Normally, Justin's house was full of relatives and friends and the relatives of friends, half of them people Justin didn't know. But for one brief period, the stars aligned and there wasn't a single person mooching off him. It was great--

Except that it wasn't.

He spent three hours wandering around, bored and lonely and in a pissy mood, feeling completely unable to entertain himself, and finding things missing from every room, and then he conference-called the guys.

Joey, who claimed he didn't even know what Justin's house looked like without a hundred people in it, organized a barbecue. "It's our turn to sleep on the couch and eat all your food, hey," he said cheerfully, before wandering off to plan a menu. Justin didn't bother to tell him that the good couches had all disappeared without a single trace.

JC, who was trying, really trying, to 'improve their diets', decided to go to the grocery store with him and so they had not only ribs and hamburgers on hand but also weird seafood and half a pound of some limp green root JC claimed was a delicacy in Japan.

Lance made sure their schedules were clear and got a recipe for a spicy honey sauce from some 'secret' source. All of Lance's sources were secret. This source, Justin suspected, was a supermarket-brand jar in the back of Lance's cupboard, but he wasn't going to say anything.

Chris didn't help plan anything, but he brought toys. Water guns, frisbees, and hula hoops. He presented the huge bag to Justin with an air of seriousness an hour after he'd been called, acting like they were expensive gifts to some head of state. Then he noticed that one of Justin's bushes had some funky-ass flowers growing on it and he disappeared into the wild foliage.

Justin stared after him in bemusement, holding a pink, sparkly hula hoop in one hand and a huge plastic gun in the other. He thought about sending them all home; if he couldn't even handle Chris' gifts at the moment, how was he supposed to deal with Chris?

Lance came around the side of the house, bringing him a drink, and he raised an eyebrow. "Chris," Justin explained simply, and Lance nodded. His eyes gleamed with amusement. He took a hula hoop from the bag, a neon green one, and set it spinning around his arm.

"One more of these and a Skip-It," he said, "and it'll be the eighties all over again."

"Maybe if we were all girls," Justin said, rolling the pink hula hoop, watching it spin into the pool. Nobody'd cleaned it while he was gone. That amazed him. Why were people gonna live in his house if they didn't want it to be nice? It looked like a swamp in there. "I don't know about you, Lance, but me and my friends played with like, GI Joe and Transformers. Not Skip-It and fucking hula hoops."

Lance smiled at him. His eyes, reflecting the sunshine, were almost the same color as the hoop still dancing around his forearm. "The girls in my neighborhood used to climb in the hula hoop together," he said. "Or drag in one of the boys. We were six at the time, seven. But when we got older, I could say 'Do you remember hula hooping with me when we were little?' and most of them were happy to relive the experience."

Justin snorted, doubting that Lance had even known girls were different from boys until he was twelve, thirteen years old. He was also willing to bet that knowing the difference hadn't made Lance like girls any more or any less than he had before he'd figured it out.

"Fuck!" Chris shrieked. Then, "Lance! Lance! I'm stuck!"

Lance grinned in the general direction of Chris' voice, then handed Justin the hoop and began to roll up the sleeves on his shirt. "So what?" he called.

"So if you don't come help me I'll never get out. I'll starve to death in here and my corpse will stink the place up, and Justin's relatives will all leave and he'll be lonely and sell the house and never even give me a proper burial!" Chris' voice climbed higher and higher, until it was just freakish and irritating, and Justin didn't know how Lance, who was generally pretty easy for Chris to irritate, could still be smiling when even he himself wanted to drag Chris from the bushes, gag him, and dump him in the pool.

He figured it might have something to do with the kissing that had been going on, according to JC, but really.

"Why should I care about any of that? This isn't my house. You're barely even my friend. I only talk to you because I feel bad for you." Lance crossed his arms and tilted his head. His gaze met Justin's as a screech of outrage echoed across the lawn. His eyes were dancing, so amused, which was weird. Justin didn't get it--Chris was a ton of fun until you annoyed or offended him, and then it was like tornado season--

And lately, Lance really seemed to thrive on the bad weather.

