When the paramedics pry Lance’s thin fingers from around his hand
and shove Justin out of the ambulance, he hugs the first person he
sees. It’s JC, who hugs him back one-armed and keeps his eyes on the
hospital staff as they unbolt Lance’s stretcher and start wheeling
him into the building. The scary thing is that a part of Justin is
going, hey, hello, I’m freaking out here, somebody pay attention
to me!
He’s not selfish, Justin knows he’s not. He likes people, he
cares about people, he cares about way more than just himself,
whatever Chris and Joey say when they’re pissed off at him. So he
doesn’t exactly know why it bothers him that everyone is suddenly
focused on Lance. He wants them to be focused on Lance. He wants them
to fix Lance, soon, now, he just wants Lance to be okay again,
that’s all.
And he wants someone to notice that he’s freaking out, here, and
so far, nobody has. Does that make him a bad person?
Chris and Joey are shouting, and people are asking Justin for
information, and now it’s like tv, even though he remembers on the
ride over, thinking that it wasn’t like tv at all -- strangely quiet,
except for the faint, faraway sound of the siren and the faint,
close-by sound of Lance crying. Justin can feel himself shaking all
over from the intensity. He is freaking out, here, yo.
Lance would notice. Lance would put his hand on Justin’s shoulder
and give him a funny look, and that’s all Justin really wants. Just
for someone to notice him, just give him a look or something.
Even with JC’s arm around his shoulders, Justin is starting to
feel like he isn’t really here. Like, if a tree falls -- or if no one
can see him, you know...is he there? Not like is he there,
because of course he is, but like...does it matter?
“Lance is gay,” he says. And now everybody knows he’s there again,
but it doesn’t help, because now Justin wishes he hadn’t said it. For
a few minutes there, it had been something just between the two of
them, private, special. And then he had to go and blow it just to be
the person in the room with the biggest news, and he feels like a
shit.
Chris shuts up in mid-rant, and stares at Justin with a look on
his face that would be really funny, some other time. Joey kicks the
wall. “Go ahead, Just,” JC prompts.
“He just...he told me that. A minute ago.” They all wait for more,
but he’s done now.
Lance would call it locking the barn door after the horses were
stolen, but Justin doesn’t care. He’s not going to give away any more
than he already has; everything else that happened while they were
alone in the ambulance is still a secret. It’s just for them, the way
that he wiped the tears off Lance’s face with his fingers, the way
that Lance threatened to quit the group because they “didn’t need
this to deal with, on top of everything,” and the way that he almost
smiled when Justin said, okay, we’ll both quit, you and me, we’ll get
regular jobs, like at a mall or something, you’ll be manager of the
Gap and I’ll work at Sam Goody or -- no, Victoria’s Secret. Yeah. In
Michigan. You and me, you and me, okay? No pressure. It’ll be all
good.
That’s personal.
“Okay.” JC takes a deep breath, and waves his hands back and forth
in an x shape to cut into Chris’ babbling, a no, shut up gesture.
“Joey. You got any money on you? Okay, take my credit card and the
keys. Pick us up caffeine, carbohydrates, everything you can carry.
We may be here a while. Chris. You find out where the main office is
for hospital security. Talk to the person in charge, and explain to
him what he’s got on his hands. We’re going to need a private wing,
or at the very least a hall that can be closed off, because in about
an hour he’s going to have the press and God knows what coming in
through the air ducts. Don’t let him fuck us around; you get Lance
sealed off from everyone but us. Justin. You have your cellphone?
Good; I need you to make the calls.”
“Calls,” Justin repeats blankly.
“Management, PR, security, the usual snake-handlers,” JC
elaborates.
Justin takes out his phone and starts thumbing randomly down the
list of programmed numbers. This could take forever. “Which--?
Management. I mean -- who am I calling? Lou or Johnny?”
“Both,” JC says, and Chris makes a strange hissing-snorting sound.
