It’s Raining Men / (All Things Just Keep Getting Better)


by Ian McDuff


Completely out of the usual cycle. Absolutely NOT the Songbook universe, at ALL. A total one-off.

Starts out PG. However, by the end…. (As I said: this one is very much out of the ordinary for me. P-With-P.)


It didn’t happen often. In fact, in its full extent, it had never happened before. Not in the cold, dark German nights of scraping by and homesickness and underpayment and overwork. Not when the ten had met up for the first time after 9/11. Not when AJ had returned from rehab, or when his and Sarah’s wedding plans had fallen through. Not at the most intense of moments, before, had all ten of them been so in need or had they gone so far. There had been on those earlier occasions some approach to it, but never the full and complete incident.

Strange that it should happen now, and at last, years after the public jokes about it had died largely away, years after anyone seriously speculated on it. Strange that it should happen now, at a time less emotionally wrought than those others.

Yet perhaps it was not so strange, after all. For this was a time when, by chance, some were hurting, and others were willing to see, and undertake a resolution, and both classes included members of each group. And this was a time, also, when there was a new ease among them as well, an ease one with another and an easiness also with the previous occasions that had foreshadowed this but had never gone so far.

And they were old enough, now, all of them, even the youngest, and they were sufficiently matured and self-aware, even the eldest and the most unreflective, to recognize this for what it was. Something unique to them. Something that could not be made to fit in any of the categories others might try to assign it to. This was not about, and its earlier adumbrations had never been about, lust, or comfort even, nor love, nor want, nor need, nor orientation, nor yet trust, nor desire. This was a manifestation of deep and unnamable emotions that transcended such elements, and, transcending, transmuted them, into something peculiar to, particular to, and fundamentally unique to the ten of them and the bonds that were between them all. It was an expression of things too great, and too shadowy, to be classified, and that answered to no mortal calculus.


A time when some were hurting.

Some, and more than one, and those of more than the one group.

A time when, after the first shock and gratitude and euphoria of reunification, AJ was prey to loneliness, and regret, and renewed self-doubt, made more imminent and more acute by the very joy of being back with his brethren and poised to re-enter the studio.

A time when Chris was feeling older, and odder, and more left out than usual, to the point that he was cracking under it, the frenetic comedy verging on the eccentric and perhaps the mad, febrile. A time when Joey, arriving unannounced, found his friend wandering half-drunk through his house, mother-naked, singing an obscene parody of ‘Do You Know the Muffin-Man,’ and deriding himself in mirrors for being old and fat and ugly and unloved, and unworthy of love.

A time when the renewed strain of his public face and the price he paid for fame was galling Nick, forced into being seen with Paris Hilton as a beard, when it had been but yesterday, it seemed, that he was his own man, soloing, and feeling free enough, incautious enough, to sing in concert an acoustic version of ‘Quit Playing Games’ to a balcony crowd most notable for the presence of Howie in it. A time when, moreover, the sordid unraveling of Jane’s and Bob’s marriage was a lesser scandal than Aaron’s having to sue Jane, Aaron’s having to bail Jane out of jail, and the unnerving publication, quickly quashed, of a privately terrifying rumor that left Nick sick at heart and panicked: the ‘million dollars’s worth of gifts’ Aaron had allegedly received from a much older male star.

A time when JC had reached the uttermost, frayed, raveled end of his rope with Jive and his solo drop date.

A time when the wretched, half-manufactured Cameron Fling and Britney’s sad public missteps had run together and boiled over into a devil’s brew in Justin’s mind, leaving him spiritually ill, wounded, and haunted by ghosts of old guilt and failure.


Inevitably, these things had been reported to Lance. Inevitably, these crises had had Howie’s full attention. There had been a time, now long past, when Lance had been, as well as seemed, the shy, sweet boy from the small-town and suburban South; there would never not be a time when Howie was not in truth the peacemaker, the sweet one. But then and now and until the end of worlds, Lance and Howie would always be, in any guise, in any personæ, the true directors and managers of their groups. Hollywood and Sweetness, each was, when it came to bedrock, the man in charge.

They were having their regular lunch together, as they did weekly whenever their schedules overlapped and they were within three hours of one another.

And as they always did, they had shared unreservedly their concerns and burdens with one another, each regarding the other as unique in being able to understand the responsibilities they respectively bore.

‘I was thinking,’ Howie said. Hesitantly. Lance looked up, sharply: whatever idiocies the world might believe, he knew as well as anyone and better than most that Howie was never hesitant.

‘Howie?’

‘There’ve been times before. When one of us was hurting, and needed … proof, tactile, tangible proof….’

‘Sure. It’s not a new idea. Not far-fetched. Okay, other folks’d never understand, but, for us, it works. So….’

‘But. We’ve never quite. All ten of us.’

Lance shut his mouth with a snap. He hadn’t meant for it to gape open in the first place: he had a reputation, as blasé and incapable of being startled, to maintain.

‘Um. Well. No. We. Ain’t gone there, so far.’

