Lance waited for the beep then growled low into the phone. "Joey, you are a dead man. Do you hear me, dead. Tell Marissa she should start looking for your replacement now, cause next time I see you, I am going to KILL you."

Lance slammed the phone back into the cradle, then jumped when he turned to find Josh standing right behind him.

"He didn't tell you I was coming did he?"

Shit. Fuck. Damn it all to hell.

Lance thought about lying, but he had a feeling those electric blue eyes would see right through him.

"No, he didn't tell me. Well..." Lance thought about Joey's comment about sending him a "present". "Not really anyway."

"I'm sorry." He shifted uncomfortably. "Listen, I'll get my stuff together and get out of your way."

"Don't be stupid." Lance shot out, then blushed a deep red when he realized what he said. "I mean...oh hell." Scraping his hands over his face, he studied the man standing in baggy sweats in front of him. His streaked brown hair was already beginning to curl around his angular face and even dressed as he was in worn sweats, he was the best thing that had come Lance's way in longer than he cared to think about. "Listen," Lance said, his voice seeming very loud in the quiet that had settled around them, "why don't we try this again."

Lance pretended to open a door, making Josh grin. "Hi. Can I help you?"

"Hey. I'm Josh. Joey's friend."

"Josh, come in." Lance grabbed his arm above the elbow as he pulled him into the living room, closer to the fire. "Have a seat. How was the ride?"

They both broke into laughter when Lance stopped, neither of them sure what to say next.

"I really am sorry about barging in on you like this." Josh finally said when the silence had become uncomfortable.

"It's okay. Not your fault Joey is..." they shared a smile..."well, Joey."

"I should have called first to make sure it was okay." In fact, he had meant to, but things at the office had gotten hectic before he'd left and when he'd finally been able to get out of there he'd scooted out as fast as he could, leaving Lance's number in the mess on his desk.

"No harm done. Really." Lance assured him, just as the microwave dinged. "That'll be your dinner. It's nothing fancy," Lance explained as he led the way into his homey kitchen. "Just some stew I had leftover from dinner."

"It smells great." Josh said drawing in the savory smell of beef and gravy.

"Well sit..." Lance placed the large bowl down on the table, "eat. Can I get you anything else? Some bread?"

Josh mumbled, "Thanks," around a mouthful.

"Sure." Lance placed the bread in front of him, the went to the cupboard for a mug. Pouring coffee into it, he set it in front of Josh, then placed sugar, and cream beside it.

By the time he was done, Josh was three-quarters of the way through the bowl.

"Wow." Lance exclaimed, "I guess you were hungry."

"I kind of always eat fast." Josh explained, swallowing his last mouthful. Coffee cup in hand, he leaned back, sipped and studied Lance. "You're not really looking for a roommate are you?"

Lance groaned. "Is that what he told you?"

"Yeah, said you were thinking about splitting your time between here and Orlando and you wanted a roommate to look after the place while you were gone."

It wasn't exactly a lie. He had confessed to Joey that he was thinking of going back home. Not splitting his time, mind you, as he'd told Josh, and he sure as hell had never said he was looking for a roommate, but that obviously hadn't stopped Joe.

"I was thinking of moving back home." Lance explained, "but if I do, I'd sell this place first."

"Oh."

"What else did he tell you? And, if you don't mind my asking, how do you know him?" Lance and Joey had been best friends since high school. He'd never once mentioned anyone named Josh to him.

"I designed his house."

"Wow, you're the architect. But I thought his name was JC?"

"It is...well...sometimes. My real name is Josh, Josh Chasez, but a lot of people in the industry call me JC. You can," he looked down at the table, then back up at Lance, "you can just call me Josh."

"Okay." Lance thought back to all that Joey had told him about the architect that had designed his beautiful new home.

'He's smart, obviously talented, funny, cute and he's got this....'

'Whoa, stop right there, Joe? Why is this sounding more like a fix-up than you telling me about the guy who's making your dream house come alive?'

