For swerved: "Nick/Lance/Kevin/JC break up, then get together again."

Chris counted Day 1 of That Section Of The Tour, You Know, That One, The One Where We're All Too Fucking Sick Of Being On The Road And Just Start Messing With Each Other's Heads To See How Long It Takes Us To Crack as the day that Nick Carter stumbled out of Lance's room of the suite (looking rumpled and well-used and still wearing last night's clothes), blinked a few times, mumbled a good-morning, stole the last cherry Danish from the hotel breakfast tray, and let himself out. The whole process took about thirty seconds.

"That was Nick Carter," he said, unnecessarily.

"Yup," Joey said, buttering his bagel.

"Coming out of Lance's room."

"Yup."

"It's that time of the tour again, isn't it?"

"Yup," Joey said, and refilled his coffee.

On day 4 of TSOTTYKTOTOWWATFSOBOTRAJSMWEOHTSHLITUTC (which really was an unwieldy acronym, but he couldn't think of any better way to put it), Chris was having breakfast when JC's door opened, and Kevin Richardson, Kevin fucking Richardson of all people, came out of it, with JC immediately behind him. "I had fun last night, baby," JC said, as they walked across the room. "Call me, okay?"

"Sure," Kevin said, and kissed JC on the cheek before departing.

"Joey," Chris said, on a whimper. "Tell me I'm still asleep."

"Nope," Joey said, buttering his bagel.

"Tell me I'm imagining things."

"Nope."

"I'm never going to be able to come up with something to top this, am I."

"Nope," Joey said, and refilled his coffee.

On day 9 of TSOTTYKTOTOWWATFSOBOTRAJSMWEOHTSHLITUTC Chris got up, went out for breakfast, bumped straight into Nick Carter again, and yelped. "Lance!" he yelled. "Your boytoy is stealing my cherry Danish again!"

"Shh," JC said. "Be nice to my date."

Chris blinked and then changed tactics. "JOEY! JC is messing with my head!"

"You're fun to hang out with, Jayce," Nick said, "but could you maybe put a muzzle on Kirkpatrick first, the next time?"

Day 11 of TSOTTetc was when Chris woke up, went outside for breakfast, walked into Kevin Richardson, stopped, whimpered, looked around to see where JC was, stopped again, whimpered again as he realized that JC wasn't awake yet and Lance was walking Kevin to the door with a hand on the small of Kevin's back, and went to go hide under his bed. Justin had to coax him out later with promises of an X-Box marathon.

On day 14 of TSOTTLMNOP Chris woke up, put a hand over his eyes, walked out of his room, walked straight into Nick, whimpered, turned around, ran into Kevin, refused to take his hand over his eyes, and stumbled across the carpet until he found the breakfast table by touch. He sat down in a chair, peeked out from between his fingers, satisfied himself that the room was no longer Backstreet-infested, and reached for the cherry Danish. And then yelped, because Lance was sitting at the table, his cup of coffee forgotten as JC sat in his lap and they made out. Right there. In full sight of EVERYONE IN THE ROOM, which happened to include one Chris Kirkpatrick, who really didn't want to see that, thank you very much.

"Pay up," Joey said, smirking. Chris whimpered again and pulled the $100 bill out of his wallet. Underneath his bed was starting to look better and better.

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