‘Up to now.’

‘Up to now. Right.’

‘On the other hand.’

‘On t’other hand, there’s never been five of us on the ropes and bleeding at the same time. Well, not when there was t’other five in a position to help.’

They looked at each other for a long moment, wide-eyed and speculative.


Contrary to popular belief, Lance was aware of his limitations. One of those limitations, as he well knew, was that when he tried for nonchalant, he came off as clinical. Wisely, he let Howie deal with getting the other eight to their departure point. His job was to make sure they had a destination.

Contrary to popular belief, Howie was aware of his strengths as well as of his limitations. He was far too wise, and, frankly, too wily, to approach Kevin, Bri, and Joey directly. He was also well aware that Kris, Leigh, and Kelly understood, if they did not altogether like, the dynamic at issue; and well aware, too, that he, if no one else, could secure their assent, and thus the presence of the three guys.


Surmounting insurmountable problems of logistics was the sort of thing Lance reveled in. Finding fifteen minutes in which the ten of them could vanish from public view without the public’s noticing was child’s play. Managing to get them away for some seventy-two hours was a mere warm-up, the sort of challenge Lance ate for breakfast.

He didn’t even pretend it matched the achievement Howie had pulled off in getting Brian and Joey and Kev to join in. Even with the Wives’s Club taking a hand.

The VIP Lounge at LAS, Las Vegas McCarran, at oh-dark-thirty on a weekday, was otherwise deserted. It was only at about five minutes before they were to board their charter flight that Joey skulked in, followed by Kevin, walking gingerly and shying at shadows, and, at the last, by Brian, who sidled in with his shoulders hunched and his head ducked like a fugitive from Divine justice.

No one commented. No one had discussed what was in prospect, except in generalities; neither Lance nor Howie had ever intended to force anyone into anything more than a time of healing and bonding, and if things were to happen beyond that, so be it. But the very bond that existed amongst the ten of them, the bond that meant that something might happen, bordered on the telepathic at the best of times, and clearly, too, Howie’s frankness with Leigh and Kel and Kris had been reflected in whatever it was they had said to their menfolk.

Lance merely cleared his throat, shook JC gently awake, and made sure everyone had packed properly.


The fresh, crisp, cold early morning of the high country, keen and pure, met them as they stepped off the Gulfstream V onto the secluded airstrip’s tarmac. SUVs awaited them; Howie and Lance had the keys. They would be sans servants, sans prying eyes, sans outside contact, even sans guards for this gathering.

Howie and Lance chose navigators, handed them the maps, and headed them into the vastness of the Big Bend country of West Texas.


The lodge was sprawling, thickly built of native stone, with cathedral ceilings for the half of the ground floor that did not have a second storey above it. A showpiece of high-priced rustic comfort. Navajo rugs were thick on the flagged and on the parqueted mesquite floors alike, and a Mexican black bear rug dominated the great hall’s room. Stuffed buffalo heads and pronghorn heads, heads of Longhorns and of desert bighorn sheep, looked down on them. There were Remingtons and Russells on the walls, and fireplaces large enough to roast a bison in; fantastically contorted pillars of wood with a deep, purpled heart – mesquite, again – colonnaded the boundary between the refectory dining room and the vast, fireplace-dowered great hall. The kitchen was stocked with Tex-Mex and barbecued brisket and links, chili and tamales and chicken-fried steak with cream gravy, and game dishes, venison, quail, and anything else the ten could want. Outside the plate-glass picture windows, there was nothing for miles in any direction but the one ribbon of road that led, beyond the horizon, to the gate that stood between them and the world; and all around, humbling the works of man, were the ghostly mountains, pointed with the lightest dusting of snow, surrounding and immuring their basin that was filled with the wildness of the Chihuahuan desert.

‘This is. Wow,’ AJ ventured, quietly.

Lance touched him on the wrist, lightly. ‘You needed it, babe. You and C and J and Chris and Nicky. To heal.’

‘And you?’ Chris’s eyes were unreadable.

‘We,’ Howie said firmly, ‘needed to be with you guys for the healing. Because we love you.’


The first day and night were spent reestablishing the rhythm of the ten as a group, the dynamic of their unique unity. Howie and Lance were unobtrusive, omnipresent, and tireless, calming and staying Brian and Kevin and Joey, drawing Justin into talking about the things that ate at his vitals, throwing Nick and Chris together for a long, private talk that seemed to ease them both, luring JC and AJ into looking at maps of the hiking trails that radiated from the lodge. Lance had thought of everything in choosing their destination, and he took Kevin by the elbow after lunch and walked him outside, with a smug grin, to show him that there was a stable out back, hidden until then by the lodge, and the two had wasted no time in saddling two of the mounts and riding out for an hour. They had things to talk about, after all, beginning with the disastrous mix-up at Sundance that had embarrassed them both.

