Silver shimmer at the edge of his vision is the only clue he has that this isn't real.

That, and Justin writhing under him. Naked and panting, all the words Chris knows he'll never say in real life. There's a moment of dissonance when the other-Justin's hand reaches up, strong fingers stroking the length of Chris' back, pulling him closer. It's almost deja vu when their heads tilt together, and his eyes slide down, long lashes and perfect mouth, whispering "Oh baby, oh Chris."

Something old breaks in Chris again and he bites down on it, closes his own eyes fiercely and all that's left is touch and sound, and that's enough. A moment of sweaty peace and Justin's arms around him, holding him close, hot breath on Chris' cheek and then - "End program"

He climbs out of the tub, gasping, pulling the goggle mask off his face. The pink goop they use in the immersion-tubs clings to him. A hot shower'll wash it off, but still, standing there on the little cloth mats embroidered "A Happy Place (TM)", shaking from an orgasm, smeared in chemical slime - Chris feels dirty.

A polite knock on the door. One-three-one-two. One of the guys. Chris sighs and belts his dressing gown tight, waves his hand over the scan lock. "Come in."

Joey pokes his head round the door, one of the twins in a sling on the front, dipping dangerously upside down and burbling happily. "Yo, we're all downstairs. You're not even dressed, Chris!"

"Yeah, well. Maybe I'll sit this out. Baby sit."

He leans over and makes coochie noises at the baby who ignores him for the shiny doorknob instead.

"Or watch tv."

Joey closes the door and unbuckles the baby expertly, pulling a soft rabbit out of one pocket, a milk bottle from the other. "It's Justin's stag night, Chris. You can't sit it out. Who's the beautiful baby? You are!"

"Well. I'm feeling sick."

"Uh huh. He's getting married tomorrow, Chris. Nothing we do is gonna change that. Ding dong, the witch is not dead."

"You would think," Chris grumbles, "that a normal person would die in a firework explosion. But no. Britney just turns bald and breastless."

"The wigs are really good, and anyway, the new silicone jobs are nice. Whatshername, Kelly's thinking of getting one."

"She's stacked! How much bigger can she get?"

"No, no," Joey shakes his head. "For Brianna. She's almost thirteen, still flat as a pancake."

"Jesus. Remind me to discuss your custody issues with you later."

"That's not the point. He loves her, they're getting married, it's done." Joey's face softens. "They really do, Chris. I know she's not who you wanted for him, but he's grown up now. He's not a kid anymore."

Not sixteen. Not in Germany, scared and homesick, hero-worshipping Chris and willing to do anything. Anything at all.

"Yeah," Chris says. "All grown-up. I'll be down later. I'm an old man, Joey, gimme time to find my walker, 'kay?"

The door clicks shut and Chris leans against it for a moment. Spreads his fingers on the solid, unchanging wood, and thinks very carefully about the clothes he should put on. Lists them out in his head. Boxers. Socks. A kilt. A shirt. A sweater. The bracelet Danni gave him. The watch Lance gave him. Glitter and lipstick,

He sighs. While it's nice for JC to be vindicated these days, getting dressed is a bitch now. "Bitch and a half," he whistles as he draws spirals over his cheekbones in rich mahogany.

And, he thinks as he slides another roll of viral shots into his back pocket, there will be women. And men. Lance's parties are legendary, and there will be plenty of meaningless exotic sex. They're all grown up now. Their last album was mostly about tantric sex and went platinum the first day. They can have sex now. Lots and lots of public sex. And they do.

Well, most of them do. Well, JC and Joey do. Chris is too old, Justin has Britney and Lance. Lance has A Happy Place.

A stupid name, but since he bought out AOL and Sony, not many people point that out now. Chris does, and he still mocks the cheesy Digital Getdown jingle, but Lance refuses to change it.

"Brought me luck," he says and who else but Lance would've seen that JC as a VR sex slave would be so popular?

Well. Wade. And Nick Carter. And, as the tabloids revealed, most of the White House.

Always a plus with a new product, having the presidential endorsement.

He heads downstairs. Long corridors of subtle lighting, expensive paintings. Locked doors, discreet palm scanners next to them. They should film a video here, he thinks. Something Jane Austeny, with them trying to find the right girl, picking the wrong door and ending up. Someplace. In a stranger's bed.

He tugs his earlobe, smacking his head in annoyance as the noise floods in, then slips it down, dials up their private channel. Joey's on silent mode. With five ex-girlfriends and all their brood here, he isn't going to be out of the west wing much. Justin's babbling to JC about Britney again.

