Author: Arsenic

Rating: NC-17, slash

Fandom/Pairing: BSB, AJ/Howie, AJ/Sarah, with a healthy dose of appearances from Kevin/Kristin, Brian/Leighanne and Nick/OFC

Disclaimer: I don't own these people, know them, think or hope that any of this is true.

Summary: Sometimes life is just the art of living through things.

Notes/Warnings: Sorry there are so many; nature of the beast. This story deals with suicide, please either read with caution or do not read if this is going to cause issues for you. Also, I started writing this before the news about Leighanne being pregnant broke, and finished it well before AJ and Sarah postponed the wedding/broke up, so both those pieces of canon are completely disregarded for the sake of this story. In addition, there are some serious changes to Sarah/AJ canon, such as how they met, due both to initial ignorance and my own unwillingness to make changes.I have been notified that there are mistakes in this story in regards to the Quakers of Southern LA. For that I apologize and thank Zana-16 for making me aware of them.

Thanks: To Zoi for making sure none of my Backstreet stuff was too screwed up. Anything massively incorrect canon-wise is there because I ignored her attempts to help me. To Ian for being actually knowledgeable, rather than pseudo-knowledgeable, about Christianity and his insights into both grammar and plot device. To Amand-r, for, well, trying, and not killing me when all was said and done. To Heidi, for catching last minute stuff and convincing me to go through with posting. And finally, Rhys, for formatting and posting this mother. I adore all of you.

Dedication: To Aimee, for listening. For creating the mold of strength and allowing me to infuse it into these characters without ever once suggesting that perhaps I was stealing something that wasn't mine. "I say 'ours' like I'm writing it right along with you." You were, babe, you were.

*

Part I: Past

*

The wooden floors were cold beneath AJ's feet when he stumbled out of bed on the Thursday That Everything Happened. He ignored the minor discomfort and made his way to the kitchen, eyes still mostly closed. The jug of orange juice that he pulled out of the fridge was almost to his mouth when he saw the note on the kitchen table. He set the jug down, smiling, expecting Sarah to have pulled yet another one of her psychic moments, the note to say nothing more harmful than "get a glass, dipshit."

What it said instead was, "I'm sorry, baby. I love you more than anything. I'm sorry it's not enough."

The words took a moment to penetrate and then he was off, running, screaming Sarah's name. He checked their bathroom first, but she wasn't there, nor in the guest bathroom that she sometimes commandeered for beauty days, nor in any of the rooms on the second floor, the living room or the dining room. AJ was well past frantic by the time he found her, sprawled on a tanning chair, almost hidden by the condensed steam of the Jacuzzi room.

There was an empty bottle of Valium next to the chair, and AJ thought he should have noticed her having something like that around. They never kept anything in the house that was stronger -- or more addictive -- than Ibuprofen.

She was still warm to his touch, although whether that was because she was still alive or because she had been in the Jacuzzi room all morning, AJ was having a hard time determining. He whispered, "Okay, okay. I'm gonna. Stay here," and ran to the phone on the deck, calling 911. He ran back when he was done, tucking her up in his arms, trying not to think about how much heavier she was now that she wasn't helping him, laughing at his attempts to carry her over the threshold, licking his ear mischievously.

"Stay with me baby." He made his way to the front door, straining to hear the sirens. "Stay with me, and I promise, I'll make things better. We will, together. I promise, it’s gonna be fine, things are gonna be fine. You're the best thing I've ever had. I love you so much."

The ambulance arrived and AJ ran outside, carrying her over the threshold a second time, going the wrong way. The ground wasn't as cold as the wooden floors had been, as cold as she was in his arms. They took her from him, laid her out on a stretcher.

"Sir, how long ago did she stop breathing?" One of the paramedics was doing CPR, kissing her in ways that only AJ had the right to. That was what the ring on his finger meant, he knew that much. "Sir? How long?"

"I don’t know. I don't know, I couldn't tell. She was in the hot tub room, it was hard to tell."

It hadn't felt as long as AJ thought was appropriate before the paramedic who had been feeding his wife oxygen sat up and shook his head. Another paramedic looked at his watch. "Time of death, 8:02 am, Pacific Standard Time."

"That's it? You're not gonna take her to the hospital, pump her stomach, do fucking something?" AJ was screaming, making a scene on his front lawn and he couldn't have cared less, wanted to make a bigger scene, hit one of the paramedics, maybe.

"Sir, I'm sorry, your wife, sir, she was probably already dead when we arrived. There was nothing we could do. I'm sorry."

AJ looked at his dead wife, pale and seemingly wide awake in the bare light of LA's morning sun. He whispered, "So what do I do now?" and didn't have the energy to tell the paramedic, who began talking about funeral arrangements and such, that AJ hadn't been talking to him.

*

AJ wasn't as close to Kevin as he was to Howie or Nick, but Kevin was the one who had always fished him out of trouble. It made sense, therefore, in AJ's mind, that if he could just get hold of Kevin, tell Kevin what had gone wrong, that Kevin would fix things.

AJ asked to use the phone outside the morgue. They had made him sign so many papers, his fingers were numb, and he wished he had his cell phone so that he could just hit memory ten and be connected. The paramedics had made him put on pants and a shirt and sandals, but nobody had thought to tell him to bring his phone.

The phone rang twice before Kevin's voice, even lower than usual with sleep, answered, "This had better be good." Kevin was always the first one up while they were on tour and the last one awake while they were on break.

"I need you to come get me, please, Kevin. Please come get me." AJ had come in the ambulance, the paramedics being less than keen on the idea of allowing him to drive.

"Whoa, Aje, where are you?" There was a soft, "go back to sleep, baby, it's okay," as Kevin left the bed.

"St. Teresa's. By the morgue."

"AJ-"

"Please, Kevin," AJ bit his lip and pretended he was crying from the physical pain. "Please, I'll explain in the car, just come get me."

"Do you want me to stay on the phone with you?" There was the purring of an engine behind Kevin's question.

AJ shook his head, even though it would go unseen. "I'm on the hospital's phone. I'll see you when you get here." AJ hung up the phone and walked outside to wait at the curb.

*

At the first stoplight, AJ explained slowly, "I found Sarah in the Jacuzzi room. Her and an empty bottle of Valium. They said…they said she was already dead when they got there. That's what they told me. After they- Well, that's what they said."

Kevin made an unplanned left turn, ignoring the honks and fingers it earned him. "I'm gonna take you to Nick's, okay?"

AJ was the only one who had a house in LA, but they were recording at a local studio, so all of the Boys were either renting or subletting. Nick's place was closest to the hospital.

"Okay."

Kevin was so used to fighting with AJ about what was best for the younger man that there was second's hesitation wherein in became clear that he didn't need to gently persuade AJ that home wasn't the best place for him right then.

"But if I don't go back there now, how will I ever?" AJ stared straight out the front window. "When you get bitten by a dog, you know, you have to pet that dog again, like, immediately, or you'll be afraid of dogs, forever. I read that somewhere."

"We'll get you a new house if we need to, Aje. Try not to worry about it right now."

"You can’t fix things this time," AJ said softly, "can you?"

Kevin debated playing dumb for a second before he answered, every bit as softly. "I can’t fix her anymore, babe. But you're still under warranty."

They stopped at a light and Kevin reached over, gently pulling the passenger seat seatbelt across AJ's torso and plugging it in.

*

Kevin didn’t leave when they got to Nick's house, which AJ wanted to thank him for. Instead AJ curled up in Nick's messy bed without asking and laid there, covers pulled up to his ears, eyes wide open.

People came in and out. Nick asked hesitantly if AJ needed more blankets and then fussily fixed up the ones already covering him, petting AJ's head softly and not saying anything else. Kristin came in and made him drink a glass of water, compassionate and yet intractable, and AJ knew Kevin had sent her in because she wouldn't cave, not like the other guys. Brian came in and kissed his forehead and told him he loved him and that he would be right outside the door if AJ needed anything. Kevin checked on him every hour or so, just to make sure he was still there, still breathing, being a better friend than AJ had been as a husband.

Howie came and stayed. He didn't touch AJ, or say anything, just stared out of Nick's window, down at the 'courtyard' that had been cultivated in the center of the apartment complex. AJ was glad he was there and couldn’t find the words to say 'thank you' anymore than he had been able to with Kevin.

Kristin came back eventually, this time with water and toast. AJ chewed slowly, willing his body to digest everything properly. Howie walked over and kissed Kristin on the cheek before sitting back down where he had been, going back to his bird watching. AJ finished the 'meal,' and gave into the feeling of being protected. He allowed himself to recognize it -- even if he couldn't feel he deserved it -- and fell asleep.

*

AJ wasn't sure if the time Howie woke him up and put him in the shower was the first time he had been woken up since falling asleep, or one of many. AJ didn't really want to get up, but there also didn't seem to be much of a reason to fight. The water was already running when they got to the bathroom, not too hot and not too cold. Howie stepped in with him, like it was something he did every day, washing his fully-grown best friend. Howie was careful not to let shampoo drip into AJ's eyes.

Howie shut off the water and bundled AJ into a towel, ushering him back into the bedroom. There was a suit lying out. It was his favorite one, black pinstripe, built from the ground up just for him. "Do we have to do this now?" AJ's voice sounded odd in his own ears.

"Yeah, baby, we do." Howie slipped one of AJ's arms through a sleeve of the white Oxford that went underneath the jacket. He buttoned the cuff.

"I didn't make any arrangements." AJ allowed Howie to do the same to his other arm.

"No, Kevin took care of it."

"Private, right?" AJ knew there was more than a hint of panic to that question but he couldn't bring himself to care. "Private?"

"Just family. Yours and hers. Some friends; Tessa and her husband, and Liz." Liz and Tessa were Sarah's closest friends.

Howie crouched down on the floor, holding a pant leg open for AJ to step into. AJ did so compliantly. "Are they mad at me?"

"Who, Aje?" Howie opened up the other leg.

"Liz and Tessa. Sarah's parents."

Howie brought the pants up the length of AJ's legs, tucked in the white shirt, zipped and buckled the pants shut. "AJ, you did what you could for so long-"

"Not long enough." AJ's right fist clenched convulsively.

"You couldn't be there every second, Aje, none of us can do that for anyone." Howie coaxed AJ into his jacket, much as he had with the shirt.

"No, but I should have made her happy enough. Happy enough not to need me every second."

"You know it doesn't work like that." Howie's hands deftly straightened AJ's collar, his thumb brushing gently against AJ's neck.

"I should have noticed the Valium."

"Baby," Howie pulled AJ into a hug. "Stop with the 'shoulds.' There's no such thing. You did what you could."

AJ's reply was mumbled against Howie's shoulder, but it sounded suspiciously like, "Wasn't enough."

*

AJ and Sarah belonged to the only Friends congregation in Southern LA because the Sunday they had decided to try it out on a whim, nobody had gawked at AJ when he had walked in the door or at any time thereafter. AJ being a lapsed Catholic, and Sarah having been safely of the new age spiritual persuasion most of her life, neither of them were looking for much more than a place to go and sit with their thoughts waiting for something -- the Spirit or otherwise -- to move them, so the fit had ended up being perfect, if odd.

The friends Sarah had made through the congregation, the ones that Kevin had found in her personal address book, were at the funeral. They hugged AJ and made him tell them that he'd be at the service on Sunday and he mumbled something that sounded affirmative even if he doubted he would. He didn't know if he could sit with his thoughts now. Anna, one of the elders, who had adopted Sarah and AJ as if they were her own children nearly on sight, gave the eulogy.

AJ knew it was Anna's bit of civil disobedience. The branch of the Society that they attended was a small, unassuming meeting house about thirty minutes south of the heart of the city, with a fairly liberal congregation, given that most the members went back to jobs in fast-paced, high-paying careers after the service every week and couldn’t be bothered to be hypocritical about living simple lives. Still, violence against the self was violence of a sort and AJ knew the most important mandate in the Quaker faith. He had been paying attention. Sarah's friends -- Anna -- may have been willing to come to his aid with forgiveness in their hearts for her, but what Sarah had done was still wrong to them.

Still, Anna's voice was as strong as Nick's was when he was singing. It told Sarah's friends and family what they already knew, that, "Sarah was contradiction after contradiction, all bound up in one person, one soul, and nobody who knew her doubted, for a minute, that all of those contradictions made sense inside of her. She saw the world as gray and made it shine silver for everyone else."

AJ listened without thinking.

*

AJ had met her at a party, he couldn't remember which one, he thought it might have been after an awards show. She had been on the arm of some producer, flashing pearly whites that gleamed almost as much as the diamonds that graced her neck.

AJ had been handling the producer, enough alcohol in his system to not really mind that the guy was an asshole. Someone else had come over, tapped the producer on his shoulder, practically led him away and AJ had been surprised, when he had looked up from the retreating back of the man, that his trophy girlfriend was still standing there. "You not gonna follow?"

She had shrugged, "I don’t think it’s getting me anywhere."

AJ had frowned at that.

"Nuh uh, McLean, don’t give me that. You knew what I was doing here with him the minute you laid eyes on the two of us. He wants my body, I want a contract, simple equation." Sarah had slid her hand down her hip, casually straightening the fabric of her dress.

"I don't usually get to hear people admit to it."

Sarah had smiled, fewer teeth visible this time, "You're pretty smashed. I give you a seventy percent chance of remembering this come morning."

"If that's true, you could waltz outta here with me and our secret would be safe with you, come morning."

Sarah's eyes had flashed with something before she closed them, blinking seductively and laughing all at once. "Oh no, I'm easy, but sure as fuck not cheap. No label, no screw."

AJ had given her a look of disdain. "Didn't do your research very well, did you? We have a label."

Sarah had returned his look, raised by a bit of casual amusement. "No, honey, what you have is something you can talk about on polite morning talk shows. I want the real deal, Geffen, Mercury, you catch my drift."

AJ, who had forgotten what it felt like to have anyone other than the guys tell him the truth about anything, had surprised himself by enjoying the sensation. "Fair enough. How about this, then -- you don’t think you're getting anywhere with your current John, right?"

The nod of Sarah's head had been reluctantly accepting.

"Let me take you out for a drink tonight, and you can move yourself out tomorrow. Start sniffing for gold elsewhere."

Sarah had pursed her lips briefly. "I don't drink. Fucks with my inhibitions."

AJ, having still been at the point where he could tell when he'd had too much, smiled wryly at that. "Coffee then. I'll even pitch in for a shot of chocolate."

Sarah hadn't been the most beautiful woman he had ever met or talked with or even slept with, but when she had looked at him, carefully assessing his offer, defensive and subtly edgy and still somehow attractive, he had known he would do whatever it took to make her fall in love with him. "Well, I suppose if you're gonna pull out the red carpet like that, I might as well have some caffeine to speed along the packing process."

AJ had offered up his arm, mentally conjuring red carpets in their immediate path.

*

Howie made AJ walk away from the grave, made him stop watching the slow process of dirt being piled back into a recently dug hole in the ground. AJ resisted, wanting to make sure there was a mound on top at the very end. The mound would mean she was really in there, taking up space. He knew it was just her body, but he was desperate enough to hold onto to what he could.

Sarah's mom was in the car, sitting next to her husband. She was crying. AJ held out his hand to take hers. She accepted and AJ, for his part, nearly cried with relief. He wasn't at the point where he could cry about anything else.

There wasn't a reception, for which AJ was glad. They dropped Sarah's parents off where they were staying. They were alone in the car when Howie admitted, "We're not sure if it's best to keep making you go places or to ask you what you want."

AJ crossed his arms over his chest as though he were cold. "I don't want to go to the house."

Howie nodded. "We thought you might want to stay with Denise."

"I want…" AJ shook his head, breathing in a tightly controlled manner. "I want to wake up from all of this, D."

Howie, who had always known when there was nothing to say, stayed silent.

"Does Nick not want me anymore?" AJ's voice was small, smaller than it had ever been, even when he was twelve and got turned down at auditions for being too geeky or too dark-skinned.

"We all want you, baby. We'd fight over you if we didn’t think it would make things worse."

"I think there are enough pieces of me to go around."

Howie twisted around and requested that the driver take them to Nick's, listing off the address by rote. AJ tried to smile, but his mouth was evidently as broken as the rest of him.

*

She had called him, unexpectedly, when she had gotten kicked out of one of her producer's apartments without much notice and wasn't feeling all that excited at the prospect of spending all night alone at a motel. "Take me out, McLean," she had ordered.

AJ had obeyed.

Sarah had sucked at bowling and AJ had taken pity on her by the third frame, plucking the bumpers out of their hiding spot and setting them in place. He had bought her a burger, fries and a milkshake and not asked exactly how she lived in between climbing-the-ladder.

He had dropped her off at the Days Inn slightly before four in the morning, and she had kissed his cheek and told him, "You're not so fucking bad, for a member of the male species."

AJ had immediately recognized this as a compliment of the highest order from Sarah.

*

Brian and Leighanne took over Nick's kitchen and made comfort foods: macaroni dripping with four kinds of cheese, and strawberry milkshakes. AJ took a couple of bites of the former, three or four sips of the latter, before giving up and asking for a glass of water. Nick handed him one and nobody tried to push him into eating more.

