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Rainee > Fiction > Rebel Yell
Oxford, Mississippi; fall of 1999.
He's a motherfucking rebel, or so he's said a thousand times, and from the beginning JC thought it was in jest but this weekend he's not so sure.
This is his element, JC supposes in his head, and he watches the kid drink like a pro. And what the fuck else was he supposed to do, when the team is far enough ahead that nobody was watching the game anymore. JC looked around, did some multiplication in his head, and presumed there to be more alcoholic beverages in the stadium than there were spectators. He kept this fact in mind as he took a careful sip of the can of Coors that had been foisted upon him, in the precise amount of time it took Lance to take two long gulps of a bottle of something much harder, JC didn't even know what. Lance had half-mentioned two days earlier that he'd never been to a game without his parents before and fuck if it wasn't showing.
He ought to be just starting his sophomore year, JC thinks, and far more used to boozing it up in the stands than he is. He'll cut Lance off by the end of the third quarter, just to save himself cleaning up after the little bastard. But he's also half-considering writing down the name on that bottle, because he's so relaxed and confident now that they might should pour him a glass of that before concerts. JC might even swear his voice is deeper but it's already in that range so low that it's hard to tell.
He's currently studying the 'Hotty Toddy' phenomenon and trying to figure out when it's appropriate. Apparently, it's only used when Ole Miss is winning, which means there's one about every three minutes now since they're ahead by two touchdowns and a field goal.
But nobody's watching the game anymore. The Oxonians -- native and enrolled, current and alumni -- are too drunk to watch anything, and JC is watching Lance.
Lance, who is loose and carefree, standing on his seat and howling the fight song at the top of his lungs. There's fire in his eyes now, and a deeper roar hiding behind the timbre of his voice, and JC finally gets a close enough look at the bottle to file away for future reference that a good dose of Jack Daniels makes Lance really damn sexy.
It's not until they're across the Grove and getting into the car that JC realizes why. Lance is finally comfortable. They put him into a pop group with three guys who are way older than him and one who's way more confident and secure. Four guys who know the business and one kid recruited out of a high school show choir. And in Orlando he boxed himself up, not because he wasn't good enough, they all knew he was, but because he was too different. He stuck out like a sore thumb withthe four of them and he knew it.
Here, this weekend, he was just another Rebel, and it wasn't a label you had to attend the school to earn. He was young, he was from Clinton, he was drunk, and that worked just fine here. And now he's in the passenger seat howling something indecent about LSU's starting quarterback's momma, and JC is just another designated driver trying to haul an intoxicated nineteen-year-old home.
They're in the Ramada down on Jackson Avenue, because they aren't rich or famous enough yet to get a room in the on-campus alumni hotel on a football weekend. JC finally hauls Lance upstairs and aims him in the general direction of his suitcase. Lance who, he's noticed, doesn't appear nearly as drunk as he did at the stadium. Must have been the adrenalin of the game, and the fumes from the fraternity alumni who drank three times as much as he did. He plods around the room slowly, pulling the bright red sweatshirt over his head.
And dear God has this band done him good-- JC's thoughts run away with him and he leans back on his hands, sitting stock-still on the bed and staring. Lance isn't built, and probably never will be, but he's been finishing up puberty with a damn lot of exercise and it's showing. He has the long, lean, well-worked quality that JC loves in guys, as he tries to cut the end of that sentence off in his head. But it's too late; it's already been thought, and if he never speaks it, it'll rattle around in his brain forever.
Lance is oblivious to this, to JC sitting on the bed by the window and vainly willing his body not to react to what he's seeing. He unfastens his jeans, the ones he's taken to wearing that hang off his hips like curtains, and they fall away from, am I really surprised?, JC asks himself, blue boxers with Colonel Reb printed all over them. Ridiculous little white-haired Yosemite Sam of a mascot, clinging like a shadow to the ass JC has had to convince himself didn't exist for the last two years.
But it sure as hell exists with him bending over to pick up his jeans and shirt and toss them onto a chair and then--
And then he turns around, too fast for JC to throw the pillow over his hips and hide the evidence of how hard he's been thinking about this. "Y'a'ight Jace?" he slurs, the alcohol and immersion bringing his accent out at its strongest.
JC is stammering out syllables that may or may not eventually form some kind of excuse. Lance tosses a hand. "Don'matter, man, y'jus' kinna quiht..." He stops, his eyes lower, and damn him for not drinking more, for not being stupefied enough to ignore what's happening to JC watching him.
