Lance liked having lots of room to spread out in whenever he was off the bus, but he'd been with the guys for so many years now that it somehow didn't feel right to sprawl out if there wasn't someone else all tangled in with him. JC and Joe were his favorites, the ones who tangled really well, if in different ways--C being like, affectionate and murmury but completely limp and apt to fall asleep and Joey being a fierce hugger, binding his arms around Lance's waist and squeezing until Lance was gasping through his laughter and pounding his shoulders.

Justin was all right too, if demanding. He was the one who got irritated if Lance was on the phone and not scratching his back, or if Lance got up to work before Justin wanted him to leave, but he was also charming and loving and funny--sometimes--so it wasn't too bad.

Chris, though.

A lot of times, he looked boneless and comfortable when he sprawled out across someone else, but Lance thought that was deceptive. Whenever he was being the Chris-bed, or platform depending on Chris' mood, he felt Chris' constant tension, his inexhaustible energy. A nearly imperceptible shudder would rock across his body and into Lance's and his breath would hitch and he'd be gone in just a few moments, off to play a game or a trick or pounce on someone and give them a noogie. That was just...Chris. Uncomfortable to be around, sometimes, no matter how much you loved him and he loved you.

Lance thought it was because Chris was uncomfortable in his own skin--

Well, that wasn't quite true because Chris was entirely comfortable with his body and knew how to move it, but Lance didn't like to think about that kind of thing much--

Maybe it was because Chris was uncomfortable in his own heart. He wanted to show that he was affectionate and sweet but couldn't let down his guard enough. He was always alert, wary, watchful. Attacking first under the guise of exuberance.

He was exhausting.

However, at the moment Joey was with Kelly again, and JC was off with someone he wouldn't talk about, would only sigh and smile about, and Justin had flown across the country to be with Britney, so Lance's house was entirely too empty and too big, and he wanted...someone.

Well, it was more a matter of what he didn't want than who he did. Really. It was just that being alone sucked after years of pretty much being with the guys every day of the year.

That didn't mean he had to call Chris, of course. There were other people. He had friends outside of the guys, outside the industry. Old friends were the best friends, right?

Except none of his old friends would ever even think of collapsing on a small couch with him and wiggling their way half under him, idly tickling or lightly scratching his sides while a stupid movie played on the big screen. They were all too normal for that.

Still, there was his family--they were all affectionate too, and funny in a way he understood, and he loved them. They all had their own busy schedules though, which he knew as well as he knew his own, thanks to his mother. He didn't want to disrupt their everyday lives if he didn't absolutely have to--they had to deal with the whole popstar thing almost more than he did, anyway.

Chris, though. He was alone too right now, and he was part of the whole popstar thing, the reason for it, and he wasn't normal enough to resist the urge to hug Lance even if hugging did make him twitchy after a minute. Plus, he always smelled good and. Felt nice wrapped around a person.

Even if he was just waiting for the opportunity to bolt most of the time.

All these things were very important when you were feeling a little. Lonely. So. Lance called him up and invited him to come spend a few nights at the house.

There was silence on the other end of the line after he asked. Then Chris chuckled. "Are you lonely, sweetheart?" he cooed, mockery heavy in his tone. Maybe bewilderment too, although Chris would never admit to that and Lance wouldn't call him on it, just then.

He smiled patiently as Chris continued babbling, and wandered into the kitchen with his phone. He was pretty sure there were Oreos in the cabinet, unless Joey'd 'fed them all to Brianna' the last time they'd come visiting. He tuned out Chris' teasing voice as he searched until he located them, all three of them that were left, lost in the depths of his cabinet. And then he tuned back in long enough to interrupt, saying, "Bring take-out, all right? I don't care what you get but make mine Mexican," before hanging up the phone and bringing his three stale cookies into the living room.

Chris'd be there in half an hour, never mind the fact that he hadn't actually said that he'd come. Lance knew him too well to be fooled by that omission, and he wanted to find something suitably torturous to be watching when Chris arrived. Like, country music videos. Or--oh, hey. 'Trading Spaces' marathon on TLC.

He settled back onto the couch to watch, eyes glued to the screen, pretty sure that this was the one where they covered the face of the woman's fireplace and her neighbors threw fits about it and the designer was an ass and the woman was pissed--

Oh, yeah.

Chris showed up right on time, with about a quarter ton of food in take-out bags. Italian, Lance could tell. He grinned as he pulled some of them out of Chris' hands and carted them into the kitchen--"Just what I was wanting," he murmured as he dumped the bags onto the table.

