Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2001 12:44:55 -0400
From: Scotty T <thepoetboy@hotmail.com>
Subject: Call To Me -- Part 1

First off, this story does not attempt to recreate any reality concerning
NSYNC.  It's fiction, it's fantasy, it's slash.  It's also PG.  If any of
you remember me, you'll remember that I don't put the boys of NSYNC into
sex scenes.

I promised a fourth story, and I'll tell you right now that this isn't it.
The fourth story is still in the future -- this is a separate story that
entered my mind and wouldn't leave until it hit the page.

To all the readers who continue to email me about my other stories (Lance
In Shining Armour, Mirrors and Beneath It All), thank you -- and I hope you
enjoy this one.

ScottyT

thepoetboy@hotmail.com

P.S.  I make no promises about a quick posting schedule.  I'm working full
time and going to school full time -- though that will all change in two
weeks.


Part 1

I live in someone's basement.  My windows are way up off the ground, maybe
a foot tall themselves, and look out into metal window wells.  If you're
close to the wall, you can see grass peeking out, green tufts against the
sky.

I have the whole basement, and it's all one room, wrapping around a core
that contains my landlord's furnace, the stairs to the rest of the house
and my tiny bathroom.  There's an exit to the surface along the south wall,
and I've made the stairs narrow with plants.  That's where they all went
when I moved here, outside onto the steps, trying to get as much light as
they can and hoping to keep out of the way of the landlord and his wife.

I don't think they'd care, even if they saw.  They haven't got any plants
of their own outside, it's grass all the way, from the curb to the cracked
red brick of the house.

Come winter, my plants will all die.  Here it is, summer, and I don't get
enough light inside to keep them, so, come winter, there's no way I can
save them.

Most of my furniture was just left over by the last tenant.  She moved out
to live with her boyfriend, and abandoned most of who she is here.  Her
grey pull-out couch, with the stains on the mattress, a white dresser she
must have made from a kit, her floral shower curtain with the tears where
hooks have pulled through, a few plates, an old, copper pot.

I read the stack of Harlequins she left on the floor beside the couch,
slipping into them like I'd slipped into her.  Playing at being them
instead of me, with their jobs, their intrigue.  Their men coming into
their lives and making everything right.

The apartment is more empty space than furniture.  One of the things I'd
done was move the couch closer to the corner that had the kitchen, just so
I wouldn't have to make the long walk every time I had to get a drink or
take some pills.  The walk is what killed me, because the floor was the
same everywhere.  In the bathroom, the kitchen, the living room, and
whatever other names I gave to bits of the whole, it was the same old beige
linoleum tile.  Even in the summer, it was cold, as if the earth was
drawing away heat from the cement and the tile that was poorly glued to it.

Don't get me wrong, though, I love it here.  This place is mine, even if
it's made up of someone else.  Even the creaks of the landlords walking
around above me are mine, like it was my own parents up there, not someone
else's.

When I'm at school, all I can think is that I want to be back here, curled
up into another Harlequin, one of the ones from the box I'd bought at a
second hand store.  I never stick around campus, always coming home as soon
as I can, sometimes wasting the money on a taxi instead of taking the bus,
just to get here sooner, and to walk down those steps and close that door.

I'm in my last year of my degree -- honours math -- though if it hadn't
already been my last year, I'd have dropped out.  Things as they were, I
decided to stick it out for the last few months, just to get the degree
under my belt, just in case I ever wanted to use it.  You never know.

I've got some friends in the math program, but we're not really close.
Their interests are very different than mine, and they're always talking
about gaming and business -- the type of people I'd have discarded as nerds
back in highschool, even though I was discarded myself.  Nice guys though,
probably as sweet as guys come, but just not my type.  I've always been
drawn more to the artists, the actors, the ones who sing on street corners
and live off your coins.  My attraction to math was always in its art --
when equations really click, math is beautiful.  The world becomes so
simple, explainable through derivations and formulas.

It's fucking gorgeous.

So there's your background, your view of where we start things.

Seven days ago, getting off the bus at school, I fell.  Down the three
steps to the pavement, where I smacked hard, hitting my head.  My forearm
burst open and there was a lot of blood.  I screamed, from the pain.

People gathered, a girl rushed forward.  A runway girl, the one who dresses
up for school and frosts her lips, tans her skin, wears tight pants and a
dark jean jacket.

I pull away from her, quickly, gripping my arm.

"I can help," she says.  She moves closer to me again, the old, fat bus
driver beside her.

I'm crying, tears down my cheeks, pride pooling at my feet with my blood.

"I'm HIV positive," I say, biting my lip.

She steps back quickly.  Looks down at her shoe to make sure she didn't
step in anything.  Pales under her tan, thinking about how close she came.
Everyone who was crowding suddenly seems a little bit further away, and a
little less worried for me.

They call an ambulance, and stand back to watch.

***

Pretty much no-one at school really knows that I'm gay.  The math
department isn't really the most socially acceptable place to come out, and
I manage to avoid radar effortlessly.  No-one ever asked.

It was especially simple since not many of the guys had girlfriends of
their own, except maybe for Alex, but we were never sure.  He kept talking
about a girl, someone in one of his gaming circles, but he never made it
clear, probably not wanting anyone else to feel bad about being single, he
was that nice of a guy.  He was the only one who knew, I think.

I was always single.  There has never been a time when I've sat back and
thought "I need somebody."  Never a moment I thought would be better with
someone who knew me, never a time I was convinced that I needed someone to
tell me they loved me or else I'd die.

But we all want sex, right?  So I had it.  It was so easy.

