like a
     moquito on acid, but he's a man, too--twenty-six and three years of
     college and five years of working late nights and long hours; he's sending
     money to his family when he gets it, and he's lived in trailer parks and
     dorms and in shabby flats by himself, and when he talks about landlords
     and union regulations and the cost of a new distributor for a '74 Volvo,
     he's obviously independent in a way that Justin, at sixteen, can't quite
     fathom.

     Chris is twisting in knots with rage over Lou's latest schedule, and the
     fact that Lance will miss two exams and nobody gets to go home for Easter.
     Joey has to dance twice a day on a twisted ankle which never heals, and
     JC's been told to get rid of his girlfriend, who's funny and really smart,
     and makes them all grill cheese sandwiches for breakfast when she stays
     over.  They had agreed, again, to take a stand over it, and then Lou
     dropped by as they were packing up to leave, and introduced them to a new
     act.  They're a four-piece with two athletic black guys who smile so
     suddenly and broadly that you have to smile back, and the exotic beauty--a
     guy with long copper ringlets and a model's cheekbones whose arrogance
     makes him macho, and the obligatory young one with shy-baby eyes the girls
     are going to weep for.  Justin knows he's not that cute.  JC knows he and
     Lance can't smile like that.  Joey knows he doesn't have that kind of
     face.  Nobody complains about the schedule.

     "They can't sing like us, though," Chris says, gritting his teeth.

     "How do you know?" JC lets his eagerness show.

     "*Nobody* sings like us."  Chris stands up and picks up his bag.  "Fucking
     nobody."

     Joey lets a slow smile creep onto his face, and that's the signal for the
     rest of them to relax, to let it slide away again.  "Nobody," JC repeats,
     and although they don't start singing, they can feel the potential in
     their throats and in their lungs.  Justin imagines he can see that force,
     joining them all one to the other like a glowing gold pentagon.  They grab
     their stuff and make for the doorway, but Chris waves as he turns left in
     the corridor.

     "You guys go ahead.  I'm gonna go upstairs and talk to Lou."  

     Justin's stomach does a weird flip at the sight of him, rudely spiked hair
     and black stubble disappearing around the corner, the shirt with ripped-
     off sleeves from an Iron Maiden concert he went to twice.  His mind offers
     up a montage of Chris-shots as he walks to JC's car--leather pants,
     tattooed calf, glasses and a thick dusty book, maroon-painted fingernails
     slapping the strings of his battered bass guitar.  A man who won two
     hundred dollars pool-sharking last weekend.  A man with a scar on his
     face.  A man who sorts out his own problems.

     Justin thinks that it should make him feel older, his outrage and his fury
     when Chris comes home that night, ten-thirty and a tightly clamped jaw,
     stinking of beer and vibrating with the restrained adulthood which has
     been forced back into a box too childish to hold it.  The bruise on his
     face tells the rest of the story--it's several hours old--and *fuck*,
     Justin thinks, Chris should have left Lou with a black eye and a bleeding
     mouth for that.  He can picture it happening--Lou's fat face pink and
     surprised, the tattoo on Chris' arm flexing and shifting and his eyes
     flashing under strong eyebrows as he tells Lou that they're not gonna take
     it anymore.

     He knows it didn't happen like that.  He's pretty sure, from the bitter,
     glittering fury Chris hides under his sullen defeat, that he knows what
     did happen.  Justin might be young but he knows how it works; remembers
     the first producer at MMC who drew him aside and said, "I didn't like your
     sloppiness today, I should get rid of you now," and how terrified he'd
     been, and what he'd done to make sure he didn't lose his place in the
     show.  He got good at recognising the perverts, eventually, and his Mom
     was there more than some other kids' parents, but he couldn't be perfect
     all the time, and he got good at staying out of the way but you couldn't
     avoid them every minute of every single day, and his Mom couldn't always
     be there. 

     "Don't think about it," JC told him once, after Justin couldn't slip
     through the fingers of  a guy who liked it rough.  "Somebody'll tell their
     parents soon."  And eventually a couple of kids would drop out and one
     producer would disappear, but soon there'd be another.  By then, though,
     Justin already knew that the stayers, like JC and himself, were the ones
     who didn't tell anybody anything, who dumbly shook their heads with wide
     eyes whenever an adult asked them oblique questions about the recently-
     departed.

