Pairing: AJ and Lance
Words: cheekbones; golden boy; kiosk; bondage


The first clue the guys had about Lance's obsession was the
folded-up sheet of paper that had 'accidentally' been torn off the
front of one of Lance's multi-page, indexed, glossy, full-color
reports, then found its way into Justin's pocket.

Well, maybe not the first clue, because otherwise Justin wouldn't
have needed to make the accident happen, but certainly the first
real hard evidence regarding why Lance was suddenly going around
with a smile on his lips and a spring in his step even when there
were no cameras trained on him, and he had not, to anyone's
knowledge, gotten laid recently.

"Dude, it's unnatural!" Chris had said, and the others had agreed
before sending Justin on his recon mission.

"And remember, should you be caught, we will disavow all knowledge
of your actions.  Plus, it would be a good idea to curl up and cry
like a baby.  Lance wouldn't kill a crying man.  Probably."

Justin had smacked Chris, before leaving the assembled conspirators
behind in JC's room and proceeding with his errand.

The last time they'd tried to hold a meeting like this, Lance had
somehow found out about it, listened to their excuses, muttered
"Fuckers," then proceeded to crash the meeting and go on a
ten-minute rant about how nobody trusted him and he thought he
deserved better after the years of toil he'd put in for the group.

Chris had tried to sneak out down the fire escape, but Joey had
pinned him to the couch, saying into his ear, "If I have to stay,
so do you," and "This group was *your* idea, Kirkpatrick."

"Wouldn't have been if I'd known I'd get stuck with *this* pissy
bitch," Chris had retorted, a little too loud, which set Lance off
on another rant, this time about respect and professionalism.

So when Justin passed Lance in the hall on the way back to JC's
room, the paper hidden in his pocket, a pre-fabricated explanation
about working on music with JC was already on his lips, but Lance
just waved him off with yet another smile.

"I'm sure anything you've got to say can wait 'til morning. 
Right?"  It was a sunny, genuinely cheery smile.

Justin was very afraid.  "Sure!" he said, nodding fervently, and
escaped into the safety of JC's room.  Flung the door closed behind
him and leaned against it, panting for a long moment.

The others looked up expectantly.

"Dude!  I thought he had me.  But, whoa.  We *so* have to figure
out what's wrong with him.  It's freaky, yo."

"We *know* that," Chris said impatiently.  He held his hand out. 
"Did you get that thing he's been mooning over forever?"

Justin shook his head and crossed the room, stride more relaxed now
that the danger had passed.  "Nah.  It was all just a bunch of
charts with lots of code numbers and percentages.  It didn't mean
anything to me and there wasn't any kind of key."

"Of course not, fool.  Lance isn't an amateur.  He has all the
important data in his head."

"Yeah, well, that's why I grabbed the first page."  Justin pulled
the piece of paper out of his pants pocket and held it up
triumphantly.

Chris snatched it from him.  "Yeah, that's code all right.  You
think he's been taking, like, stenography classes on the side to
learn how to write things so we can't understand them?"

JC raised his eyebrows.  "Well, obviously he doesn't think we won't
go through his stuff."

"Yeah, Lance is a distrustful bastard."  Chris turned the paper on
its side.  Then upside down.  "Maybe it's Egyptian done in mirror
writing or something."

"Gimme that."  Joey took it away from Chris and held it right side
up.  He squinted at it.  "This is in English, doofus, not code."

"So what you're saying is, Lance just has really really bad
handwriting and isn't some kind of super spy or something?"

"Well..."

"What does it say?" Justin demanded.

"Um..."  Joey puzzled through it.  "I think it says, 'Overthrow
Russian government by gaining monopoly over bondage kiosks'."

"Yeah, right," Chris said.  "'Cause you know, when I feel a need
for a spanking?  I head right down to the friendly neighborhood
bondage kiosk.  That Mistress Olga?  She's real good at that stuff. 
Nice touch with a paddle."

Joey wadded up the piece of paper and tossed it at Chris.  "You're
so smart, you read it then."

"Yeah, like I can make out anything from that handwriting."

