You're having a good day.
Nothing exciting or overwhelming. Just hanging out with the guys at the compound. Joey and Lance are in the next room playing pool, Chris is off somewhere, and you and Justin are watching basketball. Well, mostly he's watching, and you're dozing, curled into his warmth. He's wearing an old, flannel shirt that's been washed so many times that it's as soft as a baby's blanket, and you can feel his heart faintly thumping under your cheek. Every now and then something on the screen will make him jump and shout, and then he'll lower his voice and gently stroke your hip, saying, "Sorry, C, go back to sleep."
For once, you're not hearing song lyrics running rampant through your head, or obsessing over the vast number of things you tend to obsess over. Inside your head it is blessedly quiet.
It's a comfortable, relaxing day. A good day.
You're glad that you've started having days that you can classify as good again, instead of just seeing the world through different shades of bad.
Then Chris comes in, comes storming in, a pile of papers clutched in his hand. He's glaring at you, or glaring at Justin, and then you realize he's glaring at the both of you. Just as you see that the papers he's holding are a stack of photographs, he stops in front of you and thrusts them in your face.
"If the two of you," he practically snarls, "can't keep from flaming all over each other, could you at least be kind enough to do it when there aren't cameras around?" And with that, he tosses the pictures at you. His footsteps echo behind him as he stomps out of the room, and the pages flutter to the ground like fallen leaves.
The one that gained you his ire lands in your lap. It's a proof from the CosmoGirl shoot you did last month. Chris is lining up a shot on the pool table, and Lance is leaning over, watching. You and Justin stand behind the table, your arm casually draped around his shoulders. He's grinning, and it looks like you're laughing at something, your hip cocked as you lean into him.
You both stare at it for a second without saying anything, and then Justin moves to get off the couch. You push him back. "Stay. Watch your game. I'll go talk to him."
As you walk out of the room, you figure your good day is pretty much shot to hell.
Justin has the reputation for having the worst temper, but his tantrums are like a summer storm, blowing over and leaving the day bright and clear. He says careless, stupid things without thinking, and then comes back begging for forgiveness. He has the least ability to hold a grudge of anyone you've ever met.
Unless you hurt someone he loves. Then, he'll never forget it.
Chris, on the other hand, never says anything without thinking it through first. He knows how to use his words as weapons -- stiletto sharp, slipping past defenses to cut deep. He never settles for a flesh wound when he can strike a mortal blow instead.
The day of the CosmoGirl interview hadn't been a good day -- you weren't having those yet -- but it had been a bearable day at first. You could breathe. You didn't feel like there was a huge weight crushing the air from your chest, couldn't feel the sting like a memory of pain across your side.
They wanted candid shots of the group, because they said it would be different, so you let them follow you all around the compound, doing the stuff you would normally do, the way you would normally do it. Or at least as normally as you could with a reporter, photographers, and a bevy of assistants buzzing around everywhere. If it amused people to think that this let them see the real you, then you'd let them. You all knew better, because by now the defenses were as automatic as the facades that slipped over them to sparkle for the cameras.
You even remember when they took that picture, or at least the moment immediately after they had taken it. Chris's shot had gone wide, the flash in his eyes, and he'd looked up to see what the photographer had captured. His eyes had slid from you, to Justin, and then finally settled in the space between you, staring at the denim-clad V where your hips touched.
There are as many ways to end a relationship as there are to start one, but in the end, it breaks down to two categories: slow and drawn out, or quick and final.
You always thought the latter was the worst, two people who had once loved each other shouting horrible things at each other, a history of intimacy laid waste in the space of a few minutes.
That was before you had to live through the first kind, the kind where you see someone slipping away by inches and can't do anything to hold them. You can try to stop the movement, to reverse the flow, but it is as futile as trying to halt the tide. No matter how tight you held on, it fell apart like shattered silk in your fingers.
That was when you knew that the worst way to lose love was to see it slip away so steadily that by the end, what you're fighting so hard to keep no longer resembles what you once had.
It was after a show, a hotel night and not a bus night. You were all in Lance and Joey's room, trying to decide whether to go out or stay in. Lance and Joey were sprawled across the bed, their fingertips barely touching, but the connection between them palpable. Justin was in the corner talking to Brit on his cell phone, and Chris was sitting in a chair, with you perched on the arm.
