Chris loved the poetry fridge magnets. They had been a souvenir from JC after one of his innumerable museum trips. JC had grinned broadly, saying "I figured this would help us with lyric writing. You know, get the creative juices flowing. Some of these words are pretty inspiring."

Chris had rolled his eyes at the time and smacked JC on the arm, "You are such a freak." Secretly, he thought JC was right.

If JC had had any idea about WHAT the magnetic poetry would inspire he might have had second thoughts about buying them in the first place. Soon after that, just to be cute, Lance bought the "genius" version, which contained hundreds of words that none of then could pronounce, never mind use in a sentence.

Joey never admitted to buying the "erotic" edition, but it was written plainly on his face when the other guys crowded around it the next day, Justin and Chris giggling, Lance blushing, and JC rolling his eyes.

Chris soon discovered that although they didn't know the meanings of most of the genius words, when properly paired with words from the erotic edition, they sounded downright nasty. And hysterical.

It didn't take long for the teasing and insults to start flying. JC's disgruntled "Hey!" could be heard throughout the bus one morning as he faced "spacey flake mooning over bad notes" when he went to get some orange juice. "Oh for the love of God, people. Grow up!"

Joey just laughed and went stalking after Lance when "fat guy is pungent in toilet room" appeared. He caught Lance before he could reach the safety of the bathroom and tickled him until he almost wet his pants.

Justin rolled his eyes and then jumped on Chris next time he saw him after "spoiled child warbles as hips flair seductively" showed up. After they'd wrestled around on the floor for a few minutes, Justin pinned Chris and laughed, "So you think I'm seductive?"

Chris smacked him.

Lance knew that it had to be JC who had put "pallid boy profound voice has cell phone for ears" because he remembered fighting over that word with JC during a game of Scrabble years back. JC had grinned at him triumphantly and said "Ha. Pallid. A word. Triple word score." Lance had sulked when he lost.

Chris busted Joey one day as he put up 'space man does cunnilingus on mean dance boy.' He turned red with laughter before gasping out, "Dude, I hate to break it to you, but Wade doesn't have the right parts. I think you mean 'fellatio.'"

"Fuck you!" Joey snarled.

"You wish!" Chris danced out of Joey's way before Joey could hurt him.

Chris was mildly startled one morning to wake up and find "elf man squeals like banshee tremendously sexy." He read it through twice searching for the insult. Sure, once he remembered the meaning of banshee, he was slightly offended. But sexy? "Which one of you fuckers wrote this?"

No one would admit to it, although Joey did dance around like an idiot sing-songing "Chris has a secret admirer. Chris has a secret admirer."

Chris just grabbed the soda he had been going for in the first place and returned to the PlayStation where Justin was waiting for him.

The next message to appear was, "fat man inspissates as consumption increases."

"What the fuck does that mean?" Joey stood in front of the fridge scratching his balls absentmindedly. "I mean, is that a good thing?"

"Joe, man, if it's from the erotic edition, I'm sure you're inspissated lots of times," Justin teased.

Joey glared. "But what does it mean?"

Across the room Lance snorted his coke through his nose trying to suppress laughter.

Justin grinned. "Do I look like a dictionary? Look it up if it's bothering you so much."

Just then JC wandered in. "Whatcha staring at, Joe?"

Joey gestured vaguely at the fridge and whined, "I don't get it."

"Well," JC answered, "Fat man - that's you - inspissates - that's to thicken or condense - as consumption - that's how much you eat - increases - that's gets bigger."

"Man, how did you know that?" Justin looked impressed and almost scared.

"Got an 800 on the verbal SATs. Plus, I wrote it!" JC bolted from the room.

Chris got up in the middle of the night to piss, the result of too many bad American beers. Heading into the kitchen for a glass of water, he read "past braid boy sex on legs." Fuckers. This one didn't even have an insult. What the fuck was going on here? Not that he really minded that one of the guys thought he was sexy, but the more he thought about it the more he decided it was probably just a joke.

He finished in the bathroom, tumbled back into his bunk, and promptly fell asleep.

JC wandered into the kitchen around noon several days later to find Justin pouting in the corner.

"What's up, J?"

Justin pointed sullenly in the direction of the fridge.

JC murmured aloud as he read "golden child ruled by virgin princess. dick no action."

