Fatherhood
by Cecilia

~..~

Justin hadn't been expecting to become a father before he even turned twenty-one.

It wasn't like it hadn't happened to people he knew. Britney's cousin and her boyfriend had slipped up two years ago, and Brit's grandmother was taking care of the kid a lot. Justin remembered how much fun Annie used to be, always ready to pack up for a weekend away on five minutes' notice. He hadn't really seen too much of her in the last couple of years, even when he visited Brit's family.

It also wasn't like he hadn't been planning on doing it eventually. He really liked kids, loved his little brothers so much he sometimes still cried when he left Tennessee after an infrequent visit. The last time he'd been on an airplane, not even a private one, and he'd had to snuffle into the inflight pillow, hoping the businessman next to him in first class would ignore him completely and, please God, not recognize him.

But Chris and JC and Joey had all sat him down individually two months before his sixteenth birthday, when they started to hit it really big in Germany. They'd gone down the street to a biergarten to grab dinner in between two shows, and while they were there the waitress, who was at least ten years older than Justin and had enormous yeasty breasts spilling out of her Heidi uniform top, had sat down on his lap and kissed him, taken his slack right hand and put it on her chest. They'd all laughed and catcalled, but Chris had arranged to share his room the next night.

"Listen up and listen good, kiddo," he'd said. "You stay the fuck away from those girls or I'll kick your ass, Justin." He'd glared at him narrowly for a full five minutes, longer than Justin had ever seen him hold still for anything but their first meeting with Lou, and Justin had sworn on the pocket bible he'd carried with him all the time then.

JC'd been a little less forceful, but no less effective. He'd actually bought Justin condoms, learning, Justin found out later, just enough of the correct kind of German to get a box with minimal fuss and embarrassment. He hadn't blushed, handing them over, though Justin had felt his cheeks heat up. "Use them if you have to," JC had said, simply. "But don't have to, Jup, ok?"

Joey got drunk three days later and made Justin listen to a twenty-minute lecture on handjobs and blowjobs and eating out. "Better safe than sorry," he'd said, slurring a little, and Justin had gotten him some advil and rubbed his forehead in the morning. But it was really good advice and he remembered it later.

"If you try to tell me about safe sex I'm rooming with Johnny," he'd said to Lance the next night.

"Uh, ok," Lance had said. "*Clueless* is on with subtitles, not dubbed, you wanna?"

So after that Justin wasn't sure he could've had premarital sex if he'd wanted to, which he didn't especially, and when he and Britney broke up the decision to stay a virgin was even easier. He liked all the other things you could do with a girl if you were lucky enough to have one, and anyway, he didn't have time to be a father. At least not yet.

Justin hopes to hell that by the time Brianna is old enough to wonder, Joe and Kelly will have gotten together a convincing lie about why they'd wanted a baby at that exact moment in Joey's career and the course of their not yet matrimonial relationship, because he's always thought it would suck to think of yourself as unplanned. Like it would mean unwanted. And Justin doesn't want her ever to think that anyone didn't want her desperately at any time.

When Joey told them it was so shocking it was like hearing words come out of his own mouth that he wasn't expecting to say at all. It was the height of the tour, a hotel room surrounded by three layers of security, and they'd all agreed right away that it couldn't, shouldn't get out.

"But Joey," Justin had said, "you know we're there for you, whatever, man." Joey had smiled, and JC had leaned over and hugged him before he could cry.

A couple of days later, Justin ducked into the book section of the Target they'd stopped at at 3 a.m. while the others were helping Lance pick out new swim trunks. When they got back on the bus he dropped the shrink-wrapped package of two Dr. Spock books on JC's bunk - they had a big "$4.99 4 2!" sticker splashed across them and he thought JC would appreciate it. He'd picked up *1,000,001 Baby Names* for Joey, but before he put it in Joey's suitcase he flipped idly through, sitting cross-legged on his pillow, and found that *Justin* meant "upright just one" and was a "new manly name." *Joseph* was only a few pages back and was a "classic" and meant "this man shall add to his learning by experience." *They got that one right, I guess,* Justin thought, grinning as he remembered seeing Chris march into Joey's room the previous night with an economy-sized package of condoms. *Joshua* was right there too, of course, and meant "God of salvation."

