Page 1 of Lance
ONE
“This is the biggest pile of crap,” Ken commented, glancing over at Lance. His teal eyes were annoyed and clearly expected Lance to be, too. Restless, Ken twisted around in his chair, its confines not even close to enough to hold his irritated energy.
“Chill, Ken,” Lance commented, draped over a chair of his own but sitting somewhat more still than Ken was. But then, that was Ken. The guy couldn’t sit still if his life depended on it, and his mouth tended to run away from him just as much. Sometimes it drove him pretty insane, but Lance had to admit that it was sort of nice to have Ken around, at least most of the time.
“I’m not gonnachill,” Ken retorted, squirming as he seemingly tried to get comfortable on the chair. “It’s crap, and you know it’s crap. Some asshole is going to try to take Darien’s place. He thinks he can just audition and walk in and we’ll all just beokaywith it …”
Lance smirked, letting his amusement come out. Ken got so worked up about stuff. Not Lance’s style, even if he could understand Ken’s annoyance on this particular subject.
Darien had been his friend, too.
“Look, Darien’s gone. He’s not going to leave his boyfriend and come back to the band,” Lance explained patiently. “So we need to replace him. And how else are we going to do that other than by auditioning people?” He caught Ken’s eyes with his own. “I mean, we both had to audition, right?”
“Yeah, that’s different, though,” Ken protested. “We auditioned at the beginning. This guy coming in, he’s some loser who thinks he can just stroll in and have us accept him. I don’t know why Lester won’t just let us be a trio. You, me, and Aaron, we got this.”
Lance frowned a little as he thought that over, listening for one moment to the shrieking diva on the stage. The guy couldn’t sing, but he was attractive, and sometimes it seemed like that counted for more. Surely Lester wouldn’t do that to them, though?
“Eh, what are you gonna do,” Lance asked, stretching out his long body, stretching his legs out as much as they could, given the confines of the area. They were sitting in a theater, with rows and rows of seats, and Lance always found such areas cramped.
Ken sighed and finally stopped twitching around, resting his head against the back of the seat as he slouched down on the red velvet, which had been worn smooth by the passage of time. They weren’t exactly the most comfortable seats in the world, which probably wasn’t helping Ken’s mood.
“I say we talk to Lester. Get Aaron on board, maybe. Tell him we’ll do this alone,” Ken proposed, and Lance stared at him with bemused wonder. Ken really did live in a fantasy world a lot of the time, it seemed, but this was something else.
“You want us to tell Lester what to do?” Lance asked, and Ken made a bit of a face but nodded to accept the point. That wasn’t how this relationship went. Lester told them what to do, not the other way around.
“Okay, so maybe we try things his way.” A crafty, sneaky look appeared on Ken’s face, and Lance wanted to laugh. Of all the people he’d ever met, Ken might just be the least suited to subterfuge of any of them. “And we give this new guy a chance. Only once he’s in …”
Lance rolled his eyes.
“Seriously?” he asked. “You want to haze the new kid? That’s pretty low.” Lance peered at his best friend, then shook his head. “Count me out, man. I don’t like this whole thing any better than you do but that’s just …”
Ken frowned, storm clouds gathering on his face, especially in his eyes. He was the sort of guy who wore his heart on his sleeve, who was terrible at holding back what he was feeling. Lance could respect that, even if he couldn’t understand it to save his life.
“Okay, but … I don’t want someone coming in and trying to take Darien’s place,” Ken whispered, and Lance looked at him thoughtfully. What exactly had happened there? He might not know all of the details, but he could tell that Ken and Darien had been more than just friends, which had to hurt when the guy had run off with someone else.
“No one can,” Lance told him, which was maybe a mistake, because Ken immediately brightened up, the sun coming out from behind those clouds to illuminate him. He’d cheered his friend up, clearly, but what exactly had he gotten himself into?
“So you’ll help me?” Ken asked, and Lance sighed and shrugged. He didn’t even know this newcomer, whoever he was going to be. And Ken was right about a couple of things.
More importantly, Ken was his friend. Ken and Aaron were the closest friends he had since he’d moved completely away from New York. He knew some people here in Los Angeles, but he wasn’t going to turn his back on his friend, maybe his only real friend, for some guy he hadn’t even met.
“Let’s just see how it goes,” Lance suggested, attempting to defuse the situation a little bit. But Ken just grinned at him and winked, then rose to his feet, stretching his stocky, muscular body out and giving it a little shake.
“I’m out of here,” he announced. Not really a surprise, since Ken didn’t like to spend too much time sitting still. Lance shrugged and rose to his feet, too. He could use a smoke, and he was getting a little tired of hearing terrible singers and thinking about the nightmares that they’d cause if they got into the group.
“Boys, a word?” Lester commented, and Lance jumped, turning abruptly to glare at their manager.
“Don’tdothat,” he complained. “Seriously, it’s creepy how you just come out of nowhere like that.”
Lester, unsurprisingly, ignored his comment. He just looked at them both, eyeing them up and down like he was measuring them for their coffins. That was how ominous it felt, and not only that, it seemed like he was actually enjoying the mental image. Which only made it about a thousand times freakier.
“We gotta talk,” Lester announced, still with that look on his face. Only now it looked grim, too, and Lance mentally fortified himself against whatever the guy was about to say.
“So talk,” Ken commented, crossing his arms over his chest and glowering. Lance got the distinct impression that Ken didn’t like Lester, but then, who did? They didn’t have to like the guy to work with him.
“Lance …” Lester turned to him and handed him a cell phone, and Lance instinctively looked down at the screen, then frowned.
“It’s me,” he pointed out, feeling a little bit like someone had been spying on him as he changed. Yes, he was fully clothed in the picture, with his arm around a pretty blonde woman, but the picture had been taken without his knowledge, and he didn’t like that much at all.
