Honeybee 3/5 (popslash, Lance/Nick)

[marythefan]

"Why is VH1 calling to ask if I'm the new Backstreet Boy?"

"What?" Nick stands on Lance's doorstep, plastic grocery bag in hand, looking baffled.

"VH1 called to ask if I was taking Kevin's place on this album."

"What, do they have you on speed-dial or something?" Nick follows Lance inside, closing the front door as Lance heads back into the kitchen.

"Well, not me, personally." Lance would have given good money to see Beth's face when she called this morning to tell him about it, actually.

Nick pauses halfway in the refrigerator, putting away a couple of containers of ... is that potato salad? Lance cranes his head around to get a look at it.

"Did you buy potato salad?" he asks.

"Yeah," Nick says. "In case anything goes wrong. Not that I'm dissing your cooking skills, or anything. Just, you know. In case."

"We're not taking something you bought at the store," Lance says, scowling at his bowl of pasta. He's already got the asparagus steamed and chopped, but he's not sure whether he should slice the cherry tomatoes in half.

"OK, fine, Emeril."

"Don't start."

"Whatever."

They've already had this argument - three times - Nick insisting something from the store would be just fine, God, Bass, it's just a cookout, and anyway AJ was already going to have enough food for twice as many people as would be there. But Lance is pretty sure Nick's guys at least suspect something about them, if they don't already know. And JC is going to be there from Lance's side, and Lance knows he knows. JC called Joey three times asking suspicious questions like he was some kind of stealth superspy - as if Joey wasn't going to turn right around and call Lance about it, anyway - before he dragged Lance out one night for one of those dinners where the silences said more than the words. So, yeah. Their guys know, or at least suspect, but they've never actually seen them together, and Lance isn't showing up for the first time of that with a couple of containers of stupid store-brand macaroni salad, or something, in hand. Not with Kevin Richardson there. Not with Howie Dorough there.

Anyway, JC will appreciate fancy homemade pasta salad, even if no one else does. Lance sort of wishes he'd dropped the $45 on the bottle of wine that should go with it, especially after he spent half an hour talking to the clerk at the store about the ingredients, but he can't quite shake the feeling that he shouldn't take alcohol to AJ's house, no matter how many times Nick tells him AJ's OK with other people drinking around him.

"The new Backstreet Boy, huh?" Nick leans against the refrigerator door, arms crossed, and Lance doesn't look at the tilt of his newly narrow hips, really. "That's ... huh. That's not the way I would have thought that would go."

"What, did you think nobody official was ever going to start asking questions about how much time we're spending together?" Lance stabs at a tomato. "It's not like some people haven't already been saying stuff online."

It'd started off as a mention here and there, of course - mainly celebrity-sighting items popping up a couple of times after a recent shopping trip or when they were out at a club one night, noting the latest boyband détente. Their shared background's insulated Nick from some of the speculation, of course - and longer than Lance really expected. But it's on a predictable, familiar course, one that Lance recognizes. Already there are a couple of people wondering out loud if ... well, if exactly what's going on, is actually going on. Lance spends the first hour of his morning online every other day with a knot in his stomach, prowling old "favorite" sites that aren't really favorites, wondering when it's going to jump from being wild speculation to being mere speculation, and trying to figure out why he ever thought sleeping with someone in the closet was a good idea. It's almost enough to give him some sympathy for Reichen.

Almost.

"I didn't think that's what they would come up with." Nick holds up both hands in an "I'm harmless" gesture when Lance shoots him a look. "What? You don't think I actually told anybody that, do you?"

That's half the problem, of course - Lance isn't sure what Nick is going to say about them, or if he's even thinking about it.

"Make yourself useful," he tells Nick, pointing the knife at him. "There's green onions and parsley in that bag over there. If you can make ceviche and keep all your fingers, you don't get to pretend you can't use a knife."

"We don't have to do all this, you know," Nick says.

"We're not taking something you bought at the store, Carter."

Nick appropriates one end of Lance's cutting board, standing close enough to make Lance pricklingly aware of his body heat, with enough distance to give them both a little bit of elbow room.

"It makes a weird kind of sense, I suppose?" he finally says as he slices. "I mean ... do you ever think about recording again? Do you want to?"

"I ... what?" Lance says, putting down his knife. "You ... I know you're not asking me to join your group."

"No," Nick says, nudging him with an elbow. "But, you know. Do you ever miss it? You used to talk about it a lot. I mean, you guys could do a four-man thing, too. You'd even still have a fuller sound than we do."

It almost looks like it doesn't hurt him to admit that, Lance thinks.

"I ... no," is what he says.

Of course he's thought about it, but it's not something he wants to talk about, particularly with Nick, who's still singing with his guys. It's not something JC or Chris will consider, not without Justin, and Lance isn't willing to push any further with them.

It's too late, now, anyway.

"No," he says again, falling back on JC's words. "It wouldn't be ... right. Not with just four of us."

"Yeah, that's what AJ says JC said." Nick's poking at his piles of chopped greens, shoving them around on the cutting board. "But ... I mean, if they've made you think that, what do you think about me and Brian and AJ and Howie?"

"They haven't made me think anything," Lance says, carefully, stepping back and wiping a hand on his shorts. "Can we not talk about this?"

"Yeah, I just ... Sorry. Where do these go? In here?"

