It's a Kind of Magic
By Lois

He didn't know how he knew, but Chris just KNEW - deep down, in that little place inside him where hunches and instinct came from - that he was different, maybe even special. And not "special" the way Justin said it, crossing his eyes, drooling and slapping his arm against his chest, making everyone else laugh. That was a "special" wholly reserved just for Joey.

Meant for something, that's what it was, something bigger than where he'd come from and what he'd started out as, a manic little kid, running around playgrounds to kiss the girls, and make them punch his lights out, in clothes from the Salvation Army, living off the free-lunch program and the crackers his mother would slip into his coat pockets so that his stomach wouldn't growl during class.

Yeah, so, he'd grown up like that, wondering what it was like to get new shoes at the start of the school year instead of lying to his mother, saying his Payless knock-offs fit fine, they didn't pinch his toes, when they really did, because he couldn't -stand- the look on her face when he needed something and she couldn't buy it, or she'd have to get it second-hand. He hated that look. Hated it.

It turned him into a thoughtful little boy, outgoing in public, but quiet at home, standing in doorways watching his twentysomething mother crying in the kitchen, slumped over the table in her uniform, scrubbing at her eyes with a shredded Kleenex because he would be home at any moment, and she couldn't let him see her like that. She never knew that he was always home early, and he always saw her.

So early on, Chris decided that he had to be something special, and bust out of that existence and take his mom - and eventually, as they arrived one-by-one, his sisters - with him. When he found out that he could sing - they had no television, so he listened to the radio and sang everything and she walked in on him and just stared - he thought that he might have found his special-ness.

He found it by the front door - fell on it, actually, because the shoes his mother had found for him were a size too big, and the laces too long and just would not stay tied - buried under a pile of bills. When he brought the mail to his mother, she picked through it with the same thin-lipped, indifferent expression she always did, until she came to the thick, brown envelope, addressed to her not-quite-ten year old son, in emerald ink.

"What the-" She frowned. "Um, honey?"

Chris yanked his hand away from the box of Junior Mints he knew she kept in his purse, that he'd been secretly hijacking when he thought she wasn't looking. "Yeah, Mom?"

"You got a letter," she said, holding it out to him. Chris took it, turning it over in his small hands. There wasn't any postage, or return address, or anything to indicate the letter's origins. It was just a heavy envelope made out of a funny paper he'd never seen before, that he thought reminded him of the stuff Egyptians wrote on. They'd just had Egypt in history.

"Um." He looked at his mother, quizzically, and she shrugged.

"Go 'head," she said. "I'm as curious as you are."

He opened it, and all at once, everything made complete and total sense. He started laughing, as only an almost-ten year old can, with whoops and words he probably shouldn't have said in front of his mother, but she was staring at the letter with an ashen face, watery eyes and - Chris held his breath - the faintest hint of a smile.

When he was three, the earliest memory he could conjure up, Chris had gotten his head stuck between the bars of his crib, while his mother ran the vacuum in another room. She couldn't hear his cries, and as he struggled, his neck might have snapped, had the bars not miraculously disappeared, and the power went out, alerting his mother to the commotion in his bedroom.

Then at five, he'd been chased by a neighbor's dog, a huge bull mastiff that, as Chris ran for his life, suddenly found itself stuck in a tree. A year later, he and his mother had been at the supermarket, and she'd forgotten their stamps, and as she dumped the contents of her purse on the counter, close to tears, he reached into her coat pocket, pulling them out of thin air.

The outside world would have considered these things coincidences, dumb luck, or exaggerations. Chris' mother considered it proof, that her boy was special, though she knew that already. Chris Kirkpatrick was a wizard.

It'd been twenty years since Chris had gotten that letter - he still had it, in the trunk where he kept his old robes and Rememberalls and shit - admitting him into a private school of Magic. There was some fuss, about whether or not he'd be able to go - his mother couldn't afford the electric bill, let alone cauldrons and wands, and tuition. Chris became deathly afraid that he'd only be allowed a glimpse of a dream, before it was taken away.

As it turned out, his grandmother - a witch, from whom he'd inherited his talents - had a stash of gold that she'd been saving in case he did turn out to be inclined in the family craft. Did her no good in the real world, but for the first time - at least, during the semester, in a world he sometimes thought existed only for him - Chris was financially secure.

The school was located in Florida - something to do with the weather, the humidity being conducive to good Magic - and it was not long after graduation that Chris had found himself suddenly unemployed, with a degree that'd do him no good in, like, an office doing office-y things. There wasn't much use for a wizard in the real world. Magic was just entertainment, there.

