In All of Creation by withdiamonds
Author: withdiamonds
Video: God Must Have Spent a Little More Time With You.
A Greek chorus is a company of actors who comment by speaking or singing in unison on the action in a classical Greek play. In Ancient Greek theater, all actors wore masks onstage, as did members of the chorus. Besides adding a mystic value to the theater, masks helped to unify the chorus.
“…must have spent a little more time on you, on you, on you, you...”
As the final notes of the song fade away, Lance notices that the table in the corner has been restocked. He sighs with gratitude at the icy cold bottles of water, condensation sliding down the sides, and at the thick roast beef sandwiches piled high on a plate. He’s especially glad to see the stacks of chocolate bars in the middle of the table, and he completely ignores the bowl of fruit hiding behind a giant bag of Cheetos.
A break. Thank God they have a break before they have to start singing again. Lance’s throat is dry and Joey’s getting sloppy, not bothering to stay in key on the chorus anymore.
Far beneath them, close enough that Lance can see every detail, the beautiful dark-haired woman sleeps. Lance knows next to nothing about childbirth, but if this is how long it normally takes, Lance can only send up a silent prayer of thanks that he was born a man.
The five of them crowd around the craft services table, Chris and Joey jostling each other to be the first to grab a handful of candy bars. Justin watches with open envy as he reaches for a sandwich and a bottle of water. Glaring at Lance defiantely, he snatches a candy bar off the pile and goes to sit next to JC, who has an apple in one hand and a banana in the other, a bottle of water clutched tightly between his knees. Lance shrugs. He doesn’t care what Justin eats. He doesn’t believe that chocolate causes zits, but who is he to deny Justin his small act of rebellion.
Lance lowers himself onto the cramped couch next to Joey, leaning his head wearily on Joey’s shoulder. The two of them sit like that, barely moving, while Joey methodically eats his sandwich and Lance sips his water, until Chris says, “She’s awake, you guys.”
Joey pushes to his feet, then turns and offers a hand to Lance, hauling him up easily. “Thanks.” Joey smiles and smoothes his hands down the front of his white jacket, trying to get the worst of the wrinkles out.
They arrange themselves in their usual positions, carefully hitting their marks as the music swells somewhere behind them. Joey perches on the railing, while the rest of them surround the birdbath, or maybe it's a fountain, that stands in the middle of the soundstage. Just before they start to sing again, Chris says, “Hey, I thought this video shoot was only scheduled for one day, man.”
Lance nods. That’s what he thought, too. And then his attention is drawn to the dark-haired woman below as she moans with another contraction. He adds his voice to the song, more to distract himself from the sound than because it’s what he’s supposed be doing.
“…can this be true? Tell me, can this be real? How can I put into words what I feel…”
The kid’s cute, Lance has to admit, even if it did take him forever to make an appearance. The expression on his mother’s face as she gazes down at her newborn son causes Lance to feel a bit misty-eyed, and he can hear emotion resonate in JC’s voice as he sings.
“…my life was complete, I thought I was whole, why do I feel like I’m losing control…”
Lance loses track of time. He thinks it’s probably a lot like his own life, how he doesn’t really remember everything, especially about his early years. He only has vague impressions of his sister’s blonde head peering curiously down at him, or sometimes scrunched up with jealousy and anger. He remembers his mother’s voice as a soothing presence, making him feel safe.
Now it's Joey who makes him feel safe.
They watch the woman play with her son, and they sing as he learns to walk and talk. The little boy breaks into a run and the woman chases after him, scooping him up into her arms, his joyful laugh ringing out merrily in the warm summer air. She pulls laundry off the line, laughing back at him. Lance watches, and sees the beginning of the end, sees the boy become a man and walk away from his mother, as all children do. The sadness and pride of that moment are already reflected in the woman’s eyes as her son pats her face with a chubby hand and she kisses his cheek, pink and freckled from the sun.
Justin looks away with a frown.
Lance hears JC tell Joey that he digs the kid’s hat. Chris snorts and says, “You would, C. What the hell year is this, anyway? Who dresses their kid like that?”
No one has an answer for him.
