*N Sync. Underneath the Discoball.
Title: Underneath the Discoball
Fandom: Popslash.
Characters: Chris Kirkpatrick / Joey Fatone
Prompt: 019. White
Word Count: 5,955
Summary: An accident with a disco ball, and a moon rock changes four fifths of *N Sync.
Author's Notes: This is a bit of insanity brought to you by my obsessive love for superheroes and milosflaca obsession with the disco ball. Which reminds me, she helped to decide the powers for the guys (Because mostly? My ideas for Chris would’ve ended on the end of the world) as well as the origin. While they’re my words, the order of things of the first short scene -which of course, I can’t say here since they’re spoilers- were her idea. And of course, she did first beta. Many thanks to otherdeb for her fast beta. And this one is for joshysleo. I hope this brings a smile to your face.
* * *
The white, blinding light was the last thing Chris remembered before things went crazy.
They were in JC’s house, trying to convince him that, no, a disco ball was not a good alternative for a lamp in his basement, which now doubled as entertainment center when the moon rock that Lance had given JC as a gift after his last trip to Russia had started to glow. Chris hadn’t paid attention to that since he thought it was just reflecting the lights of the disco ball until the light from the rock was more intense that the one of the ball.
There was a ray of light coming from the rock and into the Disco Ball. That much, he remembered, but then the disco ball had reflected the ray all over the room and, while everyone had ducked, Chris was pretty sure he had seen Joey get hit before the whole room turned into a white ball of light.
When Chris finally regained consciousness, his body felt stiff. He blinked, trying to regain his bearings, watching how Joey was furiously dialing on his cell phone. JC was helping Lance to stand on his feet.
The room was very bright, and the floor was covered with smoke.
“Guys?” Chris asked, and tried to frown. His voice sounded hollow.
“Joe, I don’t think costumer service will be able to help,” Lance coughed. “What are you going to tell them, that the disco ball exploded?”
“I’ll think of something,” Joey’s face was red with anger. “Fuck, Lance, what if I had brought Bri with me?”
“Has anyone seen Chris?” JC asked, looking around.
“I’m here!” Chris said, but the guys didn’t seem to hear him.
“Joey, calm down,” Lance countered. “Where is Chris?”
“He was standing next to me just a minute ago.” Joey frowned, looking around, cell phone forgotten for a moment.
He looked straight at Chris, before turning to Lance again. “Fuck. Where is Chris?”
“I’m here!” Chris yelled, indignant. It was one thing that lately the press seemed to ignore him completely, but to have his friends do the same hurt.
Everyone turned to see him, their faces between shock and surprise.
“Chris?” Lance finally asked, tentatively.
“Oh, so you see me now?” Chris huffed. The light around him seemed brighter, somehow.
“JC, tell me you also bought a Sharper Image fancy lamp that turns on when you call it Chris,” Lance whispered, scared.
A loud crack was his only answer, and they all turned to see Joey who was staring dumbfounded at his hand.
On it, everyone could see the crushed remains of his cell phone.
* * *
Five hours later, they had gone past panicking and well into a weird calm acceptance that Chris was sure was just a stage before they either went insane or figured out what was happening.
It had took him almost half an hour to turn back to himself, and he still couldn’t believe he had been a lamp. JC had even given him a mirror so he could see it for himself.
A tall lamp, with a round, blueish light bulb.
Not a bad looking lamp, but Chris preferred being human all things considered. He didn’t know how he had managed to turn into a lamp, and he wasn’t sure how he had managed to go back to normal. He knew he was hungry, and he wondered when JC was going to remember he had guests who needed to eat.
“That light did something to you guys,” Lance said, for the second time in the afternoon. The fucker had managed to get out of it unharmed. “I don’t think we can deny that anymore.”
“If you let me call the disco ball company,” Joey began saying, only to be silenced by a chorus of nos.
“Don’t even think about it,” Chris said, glaring at Joey, “I’m not turning myself into a phone for you.”
Whatever the combination of moon rock and discoball had done to their bodies, the most obvious change had been to Chris, who apparently now could change shapes at will. Chris was sure that could be fun if he could learn to control it, and it was a lot less scary than Joey’s change.
Joey’s change was subtle. So subtle they hadn’t really noticed until he had broken his cell phone, JC’s cellphone, the phone in the basement and one in the living room, crushing them all to practically powder. As if that hadn’t been proof enough, Joey had also punched a hole straight through JC’s living room wall.
If things hadn’t been bad enough with a shape-shifting freak and a supe-strong freak, JC sparkled. It hadn’t been obvious in the basement since they all thought that the lights were JC’s emergency lights, but once they were out, and it was still bright enough to blind them, they realized the light was coming out of JC’s body.
Once Lance had pointed it out, the shimmer had dimmed a bit, but it was still noticeable. JC’s hair looked as if it had been dipped in glitter.
Lance had not changed. Lance was still normal, and Chris hated him a little for it.
“What are we going to do now?” JC asked. As he spoke, streams of light and glitter came out of his mouth. “I don’t think our medical insurance will cover this.”
“I don’t think the laws of reality cover this,” Chris grumbled.
“Chris, stop that,” Lance admonished. Instead of asking what Lance meant, Chris looked at the mirror he was still carrying. JC’s face blinked at him on the reflective surface, minus glitter. Apparently, he couldn’t mimic glitter. Sighing, he concentrated, trying to remember what he looked like, and had to suppress the need to scream as he saw JC’s features melt into his own.
The actual effect was shocking.
“Sorry,” he whispered to no one.
“You’ve got to be careful,” Lance decided. “We can’t let anyone know what happened to you unless you want to try and record our next album from Area 51. So we have to pray that this thing will fade.”
“What if it doesn’t fade?” JC asked, looking at his hand as the glow around it changed colors quickly, making Chris feel dizzy.
“It has to fade. It has to just be a temporary thing,” Lance insisted, starting to sound really freaked out.
“And if it doesn’t? What if it’s permanent?” Chris insisted. He was tapping his foot quickly against the floor, feeling really scared. He had been a lamp for an hour, that gave him the right to feel scared.
“Then you’ll have to learn to control it,” Lance finally looked at Chris, who stopped his tapping immediately. Lance didn’t seem to understand that they had the right to be freaked out. Of course, he wasn’t shining, breaking stuff, or getting his body rearranged every time he sneezed.
“What if we can’t?” Joey asked, sounding immensely sad.
No one had an answer to that.
* * *
The very next day, they had their first rehearsal on the mock stage, and Chris just wanted to believe everything had been a dream.
He could have fooled himself, if he hadn’t awakened looking like Joey. It had been a terrifying moment, when he realized he had even copied the red tips in Joey’s hair almost perfectly; so perfectly, in fact, that he had gone back silently to the room he shared with Joey just to check they hadn’t changed bodies during the night.
That would have been the cherry on the cake.
“You look like shit,” Justin told him, smiling brightly. Unlike the others, Justin looked really excited, rested and bouncy. Of course, Justin hadn’t spent the night worrying about becoming radioactive. “What did you do last night?”
“Sleep,” Chris said, forcing himself to smile. “What did you do? Drink all our coffee?”
