crack_van | Through a Glass, Darkly (NC-17)

Through a Glass, Darkly (NC-17)
Fandom: POPSLASH
Pairing: JC/Lance primarily, but everyone winds up with a part in the story.
Author on LJ:

synecdochic
Author Website: http://www.kekkai.org/synecdochic/main.html
Why this must be read: It's an epic of magic and power and genere transcendence. It’s one of the best pieces of fanfic I've ever read. And it's a mystery you can enjoy even if you aren't a fan of the band.

This week? Magic. Popslash is perhaps the most AU friendly fandom I've ever been involved with. I think it's because there is an overwhelming desire for the members of Nsync to be more than they actually are. To be a lot smarter and deeper and just more interesting than they may be in actual life. To have not hit their peak prior to 25 and be forced to spend their lives just drifting. Lance Bass the actual person spent much of 2003 and 2004 drinking and partying across the globe. Lance Bass the character saved the world several times.

I think I like Lance Bass the character better.

Through a Glass Darkly is a sequel to the terrific Rake at the Gates of Hell, which is recommended here: "Rake at the Gates of Hell Rec" You don’t have to read the first to get this one. But you should anyway, because it's just good.

Both are just beautiful. If you are a fan of Neil Gaimen's Sandman, or Hellblazer, or even if you just thought the movie Constantine was good? You will love this. Magic and religion and a mystery.

I can't think of enough good things to say about this story, so I'm going to let it speak for itself.

An excerpt:

JC gets the call for another victim

Joey had the native New Yorker's skill at hailing cabs, and he guided JC into the backseat before asking, in an undertone, "Any idea where we're going?"

JC closed his eyes and tried to get a sense of where they were and where they were going. "East. East and south, by water."

"I don't suppose these Spidey-senses come with a street address?" Joey asked, but he was already leaning forward to talk to the cabbie. "Not sure where we're going, man, but just take us down Sixth and then over to Lower East. We'll tell you when to turn."

The cabbie gave him a dubious look, but clicked the meter on anyway. JC leaned back against the leather seat and breathed, trying to empty himself of everything but that call. "Turn left here," he said, after a few minutes, and the cabbie obliged. "And ... two or three blocks south, and then right."

It was Manhattan; the cabbie had probably seen twelve stranger things before breakfast. The car was silent except for the radio and the driver singing along with it; JC absently noted with the part of his mind reserved for such things that the man was ever so slightly off-key. They were close, so close, when he leaned forward. "Slow down," he said, and made a show of looking out the window as though he was checking for street addresses. It was throbbing under his skin by now, the way a wound pulsed with blood-flow. The buildings were cheap housing, and trash was strewn on the streets and sidewalks. "Here," he said, and the driver stopped.

"Thanks, man," Joey said, and slipped a few bills through the window. "You okay, C?" he added in an undertone.

JC just kept breathing. "Yeah," he said. "I'm --" He slid out of the cab, stepping up onto the curb, looking around and trying to fix himself firmly in this world. The sense of something broken was strong, so strong. "Just -- stay behind me. And don't touch anything. And don't say anything. And don't --"

"I get the picture," Joey said.

JC took another deep breath and made his way up the steps to the door of the building that was singing to him the loudest. It was locked, of course, but the lock fell open under his fingertips with a whispered "aperite". He pushed his way through with Joey following him. The hallway was dark: reeking of urine, covered in graffiti. Up two flights of stairs; it was coming from the last apartment in the back corner. JC could sense the heartbeats of the other people in the apartment building, silent and tucked away and minding their own business.

Never open a door before checking to see if it's warded, and what's behind it, Lance's voice whispered in his memory. He rested his palm flat on the door, and then jerked it back as quickly as he could when he felt the roiling magic behind it. "Fuck!" slipped out from between his lips. "Fuck, fuck, fuck --"

Joey (who was looking around them nervously, watching out, JC imagined, for physical danger rather than magical) laid a hand on JC's arm. JC jerked back quickly, hissing. Joey just wanted to reassure, he knew, but he was so hyper-sensitive, listening, reaching, that to be touched at all was agony. "Sorry," he muttered, quickly. "I just -- don't touch me --"

Joey let it go. "Okay. What's wrong? What's in there?"

"Remember what I said I ran into Wednesday night?"

"...Yeah."

"It's back. Or rather, the aftermath of it is. There's at least one dead body in there, and a whole lot of ugly magic, and I'm too late again." JC curled his fingers into fists. "Fuck." He bit off the word and curled his fingers into his palms.

Joey's first impulse was always to touch, but he checked the motion and shoved his hand behind his back. "You gonna be able to handle it?"

"Are you?" JC shot back. "Do you really want to see what's behind that door?" It was always easier to face things like this alone, but he didn't want Joey to have to go through it with him.

Joey met his eyes. "I said I was with you, I'm fucking with you."

"All right, then." JC brushed his fingers over the lock, and it too sprang open beneath his touch. The magic washed over him, thick and heavy and malevolent, and he couldn't tell if it was blood or smoke or incense or just plain evil he was smelling. Joey's presence behind him, bright and clean and pure, was the one thing that kept him upright as he stepped through the door.

Behind him, Joey stopped dead on the threshold, and JC couldn't tell if it was from the blood and viscera spread out on the floor or if Joey could sense the presence of the magic too. It snapped and twisted and burned in his veins. This time the victim was a man, probably in his late twenties, and as JC desperately tried to block out the crawling fetid wrongness, he slowly realized that there were old wards around the room, the faint remnants of lines of white light that had been shattered into a thousand pieces by something older and stronger than they were.

"Holy Mother of God," Joey breathed, crossing himself. Some amount of sense reasserted itself, because he shut the door behind him. JC knotted his hands into fists again as the miasma doubled, having no way to escape, but it was precisely what he would have told Joey to do: shut the door to keep that power from creeping down the hallway and getting loose. The other inhabitants of the building would be sleeping poorly, haunted by nightmares of death and blood, as it was; he couldn't risk letting any more of it get free.

"Okay," Joey said, and came up to stand at JC's elbow. He very carefully avoided placing his feet over any of the lines of symbols painted in blood. "I'm, uh, thinking there's probably a lot of really bad mojo in here right now, am I right?"

"Yeah." Joey's presence helped; with Joey standing close enough for JC to feel that pure solid goodness he could almost think again. "I've got to dispel it. But not yet. I need to see if whoever did this left any clues --"

"Gimme your backpack," Joey said. JC blinked at him. Joey sighed. "Give me your backpack. I'll copy down the symbols and save you some time. I'm the one who's going to be looking them up anyway, it's better if I do it. You check for a signature, and see if you can find anything that'll lead you back to the sick fuck who's responsible for this. And then you can clean up the vibes or whatever and we can go home and take a shower and then I think I'm going to get really, really, really drunk, but I'm pretty sure I can hold off the panic attack until we get out of here." He licked his lips. "I wouldn't say no to working really quickly, though."

JC wondered if this had been how Lance had felt when JC had first wormed his way into this section of Lance's life, like everything was a little more okay if there was someone else there with you. "Yeah. Okay. Don't forget to make a few mistakes when you copy them down. I just -- God, I can't think in here. It's worse than forty thousand screaming teenagers."

"Nothing could be worse than forty thousand screaming teenagers," Joey said, with no small amount of gallows humor, and held out his hand for the backpack.

A few pictures.

First, all of NSync, circa 2001
Looking good together