"Help me out of here or I'll color in your lame-ass scraggly facial hair with green markers while you're sleeping!" Chris shouted, and Lance snorted.

"Hold on," he said. "I'll send Justin in for you. It's his house, he can deal with it."

"Have you seen Timberlake recently? He's like, fucking Godzilla!"

"Fucking Godzilla? Is there something you're not telling us about?" Lance murmured as an aside to Justin, who punched him automatically.

In the bushes, Chris was screeching something about being crushed like a bug under the weight of Justin's huge-ass feet or being felled with one blow of his freakishly long arms. Lance, laughing now, finally crossed the patio and made his careful way into the leaves. His white shirt was the only sign of him, just a little flicker of sun-reflection in the deep green and pale wood and occasional colorful blossom.

Justin shook his head and turned away, watching the pink hoop float forlornly in the pool, a bright disruption to the dank greenness of the water. While he was watching, bubbles formed in the water around the hoop. His eyes widened and he stared as it spun a few times, working up waves, and began to sink. In a few seconds, all traces of it were gone.

Wow, Justin thought. I should really get the pool cleaned. With, um, explosives. And then he shook his head, took a deep breath, and pretended that nothing weird was happening. JC and Joey were singing something while they toiled over the grill, and that was good, great, he'd never been able to resist a sing-along.

Plus, he was, uh, pretty sure he could get JC to try out the hula hoops.

Lance found Chris practically dangling from thorny branches near the side of Justin's wall. He was only two feet, maybe three feet from the concrete of the patio but it was like he'd found his own little forested world--Lance couldn't see beyond the leaves. The sunshine that filtered through had almost the same quality of light he'd seen at home in Mississippi before, while out hiking with his father in places where the trees were old and he'd always thought about redwoods when he was younger, wondering how any tree could possibly be bigger than the ones in his home state. The forest had always made him feel small and quiet.

He kind of missed that.

In Justin's bushes, if he stood up straight, he could almost poke his head out of the leaves and spoil the illusion. So he slouched, crossed his arms over his chest, and grinned at Chris.

Chris didn't smile back. But his eyes were gleaming, almost sweet.

"So I was thinking," Lance said, "that if you were really in the mood for hiking, there are woods near my Mississippi house. With trails. And, you know, real trees."

"And bears, probably. Gorillas. Some such shit," Chris muttered before twisting a little, trying to work his shirt free of the thorns which looked to be puncturing it, tearing a little. Lance figured Chris'd probably have scratches when they got him out of there. That was OK. Lance had Band-Aids in his car.

"I bet we'd turn a corner and stumble across a rabid moose. I bet there'd be a Yeti." Chris growled low in his throat and grabbed at a branch, then yelped and slowly shook his hand free of the thorns. "You can't trust nature," he said, and held up his bleeding palm like evidence.

"Oh, shut up," Lance said, taking a step closer. "There are probably worse things in here." He made a show of looking around warily. "Did you see what was growing in the pool? I wouldn't call that natural."

Chris snorted. "Yeah, I'd just call that slimy," he said. "So I named it Carson."

Lance laughed and watched as he wiggled downward, in an attempt to slip out of his shirt that failed because the thorns not scratching his back immediately seemed to home in on the vulnerable skin of his stomach. Chris yelped again and scooted back into his shirt, then looked at Lance with exasperation.

"So, hey, were you planning on just watching me be drained by these bloodsuckers, or were you thinking about helping?" he asked, his tone biting.

"I was actually wondering how you'd managed to get so caught," Lance said. "I mean, you were in here what, five minutes?"

"It only takes one minute, Bass, to cause a ton of fucking chaos, and you should know that by now."

"I went years without chaos before I met you." Lance carefully stamped down the thorny growth as he made his way to Chris, who was finally just holding still. It went against the grain, Lance knew, to wait for rescue. Especially for Chris, who could cling like plastic wrap sometimes but was fiercely self-reliant for the most part.

"I can't imagine years without chaos," Chris murmured. He didn't quite sound wistful.