"But you said--" Chris paused, then started laughing. "You're a tricky fucker, Bass."

"Gotta be, with you around," Lance said.

Chris surprised him by smiling almost sweetly and filling a plate before wandering back into the living room. Lance had long ago suspended the no-eating-outside-the-dining-room rule--under duress--so he just sighed, grabbed two beers, filled his own plate and headed for the living room just in time to hear Chris howl in protest. His plate clinked on the coffee table and Lance entered the room to see him scrambling in the couch cushions for the remote. Which Lance had hidden, of course. Chris always put up a huge fuss about 'Trading Spaces', unless Frank was one of the designers, but Lance didn't care. He'd watch any of it.

He sat down right in the middle of Chris' couch cushion search pattern and put his plate on the coffee table. He wasn't really hungry--he'd been kind of nibbling all afternoon out of boredom. He didn't quite know how to handle free time, anymore. He was pretty sure there'd been days when he was a kid when he had just been collapsed on the couch with the radio on and nothing in his head, but those days were pretty far away.

Now, they'd been on break for two days and he'd already finished all the FreeLance stuff he could think of and had started to nitpick until he was essentially told by his staff to shut the hell up. There were no new contracts to look at and his email was all caught up, his house was clean and his phone hadn't rung since the previous evening. Everything ran pretty well without his constant attention, he figured, and was a little more depressed by that idea than he was comfortable with.

He'd even been desperately bored enough to go to a club the night before but after a while, without Joe to talk to or JC to watch, he'd gotten sick of that too. It hadn't helped that every girl looked just like every other girl he wouldn't remember two minutes after she was gone, or that guys were a huge hassle anyway.

Besides.

He was tired of being an entertainer, with strangers and even with his friends. He wanted someone to entertain him, dammit, and if that was unreasonable, so what? He spent ninety-seven percent of his time being so reasonable that it made his head hurt. And now Chris was over, and if he couldn't be unreasonable with Chris...he'd probably have gone crazy about four years ago.

"Give me the remote, Martha," Chris said, patting around him. Lance grinned, settled back with his arms behind his head.

"If you want to change the channel so bad, just walk over to the television," he said reasonably, knowing that Chris'd never do it, it'd be like giving up. Chris would feel honor bound to torture Lance until Lance begged for mercy and gave him what he wanted.

And it barely made Lance feel pathetic at all, that the idea was kind of interesting. Because wrestling with Chris was a great way to blow off steam. Yeah.

As expected, Chris stared at him, then pounced. "Give me what I want, Bass, or I'll kick your ass," he mock-growled, eyes glowing, bright with gold and deep with brown.

"Such a poet," Lance said. Chris grabbed his ears and used them to shake his head, and Lance snorted, reached out to grip Chris' wrists and shove. Chris ended up on the coffee table, almost in their dinners, but that didn't last long--with a cackle, he attacked again, this time managing to get Lance flat on his back.

"You like that, baby?" he taunted, leaning down to smack a wet kiss on Lance's cheek, barely escaping Lance's attempt to headbutt him. They were both laughing--

Until Chris straddled Lance's hips, which had happened before, happened every time they wrestled, really, but Chris didn't usually look at him quite. Like. That. And honestly, Lance had never noticed before that Chris was so strong, solid and tough, yet also somehow light, energy loosely contained, motionless but just barely at rest.

They stopped laughing. Lance felt his head swim. He cursed himself because this wasn't what he'd wanted when he'd asked Chris to come over--

Although.

In the back of his mind, hadn't he known this was an option?

No. No, no. He'd just wanted company and some uncomplicated, rough affection, and he was getting this.

He wasn't getting anything.

Chris' heat seeped through his clothes and through Lance's; he usually had the coolest skin and sometimes tackled people for their warmth, just because he would never admit that he was cold. But he seemed to be burning up now, and Lance closed his eyes. It felt good. It wasn't what he'd been expecting--

--he didn't think--

--but it really kind of felt. Like something he needed more of.

His hips shifted, mostly without his permission, and he felt Chris grind against him and he opened his eyes again. Chris looked startled, but a little smile, an evil-Chris smile, was playing on his lips. This time, the buck of Lance's hips was an experiment, one that made Chris hiss, "Fuck," under his breath and shake his head.

But he recovered. Reached under Lance's shirt to get at his ribs, to tickle. Made the whole thing almost normal again which seriously fucked with his head, so Lance shoved hard but Chris was stronger than he looked. Unless Lance wanted to hurt him, he wasn't going to win--and it'd been like that for about seven years now. Right? This kind of wrestling should have been familiar as breathing, and as comforting.

