Party of the Year an mprov by Julad Words: oscillate, machiavelli, pet, sonata. Randomly calculated pairing: JC/Lance [21:35] Party of the year. Woo, JC thought, draining his champagne glass. It was the fifth party of the year he'd been to this week. And it was only Tuesday. They had another one to go to, in about--he checked his watch--half an hour. The woman clutching his arm seemed concerned by the gesture, worried that he might not be having the time of his life right here, right now. He threw back his head and laughed joyfully, and she smiled back, delighted. Her makeup seemed not so much painted as kiln-fired, like pottery. Staring into her eyes, he found it hard to believe that the eyeliner around them would ever come off; if, indeed, it had ever not been there. She removed the glass from his hand and replaced it with a full one, bursting to the brim with more explosive, alcoholic air. He drained it, confessed that he shouldn't be drinking this heavily but couldn't help it, the party was so great, and skittered off in search of a dancefloor to work off his energy. On the other side of the room, he found the fire escape, and ducked out. The cement stairs were not as finely decked out as the ballroom outside, the cement walls not as delicately painted in the latest designer chartreuse. The gathering dust and grit in the corner of each step would not, JC was certain, be appearing in the next issue of Vogue Living. With a sigh of relief, he sat down on the cold concrete, and lit a cigarette. Half an hour, he had half an hour. What to do, what to do. Crying was an option, but he had a feeling tonight was a hotel night, and he didn't want to waste the opportunity to do something else if crying could be done later. Composing would be wise--he could feel the teasing fringes of a song on the edge of his mind, a sonata in blue that hinted at forbidden love, and spoke of forbidden pleasures welling dark and delicious behind closed doors and open smiles. The song would end with a sharp, slicing sound, he could tell. The lyrics would contain all the details of this love's inevitable implosion, and the dropping away of sound as like lovers over a cliff would be all the ending such a song needed. Of course, such a song wouldn't be an 'Nsync song, and he had a thousand others like it, growing dusty and vague in indifferent piles in studios and homes across the country. No, it would be no great loss to the world if he sat in a dirty stairwell and let this song float away into blank nonexistence. Dreaming could be done, here in solitude and silence, but what point dreaming when he'd chased the wrong one; pursued fame and fortune with Machiavellian intensity, taking everyone who tried to fuck him over and smiling and pretending not to understand, waiting for the moment their backs were to him, so he could slide the knife in. In the flickering flourescent light, his hands looked bloody to the wrist. Dreaming could be done, for sure, but behind his every dream of sitting on a back porch somewhere, leaning against a post waiting for a lover to bring out coffee, was the dream he would have been having on that porch-- of fame and fortune, lights and stars and a glittering heaven of smiles and adoration. He stubbed out the butt and looked at his watch again. Ten more minutes. Reminiscence was a possibility. Shy smiles, and giggles under blankets, and that first kiss so sweet with anticipation and promise that he'd thought, surely, it couldn't get any better than this. But sweetness had deepened and expanded, growing dizzy with elation and bubbly with joy, evolving eventually into the slow, steady rhythms of sex and sleep and satisfaction. That had been before the other dream had come true, and for a while he'd lived in both, oscillating with ecstatic terror between the closet and the camera, the bedroom and the stage. Through it all, that low, soft, deep voice, and he'd sprawled under it like a cat in the summer sun, soaking up promises of straddling the impossible, of having it all in hands large enough to hold it. Reminiscence, though. Reminiscence ended on New Year's Eve, when the voice full of promises had choked off into regret, and the desolite pronouncement that what had been infinitely possible was now simply to painful to continue to bear. JC looked at his watch again. Two minutes. No time for anything, now, except to pet his own hair gently, like Lance had once done, and stroke the side of his own face tenderly, as if it were so fragile it could break at any minute, and brush his thumb over his own lips, a furtive gesture of reassurance, a promise which would never again be fulfilled. A minute to stare blankly at grey walls, and grey, jagged edges, in an over-bright light which had no sympathies for the flaws of a private stairwell's design. Ten seconds to stand up, rest his hand on the door handle and his forehead against the door. Five seconds to wish, briefly, *fervently*, that it had been some other way. One second to construct the smile on his face and the sparkle in his eyes. No time to do anything else, except keep going, through crowds and dances and smiles and kisses and adulation, on to the next party of the year, in the worst year of his life. [22:28] the end.