Crises of Faith: Fox On the Run

by Ian McDuff

Another Brian POV fic, and yes, this one just might end up being ‘the’ answer to the BrianMonth Challenge. It’s duly dedicated to Shirasade, Vero, Alexandria Brown, and the dashing, slashing Velma. Darter, Basez, and such.

Brian had been in a good mood. That meant, in what AJ (back in his more coherent days) had called his ‘weird-ass Appalachian way,’ that he’d been singing sad songs, songs of untimely death, and lost love, and sinners barely snatched from the flames like brands from the burning, and ruined lives … all the honky-tonk staples, as themes, but far older than the institution of the honky-tonk: songs that harked back to green-blue mist-cloaked mountains, songs that harked back across the sea to castles and lords and medieval poisons. In short, bluegrass and mountain music. Mournful Anglo-Celtic laments for Lord Randal, for condemned men, for men blasted and slain by their fatal love for cold-callous women such as Barbara Allen, for landscapes scarred and ruined (‘Mister Peabody’s coal-trains done hauled it away’), for souls lost to whisky and damnation.

After all, the prospect of their tossing out the first pitch at a little-league game was precisely the sort of thing that made Brian uncomplicatedly happy. It was wholesome. It was fun. It involved kids and picket-fence Americana and Our National Pastime and people who liked the Boys, if they liked them at all, without the complications of obsessive lust (except, perhaps, a few of the kids’s mothers, but that was a very minor cloud on a pretty clear and calm horizon). It was a Norman Rockwell, red-state, Reader’s Digest event, even here in damnyankee country; it was light-years removed from the sort of things they were usually pushed into (by management) or dragged into (by Kevin and, before nothing mattered to him but booze and blow, by AJ) as Events and Photo Ops. It was balm, in short, to Brian’s sincerely suburban-Southern-conservative soul. And whenever Brian was thus happy, he sang: Molly and Tenbrooks, The Old Rugged Cross, Fox On the Run, Amazing Grace, Blue Moon of Kentucky….

Besides. Nick and Howie were getting somewhere, if slowly, in repairing their relationship, and this could only help: both of them loved kids, especially Nicky, who really still was one at heart. Brian was fiercely devoted to seeing that relationship pan out for his friends-and-brothers. And the one problem that showed no signs of solution any time soon, namely AJ, well … Brian honestly believed that a few hours with those innocent little leaguers could only help Alex, just as it would help Nick – and insofar as it helped Nick and kept him from trying to lose himself in partying with AJ, whenever he and D had a rough patch, that too was all to the good, for Nick and AJ both.

So Brian had been happy that morning. Right up to the point at which he’d heard the splintering of wood and a great deal of bass-and-baritone bellowing.

People had this odd notion – one fed them by the press and the fandom – that Howie was fragile, fluttery, frail. People, Brian had long since concluded, were dumber’n dawg-shit. The only area in which Howie was particularly vulnerable was in his relationship with Nick. Oh, certainly their Sweet D had his share of issues: Brian had yet to meet a gay man who didn’t have a few insecurities about that whole facet of himself, and he no more expected ever to meet one without those issues than he expected to meet a unicorn, which, he figured, was about as likely. And they were all aware of the extra burden and sacrifice that their very success accordingly placed upon and demanded of Howie – and now, to both a greater and lesser extent, of Nick. But such things as the slings and arrows of outrageous criticism, or his being the least noticed group member, or subtle and not so subtle racism and anti-Catholic bigotry, never affected that inner core of Howie’s that was as steely as it was stable. No, the only way you could hurt D was to hit him where he lived: which is why Nick’s recent, if now repented, chickenshit period had been so hard on him. Nick was one of the only fifteen or so people in the world who mattered enough to Howie that he could be hurt by them.

So, too, of course, to a lesser degree were Brian, Kev, and AJ. But it was no surprise to Brian, whatever false image of Howie the fans might have, that Howie’s reaction to the crisis was crisp, incisive, and uncompromising. It was just as well, really: had it fallen to Brian to pass judgment, he’d have invoked a plague on everybody’s houses and scorched everyone in a ten-mile radius with the heat of his fury.

