They became friends because Lance caught Justin dancing like Madonna when he thought no one was looking. They were already friends, of course, they were all friends. They all wore coordinated outfits and short-sheeted each others' beds and didn't know yet what was really at stake, so it was easy to get along.
But Justin had been messing around in the corner of the mirrored studio one Sunday afternoon when Lance came back for his jacket.
"You're doing the Lucky Star dance," Lance said, laughing and pointing.
"At least I can dance and sing at the same time," Justin said.
Lance collected things he knew for sure. Like, Chris rolled his eyes behind the management types' backs and then nodded more than he needed to when they turned around. Joey first started liking Superman stuff because he had a crush on Christopher Reeve. JC hated his fake George Clooney haircut but couldn't bring himself to complain about it. Lance measured friendship in truths and he thought of these things as the first beads on the string. He didn't know anything for sure about Justin until that afternoon, just the blinding surface.
Two weeks later they'd bombed all around at shows and getting an American contract so Lou sent them to Germany. It had worked once before, after all. On the plane over, Justin cupped one hand against Lance's ear and sang "Lucky Star" to him after everyone else fell asleep. Justin's breath was warm and tickled and Lance tried not to tense up. Then Justin fell asleep, his head on Lance's shoulder, drooling on his shirt. Lance couldn't sleep on the plane at all.
Germany was European. Nobody really knew what that meant, but every time they saw something that made no sense, JC said, "What do you expect? We're in Europe." But really most of the time it was the same: rehearse, sleep, rinse, repeat. Lance couldn't remember the last time he'd been in a bed for more than four hours at a stretch. He couldn't remember the last time someone asked what day it was and he could answer without guessing.
They spent one weekend in Paris meeting with a new choreographer in the 4th arrondissement, and there were two guys about Chris' age holding hands as they walked down a street. "We're in Europe," Justin shrugged, pinching Lance's ass as he ran around a corner. Lance followed him down a narrow cobblestone street and tried to remember being sixteen. Sixteen would have been tenth grade and he'd hated his trig class because the teacher always stood too close. Justin was bopping down the alley like he was in the video for "Billie Jean," grabbing his crotch, and Lance knew Justin would always be the most famous but he didn't really care.
Justin cocked up a knee and doffed an imaginary hat and moonwalked over until they were pressed up against a building.
"Is it Tuesday?" Lance asked, hand on Justin's hip.
"Sure," Justin said, leaning in. "Why not?"
Lance closed his eyes and felt Justin pushing into him. Justin kissed Lance's jaw first and then the corner of his mouth. Justin burst out giggling and moved away. Lance opened his eyes.
"When in Rome, right?" Justin grinned and Lance could almost hear the cash registers clanging. Literally a million dollar smile.
Lance started walking behind Justin. "We're in Paris."
Joey had a crush on one of the choreographers, the one who decided they should do the flip in I Want You Back. Lance blushed when Justin pointed Joey's goofy gaze out to him, and blushed again when Justin poked him and said, "Dude, are you freaked or something?"
Justin started crawling into his bed when they shared a room and neither of their moms was around. Justin would talk for a little about the photo shoot or the club they had played. Sometimes he would just start singing softly, always Michael or Janet. Sometimes it was old Jackson Five. The first few times, Justin would talk until his voice started to get slow and whispery and then wrap around Lance.
The fourth time it happened Lance woke up with Justin's hand around his dick and realized it hadn't been a dream. Nobody giggled that time. Justin was kissing his neck from behind and humming and the only way to shut him up was for Lance to turn around and pin Justin down and push their tongues together. Justin had a hand up under Lance's old T-shirt when the alarm went off. A minute later the phone rang: Guten Morgen, es ist sechs Uhr.
They didn't say anything as they got dressed but when Justin went to open the door he spun back around. "I'm supposed to be in the studio until ten again but I'm just gonna say I don't feel good. Okay?" He didn't wait for Lance to answer.