Chris tunes out the words and JC's little noises of agreement. Just him. Justin with a drunken lilt in his voice, giggling every now and then. "Hey, Chris!" he says, probably noticing at last that Chris's light has blinked on inside his wrist. "Where are you, man? Me and JC are over near the fountain."

He can see them, from the top of the stairs. Sprawled on the marble rim, long legs in sheer tights, the weird sparkly tops that are in fashion this month. JC looks like a radiation victim, his hair mutated into a thousand tiny sparklers by all the glitter-mouuse holding it up.

Crowd of onlookers, no-one close enough to overhear them. Place is screened for bugs, though god knows, someone's snuck in a DIY kit or two. Cameras and all, the only real privacy left these days is alone. In a locked, scanned room, preferably hiding in a tub of pink goo. He ruthlessly shoves that thought away from him. Thirty minutes ago, he was not having sex with Justin. No.

He waves and murmurs, "Nah. Think I'll check in with Lance first."

A vague mission keeps him going past the dancers, the sound booth, the fairly-legal chemical bar. He lingers for a moment outside one room. Platinum curls and vintage clothes. Old 501s and a wifebeater, battered cowboy boots.

Then the man stands up, wiping his mouth, and brown eyes, big dark eyes full of curiosity. Not Justin. Not even close. "Sorry," he says, backing away.

Lance isn't in the kitchen but Danni is, and it's almost funny, cosmic coincidences and all. They finish off a bottle of decent red between them, and she shows him pictures of her children. He's seen them, but he hasn't seen the way her fingers trace their faces slowly. He gets up to go at the end, and she catches his hand. Rubs the inside of his palm, the way she used to do.

"Hey," she says softly. "I'm sorry. It's not easy letting go."

And he knows she's talking about more than Justin, about the way FuManSkeeto skittered and splintered, the way Danni used to call him in the middle of night, crying. He sort of wants to wrench his hand away, brush off her misguided concern. He's fine. He's happy. The thing with Justin. The thing that was over so long ago, that he told her *once*, just one goddamn time because they were both drunk and things were bad anyway -- that's not why they broke up. Or why anything. It just was.

He swallows and turns his hand, slips it round in hers gently, squeezes and lets go. "Yeah," he says. "He's all grown up."

No moon outside, sky's full of stars dancing. Satellites and the distant sweeps of searchlights. Giant stage lights scan the forest, shadows dancing after them. It's pretty in a way. Feels like endless dusk, like the world can't make up its fucking mind whether or not to move on. Chris shoves his hand deep in his pocket, feels his fist close around a couple of vials. Silver and green, take you up, take you down. Handed out like party favours, and maybe.

No. He pushes his hands through his hair, shakes a little, lets out a deep breath. He doesn't do that either anymore.

"Chris?"

Soft whirr and a floater hovers on the grass next to him, the engine heat welcome in the cold night. Lance steps off, and stands a little away from him. Hands in his pocket, head tilted. Studying him. Waiting.

"I haven't done any," he says tersely.

"I know," Lance says calmly. "I out a bio-alert on you when you arrived. You're clean."

"Fucker," he says, but without anger. Lance holds out his hand and Chris takes it. They walk. It's always been like this. Even Joey, straight as a stick, has slept tangled up naked with the others. Nearly twenty years together and the edges wear thin. They slide into each other, linked almost all the time.

"He'd still sleep with you, if he knew," Lance says.

Chris shrugs. He spent last week with JC, pliable and sweet, and every night when JC was asleep, he climbed into the tub and whispered "Justin, Sim 27."

"I like Britney," he says. It's true. She's funny and she's brave. She loves Justin and they buy kitchen equipment together and cook terrible meals that they throw out and order in, pizza and sushi for everyone, the two of them shining and bright, happy people.

It's just. In the tubs, floating, dreamless, Chris says things he's forgotten. He cries and he chases Justin across old airports, hotels. Empty stadiums. Places that have been torn down a long time ago. Tourbuses and all that time, those endless early years. Before they grew old.

Lance nods and leans in a little. They walk down a quiet path, the lights dimmed by high walls of dense green. Lance's breath is quiet and steady. At the door back into the house, they stop and Lance kisses Chris on the cheek softly. "Come to the Hunt," he says. "I'll watch with you." Then he presses something into Chris' hand and ducks inside.

