Gaudeamus Igitur: Boys Will Be Boys

by

Ian McDuff

For the BSB SongFic Challenge. (As usual, I’m finding a way to insist that I’m not writing songfic, merely, er, writing, well, songfic. Only not. Anyway, the assignments were songs from the Boys’s eponymous CD, and I seized upon “Boys Will Be Boys” because I’m snarky that way. The lyrics – God help us: they must wince in embarrassment every time they remember them – are appended below. On second thought, no, they’re not. I can’t stand to do it. You’re a glutton for punishment, look ’em up yourself. To make up for that, I have some much better lyrics as an epigraph. I even translated.)

Gaudeamus igitur,
Iuvenes dum sumus;
Post iucundam iuventutem,
Post molestam senectutem
Nos habebit humus,
Nos habebit humus.

Pereat tristitia,
Pereant osores,
Pereat diabolus….

Let sadness perish!
Let haters perish!
Let the devil perish!

They had learned, by now, to make times and spaces and places, small protected bubbles, for themselves as a couple, even if just for a weekend, and the thing both most liked about being rich international popstars – even if they did have to keep suing people to get their long-delayed royalties: fortunately, one of them had had the sense early on to invest his capital, and if they never saw another royalty they, at least, would be wealthy men – but the best thing about being rich was being able to fly halfway around the world for a long weekend.

Through the frosty window panes, the Stephansdom carved a complicated pattern against the deep, cold sky. Their ears were still ringing, their hearts thumping, their blood waltzing to the strains of the Radetzky March, as if they were still in the Goldener Saal at the Musikverein. (Short of being adopted by an elderly princess, or at least an extremely rich and old-money gräfin, with ancestral tickets to the Neujahrskonzert, not all the money and the pop fame in the world can swing two seats at the world’s most famous New Year’s concert. Someday, they’d have to ask the Bass how he’d managed to get these for them as his and Chasez’s Christmas present to them. Knowing Bass, it probably involved networking a horsy acquaintance from the Spanish Riding School, one elderly British Admiral, Second World War vintage, three international tycoons, somebody at Merchant-Ivory, and the US Ambassador to Austria.)

From the street below a few vagrant strains of Strauss – elder and younger – drifted up, even now.

There was a fire in the grate, there was brandy for the one and hot chocolate for the other, there was a comfortable pile of pillows on the floor before the hearth, and the unruly blond head, sleepy now, content, was nestled against the sleek dark poll as the firelight flickered.

‘Remember when you came out to all of us as a group?’

There was brief snort. ‘ ’M not likely to forget. Why?’

‘Oh, hearing so much German just reminded me of you, growing up on the road.’

‘And then dropping the bomb on you guys stateside. Not only, “I’m gay,” but the whole “I’m gay and I’ve had a thing for Mistah Kevin Richardson since I figured out what my dick was for.” Maybe you had the first part figured, but everybody’s eyes bugged out over the second.’

Germany. Cold, sleeting, no heat in the ratty rooms Germany. See Germany on a dollar a day, if Lou remembered to give you the dollar. Kevin groaned.

‘Easy on the blood pressure,’ Howie said. Howie was calmly reading the newspaper. The Bayerische Rundschau. He had a ten-pound Serious Dictionary beside him just in case, but so far, he wasn’t resorting to it much. There was something off-kilter, Kevin privately thought, about the way in which Howie claimed to have struggled so much with Spanish, when he was obviously capable of learning German in a few weeks. The really obnoxious part was that Howie also read the Handelsblatt with apparent ease: Kevin had enough trouble with the finance pages in English. Actually, the really obnoxious part was that – it was Howie. You couldn’t resent or be jealous of Sweet D even when you wanted to. That was pretty damned annoying, sometimes: nobody should be that damned lovable, especially when that somebody was – unintentionally (and you just knew he’d be mortified if you ever let on) – making you feel like a complete tool.

Of course, right at the moment, Kevin couldn’t even handle the International Herald-Tribune.

‘They need to grow up,’ he said.

Howie put his paper down. ‘No, they don’t. They deserve to be kids.’ People already conceived of Howie as a mediator, but Kevin, privately, thought that was – not wrong, perhaps: inadequate. He was more an arbitrator, a judge, even, and what made what Howie said worth listening to was that he always gave it to you straight. ‘If I’d ever have thought that doing this would screw Nick – or Alex – or, now that we have him, Bri – out of being a kid and getting to grow up on their own pace, I would never have started it. And if it does mean that, I can pull the plug on it.’ Howie never threw his weight around, but when it came right down to it, nobody long forgot that this was Howie’s baby.

‘You couldn’t. They wouldn’t let you, D: they want this now, and they’re willing to give up whatever fantasy teenaged life of sock-hops and malt shops you have this abidin’ faith in, to get it.’

