Favourite 
    by Julad


    Chris' room was the common room this time.  Joey did the bye-bye-bye-bye
    knock, the one that had evolved into their latest code without anybody
    discussing it.  "Yeah," JC yelled, and Joey slipped inside.

    Justin was all over Lance, getting really into it, shimmying his ass up
    and down while Lance lay back with a cat's smile and his legs spread,
    letting him do all the work.  Joey perched on the end of the couch and
    watched for a while, enjoying it, until heat unfurled in his stomach, and
    he wanted some too. Lance looked like an engraved invitation, was watching
    Joey's reaction with heavy-lidded eyes, but Justin would get hissy if Joey
    moved in on his current turf.

    He flopped down on the floor next to Chris, who was reading. "Hey."

    "Hey," Chris said, and turned the page.  On the couch, Lance groaned
    loudly, and Justin cackled in victory.  Joey reached for Chris' pants, but
    he was stopped.

    "Not now, I wanna finish this."

    "What is it?"  Joey used the excuse of reaching for it to drape himself
    across Chris.  Lance was gasping now, 'come on, come *on*', and Justin was
    gasping too, but holding still, his arms quivering as they bore his weight.

    Chris pushed him off.  "Harder than sixth grade, Joey. Go fuck JC.  He
    needs it."

    "I heard that," JC said, from behind his laptop.

    "I didn't hear you denying it," Chris smirked.

    "I don't wanna fuck JC.  Come on, just for ten minutes."

    From the couch, Justin hooted.  "*Two* minutes, Chris, man, that's all it
    takes."  Under him, Lance seized the moment and bore down hard; Justin
    gasped, and started thrusting again.

    Joey tried to get his head into Chris' lap.  Chris shoved him off.  "JC,
    will you come over here and screw this bastard?  I'm begging you."

    "Sorry, man."  JC was smirking.  "Joey and I don't do that shit."

    A laconically raised eyebrow.  "Yeah, right."

    "We don't," Joey insisted.  "I never fool with JC.  C'mon. Help me,
    Christopher-Wan, you're my only hope."

    Chris put his book down.  Victory, Joey thought, but Chris yelled to the
    other two. "Did you guys fucking *hear* that?"  He had that 'dog, bone'
    look on his face.

    "Hear what?" Lance panted.

    "Chris, shut up," Justin snapped.

    JC was packing up his laptop.  Chris was on top of him before he could
    escape.  "These two don't fuck."

    "Fucking *what*?"  Justin stopped fucking again.

    "You're kidding, right," Lance said, struggling up onto his elbows.  They
    were both coated in sweat, but seemed suddenly oblivious to the fact that
    Justin was deep in Lance's ass.

    "How is it *possible* that you two have never--" Chris was gesturing
    frantically.

    "It's just that--" JC started.

    "It would be, like--" Joey started.

    "Kinda incestuous," JC said.

    Joey stared at him.  "I thought it was more the fat and skinny thing."

    "That's kinda, you know, really *stupid*," Chris said, scorn-city.  "It's
    a Dumb and Dumber thing.  Joey.  Screw the man. JC, take a pill and enjoy
    it."

    Chris had got himself into game show mode.  He was gonna start talking
    about Contestant Number Two in a second, and the grand prize jackpot of
    getting filthy on your friend's private parts. It *was* incestuous, Joey
    realised.  JC was like his *brother*. He didn't wanna do *that* to his
    *brother*.

    "It's too gross, man."

    "Joey," Lance said.  "It is *not* gross."

    "You two are really weird.  Just do it and get it over with." Conversation
    apparently concluded to his satisfaction, Justin slapped Lance's thigh.
    "Shake that ass, mother."  Lance remembered what he was in the middle of,
    and obliged.

    "Let's go, boys!"  Chris took Joey's arm and JC's arm and led them into
    the adjoining room.  "The Honeymoon Suite. Call out if you need anything!
    Candles, oil..."

