because i'm done stealin' (Jonas Brothers, Joe/Nick, NC-17)
Title: because i'm done stealin'
Pairing: Joe/Nick
Rating: NC/17
Warnings: Light bondage
Prompt: Someone's already requested the needs-physical-contact-to-live thing, but I want to read a fic where physical contact hurts Joe of them - not an instant pain, but a draining of energy. One Nick realises, he refuses to let Joe touch him, which makes them both miserable. But they eventually figure out Nick can initiate the touch, so the end up making out/having sex where Joe has to be completely passive and let Nick do everything to him. ~ submitted by th_esaurus
Date: 11/5/09
It isn't like it's obvious at first. Joe's moods go up and down so much anyway that half the time Garbo calls him "Princess" and the other half he doesn't say anything to Joe at all because Joe's in a bitchy mood. Most people new to the entourage think it'd be Nick who is the moody, unstable one, being the tortured young artist and sick, besides, but actually it's Joe, has always been Joe, who is sensitive to a fault. If he's in a good place then the whole day sparkles, but if he's PMSing everyone knows about it. Perfect strangers know about it.
But even for Joe, he's been really...tired and out of it, lately. He still performs his heart out, but he has nothing afterward, barely enough to get safely into the truck to ride over to the hotel, falling asleep on Nick before they even get there, no matter if it's a five or a fifteen-minute ride.
Nick wonders one day, in a moment of clarity, if this is what Joe felt like watching Nick get sick as a kid, this nagging not-rightness that he feels when he thinks about Joe now as compared to Joe six months ago. At first Nick has about a three-second freakout, oh god what if JOE has it now? before his brain kicks into gear and realizes of course it can't be diabetes, Joe's way too old and is still slamming back Frappuccino and Red Bull like water without going into an immediate coma, so.
He eventually grabs Joe after a soundcheck, after Joe's told everyone he's going back to the hotel to try to catch a nap before the show, and asks Joe if he thinks maybe he's sick. Joe just looks at Nick with wide-open confusion, then gives him this big, slightly weary-looking smile.
"No, Nicky, I feel fine. Just tired."
"It's kind of been months that you've been tired, though."
Joe laughs, swings his arm around Nick's neck and pulls him tight against his side, knocking Nick temporarily off-balance. "They can't give you pills for wore-the-fuck-out, dude. Unless they're, like, caffeine pills."
Nick gives him a perturbed look, purse-lipped. "Fatigue is a sign of a lot of diseases, Joe. Anemia. Lyme disease. African sleeping sickness."
"Yes, Nicholas." His face is suddenly grave and drawn, his eyebrows a looming thundercloud of concern. "I absolutely have African sleeping sickness. Comes of hanging out with all those African mosquitoes."
"Tsetse flies," Nick corrects reflexively, scowling.
"What have I told you about reading WebMD after midnight, Nick? Seriously."
"Just...just concede you might be sick, and for me, for your brother who loves you and has deep vested interest in your welfare, promise you will go see a doctor tomorrow. Promise me."
Joe rolls his eyes but his heavy sigh gets caught up in a yawn so cavernous his jaw cracks. He blinks at Nick a bit guiltily, then nods.
"For my brother, because otherwise you will fret yourself into a stupor and forget to wake me up and Kev will have to put on the show tonight all by himself, incidentally alienating our entire fanbase." He puts up a warning finger. "But if the doc brings out a needle, all bets are off."
Nick nods immediately, a tight spring in his chest slowly uncoiling in relief he didn't even know he needed to feel. "I will go with you and protect you," he says valiantly, patting Joe sympathetically on the chest. Joe tightens his arm a little on Nick, knocking their heads together lightly.
"Come back to the hotel with me, too?"
"I thought you said you wanted to nap?" Nick says, lip quirking.
Joe just grins. "Brilliant ploy, no?"
Nick shakes his head and beckons over their driver with an imperious hand-wave. "No, not really, Joe. But let's just roll with it."
~~~
As it turns out, Nick didn't need to nag. He and Joe get as far as being tangled up in bed together in boxers and t-shirts, trading kisses back and forth across the pillow before Joe's yawning every five seconds gets obnoxious and he sheepishly admits that actually he is kind of too tired to keep his eyes open anymore, and maybe could they just take a nap? Nick doesn't even have the heart to give him hell for it, just tangles his fingers in Joe's hair and listens to him fall asleep, too fast for the middle of the day, Joe's arm flung over Nick's waist and his nose snuggled against Nick's collarbone.
Nick doesn't remember falling asleep, didn't think he'd be able to for all the worrying, but he wakes up with a start an hour and a half later, about fifteen minutes before his alarm is set to go off. He frowns groggily, wondering what, if not his alarm, woke him up. It's a second before he realizes two things: that he's turned over in his sleep and is now lying spooned back into Joe who is curled tight against him, and that his brother is preternaturally still behind him.
Sitting bolt upright in bed, Nick stares down at Joe stupidly, seeing sick-pale skin and ashen eyelids and a mouth open and slack with no breath coming out of it, unable to piece together what that even means. It's an age of heartbeats Nick can only sit there before he has Joe over flat on his back and is sitting astride his thighs and his phone is open and tucked into his shoulder, dialing his dad and he has the other ear pressed to Joe's chest and fucking praise Jesus because there is a heartbeat. It sounds so, so faint. Nick is screaming incoherently down the phone and barely hears himself, just hears Joe's sluggish, tired heart thudding underneath his t-shirt but he still isn't breathing, so Nick drops the phone, not even pausing to end the call, and bends over Joe's still, frighteningly cold body to puff air into his mouth. Nick almost forgets to pinch his nose shut but even in a blind and unthinking panic he remembers the first-aid training they all had before their first major tour. One long, hard push of air...three beats...one long, hard push of air...three beats, and Nick isn't actually counting, he's praying, furiously and barely in English, and then suddenly Joe takes a long, slow breath on his own and sighs out, sounding almost content.
About that time the hotel door bursts inward and then everything is just a flurry of activity and terror and there are EMTs in yellow vests that are so bright they hurt Nick's eyes. He supposes he must raise almighty hell when they try to take Joe away without him because the next thing he's really aware of, he's in the ambulance next to Joe, whose face is obscured by a plastic oxygen mask and whose near hand is clutched lifeless in Nick's. Nick thinks the sight of Joe laid out on a stretcher is one that will haunt his sleep til the day he dies.
~~~
Nick doesn't pass out on the floor of the recovery room when the doctors declare their diagnosis. For one thing, he's sitting down at the time, and he's far too intently focused on being awake to hear this to allow himself the luxury of blacking out.
For the other thing, there is no diagnosis. Joe's perfectly healthy, one-hundred percent all there, all functioning. He's just shutting down, for no reason. Everything in him works, but at a drastically lowered rate, as if he were freezing to death at room temperature. The medical team is, Nick likes to think, flabbergasted; they act like they have everything under control but Nick Jonas has been hearing sanitized bureaucratic bullshit nearly his entire life, so he knows how to interpret the doublespeak that means, "We don't have a clue what the fuck is going on." It makes him angrier than he's ever been in his life, that these professionals, these experts, would pretend to know how to hold life and death in their hands, then come to him and tell him his brother is dying and they don't know why.
Joe isn't getting any worse, though, at least not at the moment. He stabilized on the ambulance and by the time all the tests had been run he'd woken up. He's awake to hear that he'll need to stay for observation another couple of days, while more tests are run; he's awake when his family solemnly and somewhat awkwardly has to leave when visiting hours are over. He's awake and watching with sharp eyes out the observation window as Nick lobbies hard for, and receives, special Jonas Brother dispensation to stay in the room with Joe overnight.
"I'll bet the internet's exploding right about now," Joe cracks, sounding bone-weary but otherwise fine, when Nick comes back into his room and pulls the door shut behind him. "Joe Jonas: Amazing Sleeping Rockstar. Joe Jonas, Sleeping Beauty!" He's grinning but Nick does not laugh. He drops heavily into the chair beside Joe's bed and props his chin in his hands, looking at Joe as if waiting for him to disappear.
Joe pouts at him. "Oh, come on, Nicky. I'm fine now. The doctors'll prod me and figure out what's wrong. Or maybe it was just a one-time thing."
"Joe," Nick enunciates carefully, as to a small child, "You stopped breathing. You will never, EVER do that again, do you understand me?"
It's a testament to how scary Nick must look that Joe doesn't even look like he wants to crack a smile, let alone joke about the inevitability of not breathing at some point. He just swallows and nods, reaches out his hand and waits for Nick to slip his into it.
"Yeah, Nicky," he replies, more quietly, and lays his head down on his pillow. "You know I won't."
"I'm serious, Joe," Nick says in an even sterner tone, as if Joe wasn't listening the first time. "You...I was so...I thought I was going to have to kill myself just to follow you this time." His tone is indignant.
A shadow crosses Joe's face. "Nick. No matter what you are not allowed to kill yourself over me. I am not worth it."
"Easy for you to say, asshole," Nick says, voice getting gruffer and lower as it slides toward affection, stretched to the breaking point over the course of several hours. "You're not the one who'd have to lose you."