When they had returned, cheeks chapped by the wind but smiles easy on their faces, and had taken care of their horses and tack, they walked in to the lodge to find most of the others drowsing before the fire. It was peaceful, serene, quiet and comfortable as an old quilt: there was not a phone, an XBox, a laptop, or a television in sight. JC was slumped over Justin, fast asleep, a book dangling loosely from his hand. AJ was sprawled over Nicky and Joey, his face smoothed of its lines of worry and self-doubt. Brian and Chris had curled up under a shared blanket. Only Howie was awake, eyes sparkling, working quietly in the kitchen. Lance and Kevin cleaned up and lent a hand, the three not needing to talk, simply soaking one another’s presence in, until it was time to get the others up to wash up and help set the table. With the high, vaulted ceiling in the main hall, the acoustics were irresistible. Howie counted them down, quietly, and two basses and a counter-tenor woke the Seven Sleepers bolt upright:

Food, glorious food!
’Ot sausage and mustard….

‘Assholes,’ Chris laughed, after he was through with his patented Fred-Sanford-Heart-Attack shtick. ‘Damn it, Oliver! is my musical. Stick to Chicago, Richardson.’


After dinner, they gathered around the fire again and watched the play of light as the sun set, night pooling in their valley, fathoms deep, like water, and rising slowly up the mountain slopes that flamed metallic in the last rays of day. And then the final fire sank upon the highest peaks, and night sprang up into the sky, fountaining, and upon its unfathomable surface the wake of stars innumerable, far from the light-pollution of cities.

Justin stroked the back of Lance’s hand. ‘Your stars, man.’

Lance smiled. ‘Everyone’s. That’s why the McDonald Observatory is out here.’

‘It’s incredible,’ Brian said. ‘It truly is.’ And the first coyote of the nightly serenade seemed to agree, lifting up his voice at that instant to the stars and the full moon, and Venus blazing on the southwest rim of worlds.

‘Perihelion was last week,’ Lance shrugged.

‘Beautiful. Just. Beautiful out here. It really is, man.’ Nick was earnest.

‘That’s why we’re here,’ Howie said. ‘We all needed to remember what beauty was, and recognize it. Even in ourselves.’

Chris shot him a glance, then leveled his gaze on Joey. ‘Sold me out, didn’t you, Joe.’

Lance stepped into the line of fire. ‘This isn’t just about you, Chris. It’s about all of us. But, yes. You are one of the ones who happened, this time, to be in need of reminding. We wanted to spend time here, amidst beauty, with some people we think are beautiful. People we’ve given our lives to – because they deserve that we give ’em that. You forget, at times we all forget, just how special you are and we all are.’

‘You, and Alex, and Nicky, and Justin, and JC,’ Howie said, firmly.

Lance was slightly exasperated. ‘I mean, damn it, Chris, if you ain’t figured it out, I’d let you fuck me in the window of Macy’s at high noon if that was what you needed. Because you and everyone in this room means that much to me, and you and every damn one of you deserves to mean that much. And, yes, because you are beautiful. Each of y’all.’

‘We didn’t drag you out here to get our rocks off,’ Howie said, ‘or for some group pity-fuck. You know us better than that if you know us at all. As far as I am concerned, we can spend these last two days hiking if that is what does the trick.’

‘“Trick” being the operative word,’ JC said, but he was giggling as he said it.

Kevin cleared his throat. ‘Look. It’s. There’s the possibility here, that’s all. We’ve flirted with it in the past, but it’s never been … unanimous. But even Brian, even Joey, even I … with the girls’s knowledge and permission…. If it happens. If it does, it’s. Well, Howie, you say it better.’

‘If it happens,’ Howie said gently, ‘it happens because there is something between us that no one else has, has ever had, can ever understand. It’s not about sex, or who’s gay and who isn’t, or anything, really, except that we have a special bond, and sometimes, when some of us are hurt, it takes something tangible, something tactile. That’s all.’

‘I get that,’ Chris said. ‘No, really, I do. But. Look, man, I own mirrors, okay? You guys … me … we’re like different fucking species.

Bullshit!’ Justin and AJ reacted in unison. Lance and Howie exchanged a swift glance: they had counted on J’s and AJ’s insatiable need to comfort others. It had gotten both AJ and Justin out of their own funks many a time.

‘Do you really think we’re that shallow?’ JC didn’t sound affronted, just troubled. ‘It’s you that we know and see, not some image. Well, that and the Fine Kirkpatrick Ass, because, yeah. You are, in fact, hot, dude.’

‘Unfortunately,’ Chris said, tartly, ‘the FKA these days comes with the FKK and the FKG, the Fucked Kirkpatrick Knees and the Fat Kirkpatrick Gut.’

‘And you think that matters?’ Justin was affronted. ‘You could be fat and fifty and you’d still be the shit, okay? You’d sizzle because you’re you. Fuck. You’re Chris. I mean, the dude I still wanna be when I grow up.’

‘I thought that was C.’

Justin shook his head. ‘Unh-unh. All y’all raised me, okay, but C…. C’s been more of a dad to me than Randy and Paul put together. C’s the one I want to be proud of who I become.’