Couldn't be familiar or comforting though, with the gleam in Chris' eyes as his fingers danced over Lance's skin.

Not what I was going for, Lance thought almost desperately, trying, really trying to be good even as Chris wrenched his hands up. Not not not--

Or. Um. Maybe.

--and Chris collapsed onto his chest, panting lightly, holding Lance's wrists over his head. He moved, wiggled until he wasn't straddling anymore, until his hips had settled between Lance's thighs. Lance instinctively spread them, tilting his pelvis up.

And felt pretty stupid.

But hot. Chris' weight pinned him to the couch, not innocent wrestling anymore, not letting off steam or getting affection from someone who knew him better than anyone in the world--just hot.

Lance moaned, and Chris laughed.

"Guess that means we're not pretending this is nonsexual, huh, Bass?" Chris whispered, smiling down. Lance could feel the energy crackling through his body and thought, oh. Oh, it was attraction. Chris could be boneless and comfortable, all those times he'd looked relaxed sprawled on someone else....

Oh.

He raised an eyebrow. "It's platonic as hell on my part, Kirkpatrick," he said sweetly because Chris would expect nothing less--nothing more?--because maybe he knew the truth now but he was still not entirely sure he knew what he was supposed to do about it.

Chris snorted, dug his hips deeper between Lance's sprawled thighs. "Gonna go to Hell for lying," he said. He looked very melodramatically sad and Lance kind of had to laugh.

"Going to Hell for lying, not for having a man dry-humping me?" he drawled. Chris' hands tightened on his wrists, grinding the bones almost painfully.

"If you want to go for something really bad instead of this paltry, moderately bad shit," he said, shifting so that his body was even closer to Lance's, his mouth just a few scant inches away. "I could happily oblige you."

"Who says I want anything at all?" Lance murmured in reply.

Chris smiled at him, sultry-eyed now. His hands released Lance's wrists slowly, traced featherlight trails over his arms where his shirt bared them. Little shudders followed in his wake. That was Lance's biggest weakness, and Chris knew it just like he knew almost everything else about Lance, but he'd never been the cause of that weakness before, had never touched him slowly, with just the faintest bite of nails against his skin. Chris had obviously thought about it though; Lance could see himself melting in the darkness of Chris' gaze and knew by their gleam that Chris had imagined just this before, this slow liquefaction.

And Lance understood suddenly, knew exactly what he wanted and what he'd been wanting since long before the other guys had wandered off for a while and left him only Chris for company.

Better, he could admit it.

"This tells me," Chris whispered as he rocked his hips again. "This says it all."

"Guess this must be what I was looking for, then," Lance said, and slipped one of his newly freed hands up around the back of Chris' neck, feeling the smooth roll of a silver chain and the prickle of hair, the smoothness of tender skin. And he pulled Chris down those few final inches, into a kiss.

Chris' mouth looked cruel sometimes, tight and thin. Lance knew that mostly had to do with the fact that Chris wanted to be tough, and more with the fact that he was tough. The intense glare, the slightly insane gleam to his eyes, that occasionally cruel mouth--they weren't entirely a facade. Chris had lived a fair bit more than Lance had, and under much rougher circumstances.

That wasn't everything though. Chris loved kid games and music, and cherished his families, both blood and otherwise. He cuddled his ugly dogs and called his ex-girlfriend sweetheart, even though she'd nearly broken him. He was brutal when it was necessary, even to those who were closest to him, and he was loving when the situation called for it, even to perfect strangers. So it wasn't entirely bone deep, that dangerous edge.

Still. Lance expected, just from his mouth and the way he moved, that Chris' kisses would be harsh and sharp, edged with teeth, fast and dominant.

They weren't.

Chris kissed him delicately, with very little tongue. He used his teeth, but so. Carefully. Sweetly, somehow. Lance, who had always thought that he liked it slow, was forced to realize that Chris was the one with true patience, Chris, with this unexpected sensuality. He wanted to crawl off the couch and over to his computer, wanted to announce to the world that Chris Kirkpatrick was way better at this kind of thing than anyone had given him credit for, that Chris was suddenly, unbelievably hot.

But. He was too far gone from the kissing to even ooze off the couch. He was melted, he was a puddle, he was practicing inertia--

At least until Chris broke off one of his incredible kisses long enough to whisper something indecipherable and yet beautiful in Lance's ear, to grind hard against Lance's groin. Something broke in Lance then, the wonder that had left him to limply appreciate Chris, and he forgot about sharing this discovery with the world. He groaned deep in his chest, feeling it rumble, feeling it like a purr, and then kind of. Tossed Chris off the couch.

