"Come on," Justin says, and Chris can feel his good sense and his backbone and all his fucking resolutions turning into water and sheeting down his skin in a little tsunami of "bad idea", poised on that one wave-edge before drowning.

He doesn't say anything, but when Justin catches his wrist in one hand, turns it over and runs the pad of his thumb along the ink and skin, he doesn't pull away.

*

Chris remembers when Justin was pliable. Not a pushover, because nobody who's ever gotten near Timberlake in a studio could ever think of applying the word "pushover", but pliable, amenable to being talked into things, sweet like candy and stubborn only when everything was all about to fall to hell. He remembers the long limber length of Justin, drunk for the first time on stolen sips of JC's whatever-the-hell-it-was, wrapping his arms around Chris's neck and letting Chris steer him to bed.

Once upon a time, Chris had been able to nudge Justin to wherever he wanted Justin to go.

*

It's dark out, because these days Chris is doing his best impersonation of a vampire, or at least of a dot-com geek who never goes outside until after the big ball of gas in the sky has gone away. Justin is silent as he throws Chris's backpack in the back of his SUV. Chris is in some crazy alternate universe where he doesn't feel the need to fill up the empty space between them with noise, doesn't feel the need to ask where they're going and what Justin's doing. Justin wouldn't tell him anyway, he thinks. If he's being honest with himself, he'd have to admit that Justin learned it from him.

When Justin turns the car on, Chris can hear the low beat thump of some song he doesn't recognize, turned down so far that he doesn't hear it so much as sense the bass line. Justin reaches over and turns the sound system off with a snap, plunging the car into silence. Chris resists the urge to turn it back on, because the silence has a weight like it's pressing down on his chest and in the past few years he's really gotten used to being able to breathe.

"Kidnapping is a felony, you know," he finally says, almost an hour of silence later, once they've gotten onto I-75 and Chris has discarded just about every destination he'd been thinking they might be heading to.

"It's not kidnapping if the person goes along with you willingly." It could have been cocky, could have been the kind of thing Justin would say and follow up with that smug-ass grin, but instead it's almost tentative. Chris wonders, suddenly, if Justin isn't as sure of himself as he seems.

And yeah, alternate universe, because Chris reaches over and puts his hand on Justin's thigh, feeling worn soft denim and the start-stop-stammer of the gas pedal, and then turns his head and watches the miles count down in silence.

Next to him, Justin is breathing very carefully, like there's a baby bird asleep in his hand and he doesn't want to disturb it.

*

Justin's eyes are on the road. Chris can see the shift-turn-tug of headlights and streetlights parading across his face, lighting his cheekbones on and off and on and off like a Christmas tree with one bulb blinking out of sync. "Remember when I was sixteen?" he says.

It's Chris's cue to say I remember the bad hair or of course, the jailbait years or me and every other teenage girl in America or something else to reassert his natural right to mock Justin at every opportunity, but something about the quiet, wistful tone in Justin's voice stops him before he can say the first syllable. "Which part?" he says instead. There are so many things Justin could be referring to, and some of them are things Chris doesn't even let himself think about in the middle of the night.

But Justin's smiling, so it's probably okay. "We had, like, three weeks off, and halfway through it, just when I was about to go nuts, you showed up and talked my mom into letting you kidnap me. I was terrified of doing something wrong and you, man, you didn't even flinch, just packed me in to the car and slapped my hand away from the stereo and pointed the car west."

Chris remembers that trip. His car had been held together by duct tape and baling wire and he'd gone hungry for a week to make absolutely certain he'd have enough for gas. That had been before he'd gotten used to the thought that he'd never have to go hungry again. They'd stayed in no-star motels and slept in the car and he'd brought Justin out to Yellowstone to see the sun rise at ten thousand feet.

"I thought you might have been going a little bit crazy trying to fit yourself into your old life," Chris finally says.

"I know," Justin says. "I never knew what crazy meant until I met you."

*

So much of their history has taken place at sixty-five mph, Chris thinks. The first time Justin snuggled close in the back of the van and tipped up his head to say something and Chris kissed him, soft and quick and light and only vaguely sexual, more for comfort, really, which is Chris's story and he will stick to it until the day he dies. The first time Justin crawled into Chris's bunk, all elbows and knees and want want want, and Chris hadn't even considered throwing him out. The first time Justin had said but -- I mean -- she understands, she doesn't mind -- I don't want to stop, can we -- and Chris had opened his mouth to say no and what had come out instead was sure and Justin had smiled, long and slow like sunrise.

