1. Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets.

 

What AJ wants to know is, when did Aaron fucking Carter turn into Lolita?

 

He can still remember Nick at that age, all long limbs and blond hair and pouty lips, but that was different. Nick never tried to be sexy; he just was, even at fourteen. He’s all long limbs and sweet hugs, and he always seems surprised to know that someone wants him, even now. The innocent little fuck. AJ can still remember Nick crawling into bed with him because he was young and lonely, and the resulting sleepless hours, trying to decide whether to get up and jerk off in the bathroom or just go to sleep hard, risking an unfortunate wet dream incident. Nick sleeps curled around people like a fucking octopus.

 

But Aaron’s different. He might be the same age as Nick was, but he’s so much more aware. He moves with a languid grace instead of the awkward, coltish gait Nick used to have, and his eyes are hooded and direct where Nick’s were shy and sweet. Also, he fucking lounges all over everything, even Nick. Not like a kid, but like he knows what he’s doing—head thrown back on Nick’s shoulder, exposing the pale length of his neck, one hand loosely cupped between spread thighs, bare toes just barely touching the ground.

 

Come to think of it, he acts more like Nick now than Nick then.

 

Because Nick has grown into his body, and somebody flicked the switch from a pure glow to a molten gold light, but where it took Nick years to become that, this, whatever he is now, Aaron seems to have shifted from wide-eyed little boy to smirking twink in the blink of an eye, and its kind of disturbing.

 

AJ would bemoan the effect on the industry on the sexuality of show kids if he didn’t find Aaron so fucking hot.

 

2. Back up, boy, I ain’t your toy, or your piece of ass.

 

AJ is starting to think the kid is stalking him.

 

He doesn’t know how, but somehow Nick managed to get Aaron into the club, and now everywhere he looks he sees a boy who’s too short, too thin, too young to be there, grinding on the dance floor with a woman twice his age, head thrown back. Strobe lights glinting off the glitter on his cheeks.

 

No fourteen-year-old should own leather pants.

 

AJ finally gives up when Aaron slips up next to him and starts dancing, eyes shut, wet mouth slipping open, looking for all the world like a barely teenage rent boy. Its time for a drink.

 

But Aaron even follows him to the bar. He plops himself down on the stool next to AJ and has the balls to order a screwdriver, and the bartender actually brings him one. He only takes it away when AJ glares at him darkly and pushes the glass back, growling, “Bring him a Shirley Temple. And make mine a coke.”

 

Aaron scowls at him but drinks it, plucking out the cherry with his fingers and sucking it into his mouth. “I can tie cherry stems with my tongue. Wanna see?”

 

“No.”

 

The kid shrugs and turns back to his drink. AJ could swear that he’s wrapping his lips around the straw like that on purpose. “You’re really boring at clubs, you know that?”

 

“And you’re really fucking underage at clubs, so I would quit bugging me in case I get the sudden urge to attract the bouncer’s attention.”

 

“Whatever. The last thing you need right now is to be caught at a bar. With a fourteen-year-old. In leather pants. And a boy, too.”

 

Apparently sensing that there was about to be a horrible case of child abuse in the form of AJ smacking Aaron upside the head, Nick shows up, wrapping his arms around Aaron from behind. “He bugging you?”

 

“Yes,” AJ and Aaron say in unison. AJ glares at the kid, but he just smiles back sweetly, sipping his cherry-red drink.

 

Nick laughs and pulls Aaron from his seat. “I’ll take him off your hands,” he says, grinning conspiratorially at AJ, and then he and Aaron disappear into the sea of glitter and blond hair and golden skin.

 

Later AJ catches sight of them and they’re still dancing only with each other, hands on each other’s identical leather-clad hips.

 

3. Ooh, I want you, I don’t know if I need you, but ooh, I’d die to find out.

 

AJ can handle wanting Nick. He has for a long time—since they met, really—which is kind of sick, since Nick had been thirteen then, but AJ had only been fifteen. He’d wanted to kiss Nick’s soft pink mouth and put his hand down Nick’s pants to see what noises he could get Nick to make, the groaning noises he made when he stretched or the soft little moans he emitted when someone gave him a backrub.