'Cause it is?'

'Joey.'

'Don't Joey me, Bassman. You need someone in your life and as I'm pretty sure he's gay, why not let it be him?'

Lance had flat out refused to even consider it and Joey had let it drop. A little too easily, now that Lance thought about it. Damn.

"Why...uh...why when you have a very successful business in Orlando are you wanting to move to Coastal Maine?"

Pushing his bowl out of the way, Josh set his elbows on the table, propped his head on his hand, and blurted out his answer. "I hate it."

The vehemence with which he answered startled Lance, as did his honesty.

"I'm sorry. I know what that feels like." Lance touched his arm briefly, the heat from the other man's skin radiating into his fingertips.

"Do you?" Josh asked, his eyes traveling down to where Lance's hand still rested on his arm.

"Yeah." Lance snatched his hand away quickly, the rose to take Josh's bowl to the sink. "I guess I'm kind of here for the same reason."

"You hate architecture?" Josh joked.

Lance's low, rumbling laughter filled the room. "No," his smile was wide when he joined Josh back at the table, his own coffee cup in hand. "I hated the whole rat race thing. I started out with this dream of going to space, ya know?" Lance shrugged. "A small medical problem nixed that, so I figured if I couldn't be up in the stars, I'd study them. Which was great...at first." Until he found the constellation, they'd named it after him, and the world had opened up for him. "It was fun in the beginning. Touring, lecturing, and then teaching, but after awhile, I don't know, it felt like all people wanted were pieces of me. And I had gotten so far away from what I had started studying astronomy for. To study the stars. It was rare for me to even look at a telescope, never mind through one. So, I resigned from the school, packed up my truck and moved here. The rest, as they say, is history."

Josh had listened intently throughout Lance's tale, and now began to tell him his own.

"When I was a kid, I loved to build things. With blocks, "Legos", "Tinkertoys", whatever was around. My sister had all these dolls and I would build her houses for them. Draw them out on paper first, then take the blocks, and make them come to life. I loved it. I still do, but since I started the firm and we blew up, it's rare for me to get the chance to design anymore. Joey's house was the first one I'd done in well over a year. And that was only because he specifically asked for me. When a star of Joey's caliber asks for the owner personally, the owner is who he gets."

Lance smiled at that. He and Joey had been friends for so long that he tended to forget that he was Joseph Fatone, Oscar winning actor. To him he was just "pain in the ass", Joey.

"I think," Josh said so quietly Lance could barely make out the words, "he just may have saved my life." Eyes of the most amazing shade of blue that Lance had ever seen pleaded with him to understand. "I was dying behind that desk. I'd always dreamed of being this great success and I'd achieved it, but it was killing me, man. Slowly, sure...but I would have shriveled up and died if I'd stayed there."

"You own the company, Josh. No one can make you do what you don't want to do."

"I thought so too, but it happened. It was like this tidal wave that I couldn't stop, and before I knew it had happened I'd learned to hate what I had always loved."

Lance knew, exactly, what he meant.

Josh yawned as the clock in the living room began to chime the hour. Lance was shocked when he counted eleven chimes. "Listen," Lance's quiet voice cut through the awkward silence that had followed Josh's confession, "it's getting late. Why don't you grab your stuff and I'll show you to the guestroom. We can talk about this whole "roommate" thing in the morning."

Both mugs in hand, he moved to the sink to rinse them. Feeling Josh move up behind him, he tensed.

"Lance," Josh reached out to touch his back tentatively, "Friend of Joey's or not, I know you don't have to let me stay here. I appreciate you not kicking me out."

Lance tried to ignore the hand resting on his back, tried to tell himself that one meaningless touch really couldn't warm a person from the inside out, but he couldn't.

It had been forever since he'd been this drawn to someone, forever since he'd wanted to slip into someone's arms.

Unfortunately for him, he just didn't have the nerve.

So, he shrugged, knocking the hand off of his back and offered only a gruff, "Don't worry about it."

