The Creatures of Prometheus
by Ian McDuff
(website :: livejournal)

Sequel to Scandalicious.

"He's having an existential crisis," (James) Lance Bass explained.

JC nodded, as if this were something that happened every day. Perhaps, Nick thought, it did. To, like, other people. But not to him. And it wasn't now, either. Happening, that was. He never claimed to be the smart one, and when he saw some of the contortions the smart ones went through, he was just as well pleased not to be. Besides. Howie had enough brains for both of them. Enough for all of them, really. Kev had once snapped to an interviewer, "We have a brain," and Aidge, and the Bass, and Chris, and Bri, even, had never stopped riding him about that: one brain amongst all five of them in Backstreet. "A brain," the Bassman had snorted, teasing. "I reckon as how Howie is the official keeper for it." And Aidge would sometimes sidle up to Kev before an Event and ask, "Dad, can I borrow the brain?" And--but he was rambling, now. Point was. Point was, he wasn't having an existential crisis. It was just... Well.

"What is it, man?' C was all concern.

"I. I just don't seem to know anymore who we are. Who I am."

"That would definitely be an existential crisis," the Bass said, crisply. "Question is, what brought this-all on? And why--I mean, we're here for you, you know that, but, is there a reason you can't talk to Howie about this? Y'all ain't having problems again, I hope."

"Nnnnno. Not like that. It's just. We tried to go back into the studio, and. Lookit, I know part of it, part of why we weren't ready was, was that Howard and I weren't ready yet, as a couple. We still had--have--things to work out and that was not gonna help. But. And, yeah, other reasons. But, still, it's, I don't know how to be me without them, I could do it a while on the first CD, it was fun, it was something new, and Howie and I were okay with each other. But now. Y'know."

JC nodded, so vehemently as to set the ringlets of his mane flying. "Dude. You're not sure that things will ever get back together, or that, if they do, things will ever be the same again. And when the excitement of 'the New' was there the first time around, that didn't--you didn't think about it as much, and you and D were good, so you didn't worry as much. Even when, like, you did think about this. Because, yeah, we get it, man: much as it would hurt, you could handle Backstreet blowing up forever as long as you and Howie were okay together. Understood."

"Um. Yeah, pretty much. And."

"And you done convinced your fool self as how your fuckup, that D's long since forgiven you for, 's somehow responsible for deferring the whole Backstreet schedule," Lance said, dryly, with his "what fools these mortals be' tone firmly in place. "You done singlehandedly driven Howard to cuttin' hisself a solo CD of his own, and sent Bri back to the church-house to do him a Gospel release, and all by your lonesome made it to wheres Alex-ander is a-fixin' to up and prove that no matter how hard you sing your nuts off--"

Nick blushed, ducked his head, and tried not to grin sheepishly.

"--He can out-rock you any day th' week, 'Junior.' Now, the fact that Brian ain't going more'n five feet from Bay until the boy's damn near in college, that Kevin's playin' the West End of London in 'Chicago,' that this is when the iron's hot for D and Aidge, that ain't got nothing to do with nothing, right? It's all shakin' out thisaway on account of you and D hit a bump in the road." Lance snorted. "Fact that this here off-again-on-again bidness about whether or not y'all're over and done with is creatin' more buzz than anything since AJ's rehab?"

Nick started to protest, but gave up. When Lance was being the Dispassionate Businessman, Calculating the Angles, he bulldozed past such scruples; and the harder he was down-homing it, the more of a Cynical Pin-Stripe-Souled Bastard he was being.

"Fact that this chance to try the waters on his own is something as Alex needs right now? Fact that y'all're all reinventing yourselves to where when y'all do get back to it as a group, y'all got cred y'all ain't never had to now, and whole new fan bases? Fact that gettin' attention thisaway beats hell out of having to detail your sex lives and pose in rubber fetish gear the way Brit is? Fact that playin' 'now y' see us, now y' don't' with the label's exactly what strategy Kevin--and y'all's lawyers--wants to play? Oh, no. You bet your sweet, widely-idolized Ghetto-Booty Carter Ass ain't none of them factors is involved. No sir, it's all because Nicky and D done had a lover's quarrel. Sheeeeeyit, Nick; blow smoke up some other poor sumbitch's ass."