‘I am,’ JC interjected, quietly.

‘But you’re my, like, role model.’

Irresistibly, AJ started singing, Joey and Brian joining in with a grin:

– Who’ll be my role model
Now that my role model’s gone,
Gone,
He slipped back down the alleyway
With some roly-poly little bat-faced girl….

‘No, I meant it,’ Justin said.

I know,’ Nick said. He turned to Chris and looked him squarely in the eye. ‘C’s been J’s Kevin. You have been his Howie and his Brian, both.’

‘Do you,’ Joey said, levelly, ‘do you really think for one minute I woulda put things on the line with Kel for anyone but you guys?’

Brian winced, but nodded, adding, ‘We knew – more’n that, the womenfolk knew – that whatever needed to happen out here was to happen, and, um, what-all it might include. Might. Not forced, and not joyless, and not some duty. But, if it happens, something that … evolves. Because of what there is between us all. You know I take this seriously. You know Leigh takes this dead seriously. But here I am. Now, just what in the Sam Hill does that tell you?’

‘Don’t look at me,’ Kevin grumbled. ‘Apparently Kel and Leigh had to be persuaded. Kris packed for me, shoved me out the door, and wants video.’

That cracked AJ up, as Kevin had known it would, and Chris crumbled as soon as AJ’s patented cackling began.

‘All right,’ Chris said, finally. ‘I forgive you. Even you, Fatone, for selling a brother out.’

‘Hey. That was Bri’s favorite nursery song you were sexing up. I ever catch my daughter singing your version, I know where to look, and I will have your balls for paperweights.’


The rest of the night passed comfortably, all of them at ease with each other in a new way.

Morning saw Lance outside on the tin-roofed verandah that ran along the side of the lodge where the refectory dining room was, looking at the cold, frost-sheathed dawning. JC was up unnaturally early, and found him there.

‘This is really a neat place, Lance.’

‘It is, isn’t it.’

‘Black bears and ringtails and javelinas and pronghorns. The mountains. The stars….’

‘I know.’

‘I wish we had more time here. I wish we could come back here, like, all the time, man.’

‘Would you? Because I totally would –’

‘Of course you would.’ JC grinned through his yawn. ‘Home on the range, dude. I mean, you’re still our little cowboy, Lance. This is perfect for you.’


It was the yelp – the squall, really – that caused the others to clatter down the stairs, wild-eyed and wild-haired, and crash through the door out onto the porch.

It wasn’t a wild animal, though, that had made the noise. It was a now-incoherent JC.

‘What the fuck?’

‘He! He – he –’ JC could only point at Lance, who blushed but looked defiant.

‘He what, C? Goosed you?’

‘Look, JC.’ Lance was being reasonable. That was a bad sign. ‘Daddy always said, “the price can only go up, it’s the one thing they ain’t making any more of.”’

Joey, of course, was the first to tumble to it, knowing Lance as even the others didn’t, and having known JC the longest. ‘Oh, my God. Lance. You didn’t.’

‘He did!’ JC was quivering with outraged thrift.

‘Well, shit, JC, it ain’t no skin off your back –’

Howie knew them pretty well himself, and started giggling helplessly. ‘Lance, t-tell me you didn’t –

‘Didn’t what,’ AJ whined, confused and not liking it.

Kevin, though, looked at the land and the horizon, swept the lodge and the stables with a glance, and nodded. ‘Can I buy in?’

‘Oh, that’s right, encourage him,’ JC pouted, his lip pushed out like a three-year-old’s. ‘Bastard.’

Chris groaned, understanding now, and Brian rolled his eyes. ‘AJ? Apparently, some several of us, with the exception of Scrooge McSpazz over there, are being offered a chance to buy in to Lance’s recent acquisition of a couple of sections of Brewster County, Texas.’

‘It’s a good investment,’ Lance muttered, defensively. ‘I can – we can, if y’all want shares – lease it, and the income stream from that would be, well, I could show y’all if we’d been allowed to bring laptops, I have a spreadsheet –’

Justin laughed, and gathered Lance and JC both into a hug. ‘Never change, okay? You two: never, ever change. C, chill, it’s not a bad idea. Bassman, I’m in, let my people know the price-tag, okay?’

Chris sighed, dramatically. ‘I thought this was supposed to be an exclusive opportunity.’

‘Naw, you’re in it,’ Justin shot back.

Chris ignored him. ‘Lance. Darling precious baby. If I ever ask you to lease me something, and you decide on the spur of the moment to buy it for me instead, I will shoot you like the dog you are. Now. What’s my share, dude?’

‘Depends on who’s in.’

‘Oh, fine,’ said JC. ‘Make it tenths. But see if I ever comp you a ticket to my show again.’


Over breakfast, everyone cheered up considerably, thinking about all the things they didn’t have time to do on this trip, but could now do in the future whenever they wished.

