Obligatory warnings and disclaimers:
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If reading this is in any way illegal where you are or at your age, or you don't want to read about male/male relationships, go away. You shouldn't be here.
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I don't know any of the celebrities in this story, and this story in no way is meant to imply anything about their sexualities, personalities, or anything else. This is a work of pure fiction.
Sorry for the longer than usual gaps between chapters. Things got busy here. Questions and commentary can be sent to "writerboy69@hotmail.com". I've enjoyed hearing from all of you.
So, on with Season 2 of the story.
For once Josh woke up before me, I think for the first time since I had come to stay with him. I rolled over, awakened by the sound of a door closing, and suddenly Josh was there at the side of the bed, holding out a terrycloth robe for me to slide into.
"Morning," he said, kissing me as I stepped into the robe. He was wearing an identical one, both of them with the hotel monogram over the pockets. "Come out to the balcony."
I followed Josh out to the balcony, and discovered a breakfast table, set and waiting. The view, which had been impressive the night before, was now breathtaking as well, and I felt myself going into a sort of magic moment overload. There were covered dishes on the table, and I looked around casually, praying we'd be serving ourselves. Josh giggled.
"What?" I asked.
"You're looking for waiters, aren't you?" he asked, smiling. "We're alone."
"Thank God!" I blurted, squinting at him. I would have brought my sunglasses if I'd known we were having breakfast outside. "I mean, Josh, what was that last night? Where did those guys keep coming from? Were they hatching from the wallpaper? And that creepy old guy in the dressing room. What the hell was up with that?"
Josh threw his head back, laughing. His adam's apple bounced, and his hair shook in the sun, brown verging on golden as the light filtered through it. He leaned back in his chair, his arms resting on the sides, a wedge of his tanned, toned chest visible where his robe gaped.
"That's why I love you," he said. "I go to all this trouble, and you think you're in the Twilight Zone. But seriously, did you like it?"
"Yeah, Josh, I did," I said, spooning out the eggs. "It was one of the most amazing nights of my life, actually. And I wanted to thank you for it."
"I'd call last night a thank you," he said, lifting another lid to reveal bacon.
"No, I'm serious, Josh," I said, staring at him. "Nobody's ever gone out of their way to create something like that for me, and you do it on a regular basis. You make me feel special."
"You are special, Jack," Josh said, taking my hand.
"Thank you, Josh," I said. "Thanks for being you, and for letting me be with you. And I wanted you to know that I'm ok with you leaving. I'll miss you, but I want you to do what you have to, and know that I'll still be waiting for you when you're done."
"Thank you," Josh said, squeezing my hand.
We finished breakfast in a companionable silence, staring out at the city, watching it wake up. When we were done eating, we left everything where it was and showered, and then got dressed in fresh clothes that Josh had smuggled in from the apartment. He really had thought of everything. When we were dressed, we tidied up the room a little, as I didn't want anyone from housekeeping to have to pick up used condoms and tissues, but Josh left a huge tip for them on one of the nightstands anyway. We packed away the tuxedos in the bag Josh had brought our clothes in.
"Josh, are you sure we should steal these?" I asked, thinking about how wrinkled they were going to get.
"We're not," he said. "I bought them."
"You bought me a tuxedo?" I asked, staring at him.
"Someday I'm going to need to take you to some black tie stuff," he said, shrugging. "We might as well start getting you clothes for it now."
I didn't really have an answer for that, so I just kind of shrugged. After we had everything, we took the elevator down, and Josh thanked the manager (or was he the concierge?) for everything, handing out another round of big bills to what seemed every employee who happened to be nearby. I was on the verge of telling him there could be such a thing as too much, and it would have the same effect as not enough, but decided to just leave it alone. We weren't in my world, so maybe the rules weren't all what I thought they should be. The limousine was waiting out front for us again, and we climbed into the back seat. I snuggled against Josh, my head on his chest, and he absently stroked my hair.
"I think I'm going to miss this the most," Josh said, sighing.
"Riding in big cars?" I asked, staring up through the sunroof.
"No, just being with you," he said, looking down at me.
