The five of them sat around the living room later that evening watching a rerun of South Park, and they all laughed when Kenny died in some unnatural way for what had to be the hundredth time. It was killing Lance to sit there doing nothing instead of researching, and it looked like he wasn’t the only one because Justin’s right leg bounced up and down repeatedly. Normally Justin wasn’t one to fidget like that, but they probably had some important documents laying in the fax tray in Lance’s office right now that might hold some answers they’re looking for. If it’d been up to Lance, they’d be in there right now, but they couldn’t while JC was awake because they didn’t want to chance him walking in on them and blowing up at what they’d done.

Glancing over at JC, whose attention was on the program, Lance couldn’t help but feel frustration and anger. He was upset that JC was willing to give up so easily, especially since it was his life at stake. Though, honestly Lance wasn’t surprised at this behavior because he’d always known that JC looked out for them, and this time wasn’t any different. But it was infuriating that he wouldn’t fight for his life. That wasn’t going to deter Lance though because with the help of the guys they would find something and figure out a solution. Proving JC wrong fueled his desire even more than before.

“I’m hungry,” Justin complained, snapping Lance out of his thoughts.

“I’ll see if we have anything,” Lance said, rising from the couch and walking into the kitchen. He opened the cupboard that held the snacks and frowned when he saw that it was nearly empty. They needed to go food shopping and soon. The only thing that looked edible was a mostly full package of cookies.

“How about cookies?” Lance called into the living room.

“And milk!” Justin yelled back in agreement.

Lance nodded to himself and placed the cookies on the counter. Just as he was getting the milk out, he heard footsteps behind him and looked over his shoulder to see Joey. “I figured you could use some help,” Joey said.

“Thanks,” Lance replied.

He watched as Joey pulled down five glasses from an overhead cupboard and started to fill them with milk when his attention was diverted by loud laughter coming from the living room. Lance saw Justin and Chris exchange looks before busting out laughing again, and even JC was chuckling. JC didn’t look tired at all, which wasn’t surprising considering that he slept all day, but Lance knew that JC needed to stay on a regular sleeping schedule so they wouldn’t have any more problems not sleeping. If only there was a way that they could force JC to get some sleep. Just then Lance remembered something that would help.

“I’ve got an idea.”

Before Joey could ask, Lance turned and left the kitchen before jogging upstairs. At the top he made a left into his bedroom and grabbed the sleeping pills off his nightstand that had been left there since a couple of weeks ago when Justin had administered them to him. Lance punched out a pill before replacing the package on the nightstand and heading downstairs. Once he was in the kitchen, he took one of the full glasses and used the bottom to crush the pill.

“What are you doing?” Joey asked.

“I’m crushing a sleeping pill into JC’s milk,” Lance said as he grabbed the glass and held it just below the counter while the other hand swept the white powder into the glass.

Joey’s jaw dropped in surprise. “You’re what?”

Lance glanced behind him at the living room to see if Joey had attracted the attention of the others, but there was no sign that they’d heard anything. He leaned closer to Joey and said quietly, “He needs to sleep, and this will guarantee that he does.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Joey disagreed, frowning.

“You and I both know that he won’t get any sleep tonight since he slept all day. Then in a couple of days we’ll be right back to where we started,” Lance said.

“You don’t know that,” Joey replied.

Lance crossed his arms. “Didn’t he say that he couldn’t help it? If that’s true, then he needs something to help him fall asleep.”

“But he fell asleep last night without anything,” Joey pointed out.

“Of course he did. His body probably finally shut down.” Lance sighed. “Look, I don’t really want to do this, but I don’t want any more health problems either.”

Joey was silent for a moment before he shook his head. “He’ll be so pissed when he realizes what you did.”

“I can live with that,” Lance said, picking up JC’s drugged glass with his right and holding his own in his left, balancing the package of cookies on his arm. He glanced to his left and saw that Joey had grabbed the other three glasses with the one in the crook of his arm.

“’Bout time,” Chris groused, taking the cookies out of Lance’s arms as he and Joey entered the living room. Silently Lance handed the glass in his right hand to JC who accepted it with a nod of thanks before he sat down in the chair.

“You weren’t the one to complain of hunger,” Justin replied.

Chris shrugged. “So?”

“So you shouldn’t be complaining. You wouldn’t even have cookies if it weren’t for me,” Justin said.

“Well, your cookies are stale,” JC said, swallowing with a grimace and immediately taking a drink of his milk.