He watched TV for several hours without paying attention to a single thing that was going on. He was mildly convinced that Nick had switched channels a few times in the middle of things without AJ's having noticed.

He tried sleeping, at first by himself, then wrapped around Nick, who didn't complain, just threw his arm protectively over AJ and held the smaller man close. Eventually, AJ moved back to the den, turning the TV on mute and lying down on the couch, letting the eerie tones of night-time infomercials wash over his closed eyes.

In the morning, when Kevin let himself into the apartment, he walked over and turned the TV off before kneeling beside the couch and asking softly, "You get any sleep?" AJ opened his eyes and didn't say a word.

*

She had shown up at his door two days before the Boys had been scheduled to leave on tour. He had let her in, but been honest, "This really isn't a good time. I haven't packed."

Sarah had set the small duffel she'd been carrying down beside her. "I could help you with that."

AJ had scrubbed at his eyes. "You wanna drink?"

"I don't drink." Sarah had glanced at her watch surreptitiously.

"It's eleven in the fucking morning and if you're gonna be self-righteous about it, you can get your ass out of my house." AJ had poured himself more of the whiskey than he'd originally set out to.

"Look, McLean. AJ. I need somewhere to stay. Just a couple of days, until I can…figure out my next step." Her eyes had been empty when she had offered, "I can, um. Pay."

AJ had responded viciously, needing someone else to feel as torn apart as he had, "If that was true you'd be at a hotel right now."

"No, I mean-" Sarah had licked her lips, eyes unsure beneath their glaze of sexual promise.

AJ had known what she had meant. The whiskey had become heavy suddenly, though, sitting in his stomach. "I don’t want that."

"Oh, come on." Sarah had rolled her eyes. "You've fucking offered before."

"It's your prerogative," AJ had stated slowly, wanting to be sure that his point was clear, "if you want to whore yourself out for everyone from a third-rate studio exec to the Easter bunny. But you won't do it with me. I don't pay for sex. Not like that at least."

"AJ," Sarah's voice had wavered and she had pressed her hands to her stomach as though she would be sick, "I really. I really need somewhere to stay. I don't have anything right now."

AJ had gotten up and left the room and when he came back she had been sitting on the floor in the spot she had been standing, staring blankly forward. He had sunk down on the carpet next to her and taken her hand, placing a key in it. "I'm leaving in a day and a half. Call me when you get settled in wherever you're going and I'll tell you how to get the key back to me. You can stay as long as you like, just don’t trash things."

Sarah's fingers had closed tightly over the key. "Thank you."

AJ had gotten up to pour himself another drink.

*

Every couple of days, AJ would surface enough from the haze he was in to ask pertinent questions, such as, "Who's been doing my laundry?" or "Are we still booked for studio time?" Whoever was near him would give him an appropriate answer, and AJ would nod, or say thanks, and go back to reminding himself to do little things, like put his right foot in front of his left when walking forward.

After nearly a week of being at Nick's house, AJ crept into bed with Nick late at night. Nick didn't even wake up, used to it even before AJ's unexpected cohabitation. The guys all used each other when they just needed someone to cuddle up to in the middle of the night while on tour. AJ spoke his name, "Nick," loudly and Nick woke, not being much of a heavy sleeper.

"What's wrong?" Nick had one eye open and focused on AJ.

"I have to move."

"We know, Aje, we've all talked about it. We're gonna take care of it." Nick snuggled up to AJ, resting his face in AJ's neck. "C'mon, I'll talk about this with you in the morning, just get some sleep."

AJ waited for the sure sign of Nick's slowed breathing to slip out of the larger man's loose hold. AJ knew Nick kept his car keys by the door as a matter of habit so that he wouldn't lose them somewhere in his apartment. Nick was forever setting things down and forgetting where he had put them. AJ swiped the keys and took the elevator down to the building's parking garage.

There were still cars on the road, even at nearly three in the morning, but there wasn't traffic, per se, and it only took AJ twenty minutes to get where he was going. Nick kept the keys to each of the other guy's houses or apartments in his car, so AJ rooted around a bit in the glove compartment before finding the key to his house. He got out of the car, locked it with a satisfying 'BEEP,' and walked up the way to his doorway.

It was hot in the house, and AJ realized that one of the guys must have come by and turned off the air conditioning. The stillness was asphyxiating. AJ walked with a purpose towards the thermostat, carefully setting the numbers down several degrees when he reached it. Having accomplished his goal, AJ leaned against the wall, the house swirling around him. Using the wall as a support, AJ made his way to the kitchen, the nearest room with a phone, and punched in memory two.

Howie answered the phone near immediately, and it struck AJ how panicked the guys must be, how many eggshells they must feel surrounded him. "Hello? Is everything okay?"

"Howie, calm down. Hey, breathe. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you."

"AJ." Howie said it on an exhalation. "Are you at home? The ID screen is showing your home number."

"Yeah." AJ's back slid down the wall and he sat on the warm kitchen tiles. "Can you come be with me? I don't want to be here alone."

"Sit tight. I'll be right there." Howie hung up.

AJ hit the "off" button on the phone and drew his knees up tighter, following Howie's instructions to the letter.

*

"AJ?" Howie's voice inquired, not loudly, from the front hallway.

"Kitchen."

There was barely any noise as Howie made his way to the kitchen and when he got there, AJ saw that Howie was wearing his Pluto slippers. Howie looked down at where AJ was staring. "Oh. They were the only things I could find."

Howie sat down across from AJ, resting his back against a free-standing counter and stretching his legs out in front of him. Pluto's ears flopped around a bit before settling. "I called Nick and told him where you were."

AJ made designs by sweeping his fingers across the highly waxed, ceramic floor tiles. "I've forgotten what living with someone other than her is like."

AJ pressed his hand into the tiles firmly, holding it there, waiting to pick it up and see if there was an imprint. There was, the moisture from his hand leaving a trail that disappeared quickly when unprotected by AJ's skin. "You remember what I told people when I stopped living in Florida after rehab?"

Howie had taken off the slippers, too hot in the not-yet-cooled house, and was now playing with Pluto's nose on one of them. "That it held too many memories."

"Tell me then, D. Do I run away from LA this time? I'm running low on places to flee to."

Howie set Pluto down beside him. "Is there somewhere you want to go?"

"Somewhere where nobody and nothing will think to look for me." AJ said slowly, the thoughts forming themselves almost at the same time as the words. "Idaho. Or Saskatchewan, maybe."

Howie leaned his head back for a minute before straightening it again. "Would Kevin's place do?"

AJ frowned at that. "Huh?"

"The one in the Appalachians."

AJ tried to remember anything that might have been mentioned to him about this. "Kevin has a place in the Appalachians?"

"Officially, no. It's not even in his name, he had Kristin buy it under her maiden name. It's so hidden away that even other people who live in that area of the mountains have a hard time knowing whether anyone is occupying it or not."

"Does everyone else know about this?"

Howie shook his head. "I'm not even sure Brian knows. I know because Kev offered it to me as a place to go whenever I need to grieve for Caro."

AJ's "oh" was implicit. "I don’t know if it's really my best idea, going somewhere remote, right now."

"It's something to think about."

AJ reached out and took one of the Plutos, lying down with his head on the slipper as a cushion. Howie watched as AJ fell asleep, his body rising and sinking against the slowly cooling tiles.

*

"So where exactly the fuck are you, McLean?" Sarah hadn't ever been much for 'hello' in a phone conversation, which AJ was beginning to find sexy, much to his chagrin.

AJ had looked around his bus and out the window for anything that might give him a clue. "In the middle of a huge fuck-off field. With a scarecrow. Midwest? I think we were in Connecticut last night, though, so that wouldn't make much sense."

"I got promoted." Sarah had informed him not three weeks before that she had finally made the decision to enter into the nine to five work force with a grunt job at DreamWorks that paid her enough to lease a place of her own.

AJ had been surprised. "Already? It's been like, what, three weeks?"

"I didn't say I managed it the old-fashioned way." Sarah had drawn out the last three words.

"Oh." AJ had grinned. "I dunno, I'd say that's pretty old-fashioned, wouldn't you?"

Sarah had made an amused sound. "Yeah, I guess."

AJ had opened two cabinets below the sink looking for his stash of rum. "You get vacation on this job?"

"Mm, why?"

AJ had poured the rum into a mug, not stopping until it was more than half-way full. "Wanna come out and see me?"

"Only if it's an all-expenses paid vacation. I have to make rent." Sarah had sounded the tiniest bit wistful.

"I think I can afford to pick up the tab. I'll email you the tour dates, you pick someplace you've always wanted to go and tell me when the concert is and where to book the tickets and hotel for."

"Um, look, AJ-"

"You could have gotten that promotion without sleeping your way into it." AJ had hung up the phone before either of them could say anything else.

*

AJ woke up sore but less exhausted than he had felt since Sarah's death. He heard noise coming from above him and looked over to the kitchen table, where Kevin was sitting, whispering quietly with Howie and Nick, munching on a bagel. Nick noticed AJ's open eyes first and greeted him with, "'Mornin', sleepyhead."

AJ got up from the floor slowly, stretching as he went, trying to work out some of the kinks. Howie winced in sympathy. "I would have moved you, but I thought you needed the sleep more."

AJ came over and joined them at the table. "Probably."

"Hungry?" Kevin asked solicitously.

AJ wasn't, but he picked one half a plain bagel out of the mix and reached for the butter. "Thanks."

Howie got up and poured AJ a glass of water, setting it in front of him. AJ thanked him by taking several sips. "Did somebody call Brian?"

"He'll be here," Kevin reported. "Leigh had a check up."

AJ nodded. Leighanne was in her third month of pregnancy, and not yet starting to show. She would though, which meant they would have to be handling press releases about that soon, too. AJ was glad, in a way, it meant that the reporters that the other four guys were fending off for him would leave him alone. Plus, he had a feeling Brian was just waiting for it to be necessary to tell everyone so that Leighanne wouldn't feel she'd had her privacy intruded upon. Brian was more than eager to tell the world. "Where's Kris?"

Kevin mumbled, "She wasn't feeling well when I left this morning, said she'd catch up."

Nick scrunched up his face. "You left Kris alone and sick? That's not really like you."

"It's, uh," Kevin grabbed onto the table with his hands, as if unsure what exactly to do with them, "it's. Here's the thing. I wanted to wait, until we could…be really happy about this, or I would have told you sooner. And I know that it's kind of bad timing with the hubbub about Leighanne coming up so soon, but I figure if we work it right it'll be like when we got married right on top of each other."

AJ rubbed at his temples and glanced around to make sure that Howie and Nick looked as confused as he felt. "Kevin. Sentences, please."

"Kris and I are having a baby." Kevin's eyes were a brilliant shade of green as he made the announcement and AJ hated himself for envying that happiness.

Howie grinned. "Do you and Brian have some kind of, like, genetically encoded timing thing?"

"It's not entirely impossible, but I think it probably has more to do with the fact that Kris and Leigh were both discussing the idea with each other at the same time that Brian and I were."

AJ swallowed air rapidly and forced himself not to think about the way Sarah would bring up having a baby, her eyes narrowing as she doubted her ability to be a good mother and lighting up again as she extolled her faith in the fact that AJ would be a fantastic father. AJ leaned over in his seat and kissed Kevin's forehead. "That's great Kev. The baby's gonna be so beautiful," he said, and got up to wander out of the kitchen.

*

They had had sex for the first time when she had visited him on tour. She had sucked him off in the car on the way back to the hotel and he had made it up to her when they had gotten into his room, taking his own damn time going down on her. Once the edge had been taken off, they had spent most of the night having fun, taking things slowly, exploring. When Sarah had tried anything else, AJ had pinned her to the bed gently, and met her eyes with his, "We're not doing this because I paid for your plane ticket out here. We're doing this because you're beautiful and I'm turned on and I hope you are too."

He had waited until she had nodded -- frightened acceptance flooding her eyes -- to continue with what he had been doing.

*

Kevin found AJ in the backyard, his legs dangling over the side of the pool. Before Kevin could apologize for things that AJ didn't want him apologizing for, AJ told him, "I think we should put me back in a rehab center. As, like, a preventative measure."

Kevin reached down to undo the Velcro on his sandals and roll up his pants legs. He sat down next to AJ and put his feet in the water, swishing them around and watching the patterns of change in the current. "You wanna drink?"

"Desperately," AJ admitted. "More than anything in the world."

"I'm not saying this to be mean, Aje, but being in rehab isn't gonna bring her back."

"I know." AJ kicked his legs up, sending a small spray of water in several directions. "But I don't want you guys to have to pick up the pieces again. I don't want all your happy things to be tainted by me."

"You wanna get away from us, then?" Kevin's legs went still.

"No! Fuck no. Kev. Of course not."

"Because you've got to know that I don't care that you're not jumping up and down about the baby. I don't care. I know you're as happy for me as you can be."

"I was jealous," AJ growled, "I wanted-"

"I don't care, AJ." Kevin placed soft emphasis on 'care.'

"You should." AJ's words were short, bitten off, distinct.

Kevin shrugged, "I like being contrary, what can I say?"

*

She had called him a week after she had left him to go back to her life. He had been hung over and had answered with a sharp, unpleased, "What?"

Not giving an inch, she had snapped back, "You drink too fucking much, McLean."

"Fuck off," had been the most clever thing he could formulate.

"I will, worry not. Right after I tell you that I had a great time this weekend." Her voice had lost none of its edge, but had developed a tinge of vulnerability.

AJ, cranky as he had been, hadn't possessed a chance of staying bitchy. "Me too, Sar. I was glad you came."

"I really. I think you should drink less."

AJ had smiled bitterly, he should have known better than to think she would back off. "I really think you should mind your own business."

"I passed up a…an opportunity. I was, uh, up for a promotion."

"Oh?" AJ had fought to keep his tone casual. "Why would you do that?"

"Because I think, maybe, that I want your business to be my business."

AJ had clenched the phone tightly. "And you think that just because you want something it's going to happen?"

Sarah had snorted. "You think I would be among the tribe of Hollywood whores if I thought that? No. I don't. I just…think that for some unknown reason you've taken a liking to me. And I'm not above taking advantage of that. Not when I like you too."

"I'm never around." AJ had argued weakly.

"I know, but you gotta admit, we make the best time of it when you are." Sarah had replied with a surprising amount of cheer and truth.

"I don't have to admit anything."

"No." Sarah's voice had been almost inaudible. "I suppose you don't, at that."

"But I think I will."

"Yeah?"

"I wouldn't mind having my business be yours."

"Okay." Sarah had paused for a second. "Okay. You drink too much."

*

"Where are you going?"

Howie jumped a little and turned around. "You scared the shit outta me."

"Sorry." AJ gestured to the keys in Howie's hands. "Where're you going?"

"Grocery store. You need food."

AJ was glad he had someone around to think of these things for him. "Can I go with?"

"If there's something you want, I could pick it up for you."

AJ drew back a little. "You don’t want my company?" He worked on making it sound light, arrogant, but he knew the best he was probably accomplishing was pissed off rather than hurt.

"I thought you might be offering to make it less of a burden on me. You've been a little heavy on the guilt of late," Howie reminded him.

"Yeah, well," AJ threw his arm out, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the Jacuzzi room.

"C'mon," Howie said, choosing not to address the issue right then and there, "let's go get something to fatten your nasty-ass bony self up."

"Way to make a guy feel good about himself, D."

Howie didn't make a big deal about its being the first time AJ had cracked a joke, even a simple sarcastic one, since Sarah's death. He just grinned cheesily and pushed AJ all the way to the car.

*

AJ hadn't expected anyone to come visit him in rehab, hadn't felt he deserved it, hadn't even been sure he wanted it. At the same time, he hadn't been surprised by Kevin's visits, the way they continued, weekly, like clockwork, like Kevin. He hadn't been terribly shocked by the way Nick had peeked his head in about two weeks after AJ had been committed, shy and unsure and missing his friend so very badly. Howie's visit, first with Nick, to give the kid someone to hold on to, and later by himself, to let AJ know that Howie hadn't come just for Nick, had been as close to predictable as anything Howie did. Brian had brought Leighanne and a whole bunch of bad jokes and AJ had cried to him, because Brian had always been the most likely of them to stay calm about that kind of thing.

The idea of Sarah visiting had been so outside his realm of possibility that when she had shown up on the first day that he had been allowed visitors, AJ had blinked and told her, point blank, "You're in LA. Oh shit, I'm seeing things."

She had sat down across from him, crossed her legs fastidiously and rolled her eyes. "You need to put me on a call list, or something. I found out about this from co-worker gossip. Not okay, Aje."

AJ had tried to make sense of everything that was going on. "I didn't know you'd…" fly all the way out here to see me, flitted through his brain, but he decided on the more general, "care."

Sarah had gone unnaturally still. "We've been together for nearly four months. We've known each other for over half a year."

"I think I may have been an asshole for most of that time." AJ hadn't felt up to telling her that he couldn’t remember most of that time as well as he would have liked to.

Sarah had smiled and looked away from him. "Kinda, I guess. You were still the kindest person I've ever met."

