The rose, of course, is Justin.

* * *

The Little Prince
by afrai

* * *

The rose showed up one day, though the seed had probably sneaked onto the planet earlier. The first thing Lance knew of it was when it sprouted a raw-looking green shoot.

It was thin and awkward but somehow determined, and Lance wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with it. It didn't look like a baobab, but it sure as hell wasn't a flower either -- Lance knew what those looked like, and he looked after them tenderly, grieving when they faded and blew away.

As it turned out, he was correct in a way, because it was a flower, but it wasn't any flower he had ever seen before. The rose resembled the flowers that had gone before it like the mountains Lance would later see on Earth resembled his volcanoes.

There were three of them -- two active ones, and an extinct volcano. He cleaned them all out regularly because it wasn't much work and you never knew, though the rose would later say it was because he was an anal control freak, and Lance would be upset because he had not learnt that you must not listen to flowers. Anything a flower says is crap -- it's part of their charm.

And flowers are charming. Lance took to sweeping at a weird angle that allowed him to secretly stare at the rose, even though it wasn't like the rose could see him anyway. It grew a bud, which made Lance sure it wasn't a baobab, but didn't do anything else to dispel the mystery about it. Lance thought it was revelling in the mystery, actually, which was stupid because it wasn't even alive, but sometimes it just radiated this irritating smugness that. . . .

Lance started sweeping out the volcanoes a lot.

Then one day when the sun was rising and the volcanoes were squeaky clean and Lance was only halfway through his breakfast, the rose blossomed.

"Hey," it said.

It was really pretty, and it made Lance feel huge and awkward and speechless. He pushed his scrambled eggs aside and tried to pretend the rose hadn't caught him unprepared. The rose was not very helpful in this regard.

"Were you having your breakfast?" it said.

"Yeah, um," said Lance. "But it's okay, I'm not hungry--"

"I am," said the rose. "You got any water in this place?"

Lance fetched a watering-can.

"My name's Lance," he said. The rose broke out of an absorbed silence to say,

"Yeah?"

"I'm, uh, the prince of this planet," said Lance, and wished he hadn't. It had sounded less stupid in his head.

"Yeah?" said the rose again. "Anybody else live here?"

"There's you," said Lance. "And there's like, volcanoes. And migratory birds? They come by every once in a while. Sometimes there are these baobabs, but I don't think they're -- they don't usually stay very long." He didn't like to say this was because he killed them.

The rose thought about this.

"So basically what you're saying is you're the prince of nothing," it said.

Lance was offended, but he wasn't sure how to express it. He didn't think it'd be a good idea to yell at the rose when they'd just met.

"No, there's--"

"If there's nothing on this planet, you can't be the prince of it," said the rose reasonably.

"There's the volcanoes."

"The volcanoes don't count," said the rose. "You've got to be, like, alive and shit. No offence, but calling yourself the prince of a planet that's got, like, nothing on it, that's kind of pathetic."

"There's you," said Lance again, more to stop himself from stomping on the rose than to defend himself.

"You're not the prince of me," said the rose. "I'm a fucking anarchist, man. We bomb princes for a living."

"How do you know that, you were only just born!"

"I'm a rose," said the rose. "I know these things. It's like I have this secret rose telepathy. You never heard of flower power? I have that. I'm psychic."

At this point Lance was so annoyed he couldn't even wince.

"More like fucking obnoxious," he said.

"That too," said the rose.

Lance learned that the rose didn't mind rudeness; being snapped at actually seemed good for it. This was good, because Lance snapped at it a lot. He couldn't seem to help himself, though he wanted to be polite, because the rose was right: it was practically the only living thing on his planet apart from Lance, not counting the migratory birds, which only crapped all over the place and pecked at things when they came anyway.

And the rose was -- okay, Lance was shallow, but the rose was pretty. Having it around seemed to brighten the place.

It was almost worth having to water it every day, though it insisted on Lance's doing it the minute it woke up, and it invariably woke up just before Lance had finished his breakfast. Watering it took so much time that his breakfast was all cold and icky when Lance returned to it, but the weird thing was Lance didn't seem to mind, though he always felt vaguely irritated for some time after he'd talked to the rose.

The birds started eating a lot of leftover scrambled eggs. Lance was still trying to figure out how to feed them the coffee.

He got the rose a screen, because it complained of the cold. He thought about compost.

* * *

He realised something had to change when the volcano erupted.

He hadn't really been sweeping it out lately, because the rose took up so much of his time. It was really bossy, and the annoying thing was he seemed to take Lance's obedience for granted. It wasn't that it thought Lance shouldn't look after the rest of his planet. It didn't seem to know there was a rest of the planet. More accurately, it knew, but it didn't care. It was like nothing else existed for it.

It was the most self-centred thing Lance had ever encountered.

The really annoying thing was, the rose was also the most interesting being he'd ever met. And he didn't actually mind being ordered around by it. He even made up excuses for himself to look after it. Like, it's young. It's fragile. It needs care, or I won't be able to get any sleep if it keeps on bitching all night.

So apparently his volcanoes had been feeling neglected. One day one of the active ones just blew up -- not in a big way, but enough to show that it was serious. Lance spent the whole morning cleaning up.

The rose had been really freaked out at first, hiding behind its screen and yelling, "Don't come near me!" whenever Lance passed by, as if he carried volcano germs or something. Eventually it realised it was perfectly safe, and then it started whining for water, as usual:

"C'mon, Lance, what's a little lava going to do to the ground? It's not like it's marble or something, Jesus . . ."

Which, okay, was really annoying, and there was already an angry, dissatisfied burn in Lance's stomach because it was all his fault, he should have looked after the volcanoes. And he'd only been interested in the rose ever since it arrived, and it was a total asshole, and he still liked it. Too much.

He really shouldn't have been mad at the rose, because he couldn't actually blame the rose for his liking it, but he was.

That's when he made up his mind.

* * *

The rose was quiet, up till Lance went to say goodbye.

"Okay, you know, whatever," it said, before Lance could open his mouth. "Obviously nothing I say is going to change your mind, so just, go already. Fuck off. I don't need you."

Lance felt something in him scrunch up and go cold, and he walked off. The silence behind him trembled, and the rose shouted after him,

"I only wanted some water! You could have just said no!" Lance didn't turn around. "Fine, go on, don't listen me. Who cares if you go off and, you know, if you don't even want to say goodbye, fuck you--"

"Will you fucking shut up already?" yelled Lance.

"No! Okay? No! I can--" The rose gave a sigh like wind rustling its leaves. "Look, this just. I didn't want it to end like this."

It looked so miserable Lance had to go to it, even though he still felt mad.

"I'm sorry I yelled at you," the rose muttered.

"You're a jerk," Lance told it, but he couldn't summon up the proper irritation.

"Thanks a lot," said the rose, without heat. It paused, evidently feeling awkward.

"Look, just -- take care of yourself, okay?" it said. "For what it's worth, I wish I hadn't bossed you around, but whatever. You should go. Have fun. See the world. Get laid a couple of times."

Lance was felt a prickle of discomfort.

"Maybe I should just--"

"No, go," said the rose quickly. "I'll be fine. I've got my thorns."

Lance looked at the thorns. They looked pitifully inadequate to protect the rose from the universe.

"Yeah," he said. "Um."

"I'm a jerk, right?" said the rose. "Jerks don't get hurt. We hurt other people. Look, if you don't go I'm going to fucking prick you, man."

Lance held up his hands.

"Okay, I'm going. Going."

He only looked back once, but he thought he might have seen the rose cry ....

*nsync | fanfiction | mail