Understand Me // Joick // PG-13
Maybe he never appreciated it as much as he should have, never stopped to realize that he was really, honestly living the dream. But he’s standing onstage in front of thousands of kids, knowing that they’re all looking up to him, that they all want to be him, and all he wants to do is curl up in the corner and hide. He hates all the attention and the admiring gazes and the never ending praise that comes at him from every direction. He never really wanted to be a pop star. Because now, for the rest of his life, he’ll just be written off as “the one with diabetes” or “the one with curly hair” or, worse, “the one with the whiny voice.” He’ll always be known as Christianity’s poster boy, sponsored by Disney, shackled to this life he leads by a band of silver around his finger. And the only place that he won’t be judged by this is when he’s with Joe. Joe, who writes everything off, who cuts him down with snide comments just for the hell of it, who makes a mockery of everything they’re supposed to stand for.
When he’s with Joe, he’s not just a name and a face and a song. He’s Nicholas. He feels at home; he feels like himself. When he’s with Joe is the only time he doesn’t want to hide. Joe just sort of understands, knows that he can’t always live up to the standard, that he needs to sometimes be a teenage boy, be an angsty mess of emotions.
Joe has always known him best. He’s always been the only one to understand Nick’s sense of humor. It’s like a private joke for them, the way Nick sounds entirely serious all the time. Joe always understood Nick’s perfectionism better than Nick even understood it himself. Really, Joe knew Nick before Nick even knew himself. So it’s perfectly reasonable that Nick feels entirely comfortable going crazy in front of his older brother, is okay with just being himself when it’s just the two of them.
Joe gets that sometimes, just sometimes, Nick doesn’t want to be known as just one of “The Chastity Brothers,” but that sometimes he wants to be a moaning, writhing mess, completely undone and begging for more: harder, faster, deeper.
They’re like a pair, a team, a unit, so that when one has a bad day or is feeling down, the other suffers just as much. It’s never been something that was voluntary. For the two of them, it’s like breathing. To completely understand another person, to be so entrenched in their existence that it physically hurts to be apart, is to truly love.
So should I continue this and attempt to make it into something really long? Because I kind of want to... Let me know. :D