Crises of Faith: A Middle Episode

By Ian McDuff

Sigh. Zoicite wanted a JuNi fic from the Streeters’s POV, and some Darterslash as well. Zoicite and Lucy between them issued a challenge for ‘Brian Month’ next month (which, Gott Sei Dankt, did not require slashing Mr Straight Boy Littrell). Georgina needs more JuNi. So does Jennifer, and all the kind people at Take Time to Dream: they are low on Streetslash. And on top of all that, it’s now – Heaven help us – ‘Kevin Month.’

And I? I had already rashly adumbrated, in Sentimental Journey (Chapters 4 and 5), and later in ‘Myrtle Beach Days,’ a sensitive, gay-friendly Brian. I had also foreshadowed, in Sentimental Journey, and later in ‘Tempted By the Fruit of Another,’ some less-than-happy JuNi. And it’s important to me to show, among my other subtly didactic purposes, that being a person of faith (and a Southerner to boot) does not mean, as too many slashers seem to believe it does, being a jackbooted enforcer of middle-class morals, a Kluxer, or an evangelist of hatred.

And that, God save the mark, means that there is slowly burgeoning a Brian POV series, Crises of Faith, into which this will eventually be integrated as a middle episode. For now, it stands alone, as a partial means of satisfying at least the needs of those clamoring for JuNi and Streetslash, if not as my final response to the Brian Month Challenge. And it’s chock full o’ Kev-Angst, to boot, so: Kevin-Month celebrants, take note.

Brian could actually hear a narrator saying it, portentously intoning in voice-over, ‘This is not a happy story.’ It certainly was shaping up to be unhappy. Damned ugly, in fact.

The first gay man Brian had ever known – well, the first at least he’d known that he knew – had been one of his favorite people ever. Mr Mathers: known behind his back, inevitably, as ‘the Beav,’ with varying degrees of unkindness: a member of a large-ish and ramifying clan in the Hills of Old Kentucky, or at least of that portion of it that had not emigrated to the dark Satanic mills of Dee-troit City, a folk-wandering that had been the theme of a thousand honky-tonk songs well before another and trashier Mathers with distant roots in that emigration had emerged from Detroit to debase popular music still further. Brian’s Mr Mathers, though. Poor man: the choir director, part-time music minister, and painfully obvious gay man, lost and bewildered in the hearty, hymn-singing, deer-hunting semi-rural South. A willowy, helplessly effeminate man, married for propriety’s sake to a stout, competent woman whose jollity never reached her eyes, by whom indeed he had a darling little girl whom they both spoiled to the most oozing limits of rottenness. A sport from an otherwise hearty, feed-store-owning stock, an unexpected and out of place bird of paradise amidst the local chicken-runs, and assuredly himself never able to face what was blatantly obvious to the merest stranger. Mr Mathers, who by sheer determination to keep his eyes tightly closed, managed for all those years never to face his own gayness, and managed, too, what mattered the more, to preclude it’s being spoken of openly.

But it was spoken of, if not openly: spoken of sneeringly or tolerantly, with snickering or in tones of pious horror, by everyone not within his immediate earshot at a given moment.

It was probable that, had he been the straightest arrow in the quiver, his effeminacy of manner and voice – and there are straight men whose demeanor is inherently effeminate – but his manner would surely have incurred the sidelong glances and whispered giggles. Brian could shrug off mannerisms. But Mr Mathers stood self-condemned, through his evident helplessness to resist gaping, and ogling, and fluttering, and blushing, whenever a strapping farm boy passed, or one of the young men at the hardware store or the Southern States Co-Op.

Never, clearly, acknowledging to himself the true nature of his feelings, his successive hopeless crushes, Mr Mathers naturally never acted upon them, and if his nights beside his stolid, Rubenesque wife were haunted by dreams, no one knew it. But his girlish melting in the presence of handsome Good Ol’ Boys was adequate proof of his repressed desires, and if Mr Mathers refused to acknowledge it, he was the only one in the area to do so.

And that had been difficult for Brian to comprehend.

Out there, past Highway 4, in such small communities as Jonestown and Brigadoon and Little Texas, the patina of Lexington wore a little thin. Sure, these were suburbs now, parts of a conurbation that had slopped over the whole of Fayette County and beyond, and Lexington was a real-live city, with urban problems and urban knowingness. But these small communities, now degraded to mere suburban status, had once been real places, many of them, and preserved a small-town mindset.

Brian had never been able to understand Mr Mathers’s being so resolutely closeted, so determined not to drive a few short miles from the sometimes narrow confines of Tates Creek to the wider mental horizons of Lexington proper. Brian was fine, himself, with the exurban mindset, but Mr Mathers would be so much happier in a city’s anonymity than out here halfway to Nicholasville – heck, halfway to Harrodsburg. Brian never could figure out why Mr Mathers couldn’t figure that out for himself.