Howie, though, had not reacted, he had responded, with his characteristic maturity. ‘Everyone shut up,’ he’d said, coolly. And they had: when push came to shove, they all really knew who was first among equals, the man who had started this whole wild career, Mowgli-the-Master-of-the-Jungle. ‘Paz. Silencio. Now. Here is what we are going to do. We are going to pay for these doors. We are going to pay extra so no maricon on the hotel staff sells this to the Enquirer and retires on the proceeds. We are going to paste on happy shiny faces and go to the ballpark, and we are going to mean it for as long as it takes, because these niños are not going to be disappointed or made uncomfortable by any of you and your ching-ing problems. And when we get back here, we are going to deal with this, comprende? Good. Now get ready.’

But of course they had not dealt with it. Not meaningfully. How, Brian wondered, how in the hell could they? AJ had been out the night before, not even getting drunk or high, by God’s grace, but out partying nonetheless, dancing and quite likely hooking up despite his professed commitment to Sarah – and God Almighty but that girl deserved better’n Alex’s chickenshit cheatin’ – and putting himself in the way of God knew what temptations, even if he’d dodged the bullet on a given night. And he’d up and decided all on his own to blow off an Official Backstreet Appearance without even the excuse of having been messed up the night prior. No wonder Kev had kicked a couple doors to hell and gone.

On the other hand, if even having a psychiatrist along wasn’t enough to help AJ heal his-own-self, what the Sam Hill did Cuz think he was accomplishing, destroying other folks’s property (which was bad, but could be dealt with) and calling AJ a worthless piece of shit and saying he, Kevin, and all of them hated AJ now (which was not only bad, it was damn nigh unforgivable)? Jesus Christ and General Jackson but that was the last thing Alex needed to hear, and Brian was damned if Kevin had any right to speak for him, much less if he was going to be talking through his ass and making AJ worse.

Brian wasn’t happy about this. Not some a-tall, nosirree.

LA and Howie had both warned him, over the years, that sometimes problems had to get critical before they could be solved, or even addressed. His darling LA had told him more than once that just because he was short and rode a horse fairly well, it didn’t mean he was Napoleon, and even Napoleon hadn’t quite managed to remake the world to his liking; and Howie had once likened certain problems ‘to zits, hermano. You can’t pop ’em until they’re ripe and emerged, even if they’re sore under the surface for days before they come to a head.’ That analogy, as Brian had explained at considerable length, was sufficiently disgusting that he would probably never forget it no matter how hard he tried, which he was going to, thanks a lot, D. And Howie, the little bastard, had just done that thing where he smiled like a jade Buddha: smug, Brian thought it, and incredibly annoying. But the image, unfortunately, had stuck: as had the recognition that sometimes you just couldn’t help fiddling with a sore spot even before it erupted to where you could deal with it.

It was just as well, in a bringing-forth-good-from-evil sort of way, that the AJ situation came to a head so quickly after the little-league dustup. Nick, as the world would find out some months later, was a combative and unruly drunk, belligerent at the worst possible times. And with AJ reacting badly to Kevin’s still-rankling tantrum, it was a disaster waiting to happen when they both ended up at the same bar, and sure enough, disaster ensued.

No one – least of all the participants, or the security, caught for once off guard – would ever quite know how it happened. Nor, in the end, did it matter. What mattered was that the next morning, as the rest of them sat around a largely untouched breakfast spread, with Nick tossing back and forth, in the hand that did not have a brand-new cast on it, the prescription bottle that contained his pain pills from the midnight ER run, and driving Kevin still further mad, AJ had come in, tossed his shades forcibly against the wall, and begged them, simply, ‘Help.’

The disaster had been, then, a eucatastrophe, and all to the good.

Brian had been relieved by Kevin’s immediate reaction, which was to grab Alex in a hug that tried to pack months or years of backlogged affection into a moment. Brian had been buoyed up by Nick’s transformation, his sullenness rolled away like morning fog as he threw himself into an embrace of AJ and then a revealingly needy clinch with his Howie. Brian had been reassured by the unquestioning way in which AJ, Nicky, and Kev had gravitated towards one another and stuck close by each other as all the arrangements for rehab were made. And Brian had been soothed by Howie’s steady, sure wisdom, his faith in the ultimate justice of the universe, as they had sat companionably at the deserted table, finishing their breakfasts, allowing the other three to re-bond.

