Six Steps To Being A Better Stand-Up 3/6
Jan. 16th, 2008 03:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
randomlingThe third part of my SeSa, reposted for posterity or whatever.
Part 1 Part 2
Summary: It's pretty hard to date a guy who thinks you're straight. Part 3 of 6.
Warnings: Boybands, RPF and sex (well, okay, masturbation. Sex later).
For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dizmo.
Six Steps To Being A Better Stand-Up
Step Three: Take My Car
December 7th
Alecia stayed late after work to fix her make-up. Chris knew this because he was there late too, figuring out the sort of complicated complaint that only came in when they got crazy-busy in December. She came out of the bathroom as Chris was waiting for his computer to shut down, feeling in his top drawer for his wallet, keys, and a can of Coke he knew was in there. “Still here?” she said.
He nodded. “You too. Hey, you look great.”
She smiled. Her hair was blonde this week, and she ran a hand through it as she said, “Thanks.” There was a little pause; Chris laid his hand on the Coke, using the other hand to pocket wallet and keys. “I'm, uh, I'm going out with Justin tonight.”
“Cool,” said Chris, with what he thought was an admirable veneer of calm. It still sucked that he had to be straight and go out with girls but, really, that was how it was and he'd moved on. “Where?”
She shrugged. “A movie, I guess,” she said flatly.
“Wow, you sound psyched.”
Chris cracked open his Coke as they headed for the door; he held it open for Alecia, and she rolled her eyes at him, but went through ahead of him anyway. “It's a little weird,” she said. “Like, I don't know. I mean, he's cool at work and all, but when we're alone together, he's... it's like he's real nervous.” She looked away. She actually sounded a little upset. “Three dates, he's kissed me twice. I don't know what the hell's up.”
“If I tell you something,” said Chris as they headed out across the parking lot, “will you promise not to tell him I said it?” Alecia looked at him with both eyebrows raised, so he said, “I'm serious.”
“Uh, okay.”
He lowered his voice anyway. “I'm pretty sure the kid's a virgin. I mean, c'mon, never had sex in a car?”
“Oh,” said Alecia blankly, and then, a little more emphatically, “Oh. Right. That explains a lot.”
Chris smiled. “Hot girl like you? He's probably scared out of his mind.” Alecia smiled, looking reassured. They stopped at his car, and on impulse he reached into his back pocket and tossed her the keys. She caught them easily. “Take it,” he said, and exaggerated his smile to a leer. “Have a good time tonight, okay?”
“You sure?”
“I'm sure. Just don't trash it, okay, I can't afford to replace this baby.”
She grinned. “How the hell did you afford it in the first place?”
“A friend of a friend needed to sell it quick,” he said, patting the hood affectionately. He loved his PG: it was big and comfortable, and there was lots of space to have sex in the back seat. Or the front seat. Whichever.
“Nice,” Alecia said. “Want a ride home? It's on the way.”
Chris took a sip of his Coke and shook his head. “I'll get the bus.” He walked away, and when he turned around after a few steps, Alecia was still just standing by the car, looking stunned. “And make him wear a condom!” he called, and she laughed, and so did he.
Since Justin had made that confession, two weeks ago now, Chris had entertained a fair few fantasies of introducing him to the pleasures of getting laid in a car. He guessed that doing it by proxy was better than nothing.
It still sucked that he had to date girls.
***
Alecia took him for a drive after the movie, but she didn't talk. She was totally focused when she was driving, music playing loud, staring almost unblinking at the road. Justin was grateful for the time to think.
He'd been a bit surprised when she showed up driving Chris's car. He wasn't complaining, though; it was a great car, spacious and beautiful, and it smelled like Chris. He'd been in the car just once before, halfway through his second week at Travelstar, when it had been raining like a monsoon and his own car had suddenly died that morning, halfway to work. Chris had taken pity on him and given him a ride home, talking the whole time – a running bitchy commentary that had Justin in fits of laughter and made him forget all about the rain and his stifling one-room apartment and broken-down car – and Justin had almost kissed him on the cheek before getting out of the car.
He'd never felt that impulse with Alecia, that was the problem.
