The track was Allen Ginsberg reading poetry, with Tom Waits wailing behind him on the piano, and Chris muttered along: "my national resources consist of two joints of marijuana, millions of genitals, an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 mph and twenty-five thousand mental institutions," as he turned the page and pushed his glasses further up his nose. One of his braids slipped from the hair-tie that held them up and out of his face, and he tucked it behind his ear in irritation. His coffee was cold, and he probably needed to make a new pot soon, but there was nobody there to drink it except for him. Wasn't worth the trouble.

He'd spread out his papers over about three spots at the counter -- books piled next to him on one side, files to the other, with his work and his coffee and his cigarettes and his ashtray in front of him. "You, sir," he said to the unbound pages marked with red ink before him, "would be incapable of making a clear argument if it rose up and bit you on the ass." It didn't help that the writing was his own. In fact, it only made him crankier. It had seemed like such a good idea when he'd drafted the outline, but actually slogging through the writing process left him doubting his ability to string together a single sentence.

Just as he'd pushed aside the pages and gotten up to head behind the counter and re-fill his coffee, the bell attached to the door chimed. He automatically glanced at the clock -- four-thirty-three AM, the time of morning when the diner rarely got a single customer -- before looking over to see who'd come in.

"Your hair is blue," said the kid, blinking at him owlishly with startling dark-blue eyes. Chris winced. This time of the night, when he got customers at all, he got the ones who were only out on the streets because they had nowhere else to go, and this one looked no different. The kid was tall and thin, like he was living off his body's own resources, sporting a buzz-cut and wearing jeans that threatened to fall down around his hips. He looked like the customers Chris got sometimes, the hustlers from the sections of the boardwalk Trump didn't have iron control over.

"Yeah," Chris said back, and took a step forward to lean his hands against his side of the counter. And then he thought, what the hell, sometimes even the hustlers are just looking for a cup of coffee, and added, "Breakfast?"

The kid stumbled across the cracked linoleum and slumped down at the counter. "Breakfast," he said. His voice held the thickness of some high he was only half-down from. "Yeah. Breakfast." And then he paused, and snaked a hand into his pocket, pulling out a crumpled dollar bill and a handful of change. "Coffee," he amended. "Fuck. Not my pants. They took my pants. Don't know where they put my pants. They didn't want me to leave."

Chris stopped halfway in the middle of pouring the cup of coffee, and winced. That changed things a little bit. He got the hard-luck cases this time of night, but a statement like that one meant he'd be dispensing more than just coffee. He turned around with the cup and placed it on the counter in front of the kid, made a long reach and snagged the milk he'd been using. "Coffee, we can do. Maybe breakfast too. You got a name? Can't keep thinking of you as 'kid'."

"Justin," said the kid, and drank down half the coffee without putting anything in it and without waiting for it to cool. "Someone out on the boardwalk told me I should come over here. He said I looked like I needed a cup of coffee." Those blue eyes met Chris's again, and then Justin blinked and dragged a hand over his face. "Fuck, I'm really fucked up right now. I must look really fucked up. Yeah. Coffee. Coffee will unfuck me. If I can be unfucked. Who're you?"

"Chris," Chris said. "I dispense the coffee." He reached over the counter and caught a hold of Justin's wrists. Justin jerked in place and made as though to draw back, but the impulse was checked nearly as quickly as it appeared, and he submitted to having each of his sleeves pushed up in turn. Chris turned Justin's arms over, one by one, and checked for needle tracks. The kid's skin was clean.

"Not needles, they know I hate needles," Justin mumbled. "They keep giving me these pills to swallow. Say I'm not sleeping and I'm not gonna be able to go on if I'm sleepwalking through it." He looked up and met Chris's eyes. "Fuck, I'm sorry, I shouldn't be talking, it just gets me in trouble. It'll get out and then I'll be fucked. I'll just." He pulled back and made to push himself off the stool, and Chris laid a hand on his wrist.

"It's okay, Justin," he said, and then backed off enough to give the kid space. "I got coffee. You can stay, there's not much going on this time of night. I like the company." He fell into the usual soothing tone of voice he'd learned years before, and wondered who "they" were. His contacts hadn't mentioned anything about the major players in the game picking up any new boys lately. The kid was sure pretty enough for it, but he didn't have the dead look that most of the lifers picked up after a few months of working the streets. "You wanna talk, that's cool. You wanna just keep your mouth shut and eat breakfast, that's cool too. It's pretty quiet this time of night."

Something of Chris's tone seemed to make it through the haze, and Justin looked up at him. "I'm not an addict," Justin said, clearly. "I don't need saving, either. I just came out to prove that I'm not a prisoner in my own fucking hotel room no matter what the guys seem to think."

