"Aren't you a little worried about being seen here with me?" asked AJ, letting his two little dogs pull him along the path through the park.
Justin took a couple quick steps to catch up, then easily matched AJ's stride. "Aren't you a little worried about being seen with me?"
"Not really," said AJ dismissively. "I'm the more recognizable one." At the moment it was even true. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and sunglasses, practically his signature look; Justin, though, was in a hoody with a ball cap over his curls, looking pretty much like the average guy.
Justin didn't kick up a fuss at the slight, just gave him a derisive snort. "You know what I meant. Two guys, walking a pair of dogs in the park, one of them recently outed, more or less, in the national media ... looks pretty cozy."
"And still hinges on you being recognized," AJ pointed out, "which brings us back to square one again. I think we're pretty safe. Not that you seemed overly worried in the first place -- not afraid of adding a little fuel to the fire surrounding your alleged sexuality?"
Justin just shrugged and didn't answer, all in all a pretty healthy response. Because there wasn't anything he could do about it that hadn't already been done. People were always going to speculate, whether you gave them much reason to or not.
"Well, your choice," said AJ finally, when Justin's silence lengthened. He'd thought he would say something; if there was one thing he figured Justin loved, it was the sound of his own voice. "Can't say I mind the company." He shrugged and fell into a companionable silence himself. It wouldn't do him any harm to be seen with Justin anyway. There wasn't much that could do him harm anymore.
"Well, that's good, considering you invited me," snorted Justin, tugging on his hood and looking from side to side.
"I come here all the time," AJ pointed out, pulling Justin's hand away from his hood. "The novelty has worn off already. No one's gonna take notice of us. The key to a happy life is living in a neighborhood where no one gives a fuck."
"Liar," scoffed Justin, though he did visibly relax, slouching and stuffing his hands into his pockets. "You have a dozen keys to a happy life, and all of them contradict each other."
"Not all of them," AJ disagreed, tugging on the leash a little as the dogs tried to run ahead of them, after something that rustled in the bushes. "Only some of them. And life is full of contradictions, Justin, get used to it." Not that Justin wasn't used to that already; he was young, but his naivete was long lost.
"Yeah, I am a contradiction," said Justin, "and so are you. And so's everyone I know. That part of life isn't exactly a mystery to me. But don't you have only have one key, that's the most important thing to making you happy?"
"Well, no," said AJ, turning his head to the side to be able to read Justin's expressions better. He mulled it over, trying to extend the analogy, but language wasn't exactly one of his strengths. "It's like ... lots of keys to lots of different doors, but they all lead to the same place."
Justin looked amused, not exactly what AJ had been going for. But then he just nodded and looked forward again, down the path that curved into a grove of trees just ahead. "Is that something they teach you, when you're recovering, or something?"
"Is it so hard to believe that I might have an original thought sometimes?"
"When it involves an extended metaphor about keys and doors and the meaning of life? Yeah, kinda," said Justin, kicking at the dirt on the path. "Sounds like you're paraphrasing something someone told you once."
"Well," said AJ, reluctant to admit the truth of that. To Justin, at least. "Paraphrase or not, it's how I feel about it. And you did ask, so don't get all pissy over the answer."
"I'm not pissy," said Justin indignantly, and unsurprisingly. "How's it you're the only one who's allowed to be right, here, anyway? It was just a question. Like, that's a huge part of your life and stuff. So I figured it was okay to ask."
"Well, of course it's okay," said AJ grudgingly, knowing that was probably how he should have reacted in the first place. But hey, he didn't always do the right thing, that was life. "Just not okay to assume. I think we can agree on that?"
"All right, deal," said Justin, swinging his hand around to shake without even looking. AJ took it anyway and shook it firmly. "You know, it's like ... every day something reminds me of what happened with me and Britney, and I keep wondering what life's gonna be like now, how different it's gonna be. And I guess it reminds me of what it used to be like, too. Reminds me of all those things I'm trying not to think about now. Is it like that for you? Only, with your stuff?"
"Deep thoughts," snorted AJ, wondering just where they'd come from. It wasn't as much of a mystery just how they managed to be directed toward him, though. "Yeah, it's kinda the same, I guess. What made you think about that?"
