"Where's Justin? Where'd he go? Whe-e-e-e-re-- Hey! There he is!" It was hard to say who
sounded more delighted at the sudden revelation, Justin or the kid. Justin was, of course,
*always* delighted to be rediscovered, but Chris had to admit that even after like forty minutes of
peekaboo, Brianna still seemed pretty into it. She was his perfect audience: young, innocent, and
able to concentrate intensely on Justin for a hell of a lot longer than Chris could.
Justin and Brianna were two hours into the evening and still going strong, but Chris was pretty
bored with the babysitting thing, and *very* bored with losing Justin and finding him again.
"Hey -- hey, Brianna! Where's Justin?"
"What the hell are you trying to do, Timberlake, turn Joey's kid into paparazzi?"
Justin pushed himself up from his elbows to his hands, the majority of him still lying sprawled on
the carpet; he looked like a seal, Chris thought, a trained seal getting ready to catch a beachball on
his nose. He should suggest it; obviously it had just escaped Justin's notice that there were
endearing tricks he hadn't yet been trained to perform. "Hey, somebody's got to do some actual
babysitting while you sit on your ass and read *Rolling Stone,*" he said pleasantly.
"It's just starting to scare me, that's all. Your full-time fear that somewhere, somehow, a
prepubescent female is not thinking about how fantastic you are."
"Never gonna happen," Justin drawled lazily, and then seemed to forget about Chris entirely.
"Right, Bri? Yeah, you got it! Hey, look -- that's your nose. Hey, look -- that's your chin. Got
your toes!"
"Justin, for fuck's sake! Shut *up!*"
"Just ignore that guy. You and me are having fun, huh? Pretty good gig, yeah? Yeah?"
Chris shook his head and tried to ignore them. "Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba!" Brianna shouted suddenly, and
he leaped off his kitchen chair like a startled cat. Justin was still lying on the floor, dangling his
necklace over her as Brianna squirmed on her back, reaching up clumsily to bat at it. He spared
just one look up at Chris, long enough to grin at him in an unspoken, *I saw that.*
"Dude, you're getting her all worked up," Chris grumbled, sitting down again. "Joey's gonna be
pissed off if she's not asleep when he gets home."
"Yeah, well, he's the dad. His job is to get pissed off, and hers is to break curfew with good-
looking older guys. Ba-ba-ba-ba," he started singing back to her, and after a few seconds it
developed into the Joy of Pepsi song, and that was more than a man should have to take. Chris
grabbed the nearest unbreakable thing -- some kind of terrycloth toy with softly jingling bells
inside it that happened to be on the floor near his foot -- and pegged Justin squarely in the head
with it. "*What?*" Justin demanded, turning aggrieved and innocent eyes on him.
Shit. After all these years, Chris *still* couldn't ride the Infant's ass when he started with that
look. Not that he believed in Justin's innocence, not that he hadn't seen Justin in front of the
mirror for the last five years, practicing every look and glance and tic in his arsenal, and not that
he didn't know more about what was really in Justin's head than he did about what was in his
own kitchen cabinets. But still. Justin batted his eyes, and Chris gave it up. Second verse, same
as the first.... "I just can't believe you're teaching her Brit's product endorsements. Where's
your fucking loyalty?"
"All right, all right," he laughed, and tried again. "Ain't no lie, baby, bye bye bye...."
"Ba-ba-ba-ba!"
"She's so smart!" Justin burst out, and for the first time, it struck Chris that Justin *meant* it
when he said stuff like that. He wasn't just amusing his friend's kid; he was totally crushing on
Brianna, just stupid and grinning like Joey had managed to produce the pinnacle of human
evolution. "You think she's gonna have a good voice when she grows up?"
"I don't know," Chris said slowly, pretending to consider it. "You think her dad will?"
Justin laughed, and for one crazy second, Chris was thinking, *Take that, Brianna, you tramp.*
He gave himself a mental smack for sinking so low as to compete with a seventeen-week-old baby
for Justin's laughter. "I think that would be cool," he pronounced grandly, dropping his hand
down to tickle her stomach lightly, almost like he didn't notice he was doing it. "Like -- if
someday Joey was just one line at the beginning of MTV Icons. 'Her father was millennial teen
idol Joey Fatone....' You know. Cool."
"Nice to know you're cool with Joey becoming a footnote in music history."
"Well -- I'm not -- I'm just saying. If it was your *kid.* If it was your kid, you'd want her to be
more famous than you were. I mean, you wouldn't want her to be, like...in your shadow, would
you?"
And that brought it home more than ten solid hours of peekaboo ever could have. Imagine Justin
Timberlake, *the* Justin Timberlake, actually wanting someone to do better than him, be more
beloved by the public and remembered longer. For the first time, Chris could really kind of see
Justin as somebody's father. Someday.
He'd actually be pretty good at it.
"I'd mostly want her to be in a kennel somewhere," Chris said. "I'm not that into...kids."