Brian had also never quite grasped how it was that people said the things they said about Mr Mathers, even the kinder things. Brian knew his Bible, Old Testament and New, literally chapter and verse. He understood how people could reprove and condemn the sins Mr Mathers wasn’t actually committing, except maybe in his heart. But there was supposed to be a distinction between the sin and the sinner, wasn’t there? And Mr Mathers was the best, kindest, most just-plumb-decent man around. His paralyzing shyness was the only thing that prevented his being a top-notch voice and choir teacher. And wasn’t that shyness – a shyness pretty much limited to his interactions with other males, obviously – itself a virtue? If Mr Mathers’s heart of hearts contained the seeds of sin – and whose didn’t? That was right there in the Gospels, too – wasn’t his relentless self-censorship something to applaud, not to snicker at? If he had a special cross to bear, and he bore it, oughtn’t that count for something? He had cut himself off from so much as not to offend anyone, and what was his reward? Shoot, he was always in danger of losing his church offices, and would surely have done had there ever been the least hint of impropriety or any lack of devotion to maintaining what must, surely, have been a desperately comfortless marriage, surrounded always by watching, speculating eyes watching for the slightest stumble. And the County school board was pretty persistent about urging him, delicately but firmly, to move on, to a magnet school or somewhere closer to town.

Brian had never cared for unfairness. At all.

From those early days, then, Brian had had a profound distaste for that sort of dirty-joke-cracking prejudice. And he had come fairly early to realize that in all honesty, there was no such thing as completely straight, or completely anything else. After all, he figured, he pegged pretty high on the straight-boy scale – to the point that his adolescent bouts of fretting about sin and lust and impurity: frets to which he wasn’t overly prone but to which, like all good little Protestant boys, he wasn’t wholly immune, either: had concerned the way certain girls he knew filled out a sweater or a pair of denim shorts – and he knew damn well that he had known a guy or two for whom he could have had some feelings, had conditions been right for feelings to ripen.

It was about the person, the heart and mind and soul, the laugh and the kindness and the shared hurt and shared triumphs, not about the appendages, when it came right down to it; and if you were honest, you recognized that no matter how you were oriented, those qualities would sometimes manifest themselves in someone who wasn’t of your preferred sex. You dealt with it, and all you had an obligation to do was to be true to yourself and not to hurt anybody else and to leave the rest to the Good Lord’s grace.

So. He hadn’t freaked out when he found out, well after being dragged down to the alien heat and glare of Florida to round out other people’s implausible dreams, that his own cousin had grazed a couple of times in the pasture on the other side of the fence. After all, in honesty, Kevin – whom circumstances had forced to become, to the other three, a mix of Roman censor, Victorian father, drill sergeant, and plantation overseer – was a very different and comforting presence to Brian. Growing up, his older cousin had cherished the chance to be a big brother to Brian on occasion, Kevin being on the downhill end of that at home as the youngest of his own family. If that role of eldest was onerous upon Kevin in Backstreet, it was not surprising: with Brian, Kevin had been able to be cousin, pal, and big bubba all at once, and then not have to deal with the roles for weeks on end, until the next time. With Backstreet, though, Kevin was trapped forever in a role he had no stomach for.

And – in honesty? As they got older, Brian had come to see that, for him, Kevin was the proof example of how, every once in a while, even a straight-arrow straight boy like Brian could feel a tug towards another man. Neither wanted the complications, and both had too little interest in the possibilities, being both primarily straight; but both quietly and tacitly recognized a special tenderness between them, and cherished it – in its place, and never to be allowed out of its place.

So it was not at all out of character for Brian to have been giddily delighted on his best friend Nick’s behalf when Nick figured out that he had feelings – reciprocated feelings, at that – for another of their best friends, everyone’s beloved Howie. Even Kevin was supportive, if warily: it was clearly Kevin’s worry that not even Howie D had sufficient maturity for both of them in the new relationship.

The Great Disaster – the Debacle – had blindsided Brian.

He could still remember finding Howie that night, curled into a fetal ball, having clearly – and, typically, quietly and secretively – cried himself to the sleep of utter exhaustion.

And he would never forget, unless the Lord were particularly gracious to him, the hollow despair in Howie’s voice when Howie had awoken in the small hours to find Brian cradling him in a brotherly embrace. ‘This,’ Brian had said. ‘This-all whatever-’tis. You’ll always be first with him, D, he just needs to get his head straight and remember that.’ And D had said, in a voice as dead as it was quiet, ‘I was his first. He was pretty much my first, for anything that mattered. I intended to be his last, too. He’ll. If he comes back. Or if he doesn’t. Either way. He is, he will be, my last. I. I just. I can’t go through this again.’

Kevin had been bewildered, hurt, then angry, and just discernibly a little justified: he had a faint air of the satisfaction of a prophet who had invoked disaster and doom to unbelieving disciples, and whom doom and disaster had proven right after all.

In seeing that, Brian saw more clearly into Kevin’s attitudes and motives than did Kevin himself.

Mostly, though, Kevin was just pissed. And while Nick had certainly proven Kevin foresighted in worrying about whether Nick were mature enough to handle a relationship, it wasn’t Nick who bore the brunt of Kevin’s white-hot fury. That was reserved for, as Kevin barely managed not to put it in public, Fuckin’ Timberlake. Nick had half-assed his way out of his commitments to Howie – serious commitments seriously undertaken, and undertaken not so very long before, at that – to ‘explore other options,’ and those other options boiled down to making a full-court press after his ’N Sync counterpart.