So, entertainment it was, and he wound up at Universal Studios. Made up some bullshit about having an Associate's in Psych, sang with the Hi-Tones (God bless the Wizard Choir for keeping his voice active through all those years) and did parlor tricks to amuse the tourists. Sure, let them think the bunny he pulled from the hat was an illusion, and not, like, a real bunny, pulled out of a -really- empty hat.

And he'd always wondered if it had been a stroke of magic to meet Joey Fatone - gawky Brooklyn kid with stupid hair - working over at the Beetlejuice thing. They'd just clicked so -well- and he put up with Chris' random mood so well. There was no way that some kind of fate wasn't involved in their crashing into each other - literally - at a cast function at Pleasure Island.

"God DAMN," Chris said, reeling backwards. He'd been dancing, really dancing, when he plowed head-on into something solid. A tree, or a Buick, or something. Then he opened his eyes and saw... David Schwimmer. His eyes swam back into focus, and the guy didn't REALLY look like that guy from 'Friends'. He was -much- better.

He was also glaring at him. "Can you watch where you're GOING, asshole?" he spat. The words were a little wet, probably from the red concoction in the plastic cup, the stuff that was now all over his shirt. "Shit."

An infantile, but damn funny response boiled in Chris' brain, but he held it back. "I'm sorry," he said, evenly. "Um, I could get you some-"

"What the fuck?"

The guy stood back, looking down at himself. A minute ago, he'd been covered in Kool-Aid spiked with Everclear. Suddenly, he just. Wasn't. It was just gone. Like, magic.

Chris shuddered. He'd never -ever- let it get out of his control, like that. He was always aware of it, knew how to keep it in check, and he didn't go around showing off or doing random acts of kindness. Except for the time that his youngest sister's Elmo doll lost an eye, and she wouldn't stop crying. That was an extenuating circumstance, though.

"Huh," said the guy, and Chris snapped out of his bewildered stupor. "Guess it wasn't as bad as I... Look, sorry about the asshole thing." He stuck out his hand. "I'm Joey, I work over at Beetlejuice?"

"Chris." Joey's handshake was eager and soft. "Hollywood Hi-Tones, and, um, I do a little, uh, magic on the side." It was the closest he'd ever come to admitting to a Muggle - he loved that word, Muggle, because it was actually an old '20s term for a joint - that he was a wizard. Magician wasn't that far from the truth.

They'd sat down, and talked, and by the end of the evening knew almost everything there was to know about each other. Joey was a phenomenon looking for a place to happen, it was like he was waiting for history to come by, and he'd jump on, right where he needed to be in order to make it. He was -that- kind of a person. He didn't know how he knew, but Chris just -knew-.

Maybe he figured it out when he heard Joey sing. Chris had never heard him before, but at one point they discovered a mutual appreciation for Queen - which baffled Chris, because Joey was, like, eighteen - and of course that led to a drunken rendition of "Good Old-Fashioned Loverboy," and Chris decided that day that Joey was the best singer he'd ever heard.

He still was, even six years later, after they'd met JC, and Justin, and that weird kid from Mississippi, and become a group, the biggest fucking pop group this side of Revolver. Somehow, Chris had managed to keep his talents - the otherworldly ones, anyway - a secret not just from Joey, and the rest of the guys, but the whole freaking world.

It was amazing what some talented PR people could do. Especially if you made sure that you hired only fellow alumni.

Though there were times when Chris wanted desperately to tell Joey - his best friend, the guy he sometimes had sneaky dreams about, or studied on the sly - about it, about everything. He'd come close, as close as he had come to being found out, accidentally, by his friends, by the public. He couldn't afford to be careless, and he was pretty good about it. Most of the time.

Of course, there were slip-ups.

His friend Ron had sent him, for his birthday one year, a Nimbus 4k. It wasn't the -best- of the flying brooms, but it wasn't too shabby, and Chris was deathly afraid of the fucking thing. He'd been a laughingstock in his first year, for his lack of interest in learning Quidditch, though he managed to play it off, posing as a magic nerd who hated all organized sports. He was glad that nobody knew about his hockey fetish, about how he had his mother diligently watch every Pens game and send the final scores by owl the next morning. He'd have been found out, then, as a sports nut, who secretly loved Quidditch and wished he could play.

Yeah, so he had a fear of flying.

"If the good Lord had meant for man to fly," he said, to the only person who knew about it, as far as planes went, "He would not have invented roller skates."

Joey had just snorted at him. "I will not have you mutilating Willy Wonka in my presence, twerp," he replied.

