Dig
Once, Justin knows, long, long ago, all the land was pushed together and stretched across the ocean in some vastly different configuration. There were swamps where the mountains are; there were deserts where the glaciers are. The heat blistered in the north; the sun was younger, farther away. The dinosaurs left footprints imprinted on the earth, but they were covered by plants and filled with mud and forgotten, lost to anyone's knowledge.
He watches Chris' face change with the music on the radio. He wonders who will search for his footprints, and what they will be filled with by the time they are found.
The snow is falling fast and thick, but Justin isn't impressed, even though JC wants him to be. It's not like Justin's never seen snow before, for God's sake.
"It's different though, it's European snow," JC says solemnly, like that's supposed to make it more special. "It's the snow of our forefathers."
Justin doesn't even take the time to roll his eyes. He can hear the thud of Joey's snowball when it hits Lance's chest, but he doesn't look over. If he walks away and closes his eyes, he can be in a forest in the middle of nowhere. He doesn't need to be in a park; there doesn't need to be a hotel room with a twin bed waiting.
Chris pretends to like the twin beds. Everyone else thinks he really likes them, but Justin knows he's pretending. When Chris sleeps, he spreads himself out. His legs jack-knife across the mattress, kicking all the extra pillows to the ground, and sometimes kicking Justin too. Justin doesn't mind. He'd want someone to let him take up the whole bed if he'd had to sleep in the backseat of a Cavalier for an extended period of time. Chris is over that, never talks about it, never even thinks about it, but Justin still sees what he wants.
Justin doesn't always understand the fight in Chris, but at least he sees it.
He leaves JC to blink like a baby up at the snowflakes. By the time he passes out of earshot of everyone, the wind's picking up and the shards of snow sting Justin's mouth. He licks his lips and takes off his gloves. He can dig better with bare hands.
"It's not my fault!" Chris' voice is high and hurt, and Justin would agree with him, except he can't, because of course it's Chris' fault. "I wasn't in charge, why would I be in charge? Gunter's in charge when we go out, you said Gunter was in charge."
Justin hears his mama draw a breath and then she starts to talk, but the water makes his fingers hurt really, really bad. JC murmurs soothingly, his chapped hands gentle around Justin's wrists, forcing them under the flow from the tap.
When Chris pushes his way into the bathroom, Justin can feel his index and middle fingers, and his right thumb.
"You little asshole."
"Chris!" JC snaps.
Chris ignores JC. "The next time you want to fucking freeze your hands off building a fort, you have to tell me so I can make you wear your mittens. And not freeze your hands off. Or something. Okay?"
Justin doesn't like the restraint in Chris' voice. He's only known Chris for a year and a half, and he already hates anything fake. He wonders how long they're really going to be friends.
"Jesus," Chris says harshly, stepping closer right up against the sink, his hip biting into Justin's side, "his hands are blue."
"It wasn't a fort," Justin says to Chris' fluorescent reflection. His pinky finger twitches. "I know how to take care of myself."
"Then fucking act like it."
But the next thing Justin knows, JC is gone and it's Chris holding his hands under the warm water, rubbing his thumbs in steady circles over Justin's palms.
"– seen how he looks at him?"
JC's a little drunk, talking louder than normal. Still, Justin pauses in the hallway, keeping his eyes trained on the floor in front of him, like maybe looking at the wall will reveal his presence.
"Dude, no, just no."
"But really," JC persists, "it's just, come on, you think Chris'll do anything about it?"
Justin feels the blood flood like fire across his face.
"Sure," he hears Joey say decisively. Joey's not drunk, and Joey's known Chris the longest. "When hell freezes over."
Lance looks at him funny, but agrees to switch seats without too much trouble. Chris looks at him funny, but gives him the extra blanket when he asks for it. Chris always gets too hot on planes. Justin gets cold when he gets scared. He burrows under the blanket and tucks his legs up underneath him.
After Chris falls asleep, Justin lifts the armrest between them and curls his legs in the opposite direction, so the balls of his feet are just touching Chris' thigh. Just because he knows how to take care of himself doesn't mean he doesn't want other people to try.
Justin dreams of lying flat below the snow, safe from the wind and surrounded by warmth, the open sky full of angry clouds above him, but every cloud miles away.
Back in Orlando, "You've got a radio interview at eight, then a photo thing, then another interview for the paper, then one for a magazine, then another photo thing, then a three-song," which means four, because they've been getting encores from the very start, "then you've got a meeting with PR."
"When's lunch?" Lance asks plaintively.
"Lunch is in the van. After PR, rehearsal."
"Rehearsal!" they automatically chorus, and Justin joins in, even though he doesn't really mind rehearsing after shows. He's used to it, and he knows JC is too. At this point, they're all used to it.
He gives Lance the rest of his bagel and joins Chris, who's hunched over the countertop watching the coffee drip with a wary eye. "It won't finish in time," Chris mutters conspiratorially, "no coffee all day." He says it like it's the end of the world.
"I'm sure we can get you coffee," Justin says. "At the radio station. They'll have coffee."
"I know they'll have coffee, that's not the point." Chris slumps forward, his forehead sinking down onto his forearms. Justin puts his hand on Chris' lower back, right where the tension settles and twists. Chris turns his face to the side, peering out at Justin. "The point is on your head. Pointy-head." He reaches out and pinches Justin's thigh.
Justin makes Chris laugh. He makes Chris laugh to make Chris make him laugh. There's always something to laugh about, whether it's Lance's hair or JC's hair or Joey's hair. Justin laughed at Chris' hair once, and Chris gave him the worst Indian burn. Chris laughs at Justin's hair everyday. Justin laughs at his own hair, because hell, you have to laugh or you're just gonna cry.