At dinner Justin coughed and Chris hit him on the back a few times and Justin bent over at the waist and blinked real slow like it hurt and finally someone told him to just go back to his room, they'd do it the next day. So Lance worked on the flip for an hour until his shoulder started making a weird popping noise and went back to the hotel, stopping by the ice machine on their floor to scoop cubes into his water bottle.
Justin was watching George Michael unplugged on MTV Europe, sitting on the floor in boxers with his back against the bed near the TV. He reached out for Lance's drink and Lance handed it over and sat down a few inches away. Justin was crunching the ice and slurping and he put one cold palm on Lance's forearm as he changed channels, like somehow the two went together. Lance felt like his arms were melting and the rest of him was hot like he'd come out of a cold pool and laid out to dry on the baking concrete, steam rising off the wet body print.
Justin switched channels again, flying by dubbed Tom and Jerry cartoons and some soccer match with the announcer screaming "Gol! Gol!" which sounded the same in Spanish as in English. Justin's hand slid up under Lance's short sleeve and then they kind of fell onto each other, from nervous and slow and minuscule moves to groping all at once. Lance hit his head on the wheel of the bed and they laughed and moved over a little and he stopped thinking about getting a rug burn on his left elbow and just pushed his hand down inside Justin's boxers.
They were lying side-to-side, Justin's lean, bony hips looking sharper with his shorts pulled down. Kissing. When Lance stopped and opened his eyes and looked down and then back up, Justin had his eyes squeezed tight and then he was coming with a whimper, like he hadn't meant it, like he wanted to take it back.
Justin fell back and covered his face with his hands. "Uh," he said. "Oops."
Lance watched someone steal the ball and do a bicycle kick. He murmured, "It's okay."
Justin giggled and sat up, blocking the TV. "Yeah. I mean, at least it was only you." He stood up quickly and went to the bathroom. Lance waited a few minutes, until the blue team had scored a goal, and then got into his bed. When Chris rapped on the door in the morning to wake them up, Lance saw Justin sprawled on the other bed, not even under the covers.
Justin's mom was around for the next few weeks, hovering over Justin's shoulder while he studied and sitting in the van next to him wherever they drove. Justin still pointed out the right people on the street to smile at and grabbed Lance during rehearsals to make sure Lance noticed the hickey Joey had on the back of his neck. Once, before a photo shoot, Justin started singing "Hanging Tough" in Lance's ear while the makeup artist fussed over Lance. Justin was already prettied up and his hair didn't move at all as he bobbed his head from side to side.
The first night they shared a room again they didn't even get back until two a.m. Lance only wanted sleep, and he didn't even want to think about Justin's hand or the unsurprisingly casual way he'd made his excuses. Still, it had been one more true thing to know about Justin.
Lance walked in and fell on the bed. Justin leaned against the door and locked it. "Well," he said, clapping his hands. "Finally. Let's do it right this time, okay?"
It didn't take them the whole year to get it right. Just most of it. But they were used to doing a thing over and over until they got it right and a lot changed that year but not that they usually went to bed together and tried to do it better. The first time Lance tried to swallow and wound up spitting down the side of the bed, Justin had rubbed his bare back reassuringly. "You know when they pumped Jordan Knight's stomach that one time they found sperm?" Justin asked, and Lance didn't really think that was possible but he was grateful anyway.
They were coming back from some mall in Schenectady, the big bus rumbling down crappy U.S. roads on their way to somewhere else with a Macy's and a thousand screaming girls, and Justin put his hand in Lance's lap in the backseat. "Think we're ready to do it like the big boys?" Justin asked in his look-at-me stage voice and Johnny yelled at everybody to shut up because Backstreet was on MTV.
In White Plains they'd been upgraded from the old-school shopping center to the big yuppie mall and Justin got cornered by some brown-haired girl who was older than all of them but wanted Justin to sign her ass where it peeked out of white denim shorts. Johnny came over to calm things down but as soon as he left again Justin was laughing and doing it anyway.
