"Oh my God you're kidding me…"

"Nope."

"Seriously, you have to be lying to me."

"Nope."

"You mean to say…" Renee creased over, clutching her side to try and alleviate the pain that was brewing there. "You actually exposed Janet Jackson to the whole entire world? While she was wearing some freaky ass kinky nipple ring?"

"It wasn't that kinky, it was like this sun thing…" Justin drew a circle in the air in the vicinity of his own nipple and his companion only seemed to laugh harder. He was glad she was finding it so funny because he still had a hard time finding any humour in it; it had caused him far too much grief.

"Ooh boy…" The blonde wiped her eyes quickly with her thumb, trying to settle back down as she stretched her Juicy clad legs out on the couch. "And I thought it was embarrassing when I slipped on that puddle at Rock In Rio. Thanks, man, I feel a whole lot better."

"I'm very happy for you." Justin poked his tongue out at her and she burst into laughter again.

For all his initial surprise at how different this reality's Renee seemed to be, on further discussion - and a bottle and a half of wine - he was beginning to find that she was more like his own girlfriend than he'd given her credit for. Once she began to relax and the evil sense of humour began to come out, he thought he saw a similar spark behind the eyes there somewhere. He'd had fun talking to her, finding out what her (and his) life was like here.

After Claire had disappeared to go do some more groundwork and to go plead with her bosses about what did and didn't constitute breaking the rules (she was hoping she was allowed to use violence), Renee had very kindly offered to accompany him out to the grocery store. This was a huge relief; Justin had needed to get out of the house, but he hadn't been able to risk it. Renee changed that; she could be a buffer if he needed her to be, tell him anything he needed to know and apart from anything else it helped him keep up appearances.

Once they had got back home, they had mutually decided to camp out on the couch with some snacks and some drinks to have a long chat, answer any questions the other might have. The answers weren't always pretty, but still Justin felt it was very productive. It was also undeniably interesting, hearing about how your life might have gone if you'd made other choices - although he didn't want to hear too much, he figured too much curiosity was probably a bad thing.

So there they were - they were both at opposite ends of the couch, but the distance between them wasn't uncomfortable or awkward. Renee had plenty of room to stretch out, there weren't any bad personal bubble issues, and for two virtual strangers it was just about right. The room was quite homely, in a very shabby chic distressed kind of way, lots of earth tones everywhere, and the atmosphere was helpfully non-threatening. The stony beige coloured couch was also very squishy. Neither of them felt under any pressure, and as such it had helped the stories to come pouring out. Sometimes he felt more like he was looking at Britney than Renee - the sweatpants and belly shirt combination really wasn't his girlfriend's thing - but he still in a strange way felt like he was talking to his girlfriend in some sense, and it was comforting.

"So how long did it take you to live that one down?"

"Two years and still counting."

"For God's sake," Renee snorted, "aren't there any wars or famines in your world?"

Justin shrugged, rolling his eyes comically and making her giggle again. "You'd think not, way they tell it."

"Okay, so we did careers, we did families…" Renee mused aloud. "Go on, I'll bite, how'd you meet your edition of me?"

"Well…" Justin picked up his glass, staring for a minute into the ruby liquid before launching into the story. "She signed to Jive and originally they wanted her to do RnB, though she's totally dropped that now and she does more of a guitar, female John Mayer kind of thing. She got lost in the studio one day and barged into my room instead of hers, and we exchanged pleasantries for like three minutes… but then they asked me to write and produce some stuff with her, and I did and… I don't know. I kind of lost my head somewhere around the third day when she asked me to pass her the coffee and it was like she'd started the Hallelujah Chorus. It was monumentally lame, to tell you the truth, I was sprung so bad."

Renee smiled wistfully, taking a sip of her own drink and delicately picking up a Dorito and taking a tiny nibble. "It's okay. I know the feeling, pathetic as it is. So how come Claire said you stalked her for a year?"

"Six months, sheesh!" Why did he always have to make that correction? He propped his feet up on the coffee table, stretching lazily. "Once we were done recording I asked her out and she said no, and I didn't get it because I could have sworn she liked me too and she gave me some lame excuse about it being too early in her career… and… I mean, what can I say, I persisted. I was dead set on her and being my cocky ass self I was sure she liked me too and I swore that she had to at least go on one date with me. Even if she refused to ever see me again I was determined she at least had to give me a chance."

"Six months, though?" She raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow at him. "Even if you did get the happy ending that does flirt dangerously with stalker territory."

"So I was told," he responded wryly with a sheepish smile, grabbing a fistful of popcorn. "Sometimes I seriously just despaired, but then I figured the fact that she hadn't called the police on my ass or at least told me to go away had to mean she liked me."

