2004

It should be weird, but it isn't; they've known each other for too long, been through too much. They're quiet, but it's not the bad kind of quiet, not anymore. Just two men sitting in the front seat of a car, headed nowhere in particular, not even caring if they get there or not. It's the way it used to be; it's the way it should be.

They're listening to some mix that Chris made a few months ago and sent out to all of them, express delivery, overnight courier like it was some sort of legal document or something. JC had thrown his copy of it on the top of his bookshelves, intending to play it when he got a chance. His shelves were taller in front than they were in the back, though, and it had slowly slid down to join the thousand pens and papers that were gathering dust behind his books.

Lance had taken his copy out of its sleeve and put it in the CD folder in his car, the one that gets carried from vehicle to vehicle as though the car would not start without it. JC thinks, sometimes, that this says so much about them both, and then he stops thinking about it, because he doesn't particularly like what it's saying. It's a metaphor, or a simile, or something. He should know the difference by now, he supposes, but he always confuses the two.

"You'd better hope that we don't have a wreck," Lance says, sneaking a glance over to where JC is sitting with his feet up on the dashboard, leaving toe-prints on the inside of the windshield. "Will you sit like a normal human being, please?"

"I trust your driving," JC says, and leans his forehead against the window, looking up at the moon. It's just over the horizon, blood-red and burning, and he thinks that it might be the second prettiest thing he's ever seen.

"Took you long enough," Lance says, but he's smiling when he says it. JC thinks that smile is just like coming home.

2003

JC shows up at Lance's house with a duffel bag full of clothes and a determined expression. It is, perhaps, the hardest thing that he's ever done. "Come on," he says. "Let's go."

Lance pushes away from his computer desk and gives JC one of those looks, the look that says that he doesn't know what JC is on about. "Some of us have to work for a living, C," he says, dry as paper. "We can't just pack up and leave on a moment's notice."

"It's not a moment's notice." JC leans against the wall. "It's tradition. And don't try to feed me that you're-too-busy line, because I checked your schedule before I came out here." The house looks different without his things filling in the gaps. More empty. Lance hasn't bothered to re-order his CDs to replace the spaces where JC's had been. That, more than anything else, tells JC that Lance is hurting about as much as he is.

"C," Lance repeats. His eyes have dark circles underneath them, like he hasn't been sleeping. Maybe he hasn't. "I just don't think it'd be a good idea. You know. The two of us in a car, stuck together, after --"

"We promised," JC says. He made up his mind before he came over that he won't take no for an answer. He's ready to fight for it if he has to. They promised, more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger, that just because it wasn't working out didn't mean that they had to stop being friends. They'd both been content to let that promise stand without testing it, but it was more than past time to walk around it and kick the tires. "No matter what. You remember. I know you remember. Come on, Lance. Don't let this change things."

"It already changed things," Lance says, but his hands are already moving across the keyboard, saving documents and closing programs and getting ready to shut down. "Where are we going this time?"

"I don't know," JC says. "We'll figure it out when we get there. I just feel like driving."

2002

JC is driving, because Lance is still on Moscow time, no matter how much he's been trying to re-set his circadian rhythm. He'd plied Lance with coffee when they pried themselves out of the rickety motel bed, the first glint of sunlight just starting to lighten the curtains, and Lance had muttered something about three hours of sleep before sitting up and taking it from JC's hand. They'd both been fully clothed, so tired after their day of driving that they'd done no more than toe off their shoes and collapse in the bed, leaving a careful demilitarized zone of space between them made up of things that were not being said.

The air conditioner is sweating at maximum chill, but it has nothing on the silence that lingers between them in the front seat of the car. JC doesn't know where to start with it, where to puncture the inflated mess of a balloon that is all the history that sits between them as an unwanted and uninvited third passenger. He can smell the faint citrus of Lance's latest body-wash between them. It smells like Florida in springtime, and he is homesick for a place that he has not been in longer than he cares to think about.

The road rises up to meet him, liquid shimmer in the late August sunshine. It looks like he could reach out and touch it, scoop up the asphalt in one hand and watch it drip between his fingers. He feels like his life is slipping out of his grip as he watches it, like something's been left undone for so long that doing it would be pointless. Beside him, Lance's eyes are closed, but JC knows by his breathing that Lance is not asleep. Perhaps Lance is thinking about it, too. JC hasn't been able to think of anything else.

"I missed you," JC finally says. "While you were gone. I missed having you around." He realizes, as he says it, that he's not certain whether or not it's the truth. Maybe that's what hurts the most, that he missed the idea of Lance more than he missed Lance himself.

"I missed you too," Lance says, after just long enough that JC was beginning to wonder if Lance had even heard him. He can't tell if Lance means it any more than he does.

2001

The car is waiting for them when they trot off the stage in Mississippi, and Lonnie gives them one last be-careful lecture as he hands JC the keys. "El Paso," he says. "By the morning of the 27th. Check in at noon and when you stop for the night, and if you don't, we'll be sending people out to get you."

