"Goddammit, Lance! We've been working on this for over two hours, can't you get the fucking steps right?!? It's on the count of four, not five! And it's to your left!" Josh thundered, his voice rising to the rafters of the heat-filled warehouse. "We've only got one more week to go until we make the demo, and you still can't get the basic steps right!"

"Lay off, JC. Can't you see he's trying his best here?" Joey warned his friend as he helped the both of them off the floor, where JC had ended up when Lance had turned the wrong way and toppled onto him.

"Why the hell didn't you tell us you can't dance?" JC push on, ignoring Joey's warning.

"Why didn't you ever ask?" Lance shot back. "Y'all asked me to join the group because of my voice. Y'all never said anything about prancing around in tights like some friggin' Paris revue troop!"

"What did you say?" JC shouted as he stood eye to eye with Lance, both ready to throw the first punch.

"You heard me. I didn't spend my teenage years wearing dopey ears around Mouse Town here, so excuse me, Lord of the Dance, if it takes me a bit longer to get these moves down! Just stop copping a 'tude, Dude!"

"Why, you little prick –" JC snarled, already bunching his fist up into a very angry ball.

"That's enough, you two!" Chris said as he stepped between the two of them. "Hell, you two have been fighting like cat and dog since we started these rehearsals. This is never going to work if you two keep this up. Lance, this is not going to be a recreation of the Moulin Rouge. And JC, go cool off somewhere. I'll work with Lance and make sure he gets the steps down." The two stood there for just a minute longer, a pair of crystal blue eyes staring into a pair of stunning emerald-green orbs, neither one ready to give an inch to the other. It took all of Joey's control not to burst out laughing at his two friends.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Can I ask you something, Josh?" They were in the Fatone family room, spread out floor, recovering from another massive Italian Sunday dinner. Joey couldn't move at all, and JC just groaned every time he tried to say anything.

"Uh, Joey. This is not a good time, buddy." JC answered, feeling as if Mrs. Fatone's spaghetti and meatballs were ready to burst out of his stomach at any minute. "Your mother's cooking is so good, but it's going to kill me one of these days."

"Well, if you don't gain more weight soon, Mom's going to stuff you like she does a Thanksgiving turkey." Joey laughed, knowing full well that his mother always thinks that they are all too thin.

"Ugh, Joey. Please – no more food comments!" JC pleaded.

"Now back to my question." Joey continued. "Exactly what is it about Lance that irritates the hell out of you?"

"What are you talking about, Joey?" JC asked, trying to sound oblivious to Joey's probe.

"JC, it's me here, Joey. I'm the first person you ran into, literally, in this town, remember? Don't give me that 'I'm playing dumb and not answering' attitude. I know you too well. So just tell me what is it about Lance that makes you so upset all the time?" Joey pressed, not giving his friend a chance to change the subject.

"You want to know? You really want to know?!? He's a bible-thumping Southern Baptist goodie two-shoe mama's boy who's so anally retentive about everything that he lays out his clothes every Saturday night so that they'd be ready every Sunday morning when he makes such a goddamned racket in the room at 6 AM prancing and primping to look good before he bounces off to church that he wakes me up each and every time and then when he gets back he sits there for hours writing letters back home when he could be out there practicing some of his two left feet haven't got a chance in hell dancing moves so that maybe we can put a semi-decent demo together and try to get somewhere with the thousands of record companies out there who aren't going to sign us to anything if we got a bumbling fool for a bass voice no matter how terrific of a five-part harmony we have and –"

"Uh – JC?" Joey laughed out loud when he couldn’t hold it in anymore. "Damn, man! You really do have it bad for him, don’t you?"

"What? Are you delusional, Joey? Me? Him?" Now it was JC's turn to laugh. "Good God, Joey, I may be gay, single, and lonely, but even I'm not that desperate."

"You're not, huh?" Joey said, not believing a word that JC was saying. He really did know his friend too well. And his friend was definitely hooked.

"First of all, Fatone, Lance is the most annoying, irritating thing to come out of Mississippi since Grant and the Union Army cut off the belly of the Confederacy at Vicksburg and forced thousands of those mudpie hicks to flee to Alabama and Georgia. Secondly, Lance is so on the straight and narrow that the only way that boy will ever have sex is in the traditional missionary position, on his wedding night and not before, and then only with some proper southern belle that both Mama and Papa Bass have approved of. And thirdly, my dear friend, if I want some southern jailbait ass, I would much rather devour Justy boy, at least he knows what to do with a basketball."

"Are you sure basketballs are the only balls you're interested in?" Joey pushed.

"Go to hell, Fatone." JC said good-naturedly, still not able to believe that Joey could think he could possibly be interested in Lance. "Beside, you know that our choirboy there probably still thinks the word gay means happy."

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

He wasn't sure what the noise was that woke him up, he was just sure that he was annoyed to glance at the clock and see the red numbers 2:45. 'Great, now I won't get to sleep again till morning.' He thought, angry now to realize that the noise that had wakened him was coming from the other bed in the room. Lance was tossing and turning, struggling with what looked like a very bad dream.

"Lance?" JC said softly, trying to wake his roommate. After a couple of more futile efforts with his voice, JC groaned as he slipped out of his bed and moved toward the fitful sleeper. He knew that it wasn't all that good to wake people in the middle of dreams, but whatever the mama's boy was dreaming about, it sounded like it wasn't making him happy at all.

"Jess, no, please, Jess." Lance whispered in a pained voice as his head tossed from side to side. As he continued to struggle with the phantom demons of his dreams, JC hesitated. 'Wasn't Jessie the name of his friend? The one in the picture? A lover's quarrel?' Now JC really didn't want to wake the boy. Moving closer, JC realized that Lance was not only talking, but he was also crying, in his sleep. Tears streamed down from the corners of Lance's eyes as he continued to struggle and to reach out for something, or maybe someone, that wasn't there. Suddenly, Lance grabbed one of JC's hands, pulling it to his chest. And for whatever reason, the contact seemed to have calmed him down, and within minutes Lance was fast asleep again, the nightmare no longer tormenting his subconscious. Yet JC's hand remained in the younger boy's grasp for a long time.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

"You look like shit, man." Chris said as he saw JC tumble down the stairs to breakfast. Justin and Lance had already left for the warehouse that they were using as a rehearsal hall to work on some of Lance's more troublesome dance moves. "Bad night last night?"

"Uh, woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't get back to sleep." JC replied as he poured himself a cup of coffee and gulped it down, only to refill it immediately.

"Why? Bad dream?"

"Something like that. A nightmare. Kept me up half the night."