For Kelilah
No one ever actually believed Lance was going into space.
They all professed support, but they thought it was just something he talked about, like JC talked about painting full time or Chris talked about writing a pop version of Tommy about a Playstation wiz, except for sounding more businesslike because it was Lance, and that was just how he was.
So when he invited them all over for a big announcement, nobody guessed what was coming. Joey thought he might be making another movie. Chris would have thought he was coming out, except that they had all known for years... going back in, maybe?
Chris was still thinking of that when JC finally got there and Lance said he was going.
They all stared at him blankly. "You're going somewhere?" Justin asked.
"Going," Lance said. "You know? Up? By way of Baikonur?"
"You're what?" Justin replied. "No way," Joey said. JC looked like someone had punched him. Chris was shaking his head.
Lance blinked in disbelief. "I'm sorry," he said. "Did I somehow forget to make it clear that I actually intended to go? Because, you know, I had thought "way to go, Lance!" might be more in order here than "no way", but it's really my fault if I never explained that all those meetings weren't just for kicks."
"Um," Chris said, who was the first to recover. "It's just, wow. Congratulations."
"Yeah," Justin said. "Way to go, Basstronaut."
None of them looked Lance in the eye.
***
He called Joey on it first, grabbed him by the collar as the others were leaving.
"You're not okay with me making the flight," he said.
"Man," Joey said, rubbing the back of his neck. "You don't pull your punches, do you."
"Well?" Lance said.
Joey sighed. "Look," he said slowly. "I just don't get it. We were talking about maybe taking Briahna up to the mountains sometime, and you've got A Happy Place, and FreeLance, and..."
"And you?" Lance said.
"And us," Joey said. "What do you need to go to space for?"
"You guys are the best," Lance said. "All that... that's my life."
"Well, right," Joey said, confused. "You don't like your life?" He looked worried.
Lance rolled his eyes. "No, I mean yes. I like my life." He picked up a bottlecap from the table and held it up to the light. "People who have been in space talk about how you look down at the Earth and it's this perfect blue marble and your realize how important it is," Lance said.
"Is this an analogy?" Joey said. "Because I really don't think you're about to tell me that you want to go to space to strengthen your environmentalist convictions." Lance was quiet for a moment, pondering the bottlecap. "Or if you do," Joey said hurriedly, "That's great, I mean, I'm not against the Earth or anything, so good, only I would think you could maybe go somewhere closer like the Amazon or something..."
"Joe," Lance said, shaking his head. "No. I'm not about to start insisting they print J-14 on recycled paper. It's like... I want to step outside my life, you know? Get a different perspective, see it from the outside. Like that." He flicked the bottlecap to Joey.
"That's a pretty different perspective," Joey said. He frowned at Lance. "I mean, we all need some time off sometimes, but... I don't know." He put the bottlecap back down on the table and pushed it towards Lance.
Lance bit off the pleading smile he wanted to form.
"Well," he said. "I know. Goodnight, Joey."
***
When Joey left Lance sat in the kitchen spinning the bottlecap on the table. He had messed up somehow, trying to explain it to Joey. He would have thought after all this time thinking about it he would have the perfect words... it made such perfect sense, to him. And he couldn't just give them the little speech he gave the press, they were Joey, and Chris, and Justin, and... his best friends, he wanted them to really get it. Maybe he had explained the wrong part to Joey. Maybe that wasn't really the part he should try to explain to his friends. Maybe he'd try to talk to J... to Justin, and see if he could explain better.
***
When Justin invited him over and launched into a long soliloquy about his decision process in the question of making some solo recordings, Lance knew he was going to get a shot at explaining... whenever Justin stopped talking.
Justin wound through a long explanation of how exploring himself as an artist wasn't the same as wanting an independent career because he was making sure he wasn't just going off and abandoning his brothers, and finally looked expectantly at Lance.
"I want to go to heaven," Lance said.
Justin made a choking noise and started coughing. Lance had to thump him on the back to stop him.
