The Exception to the Rule:

     a semi-parodic bitch-o-rama, partly ripped off from The Same Inside.

     by Julad

     * * * * *

     Somehow, over the break, Lance had got himself a girlfriend.

     "Bullshit," Chris said to Justin, who was telling them about it.  "Like, a
     girlfriend who's a *girl*?"

     "Yeah," Justin said, nodding earnestly.  "I met her.  She's totally a
     girl. And Lance is like, totally into her and stuff."

     "Mother of God," Joey said, packing another cone.

     Chris threw popcorn at Justin.  "You crack me up, Timberlake."

     "No, I'm serious! It's why he's not coming today.  It's her birthday or
     something."

     "Ha! You bin sucked in." Chris giggled like he was on helium. "He's found
     a teenie drag queen, or something."

     JC accepted the bong from Joey.  "Dude, it's a prank," he slurred.  He had
     tears seeping from his eyes, even though he was too stoned to laugh.  He
     waved his hand vaguely in Justin's direction and then flopped back into
     the cushions.  "Lancie got you a good one."  

     "It's true," Justin insisted, pouting.

     JC grunted his vast amusement.  Joey snorted mindlessly.  Chris buried his
     face in his hands and laughed and laughed.

     Justin threw himself on the couch and sulked.  "You'll see," he told them.

     "Have another drink, man," Joey said, holding out the JB.  "You fucking
     need it."


     * * * * *

     When Joey dragged himself out of bed in the morning, his head hurt.  A
     lot.  The phone seemed to be ringing, but then it stopped.  Then it rang
     again, and Justin was telling him via the machine that he was a fucking
     unreliable cunt and a taxi was on its way to get him, and he better be
     ready.  

     Outside, a horn beeped.  He made the taxi guy wait another ten minutes
     while he showered, and tried to remember where it was he was going today.
     Fortunately, the driver knew.

     When he got dropped off at Johnny's, Lance and JC were already there.  So
     was Chris, who grabbed him and dragged him into the kitchen before Joey
     could even say hello.

     "He says it's *true*!" Chris hissed, looking panicked.

     Joey squinted against the sunlight streaming cheerily through the windows,
     and looked for coffee.  "What's true?"

     "About Lance!"

     The coffee pot was empty; where were the fucking filters?  

     "Joey, are you listening to me?"

     "Yes," Joey griped, annoyed.  Chris' whispering was really loud, and
     pierced straight into the throbbing part of his brain.  "Where are the
     *fucking* filters?"

     Chris grabbed the pot from his hand.  "Here."  He dumped the dregs into a
     mug, added two teaspoons of instant, ran it under the hot tap and handed
     it back.  "So, it's *true*! Lance has a *girlfriend*."

     Joey stared blearily at the undissolved crystals floating on top of his
     coffee.  "I can't drink this.  It needs sugar."

     "*Fuck*," Chris said.  He yanked it back, poured half the sugar bowl into
     it, and stirred it with his finger.  "Here."

     Joey drank it.  It tasted perfect, and he could feel it hitting off sparks
     in his gut and his fingertips and his brai--

     "Waitwaitwait *what*?  Lance has a *girlfriend*?" he repeated, stunned.
     "What the fuck?"

     Chris leaned back against the bench and folded his arms.  "Exactly."

     "My God."  Joey rubbed his forehead, and looked around for more coffee.  

     Chris sighed, and handed him a can of coke and a pack of tylenol.  "Never
     mind. We'll talk about it later."  He patted Joey's arm and led him back
     into Johnny's living room, where JC was sitting in one corner and Lance
     was sitting very far away, in another.

     Later turned out to be ten seconds later, when Justin burst in.  "Did you
     tell them?" he demanded of Lance as a greeting.

     "You mean," Lance said, looking very annoyed, "did I say yes when Chris
     and JC got in my face and demanded to know what drugs you were on because
     you were telling everyone that I had a girlfriend?"  

     "Yes!" Justin jumped up and down impatiently. "Did. You. Tell. Them?"

     "*Fuck* you," Lance said.  He looked very, very, *very* annoyed, at JC
     *and* at Chris *and* at Justin.  Joey decided not to ask if that meant
     he'd told them or not, or if that meant he had a girlfriend, because his
     head was still hurting and Lance was hefting the stereo remote like he'd
     throw it at the next person who opened his mouth.

     "You slack bastard," Justin said to Joey, punching him in the chest. "I
     waited like half an hour for you."

     "Sorry, man." Since Lance was staying at Justin's, and Lance had got here
     already, Joey had no idea where Justin had been waiting for him, or why.
     Playing it hungover seemed to be the only way to cope with the rest of the
     day, which was handy, because lying on the floor with a cushion over his
     face and letting Lance rub his shoulders was pretty much all he wanted to
     do, anyway.


     * * * * *

     "I don't get it!" JC burst out at lunch, spraying bits of sandwich from
     his mouth.  "You're queer as fuck! You knew since you were six! You've
     sucked more cock than anybody I've ever *heard* of!  So what's with the
     fucking girlfriend?"

     Lance picked the lettuce off his forehead and flicked it back at him.  "I
     don't *know*, okay?  It just *happened*."

     "It just *happened*," Justin mimicked.  "How the hell did you just
     *happen* to hook up with a girl?"

     "She's got a cock, right?" Chris said.  "She's a. what's the word?"

     "No," Lance said quietly.

     "Transexual?" JC said to Chris.

     "No, you mean transgender, don't you?" Justin said.

     "She's not."

     Chris reached for the ketchup.  "I can never remember. Which one's the one
     that has a cock?" 

     "She doesn't."

     JC slapped his forehead.  "Aha! You mean a *hermaphrodite*."

     "Yeah!" Chris turned to Lance.  "She a hermaphrodite?"

     Lance was shredding his bread roll into tiny little strips. "No. She's a
     girl. A perfectly normal girl."

     "A perfectly normal girl *without* a cock?" Justin asked, staring at Lance
     with wide blue baby eyes. Lance stood up and grabbed him by the shirt
     collar.  "Okay, okay! Just checking!"

     "Jeez, sensitive much?" JC muttered.

     Lance threw a tomato slice at him. "You're all assholes. Shut *up*." 

     They ate in silence for a while, but JC, Justin and Chris carried out some
     kind of exaggerated eyeball communication which involved looking at one
     another and wriggling their eyebrows, and then peeking at Lance.

