SIX

 

 

 

For a moment, when Ken arrived at the address that Justin had texted him, he was sure that he must have gone to the wrong place. When he double, and then triple, checked, he shook his head and seriously considered just walking away.

It wasn’t like Justin would mind if he did, anyway. Justin hadn’t even wanted to see him, and Ken couldn’t remember the last time that he’d worked out in a place like this.

The gym that Justin had directed him to wasn’t even a gym. It was just a community center, and yes, there was probably a fitness center in there somewhere, but Ken was used to having a dedicated space. Plus this particular community center looked pretty run down, not up to his usual standards at all.

But this was the time that Justin had so gracious allotted him, and Ken sighed as he perched on a picnic table nearby and looked around for Justin. It was odd, how the guy didn’t seem to be all that worried about his job. Ken would have expected Justin to be all over writing this new song.

What a mystery Justin was to him. When Ken had looked at him as Lester spoke to them both, Ken would have been willing to bet that Justin was terrified to lose this job. And now, he was acting like it didn’t matter. If Justin didn’t care, should Ken?

On the other hand, the songs that Justin had done for Darien and then for Jamie and Lance had been not only utterly gorgeous and perfect for the couples involved but also had helped make the individual singers as well as the band into a bigger deal. In short, people loved Lance and Jamie, and Ken didn’t exactly find it heartbreaking to think about himself getting the same adoration.

Besides, wasn’t it possible that it would end up being Ken and Aaron who sang this song together? That had happened with Lance and Jamie, after all, when they’d fallen in love. No reason that lightning couldn’t strike twice, especially since he intended to take matters into his own hands, too.

Ken smiled and let himself imagine it. He just needed to talk to Aaron one on one, which he wasn’t sure that he had even ever done. Ask him out. See what developed. Justin didn’t know what he was talking about, in this case.

Just as he was thinking about the older man, he appeared, walking slowly and with his head bowed. It must be the heat, which shimmered in golden waves through the air. Soon, it would be time for Ken to spend most of his free time at the beach.

Funny, though, how thoughts of Aaron left Ken’s mind when he saw Justin. He slipped off of his perch, waving over at Justin, who nodded to him as he came closer. Justin had these dark circles under his eyes, but even as Ken wondered what had caused that he had to admit that it was none of his business.

“Okay, let’s do this,” Ken said when Justin was close enough to hear. He smiled, trying to tease an answering smile out of Justin, because one thing that he had noticed about the guy was that he was way too serious. It wouldn’t kill him to smile once in a while, but Justin always seemed to be half lost in his own world.

As Ken looked at Justin, a colorful blur shot past him as though send at top speed from a cannon. But this particular cannonball didn’t shoot in a straight line. Instead, it tried to dart between the two of them and knocked into Ken’s legs full force, sending him reeling.

“Hey, what the …” Ken’s voice trailed off as he looked down into the grubby little face and huge dark eyes of the little girl who had bumped into him. She clutched in one small hand the remains of a chocolate ice cream cone, soggy with the heat, while Ken wore a lot of the rest of it on himself, smeared all over his shirt.

The poor kid sniffed and then rubbed her eyes as she looked up at him, clearly expecting him to be angry for the mess. Tears started to flow, and Ken knelt down and looked into her sad little face.

Poor thing. She couldn’t be more than about four and was obviously terrified that he was going to yell at her. Not to mention that she’d lost her treat, too.

“Hey, are you okay?” Ken made sure that his voice was gentle. He knew how to talk to kids, his youngest brother was only five, not that much older than this poor baby. He’d gotten ice cream on his shirt, but that was easily dealt with. She’d lost her ice cream entirely, just because of a moment of inattention.

“Yeah,” she sniffled, but the tears didn’t stop. If anything, they rolled faster down her cheeks, and Ken shook his head. This wouldn’t do.

“What happened? Did you hurt yourself?” He checked her over. He knew that he was not exactly a small guy, and she’d slammed into him full force, but she didn’t seem to be injured.

“No, but my ice cream …”

She had been holding off until then, but when she looked down at her ruined ice cream cone which was smooshed in her hand, that’s when the waterworks really started.

“Kyoko!” A pretty woman with a strong family resemblance to the little girl rushed up—her face a mask of horror. “What did you do? You got ice cream all over that man’s shirt!”