Lance had barely thrown the lock on the hotel door before he was pushing Justin back onto the bed and pulling both of their shirts off. Beneath him Justin always looked smaller and a little girlish, a flare of tight muscle at the waist like a corset. Lance pushed Justin's legs up until they hit the headboard and sat back, fumbling with the condom. More things to practice. But Justin was whispering lyrics under his breath, their own this time, and when Lance leaned forward and into Justin's chest, and then again, and then again, it seemed true, all of it. Justin spooned against him like always, but he muttered "you, you" over and over again and fell asleep kissing Lance's shoulder.
Lance knew more than he used to. Like, Chris sometimes drank too much and knew the guys would cover for him because he would yell at anyone, even Lou, to protect them. Joey started sleeping with anyone who wanted him, boy or girl, after he caught the choreographer sleeping with one of Backstreet's tour dancers. JC thought he could write songs that might be hits. Lance started memorizing the schedule so he always knew where they were and what day it was. Everyone was growing to hate and fear Lou but no one wanted to say it out loud and make it real.
Paying your dues, Lou always said. Lance noticed that Lou always said "you" when the next word was "pay" and only said "we" when the next word was "made," followed by a dollar amount. Justin told him that was the way things worked, that was everyone's first or second deal. Lance wanted to find the way, to meet the people necessary to move all of them onto the second or third deal where their dues were paid a lot fucking quicker and they all made some money.
The other three all knew where Justin usually spent his nights and basically conspired to make sure no one else, from Lou on down, figured it out. Justin was the same with Lance as any of the guys when they weren't in bed. Lance assumed he was a little more than the most convenient bandmate to play with mostly because Justin didn't sing in anyone else's ear while they got their make-up done.
Things got better. They opened for Janet and Justin spent the two weeks doing his "Rhythm Nation" dance in the moments before they went on stage. One night he did it in the room as a striptease and Lance almost came without touching himself. But then things got worse, and everyone was overworked and underslept and for about two weeks after a particularly mobbed appearance Justin walked around like he thought people should kiss his ring and it was only cute for maybe a day.
They were on some bus, going somewhere, and Lance knew it was Saturday but when it was just a cycle of signings and photo shoots and dressing rooms that all had the same furniture in different configurations it turned out it didn't really matter. Lance knew it was day 16 of Justin's great ego trip and that he'd skipped one signing and another interview. Lance had been the last to stop being charmed. He thought maybe he'd strained his thigh learning a new move, or maybe it had been because of how Justin had straddled him in the back of the bus the day before.
But they were all supposed to have dinner at some Hard Rock cafe opening in some overdeveloped suburb so Lance was trying to get in a good mood. And then Justin moaned about having a stomachache and a headache and maybe the flu, so they left him behind. Lance bailed early in search of Advil and an ice pack and Justin was nowhere to be found. Which would have been OK. Except Joey always got a copy of the New York Post no matter where they were, and the next day he read Page Six aloud on the bus, including a tiny item about Britney Spears at some party with Justin at the opening of a club.
"Keeping up appearances," Justin said to everyone but looking right at Lance. "There were a ton of other people there, man, it's not like I went down on her or something." Lance figured Lou must approve, after all, with the idea of Justin sort of maybe being linked to someone famous.
Chris swallowed the last of his beer and glared at Justin. "You can just tell us this shit, at least, before we have to read about it. Or is that too much trouble for Mister Curly Queenie Toppermost of the Poppermost pop darlings?" Then Justin started bitching at Chris and Chris started snarling back. Lance rubbed his thigh and went back to his bunk. Someday if they worked very hard they could all have their own bus, and Lance wanted nothing more that morning than to fill his with silence.
He didn't mean to time anything, but he'd gotten in the habit of checking his watch and following schedules even when he didn't think their time was being managed effectively. So he knew for sure that it took exactly seventy-two minutes for Justin to finish arguing with Chris and come find him. Justin just pulled aside the curtain and poked his head in.
"Get out of my bunk." Lance pushed himself into the corner and hit his head against the wall.
Justin narrowed his eyes and pressed his hands against the bedding. "What the fuck's your problem?"
"You're so -- does any of this even make sense to you? Do you understand anything that's happening?"