“…I never thought that love could feel like this, and you changed my world with just one kiss…”
She puts her son down for his afternoon nap and Lance turns expectantly to the table in the corner of the set. Chicken today, and pasta with some kind of tomato sauce. Lance had been hoping for a nice, juicy rib-eye, or maybe a sirloin, but they don’t have steak here very often. He exchanges a disappointed look with Chris as he bypasses the rather soggy looking green beans in favor of a big slice of cheesy garlic bread.
Justin’s plate is piled high with salad. Lance can see that there’s no dressing on it. Justin’s been worried lately because he doesn't have time to work out and he’s afraid of getting out of shape. Even if there was time for him to work out, there's nowhere to do it. Sometimes, when the woman and her child are asleep, Lance can hear Justin trying to jog on the tiny soundstage they inhabit. He runs in small circles around the fountain, measuring miles under his breath, and the sound helps lull Lance to sleep.
Lance and Joey staked out the small couch early on, and they sleep slumped against each other, Joey drooling on Lance’s shoulder, Lance’s hand curled tight on Joey’s thigh. Sometimes Lance catches Chris throwing sharp glances their way, but he doesn’t know if it’s because of the possessive weight of Joey’s arm around Lance’s waist or because the chair Chris claimed for himself is both lumpy and hard-backed.
Justin and JC sleep curled up together in a nest in the corner made from the cushions off the back of the couch and a half-dozen tablecloths they’ve managed to slip unnoticed from the craft services table.
Justin uses their downtime to exercise, while JC uses it to practice the song. He runs through the choreography again and again, singing quietly to himself. “…more precious than any diamond or pearls…”
“C,” Lance says gently one night. “I think you’ve got it down pretty perfect by now, man. You should try and get some sleep while you can.”
JC shakes his head stubbornly. “…they broke the mold when you came in this world,” he sings.
Justin comes up behind Lance, laying a hand on his shoulder, watching JC critically. “We’re going on location soon, Lance. There’ll be other people around, watching us. It has to be perfect. We have to do a good job.” He nods. “That’s it, C. I think that part’s okay, but be careful when you come in on and I’m trying hard to figure out…”
Lance watches for a moment as Justin is drawn into the steps of the dance, side-by-side with JC, biting his lip as he concentrates, then he leaves them alone. He goes back to Joey, waiting for him on the couch. Joey wraps warm arms around Lance and holds him until he stops shivering.
“Justin says we’re going on location soon,” Lance whispers. Joey hmms non-committally in his ear.
“Joey, do you think-”
Joey tightens his arms and Lance stops talking. “Go to sleep, Lance,” he murmurs. Lance closes his eyes obediently.
Lance likes it when they go on location. The fresh air and sunshine of the baseball diamond are a nice change from the stuffy soundstage. He eyes the horizon thoughtfully, wondering what’s beyond the peaceful looking houses that ring the outfield. He thinks about what might happen if they just started walking.
Beside him, Chris shakes his head and Lance watches his braids bounce back and forth. “Classic case of fear of the unknown, Lance. At least here, we’re together.” He watches Justin chase JC around the bases and smiles beatifically. “It’s not such a bad gig, really.”
"...how can it be that right here with me, there’s an angel? It’s a miracle..."
But once the game starts, they disappear. It’s disorienting, one minute they’re on set, looking down at the crowd and watching the boy’s team lose, and the next, they’re alone in the bleachers, singing to no one. Lance sees faces shimmering in the corner of his eye every time the group fades in and out of view. By the time the boy hits a homerun and his team wins, Justin is so frustrated he’s almost in tears.
“…in all of creation, all things great and small, you are the one that surpasses them all…” JC puts everything he has into that line, every time he sings it, but today his intensity is a little unsettling.
Lance is tired of looking at Justin's stormy face by the time the stage lights go off for the night. He can hear Justin whispering to JC in their corner, his words agitated, grating on Lance's nerves. JC’s soothing murmurs rise over the sound of Chris’s snores and finally there’s a quiet laugh, the rustle of clothing, and a stifled moan and Lance stops listening. He turns his attention to Joey, whose face is buried in Lance’s neck.
“Poor Justin,” Lance says, but he doesn't really mean it.
Joey snorts quietly, a soft huff of breath against Lance’s skin. “He likes being seen.”
