fifteen

Lance leans on the doorbell again. Chris has obviously been here since the last time Lance was around, because JC's doorbell is ringing "Quit Playing Games With My Heart". Last time it had been "Hey Mickey". JC never changes it on his own, no matter how annoying Chris gets with it, and Tyler thinks it's the funniest thing he's ever heard. "Come on, Jayce," he mutters under his breath, and taps out the rhythm of "even if I could turn back time, impossible though it may be" on the bell. No answer.

He eventually gives up. Either JC is sound asleep, or isn't home. He'd lay money on the former. He digs his cell phone out of his back pocket and leans against the door as he dials memory two. JC picks up just as it's about to go to voice mail and mumbles something unintelligible.

"Jayce," Lance says patiently. He's used to dealing with JC in the morning, even when the morning is three o'clock in the afternoon. "Jayce, baby, it's Tuesday. It's three o'clock. I'm downstairs. Come let me in." He has a key to JC's house, somewhere, but in the hassle of moving from Orlando to LA all of his keys had gotten messed up, and he's been running around like a chicken without a head since. He'll have to remember to pick another one up while he's over here.

"Hmm," JC says, half-vocalized, and then his voice sharpens a little. "Lance? Izzat today?"

Lance wonders how far the signal has to travel, bounced through the air to a cell tower and turned from wireless to digital to analog, all so he can talk to someone who's thirty feet away who just happens to wake up for the telephone and not the doorbell. Maybe Chris's next doorbell trick should be the sound of a ringing phone. Tyler will usually answer the door and then let Lance go wake JC up, but Tyler's already left for the holidays. "Yeah," he says. "Come on, babe. Come down and let me in."

"Okay," JC says, and hangs up. He's always so pliable when he first wakes. Lance shoulders his duffel bag and leans against the railing.

The door opens a minute later, and JC's eyes crinkle as he smiles. He's in a pair of sweatpants that look like he just pulled them on a minute ago. "Hey," he says, and stifles a yawn. "Sorry 'bout that. Still trying to sleep off the tour dates."

"It's okay," Lance says, and steps inside. "My flight was delayed anyway, and then there was traffic getting back to my place, and it's just been one of those days." He kicks off his shoes -- JC hates it when people wear shoes inside the house -- and drops his car keys on the table.

JC is standing there when he turns around, just at the tail end of another yawn. He wraps his arms around Lance's waist and rests his cheek against Lance's shoulder. Lance breathes in the chamomile scent of JC's hair and rubs the side of his thumb along the skin at the small of JC's back. "Hey, sleepyhead," he says. "Long time no see."

"I've been right here," JC says, and kisses the side of Lance's neck. He hasn't been -- he's been bouncing from city to city for the past three weeks, and loving every second of it -- but Lance knows exactly what he means.

sixteen

Lance is sitting at the kitchen table when JC gets out of the shower, reading the Sunday New York Times from two days ago that JC had kept around because he was intending to read it any day now, really. Lance's eyes are just skimming over the headlines; he'd probably read it Sunday morning in Toronto, but JC knows that Lance is bad at just sitting and doing nothing. Even rereading a two-day-old newspaper is preferable to staring at the wall and waiting.

JC finishes scrubbing at his hair with the towel and drapes it around his chest. He still hasn't bothered to put on a shirt. "Tea's on the counter," Lance says, and turns the page.

"Mmm," JC says, and wanders across the kitchen to pick up the mug, which proclaims its bearer to be a "#1 Dad". He peers at it suspiciously and decides that it probably wandered over along with Joey, and just never went back home. The mug, not Joey. Joey went home. The tea is just hitting the right color; Lance must have kept the water boiling and dropped in the tea bag the minute he heard the shower turn off. JC blows across the top of the mug and leans against the counter.

"C'mere." Lance puts down the paper and holds out a hand.

Now that JC's awake enough, he can see that Lance looks happy and well-rested for the first time in a while. They haven't seen each other for a few weeks, not since JC's LA show; Lance had business, first in LA, then in Toronto, and then in New York, then back in Toronto, and JC has been in the mid-tour, pre-release promotion flurry. They've only got a day before Lance is due back at the airport again, this time to catch a flight back home for Christmas Eve. JC's flight out to Chicago to meet up with the rest of his family is a few hours later. 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? And besides, Lance had said, he needed to come back to LA to finish packing.

JC brings the mug of tea with him and wraps the other hand around Lance's fingers. Lance tugs at him just enough to unbalance, and he goes willingly, trying only to keep from spilling tea all over Lance and himself and the floor as he lands in Lance's lap.

"Hey, you," Lance says, his lips inches away from JC's. His eyes are implausibly green in the late-afternoon sunlight.

"Hey," JC replies, and flicks out his tongue to touch the corner of Lance's mouth. Lance tastes like winterfresh gum. Lance curls his fingers into the waistband of JC's sweatpants, just over his hips. "You got any ideas for what you want to do tonight? Go out and be seen, stay in and rusticate, up to you."

Lance smiles -- his real smile, the one that never appears on the page of a magazine or over a news wire. "I think we can manage to think of something," he drawls.

seventeen

"Ohshitohshitohshit," JC mumbles against Lance's mouth, and slides backwards off his lap, pulling his hands out of Lance's pants as he goes. "Fuck, what time is it?"

Lance blinks. "Five-ish? Don't you have a clock in here?"

"Clocks are a symbol of the slavishly patriarchical oppressive devotion to dates and times," JC says, primly. Lance recites the end of it along with him. (Chris had first come up with the phrase in Germany, intending to mock JC's chronic inability to be on time for anything but studio times or shows, but JC had announced that he liked it and started using it as an answer.) JC slides his hand into the pocket of Lance's pants, pulling out his Hiptop to check the time, and then yelps. "Shit, I've got to call -- I've got this radio thing."

JC turns around and drags his hand through his hair, which by now has dried every-which-way and Lance knows that he's going to have to dunk his head under the faucet to get it to behave if they decide to go out later. There's a stack of papers on his counter, and he rifles through them once, then again when he doesn't find what he's looking for. "Fuck," JC mumbles.

Lance sighs. "What station?" He hauls out his Palm Pilot, stopping first to zip up his pants. He tries to ignore his erection.

"WPLJ in New York. Dammit, I had the number around here somewhere. I printed it from my email this morning before I went to bed." JC turns around and scans the counter again, as though the paper might have mysteriously appeared while his attention had been distracted.

Lance taps the stylus on the screen of his Palm and then hands it over. JC squints at the screen -- forgot to put on his glasses again that morning, Lance realizes, and knows that later on he'll find them tossed on the nightstand or lying in the bathroom, or possibly under the couch or in JC's left shoe or sitting in the microwave or something. JC is the only one who's worse at wearing his glasses than Chris is.

"The phone number," Lance says. "At least, that's what it was two years ago."

"You're a lifesaver," JC says, and flips open Lance's cellphone. Lance winces a little, ponders mentioning caller ID and why it's inadvisable to call into a radio show on the cellphone of your fellow boyband member, and decides to let it go. JC's feet are soft against the tile floor of the kitchen as he pads across to the refrigerator and pulls it open; Lance watches the curve of JC's ass beneath the sweatpants, the stretch of muscles underneath the skin of JC's back as he reaches for a bottle of water.

"Yeah," JC says after a minute. "Hey, this is JC Chasez. Yeah, yeah, sorry I'm late, lost the number if you'd believe that." He pulls out another bottle of water and brings them both over to the table; he hands one to Lance, and then pulls himself up to sit on the table and put his feet in Lance's lap.

Lance curls his palms around the arches of JC's feet as JC laughs at something on the other end of the line. He's not on the air yet, Lance can tell; JC has a difference between interview-face and casual-face, even when the person on the other end of the phone can't see him. They all do, really. Lance wonders what his looks like.

"No, man, totally my fault. I was in the shower and just lost track of the time and then couldn't get my shit together. Story of my life." Pause. "Yeah, me too, but I was only in town for the night before I had to run off to Boston. The show was great, though." Pause.