"Um," he said. "Lance. You know that's not... I mean, yeah, we picture it with clouds and stuff, but, you know heaven isn't really in outer space, right?"
"Thanks for the theology lesson," Lance said dryly. "Trade you a science lesson: there aren't clouds in outer space."
"Well, right," Justin said. "Of course not, there's no air and rain and stuff and... what are we talking about?"
"Heaven," Lance told him.
"Right." Justin nodded, then shook his head. "Wrong! Bzzt! What?"
"I want to go to heaven," Lance said for the third time.
"Well, someday you'll... " Justin trailed off.
Lance nodded. "Right. I mean, I hope, but, well."
"So space?" Justin said after a moment.
"Closest I can get on Earth," Lance said. "Or, well, off." He shut his eyes. "Up there, without the atmosphere between me and the stars... maybe I can see a little bit of God, you know?" He looked at Justin hopefully.
Justin looked at him sadly. "Lance," he said, shaking his head. "I'm sorry, man, but you're scaring me here. You're going to go ride Sputnik to see God? That's just crazy, Lance."
"Soyuz," Lance said softly. Justin didn't hear him; he was digging through a bookshelf.
"Here," he finally said, and folded Lance's hands around a King James Bible. "Word of the Lord, man. You don't need to go to space to find Christ, he's right in there waiting for you."
"Um," Lance said. "You know, I do study the Bible -"
"Good," Justin said. "But take this as a gift from a friend and brother in Christ, okay?"
"Okay," Lance said. "I'm sure I'll have a lot of time to read it. In Star City."
***
Lance got in his car and mentally checked Justin off a subconscious "hope for sympathy" list. It hadn't been a long list. And it kept getting shorter.
He thought maybe he wouldn't press his losing streak. Chris would crack jokes, and JC... Lance suddenly imagined JC saying "I know exactly what you mean", and twitched away from the image before it could hurt too much. JC never said that, not to him.
He had a little less than two weeks until his flight to Moscow and he spent the next week visiting family, who were gratifyingly proud, although in a befuddled sort of way.
***
Chris finally came to him, walking in one day without warning waving his arms and yelling, "I don't get it, man!"
Lance sighed and took a deep breath.
"The stock market?" he said helpfully.
"No, you dork, well, yeah, that too, but, you!"
Lance spread his hands and shrugged. "Me," he said.
"Why are you so set on taking this rocket ride? You want to go where no man has gone before, fuck Joey up the ass."
Lance snorted. "Thanks, Chris, because, you know, clearly the fact that rockets are kind of phallic-looking means it's a sublimated sex thing."
Chris was suddenly serious. "Well, what is it then?"
Lance couldn't help but smile. "It's a dream thing."
"Yeah?"
"Going to space is, like, the most amazing thing people have ever done. I just want to be a part of that, you know? Ever since I was a little kid I've dreamed about it. Living in space is like the limit of human achievement." He winced a little... it always came out so pompous when he was just trying to be honest.
"Final frontier, huh?"
"Something like that."
"That's not what you told Justin."
Lance sighed.
"Or Joey."
"Chris," Lance said, "Why are you in NSync?"
"The music," he said.
"Not the fans?"
"Yes the fans," Chris answered.
"Not us, then," Lance said.
"Yes, you... oh," Chris said.
"Oh?" Lance echoed, hoping he had started to see.
"I don't think so," Chris said.
"You don't... what?"
"I don't get it," Chris said. "Maybe you should try JC."
Lance put the tips of his fingers together and took even breaths.
"I'm not sure that's the best idea," he said.
"Lance," Chris said sternly. "Go see JC."
Lance nodded automatically.
"Good," Chris said, "You spacegoing lunatic. I can't believe you think rockets are only "kind of phallic", what kind of gay man are you?"
"Dude," Lance said, "I'm going to tell Joey you were pimping out his ass, just see if I don't."
"Tie!" Chris yelled, running out the door.
***
JC sat alone in his bedroom with "Return To Me" on endless repeat. He had had a plan.