"Oh." He pauses, and grins a bit. "Oh. Okay. Y'like it, huh?" He gives his hips a roll that Justin would have bitchslapped him for, and runs one hand up and through his hair.
And JC is hard enough to break glass now, but he had to be the damn mature and responsible one, didn't he, and that entire portion of his brain is howling obscenities at his dick now, and damn it, it just isn't listening. "I-I'm sorry, it's just... I didn't mean to--"
"Shiiiiit, not like I mind." And oh God he's coming over here now, he saunters over, swaggering, letting his hands slide along his waist and pushing the shorts down, not off, just letting them rest neatly underneath his hipbones.
JC's breath comes in gasps. "Lance, I... you can't be... we can't..."
Lance grins, a slow and easy and mindfucking grin. "Wh'says we can't?" His hands lift to run up JC's jawline, through his hair, and he's on his knees and he's straddling JC's lap and he's leaning down and--
"'M a motherfuckin' rebel," he growls, low and dirty and drawled, and he tastes like whiskey, and JC believes him.
~
After half an hour of gasping, JC finally exhales.
It was like sex with a rag doll, a rag doll with an absolutely perfect ass and hung like nobody would have guessed, but he was so soft, fluid, moved like molasses, resisted just enough at just the right moment. He offered himself;didn't just offer, but beckoned, and there wasn't a man alive who would have done a damn thing differently than JC did. Lance knew what he had, and teased with it, and awkward laughs and resigned smiles had suddenly exploded into such a nasty little boy, so cocky and confident and dark-eyed but still so young and begging to be taken advantage of. And he'd played along, he let JC think he'd taken him for his own, when both of them knew precisely who owned whom.
The room is still spinning slightly, and JC holds on tight, long gangly limbs wrapped around such a tiny soft thing, shoulders nestled into arms and legs tangled with legs. He leans forward to let his lips settle against Lance's left ear. "When your mother walks in here..."
Lance laughs, soft, breathless, and it's so pretty, but JC continues. "When your mother walks in here, you are so out of a job, do you know that? You'll never see any of us again. I'll be a child molester and a pervert, and when I tell her what you did to me, I'll be a liar too."
"She's out of town," Lance murmurs, scooting back against him, oh shit that's nice," at her cousin's house, and I'm legal. She can't do anything but disown me."
JC nuzzles Lance's neck gently. "Wouldn't want her to do that," he murmurs, inhaling the scent of sweat and still a hint of liquor.
Lance shakes his head. "It's fine, babe," he murmurs, soft and low, and JC hangs on to the last word, rolling it around in his head until Lance is fast asleep and has probably forgotten he even said it.
JC never will.
~
And then there's Bye Bye fucking Bye and everything gets turned upside down. JC hates the song, as good as it is, because it changes everything just when he'd gotten used to it. But it's whirlwind and manic and nobody notices Lance creeping out of JC's room at five in the morning to be in his own bed for the wake-up call at six. It's a little more and a little more as time goes by; not necessarily more often, but more to it. Every week or two one of them read or heard something new, and wanted to try it, and there are hands and lips and tongues in places nature never meant them, but nature can kiss JC's ass at this point.
Until the hiatus hits, and then he doesn't care if it's natural or digital or magical or any other kind of sex he can think of, he wants Lance, he wants him here and now and hard and hot like before and it's just not happening. Because Lance has finally figured out that he's famous. And he likes it, he likes the glitter and the lights and the attention,and he likes the parties and the liquor and women and men hanging all over him and taking his pick and it not meaning a damn thing. JC liked it too, for a while, but he's too much of a homebody. He's too much like he used to think Lance was, like Lance used to be. He likes it when it means something, when it's warm and comforting and familiar and it smells and tastes just like the first time. But every time is the first time in Lance's new world, and every time is the last, and nothing is ever the same.
And now it never will be. For a long time, JC convinces himself that he's okay with that. And he plays around some too, and he learns some tricks, and it's always hot and fast and new and never, ever Lance, not even remotely, and that's the part he's not okay with.
He writes songs for an album, and they're all about sex, and they're all about missing, and they're all about love, and they're all about Lance, except for 'Some Girls'. He still doesn't know where the fuck that came from, but the Internet loves it and he's not gonna bitch.
And then one night he looks at Lance, on the other end of the bar with a flock of people hanging on his every bullshitted word, and just like that he sees it, he gets it.
He likes sparkle.
