"To adopt a gender perspective is ....to distinguish between what is natural and biological and what is socially and culturally constructed, and in the process to re-negotiate the boundaries between the natural -- and hence relatively inflexible -- and the social -- and hence relatively transformable."

-- a booklet published by the International Research & Training Institute for the Advancement of Women, a committee of the United Nations

1).

Sometimes Justin's life feels like a movie, a documentary or an arthouse flick or a summer blockbuster production with a budget well into eight figures. Someday he thinks he will look around and someone will be there with a clapboard yelling "cut", and everything will transform into something new and strange, and three weeks later he will be on a different set, speaking as someone else, playing another role.

Sometimes he thinks that this has already happened.

2).

Fade in: interior, club scene. Justin is playing the part of the Suddenly Solo Ladies' Man this month; he and Cameron called it quits for the second and final time three weeks prior. It hurts less than he supposes that it probably should. He sips his drink and leans against the bar.

It's a gay club, but that's because once you get out of a certain radius -- Justin thinks that it could probably be graphed in from the oceans -- the gay bars are the only places you can go and be reasonably assured of good music to dance to. He remembers being in a club somewhere in the middle of Montana and overhearing two men griping about wishing that all the straight people would open a club of their own. Apparently they aren't the only people who have figured out the secret. He doesn't mind, much. He doesn't go to clubs to pick up, these days, and after a few incidents involving some critical misunderstandings, usually Joey's or Chris's fault, they've all gotten to the point where they can separate "club you go to pick up at" from "club you go to dance". This is emphatically the latter.

Someone seems to have forgotten to send the memo to JC, though, because he comes threading through the crowd with two women trailing behind him holding hands. "Justin," he says, with that smile that's made Justin's chest ache for as long as he can remember. "Darla and Susan and I are heading on back to the hotel." JC's hand is on the taller one's waist. She's got short black hair, gelled up into spikes, and she's wearing thigh-high black leather boots that lace up the back. The other one's hair is long and brown and curly, and she's wearing a shirt that shows off her bellybutton, which is pierced. "You want a lift, or will you get the other car later?"

For a minute, Justin is startled, because both of the girls are giving off such a lesbian vibe that even he, with his notoriously poor gaydar, can pick up on it. He dismisses it, though. JC's always had a thing for lesbians. "Nah," he says. "I'll catch up with y'all later. Have fun."

"We will," the tall one says. Justin wonders if she's Darla or Susan. Her girlfriend puts her hand next to JC's, both of them together spanning the line from spine to hip. JC holds the door for them both as they leave.

3).

They're having breakfast the next morning when JC comes in, looking freshly showered and still a little sleepy and vague around the edges. Joey breaks off buttering his croissant to throw a wadded-up napkin at JC's head and launch into "you and your girlfriends group up, this is how you draw them in --".

JC stands there, looking puzzled, for a minute, and then laughs. "It's not like that, dude."

"From where I'm standing --"

"Sitting," Justin corrects.

"--sitting, it looks like you managed to get yourself some girl-on-girl business last night. Dude, share your secrets. Nobody's better at talking them into it than you are. Or can you just spot the ones who are doing it because they want to pick up guys?"

Something sharpens in JC's voice. "Sexuality isn't an on or off thing, Joey."

Joey holds up his hands. "Hey, I wasn't the one who wrote a song about girls pretending to be lesbians to pick up guys."

But Justin is curious. "What's it about, then, C?"

JC tips his head to one side and studies Justin's face. "It's about connecting," he finally says.

Justin doesn't get it. This isn't, he thinks sourly, unusual.

4).

If Justin's life were a movie, one of those obnoxious movies marketed at the 18-to-27 crowd but really watched by middle school kids, the first time he'd seen JC would have played out with a hit single from some indie band nobody had ever heard of (for good reason) wailing away in the background. Or maybe a clip montage shot from the distance in soft focus. There would have been the obligatory moment where their eyes met across the abandoned lot, and JC would have paused with the basketball in his hands, and everything would have slowed down and faded out for a minute while they both just stopped and stared. And then one of the other guys would have slammed into JC's shoulder, and they would have all laughed. JC would have come over to introduce himself when the pickup game ended. That would have been when the music faded down long enough for them to exchange a few words, and then the catchy, if formulaic, chorus would come back and get stuck in the audience's heads for weeks and weeks.

The way it really happened was JC had been rushing out of makeup while Justin had been rushing in. They'd bumped into each other, and Justin had said "excuse me" and blushed. JC hadn't seemed to register the apology. Justin finds it kind of sad that he still remembers it, but then again, he's been watching JC for a long time.

5).

Three days later and they're in Austin, Texas, which Chris loves and Lance hates and Justin is vaguely indifferent towards in the way that he's indifferent towards all the places where he doesn't own real estate. Austin is close enough to the water not to suffer from the Law of Coastal Club Conservation, and they split up instead of trying to find a place that they can all agree upon.

