It was weird, at first, when Lance seemed to develop a sudden allergy to alcohol.

"Well, that was weird," he mumbled, wiping away the water he'd splashed on his face after he threw up his usual post-show beer.

"So, you think you're up for coming out to the club with us?" Joey asked him sympathetically, and Lance nodded.

"Yeah; maybe I'm just more jittery than usual. I dunno. Give me a minute and then we'll go, okay?"

After throwing up a shot and a half-glass of JD at the club, though, he said "I think I'm gonna go back to the hotel and lay down," and in the morning he felt fine -- and for the first time in a while, not hungover. He passed on the drinking the next night and didn't get sick at all, so back on the bus in the morning he took a test sip of Heineken. It promptly came back up.

"Fuck," he said, slamming the bathroom door behind him. "I would've liked some warning that my alcohol tolerance was dropping to zero here."

"I think I saw something about that on some news show," Joey volunteered. "Like, you just reach your... quota or whatever, for your body, and then it rejects everything after that."

"Yeah, but I had another good twenty years of hard drinking in me; I just know it," Lance complained.

"That is the most disgusting thing I've ever seen you do," Justin marvelled, watching Lance alternately take bites from a banana and a tuna fish sandwich he'd procured from the craft services table at a television studio.

Lance simply shrugged. "Yeah, well. Apple Jacks make me nauseous. Call it even."

"Really?" Justin raised his eyebrows. "When did that happen? And," he added, gesturing to the odd mixture his friend was consuming. "Don't tell me you don't think that's a little messed up."

"I dunno," Lance responded, taking another double-bite. "I feel like that stuff's been making me sick forever. And this," he looked down. "This is actually a lot better than it looks. I've been wanting some all day."

Justin stared at him blankly. "You've been wanting a banana and a tuna fish sandwich all day."

Lance nodded.

"Together."

"Mmm-hmm."

Justin just shook his head. "Weird."

It wasn't only Apple Jacks that made Lance ill; it was cereal in general, and also orange pekoe tea, and heavily buttered toast, and plain toast, and muffins of any flavor, and scrambled eggs, and the mere sight of soft-boiled eggs, which looked like puke itself, Lance declared thickly one morning as he rose abruptly from the breakfast table and stumbled for the bathroom.

"Wait-- I thought Lance liked eggs," Chris addressed to the room in general, after he'd left.

"That was yesterday," Justin informed him knowingly. "Who knows with Lance these days, man?"

"Just gimme a minute," Lance said, sinking down onto the sofa of the Quiet Room because he couldn't imagine standing any longer. He laid his head against the pillow and closed his eyes.

JC looked over at him with concern. "You can't tell me you're tired again," he said. "You already napped, like, three times today."

"Did not. Why, you jealous?" Lance murmured, and yawned, and didn't move until curtain call.

Lance had always gained weight on tour, once they settled into the routine of things, since he lost so much during rehearsals. It wasn't so much that he put on more weight this time, though, as he just got... sort of bigger. He was used to having his pants let out around the waist more than once per tour, but when Lisa from wardrobe clucked her tongue and tugged at him for the second time that week and said, "You never put on weight this fast, Lance -- what happened?" he frowned and shook his head.

"I haven't put on any weight this week," he said, and it was true. He knew because he'd been weighing himself more often these days, because he didn't know why his jeans were getting too tight, either.

Lisa furrowed her brows, straightening and dusting off his lapels. "Well-- how do you feel around the shoulders? Is that jacket getting any tighter?"

Lance rolled his shoulders experimentally. "Nope," he responded.

Lisa sighed heavily. "Well, do you think you can suck it in?"

"I've been sucking it in," Lance said wearily.

"Nice gut," Joey commented one night on the bus, as they stripped out of their sweaty clothes.

"Shut up," Lance muttered.

When Lance's parents came to see him the morning of *NSYNC's show in Jackson, he was laying down on the sofa, once again too sick to move for the umpteenth morning in a row. They exchanged glances before turning back to him.

