Pairing: Joey and AJ
Words: matador; brittle; package; mouthpiece


He wore the ring on his left hand. No one noticed it; he wore
several rings, and it was boring -- a nondescript gold band. If not
for the other rings, it might have drawn comment for the closeness
in design to a wedding band, but he'd worn it for a very long time.
And it was nothing next to his tattoos, in any case.

Nick wanted to have an Elvish word tattooed on his bicep. AJ'd
asked him what word, but Nick had shrugged. "Doesn't matter, does
it? Who reads Elvish anyway?"

AJ raised his eyebrows, and didn't comment.

Nick got 'KAOS' lettered down his spine instead. It made him look
dirty, his skin marred. Branded. A thousand unclean things, and
unsuited for the golden boy Nick had been. Perhaps perfectly suited
for the thing Nick was becoming.

AJ wanted his tattoos to look like that; a matador's scars, to show
where he'd met the bull and lost, but his only looked like they
belonged. The patina of age on a bronze pot, instead of soot on
Michelangelo's 'David'. Nick was growing up, and sometimes, AJ
wondered if he was growing up wrong. If Nick would go brittle and
shatter under the pressure of their lives, a boxer taking a punch
wrong, mouthpiece and blood flying to the side with the force of
the blow.

It really was no surprise when AJ shattered.

The weight of what he carried broke him. Death, and fame, and there
wasn't just one simple thing, it was the whole package, and AJ had
always known that he was at risk. That there was a reason his
tattoos looked right on him, and that walking in the shadows was
more dangerous when you carried darkness with you.

The only thing that surprised AJ was coming out the other side.
These things all went a certain way, and survival and redemption
was not part of the story. You sinned, you died. That was the way
it was supposed to work. He'd certainly tried hard enough to kill
himself with the drinking.

But he was still alive. Still whole, although different and changed
by his time in the dark. Sensitive to the harsh light being shone
upon him, and the news stories all said the same thing. They wanted
him to fail, to drink again, because it made better headlines than
'AJ spends his entire life recovering', which was the truth, but
dull.

AJ had started to like dull. To appreciate a life that didn't have
to go a certain way, and where he could be something other than a
cackling creature of sex and darkness. He could settle down, get
married, prop his feet up, and let the world go by. It could be
like that, and he didn't have to follow his destiny to his
inevitable doom. No. He didn't have to, and that was fine.

More than fine.

When he and Sarah went to pick out wedding rings, AJ took the gold
ring off. It looked too much like a wedding band already, and he
didn't need it anymore. Couldn't think of anyone it suited though,
and it sat on his mantle where he'd dropped it for a week and a
half until he caught a special on MTV and then it occurred to him.

Nick was already mending, cleaning up his tattoos and making art
out of what had been mere graffiti. He would make it on his own.
But there was someone else who was faltering, walking the same
crooked path AJ had been on, between fame and sex and money and
power, and maybe he'd find his way to the other side without
descending into corruption in the meantime, but maybe not.

AJ dropped the ring into an envelope, and had it couriered to Joey
Fatone. Who knew? Maybe Joey'd be smart enough not to take it.