Pairing: JC and AJ
Words: decay; brittle; gleaming; cacophony


1.  The Beginning (all you have to change is everything you are)

...and AJ's been there, done that, and trying to walk the
straight-and-narrow now, and yeah, that was fucking ironic in so
many ways, but he needed to do it to survive, because that other
man, that other AJ wasn't him anymore, hadn't been him in a very
long time.

AJ still wasn't sure who he was without the booze, but he was going
to find out.


2.  The Middle (i want to be somebody else)


He'd started drinking before the party, to get in the mood, to help
him assume the character of AJ McLean, Backstreet's wild and crazy
guy.  It helped him loosen up, release the last few inhibitions
left over from the shy, dorky guy he barely remembered being.

He laughed and joked with Nick on the way to the limo, and it
hardly even bothered him that Leighanne, hanging from Brian's arm,
was glaring at him.  She didn't really understand what it was like
in the music business, despite that she and Brian had met on the
set of one of their music videos.  She was essentially sheltered,
and her marriage to Brian had walled her off further from reality. 
Brian had walled her off further, protecting her, and that was
good, that was right, because she was his wife and that was the
kind of thing Brian did.

AJ ignored her gaze, dancing in his seat in the limo, singing along
with the Lit song the driver had playing over the radio.

"Your own worst enemy?" Howie asked him quietly.

"You know it, babe.  Everybody loves me.  Everyone wants a piece of
the fineness that is AJ McLean."

Howie rested his hand over AJ's for a moment, squeezing, then let
go.

AJ gave Howie a quizzical look, but Howie had already turned back
to his date, and AJ went back to grooving to the music.

The awards show would have been better if they were performing. 
Everything went better when they were performing.  It was a drug he
could never get enough of, the high of being in front of an
audience that was watching him, screaming his name, the instant
feedback he got for his every action.  Not that there was much
screaming at an awards show, he thought.  Still, performing was
performing, and the closest he was going to come to that tonight
was gladhanding it at the after-party -- Kevin's strength -- and
what he was going to be doing for whoever he took back to the hotel
that night.  Probably not his date.  She was a perfectly acceptable
blonde actress from the WB, but he'd had her, and a dozen other
girls just like her.  A hundred.  Maybe a thousand.  He wasn't
counting.

The show couldn't get over fast enough for him -- Backstreet won
nothing, and AJ wasn't happy with that because it just brought the
day closer when they wouldn't be performing anymore.  And his solo
act, Johnny No Name, wasn't nearly popular enough to make up the
difference.  People didn't like that version of him as much.

He downed a few shots of vodka at the after-party and forgot about
the loss.  He was, *they* were Backstreet.  They'd clawed their way
to the top twice now, and he knocked back another shot.  Everything
seemed funnier, better and brighter with the addition of alcohol. 
He was funnier, better, brighter.  Almost as bright as AJ McLean,
almost as big as a pop star, almost as much of a wild child as he
needed to be.  Sometimes he wished he could have been the Good One,
the Saint instead of the Sinner.  But he liked it now, got used to
the sunglasses almost immediately, eventually accepted the pain of
the tattooing as another price to be paid, and he thought that
maybe someday that debt should be considered paid, but it never
was, and at least he didn't have to live up to the expectations
Brian did.  He pitied Brian.  At least being AJ McLean in big bold
letters, glitter-dusted and glowing, and bad and dirty meant he got
to drink and get laid.

His eyes gleaming, he surveyed the crowd for tonight's prey.  He
was in the mood for something different.  Something soft and sexy,
but not innocent or even pretending to be innocent.  He'd had
enough of sweet and innocent to give him tooth decay.  No, he
wanted something like...

His eyes fell on one of the members of NSYNC dancing in place,
apparently unaware that it was against the unwritten rules to have
fun at these things.  AJ snagged two glasses of champagne and made
his way through the cacophony toward him.

*Oh yeah,* he thought as he stopped in front of JC.  *I could use
some of that.*

"Drink?" he offered, holding out one of the glasses.

JC frowned at him for a minute before smiling and accepting the
glass.  "So you don't have anything against NSYNC?"