 

He and Nick have shared buses and hotel rooms since then, and everyone’s heard him fuck Mandy—even Aaron, who’d sat next to AJ with his fingers in his ears and his little face screwed up in an expression of disgust last time it happened. AJ didn’t blame him. The point is, now he knows the sounds Nick makes when he comes. Still, he wonders what extra little musical sounds he could coax out if Nick if given the chance.

 

He wants Nick now, and its okay, comfortable. Much easier to ignore than it was before. AJ had always wanted to get there first, to be the first to have his tongue in Nick’s mouth and his hands on Nick’s cock and his fingers in Nick’s ass. But Nick was like his little brother, and Kevin would have killed him, but only if Brian didn’t get to him first. He still regrets not being able to show Nick the ropes, so to speak, but its okay now, because it’s so much easier to want Nick now. It’s lust and it’s love and it’s want, but its no longer a burning need in his stomach.

 

Wanting Nick is easy now.

 

Wanting Aaron is hard, though, and wanting Nick and Aaron is fucking killing him. He feels deeply, deeply perverted, which is usually okay. He’d long thought that AJ McLean had fully embraced all his perversions, but that’s apparently not the case. Nick and Aaron are beautiful, together and apart, and okay, yes. When he sees their heads inclined towards each other in a whisper, he can’t help but think that their lips touching would be, God. Gorgeous.

 

And yes, when he sees their hands on each other, he can’t help but think that them touching each other would be, God. So hot.

 

4. Touch me, babe. Let me show you that I am not afraid.

 

Nick and Aaron touch a lot, and not just in his imagination, either. AJ had thought that by fourteen and twenty-one, brothers would have grown apart, at least the kind of apart where the fourteen-year-old doesn’t curl up on the twenty-one-year-old’s lap for a nap.

 

But no. Aaron still naps sprawled all over Nick, and still hugs him and jumps all over him constantly, and even tilts his head up every night for a goodnight kiss, eyes closed, swanlike neck outstretched. They used to kiss each other on the cheek, but for the past year or so they’ve kissed each other on the mouth, just a quick meeting of barely open pink lips.

 

At first AJ thinks he’s crazy for noticing something so innocent, so minimal, but then he sees the way Brian looks at them. Brian watches them the same way AJ does, but at least AJ has his sunglasses as a shield. Everything shows in Brian’s eyes, even if it can’t always be interpreted.

 

When Brian looks at them, there’s always an extra little spark of heat in his eyes, a heat AJ can’t remember seeing even when Brian’s with his wife. It’s familiar, and a little scary, because it’s Brian. But still, AJ would approach him for it, if the heat wasn’t mixed with such fear, and such resigned pain.

 

AJ isn’t afraid, and he’s not in pain. He just wants, and it fucking sucks.

 

5. Underneath your clothes, there’s an endless story.

 

AJ wakes up from a nap in the green room of some morning show to find Aaron next to him, tracing his tattoos with soft fingers and fascinated eyes. No one else is paying any attention to them, too wrapped up in their own conversations, though AJ swears he sees Nick glance over at them every few seconds, look unreadable.

 

Aaron is still dragging his fingers lightly over the inside of AJ’s arm, but this time his eyes, hot and direct, are on AJ’s own. He licks his lips red and saliva-wet, and AJ just knows he’s doing this on purpose.

 

When AJ’s voice finally comes, by some miracle of God it’s only as hoarse as it usually is. “Why don’t you go play with Nick’s tattoos?”

 

The kid shrugs, but reluctantly pulls his fingers away. “I’ve seen all his.”

 

Aaron’s eyes meet AJ’s with an amused flicker of eyelid, and AJ has to close his eyes against all the implications of that.

 

6. I am in love with you, and it is no fun.

 

AJ knows he’s not crazy when he sees Howie watching them, or more accurately, watching Nick. Howie has always been the most observant one, especially when it comes to Nick.

 

Its not a very well-kept secret that Howie is in love with Nick. He’s always there, ready to give up a date with a new boy or a friend or even his family if Nick really needs him, and sometimes even when he doesn’t. But like Brian and Kevin, Howie can’t look past the way Nick used to be, that innocence, that sweetness. Nick isn’t innocent anymore.