The night he received the long, thin package - by owl, and he always wondered how the guys never noticed the owls that constantly followed him around, but went about their merry way living total owl-free existences - and found that it was a Nimbus, Chris felt guilty that he'd never really tried to get over his fear, and he decided to fly.

He took the broom up onto the hotel roof, after everyone was asleep. It wasn't the smartest thing he'd ever done. Hotels are -tall- and when you're on the roof, you experience that tallness quite vividly. He tried not to look over the edge, but did anyway, and regretted it instantly when vertigo set in, retreating to a safe distance from the edge. He hopped his broom and amused himself by zooming around in a circle, two feet off the ground.

It was a start, anyway.

Then he heard the rooftop door open, and Joey's voice. He panicked, kicked once and shot up into the sky like a bat out of hell, too terrified even to scream, holding on for dear life.

"Chris?" Joey called. He sounded miles away, and Chris thought he very well have been miles away, because looking down - WHY did he keep DOING that? - Joey was little more than a pinprick of color against the gray surface of the roof. Chris squeezed his eyes shut but that made it difficult to steer, so he peeked through just one. The stars looked different. Closer.

Eventually, he was able to slow down, turn and descend back to the rooftop, where Joey was standing, looking out at the city below, still shouting his name, along with some colorful metaphors that Chris picked up as he came within earshot.

"...out here, you little fucker," Joey grumbled. "This isn't funny, it's COLD and you better not be plannin' to jump me 'cause I'll go Tyler Durden on your ass, and fuck your shit up."

Chris hovered just a foot above Joey's head, where he could see the hair thinning up top, and contemplated working up a good spit to drop on him. Instead, he zoomed away, into the shadows, for an ungraceful landing. He rolled off his broom with an audible grunt.

"Chris?"

"Yeah," he said, shuffling toward Joey, broom in hand. He wiped at his face, rubbed his nose on the back of his hand, and ran his fingers through his hair. He probably looked like shit.

"You look like shit." Joey reached out and took the broom. "Do I even -want- to know why you're up here, on the roof, with a broom?" He weighed it in his hand. "This isn't even, like, a normal broom, or nothing. Freak broom."

Chris thought fast. "Scavenger hunt," he said. "Um, with housekeeping. I gotta find the Windex, next." He smiled, a cheesy grin that made Joey roll his eyes and snicker. He thrust the broom back at Chris. "How'd you find me?"

Joey reached out and ruffled Chris' hair. "I always know where you're at," he said, fondly.

"Lonnie," Chris muttered, but Joey only smiled.

"We're watchin' DVDs in Justin's room," Joey said, herding Chris back toward the door. "You gotta come down and break the tie, Dogma or Fight Club. I do NOT want to see Ed Norton's fucked up shit -again- but Justin and Lance are, like, being militant."

"I'm on it," Chris said. "If only to satisfy my wanton lust for Kevin Smith."

Joey chuckled, held the door open for him. "You and me both, bucko," he said. They were quiet in the elevator, Joey humming under his breath, and Chris silently grateful that Joey hadn't questioned him, or his broom, or what they were doing on the roof together. It was handy, being the resident lunatic of *NSync, sometimes.

It meant that he never had to come up with -good- excuses.

That was the most dramatic of his close-calls. Other times were minor things, like Chris being too lazy to get the remote, and changing channels on the TV without it, without getting up, and not knowing Justin was in the room behind him. They'd had a few malfunctioning televisions on the bus. Toilets flushing on their own, jars of mayo floating out of the fridge, because Chris' forgotten the Hellman's on his sandwich.

He was just too damn lazy for his own good. Especially on tour.

And then there was a night, in Sacramento…

The normal stuff happened, first. They got to the city, set up shop in the Hyatt on L Street, which was too close to the Greyhound Station and made walking to the mall a block away a dodgy business altogether, and realized that Sacramento was as boring as shit. But it had a Hard Rock, which was cool, because Justin was collecting those little guitar pins, and they could tease JC about the menu thing.

And Lance bitched about a hangnail, one of those kinds that just throbbed, no matter how much you snipped at it, and he couldn't pick anything up. Chris waited until his guard was down, when he could brush his hand without him knowing it, and as they poked around the mall Lance announced that it had stopped hurting, and he didn't see Chris smile.

He didn't make a show of it, but Chris loved the other guys, and he did stuff like that for them a lot. Splinters, hangnails, sprained ankles, averted near disaster - like the wrestling match that'd almost driven Justin's hand into a light socket, and the cell phone that'd gone off to distract JC into releasing him - and generally just looked after them, kept them happy. It was a quiet way to love them, since Chris was shy about doing it out loud.

