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Yay, July. :)
Yes. So this is The Longest Fic Ever for me, weighing in at a whopping 45k. Don't laugh, I feel like I ran a marathon while eating jalapeno peppers, trying to get this thing done and acceptable. I'm usually bored and moved on at 20k. *G* But I have finally achieved a finished and an edited state! Hurrah! And I know that if I do not share it immediately, I will continue to pick at it and never post it and eventually The End Of Time will be upon us, and I will still be saying, "One more paragraph!" So. Yes. I shall share and hope it is enjoyed.
Also, since Waxjism is down and therefore Emmy's site is down and therefore I can't put this on the web, I'm going to break it down into a couple entries, keep it from being too long in any one. Plus, it feels better in parts anyway. To me at least, and I wrote it, so I'm the only one that matters! Muah!
With thanks to Trishafish for providing light edits and everyone else who listened to me whine endlessly. It's done, I'll stop being boring about it and shut up now, I promise. :)
Acclimate
giddygeeky@aol.com
It's Joey and JC who are going to miss Lance the most, you think. You and Justin are going to *miss* him, sure, but it's not like a Lance-is-gone-oh-no-what-do-I-do? kind of missing. And besides that, Justin's going to be so busy that he won't really have time to miss anything but sleep and privacy. You'll be free though, and you've got plans to spend more time with the other two guys because you don't want them to like, fall into the darkest depths of despair.
Plan Good Cheer is going into effect before Lance even leaves because you don't want Joey and JC to realize what you're doing. They shouldn't know they're going to get a little hand-holding, a little extra fun time. They probably haven't realized that you know their worlds are going to be a little more boring without Lance around. They're not the kind of guys who want other people to know when they're unhappy--
Everyone leaves that to you.
So a week before Lance's trip to Russia, you go over Joey's house with beer and Keebler cookies, expecting to find him huddled over the album of photographs from when they were filming "On The Line" and sniffling, or something equally cheesy and pathetic. But when you get there, Lance is already there, sitting with Joey and Brianna at the kitchen table. She's tucked into her high chair, eating something orange and pasty that you think is probably supposed to be butterscotch pudding, unless Jell-O has come out with a new Radiation flavor.
You think about Bill Cosby feeding that to a crowd of small children and nearly giggle. Your mind is just *warped*, you know this, but you still amuse yourself.
Joey and Lance are talking quietly, just little companionable murmurs and mumbles. The radio is on, playing country music because Lance got Joey addicted a long time ago, even if Joey won't admit as much. The truth is that you listen to it too every now and again because he addicted you too. But still, you swagger over and switch it to rock even though you know ever word of the song that was just playing, then you hop up onto the counter.
"What's up, babies?" you ask. Joey smiles at you and Lance tilts his head, just looking. You pull your legs up to sit tailor-style and prop your elbows on your thighs, then your chin on your folded hands. You want to kick Lance out so that Joey can begin acclimating to his absence, but Lance is probably the one person you've never been able to kick out of any place. He's just as stubborn as you are on his bad days, and twice as stubborn on the good.
Brianna's the one who answers you, a stream of little kid talk you can't yet understand, although Joey and Kelly and Lance always know what she means and swear she's using whole words now, and the chatter that goes on for a good minute. She uses her pudding for emphasis--little hands reach into the bowl and her Uncle Lance gets a gooey palmful on his cheek; her Daddy gets some slimed across his forearms and his chin when he tries to still her flying hands long enough to wipe her clean.
"Just like her mother," you say, and laugh, safely out of firing range--you *know* better than to go near that girl while she has food within throwing distance. You had learned the hard way. And it really was inherited--the first time you'd met her, Kelly had flung mashed potatoes at you. Accidentally, she claimed. Again--you *know* better.
"Don't let Kelly hear you say things like that," Lance warns you in the low drawl he uses when he's joking.
"Yeah," you say. "Cause God knows *she* won't hesitate to throw pudding at me."
"Lately it's been dirty diapers," Joey says grimly, the voice of experience. You shudder and Lance laughs. He thinks it's hysterical when Joey and Kelly fight, even over baby stuff, as long as neither of them is really hurting. He sees pain in Joey's eyes though and he turns into Mediator Boy, able to solve disputes at fifty paces. You tend to take Kelly's side, mostly so you and Lance can bicker but also because you grew up with a single mom.