"I'm sorry. Um, for cheating on you a few times when I was too drunk to remember I had a girlfriend, and for not calling you when I said I would and for not making sure that you were on the list of people-to-call-in-case-anything-happens and-"

"AJ." Sarah had grabbed his wrist, in a physical request for him to stop. "It's okay, I forgive you. Liz may never be able to after all the cursing and yelling I've done about you in the past few months, but I do. I wouldn't be here if I didn't."

"I'm sorry for making you my trial run before apologizing to the guys and my mother."

Sarah had stroked the side of his face with the hand that wasn't holding his wrist. "One of the things you have to learn when apologizing to people, is what they are actually owed an apology for. I don't forgive you for the last because there is nothing to forgive. If I was more important than the people you consider family at this point, I'm not sure I would want to trust you."

AJ had turned his face to press a kiss sweetly to the inside of her hand.

*

Other than the drive over to his place and the funeral, AJ hadn't been out in the world since Sarah's death over two weeks before. The supermarket was harshly lit with the air-conditioning turned on too low and heinously bad Muzak playing in the background, but it was also late in the evening so there weren't that many people around, which was a plus.

Howie had made a list of basics: milk, eggs, fruits and vegetables, and the blackcurrant tea that AJ drank like it was going out of style being among the items on there. AJ stole away to the cookie aisle and loaded the cart up with three boxes of Pinwheels. Howie didn't even blink, which AJ could easily have kissed him for in the middle of the grocery store. Howie debated the virtues of rigatoni versus fettuccini, finally tossing both into the growing pile with another package of thin spaghetti, just in case. AJ wondered if Howie knew to avoid the mostacioli, that it would force AJ to think of the way that was the only pasta Sarah would make for herself, sliding her fork through the hollow inside rather than just stabbing at the pieces like everyone else.

AJ wished he knew when every single thing would stop reminding him of her. He would have liked to mark the date on his calendar, both to dread and look forward to. The pain of her not actually being there to run with the cart in the near-empty aisles and then hop onto the lower level of it, riding it until it came to a stop, laughing and ignoring AJ's admonitions that she'd call attention to them, was so sharp AJ had to remind himself not to check that there wasn't actually something digging into his lungs, his stomach, his throat. But at least the memory was nearly tangible. He had that much, and he wasn't sure he wanted to let go, not even in exchange for a little less pain.

Howie paid for the groceries with AJ's credit card, smiling evilly, but AJ was glad somebody had remembered it. He didn't want Howie supporting him financially on top of everything else. Howie drove them home and they both worked to get everything put away, peas in the freezer, butter in the refrigerator, peanut butter and crackers in the cabinets. When all that was left were empty bags strewn across the counter, AJ picked up the key ring.

"Going out again?" Howie asked.

AJ drove the keys against the inside of his palm. "I'm gonna go catch a meeting."

"Want me to take you?"

AJ looked doubtful. "You really want to?"

AJ could see a million different responses run their way through Howie's mind. The one he settled on was, "Yes. If you want me to."

AJ tossed him the keys.

*

Sarah had taken unpaid leave to be with him when the concerts started up again, and though she hadn't said anything, AJ had put two and two together with how much time she had been spending away from LA to be with him and informed her, "If you need anything, you just tell me."

"Relax, Aje," she had patted his shoulder, "I can take care of myself."

"Hadn't meant to imply otherwise." AJ hadn't, especially not after she had pulled him together before the first show, holding his face between her hands, reminding him that this was what he lived for, singing was just his version of breathing. Everyone had done their part to get him up on the stage, the guys mostly just by being there, not leaving AJ alone even for a second, but her by actively keeping him aware of how much he wanted to be doing what he had been about to do.

She had made love to him after the first show, her being the one to set the pace this time, not letting him get away with anything, holding him down and whispering, "Let me be the strong one, just for a couple of hours."

AJ had begun to realize in those four days how very little he was going to be able to deny her.

*

AJ had never been overwhelmingly fond of predictability, but it had been reassuring that even when he hadn't known what city he was in, he could tell what an AA meeting was going to be like. LA was no different than anywhere else with the exception of the fact that he had worked his way up to being considered a regular, so the faces were truly familiar rather than just being reminiscent of a thousand other faces.

AJ's sponsor was at the meeting. He smiled when he saw AJ and Howie walk through the door, and walked to where they were, "Hey, brought a friend, huh?"

"Cam, this is Howie. Howie, Cam." He waited for the two men to shake hands. They both knew of each other, but had never met. "Howie's fulfilling the job of live-in nanny for the moment."

Cam raised an expressive eyebrow at AJ, apparently trying to decide if there was sarcasm in his words or not. Cam was a small man, smaller than AJ, with long fingers and large eyes that he used to punctuate all of his words. "Big job."

Howie met Cam's eyes. "He'd do the same for me. Has before."

AJ wanted to protest the lie, explain that mostly, with Caro, he'd just crawled in bed next to Howie, night after night, letting the older man cry.

Howie's answer had satisfied Cam, though, who brought his right hand up in front of him, formed into an 'okay' sign. "Well, we're glad you came. Nat and Ginny and I were hoping you'd show up."

Like Cam, Nat and Ginny had been coming to meetings for upwards of twenty years and were both bona fide sponsors to what they called 'the new breed.' AJ nodded. "I'm here."

It was all he could say for certain right then.

*

"I'm gonna stay here, for awhile," Howie announced tentatively at three in the morning over a large, shared glass of blackcurrant iced tea.

AJ took several gulps. "Probably for the best." He slid the drink over to Howie. "I don't think it's really okay to have other people take care of the moving process for me. Like, the packing, and picking a house."

Howie followed the non-sequitur like they had been talking about the same thing all along. "Nobody was gonna just pick a house out for you, I think the plan was mostly to see what was available and report back. As far as the packing goes…honestly, we don't think you're ready to handle that yet."

"Yeah." AJ stood up and walked to the patio door. "That's where the favor-asking part of this comes in."

Howie slid the glass back and forth across the condensation pooling on the table. "So ask."

"I'm gonna… I'm gonna do this while my memories of her are still sharp, a little because I think I owe it to her. Mostly because-" AJ broke off, staring out the window, nothing but frustrated silence inside of him.

"Because you want those memories like that, one last time, since there won't be any more."

AJ, grateful that Howie understood what it meant to mourn someone, admitted, "I feel crazy. Masochistic."

"I can't imagine anyone who doesn't go a little bit crazy at a time like this," Howie reassured him, managing not to sound condescending.

AJ turned around, "I'd do anything to bring her back, problems and all." His repeated "Anything," was fierce, fervent, a prayer and a curse.

Howie was nonplussed. "I know, babe."

*

Kevin and Kris were at the house along with several truckloads' worth of boxes and a lifetime's supply of packaging tape the next morning when AJ fell off the couch while dreaming of Sarah. Howie asked, "You okay?"

AJ nodded. "I need a shower."

He showered in the guestroom, using Howie's overnight bottles of Aveda and the Crabtree & Evelyn hand soap that Sarah had made sure graced every sink in the house. He stuffed the towel in his mouth before drying off with it and thought about screaming for several minutes. In the end, he patted himself dry, slipped on some jeans and a shirt and wandered back to where everybody had been at last sighting.

AJ sat down behind Kris, rubbing her shoulders deeply, the way she liked it. "I hear congrats are in order, gorgeous."

Kris twisted around to smile at him, radiating contentment. He smiled back, if less enthusiastically. "You feeling okay?"

"I'm always fine after I've sacrificed half my body weight to the porcelain goddess each morning." Kris turned back to her project, constructing the broken-down boxes into operable packing units.

"Pleasant," AJ kneaded some more, hitting a particularly tense spot in her back, working through it despite her pained gasps.

Kevin looked up. "You abusing my wife, McLean?"

"I provide her with services you can only dream of, Richardson." AJ pressed a knuckle into the spot for several seconds and released the pressure, a relieved sob coming from Kris. "Better?"

"I am naming my first born after you, Alexander McLean," Kris declared.

"You might wanna stop saying that now that you have to actually deliver on the promise," Howie suggested.

Kevin rolled over from where he was and kissed his wife's knee. AJ watched.

*

Howie had liked Sarah pretty early on, which had been the final and most important factor in proposing to her. AJ valued, respected, and trusted all of the guy's opinions, but when it came to women whom AJ was dating, Howie had always been the hardest to please and the most intuitively correct one of the four. Howie hadn't liked Amanda at all.

Howie had met Sarah back before the two of them were dating, had been over at AJ's place when she had dropped by on one of her I'm-in-between-fucks-entertain-me jaunts. AJ had been ready to defend her after the three of them had gone home for the night and Howie had called not five minutes later.

"I know, what you're gonna say, D, but we have the best time togeth-"

Howie had cut AJ off. "You obviously <I>don't know what I'm gonna say. I think she has a good heart."

"Oh." It had taken AJ a moment to understand. "Really?"

"Really. She's fucked up and I don't think you should get involved with her until she figures herself out, but I like her."

AJ and Howie hadn't been talking much around the time that AJ and Sarah finally got together. Howie tended to display anger by avoiding the person he was angry with, but he had caught on and come out of his anger long enough to ask AJ if Sarah had figured herself out yet.

"As much as I have," AJ had responded, disgustingly glad that Howie was talking to him and determined in every way not to show it.

Howie had shook his head and gone back to not saying anything to AJ -- outside of appearances -- until Howie's first visit to the rehab clinic. AJ had told him, the second time he had come, "Sarah's been visiting me."

"I know. I saw her on the sign-in list. You want me to check up on her?"

AJ had watched his still less-than-steady hands tremble slightly against his knees. He had wondered if it was really from the withdrawal or from other things that he hadn't wanted to think about. "Yeah, um. That would be nice of you. And maybe, if you could program her number in your cell's speed-dial, she says she found out about this from co-worker gossip. She deserves better."

Howie had grimaced at the double-entendre. "You're gonna be better."

"I wasn't-"

"You were."

Howie had always been the type of person who didn't enter a fight unless he knew he could win. AJ hadn't continued the argument, sensing the futility.

"Do me a favor?" Howie's voice had been firm, a cross between a question and a command.

AJ had peered at him, curious.

"Don't talk your way out of this, don't tell yourself that she's too good or that things are too fucked up or whatever it is you tell yourself about the worthwhile ones, because she might not be, but then again she might be perfect for you."

AJ had told her, when he had presented her with the flower bud that held the ring he had customized to be hers and only hers, "I think you might be perfect for me. For the rest of my life."

*

Brian came over with Leighanne, bearing Chinese take-out. Nick had shown up a few hours previously and had been drafted into helping pack up the linen closets. Brian and Leighanne walked through the house, rounding up its various inhabitants and shepherding them into the kitchen.

AJ drank two glasses of water before declaring, "I think I'm gonna put most of this stuff in storage. The stuff I don't wanna get rid of. I'm pretty sure I'm not really ready for something as permanent as another house."

Kevin twirled several strands of Lo Mein around his fork. "What were you thinking instead?"

AJ reached for a plate and picked up different containers, deciding what he wanted. Brian handed AJ the Szechwan Chicken, earning himself a grateful smile. "I don't really know yet. I thought one of you might know if there was an apartment subletting in one of your buildings."

Nick speared a piece of crunchy beef rather fiercely with his fork. "I think there might be one in mine, I thought I saw a flier up for it about a week ago. I dunno if they've found someone yet."

AJ shrugged and waited until he had chewed enough to speak without spitting. "Just keep your eyes open, I guess."

Howie, whose plate was mostly full despite the fact that they'd been eating for nearly a half hour, spoke up. "How would you feel about being my roommate?"

AJ drank half a glass of water.

Howie pushed his food around on his plate. "I know you're scared to live with anyone who's not Sarah. But you're also scared of living alone and of making a commitment to any one place. So here's the deal. You pay half the rent and the utilities on a monthly basis. You have the second bedroom entirely to yourself, it even has a lock on the door for when you can't stand seeing my face one second longer. The minute you feel like moving out, you tell me, we find a place for you, the arrangement ceases. No contracts, no commitments, all you have to do is put up with one roommate."

Brian picked up the Sesame Chicken container and began to eat straight out of it, causing Leighanne to smack him in chagrin. If he noticed, it didn't cause a change in his behavior. "I think Howie missed his calling."

Nick and Brian grinned at each other, chiming in with, "Door-to-door sales!"

Everyone else in the room rolled their eyes, mostly out of principle. AJ tried to eat more of what was on his plate and gave up, having reached the half-way mark. "Sounds good, D."

Howie ate his lunch and what was left of AJ's.

*

Around the fourth or fifth time Sarah had turned him down when AJ had asked her to be his date to some kind of Event, AJ had thrown his hands up and inquired, "Are you embarrassed to be my girlfriend, or something?"

Sarah had laughed, "Yeah, that's it, Aje. That's why my mom and any of my relatives who own a telephone and my friends reaching back to college all know that I'm dating you."

"So what is this, then? You have an ex in the mob who will come after you and kill both of us in some kind of gory, all-out, got-nothing-on-Reservoir-Dogs manner?"

Sarah's mouth had hung open for a second. "Did you just come up with that? Like, right off the top of your head?"

AJ had fought not to smile. "Sarah."

"I just don't want to be 'AJ McLean's Girlfriend' for the rest of my given existence. I will be no matter how hard I try to avoid it, but I'd still prefer to put much effort as I can into the attempt. Call my life an exercise in futility, what can I say?"

AJ's amusement had disappeared, leaving a trail of nausea in its place. "I don't think of you that way."

"I didn't mean to imply you did, baby. Or the guys, or my friends, or anyone who matters, really, but everyone else would. I came out here to become someone, I did things I never thought I'd do to make that happen and here it is, happening, but only in the sense that I'm an adjunct to you. I don't… I'm not ready to give up on myself quite that much yet." Sarah's hands had stolen around AJ's wrists, tugging at them lightly, physically pleading for him to understand.

AJ had dragged her by her hands in front of the closest mirror and then stepped out of the way. "That's Sarah Marten. She's gorgeous and talented, I know because I listen to her when she's in the shower, or doing laundry or just sitting around, singing along with TV jingles. She's dating some guy, but he doesn't much matter, because all I see when I look at her is her. She takes up so much of my world that sometimes I miss other things that are probably important, but I find it really hard to care."

Sarah had looped a finger through one of AJ's belt loops and tugged him up against her. The two of them had fit perfectly within the frame of the mirror. She had looked away, but AJ hadn't noticed at the time, he had been too busy staring at her.

*

When AJ had thought about packing up, touching her things, putting them away to be unearthed later, he had thought of it in the abstract. No particular picture frame had sprung to mind, perfume bottles hadn't been a consideration. He hadn't made a plan as to which rooms would go first and which would be saved for later, when he could open their doors and walk in and breathe all at the same time.

Howie asked him, "You have a plan?" when all the others had left and they were standing in the doorway, AJ still waving out of rote.

AJ dropped his hand. "For?"

"How the packing is gonna go." Howie pulled AJ inside and shut the door.

"We pack until everything that can fit in a box is in one?" AJ thought it sounded like a pretty solid plan.

"You haven't gone in your bedroom or the Jacuzzi room once, Aje. We've been here nearly a week and you don't even look in the direction of either room. Which is fine, but I need to know if you want us to take care of those rooms, you wanna wait until the end with them…"

AJ scrubbed a hand over his face. He turned silently and began walking. Howie followed without saying a word, stopping behind AJ when the younger man put his hand on the knob of the Jacuzzi room door and went still. "You don't have to, you know."

AJ's knuckles tightened. "I have to see if I can." He pressed the knob down and swung the door open. Howie followed AJ's slow steps into the room, a step at a time. AJ got two feet inside before breaking for the small waste bin kept by one of the lawn chairs. Howie knelt beside AJ, rubbing at the back of his neck until the vomiting stopped.

"Can you stand up?"

"That's." AJ's throat was raw. "That's not the problem."

"Okay, what is?"

"I can't turn around."

Howie glanced behind them. The bottle of Valium was still lying beside the tub where Sarah had been found slumped up against it. There were a few capsules scattered. Howie stood up. "Stay here, don't move." He got up to go clean up the mess.

"I told her that. I told her to stay here. She didn't listen."

Howie put the pills back in the bottle and stuck it in his pocket for disposal once they got out of the room. AJ was using the only trash in the room and Howie didn’t want to leave him there by himself.

"I need you to listen to me though. You're gonna keep your eyes closed, and we're gonna walk out of here." Howie put a hand beneath either of AJ's elbows and slowly guided him to his feet. AJ placed a significant amount of his weight against Howie, trusting him to get them out of the room without incident. When they were beyond the door, Howie took one hand off AJ and used it to shut the door. AJ heard the locking mechanism settle into place and opened his eyes. Tears that had been stored up under the cover of his eyelids fell, soaking his face before he even got the chance to let out his first sob.

AJ's tears were silent and insistent and so harsh as to be physically painful. AJ strained against them, strained against Howie's comforting touches, broke free of both with, "I hate her, I need her so much."

