Cc: wenlittle@home.com
Hi all! I didn't intend to send this so soon, but my dear readers have been guilty tripping me (cough cough Jrok cough cough), so here it is, chapter 11. As always, a big thank you to Nifty and David, and my other archiver in shining armor Dennis. Much appreciation and gratitude goes out to my readers, ALL of you, including Casey, Aph, Wen, Jrok, Kyriel2, Lora, Danni (liking the story Danni!) and Aimee. A few plugs - For amazing drama, check out "A Tale of Two Boybands", "Intimate Stranger" and "Playing For Keeps". For beautiful romance, try "A Love Like This", "Nsync: Lance n JC" and "Devotion". For a just plain good story, try "Decisions" (which I'm in the middle of), "Little White Lies", "A Little Bit of Love", and sample "Calming Waters". It's bizarre, but fascinating. DISCLAIMER: Own no one, imply nothing. I seriously doubt any of this happened. I like to mix some true stuff in with my fiction, but I think I can safely say this is mostly stuff that never has and never will happen. Why are you reading this anyway? :) AUTHOR'S NOTE: An interesting little tidbit of info here - this chapter is my favorite of the whole story. I'm not sure why, it came very quickly. But I hope you like it too. This section also is where I got the title "No Painless Way" from, for those of you curious about the name. Okay, i'll shut up now and let you read. :)
~NO PAINLESS WAY~ by DaraLynn Chapter 11
"It's strange how pain marks our faces, and makes us look like family."
- Stephen King, 'The Green Mile'
"...still no suspects named in the abduction of 'Nsync's Justin Timberlake-"
"...cooperating fully with the Orlando PD-"
"...those with information are asked to contact-"
"...he's our baby brother. We're lost without him-"
"...had returned to Orlando for a two-week-"
"...I'm not gonna lose you...I love you, Curly..."
Timothy Korman slumped where he sat on the hotel bed. He'd been watching the news reports, forcing himself to, trying to put up a front of indifference. But that last one was too much. The anguish in the distraught singer's voice was worse than the hysterical parents and the weeping fans combined.
It had been just another assignment. A check in Korman's wallet. A file in his briefcase. The folder's pages contained the boy's height, eye color, address...simple statistics. No where had it said that the 'package' was possibly the most envied and loved child in the country. No one had told Korman that his action that day, under the shade of a sacred tree, would plunge seemingly the whole world into fear and mourning.
The plan had been precise, perfect. It just hadn't included the cold weight Korman felt in his stomach. He switched off the TV, unable to bear the grief it showed him.
//God, how many lives did I destroy? Why is this time so different from the others? Sure, this kid is famous, but...it's not that. It's something else.//
Everywhere Korman looked he saw that sunny smile, crowned with friendly blue eyes and golden curls. He saw Justin chatting happily with his friends in the Hard Rock Cafe, and remembered how the tall, brown-haired bandmate had hovered around the boy protectively.
//How many lives?//
The hated cell phone rang just once before he picked it up.
"Hello?"
"Korman, as I said, I have another job for you. One of my employees has been extremely helpful and I wish to reward his loyalty. It's well that you stayed in Orlando."
"Another kidnapping, sir?"
Elwood laughed. "Why do you sound so glum? It's what you're good at, after all. To answer your question, yes."
"Sir...I don't think I can."
"And why not, Korman? I'm making you a wealthy man."
"Mr. Elwood...I...was thinking I should probably go see my family."
The laugh he received was pitiless. "They still believe that 'travelling salesman' story? Or do you want to dazzle the wife with the tale of how you helped deliver the world's favorite teen heartthrob into my awaiting hands? And that's where he spent a good part of this morning, you know - in my busy hands."
"Stop it!" Korman yelled, his fear for the man momentarily forgotten.
The voice on the other line chilled the room. "No, Korman. You stop it. Stop letting this silly remorse torment you. Justin is safer with me than he would be anywhere else. I would never hurt him - I want him to be happy. In fact, I even intend to bring one of his friends here so he won't get lonely when I'm not around.
"Which brings me to your assignemnt, Korman..." ------------------------------------------------------------------------
As was to be expected, Orlando had been turned upside-down in the wake of Justin's disappearance. Only the Harless neighborhood was eerily quiet, thanks to the huge police force keeping fans and reporters out. Neighborhood residents had been very cooperative and sympathetic, stopping by periodically with kind words and platters of cookies. The former were gratefully accepted, the latter piled in the kitchen. No one had much of an appetite, even Joey.