 

When Howie looks at Nick and Aaron, sometimes its like he doesn’t even see the younger boy. Just Nick, happy and loving and loved. With someone who’s not Howie. But AJ knows something is going on when Howie talks to Mr. Carter about keeping Aaron on tour for another leg. Howie had done that with Mandy too, even though he couldn’t even bring himself to talk to her, just because he knew it would make Nick happy.

 

AJ would feel bad about wanting Nick, who Howie so obviously loves, if he didn’t love Nick so much, too.

 

Its fucking weird, is what it is. He and Howie and Brian, all in the same boat, and Nick completely oblivious. He’s starting to wonder when Kevin’s going to get in on it.

 

7. I don’t feel too strange for you.

 

Nick corners him at a party and asks him if he loves Aaron right next to the speakers. AJ is pretty sure he’s hearing things, so he asks Nick to repeat himself. “Huh?”

 

Nick leans down and yells in his ear, “You love Aaron, right? Like you love me?”

 

And the answer to that is yeah, but since he doesn’t really want to give away exactly what the extent of that love is, he settles for, “Nick, what is your current dysfunction?”

 

“Augh.” Nick rolls his eyes and starts dragging AJ away from the speaker, away from the party, away from all the nice single blonde girls he could be hooking up with. Its not that he doesn’t want to be alone with Nick in a small room (with a couch, to boot) but he has a feeling Nick doesn’t have in mind the same things AJ does.

 

“You have to have sex with Aaron.”

 

Unless he does. “What? I—I think I’m hearing you wrong, Nick.”

 

“You have to fuck Aaron.”

 

No…that’s still the same thing. Fuck. “Still just a little confused here.” AJ’s trying to tread carefully, but he’s pretty sure that he did just hear Nick request that AJ screw his little brother. Twice.

 

“You have to. He wants to lose his virginity, and if its not you then he’ll go out and do it with someone else, someone he doesn’t know who doesn’t know him, and God. They might hurt him.” Nicks eyes are pleading. “He knows you, AJ, he trusts you. I trust you.” He looks down at the floor, and when he looks back his eyelashes are spiky with tears. “I…can’t. He asked me to, but I can’t. I was already his first kiss, and I won’t—won’t let his whole adolescent sex life be wrapped up in his big brother.”

 

And its then that he knows.

 

Shit, he had thought that he’d known, had fantasized, maybe, but—he hadn’t really expected it to be true, not really. He’d known something was up, but still. Nick actually talking about it, Nick talking about kissing Aaron and touching Aaron and wanting to fuck Aaron, Aaron asking him to fuck him— “You and Aaron.”

 

“Yeah.” Nick’s voice is defensive, guarded. “Don’t act like you didn’t know, AJ. I’ve seen you watching us.”

 

And that gives AJ a hot spark of guilt, because he has been watching, and he has been thinking and he has been fantasizing. But that was just his fucked up dick doing the thinking for him, turning lust into fantasy. This is real life, and his only defense is to attack Nick where he’s weakest. “He’s your fucking brother, Nick. He’s fourteen.”

 

“Fuck you! Don’t you fucking act like this, AJ, and don’t pretend to have some sort of moral objection to us.” Nick’s face almost crumbles, almost cracks under the pressure of the pain in his eyes. But Nick doesn’t cry. Nick never cries. “I’m all he has. He’s all I have.”

 

“You have us!” AJ explodes. “You have us, your boys.”

 

Nick sniffs, wiping his nose with his sleeve. “That’s different.”

 

“It so isn’t, Nick. It isn’t,” AJ says, laying a hand on Nick’s face. Can’t help but smile a little. “We’re your brothers, too.”

 

And Nick smiles, and breathes, and all of a sudden there’s no tension between them, no hurt, just the heat of AJ’s hand cupping Nick’s cheek. When Nick speaks, he brings a hand up to hold AJ’s in place, and his lips just barely brush against AJ’s palm. His breath is a hot puff of air. “So, you want Aaron.”

 

“Yes.” It just seems stupid to hide is now. Nick is way more perverted than he is.

 

“And you want me.” He wouldn’t even have to look to know that Nick’s smiling, because he can feel the curve of it beneath his hand. But he is looking, and Nick’s eyes are glowing right at him.