Josh sighed, and Lance told himself that there really hadn't been a wealth of disappointment in it.

"If you want to grab your bag out of the living room, we can just go on up these stairs. They're closer to your room than the ones in the front room."

"Sure." Josh readily agreed.

When he came back with the bag, Lance had cleaned up the room and was waiting for him at the foot of the stairs. "Ready?"

"Yup. Lead the way."

Following him up the stairs, Josh blinked when Lance hit a switch and the room behind him plunged into darkness. "If you need to go down for anything overnight, this switch here," Lance pointed to the middle of three on the wall, "turns the kitchen light on. This one," he pointed to the last switch, "controls the hall light, and this one," Lance flipped the third and the stairwell went dark, "the stairs."

"I'll try to remember that." Though Josh figured once his head hit the pillow, he'd be out like a light until sometime late tomorrow.

He'd been right about one thing, the second his exhausted body had sunk deep into the feather bed in the room Lance had shown him too, he'd been out like a light.

Though he hadn't, as planned, slept til noon.

No, the glow of the sun shining blindly off all of that newly fallen snow had woken him around seven. He'd turned over to go right back to sleep, but then he'd heard the singing.

Deep, full, with an almost perfect pitch, the voice had traveled straight to his heart and shivered through his system. Jesus, he already loved that voice. Indulging, he'd lain there for close to fifteen minutes just listening, then not able to take it any longer, he'd had to get up so he could go find the man belonging to the voice.

Showering quickly, Josh dressed in faded jeans, t-shirt, and sweater. Combing his hair quickly, he made his way down the hall, stopping here and there to study several pictures gracing the walls there.

One in particular made him stop and stare. It was of Lance and what Josh assumed was his family, an ordinary picture really, except that Lance was smiling so sweetly, it took Josh's breath away.

"Please, please," he whispered to who or whatever might be listening. "Please let him ask me to stay."

Quietly he made his way down the stairs, stopping when he could see into the kitchen but was still hidden from view. Lance was standing at the stove, an apron tied around his waist, flipping what looked like pancakes on a griddle.

Josh's stomach jumped, but it wasn't the thought of getting his hands on the food that did it. It was Lance.

That spiky blonde hair, his thick shoulders that tapered down to a slim waist, that tight...okay, Josh shifted on the steps, wincing when they creaked. Time to stop that train of thought.

"Morning," He greeted Lance when he turned at the sound of his footsteps on the stairwell.

"Hey." Lance's grin lit the already sunny kitchen. "How'd you sleep?"

"Great, thanks. That bed is incredible."

"Yeah, feather beds are great. I have one in my room, too, though it's a bit bigger than yours. You should see it..." Lance trailed off, suddenly feeling awkward.

"What ya cookin'?" Josh asked, saving them both from the uncomfortable silence that followed Lance's unfinished sentence.

"Ah, pancakes, some bacon and I made some oatmeal too."

"Eww," Josh wrinkled his nose, "Oatmeal?"

"Yeah," Plopping a spoonful into a bowl, Lance laced it with brown sugar and a generous helping of maple syrup. "It's good, give it a try."

Tentatively Josh raised a spoonful to his mouth. His eyes widened at the taste. "Wow, this is good." He looked suspiciously into the bowl. "What did you do to it?"

Lance laughed, a bright happy sound. "I didn't do anything to it. I just added a few things here and there." Giving Josh a shove in the direction of the table, he ordered. "Go sit down and get out of my way. The rest of this stuff is almost ready."

Josh moved to the table, but only to set his bowl on it. Returning to the stove, he resisted the urge to wrap his arms around his unsuspecting host, instead choosing to lay his hand on the back of his neck. "Hey, Lance. Thanks."

"For what?"

"For all of this. For making me feel welcome, even though I wasn't invited, and for not kicking me out on my butt last night."

Josh thought that Lance might say something along the lines of don't be stupid again, but he didn't. He just turned those crystal eyes on him and whispered, "You're welcome."