"Stalker logic."

"Shut up!" He kicked her softly with his sock clad foot. "What about you? How'd you meet my evil twin?"

"He's not evil!" She protested loudly. "It was my first ever Billboard Awards and *NSYNC was there and I wanted to meet you all because I had this huge crush on JC…"

"Wait, does that mean my girl had a crush on JC?"

"How should I know? Anyway, I just… I saw him and it was sparks. I totally had that Hallelujah Chorus moment, which is so cheesy it's unreal and kinda bad considering he was wearing this absolutely terrible, like, purple slash maroon coloured velvet suit or something, but… yeah. I was bumping into him at all the teen shows and he asked me out and the rest is tabloid history."

"Tabloids as bad with you guys as they are with us?"

"Don't know, didn't read much while I was visiting your world… though hey, weren't you dating Cameron Diaz? What happened there?"

"Badness." Justin grimaced at the memory. "Don't wanna talk about it. But yeah, if you can't go out to dinner without five photographers accompanying you and you've got married and split up so many times you make Liz Taylor look restrained, that about matches us."

"Yeah, that about sums it up."

Renee pulled a face at Justin and enjoyed the way he chuckled at it. Laughter wasn't something that happened a lot with her boyfriend these days. It was wonderful when it did. It made her feel hopeful for a minute that maybe they were getting closer to working it out, but thus far she'd always been disappointed. Pulling her hair band from her wrist and quickly tying her hair back in a sloppy ponytail, she mused on how different a vibe she got from him than her own Justin. Certainly he seemed a lot happier; then again, she supposed he had reason to be.

She hadn't met him on her little visit to the other Renee's body, but she had read up on him to see how he was doing; it had been an irresistible impulse. He'd done very well for himself, and she'd had more than a little guilt when she saw that he was still friends with the other *NSYNC guys. She had never meant to cause so much friction between the guys; she just always seemed to be putting her foot in it with them and making them dislike her. It was like the harder she had tried to ingratiate herself the more she'd messed up. It had hurt to see that with her out of the way the problems hadn't arisen.

"Can I…" Justin sifted uncomfortably, knowing he was about to broach a very thorny subject. "If you don't mind my asking…"

"It's okay."

"Do you… I mean, I'm a little concerned about my girlfriend here and I'm wondering how far you think your guy there might go to keep up the charade that he's me. You know him and I don't, so…"

"I honestly don't know." Renee shook her head sadly at him, swirling the wine in her glass and staring into it like somehow it held the answer. "I mean… he's real big on not cheating, but she's still Renee Anderson and I kind of had an indiscretion myself a while back so I don't know if that's going to change the rules in his head."

"You cheated?" Justin asked, fairly surprised.

"We were on a break and I didn't mention the fact I'd been with anybody else in the meantime," she responded honestly. "I was really messed up for a while and thinking maybe I didn't want to be in the relationship, I started the break but he was the one who kept it going and it screwed me up because naturally that was the minute I picked to realise that I still wanted to be in the relationship…"

She paused, thinking deeply, and Justin began to get twitchy. If she wanted to talk he wanted to allow her to do so, but this wasn't exactly answering his question.

"Being in your girl's body kind of set me straight in this weird way. For the first time in forever I could do whatever the hell I wanted, and it just kind of reminded me to stop and smell the roses once in a while. I got back all hopeful that I could fix me and him, but by this point he'd seen how much more together your girl was than I was and he was so frickin' obsessed with everything she told him about your life and her life that he kind of didn't notice that I had actually grown my ass up a little and he…"

"He what?" Justin pushed.

She smirked, lifting her eyes to the ceiling and laughing sardonically. "The only thing giving me any comfort was the fact that he said he'd got rid of that necklace, because I've been feeling for a while like he'd swap in a heartbeat. Not just because of your girl, I think he's got this idea in his head that you're getting it right and he's getting it wrong, but I definitely got the impression he had unfinished business with her. So to answer your question, I'd like to think that he'll stick to his guns and draw the line at sleeping with her but I would not put it past him."

"I know I wanted an honest answer out of you but that kind of sucks."

"My turn - how likely do you think it is that she'll notice it's not you?" Renee posed her own question. "I'll be honest, at this point I'm really not sure he wants me enough to come home and I'm kind of relying on you to have her sprung enough to kick his ass back here."

He became very quiet for a moment, and from the way his fingers tapped the arm of the couch she mused that this had probably been a burning puzzle for him, too. Of course they were both coming at it from different wants and needs, but it seemed to her like she and he were probably on exactly the same wavelength right about now. It was fun to be the ones left out in the cold.