"Um, honey," Diane began soothingly, "I thought you were over that flu you thought you were coming down with a couple of months ago."

"I don't think it was the flu, Mom," Lance sighed, but she was already hovering over him, cupping his face in her hands and checking his temperature by touch. "I mean, I feel fine the rest of the day; I just start out feeling bad in the mornings."

"Well, you feel fine, and you look healthy," she mused. "Does your stomach hurt any?" she asked, and reached down to rub at it, and froze. "Oh, Jim," she said sadly. "I think you were right."

"Right about what?" Lance asked, moaning as he struggled to sit up. "What's Jim right about? Dad? What are you right about?"

His father sat down heavily across from him. "Listen, Lance -- there are some things we think you need to know...."

When Lance told them the news, Chris laughed so hard that he spit out bits of sandwich. "Oh, that's rich," he crowed. "Did you practice that in front of the mirror?"

"He's just kidding, you guys," JC said. He looked at Lance closely. "You're just kidding; you have to be," he repeated. "Right?"

Lance shook his head and folded his arms over himself somewhat protectively. "No," he said. "I'm really, um. Like, I'm due in September and everything." He shrugged uneasily. "I know it sounds crazy--"

"No, it sounds impossible," JC corrected. "You can't be pregnant because it's impossible. I mean, whatever kind of joke you think this is, you're kinda freaking me out, and it's not cool."

"Pregnant!" Chris cried, wiping bits of sandwich off of his chin, and Justin took one look at him and cracked up as well.

"It's a freak thing, okay?" Lance said. "It happens in my family sometimes. It's a Bass thing. Nobody knows why or how; it just happens." He turned to Joey. "What, do you think I faked getting sick off of beer, Joe? Or all those mornings at breakfast?"

Joey shook his head and chuckled. "You're sayin' you have morning sickness?" he said, and Lance nodded. "And that explains the gut?"

Lance tucked in his chin. "I'd kinda like you to stop callin' it that," he said flatly.

"Okay, wait. Wait, this is insane," Justin interjected, once he'd calmed down. "Who's the other father, then? Huh? Explain that."

"Hey, Justin -- you sure you wanna know?" Chris asked, nudging him in the side. "It could be you."

"It better not be me," Joey muttered.

"Well, Dr. Parker says it probably happened around that time when I was in Rio," Lance explained. "So that means, probably...."

JC paled. Joey and Chris slouched in obvious relief, and Lance scowled. "You don't have to be so happy about it," he mumbled. "It's not like I'm making you pay alimony or anything."

Justin clapped JC on the back. "Congratulations, C," he said gently. "You too, Lance," he added, nodding in his direction.

"Thanks," Lance sighed. He threw up his hands. "I can't believe this; I'm gonna be, like, a single mom! I mean, I always wanted to have a baby, but I didn't mean I wanted to have a baby."

"So where's this baby coming out?" Chris wanted to know.

Lance buried his face in his hands. "God, please. I don't even wanna think about it."

JC found him later, curled up against the wall of the suite, arms folded around his knees. He didn't look any different than he had before the announcement, JC thought, and wondered if it was really happening after all. "Hey," he said, and Lance glanced up when he came to sit beside him. "You feelin' better?" he asked. "You said you were sick, before."

Lance nodded into his knees. "I always feel better by the time it's lunch," he said, and paused as if he were going to say something else, but didn't.

JC swallowed. "I'm sorry," he said, "about before. Just... kinda caught me off guard."

Lance laughed shortly. "You and me both." He turned his head to look at JC. "I meant what I said," he added softly. "You don't have to do anything about this if you don't want to."

"I--" JC frowned and sighed. "I don't know," he said helplessly, and Lance nodded before he could say anything else.

"It's okay," he said, and pushed away from the wall to stand, and when his t-shirt settled and clung around the swell of his stomach, JC felt a surge of protectiveness towards Lance, and knew.

Secretly, Lance suspected that nobody really believed him, not until after the morning sickness had gone away and his waistline still hadn't returned. They didn't really believe him until he started giggling uncontrollably during soundcheck before one show, palm over his stomach, and backed up to sit on the platform where the band was stationed.

