NicKev Fanfic: "The Ties That Bind" [NC-17] by me_and_thee - Part II

[me_and_thee]

iv.

'...forgetting all I'm lacking, completely incomplete, I'll take your invitation, you take all of me...'

Which is exactly why you wondered if you had maybe had one too many the night before, when, on a late morning, seven months later, AJ told you he and Brian had caught his oldest and youngest band mates making out.

With one another.

Under the stage during a lunch break from rehearsals, no less.

You and Brian let AJ drag you out of the wardrobe and back to the crime scene. AJ was practically jumping out of his skin the whole time, trying to feign indignation when he was, in fact, ridiculously excited by this turn of events - in more ways than one, if his quick glance and instant lick of lips directed at Brian were anything to go by.

When you got there, Nick was still straddling Kevin, who was, in turn, sitting on a metal step, in a dim corner of the maze-like underworld that was the under-stage area. His head was hanging back, eyes wide shut. Rounded, half-bare arms were tense at his sides, supporting the relaxed weight of Nick's body against his chest; yet Kevin looked anything but in pain. Nick's head, turned away from the three of you, was resting on his shoulder while Nick’s languid limbs encircled the compliant body under his own.

It was a most glorious vision, you had to admit, if only to yourself; one that reminded you of those artsy pictures which portray dignified jellyfish embracing crystal clear waters. Which was funny, in a way, because Nick has seldom looked that particular shade of graceful in your eyes. But when he has, you know now, it has always been around Kevin.

Suddenly, Brian cleared his throat, something that prompted Kevin to open his eyes.

Slowly.

Peacefully.

Nick did not even flinch. And that was when you knew that they knew.

That they were aware AJ had seen them kissing only minutes before.

'What the fuck, man?' By the time AJ got to the '-k', Nick had, however reluctantly, lifted his head from Kevin's shoulder and turned to face - the music? You amused yourself for a second - you, in turn.

Kevin parted lips that were - as AJ must have noticed, too - deliciously wet and obscenely swollen, to offer an answer. 'Um...'

'Shut up, you dickwit! I'm talking to him.' He almost squealed, pointing an incriminating finger at Nick. Out of the corner of your eye, you caught the smirk Kevin was unable to hide before he gingerly rolled the material evidence in and out of his mouth. 'How long has this been going on, Blondie?'

It will never cease to amaze you how fast AJ can go from shocked to turned on to frustratedly protective of Nick, more violently so than you or Brian, even; although it has nothing to do with the kind of love most people (namely, anyone who is not the five of you) would assume as the cause of such a heated reaction.

Nick, unperturbed, rolled his eyes. 'Four months..', he smiled almost imperceptibly and turned to place a butterfly kiss on Kevin's now softened smirk. '..eleven days..', he punctuated with another peck. He then lifted Kevin's left wrist to check his watch. '..six hours. Now get your scrawny ass back to the wardrobe, Aje, and let me celebrate my first successful New Year’s Eve resolution.'

You winked at Kevin while Brian was putting his arm around AJ's shoulders to deter him from further inquiries on the subject, if only for a few hours. You knew AJ's curiosity would not be that easily quenched and mentally prepared to offer more of a thorough explanation of what Nick had meant by his last remark.

It did not take long for the proverbial planets to align in - you just couldn’t help indulging in the almost oxymoron - puzzling clarity. You were more than a little surprised and only vaguely hurt by the fact that Nick and Kevin's affair - though the word did not sound quite appropriate, not even at such a relatively early stage of their extra-curricular friendship - had been kept a secret, apparently since the very day of your Homecoming show.

Thinking back on that night, you started remembering bits and pieces of a distracted conversation you had begun with Nick, which both of you had spontaneously dismissed in the adrenaline rush of the last two minutes before the show.

'So, d'you have any resolutions for this New Year, Nicky?'

'Nah, I don't do resolutions, D. You know that. 'sides...'

'Besides what?'

'I'm too happy today to think about tomorrow.'

Then both of you had had to get lost in a blanket of starry eyes for two hours, and you forgot to confront Nick on his cryptic declaration of glee at a later time.

v.

'...you're cinematic razor sharp, a welcome arrow through the heart, under your skin feels like home, electric shocks on aching bones...'