"I'm not going to die, Nicky," Joe replies indulgently, the same way he'd said, so convinced, "Nicky, I feel fine." Nick shudders. Joe sighs and pulls at his hand, and Nick goes without a thought for whether it's against the rules or not, climbing gingerly into the hospital bed beside him, careful not to dislodge any of the several monitor wires hooked to Joe's body. The softly-beeping machines next to him display readings all just barely off from average, every number just a shade too low, not out of the range of normal, yet, but so very far from where Joe should be.
"You'd better not, or I'll kill you," Nick replies lamely. Joe smiles where he's tucked his face into Nick's neck.
"You'd have to catch me, first." Joe slurs a little, and Nick glances down to see him blink dazedly, obviously exhausted and running on empty.
"Go to sleep, loser," Nick commands. He's actually terrified to let Joe go back to sleep, terrified that the next time, he just won't wake up again, but this time Joe's hooked up to about a half a dozen different machines that'll make sure that the second something fishy happens, half the hospital will know about it.
Joe sleeps for maybe an hour, not quite that, and Nick is drifting, not asleep, just eyes-closed-floating and beginning to patch together a little faint hope that this was just some weird fluke of anatomy, that maybe Joe can take some iron supplements and change his diet a little and this will never happen again. That's when the room suddenly explodes in noise, alarms going off everywhere like an entire squadron of police sirens, instrument panels all at once flashing red and yellow in the dimly-lighted room. Nick nearly has a heart attack himself, jolting upright again for the second time that day to see Joe nearly chalk-pale again, his chest just barely rising and falling in a fluttery frail-looking rhythm.
More doors slamming open, more people pouring in, nurses coaxing and pulling Nick carefully out of the bed - "Be careful of the monitors, somebody get him out of here!" - but he refuses to go, shoves himself in a corner where he can see everything and stares at the activity around his brother's bed.
It's a tense and noisy few seconds before the alarms all start shutting up, Joe's body rhythms slowly and steadily hastening again with almost no intervention from the nurses whatsoever. Nick hears their confusion, quietly muttered, "Did you give him the...?" "No, he was already stabilizing, he might have spiked..." "Well then what raised his blood pressure?"
No one answers, really, and pretty soon the nurses are all looking at Nick and asking him what happened, whether he might've accidentally shifted any of the monitor wires, disrupted Joe's IV tube of clear saline. Nick adamantly tells him he didn't come anywhere near those wires, that he had been lying there perfectly still, Joe asleep, and he'd just started fading in Nick's arms for no reason at all.
~~~
It's actually Kevin who gets the idea first.
Joe's been fine for over twenty-four hours now, ever since he bottomed out that first night and the nurses moved in a cot for Nick to sleep on the floor next to Joe. They couldn't let him sleep where he could mess up the instruments and ever since Nick's been sleeping apart from Joe, Joe hasn't shown any sign of dropping blood pressure, or heart rate, or breathing.
No one else considers those two events to correlate, but Kevin pipes up on the afternoon of the third day when he looks around and sees that everyone in the room, even Nick, is now unconsciously keeping a wide berth around Joe's bed, all too afraid of altering his delicate situation for fear it could fall apart if touched.
"How many people have touched him lately?" Kevin asks in his sweet, inquisitive voice that means he's really puzzled about a problem and trying so hard to work it out. "I mean. Both the times he's crashed completely he's been in full-body contact with another person. That couldn't have anything to do with it, could it?"
The doctors essentially say "what the hell" and decide to run a test on the fly because they have literally run out of tests to perform. It's a ridiculous hypothesis, Nick can't help thinking (no offense to Kevin or anything), because there's like a boatload of evidence in all kinds of medical journals he's heard of before about the positive effects of human touch on sick people. Even sometimes at church the deacons will lay hands on a sick person, pray over them, in the hopes of divine intervention, and Nick thinks the concepts might be related somewhere thousands of years ago. He's pretty sure he's right about this and growing surer by the minute; they have a nurse lay her hand on Joe's for two hours without any ill effects (well, unless you want to count Joe spending two hours shamelessly flirting with and embarrassing a middle-aged, married nurse). After that they have Frankie sit next to Joe up in his bed for a while, having thumb-wars and playing Indian rugburn when Mom's not in the room. Joe's heartbeat doesn't so much as offer to dip.
Each member of his family holds his hand for an hour apiece after that, all without incident, til it's Nick's turn. He's feeling pretty silly and also somewhat over-scrutinized while sitting there holding the hand of the brother he makes out with every night and occasionally sleeps with in the euphemistic and not literal sense, right under his parents' noses. But Joe just placidly laces their fingers together and keeps up a constant string of, "So, does this mean we're going steady, Nicky? Can I wear your ring? Are you gonna ask me to the spring formal? Can I take you to the Sadie Hawkins' Dance? In my khaki pants? Baby, do you like my sweater?" just to see Nick blush and, apparently, provoke him to punching Joe's shoulder with his free hand. And then suddenly there's murmuring from the other side of the room, the doctors and nurses all clustered up around Joe's heart monitor, which Nick can tell after two days of watching is beeping slower than it should be, and slowing steadily the longer he holds Joe's hand.
His stomach turns over on itself. He's afraid he's going to be sick all over the scuffed hospital linoleum.
"Don't let go of him," the head physician orders. "Just keep touching him until the results are clear."
Nick's no scientist but even he can't help feeling the results are already pretty damn clear. He stares dead-on at Kevin, who's looking like he's seen a ghost, and then Joe's gripping his hand tighter, tight enough to hurt, and murmuring near Nick's ear,
"Whatever happens, Nicky, whatever they say, don't let me go, okay? You can't let me go."
Then the alarms start going off. Nick rips his hand out of his brother's and goes staggering up and back, toppling over his plastic chair into the floor. He almost ends up in his mother's lap, but she steadies him with a hand that balls ferociously in the material of his t-shirt.
It's not even a whole minute until Joe's numbers start rising and one by one the instruments stop clanging. Joe looks wildly at Nick and say, "Nick, this isn't your--" but Nick is already turning, running, fleeing out the door and down the hallway under greenish flourescent hospital light.
~~~
"Nick," Joe says, over and over, pleading with him, "This isn't your fault, okay? It just isn't!"
It's an old mantra, days old already, as they're back on tour and better than they have been in months, in terms of music quality and high energy. In terms of everything else, it's all gone to shit.
Nick thinks they might be somewhere in Arkansas, he isn't sure; America looks all exactly the same from Nashville west to Dallas. He isn't going to do this with Joe, not now, not when they've gone almost twelve whole hours without fighting.
"Joe, I really really don't want to talk about it. Okay? Can you respect that?" He gets up from his bunk and with the infinite care usually associated with defusing a bomb skirts around Joe, who's purposefully hogging the narrow hallway. Nick barely manages to pass without touching his brother, but he does manage it.
"Nick, I can hear you blaming yourself from the front of the bus, dude," Joe says, tagging close behind, too close, Nick can feel his breath on the back of his neck and it's raising goosebumps all down his spine. "I can literally hear your emo."
"Yeah, Joe. Slowly killing my brother and then being doomed to a life of never touching him again, that's just me being emo." He ducks around the fridge and throws open the door, whacking Joe with it. Joe doesn't even acknowledge the assault, just leans on the door, looming over Nick where he's leaned in to get some orange juice. He's felt like crap, lately, and his levels have been all over the freaking map, but that's what not sleeping and barely eating and falling into clinical depression'll do for you, he guesses.
"Nick," Joe says in a tone somewhere between warning and whining. Nick straightens suddenly, his mouth set in that patented, "I am about to give you a brutally polite and well-reasoned piece of my brilliant mind" purse, really ready to let Joe have it, and promptly cracks the crown of his skull on Joe's sharp chin. They both holler and stagger, eyes crossing, but only Nick leaps back like he's been burned, flattening himself backward along one wall and looking like he might try crawling out a window on the moving bus if Joe comes any closer. Joe stares at him wide-eyed, still looking a little concussed, and then in a fit of pique he kicks the refrigerator door closed so hard every last one of its contents rattles and there's a heavy THUMP of something falling over inside.
His face is set in a homicidal scowl and he reaches out and before Nick can even contemplate escape, Joe's got a whole fistful of Nick's shirt and he's yanking Nick around by it, stitches popping softly at the collar. He shoves Nick in front of him, maneuvering back toward the bunks while Nick makes these little absurd jerks of his hands as he tries to claw away from Joe without touching him. Joe grins maliciously at this, knowing he's got Nick in a catch-22, and unceremoniously stuffs Nick back into his bunk, crawling in after him and sitting at the opposite end of the bed.
Nick's breathing hard through his nose and glaring at Joe and there are about forty-seven things he'd like to discuss with Joe, calmly and rationally and maybe while strangling him with a blanket, but he doesn't say any of them because Joe says first, "Nick, shut the hell up and listen to me."
Nick shuts the hell up, more surprised than anything else.
