Title: Change
Author: rowan
Copyright:
MajickRowan 2001.
Summary: Sometimes
change isn't all that bad.
Disclaimer: I'm only
going by what Nick told me.
Note: My English
teacher would scream, but I really like sentences that start with 'and'.
~@~
When Nick told his
band mates he was gay, a lot changed.
From the second he made his confession,
Brian, his best friend, the Frick to his Frack, grew noticeably distant. Brian
was newly wary of the times Nick would drop down on top of him in the lounge,
backstage at the venues. Nick had always done it, just because Brian made a
good mattress. Now, when he did it, Brian claimed Nick was too heavy and made
him get up. Brian never said it to him,
but Nick kind of figured that he wasn't allowed to lie around in Brian's personal
space anymore. He ignored the annoying new pain in his chest and tried not to
cry when Brian flinched at his touch.
Everything escalated between the two until
it blew up in a fight in which Brian condemned him to hell and asked why he
didn't care that his soul would be damned and Nick yelled that Brian could go
fuck himself. An entire week passed before they made up. Brian apologized and
promised he was getting used to it and Nick apologized for keeping an important
things secret for so long. Brian was still a little squeamish when Nick crawled
over him on the couch to reach his bag and find his CDs or games, but Nick just
figured that that, too, would pass with time.
~@~
Kevin didn't seem to care too much. He did,
however, make it a point to remind Nick that now it was more important than
ever that any dating he did went unnoticed in the media. He reminded Nick that
people would hate him for this. Violently. He told him they wouldn’t get over
it the way Brian had. Nick told Kevin he already knew that. So, Kevin said that
he was just making sure and reminded Nick to be careful. By then Nick was
pissed off. And when Kevin tried to change the subject and to show he could be sensitive,
too, and he asked how Nick was dealing with himself, Nick just scowled, called
Kevin an 'insensitive dick', told him that he, too, could go fuck himself and
stalked off in a fit of anger. Later that night, Kevin made sure Nick knew that
Kevin cared about him, and that he didn't mean to sound so condescending and
harsh but that was just the way Kevin dealt with things. Seeing as how Nick
already knew about this, he was able to let himself get passed it pretty
quickly.
~@~
AJ claimed he already knew, because Nick was
always kissing one of the guys, mostly Brian, when he was drunk or high. And AJ
was cool about it, but not until after he went through a short period where he
treated Nick like stereotypical-gay-man. That ended when Nick punched him in the
arm, hard, and reminded AJ that he hadn't changed and that he had always been
gay and that if he didn't start treating him the same way he always had Nick
was going to kick his scrawny little ass. So AJ chilled out and stopped trying
to set Nick up with guys on the crew and leaving issues of Playgirl magazine
lying in Nick's bunk on the bus. And their relationship continued, virtually
unchanged, except that AJ's teasing now included accusing Nick of looking at
his ass.
~@~
Howie continued to treat Nick completely the
same after the announcement, and Nick didn't notice at first. Howie's lack of
strange behavior slipped in beneath Nick's radar.
~@~
The others weren't the only one's changing.
Nick had a few new things to mull over about himself. For instance, he caught
himself staring at Howie more often than usual, and for increasing lengths of
time. And there was a new shivery feeling that went through his body when he
saw Howie's well-shaped arms without a shirt covering them. And he sort of
remembered a few times when he might have dreamed of Howie's tight little body
twisting beneath his, and he eventually had to admit that despite what he told
himself, this crush was not new. It’d just been magnified until it was
impossible to ignore. Nick decided that avoidance was the best answer and he
ignored it, and concentrated on the tour schedule, and waited for it to pass
like all the rest.
One night, when Nick was laying around,
doodling in one of his sketchpads, it occurred to him to wonder why no one
treated Howie all weird about being gay. And then he remembered that Howie
respected other people's personal space boundaries and had never lied about
being gay, and that Howie wasn't careless or stupid enough to end up with
pictures of him and his boyfriend plastered on the cover of the Star or the
Mirror. And that Howie had always been gay in AJ's mind and that AJ had tried
sending Playgirls to Howie and that Howie had just started a subscription in
AJ's name and sent them to AJ's mother's house in retaliation.
So now, Nick was thinking about Howie and
had to get up off the floor because his erection was trapped painfully between
him and the carpet. Nick lay down in his bunk, jerked off and fell asleep
dreaming of Howie.
Nick tried to pay attention to how Howie
treated him, to see if he could spot some change in Howie's behavior towards
him. It was probably just Nick's imagination, but it seemed that Howie's
pre-show hug lasted a little longer than before. And that Howie was looking at
him during 'More
Than That' and 'Yes, I will'. And Nick
thought that Howie wouldn't mind too much if Nick went up and licked Howie's
neck and stuck his hand down Howie's pants.
A week passed in which Nick jerked off in
his hotel room every single night, and again in the morning in the shower. Every time, without fail, he imagined it was
Howie's hand or mouth or both wrapped around his cock. Finally, after one particularly vivid dream
about Howie and a pair of handcuffs, Nick woke up, hot and sweaty, tangled in
the sheets, decided this was getting ridiculous and went to make Howie treat
him differently.
Howie opened the door bare-foot in jeans and
a dark-blue t-shirt. Nick fell on him and thrust his fingers into Howie's hair
and pushed one leg between Howie's and slid his tongue deep into Howie's mouth.
Howie pushed Nick away, demanded to know what the fuck Nick thought he was doing.
Nick just kissed him again until Howie had to kiss back, sucking on Nick's
tongue and licking at his lips. Howie stopped protesting when Nick stripped him
and kissed him all over and licked at his throat and chest. And then his cock
was in Nick's mouth and there was no going back after that.
An hour later, they were dry and sated, and
Howie asked why Nick couldn't have realized that he wanted to do this a few
years ago. Nick mumbled something about being afraid of things changing. And
Howie said that sometimes change is good.
And Nick had to agree.
[Fin.]