The Latest In Innuendo
When Lance first came on to Chris, he was seventeen and nervous but he wanted Chris so bad he could taste him, so he sucked it up and asked Chris to the movies.
Chris just grinned at him and said, "I don't date jailbait, and I don't date Southern country boys," before patting Lance's head affectionately and wandering off to the video game tournament Joey and Justin were arguing about in the other room.
Lance really didn't like that answer, so he spent the next ten years fashioning himself in such a way that he was neither seventeen any longer nor any resemblance to the goofy hick he always thought he was. Stuff happened along the way, like the lawsuit and four other platinum albums, a shitty acting career but stunning, subtle producing credibility, and relationships that somehow managed to include the other three-fifths of NSync (for both of them). When Justin asked him curiously one day why he and Chris never hooked up, Lance found it in himself to give a tense little smile and mention something about how they had just never clicked.
So ten years have passed, and they're all riding off the high of CFTC, deciding to screw their obligations and just hang out in Chris's Orlando house, because to be honest, they're all missing each other and are finally at the point where they can admit it without feeling foolish. Joey makes a beer run, JC looks for music in the towering piles of cds that litter Chris's house, and Justin is on the phone arguing with the Chinese restaurant about water chestnuts and orange chicken.
Lance has his head stuck in the fridge, not really looking for anything but feeling the cold air waft through the short hairs on the back of his neck, and Chris is pulling plates from the cabinets. Lance doesn't realize he's humming old Garth Brooks beneath his breath until he hears Chris take the descant, and it's such a shock that Chris actually knows any Garth Brooks songs that he jerks his head out from the refrigerator and stares until Chris turns to look at him.
He doesn't know what to say. There are no words coming out of his mouth to counter that soft look that Chris is giving him, because, shit, he's Lance Bass, he always has an answer and he sure as hell had a plan, but it didn't include Chris sidling over to him to kiss him chastely. He really didn't want to do this in a kitchen, but okay. He's flexible. Well, not really, but Chris always makes him think he is.
"Hey, Bass," Chris says, badly affecting something similar to Lance's old twang, "wanna go to a movie?"