“Aw, man,” Joey groaned, joining Justin on the floor in front of the TV since he’d finished passing out the milk. “There’s nothing worse than stale cookies.”

Justin turned to look at Lance. “Way to go, Lance.”

“It’s not my fault. You guys were the ones who bought them, ate like two, and put them in the cupboard,” Lance said.

“Did not,” Chris denied, crumbs falling out of his mouth.

Lance shook his head in disgust and turned his attention back to the TV while watching JC out of the corner of his eye. He wondered how long it would take for the sleep aid to take effect because he’d read that it differed for everyone. Back when JC had given them to Justin, he’d fallen asleep within fifteen minutes. After JC finished his milk, nearly a half hour passed when Lance caught movement from JC out of the corner of his eye as his body relaxed into the couch and his eyelids fluttered closed.

“How can he possibly be tired?” Chris asked, looking over at JC who was sleeping with his upper body lying on the couch and his head resting on the arm. “He slept all day.”

“I slipped something in his milk,” Lance said, nonchalantly.

Justin’s eyes widened and unknowingly repeated Joey’s earlier sentiment, “You what?”

“Makes sense.” Chris nodded in understanding. “He probably wouldn’t have fallen asleep otherwise.”

“Yeah, but drugging him? Was that really necessary?” Justin asked.

“If we don’t want any more relapses, then yes,” Lance said. He didn’t feel any remorse for what he’d done because he knew that it was in JC’s best interests. A week ago he’d vowed to himself that he wouldn’t let JC get to the point where he made himself sick, and he had every intention of following it.

“So is this your new solution for him?” Joey asked. “Because you can’t keep giving him sleeping pills.”

Lance raised an eyebrow. “I thought you were OK with this?”

“Just because I let you do it doesn’t mean I totally agree with it. I don’t want this to become a common thing,” Joey said.

“It’s not going to,” Lance replied.

“So what now?” Chris asked, breaking the silence that had fallen over the room.

“Well, I was thinking we could get started researching JC’s birth parents since he’s not going to be waking up anytime soon,” Lance suggested.

They all agreed and shut off the TV before following Lance into the study. Immediately Lance walked over to his fax machine sitting on his desk and grabbed the stack of papers that Karen had faxed over. It was odd to think that the answers they were looking for were potentially in his hands, but he didn’t pause for long before he sifted through the papers to find what he was looking for. Before he could read the names on the birth certificate aloud, he felt someone leaning over his shoulder.

“Alison Weston and Thomas Ahamay,” Justin read and straightened up. He looked up at the others. “They didn’t get married?”

“Not everyone who has a kid gets married, J,” Joey pointed out.

“I know, but I just figured his would’ve, you know?”

Lance couldn’t blame Justin for thinking that because he had too. He didn’t know what it was, but he just imagined that JC’s birth parents had gotten married and loved each other. Though, he guessed if that was true then he wouldn’t have been adopted. There was this pit in his stomach telling him that they wouldn’t like finding out what’d happened to JC’s parents and how he came to be up for adoption. This was definitely uncharted territory for them, and Lance wondered how much JC knew about his adoption and birth parents.

“Who do we want to look up first?” Chris asked, taking the birth certificate out of Lance’s hands and looking at it closer.

“Let’s look up his father,” Lance suggested, pulling out the computer chair and sitting down in it as he waited for his computer to boot up.

Joey moved closer and half sat on the desk next to Lance. “Do you think we’ll find anything?”

“We’re about to find out,” Lance said.

The next three hours crept by slowly. Researching JC’s father was a lot harder than Lance had expected, which made going through numerous websites tedious. He knew that it wasn’t going to be easy, but he figured that it would’ve been at least a little easier since so much information was accessible through the Internet. But so far they hadn’t really found anything that could be useful. Lance tiredly rubbed his eyes; they were really starting to hurt from staring at the computer screen for so long.

“I think we should call it quits for the night,” Justin said.

“No.” Lance sat up straighter. “I’m good.”

Chris shook his head. “J’s right, Lance. We can pick this up tomorrow.”

“All right,” Lance gave in with a sigh after pausing for a moment. He’d thought about refusing, but really did need a break. Together the four of them left the study before going upstairs to their respective rooms. As Lance got ready for bed, he hoped that when he woke up tomorrow and felt more rested that they’d get something that would bring them closer to figuring this all out.