 

“Yes.”

 

Nick steps closer to him, and dips his head to whisper, “You got a thing for young blonds, or what?”

 

AJ groans and leans into Nick’s chest, dropping his hand to curl around the nape of Nick’s neck. “I feel like Humbert fucking Humbert.”

 

Nick laughs into his hair, and AJ thinks that maybe perversion is a good thing.

 

8. Feels like breaking.

 

When they get to Nick’s house, everything is still and quiet except for AJ, who feels like he’s strumming out of his skin, like his heartbeat is as loud as the engine of his car. On the drive there he had time to think, and he knows this is a bad idea. He knows it. He’ll never be able to look at Nick again, and Aaron will grow up all fucked up and hate him forever, and he’ll hate himself for popping the cherry of a 14-year-old boy and supporting some freaky incest.

 

He’d already known that he’s going to hell, so this is just overkill.

 

Still, he doesn’t turn back, and when he gets there, Nick is waiting for him in the living room, and his smile is so grateful and so happy that AJ couldn’t possibly change his mind. Besides, he’s Nick, and he’s beautiful, and AJ loves him. Loves Aaron, because that’s just like loving Nick.

 

Nick and AJ walk up the stairs carefully, slowly, in the dark, and AJ knows that Nick is giving him more time to think it over, more time to back out, but he doesn’t. Can’t, not after seeing the look on Nick’s face and watching him climb the stairs, the lines of his ass beneath his jeans. Up in Nick’s bedroom, all the lights are off, and the TV is on, humming softly and throwing blue light over the boy on the bed. He’s awake, and his lips and eyes glisten wetly in the darkness.

 

When he sees them, standing together in the doorway, he hitches in a shocked breath, and AJ is suddenly dismayed, scared to death that Aaron doesn’t want him. Scared that he was just bluffing to get Nick to fuck him, or because he never thought it would actually happen.

 

But then he grins, and reaches over to turn on the light, switching off the TV at the same time. He’s shirtless, probably already naked under the covers, and he glows a pale gold against the white sheets. “Hi.”

 

“Hi,” AJ says, still tense.

 

Aaron motions him over to the bed and he goes, sitting next to Aaron on the side of the bed, afraid to touch this golden child. It’s Aaron who initiates the first touch, taking AJ’s shades and putting them on the bedside table, running his fingers through AJ’s short hair. It feels good, like being petted, and when Aaron leans over and kisses him, it feels like breaking.

 

9. With your cherry lips and golden curls…

 

Later, he remembers it as a series of images and sensations. The cherry-red of Aaron’s mouth wrapped around his cock, the same color as the Shirley Temple from that night months ago. The thought that Aaron’s skin was like butter, warm and golden and melting so perfectly beneath his hands and in his mouth. The tiny wince on Aaron’s face when he was finally inside, the heat, the soft little moans when he finally hit what he was looking for. The way he laughed, just before he came.

 

And Nick. Nick by the side of the bed, watching, breathless. The look on his face, fascinated and a little scared, a little hurt, and the smile on his face when Aaron reached out a hand for him and said, “Nick. Nick.”

 

The way they finally looked when they kissed. The sight of slick pink tongues, hands buried in each other’s hair, sliding over each other’s butter-soft bodies. Love and love and love,  and nothing else really mattered.

 

The way Nick tasted when he finally, finally leant over and kissed AJ, the heat and the sweetness of him. The little moans he made, just the way AJ had imagined.

 

10. So wrong that its right.

 

AJ knows that for the three of them, it was just this one time, but he also knows that for Nick and Aaron, and himself and Nick, and even himself and Aaron, maybe, this is far from the last time. And that kind of makes all the stuff he’s done that’s wrong feel right.

 

 

END

 

1. “Whatever Lola Wants (Lola Gets)” from Damn Yankees!, 2. “Respect” by Pink, 3. “I Want You” by Savage Garden, 4. “Touch Me” by the Doors, 5. “Underneath Your Clothes” by Shakira, 6. “Dilate” by Ani Difranco, 7. “Rescue Me” by Madonna, 9. “Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go!)” by Garbage

 

So Wrong...
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