They were sprawled together in a careless tangle. It would have given their critics a case of the vapors. It would have given their mothers a good laugh. It would have given their decorator, Bri's and LA's, hives.

Sprawling. Who would credit it? Weren't they supposed to be the uptight ones, as if the major aim and end of religion were not joy and a life more abundant, but rather joylessness, lack of humor, and a smoldering suspicion that some reprobate, somewhere, was (anathema! Anathema!) having fun? And sprawling amidst their Showpiece Lovely Home--as the sort of people who refer to houses as "homes" would put it, parroting the semantics of commercial real estate sellers. Sprawling with no regard to the Design Concept: whatever was the world coming to?

Sprawling, and listening--O the horror--to Randy Newman's sly, complex ironies that at once comprehended the truths and virtues of, and castigated and condemned the pietistic wrongs and ancient crimes of, the South--and of the hypocrite North, as well.

Yet there they were, shockingly casual, incredibly unaffected, unstereotypically human. Baylee was sleeping peacefully, a warmth-radiant lump, sleeping and smiling in Howie's arms; Howie was himself drowsing, just awake enough for desultory conversation, snuggled into Bri's half-embrace as in the olden times; and Bri, his own eyes heavy, was curled into Miz LA, his gilt poll nestled firmly in her lap as she smiled at her boys and stifled a yawn.

"If they could see us now," she agreed, Howie having delicately alluded to the way in which they were defying every fannish preconception. "I still remember the snarls about the wedding, and my hair."

Brian snorted, lazily. "C'n still quote some of that plumb-nastiness,' he drawled. "I remember one gal on the 'Net--I hope we paid combat pay to whoever it was got the job of combing the press that month to monitor the fans-- rantin' on about how it cost such-and-so f'r your 'fairytale dress, and four hours spent on your fairytale hair,' as if you were some combination of Marie Antoinette, Lady Macbeth--"

"Brian Thomas Littrell, you know better than to mention Hillary Clinton in this house--"

"Pfft. When all along, you wanted a less busy weddin', you and me both, but."

"But between the label, management, my Mama, your Mama, and your aunt..."

"Long as they had fun, hon, you to be their vicarious dress-up doll. And of course, there's the crowd as thinks we spend all our days readin' the Good Book--the Old Testament at that, and huntin' down the heathen, and prayin' for the destruction of NPR and a dictatorship of the godly, run by John Ashcroft."

"Not to mention the restoration of the Confederacy."

"Yeehaw."

"As opposed to listening to one of your four or five Best Gay Friends talk about his relationship issues," Howie smiled.

"Good Heavens," LA mock-squealed. "Unclean! Unclean! A capital-'S' Sinner! Brian, honey, you run get the stake and I'll fetch the lighter-fluid and some kindlin'."

"Naw," Brian laughed, "we'd have to get all dressed up for a public burnin'... and I cain't find my sheet since you did the laundry."

"You guys scared the shit outta me," Nick said, quietly. It was apparent that the past tense he employed wasn't altogether accurate. "It's gonna take getting used to, you two calling each other by your right names, and it not meaning that you guys're on the outs or nothin'."

Lance smiled, a little ruefully. "Folks grow up, Nick. Ain't but a few couples keep the same pet names for each other all their lives long."

"There's a really funny mock advice column about that by James Thurber from back in the Fifties," JC mused. "About how people get old and dignified and stop snookums-ing each other. Something about, 'as long as he doesn't call you "Madge" when your name is "Mabel," ladies, you're ahead of the game.'"

"But you guys aren't old. Not like Kevin or Chris."

"Nor dignified, come to that," Lance said. "Not that Chris or Kev is."

"Nick." JC was very earnest. "We wouldn't. I mean. Okay, there aren't a lot of people we'd talk about this with. But you and Howie mean a lot to us. I think you deserve the whole story."

"Look, if it's personal--"

"Hell, Carter, you to know we're even together, I'd say, 's right personal. What Joshy and I--damn it, now you got me goin'--what JC and I always hope is to be able to he'p you and D learn from some of our mistakes and hard times."

"Like Father de Guzaman said last Sunday, evil always gets the good lines in fiction and the films, but it's virtue that's exciting. Because, usted me entiende, it is so much more challenging."

