Alamo Drive
by Scotty

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Chris balanced his coffee cup on the roof of the car and chirped the lock, all the while complaining about the road work that had turned the short scenic drive from the hotel into forty-five minutes of angst and aggravation.

“I had to pull a Lamaze at the last minute to avoid plowing down a whole row of cones that came out of nowhere. What the hell’s wrong with this city? It’s Saturday. There’s no roadwork on Saturday.”

Lance shook his head as Chris continued, cursing under his breath.

“Fucking Starbuck’s can’t even get it right." He struggled with the plastic lid, then lifted the cup to his nose. “No fucking cinnamon. I knew it.”

Lance nodded toward the house and started walking up the drive.

“It's Lemans Chris, not Lamaze. And what were you doing at Starbuck’s? I thought you were a Diedrich’s man?”

Chris poured the rest of the coffee over a bush and then closed the lid again and handed the cup to Lance.

“Lemans, Lamaze. What matters is I woke up thinking about Moby Dick, you know, for the party.”

Lance stopped and turned, pulling his glasses down his nose just enough to look over the frame.

“Ahab and the crew of The Pequod were not pirates, Chris. They were whalers. Tell me you knew that. Please. I’m not walking another step until you tell me that you knew that Ahab was not a pirate.”

Lance put his hand on Chris’s chest to make his point even stronger.

“I mean it. Not only am I not moving, but you are never touching this body again unless I get some reassurance that you are not the Cro-Magnon that you appear to be at this moment.”

Chris lifted his own glasses and met Lance’s gaze. Lance had been almost unbearable the last few months, and in a myriad of ways. He was unbearably funny now, his sense of humor blossoming as his circle of friends changed. It wasn’t so much that the guys in the group made fun of him as it was more of a family thing, an assumption that they already knew what he was going to say, so they’d stopped listening. Even when he got a chance to say something witty, no one laughed or even acknowledged that what he said was funny. Or clever. And he was both of those things, always had been. His confidence had grown at an alarming rate. Chris had always prided himself on being funny, but he let Lance take the lead on that now. It was a small but significant concession that had made Chris even more aware of how important Lance had become to him.

Other things had changed about Lance too. He’d come back from Star City in the best shape of his life, but since then his attractiveness had grown exponentially. He was unbearably beautiful now. For years, Lance had walked in Justin’s shadow. They’d been the same age, both blonde and from the south. But Lance had been younger inside, shy and naive about the world. Now all of that was gone. Justin might still be the bigger star, long gone from the close-knit world of the group, but it was Lance that had transformed himself. Chris had thought at first that it was his own bias, but after the third or fourth set of glamour shots, he knew that it wasn’t. Lance was movie star material now, handsome beyond what anyone could have expected. And he was unbearable about it, full of himself in the way he should have been from the start.

Chris loved every minute of it.

“Listen here, boy. Thirty or so chapters in, Ahab nails a gold coin to the mast of The Pequod as a reward, making the crew swear that they will help him kill the white whale. Only Starbuck is against it.” He reached over and tapped the top of the cup Lance now held in his hand. “Starbuck. Starbuck's. See? I can’t help it if my brain took it and ran with it. I went there for coffee this morning and voila, it hits me. I thought we could steal the idea for the party. Pirates coins nailed to stuff. A little Ahab decor." He nudged Lance playfully. "C'mon. You know you love it.”

Chris pushed his glasses back into place, then turned toward the white mansion at the top of the drive.

“How did you find this place anyway?”

Lance smiled slowly, then tugged at Chris’s arm, pulling him up the hill.

“Nevermind. We have a key and no rental agent breathing down our necks. Let’s go inside and see if sixteen bedrooms and 10,000 square feet is going to be big enough for Pirate Palooza.”

-::-

Chris let out a long whistle.

"Do you have any idea how much a place like this would go for in LA? You said covered patio, but this is a fucking veranda, straight out of Gone With the Wind. Look at this place."

He wasn't even sure that Lance could hear him from where he stood. His answer came in the form of a voice that seemed to be coming from somewhere overhead.

"It rents for $12,000 a month, but the real estate market is slow this time of year. I only had to make one call and we got it for two."

Chris stepped to the railing and looked up. Lance leaned out over the buttress and waved.

"There's another full patio up here, off one of the bedrooms, but it's open-air. I say we take dibs on this room before anyone gets any bright ideas."

Chris shaded his eyes with his hand and smiled. "You're a romantic fool, Bass."