“Suck it in,” JC orders him shortly, which blows Justin’s mind,
because almost nobody ever bothers to give orders to Chris. Like he’d
take any of them seriously most of the time. “The faster we circle
the wagons on this, the less likely it is that the morning news will
have him in rehab, and right now that should be top priority, not
this bullshit with Lou.”
“Here, give me the phone,” Chris says, holding his hand out to
Justin. “I’ll do this and you talk to the security guys.”
Justin starts to hand it over, but JC grabs his wrist and pushes
it away from Chris’ outstretched palm. “Let Justin do it.”
“It’s too much--“
“Chris. You’ve burned too many bridges; Lou probably won’t even
*take* your call right now. He still likes Justin. Anyway, Justin
knows Diane better than you do; she should hear from him. Guys, come
on. Let’s go.”
“Justin. Give me the phone, bro.”
“Justin, don’t do it. Chris, go. Just go.”
“Justin--“
“Shut up!” Justin yells. “Both of you, just shut the fuck up! I
can’t fucking think with you guys ragging me!”
What he means is that he just can’t think. Why can nobody else
tell that? He’s seen Lance fall down before, but not like that, not
and then not get up. He can’t think of anything but Lance crying all
the way to the hospital, looking about seven years old and completely
miserable, not even noticing that his nose was running until Justin
gave him his bandana and told him to blow it.
JC puts a hand on the back of Justin’s head and makes him meet
JC’s eyes. “Come on, Just, you gotta help me out, here. Please. We’re
gonna have the press here, we’re gonna have the people from WEG,
we’re gonna have basically one God-awful mess. With the lawsuit and
nothing signed yet with WEG and the tour on the line, we can not
let them hear us fighting with each other, okay? We’ll sound like the
last twenty minutes of Behind the Music. We’ll sound like we don’t
have it together.”
They don’t, Justin is pretty sure. If they did, they wouldn’t be
here, would they?
He knows Lance doesn’t have it together, because Lance used to
smile all the time and use jokes that were older than dirt and funny
voices to cheer the rest of them up when they got stressed out, and
now he spent most of his time alone, curled up in the corner of his
bunk with his laptop or a book, ignoring them all.
Also, he knows because of what Lance told him in the ambulance,
and Justin still isn’t sure if he should tell anyone else about that
or not. It’s not good for Lance to go sneaking out by himself, it’s
not good for him to be fooling around with people that none of them
even know, it’s really bad for Lance, decent, conservative Lance,
to be so not-together that he’s buying pills in some skanky club. He
doesn’t want to rat out his friend, and the last thing he wants is to
get anyone mad at Lance, but he’s scared of this side of Lance, and
he knows he can’t handle it by himself. Lance needs actual help,
stuff that Justin can’t do for him and JC can’t do for him and Johnny
can’t do for him, and Justin doesn’t even know who to ask.
“Come on. Come on,” JC is saying to him, shaking him like he’s
trying to wake Justin up. “You’re Justin fucking Timberlake. Take a
deep breath, smile, and make a couple of phone calls. You’re a pro.”
He’s talking gently, gentling-ly, like you would to a nervous dog or
horse. Dog or pony. Don’t mug for them, JC had yelled at him once,
after Justin had delayed the bus by stopping to smile for some people
with cameras. Jesus Christ, are we musicians, or are we some
dog-and-pony show?
Well, JC owes him one hell of an apology, because who do they need
now? They need Justin fucking Timberlake to mug for the cameras, to
make it look like *Nsync has everything under control.
Justin fucking Timberlake, they all call him. He’s pretty sure
it’s a slam, but he doesn’t get why. Who the hell else is he supposed
to be?
“What are you going to be doing?”
JC looks grim. “Finding out where they took Lance.”
If it were up to the rest of them, that’s what they’d all be
doing. JC is the only one who would think to split them up like this
to save time, to beat the clock that started when Lance collapsed and
didn’t get up. He’s good at that, at breaking things down and getting
things done, and that’s why he’s usually in charge when there’s
craziness. Right now, though, Justin hates him a little bit. It’s
like he’s making Lance just one more thing on his list of things to
get done, Justin thinks, even though he knows it’s not fair. JC is
just trying to protect them all, including Lance.
