I am tired, I am weary
I could sleep for a thousand years
A thousand dreams that would awake me
Different colors made of tears

Rain King
Chris is the queen of California, and Justin is the king of the rain. (Also see: the Justin Timberlake Is Not A God Remix by Hayley)

[ Justin is so thin that you can see the light right through him if you squint your eyes right. Maybe that's the only way Justin ever sees the sun anymore. ]

twentythree
Written for the 2003 Don We Now Our Gay Apparel challenge: Lance and JC manage to take twenty-three hours on December 23.

[ It feels kind of silly and decadent to meet up in LA for a single day, but what's the good of being famous if you can't be silly and decadent every now and then? ]

Borderlines
Just take your fast car and keep on driving.

[ He hadn't been planning on sleeping, but at around nine in the morning the world had gone all camera-click, sleep deprivation layering on top of an already bone-deep exhaustion to turn the road into single stills jerking along at an uncertain and uncomfortable slow-fast-slow-fast frame rate. ]

Spindle (the You Are Not Your Fucking Khakis Remix)
A remix of MI's Spindle, for the 2004 We Invented the Remix challenge. JC is fucked up and he doesn't care. JC is fucked up and Joey cares too much.

[ There's a spot on the ceiling, raised and uneven, a single nail-pop thrusting through the plaster or whatever they make ceilings of these days. He can only see it when there's a hand on his throat and he's fighting to get enough air to breathe. ]

Tower of Song
I was born like this, I had no choice, I was born with the gift of a golden voice. I swear it's not a songfic.

[ He can almost see it, Justin with his head bent down over the guitar, watching his fingers the way that he always does if he doesn't yet have the progression written bone-deep. The light in the lounge would be off, the only illumination coming from streetlights and the track-lighting running along the edges of the aisle. ]

Not As Smart As You Require
With apologies to Voltaire and Mike Doughty, Britney truly does live in the best of all possible worlds.

[ She doesn't understand half the language and she can't keep half the characters straight and she doesn't know why half of them are supposed to be such great books, but she's never backed down in her entire life and she's not going to stop now, not until she can point at the 100 Greatest Books list that Fe found her and say that she's read all of them. ]

She Tells Her Love While Half Asleep
Every artist needs a muse. Written for Symptoms of Love, the Robert Graves challenge.

[ There's a song in everything, if you just look with the right eyes. ]

With Honorable Mention For Whatever We Meant
Written for the 100 Ways challenge. Explicit and adult. JC and Chris get a little hands-on practice.

[ "You never told me," Chris said. His hand pressed against the base of JC's neck, right against the one vertebra that the chiropractor could never get back into place. JC didn't even bother pretending to misunderstand what Chris was talking about; there could have only been one thing. ]

This Is Not The Love Scene
The air I breathe is filtered through a thousand sets of lungs. How To Be Justin Timberlake In Thirty Easy Steps.

[ Sometimes Justin's life feels like a movie, a documentary or an arthouse flick or a summer blockbuster production with a budget well into eight figures. Someday he thinks he will look around and someone will be there with a clapboard yelling "cut", and everything will transform into something new and strange, and three weeks later he will be on a different set, speaking as someone else, playing another role. ]

Seventy-Five Miles an Hour (in the slow lane)
JC, Lance, and a romance with the road.

[ "You'd better hope that we don't have a wreck," Lance says, sneaking a glance over to where JC is sitting with his feet up on the dashboard, leaving toe-prints on the inside of the windshield. "Will you sit like a normal human being, please?" ]

Ten Bucks Says
Lance loses a bet. Justin's the one who loses his cool. Written for Lily's "Boys In Their Dresses" challenge.

[ He should have been able to let it go. It was just a bet; they'd all done stupid things on bets or dares over the years, most of which would make a comfortable footnote on their Behind the Music special in another ten years or so, or whenever the statute of limitations had expired. ]

Have You Seen Me Lately?
Because some things just aren't a choice. In my head, this is the sequel to Rain King, because you can't get much more Timbertrick than Counting Crows.

[ Justin's heard it a thousand times: different verses, same chorus, but he doesn't mind, because he always feels better when he can sing along with the refrain. ]

Don't Fall Through The Stars
Ten minutes or so in the past turned out differently, and now Chris is sitting in a diner in Atlantic City at four in the morning when Justin's having a really bad night.

[ 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. ]

On The Cover Of The Rolling Stone
It's all designed to blow our minds, but our minds won't really get blown like the blow that'll getcha when you get your picture on the cover of the Rolling Stone. Sequel to Don't Fall Through The Stars.

[ Rainbow House is one part homeless shelter, one part adult-education center, one part day-care facility, one part counseling service and crisis intervention center, one part community arts program, and entirely unlike anything I've ever encountered before. I'm surprised to find myself having so much fun that I almost forget why I'm here: to interview Dr. Christopher Kirkpatrick. ]

Betting On The Wrong Team
As in, Chris is. And I don't mean with the hockey. For Kim, mickeym, for her birthday, and only a few months late.

[ "Furnishing alcohol to minors is a violation of state and federal law punishable by a lot of really bad shit," Chris said, and handed over the can. ]

I Bet You Think This Song Is About You (the grin without a cat remix)
Done for the 2005 We Invented the Remix challenge; original story by zvi can be found here. Justin's seeing things. Either he's going insane, or he already went and it's taken him this long to notice.

