Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2000 05:27:17 EDT
From: Brwydevil@aol.com
Subject: Boys Bands: Running Thoughts 22

   My story should be renamed, "Running Thoughts Monthly"... I apologize for
taking so long to get each installment out, but here it is! Thanks for all
the emails, they each mean a lot to me. It's nice to know there is a response
out there for this tale. Keep em coming! :) The following story is fictional
and is not meant to imply anything about the celebrities involved. No
celebrities were harmed in the writing of this story. Email me for any reason
at BrwyDevil@aol.com. Kevin.

          Running Thoughts Part Twenty-Two: "Stay With Me"

   The image of Justin and Nick being split by some unknown figure jostled
Nick Carter from his sleep once more. It was another one of his confusing,
recurring dreams. They always seemed to have... to have a type of texture
deep within them. His other dreams and even his nightmares contained a
different type of flow. These patterns that recurred in his sleep were
altogether clearer and less metaphorical.
   He had never before been the type to believe in the power of dreaming, but
after his experiences in the past months, his faith in predestination was
growing stronger. He sat up in bed and curled his legs up to his chest. He
brushed a few blond strands away from his eyes and just stared ahead at the
shadows before him.
   Dreaming of Justin had always been a comfortable thing for him before. As
soon as he met him, it was as if his dreams knew which shape to take. As if
their two souls had merely been waiting for one another. This was the first
time something unpleasant occurred between the two of them in his mind's eye.
Some figure was coming between them. Nick didn't want to delve into that and
see what meanings it could have.
   Instead, he wanted to pretend like it had no significance at all. Someone
had once told him that he could cover the events that could be with the
belief that they never will be. It was a backwards vision but appropriate. He
looked over at his clock and realized it was nearly eleven in the morning.
The heavy curtains had kept out the brilliant light of day. It felt good to
sleep late. Yet he still didn't feel rested. His dreams used up the energy he
deserved to preserve.
   There was a knock on his hotel room door and he remembered he wasn't alone
in the room. Brian was fast asleep on the floor at the foot of the bed. He
didn't want to be with Howie at all, so Nick had allowed him to stay in his
room. Nick didn't want Brian to wake up, so he hopped out of bed and rushed
over to the door to see who was there.
   A messenger handed him a small white envelope. Nick motioned for the
security officer to tip the young man and he then closed the door. His heart
began to slow in rhythm as he saw Justin's handwriting scrawled across the
covering.
   He instantly smiled. Nick, didn't even want to go back to the bed. His
heart was melting in a passionate joy and he slunk down to sit in the
doorway. Before opening it, he held it close to his heart and realized how
pathetic he must have looked.

===================================================

   He wished he could have been with Nick when he read the first letter. He
had put a lot of time into it and was quite proud of what he got off of his
chest. He would probably benefit from the ever-changing expressions which
danced across his boyfriend's face as his crystal clear eyes picked up every
word he had placed passionately on the paper.
   Just in laid back and put his hands behind his head. A smile appeared on
his face. Thinking about Nick Carter always seemed to make his chest tingle
and his body feel weightless. It was the closest physical definition he could
equate to love.
   He ran his fingers along the band of the red bandana on his head and
itched at his ear. He was beginning to feel a little tired. All of his energy
was thrown into writing... fatigue was the result. He was glad that his
messenger made his way to the BackStreet Boys hotel, but there was a desire
within him to deliver that letter himself. Being caged in this hospital
lounge was beginning to exhaust him.
   Justin had read once that even people who have no prior connections to
such fears as claustrophobia can develop the tension if forced into remaining
in a closed section of space for a long period of time. He wasn't going to
freak out or anything but he could feel that the limitations he was
experiencing were beginning to take their toll.
   He missed being with Nick. He knew all too well that he had to get used to
being apart from him- especially as soon as their tours or schedules became
even more demanding. But that didn't make it any easier to be separated from
him now.
   Justin closed his eyes with the smile still on his face and hoped he could
dream of Nick.  As tired as he was, though, he couldn't seem to fall asleep.
It would have been nice to lazily waste the hours away but unfortunately he
felt more bored than rested.
   After the creativity bug had bitten him, he penned letters to Nick and his
mother and his brother- not to mention a few poems he hoped to someday turn
into songs. He had written so much that his hand was starting to hurt. It was
the first time he ever felt pain and decided it was a sensation worth
feeling. Writing was taxing but the end result was worth suffering for.
   He had never written to anyone with the intensity and honesty he used
after he met Nick. For the most part, he had never really written to anyone
at all till he met Nick. It was not a popular way of communication since the
invention of the telephone and the expansion of the internet. His other
relationships seemed so empty when he realized what he could have been
sharing and how much more he could have put into them.
   Nick succeeded in totally, completely, one-hundred-percently wooing
Justin. Neither of them ever had to stress about being alone again. Their
matching was perfect and that was a fact that Justin mentioned in his letter.
They'd only been together for a few months but it seemed so lasting and
miraculous. His only doubts were distant memories from his past that only
plagued him when doldrums set in.
   The other area of thought that seemed to constantly occur to Justin was
his sexual attraction to Nick. The fact that they had slept in the same bed
with each other and had extraordinary kissing sessions and even swapped
articles of clothing made Justin quite eager to go all the way. They were
both teenaged boys, after all. The fact that they had waited a few months
before getting to it was impressive enough. Nick wanted to take things
slowly. He was a virgin to any type of love-making and despite his
irresistible longing to experiment, he wanted to wait for the right moment.
Justin couldn't disagree with that. He found it terribly romantic and
remarkably strong-willed. He wished he had been that wise and virtuous when
it came to his first time. But when you're young and you think you're in
love, hormones play funny tricks...
   As Justin lay groggily in the lounge, a soft knock came on the tinted
glass door. He sat up slowly and said, "Come in..."
   A hospital security guard poked her head into the room and smiled.
"There's a visitor here for you. He has a pass that's a few months out of
date- but your bodyguards said he looked familiar and could come in if you
allowed it..."
   Justin thought for a moment. He wasn't sure which of his bandmates would
have given out a visitor's pass that could bypass their guards during a
situation of this magnitude... He knew he had once written one but that had
been so long ago, he never considered it to work this late in the year. "Umm,
sure. Send them in." Justin finally nodded as he sat up to look presentable.
   The door opened completely and standing on the other side was the only
doubt in Justin's mind pertaining to his relationship with Nick.