The first time Chris had pushed Justin away and said I can't, not anymore and Justin had pulled back like Chris had slapped him or sliced him or something, on a tour bus Chris didn't know and Justin had made home, with the lights of DC fading into the background.

There are fifteen moments Chris regrets in his life, and eleven of them belong to Justin.

*

"It took me a while," Justin says, as they leave Tallahassee behind them. The sun is starting to peek over the horizon and Chris wonders if Justin's given up sleeping.

It's supposed to be his cue, what took you a while, but he's been off mark since Justin dragged him out his front door, so he just rests his cheek against the window and watches the stripes on the road, tick tick tick thunk.

Justin spares a glance over, to make sure Chris is still awake and he isn't talking to nothing. "What you were doing," he says, one long smooth wave like he hadn't even paused. "It took me a while to realize. You wanted to kick me out and make sure I could handle things on my own."

Chris doesn't want to have this conversation at all, but he really doesn't want to have it when he doesn't have anywhere to escape if he needs to. He's taught Justin the fine art of cornering people way too well. By example, he thinks, and closes his eyes. "I wanted to stop taking advantage of you," he says. His voice is scratchy in his own ears; he wonders what it must sound like to Justin.

Justin snorts. "Fuck," he says, "like you even could," and Chris hisses, because really, what the fuck is that supposed to mean? Justin glances over at the sound, like he was expecting Chris to laugh, and Chris turns his face away, looks out the window at the tiny green mile markers so he doesn't have to see all the ways he fucked up written across Justin's face.

Another fifteen minutes of silence, and Justin says, surprisingly gently, like he's just figured it out, like it all just dawned on him a minute ago, "I meant that you couldn't take advantage of me, not that you couldn't stop."

Chris closes his eyes against the rush of relief, and really, when the fuck did he get to be a fucking teenage girl, because all he wants to do right now is slump against the door and listen to Justin tell him it's okay, Chris didn't fuck up, Chris didn't fuck him up. It makes him sharper. "You aren't even close to knowing what the fuck I'm talking about," Chris says.

Once upon a time that would have started a shouting match. Once upon a time was a long time ago. "I know more than you think I do," Justin says.

No, Chris thinks, you really don't.

*

They manage to miss all the early morning traffic, which Chris thinks Justin probably planned. Or maybe the universe just loves him enough to rearrange itself so Justin will never have to worry about sitting in a traffic jam with one eye on the gas gauge to make sure they're not going to get stuck on the side of the road and the other eye on the radiator to make sure they're not going to overheat. Sometimes Chris forgets that he doesn't have to worry about things like that anymore either. In his head, there's always been a divide between the people like Justin and the people like him, and this is one of the many points that taken together form that line.

The line's always been there. Chris just used to be able to step over it when he wanted to.

They stop for breakfast at a greasy spoon up in Floribama, some tiny truck stop that's one step down from "dive", and Chris drinks half a pot of coffee and Justin eats an English muffin and they don't say anything until the waitress brings the check. They reach for it together, and Justin pulls his fingers back like he's been scalded. "Let me," he says.

"I haven't pissed all my money away on hookers and blow yet," Chris says, and it comes out a lot harsher than he intended.

Justin's lips tighten, and Chris wonders if he's regretting this yet. Whatever "this" is. "This was my idea," he says, and this time when he picks up the check Chris doesn't stop him, just looks away and out the window into the mud-splattered parking lot. He's doing a lot of looking out windows on this trip so far, but that's because looking out windows is easier than looking at Justin's face, knowing that it's been so long that he can't be sure of translating the expressions anymore.

Chris comes out of the men's room after they pay to find Justin leaning on the counter, flirting with the waitress in that kind of halfhearted Justin-in-public sort of way. That, he recognizes. The woman's got the sort of look on her face that says she's trying to remember where she's met him before. Chris remembers teaching Justin his theory about hiding in plain sight, the idea that people won't be expecting to see famous people in the middle of nowhere and just won't put two and two together. It always worked better for Chris than it did for Justin, but apparently it's been long enough, because the woman's packing up a slice of apple pie and two Styrofoam cups of coffee, and Justin's lips are curved in the smirk that Chris still remembers as his "getting away with something" face.

Chris's breath steams in the parking lot, and he pulls his jacket tighter. December on the Gulf Coast is colder than Florida has any right to be. He stops with his hand on the door-handle and says, "Where are we going?"

Justin hasn't bothered with a jacket, but he hunches his shoulders over and shoves his hands into his pockets instead of opening the door. "Does it really matter?"

