Wade is perfectly well aware that everybody hates him.
He doesn’t care, really. He knows it’s more about their issues
than it is about him, and anyway, in some ways it’s a relief. All
his life, Wade has kept much too busy to have anything more than
casual friendships, and he knows that he’s seriously unprepared to
deal with something as intense and badly defined and changeable and
totally without boundaries as the connections between these five men.
He doesn’t want in. It would be just much too much.
He’s learning a lot by watching, though. Wade thinks in music,
and in a lot of ways people are a second language for him. Living
with *Nsync, however, is a crash course in social psychology; you get
savvy, or you get hurt.
The last thing Wade is looking for, now that his career is going
exactly like he wants it to, is to get hurt.
Some things do make him slightly sad, though. Like Justin.
Justin doesn’t hate him; in fact, Justin likes him a lot, and Wade
likes Justin, too. Actually, Wade likes the kid (Justin seems like
a kid; it’s impossible to keep in mind that he’s older than Wade)
more now than ever before, now that he’s realized that Justin’s
sleek, schmoozy grin and his strut and his perfect balance of
careless playfulness and outrageous confidence aren’t just products
to sell and aren’t really for the benefit of the cameras at all.
Justin is actually like that, his charm just that calculated and his
aggression just that innocent.
Not many people are that real. Wade would never have figured
Justin was one of them, but now that he’s living practically in
Justin’s hip pocket on this tour, he’s learning that he was wrong.
Actually, Justin was the first of them to like Wade, back when
Wade was just a name and a reputation to them. The first several
months were rough; the guyswere big kids at heart, prone to goofing
around and getting distracted and doing too many things at once,
while Wade has always been focused, focused, focused. They didn’t
fit well together and they didn’tunderstand each other. Wade was
frustrated, they were irritated, and it seemed like professional
respect could only go so far to bridge over incompatible working
styles.
Then there was one especially hellish rehearsal, much too close to
the start of the NSA tour, where nobody was paying attention to the
goddamn music, and there were cameras everywhere, and the six of them
had probably clocked twenty-four hours of sleep in the last three
days, all together. Wade thought he was being pretty good about
things, under the circumstances. He didn’t yell; he’d never once
yelled at them. He just told them the truth, that they weren’t
concentrating, that they were too talented to be making such stupid,
obvious mistakes this close to the tour.
They hadn’t taken it very well. For about an hour there, Wade had
been seriously concerned that they really hated him, and once word
got out that Wade Robson couldn’t get along with the sweet and
friendly boys of *Nsync, people would be scared to death to hire him
as a choreographer. Not that choreography was Wade’s only talent,
but...but he liked it a lot. Better than dancing, better than writing
music, much better than acting. It was the last thing he wanted to
be set back in.
Justin cried. Wade felt...sort of confused, and then sort of
stupid and oafish. He thought they hired him for this, because he
pushed harder than anyone and pushed everything to the next level, to
places other choreographers never even tried for. He didn’t know
what he was doing wrong; this was all he knew, the only way to keep
them on track. Should he have yelled? Or maybe just patted them on
the head and hoped they quit fucking up on their own? Wade didn’t
know. He just knew that he seemed to be failing with the *Nsync job,
and he’d never really failed at anything before, nothing this big.
He watched Justin crying, and wished he could, too.
But a little time passed – hardly any at all, really – and Wade
found himself standing next to Justin at the buffet table, mumbling
that he understood, it was just the cameras distracting everyone, he
hadn’t meant to....
Justin laughed at him outright, and hugged him, and after that he
seemed to be Wade’s inside man. Everything Wade didn’t know about
how to deliver a criticism or pull someone’s attention back to the
rhythms or head off tension before it became anger, Justin did know.
Between the two of them, it started to happen.
Ever since, Justin has sort of been Wade’s inside man. He rides
the wave of the group’s dynamic, and Wade is magnetic north, the
absolute authority. They speak to each other in music, and it always
happens. When they started writing together, it felt inevitable.