    "Marshmallows," Lance yelled after them.

    "Marshmallows?"  JC said, surprised.  Chris ducked out, slamming the door
    shut.  "*Marshmallows?*"

    "Never mind," Joey mumbled. He was kinda pissed at that; he'd thought it
    was private.  But Lance getting fucked said a lot of brainfart things.

    "I don't hear any fucking!" Chris yelled from the other side of the door.

    "One day I'll tell you what 'foreplay' means," Joey yelled back.  

    He could hear plenty of fucking outside, though.  Justin and Lance were
    working themselves up to the big boom.  Fuck, Joey thought.  A few more
    minutes and Justin would have wandered off in search of Coke and
    sandwiches, and he could have had a hot, sweaty, sated Lance, could have
    slid his cock into Lance's loose ass and looked down into green eyes glazed
    with overstimulation and lust.  Instead he had JC standing around like a
    dork, and Chris listening in.  The noises from the couch reached a
    crescendo.  Lance's ragged moaning made Joey shiver with disappointment.
    Okay, so he wasn't gonna get laid tonight.

    "Let's just get smashed," he said, opening the not-so-mini bar. He poured
    four shots of Cuervo, and got out two beers. JC was all for that; they one-
    two-three'd and slammed the first one, took a mouthful of beer, and then
    slammed the second one. Perfect rhythm, oh yeah.

    "Don't make me come in there," Chris yelled.

    "I'll show 'em how it's done," Joey heard Justin say. Lance rumbled
    something inaudible.

    "That little prick," JC scowled.  "What I wouldn't give for thirty
    seconds' recovery time."

    Joey jerked his head towards the bed, feeling the tequila sloosh through
    his veins and up to his head.  They jumped on it, hard enough to make the
    springs squeak. JC gave off a convincing "oof".  Out of the corner of his
    eye, he saw the door open a crack, and stripped off his shirt.  The door
    closed again.

    JC signalled 'oops, drinks', got up and retrieved their beers, and two
    more.  Joey drained his first bottle, and set it down on the carpet with a
    satisfied sigh loud enough to reach Chris, if he was still listening.  "I'm
    still fucking horny," he complained.

    "Make yourself at home," JC offered.  "I'll just take a nap." He was
    serious, apparently--plumped up some pillows and lay down.

    "You dumb fuck. I can't jerk off with you sleeping right there."

    "Never stopped you before," JC said, mildly.

    Which was how everything had started, really.  You couldn't spank the
    monkey in private with five guys on one bus, and hearing had become
    listening and then watching and then all restraints were off once a wasted
    Justin had said to a more-wasted Chris, "gimme fifty bucks, and I'll do
    ya." 

    Still, it didn't feel right with JC.  The guy was just not... not Lance.
    Or Justin.  Or Chris.  He was *JC*, for chrissakes. The guy who wrote lame
    poetry and lived in sex chatrooms and Joey loved the guy but JC was just.
    Not sexy.

    And jerking off in front of him didn't appeal to Joey, but fuck, he was
    horny.  Sighing, Joey slipped his hand inside his shorts.  Lance; Lance out
    on the couch right now, probably still naked.  Maybe thinking of him in
    here.  Or maybe not; you never knew with Lance, and whether he thought
    anything about any of it.  He pushed that out of his head, picked up his
    second beer in his left hand, and drank deeply.  Beside him, JC had his
    eyes closed, breathing deeply.

    Joey squirmed down a little on the bed, and got comfortable. He had a nice
    buzz happening now, a little headspin to take the edge off.  Lance, the
    first time they'd done this, while Chris and Justin were bickering about
    the right way to give head. Joey had been as wasted as any of them,
    snorting and waving his paralytic limbs around as the blurry Chris-shape
    had dragged the blurry blond curls into his lap, and Justin had choked and
    said, "fuck off, cunt," and Chris said he wanted his fifty bucks back.