He bit his lip trying not to smile.

"I get plenty of action." Justin spat. "Bastards."

"green eyes makes girls dissilient. but not women."

"Hey, Lance," Chris called. "C'mere."

Lance looked up from his laptop and joined Chris. "What?"

Chris nodded in the direction of the fridge.

"Oh. Well...I mean, that's okay right? That's a good thing. As long as the women are okay with me, screw the girls."

Chris just shook his head and prayed that Lance didn't go to the dictionary. "Um, yeah."

The grin faded. "Okay. What?"

"Nothing." And Chris edged towards the bathroom.

"Chris. You ass. What??"

"It's nothing, Lance. I just gotta take a dump."

Lance rolled his eyes. "Classy." He went back to the fridge and stared some more before hitting the spelling/thesaurus action on his computer. His eyes narrowed. "Jerks!" he called to nobody in particular.

The next day a dictionary appeared on the counter by the fridge.

Chris was awakened one morning to Joey singing, "Chris and his admirer sitting in a tree k-i-s-s-i-n-g."

He dragged himself into the kitchen. On the fridge was "dark man's eyes flash. cock throbs."

"What the fuck..."

He shook himself the rest of the way awake. "I always knew everyone was hot for the Mighty Kirkpatrick, even you guys!"

JC sniggered from his position at the table. "Whatever you say. But can someone tell the 'mighty Kirkpatrick' that his fly is down?"

"Nothing you guys haven't seen before, Jayce. Unless..." Chris quickly began rearranging the words on the fridge.

"dark man's cock flashes. space man's dick throbs."

"Bitch," said JC, but grinned anyway, and that's when Chris figured out that it probably wasn't JC writing the fridge notes, because if it had been, he'd have been stammering like an idiot.

The next time JC went out in his naked lady pants without being order to by their stylist, "flame on, chin dirt boy" appeared on the fridge.

Chris sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee pretending to read the paper. He was really keeping his eye on the fridge, waiting to see how the guys would react to the latest love letter to Chris: "dream of clothes boy in my bed" He was determined to figure out which of them was behind the game, and why.

Joey sauntered in minutes later, oblivious to Chris sitting in the corner. He marched straight towards the fridge and sniggered when he saw what was written on there. Deciding, however, it was time for a change, he'd soon rearranged the words to say "pale boy moans deep when alone in bed." He chuckled to himself when he was finished, then jumped a mile in the air when he turned around to find Chris standing right behind him.

"Whatcha doing?" Chris breathed into Joey's ear.

"Making our dear Lance squirm," Joey grinned. "He's gonna freak and go ten shades of red."

"I hope I'm around to see it."

"Sure you do, man. Sorry for erasing the one from your boyfriend," Joey winked.

Chris fake swooned. "Oh, I don't know how I'll go on!"

"Too funny, man. I'm gonna have to shake that guy's hand," Joey said, waving his hand towards the broken pieces of the note about Chris. Then he wandered out of the kitchen.

Chris went back to his paper, crossing Joey off his mental list, and settled in to wait for Lance. He couldn't wait to see the look on his face when Lance saw the fridge.

Lance walked into the kitchen a few minutes later, looking over his shoulder. He turned to Chris. "What's with Joey? He's giggling."

Chris tried to look innocent. "Dude, it's Joey. Who the fuck ever knows with him."

"Whatever."

Chris knew the exact moment that Lance read the sentence because he didn't turn ten shades of red. He turned almost purple.

"Lance, man, you okay? You're looking kind of queasy."

"Umm...it's nothing. Joey's such a kidder."

"Liar! What'd he write?" Chris got up and tried to peer over Lance's shoulder but Lance blocked him.

By the time Lance let Chris look, the new line read, "daddy man dreams of back street baby."

Joey walked in the kitchen, grabbed a bag of chips, and plopped down at the table next to Justin. "What's the matter, Jup? You look like someone just ran over your favorite PlayStation game."

Justin glowered at Joey from beneath a furrowed brow. "I just don't get it, man. I mean, Chris? Sure, it's a funny joke and all. But why Chris?"

"Huh?"

Justin pointed to the fridge.

"desire wells when elf near goal forever with (Fu) man"

The Fu was neatly lettered on a homemade magnet.

Joey started to laugh, incredulous. "You're jealous that Chris is getting mock love notes, from one of us, no less, and you're not?"