In some ways, Wade thinks it’s odd that he never had a thing for
Justin. Justin’s so – fascinating, the way he moves, the way he owns
whatever space he’s standing in. There’s a lot of the animal in
Justin, the young male creature, powerful and straightforward,
strength without malice, a natural alpha but still always
inextricably linked to the pack. Wade likes animals, and he thinks
he likes Justin for a lot of the same reasons. His honesty, his
loyalty, the shameless pleasure he takes in whatever he finds himself
enjoying. He’s sexy as hell, and that first time that he hugged
Wade, damp, strong body pressed hard and flat against him so
unselfconsciously, Wade can admit that it had an effect on him that
was hard to ignore for a few minutes there.
Odd, but lucky, too. Because Justin is his best friend, but he
doesn’t think they’d be very good lovers. Justin needs a lot of
activity, new and interesting things all the time, and Wade likes his
free time to be a little less stimulating than his working life,
the bulk of his life. It just wouldn’t be satisfying for either of
them.
The thing that sours the friendship for Wade and even makes him
feel like Justin isn’t exactly an exception to the general rule that
they all hate him, is that he knows Justin pretty well now, and he
knows who Justin would like to be, and Wade is convinced they’re not
the same person at all. Justin Timberlake, the real Justin, is a
performer. He can’t help dominating any stage you put him on, can’t
help having just a little more shine and a little more punch than
anyone close to him; he can’t help the way people, even the ones who
fight against it, always follow him with their eyes. And he’s
brilliant at what he does; he puts on the best show anywhere, and
Wade admires him for being like that. The best in his field.
But Justin wants to be an artist, and he isn’t. He’s talented,
yes, and he’s got unstoppable energy, a lot of which he’s sunk into
mastering music. That kind of effort is always rewarded, and
Justin’s command of his craft is getting better all the time. He’s
good. But Justin won’t be satisfied with good. He wants to be the
best in his field, which would be fine, if he understood what his
field was. Justin doesn’t know his own limits, which is endearing,
and a little scary.
They always had a lot in common, both of them outrageously capable
and successful at a young age, always under the weight of other
people’s jealousy, or the knee-jerk assumption that they are novelty
acts, kiddie talents who are more in demand for the idea of them than
for what they can really do. They understand how it feels to be
simultaneously adored and patronized, courted and dismissed.
Someday, Justin will be on the other side, looking at Wade across
a hopeless divide between ambition and reality. Wade is a creative
genius, and Justin only wants to be. Except when it comes to
performing, Wade will always be younger and better, and somehow
Justin has come to believe that performing is worth less than
creating. Wade would like to believe that their friendship will
survive it, that Justin will remember that it isn’t always easy to be
the one whose star just won’t stop rising, either.
He doubts it. Justin will be heartbroken when he finally realizes
how things are, and nothing will be the same after that. In some
ways, it’s easier to tell himself that Justin is already his enemy.
Chris hates him because Justin likes him, of course. Chris’
hatred is almost funny, because it’s so bipolar. Sometimes he goes
days in the same bus with Wade, acting like Wade doesn’t even exist.
Sometimes he plays with Wade, but not at all in the way he plays with
his real friends. There’s a genuine meanness to Chris’ teasing that
Wade doesn’t know quite how to respond to. So far, he’s just been
pretending not to be aware of it.
Of all the people who’ve ever been jealous of Wade, he feels the
worst about Chris. Because it’s so unnecessary. Chris focuses on
all the time Justin and Wade spend together, the way they pick up
each other’s musical ideas and race with them while Chris struggles
with songwriting, not especially talented but too stubborn to
surrender completely, and in particular Chris focuses on the way
Justin always has something good to say about Wade, in private or for
the media.
“Mr. Fabulous,” Chris calls him, smiling, his eyes narrowed just
slightly. Sometimes he sings it, a little tune that makes it sound
like it’s Wade’s theme song. At first Wade thought it was friendly,
the same way he calls Lance “Mr. Entertainment” and JC “the Duchess”
and Justin “Calendar Boy.” But he knows better now. Chris is one of
an all-too-familiar type, who resents the way it seems like Wade has
never had to struggle, the way he never fails at anything that
matters, just basically resents the fact that he’s eighteen and
pretty much writing his own ticket in a very competitive business.
And Chris is scared of the way that Justin identifies with that,
of the similarities between them. He thinks, in some deep,
self-hating corner of his heart, that Wade is a better friend for
Justin, more of a partner than Chris could ever be. This friendship
Chris has with Justin, it’s more of a marriage than anything else,
more intimate than most love affairs, and there’s no room in it for
anyone else.
