Or maybe it’s not as important to him anymore.  At first he was this cute little thing, the last into the group and anxious not to get cast aside like the boy he’d replaced.  Full of slightly shy smiles, hunched up tight in the corner of the car and watching with big green eyes.  Quiet, taking them in.  For a while Justin hated him because that staring got on his nerves and convinced him, with the utter paranoia of a thirteen year old, that Lance thought he was better than the rest of them.

It took months to coax him out into talking regularly, that low slow voice rolling through the car like honey or smoke or fog.  Lance talked and they took notice, gave it extra importance because if he’d bothered to say it, it had to be worth something.  He was just starting to warm up and get comfortable when it all changed.

First the collapse, that long awful sickness that had the rest of them scared shitless because seriously, all the life drained out of him.  He was too sick to even look miserable, just sat there looking shell-shocked no matter how long Chris sat there telling him cheerfully raunchy stories or how hard Justin gripped his hand like he could make him cry uncle and get better.

And then, Lou and the lawsuit.  Joey lost track of him then, because if it fucked Lance up, it fucked him up quietly.  Joey was busy trying to keep Chris from punching holes in hotel walls or Justin from launching himself across the rail during the hearing or JC from looking so goddamn crumpled half the time.  If Lance wanted to sit there and smolder, fine, as long as it was non-violent and healthy smoldering.

And then Joey turned around again, and the green-eyed gawky chubby kid from Mississippi was gone.  Instead, there was lean muscle and lopsided smiles and this eerie ability to lie through his teeth without blinking.  He was the publicist, the business-man, the Hollywood connection.  He looked at everything like the lawyers, polite and ruthless detachment.  The world was funny, the sort of funny where you didn’t laugh so much as smile grimly and build the walls higher.

It’s not a perfect wall.  There are cracks.  Sometimes he still trips and stares at his feet with open disgust.  Sometimes he plays along with them, laughs at Chris’s horrible jokes and thumb wrestles with Joey, plays basketball with Justin, curls up on the couch and watches TV until JC falls asleep on his shoulder.  Sometimes he lets his guard down.  Those are the exception, though.

He does what he has to with them, but beyond that he sits in the back of the bus and stares at the screen of his laptop and ignores them.  Most nights Joey can hear him typing, long after everyone else has given up and collapsed.

So Joey tried to reach him there.

It made perfect sense to do it, but Joey was left awake and staring at the ceiling as he waited for the reaction.  He wasn’t quite sure what he was expecting.  A howl of outrage?  Laughter?  Or maybe, worst, no reaction at all.  Just silence and the heavy weight of those green eyes in the morning.

Joey stared at the red block numbers on the clock, watching them tick towards 11.  He could hear Lance’s footsteps as he began padding down the narrow hallway, right on time as always.  He could hear the chair creak as Lance sat down, the soft click of his laptop being opened, the whir of it coming alive beneath Lance’s fingers.  A moment later, the soft click of Lance’s fingers on the keys began.

Another moment, and they stopped.  Jarringly, abruptly stopped.  Joey thought he could hear Lance breathe.  His heart pounded softly in his ears, mingled with the thrum of the tires on the road, and he realized that he was holding his own breath tight in his throat.

The ritual closed in reverse.  The typing began again, briefly, and only the sudden stop of the laptop’s whir let Joey start breathing again.  The laptop clicked closed.  The footsteps started again, slow and measured as always, and Joey stared at the curtain without blinking, afraid to miss anything, afraid to hope.

Lance’s shadow crossed the curtain and paused.  The second dragged on, long and inevitable and terrible.

Then the curtain parted, and Lance poked his head through.  His eyes were hard to read in the dark, but the lazy laugh in his voice made everything okay.  “I read my schedule for the night.”

“Really.”  Joey tried to make his voice sound casual, but it just made it to choked.

“Yup.  ’11:05, Joey Fatone’s bunk.’”

“Unless you have something better to do.”

“You had an appointment.”  Wood creaked ominously as Lance crawled the rest of the way in to the bunk, ducking his head to avoid hitting the ceiling.  A cut-out of some comic that Chris had given Joey brushed gently against the spikes of Lance’s hair.  “Besides, you’re a top priority client.”

“Oh.  Well, then.”  Joey couldn’t help grinning a touch.  He shifted to let Lance sit between his knees.  Awkward, but manageable.  Dismissable.  Convenient;  their close quarters had let them dismiss so much.  A hand on the back a little too long.  A night spent curled together on the couch.  A kiss in the dark, in a country far from home.

Lance’s hands rested, still and warm, on his thigh.  His voice was a whisper.  Wry, somehow, like he expected another dismissal, another dance.  “So.  What’s your confession?”

Slowly, haltingly, Joey reached up and cupped the back of his neck in one hand.  Drew him down until they were tangled.
***
End.