“But I thought…” Lance trails off, thinking about audiences, visible and invisible. He shifts uneasily and Joey palms his hip, fingertips brushing the small of his back. Lance moves closer, tugging at one of Joey’s earrings with his teeth, and forgets about their unknown audience.
"...and I'm trying hard to figure out, just how I ever did without, the warmth of your smile, the heart of a child, that's deep inside, leaves me purified..."
JC's been moody recently, fighting with Justin and ignoring the rest of them. Lance overhears him with Chris, talking furiously in a low voice.
"Your mom did it. Lynn, too. She's doing it." He points to the woman sleeping beneath them, a picture drawn in the boy's childish hand tucked halfway under her pillow. She clutches it protectively, even in sleep. "Why couldn't my mother? She just gave up," he says, his voice rough with pain.
Lance can't make out Chris's response, but he sees guilt on JC's face and hears the words Karen and Roy. JC’s quiet again after that.
"...and I’m trying hard to figure out, just how I ever did without, the warmth of your smile, the heart of a child that’s deep inside, leaves me purified..."
Chris starts studying the details of the woman's house, looking for signs of a man, Lance thinks. He stares at pictures on the walls, tries to read her letters over her shoulder on the rare occasions when she receives one, peers into her closets. But some details are just too far away for them to see, although Lance can make out the tiny laugh lines around the woman's eyes and the freckles on the boy's nose.
Chris mutters to himself about deadbeat dads and absentee fathers, glaring at Justin when he lists all the possible reasons for the woman to be on her own with her son, reasons why there's no man there.
"I don't care, Justin," Chris argues fiercely, jabbing a finger at him as they settle themselves around the birdbath.
Lance ignores them. The woman is doing fine on her own, and these are not Lance's issues. He rolls his eyes at Justin, who smiles down at the woman as she helps the boy with his homework, and shakes his head at Chris's useless anger.
"...how can I put into words what I feel? My life was complete, I thought I was whole..."
"Okay," Justin says. "I know I haven't finished high school yet, but I'm confused as fuck. What the hell war is this, anyway?"
Lance thinks the kid looks kind of hot in his uniform. He wonders if that's weird, to think that about someone he's watched grow up, someone whose life he's witnessed every waking moment of.
He glances down at his own clothes. He stopped worrying a long time ago about why their pretty white suits never seem to get dirty. It used to bother him, he used to be curious, but now he doesn't remember why he thought it was important.
That night, Justin and JC practice for hours. Chris doesn't sleep either, and Lance can hear him fidgeting restlessly in his chair. Even Joey is excited, and he presses Lance down into the couch, sucking a bruise over his collar bone, thrusting against his hip.
They're going on location again, Justin says, and this time he's convinced they'll have a live audience. Lance thinks maybe they've had one all along, but he doesn't say that out loud.
Justin is right. The boy is at a club, and NSYNC is the night's entertainment. Justin preens for the oblivious soldiers and their sweethearts, wrapped in each other's arms as they dance, lost in each other's eyes. JC sings better than Lance has ever heard him, tears in his eyes as he sings the worn, familiar words yet again.
"...your love is like a river, peaceful and deep, your soul is like a secret that I never could keep..."
Lance watches impassively as the boy's girlfriend cries when he tells her he's leaving for The War. Lance is sure she loves him, but she's only known him for a short time. It's the boy's mother Lance feels sorrow for. The boy is all she has, and knowing he's leaving her, that he's going somewhere foreign, somewhere she can't reach him, makes Lance sing with more emotion than usual.
Too soon for Justin's liking, they're back on their soundstage. Lance places his mask on the floor next to Joey's as they settle in for the night. Joey's warm hands slide down his back and come to rest possessively on his ass, pulling him close.
The passage of time is something Lance finds himself unable to mark with any accuracy, but when the boy leaves to fight, they stay with the woman.
In the beginning, Lance thought they were guardian angels, watching over the boy, but he's known for a long time that's not true. He thinks of his mother, and how she let him go when he was sixteen years old, let him go stay with strangers in exchange for nothing more than the promise of success. He knows how hard that was for her, and he sees her in the expression in the woman's eyes.
"...when I look into your eyes I know that it’s true, God must have spent...a little more time on you..."
