Lance had none of that. At fifteen, he was still singing and dancing with show choir in backwater Mississippi, where the reason people never asked how to pronounce Bass was because they could only pronounce it one way, because of the drawl. At fifteen, he still had that dream of going into space and becoming a world-renowned astronaut, and even though he knew it would never happen, it was still kind of cool to think maybe he had a shot. He was only three years shy of joining the military, and he knew his father would have let him.
Lance was a dork, and there was nothing he could do but admit it. It was obvious, with every action he took. Compared to Lance, JC was the epitome of cool.
Somehow along the years, though, when JC's defined abs gave way to a flat, soft stomach, and he grew his hair, and his language became progressively less dirty but his mind moreso, and he started writing songs like "Digital Getdown" and ones that never got put on the albums and ones that no one ever saw and he never wanted them to, it looked sort of like maybe JC was just admitting it to himself. Maybe like he was accepting that he was pathetically uncool, and just wanted everyone to know it. Maybe like he was coming out, except he wasn't.
Lance, though. As his past of show choir and dreams of the army and outer space and silly things like that fell away, he gained confidence and maybe put a little more effort into his singing and dancing -- because he was getting paid for it -- and maybe his dreams grew more realistic. He could handle his alcohol, and he worked out with Justin because no one else would, and he swore up and down and seemed to be eliciting more screams than JC ever had. Even if they were all coming from thirteen-year-old girls, it still felt good. Because at least they were screams, and at least they were proving that Lance had made it, and he was famous, even if it was at twenty-two and not fifteen, and he had purpose. He was pretty fucking cool, actually.
The other thing about JC was that even though he could talk all day about Star Wars -- the originals, thanks -- and say that, well, yeah, Harrison Ford was a lot hotter as Indiana Jones than as Han Solo, and be really boring about it, and consider the meaning of the universe and loudly vocalize his opinions on just why the passage of life was like making a quilt, he could also say really interesting things, like, "remember that time in the back of J's old car, when we, y'know, and had to stop in at the gas station to get the window cleaner because the, ah, y'know, just wouldn't come off without, like, leaving streaks and stuff?", and they were so interesting that sometimes Lance had to study his shoes to make sure he wouldn't be distracted from the interest factor.
And then there were the things he did with his fingers, which weren't like playing the same damn piano chords over and over until they sounded like some kind of music, but more like digging his fingertips into the small of Lance's back, and rudely scraping the callused pads down Lance's spine, pressing them into his ass, fingers slicked with spit, but still sharp and stinging. JC could do things with his fingers it was nobody's business to do with any appendage, and even though he was a fucking skinny little dork with shaggy hair and no purpose of which to speak, he could make Lance come with only a few twists of his fingers and a lick along Lance's jaw.
And so the thing about Lance was that he wasn't too concerned with image.