friday.

Lance came awake like a gunshot and sat up with his heart racing. "Fuck," he said, Mississippi thick as always in his first words of the day, and ran a hand through his hair. The bed was empty, and there wasn't even an indentation on the pillow to show where Chris's head had been. "All right. If that's the way we're going to play it, I can do that too."

The clock was blinking 12:48 as he made his way down the stairs and into the empty kitchen. He wondered when Chris had left. The note was in the first place that he looked for it, and he sighed.

"Lance: Gone back to my place to do the things that need doing and call my mother. Call me later. I'll see you tomorrow. Chris."

For about five minutes, he stood in the kitchen and looked at the note, lying in a puddle of warm sunlight, before sighing again and getting breakfast. His cellphone rang when he was finishing his coffee; the caller ID read "Superman". He smiled a little and flipped it open. "Cowboy Feng's Bar and Grill, how may I direct your call?"

Joey's warm laughter went a long way to freezing the chilly block of nervousness in his stomach that the coffee hadn't managed to touch. "What happened to Myrna's House of Ill Repute?"

"Closed down last week due to health code violations. What's up, man?"

"Looking for Chris. He awake yet?"

Lance sighed a little. "Long since awake, and left Dodge on the first stagecoach out. He was gone when I woke up. Left a note saying that he was going to head back to his place, do some stuff, call his mom. You try his cell?"

Lance could hear Briahna in the background doing something that seemed to involve pots as drums and a wooden spoon. Joey covered the phone for a minute and said something to her, love wrapped up even in the sternness, before coming back. "Yeah, tried that first. No answer; it went to voicemail. Oh, well, it's not important. What time are we meeting up over there?"

He found himself wishing for a minute that he smoked, just to have something to do with his hands. "Chris said that he wasn't coming back tonight. Well, he didn't say, but he strongly implied. I guess -- can you call the guys and have them meet up over here at around eight? We've got until midnight."

"No problem," Joey said, and then covered the phone again. Lance smiled; talking to Joey was always full of interruptions, but he didn't begrudge them for a minute. Joey came back after a few seconds, his voice dropped as though he was trying to be inconspicuous. "Hey, are things okay between the two of you? You and Chris? I mean, you haven't said how things were going."

"They're ... going." Lance got up from the counter and went to refill his mug of coffee. "He hasn't killed me. I haven't killed him. We're cool."

"That's not what I meant." Lance could picture Joey shaking his head. "Dude, you didn't tell him, did you. That you're in love with him. You idiot."

He nearly dropped the coffee mug. Did drop the phone; picking it back up and rearranging himself took a few seconds, and he could hear Joey laughing quietly. "I don't know what the hell you're talking about," he said, when he got himself settled again. "Share the crack you're smoking, 'cause I'm all out."

"Look," Joey said, "if you want to pretend that's not what this is all about, you go ahead, but I think you're setting yourself up for one hell of a fall when this is all over. He doesn't think you're doing this for anything but friendship, does he."

"Joey," Lance started, and then abandoned whatever the hell he was trying to say. "Look. I've got a lot of shit to do. I'll see you when you come over later, okay?"

"Sure thing, man. But if you ask me, you're being stupid about it. Catch you later."

They never bothered with goodbyes when it was just them on the phone. That had been a Justin thing, originally -- the idea that if they didn't say "goodbye", it wasn't an end to the conversation, just a postponement -- but it had quickly spread. Lance hung up the phone, closed his eyes, and then opened them again and dialed memory two.

As Joey had said, it rang through to voicemail, JC's voice proclaiming that Estelle couldn't come to the phone. They changed their voicemail greetings like some people changed socks, and nobody ever recorded his own. "Chris," he said, once the recording had beeped at him. "It's me. I figure that note you left me means that you don't feel like company today, and that's cool. Don't worry, okay? You go do what you need to do, and when they come for -- when all the shit starts to go down, don't worry. We're gonna be there. You're gonna think that it's the last minute and we're not there yet, but we will be. We know where to find you, and we know what to do. Be strong. Call me if you need me, I'll have my phone on all day."

With that done, he finished his coffee and folded the paper neatly before stacking it with the previous days' in his recycling area in the laundry room. He rinsed out the mug and set it in the sink, then turned around. He indulged himeself in a minute of mental freakout time before opening random cabinets until he found the small pottery bowl that Carrah had given him for last Christmas. He toted it upstairs with him; he'd just left it on the dresser when he heard the door open and Justin's unrestrained "hallooo" echoed up the stairs.

"Bedroom," he called back, and a minute later, Justin's head poked in.

"Oh, man," Justin said, as they went through the greeting ritual of slapping hands. "Scene of the crime. I didn't need to picture this."

"You were the one who came over here. What's up?"

Justin shrugged nonchalantly and toed the floor. "Nothing, really. Joey called and gave me the 411 about what's going on tonight, and I figured that you might want some company, since Chris pulled one of his usual disappearing acts. How're you taking it?"

"I'd like to know why everyone thinks that I'm the one in need of serious help here. I'm fine." Lance pulled a cloth-wrapped bundle out of his underwear drawer and unfolded it on top of his dresser. "Just getting a few things ready for tonight."

Justin watched with bright and interested eyes. "That's the stuff that the guy gave you, right? What's his name?"