JC is getting dressed when Justin knocks on his door. Justin loses his tongue for a minute when he sees what JC's in. Leather pants. A babydoll t-shirt that must have been from the FuManSkeeto remnants pile, one size too small and pulling nicely over his biceps, which are looking whatever's one step past fine these days. Two leather bands, one around each wrist, each of them halfway between "bracelet" and "handcuff". Tiny and delicate shoes, which Justin swears he saw Cam wearing once, or at least shoes much like them.

It should look ridiculous on him. It does look ridiculous on him, Justin thinks, and then notices the faint and artistic smudges of eyeliner around JC's eyes. Maybe ridiculous is the wrong word.

"Hey," JC says. "What's up?"

It takes Justin a second to remember why he'd knocked in the first place. "Um. Wondering where you were heading tonight. I think Joey and I are going to that place the guy at the desk was talking about."

JC holds the door open for Justin to follow him in, and then heads back to the bathroom, where the contents of his Dopp kit are spread out on the counter. "Was planning to go with Lance, actually. He needs someone to keep the boys at bay, or Jessie's going to pout. You wanna come with?"

Justin's more than a little distracted. "No, I promised Joey -- What the hell are you wearing, C?"

JC looks down at himself, then shrugs. "Clothes. Everything else was dirty."

"I'm a little confused by the whole girl vibe you're working these days."

The edges of JC's eyes crinkle up when he smiles. Justin's not sure how he knows this fact so intimately. "It's not a girl vibe. It's just a me vibe."

When he and Joey reach the club, Justin spends most of his time watching the girls, and wondering which one of them -- or which pair of them -- would have drawn JC's eye.

6).

"I've figured it out," Chris announces, dropping down onto the couch across from Justin in the Quiet Room. "C's trying to get in touch with his inner lesbian."

Justin swears as he drops the L in precisely the wrong place, neatly ruining his game of Tetris. "Fuck, you fucker, I was nearly at two hundred lines."

"Unimportant." Chris dismisses this with a wave of his hand. "Think about it. He's not going all girly on us; he's just channeling his inner lesbian. It's why he keeps picking up chicks who dance with other chicks; they can spot their own. Next thing we know, he's going to show up with short hair and no makeup, wearing a flannel shirt and Birks."

Justin frowns. He's probably supposed to find this statement horribly un-PC, but it's Chris and they gave up on trying to civilize him what feels like a few thousand years ago. "I thought I was the only one who'd noticed."

"What, that C's working the dyke groove? Gimme credit; I'm friends with enough of them to spot it. I just wonder if he's doing it out of some nefarious motive, or if he's just, I don't know, absorbing it from somewhere. Because if he is, I want them to check the water on the bus before we catch it too."

Justin laughs. He knows that Chris isn't serious; Chris had adopted the gay rights cause as one of his own approximately thirteen seconds after Lance had come out to them all, fumblingly and hesitantly, in a hotel room in Germany. "I don't think that they'd let anyone put gay in the bus water, Chris. Alienating the fanbase, and all that."

Chris reaches over and takes the GameBoy out of Justin's hands. "If he adopts a cat, I'm leaving. Just sayin'."

7).

Lance grabs a banana from the fruit basket the hotel sent up and holds it up like a microphone. "And who are you five fine boys currently fucking?" he chirps, in uncanny imitation of the tone that the reporter had used. The post-interview mockery is always the best. They're all so fucking sick of the standard questions. "You being fine upstanding notions of heteronormative behaviour for us to parade in front of our teenage daughters, and all that."

Joey is laughing before Lance points the banana at him. "My wife and I have hours of kinky sex at a time. Sooner or later, she breaks out the handcuffs and the chocolate sauce."

"And do you feel that this is an appropriate message to be sending America's children?"

"I'm not a slut, man. I'm sex-positive." Joey manages to get through the sentence without cracking up, which is mostly due to long years of practice.

"Chris? What would your rapidly-growing list of political contacts think if they knew about Joey's deviant practices?"

Chris pretends to think for a minute. "I think they'd probably wonder why I hadn't gotten pictures. Have you seen Joey's wife? She's hot." He ducked before Joey could hit him.

"Lance?" Lance tips his head to the other side and assumes his listening expression, then goes right back to being the reporter. "What do you say to the rumors that your personal assistant is actually your personal assistant?"

He tilts his head back to the other side, and goes through the motions of confusion for a second, then dawning realization. It's almost scary how good he is at that. "Well, Susie, I think it's sad the way that some people need to spread rumors like that. Jesse is a fantastic assistant and a good friend, and he's totally okay with the fact that I can't ever admit to sucking his dick on network television. We should all be so lucky."

JC is snickering right along with everyone else, and then Lance points the banana at him. "Speaking of rumors, JC, we've been hearing that you've been spending significant amounts of time lately with avowed and practicing homosexuals. Aren't you at all worried that your reputation will suffer, particularly given the current political climate?"

JC puts on his most earnest face, the one that he drags out when they really need the reporter to believe what they're saying. "I think it's like -- you know, people are just made the way that they're made, and it's, like, the world around us that makes them into something else, and I just like being around people who know who they are and where they're going, you know?"

