VI.- Cry me a River.
This time, Justin didn’t move a muscle as he took in his surroundings.
He was standing in the backstage of the Latin Grammys, and he could hear himself starting to sing in Spanish.
That gave him four minutes, more or less. With extreme care, to avoid stepping over anything, he leaned against the wall, hiding in the shadows, and ran, hoping no one would see him, to his dressing room.
Justin knew that the problem with all the jumping could be summarized in two words: He couldn’t control what happened when he was not there. Sure, he could tell Chris to stay with JC, but that wouldn’t make Joey not become an actor or insist that Kelly toured with them.
What he needed was absolute control. And that meant talking to the only person in the group he could trust to do things as they should be done.
Himself.
He remembered the Latin Grammy night pretty well. They had sung with the other group and afterwards, Lance, Joey and JC had gone to their seats, Chris had stayed to talk with the lead singer because Chris was determined to learn Spanish, and he had gone to his dressing room to change his coat before going back out.
He was going to be alone in the dressing room. So they could talk. He went to the closet, and hid inside, trying not to make a noise, and not disturb anything. As long as he didn’t make any changes, he could stay. He had learned that much.
Soon enough, the door opened and Justin saw himself, 19 years old and sure that he owned the world. Justin didn’t blame himself. He practically owned his world at 19. Britney hadn’t cheated on him, the group was still going strong, he had his friends and he had no idea that six years later he would end up traveling back in time to see that letting the curls grow that much had been a really bad idea.
“Don’t scream,” he said, coming out of the closet. His younger self looked at him, startled, but to his own credit, he didn’t scream. “I know this is going to sound fucked up, but I’m you.”
“I’m going to call security,” his younger self said, stepping back towards the door. Things were not going according to Justin’s plan. But at least, he hadn’t jumped, yet.
“If you do that, they won’t find me. Listen to me, please,” Justin tried again, raising his hands to show they were empty. “I’m you, from the future. I don’t have the time to prove it because when you believe me, I’ll go back, so listen carefully. Don’t let Chris go, ok? Just, don’t. He’s your future. He, JC, Joey and Lance. But Chris. He’s the important one. You let his friendship go once, and the future is completely ruined. Our future is completely ruined, I don’t want to be a has been at 25! So please, don’t let him go. If you let him out of your sight just a second, you’ll end up as a back up singer! Or worse! With no career! Nick Carter will be more famous than you! And keep Joey away from Chicago. The city, not the play! Don’t let him go to Chicago until 2007. Ok? It’s very important!”
“Wait… What? Back up singer? Chicago?” Justin’s younger self frowned, and Justin could see that he was starting to believe him. He was starting to feel the pull that usually accompanied his jumps. “You’re from the future? And you came to see me? Are you insane?! You could cause a paradox and destroy the universe!”
“Well, it didn’t happen, did it?” Justin yelled just as he felt the world start to ripple around him. “Just remember, keeping Chris in the group is the most important thing for the future! And Britney will cheat on you, so dump her! And even more important, cut the curls and back off with the ghetto talk! Yo, what was up with that?”
* * *
Justin opened his eyes, feeling the familiar nausea on the pit of his stomach. He was in a living room now, a bigger one than his own. There was a huge TV set in front of him, and four different game consoles hooked to it.
“Go me,” he whispered. He picked up his photo album, and started flipping through the newest pictures. The ones taken after the Latin Grammy. As far as he could tell, they were no different from his original timeline.
He stopped at the Challenge for the Children picture that had started the jumps. It was still there, just as Justin remembered. Chris, himself, Joey, Lance, JC. But there was a slight difference, one that Justin wasn’t sure if he was imagining.
Chris wasn’t smiling.
“Oh, boy,” he muttered, closing his eyes.
* * *
When Justin opened his eyes again, he was on his bed. He was starting to get tired of that, the eternal waking up not knowing where the hell he was, or what to expect of the world outside. At least, he mused looking at the wall in front of him, he seemed to have done better for himself in this timeline. The room looked a lot bigger than the one he remembered sharing with Cameron.
Cameron. Justin closed his eyes, sighing into his pillow. He hoped that this time, he was with Cameron. He hadn’t mentioned her to his younger self, because he remembered how in love he had been with Britney back then. If he mentioned Cam, his younger self would’ve never believed him.
Or that his future was crap, because how could his future be crap if he was with Cameron Diaz?
“Go back to sleep, J. It’s way too early.”
The voice next to him made Justin jump out of the bed.
