No one was going to admit it, but they were all smushed together on the couch in Chris's living room waiting for Lance to come home. Waiting up for him. Watching "Gilligan's Island" reruns on Nick at Nite. It was the only thing on t.v. they could even approach agreeing on.
"Mary Ann or Ginger?" Joey asked.
"Dude, that's an old one, Joe," Justin replied.
"The Professor," JC answered. Joey turned his head to look at him. "What? He's kind of cute. At least I didn't say Mr. Howe."
"Touché, Chasez," Joey smirked.
Just then, they heard the front door open. JC had a sudden, almost unbearable urge to get up and flee the house via the back sliding glass doors. He felt a little embarrassed they were going to be caught waiting up for Lance. Again. For about the 478th time in three months. At Chris's house, where Lance was staying until the construction on his was finished. When he thought of it that way, of all the times they'd done this before, JC forced his leg muscles to relax. He just threw another penny into the silly-things-you-do-for-friends-you-love fountain and watched Lance shuffle into the den.
"So, how'd it go?" Chris asked, ruffling Lance's perfectly sculpted hair affectionately when Lance reached the back of the couch.
"Okay," Lance replied, shrugging. He was wearing a silk, forest green shirt and black pants that Justin had picked out for him the day before. Justin had whistled low when he saw him earlier that night, and told him he was a lady-killer.
"Just okay?" That was Joey.
"Yeah, just okay," Lance repeated, shrugging again.
"So did you sweep her off her feet, steal her heart, make her order dessert?" Justin asked.
"She wouldn't order desert," Lance came around the edge of the couch and perched on the left arm.
"I hate chicks who do that," Joey said, which elicited a "me, too" from Justin. Chris eyed Justin with a dubious look.
"Britney orders dessert," Justin argued. Chris raised an eyebrow. "You know. When I see her. And we have dinner." The other eyebrow joined its twin. "Which is actually more than twice a year, thanks Kirkpatrick, now lower those eyebrows, you prick." Justin and Chris snorted almost in unison, though for different reasons. Justin posed his next question, "Are you going to see her again?" to Lance, in order to deflect more of Chris's opinions on Britney Spears' eating habits and how much she saw of Justin. Or how much Justin saw of her.
Lance shrugged yet again. "She was nice and all, but probably not. She's just not my type."
JC saw the struggle visible on Chris's face and began to pray fervently that he wouldn't just blurt out something to the effect of that's because she doesn't have a dick, stupid. He caught Chris's eye and saw him visibly relax a little. JC actually sighed from relief.
"That's too bad, yo," Justin shook his head as if disappointed. "How many of these things is management going to set you up on, anyway?"
This time, Lance only shrugged one shoulder. "I don't know. Until something clicks, I guess. I know they're just trying to be nice and all, since I always talk about how single I am and everything, but mostly I wish they'd butt out now, you know?"
Justin nodded his head sympathetically, without any sense of irony. JC could've kissed him. The four of them had figured out long ago that management kept setting Lance up on these blind dates because they had figured out that he was gay, and wanted to provide him with a nice girl who would appease the public and look the other way. What management didn't know was that Lance hadn't yet figured out that he was gay. If it had occurred to Lance Bass that he was a homosexual, he certainly hadn't shared that with himself. Much less with anyone else in the group. Lance honestly thought that management had his best romantic interests at heart and really were trying to find him a girlfriend. Lance wasn't dumb about most things, and he could work an industry room with the best of them, but he was dumb as dirt about this. The other four hated what management was doing, but had little power to change it, even after Justin had thrown a fit about it right in WEG's corporate office. The four of them had made a pact long ago that Lance needed to come to some things on his own, so no one told him anything. They were trying to protect him, JC knew, but sometimes it seemed mean not to tell him what management was doing, why they were setting him up on this seemingly endless string of dates with moderately pretty girls, and he knew all four of them felt it. So instead, they would stay up for Lance on nights he was out "dating," huddled together on Chris's sofa, sometimes high on weed, sometimes drunk, most of the time neither, waiting for Lance to finally put two and two together.
Apparently, tonight was not the night that was going to happen.
"I'm just tired. I'm gonna head to bed, okay?" Lance gestured with his thumb towards the general area of the guest room.
"Sure," Chris said easily, even as a muscle quirked in his jaw. Lance padded out of the room on new shoes that squeaked as he crossed Chris's kitchen floor.
Joey was the first one to speak a couple of minutes later. "Fuck," he said. Justin nodded.
Chris was twisting his hands together in a fist, and not talking. JC knew that was a bad sign.
"You want a ride home, Joe?" Justin asked, standing up and searching his front pocket for his car keys.
