Goodnight, My Someone

by Ian McDuff

For the JC Slashficathon.

This round’s assigned task?

JC / Chris, with fluff, curls, and innovative wooing.

For Honey.

It was the screaming that started it.

When JC woke up, and not at all willingly, to find that the weight on his bed – which was dragging the covers off of him, to boot – was one Christopher Alan Kirkpatrick, of course he screamed. In the shock of the moment, and all. And not at all girlishly, no matter what Chris said later.

‘Dude,’ Chris said, as best he could with his mouth full. ‘My ears, man.’

JC shook his head violently, his curls whipping about his face, and caught his breath as best he could. ‘The fuck, Chris?’

‘I mean, damn, C, I always knew I could make anyone scream in bed, but this is ridiculous.’

JC started to sit up fully, but Chris stopped him with a hand to the chest. ‘No sudden movements, man. You’ll get this shit all over your covers.’

JC just looked at him. His bandmate was sitting on his bed, well before the asscrack of dawn, eating … eating his leftover raad-naa. ‘So.’ Chris mumbled through a new mouthful, and then swallowed. ‘You pick this place because it was close to good takeout? Because I already finished the little box of the peanut satay chicken, and it was most excellent.’

‘This,’ JC said firmly, with admirable restraint, ‘is a dream. Well, nightmare.’

Chris waved a hand, airily. ‘Pfft. Admittedly, I’m in everyone’s bedroom dreams, but not this time. Here in the flesh. You know, it always amazes me about these little paper boxes, man. And the wire handles. Simple, yet ingenious. Whoever has the patent on this shit must be raking it in –’

‘CHRIS!’

‘What?’

‘Why are you here, eating my leftovers, in my suite, in the MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING NIGHT?’

‘Eh, I was hungry. Not hungry, hungry. Peckish. Midnight snack, but not, but certainly not as much as a full meal at, like, a diner. Diners are cool, y’know? I like the streamlined ones, the old school shit, like Airstream trailers –’

‘CHRIS!’

‘Do you mind? It’s an ungodly hour, man, and I am sure there are people in the hotel trying to sleep.’

JC was too angry to speak.

‘Well! Someone is a grumpy boy this morning. I’ll make you some niiiice coffee. Don’t thrash, you fucking idiot, you’ll get noodles and rice and shit all over the bed.’

‘You’re not a countertenor,’ JC snapped, ‘you’re a fucking house elf.’

‘All boyband countertenors are house elves,’ Chris said, banging the coffee pot dangerously. ‘Look at Howie.’

‘I don’t want to look at Howie –’

‘Liar. Everyone wants to look at Howie. Preferably naked. You, especially. You just know Carter could snap you like the twig you are.’

‘I don’t want to look at Howie, I don’t want your fucking repartee, and I don’t want to wake up and have any Goddamned coffee! I just want to know why you are here, how you got in here, why you ate my food, and why I am not peacefully asleep!’

‘You’re here being Mister Recording Artist, I’m here because a charity golf tournament needed a washed-up boybander and B-list celebrity to fill out a foursome, and Lance doesn’t play recognizable golf and is too busy juggling expensive nose jobs and even more expensive blow jobs from male models. And the only difference between this place and a Motel 6, baby, is how big a bribe the night manager wants to let a guy into a bandmate’s bedroom.’

‘You. Are. A. Mental. Case.’

‘Eh, I just had limited choices in terms of bandmates’s bedrooms. It’s the hiatus. Of course I’d’ve picked J’s bedroom if the choice had been there.’

‘Yeah, you, the fans, and the label.’

‘Oooooh, bitter. I think an extra packet of sugar in your coffee wouldn’t hurt. Mmmmm, sugar packets.’

‘Don’t you dare get wired on my fucking sugar.’

‘Man, you really are a miserly bitch. You begrudge me Thai food, you begrudge me sugar … me, your very own bandmate. I am shocked, I tell you. Wait until this hits the tabloids.’

JC whimpered. Clearly, mommy was not going to make the bad man go away.

‘Why are you here?’ JC was pleading, now. Broken.

‘Oh, didn’t I tell you? There’s a charity golf tournament that –’

‘SHUT UP! Why are you here?’

Chris sighed, looking much put-upon. ‘Honestly, my bandmates are soooo dense…. Why couldn’t I have joined Backstreet with Howie like he suggested?’

‘Howie couldn’t stand you in junior college, no way was he going to ask you to join Backstreet.’

‘Details, details. Is this any way to treat the love of your life?’

‘Listen, you freakish singing garden gnome –’

‘Oh, deal with it. I mean, honestly, dude. I could understand you being pissed because I ate all the bean sprouts out of your putt-thai korat –’

‘YOU ATE ALL MY BEAN SPROUTS?’

‘– but this denial thing? Doesn’t become you at all.’

‘Are you on crack?’

‘Not unless that’s what makes those spring rolls so addictive, why?’

‘Chris, I don’t even like you at the moment! We haven’t slept together, we haven’t dated –’

‘You really are insane at this hour. We’ve had a relationship for years. I even went with the curly look so we’d match. And besides. Look at all the wooing I’ve done.’