It wasn’t that it was a male voice, because, well, there had been that one time, when he had been extremely drunk right after the release of Justified. Back then Justin had learn to deal with the fact that, even when he preferred women, he wouldn’t say no to a night of mindless sex with a guy.
But even so, he couldn’t help but blanching when Chris looked at him, surprised.
Chris, naked, on bed, with him. Chris, looking hurt at Justin’s reaction.
“Oh, fuck,” Justin said, and that was about all that he could get out before running to the bathroom and starting to puke.
* * *
It took Justin an hour before he gathered his courage to get out of the bedroom. The first half of that hour consisted mostly of Chris, sounding worried, trying to get him to come out.
Chris, calling him babe, and love, and ‘stupid fuck, you’re starting to worry me’, and definitively not making things better. Finally, Chris left, yelling at Justin to get his shit together, and not forget his meeting at Jive.
Justin waited ten more minutes of blessed silence before unlocking the door.
Sitting on the stool, Justin started to breathe deeply, trying to calm his thoughts.
Chris had been sleeping on his bed.
Chris had been sleeping naked on his bed.
That Chris was gay, or probably bisexual didn’t surprise Justin. He wasn’t going to claim that he had made Chris gay with that first jump, since he had only told Chris about Lance’s gayness. What worried Justin is that with each subsequent jump, he kept making other people gay. AJ had never once looked at a man, as far as Justin knew, and still he had been with Chris in that one jump.
JC wrote songs about having sex with women, and he had been happy with Chris.
Justin sighed, troubled. Maybe it was Chris the one who made people gay, because apparently, now Justin was gay.
And he still had to go to a meeting at Jive. With the way this jump was going, he was going to meet with Kevin Richardson who would tell him that he was now a member of the Backstreet Boys.
Justin got out of the bathroom, deciding to make it to the meeting quickly. He would nod and agree with everything that whoever was in charge told him, and then go and look for JC. JC could tell him what was going on, and Justin could start working on fixing things.
Until he knew if Joey and Kelly were alright, he wasn’t jumping away. If Joey, Kelly and Briahna were fine, he could deal with living with Chris.
After all, they could break up and then Chris would be free to go with JC.
That was a plan.
On the way to Jive’s building, he started checking his cell phone memory list. Phone one was marked just ‘C’ and Justin guessed it was Chris’s number. That made sense, even if it made him feel sick. What had happened in six years to cause *that*? Phone two was Jive, three Timbaland. Four was his mom.
There wasn’t a single one of his bandmates –former bandmates? Justin didn’t know anymore- in the whole list.
“Justin, hi, I’m glad to see you’re on time,” It was Johnny the one who received him, which made Justin feel a bit grateful. At least he could know what was going on with his career, even if his personal life was a mess. “Look, I know you wanted to see the tour dates, but I need you to work on that remix you told me you wanted to do of Sexy Back, for the Japanese release.”
Justin sighed, relieved. It was pretty much what he had worked with Johnny before the jumps started. “Sure, I can do that. As soon as JC finishes his album I can do the remix in one day, two tops.”
“JC has freed you the studio for today,” Johnny said, suddenly serious. “You can work today and tomorrow, he won’t be there so you don’t have to worry. Just finish the mix and send it here.”
“Sure,” Justin said, wishing to end the meeting as soon as possible to try and figure out the mess that his younger self had made.
* * *
Justin closed his eyes, grabbing the wheel of his car at the Jive’s building’s parking lot. The meeting had been cut short when Johnny received a call, so Justin had been free to try and convince Johnny’s secretary to give him the phone numbers of all the guys.
There were a lot of things not making a lot of sense in that timeline, but the hostile glare that the secretary gave him was one of the weirdest. Even in the last timeline, the one where he had no career at all, she had been nice to him.
The first phone he tried was Joey’s. He had done all the changes in the last two jumps to save Joey, so he wanted to make sure it had been the right choice. However, he only got the answering machine.
“Joey?” he asked, after the beep. “Are you there screening calls? I hope not. Look, it’s me, Justin. I need to talk to you. I don’t know if you have my home number, but you can call me to my cell. Give my love to Briahna and Kelly, ok? And please, I’m sorry for everything I’ve done, I just need to talk.”
He hung up, hoping that his message had been vague enough to make Joey call him back. He had no idea where he had gone wrong this time –although Chris on his bed was a very big clue. His next attempt was Lance, who picked it up on the second ring.
“’lo? Who’s this?” Lance’s question made Justin’s stomach drop. Lance’s phone had to have all his friend’s number’s listed. Lance was like that, even having his friends’ Myspace URLs memorized. If he didn’t know Justin’s phone, it was because he didn’t considered Justin a friend.