"Sure," Joey replied, easily. "You coming, 'C?"
"No, I'll stay here for the night." JC got a confirming look from Chris. "But thanks."
"'kay," Joey waved the thanks off with a hand as he and Justin also rounded through the kitchen towards the front door.
JC slid over to the other side of the couch and put his head on Chris's shoulder. Chris started to run his fingers through JC's hair. JC loved that; he almost purred in response, and his toes curled up under one of the cushions.
"Penny for your thoughts," he said to Chris.
"My mind is worth a lot more than that, Jayce," Chris snorted.
"Says you." JC chuckled at his own joke.
Chris sighed. "It's just that. Well. Hmmm. The kid needs to face up to some things. And soon. He's getting too old for this shit, Josh."
"Maybe," JC said. "He didn't grow up like you. Or me."
Chris hummed a thoughtful affirmative. "I just thought that, well, one day someone would talk to him. Or that he would figure it out. Before. I don't know. Before he got hurt, or something. Maybe I should talk to him."
JC nodded against Chris's shoulder. He knew what Chris was trying to say. "So you wanted to have a talk with him maybe? And now you're running . . . you're running out of time?"
"Yeah. On both counts. That boy is going to get hurt soon." JC looked up out of the corner of his eye to see Chris's face hard, set like stone. Unfortunately, he knew Chris was right. They were all going to get hit with the inevitable sooner or later, and for Lance, it seemed like the time was going to be sooner, unfortunately. But nothing was going to happen tonight.
JC sat up and pressed a firm but gentle kiss to Chris's lips. "Bed," he said.
"Bed," Chris echoed, and kissed back.
The first blow came even sooner and more literally than JC had anticipated. Late one breezy summer afternoon, he was fiddling around in Chris's kitchen with a bread maker, trying to make dough for homemade pizza. The bread maker sounded like a washing machine on acid when the dough was rolling around in it, which worried JC, but looking at the dough, it seemed to be okay. He thought. His hands were wrist deep in sticky not-yet-bread substance when the front door banged, and Lance walked into the kitchen with a huge black eye.
JC would have dropped the dough if it hadn't been stuck to his hands. "What the fuck happened to you?" he blurted out.
Lance started to cry.
"Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit," JC repeated, frantically trying to get pizza dough off his hands and fingers. "Just. Just. Come in. Sit down. Sit down, Lance. I'll get some ice. Ice. Yeah. Ice. Ice is good." JC pulled the last huge chunks of dough off his fingers while Lance sat down obediently at one of the chairs in the breakfast nook. JC pulled a towel off the oven handle and tried to pile as many ice cubes as possible into it. He realized he was using too many and had to put a few back; the cubes were also sticking to the remaining dough on his fingers, not helping the situation. JC finally managed to get the towel wrapped around the ice, and walked over to where Lance was sitting. Lance had stopped crying, but his whole face, not just his right eye, looked swollen.
"Here," JC said, holding the makeshift ice pack to Lance's eye.
"I can hold it myself," Lance mumbled, a little sullen, taking the towel from JC's grip.
"Okay," JC said softly.
They sat in silence for several minutes, JC peeling dough off his fingers, and Lance not making a sound.
"So . . ." JC started.
Lance didn't offer any information. JC sighed.
"What happened, Lance?"
Lance didn't say a word, just held the ice pack closer to his forehead. JC was about to say something else when Lance brought forth, "Got in a fight with one of the lighting people at the One the Line photo shoot today."
JC took a minute to digest this new information. Lance wasn't much of a fighter, even amongst the band. He'd get annoyed, sure, and voice frustration, yes, but it hardly ever came to any kind of direct verbal confrontation, much less got physical. All he could ask was, "What happened?"
Lance's head lowered a little to look down at his lap. "They'd already finished with Joey and so they were trying to get my individual shots for the article coming out in Premiere. They'd put me in a light brown shirt, which I guess made me look pale, which made it hard to light me right, I guess." Lance paused.
Lance was silent for so long that JC thought that he wasn't going to finish. His head bowed even further, and he seemed to be inspecting his perfectly clean pair of loafers. "So one of the lighting assistants started to complain, and kept saying how hard it was, how no matter what they did, I looked pale as fuck, and. How typical that was for a fucking fag. A fucking. Fag."
JC's heart was suddenly pounding so loudly he could hear it in his ears. He thought for one horrible minute that Lance might be crying again, but when Lance spoke, his voice was soft, but clear.
