Tomorrow Held Such Better Days

By:  Sierra

 

:: I never conquered, rarely came ::

:: But tomorrow holds such better days ::

 

His finger tapped against the window softly, the hollow sound of its 'thump, thump, thump' mingling with the raindrops outside.

 

'It's not like I wanted it this way,' he thought. 'I wanted everything to stay the same. If anything, I've learned that change is definitely very, very bad.'

 

He let his finger streak down the window with a slight squeak, tracing the drops that rolled down around it an inch on the other side of the glass. Closing his eyes, Lance felt a shiver run through his body.

 

'It almost looks holy,' he thought. He pressed an entire hand to the cool glass, staring placidly out at the dark landscape passing by, swept across with rain and empty expanses. Something inside of him wanted to break through and shatter that glass. Something inside of him wanted to jump through the broken shards and start running to the center of those lonely hills.

 

He would get such satisfaction out of screaming until his throat was sore, letting the rain stream down his face and merge with the tears that would finally be able to pronounce all of his pain. He actually wanted those tears, since maybe then it would show that he was still capable of feeling. He longed for nothing more then to stare into a mirror and see his eyes red and puffy, with the wetness trailing and finally rolling into the corners of his mouth, which would be open and grasping heavily for breath.

 

He wanted to cry so badly. So very, very badly. Maybe if he cried hard enough, the hurt would just leak away…

 

Instead, all he ever saw in the mirror was his haggard appearance, with low sunken eyes, ruffled, unkept hair, and a mouth that showed no emotion unless someone forced it to. He wouldn't be surprised if the mirror cracked or hid in the bathtub out of disgust. He knew he looked hideous. In fact, he knew the reflection in the mirror was a pitiful, worthless creature that only dragged himself around from day to day because it had to.

That creature didn't really deserve to live.

 

```

"You look like shit, Bass."

 

'Go fuck yourself, Chasez. I hate you more then life itself, and I wish you would finally go drive your car full speed into a brick wall. I hate, hate, hate you,' he thought.

 

"Thanks. And I love you too." Lance puckered up a mock kiss to the man walking into the room. There was a Coke can in JC's hand, a loose piece of hair falling across his face lightly, and a sleepy look on his face as if he had just woken up. Lance had learned to notice those little things about him subconsciously.

 

Meeting eyes with JC for only a second, he turned back to the horror flick he had rented with Chris, and folded his arms across his chest. Inside, the tiny amount of emotion that still screamed in him hoarsely shouted for the man staring down at him to probe further, to ask what was wrong, and what he could possibly do to help.

 

Instead, the man shrugged his shoulders and turned away, reaching up onto a shelf and pulling down a blue tube. With a slight smile, he suddenly flung the tube across the room at Lance, striking it right into his left shoulder. Lance filched and grabbed for his shoulder, as the gel fell heavily to the ground.

 

"Well, then. Use it," JC laughed.

 

Without a thought and with rage flowing through him, Lance reached down for the hair gel. The sudden rush of anger made his vision blurry and he groped down for it with his hands. Making contact with it, he held it tight and squeezed its sides, breathing heavily. Jumping off the couch, he threw the tube up against the furthest window, immediately splattering it open. A solid 'smack' echoed from the window, which was drenched in the clear liquid, clinging on in droplets. As the gel oozed down the window, Lance growled and lunged toward JC, knocking him off his feet and sprawling him on the floor.

 

"I hate you," he hissed in his face, slamming JC's shoulders onto the carpet. "Because you just… don't… get it."

 

JC stared back up at Lance, struggling to get to get out from under his grasp. As Lance's eyes bored into JC's so intently, JC's eyes began to search all along the ground, never quite meeting Lance's, and instead looking for a way to flip the man on top of him.

 

"What the hell are you ranting about, Bass?"

 

"Fuck it then," Lance growled, averting his eyes and suddenly getting off the shocked man on the floor.

 

JC laughed as he watched Lance climb to his feet and leave the room with a slam of the door. "What? What was that about??"

 

"He knows you were just kidding, dude," Chris murmured, from his position on a couch across the room. "He's just in a mood, you know how it is. Justin himself is off in one of those. Maybe Lance'll go find him." Chris reached into his bowl and munched thoughtfully on a handful of popcorn.

 

"Misery loves company, you know."

 

JC pushed himself to his feet and shrugged. Trying to push aside the uncomfortable feeling Lance had left him with, he glanced at the horror flick emitting small screams out of the television. "Yeah, I guess you're right."

 

Chris looked up at him with a smirk. "Of course I am. Popcorn?"

 