"Okay," Chris said, and nodded. "Grilled cheese and fries sound good?"

"I don't have any money," Justin said, and then started laughing. "I don't have any money. I don't know when the last time I had to touch fucking money was."

"See, the guy who owns the place doesn't show up until I go off-shift at six," Chris said, and leaned back against the pie-case. "And he doesn't mind if I feed my friends anyway."

"I'm not your friend," Justin said, each word bitten off neat and precise.

Chris held up his hands. "Not saying you are. But nobody walks out of here hungry."

Justin looked back at him. "You some kind of do-gooder, or something? You get some sort of personal satisfaction out of saving people? You've got shrink's eyes."

Even after all the years, even after all the times he'd gotten that sort of shit, that was still one of Chris's hot-button issues. "Look," he said, keeping his voice as even as he could. "Nobody walks out of here hungry because for a long time when I was growing up, I didn't know where my next meal was going to come from. And yeah, I'm a shrink, and yeah, I am a social worker in my day job, and yeah, I'm sitting here at four-thirty in the morning to earn some extra cash to feed my baby sisters and pay off my student loans, and if I were you I'd shut up and say 'thank you, Chris, a grilled cheese sandwich and some fries sound great, actually', because you look like you haven't eaten anything in a week of Sundays."

Justin blinked at him. "Um," he said, and then frowned. "White bread."

"You got it." Chris turned around and headed for the grill. "You got a story? You don't have to talk, but you might like the chance to."

The more he thought about it, the more the kid seemed familiar. He tossed a glance over his shoulder and saw Justin reach out a long hand and snag his cigarettes off the counter. "You mind?" the kid asked, holding up the pack when he saw Chris looking at him, and Chris made a go-ahead gesture.

"By all means, I'm trying to quit anyway. Bad for the voice."

"Yeah, no shit," Justin mumbled, and lit one. He didn't seem inclined to talk, and Chris didn't press the issue, dumping a handful of fries in the basket and putting them down in the oil.

The CD whirred as it hit the end of the tracks and clicked over back to the beginning, and Chris hummed along. It was his late-night mix, the one he played when it was just him in the place, full of obscure shit and b-sides and college a-capella covers. Justin was silent at the counter behind him, and he could almost forget that he had company as he threw the bread on the grill and sang. "I sit alone and I watch the clock, I breathe in on the tick and out on the tock. I can hear your bare feet on the kitchen floor, and I don't have to have these dreams no more. I've found someone just to hold me tight, hold the insomniac all night."

"You've got a pretty voice," the kid said, softly. Chris turned around to look at him, and he was looking back, almost wistfully. "Been a long time since I've heard anyone sing just because they wanted to."

Some collegiate tenor belted out "I've tried everything short of Aristotle / to Dramamine and the whiskey bottle", and Chris shrugged. "Music kept me sane when I was younger," he said, and flipped the sandwich on the grill. "Thought I might go into the business, but that wasn't exactly realistic. I still keep my hand in, a little. You like music?"

"I used to," Justin said, and looked down at his coffee. He looked as though he was coming down from whatever he'd been on. "A long time ago. I don't know if I like it or not anymore."

Chris decided to try again. "You got someplace to go tonight? I can find you a place to stay."

Justin shook his head. "'M okay. I shouldn't have even snuck out like this, they'll kill me if they find me." He looked up at that, and Chris was struck once again by how impossibly blue those eyes were. "Not literally, you don't need to, like, try and save me and stuff. I'm just. I get really tired of being handled."

Chris grabbed a platter and tossed the sandwich on it, following it up with the fries and putting it in front of Justin. The way the kid's eyes followed him, the way he reached for the sandwich the minute it hit the counter, made Chris wonder when the last time he had eaten really was. "Sure," Chris said, easily. "Everyone gets pissed off when people tell them what to do. Who's pushing you around? Family? Boyfriend? Boss?"

Justin laughed at that, through a mouthful of grilled cheese. "Long fucking story," he mumbled.

"I got all night." Chris leaned back against the counter, and then noticed Justin's coffee was getting low. The bell on the door rang again, and he looked up to see a familiar face heading in. "Hold that thought, though. I'll be right back."

Eddie had been coming into the diner for a long time, and he recognized when Chris was working his magic on someone; he stayed up by the register instead of heading down to the counter. "How's Mike?" Chris asked, as he got closer.

Eddie smiled. "Feeling a lot better. He said thanks for the flowers y'all sent, they really cheered him up." Eddie's partner had been shot in an attempted robbery on the convenience store up the street; Chris had cobbled together a collection among the various storeowners.