“No, but you sure look like you need it. You don’t want to fall asleep in the middle of a song,” Justin answered, pointing to the coffee maker on the buffet table. Joey, Lance and JC were walking towards it, and Chris knew he wasn’t imagining the resentful looks JC and Joey were giving Lance. It was not that they hated Lance for being lucky and get out of the explosion without any changes, but the way in which he had acted afterwards grated on them all.
Chris thought for a second about starting a mock fight with Justin, just to try and forget all that had happened to them, when he saw the coffee maker explode in Joey’s hands.
“What the fuck?!” Lance was looking at Joey, somewhere between annoyed and scared, as Joey’s shirt turned darker with the stain.
Chris bit his lip, nervous. He didn’t think Joey had felt the coffee, but if someone else noticed that Joey had just been bathed in a hot liquid and hadn’t even flinched, their secret would be out.
“I’m going to clean myself,” Joey muttered quickly, running off. Chris just looked at Lance who had gone pale, looking intently at the charred remains of the coffee maker.
They managed to go through the entire routine without any incident, and Chris was starting to forget that they were supposed to be careful when two things happened in rapid succession.
First, during one of the Bye Bye Bye stomps, Joey’s foot went straight through the floor, breaking the planks.
When everyone rushed to see how Joey was, all the light bulbs over the stage exploded at the same time.
Chris groaned. Things were definitely not going well.
* * *
It turned out that Lance hadn’t got out of the ‘disco ball incident’ unscathed, but they didn’t notice his change until it was almost too late to keep their secret.
In the week that followed the incident, they all caused small accidents. The most noticeable one had been Joey’s jump through the stage, but JC had almost blinded one of their assistants just because she surprised him when he was talking on the phone, Chris somehow started mimicking everyone by accident which meant he had to keep his mind somehow focused to avoid changing in front of someone.
During that time, Chris had time to realize that he and JC had been the lucky ones. At least their powers could be hidden somewhat easily.
But Joey’s powers seemed to keep developing, instead of fading away as Lance had hoped. On that first night, Joey’s eyes started to glow red a little after he and Chris had decided to go and try to sleep a little. Only Chris’s quick reflexes helped him to avoid the beam that came out of them, melting the flower vase they had on the drawer.
While no one had noticed yet, Joey was leaving a trail of half melted soda cans and glasses all over, but Chris had thought of a couple of excuses to explain them if anyone asked.
Explaining why every single electronic device malfunctioned or worse, exploded, every time Lance came in the room was a lot harder.
“If we have one more ‘accident’ Johnny is going to think we’re cursed,” JC said, flopping down on the couch of the room he was sharing with Joey. Since they couldn’t risk Justin finding out what had happened, they always left him the single room and found ways to distract him when they needed to have meetings. This time, Justin was having dinner with Britney, which gave them more or less a free night.
“We need to either cure us, or learn to control this,” Chris said, his voice sounding deeper with every syllable. Joey, who was sitting next to him, hit him softly on the back of his head.
“Concentrate, Chris. You’re looking and sounding like Lance now.”
“Sorry,” Chris took out a little mirror he now carried with him at all times, and frowned when he saw Lance’s green eyes peering at him. The voice changes were new, now he was pretty sure he could imitate anyone perfectly, as long as he kept his mind somewhat focused.
“If that happens during rehearsals, we’ll be toast,” JC said. His shimmer, which was kept almost dim outside, shone with a blue, melancholic tint.
“It has happened,” Chris confessed, looking again like himself. He thought he looked thinner, but he couldn’t make his features change further. Absentmindedly he pulled out a Snickers bar from his jacket and started to eat. One thing he had noticed was that he was always hungry after changing. “That’s why I’ve been ‘late’ to the last five rehearsals. I get there in time, but looking like someone else.”
“You sound like them too now,” Joey had his eyes closed. Heat vision was cool in theory, but if he got angry, they could wave the room deposit goodbye. “We’re getting more powerful too.”
“Chris is right, we need to control this,” Lance said.
“How?” Joey asked, angry. “We have rehearsals all day, do you want to start a superhero camp at nights?”
“No.” Lance looked smug. That, to Chris, always meant bad news. “Next rehearsal, we’ll have another accident.”
“What?” The shimmering glow around JC turned an angry red, making Chris close his eyes. “That will only make us lose time!”
“Not this one,” Lance calmly said. “Joey, tomorrow, you’ll get your leg under the floor trap and…”
“No way!” Joey protested. “I’m not going to break my damn leg for you guys!”
“I’m more worried about the floor trap,” Chris whispered, earning a glare from Joey. “Joe, you *broke* the floor. I doubt the trap is going to hurt you. I bet you won’t even feel it.”
“Oh,” Joey frowned, slowly coming to understand Lance’s plan. “Oh! Sure. I can do it. But I don’t get it. If I can’t get hurt, what good will it do?”
“When everyone sees you going down, JC and I will make a distraction,” Lance continued, efficiently as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “And Chris will change places with you. Chris, can you fake a broken leg?”
“I guess, if I know what it looks like,” Chris nodded. He was the one with better control.
“Won’t people notice if Chris disappears?” JC pointed out.
“No, he’ll be ‘late’ to rehearsal, so he’ll miss everything. And it will give us at least a week or so to cope with the changes.”
* * *
The only drawback to Lance’s plan was that Chris had to stay focused on Joey’s shape not only while the paramedics took him to the hospital, but also during the diagnostic, the treatment and until they got his leg on a cast.
Chris had been momentarily worried when they gave him painkillers for a pain he wasn’t feeling, but to his surprise, nothing happened. He managed to remain focused on keeping Joey’s face on.
Of course, that left him alone and bored in his hospital room, after Lance, JC and Justin had left. Justin was quite shocked, still confused as to why ‘Chris’ hadn’t come to see ‘Joey’, and Chris couldn’t help but feel a little guilty. He had wanted to tell Justin about the accident, but Lance, JC and Joey had voted against the idea. Lance thought that the less people knew about their ‘abilities’, the better. Joey didn’t want Justin to think they were freaks, and JC didn’t give any reason, but he still voted against.
He was still grumbling about being left alone, and complaining to himself about the things he did for Joey, when a soft knock on his window pulled him out of his thoughts.
“Open up, Chris, someone is going to see me!” Joey was standing out of the window, smiling like a loon.
“How did you get up here?” Chris asked, shifting to his own features as he got up from the bed. He hoped the nurse wouldn’t come back while he was shifting his leg out of the cast.
“Surprise!” Joey said, opening his arms as Chris opened the window. And yes, it was surprising to see his friend standing like that, happy beyond words, while his feet dangled in thin air, in front of a window in a sixth floor. Joey was flying.
“Holy Shit, Joey! Come in before someone sees you!” Chris laughed. It was hard not to, watching Joey’s smile as he got in the room, his feet still not touching the floor. “When did you learn to do that?”
“After you guys left, I kind of start floating.” Joey laughed. “It’s cool, only that I haven’t figured out how to get down yet.”
“Have you tried unhappy thoughts?” Chris suggested, amused.
“That was my next idea, I don’t want you cooped here all day and tomorrow Lance wants Justin to see you visiting.” Joey half sat over the bed, hovering just an inch over the mattress, throwing Chris a backpack. “Get dressed, I need your robe.”
“Can you wait for me to get in the bathroom?”
“If you don’t want me to look at you naked, you can easily change into someone else. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you’re a lot better than us at this,” Joey said, very serious. “I’ve seen you practicing.”