```

Out of all the people he knew, Lance expected Chris to be the one that would notice his change in behavior. "He studied psychology, for god-fucking sake. Everyone knows that," he whispered to himself, letting his body slide lower in the seat next to his window. The soft pattering of the rain brought him back to the present, and he massaged a place on his neck where the chair's material had pressed uncomfortably into his skin.

 

'I mean, I see the signs and I only took a semester of it in high school.' He pushed the sleeves of his tee shirt up on his shoulders, since even though he felt a chill, he was sweating and felt over-heated. 'The irregular eating patterns, always wanting to sleep, the feeling of everything spiraling out of control…'

 

He put his head in his hands as he could barely focus on one thought to the next. 'It's true. It's all getting too much for me. I can't even fucking think straight anymore.'

 

Lance took his hands off his head and turned to look in his reflection in the window. 'But what do I know? I'm such a dense, mother fucking idiot. All I am is a fake, ugly, boring asshole.'

He could feel his thoughts taking a familiar downward spiraling path, but Lance couldn’t care enough to stop them. He kept his vision focused on the window, where in the dim night lights of the bus merged with the dark sky outside. In that sort of lighting, he could easily stare in disgust at his reflection.

 

'The only reason people even talk to me is because they have to. They all hate me and can't stand me, really. Well, I hate them. All the mother fuckers. All of them.' He sighed.

 

'I hate them because they don't see that I've changed. All of this,' he let his eyes sweep around the bus, 'has changed me, and I honestly can't take it anymore. Or maybe worse,' he felt his stomach dive drastically, 'they see that I've changed… and they just don't care.'

 

With that thought, he suddenly clutched his stomach and turned his cheek to the chair material on his seat, letting out a moan.

 

"Ohh, it hurts…", he whispered through clenched teeth. Closing his eyes tightly, Lance then doubled over on his stomach, putting out a hand to steady himself on the chair in front of him.

 

"Ohh…," he groaned, feeling the darkness and pain wash over him. "It all hurts so damn much…"

 

He didn't expect physical pain to come with all the emotional pain he was feeling. Still, there he was- feeling like he was being run over by the very bus he was riding, over and over and over again. The pain in his stomach shot up into his ribcage and made it very hard for him to breathe, until he was only able to squeak out slight coughs in gasping breaths.

 

'Why so much pain?', he thought, his mind swimming in dark, deep, and bottomless waters of curses and bad memories. 'Fuck. It. All. God, make it go away…'

 

The spiraling path his mind was taking him on went down, down, down on a dirt road into the pits of his despair. It was trying to show him more memories- memories that tugged at his heart and made him want to scream. When he wasn't able to stop from remembering anymore, the pain began to pound in his head and stomach even harder.

