Jc and the Actor

JC and the Actor, Chapter 24, Copyright 2003

The following story is entirely a work of fiction. It is not meant to imply anything about the sexuality or the personal lives of the members of NSYNC, or any other celebrities mentioned. If you are underage, or if it is illegal to read sexually explicit gay material where you live, don't read this.

Sorry that this chapter took so long to post, but life gets pretty crazy from time to time. Hopefully a longer wait between chapters is preferred to simply ending the story, since I continue to enjoy writing it and have a number of ideas still in the works. Please continue to send your thoughts, comments and criticisms to mzbryan2003@yahoo.com

Now back to the show, already in progress...

Chapter 24

"Nate?"

"Yeah?"

"What is it?"

"What's what? Oh." My mind was racing so fast that I had forgotten what I had sat down to say. My mom and JC sat across from me, both with looks of great concern.

"Josh, I have to leave. I have to go back to New York." He gave me a puzzled look.

"But you just got out of the hospital. You're not ready to..."

"I'm fine," I interrupted. My physical health was now the least of my concerns. I no longer felt sick or even tired. I just knew that I had to change my surroundings. "I have to get back to something normal," I continued. "I wish I could be thinking of all this as some sort of vacation, and I know we are in one of the most beautiful places in the world, but I just, well, I just can't do this." I was telling the truth, if not all of it. I did need to get back to something familiar, something symbolic of who I was and where I was from. I thought that it might be my only chance to go back to being who I was.

"Nate," my mom called. "I think you are being a bit hasty. The doctors might not even allow you to go."

"I'm going, mom," I said as politely as possible. She looked at me and it felt like she understood why I needed to leave.

"Well," she began. "I guess we should get back and start packing." JC nodded quietly but wasn't saying anything. I couldn't read what he was feeling.

"Josh, you don't have to come," I said, realizing almost immediately that it sounded too much like I didn't want him to. In truth I didn't, but only so that I could have time to think. JC glared at me and then looked down and started playing with his napkin.

"You want me to stay here in this giant sandbox all by myself?" he asked, his eyes still looking down.

"Josh, I didn't mean it like that. I just meant that you shouldn't feel obligated to come with me just because I'm leaving. I mean, this has all been horrible for you these past few weeks and I understand if you want to go have some fun."

"You don't think I should feel obligated to go with you?" he said, looking up at me. His voice sounded like it was difficult for him to speak. I realized why I had trouble understanding what he was doing. He was expressing an emotion I rarely saw from him. He was mad. "Who the fuck else should feel obligated to go with you?" he said. He looked at my mom as though he was apologizing for using bad language. "I can't believe this."

"Believe what?" I asked, not sure where he was going with all this.

"Even after all of this, I'm still not in there," he said, pointing at my chest. "You still want me to feel free to go live it up somewhere while you go back to your life in New York."

"Josh, you're overreacting. All I meant was that I..."

"I, I, I" he repeated, standing up and tossing his napkin on his chair. "It's always going to be about you isn't it? You need to go back to New York. You have to take your time. I'm pretty much irrelevant, aren't I?"

"Josh, I appreciate everything you've done for me." I noticed that the people sitting around were staring at our table.

"Oh, thanks," he said. "Like I'm a friggin' nurse or something." He leaned down so that he was eye level with me. "I'm supposed to be your boyfriend. I'm supposed to be obligated to be with you. And you're supposed to give a shit about what I'm doing or going through sometimes."

"I do, Josh." I felt terrible that he could still feel unloved, but it also made me realize that this could be my way of freeing him. "But I'm the one who almost died."

"Well, maybe someday I'll almost die and then I'll get to see what you really think of me." He turned to my mom and apologized for speaking rudely in front of her. Then he walked out of the cabin toward the back of the ferry.

"What the hell was that?" I asked my mom.

"Nathaniel, go talk to him. You made him feel like he doesn't matter."

"I didn't mean for it to seem that way, but maybe it's just as well."

"What are you talking about?"

"Maybe I should leave it like this. Let him break up with me because he doesn't like me rather than because he finds out that I betrayed him."

"Nathaniel, you're not appreciating how this whole ordeal has been for him."

"I was, that's why I said I would understand if he wanted to go off and do something."

My mom looked at me and shook her head. "Dear, the only reason Josh has been here is because of you. For weeks he's basically been here alone. No family showed up for him, no friends. Can't you see that he wants it all to be for something? To have been worth it?"