He’s doing a good job, better than Justin is. Justin wants to do
the right thing, the responsible thing, but he feels stupid and
scared, and what he really wants, deep down, is to kidnap Lance and
run away to Michigan with him, where Lance can go back to being happy
and dorky and tabloids will be something that they look at to laugh
over pictures of the Amazing Bat Baby in the supermarket check-out
line, and work will be something they stop doing at nine when the
mall closes, and singing will feel good again.
He tries to think of JC like a choreographer or a director,
someone who gives him orders every day, someone he doesn’t expect to
give a shit about him personally, or take care of him. Justin doesn’t
expect everyone to think about him all the time, you know? Just
someone. He just expects not to be left totally alone, here, when
he’s panicking and feeling guilty and he doesn’t know what the right
thing to do for Lance really is.
Showtime. He picks a number from his list and pushes “connect,”
listening to it dial. He smiles for the cameras that he thinks it’s
helpful to pretend are there when things get hard but he can’t afford
to slow down or fall apart, and he is who he is.
It’s hours before he finally sees Lance again, or at least before
he sees Lance conscious. They gave him tranquilizers.
Chris and Joey sit the whole time on either side of his bed, but
Justin can’t sit still like that. He paces the halls of their private
wing, he eats two entire cans of Pringles, he talks with a lot of
people who work for the hospital and people who work for them. He
signs a couple of autographs for nurses’ daughters, and then feels
guilty about it, but when he catches JC’s eye, JC just smiles at him,
so maybe it was an okay thing to do, not disrespectful or anything.
He naps in a hard, plastic chair, and when he wakes up, suddenly
everyone is paying attention to him, but it’s just to lecture him
about how to act with Lance, which -- well, he’s not stupid. God.
Unlike any of them, he’s already talked to Lance, and he practically
made Lance smile. Unlike any of them.
After that, he feels worse than ever, and he doesn’t know what to
do. He sits in the corner at the very end of the hall and stares at
his cellphone, feeling sorry for himself because he’s almost used up
his entire battery talking to people whose number he has on
speed-dial, and not a single one of them asked if he was doing okay.
He wants so bad to go in there where Lance is, but it’s creepy in
there, with Chris and Joey just sitting, poker-faced and not
looking like themselves at all. They don’t seem to notice whether or
not Justin’s in the room anyway, so whatever.
There’s juice for one more call, and Justin decides to be selfish,
since they all think he is already. He calls Britney, even though
he’s already called her three times this week, and he’s beginning to
worry that he’s acting kind of weird and stalker-ish. She doesn’t
seem to mind, but you never really know. Everybody he knows thinks
it’s their God-given right to advise Justin on this relationship,
which wouldn’t be so fucking annoying if they could agree on
anything. Be cool, be romantic, let things develop naturally, sweep
her off her feet. Shit, the only positive effect any of it has had on
the relationship so far is that it makes him want to be with her just
to get away from people who want to talk to him about her.
“Justin?” she says when she answers, and her voice sounds just
like it always does, bright and breathless and happy.
“We’re all at the hospital,” he says. “Lance had some kind of --
like, an attack or something. They’ve got him on a bunch of drugs,
and we don’t really know what’s going on.”
“Oh, shit,” she says immediately, her voice deepening into warm
instead of bright, which is even better. “How are you? Holding up
okay?”
And then he breaks down and cries, and she makes soft little
noises at him through the phone and says everything’s going to be
fine, until he has to get off because his battery is dying. He tells
her he misses her, which is another thing he hasn’t been doing
because he doesn’t want to sound clingy when they’ve just started
being sort of more than friends, but she just laughs breathlessly, a
little nervous, and says, “Okay, me, too, but I’ll see you soon,
right? Take care of yourself, Justin.” And then, screw clingy, he
wants to tell her that he loves her, but he doesn’t, because, duh.
They’re barely dating.
After that, he feels a whole lot better. If there’s anyone in the
world as just genuinely nice as Lance is, it has to be Britney.