"Yeah, you tell him that if he's back on the beat sooner than three weeks from now, I'll kick his ass, okay? You want the usual?"

"Yeah, please." Eddie caught Chris's eye as he was starting to turn away and duck down to the coffee machine, raising an eyebrow and gesturing with his chin towards Justin. The soda machine blocked their view of the counter, but Chris knew what he was asking, and nodded an affirmative: yes, I'm working on it, it's under control. Eddie nodded. He was one of the good cops, Chris knew, the ones who would find the ones the system would chew up and spit out and steer them to Chris instead. There weren't all that many good cops left. In return, Eddie and Mike always had a place to come and pick up their coffee at ass o'clock in the morning and rest their feet for a while.

Eddie always got a large coffee, light and sweet, and a buttered roll, and that really was the bottom of the pot, so Chris put on another one. Justin had polished off half the sandwich, he noted, and was slouched down against his stool as though he was trying to make himself smaller. Chris rapped his knuckles on the counter and poured the last few dregs of the old pot into Justin's coffee cup. "It's okay," he said, softly, when Justin looked up, startled. "He's on the side of the angels." Justin didn't say anything, but he stopped looking like he wanted to crawl under the counter and hide, so Chris toted Eddie's coffee back up to the counter with him.

"Doc," Eddie said, as he handed them over, and switched languages when Chris raised an eyebrow. "Si me necesitas --"

"No, no, está bueno, lo tengo, solamente estamos hablando, and since when has your money been any good in here?" Chris waved aside the offer to pay, the way he did every night. "Get out there and make the streets safe, I'll just sit in here with my crap coffee. Give my love to Maria, okay?"

"Sure," Eddie said, and picked up the coffee. "Catch you tomorrow."

"He called you Doc," Justin said, as the bell on the door rang again and Chris dropped the empty pot of coffee in the sink full of suds.

"Yeah. Chris Kirkpatrick, Ph.D., Psy.D., and a lot of other stupid letters that mean I spent way too long in school, that's me. You want anything else?" The plate was about as clean as Justin could have made it without licking it.

Justin shook his head. "If I eat too much I'll be sick. The stuff they give me always makes me nauseous."

"Yeah, about that," Chris said, and poured himself a cup of coffee from the fresh pot, filling up Justin's as well. "You do know that when someone else drugs you, it's illegal, right?"

"I'm the one who swallows them," Justin said, and sighed. "I told you. It's ... really complex. They're just looking out for my best interests. I kinda haven't been sleeping lately. ...At all. For a while." He looked down at his hands, wrapped them around the coffee cup, and sighed again. "A really long while."

Chris made a thoughtful hrrming noise. "Seen a doctor?" he asked, as casually as he could.

Justin laughed again. It was a sharp sound, born not at all of amusement. "Seen hundreds. All I have to do is sniffle and they have doctors running to wipe my nose. I -- oh, fuck, I really shouldn't be talking to you like this, not without you, I dunno, having signed something or something."

Something clicked in the back of Chris's head, and he realized why the kid looked so familiar. "Justin," he said, and it wasn't to get his attention, it was realization. "Justin Timberlake."

A whole lot of things suddenly made more sense. Justin paled and ducked his head, then slid from the counter-stool. "I should. Oh God, I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't."

"Sit down." It was the voice Chris used on seventeen year old kids who had a hundred and fifty pounts of muscle and a whole hell of a lot of mean on him, and it worked on Justin just as well as it worked on them. He sat. Chris looked at him for a long minute, and then reached over and grabbed the crumpled dollar bill Justin had left on the counter.

"There. Now you're covered under doctor/patient confidentiality. You need me to sign something, I'll sign something. You're safe here, kid, I'm not going to run to the Enquirer to rat you out. You wanna really talk about it?"

Justin looked as though he was ready to bolt at any second. "I --"

Chris sighed. "Look, obviously there's something seriously wrong in your life. It helps sometimes to talk about it to someone who's not involved. Fuck, I wouldn't have made it to this point if it weren't for a few counselors taking care of me, okay? I don't have the faintest fucking clue what your life must be like, but if you're out walking in the bad part of Atlantic City at five in the morning and acting like you've been doped out of your mind -- I mean, you said that you had to sneak out of the hotel, even."

"Yeah," Justin finally said, and closed his eyes. "They -- the people who manage me. There's a whole bunch of them. It's like they don't want to mess with the meal ticket. They tell me where to go and when to be there, and they tell me what to do and how to do it, and it's just --" He broke off. "I sound like some kind of whiny brat. I'm twenty-three, for God's sake, it's not like I'm some kind of slave. That's not it. They really are looking out for me. I shouldn't be left alone. I'm not very good at taking care of myself."

