The only reason Nick even picks up the first phone call is that it's his manager's number on the display. When it's not Johnny's voice on the line, he's reminded that they hired Johnny back because he's a devious motherfucker. Which was also why they fired him in the first place.

"Hey Nicky, how's it going?"

Nick is a professional. He is a professional and he knows how to hang on to his temper under extreme provocation. This is why he manages not to hang up on this person that Johnny seems to feel he needs to talk to.

"Who is this?" He's not professional enough to be polite under the circumstances.

"It's Pete Wentz." Nick makes a mental note to call Brian and tell him that Johnny has lost his marbles and they need a new manager. This is inconvenient, seeing as how they've got a new record coming out in a couple of months. "I need a favour of a Backstreet nature, and your manager thought you might go for it."

A favour of a Backstreet nature? The only reason Nick knows he isn't being Punk'd is that he hasn't been out of his house in a week and no one's had any opportunities to plant cameras. He starts glancing around anyway. "A what?"

"Just one little favour. A tiny one." Pete's trying to be charming, but he's not the only professional manipulator in this conversation. Nick is pretty much immune. However he is kinda curious.

"What exactly is this favour, Wentz?"

"I have this friend who's like, a big fan of yours. And he's kinda got a birthday coming up..."

"No." Really there are whole worlds of no just in those few sentences. Plus this is Pete motherfucking Wentz. Not exactly known for his trustworthiness.

"Oh come on. Just like, a couple of songs. I know I should ask for the whole group but your manager drives a hard bargain and I don't like Spencer that much."

"Let me put this another way. Hell no." To make his point, Nick hangs up. The phone rings five minutes later. This time he doesn't recognize the number, and it goes to voicemail.

The phone rings every five minutes for most of the day.

When his phone has been silent and still for more than an hour, Nick gives in to temptation and checks his voicemail.

"Ok, I know maybe it sounds weird, but I swear this is not a joke!"

"You were his first concert, dude!"

"He says so in interviews! You can look it up!"

"Um, I should probably explain that "Spencer" is Spencer Smith from Panic! at the Disco."

So Nick googles "Spencer Smith" and "Backstreet Boys". He's not quite ready to look at the YouTube videos, but he does see evidence that Pete wasn't lying. Or at least, not about everything. Nine years old during the first US tour. Now in a really popular band. Going to be twenty. It just makes him feel old.

Nick spends the next day the same way he's spent the rest of the week, fucking around in his recording studio, trying to get the songs out of his head and onto the computer. It's a slow process, especially since he's only one guy, but the original plan failed spectacularly, and he's not sure any of his friends are talking to him yet.

Apparently when your friends, who play instruments and are more or less in a band together, say that they'd like to help you work on your self-funded second record, they mean they want to put in maybe two hours a day of half-decent work, eat your food and drink a lot of beer. Actual rehearsal, constructive criticism, or re-takes are beyond the scope of friendship and Nick is a fascist for even suggesting they, say, do some fucking work. The fact that they were being paid didn't seem to make a difference.

But this is shot number two at the second record. The label had already been making disapproving noises when Brian called Nick and told him to get his ass on a plane to the Oprah show, and they'd been paying for songwriters and studio time back then. When he finally got around to actually submitting the old songs for approval, all he'd gotten was a big fat "no". They hadn't released him from his contract, but they weren't handing out advances anymore either.

Now there's another Backstreet record about to come out and all Nick has to show for his time off is a sketchy reality show, and a decent body. As per usual, he got plenty of input into the new record, but it's not the same. He still remembers the heady excitement of releasing Now or Never hearing the crowd sing along to his words, and rocking out to his heart's content. No wardrobe changes, no big production, just awesome music and kids who seemed to get that.

He's never in a million years going to walk away from Backstreet, but he wants the solo stuff too. So half-assed isn't going to cut it.

When Wentz calls again, Nick's been going over the same six bars for about four hours, he hasn't eaten anything and he's out of coffee. In short, it's a weak moment.

"Hey, you picked up!" Wentz sounds delighted. "Does that mean you'll do it?"

"I..." he mumbles, not really able to deal with energy like this.

"Seriously, like, 4 songs? 5? You don't have to like, sing Happy Birthday, or actually serenade the dude, or anything. It's just a nostalgia thing, a break from your normal stuff. It'll be fun." he coaxes.

"You do get that I'm not some has-been pop star who needs to whore himself out to birthday parties, right?"