“You have?” Chris raised his eyebrows, surprised. He thought he had been discreet.
“During rehearsals, I’ve seen you change just a bit of your face. So, give me that robe,” Joey insisted, so Chris turned around. It wasn’t that he was shy around the guys, they had shared enough showers to lose any modesty, but Joey was special. And he didn’t want Joey to notice that lately, his ribs were starting to show unless he focused on them. “I also brought you a couple of snack bars. I bet hospital food isn’t better than when Lance was here.”
“Thanks,” Chris said, putting on the shirt Joey had brought him. Then he helped him to put on the leg cast, grateful that it was not a solid cast. That would’ve been impossible to put around Joey’s leg. “You think this will work?”
“It has to,” Joey gave him a very soft pat in the shoulder. “You’ve got it almost under control, and JC’s glow isn’t that noticeable. As long as I don’t sprout wings and Lance stops short-circuiting everything, we’re cool.”
* * *
A week later, Chris could almost share Joey’s optimism. He still was too thin when he was not shape-changing, but it was nothing that a steady diet of, well, everything, couldn’t solve. They had a new meeting in JC’s hotel room, after they managed to convince Justin that it was a good idea for him to start checking time schedules if he really wanted to do his solo album. Chris thought it was a very bad idea to encourage him with that, but as long as the others were adamant in not telling Justin about their abilities, there was no other choice.
Joey had been alternatively faking a very good limp or sitting in a wheelchair that hid perfectly when he started floating, and Chris had to admit his friend was a very good actor. They had to sacrifice Joey’s dancing for the Pop Video, but Joey had shrugged it off, saying that it was for the good cause of avoiding being studied by scientists.
As soon as Lance got in the room, the light bulb of the lamp shut down. Chris supposed it was an improvement as it didn’t explode. Because there was no way he was going to go up in any of the stage harnesses even during rehearsal, unless Lance could promise that he was not going to make the computers explode as the coffee machine, the coke machine, JC’s brand new cellphone, and Chris’s laptop had done.
“So, how are we doing?” Lance asked, sounding tired. “Any new developments, Joey?”
“Freeze breath,” Joey sighed. That had been fun to watch for the first time, when Joey had sneezed and freeze Chris’s soda. “But I can control my strength and I don’t float anymore.”
“That’s great,” Lance sighed. Of the group, Joey seemed to be the one who had developed more powers and they all worried about that, because as long as Joey kept adding powers, it meant that they weren’t exactly out of danger. Any day now, they could develop more changes, and they all knew it. Besides, even if only Joey kept developing more abilities, that didn’t mean they were clear. After all, the heat vision had been thankfully easy to turn off, but Chris wouldn’t feel really safe until a month had passed and Joey didn’t grow a second head or started shooting laser beams from his fingers. “Chris?”
“Nothing new,” Chris answered with Justin’s more nasal voice. He didn’t change his face, only his vocal cords and a couple of bones under his skin. He had spent the best part of the week reading anatomy books to understand what was exactly what he could do and couldn’t do to his body. What had started with trying to fake a realistic broken leg was now a full on project, especially since he had discovered that every little change made him burn calories.
If he kept using those powers, he would starve to death unless he learned how to change things with the minimum effort needed. Small bone and cartilage changes were the easiest, and they did help to make his voice change.
“Show off,” Joey elbowed him playfully, and Chris could testify that Joey’s control had gotten better. He had barely felt the touch.
“Just never do that to me without warning,” JC said, smiling. “I can keep the glow at an invisible minimum, but if you surprise me, it’ll be like a damn Christmas tree, colors and all.”
“You can do colors now?” Lance asked, impressed. “On purpose?”
“Sure.” JC closed his eyes for a moment, and started laughing for no apparent reason. Suddenly, they all saw his glow come to life. It was a white, warm light that made Chris feel better just by watching it. Then it turned green, blue, purple, yellow and finally, red. “How was it?”
“Pretty,” Lance deadpanned, rolling his eyes. He didn’t look amused. “Why were you laughing?”
“If I’m not thinking about anything, they come out easier.” JC started playing with the blue sparks in his fingertips that danced to a song that only existed inside his head. “I have to keep my concentration to keep the lights out.”
“What about you, Lance? We know you don’t make light bulbs explode anymore, but did you find out what is it what you do?” Joey asked. Chris was glad someone else had asked the question. He was dying to know.
“I absorb electric energy, and send it back out again,” Lance said in a tone that suggested that he had been experimenting a lot to come to that conclusion. “That’s why my computers keep dying on me. I’m a walking power surge. It’s almost under control, as long as I absorb enough energy to keep myself charged. That’s why I haven’t been hungry since this happened.”
“So what do we do now?” Chris asked, rubbing his arm. “I don’t know if we can add superheroics to our schedule.”
“Chris, this isn’t a game,” Lance admonished, breathing slowly.
“We could get suits from wardrobe,” JC smiled at Chris, ignoring Lance and getting into the joke. As he spoke, the lights around his hair started to dance. “With masks.”
“Because the last thing we want is for the press to see our faces,” Joey nodded, amused.
“Well,” Lance practically yelled, making them all shut up. The lights around JC turned white and disappeared. “I think we’ve got enough control to star the tour as if nothing had happened. The doctors will check Joey soon and find nothing wrong with his leg, and we can pray for putting all this behind us.”
But Chris couldn’t help the feeling that it was not going to be so easy.
* * *
The tour started without more problems, so Chris could cross out ‘premonition’ from of the list of probable powers he had. He was still worried about that, especially as Joey seemed to keep getting new ones every day.
He was never going to forget the day when Kelly brought little Briahna to visit her traveling father, and Joey just took a look at her and ran to the bathroom. Chris found him with his head under the sink, as he was obviously trying to get rid of the taste of puke.
“What was that?” he asked, curious, as he handed Joey a towel.
“New power,” Joey explained, drying his face and keeping his eyes carefully closed. “Her clothes melted.”
“Wait. You’re getting x-ray vision and complaining?” Chris laughed, trying not to consider the lack of wisdom at laughing at a man who could currently crush steel bars without breaking a sweat. “I can’t believe you.”
“I wouldn’t if I had been able to stop at her clothes,” Joey pointed out. “Human bodies aren’t as attractive without skin on.”
Chris, who had been seeing exactly how a human body looked without skin on, and also varying degrees on how to take the skin off in an attempt to get more creative with what he now considered the lamest power after Lance’s, couldn’t disagree.
It took Joey a while, but when he finally could look at Chris without seeing him naked, he went out to apologize to a very worried Kelly.
The final count of Joey’s powers was, so far, super strength, invulnerability, flight, heat vision, freeze breath, x-ray vision, infrared vision, super speed and, to everyone’s despair, super hearing. They all joked with him that now ‘Superman’ was not just a nickname.
JC, so far, only shone. The spectrum of his light ran all the way to the infrared, according to Joey, so they all guessed that he might be able to shine in the ultraviolet frequency. What use that had, they didn’t know, but Chris knew that sometimes, during the concerts, JC let go of his control just a little, his lights joining their own, man-made light show.
