18
by Mickey M.
© January 2004

for clumsygyrl

They stood in front of the glass case and stared. Or, well, Chris stared, a sort of hoping-to-decide-through-osmosis. Justin just fidgeted and checked his watch. Repeatedly.

"Tell me again why we're here?" He shifted from foot-to-foot and yawned and blinked. "At a really ugly hour, I would mention."

Chris punched his shoulder. "Wake up, dude. We're here 'cos I need to get something for-" He glanced around and lowered his voice conspiratorially, "-for Lance."

"Oh, man. Are we back to this again? You could just take him out, y'know."

Chris stared at him then narrowed his eyes. "This is more than just a dating thing, doofus. This is. Well, y'know. Special. I wanna do something special for him. Get him something that's gonna mean something." He smirked. "Something that doesn't involve rose petals and vanilla-scented candles. They totally made him sneeze, by the way."

"I swear, neither of you has a romantic bone in your body."

"It's not his fault he's allergic to vanilla!" The smirk deepened. "Besides, to each his own on romance. We're both guys, unlike you and-"

"So help me god, Kirkpatrick, you finish that sentence and I'll give you a wedgie Lance'll have to help you pull out." Justin paused, then shook his head. "Euw. Never mind, I'm not even going there."

"That'll teach you." Chris grinned. "Maybe. Now c'mon, be useful and help me figure out which of these memory cards is the one for his Palm thingy."

Justin rolled his eyes. "Romance isn't just dead, to you, it's buried and rotting."

Chris decided the best thing to do was ignore him. Maybe he would go away. Lance, however, he didn't want him going anywhere. And sure, it wasn't everyone's idea of romance, and it was kind of goofy...but so was he. Not only kind of goofy, but he wasn't everyone's idea of romance.

When he unwrapped a new CD-rewriter drive for his computer at the same time Lance was opening his gift, Chris couldn't help but laugh. Lance finished neatly undoing the wrapping and joined him, low bass rumble joining his higher voice very nicely.

"We're dorks," Lance said, when they'd stopped snorting each time they tried to talk. Chris nodded.

"It works, though."

"Yeah, it really does." And when Lance kissed him, catching Chris' chin in his hand and holding him still for a long, exploring, deep kiss, Chris was glad he'd gone with his idea of romance.