"It's only for a week," I said, thinking about how sappy he and I got when we had to be away from each other. Actually, that was just romantic delusion on my part. We were only sappy when we weren't having screaming, tearful goodbyes. "And I'll be right here."
"Hanging out with the guys, running with Chris, and pining away for me?" Josh asked.
"Crap!" I blurted, sitting up. I was in the habit of not actually swearing, from working in a school environment.
"Huh?" Josh asked, confused, as I dug out my cell phone.
"Sorry," I said. "Did you tell the guys where we were going last night?"
"No, why?" Josh asked.
"I need to call Chris and tell him we're not running," I explained. As I was dialing, I noticed that I had voicemail, because I'd shut the phone off at the cemetery, but decided I'd just check it later. After a couple rings Chris answered. "Chris?"
"Jack!" he burst. He sounded upset. "Jack, where are you? Is Josh with you?"
"He's right here," I said. Josh must have caught something in my tone, because he sat up straighter, eyeing me inquisitively. "Chris, what's wrong? Did something happen to one of you?"
I thought, oddly enough, of Lance. He had seemed so down when I saw him at Justin's door yesterday.
"No, no, everyone else is fine," Chris said quickly. "Are you guys home yet?"
"No, we're on our way right now," I said. "What do you mean everyone else? Chris, are you ok?"
"What's wrong?" Josh asked, taking my hand.
"I'm not hurt," Chris said. "I just need you guys, to, well, I need a favor."
"A favor?" I asked. "I'm not following you."
"When you get back, can you, um, look through the box we gave you the other night?" Chris asked quietly.
"The Kinky Lovin' Kit?" I asked. Josh's eyes went wide. "Yeah, we can do that. What are we looking for?"
Chris was quiet for a second, and then he took a deep breath.
"The handcuff key," he answered, and I dropped the phone, laughing.
"What?" Josh asked, completely perplexed. I could hear Chris screaming my name, mixed with various obscenities, through the phone as Josh picked it up.
"Chris is handcuffed to a model!" I blurted, unable to control myself.
"You're what?" Josh blurted into the phone. "To the bed? He's not cuffed to a model, Jack. He's cuffed to the bed. Yeah, Chris, we'll be home in a couple minutes."
I could still hear a string of expletives coming from the phone. Tears were rolling down my cheeks from laughing so hard, and Josh was blushing deeply, almost choking, while fighting to keep his laughter in.
"Oh, and Jack isn't going to make your run today, either," Josh gushed, hanging up the phone in mid-swear.
The two of us collapsed on the seat in helpless giggles and shrieking guffaws of laughter. When the limo finally dropped us at the apartment complex we raced inside, still laughing, and into our apartment, where we dumped the Kinky Lovin' Kit onto the floor and began to paw through it, pushing and tossing various sex toys across the living room.
"I got it!" Josh shrieked, holding up the handcuff key.
"Let's go!" I yelped, jumping up to pull the apartment door open.
I collided with Joey, falling backward onto my ass like something from bad vaudeville slapstick. Joey didn't even step back. He stared down at me, eyes wide with surprise, as Josh ran over to help me up.
"Oh my God, are you ok?" Joey asked.
"What are you doing here?" I asked, standing. "Ow, my ass."
"I saw you guys come flying in, and I thought maybe something was wrong," he said, looking past me. His eyes fell on the pile of sex toys strewn all over the living room, and Josh hastily moved into the doorway behind me, trying to block Joey's view as one of Joey's eyebrows went up. "If this is a bad time."
"It's not what it looks like," Josh said quickly, pushing me out the door and pulling it closed behind him. "We just have to go downstairs for a minute."
"We have to bring Chris something," I explained as the two of us tried to walk casually to the stairs.
"Why didn't he just come get it?" Joey asked, following us.
"Because he's handcuffed to the bed," I blurted, giggling helplessly again.
"Jack!" Josh yelped, and Joey began to clap his hands and dance back and forth, laughing.
"Can I see? Can I see?" he begged, dancing in a little circle around Josh. "Please?"