And maybe the unpaved parking lot of a bad diner in the middle of nowhere is a shitty place to pick for his Little Bighorn, but suddenly Chris knows he's not going to get back into that car before he knows where Justin's going with this, and he doesn't mean where they're driving to. Chris has always been the kind of person who flips to the last page of the murder mystery somewhere in the middle of chapter two. "What the fuck do you want from me?"

Justin meets Chris's eyes for a minute, stubbornness written in every line of his face, and then looks away, squinting against the sunlight. "Shall we play at questions?" he quotes, lightly, and opens the car door to slide into the driver's seat.

Chris closes his eyes, counts to ten in German, tries to remember if anyone owes him a big enough favor to cover picking him up from a truck stop in Floribama, and then yanks the passenger's side door open, hard enough that he thinks it might splinter off. When it comes to Justin, he's always kind of sucked at sticking to his guns.

Ten minutes after they're back on the interstate, ten minutes for Chris to regret that he ever taught Justin it was okay to stick up for what he wanted, Justin says, without taking his eyes off the road, "Mexico."

It seems like the world's biggest non-sequitur, until Chris threads back through his memory to find the start of it. He's gotten out of the habit of having these conversations with Justin, the kind where there are minutes and hours and sometimes days of in-between before they pick right back up where they left off. "Mexico," he repeats, in his very best you've-got-to-be-shitting-me voice.

Justin shrugs. "I needed someplace far enough that you couldn't run away from me again," he says.

*

Justin had been the one to start it, and in the middle of the night when Chris takes out all of his favorite old pains to polish them up for private viewing, that's the only thing that makes it bearable. He hadn't even bothered coming out to all of them, because Chris has never been good at subtle even when it isn't about some basic part of his self-identity, but he hadn't been expecting the way Justin had latched onto him, the way Justin had started giving him those looks under his eyelashes before doing anything. Somewhere in those crazy early years, he'd woken up one morning, turned around, and realized that somewhere along the way he'd become Justin's own personal sun.

If he'd been a stronger man, he would have stopped it. Directed that hero-worship somewhere else, channeled the devotion into some more appropriate channel. He did, a little, enough that he can still live with himself, enough that Justin turned out pretty okay after all, but there's a word for men who take that kind of devotion and parlay it into sex. It's an ugly word that Chris doesn't think to himself even in that middle of the night and not even the fact that Justin had been seventeen going on thirty-five makes it any better.

It had never bothered Justin. He'd crawled into Chris's bunk to mouth him awake, made himself at home in Chris's hotel rooms and Chris's house and all up in Chris's life, and not once had he ever given one single hint it was anything other than what he wanted. Justin's always been able to create this illusion that whatever he wants is the thing that everyone should want, this illusion that things will fall into place around him because things have always fallen into place around him, and everyone always buys into it and turns it into a self-fulfilling prophecy. It took a good long time before Chris could come up for air and realize.

Chris loves Justin, but he doesn't have any room left for illusions anymore.

*

They get to the part of Texas where there aren't any radio stations, and Justin doesn't keep any CDs in the car that Chris would bother listening to, and Chris doesn't really want to break the silence anyway. He's starting to drift off, in and out, with his face up against the window and his eyes shut against the light. Justin seems indefatiguable, all quiet competence in the driver's seat. Chris wonders if he intends to keep going until they get to where he's headed, or if Justin actually plans to stop to sleep at some point. You can do that shit when you're young, he supposes.

They stopped to eat a few times, stopped to pee, to get gas. All the stops are starting to blur into each other. He remembers crossing the Mississippi at dusk, passing the refineries on Lake Charles in the twilight all lit up in their best diamond pinpoints of light against the darkening sky. He thinks it should probably be awkward, spending this much time in a car with Justin without even the barrier of music to keep them at a safe distance. It's not, really. If he closes his eyes, he can almost imagine they've gone back to the way it used to be.

Chris closes his eyes and wakes up halfway down the coast, on some tiny state highway, and he hadn't even realized he'd been asleep until Justin wordlessly passes him a bottle of water to get the taste of morning out of his mouth. When he checks the clock on the dash, he realizes that he's been sleeping for four hours. "You should have woken me," he says.

"You needed the sleep," Justin says.

"So do you."

"Nah." Justin's shoulders have got to be killing him, Chris thinks. He's been driving for nearly a day, and not once has Chris heard one bit of complaint, seen one wince or shift or stretch. "I like driving."