But it was later that day that Brian knew that his gut, at least, was ahead of his brain in being certain that this turning point was a turn for the better. He figured that out when, on their way back from the airport, after seeing AJ onto his charter to Arizona, Howie caught him singing softly: ‘… took all the love that a poor boy could give her / And left me to die like a fox on the run.’ Howie had smiled at him, and dropped him one of the infamous Dorough Winks, his lips silently forming an affectionate, ‘Kentuckians. Dios.’

What struck Brian the most, in the succeeding weeks, was just how reliable a touchstone crises could be. When a member of one’s family – and yes, for a while there they had acted more like a limited partnership than like the brothers they insisted they were, but as soon as gee had come to haw, it had been so clear as to surprise even them that they were truly and indissolubly a family – when a member of the family was taken away like this, even for a little while, it was unexpectedly rough on the remaining members. And acts of true kindness, meaningful acts, not just the public mouthing of polite pieties, stood out starkly in this new light: as did the insults and the snickers and the general mean-spiritedness of some others, who little realized the extent to which they were indelibly inscribing their names on Brian’s shit list, never to be forgotten, unlikely ever to be forgiven, and certain to be made to pay for it.

When the public feud between them and ’N Sync – a manufactured feud that Kevin’s overreaction to Nick’s brief, aberrant pursuit of an unreceptive Justin had nearly made real again – was calmly shot to rag dolls by a heartfelt public statement of support for AJ in his recovery, it meant something. And that that statement, made over the protests of some contemptible Suits and Handlers, had been voiced by Brian’s Other Favorite Gay Couple, Lance and JC, was a clear signal to Brian and all of Backstreet that the Bass-Chasezes in particular stood with them, ready to help in any way they could. Brian didn’t hesitate to take them up on it.

‘We’ll be in Scottsdale in, what, five days,’ Lance confirmed. ‘Of course we’ll make time to see Alex – if they’ll let us.’

‘I appreciate that – we all do. Um. The thing is….’

It was JC who caught on immediately. ‘This has thrown D and Nicky for a loop, hasn’t it.’

‘Weeeeell. It came at a purty complex time.’

‘Well,’ Lance said, his mind obviously already engaging the logistics problems, ‘y’all are all pretty much on hiatus on account of this anyway. Together-time he’ps them, just the two of ’em, good, y’all can give ’em that now. But if their coming to spend some time with us would be good for ’em, we’re on our Western leg, and they can meet us same time as they drop by to see Aidge.’

‘Good. Thank y’all kindly for this. I’m going to show the flag a bit in Hotlan’a, th’ow the press off the scent, me and LA, but we may well sneak out there with Nicky and D our own selves.’

‘We’d surely love to have you,’ Lance said, as JC giggled in the background.

‘So funny ’bout this?’

‘Aw, hell, boy may be Louisiana stock and Maryland-bred, but he sometimes gets tickled, you and me get too downhome for him.’ And Brian could just faintly hear JC wheeze out a faux-Southern ‘why, fiddle-dee-dee’ as Lance sighed, heavily.

‘You tell him, he keeps that up, LA ain’t bringin’ him no pralines, we come see y’all. That’ll shut him right up.’

It did.

‘I’m an enabler,’ Nick said, self-lacerating and bent on condemnation.

‘We all are,’ Brian said, a little wearily. ‘The business is. Hell, the whole damn world is. First thing Alex’ll tell you, though, on account of how it’s the first thing they’ll have l’arned him, is, down at bottom it’s his own responsibility.’

Nick just looked out of the airplane’s window at the sprawling Mississippi River, like a glittering, sun-glinting snake writhing across the green land.

Brian closed his eyes and slipped his hand into his wife’s. Getting the four of them onto this flight to New Mexico – AJ hadn’t been ready for visitors two weeks earlier, when ’N Sync had played Scottsdale – had taken a great deal out of him.

‘But – but – where are my pralines?’ JC – or for the moment, in their bubble of privacy, simply James’s Josh, just as with these trusted friends his lover could put the construct of ‘Lance’ aside and be merely Josh’s James – pouted at the Littrells.

LA stage-whispered to Lance – to James – ‘He’s so adorable when he’s being about five.’

‘He thinks so,’ James rumbled, fondly indulgent. ‘Don’t get him what he wants all the time, though. Now you know who taught Timberlake ever’thing he knows.’

‘You said,’ Josh persevered, ‘you were bringing me pralines.’