*

Sarah had liked to try new things. She had never ordered the same dish at a restaurant, no matter how much she had loved it, had bought CDs that she hadn't heard a single song off of because the covers had caught her eye, and had read books that people she didn't necessarily know well or even like had recommended. AJ had often thought that she had started dating him more because he wasn't something she had ever done before than out of any real interest in AJ himself.

He had bought her a tank of piranhas once as a gift, with the words, "It's something different," inked onto the Plexiglas of the tank. Sarah had kept them alive for nearly a year before deciding that she wasn't really into the whole having-to-feed-your-pets-live-bait scene and donating them to a marine-life center.

When Nick had been out, gallivanting around, promoting his single album, and AJ had been at home with her, wanting a drink so badly he had been willing to gnaw his arm off to get one, he had asked, "What happens when I'm not new and different anymore?"

She had shaken her head disbelievingly. "I knew I wanted to marry you because you were the one thing in my life that I woke up in the morning expecting and still wanting it all the same."

AJ had downed a bottle of pineapple juice and then made love to her until Nick had been scheduled to appear on the Early Show.

*

Cam was married to a woman who was more of a Southern Belle than Brian's and Kevin's mothers put together. AJ showed up to his second meeting since Sarah's death a week after the first one, this time on his own. Cam got up to greet him holding a tumbler wrapped in red gingham and tied up with a blue satin bow. He held it out to AJ. "Apricot preserves. From Val, she's worried aboutcha."

AJ took the jar. "Give her a kiss for me and tell her that apricot's one of my favorites." It wasn't, but Brian loved it and AJ had a soft spot for Val a mile wide.

"Your friend not with you tonight?" Cam lead them over to the coffee and poured himself a refill. AJ would have guessed at its being Cam's third or fourth of the evening. The meeting had started an hour before.

"I told him to go out or play his guitar or call his mom. They've all been helping me pack all week and he's stayed at the house with me, I don't want him going insane for lack of time to himself."

"He sounds like a good friend."

AJ narrowed his eyes. "You knew he was a good friend. They all are. They stood by me. I've told you all this."

Cam held up his hands. "I didn't mean it as a backhanded insult. Val barely stayed with me through some of my rough spots and she's legally bound to me. I just…look, sometimes people still have the ability to pleasantly surprise me. Allow me my shock."

AJ poured himself a coffee more out of the need for something to do with his hands than really desiring the beverage. "Howie's a brother."

"Two of my brothers don't speak to me anymore, Aje. Just because somebody loves you doesn't mean they'll stand by you when you most need it." Cam started to drink his sufficiently cooled coffee.

"Is this your way of telling me not to take him for granted?" AJ met Cam's eyes.

"Something like that."

AJ wanted to set down his coffee cup and walk out of the meeting, or something equally defensive and dramatic, but he couldn't remember if he had thanked Howie for everything yet, so instead he took a sip and nodded. "Okay."

*

Sarah had been graced with a chicken pox scar near her right elbow. It was small, a round indentation in otherwise smooth skin. AJ had liked dipping his head to it, kissing it to initiate sex, or sometimes, in the middle of dinner parties, just to remind her of how much he loved her.

He had enjoyed pressing his thumbs against the backs of her knees lightly, hearing the resulting giggle. "Pillsbury dough girl," he had called her and she had stuck her tongue out at him, "You're gonna give me a complex."

He had liked catching her wrists in the air, mid-stretch, first thing in the morning. Her wrists had fit inside his palm, like one of the litter of kittens he had once helped his grandmother to deliver. Her weight would inevitably fall into his hands and then he would hold her, keeping her suspended as he relearned every feature, just in case it had changed while he was sleeping. He had been afraid not to know everything about her, as if she could slip away if he wasn't prepared to tell someone exactly how far the darkest freckle on her left cheek lay from her nose.

He had paid attention to the way her stomach moved when she sang and her feet made odd circular motions when she dog-paddled.

When the nightmares had started -- dark, seemingly incoherent nightmares that left her shaking and unable to sleep again -- he had thought that his knowledge could ward them off. He had been sure that his knowledge of her was more than that of whatever had its grasp on her and was hurting her. For awhile, his presence, the way he had woken her up before she could scream, and had run out into the night to buy her comfort food of her choice at four AM, these things had warded off the nightmares and the depression that accompanied them. AJ, who had known better than to underestimate the psychosis of depression, had let himself believe, when she had fallen back into having harmless dreams of racing toaster ovens down deserted Disneyland streets and other such oddities, that the two of them and their knowledge of each other, had won.

*

Howie was in his pajamas, sprawled out over the couch, damp hair curling over his forehead when AJ got back from the meeting. A syndicated "Will & Grace" episode was playing on the TV. "Hey," Howie said, a residual smile from laughing at a joke on his face.

AJ sat down, picking up Howie's legs and placing them on AJ's knees. "Good ep?"

Howie made an inconclusive noise. "I think I've become easy to amuse."

"You were always easy to amuse, we just didn't want to tell you and hurt your feelings."

"Thanks for that, I guess." Howie leaned his head against the side of the couch and shut his eyes.

"Tired?"

"Mm. I used your weights while you were gone."

AJ poked at the flesh of Howie's calf. It changed colors but didn't give. "I should have known."

"Shuddup."

"D." AJ shook Howie's feet a little bit. "Open your eyes, D."

Howie opened them and looked at AJ with open concern. "You okay? The meeting go all right?"

"Yeah, that's fine. I just thought I might have forgotten to tell you thank you for all of this."

"Oh." Howie shut his eyes again. "You didn't need to."

"I needed to," AJ disagreed.

"I love you, Aje," Howie said the words as though they made his every point evident.

"Well, I know, but that doesn't really give me the right to be an ungrateful bastard."

"You weren't being an ungrateful bastard."

AJ sighed and gave up. He let words that were easy slide off his tongue. "I love you too."

"That I don't mind hearing."

*

AJ had learned from Kevin and Brian that the way to plan a wedding was pretty much not to. Instead, if the groom just sat around and looked presentable, everyone else would handle the details. Sarah had been a basket case in the weeks preceding the event, so AJ had done a lot of calming her down in between his sitting around jaunts. He had checked with Kevin and Brian to make sure this was normal and they had both seemed to think it was, so AJ hadn't worried.

He had offered, when he had woken up to her crying herself to sleep out of stress, "We could elope."

Sarah had given a watery chuckle. "That would only end in our murders."

"Probably, but the misery would be short, rather than protracted."

Sarah had burrowed herself nearly into AJ's chest. "You may have a point."

AJ had stroked her back. "I don't care if my wedding is a disaster so long as it ends in me being bound to you for the rest of my life."

"See, you say that now-"

"No, Sar. I'm saying that. It's an unretractable statement, okay? Sure, I like the ceremony involved in the wedding, I'm a romantic, of course I like it. I like the idea of everybody gaping at my gorgeous soon-to-be-wife as she walks down the aisle in her dress. But in the end, if you had said, 'let's hop on down to the Justice of the Peace and get ourselves some paperwork,' I would have been in the passenger's seat before you made it to the garage."

Sarah had moved herself a bit so that her face was on a level with AJ's. "I hadn't previously been aware of this, but evidently I become completely psychotic when I'm in love with someone."

"That's okay, I think it's kinda cute." AJ had brought up a hand to wipe the hair back from her face.

Sarah had sucked one of his fingers into her mouth with a mischievous smile and then bit down. "Cute, eh?"

*

Kevin, Kristin, Brian and Leighanne took charge of packing up the master bedroom and the Jacuzzi room. AJ had discussed the matter with all of them and come to the conclusion that the best manner of handling the situation would be to pack everything and put it in storage until AJ was ready to deal with it.

Kevin had called a moving company and scheduled a time for them to come out with two trucks, one to transport the stuff that was going to Howie's place and one to take the rest of the boxes to storage. AJ was selling the house still furnished. He had done most of the furnishing when he had first moved in, and it still spoke of the excitement of being able to afford a house like that in LA. AJ thought he had probably outgrown the furnishings long before, and this was just the first time he had had reason to notice.

Howie found a real-estate agent that he liked and introduced the agent to AJ for approval. AJ gave the go-ahead and the agent talked numbers. She spoke as if speaking to AJ, but Howie was in the room the whole time and AJ depended on him to deal with the technicalities. Howie would have done his research before picking someone and would know what to expect and what all the papers said and which ones AJ should sign.

Howie's apartment felt smaller than it actually was with boxes strewn about almost all of the rooms. Howie and AJ stayed awake for three days and three nights straight, stopping only to eat, going through the boxes and finding places to put everything. AJ had been content to put the decorations that he had brought along with him up in his room, but Howie had muttered something fierce about shared rent and began rearranging the décor to fit AJ's Kadinsky print in the den and his Venetian Carnival mask in the kitchen.

AJ worked on fitting his pictures of the guys in with Howie's and before long the wall that had started out having a picture album feel to it was more along the lines of a shrine, but the wall Howie had chosen was easy to see from most of the rooms in the apartment and having it covered in good memories made AJ feel better.

They finally crashed after getting the last pair of AJ's pants hung up at dawn on the fourth day. AJ literally crawled to his bed, Howie right behind him. Howie murmured, "You don't mind if I stay? Across the hall seems kinda far right now."

"Yeah," AJ agreed.

*

AJ returned empty-handed after having been gone from the apartment for nearly four hours two days after having moved in and Howie calmly inquired, "Where were you?" in a tone that screamed of the fact that Howie was reminding himself that AJ was a big boy.

"I went to go see Sherry. I'm sorry I didn’t leave a note." AJ sounded validly contrite.

Howie sighed. "I was worried, Aje."

AJ nodded. "Sorry."

"Sherry Walker?"

"Mm." Sherry was AJ's psychiatrist. He had found her after going to about seven others when the depression had first begun kicking in badly, shortly after their split from Transcon. They had an odd relationship in that AJ didn't particularly like or trust psychiatrists, or even really think that they helped, but he always went back to her when he was in a situation that he knew he couldn't get himself out of.

"Was that good?" Howie's voice was soft, as if he wasn't sure if he should be asking.

"I don't know." AJ walked into the kitchen and stated loudly from there, "She said she was glad I was staying with you."

Howie followed him. "Well, that makes two of us."

"Three." AJ grabbed two glasses and held one out to Howie. "She pisses me off."

"That's why you go back to her. She's the only person you found that you thought was telling you the truth." Howie took his glass and reached out to take AJ's as well.

"She said that it was okay to remember Sarah any way I wanted to so long as the way I chose meant that I didn't stay in my memories with her." AJ gave him the second glass.

Howie poured them both glasses of the lemonade he had made while worrying about AJ. Squeezing lemons had seemed like a good way to keep from destroying less disposable things. "What do you take that to mean?"

AJ swiped his now-full glass off the table and took a large swig. "This is good, you make it?"

Howie took a sip of his and waited.

"I take it to mean that she thinks I'm remembering her with rose-colored glasses. That I've made things so good in my head I don't want to have to leave there."

"And?"

"And I haven't." AJ took another drink, this one more of a size that would be possible to taste. "I haven't. I know who she was D, good and bad. I know that she got pissy over minor infractions sometimes and that when she was depressed she could be mean as all hell and that sometimes she lied more than she should have. It's not that I don't remember all of that. It's just that I want her back anyway. So maybe I am stuck, I dunno."

"Caro was a bitch first thing in the morning and she had to have things her way all the time and she had bad taste in music. I still want her back."

"Do you think you're in a rut?"

"No." Howie finished his lemonade and poured himself a second glass. "I think that there are some memories that travel with you. You just have to find a way of knowing that they're memories and that they can't and shouldn't compete with what's there, in the room with you."

AJ jumped up on the counter, resting his head against the cabinets. "Sherry wants me to come twice a week for awhile."

Howie accepted the change in conversation. "You gonna?"

AJ allowed his flip flops to fall off his feet to the floor. "I made another appointment."

"It's okay to go one day at a time, so long as you know you're moving forward."

"I'm not entirely sure you won't have to keep track of that for me."

Howie put the lemonade pitcher in the refrigerator.

*

Brian called AJ late on a Tuesday night and told him, "Leigh and I are at Maraschino's. Wanna join?"

By the time AJ got there so had all the other guys. It was hardly a surprise that everyone had been invited; Brian was the type of guy who had probably invited his entire class to his birthday parties until junior high just to make sure nobody got left out.

Maraschino's was an ice cream place that made their ice cream daily. The real reason to come was the waffle cones, though, which the customers could watch being made. AJ ordered himself a scoop of cookies and cream just so that he could get one of the old-fashioned cones. Leighanne had ordered three scoops of ice cream in a cone that was chocolate dipped and covered in sprinkles. AJ tried not to watch in fascination as she methodically demolished the cone and its contents.

He used a diversionary tactic on himself and announced, "I want to get back in the studio."

Everyone stared at him for a second before Nick asked, "Really?"

"No Nick, I'm just saying that." AJ felt bad about being snippy before the words even left his mouth, but he had been treated as though he were made of some particularly fine Italian glass by them before and he hadn't much liked it that time, either.

"You don't have to be an asshole, this is the first you've mentioned. And it hasn't been that long." Nick didn't sound particularly put off and AJ smiled at him. Nick grinned back.

"It's been a month and six days," AJ told them all.

Kevin bit down noisily on his cone. "We can go back anytime. I just have to call the studio and tell them we're ready to reserve time again. Do we wanna do full days every day, or maybe an every other day kind of thing? We've put off the album indefinitely," there was a note to Kevin's voice that told AJ the older man had done his fair share of screaming and mollycoddling to get that accomplished, "so it's up to us really."

Kristin leaned in against Kevin, kissing his shoulder. "I'd appreciate if you weren't in the studio in the mornings."

Leighanne nodded silently next to Brian. Brian let his hand drop to where hers was and intertwined the two with a muttered, "Sticky."

"How does afternoon to evening sound for everyone? Every day?"

Howie waited for AJ to nod before joining in, Brian waited for Leighanne to squeeze his hand in approval, Nick waited to see what everyone else was going to do.

"Okay then." Kevin popped the tip of his ice cream cone in his mouth. "This is good."

AJ made a wish over the tip of his ice cream cone and followed suit.

*

Sarah had whispered to him, "I'm Mrs. Alexander McLean," as the plane's front wheels lifted off the ground in LA. She had still had a rose petal stuck in her hair. He had left it where it was.

"Does it feel right?" The plane had dipped slightly, correcting its course to Nice.

Sarah had been swallowed up by the first class plane seat, and it had been quite a ways for her to lean in order to kiss AJ. She had done it anyway. "Perfect."

He had wanted to make love to her in their seats, ignoring the other passengers. He had settled for saying, "I'm yours."

She had smiled. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure the vows covered that clause, too."

"Just didn't want there being any doubt."

*

AJ figured out that they weren't working on any of the songs that he had substantial leads in pretty quickly, but didn't mention it, because it was as obvious to him as any of the others that his voice needed to be reminded a bit of what it did for a living before it was ready to dive straight back into the vocal acrobatics that several of the tracks on the album required.

AJ and Howie spent a lot of time harmonizing around the apartment. Doo-wop songs in the morning while making coffee and trying to wake up, Motown ballads in the evening, and anything that either one of them started and the other one joined in on during all the times in between when they weren't in the studio.

Howie sometimes sang songs in Spanish. AJ didn't know the words, and would provide a back-up melody, stringing along la-la-las and a bit of humming when nothing else quite fit.

AJ would get on a rock kick and Howie would provide guitar sounds, high and nearly electric.

There were times when AJ wouldn't join in, mostly when Howie was singing to him, lullabies to get him back to sleep after a nightmare. It should have been stupid and childish and AJ wanted to hate it but instead ended up buying Billy Joel's 'River of Dreams' album only to find that he preferred Howie's high-pitched a cappella version of that particular lullaby. He suspected it would be pretty much the same with 'Rockabye' and held off on buying Shawn Mullin's album.

Howie finished a three lullaby set one evening to find AJ still awake, fighting to keep his eyes open. Howie started to sing a fourth before stopping, interrupting the song with words with no melody, "Taking comfort in this isn't a crime. I don't think less of you. I wouldn't sing if your accepting my song was going to lessen you in my eyes."

"I feel like a fucking child who wants his mother to come back. I'm amazed I haven't started wetting the fucking bed."

"Don't say stuff like that out loud, you know it's bad karma," Howie told him. "And she wasn't your mother. And you aren't a kid for wanting her back."

"D-"

"Aje, so I sing to you, okay? I have a feeling it's more me being here, in the room, than anything else. I could sing Nine Inch Nails if that would make it easier for you. You'd fall asleep all the same, I promise, it's not about the music."

"Maybe. Maybe I want it to be about the music."

"Yeah," Howie agreed after a long silence. "Life would be a lot nicer that way, wouldn't it?"

*

In hindsight, AJ had always thought it was the high of coming home from their honeymoon that had made her relent and say, "You wouldn't happen to be willing to trade some recording time on your label for sexual favors, wouldja?"

AJ could have counted the number of times she had asked him for help beyond, "Pass the pepper, please," on the fingers of one hand. So instead of pointing out that maybe she should think about that decision a little more and get back to him he had asked, "What kind of sexual favors?"

