FIC: Always [pt.1]
Title: Always
Author: cayskank
Pairings: Joe/Nick, David/Lorenzo, Kris/Adam
Rating: PG-13 (maybe M in later parts? IDK.)
Disclaimer: Do not own, not real. No disrespect intended. Icons; collapsingnight
Summary: We'd never spent more than a weekend apart; how was I to begin to fathom this idea of his prolonged absense in less than half a year? Small town boys. Kind of AU.
A/N: Newwww story. I don't know when I'll update it, or how often. All I do know is that I have some crazy (and probably cliche and/or lame) ideas for this, which include Joe being roomies with Adam Lambert in Toronto and Nick facing a serial killer back home and a lot of pining and brother-love and the Henrie brothers with a guest appearance by Kris Allen. OH YES.
This is me coming back from my (short-lived) hiatus because even though I'm going crazy and quite bored with my life since I came back from London, LJ is addicting. Uhm, busy life is busy (grad week!) and I'm trying to convince my mom to let me see Adam Lambert in Toronto in June, and there's a lot going on but yet I feel like it's necessary to start posting a WIP (in NICK'S pov, wtf am I doing?!). I'M SORRY. (Also, Kevin is a genius in this b/c apparently I like to make him super duper smart in AUs. I've done it before, haha.)
Sidenote: I had this open in Word to the part where Joe is meeting David for the first time, and Sam came home to use the computer to print off an assignment, and she SAW it, and she stared at it for like TWO WHOLE MINUTES. Haha, brb dying of shame.)
Part One.
The most common memory and image I have of my father is one where he is nursing the bottle. The alcohol was an extension of his character; the smell of Pilsner, his favoured vice, is one I automatically associate with the man that neglected to raise my brothers and I after our mother died. I never order Pilsner at the bar.
Father often said that Joseph, my older brother of three years, was so difficult that the only coping mechanism he had was to turn to the bottle. (We all knew he'd been drinking before he'd even met our mother, however. It was a part of him.) Joe didn't talk until he was three and a half years old, and rarely smiled. And when Joe started talking, finally, he was merely a freak. He was too loud, too dramatic and colourful for Father's taste. Perhaps that was the reason he'd been so quiet for so long, just to keep from disappointing our deadbeat father.
Joe often said, in regards to his muteness in his first three years, that he simply didn't have anything to smile or talk about in those first years. It wasn't, he said, until I was born that he'd anything to properly smile about. His relationship with our older brother Kevin has always been tenulous, and there sure wasn't ever anything he had to say to Father, who despised him so. Kevin recalls that the only person Joe ever smiled at before me was our mother. Their relationship was a silent one; Mother didn't talk much, either.
I don't remember our mother -- I was merely a week old when she passed. Joe and Kevin do, however. Kevin, being the oldest, has the most recollection of her; it's Joe who has the fondest memories.
He often told me of her long, brown hair that got lost in your fingers and the unique, dangly earrings that she fancied (and that Joe liked to pull on). Frued wrote that men are born in love with their mothers, and I'm not sure of the psychological accuracy of this idea, but it was clear that Joe loved our mother.
It was a miracle, then, that he did not despise my existence. It was complications with the pregnancy that took her life, after all.
Joe didn't like Kevin much half of the time. Joe's opinion of Kevin was alterable by his many moods, however, as was his opinion on much else in the world. Kevin understood this even better than I, and rarely took offense to Joe's biting words of sarcasm.
Joe wasn't much of a morning person, and he always seemed to take direct offense to Kevin's bright mood. Kevin, of course, was very much a morning person. It never came to shouting matches, but I recall many tense battles at the dinner table in the mornings before school.
Disgruntled at being woken by his alarm clock at such an absurd hour, Joe simply couldn't handle the conversations that Kevin and I had at breakfast.
He would throw a bowl on the table as he sat down in his chair beside me (always the far left chair -- he was left-handed and couldn't stand sitting anywhere else) and reach for the Rice Crispies, which were always on the other side of the table by Kevin, who had used them last.
Kevin would be in the middle of telling me about something new he'd figured out the night before while doing his physics homework (or something along these lines) that he just could not wait to discuss with his teacher. I, the good brother I was, would politely try to follow his words and appear interested. Joe'd be spilling milk on the table as he poured it into his bowl by then, and a glare would be shot Kevin's way as the jug of milk fell to the tabletop. Joe would never put the cap back on, and Kevin, the family genius, the perfectionist, couldn't ever let it go.
"Joe, put the cap back on," he'd say.
"Suck it," Joe'd reply at his nicest, when he was feeling the least grumpy. At best, he'd simply ignore Kevin.
I would then reach for the cap and twist it back on the milk. I was done my breakfast by this time, usually, and would put the milk back in the fridge as I put my dishes in the sink to be washed later. I would put Joe's dishes in the sink, too, when he was done and had retreated to his room. He never put his dishes away in the morning.
Kevin would frown at me. "You just enable him," he'd say to me, over and over.
"I'd rather avoid it," I always replied. Joe in the morning was an ogre -- I'd clean up after him if it meant avoiding that glare being sent in my direction. I hated it enough when it was directed at Kevin.
I liked Kevin, who was six years my senior. He was a ray of sunshine to me, always smiling and optimistic. He countered Joe's dark moods with a firm stance. He was smart, too. At seventeen, Kevin would be accepted into a tough engineering program at a presitgious university three hours away, leaving the house to Joe and I (and our drunk for a father).
Those years from Kevin's departure to Joe's own escape were the first five years of my adolescence, of track meets and the Henrie brothers. Father was a vague shadow, even more so after Kevin left.
I think we were doomed from the start. We never had a chance, Joe and I. As long as I can remember, I have had an immovable place by his side, always protected and covered by my brother's strong grip on my shoulder.