The producer must have said something funny, because JC laughs. Lance slides his hands along JC's ankles and settles back in the chair to watch. JC doesn't seem to notice Lance's eyes on his face, or if he does it doesn't disturb him; he's about as animated as he would be if talking to a real person, despite staring at the wall as if he could see the person behind the voice on the other end of the line if he concentrated hard enough. They've all spent enough time on phone-in interviews and cross-country conversations to be used to it. "No, totally. If you want, I don't mind. Up to you. We could do that, or we could record. I'm on a cell, so I might cut out, but the signal's really strong here. You wanna just do that?" JC catches Lance's eye and rolls his eyes, making a "shoot me now" face. The producer must be getting overly technical. Lance digs his thumbs into the balls of JC's feet, and JC's eyes roll back in his head for half a second before he pulls the phone away from his mouth and whispers, "You keep doing that, I'll have your babies, my feet are killing me after the week I had."

Lance laughs, as quietly as he can manage. JC quirks his eyebrows and then turns his attention back to the phone. "No, no, sorry, just stuff going on here. Ready when you are."

eighteen

It's a fun hour, even if JC would rather be naked and rolling around on the floor of the kitchen with Lance. Preferably with something involving chocolate sauce. Or caramel, the real kind, not the sort of stuff that most places call caramel these days; the kind that's thick and sweet and bitter all at once. He thinks he's got a jar of it somewhere in the cupboard. At least, he did the last time he checked, and he's pretty sure that he hasn't used it since then. If they could just --

Lance pinches his big toe and it yanks his mind back to things. Lance can always tell when he's about to wander off into the clouds and drag his attention back to the things at hand. The DJ is laughing at something his co-host said, and JC chimes in, a second too late, before they're thanking him for taking the time to call in and he's doing the typical no-really-my-pleasure routine that's second nature after so many years. He can see Lance looking around in vain for a clock out of the corner of his eye.

Lance is hot. Really hot. He always forgets this until Lance is sitting right there, looking vaguely bored and trying not to fidget as JC wraps up the interview. He's being really good-natured about things, though, and even sat through JC trying, idly, to unzip and unbutton Lance's pants with his toes while brightly chattering about some of his escapades in New York. He'd failed, but it had been fun to try.

"Thank God," Lance finally said, when JC flipped the cell phone closed and handed it back. "I was about ready to yank out the antenna and pretend that you'd lost signal."

JC knows that he's joking. For one, Lance is too professional to ever throw an interview like that; for another, it's Lance's cell phone. "Sorry about that," he says again, and slides off the table to re-claim his place in Lance's lap. "Now, where were we?"

"Hungry as hell, actually," Lance says with a little embarrassed smile. "They only fed us snacks on the plane and my body's still on east coast time. Can we put this on hold and scare up some food?"

"Oh, baby!" JC blinks. "Sure. You want to eat in, or go out?"

"Jayce, I don't know when the last time you touched a kitchen appliance was, but the last time I did was in the twentieth century and I'd like to keep it that way, for the health and safety of all concerned parties. The question is not eat in or go out, it's takeout or go out. And it's up to you, you know this area better."

JC thinks for a second, and then grins. "Well, you in the mood for Being Seen, or just getting food?"

Lance runs his hands up JC's back, and JC arches against the touch. It feels good, like he's being petted. He likes the way that Lance touches him; always has. "In and out someplace quick is fine, as long as we won't have to deal with crowds. I'd be fine with takeout, too. I don't mind what we eat, I'm just enjoying spending the time with you."

JC tries to conceal the flush of pleasure that sends through his belly, and nods. "How about the place that Joey found last time he was out here, the one I keep telling you about and haven't gotten a chance to drag you yet? Tiny as hell, bad attitude, usually shitty service, looks like a health code violation waiting to happen. Best Italian food you'll ever get. You up for it?"

Lance is, and JC heads upstairs to get dressed and do something with the atrocity that is his hair. There's the usual argument about who's going to drive, which Lance always wins and JC doesn't even know why he bothers except that it's tradition, and it leaves him warm and fuzzy when he gets in the car and the first thing he hears is "Build My World" on the CD player before Lance blushes a little and ejects the advance copy of Schizophrenic that JC had overnight-couriered to all of the guys. He replaces it with Leonard Cohen and turns the volume to just the right level, soft enough to allow conversation if they want to but loud enough to still be heard, and drums against the steering wheel as he follows JC's directions to the restaurant.

JC starts harmonizing when Lance starts singing along, even though he can never remember all the words, and halfway through "there's a blaze of light in every word, it doesn't matter which you heard, the holy or the broken halleleujah", he reaches out and twines his fingers with the hand that Lance is resting on his thigh instead of the steering wheel. Lance grins at him and when they stop at the next red light, he leans over and brushes his lips against JC's, quick and chaste and mindful of the possibility of being overseen.

JC turns up the volume a little more on the stereo. It isn't that he doesn't want to talk to Lance; it's just that he almost never gets to hear Lance sing like this, peaceful and content and not worried about who might overhear. For a man who makes his living singing, Lance is far too shy about letting his voice be heard alone. Maybe if he turns the music up a little louder, Lance will let himself go for long enough.

nineteen

It takes them forever to find parking, and Lance finally just throws up his hands and parks in a loading zone. It isn't like he can't afford the ticket if he gets one. "It's always a zoo parking around here," JC says, and gives him a little apologetic smile.

"It's okay," Lance says, and unbuckles his seatbelt.

The restaurant is everything that JC promised -- tiny, cramped, grungy without being dirty, and looking to be relatively free of fans, teenage girls, reporters, photographers, and other associated people who could make a peaceful dinner unpleasant. If there are more than ten tables, Lance will eat his Hiptop. Lance can hear his stomach growling at the smells coming from the kitchen. It's like the best that Phyllis's kitchen has ever smelled, only ten times more so. One side of the room is the pizza counter, grill, and the brick oven setup, and there's a girl -- woman, really -- with her hands coated in flour and pizza dough. She's got purple hair and a nose ring, and is wearing pride rings in her ear and a t-shirt that says "my other girlfriend is a Porsche". Lance likes her on sight.

There's a stack of menus on the counter by the door, and JC grabs two of them as they head in. "Like you don't know the menu by heart, Chasez," she calls to him. She pronounces the name correctly, which puts her one up on just about every interviewer ever.

"I do, but he doesn't," JC says, pointing one thumb at Lance. She narrows her eyes at him, squinting in that do-I-know-you-or-don't-I kind of look that Lance is so familiar with, and then shrugs.

"You weren't kidding when you said you were a regular, huh?" Lance says as they sit down at one of the free tables. It's sparsely populated, which he chalks up more to the fact that LA is an eat-dinner-late kind of place and the proximity of the holidays than any sort of comment on the food. An older guy comes rushing out of the back room when the phone rings and answers it with a stream of Italian, reaching for a pad to take down the order. He sounds cranky.

"Anna knows everybody," JC says, and grabs two drinks from the soda case before sitting down. "We should totally introduce her to Chris. They'd take over the world or make beautiful freak children or just sit around and get really stoned and giggle a lot or something. Decide quickly, if we don't know what we want by the time Anna gets around to taking our order, we go to the end of the list."

Lance squints at the menu and flips through it once. There isn't a lot of choice, but what there is looks good. "Is their pesto sauce tolerable?"

"Joey called it heavenly." JC rests the tips of his toes against the top of Lance's shoes.

Lance wiggles his toes in his loafers. "High praise indeed. You really eat here that often?"

"Dude, sometimes I'm in here every night for a week. They're good and they're cheap and they don't make me feel like a freak. Kinda reminds me of the way it used to be, before everything got crazy on us, you know?" JC folds his hands together and props his chin on them. "Remember that place downtown back in Orlando, the one that had the cheesecake that should have been classified as a mortal sin?"

"The one where Justin nearly set the flowers on fire trying to learn that thing that Chris can do with a Zippo? God, how could I forget?" Lance had forgotten, though, or rather, had shunted the memory off into a lesser-used part of his brain. Those first months in Orlando still feel only half-real to him when he looks back on them. It wasn't until years later that he'd realized that the choreography they'd crammed into their heads wasn't just the choreography to the dance routines at all, but a more subtle and yet more useful variant that even now they're still refining.

"Fantastic," JC says. "We should go back there, the next time we're home." Home, Lance thinks, can probably be defined by all of them as "the place where I keep my stuff but am not currently physically located." When they're in LA, home is in Orlando. When they're in Orlando, home is Mississippi, or Chicago, or New York. It's a particular sort of post-modern nomadism that isn't made any easier by their propensity for collecting real estate like Justin collects shoes.

"You eating, or just here to shoot the shit?" Anna asks. Up close, Lance notes that she has flour smudged across her cheek and rope marks around her wrists. He politely declines to take notice of either.