Lance looked out at the bay.

"No. I just know Joey and his love of water balloons too well not to have all the bases covered. Meet me in the kitchen, so we can finish the tour. Then I want lunch, someplace-- romantic."

Chris could hear still him laughing as he walked back through the ballroom doors.

-::-

He had been standing in the doorway, watching as Lance walked the length of the kitchen for the third time.

"I'm ready whenever you are, Scoop."

Lance turned back and glared at him. "Okay, I give up. Where is it?

"Where's what?"

"The map of the house. I laid it right here on the counter with my sunglasses when I went upstairs."

Chris shrugged. "Get another one from the leasing agent. C'mon. I'm hungry."

"No. It has the sleeping arrangements on it already. Everybody's got a room. I sat down and worked it all out. Just help me find it."

Lance wasn't the kind of person who misplaced things. It just didn't happen, so it made no sense to recheck the kitchen. It also made no sense to argue with Lance just before lunch at which time Chris had hoped to get him at least mildly drunk and therefore susceptible to his loosely-structured plans for some afternoon delight. Chris pushed his keys back into his pocket and turned in the doorway.

"I'll look upstairs. Why don't you walk out back. We went out there when we first came in, remember? Maybe it's out there somewhere."

Lance nodded, but started retracing his footsteps instead. Chris shook his head and walked to the french doors that led to the grounds beyond the patio. There were no tables or low walls where Lance might have put something down, so he turned and did a quick sweep of the counter with his eyes and then followed his first hunch. The only other place that Lance had been was on the second floor veranda, so Chris took the grand staircase that bisected the ballroom. But instead of walking out on the patio where he knew Lance had been, he started opening doors off the main hallway. He had no idea why he was doing it. He'd simply felt drawn that way. He also had the odd feeling that he knew where he was going, that it all looked somehow familiar.

Four doors down, on the left, he found the map. It was laying in the middle of the bed in plain sight, like someone had placed it there for him to find. He thought of calling out to Lance, for him to see exactly where he'd found it, but again Chris wondered if he could even be heard downstairs. It was, after all, a very old house, built in 1898 according to what Lance had been told.

Chris left the room and walked back to the top of the staircase and stopped. It was suddenly, unnaturally still. There was no sound whatsoever, not even from the street. It hadn't been like that before or he would have noticed it. Chris was used to a lot of noise, to loud places. Something about this wasn't right.

At that very moment, Lance walked out of the kitchen and across the hardwood floor of the ballroom. Chris watched as he made his way to the bottom of the stairs. It occurred to him as he watched Lance come toward him, that Lance might as well have been floating because his shoes never made a sound. And the floor never creaked under his weight as it had just moments before.

Lance looked up and Chris was suddenly afraid that he would start talking and there would be no sound there either. It was the strangest sensation, like watching a silent movie. He hadn't really been afraid until he saw Lance. Now he was terrified, afraid that he would never hear Lance's sweet drawl again.

Lance stared at him for a moment, then started up the stairs toward him.

Chris waved both hands in the air to make him stop.

"Don't come up here."

Lance froze almost in mid-step. Something in Chris's voice had been strange.

"Are you okay?"

At the sound of Lance's voice, Chris bounded down the stairs, pushing the map at him as he passed.

"I found it. Let's just go."

Chris headed for the door, relishing every sound the floor made as they crossed the foyer. Lance trailed behind him, stopping only long enough to pull the door shut and lock it. When he got to the bottom of the drive, he found Chris standing there, frozen. He was staring at his car.

On the roof was a cup of Deidrich's coffee, exactly where he'd put the first one. This one was still steaming.

Lance felt a sudden chill and took hold of Chris's hand. He might be unbearably handsome and funny now, but he was not feeling at all brave.

"You are not to be more than three feet away from me at any given time this weekend."

Chris smiled smugly, then leaned in and pecked Lance on the cheek.

"That I can do. C'mon."

Lance followed him to the curb. "Where are we going?"

"Back to the hotel. You are calling the realtor and getting your money back. And I am calling Fatone. He just got himself a couple of house guests and a Halloween party."

As they pulled away from the curb, Chris looked in the rear view mirror one last time. The house on Alamo Drive seemed to flicker for a moment, like a frame in an old movie. At the stop sign, he thought to check again, then decided against it.

As it stood right now, what had happened that afternoon was just a good story for a dark, rainy night.

Beyond that was a place Chris never wanted to go again.

With Lance or without him.

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