"This is ridiculous," Joe picks as his opening gambit, which, coming from Joe, is a little like the pot calling the kettle "a rounded metal vessel used for cooking". "You? Are being ridiculous. Do you have any idea how long it took for my exposure to you to build up to the level it had to be to make me crash? I know you do, because you were there in the room when Doctor Pizzaface estimated it, but just to refresh your memory, it was somewhere on the order of four months. I'm pretty sure you can accidentally bump into me in the hallway or ram your hard-as-fuck head into mine without sending me into a coma. Unless of course you ram me with your hard-as-fuck head with enough force to give me a concussion." Joe rubs his chin for emphasis, and Nick would like to interject that, excuse me, he's the one likeliest to have a concussion after being impaled on Joe's jaw, but Joe cuts him off with a look.
"No, what you are doing, Nicholas, is treating me like I've got the bubonic plague or leprosy or...I don't know, bad fashion sense, and you might catch it." His face suddenly shifts, from annoyed older brother to something darker, more wounded. "What you're doing, Nick, is making this about a million times harder than it already is."
Nick sucks in a breath, feeling stabs of pain anew that he'd spent days trying to ignore, and says all in a rush, "I'm making it exactly as hard as it is, Joe. I can't touch you anymore, do you even...do you have any idea how hard it's gonna be to--"
"Uh, DUH, Nick," Joe snaps, not aggravated now; really hurt. Really angry. "Fucking duh. You are being a martyr, is what you're doing, taking this freak genetic mutation or whatever it is and turning it into a personal goddamn failure. You do NOT get to be the special disabled child on this one, Nick, okay?"
Nick recoils, appalled that Joe would suggest...but he's already looking apologetic, rubbing at his face with hands Nick can see are shaking, even from three feet away. All he wants is to reach out and take them, but he can't. Won't.
"I don't mean...god, Nick, you're not supposed to be like this, okay? You have...you have so much else that you have to worry about, legitimately, that I can't just sit here and watch you take on something else like it's just your cross to bear. I won't do it. This isn't your fault or my fault or anybody's fault, it's just...it's just the way things are now." He sucks in a shaky, hesitant breath, his voice lowering, becoming unsure. "And...and you gotta give me something, Nicky, just every once in a while, even. I can't. I'm pretty sure I can't live the rest of my life not touching you. I have to, even if it's only for a minute a day."
Nick's already shaking his head. "Joe, it builds up over time, like...heavy metals in the blood, or something. I can't risk hurting you, not even a little bit."
"This, though? This not being able to...give you a hug or, or a kiss ever? You think that's not hurting?"
Nick looks at him, desperate for him to understand. "It's sure as hell not gonna kill you," he offers quietly.
They don't say anything for a long time.
~~~
The tour goes on, interminable. Joe gets better every day, full of the energy he's always had that's seemed to come from nowhere. They'd used to joke, when they were littler, that Joe was solar-powered, that he just stored up the sun every day and it ran him like batteries that never needed charging. Well, he's all charged up again, and he looks good and he sounds fantastic onstage, and he and Nick spend their nights talking to each other now from separate hotel beds, as they once had done, before they found that talking to each other from the same bed was so much better.
They don't touch. Nick won't budge on it, not for the tiniest thing, and Joe's been going around driving everyone else in the entourage crazy with his constant requests for hugs (when he bothers to ask at all beforehand). He's all over Kevin in a way that clearly makes Kevin uneasy, darting guilty looks to where Nick sits ostracized on the other end of the couch and awkwardly patting Joe on the back when Joe curls around him for a hug. Joe's eyes watch Nick unblinking even as he traps Kevin with his weight.
Nick is empty-feeling, hollowed-out, and he thinks he should feel ridiculous, just like Joe said, for having gotten so dependent upon a thing that so often embarrassed and unseated him. Living with the constant threat of Joe tackling you broadside, and then suddenly having to live with the knowledge that he never will again, is pretty much the description of what Nick assumes must be the circle of hell they built especially for boys who fuck their brothers. But he can't bring himself to renege on his personal vow of no-contact, the knowledge that every touch of his skin to Joe's is a poison that never really flushes out of his system too threatening to risk it.
Until finally one day Nick comes in from lunch, back to a hotel room in a city he hasn't seen except for the airport and the McDonalds, and finds Joe lying sprawled on the bed, his hands on his face, weeping. Joe's a cryer, he always has been, but this is way different from Joe getting teary-eyed at an awards show or soggy over the baby gazelle getting picked off by some lion on Animal Planet. This is some deep, gut-wrenching sound Nick's never heard out of his brother before, and it digs right down into Nick's marrow and turns it to liquid. Nick quails, falters, then he's across the room, perched on the bed with Joe's wet hands clutched in between his, and Joe just lets out this noise like he's seen the face of God.
He stops crying almost immediately and as soon as he does he looks drowsy, exhausted from crying. Nick immediately freaks out, thinking he's sapping away Joe's energy, but he can't pull away again because Joe's hands are banded tight around Nick's wrist. "No no," Joe says to him, begs him. "I'm just...I haven't slept, I'm just really tired, I have been all day. Just. Stay with me, please?"
He falls asleep like that, hands curled around Nick's forearm and Nick pressing his fingertips careful and firm against the pulsepoint below Joe's right thumb. He keeps his eyes on his watch and doesn't move, determined to stay with Joe just as long as he can until his heart starts slowing down.
It's two hours later, without a single change in Joe's breathing or heart rates whatsoever, when Joe wakes up again and Nick asks him if he's feeling bad, weak or tired or anything like that. Joe blinks at him, still sleepy, and shakes his head, then looks down and sees Nick's hand clutched in between his own and bursts into tears again, happy ones this time.
Joe wants to immediately climb all over Nick and start tearing off clothes, but Nick's still cautious. They compromise; Nick will stay in the same bed tonight and see how it affects Joe.
Close to four in the morning Joe wakes Nick up, short of breath and barely able to lift his head, and Nick can't scramble out of that bed fast enough, stammering that he has to call an ambulance, but Joe tells him not to be retarded, that they know what's wrong and how to fix it. His voice sounds defeated, but his breathing steadily deepens and evens as Nick listens.
Nick crawls into the other bed, the sheets and mattress cold, and doesn't sleep.
All the next day on the bus Joe watches Nick with this shrewd, considering stare that would have Nick worried if he didn't already know that whatever is in Joe's head is already there and he might as well just brace himself for whatever came of it. Joe doesn't say anything, though, just looks like he's scheming, until after the show that night when they're back at the hotel.
"I think we should do experiments," he says grandly, in the manner of evil scientists with scalpels and crazy hair. He's got the crazy hair, anyway.
"Experiments," Nick repeats, wary.
"Yes. Experiments. Yesterday you held my hand for ages and it didn't hurt me. It wasn't until I laid all over you last night that I crashed. So..."
"...so? Builds up over time, the doctor said."
"Okay, first of all? That doctor didn't know jack, and you know it. Second of all, you said my heart rate didn't dip once in two hours. I felt fine for like six hours after that. Then we're laying in bed together for three hours and I crash?"
Nick squints at him. "I don't know, Joe..."
"No, look. Let's just...let's try the test again, okay?" He makes a grab for Nick's hand, but Nick jerks it away, paranoid.
"We did this in the hospital," he says bitterly. "You saw what happened."
Joe is quiet, crestfallen. He sighs and looks away.
Setting his jaw grimly, Nick sits down beside him on the bed. He reaches down and gingerly wraps his hand around Joe's, sliding his fingers down til he has them pressed to his pulse, strong and vibrant under the thin skin of his wrist.
Joe opens his mouth, closes it again. Nick keeps his eyes fixed to his watch.
After only twenty minutes Joe is getting antsy. "Nickyyy," he whispers. "How long has it been? I feel fine! Great, in fact."
"Shush," Nick tells him immediately. "It should be at least an hour if we want to be sure."
Joe makes an exasperated noise, but doesn't move again until Nick tells him he can. It's been an hour without a change; if anything, Joe's pulse is maybe a little faster, a little stronger, and Nick tries not to think of how his own heartbeat is hammering excitedly.
"Wait," Nick says, withdrawing his hand just as Joe is clearly gearing up for a victory whoop. "We have to be logical about this. What's different about how we did the test now than when we did it in the hospital? I mean, besides you being in the hospital, obviously."
They both frown into space, trying to think of variables. Nick is just about to give up, frustrated, when suddenly he feels Joe's hand curling back into his. He looks up at Joe, startled.
"In the hospital," Joe says by way of explanation, then shakes his head. "I took your hand first? That's...the only thing I can think of." His voice is unsure; he clearly thinks this is a crackpot theory, which normally wouldn't bother him. This is just more important than trying do decide what to do for their next YouTube video, Nick supposes.
He's willing to do as many tests as it takes, though, and the strange, deep quiet that falls over them here with their hands linked is like a heavy blanket, muffling them from the world outside. All that is exists here in this space between their bodies, where their hands lie linked.
It isn't long until Nick can tell Joe's pulse is slowing, and Joe frowns, swallowing, and pulls his hand away, breathing like the room is somewhat short of oxygen. Nick doesn't say anything until Joe's face clears and he takes a deep, steady breath, obviously feeling better.
"So," Joe says, quietly as if afraid of disturbing something.
"So." Nick isn't sure what to say. But then Joe's face is brightening, slowly but surely, sun burning through the fog.