Justin nodded like someone had asked again if it was true they were all best friends, without moving too much.
"Get the fuck away from me," Lance said. He watched Justin's hands clench and claw at the bedding. Justin's eyes met his for a moment, just the same pretty blue and Lance never understood people who said they could see so many truths by looking deep in someone's eyes. Always the same color and black pupils and white, there was never anything in Justin's eyes. Justin let go and slammed his hand against the wall and walked away.
For a while after that Justin couldn't stop talking about how famous he was, how he and Britney got invited everywhere and people kept trying to, like, apply for membership in their entourage, and how that meant he was doing something right. Lance kept thinking about his first high school party, where he'd nursed one beer and watched two girls make out on the couch while some football player had counted how long they went at it, one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, three-Mississippi. Around a hundred the guy wandered off. Someone puked on the lawn and one guy put his fist through the bathroom door because it was locked, and the next day at school all anyone could talk about was how rad the party had been and how fucked up they'd gotten and how great the blowjob had been.
Lance got one week back home before they finished the Christmas album and went on tour again. Some guy from Rolling Stone was with them for a while and they decided to spontaneously bust into "Chains of Love" in the middle of playing cards on the bus just to fuck with his head. "You like Erasure?" he asked, like they didn't know that was a trick question, and Chris was the only one who said yes.
Lance decided he'd expected too much of Justin and it wasn't fair to be mad. He slept badly and always alone. Justin still sang in his ear but only sometimes and almost always their own songs. Lance knew what their songs sounded like with Justin's voice in the lead and none of those songs made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up the way Justin's near-whispered imitation of Janet Jackson did. Once or twice, in clubs where their bodyguards kept anyone from seeing them in the back of VIP lounges, Justin trailed a finger up Lance's arm and sang Motown in his ear. Lance could smell the alcohol on Justin's breath and almost chose to ignore it. But then he'd shrug off Justin's touch and Justin would just glare, and Lance would go back to the bus and jerk off.
When the album went platinum and they decided to get tattoos to mark the moment, Justin grabbed Lance's hand as he sat down and pulled up his pant leg. Lance swallowed and looked away, trying not to anticipate how much his own would hurt. Justin gritted his teeth and looked up at Lance with tears in his eyes. "Fucking ouch," he said quietly.
When it was Lance's turn, he concentrated on the pain in his hand where Justin was crushing him trying not to cry out, instead of thinking of the buzzing at his ankle. When they were all done, JC grinned at the four of them with their bandaged ankles and said, "It makes it all really real, guys, really."
Lance had the tattoo to remember the work and the platinum record to hang on his wall but he didn't notice a distinct increase in his bank balance at all. He wondered exactly how many records they had to sell and how many performances for sold-out halls it took to pay off shitty hotels in Germany and choreographers who fucked around on Joey. He resolved to look harder. He resolved to stop looking at Justin.
He knew too many things now. Too many things that chafed at his skin and he wanted to forget, but it was too important. Like, Chris's lost weekend and the occasional flare in his temper that reminded them that Chris's childhood hadn't been funny at all, no matter what kind of jokes he made. Joey had a permanent broken heart and two bouts of gonorrhea. JC wanted more than anything to be thought of as smart and he was just smart enough to know that truly smart people didn't need that at all. Justin didn't have the foggiest idea what people outside the bubble were like. Lance knew someday soon they would need to leave TransCon, just like Backstreet already had. Lawsuits and injunctions and he didn't want it but he knew it like he knew winter followed fall. He saw the same certainty in Chris's eyes sometimes and they both looked away from each other and knew it would happen anyway.
Lance wanted to want just what he had. He reminded himself every day and mostly, because it was fun, he didn't need to. People loved them and they sang and danced damn well, even Lance who honestly couldn't dance and sing at once in the beginning. They were on TV, they had fans, every day something made him laugh and he didn't walk around with his jaw drooping, mooning over Justin or something and whining for some kind of serious career. He was only nineteen, and successful in an industry where next to no one succeeded. Even Chris and Joey, who watched as they got pushed further and further back, could revel in just stepping onto that increasingly well-lit and large stage. Lance was a true bass and he didn't want to be the next Barry White, so he'd never expected to be anywhere else but stage left, a few steps back. They paid him the same, wherever he stood.
