He had been working on this motherfucking song for the better part of three hours, and if he didn't think of something to rhyme with 'trance' he was going to kill someone. Someone on this bus. Someone on this bus who was yelling and giggling like a kid on crack in the front. Fucking Chris.

JC sighed and looked back down at his lyric book, intent on the words. He only looked up again when he felt a hand in his hair, almost petting the long strands. Mmm. Felt nice.

It was Justin, and when JC moved his head to look up at him, he blushed and pulled his hand away. "Sorry."

JC shrugged. Whatever. "It's okay." He smiled and tilted the notebook in his hands towards Justin. "This is getting on my nerves anyway. What's up?"

Justin shrugged too, sitting next to him on the couch. Mmm. He was warm, and JC realized that it was cold back there, and had been for awhile. Had to remember to get a blanket next time he got up.

But that would probably be awhile, so he leaned into Justin more, savoring the heat his friend gave off while it was still there. And it looked like Justin didn't really have anything to say to him, so he just went back to his notebook, tapping it impatiently with his pen.

Trance. Ants. Lance. Pants. Fuck.

He felt Justin peer over to see the book, and he heard the smirk in Justin's voice. "Chance, man."

Chance. Fucking perfection.

He wrote the line, added the chorus, then read back over the song. Read it over again. Read it over again, with Justin once again looking over his shoulder. Finally he closed the book and sighed, leaning back even further against Justin, who was surprisingly comfortable, for a skinny muscular guy. "Thanks, man. I think you saved me from another three hours of writing absolute crap."

Justin laughed. "Whateva, bro. You know you're my homie." JC laughed too, because he loved it when Justin slipped into ghetto speak. It only seemed to intensify his Tennessee accent, with hilarious results. Well, hilarious and cute. Justin's ghetto-speak could be damn amusing, under the right circumstances.

But now he was tired, and it really had been a long that he'd been working back there. So he just lay against Justin for awhile, enjoying the silence, when suddenly he remembered drowsily, "Oh hey. So what did you want?"

Apparently Justin was dozing too, because he stiffened for a moment, then went relaxed again. "Huh? Oh...nothing." He seemed assured in that. Wanted nothing, nothing at all. JC sighed internally and sat up, because if there was one thing he couldn't abide it was avoidance. Especially avoidance that wasted his time. He didn't particularly feel like trying to read Justin's mind, but he was used to it by now.

So. Great. As he was the only other person on the bus with a girlfriend, it was time for relationship advice, or something like that. How to appease your long-distance girlfriend in five easy steps. He wished for a minute that Chris had tried just a little bit harder to make it work with Dani, then took it back when he realized how snarky that sounded, even as a thought. "What is it, Curly?"

Justin grinned, a wide-ass little kid's grin, and ran his hand over his nearly-bald head. "Not so curly anymore," he drawled. "But no, I mean?" Justin grimaced a little, stretched, looked down at his perfectly manicured fingernails. Hmm. They were still damn shiny, JC noticed, but getting kind of long.

This was all perfectly interesting, JC decided, but it was disrupting his creative process. "What is it, Just? I have things to do, you know." Justin looked momentarily hurt, so he smiled a bit and said, "And I'll bet Chris is missing you."

A voice called from the bunks. "Damn straight, fucker. We were getting ready to play Final Fantasy when he decided to ditch me for you. Just cause you're prettier..." Chris' voice dissolved into a mumble.

JC laughed and got up to open the door dividing the bunks and the lounge, throwing a pillow at Chris. "I'm not pretty, Fievel. I think you're thinking of Lance."

Justin hooted on the couch. "Ooh, gonna let him know you said that!"

JC closed the door and turned back to Justin. "Oh no, you're not."

Justin was still giggling. "Am so. Then I'll tell him you wanna take him out to dinner so you can see his pretty green eyes sparkle in the candlelight...lean over the table and give him a slow, soft kiss..." Justin's voice slipped into 'husky' and he gave JC the sex-eye.

JC gave him the fuck-off-eye and then jumped him.

After that there was a lot of yelping and giggling and thwapping of pillows against shaven heads, and then Justin was lying half on top of JC, breathless with laughter. "Ha. Told you I'd kick your ass, fool."

JC rolled his eyes and pushed back his sweaty hair. Now that it was longer it got into his eyes too much, dammit, especially when it was sweaty or not brushed up with gel.

He said basically that to Justin and got back a "Yeah, I know," with a frustrated grunt. "You gotta, like, care for it all the time. Mousse. Hairspray. Gel. More fucking shampoos than I even knew they made. But--" And then he cut off again.

Again. Jesus. Was it too much to ask that he finish a damn sentence? "What, Justin? Geez. I've known you for-freakin'-ever, you can probably tell me whatever it is you wanna tell me. "

Justin looked him in the eyes, his own blue eyes serious and slightly embarrassed. "Its worth it cause like, Britney said she loved to put her hands in it. Touch it, and stuff. Especially when we were, you know..."

He trailed off, and JC smiled. "I get the point. That's cool." He threw his head back on a pillow, sighing. "Wish I had someone who could do that to me. You know, now that its long enough." Fucking tour. Fucking bus. Fucking Bobbee, who was like, in New York or something right now.

"Uh-huh." JC looked up and realized that Justin was still on top of him, apparently with no intention of moving. "That's what I was doing. You know. When I came in here. I thought you might like to feel that too."

Oh. "Oh. Well." He tried not to squirm. "Having your hair stroked by a friend and having it stroked by a girlfriend?different intent, you know. Feels different."

Justin's hands moved up, slowly over JC's face and into his hair, so he was leaning over JC on his arms, fingers in JC's hair. "Doesn't have to."

Oh. Um, okay. Their lips met very, very softly at first, and it was maybe not as wet as he would have liked it to be, but it was still very very good. Justin was both hard and soft against him, on top of him; hard because of his muscles and the bony ridges of his hips, sparking against JC's own prominent bones; soft because he was curving into JC so sweetly, like he was made to be there, and it made JC think of high school biology class, and how enzymes fit perfectly into the molecules they were supposed to stimulate because they were shaped that way, shaped to lock into the cell and heat it up.

Later, the other guys laughed when he asked them how long it had been going on. Lance said, "He's been eyeing you ever since the fucking hair, man."

"No, longer than that," Joey disagreed.

"I dunno," Chris said, leaning back on his hands. "Right before he decided that he had to go get some JC-lovin', our ICON video came on MTV. You remember, back when JC had the Keith Richard's hair?"

The other boys groaned, and JC threw a pillow at him, and then went back into the lounge so he could write, and lean against Justin, and feel hot soft hands sliding through his hair as he wrote.

Chance. Fucking perfection.

THE END