A/N: Quick update. I done an exam on Frankenstein today and I've come from it feeling a lot more calm about life in general. I also get to see my wee baby cousin on Saturday and take as many darn pictures of him as I can (which my photography tutor probably won't like, but oh well). Chapter 10 here… which in my own opinion should be called "Nick gets some guts".

Read and enjoy my loves… give my your feedback… it's wonderful to hear or read… or… whatever… XD

xo


Chapter Ten: Bruised

He hated the time of the day when the mail man came. It always meant more sacks of fan mail that they would throw onto the rest of the piles of existing mail awaiting reading. He hated how many girls would write letters to him, asking him to marry them and declaring their love for him. It always meant more guilt and more shame on his part. They had no idea who he really was. They didn't know if he was as good as the boy he played himself to be in front of the cameras. To them, he looked like a quiet reserved kind young guy. Instead, he was truly a monster, slowing ruining the lives of all he came close to. He was ashamed of himself.

"Did you get the mail yet?" Joe mumbled to him as he walked down the stairs in his boxers and his "I'm with stupid" t-shirt that Nick couldn't help but think was aimed at him.

The younger of the two brothers turned to the other in shock. It had been four days since Joe's return to California and he had said a grand total of zero words to his younger brother since he'd stepped through the threshold. Joe had been getting angrier at Mandy's response on the news as the days went on. He blamed Nick more and wanted him out of his way at all times. He had become more desperate towards getting Mandy back and constantly asked questions about the news and the mail, or if he'd had any phone calls as though hoping she would spontaneously change her mind. He had however, been sadly disappointed each time he asked. They only ever got fan mail and most of their phone calls and messages were from family and work colleagues. If they were going to get a personal call, it would always be to their cell phones. The only calls Joe had been getting on his cell, as far as Nick could tell from what he had overheard, was deep in depth hour long conversations with Miley. These phone calls had frequently planted a sickly, nervous feeling in the pit of Nick's stomach and they awoke him back to reality. He was still and idiot. The amount of lives he had ruined still added up to four: Joe's, Mandy's, Miley's and his own.

But today, he knew why his brother was talking to him. Their parents were Christmas shopping with Kevin and Frankie and there was no one else in the house that he could have asked without having to do the searching himself. He was angry… but that never stopped him from being a lazy ass. He never wanted to do anything on his own.

"He hadn't been the last time I checked a couple of hours ago," Nick's words were carefully chosen, "I don't really know what time he comes…"

Joe sighed and opened the door to their home, letting a brisk gust of wind almost knock him backwards slightly as he looked across over at the driveway where their mailbox stood.

The mail must have been in their as Joe soon walked from the door across the lawn to reach his destination. Nick watched him before he returned moments later carrying a bundle of letters and a huge smile on his face.

"What is it?" Nick asked before he could think.

Joe shook his head. Apparently, just for this morning, he had forgotten this war of silence he had been ever so surely winning for the past four days and was instead calling a temporary truce before beginning the war again. Nick didn't mind. He would do anything to get his brother talking to him again instead of treating him like he didn't even exist.

"Miles sent me our invitation to her birthday party at Disneyland…" he opened the envelope and his face dropped, "Hmm… it's got all of our names on it… must be her bosses making her keep everything nice and kind in front of the kids," he explained, "Miley would never want you there…"

Nick smiled and nodded. Of course Miley would never want him there… she didn't want the life-ruiner anywhere near her. Having him at her party would simply be inconceivable in her mind unless she was forced to by the wonderful source of power that was their bosses. They were always really going to be the ones in control of this party. From what Nick had heard of the party, there was no way that Miley could ever have organised it on her own. She was the kinda girl that went for cheap crappy cupcakes and bowls of Cheetos. Cakes that were almost as big as she was were never a good idea.

Nick nodded and slid from the stool he was sitting on and moved across the room, grabbing his keys and jacket and heading out. If he wasn't wanted… he wouldn't stay.

"Hey Paty…" he said to the woman behind the counter as he walked into the diner. She smiled and looked at him solemnly. The last time she had seen him, she'd been handing him towels to mop up the great amounts of thick rich red blood that was flooding from his nose. She hadn't said a word about anything the entire time she had been nursing his wounds of stupidity that day. He was thankful for her discretion. He'd watched as she turned down offer upon offer of money for information on the two brother's argument. But Paty, however, was not the kind of woman to run an establishment where celebrities were different from normal customers. They were normal customers and she valued their business and support more than she did giving away their lives to people who didn't care. Those people came into her diner as a way of escaping. This was a place they could think of as another home.