"I did talk to your manager," Wentz says dryly. "It costs more to rent you out for a party than it does for my whole band. And let me tell you, the figure we set was fucking ridiculous."

"And you know that if you turn this into a big fucking joke, I will kick your ass?"

"You can try. No, no kidding. Come on. Like, twenty minutes at most, and I'll say something nice about the Backstreet Boys in our next Spin interview. No, Blender. Really mess with their heads."

In the end, Nick can't resist the mental image. "Wentz, you've got yourself a deal. When's the party?"

Patrick has been trying to coax the turntables into some semblance of working for a good half an hour, when the door at the other end of the hall clangs and someone walks through. A very tall someone with spiky blond hair and a guitar case over his shoulder.

"Um, hello?" The someone calls out.

"Hey." Patrick responds, waving until this new person looks up at him. "Can I uh, help you?"

"Nick Carter." Is the reply. "I'm here for Spencer's party?"

"You're kind of early," Patrick points out, trying to remember if he'd known that Spencer knew any Nicks beyond Nick Wheeler. Surely he'd have remembered a big, broad, affable-looking guy like this. Spencer's friends tend to be about as tall as Patrick's friends, which is to say, not very.

"Oh, I'm not a guest." Nick flashes a lightning-quick grin. "I'm the talent. Pete said there'd be someone here this afternoon if I wanted to soundcheck."

"The tal..." suddenly one of Pete's offhand comments makes sense. "You're a Backstreet Boy."

Nick shrugs, but doesn't deny it. Spencer is going to flip out.

"Um, what's with the guitar?" If he'd thought about it much, Patrick would have envisioned a pretty boy with a lot of attitude and a backing tape, not a pretty boy with a guitar who wanted to soundcheck.

Nick cocks his head, and that's a definite "Are you serious?" look.

"Right, right." Patrick waves away the question. It isn't like the guitar is here to serve drinks or something. He casts another despairing glance at the turntables. "Okay." He sighs. "Oh, what the fuck. We can run through a soundcheck. Let me get down there."

Descending the staircase, he checks his watch. Jon Walker will be here soon, thank God for honest-to-goodness techs who can set up the mess that is the mainstage and leave Patrick to finish dueling with the damn turntables. Not for the first time, he curses the one sensible bone in Pete's body that had him hold a birthday party for the underaged far away from Angels and Kings.

Nick's handshake is brief but firm, and he gets bonus points for "Patrick, right?" The idea that a Backstreet Boy might actually listen to Fall Out Boy is something Patrick isn't prepared to fathom at this particular moment, so he just nods.

"What do you need? Two mics? DI? Any, um, backing tape?" He has to ask.

Nick snorts. "No backing tape, man. Just a mic, a DI and a monitor. Are you doing sound tonight, or do I need to be back later to explain levels to someone else?"

"It'll be me," Patrick decides. Really, there'll be at least four people around who can run a basic sound board, and they'll probably trade off during the evening. But he can't help meeting this unexpected professionalism with a little of his own. "Let's see if they just dumped the cables onstage, or if we got really lucky."

By the time the party is properly started, and Pete has progressed to making his speech, Nick's lost any and all nerves he had about this whole insane idea. Patrick surprised him at soundcheck by being pretty much unflappable, and he definitely knew his way around a soundboard. From his hiding place, Nick can see the top of Patrick's trucker hat over by the soundboard, and it's unexpectedly reassuring. At least if he sounds lousy it'll be his own fault.

Yeah, he doesn't regularly perform these songs without the guys, and even more rarely does he do it without accompaniment of anything but his own acoustic guitar, but it's not like he has a chance of impressing anyone in the audience anyway. He's the joke of the night and for once it's on purpose.

"So, like, Spencer." Pete says, winding down. "For the boy who has everything,"

Wrong band Nick thinks.

"I give you a piece of musical history!"

The lights go down, a dramatic, if somewhat inconvenient touch, and then Patrick clicks on a pen light over at the sound board and Nick starts to sing.

"Baby, please try to forgive me..."

The reaction is bizarre. A good half the crowd is completely confused. There is definite laughter from more than just Wentz (who is still onstage, cackling loudly) and one very loud "Oh my God, Pete you bastard" from somewhere very close to the stage. Standing on the stage, right next to Nick's stool, is a skinny little band boy who looks three parts furiously embarrassed and one part totally amazed. Nick, still singing, because a room full of a couple hundred people cannot possibly create enough noise to compete with the loudest shows he's done, winks at the kid and hands him the blue plastic rose he'd picked up on a whim.