     "There's an exception to every rule," Chris said suddenly, "but jeez, man,
     we thought you were like, a law of physics."

     "Joey'll get a boyfriend, next," Justin grumped.

     "Wooo!" Lance cried, grinning and flopping his wrist camply. "Then the sky
     really *will* fall in."

     "Fuck you all," Joey said, not sure why the whole conversation was making
     him feel sick when his stomach had been fine until now.


     * * * * *

     Joey was feeling much better by the time Lance drove him home that night.
     "Wanna come up?" he said, since Justin had gone to JC's.

     Lance looked at him cautiously.  "I can't do any-- you know."

     "Huh?" Joey fumbled in his jacket for his keys.

     "Because of Melissa," Lance explained, looking nervous.  "I can't fool
     around with you guys anymore."

     "Oh. Yeah, no," Joey said.  "Whatever. You coming up?"

     Lance smiled, relieved.  "Sure."

     Joey got them beers and they sat out on the porch, drinking.  "So what's
     she like?" he asked, eventually.

     "Um," Lance said.  "She's twenty-one. Law student. Works at a restaurant
     near my place."

     "Is she pretty?"

     "I guess." He fished in his pants for his wallet.  "This is from
     yesterday."

     It was a polaroid-- Lance and a girl, dusted in birthday-looking confetti.
     She had dark hair and olive skin, and was not so much pretty as striking.
     Sultry but totally cute, a kind of approachable Salma Hayek.  "Nice
     smile," Joey said.  Understatement; he felt like smiling right back at her
     photo, and had to force his face to stay still.  

     "Yeah."

     Joey looked over, and Lance seemed itching to say more.  

     "Hmm, and?"

     That seemed to break the dam open, and for half an hour Joey learned more
     about Melissa than, for obvious reasons, he'd ever thought would be
     possible to know about a girlfriend of Lance's.  She was nuts about horses
     and kinda feminist and her parents were rich but she tried to be
     independent and she didn't like 'Nsync until she met Lance and she wrote
     for her college paper and wanted to practice intellectual property law and
     loved Japanese cartoons and holy *shit*, Joey thought.  He'd sort of, in
     the twenty-four hours that he'd known about Lance's girlfriend--well, in
     the seven hours that he'd been sober and actually believed it--he'd
     thought he must have met her in a nightclub and been too wasted to notice
     that it wasn't a guy going down on him; in his mind she'd been some girl
     he'd spent five minutes with and three weeks trying to get rid of.  But
     obviously not.

     "And her mother's Italian," Lance said, apparently winding up.  "So she
     can cook."

     "Wow," Joey said.  *Lance* had a frigging *girlfriend*.  "Unbelievable."

     "She's not as good as you, though," and for a minute, mind still with the
     drunk Lance not knowing what he was doing in the nightclub, Joey thought
     he meant at giving head.

     *Cooking*. He meant cooking.  Jesus.

     "I'm beat," Joey said, standing up.  Lance jumped up, too.

     "Sorry," and he was definitely still babbling, "I didn't mean to talk your
     ear off or anything.  It's just--" apruptly, Lance threw his arms around
     Joey and hugged him. "You're being really good about it. Thanks."

     Joey scratched his chin.  "Sure.  No problem. It's, um."

     "Weird."  Lance giggled.  "It's really, really weird.  I mean, hell, she's
     a *girl*!"

     "Yeah," Joey said.  His headache was back.  "No kidding."

     He waved Lance off as he drove away, and went upstairs and took four
     tylenol and tried to fall asleep before he could think about whether
     Melissa was as good at giving Lance head as Joey was.  He wasn't very
     successful.


     * * * * *

     "Can you believe it?" Chris demanded, throwing his backpack across the
     room.  "Lance won't let me fuck him any more."  Lance was outside, talking
     on the phone to Melissa.  He spent a lot of time doing that, and as a
     consequence, the four of them spent a lot of time talking about Lance
     behind his back.

     "Yeah, I know." JC shook his head sadly.  "He's being faithful."  Monogamy
     was a distasteful concept to JC, who would shove his dick into any crevice
     that would take it. It was fortunate, Joey thought, that Bobbee was a slut
     who'd take anything into her crevices.  No other woman on earth would have
     put up with JC for as long as she had.

     "God, this sucks," Justin complained.  "Chris and I had to do each *other*
     last night."

     "Ew," JC said.

     "Yeah, I know."  Chris banged his forehead on the tabletop and groaned.
     "We have to break them up."

     Justin nodded fervently.  

     Joey felt kind of bad, because nobody else seemed to notice that Lance
     smiled a lot more, lately.  "It's just a phase," he told them.  "It'll be
     over before you know it."

     "Not soon enough for me," Justin said, glaring at Chris.

     "No, really," Joey insisted. "If you try to break them up, he'll get all
     stubborn and shit."  They sighed and agreed, and then he felt kind of bad,
     because that was only what he'd decided after a week of trying to think
     how to break them up.

     It wasn't the sex, he insisted to himself, jerking off that night.  He
     didn't miss the sex, didn't miss Lance grinning hungrily at him as he slid
     onto his knees, didn't miss groaned ecstasy curling hotly in his ears as
     he fucked Lance on his kitchen table, didn't miss waking up with a hand
     around his cock and hot words whispered against his chest as Lance humped
     his thigh.

     Okay.  Fine.  *Fine*.  He missed the sex.  Lance was always hot, always
     eager, always willing. Lance couldn't get enough cock; he *loved* cock, he
     *worshipped* cock, he sucked Joey's cock like there was nothing on earth
     he'd rather be doing, and that was rare enough, but Jesus, Joey thought.
     Lance made pancakes for breakfast and sat in his lap when they watched
     movies and leaned back into his chest when he was tired and kissed him
     goodbye if nobody was around and now he didn't because

     "I don't want to seem like I'm available when I'm not."  And he'd pushed
     Joey's hands back for the third time, and moved to sit primly in the other
     chair.

     "I *know* you're not available," Joey had said, getting testy.  "You don't
     fuck us anymore, I *got* that memo, okay?"

     "So what's your problem then?" Lance had snapped.  "Keep your hands to
     yourself!"

     "I just want to--" but Lance had shot dagger eyes at him, and Joey slumped
     down into the chair.  "Fine. Never mind."

     Now if they had an itch they wanted scratched, they had to go pick up a
     girl and whisper sweet things in her ear, and half the time the girls who
     threw themselves on them in clubs had to be convinced to put out once they
     were in their beds.  Then they had to disentangle from them in the
     morning, and send them off to David to be debriefed before they could
     leave the hotel.