 

```

"So… you don't understand what I'm saying, Joe?" Lance strummed the small kitchen table provided for them on the bus, looking Joey straight in the eye.

 

"No, I do understand what you're trying to say, Lance, and I think you have to realize that all of this is just in your mind." Joey sighed and ran a hand through his hair, reaching out with that hand to hold Lance's shoulder in a comforting grip.

 

Lance shied away from that touch, feeling that the very words Joey had just spoken were the worst ones possible he could have said. "You don't understand, Joe. You really don't. Something's wrong with me, I think I can feel it. I can feel everything changing. It's just… different."

 

Joey shook his head and kept his hold on Lance's shoulder steady. "Look. We've all changed, and there's nothing I can do about that. There's nothing wrong with you, Lance. Like I said, it's all just in your mind."

 

Lance finally shrugged his shoulder away from Joey's touch when his friend uttered those last words. He glanced to the floor with a scowl and shook his head, denying everything that Joey was trying to feed him.

 

Joey nodded animatedly. "Yes, Lance, yes. Now stop moping and go do something. We're all busy around here, and you're not the only one with problems to face." As soon as those words stung at Lance and made him quietly retreat even farther into himself, Joey glanced up to see another person enter the room. "There you are, JC. Ready?"

 

At JC's name, Lance's head shot up, and he took in the man that had captured his attention so intently for the past few months, in ways he could never explain. In the hurtful, dark ocean that Lance was floundering in at that moment, he wanted nothing more then to see JC's smile, toward him.

 

"Yeah, ready Joe. Let's get going." JC didn't turn his head in Lance's direction at all, and only reached down to pick up a backpack before shouldering it and walking straight to the bus steps.

 

Through his haze, Lance saw Joey push himself away from the table and begin to join JC near the stairs, without so much as a glance backward at the broken man at the small yellow table. In his desperation, Lance called out as innocently as possible, "Hey, JC! Where're you guys going?"

 

JC, a few steps down the bus already, looked back into the room through the railing slots quickly and without much interest. "Oh, yeah. Hey… Lance. Just… the park. Yeah, the park."

 

"Bye," Lance offered weakly. His face was stretched toward where JC had turned his head back away. JC's eyes only met Joey's, as he tried to hurry his friend along in an annoyed manner.

"Mmm," was JC's only distracted response. With that, the two men were gone.

 

Lance then buried his head in his hands, trying desperately not to fall apart. Not only did he have problems that weren't really there, he was being selfish, by making his "problems" into bigger proportions then they really held. And besides for the hurt and despair that was eating him away without an explanation, he was totally, utterly alone. The only person he truly loved didn't even realize he was alive, let alone cared about him in the same way. Lance knew he would have been able to stand it all if JC had offered him a smile. Just one smile. At least to show that he knew he existed, and not just to taunt and ridicule.

 

```

Lance felt his face. By then, there should have been tears, giant, streaming tears that would soak into the overly manufactured carpet beneath his feet. There wasn't even a rage at the man in his memories that had simply looked over him, when he had tried so hard to cling to that one happy aspect of his life.

 

Instead, there was nothing. There was a hollowness, an emptiness, and a giant, gaping hole, where all of his emotions should have been. In place of that was only the pain, the never ending, life-long, horrible pain. It was almost like all the emotion he had ever felt- no matter how wonderful or saddening, had been gathered up and taken across the border, dumped into the water, and covered over by layers of concrete. He would gladly pay any price or ransom to buy those emotions back and feed them back into his body, but a part of Lance knew they were gone forever.

 

As he sat there, all of the voices from his memories began to swarm together, digging the emotions deeper and cutting out an even more hollow soul, a soul which used to be a man called Lance Bass.

 

Chris peered down into his face. "Smile for me man, I haven't seen one of those in ages from you. It's like… depressing."

 

Justin shook his shoulders. "Fuck you, Bass. Maybe if you had a little more energy, you wouldn't keep screwing up the moves."

 

Joey stared straight at him. "There's nothing wrong with you. We're all busy around here, and you're not the only one with problems to face."

 

And JC said nothing at all.

 

That was the essence of it all that was enough to make him groan in pain. The simple fact that JC was completely silent and could care less what was bothering him or that he was acting differently was the force that sent him the momentum to rise up off of the chair and move unsteadily into the aisle of the bus.

 

He glanced, with sober eyes, once toward the front of the bus, once toward the back, where dim lights were pouring out from under the kitchen cabinets and onto the counter. The bathroom and bunks beyond were enclosed in darkness.

 

And then, he had made up his mind. Swaying in the movement of the bus, he hitched up the sleeves of his thin-bare white tee-shirt again and suddenly felt an energy he hadn't in as long as he could remember. The energy felt good, but he knew it would only last as long as he followed through with his decision. It felt good to have finally decided.

 

The walk toward the bathroom was longer then he remembered it, but maybe that was because he was walking so slowly toward it. His bare feet padded the carpet softly, and he made sure to steady himself quietly on the walls of the bus when it shifted in movement. When Lance finally reached the bathroom, he reached blindly inside to flick on the closest light, running his hand up the wallpaper unsteadily and finally making contact. The light made a soft click, immediately flooding the bathroom with light, which also poured straight out into the hallway and down it a bit, so that the bunks his band mates were sleeping in were lit up as well.