"What's the matter; you okay?" JC asked, looking over with a decidedly concerned expression.

Lance waved him over. "Check it out," he said, taking one of JC's hands and pressing it to his side to feel the subtle fluttering.

"Oh, wow," JC breathed.

Lance nodded, grinning. "Yeah. Wow."

The others had stopped swearing around him, Lance noticed. He suspected that Joey might have had something to do with it from the looks he shot Justin just before the younger man would say something lame like "shoot", or "rats". He knew that Joey had had something to do with it when Steve stopped swearing around him, too.

"You're not gonna offend me if you cuss or anything, Joey," he told him, over a game of MarioKart, when he heard Joey bite off another epithet.

"Yeah, but it's not good for the baby," Joey replied. "It can hear you, you know; your voice and stuff. Things outside the womb, or... whatever."

"It can't hear me, Joe," Lance said, then paused in thought. "It can't, can it?"

Lance tried to stop swearing, too, but soon found that if he did not swear, he had a tendency to take his frustrations out on others.

"Hey," Chris cried, after Lance had clipped him on the back of the head yet again. "Okay, you know what? I liked you better when you were swearing."

"Fuck you, then," Lance said.

After that, the sex came to a stop pretty abruptly as well. Suddenly everybody was afraid of hurting the baby, or making it see or hear something it wasn't supposed to. "Lance, you're, like, somebody's mother now, all of a sudden," Chris explained. "I can't do that with somebody's mother, man."

Also, his growing waistline meant that Lance couldn't quite get his legs up over anybody's shoulders anymore, which definitely put a cramp in things. But JC at least still did things like kiss him and touch his stomach all the time, and other bits that were getting neglected more and more these days, and that was nice.

The official press line was that Lance had hurt his ankle again, and as a result *NSYNC did a ballad-heavy show so that Lance could remain seated the whole while. Then they changed their stage costumes so that Lance could wear baggier things and get away with it, and the rule was that until the baby was born, he wasn't allowed to go anywhere publicly. Lance slouched a lot on stage so that no one could see the bulge of his stomach, and got hot even more frequently than that.

"I can't stand it," he complained, tearing his jacket off violently after the show. "What's the temperature in here? 180, 200?" His hair was standing up in sweaty spikes the way it might have if they'd been dancing the entire show, yet he had been sitting still the whole time. His tank undershirt stretched provocatively over his stomach, and JC could see the outline of his belly button through the thin material. He looked kind of... radiant. Beautiful, even.

"You know," JC said suddenly, reaching out for him, "it really is like a miracle. That you can do this."

"What, be miserably hot in room temperature?"

"No," JC explained, his hand on Lance's stomach. "Like, have a baby. I mean, if God could make a virgin with child, then why not you?"

"Yeah, but Lance ain't no virgin," Justin put in.

Lance narrowed his eyes at JC. "If you say something like this baby could be the Messiah, I'm gonna hit you."

"Well, he's probably thinking it's like..." Joey grinned. "JC's the other dad. So, you know. J. C."

Lance hit him.

Lance blinked and stared at Johnny as though he'd grown another head. "Maternity clothes," he said flatly, and pressed his lips together because he didn't know what to add to that. The words I'm not wearing a fucking mu-mu, EVER came to mind. "What's wrong with, um. What I'm wearing now?"

"Extra-large shirts and pants aren't going to hide everything forever, Lance," Johnny explained patiently, "and they don't fit your frame well." That much Lance already knew, since he was rolling up his jeans three times as it was, and his legs were starting to swim in the material. "We could get you some tasteful t-shirts," Johnny went on, "nothing too feminine... some regular blue jeans. No big deal. You can look over everything, and you don't have to wear anything you don't like."

No kidding, Lance thought. "If you pick a shirt that has a target sign on it," he warned.

"Nothing tacky, I guarantee," Johnny assured him.

"Oh my God," Lance said suddenly, and stood, crossing his legs, in the middle of watching Days of Our Lives, which Justin had insisted on so that Lance could get in touch with his feminine side. "Oh, my God."