"You've got to lighten up, man," Chris tells him. "Well, not too much, or your head's going to blind me – ow, no fair, no fair, that's not what the spatula's for!"
Justin's down on the floor now, Chris sitting on his legs and wrestling the spatula out of his hands.
"This is for pancakes," Chris says sternly, thwacking the flat end down on Justin's chest, "and flapjacks, and more pancakes, and not for hitting my ass with."
"Will you make me some pancakes?"
"I'll make you some ass, you need an ass more than you need pancakes."
"I need pancakes," Justin argues. "I already got some fat ass sitting on me."
"Lawksamussy Miss Justin, is I too heavy for you?" Chris wriggles forward, and suddenly, Chris is very much too heavy to be sitting where he is, his knees bracketing Justin's sides and his gravity centered right where Justin needs him not to be.
Justin needs to make Chris laugh because his treacherous hips want to arch. His body wants to move and he thinks fiercely of deep snow while he grabs Chris' shoulders and wrestles him off.
The humidity is over a hundred percent; when Justin showers and tries to dry off, he stays completely drenched because there's simply nowhere for the water to evaporate to.
He pads out into the living room wearing only a towel around his dripping waist. The fan's only blowing hot air around, and everyone is lying in various states of death on the floor.
"Go get decent," Lance grumbles, "we gotta go dance in forty-five minutes."
"We have to dance?" Joey groans.
"We get to dance," JC corrects him, and Joey makes a good-faith effort to lob a pillow at his face.
Lance snorts. "You think this is hell, wait until we start touring or something."
"That won't be hell," Chris says. "That'll be heaven. But, like, Muslim heaven, with virgins and wine and stuff. We're killing ourselves to get there, aren't we?"
Justin stands in the path of the muggy blast from the fan and feels the drops of water roll lazily off his shoulders. "Lord have mercy," he says, trailing his finger in the sign of the cross through the damp moisture on his chest. The air is only half as hot as Chris' eyes, involuntarily following his movements.
Justin hears Chris jerking off in the bathroom. He doesn't mean to, and he feels guiltily voyeuristic, standing in the hallway and closing his eyes so his other senses can be heightened.
He wants to hear everything. When he can hear everything, he imagines he can see everything too.
Chris will be standing in front of the sink, the mirror still slightly fogged, and he will be resting one hand on the tile. His legs will be spread, his shoulders bent as he breathes harshly, his hand working between his thighs.
Chris' hard-ons are mysterious bulks behind denim, solid pushes of flesh under soft flannel pants, hiding in plain view under track pants. When Chris stumbles downstairs in the morning, Justin hunches over his cereal so that the tilt of his head will mask how his eyes track the firmness beneath Chris' boxers as he reaches for the bread kept on top of the refrigerator. When Chris' back is turned, Justin's hand sneaks under the table to rub himself reassuringly.
Chris' dick will be hard and dark, the head an angry red, pushing out from the skin that moves with Chris' fist. He will rock forward, his weight catching on the arm that supports him, and Justin hears the soft grunts that accompany each upstroke.
Justin presses the flat of his palm firmly against his own dick, feeling the sweet pressure course up through his body like fire.
Chris' ass will clench as he strokes himself faster, his hand a slick tunnel to fuck into. His balls will be tight; they will draw up close, hard and heavy, and Justin strains to hear what Chris moans when he comes, some word thickly whispered as he shoots over his fingers, onto his stomach and the yellow tile of the countertop, each rhythmic pulse echoing the beating of Justin's heart.
Justin spends the rest of the morning shut in his room, lying on his bed, his hand around his cock. With the curtains drawn, tiny spikes of light hit his thighs and stomach, illuminating the muscles, the dips and lines where Chris' tongue would fit like a puzzle piece, curved edge to an empty place.
When he comes down to the kitchen, Chris has already made him a BLT just the way he likes it: white bread, light on the mayo, the bacon crispy and perfect.
"Okay, what the hell is that?" Lance's face is pressed to the window, and he jumps when Joey whoops and slaps his back.
"That's snow, country mouse."
Justin laughs when Lance pulls back and rolls his eyes at Chris. "I know what snow is, dumbass," Lance says. "I just didn't realize it snowed in Florida. Ever."
"It doesn't." JC joins Lance and Joey by the window. "It must be . . . um, it must be a cold front, like, cold air from the north hitting the humidity here in some weird way."
"Turn on the TV," Lance says.
"Dude, there's no TV outside!" Chris has already pulled his shoes on. He looks expectantly at Justin. "You're coming, right?"
It won't be fast enough or thick enough to even cover the ground; no snow angels for JC or snowballs for Joey, no sledding like in that park in Munich. Justin catches the sweatshirt that Chris tosses him, but doesn't put it on. It won't be cold enough outside.
The air has just frozen enough for breath to crystallize in puffs of clouds, and Justin barely feels the goosebumps rise on his arms when Chris lifts an arm around his shoulders and gazes up at the sky.
"Losers. Watching the news."
"Here's the news," Justin ducks his head and whispers to Chris' neck. "It's snowing."
"That ain't news anymore. I knew that like three minutes ago. What else is new?"
"Something." Justin's voice catches in his throat. He can't explain himself, won't explain himself, although he's pretty sure he understands. He leans into Chris and turns his face up.
Chris' next words are almost too quiet to be heard over the wet drop of Florida snowflakes. "Justin. That ain't news either."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"So?"
Justin blinks up at the snowflakes. They hit his eyes, but it doesn't sting at all. Chris' arm is very warm around him, and where the snow lands, it melts. He doesn't want to lie beneath anything. He feels safe on top of the world, and he can see where he's going, the footprints of his future stretching clearly ahead of him in the blank landscape that he can barely imagine.
He puts his arm around Chris' waist and waits for Chris' face to change.