Justin was the last one in the hotel. He'd been feeling…unattractive? since he and Britney had—yeah, whatever—and signing autographs and fending off girls ranging from Teeny to Mom of Teeny, it helped.

He put his CD player back on in the elevator. He didn't want to, like, talk to anyone, he just wanted to be worshipped a little and none of the security guys were in awe of the magnifice that was JRT.

Neither were his guys, so he wasn't particularly happy to see JC and Joey sprawled on his bed, while Lance strolled around the bed and Chris—he wasn't sure what Chris was doing, but he didn't think it could be good for the knees.

Chris got closer by means of his bouncy locomotion, started circling Justin. Justin kept turning to face him, but after a few minutes he got dizzy, stood stock still and closed his eyes.

Chris grabbed the headphones. By the time Justin got his eyes open again, his best friend was squirming his way onto the bed.

"Uh, guys? What's up?"

Lance stopped pacing and looked directly at Justin. "We're staging an intervention."

Justin ran that through his head again. If he remembered correctly, an intervention was like what Backstreet had done to AJ, for something serious. And he was pretty sure he wasn't drinking that much, and he never had done drugs, and he was sleeping with a lot fewer groupies than Chris, and what the hell? "For what? I'm not an addict."

At this, Chris bounced up again and grabbed Justin's CD player. He popped it open and pulled out the CD. "Ladies and—well, gentlemen, I present exhibit one: the infamous remix CD."

"This is about my music. You're upset because I've been listening to a lot of Puff Daddy."

JC laughed. "All day. In your sleep. In my sleep. I don't like dreaming of Usher, you know?" JC laughed some more, until he started giggling, then he covered his mouth with his hands.

Joey started singing, "I need a girl to ride, ride, ride."

"Do you have any idea how wrong that is?" Chris demanded.

"His ability to sound exactly like him is bizarre, but I wouldn't call it wrong. Just, you know, weird."

"Joey hates Puff Daddy," said Lance.

Chris nodded. "With a fierce and passionate hatred that knows no bounds."

"Really? I didn't know that. How did I not know that?" Justin scratched his head, because, really, that was the sort of thing they told each other. There had been a couple of physical fights in Europe because of musical tastes, and also, with the singing all the time, they just tended to know these things.

"He keeps it quiet." Lance shrugged. "He's afraid we'll run into him at an industry thing and someone will tell."

JC crawled forward on the bed. "You have to stop." He poked Joey. "You have to stop, but also, you, J." He hummed a few bars of I Drive Myself Crazy.

Joey rubbed his shoulder. "You can't listen to that song anymore, okay? Because not only have you had it on repeat for three fucking weeks, and not only is it by Puff Daddy, an entertainer whom I loathe and despise, but it makes less fucking sense than Space Cowboy, okay. So, cut it out before one of us kills you."

And he almost nodded and said okay, because that was the sort of thing they did, or rather they didn't do on tour, when it occurred to him, "Headphones. I've been listening to this on headphones, only."

JC started singing I Believe I Can Fly, a song which Lance had briefly adopted as his anthem when he first started thinking about putting together his space thing during the hiatus. Chris joined in, then Lance. Justin found his mouth opening of its own accord. Then Joey started in, and they ended up singing the whole damn song.

At the end of this demonstration, Chris made a show of mock whispering to Lance, "Justin, he sings along to things. I bet it's because he's in one of those, what do you call it, vocal groups? Where people sing a lot. With other people and everything."

Lance dropped an arm around Chris' shoulder. "You harmonize. You hum the hook. You do the incredibly bad and incomprehensible rap. We want to strangle you."

Justin looked around his hotel room, spotted a chair in the corner. He went over and sat in it. Joey and JC turned to face him, and Chris and Lance sat on the floor with the bed at their backs. "Is it seriously—no, duh, intervention, yeah, serious. Hmmm. I really like it, though."

Lance raised an eyebrow. "We guessed."

"I don't understand, J, what do you see in that song?" Joey scratched his stomach and rolled back on his back. "Because, really, Puff Daddy cannot rap. I mean, I'm not the biggest rap fan in the world, right, I know this. But he sucks and I can tell, which is saying something. It would be one thing if you had Public Enemy or Eminem or something good on forever, but really. What's the attraction?"

"Usher!" shouted JC. "Like Nelly."

"Okay, number one: I never had a crush on Nelly. Number two: any crushes I might have had on Nelly do not extend to Usher because Nelly is hot and Usher is trying too hard. And three." Justin paused, because there really wasn't a three, but he'd started, and was there a good way to stop? "Three: it reminds me of y'all."

Chris started looking at him sideways, literally tilting his head to one side. Joey tilted to the other side. JC frowned and muttered something which Justin thought might be, "I like Usher."

Lance's response was probably the most representative. "We remind you of a crappy rap about a girl? Or maybe a lot of girls, you can't tell because it's crappy." His frown was vaguely bitter and repulsed, without any real heat. It made him look like Diane for just a minute.

Justin blinked and Lance's face was normal, and Joey and Chris had their heads upright. "No, it reminds me of you. Or it reminds me I don't need, uh, her, because I've got you. You know?"

Four heads shook rapidly.

"Okay, right. Um, so the song is about how Puffy needs a girl to be, like, decorative, but also homey, and also to protect him, right?"

"Is that what the song's about?" asked Joey. "Because I can't tell, like I said, it's worse than Space Cowboy."

JC frowned. "It is not the worst song ever. It's a very good song. You all liked the wi yi yippi's. And I told you not to make me write songs while I was drunk. And Usher doesn't work harder to be sexy than you do, J."

"That was his point, C, that I Need a Girl is, in fact, worse than your song." Lance twisted around until he was on his knees, facing the bed. He stroked JC's tummy a few times. "Space Cowboy is also better than, say, Riddle, but is actually worse than a lot of what we've sung, so get over it. We love you and we want to sing your stuff, we just want it to make sense."

"That, that right there is what I'm talking about."

"You don't need a girl because we all know that Space Cowboy is bad, but not that bad?" Chris blinked rapidly. "No, that's not it. What's he talking about?"

"Lance is mean?" offered JC.

"Lance patted Jayce's tummy," said Joey.

"I am not mean," said Lance. "But it's been over a year, it's time to accept that Space Cowboy is not your masterwork, thank goodness."

"Usher works his ass off to be sexy. I breathe and girls want me, but that's not the point. The point is that I can depend on you guys for everything, and that's good, because I don't need a girl, and that's good, because she broke my fucking heart." Justin nodded decisively.

Chris came over and started rubbing his back. "We love you, too, Justin."

Lance scooted forward and patted his foot.

JC started humming Girlfriend and giggling at the same time.

Joey reached one hand towards him, petted the air, but didn't actually move off of the bed. "You still don't get that CD back."