He had tried, he really had. He had tried to stop, tried to forget about the nights and the stolen kisses and the clubs.

It was just that JC felt so gritty beneath him, with his raw and bony hips and rough fingers scrabbling at his shoulders and his jutting ribcage. JC with his long elegant hands and his furiously blue eyes, JC who he didn’t want to look at sometimes because the blend of beauty and terrifying thinness hurt his eyes. It was that he’d never felt so fucking alive than when the plaster was digging into his bare back and JC’s fingers were shoving his shirt up and JC’s lips were pressed against his collarbone and he could feel JC’s teeth pressing against his bare skin.

And after that it was simply a matter of time before he began to get curious about the rest of them. What they smelled like, what they tasted like. JC knew, of course JC knew- JC was beautiful. He hadn’t known about them until a few months after that first night at the club, and then he’d laughed because it was so obvious.

“Are you sleeping with Lance?” He’d asked uncertainly, twisting the comforter into knots and trying not to look at JC.

And JC had laughed and said, “Isn’t everybody?”

After a few minutes, he had said, quietly, “I’m not.”

And JC had sat up then, his elegant hand resting on Justin’s thigh and his thumb rubbing small circles on Justin’s knee. “Justin—” he hesitated and the silence was painful between them, there were never silences like this between them. Finally JC said carefully, “it’s just sex. You know? Like, it doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t—I don’t know. You shouldn’t take it so seriously. Because in the end, all that really matters is who you spend the night with, whose arms you can curl up in… you know?”

And he had to smile because only JC could throw in romantic notions while telling him that he could fuck other guys if he felt like it.

So nothing was ever said when JC came in at four in the morning, smelling like Lance’s cologne. And nothing was said when JC caught Justin staring at another of the guys. And nothing was said when Justin walked in on JC and Joey making out the dressing room.

So Justin wasn’t surprised when he came out into the hall one day and found Chris leaning against the wall, watching him with hooded eyes.

And Chris was different than JC, he was rough and his skin felt like sandpaper against Justin’s and he hissed curse words into Justin’s ear that were nothing like JC’s breathy sentimentalities but sent tingles down Justin’s spine all the same. And Chris would drag his nails down Justin’s back and scrape his teeth against his chest and leave bruises on his waist where Chris’ small hands at clutched too hard but Justin didn’t mind because it was nice not to be treated as if he would break.

And as Justin made his way back to the room he shared with JC, and ran into Lance letting himself out of their room, he realized he hadn’t felt guilty at all. And when he crawled into bed beside JC, and JC smelled like Lance and Justin smelled like Chris, all JC said was, “good.”

Lance was different too, Lance’s skin was silk and cream and smelled like peaches and he murmured things like “oh, baby, do that again” like a cheap porn star but Justin didn’t think it was cheesy because Lance had the voice for that sort of thing. And when they kissed sometimes Justin would open his eyes and stare into Lance’s and drown in those intoxicatingly green eyes and feel like he was being suffocated with emeralds.

At night he lay awake with Lance and JC and they would sprawl over the bed and sometimes Chris was there, too, and they’d joke about their sex lives and JC would trail his fingers down Justin’s back and sometimes Lance would plant tiny kisses a long Justin’s jaw. And they never mentioned Joey.

And Joey, Justin found out, tasted like alcohol and sex and smelled like rain and was gentle and caring, not as if he was afraid to hurt Justin but because he was just like that.

And he never went too far with him, he never did more than kiss him and even that was restrained, and when Justin asked why he smiled a little and said, “you’re just a kid, Justin.”

When Justin pointed out that he wasn’t a kid any longer, that he was eighteen, Joey only looked sad. “Lance was even younger.” He had said once. “But look at him now.”

And Justin did look at him sometimes, he looked at the creamy skin and the long eyelashes and the full, pouting lips and drowned in his green eyes and didn’t notice the pain, the sorrow that flashed sometimes in those same eyes because he was too busy drowning himself in them.

“Do you ever… hurt?” Justin had asked once, soaking in the semi-darkness and listening to JC breathing beside him. “I mean, does it ever… I don’t know. Like, do you ever think about it?”

“About what?” JC had responded.

And that was enough for Justin, because it answered his question in a sad, twisted way. Because he thought about it, he thought about it all the time, even though he knew none of the others did.

And it made sense and it didn’t, which confused him entirely. He wasn’t sure if he was in love with any of them- JC with his artist’s hands and Chris with his rough touch and Lance with his porn star voice and Joey with his gentle embrace. But if he didn’t love them, then what the hell was he doing? Was it all just for a few moments when the world slipped away, and then came back even harsher before because he’d been without it for a few minutes?

Sometimes Joey would run his fingers through Justin’s curls and rub Justin’s neck and tell him that it would all be okay, someday. That for now he didn’t have to think about it, that he should just enjoy it while it lasted.

He wanted to ask what would be okay but he knew what, he knew what Joey was talking about, he just didn’t want to acknowledge it. They all knew what Joey was talking about but they didn’t want to talk about it, none of them wanted to say anything, they just wanted to go on in quiet, self-inflicted oblivion.

Once he’d run his thumb along JC’s wrist and found three little scars, almost invisible. Before he could ask JC had pulled his wrist away and muttered, “it’s nothing. Forget it.”

And there were similar scars on Chris’ wrists, and Lance’s as well. And Justin had to wonder why. And he had to wonder if he really knew the people he thought he did. And he had to wonder if the physical pain really took away the emotional pain he was so intent on not feeling.

And so that was why Justin was sitting in the bathroom at four in the morning, eyes burning from the strain of seeing in the flickering, fluorescent light, a razor held to his wrist. He just wanted to know, just wanted to see if it really did anything.

And as the blood swelled and ran down into the fine hairs of his arm and he clenched his teeth in pain, he knew it was stupid. But he also knew why they did it.

And the door flew open and the other four stood above him and Lance was crying softly.

“Justin, no… no, don’t.” JC murmured, taking the razor away.

And he cried as they swept him into a hug, all five of them, and told him it would be okay.

It wouldn’t be okay. And they all knew it.

But it was better not to think about it.

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