"Not if they're all as sexy as you."

JC's eyes widened, then he nodded at AJ and his smile got larger.

AJ just grinned.  He knew where he'd be getting it tonight.

He had a couple more drinks before he could escape the party
without threat of a lecture from Kevin.  He saw his date back to
her hotel before returning to his own room.

He was on tonight, baby.  He was AJ McLean, and the world belonged
to him.


3.  The End (i'm my own worst enemy)

He'd been drinking since he got up.  Steadily, because there was an
endless supply of alcohol available to him, and it wasn't like he
was going to run out.

It was a simple matter to escape from the tour; his bodyguards were
paid to keep him safe, not to force him to stick to the schedule. 
Kevin would throw a fit when AJ showed up for the show, but Kevin
threw a fit at everything AJ did these days, and AJ wasn't going to
coddle Kevin's brittle temper.

He needed out, and for once, he knew how to get there, where he was
despite the confusion of being in a new city nearly every night,
and that he could get to where he needed to be.

AJ crumpled the message the hotel had sent up in his fist and told
his bodyguard which hotel to take him to.

"I can't come running every time you call," the other man said to
him, once AJ had gotten inside his room.

"But you do," AJ said, pulling at his shirt.

"You need me," JC said, helping AJ strip him.

"Yeah.  Fuck, yeah, right there."

And it was good sex, had always been good sex, even from the very
first time.  AJ was great in bed; he knew that, but JC was maybe
better, and the two of them together... it was better than girls,
better than sex with anyone else, better than getting smashed out
of his head and spending the night lying under a table feeling the
grain with his fingertips.  Not better than performing though, and
he groaned when he saw the time on the hotel clock.

He threw himself out of the bed.  "Where are my fucking clothes?"

There was a pile of discarded clothing on a chair, and he grabbed
at it, picking up a piece at a time and throwing it over his
shoulder onto the floor when it turned out to be JC's and not his. 
"Where the fuck... what the hell did you do with them?"

"I didn't--"

"Shut up.  Where..." he searched frantically through the room.  He
couldn't be late.  He didn't care about Kevin's lectures, but
missing a show -- no, he couldn't.

"Look, it's not my fault."  JC sat up in bed.  They'd had sex on
top of it, hadn't even bothered stripping off the bedspread.  He
looked good naked, even against the ugly red and brown pattern.

"It is your fucking fault," AJ said viciously.  "You know I have a
show tonight.  You should've been more careful where you put them."

"Where *I* put them?"

JC's tone was rising, and it pissed him off.  He felt panicked and
disjointed.  Adrenaline was rushing through him.  *Gotta find my
stuff, gotta move, gotta go,* and it was fight-or-flight, and he
knew AJ McLean was never to blame for anything.  AJ sometimes, but
AJ McLean never, and it had been a long time since he'd been
anything other than a Backstreet Boy.

He hated JC, hated him for hiding his clothes, for being the thing
that was keeping him from where he needed to be.  "Yeah, where you
fucking threw them.  If you weren't such a useless cocksucking
slut, I'd be able to find them."

He heard the bed creak from where he was on his knees next to it,
looking under it to see if his clothes had been kicked there. 
"About time you got off your ass and helped."

JC kicked him in the stomach, hard.  "I'm not a slut.  I'm not
anything you're ever going to get again.  Maybe I should have known
this was never going anywhere, but I thought it was more than
this."  He picked his clothes off the floor.  "Get out, AJ."  He
stalked into the bathroom, and shut the door firmly behind him.

With JC's clothes gone, it was easy to see where his own were.  AJ
pulled them on and walked out, arms wrapped around his torso.

No one treated AJ McLean like that.  Nobody.

He snarled at his bodyguard as they left the hotel.  He was going
to be late and he still needed a drink.  In the car, he shifted
restlessly in his seat, the music making him even more irritable. 
He needed to perform, needed to be AJ McLean again, before he
slipped up and allowed out the unworthy thing underneath.

Let him at the stage and everything would be all right.  He would
know who he was again.  He would be who he was again.

There was a bottle of whiskey in the limo.  AJ fumbled the top off
and drank.