Chris comes out a little while later and offers Justin the rest of
his coffee. “He’s awake,” Chris says. “He asked if you were still
here.”
“Can I go see him?”
Chris gives him an are you stupid? look. “Yeah. I think that
would be a good idea.” Justin runs all the way down the hall.
“Hey,” Lance says when he comes in, smiling at him. He turns to
Joey and says, “Hey...would you mind if -- can I have a few minutes
with Justin?”
“Sure,” Joey says, but he looks a little bit hurt. Well, too bad.
Justin and Lance have, like a bond. It’s nothing personal against
Joey, it’s just how it is. Joey touches Lance’s hair lightly as he
gets up to go, and Lance sort of moves away from the touch, smiling
half-heartedly and blushing a little.
Unlike other hospital rooms that Justin’s been in, there’s no
window on this one. It’s a sweep for the home team on that privacy
thing. “You’ve got one of these cool beds that sit up and lie down,”
Justin comments, picking up the controller and studying it. “I’ve
always wanted one of these.”
Lance shifts a little to the side. “Check it out,” he offers.
It’s almost weird, how not-weird it feels to lie down next to
Lance. The bed is too narrow for Justin’s shoulders to fit in
comfortably without pushing Lance against the rail, but when he puts
his arm around Lance’s shoulders, they both fit, and Lance feels good
against him. They keep grabbing the remote control away from each
other and crunching the bed into different positions until they’re
both laughing, and Lance says, “Quit, we better quit -- we’re gonna
break it for sure.”
After that they settle down. “You’re not sick, are you?” Justin
asks.
“No. I’m -- exhausted, I guess. That’s what they wrote down, for
the official report.” He changes his voice, and he sounds exactly
like a booming, authoritative news anchorman as he says, “Reports
that Mr. Bass has been hospitalized for exhaustion have been
confirmed. Spokespeople from *Nsync have no comment at this time,
other than to say that Bass’ condition is stable, and their schedule
is expected to resume as planned by the end of the week.”
“JC thinks they’re going to say you’re in rehab.”
“Well, I’m not,” he says, a little testily.
“You’re exhausted.”
“I hate that. It makes me sound like...such a wuss. I mean, we’re
all exhausted. When was the last time any of us wasn’t exhausted?”
Justin can’t remember. “Well, you’re, like...medically exhausted.”
“I’m just plain screwed up,” Lance says, and he laughs kind of
unpleasantly. “They’re sending a psychiatrist to talk to me.”
“That’s good,” Justin says immediately, but Lance is frowning. He
thinks about changing to agree with Lance, but then he thinks, no,
I’m right about this, this is right. “You need to talk to somebody,
man. Somebody who knows what the fuck they’re doing.”
“The more people who know, the better the chances that it’s going
to get out.”
“So what? No, seriously, so what? Man, you haven’t done anything
wrong -- well, nothing major. Nothing that matters.”
“You don’t understand,” Lance sighs, turning his face against
Justin’s shoulder. “You know what’s exhausting? Having something like
this to hide is exhausting. Being scared that if you screw up, it
won’t affect just you, it’ll affect the people you care about most in
the whole world. You guys invited me to come sing with you, and what
do I do? I fuck up--“
“What do you do?” Justin interrupts. “You do it. You come sing
with us. You. We didn’t hire part of you, and we didn’t hire your
fucking public image, okay? You let the -- the snake-handlers worry
about that. Let us worry about you.”
Lance smiles, but Justin can feel him smiling a little against his
shoulder. “Well, let me worry about you guys, then.”
“Um, no? Because you don’t do it right.”
“I don’t? How should I worry?”
“Like, casually. Or cautiously, or something. Something that
doesn’t land you in the hospital, or -- or wherever the hell else
you’ve been winding up lately.”
He groans. “God, I’m so sorry about that. Justin, I swear, I’m
so sorry, you have no idea. It only -- I went out a few times, but
the rest of what I told you, the really bad stuff, that only happened
one time, I swear to you.”
“I believe you. Hey, come on. You’re not the only guy in the world
who’s ever gone a little nuts. We’ve all got -- stuff that shouldn’t
be getting out.”