One morning he woke up tired and started thinking of Justin and Germany. An elevator in Germany, when Justin was just barely seventeen and they had just come back from being nobody at all in the States. Back to Europe, where girls followed them into the airport and rode the baggage carousel just to catch a glimpse. In the bright elevator, standing in one corner away from the bodyguards, Justin had hooked his finger in Lance's WWJD bracelet, the kind Lou had them all wearing that year. Justin had breathed into his ear. "Jesus would want you to give me a blowjob as soon we're alone."
It had been embarrassing, almost nineteen and hard as hell in the elevator from Justin's finger stroking up and down his wrist and a hot mouth by his ear. Lance had tried to shift his pants to hide it and looked down, abashed. "Blaspheme," he said, because he didn't think Justin would know the word.
Justin had smiled and said, "Okay, so look at it like, What Would Justin Do. It still works for the J part. And Justin? Justin would definitely want you to give Justin a blowjob."
Lance had crossed his arms over his chest, to make Justin stop touching him. He'd rolled his eyes and then when they'd finally been alone, he'd done exactly what Justin wanted. Lance sat up in his bunk, more than a year later, and rubbed his forehead. He shook his head and didn't think about Justin. At least Justin hadn't started talking about himself in the third person or anything.
Lance was tired already and he'd only been up for ten minutes. He was still a little sore from getting swung around in the harness during last night's show. The day before that he'd been out of breath after half a song, gulping down water backstage while the runner pulled off his pants and got him buttoned up again. His dresser in Phoenix had needed safety pins to get one of his outfits to stay up on his hips and Lou had taken one look at him last week and told him to get his ass into a tanning booth, they were from Florida for chrissake and no one wanted to see the ghost of Lance on a sunny spring day. Lance knew once they had a break, he'd be fine. He just wasn't sure how long it would be until that.
That night he had to lean on Justin before they went back out for the encore, hanging on to his shoulder like one of those baby palm trees tied to stakes so they didn't keel off the highway median. "Light-headed," he coughed, squeezing his eyes shut.
"I had no idea I still had that effect on you," Justin said, but he put an arm around Lance's back until they ran back up the stairs and onto the stage. He barely made it off after "Ain't No Stopping Us Now" before he was puking behind the snack table, in full view of at least three gaffers and some random girls he didn't know. Fuck. Lou was going to kill him. Pop Star Has Eating Disorder. 'N Sync Slayed By Sick Singer. He Drove Himself Crazy. Or something even worse, some pun far beyond his comprehension.
He went straight back to the hotel and crawled into bed, ordered soup from room service and slept through his wake-up call. Joey was banging on his door for five minutes before he dug out of the hazy confusion of a nightmare where he kept falling down on stage. He threw up twice on the bus but told Chris he was fine because they all had enough going on without worrying if he would toss his cookies every time he did a kick. It was just like being a racehorse, he thought. You just keep going. Just get up and do it again. About a thousand hotels before he'd seen some movie where a horse ran itself to death but he just took another DayQuil and put on a sweater.
Justin hugged him out of the blue as he rounded a corner going somewhere. Somewhere. Lance concentrated on putting one foot in front of another and smiling on cue. Justin held him for a moment and looked almost scared. "Shit, you're too thin. And you look all washed out, man." Justin bit his lip and then went onto wherever they were going. Lance followed Justin's bobbing blond head to the next door he needed to go through.
Lance winced as Chris stared at him. He batted off Joey's offer of chips. He tossed JC's sweater back. He just needed to get the job done and then there would be a break and he would be fine. He threw up twice after the next show and couldn't figure out which one of them was sitting behind him, rubbing his back. "It's okay," he said to the wall, not knowing who it was back there sighing and sniffling and resting a cool hand on his shoulder. "It's okay. Justin finished that show after he broke his thumb. I'll be fine."