Wade can’t believe Chris could ever really think Wade wants or
needs in, or that Justin would let him in if he did. Chris is
something past human in Justin’s mind, some kind of scruffy but
infallible guardian angel, an underdog saint. Wade can’t even really
comprehend this thing that Chris and Justin share, and he’s certainly
no threat to it, even though he can write hit singles with Justin and
Chris will never be able to do that.
The thing about Chris, though, is that he can’t quite make the
jump to hating Wade. For all his resentment and all his fears,
there’s a part of Chris that does like him, that wants to like him.
And so from time to time Chris will start to feel guilty, and he’ll
make some public statement about how great Wade is, or he’ll call him
Mr. Fabulous and sound like he sort of means it. Of all of them,
it’s Chris who most often manages to act like it isn’t weird to have
Wade hanging around the bus or in the dressing room with them. He
remembers the things Wade likes and doesn’t like, and he doesn’t make
a big deal about making sure there are Skittles in with the stash of
Caramellos, and he asks when Wade is going to be back when he has to
fly back to L.A. on business for just a little bit.
So there’s this constant back-and-forth with Chris. He’ll do an
interview and when the Pop video comes up, he’ll manage to make it
sound in a very few words like Wade is a gold-digger of some kind,
like he jumped too fast to be in it and wants things he has no
business wanting, and Wade will feel completely paralyzed, because he
doesn’t know what to say to prove that isn’t true. He doesn’t want
what belongs to Chris, not the gig, not the man.
But then the very next day they’ll be doing a different
appearance, and Wade will be doing Lance’s makeup himself because he
likes to, and Chris will casually stick his head in the door of the
dressing room and say, “If you really loved him, you wouldn’t let him
wear those pants in public,” and Lance will just grin and give Chris
the finger, and Wade will very casually say, “Who says I do? You
have any idea how much he’s paying me?” and Chris will laugh and say,
“Hush money, baby. Ain’t good for the image if the fans find out
Lance is secretly a pedophile.” And it will seem very normal to
Wade, although he doesn’t have a lot to compare it to. It seems like
the way all of them would be with him, if things were just a little
bit different.
Lately, though, Chris doesn’t spend much time talking to him at
all. He and Justin are in some kind of new place with each other,
making all kinds of eye contact and touching each other’s shoulders
for no apparent reason, and a couple of times they’ve even slept in
the same bunk, so Wade doesn’t quite know what’s going on there, but
he likes it. Maybe things will be easier soon, if Chris has a part
of Justin that he isn’t afraid he’ll end up having to share with
Wade. Maybe he’ll start hating Britney instead, and leave Wade out
of it.
It’s none of his business, what’s going on with Chris and Justin,
but he did ask Lance, casually, if he thought the two of them were
starting something, and Lance just gave him one of those humming
little laughs that Lance did. “Probably,” he said, “but you’d have
to know Chris and Justin. They don’t exactly move real quick.
They’ll get there eventually.”
“It’s good to be cautious,” Wade observed.
Lance just rolled his eyes and said, “At least one person in any
relationship oughta feel like courtship should take less time than a
Presidential term.”
Lance is a romantic. He likes to feel like he’s being caught up,
possessed, pushed over the edge. Wade doesn’t think he would enjoy
that at all; he knows perfectly well that he has control issues, and
that’s fine with him. He wouldn’t be where he is today if he weren’t
so fastidious about maintaining control.
JC hates him because Joey does. By all rights, JC should be
jealous of Wade, too, because of the way music comes naturally to
Wade, and the way JC has to work so hard to make things sound right.
But JC is surprising, because he almost likes the hard work better
than he likes the results. JC likes working on things; the process
isn’t something he puts up with, but kind of the point in and of
itself for JC. Wade wishes he could feel half as sated and serene as
JC looks after being up all night, a slave to the work.
He doesn’t seem to notice or care that Wade has more talent than
he does, that things come easily for Wade. So he isn’t at all what
Wade thought he would be.
He’s more emotional than he comes across when you first get to
know JC, and he’s the one who hasn’t been able to make even an
unhealthy kind of peace with the way Wade is throwing off the group’s
harmony by being around all the time. He can’t pretend it isn’t
there like Chris can, and even though he used to like Wade all right,
he can’t bring himself to look like he’s siding with an outsider
against one of their own.