It had been a bad night for him, his knees hurt and he had flubbed the choreography a few times. You were trying to make him feel better, because that was what you did now -- filled the silence with aimless chatter, apologized for things you had no control over, did everything you could to try and make everything right again, no matter how futile your efforts.
He seemed so angry now, all the time. Angry at you, the other guys, the world.
You don't remember exactly what you said to him, and that still bothers you. It was the last thing you would ever say to Chris when the two of you were a couple, and you feel like it should be engraved on your memory. It should have lasting resonance, so that you can take it out and study it with the knowledge of hindsight, and think that you should have seen coming what happened next.
You said whatever it was -- maybe "Don't worry, I'm sure no one noticed," or, "We'll get you some ice, and you'll feel better," or maybe something cute and silly designed to make him laugh. You think you probably reached out to touch him, to stroke his cheek or run your fingers through his hair, because there was a time when he had told you that the simple touch of your hands was like heaven. And the next thing you knew, the room was tilting, and your side was one huge blaze of pain.
Chris had shoved you away, hard, and you had fallen against the nightstand before ending up on the floor. And then Chris was standing over you shouting, "Get your goddamn hands off me, you pathetic, needy little bitch. You know, if I wanted a girlfriend or a mother, I'd have actually dated a girl, you idiot."
You didn't move, because you couldn't. You couldn't breathe, or move, or do anything but sit there, frozen in place. Then you heard the door slam, and heard a loud, sharp crack echo from out in the hallway.
Lance moved first, racing out of the room after Chris. Joey lifted you up onto the bed gently, and you heard an annoying buzzing somewhere next to your ear. Justin picked his phone up, hit a button, and tossed it across the room without even looking. You realized he must have hung up on Britney in mid-sentence.
"Are you okay?" Joey kept asking, patting your arms and legs as if to check if anything was broken. You didn't think anything was broken except your heart, until his hands skimmed over your ribs and you let out a hiss of pain. He lifted your shirt gently, studying the faint blue streak that was already forming. "You think they're broken?" he murmured to Justin, who was just staring at the door blankly.
Then Lance came back in. "Chris put his fist through the wall... I think he busted his hand up pretty good. We've got to get him to the hospital."
"I think maybe we should take C, too," Joey said, but you shook your head. You didn't want to go to the hospital. You didn't want to ever have to move again.
Lance brushed your hair away from your face, his hands cool and soothing on your temples. "Okay, C, whatever you want. Whatever you want." He and Joey exchanged a long look, and then Lance pulled Justin up. "C'mon, J, let's go." Justin followed him without saying anything, but you remembered the dark, haunted look in his eyes long after he was gone.
The girlfriend question is inevitable in every interview, and sometimes you lose track of which story you are supposed to be telling this week. Justin and Britney, always. Lance and Laura, ever since the premiere. Joey and Kelly, though they almost never mentioned her by name. And now Chris and Michelle. You don't know if that one is true or not. You haven't asked. You never will.
The reporter seems oblivious to the undercurrents running between you all. She doesn't hear the bitter irony in Justin's tone when he says, "With Chris and me, honor is a big deal. And when honor kicks in, you always make the right decision." It's as if he's trying to remind Chris of something he once knew -- or something Justin once thought that Chris knew, but has since learned otherwise.
You don't know who feels the loss of Justin's blind hero-worship more -- Justin, who has learned that his idol does indeed have feet of clay, or Chris, who always insisted he never deserved to be the object of Justin's devotion.
You can't tell if Chris had even heard what Justin said, until the girlfriend question comes up and you get to be the one who tells the truth since you really are single. Chris pipes up, his smile looking sharp and feral to anyone who knows him well. Or anyone who once thought they did. "It won't take long for him at all," Chris says, "He's very clingy."
You hear it like an echo in your head -- "you pathetic, needy little bitch" -- but you don't show it, keeping your smile fixed in place while the reporter giggles at Chris.
Chris apologizes, of course. Hand bandaged in a contraption that looks like it's layers of concrete holding him immobile, he waits until you're all sitting down for breakfast before clearing his throat, and mumbling, "JC... I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said... I'm sorry. And I didn't mean to push you. Hurt you. It's just... I'm sorry."
