Pairing: Brian and Nick
Words: covet; animate; blitzed; exquisite


Somewhere, a phone was ringing.

Nick was pretty sure that this was hell.  He didn't know a whole
lot about the subject; despite management's insistence from the
beginning that all of the Backstreet Boys profess to be good
Christians, his life hadn't really left him with a lot of time to
go to church.  He didn't have Brian's peaceful
growing-up-in-the-country background, or really, a background at
all.  So his own ideas of hell tended to feature endless dance
rehearsals followed by photo shoots in the rain followed by singing
while sick and then getting yelled at afterward for not being sexy
enough, which really, was precisely like his own life on really bad
days.

Well, he'd never been accused of having too much imagination.

And the damned phone was still ringing.  Ringing phones, he
decided, especially on his rare days off, were also part of his own
personal definition of hell.

He fumbled for it from the bed, and finally managed it to get it to
his ear, right side up.  "Hello?"

"Hi-diddley-ho, good neighbor."

"Is someone dead?"

"Erm," Brian said on the other end of the line.  "No."

"Is something on fire?"

"No, not that I know of."

"Is either of those things likely to happen in the near future?"

"No."

"Good."  Nick got the phone back on the receiver after way too much
effort that left him almost, but not quite, awake, dragged the
pillow over his head and closed his eyes.  If he couldn't get back
to sleep, he was going to be very very upset with Brian.  So, okay,
sure, his solo album wasn't doing as good as Timberlake's.  So,
okay, to some extent, he didn't *care* that it wasn't doing as
well.  People liked it; he was having fun, and that was what
mattered.  That and getting back to sleep.  He sighed and wriggled
his head until he was more comfortable.  Yeah, he could fall back
to sleep.  There was nothing to get up for today.  He had the whole
day off, blissfully off, alone, free to savor the exquisite
pleasure of sleeping in and...

The phone rang again.

Nick groaned.  For a brief minute, he thought about unplugging it,
but then again, it *might* be important.  It probably wasn't.  He'd
gotten woken up three times after the picture of him scrambling up
the bank in wet pants had appeared in the press.  Once by his
mother, at about 2 a.m. -- and that call had ranged from the
appalled, namely how upset she'd been that he'd done such a thing,
to the appalling, which had been her follow-up reaction that if
he'd wanted to get publicity by posing semi-nude, he should have
done it on the album cover.  The second time at 5 a.m., by AJ,
who'd somehow managed to get the time zones backward and added
three hours when he should have subtracted, and had said he wanted
to give Nick the number of a good alcohol counselor on the grounds
that Nick must have been blitzed to finally give up his 'stupid-ass
virgin inhibitions' and see the light about going out without
underwear.  And the third time by Brian, to let him know that
Leighanne's doctor had decided that it'd been false labor and that
he wasn't going to induce labor until December 1, if the baby
hadn't come out on his own by then.

Baby.  Brian.  Phone.

Shit.

He picked up the phone, which was still ringing.  "Brian?"

"Nope."

It was Brian.  "I'm sorry I hung up on you before, Bri.  I didn't
realize...  Did Leighanne have the baby?"

"Yep!  But you're going to have to stop calling me Brian."

Nick sat up, feeling about as animate as a corpse.  He was still
half-asleep.  "Why's that?"

"You're gonna have to call me Daddy now!  Oh, Nick!  You should see
him.  He's... okay, he looks funny, because babies do, but he's
different, somehow, you know.  Adorable.  *Mine*.  He's so cute all
asleep, with his scrunched up face and you have no idea until
they're here just how much they mean to you..."

Nick scrubbed his hand through his hair and tried to remember where
the nearest airport was.  "You want me to come down?  See him for
myself?"

"No."

"Oh."  Nick tried not to feel hurt.  It wasn't that he was coveting
his neighbor's husband, precisely -- there were lots of other good
reasons why he was going to hell or, depending how you looked at
it, was already there, but yeah, sometimes he felt that maybe Brian
had been a lot more his than he was now.

"I don't want things to get nuts here," Brian explained.  "Because
they could, really fast, if people start showing up.  It's been
hard enough to keep it to just our parents, and I even wish they
weren't here.  I mean, Leighanne's mom was really great during the
labor and everything, but I wish it could just be the three of us. 
The three of us.  Do you know how great it is to say that?  We're
a real family now.  And, besides, Leighanne's really tired.  I want
to just kick everyone out of the hospital room and watch her feed
him, but I can't.  The best I can do is save the circus for next
week."

"Yeah, I understand."  And he sorta did.  The circus part, anyway. 
Although Brian was fooling himself if he thought he could avoid it.

"Great!  I just needed to tell you, to let you know.  I'll let you
get back to sleep.  Gotta call the others still."

"Sure thing.  Congratulations, Bri -- I mean, Daddy."

"Thanks!"

Nick heard the grin in Brian's voice as he hung up.  Brian was
going to be a great dad.  He'd been great to Nick when Nick was
growing up and clutching at whatever support he could find.  It was
foolish of Nick to think that Brian would always be there for him.

The only people who would always be there for you were your family.

Nick's family wasn't Brian.  Or the Backstreet Boys.  It was the
Carter's.

It was his mother, whose chief objection to seeing his nearly naked
ass in the press was that Nick hadn't properly used the opportunity
to pimp his album.  It was his sisters, who seemed determined to
become juvenile delinquents, although BJ's only claim to being a
juvenile was her maturity level.  It was his brother, who Nick was
afraid was growing up to be just like Nick, only worse.

Nick laid back down and put the pillow over his head.  Sometimes he
wished he'd had time for church growing up.  This would be a good
time to know whether he had any chance of going to heaven.

Because he'd certainly already been to hell.