The woman is frantic without her son, checking for mail several times a day, and Lance tries to distract himself from her fear. Joey makes faces at him behind JC, rolling his eyes at how much JC emotes when he sings, still, even after all this time, going to his knees, his fists clenched with passion. But then Lance starts to worry. Why hasn't the boy written, if not to his girlfriend, then at least to his mother? The grief on her face haunts Lance's dreams.
The two women comfort each other, the mother's face softened with age, the pretty blonde girl glowing with youth beside her. Lance wonders if he should have called his mom more often from the road, sent more emails, something, or if it was enough for her just to know he was happy.
He understands that he thinks of his life in the past tense, and he wonders when he started doing that. He stopped struggling a long time ago, and he can barely remember the nights he spent shaking with loss, spilling tears of grief on Joey's shoulder. His other life, his real life, is clear and sharp in his mind, but the need to hold on to it is becoming less urgent, especially when Joey's hands move over him, making him forget. He knows he can't have this, Joey hard and slick inside him, his words hot on the back of Lance's neck, anyplace other than here.
"...your love is like a river, peaceful and deep, your soul is like a secret that I never could keep..."
A man in uniform walks up the sidewalk to the woman's front door. She's afraid to answer his knock, Lance knows. He almost stops singing as the woman's fear clutches at him. He can barely breathe.
Lance realizes the boy is home at the same instant the woman does, and his voice bursts from his throat with joy, soaring like it never has before.
"...how can it be that right here with me there’s an angel? It’s a miracle..."
Lance thinks he's the only one who really remembers, but he sees the changes.
He sees Justin stare at the crowd, trying to gauge the size of the audience. He'll never be satisfied, no matter how many people watch him perform, and Lance is waiting for the day he's no longer willing to share.
Lance watches the scenery roll by the bus window and thinks about the mask hidden at the bottom of his duffel bag.
Joey's sitting at his side, their shoulders bumping as the bus jolts over the highway, but Lance knows he can't put his hand on Joey's thigh, can't slide it slowly up the seam of his jeans and touch him the way he's almost shaking with the need to do.
So he lets their shoulders touch instead and clenches his hands into fists to keep them still. And he wonders if he's the only one with a mask hidden away
He thinks about what could happen if he pulled the mask out and put it on.
He thinks about possibilities.
Video: God Must Have Spent a Little More Time With You.
A Greek chorus is a company of actors who comment by speaking or singing in unison on the action in a classical Greek play. In Ancient Greek theater, all actors wore masks onstage, as did members of the chorus. Besides adding a mystic value to the theater, masks helped to unify the chorus.
“…must have spent a little more time on you, on you, on you, you...”
As the final notes of the song fade away, Lance notices that the table in the corner has been restocked. He sighs with gratitude at the icy cold bottles of water, condensation sliding down the sides, and at the thick roast beef sandwiches piled high on a plate. He’s especially glad to see the stacks of chocolate bars in the middle of the table, and he completely ignores the bowl of fruit hiding behind a giant bag of Cheetos.
A break. Thank God they have a break before they have to start singing again. Lance’s throat is dry and Joey’s getting sloppy, not bothering to stay in key on the chorus anymore.
Far beneath them, close enough that Lance can see every detail, the beautiful dark-haired woman sleeps. Lance knows next to nothing about childbirth, but if this is how long it normally takes, Lance can only send up a silent prayer of thanks that he was born a man.
The five of them crowd around the craft services table, Chris and Joey jostling each other to be the first to grab a handful of candy bars. Justin watches with open envy as he reaches for a sandwich and a bottle of water. Glaring at Lance defiantely, he snatches a candy bar off the pile and goes to sit next to JC, who has an apple in one hand and a banana in the other, a bottle of water clutched tightly between his knees. Lance shrugs. He doesn’t care what Justin eats. He doesn’t believe that chocolate causes zits, but who is he to deny Justin his small act of rebellion.
Lance lowers himself onto the cramped couch next to Joey, leaning his head wearily on Joey’s shoulder. The two of them sit like that, barely moving, while Joey methodically eats his sandwich and Lance sips his water, until Chris says, “She’s awake, you guys.”
Joey pushes to his feet, then turns and offers a hand to Lance, hauling him up easily. “Thanks.” Joey smiles and smoothes his hands down the front of his white jacket, trying to get the worst of the wrinkles out.