The area was safe and secure, for what it was worth. Everywhere else police departments were corresponding with Orlando's - running background checks, questioning various persons, even circulating Justin's picture, for the few who didn't know what he looked like.
Justin's bandmates and family walked around the large house like zombies, breaking down and comforting in turns. Randall Timberlake had remembered aloud the talent show Justin had done when he was eight, and spent the next three hours crying too hard to speak. Diane Bass and Lance had talked alone for a while, and both reemerged with more understanding of the other. Lynn and Paul bravely tried to keep everyone busy and hopeful, but it was no easy task. The house had become, it seemed, the focal point of all the world's misery.
With their bodyguards in the usual places at their sides, the four remaining 'Nsyncers had fallen into the familiar pattern of sharing the work at hand. Because of his ability to stay calm, Lance did most of the talking to the press and, the rest of the time, concentrated on trying to sense Justin. Chris spent his time with the detectives, suggesting and answering, and served as the self-appointed Comfort Guy to Justin's family. Joey was monitoring the newspaper and TV reports, which only someone as naturally-optimistic as him could have handled.
Police and criminologists discussed Justin as if he were a misplaced object; people wondered if he was still alive. Scenes of candle-lit prayer vigils around the country gave way to similar but foreign footage, in which girls and their mothers pleaded with God in languages Joey didn't understand. On MTV and VH1, other artists and VJs expressed their concern between the 'Nsync videos that played continuously like a morbidly-cheerful tribute. Serena Altschul burst into tears during an MTV news break, remembering the giggly boy she had interviewed.
Schools were half-empty, missing the students whose parents couldn't pry them away from the news reports, or take the tear-stained pin-ups from their hands. Churches, synagogues and places of worship world-wide filled with fans young and old, some praying earnestly for the first time. Joey, who had never really given God too much thought, fervently begged the one Justin had never doubted.
And J.C....well, J.C. did anything he was asked to, but without emotion. Sometimes he seemed like his own ghost, a dimmed version of what he once was. The creature his heart beat for had been snatched away, and the best part of J.C. had followed him. It took all the twenty-two-year-old's strength to keep breathing and moving.
At the moment, he could only do one, as he sat motionless on the sun-warmed ground beneath the basketball net. He didn't look up as Lance tentatively approached and sat down next to him.
"Hi, J.C."
J.C. Lance, Joey and Chris all called him that pretty often. They said 'Josh' too, but Justin rarely used any other appellation for his friend. Lance knew this, and here in one of Justin's favorite places, couldn't utter the name just then. The silent man sitting next to him had been 'J.C.' since his Mouseketeer days, but wasn't quite as much 'Josh' without Justin around.
"Hey, Scoop."
Lance glanced at the basketball in front of J.C.
"Why are you out here? It just makes you hurt more."
J.C. met his friend's eyes with a confused look. "How do you know that?"
"C, I can feel it. It flows off you like heat. These waves of terrible pain."
J.C. sighed, and slipped an arm around his younger brother, pulling him closer.
"I'm sorry I'm hurting you, Lansten."
"It's okay. I'm hurting on my own anyway."
"Do you always feel what people around you are feeling?"
Lance thought for a moment. "Usually, if it's strong. It's easier with people I know. And care about."
"I love you too, Poo-Fu."
Lance leaned his head against J.C.'s shoulder, and J.C. rested his cheek on the gelled blond spikes.
"It's not fair that you should have to feel other people's pain," J.C. murmured. "It's no way to live."
"It's my way, C. You know, when I was fourteen I was on my school baseball team. One afternoon I was finishing getting changed after practice when I felt this awful feeling of hopelessness wash over me. So I followed it to where it was coming from. In one of the empty classrooms, my algebra teacher was at her desk sobbing. As I got closer I saw that she had a gun."
"Oh shit..." J.C. unconsciously tightened his arm around Lance.
"Yeah. When I went in she hid it and tried to pretend nothing was wrong, but I wouldn't let it go. After about ten minutes she finally broke down again and told me that her husband had passed away and that she couldn't live without him. That she was dying inside and she wanted to finish the job."
"What did you do?"
"I don't remember everything I said, but I told her that she was still alive and that's how her husband wanted her to be. I made her tell me all the good things she still had left, and pretty soon she realized that she had a lot to live for."
"So she didn't do it?"
"Nope. Actually, she just got remarried last year. When I went home that day I was terrified that she might reconsider and use the gun, but on Monday morning before class she hugged me and thanked me for saving her life."