     JC didn't have a problem with this.  Joey and Justin and Chris had
     retained just enough integrity that they jerked off a lot more, wishing
     Lance didn't have a girlfriend.

     "Your boyfriends never minded!" Justin yelled in Santa Monica or
     somewhere, someplace the hotel security had fucked up and they were
     trapped in their suites with three guards outside every door.

     "No," Lance said coldly.  "And *I* never minded, either.  But now I do.
     Deal with it."  

     Justin swore until his face turned blue, and stomped off looking for
     Chris.


     * * * * *

     Lance was still attracted, like a magpie, to any clothes which glittered.
     This disappointed their publicist immensely.

     "You would think," she grumbled, taking the blue and silver shirt off him
     and throwing it into the basket labelled NEVER AGAIN, "that this little
     exercise in straightness would extend to other realms of your behaviour."

     "I like that shirt," Lance whined, edging towards the basket.  She blocked
     him off.

     "And *this*," she said, shaking a teen mag in front of his face angrily.
     "I've told you a thousand times: Do not profess admiration for George
     Michael."

     "Judith, I *didn't*. I only said that--"

     "That you wanted to be like him when you grew up?"

     "No! Well. Not in so many words," Lance said, sighing.  "His solo career,
     I meant.  He really made--"

     Judith sighed and tossed the magazine on the table.  "Nobody cares about
     his *career* anymore, sweetie.  Never. Mention. His. Name. Got it?"  She
     consulted her clipboard.  "Now maybe I'm tragically unhip, but last I
     heard, The Cranwick was a gay bar, no?"

     "But all my friends g--"

     "Under no circumstances will you be seen there again."

     "I only went there for the *music*."

     "And that's another thing!" she yelled. "You like *country* music,
     remember?  Garth Brooks, Leann Rimes, Faith Hill, heard of them?  Country,
     country, country!  No more of this 'digi-tech vibe' crap you've been
     spouting."

     Lance pulled at his hair in frustration.  "But I've got a *girlfriend*
     now! Can't you lighten up on the other stuff?"

     Judith sighed heavily, and sat down and put her arm around him.  "Sweetie,
     I *love* your girlfriend.  I could *marry* your girlfriend.  She makes me
     very, *very* happy."

     "I know," Lance said, marginally appeased.

     "So if you'd just make a teensy little bit of extra effort to improve--"

     "Change my whole life, you mean?"

     "Well," Judith considered it.  "Yes. Basically."

     Lance shook off her arm.  "No!  No way!"

     "Tone it down or you're grounded, kid," Judith ordered.

     "Fuck, not even my *mother* is as uncool as you are," Lance yelled, and
     flounced out.

     Judith adjusted her glasses.  

     "Chris," she said. "The purple velvet pants. Hand them over."


     * * * * *

     Joey had once liked doing advice columns for magazines, before he'd turned
     into a bad case from one.  A girl asked him to sign the last one he'd
     done, because she'd taken his advice.

     "Which one was it?" he asked, signing the picture of himself and Lance
     sitting at a table covered in letters.  Lance looked really good in it.
     Joey had his eyes half-shut, like a dork.

     "That one," she said, pointing to the question. 

     'There's a guy I really like, but he has a serious girlfriend.  What
     should I do?'

     'Give them their space,' Joey had advised, 'if you want a chance with him
     in the future. You'll only make a bad impression if you try to interfere.'

     "I *suck*," he said aloud.

     'And go out, have fun, and try to keep your options open' Lance had added.
     'You never know when you'll meet someone who'll make you forget all about
     him.'

     Joey sighed.  "Lance sucks too," he said, and then smiled as if he was
     joking.

     "No, he was *so* right!" she told him.  "I met my boyfriend a few weeks
     later, and now I'm so happy!"

     "I guess you--" never knew that the first guy kissed like an angel "--got
     pretty lucky, huh?"

     "Yeah," she said, blushing and giggling.  "I did."

     Joey remembered doing that magazine, now.  It was two months ago, in New
     York.  They'd had a later start than the others, and filled in the time by
     making out on Joey's bed.  Lance had been so sweet and hungry and generous
     in the morning, but he'd spent that night in Chris' room.

     He didn't think it had been their last time together, but he couldn't
     really remember anything else they'd done after that, and Lance had gone
     home to Mississippi a week later.


     * * * * *

     "So, you do fuck each other, right?" Justin asked, four drinks past
     discretion and eight drinks past tact.

     Melissa choked on her vodka lime, and the silver glitter in her hair
     sparkled as her shoulders shook.  "Yeah," she said, laughing and wiping
     her nose.  "Of course.  What about you and Britney?"

     Justin scowled.  "Can't say."

     "They fuck," JC drawled, slinging an arm around Melissa's shoulder, "and
     then they fight, and then they fuck some more."

     Justin hit his shoulder, hard.  "You fucking moron, you can't say shit
     like that around natives."

     "It's okay," Melissa said quickly.  "I don't tell anybody anything."

     "You're a darling," Joey told her.  He hadn't meant to.  It was just that
     she was spectacularly unimpressed by all the showbusiness types, and that
     she really didn't seem to give a shit that Lance was rich and famous, and
     that she hated it as much as Joey did when Lance went off schmoozing at
     parties.  That, and Joey had had a *lot* of champagne, and they'd won two
     awards tonight, and Backstreet hadn't won any.  

     "Doesn't matter," Justin said.  He and Britney were fighting more than
     they fucked lately, and that made him an angry drunk.  "Don't tell her
     anything."

     "Fuck you," Melissa said, harshly, and walked away.  JC staggered when her
     shoulder disappeared from under him.  Joey propped him up on Justin and
     followed her out to the balcony.

     "Where does he get off?" she demanded, eyes flashing in anger.  "I fucking
     do *everything* I'm supposed to and *nothing* I'm not supposed to and all
     my friends hate me because I can't talk about stuff, and I am not going to
     take crap from some fucking teenage brat because I'm not a fucking starlet
     or something."

     "It's okay," Joey said, staring out over the city.  "Ignore him, he's a
     prick sometimes."