"So I got a little mad and said that wasn't true, that I wasn't gay, and the other people started talking about throwing the guy out, about how unprofessional he was, and they went to remove him from the set, and he kept going on and on about how they were protecting this faggot just because he might make them some money. Security threw him out," Lance finished.
"So how'd you get the black eye?" JC was confused.
"When I went to take a break from the shoot later, I walked straight into one of the concrete pillars on the set. Right into it. Face first. We had to cancel the rest of the shoot."
JC might have laughed, if Lance didn't look so miserable, and if the lighting guy hadn't been such a stupid asshole.
"Are you okay? You don't have a concussion or anything, do you?"
Lance shook his head. "No. They brought a doctor on set. I'll just look banged up for the next few days. I feel stupid more than anything else."
JC nodded. He didn't know whether to press the issue this brought up, or leave it be. He was still trying to decide when Chris came home, pushing the kitchen door open, Busta and Korea yipping at his feet.
"Yeah, we had a good time at the park today, yes we did, yes we did, didn't we?" Chris continued to coo to the dogs. It seemed to take him a moment to notice that JC and Lance were sitting at the kitchen table, and even longer to assess that this was no ordinary late afternoon chat.
"What in holy fuck happened to you?" he asked Lance.
Lance shot JC a look that JC missed, he was so intent on hoping that Chris wouldn't jump to some conclusion.
"Who hit you?" Too late for that.
"No one."
"C'mon, Bass, who gave you that shiner?"
"No one, Chris. I ran into a pillar at the photo shoot. It's no big deal."
"You'd better tell me the truth, so I can go kick the crap out of this guy."
"Chris. Are you even listening? No one hit me, okay? I ran into a fucking concrete column, okay? See?" Lance pulled the towel and mostly melted ice away, indicating the now visible angry red patch that ran down the length of his nose, damage obviously done by something as immobile as concrete.
"Oh." Chris got dog food out of the bottom cabinet. "So how'd you manage to pull that one off, dorkus?"
"I was distracted." Lance's voice went soft again.
"By what?" JC was trying desperately to catch Chris's eye. Either he was failing utterly, or Chris was ignoring him. JC suspected the latter.
Lance's shoes once again became objects of intense scrutiny. "One of the lighting guys called me a fag."
"Oh," Chris said. The silence that followed was just a little too long, and JC hoped no one besides him had noticed.
Lance looked up suddenly, forehead wrinkled with new purpose. "You don't think that's true, do you?" he asked, almost furiously.
"No, no, of course not. No," JC stammered quickly. A little too quickly.
Lance stood up so quickly he almost upset the chair he had been sitting on. "Oh, God. Oh, God. Yes, you do. You do. You think I'm a fucking fag, too, don't you?"
JC winced visibly at the word fag.
"That's not true," Chris started.
Lance turned on Chris so suddenly he reminded JC of a lion prowling his cage.
"Oh yeah? So why no jokes, funny man? Oh. Oh. All you can say is 'Oh.'" Lance mimicked Chris a little viciously. "Where's the 'that guy is so full of shit' or 'takes one to know one' or 'who could say that about manly little Lance here'? Huh?"
Chris just opened his mouth, then shut it again.
"Lance, Lance . .. ."JC tried to start.
"I can't believe y'all think I'm gay. You do. I don't believe that I haven't seen this before in you guys . . .y'all are supposed to be my friends."
JC made a firm attempt to interrupt the beginnings of Lance's tirade. He was just warming up, JC was sure. "Lance. We don't think you're gay. Exactly. We just think you might be a little confused." It occurred to JC now that he sounded a little like his mother.
"Confused?" Lance echoed.
"Yeah, confused," Chris picked up the ball. "Like, maybe you're not sure what you want. All those girls you keep going out with, they're not for you, right? So maybe."
"So maybe a guy is?" Lance asked, incredulous.
Chris paused. "Maybe."
Lance threw his arms in the air, and his palms hit his thighs back down with a definite slap that probably hurt. Lance didn't seem to notice. "Just because I haven't found a girl I've liked, doesn't mean I don't like girls," he hurled at Chris.
JC stifled the urge to placate Lance with a "good point." Besides, Chris was plenty wound up for all three of them.
"Maybe," Chris said again. "I'm just saying, maybe you need to try some things, Lance. Do some thinking. Find out who you are and all that shit."
"That is shit, Chris. I know who I am. Besides which, I'm not going to go off on some quirky little voyage of self-discovery now."
"Why not?" JC asked.
Lance turned to look at him. JC wanted to slide his chair back, but stood his ground instead.
"I did," JC said. "For a long time, I didn't know what the hell I wanted. I knew I didn't want Bobbie, but I didn't know what else was out there. And then I found out Chris was out there." JC smiled, and aimed it right at Chris.