===================================================

  The French restaurant was quite extravagant and lovely. It was dim but the
violin music in the background made a light of its own. AJ and his
girlfriend, Lana, dressed very conservatively, stepped in to meet the host at
the front podium.
   "Do you have a reservation?" he asked with a wrinkled grin.
   "We do. Two for McLean." Lana answered as she held AJ's hand. They walked
down the purple carpet towards a finely decorated table inside a quaint
alcove. The elderly manager pulled the tall armchair out for the beautiful
young lady and courteously pushed it back in to seat her comfortably. Menus
were opened for them by two young bus boys and fresh bread and cold water was
placed at the middle of the table.
   "I just hate the lousy service in this place..." Lana sarcastically shook
her head. AJ looked into her eyes and grinned. It was very rarely his
intention to go to such elaborate eateries due to the fact that his tastes
were much simpler and less refined, but since he was dating someone now, he
decided that he would go all out for her.
   They had spent a great evening together and this expensive stop was meant
to top the evening off. Lana suggested that the two of them visit a museum
followed by a little shopping. AJ was happy to oblige. He had rarely ever
been so connected to another individual before. He would have agreed to just
about anything she wanted to do.
   He wasn't sure why he was so intensely engrossed in his time with Lana but
there was a mysterious missing segment he always noticed when the two of them
were alone together. He tried to cover up this vacant expanse within his soul
by convincing himself that he just needed to be closer to her. After all, she
had everything he wanted.
   Lana was a determined, career-minded, intelligent, unique woman. She had
charm and simplicity and always seemed to know the right words to say. She
was beautiful and stunning in the most peculiar way and still AJ couldn't
focus totally on her.
   As they sat silently looking over the names of foreign dishes on the aged
yellow pages, the violin music soothingly drifted around them. It was a
romantic semblance of sound and the perfect moment. AJ smiled to himself and
let the tune invade his senses. In his mind, he had had a vague recollection
of this song. He wasn't sure how he knew it but he was positive he had heard
it before.
   The memory connected to a flash of Kevin. AJ pushed it aside. He felt he
thought about him far too much recently. He didn't understand why it was
happening, he merely noticed that a lot of outside stimuli seemed to bring up
one of his friends.
   "Do we want appetizers or do we want dessert?"
   A song or a smell or a picture jogged AJ's mind and always brought up
Kevin's face. At first, when these images began, he just thought that he
wasn't spending enough time with the rest of the boys in the group but when
he realized that the flashes never involved any of the other members, he
figured something was out of place.
   There had been several moments when he would catch Kevin looking at him in
a bizarre way, but AJ never paid attention to it. As he thought about it now,
he still didn't find anything exceedingly strange regarding how Kevin and
himself interacted... he was just curious as to why none of his other friends
entered his thoughts as often as Kevin.
   "Darling, do we want appetizers or do we want dessert?" Lana asked again,
this time a little louder.
   "Oh... Oh..." AJ looked up at her and remembered that he hadn't even
really been reading his menu. "Well... umm.... its up to you."
   "Well, if we're really hungry we should get appetizers... but if we can
wait for a whole meal and then save room for something afterwards... we can
do that too." She explained. AJ just nodded, his eyes not focussing on
anything. "Are you all right?" She inquired.
   AJ shrugged his shoulders. "I don't care either way." He said with a small
grin. Lana furrowed her brow in thought and got back to reading the menu.
AJ's eyes, however, never stopped staring thoughtfully into space.