"Yes, Dad," JC says, lowering his eyes and trying to hold in the laughter. He mostly fails.

The corners of Lonnie's lips quirk, and he rolls his eyes. "Still can't believe you two talked us into this," he grumbles.

"Tradition," Lance says, and throws his bag into the backseat of the car. "You can't mess with tradition. It's bad luck. Come on, Lonnie, you're the superstitious one."

They don't say anything to each other until they're well past the traffic departing the stadium. The car's tinted windows mean that they can hold hands without having to worry about who's going to see them. "You glad to be off the bus?" Lance finally says, breaking the silence. "I know I am."

JC flexes his fingers around the steering wheel and rocks his head back and forth to crack his neck. "God, yes," he says. "I love Chris and Justin, but I love them most in small doses. And this is most certainly not small doses."

"Yeah," Lance says, and tips his head back to look at the stars. JC looks at the line of his throat and remembers the taste of it. They both need showers more desperately than just about anything else, and JC still wants to lick Lance clean. "It's good to be free for a little while."

They'd argued two days ago, some stupid thing in New Orleans that JC can't even remember now that it's past. The arguments are coming more and more frequently now that the first blush is wearing off, but that's what relationships are. Working through the arguments and trying to find a common ground. They're stupid things, anyway. All of them. All that really matters is having Lance next to him and the open road in front of him.

"We're going to have to bust ass in order to get there on time," JC says. "Not much time to stop and sight-see this year."

"It's okay," Lance says. "I've got all the sights that I need."

2000

JC sleeps like a rock for the first four days after the tour finishes, and then putters around the house for another two while Lance catches up on sleep of his own. It seems kind of silly to get off the road and then turn around and go right back out, but it's different when it's just the two of them instead of them and the rest of the world. When they're out in the middle of nowhere, they can pretend that everything is normal for a little while, anyway.

Lance comes up behind him as he's throwing the cooler in the backseat. The automatic check around for photographers before he nuzzles the curve of JC's neck doesn't even bother either of them anymore; they're used to it. "Did you remember to pick up a six-pack of Diet Dr Pepper to throw in the cooler?"

The glint of sunlight in Lance's face turns his eyes into a beautiful pale jade. JC wonders if someday he'll be able to work that into a song, if it won't sound too cheesy. "Yes, I remembered your heathen beverage. Did you remember to change the message on the answering machine?"

"I let Chris record it yesterday," Lance says, smiling. "I'm ready when you are."

The routine is familiar, but there's something new and exciting about it, something that was waiting there for years before they noticed. JC throws back his head and drinks in the sunlight, the breeze, the way that he feels electric and ready even though his body is still complaining of its exhaustion. "I feel like everything's new," he says. "Like the world's just a little sharper."

Lance rests his cheek against JC's shoulderblade, briefly, and then slips the keys into JC's pocket. His hand is warm, and he cups JC's hipbone through the thin fabric of the pocket of JC's jeans. "I know," Lance says. "I love you too."

1999

They're early this year, because the rest of the summer is going to be full to bursting, but JC doesn't mind. They need the time off, quite desperately, but they wouldn't trade it for the world. At least, that's what JC keeps telling himself.

Part of the fun of their trips is staying in the kind of motel rooms that they had to, at first, when they could barely afford gas and food enough to get them to where they were going and back again. The first night that they're on the road, Lance sits abruptly up in the other queen-sized bed and says, "This isn't working."

"Huh?" JC is almost asleep when Lance speaks, but JC is good at falling asleep anywhere he wants to. "What's not working?"

"Sleeping in a bed this size all by myself. Without the bus moving. Without the other guys around. Without the noise of the road."

The curtains of the motel room are drawn, and JC can barely make out Lance's outline in the dark. "That's a pretty transparent excuse," he mumbles, but turns over anyway. He'd known this was coming.

"Shut up, you fucker," Lance says, but JC thinks, from the sound of his voice, that he's smiling. "I really can't sleep."

"Okay, fine," JC says, and holds back the covers. "Come on. I won't be responsible if I steal all the blankets, though."

"You always do," Lance says, and slides into the bed next to JC. His skin is warm. JC tries to remember why he'd spent so long telling himself that it wasn't all right to touch.

1998

Past Labor Day doesn't quite count, they agree, but there's nowhere else that they can manage to squeeze time in. "Lucky fuckers," Joey says, as he watches them bicker amiably over which CDs are going into the CD folder. "Wish I could come along."

JC looks at Lance; there's a conversation there, in the tilt of Lance's head, the answering raise of JC's eyebrow. "We'll do another road trip," Lance says, for both of them. "Later on. If you want to come, too."

"I'm not honing in on your bonding time," Joey says, easily, and spreads his hands. "Hey, if you two want to spend a week in a traveling tin can after the summer we had, that's fine by me. Count me out on that one. I just meant, it must be nice to be able to drive around and not have a schedule to keep to."