Everyone else spends a lot of their time pretending that there’s
no triangle, that nobody is anyone else’s rival. JC just can’t pull
it off. He would feel too much like he was stabbing Joey in the back
if he even tried. So he tries to be particularly cold when Wade is
around, and it actually seems to make him a little miserable and
stressed-out.
Now that Wade is around a lot, JC spends more and more time by
himself. Wade knows JC blames him for all of it, which is kind of a
cop-out, because there were problems with Joey long before Wade came
along. But he’s the stranger and JC really thinks Joey is sliced
bread, and so it’s inevitable that it’s black and white for JC. Wade
out, Joey in. Only Joey’s out and Wade’s in, and JC can’t go along
with that and can’t change it, and he hates Wade for trapping him
like this.
Wade was, probably unwisely, present when they first got the MTV
footage of the video shoot. He sat on the floor behind the rest of
them to watch it, carefully not next to anyone at all, just off on
his own. But he had a good view of JC’s face, and he saw how white
JC turned when he saw himself say “Wade is one of us,” and how he
looked over at Joey who wouldn’t look at him, and Wade turned his
face away and rested his cheek on his knees, thinking how stupid it
was that something that was so innocent at the time could be all
fucked up now, and for the first time he just wanted to stand up and
say, “I never wanted to be one of you, I just fucking work for you,
just stop putting all of this on me!” He wanted to go home. He
wanted to see his mom again.
But he stayed, and pretended he couldn’t see how JC was silently
resolving never to make that mistake again. He pretended not to
notice, too, how the video showed him slinging a casual arm around
JC’s waist, just like he pretended not to hear the spite in Joey’s
recorded voice.
JC is the only one, as far as Wade knows, who ever raised an
actual objection to Wade’s presence. It was during a break in
rehearsal, when Wade was trying to catch a few minutes’ power sleep.
He was too tired to feel cautious, and when Lance sat down beside
him, he put his head on Lance’s leg and murmured a drowsy, “Feels
nice” when Lance started stroking the back of his neck.
“Do you have to do that?” JC said, sharply. “In public?”
“JC, leave us alone,” Lance said, tiredly.
“I mean, can there be just some time, anywhere, that we don’t
have to–“
“No,” Lance said flatly. “This is how it is now. I have enough
to hide from strangers; don’t ask me to hide from my friends, too.”
If it weren’t a moral issue for Lance, Wade would have backed off
a long time ago. He’s pretty sure these guys are not his friends,
and he has no problem with hiding from them. But Lance is one of
them. It’s different for Lance.
And then, of course, there’s Joey. Joey Joey Joey.
It’s hard not to blame Joey for everything, but Wade doesn’t want
to get into that, the finger-pointing and the name-calling. First of
all, it would just make a bad situation worse, and second of all,
Lance would be upset by it.
Maybe Wade should feel jealous, too. After all, Lance is still
very attentive to how things make Joey feel, still very concerned
about Joey being okay. Wade isn’t sure that’s normal behavior with
your ex, but then, of course, Joey’s not the normal ex – not with the
element of still being in the group together complicating things.
He’s never really felt jealous of Joey, however. He knows Lance
used to love Joey, and he’s even pretty sure that a part of him still
does. It’s pretty clear that Joey wants him back, even if he’s got
too much pride to admit it. Maybe that’s why Wade isn’t jealous; if
Lance wanted to go back to Joey, he could, any time. Everyone knows
it. There’s nothing convenient about being with Wade instead, which
means Lance must really like being with Wade.
Joey just hates him. It’s gone beyond reasons, gone well past the
fact that Wade’s choreography has always made him feel cumbersome and
unathletic, well past the video, probably even past his jealousy over
Lance. Joey hates him now for the sake of hating him. Because it’s
a distraction from anything else he could be feeling, like loss or
guilt or regret.
He picked up Chris’ name for Wade, but instead of Chris’
theme-song, Joey drawls it out in a queeny sort of way: Mr.
Faaaahbulous. He sexualizes it somehow, manages to make it about
being a starfucker where Chris seems to make it about being vain.
Well, Wade supposes he’s both of those things. But it’s not his
fault that everything he touches turns to gold, and it’s not his
fault that his life is half Teen People and half Sex in the City.