"So, you can touch me," Joe says, his voice growing confident, "but I can't touch you. That makes perfect sense!"
"Joe, that makes no sense at all."
"No no, it does! If you're the one to start all the touching, then we're fine. I'm fine! I just...just have to remember not to go crazy and touch you!" He sounds like they've made a breakthrough, gained real ground, and nobody stops his victory cheer this time, as he pumps his fists in the air. He shifts his weight and puts out his arms in Nick's direction, clearly going for a big, violent hug, then he stops himself, looking chagrined.
"Uh. Haha, um. Gimme a hug, Nicky?"
And of course Nick does, big and violent, knocking Joe back to the bed. He feels like his body realigns and he can breathe again.
~~~
"No, Joe, you can't...you have to lay still," Nick says, for possibly the twentieth time, sighing in an exasperated huff while Joe whimpers and flops his hands back to the bed, trying to stop his wriggling. Nick only has Joe's shirt off so far and Joe already can't keep his hands to himself, with Nick fully clothed. "This is not gonna work if you don't keep your hands down and let me do this."
"Nicholas, you do not know what you ask," Joe groans, breath hitching as Nick kisses down his bare stomach, warm beneath his lips. "It's been WEEKS."
"Uh, yeah. I was there." He bats away Joe's hands where they're making a bid for Nick's hair. "And if you don't quit, I won't be asking, I'll just tie you to the bedstead."
Joe shudders but drops his hands. Nick smirks. Joe likes the idea but won't admit it. Nick mentally inventories his bags trying to decide where his closest necktie is.
"N-no," Joe says, trying for indignant. "I'll be good." Joe is pretty horrible at this lying still thing, though. He loves to touch, loves to put his hands all over Nick, looking like he can't believe he's allowed. He gets off on it, and it breaks Nick's heart a little that Joe can't have that, now. But then, this is kind of getting Nick off, Joe spread out for him and not allowed to do anything back, Nick calling all the shots. And Nick can tell that even though Joe is frustrated, he likes it, too.
Nick doesn't waste time getting Joe's pants undone and off, boxers gone, and Joe is already kind of a shivering wreck. It has been weeks. He's hard and leaking all over his stomach, and Nick wants so badly to go back to where they were before all this, when their biggest worry was not getting caught. He still feels a thrill of fear when he reaches out his hand, wraps it around Joe, can't help but wonder what if we're wrong, what if I kill him, oh god please don't let me hurt him, but the only response he gets is Joe's automatic and desperate arch up into Nick's hand, and Nick can feel the blood thrumming under the thin, soft skin of Joe's cock, his pulse strong and fast.
"Nick," Joe gasps, his hands curling and uncurling, his hands fluttering up toward Nick only to fall again as he remembers. Curl, uncurl; up, down. Nick laughs a little and Joe glares at him. "'s not...not funny, Nick, this is hard."
"Yes, I see that," Nick murmurs, giving Joe's dick a squeeze. Joe's eyes roll back, but then Nick realizes it's actually Joe rolling his eyes at Nick's lame pun. Joe's hand is creeping up Nick's leg again. Nick grunts and lets go of Joe's dick.
"Wh--?"
"Told you to keep your hands to yourself, didn't I?" Nick says with a smirk. He walks over to one of his suitcases pulling off his shirt as he goes and knowing that Joe's eyes are on him.
Joe doesn't say anything, but Nick can hear the bedclothes rustling. When he turns around, a black silk skinny tie dangling from his hand, Joe is jerking himself slow, eyes fixed on Nick. They stay fixed on Nick as Nick walks back around and Joe helpfully lifts up his hands, wrists crossed above his head on the pillow.
Nick wraps the tie around them a couple of times then ties it to one of the slats in the headboard, efficient. It's not all that tight and the knot will probably come undone without a lot of fight, but it's just a reminder anyway, silently telling Joe what Nick would have to keep repeating, otherwise.
Shimmying out of his jeans, Nick climbs on the bed in just his shorts, settling in on Joe's far side. Joe's head is lolled toward him, eyes still on him. His breathing is deep and fast, not the least sign of weakness in him; he's shaking with pent-up need.
"Nicky," he says, his voice strained. "You gotta touch me."
Nick splays out his hand on Joe's stomach, fingers spread wide to touch as much as he can at one time, soaking in Joe through his skin. Propping himself up on the other elbow, he starts moving his hand around, just touching everything, purposeless and so important, memorizing the planes and textures of his brother's skin, which he'd thought he'd never touch again.
There's a vague whining noise and Joe is squirming again, already pulling at the tie a little. "No, Nick," he mutters through his teeth. "I mean touch. Me."
Nick grins slowly, and his hand stills where it is, right over Joe's thrumming heart. "Pretty sure you're in no position to be giving me orders," he replies mildly, tracing Joe's collarbone with his fingertips.
Joe looks like he is trying to murder Nick with his mind. "You are a horrible person, Nicholas. A bad, bad man."
That only makes Nick's grin widen. "I know," he says, leaning down to kiss Joe thoroughly.
~~~
He takes painstaking care with Joe, agonizingly tracing out the curves and hollows of his body, discovering imperfections he'd missed, the spray of tiny moles down his left side over his ribs, the asymmetry of his nose. He is beautifully different from Nick in almost every way, and although Nick has loved his brother since before he knew he shouldn't, he has never quite so appreciated all the touchable, traceable, kissable, lickable parts of Joe as he does now, when he almost didn't have them.
Joe grumbles as Nick proceeds to relearn his body with just his lips, but the complaints are half-hearted and by the time Nick is sucking on the hollow of Joe's throat it's more groaning than grumbling. Joe shivers when Nick kisses his nipples, arches up when Nick slicks his tongue into the depression of Joe's navel, but Nick holds Joe's hips down hard when he ducks in to swallow his cock, shallow and little-practiced, but good, good, or so Joe is chanting, pulling harder at the tie around the headboard, going nowhere. It is making Nick harder than he's ever been in his life to take Joe apart like this, so totally, completely at his own discretion.
From the way Joe comes down Nick's throat, fast and without warning with his head thrown back and his lip bitten down hard, Nick thinks it might be good for Joe, too.
"Just lay still, Joe," Nick breathes, minutes later, his breath warm where it bounces back at him from the inside of Joe's right thigh. His slick middle finger is hot, buried in Joe's body to the last knuckle, and Joe is trying desperately to remember not to wrap his legs around Nick, pull him in. Nick huffs, but it isn't quite a laugh. "There's no footboard here for me to tie your ankles to." He puts his mouth back against Joe's softened dick, laying wet kisses along the tacky skin as another finger disappears inside. Joe is tense almost everywhere else, but here his body gives for Nick, opens to him until it's all Nick can think about.
"Nick, Nicky, please," Joe moans - he's never been above begging, bribing, or stealing from Nick something that he wants - and Nick's tenuous control disappears just like that. He needs Joe just as badly, almost lost him just as completely, and in that heartbeat Nick understands what Joe felt four years ago, so much more than he ever thought he would, and it nearly breaks him in half.
He slides into Joe quick and all-at-once, Joe's body falling open and slack for him. Nick hooks his hands under Joe's knees to pin them up, where they can't snake around Nick and undo all of Nick's careful work to keep Joe healthy. Leaned over Joe so close, Nick's forehead rests on Joe's, and for just a moment neither of them move, and then Joe, who has never really followed a rule in his life, tips up his chin to kiss Nick, fast and hard, and then says, "Nick," and Nick moves.
~~~
It's bizarre, how it works out. Six months to the day that they first took Joe to the hospital, they're back there again, the same hospital because they have, like, research rights on Joe's "condition," being the first hospital to encounter it, or whatever. They're running the same tests, incorporating the new information about how Nick can touch Joe but not the other way around, helpfully sanitizing the story of how they figured that out, when Joe's "condition" just...disappears. It's just gone, they have Joe grab Nick's hand and hold it for ages and ages and nothing happens. No dips in Joe's heartrate, no catches in his breathing; it's like he had a bad headcold for almost a year, and then finally shook it off. They're not sure when exactly it happened, since Joe had been studiously not touching Nick all that time (and in the six months since he was diagnosed he's actually gotten a lot better about not touching when he's told), but regardless, as of that day in the hospital, Joe is officially cured.
It takes a long time, but not nearly as long as you'd think it might, for Joe to fall back into the comfortable, achingly wonderful familiarity of just grabbing Nick, hugging him, putting his hands on him whenever he wants. Nick realizes as Joe grows back into it that the loss of Joe's natural oblivious forwardness, his complete lack of a concept of personal space, was like this yawning void in the substance of his life, this unstoppable need he did not even realize he had, until he has it again and feels the difference in the way his heart beats when Joe's around. He supposes he shouldn't be as surprised by that revelation as he is (he once tries to articulate it, in somewhat vaguer language, of course, to Kevin, but Kevin just gives him a funny look and a laugh and says, "Duh, Nicky," which, okay, Nick thinks that might've been a little unnecessary). He's always known he needs Joe, need him to look after him and back him up, and, yes, save his life when necessary. He just hadn't realized quite how much Joe needed him to do the same from time to time. And really, Nick figures that's just a greater way of needing someone back, looking after them; he figures he'll never need to wonder whether Joe needs him, too.