I've got blue eyes, the square jaw, blond hair to my shoulders that curls
just a little bit.  I'm tall.  Guys used to look up at me and smile as they
bought me drink after drink, thinking there was no way they could get me,
when, in fact, they were working on a sure thing.  Play a little hard to
get, and they line up.  Give yourself away, and you only get the castoffs.

HIV is such a strange thing though.  Most people don't understand how easy
it is to get -- and it was easy.  I never had to think about it, but it
sought me out.  It found me, and slipped into me in no time.  Then it lived
inside me, wrapping me around it like a blanket, disguised and hidden so
that I didn't even know it was there, all the while I was sleeping with
more guys.  I don't know how many people I infected before I found out.

Alex, maybe.

This one guy, at the bar, lord he was beautiful.  Dark hair and eyes, broad
shoulders.  He dressed like a real man, not like some left over child in
tight club clothes.  It was like he'd just stepped away from the office,
away from a real life, and into the club.  I wanted him the minute I saw
him, and he wanted me.

But he insisted, so I got the test.  Failed it.

I never showed up to where we'd agreed to meet, because I didn't want to
have to admit to him how close he'd come.

The ambulance workers didn't hesitate to help me, safe from behind their
latex gloves and protective procedures.  Within an hour I was stitched up,
cleaned, and left to wait in the waiting room while X-rays were processed
in the depths of the hospital to check my skull.

The emergency room was quiet, since family doctors were probably still
open.
  A woman was rocking her three year old across the room, feeling her
daughter's forehead for any sign of the fever that had brought them here,
looking to the triage nurse to silently ask where the doctor was.  The
little girl had fallen asleep half an hour ago, curled in her mother's
arms, with her legs hanging over the scratchy wooden arms of the chairs.

A big blond man came in and looked hurriedly around the room before
speaking to the nurse.  Whispers.  His pony tail fell halfway down his
back, scattering over his leather jacket, masking some of the letters in
"security."

"I'm sorry, sir.  He'll have to wait in line."  The nurse hardly looked up
from her computer terminal, steeled against the constant panic of Emergency
like a veteran to war.  This was a light day for her, she was still waiting
for the bomb to drop.

I heard the sliding doors in the hall, and movement, a shock of movement
after the quiet of the last hour, and turned to look over my shoulder.
Three guys game through the door, two of them practically carrying the
third, the middle one's arms around the shoulders of his bookends.  The one
on the left wore a "security" jacket to match that of the man harassing the
nurse, the one on the right was smaller, but no less strong.  He had dark
curly hair, angled cheeks and jaw.

But it was the one in the middle who caught my eye.  His hair was medium
brown, tightly curled mop around his head, his face young and confident,
barely showing the pain he was feeling.  He was biting his lip as they
eased him down on one of the vinyl seats, just across from me.  It was
obvious what was wrong by the way he carried his leg, gingerly, out of
place with his ripped jeans and the dark sports jersey he wore.  There were
still streaks of makeup on his face, showing how quickly the pancake had
been striped away, still sweat marks drying on the jersey.

He stared at his leg as the one security guard went over to give the other
backup, and as his friend knelt down and started unlacing the running shoe
on the bad leg.  Justin winced and for a moment JC stopped and looked up at
him.

Yeah, I recognised them.  You can't cruise the clubs for long without
knowing who NSYNC was, but my interest was more than just passing, and it
was more aesthetic than musical.  A good cruiser never goes off duty, even
when he's shopping for music.  An eye for quality can never be turned off,
and it affects more than you'd often like it to.  Justin had the look for
me, the young, cocky, forward look, the obnoxious pride that would come in
and allow me to just sit back while he thought to seduce me.

"Just get it off," Justin said, huskily, biting his lip again closing his
eyes.

JC held onto Justin's ankle as he eased the shoe off.  "It looks swollen,
buddy."

"Surprise surprise."  Justin sagged down into the chair and looked around
-- I quickly looked away before he noticed me watching him.  "Get out of
here, alright?  We don't need to both be caught here."

"I can stick around for a while," JC replied, slipping into the seat beside
his friend.  He was dressed similarly, with a dark jersey, but his jeans
were darker, with colourful patches.  It looked like some kind of stage
costume.  I vaguely remembered they were playing in the city, but didn't
give it much though -- it wasn't important in getting what I wanted.

One of the security guards called from the nurses desk.  "Come on, Josh, we
have to get moving or they'll have to hold the show."

JC looked from Justin to the security guy and back to his friend, but
Justin just ignored him and stared at the ceiling, trying not to move, so
Josh got up.

"Call us when you get the damage, okay?  I'll leave my cell on."  Josh
swept his hand through his hair, longer now than I'd ever seen in pictures,
much more mature.  His pants clung to his butt, far tighter than Justin's
get-up.

"Will do."

And then JC was gone, and with him the second security guy.  The first
continued to argue with the nurse, a woman who had seen far worse
challenges.  Now that Justin sat alone, I could move into position for him
to make a play for me.

I played it shy.  I kept looking at him, quickly, furtively.  Not nearly
for long enough to be overt, but often enough to be easily noticed.  And I
didn't go for the face -- that would be a rookie mistake, and he'd know I
was a fan instead of a lover.  My eyes settled on his strong forearm, then
danced away, to his chest and away, his legs, his hips, his crotch.  At
last my gaze settled for a moment, until I was sure he'd noticed me
looking.

I darted my gaze up to his eyes, and there, as I knew it would be, was that
cocky grin, floating through the pain, and his eyes met mine.  I looked
away.  Turned my body a bit, just enough so that he'd think I was
embarrassed about getting caught, letting my eyes travel the room as if I
was just randomly drifting, settling on things at random.

From the corner of my eye, I knew he was still watching me, and I knew
this was going to be much easier than I'd at first suspected.  I wasn't
going home alone tonight.

End Part 1.

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