"Not yet. Wait a minute." Lance scrapes the tomatoes into the bowl and tries to ignore the way Nick's fidgeting uncomfortably behind him. "There's a jar of roasted peppers in the fridge. Can you get them out? Oh, hey. And the feta while you're in there."

He's tossing pasta and tomatoes and asparagus together when Nick comes back with the peppers and cheese, still looking downcast.

"Look," Lance says, taking the package of feta from him. "What do you want me to say? That the whole thing was stupid and it sucked and it pissed me off and I blamed Justin, because he left me .. left us ... because he left us hanging? I've got a copy of my book you can read if you want to hear it again. I'm over it. Everything's cool. I just don't want to have to defend the whole thing. So. Can we just not do this? Please? I've got pasta salad to worry about. Slice those up for me."

"I wish you'd stop worrying about this so much," Nick says, grimacing as he tries to open the jar of red peppers. "It doesn't have to be this big ...." he waves his hands around, "... deal. I can't get this open. Where's a spoon?"

"We're not taking something you bought at the store," Lance says. "Where's the jar opener?"

"I don't know. Where's a spoon?"

"Just use a clean one," Lance says, crumbling cheese over the bowl and shifting to let Nick get a teaspoon out of the drawer at his hip.

"In there?" Nick asks, gesturing, once he's popped the lid and sliced some of the peppers.

"Yeah," Lance says, pushing everything into the bowl as Nick tips the cutting board over it.

Their fingers slide together in the olive oil from the peppers, and Nick traces a finger over Lance's knuckles. He raises an eyebrow when Lance looks up at him.

"Stop that," Lance says, corners of his mouth quirking. "Go get me the dressing out of that bag over there. Wash your hands first!"

Nick starts laughing when he pulls out the bottle of dressing.

"Oh, we can't take anything from the store but you're going to cheat and use a bottle of Italian dressing you got from the store to make your fancy-schmancey pasta salad?" he says, giggling.

"Shut up, Carter," Lance says, trapped wrist-deep in pasta. It's the only thing saving Nick from a smack at this point, he's pretty sure.

"I know, I know," Nick says, setting down the bottle on the counter beside Lance. "We're not taking anything I bought from the store. I really just wish you'd stop worrying so much, you know?"

He combs his fingers through Lance hair, cups his cheek and tries to smooth out the furrow between Lance's brows with his thumb before leaning in and kissing him. Lance flails around with one slick hand, only just stopping himself from wrapping it around Nick's wrist as Nick licks into his mouth.

"Why are you so laid back about this?" he asks, when Nick pulls away. "I mean, all the guys are going to know about us after this. Not just your guys. Mine, too. You aren't concerned at all? About what they're going to think?"

There's an unreadable look on Nick's face as he steps back - it's one Lance has seen before, but he can't quite place it - and he turns to look out the French doors, past the pool, back turned to Lance.

"Why is that such a problem for you?" he asks, finally, as Lance tries to wash dressing off his hands. "I just ... I don't see why it's such a problem, them knowing we're together?"

"I don't ... It's not a problem for me," Lance says, poking in the bowl with a fork. "I just want to be sure you're OK with it. And here, taste this."

Nick narrows his eyes at the forkful of pasta salad but opens his mouth obediently, screwing his face up as he chews.

"What?" Lance says. "No. It's not bad, is it?"

"I think I need to try to some more to be sure," Nick says, taking the fork from him. "Like, maybe a bowl of it. Just to be absolutely positive. Maybe two."

•••

Lance sits with the Boys on a plane to Malaysia, but there are too many other people for him and Nick to do anything except behave themselves. Mostly.

"I'm the boyfriend of the star," he says in response to AJ's raised eyebrow when he appears at the terminal, and Brian has a sudden coughing fit.

It's not true - well, not entirely. Lance and Joey are scheduled for some of their star-dancing schtick as emcees during part of the benefit music festival, so he's not just there as Nick's secret arm candy, but Nick buries his nose in Lance's neck, and Lance thinks he can feel Nick's smile against his skin before he almost bowls both of them over, staggering and stumbling.

Howie shows up late and disheveled, and Nick and AJ flutter their eyelashes at him and swoon, and AJ says "Oh, Howard" in a gravely sex voice and leans his head on Howie's shoulder before Howie pushes him off, laughing, and calls him a dumbass. Nick bounces over to Brian, and Lance stands with his hands in his pockets, grin in place, feeling Howie's gaze heavy between his shoulder blades and thinking about Ford.

Ford always felt like Stacey's first real boyfriend to Lance, because he was already her boyfriend when she brought him home with her, the first time any of the family met him. He wasn't like all the boyfriends before that, who Lance and his parents already knew because they were Stacey's lab partner or her best friend's boyfriend's best friend or even because they were guys Lance's mom had taught math to in eighth grade. Ford wasn't like the guys who already had a space and a role and suddenly had to be shifted into this new space that never seemed quite real because they never quite fit. Ford was a grown-up boyfriend, someone their family had never seen shoot soda out of his nose at Stacey's twelfth birthday party or take out one of the bushes beside the garage because he was just getting the hang of driving. So it was no surprise to Lance that Ford was the one Stacey ended up keeping.

The thought doesn't make Lance feel very comfortable right now, really. He's afraid he's Stevie Lane in this scenario - Stevie, who'd never managed to graduate up to Steve, even in high school, and who always had to endure gentle jibes from Lance's mom about his math skills when he came over to pick Stacey up on Saturday nights.