Pairing: Joe/Nick
Rating: NC/17
Warnings: Light bondage
Prompt: Someone's already requested the needs-physical-contact-to-live thing, but I want to read a fic where physical contact hurts Joe of them - not an instant pain, but a draining of energy. One Nick realises, he refuses to let Joe touch him, which makes them both miserable. But they eventually figure out Nick can initiate the touch, so the end up making out/having sex where Joe has to be completely passive and let Nick do everything to him. ~ submitted by th_esaurus
Date: 11/5/09
It isn't like it's obvious at first. Joe's moods go up and down so much anyway that half the time Garbo calls him "Princess" and the other half he doesn't say anything to Joe at all because Joe's in a bitchy mood. Most people new to the entourage think it'd be Nick who is the moody, unstable one, being the tortured young artist and sick, besides, but actually it's Joe, has always been Joe, who is sensitive to a fault. If he's in a good place then the whole day sparkles, but if he's PMSing everyone knows about it. Perfect strangers know about it.
But even for Joe, he's been really...tired and out of it, lately. He still performs his heart out, but he has nothing afterward, barely enough to get safely into the truck to ride over to the hotel, falling asleep on Nick before they even get there, no matter if it's a five or a fifteen-minute ride.
Nick wonders one day, in a moment of clarity, if this is what Joe felt like watching Nick get sick as a kid, this nagging not-rightness that he feels when he thinks about Joe now as compared to Joe six months ago. At first Nick has about a three-second freakout, oh god what if JOE has it now? before his brain kicks into gear and realizes of course it can't be diabetes, Joe's way too old and is still slamming back Frappuccino and Red Bull like water without going into an immediate coma, so.
He eventually grabs Joe after a soundcheck, after Joe's told everyone he's going back to the hotel to try to catch a nap before the show, and asks Joe if he thinks maybe he's sick. Joe just looks at Nick with wide-open confusion, then gives him this big, slightly weary-looking smile.
"No, Nicky, I feel fine. Just tired."
"It's kind of been months that you've been tired, though."
Joe laughs, swings his arm around Nick's neck and pulls him tight against his side, knocking Nick temporarily off-balance. "They can't give you pills for wore-the-fuck-out, dude. Unless they're, like, caffeine pills."
Nick gives him a perturbed look, purse-lipped. "Fatigue is a sign of a lot of diseases, Joe. Anemia. Lyme disease. African sleeping sickness."
"Yes, Nicholas." His face is suddenly grave and drawn, his eyebrows a looming thundercloud of concern. "I absolutely have African sleeping sickness. Comes of hanging out with all those African mosquitoes."
"Tsetse flies," Nick corrects reflexively, scowling.
"What have I told you about reading WebMD after midnight, Nick? Seriously."
"Just...just concede you might be sick, and for me, for your brother who loves you and has deep vested interest in your welfare, promise you will go see a doctor tomorrow. Promise me."
Joe rolls his eyes but his heavy sigh gets caught up in a yawn so cavernous his jaw cracks. He blinks at Nick a bit guiltily, then nods.
"For my brother, because otherwise you will fret yourself into a stupor and forget to wake me up and Kev will have to put on the show tonight all by himself, incidentally alienating our entire fanbase." He puts up a warning finger. "But if the doc brings out a needle, all bets are off."
Nick nods immediately, a tight spring in his chest slowly uncoiling in relief he didn't even know he needed to feel. "I will go with you and protect you," he says valiantly, patting Joe sympathetically on the chest. Joe tightens his arm a little on Nick, knocking their heads together lightly.
"Come back to the hotel with me, too?"
"I thought you said you wanted to nap?" Nick says, lip quirking.
Joe just grins. "Brilliant ploy, no?"
Nick shakes his head and beckons over their driver with an imperious hand-wave. "No, not really, Joe. But let's just roll with it."
~~~
As it turns out, Nick didn't need to nag. He and Joe get as far as being tangled up in bed together in boxers and t-shirts, trading kisses back and forth across the pillow before Joe's yawning every five seconds gets obnoxious and he sheepishly admits that actually he is kind of too tired to keep his eyes open anymore, and maybe could they just take a nap? Nick doesn't even have the heart to give him hell for it, just tangles his fingers in Joe's hair and listens to him fall asleep, too fast for the middle of the day, Joe's arm flung over Nick's waist and his nose snuggled against Nick's collarbone.
Nick doesn't remember falling asleep, didn't think he'd be able to for all the worrying, but he wakes up with a start an hour and a half later, about fifteen minutes before his alarm is set to go off. He frowns groggily, wondering what, if not his alarm, woke him up. It's a second before he realizes two things: that he's turned over in his sleep and is now lying spooned back into Joe who is curled tight against him, and that his brother is preternaturally still behind him.
Sitting bolt upright in bed, Nick stares down at Joe stupidly, seeing sick-pale skin and ashen eyelids and a mouth open and slack with no breath coming out of it, unable to piece together what that even means. It's an age of heartbeats Nick can only sit there before he has Joe over flat on his back and is sitting astride his thighs and his phone is open and tucked into his shoulder, dialing his dad and he has the other ear pressed to Joe's chest and fucking praise Jesus because there is a heartbeat. It sounds so, so faint. Nick is screaming incoherently down the phone and barely hears himself, just hears Joe's sluggish, tired heart thudding underneath his t-shirt but he still isn't breathing, so Nick drops the phone, not even pausing to end the call, and bends over Joe's still, frighteningly cold body to puff air into his mouth. Nick almost forgets to pinch his nose shut but even in a blind and unthinking panic he remembers the first-aid training they all had before their first major tour. One long, hard push of air...three beats...one long, hard push of air...three beats, and Nick isn't actually counting, he's praying, furiously and barely in English, and then suddenly Joe takes a long, slow breath on his own and sighs out, sounding almost content.
About that time the hotel door bursts inward and then everything is just a flurry of activity and terror and there are EMTs in yellow vests that are so bright they hurt Nick's eyes. He supposes he must raise almighty hell when they try to take Joe away without him because the next thing he's really aware of, he's in the ambulance next to Joe, whose face is obscured by a plastic oxygen mask and whose near hand is clutched lifeless in Nick's. Nick thinks the sight of Joe laid out on a stretcher is one that will haunt his sleep til the day he dies.
~~~
Nick doesn't pass out on the floor of the recovery room when the doctors declare their diagnosis. For one thing, he's sitting down at the time, and he's far too intently focused on being awake to hear this to allow himself the luxury of blacking out.
For the other thing, there is no diagnosis. Joe's perfectly healthy, one-hundred percent all there, all functioning. He's just shutting down, for no reason. Everything in him works, but at a drastically lowered rate, as if he were freezing to death at room temperature. The medical team is, Nick likes to think, flabbergasted; they act like they have everything under control but Nick Jonas has been hearing sanitized bureaucratic bullshit nearly his entire life, so he knows how to interpret the doublespeak that means, "We don't have a clue what the fuck is going on." It makes him angrier than he's ever been in his life, that these professionals, these experts, would pretend to know how to hold life and death in their hands, then come to him and tell him his brother is dying and they don't know why.
Joe isn't getting any worse, though, at least not at the moment. He stabilized on the ambulance and by the time all the tests had been run he'd woken up. He's awake to hear that he'll need to stay for observation another couple of days, while more tests are run; he's awake when his family solemnly and somewhat awkwardly has to leave when visiting hours are over. He's awake and watching with sharp eyes out the observation window as Nick lobbies hard for, and receives, special Jonas Brother dispensation to stay in the room with Joe overnight.
"I'll bet the internet's exploding right about now," Joe cracks, sounding bone-weary but otherwise fine, when Nick comes back into his room and pulls the door shut behind him. "Joe Jonas: Amazing Sleeping Rockstar. Joe Jonas, Sleeping Beauty!" He's grinning but Nick does not laugh. He drops heavily into the chair beside Joe's bed and props his chin in his hands, looking at Joe as if waiting for him to disappear.
Joe pouts at him. "Oh, come on, Nicky. I'm fine now. The doctors'll prod me and figure out what's wrong. Or maybe it was just a one-time thing."
"Joe," Nick enunciates carefully, as to a small child, "You stopped breathing. You will never, EVER do that again, do you understand me?"
It's a testament to how scary Nick must look that Joe doesn't even look like he wants to crack a smile, let alone joke about the inevitability of not breathing at some point. He just swallows and nods, reaches out his hand and waits for Nick to slip his into it.
"Yeah, Nicky," he replies, more quietly, and lays his head down on his pillow. "You know I won't."
"I'm serious, Joe," Nick says in an even sterner tone, as if Joe wasn't listening the first time. "You...I was so...I thought I was going to have to kill myself just to follow you this time." His tone is indignant.
A shadow crosses Joe's face. "Nick. No matter what you are not allowed to kill yourself over me. I am not worth it."
"Easy for you to say, asshole," Nick says, voice getting gruffer and lower as it slides toward affection, stretched to the breaking point over the course of several hours. "You're not the one who'd have to lose you."