‘I’m not romanticizing growing up in Orlando, Kev. It has its mean streets. But tell me this. If they’re too immature for you to stand, and they need to grow up, how is it they’re mature enough to decide what they want?’

‘You got the Saran Wrap, Agent Frack?’

‘Check. Tape, Agent Frick?’

‘Check. Is the coast clear, Agent Boner?’

‘Gimme a damn break. “Agent Boner.” Cute. Yeah, he’s in talking to D. You want to go cover his pisser up with plastic wrap, whatever. Just leave me outta it. What you two do to get their attention….’

‘Hey! We’re just, um, we don’t have time for this right now, but. No.’

‘Shhhyeahright. If either of ’em wore pigtails, you’d sit behind them and dip ’em in the inkwell on your desk. I just wish I knew which of you had which crush on which of them.’

Nick stood up from his ‘secret agent skulking crouch,’ dropping the plastic wrap, flushed, eyes blazing, his voice rising to an unfortunate gosling squeak. ‘You take that back right now, Alex-ander! You –’

‘Y’know, that’s the same shade you turn when you get too close to Kev –’

‘Guys! Hey now, y’all, come on! Knock it off!’ Brian was holding Nick back. ‘We’re gonna get in trouble!’

‘They just – they have to get real. Get serious.’

‘They’re more than serious enough when it comes to the job at hand. You and I can go out and blow off steam at clubs, pick up, even. They can’t.’

Kevin didn’t really want to be calmed down by sheer logic and loving indulgence: he’d wanted to vent and maybe throw something and have a good cuss. But he was clay in Howie’s hands when it came to being talked down from whatever high dudgeon he managed to achieve from time to time (and if he was going to keep mixing metaphors like that, maybe he had better leave the songwriting to the professionals. Although, if the stuff they were singing these days was an example of professional songwriting, maybe not, come to think of it).

‘Kevin? Your wandering attention, please?’

Kevin smiled. Damn Howie: he hadn’t wanted to smile.

‘Kev. Look. One obsessive is enough, okay? You don’t really want them to become Kevin clones. You just want some peace and quiet. I understand that. You know how I cherish my peace and my alone time. But. Take Brian.’

‘Oh, I am especially disappointed in Brian.’

‘No you’re not. You just think you have to pretend to be so you can be “daddy.” But deep down, when you see him carryin’ on like he doesn’t have a care in the world, despite all that he’s been through with his heart since he was a kid, you get all glowy.’

That was another annoying thing about D, his perceptiveness. On the other hand, Kevin reflected, if AJ had been Howie’s age and vice versa, if AJ (or Nick, God help us all, or Bri, even) had been the other adult he had to work worth … well, he’d be in a straitjacket by now, with grim Teutonic psych-ward nurses barking orders at him.

‘You took the boy away from Sunday School and the church choir and dropped him in the fleshpots of Europe, Kevin. He must feel like a 1918 doughboy on leave in Paris. As long as his reaction involves shaving cream and Gummi worms and pails of water over doorways instead of three call girls, a jeroboam of Veuve Clicquot, and a Greek contortionist, you’re ahead of the game, here.’

‘We can’t afford shaving cream. Not when they steal mine and use it all creating an ambush involving three yards of yarn, the dresser in AJ’s and Bri’s room, an alarm clock, and the whistle they stole from the doorman at the hotel we can’t afford to stay in.’

Howie snickered. ‘Actually, that one was pretty inspired.’

‘I don’t think,’ Kevin said, stiffly, very much on his dignity, ‘it was particularly helpful to us when their “trap” ended up catching Lou on one of his flying visits and an A&R rep from BMG.’

AJ had ended up by stomping out, still sneering at Nick-ay’s immaturity and still snide about his “crush.” This time around, fortunately, Nick was rooming with Brian (something that always made Kevin’s veins stand out and often caused him to develop a tic in his left eyelid, just contemplating the potential for disaster). At least it meant Brian could talk to Nick privately.

‘I’m not,’ Nick protested, his voice clotted with tears and sniffles.

‘Fine, that’s fine. Honest. All I’m sayin’ is, I’m your brother, I love you – not that way, but – and it wouldn’t matter to me either way. Okay?’

‘We could be the Vienna Boy’s Choir with the drawing capacity of the Stones, and it wouldn’t satisfy Lou. And the Germans at the record company expect Americans to be light-hearted, immature barbarians. Now. What’s really gotten up your ass?’

‘Why? Why do they pull this shit?’

‘Boys will be boys, Kev. I can only imagine what you were like at that age.’

‘But. But.’

‘Stop sputtering, you remind me of that godawful car I had in college.’

‘Okay, why do they pull this shit on us?’

‘You, mostly. Being the Sweet One has its advantages. They do it because they can. Because you react. Because you’ve set yourself up as the authority figure, and that’s who healthy kids that age rebel against.’