"Can I stop you?" Josh asked rhetorically.
The three of us walked down to Chris's apartment, and I pushed open the door, peeking inside.
"Chris?" I called.
"Jack! Jesus Christ!" Chris yelled from the bedroom. "What the fuck took you so long? I called you like ten times!"
"Joey and Josh are with me," I said, unsure of whether or not he wanted them to come in, too. "Where's the girl du jour?"
"She had a shoot!" Chris yelled. "I don't care who's with you! Just get in here and give me the God damned key!"
I hurried through the living room, Josh and Joey scurrying along, giggling, behind me. I jerked open the bedroom door and froze in the doorway, feeling fresh laughter bubbling up in me. Joey and Josh collided with my back, almost knocking me over. Chris had one hand free, but the other was firmly cuffed to the bed, which he had pulled halfway across the room in his attempt to reach the closet. I was guessing he wanted to throw on more clothes, since all he was wearing was a tiny pair of gold sequined hot pants, extremely small and extremely tight. He turned and glared at us in exasperation.
"Oh my God! You're huge!" I blurted, clapping a hand to my mouth as I realized that I'd said that out loud. His bulge was, well, enormous.
Chris blushed a deep, deep scarlet over his whole body.
"Wow!" Josh gasped, his eyes in the same place.
"Nice pants!" Joey screamed, pointing and laughing. "No one can resist Mango-Chris!"
"Jesus Christ!" Chris yelled, still bright red. He wasn't mad, at least, which was surprising since the three of us weren't exactly role-modeling maturity. "Just give me the key and get out!"
"Here," I said, handing it to him, not even trying to hold in my laughter. "We'll just, um, we're, we're gonna go, now, right now."
"Please!" Chris said, turning to unlock the handcuffs. I hoped all the keys to cheap handcuffs really were the same.
Josh and I hurried away from the bedroom, holding hands as we skittered through the apartment, and behind us I heard Joey chanting in a sing-song voice, "Oh, Chris, your penis is enormous!"
"Out!" Chris screamed, throwing a pillow at him.
Joey followed us to the door, quaking with laughter. I thought I was going to wet my pants.
"Call me if you need anything!" I yelled from the doorway.
"Fuck you all!" Chris yelled back.
The three of us collapsed in helpless laughter on the patio furniture, taking a minute to just let it all out, and then to collect ourselves. Joey ran to his apartment, explaining that he needed to call his brother, and Josh and I went upstairs to get him packed. We worked mostly in silence, but every couple of minutes we'd look at each other and just start giggling again. When Josh was all packed up we carried his bags out to the walkway, and walked hand in hand over to Justin's door. Josh knocked, and Justin pulled it open, smiling at us.
"Hey guys!" he said, pulling us both against him in a quick hug. "Ready to go?"
"Yeah," Josh said, looking down. I leaned over and kissed him, and he smiled at me.
Josh and I rode in the back of Justin's car, staring at each other and holding hands. I was so focused on Josh I didn't even notice the high speed daredevil stunt show that Justin's driving usually was, and every once in a while I caught him glancing at us in the rear view mirror, his eyes crinkling in a smile. When we got to the airport, we still had about an hour before Josh's flight, and we spent it in the VIP lounge, sitting by ourselves, staring out the window, just soaking in each other's presence. Justin found a magazine to distract himself with, and sat off by himself reading, giving us our space.
Finally it was time for Josh's plane to board. Justin and I walked him over to the door, and Justin gave him a quick hug, squeezing him tightly.
"Good luck, Josh," he said. "Call if you need us."
"Thank you," Josh said. "I will."
He turned to me, and pulled me against him. I rested my forehead against his, feeling him breath against me in time to my own breaths.
"I love you," he whispered.
"I love you, too," I whispered back.
Josh let go of me and hurried down the walkway, head down, not looking back. I wondered if he was crying, because I wanted to. I felt Justin's hand settle reassuringly onto my shoulder.
"You ok?" he asked, squeezing lightly as I watched the plane.
"Yeah," I answered, turning to him. "Can we just get out of here? Please?"