"Kinrowan. Matthew Kinrowan, and yes, it is." Inside the cloth was another cloth pouch tied with a drawstring, a piece of paper with quickly sketched symbols, a tiny knife sheathed in leather, and a linen cloth stained ruddy brown; Lance tucked the paper into the back pocket of his jeans and started picking the knot out of the pouch with his fingernails. "You remember what you're supposed to do?"

"Yeah." Justin sat down on the bed. "You're going to go over it again for everyone, right?"

"Yeah." The pouch was filled with blue powder, and Lance emptied it into the bowl. He picked up the pair of scissors sitting on the dresser, leaned over to look in the mirror, and carefully clipped a lock of his own hair, adding that to the bowl. His stylist would just have to cope with the bare patch. "Do me a favor, will you? Head on down to the kitchen and pick up one of the chopsticks out of the drawer and a bottle of Evian out of the fridge."

"Sure thing." Justin eyed the bowl curiously, but headed on down the stairs anyway. Alone in the room -- he didn't really want to try to explain what he was doing -- Lance picked up last night's condoms from the dresser and carefully emptied their contents into the bowl as well. He'd just finished tossing them into the garbage in the bathroom and washing his hands when Justin returned.

"Aren't you supposed to be chanting something obscure when you're doing this sort of shit? Double, double, toil and trouble --"

"Don't say that." Lance turned around to face Justin, and took the bottle of water and the lacquered chopsticks from his hands. "Bad luck to quote that play."

"Right, sorry, I forgot." Justin ducked his head and sat down on the bed. "This is all just sort of weird. I mean, it's like you're mixing up some sort of crazy spell or shit."

Lance sighed, just a little. It was precisely what he'd been thinking. "Trust me, J, I know. I am just as weirded out by all of this as the rest of you guys. I'm just hiding all of it a little better, is all."

"JC wants to talk to your guy when this is all over and, like, ask him for creativity spells or something." Justin's eyes flicked over to the window, and then back to Lance. "I don't know. I still don't really believe in any of this, you know?"

"I don't know if I do either." Lance spit into the bowl, then picked up the knife from the dresser, unsheathed it -- it was made of obsidian, not metal -- and resolutely thought about something else. The skin of his palm parted beneath the blade, and he let a few drops of blood spot against the damp blue powder before picking up the linen cloth and pressing it against the wound to staunch the bleeding. He looked over at his shoulder at Justin, who was watching the whole process with a sort of sick fascination. "I'm glad that you said that to him last night, though. What you did. Even if this is all one huge acid trip and it all turns out to be nothing, I'm glad that you finally said it."

"I am too," Justin said. "I've been meaning to say it for forever. Years, even. But the time never quite seemed right, you know? I mean, it took me a while to see it, but once I did, there really isn't much of a way to bring that shit up. I mean, we all call each other brothers, and we are, but that's above and beyond the call of duty. I was a shit back then."

Lance laughed. "We both were." He opened the bottle of water and poured a little bit of it over the mess in the bottom of the bowl, stirring it with the chopstick. (Don't let metal touch it, he could hear Kinrowan's voice echoing in his memory. It won't ruin what you're building, but it will disturb its efficacy, and you'll be wanting every bit of help that you can get.) "Someday we'll both have children, and when they go through adolescence, we'll think back on what we put Chris through and finally understand." The woad was turning to paste; he added a little more water. "Seriously, though, J. I should have let you take my part in all of this. You're so much closer to him."

"It wouldn't have worked," Justin said. The set tone to his voice made Lance turn around. Justin was watching him, with that firm and serious expression that graced his face when he was saying something that really mattered. "You said that it had to be someone who loves him."

"We all love him," Lance said.

"No, man. We all love him. You love him. We talked it over when neither of you were around. Nobody's in love with him like you are. I love him, and sure I'd jump his bones if I got the chance, and he's the older brother I always wanted and the best friend I've ever had, but if there's going to be someone who needs to stand for him, it's going to be you. It's gotta be you."

Lance closed his eyes and tried to pretend that it didn't matter. "It's so nice to know," he said, "that you've been discussing my emotional life when I wasn't privy to the discussion."

Justin made a quick and impatient gesture. "Oh, lay off it. You know that we all talk about each other when we're not around all the time. Hell, you've done it. Seriously. You've been watching him since you were eighteen and wondering if you'd ever be cool enough for him, and I've got news for you: you're the only person who could handle him. And if you don't go for it when all of this is over, if you treat this like it was a few days fucking in the middle of extreme duress, I'm going to -- I don't know, hunt you down and kick your ass, or something."

Lance let the conversation slide away. The paste was reaching the consistency of paint, and he tipped in just a bit more water to get it the rest of the way there. "You could try," he said.

Justin snorted. "Try and succeed. Seriously, man. Don't let a good thing slip away just because you're too chickenshit to go for it, all right? I know where you live."

"You have a key to where I live. Come on, I have to go put this outside in the sunlight for a few hours."

Justin nodded, apparently content to let the conversational topic go. "Yeah, sure. You eaten yet? I missed lunch and you could probably stand to get the hell out of this house."

"Translation: You got Lance-sitting duty and you're hungry, so you're going to try to feed me even though I'm supposed to be fasting all day."

Justin just grinned. "All right, then, you can watch me eat. Come on."