'It's pretty fucking adorable, if you ask me.' AJ mumbled over a mouthful of his bacon and eggs eight mornings later - and you would never admit it to anyone, let alone him, but you have come to find this bluntness of his almost endearing. You slowly lifted your face from your ever-present cell phone and raised a questioning eyebrow, pretending to fake interest by means of an exaggerated smile.

'Care to elaborate?' You threw in a small wrist motion for good measure.

'Elaborate on what?' Brian joined you at the round table in your private breakfast room, balancing a glass of orange juice and two bagels on a saucer.

'Your cousin and Junior.' AJ offered, with a tilt of his head in the direction of the elevator, having sensed their presence even before the sliding doors actually parted.

'Oh, that.' Brian's warm smile and the amused sparkle in his blue eyes made him look much younger, somehow, than his 24 years.

You are not usually fond of such blatant clichés, but you could not help grinning alongside Brian at the image of Kevin and Nick's unwillingness to keep one's hands off the other.

You could not make out what they were saying to one another, even though they were not bothering whispering. Which made you glad they already felt that comfortable and trustful around the three of you.

Even if it scared you just a little.

Had AJ been sitting where you were, though, he would not have missed the chance to gape shamelessly at Kevin, who was leaning against the leaf-green and ebony ribs of the marble baseboard decorating the immediate outside of the elevator, only half-hidden by a thriving Weeping Fig; and at Nick, who was moulded to him and placing open-mouthed kisses on Kevin's neck. AJ would have probably told them to get a room, too, while actually enjoying the show. But you were not AJ, so you opted for lowering your eyes discreetly and fumbling with your ever useful phone.

'Yeah, *that*. Am I the only one who hadn't seen this coming, anyway?' AJ's frustrated-bordering-on-pouty look made you try to cover a laugh with a cough.

The same laugh Brian did not bother trying to stifle. 'Awww, babe.' He rubbed AJ's bicep and the younger man automatically relaxed under Brian's affectionate touch, despite his efforts to keep up the grumpy façade. 'That's because you have a bit of a low attention span.' Brian finished with a huge grin.

'Guess so.' AJ stood up and started to walk away from the table. 'Though your nipples would beg to differ if only you gave my oh so talented tongue a chance.' He quipped halfway to the coffee stand on the other side of the room, without even turning around; predictably, a shit-eating grin he did not let the two of you see beamed on his face.

Brian blushed like the little choir boy he will always be at heart and you groaned, smacking your forehead in a dramatic gesture. A nasal ‘Oh maaan’ escaped your mouth and, you wondered aloud, ‘When did this turn into the gay version of Fame?'

vi.

'...and if you have a minute why don't we go talk about it somewhere only we know? This could be the end of everything, so why don't we go somewhere only we know?'

Of course, Kevin & Nick was not always synonymous with sloppy kisses stolen during elevator rides or inebriating post-show wardrobe sex.

As a matter of fact, it felt as if the most unexpected relationship you had ever been privy to had begun and was doomed to come to an end in Italy.

‘This is it’, you thought to yourself.

It was the ninth of July of 1999 and Kevin refused to get off the tour bus that was parked outside the Stadio dei Pini in this small town somebody had once told you is called Varieggio … or is it Viareggio? Whatever. You screwed it up and greeted the adoring crowd with an awkward 'Hello, Milano', anyway. On second thought, maybe you should have learned to jot down stuff on your hands to remember place-names and pleasantries in foreign languages, too.

Just like Kevin does.

Right. Kevin.

His excuse for not wanting to leave the bus was that ... it was too hot. So, okay, it was pretty darn hot, but, when you think of the hundreds of girls who had been camping out on the muddy ground outside the stadium for over ten hours and who were chatting and laughing - and cheerfully singing, for crying out loud! - under the same sun, you cannot help wondering if local gossip magazines that had compared Mr. Kevin I've-lived-in-Florida-for-ages-but-I-have-the-nerve-to-complain-about-hot-weather-in-Italy Richardson to a spoiled diva had had a reason to do so.

But then you also saw the crossed expression marring Nick's flushed and sweaty face and you forgot all about drama queens. He had just finished giving a bit of a private show - in the shape of a basketball match with Brian - to some lucky fans (and some reckless ones who had climbed up whatever available surface for a glimpse of blond or strawberry hair), but, once again, those eyes did not look tired on account of physical exertion alone.

And, really, the only one capable of making Nick look like that - probably second only to his mother, you have come to understand over the years - is Kevin.