"I'm not going to die, Nicky," Joe replies indulgently, the same way he'd said, so convinced, "Nicky, I feel fine." Nick shudders. Joe sighs and pulls at his hand, and Nick goes without a thought for whether it's against the rules or not, climbing gingerly into the hospital bed beside him, careful not to dislodge any of the several monitor wires hooked to Joe's body. The softly-beeping machines next to him display readings all just barely off from average, every number just a shade too low, not out of the range of normal, yet, but so very far from where Joe should be.
"You'd better not, or I'll kill you," Nick replies lamely. Joe smiles where he's tucked his face into Nick's neck.
"You'd have to catch me, first." Joe slurs a little, and Nick glances down to see him blink dazedly, obviously exhausted and running on empty.
"Go to sleep, loser," Nick commands. He's actually terrified to let Joe go back to sleep, terrified that the next time, he just won't wake up again, but this time Joe's hooked up to about a half a dozen different machines that'll make sure that the second something fishy happens, half the hospital will know about it.
Joe sleeps for maybe an hour, not quite that, and Nick is drifting, not asleep, just eyes-closed-floating and beginning to patch together a little faint hope that this was just some weird fluke of anatomy, that maybe Joe can take some iron supplements and change his diet a little and this will never happen again. That's when the room suddenly explodes in noise, alarms going off everywhere like an entire squadron of police sirens, instrument panels all at once flashing red and yellow in the dimly-lighted room. Nick nearly has a heart attack himself, jolting upright again for the second time that day to see Joe nearly chalk-pale again, his chest just barely rising and falling in a fluttery frail-looking rhythm.
More doors slamming open, more people pouring in, nurses coaxing and pulling Nick carefully out of the bed - "Be careful of the monitors, somebody get him out of here!" - but he refuses to go, shoves himself in a corner where he can see everything and stares at the activity around his brother's bed.
It's a tense and noisy few seconds before the alarms all start shutting up, Joe's body rhythms slowly and steadily hastening again with almost no intervention from the nurses whatsoever. Nick hears their confusion, quietly muttered, "Did you give him the...?" "No, he was already stabilizing, he might have spiked..." "Well then what raised his blood pressure?"
No one answers, really, and pretty soon the nurses are all looking at Nick and asking him what happened, whether he might've accidentally shifted any of the monitor wires, disrupted Joe's IV tube of clear saline. Nick adamantly tells him he didn't come anywhere near those wires, that he had been lying there perfectly still, Joe asleep, and he'd just started fading in Nick's arms for no reason at all.
~~~
It's actually Kevin who gets the idea first.
Joe's been fine for over twenty-four hours now, ever since he bottomed out that first night and the nurses moved in a cot for Nick to sleep on the floor next to Joe. They couldn't let him sleep where he could mess up the instruments and ever since Nick's been sleeping apart from Joe, Joe hasn't shown any sign of dropping blood pressure, or heart rate, or breathing.
No one else considers those two events to correlate, but Kevin pipes up on the afternoon of the third day when he looks around and sees that everyone in the room, even Nick, is now unconsciously keeping a wide berth around Joe's bed, all too afraid of altering his delicate situation for fear it could fall apart if touched.
"How many people have touched him lately?" Kevin asks in his sweet, inquisitive voice that means he's really puzzled about a problem and trying so hard to work it out. "I mean. Both the times he's crashed completely he's been in full-body contact with another person. That couldn't have anything to do with it, could it?"
The doctors essentially say "what the hell" and decide to run a test on the fly because they have literally run out of tests to perform. It's a ridiculous hypothesis, Nick can't help thinking (no offense to Kevin or anything), because there's like a boatload of evidence in all kinds of medical journals he's heard of before about the positive effects of human touch on sick people. Even sometimes at church the deacons will lay hands on a sick person, pray over them, in the hopes of divine intervention, and Nick thinks the concepts might be related somewhere thousands of years ago. He's pretty sure he's right about this and growing surer by the minute; they have a nurse lay her hand on Joe's for two hours without any ill effects (well, unless you want to count Joe spending two hours shamelessly flirting with and embarrassing a middle-aged, married nurse). After that they have Frankie sit next to Joe up in his bed for a while, having thumb-wars and playing Indian rugburn when Mom's not in the room. Joe's heartbeat doesn't so much as offer to dip.
Each member of his family holds his hand for an hour apiece after that, all without incident, til it's Nick's turn. He's feeling pretty silly and also somewhat over-scrutinized while sitting there holding the hand of the brother he makes out with every night and occasionally sleeps with in the euphemistic and not literal sense, right under his parents' noses. But Joe just placidly laces their fingers together and keeps up a constant string of, "So, does this mean we're going steady, Nicky? Can I wear your ring? Are you gonna ask me to the spring formal? Can I take you to the Sadie Hawkins' Dance? In my khaki pants? Baby, do you like my sweater?" just to see Nick blush and, apparently, provoke him to punching Joe's shoulder with his free hand. And then suddenly there's murmuring from the other side of the room, the doctors and nurses all clustered up around Joe's heart monitor, which Nick can tell after two days of watching is beeping slower than it should be, and slowing steadily the longer he holds Joe's hand.
His stomach turns over on itself. He's afraid he's going to be sick all over the scuffed hospital linoleum.
"Don't let go of him," the head physician orders. "Just keep touching him until the results are clear."
Nick's no scientist but even he can't help feeling the results are already pretty damn clear. He stares dead-on at Kevin, who's looking like he's seen a ghost, and then Joe's gripping his hand tighter, tight enough to hurt, and murmuring near Nick's ear,
"Whatever happens, Nicky, whatever they say, don't let me go, okay? You can't let me go."
Then the alarms start going off. Nick rips his hand out of his brother's and goes staggering up and back, toppling over his plastic chair into the floor. He almost ends up in his mother's lap, but she steadies him with a hand that balls ferociously in the material of his t-shirt.
It's not even a whole minute until Joe's numbers start rising and one by one the instruments stop clanging. Joe looks wildly at Nick and say, "Nick, this isn't your--" but Nick is already turning, running, fleeing out the door and down the hallway under greenish flourescent hospital light.
~~~
"Nick," Joe says, over and over, pleading with him, "This isn't your fault, okay? It just isn't!"
It's an old mantra, days old already, as they're back on tour and better than they have been in months, in terms of music quality and high energy. In terms of everything else, it's all gone to shit.
Nick thinks they might be somewhere in Arkansas, he isn't sure; America looks all exactly the same from Nashville west to Dallas. He isn't going to do this with Joe, not now, not when they've gone almost twelve whole hours without fighting.
"Joe, I really really don't want to talk about it. Okay? Can you respect that?" He gets up from his bunk and with the infinite care usually associated with defusing a bomb skirts around Joe, who's purposefully hogging the narrow hallway. Nick barely manages to pass without touching his brother, but he does manage it.
"Nick, I can hear you blaming yourself from the front of the bus, dude," Joe says, tagging close behind, too close, Nick can feel his breath on the back of his neck and it's raising goosebumps all down his spine. "I can literally hear your emo."
"Yeah, Joe. Slowly killing my brother and then being doomed to a life of never touching him again, that's just me being emo." He ducks around the fridge and throws open the door, whacking Joe with it. Joe doesn't even acknowledge the assault, just leans on the door, looming over Nick where he's leaned in to get some orange juice. He's felt like crap, lately, and his levels have been all over the freaking map, but that's what not sleeping and barely eating and falling into clinical depression'll do for you, he guesses.
"Nick," Joe says in a tone somewhere between warning and whining. Nick straightens suddenly, his mouth set in that patented, "I am about to give you a brutally polite and well-reasoned piece of my brilliant mind" purse, really ready to let Joe have it, and promptly cracks the crown of his skull on Joe's sharp chin. They both holler and stagger, eyes crossing, but only Nick leaps back like he's been burned, flattening himself backward along one wall and looking like he might try crawling out a window on the moving bus if Joe comes any closer. Joe stares at him wide-eyed, still looking a little concussed, and then in a fit of pique he kicks the refrigerator door closed so hard every last one of its contents rattles and there's a heavy THUMP of something falling over inside.
His face is set in a homicidal scowl and he reaches out and before Nick can even contemplate escape, Joe's got a whole fistful of Nick's shirt and he's yanking Nick around by it, stitches popping softly at the collar. He shoves Nick in front of him, maneuvering back toward the bunks while Nick makes these little absurd jerks of his hands as he tries to claw away from Joe without touching him. Joe grins maliciously at this, knowing he's got Nick in a catch-22, and unceremoniously stuffs Nick back into his bunk, crawling in after him and sitting at the opposite end of the bed.
Nick's breathing hard through his nose and glaring at Joe and there are about forty-seven things he'd like to discuss with Joe, calmly and rationally and maybe while strangling him with a blanket, but he doesn't say any of them because Joe says first, "Nick, shut the hell up and listen to me."
Nick shuts the hell up, more surprised than anything else.