"She does that?" you ask, and Lance shakes his head, his lips twitching. Then he touches his slimed cheek with a grimace, gets up and heads for the sink.
"Dude, weekly." Joey's sigh is pure martyr. "I swear to you, I get a whiff of dirty diaper and my first reaction is to duck and cover. Thank God the days of potty-training are nearly upon us."
You laugh and Lance leans against the counter by the sink, by you. The water is running, warming and he's watching it so you lean towards him, lick his cheek, leaving a broad stripe of skin in the middle of a butterscotch patch.
He wrinkles his nose at you and scrubs his cheek with the back of his hand, smearing the pudding like a little kid might. You reach over and wet a cloth for him; he stands patiently, grinning at you from the corner of his eye while you wipe the rest of the pudding from his cheek. Then he wrings it out and brings it over to Joey, who's covered now in butterscotch. Brianna is telling him something that must be very serious from the expression on her little face, and patting his stubbly cheeks with her hands. He's blowing raspberries at her.
You watch the two of them and breathe normally with just a little effort. Sometimes, you really really want kids, and Brianna makes your heart ache. Lance looks over his shoulder at you, you don't know why cause it's not like you moved or made a noise or anything, but he's got understanding in his eyes and once Joey's taken the cloth, he comes to stand by you again.
His elbow rests by your thigh on the countertop, his chest brushing your knee, his legs crossed at the ankle. Super casual. He says, "I get a whiff of Chris and my first instinct is to duck and cover. Does that mean Chris smells like dirty diapers?" and his eyes crinkle with a smile when you smack him across the back of the head with a roll of paper towels.
Joey, wrapped up in kissing Brianna's little fingers, doesn't seem to have noticed the exchange. He's not seeing much of anything but his daughter. You wonder about that, wonder about how you managed to forget how much attention he was determined to give her, wonder how you could possibly have thought that he'd spend the whole break moaning about Lance's absence.
For the first time you think maybe Plan Good Cheer is unnecessary, that he'll miss Lance but be mostly OK, and you chomp down on your nails a little. Plan Good Cheer was like, your purpose for this break. You haven't really made any other Plans, besides to work on the Fu stuff and do charity stuff and clean out your closets and maybe do some voice-over work. Cheering up your friends was going to take up at least fifty-eight percent of your time.
There's still JC though, you think, and stop chewing on your nails. Surely JC will be all in a dither about it--
And God bless his spazzy little heart for that.
~~~~~
You'd spent a good couple hours with Joey, Bri and Lance, waking up the next morning without a hangover and with the taste of butterscotch pudding in your mouth. And chips. And cookies. And maybe, a little, Lance's skin--but that was like the first taste of the evening so you're sure you imagining it.
You shuffle down your hallway in plaid pajama pants, bare feet, and a sweatshirt. There are things to be done and places to go even if you just want to head back over to Joey's and have breakfast. Undoubtedly, Brianna will throw her eggs and Joey will make sausage and some friend or family member will be sitting in his living room, watching TV and mixing a bowl full of something.
Your kitchen is empty when you reach it. So is your living room, and your dining room, and your basement. No one's napping in any of your bedrooms or showering in a bathroom. The games are all off in your rec room, and the pool balls are neatly caught in a wedge up in the poolroom. Your attic is full of dust and creepiness and furniture covered in sheets; things you don't remember buying or using ever but this house was built for you. It's not like there's other people's crap cluttering up your corners--
Although there are probably bats. It's just that weird up there.
You get juice out of the fridge and drink it straight from the carton. That counts as breakfast, right? And then you wander back down the hallway, stripping as you go, and get in the shower for exactly long enough to wash your hair, scrub down, and jerk off. That takes care of the cleanliness portion of your morning's entertainment. Getting dressed consists of putting on your baggiest jeans, a shirt that shrank in the dryer and now has three-quarter sleeves and is just barely loose enough for comfort, and sandals. With socks. Then you get in the car and start driving. Where you're going, you're not sure yet, because you have four hours before the first interview--
But you're pretty sure that you must have things to do and places to go.
