For sprklydncgrl: Justin/JC. "Got my paper, got my cappuccino cup / Got the headlines in my head and now I'm fed up / On the pages now the stage is set before me / and I've been called to draw the curtain."

No matter where you are, no matter what city you're in, no matter what country you're in, no matter who's around you or what you're wearing or what color the walls of the green room are really painted or how many steps it takes you to pace the length of the hallway outside the stage door, some things never change. It's always the same tickle right at the base of your spine, the same little thrilling electric ping sizzling through your blood, the same way your toes get cold and your fingers get numb and you can't figure out if you want to curl into an S on the couch with a blanket tucked over you to get that last ten minutes of sleep or go and run the hallway five or six times and work off some of the anticipation.

It's different, though, when there's nobody to turn to who's walked those hallways with you, night after night, city after city. It's different when there's nothing but the TV blaring in your dressing room, turned on to cover the silence that's only louder for being full of the sounds of girls shouting for the mascara or their stockings or the single tube of lipstick that they've managed to hold on between them, tuned to CNN because it's too close to the show to listen to anyone else's music and there's nothing else on that can serve as just meaningless noise. It's different when it's just you, about to be just you, and when the critics take notice they'll be taking notice of just you.

"Breathe," he says, on the other end of the phone, hissing and crackling with trans-Atlantic static, and you do, because you suddenly feel like you wouldn't remember how if he didn't remind you. "Now smile." And you do, because you remember a hundred, a thousand, nights just like this one, only those had him warm and real and standing right beside you.

"Justin," you say, and then stop, because the sentence that was going to become has died stillborn on its way from the inside of your head.

"I know, baby," he says. "It's only a show. You've done hundreds of them."

"Not without you there," you say, and bite your lip.

"I'll be listening," he says. "And I'll call you first thing when I see what the papers say."

"I miss you," you say, because with it sticking in the back of your throat there isn't anything else that you can say.

He makes a little noise that you can't read, sympathy or frustration or agreement or something, and that only makes it worse, because you used to know what each and every one of those noises meant. "I miss you too," he says. "Now go and drink your coffee and then get out there and knock them dead."

You don't know which is worse -- the fact that he knows enough to say it, or the fact that every syllable sounds like goodbye.

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