     "All the time, as far as I can tell," she snapped.  Joey thought about
     trying to defend him, and then thought really hard about saying something
     that would piss her off so much she'd break up with Lance, but Justin's
     best efforts weren't succeeding, so why bother?  If only he could hate
     her, life would be so much simpler, but of course any girl who could turn
     Lance onto, well, onto *girls*, would *have* to be charming and down-to-
     earth and impossible to dislike.  He drained his glass and sighed.

     He thought about asking her to dance, but really, even though he liked her
     he didn't want to spend any more time with her than he had to.  "Let's go
     find Lance," he suggested, and disappeared into the crowd before she could
     follow.  When he found Lance, though, she was already by his side.  Joey
     looked for his date, but she was making out with JC, so he amused himself
     prowling the room looking for Bobbee, to find out who *she* was getting it
     on with.

     Erik from O-Town had his hand up her skirt when he found her, so there was
     some justice in the world after all.  

     Some, he thought, catching sight of Lance and Melissa crooning to one
     another in the corner, but not much.


     * * * * *

     For Christmas, JC got Lance copies of the English Queer as Folk.  Joey had
     cringed at JC's insensitivity, but Lance had liked it.

     "You don't mind?" he asked, nervously.  "Being reminded of. well."

     Lance shrugged, and looked kinda sad.  "It's not like I ever got to do it
     that much anyway."

     "You should have come out," Joey told him.  "We would have totally
     supported you, and everything."

     To his surprise, Lance crawled over and wrapped his arms around him.  "I
     know that," he said, into Joey's neck.  "I always knew that."

     Joey hugged him, hard, savouring it.  "So why didn't you?"

     "Because I'm not *stupid*."  Lance laughed, hot breath and deep, jagged
     sounds.  "And besides, I never had anybody to come out *for*."

     Oh, Joey thought, but he didn't really know what he was thinking 'oh'
     about. He ran his hands up and down Lance's back, but Lance disentangled
     himself, and went into his own room to call Melissa.


     * * * * *

     Chris threw him a squishy hamburger, and collapsed next to him on the
     couch.  "I got X-men and Armageddon."

     "I've seen Armageddon," Joey said.

     "Well I haven't, so I don't care."  Chris dug in the paper bag and
     retrieved a sixpack of Bud, sticky with leaked mayonnaise.  "But we can
     watch the other one first."

     Joey put it on and got comfy, planning to catch up on sleep, but ended up
     watching it after all.  Chris professed much admiration for blonde Halle
     Berry.  Joey liked whatshername, Rogue, but didn't mention that it was the
     accent, and the shy courage, and the sweet vulnerability she kept trying
     to hide underneath her bravado.

     "Dude," Chris said at the end, gesturing at the screen with a soggy fry as
     Rogue watched Logan leave again, "that is so lame."

     "Mmm," Joey said.  He wanted to hug her and tell her she could do better
     than waiting around for Logan to catch a damn clue.

     Chris hmmphed.  "At least Lance had more sense than that."

     Joey turned to look at him.  "Huh?"

     "Never mind," Chris said, and put on Armageddon.


     * * * * *

     "So, explain this to me," JC said.  JC never tired of asking Lance
     questions about Melissa. After two hours with him on their bus, Joey was
     getting kinda tired of it, though. Particularly because Lance was being
     unusually forthcoming, and JC was being unusually... not entirely
     insensitive.

     JC and Lance were bonding over women.  Joey thought he might be sick.

     "Are any other women sexy to you now?  Or is it just her?"

     Lance's old answer had been that when he was really wasted, women looked
     as good as old men and farm animals, which was actually pretty good.
     Consequently, he'd had sex with a lot of girls in Europe, because, he
     claimed, they at least smelled a lot nicer than old men and farm animals.
     Now his answer was, 

     "sometimes.  If they remind me of her it's sort of. There's a spark.  But
     nothing big."

     "Wow," JC stroked his chin and looked thoughtful.  Joey wanted to hit him.
     "Okay, does she turn you on the same way that guys turn you on?"

     Lance shook his head.  "Completely different."

     "Yeah? How?"

     "Uh.  Guys are hot," Lance said, and grinned.  "I totally wanna fuck them
     like, right where I see them."

     "Yeah?"

     "*Yeah*." Lance sighed wistfully.  Joey's stomach fluttered with hope, but
     then a dreamy smile drifted onto Lance's face. "With Melissa it's. Um. I'm
     not thinking with my cock."

     "You're *not*?"  

     As if, Joey thought bitchily, JC ever thought with anything else.

     "Nah."  Lance hugged himself and giggled.  "I wanna make *love* to her."

     "I've got to go and." Joey stood up. "Um. Lie down."

     "You make a really freaky straight guy," JC told Lance, as Joey staggered
     down the aisle to his bunk.

     "Well, duh!" Lance said, but when Joey came out half an hour later to see
     what was so fucking funny, JC was sliding his tongue between two of his
     fingers, and Lance was nearly crying he was laughing so hard.  JC stopped
     what he was doing and glared at Lance and said, "no, seriously, it works
     *every* time," so Lance sat up and quelled his giggles and tried to
     imitate JC's tongue movements on his own fingers.

     Joey went and lay down again.


     * * * * *

     Melissa's picture started showing up in magazines and on websites.  She
     usually looked fucking gorgeous-- smiling broadly, eyes sparkling, black
     hair glossy and sleek.  Lance always had his arm around her, and his eyes
     on her like he couldn't bear to look anywhere else.


     * * * * *

     It was about time, Joey decided, at a bar in Los Angeles, for a crisis.
     It just wasn't right, he decided, that he spent hours each week looking at
     women, flirting with women, picking up women, having sex with women, and
     wanting to lick his best friend's adam's apple, wanting to feel the soft
     scratch of baby stubble on his cheek in the morning, wanting to run his
     hands over a boyishly hard chest.  Worse, he wanted Lance's cock, lay
     awake thinking about sliding his mouth over slick, tight, clean skin and
     feeling the hard throbbing underneath.  Worse still, when he danced drunk,
     his hips moved of their own accord to the bass, and would glaze off into a
     dark, hot headspace where he imagined going back to the hotel and slipping
     into Lance's room and spreading his legs and letting Lance, with a
     shuddered gasp, push his cock inside him.

     It wasn't *fair* that the strangeness that should be there with Lance,
     because he was a fucking *guy*, was there with the women he slept with
     instead.  It was *wrong* that his body and Lance's body had an unspoken
     understanding of what was desired and how to make it feel good, and right,
     and natural.  And it was *ridiculous* that the gripping of hot, wet pussy
     around him didn't compare to how fucking proud he'd felt when Lance's cock
     was in his ass; that he'd never felt more like a man than when he walked
     around for two days with an ache that none of the other guys had ever
     felt, because they weren't secure enough to let Lance in like that.