JC pushed himself to his feet, wincing when his back popped. His whole body was sore from sleeping in such a weird position all night. Slowly he rolled his neck and shoulders to loosen the kinks that had accumulated there overnight before he started to stretch. He glanced over at the clock on the entertainment stand and felt anger course through his body. It was nearly ten o’clock in the morning, and he shouldn’t have been asleep that long since when he’d fallen asleep he’d only been up for about six hours. The only explanation as to why he had fallen asleep and slept that long was that he must’ve been slipped something.

It took him a minute to realize that a sleeping pill must’ve been crushed into his milk because the cookies couldn’t have had anything in them since everyone had some. From there it wasn’t hard to conclude that it’d been Lance’s idea because he’d made it very clear the other night that he thought he should’ve taken one. JC was pissed that Lance had gone behind his back like that to force him to sleep.

There was a part of him that could understand where Lance was coming from because there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do to make sure that the guys were taking care of themselves. Just three weeks ago he’d given Lance Nyquil under the pretenses that he was taking Dayquil, and shortly after that he’d given Justin a sleeping pill once he found out about his nightmares. However, that didn’t stop him from feeling betrayed because one of the things he hated most was when people went behind his back and lied about it. Not that he would’ve taken the pills willingly if Lance had offered them to him, but that was beside the point.

JC heard a low bass voice resound in the kitchen and knew that Lance was in there. He walked into the room to find Lance talking to Joey who was leaning against the counter with a cup of coffee in his hands. Joey looked up and greeted him, “Hey.”

“I can’t believe you,” JC hissed to Lance when he turned around to face him, ignoring Joey’s greeting.

“I’m just going to…watch TV or something,” Joey excused himself from the room. JC felt bad for putting Joey in a position where he had to leave the room to avoid his friends fighting and being pulled into it, but he couldn’t contain the anger that he held towards Lance.

“What?” Lance asked innocently once Joey was gone.

“Don’t act like you don’t know.” JC glared at him. “You drugged me.”

Lance sighed. “I didn’t have a choice.”

“You had plenty of choices. Like letting me run my own damn life,” JC retorted.

“Well, if you would actually take care of yourself, I wouldn’t have to do it for you, now would I?”

“You had no right to drug me,” JC said after trying to think of something to say. He knew that Lance was kind of right because he hadn’t been taking care of himself before. But now he was trying to, and Lance seemed to overlook that.

“You’re such a hypocrite. You did it to me…to Justin,” Lance replied.

“That’s different!”

Lance shook his head. “You’re the only one allowed to be worried?”

“No, but you should let me at least try to handle it before you slip me sleeping pills,” JC said.

“You wouldn’t have bought them if you weren’t going to use them,” Lance replied.

“Which means it should’ve been my choice,” JC shot back.

Lance crossed his arms. “I think the past couple weeks have shown your decision making skills suck.”

Just then JC’s phone began playing Beethoven’s ninth symphony, preventing him from saying anything else to Lance. He dug the ringing phone out of his pocket and glared at Lance. The back door opened and Chris and Justin came in from the backyard, so JC walked into the hall to answer his phone.

“Hello?” JC answered.

“Hi, JC. It’s Kelly.”

“Oh, hey. How are you?” JC asked, walking from the hallway into the living room where Joey was relaxing on the couch with the remote in his hand as he watched some classic black and white film.

Joey looked up from the TV. “Who you talking to?”

“Is that Joey?” Kelly asked. JC figured she’d heard him. “Don’t tell him it’s me.”

“My mom,” JC answered.

“Oh. Tell her I say hi,” Joey said and slowly rose from the couch. He headed for the kitchen because he knew that he’d have to let the others know that JC was talking to his mom. His heart was racing so fast that Joey was surprised he wasn’t having a heart attack. This wasn’t good. There was a good possibility that JC would know about what they’d done to get his birth certificate and then all hell would break loose.

“Guys, guys,” Joey whispered harshly as he entered the kitchen, glancing behind himself to see if he’d attracted JC’s attention yet.

Chris frowned as he leaned against the counter. “Why are you whispering?”

“We have a problem,” Joey said, ignoring Chris.

“What?” Lance asked, still sitting at the table.

“JC’s talking to his mom,” Joey said.

Justin immediately pulled his head out of the refrigerator and stood up straight with a worried expression on his face that Joey was sure mirrored his own. “Seriously?”

“How do you know?” Chris asked, rubbing his stomach lightly. Joey frowned, but quickly realized that it must’ve been from when Justin had straightened suddenly. Justin probably pulled on his stitches a little, but must be all right or else Chris would’ve said something.

