There's an elephant on the bus, but Joey doesn't think Lance has noticed.
Lance is doing what Lance always does on the bus. He eats, he sleeps, he frowns over his laptop, he has curt conversations on the cellphone, with one eyebrow higher than the other, he bitches about sadist choreographers, and he smiles up at Joey with that unreasonably beautiful wide-open thank-you smile whenever Joey gets him a coffee.
Damn elephant.
Joey doesn't think the elephant was here last year. He's pretty sure somebody would have noticed an intrusive pachyderm when they were all sharing a bus. It would have been horribly obvious back in the day when they all squashed into the van together. There'd have been complaints. Chris would have -- well, anyway, there was no elephant on the van. No elephant back in Orlando.
But it's here now, and it was small and cute at first, but it seems to keep growing every time he doesn't look at it, and now it's just huge, and it fills the whole cabin and Joey hardly dares to get out of bed. And it kinda squeezes itself out of the way when Lance goes through to the kitchen, so Lance hasn't noticed it yet, but the damn thing is getting bigger every day and it isn't supposed to be there at all and what the hell is Lance going to do when there isn't room for all of them on the bus and Lance just can't help but notice the elephant?
It's pink, too.
Joey hides in his bunk and tries not to think about the pink elephant.
It doesn't work.
Except sometimes, when he thinks about huge green eyes instead, and a goofy adorable smile and sweet strong hands playing over a keyboard and the swell of perfect globes in Lance's jeans, and then he isn't thinking about the elephant for as long as it takes to imagine the hands playing on him and his hands stroking and sliding and maybe there are mouths and tongues and there are definitely cocks and...
And when he gets his breath back, the pink elephant is still taking up all the space in the bus, and Lance is still talking on his cellphone as if everything is perfectly normal.
*
Joey isn't supposed to have a pink elephant on his bus. Joey likes the soft things: breasts and pussies and long silky hair trailing across his thighs. It isn't relevant that Lance is the best of his four best friends, the one who will laugh with him and curse with him and plot with him and drink with him and be quiet with him, whatever it is he needs most. It isn't relevant because Lance just isn't equipped with the soft things Joey likes. Lance has hard things instead, a chest that's flat and has tiny brown nipples, and arms with surprising muscles in them, and a cock that can be hard and impressive and would do to Joey the kind of things he usually expects to do himself...
...and dammit, now Joey's hard too, and the elephant is smirking at him. It does that a lot.
*
The elephant doesn't get up on stage with them. This is good, because a big pink mammoth shambling about up there, even with the pyro and the Timberlake and JC's hips, someone would notice. But no, the elephant stays on the bus, waiting till they scramble back in, panting and too adrenalised to be as exhausted as they really are, and Joey gasps because the elephant is so huge that he can hardly get his breath.
And when Lance gets to the bunks and strips off his sticky shirt and stands there glowing with a sheen of sweat, when Lance offers him first shower, Joey just stares. Until the elephant nudges him in the back, and he stumbles forward and Lance catches him. And the elephant just keeps shoving him forward and he flattens himself against Lance, except flat is exactly what he isn't, Joey's so high from being a singing sex god that he can't help it, he's so hard, so hard, and there isn't room in the bus for him to be anywhere but pressed against Lance, urging his lips apart, rubbing against him, huffing little desperate breaths into Lance's mouth and flattening both his hands on Lance's perfect ass to pull his hips closer, and is it the elephant's trunk twining round his neck or Lance's arms that won't let him get away?
Lance stops kissing him, and that isn't right, Joey complains, until he hears Lance say: "Clothes off, Joe, please, naked now, Joey," and that is a fucking brilliant idea and he doesn't need the elephant's trunk to help him rip off his sweaty clothes, though possibly it's the elephant that tips him off balance and onto the bunk, but that's really not a problem because Lance is on top of him now and if it's the elephant that's pressing down on Lance to meld their bodies together, then go, pachyderm, go! because this feels fine and who needs oxygen anyway?
"Inside me," Joey gasps, and he pleads for as long as it takes for Lance to agree, which miraculously isn't very long at all, and there's something to be said for sadist choreographers after all, which is that Joey is a whole lot more flexible than he ever thought he needed to be, and maybe it kinda scares him a bit at first but then it's good, it's very good, and Lance can do stuff with his hips that makes the elephant stand up and pirouette in a shower of stars and Joey clutches at him and hard is everything he wants.
*
They are sweaty and sticky and twined together when they wake up, and Joey thinks he should probably let go of Lance and have that shower, but the elephant seems to have gotten comfortable, filling the bus from floor to ceiling as it snoozes blissfully, so there really isn't much option but to stay in the bunk and hold Lance in his arms and stroke him and kiss his short silky hair for a while.
A snuffle and a wriggle, and Lance is awake. But he doesn't seem much inclined to move. Joey is glad of this. It would be unkind to tread on the elephant. The elephant was good to Joey last night, and it would be wrong to repay such treatment by trampling it as it sleeps. It's actually a rather splendid creature. It can stay comfortable; Joey and Lance are just fine sharing a bunk.
Only Lance shifts, as though to get out of bed. Joey protests, and Lance does the thing with the eyebrow, which is disconcerting at this range.
"There's, uh, an elephant on the bus," Joey mutters. "A pink one."
Lance, unexpectedly, blushes. "Ah," he says. "I sorta hoped you hadn't noticed it." Then he tilts his head back, and gives Joey that beautiful wide-open thank-you smile. "But I'm glad you did."