"Upstairs," he snapped, already heading there himself and stripping off his shirt as he went. He left it in a puddle of pale, soft fabric at the landing, heard Chris whoop with disbelieving laughter from somewhere near the bottom of the stairs, ignored him long enough to get into his bedroom and carefully work down his fly, strip, toss the covers off the bed. By the time he was done, Chris was leaning in the doorway, still laughing but at least now he was naked.

He beckoned to Chris and Chris came closer, danced closer, ridiculous and marvelous with all his bare, naked skin, still chuckling. He stopped once he was within Lance's reach though, because Lance was taking charge; he reached out, grabbed, tumbled.

Followed.

They were kissing again, now skin to skin, and this time it was Lance's kiss. Not quite as slow, deeper. More tongue, less teeth, and Chris was halfway underneath him, which was really kind of familiar, and aroused, which was not.

And then Chris was inside him, which Lance planned on making familiar.

Fast.

"So, Lance."

He grunted, dragged out of unconsciousness. Why is he talking? he wondered. Quickly followed by, how did he survive that?

But Chris had more than survived, apparently, he'd come out of the explosion with the ability to speak still in place, which was more, Lance was certain, than he could manage himself.

"Why tonight?" he murmured hazily from somewhere under the covers. Lance sighed and shifted, still half-asleep. Chris' voice was so slow and raspy that it sounded like he was mostly unconscious but. There he was with his questions--and of course the first one was the last one Lance'd want to answer.

So Lance didn't say anything. He pretended to be asleep.

He wasn't a good pretender.

Chris cleared his throat. "Now when we fight," and he sounded much closer to aware now, unfortunately, "can I win by tackling you to the ground and kissing you senseless?"

Lance groaned.

"Was that a yes, Bass? So I should keep going?"

Lance buried his head under the pillows.

"When you're being fuck-all annoying, can I just put my dick in your mouth?" Chris asked, voice sweet and innocent, and Lance rolled over on his back and smiled at the ceiling.

"Shut up, I'm sleeping," he said. Chris chuckled and pushed the covers off his head, crawled over to where Lance was, sprawling out across his chest, hand resting over his heart. Lance covered Chris' hand with his own and Chris looked up.

"Well, is that a yes? A hell, yeah?" he asked, eyes totally serious, earnest. Lance smacked him on the back of the head.

"You're an asshole," he drawled, mostly kidding. Chris grumbled but grinned, flopped down. Lance could feel his breath, the tickle of his eyelashes, the cup of his palm over Lance's navel. The press of his lips to Lance's skin.

"Bass, Bass, Bass--" Now Lance felt that mouth, pretty, cruel mouth slide into a curve and rolled his eyes, not even wanting to know what was going to come out of it. Chris said, "Do you want to get married and make babies?" and Lance just about coughed up a lung laughing.

Chris was shaking with suppressed laughter the way he did sometimes, when his voice was just so serious but he was really cracking himself up. "No, really, we can name our first son--"

Lance groaned, muzzled Chris with his hand. Chris tilted his head to look at him, and Lance said "Tonight because I was tired of waiting and being lonely, although I didn't realize it until you humped my leg, freak," because he knew that Chris was just leading up to asking again, and that was a good answer even if it wasn't quite the whole truth, even if he didn't know quite what the whole truth was.

Chris smiled, and Lance thought that maybe he understood, and he kissed Lance's palm, licked it, which normally would have grossed Lance out but he was feeling a little. Well. So he just removed his hand and muzzled Chris with a kiss instead, and that made the licking OK.

Great, in fact.

Better than listening to Chris go on and start something that would only lead to Chris getting out of bed and making out a truly ridiculous family tree which he'd show to everyone until Justin just gave in and got it framed for him--to make it less portable. Then Chris would want to hang it over the mantel and Lance would end up pissed like the woman on 'Trading Spaces' because no one fucked with his fireplace, and Chris would win the resulting fight by tackling him and kissing him until Lance agreed to blow him and then they'd crawl into bed and wrap around each other--

Although. Maybe that wouldn't be so bad, all together.

But right now Chris was hitching his legs above Lance's waist and whining high in his throat and Lance forgot about his fireplace with the tight pressure of Chris' body against his own. He ground down, feeling like he'd never be untangled from Chris again, like he'd never want to be.

And he figured that maybe, so far as tangling went, he had a new favorite.

~end~