Once, after Britney had hung up on him, after a stupid fight about nothing, Justin had curled up into himself and hid in the back of the bus for hours. Chris broke one of his own rules, about letting magical things fall into the hands of non-magic people, and gave him out of his own stash a Candy-Floss Chia-Pop, a fuzzy little lollipop of pure sugar that reminded Chris of Justin's hair, sometimes. They were enchanted, to bring out good moods in sour people.

Justin had liked it, and come out of his shell, and high on sugar he'd called Britney back to make up. He didn't like to admit it, but cheering the other guys up - normally Joey's job - made Chris feel useful within the band. He knew he was necessary, with the high voice and the charm that made interviews go by smooth and quickly, but there were some times when the others overwhelmed him. They were all so talented, and the only talent Chris possessed, he had to hide.

Until Sacramento.

Arco Arena was in the middle of freaking nowhere, off in rice fields or tomato fields, or just FIELDS, with the city poking up out of the flatness behind a thin curtain of fog. They did sound check fairly early, because of an interview with KSFM in the afternoon, and they were a bit rushed which infuriated JC, who wanted to run through 'Strings' completely, rather than just the first verse and chorus.

JC was stage-left, talking to Wade and like Pavlov's dog twitching along with the playback, and Justin and Lance were bent over a Gameboy belonging to some local crew member, while being fastened into their harnesses. Joey was already strung overhead, swaying back and forth, gently, as if blown by an imagined breeze. He looked lost in thought, to Chris, who stood aside, pretending not to watch him.

"Hey Chris!" JC called, waving at him. "C'mere, gotta ask you something-"

Lance and Justin argued. "I said, it's my turn-"

Someone screamed.

"Oh my GOD, JOEY!"

The harness, had snapped, a diamond-shaped enclosure coming undone, and he'd twisted upside-down, and falling. Chris looked away from JC, long enough to see the harness swinging empty, and Joey coming down out of it. He was fifty feet up, falling head-first, and would be killed on impact.

Nothing happened. Then, "Holy shit," said JC, softly.

Justin was the first to look up, at the sound of his stunned voice. He peeked through his hands, and they fell down useless to his sides, and he nudged Lance, whose face was buried against Justin's shoulder.

"Oh my God," he said. "Look at that."

Crew members circled the stage, staring with dropped-jaws and eyes wide with disbelief, at Joey. He hovered in mid-air, upside down and just inches from the floor, held up by nothing, the harness dangling uselessly overhead. He just floated, there, seconds from death, pale-faced and looking as if he were about to throw up.

Joey looked around frantically at everyone, up at the floor and then down at the broken harness, and it seemed to dawn on him what had just happened. Then he turned, and saw Chris, and everything made complete and total sense.

He stood absolutely still, a look of solid concentration on his face that turned his eyes almost completely black. His hands were out in front of him, one empty, the other holding a long, thin piece of wood, not quite a stick, but resembling one. The end sparked gently, spitting red and gold embers, some of which swirled lazily around Joey, protectively. Like magic.

As soon as Chris caught Joey's eye, he seemed to snap out of it, and he dropped his hands quickly. Joey tumbled to the ground, and after a second, the crew pounced on him, chattering excitedly, some wiping their brows and even their eyes. Justin and Lance plowed through the mob. JC - who'd seen what Joey had - just stared at Chris.

"I, um." Chris said, batting the stick absently against his leg, showering his foot with little tiny specks of light. He shook his head a couple of times, and JC sensed an apology that Chris couldn't put words to. He looked at him, sadly, shook his head once more, and was suddenly gone.

JC, under the suspicion that Chris had not in fact run away, pushed the thought aside and went to see about Joey.

Chris reappeared in the dressing room and sat down on the nearest couch. He was sure his PR - Class of '88 - would be able to spin a believably story out of what had happened. The harness hadn't completely broken, a few strings had kept Joey from mortal injury, and anything else was just the usual hyperbole tacked on to a story about famous people to make it seem more fantastic. They'd cover for him. He knew that.

He tapped the wand anxiously against the floor. Joey, on the other hand, and JC, had seen it all. They'd seen him for what he really was, and there was no way he could silly-excuse himself out of it. They'd come to him for answers, and he'd either have to tell them, or try to lie, or not tell them. The only way to not tell them was, he thought, sadly, to not be there when they came to find him, maybe even the group. Start a Wizard Quintet, or something.

"Chris?"

Joey's voice, tentative and strained in the doorway behind him, knocked the silly notion out of his head. Chris didn't turn around. He kept his head down, concentrating on the fragments of color the tip of his wand sent skittering across the floor with each tap. "Yeah."

