Howie, ever organized, arrived in the V.I.P. lounge early Sunday night, having encountered only a few fans. He sank down into a chair and glanced around as he reached for the book in his carry-on. The glance turned into a double-take when he spied a familiar figure pacing the other side of the room. Sighing, he went over and fell into step with his groupmate.
"Nicky?" he asked warily. "How long have you been here?"
"'Bout half an hour," Nick muttered absently, still pacing.
"You're early for a plane flight," he pointed out needlessly. "You're not okay, are you?"
"Nope." The bald statement in such a quiet, flat voice scared Howie.
"I have sleeping pills..." he offered, feeling helpless.
"I don't think anyone wants to find out what could happen if I fall asleep on the plane," Nick noted bitterly.
"You're still floating things? I thought A.J. said..."
"He doesn't know. I sealed off my room." He paused in his pacing, glancing at Howie as a thought occurred to him. "Make sure you don't get the room with a connecting door to me."
"I can handle it, Nicky."
"Yeah, by staying *away*. I'm not gonna have you on my conscience too."
"On your conscience?" Something snapped for Howie. He'd seen Nick wait for this girl for years and enough was enough. "For God's sake Nick, this is *her fault*. She strung you along for years and then she left you. Wake up!"
"You don't know what you're talking about, D." It was said with no malice at all.
"And poor Mandy. I never thought I'd say *those* words, but you kicked her to the curb, just waiting for Lina to come back to you. She didn't deserve that. I mean she's deserved to be dumped once or twice in her life, but recently, she's been fine."
"What do you want me to do? I've been trying to fall for her for three years. You think 'cause Lina's gone I should just *resign* myself to her? Does she deserve that?"
"She could do worse." Nick made a rude noise.
"I know what it looks like, hell, it's one of the reasons I didn't disappear off to Toronto the second I realised she was gone..." he trailed off for a moment, then decided to leave that tangent alone for a while. "But D, until I do talk to her, I gotta believe in her. No one else ever does."
"And when is that going to be, dude?" A.J. inquired innocently, making himself known.
"This is fucking with your head," Howie nodded agreement, "It should be soon."
"I know," Nick shook his head. "I'm sorry it's messing things up for you guys."
"Nickolas Gene Carter if you don't stop guilt-tripping yourself I am going to beat you up."
"Sorry?" he managed a weak version of the patented Carter half-smile. "I'll hold it together, ok? Just.. we still have a day off in Toronto, right?"
"We'll keep it clear." Howie made a mental note.
"That's a couple weeks away!" A.J. protested.
"Toronto." Nick was firm, "I'm not teleporting off to see her this time. I'm going to do... whatever I do... in real life this time."
"So you're going to make yourself crazy until then? Man you just love torturing yourself don't you?" With an exasperated sigh, A.J. walked away. Howie and Nick watched him go.
"Hey Nicky?" Howie began after a moment. Nick inclined his head, listening. "Promise me something?"
"Sure."
"Before Toronto, try and explain to me what makes you so sure she's for real?" he grinned a little. "Gotta make sure she *does* deserve my little bro'."
Nick thought about it a moment. "It's hard to talk about her," he mused aloud. "But... maybe it'll help me figure things out. Okay." The two men shook on it.
Nick managed to keep up a pretty good facade. The agreed-upon lie was that he was fighting off the flu. It served to explain why he often looked tired, and sometimes didn't say much in interviews. The others marveled at how upbeat he was onstage, except for A.J. For him, the first night of the tour was a revelation.
A.J.had always fed off the enthusiasm of the fans, letting their energy boost his own.But that night, what he felt was truly staggering. It started as the doors to the arena opened, a peculiar buzzing. He saw Mindi and Nick exchange looks, then blatantly tell each other, so that he could hear,
Keep him down!
Instead of just high energy, A.J. was inundated with the actual feelings of several thousand fans. People who were excited beyond belief, hysterical, and surprisingly, to him at least, they *all* seemed to be at least a little lustful. As usual, the more he played to the fans, the higher they got, and the higher he got. The second the first ballad started, Mindi and Nick clamped down on him.
Behave! they chorused.
We don't need you screaming your parts to a *ballad*, nimrod.
You're going to make yourself sick, just taking it all in like that, Mindi lectured. He felt a certain distancing from everything as they both worked to filter the raw emotions that were being thrown at him.
You guys are no fun.
And you're insane. It balances out, Nick joked.
After the show, A.J. bailed on the party early and sought out Nick to ask him some questions. Mindi was now officially his teacher when it came to all things psychic, continuing in the role she had started that night when the whole world had changed, but on this one, he needed Nick's perspective.
"How do you do it, man?" he asked,sinking down into a chair.
Nick knew exactly what he meant and grinned, "It's pretty great, isn't it? But you *gotta* keep control or you'll go nuts. You've seen some of the psycho things our fans do, if you leave yourself open to all of 'em like that... yikes."
"So how do you do it?" he repeated.
"Filters - I'll give Mindi a template of what I use, she can figure out whether or not you can handle it - and... I'm picky."
"Huh?"
Nick flopped forward on the bed to fix A.J. with an earnest gaze. "You got it all raw, you weren't payin' attention to the subtleties. Everyone's concert experience is different -- I pick out the dark spots. Some are having a bad day, feeling sick or tired, broke up with their boyfriend, had a fight with their parents... or something more serious. I try and pick 'em out, direct some of the positive energy back out at them, make them feel better. Others... " his face took on an expression of disgust.
"What?"
"There are some *nasty* people who come to our shows, Alex. Psychos who want to take one of us out, perverts looking to take advantage of an unsupervised young fan... it's ugly."
A.J. shivered. He'd known that as a fact, but he could see from Nick's eyes, feel it radiating off the younger man, that the evil and ugliness had touched his soul. "What do you do about them?" he asked softly.
"What I can." He sounded tired. "If there's a psychic cop in the building, I let 'em know. Sometimes I slip out after a show and follow someone home, make sure they don't do anything *that* night. Little stuff."
"Damn. When they say you had to grow up fast in this business, they don't know the half of it, do they?" A.J.'s respect for Nick rose another notch.
Nick shrugged it off. "Two choices come with power - corruption or responsibility. I chose responsibility. I don't regret it. Hardly ever, anyway."
A.J. knew without asking that the "hardly ever" had to do with Lina. They both knew that was a subject for another night.