Justin blinked, trying to get a grip on his surroundings.

Just as he expected, he could see the back of the stage of the Billboard awards, and he cursed inwardly. This time, there was no way he could pass for his younger self, and if anyone saw him, he would get thrown out.

Briefly, he remembered JC’s words.

“If you travel to the past, do not touch anything!”

Easy for him to say, Justin guessed. Now that he was there, he had to find the way to solve the mess he had created.

Trying to figure things out, he took a step back, not noticing the table behind him until he bumped it and heard the distinctive sound of glass shattering.

“Shit!” he yelled, just as the world around him started to ripple “Wait! It’s not fair! I didn’t do anything!”

*           *           *

Justin barely had time to register that he was not in his living room and his photo album was not in his hands before he fell to the floor.

The ground was moving.

And it wasn’t the movement of an earthquake, even when he was pretty sure they didn’t get earthquakes in Florida, it was a rhythmic movement he knew well.

He was on a bus.

“Oh, boy,” He muttered, and closed his eyes.

*           *           *

Justin woke up, feeling disoriented. He was on a bunk bed, on a bus, and he had no idea how he had gotten there. He remembered the time traveling, because it was one of those things one didn’t forget no matter what, but he couldn’t figure out how the fact that he had broken something in the Billboard Awards ended up with him in a tour bus.

He got down, trying to think. The last two times, it had been easy to find out what had happened. If he was in the middle of the highway, it wasn’t going to be that simple. The good news was that he wasn’t going to have to deal with yet another meeting at Jive.

He scratched his head, still half asleep when he heard the quiet laughter coming from the kitchenette. He wasn’t alone on the bus.

Trying not to look spooked, he walked towards the laugh to find Joey and Lance, cheerfully sharing breakfast.

“Look who’s up!” Joey greeted. “It’s your turn to wash the dishes then.”

“The dishes?” Justin asked, taking in the differences of his friends. Joey looked as big as always, with a gray t-shirt that was a bit frayed on the ends. His hair was dyed blonde again. Lance’s hair wasn’t as short as he remembered, and was wet, probably from a recent shower.

“It’s the deal,” Lance smirked. “Last one to wake up does the dishes. You remember that, right? It was your idea.”

“Sure,” Justin muttered, wondering exactly how he was going to figure out what was going on without convincing his friends that he was crazy.

*           *           *

The buses stopped just a little after ten, and Justin was still clueless about what was going on. He knew they were on tour, that *N Sync was still together, Lance was out of the closet –something he learned when Lance answered his cell phone by saying ‘Hey, Reichen, love. I was thinking about you’- but Joey and Kelly hadn’t married. They still lived together, whenever Joey wasn’t on the road, but there had been no wedding.

But important questions like what tour it was, when was the next concert, and what was he supposed to sing, were the questions he couldn’t ask.

His only consolation was that this time, there was not going to be a meeting at Jive.

“Group meeting!” Justin’s relief was short lived when JC entered the bus, followed by Chris, who was the one yelling at the top of his lungs. It wasn’t hard to see the changes in both his friends. JC was wearing his hair just as he had done while releasing Schizophrenic, slightly longer than usual, but his sense of fashion was as impossible as always, and he was still wearing the pink shirt that Justin had already seen four days in a row. Still, it was hard not to notice that he wasn’t wearing his Leo necklace. In its place, he was wearing a silver collar that Justin remembered seeing a lot of times around Chris’s neck. Chris, on the other hand, was wearing his hair long and covered by a bandana just as Justin remembered him doing in his *original* timeline. Chris was also wearing a black fumanskeeto tank top and a wrist bracelet near his left elbow, a quirk that Justin had never really understood. Around his neck, Chris wore the Leo necklace.

Shit.

It didn’t take a genius to realize that Chris and JC were together this time. Justin knew his best friend. JC wouldn’t take off his necklace just for a prank. And Chris looked *happy*. As happy as he had looked with Dani… or, now that Justin thought about it, with Lance.

“I didn’t know we had a group meeting scheduled for today,” Lance said with an amused smile. “Wasn’t that for tomorrow?”

“We decided to change it,” JC explained, sitting down. Chris sat next to him, laying his head on JC’s lap. Justin tried mightily not to look shocked. He was guessing the arrangement was sort of common on the bus given that neither Joey nor Lance commented on it. “Since tomorrow Joey’s not going to be with us.”