Justin glared at Joey. "I'm not jealous." Joey kept laughing. "I'm not. I just mean...why Chris? What a stupid joke."

"Why not Chris? You get adoring letters and chicks' underwear all the time. Why should it bother you that Chris is getting some attention? It's not like your pop star status is being threatened by this, you selfish prick," Joey answered, his tone taking the sting from his words.

"Asshole," replied Justin and stormed from the room, almost knocking Chris over.

Joey shook his head at Chris, "For such a worldly guy, he sure can act more like a baby than even Brianna sometimes. You hear all that?"

Chris only nodded. At last, he had his answer, the one he secretly hoped it would be.

Lance climbed back on the bus wet from a post-show shower, eager just to climb onto his bunk and close out the world for a few hours. Even with those damn state of the art monitors his ears were still ringing. He lay down and was about to switch off the light when something caught his eye. Stuck to the metal ceiling of his bunk, he read "crazy braid hair loves his pale boy on the ship of diamonds". Lance blinked twice, read it again and shut off the light.

Chris stared blankly at the tv. Lance was in his bunk and the other guys had gone out. Chris fidgeted with the remote, aimlessly flicking through channels. He knew Lance had to have seen the note, but he hadn't reacted at all. Chris knew he was an impatient motherfucker, but going to Lance would blow his chance to play it all off as a joke, especially if it had only been a joke for Lance in the first place.

"Hey Chris," came a rumbling voice behind him. "What'cha watching?"

"Nothing. There's fucking nothing on. We have 220 channels and yet, amazingly, there's not a damn thing on worth watching." Chris patted the couch next to him and extended the remote toward Lance. "Here. See for yourself."

Lance paused, then finally said "Okay" and took his seat.

As Lance flipped the channels, Chris continued to ramble. "What's the point of being international goddamn pop stars if we can't even get anything good on tv?"

"Umm...so that we don't waste our mind on crap? We could be working on our 'craft'" replied Lance, using JC's word, the one that always made the rest of them snigger behind his back.

Chris grinned. "Or we could go play with the fridge magnets. I'm really loving all the messages *someone* has been sending me."

"Yeah? They're..uh...sexy. And kinda...funny and stuff. Better than the ones I've been getting. Until..lately."

"They are sexy. And funny. So you got a good one?"

"Yeah. From someone" he said, using the same tone Chris has before.

"How good?" Chris asked, looking away to pick at the corner of the couch.

"Pretty much as good as it comes," replied Lance, mimicking Chris' actions. "I think."

"Really?"

Lance's eyes met Chris'. "Yeah."

"Cool!" Chris said, just before he pulled Lance to his feet and dragged him to the kitchen. Keeping Lance's hand in his own, Chris used his other hand to arrange a message on the fridge.

"Fuck all night?" Lance read aloud. "Sounds like a plan."

At the first hungry taste of Lance's lips against his own, Chris silently thanked JC again. The magnets were certainly getting the juices flowing, albeit probably not quite the way JC had in mind. Then Lance did something nasty with his mouth and Chris stopped thinking altogether.

"My fucking head," groaned JC. "I'm so thirsty."

"JC man, you had 2 beers and a fucking Shirley Temple last night. How can you be hung over?"

"Fuck off. And get your big ass head out of the fridge so I can get the damn juice."

JC got his juice and slammed the door closed.

Justin gestured at the fridge. "What the fuck do you suppose that means?"

"Never mind what that means," Joey said from the doorway. "Have you guys seen Chris? He isn't on the couch, and he's not in his bunk. We didn't leave him behind, did we?"

JC looked worried. "Where's Lance? He might know."

"Well, he's not in here with us, and he's not in the back. Think he might be, I don't know, *in his bunk*, you dumbshit?" Justin razzed.

"You're such a bitch in the morning," JC replied. "C'mon."

Justin and JC followed Joey back to Lance's bunk. "Hey, Lance-" Joey pulled back the curtain and pulled it shut just as quickly.

"Guess we know where Chris is," Justin smirked.

"Guess we know the fridge means, too." JC added.

"I missed it," Joey said and headed back to the kitchen, JC and Justin right behind him. Joey read aloud, "Pale boy loves his crazy braid hair on the ship of diamonds." ~end~