Inherit
“The next person who utters the words bigger than the Beatles is gonna get their ass kicked!” Chris growled. “Haven’t you people ever heard of hubris?” He shot a glare around the table, but he was greeted mostly by blank stares. He shook his head like he was disgusted with all of them. “Okay, then how about a jinx? Haven’t you ever thought about how we’re gonna jinx everything if we’re all running around saying we’re gonna be bigger than the Beatles?”“Well, but, Chris, no one here-”
“Shut up, Joey. I know you didn’t say it. But I heard that flack from Jive, the TRL-liaison guy, say it this morning.” Chris paused to take a swig of Coke.
Justin took advantage of the lull to say, “Well-” but that’s as far as he got before Chris swallowed and plowed ahead like Justin wasn’t even there.
“It’s not like the surviving Beatles are looking for someone to take their place as the greatest band of all time, you know,” he asserted.
“Dude, chill. It’ll be okay,” Justin said soothingly. He exchanged glances with Lance over Chris’s head. “JC, tell him it’s okay.”
Justin hid a grin as JC jumped in and started telling Chris that it would be fine because no one was paying that much attention to them yet, anyway. Soon the whole world would be hanging on their every word, but not yet, so Chris could relax for now. Someday, Chris was going to catch on to the way Justin used JC to distract him whenever he really got going. Until that time, however, Justin was going to make full use of a tactic that was both effective and provided amusement for all concerned.
Chris was shaking his head and muttering darkly by the time JC wound down, but Justin could see the smile in his eyes as he hooked one arm around JC’s neck and clapped his other hand over JC’s mouth.
“Okay, group lunch is over.” Justin shoved his chair back from the table. “Me and Lance have plans.”
Lance nodded and stood up. “There’s a whole beach waiting for us out there.” He gestured towards the glass doors that opened onto the hotel beach. “We’re in Honolulu, guys. We have a free day. What the hell are we doing inside?”
They were in Hawaii to do several concerts, including one on New Year’s Eve. Britney was performing, too, and right now she was waiting to meet Justin and Lance on the beach. Justin put his hand on the small of Lance’s back as they left the dining room, urging him toward the elevators.
Justin and Lance had managed to snag the only available adjoining rooms on their floor, mostly because Justin had threatened Chris with bodily harm if he tried to take them for himself. Britney was down at the other end of the hall, which was a pain, but at least they were all on the same floor.
Justin and Britney weren’t even publicly admitting to dating yet, but Justin knew the time was coming. Jive had a whole timetable worked out, and Justin was fine with that. Britney was one of a small group of people Justin felt truly comfortable with. They’d known each other since they were children, and they’d grown up in similar circumstances. They’d shared so many of the same experiences, even if they hadn’t shared all of them together. They were used to existing in the public eye.
Britney knew about Justin and Lance, of course, and she and Lance adored each other. Brit knew that Justin considered Lance to be the love of his life, and she knew he wasn’t looking for a replacement.
She also knew that Justin was bi.
He had been trying all day to come up with a way to approach Lance about this. He decided to go for a direct attack.
“Hey,” Justin said, as he stuck his head through the open door between their rooms. Lance was just pulling his bathing suit up over his hips, and Justin whistled.
“Shut up,” Lance laughed softly. Justin sauntered into the room.
“Umm, you look hot,” he said as he cupped his hands around Lance’s ass and pulled him in for a kiss, grinding their hips together, quick and dirty.
“I look pale, is what I look,” Lance replied, easing his way out of Justin’s arms and reaching for a t-shirt. “No way am I going out there without a shirt. I’ll fry.”
“Umm, too bad, all that pretty skin, hidden away,” Justin said with what he hoped was a seductive leer.
Lance squinted at him with a small smile. “Justin, did you want something?”
“Busted,” Justin laughed nervously. He took a deep breath and just went for it. “Brit wants to know if she can, um, be with us. You know, like watch us. Maybe even touch, um, do stuff-” He broke off at the look of astonishment on Lance’s face as it dawned on him what Justin was talking about.
“Excuse me?” Justin wasn’t sure which was higher, Lance’s voice or his eyebrows.
“Hey, Brit doesn’t get a lot of play, stuck here with us, and-”
“Justin, she’s supposed to be a virgin!” Lance exclaimed, his arms paused in mid-air, shoved halfway through the sleeves of his shirt.
Justin blinked. “Well, yeah. That’s why she doesn’t get a lot of play.”
“Are you insane? Have you lost your mind?” Lance tugged his shirt over his head and furiously pulled it down over his bathing suit.
“Also, her soon-to-be official boyfriend has a boyfriend of his own,” Justin added with what he thought was unassailable logic.
Lance goggled at him. “You can actually say all this with a straight face?”
Justin shrugged. “Sure. Don’t you think it might be, well, you know, kind of hot?” Justin really was curious. The whole idea had him hot and bothered, and he wondered how Lance could not feel the same way.