Spencer blinks, deer-in-headlights. Nick decides to give him a few moments. He settles on the stool, slides his mic onto the stand and pics up his guitar. He looks out at the crowd, seeking out the soundboard almost instinctively. Patrick seems fairly unfazed by it all, but gives him a thumbs-up when their eyes meet.

Next thing Nick knows, there's a flurry of movement from the crowd and another two tiny band boys clamber onto the stage, half-dragging a third, more rugged guy behind them. This brings Spencer back to life. He smacks Wentz upside the head (Nick decides to like Spencer) and shoves him off the stage, before being swarmed by what Nick has decided is likely to be the rest of his band.

It turns out that Spencer is not the only possibly-former Backstreet Boys fan in the room.

"Oh my God!" One tiny person (and really, Nick is starting to feel like a giant in this room) mock-screams, high enough and close enough to Nick's ear to make him wince. "You're Nick Carter! Sign... Here. Sign my guitarist!" He thrusts the boy in question at him, to general laughter.

"Um, hi." Says the guitarist, looking flustered and very young. "I'm Ryan."

"You know, I think I'm supposed to be Spencer's birthday present," Nick points out.

"Spencer doesn't talk." The screamer informs him. "But he plays drums! He could play drums with you. Wouldn't that be neat, Spence?"

Spencer has regained his composure and rolls his eyes at this pronouncement. "You'll have to forgive Brendon, he's had twice his quota of sugar already today."

"There is a drum kit, right there." Nick encourages him. "I was only planning to do, like, Quit Playing Games, I Want It That Way, stuff like that. Do you want to?"

It takes a few minutes, but with hurried introductions and much egging on from the crowd, Nick ends up fronting Panic! at the Disco, covering Quit Playing Games. It is definitely the joke of the night, but the laughter is a lot more with him than at him.

It isn't as if Patrick's never heard a Backstreet Boys song before, but he had always thought they were just a studio band. Manufactured pretty-boy easy-listening bubblegum pop, right? He could accept Nick not being a diva without too much fuss. And hey, lots of people play guitar semi-decently. Nick being performer enough to take being practically hit on by Panic! is no surprise at all - Brendon Urie resembles a fourteen-year-old girl more often than anyone bothers to mention to him.

What he didn't expect was...this. Nick's voice isn't perfect, Patrick has definitely heard smoother voices. But goddamn if the unnaturally tall golden boy doesn't know how to use it. He lets Brendon lead off, and sits through the verse with his head cocked, strumming the guitar and listening. Brendon plays up to it shamelessly of course. And then the chorus comes and Nick just slides into place like he's been singing with Brendon all his life. Lucky bastard has perfect pitch. He takes second verse, slips back into high harmony for the chorus and then growls his way through the bridge. Patrick itches to feed that voice into GarageBand and build things around it.

Brendon almost bounces off the stage when they finish, he's so hyper. Nick just laughs at him. He covers the mic to talk to the band, and then leans into his mic, winking at the audience like he has a secret.

"Hey, so, we're all having a good time up here, but I ain't convinced y'all are having a good time out there."

The reaction is definitely mixed.

"Okay, that's cool. Whatever. But this next number, if you pay attention, you'll find out it's really a magic trick. Ready guys?"

He plays an intro on his guitar that sounds terribly familiar to Patrick's subconscious, and lets Brendon lead off again.

"You are my fire / the one desire..." By the time Nick chimes in, there are people humming along. At the first chorus the humming becomes singing. And when Nick belts out "Don't want to hear you say.." the crowd drowns out Brendon in response.

When they're done, there's plenty of applause. Nick flashes the room a very smug grin. "And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how to turn a room full of unimpressed emo-punksters into a singalong."

Patrick laughs until he runs out of breath.

They do one more number, Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely, that Patrick half recognizes, and then Nick takes his bows, poses for about thirty pictures with Spencer and the rest of Panic!, and packs up his guitar. Patrick abandons the soundboard and heads to intercept him.

"Hanging around?" It wasn't the best start, but Patrick has never been good at small talk.

"Maybe for a while." Offstage, in the middle of a crowd that is, I Want it That Way notwithstanding, not his usual audience, Nick definitely looks a little less open, a little more appraising. The guitar case slung over his back looks a little like a weapon.

"Lukewarm water?" Patrick offers up one of the plastic bottles as a peace offering. "There's a case by the soundboard for some reason."

