kel: Who knew -- this is actually a JuC/trickyfish story.
kel: -- except in the way that it isn't at all, but those are the only pairings that we ever spell out.

lise: JoLa, too.

kel: I love the part about Chris' *NSYNC dance card.

 

Lance calls Joey every night for a week before Joey calls him back. When Joey finally calls early on a Thursday morning, all he says is, "Sorry, man, there's this chick -- she's doing some retrospective about Chris and I just, I couldn't --"

"It's okay," Lance says, and silently takes back every thought he's had for the last month about Joey being a quitter.

"So, I haven't been checking the messages much," Joey finishes. After that, there's no way Lance feels like he can tell Joey why he's been calling, so he asks about the new play, about Briahna, about the weather in New York, even.

Lance can tell, by now, when Joey's about ready to hang up the phone, so all at once, he blurts out, "Did you know that Justin slept with JC?"

"You mean like how you slept with Chris?" Joey fires back, as though he's known this was coming. Maybe he's been talking to JC. Or maybe he just knows.

"Not like how I slept with Chris," Lance says.

"No," Joey says, "not really like that at all."

Lance slept with Chris off and on for about two months right before the third and last hiatus, the one that stretched on forever and always. It wasn't a big thing, just one night there was some beer and there was some porn and it really could have happened any year, any tour, it just happened to be the last. Still, when they were finished, the first time, panting on the plush hotel carpet, Lance turned to Chris and said, "Why now, man? Why this?"

Chris shrugged helplessly, rubbing a hand across his stomach.

"You trying to mark off another 'X' on your NSYNC dance card?" Lance said.

At that, Chris sat up, somewhat, and slumped against the foot of the bed. "No way," he said, "I've never -- you're the first boy bander I've ever nailed, dude."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously," Chris replied, "I'm guessing that's not the case for you?"

"You know that's not the case, man," Lance said. He was still lying down, but no longer languid. "JC, and Joey, and now you. I guess all I have left is Justin, right?"

He looked up at Chris, grinning a little bit, but Chris' face was serious. "Justin," Chris said slowly. "You don't want to sleep with Justin."

 

lise: This scene - I don't know if it was after we posted and one of the insane lj discussions dissecting each aspect of this story or not, but someone pointed out something very fundamental about this scene, and Chris in particular. Chris, here, is shown as *knowing*.

Which begs the question - in some respects, did Chris know and thus permit what happened?

I don't think it was a question we ever answered, either in our heads or spelled out on paper.

kel: We called the cult AU stories "everybody falls in love with Justin," and in this story, Chris is really the only one who's not a little bit in love with Justin. And that's because Chris knows Justin, and that's what Justin can't take. Moving on.