"Wow." J.C. was amazed.
"Yeah. Ever since then she's called me her 'angel'. She kept saying that without me she wouldn't be alive, that I had given her hope again."
J.C. smiled with understanding; after all, he had an angel too.
"It's a good thing you sensed something was wrong."
"Exactly. A good thing. It does hurt me sometimes, but whatever I have lets me help people. There's no painless way to live, J.C., and there shouldn't be. If no one was ever sad, joy would have no meaning. Light wouldn't be such a relief if it didn't follow darkness. I didn't ask for this, but I have it. And if I can help others, it's worth it."
J.C. shook his head as Lance gently pulled away.
"God, Scoop. How do you know so much?"
"The truth of things and people is what I see, Josh. It's been the curse and the blessing of my life. I can feel what others feel. I know what exists between you and Justin. I think, deep down, I always have."
"You know?! How long have you known?"
"We all know how you feel about Justin."
J.C. nodded. He had told them shortly after the group was formed, at the same time he'd revealed to them that he was gay.
"I started to sense that Justin felt the same way about you early last year. I was thrilled beyond words, but it wasn't my place to say anything to either of you."
The older man nodded with understanding.
"Besides, I'd never been sure about the impressions I get before. Mentioning what I sensed between you would have been taking a chance that could've hurt one or both of you. I wasn't certain until the morning after we got here, when he came out and joined us here on the court."
A sad smile painted J.C.'s face. "I had just found out how he feels the night we arrived...Lance, you knew for sure that morning?"
The soft green eyes looked at him gently.
"Josh, there's always been this bond between the two of you. For years I thought it was just the strongest friendship that ever existed. That day, I knew it to be more. C, the link that you and Justin have is so powerful that I can almost see it when I'm near you both. That's why I'm so sure we'll get him back. God doesn't create something so right just to break it.
Love does triumph, Josh. What you and Just have is the most perfect harmony that life contains, and the full horror of man's cruelty can't destroy it. You will, we will, get Justin back."
J.C. looked hopefully at his friend for the first time in days. "You speak so beautifully, Lance. Do you really believe all that?"
The blond smiled back with quiet wisdom. "I have to, Josh. If I doubt that, I doubt my whole life and everything I know. I've never been in love, but I know soul-mates when I see them."
J.C. put his arm around Lance again. "You'll have what me and Justin have someday, Scoop. And God, will she be lucky!"
"He."
J.C. wasn't as surprised as he thought he would be.
"You're gay? Why didn't you tell us?"
Lance giggled, a sweet, musical sound. "You never asked. No, really, I guess I figured you knew. What, no bleep on your gay-dar?"
The dearly-missed sound of J.C.'s laughter filled the air. "No nothing on my gay-dar. You, like, didn't register at all."
Lance sighed sadly. "Maybe that's prophetic. Maybe some people just don't find love."
J.C. squeezed his friend affectionately.
"Don't you dare say that! Do you have any idea how many guys out there would shoot their parents just to get close to you?"
Lance laughed. "Gee, that sure makes me happy."
"Lance, being that we're both gay and we're such close friends, I can say this to you. You are one of the sweetest, most brilliant, most perfect beings God ever put on this earth. And, not to embarass you, but you are so gorgeous. Seriously, if I didn't have my angel I'd be stalking you."
The teenager laughed again, blushing. "Thanks, Josh. That means a lot. Deep down I do believe that there's someone out there for me. And someday I'll have the same magic you and Curly do. It's just...sometimes it seems so far away, when I'm burdened with the pain people around me feel." The voice was suddenly sad.
J.C. lifted his other arm up and pulled Lance into a warm embrace, patting the boy's back soothingly.
"Feel how I feel," he instructed.
Lance closed his eyes and opened his mind. Instantly it was flooded with J.C.'s love and admiration for the younger man, with the knowing how much J.C. needed Lance, how special the blond was to him. Lance felt the heaviness in his heart lighten, and he knew that the love of his friends and family would always keep him from drowning in the suffering that was heaped upon him. The pain that his innocent soul bravely accepted.
"I feel it, Josh...thank you."
J.C. didn't let go. "Tune into it whever you need to, Scoop...it's always there."
He held the blond tightly, one of the two fragile creatures J.C. had taken it upon himself to protect. With the hope Lance had given him, and the reassurance J.C. had given back, the two friends clung to eachother a while longer, each drawing strength from the other.
~to be continued~ Questions and comments (no flames) to DaraLynn_writings@hotmail.com, please