"You think we've really given Cuz all the best lines, D?"

LA thwapped Brian's ear. "Howie, sweetie. It's easier to play evil, or write evil, not because goodness is boring, but because we can all easily imagine ourselves worse than we are. Few of us are good enough that we can imagine virtue."

"That's why so many of our songs are so chickensh--um, chickenpoot. We can say we'll be better to the poor little gal than the bum she's with, but--white knights we don't do so well. Adultery by cell phone? That we can do."

"I hate that song."

"Hey, all you had to do was turn into a stalker fan-girl. I got my as--my butt pelted with BBs. Suckers stung, too."

"Given how everything y'all sing is either stalkerish, would-be seductive--"

"'Would-be' seductive? Hon!"

"Oh, honestly, Brian, it's like the old SNL sketches with Steve Martin and that other feller, the East European dimwits looking for American girls with 'beeeg Amayrican breasts.' It's always the same lines. Save y'all from the men you've become, keep y'all from goin' crazy, get down with y'all: land's sakes, hon, those are the cheesiest lines ever used outside of a dive bar five minutes before closing after a night of strikin' out. So: stalkerish, failed seductive, or just plain skeevy."

"You mean, like, 'wishin' I could thank you in a, heh, different way,' LA?" Howie was at his most dangerous when he was all wide-eyed and innocent. Bri and LA both shuddered.

"Okay," Brian said. "We are skeevy."

"No, hon, but the lyrics are. Because it's easier to write that sort of thing than it is to write a good ode to marriage and domestic life. I mean, unless you're James Taylor or Irving Berlin or somebody. It's the same with acting: it's easy to exaggerate one's worst impulses, and we all have so few good ones: that's why being the villain is the plum role."

"Unless it involves turning into a girl halfway through the video." Howie held few grudges in this life: "The Call" was amongst them, just in back of "everything Jane Carter had ever done."

"Now, Howie." Miz LA pinned him with a look. "Mostly you get pigeonholed as the sweet one, and you know it. And you are sweet, but. Good Lord, Howard, it's what we were talking about earlier. People just assume that Kev's a junkyard dog, because he looks the part."

"It's the eyebrows," Bri said, sagely. "And the height, mutant booger that he is."

"And I'm the blonde ice-princess and Brian's the Psalm-singing Puritan and so on. When we all know that Kev's a marshmallow beneath that...hard-candy shell."

Howie batted his eyes and went for the gay joke, camping it up. "Oh, Mary, I wouldn't know, he'th never melted in my mouth or in my handth."

LA just smiled and shook her head as Brian punched Howie's bicep. "The point is... Nicky, now. Now, what you have, you lucky dog, is a big golden bundle of boy."

Howie smiled, but Brian keeked an eyebrow at his wife. "A mite less enthusiasm, if you don't mind, there, missus."

"Pshaw. Everyone in this room except Bay can admit the boy is hot." Brian made a muffled sound of protest, but his heart wasn't in it. "But, Howard, darlin'. You brought that out in him, the good, because while you see the bad in people you refuse to countenance it, and you loved Nicky into being his best, into growing into the better angels of his nature--and Lord, my granny'd have a fit if I ever quoted Mr Lincoln to anybody else. Nick, as you know better than most, went through an awful grim phase for a while, hauling off and hittin' folks and all, and getting awful close to the line Aidge blundered right on across. I can think of someone else who did the same sort of thing, not precisely, but not unlike--and I don't mean AJ--and, no matter that he's better some now, and no matter that, as the world judges, he may be thought by most to have outpaced Nick, he's still not anywhere nigh where Nick is at as a person, not yet. And the reason is, the reason is that Justin, God love him, didn't, doesn't, have anyone in his life to compare with Nick's having you."

"God redeems," Brian added, "but He works through instruments. And you, Howie, were--are--that instrument in Nick's life, you and your love."