On the plane, Nick falls over on Lance's shoulder, finally worn out. They're barely in the air before he's asleep, and Brian puts a blanket over him, gives Lance a smile. Lance ignores Howie's assessing gaze. Mostly.

He's able to hook his pinkie around Nick's under cover of the blanket where it falls over his thigh.

Later, he wakes up to find Nick gone. He asks the flight attendant for a Diet Coke before he stands up and stretches and wanders to the front of the plane. Nick's hanging outside the bathroom, and Lance hopes he isn't going to get asked to join the mile-high club, not in an airplane toilet, because, ew. The smell in those things is way too gross. He wouldn't mind on a charter plane, and he resolutely does not think about the pictures he's seen of the bed on that plane the Boys used for the Around the World junket, or about the opportunities it would have presented.

As he reaches the front of the plane, he realizes Nick's not hanging outside the bathroom - he's hanging outside the galley, talking to a flight attendant who's poking through one of the bins on the wall, used plastic cups and empty soda cans neglected on the counter beside her. His voice is low and sweet, a cajoling cadence Lance recognizes from stolen kisses, always accompanied by guileless eyes and a hint of wickedness to his grin. The flight attendant - she's young, Lance notices, and tiny, with a mass of dark hair swept up and pinned in a simple, elegant twist - throws back her head and laughs at something Nick's said, too low for Lance to make out the words, and Nick cups her elbow as she puts her hand on his arm, shaking her head in a way Lance knows means "yes," because really, who can say "no" to Nick when he looks at you like that?

Lance nods at him, squeezes into the bathroom, locks the door. He can hear the murmur of the flight attendant's voice and Nick's answering laugh. "I know, right?" he hears Nick say, and he studies himself in the mirror, telling himself he's pathetic. It's just image - even if Nick's always been more about the girls than the boys, Lance and Howie notwithstanding. But really, if Lance wanted to deal with this particular insecurity, there's always JC and his hit-or-miss sexuality. He smiles fiercely and toothily into the mirror and tells himself he won't spill his drink on this particular flygirl.

When he gets back to his seat, Nick's stolen the window view, so Lance steals Nick's blanket, wrapping it around himself and closing his eyes as if he's going back to sleep. He feels Nick's fingers curl around his where he's clutching the blanket, pressing something into his palm, and when he opens his eyes and looks down, it's an extra package of peanuts, honey roasted.

He slides it into his pocket and curls up facing Nick, knee pressed into one solid thigh, tucked close enough to breath in the fading scent of laundry detergent on Nick's Goonies T-shirt.

He's supposed to eat with Joe and Kelly as soon as he lands and can get a shower; Joey meets him at the airport, where Nick and the Boys get whisked off to the venue to take an early look at where they'll be performing. For a while, it felt strange to be hauling his luggage through airports with Joey the only other guy as his side. Now, it feels normal. What's strange is to be hauling his baggage through an airport with Joey at his side and not have his goddaughter clinging to one of his hands, taking up most of his attention.

In the cab, he finds himself worrying the small foil bag of peanuts in his pocket, and he pulls it out and smoothes the crumpled package absently as Joey tells him about dinner last night, which involved some kind of impromptu mambo and a near disaster with an entree that left Kym mortified and Kelly rolling her eyes.

"You gonna eat that?" Joey asks, and Lance looks down at the package, half-surprised.

"Yeah? I guess."

"Won't be hungry later."

"Thanks, dad," Lance says.

What he's thinking is, maybe that's OK.

•••

Lance doesn't even bother to look at the display when his phone rings, he just flips it open.

"Hi, JC," he says.

"Let me talk to Joey," JC says.

"If you wanted to spend the day with us, you could have just come along, you know," Lance says before handing the phone across the front seat to Joe.

So far, JC has called, like, 50 times, today - OK, no, that's an exaggeration, Lance supposes, but not much of one. He called when they were at lunch, just after the salsa and chips were finished but before the fully-loaded cheeseburgers could get there. He called while Joey and Nick were battling it out at Action Girlz Racing on the Wii display at Toys R Us and again while they were battling it out over the last Max Steel action figure - they claimed it was for Briahna or Baylee, but Lance doesn't really believe either of them. The phone buzzed in Lance's pocket, set on silent mode, while they were in the movie theater, Joey digging his elbow into Lance's ribs and giggling like a 12-year-old girl while Nick's thumb stroked slow patterns on the back of Lance's hand in the dark, and Lance didn't even bother to answer that time. Supposedly, JC was set to work on something with AJ today, something the Boys wanted to switch up on a track for the album, but Lance doesn't know how they could have possibly got anything done when JC's been on the phone half the time.

"So, how's that song coming, Jayce?" Joey asks, trying to steer and talk at the same time, and Nick throws a theatric hand over his eyes in the back seat. "No, we're just pulling into the driveway right now. Yeah, I can pick some up for you on my way over. No, it's fine. Just let me drop these guys off. Yeah. Like, two minutes. Bye."

"What now?" Lance says.

"Don't ask," Joey says, shaking his head as he tosses the phone back to Lance and puts both hands on the wheel for one of the sharp curves in Lance's winding drive. "It's just better that way."

He gets out of the car long enough to pull Lance close and promise he'll call when he gets back to Orlando, but he refuses to come back in; he's already got his stuff loaded in the trunk of the rental car for that night's flight

"No, hey, come back for dinner," Lance says, into his shoulder, tilting his head as Joey cups a big hand around the back of his neck.