Lance seemed happy to ignore his power. As long as they let him have an hour near an electric outlet so he could ‘feed’ before a show, there were no more incidents, for which Chris was very grateful. Everything on the show depended on computers, and he would hate Lance if the Space Cowboy harnesses suddenly malfunctioned because the man just wanted a bit of an energy snack.
And himself, he couldn’t deny he had fun being a shape shifter. For one thing, it made a lot easier to get past security without them noticing, and he could actually go out and enjoy himself without anyone recognizing him. Since his abilities also extended to inanimate objects and animals, Chris had been experimenting a lot.
Which explained why he was a pigeon outside the stadium just three hours before the concert. It was an interesting pastime, to see the empty stadium before the fans came and filled it. And in the small size he was in now, it put everything in perspective.
“It is done,” a man was talking in hushed whispers to his cell phone below the cable where Chris the pigeon was perched. There was no one else around, so Chris thought it was suspicious that he was whispering. And curious, since he thought he recognized the man as one of the many temporary crew members they had hired after one too many Lance-caused accidents. “I rigged the first harness from the right.”
Pigeons couldn’t frown, so Chris just leaned his head to the side. The combination of the words ‘rigged’ and ‘harness’ was not a good one.
“Hey, I told you I would do it,” the man repeated. “In a couple of hours, Timberlake will be history.”
And that phrase was more than worrisome. Sure that the man wouldn’t even notice a pigeon flying away, he took off, hoping to find Lance in one of his better moods.
He got to the hotel with no problems, but in his hurry, he decided to go straight to Lance’s window. Unfortunately for him Justin was there, arguing with Lance, Joey and JC.
“Dude, I’m starting to think you guys hate me,” Justin said. “When was the last time we went out together?”
“Justin, we live together. It’s no big deal if we don’t go clubbing every night after a show,” Lance answered, calmly and composed. It was a huge contrast with Justin’s angry face.
“We used to!” Justin stomped his foot on the ground. “Guys, we’re growing apart, don’t you see? Hell, I couldn’t even find Chris!”
“COO,” Chris cooed. While he could speak as a pigeon, he doubted Lance would appreciate it if Justin heard him. No one in the room seemed to even notice.
“Chris just went out for some air, J,” Joey said, trying to convince Justin. “He’ll be back in time for the show.”
“COO!” The window was open, so Chris flew right in and perched on Joey’s shoulder, startling everyone.
“Fuck! How did that got in here?” Justin swatted at him, but Chris didn’t even blink. He needed to talk to the guys, and getting Justin out of the room was step one in his not-so-well-thought-out plan.
“It seems to like Joey,” JC said, smiling. If pigeons could frown, Chris would have. He was sure JC didn’t know he was the pigeon, but even so the comment was too close for comfort.
Unfortunately, pigeons couldn’t growl either.
“Why don’t you go see if Chris is back?” Joey turned his attention to Justin, carefully keeping his shoulder still. Apparently, he had realized that it was odd that a pigeon would look for human company like that and that it meant that it was probably not really a pigeon. “I bet he wouldn’t mind going to a club after the show if you still want to go out.”
That was it. Chris was going to kill Joey. He was going to figure out how to become a functional dragon and kill Joey. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to spend time with Justin, but Justin was going to ask questions, and Chris hated lying to his friend.
“You want me out of the room,” Justin said. It was obvious that they were not fooling him, and Chris wondered when they were going to realize that. Justin was a lot smarter than they were giving him credit for. Then, he saw Justin’s eyes grow bigger, as if he had figured out something. “Are you guys having sex? Because if you are, I want to know. I don’t want in because, no offense, not my thing, but I want to know. We’re supposed to be friends here, yo.”
Chris almost fell off Joey’s shoulder trying to stifle a very un-pigeon like laugh. As it was, JC, Joey and Lance looked as if they had been hit with a baseball bat. Or a train, in Joey’s case.
“There’s no sex involved,” JC said, quickly. He was getting nervous, because Chris could see small sparks of glitter coming out of his mouth. “At all. Seriously Justin, you should go and wait for Chris. We’ll be down there in a minute.”
“Ok,” Justin smiled, looking a bit vacant, turned around and left without further discussion.
“What the fuck was that?” Chris asked, once Justin was out of hearing range. He flapped his wings once, before leaving Joey’s shoulder and landing on the floor, changing to human form almost immediately. He was really getting better at it.
“Hi, Chris. Care to tell us why you were a pigeon?” Lance interrupted, sourly.
“Never mind that, since when does Justin listen to us without a discussion?” Chris crossed his arms. “What did you guys do to him?”
“Nothing,” JC shook his head. “He probably thought the argument was overplayed. We had been going at it for a while before you came in. And Lance is right, why a pigeon?”
Aware that he was not going to convince his friends that there was something wrong if Justin let someone else get the last word, Chris told them what he had overheard. They had only two hours to figure out how to make everyone fix that harness without explaining that Chris knew it was broken because he had heard a man talk about it while he was a pigeon.
* * *
“We’re making a small last minute change,” Lance announced minutes before the show began. They were about to get into the boxes for the big entrance, so they only had a few crew members around. Chris had checked twice that none of the guys around them had been the guy who had sabotaged the harness and so they could put Lance’s plan in action.
“This is not a good moment to make changes, Lance.” Anthony, their floor manager, looked anxious. With all the unexplained accidents during rehearsals, Chris couldn’t blame him.
“It’s a small thing,” JC piped in, smiling. “Nothing major.”
“I’ll change harnesses with Justin,” Joey explained. “Instead of being next to Chris, I’ll take the one in the right. That’s all.” Joey explained, sitting on the box he would share with Lance.” To add some variety.”
“Wait. Why?” Justin frowned. He had made Chris promise they would’ve going clubbing after the show, after a long rant about how they were not as close as they used to be.
“As Joey said, it’s just a little thing to make the show different,” Chris smoothly lied. He knew it was a flimsy excuse. They rehearsed the shows to keep everything perfect and even small changes were simply not done like that. “Besides, that way you can hold my hand during the descent. Weren’t you complaining we weren’t as close as we used to be?”
Justin frowned, obviously not completely convinced. When they had started doing stunts like rappelling down from the top of the stage, Chris had been terrified and Justin was the one who talked him into doing the stunts, joking around to make Chris forget his fear. Now, he could do it without help, he had managed to get over his fear. Asking for help again hurt his pride a little, but it was a small price to keep Justin away from the sabotaged harness.
“Come on, Justin, it will be fun,” JC added, sitting down on his own box. His eyes twinkled with amusement.
“Ok, let’s do that,” Justin agreed smiling. “But next time I want the center harness then!”
* * *
They were up in the air, Lance, and JC to his left, Justin and Joey at his right Chris was keeping his eyes up front, not looking down. The fact that he *could* now do the descent without becoming paralyzed with fear didn’t mean that he liked it.
He turned to see Joey, just to check he was all right. Part of him still wanted to believe that he had been mistaken and no one had sabotaged Justin’s harness. But the lines of the harness weren’t tensed at all. Either something had happened, or Joey had decided not to risk it and fly all the way down anyway.
He hoped not. He could deal with the fact that now he, JC, Joey and Lance had superpowers. He could even deal with the fact that they were lying to Justin. But the idea that someone was trying to kill his younger friend was a little too much.
But if someone was trying to kill Justin, at least the white light had given them the means to stop it from happening.
And, now that Chris thought about it, that was pretty cool too.