"It was my doing," JC said, quietly. "When I was a Mouse, it didn't matter so much. Being renamed. I mean, stage names are part of the business: there was the time J was, briefly, 'Justin Randall,' and D did that 'Tony Donetti' thing, and. Yeah. But I guess there was always something there, in the back of my brain, man. It's. It's an adoptee thing, I can't really make others understand. Identity and stuff. I mean, look at Lance. Even during the fucking stupidity of 'Lansten,' which was just, you know, idiocy. There was never any question who he was. Big Jim's son, Miz Diane's boy, Stace's brother, and so on, through all the kinfolk and where they were from and. It's like he carried a tiny bit of Mississippi with him all the time, roots and connections and stuff. I remember there was this one time when J asked about a new girl on the staff..."

"Who's the new girl in PR?"

Lance took the question to himself. "Gayle? She's from Arkansas, went to UAB, though, I b'lieve, majored in Communications, nice girl, plays the church organ at that little Presbyterian church in Winter Park when she's home. Got engaged to a feller at college who was from Alabama, but it didn't take, on account of how he was an asshole, best I can tell, cheated on her with one of the gals as was set to be a bridesmaid--"

"Jesus, TMI. I was just asking," Justin said, and stood up. "All I wanted was a name and whether she was single, not her family tree." And he slammed out.

"He didn't ask for her name," Lance observed, with a Southerner's irritation. "He asked who she WAS."

"But for me," JC went on, "it was never that way. And then there was Los Angeles. That's when I really... It was a way of staying sane. All the bad shit that went down, all of that happened to 'JC,' not to me. To the stage name, the stage persona. I...I needed that distance so desperately. To me, 'Josh,' the pre-New-Mouse-Club kid, was real, and safe, none of the stuff that happened, happened to me, to 'Josh,' it all happened to that 'JC' cat that Disney had made. And when. When I finally faced it. I mean, back here, and the group starting, and Lance came along. And I tried to push him away, and. Well, at first, I didn't, I sorta brothered him, because, well, it was kinda like we'd...a-adopted him, y'know?"

JC paused, to steady his voice. "But then. I did a one-eighty, tried to shut him out. It was to protect him, kind of. 'JC' was dirty, soiled, used; 'JC' had seen shit in Los Angeles that Lance should never ever be exposed to..."

"Now, honeybunch. You're leavin' out where I fucked up. Joe had this habit, I guess showin' off, which he don't do much of, really, but this was different, it was a way, I think, of putting Justin in his place and staking the claim, remindin' ever'body as it was Joe who went back the furthest with JC. He would call him 'Josh' once in a while, just to underline that, underline that he'd known C before C'd even got used to his new stage name, what time C was fire-new in town. And I thought that was a sort of in-group thing, I never was worth a damn with them sort of dynamics, and when I felt I was stayin', that I was 'in,' I used it a time or two--until C tore me new one over it."

"Because I was trying so hard to shove you away. I knew if you ever got past my defenses, I was going to fall so hard and so fast there'd never be any hope of my resisting you. And that wasn't fair to you, with me being all dirty and used from the Angeleno days."

Nick opened his mouth, thought better of it, and closed it with a snap.

"Yes, Nick,' Lance said, gently, "we are both of us still dealing with that-all. And it don't make no never-mind, because our love is stronger than any fears. But that is how it came about. When Joshua Scott Chasez finally fessed-up to not hatin' me..."

"When I crumbled like a sand-dollar cookie, you mean, and threw myself at your feet, whimpering. See, Nick, that was when I asked him to call me 'Josh,' sort of a, well, a special thing. A two-of-us thing."

"But now," JC'd said, "now you have the right. Only you, ever. Because. It makes me feel good. It lets me know that you love me, would have loved me if we'd met without the group, would have even if I'd never gotten a break or been on TV or anything. It makes me feel safe, like when I was little and they took me in."

There hadn't been much Lance could say to that. Nor to what Josh had said next, with serene determination and sublime indifference to whether it might be true for Lance, as apparently it hadn't actually been for Josh, that the use of his given name called up faint memories of an angry parent: "And I shall call you James. It will be something just for us." Fortunately, as the newly-re-christened James had later explained to Chris, who worried about just such issues, Daddy was always 'Jim' or 'Big Jim' or 'Mister Jim,' and when Diane was riled with her son she called him by his full set of names, Christian-middle-and-surname. "Good," Chris had said, faintly, "because, um, having a flashback to your mom yelling at you when you're, um, busy..." And Chris had shuddered while James had blushed.