"Yeah, well," Joey says, letting go. "Let's see how things go over at JC's. I'll give you a call, OK? C'mere, kid."

He grabs Nick and lays a kiss on both of his cheeks before lifting him off the ground in a bear hug.

"Hey, what ... no, man ... quit it," Nick says, smacking at Joey's hands and rescuing his hard-won action figure at the last minute.

"Always been sneaky, like that," Joey tells Lance, before he pulls him into a last hug. "You good?" he says, low in Lance's ear.

"Yeah," Lance says, nodding as Joey ducks his head to make eye contact. "Yeah, I think I am."

It's been a good day, he thinks - a chance to see Joe while he's out here filming some promo spots for E! red carpet stuff, a chance to get outside the house with Nick, buffered by Joey's presence, without worrying about who might be watching, what they might be seeing. Maybe ... maybe he should talk to JC about going out to dinner sometime, something with AJ along, too, some space for both he and Nick to breathe. Maybe Jamie-Lynn or Shannon ... but no, he thinks. They're both too well-known as past beards, at this point - he might as well hang a sign around Nick's neck and tape a bullseye to his back.

It's a lot quieter once Joey's back in his rental car and gone.

"Baylee?" Lance says, looking pointedly at the package in Nick's hands as he opens the door. "I don't believe that for a minute, Carter."

"Would I lie to you?" Nick asks, laughing, making the action-figure dance. "Swear to God, that's what ... What? What's wrong?"

He runs into Lance as Lance stops short in the entryway. Nick slings an arm over his shoulders, across his chest, presses up against his back, but Lance hardly notices, his skin prickling. Something's wrong, he can tell. Something's ... off.

"Somebody's been in here," he says.

Nick goes quiet against him.

"Are you sure?" he asks, low. "How do you know?"

"I don't ..." Lance shakes his head in frustration. "I can't tell what it is, I just know."

He expects Nick to be skeptical, but his arm tightens, and when Lance turns his head, Nick's chewing on his bottom lip with that worried, considering look he gets sometimes.

"Call the cops?" he asks.

"I don't ..." Lance untangles himself from Nick's grasp and steps carefully into the dining room, looking around. There's something ... "Do you smell that?"

"What?"

"I think it's ... garlic?"

"What?" Nick says, voice still low but now incredulous. "You think someone broke in and cooked for us?"

"Maybe it was somebody I know?" Lance says, considering, now that he's past the immediate freakout of someone in the house, someone maybe upstairs in the bedroom where he and Nick had sex last night, in the family room where Nick fell asleep in front of the TV two days ago with his head in Lance's lap, Lance's fingers tangled in his hair.

There are plenty of people who know or could guess his security code, now that he thinks about it - Jamie-Lynn or Beth or Ben - so, OK, someone's been in his house, but it's probably someone he knows. He probably ought to be glad one of them hasn't dropped off another dog for him to adopt. Which reminds him ...

"Dingo?" he calls. "Foster?"

There's a thud somewhere above his head, quickly followed by another, and then the sound of nails clickety-clacking across wood floor. Eventually a couple of noses poke through the metal railings of the upstairs landing.

"You're so lazy you couldn't even come say 'Hello?'" Lance says accusingly.

Foster bounds down the stairs to stick her nose in Lance's hand, back end swaying as her tail wags. Dingo's stretching, still on the upstairs landing, when Nick pushes open the door that leads to the kitchen.

"Hey, Lance," he says. "You should come look at this."

"What?" Lance says, warily, standing up from his crouch, giving Foster's ears a last good scratch.

Someone has broken into Lance's house and cooked for them.

He looks over at Nick, who's still leaning in the doorway with one hand on the doorjamb, then back at the covered dishes on the table in the breakfast nook, at the candle, the bud vase with a single red rose. He looks at Nick again, raising his hands, palms up.

"Dude, I don't know," he says, venturing further into the room. "We got visited by the romance fairy?"

At least whoever did it cleaned up the pots and pans when they were done.

"A romance fairy in capri pants, I bet," Nick says, eyeing a bottle of wine, white, chilled, open to breath.

Yeah, this probably is why JC was calling all day, Lance figures, eyeing the bottle. There's a sign propped up beside it that says "SANGRIA!!" with an arrow pointing to the fridge. The smiley face at the bottom of the exclamation points looks like AJ's work, Nick says, peering at the squiggly goatee it's got. There's a lighter laying by one corner of the note, and Nick picks it up, looks at Lance and shrugs, moving to light the candle in the middle of the table. When Lance opens the refrigerator door and pokes around, he finds a pitcher labeled "SHERRY COCKTAIL!! DRINK WITH SHRIMP (and rice cakes)" in a couple of different hands next to the pitcher labeled "SANGRIA" - without the exclamation points, this time - and "(WITH BBQ COSTILLAS)."

"Costillas?" he asks Nick, who starts lifting lids.

"Tapas," he says, looking up at Lance before he goes back to inspecting the food. "Um. Some kind of mini rice cakes? Like, steamed rice. With something green in them? Shrimp. Ooo! Olives! Mini barbecued ribs?" The last bit is kind of muffled through the olives in his mouth.

"Barbecued costillas," Lance hazards.

"And some kind of bread with a ... mushroom spread on it?" Nick looks up again. "They must have been here all day."

