In the morning, they discovered Justin had contracted the plague from Lance despite Lynn's best efforts at quarantine. It was admittedly difficult to maintain a separation between any two members of the group when their job, by definition, required them to bounce around and off of each other for several hours a day. And when you thought about it, belting out a song while standing next to someone virtually guaranteed you'd get a faceful of viral capsids sooner or later.
"I'm pretty sure it's your fault," Lance said. He lifted the bun off the top of his sandwich and poked the patty underneath, squinting in the midday sun that shone down on the marketplatz. His finger left an indentation in the meat.
Every time, Chris swore he wasn't going to let Lance pull him into this shit, but still, every time, Chris couldn't sit still and let it go. It was a failing; he recognized this in himself. He'd work on it one of these days. "I'm pretty sure you're full of shit. Are you eating your fries?"
"Lemme have some," JC said, lunging across the table. Lance, though, had grown wily from a year of brotherly torment: he lifted his plate over his head.
"Thanks," Joey said, grabbing a fistful of Lance's fries and shoving them into his own mouth. He sat down next to Lance, the three sausages on his plate dripping mustard from their toasted buns. Chris's stomach growled. "Hey, have you seen the kid? Snot everywhere. He sounds like shit, too."
JC groaned.
"It's Chris's fault," Lance said. "He's the carrier."
"I beg your goddamned pardon. Joe, I'm your best friend, right?"
"No. I got them at that stand over there," Joey said, pointing. "Get your own."
"See," Lance said, leaning over his plate, "I was sick, and you were in my room all night..."
"Bow chicka bow bow," Joey sang, making the bench vibrate with his gyrations. JC caught the groove and undulated against Chris.
"Jesus Christ, you're a couple of perverts," Chris said. Yes. It was very important that he establish who the perverts were here.
"...except for when you left to go get me some soda. And you went into Justin's room. So, since you're not sick, but he is, then you must be one of those people who doesn't get the symptoms but infects everyone he comes into contact with."
"Or she," JC said. "It could be a she who does the infecting."
"But Chris isn't a she," Joey said.
Lance snorted into his coke, but Chris saw Lance's eyes flicker in his direction. The little fuck. "You are not going to say whatever it is you're thinking of saying. Any of you. And I'm not a carrier, either."
JC stirred a french fry through the glob of mayonnaise on his plate. "Then why aren't you sick?"
"Or maybe I am," Chris said. "And you're sitting right next to me. Oh, hey, don't think I didn't see you drink half my soda." JC's eyes grew wide, and he scooted his chair back, nearly tripping a woman trying to get into the store next to the cafe. Chris took the opportunity to steal food off JC's plate. Lance's hand knocked his aside and got to the pickle spear first.
"Sorry," Lance said, clearly not.
Chris watched him chomp the pickle down in two bites. He'd seen Lance eat candy with less relish. The freak. "You shouldn't have an appetite. You're sick."
"I'm better now."
"Thank God," JC said, "because you're going to have to cover some of Joey's lines, right, while he and I split up Justin's leads—"
Chris kicked JC's shin. "Because it's not like you've got another tenor around to pick up the slack or anything."
"— and Chris, except then Joey's got to get the high harmony, which still means that Lance has to cover more of the bottom."
Lance shot a look at Chris.
"Bow chicka bow wow wow," Joey sang.
"I didn't mean it like that, guys. I meant— not like the bottom bottom." A flush crept up JC's throat.
"And on that note," Chris said, balling up his napkin, "I'm getting the hell away from you all until the show tonight. Don't spend so much time primping you miss the bus to the venue, ladies."
It was more difficult than it looked to make a dramatic exit in an unfamiliar town; the 7-11s and corner bars that made such good hideouts when the guys got on his nerves in Orlando were not to be found here. At least not bars where the patrons spoke his brand of lingua franca.
He killed two hours in a record store with shitty selection and no English-language magazines newer than last month's issues. It was still time well spent, though, to know how pissed the handlers were going to be when he made it back to the bus ten minutes before it pulled out of town. Justin was taking up an entire row of seats with his bundled-up body and his wads of kleenex.
The show that night wasn't as bad as it could have been. Lance did look a little hectic around the eyes, dancing too close to Chris's heels during Tearin' Up and then again during the bridge of Here We Go. Justin kept forgetting that he wasn't supposed to strain his voice, stepping on cues that weren't his for the night. It did insert a touch of surprise into the songs, which Chris welcomed. It was possible to pay attention the first three hundred times singing the same song, but after that the vocal cords went off and did their own thing, no longer needing help from the brain.
The hotel that night was of the European backpacking-college-student variety, meaning Chris had to wait his turn in the semi-private bath at the end of the hall. He was still dripping dry in his towel, standing in front of the sink and poking at the weirdness that was going on with his hair when Lance let himself into the bathroom.