“Guys, you know Kelly is flying to meet us in Chicago, I haven’t seen her in weeks,” Joey explained, shaking his head. “I told you that yesterday. She and Brianna are coming.”

“Which is exactly why we’re having the meeting today,” Chris said with a smile. “So you can actually relax with your family before the concert.”

“We have a concert tomorrow?”  Justin couldn’t help it. He was panicking. One thing was to bluff his way out of a recording session. Another very different was to sing and dance for two hours when he had no idea of the *song set*, let alone the choreography.

He doubted that in five years they had kept I want you back, It’s gonna be me or Bye Bye Bye.

Perhaps Bye Bye Bye. It made a good ending to a show.

“Sure we do,” Chris looked at him, amused. “You know, they pay us for this. I know, it’s a crazy idea, but after ten years, they seem to think it works.”

“Don’t tease him, Chris,” JC scolded. “You tend to forget our interview dates, so you have no room to talk.”

“You forget *one* interview, and of course, your boyfriend never lets you forget,” Chris rolled his eyes, sitting up. “Seriously, J. You have never forgotten a concert before. What’s wrong?”

Justin gulped. He was good at telling lies, he knew that. However, it was hard to tell a lie when he wasn’t sure of what to say. It was different when the only thing he could say was ‘sorry, but in the last timeline I woke up in, we weren’t even together as a group’, and he was pretty sure that was not going to be a good answer. Even if JC had listened to him last time, there was no way in which Justin could tell him anything now. Not if this time, JC had ended up being Chris’s lover.

“I just… I think I’m still half asleep,” he finally answered, lamely. “What were we going to talk about today?”

Chris narrowed his eyes, looking suspicious. Justin gulped, but managed to keep his poker face. He just had to fool the guys long enough to figure out what to do.

“The same thing as the last two meetings,” Lance laughed. “Namely, what will be the song set for our next album.”

“We’re doing some advance.” Joey stretched his arms, and Justin could see the shadow of a new tattoo, barely showing under Joey’s shirt. “We’re down to what? Twenty?”

“Twenty one,” Chris corrected. “We could make it a double album.”

“Johnny won’t let us do another double album,” Lance shook his head. “So what do we do? Put the names out of a hat?”

“We could always think of what would look good for the next tour,” JC said. “I don’t know about you guys, but I think we could leave Bye Bye Bye out then. It’s been almost seven years, the joke is growing old.”

“You’re forgetting our manager, C,” Chris interrupted, smiling. “He wants us to keep one of the old songs on the set. If we take out Bye Bye Bye, we might as well say we want to do Tearin’ Up My Heart again.”

Justin listened to his bandmates arguing, and he realized that, deep down, he had missed it. While he enjoyed being the one in charge, being the one who made the decisions without any external input, he had missed the easy way in which they used to start meetings. It hadn’t been until the last year he remembered when things had gone sour. When he had been more worried about his solo album, and Joey could only talk about Brianna, and Chris had started retreating into his own world.

Apparently, that hadn’t happen here. Their meetings had never become virtual battles, ending with more yells than words.

He could get used to it, he realized, and smiled. Trying to be casual, he reached for the copy of the songs’ titles that Lance had pulled out after telling Joey that no, a remix of Giddy Up was a bad idea.  He still didn’t know how the new songs sounded, how *N Sync’s sound had evolved after five more years, but he figured that the titles could give him some idea of what to say.

The first title was a familiar one, and Justin smiled. He could work with what fate was throwing at him.

Sexy Back.

If he was still writing, he could learn to like this timeline.

*           *           *

Justin wasn’t that sure of himself by the time the meeting ended and Chris and JC left to their own bus, apparently, to talk about arrangements.

They didn’t ask Justin to join in, and neither Lance or Joey commented on it. Justin realized that it was a common thing. Just like in his time, when it was him and JC the ones who would talk about what they could do with the songs, ignoring everyone else.

“They’re probably going to end up having sex,” Joey told him when Justin half commented that he wanted to talk to them about a couple of remixes. “So unless you decided that you’re not really that freaked out about it, I wouldn’t recommend going to their bus.”

Since the image of Chris having sex with JC was not one he wanted to explore, Justin dropped the subject. There was nothing more to do, except figuring out how he was going to learn five years worth of new choreography and solos in less than seven hours.