"Coffee?" she mumbled taking out a cup and planting it onto the counter as he sat down silently. He nodded with a weak smile and she poured him a cup. He sipped away at it as the woman stood in front of him with a smile. She was an elderly woman but she always made people feel welcome. She'd worked in this diner her entire life and it had belonged to her family since its establishment in the sixties.

"What's wrong?" he asked as he noticed her staring at him.

She narrowed her eyes at him. She was a wise old thing and it was quite scary sometimes.

"Mandy's at that back table," she said matter-of-factly, showing him his usual order written onto her notepad without even a word mentioned. He looked from her to the notepad and nodded. He looked back at her with a frown and shook his head. He was clueless. She'd expected as much, "Go talk to her about your brother… maybe then you're nose will stop looking so bruised and broken…"

Nick looked at her. He knew that he had to talk to Mandy sooner or later. If he was to tell the truth then Mandy and Joe would make up and be together finally after nearly a year and then maybe Nick would stop feeling so guilty about everything that he had done. He would have solved the problems of two lives. Having two lives ruined was always going to be better than having the four he had done. At least he would have the friendship of Mandy and the brother-ship of Joe back in his hands to hold onto. But he had known since that moment all those months ago and all those moments after that winning back the affections of Miley was going to be harder than anything he had ever done. She was tough. She didn't break on anything easily. She was stubborn… then again… so was he.

And after what he'd done he probably wouldn't have forgiven him either.

He approached Mandy tentatively, holding his coffee cup as though it was a full body shield. He didn't know what he would do if Mandy became violent. He hadn't known her to be violent, but her interview on the news a few days ago had brought her to a whole new light. She could get angry instead of just hysterically stupid or panicky. She was a very emotional woman and he had brought about most of those negative thoughts and emotions into her life. It was time he fixed it.

"Hi."

She looked up from her copy of Twilight frowned. She closed the book slipping her marker between the pages and shook her head at him in confusion, "What do you want?"

He shrugged, "I was sitting over at the counter and I saw that you were sitting here alone and I wanted to see if you'd want to sit with me and perhaps… ya know… talk?"

Mandy pushed her book further away from her grasp and nodded, "Okay…"

As he quickly rushed to sit down, it was like everything he had been building up inside of him came erupting from him like a volcano. He planted his coffee on the table and leaned towards Mandy quickly, the words spilling from his mouth like word vomit… stupidly idiotic word vomit that made absolutely zero sense to anyone who heard it.

"Please… please take Joe back…" he hissed to her closing his eyes hopelessly, "It isn't his fault… it's my fault… my fault… don't blame him for me being an idiot… please Mandy…"

She looked at him confused and shook her head at him. Nick had always thought she was a little slow, but now he knew that it was just because he was making no sense at all to her. She knew nothing of what he was talking about. She had no idea of how much of an idiot he had been. She had not one clue of how unkind and cruel he had been to her without her knowledge. He was prepared for her to hate him after this, just as long as she was able to forgive Joe and let them both be happy again. It was enough happiness for him.

"What are you talking about?"

"Take Joe back."

She laughed, "No…"

Nick shook his head and shrugged his shoulders, "Why?"

She smiled and clasped her hands together on the table in front of her. She was instantly thrown into being in charge of this conversation and Nick sensed that she knew it just from how he was looking at her pleadingly. He wasn't going to give up in his requests. He was not going to let Joe be unhappy and her be completely clueless. It had been too long amount of time. He would do anything to make her take him back… beg, plead, steal… anything.

"I thought it was quite obvious why I won't step within a mile radius of your superficial asshole brother…" she said plainly, "I don't want anything more to do with him. He only wants me because people know my face now and I won't embarrass him. He wasn't interested ten months ago when all I wanted in the world was for him to love me."

"He does love you!" Nick begged her, "He's so in love with you that it hurts to see him like this…"

Mandy laughed and lifted her napkin from her lap, throwing it onto the table.