~~~~~
JC's house is completely dark when you pull up a long time later, parking your car in his driveway and sitting behind the wheel, just looking in his windows like a stalker. You know he's in there somewhere, probably in one of the rooms at the back of the house, without lights on. He's like, the hiding-est person alive sometimes. He disappeared for four days once a year or so ago. You'd all have thought he was abducted or something but for the fact that he left a paper trail as clear as daylight to those who knew where to look--
And the 'hiding' part of that came from the fact that there were only four people who did know.
On the fifth day, he'd come back totally relaxed, just gleamy with contentment. Joey'd asked if he'd gotten laid and JC had just hummed while you cheered and Justin made "eww, gross, JC naked!" noises. But Lance'd told you later that JC'd told him he hadn't gotten laid at all. He'd just spaced out on the back porch of a little cabin in Maine and slept in the sun and swatted mosquitoes and 'regrouped'.
Regrouped, you'd thought, even as you'd teased Lance about gossiping like an old woman, even as you'd begged for more detail. You didn't like that word. You preferred unwind, and thought that even if maybe JC did dumb stuff like disappear when he wanted to unwind, at least he knew what he needed to do, and that was more than you could say for other people--
Including yourself.
You take off your seatbelt but don't open the door because there's another car pulling in behind you, a big one with high headlights. An SUV.
Lance.
You consider banging your head on the steering wheel but JC lives in a very, very quiet neighborhood. It's not quiet like the neighborhood you live in, where everyone's gone all the time, it's quiet because his neighbors are like, totally respectful and responsible and a lot of them have young kids. If you bang on the horn, someone's going to come running to make sure you didn't have a heart attack or something. Then when they see that you're OK they're going to lecture you about the sleeping habits of small children, and you just don't want to deal with it.
Lance's lights flash high beams for a second, and then his car is off. You watch in the mirror as his door opens and he climbs out, reaches back in to grab something, then heads for your car. You lose track of him but know what to expect--when he raps on the window with his knuckles, you hit the button and let it roll down.
"Was I speeding, Officer?" Your voice is light, a lot calmer and more amused than you feel.
He laughs a little, says, "Fancy meeting you here. Were you going in, or planning to just sit out here all night like a jilted girlfriend?"
"I have five rolls of toilet paper in the back seat," you lie. "And eggs in the trunk. Jilt *that*, fucker."
He's still laughing, even as he's reaching in through the open window and unlocking your door. It opens and he pulls you out. You stumble a little when your feet hit the ground because you weren't expecting it. Normally, if Lance is trying to push you around, he's not literally *pushing*. It's more like, talking and talking and talking some more until you either give in or jump on him.
"I have wine," he says as he tugs you along behind him. "And JC told me earlier that he has those cookies, with the marshmallow."
"Pinwheels?"
"Yeah."
You rush to catch up now, because, dude. Cookies. And alcohol.
"It's a trend," Lance says as you climb the stairs to JC's front door and he opens it, follows you in. You stand in the dark entryway, Lance's hand wrapped firmly around your wrist and his paper bag crinkling. You can hear JC singing from somewhere in the house, a Greek lullaby that Joey taught you all after he filmed the movie. It's pretty, and you and Lance just listen for a while. Then he tugs again and you're trailing through the warm, dark halls of JC's house, tracking his voice.
You find him in what he calls his meditation space, sitting on the floor with candles going and the cheap little keyboard he mostly uses when he's in his bunk on the bus in his lap, and his voice filling the room. He looks up when you come in and doesn't seem surprised to see you; although he was clearly expecting Lance, you hadn't really talked to him at all yourself, so how would he know? Just because he's JC, maybe. He has mysterious ways, you think, and can't help grinning at him. He grins back, happy to see you, happy just to be sitting on the floor waiting for company and--
"Lance told me you'd be coming along," he murmurs to you after Lance curses softly and then heads to the kitchen for a corkscrew. He's back before you can think of a response, and JC is smiling, studying his keyboard as Lance brushes past you, fabric against fabric against skin.
"You guys remember your parts in this one?" JC asks, playing the first few notes of the lullaby again. You nod and Lance hums a pitch, and then he settles cross-legged in front of JC and opens the bottle and pours wine while JC makes appreciative noises.