"Sure," Justin answered, shrugging.
As we were leaving the airport I remembered that I needed to clear all those messages from Chris off of my phone. I wanted to keep the voicemail clear in case Josh called and I didn't have the phone with me. Scanning through a string of increasingly urgent and frustrating messages from Chris, I found myself smiling, but I stopped when I found a message from Stacy, the secretary at the studio, telling me I had a letter.
"Justin, can we stop at the studio?" I asked blandly. "I need to pick up some mail."
"Sure," he said, shrugging.
Neither one of us really seemed to feel like talking. I was missing Josh already, and the CD player in Justin's car was on an endless repeat of Britney's albums. Oh yeah, we were sadly, pathetically in love.
"Can you get mine, too?" Justin asked. "I want to make a call."
"Sure," I answered, assuming that he was calling Brit.
I signed in at the desk, and hurried back to Stacy's office. I knocked once on her door, and she turned, hanging up the phone.
"Hi," I said. "What do we have?"
"Looks like another card," she answered, holding up a pale pink envelope. "No return address, but it does have a postmark."
"This is the zipcode we're in," I said, taking it from her.
"Yup," she said, leaning back in her chair. "There's a post office right up the street."
"Thanks, Stacy," I said, wondering absently if I should offer her a giant tip or something.
Why mail this one, when he had just walked the last one right in? I thought about it as I was crossing the lobby, and my eyes fell on the camera again. If I noticed it, surely my stalker had, too. I walked out and saw Justin leaning on the hood of his car, chatting away on his cell phone. When he saw me, he waved, and quickly ended his phone conversation before I had walked close enough to hear any of it.
"Ready?" he asked.
"Yeah, let's go home," I said, climbing into the car.
"What did you get?" Justin asked. "Anything good?"
"Just a card," I answered, downplaying it.
"Cool," he said.
We drove back to the apartment building, and I thanked him for driving us both, and for stopping at the studio. We talked about maybe going to see a movie later, but didn't make any firm plans. As I walked up the stairs to Josh's apartment I saw Justin turn and walk toward Lance's door. I wondered again what the hell was going on with those two, but then remembered that I had problems of my own, and I hurried inside to open my card, filled with morbid fascination.
This one had a picture of one of those big-eyed Precious Moments kids on the front, and carried the phrase, "Thinking of you" across the top in shiny pink foil.
"I bet you're thinking of me," I muttered to myself, wondering if muttering to myself might be a sign of mental instability.
I opened the card, and a large clipping with two pictures on it fluttered out. I picked it up, recognizing it immediately. It was a chunk of Basil Morgan's stupid gossip column from the paper. At the top was a grainy picture of Justin and I at the airport coffee shop where we thought no one had seen us on the day I almost left, and underneath was a group shot of all of us from our lunch at Spago, a much better picture, all beaming teeth and handsome faces, and me right in the middle. Between the pictures was Basil's latest blurb, which I didn't feel merited being called an article.
"Pop-ular boyband Nsync appears to have picked up a new friend recently, but the question on everyone's lips is 'Who is he?' The same mystery guest has been seen with the boys at such places as Planet Hollywood, in LAX (above), and at Spago (below), where witnesses said he lived it up just like a member of the band! No one seems to know who he is or where he came from, and a spokesperson for the band offered no comment, saying that the guys have 'any number of close friends'. Really, guys? Where are the rest of them?"
I had been pretty pissed when I had read that in the paper, but Josh just shrugged, and explained that it was a consequence of hanging out with the band. Eventually someone was bound to notice that I was around all the time. I just wished it wasn't this annoying pig of a "reporter", and I still couldn't believe it was legal for him to write this stuff. For once the clipping wasn't painted over with White Out, and I set it aside, turning back to the card.
"Wow, Jack, don't you look cozy with your exciting new friends? Too bad it's not going to last."
What was that supposed to mean?
I put the clipping back in the card, and stuffed them both back into the envelope. Carrying them into the second bedroom, I pulled down my suitcase and added this to my collection. Sitting on the bed, I tried to call Carla again. This had to be someone I knew, obviously, but I had no clue who, and thought that maybe she'd have some ideas. Her phone rang and rang, and when the machine finally picked up there were about fifty beeps before I got to leave a message.