It's the glitter. The novelty. Lance seduced for too long, now he lets the world seduce him; or at least he seduces it from afar, letting it beg him for a piece.
I can sparkle.
JC leaves, planning.
~
It's three weeks later the next time they're in the same club and JC fucking sparkles, all right. He's tight t-shirt and gelled curls and commando under the leather pants. He looks like a damned rent boy, and he's seeing people react. Everyone reacts. It's a good sign; he's playing a slut, and Lance likes sluts, because he's a star now. Stars chase sluts, and drink and party and glide from club to club. Stars don't watch football. Stars don't rebel.
He shoots Lance sultry looks across the bar. Lance laughs it off, and returns his attention to whispering something dirty to the brunette with her hands on his crotch, but he can't stop looking back.
JC leans to the bartender and says something Lance can't read, and doesn't understand until he's given a bottle of Jack Daniels and a shot glass. He closes his eyes, and JC imagines the memories flooding him, imagines him wanting it all back just as bad as JC has ever since it was gone. And he barely smothers a grin as Lance pushes away from the bar and walks around to the other end.
JC leans back on the bar, his hips jaunted out just slightly and flashing the secretive smile that used to pass between them in the hotel hallways. "So?"
Lance isn't smiling. "Yeah. I know what you mean."
JC is silent. Let him take it at his own pace.
Lance runs a hand through his hair. "I know what you want, JC, and..."
"And?" JC lets his tongue slide hot and wet over his upper lip.
Lance shuts his eyes tight and takes a deep breath -- JC's tiny smile widens until he speaks. "It's just not happening."
JC freezes, his mind freezes, the world freezes, his heart breaks, his heart breaks? That wasn't supposed to happen.
"We were young, we didn't know what we were doing--"
"I did."
"But I didn't. The first time, I was drunk, and then it just felt good..."
"It wasn't just your ass that felt good, Lance, and you know it."
Lance steps back, his eyes dark and not in the good way, dark with something harder and more distant than his young lust. "It's nothing, alright, C? It never was anything."
"It was then. It may not be now... but it was."
Lance takes a deep breath. "I'm just... I've changed, alright?"
JC smiles, a softly bitter smile that despite his frustration Lance hates because JC's face is too young and soft and beautiful to be bitter. "Of course you have. I knew that to begin with. You're a star now."
He pushes past Lance into the throng, heading for the door, and when he whispers he doesn't know if he intends for Lance to hear or not.
"But you used to be a fucking rebel."
~
Lance doesn't know JC has been following the Rebs for the four seasons since then, and JC doesn't care.
He set the game to tape off SportsSouth and they were going to watch it together, it was going to be foreplay, and now JC lays only halfway under the covers and watches, drowsy. It's almost 2 AM and Eli just made a Heisman-worthy pass and he really doesn't give a fuck. He just wants to drown out his own thoughts, focus on the screaming and the announcer and the who the hell are we and the sound of soft breath and the bed creaking behind him--
There are hands on his sides before he can even turn around, slipping under the hem of the snug shirt and teasing up his ribs, and his shoulders roll back by reflex, and all four arms move up in one fluid motion to pull the shirt away.
Lance's hands slide down his chest, his stomach, his fingers dipping under the tops of his pants just up to the first knuckle, just enough to make his hips squirm without his permission, and his voice is hot and tense against JC's ear as he hisses, "Starfucker."
It takes JC a full three seconds to come up with a retort, and by that time there are lips and tongue on his neck and shoulders and jaw and hands pushing down into his pants and it doesn't fucking matter anymore. Lance has grown so damn much, and his hands are long-fingered and strong and still know just how JC will react to each touch and just how to make him go limp with his own desire, and he does it, slow and soft and perfect and just like always and like never before.
JC's breaths are long and slow,but Lance's are growing deeper and heavier by the moment, and the movements of his hands match them, and JC can feel the shudders running up and down his spine already. He tugs gently at Lance's wrist, and he reads his mind like always, hands sliding out and quickly unsnapping the front of the pants. He pushes them down roughly, too fast, and the friction makes JC's hips buck. When he reaches back to return the favor he finds nothing, hard bare skin pressed against his.
That's enough to drive him over the edge, to elicit a loud, sharp cry, and Lance is pressed tight behind him, and suddenly he understands. This is why Lance came back. To take what was his all along. He wasn't going to play the toy, the captive, not anymore.
"You know what I am," Lance growls, and JC knows. He knows, and he arches his back, and he shuts his eyes, and he tastes whiskey, and he believes it.