“Justin, I know you mean well, but this isn’t like you and
Britney. I mean, I understand why you guys are trying to be out of
the limelight and all that, but it’s not the same--“
“I had sex at a gay club, too, once.”
It feels kind of good to say that. Justin didn’t know that he was
holding it in, exactly -- not like on purpose. He just didn’t want to
say it and have anyone think that he was bragging. Or complaining.
Or...announcing anything. It just happened, is all. But now that he
has said it, he’s glad he did.
“With...with a guy?”
“Yeah. Well, it was someone I knew. From MMC. Well -- I didn’t
exactly -- it wasn’t sex. The point is, nobody has to know. It’s no
big deal.”
“What happened?”
Justin shrugs, awkwardly, because of the way his shoulders aren’t
in alignment. “It was right after we came back from Germany. We were
in Orlando, and I ran into this guy I knew, and we went clubbing. He
knew stuff about *Nsync, what we were doing with ourselves, and I
thought that was pretty cool; a lot of people in America still never
heard of us then. We were leaving one club, and he just started....”
“You liked him?” Lance ventures, softly.
“I liked what he was doing,” Justin says with a little grin that
he knows Lance can’t see. “It was...you know, it feels good. Anyone
puts their hand in certain places, it’s gonna feel good.”
“So...what happened?”
“Um. You know, it doesn’t matter. You gotta focus on my general
point, here, which is--“
Lance lifts his head up, and he’s looking down at Justin with a
strange sparkle in his eyes. “Justin,” he says, drawling the name out
into half a dozen syllables in a way that should be whiny but is
actually kind of melodic instead. “You can’t start a story like this
and not finish it.”
“The point of starting the story at all is--“
“Justin!”
“Look, it didn’t happen! I mean...it did, the part I told you did,
but.... He jerked me for a while, and then I made him stop and I went
home. It’s not, like, a good story, but it’s a story that makes a
point, which is that nobody is going to be mad at you for doing one
unprintable thing, because everybody does it sometime. That’s the
point.”
“Oh.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” Justin says dryly. “Next time I’ll skip
trying to cheer you up and just bring porn.”
“I do have a VCR in here,” Lance notes, and then laughs as Justin
nudges him hard with the side of his body. “I’m sorry -- it’s a good
story. I mean, it is helpful. I feel better. Can I just ask you one
thing?”
Suspiciously, Justin says, “Yeah.” “Why did -- why did you want
him to stop? I mean.... Never mind, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t--“
“Because he was a fan.” After he says it, Justin realizes that
probably doesn’t sound like a reason to anyone but him. So he tries
to explain; he’s only tried once before, to Chris, who just laughed
at him and said “Whatever,” like Justin was speaking some foreign
language. “There’s this look in their eyes, fans, when you’re dancing
with them, or you’re maybe kissing them or something. Like they’re
not really there. Like part of them is already on to the important
part, which is telling everyone they know about it tomorrow.” Lance
doesn’t laugh; Lance kind of nods. “I want it to be about me,” Justin
blurts, and then he changes it to, “I just think it should at least
be with a friend,” because that sounds better. Less selfish. Not that
he is, because he isn’t, but still. Sometimes it’s okay to be, isn’t
it? Just some of the time?
“But if it’s a friend,” Lance says in a whisper, sounding sad
again, “isn’t that its own whole set of problems? I mean...if there’s
somebody that you like, but...but maybe is too close, and it’s --
scary?”
Justin feels his heart slam, and then settle into a fast rhythm
that doesn’t quite seem to work right. “Like...if it’s one of us?”
He was half-afraid Lance would freak at that, but he sighs like
it’s the biggest relief in the world. “Yes. Yes. Because it sort of
feels like it has to happen, you know, because we’re all so close
anyway, but at the same time....”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t want to say...no, I would never let it happen,
because...because it is happening, you know, the feelings -- I
mean, I want it to. But if we, you know, within the group, if
people are pairing off -- not that we’re paired off, but it’s like,
if there’s something special, something that not everybody in the
group has, could that mess things up for everybody?”