    "Fuckbrain, you didn't give it to him yet," Lance slurred, and he and Joey
    fell off the couch together and rolled around laughing on the floor of the
    bus, pissing themselves at Chris and Justin trying to sort out in
    monosyllables who was doing what to who.  Eventually they had, though, and
    it wasn't funny anymore, and Joey hadn't known what to do until Lance
    crawled onto him, and the rest of his memories were of low rumbles and
    long, sly kisses that felt, well, *Southern*, and a CD case cracking under
    his shoulder, and JC two feet away, sleeping through everything, and the
    surprised, stupid thought like a broken record in his head: 'I'm getting
    off, I'm getting off, holy *fuck* am I getting off on this'.

    He was getting off on it now, all right.  He shoved his shorts down, got a
    better grip, and remembered more: waking up with ten thousand girls' off-
    key shrieking inside his head, but with a heavy body on top of him that
    nearly made the pain go away. Lance fucking him for the first time, a
    locked dressing room backstage in Chicago, and how he'd gone onstage
    feeling like the *man*, knowing he was the hottest shit this town had ever
    seen because Lance, clinging to his back and gasping, had said so, over and
    over.

    Desperate sex, during the lawsuit, when both Justin and Chris had their
    hands full with JC, who was taking it hardest, and Lance, who was working
    all night and smiling for the cameras all day, would cling to him while
    Joey tried everything he could think of to get him to sleep.  Lance arching
    his back and purring as Joey slid into him.  Fooling around, in front of
    the other guys, trying to get Lance to lose control for him, or loving the
    feeling of being in the middle of it when somebody walked in.

    "Who are you thinking about?" JC asked.

    *Shit*.  Joey yanked his shorts back up.  JC was lying, facing him, and
    his eyes were open.  He was hard, erection showing through his trackpants,
    but not touching himself. "Nobody," Joey said.  

    JC smirked.  "Yeah right.  Give."

    "No, serious," Joey insisted, while his cock throbbed, disappointed again.
    "Random chicks." He grinned, feeling like an asshole--he hated lying to JC.
    "Nobody whose name I can remember."  He retreived his beer, jerked his head
    in the direction of JC's lap.  "You?"

    JC rolled onto his back and put his hands behind his head. "Bit of
    everything.  Britney after the MTV thing.  Justin and Lance before."  He
    pulled one hand out, then put it back again. "The time we all fucked Chris
    in your pool.  Chat sex, last night."

    "Chat sex is so dumb," Joey told him.  "I don't get it." JC's obsession
    with it kinda worried him, actually.

    "It's safe," JC said, simply.  "You're lying, they're lying, but at the
    time they're *there* for you and you can do anything you want, and you
    don't have to worry about what might happen after."

    "But it's not *sex*.  It's a computer screen."  The difference between the
    two seemed obvious to Joey; it seemed to have escaped JC.

    "When you're into doing it, it's better than sex." JC picked up his beer,
    and drained it.  Joey got up, reluctantly, and grabbed two more.  "It's a
    mindfuck.  You don't need your bodies when you've got your imaginations."

    "That *works*?"  

    JC nodded, and Joey shrugged, not understanding, but at least in
    possession of the facts.  Maybe it'd make sense some day.  He handed over
    the beer and lay down again.  "Are you *sure* you're not a girl?"

    JC laughed, his eyes crinkling up.  "Maybe.  Your turn. Ask something."

    They were going to do it like this, Joey realised, and was relieved.  JC
    could get distant, get so wrapped up in the music and Da Biz, as Justin
    liked to say, that sometimes it felt like he wasn't really *with* them
    anymore.

    "Okay," he said, thinking hard, wanting to make that missing connection
    with the right question, but he couldn't come up with anything that didn't
    sound like he was trying.  "Britney or Christina?" he said eventually,
    facing the ceiling and sliding his hand down again.