"Yeah," JC says, and gives her one of those smiles that nobody is immune to. She doesn't seem to be the exception. Lance remembers that they're in public just in time to avoid reaching over the table and twining his fingers with JC's.

twenty

Lance seems to be highly amused when their dinner arrives at the table accompanied by a five-minute lecture from Anna about "watching what comes out of your mouth, Chasez, the song is one thing, but you keep coming off in interviews like you think that there's no such thing as a lesbian and all they need is a good man to get in between them and I know you don't think that, at least if you ever want to get fed in here again you don't think that, so pay a little more attention next time, okay? Good. Now eat quickly and get out of here, you're bringing up the average annual income in here by a factor that I'm seriously uncomfortable with."

JC watches Lance make the orgasm face as he takes his first forkful of tortellini and can't help the smile. "What?" Lance asks, as he looks up.

"Nothing," JC says. "You. You're funny when you find good food."

Lance points his fork at JC, which JC knows is a habit he picked up from Chris and that Diane tries to beat out of him every time he's back in Mississippi. "You're pretty funny yourself. You show up here for dinner just to get bitched out by a lesbian with purple hair about your album, don't you."

JC pokes at his fettucini with his fork and refuses to meet Lance's eyes. "I show up here for the food."

"Yeah, the food's great, but you're here for the normal." Lance reached over the table and touched two fingers to the back of JC's hand. "Hey, it makes sense. You can get good food anywhere. Normal is a little harder to find."

JC ducks his head and scowls. "Like you're any better. You're ..." He stops and reconsiders. "You, your girlfriend, and your boyfriend dressed up in Trainspotting chic and dry-humped on the catwalk. I take it back. There's no normal there."

Lance looks startled for a second, and then grins. "Yeah, but it was hot, wasn't it?"

"Oh yes," JC says, fervently. He'd gone out of his way to find every single one of the photos from that event. Lance hadn't told him ahead of time, just warned him that he was planning to have some "fun". Joey had been the one to email the rest of the guys with one of the pictures that first hit the image services, accompanied only by "o.O" as the body of the email.

"And she's not my girlfriend," Lance adds, after a second. JC gave him a look. Lance studiously didn't meet his eyes. "What? She's not. And Jesse's not my boyfriend. I'm not dating anyone."

"Okay, okay," JC says. "I take it back. No dating. At least not unless it's for the cameras."

"You remember when you and I first got together?" Lance says, smiling. "God, we were both so young then. Looking back at it I'm surprised you didn't punch me when I gave you the no-monogamy speech. I was such an arrogant little shit about it."

(Lance had dumped that on him on a cramped tour bus somewhere in between Atlanta and Baltimore while the rest of the guys had gone out of their way to pretend not to listen. JC had gone to curl up in Justin's bunk afterwards, because the kid was a lot smarter than anyone gave him credit for when it came to relationships, and Justin patted his back and told him that men sucked and not in the good way and Lance was just trying to have his cake and eat it too.)

"You weren't bad," JC says. "You were nineteen. We all did stupid things when we were nineteen."

(Joey had let it go for about two months, two months of Lance picking up boys, and the occasional girl, and JC watching it all with his heart in his mouth waiting for Lance to find someone else he loved better than he loved JC. When JC found Chris stumbling out of Lance's room one morning, looking tired and well-used and like he needed a night off to recover from his night off, Joey took one look at JC's face and walked out of the room. He came back a minute later with his cell phone, halfway through a sentence, and handed it to JC and just said "Talk." When the first words out of Kelly's mouth had been "JC, honey, love and sex are two entirely different concepts, but he loves you all more than he could ever find a way to say," JC had felt something shift and crack inside his chest, but once he put it back together, he started to understand.)

"You didn't," Lance says. "You signed a record deal when you were nineteen."

(And it was okay after a while, it really was. JC got over feeling like he'd been cheated on, because it wasn't as though they'd been dating in the first place. And there's something liberating about being able to come home after a night of clubbing and climb into bed with Lance to whisper stories of picking up in the back hallways and bathrooms. They're friends, first and foremost, and friendship is far more important than anything romantic. He almost doesn't remember the way it used to feel.)

"Yeah," JC says. "But do you remember the hair?"

(And anyway, JC loves the rest of the guys enough that he can share. And they're always the ones that Lance comes home to in the end.)

"Okay," says Lance. "You may, in fact, have a point there."

JC rolls his eyes. "You didn't necessarily have to agree with that statement, you know. And I seem to recall a few fashion disasters of your own that we've all just agreed to forget about."

Lance ducks his head and then grins at JC. JC can't help but grin in return. The hiatus has given them all so many different things that he stopped counting months ago, but he thinks that the one thing they all needed the most was time off from each other. Not in the bad way; not in the dysfunctional way. More like in the way that when you see something spectacular every day, you wind up desensitized to it, and it takes time away to re-set your senses until you can see everything clearly again.

"I think we're both safe for the title of Worst Fashion Disaster, though. At least, as long as we keep Chris around." Lance quirks his eyebrows, and JC nearly chokes on his water. "Or we could try and convince Justin to go back to the sparkly bandannas."

"Nothing justifies the sparkly bandannas." JC pokes at the last of his pasta. "Except maybe, like, severe colorblindness."

Lance is about to say something when Anna clears her throat, standing next to the tiny table. She's serious for once, rather than her usual in-your-face cheerful abrasiveness, and she rolls her eyes when JC shoots her a "what's-up" look. "We got a takeout order from the Times building," she says, and pulls their check out of her back pocket. "They'll be around in about five minutes. Figured you might want to be out of here by then; I don't know if it's the entertainment people or not."

Lance raises his eyebrows and tips his head and it's the look that says he's about to ask what's in it for her to give the warning. JC kicks him underneath the table and stands up, pulling out his wallet before Lance can start the argument about who's going to pay. He's usually more than willing to let Lance grab the check and override his token protests, but the argument traditionally lasts at least ten minutes, and he just doesn't feel like dealing with reporters. "Thanks, Anna," he says, and leans over to kiss her on the cheek. Lance's eyebrows tip up further, but he follows JC's lead and stands as well. "That's what, four I owe you?"

"Make up for it by watching your mouth in interviews, you hypocrite," she says, but she's smiling. JC grins back and pulls out two twenties from his wallet: one for the check, one for the tip. There's a time and a place to watch what you spend, but when you find a place with good food and a waitress who'll warn you when the reporters are on the way, especially when you're on a not-date with one of your bandmates -- well, that's neither the time nor the place. "You boys enjoy yourselves tonight. Merry Christmas."

twenty-one

"Gaydar, I tell you," JC says as they walk back to the car. Lance knows that if he complains that it's cold JC will laugh at him, maybe throw in a tale or two of Maryland blizzards for good measure, but Lance grew up in Mississippi and cold, he thinks, is cold. "She totally picked up on it, like, the first time I was in there."

"And you're not worried?" Lance frowns a little bit. "I mean, I'm hardly the best person in the world to talk about things like that, but --"

"It's cool," JC reassures him. "Besides, I was in there the first time with Joey, and there was like, this scary Italian cultural long-lost-family-bonding-on-sight thing going on. I'm not worried."

And anyway, Lance thinks, anyone who sees JC's video sure won't question that JC does, at least occasionally, like women. People who haven't seen JC's video won't question that he likes women. People in Russia can probably guess that JC likes women, like the very act of creating a video like that echoes across the world and gets whispered on the wind. It isn't that Lance doesn't like the video -- far from it, he thinks it's hot as hell. But the first thing that he did after seeing it was call up Chris and say "really, man, you don't think that sometime in the past eight years one of us could have explained the concept of 'subtle' to C?" and Chris had laughed and just said, "He is what he is."

He shoots a glance out of the corner of his eye, watching JC without JC realizing that he's being observed. JC is tired, in the way that Lance knows so well -- promoting, touring, smiling pretty for the cameras. Lance wonders if JC has gotten a chance to slow down since the AMAs. But it's the good sort of tired, the kind that comes from doing what you really love, and Lance knows that he shouldn't worry.

They do have a parking ticket when they get back to the car, and Lance picks it off the windshield and groans. "It figures," he says, and unlocks the doors.

"Merry Christmas," JC says, and slides into the passenger seat.

Lance bites his lip. "Yeah, about that. I don't have your present yet. I don't have, like, anyone's present yet but the family. I didn't want to make Beth do my shopping again this year, I wanted to do it myself."

"Hey," JC says, and turns to face him. "It's cool. Having time with you is present enough. You know that it's not about the presents."