Kevin had to have someone to blame. Blaming Howie was of course out of the question. Brian thought it was curious, really, how, the further Kevin drifted from the church and faith of their forebears and of their childhood in Kentucky, the more judgmental and Puritanical Kevin became, the more obsessively he categorized actions into right and wrong, innocent and sinful. By this point, Kevin’s faith had been largely subsumed in his activism, which as far as Brian was concerned had replaced rather than complemented Kevin’s old faith. Brian had been loyally supportive of Kevin in public, and even, to an extent, in private; but the lines had been drawn pretty sharply when Brian had agreed to tag along with Kevin to an activist shindig, and blandly appeared in the lobby in a Bush / Cheney sweatshirt. Kevin, of course, had gone ballistic: as is the way of things in families, he and Brian rarely clashed, but when they did, it was several orders of magnitude more violent than any clash either might have with AJ or D or Nicky. It was on that occasion that Brian had flung the bitter truth at his cousin and long-time hero: ‘Damn right it bothers the hell out of me you done gone back on your raisin’ and damn right I don’t much like this new religion you’ve taken up in place of what we learned, but what surely chaps my ass is that you’re even more of a Pharisee as a damn Druid or whatever you’ve become than what-all people accuse us believers of being! Talk about seein’ everything in black and white and bein’ judgmental and all – for sheer self-righteousness, cuz, you take the cake now more’n you ever did back to home!’

He and Kevin had – eventually – gotten beyond that, but the fact was, as Brian recognized, that this was just where Kevin was at, nowadays. He had to have someone to blame, a focus for his anger and disappointment and, frankly, his nagging sense that somehow he had failed them all by, in some unwitting way, allowing this to happen.

He had had to have someone to blame, and so long as there was any other choice at all, it was psychologically intolerable to Kevin to blame Nick. So he blamed Justin. Loudly. Publicly, too, by innuendo, setting back by at least a year the restored relations between the rival groups.

Brian had called him on that. ‘You’re blaming the victim, here.’

‘No!’ Kevin was fierce, almost unbalanced, in the denial. ‘The victim is Howie. And Nick. That – fuckin’ Timberlake. Fuckin’ little prick. He. He’s leading Nick on. Little prick-tease. He –’

‘He’s practically being damn nigh stalked by Nick, and you damned well know it. He’s scared to death, and miserable, and upset, and worried to hell-an’-gone ’bout D … now how in the Sam Hill’s that his fault?’

‘I don’t believe it. I won’t believe it. Who has been telling you these lies?’

Brian gave him a level, almost pitying, look. ‘You know,’ he mused, ‘I ought to have gone ahaid on and flat let Bass loose on you.’

And Brian had said, equably, ‘You can’t slug my cousin for defending one of his own, when you’re here to defend one of your own just as hot.’

Brian had nodded. ‘Yep. But I cain’t let y’all punch him for that.’ He’d paused. ‘That’s my job.’ And a look that was in its way a guarantee had passed between him and his Other Favorite Gay Couple, two friends he supported almost as heartily as he had supported Nick and D.

And he had made a point with his fist that same night, in yet another kinfolks’s hollering match with Kevin: both still had the bruises to prove it. It could have reached the proportions of a final breach had they been allowed to get fully into it, but their fury had upset Howie, badly, and caused a minor breakdown on AJ’s part, and they’d had to back off and divert their energies to picking up those pieces. Howie had been in agony that his failure – as he saw it: Howie had had almost insuperable issues before he and Nick had found each other, issues that were a legacy of the closet, and they had returned with redoubled force when Nick betrayed him, accompanied by deep feelings of unworthiness and self-disgust – Howie had been in agony that his failure had caused this rift, and AJ, behind the tough, hard-ass façade, tended to become screamingly hysterical at any threat to the unity of the only real family he’d ever known.

And now – still – Kevin was blaming the victim. Before he could do more than issue a strangled bellow of protest, Brian snapped at him. ‘Loyalty’s a fine thing, but the hell were we ever clannish mountain folk with blood-feuds to settle? Last I checked, we ain’t Hatfields nor yet McCoys. You think I like having to confront the fact Nick’s at fault, much as Nick means and has always meant to me? But there ain’t no way in hell Timberlake’s to blame here for Nick’s goin’ off the rails. Hell, Timberlake’s so gun-shy to start with about bein’ a mite bi –’

‘That’s exactly it,’ Kevin said, feverishly. ‘That whole blushing virgin, is-he-or-ain’t-he thing he does, that’s how he drew Nick in, seduced him, cock-teased him, it’s what they do –’

‘“It’s what they do?”’ Brian was incredulous. ‘Who “they”? Gays? On account of I seem to recall you’ve done a mite of experimentin’ your own self –’

‘No! Not – not gays. Prick-teases. Like … like fan-girls and such … and Timberlake.’

Brian just shook his head in disgust. ‘Be damned. You are one sensitive, liberal-minded, artistic, diversity-embracing, Democrat tree-hugger, ain’t you just.’ He snorted, nostrils flaring impossibly wide. ‘Cuz. What you are? You … are a fucking Neanderthal.’ And he walked out, carefully slamming the door behind him.

Howie had taken to moving about as if he were made of glass, and his posture was that of a man trying to minimize his presence enough to hide behind the nearest potted plant. It startled Brian a little bit, then, when Howie swung Brian’s door open before the echo of his one, brusque knock had faded, marched in, sat, and said abruptly, ‘Been on the phone with Kirkpatrick.’

Brian might be startled; he was not about to back down. No Kentuckian, and by God no Littrell, ever backed down.