It had been a good plan, and JC had been very fond of it: once upon a time (JC's plans were always more like fairy tales), Lance had been trying to go to space, but Lance was going to get turned down for space and turn to him, JC, for comfort, and realize that his heart's desire had been in his own backyard all along and he didn't need to go anywhere and they would live happily ever after. Only now Lance was going to space after all and he was going to go off and have wild, geometrically implausible zero-gee sex with sexy Russian cosmonauts named Yuri, and forget all about JC, if he had ever remembered him to begin with. It was catastrophic plan failure.
"JC?" It was Lance, calling his name up the stairs, and for a wild moment JC thought maybe the plan had worked after all, that Lance had changed his mind and was there for him. He half-ran down the stairs; Lance was perched on the arm of a couch fiddling with a stereo remote.
"Lance," he said.
"Hey," Lance said. "I guess... I know the news about me going up kind of took you all by surprise, and, I just, I didn't want to leave without talking to you about it."
"Oh," JC said. "Okay." He made himself smile at Lance. "So talk."
"Nope," Lance said. "This is the best way I can explain it." He pulled out a slim CD case and crossed the room to the stereo. "There's a bunch of things I could play you," he said over his shoulder. "Fanfare for the Common Man, Dreamline... but I think this gets it best."
The music started like the theme to an adventure movie, and JC couldn't help grinning. Somewhere around a big chord he realized Lance was staring at him.
He stared back. There was a big swelling march theme, which JC knew he was supposed to interpret in terms of noble, uplifting things like the Spirit of Exploration, and which he was instead interpreting in terms of Lance looking at him look at Lance, a sort of final and inevitable...
It didn't resolve. Where there should have been another big chord it ran off all tinkly again with the original theme and was back to adventure music. JC figured he understood, all right.
When it finished, Lance switched off the stereo and looked at him expectantly.
"The end sounded kind of like Star Trek," JC said, and watched Lance try to hide his disappointment.
"I guess," Lance said weakly, and JC had to turn away from the crestfallen look on his face.
"What was that?" he said, trying to sound curious.
"Jupiter," Lance said. "Um, you know, Holst, from the Planets?"
JC looked back at him. "Did he write one for all the planets?" he asked.
"Well, he didn't know about Pluto," Lance said, "But yeah."
"Venus?" JC asked, catching his breath a little.
"It's kind of boring," Lance said.
JC sighed.
"Mars sounds a lot like the Imperial March," Lance offered.
JC shook his head. "Well," he said. "You probably have a lot to do, getting ready..." he gestured towards the door in a "don't let me keep you" manner. Since it was clear Lance wasn't going to let him keep him.
When he was gone, JC went back to his room.
***
Lance made it most of the way home before he had to pull over to scream.
He had thought long and hard about what he could say to JC, because, the truth was, he wanted JC's understanding the way screaming fans wanted Justin's mouth. He wanted it wrapped around him, wetly, teasing out his most secret places. He wanted JC to listen and say "yeah, I totally get that", not just about space, but about everything; he wanted to stare into his eyes and know that he was known.
There had been a minute, on JC's couch, when he had thought maybe... it had been a minute straight out of Lance's fantasies and totally distinct from any prior real-life experience. Normally JC's eyes glazed over as soon as Lance started talking about something. Lance wasn't even sure why he had ever thought it made sense to want the visibility thing from JC to begin with; other than what you necessarily have in common when you're both members of the same super-popular boyband, they didn't have much in common. Maybe it was the softness in JC's voice when he was trying to be supportive, the way he lit up with enthusiasm over new songs and could spread that enthusiasm to anyone in the vicinity, which, really, explained a lot, the way his hugs always seemed to mean something. Lance couldn't help but think that rightly JC ought to be able to understand, and it was somehow his own fault that he never did, his inability to find the right words.
This, that he had wanted JC to understand more than anything, he hadn't even wanted to try to explain; as long as he didn't, he could think that maybe JC would, if he did.