Author: cayskank
Pairings: Joe/Nick, David/Lorenzo, Kris/Adam
Rating: PG-13 (maybe M in later parts? IDK.)
Disclaimer: Do not own, not real. No disrespect intended. Icons; collapsingnight
Summary: We'd never spent more than a weekend apart; how was I to begin to fathom this idea of his prolonged absense in less than half a year? Small town boys. Kind of AU.
A/N: Newwww story. I don't know when I'll update it, or how often. All I do know is that I have some crazy (and probably cliche and/or lame) ideas for this, which include Joe being roomies with Adam Lambert in Toronto and Nick facing a serial killer back home and a lot of pining and brother-love and the Henrie brothers with a guest appearance by Kris Allen. OH YES.
This is me coming back from my (short-lived) hiatus because even though I'm going crazy and quite bored with my life since I came back from London, LJ is addicting. Uhm, busy life is busy (grad week!) and I'm trying to convince my mom to let me see Adam Lambert in Toronto in June, and there's a lot going on but yet I feel like it's necessary to start posting a WIP (in NICK'S pov, wtf am I doing?!). I'M SORRY. (Also, Kevin is a genius in this b/c apparently I like to make him super duper smart in AUs. I've done it before, haha.)
Sidenote: I had this open in Word to the part where Joe is meeting David for the first time, and Sam came home to use the computer to print off an assignment, and she SAW it, and she stared at it for like TWO WHOLE MINUTES. Haha, brb dying of shame.)
Part One.
The most common memory and image I have of my father is one where he is nursing the bottle. The alcohol was an extension of his character; the smell of Pilsner, his favoured vice, is one I automatically associate with the man that neglected to raise my brothers and I after our mother died. I never order Pilsner at the bar.
Father often said that Joseph, my older brother of three years, was so difficult that the only coping mechanism he had was to turn to the bottle. (We all knew he'd been drinking before he'd even met our mother, however. It was a part of him.) Joe didn't talk until he was three and a half years old, and rarely smiled. And when Joe started talking, finally, he was merely a freak. He was too loud, too dramatic and colourful for Father's taste. Perhaps that was the reason he'd been so quiet for so long, just to keep from disappointing our deadbeat father.
Joe often said, in regards to his muteness in his first three years, that he simply didn't have anything to smile or talk about in those first years. It wasn't, he said, until I was born that he'd anything to properly smile about. His relationship with our older brother Kevin has always been tenulous, and there sure wasn't ever anything he had to say to Father, who despised him so. Kevin recalls that the only person Joe ever smiled at before me was our mother. Their relationship was a silent one; Mother didn't talk much, either.
I don't remember our mother -- I was merely a week old when she passed. Joe and Kevin do, however. Kevin, being the oldest, has the most recollection of her; it's Joe who has the fondest memories.
He often told me of her long, brown hair that got lost in your fingers and the unique, dangly earrings that she fancied (and that Joe liked to pull on). Frued wrote that men are born in love with their mothers, and I'm not sure of the psychological accuracy of this idea, but it was clear that Joe loved our mother.
It was a miracle, then, that he did not despise my existence. It was complications with the pregnancy that took her life, after all.
Joe didn't like Kevin much half of the time. Joe's opinion of Kevin was alterable by his many moods, however, as was his opinion on much else in the world. Kevin understood this even better than I, and rarely took offense to Joe's biting words of sarcasm.
Joe wasn't much of a morning person, and he always seemed to take direct offense to Kevin's bright mood. Kevin, of course, was very much a morning person. It never came to shouting matches, but I recall many tense battles at the dinner table in the mornings before school.
Disgruntled at being woken by his alarm clock at such an absurd hour, Joe simply couldn't handle the conversations that Kevin and I had at breakfast.
He would throw a bowl on the table as he sat down in his chair beside me (always the far left chair -- he was left-handed and couldn't stand sitting anywhere else) and reach for the Rice Crispies, which were always on the other side of the table by Kevin, who had used them last.
Kevin would be in the middle of telling me about something new he'd figured out the night before while doing his physics homework (or something along these lines) that he just could not wait to discuss with his teacher. I, the good brother I was, would politely try to follow his words and appear interested. Joe'd be spilling milk on the table as he poured it into his bowl by then, and a glare would be shot Kevin's way as the jug of milk fell to the tabletop. Joe would never put the cap back on, and Kevin, the family genius, the perfectionist, couldn't ever let it go.
"Joe, put the cap back on," he'd say.
"Suck it," Joe'd reply at his nicest, when he was feeling the least grumpy. At best, he'd simply ignore Kevin.
I would then reach for the cap and twist it back on the milk. I was done my breakfast by this time, usually, and would put the milk back in the fridge as I put my dishes in the sink to be washed later. I would put Joe's dishes in the sink, too, when he was done and had retreated to his room. He never put his dishes away in the morning.
Kevin would frown at me. "You just enable him," he'd say to me, over and over.
"I'd rather avoid it," I always replied. Joe in the morning was an ogre -- I'd clean up after him if it meant avoiding that glare being sent in my direction. I hated it enough when it was directed at Kevin.
I liked Kevin, who was six years my senior. He was a ray of sunshine to me, always smiling and optimistic. He countered Joe's dark moods with a firm stance. He was smart, too. At seventeen, Kevin would be accepted into a tough engineering program at a presitgious university three hours away, leaving the house to Joe and I (and our drunk for a father).
Those years from Kevin's departure to Joe's own escape were the first five years of my adolescence, of track meets and the Henrie brothers. Father was a vague shadow, even more so after Kevin left.
I think we were doomed from the start. We never had a chance, Joe and I. As long as I can remember, I have had an immovable place by his side, always protected and covered by my brother's strong grip on my shoulder.