"But here's the thing," Lance said, his gaze locked with Nick's. His voice was insistent, driving home the importance of this lesson that he wanted Nick and Howie to profit by. "There came a time when that distinction started to do more harm'n good. You know that. You were there."

"Well, but, James, when I'm. Out there it's different. JC maybe can lead kinda, some ways, some things. But. Me. Josh. I'm not a leader the way you are, I'm not, all the things you can do, the business--"

"If I'm a leader, neighbor, it's a sure-'nough case of the blind leadin' the blind, I tell you what. And in case you forgot, you let me step in and become the point man for group bidness, all the which you were doin' afore I got there, on account you could see I needed to feel like I wasn't the fifth wheel, even though I was, sure as the dew falls on Dixie."

"I. I'm not arguing with you. You're...I know you wouldn't lie to me, I know that, and if you say that's how it was... I just. I don't remember those things. Inside. Inside, I don't see them, I don't feel them. I don't remember who I was, I don't know who I am..."

"And that--preservin' a habit that had done turned harmful to the man I love--that was something I wa'n't about to abide. So. I don't say as we'll never use our old pet names for one another never no more. But. Somethin' gets harmful, the thing to do is drop it like you had y'se'f a cottonmouth by the tail. That's the measure of carin', Nicky."

"Howie." Miz LA's voice was maternal, if firm and no-nonsense. "It's wonderful that you have loved Nick into becoming a better man, and a grown-up. And I would be the last person in the world to tell you you haven't handled things as well as anyone could have. But by...not just seeing, but always expecting... the best in and of everyone, sometimes. Well."

"Sometimes," Brian chimed in, coming back into the room with a freshly-changed Baylee, "your expectations get a mite overreachin'."

"I'm not sure I understand you," Howie said, cautiously.

Brian paused, picking his words. "Nicky...Nicky is a special case, Howie. Sure, you and Alex done been in the bidness all your lives, right near. But y'all are like C or Joe, if not like Kev or me or the Bassman, y'all had some semblance of normal life. Nicky's like J, he grew up in a fishbowl and backstage. He's never had any of the normal growin'-up experiences that...well, they might've armored him some against all sorts of things. And you know damn good and well that, while I'd never for a minute suggest that Nick's not just as whip-smart as they come, he has some. He has some areas--heck. Leigh, hon?"

"What Bri means is, Howie, because this is something we've talked about: Nicky might not process things the way most people do. If he had ever had a real education, I think he might have been diagnosed as dyslexic. Along with all the other things you've done, just by loving him and trusting him and never making him feel stupid or mocking him, you've done a lot, I think, to help with that. But the way he used to mangle sentences, and still does, sometimes, when he's under stress. It's suggestive. Like Neil Bush and George W. And for Heaven's sake, at least y'all should try to get Aaron and the girls checked, just in case, running in families the way it can, because Lord knows Jane never will, just so long as they're bringing home some bacon."

"I guess what we're saying is, Nick's growin'-up was so alien to everyone else's normalcy, and the way his mind works being a mite off-kilter anyway, you have to factor that in. His reactions to situations are bound to be different than other folks's. And this latest thing. Of course you have the right, each of y'all does, from t'other, to expect fidelity. Knowing fidelity. But Nick...I believe just as much as you do that what happened, happened pretty much without his knowing it was happening. The boundaries of reality have never been the same for Nick as for the rest of us, he's never been allowed to know reality, and his dreams--and nightmares--have always been so vivid, bleedin' over into the light of common day."

"The greatest fear each one of you has is that the other will leave, someday. Both of y'all know that; all of us who know and love y'all know that, too. Howie, dear, you couldn't be the sweet one if you weren't also the strongest, you know that--"

"LA's right, bro, you know that. You have a center. I do too, and...well, you notice that we don't flail around the way Cuz does, or Aidge, or Nicky. So much of their darker sides is just panic. Which is always the way. 'Perfect love casteth out fear.'"

"But if you have one area of insecurity, where you are always at your weakest, it's here, Howie, in your relationship with Nick. It's fine that you think so highly of him, but not when it means you devalue yourself, because in the end that devalues him, too: when you don't trust him to stay through the tough times. That's the point, sweetie."