“Hot? Hot for one of my best friends, who happens to be a girl, to watch me have sex with my boyfriend? Of course, what’s not hot about that? What was I thinking!?”
Oh, right, the strictly gay thing. That could put a damper on Lance thinking the whole idea was hot. He narrowed his eyes and peered at Justin suspiciously. “Wait, is this because you miss girls or something?” His face softened into a thoughtful expression. “Because if it is, well, I guess it’s not really fair for you, is it?”
Now Lance looked kind of guilty and Justin hastened to reassure him. “No, of course not.” It really wasn’t because he missed girls, Justin didn’t think. “We were just talking, is all. We thought it might be fun.”
“Justin, it’s not the same as playing doctor when you’re ten years old.” Now Lance looked exasperated, and like he thought he was 40 or something, as he pushed his feet into his flipflops and oh-so-responsibly checked his backpack for sunscreen.
“Well, it kind of is,” Justin said reasonably. “Don’t you think so? Come on, Lance, it’ll be fun. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. You don’t have to do anything, you know, with Britney.” He looked around the room for his sunglasses. “Do they have towels on the beach, do you think?”
“What, so only you are? You and Brit can do stuff, and you and I can do stuff, and she’s going to watch? Have I got that right?” Lance grabbed his key card off the dresser and tucked it in a side pocket of his backpack.
Justin nodded hopefully as he located his sunglasses and put them on.
Lance opened the door and waved Justin out into the hallway ahead of him. “Not in a million years, Justin. Not in a million years.”
~~~~~
Lance doesn’t see his mother anymore when he looks in the mirror. He doesn’t know whether he regrets that or not. He’s not sorry about his nose, exactly, but he sometimes regrets losing the comfortable familiarity his reflection used to give him.
He used to feel a similar sense of home when he looked at Justin, too, but that was a long time ago. Now he doesn’t really look at Justin much at all. Not when Justin is looking back, anyway.
Which at the present time is making Joey huff impatiently. Lance just raises his eyebrows and stares at him, silently determined not to let Joey win. “The more you push, Joe,” he mutters under his breath.
Pointedly turning his back on Joey, Lance works quietly with Justin, going about the business of recording Lance’s part of the song Lance likes to call Get Over It, Already, the one he thinks is all about Cameron dumping Justin’s ass. Not that he has a clue about what really happened, he only knows what he read in the tabloids over the past summer. He of all people is aware that you can’t rely on US Weekly for accurate reporting, but there was no way he was going to ask anyone for the actual facts at the time, so he imagines all sorts of dramatic scenarios, ones where Justin pleads with Cameron not to go, while Cam stares at him disinterestedly, disdain oozing from every pore as she packs her suitcases.
He’s only a little ashamed of himself for that.
This is a beautiful song, bittersweet and aching, and the bass part in particular is lovely, the lines and melody haunting. In fact, his part is almost a solo in places, but Justin knows better than to push Lance for that. They’ve done this so many times that they can do it without a lot of chatter, using the music to communicate without words. Which Joey should know, and he needs to stop watching them, to stop monitoring Lance for any signs of not trying. Just because Lance and Justin aren’t sharing deep, soulful glances into each other’s eyes doesn’t mean they’re not getting along perfectly fine.And, wow, this song truly is gorgeous, and Lance could sing this all day. He closes his eyes on the ninth take, just letting the sound wash over him, and it occurs to him how much Justin learned from Robin over the years about vocal arrangements and how their five voices fit together best. His voice catches on the sudden tightness in his throat, and he stops singing, stumbling to a halt in the middle of a phrase.
There’s a pause, then Justin says, “Lance?”
Lance opens his eyes and looks directly at Justin for the first time since Justin walked in on him with that guy in Chris’s bathroom. He blinks to clear away sudden tears, feeling like an idiot, but Justin smiles, a tentative, questioning smile.
Lance doesn’t let himself look away. “Robin,” he tries, and has to clear his throat. “I miss her. You, Justin, you, like, inherited how she was with our voices, or something.” Justin’s expression changes and his smile becomes sad. “You know what to do with them.”
“I miss her, too,” Justin says softly, shrugging. And Lance guesses he does. Justin isn’t heartless, after all. Being able to walk away from someone without a backward glance isn’t the same as not having a heart.
Lance knows Justin has a heart, because once upon a time, Lance broke it.
Okay, their big moment of emotional connection is over, and Lance forces his eyes back to the music on the stand in front of him, but it’s with reluctance that he does, and he feels something ease inside, just a bit.
Lance has learned from his mother over the years how to stay strong, how not to give in, no matter how much people might want him to. He’s watched her stand up to friends and relatives who thought Lance shouldn’t date boys, that he shouldn’t try to go to space or anything else he might fail at, who think he shouldn’t be out, that being gay is a sin. Some of the battles in her life have been fought in opposition to Lance’s father, and some of them have been fought at his side.