Ken shook his head and rose to his feet, smiling as he looked past Justin, who, for some reason, looked nervous, to the woman who seemed to be Kyoko’s mother. In one smooth motion, he tugged his dirty, sticky tank top over his head, balling it up and shoving it in his gym bag.

“There, no worries. It’s fine. Come on, sweetheart, I’ll get you another ice cream,” Ken offered. With Kyoko and her anxious mother in tow, Ken went over to the stand, and soon enough the little girl had another ice cream.

“Thanks!” she said happily and then disappeared into the community center with her mother. Ken watched her go with a smile.

“They’re so cute at that age,” he said and then gave a self-conscious little laugh as he looked over at Justin, who was looking at him, for some reason, like he’d turned into some sort of alien. “What is it?”

“I just didn’t expect you to be good with kids,” Justin admitted, and there was this look in his eyes, those strange, steely eyes, that Ken found just a little bit too touching. No matter how much Ken tried to shrug it off, he couldn’t help but enjoy that look, at least a little.

No one took Ken very seriously, and he was very aware of that. At that moment, though, it seemed like Justin was looking at him, really, truly looking at him, seeing him as a person, and he shot Justin a tentative smile and something, some sort of recognition, seemed to pass from his gaze to Justin’s and back again.

It was almost palpable, this thing. And not, Ken realized, the sort of thing that he really had any idea what to do with. What was it? The beginnings of friendship? But Ken had had friends before, so why was this so intense? It felt like the wind was pushing at him, knocking him forward and toward Justin, and he didn’t know if it would sweep him right off of the ground so that he could fly, or shove him down onto his face in the dirt.

“Uh, we should go in.” Justin was shifting nervously from foot to foot, and even if his face was as hard to read as ever, Ken could almost swear that Justin felt the same thing that he had just felt. Or was it just Ken’s imagination?

“Right,” Ken agreed, and together, in companionable silence, they walked into the building together. Gone were Ken’s thoughts about how crappy the workout space was. And for once, Ken found himself content, for a while, at least, to just walk side by side and not have to fill up the space between them with words.

Whatever this was, it was important. Ken was coming to sense that, because it seemed like Justin, enigmatic and serious and intense, didn’t do anything by half measures. This friendship was new and tenuous, but it already felt like something serious to Ken, and he wasn’t used to that feeling.

To his surprise, he didn’t exactly hate it, either.

 

* * *

 

There were more surprises in store, too. Justin tended to dress the same, no matter the weather, in loose sweats and big t-shirts. Ken had made some assumptions about what the other man would look like in less clothing, and those assumptions were all proven wrong.

Justin was short, a good couple of inches, nearly half a foot, shorter than Ken was. Ken would have thought that Justin would be small all over, slender and almost delicate, but as it turned out nothing could be further from the truth. Small Justin might be, but delicate wasn’t the word for those shoulders, or the chest, which was revealed by the tank top which Justin changed into to work out.

Ken found himself a little bit too inclined to stare. Justin was ripped. No tiny waif, his shoulders and chest were broad, and more than that, covered in tattoos that Ken also wouldn’t have expected.

Since when was Justin, quiet Justin, Justin who was always just there in the background helping to make the band work, a hot, vital, gorgeous man? It almost wasn’t fair that Ken had to force himself to look away as Justin changed.

Instead of reaching over to trace the shapes and colors on Justin’s skin, he dabbed chocolate ice cream from his own. He hadn’t brought another shirt, so he’d be working out topless.

A thought, sudden and not entirely unwelcome, popped into his head. Was Justin looking at him, too? Though he didn’t even know if the guy was gay or bisexual or into men at all, there had been moments between them which could definitely make Ken wonder.

As they stepped into the weight room, Ken forced his mind away from all of these ridiculous thoughts. When he looked at Justin, he tried to make himself see him as he always had, but found it more difficult than he would have thought. It seemed that some paths, once you started going down them, were pretty hard to turn back from.

“Okay, so this song.” They were here for business, and Ken, for once, let him take refuge in his work. It wasn’t a date, not really. This was just the only time that Justin would see Ken, so he was taking advantage, that was all.