-- * --

Chris didn't call. Lance hadn't really been expecting it -- Chris's standard mode of operation when something big was looming over him was to hide away in his house, getting ready to face it -- but he couldn't help feeling just a little worried about matters.

His standard mode of operation when something big was looming over him was to try to act as normally as possible, but he had to re-sort the laundry three times before he was sure that he hadn't left the red socks in with the white underwear.

"I brought the paintbrush without the metal tips," JC said when he showed up, and pressed it into Lance's hand. "Give me the paper to look over before I start."

Lance nodded and pulled the paper from his back pocket. "Sure. They're pretty simple."

JC nodded. "Yeah, I can do these." He looked down at the paper again, then back up at Lance, and his eyes crinkled in a smile that Lance thought was trying to be reassuring. "You like any of them? We could always head over to the tattoo place later. They'll have something to work from."

"You're supposed to be the one who talks us all out of getting more tattoos," Joey said, coming out of the kitchen with a glass of water. "I distinctly remember the responsible-adult lecture after Lance got his last one."

JC shrugged. "You know my motto, man. Do one thing out of character every day, so people don't start thinking you're predictable. Who's going to do mine?"

"I will," Lance said, and stripped off his shirt to present his skin as a canvas. "They're simple enough."

"Hold still," JC said, a minute later, as the paintbrush dipped in the woad traced the first glyphs down the side of Lance's face.

Lance started to scowl, and then stopped himself, not wanting to have to wash off the design and start again. "It tickles," he said, trying to move his mouth as little as possible.

"It's a paintbrush going over your skin, of course it's going to tickle. I said hold still."

Justin was leaning over the back of the couch and watching the whole process with interest. "That stuff is so gross," he said. "Why'd you have to put all that stuff in there?"

"It's an old idea," JC said, before Lance could answer. "That parts of you have power. There's probably spit in there, right, Lance? And blood, and hair. And something from Chris, too."

Lance made a noncommital noise. Justin screwed up his face, realizing what of Chris's must have made its way into the ingredients list, and Joey handed Justin the glass of water before he could make a comment. "How do you know that shit, C?" he asked, instead, after taking a drink.

JC was dividing his attention between the paper in Lance's lap and Lance's face, where he was drawing the symbols at the edge of Lance's hairline. "Did some reading this week," he said, then frowned and smudged lightly at a spot with his thumb before going over it again. Lance wondered how ridiculous he looked, and had to stop himself from laughing at the thought that he could put on a kilt and play William Wallace for the trick-or-treaters. "Knew some stuff about weird stuff already. But there's, like, a lot of good music from back then. Simple stuff, but universal. When all of this is over, I may keep listening to it. There's some stuff I wouldn't mind borrowing from."

"We could put out an album of traditional music," Joey suggested, only half-seriously, sitting on the back of the couch next to Justin. "Pop folk music. I bet we'd sell millions of copies."

"I bet we'd be laughed off the charts," Justin said resting his head on Joey's leg. Joey automatically started kneading the back of Justin's neck. Lance smiled to see it.

"Okay, I think that's the best I can do," JC said after another few minutes, and stepped back to study Lance's face, then nodded. "Where's the book with the other symbols?"

"Over on the table," Lance said, and nodded towards it. "There's a Post-it note on the pages you want."

JC picked up the book and flipped through it until he found the note with Lance's name, then looked back at Lance, apologetically. "This is really going to tickle like a son of a bitch." He bent down and began painting the glyph labeled as "love" over Lance's heart. It did tickle; Lance gritted his teeth.

As JC painted, Lance closed his eyes. He felt as though the room was getting sharper, more defined; each stroke of the paintbrush seemed to bring everything further into focus. "I think we should all make a resolution right now that we're not going to look in the mirror, and we're not going to tell each other how insanely stupid we look," he said as JC finished, and bent his neck to blow lightly on the woad against his skin. The moisture was cool in the air-conditioned living room.

"I kind of like it," JC said. "Old. Interesting. We should put it in our next stage show."

"Or we could just scrub it off the minute we get home, pray that the stains aren't too bad, and never speak of this again. C'mon, Justin, you're next." Lance gestured to the stool he'd been sitting on.

Justin made a face. "You didn't mention that it was going to stain. How long are we going to be wearing this shit?"

"We can wash it off when we get home," Lance said. He leaned back against the couch and watched JC tip Justin's face to one side with a hand on Justin's chin, studying and frowning, before starting in on the runes across Justin's skin. Lance blinked; as JC painted, Justin's face seemed to age, as though Lance was looking at a photograph of him taken ten years in the future.

"You okay?" Joey asked, and bumped a fist against Lance's bicep. "You're looking sort of startled."

Lance rubbed a hand over his eyes. "I'm okay," he said. "Just -- kinda seeing things, is all."

"It's that freaky shit again," Joey said, helpfully. "Matt said you were gonna see weird stuff until you came back to him and he told you how to block it out. Guess Chris isn't the only one who's a freak, huh?"

Lance tore his eyes from Justin's face and leaned over to cuff Joey upside the head. "Fucker," he said, affectionately. "You're not helping." But he was; Joey's kind and unrelenting normality made it all seem better for a minute, and when he looked back at Justin, all Lance saw was the familiar face, watching JC with an easy patience honed by years of waiting for make-up and wardrobe.