They arrange themselves in their usual positions, carefully hitting their marks as the music swells somewhere behind them. Joey perches on the railing, while the rest of them surround the birdbath, or maybe it's a fountain, that stands in the middle of the soundstage. Just before they start to sing again, Chris says, “Hey, I thought this video shoot was only scheduled for one day, man.”
Lance nods. That’s what he thought, too. And then his attention is drawn to the dark-haired woman below as she moans with another contraction. He adds his voice to the song, more to distract himself from the sound than because it’s what he’s supposed be doing.
“…can this be true? Tell me, can this be real? How can I put into words what I feel…”
The kid’s cute, Lance has to admit, even if it did take him forever to make an appearance. The expression on his mother’s face as she gazes down at her newborn son causes Lance to feel a bit misty-eyed, and he can hear emotion resonate in JC’s voice as he sings.
“…my life was complete, I thought I was whole, why do I feel like I’m losing control…”
Lance loses track of time. He thinks it’s probably a lot like his own life, how he doesn’t really remember everything, especially about his early years. He only has vague impressions of his sister’s blonde head peering curiously down at him, or sometimes scrunched up with jealousy and anger. He remembers his mother’s voice as a soothing presence, making him feel safe.
Now it's Joey who makes him feel safe.
They watch the woman play with her son, and they sing as he learns to walk and talk. The little boy breaks into a run and the woman chases after him, scooping him up into her arms, his joyful laugh ringing out merrily in the warm summer air. She pulls laundry off the line, laughing back at him. Lance watches, and sees the beginning of the end, sees the boy become a man and walk away from his mother, as all children do. The sadness and pride of that moment are already reflected in the woman’s eyes as her son pats her face with a chubby hand and she kisses his cheek, pink and freckled from the sun.
Justin looks away with a frown.
Lance hears JC tell Joey that he digs the kid’s hat. Chris snorts and says, “You would, C. What the hell year is this, anyway? Who dresses their kid like that?”
No one has an answer for him.
“…I never thought that love could feel like this, and you changed my world with just one kiss…”
She puts her son down for his afternoon nap and Lance turns expectantly to the table in the corner of the set. Chicken today, and pasta with some kind of tomato sauce. Lance had been hoping for a nice, juicy rib-eye, or maybe a sirloin, but they don’t have steak here very often. He exchanges a disappointed look with Chris as he bypasses the rather soggy looking green beans in favor of a big slice of cheesy garlic bread.
Justin’s plate is piled high with salad. Lance can see that there’s no dressing on it. Justin’s been worried lately because he doesn't have time to work out and he’s afraid of getting out of shape. Even if there was time for him to work out, there's nowhere to do it. Sometimes, when the woman and her child are asleep, Lance can hear Justin trying to jog on the tiny soundstage they inhabit. He runs in small circles around the fountain, measuring miles under his breath, and the sound helps lull Lance to sleep.
Lance and Joey staked out the small couch early on, and they sleep slumped against each other, Joey drooling on Lance’s shoulder, Lance’s hand curled tight on Joey’s thigh. Sometimes Lance catches Chris throwing sharp glances their way, but he doesn’t know if it’s because of the possessive weight of Joey’s arm around Lance’s waist or because the chair Chris claimed for himself is both lumpy and hard-backed.
Justin and JC sleep curled up together in a nest in the corner made from the cushions off the back of the couch and a half-dozen tablecloths they’ve managed to slip unnoticed from the craft services table.
Justin uses their downtime to exercise, while JC uses it to practice the song. He runs through the choreography again and again, singing quietly to himself. “…more precious than any diamond or pearls…”
“C,” Lance says gently one night. “I think you’ve got it down pretty perfect by now, man. You should try and get some sleep while you can.”
JC shakes his head stubbornly. “…they broke the mold when you came in this world,” he sings.
Justin comes up behind Lance, laying a hand on his shoulder, watching JC critically. “We’re going on location soon, Lance. There’ll be other people around, watching us. It has to be perfect. We have to do a good job.” He nods. “That’s it, C. I think that part’s okay, but be careful when you come in on and I’m trying hard to figure out…”
Lance watches for a moment as Justin is drawn into the steps of the dance, side-by-side with JC, biting his lip as he concentrates, then he leaves them alone. He goes back to Joey, waiting for him on the couch. Joey wraps warm arms around Lance and holds him until he stops shivering.