Lance smiled at him. "And you'll never experience them. You bring it with you wherever you go." A thorn snagged his bare forearm and he winced, swore. "You know, I have a wall around my house, just like Justin's wall, and that seems to work pretty well as far as the keeping-people-out thing goes. I do not understand the addition of protective foliage."

"You're not Timberlake," Chris said, and sighed. "Could you hurry it up, maybe? Swear to God, if I had known getting a single flower blossom out of these bushes of death was going to be this troublesome, I'd just have gone for the daffodils in his front yard."

Lance finally reached him and immediately started to work the thorns free of his shirt. "Why were you after flowers anyway?" he asked. "You brought Justin a super-soaker, no need for a bouquet from his own gardens."

Chris grunted, frowned, looked away. Lance, switching between watching his hands carefully and monitoring Chris' face for signs of discomfort, laughed. "For me, huh?" he said, and Chris bared his teeth. Lance wrapped a hand around the back of his neck and squeezed lightly, still laughing. "I really do--"

"Do need to focus, Bass," Chris muttered. "Just...get me out of this, OK?"

Lance let his fingers card gently through Chris' hair. "I'm working on it," he said quietly, and smiled.

Joey and Justin sat in lawn chairs by the grill. JC, barefoot, wearing khaki shorts and a white t-shirt and surprisingly free of ornamentation, was spinning one of the hoops around his narrow hips. He was utterly absorbed. Joey and Justin were equally focused.

"I hate him," Justin said abruptly. "No, really. I just--"

"You want to get in his khakis." Joey nodded wisely.

JC shimmied and laughed. "You guys, it's totally cool," he called across the lawn. "I guess you don't forget how to do things like this after all."

"Not when you'll have sex with anything that moves," Justin muttered.

Joey was more charitable--and honest. "Not when you dance like your hips are oiled," he said, and sighed wistfully.

Justin punched him, hard. He decided that he hated Joey too. "You're straight," he said sharply.

"You're on the rebound," Joey said back.

"I'm just looking!"

"I'm just looking!"

JC raised his voice again, said, "Hey, I left my house to hang out with you guys. Do you think you could at least try to be cool?"

Joey flipped him off. JC laughed and wandered closer, to baste the ribs, thankfully dropping his hoop on the way. Justin found himself still staring hungrily though as he danced in place, singing the damned Chili's song. He was just too cute, and too gorgeous, and too frigging hot--

Joey leaned over and laughed in Justin's ear. "Don't worry, Rebound Boy," he whispered. "I really am straight." He got up and headed for the grill, bumped JC's shoulder with his own, laughed at something JC said. Then he looked behind him and winked--winked--at Justin, and slid a hand into JC's back pocket.

JC laughed, wiggled. Joey grinned at Justin, evilly, full-on twinkle in his eyes and gleaming white teeth, and Justin growled with frustration--

Then threw a frisbee at his big, fat head.

"Little bunny FooFoo, hopping through the forest, scooping up the field mice and bopping them on the head. Down came the Good Fairy and she said--"

"She said, 'Stop singing that damned song, fucker. There ain't no fairies in this story.' Just get me loose, OK?" Chris turned his head and glared balefully; Lance, unable to resist, pressed his lips against Chris' temple. When he pulled back again, a flush had risen along Chris' cheekbones and his eyes were narrowed. "Don't do shit like that," he said quietly.

Lance raised his eyebrows. "Don't do what? Show you affection? We're in a private place, so why shouldn't I?" He couldn't help sounding irritated. He remembered Chris' first kiss, the fast, furious, unplanned press of mouth to mouth, the way he'd backed away in a heartbeat, so obviously positive that Lance was going to belt him or something. He remembered reaching out to gather Chris close again. He remembered seeing a flash of shock in Chris' gaze, worse than it would have been if Lance had reached out with a fist instead of an open hand. He remembered seeing that same shock every time he'd touched Chris since then.

It came very near to pissing him off.

Chris stared at him, then turned his face away. "It fucks with my head," he muttered, obviously uncomfortable saying so.

