the end of the beginning
     by Julad


     * * * * *

     After Britney, Lance got an attitude.

     After Britney.  A.B., Chris thought.  About time they gave it an
     abbreviation.  

     A.B., Lance got himself the kind of attitude where he put his hand on
     Carson Daly's knee, and laughed throatily.  A.B., he showed up at a
     premiere with beard rash on his throat.  A.B., he told Seventeen that his
     favourite clothes were all sparkly and pretty.  

     It got edited out.  "Bad for business," Lance said.  Management tried
     freaking at him, and Lance laughed.  "Oh, *please*," he said.  "This game
     is decades old; do your job and play it.  Like MTV really *wants* to shit 
     in its own drinking water."

     Rumours were flying that Justin and Britney were engaged.  She was
     photographed with a diamond ring on her finger.  "You won't be their
     drinking water for much longer," PR warned him.

     "No shit, Sherlock."  Then he walked away.

     A.B., he sashayed over to Ricky Martin at the Grammy party, and sat down
     on his lap.  Ricky laughed and rustled his hair and tried to brush him
     off, and Lance gasped in fake horror, said, "oh silly me, of course, I'm
     too old for you now!"  When he walked away, he took Ricky's drink and one
     of Ricky's dancers.  He wasn't even drunk when he did it.

     "Who the fuck cares?" he drawled, when Chris tentatively raised the topic.
     He had his feet on the hotel coffeetable, and was filing his nails.  "The
     White-trash Royals are buying a house, they'll get *all* the six inches',
     *and* all the spreads."  Then he smiled bitterly, as if the joke was too
     dark for anybody else to appreciate it.  Chris appreciated it, though.
     Lance, Chris realised bizarrely, had stopped being the goofy down-home guy
     who was just saucing it up for their laughs - now he really *was* a camp
     little bitch.  Somewhere between 16 and 21, Jekyll and Hyde had switched,
     and "'Nsync's Lance Bass" had become a flawlessly staged performance,
     interview after interview, night after night after night.  Chris wanted to
     shake his hand and congratulate him on it, but it was too late now--the
     act was over.  After Britney, Hyde kicked Dr Jekyll's sweet shy wholesome
     little butt down the stairs and out the door and into the river, and waved
     the corpse away with a limp wrist and a eulogy of "thanks for the good
     times, sweetie."  

     Lance bought a T-shirt with a naked Ken and Barbie doll fucking
     plastically, and wore it every single day till it was nearly transparent.
     It got stained faintly pink by a red sweater, except Lance *never* forgot
     to separate his whites.  The more Chris had to stare at the thing, the
     more sure he was that it was a really, really, *really* big fucking
     political statement.  Not to mention bitchy as hell.  If Justin had
     bothered to notice it, he would have screamed the house down.  Chris
     couldn't be sure if it really meant all the things he thought it meant,
     though, because nobody else seemed think anything of it.

     He caved and asked, when he couldn't stand the suspense any longer.  Lance
     shrugged, raising his diva's eyebrow as if Chris were just now getting the
     clue bus.

     The intensity of his concentration on business matters took on a whole new
     resonance, too.  "You're smarter than I gave you credit for," Chris
     confessed at six-thirty one morning, when Lance was flipping on his
     powerbook before he even fetched coffee.

     Lance looked at him with genuine warmth, for the first time in what seemed
     like forever.  The first time since the dawn of the Age of Britney.  "I
     am?"

     "I thought--" Chris gestured angrily to his own paperwork, the crumpled
     detritus of an all-night budget session.  "I thought I was the smart one.
     Completely different business, something to jump sideways to, you know?"

     Lance nodded, and leaned over Chris to top up his coffee for him.

     "And the band would boost me up but it wouldn't drag me down again."

     "It won't, much.  It's a good plan." He sounded like the Lance of old.
     The calm one.  The serious one.  "Don't worry, you'll make it."

     Chris shook his head, letting frustration overwhelm him.  "If I was really
     smart, I would have studied *this* business.  Then I wouldn't be sitting
     around, waiting to crash and burn."

