It wasn't the usual fan thing, hearts, flowers and passionate declaration of love. This card had come to his private mail box, and this card was elegant, simple, and anonymous.
He turned it over in his hands. Searched the envelope for clues—nothing, just an LA postmark that, really, didn't narrow things down a whole heap. And it was, well, tempting. A brief message, enough to be intriguing: We could be good together. We should meet. A ticket to a concert.
A small venue, a band he'd vaguely heard of...
Hmm.
* * *
"Hey! JC!"
"Lance!"
Nobody was taking any notice of them, a crowd just a little too sophisticated to be interested in sometime boybanders, or at any rate, too sophisticated to betray it if they were. And the band was good, more eloquently jazzy than Lance had been expecting, with enough up-to-the-millisecond weirdness going on to take them out of the jazz category and into, well, whatever. He should have guessed JC would be here.
They hugged happily, JC's adorable squishy grin turning him from the would-be suave man-about-town to the familiar lovable dork. Lance checked him out for glitter, just in case.
"Looking good, man," JC told him. "I didn't know you'd be here, we could have come together."
"Me either, I mean, you too." Lance paused, tilting his head thoughtfully. "I mean, I didn't expect to run into you here, but maybe I should have."
"Yeah, they're great, aren't they," said JC, absently. He looked as though something unwelcome had just crossed his mind, but with JC, that could be anything. Asteroids heading for Earth, why wasn't there a rhyme for silver, had he remembered to put on underwear, anything.
Lance had worries of his own. He'd much rather stick with JC for the rest of the evening than hang around waiting for some anonymous self-invited date to show up. Okay, so the anonymous one had good taste in music, but he just wasn't in the mood to make the effort, not now that JC was here. And the lead singer had just announced the final number. Best get out of here fast.
"JC, you wanna go get dinner somewhere?" Lance suggested.
JC beamed. "Great. I was just thinking, we should split, before, um, yeah. Let's go."
* * *
Of course, it was Valentine's Day. Everywhere was booked solid. In the end, they went back to Lance's house and ordered takeout, which was, when JC thought about it, probably wiser than sitting cosily together in a restaurant full of happy couples on Valentine's Day. Lance opened a bottle of really good Merlot—trust Lance to get ahold of the good stuff—and then another, and they sat on the couch and talked themselves hoarse.
And maybe it was the Merlot, or maybe it was because he'd gone out that night kinda expecting to get laid, or maybe it was the way Lance's eyes dilated in the soft lamplight and the way his skin looked like warm cream and his tongue flicked for the last drop of wine at the corner of his perfect mouth, or maybe it was all those things, that had JC leaning forward to stroke a careful finger across those smiling lips. And then it was definitely the way Lance opened up and nipped delicately at his finger, and the way his eyelids dropped a little so that his lashes cast shadows over his flawless cheeks, that had JC moving in to kiss him. And after that, it was the feel of satiny flesh, and the warm dark sexy noises, and the hard ridge against his thigh, and hot breath and urgent hands, slick tongues, teeth, need, that got them both naked.
* * *
It was almost noon before they got out of bed in search of breakfast. Lance rejected with a shudder the leftovers from last night's Chinese, and put rolls into the oven to warm while JC picked idly through the fruit bowl and the coffee machine blessed the air with the fragrance of the finest Jamaican beans.
They sat comfortably, grinning at one another as they ate, too sated for the moment to do more than appreciate the sight of peach-juice being licked from lips, or the ripple of throat swallowing coffee.
"We should have done this a long time ago," JC murmured, smiling at his buttered, steaming breakfast roll.
"Make up for lost time?" Lance suggested, mumbling through a mouthful.
"I feel a bit..." JC chuckled. "I shouldn't, I mean. I was supposed to meet someone..."
"You did. You met me," Lance pointed out. "Which was way better than—I was actually supposed to be meeting someone there, at the venue."
"Oh? Who?"
"I, uh, dunno." Lance blushed slightly. It was sweet, JC thought, that Lance, who was so sublimely uninhibited in bed, could still blush like a shy teenager at times. "I got this card, and a ticket, and I thought... I didn't have a date for Valentine's Day, so."
"You got a card?" JC began to grin.
"Did you—?"
"I got one too. With the ticket."
"So, you didn't send it, then? I thought for a moment there that you—"
"Nope. Wasn't me."
"Someone set us up," said Lance. "You and me. So who do we know who'd..."
They looked at one another, and laughed.
"Justin!"