‘I didn’t want to have to be the authority figure!’

‘Oh, stop bellowing, Kev, it’s cute but it’ll strain that bass-baritone that makes the little girls tingle in places they didn’t know could tingle yet.’

‘The –’

‘And you didn’t have to become the authority figure, you chose to, because you were new and you were looking for a role so you didn’t feel like a walk-on and you had no clue as to how things could be run with a loose rein and how these kids could be manœuvered into things without catching on instead of being forced and frog-marched, which is what I was doing.’

‘I. You were. I didn’t mean. Fuck.’

‘It’s all right. I was tired of it already and you so desperately needed to feel useful, so I let you.’

‘Fuck.’

‘Apology accepted but unnecessary.’

Kevin sighed, like a tired horse. ‘Damn.’

‘Uh hunh.’

‘So I made myself a target.’

‘Sorta, yeah. But. Nicky especially. He wants attention. This gets him attention. Not the best sort of attention, but he’ll take what he can get.’

‘Um. About that.’

‘Yes?’

‘He’s. He gets. Boy’s all willowy and flailin’ about and.’

‘Don’t look at me. Gaydar is a myth.’

‘D –’

‘I doubt he knows yet. I sure don’t. But if that’s the case, and if, even if that is the case, that’s also the reason he wants attention from you, which, fine, you’re sex on wheels, but even if he is gay or bi or questioning it’s not automatic that that’s why he pesters your broodingly handsome ass – but if that’s all the case, gut it up. It’ll pass.’

‘He’s too young even to be thinking about –’

‘He’s too young to be acting on it. Certainly with anyone our age, and I’d be squicked even if he were playing doctor behind the garage with, say, that Mouse kid his age that Kirkpatrick’s signed up. But. He’s certainly not too young to be thinking. What sort of teenaged horndog were you?’

‘Point taken. But. Even if he were twenty, I’m not, I, I couldn’t reciprocate any feelings he might have. I don’t want the kid hurt.’

‘I thought you wanted him to grow up. Hate to be the one to break the news, but that’s usually part of the process.’ Howie never talked about his own private life, not on this score: this was the most specific he’d ever gotten.

‘Was it? For you? With, like, a first crush that didn’t pan out?’

Howie smiled to show he wasn’t actually angry at the intrusion, then raised the German paper as a barrier. ‘Can’t help with the shaving cream problem, but we do have a show coming up. You’d better go wax that chest of yours that Lou wants you to show off to all the girls and any chickenhawks in the audience.’

‘Like you should talk, Mr If I Don’t Have My Nair They Call Me Brillo Boy.’ Kevin was smart enough to recognize a ‘No Trespassing’ sign when he walked slap-dab into it.

Germany again, and Nick was 17 now. Seventeen, and still trying to get Kevin’s attention by acting up, and acting out. Seventeen, still underweight, still subject to stage fright, still looking like a startled fawn when he had a solo to do, still willowy. Still hating the fragility he projected, still hating the timbre of his voice. Still desperately afraid and painfully self-loathing. Still despising what he saw, and detested, as his ‘nelly’ aspects: the giddiness, the tenor voice, the very patterns he had tried and failed to eradicate in his speech. Still unable to control his blushes and the pounding of his heart and the weakness of his knees when he got the attention – even the furious attention – from Kevin that he so rashly sought, so abjectly craved.

They wanted him to wear something flowy – they’d used a ‘di-’ word. Dif-, diafn-, something. Diaphanous, maybe? Whatever – for his solo, for “Heaven In Your Eyes.” No way. Not with AJ out there in a shirt that was spray-painted on, doing “Brick House.” Damn sure not with Kevin going out with no shirt at all, and doing the shimmy and the pelvic liquefaction whilst thundering out “Nobody But You,” all growly and dominantly male. White shirt? Fine. But he was damn well wearing jeans. Something constraining. Something where he might have some hope of not showing-hard.

His defenses were pretty meager these days.

‘You know, you were right, back in the day.’

‘No doubt,’ Howie smiled. ‘About what in particular?’

‘And they call you “sweet,”’ Kevin snorted. ‘Ego much? You were right about Nick. And not growing up. The old one was a pain in the ass, but this new Nick, the one who can’t seem to express himself except by taking a swing at people, even though he’s so, so –’

‘Such a queen?’ Howie was a little stern with Kevin this time.

Kevin had the grace to blush. ‘Look, we still don’t know his sexuality, and I think we still all don’t care. That won’t make us love him any the less. Punching everyone in sight? That might. But not being gay, if he is. But even if he’s straight, he’s just naturally sort of, well, not a defensive lineman, okay?’

‘True. Though he’d be even more of a disaster if he were, right now, and if he grows to fit those feet, if he fills out the way he’s shot up in height, he will be one. At least right now he can be physically wrestled down, in an emergency.’