‘Well, sweetie, it’s just that AJ looked so lonely there, and he’s developed such a sweet-tooth in rehab….’

Josh looked at her reproachfully. Nick wasn’t patient enough for this game, though. ‘Jesus, Leigh-Lit, just give him the damn pralines or we’ll have to listen to Sashay whine all night.’

Josh stuck his tongue out at Nick, then grabbed the tin of pralines greedily, scurrying off to hide his prize away as LA and the guys laughed.

Shortly before they left for the venue, ’N Sync to prepare and the Littrells and the Carter-Doroughs to be snuck in and hidden very securely away, Brian took James aside. ‘Y’all know how much we appreciate this, especially after all that happened earlier?’

‘Aw, hell, Bri, it don’t make no nevermind. Not now. We’ve all accepted that Nick was temporarily insane at the time, though if he wants Josh to stop calling him “Hamhock,” he’s whistling Dixie, ’specially long as he keeps calling Josh “Sashay.” But even at the worst, wasn’t nobody blaming you, nor AJ, who was so outten it he didn’t know it was happening for starters, nor yet D, bless his sweet heart. Just Nick for going off the rails and nigh stalkin’ Justin, and Kevin for getting all Rottweiler about it and blamin’ the victim. ’Sides, in addition to this being for D, it’s for AJ, too, and we really do mean it about wantin’ him to get better and come back a hunnert-ten percent.’

‘Howie?’

‘Baby.’

‘Why. I mean. Why did Frick and LA want us to spend some time with Sashay and the Bassman while we were out here to see Bone?’

‘Why do you think?’

‘Um.’

‘Digame, mi adorado.’

‘So we knew we had supporterative friends who support us? So, maybe, well, so I’d know they forgived me?’

Howie carefully suppressed a smile. He was always careful to correct Nick’s mangled English without belittling Nick, even if he had secretly agreed with AJ’s one good line, at their meeting at the rehab clinic, about his having the only boyfriend around who didn’t speak either of Howie’s languages.

‘There’s that, yes. They have forgiven you, and they are supportive. But I think, too, he wanted us to see that a relationship can work even in all this madness, and that we can’t let our crazy friends, love them though we do, and their insane problems, mess with us and our relationship.’

‘AJ’s not insane.’

‘He puts up with us – that’s questionable right there. And I know you’re not going to tell me Kevin’s not wound a little bit too tightly.’

‘Okay, Kevin is crazy, yeah.’ Nick snuggled in a little closer. ‘Howie? Could you come help me in the shower?’

Howie was immediately concerned. ‘Baby, I told you a thousand times to let me know if your hand was bothering you.’

When Nick replied, it was breathed directly into Howie’s ear, punctuated by nibbling. ‘Oh, it’s not my hand I need help with….’

Howie practically dragged Nick into the bathroom.

The next morning, Joshandjames (TM) made certain the Littrells and the Carter-Doroughs were ushered up to their floor to join ’N Sync for breakfast. It was difficult not to suspect Bass of an ulterior motive, as he had clearly not warned their bandmates, and he laughed immoderately when Justin caught sight of LA, squeaked, blushed, and ran to put on something more than his underwear. Chris, even, caught equally unprepared for company, had flushed brick-red and dashed off to throw on his ratty but modesty-bolstering robe. Joey had been padding about in sweats, and was unfazed.

‘It’s not anything I haven’t seen with Backstreet,’ LA said, smiling.

‘Those two are just insecure about comparisons,’ Joey grinned.

‘And you’re not?’

Joe just looked at Nick, eyes twinkling. ‘I’ve never seen a reason to be … and I’ve shared locker rooms with you guys, remember?’

LA snickered, in a ladylike way.

Josh, too, had had to get in on the act. ‘You’re quiet this morning, Carter. Last I heard you, you were more … resonant?’

‘That was the acoustic properties of the tiles,’ James said solemnly.

It took a moment, but Nick got it, and turned far redder than ever Justin or Chris had done.

‘ ’S ’at why I didn’t have hot water this morning?’ Joey leered.

‘Stop,’ Nick moaned, his hands over his face.

‘Naw,’ Joey said, earnestly, ‘that’s the great thing about hotels, they never run out of hot water and they have all the handicap rails to hold on to and the non-skid stuff on the bottom of the thingy. That’s very important.’