"What," Chris mumbled, and "you're blocking the TV," he added, pressing on the side of Lance's knee until he stepped aside.

"I have to pee, like, seventeen times a day," Lance announced.

"We noticed," Chris said. "Good for you."

"No," Lance insisted. "I have to pee, like, seventeen times a day, and these don't have a fly!" He gestured to the cute denim maternity overalls he wore, that hadn't looked particularly feminine when he put them on, except that yeah, if one thought about it, women's overalls wouldn't have a fly.

"And you just noticed this now?" Joey asked.

"I only had to pee now," Lance retorted. "I wasn't thinking about a fly before I had to pee." A strange look came over his face, and he distractedly reached up to unhook one strap, then the other. "I wonder if I can make it," he murmured, turning on his heel and bolting.

"And thus Lance's experiments with maternity clothes were ended," Justin announced morosely from his position on the floor.

"Those were really cute overalls," Chris put in.

Chris liked to talk to the baby, propping himself up on his elbows against Lance's lap as he lounged backstage or in their suite in the hotel, and recounting various adventures from his childhood. And then adventures from high school. And then adventures from college. And then Chris started explaining the intricacies of spinning records to the baby, and after that Lance tuned him out.

Justin liked to sing, taking traditional nursery rhymes and giving them an R&B twist, throwing in a beat-box and a rap where appropriate. Every time Justin sang "if you're happy and you know it, clap your hands," Lance felt the need to point out that "you're clapping alone, Justin," but he had to admit that it looked awfully cute, so he didn't really want Justin to stop.

Joey told the baby jokes; his repertoire of "clean" jokes was quickly exhausted, and he prefaced the dirty ones by saying "you won't get this one, but it's really funny anyway." Joey also did Shakespearean soliloquys and monologues for the baby; Macbeth, Hamlet, Portia, Antony. Lance found it fascinating how people seemed to forget he was in the room when they were talking to "the baby," but in this case it allowed him to watch Joey work his acting chops without feeling self-conscious, so he couldn't complain.

JC read to the baby, too; from his books of poetry featuring his own brand of philosophy and the books that had helped him shape his world view. Lance tried to keep an open mind, but eventually he would fall asleep to the sound of JC's voice, and later said to him, "Could you please stop polluting our baby's brain with Deepak Chopra?"

JC was righteously indignant, but settled down after Lance let him feel the baby move for a while.

Because he was hot all the time, and getting bigger by the day, the others often singled Lance out as a source of heat where they would have turned to Joey previously. Pre-show, post-show, during sound-check, or in moments of boredom, one or more of the others could be found curled up around Lance's side, hands up under his shirt in the front or back -- but usually the front, for the kicking -- drawing from his body heat if the air conditioning was too strong.

"Ow, ow-- ow, Justin. Just-- no. Ow." Lance pushed on Justin's head from where it rested against his chest.

"What's the matter?" Justin blinked, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep.

"Just... you know. Sensitive. Nipples." Lance shrugged uneasily.

Lance, JC knew, couldn't stand the fact that he couldn't always keep up with the guys anymore when they headed off walking somewhere, and the fact that he waddled more than walked the bigger he got. He didn't like being on his feet for more than five minutes at a time, and couldn't see his feet anymore besides. And he was amused by the fact that his mother told him he was carrying low like he'd be having a boy.

JC knew that the baby kicked more when Lance listened to pop CDs, but settled down, as if it knew that Lance needed to concentrate, during concerts. He knew that Lance got backaches from sitting up and side-aches from lying down, and that he liked it when JC rubbed his back and hips and threw out ridiculous suggestions for baby names.

JC knew these things about Lance.

"I just wanna know," Lance said loudly as he stepped into the suite's living room with his shirt hiked over his stomach, "when these stretch marks happened, and when in the night I became an outie."

Chris whistled low. "Put that thing away, man," he said. "No one needs to see that." And "hey," he added, "you're gettin' kinda huge. Shouldn't you be in Lamaze or something by now?"