"I'll be done in a minute," Chris said. "You guys are worse than sisters."
Lance dropped his Dopp kit into the sink in front of Chris and put a hand on Chris's shoulder.
"Jesus, I said—"
Choreography, apparently, wasn't good for growing boys. It made them strong and sure on their feet. Clearly, that was the only reason Lance was able to pull Chris away from the sink and back him up against the wall.
"The fuck, Lance." Then Lance pulled the towel away from Chris's hips. Things became obvious shortly after that, as Lance let the towel fall on top of Chris's feet, then got down on his knees.
"Hey, ah." Chris cleared his throat. His dick looked so quiet and unsuspecting, still a little pink from the hot water and the scrubbing in the shower. You never did know when one of your bandmates was going to back you up against the towel rack and get up close and personal with you. "This is really not—"
Lance smiled the strangest smile, even though there was nothing funny about the situation. Then he cupped his hand around Chris's shell-shocked dick and opened his mouth.
Chris wouldn't call it sucking, not what Lance did at first. It was more of a licking sort of hello-let's-see-how-you-like-this introduction between Chris's dick and Lance's mouth. It involved Lance's tongue making a number of passes up and down, and occasionally side to side, as if he were getting a feel for the dimensions involved in this endeavor. Chris's dick was doing its best to make the situation more challenging, violating direct orders from Chris's brain to sit down and shut up.
"So very much not a good idea for you to be doing this and, oh, fuck." Chris twisted his shoulders so that the towel rack wasn't digging into his back. Any second now, he was going to push Lance away. He was. He even went so far as to put his hands on Lance's head, but instead of pushing he ruffled his fingers through the bleached-out strands of Lance's hair.
The oddest thing — if you didn't count Lance falling to his knees in front of Chris — the oddest thing was that Lance hadn't looked at Chris once, not since he had walked into the room, not that Chris could remember. Usually Lance was all about the pointed looks and raised eyebrows, all over the place, like their entire life was a comedy show and Lance had to make sure the audience got the joke.
When Lance started sucking in earnest, Chris realized he was completely and utterly wrong to think that Justin was the one with cocksucking lips. Not that he'd ever thought of something like that, but if he had, if he'd been forced at gunpoint to lay money on it, he would've bet Justin had the perfect mouth for it. He never would've figured Lance for having a lower lip that pouted out just so, or cheeks that hollowed when he drew in hard.
And if held at that same gunpoint, Chris might even admit that it had been a few years since the slightest breeze got him raring to go. It took a certain amount of concerted effort these days. Lance, bless him, had never been one to shy away from effort, even though this hadn't been at all what Chris meant when he'd told Lance right after his audition that it was going to take work and dedication and shit like that if he was going to catch up with the rest of them.
"If you're going to keep this up, Jesus. You should, there are better places than here, where just anyone can walk in." Because wouldn't that just be perfect if, say, the aforementioned Timberlake or, better yet, Lynn decided that now would be a really good time to see if the bathroom was free.
It didn't look like much from where Chris was standing, but Lance turned his head just so and oh, fuck. Chris couldn't be certain because his cock was feeling pretty fucking incredible all over, but he thought Lance had discovered a way to make it feel like he was sucking you and trying to get inside of you all at the same time. His cheeks were doing that hollowed-out thing again. It made Chris want to touch them. Lance's tongue was doing very clever things that involved finding places that made Chris's hips hike up. Really, if Chris wasn't strong enough to push Lance away, he thought the least he could do would be to keep his hands off the boy's head and stop urging him to take a little more. Yes, please.
The sound of Lance breathing heavily through his nose like he'd been run too hard really shouldn't be as hot as it was.
Lance's fingers, calluses and all, started scratching over places that should've made Chris yelp. But no, Chris had to open his big fat mouth, didn't he, whenever he and JC and Joey got to drunken boasting about which of them was the best in bed. And Chris had to go on and on about how there wasn't any such thing as too rough or nails that were too long. And of course Lance, who had this nasty habit of remembering everything the next morning, Lance would choose now to remember all of Chris's deepest, darkest, most drunken secrets.
Not that Chris was any good at keeping that kind of secret. And Lance was much too good at this whole blowjob situation.
"Okay, so, I should tell you— and you can just go on ignoring me if you want, but I should tell you— now would be a good time to stop. If you're going to stop. Because I don't know about you, but this is the point where I start to question how much I really like a guy." It had been a while, actually, since Chris had been into a guy enough to bother getting into Lance's position. But he still kept in practice enough to know when things were about to get messy.
