tamingthemuse | 114 - Seychelles - Summertime - originalharmony

Title: Summertime
Fandom: Backstreet Boys (RPS)
Prompt: #114 - Seychelles
Warnings: RPS - real person slash; in this case, Kevin Richardson/Nick Carter and Brian Litrell/AJ McLean. AU.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Summertime was dancing, pressed hip-to-hip against another man to music from the nineties with a good beat and terrible lyrics, and remembering a night when he was sixteen and kissed someone he shouldn't have.

So I finished this at exactly 11:59, and the time stamp says 11:59, even though it's 12:10 now because I've been freaking out and checking formatting and such, so I'm hoping that's acceptable and that I don't get smited. There is a mod post on this, but I figured I'd say something...

Summertime was dancing, pressed hip-to-hip against another man to music from the nineties with a good beat and terrible lyrics, and remembering a night when he was sixteen and kissed someone he shouldn't have. Summertime was going on vacations to Lanikai and Ninety Mile Beach and the Seychelles, and fumbled handjobs on the beach at seventeen-eighteen-nineteen. Summertime was grainy pictures taken by inexperienced photographers, and pretending he didn't have a weakness for dark-haired men in suits who were about nine years older than him, and getting so good at it that none of them approached him any more.

The summer he was nineteen had been the summer his band made it, and, after a show one night, he and AJ had had it out and then had it off. They'd done it a couple of times, and then Brian had come back to Orlando to record his third album, and Nick and AJ had broken it off because Nick knew at least as well as AJ, and maybe better, that AJ had been in love with Brian since he was seventeen, and that was four years.

Maybe three months later, Brian's album had been done, and, by that time, he and Nick were as close as they'd been when he had stopped coming to Orlando for the summers two years prior, when he had started really touring and his career had kicked off. There was a big release party, and – of course of course of course why hadn't Nick realized? – Brian's cousin Kevin came.

Nick came, too, but he was drunk and alone in his own bed, unable even to bring anyone else with him if Kevin was around.

Kevin hadn't been even been able to meet his eyes, he thought. Kevin knew – Kevin knew he was still as painfully head-over-heels as he had been when he was sixteen, and that was why Kevin wouldn't look at him, because Kevin hated him. He maybe cried a little bit, but he was drunk, and nothing mattered if he was drunk, right?

The next morning, talking to Brian over a Kentucky-style hangover cure and coffee, he found out that Kevin had had an “emergency” at the law firm he worked at and had to leave early, according to the note he had left, but that Brian thought he had been lying, and couldn't figure out why.

'Because he's so disgusted by me that he can't stand to be in my presence any longer than necessary,' he thought, his muddled brain not realizing that Kevin knew about Brian and AJ.

Two years later, he was a little out of breath from dancing and not even tipsy, way too sober to be imagining the short spiky hair and beautiful green eyes that he found when he looked down the bar to the man the bartender indicated had sent him his drink. Swallowing it in one gulp, he rose smoothly, flowing as much as walking toward the lanky man who was more familiar than was believable.

He smiled at Nick in easy recognition and heartfelt affection. “I felt a drink was the least I could do, since I didn't know if you'd let me return the kiss.”

“I don't understand,” Nick said, moving a little closer and taking the offer hand. He let Kevin lead him onto the floor, and they moved together, one against the other and feeling better than anyone had a right to.

Kevin kissed the side of his neck, even now a little taller than he was, and, in a moment, he did.