‘Good,’ he said evenly. ‘Glad to hear it. Two of y’all’ve been friends for a coon’s age; he’s a good person, you to talk-at right now.’

‘You and I’ve been friends a while, too.’

‘Still are.’

‘Friends as a rule don’t wash their friend’s dirty ropas in public.’

‘Kirkpatrick ain’t public. And desperate times call for desperate measures.’

‘He says Justin’s gotten actually scared about this. Not … physically. But. You know.’

‘It’s a dangerous situation.’

Howie sagged into a chair. ‘He. Chris says. Um.’

‘He and I talked. Damn straight I’m trying to keep tabs on Nick through Kirkpatrick. And yessir, I surely did discuss Nick’s reasons with him. Such as they are. I agree with Chris.’

‘He took a couple of Psych classes, Bri, at a one-horse college he didn’t finish. He’s not Sigmund Freud.’

‘Nope. But he makes sense on this ’un.’

‘I wish I believed that. I want to. Madre de Dios, I wish he were right. But let’s not shit ourselves here. Of course he wants Justin, not me. They’re the same age, they’re the two golden boys, Justin’s so far beyond me –’

‘Bullshit. And even if that were true, Nicky has –’

‘Look, Brian, I appreciate the kind words, but let’s be real here. Blond god frontmen of twenty-and-a-bit don’t settle for older short guys who wouldn’t be offered a solo gig if he – I – were the last singer on earth. I was good enough for Nick to experiment with and to make sure he was gay, that this is what he liked and who he was. I was the test drive. Now he’s moving on to someone who fits, it’s perfectly natural –’

‘Oh, stop wallerin’ in that mudhole!’

Howie glared at him, too taken aback to forestall Brian’s next words.

‘Nick’s the product of a fucked-up life and the stage mother from Hell, D, and you damn well know that. If anything, he has a worse self-image than you do, and that ain’t easy, though AJ’s certainly managed over the years, come to that. ’S why Kirkpatrick’s so damn acc’rate here, D. Problem is, Nicky’s convinced he ain’t enough for you, really, down deep, and this whole ugly mess is on account of his needin’ to see if someone else, someone he thinks is too good for him just like he thinks you are, can possibly be interested in him. What it is, he’s tryin’ to see if he was ever more’n a pity-fuck for you, given how he don’t think he deserves you … or anybody else, matter of that. That damn woman…. This is about Nick’s self-loathing and sense of unworth and all the other baggage that damned Jane Carter done laid on him over the years, and you know it, ’cept you have your own baggage and you druther set on your ass and waller in the Slough of Despond than do what needs doin’.’

Howie just sat there, mouth open, lower lip trembling, as his eyes brimmed with tears. Brian took three steps to where his friend sat, and wrapped him in a fierce hug.

‘D, c’mon, I’m sorry I had to kick-start you. It’s on account of I love you.’

AJ was trashed. Out of his tree. Knee-walking, toilet-hugging drunk. Kevin took charge of him from three extremely annoyed bodyguards, hoping that drunk was all AJ was, this time.

Of course, he could have a lab do a tox-screen on his boots, now that AJ was puking all over them.

‘The fuck do you do this to yourself?’

AJ retched, wretchedly. With evident effort, he raised his head, and his bleared gaze met Kevin’s. ‘Maybe ’s your fault. You bein’ a pricktease an’ all.’ His eyes rolled back in their sockets before Kevin could snap at him, and with impeccable timing, AJ passed out.

Howie was snuggled deep for comfort, evidently with no plans to leave, head tucked trustingly into Brian’s shoulder, all sobbed out. They’d given up, all of them, years ago, on macho posturing.

‘Brian?’

‘Hmmm?’

‘Thanks.’

‘Any time, hermano.’

‘I’ll make you bilingual yet.’

‘Already am. I speak English and Southern.’

‘Pfft. Bri?’

‘Still right here, D.’

‘ ’Kay if I stay?’

‘You have to ask?’

‘Good.’ He paused. ‘Um. Bri?’

‘Yeah, D.’

‘You really think Kirkpatrick is right?’

‘You know I do. And so do you.’

‘So. The. Um. If I fight for … for Nick … that’s what he’s waiting for? That’s what he needs to know? That he matters? I fight, I automatically win?’

‘Well, now. Dunno if anything in this here life is automatic, D. But I’m bettin’ the “over.” No question, fighting – you thinking he’s worth the effort – is the signal Nick needs. And I know one thing for certain.’

‘Mmm?’

‘You don’t fight a-tall, ain’t no way. Fighters may win their fights. Cain’t win if you don’t fight.’

‘Okay.’ Howie relaxed still further, worn out by emotion, but quieter within himself now.

He stayed quiet as – without so much as a knock – Kevin trudged in. Kevin winced a little at the way Brian instinctively shifted, his body language, all unwittingly, protective, shielding Howie. Kevin knew he’d been a prick lately, but he didn’t think he deserved that. Howie was perhaps the one person he was least likely to hurt, not because he held the mistaken but common belief that Howie was fragile – nothing could be further from the truth: Howie’s inner struggles had served only to case-harden him – but because he respected Howie more than he did the others, save Brian, and Brian, as blood-kin, wasn’t entitled to slack.

‘We’ve talked about knockin’ on doors,’ Brian said, fairly mildly.