Lance shook his head, pulling down his shirt. "Gee, thanks, Chris. No -- Lamaze is for labor, and I'm not gonna go into labor."

"Oh, right, right, silly me; I should've known. So what're you gonna do?" Chris asked. "Waste those child-bearing hips? Get a C-section?"

Lance shrugged. "Yeah, I guess. I better."

"Whoa," JC frowned. "That's gonna leave a scar."

"No shit," Lance replied.

"Yeah but," Justin put in. "They can make the incision underneath your stomach these days so no one can tell," he said, then shifted uncomfortably under everyone's stare. "What? I read things."

"Hey, Lance," Chris greeted him one day as he stepped on to their bus with a bag clutched in his hands, half-hidden behind him.

Lance squirmed up from where he half-lay on the lounge sofa, not having been able to sleep fully laying down in days. "Hey," he responded. "What's up?"

"Well, I just." Chris shrugged and averted his gaze. "Me and Justin were messing around in the strip mall, and I, uh. I sorta saw this and thought, you know. Of you. So." And he brought the bag around from behind him and reached inside, presenting a large yellow baby blanket embroidered with characters from Dr. Seuss' varied and many books.

"Oh," Lance ran his hands over the material. "Oh, thanks, Chris," he said sincerely, spreading the blanket over his stomach and lap. "This is so nice of you, thanks."

"Yeah; yeah. You're welcome," Chris said, and left, and when Joey got on the bus a minute later, Lance was crying, sniffling to himself discreetly.

"What's wrong?" he asked, sitting down next to him.

"Fuckin' hormones," Lance sniffed.

They threw him a sort of baby shower, only without the presents.

He hadn't suspected a thing; for whatever reason he couldn't logically apply the same rules of pregnancy to himself as he would apply to any normal woman. So on the last night of the tour it didn't occur to him that he was due in under two months and this was the last time he'd be seeing several of his friends for an extended period of time, and that maybe, just maybe, they would have something planned for him.

"We surprised you real good, didn't we?" Justin grinned later that night, over a slice of pizza.

Lance nodded, wide-eyed. "Did I give it away when I clutched at my heart and screamed like a girl?"

"Yeah, that was when I suspected." Justin laughed, then paused contemplatively. "You know," he said, "despite how weird this whole situation is and everything, you've really been handling it well, and, you know... I really wish you the best. The both of you. You know." He shook his head. "This really is weird."

Lance laughed as well. "Yeah, it is." He didn't think he'd ever get used to it.

When the tour ended, Lance went home to Mississippi, because there comes a time when a man needs his mama, and this was one of those times.

"Do you want me to come with you?" JC asked him.

"Yeah; I think you should probably be there," he said, grateful that JC had offered, because he wasn't going to ask.

They were giving the baby to his sister and brother-in-law, they already knew. "I can't; I just can't, Stacy," he'd said. "I'm not ready to be a dad; JC's not ready to be a dad. We can't give it the kind of life it deserves, and you can." And Stacy and Ford had been trying to get pregnant for years, while it had happened to Lance on worse than a fluke.

"You're so lucky," Stacy told him, when she greeted him at their parents' house. "Have I told you that today?"

"Hey, Stace?" he said, draping an arm over his belly. "Anytime you wanna trade, just lemme know."

She grinned. "Well, can we negotiate the name?"

He shook his head. "Nuh-uh. I'm not budging on that. It's gonna be Rio. Rio if it's a girl and Rio if it's a boy. That's it."

"But Lance," Stacy protested. "Ford and I have never been to Rio."

"Then this is your excuse to go," he answered, smiling sweetly.

JC stayed in one of the guest rooms, and in about two weeks the other three had joined them, "'Cause really? We wouldn't miss this for the world," Joey explained.

Lance had picked a date for the C-section by throwing darts at the calendar -- he felt like choosing the date for the birth was wrong somehow, so the darts helped bring a sense of randomness to the act -- and was advised to spend as little time on his feet as possible. So instead of having one hovering grandmother-to-be, one hovering father-to-be, and one frequently-visiting sister, he had now acquired three other hovering devotees.

