"Why do I feel as though my head is about to explode?" Hannah rolled onto her stomach and pressed her face into her pillow, not hearing another person enter the room.

"Well, if your head is about to explode then maybe I should go....after all I don't want Hannah guts all over me." She looked up and saw the face of one of her new friends, Lance, a member of the group *nsync.

"What are you doing up here? Aren't you supposed to be at the party with everyone else?"

"I just wanted to see if you were feeling better. I am human, I do care you know." He had a touch of sarcasm in his voice and Hannah picked up on it immediately.

"I'm sorry....I just feel so awful..." She pressed her face into the pillow again and moaned softly. "The pain sort of goes away when I close my eyes..."

"Then keep your eyes closed. Is it just your head?" Lance sat next to the girl who was one year younger than him, seriously concerned about her.

"No...my arms, my legs, my back, my shoulders, my every single body part hurts, even my hair hurts." She looked up at him and tried to smile. "I'm so pathetic."

"No, you�re in pain. It happens to the best of us." Lance put his hands on her back. "Where does it hurt?"

"Everywhere....it's all knots right now..." She was cut off by the warm touch of Lance massaging her back, kneading her soft flesh through her t-shirt. "Lance....." She moaned and Lance smiled. "You don't have to do this you know...."

"It's all good, I don't have anything else to do." He pressed his fingers into her back making her groan again. She lifted her long auburn hair up so that he wouldn't cause her more pain by pulling it, and Lance noticed a mole on the back of her neck.

"You have a mole on your neck." He said.

"I know..." She sighed.

"You make it sound like a bad thing." He smiled gently to himself and kept rubbing her shoulders.

"I dunno, it's never really been a big thing." She kept her eyes closed as she talked with him.

"You could get it removed...." Lance suggested and Hannah opened her eyes to look at him.

"I could never do that. It's part of me. It's just never made me feel....beautiful that's all." Sadness crept into her gaze and Lance wondered what she meant.

"How do you mean?" He stopped what he was doing and looked right into her brown eyes.

"I don't want to get into it right now......." She closed her eyes again.

"You�re worrying me Hannah. Please tell me what you meant by that?"

"Fine. But only if I can keep my eyes closed."

"Of course."

"Okay," She said, pulling back the covers of the bed for him to get in next to her. Lance was thankful that her eyes were shut: she couldn't see the red that had crept into his face. "When I was growing up I was always kind of on the outside of everything that was going on. I never really felt accepted. I always had brown eyes and plain straight hair, and I was always fat," She said that word with disgust but immediately regretted it. "I was always big-boned if you will and I never ever in my whole life felt gorgeous. I was surrounded by beautiful people." Lance could hear her unhappiness in her voice. "My sister was a year younger than me and she was sooo skinny. I always joked about wanting her body...but my parents never knew how I really felt about it." She didn't want the tear to escape from her eyes, but she couldn't stop it and before she could wipe it away, Lance's thumb brushed it from her cheek.

"Go on," He said comfortingly.

"I never had a boyfriend in high-school because nobody knew who I was, other than my friends of course. My parents always told me how jealous my sister was of me, of my talent, of my voice and of my confidence but they never knew that I was so jealous of her look. She had sooo many friends and guys flocked at her feet. Sure I could get up in front of people and sing, but I could never be so comfortable around people as she was. When I was onstage it was like I was a different person, and I didn't care who was out there because usually I couldn't see them." Lance didn't know that she could sing. He'd have to ask her about that later. "University came along and I finally had a boyfriend. Sure it didn't last longer than a week, but it was still a boyfriend right?" She laughed bitterly. "He hated me sooo much. It was a pity date and he never talked to me again after that one night." Lance's eyes opened incredulously. He couldn't believe that someone would be so rude. "I think the only person who ever told me I was beautiful was my Aunt. And that makes me sad, because if people had looked beneath what I looked like, they might have enjoyed the person who was inside." She opened her eyes to see his reaction. He was looking at her intently and she felt her skin burning under his gaze. "Now here I am...online correspondent for N SYNC and spilling my guts to someone who I barely know...I don't want you to pity me."

"I think your pretty, Hannah." Lance said softly. "From the first day I saw you I thought you were beautiful and then when I saw inside you, my feelings changed. Now I think you�re gorgeous." Her face reddened at his words and a smile tugged at the corner of her lips.

"Well, Lance, I always thought you were the cutest member of *nsync." Now it was Lance's turn to blush.

"I....I didn't know you felt that way..." He said, once again hoping that her eyes would stay shut and that she wouldn't see how red his face was.

"Yep." She sighed softly and Lance wondered if she was feeling any better.

"Does your head still hurt?" He asked quietly.

"It's getting better." She murmured and tucked herself under the covers more. They lay in silence for a few minutes, but Lance was still pondering the last statement she had made. The statement about him being her favourite.

"What did you mean when you said I was the cutest?" He asked softly, hoping that she hadn't fallen asleep.

"Hmmm?" She questioned sleepily.

"Before, you said that you always thought I was the cutest out of everybody." By everybody, he meant his group mates. "What did you mean?"

She opened her eyes and found his green ones staring down upon her. Never in her wildest dreams had she ever imagined that he would be laying next to her, she had never ever thought that he would care about what she had to say. "You were my favorite. Ever since you had that awful hairdo." He laughed and she realized that she had just insulted him. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean..."

"No, it's alright, I mean, I didn't like it too much either." His voice softened. "Go on."

"When I wasn't singing or playing piano, I was your typical teenybopper. My mother told me sooo many times that I was going to have to become mature and I was going to have to leave those boy bands behind...but I never listened to her. I always saw something in you, in your eyes, and maybe that's what helped me get over my issues." She paused to see his reaction to all this. "Issues that I still deal with. But I guess that's part of me." She giggled. "Here I was talking about you and then all of a sudden I was talking about me."

"That's alright." Lance said, secretly wishing that she would finish her train of thought.

"I always thought I saw a little bit of something in those eyes of yours. A little bit of pain, a little bit of craziness, and maybe a little bit of uncertainty." Lance couldn't believe how true her words were. "A little bit of skepticism in yourself."

"How on earth..." He whispered.

"But I could never understand that look of doubt that I could always see. Lance, please tell me. If anyone, I will understand." She put her hand on his arm gently. "And even if I don't, I will still listen."

"You're right. I was always a little cautious when it came to things. When I got that call from my voice coach I was happy that my dreams were coming true. But I wondered if they were ever going to be my friends. I wondered if they'd ever like me for anything but my voice." Lance's voice cracked. "But now I see that they do like me. In the beginning, I couldn't dance and I sucked at sight-reading. The only thing I could do really well was stay in tune. I always felt like I was holding them back." He laughed softly. "I was gunna leave them. I was gunna say that it was too much for me and that I needed a normal life. But then I really thought about it and I opened up to them. If I hadn't, I would've missed all this."

"And now look at you. Your famous and you have four of the best friends that anyone could ever ask for." She smiled at him. They lay still again, letting the quiet of the room envelope them.

"I guess I should be getting back to the whole party thing, eh?" Lance said sitting up.

"Yeah," Hannah said opening her eyes and looking straight into Lance's.

"Thanks for listening to me." He said, standing and taking his coat off the back of a chair.

"I'll always be here for you to talk to." She said softly as she pulled him into her arms for a hug.

"Okay." Lance said as he wrapped his arms around her. Into her ear, he whispered words that would stick with her forever. "I'll always think you�re beautiful."

[end]

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