     "What are you talking about?  I can't do anything about it either," Lance
     said, sitting down, opening his mail program.  "The Royals have ascended
     their heavenly throne, and we're falling back to earth."

     "You've got a grip on it, though.  Of yourself, of your money."  Chris
     looked at him; he was still wearing the damn plastic no-genitals sex
     shirt, which now had holes in the back and a torn neckline.  It was
     retired from public life, though, replaced by a red one with the Cowardly
     Lion on it.  Any day now, Lance was gonna pick his live syndication
     moment, was gonna roll his eyes, or shake his head, or smirk, and set off
     the avalanche he was building; *It* would be *Out*, and Lance would use
     the last momentum of his boyhood fame to achieve a cult celebrity status,
     which would be adult, and political, and would have staying power.
     "You're in control.  You've planned your fall."

     "I'm a top," Lance said, yawning, and stretching, his shirt riding up his
     stomach, "but I can bottom when I need to."

     * * * * *

     Nobody else was in control.  A.B., JC got thinner, and thinner.  "I just
     want to get this section done," he'd say, and skip lunch.  "The next
     album," he kept saying, drunk or sober, shooting up or coming down.  "The
     next album will fix everything."  At dinner, he'd eat slices of cucumber
     and carrot sticks, until Justin's phone rang, and then he'd cut them into
     precise little pieces but not put any more in his mouth.

     "Are we going to do anything about him?" Chris asked Lance, since they
     seemed to be the only ones even *trying* to steer any more.  Lance sighed.

     "I'll trade you for Joey," he said, and Chris shivered.  He didn't know
     what to do about JC, but he didn't want Joey, who was living a last-ditch
     cabaret, who was sure that burning out was better than fading away.  Chris
     couldn't even bear to watch it, the booze and the drugs and the women and
     then coming back to the hotel and straight to Lance.  Lance would test the
     waters with a smile, and if Joey responded there were hugs and cuddles and
     laughs, but if not, if "fag" was parried with "drunk" was met with "freak"
     was answered with "loser", they'd beat the shit out of one another.  Lance
     wasn't fooling around, either, wasn't just playing defensive.  He smashed
     a chair through a glass door, once, missing Joey's head by inches.  He
     only did it the one time, though, because Joey got under it with a punch to
     Lance's chest which left him gasping every breath for days.  And the worst
     part, the most awful thing to watch, was what happened when one or the other
     finally won the fight, when a black and blue body got shoved back on the
     bed and stripped naked.  It was bad when punches were still being thrown,
     but worse when the loser was too hurt or drunk to struggle.  The sex was
     hard and fast and brutal, and bore such a twisted resemblence to the hot
     fierce fucking they used to do that Chris sometimes wondered if it had
     been that way all along.  

     It had been sweet once, he would tell himself, fist crammed into his
     mouth, trying to overcome Lance's pleas not to interfere.  It had been
     cute, and funny, and sometimes really fucking sexy, he was sure of it.
     The only times he could really remember the good parts was after, if Joey
     was still awake, because they clung to one another and sobbed like they'd
     once giggled.

     "I can't deal with Joey," Chris admitted.  

     "Me neither," Lance said softly, staring blankly at their reflections in
     the polished gold elevator doors.  Their makeup artist had nearly quit
     yesterday, over the bruise on Lance's face.

     "Why do you do it, then?"

     Lance laughed, a short, sharp bark of irony.  "Give me a siiign..." he
     sang, caressing his own battered cheek, and Chris shivered at the flash 
     of the performer to come--voice trained but cracking, emotions bitter 
     but sweet.  They were harmonising and mimicking moves by the time the 
     elevator pinged, though, and it was easy to smile as the doors sprang 
     back and they stepped into the crowded foyer, blinking into the flashing
     of camera bulbs.  Easier than usual to smile, anyway.  JC and Joey didn't
     do very many appearances, A.B.  

     Justin, of course, did his own.

     end part one.