"So what are we supposed to *do*?" Justin asked.  "It's scary.  I
mean, y'know Lance is plotting *some*thing.  We can't just let him
go ahead with it.  He could be trying to do anything.  And I know
I don't wanna be around when he finally brings his evil plan to
fruition."

"Fruition?" Chris snickered.  "What, you get one of those
Word-A-Day calendars for your birthday or something, J?"

"Shut up.  I'm right and you know it.  Lance being happy is not a
good thing."

"Yeah, yeah, of course.  How could I ever deny it?  The great
Justin Timberlake is always right.  So, whaddaya think, golden boy? 
Is Lance gonna get to us with bad nutrition?  Did you have an
intuition?  No, I got it -- he's on a mission to get tuition money
for Evil Bastard School."

"Fine.  Mock me.  You just wait.  Lance is going to do something
really horrific, and then you'll be sorry."

"Ooh, guys, hear that?  We're gonna be sorry."

Justin flounced out.  But not without sticking his head out the
door and looking both ways first.

****

Lance was humming under his breath as he shut the door of his room
behind him, humming that broke into open song as soon as the door
was shut.  "I hate Backstreet in the springtime.  I hate Backstreet
in the fall."

He rummaged through his bag for his report.  Pages and pages of
gloriously itemized hatred.  Every degree of rage meticulously
detailed into pie charts and graphs.  The key, he'd discovered, to
endless patience and forbearance and serenity in the face of
overwhelming pressure and endless challenges was carefully executed
plots of vengeance.  Other, lesser, people might yell at passing
motorists and vent that way.  Lance didn't have that outlet.  The
minute he flipped someone off, there'd be photos of it and then
there'd be bad publicity to deal with which would just make him
even angrier.  He could harass their entourage, but then there'd be
similar results, regardless of confidentiality agreements.

No, he couldn't do any of that.

What he could do though, was this.  His hand closed around the
pleasingly solid bulk of the report and he sang happily, "Oh, why
oh why, do I hate Backstreet?  Because Kevin's there."

The phone rang and he frowned.  What the hell?  That was the hotel
phone, not his cell phone.  Anyone who was anyone would use his
cell.  He couldn't think of any reason the hotel itself would be
calling him.  Wrong number, maybe?

He picked it up.  "Hello?"

"Mr. Bass?  This is the concierge.  We have a bit of a situation
here."

He sighed.  Sat down and pulled out his PDA.  No telling what might
have come up that they felt had to be handled by him instead of
going through the usual channels.  How he got singled out for this
kind of thing by random hotels who should presumably believe that
their manager or their bodyguards would actually be the appropriate
handlers of any kind of problem was beyond him though.  "All right. 
Shoot."

"There's a Mr. McLean here.  He requested you by name."

Lance frowned again.  Turned on the PDA and made a note.  They
weren't going to stay in this particular hotel again.  This was not
the kind of issue he wanted to be bothered with.  "What seems to be
the problem?  Do you think he's not the real AJ McLean?"

"Ah...  We're fairly certain of his identity, sir."

He squeezed his eyes shut.  "You do have the number of our security
people, correct?  Call them.  If they decide it's really him,
they'll escort him up."

"Very good, sir."

Definitely not staying there again.  "And your name is?"

The man hesitated and told him.  Lance wrote it down.  "Great. 
Thank you so very much."

He entered in a few numbers after the man's name, assigning an
irritation quotient, stupidity quotient and an incompetence
quotient for him, then summing it up into an overall score out to
two decimal points.  It was very important to be accurate about
this kind of thing.

He'd turned the handheld off, flipped the cover back over and put
it back, when the phone rang again.  This time his cell phone.

As he was expecting, it was Dre telling him that AJ was there and
on his way up.

When the knock came, Lance answered the door, still humming.  It
made him happier.

AJ arched an eyebrow at him.  "Go, Ella."

Okay, so he'd been switching Ella Fitzgerald's immortal lyrics for
his own less-enduring ones, but still.  He mentally added the
remark to AJ's tally on his shit list.  He still wasn't sure
whether to count stuff AJ had done before rehab.  Lance wasn't
*petty*, after all.