Sometimes it occurs to Wade that if he were remotely normal, he
would have spent this May going to prom and graduation parties,
instead of taking Joey’s place in a music video. It hits him that by
the world’s standards, he should be renting his first tux and dancing
in a gym somewhere to *Nsync songs, probably slow-dancing with a
friend to “This I Promise You” and entertaining vague, pleasant
fantasies of getting naked with Justin or JC or maybe even Lance.
But this is his life. It’s never been even remotely normal.
Usually Joey restricts himself to making Wade’s life difficult in
small ways; shouldering past him when there’s enough room in the hall
to go around, picking up sandwiches for the five of them but not for
Wade, changing the channel even after Wade points out that he was
actually watching that. He never really talks to Wade. It’s like
he’s determined to go on as though Wade didn’t exist, as though that
would make it true.
He only confronted Wade once, at the Coke machine in their hotel
in the second week of the tour. “Why are you still with him?” he
demanded.
Wade just looked at him, observing. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“So you like him.”
“You know I like him.”
“Do you love him?”
Wade waited for the end of the loud noise that was his can of
Mountain Dew crashing down into the tray. “What’s the right answer?”
“What?”
“I don’t really want to say the wrong thing and make you even more
pissed off at me. Why don’t you just tell me what you’d rather hear,
and I’ll tell you that?”
“You fucking smart-assed little son of a bitch. Just tell me, are
you in love with him?”
“That’s pretty personal.”
“Lance is still my friend, I think–“
Gathering up everything he’d learned over the years about giving
orders to people who were older and more experienced, people who’d
showed up planning not to take him seriously, Wade met Joey’s eyes
and said, “Then talk to him. I’m not your friend, and my love life
is none of your damn business.”
He doesn’t really know if he loves Lance. He thinks it’s just too
soon to tell. But why should he have to say that to Joey? Nobody
died and left Joey Lance’s protector. Lance doesn’t need a
protector, which Wade can see perfectly well, but he thinks Joey
maybe never did understand. Lance is nobody’s fragile china doll.
Lance doesn’t hate him. Lance likes him just fine.
He’s not sure when that started. They’ve always been flirty with
each other, and maybe it’s gone a little further than it should at
times, but it was a complete shock when the video was finished and
Lance hit him like a missile, walking right through the door and
shoving Wade to the bed, his hands everywhere, his kiss explosive.
Well, what was he supposed to say? Stop? What about Joey? Wade
has no doubt he would’ve been a better person if he had, but at the
end of the day, Wade knows who and what he is. Creative genius,
consummate professional, natural musical talent – and eighteen years
old. And Lance is sexy – the contrasts in him, the gentleness and
the knowingness, the confidence and the lack of pretension, the
prettiness of his face and the way his broad shoulders and his lean,
solid muscles and the smell of him are so perfectly male. He’s
always thought Lance was sexy, and he couldn’t have said stop because
he didn’t want to say stop, not even if it would make him a better
person. Not even if the hotel were on fire.
In the beginning, though, he’d been sure that this wasn’t about
him. There was some kind of pain in Lance's eyes, something he was
lashing out against. Wade figured there had been a fight with Joey;
he figured he was part of the revenge. But Lance grabbed his wrists
and pushed the backs of his hands against the wall and knelt over
him, saying in that cool accent of his, “Are you gonna let me fuck
your mouth?” And there was never even a chance that Wade was going
to say no, because he’d honestly never been that turned on in his
life, and he really could have given a shit at that point why Lance
was doing this.
By dawn, when Wade was feeling sore and used and delirious and
ridiculously grateful, when he had his arms wrapped around Lance and
he was thinking that there was no possible way either of them should
have had the energy for that, and adrenaline was a beautiful,
beautiful thing, Lance broke down a little. Wade kissed away his
tears and nodded wisely when Lance told him he’d split up with Joey,
and because he was still in that goofy, post-coital stage, he’d said
a bunch of things that he probably wouldn’t have said if he’d had
time to think them through. Not exactly I love you, but close
enough.
At the time he meant them. For a while then he didn’t, but he
didn’t know how you let somebody know that, and then while he was
worrying about it, it seemed like he sort of did start to mean them
again, and by that time he was sure that things had changed for
Lance, too, that it wasn’t about revenge anymore. Just about Wade.