 

Lance studied each bunk, covered with a dark red curtain. He could pick out Joey's, Justin's, Chris', and finally, JC's. Normally, a small moan would have escaped from his throat when he saw that JC's arm had fallen lazily out of the bunk in his sleep, stretching his hand down toward the floor a few feet below him. Instead, he stared at the arm numbly, and turned away from the soft creaminess of the hand, steadying his own hand on the bathroom doorway beside him.

 

"And here we go…," he whispered.

 

He walked into the bathroom and toward the mirror, not bothering to grimace at his reflection. 'I have a reflection?', he thought absently. 'That's strange. I don't even feel my body.'

The mirror only looked like a shiny piece of metal at that point, and he opened the smooth metal with one hand, exposing rows and rows of labeled plastic and glass bottles. Picking out a bright white plastic one carefully, he shut the metal/mirror again, even though he didn't quite see the point to it anymore.

 

The small bathroom window behind him still pattered with rain and let in the dark light from the night outside. Lance lowered himself to the closed toilet seat and gasped lightly at the coldness of the tile on his bare feet. He fumbled with the top to the bottle, muttering and cursing his fingers, which he hadn't realized were shaking.

 

```

JC stared at the curtain covering his bunk, which jostled and moved a bit with each sway of the bus. When he was done running his eyes along the fuzz of red, which was worn in a few places, he sighed. He then pulled his arm up through the curtain and turned onto his back. JC knew there was something horribly wrong with Lance, but he was too chicken-shit scared to do anything about it, let alone confess that he truly did care for the man on a deeper level.

 

But he had noticed, and they all had, as well. Joey had almost cracked that day when he and JC were supposedly going to 'the park'. JC remembered Joey slamming him up against the metal of the bus once they had reached the concrete below, hissing in his face.

 

"He's screwed up, man. We need to get him out of there and get him some help."

 

But JC had reluctantly refused, denying to see that his fellow band mate had problems they couldn't comprehend and deal with on their own. Chris had pulled him aside more then once, and Justin was almost on the point of cracking and bringing Lance to the nearest hospital several times.

 

"No," JC had told them sternly, his mind rushing and his body shaking. "We can deal with this. I can deal with this. Let's just keep looking out for him, ok?"

 

He traced a couple lines on the grains of wood above him and rolled over again with a sigh. He had wanted to be the hero for Lance, to come in and make everything alright in his world. He wanted to create the perfect world, and tell him that his life wasn't really complete without him.

'But all I really am is a fucking selfish bastard,' he thought, knotting his fingers together.

 

```

Lance finally dropped the cap to the bottle onto the floor, and with each shaking movement, he spilled a couple more white pills onto the tile. He brought his hands up to his beaded forehead in frustration and pain. The pills seemed to echo out a hundred times louder then normal in his mind as they struck the tile and bounced into the cracks. The noise pounded in his head, and he just wanted to make it go away, so very, very badly.

 

He finally brought a sweating, shaking hand up to his mouth and dropped one pill in. His eyes were forced shut and even his eyelashes seemed dipped in sweat. Swallowing the pill dry, his throat seemed to reflex and force him to cough it up. Struggling, his fingernails had taken on a ghostly white, and his face was red and strained as he swallowed.

 

'God, just let me do it,' he pleaded in his mind. 'Just let me go…' Finally, he was able to get it down, and he reached quickly for another, and another.

 

Smiling slightly, he was able to get both of them down much easier. The pills still spilled out of his hands as he greedily reached for more and more. The pills felt weighted and good in his hands, catching in the light and then clattering to the floor. Another spilled, and another, and another.