To be continued…
Fandom: Popslash.
Characters: Chris Kirkpatrick / Joey Fatone
Prompt: 019. White
Word Count: 5,955
Summary: An accident with a disco ball, and a moon rock changes four fifths of *N Sync.
Author's Notes: This is a bit of insanity brought to you by my obsessive love for superheroes and milosflaca obsession with the disco ball. Which reminds me, she helped to decide the powers for the guys (Because mostly? My ideas for Chris would’ve ended on the end of the world) as well as the origin. While they’re my words, the order of things of the first short scene -which of course, I can’t say here since they’re spoilers- were her idea. And of course, she did first beta. Many thanks to otherdeb for her fast beta. And this one is for joshysleo. I hope this brings a smile to your face.
* * *
The white, blinding light was the last thing Chris remembered before things went crazy.
They were in JC’s house, trying to convince him that, no, a disco ball was not a good alternative for a lamp in his basement, which now doubled as entertainment center when the moon rock that Lance had given JC as a gift after his last trip to Russia had started to glow. Chris hadn’t paid attention to that since he thought it was just reflecting the lights of the disco ball until the light from the rock was more intense that the one of the ball.
There was a ray of light coming from the rock and into the Disco Ball. That much, he remembered, but then the disco ball had reflected the ray all over the room and, while everyone had ducked, Chris was pretty sure he had seen Joey get hit before the whole room turned into a white ball of light.
When Chris finally regained consciousness, his body felt stiff. He blinked, trying to regain his bearings, watching how Joey was furiously dialing on his cell phone. JC was helping Lance to stand on his feet.
The room was very bright, and the floor was covered with smoke.
“Guys?” Chris asked, and tried to frown. His voice sounded hollow.
“Joe, I don’t think costumer service will be able to help,” Lance coughed. “What are you going to tell them, that the disco ball exploded?”
“I’ll think of something,” Joey’s face was red with anger. “Fuck, Lance, what if I had brought Bri with me?”
“Has anyone seen Chris?” JC asked, looking around.
“I’m here!” Chris said, but the guys didn’t seem to hear him.
“Joey, calm down,” Lance countered. “Where is Chris?”
“He was standing next to me just a minute ago.” Joey frowned, looking around, cell phone forgotten for a moment.
He looked straight at Chris, before turning to Lance again. “Fuck. Where is Chris?”
“I’m here!” Chris yelled, indignant. It was one thing that lately the press seemed to ignore him completely, but to have his friends do the same hurt.
Everyone turned to see him, their faces between shock and surprise.
“Chris?” Lance finally asked, tentatively.
“Oh, so you see me now?” Chris huffed. The light around him seemed brighter, somehow.
“JC, tell me you also bought a Sharper Image fancy lamp that turns on when you call it Chris,” Lance whispered, scared.
A loud crack was his only answer, and they all turned to see Joey who was staring dumbfounded at his hand.
On it, everyone could see the crushed remains of his cell phone.
* * *
Five hours later, they had gone past panicking and well into a weird calm acceptance that Chris was sure was just a stage before they either went insane or figured out what was happening.
It had took him almost half an hour to turn back to himself, and he still couldn’t believe he had been a lamp. JC had even given him a mirror so he could see it for himself.
A tall lamp, with a round, blueish light bulb.
Not a bad looking lamp, but Chris preferred being human all things considered. He didn’t know how he had managed to turn into a lamp, and he wasn’t sure how he had managed to go back to normal. He knew he was hungry, and he wondered when JC was going to remember he had guests who needed to eat.
“That light did something to you guys,” Lance said, for the second time in the afternoon. The fucker had managed to get out of it unharmed. “I don’t think we can deny that anymore.”
“If you let me call the disco ball company,” Joey began saying, only to be silenced by a chorus of nos.
“Don’t even think about it,” Chris said, glaring at Joey, “I’m not turning myself into a phone for you.”
Whatever the combination of moon rock and discoball had done to their bodies, the most obvious change had been to Chris, who apparently now could change shapes at will. Chris was sure that could be fun if he could learn to control it, and it was a lot less scary than Joey’s change.
Joey’s change was subtle. So subtle they hadn’t really noticed until he had broken his cell phone, JC’s cellphone, the phone in the basement and one in the living room, crushing them all to practically powder. As if that hadn’t been proof enough, Joey had also punched a hole straight through JC’s living room wall.
If things hadn’t been bad enough with a shape-shifting freak and a supe-strong freak, JC sparkled. It hadn’t been obvious in the basement since they all thought that the lights were JC’s emergency lights, but once they were out, and it was still bright enough to blind them, they realized the light was coming out of JC’s body.
Once Lance had pointed it out, the shimmer had dimmed a bit, but it was still noticeable. JC’s hair looked as if it had been dipped in glitter.
Lance had not changed. Lance was still normal, and Chris hated him a little for it.
“What are we going to do now?” JC asked. As he spoke, streams of light and glitter came out of his mouth. “I don’t think our medical insurance will cover this.”
“I don’t think the laws of reality cover this,” Chris grumbled.
“Chris, stop that,” Lance admonished. Instead of asking what Lance meant, Chris looked at the mirror he was still carrying. JC’s face blinked at him on the reflective surface, minus glitter. Apparently, he couldn’t mimic glitter. Sighing, he concentrated, trying to remember what he looked like, and had to suppress the need to scream as he saw JC’s features melt into his own.
The actual effect was shocking.
“Sorry,” he whispered to no one.
“You’ve got to be careful,” Lance decided. “We can’t let anyone know what happened to you unless you want to try and record our next album from Area 51. So we have to pray that this thing will fade.”
“What if it doesn’t fade?” JC asked, looking at his hand as the glow around it changed colors quickly, making Chris feel dizzy.
“It has to fade. It has to just be a temporary thing,” Lance insisted, starting to sound really freaked out.
“And if it doesn’t? What if it’s permanent?” Chris insisted. He was tapping his foot quickly against the floor, feeling really scared. He had been a lamp for an hour, that gave him the right to feel scared.
“Then you’ll have to learn to control it,” Lance finally looked at Chris, who stopped his tapping immediately. Lance didn’t seem to understand that they had the right to be freaked out. Of course, he wasn’t shining, breaking stuff, or getting his body rearranged every time he sneezed.
“What if we can’t?” Joey asked, sounding immensely sad.
No one had an answer to that.
* * *
The very next day, they had their first rehearsal on the mock stage, and Chris just wanted to believe everything had been a dream.
He could have fooled himself, if he hadn’t awakened looking like Joey. It had been a terrifying moment, when he realized he had even copied the red tips in Joey’s hair almost perfectly; so perfectly, in fact, that he had gone back silently to the room he shared with Joey just to check they hadn’t changed bodies during the night.
That would have been the cherry on the cake.
“You look like shit,” Justin told him, smiling brightly. Unlike the others, Justin looked really excited, rested and bouncy. Of course, Justin hadn’t spent the night worrying about becoming radioactive. “What did you do last night?”
“Sleep,” Chris said, forcing himself to smile. “What did you do? Drink all our coffee?”