“Yeah.” Justin settled down on a machine, and the muscles of his arms bunched and flexed under smooth skin which soon had a sheen of sweat on it. Quickly, Ken sat down, too, putting his feet on the plate of the leg press, focusing on adjusting the weights instead of on Justin. It seemed safer, somehow. “Did you have any thoughts about that?”

Ken considered and then smiled a little bit. If he did want to use this song as a way to get to Aaron, then yeah, he definitely had some thoughts on the matter. And thinking about his growing feelings for Aaron could be exactly what the doctor ordered when it came to taking his mind off of Justin.

“Yeah. I did. I’m thinking that it should be about being in love with a friend.” Ken focused briefly on his legs, making sure that his form was proper, that he wouldn’t hurt his knees, as he started to press the weight.

“In love with a friend.” Justin’s voice was odd and blank as a sheet of white paper, and Ken turned to look at him, suddenly cautious. It was far too easy to remember how Justin had reacted when Ken had told him about Aaron. Something dawned on him, something dark and terrible, which shook Ken deep into places that he hadn’t even known that he had.

“Do you want Aaron for yourself or something?” Ken demanded, trying to make his voice come out lighter than it wanted to. Less intense and forceful, less like he was angry, even though he was. And the really weird thing was that, if he let himself be completely honest, it wasn’t Aaron that really bugged him about that.

Justin turned to shoot a look at him that made Ken bristle. It was so amused, like Ken was just a child throwing a temper tantrum. It was a look that Ken was pretty familiar with since he’d seen it tossed his way before with varying levels of annoyance and amusement.

Somehow, though, he didn’t like to see it from Justin, even more than he didn’t want to see it from anyone. Ken turned his attention back to his own legs, and he didn’t try to take back the question, but he didn’t exactly expect an answer, either.

“No,” Justin finally said, and Ken was pretty sure that that tone of voice spoke of a sort of mocking amusement. “I don’t exactly get I’m available vibes from Aaron at all, but even if I did, I’m not interested.”

In an odd twist, Ken found himself a bit protective of the older man. He turned to look at Justin again, only maybe that wasn’t the best idea because it meant that he was once more looking at a man who was far too sexy, now covered in sweat, muscles strained and bunched with the effort.

“Right. Okay.” Ken paused and then continued on. “So yeah. That’s what I want to do with the song.”

He slid off of the machine and moved on to another, and Justin followed him. It was a little bit surprising to Ken, how this community center gym could actually be so well equipped. Oh, the machines were definitely older than at his own expensive gym, but they had been maintained well, and there really wasn’t that much of a difference.

Still, wasn’t Justin supposed to be some big deal in the songwriting world? He was certainly in great demand, so why would he choose to keep on going to a place like this? Just one more thing on the growing list of why Justin was a mystery and Ken wasn’t quite sure what to make of him.

“I could get into the whole unrequited love thing,” Justin said suddenly, settling down onto another machine which had him reaching up over his head to grip a bar and pull it down behind him. Seeing Justin all stretched out like that, body sweating and working, it was a little bit too easy to imagine other situations where he would be stretched out, grunting softly with effort, with Ken on top of him …

Whoa. He had to stop that. Justin would laugh at him if he knew that Ken was having dirty little fantasies, but they kept coming up in his head, which was going to lead to other things coming up if he wasn’t careful, and Ken knew that his shorts didn’t exactly hide a lot.

“Yeah?” Ken asked, smiling a little bit as he watched Justin’s profile, as his eyes traced over his nose, his long, dark eyelashes, almost too pretty for a man, and especially the full, classic shape of his lips. What would it be like to press his own lips against Justin’s, to feel them yielding under his? Or would Justin tense up and push him away?

“Yeah.” Justin shot him a smirk, and for a moment, Ken wondered if Justin had picked up on Ken’s growing attraction to him. “Let’s do it.”

That smirk, and the slight hint of something or other that Ken couldn’t quite define but which shimmered in the depths of Justin’s eyes, it made him wonder a bit. Was Justin doing it on purpose? Because honestly, Ken was finding that he didn’t mind the idea at all. Let’s do it.

Did Justin have any idea how in Ken would be? But there was no way in hell someone like Justin would even be into Ken at all, even just sexually. Only sometimes, Ken found himself wondering.