Some people have to wait until death to be judged by their gods. Chris got his verdict eleven days after his thirty-first birthday.Weird Al was on TRL for the debut of his latest video. Chris had two VCRs set up to tape it, just in case one of them didn't work, or Justin wandered in and decided to watch something in Chris's movie collection, not that that had ever happened more than seven or eight times when Chris was trying to tape something.
So Chris was hanging on Weird Al's every word, which he knew was maybe a little pathetic given that he had met him in person for real, but that hadn't made him less cool, and really it would have been kind of sad if meeting people made them less exciting, because Chris met a lot of people. But that hadn't happened, Weird Al was still exciting, until Carson mentioned that several members of NSync were fans, and asked him if he had ever considered doing a parody of one of their songs. Little flashbulbs exploded behind Chris's eyes; he was so tense, so eager for the answer that he felt like he was proposing marriage, only without the being-nervous-beforehand part. The question had come out of the blue, but now his life suddenly depended on it, and then Weird Al was laughing a little and saying that "no, it would be way too easy."
Chris blinked.
Castles fell, the champagne of his life went flat. Entire goddamn mountains slid down the mountainsides of shock and collapsed into heaps in the pit of his stomach. His phone rang.
He answered it automatically.
"Um, hey, Chris?" It was Lance.
With a finely-honed acuity, Chris recognized that he was about to be asked if he Was Okay. Chris hated that.
"Fine," he snapped, turning off the TV.
"I could come over," Lance said.
"You're a good southern boy," Chris said caustically, "You ought to know the difference between "can" and "may"."
"Sure then," Lance said, and Chris wondered why he had even bothered to call. He considered smashing the phone against the wall. He considered smashing the video. He considered smashing the whole shelf of videos... Behind the Music. VH-AL and most of the AL-TV specials. The entire week that Al had hosted The List. Suddenly worth less than "Sliders" reruns.
He was still staring blankly at the dormant television when they showed up.
Lance just raised an eyebrow in greeting, but JC started right in with "Hey, Chris, I saw on TRL -", and Chris cut him off by loudly asking if anybody wanted a beer.
"I don't think he had any right to just dismiss us -" Justin started, and Chris said he didn't really care.
JC and Justin looked at him and joined in a sort of chorus of concern. "Are you really not upset, Chris? Because I would be upset, if someone I respected as an artist said, and I thought you would be upset, but if you say you're not upset -"
"Fine!" Chris shouted. "I'm upset. I'm devastated, okay! Fuck off!"
They rolled their eyes affectionately, and Joey fuzzed his head, and he did feel a little better.
Lance watched him calmly over his beer while Justin and JC talked at him animatedly about the lyrics they had worked on in the car on the way over: "It could be called Digital Putdown, about flaming people on the internet..."
They sang him a little, and it was actually pretty funny, and he was touched that JC would cooperate in the parody of his own song to cheer him up, but -
"That's not really the point, guys." And it wasn't.
They all had a few beers, and Chris must have sounded like he Was Okay, because he was able to shoo out Joey and Justin and JC without too much trouble, Justin whispering on the way out what Chris already knew, that the parody had been Justin's idea and it had been a big deal for JC to go along with it like that. He summoned up an appreciative nod for Justin, then turned to the task of dislodging Lance.
"Wanna talk?" Lance asked quietly.
"No," Chris said, and waited, and Lance waited, and "That's not fair," Chris said. "You can't just... sit there."
"Hoping for another song parody?" Lance asked.
"Argh," Chris replied. "It's not that I'm never going to hear the immortal lyrics to "Just Got Fired" or "No Viruses Attached" or whatever. It's..."
"The rejection?" said Lance.
"It's that he ripped my heart out, plopped it on a scale and tossed it over his shoulder for the Devourer of Souls." Chris said. "And the worst thing, the worst thing..." He couldn't continue.
"Is that he doesn't know what just happened? That you've always kind of had this hope and now it's just been shattered but for him it was just this offhand comment?"
"Yeah," Chris said. "He has no idea." He looked at Lance questioningly.
"If I got turned down for space," Lance said. "People think I'm just some crazy minor celebrity with a whim, that's how I know how you feel."
"Hardly minor, but yeah," Chris said, "It was, like, something I had thought about. For a long time."
They sat quietly, sipping their beers.
"Wait," said Chris, a certain suspicion dawning like an oncoming train. "You weren't talking about space."
"Um," Lance said. "Sure I was."
Chris looked at him. He was all cool green eyes.
"Okay," Chris said, "I've just come to the sudden realization that really the whole thing with Weird Al is my fault, since if I really cared that much I should have asked him if we could collaborate on something, since how would he ever know that I'd be interested if I didn't say anything, and we're both musicians, it wouldn't have been that unreasonable for me to say something, and who knows, he might have gotten a kick out of the idea of recording with a boyband, he might even have liked the idea, if only it had ever been mentioned to him, but -"
"Okay, okay!" Lance said. "Point taken, lesson learned - "
Chris kissed him.
"Actually I was talking about Joey," Lance said.
He waited until Chris had open and shut his mouth several times to let his straight face break. "Kidding," he grinned, and kissed Chris, catching the next jaw drop perfectly.
"I guess it was a pretty lame dream," Chris said a bit later.
"No such thing," said Lance, "C'mere."
::End::
special bonus! lyrics to "Digital Putdown"
Baby baby I can say all that I want, I'm getting nasty nasty, I'm getting rudey-crudey
Baby baby don't even bother to talk, 'cause I won't hear ya hear ya, and I'll ignore ya 'nore ya
Baby baby I can say all that I want, I'm getting nasty nasty, I'm getting ruder-ruder-ruder-ruderDigital digital putdown, posting a flame
Baby I've been banned from the group but I can join it by a different name
Digital digital putdown, nothing to do
Maybe I have nothing to say but I can say it so it pisses off youEvery time I'm cruising on the net, boy, I can't wait to make you more upset, boy
So try to post, you know I'm waiting there for you
Bouncing me from newsgroup after newsgroup, you know that I just want to make your mood droop
'Cause I'm a troll, babe, and that's all that I can doCan we have a flame war
Some mentions of Hitler, baby
I'll write back right away, no need to mull
If you're feeling bored, then don't be dull, send a message
You know the kind you pipe off to dev-nullDigital digital putdown etc.
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