“Lance? Please, don’t hang up, it’s me, Justin,” Justin said quickly. “I need to talk to you.”
“Justin, I’m in a Barnes and Noble, waiting for Reichen to finish signing his book, I can’t make a scene here, so just say what you want to say and I’ll hung up and we’ll keep on with our happy lives. If what worries you is that I will mention you in my book, don’t worry, I won’t. You might thing nothing of it, but I care too much about Chris to do that,” Lance practically hissed. His voice sounded as if he was clenching his teeth.
“What? No, no Lance, it’s not about your book,” Justin sighed. He didn’t even know Lance was writing a book. “It’s about Chris.”
“What did you do to him?” Lance sounded angry, and Justin figured that whatever he had done, it hadn’t been good. How come everyone who got Chris in the other timelines was happy, and now he was stuck in a world where apparently, his friends hated him?
“I…” Justin stopped, trying to think fast. If he said the wrong thing, Lance would hung up on him. “I’m planning a surprise party for him on his birthday, and I wanted to invite you all. I know it’s a little too soon, but with our busy schedules and all, I thought it was best to let you know now.”
“You want us in your house?” Justin let out the breath he had been holding. Lance now sounded shocked, but it was better than angry.
“Yeah, look I know it’s unexpected but…”
“No, no. We’ll be there,” Lance interrupted him. Justin was glad of that because he had no idea of how to keep going. He would leave some notes on his agenda about the surprise party. He still didn’t know what happened to the different timelines when he jumped again, but if they stayed, he wanted his alternate self to try and fix his mess. “For Chris.”
“I know, thanks, Lance. We’ll talk later,” Justin smiled on the phone. If he could fix things, maybe this wouldn’t be a bad place to stay.
* * *
Half an hour later, Justin wasn’t that optimistic about the future. JC hadn’t answered at his home, on his cell, or even at the studio. When he had arrived to the studio, the guard at the door told him that JC had left an hour before.
Justin banged his head against the wheel of the car. JC had been his rock in the last few jumps, he always knew what to do.
If he couldn’t talk to JC, Justin feared he would do something wrong. So instead of staying around and working on a remix that Justin knew he would probably never use, especially if he jumped out again, he asked for JC’s home address and decided to go and visit him personally.
JC wasn’t home when Justin arrived, so he decided to wait, sitting on the steps of the house.
As he waited, he started thinking about the newest timeline, what he knew about it, and if it was a good idea to stay here.
On the plus column, his career seemed to have the same path as it had on the original timeline. Since his original plan had always been to return to it, Justin couldn’t complain about that. He was successful, he was famous and his music was his own again.
On the bad column, if Lance and Johnny’s reactions were anything to go by, his friends hated him. Johnny had acted as if Justin didn’t talk to any of the *N Sync members at all, and Lance had answered even angrier than the time when apparently Justin had flipped because Lance and Chris were together.
Being Chris’s partner was in the middle column. Justin truthfully didn’t know what to think about it. He still didn’t think he was gay, and if Chris was –and he really had to figure out if he had made Chris gay with that first jump or he had just didn’t know before that- it wouldn’t be fair for them to stay together.
He didn’t even know what Chris was doing with his life now. He only knew that Chris was living with him and that was it.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Justin had been so immersed in his thoughts, that he never heard JC’s car arrive. He looked up, surprised, to meet the furious face of his friend. JC didn’t look much different from his original timeline either. Still wearing his hair short, still wearing the same pink shirt that Justin was starting to hate.
“JC, I need your help, please!” Justin was up in an instant, trying to think fast on what to say to JC to make him stop and talk to him. JC simply ignored him, opening the door to his house and stepping in.
“Too bad,” JC said suddenly, turning to look at Justin with a sneer. “I only help my friends. Get out of here before I call security.”
And with that, he closed the door to Justin’s face.
* * *
There were three things that Justin couldn’t live without. His fame, Chris’s friendship and JC’s friendship.
He could live in a world where Lance hated him. He could live in a world where Joey hated him. And mostly, he could do that because he trusted that he could fix things and make them like him again. He was Justin Timberlake, everyone liked him. That was another one of the truths that his mom had taught him when he was a kid. Those who didn’t like him at first didn’t know better. They only needed a chance to see how great Justin was.
After JC closed the door on his face, Justin felt lost. JC was his best friend since he had been ten. His older brother, his friend, his writing partner. There wasn’t a single thing Justin could do to make JC hate him, and Justin had done practically everything to him, including disbanding *N Sync when JC still had wanted to go on forever.