Justin was trying to figure out what to do when his cell phone started ringing. Without really thinking, he answered it without looking at the name on the screen. The tone was his own melody for Sexy Back, so he figured it was Cameron.

“What’s up, babe?”

“Justin, I’m so sorry, I won’t be able to meet you in Chicago.” The voice on the other side of the line didn’t sound like Cameron at all. Unfortunately for Justin, it wasn’t an unknown voice either.

“Brit?”

“Do you call anyone else ‘Babe’ on your cellphone, J?” Britney didn’t sound mad, which was a good thing he guessed. It didn’t help the sinking feeling in his stomach though.

“Only you?” He half asked, trying to go along. If he was dating Britney, things would be a lot harder. While he had managed to mend their friendship, the fact that she had cheated on him had never stopped hurting.

“I hope so,” she answered, her voice clearly laughing. “Anyway, I was telling you, I won’t be making it to Chicago, since we’re having a bit of a problem with the new video, so, what do you say if I fly to whenever you’re going after Chicago? I have two weeks free, and, well, even with the group concerts, we could have a second honey moon, what do you say?”

*           *           *

Justin came back to himself to see the very worried face of JC looking down at him. He blinked, trying to clear his memories.

“Man, I had the most awful nightmare ever,” He muttered, sitting up. Only then he realized he was on a bunk bed of a tour bus. The nightmare wasn’t over, apparently.

“You scared Britney half to death, Justin,” JC said, giving him a wet cloth for his head. “Us too, by the way. You just fainted, what happened?”

“Britney cheated on me,” Justin said, slowly. “She cheated on me, we broke up and then she got married and had two babies.”

JC frowned, puzzled. In the *right* timeline, JC had been the first to know about Britney’s fling.  “She did all that since you saw her, just yesterday? How did she manage to hide two pregnancies from the press?”

“No, not *now*,” Justin kept going before realizing he really couldn’t explain things to JC. “In my nightmare. She cheated on me in my nightmare. When I fainted. It was… too real.”

“Well, J, you’ve always been a little too jealous of her friends,” JC pointed out. “Maybe the heat got to you, and when she said she couldn’t come to Chicago… it shorted you out?”

Justin nodded, not trusting his voice.

“You ok? We’re about to get to the hotel, and you can sleep there for a couple of hours. We have an interview at nine, but afterwards, you can rest.”

“I just need, look JC, this is going to sound weird,” Justin gathered his courage. Of everyone in the group, JC was the only one who was not going to laugh. “But I can’t remember a single song after the Celebrity album. Or the choreographies. Or our song set for tomorrow’s show.”

JC didn’t even blink. In fact, he smiled.

“That was why you panicked at the meeting?” JC shook his head. “J, you have to stop drinking whatever Chris offers you. I love him, but he was never meant to be a barman. Just rest, it will come to you.”

“What if it doesn’t?” Justin was seriously worried about that. None of his jumps had come with the memories included.

“Well, I got copies of the cds in our bus, and we have four concerts taped because Steve wants to make this DVD a special one, not just a recording of the show, so I could lend them to you when we get to the hotel,” JC said, although Justin could tell that his friend was not very amused at the possibility. No one took their music more seriously than JC. “And if nothing works, I wake you up tomorrow at four and we spend the whole day teaching you the show.”

*           *           *

Justin sat on his room bed, still wondering what to do after seeing the video of their latest concert. He had an easier way out if he didn’t want to try performing, and he knew it. He could just find one picture, one single picture of before, and he would be in another reality where he wasn’t pressed by time.

But that would mean screwing *again* with his friend’s lives. And here Chris was happy, JC was happy, and Lance was happy. After the last reality, Justin wasn’t sure he could guarantee that would happen again.

Sure, he was *married* to *Britney*, and he still didn’t know what freaked him out the most: the marriage part or the fact that it was Britney. But as far as he knew, they were still on the top of the world.

Deep down he knew he had no right to mess up with that.

The concert had been different. Justin knew that it didn’t matter if he left this reality, even so he would never forget the bizarre sight of the five of them singing All day Long I think About Sex without back up dancers. He guessed he was lucky. With three gay members in a group of five, there could’ve been male dancers instead.