Not that he really had a problem with that. It mainly consisted of the five of them sitting around watching TV in the basement den the way they would on the bus or in any hotel room, and one of the other guys shoving a pillow behind his back if he got too uncomfortable sitting up.

"So, did your Dr. Parker freak out or anything when you went to see him, Lance?" Chris asked late one night from his position on the floor in front of the television. He tossed a handful of popcorn into his mouth as he spoke. "I mean, for him to not turn you over to the press or whatever. Make you a lab rat."

Lance shook his head. "No, he's delivered for my family before. Like, the male half."

JC turned his head on Lance's thigh. "The other guys in your family who've had babies?"

"Yeah," Lance nodded. "He delivered for my uncle, so they go way back, I guess. Which is mostly why I came back here."

"You've got a freakish little family there, haven't you, Lance?" Chris declared, taking another handful of popcorn. He looked back after a moment, when Lance hadn't responded. "Lance?"

Lance was staring at nothing in particular, handful of popcorn halfway to his mouth, the other hand rubbing at his stomach absently. "Um, you guys?" he said, a pained expression crossing his face.

JC twisted himself to look up at him, propping himself up on his elbows. "Oh, shit," he said softly.

Lance told everybody but JC to go to sleep, that he'd be fine, that it was probably just indigestion. He declined the offer on Joey's part to wake up his mother just in case. But by now nobody was willing to actually go to bed, instead staying near the staircase while Lance spoke with his doctor on the phone.

"No, I know that I--" he said, and paused. "About... an hour 45 minutes, 2 hours maybe?" Another pause. "No, indigestion is different; I should know, I have it every day." Pause. "Yeah, I know. I know, that's why I called you." Pause. "Yeah, that's what it feels like." Pause. "Yeah, but how can I be having contractions when I don't have a ute--" he sighed. "Okay, you know what? Bye." And Lance brought a knee up and snapped his cell phone neatly in two.

"Oohh," Justin winced.

"Um, Lance?" JC ventured gently, approaching Lance where he stood against the wall with his eyes closed, hands roaming his stomach. "What did Dr. Parker say?"

Lance opened his eyes and looked at him. "He said it sounds like I'm in labor," he snarled, and threw the two pieces of phone at JC's chest. "Fucking duh."

"Well, gee, I'm really tired," Chris announced suddenly, rising to his feet and sprinting up the stairs.

"Yeah, me too," Joey agreed, as he and Justin squeezed past each other to get by.

JC didn't know how long he stayed up rubbing Lance's lower back through his contractions -- was that even what he was supposed to do? He didn't know, but Lance said that it helped, so he did it until his wrists got sore. Lance didn't seem to be in pain so much as he seemed to be... pissy. "I would've taken fucking Lamaze, you know, if I'd just known I had to," he'd protested, taking deep breaths and leaning forward as far as he could while JC rubbed.

"Do you want me to wake up your mom?" JC asked again. He felt like he asked every half hour.

"No; I'm okay," was always the reply.

He wasn't sure when or in what position he'd fallen asleep, but when he woke up he had a terrible crick in his neck, Lance's legs were in his lap, and Lance was on his side on the couch, moaning woefully into a throw pillow and rolling his shoulders in the gesture of one who cannot get comfortable no matter what they do.

"Lance?" he asked, reaching up and rubbing at his back again. Lance sobbed in lieu of a response.

He tried again. "Lance, do you want me to wake up your mom?" he said, and Lance nodded, his face still pressed to the cushion.

Trying to remain upright in the passenger seat of his mother's 4-Runner, she holding his hand and letting him squeeze it while JC helplessly massaged his shoulders from the backseat, Lance was pretty sure that his hips were going to explode. It occurred to him, suddenly, that 'labor' was merely a diplomatic word for 'work'. Well, duh, he thought. He couldn't think of a diplomatic word for 'mind-numbing agony', though.