Chris is beginning to wonder if Justin is even human anymore, because his own back is telling him that it's really not happy with him about this sitting thing, thank you very much, and if we could manage to find a place to stop and pee that would be very much appreciated as well, yes? It makes him cranky, crankier than just the kidnapping and the being stuck in a car with your ex who really isn't your ex and the sheer fucking ridiculousness of the whole damn mess. "So this is what, some kind of way of proving to me that you're capable of planning and executing something like this? That you're superhuman enough to drive from Orlando to Mexico without stopping to sleep? That you don't need help from anyone anymore?"

They've been driving so long that Chris doesn't even realize that Justin's stopping the car until all of a sudden they aren't moving anymore. "Okay," Justin says, neat and clipped and precise, "you really need to get the fuck over yourself, because plenty of people have taken advantage of me in my life and I know exactly what it feels like, and you? This thing, this whole fucking weird thing, is and was so far from being taken advantage of it's almost out the other side, and I am sick and tired of dealing with your fucking neuroses, so get the fuck out of my car and go piss on the side of the road and I'm going to hope it knocks some sense into you. Or at least that you take the attitude out of the car with you and forget to bring it back in. Because really, the suffering martyr with the weight of the world on your shoulders routine got old about two years ago."

Chris stares for a minute, trying to figure out if he's still asleep and just dreaming, and then fumbles for the doorlatch. There are seven million stars overhead, and every single one of them looks like it's staring him right in the face.

Twenty minutes later, just past the sign proclaiming it to be ten miles to Refugio, Justin says into the silence, "It's my way of telling you that I was ready for you. Even when all this started, I was ready for you." Chris opens his mouth to say something, he doesn't know what but something, and Justin cuts him off with "You just weren't ready for me."

Chris closes his eyes. "All I was trying to do was not to hurt you."

"Yeah, well." Justin's voice is curiously flat, like he's been given a line to deliver and can't quite find his motivation. "You spend your entire life trying not to hurt people. Maybe it's time for you to start realizing that all you're doing is hurting yourself."

Chris has always preferred it that way. If someone's got to be hurt, it's always better if it's him. If you break your own heart before someone else can beat you to it, at least that way you can control how it shatters.

*

The sun is rising over the Gulf when they pull into Matamoros. Justin seems to know exactly where he's going, and Chris thinks this can't be the first time he's been here. They're apparently staying in some hotel Justin knows, right on the playa. Chris is startled to hear Justin bargaining in liquid, lilting Spanish. He's filthy with the stink of travel, but he can smell the water on the air. It smells like freedom.

Justin comes back with a key. Chris braces himself for some casual inanity; they haven't said anything since that last brief exchange, like Justin's been giving him time to think things out and come to a conclusion. It's almost starting to make sense in his head, all the twists and turns and wrong steps and missed moves over the past however the fuck long it's been. Talking about the mundane things now will just risk shattering it whole.

Justin doesn't say anything, though, just grabs Chris's wrist, the same way he did to start all of this, and leads him into a room that's shabby but clean and smells like the flowers that are blooming just outside the building. "I," Chris says, and then turns around and Justin's right there, in his space, in his face, in the room and breathing out the molecules that Chris is breathing in, warm and real.

"Shut up," Justin says, and kisses him.

And yeah, Chris knew this was going to happen, knew it back in the part of his brain that keeps track of these things and doesn't bother to inform him until it's already too late to do anything about it, but Justin's mouth is hot and sweet, just the way he remembers it being. Twenty-eight hours of silence and all of a sudden there's so much to say, because Chris suddenly realizes why Mexico, why this, because the past twenty-eight hours of silence has woven this, this shape, this pattern, out of its spaces, and all of a sudden he understands.

Justin's exhausted. Chris can feel it deep in his own bones, feel the weight of the dance Justin's been leading and the effort it's taken him to balance on the knife-edge between too much and not enough and do it all without saying more than fifty fucking words the entire time and oh, Jesus, Justin's hands, sliding under his t-shirt, unbuttoning his jeans, and Justin's mouth kissing everywhere that hasn't seen the sun in far too long, and all Chris can do is open and close his fists against Justin's shoulders.

He's exhausted and he's filthy and he's too fucking old to start all this over again, except it isn't a starting, it's a finishing. Justin pushes him back against the bed, and Justin strips off his clothes, and Justin glides into him so slip-slide slow and says "you can talk now," and Chris finally does.

*

Chris wakes up to find Justin sitting on the edge of the bed, holding a cup of coffee, watching him. He sits up and his back screams bloody murder.

"It was always my idea," Justin says, and hands him the coffee.

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