‘Besides,’ AJ said, poking JC in the short ribs. ‘Cowboy there couldn’t have been expected to resist this. It’s shitkicker heaven and a land deal, man. I know addictions when I see ’em.’

‘Okay, enough with the cowboy jokes. Nobody gets on Kevin for that.’

Kevin snorted. ‘You just don’t see them at their worst, Lance. I realize that’s hard to believe given how you have seen them, but….’

‘Hey!’

‘Face it, Hollywood,’ Chris grinned. ‘You’re still our little Space Cowboy.’

‘Okay,’ JC said, ‘let’s not go there –’

‘Egocentric much? I could perfectly well have had the Steve Miller Band in mind –’

‘More like an old standard,’ Joey smiled. ‘Given that Lance likes his comforts even when he’s being “an old cowhand / From the Rio Grande.”’ And he swung the lines,

I know every trail in the Lone Star State
’Cause I ride the range – in my Ford V-8:
Yippee-i-o-kye-yay.

‘I reckon y’all’d rather we had cowboy angst?’ Lance had done That Thing With His Brow, as Justin referred to it: the Spock Thing.

‘Worked for Robert Earl and Lyle,’ Brian quipped.

And me, I stand here
At the last fillin’ station,
While the wind moans a dirge to the coyote’s cry;
I’m back in my car
I’m out on the highway
Goin’ hard, goin’ fast, goin’ wide.

‘Yeah, well, we’ll be stopping and staying rather than “Rollin’ By,”’ said JC. ‘For this amount of change, dude, I intend to get full return on investment.’

‘You could put in a studio and a futon,’ Nick said. ‘That and a bathroom and we’d never see you again, man.’

‘Go easy on the man,’ Howie said. ‘It takes work being the Mozart of pop. Especially on the cheap.

JC took unerring aim and nailed him with a biscuit.


The thing was, once they stopped talking about it and obsessing about, it became steadily more likely that, before the retreat ended, they would indeed end up giving each other bodily comfort.

Perhaps it was because the tension had left them.

Perhaps it was because they were talking without reservation, without posturing, without censorship, in absolute trust.

Certainly it was because, when cut came to shoot, there was no one else they trusted as they trusted one another.

AJ made that point. ‘I’m afraid,’ he said, quietly. ‘I used so many people – I used you guys – for so long. I’m afraid that it’s the only way I can interact with people. I used Sarah. I don’t ever want to do that again. I don’t want to find substitute addictions, and fuckin’ sure not in using other people. And. Damaged goods, y’know? You guys are the only people I’ve made enough progress with that I feel maybe I’m not using you, and not selling more than I got anymore.’

‘Alex.’ Howie’s voice was gentle. ‘You can’t live like that, man. Don’t you know we’re here for you? Even for comfort? Even for love? I mean, you can always come to me, always.

‘And me,’ Nick added. ‘Us. Um. Right, Howie?’

‘Ooooh,’ Chris said, ‘Backstreet threesome. Interesting.’

‘I don’t. I don’t like asking.’

‘With us? Baby,’ Lance said, shaking his head. ‘You don’t have to ask.’

JC grinned and batted his eyelashes at AJ. ‘All you have to do is whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you? You just –’

‘I really don’t need the image of you as Bacall,’ Chris said, tossing a pillow at JC. Justin intercepted the pillow and did the sensible thing, wrapping Chris in his arms and pinioning him. Chris squirmed a little, protesting silently, but it was obvious to everyone that it was a pro forma protest and his heart wasn’t in it.

‘But. For so fuckin’ long, I. Okay. I know. Day at a time. But it’s fuckin’ hard, adjusting. You know how much of my life as a sexual being was, like, conducted in a state of severely fucked-up? I’m almost afraid to get naked sober: it’s disorienting, doing this straight. Well, not straight, in the “het-not-bi” sense, but –’

‘We know what you mean, hon.’

‘Alex?’

‘Yeah, D?’

‘Why now? I mean, is there something about us getting back together and getting ready to record again that set you off?’

‘I. Shit.’ AJ thought for a moment. ‘It’s. Lemme see if I can express this without fuckin’ it up beyond recognition. What we do … Kev, this is prob’ly gonna piss you off, here, but.’

‘Go on, Aidge. It’s okay.’

‘No matter what we like to think, we’re a fuckin’ boyband. Okay? Because no matter what we do, that’s what the public says we are. So. Like. One of the things we’re selling. It ain’t about the “male vocal harmony,” Kev, and we might as well fuckin’ face it; a big-ass chuckin’ funk of what we’re selling is our asses. Dream boys. Public sex toys for mass fuckin’ fantasies. And here we are with two of the heart-throbs married, Howie still not gettin’ his props with the public, and me tryin’ to fuckin’ figure out how to be the reformed Bad Boy. Which just puts extra pressure on Sweet and Junior to shove ’em so far back in the fuckin’ closet they’re behind the leisure suits.

‘We’re about to start sellin’ sex again, and I still ain’t figured out how to fuckin’ be sexy while sober.’