"My goal all along was to fuck with your head," Lance said more calmly than he felt, and he rubbed his knuckles down Chris' back, which was almost clear of the pricker bush now. "You've got some pretty strange ideas about what it is to really love someone and show them that you care, Chris, of course I'm going to do my best to fuck that up."

"Yeah, thanks, I really appreciate that." Chris' tone was bitter, but Lance was watching his face, saw the way his mouth shifted, the way he blinked hard. Somewhere inside, he meant it. That eased the tension which had built in Lance's stomach, allowed him to lean forward and press his mouth to the corner of Chris', tenderly.

This time, Chris sighed and tilted his head, just a little. Then he shook it briskly, like a wet dog, and sighed again, PDA crisis momentarily averted. Lance wouldn't forget it though, wouldn't let Chris fake him out, but he let it drop for the moment and went back to work. "So anyway," he said idly, then hummed a pitch before continuing to sing. "Down came the Good Fairy, and she said, 'Little bunny--' "

"Ok, little bunny, shut the hell up," Chris shouted, turning his head to glare. There was a hint of relief in his eyes, though, and something like a grin. "I don't know why everyone always thought you were the sweet southern gentleman." He was starting to shift his weight from foot to foot, twining his fingers together. Lance thought that this must have been the longest he'd stood in one place in years. "It was obvious to me from day one that you were an evil, evil boy, and you've grown into an evil, evil man. I have to tell you, I don't think I'm gonna stand for it anymore. Not if you're going to bring in these stupid kid's songs to top the rest of your vileness."

"What are you going to do?" Lance leaned in closer, working on one of the last stubborn knots of cotton and thorn. "Gonna out me to the world as a rebel? As what, a singer of kid's songs?"

"You're no rebel, you're just twisted." Chris, sensing that freedom was near, began to tense up, bounce forward on his toes a bit. Lance hooked an arm around his waist, twining his fingers in the loops of Chris' shorts, ostensibly for balance--in reality, to keep Chris from bolting and either getting tangled again, or getting free.

"You helped twist me," Lance said. "So don't complain. And stand still. Just one more branch and you're good to go."

"I could just go now," Chris said, his whole body straining forward slightly against Lance's arm, his eyes focused forward. There'd been a show on Animal Planet once at like, two in the morning with a story about this deer that got stuck in a fence and had to be cut free. They'd all been totally trashed when they watched it but Lance remembered how fast that deer had run off when it could. He kept his grip on Chris steady.

"Have a little care for yourself," he murmured and ran a palm down Chris' back, to smooth his shirt into place. All the thorns were gone. "Or let me care for you. I like you too much to let you go to shreds."

Chris turned his head to stare into Lance's eyes, frowning. "Thank you," he said, and kept staring.

Lance smiled. "You're welcome." He wrapped his other arm around Chris, slowly, and backed away from the mess they'd made, into a slightly less dangerous spot.

"I really do care about you," Chris said, not seeming to have noticed that they'd moved, that he was free.

"I know you do," Lance said, and then he lowered his mouth to Chris'.

Justin abruptly stopped pounding Joey's head into the dirt. "Hey," he said. "Chris and Lance have been gone a while. Should we like, do a rescue mission? Because I have radios. And safety flares." He thought about the tangle of bushes, which had really grown an absurd amount since he was last at home. Someone was supposed to have pruned them. Someone was supposed to have cleaned the pool.

Someone was gonna be in trouble, later.

He muttered, "also, I have a machete," and then told himself that he wasn't thinking about using it, really. Unless whatever was in the pool grew legs and fangs and came after him, anyway.

He made a mental note to keep the machete by his bed that night.

Joey punched him in the side. Justin managed to get his knee on Joey's wrist, then sat back on his chest and looked at JC, who smiled.

"I think the last thing Lance wants is the three of us bumbling around right now."

Joey said, "Bet Chris'd pay homage to us for at least an hour if we saved him," and started snickering.

JC laughed but shook his head. "No, they're probably talking. Let them work it out."

