By Trixie

Chris only wants one thing for his birthday this year, and he's on a mission to get it. It's probably not one of the smartest things he's done-- getting in the car and setting out on a road trip only three hours into his birthday--but it feels necessary. According to Mapquest, it takes 16 and a half hours to get from Miami, Florida to Clinton, Mississippi. He intends to make it in 14.

He squints at the clock on his dashboard as he pulls off I-75 to get gas and caffeine. It's 8:00 AM, and he's almost to Tallahassee, so he figures he's making good time. He's supposed to be having lunch with his mom and Taylor before driving with JC up to Orlando to have dinner and go out with Justin. He's pretty sure that Justin has some kind of party planned, but he can't worry about that right now. After he fills up his tank and gets his thermos refilled with coffee, he drives through McDonald's for an Egg McMuffin and a couple of hash-browns and then calls his mom. He doesn't tell her what he's doing. He's not sure he can explain it. He just tells her that something came up and he had to go out of town. He tells her not to worry and that he'll make it up to her as soon as he gets back.

He does feel a little bit bad about the fact that he left JC passed out on his living room couch with only a note and a set of car keys saying, "Had to go somewhere. Take the Cruiser to J's. I'll call later." But he doesn't call, because he's pretty sure that JC would be able to talk him out of this trip, and he doesn't want to be talked out of it.

It's irrational and crazy, and Chris knows it. But he also knows that until he can see Lance, until he can assure himself that the email he'd read, the one about a Soyuz rocket that had blown up on its platform in Russia, had nothing to do with Lance, he's not going to be anything but irrational and crazy.

And goddamn Lance anyway for coming back from Russia--finally!--and wanting to spend time with his family. He'd called Chris from Justin's suite in London and apologized for not being able to get back to Florida in time for Chris's birthday. He'd sounded really nice and apologetic when he said, "I can't just drop into Clinton for a day and then fly off to Orlando. Everyone's got plans and shit, and I really want to spend some time with my parents, you know?"

And Chris was fine with that. Really he was. He's waited for the last six months--or seven years, he's not sure-- so another few days was no big deal. No big deal until yesterday. It was JC that had subscribed them all to a space news update service to forward any articles on Lance and the ISS. Things changed so much and Lance was so busy that it was impossible for him to keep them up to date. Chris would like to hate him for that, except that it was JC who talked him down from a full-blown panic attack and then had calmly picked up the phone and called Lance in Mississippi. He'd chatted with him for a few minutes while Chris sat and listened and tried to breath normally again. When JC wanted to hand the phone off to him, he shook his head because he felt like an idiot, but it was enough just to hear Lance's muffled rumble on the other side of the phone.

Last night, JC had made dinner for him and they had drunk a few bottles of wine that JC was trying to convince Chris to like, and then smoked a shit-load of weed until JC passed out around 1:30. Chris had waited just as long as it took to sober up enough to be able to drive his Cherokee before leaving JC the note and grabbing his keys and wallet. Now he's half way to Clinton and he has no idea what he's going to say or do when he gets there, just that he has to get there.

It ends up taking nearly fifteen hours to get to Clinton because he pulls off near Mobile to stretch out in the back and sleep for an hour and a half. Because he might be irrational and crazy, but he's not stupid, and nodding off twice on the Interstate is enough to scare him into stopping.

"Chris!" Diane pulls him into a hug as soon as she sees him. "What on earth on you doing here?" She seems not only surprised to see him, but honestly baffled by his appearance.

Chris chuckles and winks. "I came to see if you'd gotten rid of your husband yet, so we can run off to some tropical paradise together." Flirting with Lance's mom is an old, unbreakable habit, one he started because she seemed to enjoy it, and because it annoyed the hell out of Lance.

She sighs theatrically and puts her arm around Chris's shoulder, leading him into the kitchen. "He seems to want to stick around. Quite an inconvenience."

"I live in hope," he answers with a grin. "Lance around?"