Justin pushes up on his elbow. Lance looks so pale and scared,
just like he did in the ambulance. Like he’s two seconds away from
bringing about the end of the world, and he’s just hoping you won’t
be mad at him during your last two seconds on earth together.
Lightly, Justin puts his fingers over Lance’s face, the middle two
over his eyebrows, pinky and forefinger against the corners of his
eyes, his thumb on Lance’s cheekbone. “You so suck at worrying,” he
whispers. “It ain’t one of your talents.”
“I just can’t stop feeling it,” he says miserably, his voice
cracking. “I don’t even know if it could ever go anywhere for real,
but--“
Lance’s lips are unbearably soft under his, and they taste clean,
like skin and saliva, without all the usual chemical tastes that
cling to women’s lips. Justin tips Lance’s head back with his hand
under Lance’s chin, and he strokes down Lance’s neck and across his
shoulder. Lance is so tense, like he’s frozen solid. Justin makes the
kiss more insistent, slipping his tongue along Lance’s bottom lip,
and a shudder runs through Lance as he opens his mouth, just a
little, and kisses back, just a little.
“It’s okay,” Justin murmurs against his lips. “It’ll be okay.”
Lance is still kissing him as he gets his hand on Justin’s
shoulder and pushes him back, so they come apart with a soft, wet
sound. “Oh my God,” Lance says, dazed.
“It’s okay,” Justin says again, stroking Lance’s cheek. Because
Lance is totally right; with all of them as close as they are, how
could anyone be closer? How could you ever be sure with anyone else
-- sure that they know you, sure that they love you in spite of all
the obnoxious little things you find out about someone when you live
on a bus with them, sure that they won’t vanish when things aren’t
going right? It just makes so much sense. It feels so safe, like an
old favorite song.
“No -- no, Justin,” Lance says, taking hold of his wrist and
brushing it away. “You don’t understand.”
“It’s okay,” he says,
reflexive now. He just wants Lance to shut up and kiss him again,
because that’s the point of the story.
“Joey,” Lance insists, which doesn’t make any sense to Justin.
He draws back just a little, and sees Lance’s face.
He sits up.
With a groan, Lance covers his face with both hands. “Okay, this
is fucked up,” he says, his voice hollow from behind them.
Justin tries to say something, but he doesn’t know what to say.
How in the hell could he have been so wrong about this? How could he
have had *no idea* what was going on here -- how Lance was feeling,
how Lance was feeling about him, how Lance was feeling about...
Joey. “I didn’t know you--“ Lance begins.
“I don’t,” Justin says shortly. Because he doesn’t -- didn’t.
Never even thought about it, until like a second ago. So who cares
if Lance doesn’t, either? It’s not exactly like all his hopes and
dreams are crumbling. He never even thought about it until just
now, and that was only because of a stupid mistake. So. No big deal.
“Justin, please. Please don’t be....”
“You have a thing for Joey?” On the one hand, he guesses it
makes sense, because Joey and Lance have always been close. But on
the other hand...what the hell is so special about Joey? If he’d
said JC, okay, because JC was pretty hot, so, sure. And if he’d said
Chris -- well, that would be weird, but on the other hand, Chris just
has this effect on people. So okay. But Joey, Justin loves him and
everything, but he’s just Joey, just fun and ordinary and nothing
like Lance, who has all these hidden layers and is totally sensitive
and deep.
God, he’s an idiot. When did he get this dumb about people? Unless
he was all along.
“Yeah,” Lance says quietly. “I have a thing for Joey.”
“Joey’s straight,” Justin says, maybe a little bit nastily.
But Lance just quirks his eyebrow and says, “Not as much as you
would think.” Then he looks sorry that he said it; Justin wonders if
his own face makes it look like that hurt to hear. Lance touches his
arm and says, “I’m sort of -- I’m sort of in the middle of stuff with
him.”