Chris winced and tried to remember what he knew about the kid. It wasn't much; he didn't pay attention to the pop music scene very closely, but then again, Justin's face and voice were everywhere every time he turned on the radio or the TV these days. He vaguely remembered that the kid had been in the business since he was about twelve, had spent some years as a teen pop sensation over in Europe for a few years, come back to the US and been on near-constant touring-and-recording duty ever since. Five albums, he thought. Maybe six. He couldn't remember. There'd been some sort of scandal along the way with his management, but Chris didn't pay enough attention to things; he only knew what he picked up from the kids who slid in and out of the shelter and the various magazines they brought with them.

"Everyone's good at taking care of themselves when they have to be," he offered. "Have you ever really had a chance to find out for yourself?"

The song on the CD player changed again. Chris frowned at it and leaned over to turn the volume down a little more, then reached for his pack of cigarettes and lit one.

"It's not like that," Justin said, and he sounded irritated.

"So tell me what it's like. Don't tell me what you should be doing. Tell me what you really do. Tell me what it's really like." Chris waved away the cloud of smoke and hit Justin with one of his very best I-dare-you looks, one that had been refined through years of practice at getting people who didn't really want to talk to open their mouths and confess.

Something sparked in the back of Justin's eyes. Chris thought it might have been anger, and that was a good sign, so he let it go. "All right, fine. It depends. I'm on tour now, so it all depends on if it's a travel day. I play five shows a week most weeks. I'll wake up on the bus and grab something to eat, and we'll stop the bus for half an hour so my personal trainer, who the label hired by the way and who I hate, comes over to the bus and has me lifting weights for a while, and then my vocal coach grabs me and has me doing work for a few hours, and usually by then we're at the venue. The crew sets up the stage, and I usually have to go and do the meet-and-greet thing, most shows have the local radio station having given away tickets to VIP or something. And when I'm done being charming there, it's a call-in interview or something, and then I get half an hour before the show to quiet down and prepare, and then it's on stage. This tour, the sets run about an hour each, twenty minute break between them for me to catch my breath, it's hard to be up there dancing like I do and singing at the same time. And when it's over, I get back on the bus, if I can make it through the crowds of screaming girls trying to all get a piece of me, and I get to take a shower and leap around the fucking bus for a while to burn off some of the energy that being on stage raises, and we drive to the next city and I do it all over again the next day."

Justin's voice was getting steadily more high-pitched, steadily louder. Chris just watched and occasionally took a drag off his cigarette. It sounded as though the kid was long overdue for a little bit of yelling. "And I'm never fucking alone and I can't go anywhere I want to go without having a security guard looming over my shoulder and I can't remember the last time they let me take a fucking vacation, I keep asking and they keep telling me, the publicists and the handlers and the people from the label and all these people I don't even know who they are and what they do except that I probably fucking pay them, all these people with those soft sweet voices keep telling me that it's not time yet, that we have to take actions to 'safeguard' my 'market share', that there are far too many child stars trying to break out into the adult market and I can't afford to be one of the ones who doesn't try too hard, I still have to work to make up the bad rep I got when I jumped labels, and I haven't been home for more than a week at a time since I was fifteen, and I'm sick and tired of people trying to get a piece of me and I'm sick of the way they all look at me and I'm sick of wondering whose metaphorical or not-so-metaphorical dick I'm going to have to suck at the next industry event and dear God I'm whining like I'm fourteen and I don't fucking care." He took a deep breath and looked at Chris with startled eyes. "Where did that come from?"

"Sounds like it's been building up for a while," Chris said, and refilled Justin's coffee again. "You were how old when all of this started?"

"Twelve," Justin said, and slumped back down on the stool. "Started the singing thing when I was fifteen. Sued my management when I was eighteen. My momma made a few bad contract decisions for me. I love her, I really do, she never pushed, it was what I wanted, but I was getting screwed pretty hard, and I don't mean like that. Fuck, why am I telling you this."

Chris shrugged. "Because I'm some random guy that you've never met before and will never see again, so you don't have to worry about me." He studied Justin's face, carefully. The kid looked like he was down from whatever they'd dosed him with, and okay, he could possibly begin to see why they'd done it, because there was a layer of exhaustion over Justin's face that looked as though it had been there so long that he didn't even realize what life was like without it. It didn't mean that Chris liked it any more. "This new management, they keep telling you that you have to work harder?"