"No, honey, he left this morning. Have a seat. You want some tea?" She opens the fridge to grab a pitcher before Chris can even answer, so he just nods and sits down at the breakfast bar in her big, airy kitchen.

"When's he gonna be back? I can hang out and wait."

"Chris," she says with a shake of her head and sets the full glass down in front of him. "Lance flew back to Orlando. For your surprise party. The question is, what are you doing here?"

"Orlan… what?" And then he realizes exactly how stupid he's been. He carefully moves the glass out of the way and then bangs his forehead down on the counter. "Oh for fuck's sake!" and then, "sorry, Diane," because no one is allowed to cuss in front of Mama Bass. It's one of Lance's rules.

"It's all right, sweetie," she says and pats him on the back of the head. "I think it seems appropriate under the circumstances."

"I am too stupid to live," he says, sitting up and looking at her sheepishly.

"Yes," she nods and raises her eyebrow exactly like Lance does when he thinks the person he's talking to is full of shit. "Stupid is precisely what I think of when I think of Chris Kirkpatrick." Then she actually rolls her eyes and Chris has to laugh. She hands him the sugar bowl and pats his hand. "Drink your tea. I'll get the phone."

Chris puts two spoonfuls into his tea and stirs it up. Diane makes her tea sweet, but it's never sweet enough for him, and it makes him smile that she knows that. He takes a long drink of the tea and rubs his eyes, wishing he could just go to bed and wake up and start this day over again-- or rather, yesterday. When he looks up again, Diane hands him the phone and sits down across from him. Justin's number is already keyed up on the display and he just has to hit send.

"Hey J," he says when Justin answers his phone.

"Chris! Where the fuck are you? JC said you just disappeared, and we've been calling your cell phone and every fucking place we can think of. What the fuck, Chris?!"

"I'm in Clinton. Drinking Mama Bass' iced tea."

"What?!" Chris flinches as Justin's voice goes up into registers that even his own voice rarely reaches. "What are you…? Why…? The fuck, Chris? You stupid son-of-a… what are you doing in fucking Clinton? I can't bel…"

Chris can hear a commotion on the other end of the line and then Justin's screeching voice is replaced by a completely different voice.

"Chris? What are you doing in Clinton?" Lance asks, and he sounds annoyed and relieved at the same time, but mostly he just sounds fucking good.

"Hangin' out with your mom," he answers, suddenly finding the humor in all of this mess. "What are you doing in Orlando?"

"Waiting for you to show up for your surprise party, you dork. Did you drive?"

"I hate flying, man," Chris says, knowing that it's enough of an answer. "Sorry about the party."

"Fuck the party, Kirkpatrick," Lance growls and Chris has to blink because wow, that's something he never expected to hear come out of Lance "Party-Boy" Bass' mouth. "Hang on," he says, and then he's gone and Chris can only hear muffled voices arguing in the background.

He drinks some more tea and waits. After a few minutes, Lance comes back and Chris can still hear Justin's voice in the background, but now it's barking orders. "All right, here's the deal," Lance says. "You stay put. Stay at Mom's house, eat some dinner, get some sleep, whatever. But Chris," Lance sighs, "don't. go. anywhere. You hear me?"

"Okay, Scoop," Chris says, smiling at Lance's tone, and then he yawns because really, he couldn't go anywhere else if he wanted to. "Whatever you want."

"Good. Now let me talk to Mom." Chris hands the phone over to Diane and puts his head down on his arm. He closes his eyes, listening to Diane's soft voice. He looks up when he hears her hang up the phone.

"What'd he say?" he asks.

"He told me to feed you and keep you here. They're going to fly out in Justin's charter as soon as they can work out the details. How do you feel about reheated chicken-fried steak?"

"That'd be fabulous," he says and puts his chin in his hand, watching her move around the kitchen. It's something that they'd never tell their own moms, but they all pretty much agree that Mama Bass is the best cook, although it's a pretty close tie if they take Phyllis Fatone's marinara into account.