“Justin says we’re going on location soon,” Lance whispers. Joey hmms non-committally in his ear.
“Joey, do you think-”
Joey tightens his arms and Lance stops talking. “Go to sleep, Lance,” he murmurs. Lance closes his eyes obediently.
Lance likes it when they go on location. The fresh air and sunshine of the baseball diamond are a nice change from the stuffy soundstage. He eyes the horizon thoughtfully, wondering what’s beyond the peaceful looking houses that ring the outfield. He thinks about what might happen if they just started walking.
Beside him, Chris shakes his head and Lance watches his braids bounce back and forth. “Classic case of fear of the unknown, Lance. At least here, we’re together.” He watches Justin chase JC around the bases and smiles beatifically. “It’s not such a bad gig, really.”
"...how can it be that right here with me, there’s an angel? It’s a miracle..."
But once the game starts, they disappear. It’s disorienting, one minute they’re on set, looking down at the crowd and watching the boy’s team lose, and the next, they’re alone in the bleachers, singing to no one. Lance sees faces shimmering in the corner of his eye every time the group fades in and out of view. By the time the boy hits a homerun and his team wins, Justin is so frustrated he’s almost in tears.
“…in all of creation, all things great and small, you are the one that surpasses them all…” JC puts everything he has into that line, every time he sings it, but today his intensity is a little unsettling.
Lance is tired of looking at Justin's stormy face by the time the stage lights go off for the night. He can hear Justin whispering to JC in their corner, his words agitated, grating on Lance's nerves. JC’s soothing murmurs rise over the sound of Chris’s snores and finally there’s a quiet laugh, the rustle of clothing, and a stifled moan and Lance stops listening. He turns his attention to Joey, whose face is buried in Lance’s neck.
“Poor Justin,” Lance says, but he doesn't really mean it.
Joey snorts quietly, a soft huff of breath against Lance’s skin. “He likes being seen.”
“But I thought…” Lance trails off, thinking about audiences, visible and invisible. He shifts uneasily and Joey palms his hip, fingertips brushing the small of his back. Lance moves closer, tugging at one of Joey’s earrings with his teeth, and forgets about their unknown audience.
"...and I'm trying hard to figure out, just how I ever did without, the warmth of your smile, the heart of a child, that's deep inside, leaves me purified..."
JC's been moody recently, fighting with Justin and ignoring the rest of them. Lance overhears him with Chris, talking furiously in a low voice.
"Your mom did it. Lynn, too. She's doing it." He points to the woman sleeping beneath them, a picture drawn in the boy's childish hand tucked halfway under her pillow. She clutches it protectively, even in sleep. "Why couldn't my mother? She just gave up," he says, his voice rough with pain.
Lance can't make out Chris's response, but he sees guilt on JC's face and hears the words Karen and Roy. JC’s quiet again after that.
"...and I’m trying hard to figure out, just how I ever did without, the warmth of your smile, the heart of a child that’s deep inside, leaves me purified..."
Chris starts studying the details of the woman's house, looking for signs of a man, Lance thinks. He stares at pictures on the walls, tries to read her letters over her shoulder on the rare occasions when she receives one, peers into her closets. But some details are just too far away for them to see, although Lance can make out the tiny laugh lines around the woman's eyes and the freckles on the boy's nose.
Chris mutters to himself about deadbeat dads and absentee fathers, glaring at Justin when he lists all the possible reasons for the woman to be on her own with her son, reasons why there's no man there.
"I don't care, Justin," Chris argues fiercely, jabbing a finger at him as they settle themselves around the birdbath.
Lance ignores them. The woman is doing fine on her own, and these are not Lance's issues. He rolls his eyes at Justin, who smiles down at the woman as she helps the boy with his homework, and shakes his head at Chris's useless anger.
"...how can I put into words what I feel? My life was complete, I thought I was whole..."
"Okay," Justin says. "I know I haven't finished high school yet, but I'm confused as fuck. What the hell war is this, anyway?"
Lance thinks the kid looks kind of hot in his uniform. He wonders if that's weird, to think that about someone he's watched grow up, someone whose life he's witnessed every waking moment of.