Plus the rehab thing had been one of Lance's better revenges, he
thought.  He'd gotten AJ *and* Kevin at the same time, and no one
had any idea that he'd even been involved in the debacle that had
brought AJ's problems out into the open and forced Kevin to finally
do something about it.  Nick's wrist had been accidental, though. 
Lance had considered giving Nick credit against some future
stupidity, but in the end had decided to add it to Kevin's tally. 
Kevin's tally was very high.

"Come in," Lance said, sardonically, bowing AJ inside.

"Don't mind if I do."  AJ brushed past Lance.

Lance closed the door behind him and turned around.  "So why are
you here?"

In the space of those few seconds, AJ had managed to snag an orange
from the fruit centerpiece, fish a bottle of water out of the ice
bucket of them Lance had on the table and sprawl back into a chair
with his plunder.

Lance raised his eyebrows at him.

AJ opened the water, drank.  "See, there's this thing."

Patience was one of Lance's strong suits.  It wasn't something he'd
had to learn, slowly and painfully, like the others.  He was very
very good at outwaiting other people.  He sat back down in his
chair, pulled out his PDA and added today to AJ's total.  It didn't
really up it much.  Kevin was way ahead.

"And I thought maybe you'd understand if anyone would.  I know
anyone else would say we're nothing alike, but I think we are in
certain, very important, ways."  He set the bottle of water down
and started slowly picking the peel off the orange.

Lance got up, grabbed a trash can and dropped it on the floor by
AJ's chair.

"Thanks," AJ said absently, sweeping the tiny fingernail-sized bits
of orange peel off his lap into the trash.

He nodded and sat back down.

"So, anyway, I know you have issues.  Me, I have a quick temper. 
I get angry fast.  And you'd think that'd mean I'd get over it
fast, too.  Except I don't.  Now, I used to handle that certain
ways.  You know what I mean.  But that's not an option anymore.  I
tried counseling.  More than once, too.  But that shit didn't work
for me.  They just didn't get what it's like to live our lives.  Or
maybe it's something wrong with me that I don't get the kinds of
stuff they want me to do to fix the problem.  Whatever.  It doesn't
work for me.  Now, I know you got the same kinds of problems.  And
you're a slow burn kind of guy.  So I know that what you're doing
is probably gonna work for me, too, if I can get you to tell me
what it is you're doing."

"Who says I'm doing anything?" Lance asked neutrally.

AJ had the orange half-peeled.  He snorted at Lance's remark. 
"Please.  You were *singing* when I came in."

"Maybe I'm just happy."

"The only thing that makes guys like us happy is lots of sex, lots
of booze or both.  And I don't see either of those here."

Lance's eyebrows climbed again.  AJ, he noted, had nice cheekbones. 
Sexy.  But then, little about AJ wasn't.  Even the liquid
collecting on AJ's hands from the orange peeling was sexy, in a
sort of want-to-lick-them-clean sort of way, although the orange
peel residue would be bitter, not sweet.

"So you have to have figured out something else.  And I want to
know what it is.  Before I go crazy."

AJ did look a little anal compulsive, Lance thought.  What with the
orange peeling and all.  "Well..."

"Please?"

He considered it.  It wasn't something he'd been sharing with the
other members of NSYNC.  He didn't think they'd understand.  For
one, all of them were on his list for infractions both major and
minor, although he did his best to keep their scores as even as
possible.  A paid-up balance equalled serenity for Lance.  Also, he
didn't think any of the guys would understand his ideas about
getting even with people.  They liked him even at his worst, and he
liked them, but that didn't mean that they necessarily always
*liked* each other.  Lance believed heavily in the concept of
poetic justice.  And not the kind that rhymed.

"You really want to know?"

"Yeah."  AJ dropped the now-naked orange on the table.  "I really
do."

"Well," Lance said.  "You know what they say."

"I really don't want to know, do I?"

Lance shook his head and smirked.  "'When the student is ready, the
master will appear.'"

"You're a complete loony, you know that?"

"Yeah, well, you're the one who came to me for help.  What does
that make you?"

"Certifiable."

Lance got up, went into the bathroom and came out with a wet towel. 
Tossed it to AJ.  He could leave the licking for later.  After he
found out if AJ was interested.  "Here's the way it works..."