     After two days of thinking about this, his dick hurt from jerking off too
     much, and he had to stop.

     For fuck's sake, he thought.  There had to be a crisis in there somewhere.
     But the only crisis he seemed capable of having was the one where he moped
     a lot, because he couldn't have what he wanted anymore.  And that wasn't
     dizzying the way a crisis should be, and it wasn't shocking or nauseating
     or infuriating.  The faint, gnawing absence of Lance's kisses and Lance's
     sultry laughter and Lance's sturdy body sleeping in his bed... that was
     merely a way of life.


     * * * * *

     He had hoped, in his pathetically morose way, that Lance would at least
     come to him for advice.  Since, well, Lance had never had a girlfriend
     before.

     "Yeah, I got it under control," Lance said breezily, when Joey asked him
     if he'd got Melissa anything for Valentine's day.  "Check it out."  It was
     a ruby necklace, and the complete set of Gundam Wing on DVD.  

     If he'd been asked, Joey would have said he'd rather stick hot pokers in
     his own eyes than help Lance shop for his girlfriend, but now he was
     annoyed that Lance hadn't asked.  Since they were in LA on Valentine's
     Day, though, Joey took Lance out to dinner.  He chose an Italian
     restaurant, "because I'd cook for you if we were home".

     Lance raised his gay little eyebrows in confusion, and Joey realised that
     Lance had forgotten that he'd once said Joey was a better cook than
     Melissa.  Then he wondered if Lance had meant Joey was better at giving
     head after all, and then he drank two bottles of wine just to get himself
     to stop remembering what it had been like when he'd been able to reach out
     to Lance and pull him close, and make him laugh, and make him moan, and
     make him grip his hair and come into his mouth and say "man, you are so
     fucking *good* at that."


     * * * * *

     Meanwhile, Joey dated Joanna and Ramona and Renee and Daphne and Alana.
     They were hot, so he fucked them, and they were models, so he took them to
     awards ceremonies, and they were pretentious, so he bought them expensive
     gifts.  They weren't Lance, though, so they didn't interest him all that
     much.  Eventually he stopped asking them out.

     He fucked Tania and Amanda and Sonia and Lucille, and the one with the
     legs, and the one with the breasts, and the one with the dark blue eyes,
     and two Swedish sisters, and the bleach blonde with the bleached pubic
     hair.  They usually left their phone numbers and said "call me," but he
     never did.

     "Dude," Chris said, going through the pile of little morning-after notes
     which had collected during two weeks in New York.  "You are on *fire*!"

     "Yeah," Joey said, looking them over, trying to remember who Belinda had
     been.  "I guess so."

     Chris jumped onto the bed and started bouncing.  "Let's go out. I wanna
     pick up your leftovers."

     Joey swept all the old phone numbers into the bin.  "Sure."


     * * * * *

     "Joey," his mother said, at his grandmother's birthday lunch, "you've been
     drinking a lot lately.  Is anything wrong?"

     "I'm.  No.  I'm fine," he told her, fumbling in his backpack for his
     sunglasses.


     * * * * *

     Lance stayed with Joey next time they were in Orlando, because JC was
     still renovating his new place, and Chris had no space, and Melissa and
     Justin still wouldn't go near one another.  It was good having him around,
     even though he slept in his own room.  Joey would wake up and hear Lance
     moving around the kitchen, making breakfast and singing to himself, random
     snippets of Madonna and the Bloodhound Gang and Moby drifting up to him
     with the smell of coffee and toast.  They smiled at one another in the
     bathroom mirror when they brushed their teeth, and Joey liked coming home
     from clubs to find Lance sitting with his laptop on the dining table,
     waiting to hear about his night.

     Melissa came up most weekends, though, which wasn't as good.  They'd
     bonded over the Italian thing by complaining about their mothers for ten
     minutes, but then Joey found out Melissa spoke perfect Italian, because
     she spent summers living with her trendy fashion-designer Aunt in Rome.

     And here's yet another reason to hate her, Joey thought, tasting the best
     fucking omelette he'd had in years.

     "Is it okay?" she asked, shifting nervously from foot to foot, spatula in
     hand.

     He nodded politely and she beamed at him, and it was impossible not to
     smile back.  

     "Come here," Lance said, and dragged her into his lap.  They kissed
     sweetly, and then resumed their week-long argument about whether Johnny
     Depp was sexier than Brad Pitt.

     *God*, how he hated her, especially since he couldn't hate her at all.

     She called his home line once, while Lance was out.  "His mobile's off,"
     she said, and sounded upset.

     "He went to the movies," Joey said, lonely and miserable and not in the
     mood to deal with any insecurity or paranoia or whatever it was she was
     getting worked up over.  "He'll be a couple of hours."

     "Oh, God," she said, and started crying.  

     Oh, Christ, she's fucking *pregnant*, Joey thought, and nearly started
     crying himself.  "What's wrong?" he said, a little more rudely than he'd
     intended.

     She didn't notice.  "Joey," she sobbed.  "Somebody killed my cat!"

     "Somebody what?" He sat down.

     "They left her in the doorway, and the note says to stay away from him,"
     she was rapidly approaching hysteria, "and it's *stapled* to my *fucking*
     cat, and she's fucking *dead*, because they fucking broke her fucking
     *neck*!"

     "Jesus fuck," Joey said, and stood up again.  "Holy fucking hell."

     "No fucking kidding!" she screamed.  "They're crazy!  They're fucking
     *murderers*!"

     "Oh, shit." Joey couldn't breathe.  Where the hell was Lance when you
     needed somebody to be calm and rational?  "Oh, shit."

     "Oh, and the note says I'm next," she added, like it was an afterthought,
     and Joey's heart skipped a beat.  Houston, he thought dizzily, we have a
     motherfucking *problem*.

     "Listen," he told her in the best calm-and-in-control voice he could
     manage, pulling out his mobile and dialling Johnny with shaking fingers.
     "I want you to get into a taxi right now and get on the first flight here,
     okay?  And Lance will meet you at the airport, and we'll sort this out.
     We've got people to deal with this shit.  Okay?"  She didn't say anything.
     "Come here, where you're safe.  *Okay*?"

     "Okay," she said, suddenly subdued.