And no one was answering Joey’s phone.
Justin was aware that he couldn’t go and ask Chris what was wrong because he couldn’t lie to Chris and say that he had just forgotten everything about their relationship. Chris would never believe that, not like JC. So he did the one thing that had never occurred him to do before.
He stopped in the nearest computer store, bought a laptop with wireless internet and logged in. Lance had once told him that everything you wanted to know about their lives was on the internet, and while Justin had never believed him, it was a good time to find out if it was true.
Three hours later, a lot of bytes told him a story that he wasn’t sure he wanted to believe. If he kept to the news sites, the story was pretty much done with in 2002, when *N Sync had announced that they were breaking up for ‘artistic differences’. After that, all the reports he could find were news about his own album, the infamous nipplegate, Lance coming out, and JC’s solo album. There was a report on Joey’s wedding, at which JC and Lance assisted. Justin was mentioned as absent, but there was not a word about Chris.
In fact, there weren’t any news about Chris after the report of Fumanskeeto closing down. Only a couple of blurry pictures of Chris in some of Justin’s events, with the caption “Justin’s former bandmate came to lend his support” and that was it.
The fan sites, though, painted a completely different picture.
Googling ‘Chris Kirkpatrick’ brought him a great deal of pages, the first one being Kirkpatrick.nu, which claimed to be the source to get news about Chris. But there were no news about Chris, only sightings, and all of them in Justin’s company. The latest picture they had of him was at the Future Sex/Love Sounds release, and there was no mention of a band, of new projects. He was listed as one of Justin’s producers and writers, but there weren’t any songs written by him on either Justified or Future Sex.
Chris’s mySpace page was as empty as it always was, although there were a couple of new/old pictures on it, one from before *N Sync disbanded, that showed them all at Challenge of the Children. Justin frowned when he saw the picture. It was a different version of the one that had gotten him into the time traveling mess. It had changed again, now with JC in the center of it, wearing a red jersey. Justin had his arms around Chris and JC’s shoulders, smiling brightly. Chris had titled the picture “Good times”.
The other picture was a picture of them together at the Justified release party. Chris was talking to Justin, who was smiling. Justin, of course, didn’t remember that moment. Chris hadn’t gone to the release party Justin remembered. They looked happy. The picture was titled ‘taken by a friend.’
Justin still didn’t have a clear idea of what had happened. But the picture that he was getting was not a good one. He remembered one of his last fights with Britney, before she went and slept with Wade. She had called him a controlling self-centered psychotic bastard, who was even jealous of Britney’s sister. At the time, Justin had only told her that she had no idea what half of those words meant, and he had actually believed that. But now, the words came back to haunt him.
Justin knew that he had always been a little too possessive. He hadn’t actually thought about it until he started dating Cameron. Cameron, who was older and a lot wiser than him, had made him see that most of his jealousy came from the fact that he had very few real friends, people whom he could call friends and know they weren’t looking for him because he was famous. That made him insanely jealous of anyone who came close to that circle of friends.
As a lover, he was even more jealous, and it had taken him two years of therapy and of Cameron’s patience to get him to realize that and start to change it.
Chris, however, had known about that. He had lived with Justin for ten years, seeing him with Britney and a couple of girlfriends in between, and never said a word.
Not liking the direction his thoughts were taking, Justin closed the laptop and got ready to drive back home.
* * *
When he got back home, Chris was inside already, playing Halo.
“You got your problem out of your system?” Chris asked, sounding bored.
“Mostly, I’m sorry about this morning,” Justin said, sitting down on the couch next to Chris, who paused the game.
“Lance told me you called him, he asked if aliens had abducted you,” Chris smiled at him, and Justin felt his stomach knot. He knew that smile, it was Chris’s loving and patient smile, the kind of smile he gave when he was being the responsible adult in the conversation. “What did you tell him to give him that impression?”
“I told him I wanted to see him, you know, to pass the time,” Justin lied quickly. If he was staying, he had to make a surprise party and he wasn’t going to ruin it by telling Chris about it.
“Well, I just checked the house and I didn’t found a pod, so do you mind telling me what is going on?”
“When are you going to record again?” Justin asked, changing the subject. Chris sighed, looking at the paused game.
“Who told you I was recording anything?”
“Come on, Chris, you don’t just stay around the house playing videogames,” Justin said, hoping it was true. His friend had too much talent to waste it like that.
“Fuck, J. It’s not that I didn’t want to tell you. I just knew you were going to flip just like you did when I said I wanted to work with C.” Chris was looking at his hands, as if he was thinking on what to say. “Look, a couple of friends are making a band, they asked me to do some vocals, and that was it. I was just helping them.”