"Pay no attention to the freaky man, babe. He's just talking smack. Secretly, he's in love with
you. He's planning to lure you away from me...."
"J, there ain't enough money in the world to make me go head-to-head with you over a woman.
I'd get beat like a red-headed stepchild."
"Yeah," Justin agreed with a lazy smile. "Probably. Okay, baby, I guess that's it. You're all
mine." He swooped her up in both arms and rolled over on his back, pulling up his knees and
balancing her lightly on his shins. Brianna screamed, and then laughed, her little hands fisted
tightly around Justin's fingers as he rolled his hips from side to side, dipping her through the air.
"I wanna marry you," he said in a voice Chris hadn't heard very often out of Justin, rich and
rumbling and warm and, to Chris' trained ear, surprisingly unaffected. If he'd had that on tape, he
probably could have sold it on the black market for thousands; those words in that voice, it could
be banned in seventeen states and send the teenies into cardiac arrest. There were days when
Chris had to admit he understood where the fans were coming from. Admit to himself, anyway.
There were *never* days when he had to admit it to Justin.
"I'm telling Joey that you have creepy and inappropriate designs on his daughter."
"You do that. I'm not ashamed. Me and Bri, we have a love that society can't stand in the way
of. When she grows up, she's gonna make an honest man out of me."
Chris snorted. "That'll be the day." With Justin's tank top riding up his stomach and his obliques
flexing as he rolled his hips, Chris was perfectly aware of exactly why Justin was never going to
be an honest man, ever: the whole rest of the world had other plans for him, and probably always
would.
"You should hold her."
"I don't want to," Chris lied reflexively. He didn't *not* want to hold her, but if she started
crying as soon as he got her, Justin would never in a million years let him live it down. It wasn't
worth the risk.
But Justin turned his head to the side and fixed him firmly with those deadly eyes, half-lidded and
darkened, and he said, "C'mon down here, Chris," and if he'd had *that* on tape, in no way
would he sell it, or share it with anyone for all the tea in China.
He sat down with is back against the couch and his legs out flat. Justin tucked Brianna under one
arm and rolled up to his knees in one complicated, fluid motion that he didn't even seem to have
to stop and think about logistically. Somehow, when Justin moved, all the pieces just seemed to
fall into place, and if he took it for granted, Chris never did. He'd made a small fortune off of
Justin's effortless grace, after all, and most of the time, Chris believed that was the reason he
stayed so keenly aware of it.
On the other hand, when Justin did totally innocent things like slap Chris' knee lightly and say,
"Here, get your legs up," and it still practically shorted out Chris' brain -- it was a little harder to
believe it was all about the Benjamins. There was definitely... something about Justin that money
just couldn't buy....
Obediently, he pulled his feet in and his knees up, and Justin sat the kid in Chris' lap facing him,
her back braced against his legs. Immediately, she turned her head, looking for Justin. "Hey.
Chris," he directed, pointing in Chris' direction, but Brianna just looked at him with dark, owlish
eyes and made a small noise that went up at the end like a question. "Look at *Chris.*"
No go. "Guess this is why they don't put me in the front at photo shoots," Chris suggested
mildly.
"Come on, Brianna, I'm trying to help you seduce this guy. You gotta look at him first, though."
"Ba-ba-ba...." She actually put her hands up in front of her eyes, and Chris let his head fall back
against the sofa and groaned. Joey's daughter was apparently one of those snotty girls that the
clubs used to be full of back before he was famous.
"Look! That's so cute -- she wants to play peekaboo again! No, come on, Bri -- *Chris.* Come
on, he's not that ugly. He grows on you," Justin added with a strange slyness and an unreadable
little smile in Chris' direction.
It seemed to call for a response, and Chris settled on a nice, neutral, "Fuck you."
She turned her head, finally, and for the first time, Chris was on the receiving end of the same
tireless focus that made Brianna the Guinness World Record holder in hours logged playing
peekaboo. "Hi," he said, when Justin glared at him. "Hiya."
Brianna made a string of sighing, breathy syllables and reached out, her hand tapping
experimentally against his beard. "You probably remind her of Joey with that," Justin suggested.
"Listen, sweetheart, I'm not your daddy, okay? I'm just here for the free food. Hi.... Hi." Okay,
it was a little fun. Chris smiled, and Brianna laughed. "She can probably sing. I bet. She sounds
like Joey -- the laugh."
"Yeah, I think so, too. See? 'S not so fucking hard, is it?"
"She's cute," Chris allowed, his voice implying that he was amazingly magnanimous to say so.
"What's with that name, though? Brianna? That's so hip it hurts. It's going to be one of those
names, like Heidi or Renee. One of those names that everyone gives their kids for ten years, and
then never again."
"Since when are you the expert on baby names?"
"I just call 'em like I see 'em."
"It's a pretty name. But I guess...I guess I dig what you're saying. Good to have a name with a
little staying power. Elizabeth, Katherine, whatever."
