Sexual Healing
Darter-focused entry in the Songbook, because, as of 26 APR 03, 
ZoiciteNicoSaabira
Nick had been frightened, was still frightened, of any number of things: that the fans would desert them (and that it would somehow be his fault), say, which panicked him not because he cared about fame and bling and fortune (he’d gotten over that at the age of, oh, seventeen), but because he lived in abject terror of not having Brian and Alex and Kev in his life – and even ‘all up in his business’ – twenty-four-seven. The hiatus had been good for them all, but it had been so because it was a hiatus, not an ending, not a retirement, not a breakup.
Frightened, regularly, to the edge of nightmare and waking in a cold sweat, his own shouts ringing in his ears, by the fact that Jane had control of Aaron’s career, and of all his siblings’s futures, and would whore out the family dog, much less a child of her womb, if it meant an extra nickel in the kitty.
Frightened, often, of his own desperate needs, and his own bumbling attempts to love Howard in return a tenth as much as Howard loved him.
Frightened that, despite all the reassurances Howie could give him, sooner or later Howie would wake up to the fact that he, Howie, could do infinitely better.
There was nothing anyone could do – Nick himself most assuredly included – about the fears that Backstreet might someday cease to exist as a corporate entity (whether it ever sang another note as a boyba- – er, male vocal harmony group: Nick could see Kevin giving him the Eyebrows of Doom, in his mind, for even half-thinking the wrong term – whether the five of them ever hit another diminished fifth or not), or about Jane’s transparently evident unfitness to be a mother. Nothing to be done but wait it out. And Nick had slowly learned to let the tide wash over him, to endure until it receded, and not to absorb its salt-bitter tang. To endure like a coral reef. As for his fears that Howie would eventually come to his senses, well, he’d learned to recognize them as irrational, to compartmentalize them, to ignore them, and, slowly, baby-step by baby-step, to trust.
Howie didn’t think of himself as a courageous person. He couldn’t understand, either, how such otherwise perceptive people, people who in all other respects knew him better even than Paula and Hoke, and certainly better than John (from whom, and from whose actions, had Howie ever been willing to confront it, much of Howie’s self-doubt derived), could think him strong and courageous.
It hadn’t been courage, rejecting an easy way out, that had forced him to survive in the days and weeks after Caro’s death, when all he wanted to do was take the fastest route to an adjoining cemetery plot; it was fear, Howie maintained, much of it the fear of damnation, not in itself but because Caroline was surely in Heaven by now, with the briefest of stops in Purgatory, and any death that did not result in his being reunited with her was precisely not what he so ached for. And certainly Howie rejected the notion, the daft notion his brothers of Backstreet and his friends of ’N Sync inexplicably held, that he was at all courageous in his self-acceptance: if he had all that much courage, after all, he’d be out, el no?
And then there was Nick. Golden, loving, adorable Nicky. Howie believed in facing facts. And the fact was, Apollonian gods might dally with mortals, but always, in the end, soon or late, they returned to Olympus and their own. It was a joy and a privilege to have Nick’s love for a time, and to watch him mature, but it was a bittersweet joy. As Nick matured, Howie aged; and the day would of course come when Nick would find someone of his own age, and in his own league, which, Howie was certain, Howie would never be in, and with whom he could share more interests than those artificially created by the highly artificial, hothouse situation of Backstreet. It was inevitable. Even Nick knew it, subconsciously: every panic Nick underwent about the possible end of their relationship told Howie as much. He hadn’t spent a couple of years listening to Chris Kirkpatrick, in and out of choir, babbling about the Cliff Notes version of Psych, not to recognize projection when he saw it.
Yes, of course it was in this area that he, Howie, was most vulnerable; but that, he insisted, was no basis on which to say, as his friends and brethren so fondly and foolishly believed, that he was particularly courageous about other matters, either.
Neither Nick nor Howie, though, had ever been so frightened and so stunned as they were now.
When Howie had seen the article from the clipping service, he’d frowned. That had piqued Nick’s curiosity, and he’d sidled over to read it over Howie’s shoulder. True love, Nick sometimes felt, was not being bitched out for reading over a shoulder.
At first, Nick thought it was the prospective title for the CD – Schizophrenic – that had upset Howard. There was a sensitivity issue there, after all. Then he scanned down and saw the phrase, ‘It can be anything from being out or, of course, the classic thing, being in love or maybe falling out of love.’ And for one brief moment, he thought that their friend had just dropped a bombshell without warning anyone in advance. Then he reread the sentence and saw that, no, it was not a coming-out reference. There was nothing in the admission, ‘there’s a lot of weird stuff going on in my brain,’ that anyone could dispute, and certainly nothing in that that ought have caused Howard any alarm.