AJ had gotten well-laid and Sarah had gotten a small, not-very-flashy album filled with pop tracks that had showcased her voice and not much else, which had been exactly what she had wanted. Her picture on the front was unassuming and her name was still Sarah Marten according to the CD cover, something she had put her foot down on and AJ hadn't really disagreed with.

AJ had wondered, when the reviews started rolling in, telling potential buyers that Sarah's voice was anywhere from, "sultry and enjoyable," to "smooth and solid," to "enjoyably pop-perfect," if things would have been different if the album hadn't been released under Backstreet's label. If reviewers wouldn't have felt it necessary to start off their reviews, "In her debut album, AJ McLean's wife…" If they wouldn't have been so ready to ridicule her efforts, oftentimes openly pointing out that "fame is an easy road when you have a husband who can provide it for you."

AJ had constantly had to remind himself not to glare when reporters would ask him what he thought of the album. He had had to train himself never to call her his wife in his responses. "I think Sarah's one of the most talented women I've ever met in my life," or, "I'm blown away by Sarah and what she can do. This album is something she's been working toward for a long time and I think she really accomplished what she set out to do with it," or some variation thereof. Never, "I'm so proud of my brilliant, talented wife," never that.

The album had sold decently: Backstreet had enough fans who had promoted it on their websites to propel it onto the charts, and the first single had made it in to the top 40. AJ had heard it in the car one day and had nearly killed himself and a few other people on the freeway dialing Sarah's number to tell her to turn the radio on. After the song, the DJ had announced, "That was Sarah Marten, AJ McLean's wife's new single, 'Hear This.' Good stuff, huh?"

AJ had wished he hadn't been able to get through to her.

*

AJ packed an overnight bag, took the airline tickets out from where he had been hiding them just in case he decided he actually did want to use them, drove himself to the airport and called Howie once he was past check-in.

"What's up?"

"I'm at the airport, I'm gonna go spend time with my mom for the holiday."

"You got a last minute ticket the day before Thanksgiving?" There were very few things that still amazed Howie, but AJ sensed this was probably one of them.

"No, I booked it awhile ago, I booked two, actually. Which was why… I didn't know if I was going until today."

Howie's voice was gentle as he asked, "Did you tell the airline she wasn't going to make it?"

"I couldn't." AJ's words were short, mixed with equal parts frustration and pain.

"It's okay, they'll figure it out," Howie reassured him. "You want me to see if I can hop a flight on Friday or something? I'm sure one of our people can swing that for me."

AJ's thoughts took a sudden turn toward the panicky. "What are you gonna do?" Nick had flown out to join Aaron and Angel the day before, Brian and Leighanne were in Kentucky and Kevin and Kristin were in Kansas City, with her family. AJ hadn't considered the fact that Howie probably wasn't sticking around LA because he couldn't get plane tickets. "You were staying for me, weren't you? Fuck, I'm a shithead, D. Really, I didn't even think-"

"AJ. Shut up."

"But-"

"No, I'm serious. Aaron's tour is in Portland. I can make the drive up there by tomorrow and spend the holiday with them. Then, if you want, I'll fly out on Friday and make Nick drive my car back."

"You should make Nick drive back with you anyway."

Howie snorted. "Probably."

"Stay in Portland, ok?" AJ said this all in one breath, a single exhalation.

"You sure?"

"Yeah. I need…to make sure I can be without you guys, you, for a weekend. It's kind of a false test, with my mom being there and everything, but it's something."

"You'll be fine." Howie didn't sound like he thought AJ was being melodramatic, just like it was something AJ needed to hear.

AJ was glad one of them could say it. "I know. But seeing is believing, evidently."

"Have a safe flight, babe. Call me when you get there."

"Will do."

"Don't forget AJ."

"Yes mom."

"Bye, you gigantic pain in my ass."

AJ wasn't sure if Howie caught his, "Love you, too," before hanging up.

*

Sarah had gone on tour without him, opening for Brandy rather than headlining because, "The last fucking thing I need right now is people saying my husband underwrote the damn tour, thanks."

He had wanted to go along, but when he had mentioned talking to the guys about postponing recording just a bit longer she had looked at him coldly and said, "Sweet of you, but no."

He had drawn back and she had come back to herself, the way she sometimes would after a night where even crying for hours on end couldn't get her to sleep, and had apologized, "Babe, it's not that I don't want you there, I do, of course I do. I just…"

He had finished for her, as exhausted as she was from staying up those nights with her, "Don’t want my being there to eclipse you."

He had never admitted to the problem before, had always let her be the one to snipe about it or cry about it or just mention it, but it had always been her situation to react to. She had looked straight at him now that the words had been put between them, her eyes neither confirming or denying.

He had offered, "I could leave, if that would make it better for you." He had been amazed his breath had held out during the offer, had doubted that he was anything but transparent in the fact that he wouldn't know what to do if she took him up on it.

She had walked to him at that, pulled him into her, breathed unevenly into the slope of his neck. "I know it doesn't always seem like it, and I'm sorry for that, I'm sorry for a lot of things that I probably don’t apologize for, but our marriage is more important than my career. I love you more than some silly CD, I do."

It had been nice to hear the words, but AJ had wondered if she loved him more than her independent identity.

*

"Hi." AJ stood on his mother's doorstep. "Sorry I didn't…I didn’t know I was coming."

Denise pulled him into her arms, carry-on luggage and all. "That's okay, I'm just glad you're here."

The last time AJ had seen his mother had been a few days after the funeral, hugging her goodbye before Brian drove her to the airport. She had offered to stay but AJ had shook his head and said, "I'll call if I need you," and he had, on a weekly basis, sometimes more, just to say, "I miss you," and hear her certain, unwavering, "I love you," come back without hesitation.

She herded him into the house, pushing the bag off his shoulder in the front hallway and leading him to the couch, where she sat down next to him, their sides lined up neatly against each other. "I was gonna go to Diana's tomorrow night, but I'll call and cancel if you'll help me make dinner here. That okay, just you and me?"

AJ put his head down on her shoulder, tired from the flight, from reminding himself that the adolescent male flying standby in the seat next to him had every right to that seat. "I was kinda hoping for that, actually."

Denise kissed his forehead, "You're warm."

AJ smiled wearily, enjoying her concern. "Just tired, mom."

"You want anything to eat before you crash? Food plane is shit." Denise pulled herself to her feet and hauled AJ up after her.

"Just a glass of water. Not really hungry."

Denise frowned. "You've lost weight."

"I know, Nick bitches about my supermodel physique on a daily basis."

"Tell Nick he can keep his thoughts to himself or he'll have me to deal with," Denise threatened playfully. Nick was nearly as much of a son to her as AJ was.

"Great, now he can call me a momma's boy, too. Yay."

Denise smacked AJ lightly upside the head before grinning and grabbing his face to kiss it soundly. "I'm so glad you came. I've missed you like you wouldn’t believe."

AJ didn't pull his face away. "I'd believe."

*

Sarah had started seeing a shrink during the tour, after the third time she had called, crying and barely breathing, keeping AJ up all night. At the end of that call, he had warned, "Baby, you need help. Either that, or I'm catching up with you in D.C. Your choice."

One of the wardrobe girls that Sarah had made friends with gave her the name of someone who would do long-distance therapy and Sarah had called to set up a phone appointment. By the time she had stopped touring, Sarah had been with the same doctor for nearly three months. The doctor had put her on anti-depressants about three sessions into their doctor-patient relationship. The first pills had caused Sarah to vomit on a regular basis and the second ones had caused headaches so bad she had trouble opening her eyes, but the third ones seemed to work out, on the side-effect front if nothing else. They had not yet begun to work on solving the actual problem when Sarah had gotten back to LA and had slept for three days straight waking only when AJ had made her awaken in order to get some food into her.

When she had finally awoken on her own, she had showered before driving out to the studio where AJ was recording. AJ had seen her walk in the sound booth and grinned toothily, mouthing, "Hi, sleepy."

She had mouthed back, "Hi, dopey."

The guys had taken a lunch break about an hour after she had arrived and AJ, in his excitement, had barely been able to coordinate his legs well enough to get through the door to where she was. He had kissed her long and hard until Nick's smacking him and yelling "Only you can prevent PDA!!" loudly over and over again finally convinced him to stop. He had turned around to smack Nick in retribution and, having accomplished his goal, swiveled back to beam at her, "I missed you."

"Oh yeah, me too," she had agreed. Kevin had nearly pushed the two of them out the front door, instructing, "Go have lunch somewhere, we'll take care of Brian's solos if you're not back on time."

He had taken her out to their favorite hole-in-the-wall, a middle-Eastern joint that was about the size of AJ's closet. Sarah had mentioned craving good schwarma throughout the last half of the tour. He had let her do all the talking, tell him things that she hadn't thought to mention over the phone about the last few cities, how completing her first tour had felt and how things with her shrink were going. In the middle of all this she had dropped the tidbit, "I started going to church again somewhere around Houston, with Nora, one of the makeup girls. She was Presbyterian, pretty hard core, if we weren't on a bus on Sunday, she was in church. So, I kinda asked if I could go along one Sunday and it was good, y'know? I mean, I don't think I'm Presbyterian." Sarah had been raised in a Catholic church by a mother who only took her children to church out of the vague notion that for some reason she should. None of the teachings had stuck much and Sarah had comfortably settled into generally believing there was something out there and not bothering herself too much about what it was. "But I like the routine of it, the…austerity. I don’t even know if that's the right word. There's just something comforting about holy ground, I guess." She had laughed. "I was pretty sure until about a month ago that those words would never come out of my mouth."

"We could look for a church," AJ had at one point in his life been devoutly Catholic, when he was young, around the same time that most children become devoutly something, regardless of dogma. He hadn't woken up one day having lost that intense belief, but it had drained from him, leaving him with a belief in the Lord, if not necessarily in the Church. "I wouldn't mind going with you."

"I thought I'd look in the phone book, see what's even around."

"Not Catholic. I don’t think I can go back."

She had shook her head. "Not Catholic, not Presbyterian. Hundreds more to check out. We'll find something."

She had sounded so sure, optimistic in a way that she hadn't been in so very long. AJ had reached out to grab her arm, kissing the inside of her wrist. "Of course we will."

*

Howie was already back by the time AJ opened the front door to the apartment and set his bag down in the entry way Sunday evening. "How was your trip?" he yelled in the direction of the kitchen, where there were clanking noises.

Nick poked his head out of the kitchen and informed him, "You're a fuck."

AJ shrugged, this was hardly news. "What'd I do this time?"

Nick's voice got oddly high-pitched, the way it did when he was imitating Howie, "AJ told me to tell you to drive back with me anyway." Nick's voice dropped back down into its regular register, "Ten hour drive. With a perfectly good airplane ticket waiting for me."

AJ walked toward Nick, "One, you hate flying, two, I bet Howie stopped and let you play in the ocean even though it's way too cold at this time of year and he really shouldn't have, but he's a dumbass when it comes to you, and three, you like road trips, they're a way of existence for you, so just shut up and tell me how Aaron and Angel are." AJ had reached Nick by this point and attempted to swallow him in a hug. AJ got swallowed instead, but it all worked out in the end.

"The twins are good, Angel's so damn pretty. Aaron tells me that him and Kobe have to be really careful monitoring all the guys that she comes in contact with. It drives her crazy but it makes me feel better. Aaron's totally everything I want to be when I grow up, so no problems there."

AJ pulled back from the hug. "Has Angel thought about what she wants to do?"

Angel and Aaron would both be graduating from bus school in seven months time. For Aaron it just meant another framed piece of paper to put next to the awards on his wall, but Angel had been considering being the first Carter child to go to college. Given that she was the only one of the five who validly had no interest in singing, acting or modeling, AJ got the sense that she sometimes felt it was the only way to distinguish herself. Nick shook his head. "Well, I think she has, but I'm not sure how she feels about being away from Aaron for long stretches of time like that."

AJ nodded. "She's got time, it’s not like she has to go next year, or anything. Is that Howie in the kitchen, or did you bring an imaginary friend back to my apartment?"

"Nah, Aaron was running short, I loaned all of those to him." Nick walked back into the kitchen, followed closely by AJ.

Howie glared playfully at him, "I didn't let him go in the ocean for very long."

AJ rolled his eyes. "Have a good holiday?"

Howie put the last dish he had been cleaning in the dishwasher and dried his hands on a towel. "Excellent. How's Denise?"

"Keeping Florida from self-destructing, as always. She sends her love, to both of you."

Howie eyed AJ, considering him. "You look better." Nick made an agreeing noise.

AJ motioned inelegantly with his head. "Four days with a momma intent on feeding you'll do that."

Nick suggested, "Maybe you should have stayed longer. Not like any of us have managed to get you to eat."

Howie didn't say a word, his eyes never leaving AJ. AJ shook his head. "You guys have managed other things. It's good to be back."

Howie walked over to hug AJ, "Didn't give you a welcome back hug."

AJ thought it felt like something more.

*

The pills hadn’t caused side-effects, but as it turned out, they hadn't worked either. Sarah's therapist had put her on a fourth pill that had made her so dizzy she had spent half her time with her eyes closed, her hands against the closest firm structure. The fifth attempt had caused her to vomit again and the third morning she was on them, when AJ had been sitting behind her on the tiled floor, stroking her back soothingly, she had admitted, "I can't really do this anymore."

AJ had hated the way defeat seem to hang on her, dripping off her shoulders. "That's okay, baby. We'll try other stuff. Kevin has a brother who's seriously into holistic medicine. I can call him, see if he has any suggestions."

"Herbs and vitamins and stuff?"

AJ handed her the glass of water he had brought in after she had run out of the kitchen. "Yeah, nothing artificial. Better for you."

Sarah had rinsed and spit, then flushed the toilet. She had turned to lean back against the cabinets. "Why are you still here?"

"I wanted to make sure you were all right."

"No." Sarah had taken a sip slowly, to make sure it would actually go down and stay down. "I meant that in a larger sense. Why are you still with me?"

AJ had scooted across the floor to where she was, resting a hand on each of her knees. "Because there's nowhere else I'd rather be. I don’t understand why you have to ask that."

"If I were you, I'd have been gone. Way gone. Gone with the wind, gone."

AJ had shaken his head. "Good thing we're who we are, I guess."

Sarah's lower lip had trembled, but she had held it together enough to say, "I'm no fun. And I yell at you for calling your friends to gloat over baseball scores."

She had screamed at him for nearly an hour the night before for calling Nick after the Marlins game rather than spending time with her. He had responded by not following her up to bed, but had given in when she had woken up screaming. She hadn't apologized and he hadn't had the heart to point it out. "Yeah, well, the next time you call me Carter-whipped, don't expect that there won't be some return screaming."

Sarah had smiled weakly, they both knew that was among the least ugly things she had said. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said any of that. I don't even know why I did. Half the time I feel like I'm not in control of my own fucking brain. That's what I mean, though. I don’t understand why you hang around for all this."

"You hung around during some of my less-than-shining moments. And you had less reason to than I do now."

"I knew you could fix yourself. I don't. I don't know if it's the same with me."

"Well," AJ had lifted his hand to brush a few rogue strands of hair away from her face, "there you go. I have to stay. Somebody in the equation has to have faith, right?"

Sarah had turned her mouth into his hand, but hadn't kissed it, instead just breathing shortly against his palm. "It doesn't hurt."

*

The night that they finished up at the studio at nearly one in the morning, Howie and AJ climbed in the car they had come in together, glanced at each other, smiled conspiratorially and said, "Jellies."

Jellies was a locally owned 24-hour pancake house that was frequented more by prostitutes and University students than any other type of clientele, but those two sets of customers were very loyal and kept business booming. The guys had been led there on one of their first trips to LA by one of Kevin's old friends who was doing his graduate studies at UCLA and could afford to eat only at places sanctioned by the national union of starving students. Jellies fit in those guidelines without a hitch. One visit had been enough for all five of them to promise their first born children and a second visit to the owner, Mama J, a tiny but ebullient African-American woman who loved jazz and didn't know a thing about music outside of that genre. Which suited the guys just fine.

Mama J wasn't there when Howie and AJ arrived at slightly past one-thirty, but her son and her niece both were. Regardless of the fact that Jellies had a huge clientele, everyone on staff knew the regulars. Howie and AJ were regulars. Jeff, Mama J's son, came over. "Hey guys. The usual?"

Howie and AJ came in for breakfast at least once a week. Howie ordered the Belgian waffles with strawberry syrup and whipped cream. AJ got himself a coffee and an order of French toast. Howie scrunched up his face. "Not at this time of night, not for me. Just some coffee and a pancake, with the Vermont Syrup that I know Mama hides in the back for those who know enough to ask."

Jeff lifted an eyebrow. "Told you about that, did she? She must like you guys more than she lets on."

AJ smirked, "We're Mama's sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth children, and don’t you forget it. I'm gonna deviate as well and get eggs, sunny side up with toast and the strawberry preserves. And water." AJ would be up all night if he drank coffee at this point. There was a possibility he would be up all night anyway, but he didn't want to guarantee the situation.

"Sounds good," Jeff said with a small nod, "I'll be right back with all that." He slipped off to the next table of people who had just walked in. Midnight and a little past was one of Jellies's busiest hours.