Which is a good thing, all in all. He likes Lance, too, much more
than he ever expected he would. Lance is kind and curious, a good
listener and slow to judge; he’s easy to talk to, and Wade almost
never finds it easy to talk to anyone. He has a sly sense of humor
that Wade just loves, and a snarky way of undercutting the people
around him just by arching an eyebrow and shrugging slightly while
they’re saying something stupid. One way or another, Lance always
gets his digs in, and he does it without looking like the bad guy;
maybe it’s a bit amoral to admire that, but Wade definitely does.
Lance is good with people, facile and confident, and Wade likes to
lie in bed and listen to him do business over the phone. It’s
impossible not to take him seriously; he’s completely an adult. And
at the same time, there are all these boyish things about Lance: the
way he fusses over his ferret, the way he’s still a fanboy around
famous people when he doesn’t have business to conduct with them, the
way he still calls his mom for advice, just like Wade does.
It hit home for the first time when things were still very new
between them, and Lance still had a little bit of swagger in his step
because he’d finally realized that Wade’s outrageously sexual style
of dancing was just *dancing* and didn’t mean that he was all that
experienced, which meant that he wasn’t lying when he said that Lance
could do things to him that he’d only ever heard about before.
The exact moment it hit home was when Lance bounded out of bed
after a mid-afternoon lull in the schedule had provided them a chance
to be alone briefly before that evening’s pre-concert chaos, bopping
around the hotel room searching for his clothes and singing, “Just
got Wade, it’s Friday night...” Wade was laughing himself
breathless, feeling his face turn a little heated, and realizing that
his stomach was tensing up in a totally unfamiliar way because of how
Lance made him horny and made him laugh and made him feel comfortable
when by all rights Wade should never feel comfortable here, the sixth
man on tour with a five-man vocal group. He threw a pillow that
caught Lance in the small of the back, yelling, “You can’t dance,
Bass!”
Lance stretched his fingertips up toward the ceiling, making
Wade’s mouth go dry and making him wonder if any amount of time
that they would ever realistically fit into their schedules would be
enough to get as much of Lance as he wanted. “I can, too. I got
moves.”
“They’re not dance moves,” Wade growled, and Lance looked over his
shoulder and smiled wickedly. “My choreographer loves ‘em,” he said,
his tone all innocence and his eyes making Wade feel like the best,
most expensive sex toy on the planet as they traveled up and down his
body.
So maybe he is in love with Lance; again, like so many ordinary
things, it’s hard to tell without ordinary experiences to compare it
to. He knows that he’s not going to be driven away just because Joey
is jealous or JC and Chris feel like he doesn’t belong this close to
the divine center of their elaborately networked friendship.
It isn’t easy. There are days when Wade just wants to hit his
head against something over and over again until he can’t hear them
anymore. They’re noisy and fractious, moody and hyperactive, and
whatever bus he’s on, there are too many of them. He’ll be sharing a
couch with Lance, both of them absorbed in paperwork for their
respective production companies, and he’ll hear Justin screeching
from the other end of the bus,“Or what, Joey? Or you’re gonna hit
me again? Bring it! My girlfriend hits harder than you!” And Joey
yelling back, “Oh, you know that for a fact, do you? What, she found
out you were letting Chris fuck you–“ And Justin screaming, “Don’t
say shit that you don’t know shit about! Fucker!”
Wade just lolls his head onto Lance’s shoulder and sighs, and
Lance rubs his shoulder, saying, “Understand now why I’ve got to have
you here? They’ve already driven JC completely insane. I’m next.”
“Is it always like this on tour?”
Lance sighs and shakes his head. “Didn’t use to be.” He dips his
head down and kisses Wade softly, until Wade forgets his paperwork
and puts an arm around Lance’s neck. Little by little, the paperwork
gets shuffled aside, and Lance lies down on top of him, tickling him
ever so slightly as they nuzzle at each other’s lips, and Wade can’t
stop smiling, and he can’t even hear Joey and Justin fighting
anymore.
“God,” Justin says as he stalks past. “Don’t you guys ever quit?”
And Justin’s the one who likes them.