     "Are you right for money?" Joey asked her.

     "Yeah," she said dully.  "I've got money."

     "Call me when you know your flight."

     "Okay."

     "Call me if you need *anything*."  Fuck, he thought.  He had no idea what
     she might need.

     "Okay."

     "Okay.  It's fine.  We'll take care of it."

     "Joey," she whispered.  "What should I do with her body?"

     He had no fucking idea what she should do with the dead fucking body of
     her fucking cat.  Tell her to just leave it there?  Tell her to take it
     inside the house?  Lance would have known.  "Someone will take care of it
     right away," he promised, and hoped he wasn't lying.  "Just get here so
     Lance can take care of you."

     God, he thought, once Johnny was on top of the cat killers and Lance had
     Melissa wrapped in a blanket on the couch and he'd brushed off her
     embarrassed apology and things were vaguely back under control.  He
     fucking *wished* he could hate her.  He wished he could wish for her to go
     away, so he could have Lance to himself again, instead of worrying that
     any day she *would* be pregnant, or they'd move in together, and what
     little of Lance he had left would slip slowly away until nothing was left
     but shows and interviews and TRL where they romped around and hugged and
     laughed but didn't really hold each other like they meant it anymore.

     "You don't like Melissa very much, do you?" Lance said one day, staring at
     his nails.

     "What?" Joey said, panicked because he thought he was hiding it really
     well.

     "You don't have to hide it," Lance said.

     "No, I do like her--"

     "Because I'd rather you were just honest"

     "and frankly if she makes you happy that's all that matters"

     "so if it bothers you I can stay somewhere else"

     "and if I give off weird vibes sometimes it's only because I--"

     "and maybe see a bit less of her since the group is still the--"

     "miss the old you sometimes."

     "most important thing to me."

     They looked at one another for a second.

     "Oh," Joey said.

     "Okay," Lance said.

     "Cigarette?" Chris asked brightly, holding out the packet to them.


     * * * * *

     They were doing some South African talk show, and Joey had a vague feeling
     Judith had warned them about it.  He wished he'd listened to her now,
     because the questions were hard, and the host wasn't letting them dodge
     out of them.  She was more like a lawyer than a talk show host, and it was
     scary, because Joey was good at telling the usual white lies, but he was
     bad at the outrageous falsehoods which hostile questions required.  He and
     JC and Lance grew quieter, letting Justin and Chris answer the hardest
     ones, because Justin could always look mature and adorable and say some
     perfectly blithe and charming thing, and Chris was being a fine freak,
     diverting her attention with bizarre and outrageous tangents.

     The next viewer question was from a guy: "'Nsync have a big following in
     the gay community here, and what we all want to know is, if you met a guy
     you found attractive, what would you do about it?"

     Beside him, Lance was immaculately cool and collected.  Joey bumped knees
     with him under the table, and leaned back and smiled and tried to look
     relaxed.  Chris launched into a story about how he'd fallen in love with a
     goat once, but the goat had left him for a chicken, so now he had
     abandonment issues and a huge feather boa collection.

     "I'll take that as a 'no comment'," the host said scathingly, and after
     she turned to JC, Chris cringed.  Judith would have his balls in a sling
     for that one.

     "I, uh." JC scratched his head, putting on his best 'vague and stupid'
     look.  "I can't say it's ever happened. So. I um. don't really know."

     Justin smoothly reiterated his 'virginity'.  Joey was almost jealous-- it
     came in very handy, sometimes.

     She tapped her pencil skeptically, but didn't pursue it.  "What about you,
     Lance?"

     "I have a girlfriend," Lance said, ducking his head and looking just the
     right amount of embarrassed.  "So even if it did happen, I'd. you know.
     not do anything."

     And it's even the fucking truth, Joey thought, sulking.  Lawyer-woman
     turned to him, and seemed a lot like a preying mantis dying to bite off
     his head.  "Mr Fatone?"

     And Lance *knew* they talked bullshit in interviews, he *knew* it, but
     Joey couldn't bring himself to lie, to deny Lance that small validation.
     If he was Justin, he'd have the perfect lie.  Instead, he had a giant
     blank.

     "I'm really.  Well.  You see."  

     No, he realised, there was absolutely no way to say on live television
     that he was totally straight while subtly telling Lance that he wished
     he'd had just one more night with him before losing what he'd spent three
     years taking for granted.

     "What Joey is trying to say," Chris interrupted, "is that he's so into
     women that it would take a nuclear explosion to get him onto the other
     side of the fence."

     "No, hey, I'm not *that* bad," Joey laughed, and tried not to look
     relieved.

     "Oh, yes you are," Justin told him, and turned to the host.  "Joey's like.
     He crashed his car, last year, because he was staring at a girl."

     "I did *not*.  The other driver didn't give way."

     "Hey, man, I was *there*!" JC shouted.  "He nearly killed us both, because
     he was distracted by a miniskirt!"

     "It wasn't her skirt, dumbass," Joey told them, with his best rakish grin,
     "it was her *legs*."  

     In the commercial break, Joey tried to touch Lance's hand, but Lance
     shoved it away.  The cameras weren't even on them, or anything.

     Sometimes, Joey thought glumly, Lance was too professional for his own
     good.


     * * * * *

     "Aren't you ever tempted?" Joey asked one day, feeling like he'd die if he
     couldn't touch Lance, and no longer caring what he had to do to get it.

     "Tempted by what?"

     "By," Joey waved around the cafe as if it were a treasury of unearthly
     temptations. "Men. Sex. Stuff."

     Lance flopped his head to his side and shrugged.  "Only in a. like. An
     abstract way."

     "Huh?" Joey said, unable to comprehend anything except mindless, agonised,
     all-consuming *longing*.

     "Like you're tempted by chocolate cake when you're not hungry," Lance
     explained.  "You look it at and think it would be good to eat, but if you
     can honestly tell yourself you don't need it, it's easy not to have."

     "I *always* want chocolate cake," Joey said, staring at Lance's exposed
     throat, golden with a summer tan, collarbones visible in the deep V of his
     shirt.  

     Lance chuckled and blinked his eyes against the sun.

     Joey scowled into his macchiato.  He was so fucking *hungry*.


     * * * * *

     Out of sheer desperation, Joey got himself a girlfriend.  He wasn't sure
     what he was trying to achieve, but nothing else had worked, and Lance was
     still walking around being so god damn *happy*.