"Work harder, do more, smile for the cameras, record another album, can't slow down or we'll lose the momentum." Justin made a little sharp gesture and then sighed and picked up his coffee. "And, you know, it's not as bad as I'm painting it to be. I love what I do, I really do. I'm just ... really tired of getting shoved around like this."

"Sounds to me," Chris said, after thinking for a few minutes, "like you need to get yourself some new people. Start making your own decisions."

"You think the thought's never occurred to me?" Justin reached for Chris's cigarettes again. Chris automatically picked up the ashtray he and Justin had been using and tipped its contents into the garbage, then grabbed a cigarette for himself. "I just -- I know it sounds like I'm making excuses. And I guess maybe I am." Justin tipped his head to one side. Chris thought, looking at him, that maybe it was the most honesty Justin had given himself in years.

"Scared?" Chris kept it as brisk as possible. He had good people instincts, and right now they were telling him Justin was ready to answer the tough questions, but only if he couldn't detect any sympathy in the asking. He had a feeling Justin got too much catering-to. He topped off both coffee mugs and headed around the counter to sit down next to Justin. Easier if they were on the same level, without the barrier of the counter separating them.

Justin hesitated for the barest of seconds. "...Yeah. Yeah, I am." He took a deep breath and held it for a minute, his eyes focused on something distant and internal, then let it out in a puff. "Maybe I'm pissed at everyone else so I don't have to be pissed at myself. Damn, you're fucking good at this."

Chris shrugged and finally lit his cigarette. "I don't do anything but poke people into thinking about things. You come up with the answers yourself. From where I'm sitting, it doesn't look impossible, but I'm a fixer at heart. I know it's not always as simple as it seems on the surface, and it's easy for someone who isn't involved in the situation to come in and say he knows what to do. But you're not totally fucked. You're just in a bad place right now."

Justin turned the coffee mug around in his hands a few times, staring into the liquid. "It's just hard. To think about almost starting over, in a way. Changing everything."

Chris couldn't help himself; he snorted into his coffee. Justin looked up, his eyes wide and startled. "You want hard? Try working ten-hour days minimum at the shelter, going home, getting four hours of sleep, getting up and coming in here three days a week and dealing blackjack over at the Taj the other four, then taking a two-hour nap in my office before starting it all over again. That's hard. What you're talking about is just a little shakeup."

There was another pause. For a minute Chris wondered if he'd pushed too far, crossed the line from "brisk" to "unsympathetic". Justin caught himself after a second and took one last drag from the cigarette before stabbing it out in the ashtray. "Why?" he asked.

"Why what?"

"Why work so hard. So much. I know why I do it. I want to know why other people do it." Justin looked as though he were trying to piece something together, try to fit together a puzzle in his head.

Chris shrugged. "Why does anyone do anything? Money. Doctorates aren't cheap, even if you're going to state schools. We had nothing when I was growing up. Less than nothing. Lived out of the car for a while, stuff like that." Once, he would have been ashamed to admit it, but his years of school hadn't just been to learn how to help other people; along the line, he'd learned how to help himself. "I picked social work because I wanted to spend my life helping to fix situations like the ones I was in when I was a kid, and I got the Ph.D. and the Psy.D. because I wanted them both and I knew if I left school I'd never go back. But I racked up some pretty hefty student loans, and the shelter I run can't exactly afford to keep me in champagne and caviar; they can barely pay my rent. It'll support me, but I'm not just supporting me. I've got a sister in college and one still at home with my mom, and they can use every spare penny I have."

Chris was used to telling the story; sometimes it was the only way he could reach people. It was the first time he remembered anyone listening so intently, so closely, as though hungry for human contact. Hell, Chris thought, remembering what Justin had said, maybe he was. "Why didn't you pick a job that would make more money?" Justin asked. From someone else the question could have been an attack; from Justin, Chris felt like it was just an attempt at understanding. "If you needed to support them, I mean. You could have gone into private practice, if you're a shrink. Or you could have picked something else."

"I could have gone into private practice, but it wouldn't have hit the people who really needed it, the ones who can't afford to go talk to someone. And I could have done something else, but that would have only fixed it for us. Not for anyone else." Chris looked down into his coffee, but he wasn't seeing the cup; he was seeing Taylor, the way she'd looked when she'd first been born, when he'd held her in hands still bruised from where his mother had been gripping them during delivery, the way he'd looked down at that face and known, suddenly and crushingly, that he'd do anything to keep her from knowing the growling, angry hunger in the pit of the stomach coming from never having enough to eat. "And I could have. I almost did. But if everyone said that, nobody would ever be there for the people who needed the help."