It started when Nick and Kevin were virtually cornered in the elevator of the “Astor” hotel in Viareggio by a particularly extrovert male fan, who invited Nick - although not quite in so many, um, words - to what was apparently a very popular local gay club.

Six years of being a Backstreet Boy had taught Kevin all about the Subtle Art of Declining Compromising Invitations, whereas Nick must have been skipping some paramount lessons. At least, that is what Kevin thought when he saw his boyfriend turn up the wattage of his smile and run a flirty index across the young brunette’s chest. ‘Yeah, that’d be cool-‘ Nick started enthusiastically.

‘-if we were into that sort of thing. But, hey, thanks.’ Kevin amended, giving a light jerk to Nick’s arm, all the while balancing an equally blinding - and painfully fake - smile for their fan’s sake. But the star-struck boy was probably too busy creaming his pants under Nick’s touch to have noticed the lethal glare Kevin had reserved for Nick.

***********************************

‘What the fuck am I gonna do with you?!’

‘Well, you could start with…’

‘Don’t even go there!’ Kevin warned, having all too easily imagined the obscenities Nick was concocting in his filthy mind, and promptly put a distance between himself and the leg that was already trying to make its way in between his.

‘Relax, man, it’s not like I let him suck me off in a cloakroom.’ For the male bimbo many people thought he was, Nick sure knew which buttons to push to challenge someone.

Or maybe just Kevin.

‘Yeah, only because I was there, too.’

‘That wouldn’t have stopped me had I wanted to.’

‘Then what did?’

‘I wasn’t interested.’ If Kevin had managed to hide the hurt at Nick’s previous remark, his efforts to let that last brief sentence slide over him were moot. He swallowed and held Nick’s look.

‘But you are interested in going to that gay club, aren’t you?

‘What if I am.’ The dull, non-question tone of that reply started to drain rather than unnerve Kevin.

‘Look, Nick, I’m not trying to pick up a fight, I just want you-‘

‘-to be honest. Okay, then I am gonna be honest with you and say that, yes, I wanna go check out that place.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with that..’

‘Then why the hell are we fighting?’

‘If you’ll let me finish..’ Nick rolled his lips into his mouth and pushed his hands slightly towards Kevin as if to signal he was all ears. ‘What if somebody recognized you?’

‘So what? I’ll be dancing and having a drink, is all.’

‘At a gay bar?’

‘If anything, the press will think I’m not only adorable’, Nick grinned, ‘but sophisticated and open-minded, as well,’ he concluded with a smug smacking of lips. ‘And that’ll make good publicity for the group, won’t it?’

‘Uh, uh, sure.’

‘Kev, what is it? Stop beating around the damn bush and tell me what’s up your ass.’

‘I can tell you what I’d like to be there..’ Kevin lasciviously answered in what even he recognized as a gauche attempt at distracting Nick, who, in turn, shushed Kevin just by raising an eyebrow; despite the sudden twinge those few words had caused south of his own border. Kevin sighed and grudgingly complied. ‘I ... well ... I don’t know that I’m comfortable with you being there with tens of horny guys rubbing against you like cats in heat. There I said it.’

After a brief pause he used to mentally shut up the neener-neener jealousy alert which warmed him inside and almost made him blush, Nick calmly replied. ‘Then why don’t you come, too? It’ll be even less suspicious if two of us are there together.’

The adultness of his own logic nearly gave him a headache.

‘Clearly, you have no notion of the workings of slash fangirls’ minds, baby.’ He gave a soft smile, trying to alleviate the seriousness of his previous admission.

Nick just rolled his eyes, slid his thumbs inside of Kevin’s belt loops and yanked his hips against himself.

And Kevin let himself be literally bent and metaphorically broken, torn as he was between the lustful maze only Nick could get him that far gone in and the weight of his lover’s earlier words; disguised reasons, that kept sinking in like an out of control splinter dangerously aiming at his heart.

He let out Nick’s name in a strangled cry while tears crash-and-burned against his shut eyelids as he pushed against Nick’s hand one last time and came.

And that marked the moment in which pride and unprocessed remorse began to abandon their respective sides of the fence and got tangled up in a joined effort to embitter battered hearts.

vii.

'...why would I sabotage the best thing that I have? Well, it makes it easier to know exactly what I want...'

