Through
Some bands spend years recording an album. Years. Lance has heard stories about legendary bands going into the studio and emerging a lifetime later with just a few workable tracks. He’s always wondered how that was possible, but it’s clearly happening here. NSYNC will never be finished making this CD.
It’s perfectly possible to take forever, he realizes, if you have two anal-retentive perfectionists who can’t agree on one single little detail about anything at all, coupled with an indulgent record company willing to give them as much time as they need.
If this recording gig goes past six months, Lance’s is already planning on asking Joey to shoot him. Just shoot him and put him out of his misery. At least it would be quick. This, this is like dying by inches. Instead of The Death of 1000 Cuts, it’s The Death of 1000 Minor Decisions.
The worst part of it is, they’re having fun. Justin and JC are obviously having the time of their lives, thrilled to be doing this together again, so Lance doesn’t see an end in sight. There is absolutely no light at the end of this very long tunnel.
He’d probably be having fun too, if he weren’t so miserable.
Joey and Chris are having fun. As long as Joey’s singing, he’s happy. And this is what Chris has been waiting for these past six years, the chance to do this again.
If only it weren’t so much like being nibbled to death by ducks. Annoyingly cheerful ducks.
Since the night of Chris’s party, Lance and Justin have been tiptoeing around each other even more than they were before. Lance can’t outright refuse to interact with Justin, there’d be some kind of band intervention if he did that, but the tentative friendly overtures from Justin have stopped. Lance shrugs. Whatever. No one asked Justin to come barging into the bathroom that night. Who does that at a party? That has nothing to do with anything, anyway. He isn’t going to think about the expression on Justin’s face in the mirror. He doesn’t owe Justin anything.
Lance sits, flipping through a magazine, pretending not to watch JC and Justin laughing in the sound booth. Suddenly, Chris materializes beside him, flopping down in the corner of the couch Lance has claimed for himself during the endless hours in the studio.
“You’re an ass,” Chris says flatly, and Lance turns to stare at him. Chris doesn’t look at all happy. In fact, he looks prepared to do battle.
“What?” Lance is so not in the mood for Chris right now.
“You could at least stop acting like he’s invisible, like he’s not right here in the room. Or would that compromise your injured party status too much?” Chris has his arms folded across his chest, and he’s glaring at Lance.
“Don’t act like you know anything about it, Chris. You have no right. You know nothing about it,” Lance hisses, instantly furious.
“Oh, no? You think I wasn’t there for most of it? We were all there, Lance, we all lived through it, so don’t you fucking tell me I don’t know anything about it.” Chris is equally furious, and by this point he’s snarling in Lance’s face and poking his finger in Lance’s chest.
“Chris.” Justin’s voice startles them both into silence. Lance didn’t see him come out of the sound booth, and apparently, neither did Chris. “That’s enough,” he says quietly.
“I just think-” Chris starts, but Justin interrupts him.
“Don’t.” He holds Chris’s eyes, and whatever passes between them is enough to shut Chris up, at least for now. Lance knows it’s too much to hope it’s for good.
“Fine. I gotta take a leak.” And Chris is up and out of the room before anyone can say anything else.
Justin doesn’t look at Lance. “Sorry,” he says, then he goes back into the booth, where JC has been watching them curiously.
Lance pretends to go back to his magazine, but he’s shaking with anger, and he tosses the month-old copy of Rolling Stone down on the couch so he can fume without any distractions. He checks his watch to see if it’s time for Joey to get back from picking Briahna up at school. It’s Joey’s Daddy time, and Lance knows it’s important, but he wishes Joey would hurry.
When Joey finally gets back, Lance is a little calmer. Joey picks up on the changed atmosphere in the studio right away, and frowns in Justin’s direction. Lance feels a stab of guilt that Joey immediately assumes that whatever’s wrong is Justin’s fault. And that’s just silly, because of course it’s Justin’s fault.
But when Joey eases himself down on the couch next to Lance and quietly asks him what’s going on, Lance shakes his head. “Nothing. Everything’s fine.” He promised himself he’d try, he promised them he could do this. He smiles wanly at Joey. “You’re all sweaty. Is it that hot outside?”
It must be, because Joe bitches non-stop about the Florida heat for at least ten minutes, letting Lance change the subject. That’s why Joey is the best best-friend ever.
Justin and JC are more subdued for the rest of the afternoon, keeping the laughter and the fun to a minimum, and for that, Lance does feel guilty. Chris started it, but Lance knows he’s not a ball of fun on the best days. Instead of staying until eight or nine o’clock the way they have been, at six JC tells Joey to go back home and have dinner with Kelly and Briahna, they’re calling it a night.
Chris and Justin leave together. Chris hasn’t said another word to Lance all afternoon. This happens, Lance tells himself. When they spend so much time together, especially crammed into a recording studio, this is bound to happen. They’ll get through it, they always have before, and some of it was under worse circumstances than this.
Some of it was while Lance and Justin were actually falling apart. Lance admits to himself that he and Justin put the others through hell on more than one occasion, and he guesses he can cut Chris some slack.