She heats up chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes and gravy and fried okra, and she sets it down in front of him with another glass of tea and a promise of apple pie for desert. She tells him that Jim is out at Stacy's place for the evening and Chris grins and says, "So it's just us girls, eh?"

She nods and then pins him with a Mama-Bass-serious-business look and asks, "Chris why did you drive out here?"

He puts down his fork-full of mashed potatoes and sighs, then shrugs. It's no use making up a story because she has a better bullshit-o-meter than his own, but he has no intention of telling her the whole story. "I saw a thing about some rocket exploding in Russia. I just... I wanted to see him, you know?"

Diane nods and says, "I understand." And Chris can tell that she does. He can see the same knowledge of horrible possibility in her eyes that he feels, only he's sure that whatever he feels pales in comparison.

"Yeah. Crazy kid," he says softly and goes back to his food.

Because the thing is, Chris loves all of the guys and he'd probably be freaking out if any of them were planning to strap themselves to a rocket and ride it into space. Hell, Justin's solo foray scares the hell out of him. But this... Lance is different. He's a special case because six months ago, there had been a silly drunken night on tour when they'd ended up in bed together. The next morning Lance had freaked out and that had been the end of it.

Except that it wasn't the end of it for Chris, it was only the beginning. Or maybe it wasn't the beginning, just a catalyst for things that he'd felt a long time. Whatever, he wanted a lot more than one drunken night on tour and Lance had seemed to want anything but him. Freddy suddenly became a more permanent fixture and Chris had backed off, because really, what else was he going to do?

And then last month, the e-mails had started. They didn't get to talk to Lance very often because the combination of time-zones and Lance's heavy schedule made it impossible to catch him. So, mostly they heard from him by e-mail. And recently, the e-mails to Chris had gotten more frequent and more intimate. Lance had started talking about things-- things that he never, ever talked about, like his reasons for wanting to go to space, like his need to prove something to his father, like the real reasons that his last few relationships hadn't worked out. Chris wasn't really sure what to think about them until that last subject came up.

I'm not very good with boyfriends, I guess, he'd written. I already have to share space with four other guys and there's not much room left, you know? Also, I can be a real jerk sometimes. Maybe I need someone who already knows that about me.

Later he'd said, me and Freddy aren't sleeping together anymore. He's still helping me out, but I broke it off. He's just not what I want.

In his last e-mail, he had talked about how much he loved the training, and how exhausted he was and then he had said, I want to go up. I really do. But I also can't wait to come home. I miss things. I miss you.

And that had been it, aside from e-mails sent to all the guys to let them know what was happening, and then the call from London. And it's frustrating as hell for Chris because this isn't Lance. The Lance he is used to either says what he means bluntly or doesn't say anything at all. Chris can read between JC and Justin's lines, but he's never learned to do that with Lance because he's never needed to.

He just really, really wants to see Lance again so he can start trying to figure him out.

He eats the rest of his meal mostly in silence. When he's done, Diane tries to convince him to go lie down in the guest room, but despite the fact that he's been awake for over 24 hours, he's reached that point of exhaustion where his nerves are on edge, and he doesn't think there is any way he's going to be able to sleep. Instead he goes out on the sun-porch with Diane and stretches out on the big comfy couch they have out there and watches the Discovery channel with her. The last thing he remembers is petting Lance's little dog Lexi and watching some show about mummies.

"Stupid little crazy fucking freak," Justin is mumbling as they buckle themselves in for the flight to Jackson. "I swear to god, I am never throwing him a party again."

Lance filters his complaining out because, really, he's been doing it since they talked to Chris and it's getting a little old now. And Lance figures he has just as much reason to complain because he's spent the past three days on flights across the world, from Russia to London, then London to New York, where he got to see Joey for a whole two hours in the VIP lounge at JFK before getting on another flight to Jackson. He had less than a day with his family before he got on another plane to Orlando so he could be at Chris's party.