     "I didn't realise until I found it," Lance had told him once, staring out
     the bus window, "that I was looking for something with a *future*.  And
     with men, there'll never be a future."

     A future, Joey thought.  Maria was Italian, and played third violin in the
     New York Philharmonic, and wouldn't take him fooling around, which wasn't
     too bad, because she was dynamite in bed and would fly across the country
     to see him at the drop of a hat.  His mother worshipped her, and
     threatened to kill him if he fucked it up.  He dated her for two months,
     and then declared them a couple.

     "Christ, it's contagious," Chris said.  He and Justin were fucking like
     bunnies, now, and JC sometimes joined them.  Joey had tried it with them a
     few times, but it wasn't the same. They didn't smile the right way, both
     shy and forthcoming, and didn't climb onto him with horny impatience the
     second they were alone, and they didn't stay the night and sleep, nestled
     warmly in the crook of his arm.  

     In England Joey had met an actor who looked like Lance, and went back to
     his place and it was, in Sean's words, "a right balls-up".  From the
     context Joey figured out that a "balls-up" meant a disaster. After that,
     Joey finally realised that he wasn't into men at all, and Lance was just
     the exception to his rule.

     Lance thought Joey's girlfriend was a bitch, and stayed at JC's when she
     was at Joey's. She was getting annoying anyway, so Joey dumped her.

     "That's okay," she said, in her haughty accent.  "There's a new cellist in
     the orchestra. He's French, and he drives an Alpha Romeo."

     "Glad to hear it," Joey told her, and hung up.

     Life went on, a bright and shiny montage of singing and dancing and
     smiling for cameras and screwing beautiful women and then kicking them out
     of his bed because he felt better, just a little, when he was sleeping
     alone.


     * * * * *

     They were in Hawaii for a week, shooting the new video, when Joey noticed
     Lance suddenly wasn't as happy as he had been for the past eight months.
     He laughed while they were waterskiing, and schmoozed his ass off with
     vacationing celebrities, and he was on the phone to Melissa a lot, but the
     sparkle wasn't reaching his eyes anymore.

     "What's wrong?" he asked, sitting down on Lance's bed.

     Lance looked at him for a long time, plucking absently at the bedspread,
     and then his face crumpled.  "We broke up."

     "What. When?"  Joey reached an arm out, and his skin rioted joyfully when
     Lance relaxed into it and sniffled.

     "Last week.  It got too hard on her.  She was still getting hassled and
     stuff."

     "Awww."  Joey wiped the tears from Lance's cheeks.  "I'm so sorry."  He
     felt awful that half his brain was shouting in ecstasy.  Let it be
     permanent, he could hear himself praying.  Let this phase be the fuck
     *over*.

     "I just wanted--" Lance broke off and stared up at Joey with red, moist
     eyes.  "Someone who was *real*, you know?"

     "I know," Joey said, rubbing his shoulders.  "I know."  Marinda, Glenda,
     Rhianna, Sophia.  "God, baby, I *know*."

     "But nobody who's real would put up with all the shit, would they?"

     On Monday night, a girl had abseiled into Justin's hotel room.  She'd
     hidden in a ventilation duct on the hotel roof for two days, to avoid the
     security sweeps. Joey sighed.  "I don't know."  He kissed Lance's
     forehead.  "I don't think so."

     "*Fuck*," Lance said, and cried into Joey's t-shirt some more.  Joey
     hugged him as hard as he could.


     * * * * *

     He put Lance to bed and stroked his hair until he fell asleep, and went
     back to his own room and felt so awful that he couldn't jerk off and
     couldn't feel happy and couldn't sleep and finally got up and called
     Melissa.

     "Hey," he said.  "It's Joey."

     "He told you," she guessed, sounding exhausted.

     "Yeah."

     "Is he okay?"

     "Um." Joey rubbed his temples.  "He's. No. Not really."

     "He was the one who broke up with me," she said, "but it was my fault
     because I couldn't fucking *cope* with it anymore, I just couldn't deal
     with the press and the girls and the--"

     "Hey. Hey, it's okay. It's not your fault."  

     She started crying.  "It *is*, though. I thought I was stronger."

     "I'm sorry, I'm *so* sorry," he said.

     "Don't hate me," she begged.  "I tried as hard as I could."

     "I could never hate you," Joey promised, and for once was glad that he
     meant it.

     "Will you take care of him for me?"

     "Of course."

     "Okay. Thanks," she said, and seemed about to say goodbye.  

     "You wanna talk?" he offered, because he just felt fucking *awful*, for
     her and him and Lance and the whole fucked-up no-future mess that was
     their lives.

     "I. Um. Yeah," she said, sniffling.  "Do you mind?"  And so they stayed on
     the phone.  At midnight she confessed that she was glad it was over, but
     half an hour later she was distraught again, and Joey learned a whole lot
     of Italian words for crazy fans that his father hadn't taught him.  Joey
     worked his way through the minibar while she got through a bottle of gin,
     and they dissected Lance's bedroom technique and laughed until they were
     both crying and she stopped and said,

     "Joey, what's wrong?"

     and somehow, sitting on the bed, dizzy with fatigued desire and surrounded
     by little empty glass bottles, he ended up telling her all of it.

     "My God," and she sounded as dazed as he felt.  "I had no idea that you
     were.  That you--"

     "I won't, you know. Do anything," Joey promised, and then realised what
     he'd said.  You fucker, he cursed himself, and drained another mini-
     tequila.  You stupid, stupid fuck, Fatone.

     "It's okay," she said.  "I won't hate you."

     "You will."

     "I'll *try* to hate you," and Joey heard the sloshing of liquid in glass,
     "but if you make him happy then I won't be very successful."

     "Yeah," Joey sighed.  "I know.  But it doesn't matter.  He's convinced he
     has no future with men."

     "*Judith*," she sneered.  "That fucking bitch messes with his head."

     "It's her job to mess with his head," he said, but couldn't stop himself
     from complaining bitterly about it.

     When dawn was turning the Hawaiian sky pink, and lit up the beaches with
     rippling pastels, he heard her alarm go off.  "Fuck," she sighed. "It's
     eight o'clock here.  I've got class in an hour."

     "Makeup is gonna *kill* me," Joey agreed.

     "I'll talk to you later, okay?"  

     "Yeah," he said, "okay."  She hung up and he wrapped himself tightly in
     his blankets and closed his eyes and tried to sleep.