‘Well, if he wanted my attention, he’s gotten it. I can’t imagine either of us is enjoying it worth a damn.’

‘He gets just as much of mine, Kev. Maybe more: I’m the one patching things up after both of you have stormed off to your tents, like Achilles in a sulk. There’s certainly one thing I’ve paid more attention to than you seem to have – no, no, I’m not criticizing. I have … an advantage. Kev, whether he’s admitted it to himself or not, he’s at least bi. Which has to be tying him in knots, and is probably, almost certainly, why he’s lashing out. But, yeah. At least bi.’

‘He. You’re sure?’

‘Look, at that age – heck, at ours, and we’re not exactly kids anymore –’

‘Watch it, pal.’

‘– Everyone, um, takes matters in hand from time to time. I mean, boys will be boys….’

‘Yeah, but for him that time is always. Sure, we’ve all quietly drained a pipe on the bus, but, damn. He’s incessant.’

‘He’s incessant because it’s the bus. Or the van. Or the changing rooms. Probably not nearly as much in his own room. Don’t you get it?’

‘No.’

Howie sighed. ‘Give the kid a deep breath of male pheromones and he’s hard as a rock and hot as a bitch in cycle. Put him in an all-male environment and he could cut diamonds with it, he’s so hard. What does that tell you?’

‘Oh, shit.’

They were always telling him it was too soon for this that and the other, he was too young for X, Y, and Z. ‘Wait,’ they told him. It was always ‘wait.’ And they’d push him away.

He shouldn’t be dwelling on these things in the middle of a show. Not with his stupid, stupid solo coming up. But with AJ showing everyone how to be totally lewd without even taking off his hat, and with Brian, even Brian, God, being all earnest and making you want to take him home…. And Kev. Someone big enough to protect him, enfold him. Someone so male. With a real man’s voice, not his own dumb stupid tenor thing. And that body. Legs that would. And the chest. And.

The thing was, it was a relief that they’d push him away about this too if he ever said anything, that they’d tell him it was too soon and he was too young if he ever tried to make a play. Because. He felt like shit for obj-, obtec-, objectifying Kevin. And he knew Kevin. He wasn’t, he suddenly realized, really in love with Kevin. Not Kevin. They’d never work and he wouldn’t really, actually want them to. It was what Kevin represented. What he wanted was a guy kind of like Kevin. A lover who could be a teacher and a mentor and a protector, but who wouldn’t talk down to him or get all impatient. And yeah, okay, a body that would stop traffic would be nice, too. It was nice to be a little in lust with Kev: it made for a fantasy, a nice safe place in your mind you could retreat into when you needed to; but you wouldn’t want to actually put it into practice. In fact, the best part of the Kevin thing was that it was safely unattainable. He realized, with a sudden shock, that what he had thought he’d felt for Kevin all this time was really no different than what the screaming fans out there felt for one or another or all of them.

Standing backstage in a German venue, waiting for his solo, Nick had suddenly grown up by a whole, quantum stage.

Okay. D was going on now. He’d be next. Time to center, and focus, and deal with these new realizations later. He had a show to do.

Idly, he looked out to the stage as Howie started the first chorus of “Betcha By Golly Wow.” Looked idly out, and, again suddenly, completed an entire revolution in his growing up, as his mouth dried up and his breath came shallow. Howie was all but out of his shirt now, and no teeny in the pit seats could possibly be as dumbstruck as Nick was now.

A mentor? Oh, always.

A protector? For most of his life, it had been Howie. The one constant, the anchor, the rock.

An older, more mature man to balance him out? Central Casting hit the mark with that one.

Always tender? Never condescending? Eternally patient? Endlessly loving? Duh.

Body that would stop traffic? Whimper.

Oh shit. This was definitely an ‘oh, shit’ moment. Because with Howie, it might not be safely unattainable in a year or so. It might not be a comforting Impossible Dream, but might instead easily be dangerous reality, the minute he turned eighteen, with Howie.

And all this time he’d thought he was vying for Kevin’s attention, whose had he been getting in full measure? Who had been the one who cleaned up the messes and glued them all back together? God, he’d used Kev, and the process of annoying Kev, to get Howie’s attention all this time, and, dumb him, he’d been too stupid to see it. (Betcha by golly that Howie’d seen it, though. And never said a word.)

Oh, shit. Hurriedly, he buried this new revelation and resolved to keep concentrating on Kevin, to keep pretending that the safely-unavailable Kevin was who he was really interested in. Showtime now. Showtime now, anyway.

The solo that night was a case study in nerves conquered by willpower.

‘Oh, yes,’ Nick said, as the fire crackled and Howie cradled him in the small hours of a Vienna New Year’s Day. ‘I remember the hell out of that.’

Howie kissed his temple, then nibbled gently on his earlobe. ‘And, amante?’

‘It was you, though, always. It was always you, all along.’