Howie leaned back in the booth. "You sounded so good today."

AJ smiled appreciatively. "I can't believe we got that much done. I mean, for nearly six weeks we've been puttering around, at best, getting solos laid down, tracks half finished, whatever and then all of a sudden we all wake up this morning and get two full songs completely recorded. My brain is demanding to know what's going on."

There was still major tuning to do on both the songs and it would be a few more weeks before everybody was happy with everything that had been accomplished today, but it was a huge step in the right direction. Ceci came over to fill Howie's coffee cup, he thanked her and wrapped his hands around the cup, waiting for its warmth to filter up through his arms. "I think Kris is feeling better, for one thing. Kevin was about three times as mentally present as he's been ever since we started again."

AJ laughed. "You have got to be the most tactful person I have ever met."

Howie questioned him with a look and, "Oh?"

"Because, yeah, I'm sure Kev's really been the problem this past month and a half." AJ's sarcasm was thicker than the maple syrup Jeff had dropped at the table on his last round through the room.

"He was Aje, and if you'll notice, I did preface my statement with, 'for one thing.'"

AJ smiled up at Ceci as she dropped off their plates, she grinned back and ruffled his hair. Ceci may have been Mama's niece, but she was a mother in her own right four times over and never passed up an opportunity to show off her maternal instincts. AJ slathered the homemade preserves over his toast and crunched down. "I feel like I'm not up to speed."

"You're not, but we hardly expect you to be."

"I think the people who buy the album will."

"Why do you think we're taking so damn long, we all figure that either you'll catch up to speed at some point or we'll tweak it for so long that it won't matter." Howie spoke with his mouth full.

"I take it you've discussed this."

Howie shrugged. "Not really, you know how it is."

AJ thought about that, because much of the time that Backstreet had to convene without a member he knew he was the member they were talking around, but he had been there at times, when Caro had died, when Brian had been sick, so yeah, "Yeah, I do."

"You had to think about that?" Howie couldn't keep the amazement out of his voice.

"I'm so far from myself sometimes right now, it's a long distance phone call just to get hold of my own brain."

Howie smiled tightly and offered AJ his fork with a chunk of pancake speared at the end. AJ took him up on the offer.

*

Sarah had gone on St. John’s Wort at the suggestion of Kevin’s brother. He had wanted her to call every day to tell him how she was feeling, so it hadn’t taken too long before it became apparent that Sarah had lost all interest in eating while taking the supplement. After that the experimentation had gotten a little bit more exotic, mixing things like Kava Kava with Chinese herbs that AJ had never heard of before and had experienced more than a little trouble pronouncing. The first combination had put Sarah to sleep, the second hadn’t let her sleep, and the third one just hadn’t done anything for her. It had been like trying out prescriptions again, only with a more attentive doctor.

Sarah had been talking with Kevin’s brother every day for nearly two months when Kevin had informed AJ, “Junior’s invited both of you out to stay the next time I get out that way to see him. Or just the two of you, but I thought you might be more comfortable if I were there.”

AJ had agreed with Kevin. He liked all of Kevin’s older brothers immensely, but of all the siblings of the core-Backstreet family, they had always been the ones AJ had felt least at home around. “Just tell me when. Advance warning, though, no springing this on me three days before.” Kevin had a tendency to do that with things he thought the other guys might get nervous about. “And invite Sar yourself, she’ll get all edgy with me if I suggest it.”

AJ had walked into his house that evening to the sound of a one-sided conversation, “That’s really sweet of him.” Silence. “I dunno Kev, I mean, you barely get to see your family as it is, you really want us there?” Another pause. “Well, okay, if that’s what you both want.” Sarah’s voice had carried laughter when she had finished the conversation with, “Okay, okay. Fine, be that way. All right. Have a good night, say hi to Kris for me.”

AJ had heard the click of the phone meeting the receiver and moved into the TV room. “We gonna go visit Junior?”

“Sounds that way.”

"If you don’t wanna go and were just feeling a little swept away by Kev, I can-"

"Aje, honey, I'm a big girl. Regardless of how the last year has probably made it seem to you, I can stand up for myself." Sarah's words had been harsh but her tone understanding.

AJ had crossed to the sofa and sat down on the arm. "I know, but Kev can be intimidating even to the burliest of us sometimes."

Sarah had lifted an eyebrow while untying AJ's right sneaker. "Burly?"

AJ had glared. "You're supposed to stroke my ego here."

Sarah had reached up and stroked the crotch of his pants, "There, there baby," before untying the left sneaker and shucking both of them off.

When AJ had gotten his breath back under control he had started in with, "Sarah-"

But she had cut him off effectively, "I'm glad you're protective, it makes me feel loved. But I need to feel competent as much as I need to feel loved, so you're gonna have to step off a little bit, okay?"

AJ had drawn his feet in closer to himself in compliance. Sarah had pulled him back when he lost his balance and nearly fell backwards onto the floor.

*

Howie wasn’t an insomniac, but he would go through week-long periods, particularly during the holidays or near the anniversary of Caroline’s death, when he just couldn’t sleep at all. After the first couple of times he had gone to a doctor to get a sleeping prescription, but the pills had left him feeling groggy for days at a time, which he couldn’t handle even if they weren’t on tour, and they usually were.

Howie had tried buying intensely academic books that looked impressively boring, but instead of lulling himself to sleep, he had learned more than he had ever wanted to know about South American reptiles and legal procedures in civil court cases. Finally, in an act of pointless defiance against himself, Howie had decided that he might as well get something done if he wasn’t going to sleep and had taught himself how to knit. So it was that every once in awhile, Brian would get a new sweater in which the color pattern actually wasn’t offensive to the naked eye, Kevin and Kristin would get matching scarves or hats or something equally disgustingly cute, AJ would get covers for his golf clubs, and Nick would get mittens, since he complained that it was hard to find ones for hands as big as his.

At first the knitting had been erratic, mostly a late-night, since-I’m-not-sleeping-anyway sort of thing, but Howie had found it addictive and would hide two balls of yarn and his knitting needles in as many easy-to-reach places as possible, knitting in between interviews, before shows, on the buses, in the studio. He could hold full-fledged conversations, watch the TV, sing, and even sometimes walk while knitting. Howie made throws for himself, large and colorful and fluffy. They were folded up into the linen closet of the apartment, thrown over the sofa, draped over the bed.

AJ loved the throws, wouldn’t waste a moment in the evenings when they got home from recording before picking up the nearest one and wrapping himself in it, even if he wasn’t cold. At night, when he gave up on trying to sleep, he padded out of his room wrapped in the throw with different shades of blue working their way from the center out in various geometric patterns.

He would watch the TV, or bake ginger snaps that he had no intention of eating, but counted on Howie to devour. He was used to the silence of the apartment at night, the sound of his own footsteps against the plush carpeting. Which was how he knew something was different when he walked out one night to hear the rhythmic clicking of Howie’s needles. AJ stopped in the doorframe of the couch area to watch Howie's hands barely move, confidently weaving a pattern for some unnamed object together. Howie's eyes were intent on the television screen, seemingly unaware that his hands were involved in any kind of activity whatsoever.

AJ walked to the couch, the throw swishing noisily around him. Howie started a bit before his brain actually caught on to who was approaching. "Oh. Hey."

"Hey. Didn't mean to startle you." AJ laid down on the sofa with his head in Howie's lap. Howie lifted his arms a little and kept on knitting. He hadn't stopped even in the midst of jumping in shock. The clickety-clack of the needles was loud in AJ's ears. "Whatcha making?"

"Angie told me if she didn't get a Howie original in the near future there would be slaughter and mayhem and I would evidently have only myself to blame."

"Well, naturally," AJ conceded, "Angie's never at fault."

"Mm."

"Couldn't sleep?" AJ closed his eyes, lulled by the rhythm of the needles.

"Nah. Holidays. You know me."

"Yeah, I do. You going home?" It occurred to AJ that, living with Howie as he did, he should probably know something like this. He didn't let it bother him too much, as most of the ways in which he functioned with the other four weren't exactly what anyone would call mainstream.

"No. Mom and Dad are taking a vacation, Polly's running a DLF benefit dinner thing, Angie's spending it with her husband's family and John's a lost cause with being a host for anything. I was gonna invite myself along wherever you were going, and if that failed, fling myself onto one of the other guys' backs and refuse to let go until the season was over."

"I'll save the other guys the trouble. Stay with me."

The needles faltered for a mere second. "Whatcha doing?"

AJ opened his eyes, taken aback by the slight stumble in Howie's actions. "Dunno, haven't really been thinking that far ahead these days. I know I want you to do it with me, though."

"We'll figure something out."

AJ found the remote control on the couch behind him and turned the TV, still playing softly, off. "Mind if I fall asleep on you?"

"I'm not making too much noise?"

"It's reassuring. Or something."

Howie repositioned the ball of green yarn so that strings weren't drooping into AJ's face and then picked back up where he had left off. AJ snuggled deeper into the throw and let himself feel content for a few seconds, before drifting off into sleep.

*

On the flight home from Junior's, Sarah had expressed the hope that she could, "Hold on to this place, y'know? Just feel this calm more often, enough that it weighs out the other stuff."

Neither of them had spoken the facts out loud, most significantly the fact that it was easy to feel calm and sane when hundreds of miles away from the problems of home and the world that generally surrounded them, in the middle of gorgeous small-town Kentucky.

Instead Sarah and AJ had pretended to ignore the world and Sarah had started thinking, "Maybe it's time for me to go back to the studio."

On the surface, the idea hadn't been a bad one. By the time she could finish putting together a sophomore album it would have been a little over a year since the first one had dropped, which was good marketing. Underneath the surface there had been a million good reasons that AJ had thought he should have been enough of a husband to bring up, but he couldn't, not when she had been smiling with her whole face, eyes, cheeks and all. He had gotten to the point of recording those smiles in his head, in case they stopped coming and all he could get were the half-hearted ones, all teeth and no soul.

He had been forced to leave her for most of her time in the studio, depending on phone calls and weekend visits from her in random cities to find out how the process was going. He had told himself, when her voice had shaken over the line and she had mumbled about dragging herself out of the bed in the morning despite her complete desire to stay there indefinitely, that maybe she had left her happiness at the studio; he had wanted so badly to believe that she had some stored away somewhere.

He had made sure the Boys would be finished touring for when her album broke so that he could be at all her events, smiling at her from the wings, trying to send some of his own pride, his own euphoria, silently into her. She had smiled for everyone else at those things, saving her smiles up for the people that she had thought most needed to see them. Which meant that unless he had been looking at her at the same time as someone else, someone supposedly less important, he had never gotten to see her smiles anymore, not even the ones he had known didn't go down through to her toes.

Still, late at night, when he had combed his fingers through her hair and wiped away tears from under her eyes with his thumbs, he had smiled for her and reminded her, "I love you, girlie."

"I treat you like shit." Sarah had pulled away, unconvinced.

AJ had followed her. "I get the real you, that's all I need."

"The real me is-"

"The real you is sad, and talented, and sweet, and I love her."

"I think I hold on for that."

"Then you're gonna be holding on forever." AJ had tightened his grip, pleading with himself to believe his own words.

*

AJ made himself wake up on Sunday, get out of bed, shower, dress in a suit, drive his car to the service and sit in a different spot than he and Sarah had basically claimed as their own in the two years that they had attended together. Kenny and Jeri, a couple who lived a couple of blocks away and had started coming to that particular meeting house on Sundays more out of convenience than out of faith and had ended up staying out of comfort and the slow regaining of a spirituality that wasn't disconnected from the rest of their lives, sat on each side of AJ. Jeri took AJ's hand and told him, "Good to see you, been awhile. We were worried."

Anna sat nearly across from him in the circle. She crossed the space to come over and kiss his cheek. "Hey."

AJ took their silent welcome, even the expectations of return that it carried with it, and let himself sink into its warmth, concentrating on that as he struggled, silently, to reach some kind of peace. He had long ago given up on being moved. AJ wasn't exactly an atheist, but he wasn't sure that meant he believed in anything so much as not believing that there wasn't anything. Now, more than ever, he wanted to believe, to know that something had been there, waiting for Sarah, that she was being made happy. He wouldn't think about the other possibilities, the hateful words of men who screamed from pulpits about unforgivable sins, damning sins, or even the more silent disapproval of the Quaker community, the failure to understand that what she had done hadn't been meant as an act of violence, this much AJ knew, but rather as an act of release. As much a release on him, on what she saw as a terrible dominion over him in herself as a release of the depression that had held her in its thrall without reason or rhyme.

AJ had once looked forward to Sundays; the way Sarah would use a different soap, wear a different kind of dress to separate that day from all the rest, demarcate it as divine. The way her silence next to him communicated itself in a way that was as close to holiness as AJ had ever been or wanted to be. The way she would make brunch afterwards and taste of French toast all day, taking away the memories of tasteless and even more meaningless wafers.

He knew though, in his wordless search for peace, that this was the wrong place to find it, that his belief in this place was as wrapped up in her as it was in anything omnipresent and merciful. There had been more peace in his sleepless nights, a room away from Howie, whose breathing was loud and reassuring throughout the apartment. This silence was too much, not oppressive but not helpful and when it came to an end, AJ struggled to his feet, smiling at those who had greeted him and nearly ran to the door, ready to get back to the apartment and make himself anything other than French toast.

*

He had left her once. She had been on tour at the time, a mostly clubs and small arenas tour, but with her as the main act. He had come to visit her three weeks into it. She had stopped taking the supplements that she and Junior had continued to explore for nearly a year a few weeks before the tour, and was suffering from depression that had more to do with a loss of hope than withdrawal, as the supplements hadn’t been doing much for her anyway, or she would have stayed on them. She had also been exhausted from the twenty-four hour a day daily experience that is touring and when AJ had shown up at her hotel, he had ordered room service and tucked her safely in bed, over her protestations of wanting to be awake for as much of his visit as possible.

She had woken up as worn out as she had been before she had fallen asleep but with more energy to fight and had taken out her frustration at never feeling well, her jealousy at the way he seemed to have gone down the path that she was taking and found his equilibrium anyway, on him. "I guess you like me better when I'm sleeping, huh?"

AJ had responded warily, well used to that particular biting tone and the possibility of what could follow one bitter comment. "I like you better when you don't look half-dead."

"Right, because as AJ McLean's wife, I'm a physical paragon to millions of pre-pubescent girls everywhere."

"I came to see you, are we gonna do this for the entire week?"

"Why? You wanna go back to your Boys? They more fun than I am?"

He had stayed up most of the night before making sure she didn’t wake scared or crying, the way she did so often at home, so it had been his exhaustion speaking when he had retorted, "Yeah, y'know what? That's exactly what I want," and had walked out of the door, taken a taxi to the airport and flown standby back to where the Boys were preparing for the second leg of their tour.

Not even half-way through the flight, he had woken out of a take-off induced snooze and wished he could take it back. Out of all the times when she had screamed at him for hours or refused to talk to him over mistakes he hadn't really made, it was such a minor spat, nothing really, and he had known that she was petrified of him leaving. He had picked up the in-flight phone and ran his credit card through it. He had dialed her cell and prayed that she had it on. She had sounded sniffly when she had picked up, and AJ had wished there was some way to physically harm himself without alarming the other passengers on the plane.

"Hey, hey. It's me. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have stormed out like that." AJ had been tired of apologizing, but at least this time he had truly felt himself to be in the wrong. Most of the time it had felt like a mollifying tactic that rarely, if ever, worked.

Sarah had stifled a sob. "No, baby, it's me who's sorry. I thought-" Sarah had broken off, her vocal chords evidently paralyzed by what she had been about to say. "I thought you were gone."

AJ had been even more tired of getting apologized to. Part of him had thought that maybe this was because he really already knew she was sorry, he wouldn't have stayed with her thinking she meant the things she said and did, but part of him had just thought that he was tired of telling himself later on, 'she's always sorry afterwards.' It hadn't been fair to him, but it hadn't been fair to her either, which was why he had answered, "Nah girl. I'm here. On a plane, but, you know, the spirit me. Standing right by you."

"Don’t leave me Aje, I'm begging here, okay? I need you."

AJ had considered his next words carefully before saying them, needing to know that he was telling the truth, both for his and her sake. "I think I have a better reason for not leaving you."

"Oh yeah?"

"It's a secret, you can't tell."

"My lips are sealed."

AJ had stage-whispered into the phone. "I'm still mad-crazy in love with you."

*

AJ got home from the service to the scent of chile rellenos casserole, the recipe of which, as the guys had been told time and again, was a Dorough family secret. AJ thought it was the perfect substitute for French toast and he hugged Howie tightly. Howie let himself be hugged and didn't ask how the service had gone and AJ remembered exactly why when he thought of his best friends, Howie's name always came just a nano-second before the rest of the guys'.

AJ went to his room and changed into loose-fitting pants and a t-shirt, readying himself to spend the day lounging, maybe writing, if he felt up to it, which he rarely did of late. When he came back, Howie was gingerly setting the piping hot casserole dish down on a heat-resistant pad in the middle of the table. AJ grabbed the glasses that had been set on the table. "Iced tea okay?" Leighanne had made her famous lemon iced tea and farmed out gallon jugs to each of the guys. Howie and AJ were told they had to share.