It wasn't that he didn't like her. He did. She was a lot of fun, and he could see that she was attractive, if you liked girls, which he didn't. It wasn't even that he didn't like kissing her: it felt okay, and she smelled nice, but it wasn't anything like the bone-deep, visceral thrill he got just thinking about kissing Chris. Somehow, though, he'd thought that when he was done with high school, he'd be done with dating for the sake of appearance, and with all the other shit you put yourself through just to be liked. Then he'd met the real world, where he was pretty sure telling the guy at Disney World he was gay was the reason he hadn't gotten the job. He hadn't been prepared at all for a world where, instead of putting yourself through the shit to be liked, you had to do it just to make a living.
Presumably there were gay people out there living normal lives and making it work; but he didn't know any, so he had no idea how to get started. Which meant that here he was, dating a woman from work, because he didn't know what else he was supposed to do.
“Justin?”
Somewhere in the middle of all that, Alecia had stopped the car and started talking to him. Justin blinked. “Sorry.”
She touched his arm, gently, affectionate. “It's cool. You okay?”
“Yeah, I'm good.” He smiled at her, a little uncertainly, and looked around.
They were parked on a deserted street by the gate to a park. It was after nine now, so the gate was padlocked shut, and it was set in black iron fences, taller than he was, with spikes on top. He looked up at them and thought about climbing over them, an idle fantasy of running away. Not from Alecia. Just from... stuff.
He looked back at Alecia, and she was looking at him. Straight in the eye, unashamed, everything up-front. That was Alecia all over. He envied her. She said, “Okay, I want you to be honest.”
“Okay,” he said. He was a bit bewildered by that, but, okay.
“Do you like me?”
He blinked, surprised. “Of course I do,” he said, and felt a small sense of victory that it wasn't a lie.
She smiled, looking frankly relieved, and he instantly felt like a heel. “Cool,” she said simply, and leaned over to kiss him. He kissed back, putting his hands on her waist, and she ran her fingers through his hair. He tried, he honestly tried, to get into it, the way he did in his head with Chris. When she parted her lips, he responded, but he felt nothing. He still felt nothing as their tongues tangled together, nothing but mild boredom, nothing until the nasty shock when she suddenly put one hand on his crotch. He started, breaking the kiss, and she took her hand away and sat back in her seat, panting a little.
“Too fast?” she said.
He took a breath and realized he was breathing hard too, but not from the kiss. He was scared, he realized. “It's...” She looked at him, looking bemused, and then, when he didn't say anything, sort of annoyed. He tried again. “It's not that.”
“Well, what the hell is it?” She looked genuinely pissed now. Justin's breath caught in his throat. “If you didn't want to go out with me, Justin, you could have just said when I asked you. I can really do without the bullshit.”
“It's not you,” he managed, still not quite able to breathe like a normal person. Alecia folded her arms and stared him down, and he found that he could say it, okay, he could say it, but he couldn't look at her while he did. “I'm... I'm gay.”
It was only the second time he'd said it to anyone. He'd said it aloud plenty of times: over and over in his room, aged fifteen, when he'd first figured it out; and over and over again, when he'd planned on telling his mom, his teacher, one of his girlfriends, his best friend. In the end, the first person he'd said it to had been the guy at Disney World, who'd just said, “Okay,” and asked another question. Alecia wasn't saying anything. He couldn't even look up and find out what her expression was.
When she did finally say something, it was, “I'm gonna fucking kill Chris.”
That threw him totally. “Chris?”
“If this is one of his stupid jokes, I'm gonna put him in this car and drive it into the fucking swamp.” Justin risked a glance up, and she looked as angry as she sounded. “He put you up to this, didn't he?”
Justin, still not breathing right, gasped, “No – I – you can't – you can't tell him.” That stopped her in her tracks: now she just stared at him, still looking pissed as hell. “Please don't tell anyone,” he said. He felt about as pathetic as he sounded.
“Chris doesn't know?”
“Please don't tell him,” Justin begged. “Or anyone at work.”
“Why not?”
“I'll... I'll lose my job.”
Alecia barked with laughter, but didn't smile. “Are you insane? Who would fire you for being gay?”
That one was easy. “Lance.”
“You are not serious,” she said, but he was. “Lance? Lance Bass? Lance, Queen of Travelstar?” Justin stared at her. “He's about as gay as they come, babe. If he fires you for that, I'll kill him myself.”