It took Lance taking just a little bit more, jutting his jaw forward and pushing his lips right up against his own hand for Chris to lose it. And it was good, really good and everything, until Lance grunted, like oh, shit, he wasn't expecting Chris to actually give it up like that.
The grunt somehow, miraculously, was even hotter than those hard, desperate breaths. That was it; it was all sparks of light, blue and green behind Chris's eyelids and it was over. Finished.
Chris let his head fall back until it was resting against the wall and he could see where the plaster was cracked by the molding over the door. Out of the corner of his eye he watched Lance crack his neck. Lance stood up, knees red with crosshatches from the tile, and knotted Chris's towel back around Chris's waist.
"You," Chris said. "You're. I don't know." He stood there, like an idiot, watching Lance lean into the shower stall and come out with Chris's soap and shampoo bottle. Lance piled everything into Chris's arms, then steered him towards the door.
Chris shook his head. "I'm going to my room now. To sleep. On my bed. That's where I sleep."
"You do that," Lance said. His voice sounded loud; Chris had gotten used to his own monologue. Lance pushed Chris out into the hallway and closed the door behind him.
*
The next morning, Chris tracked JC down in the dining room downstairs where a spread of cheeses and pastries had been laid out in an attempt at breakfast. JC was talking to Joey, who, instead of listening, was hiding behind an issue of Mad with a muffin and ignoring the rest of the world. Across the room, a group of local guys brought on to help with the lighting and heavy lifting were reading indecipherable newspapers and taking advantage of the free food.
Chris grabbed a biscuit-looking thing with one hand and JC with the other. "Hey, I gotta talk to you."
"Wait, man. I need a refill." JC grabbed a spoon and a jar of Nutella off the table before obediently following Chris over to the windows. "You should try this on the biscuits."
"I like my chocolate pure and uncontaminated," Chris said. "You are not eating that entire jar."
JC shrugged. "You know that everything on that table gets added to our recoupable debt, right? Doesn't matter if we eat it or not. So we might as well."
Chris narrowed his eyes. "I thought you slept through the last three business meetings."
"You've gotta pay attention to stuff," JC said around his mouthful of toast. "Even when the conscious mind is unaware."
"Right, okay, and on that note, I think I should remind you of what we promised to pay attention to before we began this excellent European adventure."
JC looked puzzled.
"The Saturday before we left, when we got the wings from Applebee's and you stuck me with the check, and I said that the terrible blonde twosome were going to need supervision, and you did that nodding thing where you look like your head's going to fall off?"
"Oh, right, right. Sure. Um. Is something wrong with Justin?"
"The list of things that are wrong with Justin would take me all morning and then some to recite." Chris dipped his fingers into JC's jar of Nutella. Someone had to save him from all that sugar.
"Was that yes or a no?" JC frowned. "Because, hey, it's early, and you're not exactly making sense yet."
"It's more like— I'm afraid that maybe, maybe someone's been, kind of, oh, I don't know. Fucking with Lance's head." Chris was so screwed, but it was nevertheless clear that Lance had come to him already damaged.
"With Lance? Oh, no, hey. Lance is cool."
"No, not that. And I am not in any way agreeing that there's a single cool bone in Lance Bass's body. I'm just wondering if maybe someone might have...." Chris circled his hand between them.
JC frowned again. "Left him hanging?"
"No! Jesus. If someone might have messed him up, like. In a sex way. A bad, unsexy sex way."
Six feet away, Joey lifted his head out of his magazine. "You had bad sex?"
"You had bad sex with Lance?" JC said, looking more intrigued than horrified.
"No!" Chris shouted, loud enough to make the Germans across the room pay attention. Please, God, let them be part of the German majority that knew not what the crazy foreigners were saying. "No, not me. I am so not even bringing myself up in this conversation, this conversation that is about our young friend Lance, not our old friend Chris, and the fact that I think someone might have done something to him. To make him oversexed and everything. Lance, not Chris— Jesus, I mean not me. Not me, no."
It wasn't even a lie; Chris Kirkpatrick had never had bad sex with Lance Bass.
JC sat down on the window ledge. "So what makes you think someone messed him up?"
Chris sighed. "It's not like there's any one thing. I just want to know if you think someone might have confused him. Or something."
"Huh," JC said, then fell quiet, his eyebrows scrunching up. Chris sat down on the floor to wait. Joey had gone back to his magazine. The Germans were ignoring the talent, as they had long since learned was their safest option.
Chris ate his biscuit, chewing very deliberately.
"I don't think," JC said, speaking slowly, "that Lance is confused about much of anything. Not sex, at least. First he told us that he knew he was gay when he was, like, six. And then there was that thing in high school, with that Jake guy. And then the other guy. The one he told to fuck off. And— hey, Joey? What was the name of that guy Lance said he used to go across the county line with when he was sixteen? The one with the name?"