There's a pause, the way there usually is when JC goes off on one of his tangents, even when they're deliberate. "Don't forget, it's all about the music," Joey says, his eyes wide. Justin laughs, but his heart isn't in it. It's not really all that funny anymore.

8).

Chris once explained the Kinsey Scale to them all, right after Lance had come out to them. Justin had been terrified, though he never admitted it to anyone, that there was something wrong with him because he caught himself watching JC's lips. "It's, like, a sliding thing. A zero means that you're exclusively heterosexual, and a six means that you're exclusively homosexual. A three means you're bisexual. And then there are all those numbers in between that show the degrees. Almost nobody's a plain zero or a six. Most everyone lives somewhere in-between."

"Where are you?" Justin had somehow worked up the courage to ask.

"Honestly? In theory about a two, in practice, strict zero. And it changes. It does for most people." Chris had watched Justin carefully, as though making notes for things to ask him later. "Like, Lance would probably be a four or so up until now, and maybe he'll go towards a six, maybe he'll go towards a three. It's not anything wrong, it's just how people are made."

"Numbers are stupid," JC had said.

Justin had agreed. It was partially to see JC's eyes crinkle up with that smile, and partially because if he was being honest with himself, he would have to draw an "x" on the line somewhere right around the four.

9).

It isn't as though JC is dressing in drag. They've all been in women's clothing once or twice, for videos or Halloween or pranks or Rocky Horror. They make pretty lousy women.

No, Justin realizes, after spending a few weeks paying careful attention -- it's not that JC is dressing in drag. He's not trying to pass as a woman; he's not even trying to give the impression from across the room. No one could deny that JC is unquestionably, incontravertably male. He's just picking up the clothes that he thinks look good and feel nice.

JC is just being comfortable -- comfortable with himself, comfortable with the way he moves, comfortable with who he is and how he's gotten there. Justin's seen him gently dissuade gay men who are hitting on him with no hurt feelings on either side, and then be flirting with them again five minutes later. That's a trick that really should be put on JC's resume, because Justin's never met anyone else who can explain "no, really, I'm not into guys" with such tact and grace.

He wonders where JC learned it. Then he stops, and reconsiders, and wonders why it's so rare.

10).

"I'm not asking this to be, like, nosy --"

"Go ahead, J. It's okay. I won't be offended."

"I just -- I mean, I was wondering. What you do when you bring, uh, two girls back with you. I mean -- is it like it is in porn? Are they concentrating on each other and ignoring you, or is it like -- they're there to turn you on, or --"

"No -- no, that's not it. It's not a show or anything. They're just -- I mean, sometimes we don't do anything but talk. And sometimes we do more than that. And sometimes they're touching me, or I'm touching them, or we're all touching each other, and yeah, sometimes they're touching each other and I'm just watching, and sometimes it's me and one of the women and her girlfriend is the one watching, but it's not -- it's not creepy like porn is. It's just -- whatever we want to do. Whatever feels right."

"Isn't it weird? To know that you're not what they really want or what they usually go for?"

"Don't think of it like that. It's not about a binary -- you know, straight is 'one' and gay is 'zero' or something and things can either be on or off, no in-between. Don't think of it as preferences. Think of it as people. I mean, I know how crazy it is to say that there can be a connection like that with someone you just met, but sometimes there is. And you just have to forget about things like what set of plumbing you have and just go with it."

"Why -- why lesbians? I mean, if you're looking for a girl --"

"I'm not looking for a girl. There's too much crap pinned on the word 'girl'. I'm looking for someone who does things because she wants to and she thinks they're right, not because she graduated from playing with Barbies to doing whatever Seventeen told her girls should do to reading Cosmo to figure out what's in this season. It's just -- Finding a woman who's like that is hard. I don't like what girls are told they have to be. It's just that the ones who have thrown that out tend to also be the ones who threw it out because they were looking for a world in which it was okay to like women."

"...Do you think that you might ever. You know. With a guy."

"...If it was the right guy. If it was someone who could see me, not the shit that everyone keeps layering on top of me. If it was someone who could see what I see when I look at people, not what everyone else sees. Yeah, I've thought about it. I mean, I think everyone has, at least in some really vague way, but I've really thought about it."

So have I, Justin thinks. He does not say it.

11).

If Justin's life were a movie, that would have been his cue. Instead, he goes back to his bunk and jerks off, twice, then washes his hands and reads another chapter in The DaVinci Code before bed.

12).

Justin had said all the right things about JC's album, because he really had liked it. He really had. It reminded him of the music that Chris and JC had used to play on the bus, late at night when they thought Justin was asleep enough so that they didn't have to use headphones. There were some groups he never would have heard of without the two of them: Joy Division and the Pet Shop Boys and the Cure and all of the artists who had been off the charts and half-forgotten before he'd gotten out of grade school. He could hear hints of it, between the lines, but the rest of it was pure JC.