"Jesus, Carla, where the hell are you?" I asked. "Call me, day or night! I need help, kiddo."
I hung up, dropping the cell phone back into my pocket. Looking around, I decided this would be a good time to clean and air out the apartment, so I pulled the window open, and then walked into the other bedroom and did the same. We'd just changed the sheets on the bed, so that was ok, but maybe I'd do the bathroom. Or the kitchen. Or both. Anything to fill my time. As I pulled open the front window, suddenly creating a cross breeze, I heard papers rustling in the second bedroom.
"Crap!" I yelped, running in.
The papers on Josh's keyboard, the songs and notes he was working on, were blowing around the room, and before I could slam the window closed I saw a few pages get sucked outside.
"Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!" I reprimanded myself, peering down through the glass.
The apartment building sat on a fenced in lot of its own, to give it a little space from the neighbors. I hadn't been in the backyard, since we all spent so much time in the courtyard instead, but I knew you could reach it through the parking lot. I saw Josh's pages caught in one of the bushes down there, and figured I'd better go get them before more wind came and blew them away.
I stomped down the stairs, cursing myself internally the whole way for being so stupid. There was no way I'd be able to get Josh's papers back in order, since he kept them organized in some sort of system that only he understood, but I could at least make sure that I got them all. Once I explained what had happened, he'd be able to put them back together, and he wouldn't lose any of his work, as long as I didn't lose any. I hurried through the parking lot, and surveyed the backyard.
Unless you stop to think about it, you tend to forget that the entire state of California is mostly desert. The lush greenery and rolling lawns you see on television are the result of good irrigation more than anything natural, and Jackie apparently didn't believe in irrigating the backyard very often. It made sense, as it was a waste of water to keep a space green if no one noticed it or used it, but it left the backyard looking like a little slice of scrubland. There were a lot of low bushes, and some brownish, scrubby grass, and I wondered if there might be scorpions or rattlesnakes out here, unable to think of any other creature that might live in such terrain. Oh, wait, I was forgetting fire ants.
Shaking my head to clear it of asinine thoughts of animals attacking people on bad specials on Fox, I hurried around the side of the building. Josh and Chris's apartments made up the back wall, and I found most of the papers on that side. Flipping through them, I realized I had counted six pages from the window, but only had four in my hand. The others must have blown around to the far side, because I didn't see them out here. I walked around to the far side, and saw them caught in another bush. Picking them up, I realized I heard voices, and that Lance's window was open.
"Do you want me to take it out?" Justin asked, his voice soft and smooth as honey.
What the hell? A thousand thoughts ran through my head.
"No," Lance answered weakly. His voice was somewhere between whining and crying. He sounded miserable.
"Are you sure?" Justin asked again, his voice rolling softly like velvet. "Are you sure you don't want me to take it out, because you sure did the other day."
Silence greeted this, and I began to walk toward the open window, clutching Josh's notes in my hands, unsure of what I might see but somehow knowing.
"OK, then," Justin said, his voice changing, sounding like Lance had just made a really stupid choice.
"Please," Lance asked quietly.
"Please take it out?" Justin asked. I could hear the smile in his voice. "Sure, Lance, anything to help out a friend."
I heard the rattle of a buckle, and the slide of a zipper, followed by the thump of a buckle hitting the floor. I was almost to the window.
"There," Justin purred. "Now what do you want to do?"
I stared, wide-eyed, jaw dropping open, into Lance's bedroom. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, and thought that maybe I'd just had a stroke or something. None of this made sense.
Justin was standing in Lance's bedroom, his hands resting on his bare hips. They were bare because Justin's pants and briefs were down around his ankles. His cock jutted out from his blond pubes like a spike, curving upward a little, the pink head large and full. Facing Justin, on his knees, with his fact twisted into a mask of confusion, and possibly lust, was Lance.
Justin smiled down at him.
Gosh, I love cliffhangers. Don't you?