“I shouldn’t have flipped at you and C,” Justin says, and now he has another piece of the puzzle. When it came to a perceived threat to his relationships, Justin knows he can be a lot more vicious than when it was just about a perceived threat to his career. “I just realized it now.”
“Therapy is working, isn’t it?” Chris smiled and leaned in for a kiss. Justin braced himself, trying not to move away. It was strange to kiss his best friend.
Chris didn’t let the kiss linger, and Justin knew that no matter what, he couldn’t stay in the timeline. Maybe the Justin his younger self had become loved Chris, but he didn’t. And Chris deserved to be with someone that loved him.
* * *
It was around ten when Justin pulled out the photo album. Chris was on the kitchen, getting something to eat, so Justin started flipping through the pages looking for a place to jump to. He still didn’t know if Joey was fine, but he still thought that he needed to get Chris with someone who loved him, and not someone who had been thinking about Cameron Diaz while they kissed.
“What are you doing?” Chris sat next to him, holding a sandwich and almost making his heart jump out of his chest. He had never traveled with someone watching.
“Just looking at some old pictures,” Justin answered, trying to keep his voice normal. “Remembering.”
“You really want to see the guys again, don’t you?” Chris asked, studying him with his eyes.
“Yeah,” Justin sighed, not looking at Chris. Not even when Chris hugged him and started looking at the pictures. “I’ve been trying to reach Joey too, but no one answers at his house.”
“Oh, they’re not home,” Chris said, casually, flipping the pages with him. “They went to visit Joey’s parents in New York.”
There was one from the Teen Choice Awards in 2000 that had him, JC and Chris holding the surfing board award. They were smiling, but Justin realized that JC’s and Chris’s smiles were forced. That picture had been taken a couple of months before the Latin Awards, and Justin couldn’t remember why Lance and Joey weren’t there.
It didn’t really matter, since he couldn’t jump in that picture. Not without the other two.
“Fuck, I remember that,” Chris said, putting his finger on top of his own face. “I had just broken up with JC and I wanted to be anywhere but there, but without Lance or Joey, Johnny didn’t want to send only two of us to get the award.”
“You… broke up with JC then?” Justin looked up, surprised. “I didn’t know you had dated him then.”
“Of course you knew,” Chris hit him in the shoulder, playfully. “I told you years ago, right before we started living together. I can’t believe you forgot when it was my main reason not to date you.”
“I just… I just forgot,” Justin finished lamely. That made no sense. That picture had been taken before any changes made by his jumping. Which meant that he hadn’t turned JC gay.
That was good news. It meant that if he could just jump a little while before they broke up, he could help them to stay together. If a world where JC and Chris had broken up and then come back together had been so great for *N Sync, Justin figured that a world where JC and Chris never broke up had to be even better. And now Joey hadn’t gone to Chicago, so everything would work out.
The phone rang, startling Justin. Even if Joey and Kelly were in New York, he still was wary of that sound.
“I’ll get it,” Chris said, getting up. Justin smiled at him, memorizing the image of his best friend happy and in love. He promised himself he would see Chris like that again.
He stopped his flipping at a picture taken just a few weeks before the Teen Choice awards, during the filming of the Today Show. Lance was on the far edge of the picture, looking at something outside it, with his usual calm stare, while JC was pointing at his own microphone, probably in answer to something someone had asked him. Chris was looking at Justin, with a bewildered expression, while Justin was laughing at him. He was wearing a green shirt, and a blue bandana, as well as a pair of black tennis with red flames painted on them. Joey wasn’t actually listening to the conversation, his attention focused on his audiophone.
“Hey, Kel! How are you?” Chris answered the phone, and Justin turned slightly to see his friend. Chris smile was starting to become a frown. “What? What happened?”
Justin blanched. Chris looked shocked, and it couldn’t be. Kelly and Joey were in New York, not in Chicago. Even if he had managed to fuck up everything else, Justin had saved Joey’s life. He knew that.
“Shit, Kelly, no. You know you can count on us,” Chris looked up to see Justin, and mouthed the words ‘car accident’ to him. “I’ll call Lance, and we’ll be there with you tomorrow morning.”
Justin didn’t wait for Chris to hang up. He turned to see the picture again, no longer caring if appearing in the middle of a live TV filming was a bad idea, and focused. The picture had to ripple.
After what felt like a long time, his earring sparkled, the world rippled, and the last thing he heard of a world where he had loved his best friend, was Chris’s startled voice.
“Justin?!”
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