He didn't have the corkscrew but there were three glasses in the bag, you note as you sit down beside him, your hand wrapped around your wrist where it tingles from his grip. Lance told JC you'd be coming.
He knows something's up, you think--
And then you eat the cookie JC gives you, fresh from the box, and you know by the light in his face, even in the shadowy room, that he's not going to need you more at all while Lance is gone. He's a lot more self-sufficient than people'd think, maybe even more than *you'd* thought, unfortunately.
But at least he stocks up on the good cookies.
~~~~~
When you wake up in the middle of the night, you're on your stomach, your head turned to the side. Your wrist is right there and you frown because yeah, you think it's bruised. Lance hadn't seemed to have such a tight grip on you except that your skin had burned after he let go, but still. JC certainly hadn't done it; he'd played his keyboard and you'd sung with him, and it had been weird but good with just your three voices covering the spectrum, and he hadn't touched you.
He’d sung *for* you a little though, some of the songs he writes by the truckload but doesn’t record because he’s scared that they’re not good enough and he loves them too much to be told that kind of thing.
You’d wanted to beat him upside the head with one of the lit candles because *God* he never shows anyone the things that are *amazing*, the things with real emotion behind them and not just--whatever it is that makes JC’s songs. Odd. Interesting, good, *odd*.
But you hadn't hit him, you'd just listened until he'd run out of finished songs and started to write new ones, right there with you and Lance listening, saying "here," and "no, C, this chord," and "oh, perfect," until the cookies had been eaten, and the wine was gone. You'd had a fair bit of scotch besides and were half-asleep by the time JC put the keyboard down.
Still.
You think you remember JC and Lance carting you up the stairs to one of the spare bedrooms, talking quietly about things you didn't understand, laughing. But you might be wrong. You must be wrong. Because if you're not, then you said, "Lance, go home. JC's going to miss you too much when you're gone for you to be hanging around right now." And you didn't say that not just because it would have exposed Plan Good Cheer, but also because you vaguely remember that it might have been "I'm going to miss you too much," instead of "JC's going to miss you too much," and that's just all kinds of wrong--
So it didn't happen.
You stare at your skin until you're convinced that it's going to be dark purple in the morning, florid with color and maybe even a little swollen. You stare until you're convinced that Lance is the most abusive, scummy friend ever. You stare until you're convinced that you were too drunk and exhausted to say anything.
Then you turn on the lights and see that your skin isn't bruised at all.
~~~~~
End Pt 1
Also, since Waxjism is down and therefore Emmy's site is down and therefore I can't put this on the web, I'm going to break it down into a couple entries, keep it from being too long in any one. Plus, it feels better in parts anyway. To me at least, and I wrote it, so I'm the only one that matters! Muah!
With thanks to Trishafish for providing light edits and everyone else who listened to me whine endlessly. It's done, I'll stop being boring about it and shut up now, I promise. :)
Acclimate
giddygeeky@aol.com
It's Joey and JC who are going to miss Lance the most, you think. You and Justin are going to *miss* him, sure, but it's not like a Lance-is-gone-oh-no-what-do-I-do? kind of missing. And besides that, Justin's going to be so busy that he won't really have time to miss anything but sleep and privacy. You'll be free though, and you've got plans to spend more time with the other two guys because you don't want them to like, fall into the darkest depths of despair.
Plan Good Cheer is going into effect before Lance even leaves because you don't want Joey and JC to realize what you're doing. They shouldn't know they're going to get a little hand-holding, a little extra fun time. They probably haven't realized that you know their worlds are going to be a little more boring without Lance around. They're not the kind of guys who want other people to know when they're unhappy--
Everyone leaves that to you.
So a week before Lance's trip to Russia, you go over Joey's house with beer and Keebler cookies, expecting to find him huddled over the album of photographs from when they were filming "On The Line" and sniffling, or something equally cheesy and pathetic. But when you get there, Lance is already there, sitting with Joey and Brianna at the kitchen table. She's tucked into her high chair, eating something orange and pasty that you think is probably supposed to be butterscotch pudding, unless Jell-O has come out with a new Radiation flavor.
You think about Bill Cosby feeding that to a crowd of small children and nearly giggle. Your mind is just *warped*, you know this, but you still amuse yourself.
