Frisbee
     by Julad


     Joey woke up alone on the bus, and didn't like it.  It was just past
     midnight, and he'd gone to sleep to the sounds of Nintendo and the Rolling
     Stones and Justin on the phone to a girl, jerking off.  Now the soft
     rumble of wheels on the road had a monotony uninterrupted, like the end a
     record left turning for hours, untended.  He threw off the blanket, swung
     his legs over the edge and dropped down to the floor. The empty bunks,
     with their drawn-back curtains, made him think of empty coffins.  The
     driver was lit up by his fancy dashboard, and didn't turn back to look at
     him standing there, just drove on, and on, and on, until Joey wondered if
     he was alive at all.  All it needed was a piece of paper blowing up the
     aisle, or a dust devil spinning across the table, and this was life after
     the band was over, an empty shell sadly echoing the laughter and shouts of
     the past.

     He didn't want to make a fuss, but the bus was really chilling him.  It
     was just way too quiet, and way too still. He poked around for something
     to amuse himself, but there was nothing.  Well, there were magazines
     everywhere, and music and books and videos and games and food and mail,
     but he looked at it and it all just seemed... creepy.  Abandoned.  Unreal.
     He didn't want to touch it, in case it made him that way too, but it felt
     like it was already too late for that.  If Joey watches a video on a bus 
     and nobody is there to see him do it, did he really watch the video?  He 
     had a weird feeling that he didn't exist, now that he was suddenly not 
     plugged into the other guys, now that he wasn't being annoyed by them or 
     laughing at them or listening to them sleep.

     Getting vaguely panicked, and figuring he was a big star now, he could
     make stupid demands and inconvenience people when he wanted to, Joey told
     the driver he wanted to get on the other bus.  The driver didn't say
     anything, and Joey's stomach turned over, his throat felt sticky with the
     scream that was starting deep in his chest.  Was this death, then?  Had he
     chosen this as his own personal hell?  The unthinkable: there had been an
     accident, an overdose; some terrible incident he hadn't been awake for was
     getting hourly updates on every news report on the planet, and he was
     being taxied through a big empty otherworldly nowhere by a grim reaper in
     a denim jacket.  

     Then the weirdness dropped away, the driver sighed and scratched his neck
     and radioed the other driver and arranged a side stop.  Joey got off and
     trudged along the side of the road, through the huge, remote, depthless
     night, and up to the other bus, which was rumbling so loudly that it *had*
     to be more real than the bus he'd just left.  Up the steps and inside, to
     where everyone was piled on the couch, looking beautifully warm and alive.
     The door hissed shut, the engine revved, and they were moving again.

     The TV was playing The Lion King, dusting their faces in orange and gold.
     Lance was the only one watching it.  JC was sprawled across Justin's legs,
     and had Justin's shirt pushed up, and was idly licking the hard lines of
     his stomach.  Justin's hands toyed with JC's hair, but his head was on
     Lance's shoulder, and he was harmonising softly to the soundtrack with
     Lance.  Chris was curled up between Lance's legs, his eyes closed.  As
     Joey came in, Chris smooched the inside of Lance's knee.

     Joey looked for a space, a place he could plug himself into, but there
     wasn't one.  He stepped closer, like he did sometimes, like their bodies
     were a fire he could warm himself by, but this time the fire wasn't
     working, and the scared part of him was still cold and alone on the other
     bus, dead and being towed away, after the band had broken up.

     "Joey, my man," JC said, lifting his head and stretching his back.
     "What's up?"

     "I want a girlfriend," Joey blurted.  And he did.  That was how Chris
     handled it;  Dani was only a phone call away, any time of the night he
     could dial a few numbers and be connected.  JC plugged himself into music
     and the internet, and Justin got off so much on the fame thing that he
     could just reach out his finger and stick it into the electric current and
     feel alive.  But girls weren't real, to Joey.  They were everywhere, and
     he liked them, but like bus drivers, they didn't count as real people.

     Lance looked up at him.  "Why do you want a girlfriend?" he asked, like he
     truly wanted to know.

     Joey didn't want to say, looked again for an empty space, waited for
     somebody to shift their legs or pat their lap, but nobody did.  Their
     stillness seemed to say something loudly: they had one another, what did
     they need him for?

     "I read this thing once," Joey said, getting angry because he didn't want
     to feel hurt.  "In a book.  Somebody said that this stuff never works.
     It's too unstable and everyone goes into couples and then it all splits
     apart and everyone ends up alone."

     "Bullshit, man."  Chris flicked popcorn at him.  "You so cannot read
     books."

     And Joey noticed that JC's arms tightened around Justin.

     "Joey, you dick," Lance spoke up, louder than his usual voice.  "Come
     here."  He didn't wait, but clambered over to Joey, clocked him on the
     forehead and then gripped his arm.  "Of course it's too unstable.  But
     jeez, man, look around you.  Unstable is our fucking *life*.  We live in a
     goddamn *frisbee*, okay?  Nothing else survives here."

     The warm imprint of Lance's hand on his arm was good, was always good, and
     he would always be hungry for it, but it would never be enough, because
     Lance had God, and hard work, and charity, and all those things which
     wouldn't evaporate when the grim reaper came.

     "Centrifugal force," Chris murmured, and all four of them turned to stare
     at him.  "It's basic physics, fuckbrains," he snapped.  "Spin something
     fast enough and up becomes in, and gravity is out, and everything gets
     spread really even.  Or something."  He stretched out across Lance's empty
     seat, and put his feet on JC's back.

     "And when we crash, Joey," Lance was pulling him down towards the couch,
     his voice somehow smooth and reassuring, "everything else will come down
     with it. But that's not today, all right?"  He looked serious, but calm.
     "Not today."

     Joey let Lance push him onto the couch, and Chris yanked his legs away and
     complained, and then leaned his head on Joey's shoulder and dropped a kiss
     on Joey's neck.  Lance came down in Joey's lap and covered him, and Joey
     got his arms around Lance's waist and gripped him hard.  Justin's body
     shifted against him, gently, and his legs slipped in to tangle until Joey
     didn't know whose limb was whose, and JC reached over and rested a hand on
     his knee, and finally, the feeling of freefalling in emptiness faded away,
     replaced by the touch and sound and smell of real people.  Aftershave and
     shampoo and soap and sweat.  Soft breathing, and Justin chuckling, and
     Chris yawning, and the stupid Lion King music and JC humming something that
     clashed.  Warm bodies and beating hearts and the bus vibrating like it was
     something spinning really fast.  

     Joey opened his eyes, and Lance was staring down at him.  Lance, who saw
     the future with those piercingly clear eyes.  Lance, whose laptop always
     glowed softly with a pathway out of the wreckage *nsync would eventually
     become.  Lance, who kept himself connected to a thousand timeless things
     in a thousand different ways.

     "When it happens, you won't be alone," Lance told him, steady eyes looking
     straight into his, salty fingers brushing his lips, brimming over into the
     last of his empty senses.  "I promise."

     end.