He'd said all the right things to JC, because he really did like it. It nagged at him, though, and later on, in the middle of all of JC's struggles, he had said to Lance over lunch, "Do you ever think that maybe C should have turned out something a little more, I don't know, more easily marketable? I mean, we know he can write it."

Lance had just looked at him for a long minute, until Justin had wanted to crawl under the table. "He can write it," Lance had said, slowly. "But that doesn't mean that he wants to."

13).

"Come on," JC says, nudging Justin's shoulder. "Come on downstairs and spot for me. I'm going nuts just sitting around."

They're in Seattle for two days, and the hotel's fitness center isn't the greatest thing that Justin's ever seen, but it's good enough to burn off some energy for a while. The tour is starting to pick up momentum. Apparently enough people remembered them. The shows aren't quite selling out, but it is pre-album-drop, and they're doing well enough, and Justin is happier than he thought he would be with being one of five again instead of one of one.

"Do you ever wonder," he says, standing in the middle of the fitness center and watching JC fuss with loading weights onto the bar, "what we're going to do when nobody wants to pay us to make music anymore?"

JC is wearing a sleeveless shirt, cut off just above his bellybutton, and the pair of sweats that Justin's had his eye towards stealing since the first week of the tour. "Man, that's awfully morbid. Who says that they're ever going to stop?"

Justin shakes his head. "Everything changes, and if you don't change with what everybody wants, you wake up one day and find that you've been left in the dust."

"You worry too much about what other people think of you," JC says, and stretches out on the bench. His shirt rides up as he lifts his arms. Justin fixes his eyes on a stain on the floor to keep himself from looking. "You've gotta do what you want, and let everyone else figure out what they'll make of you once you do. If you keep defining yourself by reflections, you aren't going to have anything left once the lights go out."

"I thought I was supposed to be the one who read all the self-help books," Justin says, trying to make a joke out of it. Sometimes it's hard to know what JC means when he goes all metaphorical, but really, Justin thinks, this one is pretty clear.

JC's face is upside-down to him, leaning back across the bench. From this angle, he looks like someone Justin's never seen before. "You don't need a self-help book to tell you that the key to being happy is doing the things that make you happy, Justin," he says gently.

The muscles in JC's biceps shift and move under his skin as he lifts. Justin cups a hand underneath each side of the barbell, not quite touching, watching to see if JC's hands will slip. "I'm happy," he says. "Hell. How could I not be? We've got almost everything we could want."

"If you could have one thing, one thing at all, what would you ask for? Not just something you want, something you want. Something you don't have, and can't just buy."

Justin stops short for a minute, because his first impulse is to give it the Reporter Answer, the one about how blessed and lucky they are and none of them want for anything. JC deserves an answer that's more real than that. Damned if he can think of anything, though. "I don't know. I can get myself anything that I can think of."

"I don't mean things, Justin." JC squints up at him from underneath the barbell. "Any of us can get things. I mean something more real than that."

JC never used to make him uncomfortable. Justin wonders when this changed. "What's yours?"

He's expecting JC to say something about music, about finding a connection with the audience, or making an album of his own that stays on the charts for more than a few months, or winning a Grammy. It's not what JC says. "Someone. Someone who's tough enough to handle all this shit and not be touched by it. Someone who can hear what I'm not saying. Someone who can see me through it all. I've been waiting a long damn time."

The air conditioning in the fitness room is turned up a little too high, presumably to keep people from overheating on the treadmill. Justin shivers a little and wishes he could take his hands away long enough to rub them over his arms, generate some friction to warm him up. "I don't know," he says again. "I used to have a list. I've done everything on it, though."

"Maybe it's time to get a new list," JC says. "If you don't have anything to work towards, you're just sort of sleepwalking through your life."

14).

When Cameron had given Justin the It's Just Not Working speech, three weeks before they started on the tour, it felt like it was blindsiding him out of left field. "It's working," he'd said, fighting the rising panic in his voice and not even knowing why it was there. "Baby, it's working."

"It's really not, Justin," she'd said. "It's -- I do care about you. And I've had fun. A lot of fun. But your head really isn't here, no matter how much attention you pay to me."

He'd been standing at the kitchen counter and she'd been wearing a pair of his boxers and sitting at the table and he remembers thinking, clear as crystal, that if she were going to break up with him the least she could have done was waited until after the tour, because things were awkward enough in his life already. "I haven't been looking at anyone else. I haven't been looking for anyone else."

"I know you haven't," she had said. "But life is too short for me to be with someone who's kissing me because I'm in the box labeled 'Girlfriend', and not because he wants to."

He hadn't understood what she meant until the tour started up again and he was back in front of an audience making music, rolling his hips and teasing the crowd with a smile and a gesture. The charge of it had sparked through his blood, the near-sexual desire running through his skin and heading to ground like electricity. He'd realized, four songs into the set, when they'd all found their groove, that he'd never felt like that with Cam. Not once.

JC had caught his elbow during the spare three seconds in costume change. "You okay?" he'd asked, quick and clipped while wardrobe wrestled him into his next shirt.