"Oh, Nicky. Look, hon, if there's anything Lance and I wish we could--wish you would take away from this, it's that...look, dude. Love isn't an emotion, it isn't a phase, it isn't a state you're in. It's...it's a process, a way of living, it's actions."

"It's knowing that you're not complete without th' other 'un."

"And that--that is something that stays, that isn't affected by, like, events. I mean. You're right, it's not that we're all older-and-wiser--"

"They ain't but, what, nine months atween you and me, Nick, anysomehow."

"But we've been together longer than you and D, man, and lived through more shit. We've hurt each other so terribly, sometimes. But. We can't be ourselves except as part of us, not anymore."

"We've survived, Nick. That counts for a right smart of somethin'-or-other, right there. You think it's all been cloudless glory and Valentine's Day?"

"You never cheated," Nick said, trying not to cry.

"Damn nearly did. You name it, we've at least slapped it on the ass as we done run past. I got me a mean streak wider'n the Mississippi at Natchez, and deep as...Kevin's. And a tongue on me that'd cut bread, 's so sharp. I've been more sorts of prick to JC'n I care to detail."

"And I've embarrassed him, all--but betrayed him, gotten fucked up and pulled stunts I hope never see daylight."

"And then there was the...sexual problem."

"Whoa."

"Look, I ain't all high-behind talkin' 'bout this, either, Nick, but you and Howie mean too much to us, us to leave any stone unturned."

JC cut in, then. "Nick. Um. We know you two well enough to know. To've realized. That, um. Well, you cats have, like, some defined roles. Really defined."

Nick was almost as red as Lance got at his best. "Ahhh..." It came out as a squeak. "There's nothing wrong with, I mean. I don't think? The, um. The sorta daddy-thing?"

"No, no. Nothing at all. You two are comfortable with it, that's cool, dude. I meant. I meant, everyone more or less knows that, well, you don't exactly play pitcher very often. Mostly you're, ah, behind the plate."

Nick shut his eyes so as not to have to look at his friends. "I guess we are kinda...vocal sometimes? In close quarters."

"Dude, last man on earth to be throwing rocks, here. What Lance and I are talking about is, there was a time. We both, um."

Lance sighed, and took up the gauntlet, lest they be there all night. "I'll cut to the chase, here. Partly because he was older and more secure, partly because it made him feel secure, safe and stayed, and partly because he knew I caught enough shit in my awkward days anyway, well, when we first started havin' sex, when the relationship became physical, I pretty much exclusively topped. Which, fine, no complaints, but as both y'all know better'n most folks'd, there is something secure, some sense of safety and--I don't mean this in any bad way--possession, in bottomin', and. Fact is, I'm...fond of it myself. What we're getting' at is, there was a time when I thought the only thing that'd save our relationship might be investin' in a double-header, and that ain't a baseball analogy there: we were both in a phase where, for various reasons, we both had a need to--well, catch rather'n pitch. But we worked through that, and we're still here, and JC has turned out to be a damn fine top when the mood strikes him. Which, oddly enough, it does when he's flamin' the brightest."

"Metrosexuality, baby. I'm just trendy."

"No, hon, you're just lucky you can hide behind a timely trend. Trendy you ain't. Bendy, yes, but not trendy."

"And that's another issue we've had to deal with. There was one joke--one--about maybe dragging J in for a threesome so Lance and I could both bottom together. But that's still a sore spot."

"Now, did I ever once say it was rational?"

"I know, babe. I know. Lance...Lance has this sense of guilt, that maybe if it hadn't been for him, I might have hooked up with J, and then, well. You and J are a lot alike, Nick, I mean in never having had even as much of a normal life as the rest of us had at least, y'know, like bits and pieces of. And you both had a tougher time than you shoulda, in your teens. But you were lucky. You had Howie. Because J was, like, the odd man out, he didn't have that, and, yeah, we all feel guilty in various ways that we weren't more help to him, but Lance has this bee in his saddle--oh, whatever, Lance, I can't keep your Southern-fried proverbs straight--anyway, he feels like he somehow 'stole' me from J, which, like, no, I love J, but, no, like sleeping with Tyler, man."

"And even these irrational fears, Nick, we just...it ain't that they don't sting, but what you have to do is survive it, lend each other strength."

