Suicide Doors

Chapter Eleven

By: Jondy Macmillan

A/N: Have I mentioned that you guys rock? You guys rock so hard. Every single review I get leaves me absolutely ecstatic. Thank you!


The first gig they played in the weeks of silence was pretty much the most awkward thing ever. Joe was off his game, and even the audience could tell.

"C'mon, Danger!" Kevin yelled into the mic; fake encouragement, and the name sounded like a curse. Even so, the words were the first his older brother had spoken towards him in ages, so Joe took heart from that. Plus the screaming girls; Joe never did understand how they had the capacity to keep screaming and screaming like they were trying out for some scary movie. Didn't they need to breathe?

Nick still wouldn't look him in the eye.

Afterwards, when they were bombarded by their fans, Joe noticed fewer girls were vying for his attention. There was no lack of fans; they just seemed to gravitate towards Kevin and Nick. The smattering that would meet his gaze reminded him of Macy.

"Ignore it," a voice said, and Joe glanced up. There was a girl in her late teens with much too much foundation caked on smiling wickedly at him.

"I'm sorry, what?" he glanced down at the notebook she wanted him to autograph and scribbled out his name. He could see a gleaming white imprint on the page. It was the kind that you make when you press down too hard with your pen and it leaves the fossilized remains of whatever you wrote behind. Just barely there under the bright lights, 'Mrs. Joe Lucas' was scrawled out. Now his signature overlapped the ghost of those words.

"I said ignore it. You're figuring yourself out, so what?"

"I- do I know you?" he asked, confused. The girl didn't go to Horace Mantis, he was sure of it.

"Nah," she gave this carefree giggle, like she couldn't believe Joe Lucas of JONAS had asked if he knew her, but her words were firm, "I'm just saying, you look kind of lost. Don't let mistakes dictate your relationship with your brothers."

"Uh," he was touched, kind of, "Thanks for the advice."

"Sure. Someone's gotta support the bad boys of the world," the fan winked.

"I'm not a-"

"And man, if I had brothers as cute as yours, I would totally be getting up close and personal family time in-"

"Next!" he squeaked out, cutting off her lewd description and letting a younger fan push the girl aside. She didn't look pissed; just mildly amused. She even wiggled her fingers at him before she was swallowed by the rest of the pushy crowd begging for a JONAS boy's autograph.

She probably thought he was disgusted by what she was saying, and he was. Only because having 'up close and personal family time' was exactly what he wanted to do with Nick.

When the meet and greet was over and done with, Joe felt nothing but sweet relief. Their parents met them with hugs in a backstage tradition before they started breaking down their set. At least his parents were talking to him, Joe reasoned.

They'd turned out to be slightly more upset than he'd initially thought. Apparently the idea that his brothers were punishing him enough had sort of fallen through. The second Joe broke a plate while washing the dishes, he was grounded for like, all eternity, but hell. He didn't mind the transference. As far as he was concerned, being grounded was fine. He was probably never leaving the house for anything but gigs and school anyway.

Of course it would figure that the minute he found his breaking point, things began to turn around.

The drive through the Lincoln Tunnel past midnight was easy and quick. They got home in less than forty minutes, and basically crawled to bed. The next morning was a Saturday, which Joe elected weekly sleep in however long he fucking wanted day. He expected this Saturday to be like the past few; when he woke, his brothers would be gone and he'd be stuck figuring out what to do if Stella wasn't free. He didn't think he could stand another soap opera marathon.

Sure enough, when he woke up to a too-bright sun that morning, he was struck by the same silence that had haunted him for the better part of the month.

He'd skipped taking a shower the night before, and it felt like the concert's sweat and blood and shattered dreams were sticking to his skin like flypaper. When he turned the faucet on in the bathroom, he didn't get into the shower until the place was filled with so much steam that he could barely see his hands. It felt like disappearing.

Joe wondered if Nick was out with Penny. He didn't know how things were going with them, but they had to be good. Nick spent practically every day with her. Joe knew he was working on a new song; he heard it sometimes, late at night when Kevin had fallen asleep on the couch and Nick thought Joe was off in dreamland. He'd strum out the tune on his guitar, ever so soft, and hum. It made Joe's heart clench to think that such a beautiful tune could be about such a boring, stupid girl.

He didn't want Nick to write songs about him, but he didn't want Nick to write songs about anyone else either.

After what must have been an hour, Joe climbed out of the shower lobster red and aching. He felt like maybe it would have been better for everyone if he'd just attempted to drown himself in there, but he wouldn't give anyone the satisfaction of knowing he'd lost it over this. Not even himself.

He wrapped himself in a fluffy white towel hanging low on his hips and strutted out into the cold air of their bedroom.

Stupid firehouses with their stupid drafty lofts. Winter was sneaking up with its teeth and its claws, and soon it would be time to blast the heat, expense be damned. Hey, that was one advantage of being a rockstar Joe was allowed to make use of.

He was standing beside his bed, rifling through his drawers for a pair of clean boxers when he heard, "Hey."