Justin shook his head. ‘Dawg, sober or not, you don’t have to figure out how to be sexy, you’re sexy whenever you fucking breathe.’

‘But I don’t feel sexy.’

‘But, AJ, you still are. And besides, we’re hoping to change the way the public –’

‘Brian.’ Chris’s voice was gentle. ‘I understand where AJ is on this. It’s not how they see you. It’s whether you can bear to shave, because you can hardly stand to look in a mirror. It’s … it’s about hating what you see in the mirror –’

‘At least you see something,’ Justin added. ‘Nick and me, we’ve been – I mean, damn, I don’t know how Nick’s done it, but. When I look at the motherfucking shit-pile my relationships have been. What scares me is, look, I knew Brit since – forever. And it still don’t know who she was dating. Me? Or Justin Fuckin’ Timberlake, Pop Supahstah? Closest thing I have to a self-image is what y’all gave me. If there’s anyone under all this bling and bullshit, man, it’s the guy y’all raised. But so much of it … it’s like the self I have was created by others, fans, Momma, Lou, Johnny, Pharrell, Brit. I’ve tried more shit than a Christmas turkey, from nearly following AJ down that road, to all the self-help shit y’all rag my ass about, and. Fuck. I still can’t tell you who I am. And it scares the piss out of me.’

‘You’re looking in the wrong mirrors, J.’ Lance hunkered down in front of the couch and took Justin’s face in his hands, gently. ‘Which means we failed you, all these years. Because you should be able to see the man you are when you look in my face, look in C’s eyes, look at Joe’s smile, look at how Chris looks at you. That’s the mirror you need to look in, darlin’. And I think you know what you’ll see there.’ Lance leaned in and kissed Justin’s brow, softly.

‘What I see in Howie’s eyes,’ Nick said. ‘Which is why it fucking kills me that I have to do the beard thing again. Because I trust Howie, I do, but it’s unfairly to make him wait like this, and I sometimes kinda feel he’d be better off if he moved on.’

‘Nicky –’

‘I know. I know. And I thank God every day that you would never think it. But it feels like I betray you every day by silence and pretense. And for what? For the fucking fans and the fucking label?’

JC grunted. ‘And that’s the kicker, Brian. There’s a part of me that would die if I weren’t able to get out there on stage and sing my heart out, man. And I know, when I’m, like, honest about it, that getting chances like we’ve had are freakin’ miracles. I mean, offstage, I’m just a skinny kid with a huge honking nose and a brain that works weird. If all this hadn’t happened, you could pass me on the street, dude, never a second glance.’

Justin bridled at that, and made an inarticulate noise of protest.

‘J, c’mon, you know it’s true. But the biggest and best thing of all is you guys. And maybe only Chris and Aidge and maybe Nick get this, all the way, but, belonging matters, and I never felt like I did, really, completely, until this. Adoptee issue. But. The price, man. The price. One of the things I admire about you, Brian, you never sold your soul. I did, though. And I got a lot out of it. But when things go the way they’re going right now? It was a bargain that had a price, man. I couldn’t live without it. But sometimes I think the price will kill me, too.’

Joey had cocked his head to one side. ‘C? How long have I known you?’

‘Joe –’

‘No, man. Really. No skinny, big-nosed, awkward kid in this room. You are … damn, C, think about it. You got three straight guys, three bi guys, and two of the sexiest gay guys on the planet sitting here with you, and every one of us can tell you, you are sex on wheels, man, and more than that, the best person we know. Cheap, but cool.’

‘Joey. Dude. I trust you. I believe you. I always have. But, like, it’s sometimes, it’s like I’m in the booth and your mike is off and all that gets through to me is silence.’

‘Which is why sometimes a practical demonstration can’t hurt,’ Howie said.

‘You were wondering why Howie and I called this meeting, right?’ Lance’s eyes were dancing.

JC hung his head and reached over to squeeze Lance’s hand. ‘I know. And don’t think it doesn’t mean everything to me.’

‘Well, good,’ said Justin, a little huffily. ‘ ’Cause that’s what you mean to us.’

Brian, watching, thought about how long and intimately Justin’s life had been bound up with JC’s; and thought, vaguely, of how their own lives, his and his bandmates’s, his and Nick’s especially, had been similarly intertwined. And, thinking this, felt for the first time the shift in the atmosphere. Justin leaned over to press a fleeting kiss to JC’s lips. Like a flash of lightning in the heart of a storm at night, the gesture seared and dazzled, revelatory as the lightning, showing forth blindingly what had been brewing and hidden for so long. And as lightning charges the air, so the atmosphere in the room became tangibly charged, a diffuse and encompassing love and want thrumming in the very stillness.

Brian had a quick, prickling sensation of surprise, and of surprise that he was surprised, that it was AJ who stood, and, typically, made the potential, actual. Overt. Obvious. ‘Those kickass blankets and quilts, and the extra pillows, are in the hallway closet, right?’