“Are you eating with us tonight, or do you have somewhere else to be?” Joey asks him.
“No, no where else. I’ll be there in a little while. I want to talk to C for a little bit.” He waves Joey out of the studio and turns to JC.
JC’s gathering up his things, stuffing papers and CDs and demos into his backpack. He doesn’t say a word, but Lance feels defensive anyway. “I’m trying, JC, I’m really trying.”
JC stops attempting to make his notebook fit in with all the rest of his stuff and peers seriously at Lance. “I know you are, honey. J knows it, too.”
Lance doesn’t want to talk about Justin. “Chris doesn’t.”
“He’s Chris,” JC shrugs, as if that explains everything. “He loves you, you know that.”
Lance sighs wearily. “Yeah, I know.” He’s known Chris since he was sixteen years old. Chris loves him.
“It’ll be okay, Lance. That’s what I know.” JC smiles at him, squinty-eyed and reassuring, and Lance lets himself be comforted by it.
~~~~~
They went through Customs in Miami, as usual. With all the flying they’d been doing back and forth from Europe to Florida, Justin was becoming an old pro at airports. When they first started this, he worried about going through Customs. The little boy who still lurked inside him, the one who was afraid of breaking the rules, lived in fear of a Customs agent knowing that Justin had illegal contraband hidden in his suitcase just by looking at him. Of course, he didn’t have any illegal contraband in his suitcase, or his backpack either, for that matter. He wasn’t even sure what would be illegal to bring back from Germany, aside from Cuban cigars. None of them smoked cigars, so he was able to resist the temptation to roll them up in his dirty underwear and try to smuggle them into the country.
He regarded Wesley suspiciously out of the corner of his eye. Now, it was possible that he would bring Cuban cigars into the country, if Lou asked him to. Lou always had a cigar in his hand. Justin edged a little bit away from Wesley, trying to cover his movements by elbowing JC and pointing at a sign on the wall. He didn’t want to be standing next to Wesley if the Customs agents decided to search him or anything. What if they thought Justin had Cuban cigars stuck in his pockets, or something, just because he was traveling with Wesley?
JC read the sign, which said Welcome to Miami, and stared at Justin as if he’d lost his mind. Okay, right, he wasn’t afraid of Customs anymore, he remembered. Get a grip.
And now their flight to Orlando was delayed. They could have driven home in the amount of time they were going to have to sit here and wait for their plane, but the tickets were all paid for and Lou wouldn’t want the money to go to waste. Justin just wanted to sleep, because he slept kind of crappy on planes, even when his head was on Lance’s shoulder, but there really wasn’t a place here in the airport where he could get comfortable, and besides, it was only four o’clock in the afternoon. Sleeping now would screw him up for days. He’d just get straightened out when it was time to fly back to Europe next week.
At least they could eat, and they all headed straight for McDonald’s, the promise of an American McDonald’s adding a spring to Justin’s step. He didn’t care what anyone said, McDonald’s in Germany just didn’t taste the same.
The airport was busy, and the line for McDonald’s was pretty long. It took less than five minutes before Chris was poking JC again, and then running away when JC grabbed at him. By the third time Chris had almost crashed into someone who was innocently just trying to get to their gate, Joey had his video camera out. Maybe the tapes could be used as evidence in Chris’s trial when he was arrested for flattening an old lady wearing Mickey Mouse ears or a little kid trying to escape from their parents.
“I’m not letting you cut back in line if you don’t stay put,” JC finally announced. Lance looked back and forth between Chris and Justin and then moved in front of JC.
“I’ll let you in, Chris,” he said with a grin.
“Thanks, Lance.” And Chris poked JC in the side and ran fifteen feet up the terminal and back again, bounding up to Lance and throwing his arms around him. “Save me, Lance, save me!” JC ignored him, which Justin was sure JC knew was never a good idea.
By the time they got their food, JC had threatened to castrate Chris with a plastic straw if he didn’t knock it off, and Joey was able to get some great footage of Chris chewing his French fries with his mouth wide open.
Justin nudged Lance, and they took a couple of Quarter Pounders back to their moms, glad to escape the insanity, at least for the time it took the others to catch up with them.
Once Justin ate, his energy level seemed to skyrocket. There was nothing to do in this stupid airport, and he just wanted to get home, where they could swim or play basketball, or something, until it was time to go to bed. He elbowed Lance again.
“Dude, let’s take a walk.”
“Don’t go too far, Justin, in case they call our flight early,” his mom said. She looked exhausted, and Justin smiled reassuringly at her.
“We won’t.” He bumped Lance with his shoulder. “Let’s go look at magazines.”