“Lance is gay?”
Alecia raised her eyebrows. Then she smiled, at last. Justin found himself smiling back, still feeling a little bit shaky. “Okay, fine. I won't tell anyone if you don't want me to, J. But seriously. They might give you a little grief, but no one's actually gonna care.” She shook her head and started the car. “C'mon. I'll give you a ride home.”
***
It wasn't even ten yet when Chris heard the car pull up outside and, a minute later, his doorbell. When he opened the door Alecia was there, car keys in hand, looking, not totally distraught, but a little shaken. “You wanna come in?” he said.
She shook her head. “No, thanks,” she said, and shoved the keys into his hand.
“What happened?”
Alecia shrugged. “We broke up. Well, you know. We weren't really together, just. We went out a couple of times. Whatever.”
“I'm sorry, kid,” Chris said. He put the keys in his pocket. “I think you should come in. Or at least, I should drive you home.”
“I'm good,” she said. “Twelve blocks. But thanks.”
“Did he screw you around?” Chris asked sharply.
She smiled. “No, not really. G'night, Chris.”
“Night, babe.” He leaned against the doorframe and watched as she walked away, right until she'd turned the corner and disappeared out of sight. When she was gone, he slammed his fist into the frame and said, under his breath, “I'm gonna kill the little fucker.”
***
Buzzed with caffeine, Chris took the stairs back down to his apartment two at a time. He'd been trying to write new material all night, but it all kept coming back to jokes about inappropriate crushes at work, and then he had to turn Justin into a girl, which was just weird, and totally missed the point of all the jokes he wanted to tell. This, somehow, in the midst of telling himself that he'd moved on.
He always drank too much Coke and ate too many chips when he was writing, and now empty cans and packets were strewn all over his kitchen table. Chris started to gather them up and, as an afterthought, took the pages he'd written tonight and tossed them in the trash, too.
Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to try to write jokes when you were lonely, pissed off and horny. Chris was all three tonight.
He turned the radio on to keep him company while he cleaned up, but he just got distracted by it, switched stations three times, and eventually shut it off again, humming to himself while he washed the dishes. After a night of trying to write jokes that weren't about Justin, and trying not to imagine Justin having sex with Alecia in the car, it wasn't all that surprising that his head was full of Justin. It was even less surprising that the pictures of Justin in his head were making him even hornier. It was weirdly embarrassing, he thought, getting hard while doing your own dishes.
After finishing the dishes he flung himself onto the couch and hunted for the remote. There was, of course, nothing on TV but reruns and stupid reality shows. There was nothing, not even a movie that could distract him enough to stop him thinking about Justin. He ended up letting a stupid late-night talk show run in the background, some movie star or other rambling on as Chris closed his eyes, tipped his head back, and slid one hand down over the front of his pants.
The movies playing on the inside of Chris's eyelids starred Justin quite often lately. In this one, he was sprawled across the back seat of Chris's car, on his back, knees bent, moaning and writhing as Chris kissed his stomach. Chris squeezed his own cock gently and tried to change the picture, telling himself that it really wasn't appropriate to be fantasising about his straight, much-younger colleague. The movie in his head, though, rolled on: he could imagine Justin's hand on his head, pushing down just a little. Justin, squirming and desperate, moaning please.
Chris gave in and unzipped his fly. The movie changed in his head, and it was one of Justin's big, gentle hands reaching in and taking hold of his cock, long fingers teasing. Chris let out a ragged breath: you couldn't really tease yourself, but his cock seemed to appreciate the effort, and in his mind Justin was doing a great job. He thought of all things he wanted: Justin's lips wet against his neck, hands on his ass, erection pressing into his stomach. Justin, eyes closed and mouth open, as Chris moved his mouth down. He wanted to know what Justin looked like when he came, because in his head it looked pretty fucking good.
It didn't last long; all of a sudden he was just there, coming, imagining Justin doing the same, thrusting hard into Chris's mouth and crying out. When Chris opened his eyes a beer commercial was playing. He breathed out; maybe he should have drugged himself unconscious with beer tonight instead of getting all hyped up on Coke.
It wasn't until he was reaching for a handful of Kleenex that he remembered he was supposed to be pissed at Justin for screwing Alecia around.