Four months after the gay club fiasco, you were literally on top of the world. The five of you had managed to snatch a $60 billion partnership agreement from Jive Records and you even won your forth European Music Award. The one for Best Group, no less.

On top of it all, Kevin was named Sexiest Pop Star by People magazine.

It was actually Nick who told you, Brian and AJ, flourishing a wrinkled copy of the magazine in his hand; it was even more of a tell-tale evidence of how proud he was, had the unmistakable twinkle in his eyes not been eloquent enough.

Only, when he mentioned Kevin’s award, you had to refrain from asking whether your oldest bro had been given the award for Most Stoic, Masochist Sucker, too.

The three words being your, Brian’s and AJ’s contributions, respectively.

Of course, you had no right to seriously tamper with your band mates’ love life, especially since Kevin had been the first to sign the silent oath that had turned him and Nick into little more than fuck buddies.

But still.

Still you could not help but wonder how on earth two people who were so intrinsically part of one another could be just as painfully oblivious to it that they had ended up, more or less consciously, sabotaging the best thing they had ever had.

Then again, they were unaware masters at messing with your heads, too.

Or maybe just your head, given AJ’s disarmingly confident analysis of the whole … thing.

You gave him an ‘Uh..sure?’ look and nodded dumbly when, in that raw philosophy that you knew AJ was effectively capable of, he explained to you that whatever Nick and Kevin might have had before had turned into ‘a suburban supermarket on a late Saturday afternoon: so squalid in its bleakness that one ends up finding it endearing. Comforting, even’.

Back then, though, you didn’t dwell on what later proved to have been an exercise of surprising insight on AJ’s part.

viii.

'...it's not you, it's not your fault, you've got everything I could ever want, and you've always understood my intentions are good and we've been so close from the start, but the furthest distance I've ever known is from my head to my heart...'

Early 2000 saw you busy, among other things, playing Actor’s Studio for the Millennium TV series of pseudo-documentaries you shot for the online fan club.

Two hours prior to the Greensboro, NC, show, the five of you were lazing around the venue, basking in the afterglow of a necessarily premature dinner. You were sitting on the beige leather sofa of your changing room, talking Pollyanna’s ear off through your mobile phone and Brian was catching forty winks. Virtually on your lap.

Yeah, you would have made one hell of a shinyhappygay cabaret family, had your pop career not taken off.

As if to confirm your silly musings and the related jokes you had been exchanging with your sister, you lifted your gaze from your Brian-laden lap to see AJ standing beside the window and looking intently outside, onto the expanding crowd that was quickly filling the arena. He was discussing some details regarding the lighting arrangement with Kevin, who was also standing, right in front of the window and with a far from unpleasant bundle in tow.

Nick’s chest and smiling face were pressed against Kevin’s back, his pale arms laid around the older man’s neck in a languid - and yet somewhat possessive - abandon.

And that’s when it dawned on you that … it wasn’t so much that Nick laughed more when Kevin was around.

It was rather like he smiled more.

More lazy smiles that spoke of fullness and naughty grins filled with promise, instead of the jaw-hurting plastic ones he had half-made a living on for years.

Which inevitably caused you to mentally bang your head against the nearest hardest wall, wondering for the umpteenth frustrated time what the point in whoring his feelings away to the best offerer was; especially when he could have allowed himself - before anyone else - to at least try and chase away the oppressive numbness inside of him, instead.

But you knew it was something he was going to have to come to terms with … in his own terms.

Not yours, not even Kevin’s.

So, with a quiet understanding which could have easily passed for placid contempt, you never held it against Kevin when, for months on end, he let himself get around with irremissible poison in his heart and scarlet dust running through his veins.

ix.

'...and when you tell your friends about how we've ended, please, be kind, 'cause you know that I tried..I tried to give you more but you wanted less, I tried to read your mind but I failed the test...'

When he had decided to severe the leash he felt like he had imposed on his young lover, the worst part had been accepting his own weakness, since, rationally, he knew he was not going to lose Nick once and for all, in a melodramatic coup de scène worthy of Hitchcock’s Frenzy.

Except that it was all one hell of a filthy vicious circle.

Because his feeling like a walking contradiction, his failing at playing by the Brian Kinney rules (so, yeah, AJ wasn’t the only one to occasionally indulge in addictive softcore porn), made his head ache under the unforgiving scrutiny of dreaded hypocrisy.

