Suicide Doors

Chapter Fifteen

By: Jondy Macmillan

They reached their quiet little firehouse early in the morning, and they had to hide out in the living room to keep from waking Kevin up. Joe didn't know what to think. He didn't know what had happened in the bar back in the city, except that he was confused. Nick kissing him- it couldn't mean what Joe thought it meant. Because Nick was a smart kid, and what they'd just done wasn't smart at all. Joe was convinced that it was his fault, somehow. That he was the one who'd fucked up.

It wasn't that big of a surprise, really. He wasn't sure anymore where the love inside of him that was good and right and brotherly ended and where the love that was twisted and dark and wrong began.

But then he wondered how love could ever possibly be wrong, and came up with no answers, again and again and again.

"What are you thinking?" Nick tugged at his hand, and that was such a chick question, something a girl would ask to try to get into a boy's head, but it was also somehow a Nick question, something his little brother had asked him a million times before. He said, "Joe. Joe, look at me."

Joe did. Whatever Nick saw on his face, he didn't seem to like.

"What's wrong?"

"I- back at the club. I'm sorry. I didn't meant to-" his voice faltered, and he didn't know how to say what needed to be said. And Nick was like, invading his personal space. Joe was touchy-feely and overly affectionate almost all the time, but he wasn't used to having the tables turned. He was the one who set the terms and conditions of what body parts should graze against each other, who to lean so close to that they were sharing air, and he wasn't sure how he felt about Nick being all up in his territory.

"To what," Nick grated out, eyes darkening.

"I shouldn't have said- what I said. I shouldn't have forced you to. Do. That," he finished lamely, thinking of the hot press of Nick's lips against his own, and the way he'd wanted, still wanted it, couldn't stop wanting it.

"How could you even think that? You've never been able to force me to do anything I don't want to, idiot. And- how can you even think that I've ever felt anything but this. You're my brother. I love you."

Joe let out a strangled, wounded noise, because they'd had this conversation in the club bathroom, back when Nick's hips slotted ever so perfectly with his own, but obviously he hadn't been clear enough.

"I don't think we're talking about the same kind of love."

"We are," Nick said with absolute certainty, "Do you think I make a point of hooking up with Kevin, too?"

That was not a visual Joe had ever wanted.

"Um. Ew."

Nick was looking at him with this fond sort of exasperation that Joe didn't really understand, and Joe figured he was making excuses, making it somehow okay for Joe to feel forgiven, because that was what Nick liked to do. Protect him, even though it wasn't his job.

Joe blamed his mom for that. When Nick was born, she'd given him this entire lecture about the responsibility of being a big brother, while Kevin got to watch cartoons. Which at the time had been supremely unfair, but of course, he already knew all about what it took to be a big brother. As far as Joe could see back then, it involved tickle attacks and a lot of noogies.

But a few years later, when Nick was actually old enough to be bossy but still too young to have gotten a grasp on sharing, Joe heard the lecture again. Nick had broken one of Joe's newest birthday presents seconds after it was opened, and Joe may have overreacted. There was yelling.

A lot of it.

And then Nick called him the worst brother in the entire world, which lead to fuming and yelling and a little bit of crying into his pillow. When Joe emerged from his room half an hour later, finally prepared to respond gracefully and be the better man, he ended up eavesdropping instead. Nick, sitting on their mother's lap, was listening intently as she explained to him all the pitfalls and responsibilities and rewards of being a little brother, and how sometimes big brothers needed to be taken care of, too.

Ever since then, Nick had taken his responsibility really fucking seriously.

"Exactly."

"I'm not- I'm your big brother. I'm supposed to protect you, not-" he faltered again, Nick's expression tugging at something peripherally in his brain, "Not this."

"Joe, listen for once. I've been in love with you for as long as I can remember. I didn't realize at first, what it meant, that I loved you differently from the way I'm supposed to. But ever since I figured out what it meant to love someone else, it's been you. Not- just as a brother."

"You don't know what you're-"

"I do," Nick interrupted, "I've never known how to love you any way but this. Waiting for you to see it has been torture. You're really, really dense."

"That long? That can't be true. I didn't notice-"

"You never saw because you weren't looking for it, Joe. It kind of set it in this summer. Notice how I didn't have some kind of minor meltdown in the public eye."

"The summer," Joe echoed, "When you started stalking me."

"I was not stalking you moron. I was trying to spend time with you. Didn't I say that I missed you?" he asked, hot and urgent in Joe's ear.

Oh. Oh.

"But, in the bathroom, you seemed so surprised-"

"I didn't want to get off in a public restroom," Nick shifted, ears burning a little bit, "That's not- appropriate."

"Oh my god. You're such a little romantic."

Nick's cheeks began to flame. He said, "I take it back, I hate you."

"No you don't," Joe grinned, "But- I don't understand. Why did you seem so surprised when we-?"

Nick sighed, "I figured out that this whole thing wasn't hopeless a few weeks ago. I caught you looking at my butt?"

Nick raised an eyebrow, and Joe took a moment to remember what a fine sight that had been.

"I was really mad at you. Because- god, for a hundred reasons. You're irresponsible and kind of a moron and you're quite possibly the densest person I've ever met. Sometimes I think mom's not lying when she said she got me from the orphanage."

Joe grinned.

"And that thing with Penny, and with my ex-" he frowned, face darkening.

"Nick," Joe said, feeling like he needed to explain all of it away, "I'm sorry about-"

"Stop. I don't care about her," Nick said, "Not like that. Not anymore."

"Then what? What was your drama?"

"My drama? My drama is that this- This belongs to me," Nick said, and he pressed his mouth to Joe's, firm, possessive.