"Mom, how can I go and assure him that I love him only to break his heart later on?" It seemed like it would be even crueler.

"If you love him, he should know that."

"So I should go talk to him?" Something told me I could fix this. JC was definitely reacting to his feelings, more so than coming to some sort of profound realization. My mother nodded and I excused myself to head out to the back of the ferry. JC was standing in the same spot I had occupied just before lunch, watching the propellers churn up the water.

"I'm afraid it is always going to be about me," I said with some humor, stepping up behind him. He turned and couldn't help but give a slight smile before turning back to stare out at the water. "Josh, you don't honestly think for a second that I don't love you, do you?"

"No," he said.

"When I said that you didn't have to come with me, I was only thinking that you might be starting to feel like a nursemaid who has to follow me around, taking care of me all the time. I don't want you to ever feel that you have to be with me for any reason other than because you want to be."

"I know," he said.

"So what is this all about then?"

JC turned and looked at me. "No one is ever going to take our relationship seriously," he said. "We're never going to have the respect that a married couple would or that even an unmarried straight couple would."

"This is what you're worried about?" I asked, somewhat perplexed. It seemed odd and perhaps a little premature for him to be thinking about stuff like this. After all, we had only known each other for six months.

"It's not something I think about daily," he corrected. "But with you being sick all this time, I just started thinking about how if something had happened to you, the world would never know or care about our relationship. I would have just been some friend at your funeral."

"Josh." My funeral wasn't something I particularly wanted to talk about. "Our family and friends would have known. And who cares about anyone else?"

"I don't believe that," he said. "The guys just stayed up in Germany the whole time. Yeah, they called, but something makes me think that if it were my girlfriend who was sick, they would be by my side. It's like everyone secretly thinks that we're just fuck buddies or something."

"Josh, I don't know what their reasons are, but if that's the case, then fuck them."

"That's fine," he said. "But if I start to feel like you are able to see our relationship as casually as everyone else does, then I just don't know what to do." Our relationship was anything but casual. I was mentally berating myself every second of the day over it. "We have to make this work," he added with some hesitation.

"Josh, we can't live our lives to prove to everyone else that we are worthy of respect. We have to live our lives for ourselves because we do deserve the same respect that is given to others." This conversation was getting me all twisted inside. I was conscious of my own betrayal while I struggled to make JC understand how great our relationship was. I didn't know if I was a hypocrite or a sociopath.

"You realize we could have it all if it weren't for this whole gay thing?" he said, making me realize that he may not have been as comfortable with his life as I had thought.

"Josh," I said, putting my hands on his hips. "I have it all."

Late that night, we boarded a plane bound for New York. Given that we had made the reservations so late, my mom quickly elected to be the one to sit apart from us, and she took a seat in the front of the first class cabin while JC and I took the last two together in the back.

"It's kind of nice knowing that we don't have to do any work for a while," JC said. He had lost his temporary state of hopelessness. "We can just enjoy the holidays without worrying about anything."

"Yeah," I forced myself to say, staring past him out the window.

"I kind of miss your apartment," he said. "After you left I went by it once in a while just to see it." I didn't tell him that I had done the same with his house when I was in Los Angeles. I couldn't afford to have him love me anymore than he did.

"I'm probably going to get rid of it when my lease ends in January," I said dryly. "I should probably buy something now."

"Oh," he said, somewhat saddened. "You mean now because you are rich and powerful?"

"I don't know about the powerful part, but yeah, I would like to own something."

JC asked me if I was going to keep living in New York and I said that I was. I couldn't imagine living in Los Angeles, and since I was predicting that I would be single very soon, the idea of uprooting myself seemed a bit silly. Part of me thought that JC was flirting with the idea of us moving in somewhere together, but my body language seemed to steer him away from actually bringing it up.

"I have to show you my house in Florida," he added at one point. "That's really where I spend most of my time." I hadn't realized that. I guess the new album and the tour was what made him have to spend so much time in LA.

It was getting really late and I was growing quite tired as the plane soared through the sky. The flight attendant handed out blankets and it felt good to be under their warmth and protected from the air conditioning. JC indicated that he was going to try to get some sleep and nodded goodnight to me as he laid his head back. Feeling somewhat playful, I slowly moved my hand underneath the blanket. I knew I shouldn't have, but I just kept telling myself that it was for him and not for me.

"Um, Nate?" he said quietly without opening his eyes.

"Yeah?"

"That's my zipper."

