Joey was protective of his friends. He got worried when Lance didn't sleep enough or when JC slept too much. He made sure to be funny and goofy and make Chris laugh too hard at dumb movies when he seemed tired and bitter. It was Justin that worried him the most.

Everyone made a point of saying how well Justin had dealt with such celebrity at such an early age. Joey agreed with them. But no one saw the tired Justin, the one who was confused and lost, late at night. He didn't drink too much or lose himself in drugs, but there were other ways of not dealing.

Joey thought that maybe he smiled too much, too brightly, and sometimes it took hours before he calmed down after a particularly grueling day. Joey would feed him pasta and pepsi, tell him stupid stories about random people, just to make him real again.

It felt like 'The Velveteen Rabbit' in reverse. Justin was real, and then people put more and more stuff on him, until he was shiny and new and nothing. When Joey tried to explain that to JC, one day, he'd just smiled sadly, and patted Joey on the arm. He'd felt like punching a wall, because it wasn't him that needed the sympathy.

Joey was the one who pulled Justin onto the buses when he stood patiently signing autographs, taking the time to smile at all the people who waited for them. It was a lost cause, remembering names, but Joey watched Justin sometimes, marveling at the way that he made it a point to use names whenever he could.

He started making a point of finding funny, stupid things for Justin to do. Once, he bought silly bead kits and he and Justin made friendship bracelets. They'd taken an entire day to make, because Justin was anal retentive about patterns and colours. They traded after they were done, and Joey made sure to tuck it in a pocket of his bag, so it wouldn't get lost in the constant shuffle of their life.

Another time, during a late night Target stop, he found old fashioned colouring books, the ones with only pictures and no word puzzles or other boring stuff. He bought the big box of crayons, the 64 count one. Justin laughed a little when he saw it, "Joe, man. You get younger every day." but he still smiled and cracked open the box and stuck his nose into the box.

When they settled down, and Justin had his head tilted to the side, concentrating on colouring within the lines, Joey thought this was perhaps the real Justin. Intent and purposeful and very serious, but so funny within the seriousness, colouring purple elephants and green cupcakes.

When he licked his lips and stuck a teal crayon in his mouth, reaching for pink, Joey thought that if things were different, he'd be reaching over the table and spreading Justin out and kissing him senseless. Instead he made it a point to colour within the lines and not think about things that would make him part of Justin's problems.

~end~

The Velveteen Rabbit