Joey and Lance are talking quietly, just little companionable murmurs and mumbles. The radio is on, playing country music because Lance got Joey addicted a long time ago, even if Joey won't admit as much. The truth is that you listen to it too every now and again because he addicted you too. But still, you swagger over and switch it to rock even though you know ever word of the song that was just playing, then you hop up onto the counter.
"What's up, babies?" you ask. Joey smiles at you and Lance tilts his head, just looking. You pull your legs up to sit tailor-style and prop your elbows on your thighs, then your chin on your folded hands. You want to kick Lance out so that Joey can begin acclimating to his absence, but Lance is probably the one person you've never been able to kick out of any place. He's just as stubborn as you are on his bad days, and twice as stubborn on the good.
Brianna's the one who answers you, a stream of little kid talk you can't yet understand, although Joey and Kelly and Lance always know what she means and swear she's using whole words now, and the chatter that goes on for a good minute. She uses her pudding for emphasis--little hands reach into the bowl and her Uncle Lance gets a gooey palmful on his cheek; her Daddy gets some slimed across his forearms and his chin when he tries to still her flying hands long enough to wipe her clean.
"Just like her mother," you say, and laugh, safely out of firing range--you *know* better than to go near that girl while she has food within throwing distance. You had learned the hard way. And it really was inherited--the first time you'd met her, Kelly had flung mashed potatoes at you. Accidentally, she claimed. Again--you *know* better.
"Don't let Kelly hear you say things like that," Lance warns you in the low drawl he uses when he's joking.
"Yeah," you say. "Cause God knows *she* won't hesitate to throw pudding at me."
"Lately it's been dirty diapers," Joey says grimly, the voice of experience. You shudder and Lance laughs. He thinks it's hysterical when Joey and Kelly fight, even over baby stuff, as long as neither of them is really hurting. He sees pain in Joey's eyes though and he turns into Mediator Boy, able to solve disputes at fifty paces. You tend to take Kelly's side, mostly so you and Lance can bicker but also because you grew up with a single mom.
"She does that?" you ask, and Lance shakes his head, his lips twitching. Then he touches his slimed cheek with a grimace, gets up and heads for the sink.
"Dude, weekly." Joey's sigh is pure martyr. "I swear to you, I get a whiff of dirty diaper and my first reaction is to duck and cover. Thank God the days of potty-training are nearly upon us."
You laugh and Lance leans against the counter by the sink, by you. The water is running, warming and he's watching it so you lean towards him, lick his cheek, leaving a broad stripe of skin in the middle of a butterscotch patch.
He wrinkles his nose at you and scrubs his cheek with the back of his hand, smearing the pudding like a little kid might. You reach over and wet a cloth for him; he stands patiently, grinning at you from the corner of his eye while you wipe the rest of the pudding from his cheek. Then he wrings it out and brings it over to Joey, who's covered now in butterscotch. Brianna is telling him something that must be very serious from the expression on her little face, and patting his stubbly cheeks with her hands. He's blowing raspberries at her.
You watch the two of them and breathe normally with just a little effort. Sometimes, you really really want kids, and Brianna makes your heart ache. Lance looks over his shoulder at you, you don't know why cause it's not like you moved or made a noise or anything, but he's got understanding in his eyes and once Joey's taken the cloth, he comes to stand by you again.
His elbow rests by your thigh on the countertop, his chest brushing your knee, his legs crossed at the ankle. Super casual. He says, "I get a whiff of Chris and my first instinct is to duck and cover. Does that mean Chris smells like dirty diapers?" and his eyes crinkle with a smile when you smack him across the back of the head with a roll of paper towels.
Joey, wrapped up in kissing Brianna's little fingers, doesn't seem to have noticed the exchange. He's not seeing much of anything but his daughter. You wonder about that, wonder about how you managed to forget how much attention he was determined to give her, wonder how you could possibly have thought that he'd spend the whole break moaning about Lance's absence.
For the first time you think maybe Plan Good Cheer is unnecessary, that he'll miss Lance but be mostly OK, and you chomp down on your nails a little. Plan Good Cheer was like, your purpose for this break. You haven't really made any other Plans, besides to work on the Fu stuff and do charity stuff and clean out your closets and maybe do some voice-over work. Cheering up your friends was going to take up at least fifty-eight percent of your time.
