“Get with it, Lance!” Justin shoved his bandmate into the wall, and the other boy’s head made a clunking sound against the concrete. His nose was smashed, and Justin [who was the youngest diva any of them had ever met], who had towered over Lance before, shrunk into the corner shouting for someone to help. Lance sank down the wall pinching the bridge of his nose, trying to stop blood from spilling onto his shirt. Tears dripped from his chin too, but they didn’t make a scarlet stain like the blood did. He thought maybe he was sobbing, but when Joey came down the hall, calling for Justin, asking, “what’s wrong, Curly?” he didn’t know Lance was there too. Joe wasn’t prepared to see the youngest of the five guys slumped against the wall of a nameless corridor crying. He stopped, and was soundless, but Justin kept crying for help. Lance was finally able to speak through his own silence: “Joe, help me up, get me something to clean myself up with, and get someone to call a doctor.” Of course, Joey did was he was told, because even when the crisis was happening to himself, Lance seemed to be the one who had his head tightest on his shoulders. Just as Joey was helping Lance off the floor, Chris hauled Justin up; Justin who had stopped crying and was now mumbling “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” and wiping his cheeks with his fists like a three year old.

“What the fuck happened here?” Chris asked with a protectiveness they’d never heard him use for Lance before. Justin shrunk before him and started to cry again. Lance almost wanted to stay there and see what Chris did to him, but he knew he had to go get cleaned up. He could hear Joey coaxing him.

“I was just playin’ man, I didn’t mean for him to get hurt.” Justin kept talking but was hushed by JC folding him into his arms like a child.

“It doesn’t matter how it happened, J—” JC started quietly but Chris cut him off.

“It does so matter how the fuck it happened. What if Lance had passed out? What if he has a concussion? What if—”

“Chris!” JC shouted at the older man. Chris stood defiant, but kept quiet. “Lance isn’t going to die. It doesn’t matter right this second what happened. All that matters is that we get him to a doctor.” Justin pulled away from JC then, and reached for Chris, his best friend, but Chris pulled away from him. Glaring, he turned his back and followed the path that Joey and Lance had taken only minutes before.

When he got around the corner though, he leaned against the wall as if all the energy had drained from him. JC had been right; Lance was going to be fine. Chris didn’t understand why he felt like Justin should be paying for what he did to Lance; they were brothers, and sometimes they got into scraps. But as Chris sighed and followed in the path of Joe and Lance, JC peered around the corner, and silently feared for the group’s dynamic.

Things like this had been happening more and more lately. It was like they had been together for too long now, they needed to be apart for longer than a weekend at a time. They were starting to feel the effects of cabin fever, and they needed to relax. JC himself wanted to go to this great spa he’d heard about on the internet. He wanted to be bathed in mud and massaged and left to soak in lavender.

And that was when JC decided they needed a vacation. He knew it probably wouldn’t last very long, just two or three days on their own, without the constant feeling that the person behind you knew more about you than you did. They all needed to be apart and figure out that they needed to be around each other. The only way to show them all was to make them all do something different.

JC figured they would mostly be on the same page as far as having separate vacations was concerned. The only one he was vaguely concerned about was Justin—that boy’s separate life with Britney rivalled all that they held together as a group of best friends. Maybe he could convince Justin to go away without Britney.

And maybe while he was at the spa there would be purple elephants there too.

So he didn’t know how long it would last, or how he’d get them all to agree, but he knew that when they all got back together again, everything would be new again, and they’d be closer than ever.

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