Yeah, sure. He'd moved on just fine.
Part 4 Part 5 Part 6
Part 1 Part 2
Summary: It's pretty hard to date a guy who thinks you're straight. Part 3 of 6.
Warnings: Boybands, RPF and sex (well, okay, masturbation. Sex later).
For
dizmo.Six Steps To Being A Better Stand-Up
Step Three: Take My Car
December 7th
Alecia stayed late after work to fix her make-up. Chris knew this because he was there late too, figuring out the sort of complicated complaint that only came in when they got crazy-busy in December. She came out of the bathroom as Chris was waiting for his computer to shut down, feeling in his top drawer for his wallet, keys, and a can of Coke he knew was in there. “Still here?” she said.
He nodded. “You too. Hey, you look great.”
She smiled. Her hair was blonde this week, and she ran a hand through it as she said, “Thanks.” There was a little pause; Chris laid his hand on the Coke, using the other hand to pocket wallet and keys. “I'm, uh, I'm going out with Justin tonight.”
“Cool,” said Chris, with what he thought was an admirable veneer of calm. It still sucked that he had to be straight and go out with girls but, really, that was how it was and he'd moved on. “Where?”
She shrugged. “A movie, I guess,” she said flatly.
“Wow, you sound psyched.”
Chris cracked open his Coke as they headed for the door; he held it open for Alecia, and she rolled her eyes at him, but went through ahead of him anyway. “It's a little weird,” she said. “Like, I don't know. I mean, he's cool at work and all, but when we're alone together, he's... it's like he's real nervous.” She looked away. She actually sounded a little upset. “Three dates, he's kissed me twice. I don't know what the hell's up.”
“If I tell you something,” said Chris as they headed out across the parking lot, “will you promise not to tell him I said it?” Alecia looked at him with both eyebrows raised, so he said, “I'm serious.”
“Uh, okay.”
He lowered his voice anyway. “I'm pretty sure the kid's a virgin. I mean, c'mon, never had sex in a car?”
“Oh,” said Alecia blankly, and then, a little more emphatically, “Oh. Right. That explains a lot.”
Chris smiled. “Hot girl like you? He's probably scared out of his mind.” Alecia smiled, looking reassured. They stopped at his car, and on impulse he reached into his back pocket and tossed her the keys. She caught them easily. “Take it,” he said, and exaggerated his smile to a leer. “Have a good time tonight, okay?”
“You sure?”
“I'm sure. Just don't trash it, okay, I can't afford to replace this baby.”
She grinned. “How the hell did you afford it in the first place?”
“A friend of a friend needed to sell it quick,” he said, patting the hood affectionately. He loved his PG: it was big and comfortable, and there was lots of space to have sex in the back seat. Or the front seat. Whichever.
“Nice,” Alecia said. “Want a ride home? It's on the way.”
Chris took a sip of his Coke and shook his head. “I'll get the bus.” He walked away, and when he turned around after a few steps, Alecia was still just standing by the car, looking stunned. “And make him wear a condom!” he called, and she laughed, and so did he.
Since Justin had made that confession, two weeks ago now, Chris had entertained a fair few fantasies of introducing him to the pleasures of getting laid in a car. He guessed that doing it by proxy was better than nothing.
It still sucked that he had to date girls.
***
Alecia took him for a drive after the movie, but she didn't talk. She was totally focused when she was driving, music playing loud, staring almost unblinking at the road. Justin was grateful for the time to think.
He'd been a bit surprised when she showed up driving Chris's car. He wasn't complaining, though; it was a great car, spacious and beautiful, and it smelled like Chris. He'd been in the car just once before, halfway through his second week at Travelstar, when it had been raining like a monsoon and his own car had suddenly died that morning, halfway to work. Chris had taken pity on him and given him a ride home, talking the whole time – a running bitchy commentary that had Justin in fits of laughter and made him forget all about the rain and his stifling one-room apartment and broken-down car – and Justin had almost kissed him on the cheek before getting out of the car.
He'd never felt that impulse with Alecia, that was the problem.