 

```

JC made up his mind. He pushed back the red curtain with one fluid movement, moving the gold rings of the curtain to one side with small clinking noises. He untangled himself from each sheet in his bunk and then lowered himself very softly to the floor below. As his eyes became adjusted to the light, he was surprised there was light at all in the hallway. He brought up a hand to rub his eyes and push back his hair from falling into his eyes, and strained to see the light flooding from the bathroom down the hall.

 

'And who the hell's making a trip this late at night?' Lazily, he walked along the carpet and pushed back the curtains on each bunk as quietly as possible. Justin's bunk held his person, and so did Joey's, both containing a wild mess of hair turned away from the intruding light.

 

JC caught his breath as he reached for Chris' bunk. If the man was there, he wasn't sure if facing Lance awake would be as easy as staring down at his sleeping face and then gently shaking him awake. He let his hand slide the rings and curtain back and to his questioning relief, he did see a mat of black hair on a pillow and eyes shut tightly below.

 

Shutting the curtain quickly, JC smiled to himself. It wouldn't be easy, but he would finally be able to face Lance alone. He shut his eyes and swallowed slightly, folding his arms across his chest to stop his hands from shaking and revealing his nervousness. There was no night except then to not only tell Lance, but also too see what had been bothering him so much. He would risk a shattered ego, which was balancing on his sleeve like a delicate Chinese vase, for Lance's sake.

 

The light from the bathroom was foreboding, but JC reached it easily and placed a hand on the wood frame outside of it. The door was open slightly, and he started to place a jittery hand on it to knock. He couldn't even start to comprehend the darkness his bandmate was feeling, but he knew he could try.

 

'And tonight is the night,' he told himself.

 

```

Lance could feel himself falling to the floor. He could feel the darkness washing around the outside of his eyes, and was finding it hard to focus correctly. He steadied a hand on the toilet seat and eased his body down onto the cold tile, feeling a shag carpet somewhere near his head. His movements, slowing and slowing a little more, were slightly jerking, and he struggled to swallow with each breath.

 

The energy that had been flowing through him was draining away, until he rested his head against the shag carpet in exhaustion. He could hear the pattering of the rain on the window continue, but it was growing fainter in his mind. It was growing slower and slower, like his movements.

 

"And when I go, no one will care," he whispered, searching to keep his draining thoughts coherent.

 

Lance suddenly gripped the shag carpet with one hand in a surge of movement, grasping onto each strand and tearing at it, as his thoughts battled each other. "But do I care if they care?" The strands slipped out of his grip, as the sweat dripping from his hand splashed onto the carpet and down his strained face.

 

His body had begun to fight for itself, as his thoughts began to do the same. "I don't care if they don't care. Don't let me go… Oh, fuck. God, don't let me go… I really don't want to now…"

 

But slowly, his eyes began to shut. His body began to relax. Even his voice was softer, as it trailed away. There was suddenly a peace in his body that Lance had never experienced before.

 

Maybe he did want to go, maybe he didn't want to fight. His body began to ease from the tension and stretched out like a little child's on the floor. The shag carpet actually felt good against his head, comforting and soft. The light coming from the ceiling of the bathroom was suddenly warm, and felt a little like a peaceful summer sun soothing the arch of his face.

 

A movement and a voice swam through his mind. It sounded faint, very faint, almost as if he was hearing it through a hundred feet of water or it was being screamed through a hurricane. He couldn’t quite decide.

 

It was one of the most difficult struggles he had ever faced in his life was to open his eyes for another time. Colors splashed out at him, but at the center of all of them, he could barely recognize a vibrant blue. He could feel himself reaching for it, because he recognized it as eyes, and then a face, and then JC.

 

'But that can't be JC,' Lance thought. 'He looks like he's been crying. He looks like he's screaming something down at me, and he looks like he's upset. He's mouthing something… What is it? 'I love you?' What kind of horrible fucked up dream is this? He doesn’t love me. He doesn't even care about me. No one really does. Maybe…' Lance thought, settling his body and closing his eyes once more, 'I've finally reached heaven.'

 

Behind his closed eyes, beyond the vision of JC crying, tripping over the spilled bottle and pills, running to the door, and awakening his three other band mates with terrifying screams, Lance could see JC's face calm and quiet.

 

His smile was warm and his hands were welcoming. Each finger reached out toward his and motioned him forward, into arms so very reassuring. His hair, still trailing into his face with that softness Lance loved, was finally there for him to touch, feel, and caress. Those eyes stared back at his with a love and passion he knew had existed all along.

 

'I have reached heaven,' Lance thought as he reached out for the face. 'And heaven is beautiful.'

 

:: I never conquered, rarely came ::

:: But tomorrow holds such better days ::

 

The End

 

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