"Arturo," Joey said, not looking up.
"Arturo. So, you see. And he sounds really calm and normal when he talks about stuff like that, so. I think Lance is fine."
Chris stared at JC.
"You don't think so?" JC asked.
"When, precisely," Chris said, enunciating carefully, "did Lance tell you all of this?"
"Oh, I dunno. A while ago, I guess."
"A while ago. And I never heard about it because?"
JC was trying to balance the spoon on just his little finger. He wasn't very good at it. "You were probably working, in between the rehearsals and stuff."
"Okay. So I was working, while Lance was telling you about his apparently way more extensive than I'd imagined sex life."
JC nodded.
"And at no point over the past year did this ever come up when we were bored to fucking death and I was telling all of you guys about Anne, the girl who wore black fishnets and kept her fingernails two inches long?"
"I guess not," JC said. "It's not like Lance gets as drunk as you do, what with his mom around a lot of the time."
"Right," Chris said. "He wouldn't."
"Are you okay?" JC asked. It was remarkable, really, how JC was only insightful when it least served Chris's purposes.
"Fine, fine," Chris said, leaving the room in search of a deep, dark hole suitable for crawling into.
*
Avoiding Lance was out of the question, what with the constant proximity. Chris settled for keeping JC, preferably, or Joey, during the frequent times when JC's attention was elsewhere, between himself and Lance. He wasn't doing it for his own good, but for Lance, who clearly didn't need Chris fucking with him.
Not that Chris had fucked with Lance to begin with. He'd been innocently brushing his teeth, for Christ's sake. Colgate was not an aphrodisiac.
A week later, on a hazy Friday night, they played an early slot at a music festival in Heidelberg. With Justin fully recovered, bouncing from one side of the stage to the other, giving all the pubescent girls time to squeal over his swiveling hips, Chris was able to get through the usual parts and choreography with as little brain power as possible. The earliest slots were, of course, the shittiest, as they were then forced to sit around and do nothing for the two hours between their set and the big togetherness multi-group song slated for the finale. Chris cut away from the green room to hit the restroom, figuring there was little point in spending those two hours miserable and sweaty when he could at least submerge his head in a sink of cold water.
As the door closed behind him with a click, Chris decided he should probably lock it. If someone else needed to get in, they were welcome to knock. He turned around. Then he decided he was being paranoid.
Then he decided it was better to be safe than sorry that you've got no willpower at all when you're naked and someone's got his mouth on you.
Chris was reaching for the doorknob when it turned of its own accord and Lance slipped into the restroom.
"Fuck no," Chris said. "You know, I'm starting to wonder if you've got some sort of a tile fetish. What's wrong with beds? Or a couch? I know doing it in the back of a car is a little passé, but it's a classic for a reason."
"I came in to wash my hands," Lance said. "I don't know what you think I'm here for."
"Oh. Good." Paranoid, indeed. "Right. Because this is a bathroom, where people come to take care of their bodily functions. It's completely not a sexual place. In fact, you probably didn't even know that I was—"
Lance stepped close, backing Chris up against the door.
"—here."
Lance slid his hands around to the front of Chris's pants, which were, tragically, held up by only one defenseless button and a equally clueless zipper. They didn't put up much of a fight.
"Oh, God," Chris said.
Lance didn't bother to take them off, but went down on Chris with his pants still around his knees. The fettering effect gave Chris another excuse not to try to get away. Mostly, though, it was Lance's mouth that kept him still.
Squirming didn't count.
This second time around, Chris could actually concentrate. For one thing, there wasn't a towel rack behind him, digging into his back and driving him bonkers. But mostly he could pay attention to what Lance was actually doing — doing really, really nicely, thank you very much — because it wasn't quite the shock it had been the first time. Chris had been half-expecting this, it seemed, for so many days that it was almost a relief to not have to look over his shoulder any longer.
He could look down a couple feet and be mesmerized by Lance instead.
It wasn't as if this was any less mind-shatteringly good the second time around. Chris patted Lance's cheek with an unsteady hand, then shuddered as Lance swallowed and held still, right there, for one excessively long second. No, Chris's mind was still floating around in little pieces, but each little piece was so clear, so crystal-sharp that when Chris got finished groping for the door handle and turning the lock, he could pay attention to what Lance was doing.
"Fuck. Do that thing with your tongue—"
Lance did a thing. It was nice, but it wasn't quite perfect.
"—no, the other— Jesus fuck me yes."
