Secrets

Actually, JC is waiting for his turn with the weights more than he’s making sure Justin doesn’t drop something heavy on his foot. “Justin!” he says sharply, drawing Justin’s attention back to his bicep curls and away from Lance’s ass. He makes a come on, get on with it motion with his hand and Justin scowls.

“Go wait somewhere else, JC. You’re getting in my way.”

JC rolls his eyes and follows Justin’s gaze back to Lance’s ass. “Right.” He stands up and parks himself between Justin and Lance. “You’re done, dude. Put the weights down and go take a shower.” The unspoken “cold” shower is unmistakable, hard to miss. He turns and winks at Lance as Justin grunts through one more set of reps and then stops, abandoning the weights and wiping his face on a towel.

“There, thanks for being so patient,” he grouses at JC, then departs with an air of injured dignity, without making eye contact with either one of them. Lance shakes his head at JC. He doesn’t want JC’s teasing to discourage Justin. Lance is enjoying the attention.

But he doesn’t say anything, because no one but he and Justin knows what happened the other night in the bathroom of the club they’d gone to. Acting all covert, at least around the other guys, is not something Lance is at all good at, but he can be a model of discretion when he really tries. He’s decided this is something for him and Justin to either work out or not, and the last thing they need is for the other three to put in their two cents worth, at least this early on. Lance isn’t delusional enough to think they can keep it on the down-low forever, though, not around three of the nosiest people God ever created. He sighs and looks at JC, grinning to himself like the dork he is as he chooses a set of weights from the rack, probably working out how best to embellish what he thinks he saw when he tells Chris and Joey about it.

Lance figures they probably have two days, maybe three, tops, to get their shit together.

He still isn’t sure it wasn’t a mistake to let Justin kiss him. He knows very well that sex doesn’t solve anything, and can, in fact, make things worse. Much worse, if their past experience is anything to go by. But this time feels different. For starters, it wasn’t sex, it was just a kiss. A kiss with no hidden agendas, a kiss that neither one of them was using to send a message or establish a claim.

It was, in fact, one of their more successful bathroom encounters, Lance thinks, smiling reminiscently.

By the time Justin gets out of the shower, Lance is done with his cardio, and he’s all sweaty and gross. There was a time, a lifetime or two ago, when Lance would have joined Justin in the shower, and the other guys would have given them the space and privacy for that. He and Justin used to think they were getting away with something, that no one knew that somewhere back in the showers at whatever venue they were playing, Lance had Justin pinned against the wall, fucking him hard, one hand around his dick and the other covering his mouth to keep him quiet, until one day Joey laughed at him and asked Lance if he ever wondered why they’d never been interrupted.

Lance tries to shake off those memories, because they make him want Justin with a desperation he thought he’d left behind a long time ago. But if nothing else, he’s learned patience over the past few months. He can wait. He thinks this time it may be worth it.

~~~~~

“So your plan is basically to just stare at him until he falls swooning into your arms, do I have that right?”

If Chris wasn’t his best friend, Justin would have clobbered him a long time ago. “No, asshole, that’s not my plan. And how do you even know I have a plan?”

Chris snorts derisively. “It’s you, of course you have a plan. That’s the secret to your success, always having a plan. And C says you’re being pretty obvious about-”

“Shut up,” Justin interrupts indignantly. “I am not. And I do not. Have a plan, I mean. Why would I need a plan?” Justin sucks at bluffing around Chris, he knows this.

“Please. Don’t make me laugh.” Chris grins at Justin. “But I’d keep trying that staring thing if I were you. Really, don’t give up. It’s sure to work eventually.”

Justin puts an end to the conversation by using the time-honored method of throwing his sweat-soaked towel in Chris’s face and then running like hell toward the buses. Chris is hard on his heels, screeching about revenge. For someone who goes on and on about his advanced age, Chris has a tendency to revert to childish behavior at the slightest provocation.

Justin locks himself in the bathroom, using up more than his fair share of the hot water, while he lets JC calm Chris down. Chris eyeballs Justin darkly when he comes out, wrapped in a towel, but since JC’s hand is working it’s way down the front of Chris’s pants and JC’s tongue is doing something to his ear that Chris seems to like, Justin figures he’s pretty safe, at least for the time being.

He ducks back toward the bunks to get dressed, giving Chris and JC a modicum of privacy that they don’t deserve in the least. As he slides his sweat pants up over his hips, he wonders if maybe things would have been different if he and Lance had shared a bus before. If they’d been able to just relax and share space, and not have to hide, and pretend, and wait for the opportunity to be together. If they hadn’t had to be so damn secretive about the whole thing.

He thinks Chris and JC are pretty lucky, and he hopes they appreciate it.

~~~~~

Joey and Kelly were lucky, Justin thought. They had all their friends and family here, together, to celebrate their wedding. They had a beautiful daughter, and the world smiled at them and laughed with them, and nobody frowned, or told them they were sinful, or that they loved the wrong person.

The end result of this top-secret meeting, which had been highly anticipated and hyped by the press, was an article in People Magazine describing how the other four were all mad at him.