"Sounds good."

AJ poured them each a glass and brought the glasses back to the table, where Howie was scooping a healthy portion of his masterpiece onto AJ's plate. AJ sat down, fiddled with his fork and admitted, "I don’t think I belong there anymore."

Howie dug into his portion and blew gently over the tip of his fork to cool the piece he had extracted. "That's okay. You had to go to find out."

AJ played with his food a bit. "Yeah."

Howie gave him a very specific I-made-this-food-and-you-are-damn-well-going-to-eat-it glare. "It's okay to leave things behind, Aje."

AJ forced his first bite down. Once past the first bite, he was surprised to find himself considerably hungry. "I think I may be bad at doing that."

"You just don't have a lot of practice. The last friends you left behind were people you knew more on an acquaintance-level in high school than anything else. Most people your age have done shit like graduated from high school and gotten jobs, or gone to college or something that forced them to move on, but you and Nick kinda got fucked over on that particular life-lesson."

"I wouldn’t trade you guys for that." Which was saying a lot, because as much as he loved performing, there were very few days were AJ didn't wonder about different decisions he could have made in his life. For all his talk about it, he really wanted to be able to hang a piece of paper on his wall that declared him a college graduate, wanted to know what it was like to leave home at an age where he was actually considered autonomous and learn what it meant to live on his own. AJ doubted it was as glorious as he sometimes envisioned it as, but still, it was the unknown, and he was known to give into the-grass-is-always-greener syndrome as much or more than the next guy. But he meant what he had said: given the choice between fulfilling his daydreams and keeping the guys, he would pick that latter every time.

"We wouldn't trade you for anything either," Howie reminded him softly.

AJ knew he shouldn't have to be reminded of something that simple to understand and know, but that one fact became complex in his mind, where it was blocked by memories of the things he'd done to the guys, the things he'd said to Nick while drunk that nearly drove Nick into alcoholism himself, the way he'd treated Kevin and Brian's wives with a disrespect that still made him nauseated just to think about it, the times that he had toyed with Howie, manipulating the older man's loneliness for his own selfish ends. AJ was endlessly grateful that Howie had kept his wits about him enough to generally just push AJ into the bathroom and make him drink water until he either vomited or sobered up.

"Aje, you told me about a month ago that you missed her even though you knew there had been the good and the bad, that you would take all of that to have her back."

AJ nodded, acknowledging that those had been his words.

"Do you think we're so shallow that if you went, we would only miss the good parts of you?"

"I wouldn't blame you."

"You're not answering my question."

"I think…I think that you guys are special when it comes to me. That you've been around me for so long you've forgotten what anything else feels like. Stockholm Syndrome, or something."

"Given that theory, if this were a romance novel, I'd be getting some right about now."

AJ looked up from where he was staring at his plate to gape at Howie.

Howie shrugged, a goofy smile on his face. "Just sayin'."

AJ snorted, shook his head and kept to himself his opinion that Howie never 'just said' anything.

*

"She shows up in my dreams, sometimes," AJ talked without answering whatever question Sherry had asked him. They both knew it didn't matter. Eventually, something would be communicated between the two of them. "Mostly not a starring role, more a cameo. I mean, the dreams are weird, right? So she'll be like, making orange juice out of old shoes on the corner of the only street that I distinctively remember from Amsterdam and that's only because one of the guys passing out advertisements tried to get Nick, who was almost three at the time, to participate in one of the live nude shows they have there."

Sherry looked mildly impressed. "Literally, that's one you've had?"

"Yeah. And the time where she was the choirmaster for a choir made up completely of geese and flying squirrels. I've been trying to block that one, but no such luck as of yet."

"Are they frequent?"

"About as frequent as sleeping is for me."

Sherry eyed him. AJ shrugged. "Still hit and miss on that. Better than it was."

Sherry let it go. "What are your thoughts about her like when you're awake?"

It wasn't the first time she had asked the question, but AJ was smart enough to realize that his answer had changed nearly every time she had asked it and the point of the exercise was mostly to make him stop and think about where exactly he was in his brain. "Erratic but constant. There's a new vending machine at the studio that is purely fruit juice and I can't stop getting the Dole strawberry-banana thing because that was her favorite, she got it every time she went to the grocery store. I don't even like it that much, but seriously, I'm compelled, my hand refuses to push any other button. I walk by stores and see something she would like and I'm half way to the register when I remember that the process of giving it to her is really more than I'm willing to go through with. Which is hard. Because at first I did want to follow her, I did. I still want to be with her, but I'm not…well, I'm not suicidal, and I recognize on some level that that's probably a good thing but it's hard to get up in the morning and think that maybe I want to move on with my life, maybe, and not feel guilty about that."

Sherry waited. She knew him well enough to know what was the end of a thought and what was just a pause to consider. He didn't disappoint her. "It's back and forth though. I mean, it's only been a little over two months, so I guess that's okay. Howie still freaks out about Caro sometimes. He…when she first, well, when he came back to us after the funeral, he kinda took the meaning of quiet to a new and unforeseen level for the longest time, and when we finally got him to talk, he was so afraid that, I dunno, we were gonna come down on him for still being upset and this was only a month or so after she had died. That's why, in my head, I know, I know that I can still be not okay about this, that the guys aren't going to be mad and that it's healthy, grieving takes a long time, yada yada, I've read all the pamphlets in your waiting room about this. And I don't think I would feel okay if I was back to normal now, it'd be such a betrayal, but all these things get wrapped up in my head and I end up feeling completely unsure of what I'm supposed to be feeling or doing."

Sherry narrowed her eyes. "And what do you do when that happens?"

"Miss her. I just miss her."

"Then maybe that's all you're 'supposed' to be doing."

AJ twisted his mouth up. "Don't get all mocking on me." His words were playful to let her know that he understood.

"Seriously, AJ, you think too much. Just let this happen. Not to the point where you can't function, but don't rush yourself, or talk yourself out of taking what you need from life. And stop with the guilt, it's not helping anyone."

"It's nice how everything sounds so easy when I'm sitting in this chair inside this office."

Sherry smiled knowingly. "Well, you know what they say about setting up a practice."

AJ tilted his head, suspecting that he probably should not be humoring her.

"Location, location, location."

AJ groaned and reminded himself to trust his instincts more often.

*

Sarah had caught up with the Boys at the end of her tour and spent the last month and a half of the Boys's tour making AJ's bus cozy when he wasn't there, and hanging on to him like a particularly strong lemur when he was. He hadn't minded, they didn't get to spend enough time together for AJ to even want to complain about being stifled by her presence when she was around. He hadn't been able to imagine a point when he ever would be around her enough to get tired of her, even when they were old and swinging together on their front porch was the only thing either of them did all day.

She had read aloud to him at night, everything from pulpy airplane-ride suitable novels to Sartre to the New York Times. AJ hadn't always understood the stuff she had read, but he had liked the cadences of her voice, the way she would stop and consider something she had read, playing it over in her mind and he had known that she was filing it away. Sarah had always found ways to use what AJ considered to be the most trivial of facts or concepts in the most unexpected ways. She had been smart in the least flashy of ways, seeing connections between things that few other people saw without the need to point out her superior knowledge. Sometimes AJ had asked her what she was thinking about when she would stop at the end of a paragraph. At first when he had done this she had looked guilty, "You really wanna know?"

"I asked, didn't I?"

And Sarah had broken her thoughts down for him, so that he could follow them. He had known her train of consciousness hadn't sounded like that in her head and, at the same time that he had wished he could have heard it that way, been that far inside of her, he had appreciated her efforts to allow him that close, make sure he was actually with her, instead of just following along behind. She had never made him feel stupid, even though they had both known that of the two of them, she was far more traditionally book-smart. Instead, she had a tendency to boost his confidence in his intellect by laughing at his jokes, seriously considering his thoughts, coming back with her own thoughts on the things that worried him. He had never caught her acting like he was just a little too slow on the uptake or a little too shallow about a conversation topic and AJ could only imagine that that was a result of her never having done such a thing.

Other than late at night, when she had pulled out whatever book they were in the middle of, Sarah had been quieter than usual after coming back to him that time. She hadn't been completely silent, just subdued. AJ had tried pulling her out of it, asking her questions, poking light enough fun at her that she would respond but not be hurt, but mostly she just laughed as much as expected and tickled AJ until he begged for mercy. He had let her be after awhile, assuming that she would become talkative again in her own good time, when the residual loneliness and stress of her tour wore off.

He had been a bit taken aback by her pressing need to be near him physically, optimally touching him whenever he was close enough. Sarah had never been one to shy away from his touch, but he had never felt the sense of urgency that was behind each hug, each peck on the cheek, each brushing of their fingers since her return. His own need had grown in conjunction with hers and before he had known it Nick and Brian had been making up rhymes about Sarah and him accidentally getting stuck together in tragic tour bus accidents. The rhymes had been clunky and AJ had ignored them far easier than he had ignored Howie's concerned, "You guys okay?"

But when AJ had pressed her fingertips to his lips, or when she had laid her palm over AJ's bare kneecap at night, the other hand holding the spine of a book open, urgency or no, everything had felt okay. Everything had felt perfect, for AJ. So he had replied to Howie's concern with, "It just feels good to have her near me. With me."

*

AJ was watching intently as Nick laid down one of his solo tracks when Howie plunked down next to him and held out a bottle of Dole Kiwi-Strawberry. AJ took the bottle and shook it, "This isn't my flavor."

"No, but I think you might like it."

AJ looked over at Howie, who was intent on drinking half his bottle of orange juice in one go. AJ sipped at his own drink. It was good, sharper than the banana-strawberry. "Thanks."

Howie nodded. "You're welcome. Kid's getting better about the emoting."

AJ looked back into the recording booth. Nick was still on the stool he had started on, which at this stage in the process was pretty darn impressive. "Yeah."

"What do you want for Christmas dinner?"

AJ could appreciate the way Howie always managed to slip conversations that had the potential to be monumental into the middle of other, completely insignificant conversations. "Chocolate chip cookies."

"I didn't ask what you wanted as an appetizer."

AJ snickered. "I hadn't really thought about it."

Howie was kind enough not to mention the fact that nowadays, if AJ thought about things that were happening the next day it was something of a miracle. "I talked to your mom, she said you really liked sticky sweet potatoes when you were a kid."

"Yeah, I'm sure that's exactly what my mom said. More like, 'Kid fucking ate me outta house and home with his damn sweet potato fetish,'" AJ trilled in a high falsetto.

"If I ever have a conversation with your mom that involves the word 'fetish' I probably won’t be able to face either of you for several months. But she might have been slightly more descriptive than I lead you to believe in my earlier statement."

"Mmhmm," AJ drew the sound out.

"So, sticky sweet potatoes for you, and cranberry Jell-O thingamajigger for me-"

AJ interrupted with, "Is that the scientific name for it?"

Howie was nonplussed, "Yes. We still don't have a main dish."

"We could be horrifically original and cook a turkey or bake a ham, we're neither of us herbivores," AJ pointed out.

Howie hedged. "I thought. Well, I was thinking maybe if we did something different this year, that, well, y'know, it would make it separate from other years. Something we could remember without being forced to remember everything else."

"Something we could do without being forced into that," AJ added on, understanding perfectly. He thought back, for a moment, to the way Howie had pleaded with AJ to call Paula and tell her that Howie couldn't make it for Christmas that first year. Howie had told AJ that he could use any excuse so long as he didn't end up having to go home. AJ had stayed with him until Howie had calmed down, agreed to go. AJ wondered if he would have done the same thing, knowing what he now knew. He said suddenly, illogically, "Thank you for doing this."

Howie's eyes flickered with confusion for a mere moment before they cleared. "It's not a big deal."

"I was speaking in larger terms."

"So was I."

*

Sarah had pleaded with him when he was at his most vulnerable, freshly fed and unbearably horny, "Let's stay home for awhile."

They had been in LA for a week, but AJ had been scheduled to head back out again to do a couple of appearances for the American Diabetes Association. "Sar, c'mon, this is shit I can't cancel, you know that."

She had, AJ had seen the knowledge in her eyes. She had asked dully, resignedly, "Someone's always more important, huh?" and AJ had wondered why he had missed being yelled at.

"Baby. You know that's not true," AJ had stated emphatically.

Sarah had gotten up to collect the dishes from the table. "Sometimes."

AJ had beaten her to the sink, turning the water on quickly and yelping when it burned the fingers he ran under it experimentally. Sarah had flicked the faucet off and pressed on the refrigerator door mechanism, spilling three cubes of ice in different directions on the kitchen floor, but capturing one to hold to his fingers. "Can you come with me?"

Sarah had fixed her eyes on one of the stray cubes, melting down into nothingness. "I'm tired of being everywhere but here."

"It's only another couple of weeks." AJ had kept his hands still, not pulling away until the last of the ice was dripping through their fingers, splashing the tiles several feet below.

"It always is, Aje. Just a few more weeks after the month before which came right after the previous two months of being everywhere in creation. I want to stay home with my husband for a little while. Just a month, okay? Four weeks, right in a row."

"Okay." AJ had turned back to the sink, pouring a bit of soap onto the sponge and scrubbing for all his worth. "But after this, Sar. I can't pull out now. After this I'll cancel everything for the next month, I'll talk with the guys about covering for anything that's not right here, and I'll hole up with you for an entire thirty-one days."

"You promise?"

AJ had turned the water back on, more cautiously this time. "I promise."

"You promise like you promised the ADA?"

AJ had faced away from the sink, looking directly at her, and had said, over the sound of running water. "No, I promise you like I promised my wife."

"And that's better?" Sarah's expression hadn't given away anything.

"That's better." AJ had gone back to fighting ordinary household grease.

*

When Howie had told AJ that they were having sweet n' crunchy chicken for Christmas dinner, AJ had eyed Howie doubtfully and inquired, "You know how to make something called sweet n' crunchy chicken?" because Howie was a quick learner, but hadn't been taught much up until now.

"Well, not yet," Howie had enunciated each syllable of his words.

"But?" AJ had prompted.

"But Mama J said she'd teach me."

AJ's jaw had dropped open and he had just barely managed to form words with a dysfunctional mouth, "Mama J told you she'd give you that recipe?"

Mama J's sweet n' crunchy chicken was legendary. It wasn't served at the restaurant, not really fitting into the whole pancake-house genre, but every one of her regulars had heard Mama's kids or nieces or nephews ramble on about it at some point.

"She said she'd teach me to make it."

AJ had stayed silent, waiting.

"It might have taken a little convincing."

Which AJ had well known meant that Howie had spilled every last detail of the last nine years of their lives right into her well-intentioned lap. When AJ came home the afternoon before Christmas eve from running last minutes errands and caught a whiff of sugar baking slowly into tender chicken pieces, he forgave Howie whatever indiscretions the older man had committed to get his way in this instance. "Fuck that smells heavenly, D."

Howie grinned at AJ over the marshmallows he was whipping for the sweet potatoes. "I hope it tastes as good. You get the cinnamon?"

AJ dutifully dug around in the grocery bag and handed over the requested item. "You need help?"

"There's a whole bunch of fruit in the crisper drawer that I need cubed, can you take care of it?"

AJ put the groceries that needed to be refrigerated or frozen away in their proper spots before grabbing at the stash of fruit that Howie had indicated would be waiting for him. He set to peeling what needed to be peeled, washing what needed to be washed and cubing the prepared products. He enjoyed the repetitive, meditative aspect of the work, throwing his mind into the motion of the knife, staying just aware enough not to cut himself.

Beside AJ, Howie was more active, measuring ingredients, strategically placing items in dishes, stirring and whipping and layering, but equally silent.

When AJ finished his task it took him a moment to realize it. When his brain had caught up to his body, AJ moved slightly so that he was in back of Howie and wrapped his arms around the slighter man. Howie, surprised, tensed suddenly before relaxing into AJ's hold. "Hey, you okay?"

AJ squeezed tighter, more tightly than could possibly be comfortable for Howie and yet not tightly enough for AJ's own comfort. "I haven't been able to enjoy silence like that in so long." Almost three months, AJ almost added, but didn't because Howie kept track of things in his own way and would know how long it had been.

"Merry Christmas, Aje." Howie's words were tightly forced out, just like his breath. AJ managed to loosen his arms a little.

*

AJ had called Sarah every day while he was away. She had always been there when he had called, and he had resisted the urge to ask her if she was waiting by the phone.

She had told him, "Can't seem to get up the motivation to go out much," anyway.

He had timed his calls so that he would have at least an hour; it had taken awhile to talk Sarah into being particularly responsive. He had ended up doing most of the talking in the end, not wanting her to feel frustrated at her inability to express herself. When he had gotten back, he had a feeling he had probably been even more relieved than she was. It had been early evening but she had already been donning pajama pants and a loose tank with no bra. He had shaken his head and pulled her toward the shower, stripping both of them as they went.

When the water had hit her skin she had jumped, almost as if unaccustomed to the sensation and AJ had gentled her, smoothing his hands along her sides, settling them on her hipbones. "Hey."