JC's chest had been glistening with sweat and the bottle of water that he'd dumped over his head the minute he'd been out of sight of the audience. Justin had nodded and ducked his head for them to pull his own shirt on. "Fine," he'd said. "Talk about it later."

They hadn't.

15).

JC never used to sing in the shower, but somewhere along the way, during the two years that they all hadn't been living in a moving tin can, he'd picked up the habit. Justin sits in his bunk with his headphones over his ears, but without music playing in them, and listens to JC wandering idly through something that Justin thinks he's heard before, something slow and bluesy about New Orleans and a rising sun.

There's the occasional gap, probably when JC ducks his head under the water to rinse out his hair, and a few times JC gets tangled in remembering the lyrics and has to start again. Justin slides his headphones off his ears so that he can hear better and presses his face into his pillow to block out the light.

Joan Baez, Justin finally thinks; that's where he'd heard it before. Or maybe Bob Dylan, but those aren't the lyrics that JC is singing. It's only an octave and a half, but JC's voice slides over the notes like poured honey and lingers on the flourishes until Justin thinks he might be trying to harmonize with himself. If anyone could do it, it would be JC.

I'm going back to spend my life beneath that Rising Sun, JC sings. Justin's never heard him sound like this before. There's a minute, and then the shower clicks off. Justin holds his breath when the bathroom door swings open, and has never been more grateful for the curtains that cover each bunk.

16).

In Anaheim her name is Jessica. In San Francisco, she is Elise. In Phoenix, they are Marita and Keiko. In Albuquerque their names are Vi and Rachel.

Justin sees them sometimes in the morning, slipping out of JC's room, holding their shoulders straight and their heads high and smiling at the guards as they go. He stands and watches as unobtrusively as he can, trying to find some common thread that binds them together. In Lincoln, Nebraska, she is tiny and pale, a delicate Scandinavian ice-flower who looks as though she might melt in the sun. In Chicago she has skin the color of midnight and walks as though she could conquer the hotel with her stride. In Minneapolis she moves with a heavy limp, leaning on a cane as she goes, and she blows Lonnie a kiss as he holds the elevator door for her.

Justin chooses his partners carefully: slender, slim-hipped, small-waisted, with large hands and wide, merry eyes. They always leave before the morning, and sometimes he doesn't even bother fucking them, just stretches out on the bed and brushes his fingers along the heat of their inner thighs. Sometimes he forgets to remember that this is what he wants.

In Buffalo her name is Faith, and she has long red hair spilling over her back in a riot of curls. Justin watches from the door to his room, cracked barely open, as JC keeps his hand on the small of her back all the way down the hallway. She says something to him as they wait for the elevator. He throws back his head and laughs, and it cuts through the stillness of the early-morning routine. She stands on the tops of her toes to kiss him, and then slips into the elevator without looking back. When JC turns, there is a tiny smile on his lips, as though he has been vouchsafed some small and significant secret.

She is Tia in Manhattan. Justin watches her and JC in the club, their heads together, smiling over something that he can't hear, and forgets to bring someone home with him.

17).

Somewhere in the middle of New Jersey and Justin can't sleep. He's gone through tired and come out the other side, where everything is sharp and bright and overexposed. It isn't caffeine, or nerves, or anxiety. His body just does this sometimes. Stores up so much charge that he can't let off enough of the static to be able to close his eyes.

Chris is long since unconscious and Justin thinks that he's the only one awake, but then there's a sleepy noise next to him and he looks up from his book to see JC standing there, swaying unconsciously with the meter of the bus. "Couldn't sleep?" JC asks, and runs a hand through his hair.

"The usual," Justin says. He makes a little gesture of impatience.

JC nods. "Bunks sleep two if you squeeze right," he says, and turns around, stifling a yawn against the back of his hand.

The bunks sleep two if you don't mind having elbows in faces and knees and feet sticking out into the aisle. Justin doesn't mind. JC is warm and his heartbeat rings the counterpoint to the bus's engine. Justin nestles back against JC the way that they've done a thousand times, and JC slings one arm over his ribcage and pulls him close. The next thing that he remembers is sunlight on his face.

18).

If Justin's life were a movie, that would have been the revelation scene. He would have woken up to find JC leaning over him, propped on one elbow, studying his face as he slept, and when he opened his eyes it all would have clicked into place with a slow and sudden blooming.

Instead he wakes to hear JC and Chris arguing softly in the kitchen. He rolls over and realizes that he isn't in his own bunk. Two minutes later, he realizes two things: one, JC is laughing at something that Chris said, "no, no, not like that, he just couldn't sleep", and Justin can't tell if it's horror or regret that he hears in JC's voice.

Two, he really has to pee.

19).

Justin can't remember if they're staying on the Maryland or Virginia side of the D.C. suburbs, but whichever it is, the hotel kind of sucks. He can't say anything, though, not without shattering the careful goodwill he's been stockpiling among the crew and the people responsible for tour booking, and so he closes his mouth and fixes his very best vapid smile on his lips and thinks longingly of his own bedroom. Which he hasn't seen in what feels like years.

