Justin slipped his sunglasses on and stepped out into the hot Miami heat. The sun glared down on him, warming his cool, air conditioned skin instantly. Pulling his hat down further over his eyes, he set off along the beach, bodyguards in tow. As his eyes roamed across the sand, a deep intake of breath was emitted. There was JC, laying face down on the sand, a towel below him, fast asleep. Justin smiled slightly for a moment until he remembered. Then, just as quickly, the smile was replaced by a scowl. Making his way over to the older man, he bent down and shook him lightly. JC stirred, but didn’t wake up.
“Wake up, idiot. You’re fucking burnt to a crisp.” Justin mumbled. JC’s eyes fluttered open and focused on the face before him, a matching scowl covering his normally peaceful face.
“Fuck you. Go away.” Justin watched as JC moved slowly, wincing slightly in pain from the sunburn he had received.
“Fine. You wanna be a fucking lobster, I don’t give a shit. I was just trying to be nice.” Justin said, standing up straight.
“Cut the shit, Justin. Being nice to me is the last thing you ever want to do anymore.” JC sat up slowly, the pain evident on his face. “Shit that hurts.” It was mumbled under his breath and for just a moment, Justin wanted to go to him, to see if there was anything he could do. But the moment he turned around and caught sight of JC’s face, that thought was gone. He sighed deeply. Things use to be so different for them. They actually use to be friends. Best friends in fact. The type of friends that shared everything with each other. JC use to be the type of friend that Justin went to for advice, comfort, or simply just to laugh with.
And on top of that, there had been sexual undertones between them for years. Longer, Justin was sure, than either of them should have been feeling anything more than friendship, mainly because of the age difference. But then, Justin had hooked up with Britney. They were still friends through it all, and the flirtatious edge between them never really went away. When he and Britney finally broke up, he went to JC first. JC had offered comfort, a shoulder to cry on, and arms to hug him with. Justin had felt safe and warm in those arms. And he thought maybe, finally, after years of longing, something would finally happen for them.
All during the Celebrity Tour, the flirtatious edge to their relationship was upped a notch. The looks were more blatant, the touches lasted longer. Many nights, Justin found himself asleep in JC’s bed. A few kisses had been shared, but nothing had happened beyond that.
But everything had changed after the tour. The group, as a whole, had decided to take a break. Six months originally, to do whatever they wanted outside of the group. Joey had headed up to New York to star in Rent. Lance had headed to Russia for space training. Chris had decided to disappear for awhile, heading across country in a Winnebago, seeing the sights on his own time. At first, Justin and JC had stuck around in Florida together, just hanging out, enjoying their down time.
Then Justin announced he was going to do a solo album. That was the turning point, the defining moment. That was when everything spiraled out of control. He talked to each of the guys individually, just to get their reactions. JC was the last person he went to, since it was his opinion that mattered the most. Everyone else had been supportive, encouraging, happy for him even. So he had high hopes when he sat down to tell JC. Maybe that was part of the problem. Maybe his hopes were so high that he missed the look in JC’s eyes. To Justin, JC’s eyes were the windows to the world within. He couldn’t lie to Justin, simply because Justin could read each and every though and emotion through those eyes. But when the words of support came out of JC’s mouth, Justin had missed the look in his eyes. The look that would have said it all. Would have told him everything he needed to know had he simply stopped to look. JC wasn’t ok with it. Not at all. In fact, he was jealous as hell. But Justin didn’t see it.
It took a while for him to finally figure it all out. At first, he had taken off to work on his album, writing and recording in Virginia with Pharrell and Chad. He had called JC often, but the conversations were always short, JC looking for excuses to hang up quickly. A couple months after these weird conversations between them is when it finally hit Justin and he started watching closely. It wasn’t that hard to pick up on the jealous and pain in his voice once Justin started listening properly and he finally called JC on it. JC denied it, but it was too late. That conversation was the beginning of the end.
They started fighting whenever they talked and the conversations started coming less and less often until finally, it had been months and they hadn’t spoken to each other. Justin missed his best friend deeply, but at the same time, it wasn’t his fault things had fallen apart in the first place.
They hadn’t seen each other since Justin left for Virginia for his album when the MTV Video Music Awards came around. When he found out everyone but Lance was going to be there, watching him perform and then they were all going to be onstage together announcing presenters, he was ecstatic. He hoped that, maybe, if they saw each other, they could put this all behind them. Unfortunately, that hadn’t happened. The animosity running between them was too thick. Justin had been busy that week, with promotion, but the few times he had seen JC outside of a work environment, things had been very strained and it took everything they had to not start yelling back and forth at pretty much everything that was said to each other. It had been a relief when they each when their separate ways again.
When Justin found out, through MTV, that JC was working on a song with Dallas Austin for a soundtrack, and then later when he found out, from Chris, that JC was doing his own album, he had been mad. It felt, to him, that JC was simply doing it to one up him. To see if he could be more successful with a solo album. To see if he could sell more than Justin. He had called JC, angry, and another fight had ensued. That was the last time they had spoken, until now.
To say it didn’t hurt would have been a lie. Justin hated the fact that his best friend was no longer his best friend because of a stupid album. They had years of friendship between them and it killed Justin to know that JC would let it go so easily, over something so stupid. But the worst part was that Justin knew, if JC had just told him originally that he had a problem with it, Justin never would have done it to begin with. It was too late by time he found out to back out. And on top it off, he had felt betrayed because JC had lied to him, so even had he been able to back out, he wouldn’t have, simply out of spite.
Now, almost a year later, they were together again. It was obligatory and they knew they would both put their differences aside for the fans, but the tension between them when it was out of the fans view was thick enough to choke on.
Justin sighed again and let his covered eyes travel over JC’s face. “What happen to us, C?” The sadness and remorse was thick in his voice, but if JC heard it, he ignored it.
“Fuck you. You know what the hell happened to us. Thanks for waking me up. I’ll see you later.” JC climbed slowly to his feet and headed off to the hotel. Justin’s shoulders slumped as he watched JC walk away and he fought against the tears threatening to rise. Wiping quickly across his face, knocking away the few tears that had slipped out, he followed slowly, keeping enough of a distance between them.