"I don't understand." Young Lance can't seem to meet Lance's eyes.

"It happens, sometimes."

"Really?"

"It happened to JC," Lance offers, which seems to encourage his younger self, who walked through the door that morning and didn’t seem all that surprised.

"JC? Really?"

Lance nods. He wants to do something to take that lost look out of this kid's face, but there's not much he can say without broaching that long list of information they've all decided should be kept from him. Right now, he's pretty much walking around and touching everything, taking it all in. He seems a little sad. "Everyone is so different," he says, and scratches at his white-blond hair.

"We're just older," Lance promises, and he means it. "Everyone's the same. Even Chris," he adds. He's seen young Lance sneaking curious, hopeful glances at Chris, who's probably the least changed of any of them. The younger him doesn't say anything, so he lets it drop. "It's late. We should probably go to bed."

"Okay."

He had forgotten how easily he used to take orders; how every request was met with no resistance whatsoever. The lawsuit had been the first time he'd ever dug in his heels over something, but he definitely isn’t allowed to talk about that, either.

The guys are taking up all his guest rooms, and Lance wants to keep an eye on his visitor, so he drags out the guest pillows and piles them onto the other side of his own bed. “Okay?” he asks, and then realizes that it’s nicer than anything he had ever slept on when he was that young. Not that this Lance is a baby. He says he’s eighteen, and the truth is, Lance doesn’t remember a whole lot about that time period. It had all happened so quickly that sometimes it seems he was born, fell into a wind tunnel of screams and woke up alone in this big, fancy house. It’s probably all the pot from over the years, which his momma warned him against but was too comforting to resist.

“How did you get like that?”

Lance tosses his t-shirt into the hamper and glances down at his bare chest, pleased. “I work out. A lot,” he admits. “It sucks.” It does suck, but it pays off at times like this, when people look at him the way young Lance is looking right now.

“Can I turn the light off?” young Lance asks, standing by the side of the bed, eyes fixed on the line of muscle above Lance’s waistband.

“Yeah,” he laughs softly, and they climb into bed at the same time. It takes them both a while to get comfortable, but slowly, Lance starts to relax.

“Are you happy?” his younger self asks quietly. “I mean, is everything good?’

Lance blinks up at the dark ceiling. He searches around for an answer until he finds one that feels honest. “Yeah,” he answers firmly. “Everything’s good.”

***

When Lance wakes up, he stumbles into the bathroom and is immediately wide awake, shocked into alertness by the sight of his face, which is familiar and unfamiliar all at once. “Oh my GOD,” he yells. “Oh my GOD.” He can’t stop saying it, until Chris and Justin rush in to see what’s the matter. “Look!” he insists, and points at his nose, which is big and flawed on his face, exactly the way it used to be.

“What’s wrong?” Justin asks, even though the answer is so obvious that Lance doesn’t know how they can’t see it.

“My fucking nose!” he shouts, and then steps out of the bathroom to turn an accusing glare on his younger self, who has got to have something to do with this.

“I didn’t like it,” young Lance says coolly.

“So you, what? Altered the future? You can’t do that! Do you have any idea what I went through to get this fixed?”

“It looked…weird.”

“Oh, really? Last night you liked the way I looked just fine!” At this, Chris raises and eyebrow and glances toward young Lance, who flushes bright red, a habit that Lance lost years ago.

Justin ignores that exchange, because Justin avoids drama until it becomes absolutely necessary, at which time he embraces it and redefines the word. But for now, he just purses his mouth while he studies Lance’s face. “It did look kind of weird,” Justin says thoughtfully. “Yeah, this looks more like you.”

“More like him, you mean,” Lance argues, and stalks back into the bathroom, his face burning with all the anger he can’t release because he’s not quite sure where to direct it. Chris follows.

Lance puts his hands on the counter and looks down into the sink, unwilling to look at his face again until he can start to accept that he’s been fucked over. He can feel Chris next to him, staring.

“What?” he snaps. The smooth marble feels good against his palms, and slowly, his distress begin to abate. Until Chris opens his mouth.

“Dude. Did you have sex with yourself last night?”

Lance can’t suppress a mean smirk. “You mean did I jerk off?”

“No! Did you do it with him?” Chris hisses, as though it’s any of his business.

“God, how egotistical do you think I am, Chris? Of course I didn’t fucking have sex with him.” In an attempt to get rid of Chris, he unwraps the towel from around his waist and steps inside the shower. “Also, that’s just…”

He’s still trying to think of a word to describe it long after Chris has gone.