    Beside him, he could sense JC doing the same thing. "Christina.  She's
    just.  They're both putting on this huge act, and Britney's more
    convincing, but Christina seems more like there's a real person inside
    her."

    "Oh," Joey said, and he didn't really get it--Britney was real as; she was
    exactly who she always wanted to be--but he could feel that it mattered to
    JC.  "I like Britney.  I'd break Christina in half."  He jerked himself,
    gently.  Britney was a whore and loved every minute of it; Joey liked girls
    like that.

    "Kinkiest thing you've done with a fan," JC said.

    Joey thought hard.  Weird places didn't count--fans would do it
    *anywhere*.  A girl in Germany had wanted to be tied up, and Joey knew he
    was stupid but he wasn't *stupid*, he could spell l-a-w-s-i-u-t.  "I had
    four girls in my bed once.  In LA. They wanted Justin to come, though, and
    got really pissed when he didn't show up."

    "Fucking Justin."

    "I know."

    JC was moving his hand around down there, now.  "I fucked a girl while her
    mother watched," he confessed.  

    Joey sputtered.  "You fucking sick fucking *fuck*, JC! Jesus!" Not even
    *Justin* had done anything that fucked up.

    "Don't tell anybody or I'll kill you," JC warned, voice soft and intense.
    "This really, really, pretty girl, and she asked, and her mother was, you
    know. She was really cool but worried about what I might do to her
    daughter, so I said okay."

    "Jesus," Joey said again, but the idea was making him hot, too. Especially
    if they looked more like sisters.  He squeezed his balls a little, tried to
    take it easy.  But *Jesus*.  He took a few deep breaths.  "Okay.  Who do
    you like to watch?"

    "Depends."

    Joey threw his shirt at him.  "That's not a fucking answer."

    "It is *so* an answer."

    "It's a sucky answer.  Okay, who do you like to watch *best*. If we
    weren't stuck in here together, who would you wanna watch."

    "Okay."  JC sighed, stared at the ceiling.  "You and Lance."

    "Whoa," Joey sat up.  "You like watching *me*?"

    "No, I mean.  With Lance.  You're really, I don't know. Sweet together, or
    something."

    It was on the tip of Joey's tongue to say it, to tell JC about it and ask
    him what to do, but he'd already knew what the deal was, and JC would say
    the right thing and make it feel not so bad, but he was a dreamer, too.  JC
    would give him the romantic answer, not the right one.  Joey flopped back
    against the pillows.  "Ew.  No offense, man, but watching you is--"

    "Yeah, whatever, I know.  Your turn."

    Not Lance, Joey told himself.  Don't say Lance.  "Chris and Justin."

    JC snorted.  "That's stupid.  They hardly even *like* one each other."

    Joey snorted--JC really *was* a girl sometimes.  "That's what's so hot
    about it, you dick.  They're bitching, and they're whining, and then they
    get naked and fight to be on top."

    "Ohh.  Like mud wrestling."  JC was breathing hard now. "We should put
    them in jelly or something."

    "Whipped cream."

    "Chocolate sauce."  They both grunted, and the bed was starting to shake.

    "My turn," Joey said, even though he wasn't sure it was. This felt great,
    though, he felt really good, and close to JC like he'd been missing the guy
    for six months.  And he *had* missed him--not fucking JC had meant that
    they were usually hanging with somebody else.  "Um. Best technique?"

    "At what?  Nah, whatever it is, Chris is the best."

    "Chris fucking *rocks*," Joey agreed.  "He blew me for an hour, once."

    JC looked at him.  "No way."

    "Way."  Joey stretched out on the bed, got ready for the build-up.  "You
    were off somewhere, lawsuit crap.  We got really smashed, and Chris decided
    Justin had to learn how to give head properly--"

    "Oh, man."  JC paused, took a swig of beer.  "That kid'll *never* give
    good head."

    "You're telling me.  But Chris demonstrated on me, and Justin practiced on
    Lance, and it was the fucking hottest thing since`Baywatch Nights."