"I don't even ..." Lance spreads his hands again and looks at Nick.

"So, I guess maybe this means they approve?" Nick says and grins at him.

The green stuff in the rice cakes turns out to be artichoke, and there's also cheese in the middle of them, and Nick swallows a little bit hard a couple of times when they find the note on the plate that says "(brian and leigh's recipe)." The shrimp are garlicky and buttery, and Lance maybe draws out eating them, watching Nick watching him suck his fingers clean as they peel the tails away from the meat. The both agree beer would have been better with the costillas.

"Here," Nick says, holding out a bit of bread he's swiped through the spicy sauce.

Lance wipes a smear of the sauce off Nick's bottom lip with his thumb as he chews, before he sits back in his chair, looking out over the patio and the pool and the last smudges of smoggy pink on the horizon over Beverly Hills. He wonders if he's making a mistake, thinking about getting out of L.A., wonders if it would make things like this better or worse.

"What?" Nick asks him. "You've got that thinkin' look."

He's put olives on the ends of his fingers, and he waves two of them at Lance.

"Just thinkin' about what happens if this show comes together," Lance says, nabbing one of the olives.

"Chicago?"

"Yeah."

"They're gonna be able to switch up the arrangement for your voice?"

"Yeah."

"Looks pretty certain."

"Yeah." Lance pushes his plate aside, swallowing his olive despite the sudden knot in his stomach.

"Gonna have to find a place in New York."

"Yeah."

"You should talk to Kevin, you know." Nick leans forward, elbows on the table. "He did that run as Billy in London."

Lance tilts his head, studying Nick, trying to figure out if he's serious, wondering if he realizes that Kevin Richardson will never not be vaguely terrifying as long as Lance is fucking Nick, scary in a way Lance never took seriously before.

"You ready for it?" Nick asks, poking around in the pile of discarded tails like there might be a forgotten shrimp at the bottom.

"Dude. George Hamilton managed it, and did you see his Dancing With the Stars performance?"

Lance doesn't say what he's really thinking, which is that he's pretty fucking terrified. He'd let someone pull out all of his toenails before he'd admit that. It won't be the first time in his life he'll walk onto a stage completely fucking terrified, and it won't be the first time nobody will know it, either.

"Don't hate on old people, Bass," Nick says, poking him in the forehead.

"Stop that," Lance smacks at Nick's hand and reaches around to steal a couple of his remaining olives. "You guys are going to be finishing up the album soon, huh?"

"Yeah," Nick says, pushing himself up and taking some of the dishes over to the sink to run water over them.

"Hey," Lance says, coming over to put his arms around Nick's waist. He stands on his toes, but Nick's still just too tall for Lance to hook his chin over a shoulder. "You're gonna be doing some promo in New York, right?"

"Yeah," Nick turns off the water and turns around in Lance's arms, wiping his fingers on the seat of his pants before he brings his hands up to Lance's face, holding him still to kiss him.

Lance's phone buzzes again that night, and he ignores it. The next morning, there's a text from Joey:

DINNER 2NITE? LOL

•••

Lance knows it's stupid, but he hates Nick's haircut.

It's not a bad haircut; it's not even a new haircut. It's one Nick's had before; it's one Lance has had before - vaguely out of control in a stylishly tousled sort of way, heavy on the product, shorter and spiker on top than the blond mop Nick let grow without much thought while he was spending time in rehearsal and the studio.

Lance liked the longer hair. He liked combing his fingers through it while Nick slept, head on Lance's lap or Lance's chest; he liked the chance to brush it out of Nick's eyes and lean in to steal a kiss; he liked the way it felt in his hands when Nick was on his knees or Lance was on his back.

Still, this is not really about the hair, and Lance knows that, too. It's about post-production and preliminary publicity, it's about plans for promotion and appearances, it's about more cameras and more attention and more eyes on Nick once this album comes out. It's about Lance being even more careful about keeping his hands to himself.

Lance eyes the haircut from across the kitchen and tells himself he's being stupid. Knowing it doesn't make it any better.

"I think maybe you want to do this?" Nick says, looking up from the sink where he's trying to peel a batch of hard-boiled eggs.

"What did those eggs ever do to you?" Lance asks, peering at the three misshapen examples of Nick's handiwork already sitting on a plate.

"The shells keep sticking," Nick complains, hooking his chin over Lance's shoulder to watch as Lance pokes gingerly at the eggs.

"Go ... do something else," Lance tells him.

"Hey," Nick says, cupping a hand around Lance's neck and stroking a thumb along his jawline. "Are you OK? You seem kinda' ... weird today."

I hate your haircut, Lance thinks.

"It's nothing," he says, stepping away from Nick. He reaches into the sink for the pot with the rest of the eggs to try making the move look less obvious. "Just, stupid stuff. Getting the house closed up. Things people are writing about the show."

None of that's a lie, exactly. Lance feels vaguely unsettled, one foot already out the door and in New York, one still here in L.A. Being called a "casting stunt," by a theater critic for a major newspaper chain didn't help, either.

"What are people saying about the show?" asks a voice from the open French doors.

"That I am going to bring down a role whose fine tradition has been upheld by George Hamilton and both Dukes of Hazzard," Lance says, grinning at Lacey.

"Oh, they don't know what they're talking about," she says, making a face before she throws her arms around his neck so he can pick her up and swing her around. "When do we fry the turkey, anyway?"