***

Lance finds his younger self with Justin, out on the back patio, chatting and sunning themselves on Lance’s posh reclining lounge chairs.

“I can’t wait to tell my Justin he’s gonna be a big star,” young Lance says earnestly, and is rewarded with a brilliant smile from Justin.

“He already knows,” Justin replies, and tips his head back to catch the sun. “Trust me baby, he already knows.”

***

Lance almost can’t bear to watch young Lance with Chris. He hasn’t thought about it in so long, but it had been nearly impossible back then to be around Chris’ clever hands and extraordinarily pretty mouth without being able to have them or to even admit to wanting them. He’s never seen it from this vantage before, and it’s even worse having to witness the way young Lance smiles at everything Chris says, and then gives away everything with his eyes.

“Pretty wild, huh?” JC says slyly. “Man, you were so…you know.”

Lance stops dead in his tracks. “What?”

“You know. Back then,” JC shrugs, still smiling.

“I don’t know how I was,” Lance tells him, and he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to.

“I dunno. So ready for it, or something. Hungry,” JC says absently, and rubs his fingers against his scruffy jaw. “I guess you outgrew it or something? You seem good now.”

“I am. I’m good,” Lance repeats. “Really good.”

“I wish we could tell him more stuff,” JC sighs. He drapes his arms around Lance’s back and together they watch Chris and young Lance teaming up against Justin in the pool.

“What would you tell him?” Lance leans back into JC’s solid weight and shuts his eyes so he doesn’t have to see the way young Lance reaches for Chris, always reaches and never takes hold.

“About Lou, I think. To get his heart checked out. And…to watch out for the bad salmon at that Millennium party.” He laughs, and Lance laughs along with him, heady with relief.

***

Still wet from the pool and shivering, young Lance tracks him down in his bedroom, where Lance is trying to make some phone calls without the curious stares of the other guys. What Lance hates most is the way everyone keeps looking at him as though they’re seeing him for the first time. It’s why he’s worked so hard to change himself, after all, so that everyone would forget about his long-gone gawkiness that it makes him cringe to remember.

“Hey,” young Lance says tentatively after Lance hangs up. “Do you have something I can wear? My clothes from yesterday are kind of gross.” He’s soft and appealing with a towel wrapped around his shoulders and his wet hair sticking up in a hundred wrong directions. He doesn’t look at all how Lance remembers feeling at that age, which was invisible to any guy he was interested in. He’s not invisible, though; Lance sees everything from the smooth, flawless skin to the bulk of muscle that hides beneath a soft layer of padding.

“Take anything you want,” Lance tells him, and curls his fingers into his palm so that he won’t touch the bare expanse of skin on the back of his neck. The other Lance disappears into the massive walk-in closet and reappears a few minutes later, tugging at a pair of low-riding jeans that don’t fit quite right.

Lance doesn’t say anything, but watches as the other Lance looks miserably into the mirror and tugs the plain black t-shirt down lower. “Maybe some sweatpants,” he mumbles, and Lance hates the blush that’s spreading from his cheeks down his neck.

“Hey,” he says, and tosses his phone onto the bed. Young Lance is tense when Lance goes to stand beside him, but he knows the self-loathing that’s running around in this kid’s head, and it’s so wrong that he used to do this to himself—still does it to himself, actually. Maybe he’ll never be able to stop. “These were custom made,” he explains. “For me. So, they don’t fit anybody but me.”

The younger Lance nods, but Lance knows what that’s about, too. “You look good,” he tries again. This time he touches his finger to the bare sliver of hip the jeans don’t quite cover, and rubs softly. “Really good,” he says again, because sexy sounds wrong. A shiver of regret races through him at the startling truth of it and he steps back, away from the other Lance’s questioning eyes.

“Take anything you want,” he says again, and grabs his phone from the bed. “I’ll be downstairs.”

***

The other Lance goes to bed while the rest of them stay up and try to figure out what to do with him. Joey and JC don’t see why they have to do anything at all, but Chris seems just as concerned as Lance about getting the kid back to wherever he came from.

“And he’s sweet,” JC adds to his already lengthy list of things he loves about this Lance. He’s in love with what’s happening because when this same thing had happened to him, it had apparently been a priceless growing experience. “Man, you were just so fucking sweet back then.”

“The only reason he got away with all that shit,” Chris says absently, flipping through channels. “With being such a sarcastic bitch.”

“He did!” Joey laughs. His arm comes around Lance and squeezes hard until Lance thwaps him on the chest. “Dude, you did. You had it made.”

“Not sweet,” he corrects them, while displaying his middle finger for Chris. “A virgin,” he says, just so he can watch their faces transform with shock.