Then Nicky found the reference that had disturbed Howie so. ‘… Stuff that everybody relates to. There’s songs about sex, there’s songs about drugs, there’s songs about relationships.’
They both startled when the phone rang, with the pat, clichéd timing that real life shamelessly stoops to: Howard actually jumped a bit, and it was the barest luck that Nick managed to jerk back in time not to have Howie’s shoulder clip the underside of his jaw. They exchanged a quick look, wondering the same thing. Was it Aidge calling? Or –.
Howie had answered before the phone could ring again. ‘Hello?’ Nick needed only look at the way Howie’s shoulders tensed to recognize that it wasn’t AJ calling. That wasn’t the posture Howie subconsciously adopted when AJ was calling, even if it were a pissed AJ. Howie’s next words confirmed Nick’s dread.
‘James, hi.’
With more practical intelligence than outsiders would have credited him with, Nick nodded in Howie’s direction and went to get the guestroom ready.
The Bassman stayed for a few days, if you could call it ‘staying’ when his presence was so exiguous. Lance – they tacitly agreed on that approach: the James they knew, the private side of James Lance Bass, was very much Josh’s James, and right about now, ‘Josh’ had been demoted to ‘C,’ the coworker and business partner, nothing more – Lance was unfailingly polite, though he took them up more thoroughly than they’d expected on their offer of a bolt-hole. He either stayed in the guestroom, throwing himself into his work, the newly haggard planes of his face sharpened and illuminated by the glow of his laptop’s screen; or he used the place as a pied-à-terre, returning only to sleep. When they glimpsed him, it was like sighting a pallid ghost.
He’d listened, briefly, with an obviously strained patience, when they’d tried to talk to him about The Issue. He’d said very little in response, agreeing politely that the song-writing period had coincided with a period of turmoil in C’s life that was supposed now to be behind them both, and that therefore what he had written then had nothing to do with what C was up to now. That seemed not to be the point, which, if Nick and Howie had had to guess, had a great deal to do with being made a fool of, publicly. They knew, with considerable foreboding, that Lance was raging inside, and it unnerved them that his rages were clearly occurring elsewhere, and never where they could try to help him. Lance had been a very good friend for a very long time, he and C both.
That, in the end, was what scared them most. They finally felt free to talk about it after Lance, with the most formal courtesies, including a bread-and-butter gift, had left for Mississippi, from which they received only two days later a thank-you note for their hospitality, on stiff, heavy paper with a socially impeccable engraved letterhead. As a distancing mechanism, Lance’s retreat into the minutiæ of Southern Manners was disturbing in the extreme.
But he was out of the house, now, and they could talk about it. In bed. Where they had also felt constrained, about rather more matters than conversation, during Lance’s visit. They had made love, earlier – and this night, it was just that, hackneyed though the phrase was: not for tonight Nick’s occasional bouts of raw physical need – with a reciprocating tenderness that exceeded even their usual affection, and felt, now, healed, more open to one another, than they had been for most of the past week.
‘It has to work out,’ Nick said. His voice was urgent, and fearful. ‘It just has to.’
Howie, holding him, stroked the broad expanse of Nick’s back, gentling him. He didn’t ask. He didn’t need to.
‘If they can’t make it work, James and Josh…..’
Howie closed his eyes, lest Nick read his reaction to the implication Nick left hanging.
‘Howard? Howie. Sweetness. If. If I’d.’
‘You know how I would have reacted, because we all of us went through this with Alejandro. And yes, it would have been the same, because of course I love you more, differently, than I love AJ, but that would be irrelevant to the situation if you were in his shoes, or C’s. I might have acted earlier with you than we did with Aidge, but that would be because I would, I hope, be able to get through to you sooner, because of what we share, as lovers. But as far as booting your sweet booty into rehab, it would have been exactamente como con Alejandro. Exactamente como eso, truly.’
‘And if I’d – you know I’m always scared I’ll say something wrong, not just stupid like I do, but, you know, damageful. If I’d done something like C did….’
‘I wouldn’t have to say a word.’
‘Well, no, ’cause Kev and Bri and Aidge would tear me a new one before you could open your mouth, even, and. Okay. But.’
‘We would work it out. And I’m sure they will, too. But even if they don’t, we would. If that ever happened between us, we would work it out. I would be there for you.’
‘You always are. You always have been.’
‘I love you.’
‘I love you, too. I mean it. Like, forever. And you take such good care of me.’ Nick snuggled closer, and sighed, the wreathed tendrils of burgeoning sleep finally dragging him down. ‘You always take care of me.’
Howie held him, shielding Nick, shielding himself from night fears. ‘As long as you want me to,’ he said, and refused to think about the day when Nick might no longer want him to.
‘Always,’ Nick murmured, sinking into sleep. And for now, Howie was willing to let himself believe that.
END