"Wait," Lance said, suddenly. JC turned, just before making the first stroke over Justin's heart.

"What?"

"Not that one." Lance's eyebrows drew together; he wasn't sure why it was wrong, but it was wrong. "Here." He slid the book over to him, and flipped the pages until he found the one that felt right. "This one."

JC looked at it, and then nodded. Rather than marking Justin with "brother", he limned the rune for "son". Justin's head and shoulders were clouded with a halo of milky brilliance that Lance knew only he could see as he tilted his head down to see what JC had drawn on him.

"How did you decide?" Justin seemed interested as he lifted his fingertips to his chest, stopping just short of touching the damp woad. Lance wondered if he felt it, whatever "it" was, if he could feel the power of the symbols on his skin the way that Lance could. "Who got which symbol, I mean."

"I ... I don't really know. Kinrowan told me to pick the one that summed up each of us. Well, each of us the way we relate to Chris. Or the way he sees us. It's -- I don't really know how to describe it. It's just what feels right." Lance shook his head. "I couldn't tell you. It just is."

"Going all mystic on us," Justin said, but there was a smile on his lips as he said it. For the first time, he seemed as though he'd lost his skepticism. "You going to start doing voodoo spells on the bus, or something?"

"Maybe he can find a spell to make your socks stop stinking," Joey said, and pulled off his shirt. "Outta the chair. My turn." Joey's rune was "protector". As JC finished drawing it, Lance could see a featureless form, made of light like the opposite of shadow, standing behind him with its hands on Joey's shoulders.

Closing his eyes didn't seem to help anymore. He did it anyway; the room was replaced by darkness, but against the velvet insides of his eyelids, he could see the outlines of each of the others anyway, like a stronger version of afterimages. It would have made his head hurt, if his head hadn't been hurting all week, and he drifted inside his own mind and his own pain for a few minutes.

"Lance," JC said, from just next to his ear, and closed a warm hand over Lance's wrist. Lance jerked slightly and opened his eyes. "It's my turn. Do you want me to get someone else to do it?"

"No. I'm okay, it's just --" Lance blinked again a few times, because JC was a riot of colors, all swirled and bright and rainbow. It flared for half a second, and then clicked off, and then back again.

"Yeah," JC said, and nodded, as though he knew precisely what Lance was talking about. He turned around and looked at Joey and Justin. "Hey, guys, can one of you pretend that you've forgotten something vital and important in the kitchen, and drag the other one out to go and get it with him? And it'll take you like five minutes to find it?"

"Gotta go, baby's on fire," Joey said, automatically, and grabbed Justin by the waistband of his jeans. When they were safely out of earshot, JC turned back to Lance. Lance winced slightly as the rainbows came back.

"Yeah," JC said again, and smiled. "First time it happened to me I thought I was going bugfuck. Here. Close your eyes again."

Lance opened his mouth as though to say something -- the universe had just gotten eminently more strange, as though the universe needed any more strangeness on top of an already fucking unbelievable week -- but JC put a finger on his lips. "Just do it, Lance," he said. There was warmth and love in that tone. "If I'd known, I would have shown you earlier, but you didn't mention that you were seeing stuff. Come on, just close your eyes."

Lance shut his mouth and closed his eyes. A second later, JC's fingertips settled at the outer edge of his eyelids, and the odd sense of unreality vanished like a burst balloon. It took the lights and colors with it, leaving him feeling drifting and disoriented. JC's voice was low and soothing as he said, "The guy who taught me this couldn't see stuff, but he had other things to block. Take a deep breath." Lance did. "And another. Find where you're breathing from. It's easy, we're singers, we know how to breathe from the center."

After a few more breaths, Lance could feel it, like a warm and sleepy pool of radiant energy curled in his belly. JC's voice stayed soft. "Once you've got it, find the spot around you that feels just like it. Not me. There'll be another one."

With his eyes closed, and the light gone, Lance could sense the things around him, the way that one only notices a soft noise when the loud noise is gone. JC felt like a nap in sunlight coming through the window in winter. For half a minute, he just wanted to lean against JC and hold on, let JC soothe away his worries. But he pulled his attention away from that warmth and comfort, and realized that JC was right; somewhere in among the disorientation there was a distinct sense of "down", and somewhere in among the sense of "down" there was a sense of "stable-bedrock-home-safe". "Yeah," he said, and his voice sounded odd in his own ears.

"Just sort of, like, reach for it. Not with your real hands, but with your mental hands. And sort of -- pick up energy from it, and bring it up to that spot in your center."

It was harder than JC made it sound; the spot kept moving, just as Lance thought he'd found it. "Yeah," he said, again.

"This is really just the quick and dirty hack," JC said. "You're going to have to learn the real way to do this really soon, because you can't leave it like this for long. But take that spot, and that energy, and push it around you like a force-field. Imagine, like, a big brick wall surrounding you. All around, not just in front. Top and bottom, too, like a bubble, to put up a block."

JC was incapable of sticking to one metaphor. The sense of disorientation was slowly ebbing, though, and Lance tried to put up the blocks the way that JC had described. After a second, he realized that his mind was taking the word "block" literally; he was imagining building blocks, like the kind that he'd played with as a child, forming a reassuring wall between him and the rest of the world.