“No way!” JC exclaims, awestruck.

Only Chris says nothing, but remains completely engrossed in the television. Maybe he knows how wrong it is for this young Lance to be here, but Lance is too afraid to ask.

***

The other Lance is still awake when Lance comes to bed. He’s lying in wait, and as soon as Lance gets settled in he clears his throat and asks, with a hint of accusation, “Remember this morning? What were you and Chris doing in the bathroom?”

Lance groans and buries his face in his pillow. “What is with you two? He asked me the exact same thing.”

Beside him, the other Lance laughs mildly; a low, pained sound. “He thinks you’re doing that? With me?”

“Apparently, yes.”

There’s a long silence, during which Lance remembers what it had been like not to want Chris so much but to hope for it on a daily basis. He supposes he should say something encouraging; something inspirational like JC had done for his own younger self when it had happened to him, but he doesn’t know what can make this right.

“I know you don’t like having me here,” young Lance says, frowning, mistaking Lance’s silence for something else entirely. He’s so young, fresh and untouched in spite of the fact that at eighteen Lance had wanted nothing more than to be touched, nothing more than to fuck and be fucked, and how it had felt like it would never happen.

Lance drags his gaze away from the masculine, deceivingly mature line of the other Lance’s throat. “It’s not you-“ Lance begins.

“-it’s me,” his younger self says wryly. “That line doesn’t exactly work in this situation, does it?”

“I’m sorry,” Lance says, because it really doesn’t.

***

He’s nearly asleep when the other Lance grows restless and squirms endlessly, rearranging his pillow and moving his feet around under the blankets.

“What,” he finally asks.

“Sorry. It’s just…I was thinking about something.”

“No kidding.”

“Shut up. I was just thinking, Chris was thinking about us having sex. Me and you,” his younger self says slowly, as though the idea is still taking shape in his mind. “I mean, he brought it up. He was thinking about us. And maybe picturing it and stuff.”

Lance is suddenly wide awake, and his younger self won’t stop talking.

“I think he thought it was sexy.”

Lance goes warm all over. His body is already reacting to the direction they’re heading, his skin tingling and alive with slow-building arousal. “I don’t know,” he says carefully. “Don’t you think it’s kind of…” wrong. incestuous.. sexy, oh god pleaseletmetouchyou.

His younger self is quiet for a moment, and then lets out a long sigh as though he’s been holding his breath. “No,” he answers. “I think it’s like- like masturbation. Right? Like getting yourself off.”

If that isn’t enough to make his cock swell that last bit into full hardness, then the sudden harsh breathing of the other Lance is. “Probably better than getting yourself off,” Lance says, and rolls carefully onto his side. It’s probably a lot better. The very idea of it makes him clutch the blanket in his hands so he won’t reach out and see for himself. “Look. I know you’ve never-“

“-but you have, right?” young Lance asks, a desperate tension in his voice. “Oh my God, please tell me that I’m eventually going to do it.”

“You are,” he assures him. He remembers being that desperate for it, and how he’d thought that Chris justhad to be the one. “Eventually.”

“I hate waiting,” his younger self whispers hoarsely, and Lance remembers that, too.

“I know,” he says, and moves closer. Young Lance doesn’t move away; instead, he turns his face toward Lance, open to anything, inviting everything. “So, you really think it’d be like jerking off?” Lance encourages him.

“I think so.” Young Lance nods and swallows hard. “I mean, if I touched you, I’d do it the same exact way I do myself. And it would, um. Your dick would feel the same in my hand.”

Lance’s eyes flutter shut when he leans forward and catches young Lance’s mouth in a soft kiss. “And what about my hand?” he whispers. This, he knows how to do; so many people have melted under his advances, but none of them have tasted as sweet as this unspoiled version of himself.

He answers his own question by closing his hand over young Lance’s erection, hot even a thick layer of cotton briefs. His hand fits perfectly, and the kid had been dead on; it feels just like his own, and Lance’s hand moves accordingly.

The other Lance isn’t experienced enough to concentrate on more than one thing at once. He’s so awestruck by the hand stroking his cock that Lance has to coax his mouth open with a patient tongue until young Lance remembers to kiss back; warm, eager kisses that beg for sex. When his hand slips inside the other Lance’s underwear and his fingers slide down to cup his balls, Lance gets a sharp gasp followed by a rapturous moan that unfortunately occurs just two seconds after the door has creaked open.

“Oh, shit. Sorry, I’m.” Chris sounds, for once, genuinely flabbergasted.