"I know," Lance says. "But --" He looks for a way to explain it, stops, and waves a hand in mute attempt to convey what he's trying to say. "I don't like being late with things. This whole thing just snuck up on me this year."

JC captures Lance's hand in his own and threads their fingers together. "It's okay," he says, and just that simply, it is. Lance always forgets how calming JC is to spend time around. "If you really want to get me a present, make breakfast for me tomorrow morning. Or, okay, arrange for breakfast to be there when I wake up tomorrow morning."

"Tomorrow afternoon," Lance corrects, and reclaims his hand back long enough to start the car.

"Good point," JC concedes, and they're quiet again as Lance puts the car in drive. Well, as quiet as they can be when both singing along with the CD, but they're not talking. Even after all these years, Lance feels self-conscious singing along to the music when there's someone else in the car -- singing while driving just seems like a private thing, something that you do at the top of your lungs when you're all alone, but JC is physically incapable of hearing music over a certain volume and not harmonizing to it, and, well, if JC is doing it, there's no reason for Lance not to follow suit. And besides, JC is an easy person to make a fool of yourself in front of. He never bothers to take notice of someone else's embarrassment, so it's as if that embarrassment never existed.

(JC had been the one that Lance, feeling like his face was about to catch fire, went to and confessed that he'd been giving blowjobs for a year and a half, thank you very much, but he'd never figured out what he was supposed to do with his teeth. JC hadn't even blinked; he'd nodded and liberated a banana from Justin's momma's kitchen. They'd shared the banana afterwards.)

Lance is the one of them with the sense of direction, so JC doesn't bother giving directions from the restaurant back to the freeway, trusting that Lance can figure it out. Given the amount of driving he's done in LA, Lance can, but when he's about to pass the right exit on the freeway, he abruptly changes his mind and shifts into the other lane. JC breaks off, right as he's in the middle of thirds on "from this broken hill all your praises they shall ring" to say "No, no, this exit."

"Yeah, I know," says Lance. "I feel like taking the long way."

(Lance had tried to figure out for about three months if JC was really hitting on him or if it was just JC being friendly, and eventually had just given up and slid naked into bed with JC, one night in Germany when they'd been sharing one of the double rooms. JC had been startled but interested, although he'd tried to talk Lance out of it first. Lance wound up being fairly glad he'd been stubborn around the time of their first orgasms.)

"As long as you don't expect me to figure out where we are," JC says, and goes back to singing along, fifths this time, on "let the rivers fill, let the hills rejoice". Lance chimes in on the third with "let your mercy spill on all these burning hearts in hell, if it be your will to make us well", and he thinks that he really can't wait for the next chance they're all going to get to sing together, he loves the group sound, but he's always loved the way that JC's voice twines around his the best.

(It had been fun and it had been hot and they'd driven everyone nuts by slipping away to screw like rabbits at every chance, and it scared the hell out of Lance when a while later he caught himself whispering "love you, love you, love you" into JC's mouth as JC fucked him. He wasn't supposed to fall in love that young. He sure as hell wasn't supposed to fall in love with another guy. Sleeping with them was one thing, that was something he could justify to himself after a little bit of mental gymnastics, but love was reserved for the nice girl he'd meet someday and settle down with and eventually have two point four kids and a dog and a white picket fence. He'd given JC the seeing-other-people speech the next day, and JC had seemed totally cool with it, all smiles and nods and "it's not like we were dating in the first place." Lance had been so relieved at the time that he hadn't looked past what JC was saying to what was in his eyes.)

"CD folder's under your feet," Lance says, automatically, as the CD runs out and spins around to the beginning again.

JC reaches down to snag it. "Any preferences?" he asks.

(It hadn't been until about a year later that he'd figured out two very important things: one, the whole white-picket-fence fantasy was highly improbable, given the way that his tastes were starting to shape up, which is to say, decidedly towards the male half of the species. And two, that what JC had really been finishing that sentence with was "but I'd be totally cool with it if you wanted to be.")

"Nah," Lance says. "Something we can sing along with. You pick."

(The dual epiphany had left him wanting to apologize to JC, somehow, but the subject had long since passed by, and they'd settled into a comfortable and easy friendship that just happened to include side benefits. And there was Chris, and Justin when he wasn't insisting that he was straight, and Joey once before they'd realized that Joey was straight, and they were nice, too. But he always kept coming back to JC in the end. He wondered if JC realized.)

"Oh, hey," JC said, as he flipped through the few CDs that Lance kept in the car and rotated in and out as the mood struck him. "You brought Chris's I-hate-LA mix out to the car."

"I've always got Chris's I-hate-LA mix in the car." Lance hits the brake just as some fucker in an SUV talking on his cellphone cuts right in front of him. He's developed the two-second precognition that you need in order to survive driving in LA, but that doesn't mean he likes it. "Especially since being in the car in LA means that I'm going to have to be driving in LA."

JC pops the CD in and adjusts the volume so that they don't get blasted. "You bitch an awful lot about LA for someone who's been living out here for how long? Why'd you move out here if you hate it so much?"

"You're out here," Lance says, simply, and keeps his eyes on the road.

twenty-two

"You want something to drink?" JC asks, as he goes through the house clicking lights on, willy-nilly, behind him.

"Sure," Lance says, kicking off his shoes again. "Tried anything good lately?"

"Oh, yes. You have to try this stuff." Lance follows him into the kitchen, which is, as usual, immaculate. Lance leans against the counter and watches him, eyes bright, as JC pulls two wineglasses out of the cabinet. "I mean, I know that you aren't really into wine and all that, but this stuff is fantastic."

"It's not that I don't like wine," Lance corrects. JC pulls the bottle out of the fridge, half-full and corked with one of those plastic gizmos that keep the flavor, and swirls it around so that the spices at the bottom of the bottle re-mix. "I have nothing against wine. I'm just not a connoisseur the way you are."

"Well, you don't need to be a connoisseur to appreciate this stuff. And it's not wine, it's mead. Close enough, but different family. I mean, sometimes you get white wine with honey added that's called mead, but that's not the real stuff. The real stuff is -- Oh, you don't really care." JC stops himself before he launches into a full-on diversion. He's getting better at reading when people aren't interested and are just indulging him.

Lance is smiling tolerantly. "No, not really, but you do, so I'll listen."

"Nah." JC uncorks the bottle and pours two glasses, careful as always not to spill a drop of it. "I mean, it's not important. But I found a few bottles at my wine store, and this one even came with the little packet of nutmeg and cinnamon and clove to add. It's a holiday recipe. Tradition, you know? You always hear about wassailers, in holiday stories and carols and stuff, and toasting good health and good fortune at the holidays for all the coming year, and the guy who sold it to me said that this winery has used the same recipe for years." History has always fascinated JC, the thought that somewhere, people were doing the same things that they'd done over and over for longer than the US had even existed. He remembers walking through a graveyard in Austria that had been old back when the Pilgrims had first landed in Massachusetts, rubbing his fingers over a gravestone and wondering who the man had been when he had been alive. He likes the thought of continuity like that, of being in the same place and doing the same thing every year.

Lance nods. "Like in the song. 'Wassail, wassail, all over the town --'"

"Yeah, exactly!" JC hands over one of the glasses and sips from his, feeling the honey explode on his tongue. The first time he'd had it, it had tasted precisely like Christmas to him, even though he'd never had it before, and he'd finished the entire bottle until he was giggling stupid and wrapped all of his presents in a single night.

"Sweet," Lance says, and licks his lips as he lowers the glass again. JC is fascinated by the way that Lance's tongue glides over his lips, quick flash before it disappears again. "But not cloying. Tastes kind of like summer."

"No," JC corrects quickly. "Like snow outside the window, and a fire in the fireplace, and warm fuzzy socks, and nowhere to be until the roads are cleared. Like the smell of the pine tree decked out in little white lights behind you. Like the way that moonlight looks over snow that hasn't had anyone tromping through it yet, all silver and glowing."

Like the way you taste when I have you in my mouth, with you all spread out on the sheets and breathless and whispering my name, JC thinks, but doesn't say. Maybe it shows on his face. Lance takes another sip and raises his eyebrows. "You're not supposed to wax poetic until after you've finished the bottle."

"You've got no poetry in your soul," JC says, and takes another sip of his mead.

"That's why I keep you around," Lance says. "And you keep me around to answer middle-of-the-night tax questions when your accountant is tucked safely into bed. It all works out."