"Yeah," JC said, after a second, and Lance would be damned if he didn't sound like a proud parent. "You've got it. Now just tell it to stay when you take your attention off of it, and open your eyes."

Lance opened his eyes after another moment, to see JC smiling at him with that crinkly-eyed smile that was known to melt hearts. And nothing more than that. "Woah," he said. And then felt stupid.

"'No one can be told what the Matrix is, you have to see it for yourself,'" JC quoted, and then grinned a little more. "Better?"

Lance blinked a few more times. "How the fuck do you know how to do that?"

JC shrugged. "Used to think I was going nuts until Tony noticed that I was flinching at something that wasn't there. He taught me. I don't know where he picked it up. More things under heaven and earth, Horatio, and so forth. If I'd been paying more attention to you this week -- well. I just thought that you were, like, having Chris rub off on you or something."

"You saw Chris? I mean, you saw the way he glows?" Lance frowned.

"Yeah. Didn't know what it meant, but some people just do that. You'll figure it out eventually." JC shook his head. "I didn't know anything about the faerie stuff or anything. All I know is that sometimes I see things that aren't really there, or something. It's, like, another set of senses. You can tell who's really spiritually connected, who's got a strong heart. Look at the other guys sometimes, when we're all together. It's pretty."

"Gosh," came Joey's voice, loudly, from the hall. "Justin, I'm really glad that you came into the kitchen with me to help me find a bottle of water, despite the fact that I've been in Lance's kitchen about as much as I've been in my own! I really hope that the guys don't mind that we were both gone when we come back into the living room in another thirty seconds!"

JC smiled a little more and dropped his hands from Lance's face. "We'll talk about it later. I want to talk to that guy you met. He can probably teach us both an awful lot."

Lance just had time to nod before Joey and Justin came back into the room, Joey whistling loudly as he walked. Lance looked at them both, and all they looked like was themselves.

"Come on," Lance said, and picked up the paintbrush that JC had left in the bowl of woad. "Let's finish this."

JC's rune was "soul". Lance had picked it earlier, but hadn't realized how right he was.

-- * --

"Are you sure we've got the right spot?" Justin asked for the hundredth time, stuffing his fists into his jeans pockets. It had been warm enough that none of them had thought to bring a jacket, but the breeze was cool and standing still left them all chilly.

"This is where Kinrowan said," Joey said. He and Lance were standing next to the scraggle of bushes on either side of the pathway that ran through the park. JC and Justin were in the middle of the pathway, waiting. "We're right by one of their places of power. Lance said he could feel it. They'll be by, at midnight."

"Yeah," Lance said, distracted. He could feel what Kinrowan had been talking about; there was something flowing underneath the ground, something running fast and loose and free and waiting to be tapped. He stuffed his hands into his pockets as well, to avoid reaching for it. He didn't want to know what would happen if he did. "This is it. This is the place. I just --"

"Lance." Lance looked up to see Justin looking back at him, composed and serene and mature in a way that he'd been once, and then lost for a while and found again. "Dude. It's cool. Remember, you're the scary competent one. Be scary and competent. I know you can."

"I hear them," Joey said, his head picking up and tilting so that he could hear better. "There's bikes coming. I can hear them. Far off, but getting here fast."

"Showtime," JC said, and held out a hand. There was a brief pause, and then they all reached out at the same time, grasping each other at random, the way they always did. "Let's rock."

"Let's do it," Lance said, and took one last look at the other three before nodding and melting back into the bushes. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, running through every single stage-fright exercise Justin had ever taught him, back in the days when he'd been a scared young kid and Justin, even two years younger than he was, had been so far more ready for fame and fortune than Lance was still.

JC and Justin never let go of each other's hands, just stood in the center of the path waiting. In the half-moonlight, Lance could see Justin's knuckles, white against his skin as he held on. Justin was the one who was in the most immediate danger. Lance had offered, but Justin wouldn't hear of it.

A minute later, the riders came into view, and Lance's world exploded.

He noticed the bikes first; top-of-the-line, he thought, with the limited knowledge of motorcycles he'd picked up from hanging around Justin and Chris. Black leather, brown leather, chrome and metal. The riders were in double file, with one figure on a black motorcycle in front. They looked like any group of riders Lance had ever seen, anonymous and pale in their riding leathers.

And then his wall of blocks cracked and crumbled, and the landscape around him blazed forth with light.

If he squinted, just a little, just enough to stave off what felt like incipient blindness, he could see what he had seen a minute before; a group of bikers, perhaps in a tighter formation than was usual, riding incongruously down a park's paved pathway in double-file. And then he tilted his head just a little more, turned his eyes just right, and the bikes were horses, tall and shining and standing proud and true, and the people on the horses were just as tall and shining -- pale, ethereal, armored and blank-faced and the most beautiful things he'd ever seen. For half a second, he wondered what it would be like to ride with them.

At the front of the column were the horses of black; behind them were the horses of brown. And behind them, dressed in a robe of white and riding on a white horse, was Chris, with his face turned down and his expression blank. His hands rested on the pommel of his horse's saddle, as though they had been placed there by someone other than himself and he hadn't thought to move them.

The single rider at the front of the column was a woman, curved and shapely with a mass of black hair and cruel, dead eyes. Lance could only look at her for a moment before he had to squint again and turn his eyes away, and when he looked back, that strange sight had clicked off and he saw only the motorcyclist again. She stopped her bike (her horse?) inches away from Justin, and looked down her elegant and aristocratic nose to stare him directly in the eye.