Joey wordlessly sat down beside him, without even asking if it was okay, because he knew it was. He reached out a hand, and Chris gave him the wand, and the sparks immediately died out. Joey waved it once through the air, with a little whistling sound, before handing it back. As soon as it was back in Chris' hand, light poured out of it, and he let it dance above them, for a moment.

"Cool," said Joey, nodding appreciatively. "So that's, like, a wand?"

Chris shrugged. "Yeah, suppose so. It's made out of pine and-" He cut himself off, not wanting to mention the heartstrings of a dragon. "I've had it since I was, like, ten. It's a little worn out."

"Since you were ten?" Chris raised his eyes to Joey's inquisitive look. "Okay," said Joey, carefully. "I'm just gonna, like, ask, okay? I mean, what-"

"I'm a wizard," Chris said, exhaling loudly. "I know, it's, like, it sounds like bullshit? But that's it, Joe. I'm a wizard, this is a magic wand, and, um. Yeah." He bent his wand, slightly, back and forth, the wood gone flexible with years of use.

Joey stared. "Um," he said. "Okay, well. Uh. I didn't know there were, like, really such things..." He looked down, and Chris saw that he was still shaking. Before, he'd have put his arms around him, but Chris suddenly felt shy. The look on Joey's face was frustration, as if he weren't quite convinced that this wasn't just another one of Chris' elaborate stories. He didn't think a hug would be too welcome, right then.

"I mean, I'm still Chris, you know?" he said, a little more defensively than he meant to. "I just, like, I don't know! I was born this way, it wasn't, like, a choice or anything. I just. Oh, hell." He nibbled at the end of his wand, a habit he'd picked up during finals, that'd left one end of it riddled with little bite-marks. Finals were -hell- in wizard school. "I just didn't know how to tell you guys..."

Joey grunted. "I can't believe you've kept it, like, a secret for this long," he said.

"I've had twenty years of practice," Chris replied, glumly. "You think being short and having a squeaky voice is bad for a kid's social life? Try having owls following you around all the time, and wanting to talk about the Quidditch Cup but nobody knowing what the fuck you're talking about."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Joey's voice betrayed his smile, Chris didn't even have to look to see it. "You're not weird, Chris. I mean, this is, um, okay, this is WEIRD, but it's the situation, and - it's not every day you find out your best friend's, like, a wizard, you know?" Joey suddenly touched Chris' arm. "But you're still Chris. You're just special."

Chris rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I know, 'special'," he said, twitching his fingers like quotation marks. "I hear it enough."

"Not that kind of special, dickhead." Joey nudged him. "I mean, okay, I always thought you were a little, y'know, Looney-Tunes. You'd say the most fucked-up shit, sometimes, but... like, it made sense, somehow, in the context of... you. To me, anyway," he added, quickly. Chris couldn't hide his blush.

"Um."

Joey leaned close. "Don't be mad, or scared, or anything, about us knowing you're a wizard," he said, softly. "I think it's cool, and - shit, Chris. You saved my fucking life." Joey's expression suddenly became grave, pale and scared. "I mean, do you even realize that? I mean, I could've been, y'know..."

He suddenly hiccupped, and Chris dropped his wand, holding out his arms and letting Joey come into them. They held on to one another, rocking back and forth just slightly, enough for comfort. Chris felt the collar of his shirt grow damp, and he was sure Joey's hair was wet, with his face buried in it, but neither of them made any sounds, except for the occasional sniffle. Slowly, Joey stopped shaking.

"Thank you," he said, eventually, lifting his head up from Chris' chest to smile weakly at him. "I mean, for, you know."

Chris pushed the hair out of his eyes. "I'd do it again," he replied. "In a second. I mean, screw it, I don't care if the whole world had to find out about me, I couldn't not do it, if it meant your life. Any life, but yours especially." Chris snorted. "Shit, I love you enough that I'd turn Justin into an azalea for you. I wouldn't even -need- an excuse for that."

Joey laughed, but didn't say anything, and he took Chris' face in his hands and kissed him, lightly, just once, then once more. He waited, and when Chris nodded - his insides too chaotic to let him speak - he kissed him again, lips parted, the way Chris had always thought they might kiss, someday, when the opportunity arose.

And he thought, as he concentrated on the taste of Joey's tongue, and the turbulence deep down inside him, the swirl of nerves and joy, that it was a kind of magic, kissing Joey, but not the kind he knew, a magic of the real world he'd only begun to learn, and he knew that Joey was the one supposed to teach him.


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