It wasn't that he didn't like her. He did. She was a lot of fun, and he could see that she was attractive, if you liked girls, which he didn't. It wasn't even that he didn't like kissing her: it felt okay, and she smelled nice, but it wasn't anything like the bone-deep, visceral thrill he got just thinking about kissing Chris. Somehow, though, he'd thought that when he was done with high school, he'd be done with dating for the sake of appearance, and with all the other shit you put yourself through just to be liked. Then he'd met the real world, where he was pretty sure telling the guy at Disney World he was gay was the reason he hadn't gotten the job. He hadn't been prepared at all for a world where, instead of putting yourself through the shit to be liked, you had to do it just to make a living.
Presumably there were gay people out there living normal lives and making it work; but he didn't know any, so he had no idea how to get started. Which meant that here he was, dating a woman from work, because he didn't know what else he was supposed to do.
“Justin?”
Somewhere in the middle of all that, Alecia had stopped the car and started talking to him. Justin blinked. “Sorry.”
She touched his arm, gently, affectionate. “It's cool. You okay?”
“Yeah, I'm good.” He smiled at her, a little uncertainly, and looked around.
They were parked on a deserted street by the gate to a park. It was after nine now, so the gate was padlocked shut, and it was set in black iron fences, taller than he was, with spikes on top. He looked up at them and thought about climbing over them, an idle fantasy of running away. Not from Alecia. Just from... stuff.
He looked back at Alecia, and she was looking at him. Straight in the eye, unashamed, everything up-front. That was Alecia all over. He envied her. She said, “Okay, I want you to be honest.”
“Okay,” he said. He was a bit bewildered by that, but, okay.
“Do you like me?”
He blinked, surprised. “Of course I do,” he said, and felt a small sense of victory that it wasn't a lie.
She smiled, looking frankly relieved, and he instantly felt like a heel. “Cool,” she said simply, and leaned over to kiss him. He kissed back, putting his hands on her waist, and she ran her fingers through his hair. He tried, he honestly tried, to get into it, the way he did in his head with Chris. When she parted her lips, he responded, but he felt nothing. He still felt nothing as their tongues tangled together, nothing but mild boredom, nothing until the nasty shock when she suddenly put one hand on his crotch. He started, breaking the kiss, and she took her hand away and sat back in her seat, panting a little.
“Too fast?” she said.
He took a breath and realized he was breathing hard too, but not from the kiss. He was scared, he realized. “It's...” She looked at him, looking bemused, and then, when he didn't say anything, sort of annoyed. He tried again. “It's not that.”
“Well, what the hell is it?” She looked genuinely pissed now. Justin's breath caught in his throat. “If you didn't want to go out with me, Justin, you could have just said when I asked you. I can really do without the bullshit.”
“It's not you,” he managed, still not quite able to breathe like a normal person. Alecia folded her arms and stared him down, and he found that he could say it, okay, he could say it, but he couldn't look at her while he did. “I'm... I'm gay.”
It was only the second time he'd said it to anyone. He'd said it aloud plenty of times: over and over in his room, aged fifteen, when he'd first figured it out; and over and over again, when he'd planned on telling his mom, his teacher, one of his girlfriends, his best friend. In the end, the first person he'd said it to had been the guy at Disney World, who'd just said, “Okay,” and asked another question. Alecia wasn't saying anything. He couldn't even look up and find out what her expression was.
When she did finally say something, it was, “I'm gonna fucking kill Chris.”
That threw him totally. “Chris?”
“If this is one of his stupid jokes, I'm gonna put him in this car and drive it into the fucking swamp.” Justin risked a glance up, and she looked as angry as she sounded. “He put you up to this, didn't he?”
Justin, still not breathing right, gasped, “No – I – you can't – you can't tell him.” That stopped her in her tracks: now she just stared at him, still looking pissed as hell. “Please don't tell anyone,” he said. He felt about as pathetic as he sounded.
“Chris doesn't know?”
“Please don't tell him,” Justin begged. “Or anyone at work.”
“Why not?”
“I'll... I'll lose my job.”
Alecia barked with laughter, but didn't smile. “Are you insane? Who would fire you for being gay?”
That one was easy. “Lance.”
“You are not serious,” she said, but he was. “Lance? Lance Bass? Lance, Queen of Travelstar?” Justin stared at her. “He's about as gay as they come, babe. If he fires you for that, I'll kill him myself.”
“Lance is gay?”