"There are other reasons I keep you around," JC says. The glass makes a soft click as he sets it down on the counter.

twenty-three

"So how is Jesse, anyway?" JC asks, over ice cream. They'd left dinner too early to assuage their sweet tooth, so it's up to the vagaries of JC's freezer to provide dessert. Lance thinks that the three pints of Ben & Jerry's is yet another sign that Chris had been visiting lately. Chris trails odd ice cream flavors behind him. Among other things. "I didn't get a chance to really say hi to him after the LA show last week."

JC is a freak and eats his ice cream with a fork; he says that it lets him pick out the goodies and eat them first. Lance supposes that as quirky habits go, it's not bad. "Two weeks ago, and he's good. He sends love. He really liked the show. So did I, for that matter, if I forgot to tell you."

"You did," JC said, "but it's totally cool, I could tell you were loving it. And Justin called me afterwards, Lynn let him listen along to a lot of the show on her cell. He couldn't stop raving."

"It's a good show," Lance says, seriously. "Feels like you. Feels a lot more like you than some of the stuff we were doing, before the break. You were totally loving it up there."

"I was scared out of my skull up there," JC confesses with a laugh. "It's so freaky. The good kind of freaky, but freaky, still. You should come to some more of the appearances after New Year's. It was good to be able to look up at you and read how well it was going."

"I should," Lance said. It had been weird, sitting up in the balcony instead of being on the stage or behind the stage, but it had been good to watch JC in his element. JC was a performer. No, Justin and Joey were the performers; JC was the artist, the one out of all of them who reached inside himself and molded a piece of his soul into his music, placing it up on the altar of the stage like some kind of burnt offering. They all knew that feeling, but nobody knows it like JC does. His lyrics are dippy and trite sometimes, he'll be the first to admit it behind closed doors, but the minute that JC starts singing, those lyrics come alive.

"You know you're always welcome," JC says. "Anywhere. No matter where I am."

"I know," Lance says, and reaches across the counter to fold his fingers over JC's own. It's always been the truth, even through the rest of the shit. For both of them. He knows that JC isn't just talking about the tour. "I just sometimes forget about that part of it, you know?"

"I know," JC says, and Lance knows that he's not talking about the tour either. "But it's true. I miss you sometimes."

That broadsides him right in the throat, rising like a tide to keep him from speaking for a long minute, and Lance eventually swallows hard. "Jayce," he says, looking for the right words. Looking for any words. They don't present themselves. He tries it from a different angle, as though maybe that might be less treacherous. They've always believed in going back to re-visit conversations that aren't quite over, hours or days or weeks or months later. "You ever think about it? I mean, if you could go back and shake yourself at nineteen, shake some sense into your head. What would you say?"

JC gives the question more thought than it probably deserves, tipping his head to one side. His ice cream lies forgotten on the counter, fork sticking out of it like some bizarre fetish. "Don't trust Lou further than you can throw him," he finally says. "Don't ever worry about letting the guys down, because they're going to stick with you through thick and thin. Don't be afraid of hard work, because it's going to pay off. Don't ever lose hope, because for a while, hope is going to be the only thing that you've got." He pauses for a minute, then pokes at the chunk of Snickers bar sticking out of the top of the carton. "You?"

"You do not really want what you think you want," Lance says, and wonders if JC might get it.

zero

JC always checks his email before he goes to bed, last stop on the road before brushing his teeth and stripping off his clothes. It's one little bit of routine that he relies upon, part of the process. He's not sleepy yet, but Lance is starting to look a little frayed around the edges, and JC tries to remember that Lance started his day eighteen hours and three timezones ago. It's easy to forget, sometimes. It always has been, when they're not living in each other's pockets.

"You should head on up to bed," JC says, and picks up the empty pints of ice cream from the counter. He tosses his fork and Lance's spoon into the counter and stows the empties in the garbage. "I'll be up in a minute. Just wanna check my email."

"Yeah," Lance says, and stretches. His shirt rides up as he rises up on his toes, and JC is briefly distracted by the flash of perfect skin displayed underneath the hem of Lance's clothing. When it's late enough at night, JC thinks that Lance talks like he's singing, not in the way he makes the sound but in the way the sound reaches JC's ears. He wonders if Lance really is saying what he thinks Lance was saying, but it's so much easier to just let it go, leave it alone and not open up the old wounds that he'd almost forgotten he had. He wonders why Lance chose tonight of all nights to bring it up. "Eh, I'm not really ready to go to sleep yet."

"Well, I'm gonna check my email anyway," JC says, and Lance gives him a quick little grin.

The benefit of having Lance hanging over his shoulder while JC is reading email from Carlos and Jive and Tyler and his mother and Chris and Justin is that Lance is fundamentally incapable of standing around and doing nothing, and when that standing around is behind someone else, it invariably turns into a backrub. Lance's hands are strong and sure, and he can always find the one spot that's threatening to go from knot to boulder. JC can hear himself making little breathless noises every time Lance folds his knuckles over a particularly stubborn muscle, and under Lance's patient ministrations, the ache slowly starts to fade until JC can't even remember it anymore.

Carlos is yelling something about January appearances and his mother is teling him not to forget the master audio tracks of his latest performances so his father can hear and Justin's sent him a link to an absolutely hysterical internet message board thread that's rife with conspiracy theories and Chris has turned up another one of those pictures -- God only knows where he gets them -- that have the capacity to cripple you with laughing; this one is of a long-haired Angora cat wearing a lime that's been carved into the shape of a football helmet, of all things, and it makes JC giggle helplessly. It all blends into the rhythm of Lance working his patient way down JC's shoulderblades with his fingertips. JC shuts off the computer and turns around in his desk chair to rub his cheek against Lance's belly and inhale the cool clean scent of him. It's been building unbidden behind his lips the entire time he's been reading, so when he catches himself blurting out, "I'd tell me not to let you get away with saying that you don't want something that I know you're looking for," it's not a surprise at all.

Lance looks startled for a minute until he figures out what JC is talking about, and then his fingers close around the back of JC's neck. "Think we could build a time machine and go back and beat ourselves senseless?"

Pieces of conversations conducted through gaps of hours and days and years. It's the story of their lives, the little times that they can make for each other. "You're the science guy. You tell me."

Lance's skin is warm beneath his cheek. "I'll get right on that. You gonna come to bed sometime this century?"

"Yeah," JC says. Lance holds down a hand to help him out of the chair. He doesn't need it, but he takes it anyway.

one

"Beautiful," JC mumbles against Lance's lips. "Beautiful, so damn beautiful, so perfect, yeah." The words stumble from his lips and Lance knows that he doesn't even hear what he's saying, never has. JC's always been a talker in bed, like it all builds up in him until he has to give it the little release of letting the words fall before he explodes.

They stumble across the bedroom, JC backwards, Lance forwards, kissing like they're starved for air and the only oxygen they can get is from each other's lungs. Lance can feel JC's fingers fumbling with the buttons on his shirt, sliding over his chest, and it's clouding his mind so much that the simple mechanics of the fastening on JC's jeans escapes him. It feels like coming home so much more than landing on the airstrip at LAX ever does, safe and warm and perfect and oh, so right and ready.

He walks JC back against the bed and JC folds as the mattress hits the back of his knees. "God," JC says, pulling Lance down with him, "God, yes, missed you, always miss you, miss you so much." The words sink into Lance's skin like rain on parched ground, and he can feel the way they make him bloom. He rolls on top of JC and mouths at the curve of his neck, that spot where neck joins with shoulder, that spot that tastes like cool clean water. JC tosses his head back against the pillow and flexes his fingers against Lance's back, hungry for it.

Lance wants nothing more than to take it slowly, to memorize every curve and line and gasp and shudder, to hold them in his heart and play them back on long and lonely nights halfway across the country. JC calls him beautiful, but JC's never been able to see it in himself, the way he pours himself into it like there's nothing else. If he could see it, Lance thinks, there'd never be any doubt in his mind again.

JC tangles one leg over Lance's and rolls, pulling Lance to the side and struggling impatiently to get his hands underneath Lance's clothing, and oh, it's so real and solid and perfect that all Lance wants to do is touch. "Want you," JC says, and Lance rests his mouth against JC's skin and breathes out, once, heavily.

"Want you too," Lance says. There are other words, but they can wait.

two

"Mmm," JC says, and stretches, long and sinuous. He feels deliciously used, wonderfully satiated, languid and lazy and mellow. He drags his toes along the back of Lance's calf, and Lance rumbles incoherently and lifts his head from the pillow long enough to blink a few times and press a soft kiss against JC's lips.