They stayed, standing, eyes locked like that until the kettle Lance had put on to boil began to whistle, startling both of them.

"Jesus." Josh laughed, covering his heart with a trembling hand.

"Sorry." Lance's cheeks were a rosy pink when he turned the heat off under it. "I forgot I had it on." Busying himself at the stove, he tried hard to ignore Josh's movements as he poured himself a cup of coffee.

"So," Josh asked when Lance settled a heaping plate of food in the middle of the table, then sat down across from him, "How much snow do you think is out there?"

"At least an hour or two's worth of shoveling." Lance answered, laughing when Josh's eyes widened at his words.

"No way?"

"Yup. I'd say there has to be a good foot or so out there."

"Wow." Josh looked towards the window, then back at Lance. "Don't they have people you can hire to take care of that?"

"Yes, city boy, they do, but I usually like doing it myself."

"You like shoveling snow? For two hours?"

"Well, it'll only take me two hours if I do it by myself. If I have help," he hinted, "it'll only take me half that long."

Inwardly, Josh groaned, but then he thought about how long it had been since he'd actually even seen snow, and how beautiful it had looked when, after his shower, he'd glanced out of his window.

Not to mention, he'd be doing it with Lance. It could be their first "roommate" project. If only he could get Lance to think of it like that.

"Listen, if you're seriously thinking of moving up here, you'd better get used to shoveling. It doesn't snow like this all the time, but it does do it at least once or twice in the winter."

"Am I?" He asked.

"Are you what?" Lance looked up at his question.

"Am I moving in," he said, instead of up, "here?"

"I guess," Lance teased, "that depends on how good of a shoveler you are."

It turned out that Josh, was a very good shoveler. And if they had stuck to doing just that, it would have probably taken them less than the hour Lance had estimated with both of them working on it, but they hadn't.

Somewhere, in the middle of the driveway, they'd given up on shoveling to play.

It had started out as an innocent enough question on Lance's part, "When was the last time you built a snowman?"

"Damn, probably about as long as it's been since I had a snowball fight." Had been Josh's reply. Lance who had continued shoveling, didn't notice Josh stop, or the huge snowball he'd formed, not until it hit him squarely on the back of his head.

Snow had already begun to trickle down the collar of his shirt when he turned to retaliate, Josh's grin egging him on. Unfortunately, when Lance turned to fire his first missile, Josh's second hit him, right in the face.

The war was on.

By the time it was over, Lance had tackled Josh, it was the only way to stop the pelting he'd been on the receiving end of, and they lay, in a tangle of limbs, buried in the snow.

"God, that was fun." Josh smiled. "I don't think I've had a snowball fight like that since I was a kid and we lived in Maryland."

"It snowed in Maryland?" Lance asked, having never been there.

"Not a lot, but every once in a while it did." Josh turned his head, found himself ensnared in eyes so green they hurt to look at them, and knew, in that moment, what it meant, to have one single moment change your entire life.

"Lance." He breathed, moments before ice cold lips touched his.

Desperate to touch he pulled one hand out of a snow-encrusted glove and buried it in Lance's warm, moist neck.

It had been too long, was all Lance could think, way too long since he'd felt like this. He didn't ever want it to end.

"Stay," he whispered against Josh's lips.

"Yes." Was the only reply he received, the only one he wanted.

Hours later, they made their way in, dripping wet, and exhausted.

"I'm going to go up and change." Josh said, running a hand over Lance's thick hair. "You should to."

"I will." He answered, taking one last look at the giant snowman they'd built. Closing the door, he turned to find Josh still standing in the same spot, waiting for him. "Go ahead, I want to put this stuff in the mud room. I'll be up in a sec."

"You want me to help?" He offered.

"No." There was something that Lance needed to do...alone. "You go ahead, you're shivering. I'll be right there."

"Okay."

Lance waited until he heard Josh's footsteps above his head before he picked up the phone and dialed the familiar number.

'Hey, this is Joe. Leave a message if ya want, or don't. It's really up to you.'