"Twenty minutes or so," Lance says. "Derek and Shannon are already outside, if you want to go find them."

She smacks a kiss on his cheek and runs off. Nick blinks after her.

"She's smaller than I expected," he says.

"You don't suppose she knows anything about peeling eggs?" Lance asks as a huge chunk of egg white comes off along with a piece of shell.

"I told you," Nick says mildly.

He runs a hand through Lance's hair, tugging a little bit at the nape of his neck, and leans in - probably to press a kiss to Lance's temple - but Lance ducks away.

"Can you go ahead and start ... deviling?" he says. "Deviling? Is that a verb?"

Nick's looking at him, head tilted, slight furrow between his brows, like he's trying to work out some kind of problem, but Lance looks down and concentrates on his eggs. When Nick moves away, Lance can track his progress by sound around the kitchen - a bowl from the cupboard, knife and fork from a drawer. He comes back and wordlessly starts hacking eggs in half, scooping out the yolks and mashing them. It doesn't take him long to catch up to Lance.

"What do we need for these?" he asks, looking down at the bowl of powdery yellow. "Mustard, mayo ..."

"Vinegar," Lance says.

"Relish ..."

"Not relish," Lance says, rinsing off the last egg and setting it on the plate.

"What? Yes, relish."

"OK, no," Lance says, wrinkling his nose. "That's just ... No."

"Deviled eggs are supposed to have relish in them," Nick says.

"I don't know who told you that, but no."

"Well, you're wrong, but OK, fine," Nick says, dumping mayonnaise in the bowl with the egg yolks.

"I'm not wrong, but good," Lance says.

"Why do you do this?" Nick asks, throwing his spoon down on the counter. "Why do you do this every time?"

"What?" Lance asks, baffled. "What are you even talking about?"

"You do this, all the time, when we're going out together or doing things together or just ... just being seen together." Nick says. "It's fine when we're here, when we're alone, behind closed doors - then you don't have any problem bein' with me, but you don't want anybody to see us together - you didn't even want our friends to know we're together. What the hell, Lance? Why do you always pick a fight or make things miserable so that we'll, I don't know, cancel our plans or stay away from each other any time it's not just us, here? Why do you do that?"

Lance stares at him for a minute, mouth hanging open, before he can put together any kind of counter argument.

"That's not true!" he says, finally. It's not a very good counter argument, he knows, but he thinks he deserves a little bit of slack, because really, where the hell did this come from?

"Yes, it is," Nick says, low, vicious.

"I flew to Southeast Asia with you," Lance says icily, setting down the plate he's holding with a clatter. "I spent the entire day out with you when Joey was here. I went out to dinner with you. Or does that not count?"

"Oh my god," Nick says, flailing his arms. "You ... You did it before AJ's cookout. You spend hours on your computer, worrying that someone, somewhere, is saying something about us being together. You went out to dinner with me, sure, and then you worried the entire time that someone was going to see you with me. You made me take you out the back door because you were so worried about Reichen seeing you with me ... "

"What the fuck, Carter? That didn't have anything to do with you. It wouldn't have mattered who I was with."

That ... came out kind of the wrong way, Lance thinks. It sounded kind of ... bad. He can tell it didn't sound bad to just him, because Nick's flushed now, and his lips are pressed together in that thin line that's so telling.

"Maybe if it didn't matter if it was me or not, maybe I shouldn't have come back, right?" he says. "If it doesn't matter if it's me, maybe I should just leave, now. I mean, what difference would it make? Maybe if I'm out of the picture, you can find somebody you're not ashamed to be seen with."

He's up in Lance's face by this time, but there's no way Lance is backing down after that.

"How can you say that? We're seen with each other all the time," he says, angry. "Have you not heard the rumors that people are talkin' about? Are you missing what they're startin' to say about you? Or do you think you're ready for that talk with your mother now?"

"Do not ... do not bring my mother into this." Nick's face has gone white.

"Nick." It's AJ's voice, from the doorway out to the back patio, and Nick breaks eye contact first, looking over as AJ walks into the kitchen. "Nick, hey. What's goin' on?"

"Don't," Nick says, shoving away the hand AJ tries to lay on his arm.

"Hey, bro, everything's cool," AJ says, stepping back with his hands up. "It's just, Shannon came and got me, she was coming in here to get another drink, and you know, I don't think you two should be worrying the ladies like that."

Nick looks away from both of them, rubbing a hand over his eyes, and then he turns around and walks out the door. Lance turns to AJ, mouth open, because really, what the hell was that about?

"Just leave him alone." AJ makes a small move, as if he's going to touch Lance this time, before pulling back. "You have to leave him alone when he gets like this."

"Yeah, well, you don't have anything to worry about, now," Lance says, turning around abruptly and banging a couple of empty pots into the sink. "It looks like we'll probably be leaving each other alone for good."

"He'll be back, Lance," AJ says. "He might leave, but he'll always come back."

Lance thinks he feels a light touch on his shoulder before AJ turns around and walks outside.