“He told me.” Joey looked at each of them. “What are we going do?”

Justin held up his hands. “Don’t look at me. I knew lying to a mom was a bad idea.”

“We need to listen in on his conversation,” Chris said.

Lance frowned. “What good would that do? She could’ve already told him.”

“We need to know for sure,” Chris replied. He crept towards the living room where JC still was only to be forced to lean casually against the wall as JC walked into the hallway. Chris nodded at him and JC gave him a funny look before continuing down the hall by Lance’s study with his back to the kitchen. The others joined him and together they leaned their heads into the hallway and fell silent to listen to what JC was saying.

“No, he hasn’t said anything to me.” JC paused briefly. “Why?”

There was a moment of silence before JC said, “He called you?”

The four of them exchanged wide-eyed, uneasy looks. It sounded like his mom was going to tell him about Lance calling her yesterday and there wasn’t anything they could do about it because JC turned and walked out of the sight before they could hear the stairs creak signaling that he was going upstairs to his room.

“Let’s follow him,” Chris said.

“We can’t. That’d be rude,” Lance replied.

Chris rolled his eyes. “I think we’re past that stage.”

“Yeah, I don’t think it gets any worse than going behind his back,” Joey added.

“Still we can’t go up there and stand outside his door. It’d be suspicious,” Lance said.

Chris sighed. “What are we going to do then? She’s probably telling him what we did.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and she won’t tell him,” Lance said hopefully.

“We’re screwed,” Justin groaned and Joey silently agreed. Shortly JC would know all about what they’d done and what they were up to, and he’d be pissed about it. The only thing they could really do now was prepare for the anger JC would unleash on them when he got off the phone.

“So you wanted to talk about Joey?” JC asked, sitting on his bed with his legs tucked underneath him. He’d gone up to his room to ensure he would have privacy because he didn’t want the guys, especially Joey, to walk in on this conversation.

Kelly sighed. “I’m worried about him, so I called you because I knew you’d tell me what’s going on.”

“What do you mean?”

“I know something’s going on because otherwise Joey’d be here right now.” Kelly paused. “Unless he doesn’t want to come home.”

“Don’t say that. He’s crazy about you and Brianna and misses you both,” JC said.

“Then why doesn’t he come home? Is he drinking again?” Kelly asked.

JC shook his head even though he knew that she couldn’t see him. “No, no. We’ve been keeping an eye on him. You don’t have to worry about that.”

“Then what’s going on?”

“How much has Joey told you?” JC asked. He didn’t want to say anything if Joey hadn’t told her anything because if he hadn’t done so then he must not be ready to tell her. Plus he didn’t want to get in the middle of this and cause even more problems between the two of them. It was bad enough that he was the reason Joey’s family life was messed up, he didn’t want to make it worse.

“Not much,” Kelly admitted. “But I was hoping that you could tell me.”

“I’m sorry, Kelly, but I can’t. If Joey didn’t tell you then there must be a reason, and I don’t want to go behind his back like that,” JC said, wincing. The reason was because there were demons after him. It was such a crazy reason that JC didn’t blame Joey for not telling Kelly because if he hadn’t lived through it, he probably wouldn’t believe it either.

“I understand. You’re such a good friend, JC.”

“Look, Kelly…” JC sighed, running a hand through his hair. “I promise you that you’ll get your time with Joey before we go back in the studio again. You’ll see him so much that you’ll want to send him back to us.”

Kelly laughed softly. “Thanks, JC. I appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Well, I have to go pick up Brianna from a friend’s house. Take care of yourself,” Kelly said.

“You too. Tell my favorite niece I said hi,” JC replied.

“I will,” Kelly promised. “Bye, JC.”

“Bye.”

JC hung up his phone and sighed. It’d been hard not to tell Kelly what she wanted to hear, especially since she called him because she trusted him to tell the truth. And he could tell that she’d been disappointed when he told her that it wasn’t his place to speak for Joey. However, he didn’t regret his decision because he knew that Joey would tell her when he was ready.

Tossing his phone on his dresser, he left his room and headed down the stairs only to find Joey and Lance straightening from their bent positions at the bottom while Chris and Justin ducked into the study. Slowly he descended the rest of the stairs.

“How’s your mom?” Joey asked.

“Good,” JC said, eyeing him and Lance warily. It was obvious that they were up to something and that Justin and Chris were probably in on it. Nothing was coming to JC’s mind, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to keep his eyes open from now on.