"Actually," Chris murmured, "if I have kids, I'm thinking about Fulicia."
Justin threw his head back and laughed so loudly that Brianna looked shocked. "Sick, man.
You're *sick.*" Justin sprawled on his back and put one bare foot up on the arm of the sofa,
curling his toes as if he were sharpening his claws on Joey's furniture. "Seriously. What would
you have named her? If it were your kid?"
"You are seriously beginning to scare me with this biological clock bullshit, J."
He made a scoffing sound. "I'm just *curious,* yo."
"I don't know. I don't know! I haven't thought about it. Anyway, I think women do that.
They've got the names all picked out from like the seventh grade, and it's probably more than
your life is worth to get in the way. By the time they're naming the kid, you're probably
disposable anyway." He let Justin sulk for a minute before taking him off the hook. "All right,
you're dying to tell me, so tell me."
"Lydia."
"Why?"
Justin cocked his head, puzzled. "I like it. What do you mean, why?"
Chris shrugged. "It doesn't mean anything."
"So gimme a better one."
"Best two out of three? What kind of weird-ass competition is this?"
"What kind of something? What should it mean?"
Idly, Chris poked the kid, Justin's voice playing in his head. *Hey, look -- that's your nose. Hey,
look -- that's your chin....* He really hadn't given the subject any thought before, but lack of
preparation had never stopped him from having a comeback to one of Justin's challenges before.
"Marlene," he finally said.
"You'd name a defenseless baby *Marlene?* What the hell is wrong with you?"
"After Marlene Dietrich." At Justin's blank look, he began to get scared. "*Marlene Dietrich,*
the actress, the singer? You know, you're not always going to be pretty enough to make up for
being just rock fucking stupid."
Justin flipped him off. "Greta Garbo and Monroe, Dietrich and di Maggio. I got it, I got it."
"Yeah, Madonna lyrics can stand in for a sound education any day of the week. You philistine."
"Educate me, Alex Trebek."
The kid looked tired, and without thinking too hard about it, Chris turned her around, letting her
lie across his stomach with her head on his arm. He saw Justin's lips twitch in an aborted smile,
but chose to ignore it. "She was a big silent movie star in Germany, and she came to Hollywood
in the thirties. Big superstar, in a real bad-ass, femme fatale kind of way. There was a big dust-
up when Hitler tried to pay her off to get her to come back to Germany and make good German
movies again, but she told him to fuck off and started doing U.S. propaganda films instead. So
here's this chick, just this entertainer, and everybody wants her for their fucking *war.* They get
how powerful she is, just by being on the screen. And she sang this song, "Lili Marlene," that just
tore up the charts all over the world. They loved it in Germany, and our soldiers would go over
there, and they wouldn't speak a word of German, but they'd hear this croaky-voiced sex goddess
singing "Lili Marlene" on the radio, and...."
Brianna was asleep, breathing noisily through her mouth.
"World peace through pop," Justin said, and there was something approving about the way he
said it, like he wasn't -- quite -- making fun of Chris.
"I'm not exactly saying we didn't drop a bomb on Germany because of Marlene Dietrich."
"I know. I know what you're saying. Hey, I travel enough, I oughta know. The right song, the
right time, a million miles from home.... Lili Marlene."
"Lili Marlene. Here -- take this."
Justin sat up, smirking at him as Chris passed him the baby. "Knocked her right out with that
story. If this international superstar thing falls through, you should definitely look into a teaching
career."
"You want me to order a pie?" Chris volunteered as they both stood up.
"Hook me up with everything. Except black olives."
"I'm aware of your black olive phobia."
"It's not my fault they look like fucking cockroaches died on your pizza."
"I'm still working on a way to get an actual pizza covered in dead cockroaches delivered to you."
"Nice to know there are fucked-up thrills that money still can't buy. Restores my faith in
America."
On a whim, Chris made a grab for Justin's ass, and for once, burdened down with Brianna, the kid
was too slow to dodge it. "Hey, J, sweet thing--"
"Fuck off, asshole," Justin laughed. "God, you're a twisted fucker."
"--when you have my babies, you gonna let me name one Lili?"
"You only *think* you could top me, bitch," he growled in his most professional *getting your
hands on me would be the high point of your fucking existence* voice.
Chris watched his best friend climb the stairs with the newest love of his life sleeping in his arms,
singing something Chris couldn't quite hear under his breath, and he smiled.
Okay. They were both cute.
end
Bettythoughts, from the original posting (June, 2001): So this is my first *Nsync story, and all in
all it went pretty smoothly, except that I can't get my word processor to stop de-capitalizing the
"S" in *Nsync. See? In my other fandom, I have earned a reputation for writing fairly short
stories with lots of dialogue and only enough sexual content to keep me from getting my ass
kicked off the slash lists. So far, my *Nsync career is shaping up pretty much exactly the same.