One-Up

"But Chrissy," said Joey, jumping out of the hot tub and slinging a towel around his waist, "it's not dirty. I'm sure you and your sister would have a fabulous time."

"Oh, fuck off," she said as she threw on her shirt and grabbed her bag, heading for the door. Joey couldn't help but stare at how her white shirt clung to her still-wet chest; when she noticed she smacked him with her bag and flung the door wide open. "That's just sick."

"It's not sick, baby. It would be a beautiful thing." He followed her out the door, only to find they weren't alone in the hallway.

"I can't believe you want me to do that," came a voice that was almost identical to his date's.

"Come on, Missy," replied a voice that was equally familiar to him, " you can't tell me you've never tried ... "

Joey looked to the side to see AJ McLean arguing with his date's twin, a thick white bathrobe wrapped crookedly around him. When he finally turned back to Chrissy, he just earned himself another swat on the shoulder.

"You're still thinking about it, around you?" she accused him, just short of shrieking, hitting him one last time for good measure. "Come on, Missy, let's go. I'm sure there are nice boys around here somewhere."

"Hey, I'm a nice boy," called Joey after her, "and your sister would have a chance to find that out too, if you stayed."

"Oh, nice, Fatone," said AJ as the twins stepped onto the elevator, giving them each a glare as the doors closed. He turned back and tried the door to his room, then started for the elevators in alarm. "Oh shit, wait, wait ... !"

Joey shoved a shoe in his own door to keep it from locking him out, then followed. The devil on his shoulder whispered that maybe if they hurried they could catch them, or better yet he could catch both of them before AJ did. The slightly more practical devil on his other shoulder insisted that it was a hopeless cause, and it was still early enough to start looking for other prospects.

AJ was staring forlornly at the elevator doors as he reached him. "It's not as if it's particularly kinky, wanting to be with twins," muttered Joey, just loud enough to be heard.

"Exactly," said AJ, unexpectedly turning around to face him. "It's nothing I haven't done before. And I've done way kinkier things that that."

"Haven't we all?" said Joey. "Threesome with twins? Way down on the kinky scale."

"Fuck," muttered AJ, shaking his head. "Can I use your phone, Fatone? I need a new key and I don't need to be going down to the front desk like this."

Joey just nodded his head and gestured for AJ to follow; he'd been expecting the request ever since AJ'd yanked on the locked handle to his room. "Like there was this one time," he went on as they walked, "I made it on top of a hotel bar, after closing."

"I've done that," said AJ promptly as he followed him into the room. "Chicago, ninety-eight. That's not so kinky."

AJ found the phone before Joey could respond, so he went on into the bedroom and pulled the wet towel off, slipping into a pair of loose sweats. They didn't hide much, but after running out into the hallway in just a towel there wasn't much left to hide.

He was just hanging up the phone when Joey came back out, running the now-even-wetter towel over his bare chest. "They're sending someone up soon," AJ said, sitting down on Joey's sofa like he had an invite. Which he kind of did, Joey had to admit. "I gave them your room number."

"Whatever," he said, going over to the picture window and pulling the drapes open now that he no longer needed the privacy. There were flood lights everywhere for the night skiers, and the slopes were lit up like Christmas. Not that there were even very many people out there to enjoy it. Joey figured that by this time of night most of them had, like him, found someone they thought they were gonna bunk down with, or were warming up downstairs in the lounge. "You ever done it on a chair lift?" he asked, turning back around to AJ with half a grin on his face, part from the challenge and part from the memory of doing it.

"On a chair lift and again halfway down the mountain," he countered with a smirk of his own. "Colorado, two thousand."

"In the snow? With people skiing by?"

AJ nodded. "On a blanket, of course. There are parts of me that don't like the cold much."

"I did it at night, after they closed down," said Joey, finally sitting down at the opposite end of the sofa, "at the bottom of the mountain. On our jackets. Quickly."

AJ just laughed. "I bet it was quickly," he said. "Oh, but speaking of quickly ... backstage at the Grammys, right before we had to present. You ever?"

Joey whistled in appreciation. "Backstage at the AMAs, but after presenting. There's no way I was gonna get that damn outfit back on in time if I'd done it before. Though ironically, it was with one of our stylists. She was great in the sack, but I've been apologizing to JC for years now for some of the choices she made for him while we kept her on the payroll."

"You know, that explains a lot," murmured AJ, shifting in his seat. "You ever spend any time in an S&M club?"

Joey hesitated before nodding, adjusting himself through his sweats when those particular memories came to mind. "Some," he said finally. "Not so long ago. That's pretty vague, though."

"Well, I don't expect you to have done anything hardcore," he snorted, looking Joey up and down. "Tying up? Spanking?"

"Oh yeah, sure," said Joey breezily, not sure if he should resent that AJ had assumed he hadn't done anything hardcore or not. "Both sides. And other stuff, too. You, McLean?"

"Of course," he said, just as breezily, even accompanying it with a dismissive hand gesture. "Madrid, ninety-nine, among other times. There isn't much I haven't done at least once."

"Really," said Joey, adjusting himself again, right in plain view. "You ever made it with a guy?"

AJ actually looked startled for a moment, and Joey scored himself a mental point. "Well, not with just a guy ... " he had to admit, looking Joey up and down again.

"Want to?"

AJ only hesitated for a moment. "Sure," he said with a shrug, getting up to follow Joey into the bedroom. Joey was already on his feet. "Can't have any blemishes on that perfect record of mine, after all."

Joey did hear the knock at the door about ten minutes later, but obviously AJ didn't over the moans he was making so he didn't bother to answer it. Really, right at that moment, the key to AJ's room wasn't anything they were going to be needing.