They walked companionably around the terminal, stopping in the store that sold magazines and candy and newspapers and bandaids and Advil and Miami Heat baseball caps. Justin bought some M&Ms and a bottle of water. He had a system for keeping his American dollars separate from the different kinds of European money he’d collected over time, and he was happy to see he had more dollars with him than he’d thought. He added a bag of Skittles to his pile, and paid the cashier, relieved for a change that he didn’t have to stop and stare at his handful of coins like he was some kind of an idiot, trying to figure out how to pay for candy. Lance figured out German marks a lot faster than Justin had, and Justin was always trying to get him to pay for stuff. Justin handed Lance the bag of Skittles as they walked away from the counter and Lance took them with a grin.
They made another circuit of the terminal, then headed to the bathroom. Justin thought that bathrooms on planes were gross, so he decided to go before they had to board their flight. The bathroom was empty.
After he washed his hands, Justin backed Lance up against the sinks, and said, “You know, once we get home, it’s going to be crazy, dude, there’s not going to be time to do anything but practice and do that photo shoot Lou scheduled, and Robin has a couple of new songs for us to learn, and then we have to leave again.” He reached up and felt his hair. “And they want to do something to my hair again while we’re home.” He was tired just thinking about it all.
“What’s your point, Justin?” Lance asked, raising his eyebrows and laughing at him.
“I wanted to have, like, five minutes alone with you, that’s all. Quit laughing at me,” Justin pouted.
"I’m not laughing. And why do you need time alone with me?”
“If you have to ask…” Justin wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.
“Someone could come in, Justin,” Lance pointed out, but he didn’t look like he was planning on going anywhere.
“Then I suggest we get on with it, man.” Justin leaned forward and pressed his lips against Lance’s, kissing him somewhat desperately. They didn’t get to do this very often, because they were never, ever alone, it seemed, and Justin wanted to do it a lot more than they could find the opportunity for. Lance was pretty ingenious when it came to finding a quick five minutes alone, but they mostly ended up kissing in bathrooms, one eye on the door and one ear on the sounds from outside the door. Justin thought that for the rest of his life, he would associate kissing Lance with brightly lit tile and the smell of disinfectant.
It had taken him a while to figure out that he even wanted to kiss Lance, but once he had, he pretty much never wanted to stop. That wasn’t possible, though, so he had to settle for stolen moments. He didn’t want anyone else to know what they were doing, not yet, especially since he hadn’t talked to his mom about his recent discovery that he liked boys as well as girls. Diane knew about Lance, of course, since Lance had known he was gay since he was still in diapers, practically.
Okay, so that wasn’t really a sexy image. Justin got his mind back on kissing Lance. He thought they were getting better at it. At first he didn’t have any idea how to kiss a guy, but kissing Lance wasn’t that different from kissing girls, and he’d had a lot of experience at that for someone his age, he thought.
Lance’s lips were soft and warm, and sticky from the Skittles and his tongue tasted like cherries as it slid into Justin’s mouth.
There were voices outside the door and Justin reluctantly pulled back. He watched Lance open his eyes and they were soft and unfocused, looking at Justin with such sweet lust that Justin couldn’t move. Then the door opened and Justin wrenched himself away, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Get me a Snickers bar, Joey, okay?” JC called over his shoulder as he came into the bathroom. He stopped right inside the door, and stood there, regarding Lance and Justin with a small smile. He shook his head. “It’s almost time to board, and Lynn’s starting to wonder if you guys are ever coming back, dudes.”
Justin nodded his head without saying a word, because he didn’t trust his voice right now. Lance calmly raised an eyebrow and said, “Sure, we’re coming.” He put his hand on Justin’s shoulder and pushed gently. “Come on, Justin, let’s go.”
“It’s fine, don’t panic. It’s just JC,” Lance murmured as they walked back down the terminal to the gate.
“I know, I’m cool,” Justin said. He was. His heart rate settled back down to normal, and there was a bounce in his step as they approach the gate. Kissing Lance and then almost getting caught was kind of exhilarating.
Chris saw them coming and headed towards them at a gallop. “Lance, Lance,” he hollered, turning heads up and down the concourse. He reached them and threw himself onto Lance’s back. “Carry me, Lance. I need a ride. I’m tired, Lance.”
Justin laughed as Lance hauled Chris to the gate on his back. Chris pretended to bite Lance’s ear, and Lance dumped him on his ass right in front of their moms. Lynn smiled tolerantly at their antics, but Diane looked like she was pretty much at the end of her rope. Lance sat down, and dragged Chris into the seat next to him. “Sit, just for a few minutes.” Chris did, leaning his head on Lance’s shoulder and batting his eyes at him.
“My hero,” he sighed, and Lance shoved him away, laughing helplessly.
Justin sat in the row of seats across from them, and soon Joey and JC came back to join him. It was almost time to board their flight, and thank God for that. Justin felt the exhaustion creep back as he sat there, waiting. Lance looked up from whatever evil plan he and Chris were hatching and caught Justin’s eye. He smiled, slow and enticing, and Justin could have sworn the flash of heat that arced through the space between them was visible to everyone around.
~~~~~
Through: used as a function word to a: indicate passage into and out of a process, b: indicate exposure to a specified set of conditions, c: indicate a period of time; from the beginning to the end of, d: indicate completion or exhaustion