JC opens the door at his first knock. "Thought you were the room service," he says, squinting. "Weren't you going out with Chris and Lance?"

"Didn't feel like heading to the places they were going," Justin says.

JC cocks his head to one side. "Tired of the gay bars? Or do they just not fit your image?"

"No," Justin says, quickly. "No, that's not it, I don't -- I mean --" He breaks off and sighs. "I just didn't feel like going out, period. I think I might just be getting old."

JC lets that go by. "Come on in," he says. "I'm watching some videos."

"I thought you might. Um. Have company." Justin steps into the room. On the television, the DVD is paused at a shot of Bjork sewing pearls through her own skin. Justin winces.

JC shakes his head. "Felt like a night off." He follows Justin's eyes, and then sits down on the bed and unpauses the video. Bjork sings this time I'm gonna keep me all to myself / she loves him, she loves him / and he makes me want to hurt myself again.

"I'm surprised you can watch this," Justin says, after a moment of silent fascination. He knows JC's issues with needles.

JC offers up a little smile. "It's not that bad. When it's someone else. When it's about making your own body look on the outside the way that it looks inside your head." His lips curve a little more. "When you can close your eyes and you don't have to watch the needle."

"What would you do?" Justin asks. The question leaps to his lips. "To show it, I mean. If it weren't for the needles."

"I don't know," JC says, after a minute. "Something black and tribal, across my collarbone, maybe. Stark and flowing at the same time."

Justin studies JC. It would suit him. "You should pick up some body paint, and try it out."

JC raises an eyebrow. "Why, are you volunteering to be the artist?"

Suddenly, Justin can't meet JC's eyes. "You know I can't draw worth shit," he mutters, and is grateful when room service knocks on the door.

20).

"How did you know?" Justin asks Lance. They're the first ones up, Lance because he always is, Justin because he isn't sleeping more than three hours a night, and they're sitting over breakfast. "I mean. When --"

Lance, bless him, knows precisely what Justin means. It's early enough and he's in a good enough mood to just answer without making Justin squirm for it. "Always. From the time I was about nine or ten."

Justin fidgets with his cereal spoon. "Do you think that it's possible to -- I don't know, figure it out later? Much later." He sighs. "Much, much later."

Lance is quiet for a minute, and Justin begins to think that this was a really, really bad idea. "No," Lance says finally. "I think you always know. It's just a question of whether or not you're willing to admit it."

"I was afraid of that," Justin mutters.

Lance leans over the table and wraps his hand around Justin's wrist. It's a tight grip, but a comforting one. "Sometimes it's okay to be the person inside of your head," he says. It makes more sense than it should.

21).

Justin used to sing in the shower, once upon a time. He would sing in the shower and in the car and waiting on line and shaving in the morning, though that always required careful negotiation with razor blades and skin. Somewhere a while back he'd gotten out of the habit, somewhere around the time that him singing had gotten to be a reason for girls to swoon and faint. He'll sing along when there's music playing, but it always feels wrong to him. Like something he's only doing because he's supposed to.

He looks at himself in the mirror, which is already starting to steam up from the shower that he's trying to get to the right temperature before stepping in. He needs a shave and his hair is getting too long. When it grows out, he looks like he's eighteen again. Someday, he's sure, he'll appreciate this fact, but for now it's really nothing more than an annoyance.

He wonders what he would look like if he'd been born a girl. He wonders how he would look different. He wonders whether it would have been easier or harder.

Somehow he's not surprised to realize, halfway through rinsing the shampoo from his hair and reaching for the body wash, that he is singing. Not a word was spoke between us, there was little risk involved / everything up to that point had been left unresolved / try imagining a place where it's always safe and warm / "Come in," she said, "I'll give you shelter from the storm."

He forgets most of the words halfway through and has to hum along, and every note feels fucking fantastic. Well, I'm living in a foreign country but I'm bound to cross the line / beauty walks a razor's edge, someday I'll make it mine, he sings. It's not his usual pre-show warm-up, but it'll do.

22).

"Congratulations, Infant," Chris crows when Justin shows up for breakfast, an hour or so later than he usually wakes up. Justin peers at him sleepily.

"Um. For?"

Chris points at Lance, who is sitting in his usual spot with his nose buried in his laptop. Some things never change. "Tell him, Lance."

Justin is beginning to worry that he's let something slip. Lance looks up, quirks an eyebrow, and says, "Well, you always said you'd be the first to do it."

"Do what?" Justin asks, and then glances at Lance's computer screen.

"I updated the spreadsheet this morning. You are now officially the first one of us to have reached the level of 'fuck-you money'. And in doing so, you lost me a hundred bucks in the pool, so you'd better appreciate it." Lance points to the column in the spreadsheet labeled "Justin". Justin squints at it, and for the first time ever, the numbers aren't red.