There were a few things in life, Chris had noticed, that weren't all that bad even when they were bad. Blowjobs were up at the top of that list, right behind anything having to do with people who willingly got naked in front of Chris. This was very definitely not a bad blowjob. It was, now that Lance had figured out how to do that tongue-thing, the most perfect blowjob Chris had ever had the pleasure of being coerced into.
From the beginning, the advantage belonged to Lance, who hadn't given Chris time to cool down from the performance. Chris had been just on the acceptable side of not-hard when Lance had started. He hadn't stayed there for long.
Chris came with one hand cupped around Lance's head and the other in his own mouth, the ball of his thumb shoved between his teeth.
As soon as Lance let him go, Chris slid down until he was sitting on the floor. Lance, in the meantime, got up and walked over to the sinks, where he washed his hands.
Chris watched Lance fight with the paper towel dispenser. "You really shouldn't have done that."
Lance dried his hands very thoroughly, ignoring Chris.
Chris cleared his throat. "But I'm kind of glad you did."
Lance looked at Chris for the first time since walking into the room. "You sure?" he asked.
He walked out while Chris was still thinking of how to answer.
*
Chris made it through the finale and back onto the bus without dealing with anyone by virtue of his naturally surly disposition. There were times when he treasured his ability to be an utter bastard; it gave him an excuse to ignore Justin's chatter and Joey's recap of the performance, even when asked direct questions. When he ensconced himself in his seat for the ride to Munich with headphones jammed on his ears and his hat pulled down low over his eyes, even Justin knew to back the fuck off. Chris wedged himself between the seat and the window, doodling on his shoe with a pen he'd stolen four hotels ago.
It was possible that Chris had miscalculated.
The problem with Lance was that he picked up things too easily, adapted to the situation at hand with relatively little fuss. Not the way Justin did, by mastering whatever he put his determined little mind to. Lance was more subtle; he'd sit on the sidelines, paying attention for the first few days, then he'd jump in and make a fool of himself and next thing you knew, he was right there in the thick of things, holding his own.
If only Lance had been properly clueless when Chris had started with the flirting, none of this would have happened. If Lance had had the sense to be offended, well, then. Even better. This entire inappropriate sexual interlude could have been avoided.
Chris dismantled the pen. He fiddled with the spring that made it retractable until it was stretched out of shape and useless.
Against the backdrop of the night outside, mirrored on the reflective surface of the window, Chris could watch Lance and JC where they sat at the drop-leaf table across the aisle and a couple rows back. JC was nodding while Lance spoke earnestly, drawing things on the tabletop with his finger.
Chris couldn't possibly make out what Lance was diagramming at this distance, but he was certain it had to do with him. Peripherally, at least. When Chris thought about it, everything having to do with this group had to do with him in one way or another.
Which was why it was up to Chris to do the decent thing. The right thing. Lance needed harmless boys who were as amenable and clueless as himself to mess around with. Chris, on the other hand, needed to find his balls and remember that idle flirtation was not meant to lead to indecent acts in public lavatories.
Chris tucked the pen parts into his pocket and spent the rest of the ride getting ink on his hands, trying to draw with the cartridge alone.
*
"So you and Lance are dating and everything, right?" Justin plopped down on the bench next to Chris. "You shouldn't be smoking. Can I have one?"
Chris thought he was safe hiding in the lobby, taking deep, deliberate drags from a cigarette he'd bummed off a British chick with blue hair. The girl had asked him about decent places to get a drink and, discovering Chris had learned more about the pubs within walking distance of the hotel in one night than she had in half a week, had laughed and tucked a second cigarette behind Chris's ear. He'd lit the second off the first, on the grounds that he didn't have a lighter and if he went around the corner for a book of matches, he'd probably buy an entire pack of smokes and screw his throat up even more.
"Fuck no. And also, fuck no. Go away."
"Because I asked JC what was wrong with you, and he said something about identity and discovery and not always being able to control the people around you. Then I asked him where Lance was, and he said almost the same thing. Plus Joey says y'all are messing around. So. Are you dating Lance?"
"Jesus Christ," Chris said. So much for the calming effect of the only nicotine Chris had tasted in months. "I am not dating Lance. Are you sure you aren't a girl? Or have you been reading the fan mail again?"
"Shut up," Justin said. "It was a legit question, all right? I just wanted to know."
"And I just want a million dollars and Asia Carrera as my personal geisha girl, but I'm learning to live with disappointment."
Justin brought his feet up on the bench, taking up twice as much space as was necessary. "But you don't want Lance?"
Chris sighed. "I didn't say that. I'm not saying anything, to any of you. Which is why I came down here in the first place."
"Because if you don't want him, that's cool. I was just checking."
Chris narrowed his eyes. "Justin."
"What?" With his wide-eyes and his melodramatic blinking, Justin had the worst look of fake-innocence Chris had ever seen.