Chris let himself smile back, slightly, and his look at Lance softened, just a little. Lance's shoulders lowered, and he reached back and trailed his fingertips on the table.
"And we're happy, Lance. You see that, right? It's okay. You've never been anything but supportive of us-so what's up with that not being okay for you?" JC finished.
"I love you guys. I know. I know you're happy. I do support you. But I also think you're going straight to hell," Lance's fingers moved away from the tabletop.
JC could tell Lance was only half kidding, if that.
He also knew that was exactly the wrong thing to say in front of Chris. He made a wish that Chris wouldn't lose it in front of Lance.
Wishing and hoping weren't working out too well for JC today. "Fuck you, you, stupid, scared, son of bitch," exploded out of Chris's mouth. JC balled his hands into fists and looked at the ground. Lance was so stunned he didn't say anything for a second, which was plenty of time to give Chris another opening.
"I spent most of my life so poor we never had a phone, wearing shoes with holes in them that we'd fished out of the church's lost and found box, getting half-time attention from my mom because there were five of us to feed, living off of lousy amusement park wages in Orlando and having a dream about being in a singing group that came true but then got turned into a boy-band-o-rama and the most well marketed pop machine since, well, since no one." Then Chris started pointing at JC. "And that one, that one over there spent years miserable, jerking off in front of computers and wandering around listless and depressed, completely confused. So listen here you little bigoted Mississippi bastard: don't you ever, ever say anything like that about either of us again. Neither of us ever thought we'd find any kind of happiness, and now that we have, I'm not going to let you make it even sound wrong, especially when all we're doing is trying to help you be happy too, because you're our friend, you stupid bitch. And you will especially not say that kind of thing in my house, while under my roof, fucker. Now go out and kiss a boy and get this damn thing over with." Chris might have had a high singing voice, but when he roared, his voice was strangely low.
"Fuck you and your help. 'Cause you don't have the right to choose. At least not about what's right for me and about who I am." Lance growled and stalked out of the kitchen.
The only sound in the kitchen for a long time was the sound of dogs chewing on expensive dog chow.
"I didn't used to jerk off in front of a computer," JC finally said, petulantly.
Chris went to sit down next to him. "Never?" he raised an eyebrow.
"I'm invoking my fifth amendment rights," JC replied, trying to cheer Chris up.
"Hmmmm." Chris looked around the kitchen. "What the hell is that all over the counter?"
"Pizza dough."
"Oh." Then, "I'm not even going to ask."
Chris and Lance didn't speak to each other for the next four days, three of which JC spent trying to convince Lance that he should still continue to stay with Chris, that that was fine.
On the fifth day, Chris was making breakfast, and he asked Lance if he wanted an omelet. Lance said yes. Chris made him an egg white omelet with cheese, mushrooms and red peppers. Everything was better after that.
But no one talked about the fight in the kitchen.
"Heads I win, tails you lose," Chris said, getting ready to flip the quarter.
"That's just dumb, Kirkpatrick," Joey said.
"How come?"
"Because it doesn't even make sense, you moron."
"Sure it does. It means I'm guaranteed to win, dork. I thought I could get that one past you."
"My intellect is more than a match for you, Kirkpatrick. Jesus. Let's just let Jayce decide."
Chris groaned and rolled his eyes. He and Joey were trying to flip a coin to decide which movie to watch for the evening. Chris wanted "Legend of Drunken Master," which Joey had already seen, and he refused to watch most movies more than once, even on video; Joey had picked "Road Trip" which probably would have been fine if Chris didn't have an inexplicable aversion to snakes. He couldn't handle the boa featured; he feared for the little mouse. JC thought that was the cutest thing he'd ever heard in his life.
"If we let 'C decide, he'll pick something girly like 'Erin Brokovich.'"
"Hey! That's a good movie!" JC protested. Chris shot Joey an I-told-you-so look. "Okay. Okay. What about 'High Fidelity?'" JC proposed. Joey nodded his head and Chris shrugged.
"Fan-fucking-tastic. I'm going to go order the pizza." Chris stated, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket. They were settling in for another night of waiting for Lance to come home. It was a few weeks after his fight with JC and Chris, and Lance had announced he had another date. Chris and JC had tried to be supportive, disappointed that after all that had happened, nothing was going to come of it. Chris, especially, had been a more than a little sad about it, so JC had arranged for Joey and Justin to come over and continue their unspoken vigil over Lance's attempts at dating.
The doorbell rang. "I'll get it," JC said, leaping up from the couch and heading to the foyer. When he got there, the bell rang a second time. "Coming," he said, and opened the heavy wooden door. Justin stood outside.