But now he couldn't even blame his own explaining skills. When Chris had pushed him into talking to JC, he had come up with the very best explanation he could. Music was JC's language, and Holst had clearly understood what Lance felt. How it was grand, but still fun. Thrilling. Lance was too young to have ever seen an E ticket, but he thought he knew exactly what Sally Ride had meant. And he had wanted so much for JC to know, too. At first, it had looked like JC was absorbed in the music, and he had watched him, trying to memorize his face, that perfect look of concentration. And then their eyes had met, and there had been a minute, just a minute, when he really thought he had finally connected with JC. And then JC had looked away, and sighed, and had sat there clearly waiting for it to be over.
Lance sighed as well and pulled back onto the road. He had tried. And even if nobody got it, he was still making the flight, which was, he reminded himself, the coolest thing ever, so it was going to be pretty damn good, even if he was up there all alone. Even if they, like, didn't want to hear all about it when he came back. He would still have gone.
***
Chris showed up an hour or so after he got home. Lance was starting to pack, occasionally muttering to himself things like "see if I care."
"Did you talk to JC?" Chris asked.
"Yeah," Lance said.
"Aaaaand?"
"He doesn't get it," Lance said dully.
"That's because it's ungettable," Chris said. "But did you, you know, talk to him?"
"No," said Lance, "We conducted the entire meeting in pantomime! What the hell are you on about?"
"When you got there," Chris said slowly, "Was he by any chance playing October Project?"
"Um," Lance said, thinking, "I think he might have been, how did you guess?"
"I knew," Chris enunciated, "Because the last time I saw him he had "Return To Me" on endless repeat. I think it's been a couple days now."
"Oh," Lance said. "Um."
"Do I need to tell you to run a search in your mental lyrics server?" Chris asked, frowning.
"Er," said Lance, "No." Now I want to know how to hold you... "Me?" he asked stupidly.
Chris smacked him on the back of his head. Lance had the sudden feeling that there had been a script, and that he had flubbed his lines and ad-libbed something totally off the plot, and that Chris was now trying to get things back on course.
"Maybe you need to get your eyes off the skies and onto the people around you," Chris said.
"Ah," Lance said. It occurred to him that he didn't think he had ever seen the script, and, really, shouldn't somebody have clued him in in advance of showtime? Because, really, he had just screwed up in front of the most important audience in the entire world.
"You might have said something before I went over there," he said, trying to block out the sinking feeling of ruin and disaster and despair that was threatening to catch up with him.
"Right," Chris said, "Excuse me for drastically overestimating your emotional competence. Let me guess," he went on, "You tried to explain how space is shiny and exciting and he should be happy for you, right?"
"More or less," Lance said. He started trying to work up a mental decision tree and got stuck on was this a salvageable situation. Did Star City count as fleeing the country if the answer was no?
Chris, bless him, threw him a cue he could work from. "Go. Talk. To. JC," he said, each word accompanied by a painful poke to Lance's sternum.
***
So he went back to JC.
"JC," Lance said breathlessly, standing in his bedroom doorway, having dashed up the stairs in his eagerness to get it right this time. "JC, I screwed up," he said, and watched JC start to smile a little. "I got my CDs mixed up. Can I try that again?" Without waiting for permission, he stopped "Return to Me" mid-calling you back and slipped in the CD he held.
one two three four
(love-love-love-love)It was happy pop, and Lance bounced on his toes briefly before coming to an anxious halt in front of JC.
you, you were on a moon- moon-beam
me, I was on a star
gee, everything was blue, blue-green
be-cause everything was far
Lance stared into his eyes, willing him to understand.
me, I was in a mo- mo-vie
you, you were in a song
gee, everything was groo, groo-vy
we, everything was wrong
JC wasn't reacting. Lance hadn't been sure he could trust his voice, and it had certainly seemed like the sort of romantic gesture JC would like. Had he been wrong?
no matter where you are
i can always see that far
you were on a mo-on-beam of love
a pretty little moonbeam
it's you i'm thinking of
Without breaking eye contact, JC reached out the remote and snapped off the stereo mid-play.