Justin seemed to consider it for a minute. "I wonder sometimes," he finally said. "Whether it's selfish of me to live the life I'm living. I mean, I just spent twenty minutes bitching about how much it sucks and how much I want to just -- I don't know, change my name and run off to be a librarian in Ohio. But it's not that bad. Not when you think about it." He sounded more like he was trying to convince himself than he was trying to convince Chris.

Chris looked up. "It is and it isn't," he said. "I mean, if you sit down and play a few hands of Dysfunctional Life Poker, everyone's going to win and lose a few pots, you know? But everybody has to look at their own life, individually. Not compare it to other people's. Really, in the end, it all comes down to this: are you happy?" It had taken him a long, long time to come to these conclusions, but once he had, they'd seemed so obvious. "Not 'am I doing what I'm supposed to be' or 'could I be doing better for myself' or 'am I doing better than someone else is', but: Am I happy? Strip out all the rest of it, pare it down to just the essence of things, and ask." He didn't intend for it to be a challenge, but from the look on Justin's face, it was coming out as one, so he just finished it off. "Are you happy?"

For a minute, Chris thought Justin might answer, right off the top of his head like that, without stopping to think about it. Then he stopped, bit his lip, and looked into his nearly-empty coffee cup, as though the answers would be written down in the grounds in the bottom. "If you'd asked me that yesterday, I would have said I didn't even know what being happy was," Justin said, slowly. "But you know what? There's a lot of good stuff in it, too."

"Yeah?" Chris asked. "Like what?"

Justin pursed his lips, his eyes distant. "Being able to create things. Being able to share things with other people. Being able to cheer people up -- look, I know my stuff isn't high art, it isn't anything that's changing the world or anything, but it's good solid pop music and it makes people happy. And that's a good feeling. I like some of the people I work with. I like not having a nine to five job, no matter how many times I say I wanna run away and join the office." He flushed a little, just the faintest hint of pink around his cheekbones. "I like the way it feels to be standing up in front of thousands of girls, all screaming my name. I guess it's kind of egotistical."

Chris raised an eyebrow. "I'd start to worry about you if you didn't," he said, dryly. "Like it, I mean."

"Yeah, well." Justin looked down again, then drained the last of his coffee. He wrapped his hands around the mug, like it could warm him even though it was empty. "Yeah. There's good stuff about it. And the bad shit ... it's pretty bad. But it's too easy to just look at the bad shit and forget about the good shit, because the good shit has almost started to get, I don't know. Routine. Or something like that. I'm babbling."

"You're making pretty clear sense to me," Chris said, and got up again to refill the coffee. Drinking this much coffee might mean he'd have to forego his morning nap, but he didn't really mind. He didn't need much sleep anyway, or so he told himself. "Keep going. You're on the right track."

"I'm glad it makes sense to one of us," Justin muttered, and then looked up. "I'm not really going to quit, am I? And not just because I'm still under contract."

"If you were going to quit, you wouldn't be here. You would have started walking and not stopped until you hit Ohio." Chris put the coffee pot back on the warmer, then turned around to peer out into the gloom outside the door as he saw the lights. "Fuck, hold that thought."

"Huh?" Justin tipped his head to one side, like a dog listening to a whistle.

Chris jerked a thumb towards the door. "Newspapers are here. I gotta drag 'em in, put 'em together. Gimme a minute."

Justin nodded, then slid off the stool. "I'll help," he said, and then looked a little startled, as though he'd never expected to hear himself offering.

Chris grinned. "Yeah, I guess it's good for you to get your hands dirty every now and then. Come on."

They hauled in the bundles of papers and Chris sliced the plastic ties around each of them with the knife he kept in his pocket. They worked in silence for a minute, Chris giving the bare minimum of instructions -- it wasn't really difficult; put this section in that section and then stack them on the wooden newspaper bench. Chris let the silence go on, because he could see Justin thinking, see the bits and pieces turning over in his head while he went through the repetitive motions.

"There's two things I can do, isn't there?" Justin finally said. "Keep on going the way I have been, remember that there's good parts to it all, and put up with the bad in order to get the good." He took a deep breath. "Or go back, stand up for myself for the first time in my life, tell everyone that shit's going to be changing, and fix things."

"Pretty much," Chris said. He dusted off his hands, black with newsprint, on his jeans. "And I think you already know which one you've picked. You're going to pick at it a bit in your head, come up with the best way to handle it, come up with the best way to make it happen without fucking things up too badly for you. Might try to talk yourself out of it once or twice, too, might take a few steps forward and a few steps back. But in the end you'll stick to it, if you remember to just keep asking yourself: what would it take, what has to change, in order for me to be happy?"