"Honestly? I really want to believe she'll notice - especially because the idea of anybody else touching her makes me want to throw shit - but I don't know." Justin had to be honest with both of them at this point. "We've only been dating a year and if I was following all that existential shit Claire was saying right, then maybe there's enough the same that he can pull off the act."

What Justin was referring to was Claire's little spiel about how the core of a person remained the same and it was only choices and the resulting circumstances that differed. She'd gone into some lengthy example about how people had huge expanses of unexplored potential and it was just that different choices tapped into different parts of it and made them look more different than they were. He'd had a really hard time getting the gist of it- not only was her subject matter very complicated but Claire talked fast.

"I don't know," Renee shrugged. "I mean I'm sitting here with you and okay, I know who you are, but I don't see him when I look at you. I know that's weird since you're in his body and all but I just don't."

"I guess that's kind of encouraging. And I gotta admit I don't look at you like her at all, I mean I'm not attracted to you in the… that really didn't sound so insulting in my head."

She flashed him a grin. "That's okay, me neither. Don't get me wrong, I've actually had fun talking to you which is really kind of weird, but no. No attraction there at all. I mean, you are similar in a lot of ways, you both do that really annoying knuckle cracking thing and like the way you speak and stuff like that are similar but… I can't explain it, you just have a different vibe."

Justin pondered this for a moment, fiddling with the hem of his black wife beater. "Yeah, that's what I thought about you. I mean, I know you've had some shit going on so that's understandable, but even beyond that… it's like I can see how you are Renee, but I can see how you're not, and I think even if I had caught you in exactly the same mood as my girl I'd still see a difference."

"See why didn't Claire explain it like that? I actually get what you just said."

"Claire's… interesting. Was she like that when she was alive?"

"Amazingly, I think dying made her even more of a smart ass."

"Not smart enough to dream up a way out of this," he complained, pulling his feet off of the coffee table and drumming them nervously on the floor.

Justin couldn't help it, his every thought always circled back to how in the world he was supposed to get home. He wasn't used to feeling so powerless; he'd always been very much in charge of his own life and career, a man who made his own destiny. He loathed the fact that his fate currently lay in someone else's hands. Renee felt compelled to speak up in her best friend's defence - funny how that impulse was still alive after all these years.

"It's not like it's her fault. She does have that awkward little paradox where she needs to make Renee realise who he is so she can see her, but she can't do anything to make that happen until she can see her."

"I know." Justin sighed, swallowing the rest of his wine in one gulp - considering he still had half a large glass left that was somewhat worrying. "It just sucks. I can't help thinking what's the point of having her around if she can't... whoa, where's the fire?"

Renee had suddenly leapt up and in the process had managed to spill red wine all over the coffee table, from whence it was now dripping all over the very light coloured carpet. It was going to be a pain in the ass to remove the stain.

"I got it. Least, I think I do…"

"What?" He asked as he automatically reached for the napkins - little good that it would do. Really he shouldn't be concerned as it wasn't technically his carpet.

"Renee can't tell her, but you can."

Justin snorted impatiently, looking pointedly at her. "Did we not listen? There can't be two Justins in one dimension. I can't make the switch so I can't tell her jack. I can't wish you there because all that would do would swap you and her over, and for all we know he'd just reverse his wish. That'd land us back where we started because my Renee wouldn't be able to undo your wish and all we'd have done would be swap places but still have the same problem and for FUCK'S sake, I can't even follow myself right now. This dimensional shit is driving me insane!"

"There can't be two Justins or two Renees in the same dimension, it's true." A wonderfully sly expression began to curl at the corners of her mouth and narrow her eyes. "But what if you went back to that weird watching place you guys told me about? You could wish yourself there, then her too - you could tell her everything so she'd be able to see Claire. Did you understand any of that or do I need to try again?"

Justin did have to take thirty seconds or so to process what she had said before fully comprehending, but once he'd cottoned on it did smell of brilliance. Provided that the strange cosmic rules currently preventing him from kicking his other self's ass (and sadly would prevent him ever doing so) didn't forbid this too, it could really work. He thought it was in fact the best plan anybody had ever had in the history of making plans.

"I think you're right… fuck, you're a frickin' genius, woman. Maybe we should check with Claire first though? I had to go with her when she brought me here, she seems to be the way you move through these dimensions and once again I'm appalled with the sentences coming out of my damn mouth."

"Well why don't you just wish yourself there now, she'll have to pick you up anyway and you can explain the plan. Even if you can't get the other me there you can at least check up on my bastard boyfriend. Did that sound bitter?"

"Little bit." He nodded.

"Oh well. Get to wishing, boy."