"Are you still going to Russia?" he said.
Lance sighed. Apparently they hadn't given JC the script either, because wasn't he supposed to be melting into Lance's arms about now?
"Well, yeah," he said. "But, I mean, I'm coming back."
JC shook his head. "Nice with the Men Without Hats," he said. "Space theme and everything. But you should have tried Speed of Light instead."
Lance thought about it.
"OMD?" JC said helpfully, "Same CD as Apollo 11?"
Lance took a little breath. "Hmm," he said, thinking. "If I had known that you would call, if I could dream that you would fall, something something something..." he trailed off, obviously not wanting to recite what he had just recalled.
"I would have stayed at home tonight," JC finished. "It's if I could change these wrongs to right at the somethings." He looked away from Lance.
"Jayce," Lance said softly. "It's not about you. I mean, I... I want so much for you to understand. I... I thought you thought I was boring."
"So you're going to space to be more exciting?" JC said hopefully.
"No," Lance said. "I'm going for me, I just wish I could share it with you..."
"But you're still going," JC said. He shook his head sadly. "See, this is where we're just in different worlds here. If you really wanted to be with me, you wouldn't go charging off to Russia for six months of training."
"They bumped it down to four," Lance said. "If I had known, we could have had longer together first..." he realized he was whining, or maybe begging.
"It's a question of what's important," JC said. He looked like he was about to cry (more or less how Lance felt), but flinched away when Lance reached a hand out to him. "Go pack," he snarled.
***
Lance had his cry on the side of the road in almost the same spot he had pulled off to scream.
***
Chris was on his porch when he got back.
"Did you screw up again?" he asked, seeing Lance's face.
"I played him Moonbeam," Lance choked out.
"Oh, hey, that's a great song," Chris said. "You were even really in a mooooovie! That's practically the only pop song to mention the Doppler effect, too."
"What?" Lance said, momentarily distracted from ruin, disaster, and despair.
"Sure," Chris said, "What did you think that whole "everything was blue-green because everything was far" thing was about?"
"Um," Lance said. Chris waited until he was pretty sure Lance was trying to figure out whether blueshifting really meant things were getting farther apart to wrap him in a giant, constricting hug.
"What happened," he murmured, momentarily afraid that he had gotten it wrong and JC had perhaps been playing "Return to Me" as a serenade to his lost socks.
"E finks I don muv um becuv om gawn do pace," Lance said, muffled by Chris's shoulder.
Chris unwrapped his arms and stepped back. "You moron," he said. "And you're still going?"
"Chris!" Lance yelled, upset by the sudden desertion. "Hasn't anybody been listening?! It's only the biggest chance of my entire life! I'm supposed to give it up because JC, Digital Getdown evidence to the contrary, can't deal with a few months long-distance?"
"Your biggest chance, huh?" Chris said, eyes narrowing. "Sure that's not NSync? Or maybe JC? You'd give that up for an exotic vacation?"
"It's space," Lance said, almost crying. He took a deep breath and made himself calm down. "And I am not giving up NSync. I'm going to be back. But this is something I have to do... no, it's something I want to do."
"More than JC," Chris said.
"It shouldn't be a choice," Lance said. "He just doesn't want to understand."
"You can't go," Chris said.
"I'm going," Lance replied.
***
JC sat in his room. There was no music: he couldn't stand to take The CD, with Moonbeam, out of his stereo, but nor could he stand to play the album without crying again.
Three things happened simultaneously: his phone rang, Instant Messenger chirped, and he heard a knock at his door.
***
Lance spent a couple days having long conversations with old friends from high school with whom he had drifted out of touch. Most of them were very congratulatory about the upcoming launch, which almost, but not quite, didn't make it worse.
***
And then he was packing for real; he had a very early flight to the airport the next morning.
There should have been a going-away party, Lance thought, folding his socks in neat stacks. Nothing big, just the guys and jokes about "in space, no one can hear you counting steps." Instead, I'm surprised they haven't had me kidnapped by cult-deprogrammers, the way they seem to feel about it.