“That’s why you stopped me?” He feels like a moron as soon as he
says it. He shouldn’t be begging Lance for assurances; he came here
to make Lance feel better, and now he’s making it all about
himself. Justin fucking Timberlake.
He’s beginning to get that one.
“That’s why,” Lance says seriously. “That’s the only reason on the
whole planet that anyone would...not kiss you.”
Justin is used to being called a sex symbol and things like that.
But it’s better, coming from Lance. Maybe because he knows that Lance
doesn’t want anything back. They’re just hanging out, bonding.
Friends. Bonded. “If Joey’s jerking you around, he’s a retard.”
Lance smiles slightly. “I don’t think he’s jerking me around.”
“Good. Because you deserve...anything you want.”
His smile deepens a little, and he reaches out like he’s going to
touch Justin, but then he doesn’t. “There are always things you want
and can’t have. Always.”
“Okay. So now that I’ve been totally stupid, I’m just going to ask
straight out: what do you want me to do? You want me to go?”
“No!” Lance seems genuinely shocked. “No, stay here.”
So Justin lies down again, just like before, with his arm around
Lance. It’s okay. The awkwardness is already starting to disappear.
“Thanks for coming with me,” Lance says. “In the ambulance.”
“I wanted to.” After a second, that starts to sound funny to
Justin, so he laughs. “And I’m Justin fucking Timberlake. I get what
I want.” Out of nowhere, then, he thinks about Britney and stops
laughing. Wow, that was almost...a weird situation.
“Me, too. I mean, I wanted you to. I didn’t want to be alone.”
Lance had chosen him. Justin remembered all of them crowding
around Lance, and how Lance had hardly seemed to recognize anyone,
except for the way he reached out to Justin and grabbed his hand.
He’d followed along when the paramedics came and took Lance, just
because it was him that Lance was holding onto.
He has a quick image of the two of them kissing, Joey and Lance.
It’s weird. It doesn’t seem right, somehow.
He moves his hand a little to play with Lance’s hair. “You need
anything now?”
“I’d like to hear you sing,” Lance says, shyly. “If you don’t
mind.”
Justin doesn’t mind. It makes him feel somehow invincible,
actually, to think that the one thing he’s best at might be just what
Lance wants. “What do you want to hear?”
“When my mother put me and Stacy to bed, she used to sing songs
from Disney movies.”
Justin grins. “You may not know this, but I know a bunch of Disney
songs.”
“Yeah?” Lance pretends to be surprised, while Justin chuckles.
Then he says, more seriously, “This is a stupid thing to ask for,
isn’t it? For, like, an adult?”
“Who cares? You get whatever makes you feel better. Anything you
want.”
Lance sighs, and nestles into the curve of Justin’s arm. “Can I
live in that world?” Songs, songs.... Justin wracks his brain for old
Disney, stuff that Lance’s mom might have liked. “I know you,” he
tries out, and keeps going when he sees Lance smile. “I walked with
you once upon a dream....”
“I love him,” Lance whispers fiercely. “But I don’t know what he
wants from me.”
“I know you, the gleam in your eyes is so familiar....”
“I love your voice. I wish I could be the first person to tell you
that, so it would really mean something special. But I do, anyway.”
Lance goes back to sleep while he’s singing, but Justin keeps
going. He’s at “But if I know you, I know what you’ll do,” when Joey
opens the door to look in on them.
Carefully, Justin begins to extricate himself, trying not to wake
Lance. Years of conditioning have made him unable to stop a song
before it’s over, so he finishes the last verse under his breath as
he rolls Lance back over and smooths the sheet over him.
Joey is giving him a strange look as Justin goes to the door, and
Justin feels embarrassed and guilty at the same time, like Joey knows
everything. Even though there’s nothing really to know. Nothing
major.
“He’s exhausted,” Justin says to Joey.
“Yeah. That’s what the doctor told us.”
He wants to say something like, You better treat him right or, If
you hurt him, you’ll be sorry. But he’s afraid he’ll sound.... He
doesn’t know how he’ll sound, and Justin always gets by on knowing
how things will play for the audience. It’s strange to be this in the
dark, and suddenly Justin wonders if everybody feels this way about
-- kissing, and relationships, and things like that. Or if it’s just
him.
