JC jumped up from his seat on the floor as soon as he heard the bathroom door unlock. He was slightly shocked at the person that he saw on the other side. JC's breath caught in his throat and his heart broke for the man, turned child, in front of him.
Lance's hair was disheveled, his eyes red and swollen from crying. His skin was pale and the look in his eyes could only be described as dead. There was no emotion there anymore.
"Oh, Baby." JC whispered, reaching his hand out to rub Lance's cheek, but Lance pulled away from him.
"I'm not stupid guys, so I'm not going to do anything stupid. You can all go home now. I finally got what I wanted." Lance said, looking at Joey and Chris as he said the last part.
Chris stepped forward. "It might be what you want, but it's not what you need." Chris tried to explain to him.
"I'll see you guys in the studio in a few days. Forgive me for not showing you out." Lance said, turning towards his bedroom.
"Lance, are you sure you want to be alone?" JC asked, taking a step in Lance's direction as the others made their way to the door.
Lance stopped walking and looked at JC over his shoulder. "It's too late to ask that now, don't you think?" With that Lance turned, went into his room, and closed the door.
JC pushed the tears in his eyes away as he exited the apartment. He found everyone else waiting in the parking lot for him. He heaved a sigh as he approached them.
"You ok?" Justin asked, resting his hand on JC's shoulder.
"I'm not the one you should be worried about right now. Lance feels like he's all alone and everyone has abandoned him." JC explained looking Justin in the eye.
"But we haven't abandoned him! We're all right here for him. How can he think that?" Justin asked not believing what he was hearing.
"Between what I did to him and what his mom just did, he's too hurt to see that." JC said, choking on the tears of grief, guilt and worry.
"Well, what did he mean that he finally got what he wanted?" Briteny asked, turning to Chris and Joey.
"He said earlier that he drank so much last night because he didn't want to feel anymore. He wanted to be numb." Joey said sadly.
JC sighed. "He's shutting everyone out. That's how he'll be dealing with everyone. None of this should have happened in the first place." He practically yelled, tears stinging his eyes.
"This isn't your fault JC." Chris said soothingly.
"The hell it isn't!" JC shouted. "If I had been able to keep my dick in my pants, none of this would have ever happened! He's hurting right now because of me. This is all my fault." Tears were streaming down JC's face by this time.
"Why don't we get you home and then we can talk about this. No sense in causing a scene and drawing attention to Lance's apartment building." Justin said, JC blindly following behind him to the car.
~*~
Lance lay on his bed, curled into a fetal position. He'd finally gotten what he'd wanted. With those few lines sung through the door, the last of his ability to feel was gone. He knew it would come back, but for not it was enough.
It was like getting a cut. For a little while after, the trauma of the wound numbs the skin, keeping hit from feeling. This was the same. Eventually, his ability to feel would return, but for now he was content with his numbness. He'd deal with feeling when he actually felt something.
For now he was numb and that was all that mattered. Not the ache in his heart as he looked at the picture of the guys opposite him. Not the tears that streamed down his face as his eyes settled on the next picture, of himself and Josh. Not his hitched breath at the thought of the next picture in line, of his families, both of them, all together before things had changed. Just the numbness.
Lance found his thoughts wandering to the song Josh had sung to him outside the bathroom only moments before. He'd known that Josh was apologizing for what he'd done. He'd known that Josh had meant every word he'd sang and that he had been singing from the heart. He just couldn't bring himself to do what he wanted more than anything to do. He couldn't bring himself to bury himself in Josh's arms and never leave. Josh deserved better than that. He deserved someone who could be his everything. Someone who could give him everything, so that he wouldn't have to go looking to other people to find what was missing in his life. He deserved someone who would leave nothing missing in his life. Lance couldn't be that person. He'd been missing something before, but he would be severely lacking now. He had no heart to give anymore. Josh had that, and it was broken in two, and Lance didn't think any sort of apologies or making up could fix that.
~*~
JC was pacing the floor of the house that he and Lance had shared for little over a year, his mind flooded with thoughts of worry and guilt. Chris, Joey, Justin and Briteny sat on the sofa facing him, their heads following his movements as if watching a tennis tournament. After about ten minutes, Briteny had, had enough.
"JC, sit your ass down. You're giving me a headache." She ordered, dropping her head into her hands, her hair creating a curtain, hiding her face from view.
"I'm sorry. I just don't know what to do anymore. I can't stand that feeling." JC said, dropping into an armchair. "I've always known how to deal with Lance, how to comfort him. Even in the beginning. Now I'm floundering, I don't know how to fix it, and that pisses me off." JC leaned his head back and closed his eyes.
"JC, I don't think you can fix this." Justin said, thinking back to the conversation he'd had with Lance the night of his and Briteny's party.
"But I have to, Justin. I've always fixed things. He counts on me to fix things." JC asked.
"That may be part of the problem, JC." Justin said, leaning forward in his seat.
"I don't understand what you're saying, Justin." JC said, his expression showing his puzzlement.
"I want you to think about something, all of you." Justin waited for the nods from everyone, to see if they were paying attention, before continuing. "When Lance joined this group nearly six years ago, he lived at home and under tight rule from his mother. All understandable, he was only 16 at the time. When we went on tour, his mother was right there for the first year, still understandable because of his age. She took care of him. He didn't have to think about anything. Are you following me so far?" Justin asked, looking around the group.
"Yeah, I see all of that, but what does that have to do with this? His mother isn't here now, and she sure as hell doesn't tell him what to do anymore." JC said, not understanding where Justin was going with this whole thing.
"I'm getting there. After his mom went back to Clinton and he stayed here, he stayed with Joey. Then, when you guys started getting serious, you moved in together. The boy has never had to take care of himself and he doesn't know how." Justin said, sure that they would see what he saw.
"OK. I was with you there for a while Jay, but you lost me. Of course he can take caer of himself. Hell, he runs two businesses, keeps up with Nsync, and takes care of all of us. How can you say he doesn't know how to take care of himself?" Joey questioned, not sure of where Justin was going.
"That's not the point. He can take care of his artists, and his movies, Nsync and all of us. He can take care of money, houses, assets, friends, but not himself, at a level as a person. Every decision he's ever made, he came to one of us or his family. He told me the other night and I didn't see it until now. He always had his mom, and when she left him, he could deal with that because he had JC. He's always had something stable, something familiar. Someone familiar. No offense, JC, but when he lost that stability, when he found you with Rob, and everything that he thought he knew was taken away, he realized that he didn't know how to take care of himself as an individual. He doesn't know how to be an individual." Justin finished, looking around the group. Looking for understanding. He found it in JC.
"He can take care of and manage groups and things, but he's never had to manage his life by himself. It's always been him mom or us or me, but never himself. I can't believe I didn't see this earlier." JC said, sitting back in his seat, looking as if he'd been punched in the stomach.
"But what does that have to do with what happened today, when his mom called?" Chris asked, still trying to figure things out.
Briteny was the one to speak now. "He didn't have JC to fall back on anymore. That's what he thinks, JC." Briteny was quick to sooth when she saw the pained look on JC's face. "When his mom called, he latched onto the hope that she would be there to put his life back together. When she wouldn't, he didn't know what to do. He's lost and scared, but he knows what he didn't have before. Trying to learn to be his own person and be on his own is scaring the hell out of him. He's not sure he wants to learn, but now he has no choice. That's why he's been drinking himself silly. So he doesn't have to face it."
"So, how do we help him?" Joey asked.
"We leave him alone and let him learn." Was JC's pained answer.
Chapter 7 coming...maybe...eventually!