Fuck-you money isn't their own invention; the term has been around for a while. Lance might be the first person to have ever placed an exact dollar amount on it. Justin doesn't understand word one of the spreadsheet -- it all has to do with 30-year loan rates and prime interest rate and the real estate market in various places and whether the Dow is falling, rising, or standing on its head whistling Dixie -- but Lance had started it after the lawsuit, back when they all swore a solid oath that they'd never again be in a position where they couldn't say "fuck you" to someone who needed to hear it. A few weeks later, Lance had come up with an exact dollar amount; a few weeks after that, they'd all just let him start keeping track of their investment accounts so that he didn't have to keep reading off numbers at breakfast every morning. The closest any of them had ever gotten before today had been Lance, within a quarter million, before the market had cratered.

The tiny black numbers stare up at Justin accusingly. He looks at them and tries to understand, tries to make himself understand, that what they are saying is that he never has to work again in his entire life if he doesn't want to. Never has to worry about whether or not his public image is going to sell records. Never has to worry about turning around and watching it all slip away with a slip of the tongue.

It doesn't seem real.

"So," he says after a minute. "I guess this is where I say that drinks are on me, huh?"

"Don't mind if I do," Chris says, and grins. "You still gonna remember the little people?"

"Oh, fuck you," Justin says before he can think better of it. Because really, he does have to worry. He's one of five, after all.

23).

Chris had said to Justin, after crashing one of his club shows and throwing ice at his backup singers and playing Chopsticks in front of an audience of screaming girls, that they were doing things all backwards. "You're supposed to look at places like this as a step up from the shitty dive bars that you and your buddies were playing during college. That way it's special."

"It's special," Justin had said. "I can see their faces out there."

Someday, Justin thinks, when all of this is winding down, he wants to play a tour where it's just them and a few guys on keyboards and guitars and drums. His post-show shows had boiled the music down to nothing but the essence of it, raw and hot and aching, and there had been some nights when the thought of doing that had been the only thing to get him through the rest of the night. He wonders how intense it would be to have the rest of them there with him for it.

24).

They're riding through West Virginia when Justin makes a noise of frustration and rips the top sheet out of his notebook. He crumples it into a tight ball and wings it at the garbage just as the bus swerves to avoid hitting an idiot who tried to merge in in front of them. It misses and falls, then rolls across the aisle to hit JC's foot.

JC bends down and picks it up. He raises an eyebrow at Justin with the look that they all know is asking for permission; Justin flushes and drops his eyes. JC irons out the paper against his thigh with one hand and reads it through once, then again.

"It kind of sucks," Justin mutters. "Which is why I was throwing it out."

"It doesn't suck," JC says, absently, his eyes still roving over the lyrics. "Here. This bit, you can save this: 'the air I breathe is filtered through a thousand sets of lungs'. I like that. It's not your usual style, but I like it."

"I'm trying something different," Justin says. "It's not working."

JC looks up and gives him a sudden sweet smile. "It's working. You're just not used to how it feels yet."

25).

It took two years, but Justin and Britney are talking again. Hesitantly, casually, picking out words with the care of two people who know that they hurt each other badly and it can never be the same again, but they've both changed a great deal and maybe, just maybe, the people they are now can manage to be friends again.

They've agreed to talk once a week, for however long they can stand before they have to go and do something else or before they're tempted to bring up old ghosts. Justin interrupts one of the awkward silences to ask, "So, uh. You seeing anybody right now?"

"Yeah," Britney says. "One of my dancers."

It takes a minute for Justin to remember: JC had told him that all of the guys on Britney's tour were gay. He draws a line between that fact and the way that Britney is wearing her nails so short and blunted these days, and then just says a quiet "oh." "What's her name?" he asks.

Britney is silent for a minute, and then she laughs. He recognizes the laugh; it's a short bark that doesn't hold much amusement, only surprise. "When did you start paying attention to the world around you, Justin?" she asks. It's more fond and less bitter than it could have been.

"Recently," he says. "I think I'm kind of enjoying it."

26).

By the time they get to North Carolina Justin's insomnia has clicked over to being oversomnia, which is what they've always called it when one of them goes into hibernation for a few days to catch up on lost sleep. He wakes up in mid-afternoon and basks in the sensation of having gotten a full night's rest. The engine of the bus is beating a quiet heartbeat underneath him, and Chris and JC aren't even bothering to keep their voices down.

"--difference between being queer and being gay," Chris is saying, somewhere in the middle of trying to make an obscure point that only he cares about. "Gay has to do with who you sleep with. Queer is who you identify with. Gay is orientation, queer is attitude."

"So you're saying that if you hang out with gay people, you're queer? Queer by association?"

"No, no, no." There's a pause, and Justin can hear faint video-game noises in the background. "I'm saying that queer is a non-definition. It's a refusing to be defined. It's a deconstruction of preconceptions. It's someone trying to say that they don't care about standard definitions of gender and sexuality, they're going to make their own."

"I don't know if you can divide it like that, Chris." JC sounds amused.

"No, it's like -- Lance? Lance is both gay and queer. You, you're queer, you're just also heterosexual."