"I don't know, Bri. Maybe I'm still too untrusting, perhaps I still haven't integrated my whole self with my beliefs. No se. But. I have a hard time, sometimes, thinking that what even Holy Mother Church denounces, can be a saving grace for Nicky. I could never give him up, but. I feel sometimes...guilty. As if I am harming his soul."

"Well, Howard, just because I ended up singin' skeevy ballads to teenies instead of goin' on to Bible College and the ministry, don't mean I've stopped readin' and thinkin'. You never know: after our run's over, I might yet get myself ordained." His wife's expression showed how unlikely she thought that, but Brian, unlike Howie, didn't see her. "And just because I'm not a Catholic don't mean I haven't read y'all's Fathers and Doctors, or at least the commentaries: Aquinas-for-Idiots sort of thing. And wasn't it him who said that if reason and science impel a conclusion, then dogma has to follow the facts, not t'other way round? Ain't like...if it weren't you, it'd be someone else, you know damn well you didn't 'turn' Nick gay. Any more'n anyone 'turned' you. Y'all are what y'all are, just as you were created to be, no different from the other genes that made him a damn endocrine freak and you a normal-sized human--"

"'Normal,' says the munchkin," LA snorted.

"--Hush up, woman! Your Lord-and-Master is a-talkin'!" At that point, all three of them got so severe a fit of the giggles they had to stop for a while. "I rule this household with a rod of iron," Brian gasped out, still laughing.

"Finally swiped some of JC's Viagra?" LA shot back. That set them off again, to the point Baylee woke up and joined in, burbling and bubbling.

"Anyhow," Brian said, finally. "Y'all were created as you are, and no work of God's hand is flawed. I don't think you're doing Nick harm. Good Lord. His piety's less manufactured now, if less practiced--I remember when it was all pretence, another card to play in the liner notes. And he's--y'all both are--more orthodox than Kev or Aidge. Aidge is still working through to a renewed knowledge of God through his rehab aspects, my own cuz is running around bein' an ex-Pentecostal, Tibetan Buddhist neo-Druid (and you know the Rev Tim is riding his ass, ever' phone-call he gets from home)... Shoot, at least you drag Nick to Mass with you once in a while. I'll take that in a heartbeat."

"Just for Heaven's sake don't let him get all 'spiritual,'" LA added. "It's actually painful, watching Kevin and Justin flounder through the self-help books and the New Age goo."

Justin had been a little off-balance, walking about in some perturbation of mind, ever since his incessant search for self-guidance had led him to pick up a copy of Everything But the Burden. About a chapter and a half into the book, he'd had to put it aside, and was still trying to come to grips with, well, Things.

Unfortunately, a worried Justin was a clingy and rather conversable Justin. A chatty Justin, seeking incessantly for the reassurance of being listened to. "Like being in a band with Coleridge's Ancient Mariner," Chris had muttered. And, "Y'know," Howie had said to his friends-and-rivals, after getting some of the splash-over at an industry party, "maybe the unexamined life is worth living."

"Be easier on the friends-and-colleagues," Chasez had sighed.

"There's a reason," the Bass had added, darkly, "why them Athenians gave the old bastard a hemlock mai-tai."

"But you've stayed together through all this."

"What can I say?" JC smiled. "It's like Willie says. Even at my worst, when I was drifting, and doing all sorts of things to waste my youth and my talent when I could have been writing...well, 'my heroes have always been cowboys. And they still are, it seems.'"

"We've been there for each other. Seven years as any sort of real couple, hell, we are each other. Parts of a whole. And even when the wheels have come off and the bottom dropped out. Tell you what, the space clusterfuck hurt me to where I thought I was fixin' to curl up and die; but that wouldn't be a paper cut compared to how it'd be if we ever lost each other." He looked at JC and grinned. "You want to quote song lyrics at me, you can damn well take what you dish out, hon. 'You are my shining star. Don't you go away.'"

JC ducked his head and blushed, faintly, high on those fabled cheekbones.

"Um," Nick said, tentatively. "That's. That's sorta what scares me. I mean. You two have, I dunno, changed, grown, whatever, but you've done it together, and. We. We're all off reinventing ourselves, all of us are off doing the sorta thing J is doing, and I know you guys all have a sorta concern that he'll never really come back. What. What if, after this time apart, and not just being a part of how things are. What if me an' Howie don't fit anymore?"