"Oh, my mistake," I said, pulling the fly to his jeans down and slipping my hand inside. His cock felt all twisted up inside, and I began to manipulate it through his underwear so that it pointed up toward his chest. He sighed softly.

"You're going to get in trouble," he whispered, his eyes still closed. He looked very relaxed as I began to rub my hand up and down his cloth-covered cock.

"My arms need the exercise," I whispered into his ear. I looked around and everyone seemed to be either asleep or wrapped up in their own conversations. I seriously doubted anyone thought anything inappropriate was going on under our blankets.

"I thought you didn't want to join the mile high club?" he asked. He had a good memory.

"I don't," I said, feeling him start to harden. "But I don't think there is anything wrong with you becoming a solo member." JC's lips turned into a slight smile. He gave out another sigh and I saw his eyes close tighter as he pushed the back of his head into the seat. He was letting me proceed and seemed quite content about it. Maybe he thought he deserved it. Maybe he wanted it. Maybe he wanted me to do what I wanted. I didn't know or care at the moment. I was just loving the feeling of running my hand over his huge pole.

Up and down I stroked him, eventually working him up to a full-blown erection. I could feel his cock head poking out of his underwear and squeezed it, feeling his thick precum coat my fingertips. I started pulling down his boxer-briefs until I was holding his hard flesh, with the denim of his jeans rubbing against the back of my hand.

"Nate," he sighed, placing his hand over his crotch so he could feel my movements. I started to quicken the pace and I could tell that JC was slowly starting to rock his hips back and forth, getting himself more and more lost in the sensations.

I leaned in very close to him and whispered into his ear. "I love your huge cock, Josh. I love feeling it hard and wet in my hand."

"Nate," he interrupted, a bit louder than he had wanted to.

"I'd love to take out your big cock right here." I continued, knowing how much he liked dirty talk. "I'd like to suck it all the way down right in front of everybody."

"Nate," he said again, responding to my words and my rapidly moving hand. His cock was leaking like a faucet.

"What, Josh? What?"

"I'm close."

"Close to what?" I asked, looking around quickly before biting his ear. "Close to cumming?" He nodded, his eyes still closed.

"You want to cum, Josh?" He nodded again. "You want to cum all over yourself and my hand?"

"Yes," he panted. I noticed perspiration developing on his forehead. His knees were starting to lift and I began to furiously pump his cock.

"Nate, ungh!" He groaned in such a way that it almost sounded like a cough. Suddenly his whole body tightened and his left leg involuntarily shot out, kicking the seat in front of him.

"Sorry, sorry," I called out quickly before the women in front of him had the chance to turn around and give her requisite expression of disdain. At the same time I could feel JC's cum pumping hard out of him as I finished him off. He continued to breathe hard, though his expression turned back into a smile as he finished his orgasm. He finally opened his eyes and gave me a somewhat quizzical look as if to say, "what the hell was all that for?" I just smiled at him and told him to get some sleep.

"It was just a blowjob, right?"

"Yeah," I said.

"So what's the big deal. Isn't that just like a handshake for your people?" I gave Morris a look of dismay and he smiled and gave me a quick wink. "Come on Nate, I mean if you are so in love with the guy, why ruin it with something unimportant?"

"It is important," I said. "It wasn't just a physical act. I actually had feelings for the kid."

"You mean, that's what you told yourself," Morris corrected, sipping his coffee. It was late November in New York, most definitely one of its more enchanting seasons. Morris and I had been walking around mid-town, and were now stopped at Rockefeller Center, watching the tourists ice skate.

"I don't know," I said. "I just know that I'm keeping too many secrets. It just can't be right. I'm taking away his choices."

"You think he can do better than you?" Morris asked. It was flattering. "I mean, say you tell him and he breaks up with you. Isn't he just going to realize later on that he still wants you? So why go through all this trouble?"

"Part of me just feels that everything should be out in the open before moving forward. I don't want to be sitting next to him ten years from now thinking about that day I betrayed him."

"Well, I just think you are taking a big chance over something that really isn't that important. You're never going to do it again, but I realize it is hard to say that honesty isn't what is most important in a relationship."

"Our profession is all about finding truth. We think of it as the most fundamental part of being human. How can I disregard that?"

"Maybe you can't," Morris said. We looked at each other for a moment and it seemed as though we both realized for the first time what I was going to do. "Maybe you should wait until after the holidays," Morris weakly suggested.

"Josh is leaving tomorrow so he can be with his family on Thanksgiving." Despite everything that we had gone through recently, JC and I both agreed we should spend the holiday with our respective families. I was renting a car and driving up to New Hampshire with Edward tomorrow night.