"It is," JC says, but that's not the nicest part of it. The best part is just getting to spend time with Lance, the two of them. They don't even spend a lot of time talking; mostly, it's just the two of them in the car, JC's hands on the wheel, Lance's feet tucked up underneath him, the music just loud enough to be heard. There's comfort in that, in being able to spend some time with someone and not have to keep talking to fill the silence with noise. They've all evolved the courtesies of silence when necessary, it's a survival trait really, but Lance is the person with whom it's most comfortable. JC still isn't sure why.

From the look on Lance's face, JC thinks that he's not the only one who thinks that way.

1997

The craziest thing about all of it is the way that they can go from being unable to walk down the street in Europe to coming home and having nobody recognize them. JC hands over the handful of crumpled singles to the gas station attendant, who doesn't even blink an eye, and makes his way back over to the car, the two bottles of soda hanging precariously from his fingers.

Lance takes his feet off the dashboard as JC opens the door and slides back inside. "We can make Colorado by dinnertime, I think," he says, and begins re-folding the map. "If we drive fast. I'm getting kind of sick of fast food; do you want to try and find someplace semi-decent to stop for dinner?"

"Sure," JC says, and tries to remember what the contents of his wallet are like. Someday, he tells himself. Some year, on one of these trips, he's not going to have to count the nickels and dimes in his ashtray in order to put the last few gallons of gas necessary to make it home into the tank. "I've never been to Boulder, but Joey says it's pretty neat. Wanna head on up there?"

"I don't really care where we're going," Lance says. They've kept the AC off to save gas, and there's a thin sheen of sweat across his face and the lines of his collarbone. He lifts the hem of his t-shirt to wipe it across his skin as JC turns the engine back on. "I'm just kind of enjoying the ride."

"Yeah," JC says. "I'm glad we're still doing this. It's one of the things I look forward to."

"Me too," Lance says, and cracks open his soda. It fizzes and threatens to overflow, and he licks the foam off the bottle through his fingers. "I'm glad we did it in the first place. I like spending time with you."

1996

"Germany," Lance says, naming the thing that they haven't been talking about all day, when they finally stop for dinner at a McDonald's in Illinois. "I've never been to Europe before."

"Think it'll work?" JC asks. "I mean, they seem to think that it'll be a good idea. But -- I don't know."

Lance is so damn young, and JC still wonders how he managed to convince Diane that it would be okay to bring Lance along on these crazy cross-country drives. Maybe Diane saw how much Lance needed it. Maybe Diane saw how much JC needed it; Lance is young, young in a way that JC thinks that he never was, but sometimes JC thinks that Lance is the more grown-up of the two of them.

Lance licks the salt of the french fries off his fingers and shrugs. "I don't know either. But at least we're getting somewhere, right? I mean, we'll be far from home, but we'll be doing something. I'm okay with being away from home if it means that we're making progress."

JC doesn't know if he's as okay with things as Lance seems to be, but he learned a long time ago that he wasn't going to let homesickness bug him. Especially not when the other guys don't seem to be minding it at all, even if Diane and Miz Lynn are going to be coming along with them. JC almost wishes he was young enough for his mother to make a fuss, too. "Yeah, I guess," he says.

"Hey," Lance says, and when JC looks up, he wonders when Lance got to know so much. "It'll all be okay if we're all in it together, right?"

1995

Lance is new and awkward, all elbows and knees, and JC's heart breaks for him every time he sees the way that Lance tries to fit himself into a conversation. He confesses to JC, one night when they're floating out in the pool in the chilly early-December Florida air and looking up at the stars, that he still doesn't feel like he knows any of them, no matter how much time they're spending together.

JC understands that, the way that you always feel like an outsider unless you were there from the start. He was like that on MMC for a while, even, and they all spent so much time together that even now he could have recited any of Tony's stories from beginning to end. It's easier for him, maybe. He's got people he already knows. Lance is a stranger.

A stranger that he wants to know better, though, so he rolls over on his pool-float as an idea springs into his head. "Hey. We've got a week off right before Christmas. Think your mom would let you take a roadtrip with me? We'll, I don't know, drive on out and around for as long as we feel like and then come back. Talk about stuff, see some things, spend some time. We could make it, like, a tradition. You and me."

Lance hesitates for a second, and JC thinks that he might be ticking over the thousand reasons why it would be a bad idea. It would be a bad idea; they spend so much time together that they're all kind of looking forward to some time off from each other, but JC's always loved driving and he never gets enough, and besides, he kind of likes Lance; the quiet, shy humor that peeks through from time to time, the soft and innate kindness that, JC thinks, will someday mature into a person he'd be proud to call friend. "I -- I'd like that," Lance finally says, and smiles. "Mom'll take some convincing, but I can probably talk her into it. I think. She likes you, anyway."

"Next year," JC says, "we'll do it in the summer, so we don't have to worry about the weather. Let's make it a tradition. Just you and me and the open road."

"I'd like that," Lance repeats. He's still uncertain of himself, still shy in the face of wondering whether or not he'll fit in, but he ducks his head and smiles. JC can feel his heart turning over in his chest. Oh, it would be so easy to fall.

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