"You are not thinking about bouncing right out of this bed and taking a shower," Lance informs him. JC relaxes from the stretch and drapes himself along Lance's side, nuzzling the curve of Lance's collarbone and pausing only to cluck, lightly, at the bite marks he'd left there. Well, Lance would just have to deal with them.

It wasn't as though it were the first time. JC smiles, remembering the mornings of frantic complaints from the makeup people, remembering the raised eyebrows and knowing looks from the other guys, remembering Joey's little snickers. Joey always knew when someone else was getting laid. It was like his secret superpower or something. "Comfortable," JC says, and rubs his hand along Lance's spine. "Not moving for a while."

Lance stifles the yawn, and JC winces a little. It's five-thirty in the morning by Lance's body clock, and though it's hardly the first time that they've been up all night stealing time like this, usually they do it out of necessity and not out of sheer temporal disconnect. He doesn't blame Lance for being sleepy, but he wishes, guiltily, that they hadn't stayed up talking about tours and albums and publicity appearances and Lance's business and meetings and all the thousand other mundane things that could be accomplished over cell phone and email without wasting their time together. It had been nice to get the chance to talk in person, though, to see those green eyes and that half-grin to go with the voice. It was always nice to be able to sit and spend time just existing together, comfortable in a way that JC could never identify or define.

"Hey," Lance says, and opens one eye. "You're thinking awfully loudly. What's up?"

"Nothing," JC says. He rubs his fingertips over the base of Lance's neck, and Lance shivers a little as JC goes over one of those spots. JC's got them all memorized, having long ago mapped out Lance's skin inch by inch. He imagines that if he closes his eyes, he can feel the bass clef underneath his index finger. "Have I told you lately how much I love this tattoo? It's perfect for you."

"Wanted to have something to remind me of the music," Lance says, his voice slurring with the edges of sleep. "To keep y'all with me when you're not there."

"Yeah," JC says, and kisses the tip of Lance's nose. "Sleep. We'll have time in the morning."

three

Sprawling out in bed with Lance is never a bad thing, but JC is wide awake, no matter how long he stays curled up against Lance's side. He's not selfish enough to want to wake Lance back up to keep him company, but just lying in bed is driving him nuts, so after another twenty minutes of staring at the wall, he eases himself out from under the covers and pats the floor with his toes until he finds the sweatpants that he pulled off to get dressed earlier that evening.

He wanders back downstairs and turns his computer back on. He probably should have put off reading his email until after Lance had fallen asleep, it would have given them more time, but he'd been cherishing a small and hidden hope that Lance would have been able to stay up a little longer and he'd been able to fall asleep a little earlier and they'd had the chance to go to sleep together.

He doesn't have AIM set to turn on automatically, but he checks the clock for the time and shrugs, starting up the program. He doesn't expect that anyone will be on at this time of night, especially since most of the people he usually talks to are making Christmas plans, but Chris's screenname pops up on his list and he isn't set to away, so JC imagines that he's probably sitting up on a caffeine buzz, spreading outrageous rumors on fansites and possibly talking smack about the Backstreet Boys anonymously again. Or maybe he's just looking for porn. He IMs Chris with hey, man, you awake? and gets back yeah, me and sleep aren't on speaking terms again this week after a minute.

call you? don't really feel like typing right now.

well, you might wake up the four Playboy bunnies and the petting zoo, but they'll cope.

JC grins as he reaches for the cell phone. Chris is memory five, and he doesn't bother with a greeting. "I thought we told you that Playboy bunnies are bad for the image."

Chris laughs. "It's nearly 2004, we're updating for the new millennium. What's up, man? Thought you and Lance were shacking up tonight and ignoring the real world."

JC fiddles with his email client for a minute and then realizes that he really doesn't feel like typing, or staring at the screen for that matter, and shuts his machine off without bothering to shut it down first. "Yeah, we did, it was great. He must have gotten the sleep that bailed on you, though. He's out cold upstairs, but I woke up like, twelve hours ago and can't sleep yet. And after this week, it's like I'm so far into tired that I'm out the other side." He kicks the filing cabinet part of the desk to make the chair swivel around, then puts his feet down and stands up to pace. He isn't really sure why he wanted to talk to Chris -- to anyone, really -- but he thinks it might have something to do with the way that the house, with Lance asleep, feels far emptier than it does when he's home alone.

"How's it going, anyway?" Chris's voice sharpens for a minute, like he's turning his attention solely to the conversation instead of whatever else he was doing. JC's got a picture in his head of Chris in fuzzy socks and that weird thin robe thing he picked up in Japan years ago, with his glasses perched on his nose and squinting at the computer screen, surrounded by the debris of soda cans and empty bags of chips. He's pretty sure that it's close to the reality. Chris has taken to hiatus like a duck to water. "You're not calling because the two of you have had, like, some sort of you-have-forgotten-the-face-of-your-father fight with the scary quiet thing instead of the yelling and now you're both plotting ways to boost pity sales of our next album by offing each other just after recording, right?"

That makes JC laugh. He drops down on the couch and closes his eyes, imagining that Chris is sitting just across the room. "No, nothing like that. Where do you come up with stuff like that? It was good to just get the time."

Chris hums thoughtfully. "You two still doing your on-again-off-again thing?"

"Yeah," JC says, and hooks one of his knees up over the back of the couch. "I dunno. It's weird. I'm getting a weird vibe."

"Define 'weird'," Chris says. "I am familiar with the Chasez concept of the universe enough to realize that what you think is weird and what the rest of the world think is weird are very rarely in accordance."

"Eh. I don't know." JC attempts to lift one of the cushions off the back of the couch with his toes and tries to think why he even brought it up in the first place. "It's just. I dunno. I'm kinda getting the vibe that maybe he wants to. Try again or something." He feels pretty stupid saying it, like he's in the midst of some sort of middle school crush. It's not like they had spectacular flaming breakup trauma. He keeps telling himself that. Really, out of all the relationships he's ever had, it ended the best. That kinda says something.

"Hmm." There's a long pause, and JC wonders if he really has finally snapped, if Chris is going to come back with some sharp and devastating rejoinder. He's just about to say nevermind when Chris hmmms again. "Don't know what to tell you. It's Lance, we all know what Lance is like when it comes to shit like that, but you guys have both grown up a lot in the past few years. Maybe he does want to. Maybe he doesn't. You're not going to know unless you flat-out ask him."

Maybe JC had been hoping for some sort of magical answer. Chris is sometimes capable of doing stuff like that, but he guesses that when it comes to Lance, Chris is just as confused as the rest of them. "I just. I don't want to fuck it up."

"I know," says Chris. "But the two of you haven't been talking about it for so long that it's probably past time to start."

four

JC still wasn't tired when Chris finally begged off the phone, declaring that the Playboy bunnies were starting to get lonely and the zoo would be awake in a few hours, so he'd better get to sleep before then. JC wonders if maybe Chris wasn't joking about the menagerie. He wouldn't put it past Chris.

He slipped his cell phone back into its charger and eyed the computer again, but he still didn't want to type, and he's sort of between mindless computer games again, after Justin had kidnapped his copy of Civilization III, which had been his primary method of work avoidance. Justin had claimed it was to save JC from himself, but JC secretly suspected that it was because Justin had never been able to beat his high score and wanted to practice. He considers trying to find the CD for the Sims, but despite being precisely in the frame of mind that should facilitate mindless game-playing -- the "point, click, drool" stage, as Lance tends to call it -- he still feels kind of like wandering around the house instead.

They'd forgotten to turn the lights off before heading upstairs earlier, so JC lets darkness follow along behind him like a puppy as he goes. He's still not quite sure why he feels so restless, so out-of-sorts. He's used to being the only one awake in the house, when Tyler has gone to bed and he's managed to flip his sleeping schedule again, but this is a different kind of still feel to the house, like the whole house is sleeping and he doesn't want to wake it.

The floor of his studio is cold underneath his bare feet as he wanders down the stairs. He hadn't realized that he was headed there until he found himself opening the door, but it sort of seems like a good place to go by default if he's not sure what else he feels like doing. He wanders by the desk, picks up his notebook without sitting down, and puts it back down; he's not in a lyrics mood. Maybe it's not time for creating; maybe he's used up his creative juice for the year and has to wait for it to re-set on New Year's Eve when the ball drops. He sits down at the piano bench and rests his hands on the keys for a few minutes, then starts with tri-tone scales. It's apparently a jazz night, or so his fingers tell him.

