["Depression is nothing more than rage turned inward."] Justin sat there on the couch that was still warm from the joining of their bodies and watched the tall, slender dark-haired love of his life waltzing away from him, crushing his insides with each retreating step. And lightning shot through his head, shot through his gut, shot through the floating slivers of what was left of his heart. Lightning that screamed at him, "THIS CAN'T HAPPEN, ASSHOLE! YOU CAN'T DO THIS!" He couldn't do it. He couldn't, he knew instinctively, let JC leave. He just couldn't. Absolutely couldn't. He'd get on his knees and grovel for days if he needed to. He didn't care. He'd do anything. He'd been with JC for a long time, see. He knew JC was worth whatever it might take to keep him. Any fucking thing in the world. He wiped his leaking eyes with the unbuttoned sleeve of his shirt, ignored the thousand-mile-an-hour pounding of his heart, and bolted upward. As fast as those streaks of lightning tearing through him, he bounded across the room, hurdling the small table and ice bucket with ease, and overtook JC before JC's hand could fall on the doorknob. He didn't tackle him. He didn't even touch him - only surrounded him in a hot, confining semi-circle with his body, throwing a flat palm to the door and then to the wall, on each side of JC's shoulders. JC was pinned and powerless again, but he didn't whirl around in surprise, just lowered his head and sighed, as bleakly resigned to this charismatic reaction from Justin as he had been to walking out of the room. "I can't, Jace. I can't let you go. Not tonight. Not ever again." "Please, J. Don't make this harder than it already is," JC whispered. And Justin wanted so fiercely to hold him and stop him from sounding like that. "Listen to me for a second. Just one more time. Okay?" Justin the Captor didn't pause for an answer. "I know you're sick of my bullshit. I heard everything you've said here today. I understand what you're feeling. I do. Even if you don't think I can any longer……….I do, Jace. And you're right. I've let them rule me. I've compromised and done what they dictated to make us all lots of money and get huge-ass famous. I've done and said things that make me look like the biggest ego-fucking-prick ever. I know that. I can't help the bad press, the misquotes, the negative perceptions, the times I was just being a cocky son of a bitch. I would if I could. I'd go back and do it all over. Fuck, yes. I would. But you know I'm not like some of those bastards make me out to be." "I know, J." Justin leaned forward just close enough to caress the back of JC's soft hair with the tip of his nose and his lips. "Jace, maybe I've grown up a little over the past year and all. Maybe I've got more confidence in myself now, in ME. Maybe I can do it on my own now, without their backup, steering me and shit……….But, baby, I still need you. I love you. I want us to be what we used to be. And if that can't happen, if it's ruined totally, then I want us to be something close to it, something wonderful again……….I want us to be together again……….And fuck tonight. Fuck the Grammys. I'd give it all up to get you back. I swear, baby. I'd rather have you in my life again, fulltime, than all of that. I've had to do a lot of fucking thinking in the last week, and you're what my mind keeps coming back to. Us. I want to make all the wrong right and be us again. I want to fix it……….Please, Jace. Say you'll think about it. Say we can try and work through all this shit. I love you more than anything. ………I can't lose you……….I'll give up anything. Everything." Slowly, hesitantly, JC turned from facing the wall to facing Justin. His shoulders pressed against the door, expressionless, he removed the glasses from his eyes, folded then, and dropped them in an inner pocket of his suit. His eyes drowned into Justin's each thudding second. "We're not going to escape from each other, are we? Ever?" he said in a raspy whisper. "Do you want to?" "No." "You didn't hesitate, Jace. Not for a second. You don't really want to leave, do you?" "I just thought it would be best, J. Best for both of us. If I leave." "Wrong." Justin stepped closer, planting a leg on each side of JC's two. But he refrained from leaning one suffocating inch closer to JC's face. His shirt flapped open at his sides, and his heart thundered in his ears. "What's best is for us to be with each other. Not apart. Please say we can make that possible again. Let me try. Please. For us. I'll get on my knees." JC gazed at him. Then smiled. Sort of. "You're a relentless brat." "I love you. I'm not quitting." "Then we'll have to do some serious work on it. If we try it again." That lightning ripped through Justin's dark pupils and along his nerve synapses, fiery tingles. "Anything, baby. We'll go slow. Whatever you say. We'll build it back better than it was before. Okay?" "And we'll actually start doing things like normal, two-way communication between us? No more strained breaks where we hardly speak at all?" "Absolutely. And no more big gaps and separations except for the necessary ones. Like when you go out promoting and touring." "This scares the hell out of me, J. Starting it up again. It's all I've wanted since we've been apart. But it fucking scares me senseless." Justin smiled and lowered his head forward to barely brush his mouth across JC's, just a warm whisper of sweet contact. "Me too, baby. You've always scared me senseless……….Like that line you told me eons ago about doing one thing daily that scares your heart to skipping beats. Remember that?" "Sure. I remember." "You're still that thing for me." "Justin." "What?" "They're going to, like, send a goddamn search party in here for us." "Fuck 'em. I don't care." Somehow, JC remembered for a second to pull in a deep breath. And it was filled with Justin's fragrant heat. "I think you owe me something, J." "What's that, baby?" "A trip to Honolulu." Justin giggled and grazed JC's lips with his again, tasting them with the tip of his tongue. "After you're done touring and pimping your sexy-hot CD, we're there. Honolulu. Just us. Anything else? While you're asking?" "Well………." JC stalled and smiled with wicked, cunning slowness. "C'mon, Jace. What do you want? Name it." "For real?" "For real! Spill." "That part about, you know, getting on your knees. Were you bluffing?" "Oh. That," Justin cooed with a sly breaking grin of his own. "No bluffing here, Jace. That is not a problem at all," he whispered and leaned, full frontal, into JC, holding onto him with both hands, oozing down his body like warm syrup, and dropping to a kneeling position in front of him. As his fingers went for the clasps and zipper of JC's slacks, he smiled at the feel of JC's hard length quivering anxiously under his touch, and his breath hitched hot in his throat at the sounds of JC already gasping and whimpering above him. "My pleasure, baby. And this is only the beginning of things to, well, come." ~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~ Later, back at the door that opened into the hallway, with Lonnie standing close by, JC and Justin embraced each other - just a, natural, friendly, all-is-good hug - because, JC had to admit, there were always eyes everywhere. And because it wasn't a hug for keeping up appearances anyway. It was for them alone. Alone together. "So when?" Justin hushed with hot breath at JC's ear, arms wrapped around him if only briefly. "When can you see me again?" "Yessss." "Are you sure you want to?" "Stop it, Jace. You know I want to." "Take your mom to dinner after the show. Get in some celebrating. You deserve it. I'll hit some after-parties while you're doing that. Then we can meet up at your place later." "And do some partying of our own?" "Lots of celebrating, J. Count on it." "I already am, Jace." "Yeah, I can feel how much." "Good. Save your strength, baby." ~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~ FINI