‘Joe,’ James said dryly, over Josh’s crescendo of giggles, ‘has certain well-defined areas of expertise.’

‘That’s what Kel tells me,’ Joey beamed. By this time, Howie, LA, and Brian were laughing out loud as Nick continued to squirm.

‘I suppose it’s just lucky my goddaughter wasn’t named “Sheraton” or “Hilton,”’ James said.

‘Oooohhhhh, yes,’ LA said, perking up and leaning forward to tap Joey on the knee. ‘There had better be some new baby pictures, mister.’ And she and Brian and Joey went immediately into child-rearing mode, their attention given wholly over to talk of pregnancies, diapers, and feedings at 4:00 AM.

Howie gathered Nick into an embrace and gently prised his hands from his face. ‘Baby, you know I’m not ashamed of you and of what we have. I wish we could tell everyone, and I know Josh and James were just teasing about something I’ll bet they’ve done a thousand times.’

‘You underestimate us,’ Josh grinned. ‘We’ve single-handedly increased sales of tile cleaner and pay rates for hotel maids all over the country.’

‘Because,’ James said, his tone more serious now, ‘in the position we’re in –’

‘– And we’ve been in a lot of positions –’

‘Josh, be serious. But, the way things are for us, and for y’all, you have to make your own special places and your own home on the road and your own safe zone. And you can’t be shy about it, not with your brothers, your family, and certainly not with your own true love. That’s the one lesson I hope to hell you learn from this-all.’

‘But what if. Um. What if it bothers AJ?’

‘Then you work around that, based on the fact that he loves y’all and y’all love him. Personally, I cain’t imagine anything about sex, at least anything that don’t involve sheep and poultry, botherin’ AJ, but if it does, y’all talk through it, don’t try and hide and talk all around it.’

‘Besides,’ Josh said, serious in his turn, ‘I think it’s much likelier that problems or tension between you two is. Would be. Shoot, whatever, it’d stress him more if you two were screwed up than if you two were, um –’

‘Screw-ing?’

‘D!’

‘Sorry.’ Howie looked anything but sorry, and that smile got an answering grin from his Nick.

‘Thanks, guys,’ Nick said, unwontedly shy. His voice, though low, was sincere.

James and Josh – or rather, the public personae, Lance and JC – and the rest of ’N Sync had already left. Now it was time for the Littrells and Nick and Howie to do the same.

‘Nick? Nick! The hell are you? God Almighty, our flight’s in an hour – you’re not even packed!’

‘Neither am I,’ Howie smiled, leaning out from his and Nick’s bathroom, his torso bare.

‘But –’

‘You and LA go on back to Atlanta,’ Howie said. ‘Nick and I are going to see if the Fatone Theorem can be validated by a series of carefully controlled experiments that render similar results.’

Brian gave in, grinning. ‘I’ll find a less explicit way to phrase that to the missus.’

‘Oh, don’t bother,’ Nick chuckled from within the bathroom. ‘She already knows. In fact, if I recall, Howie –’

‘– Yes, Nick, you are perfectly right,’ Howie said, with mock solemnity. ‘I do believe it was Mrs Littrell’s idea, was it not.’

‘I believe so, Mr Dorough, I believe so.’

‘That’s “Carter-Dorough” to you, young man.’

Brian just shook his head. ‘Fine. I’ll tell the press you two are visiting AJ, and I’ll tell Cuz you’re holed up in a hotel in Las Cruces going at it like a couple of minks on Viagra.’

Nick’s reply echoed off the tiles. ‘Naw, be too much trouble to find a new bass after Train keels over. Just tell him we’re doing some hiking and mountain-biking, ’cause in between orgasms, we intend to. D’s sexy in shorts.’

‘I’m sexy in anything. And sexier out of ’em.’

Brian groaned, and turned to go.

‘What about you, Brian? What’s your Official Backstreet Hiatus Schedule? Touring with ’N Sync?’ Howie winked as he said it.

‘Nope,’ Brian said. ‘To borry the payoff line from Bass’s favorite movie, “I’m going home to my wife.”’

And he walked through the suite’s common area, intent on doing just that, grinning when he caught himself singing. Now everbody knows / The reason for the Fall: / Woman tempted Man / In Paradise’s hall. / That woman tempted me / And took me for a ride / Now like a hunted fox, boys, / I need a place to hide…..

END