    "Oh, man," JC said, and started rubbing himself again. "Oh, *man*."

    "Should have seen it."  Joey closed his eyes and let the memories come.
    "Chris got Justin really pissed, like how dare he say Justin Fucking
    Timberlake wasn't the *best* at something, so he wouldn't give up till
    Lance came."

    JC snorted and moaned, his hand speeding up.  "It took him an *hour*?"

    "Yeah," Joey said, jerking himself fast now, "no hands. But Chris was
    working me the whole time." And Lance was going out of his *mind*, he added
    silently--red in the face and frantic, wanting to just come to get off to
    do it to come now oh god Joey I need you do it *please*...  "I fucking
    passed out after that one."

    "Oh *God*," JC gasped, and this was it, for both of them, the trip the
    trigger the straw the camel, the hottest memory ever and JC was saying
    their names, all of them, and moaning, and Joey wasn't saying a name, bit
    his tongue on it and groaned, and JC was arching off the bed and fucking
    his hand hard. Joey felt it surge towards him, Christ, JC was sexy now, and
    everything was sexy now, and *god*, he grabbed JC's shoulder and felt him
    alive and reconnected, and maybe Lance was listening, and he blurted 'oh
    fuck' and just *came*.

    "Oh, god, *fuck*," JC said, and came too.

    They lay there for a minute, gasping.  

    "Gross," Joey said, when he could breathe, and went into the bathroom for
    a towel.  He wiped himself off, and threw one out to JC without looking,
    because he didn't want to see it; JC was back to unsexy, and you didn't
    want to watch your unsexy best friend's clean up his own cum.

    Joey looked at himself in the mirror.  Messed up, but in a good way.  He
    loved how he felt after sex.  He could go find Lance, now, but Lance might
    be busy, and anyway he didn't want to leave JC alone again just yet.  He
    threw the towel in the hamper, straightened up his clothes, and went back
    out.  JC was clean and tidy and looked sleepy again, huddling a pillow.  He
    was still tired all the time, Joey realised.  He needed a break.

    "C'mon," JC said, and patted the bed.  Joey flopped down. He was hungry,
    but room service would be a hassle.  He could go see what the guys had, but
    didn't feel like hunting them down.  He wasn't hungry enough to actually do
    anything about it, he decided.  Maybe later.

    "Joey?" JC murmured in his ear.

    "Mm?"

    "Who's your favourite?"

    God *damn* it.  Joey thought about getting mad, but it wasn't JC's fault.
    "Don't ask that shit, J," he said, looking away. "You start saying things
    like that, and it gets out, and it gets messy."

    "Joe," JC said, eyes serious.  "I know you have one.  I know who it is."

    "Don't say it," Joey warned.  "Just don't go there."

    "He really likes you," JC offered, tentatively.  "You guys could be
    happy."

    "Yeah, and we pair off, and then what?  Justin feels left out and goes
    prima donna, and Chris knows he'll be the fifth wheel if anybody is, and
    we'll fuck up everything.  I've *thought* about it, okay?  We can't."

    Skinny fingers brushed his hair, his cheek.  "I'm sorry Joe. That sucks."

    "Yeah.  I know."

    JC got up and pulled the covers back on the bed.  "Come on, it's late.
    I'm tired.  Get in."

    Joey rolled across the folds and slid under; JC curled up around him and
    pulled the covers up over them.  They squirmed around, got comfortable.
    Joey rested his head on JC's arm and closed his eyes.

    "Hey," JC whispered, "you didn't ask me who my favourite was."

    "Everybody's your favourite, J.  You couldn't make up your mind if you
    tried."  Joey sighed.  "That makes me hate you so bad sometimes."

    "I love you to bits, man."  JC hugged him hard.  "I'm really sorry,
    honest."

    Joey kissed his cheek, a barely-there brush.  "I know. But I couldn't do
    it without you, so I love you more than anybody."

    end.