A shallow silver disc embedded on his palm, a slight tug when he raises his hand in Lance's direction. Lights sparkle and reform, tracking him. Chris goes the other way, looking for a drink.

Midnight strikes. Gongs bang, fireworks crack like thunder and lightning and the Hunt begins. Pagan marriage rituals to tie-in with Britney's newest album, Green Witch. Great publicity, and suddenly, Chris realizes, as the gates are dragged open by women in leafed-dresses, and Justin appears, one lone light on him - more.

Blue paint along his skin, tracings of bronze over his face. At his temples, deer horns curve out, glinting dull gold in the soft light. Justin struts, like a horse before a race, flanks shivering in the cold. There are drum beats, and a crowd gathering behind. Britney, in white robes and a mask as alien as his, spirals and tiny horns that trail down her naked back, her naked skull. They hold her aloft, a crowd of hundreds, and Justin walks alone, ahead of them. Justin does not look back.

Chris jumps slightly when a warm hand slides round his waist. Lance murmurs "Now," and there is a crack of something like thunder, a haze over the field below. Thousands of floaters it seems, hovering and now sliding on pre-drawn tracks. The crowd below is roaring, running. Justin runs ahead, long swift strides. His shadow races in front of him.

"They'll catch him in the end, the Horned One. They always do. Someone has to catch him and hold him, and then he dies." Justin stumbles on the field and picks himself up. The crowd is gaining. Britney is at the front, her dress shedding like petals, white cloth fluttering on the wind.

"He dies," Lance says, his fingernails tracing the side of Chris' ribs. "Because he's young and beautiful, and someday that ends. He can grow old and quiet, or he can run and die like this."

The crowd is almost on him. Britney reaches and catches him, one hand on a backflung ankle, and they fall, hurtling together, the crowd surging over them, shielding them from view. The noise is unbearable, shrieking and roaring, and none of the cams can get close enough to see through the surging crowd, to see what lies beneath.

"I don't want him like this," Chris says. His face is cold where the wind whips at tear tracks.

"I know," says Lance. "But he's still here. Just different."

The crowd parts for a moment, and he sees him. He would recognize Justin anywhere, the curve of that shoulder, the line of that leg. Alive and tangled up in Britney, riding away. He can hear them on the private network, he's always been able to hear them he realizes. JC and Joey and Lance have been listening in too, and he can hear their breathing across the ether, all the way to the double-echo of Lance, standing next to him and on the network. Justin crying and saying "Brit, oh Brit," and it is too late. The Hunt is over.

He pushes blindly past Lance, twists his earlobe till the voices mute, until it's just him, running back to the house. He's not as fast as he used to be. Three flights of stairs to his room, his chest burning when he slams the door open and he hates that, hates that he can't sprint anywhere, can't stay up all fucking night without poppers and he's old, he's old.

Lance is waiting for him. The windows are open, breeze blowing the sitting room curtains around the floater, red velvet on sleek silver. Lance, pale and dark, calm and fierce, grabbing Chris' shoulders and pushing him down, down to the hardwood floor. His knees hurt, and he tries to say something, but Lance's mouth is on him, tongue in his, shutting out the words, shutting out everything.

"Listen," Lance says. "I'm tired of waiting. Watching you watch him. It's finished. Finished." He kisses him again, hard and desperate, the way Chris has always liked being kissed. Hands tugging at the back of his shirt, expert.

Sex with Lance is messy and rough and the floor scrapes their backs as they fight, rolling across it, legs hooked round thighs, hands pinning arms. Bites and scratches and Chris has never done this with Lance, it never came up in all that time, it was never. He had never expected to see Lance arch below him, bruises blooming on his pale skin and to have that voice growl, "Now. Now."

"How did you know?" he asks afterwards. He can't get off the floor, and Lance has to heave him up. Boneless and exhausted, the two of them squeezed into an armchair, Chris on Lance's lap, lazily licking the underside of his jaw.

"I wrote Sim 27," Lance says. His throat hums and his jaw clenches. Chris pauses. The silver disc in his palm itches. His back's going to kill him in the morning. He looks away from Lance and sees the sky through the open window. Grey and streaks of red. Morning. He rests his head in the hollow of Lance's shoulder, the way he used to do on tourbuses, watching bad tv late at night in hotel rooms. Backstage, waiting for their cues.

"Wake me up for lunch," he says and slips his other hand around Lance's neck. Closes his eyes.