They do have a lot of sex, and Wade is pretty sure that even if
there was no external tension, it would be annoying for the other
guys to be around. Life would be easier if they were a little more
circumspect, but Lance can’t seem to stop touching him, and Wade damn
sure can’t bring himself to make Lance stop. They manage to stay
cool when Joey’s in the room, but that’s usually as much as they can
do. “I remember my sexual peak,” Chris sighed once as they ducked
out of the bathroom together, wet from their shower, Lance’s hand
resting on the small of his back with his fingers just underneath
Wade’s towel.
He wonders sometimes if Lance and Joey used to be the same way,
but he would have no idea who to ask, or how. He’s not even sure
that he really wants to know, deep down.
He’s wearing a headset and talking with the stage manager, one eye
on the clock and one eye on JC whiffing the hackeysack. Chris says,
“Jesus Christ, C, are you getting *worse* at this game or what?” and
Lance says, “Sorry, sorry, that was my fault. You want me to try it
again?” and Joey says, “We don’t have all night; let’s just go.”
Justin is already on his way up the stairs, already on-stage in his
mind. Wade shakes his head, sick of all five of them, worried about
them all. They’ve changed so much since Wade first met them, boys
with bad hair who were always walking over the tops of each other
like they were so used to sharing space on a bus or an interview
couch that they forgot they could fan out a little when there was
room.
Before he goes up the stairs, Lance pauses long enough to bend
back the mouthpiece on Wade’s headset and kiss him, a quick, nasty
kiss, his hand wrenching hard through Wade’s hair. “Lance!” Chris
barks. “Goddammit!” Lance ducks his head and runs up the stairs
without looking back.
Wade is sitting on the back of the couch in the green room,
scarfing Oreos and rubbing the spot between his thumb and forefinger
that’s supposed to stop headaches – some kind of acupuncture thing.
Someone sits down beside him and hands him a cup of coffee. It’s
Anthony, the road crew boss, and Wade is once again impressed with
the sheer volume of tattoos on the man’s arms. They imply a degree
of life experience that Wade is impatient to have himself.
“Can I give you a piece of advice, kid?” Anthony says, and usually
Wade would say no, but it’s just Anthony. He’s not too damn likely
to need to give Anthony any choreography, ever, and so he’s not
worried about whether or not the guy sees him as a kid. In some odd
way, Wade thinks it might almost be nice. To be talked to, just this
one time, like a kid. So he nods.
“Don’t fuck the talent,” Anthony tells him, his normal bluntness
mixed with sympathy. “I know – easy to say, not so easy to do. But
it doesn’t work out. It never works out.”
It’s a little offensive, really. Don’t fuck the talent? What the
hell is Wade, if not talent? But he doesn’t want to insult Anthony,
so he doesn’t say anything. Not for the first time, he’s curious
about Anthony’s years in the business, but Wade’s not good at drawing
people out.
“It’s no big thing,” Wade tells him. “It’s just fucking.”
But that’s not true. Not at all. Wade knows something about just
fucking; he’s been just fucking for years. That’s the best way to
handle your needs in Wade’s line of work. He moves around a lot, and
the only people he really has a chance to get to know are usually
employers or potential employers. He’s not as naive as Anthony
thinks he is; he’s well aware of the potential difficulties of
getting emotionally involved with people you have to maintain a solid
working relationship with, too.
None of which explains Lance, of course. But...Lance is
different. *Nsync is different. Work and play are really, really
hard to keep separate when Wade is around them, because they really
aren’t separate things in their minds at all. You almost have to get
involved, even when you’re terrified of it, even when you’d rather
keep your focus and your solitude and your control.
“Okay,” Anthony says. “As long as...you know. You’re not setting
yourself up.”
The last thing Wade is looking for, right now as he’s standing on
the threshold between success and stardom, is to get hurt.
When Lance gets offstage, sweaty and electric and grinning, Wade
grabs him by the waistband of his pants and jerks him closer,
whispering, “I wanna get fucked, Bass. Seriously...fucked. ” Lance
smiles at him, startled but happy, and Wade closes his eyes for the
kiss, telling himself that it’s not about working out or not working
out.
He makes plans not to worry about it anymore – who hates him and
who likes him. That’s not what he’s being paid to think about, here.
He promises himself he’ll concentrate on being more professional
from here on out. Lance slips him some tongue, and Wade swears to
himself that he can be the one person here who knows the difference
between work and play. He promises himself he won’t forget, not for
a second.
He pretends not to see Anthony watching as he and Lance leave
together.
end