The music takes him over, though, the same way it always does. It's always been his place of refuge, his retreat, his meditation. He lets it flow through his fingers and out to the keys, and when he breaks off the scales and just lets himself go, whatever lines strike his fancy, he knows that he was right to listen to his subconscious when it brought him down here. He lets his fingers wander, stretching out one chord, letting another fall into place.

Piano isn't necessarily his first choice for an instrument to put on an album, but it's his first choice for working out melodies, seeing where the music goes and where it takes him. He closes his eyes to just slits and thinks about playing Lance's song, the song that Lance sings with his every turn and shift and word and movement. His hands slip down an octave and the song stretches out, slips sideways, slows down. There's Mississippi afternoons in it, and slow smiles, and that open and honest and somehow always kind way Lance has of always telling the truth, no matter how much that truth hurts.

(Lance had been the one to rescue "Build My World" when it had nearly died stillborn, poking his head into the studio with a pizza delivery just in time. JC had grabbed him and sat him down at the piano bench, running through the melody quickly because he knew that Lance would follow. "Play that," JC had said, "just that, just a few times," and Lance had only nodded and splayed his fingers over the keys. JC hauled out his keyboard and worked around the notes that Lance was coaxing, putting in the depths of chords, and it wasn't working and wasn't working until Lance had picked up his other hand and started riffing a harmony line underneath it all and yes, that was it. Lance never improvises when he's at the piano, he's the type who plays what's written, but he had that time and it had been perfect. Once JC had gotten the notes down before they'd flown away, he'd asked Lance where they'd come from, and Lance had just shrugged. "I heard them there," he said, and JC had known that was just another way that Lance had of telling the truth.)

Truth, JC thinks, but not all the truth, not necessarily. Maybe Chris was right, maybe it is time to have the talk, but not the night before the night before Christmas. He's happy enough with what he's got. He's got to remind himself sometimes that he's pretty damn lucky, to have people in his life like that. He's been talking in interviews about how he's enjoying the single life, and it's true, but what he doesn't add is that he most likes the easy, no-strings-attached-pardon-the-pun kind of love that he surrounds himself with. He's happy. He's got everything he ever wanted, and the thought that he might risk that for a might-have-been doesn't sit right with him. But then again, the thought of letting something pass him by just because he's scared of what might happen doesn't sit right with him either, and he really has regressed to middle school, because he's making far more of a big deal out of all of this than it deserves.

He realizes, in disgust, that the melody he's picking out underneath the light and delicate chord progression his left hand has slipped into isn't something he can use at all, because it's already been done. "'Cause nobody loves me, it's true, not like you do," he sings, because once he realizes what he's playing he has to sing along, and then drops his hands down on the keys to make a cacophany. He's no Beth Gibbons.

five

JC is glad that he knows his bedroom well enough to move around in the dark. He doesn't like sleeping with the blinds drawn -- he likes being able to wake up in a puddle of late-afternoon sunshine when he can, sleepy and gradual -- but between the trees and the fact that his room faces to the mountain in the back, he doesn't get much in the way of outside lights to his bedroom. It always takes him a while before his eyes adjust, and he picks his way across the room hoping that he hadn't left his pants lying on the floor waiting to reach out a hand -- well, okay, a leg -- and yank him down by the ankles. His pants are malevolent like that sometimes. Stupid pants. Every now and then he ponders staging a revolt and banishing them in favor of a kilt or something, except he's got bony knees.

Lance is sprawled out across the bed like some sort of bulkhead, like he's taking a stand for truth and justice and the American way and the right to take up all available space so that your sleeping partner gets shoved onto the floor. That wasn't in the Declaration of Independence, but JC thinks that if Lance had written it, it might have been. Maybe that was in the first draft. JC kicks off the sweatpants and drops them on the floor, where they join the pile of clothing that is conspiring to someday do him bodily injury, and looks down at Lance sleeping.

Asleep, the lines in Lance's face smooth out. It's not that he looks younger; if anything, he looks older, like there's none of the energetic goofiness that sometimes manifests itself and reminds you that no matter how much Lance has grown up lately, he's still and forever more going to be one of the babies of the group. Asleep, Lance loses that animation, but he gains a stillness that JC sometimes wishes were there during the day. Sometimes he wonders about all the things that they all sacrificed, to get to where they've gotten. It was worth it, he'd never in his life say that it wasn't worth it, but sometimes, when some of his friends are reminiscing about sitting up all night during college over the bones of a pizza and debating everything from Heidegger to D&D rules, he wonders who he'd be if he'd gotten that chance.

He slides into bed next to Lance, nudging him over as gently as he can, and Lance wakes up enough to roll over and tuck an arm over his chest before drifting back off. The bed is warm and the covers are already tangled and pulled out from the foot of the bed. Lance's secret superpower would be to unmake beds the minute he sits down on them. JC listens to the sound of Lance's breathing and can taste the pillow beneath him when he smiles.

nine

The morning light is soft and hazy across his face when Lance comes awake. JC is sprawled out over his half of the bed and half of Lance's, and it takes a good five minutes for Lance to work up the motivation to untangle himself. It's warm and comfortable and he feels well-rested for the first time in a week or so, even if he got less sleep than he should have after being up that long. He always sleeps better when there's someone else in the bed. He always sleeps best when that person is JC; it's like JC radiates peaceful slumber.

JC shifts as Lance gets up from the bed, making some soft noise that isn't articulate enough to be called a word. Lance knows that he's not awake enough to remember it; JC always wakes up when someone climbs into or out of bed with him, but it's not a true waking, not enough to prevent him rolling over and going right back to sleep. He's wrapped in the covers and only a few inches of skin peek out -- the curve of a shoulder, the flash of fingers tightened unconsciously around the edge of the comforter.

Lance just stands there watching him for what feels like forever. He's so damn beautiful, whether awake or asleep. Every time Lance tries to look at him, just look at him for a while the way that he deserves, just drink in the pure clean lines and curves of him, JC gets uncomfortable after only a few minutes of it, starts shifting and stammering and thinking up excuses to get up and do something else. It's so rare that Lance gets as long as he wants to look.

He was trying to figure out what he wants to say all night, trying to figure out how to say it, and he thinks that he's probably freaked JC out by now. He isn't offering hearts and flowers, and JC should know that. It's not his style. But what he's been trying to say is different than that, deeper, more real, and he thinks that maybe JC gets it. Maybe shares it. If he could only articulate it. They've had so many conversations in bits and pieces over the years that sometimes he forgets how to talk something out from beginning to end.

He brushes his lips over the curve of JC's shoulder -- warm skin beneath him, tastes just like morning and sunshine, and if he ever worked up the nerve to tell JC that he'd never get accused of lacking poetry ever again -- and pads silently off to the bathroom and the shower. Behind him, JC turns over and pulls the covers over himself a little more tightly. Lance pauses in the doorway and looks back over to the bed. JC's hair is tangled and messy, starting to snarl, and as Lance watches, he spreads out a hand in his sleep over the pillow where Lance's head had been.

ten

JC is the kind of person who likes for his guests to feel welcome. He stocks Chris's beer, and baby-proofed the house for Joey and Briahna, and always makes sure that there's a guest bedroom with fresh linens and that the guest bathroom is well-appointed. It's always little things, the kind of thing that JC presents as though they're a given.

It's the reason why Lance can slide back into bed next to JC, open up his laptop, and not have to worry about cords and wires in order to connect to the Internet; JC was not the most technical out of them, but he'd gone out of his way to make sure that the wireless network covered the entire house, precisely so that Lance could sprawl out anywhere he wanted with his laptop and get some work done. He props himself up with a few pillows behind his back and a towel topping it off so that his hair doesn't drip on JC's pillows, and sets his coffee on the bedside table.

JC mutters something that doesn't belong to any waking language and rolls over, fitting one arm over Lance's hips and nestling the side of his face against Lance's side. Lance waits for a minute to see if that means that JC is about to wake up, but he settles again. Lance brushes his fingertips through JC's hair, smiles as JC sighs softly, and wishes he never had to leave.

eleven

JC is sitting on the edge of the empty stage at Irving Plaza, with his guitar in his lap trying to tune it, while Chantal rests her ankle on his shoulder and uses him as a barre for stretches and warmups. The guitar sounds like Billie Holiday singing when he touches a string, but it's flat. A man with his skin painted blue lets himself in through the back door of the club and walks backwards across the floor, then turns around and tries to take the guitar from JC. His fingers leave blue smudges where they rub against the back of JC's hands. JC tries to explain that the guitar still isn't tuned, but the blue-skinned guy will only talk in rhythmic clicking noises.