“No, but you sure look like you need it. You don’t want to fall asleep in the middle of a song,” Justin answered, pointing to the coffee maker on the buffet table. Joey, Lance and JC were walking towards it, and Chris knew he wasn’t imagining the resentful looks JC and Joey were giving Lance. It was not that they hated Lance for being lucky and get out of the explosion without any changes, but the way in which he had acted afterwards grated on them all.
Chris thought for a second about starting a mock fight with Justin, just to try and forget all that had happened to them, when he saw the coffee maker explode in Joey’s hands.
“What the fuck?!” Lance was looking at Joey, somewhere between annoyed and scared, as Joey’s shirt turned darker with the stain.
Chris bit his lip, nervous. He didn’t think Joey had felt the coffee, but if someone else noticed that Joey had just been bathed in a hot liquid and hadn’t even flinched, their secret would be out.
“I’m going to clean myself,” Joey muttered quickly, running off. Chris just looked at Lance who had gone pale, looking intently at the charred remains of the coffee maker.
They managed to go through the entire routine without any incident, and Chris was starting to forget that they were supposed to be careful when two things happened in rapid succession.
First, during one of the Bye Bye Bye stomps, Joey’s foot went straight through the floor, breaking the planks.
When everyone rushed to see how Joey was, all the light bulbs over the stage exploded at the same time.
Chris groaned. Things were definitely not going well.
* * *
It turned out that Lance hadn’t got out of the ‘disco ball incident’ unscathed, but they didn’t notice his change until it was almost too late to keep their secret.
In the week that followed the incident, they all caused small accidents. The most noticeable one had been Joey’s jump through the stage, but JC had almost blinded one of their assistants just because she surprised him when he was talking on the phone, Chris somehow started mimicking everyone by accident which meant he had to keep his mind somehow focused to avoid changing in front of someone.
During that time, Chris had time to realize that he and JC had been the lucky ones. At least their powers could be hidden somewhat easily.
But Joey’s powers seemed to keep developing, instead of fading away as Lance had hoped. On that first night, Joey’s eyes started to glow red a little after he and Chris had decided to go and try to sleep a little. Only Chris’s quick reflexes helped him to avoid the beam that came out of them, melting the flower vase they had on the drawer.
While no one had noticed yet, Joey was leaving a trail of half melted soda cans and glasses all over, but Chris had thought of a couple of excuses to explain them if anyone asked.
Explaining why every single electronic device malfunctioned or worse, exploded, every time Lance came in the room was a lot harder.
“If we have one more ‘accident’ Johnny is going to think we’re cursed,” JC said, flopping down on the couch of the room he was sharing with Joey. Since they couldn’t risk Justin finding out what had happened, they always left him the single room and found ways to distract him when they needed to have meetings. This time, Justin was having dinner with Britney, which gave them more or less a free night.
“We need to either cure us, or learn to control this,” Chris said, his voice sounding deeper with every syllable. Joey, who was sitting next to him, hit him softly on the back of his head.
“Concentrate, Chris. You’re looking and sounding like Lance now.”
“Sorry,” Chris took out a little mirror he now carried with him at all times, and frowned when he saw Lance’s green eyes peering at him. The voice changes were new, now he was pretty sure he could imitate anyone perfectly, as long as he kept his mind somewhat focused.
“If that happens during rehearsals, we’ll be toast,” JC said. His shimmer, which was kept almost dim outside, shone with a blue, melancholic tint.
“It has happened,” Chris confessed, looking again like himself. He thought he looked thinner, but he couldn’t make his features change further. Absentmindedly he pulled out a Snickers bar from his jacket and started to eat. One thing he had noticed was that he was always hungry after changing. “That’s why I’ve been ‘late’ to the last five rehearsals. I get there in time, but looking like someone else.”
“You sound like them too now,” Joey had his eyes closed. Heat vision was cool in theory, but if he got angry, they could wave the room deposit goodbye. “We’re getting more powerful too.”
“Chris is right, we need to control this,” Lance said.
“How?” Joey asked, angry. “We have rehearsals all day, do you want to start a superhero camp at nights?”
“No.” Lance looked smug. That, to Chris, always meant bad news. “Next rehearsal, we’ll have another accident.”
“What?” The shimmering glow around JC turned an angry red, making Chris close his eyes. “That will only make us lose time!”
“Not this one,” Lance calmly said. “Joey, tomorrow, you’ll get your leg under the floor trap and…”
“No way!” Joey protested. “I’m not going to break my damn leg for you guys!”
“I’m more worried about the floor trap,” Chris whispered, earning a glare from Joey. “Joe, you *broke* the floor. I doubt the trap is going to hurt you. I bet you won’t even feel it.”
“Oh,” Joey frowned, slowly coming to understand Lance’s plan. “Oh! Sure. I can do it. But I don’t get it. If I can’t get hurt, what good will it do?”
“When everyone sees you going down, JC and I will make a distraction,” Lance continued, efficiently as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “And Chris will change places with you. Chris, can you fake a broken leg?”
“I guess, if I know what it looks like,” Chris nodded. He was the one with better control.
“Won’t people notice if Chris disappears?” JC pointed out.
“No, he’ll be ‘late’ to rehearsal, so he’ll miss everything. And it will give us at least a week or so to cope with the changes.”
* * *
The only drawback to Lance’s plan was that Chris had to stay focused on Joey’s shape not only while the paramedics took him to the hospital, but also during the diagnostic, the treatment and until they got his leg on a cast.
Chris had been momentarily worried when they gave him painkillers for a pain he wasn’t feeling, but to his surprise, nothing happened. He managed to remain focused on keeping Joey’s face on.
Of course, that left him alone and bored in his hospital room, after Lance, JC and Justin had left. Justin was quite shocked, still confused as to why ‘Chris’ hadn’t come to see ‘Joey’, and Chris couldn’t help but feel a little guilty. He had wanted to tell Justin about the accident, but Lance, JC and Joey had voted against the idea. Lance thought that the less people knew about their ‘abilities’, the better. Joey didn’t want Justin to think they were freaks, and JC didn’t give any reason, but he still voted against.
He was still grumbling about being left alone, and complaining to himself about the things he did for Joey, when a soft knock on his window pulled him out of his thoughts.
“Open up, Chris, someone is going to see me!” Joey was standing out of the window, smiling like a loon.
“How did you get up here?” Chris asked, shifting to his own features as he got up from the bed. He hoped the nurse wouldn’t come back while he was shifting his leg out of the cast.
“Surprise!” Joey said, opening his arms as Chris opened the window. And yes, it was surprising to see his friend standing like that, happy beyond words, while his feet dangled in thin air, in front of a window in a sixth floor. Joey was flying.
“Holy Shit, Joey! Come in before someone sees you!” Chris laughed. It was hard not to, watching Joey’s smile as he got in the room, his feet still not touching the floor. “When did you learn to do that?”
“After you guys left, I kind of start floating.” Joey laughed. “It’s cool, only that I haven’t figured out how to get down yet.”
“Have you tried unhappy thoughts?” Chris suggested, amused.
“That was my next idea, I don’t want you cooped here all day and tomorrow Lance wants Justin to see you visiting.” Joey half sat over the bed, hovering just an inch over the mattress, throwing Chris a backpack. “Get dressed, I need your robe.”
“Can you wait for me to get in the bathroom?”
“If you don’t want me to look at you naked, you can easily change into someone else. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you’re a lot better than us at this,” Joey said, very serious. “I’ve seen you practicing.”