Everything kind of sucks after that. Lance laughs and pours drinks and plays host, but there's a knot in his stomach and his throat feels tight and not even lowering the turkey into the deep-fryer can make him feel better. JC keeps staring at him from under a tree, barefoot and cross-legged and artificially serene, prickling the hair on the back of Lance's neck. If he's going to smoke up before coming to Lance's Thanksgiving dinner, the least he could do is share, Lance thinks balefully. Shannon's keeping a narrowed eye on Nick, even as Derek leans over to whisper something in her ear. Nick, himself, has taken up residence under a tree adjoining JC's, far enough away to avoid conversation but close enough that AJ can move easily from one of them to the other; Nick's busy making sure the patch of lawn in front of him is completely grass-free, pulling up stalks one by one and shredding each thoroughly before moving on to the next.

"Stop that," Lance says, sliding onto the bench beside Shannon and nudging her with a shoulder, figuring she's the only one of them he can do anything about.

"What was that about?" she asks.

"Nothing. It was an argument. It was the stupidest argument ever, but ... It's fine."

"Lance ..."

"It's fine."

It's really, really not fine.

Lance is standing in the kitchen, dragging a fork listlessly through the leftover mashed potatoes when Nick comes in.

"I'm gonna go stay at AJ's tonight, I think," Nick says, sounding subdued.

"OK," Lance says, not looking up.

"Will you be OK, here?" Nick asks. "I know I was going to help clean up, and maybe help get some stuff done tomorrow before you leave for New York next week, I can come back in the morning if you need me to ..."

"It's fine," Lance says. "There's not that much left to do, anyway."

"OK."

"OK."

Nick stands there for a minute.

"Lance ..."

Lance makes the mistake of looking up, and then he feels even worse, because really, he thinks, being mean to Nick Carter is like kicking a puppy - a big dumb puppy that doesn't even know what it's done wrong. The thought actually makes him feel vaguely pissed off again. He thinks he deserves some time to be mad, here, without having to feel guilty about it. They were arguing over deviled eggs and then out of nowhere, Lance is somehow the worst boyfriend in the world?

"I'm just ... I'm gonna go ahead and go, then," Nick says, gesturing at the door.

He leans in like he's going to kiss Lance but stops like he's thought better of it, before he turns and leaves.

"I had the stupidest fight in the world tonight," Lance tells Jamie-Lynn five drinks later, looking up at her from where he's lying with his head in her lap.

"Oh, honey, I'm sure you'll have stupider ones," she says, petting him. "What did you do?"

They've moved inside, the night air cool enough to drive them indoors, and Lance took the opportunity to light a fire in the living room, even though it wasn't really going to be that cold. He can turn on the air-conditioning if it gets too warm, he figures. He was kind of planning on making out with Nick in front of the fire, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen tonight.

Jamie-Lynn laughs.

"What?" Lance asks.

"You do realize you said that out loud?" Derek asks from the other end of the couch. "That making-out thing."

"It wasn't so much the saying it out loud as the tone," Jamie-Lynn says. "And the face you made."

"It was a good idea," Lance insists. "Except now he's mad at me. He thinks I'm ashamed of him because I won't be seen in public with him. Also, I wouldn't let him put relish in the deviled eggs."

"You are kind of psychotic about not being seen with him," she says.

"It's for his own good!"

"I get that," she says, patting him on the head again. "I do. It's not like we weren't all a little psycho about protecting you, you know. You even mentioned it after, how weird we all were about it."

After everyone else leaves, Lance finally finds JC, upstairs in his bedroom, reading, leaning back against the headboard, glass of wine in hand.

"Your taste in books is awful," JC says, looking up to study Lance where he's propped himself in the doorway.

"What's that one about, anyway?" Lance asks, squinting at it from across the room. "And how many is that you've had? I think you need to stay here, tonight."

"Where's your beau?" JC asks, setting down the book to upend the last of his wine bottle into the glass.

"Who even uses that word?" Lance makes a face. "And he's staying at AJ's tonight."

"I thought that kid had a place of his own out here." JC looks back at Lance and laughs.

"What?"

"Nothing. You've just got that same look you get when someone puts you in a position where you feel like you have to defend Justin."

"Shut up," Lance says, sprawling across the foot of the bed. He picks at a cuticle for a long, silent minute. "Anyway, apparently he never stayed on his own bus, either."

"Well, I can't stay," JC says. "I've got an early meeting."

"Oh." Lance rolls his head back on the mattress to study the ceiling. He can't imagine who JC would have an early appointment with, at this point, but OK.

"You're as bad about being alone as he is, aren't you?" JC kicks Lance's foot gently.

Lance opens his mouth, then closes it. Shrugs. What's he going to say? There's a reason he has a house with three bedrooms, two family rooms and a fully tricked-out poolhouse, even though he's only one person, and it's not just because of the gate. Extra people around him have always meant security, in any number of ways. He's good at hiding in the background. What was a necessity so long has just become habit.

"You have to help me set that clock in the guest room," JC says, setting his wineglass on the floor and scooting around to lay with his head on Lance's stomach. He props his bare feet on top of the headboard. "I swear I'm going to throw it through the window if it goes off at 3 a.m. again."

"Dude, I have no idea how to set that clock," Lance says, combing his fingers through JC's hair. "Just bunk in with me. It'll be like a slumber party."

"You gonna paint my toenails?" JC says, eyes closed, smiling.

•••

Lance listens to Nick's message four times after he finds the Ice Blue Island Twist mix, hits "4" three times in a row on his cellphone voicemail, repeat repeat repeat. He's making his final packing run through the kitchen - at this late stage, that pretty much means tossing out stuff that's only going to go bad, once he's out of town - when his fingers slide over the Kool-Aid packet jammed half-behind one of the shelves in his pantry, sugary crap that he never would have bought on his own, not unless there was going to be vodka and shot glasses and irony involved.