Kevin ducked his head. ‘I know,’ he whispered. ‘But this was enough of an emergency to justify my spare keycard. Ain’t like LA’s here, and I know you don’t cheat, so….’

‘No need to whisper,’ Howie said, drowsily. ‘I’m just dozing, kinda.’

‘You doin’ all right, D?’

‘No. But I’m better.’ He looked at Kevin, every line of whose posture was defeated, then pillowed his head back on Brian’s shoulder. ‘Get your independent, do-it-all-on-your-own ass over here,’ he added.

Kevin sighed, gustily, and shambled over to the bed, lowering himself carefully down upon it.

‘Stop being tentative,’ Howie snorted. ‘He’s homely as sin,’ he added, affectionately, ‘and straighter’n boredom, but you have to admit, Bri’s snuggly.’

‘For a small guy,’ Kevin said.

‘Shut up, endocrine freak.’ Brian tugged Kevin closer as he said it.

‘What’s going down?’

‘Alex … really tied one on.’

Howie stirred, conscientious and worried as always. ‘Should he be alone?’

‘Nope. And he ain’t. Nick finally dragged his Timberlusting ass back here, and I stuck him with the nursing shift.’

‘Sounds like you’re mad at both of them.’

Kevin was silent for a long moment. ‘I am. Fucker ralphed all over my boots.’

‘Nick?’

‘AJ.’

‘So you’re mad at Nick.’

‘Um. Yeah.’

Howie reached across Brian and stroked a comforting hand down Kevin’s jaw. He’d been able to tell, just from the timbre of Kevin’s words, that that jaw was clenched tighter than a preacher’s daughter. Kevin wrapped Howie’s hand in his own and sagged against Brian, with a small, choked sob.

‘Kev?’

‘Shit. ’S a’right. I’m. I’m just so fucking tired.’

‘You keep refusin’ to learn to delegate, you’ll be t’other heart patient in the fam’ly. And I tell you true, ’t’ain’t no fun, cuz.’

‘Brung it all on myself, though.’

‘Somebody said something.’ Howie’s words were a statement, not a question.

‘Ohhhh, yeah. Several somebodies.’

‘AJ?’

‘You remember what – what I called Timberlake, blamin’ him?’

‘Lots of things.’

‘But. Okay. But when I, ah –’

‘Called him a pricktease. I remember.’

‘AJ threw that at me. Tonight. Called me that. Right after he hurled on my boots.’

‘The hell were you wearin’, cuz, a $3000 pair of elephant Noconas? Ain’t like you to have this footwear fetish.’

‘It’s an avoidance tactic,’ Howie murmured. ‘I should know, I’m a past master of ’em.’

Kevin squeezed Howie’s hand, which he had not yet let go of. ‘Lay off my Luccheses, Bri.’

‘Attention, parents. We have a lost topic at the mall’s security station….’

‘Okay. Okay. So. AJ. And then. After Nicky came dragging in. I went up to 42. To their floor.’

By now, both bands were eager to get out of the same town, much less the same hotel: it wouldn’t stop Nick’s making a public spectacle of himself and Justin, but it would at least relegate it to long-distance and email, instead of personal stalking.

Howie squeezed Kevin’s hand, then, reassuringly.

‘Anyway. I’d had time to think. Since AJ’d got back. Hell, since you and I teed it up, Bri. So. I went. To apologize.’

Brian extricated himself from Howie and clambered across his cousin, shoving him to the center of the bed. He and Howie promptly wrapped Kevin up and held him, then, all three touching, grounding one another.

Kevin swallowed the lump in his throat, and went doggedly on. ‘So. To apologize. They … didn’t exactly greet me with open arms.’

Brian snorted.

‘I know. I deserved it all. But – except for Bass’s nearly crushing my forearm: little fucker’s sure buffed up over the years. Hell of a grip – they listened.’

‘Figured they would.’

‘You talk to Chris about that, too?’

‘You heard?’

‘Knew D here had talked to Dr Feelstrange, then come looking for you with a .45. Figured it out. So. You and Chris analyze me?’

‘Nope. Didn’t discuss you with Chris a-tall.’

‘Huh.’

‘Talked to JC instead.’

‘Wh- okay. That’s. Ah … why?’

‘Needed facts, not analysis. Sashay’s the one likeliest to have those particular facts: normally, it’d’ve been Bass, but he was too young and they did a better job of sheltering him than we did with some of ours.’

‘Fuck,’ Kevin muttered.

‘Oh, grow up. I’ve known since Gawd was in short-pants about your brief experimentation with bein’ bi, and you know well as I do it don’t bother me none. D?’

‘I was around then, sort of, and heard more later. And – like it’s gonna bother me.’

‘Not what I was worried about,’ Kevin said.

‘No, but, hell, cuz. That whole thing about Justin’s uncertainties and insecurities and questioning bein’ just a pricktease act? That was never you talkin’. Just didn’t fit. But I couldn’t see you with anybody, in your experimental days, as would do you like that. You ain’t cut out for takin’ much crap from anyone, and could pretty much beat the shit out anybody tried it. So there was only one thing I could think of, you to be on the short side of a power relationship. Why I called JC. You reckon AJ’d overheard any of that, back in the day, and let it fester all this time?’