Lance yanks his hand out of the other Lance’s underwear and squints at the light that spills in from the hallway. “Chris,” he hisses. “Shut the fucking door!” The light immediately shrinks into darkness.

Lance places his hand on young Lance’s chest, trying to soothe, because Chris is still inside the room, undistinguishable in the darkness. Against his palm, Lance can feel the other Lance’s heart beating out a hopeful, frantic rhythm.

“What do you want?” he asks Chris. The last word is said on a shudder, because young Lance’s hips, tucked against Lance’s belly, can’t seem to stay completely still. At least Chris can’t see what they’re doing; even if there were any light, their bodies are ensconced in a cave of blankets, their bodies already heating up and filling the small space with the scent of their mutual arousal.

“I was just going to…uh. Are you really going to pretend you’re not getting it on with yourself in there? I knew it!” Chris is rapidly losing whatever reservations he’d initially held about the situation. “Kinky,” he adds slyly.

“A hand job is not kinky.” Lance glares in Chris’ general direction, even if he can’t see him.

“Ask if he wants to join us,” his younger self pleads into Lance’s neck, a whisper so soft that Lance almost doesn’t hear it.

“No,” he whispers back. No fucking way. He’s gone this long without being laughed at by Chris- at least for this particular thing- he’s not about to set himself up for it now. He rolls away from the other Lance and climbs out of bed, jerking on his robe before turning on the bedside lamp.

It figures that young Lance is smooth and golden in the lamplight, tousled and sporting an enormous bulge where the blanket is draped over his crotch. Chris can’t take his eyes off of him, and Lance can’t take his eyes off Chris.

“He wants…I was going to…” Lance stops, because there aren’t any words to make it sound normal or healthy in any way. “You should,” he says firmly. “If you want to. I’m gonna crash with Joey.”

He shuts the door behind him and doesn’t look back.


***
***
The day the other Lance disappears, Lance has to take a meeting first thing in the morning. It’s a real meeting with real grown-up clients, so he puts on a suit and listens to his people tell him about earnings and losses until it’s time to go home. His goes directly into the kitchen when he gets home, and finds Chris sitting at the table.

“Everyone else gone?”

“Yeah.”

Lance nods and loosens his tie before making himself a bagel with strawberry jelly. It’s like an awkward morning after without the benefit of actual sex.

“He said some interesting things.”

Lance shrugs. “He’s young. Kind of stupid.”

Chris looks at him sharply. “He wasn’t- you weren’t stupid.”

Lance doesn’t know how to respond, so he just chews his bagel, which is dry and tasteless on his tongue.

“He said-“

Lance can’t stand it. “Stop!” he says, too loudly. “I don’t want to know what he said! Don’t you think I can guess?”

“But.” Chris is still rumpled and sleepy-eyed, like he’s just come from bed. When Lance takes a second look, he notices that Chris is also squinting suspiciously at him. “But don’t you…I mean, wouldn’t you…remember?”

He was supposed to remember what young Lance said to Chris as they were fucking? Hardly, Lance thinks balefully. Maybe if it were him Chris had bothered paying attention to, but it wasn’t. It had been- Lance shakes his head and tries to get a grasp on what’s happening, because something inside him is shifting, making room for whatever it is that’s coming, which is the crashing realization that Chris had been with him last night.

The truth is so staggering, Lance has to brace his hand on the counter while the memory flickers and flares into an aged but vivid recollection of everything that took place between his young, smitten self and an older, calmer Chris.

He remembers being kissed. He remembers being touched, first by his older self and then being handed over to Chris, so excited he could barely breathe when Chris climbed into bed with him.

He remembers exactly what he had said, and shame courses through every part of him when he thinks of how earnest he’d been, how he had trembled and unfolded under Chris’ hands and mouth.

“That wasn’t me,” he says stiffly. He’s smooth and suave; an expert at sucking cock and a methodical lover. He doesn’t pant and whimper from a simple kiss anymore, Chris needs to understand this. He’s not a loser.

“You think I don’t know who I was sleeping with last night?”

“Look,” Lance sighs. His eyes feel tired and he shuts them, sagging against the counter. “I’m not mad at you. He was really…”

“He was you, Bass.” With his eyes closed, Lance is more tuned in to Chris’ voice; to the high, familiar tone that always sounds on the verge of a taunt. A joke is always coming next, so Lance waits for it. No doubt he’ll be the target after all the things he saw in the brand new memory of something that happened seven years ago. “I know who you are,” Chris insists stubbornly.

