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? They live in each other's pockets, have for years; it should have been the sort of thing that's hard to hide away, except that they all have their little quirks, and after a while, it just becomes another thing that blends into the background until things have always been like that.

The thought nags at him, sneaking up to broadside him when he's least paying attention, and Chris finally decides that it had to be recent, because otherwise, he would have noticed. Someone would have noticed, because there are some things that can't be accounted for just by calling them "quirks". Except really, if he's going to be honest enough with himself, no, he probably wouldn't have noticed, because Justin and JC are attached at the hip these days. And Chris is cool with that, really, because JC was good for Justin and Justin was good for JC and the two of them together were just. Happy. But when they're together, it's like they're both different people, just a little. Not in a bad way. Just different.

JC's a lot more observant than they give him credit for, Chris knows. But Chris has known Justin forever too, and Chris is a lot more used to watching Justin than JC is. Chris has been looking out for Justin for years. And Justin has been changing, since that meteoric rise to fame and fortune. Nothing overt; on the surface, maybe even deeper, Justin's still the sweet little charmer boy he's always been. But the longer Chris watches him, the more he starts to add things up in his head.

Like the way that Justin starts taking showers hot enough to scald anyone else, hot enough to leave his skin red and pulsing afterwards, like a bad case of sunburn. Chris and JC were sitting in Justin's hotel room one morning, Chris bouncing on the bed and yelling about sound check, when Justin came out all lobster-pink and shiny. "I've heard of hotels where the hot water goes out, Infant," Chris said, "but none where the cold water does," and JC just sighed a quiet note and left white fingerprints fading back to red on Justin's arms as he dragged Justin across the room to get dressed.

Like the time that Justin and Chris were out riding one afternoon, and Justin tipped the bike -- ten miles an hour on some stupid gravel back road, he was barely even scratched, but looking back at it Chris realizes that Justin is damn well too good of a rider for it to be an accident. JC palmed the patch of roadburn along Justin's calf and looked at Chris with worried eyes, because Chris is the one who knows what happens to Justin, Chris is always the one who knows what happens to Justin, and Chris just shook his head. "J has yet to learn that balancing on a motorcycle is not like balancing on a giant bouncing ball," he said, and Justin threw a pillow at him, and the whole thing was forgotten in the wrestling match that ensued.

Like the time that Justin wandered barefoot across gravel that was maybe half broken glass, and didn't even seem to notice. Lance read him the riot act when the soles of Justin's feet turned out to be less thick than Justin had claimed they were. "How can you not notice these things?" Lance lectured, spending twenty minutes sitting on the bathroom floor with tweezers while Justin sat on the sink and winced, and Justin just shrugged. "Mind was elsewhere, man, you know how it goes." Justin left faint bloody footprints on the tile floor for the rest of the afternoon.

Like the way Justin keeps talking about getting more ink done, and Chris thinks back about when he'd had the cross inked, remembering the way Justin's eyes had slitted shut and his lips had parted, just a bit. The way he'd held absolutely motionless, and when it was all done, had tipped the artist way more than courtesy required and brushed his lips across the guy's, lightly and chastely, before sauntering back out into the bright afternoon sunlight.

Like the way Justin insists on using the hotel pool, the outdoor hotel pool, the outdoor fucking hotel pool even in fucking Minneapolis in May, and if that water was more than sixty degrees Chris will eat his shirt. Justin dove into the water without a second glance, and only got out when he was shivering so badly that Chris was sure that his lips were turning blue and Joey was howling something about pneumonia. JC was there to hold the towel for him, rubbing his hands up and down Justin's arms briskly, and bent over to murmur something in Justin's ear. Justin only laughed.

It takes Chris a while to start seeing it, and he doesn't know what calls it to his attention, but once he starts seeing it, he sees it everywhere. The way that Justin pushes himself, in dance rehearsals, until everyone else is limp and aching and sore and Justin's got to be in agony just like the rest of them. The way that Justin spends hours with the weight machines, until the sweat is pouring down his back and his body must be screaming for rest, with JC calmly holding up a single hand to spot for him. The way that Justin chews on the second knuckle of his index finger when he's distracted, until he nearly draws blood, and never even notices.

He's just gearing up to say something, something along the lines of yo, J, been noticing the masochistic tendencies lately, you wanna tell me what's going on? Because Justin's his best fucking friend, and even if he weren't, Chris is still the self-appointed Boyband Older Brother, the one who's supposed to notice this shit before it gets this bad, the one who's supposed to take care of all of them.

Justin saves him from having to make a fool of himself, though.

"You know," Justin says one afternoon, his head tucked in the curve of Chris's hip as they work their way through Grand Theft Auto 3 and chat about ideas for the next album, "C's been talking to me a lot lately about the idea of white noise."

Chris is only half-listening, pondering the best way to go about the discussion he's pretty much decided it was time to have. "White noise?"

"You know. When you've got sound that's all sorts of different frequencies at once, and you're using it to mask other sounds. It drowns out all of the other shit, and if you want to, like, be heard over it, you've got to shout." There's a dark-wine smudge on the inside of Justin's wrist, and Chris imagines JC capturing Justin's tanned skin between his teeth and suckling on it.

And in that second, Chris knows. Knows that JC has noticed what's wrong with Justin, and that JC has been watching out for him. Knows that all of those little looks JC has been giving him whenever Justin does something stupid aren't "Chris, what's wrong with Justin this time", they're "do you see it too?" Knows that he's been really, really fucking blind, and JC hasn't, and man, do they ever not give C enough credit.

JC's been channeling Justin's unconscious desire to feel something, Justin's subconscious need to slash and bite and burn through all of the glamor and glitz and glitter to find something real, channeling it into something that, okay, is still fucked up, but it's at least lovingly fucked up. JC's been watching over him, and hasn't tried to stop it, and probably hasn't even said a word to Justin about it, at least not a word that wasn't couched in some bizarre JC musical metaphor that nobody ever gets anyway.

Chris takes a long, shuddering breath, because in that one second he realizes just how really messed Justin could have gotten while none of the rest of them were paying attention. He'd seen it happen before, when people were so drowned out by the flood and noise of sudden success that they need to do something to reassure themselves that they're not dreaming. Something to reassure themselves that they can still feel.

Something to break through the white noise.

He's been staring at Justin too long, and he's about to wreck their chances for beating this level, and all he can say, distractedly, is "Yeah?"

"Yeah," Justin says, and smiles, that tolerant smile that they all use around JC. "I just hope he doesn't turn it into a song," and Chris knows that it's all going to be okay.

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