Nick had him crowded up against the wall, and this was insane, this was where he ate cereal and joked with his parents, and now he wasn't going to be able to walk on linoleum without thinking about the way Nick's hardness was burning through his jeans. Joe kissed him back until he couldn't breathe, and even then, he didn't want to stop. Not ever, not for anything.

When Nick finally, inevitably pulled away, he shook his head, eyes sparking, and said, "You're stupid. Really, completely, ridiculously stupid."

Joe was getting really tired of the jabs to his IQ. But shock had rendered him mute, and he didn't have any way to respond, no witty retorts. Just a fervent desire to kiss Nick, again and again and again.

Nick's mouth was open, an insolent little grin tugging at his lips, and when he saw Joe's eyes following, his tongue darted out, flicking over their contour. He said, "Come on. I want to show you something."

He tugged Joe down to their room, into the soundproof studio where there wouldn't be a chance of waking Kevin up. It felt dangerous, sneaking around with their big brother a few feet away, but Joe was still so confused. So happy and lost and a little bit scared that he couldn't be bothered worrying about that.

Nick sat down in front of one of the keyboards set up in the room and began to play. It was the song, the one that Joe had heard him work at right after the tabloid scandal broke. The one he thought was about Penny. Nick hadn't been playing anything else for like, a week and a half, and then, Joe realized, he'd stopped playing anything at all.

He paused in the middle of it, in the place Joe had never heard him go past. He said, "When the first tabloid broke, the one calling you bi, it hurt. I wondered why you wouldn't go for me if you did like guys. And then you started fooling around with my ex, a girl who rejected me, and that hurt too."

Joe felt guilt weigh heavy on my shoulders.

"I broke up with Penny for you. Because you didn't seem to like her, and that made me mad, because you didn't even seem to care about me enough. It made writing impossible. I wrote this for you. It's like a love song but something else, something I couldn't quite pin down. It left me more and more when I thought you were being cruel."

"Nick, I-"

Nick held up a hand and said, "You're stupid."

"You know, I think we've had this conversation before."

"I get it now. Why you did all those things. And I've got the end of the song," he laughed out, delighted, but he didn't bother playing it. He stood up, bounded over to Joe, and grinned.

Nick loved inspiration.

One time, Joe heard him say it was like, a line tugging at the end of his spine, sending electricity all the way to his fingers, so that no matter what he was doing, he kept getting these little rushes of adrenaline. He sat straighter, he wrote faster, and his ideas clicked just right. As far as Joe knew, it was very possibly his favorite feeling in the world, more than love, more than exhilaration, more than anything.

Except now he was staring at Joe with shining eyes, like his favorite feeling in the world was simply this; standing alone in a room with his brother, gazes locked, the only music the sound of their breath.

Joe's heart was bleeding feelings, tangible thoughts that were color and light and sound, and Joe could see all of it in his eyes. And Joe felt the same way, overflowing, his chest too full to contain the things he wanted to say, the things he wanted to shout at the top of his lungs.

The closest thing he could think to compare it to was singing, the way, when he stood on stage his voice tangled with Nick's to create something new, something that had never been heard before, that would never exist without the two of them, pulses hammering, lungs exposed for the whole world to see.

"You know this isn't going to be easy," Joe had to say, felt like he couldn't not say.

"Nothing worth it ever is."

"You are such a walking cliché," Joe accused.

Nick rolled his eyes, "I get it from my corny brother."

"Okay," Joe said, and kissed him, breathing into his mouth, "Okay."

And it wasn't like Joe had given up on that car with suicide doors. He knew that there were sure to be times in the future where he'd sneak off into the neon-like glow of the city and indulge in a drink or two or ten. He was going to live his rockstar life…but now he was guaranteed to have Nick holding his hand. Every step of the way.

"So are we like boyfriends now? Boyfriends, brothers, secret lovers…I don't know Nick, that sounds like a lot of titles," Joe teased later, leaning into Nick's side, and damn, when had his baby brother gotten taller than him?

"How about just one?" Nick countered, grinning, leaning back, "Mine."

He didn't have to give up one way of life for the other. He could do both, and eventually, he could probably even settle for doing just one. Because being loved by Nick, yeah.

That made him feel like a rockstar.

"I could live with that."

A/N: The End. I know it took me like half a year to update this, and that is mostly because I'm terrible with endings. I always have nervous meltdowns about posting them and agh. I hope you guys enjoyed this, and I want to apologize for the mistakes in this story. The most notable ones that don't involve grammar or spelling being the bits where I say that Joe and Stella never dated and then later state they do (the show was still running and I was obviously confusing my meta there), and then where Joe says he hasn't been to New York since the part but actually had been, for the concert scene. I apologize- I might go back and fix that; it's just such a pain to reload each individual document and switch it out and- I wish ffn had something where you could directly edit the chapter. That would be amazing. So let's pretend that LA never happened, and when Stella mentions them dating, she means that she wanted to date him, and ummm that the first concert was actually upstate NY and not the city.

As a side note, I don't know if I mentioned it, but all the bars in this story are based on real places. The first, I think, was Wicked Willy's in the village, and then Off The Wagon. The last was Nikki Beach.

Chapter titles are from these songs: Beautiful Colors by Kill Paradise, 4ever by The Veronicas, The Truth Is, You Should Lie With Me by Say Anything, Blue And Yellow by The Used, The Takers by Barcelona, 1901 by Phoenix, Blinding by Florence and the Machine, Boats And Birds by Gregory and the Hawk, What New York Used To Be by The Kills, Baptized By Fire by Spinnerette, My Next Mistake by Styrofoam ft. Jim Atkins, Wonder by Megan Mccauly, Faith Hope Love by Starsailor, Bloodstream by Stateless, and Littlething by Jimmy Eat World.

Please review and let me know what you think!