He's just thinking that the clicking noises sound kind of cool, like he could sample them and put them in a song or two later, when it adds in a little chiming noise. Chantal digs her fingers into his hair and scritches his scalp, half-petting him, and he holds onto the guitar a little more tightly to keep the blue man from taking it away from him. He can't let a blue guy take away a guitar that sings like Billie Holiday. He has to piss and the room seems kind of hazy and he thinks that he might be lying down, maybe, but then the guy tries to take his guitar again and he thinks he might smell coffee. He hopes that the coffee isn't blue. Although blue coffee might be interesting, it might taste like blueberries, and since when has Chantal spent any amount of time stroking his hair, anyway?

For a few more minutes he tries to hold onto it, until the feel of fabric underneath his cheek becomes the pillow and not the side of the stage somehow, and the clicking of the blue guy's speech becomes the clicking of Lance's laptop keys, and the hand that's petting him becomes Lance, typing one-handed and using the other to stroke JC's hair. He takes another few minutes to half-drag himself up the ladder of consciousness, and Lance's hand stills.

"Good morning," Lance says, and smiles.

"Mmmmrmpgh?" is all that JC can manage. It feels like his mouth is glued together.

Lance, bless him, knows exactly what JC is asking. "Eleven twenty-eight. Go on back to sleep, we've got a little more time."

JC wonders where the Billie Holiday came from in his dreams, because Lance isn't playing any music, but he turns over and nestles his back up against Lance's side. Lance is warm and smells like JC's own shampoo, and his fingers are soft against JC's neck. He falls back to sleep to the sound of soft keyclicks and thinks, muzzily, that this is worth the hassle of having had to dick around with technology for long enough to make sure that his house was networked right.

twelve

Lance shuts his laptop just as his battery is about to run dry -- thank goodness that his seat on the plane is first class, they have outlets that he can plug into and recharge -- and leans over to kiss JC's shoulder again. "JC, baby, come on. Time to wake up again."

JC is still and silent for a long moment, and Lance wonders if it's going to be another one of those days where he has to spend twenty minutes patiently coaxing JC up the evolutionary ladder until he approaches "sentient", much less "human". There's a sudden contraction and then expansion of muscles beneath the comforter, though, and JC sits up abruptly (narrowly avoiding hitting Lance's nose with his shoulder) and drags a hand through his hair. As much as they tease JC for being the sleepy one, over the years he's learned this preternatural ability to come bolt awake when he needs to. "'M not late," he mumbles, and then blinks a few times. "'Timezit?"

With JC sitting like that, the sunlight breaking over his shoulders and crowning his head like a halo, Lance can't resist the urge to lean over and touch. He nips lightly at JC's lips (ignoring the morning breath) and then pulls back and smiles. "Twelve-eighteen. I've gotta be out of here by like one-ish to make my flight, I just wanted to make sure that you'd be awake enough to remember me saying goodbye."

JC blinks at him again and then slides over on the bed, wrapping his arms around Lance's waist and resting his head on Lance's shoulder. "Yeah," he says, and then yawns. Lance's jaw aches in sympathy at the cracking noise. "'M up. Wish you didn't have to go."

"Me too," Lance says, and rests his cheek against JC's hair. "I'll be back, though. We'll make plans after New Year's, all of us." JC is probably going to be on the road after New Year's, though, he thinks, and winces. He remembers Justin's backbreaking schedule for the first few weeks after Justified dropped, and thinks that maybe he shouldn't have woken JC up after all; he could probably benefit by storing up sleep like a camel for a few weeks.

"Back in a minute," JC says, and slides from the bed. Lance busies himself by packing his laptop back into the case as the water runs in the bathroom, stops, then runs again. JC re-emerges just as Lance is finishing up, smelling like mint toothpaste and liquid soap. He winds his arms around Lance's chest from behind and rests his cheek against Lance's shoulder again. "Morning," he says, and he sounds a lot more awake this time.

Lance turns around and presses a kiss against the corner of JC's mouth. JC turns his head a little and opens his mouth beneath Lance's, and JC in the morning is always sleepy and boneless and so sweet and pliant that Lance regrets not waking him up earlier so that they'd have enough time to continue on that implicit promise. Last night had been good, but he'd been half asleep himself then. He remembers a time when their sleeping schedules at least nominally resembled each other, but it was a long time past. JC pulls away and stifles a yawn against Lance's shoulder again, tucking his hands under the sweatpants Lance is wearing (JC's own, rescued from the hell that is JC's laundry pile on the floor) and resting them there comfortably against the top of Lance's rear. "So, is my Christmas present ready?"

It takes a second. "No," Lance says, and laughs. "I checked after my shower. You don't have enough in this house to keep a bird alive."

"No point in grocery shopping when I'm just leaving again," JC mumbles.

"But I wanted some cereal, yo," Lance whines, in uncanny imitation of someone near and dear to them both, and JC chokes on his laughter.

"Come on," JC says after a minute to recover, and pulls his hands free again. "I think I can manage to turn up something to feed you. You've got time, right?"

"Yeah," Lance says, and kisses JC on the nose. "I've got time."

thirteen

"Are you ever freaked out by it?" JC asks, as Lance comes down the stairs with his duffel bag on one shoulder and his laptop case on the other. He puts his empty cereal bowl in the sink and runs the water in it.

Lance drops his bags in the hallway, then comes over behind him and sticks his hands under the running water. "Gonna need a little more of a cue than that, Jayce," he says.

JC rolls his eyes. Lance shakes his hands and then leans over to dry them on JC's pants. JC yelps and jumps backwards, glares, and hits Lance in the chest with the dishtowel. "The flying. Letting someone else drive. Now that you know how to."

Lance tips his head to one side and looks at JC. "No," he says, after another minute. JC wonders if Lance knows what he's really asking. "Not anymore."

JC shuts the water off and tries not to think about the sheer amount of laundry he still has to do before he'll have any hope of finding clean clothes to bring to Chicago with him. He should have started a load before he went back upstairs to sleep last night. "How long's the flight?"

"Three and a half hours from LAX to Memphis, twenty minutes of frantic dash across the airport, then a puddle jumper down to Jackson that lands almost before it takes off. I should be getting in down there at around ten, their time. Just in time to make it to midnight services at church. Where I will no doubt be thrown a choir robe and told that I'm the bass line in 'Gaudete' again this year." Lance leans against the counter and smiles. "Just another Christmas tradition."

"Guess that's one of the perks of coming home," JC says. "I mean, who else can guilt you into singing without worrying about the cameras."

"Yeah." There's a minute that would be awkward silence if they weren't so used to each other, and then Lance's hand closes over JC's wrist. JC looks up just in time to bump his nose against Lance's, and then Lance is kissing him, quick and sweet. "We gotta do this again sometime soon. Sometime when we've got more than a day. I miss you."

JC twines his arms around Lance's waist and plays with the belt-loop of Lance's jeans. "Yeah," he says. "Miss you too."

There's another of those moments of quiet, this one peaceful rather than awkward, and then Lance finally pulls backwards. "I gotta go. Security's gonna be a bitch, and if I miss my flight, I'm fucked. Mom will kill me."

"Yeah," JC says, and rests his hand on Lance's cheek for a minute before letting his hand drop. "Gimme a call or a text or something to let me know you got in safely, okay? And give my love to everyone. Haven't seen your family in ages."

"Sure. You too, actually. Hug everyone and tell them I said Merry Christmas." Lance brushes his lips over JC's again, and then sighs. "I don't want to go."

"Go and catch your flight," JC says. His subconscious has made decisions for him while he was asleep, but the discussion can wait. They'll have it in bits and pieces, in sentences here and single words there, in text messages and emails and phone calls late at night and an hour or two taken in bits and pieces.

It'll take shape as they go, living and breathing like what they've built with each other, like what they will build with each other. JC smiles and wraps his hand around Lance's, then lifts it to his lips, pressing a brief kiss on the back of Lance's knuckles before letting it fall again and taking the step backwards.

"Yeah," Lance says, and picks up his laptop case again.

It's all gonna be okay. JC can hear it in the in-betweens. "Hey," he says, and then nods. "It doesn't mean that you're leaving."

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