Alecia raised her eyebrows. Then she smiled, at last. Justin found himself smiling back, still feeling a little bit shaky. “Okay, fine. I won't tell anyone if you don't want me to, J. But seriously. They might give you a little grief, but no one's actually gonna care.” She shook her head and started the car. “C'mon. I'll give you a ride home.”
***
It wasn't even ten yet when Chris heard the car pull up outside and, a minute later, his doorbell. When he opened the door Alecia was there, car keys in hand, looking, not totally distraught, but a little shaken. “You wanna come in?” he said.
She shook her head. “No, thanks,” she said, and shoved the keys into his hand.
“What happened?”
Alecia shrugged. “We broke up. Well, you know. We weren't really together, just. We went out a couple of times. Whatever.”
“I'm sorry, kid,” Chris said. He put the keys in his pocket. “I think you should come in. Or at least, I should drive you home.”
“I'm good,” she said. “Twelve blocks. But thanks.”
“Did he screw you around?” Chris asked sharply.
She smiled. “No, not really. G'night, Chris.”
“Night, babe.” He leaned against the doorframe and watched as she walked away, right until she'd turned the corner and disappeared out of sight. When she was gone, he slammed his fist into the frame and said, under his breath, “I'm gonna kill the little fucker.”
***
Buzzed with caffeine, Chris took the stairs back down to his apartment two at a time. He'd been trying to write new material all night, but it all kept coming back to jokes about inappropriate crushes at work, and then he had to turn Justin into a girl, which was just weird, and totally missed the point of all the jokes he wanted to tell. This, somehow, in the midst of telling himself that he'd moved on.
He always drank too much Coke and ate too many chips when he was writing, and now empty cans and packets were strewn all over his kitchen table. Chris started to gather them up and, as an afterthought, took the pages he'd written tonight and tossed them in the trash, too.
Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to try to write jokes when you were lonely, pissed off and horny. Chris was all three tonight.
He turned the radio on to keep him company while he cleaned up, but he just got distracted by it, switched stations three times, and eventually shut it off again, humming to himself while he washed the dishes. After a night of trying to write jokes that weren't about Justin, and trying not to imagine Justin having sex with Alecia in the car, it wasn't all that surprising that his head was full of Justin. It was even less surprising that the pictures of Justin in his head were making him even hornier. It was weirdly embarrassing, he thought, getting hard while doing your own dishes.
After finishing the dishes he flung himself onto the couch and hunted for the remote. There was, of course, nothing on TV but reruns and stupid reality shows. There was nothing, not even a movie that could distract him enough to stop him thinking about Justin. He ended up letting a stupid late-night talk show run in the background, some movie star or other rambling on as Chris closed his eyes, tipped his head back, and slid one hand down over the front of his pants.
The movies playing on the inside of Chris's eyelids starred Justin quite often lately. In this one, he was sprawled across the back seat of Chris's car, on his back, knees bent, moaning and writhing as Chris kissed his stomach. Chris squeezed his own cock gently and tried to change the picture, telling himself that it really wasn't appropriate to be fantasising about his straight, much-younger colleague. The movie in his head, though, rolled on: he could imagine Justin's hand on his head, pushing down just a little. Justin, squirming and desperate, moaning please.
Chris gave in and unzipped his fly. The movie changed in his head, and it was one of Justin's big, gentle hands reaching in and taking hold of his cock, long fingers teasing. Chris let out a ragged breath: you couldn't really tease yourself, but his cock seemed to appreciate the effort, and in his mind Justin was doing a great job. He thought of all things he wanted: Justin's lips wet against his neck, hands on his ass, erection pressing into his stomach. Justin, eyes closed and mouth open, as Chris moved his mouth down. He wanted to know what Justin looked like when he came, because in his head it looked pretty fucking good.
It didn't last long; all of a sudden he was just there, coming, imagining Justin doing the same, thrusting hard into Chris's mouth and crying out. When Chris opened his eyes a beer commercial was playing. He breathed out; maybe he should have drugged himself unconscious with beer tonight instead of getting all hyped up on Coke.
It wasn't until he was reaching for a handful of Kleenex that he remembered he was supposed to be pissed at Justin for screwing Alecia around.
Yeah, sure. He'd moved on just fine.
Part 4 Part 5 Part 6