Justin took a deep breath, dropped JC's hand, and opened his mouth to speak. Justin had always been the one of them to learn his lines the quickest, and he'd been given the script ahead of time. His voice was calm and sure as he recited the words: "You have something that belongs to us, and we have come by the old laws to let you know that we will not let you have it."

"The old laws no longer hold true," she said, and Lance nearly wept at her voice. There was a running river in it, and the bays of a wolf-pack scenting its prey, and the heavy and ponderous scent of roses on a cloying and pellucid summer night. Every voice he'd ever heard was a dim and distant shadow of this one.

Justin swallowed heavily, and behind his back, his hand crept back into JC's for strength. Lance thought that he could almost smell Justin's fear. His tone didn't waver, though. "The old laws cannot be denied. We stand before you bearing the marks of air and fire, water and earth, and the One Who stands above them all, and we say to you, he shall not be yours."

Venom crept into Justin's last five words; Chris looked up at the sound of it, as though it had taken a moment for the knowledge that he was not alone to seep through the haze. I am about to do the most stupid thing I have ever done in my entire life, Lance thought, with extreme clarity, and then made himself stop thinking at all.

"Chris," he said, and stepped from the bushes to stand at Chris's side. The sight chose that moment to return in full force, and Chris blazed with light and power.

His voice seemed to take a minute for Chris to process, too, and it was a long few seconds before Chris turned his head and looked down at Lance. The first signs of hope flared in his eyes, and then died again. Lance shook his head and held up a hand, reaching for the Chris he saw on top of the horse, and not the Chris he saw on the motorcycle. "Chris," he said again, loading it with as much command as he could manage, and as the Queen turned her head to see what was going on behind her, Chris reached down and took Lance's hand tightly.

For half a second, the earth seemed to heave under Lance's feet, and the stars seemed to stop in the sky. "I love you," he said, as plainly as he could, and then leaned backwards hard.

They landed on the ground together in a tangle of arms and legs. There was a heartbeat where they might have gotten up together, dusted themselves off and sorted out which limbs belonged to whom, and it felt like the indrawn breath before a scream. Lance rolled over smoothly and wrapped his arms around Chris's body, as tightly as he could, and Chris's arms came up automatically to wind around Lance's neck.

And then the universe exploded.

One minute, Lance could feel Chris's vertebrae underneath his fingertips. The next, something slid smoothly between his fingers, dry and scaly. He clutched at the snake automatically, pinning the back of its head between his thumb and forefinger just as it was rearing back to strike. Chris, he thought, clear and shocking in the sort of Zen no-mind of absolute terror and absolute determination, this is Chris, I can't hurt him, this is Chris. He rolled to his side automatically, to avoid crushing the serpent.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Joey slip from the bushes, place a hand on the tassles of the leather hanging from the handlebars of the bike that Chris had been riding (around the mane of the horse that had borne Chris) and slice through them with the obsidian knife. He moved quickly and with purpose, and slipped the strands of leather (hair) into his pocket before crossing the path to stand at Lance's side.

"He is mine," the Queen said, as Lance clutched the tail of the snake in his other hand. "And you will not have him."

One minute, Lance was holding scales and sinew. The next, rough skin turned to fur underneath his fingers, and something slammed into the side of his head with the force of an anvil. Can't let go, can't let go, ran through his head like a mantra, and he rolled over again, trying to cover the bear's body with his own and pin down those deadly paws. Another weight hit the backs of his knees, and dimly he realized that Joey had flung himself over the bear's lower half to lend his weight to Lance's own.

Lance was the one who needed to hold on, though, and he dug his fingers into the bear's fur, trying to keep his head up and back and away from the teeth. He lost his balance, had no leverage to hold himself up, and slammed his jaw down hard against the creature's breast. Just as he was about to close his eyes and wait for those teeth to close on his throat, someone skidded past him on the path, going down hard in the dirt. A touch ghosted past his hair, and he looked up just in time to see Justin's fingers lock beneath the bear's chin and yank it up and backwards, hard.

One of the pale and distant people cried out three notes, like a hunting call.

One minute, Lance had his fingers twined in rough fur. The next, his grip closed hard on a wild and flowing mane. A dull roaring sounded in his ears, and he realized that it was the noise that the lion was making -- that Chris was making, howling like a beast that had scented its prey. One paw flailed as the lion tried to shake Lance free, and three drops of Justin's blood fell on Lance's cheek as Justin flew backwards to land, crumpled, on the ground next to them.

Lance rolled with the lion's movements as well as he could, and scissored his legs frantically to try and struggle them loose from where they had been pinned beneath the lion's body. A hand closed around his one free ankle and pulled, rougly. Lance knew that JC would apologize for it in the morning, but it got him free, and grimly he pushed as hard as he could to knock the jungle cat off its paws and get one leg over it to once more cover it with his body.

He could hear his own ragged gasps in his ears, over the lion's wild roar. Hold on, he thought, and for an endless wrestling struggle, thought that he couldn't possibly be strong enough.

"What we claim," said the Queen, distant and majestic, "is ours. You shall not prevail."