Joe nearly dropped his towel.

Nick hadn't spoken a word to him for so very long that somehow his voice seemed foreign, even though Joe had heard it last night at the concert, and heard every morning over breakfast when he conversed with people other than Joe.

"H-hey," Joe croaked out, hating the veil of mistrust that obscured Nick's eyes from him.

"I," Nick took a deep breath, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans, "I wanted to talk to you."

"I'm naked," Joe said, glancing down at his towel, and he didn't know why he was drawing attention to that fact. Maybe he didn't want to have a heart to heart when water was dripping its way down the cut of his chest, or maybe he felt uncomfortable with the way Nick was staring.

Wait, Nick was staring.

His little brother glanced away, "I don't care."

Okay, well. That was different.

"Um. Right," Joe sat on his bed, only realizing that it was a bad idea when his towel rode lower still. He tucked the towel more tightly together and Nick's eyes followed the motion.

"So," he prompted, when he realized that his baby brother still wasn't saying a word. God, what if he'd decided breaking the vow of silence was a bad idea? Joe felt the sudden need to babble, to fill the void, to do anything to make Nick smile and just talk.

"It occurred to me, at the concert last night," Nick sat beside him, and then his eyes moved, glued decidedly to Joe's bedside lamp, "That maybe the way we're treating you is bad for the band."

"Bad for the band," Joe echoed, a sinking feeling in his gut. He didn't expect forgiveness, of course, but he didn't want to be welcome back just for the sake of the fucking band. Like he wasn't even family.

"Yeah," Nick reclined back on the palms of his hands, and now he was looking at the ceiling, which was infinitely more interesting than the lamp anyway.

"Okay."

"Okay," Nick repeated, and he made to stand up, then stilled, "Except it's not really okay, is it?"

Joe might have looked up, and his eyes might have widened, but he wouldn't let himself react either of those ways. Instead he decided that the carpet was even better than the ceiling, and Nick was missing out, because at least Joe could stare at Nick's bare feet.

They probably looked like idiots; one determinedly watching the roof and the other trying to test x-ray vision on the ground.

"Nope," Joe agreed finally, after a silence he'd created. See, two could play that game.

"Joe, you really fucked up."

Wow, it sucked hearing that out of Nick's mouth. He felt like he'd been punched.

"I've been informed," he replied icily. He was arrogant, and he was prideful, and couldn't anyone understand that he had his reasons behind that one ginormous mistake?

"I'm telling you because you need to hear it," Nick continued, "I know we've been brutal with the ignoring you-"

"And the avoiding me," Joe interjected.

Nick's lips twitched in a wry smile, which Joe caught, because he let himself glance up for just a moment, because hey, Nick was smiling, "-and I know you've probably been hurting, but you have to understand that this was all for your own good."

His own good. Those were his new least favorite words.

"Made it easier for you spend time with Penny, at any rate," Joe remarked bitterly.

"Penny?" Nick mouthed, the word barely a whisper. Then he exploded, "God, what is your problem with her? You've been nothing but a downer since I started dating her, which is what you wanted, might I remind you- and then you fucking hook up with my ex girlfriend, and you still manage to make Penny out to be the bad guy? Joe, c'mon!"

"Sor-ry," Joe intoned, annoyed suddenly; at himself, at Nick, and at the stupid girl he'd set loose in Nick's life, "I just don't like her, okay?"

"No, not okay. If you didn't like her, you should have said so from the beginning! Jesus, Joe, I'm only dating her because you told me to!"

His words gave Joe pause. Why would Nick care what Joe said? Why would he follow his big brother's instructions when he never had before? Because Nick never took Joe's advice. Granted, most of Joe's suggestions surmounted to 'come on, Nicky, jumping off the roof will be fun', but still. He was sure at one point or other in his life, he'd offered solid guidance, and Nick had probably ignored it.

Disgusted, Joe decided Nick was lying through his teeth, playing some sort of sick mind game, "You are so full of yourself."

Nick's face screwed into a grimace and he spat, "Yeah, well; family trait."

Ouch.

"You know what?" Nick demanded, "I thought I could talk to you, impress the seriousness of what's going on here in some way that Kevin hasn't been able to, but you are just- so, so beyond help right now."

"Nick, that's not fair."

Nick wasn't listening. Nick was walking out on him, again.

And it wasn't fair, not at all. Because Joe's chest hurt, watching his brother leave like that. For a second, just a split second, Joe had entertained the idea that Nick had been- what, checking him out? Like that was even possible.

Joe fell back on his bed, trying to find stars in the whorls and patterns of the ceiling. He needed something to wish on; he couldn't take this anymore. Nick's name was branded on his heart, and it was horrifying, because Nick lived inside him before all this had happened, in the threading of his pulse, the thumpthumpthump of his blood in his veins. Nick was doubly marked inside Joe now; brother, lover.

And Joe, well he only had one mark, one word etched inside himself.

Sinner.


A/N: This drama has got to crack and soon. It's killing me, man. Please review!