Pairing: Justin and Lance
Words: lascivious; ointment; kin; perplexing


1. Faith

It was Justin who finally told Lance the truth, because Chris was
too protective of all of them, even then, to ever say something
like that, and Joey too nice.  JC might have said something, but,
to him, it was a done issue -- they would succeed with Lance, or
fail with Lance.  Telling him that the record execs didn't want him
there would serve no purpose now that Chris had already told them
NSYNC wasn't NSYNC without Lance.

Justin wasn't that nice.  Okay, yeah, Chris had probably made the
right decision.  Probably.  Justin would do anything to make this
work; if that included sacrificing Lance, well, at least they
hadn't traveled very far along this path yet.  Lance could go home,
be a kid, do the kind of stuff he'd be doing before the NSYNC
thing.

Justin had never been a kid.  Not as long as he could remember.

Lance, though, was young and unfinished, and Justin found his
failure to adapt perplexing and frustrating.  This was his life
now.  The kid needed to deal with it and get with the program.

So Justin told him.  Maybe it'd toughen him up.  Motivate him to
get his act together.

Lance just looked at him and nodded dumbly before rubbing more
ointment on his blisters.  "Okay," he said, like he didn't
understand how important this was, how much they were having to
drag his ass.

Justin frowned at him and told Lou that they needed more rehearsal
time, not like they weren't already putting in 12 to 16 hour days. 
This was gonna work, and if they needed 18 hour days to make it
happen, it would.  Lance would learn what it meant to be a
professional.


2. Hope

The crushing schedule of nearly successful pop stars gave him, all
of them, very little time to sit at Lance's bedside.

Justin got twenty minutes, with Diane at his elbow, and Chris
across from him, and Joey and JC out in the hall with Lou and
Johnny, waiting their own turn.  The rest of Lance's family would
be there about the same time they would have to leave, because the
show must go on, even if one of the performers had nearly killed
himself trying to make it work.

Lance was unconscious.  Grey even, which wasn't an improvement over
how he'd looked at the concert.  They were throwing around words
like 'heart condition' and 'surgery' and 'next of kin', but Justin
wasn't listening.  He had his hand on Lance's wrist, and his
fingers wrapped over Lance's pulse-point.

He wanted to cry, except he already was, and it didn't seem to be
doing much good.


3.  Charity

He was in L.A. when he heard that Lance probably wouldn't be going
to space.

"So is he coming back home now?" he asked Chris, because, of
course, Lance hadn't even tried to contact *him*.

"No."

"No?"

"Nope.  Says he's going to stay there.  Pepsi's been floating some
things around, and he thinks if he puts in the effort, he can get
on the April flight.  And NSYNC isn't doing anything right now,
anyway.  Said it'd give you time to promote your album."

He nodded, even though Chris was on the phone.  It would, and,
yeah, Jive had been after him to do something about that, but it
wasn't like he hadn't been working on ways to make both things
happen.  He hadn't given up on NSYNC yet; they'd all put too much
into it for him to ever give up on it, especially not for a
fledgling solo career.  "Did he say anything?"

"He said a lot of things.  What about?"

"Chris..." Justin said, because Chris knew.  He'd had to tell
someone about it, about how, after the break-up with Britney, he
and Lance had gotten together, and sometimes he didn't think he
knew this new Lance, the one who tossed back whiskey after whiskey,
and laid lascivious kisses on him before going to bed with him, and
then left.  Left, and didn't mention it again, and Justin didn't
know how to bring it up when Lance brushed everything off smoothly,
like it didn't matter, like it'd never happened.

"No, he didn't."

"Oh.  Okay, I get it."

"Yeah, from what I hear, you're getting it all right, just not from
the Bass man."

"You suck."

"You wish, baby."

"I'm not a baby.  I'm definitely not *your* baby."

"Sorry to burst your bubble, kiddo, but..." and Chris sang the next
line, "you'll always be my baby."

There was some ritual trading of insults, and promises to get
together when they were next in the same place together, and then
Chris hung up.

Lance was staying in Russia, on the hope that maybe they'd send him
to space when they'd already screwed him over once.  Lance was not
returning his calls, had just given him a self-assured,
professionally blank smile the last time Justin had seen him, when
Justin had asked him what they were doing.

He didn't get it.  He didn't get Lance at all; he never had.