"Well then, I guess I know what you will be doing tonight," Morris said, looking quite upset.

"I think it's time to deal with my mistakes," I said.

I didn't know what else to do while I waited for JC to come home, so I started to cook. Though it was in a bit of disarray at the moment, given the shopping spree we had gone on when we first got back a couple of days ago, I was happy to be back in my apartment. Everything was once again familiar. Physically I was doing well, aside from being a bit more tired than usual. My own doctor told me that I could not resume any strict exercise regiment for at least another couple of weeks, but I assumed that once I started up again, my energy level would go back to what it usually was.

"Smells good," I heard JC say as he entered the kitchen. My entire body blew up in goose-bumps at the sound of his voice. Why was I going to do this to myself?

"How's Britney?" I asked him, trying to focus my attention on the sauce I was making.

"She's good. She redecorated again." I still hadn't met her, but it sounded like her tastes changed quite often.

"Justin doesn't mind that you are friendly with her?" I asked.

"He doesn't seem to. I mean, she and I don't have the friendship that we used to, but whatever, it's still nice. She told me to tell you that she wishes you a speedy recovery." He came over and stood next to me leaning his back against the counter, forcing me to look up at him. His face was smooth and his eyes very blue because of the navy turtleneck sweater he was wearing. His hair was a well managed bunch a small dark curls, all in all a radically different portrait from what he looked like in Egypt. "What?" he asked, noticing that I was staring at him.

"Nothing," I said quickly, looking down into the pot I was supposed to be stirring. I bit my lower lip. "I, uh, I think you are beautiful." I looked up again to seem him blush and turn his head away. He grabbed a tiny dinner roll that was sitting on the counter and bit into it.

"So what is all this?" he asked, gesturing at the pots.

"It's this pasta dish my mom learned when she was in Italy."

"Looks great," he said. "I have to give Johnny a call." He walked through the swinging door and out into the living room. My heart was racing like it never had before. Part of me wished it would just spin out of control and spare me from the torture I was putting myself through. "Oh," he called into the kitchen. "I got my results today. Looks like everything is fine on my end."

"Mine too," I called back. It was fitting that just as we had reached the next stage of our relationship, it was probably going to end.

I heard him say something into his phone and realized he must be on hold. "I really started liking your mom after we got to spend so much time together in Egypt," he yelled out. I guess he was thinking about the recipe of hers that I was using.

"Well, she just loves you," I yelled back. My face felt hot and my mouth felt incredibly dry. I walked over to the open bottle of wine and poured a glass, drinking it down in only a few gulps.

"I want to get her something really great for Christmas," he said. "Any ideas?"

"No," I said, feeling like I might hyperventilate.

"Does she like jewelry?"

"Josh, I had an affair." I blurted it out. I said it. It was done. There was nothing I could take back. There was silence on the other side of the door before it slowly started to open. JC stepped into the kitchen, his face looking like a blank sheet of paper.

"What?" he asked very calmly. My back was against the sink as I looked at him, unable to break eye contact.

"I had an affair. In Africa, before you came. Before I got sick. It was a completely stupid, one-time thing that will never happen again." I was trying to keep it all as simple and as matter-of-fact as possible. JC just kept looking at me. I couldn't tell what he was thinking.

His eyes shifted when a voice came out of the phone he was still holding next to his ear. "I'll have to call you back," he said, flipping the phone closed and staring at me once again. "You're not supposed to drink," he said, noticing the glass in my hand.

"Josh, I'm sorry. You have to believe me. I know that we've discussed this stuff before and I'm in total agreement with you that guys who cheat are scum, but you have to know I love you and I still want to be with you." He tucked his phone into his pocket and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"So what now?" he asked. "What am I supposed to do now?"

"I'm telling you because I don't want to make decisions for you. You have the right to do whatever you want, but I hope we can get past this."

"It was that kid, wasn't it?" he asked. "That Bobby?"

"Yes."

"You fucked him?" Inflection and emotion were returning to his voice.

"No, Josh, no, I never would have, I mean, he just..."

"Stop it!" he yelled, holding up his hand. "I don't want to hear the details." A look of disgust was spreading over his face.

"Josh, since the second it ended all I thought about was how stupid it was. All I thought about was how much I loved you. It made me realize that I loved you more than I could even imagine."