“You have?” Chris raised his eyebrows, surprised. He thought he had been discreet.
“During rehearsals, I’ve seen you change just a bit of your face. So, give me that robe,” Joey insisted, so Chris turned around. It wasn’t that he was shy around the guys, they had shared enough showers to lose any modesty, but Joey was special. And he didn’t want Joey to notice that lately, his ribs were starting to show unless he focused on them. “I also brought you a couple of snack bars. I bet hospital food isn’t better than when Lance was here.”
“Thanks,” Chris said, putting on the shirt Joey had brought him. Then he helped him to put on the leg cast, grateful that it was not a solid cast. That would’ve been impossible to put around Joey’s leg. “You think this will work?”
“It has to,” Joey gave him a very soft pat in the shoulder. “You’ve got it almost under control, and JC’s glow isn’t that noticeable. As long as I don’t sprout wings and Lance stops short-circuiting everything, we’re cool.”
* * *
A week later, Chris could almost share Joey’s optimism. He still was too thin when he was not shape-changing, but it was nothing that a steady diet of, well, everything, couldn’t solve. They had a new meeting in JC’s hotel room, after they managed to convince Justin that it was a good idea for him to start checking time schedules if he really wanted to do his solo album. Chris thought it was a very bad idea to encourage him with that, but as long as the others were adamant in not telling Justin about their abilities, there was no other choice.
Joey had been alternatively faking a very good limp or sitting in a wheelchair that hid perfectly when he started floating, and Chris had to admit his friend was a very good actor. They had to sacrifice Joey’s dancing for the Pop Video, but Joey had shrugged it off, saying that it was for the good cause of avoiding being studied by scientists.
As soon as Lance got in the room, the light bulb of the lamp shut down. Chris supposed it was an improvement as it didn’t explode. Because there was no way he was going to go up in any of the stage harnesses even during rehearsal, unless Lance could promise that he was not going to make the computers explode as the coffee machine, the coke machine, JC’s brand new cellphone, and Chris’s laptop had done.
“So, how are we doing?” Lance asked, sounding tired. “Any new developments, Joey?”
“Freeze breath,” Joey sighed. That had been fun to watch for the first time, when Joey had sneezed and freeze Chris’s soda. “But I can control my strength and I don’t float anymore.”
“That’s great,” Lance sighed. Of the group, Joey seemed to be the one who had developed more powers and they all worried about that, because as long as Joey kept adding powers, it meant that they weren’t exactly out of danger. Any day now, they could develop more changes, and they all knew it. Besides, even if only Joey kept developing more abilities, that didn’t mean they were clear. After all, the heat vision had been thankfully easy to turn off, but Chris wouldn’t feel really safe until a month had passed and Joey didn’t grow a second head or started shooting laser beams from his fingers. “Chris?”
“Nothing new,” Chris answered with Justin’s more nasal voice. He didn’t change his face, only his vocal cords and a couple of bones under his skin. He had spent the best part of the week reading anatomy books to understand what was exactly what he could do and couldn’t do to his body. What had started with trying to fake a realistic broken leg was now a full on project, especially since he had discovered that every little change made him burn calories.
If he kept using those powers, he would starve to death unless he learned how to change things with the minimum effort needed. Small bone and cartilage changes were the easiest, and they did help to make his voice change.
“Show off,” Joey elbowed him playfully, and Chris could testify that Joey’s control had gotten better. He had barely felt the touch.
“Just never do that to me without warning,” JC said, smiling. “I can keep the glow at an invisible minimum, but if you surprise me, it’ll be like a damn Christmas tree, colors and all.”
“You can do colors now?” Lance asked, impressed. “On purpose?”
“Sure.” JC closed his eyes for a moment, and started laughing for no apparent reason. Suddenly, they all saw his glow come to life. It was a white, warm light that made Chris feel better just by watching it. Then it turned green, blue, purple, yellow and finally, red. “How was it?”
“Pretty,” Lance deadpanned, rolling his eyes. He didn’t look amused. “Why were you laughing?”
“If I’m not thinking about anything, they come out easier.” JC started playing with the blue sparks in his fingertips that danced to a song that only existed inside his head. “I have to keep my concentration to keep the lights out.”
“What about you, Lance? We know you don’t make light bulbs explode anymore, but did you find out what is it what you do?” Joey asked. Chris was glad someone else had asked the question. He was dying to know.
“I absorb electric energy, and send it back out again,” Lance said in a tone that suggested that he had been experimenting a lot to come to that conclusion. “That’s why my computers keep dying on me. I’m a walking power surge. It’s almost under control, as long as I absorb enough energy to keep myself charged. That’s why I haven’t been hungry since this happened.”
“So what do we do now?” Chris asked, rubbing his arm. “I don’t know if we can add superheroics to our schedule.”
“Chris, this isn’t a game,” Lance admonished, breathing slowly.
“We could get suits from wardrobe,” JC smiled at Chris, ignoring Lance and getting into the joke. As he spoke, the lights around his hair started to dance. “With masks.”
“Because the last thing we want is for the press to see our faces,” Joey nodded, amused.
“Well,” Lance practically yelled, making them all shut up. The lights around JC turned white and disappeared. “I think we’ve got enough control to star the tour as if nothing had happened. The doctors will check Joey soon and find nothing wrong with his leg, and we can pray for putting all this behind us.”
But Chris couldn’t help the feeling that it was not going to be so easy.
* * *
The tour started without more problems, so Chris could cross out ‘premonition’ from of the list of probable powers he had. He was still worried about that, especially as Joey seemed to keep getting new ones every day.
He was never going to forget the day when Kelly brought little Briahna to visit her traveling father, and Joey just took a look at her and ran to the bathroom. Chris found him with his head under the sink, as he was obviously trying to get rid of the taste of puke.
“What was that?” he asked, curious, as he handed Joey a towel.
“New power,” Joey explained, drying his face and keeping his eyes carefully closed. “Her clothes melted.”
“Wait. You’re getting x-ray vision and complaining?” Chris laughed, trying not to consider the lack of wisdom at laughing at a man who could currently crush steel bars without breaking a sweat. “I can’t believe you.”
“I wouldn’t if I had been able to stop at her clothes,” Joey pointed out. “Human bodies aren’t as attractive without skin on.”
Chris, who had been seeing exactly how a human body looked without skin on, and also varying degrees on how to take the skin off in an attempt to get more creative with what he now considered the lamest power after Lance’s, couldn’t disagree.
It took Joey a while, but when he finally could look at Chris without seeing him naked, he went out to apologize to a very worried Kelly.
The final count of Joey’s powers was, so far, super strength, invulnerability, flight, heat vision, freeze breath, x-ray vision, infrared vision, super speed and, to everyone’s despair, super hearing. They all joked with him that now ‘Superman’ was not just a nickname.
JC, so far, only shone. The spectrum of his light ran all the way to the infrared, according to Joey, so they all guessed that he might be able to shine in the ultraviolet frequency. What use that had, they didn’t know, but Chris knew that sometimes, during the concerts, JC let go of his control just a little, his lights joining their own, man-made light show.
Lance seemed happy to ignore his power. As long as they let him have an hour near an electric outlet so he could ‘feed’ before a show, there were no more incidents, for which Chris was very grateful. Everything on the show depended on computers, and he would hate Lance if the Space Cowboy harnesses suddenly malfunctioned because the man just wanted a bit of an energy snack.