"Justin's situation is a hoss of a whole 'nother color, Nick. He has to find hisse'f first. You nor Howie need to, on account y'all both know who y'all are. And who y'all are is--well, you tell me. You're findin' out right about now that you can be Nick Carter, on your own, but that in some way you'll always be Nick Carter of the Backstreet Boys. I don't want to be tacky about this, but even if things were at their worst for y'all as a group, you'd still be part of that past...in the same way that no matter what issues you--and the rest of the civilized world, come to that--have with your Momma, you are Jane's son and always will be. But, honestly, who are you, Nick? You're Howie's Nicky, and he's your Howard, and ain't neither of y'all able to stop bein' that anymore'n you could stop bein' Aaron's brother or he could stop being Hoke's and Paula's boy."

"He's loved and protected and watched out for you since you were thirteen, Nick. And then when you grew up, and came of age, that deepened and became something wholly new and special, a whole different order and sort of love." JC's voice was gentle. "Do you really think all of this has been wasted? Or is so fragile? Love is mightier than that, and wiser, and love and beauty are never wasted. Never."

"Y'all two are stubborn as a couple of cane-mill mules, the which I ain't in much position to say much about. But that came in handy when you and Howard made me and JC here set down and talk through our problems. We're more'n capable of doin' the same to y'all, and you know damn well I could arrange for the both of y'all to be locked away until y'all were ready to come out reconciled, and no one would have a shot at findin' y'all until then. And we'd set in with y'all if I thought it'd help, way y'all did with us, but it wouldn't: y'all are at a stage in y'all's journey, you need to do this standin' on your own hind legs. The problem ain't that y'all don't trust each other enough--"

"--It's that neither of you trusts himself enough, Nicky. And you two need to talk through this. Honestly, no more evasions, no holding back. No more trying to protect each other by telling only half the truth, 'mkay? You're both tougher than you think."

"Howie, you of all people ought to know confession's good for the soul. You folks, you Catholics, even call it the sacrament of reconciliation, right? What it is, you and Frack need to...just talk it all out. And not just the bad. Because he's lived his life in this artificial environment, not knowing--the way we know--what life is for normal folks, sometimes the magnitude of things, the full meaning of actions, don't speak louder'n words to Nick. Boy's got no scale to measure by. So you need to 'fess up more'n just your fears, your insecurities and all, but your hopes, too, and what he means to you. Now, if you want...oh, a mediator, say...LA or I would be more than happy, or I know Kris would, and Kev, or for that matter your old college buddy Dr Feelstrange Kirkpatrick, or Joe, or Aidge--with the Big Book in hand--or, by way of payback, the Bass-Chasezes. Um. I...I'm sure he'd do it as a matter of friendship, but I cain't say as I'd exactly recommend J for the job, until he finds his own ass with both hands, even if he is a lot better these days'n he was."

"But I think you probably need it to just be the two of you, this time."

"Yes, ma'am," Howie said.

"And Howie?' Bri leaned forward and tapped him on the knee. "Love him all you want. Tell him how much of your world he is. But don't...you should keep right on seein' him at his best, always seein' the best in him, but don't idolize him, because then you expect too much of him (or any man), and you expect too little of yourself."

"Just be there for each other. Make each other know that you're there. See what he sees; make him see things through your eyes. Be open, and stop trying to protect each other from reality, sweetie. It always backfires. Trust me: it's like with Baylee, you don't ignore the diaper situation, you change it just as fast as you can, or else."

"Mammy has spoken," Bri grinned. "And you know as well as I do, if Momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy."

"Okay," Nick said, and took in a deep, slightly shaky breath. "Okay." And he reached for his cell. It rang, there in his hand, and he nearly dropped it.

"H--Howie?"

Lance and JC exchanged a glance, stifling their grins. "Two halves of a whole," Lance rumbled, as they sidled out. Just before the door closed behind them, they heard Nicky say, "I. Me too, I was just picking up to call. We need to--"

And even if they were closing a door to give Nick and Howie some privacy, Lance and JC, the old familiar Jamesanjosh™, had a feeling that another door was opening, somehow.