‘Shit. I hope not. Or maybe I hope so, if the other idea is that he had to deal with it too. I’m already planning to find out, and if he did –’

‘We’ll kill the greasy fat fuck.’ That was Howie, firm and uncompromising. ‘What? Like you thought I didn’t catch some of that?’

‘Fucking shit.’

‘Chill. I dealt. What did you do, when Lou started that with you?’

‘Kneed him in the balls and started to plan our escape.’

‘Smart. We’re grateful, man. Verdad.’

‘You?’

‘First time? Ran. Second time? Let him corner me and get started with his suggestive shit, then unbuttoned my jacket to show him the tape recorder. Told him I had the DA on speed dial, and I hoped I had simply “misunderstood” him. Dropped a word to C and Chris, and – that’s when I approached you about ditching him, and found out you already planned on it. You were talking money, so I figured it was just me on the other stuff, and I kept it on the DL.’

‘The money thing was cover. Legit, the fucker was stealing us blind, but. I couldn’t admit….’

‘Been there, did that, have the T-shirt, mi amigo.’

Brian wasn’t impatient, but his voice held a slight sternness of tone. ‘Y’all know this don’t make sense.’

‘Is it supposed to? Look, cuz. D’s gay, he’s out to everyone who matters, he’s not ashamed of who he is – nor should he be. I’m basically straight, at the time I was doin’ some bi sampling, I was conflicted. Point is, doesn’t matter where you are on any scale, same as it doesn’t matter how out or how closeted you are. There may be gay and bi guys out there who’ve never known self-doubt, who’ve never questioned their own validity and the validity of their sexuality, but I surely never have met nor heard of one. ’S what Lou preyed on, the self-doubt. Maybe – if I’d confided in D, or he in me…. But, no. We’d still have had those internalized self-doubts that scum like Lou latch on to. I wish – I do wish I’d … it was bad enough, having that said of me. But internalizing it, and then spewing it on Timberlake? I told them all, straight up, as how I’d never been more ashamed of myself in my life.’

‘They forgave you.’

‘Yeah. Even Ti- even Justin. Hell, all of ’em even hugged me, an’ shit.’

‘Yeah, that musta been so unpleasant.’

‘Smartass. Sashay and Bass kissed me, even.’

Howie could be heard to be grinning even before he spoke: ‘Tongue?’

‘Ugh,’ Kevin groaned. ‘On the cheek – the side of the face, smartass, before you even start –’

‘Holt on,’ Brian said. ‘Solves your problems, good, fine. But what about Nick? More to the point, since D has plans on the Nicky count, what about Justin?’

Kevin was silent a moment. ‘Well. Nick … I’m through covering his ass.’

‘It’s a nice ass,’ Howie said, a little wistfully.

‘And it’s yours, by promise and commitment. He needs to stop peddling it around. We’re doing brunch tomorrow with Justin and them. And getting this settled. I’m tired of Nick hurtin’ D, and creating drama and tension that are just fuckin’ AJ up worse than AJ fucks his own self up. I’m even tired of Nick’s hurting Justin and embarrassing me and wrecking everybody’s friendships.

‘So. Brunch at the OK Corral, come morning.’ Kevin paused, thoughtfully. ‘Ain’t liable to be pretty.’

‘This isn’t one of the happy stories we’ll tell the grandkids,’ Brian said.

‘But it’s just an episode,’ Howie added. ‘And it takes shadows to bring out the light, right? This is just one part of the story, and the story’s nowhere near over.’

‘We’re still in “Chapter One,”’ Brian agreed.

‘We don’t fix this, we’ll be in Chapter Eleven,’ Kevin snorted, starting to get up and leave.

The other two pinioned him. ‘Stay,’ Brian ordered him. ‘You need this.’

‘And we do, too,’ Howie said.

Kevin stayed.

Brunch had been set for a civilized hour, as neither group had a morning schedule that day: a fact miraculous in itself. Even at that, it came too early for all of them. It was agreed fairly early on by the other Boys that there was no point in dragging AJ to the meeting, and indeed that trying to do so would do more harm than good. The real fun started when the three others confronted a disheveled Nick, who had had no intention of getting up to begin with.

Brian admitted that some of Nick’s problems were their own fault, as well – of course – as being Jane’s, and Nick’s. But the usual imperative (one Kevin had never really managed to accept), of at least trying to demand responsibility of Nick and treat him as an adult and an independent moral agent, capable of choice, had had to yield to the day’s urgency. Nick’s protests were unavailing, and in the end, Brian and Kevin had simply dumped Nick, just as he’d been when dragged physically from his bed, into a cold shower.

Things had been little happier up on the 42d floor. Kevin was now off the shit-list, and Chris and C had had a long talk about ‘Hamhock’ – C’s bitter nickname for Nicky since this began, though no one was quite sure why he’d come up with it: it had stuck, permanently – and C was at least willing to accept that Nick might be Not Guilty By Reason of Insanity. But Joe and Lance were still locked-and-loaded and on full automatic, gunning for Nick.

Justin merely curled into a ball and hid behind Chris, regressing by about six years.

‘Wastes of time, defined. One, trying to keep AJ sober. Two, setting you up with a woman. Three, pretending D hasn’t been hurt bad by a self-absorbed prick of a twink who – coincidentally – sings tenor with BSB. Four, you primpin’ for this meeting, since no one cares except D, and he’s seen you in the mornings.’ Brian was caustic, leaning in the door of Nick’s suite. ‘Get your spoilt ass out here now, before I put you over my knee and spank that same ass.’

