Lance hated meetings, detested the sheer time sucking waste that went into them. It didn't mean that he couldn't be good at them. He was and he knew it, just like he knew a thousand cell phone tricks, most of them involving the use of his voice. There were times when warmth was required and other times, well, it was possible to make a deep voice sharp and cold.

JC loved to watch when Lance was 'mean'. Lance thought that he was more like just businesslike, but JC always stopped if he heard that one particular tone of voice. He'd stare at Lance, a tiny smile quirking at the corners of his mouth.

"You're so amazing," JC always said as soon as Lance hung up. He'd see that tiny flicker of admiration in JC's eyes, and start to show off. Lance remembered Discovery Channel programs about preening birds and exhibitionist snakes, and he'd tell himself that he wasn't clicking his cellphone closed with that jazzy little snap because JC was watching.

JC said that once, "Man, it's like choreographed or something. It's always that jazzy little snap." He'd tried to demonstrate what he meant for Lance, but he just wound up prank calling Chris and then almost breaking the snappy part off. After that, Lance thought of it as his Jazzy Little Snap, in capital letters, especially when JC was smiling at him.

Lance wondered sometimes about what JC would look like if he had to be argumentative and in control. He thought that JC wasn't the sort to impose his wishes on others, preferring to nice people into doing what he wanted.

Lance watched him, sometimes, just the way JC watched him. He'd see JC smile and almost agree to do something he didn't want to do, but in the end he'd be so reasonable that he'd wind up with exactly what he wanted.

Sometimes, when he saw JC look at him in that sweet, admiring way, he wished that he was good at something other than business meetings and cellphone calls. "Practice makes perfect," he thought then, and then he made himself forget to try.

~end~