*Christopher* was "Christ-bearer" and was a "new manly name" too. *Lance* was "an attendant," "fashionable many years ago but now out; a wimpy name." Justin snickered and kept flipping. Laura, Lawrence, Leah, Letitia, Leslie, Levy, Lillian...he didn't stop until he got to Rachel and Robert, and tucked the book into the pocket at the side of his bunk. He already had a short list in his head.

It was Lance who called him, at two in the morning. He wasn't home yet, but his cell was set to vibrate in his pocket, and he pulled it out immediately. It was only a text message: "baby lady of mercy come now." He'd apologized to his dance partner and gone.

When he got there JC'd been standing up, vibrating slightly like he did before a concert, Chris, of all people, with a hand on his arm and trying to quiet him down. Lance was talking to Joey's dad in another corner of the waiting room but he looked up and smiled as Justin came in. A few minutes later, Joey'd come out and hugged Justin quickly. Another hour or two, they thought.

Just under three hours later, they'd let them in.

Kelly had been bathed and re-dressed by then, and she was sitting up with a little blanket-covered bundle cradled against her chest. Justin held JC's hand tightly, smiled at Kelly when she looked up at him, but the bundle *moved* and he saw her face.

"Want to hold her?" Kelly asked softly.

He couldn't speak, but he squeezed JC's hand, reached down and took her. She didn't wake up. JC reached over and touched her forehead, stroking a little, as he settled her into his arms, back against his chest.

"What's her name," he breathed as JC brushed his fingers over the top of her head, watched the wing of dark hair fall across her forehead and knew it was love.

Justin changes diapers without complaint, sits up all night with Chris when Joey and Kelly need a night off, leave them to babysit and she cries until four in the morning. They pass her back and forth and take turns getting more Scotch from the kitchen cabinet, Chris bouncing her gently and cooing lullabyes whenever she settles down for a minute. JC and Lance take her shopping with them one morning and come home with pastel bags hanging off the handlebars of her stroller, tiny white duck baby shirts nestled in tissue paper, wooden blocks in bright colors and a set of toy trains that she won't be old enough to appreciate for forty or fifty years.

"JC," Joey says, looking through the bags at his kitchen table while Justin finishes lunch, "didn't you go for your mom's birthday present?"

Lance shrugs helplessly in the corner as Chris comes down the stairs with a newly-changed Brianna in his arms. He's turned her wispy curls into two tiny braids starting over her ears.

JC tells interviewers that they all like off time because they have a chance to be home in their own places. That's true, Justin thinks, although they hardly ever spend time in their own places anyway. Britney's the only one that really lives in the house in Beverly Hills. In LA, they all crash in the house that JC owns on paper; and in Orlando, Joey's couch fits the imprint of Justin's ass perfectly. Four days into their vacation, Justin hasn't bothered to go anywhere but the local Chinese takeout place and Joey's spare bedroom. Lance went to Mississippi for two days to see Laura and his family and do some listening to Freelance audition tapes, but he got back the night before last, dropped his suitcase at home, and came over for dinner. He's still here too. Chris and JC played a really dirty game of tackle football on the lawn yesterday while Justin and Lance cheered them on from the porch, betting on who would cheat the most. Lance won when JC slid the football down the back of his sweatpants and declared himself the winner unless Chris wanted to go after it, and Chris pulled his pants down with his teeth because JC was holding onto his wrists too tightly to break the grip.