One minute Lance's arms were full of a spitting, roaring cat. The next, the pain receptors in his skin flared to full and agonizing life, and he had to override the instinct to jerk his hands back. The lion had turned to blazing, white-hot steel beneath his touch. The sweet and sickly smell of scorching flesh filled his nostrils. He was crying as his hands cracked and burned, and it was the worst pain he'd ever felt, raw and agonizing and oh, God, he wanted to let go, he wanted to let go more than anything he'd ever wanted in the world, and he knew that he couldn't. Joey's voice was screaming in his ears, and he might be screaming along with it, but he couldn't tell.

Chris, he thought desperately, Chris, dear sweet suffering Christ in Heaven, ChrisChrisChrisChris, he'd known it was going to be bad but not this bad, not like this, and the blisters on the palms of his hands were splitting and weeping and he would. not. let. go. With the last little scrap of consciousness he could summon over the pain, he clung to the memories. Chris opening up beneath him like a hothouse flower, Chris looking at him over his kitchen table, Chris tilting his head back for Lance's kiss, Chris reaching for him Chris's arms around his neck Chris's skin under his lips Chris in a hotel hallway in Germany lost and alone and terrified and someone was saying something but he couldn't hear it through the rush and roar of pain that sounded like the ocean and

one minute Lance's hands were on fire. The next, his hands closed on nothing, and he was sobbing at the thought that he had failed, he had let go, before he inhaled sharply and his lungs and throat seared and scorched, because he was holding onto nothing but a blazing brand of fire. He could feel the rest of his skin bubbling, and through that hurtcharringsearingagony was the sharp sensation of someone slapping at his face, and then something heavy and rough slammed into him and they were rolling off the path and down the hill and through the bushes which flared into flame behind them and into the blessed and icy water of the filthy and stagnant pond at the side of the pathway and

When he could think again, he was holding Chris's naked body against his chest, and JC was holding both their heads out of the water, and dear God his skin was screaming so loudly that it was the greatest shock of his life to look down and see his palms unmarred by blister or blood. He realized after a second that he was naked too, his clothes having burned off of him in those last few pain-soaked minutes. Chris was unearthly still for one minute, and then he shivered, like a full-body contraction, and reared back and out of Lance's arms before Lance could stop him. God, no, was all that Lance could think, but even as his hands closed on empty air, he could hear Justin's shaky voice behind them, clogged with pain and tears, reciting as though by rote.

"We have said you will not have him. And we have held what is ours. By air and fire, by water and earth, and by the One Who stands above them all, you have lost and you will not take him."

We won, Lance thought, into the sudden silence as the pain began to ebb. He turned his head to see the Queen, tall and pale and angry, standing at the edge of the pathway and looking down the hill to where the three of them sat in the muck.

"Had I known," said the Queen, looking directly at Chris. She spoke as though she had all the time in the world. "Had I known that thy love would steal thee away. Had I known. I would have taken out your heart, and put in a heart of stone."

There was threat in that voice, the calm creeping promise of someone in whose power it is to carry out the threat that is being made, and Lance closed his hand around Chris's wrist. Chris shuddered at the touch, but didn't pull away; ripples pooled and shimmered around him as he half-fell sideways to land against Lance's chest. Like a dead weight, Lance thought, and then shivered himself, and brought his other arm around Chris's shoulders. JC wrapped his arms around them both, as though he could be their shield.

Above them and to the side of the woman, Justin coughed, sharply, and took a step forward. He nearly went down under his own weight, and Joey lept to his side, leaning against him even as Justin leaned against Joey. The blood from the swipe of the lion's claws trickled down Justin's cheek, and his clothes were covered in dirt from when he had flung himself down next to Lance and bear-Chris. Justin lifted the back of his hand to press against the wound and brought his skin away stained with red. "Look, bitch," he said, and there was nothing of recitation in his tone anymore, just raw white anger. "You missed the fucking memo. Get out of here. You lost. Game fucking over."

"That is two." The woman ignored Justin; her words fell, neatly and well-patterned, against the night sky. Her voice was calm and uninflected, but her eyes spoke of rage banked deep. "Two who have slipped through our grasp. There will not be another." Her gaze landed on Lance's, and that strange sight shifted behind his eyelids again. He saw the fury wrapped around her shoulders like a halo, and he saw the threat in her eyes, and he saw his own death in her words.

"Damn right there won't be, lady," Joey rasped. Somehow, despite the difference in height, Justin had managed to bury his face in Joey's chest, holding on and just shaking. Joey glared at her over Justin's head, and Lance thought, distantly, that he would be able to see the hatred in Joey's own eyes even without that curse of vision. "He's ours, and you're not going to get your hands on him again."

"Love can not sustain you forever," the woman said, dispassionately. She was speaking to Chris, and Lance turned slightly, as though he could save Chris by putting his own body between Chris and her venom. "Should it fail, you will fall."

Joey shook his head. "By the old laws," he said, so quietly that Lance could barely hear him. It should have been Justin's line, but they all knew it. Just in case one of them hadn't made it through. "By the old laws. Twice we have bound you by air and fire, by water and earth, and by the One Who stands above them all whose command even you may not deny. And thrice we abjure you, by that name which may not be spoken. Be gone from here, and leave us what we have won."

JC, silent until then, stood up in the pond. His own clothes were rags as well, damp rags that clung to his skin. "Go home," he said, and there was so much kindness in his voice that Lance had to choke back tears. "There's nothing left for you here. Go home."