‘Not of me, you haven’t. Dani, yes. Your psychotic non-relationship with Justin, sure. But we have never, um, “wooed,” dude.’

‘Sure we have. I gave you beer in Germany. I even gave you my last few Twizzlers once. 1998. I think it was in August.’

‘Well, forgive me for not realizing that amounted to a proposal on your home planet!’

‘And all the special times we spent together,’ Chris sighed, batting his lashes.

‘Waking me up on the bus when you and J got into a fight over the PlayStation counts as “special times”?’

‘And how you always came to me….’

JC opened his mouth, then shut it. Chris had always come to him about the J Situation. And the Joey Situation. And the Dani Situation. And the Howie Situation. And, if he were going to be honest, he’d always gone to Chris about the Lance Situation. And his Joey Situation. And, God help them all, the AJ Situation. He’d never gone to anyone about the Bobbie Situation, because, well….

‘Because we’d’ve given you a pistol and some ammo and an alibi, and left you to it?’

‘Tell me I didn’t say all that out loud.’

‘You … um, mumbled?’

‘Fuck.’

‘Hey, though, who else were you going to go to over the Lance Thing? I mean, Joe’d adopted him, Justin wants to pretend we’ve never seen each other’s dicks…. You just thought you wanted a knight in shining armor, man, until you realized that Lance was nothing but armor. Like trying to fuck plate steel.’

JC winced. ‘And you and J? What was that, the statue that didn’t come to life? You and your Pygmalion complex.’

‘Pig what? Who you calling a pig?’

‘Don’t pull that shit with me, Chris, I know you too well.’

‘A-ha! My point exactly! J … that was just displaced shit. I was ignoring my thing for tall, lean tenors.’

‘J is a tall, lean tenor.’

‘Okay, tall, lean, brunet tenors. With curls. And toe-rings. And really girly wardrobes.’

‘Prick.’

‘Hell of a thing to say to the love of your life.’

‘You are not –. Oh, fine.’

‘Fine? I mean, yeah! Fine!’

‘So this is the domestic shit, right?’

‘Huh?’

‘I mean, here we are, after almost a decade of unacknowledged foreplay, right? And we’re all domestic now. Eating leftovers at –’ he looked at the clock, and shuddered – ‘at an hour I refuse to acknowledge. We skipped the whole honeymoon period and the wild riotous sex to go straight into the middle-aged stuff. All passion spent.’

‘The fuck do you mean, “all passion spent”?’

‘Well, at your age it’s understandable –’

‘You little –’

‘All that innovative wooing wasted –’

‘I’ll show you whose passion is spent –’

Lithe as a cheetah, JC was out of bed, scattering leftovers, and on his feet, grinning. ‘You’ll have to catch me first, you senile old fart….’

‘Come back here, Chasez!’

‘You need wheels for that walker?’ JC tossed the remark over his shoulder as he pelted out in the main sitting room of the suite. Behind him, Chris, who had gotten a foot tangled in the bedclothes and a box that had held steamed rice, swore.

‘Passion spent, my ass, you little fucker –’

JC giggled, and turned to flee. But old age and treachery will beat youth and skill every time.

‘Passion spent?’

‘Mmmph.’

‘SPENT, you say?’

‘Mmmm….’

Lance’s voice on the conference call was crisp, and slightly irritable. Justin refused to admit that he could hear Jesse snickering in the background. ‘If the number is not on my PDA, J, it does not exist. Do you understand me? We have tried every number we have for either of them and. They. Are. Not. Answering. Now, if you don’t mind I have … matters … to attend to….’

‘But, Lance.’

‘Stop whining,’ Joey chuckled. ‘You’re giving Briahna a run for her money, J.’

‘Fine,’ Justin snapped. ‘I’ll go track them down myself.’

‘I don’t think,’ Joey said, carefully, ‘that that’s a good idea.’

‘You know something, don’t you.’

‘I know a lot of things, J, why?’

‘Don’t get innocent with me, Fatone.’

‘Look, I’m just sayin’. Usually, when people can’t be reached, it means they’re … busy.’

‘As I had planned to be by now,’ Lance added, waspishly.

‘Yeah, well, I doubt they’re both “busy” the way you planned to be, Bass. Not at the same time. Right, Joe?’

‘…’

‘JOE? You’re keeping something from me, Fatone, you fuckwad.’

‘Joey….’ Lance was preternaturally calm. ‘Does this have anything to do with the fact that Kirkpatrick called me so I could walk him through booking a flight online?’

‘Um. Maybe?’

‘Oh, God,’ Justin moaned. ‘I didn’t want to know, I really didn’t want to know, why the fuck did I ask?’

‘Yeah,’ Lance snorted, ‘it’s only been coming for the last seven years or so.’

‘And if Chris gets his way,’ Joey chuckled, ‘they’ll keep coming for the next seven y- –.’

There was a sharp click as Justin turned off his phone. The life members of the Two-Man-Bus Matchmaking Society took a breath, and then started laughing, and laughing, until they were too weak to laugh any more.

END