"Aargh!" Chris shrieked, as the entire contents of the medicine cabinet showered down onto his hapless head.
When the deluge stopped, he cautiously brought his arms down from their protective positions around his ears, and, sighing, began to put the supplies back onto the now-bare shelves. The tiny bathroom on the bus probably hadn't been meant to store the kind of volume a couple of traveling boybanders needed, although when he thought about it, it *should* have been designed for exactly that, seeing as how it was their bus. As it was, he didn't know if there'd be enough room for his own stuff, though he hadn't brought everything over from his regular bus, since this swap was only for a couple days. Lance and Joey had enough hair product to... wait. What?
This wasn't all hair product.
It wasn't even half hair product. Yes, there were two bottles of shampoo and conditioner and three kinds of gel, and a couple of heavy duty nail files, the metal kind, but there was also a lot, "a lot", in fact, a hell of a lot, of toothpaste. The kind that whitened; the kind that fluoridated; the kind that protected against cavities; the kind for sensitive teeth; the kind that freshened the breath. Oh, and a normal tube that just cleaned your teeth, which after a moment's thought Chris recognized as his own. Plus dental floss on reels and those little Y-shaped flossing utensils and enamel whitener and mouthwash and toothpicks and tooth polish and—he counted them—a full dozen unopened toothbrushes of various kinds, and seven opened ones in rainbow colors.
Slightly boggled, Chris crammed the stuff back into the cabinet and retreated back to the relative sanity of the sleeping area, before remembering that he had gone into the bathroom to take a leak, before he'd been attacked by Lance's dental armory. So he went back to attend to the matter. And was very careful not to jog the cabinet with his shoulder, this time.
On this bus, Chris could have sole command of the Playstation, while Lance was engrossed in whatever business shit he was doing on his computer. Sighing with happiness, Chris hunkered down and started to play.
About a hundred miles later, he looked up. Lance was still sitting there by the window, staring at his laptop. Oh well. Chris shrugged. It would have been okay to play a two-hander, particularly since he knew he could annihilate Lance at any game he cared to name, but if Lance was still working...
He didn't look quite so much like a creature from outer space these days, Chris thought, looking at Lance's little frown of concentration with some affection. He did still look a bit otherworldly, but that was mostly because he wasn't supposed to look pretty and yet managed it anyway. Lance's odd, asymmetric features should not add up to, well, to something beautiful. Sitting there with the sunlight streaming through the window and the dust motes flying in the beams of light, Lance practically glowed. No, gleamed. No, that wasn't it either.
He... sparkled.
Which was kinda strange.
It was probably just Chris's imagination. He'd been tending to... idealize Lance lately. He had to stop doing that. He had to stop looking at Lance and thinking about things he shouldn't think about, because he couldn't have them. Lance was just a kid. Sure, he'd grown up some, but he wasn't very old, and still innocent in so many ways.
Lance looked up, saw Chris staring at him, and smiled that sweet, trusting smile.
Chris grunted, feeling even more like a pervert, and went back to his game.
"Lance, man, you are going to wear out your teeth," Chris announced, watching from the doorway as Lance selected the orange toothbrush. He had an array of flossing implements (and a nail file) on the sink, but had apparently finished that part of the routine before Chris had cottoned on that Lance was in the bathroom, and gone to mock.
"Ggguuhuh," Lance replied, then spat. "Got to keep them in good shape."
"Yeah, sure, man, but there's dental hygiene and there's OCD."
Lance narrowed his eyes at him, but this was less effective than usual due to the foam bubbling between his parted lips giving him a rabid look. Lance seemed to realize this, and ignored Chris in a very determined way, like an affronted cat, as he continued to brush and spit, then rinsed fastidiously, and to Chris's astonishment, then brandished another toothbrush, this one battery-powered, with a tiny round head.
"Oh, you are kidding me! Aren't they clean yet?"
"It's important," said Lance, in between polishing his front teeth. "Nobody likes a guy with bad breath." He poured a capful of mouthwash and tossed it back like it was tequila, except, Chris supposed, he'd have swallowed the tequila instead of swishing it around in there and squirting it back into the sink.
"Did someone tell you you had bad breath?" This was paranoia, and Chris couldn't think of any other explanation. "You really don't. Well, first thing in the morning, maybe."
"Food can get trapped in there. Tends to stick, and it decays."
Even so, he was carrying this way too far. "Seriously, there'll be nothing left. You'll have these little stubs where—woah!"
Lance was grimacing into the mirror, inspecting his teeth. They were spectacularly clean. They were also, and Chris had not previously noticed this, unusually... pointy. At least, the ones his momma called 'dog-teeth' were. Canines, yeah. Them. Pointy. Lance ran his tongue over his teeth, apparently testing for cleanliness, and Chris stared at the mirror.
"Dude," said Chris, and stopped. What, exactly, was he going to say here? "You have really.... really, um, sh— shiny teeth."
"Don't you mean, really sharp teeth?"
"Ahaha. Uh. Mmm."
Lance ran his tongue over his teeth again, paying particular attention to those pointy canines. "They are sharp. Need to be, really."
"Uh.... " Chris wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer, but he couldn't help himself, he had to ask. "Why is that?"
Lance raised his eyebrows.
"Because," said Chris, in a rush, "you look kinda like a vampire, what with the pointy teeth and the weird eyes and all, and obviously vampires aren't real."
"Of course not," said Lance.
And Chris realized that vampires were in fact real, and that Lance was in fact a vampire. "I thought you—people like—uh, vampires weren't supposed to have a reflection."
Lance looked at him pityingly. "Try looking up the laws of physics, why don't you," he said.
"Oh." There were, suddenly, an awful lot of questions Chris would very much like to know the answer to without having to ask Lance any of them, questions like, do you actually drink people's blood, and, when did you last feed, and, areyouhungryrightnow? "So. Okay, then." And, also, did it hurt?
"Chris," said Lance, and was his voice even deeper than usual? "Don't worry. I'm not one of those vampires. Ask Joey. I only bite people when they ask me to."
And he smiled.