"Guard well your heart," the Queen replied, and drew a cloak out of nowhere to wrap it around her shoulders. Lance shivered. Her eyes were resting directly on his. "You think him yours, but what Faerie takes, Faerie does not let go of lightly."

And with that, they were gone, between one blink and the next.

Joey, ever practical, was the first one to break the dazed silence. "I've got some spare clothes in my trunk," he said, as Justin coughed sharply again. "Come on. You guys are soaked. Let's get you out of that disgusting water and into some clean and dry clothes." Gently, he eased Justin away from clinging to him. "Do you guys need a hand getting out of there?"

Chris unfolded himself from Lance, slowly, and Lance's heart caught in his throat, because he'd never wanted to see Chris, not like this -- not wet and naked and helpless, with fear in his eyes. Chris was the strong one, Chris was the one who always knew what to do, and now he looked back at Lance small and thin and bedraggled. "Is it over?" he asked, the first words he'd spoken, and his voice was so rough from what must have been screaming that Lance wondered if there might be permanent damage, when all was said and done.

"It's done," JC said, and leaned down to give Chris a hand in standing up. "Come on. We'll need to be out of here before the cops show up."

"It might be fun to try to explain," Justin said, trying to make a joke, and pressed the back of his hand against his cheek again. "The tabloids would get a kick out of it."

Lance pushed himself to his feet and shivered as the cool air brushed over his wet skin; it felt almost as though the breeze were tugging at him, trying to pull him away. Automatically, his hand sought Chris's, twining their fingers together. The thought of not holding on to Chris felt foreign and uncomfortable.

Chris looked down at their joined hands, and then looked back up at Lance. "She said I still belong to her," he said, and his tone was bleak.

"You belong to you," Lance said, softly, and resisted the urge to add "but you're going to have to learn to share with me".

-- * --

Kelly, thank God, had years of experience in dealing with boyband antics with equanimity. When five men -- three damp, one bloody and filthy, and one just plain exhausted -- showed up in her kitchen on Halloween night, painted with woad and wearing each other's clothes, all she did was pass out towels and mugs of tea, send them to the living room, caution them strongly against waking up the baby, and kiss Joey on the forehead before retiring to bed.

Joey straddled Justin's knees, with the first-aid kit spread out over the coffee-table, and scrubbed at the woad markings with a washcloth before tending to the wound on his cheek. Justin winced with each touch, pulling away instinctively, until Joey cuffed him upside the head. "Quit squirming, you fucker, it's not that bad, it can't hurt that much. For the love of God, Lance's hands were on fire, all this is is a little cut."

Justin stilled immediately, his gaze snapping over to Lance, who was slumped on the couch with Chris, boneless and needy, draped over him and nestled in the curve of his arm. "Jesus, Lance, I didn't even think --"

"It's okay," Lance said, and uncurled slightly, just enough to shift Chris's weight. He could tell that Chris was wide awake, but his eyes were closed. "It's not. It wasn't that bad." He was lying, but he'd made the resolution in the car, when Chris hadn't seemed to remember anything that had happened, that he would never speak a word of it to Chris. He wouldn't trap Chris with obligations, or with gratitude. He held up his hands, smooth and unmarked, to show Justin. "It wasn't. It wasn't real. Or it was, but it didn't scar. It doesn't even hurt anymore."

"Drink your tea, Lance," JC said quietly. He was tucked up on the other side of the couch, his knees pulled tightly up to his chest, and his toes just barely touched Chris's, as though he wanted to hold on but knew that Chris would want his space. "And then I'll drive you both home, and you can take a shower, and we'll all sleep until sunset tomorrow."

"JC," Lance said, and then stopped. He searched for a way to say to JC that he knew that JC had been the one to grab onto them both, onto Lance and the blaze of flame that Chris had been, and roll them into the water. He couldn't. Couldn't think of a way to say "thank you", any more than he could thank Justin for nearly dislocating his knee to get to Lance's side in time to protect him from the bear's jaws, any more than he could thank Joey for being the one to keep his head through the whole thing and end it all when it was over.

"It's okay," JC said, and smiled. "I know. I love you too. I love all of you."

That hadn't been what Lance was trying to say, but it was what he meant, and it was enough.

-- * --

The shower in Lance's bathroom clicked off, and Chris appeared a minute later, clothed in a pair of Lance's sweatpants that were absurdly too long for him and a towel around his shoulders. The water had done him good; he was beginning to look like himself again. "You said that you loved me," Chris said, abruptly, without preamble. His voice was still scratchy, but Lance could hear that it was already starting to heal. "Before it all went down."

Lance closed his eyes for a minute, wishing more than anything that Chris had forgotten that part of things as well, and then opened them again to meet Chris's. "Yeah," he said. It had been a long fucking night, and he couldn't keep the detached tone he'd been deliberately using all week, and it was all right there for Chris to hear.

They stood there for a long moment, Lance already in the bed, Chris in the doorframe of the bathroom, just looking at each other, until Chris smiled like sunrise. "Good," he said, and dropped the towel on the floor. "Because I'd hate to think this shit was unrequited." He climbed over Lance in the bed, all elbows and knees and bones and warmth and skin, and once again it was just like coming home.

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