"Thanks." He downs half the bottle in one gulp, and looks to be seriously considering dumping the rest over his head. Patrick's pretty sure no one would object, but apparently Nick thinks otherwise, and re-caps the bottle. "Fucking stage lights. Hey, is there anywhere to *sit* around here? I feel kind of conspicuous."

Patrick looks him from head to toe and back again, as close as he's comfortable to actually making a joke just yet. "Yeah, sure."

Nick rolls his eyes. "It's not my fault you're all unnaturally short fuckers."

Patrick snorts, but leads the way to one of the padded benches at the edge of the dance floor. Nick half collapses onto it, his guitar case propped between his legs, and Patrick stakes out a space beside him.

"I gotta know. How did Pete "persuade" you to show up?" It's not the best conversation opener, but Patrick has been collecting "Pete stories" since before they even met.

"Promised he'd say something nice about the Boys in the next interview you guys do with Blender." Nick quirks a grin, his face alive with mischief. "Try not laugh when he does, I'm kind of hoping he can make some reporter's head explode."

"That's awesome." Patrick can just see the scenario now. He's glad Nick warned him, he'll have to pass the message along. Joe and Andy can help him find some way to keep Pete to his word. "There's no guarantee it would make it into print, though."

"Yeah, true." Nick shrugs. "I have Pete's number like, fifty times in my last incoming call list. If it doesn't hit the magazine, I'll call the dude on it."

"Fifty times?"

"What, you think I said yes on the first call?" There's that "Are you an idiot?" face again.

"Well you never know." He has to tease. "Lots of people fall for Pete at that first smile."

Nick snorts. "Lots of people haven't spent their entire life in this business. I wouldn't say Pete Wentz is small-time, but I've dealt with sneakier. Hell, if my manager wasn't such a snake I wouldn't ever have talked to him in the first place."

"Okay, this I gotta hear."

Nick finally explains the whole story in full, including the moment of weakness. Being abruptly reconnected to the real world after spending a day on a song - that's something Patrick knows very well. He looks at Nick with real respect. "You're recording a solo album? By yourself?"

"Ain't gonna get done any other way." Nick takes another swig of his water. "I know it's not gonna end up perfect, no matter how much I sweat it. Better than a demo, yeah, remind the suits I'm more than just a pretty boy with a voice. I dunno. It's probably pointless, but I gotta try, y'know? I thought maybe after the first album it would be out of my system, but fuck if I don't want it more now."

"There was a first album?" Okay possibly not the most diplomatic of things to say.

Nick barks out a laugh. "Yeah it only sold a couple hundred thousand in the States. I played clubs to the smallest audiences since I was like... twelve and we were doing schools. But I loved it."

"Is it still in print? Maybe I'll pick it up." It's not a pity offer, either. Nick's totally enthused, and Patrick wants share in that a little.

"Yeah? Gimme your email, I'll send it to you."

So Patrick dictates, and Nick plugs it into his phone. Patrick does the same for Nick's because it's hard to know what's important in his inbox, and what's not.

"What about you, man? Any solo projects?"

"Me?" It's the most ludicrous idea. That he could get up on a stage without Pete, or Travis, or somebody to take the heat off him. "Yeah, no. I'm a producer, not a solo artist."

"Hey, right. You worked with Gym Class Heroes, right? That's a sweet album."

"Thanks, man." As usual, Patrick is blushing at the compliment.

"Don't suppose you've got a hole in your schedule?" Nick elbows him conspiratorially.

"What, for you?" The idea takes Patrick completely aback. He stares.

"Stupid idea, huh? I'd completely ruin your street cred."

"Well... no." He remembers the sudden visceral reaction he had to Nick playing with Panic!. Here Nick's offering it to him on a plate. "We're on tour. I mean, I have a studio on the bus, but it wouldn't be the quality you're used to."

"Better than me by myself." Nick says this to the top of his guitar case, and Patrick realizes he's serious, and that he actually cares whether Patrick says yes or no. He does have another project on his plate, he's still finishing up with Cobra Starship. But working with Nick would be his first project with a totally seasoned professional. Someone he could probably learn from as much as he could teach, and wow, he never thought he'd say that about a Backstreet Boy.

Plus, he likes Nick.

"When you send me the album, send me a couple of tracks you're working on. I'll see what I think."

"Really?" And oh boy does Nick light up when he's excited. Like a big golden retriever in sunshine. Yeah, Patrick really needs to spend more time around this guy. Hopefully the music won't completely suck balls.



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