5. Shoot Out the Lights, Justin/Chris, Justin/Joey
Watching the Dark
by Tiffany Rawlins
Keep the blind down on the window
Keep the pain on the inside
Just watching the dark
Just watching the dark
And he might laugh but you won't see him
As he thunders through the night
Shoot out the lights
Chris is a moody bastard. But he always has been, so Justin's used to that part. Six years of Chris walking out in the middle of conversations and then jumping hugs all over everyone an hour later, you guys are the best, you couldn't pay me enough to be doing anything else.
"You certainly couldn't be getting paid any more to do anything else," Lance says, always so goddamned literal, but Chris is up and hyper now and just smacks a big kiss on Lance's forehead and skips off, dragging JC by the hand to check out something colorful and cool he saw on St. Mark's.
Joey uses that as an excuse to drag Justin onto his lap and run his hands through Justin's hair and suck on his tongue, because now they do that, now they do it in front of the other guys, at least. Joey still seems kind of a show-off about that and Justin's still kind of annoyed by that but he thinks it will fade when Joey gets used to the idea that they're doing it now. For the forseeable future, he thinks. Based on performance. Subject to termination by either party when dissatisfied with results and/or compensation. No-fault.
Chris was the first one to use the word 'exploitation' out loud. In a sentence. And then he explained what that meant, and then he called a lawyer. That's not why Justin will always drop everything, but it's half of it. The other half is about photographers and directors and producers who stood too close to him before he'd even finished growing and how Chris never left the room until someone else came in. In interviews sometimes they ask what he can count on now that everything's so big and crazy and sometimes he says he always knows that Chris calling him was the best thing that ever happened. And when he says it, it feels true.
He thinks this time it might be worse. He's not sure, he feels like he should have kept some chart with ups and downs and binges and weeks when Chris would just stop speaking unless spoken to. He wonders if he's the one who's supposed to say something out loud, if he's supposed to call a doctor or someone and tell them how bad it really is. It seems pretty bad, and somehow, this time it seems worse.
"Man, could you just, like, go blow Chris or something and get him to lighten the fuck up? I don't care if you do." Joey says, tugging at the barbell in his eyebrow. New York is kind of cold that day and they've been doing press since fucking seven thirty in the morning and Chris just got worse as the day went on. "This year didn't fucking suck," Joey says, and Justin was thinking the same thing but now it pisses him off.
He's not going to sleep with Chris to make him feel better, and he tells Joey that, and Joey looks annoyed and kind of bored. Joey, who should have known this would be how it is.
"Why not," Joey says, like he really thinks it's a good idea. Justin wonders how Joey can really think it's a good idea, because everyone knows that Chris is in love with Justin, and none of that sounds like a good idea.
Justin blows Joey instead, and that shuts him up for a while.
Justin gets up early the next morning because Joey snores louder than he remembered and New York at seven in the morning is empty, still pretty much recovering from the night before. He stands on the street corner alone, all alone, bodyguards still crashed out themselves. There are two joggers, three dog-walkers and one police officer who looks at Justin like he's not supposed to be there. There's a missing poster taped to a lightpole and he feels kind of queasy and sad until he reads that the guy was last seen in Chelsea on November 15, and then he's just confused.
He takes the elevator to Chris' room and lets himself in. Chris is sitting with his knees up in a chair right next to the window. The window is open. The room smells clean and the curtains are open but it still feels dark.
"Past your bedtime, isn't it?" Chris asks, not looking.
Justin thinks maybe Chris is trying to make a joke but it's too early, or too late, for things to seem funny.
"Are you okay?" he asks instead. "You seem -- are you okay?"
Chris just stares at the metal edge of the windowsill.
"I'm not leaving until you say something."
"Something," Chris says.
"Oh, just -- fuck you, man." Justin turns to the door and then sits down on the bed. "That doesn't count."
Chris touches the glass like he doesn't think it's really there. He sounds ragged and torn and tired and Justin thinks that if he'd known none of this would make Chris any happier he might not have wanted it so much.
"People went on, you know?" Chris says. "The sky fell down and they got back up and honestly I can't tell the difference. It just always kind of feels like this."
Justin's always afraid to touch Chris when he's like this. He should probably be afraid to touch anyone when they're like this, like how Joey has a bad day and Justin runs a palm across his chest and now they're something that Joey wants to show off. But with Chris he knows better and when it matters most he remembers.
He sighs and says, "Yeah," and Chris says, "Yeah," and the phone rings with a wake-up call and Justin picks up the receiver and drops it back in the cradle.
"You're okay?" he says again, and just like that, Chris is smiling like a goof.
"You know what I meant to do the last time we were in New York?" Chris asks, bouncing a little.
"The, uh," and then Justin remembers, "that theater festival thing?"
"Yeah," Chris says. "There's this thing, somewhere downtown. Some guy in a room does a one-man version of Macbeth. Using, like, these little action figures. He does all the voices and everything. You want to go?"
Justin goes. He's used to this part.