Justin looked down, caught a trace of Joey's smirk, and pounded his head into the ground again. "You have enough problems of your own anyway," he said. Joey laughed and then twisted, flipped them over so that he could push Justin's face into the dirt and yank one of his arms high up behind his back.

"You both have problems." JC stood over them, frowning. "Honestly, anyone'd think the two of you were the absolute worst enemies. Could you just chill for a while? Please?"

Justin spit out a mouthful of dirt and opened the eye not currently being ground into a rock. "Right now, we are the worst enemies. I hate him, and I'm gonna hate him forever."

Joey laughed again, yanked Justin's arm higher to make him yelp. "Don't worry," he said to JC. "After dinner, the kid'll be my devoted slave again."

"Huh." JC watched for another minute. Then he said, "You guys are like, the biggest three year olds ever," and he shook his head.

"Shut up, Jayce, you were hula hooping," Justin said around another mouthful of dirt. Joey reached out blindly and grabbed JC behind his knee, then tugged. JC squeaked and tumbled down, then started giggling and pulling at Joey's hair to make him growl.

Justin felt JC's bare calf press against his side where his shirt was rucked up and closed his eyes again. Sometimes, he really, really hated these guys.

"I know I'm not making this easy on you." Chris gripped Lance's upper arms, kneading a little, not looking into his eyes.

"It's easier than you think," Lance murmured. Chris snorted and rested his head against Lance's shoulder, and Lance allowed himself to tighten his hold gently, mindful of the fact that against his arms, Chris' shirt was rough with tattered holes from the sharp thorns. His skin was probably in bad shape too but Chris was relaxed for once, warm and solid, and he wasn't ready to give that up right away.

After a few minutes, Chris pushed back. He met Lance's gaze, smiled, patted Lance's cheeks with his fingertips. "You're a good guy," he said quietly.

Lance smiled back. "Ten minutes ago, I was so evil that you weren't going to stand for it."

"Ten minutes ago was before the kissing."

"And the success of the rescue," Lance said, pulling at the sleeve of Chris' t-shirt.

"Not so successful for the shirt, I guess." Chris made a frustrated noise, then looked up at Lance through his lashes, almost furtive, mostly coy. "It was sacrificed in my attempt to woo you," he said solemnly. "Does that get me bonus points?"

Lance chuckled and held out his hand, gripped Chris' loosely. "Nah," he said. "It takes more than blood and cotton to get my attention."

"Oh yeah? What's it take, then?" Chris' mouth was set in a teasing grin, but Lance thought he saw seriousness, concern. There was always so much going on beneath the surface with Chris. That was part of the reason Lance had kissed him back, because he had known that Chris'd never kiss him like that unless there was a lot of feeling behind it.

"It takes a lot of effort," he said. "Oh, yeah. Climb a couple mountains, change the course of a few rivers, take down a yak with your bare hands. Then come back and sit by me and just, you know, breathe for a while." He smiled, touched Chris' cheek with his free hand

"I'd take down a yak for you," Chris said. Then his lips curved, crooked, his typical crazy grin. "I'd even shower after, hey. Wouldn't do that for just anybody."

"It must be true love then," Lance murmured, and then turned and began to head back, still holding Chris' hand lightly in his own.

"Maybe it is," he heard Chris say very quietly, like Lance wasn't supposed to hear it, and he ducked his head and smiled.

Maybe it was.

Justin sat on his lawn chair and held a bag of peas to his eye. JC'd caught him hard with one of his bony elbows and Joey'd laughed, and now all he wanted to do was sit and brood until it was time to kick all their asses out of his house--

Except that he was totally not staying here by himself and anybody who tried to make him was going to get tossed in the Pool of Death.

Behind him, the screen door slammed and he jumped, squeaked. Chris snorted and a hand came to rest on top of his head, rubbing hard. "Don't panic, baby," he said. "It's just us."

Justin turned his head to glare. "You scared me half to death. What the hell were you doing in the house?"

"I needed a shirt," Chris said, and dangled the one he'd been wearing earlier in front of Justin's face. It was pretty tattered. It smelled like Lance's cologne.