You nod at him, your eyes focused somewhere on the air between you. You can take deep breaths without it hurting too much, so you figure your ribs aren't broken.
You accept his awkward apology, made publicly because he hurt you publicly, and he thinks that's the right thing to do. You have to accept it for the same reason you know he has to make it -- because you live together, work together, have lives and careers that are intertwined with each other. You have to go on from here, simply because there is no other choice.
It doesn't do anything to wipe away the words he's already said.
After all, you know that Chris never says anything he doesn't mean.
The guys worry about you all the time. That you're not eating enough, not sleeping enough, worrying too much. Now that you've become this hollow shell, you imagine that they probably had a whispered conference to try and decide who gets to take care of you.
At first you thought that Justin had drawn the short straw, because he seemed the least likely of comforters. If anything, you would have expected him to be worried about Chris, who has given up fighting against his violent mood swings and is like a dark thundercloud ready to burst. But Justin can't seem to bear to meet Chris' eyes any more than you can, and you realize that in that moment when you watched your relationship with Chris disintegrate, Justin had also lost something he had believed in.
You also realize that when you weren't paying attention, Justin has grown up. He's always been a little boy to you, but he's not anymore. He's an adult, calm and steady, and you're glad he's there.
He tapes your ribs for you, because you're too embarrassed to go see the tour doctor. It feels too much like you're a battered wife -- what would you tell him, that you ran into a door in the dark? You haven't cried yet, because you just don't know how, but he does, his fingers gently tracing the ugly, mottled lines of purple and black as tears streak down his cheeks.
It helps, somehow, that he's willing to do your crying for you.
You find Chris in the studio, staring down at the mixing board as if he's expecting to find a message written there. You remember that he played Falling for you for the very first time in here, his eyes wide and hopeful.
You can remember things like that without it hurting quite so much now, and you're glad of that.
"It's just a picture, Chris. It doesn't mean anything. No one will even look twice at it."
He doesn't look up when he hears your voice, and you walk closer. You've never been afraid of Chris, not really, even when he was standing over you and you couldn't breathe, but it took time for you to be comfortable in his personal space again.
"I was jealous," he says in a low voice, octaves lower than his normal speaking voice. "Is that what you want me to admit? Fine."
"It's just a picture," you repeat helplessly. This wasn't the conversation you expected to be having.
He grabs it from your hand, and points. "Look. Just look at the two of you."
Sure, the pose is maybe a little cozy, but it's hardly intimate. "Chris. We're not doing anything!"
"You look so happy," he says, and then his voice breaks, and he hides his head in his hands.
You blink a few times, and look at the picture again, this time seeing past the easy body language and looking at your own face. You hardly ever look at yourself in pictures anymore, because staring at your dead eyes and brittle smile always made you think of corpses made up brightly to resemble the living.
But in this picture you look... real. Chris is right. You look happy.
"I used to make you look like that," Chris said. "And now... You hate me."
You sigh, and let yourself touch his shoulder. You still half expect him to push you away, but he never has, not since that horrible night. Chris hasn't been anything but gentle toward you since then, and you know it's because he scared himself more than the rest of you combined.
"I don't hate you. You know that. I think... I think maybe the only person here who hates you is yourself. And I don't know what to do to fix that. I never did."
That was what you finally understood, once you weren't inside it anymore, and what you tried to explain to Justin. Chris never meant to hurt you, or Justin, or anyone else. The person Chris hurts the most is always Chris.
Unfortunately, the only person who can really change that is also Chris.
There's something like regret in his eyes when he looks at you. You know now that sometimes, Chris does say things he doesn't mean.
"There's nothing going on with me and Justin. We're not... it's not like that." You don't know if it helps him to hear that or not, but it's the truth. For now, at least. Later isn't something you've let yourself think about much yet. It's enough right now to be able to breathe.
He nods, and pats your hand gently before shrugging away. You know that's all he has to say to you on the subject, that whatever he thinks and feels about what happened between you is still locked too far inside for anyone to reach.
So you respect that, and leave him alone with his thoughts and his demons and the battles that you can't help him win. Maybe one day he'll let you cry for him, but it's not today.
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