"Whatever the fuck you're thinking of doing to Lance, stop thinking it."
"I dunno," Justin said. "It's just, if you're not all exclusive with Lance, then I thought." Justin shrugged.
"I cannot fucking believe you." Chris wished he'd gone ahead and bought those cigarettes. "Either of you. Whatever happened to teenagers locking themselves in their rooms and jerking off ten times a day? No, you can not fuck around with Lance."
"Because you are?"
"Because you're too young! And nowhere near repressed enough. We need to get you off this continent and back below the Mason-Dixon line where you belong." Chris got to his feet, stubbing out his butt in fern-filled planter. "I'm going upstairs, and you're not going to follow me. In fact, I'm not talking to you until tomorrow, during which time I'm going to completely forget you said any of the things you just said."
"Okay, fine." Justin kicked the corner of the planter. "I don't see why everyone gets to have sex but me."
Chris gritted his teeth, but didn't turn around; he had years of experience ignoring younger sisters bent on getting a rise out of him. Justin was an amateur. Chris repeated this as he punched the elevator button, waited in vain for the stupid thing to light up, then punched it again. He reminded himself, when he gave up on the elevator and stomped his way up the stairs, that he was the adult here, and that certain people needed to be reminded of that fact.
He marched down the hallway and pounded on the door to Lance's room.
In a t-shirt and sweats, looking terribly soft and rumpled, Lance opened the door. Chris stuck his foot between the door and doorframe, just in case Lance got any bright ideas.
"We need to discuss how we're not going to be sleeping together, ever. Not any more."
"I'm fairly certain sleeping hasn't been involved at all," Lance said. He let go of the door and shuffled back towards the bed.
Children today were so literal. Chris reminded himself to be firm, but not vicious. He needed to be sensible. Reasonable. "You know what I mean."
"No, actually, I don't. How about you explain?"
"It's my fault, mostly." There, that was a remarkably generous concession. Chris sat down on the edge of the bed, watching Lance fluff his pillows. His hair was sticking up in back again. "I said some things, did some things that may have blurred some lines in your over-bleached head. So what we need to do now is back everything up by six months and not do any of that again."
Lance leaned back against the mound of pillows. "Six months ago you were calling me a hick and a redneck and prank calling my mother at six in the morning. Which, by the way, she still hates you for."
"Maybe not that far back." Chris made a mental note to buy something expensive and snazzy for Lance's mother. "Just after that."
"No," Lance said.
"Okay, so—" Chris blinked. "Excuse me?"
"No. I'm not going to forget anything. We're not going to stop what we're doing, either."
Chris clenched his jaw. This conversation was not going as planned. He should have made Lance come over to his own room; at least then Chris would've held the figurative high ground. "We're not."
"Well, I'm not going to stop. You should start, because you're being awful selfish."
"How am I being selfish?" At Lance's look, Chris backtracked. "Okay, so if you're only talking about the details, then yes, maybe there has been selfishness, but I'm looking at the whole big messed-up picture. I'm talking your mental stability and well-being. You do not need to be fucking around with me."
"Have you got a better suggestion?" Lance said through clenched teeth. "Seeing as how you're telling me what to do with my life."
"Someone your own age! Someone sweet and suitable who isn't on your mother's hit list!"
Lance folded his arms. "Someone like a girl?"
"I didn't say that," Chris said. Now the kid was just being dense. "Have I ever said anything remotely resembling that in the entire time you've known me? I'm not a hypocrite."
"Just an asshole," Lance said, but he said 'asshole' kind of low and quiet, and he wasn't gritting his teeth anymore.
"I'm an asshole," Chris said, nodding a lot to get his point across. Nodding never hurt; it seemed to work for JC in particular. "Finally, you begin see my point."
Lance got up on his knees, making the bed dip down in the center. It was like Lance had created a little space-time disturbance that forced Chris to lean towards the middle of the bed. "I like that you're an asshole."
Chris shook his head. "Maybe I should have sicced Justin on you after all."
"Justin?"
"He gets ideas," Chris said, ignoring the way Lance was taller than him, up on his knees like that, and was smelling rather attractively of clean cotton and shampoo. "He wanted to know if we were dating."
"I don't know," Lance said. "He'd probably be a lot less work than you. And he'd reciprocate. You should go tell him I'm available."
"I'm going to assume you're joking," Chris said.
"You always do." Lance sat down on his heels. "That's the problem. You can't keep doing that. I actually can make decisions for myself, you know."
Chris looked at Lance.
"But if you really don't want to do anything with me, then okay." Lance shrugged. "Just stop making me the problem."
