For stargems: "Justin and JC. Highschool AU. One's a jock, the other is a punk, but neither necessarily fit the stereotypes. Chance encounter/conversation turns into something more."

Justin Timberlake was tall and lanky, the starring forward on the varsity basketball team, and the college recruiters were lining up around the block to wave pamphlets and booklets in his face and sing the praises of their institutions, but he also had the distinction of being the only person the school's literary magazine made an exemption on the five-pieces-per-student rule for in his sophomore year. Joshua Call-Me-JC-Or-I'll-Snarl-At-You Chasez was perhaps the most unlikely juvenile-delinquent editor-in-chief of the Clarion, the student newspaper, in the history of that establishment's eighty-three years of existence. The school board members had raised a few eyebrows at the leather-jacket-safety-pin fashion choices the first few times he'd shown up to cover meetings, but the student body loved his hard-hitting editorial series about students' civil liberties or lack thereof, the teachers loved him because he took the paper from being published every six weeks to every two and brought it from a sixteen-page spread to twenty-four at the same time, and the administration wavered between throwing him in detention for so much as breathing and being ridiculously proud of the fact that the paper had won five national awards in the past two years.

They didn't know each other very well, but JC liked Justin because he won games (which looked good on the sports page) and photographed very well, and Justin liked JC because he always said nice things about Justin's poetry at litmag meetings, or at least as nice as JC ever said about anyone's poetry, which usually meant that he didn't use the word "trite" or "banal" so much as once.

"Hey," Justin said, leaning against the locker next to JC's. "You going to be at litmag this week?"

"Probably not," JC said, and shut his locker. "Paper's going to bed on Wednesday, and we're behind on layout."

"Oh," Justin said, and glanced down at his sneakers. "You, uh, wanna go get coffee or something Friday night, then?"

"Can't, I have plans," JC said, and folded his arms across his chest. "Friday nights we go do Rocky Horror."

"Oh," Justin repeated, and then winced, hearing himself. "Okay. I'll just --"

JC's hand closed around his wrist. "You'd make a good Rocky," he said, and smiled.

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