"This is ridiculous," Joe picks as his opening gambit, which, coming from Joe, is a little like the pot calling the kettle "a rounded metal vessel used for cooking". "You? Are being ridiculous. Do you have any idea how long it took for my exposure to you to build up to the level it had to be to make me crash? I know you do, because you were there in the room when Doctor Pizzaface estimated it, but just to refresh your memory, it was somewhere on the order of four months. I'm pretty sure you can accidentally bump into me in the hallway or ram your hard-as-fuck head into mine without sending me into a coma. Unless of course you ram me with your hard-as-fuck head with enough force to give me a concussion." Joe rubs his chin for emphasis, and Nick would like to interject that, excuse me, he's the one likeliest to have a concussion after being impaled on Joe's jaw, but Joe cuts him off with a look.
"No, what you are doing, Nicholas, is treating me like I've got the bubonic plague or leprosy or...I don't know, bad fashion sense, and you might catch it." His face suddenly shifts, from annoyed older brother to something darker, more wounded. "What you're doing, Nick, is making this about a million times harder than it already is."
Nick sucks in a breath, feeling stabs of pain anew that he'd spent days trying to ignore, and says all in a rush, "I'm making it exactly as hard as it is, Joe. I can't touch you anymore, do you even...do you have any idea how hard it's gonna be to--"
"Uh, DUH, Nick," Joe snaps, not aggravated now; really hurt. Really angry. "Fucking duh. You are being a martyr, is what you're doing, taking this freak genetic mutation or whatever it is and turning it into a personal goddamn failure. You do NOT get to be the special disabled child on this one, Nick, okay?"
Nick recoils, appalled that Joe would suggest...but he's already looking apologetic, rubbing at his face with hands Nick can see are shaking, even from three feet away. All he wants is to reach out and take them, but he can't. Won't.
"I don't mean...god, Nick, you're not supposed to be like this, okay? You have...you have so much else that you have to worry about, legitimately, that I can't just sit here and watch you take on something else like it's just your cross to bear. I won't do it. This isn't your fault or my fault or anybody's fault, it's just...it's just the way things are now." He sucks in a shaky, hesitant breath, his voice lowering, becoming unsure. "And...and you gotta give me something, Nicky, just every once in a while, even. I can't. I'm pretty sure I can't live the rest of my life not touching you. I have to, even if it's only for a minute a day."
Nick's already shaking his head. "Joe, it builds up over time, like...heavy metals in the blood, or something. I can't risk hurting you, not even a little bit."
"This, though? This not being able to...give you a hug or, or a kiss ever? You think that's not hurting?"
Nick looks at him, desperate for him to understand. "It's sure as hell not gonna kill you," he offers quietly.
They don't say anything for a long time.
~~~
The tour goes on, interminable. Joe gets better every day, full of the energy he's always had that's seemed to come from nowhere. They'd used to joke, when they were littler, that Joe was solar-powered, that he just stored up the sun every day and it ran him like batteries that never needed charging. Well, he's all charged up again, and he looks good and he sounds fantastic onstage, and he and Nick spend their nights talking to each other now from separate hotel beds, as they once had done, before they found that talking to each other from the same bed was so much better.
They don't touch. Nick won't budge on it, not for the tiniest thing, and Joe's been going around driving everyone else in the entourage crazy with his constant requests for hugs (when he bothers to ask at all beforehand). He's all over Kevin in a way that clearly makes Kevin uneasy, darting guilty looks to where Nick sits ostracized on the other end of the couch and awkwardly patting Joe on the back when Joe curls around him for a hug. Joe's eyes watch Nick unblinking even as he traps Kevin with his weight.
Nick is empty-feeling, hollowed-out, and he thinks he should feel ridiculous, just like Joe said, for having gotten so dependent upon a thing that so often embarrassed and unseated him. Living with the constant threat of Joe tackling you broadside, and then suddenly having to live with the knowledge that he never will again, is pretty much the description of what Nick assumes must be the circle of hell they built especially for boys who fuck their brothers. But he can't bring himself to renege on his personal vow of no-contact, the knowledge that every touch of his skin to Joe's is a poison that never really flushes out of his system too threatening to risk it.
Until finally one day Nick comes in from lunch, back to a hotel room in a city he hasn't seen except for the airport and the McDonalds, and finds Joe lying sprawled on the bed, his hands on his face, weeping. Joe's a cryer, he always has been, but this is way different from Joe getting teary-eyed at an awards show or soggy over the baby gazelle getting picked off by some lion on Animal Planet. This is some deep, gut-wrenching sound Nick's never heard out of his brother before, and it digs right down into Nick's marrow and turns it to liquid. Nick quails, falters, then he's across the room, perched on the bed with Joe's wet hands clutched in between his, and Joe just lets out this noise like he's seen the face of God.
He stops crying almost immediately and as soon as he does he looks drowsy, exhausted from crying. Nick immediately freaks out, thinking he's sapping away Joe's energy, but he can't pull away again because Joe's hands are banded tight around Nick's wrist. "No no," Joe says to him, begs him. "I'm just...I haven't slept, I'm just really tired, I have been all day. Just. Stay with me, please?"
He falls asleep like that, hands curled around Nick's forearm and Nick pressing his fingertips careful and firm against the pulsepoint below Joe's right thumb. He keeps his eyes on his watch and doesn't move, determined to stay with Joe just as long as he can until his heart starts slowing down.
It's two hours later, without a single change in Joe's breathing or heart rates whatsoever, when Joe wakes up again and Nick asks him if he's feeling bad, weak or tired or anything like that. Joe blinks at him, still sleepy, and shakes his head, then looks down and sees Nick's hand clutched in between his own and bursts into tears again, happy ones this time.
Joe wants to immediately climb all over Nick and start tearing off clothes, but Nick's still cautious. They compromise; Nick will stay in the same bed tonight and see how it affects Joe.
Close to four in the morning Joe wakes Nick up, short of breath and barely able to lift his head, and Nick can't scramble out of that bed fast enough, stammering that he has to call an ambulance, but Joe tells him not to be retarded, that they know what's wrong and how to fix it. His voice sounds defeated, but his breathing steadily deepens and evens as Nick listens.
Nick crawls into the other bed, the sheets and mattress cold, and doesn't sleep.
All the next day on the bus Joe watches Nick with this shrewd, considering stare that would have Nick worried if he didn't already know that whatever is in Joe's head is already there and he might as well just brace himself for whatever came of it. Joe doesn't say anything, though, just looks like he's scheming, until after the show that night when they're back at the hotel.
"I think we should do experiments," he says grandly, in the manner of evil scientists with scalpels and crazy hair. He's got the crazy hair, anyway.
"Experiments," Nick repeats, wary.
"Yes. Experiments. Yesterday you held my hand for ages and it didn't hurt me. It wasn't until I laid all over you last night that I crashed. So..."
"...so? Builds up over time, the doctor said."
"Okay, first of all? That doctor didn't know jack, and you know it. Second of all, you said my heart rate didn't dip once in two hours. I felt fine for like six hours after that. Then we're laying in bed together for three hours and I crash?"
Nick squints at him. "I don't know, Joe..."
"No, look. Let's just...let's try the test again, okay?" He makes a grab for Nick's hand, but Nick jerks it away, paranoid.
"We did this in the hospital," he says bitterly. "You saw what happened."
Joe is quiet, crestfallen. He sighs and looks away.
Setting his jaw grimly, Nick sits down beside him on the bed. He reaches down and gingerly wraps his hand around Joe's, sliding his fingers down til he has them pressed to his pulse, strong and vibrant under the thin skin of his wrist.
Joe opens his mouth, closes it again. Nick keeps his eyes fixed to his watch.
After only twenty minutes Joe is getting antsy. "Nickyyy," he whispers. "How long has it been? I feel fine! Great, in fact."
"Shush," Nick tells him immediately. "It should be at least an hour if we want to be sure."
Joe makes an exasperated noise, but doesn't move again until Nick tells him he can. It's been an hour without a change; if anything, Joe's pulse is maybe a little faster, a little stronger, and Nick tries not to think of how his own heartbeat is hammering excitedly.
"Wait," Nick says, withdrawing his hand just as Joe is clearly gearing up for a victory whoop. "We have to be logical about this. What's different about how we did the test now than when we did it in the hospital? I mean, besides you being in the hospital, obviously."
They both frown into space, trying to think of variables. Nick is just about to give up, frustrated, when suddenly he feels Joe's hand curling back into his. He looks up at Joe, startled.
"In the hospital," Joe says by way of explanation, then shakes his head. "I took your hand first? That's...the only thing I can think of." His voice is unsure; he clearly thinks this is a crackpot theory, which normally wouldn't bother him. This is just more important than trying do decide what to do for their next YouTube video, Nick supposes.
He's willing to do as many tests as it takes, though, and the strange, deep quiet that falls over them here with their hands linked is like a heavy blanket, muffling them from the world outside. All that is exists here in this space between their bodies, where their hands lie linked.
It isn't long until Nick can tell Joe's pulse is slowing, and Joe frowns, swallowing, and pulls his hand away, breathing like the room is somewhat short of oxygen. Nick doesn't say anything until Joe's face clears and he takes a deep, steady breath, obviously feeling better.
"So," Joe says, quietly as if afraid of disturbing something.
"So." Nick isn't sure what to say. But then Joe's face is brightening, slowly but surely, sun burning through the fog.
"So, you can touch me," Joe says, his voice growing confident, "but I can't touch you. That makes perfect sense!"