Chris sighed. Talking to Lance was like playing Battleship; there was always a point when your carrier was gone and the other guy had hits on your cruiser and submarine. Finishing the remainder of the game was a formality after that. "You're not the problem."
"That's good," Lance said.
When Chris had discovered, during his first semester in college, that high school had nothing to do with anything, and that getting out meant you got a chance to start yourself over, he'd decided that he was going to be the type of person who arranged his life to his liking. He wouldn't forget anything that happened along the way, but in ten years, he wanted to be unrecognizable to his then twenty-year-old self.
He'd also decided that sex was a lot simpler when it was with people who didn't remember you from before. His type, he found, ran towards small, modish girls who didn't shop at the mall, and guys who shrugged and said thanks and who nodded at him the next time they were at the same party.
His type did not include blushing, corruptible virgins. Particularly not those with whom he'd signed recording contracts. Not that Lance was blushing. And not that Lance didn't seem amenable to corruption. Chris wasn't even going to think about the noticeably sketchy nature of Lance's virginity.
But a record contract was a shitty thing to use as an excuse to dash Lance's hopes. Particularly when his own hopes were going off on their own, being giddy and squishy instead of impeccably cool and mature.
Lance was the only person Chris knew who was any good at playing straight to his jokes, anyway. A guy couldn't dismiss something as rare as that out of hand.
Sighing, Chris toed off his shoes and swung his feet up on the bed. "And you don't want Justin. He whines. A lot. And maybe he'd reciprocate, but he doesn't know what he's doing and he'd probably take a lot more coddling than I take convincing."
Lance had that considering look in his eye. It made him look older than he was. "How much more convincing do you think you need?"
"About fifty hit points or so," Chris conceded.
"That's, what." Lance shifted until he was sitting right in front of Chris. "A good leer and a look at me without my clothes?"
"Just about. And then, if you were already naked, you'd probably want me to take advantage of you."
"I thought I was pretty clear about that," Lance said.
Chris reached for the hem of Lance's t-shirt, pulling it up to expose a few inches of bare skin. Good at watching the rest of them for cues, Lance lifted his arms and let Chris pull the shirt the rest of the way off.
"Okay." Lance rolled his shoulders, cold or shy or some combination of the two. "Your turn."
Chris shook his head. "Remind me to lecture you about creating and maintaining a mood at a later date." But he did shed both of his shirts, and got up to shuck his jeans and shorts. The way Lance watched, curious and antsy, was something Chris could get used to.
Hopping back and forth from one foot to the other, Chris took off his socks. "Lesson one, Bass. Don't forget the socks. There's nothing as stupid looking as a man wearing just his socks."
"Already learned that from looking at porn," Lance said.
"Observant of you."
Chris crawled back up on the bed, over to where Lance was conveniently laying back, arranging himself in a picture-perfect example of what disreputable photographers were looking for in just-turned eighteen-year-old boys. "Did you learn that from porn, too?"
Lance shook his head. "Justin."
Pop music was really far more a corrupting influence than most parents realized. "How about we both stop mentioning him?"
"Fine by me," Lance said. Chris scratched his fingers down Lance's chest, getting a nice shiver when he flicked a nipple, ending up at the loosely-tied knot at the front of Lance's sweatpants. When he paused there, just for a minute, Lance shifted on the mattress.
Since Chris was compromising his principles, he didn't feel at all bad for making Lance squirm. Especially when Lance looked so good fighting to keep still.
"Um," Lance finally said. "You want me to do it?"
Chris shook his head.
"Okay," Lance said on an unsteady breath. "I'll just. I'll wait, I guess."
One of the many things Chris had not had time to appreciate until now — or had deliberately not wanted to appreciate — was the very nice way Lance's sweatpants made it obvious how hard he was underneath. And how nicely he'd grown up. Chris pulled on one end of the drawstring.
"Is this going slow thing lesson two? Because we can skip it."
"Hush," Chris said. "You'll make me reconsider."
Lance laughed, low and dirty. Chris got the impression his threats weren't being taken seriously.
When Chris tugged on the waistband, Lance obediently lifted his hips. That was quite nice to watch; Chris wondered how long it would take for him to convince Lance to touch himself in front of an audience of just Chris.
"Hmmm." Chris dropped Lance's sweatpants on the floor, and eyed the view. "Do the boys back home know what they're missing?"
"They didn't all miss it." Lance closed his eyes as Chris wrapped a hand around his dick. "Just most of 'em."
It didn't take long, once Chris found an angle that let him squeeze almost all of Lance's dick with each stroke, for Lance to start gulping for breath the way he had the first time he'd jumped Chris. Apparently, Lance forgot how to breathe properly whenever he was turned on, not only when he was sucking cock. Chris could get used to those sounds.