Formal greetings were exchanged, stiffly. Smalltalk wasn’t even attempted. The nine ate in silence, and when the detritus was set outside the hallway door, Lance shot the bolt, sharply: it resounded like a pistol shot.

No one spoke.

Just when Nick thought he would scream from the tension, Howie began to talk, his voice level, calm, but low.

‘Justin? I owe you an apology. I should have intervened earlier, stopped this somehow before you got hurt as badly as –’

‘As you have.’ Justin peeked over Chris’s shoulder, JC’s arm slung over Justin’s own, slumped shoulders, in turn. ‘You don’t need to – I mean. You were hurt the most. No way you had to be worrying about me or nothin’.’

‘I did, though. I did need to. Nick’s my responsibility, has been ever since he and I made a commitment. And it’s not a commitment, this relación confiada, that he could get out of, or really wanted to. This is Nick we’re talking about, sabe? The one with – Nicky, I’m sorry, but it’s not as if we’re not all friends here, and it’s not as if they didn’t already know –’

‘And it’s not,’ Brian added, dryly, ‘as if Nicky deserves any tender consideration of his damn feelings right now anyway.’ Lance raised a Spockish eyebrow at that, and he and Brian exchanged taut, wolfish grins, grimly.

D ignored this. ‘Justin, this is Nick we’re talking about. With his parenting issues, and his “Daddy” thing, and, remember, that long-time crush on Kev.’ Nick, by now, was multiple shades of sunset, as best one could tell: he had curled up in his chair with his face in his hands. ‘Now, I think you’re all that and a bag of chips. So do Lance and C – or more to the point, the real, private James and Josh. But they don’t want you: they have each other. And – perdone, por favor, mi brusquedad – neither do I. Nicky’s it, for me. Even now. But you were never what Nick wanted: for one thing, you’re too young for his tastes. What he wanted was my attention, and some proof that I hadn’t just “settled” for him or was just accommodating him. And he wanted the sexiest guy he could find – you – to validate him, he had to know he was attractive to someone he hadn’t grown up with.’

‘I understand.’

‘And I should have gotten my head out of my ass earlier and stopped this. Because you of all people didn’t need this. And I do have a responsibility to you, as a friend, as family. This has to have hurt you, and messed with your coming-out process. So. Forgive me.’

Justin sniffled, and stood, and met Howie halfway across the room, enveloping him in a needy hug.

‘Awww, man. You are … thanks. Nick’s a lucky fucker.’

Nick choked out a sob.

Justin looked over at him. ‘And so is D, Nick. You been kinda fucked in the head lately, okay? You think I don’t know what it’s like? Dawg. You an’ me, we got a lot in common, just from what we been through. You had me scared, yeah, for you as well as me, and for all of us. I kept waiting for the headlines, yo, and all this to crash in on us. But sheeyit. If things were different. You an’ D, man, MFEO. But if things were different. Okay? Both y’all are two lucky fuckers. You just luckiest ’cause it looks like D loves you enough to take you back even now.’

‘Verdad. Nicky. Muchacho. Come here, Nicky.’

Reluctantly, head hanging down, Nick edged over to the two. Howie pushed Justin and Nick into an embrace, both of them hesitant, slackly resistant, and then enveloped them both. With a strangled whimper, Nick fell away from Justin and collapsed into Howie’s strong arms. As Howie held his Nicky again, Justin, greatly daring, dropped a brief kiss atop their heads in quick succession, and backed away, into the supportive arms of the Bass-Chasezes, Joey, and Chris.

The grin James Lance Bass exchanged with Brian, this time, was purely triumphant.

‘D- oh God, D. I’m so sorry, I’m such a worthless fuckup –’

‘No hable el absurdo, mi querido. Sssh. Shush, precioso. I forgive you – this time. Because I love you more than you believe.’

‘I want to believe, I really do –’

‘Paz. Silencio. You will. I will show you. Prove it to you. Ay, bebé. Hijito. Sshhhh….’

A week had passed. To everyone’s relief – especially given that, at the end of the meeting that had cleared the air between the bands, Justin had impulsively hugged Kevin, in a positive orgy of forgiveness, and ever since, Kevin had been muttering, ‘The hell did he get that tall’ – to everyone’s relief, Kris, like LA, had joined them. Better still, they were caught up in the preparations for their Around-the-World-in-Eighty-Singles launch for Black & Blue, so there was less time for them all to brood. Nick and Howie were ‘taking it slow,’ intent on repairing their relationship from the ground up, and were progressing, albeit slowly and, on Nick’s part, with sundry missteps; and Brian was in regular communication with their suddenly supportive friends, especially Chris and the private, real Jamesanjosh™ – even if, for marketing reasons, the managements of the two groups tried, pointlessly and unsuccessfully, to discourage those contacts.

It was to LA, though, as was natural, that Brian unburdened himself. ‘Darlin’?’

‘I’m listening, o singing munchkin.’

‘Great, I’m married to a female Chris Kirkpatrick. Is it too late to seek an annulment?’