"Well… he sure did prove his love for me when he dumped me two weeks before you left the tour, breaking my heart and my hopes in the process…" she mumbled, "He was fine back then and he sure seemed fine when he was brainwashing my best friend into thinking he was the most wonderful guy on the planet…"

"Miley's got nothing to do with this…"

"Obviously she has because he's talked her into this!" Mandy slapped her hands onto the table moving forward to hiss her words at him until their noses were almost touching with the secrecy of their conversation, "She came to my apartment yesterday saying how he had done all this stuff and to trust him. I couldn't believe it. She used to hate you guys!"

Nick paused taking in her statement as slowly and gently as he could. It stung a little but he didn't let it get to him.

"Nope… it's just me and Kevin she hates…" he nodded accepting his part, "Kevin because he has no sense of style and me… well… she hates me because I don't know what I've got till its gone… and I don't know how to play fair…" he shook it all out of him, "Blame me… blame me for everything… I'm the one that caused all this trouble for you and I take sole responsibility."

Mandy stared at him, figuring him out, trying to read what the hell he was trying to say in the sincerity of his eyes. He was adamantly staring at her. He was making sure she understood his seriousness. He meant business today and not his usual type of business. It was business of the heart… family business. It was the only actions that truly meant something to him. His family were everything. The people he loved were everything to him. He had to save them. He had to rescue their hearts from being broken more than they were already.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that I was the person that told Joe to not ask you to be his girlfriend when he was so sure he was going to marry you one day…" Nick began, "I told him that you weren't good enough for him and that he should forget about you… and he did. If you're going to be pissed at him for anything, be pissed at him for caring so much about his family's opinion."

SLAP!

He hadn't seen it coming, but it had been hard, fast and painful. He pulled away from her hand and shook out the pain with a laugh. She sat there, raised in her seat a little as she puffed hard and fast on her anger attempting to release it from her pent up body.

"Why would you do such a thing!?"

"Because I'm an idiot… and so are you for not noticing how much he still cares about you…"

She gasped out a laugh and shook her head, pointing her finger down hard onto the edge of the table, "I didn't listen to Joe because he broke… my… heart…" she tapped her finger onto the table with each word, "If I'm an idiot for that… What's your excuse?!"

Nick took a deep breath and smiled at her as calmly as he could. He didn't know, was the answer to her question. He had no idea why he was such an idiot, just that he wanted to change things. And that was what he was doing. That was why he had walked over to this tiny two seat table in the middle of a diner in little old Toluca Lake – he wanted his atonement. He wanted to be forgiven for being stupid and for pushing everyone slowly but surely as far away from him as humanly possible.

"Can I ask you something?" he asked completely changing the subject and ignoring her question, instantly changing the entire tone of the once heated conversation.

"What?" she breathed.

"This Justin guy…" he mumbled, "The one that Miley was or is seeing…"

"What about him?" Mandy cut through him impatiently. He sighed and waited patiently, trying to pick the correct words. None of them, however, seemed enough.

"How much did she like him…?"

Mandy shrugged her shoulders. There was only one way for her to explain it that he would ever understand, "He brought back that smile on her face for a little while longer each day…" she played with the straw in her chocolate milkshake and shook her head as she looked into its depths. A smile of pride began to appear on her face as she remembered everything that little girl had fought against everyday since the moment she'd stepped back on that tour bus. Then she realised what Nick had done and the smile began to disappear. "She was slowly coming back to us and then one day it all just disappeared into nothing…"

She paused for a moment, before realising what was occurring. She narrowed her eyes at him knowingly not really needing an answer, "Why do you care? Are you jealous?"

He laughed and shook his head frantically, "No… no… of course not… I was just wondering how she was taking the whole break up thing?"

Mandy let out a chuckle and stood up wiping her mouth with the napkin, "They were friends more than anything… I guess that's made it a lot difficult now that they broke up. All she ever cared about was how he was and if he was okay. She was sure he was going to do great things…" she grabbed her bag and paused beside him. Swiftly, her hand made contact with the side of his head behind his ear, the slapping sound echoing for a moment.

She smiled at him pleased as he grabbed the side of his head in pain.

"That one was just for good measure…"

She left as Nick giggled to himself. One life down, three to go...

A/N: Is Brother-ship even a word? Because it is now. It's my word. How did you guys like that? Was it okay? Let me know dudes and dudettes and any other kind of being to which you may be. Hmmm…sorry... im hyper.

Reviews are lovely ;)

B xo