Those lessons serve Lance well, and he doesn’t give in easily, and while he knows his stubbornness sometimes infuriates and annoys the people who love him most, it’s one of the things he’s the most proud of about himself, one of the traits his mother passed on to him that he’s glad to have. He doesn’t give in, and he tries very hard not to let himself be swayed by others. It’s not been easy, and he’s not always successful, particularly when it comes to the four men his life has been irrevocably entangled with since he was practically a child.
But his mother also taught him that there’s a time to give in, a time to let someone else win. She recognized that it was one of those times thirteen years ago, when she sat in Lou’s office and let total strangers persuade her to give them her only son, based solely on the desire Lance knew she saw in his eyes.
And Lance knows it’s one of those times now. He actually thinks he feels something thaw in his chest, although he suspects that’s pretty fanciful. But he looks at Joey, who doesn’t have any reason to be in the studio this afternoon other than to babysit Lance, and he thinks of JC and his infinite reserves of patience and love. He thinks of Chris, his anger camouflaging his hard-earned optimism and his vulnerability.
And he looks at Justin, really looks at him, and for once he doesn’t see the man who broke his heart. He sees instead the boy who won it so many years ago.
~~~~~
Lance flipped his sunglasses down over his eyes and laid his head back against his lounge chair, letting the hot sun and the sea breeze soothe him. There were photographers all over the place, and he absolutely couldn’t believe Justin. Okay, taking his shirt off was fine, they were on a beach, and Justin didn’t mind being photographed shirtless at all, in fact he loved it.
Offering to put sunscreen on Lance’s back if he would take his own shirt off, finding a reason to bend over or flex something every five minutes, and looking for excuses to touch Lance, whether it was to shoo a “fly” away from his cheek or brush sand off his chest, were something else entirely. Nudging Lance with his elbow and winking whenever Britney tossed her hair back was just making him laugh, however, and so Lance lowered his sunglasses and looked out over the ocean, listening to the sound of the waves, because he didn’t want to encourage Justin in any way.
Justin was relentless when he wanted something, a flair for being persistent that he had gotten from his mother. Lynn had taught Justin never to take no for an answer, and that if he wanted something badly enough, people would find a way to give it to him, as long as he kept trying. Their combined forces of will had been one of the most important elements in the creation of NSYNC, and it made Justin think he could accomplish anything if he just tried hard enough.
It was, in fact, making Justin think that he could get his boyfriend into bed with his pseudo-girlfriend, and while it was amusing to watch him try, it wasn’t going to happen. It was a bad idea on so many levels, and Lance ignored the heat that had flashed through him when Justin first mentioned it. Britney was his friend, and even though she was headlining her own tour now, they still found themselves thrown together often, and it would be awkward to know she had seen him like that. To look at her and know she had been there when Justin kissed him, when Justin touched him, to know that she had watched him come while Justin-
And, no. Just no. He calmly reached for his towel, intent on draping it across his lap and the sudden hardness there, but it wasn’t where he’d left it, in the warm sand next to his chair. He groped around and heard a soft snicker close to his ear.
“Dude. You so want to.”
“Hello, Justin,” Lance said, in an attempt to hold on to his dignity. Justin ignored him.
“I’m about ready to head on in. You know what the beach does to my hair. Same as my momma’s hair, salt water’s not good for this shit.” He yanked at a handful of curls and grinned. “Someday, I swear, I’ma shave it all off.”
Lance looked at Justin, the sun shining on his head full of curls, reflected in his smiling eyes, all playful grin and long, sleek muscles and golden skin. He looked at Britney, smiling at him with a combination of hope and embarrassment. He felt drugged by the hot sun and the golden sand and the soporific sounds of the waves and the people laughing and playing all around them.
He caved. Justin knew the minute he did, and he whooped in triumph. Britney shushed him, and they began to gather up their things for the walk back to their rooms.
Afterwards, Lance was never sure if it had been a mistake or not. He lay across Justin’s bed, drowsing in the late afternoon sun that came through the window, feeling its heat on his already sunburned skin. Justin and Britney slept next to him, all three of them tangled up in the sheets, and each other. He studied their faces through half-closed eyes, but neither of them gave anything away in their sleep.
He still felt Britney’s hand, smaller and softer and more unsure than Justin’s, bringing him to hardness while Justin kissed him.
He could still taste Brit’s skin, salty from the ocean, as he kissed her soft, round breasts while Justin licked between her legs, and she moaned in Lance’s ear.
He saw himself kissing his way up Justin’s spine while Justin held himself over Britney, gently thrusting his way inside.
He could still hear Justin frantically pleading, “yes, please, I want you to,” and then Lance was coming deep inside him while Britney watched with wide eyes.
Then, finally, he was sucking Justin off, not able to keep the possessiveness out of his expression while he locked eyes with Britney.
As he fell asleep, Justin behind him, his arm tight around him, Lance thought maybe he liked it too much to ever do it again.
~~~~~
inherit: a: to come into possession of or receive especially as a right or divine b: to receive from ancestors by genetic transmission c: to have in turn or receive as if from an ancestor