JC, back at the grill with Joey, turned around and whistled. "Nasty," he said, wandering a little closer. "Were you scratched up?"

Chris smiled. "A little bit. Nothing Lance's mega box of Band-Aids couldn't handle."

"Did he have to get you out of there with a weedwhacker or something?" Justin took the shirt and fingered one of the shredded places. Chris sat in the chair next to him and grinned, looked over Justin's shoulder at Lance.

"You don't wanna know what he had to do," he said melodramatically. "It involved blood, sweat, tears and--"

"Kinky sex games are not played in my house," Justin said, and then he grinned.

Lance came around and sat by Chris' legs. "Don't worry," he murmured, his voice very low and smooth. "We kept all the kinky sex games confined to the bushes."

Justin threw the shirt at him.

Chris started laughing hysterically. Lance leaned back and turned his head, smiling up at Chris before kissing his knee and turning back around. Chris sat forward long enough to run his hand through Lance's hair, then collapsed again, snickering.

Justin stared, startled--yeah, he'd known they were like, getting together, but that was the first time he'd actually seen something new, something like proof. "Very weird," he muttered. "Y'all are very, very strange."

JC sat against Justin's chair and tilted his head back. "Poor Justin," he said, grinning upside down. "Someone builds a dungeon in his cellar and his friends have sex in the bushes--"

Justin held out a hand. "Hey, wait, there's a dungeon in my cellar?"

Chris blinked at him. "What, you didn't know about that?"

"No, I didn't know." Justin mashed the bag of peas against his eye and groaned. "That's it, I give up. They can have this house, they can do whatever they want with this house--I am moving out. Fuckers."

"Awww," Joey said. "But think of all the fun you could have with your new sets of manacles!"

"You're a fucker too," Justin muttered, and Joey laughed, turned back to the ribs and started humming. Justin sighed, watched Chris wriggle down in the lawn chair until Lance grabbed his palm and started tracing a cut there with long fingers. The two of them were whispering so low that Justin couldn't hear what they were saying; he looked away, sighed again. Apparently, issues were being resolved in their corner.

Whoopie.

Justin thought, what about my corner? And that made him think about the house, and that made him think about one of those people who'd lived in his house building kinky stuff in his basement and he shuddered.

"Don't worry," JC said. Justin met his gaze and JC smiled, one of his rich, strange, sweet smiles. "You don't have to stay here if you don't want to. There's plenty of room for you at my house."

Justin stared. JC never invited anyone to stay at his house. If you were there and got drunk, fine, he wasn't going to let you get in the car anyway, but he never just invited--

"Your house is just as scary as my house," he said.

"Just think of it this way, baby--at least I know who built my dungeon," JC murmured, and then he trailed his fingertips down Justin's arm and smiled.

Justin swallowed hard. OK, yeah, maybe he'd been thinking about JC but this was a little much--

"Ouch," Chris said suddenly. Justin turned his head to see Chris pulling a piece of plastic out from behind him. Lance took it and turned it over, frowning, and then handed it to Justin, who gulped again.

It was pink.

It was wet.

It'd been mangled.

And how had it gotten to the lawn chairs?

Justin dropped it like it was radioactive--and who knew, maybe it was. "I, uh." He shook his head, frowned. "Yeah, OK--JC, I'm moving into your house for a while. Thanks."

"Not a problem," JC said, and smiled at him. At the grill, Joey started laughing.

"Chris and Lance are playing sex games in the bushes, and Justin and JC are gonna play sex games at JC's house. Where are the sex games for me, I wanna know."

"If you're so hard up," Justin said, "I think there's a mermaid in the swimming pool."

Joey laughed again, and JC hummed, looked up at Justin. "A mermaid with big teeth," he said, touching the hula hoop remains with his fingertip.

Justin smiled, really wide. "Perfect," he said, and JC laughed, reached up and gripped Justin's hand.

Justin thought, OK, so maybe I don't hate him, and twined their fingers together.

~end~