"Joe, that makes no sense at all."
"No no, it does! If you're the one to start all the touching, then we're fine. I'm fine! I just...just have to remember not to go crazy and touch you!" He sounds like they've made a breakthrough, gained real ground, and nobody stops his victory cheer this time, as he pumps his fists in the air. He shifts his weight and puts out his arms in Nick's direction, clearly going for a big, violent hug, then he stops himself, looking chagrined.
"Uh. Haha, um. Gimme a hug, Nicky?"
And of course Nick does, big and violent, knocking Joe back to the bed. He feels like his body realigns and he can breathe again.
~~~
"No, Joe, you can't...you have to lay still," Nick says, for possibly the twentieth time, sighing in an exasperated huff while Joe whimpers and flops his hands back to the bed, trying to stop his wriggling. Nick only has Joe's shirt off so far and Joe already can't keep his hands to himself, with Nick fully clothed. "This is not gonna work if you don't keep your hands down and let me do this."
"Nicholas, you do not know what you ask," Joe groans, breath hitching as Nick kisses down his bare stomach, warm beneath his lips. "It's been WEEKS."
"Uh, yeah. I was there." He bats away Joe's hands where they're making a bid for Nick's hair. "And if you don't quit, I won't be asking, I'll just tie you to the bedstead."
Joe shudders but drops his hands. Nick smirks. Joe likes the idea but won't admit it. Nick mentally inventories his bags trying to decide where his closest necktie is.
"N-no," Joe says, trying for indignant. "I'll be good." Joe is pretty horrible at this lying still thing, though. He loves to touch, loves to put his hands all over Nick, looking like he can't believe he's allowed. He gets off on it, and it breaks Nick's heart a little that Joe can't have that, now. But then, this is kind of getting Nick off, Joe spread out for him and not allowed to do anything back, Nick calling all the shots. And Nick can tell that even though Joe is frustrated, he likes it, too.
Nick doesn't waste time getting Joe's pants undone and off, boxers gone, and Joe is already kind of a shivering wreck. It has been weeks. He's hard and leaking all over his stomach, and Nick wants so badly to go back to where they were before all this, when their biggest worry was not getting caught. He still feels a thrill of fear when he reaches out his hand, wraps it around Joe, can't help but wonder what if we're wrong, what if I kill him, oh god please don't let me hurt him, but the only response he gets is Joe's automatic and desperate arch up into Nick's hand, and Nick can feel the blood thrumming under the thin, soft skin of Joe's cock, his pulse strong and fast.
"Nick," Joe gasps, his hands curling and uncurling, his hands fluttering up toward Nick only to fall again as he remembers. Curl, uncurl; up, down. Nick laughs a little and Joe glares at him. "'s not...not funny, Nick, this is hard."
"Yes, I see that," Nick murmurs, giving Joe's dick a squeeze. Joe's eyes roll back, but then Nick realizes it's actually Joe rolling his eyes at Nick's lame pun. Joe's hand is creeping up Nick's leg again. Nick grunts and lets go of Joe's dick.
"Wh--?"
"Told you to keep your hands to yourself, didn't I?" Nick says with a smirk. He walks over to one of his suitcases pulling off his shirt as he goes and knowing that Joe's eyes are on him.
Joe doesn't say anything, but Nick can hear the bedclothes rustling. When he turns around, a black silk skinny tie dangling from his hand, Joe is jerking himself slow, eyes fixed on Nick. They stay fixed on Nick as Nick walks back around and Joe helpfully lifts up his hands, wrists crossed above his head on the pillow.
Nick wraps the tie around them a couple of times then ties it to one of the slats in the headboard, efficient. It's not all that tight and the knot will probably come undone without a lot of fight, but it's just a reminder anyway, silently telling Joe what Nick would have to keep repeating, otherwise.
Shimmying out of his jeans, Nick climbs on the bed in just his shorts, settling in on Joe's far side. Joe's head is lolled toward him, eyes still on him. His breathing is deep and fast, not the least sign of weakness in him; he's shaking with pent-up need.
"Nicky," he says, his voice strained. "You gotta touch me."
Nick splays out his hand on Joe's stomach, fingers spread wide to touch as much as he can at one time, soaking in Joe through his skin. Propping himself up on the other elbow, he starts moving his hand around, just touching everything, purposeless and so important, memorizing the planes and textures of his brother's skin, which he'd thought he'd never touch again.
There's a vague whining noise and Joe is squirming again, already pulling at the tie a little. "No, Nick," he mutters through his teeth. "I mean touch. Me."
Nick grins slowly, and his hand stills where it is, right over Joe's thrumming heart. "Pretty sure you're in no position to be giving me orders," he replies mildly, tracing Joe's collarbone with his fingertips.
Joe looks like he is trying to murder Nick with his mind. "You are a horrible person, Nicholas. A bad, bad man."
That only makes Nick's grin widen. "I know," he says, leaning down to kiss Joe thoroughly.
~~~
He takes painstaking care with Joe, agonizingly tracing out the curves and hollows of his body, discovering imperfections he'd missed, the spray of tiny moles down his left side over his ribs, the asymmetry of his nose. He is beautifully different from Nick in almost every way, and although Nick has loved his brother since before he knew he shouldn't, he has never quite so appreciated all the touchable, traceable, kissable, lickable parts of Joe as he does now, when he almost didn't have them.
Joe grumbles as Nick proceeds to relearn his body with just his lips, but the complaints are half-hearted and by the time Nick is sucking on the hollow of Joe's throat it's more groaning than grumbling. Joe shivers when Nick kisses his nipples, arches up when Nick slicks his tongue into the depression of Joe's navel, but Nick holds Joe's hips down hard when he ducks in to swallow his cock, shallow and little-practiced, but good, good, or so Joe is chanting, pulling harder at the tie around the headboard, going nowhere. It is making Nick harder than he's ever been in his life to take Joe apart like this, so totally, completely at his own discretion.
From the way Joe comes down Nick's throat, fast and without warning with his head thrown back and his lip bitten down hard, Nick thinks it might be good for Joe, too.
"Just lay still, Joe," Nick breathes, minutes later, his breath warm where it bounces back at him from the inside of Joe's right thigh. His slick middle finger is hot, buried in Joe's body to the last knuckle, and Joe is trying desperately to remember not to wrap his legs around Nick, pull him in. Nick huffs, but it isn't quite a laugh. "There's no footboard here for me to tie your ankles to." He puts his mouth back against Joe's softened dick, laying wet kisses along the tacky skin as another finger disappears inside. Joe is tense almost everywhere else, but here his body gives for Nick, opens to him until it's all Nick can think about.
"Nick, Nicky, please," Joe moans - he's never been above begging, bribing, or stealing from Nick something that he wants - and Nick's tenuous control disappears just like that. He needs Joe just as badly, almost lost him just as completely, and in that heartbeat Nick understands what Joe felt four years ago, so much more than he ever thought he would, and it nearly breaks him in half.
He slides into Joe quick and all-at-once, Joe's body falling open and slack for him. Nick hooks his hands under Joe's knees to pin them up, where they can't snake around Nick and undo all of Nick's careful work to keep Joe healthy. Leaned over Joe so close, Nick's forehead rests on Joe's, and for just a moment neither of them move, and then Joe, who has never really followed a rule in his life, tips up his chin to kiss Nick, fast and hard, and then says, "Nick," and Nick moves.
~~~
It's bizarre, how it works out. Six months to the day that they first took Joe to the hospital, they're back there again, the same hospital because they have, like, research rights on Joe's "condition," being the first hospital to encounter it, or whatever. They're running the same tests, incorporating the new information about how Nick can touch Joe but not the other way around, helpfully sanitizing the story of how they figured that out, when Joe's "condition" just...disappears. It's just gone, they have Joe grab Nick's hand and hold it for ages and ages and nothing happens. No dips in Joe's heartrate, no catches in his breathing; it's like he had a bad headcold for almost a year, and then finally shook it off. They're not sure when exactly it happened, since Joe had been studiously not touching Nick all that time (and in the six months since he was diagnosed he's actually gotten a lot better about not touching when he's told), but regardless, as of that day in the hospital, Joe is officially cured.
It takes a long time, but not nearly as long as you'd think it might, for Joe to fall back into the comfortable, achingly wonderful familiarity of just grabbing Nick, hugging him, putting his hands on him whenever he wants. Nick realizes as Joe grows back into it that the loss of Joe's natural oblivious forwardness, his complete lack of a concept of personal space, was like this yawning void in the substance of his life, this unstoppable need he did not even realize he had, until he has it again and feels the difference in the way his heart beats when Joe's around. He supposes he shouldn't be as surprised by that revelation as he is (he once tries to articulate it, in somewhat vaguer language, of course, to Kevin, but Kevin just gives him a funny look and a laugh and says, "Duh, Nicky," which, okay, Nick thinks that might've been a little unnecessary). He's always known he needs Joe, need him to look after him and back him up, and, yes, save his life when necessary. He just hadn't realized quite how much Joe needed him to do the same from time to time. And really, Nick figures that's just a greater way of needing someone back, looking after them; he figures he'll never need to wonder whether Joe needs him, too.