She had looked straight at him and AJ wondered if maybe the water had woken her up, since after a moment she actually seemed to see him. She had smiled. "Hi you. You're back."

"I am." He had closed her eyes with his fingers before soaping up her hair and rinsing the shampoo out. His hands had skimmed along her skin, over the muscles in her legs, the vertebrae, her breasts, lathered heavily in body wash. She had accepted his ministrations with a few quiet gasps and very little else.

When he had turned the water off, dried her, led her into her closet and put her in one of his favorite of her outfits, she had tilted her head. "What are you doing?"

"Taking you out."

"No, I don't-" She had shaken her head, "You just got back."

"Yep, it's a special treat. A date, if you will. You, me, the nice waiter. Maybe a bag of popcorn in a dark theater with plushy stadium seats and armrests that rise, later."

Sarah had eyed him doubtfully. "You wouldn't rather we just stayed in? I could make you better popcorn here. And we could order in a movie while it was popping."

AJ had ran the pointer finger of his right hand from the hollow in her neck to the place where the V-neck of her shirt hid the rest of her chest. "I wouldn't get to show you off, then."

"I think everyone knows you've got me, Aje." Sarah's comment had almost ended on a snicker.

"I want to remind them. Sar, please, c'mon, we'll have fun." AJ hadn't remembered a time when he had been too proud to beg with her. He hadn't thought that then would be a good time to pick up such a policy of being.

Sarah's mouth had twisted indelicately. "Okay, fine."

AJ had begun to grin.

"But only because you said the magic word."

*

Howie was in AJ's room when he rolled over and groaned, "I ate way too fucking much and you didn't stop me, you are not my friend," upon waking up.

Howie processed this. He stood up to begin walking out of the room. AJ saw the package in Howie's right hand. "Wait, I might be persuaded to rethink that."

Howie turned around and tossed the gift at AJ. "Merry Christmas, bitch."

"You too, honey." AJ's fingers worked clumsily at the tape on the package. "I got you one. It's in the top drawer of the dresser in my closet."

Howie got up to find his gift. AJ gave up on unwrapping his neatly and ripped impatiently at the paper. The book inside had a spine so worn AJ could barely make out the words that had once graced its surface and its cover was soft from the amount of times human hands had caressed it, but its pages were all there and unbent and AJ recognized it on sight. "I've read it," AJ said, slightly breathless and unsure of how else to respond.

"No you haven't," Howie corrected him.

"Well," AJ shrugged, fingering the embossed lettering spelling out 'The Hobbit' on the front of the book fondly. Howie had read it over and over after Caroline had died until AJ had asked him what was so wonderful about it and Howie had read it aloud to AJ, a little bit each night, sometimes only a page when they were tired. It had taken them months to finish. Months in which Howie had healed.

"Read it to yourself this time," Howie instructed him.

AJ considered Howie for a moment. "I'll give it back, if you want."

"If I'd wanted that, I would have loaned it to you and gotten you a different Christmas present."

AJ accepted the sentiment for the moment and swung his legs over the side of the bed.

Howie grabbed AJ's arm. "Where're you going?"

"Shower."

"You're not gonna watch me open my gift?"

AJ shrugged uncomfortably and Howie let go of him, frowning. Howie flipped the envelope he had found with his name scribbled on it open without taking his eyes off AJ until he had to in order to read the card. He recognized it immediately as the form greeting DLF sent to people who had had donations made in their name. He didn't bother to read the words, skipping down to the number at which point he choked on his own tongue. "A. J."

AJ dug his heel into the carpet. "She left me everything." Sarah hadn't been as rich as AJ, but she had hardly been poor either. She had earned enough on her tours and on the royalties from the songs she had written on each of her albums to make her an independently wealthy woman. "Everything." AJ didn't want any of it.

"This is-" Howie checked the number a second time, just to be sure, "Unreal. I mean, this is more than we generally get out of any three grants in a year's time."

AJ leaned down and kissed Howie's cheek. "Merry Christmas, D."

*

"I," Nick announced, with much waving of his hands and little fanfare, "am throwing a schwank New Years' Party."

Leighanne perked up at this news, trying to communicate her joy without moving in any way. Brian had spent ten minutes just getting her to where she wasn't nearly crying from back pain. "Can I be in charge of decorations?"

Nick beamed at her but answered sternly, "Only if you promise to make Brian do all the actual work."

Leighanne stuck out her hand and Nick shook it gingerly, not wanting to jar her. Brian sighed dramatically, long ago consigned to his fate and not at all unhappy about it.

"So who's coming to this big ol' schmancy party?" Kevin wanted to know. "New Years' is in a week, people who are not us are going to have plans."

"I saved you guys for last, being that you're a sure thing." Nick smiled angelically. "I've been inviting for a month," Nick counted off on his fingers, "Aaron, Angel and Leslie. Beje and Ginger already had plans," Nick pouted, but continued, naming a sizable list of people that he considered himself to be friendly with, if not close friends. There were people that he had worked with on his solo albums, other singers, people who helped him out with his Ocean Campaign and at the end he tacked on, "And maybe this girl, Lara, because we keep seeing each other at basketball games, and um. She's nice."

Nick was blushing, so AJ rushed to capitalize on his weakness. "You keep seeing her at Laker's games? I thought you had a box."

"I do." Nick answered cryptically.

Howie, who was trying not be hurt by the fact that evidently this had been going on for awhile, at least most of the basketball season, and Nick hadn't seen fit to say anything until now, prompted, "And?"

"She has one next to me. She's a freelance IT consultant with several larger firms down in the Valley. Which means there's basically no chance of her flirting it up for the money. Plus, I don’t think she knows who I am."

Kristin wrinkled her nose. "How old is this girl, Nick?"

"Twenty-seven," Nick answered confidently, as though he'd expected all this. AJ had to recognize, internally at least, that Nick probably had and that's why it had taken so long for him to say something. Not to mention the fact that Nick had long ago learned his lesson in being cautious about falling for a woman.

"Geez, Nick." Kevin whistled, low and long. "You found yourself an ambitious one. Probably insanely smart, too."

Nick chewed his lower lip for a second. "Too good for me?"

AJ was pretty sure he caught his gasp before it became audible. Brian wasn't so lucky. AJ's, "Why would you say that?" got jumbled up with the other's similar reactions.

Nick shrugged, undaunted by the deluge of words coming at him. "Just saying. I mean, she doesn't want my money and she doesn't want my name attached to hers-" Nick stopped and shrugged again. "I just don’t think I'm that much of a prize without either of those…" Nick snapped his fingers a few times, searching for the right word.

"Incentives?" Kristin supplied softly.

"Yeah. Those."

AJ sighed and looked around him. Kevin and Brian had both found girlfriends too early into the whole Backstreet phenomenon to have understood that feeling and Howie had strenuously avoided dating in favor of casual, short romantic liaisons, not having found anyone he was willing to exert the effort necessary to hide and keep mollified about having to be hidden. AJ, though, AJ understood what Nick was saying perfectly. Even knowing Sarah had her own baggage AJ had spent most of his marriage marveling at the fact that she had picked him on his own merits. Luckily, Nick was AJ's friend, and if he wasn't exactly hot for Nick, AJ at least knew exactly what this woman saw in him. "She thinks you're sweet and that you don't ask for too much out of her. She knows you have something you like in common and that, if nothing else, she can fill up an hour talking to you about her favorite basketball moments. She thinks you're cute because you have kind eyes and a strong smile."

AJ said the words fluently, with no trace of how much they made him miss his wife, miss the first person in the world who had looked at him in a romantic way and made him feel more than just adequate. Sarah had been given to making him feel more than merely fantastic. Looking at Nick's unsure eyes, AJ practically willed the universe to show his friend what that feeling was like, if not with this girl, then with the next.

Nick toyed with the fraying patch at the knee of his jeans. "So you guys think it's a good thing that I invited her?"

Brian, Kevin, Howie, Leighanne and Kristin all whipped their eyes from where they had been fixating upon AJ back to Nick and gave a varied array of responses that basically all corresponded to, "Uh, yeah."

*

She had said goodbye to him. Not with her words, which had sounded the same the last night of her life as they had every night before that, but with her body. They had made love for hours, moving restlessly from room to room, caught up in each other. AJ had tried counting the strands of her hair at one point, sifting them through his fingers. She had laughed at him, pulling away to go down on him at the same time, her laughter vibrating around his cock and up through him to the base of his skull.

AJ hadn't even been sure how they had made it to the studio, but she had left oil there, as she had left other toys strewn about the house when he had gone out earlier that evening to pick up some groceries. Her eyes had been alive and loving and wistful in a way that he hadn't understood when she had greeted him at the door, setting the bag of groceries casually in the kitchen, not really caring if anything spoiled. "C'mon," she had beckoned, "I have a surprise."

His studio had been full of machines that glowed in the dark, red and green and sometimes even blue. When he had rubbed the massage oil slowly and painstakingly into every last patch of available skin on her naked body, the lighting had swirled and come together on the canvas that was Sarah, and she had resembled a sort of post-modern Monet. AJ had covered her with his body, smudging the paint, transferring it to his own skin.

There had been frozen Godiva chocolate in the kitchen, which Sarah had warmed in her mouth and then fed to AJ; cold butterscotch sauce that she had licked from the back of his knees and along the length of his spinal cord and used as an excuse to get him in the shower, where he had taken his time bringing her to orgasm, until she had been gasping from equal amounts pleasure and cold.

She had pushed him into his lounging chair before turning, sliding down on him, their damp skin sealing her back to his chest. He had splayed his fingers over her stomach, the tips brushing against the bottom edge of her ribcage. His hand had swept down to her thigh, splayed open, lying on the chair's armrest. His other hand had swept her hair to the side so that he could nip at her neck, rest his forehead on her shoulder and feel the tiny noises she was making.

They had taken their time getting up after that, waiting until the room was willing to sit still for them to crawl to the bed. Sarah had managed to tuck them under the covers, wrapping herself around AJ even more tightly than the comforter. He had fallen asleep with her safely in his arms, shielded from everything but herself. She had whispered urgently, "You're the best thing I ever had. I love you so much."

He had meant to tell her the same thing, but his lips had seemed too heavy to move and he had tiredly reminded himself to tell her in the morning.

*

Between Leighanne's classy decorating scheme, Nick's studio's catering connections and Kevin's penchant for organizing, AJ had to reluctantly admit that Nick's party had turned out to be pretty damn 'schwank.' He ruffled Nick's salon-styled hair and punched him lightly, "Good party, kiddo."

Nick pulled several of the buttons on AJ's shirt loose and moved away. Howie shook his head reprovingly. "You couldn’t have done that after we had met this mystery woman?"

Howie headed off in the direction Nick had gone, clearly intent on meeting the woman next to Nick. The top of her head just barely reached Nick's shoulder. She was laughing at something Nick had said to her, her brown eyes flashing happily and her full cheeks reddening rapidly. Nick turned as he saw them coming, AJ's slight evidently already forgotten. He held out his hand, "Lara, these are my two best friends who couldn't be bothered to show up on time, Howie and AJ."

AJ shook Lara's hand after Howie, slightly taken aback by the firmness of her grip. He imagined it took an extra layer of toughness to survive as a woman in the particular field she had chosen.

She sized up the two men in front of her. "So, you guys are Backstreet Boys."

Her tone indicated that this was news to her and AJ was a little bit surprised by the fact that evidently Nick had been right about her not knowing who Nick was. It was heartening. AJ tipped his head. "Shh, don't tell anyone, alright?"

"I'm probably gonna be the only one here who didn't know that until tonight, huh?" Lara sounded mildly worried underneath the lightness of the question.

Howie told her smoothly, "You know now. And Nick likes you better than all those people who knew anyway."

Nick pinned Howie with a shut-the-hell-up glare. Lara turned to him and he wiped his face to carefully neutral. "That true, Mr. Carter?" She asked.

"Um," Nick blinked and a nervous smile stole onto his face. "I'm gonna go get something to drink. You want something?"

"Gin and tonic, light on the gin," she let him off the hook and he scurried to the bar.

AJ let her in on a family secret, "Nick's a lost cause in the flirting department."

"Yeah, we were doing fine until he asked me to the party, then all of a sudden just talking evidently had expectations placed on it, at least in his mind." She sighed after him fondly.

AJ took a chance on her, needing to believe in something, and gave her the only advice he had to give. "He's worth a little trouble."

She turned back to AJ and Howie, assessing them more thoroughly this time than at first introduction. Cautiously she responded, "I've been thinking that same thing."

After a little more small talk, AJ left Lara alone with Nick, who had returned with the drinks. AJ steered Howie away from the music, where they could speak at a normal decibel level and dropped his opinion that, "Caution is a good thing in a possible Backstreet mate."

Howie glanced back at Lara and said, distractedly, "True."

*

AJ danced with Kristin and Leighanne, holding their waists carefully, mindful of their momentary dual existence. He didn't think about the way Sarah's hipbones had curved smoothly under his hands, the way her skin would have felt, stretched taut to make room for an embryo.

He danced with Leslie, who had Nick's smile, and Angel, who had Nick's eyes. He danced with Lara, who couldn’t keep her eyes off Nick. She confided, "He's a gentleman."

AJ agreed. "We did our best with the young'n there."

She wanted to know, "Is Kevin kind of…terse in general?"

AJ made a mental note to talk to Kevin about scaring off Nick's potential girlfriends. "He's protective. We all are. Nick's the baby."

She nodded knowingly and politely refrained from mentioning that Nick wasn't even a year younger than her. "I'm the youngest of three."

AJ mock-danced with Brian, who was in über-goof mode. He ate some of the fruit fondues at Nick's urging, or rather, Nick's suggestion that AJ eat something before Nick force-fed it to him.

He watched Howie dance with different women. Howie had taught Leslie to salsa when she was sixteen and at twenty her body had settled into the dance. The two of them looked better together than anyone had a right to, and AJ didn’t have to wonder how Howie had passed himself off as straight for all these years. AJ knew, as did Kevin and Brian and Nick, that Howie tended to think of women as an endless supply of sisters that the world had provided him with, but his way of touching their hands, kissing their cheeks, leading them around a dance floor tended toward the incestuous to outside eyes.

AJ had always thought that if Howie would just look at women as objects of romantic possibility, he wouldn't have to be jealous of the women in Howie's life. A girlfriend, or even a wife could never be to one of the guys what they were to each other; AJ knew this fact intimately. It hadn't mattered how much AJ had loved Sarah, his relationship with her had been something wholly apart from his relationship with the other guys and they had both known it.

Someone of sister status was competition, though. The Boys were family and only someone of immediate familial importance could break into their ranks. Howie's acceptance of women on that level made AJ jealous in ways that he couldn't and wasn't sure he wanted to explain to himself. AJ probably knew the significance of Howie's biological sisters better than anyone, including Paula and Hoke. Caroline's death had created an emptiness in Howie that nobody, not AJ or anyone, could fill. AJ was reminded of that watching Howie's hips move in time with Leslie's.

AJ tried to disappear to the bathroom a few minutes before midnight, knowing that Kevin would kiss Kristin and Brian would kiss Leighanne and that Nick might even work up the nerve to take his chances with Lara. Knowing that he would have done something silly and dramatic, like dipping Sarah to the floor before kissing her dizzy, that she would have laughed, upside down with her eyes closed. Howie caught AJ's attempted escape no more than three paces toward the double doors and pulled him back, "Stay with me. I want to help you bring in the New Year."

AJ surprised himself by what came out of his mouth, not having really understood his own emotions on this issue, "I can't start another year right now."

"You can," Howie disagreed. "With me." He corrected himself, "With us. We're still here."

"She always made sure there was fake champagne wherever we went for New Years'. And she wore a new dress, because evidently it's bad luck where she comes from to start the year out in already used clothing." Or rather, that had been the excuse she had used to justify getting the new dresses she wanted every January 1st.

"Caro made resolutions that she actually kept. I do that every year now."

"You have one for this year?" AJ wanted to know.

"To get this album put out."

"That's not really a just-you resolution," AJ pointed out.

"No, but it's something I can push us all hard enough to do." Howie could be tough when the situation demanded it, tougher even than Kevin.

"You have a sweater or something that you've knitted but not used yet?"

Howie considered the question. "I made a scarf. I haven't decided who to give it to yet. Someone who lives where it's cold."

"Can I borrow it for tomorrow?"

"You can have it, I'll make another one if it turns out I actually need to. It's pretty warm here, though."

"I won't wrap myself up in it."

"It's pastel."

AJ winced, but just said, "I did ask kinda last moment."

Howie turned his head as the partygoers shouted, "10!" He turned back to AJ quickly, "Stay?"

AJ shouted, "8! 7!…"

When they hit one, Howie pulled AJ over to the table where Kristin and Leighanne had been holding court most of the evening. He grabbed a couple of glasses that were set aside from all the others and held one out to AJ, "I reminded Nick to make sure there was something for us to toast with at midnight."

AJ took the glass with slightly unsteady fingers and marveled at how loud the sound of his glass meeting Howie's was, even in the noisy ballroom. Howie drank the carbonated cider and said, "Happy New Year, Aje." His lips were wet and the words sounded like a kiss.

*