JC has perfect absolute pitch. It's just one of the things that they all rely on, like Chris's ability to always know what to say, and Justin's boundless enthusiasm, and Lance's business smarts, and Joey's full-body hugs. They've all got perfect relative pitch, it's sort of a requirement in this line of work, but JC is the only one of them who can name the note and sing it back to them. "JC," Justin will say, in the studio, head bent over the keyboard, "I think this piano's out of tune, gimme an A," and JC can reach inside his head for the place where the music curls around his heart and let the pitch ring out, clear and true.

Music trails along behind them. It always has. They all sing in the shower, hum along with whatever's playing on the Walkman, whistle in the lobbies and elevators of hotels. The green room before a show is a cacophany of warm-up exercises, up scale down scale arpeggio glide chord, all on nonsense syllables half the time, lyrics to whatever they were listening to on the bus the rest of the time. They're usually all in different keys when they start up, falling into harmony as they go along, until even their scales come out in five-part. JC wonders sometimes, though, if he's the only one who notices the other sort of music that's always followed them around.

Like the note that Chris shrieked (C sharp) when Joey dumped a glass full of cold water down his shirt in this one hotel in Phoenix. It turned into a wrestling match immediately, and JC nudged the bowl of popcorn out of the way with his foot before it got overturned and they had to pick kernels out of the carpet for half an hour (because Lance has this thing about trashing hotel rooms, really, he says it's rude to act like animals and expect someone else to clean it up after you). JC nestled back into the couch and smiled, just a little, before turning on the subtitles on the DVD they were watching so that he and Justin and Lance could keep paying attention to the movie while Joey and Chris were making enough noise to wake the dead. Joey managed to get away from Chris before kicking over Lance's water bottle, and Chris sat on his head and announced that he had summited Mount Animal. Chris wound up making Joey sit in "the wet spot" when they were done, and Joey bitched for the rest of the night in between making Muppets jokes, and Lance just rolled his eyes and smiled.

Or the fact that the bus's engine ran in D major, and JC could always tell when they were going up a hill, because the note would switch from D to F sharp as the bus shifted gears. He fell asleep every night to chords in D, with the soft sound of Chris and Justin breathing for percussion.

Or the way that the ambulance siren wailed in C melodic minor fifths, A-E-A-E-A-E, and Joey whimpered without even realizing it (A sharp, a dissonant note) when the ambulance went over a pothole. JC's hands were still dark with Joey's blood, no matter how many times he wiped them off, and the paramedic spoke calmly to Joey while pressing the gauze against his leg. JC held Joey's eyes with his own, and his fingers left dark smudges on Joey's cheek and forehead as he told Joey it's all going to be all right, we'll figure out something for the video, just relax and let them take care of you.

Or the soft murmur of exasperation (glissando from G down to B flat) when Justin noticed that JC had Justin's guitar in his lap, tuning it absently as they talked. Yo, C, I can tune my own guitar, he always said, rolling his eyes, but JC knew that behind it was Justin's way of saying thank-you for the little things that they all did for each other, thank-you for remembering the little details that they all had burned into memory from frequent use. E, A, D, G, B, E, and Justin's ankle twined around JC's as Justin reached for the TV remote to change the channel.

Or how Lance has always spoken in the key of F, soothing low rumble washing over JC's skin as he dozed on the couch, his head against Lance's thigh. One of Lance's hands held the cell phone while the other rubbed absently at the back of JC's neck, and JC could hear himself purring the answering B flat as he drifted peacefully in and out of sleep while Chris's video game noises provided soft syncopation.

Or the time he realized that Briahna warbled the interval between D and E when she was hungry, until Chris got up and picked her out of her crib, wrapping her in a blanket and taking her out to Joey's living room, tucking her up against his chest. Joey was out cold on the couch, exhausted from lack of sleep and the new-daddy stresses. I don't mind, Chris said, softly, as he held the bottle for Briahna and rocked her gently back and forth. Let Joey get a little bit of sleep. And what JC heard was just a heartbeat of love, love, love behind it all, as Briahna sighed a soft little baby sigh and fisted her hand in Chris's shirt to go back to sleep.

It feels like cheating, sometimes, to take the songs he writes from the others like that, to refine and distill and shape and synthesize their natural music into album tracks, but none of the other guys have ever noticed. And it's only fitting, after all, that they go out on stage and wind up singing for the public the things that they sing for each other in private without even realizing. It seems more honest, more real, a defense against the accusations of being fake and plastic-coated and over-mixed and pre-recorded. It's always been his own form of anthropology, of documenting the rites and rituals that they've developed over eight years of living in each others' pockets.

And besides, there are some things that he'll never put in a song. Like the way that Justin moans on a single perfect A, low and sustained and breathy, when JC slides inside of him.

JC has perfect pitch. He smiles against Justin's skin and hums the answering C sharp as his mouth closes on Justin's. He's always loved their kind of harmony.

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