"Nominally heterosexual."

"All right, fine, if you insist, nominally heterosexual. Joey's queer too, a little. Not as much as you. Justin, now he's gay without being even a tiny bit queer."

Justin stops breathing. It feels like the bus has turned over and landed on his chest. He's never said a word of it to Chris, not once, not ever. Not to anybody. He curls his hands into fists underneath the pillow and tries to keep himself from shaking. Nobody has ever said it out loud before.

"Chris." JC has lowered his voice, as though afraid of being overheard. "Don't push him on that. Don't even mention it where he can hear you. You know how not okay he is with that thought, even to himself."

Chris snorts. "Yeah, I know. Mister I'm So Straight That I Can Talk To The Advocate Without Having My Masculinity Threatened isn't going to be sucking dick anytime soon."

"That interview hurt to read," JC says. "Because he knows as well as any of us do that him being gay would be a big deal."

"Yeah," Chris says. "Almost makes me want to come out at the top of my lungs, just to see people freak out."

JC laughs. "Chris, you're not gay."

"I know," Chris says. "But I'm pretty fucking queer."

27).

They've got a day off in Atlanta, and Justin spends it sitting in a park staring at the little kids on the playground. Mike is one bench over, diplomatically trying to look as though he isn't watching Justin like a hawk in case word gets out on the Internet and there's a sudden influx of fangirls. Justin just wants some time outside, in the sunlight, somewhere he doesn't have to worry about whether or not anyone is looking. He isn't going to get that here, but it's close enough that he can pretend.

Once upon a time, at a party that the label was throwing in LA, Justin had been trapped for about twenty minutes by a girl who was dressed all in black and holding a glass of champagne. She had been swaying back and forth in the breeze from the air conditioner, two and a half sheets to the wind, and she'd been spouting all of the trendy things to say about sexuality.

"I'm not attracted to bodies," she'd said, "just people." Justin had resisted the urge to reach out and nudge her elbow a little to see if she would topple over. He hated that line. It never made any sense to him; it's a post-modern ducking-the-question that completely fails to acknowledge any of the real issues involved. It's suddenly hip for girls to say things like that, to talk about how there really isn't much of a difference between "male" and "female" except for the part where one of them can pee standing up, and it's overly dismissive of the actual reality of the situation, which is to say that bodies do matter and perceptions do matter and who a person is depends so much on who they were told they have to be.

Justin has been watching JC for years, and the last few years or so of it has been JC struggling against everything that anyone ever told him that he had to be and trying to figure out who he really is, and Justin thinks that it's not so much a question of "gay or straight" as JC deliberately playing with it. He's been watching JC for years, and he's watched JC try on all sorts of different roles, each one carefully considered and assumed just because JC thinks that it feels right, or it'll teach him something, or because JC wants to try it. He's watched JC for years, and held his breath waiting for it all to backfire, and somehow it never has.

JC isn't a girl, or a lesbian, or a gay man or a straight man or anybody other than JC. JC can throw a punch and get a manicure and change his own oil and wear eyeliner and none of it makes any difference to what's behind his eyes.

If Justin is being honest with himself, and Justin has been trying to be honest with himself, he has to admit that he envies JC that security. Justin knows who he is, he's always known who he is, but there's a difference between knowing who you are and knowing how you got there. When Justin says that he is comfortable with who he is, what he really means is that he is comfortable with all of the things that made him. He's never stopped to wonder whether or not those assumptions that built him are the right ones.

Sometimes Justin wonders who he'd be if there were nobody watching.

28).

In Atlanta her name is Aisha, and Justin hates her for the way she can wear the shirt that says "I dig your girlfriend" and nobody sells a picture to the tabloids, because he can't hate her for the way that JC's eyes light up when he smiles at her.

29).

Justin stares at himself in the mirror. It feels as though his reflection belongs to someone else, someone foreign, someone he's never seen before.

"I am twenty-four years old," he tries. It comes out far more evenly than he was expecting it to. "I'm a singer. I'm a dancer. I'm an actor. I have a bad temper sometimes but I try not to be an asshole to people who don't deserve it. I love my mother. I have four brothers who love me and don't care about what the rest of the world thinks of us all, they just want me to be happy."

He takes a deep breath. "And I want to sleep with JC." It's not what he should be saying, but it's a good enough start. There'll be time later for him to practice saying the other things he needs to.

The world does not end.

30).

Fade in.

Justin is standing in the hotel hallway, looking at the door. It's two twenty-one AM on a Wednesday and they've been on the road for so long that Justin is beginning to forget what home smells like. He lifts his hand, hesitates for a minute, and then knocks. It rings out loudly in the stillness; he thinks heads must be turning all throughout the floor. His hands are clammy, and he wipes them on his sweatpants. He tastes toothpaste and nerves.

The door cracks open a minute later. Justin shifts his weight from foot to foot. "I see you," he says. "And I want you to show me what you see when you look at me."

What he really means is "I love you." He wonders which one JC hears.

JC looks startled, then smiles and holds the door open.

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