He glances down at his own clothes. He stopped worrying a long time ago about why their pretty white suits never seem to get dirty. It used to bother him, he used to be curious, but now he doesn't remember why he thought it was important.
That night, Justin and JC practice for hours. Chris doesn't sleep either, and Lance can hear him fidgeting restlessly in his chair. Even Joey is excited, and he presses Lance down into the couch, sucking a bruise over his collar bone, thrusting against his hip.
They're going on location again, Justin says, and this time he's convinced they'll have a live audience. Lance thinks maybe they've had one all along, but he doesn't say that out loud.
Justin is right. The boy is at a club, and NSYNC is the night's entertainment. Justin preens for the oblivious soldiers and their sweethearts, wrapped in each other's arms as they dance, lost in each other's eyes. JC sings better than Lance has ever heard him, tears in his eyes as he sings the worn, familiar words yet again.
"...your love is like a river, peaceful and deep, your soul is like a secret that I never could keep..."
Lance watches impassively as the boy's girlfriend cries when he tells her he's leaving for The War. Lance is sure she loves him, but she's only known him for a short time. It's the boy's mother Lance feels sorrow for. The boy is all she has, and knowing he's leaving her, that he's going somewhere foreign, somewhere she can't reach him, makes Lance sing with more emotion than usual.
Too soon for Justin's liking, they're back on their soundstage. Lance places his mask on the floor next to Joey's as they settle in for the night. Joey's warm hands slide down his back and come to rest possessively on his ass, pulling him close.
The passage of time is something Lance finds himself unable to mark with any accuracy, but when the boy leaves to fight, they stay with the woman.
In the beginning, Lance thought they were guardian angels, watching over the boy, but he's known for a long time that's not true. He thinks of his mother, and how she let him go when he was sixteen years old, let him go stay with strangers in exchange for nothing more than the promise of success. He knows how hard that was for her, and he sees her in the expression in the woman's eyes.
"...when I look into your eyes I know that it’s true, God must have spent...a little more time on you..."
The woman is frantic without her son, checking for mail several times a day, and Lance tries to distract himself from her fear. Joey makes faces at him behind JC, rolling his eyes at how much JC emotes when he sings, still, even after all this time, going to his knees, his fists clenched with passion. But then Lance starts to worry. Why hasn't the boy written, if not to his girlfriend, then at least to his mother? The grief on her face haunts Lance's dreams.
The two women comfort each other, the mother's face softened with age, the pretty blonde girl glowing with youth beside her. Lance wonders if he should have called his mom more often from the road, sent more emails, something, or if it was enough for her just to know he was happy.
He understands that he thinks of his life in the past tense, and he wonders when he started doing that. He stopped struggling a long time ago, and he can barely remember the nights he spent shaking with loss, spilling tears of grief on Joey's shoulder. His other life, his real life, is clear and sharp in his mind, but the need to hold on to it is becoming less urgent, especially when Joey's hands move over him, making him forget. He knows he can't have this, Joey hard and slick inside him, his words hot on the back of Lance's neck, anyplace other than here.
"...your love is like a river, peaceful and deep, your soul is like a secret that I never could keep..."
A man in uniform walks up the sidewalk to the woman's front door. She's afraid to answer his knock, Lance knows. He almost stops singing as the woman's fear clutches at him. He can barely breathe.
Lance realizes the boy is home at the same instant the woman does, and his voice bursts from his throat with joy, soaring like it never has before.
"...how can it be that right here with me there’s an angel? It’s a miracle..."
Lance thinks he's the only one who really remembers, but he sees the changes.
He sees Justin stare at the crowd, trying to gauge the size of the audience. He'll never be satisfied, no matter how many people watch him perform, and Lance is waiting for the day he's no longer willing to share.
Lance watches the scenery roll by the bus window and thinks about the mask hidden at the bottom of his duffel bag.
Joey's sitting at his side, their shoulders bumping as the bus jolts over the highway, but Lance knows he can't put his hand on Joey's thigh, can't slide it slowly up the seam of his jeans and touch him the way he's almost shaking with the need to do.
So he lets their shoulders touch instead and clenches his hands into fists to keep them still. And he wonders if he's the only one with a mask hidden away
He thinks about what could happen if he pulled the mask out and put it on.
He thinks about possibilities.