Lance was also one of those incredibly lucky boys blessed with a dick that managed not to look stupid. Not like, say, the other dick that was in the bed, wondering why it wasn't getting its share of the attention. Chris rubbed a hand over his cock, quick and hard, promising it a turn later. Right now, he had this very pretty and willing dick right in front of him that deserved his full attention.
"Uhn," Lance said.
"Yeah?" Chris was willing to take direction in bed; he thought it was one of his better attributes. Also, it justified his own tendency to make demands.
But all Lance said was "yeah." Chris went back to figuring out the best way to make Lance gasp. He kneed his way in between Lance's legs. The lines of muscle that ran up Lance's thighs and over his hips were just begging for a hand to touch them. There was a bit of skin in the hollow of Lance's hipbone, skin so much paler than his chest and legs that it was obvious it had never seen the sun. Lance murmured unintelligible things when under both of Chris's hands.
There were a lot of things about this situation Chris could get used to. He should've given in weeks ago, though he didn't need to tell that to Lance.
"You called me selfish, didn't you." Chris palmed the head of Lance's cock and watched him arch his back.
"Holy— yeah. Yeah, selfish." Lance opened his eyes and looked Chris in the face. "Very."
"Mmm hmm," Chris said, sliding down the mattress and propping himself up on one hand. Close up, Lance's dick was still something to make a fuss over.
Chris opened his mouth and took Lance in.
To his credit, Lance managed to stay mostly still while Chris remembered — Jesus, but it had been a while — how to move and suck and breathe all at once. Not quite like riding a bike; it had a hell of a lot more going for it. For one thing, Lance tasted like clean boy and salt, and was trembling where Chris held him down at the line where leg met hip.
Everything he'd learned during that first heady year of college came back in a rush. Chris breathed in deep and got serious.
"Oh, fuck," Lance said, half air, half drawl. Chris felt rightfully smug at the note of wonder in his voice. There weren't that many people in the world who earned their living by their mouth alone.
The dancing, to Chris, didn't really count.
Lance was giving up breathy little moans nearly constantly. Backing off a little, Chris experimented with what he could do with just his tongue and the right amount of suction.
The answer, to judge by Lance's squirming, was rather a lot.
More entertaining than he remembered, Chris could appreciate why Lance had thought cornering Chris and going to his knees would be worth it, and not only for Chris. Jesus. Lance was big enough to make Chris's jaw ache in just the right way, and loud enough that even an idiot could figure out exactly how he liked to get it.
Draw up, then move his tongue, then go down as far as he could go: Chris found a rhythm he knew he liked, and Lance's body seemed to agree. Messing with Lance's head, long one of Chris's favorite diversions, was even better from down here. All he had to do was open his throat and swallow every handful of strokes, and Lance would curse, using words he'd never dream of saying in polite company.
Lance fumbled for Chris, tangling his fingers in Chris's hair. "Chris," he said, rather urgently.
"Hmmm?" Chris smiled at the shudder he got in response.
"'S really good," Lance slurred. "Really, really, really— oh fuck, fuck, fuck. Fuck."
Which was, Chris figured, more than anyone could ask in coherence for an eighteen-year-old subjected to the best Chris Kirkpatrick could pull out of his hat. Chris went down deep once, twice, then pulled back when Lance started to shake.
"Fuck," Lance said, rich with meaning, as he fell apart in Chris's mouth.
Much as the girls in Europe seemed to think Lance was cute when he was being bashful in front of the cameras, Chris has never figured out what was so sexy about being tongue-tied. Except, of course, when it was coupled with every inch of Lance straining, shaking to make it out the other side. Chris mouthed Lance gently until he opened his eyes, blinking and tugging on Chris's shoulder.
Then he let Lance go, slow and easy. He licked his lips and smirked. "I was hoping I remembered how to do that."
"Fuck," Lance said, once again.
"Later." Chris squirmed his way up Lance's side, making sure he stole his rightful allotment of pillows. "I think that's lesson twelve."
Lance made a murmuring sound.
"Oh, no," Chris said. "This is lesson three— no falling asleep until Chris gets his turn."
"You had two turns," Lance said into the sheets.
When Chris ran a thumb over the head of Lance's dick, Lance swatted him away. "Should've figured you for the kind of guy with a scorecard and a spreadsheet," Chris said. "I'll have you know that I only put out once on the first date."
Lance rolled to face Chris, curling up on his side. "Wake me when it's midnight, then."
Lance fell asleep in short order; too many nights spent in close quarters meant Chris could tell the moment he was gone. Reaching to turn off the bedside light, Chris settled back down to find Lance worming his way closer to his heat, nuzzling his face into the warm space against Chris's neck.
"In the morning," Chris said to the dark room.