He considered crying, but being snappish felt a lot better. "Quit fuckin' touching me," he told JC over his shoulder, his head lolling back with the intensity of the contraction, ignoring the squeeze Diane gave him for cussing.

"You're just mad 'cause you're in pain," JC responded, not letting up, and Lance thought something vaguely like I really love him before he was hit with a whole nother wave of hurt and said,

"I'm gonna kill you if you don't. stop. touching me," and he must have sounded sincere, because JC stopped. Lance wished he hadn't.

Once he'd had an epidural, though, Lance loved everybody.

"I love you, JC," he told him, gripping JC's hand in both of his own. "You stayed up forever with me, and that was great. Really. I love you, man." He turned to Diane. "And I love you, Mom," he told her earnestly. "I'm sorry for all the stuff I put you through as a kid and everything, 'cause I totally appreciate it now." He pointed at his stomach. "This? Right here? Best part of being pregnant, right now. Did you get an epidural, Mom?"

Diane smiled and shook her head. "No, sweetie; not for you or your sister."

Lance scoffed dismissively. "You're crazy."

JC leaned away and stopped a passing attendant by the arm. "Is this stuff supposed to affect his mind?"

"I'm not on drugs, JC," Lance said loudly. "I'm just happy, okay?"

Rio was a girl, with a smattering of dark hair and luminous green eyes, looking nothing like her adoptive parents and everything like her biological ones. "Oh, good," Lance sighed, when Dr. Parker announced the gender. "That way, if she ever gets pregnant one day, the shock won't kill her."

Rio was also premature, though, and stayed in the hospital for two weeks, whereas Lance could go home in two days. Lance couldn't bring himself to visit her, even though Joey and Justin and Chris would visit him gushing about how tiny she was, and oh, her little fingers, and how oh, she was going to be such a beaut when she grew up.

All of which was true about Rio, JC thought, but when Lance couldn't even bring himself to be excited about her he started sleeping a lot and JC started fielding the visits.

"I don't know why," Lance told him later, leaning against him back in his own living room. "I mean, shouldn't I be, like... there for her?"

"I don't know, Lance," JC answered truthfully. "Maybe you're just, you know, depressed. Stuff like that happens, right?"

Lance shrugged helplessly, looking so forlorn and uncertain that JC had to pull him close and hold him comfortingly. He marvelled over how small Lance was again, since the birth. He'd almost forgotten what it was like without something between them. It was nice to have Lance back the way he used to be. Physically, at least.

"When you go see her today," Lance said against his shoulder, "tell her I love her, okay?"

"Oh, sure thing," JC consoled him, rubbing his back the way he had when Lance had been pregnant.

By the time Rio was released from the hospital, Lance felt slightly better, and went with Stacy and the rest of the family to see her off to her new home. "So... I guess you can go home now," he told JC, when they arrived back at his house. He leaned back against the front door and raised his eyebrows. "I'm really glad you came, though."

"Yeah, I was thinking about that," JC said, heading for the living room and sitting down on the sofa. Lance followed his lead. "I was thinking about this whole thing, and I know you've just been through a lot and everything, but I was still thinking that maybe... like, if this kind of thing should ever happen again... that we could, you know. Do it together. For real. And, you know, keep the baby."

Lance leaned back and folded his hands high up on his now-flat stomach, still used to having something to rest his arms on. He looked down at his stomach, as though he missed it. "You mean, like, as a couple."

"Yeah, that's what I mean." JC held his breath waiting for a reply.

"I would--" Lance smiled and looked up into his eyes. "Yeah; that would be good. I'd like that... but." He paused, uncertain. "What if there was no baby?"

JC smiled back and leaned over him. "Well, there'd still be you."

Author's Notes: Um. I don't generally like male pregnancy fics. I don't! But I have a thing for Lance, and I have a thing for pregnancy, and I thought, "what if I wrote this like the farce it should be?" and so I did. And... yes. This is the director's cut, with all the stuff I wanted to say the first time around but left out... added.

This exercise in insanity was heavily influenced by Helen's fic "The Same Inside." Also, many, many thanks to Stacia for practically co-writing the thing with me! :-)

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