“What is it that you want?” Lance pushes away from the counter and stuffs his napkin and the remainder of his bagel in the garbage can. He feels as though he’s been punched in the gut. Who knew that getting what he wanted all along would feel so awful? The problem is that the memory is so distant, like it happened to someone else, so for Chris to insist that they had shared something…what, special?

That’s probably not what Chris is saying at all, now that he thinks about it.

“I don’t know. Maybe you can tell me how you could fuck me last night and then act like it’s the worst decision you’ve ever made.”

“It wasn’t ME!” Lance yells, and he can’t believe he’s actually storming out of the kitchen but he is, anything to get away from Chris, who follows closely behind, and screeches,

“IT WAS YOU!” so loudly that Lance cringes.

“Sure, Chris. If he’s so me, then how come you jumped into bed with him after two days, and you have never once shown any interest in me, Lance, the real me!”

Chris gapes, then glares, then gapes again. “What? Are you serious? What about all those times I pantsed you on the bus? Or, or the time I stole your ipod and uploaded all those love songs?”

Lance pauses, at a loss. “Are you serious? I thought you were just being an asshole.”

Chris opens his mouth, then shuts it and smiles.

“But you never took me to bed,” Lance adds weakly.

“Nobody ever just handed you over to me like that. All naked and ready for it.” Chris defends, gesturing wildly. Ready for it. That’s what JC had said about him, too.

For the first time all week, Lance lets himself really look at Chris, who is smirking and moving toward him. “C’mere,” he says when he reaches Lance, and closes the last bit of room between them by reaching out and tugging at Lance’s tie until Lance has no choice but to stumble forward into Chris’ space.

***

The dark stubble on Chris’ jaw has always been a temptation, and while looking at it in the muted light in his bedroom, Lance comes to the slow realization that he’s finally allowed to touch it. Touching leads to kissing, and Chris kisses like he has something to prove; deep, urgent kisses that shock Lance to the core because of what’s behind them.

His hands are as clever as Lance has always imagined, as he quickly undresses them both, then tumbles Lance onto the bed. Somewhere in his head, Lance wants to take charge, but he can’t seem to stray from Chris’ mouth, where they communicate better than they ever have with words, where every stroke of tongue is a question, every scrape of teeth an answer.

“I like you better like this,” Chris finally pants against Lance’s neck, hot puffs of breath that seize Lance’s body with the sensation of hot and cold all at once. “Less blonde. Sexy.”

Lance doesn’t know how to reply because he’s always liked Chris’ dark hair, dark eyes, and everything about him. In fact, Lance has always coveted one thing most of all, so he makes his way down Chris’ body until he rests in the juncture between his legs, where he presses his face against Chris’ erection and draws his tongue up the length.

Chris’ thighs feel wonderful in his hands, and he smells delicious, like sex, where Lance licks and sucks and finally draws the smooth, swollen head into his mouth. There’s no mistaking what Chris wants when he groans and spreads his legs. Lance’s hands wander lower while his mouth goes methodically up and down, and he moans deep in his throat when his finger, which he had only meant to tease with, slides damply into Chris, who is soft as velvet around his finger.

He could take Lance’s cock right now, Lance knows, and has to stop himself from just rutting against the bed. He could take Lance’s cock now because he’s ready, still lubed and relaxed from last night, which is…Lance lifts his mouth away from Chris’ dick and looks at his face, his flushed cheeks and swollen mouth. It’s actually kind of hot, Lance thinks, and pushes another finger into Chris just because he knows he can.

“Anytime now, c’mon,” Chris moans, and Lance doesn’t argue.

As it turns out, Lance isn’t the cool, suave lover that he had thought himself to be. He wants it so badly that his hands tremble, until Chris takes Lance’s hands in his own and with a long, thoughtful look, hooks his feet around Lance’s waist and draws him down until he’s pressed so far into Chris that he can’t tremble, can’t do anything but move with Chris, in him and on him until he can’t not do it. He remembers this. The softness of Chris’ body and how he hated it so much on himself but loves how it feels now, the way he never had a chance at being in control when Chris is letting him do this intimate, long-desired thing.

Chris’ kisses are the only thing that anchor him, and when Lance comes he buries his burning face in Chris’ neck, unable to chase away the intrusive memory of what he’d said last time they’d done this. Somehow, he knows Chris is thinking the same thing, and it would be awkward if only he didn’t feel so good with his dick inside a hot, tight place and his body plastered wetly against Chris’. The best, possibly most surprising part, is the way that Chris drops small, silent kisses along Lance’s forehead while they lie there, holding each other.

“I knew it was you,” Chris says, but instead of smug, he sounds relieved. There’s no point in arguing, so Lance tips his face up for another kiss.