Yeah, big trade secret, right?  Chris Kirkpatrick, knowing any better.  I could be turning forty and the media would still be selling that image of us as these mysterious lost boys from Never-Neverland.  We just didn’t grow up.  I could be shuffling around that stage in a walker, and the general reaction would be ‘aww, lookit the man-child dance’.

To tell you the truth, I grew up a long fucking time ago.  Hard to embrace your inner child when your inner child spent a great deal of time sharing a bed, squeezed together in a magnificent ‘game’ every time winter rolled around to find us without heat again.  Mom never mentioned that the name of the game was to avoid freezebite or hypothermia, but I knew.  If I’d done stupid, selfish little kid things like ignoring the too-bright note in her voice, I’d have fallen asleep and missed catching one sibling or another slipping out of bed when Mom finally got a few seconds of sleep.

But it was a good cover for a while.  I stayed in choir because I didn’t know any better.  I got in barfights because I didn’t know any better.  I went for the stupid hope that I might piece together a decent little group and make a couple bucks because I didn’t know any better.  I punched Lou in his ugly fucking face when he leered at Justin a little too long because, well, you guessed it.

I can justify all that to myself.

I can’t justify this.

The bus bumps and purrs along in the dark, the world streaking past our windows.  I’d be a little more excited about that if I hadn’t poured a touch too much energy into the show tonight.  My knee aches, a steady nagging pain that won’t let me do anything constructive like sleep.  Instead, I just get to sit here and watch the same movie I’ve seen too many times before.  Amazing how the classics lose their shine after you use them one too many times to fight insomnia.  I’d get up and change it, but…

Well, hard to move too much when America’s golden boy is draped warm and heavy on you.

I test that out, and yes, that’s still a weird thought.  Justin Timberlake, America’s darling.  I’ve known him too long for the hero worship or the hatred to make sense.  He’s a kid, just a kid, with talent and a bright, real smile.  I keep waiting for that to fade out into something plastic, like Lance’s did a long time ago, but he still grins like he’s having the time of his life.

Or hell, maybe it did turn plastic and he just has me fooled along with the rest of the universe.

He snuffles against my shoulder and burrows deeper, mumbling something, his hand fisting tight in my shirt.  At least that’s still here as comfort, the fact that he can curl into me like it’s still Germany and he’s still fourteen and I’m still his surrogate older brother.

He’s grown-up a bit.  He doesn’t need me like that anymore.  It changed out of that desperate, needy thing of the first few months into something like a very real, very normal friendship.  Except for, you know, the cuddling.

Again:  I know better.  I know this’ll backfire on me.  Either I’ll lose my patience with him or he’ll have a sudden executive decision that he can sleep just fine in his bunk, thank you.  Never mind those nights that he finishes the concerts trembling, ready to buckle and still so wound up that his eyes show white on all sides.

Never mind that I, the guy who can’t even handle neediness from pets anymore, am all too willing to sit up with him and pet his hackles down when he finally eases down enough not to flinch from every touch.  For all I tell myself that I don’t want to repeat the experience of having a cranky, sleepless Justin on my bus, I still can’t completely dismiss that brief surge of warmth when he first suffers the petting, then leans into it, then crawls onto my lap and curls up tight.

Poor kid.  He’s so fucked when this thing is over.  He was socialized in a happy little bubble where he can find laps to crawl into without getting a broken nose or a slit throat.  I think he needs this, too, almost as much…

Almost as much as I do.  Damn it.

I don’t like needing anything.  That’s not my gig, not what I do.  I am needed; I don’t need.  It’s a matter of pride.  Or survival.  Something like that.  Either way, you learn not to get too attached to things when you regularly see them sitting out in front of your house when you come home from school.

As for people… people leave.  Simple as that.  They die, or they just decide to take off.  Better not to get attached to more people than I already am.  It might not look like the other four are going anywhere anytime soon, but the risk’s there, dormant as cancer.  All it’d take is one argument, one car crash, one slip in the shower or with the needle.

Which doesn’t explain why I’m sitting here, petting the back of Justin’s neck.  Every night I don’t push him away, I’m getting closer and closer to something dangerous.  Something’s sliding closer to clicking in my brain, silent and unavoidable, and every breath I feel him take is bringing it closer.

Hell.  Like I don’t already know what’s threatening to click.

I don’t want him.  He’s a good kid sometimes, a petulant, spoiled, sullen, naïve, innocent, sweet… beautiful…

Fine.  I can’t fucking have him, then.  Since when did the beautiful prince do anything with the troll under the bridge but kill him and take the lady fair, huh?  I’m not getting a happily ever after.  I’m not even getting a ‘once upon a time’, because this is not my fairy tale.  That honor belongs to a sweet fluffy pretty girl, someone who’ll pretend he doesn’t have a dark side.  They’ll marry and have two point five kids, and I’ll probably die a bitter old man.  Or with a gun in my mouth, depending.

I know how this story goes, and I know I should jerk my hand away like he’s burning me.

I know it.  Doesn’t mean I’ll do anything about it.

He sighs, his mouth brushing the inside of my throat, and the trigger slides that much closer to being pulled.