"Fuck," Justin said, and looked around himself, as though trying to convince himself that he wasn't dreaming. "How the hell do you read my fucking mind like that?"

Chris laughed. "It's my job, man. When you boil it all down, everybody's got one of, like, five of the universal problems. It's just trying to recognize which one of the five it is." He shrugged and ran his fingers up the stacks of newspapers, counting them off in his head to make sure he had as many as he was supposed to have. "And you've got sense. You're not hopeless, I mean. You're pretty okay, under all of the crap." He wasn't sure what made him say that, but he did, and it was true. "You wouldn't have gotten this far, if you weren't."

Justin squared his shoulders, and then sank down to sit on the newspaper bench, ignoring the way the wood was probably leaving splinters against his jeans. "Yeah," he said, slowly. "I think I'm gonna be okay."

There was nothing, nothing in the world, that Chris liked better than hearing that particular tone from someone. It was the sound of someone who'd been in pain for so long he'd forgotten what it was like to draw a free breath, until something shifted and something changed and suddenly, even if it wasn't all okay yet, there was the chance it might possibly be. Some impulse made him say, "Here." He pulled the cardwallet out of his back pocket, fished out one of his business cards. "I usually tell people to come back and talk to me about the rest of their shit once a week or so, but I'm gonna guess you've got a morning bus to catch, or something. But if you ever need someone to talk to, ever need someone who isn't going to sugarcoat shit, someone who'll give it to you straight and shake you by the shoulders when you need it? Gimme a call."

Justin took the card and turned it over in his fingers. "I didn't think people like you really existed," he said, slowly. "I feel like I'm going to pinch myself and find I'm back in that hotel room with the security guard at the door, or something."

"Yeah, well." Chris ran a hand through his hair, or rather, tried to; he always forgot about the braids, and he accomplished nothing but knocking a few more of them free. He scowled, pulled free the hair tie, and bundled them all back up. It distracted him, and he needed a bit of distraction. "If it makes you feel better, I could, like, ask you for your autograph for my sister, or some shit that feels more like what you're probably used to."

Justin looked up and smiled at that, actually smiled, and Chris could feel his heart catch in his throat, because that look was more beautiful than anyone really had a right to. "Hey. It's probably the least I owe you, right?"

There was a breath of air and the bell on the door jingled again; Chris thought it was probably just the bakery guy delivering the pastries and the hard rolls, but Justin's shoulders tensed, and he seemed to shrink back for half a second before he caught himself. Chris turned to see a huge black guy standing in the doorway, the size of a fucking tree or something, looking at Justin with the look of someone who's finally tracked down an escaped kitten and was not looking forward to talking it out of the tree it had found itself in. "Justin," he said, disapproval written clearly in his voice. "Do you know how long it took us to find you?"

Chris looked back at Justin, and for a minute, when their eyes met, he thought he saw Justin asking for help, asking for someone to step in and give him someone to hide behind. Chris sighed, mentally steeled himself for a few days in the hospital when the guy tried to get through him, and prepared himself to take the step forward when Justin took a deep breath and said, "Tiny. Give Chris twenty bucks to cover my breakfast, and then we're going back to the hotel and I'm calling a meeting."

The guy -- of course he was called Tiny, looking like that he couldn't possibly be called anything else -- frowned. "You can't just walk out like this without telling anybody."

"I think you'll find I can," Justin said, after another deep breath. It started out tentative, and gained steam halfway through. His eyes flicked back to Chris, as though looking for support, and Chris tried to give it wordlessly as best he could, even though facing down security guards was not really a regular part of his job description. "Because what you're all forgetting is that you work for me, I don't work for you. And it's about time I started remembering it, too. Now give Chris a twenty, and when we get back to the hotel, whichever of you fuckers took my pants can damn well give them back, including my wallet. And I'm calling that meeting, and if I wake people up, I don't really care." It came out in a rush, like Justin was scared he wouldn't be able to get it all out if he didn't get it out quickly, and Chris tried to hide a grin.

"Justin --" the guard started, but Justin shook his head.

"No, don't 'Justin' me. I've had enough of 'Justin' out of you guys." He held out a hand. "Money. Now."

Tiny studied Justin for a minute longer, then looked at Chris. Chris tried his best to look like he wasn't an ax-murderer and wasn't out to screw Justin over; it must have worked, because after a minute, Tiny pulled out his wallet, fished out a bill, and handed it to Justin. "Good," Justin said, and handed it to Chris. "Now wait outside. I'll be out in five minutes."