Besides that, it had been an interesting two hours. The choreography was a lot more subdued than what Justin remembered, which was perfect in his opinion. That meant he could learn them faster. They still used pyrotechnics, and lasers and gag videos. And they had kept not only Bye Bye Bye, but also a small reprise of God Must Have Spent and Celebrity. Besides from All Day Long, he also recognized Rock your Body and Who Am I. The rest of the songs were completely new to him.

But he knew that even that is not going to be a problem as big as trying to learn the choreography. Because for the first time since the first *N Sync’s concerts, he is not up and center the whole concert. They all are. It’s a *group* concert, and Justin wondered exactly how much  the group had changed because Chris and JC were together. Joey had solos, *Lance* had solos. They sounded incredibly different from what Justin remembered. Not bad, but not something he was expecting to hear.

By the time Chris came to knock on his door to tell him they have an interview and he has to be down at the lobby in five minutes and that he doesn’t care if Justin is naked because they aren’t going to be late, Justin still didn’t have an answer to his question.

Did he stay there, where everyone but he was happy, or he destroyed this reality in the off chance that the next one would be better for him?

*           *           *

Their interview for that day was at a local radio station, so Justin didn’t have the luxury of a couple of minutes before make-up as he hoped. He now knew a bit more than in the morning, at least now he knew that their latest album was called “Burning” and that their tour was the “Tied Up” tour. And that was about it. He didn’t even know what was going on with his own life.

“Guys, I don’t think I’m ready for this,” he muttered, as the station manager led them to their seats. “I’m pretty sure I’m not.”

“Don’t worry, J. We’ll take care of it,” JC smiled at him. He had changed clothes and now was wearing a white tank-top with strange words hand-written with puffy sparkly paint. It looked like the one JC had wore during the Pop Odyssey tour, only that this one was handmade and the words were absolute gibberish. In fact, now that Justin watched it closely, it was just one word. Tricks, only misspelled, with a c instead of an s.

Only JC would wear a misspelled shirt.

Still, Justin couldn’t avoid the sinking feeling on his stomach as the show began and the DJ made the introductions. There wasn’t a single question he felt he could answer. And the DJ would focus on him, they always did. Ask him about solo projects, new singles, his romance with Britney –which had become quite annoying in the last years, because they questioned him about her marriage, and her kids, as if he was supposed to know anything.

Now he couldn’t even answer his opinion about Lance’s coming out because he didn’t know when Lance had come out. He didn’t even question the publicity of JC and Chris’s relationship because he had seen them kiss, briefly and with the same sweetness that Justin used to have with Cameron, out and in plain view.

To be truthful, he felt a little disappointed that he had missed *that* development. He had just appeared when things already worked, and for a moment, he sincerely wished he could remember *how* JC and Chris had come to realize that they worked together.

It still came out as a surprise when the first question the DJ asked was aimed at Chris.

“So, Chris, did you ever expected *N Sync to last this long?”

“Sure I did!” Chris answered, casually leaning on JC. “There were a few rough patches, especially after Celebrity, but we’re friends so, I see us together for a long, long time.”

“It’s been two years since you and JC decided to make your relationship public knowledge, has anything changed for you because of that?”

Justin was genuinely curious about what Chris would say, but it was JC the one who picked up the question.

“We were really worried about that,” JC started saying. “Our management was livid, since we hadn’t run it past them. It was time to do it though, and it isn’t as if what someone does in private should be anybody’s business. Fans surprised us, though.”

“Our fans have always been very supportive,” Lance piped in. “Last year, they put an ad on Billboard to mark our ten years together as a group.”

“We saw that,” the DJ agreed. “So it hasn’t hurt your sales at all?”

“We do get the occasional hate mail,” Chris shook his head. “And once we had a group protesting outside one of our concerts, but we still don’t know if it was because of JC and me, or because of JC’s lyrics.”

“There have been some questions about that. How do you felt when All Day Long was pulled from the airwaves?”

“A little disappointed,” JC nodded. “Of course, I still think it wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t had that mishap with Janet at the Superbowl.”

“That was an honest accident!” Justin couldn’t stop himself. He had had more than enough grief regarding that incident in his own timeline, he really didn’t want to go back and rehearse it again. “I had no idea those things came off!”

