Justin's the first up, he thinks, as he scrambles three eggs and hums harmony for one of the ballads, but then Lance comes bounding in from a run, sweaty and flushed. There is sagebrush caught in his shoelaces and he gulps water like he hasn't drunk in days.

"Where's everybody?" Lance pants.

Justin shrugs, not his brothers' keeper, and since when does Lance run every day, anyway.

"Oh," Lance says, and just then JC and Joey stumble down and Chris is behind them and it's everybody at once in the kitchen, kind of like being all on one bus again.

Joey watches Justin dump the food onto a plate. "Thanks for making enough to share, Jup," he says, opening the fridge. Justin eats on the back deck, alone.

Nobody talks about anything real all day. Day two, two down, five to go and break up or make up, Johnny said, but don't come back unless you've figured out which.

"Where's today's homework assignment?" Chris says, mid-afternoon, and Joey tells him to shut up and Chris says "no, you shut the fuck up, you cheap tramp," and then JC stands up and leads Joey by the hand out of the room. Chris rolls another joint and then works his way through the first chapter of every book on the top shelf of the living room bookcase.

Justin spends the afternoon at the piano in the great room but no one joins him. He gives up on the album material and sings old Carpenters songs but it's just his voice echoing through the house. JC and Joey hike up one of the little mountains out back and come back tired but in a better mood. Lance cooks dinner again, steaks this time, and JC only ruins one pot before successfully making some rice to go with it. They don't talk but they eat at the table together anyway, cause it's not like they haven't ever gone through days where it's just habit to be stuck with each other. Once towards the end of a tour they went almost a week without talking, all routine meals and games of cards and petty shit and Justin thought about bailing but never did.

It's summer but still dark by nine or ten and Chris sits out back watching the stars for about an hour cause there's no TV and then smokes another joint and goes to bed. Lance stands up around eleven and Justin looks up from the back cover of the book Chris had left out, but Lance is back in a minute with his laptop and balances the computer on his knees on the couch. Justin goes up and gets his CD player. He sits on the far end of the couch and makes more notes about each track.

He's finally reset his watch for godforsaken desert time so he knows it's a little after midnight when Lance groans and unfolds himself, knees popping. He comes back from the kitchen with two glasses of milk and hands one to Justin. Justin drinks half. Lance swallows all of it in one long pull, throat bobbing.

"Tomorrow," Justin starts, and Lance sets the glass down on a coaster. "Tomorrow, we should talk."

Lance frowns a little. "All of us, you mean." Justin nods. "J, I mean, do you really think..."

Justin stares hard and it shuts Lance up. He didn't get this far thinking the worst, none of them did.

"Yeah," Lance says slowly, and then stands up. "Bed," he says.

"Oh yeah?" Justin says, and it's just a thing he says, he says things like that, he says them and then he hears how they come out of his mouth. But now Lance's eyes are kind of hot like a live wire. Justin rolls this around in his head, all at once, Lance running through the sagebrush and making dinner and bringing him milk and looking charged up now like he only does anymore when people are talking premieres and awards shows. It's not like it didn't sound like that in his head, and what the hell, somewhere buried in all the things they don't talk about is the truth that they're falling apart anyway and that maybe they might've done this a long time ago if other people hadn't been in the way, so he says "yeah" again, not a question this time.

Lance cocks his head and says, "Get the lights," before spinning and taking the stairs two at a time. It's been awhile since Justin ran after anybody, for real or just for distraction. He's never even kissed Lance except on a couple New Year's and birthdays and even those times were a long time ago.

Lance is waiting by the window in his own room, already half-naked. Justin closes the door behind himself and says, "I wanted to do that." Lance shakes his head, smirking, and holds out the t-shirt.

"Want me to put it back on?" Lance says, kind of like a growl, and Justin thinks this could be a hell of a distraction. Justin's still bearing down on Lance, and now Lance's back is against the window and his ass is on the sill.

"Uhn-uh," Justin says.

The last quarter-inch between them takes forever to disappear, but when it does Lance tastes like the good kind of sleepless night, the kind that leaves you bruised in strange places and fuzzy-headed and walking into walls by accident. The only word he can find for Lance's mouth is strong, and he wraps a hand around the back of Lance's neck, his knuckles bumping against cold glass as they push at each other's lips. Justin opens his eyes once and there's just an inky void through the window. He almost wishes someone were there to watch, to see what they're doing when everyone knows better, but what the hell, they're in the middle of nowhere. It's maybe too much to ask for an audience.

Lance's shirt is still bunched up between them and when Justin draws back it falls to the floor. He puts his hands on Lance's shoulders, pulls them both down. One of Justin's shoulders dips off the area rug as they kiss and juts into the wood floor with every move. He shucks his pants and underwear and tugs off Lance's while he's at it.

"There's the bed," Lance rumbles, casting out a hand and closing it in a fist on the comforter. Justin says sure, pushes Lance over so he's sitting with his back against the boxsprings. He straddles Lance, hovering on his knees a little. Lance peels off Justin's shirt and Justin settles on Lance's lap and they're skin to skin, Lance's hot, smooth dick tucked against his, hands all over his back, teeth on his neck. Justin reaches behind his back to grab Lance's wrist, pulls fingers to his mouth and licks them sloppily.

When Lance finally pushes into him it's like the end of a long drought, forty days and forty nights spent wandering in search of some kind of religion and this is what he's found. Wherever they are, this street, he thinks disjointedly, as Lance sighs in his ear, this street definitely has a fucking name. Justin hangs his arms around Lance's neck and wraps his legs around Lance's back and they're breathing heavy but not making much noise. A deep, thudding boom makes the air quiver and Lance thrusts up and Justin pitches back, coming hard, so fucking hard he thinks he howls. Lance braces the fall with palms flat on either side of Justin's head and with another push or two he's done, too.

The second time Justin fucks Lance on the bed, on top of the covers, and they're not as quiet. He falls asleep with one knee under Lance and a scratchy Mexican blanket over part of his back.