Before the soundcheck in Orlando, he sat in the dressing room and tried to catch his breath. Justin sat in front of him and made a face. "Man, get it fucking together." Justin stood up and walked to the door. "Are you, uh, are you really sick?"
Lance nodded. "I'll be fine." Or, he thought, not. He looked at Justin standing in the door, taller every day. Justin looked fuzzy and incorporeal. Justin was the brightest, sharpest thing in the world and Lance watched him dissolve and then the whole world went black.
When he opened his eyes, someone was holding his head and his hair hurt. A woman's face loomed over his, saying, "We're gonna need to -- I need you to" and she was loud so Lance closed his eyes again.
He dreamed of elevators. A soccer game playing on the mirrors in an elevator and bright lights shining in his eyes. Justin's soft voice, almost crying, somewhere. Chris snarling at someone, saying "Fucking no, fucking just no" over and over again. He needed to get to the soundcheck. He reached out to tell someone he needed to get to the soundcheck and put on his costumes so someone could alter them because he'd lost weight again. They jabbed him in his hand and his arm and he winced.
He opened his eyes and he was in a hospital room. His mother was sitting in a chair and rubbing her hands. She stood up and brushed at his hair. It still hurt. "Mom? I need to get to the soundcheck." His voice sounded raw. He would need some tea or something before the show.
"Oh, honey. They're on right now. You're here, just rest."
He closed his eyes. Lou would fucking kill him now.
The next time things got bright he tried to sit up too fast and then it was like hitting his head against a cobblestone street, over and over, harmonies all bent out of shape and screaming and a 16-year-old Justin was warm and holding him down and when he woke up again a young guy in a starched jacket was asking him what day it was.
"Germany?" Lance guessed, and passed out again.
Practice made perfect and the next time he opened one eye slowly, then the other, and then held really still. Chris ran out in the hall and found everyone and his mom was there and he went to hug her but she got caught in the IV cord so he went still again. He still had no idea what day it was, really even what month -- "It's warm out," he said, and the doctor nodded like that was the right answer -- but he knew his name and there were three fingers, then two, then three again, but only when there was supposed to be, so finally his mother went home to sleep. Justin stayed. Joey took everyone else down to the cafeteria.
"Dude," Justin said, pulling at the stiff sheets and biting his lip. "We, you have no idea how fucking freaked people were."
"How was the show?" Lance managed, trying to swallow.
"Oh, Jesus," Justin said, coughing and pushing his face down into the mattress right near Lance's thigh. His shoulders bent inward and Lance reached down to hold the back of Justin's neck where the hair was short and shaved, bristling and more tactile than the tug of the anchor in his chest. Lance knew it was probably just whatever they had him on but he thought he might be crying too, something was making his cracked lip sting.
The bodyguard knocked and Justin sat back and the nurse came in to flip a switch and fix his pillow. She had a daughter, Lance was sure, and even if it took till the next shift she was going to ask him for something, bring him something to sign.
"Can you just -- do you have to do this kinda thing now? He needs to sleep," Justin said, and he was quiet about it but still she walked right back out. Justin came back from telling everyone else to go home, telling the bodyguards to keep everyone away so Lance could sleep, and he dragged the chair close and kissed Lance's forehead before sitting down. Lance reached out and pawed at Justin's face, trying to find a handful of hair to hang on to in case he started falling again.
Justin crawled up inside the guardrails and he felt heavier than usual against Lance's side but Lance wasn't sure anymore whose ribs stuck out farther. He closed his eyes again and Justin leaned up and rested his lips right under Lance's jaw. Justin hummed his way through "Vogue" and "Love Don't Live Here Anymore," mouthing the words against Lance's jugular so they thrummed like a head mike with the levels all wrong, too low. "I know where beauty lives," Justin sang, sweet and low, not even real anymore, just part of Lance's dreams.