The doorbell rang.
It was not cult-deprogrammers; all four of his bandmates were standing on his porch. Including JC.
"Yeah, yeah," Lance said, opening the door. "You don't get why I'm going and you've ganged up for one last shot at talking me out of it." He carefully didn't look at JC.
"No, wait," Chris said. "It's not like that."
"Yeah?" Lance said, suddenly hopeful.
"Well, we talked," Chris said.
"And?"
"We still don't get it."
Lance's face fell.
"But we still love you," Chris said. "So, uh, here."
He shoved a small, messily-wrapped object into Lance's hands. Lance unwrapped it slowly. It was an IPod.
"We'll call you all the time in Star City," Justin said. "But, like, in case you get lonely, or, like, up there, we all recorded stuff."
"And," Chris said proudly, "If you get tired of whiny messages, there's the Ultimate Space Mix."
"You made me a mix?" Lance said. He vaguely suspected he was grinning like an idiot. Beaming, he thought, and winced, and looked even less at JC.
"We all made you a mix," Joey said. "Mixes. Magic Carpet Ride..."
"Both versions of Major Tom -" Justin said eagerly.
"Okay, guys," Chris said. "Let's not spoil it for him."
"I don't know what to say," Lance said. "Thank you guys so much..." It was almost perfect.
"Don't," Chris said, looking pointedly at Justin and Joey. When they failed to pick up the hint, he grabbed their arms and dragged them backwards down the porch steps. Leaving Lance alone with JC.
"So," Lance said. "Um." He wasn't sure where to look.
"Can I come in?" JC said.
"Um," Lance said, and held open the door.
"These are from all of us too," JC said in a rush. "But they said I could give them to you." He handed Lance a small envelope.
Lance opened it and shook out four small squares of light cardboard into his hand. He picked up one and looked at it more closely - it was a little drawing of a shooting star in orange and yellow, with "Bring me back one!" written across it in Justin's handwriting, and his name signed below.
"They're temporary tattoos," JC explained nervously. "See, we weren't sure if you'd be able to take up the IPod or not, and we didn't want you all alone up there without something from us, so we thought you could just stick them on your arm or something and they wouldn't weigh anything or get in the way, but they would just be there, just, like, if you wanted to, so we got the guy to print them for us..."
Lance turned them over carefully. Chris had drawn a little planet Earth with four stick figures standing on top labeled "US". An arrow pointing to the planet said "HOME". He had just written "HI!" underneath. Joey's was a little jumping spaceman that said "Giant leap for boybandkind!" in big letters, and smaller underneath, "Don't forget to land, Love, Joey."
JC's was the simplest, a fat turquoise crescent moon. "No matter where you are," it read in JC's spiky cursive.
Lance looked up at him. "Oh," he said intelligently.
JC looked back at him. "Ack!" he said suddenly. "Don't cry on them, they stick on with water..."
Lance looked away and carefully put the four tattoos back into the envelope. He set it down ceremonially on the table and gave it a little pat, and turning, flung his arms around JC and began kissing him thoroughly.
***
Later, JC helped him finish packing.
"Dude," Lance said, contemplating the IPod before nestling it into his carry-on, "Did you put "Return to Me" on here?"
"Nope," JC said happily. "Because I know you're going to."
::End::
Notes: Lance's "did I somehow forget" speech was inspired by a similar line from ultimate operator Oscar Valparaiso in Bruce Sterling's Distraction. Lance's conversation with Justin inspired in part by Cecilia's interpretive thoughts on "Space Cowboy." The tattoos were undoubtably inspired by A Map of the World.
And, my god, I wrote songfic. Using *Holst*. Ever since this story first occurred to me I've had this nagging fear that I'll never be able to listen to Jupiter again without thinking of boybands. But, like, it's such a good piece of music that I think it'll win. Also, of course, Men Without Hats' Moonbeam, and OMD Speed of Light.