And himself, he couldn’t deny he had fun being a shape shifter. For one thing, it made a lot easier to get past security without them noticing, and he could actually go out and enjoy himself without anyone recognizing him. Since his abilities also extended to inanimate objects and animals, Chris had been experimenting a lot.
Which explained why he was a pigeon outside the stadium just three hours before the concert. It was an interesting pastime, to see the empty stadium before the fans came and filled it. And in the small size he was in now, it put everything in perspective.
“It is done,” a man was talking in hushed whispers to his cell phone below the cable where Chris the pigeon was perched. There was no one else around, so Chris thought it was suspicious that he was whispering. And curious, since he thought he recognized the man as one of the many temporary crew members they had hired after one too many Lance-caused accidents. “I rigged the first harness from the right.”
Pigeons couldn’t frown, so Chris just leaned his head to the side. The combination of the words ‘rigged’ and ‘harness’ was not a good one.
“Hey, I told you I would do it,” the man repeated. “In a couple of hours, Timberlake will be history.”
And that phrase was more than worrisome. Sure that the man wouldn’t even notice a pigeon flying away, he took off, hoping to find Lance in one of his better moods.
He got to the hotel with no problems, but in his hurry, he decided to go straight to Lance’s window. Unfortunately for him Justin was there, arguing with Lance, Joey and JC.
“Dude, I’m starting to think you guys hate me,” Justin said. “When was the last time we went out together?”
“Justin, we live together. It’s no big deal if we don’t go clubbing every night after a show,” Lance answered, calmly and composed. It was a huge contrast with Justin’s angry face.
“We used to!” Justin stomped his foot on the ground. “Guys, we’re growing apart, don’t you see? Hell, I couldn’t even find Chris!”
“COO,” Chris cooed. While he could speak as a pigeon, he doubted Lance would appreciate it if Justin heard him. No one in the room seemed to even notice.
“Chris just went out for some air, J,” Joey said, trying to convince Justin. “He’ll be back in time for the show.”
“COO!” The window was open, so Chris flew right in and perched on Joey’s shoulder, startling everyone.
“Fuck! How did that got in here?” Justin swatted at him, but Chris didn’t even blink. He needed to talk to the guys, and getting Justin out of the room was step one in his not-so-well-thought-out plan.
“It seems to like Joey,” JC said, smiling. If pigeons could frown, Chris would have. He was sure JC didn’t know he was the pigeon, but even so the comment was too close for comfort.
Unfortunately, pigeons couldn’t growl either.
“Why don’t you go see if Chris is back?” Joey turned his attention to Justin, carefully keeping his shoulder still. Apparently, he had realized that it was odd that a pigeon would look for human company like that and that it meant that it was probably not really a pigeon. “I bet he wouldn’t mind going to a club after the show if you still want to go out.”
That was it. Chris was going to kill Joey. He was going to figure out how to become a functional dragon and kill Joey. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to spend time with Justin, but Justin was going to ask questions, and Chris hated lying to his friend.
“You want me out of the room,” Justin said. It was obvious that they were not fooling him, and Chris wondered when they were going to realize that. Justin was a lot smarter than they were giving him credit for. Then, he saw Justin’s eyes grow bigger, as if he had figured out something. “Are you guys having sex? Because if you are, I want to know. I don’t want in because, no offense, not my thing, but I want to know. We’re supposed to be friends here, yo.”
Chris almost fell off Joey’s shoulder trying to stifle a very un-pigeon like laugh. As it was, JC, Joey and Lance looked as if they had been hit with a baseball bat. Or a train, in Joey’s case.
“There’s no sex involved,” JC said, quickly. He was getting nervous, because Chris could see small sparks of glitter coming out of his mouth. “At all. Seriously Justin, you should go and wait for Chris. We’ll be down there in a minute.”
“Ok,” Justin smiled, looking a bit vacant, turned around and left without further discussion.
“What the fuck was that?” Chris asked, once Justin was out of hearing range. He flapped his wings once, before leaving Joey’s shoulder and landing on the floor, changing to human form almost immediately. He was really getting better at it.
“Hi, Chris. Care to tell us why you were a pigeon?” Lance interrupted, sourly.
“Never mind that, since when does Justin listen to us without a discussion?” Chris crossed his arms. “What did you guys do to him?”
“Nothing,” JC shook his head. “He probably thought the argument was overplayed. We had been going at it for a while before you came in. And Lance is right, why a pigeon?”
Aware that he was not going to convince his friends that there was something wrong if Justin let someone else get the last word, Chris told them what he had overheard. They had only two hours to figure out how to make everyone fix that harness without explaining that Chris knew it was broken because he had heard a man talk about it while he was a pigeon.
* * *
“We’re making a small last minute change,” Lance announced minutes before the show began. They were about to get into the boxes for the big entrance, so they only had a few crew members around. Chris had checked twice that none of the guys around them had been the guy who had sabotaged the harness and so they could put Lance’s plan in action.
“This is not a good moment to make changes, Lance.” Anthony, their floor manager, looked anxious. With all the unexplained accidents during rehearsals, Chris couldn’t blame him.
“It’s a small thing,” JC piped in, smiling. “Nothing major.”
“I’ll change harnesses with Justin,” Joey explained. “Instead of being next to Chris, I’ll take the one in the right. That’s all.” Joey explained, sitting on the box he would share with Lance.” To add some variety.”
“Wait. Why?” Justin frowned. He had made Chris promise they would’ve going clubbing after the show, after a long rant about how they were not as close as they used to be.
“As Joey said, it’s just a little thing to make the show different,” Chris smoothly lied. He knew it was a flimsy excuse. They rehearsed the shows to keep everything perfect and even small changes were simply not done like that. “Besides, that way you can hold my hand during the descent. Weren’t you complaining we weren’t as close as we used to be?”
Justin frowned, obviously not completely convinced. When they had started doing stunts like rappelling down from the top of the stage, Chris had been terrified and Justin was the one who talked him into doing the stunts, joking around to make Chris forget his fear. Now, he could do it without help, he had managed to get over his fear. Asking for help again hurt his pride a little, but it was a small price to keep Justin away from the sabotaged harness.
“Come on, Justin, it will be fun,” JC added, sitting down on his own box. His eyes twinkled with amusement.
“Ok, let’s do that,” Justin agreed smiling. “But next time I want the center harness then!”
* * *
They were up in the air, Lance, and JC to his left, Justin and Joey at his right Chris was keeping his eyes up front, not looking down. The fact that he *could* now do the descent without becoming paralyzed with fear didn’t mean that he liked it.
He turned to see Joey, just to check he was all right. Part of him still wanted to believe that he had been mistaken and no one had sabotaged Justin’s harness. But the lines of the harness weren’t tensed at all. Either something had happened, or Joey had decided not to risk it and fly all the way down anyway.
He hoped not. He could deal with the fact that now he, JC, Joey and Lance had superpowers. He could even deal with the fact that they were lying to Justin. But the idea that someone was trying to kill his younger friend was a little too much.
But if someone was trying to kill Justin, at least the white light had given them the means to stop it from happening.
And, now that Chris thought about it, that was pretty cool too.
To be continued…