Justin pointed indiscreetly. "Well, see that couple there?" he said, waggling his finger at two people holding hands. "That girl ... well, I thought she was a guy for a minute, what with the short hair and flat chest." AJ grunted and Justin cleared his throat politely. "Anyway. So I thought it was two guys holding hands. And suddenly I wondered what that was going to be like."
AJ lowered his sunglasses to give him a look, his other hand firm on the leashes. "Something you're thinking about doing soon, Timberlake?" he asked. "I thought the whole idea of refuting that story was so that you wouldn't be outed."
"Oh, it was," said Justin quickly. "It was. But someday ... it won't matter."
"Hate to break it to you, but -- "
"I know, I know," Justin interrupted him. "It'll always matter. It'll always make a difference. I just mean ... someday, it'll be entirely my choice."
"It's not your choice now?"
Justin gave him a disbelieving, almost scornful look. "I can't believe you just asked that," he scoffed, kicking at the dirt again. Looking at the ground. "Of course it's not my choice. The only thing I choose these days is my own underwear."
"Maybe you should think a little harder about why you're letting people do that to you."
"Oh, don't," snapped Justin. "Just don't, AJ, don't play stupid and don't play pop psychologist. You know exactly what it's like, for me, when it comes to that. You know exactly how much control I have."
"You're right, I do, more or less," AJ agreed. "And it's probably more than you think." He shushed Justin's immediate protests with a wave of his hand. "No, no, I know all about the kind of stuff that's written into your contract. But there are a lot of things that you can still choose that'll ... well, change your life. Either way."
"You didn't choose rehab," Justin pointed out. "If that's what you're getting it."
AJ shook his head at him. "Of course I did," he said, stopping and tugging on the leash just hard enough that the dogs turned around to look at him questioningly. "Rehab doesn't do a damn thing for you unless you choose it, no matter how well-meaning the people are that put you there." He gestured at a picnic table, in the shade of a large tree, then started leading them to it.
"It's just hard, wanting something," said Justin, sitting down on the table without further prompting. "Like ... guys. And knowing you can't have it."
"There's very little you can tell me about craving something you can't have that I'm not already intimately familiar with," said AJ. He patted his pocket for a cigarette before realizing that he'd left them in his jacket back at his house. With a scowl, he curled his fingers around the edge of the picnic table and tried not to think about it. "Everything I look at reminds me, too."
"Like what?" asked Justin, with the innocent curiosity of someone who just didn't know what he was asking. "What do you see right now that reminds you?"
AJ almost didn't answer, almost ignored the question, except apparently they had a pact now, to always answered each other's questions whether they liked them or not. "Your shirt," he said finally. "Reminds me of a fancy bottle of sambuca I used to have. Empty, of course, the first night I bought it. But I always kept that bottle." He looked around again, memories jumping out at him. "The way the grass moves," he said, "when the wind blows across it, it's like the way my head would spin when I'd just gotten a good buzz on. And the leaves ... " He stared at the patch of fallen, long-since yellowed leaves on the ground beneath them. "They're the color of whiskey."
Justin was silent for a long time; AJ could barely even hear him breathing beside him. Right when he was about to suggest moving on, however, Justin finally spoke. "How do you cope?" he asked quietly. "How? With all of these things around you?"
AJ turned and gave him a tight smile. "I work on cars," he said. "You ready to start heading back?"
There was another long silence before Justin nodded and hopped off the table. "It's not like I don't date," he said as they started back up the path, and AJ knew perfectly well it wasn't the non sequitur it seemed. Justin's mind worked that way, making connections without always verbalizing them. "It's not like I don't find guys to be with. That's the kind of choice you're talking about, right? That's the kind of choice I do make."
"Yes, exactly."
"They may not like it, but they can't stop me from doing it."
"Do the things that make you happy," agreed AJ, vastly relieved at the turn of the conversation. And, he had to admit, relieved that Justin did understand, and that maybe there was someone who'd make the right choices in the first place. "Do the things that make you whole. That's what I'm talking about, Justin. Yeah. That's the spirit."