Lance nodded. Chris vocalized a wordless interrogatory, which AJ cut off mid-squeak. ‘I don’t,’ he said slowly, drawing it out, ‘know about anyone else … but I thought I’d spend the night here in front of the fireplace. It’s a big-ass floor, man, so company’s fuckin’ cool, too.’ He let the invitation hang.

Rising fluidly to his feet, Lance grinned. ‘We’ll be down in a bit. Me, I’m a-fixing to take a quick shower.’ He paused, coolly. ‘Nicky? J? Care to join me?’

‘Planning on some sudsy fun?’ Chris’s tone was dry.

Lance gave him a deliberately saccharine smile. ‘I just feel obligated, now that we’ve bought the place, to save on water bills: make C feel better about costs. You want to come help save the planet’s resources?’

Chris wasted no time joining Justin, Nick, and Lance on their way up the stairs.

‘I think we could all use showers, come to think of it,’ Brian muttered. ‘Cold ones.’ But his heart wasn’t in it.

Half an hour later – a half hour in which, apparently, there had been nothing more serious than scrubbing and light foreplay, on anyone’s account – they had in fact all showered, and brushed their teeth, and drifted back into the great hall. The sweet tension was palpable now, in no way diminished by their having been apart for their ablutions. Even Brian had failed in his attempt to pretend to himself that they were merely preparing for some warped boyband slumber party.

He felt, as he had so often felt in times of worry and self-doubt, a warm, strong, cousinly hand on his shoulder.

‘I have a feeling,’ Brian murmured, ‘that I’m about to cross a Rubicon.’

‘And possibly save a brother’s sanity and soul,’ Howie said, just as quietly.

‘It’s not the end of the world, or any betrayal,’ Kevin added. ‘Just accept.’

‘You can?’

‘Cuz…. You were a good boy, singing in the choir, playing ball, and doing your homework, when you got my phone call to come to Orlando. By then, I’d been an actor, a dancer, and a model, before joining a … an all-male vocal harmony group. This ain’t exactly going to be my first time touching another boy’s cock.’

‘I kinda knew that.’

‘Figured you might’ve guessed.’

Nicky had come over to stand by them, as Brian wavered on the boundary between the dining hall and the great hall. ‘Frick. This. This is the first time, it may be the only time I ever get to. I mean, maybe you’ve guessed this, too, like you guessed about Kev. Maybe not. But. This one time, I’m gonna show you in a different way, but it’s the same. The same love, I mean? Unless you really don’t want me to, this is my one chance to show you, this way, the way I feel and have always felt and will always feel for you, I’ll never get to show you like this again but – this is how I’ve always loved you and will always love you.’

Brian’s memory flashed back to that brief touch of Justin’s lips against JC’s, freighted with the weight of years, and understood. He mewled, a small, broken sound, and buried his face against Nick’s chest. The next thing he felt was Nick’s hand beneath his chin, and Nick’s lips on his, hesitant at first but swiftly insistent, sweet and passionate at once, his tongue demanding entrance, imperatively. When they came up for air, he had to fight to focus his gaze, and when he did, he saw his friends, all his friends, look at him with compassionate love.

‘Relax,’ Kevin soothed him. ‘You’re still a little stiff here.’

AJ, blessedly, typically, cackled: ‘I should hope to hell –’ and that gave Brian, with the release of his own laughter, his bearings, his assurance that nothing that happened this night would change or mar their everyday love for one another, all of them.

His gaze sharpened, and he saw them with new eyes as the fire’s play glinted on them, casting off sparks of glory. Seal-sleek Howie of the perfect body and the more perfect heart, all-loving, sun-bronzen, and satiny as San Juan nights: Howie, with his gentleness and care and saintly patience. Lean, striated, perfectly defined, the one ethereal yet fundamentally male, the other with the little boy peeping out from behind the cockiness, JC and Justin mirroring each other, with Lance between them, cobby and compact, carven of marble with wise, jade eyes, formidable yet beneath it all endlessly loving and loyal. AJ, the survivor, forged in fire, with the eyes of a stricken doe set in his mask of masculine cool, his body in both senses a work of art, his lankiness and gawkiness long since transmuted into something pantherine. Chris, fierce, valiant Chris, himself still charmingly insecure here, even as Brian was, yet with a core of steel; Chris, unconsciously sexual despite his own self-denigration, comfortably cuddly yet wild at heart, whom one ached to enfold and reassure. And beside him, Joe, rampantly masculine, strong-featured and strong of character, and built of heart of oak, with limbs like tree-trunks: manly, brotherly, and paternal, and devastatingly sexy with the experience of years. Kevin, even, he saw with new eyes, the classically handsome, the perfectly sculpted, but more than that the ever-caring, the great defender of all he cared for, uncompromising; and Nick, once their baby brother, now grown to broad, golden manhood, beautiful now in character and heart as in form. Nick, who loved them all, who loved Howie devotedly, but who also loved him specially.

Nick looked at him, his face open, honest, and needy. ‘Please, Brian. Love me.’