"So. Hi," Nick's voice says, low, with a curious hollow echoing sound to it, like he's snuck away to the bathroom or something and cupped his hand over his phone to call. "I don't know what's going on, exactly, but I just wanted to say, you know, I'm sorry about last night. Well, tonight, I guess, but it's past midnight by now. And you probably won't get this until the morning anyway - I was hoping you'd be awake, but I know you have to be tired, so. I couldn't sleep, and I was thinking about you, and I thought I'd try calling, at least. We're going to be in New York in about a week and a half, doing a photo shoot, and ... I don't know. You'll give me a call, right? I have to go, your voicemail is going to cut me off again, but I'll talk to you later, right? I ... Yeah. So. Call me. Please? Bye."

When he finally hangs up, Lance sits at the table in the breakfast nook, folding the top of the Kool-Aid package over and smoothing it out again, squinting at the sunlight that's reflecting off the water in the pool and somehow stabbing its way right into the hungover part of his brain, behind his eyes. He contemplates his phone. He thinks about calling his voicemail and listening to the message again.

He calls Chris, instead. He's running water into a plastic pitcher on top of the drink mix when Chris picks up.

"Lance Bass! What are you doing awake at this fine hour of noon on a holiday weekend!"

"I need help," Lance says, and Chris laughs at him. "No. Shut up a minute. Not help, so much, as ... advice."

"You realize I'm still going to charge you my regular hourly rate, even though you never actually take my advice?"

"Dude, seriously." Lance shuts off the water and worries his lower lip with his teeth, staring blankly out the window at the backyard cabana. "I think I might have fucked up."

"What? Impossible."

"Shut up."

"How can I offer you my fine advice if you don't want me to speak?"

"OK, maybe this was a mistake."

"No, come on, Lance," Chris's voice is abruptly serious, the same tone Lance remembers from drafty hallways and damp dressing rooms in Germany, encouragement mumbled in his ear after another stumbling showcase, counterpoint to JC's adamant tones talking down record company reps on the other side of doors. "Come on. Talk to me. What could you possibly have done that's so bad you're calling me for advice?"

Lance sighs and scrubs a hand over his face.

"So, Nick and I had this huge fight last night ..."

"No."

"Wait, what?" Lance says, thunking a glass down on the counter. "No? What do you mean, 'no?'"

"No, Lance," Chris sounds adamant. "Just, no. Nick and I hang out, I'm his friend, too. You know that. You're not putting me in the middle of this."

"So, what? You hang out with him, and that takes priority over a dozen years of our relationship? Is that how it works?" Lance is abruptly angry, wondering what Chris already knows about "this," this thing he won't get in the middle of, whatever "this" has turned into, however long it's been building.

"Don't be an asshole, Bass," Chris doesn't sound mad, just matter-of-fact. "You knew I was his friend when you called me, you counted on it. It's the reason you called me in the first place, instead of Joey."

"That's not true."

"Don't lie, Lansten."

Lance considers hanging up.

"Come on," Chris cajoles.

"Dude, I just ..." Lance sighs and thumps a fist against his thigh. "I don't know what I'm doing here, and I was hoping you could help me out. Give me a little bit of insight."

"Lance, are you asking me if he likes you like that? What? Do you want me to pass him a note? Wait, I'll go get Taylor on the other line, I'm pretty sure she and the other middle-school girls have some experience with this."

"Oh, fuck you, too."

"Mmm, is that an offer?"

"Why did I call you?"

"Because you needed someone to tell you to man up and talk to Nick, yourself? What, are you scared? Seriously? Don't tell me Lance Bass is going to admit he's scared of something. Other than spiders, I mean, but I suppose that goes along with being a giant girl."

"Everybody else gets to be scared sometimes," Lance says, shoving his glass across the counter in a fit of petulance.

"If you're scared, think about how he feels."

"Chris, he doesn't have the fucking sense to be scared." Lance realizes he's yelling. "He doesn't seem to have any idea of what he's walking into. I'm trying to protect him."

"Oh, bullshit, Lance. He's a goddam grown-up. If he's decided this is what he wants to do, than it's his decision to make."

"And when he changes his mind and decides he can't hack it anymore, I'm the one who's going to end up ..." Lance trails off bitterly.

"Well, maybe he's the one you should be telling that to."

Lance sniffs and scrubs his nose with the sleeve of his T-shirt. Chris sits silent on his end of the connection for a minute.

"He's a good guy, Lance," he finally says.

"I hate you," Lance says, conversationally.

"Your words of love, they make me tremble with desire."

"Dude, seriously. You get women with lines like that?"

"Some days, kid, I think they just feel sorry for me."

Lance pours himself a glass of Kool-Aid after he hangs up, making a face. It still looks like freakin' Windex. He remembers Nick chasing him around the pool, trying to lick him with a blue tongue.

He gulps down the whole glass before he pulls his phone back out and texts Joey.

AM I AN ASSHOLE?

Ten minutes later, he's trying to hack out some cubes from the frozen mass in his broken ice maker - he can't find the icepick and has fallen back on using a butter knife - when his phone buzzes.

Y BUT I <3 U NEWAY

Fifteen seconds later, his phone buzzes again.

B DOES 2

Lance laughs in the middle of his empty kitchen, and it almost sounds normal.

•••