Tiny looked like he was going to protest, but decided it wasn't worth it; he nodded, threw a look at Chris that Chris had no trouble interpreting as "fuck with him and I'll fuck with you," and went to stand immediately outside the door, on the small stoop, where he would no doubt drive away anyone who tried to get in the door. Chris hoped that didn't include the bakery guy, because if they didn't get the day's delivery, it was going to screw a lot of things. Justin waited until the door closed, and then let out his breath in one giant whoosh, followed by laughter that held more than a little tinge of hysteria.

"Jesus," he said. "I've been wanting to do that for --"

"A really long time, I'd guess," Chris said.

Justin grinned back at him. "Fuck, yeah." He gestured to the twenty in Chris's hand. "Keep the change, okay? Because really, you make the best damn grilled cheese sandwich I've had in years."

"My life," Chris said, and tucked the bill into his pocket, "is sometimes inexplicably weird. You want a coffee for the road?"

"Make it two. I'll fuck with Tiny's head by bringing him coffee for him to drink while I'm yelling at him on the walk back to the hotel." Justin got to his feet with the air of someone who would be bouncing on the balls of his feet, if he wasn't so damn tired. "And then I think I'm going to tell everyone who works for me that I'm going to be re-evaluating whether or not I really need them over the next week or so, and see who I can live without and who I really would miss if I fired them. And then I'm going to call my momma and tell her I love her, and then I'm going to sleep for the next sixteen years. And when I get up, I'm going to look myself in the eye in the mirror, and tell myself that I'm done with taking all this shit, and I'm going to do that every damn morning for the next month if I have to until all of this is fixed." He caught Chris's hands, held on to them tightly, and squeezed. "Thank you. Thank you. I can't say it enough."

"I didn't do anything but show you how to look at things," Chris said. "You already had the answers. All you needed was someone to point you to where they were."

Justin shook his head. "But I wouldn't have found them on my own. I should find that guy who pointed me here and fucking kiss him, man. Because he must have been my fucking guardian angel this morning, or something."

Chris noted the strength of Justin's hands, the way they were slightly slick with sweat, before he pulled back and went for the to-go coffee cups. "Well, if it turns out to not be that easy, you've got my number. And don't hesitate to call, okay?"

Justin nodded. "I won't." He grinned, suddenly. "I'd ask if you wanted to come be my tour shrink, except you wouldn't leave your shelter, would you?"

"No, I wouldn't," Chris said, surprised that Justin had been paying enough attention to realize it. "But hey, I've got a good cell phone plan, if you need me." He came back around the counter and handed over the two cups, and Justin took them, not even seeming to notice the heat seeping through the cup. "And I think you'll find that there are people who'll give it to you straight, other than me. You've just got to find them, and let them know what you expect from them."

"I'll keep that in mind," Justin said. For a minute, he seemed to be thinking about juggling the coffee from one hand to the other, freeing up a hand for some purpose or another, and then seemed to think better of it. He leaned over and kissed Chris, quickly but firmly, direct on the lips, and then pulled back. "Get some sleep, okay? You deserve it."

The bell on the door jangled again, and then Justin was gone in a whirlwind of fresh energy, leaving Chris staring after him.

*

Five months later, when Chris had almost forgotten, when he was buried in funding requests and desperately trying to figure out how the hell he was going to make not enough money stretch to cover too many bills, he walked into the shelter to find Janice, his usually unflappable secretary, with her face buried in her hands over the mail.

"Jan?" he asked, stepping in further, his eyes hitting the pile on the desk to see if some huge bill they hadn't budgeted for had come in, see if there was some phone message or police report saying that one of their regulars had finally run into something they couldn't handle. "You okay?"

She lifted her face, and Chris could see that it was wet with tears, but they were tears of relief, not of grief. "You have to see this," she said, and handed him a piece of paper with a check paper-clipped to it.

He saw the check first, and his heart nearly stopped, because there were way too many zeros after the number printed on its face. "Jesus Christ," he said. "A donation?"

"Read the letter," Janice said.

The actual letter was stuffy and more than a bit over-formal, printed on the letterhead of some company Chris had never heard of, but there was a hand-written note underneath it, in a scrawl Chris had to squint to decipher:

"Chris: I wanted to do something for you equal to what you did for me, but I couldn't think of anything even close. Money can't express it, but the least I can do is make it easier for you to keep helping other people. Hire someone else so you can get some sleep, okay? I'm sleeping like a baby for the first time in years. The new album comes out next quarter. I'm sending you a copy. Be sure to read the liner notes when it gets there."

It was signed, simply, "JT."

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