JC, who always thinks he's really going to go to his own house at night, hadn't packed a change of clothing, so he'd had to borrow from Justin when his own pants were too muddy to put back on without being washed. He's wearing Justin's jeans now; they're a fairly good fit, although a little too tight in the ass and a little loose over the thighs. It doesn't really matter, though, for just standing ankle deep in Joey's messy shag carpeting playing with Brianna. JC's half bent over, holding Brianna's hands as she stretches her arms up as far as they'll go. He bounces her for a while, lets her down, picks her up, bounces her again. They've been doing it for half an hour and neither of them seems to be tired of it yet. Joey had been rinsing diapers in the bathroom, Chris sitting on the bathtub rim and laughing at him, but they came back down not so long ago and settled into the couch opposite the one Justin's on, Chris stopping on the way into the room to tug Lance away from the computer desk by the living room window. "Bad for your eyes, Bass," he'd said, and hooked a thumb into Lance's belt loops, pulling him down practically into his lap. They've sorted themselves out into not quite a pile, now, Joey and Chris each leaning against an arm, Lance half reclining against Chris with one foot tucked under Joey's leg. Lance and Chris are talking about the Red Sox, and Joey looks up and smiles at Justin once, but mostly the two of them just watch JC and Brianna from opposite sides of the room.

"Oh my God," JC says suddenly. "Oh my - Joey -" Joey and Lance and Chris and Justin all sit up in alarm as JC squats down to Brianna's level, but he doesn't pay any attention to them.

"Bri," he says to her.

"Ceeeeeeeeeeeeeeee," she says, and laughs.

"Brianna, are you a big girl?" he asks, and Justin frowns in confusion. She laughs and makes a gurgly noise; Justin doesn't think she's up to that much language yet.

"OK," JC says. "I'm gonna be right here, honey, right here." And he eases one hand away from her grasping little fingers, and then, after a second, the other.

Brianna lasts all of seven and a half seconds - Justin can feel the thud of each one straight through his heart - before she tumbles back onto her bottom, JC catching her just before she hits the ground so that she giggles instead of cries, and kicks her feet until he lifts her back to them. But she did it, she stood up without C holding onto her, and she does it again, a little longer this time, when he lets go.

"Joey," JC says in a choked voice, and has to clear his throat. Joey had reached out to grab Chris's arm, but he lets go of it now and takes the five steps to where JC is holding Brianna up for the third time, kneels down. He and C are almost exactly the same height, and when Chris gets down on the rug on the other side, it all looks lopsided but perfect. JC gives them each a hand, and they help her stand, and let her go, and Lance takes a turn - she stands the longest for him, and then goes back to falling over immediately when JC sets her up again. Joey looks up at one point, his eyes watery, and meets Justin's gaze, but neither of them has to say anything. Justin doesn't move off his couch. He's not sure he could if he wanted to really. He's ok, for now, just to watch.

It *is* good to be home. Justin's favorite part about it is all the time he has to think about how much he loves his life.

~..~

So many times I thought I held it in my hands,
But just like grains of sand
Love slipped through my fingers. And so many nights,
I asked the Lord above
Please make me lucky enough
To find a love that lingers
Something keeps telling me
That you could be my answered prayer
You must be heaven sent I swear

Cause something happens when you look at me I forget to speak.
Something happens when you kiss my mouth my knees get so weak.
Could it be true this is what God has meant for me cause baby
I can't believe that something like you could happen to me
Something like you

Girl in your eyes, I feel your fire burn
Oh your secrets I will learn
Even if it takes forever
With you by my side
I can do anything
I don't care what tomorrow brings
As long as we're together.
My heart is telling me
That you could be my meant to be
I know it more each time we touch...
Cause something happens when you look at me I forget to speak.
Something happens when you kiss my mouth my knees get so weak.
Could it be true this is what God has meant for me cause baby
I can't believe that something like you could happen to me

Something magical,
something spiritual,
Something stronger than the two of us alone.
Something physical,
Something undeniable.
Nothing like anything that I've ever known...

Cause something happens when you look at me I forget to speak.
Something happens when you kiss my mouth my knees get so weak.
Could it be true this is what God has meant for me cause baby
I can't believe that something like you, something like you
That something like you could happen to me.