[ Even the inside of Lance's briefcase was organized, Justin thought sourly, glancing at it. Pens over here in this pocket. Pencils over there in that pocket. Paperback copy of whatever political science book Lance was reading over lunch tucked neatly next to sparkly Britney Spears spiral-bound notebook. ]

PR139612: The Case of the White Rose Bandit
Written for the 2005 Don We Now Our Gay Apparel challenge. Justin's a DC Metro cop who catches a tricky case; JC's the senator's son who might be the one to help crack it.

[ "This guy's smart, skilled, and he's got balls of fucking steel to taunt people like this," Justin said. "He doesn't just rob them; he robs them and leaves his calling card." ]

Reclaiming
Written for the 2005 Don We Now Our Gay Apparel challenge. Justin's willing to let Chris run, but sooner or later it's time to rein him in.

[ He doesn't say anything, but when Justin catches his wrist in one hand, turns it over and runs the pad of his thumb along the ink and skin, he doesn't pull away. ]

[ A series of unconnected fairy tales. ]

Heart of Stone, Eyes of Tree
Chris is lost, and Lance goes to find him. A fairy tale in eight parts.

[ From that point they all seemed to gravitate around Chris, like he was the source of warmth and heat and they were all freezing. ... If Lance sometimes sat up at night and wondered where, precisely, the tempo had all changed, he never thought of a night in a hotel room in Germany and the water dripping from Chris's hair. ]

As May Change To Be
A placeholder listing; the five stories written to make the sixth story make sense. If you want to figure out the sixth story on your own, when it's done, don't read these.

Please Master
Lance walks in on an intimate moment and doesn't leave afterwards. Pretty much just an excuse for porn. Written for the Queer Shoulder to the Wheel challenge. Contains BDSM themes, though more on the B&D than the S&M, and rated NC-17.

[ Justin sounded disgusted. "Nobody's beating me up, I'm not in need of any sort of intervention, and you're, you know, really intruding on personal time, so if you wouldn't mind fucking off?" He crossed his arms over his chest. "Door's right behind you, man." ]

Drown Out the Voices, Drown Out the Noise
Chris realizes, a little too late, that he might be in over his head. Contains heavy SM content. Adult and explicit.

[ It was all in the wrist. It always had been. Chris swung again, and this time he connected, whoosh-slap of suede striking skin, and that one felt better. More precise. He sent the flogger dancing again, and the third set of lines landed exactly where he'd intended for them to land, overlapping the edges of the second with less than a quarter-inch to spare. Yes; that was it. It had been so long since he'd gotten the chance to work with someone like this, someone he wasn't simply trying to teach a lesson. ]

Rake at the Gates of Hell
Lance has a few talents that don't appear on his official biography. Sh'ma Yisrael indeed. Written for the Sold Your Soul challenge.

[ It works like this: You hate it more than anything you could imagine, and if someone showed up on your doorstep tomorrow and told you that he could take it all away from you, you think that you would shut the door in his face and never once look back. ]

Through A Glass, Darkly
Lance is in Russia, and JC's left to mind the store. Easy enough, except in the way it's totally not.

[ It's in the blood. It's all in the blood. ]

The Many-World Theory of Quantum Mechanics
Five things that never happened to Lance Bass, Magus.

[ Naked I came to Carthage, he thinks. O Lord, thou pluckest me out. ]

Lies My Parents Told Me
Lance rushes in where angels fear to tread and thinks about his childhood. The author merrily steals the title from Joss Whedon. Written for the You Taste Like Honey, Honey challenge.

[ At first he'd wondered if everyone could see it. When he'd realized it was just him, he started seriously considering the possibility that he was simply crazy. ]

Augmented Fifth
JC can find harmony in the strangest places. (Also read: The Rainy Day No Shame Straight-Up Pornography Remix by Shine)

[ JC has perfect absolute pitch. It's just one of the things that they all rely on ... They've all got perfect relative pitch, it's sort of a requirement in this line of work, but JC is the only one of them who can name the note and sing it back to them. ]

All Your Mental Armor
Lance can't dance. Or so he thinks. JC and Justin try to prove him wrong.

[ Justin was just sitting on the floor watching, a little smile on his face, and Lance was virtually certain that no matter what fucked-up relationship rules JC and Justin were using, watching your semi-kinda-almost boyfriend hitting on one of your bandmates should have rated at least a spark of jealousy. ]

Never Get Far
JC and Justin. A DDR machine. A boardwalk. Some Bryan Adams. (The morning after, which contains less Bryan Adams and more sand in uncomfortable places: To Last Forever by SarahQ.)

[ But it's kind of nice to be in the middle of a press of people who aren't waving pictures and CDs and t-shirts to be signed, really. It's dark out but the boardwalk lights are bright and shiny and five or six radio stations are fighting it out for supremacy and he can hear screams and cheers from the roller coaster further out on the beach and for a little while, just a little while, it's all normal. ]

White Noise
Chris wonders how he missed the fact that Justin's a little fucked in the head.

[ Once he realizes what Justin's doing, Chris kicks himself for not noticing earlier. Kicks himself hard, with steel-toed boots, except that sounds right up Justin's alley, doesn't it? ]

Solo
JC tries to remember that "solo" means "solo". Written for Small Change: A JC Challenge.

[ forgive us our hangovers / as we forgive all those who continue to hang over against us / and lead us not into temptation / but deliver us from evil / and someone give us all a ride home ]

The Bathroom Vignettes

[ Written with SarahQ; a back-and-forth series, a dabbling in brevity. ]

Ficlet Index

[ A Miscellany. ]

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