‘I do,’ Brian said. ‘God help me, I do.’ And they sank to the blanketed, quilted expanse of floor, Nick cradling him, Nick’s tongue wet and insistent in his ear.

Brian’s memories, ever after, were largely disjointed, moments of unforgettable focus amidst a haze of want and longing and indiscriminate love.

AJ raising his face, his eyes as glazed as his mouth and lips, from Justin’s eager ass, as Justin, incoherent, drummed his heels on the floor and writhed.

Howie and Lance riding Joey and Kevin, kissing with urgent passion, their moans silenced by JC’s striding over and standing between them, their mouths closing over his cock, battling for possession of the prize.

Nick’s swollen lips closing voraciously over Chris’s prick, his huge hands clasping Chris’s trembling thighs, refusing to allow Chris to retreat and hide in a corner, even as Brian himself, the sweat pouring from his brow to splash on Nick’s broad back, fucked Nick, Joe kneeling beside them, one hand on Nick’s massive cock and the other vast paw driving Brian forward, seated firmly on the swell of Brian’s ass; Joey’s beard tingling nerve endings Brian hadn’t known he had as Joey kissed him with dizzying thoroughness.

The surreal feel of his, Brian’s, prick riding against Lance’s huge tool in the vise-like grip of Justin’s ass as they double-fucked him, Brian in Lance’s lap and encircled by Lance’s arms in a strangely comforting sensation, as Justin convulsed in the throes of a no-hands prostate orgasm.

The tender, achingly slow and gentle ass-play Howie and Lance subjected Brian to, loosening him, preparing him, for what felt, when they were done, like several yards of Kevin’s prick, the first and only, the only possible choice to do the honors. The insane sensations in his virgin prostate, the sudden click of teary agony’s turning to ecstatic pleasure and his own cock, hiding in pain until then, suddenly engorged, harder than ever before. The near-blackout of losing it in white-hot jets with that unbelievable pole still up his ass, pressing and sliding against his spasming prostate, in the orgasm that straight men never know.

The way Chris threw his head back, neck exposed, surrendering, all defenses down, when JC blew him and Howie alternately and together, managing impossibly to get both cocks in his mouth, that pillow-lipped mouth, beyond the glistening cockheads.

The taut, empurpled head of Nick’s ‘Thor’ in the second before, in extreme close-up, it erupted after Brian’s first, tentative attempts at giving head, which, whatever it lacked in technique, clearly meant everything to Nick after years of love from afar; and the strangled cry that Nick voiced as he came, with Howie nuzzling his neck and Justin’s strong, nimble fingers strumming across Nick’s balls and spasming asshole.

Justin on his back, all weight on his shoulders, his feet on the floor around his ears, as limber as JC after all, as Chris stood over him, drilling straight down, almost doing squat-thrusts into him, fucking him into oblivion as Kevin, muscles straining in the necessary crouch, sixty-nined with Justin.

And Brian would never forget a single detail of their ultimate connection, as the first false dawn preceded dawn outside. Justin, still insatiable, supine on a built-up pile of cushions and pillows. Kneeling on the floor was Kevin, biceps bulging but tireless, holding Nick by the calves and levering him into and out of Justin as Nick fucked deep. Brian himself was kneeling over Justin’s heaving chest, Nicky deep-throating him mind-blowingly. Behind him, Chris was moaning as Justin blew him, and as Joe pounded Chris’s ass relentlessly; and down on the floor, AJ was sprawled beneath Kevin, silenced at last by dint of Kevin’s tool down his throat, while Howie rode AJ’s cock. Straddling AJ and Howie, JC was fucking Lance with grace and power, in a choreography that could not be newly learnt by the two of them but must have existed for years, even as Howie was clearly sucking Lance’s remaining brains and will power out through his cock.

Brian cried out harshly, and came, triggering a chain reaction that rolled through others over the space of a good five minutes.


Morning came lazily, slowly, and – miraculously – without any but bodily discomfort. They were sated; they were sore. But they awoke in a sprawling pile and tangle of limbs, a tangle affectionate and relaxed, and even the three who knew, with a certain bittersweet tinge to the knowledge, that the night’s closeness could never be recaptured and that they, at least, would never again be part of that form of their mutual love, had no regrets. They accepted it, simply, as the grace that it had been, and spent their last day there, all of them, in indifferent pursuits, cleaning the place up and planning what hikes and trails, what mountaineering and riding, they would do in after times, as they and theirs came back in future to their new sanctuary.

And it had been a sanctuary. JC was ready to face the world and the label again. Justin’s doubts were in abeyance. Nicky could steel himself again to play his public role. AJ no longer questioned. And Chris was renewed, younger and fresher than he had been in longer than they’d any of them quite realized.

‘Lance?’

‘Yeah, C?’

‘Make sure my name’s on the deed, dude. This place is primo. At any price.’

Lance smiled, and ruffled JC’s hair.

As they left for the airstrip and their charter back to reality, a gentle rain, chill and austere, cleansing, renewing, began to fall upon the desert.


END