“Because Britney never wears outfits like that,” Chris joked, earning a laugh from everyone around. Unfortunately for Justin, his outburst brought the attention of the DJ back to him.

“Speaking of Britney, it’s been six months since you two tied the knot. How’s the life of the married man treating Justin Timberlake?”

Justin opened his mouth, closed it again. How could he answer that question when in his mind he wasn’t even married? When he couldn’t stop thinking that Britney had cheated on him?

“I still can’t believe it happened,” he finally said, hoping that he sounded lovestruck and not just dumbstruck. “It’s like… I keep thinking Brit married someone else.”

*           *           *

“You’re in deep shit, man,” Joey said, on the way back to the hotel. “If Britney listened to that interview, she’s going to have your balls for dinner.”

“I just said the truth, I’m still shell shocked from the wedding,” Justin answered, smiling. He had come to a decision. This timeline wasn’t so bad. His friends were happy, he was still famous. Maybe he was no longer the most important part of *N Sync, but he still was *Justin Timberlake*. He could work with it.

Besides, he was pretty sure that going back to *his* original timeline was going to be too complicated. If the worst came to happen, he could always divorce Britney. They had already lasted six months, which was a lot better than Britney’s first marriage in his timeline.

They were reaching the hotel when Joey’s cell rang. Justin looked at him smile when he saw the name on the screen, flipping it open.

“Hey, Kel. You’re in Chicago?” Joey’s smile crumpled fast, his skin taking a ghostly white. “Yes. This is Joey Fatone. Are you… Are you sure? But… Yes, she’s my girlfriend, Kelly Baldwin. Wait. Please. She was traveling with our daughter, Briahna Fatone. She’s just… No, no. No, please. Don’t…”

Joey started sobbing, while everyone else looked at him in horror. Lance was the first to react, taking the cell away from Joey’s hands.

“This is Lance Bass, could you please repeat me what you just told Joey?” Lance asked to the phone, and Justin saw his mouth tighten. “I see. Outside the city? And you’re sure there are no survivors? I see. Look, I understand that you’re just doing your job, but…”

Justin blacked out Lance’s words, focused on Joey, who was still sobbing and muttering on the back of the limo. Chris had moved to his side, hugging him. From what Joey was saying, Justin could make the words ‘plane accident’.

Shit.

*           *           *

It took Justin one hour to decide what he was going to do, and half an hour to find what he needed.

There was nothing to think, really. He could go back, and make sure Kelly and Briahna weren’t on that plane to Chicago that night. The others would agree, if he could tell them what he was planning. He just had to be careful not to change anything else. *N Sync together, JC and Chris together, it worked, it worked even better than Lance and Chris together – and he would only admit to himself that the reason why it was better was because when Lance and Chris had been together, his own career was stalled – so if he managed to just change how Kelly and Joey lived, he could keep the best of this timeline.

And Kelly and Briahna.

He even had the plan. The only reason why the girls had died had been because they hadn’t been on the tour with them.  He just needed to convince Joey to make Kelly come with them all the time. It was easy. 

The hard part of the plan was finding a picture close enough in time to the Billboard awards of 2000 so he could jump, but not jump far enough to ruin JC and Chris’s chance to be together. So he had gone and bought every single music magazine he could find, flipping through the pictures trying not to focus in any one until he found the one he was looking for. Thankfully, all the magazines repeated old pictures in articles about them, so he knew it was just a matter of time.

Regretfully, he saw the pictures where Chris was hugging JC, seeing a fast forward map of *their* relationship. There was a risk he would be destroying that, and he knew it. But he decided that if whenever he ended up, Chris and JC *weren’t* together, he would find the way to get them together.

When he found the old, small picture of the Planet Hollywood party back in 2000, he smiled. It was just a month before the Billboard awards, and nothing much could happen in a month that could change Chris and JC’s romantic life. He hoped. Still, he concentrated in the image before him, Lance with his green jacket, JC smiling, still looking somewhat *normal* in white. Chris, next to him with his Pittsburg’ Steelers’s cap, looking sideways at JC, Joey behind him looking at something the others hadn’t spotted, his hand on Justin’s own shoulder. Justin had been grimacing, he didn’t remember why, in a yellow-brown jacket. They had been tired then, Justin could see even if he didn’t remember, and he was concentrating on Chris’s silver hoops when the picture, thankfully, rippled.