"Hey, man," JC greeted Justin enthusiastically. "You're just in time-Chris is ordering the pizza. You want anything besides pepperoni?" JC ushered Justin into the foyer. Justin had just opened his mouth to answer when JC spoke again. "And since when do you ring the door bell? The door is always open for you."
Justin shook his head. "JC, man, you've got to lay off those protein shakes in the middle of the day. They make you hyper."
JC shrugged. "Maybe a little."
"A little? When you drink them you're practically on crack, yo."
"Shut up, Jup," JC said, good-naturedly.
"Is that Justin's voice?" Lance's own voice drifted down the stairs.
"It's me, Lance," Justin called back up.
"So, we're settling in for the night," JC said to Justin, pointing with his thumb towards the den.
"Yeah, um," Justin started as Lance almost literally came bouncing down the stairs.
"You ready?" Lance asked Justin. Justin nodded his head and flashed a "Justin Timberlake" smile at Lance.
It took JC a minute to summon the brainpower necessary to form words. "I thought you were going on a date, Lance," he said slowly.
"We're just going to the movies," Lance said. "It's no big deal."
"But. I. Thought. You were going on a date," JC said, as if he hadn't said the right thing the first time.
"I am," Lance said. "I'm going to the movies with Justin." Justin was stifling the giggles.
"But that would mean . . ." JC trailed off.
"That I'm going on a date with Justin. Yes. That's exactly what it means," Lance smiled at JC.
JC stood there for a minute. "I am so confused," he finally managed. Justin finally laughed out loud.
"What's going on in here?" Chris staggered in. "Oh. Hi, J. The pizza will be here soon."
"I'm not staying for pizza," Justin informed Chris.
"Why not? I didn't order peppers," he pouted.
"He can't because he's going on a date with Lance," JC explained, a little awed at his own power of deductive reasoning.
Chris looked from Lance to Justin, and back again. "I tell you to go kiss a guy and you pick fucking Timberlake?" he directed at Lance.
Lance shrugged and blushed. "He's cute," he explained.
"Jesus." Chris shook his head. "Justin?"
"Hey, I am cute," Justin piped up.
"Shut up, child," Chris said. "When did this happen?"
Lance shrugged again. "A couple of weeks ago. I wanted to see . . . um. What it felt like. To. You know."
"If you can't say it, that means you shouldn't be doing it," Chris sagely informed Lance.
"To kiss a guy. And. Other stuff."
"What other stuff?" Chris stared pointedly at Justin.
"None of your business, Kirkpatrick," Justin said, taking Lance's hand and pulling a little.
"Timberlake?" Chris asked Lance again. Lance just laughed this time. Chris turned to Justin. "And what about Britney?"
Justin snorted and rolled his eyes. "Wade."
"Wade what?"
"Wade. And Britney. You know. For a while now."
"Shit, man." Chris said. "That little fucker."
"Yeah, well, whatever. It's not like it hasn't been coming," Justin agreed as Chris nodded his head. "So, Dad, can we go now?"
"Yes," JC said. He made a shooing motion with his hands. "Go. Have a good time."
"Be back by ten," Chris said as Justin and Lance headed towards the door. He got nudged in the ribs by JC's bony elbow for his trouble. "So does this mean you're gay?" he called after Lance.
"I'll let you know after tonight," Lance said as he walked out the door. JC could hear Justin laughing even as the door shut.
Chris shrieked. "My virgin ears!" he cried.
JC took him by the hand. "Your ears are hardly virgin," JC told him.
Chris squeezed JC's hand. "If they're not, it's your fault," he said, and kissed JC softly.
"Hey, Joe, wait'll you hear this," Chris screamed towards the direction of the den as they walked through the kitchen towards Joey.
The next morning, JC had two things to consider. One, that the pile of sunflowers Lance had sent to Chris and JC that had been delivered moments before the coffee started to perk, along with a card that said simply, "Thank you. I love both of you," meant that the night had gone well. Very well. And that Lance was, hopefully, even better.
Chris, however, considered the paper over his coffee as JC considered Chris. Chris finally put down the paper.
"This is going to end badly, you know," he said to JC.
"Actually, I think they really have a shot at something special. Or at least, um, interesting," JC amended, puzzled at Chris's reaction.
"That's exactly what I mean," Chris sighed.
"You're so predictable," JC answered, reaching a finger out to swipe stray hair out of Chris's eyes. "Never happy, are you?"
The coffee continued to brew on the stove, rich and warm, the smell wafting throughout the whole house, contradicting JC's last few words.