There's still JC though, you think, and stop chewing on your nails. Surely JC will be all in a dither about it--
And God bless his spazzy little heart for that.
~~~~~
You'd spent a good couple hours with Joey, Bri and Lance, waking up the next morning without a hangover and with the taste of butterscotch pudding in your mouth. And chips. And cookies. And maybe, a little, Lance's skin--but that was like the first taste of the evening so you're sure you imagining it.
You shuffle down your hallway in plaid pajama pants, bare feet, and a sweatshirt. There are things to be done and places to go even if you just want to head back over to Joey's and have breakfast. Undoubtedly, Brianna will throw her eggs and Joey will make sausage and some friend or family member will be sitting in his living room, watching TV and mixing a bowl full of something.
Your kitchen is empty when you reach it. So is your living room, and your dining room, and your basement. No one's napping in any of your bedrooms or showering in a bathroom. The games are all off in your rec room, and the pool balls are neatly caught in a wedge up in the poolroom. Your attic is full of dust and creepiness and furniture covered in sheets; things you don't remember buying or using ever but this house was built for you. It's not like there's other people's crap cluttering up your corners--
Although there are probably bats. It's just that weird up there.
You get juice out of the fridge and drink it straight from the carton. That counts as breakfast, right? And then you wander back down the hallway, stripping as you go, and get in the shower for exactly long enough to wash your hair, scrub down, and jerk off. That takes care of the cleanliness portion of your morning's entertainment. Getting dressed consists of putting on your baggiest jeans, a shirt that shrank in the dryer and now has three-quarter sleeves and is just barely loose enough for comfort, and sandals. With socks. Then you get in the car and start driving. Where you're going, you're not sure yet, because you have four hours before the first interview--
But you're pretty sure that you must have things to do and places to go.
~~~~~
JC's house is completely dark when you pull up a long time later, parking your car in his driveway and sitting behind the wheel, just looking in his windows like a stalker. You know he's in there somewhere, probably in one of the rooms at the back of the house, without lights on. He's like, the hiding-est person alive sometimes. He disappeared for four days once a year or so ago. You'd all have thought he was abducted or something but for the fact that he left a paper trail as clear as daylight to those who knew where to look--
And the 'hiding' part of that came from the fact that there were only four people who did know.
On the fifth day, he'd come back totally relaxed, just gleamy with contentment. Joey'd asked if he'd gotten laid and JC had just hummed while you cheered and Justin made "eww, gross, JC naked!" noises. But Lance'd told you later that JC'd told him he hadn't gotten laid at all. He'd just spaced out on the back porch of a little cabin in Maine and slept in the sun and swatted mosquitoes and 'regrouped'.
Regrouped, you'd thought, even as you'd teased Lance about gossiping like an old woman, even as you'd begged for more detail. You didn't like that word. You preferred unwind, and thought that even if maybe JC did dumb stuff like disappear when he wanted to unwind, at least he knew what he needed to do, and that was more than you could say for other people--
Including yourself.
You take off your seatbelt but don't open the door because there's another car pulling in behind you, a big one with high headlights. An SUV.
Lance.
You consider banging your head on the steering wheel but JC lives in a very, very quiet neighborhood. It's not quiet like the neighborhood you live in, where everyone's gone all the time, it's quiet because his neighbors are like, totally respectful and responsible and a lot of them have young kids. If you bang on the horn, someone's going to come running to make sure you didn't have a heart attack or something. Then when they see that you're OK they're going to lecture you about the sleeping habits of small children, and you just don't want to deal with it.
Lance's lights flash high beams for a second, and then his car is off. You watch in the mirror as his door opens and he climbs out, reaches back in to grab something, then heads for your car. You lose track of him but know what to expect--when he raps on the window with his knuckles, you hit the button and let it roll down.
"Was I speeding, Officer?" Your voice is light, a lot calmer and more amused than you feel.
He laughs a little, says, "Fancy meeting you here. Were you going in, or planning to just sit out here all night like a jilted girlfriend?"
"I have five rolls of toilet paper in the back seat," you lie. "And eggs in the trunk. Jilt *that*, fucker."