‘It is unless you want to tell the whole world we’ve never consummated the marriage. Which, in addition to being a lie, would –’

‘Would make me part of Leno’s and Letterman’s monologues ever’ night for the next decade. I’ll pass.’

‘Oooh, smart munchkin. Seriously, though, babe. What is it? AJ?’

‘Partly. And Frack.’

‘Maybe this whirlwind tour will help. Nick will have to spend even more time with D this way. He can’t sneak out with Alexander and “par-tay” when it’s decision time or a topic comes up he doesn’t want to deal with.’

‘They are making progress, though, hon.’

‘I know they are. But they’d make more if Nick would face things head on. Right now, this is all a tribute to Howard’s patience, more’n anything.

‘Besides. Whatever happens with their relationship, sugar, the risk right now is that Nick’s headed down AJ’s road. That needs to stop.’

‘I know it does. But Nick has D, and I have faith in D’s being able to stabilize Nicky, long as we keep Nick away from The Bitch Mother. AJ’s in freefall.’

‘Well, this hundred-hour stunt should help. Either he’ll get away from the pattern, or. Well.’

‘He’ll finally hit bottom to where he admits and sees he needs help?’

‘May be what it takes.’

It was a hot summer night, sticky and clinging. Nick and Howie’s relationship had been repaired to an extent; they were together, and Nick wasn’t straying as far as that went. But they had reached a plateau in their progress, and things were still less than wholly satisfactory. And Nick was ‘partying’ pretty hard: as D more honestly put it (and this by no means decreased the tension), Nick was bingeing, especially whenever Aaron’s career forced Nick into contact with Jane. Unfortunately, too, as the public would find out in January and in March of the next year, Nick could be a surly and combative drunk.

AJ, of course, was as volatile as nitroglycerine in a Waring blender, even on the rare and fugitive occasions when he was sober. His free-fall had accelerated beyond description with the death of his beloved grandmother.

It was typical of the Fates that the two should end up in the same dive that night. The bodyguards had become used to being alert for possible altercations with staff, patrons, police, bouncers, even the bodyguards themselves. Internecine warfare, however, was new.

There was never any agreement on what exactly happened, or even what caused it. The whole thing blindsided security, and neither AJ nor Nick was in a condition to note and remember, afterwards, how the fracas started, or why.

There was simply a half-minute’s worth of raised voices as the guards turned their attention to their charges rather than the perimeter they’d established. It was too late by then: there was a quick flurry of action, a throttled bellow from Nick, and AJ turning white as a hospital bedsheet. After that, there was no time to worry about any sequence of events: the tasks were to get AJ back to the hotel and Nick and his broken wrist to a discreet doctor.

The next morning was bathed in a cruel glare from the windows: Kevin, grimly, had thrown the curtains back ‘to get some damn light in here. I’m about sick of this darkness we’re all stumbling around in.’

Nick was seated in the corner, his breakfast untouched, his face turned resolutely to the wall, not speaking even to Howie, his good hand annoyingly flipping and rattling his plastic pill bottle with his painkillers in it.

‘Can the mariachi,’ Kevin snapped. Nick ignored him.

That was when AJ sidled in. He winced, at them and at the light, and lowered his head. No one said anything. After a long moment, he looked back up at them all. With a gesture of sudden savagery, he ripped his shades off and hurled them against a wall, not flinching even when they shattered. He squared his shoulders and looked them each in the eye, successively, his own glance as raw and naked as an undressed wound.

‘Help,’ he said, simply.

Twenty minutes after that, no one was left in the common area of the suites except Brian and Howie. Kevin, as soon as AJ had spoken, had moved to grab AJ in a hug that seemed to be trying to make up for several years, a hug that revealed just how tentative Kevin’s hugs had imperceptibly become, little by little, over the past few months. Kevin had whispered briefly to AJ, then vanished to make some phone calls. Nick had been likewise galvanized, rushing over to AJ and kissing him thoroughly on the receding hairline, before grabbing Howie with his good hand and drawing him close for a real kiss. Brian and Howie had also hugged AJ and told him how proud they were of him, then sent him off with Nick, who was blinking away tears, to go sit quietly with Kevin. Those three needed each other just then, Bri and D felt.

Now only Brian and Howie were left, with the last of the breakfast spread. ‘You never lost faith in him,’ Howie observed, passing his Southern friend the last biscuit.

‘Now that’s generosity,’ Brian said, accepting the biscuit gratefully. ‘There’re some migas left for you; they didn’t have that tortilla omelet thing you like.

‘And. No. I never did lose faith. I dunno as how it was faith in Alex, exactly. It was faith that for him, for Nick, for all of us, that sooner or later all things work together for good.’

‘Maybe the shock will do Nicky some good. But I think … I think he’ll have to get a little closer to rock-bottom before he gets straightened out.’

‘That well could be. But he will get squared away. You know that.’

‘I do. I do know it. I just sometimes need to renew my belief.’

‘Your belief in?’

‘In believing. You help with that, a lot.’

‘Couldn’t keep on keepin’ on without you, D. You’re a rock, and I count on you a lot when my gauge is tapping “empty.”’

‘Thanks.’

‘Back at you, D. Grathiath,’ Brian grinned, using the Castilian pronunciation, Castilian lisp and all.

Howie just shook his head. ‘Peninsulare snob. Love you anyway, ’mano.’

‘Then stop hoggin’ the coffee, brother.’

END