The next day it turned out Lance had one or possibly a number of cardio problems, they weren't sure yet but he had to stay longer. Chris stood in the hallway and screamed at Lou but still they got on a bus to Tampa without him. Lance watched old "Family Ties" reruns and Mallory outscored Alex on an IQ test and no one believed it was possible. Nick came by to pick her up for a date and everyone said "Hey-eyy," stretching it out like maybe she wouldn't go after all, because Mallory wasn't the brightest bulb in the bunch but she wasn't as dumb as Nick. At 11 he flipped to something in black and white and shuffled to the bathroom to brush his teeth. The fluorescents made him look awful so he turned off all the lights and got back into the high bed.
Justin was back before midnight, hair all frizzy from the open road at 85 miles an hour. A pint of Baskin Robbins in one hand and flowers, of all the crazy things, what looked like a dozen roses in the other. He kicked the door shut behind him and bent down to kiss Lance on the mouth like it was how they always said hello now.
"It fucking sucks doing that without you," Justin said, sitting on the edge of the bed and sighing. Lance held onto Justin's wrist, circling his fingers around the bone and nodding as Justin started kissing him again. "Please tell me you're coming home soon."
"I might have to stay a few more days," Lance said. "I have a broken heart." He was grinning into Justin's neck and pulling him down, but Justin pushed up against the bed pillows like it was a workout and even by the dim glow of the monitors Lance could read guilt.
Justin shoved away and stood next to the window where Lance could only see the edge of his nose and the back of his head and that his hands were clenched tight at his sides.
"That was," Lance started and Justin leaned his forehead against the glass and held onto the sill. "They said it's probably just a murmur." Justin was quiet and something beeped off and on, on and off, on and on again. Then off.
"I should have known," Justin said finally.
Lance sat up against the extra-firm pillows and blinked away the dizziness. "Right. Because right after the last video shoot you ran off to finish your residency in internal medicine."
"You --fuck, you know what I mean." Justin didn't turn around.
"I'm, uh. Justin, I'm lost."
Justin turned around and walked back to bed, running his finger lightly around the edges of the IV bag suspended above Lance, flicking at it. "Nope. That's me." Justin's eyes flicked around everywhere, from the bright balloons on the flowers Stacy had sent to the closed door and dimly lit corridor outside the thick plastic window and all around the room but not at Lance. "You know, it's pretty late."
"It was a long drive, yeah, I know."
"No. It's just, uh, late for this. But I'm sorry. For, when we were -- when I said that thing. When I said it was okay 'cause it was only you. That -- what I said came out wrong."
Lance reeled back on the pillows. He reached for Justin and missed twice before he finally hooked a finger in Justin's dangling hand. "That was a while -- look, it's okay. Sit down again, okay?"
Justin perched on the edge of the bed, holding tight to Lance's hand like it made things hurt less. "It's not. Fuck that. It's not at all okay. Don't -- don't fucking cut me some slack here."
"Man, I have, like, a hole in my chest right now. This is my job?"
Justin's fingers walked over to where the tube stuck out of Lance's arm and Lance tried to swallow around the love in his throat. It was like the first time he heard a crowd scream.
"I'm just saying, look." Justin wound his free hand through his curls and shook his head. "I fucked up. I've, I don't know what about the last goddamned four years has been real except what we did. Except this, I mean. This is, dude, too real."
A baby was crying in the hall and the beeps skipped again and Lance put his other arm around Justin's waist and drew him close. "This is real?" Lance asked, and in the minute before Justin said yeah Lance realized he could hear time go by on the clock by the door, the long hand snapping into place. One-Mississippi. Two-Mississippi.
Then Justin said it again, like a question: "Yeah?"
And Lance nodded. "Hey," he said, pulling Justin back onto the bed. They had things to do. They were gonna get out of this mess. They were going to really get somewhere now. "Is it -- are we still in May?"
"Yeah," Justin said. "It's Friday. Almost Saturday by now."
All we have to do now
Is take these lies and make them true somehow
-- George Michael
END.
Credits: Two-stepping love to Jess. Jae watched our backs. Also channel 43, Ray's sun coming up, 1805's CDs and all the supastars whose moves we stole. And theMango, for a painless debut.