But he's having a hard time working up any kind of real anger or annoyance at Chris's little stunt. It's typical of Chris to throw a wrench into the works of any carefully crafted plan, and it's hard to be angry at someone who just drove 16 hours straight just to see Lance. He looks out the window and grins to himself at the thought.

"Oh my god," Justin exclaims. "You're grinning. You think this is fucking cute, don't you?" he accuses, pointing a finger at Lance.

Lance tries really hard not to blush, but it's one of the few things he hasn't figured out how to control.

"Oh good lord," Justin throws his hands up, but his mouth quirks up at the corners. "You two deserve each other." Then he's grinning for real because Justin Timberlake has never been able to resist a little romance.

"Dude," JC chimes in, "it's romantic. It's like... like a John Cusack movie, or something."

"Whatever, man. All I know is that I left my house full of people in the hands of Trace and Nick and I'm going to have to pay for this little unplanned flight. Jive sure as hell ain't gonna do it."

"I'll cover it, Justin," Lance says.

"Fuck off. You will not. Consider it my gift to the two of you freaks. It's the least I can do to help this grand love affair fucking get under way already."

And as cranky as he sounds, Lance knows that he means it. He knows because when he was in London, he sat down and told Justin how he felt about Chris. He told him that he was in love with Chris, and he thought that Chris might feel something for him too. He had done it because he was scared to death that he'd blown things completely, and he'd figured telling Justin was like a dress rehearsal, because however Justin reacted would help him gauge Chris's eventual reaction. That's just the way the two of them work.

Justin had just looked at him and said, "Thank fuckin' God, he's driving me nuts with the pining," and "If you hurt him, I'll beat the shit out of you. Or... something bad." Then he'd hugged Lance and told him they had to throw Chris a surprise birthday party, and Lance had known that everything was okay.

JC has a point, though, Lance thinks. This whole thing is taking on the air of madcap romantic comedy and Lance really hates drama. He just really wants to see Chris, he wants to wish him a happy birthday and he really, desperately wants to kiss him.

The thing is, Lance had been thrilled about going to Russia, not just because he was going to get to live a dream, but also a little because he really wanted to get as far away from the other guys as he could. They'd been living in each other's pockets for almost seven years and sometimes he just got really tired of being Lance-from-NYSNC. And he got what he needed out of Russia-- he went over there and he worked his ass off and he walked away with a certificate that said Lance Bass on it, even if he didn't make it into space.

Yet, he adds mentally. Yet.

But he had also had a lot of time to think and he'd come to a few conclusions. First, accomplishing something by himself, while satisfying, wasn't nearly as fun as accomplishing it with the other guys. Two, he maybe kind of liked being Lance-from-NSYNC more than he'd ever admitted to himself before. Three, and most importantly at the moment, he really missed Chris.

There's a rental car waiting for them at the airport, and as Lance pulls into his parents' driveway at 11:35, he says a little thank you that they'd made it before Chris's birthday was actually over. He nudges JC to wake him and looks in the rear view mirror to see Justin grinning at him.

"It's gonna be fine, dude," Justin says and opens the back door, "Might even be perfect." He grabs the cake box off the seat next to him. It is, in fact, only a portion of the big sheet cake that Justin had ordered for the party. He had not been happy about having to cut up the Naked-Lady-on-Harley design, but Lance figures it's one of the best things to come out of this mess.

JC just slings an arm over Lance's shoulders and hugs him before towing him up to the house. His mom meets them just inside the front door and hugs Justin and JC before kissing him on the cheek and saying, "He's asleep in the sun room. Go wake him up."

Chris is asleep on the big dark green couch, Lexi curled up into a little ball next to him. He's got a hand buried in her fur, his other hand tucked under his cheek. Lance thinks it might be one of the cutest things he's ever seen, and it makes him shake his head at his declining objectivity. He listens to his mom and the guys talking in the kitchen for a minute before moving into the room. Lexi looks up, bounds off the couch with a little yelp and jumps all over his feet in excitement, so he leans over and scratches her ears before looking up to see Chris blinking up at him.