“You okay?” Joey asks.
“Don’t worry about me. Just get Lance healthy. Hey, can I borrow
your cell?”
Joey hands it over. He’s not sure he can remember the number -- he
usually uses the speed-dial. But he lets his fingers go, and it comes
back to him, by instinct. It rings for a long time before she
answers, saying, “Hello?” very un-welcomingly. Justin’s freaked until
he remembers that she wouldn’t recognize Joey’s number on her caller
ID.
“It’s me, Brit,” he says. “I’m on Joey’s phone.”
“Oh. God, Justin, I almost didn’t answer. You shouldn’t do that.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just--“
“Lance? Is it Lance?”
“He’s going to be fine. It’s just exhaustion; they’re going to
keep him here, but he’s fine.”
“Yeah, they have to observe him,” she says sagely. “Are you...?
It’s a getting a little bit late. Did you want something?”
He takes a deep breath. “Just wanted to hear your voice.”
She seems to think about that for a minute, and then she says,
“Okay.” She sounds pretty pleased. “That’s fine.”
“I want to call you a lot. A lot of times I don’t, because I don’t
know what you’ll think.”
“Okay.” Now she just sounds a little confused.
“I’ve never done this before.”
“Okay, Justin, are we talking about anything in particular?
Because I would jump in, if I knew.”
He laughs, raggedly. Okay, now she thinks he’s an idiot. That’s
okay. He can live with that. “I really like you. But it’s weird,
because I don’t know how I’m supposed to be with you. How I’m
supposed to act.”
“I don’t really think you are supposed to act,” she says,
primly. “I think you’re supposed to be real.”
“I want to be your boyfriend.”
There’s a long pause, until Justin finds himself hoping he’s lost
the signal. “Okay,” she says, softly. “It might be a
little...problematic.”
“We’ll figure something out.”
“This thing with Lance has you kind of freaked, doesn’t it?” she
says sympathetically, and for a second he thinks she knows about the
kiss somehow. Then he realizes she means the hospital thing. He
wonders how to answer that, what she wants to hear. He has to stop
himself, almost physically, from trying to figure it out. “It has me
totally freaked. Lance always seemed so...solid, you know? He never
said anything.”
“Maybe he should have said something.”
“Probably.”
“Tell him I hope he feels better fast.”
“I think if I had to pick who the nicest person I know is, I
wouldn’t know whether to pick Lance or you.” It sounds dumb, and it
isn’t the most flattering thing to say to your girlfriend, that it’s
like -- either her or not her. But it’s true.
She doesn’t sound offended at all when she says, “Thank you,
Justin.”
“It’s true.”
“That’s why I’m thanking you.”
“I’m going to let you go, because it’s late. But...you’ll think
about me, won’t you?”
He can hear the way she smiles. She just has one of those smiles.
“I will, yeah.”
That’s all he wants, and it’s not so much to ask, is it? All five
of them to be happy. And someone to notice when he’s feeling better
again.
end
Bettythoughts: Parts of this story used to be attached to "Margaritaville" and "King of Diamonds"
in one big, long thing dealing with Lance and his hospitalization in the spring of '99 called "Kings
in the Corner." But that story was, well, really long, and kind of boggy and cumbersome, what
with all the scene changes and whatnot. So I ended up chopping out the "King of Diamonds"
section and posting it independently, and then fleshing out the middle section, which eventually
became "Margaritaville," at which point I really felt like I'd gotten the good stuff out there and
the rest was expendable. But Mary, the Font of Sparkly Wisdom, kept saying she missed the
beginning of the old story, which was mostly about Justin's reactions to Lance's collapse and
revelation. After I picked the whole thing over to build "Margaritaville," there wasn't a whole
story left out of the front section, but to make Mary happy, I did some major reconstructive
surgery. Hospital, Lance and Justin, dig it. So now instead of one big story, "Kings in the
Corner" is a trilogy of hospital, lance-and-justin related stories.