     He knows Lou is that way, too, the heavy breathing as he dresses them all
     like dolls, but Lou is smarter than the MMC weirdos.  Whatever he does, he
     doesn't do it to Justin.  Not to Joey, either, but sometimes Justin
     suspects JC is protecting both of them, the way JC's shoulders slump on
     late nights, like the burden on them is too heavy.  He has a feeling that
     Lou knows better than to try it on Lance, who flirts with him like an
     angel and reveals a wolf's teeth when he smiles up adoringly.  All the
     better to take you for everything you've got, Lance seems to be thinking,
     hugging back happily whenever Lou puts his arms around them.  It might
     just be, though, that Lance is perkily clueless in his nervous eager way,
     and Lou is biding his time for the perfect moment to take him, and Justin
     is reading his own wish-fulfillment into a scenario where somebody,
     *anybody*, is smarter than Lou.  Lance will probably come home one day,
     cheeks white and moving his limbs a little jerkily, with a cheerful smile
     papered on his face which hides nothing from people who've been there and
     done that and bought the t-shirt which says "EVERYTHING'S FINE!" and under
     it, in tiny subdued letters, "I will never be the same again".

     None of which explains why Justin feels so disappointed by Chris, by the
     way he opens the fridge and drinks orange juice from the carton and wipes
     his mouth crudely and then kicks the fridge door shut.  

     Like a teenager would do.

     Justin wants to be the man about it, but since the only man in the band
     can't be a man anymore, Justin doesn't bother trying.  Instead, he walks
     slowly over to Chris, and takes the carton from his hand and puts it on
     the bench and puts his hand on Chris' shoulders and bends his neck and
     rests his forehead against Chris' clammy neck.  "I love you," he says--
     because what else is there that he could possibly say?--and slides his
     arms down until they circle Chris' waist with evident intent.

     Chris starts violently, and then shoves him up against the pantry door.
     Justin hears the crack of his head against the wood more than he feels it.
     "What do you think you're doing, boy?" Chris sneers, eyes narrowed and
     glittering, chest heaving as he breathes through his nose.

     "I know what I'm doing," Justin tells him, with the part of himself which
     evolved on MMC, the part which is chilled and adult and in perfect control
     of how he feels about the hundred raging storms which toss him around like
     a rag doll.  He slides down the door until he's kneeling, and looks up to
     see biceps flicker in bare arms as Chris braces himself.

     "Justin, don't," Chris says, but he's hard, and his feet are shifting
     restlessly.  

     "It's okay," Justin says, and it *is*, because if Chris doesn't want to
     put him through this, it makes a world of difference.  He pushes up the t-
     shirt and undoes the jeans to reveal a cock flushed and angry, throbbing
     with adrenalin fury.  "I can take it," Justin whispers, and then parts his
     lips, and this time he feels rather than hears his own head banging
     against the door with the force of Chris' thrusts.

     "Shit," Chris is saying, with tight-throated despair, "shit, shit, shit,"
     in a dozen strands of abraded perfect pitch.  Justin hugs his thighs and
     swallows harder, Chris bangs his forehead against the door, hard, in time
     with his thrusts, and then gasps, and then moans like he's dying, and
     shudders against Justin's tongue.  Justin feels it all the way down his
     throat, and the dry sobs above him are rich with regret and latent purity.

     Justin ducks his head away and gives Chris a chance to leave; when he
     looks up, Chris is sitting on the bench, staring distractedly at the juice
     carton.  He rubs at his face roughly.

     "How-- You-- you're just a baby," Chris says softly.  Brokenly.  Like he 
     hadn't known.

     "I'm--" Justin doesn't know what he is, times like this.  He doesn't know
     what Chris is, either--this man with his bruise and his lips twisting
     bitterly and his rough hair catching the light as his head tilts back and
     his eyes stare at the ceiling like tears will pour out if he looks away.
     They're some freak-show mirror-image of one another, he realises--what
     gave the youth his small adulthoods poisons the adult with putrefying teen
     angst.

     Justin thinks, maybe, he can be something for this man.  It's something
     he's accustomed to being, but it's something he's not used to liking.
     Chris might be ten years older and Justin might find that irrestistible,
     but there's some growing up which Justin has done and Chris hasn't.
     Justin thinks that he'll try to keep Chris young for as long as he can,
     and the thought gives him a warmth he doesn't quite understand, but it
     feels good, so he smiles about it.  Slowly, Chris smiles back.  

     end