Until believing he deserved more and, at the same time, feeling unworthy of Nick’s love - because, deep down, he had no doubts Nick loved him, in his own twisted, not so unconventional way - turned into an unbearable cocktail.

And, when few months later Kevin confessed to the Rolling Stone™ reporter that, on several occasions, he and Nick had come to blows - in a sensibly different way from the one AJ’s snicker suggested and for which Brian kicked his ankle - he did not lie.

Three days after the madness that had been the Into the Millennium Tour ended, thus giving you the chance to catch your breath, the five of you vowed not let yourselves be vacuumed into such an insane schedule.

Ever. Again.

Countless months of live shows above interviews, piled up on press conferences and all sorts of tv appearances, had taken their toll on all of you. So much so that there had been days when even just seeing one another first thing in the morning had had the ability of making your skin itch and want to scrape it off just to throw it at one other.

March 18, 2000 had been one of those days.

Mature deliberations on the need to give each other space were exchanged between Nick and Kevin, which had made it impossible for you to expect Kevin to go through, until the bitter end, with his decision of calling off the benefits part of his friendship with Nick.

And marry his elusive girlfriend of five months.

What you had expected, though, was Nick letting Kevin go with as much kicking and screaming as he had been able to muster in his juvenile refusal to surrender to a defeat he had already signed up for less than a year prior; all by himself, no less.

As sorry (and worried) as you felt for Nick and his disquieting lack of self-confidence, the usually lethargic cynic in you thought he sort of deserved what Kevin was doing to the both of them. Even so, you had to make sure your older friend wasn’t doing it for the only wrong reason you could think of.

‘Just promise me you won’t make the mistake of doing this just because you think of your time as more worthy than his, ‘kay?’

‘It’s quite the opposite, D. Quite the opposite.’ He conceded for all answer.

x.

'...I am a hostage to my own humanity, self-detained and forced to live in this mess I've made, and all I'm asking is for you to do what you can with me but I can't ask you to give what you already gave...'

Nick looked at Kevin chatting wearily - if only in his eyes - to a male friend of Julie’s and, for the millionth time that day, he wondered what had possessed him up to the point of actually making him go to the wedding that had just been celebrated.

He dwelled on the painfully fresh memory of two hours earlier, before the beginning of the ceremony, when Kevin had fixed Nick’s tie with a diligent and just as tender gesture; then thought of how cliché an eleventh hour confession would have been. How his secretly bleeding silence could easily become the new black.

But in the end, he just thought … fuck it! He put on a blinding phoney smile, walked to where Kevin and Jason - Josh? - were standing, excused himself and the newlywed under the pretext of a special present for Julie he wanted to discuss with Kevin and dragged his ex lover to the bride’s dressing room.

Like a compliant prisoner under the spell of the Stockholm syndrome, Kevin let Nick press desperate lips against his own.

No grinding of hips nor groping of hands to distract them from the decadent sublimity of their kissing. Just their two mouths, achingly dry from having craved this back for far too long … way too much, and nothing else.

There was no such thing as the typical explosion of colors when their embarrassingly adolescent orgasms hit them; only dense, white drops landing on the pitch black ground of closed eyelids and dilating like circles of water brushed by a stone.

xi.

'...doesn't it scare you, your will is not as strong as it used to be?'

Late October came and, by then, no member of the extended Backstreet family - not even Julie herself, who had proved to be exceptionally zen about the whole thing - was willing to believe that nothing sexual was going on between Nick and Kevin.

Except you were all wrong.

After their frantic kissing in the wedding closet, the closest they had come to touching each other had been their almost-hand-holding while shooting the video for Shape of My Heart and Nick’s actual grabbing of Kevin’s hand to drag him back into the studio on the set itself.

After all, shoulder-to-shoulder whispering and meaningful glances stolen on a ferry boat in Rose Bay, Australia, a month later didn’t have to mean anything, did they?

Either way, a bitterer AJ didn’t find them adorable anymore.

He was now of the opinion that they needed ‘to get their fucking minds out of their asses because this “The Party” shit is making me sick.’ Of course, you didn’t deprive Brian of the pleasure of nagging AJ about his familiarity with one of the sappiest - and foreign at that! - movies of all time.

You didn’t find them adorable, either. But neither did they cause your glycaemia to skyrocket like, apparently, AJ’s did.

You were simply sitting and waiting for the other shoe to drop.

TBC (see next entry)