===================================================

   Nick wanted to thank Justin for sending the letter all the way across town
for him. He hadn't opened it up yet because it would require light to read
through it and Brian was still fast asleep on the floor. Nick lifted up the
receiver of the phone and planned to call information to get in touch with
the hospital Chris was brought to, but instead of a dial tone, he heard the
sound of crashing waves on the other end of the line.
   "Hello?" he asked.
> Nick? It's Howie...
   "Howie?" Nick realized he must have picked up the phone without letting it
ring. His timing was perfect. "Where the hell are you?"
>I'm in the Bahamas at our recording studio.
   "Why did you go there?" Nick kept his voice low. He didn't want Brian to
be unpleasantly awakened. "Don't you think you should get back here and work
this whole fight thing out with Bri?"
>Well that's why I'm calling... I want to talk to him. There was no answer in
our room, so I knew he must have been by you.
   Nick didn't want to answer. He didn't want to say that Brian was in his
room because it would have put him in the place of some kind of relationship
buffer- and that was a role he refused to play. "Howie, man... you've gotta
do this in person. A telephone call from an island paradise isn't the kind of
message you want to get across to someone you need to mend things with."
>Nick, don't get involved, just get him on the phone.
   "That's IS getting me involved. You two need to figure out some way to fix
this. I don't care how... But I am not going to get in the middle. Get back
to New York before Brian decides to never forgive you."
>What did he tell you, Nick?
   Nick honestly didn't want to lose either friendship. He was close with
both Howie and Brian- and he knew that they had been happy together a long
time ago. In his opinion, they needed to talk things out and maybe spend a
little time apart. He refused to give his opinion, though, unless he was
asked for it. Disastrous consequences often ensued otherwise. "Listen, How...
I told him what I am telling you. I can be a good listener but I will not
advise you. I'm sorry, buddy... this is an area I can't substitute for you
in." Nick said and quickly ended the conversation.
   Nick sighed and rubbed at his eyes in the dim room. He looked to the left
and saw that Brian had been watching him as he spoke to Howie. He stood up
and moved closer to the edge of the bed. "Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you
up."
    "Thanks for trying to help me and him." Brian groggily shook his head.
    "Did I do the right thing?"
    "I wish I knew... Maybe nothing can fix things now. Some things are
unforgivable." Brian laid back down. "I don't really want to think about it
right after I wake up."
    "I understand, man." Nick changed his position as he changed the
conversational tactic. "Wake up on your own. I'll order breakfast in a little
while, okay?"
   Brian acknowledged him and disappeared back into the shadowy recesses of
the floor. Nick thought about the relationship web that was shredding itself
apart before his eyes and sighed loudly. He didn't want to get in the middle
of anything, so instead, he just went to the bathroom and turned on the
light.
   Finally he would be able to open Justin's letter. Brian and Howie's drama
was going to have to wait. He had love and future and passion and all that
jazz to face now.

===================================================

   He sped down the crowded streets, just barely making every green light.
The traffic around him blurred past in a colorful array of speed and flashing
light. Joe was still laughing to himself about some internal joke that he
couldn't explain and didn't understanding. His vision was foggy and he felt
like he was inside the chair of some video racing game. The movements he
witnessed seemed so choppy and surrealistic, he didn't notice the addition of
red flashing lights behind him.
   The limousine wagged awkwardly down the Manhattan avenue and pedestrians
fled to the sidewalks as Joey's vehicle zoomed past. The cop car raced after
in hot pursuit. If he got dizzy or tired, many innocent lives could be in
danger. He just thought he was having fun.
   A taxicab door suddenly opened and Joe swerved to avoid striking it. As he
skidded to the left another car pulled down a cross street and Joey turned
the car the opposite way. As he zigzagged at seventy miles an hour, the
drivers side lifted up off of the ground and sent the balance of the entire
car out of control. It landed correctly on all four wheels but steered wildly
and crashed through a series of signs and came to a halt at the edge of a
large cement fountain.
   The glass from the broken headlights shimmered on the cold, dark asphalt.
The cops departed their car and rushed to make sure the driver was all right.
As they approached cautiously, they saw Joey unconscious in the drivers seat.
   "Make sure no one's in the back..." One of the officer's said. "We've got
to call an ambulance here..."

=====================================================

   Okay, there's another part for you to mull over. I hope you are enjoying
what I have here. The climax or whatever we like to call it, is building...
as the number of chapters is running short! Email me at BrwyDevil@aol.com.
Kev.