     * * * * *

     Lance was miserable for days, and still spent most of his time on the
     phone to Melissa.  Joey was terrified that she would tell him, but she
     didn't.  He realised, eventually, that she wouldn't have lasted eight
     months dating a celebrity if she couldn't keep her mouth shut, so he
     relaxed and took Lance rock-climbing and abseiling and skydiving, and then
     they were back in LA and he put his arm around Lance a lot in interviews,
     and Lance leaned into him and seemed grateful.

     In a hotel in Chicago, a week later, Joey looked up from Letterman to see
     Lance standing in his doorway, wringing his hands.

     "I just," Lance said, pushing Joey down on the bed and climbing on top of
     him. "I'm sorry, I should wait, I thought I could wait, but I *really*
     want your cock." He licked Joey's face and sucked on his neck and humped
     against his thigh. "Please?" he whispered breathlessly. "Can I?"

     "God," Joey said, knowing he was grinning like a fool.  "*Hell* yeah."

     Happiness, Joey realised as Lance dragged his mouth frantically south, was
     the gay rebirth of your bandmate.  Lance sucked him so hard he came in
     sixty seconds, and he didn't wait to get his breath back before he went
     down on Lance.

     "Jesus," Lance gasped, sixty seconds later.  "You are so fucking *good* at
     that."

     "Mm," Joey said, swallowing happily.

     They had two days off in Boston that week, and didn't leave his hotel room
     the whole time.

     "I missed you," Lance panted, kissing the back of Joey's neck.  "I missed
     you so much."

     I was going crazy without you, Joey tried to say, but Lance's cock hit
     *that* spot, hit it *good*, and he came so hard he thought he'd never
     be able to speak again.


     * * * * *

     It was another week before Justin and Chris stopped screwing one another
     for long enough to notice that Lance was sleeping in Joey's hotel room.

     "You're getting Lance again?" Justin shrieked.  "No fair!"

     "Hey!" Chris grabbed him and whacked his ass.

     "Prick, cut it out!" Justin shouted, and wrestled Chris to the carpet.  

     Joey had to leave the room, because it was obvious that he'd ceased to
     exist as soon as they hit the ground kissing.


     * * * * *

     So they didn't really talk about it, not when they had eight months of
     fucking to catch up on.  Well, not until Joey found out that Lance had
     fucked JC since he'd been 'back'.

     Joey went and banged on JC's hotel door instead of going right in,
     because he needed to hit something.  "What did you do that for?" he
     demanded, when JC opened it.

     JC just looked at him, and his eyes glittered with contempt.  "You're 
     a stupid, selfish bastard, Fatone," he said, mildly, "and he hasn't got 
     one damn reason *not* to sleep with me."  Then he closed the door 
     in Joey's face.

     Joey figured some stuff out, then, and went out and got completely smashed
     and phoned Lance and shouted, "just so you know, I was dying without 
     you.  And I'm totally fucking in love with you and everything."  Then he 
     hung up on him and drank until he passed out.

     In the morning, his head hurt.  A *lot*.  Lance rubbed his shoulders and
     brought him fresh, sweet coffee and said, "hey, no," when Joey tried to
     apologise for being the most insensitive man in the history of time.

     That, and he gave Joey the mother of all blowjobs, and looked really,
     really happy.  


     * * * * *

     "Hey," she said, when he answered his phone.  "It's Melissa."

     "Oh, shit," he said, stomach lurching.  "He told you?"

     "Yup."

     "Do you hate me?"

     "Yup," she said, and then groaned.  "No. Yes. I don't know. You fucking
     *cunt*, Fatone."

     "Are you okay with it?  Cause if you're not, I'll--" I won't stop, he
     thought.  But I'll feel really really bad about it.

     "No, I think I'm relieved."  She laughed bitterly.  "Or maybe not.  Fuck.
     I really don't know."

     Where was the advice column, Joey wondered, where he could ask some
     popstar what the proper etiquette was when you've stolen your gay best
     friend back from his girlfriend?  Perhaps somebody from Backstreet would
     know.

     Joey laughed.  He couldn't help it.

     "No, you listen to me," and she sounded cranky and tired and ungracious.
     "I'll let you have him, okay, but if you dick around on him, I'll come up
     there and kill your fucking cat."

     "Don't worry," Joey promised. "I'm not gonna dick around on him." 

     "Good."

     She really was a darling, Joey thought.  He liked her now.  A lot.  "You
     gonna do what Judith wants?" he asked, because it wouldn't be so bad
     having her around for a while longer.  "You can live at my place, still."

     "I was gonna ask you," she said.  "I'd do it for Lance, and Lance'd do it
     for you.  So it's kinda your call."

     He thought about it for a minute, listening to Lance shuffling paper on
     the kitchen table.  "Nah," he said, eventually.  "I don't think it would
     be right."

     "You sure?"

     "Yeah." Joey's stomach fluttered, but he smiled.  "Yeah, I think so."

     "You sure you're sure?" she said, and it sounded like she was smiling too.
     "Cause if I was gonna be stuck with a fake boyfriend for the next year, I
     was gonna try being a lesbian."

     "You don't need us for that," Joey said sagely.  "Just find the right
     woman, and you'll never look the other way again."

     She laughed.  "Yeah, well.  So I've heard."


     * * * * *

     Judith was not impressed.

     "You're telling me," she repeated slowly, "that not only has Lance swung
     back to his old flamer glory, he's taken the straightest one of all with
     him?"

     "Yup," Joey said, cuddling Lance in his lap.

     "And the straightest one of all insists on doing this without a cover?"

     "Yup."

     "Fuck," Judith said, slamming her clipboard on the table.  "*Fuck*."

     "And guess what else," Lance said, and handed her the latest
     BrotherSister.  "Page six."

     "The Carlton?" she screamed, and hit him over the head with it.  "You got
     fucking *photographed* kissing fucking Joey on the fucking mouth at the
     fucking *Carlton*?"  Then she looked at it again.  "I got rid of that
     shirt," she said, eyes narrowing.

     "I bought him another one," Joey purred.

     "You're both fucking grounded!" she yelled.  "For-*ever*.  Until the end
     of fucking *time*."

     So that was going to be his future, Joey thought: a life lived in hotel
     rooms.  Behind walls of security. With Lance, and some occasional room
     service.  Until the end of time. 

     He closed his eyes blissfully, imagining it.


     * * * * *
     end

     So. Go read The Same Inside again.  You know you want to.
     http://home.att.net/~helen8/samep.htm