lise: This flashback, we always saw as very heavily referencing the article about Pharrell. Make of that what you will. Also, I think this is the only time that Justin speaks.

 

Sometimes, Lance still dreams about Justin.

But not the kind of dreams where Justin shows up on his front porch with carnations and jelly beans, or where he sees Justin in the mall, trying on pink stretch pants. Now, Lance only ever dreams about things that have happened, and sometimes he dreams about Justin, the same way he dreams about all the guys and anyone else who was a constant presence for those years of his life.

lise: There's the obligatory timbertrick moment from Making the Tour, too.

Lance took a nap this afternoon halfway through Making the Tour, the last thing he remembers is Justin kicking Chris in the head on the moving walkways. Lance dreamed of Justin, of driving Justin to the compound for rehearsal for the Strings tour early in the morning. For whatever reason, the radio station Lance usually liked was coming through as static, and so he flipped through the channels trying to find something else that didn't make his head pound, with one hand gripping the steering wheel.

Two seconds of a song that sounded like broken glass in Lance's ears and Justin's hand jumped out to cover his own. "Leave it here," he said, "I like this song."

Lance groaned. "It's giving me a headache, and it's my damn car, I'm changing it."

"Dude, no, come on. I like this song."

"Justin, I said no," Lance snapped, and flipped to the next station.

In the dream, Lance can step outside himself and wonder what exactly it was that led to what happened next. Maybe Justin was cranky, maybe he'd been shoved up front-and-center at too many photo shoots that week, but for some reason Lance doesn't even understand when he's unconscious, Justin reached his arm across the car and instead of grabbing the radio knob, he grabbed at the wheel of the car.

The car jerked sharp to the left like a carnival ride and Lance somehow managed to push Justin away and swerve to the left in the same sweep of his arms. He pulled the car over to the side of the road, not even remembering to turn it off, just panting against the wheel. "What the fuck, Justin?" he shouted, "What the fuck were you doing?"

Justin looked at his hands, bright red with imprint. "I don't know, I don't -- I'm sorry. You just, you wouldn't listen to me, and I'm sorry, let's just go, okay? I'm sorry."

Lance forces himself to wake up before he can accept Justin's apology.

kel: So, Sandy the Younger and Sandy the Older have this joke about Kevin Richardson: "Mention of dead father? Check!" it comes from watching too much Backstreet Boys footage in which Kevin would somehow always manage to mention his dead father. Think of this as the Mention of dead father? Check!" portion of the DVD commentary, except that it's "Mention of Kel's PTSD? Check!" Go ahead and say it, it's okay.

If you've ever stumbled across my livejournal, you know that when I was a freshman in college, I was almost killed in a car accident and I'm about twenty-six different kinds of fucked-up because of it. This was one of the last scenes in the story to get written, and the whole time we were writing the story, I kept telling Lise, "You gotta write it, I can't do it."

But then it kept not getting written and it kept not getting written and we kept dividing up the stuff that still had to get done and I finally said, "okay, I'll try." and what I ended up writing was probably the most personal thing I have ever written and most personal thing I will ever write. Which is kind of weird, to have that be a dream sequence in a popslash story where Justin's a serial killer. But I guess that's how those things go. moving on.