"Well, I guess I'll have to thank Bobby for that," he snarled, walking over to the wine bottle and pouring himself a glass. He downed it one gulp and turned to look at me again. It wasn't the first time I had hurt him, but it might have been the last. "Well, I'm feeling pretty much like a big fag at the moment," he said after a few beats. "We're not supposed to care about stuff like this, right? We're just supposed to be big manly men who go around fucking and sucking and no one is supposed to care, right?"

"Josh, don't talk that way. Of course you are supposed to care. I care. I think what I did is disgusting. I'm just saying that I'm sorry. That I want your forgiveness." He shook his head and kind of started pacing back and forth in the small space.

"So what's your reason, huh? You must have a reason?"

"I won't insult you further by giving you excuses."

"I want to know," he said, walking toward me and standing uncomfortably close to me. "I need to know how you could do this."

"I was afraid that my life was going to become routine," I blurted out. "I was afraid that I had accomplished it all too quickly. Family, friends, lover, career. Everything in place at the age of twenty-six."

"That's fucking bullshit," he said. I could feel his breath on my face.

"It's what I was feeling," I snapped back. "It's not an excuse but it's what I was feeling. It was like my mind became fixated and I couldn't control myself." His eyes squinted at me and it felt like he was trying to convince himself that I was the same person I was ten minutes earlier.

"I feel like such an asshole," he said. The weeks I spent at your bedside crying, talking to you, praying that you would be all right. You've completely humiliated me." I could see tears forming in his eyes but they were tears of anger. "How do I ever get back that time?"

"Josh, I was in a friggin' coma and I was thinking of you. I think my almost dying was maybe the best thing that ever happened to us because it made us realize how intense our feelings were for each other. Any doubts I may have ever had are gone."

He looked into my eyes and I saw his hand move as though it was going to caress my face. "How could you do this?" he asked, the tears running down his face. He pulled his hand back, turned around, and flung the glass he was holding in his other hand across the room. Glass flew everywhere, though it didn't reach us where we stood. He stormed out the kitchen and I quickly followed after him, begging him to forgive me.

"Well," he said, looking at all the bags in the living room. "I guess I just pack all of this stuff up and move on to the next guy, huh?"

"Josh, I don't want you to move on. I want you to stay here with me."

"I can't stay with you," he said angrily. How could I live with myself? If I forgive you it's like giving you a license to do it again."

"Josh, it will never happen again, please believe me." I was surprisingly holding myself together. I wondered if nearly dying forced everything else to be viewed in proper perspective.

"Believe you? Because you're so honest? You know what, this is all my fault anyway. I'm the one who forced this from the beginning. You didn't want a relationship, but I pushed you into one. I apologize for that."

"Josh, that was bullshit about me not wanting a relationship. I wanted you so much since the day I met you that it scared me. It seemed to good to be true."

"Well," he said in mock laughter. "It was." He surveyed the room and then put his hands on his hips. "Fuck it," he said. "I'll send someone to pick all this stuff up." He started to walk toward the door.

"Josh, don't walk away from this. We're adults, let's discuss it. Let's make it better."

"Why bother?" he said, jerking the door open. "I mean, let's face it. I can fuck anyone I want, and you've obviously already started, so why not just end this and really start living it up?"

"Because I love you," I said quietly, realizing we had stood in this same proximity before. "And because I know you love me."

"Love you?" he said, his face overcome with an expression of bewilderment. "I fucking hate you." He slammed the door closed and he was gone. I didn't even move to chase after him. I guess it was because I agreed with most of the stuff he had said. I did humiliate and betray him. I did make him feel all the things he never wanted to feel again. I didn't deserve him and I should be punished.

But I did love him.

Walking back into the kitchen, I decided most definitely that I would be moving. For all the good times I had had here with JC, there were equally bad ones. The rooms were full of passion and pain, and right now I didn't want to remember any of it. I swept up the glass and emptied the sauce and pasta into the garbage.

Back in the living room, a thought overcame me. When Mark left me, a toothbrush stood as the only evidence he had ever been here. In the few months I had been with JC, his presence could be felt everywhere. The kitchen had his favorite wines. The bathroom had his razors, soaps and shaving cream. Jeans and t-shirts were in my drawers and my living room was currently filled with bags of clothes and shoes. In such a short time, he had become more entwined in my life than anyone ever had. It was perhaps the most bittersweet realization of my life. Feeling the tears start to run down my face, I switched off the lights and headed into my bedroom, crawling underneath my comforter. It was probably only six in the evening, but it felt like a night that may never end.

To be continued