He's still laughing, even as he's reaching in through the open window and unlocking your door. It opens and he pulls you out. You stumble a little when your feet hit the ground because you weren't expecting it. Normally, if Lance is trying to push you around, he's not literally *pushing*. It's more like, talking and talking and talking some more until you either give in or jump on him.
"I have wine," he says as he tugs you along behind him. "And JC told me earlier that he has those cookies, with the marshmallow."
"Pinwheels?"
"Yeah."
You rush to catch up now, because, dude. Cookies. And alcohol.
"It's a trend," Lance says as you climb the stairs to JC's front door and he opens it, follows you in. You stand in the dark entryway, Lance's hand wrapped firmly around your wrist and his paper bag crinkling. You can hear JC singing from somewhere in the house, a Greek lullaby that Joey taught you all after he filmed the movie. It's pretty, and you and Lance just listen for a while. Then he tugs again and you're trailing through the warm, dark halls of JC's house, tracking his voice.
You find him in what he calls his meditation space, sitting on the floor with candles going and the cheap little keyboard he mostly uses when he's in his bunk on the bus in his lap, and his voice filling the room. He looks up when you come in and doesn't seem surprised to see you; although he was clearly expecting Lance, you hadn't really talked to him at all yourself, so how would he know? Just because he's JC, maybe. He has mysterious ways, you think, and can't help grinning at him. He grins back, happy to see you, happy just to be sitting on the floor waiting for company and--
"Lance told me you'd be coming along," he murmurs to you after Lance curses softly and then heads to the kitchen for a corkscrew. He's back before you can think of a response, and JC is smiling, studying his keyboard as Lance brushes past you, fabric against fabric against skin.
"You guys remember your parts in this one?" JC asks, playing the first few notes of the lullaby again. You nod and Lance hums a pitch, and then he settles cross-legged in front of JC and opens the bottle and pours wine while JC makes appreciative noises.
He didn't have the corkscrew but there were three glasses in the bag, you note as you sit down beside him, your hand wrapped around your wrist where it tingles from his grip. Lance told JC you'd be coming.
He knows something's up, you think--
And then you eat the cookie JC gives you, fresh from the box, and you know by the light in his face, even in the shadowy room, that he's not going to need you more at all while Lance is gone. He's a lot more self-sufficient than people'd think, maybe even more than *you'd* thought, unfortunately.
But at least he stocks up on the good cookies.
~~~~~
When you wake up in the middle of the night, you're on your stomach, your head turned to the side. Your wrist is right there and you frown because yeah, you think it's bruised. Lance hadn't seemed to have such a tight grip on you except that your skin had burned after he let go, but still. JC certainly hadn't done it; he'd played his keyboard and you'd sung with him, and it had been weird but good with just your three voices covering the spectrum, and he hadn't touched you.
He’d sung *for* you a little though, some of the songs he writes by the truckload but doesn’t record because he’s scared that they’re not good enough and he loves them too much to be told that kind of thing.
You’d wanted to beat him upside the head with one of the lit candles because *God* he never shows anyone the things that are *amazing*, the things with real emotion behind them and not just--whatever it is that makes JC’s songs. Odd. Interesting, good, *odd*.
But you hadn't hit him, you'd just listened until he'd run out of finished songs and started to write new ones, right there with you and Lance listening, saying "here," and "no, C, this chord," and "oh, perfect," until the cookies had been eaten, and the wine was gone. You'd had a fair bit of scotch besides and were half-asleep by the time JC put the keyboard down.
Still.
You think you remember JC and Lance carting you up the stairs to one of the spare bedrooms, talking quietly about things you didn't understand, laughing. But you might be wrong. You must be wrong. Because if you're not, then you said, "Lance, go home. JC's going to miss you too much when you're gone for you to be hanging around right now." And you didn't say that not just because it would have exposed Plan Good Cheer, but also because you vaguely remember that it might have been "I'm going to miss you too much," instead of "JC's going to miss you too much," and that's just all kinds of wrong--
So it didn't happen.
You stare at your skin until you're convinced that it's going to be dark purple in the morning, florid with color and maybe even a little swollen. You stare until you're convinced that Lance is the most abusive, scummy friend ever. You stare until you're convinced that you were too drunk and exhausted to say anything.
Then you turn on the lights and see that your skin isn't bruised at all.
~~~~~
End Pt 1