"Hi," Lance says, moving toward the couch. Before he can get too close, Chris is up and off the couch and wrapped around him with a squeak of "Lance!" that sounds suspiciously like Lexi's yelp. It makes Lance laugh, but he wraps his arms around Chris and hugs back just as tightly.

And yeah, this is exactly what he needed. They're all touchers-- Joey gives the biggest, hardest hugs and Justin clings like nobody's business and JC is all about little, fleeting touches to keep himself grounded, connected. It's something that Lance had to get used to back in the early days, but once he did, it became something he needed too. But Chris... Chris needs physical contact more than any of them. It's the only thing that can calm him down, cheer him up, or ground him when he's emotional. Lance remembers, after he collapsed, Chris crawling into his bed in the middle of the night, long after visiting hours at the hospital. He did the same with Joey after he hurt his leg, and during the lawsuit Chris routinely curled up with one of them for hours on end until he was able to go out and face it all again. So there's nothing sexual about this hug, it's just Chris reconnecting with one of his wayward lambs, and Lance thinks that he wanted this even more than anything else.

After a minute, Chris rubs his face against Lance's shoulder and then pulls back to look at him. "Jesus, look at you," he says, "you're all skinny and hard. My little cosmonaut," he laughs and reaches up to ruffle Lance's hair, then kisses his forehead.

"Look at you," Lance replies, scrubbing a hand over Chris's buzzcut. He likes it, the feel of it, the way it makes Chris look so open, soft. "Sorry I missed the mohawk. I like this, though."

"Yeah?" Chris asks and hugs Lance again, sighing. "You feel good."

"You too," Lance says and now things are different. The hug isn't about comfort anymore, it's about Chris and Lance and what happens next. He can see his mom and the guys standing in the doorway out of the corner of his eye, but he doesn't care. He kind of thinks that it's now or never, so he takes a deep breath and says, "Chris?"

"Yeah," Chris says, and it's not a question. It sounds more like an agreement, an acknowledgment. Chris pulls back and leans in to whisper in his ear. "I'd totally fucking kiss you right now if your mom wasn't watching."

Lance laughs and grabs Chris's face with a grin because his mom is not a problem. She knows everything and she even approves, which is almost a first for any of his boyfriends. "Happy Birthday, Chris," he says and then leans forward and kisses Chris. Chris just squeaks and then leans into the kiss, wrapping his arms tighter around Lance and opening his mouth. He tastes so fucking good and feels exactly right and Lance is pretty much just happy.

When he needs to breathe he pulls away, keeping their foreheads touching and grins. "Amazing."

"Yeah," Chris says and laughs. And then there's applause and catcalls and the moment is pretty much over but that's okay, because Lance got exactly what he wanted.

Justin and JC start singing Happy Birthday. Lance joins in and he realizes that there was something else he really missed while he was gone. He doesn't think he's sung anything, except in the shower, for months. He wraps his arms around Chris from behind and holds on while Chris blows out his candles and says, "Best birthday ever."

There's cake and champagne and a lot of ribbing on Chris about his impromptu road trip, and presents are opened. Joey calls and Lance isn't sure what he says to Chris, but Chris laughs and then nods seriously and looks at Lance in a way that makes his belly do the same kind of flip it made during his parabolic flights.

Later, they put in Joey's present, which is something he calls The Real Reel NSYNC, the edit of footage from those early days in Europe that he made just for the five of them. Lance curls up on the couch with Chris next to him, arms wrapped around him and his head on Lance's shoulder. He watches a smaller, younger version of Chris on the screen bouncing off walls and stopping only to make a lewd suggestion and lick a much younger, dorky-looking Lance's cheek to make him blush and scrub at it. He laughs and Chris snores in his ear, and Lance thinks that being Lance Bass is underrated, and that being Lance-from-NYSNC is something he's pretty good at, but he's really looking forward to being part of Lance-and-Chris. It's a whole new challenge ahead of him, and there's nothing he loves more than a challenge.

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