Fall From Grace by Tee and Danielle

It was quiet again. Kevin and Nick had cried all the tears they had,
and now silence reigned. They were still wrapped in each others arms,
having not moved from the position they were in since first entering the
cave.

Nick was still rocking them gently, running his fingers through Kevin's
hair. Doing it for as much his own comfort as Kevin's. He felt so
helpless right now. There wasn't a thing he could say that was going to
make this better, and that's what killed him.

Nick rubbed his fingers over the back of Kevin's neck, feeling him sigh
and stretch his neck out. "This is my cave. Remember when we heard
about the press tour and I disappeared?"

Nick continued, "Well, this is where I came. This is my place to get
away from everything. I've been coming here as long as I can remember.
It's seen me through everything. When I had to decide between the Mickey
Mouse Club and the Backstreet Boys, when I was terrified of you to the
point of nearly peeing myself whenever you looked at me, when I started
falling in love with you but didn't know it. It's seen me through it
all. No one knows this place exists, I've never told anyone about it
until now."

Nick reached behind a rock and pulled out a lantern and some matches in
ziploc bag. He lit the lantern and the glow brightened the inside of the cave from the
twilight that was falling outside.

Nick gestured to the walls around them, "I come here and whatever is
bothering me, I write it on the walls of this cave. Then I look out
there at the ocean and usually if I stare out there long enough, I find
an answer. And if I don't, then the question probably wasn't that important anyway."

Nick hugged Kevin to him tighter, "Besides with you, this is my favorite
place in the world to be. It's so calm and peaceful. I feel like I'm
standing at the edge of the earth and nothing and no one exists but this
place. No managers, no cell phones, no people pulling at you in eight
different directions. Just calm and quiet."

Kevin couldn't even talk, he was so touched that Nick had brought him
here. He was sharing something that was so special to him, that not
even the bond of marriage could make him give up his secret place. He
raised his head off of Nick's chest and looked at the walls of the cave.
They were covered in writing. He wanted to get closer to see what some
of it said, but didn't want to intrude on Nick's space.

Once again, it was like Nick knew what Kevin was thinking. He handed him
the lantern, "Go ahead. I wouldn't have mentioned the writing if I
minded you looking at it. I already feel like I know you inside and
out, no secrets, from when you let me read your journal. This is my
journal."

Kevin took the lantern and crawled to the wall of the cave and started lighting up some of the writing there. In the light thrown there, he could see everything from child-like scrawling to the swooping letters that he knew as Nick's writing now.

Kevin saw the drawings on the wall also. Wedding rings, a dolphin swimming in the water. He kept going back in the cave, looking at all the writing on the wall. Smiling at some of he entries, biting his lip at others, feeling Nick's pain as he wrote them.

He moved the lantern and the light bounced off something that made him catch his breath in his throat. There on the stone of the wall of the cave was an incredibly detailed drawing of him.

It was almost like a picture of the side of him that hardly anyone saw. He looked at his mirror image in the wall of the cave and saw the loneliness in his eyes, the sadness. The look on his face was somewhere between the sadness in his eyes and one of love. Nick had drawn him with one hand tangled in his long bangs and sweeping them back out of his eyes, even getting as detailed as the time on his watch and ring on his thumb. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

Kevin reached out and touched it, feeling the cold stone touching his fingers and the roughness raising underneath his fingertips. It must have taken Nick a long time to draw this picture of him on the wall of the cave. To get such painstaking detail dispite the texture of the wall.....he looked over the whole of the portrait again and noticed the way his hair was longer and he looked younger than he did now. He saw looked to the bottom right hand corner and saw Nick's signature and the year. It read 1996.

Kevin is so hard on me. But when I do something right and he smiles at me or gives me a hug, I feel like I can fly.

She hurt him again. Why am I so weak that I can't make it stop?

I love him. How can that be wrong?

Kevin was choking back tears at how precious a glimpse inside of Nick he was getting. Despite the tears prickling at the back of his throat, he was smiling.

"I think I loved you all along, I just didn't know what it was, what love was, enough to recognize it."

Kevin turned around to look at Nick and almost cried out. The light from the lantern was dancing off of him and the purples, pinks and blues of the sunset outside the cave opening behind him. Kevin was wrong. This was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

Kevin wiped the moisture from Nick's bottom lip, trembling a little when Nick took his thumb and kissed the end of it as it went over his lip,"Remember what you did when you finished reading my journal?"

Nick smiled as he remembered running in like a bat out of hell, flushing the sleeping pills and then jumping on the bed and kissing the hell out of Kevin.

Kevin uncapped the marker and went to a space on the wall, "I was diagnosed with cancer today and I'm afraid. I've never been so afraid in my life. I watched my dad die of cancer and I know it's not romantic, it's not serene. It's brutal and hard and I don't want Nick to watch me go through that.

Kevin looked at his writing and then over his shoulder at Nick and took his hand, pulling him towards the front of the cave and they sat down, wrapped around each other again on the blanket and watched the last of the sunset.

Kevin smiled. There was just something about his wonderful husband that made him forget about everything but him. "You were right about a couple of things. Like it feeling like your standing on the edge of the earth here. Like nothing exists but this. And, writing all my feelings down on the wall does make you feel better. It give you a little perspective on it. I like this feeling, I like being here."

Nick cuddled up closer to Kevin, "I'm glad I could share it with you. You just let me know when things get too overwhelming and we'll come here. We'll make this our place to get away from everything. All the stuff that's bugging us, it stays on the walls where it belongs. Deal?"

Nick planted a line of kisses along Kevin's neck, "I don't know what's going to happen in the next little while, but I can promise you this, Bumpkin. No matter what, it's going to be you and me facing this together. And you are going to beat this thing, 'cause no way in hell am I letting go of you now or ever. Got that?"