It was Lance.

~~~~~

Moonlighting the Movie is the big hit everyone predicted it would be. It’s a light-hearted romantic comedy, a perfect summer date movie. Most of the promo was done before the Back to Back tour started, and Justin had made the rounds of Leno and Letterman, O’Brien and Seacrest, pushing the tour at the same time as he pimped the movie.

Conan gave him a hard time, predictably, and Leno didn’t listen to a word he said, as usual, but Lance figures it helped the tour numbers a lot. It’s a shrewd business move, and Lance fully approves, although he didn’t really enjoy watching the movie clips that show Justin and Cameron bantering and kissing and in general just having a swell time together. He decides it’s one movie he can live without seeing.

Every once in a while, Justin has to fly off to do more promo, and that’s fine, except that Lance never would have expected him to do TRL by himself at this stage of the game.

TRL isn’t what it once was, what Lance likes to think they helped make it back in the day, but it’s still relevant to success in the music business, and Lance is deeply disappointed in Justin. And highly pissed.

So the next time Justin sends him one of those shy glances and earnest smiles, like it was 1997 all over again, Lance just glares at him and doesn’t smile back. That totally throws him, which Lance knew it would. Justin can’t stand to have someone mad at him and not know why. If he knows why, he can deal with it, which is why Lance is in no hurry to provide him with any explanations.

Let him stew.

Lance knows perfectly well that he’s acting like a five year old over this. The third time Justin says something to him while they’re waiting for soundcheck to start, and Lance refuses to answer him, doesn’t even deign to look at him, Joey’s suddenly in his face, hand over his mic, and this time he’s not using the voice he uses when Briahna has just about pushed everybody’s last buttons. He’s using the voice Kelly uses, and Lance is impressed, and actually a little shaken. The accents may be different, but Kelly doesn’t take any more shit from her kid than Diane ever took from Lance, and he’s inclined to rethink his approach.

Fine. When they’re all gathered back in the Quiet Room to regroup after soundcheck, to discuss any last minute issues with the show, and Justin turns his sad, bewildered eyes on Lance and says, “Lance? Are you mad at me?” Lance is more than happy to share what he knows.

The other three are watching them closely, no one is making any attempt to be subtle about it at all. Lance figures it’s time to get things out in the open anyway. “Yes, Justin, you could say that.”

“But why?” Lance ignores the note of apprehension he hears in Justin’s voice.

“Justin, you’re going on TRL without the rest of us. What the hell do you expect?” Lance can tell from the expressions on the others’ faces that this is news to them.

“What are you talking about? How did you-shit,” Justin breaks off, biting his lip and looking around the room, frowning when he gets a look at the dawning comprehension on Joey’s face.

“How did I find out?” Lance asks. “One of the Assistant Directors is, um, a friend of mine.”

“Right. A friend. I’ll just fucking bet,” Justin snaps, momentarily diverted.

“Justin,” Joey says from his spot on the couch.

“I’m not going by myself!” Justin says defensively. He stands up abruptly. “Fuck. I didn’t say anything yet because, you know, I wasn’t sure I was even fucking going at all. I told them you guys were coming on with me, or I wasn’t showing.” He pauses, frowning. “The damn studio’s pimping the movie, Cameron is on this week. They made arrangements for just me to be on. It never occurred to them to include you guys. And TRL isn’t what it used to be, you know, they didn’t think of it either.” He shakes his head and mutters, “Fucking morons.”

“Did you hear back from them?” JC asks. He’s glancing curiously between Justin and Lance.

“Just this afternoon, yeah. They said fine, and you guys can be surprise guests, and after we get the goddamn movie talk out of the way, I can plug the tour, and you all can come out to talk about it with me.” He looks around at them again, and Lance can see the hurt in his eyes. “Do you really think I’d do that? Do TRL on my own?”

“No, of course not,” says Chris, glaring at Lance and crossing his arms across his chest.

JC shakes his head. “No, honey, I didn’t.” He, too, looks reproachfully at Lance. And that hurts, because JC is hardly ever cross with Lance.

“Sorry, J,” Joey sighs.

“It’s fine,” Justin shrugs. But Lance knows it’s far from fine.

Okay, he’s really made a mess of things. Adrian has obviously passed him old news, or maybe he just wants to cause trouble, although Lance can’t imagine why he would. He’s part of Lance’s network of sources for industry gossip. He and Lance have only hooked up once or twice, and they’re on perfectly friendly terms, as far as Lance can remember.

“Justin, I’m sorry,” Lance says helplessly. He wishes the others would go away, he wants to get Justin alone, to tell him how badly he feels. And he does feel awful. He jumped to conclusions based on unreliable gossip, and instead of asking Justin about it, he just assumed that Justin was still playing the solo game. He has to remember that Justin came to them, they haven’t dragged him back into the group against his will. He isn’t here under duress.

Someway, somehow, Lance is going to have to learn to trust Justin again. He’s never stopped wanting him, never stopped loving him, but he stopped trusting him a long time ago.

“Whatever,” Justin says. He sounds frustrated and defeated.

“I didn’t want to think…” Lance doesn’t know how to finish that sentence without making everything worse.

“But you did,” Justin says flatly. He looks at his watch. “I’m going to go make a few phone calls before I eat.”

It’s a very quiet group that meets to do the pre-show hackey. Lance didn’t realize how much he’s come to depend on the times during the concert that he and Justin make eye contact, until tonight, when Justin avoids him as much as he can onstage. It reminds Lance forcibly of some of the Celebrity concerts, and that’s not something he’s willing to live through again.

Mostly, he misses having Justin’s eyes on him.

~~~~~

secret: a: kept from knowledge or view b: marked by the habit of discretion c: revealed only to the initiated d: not being open or declared e: specific key to a desired end

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