~ Chapter Sixty Eight ~

Felicia rolled over on her back, pulling her pillow over her face to shield the daylight coming in through the windows.  AJ was already up, she could hear him banging around in the bathroom.  It sounded as if he was throwing things into the shower, but chances where he had just knocked the shelf loose again.

She wasn't quite ready to wake up yet.  Last night had been the best night's sleep she had gotten in several weeks.  She'd still be sleeping if it wasn't for AJ trashing the bathroom.  He was sorting through the closet now, she could hear him singing slightly off key as he wandered around the room. 

If he dared to try and wake her up, she was going to kill him.  Felicia had a sneaking suspicion that she weighed more than he did now.  He wouldn't stand a chance.  He had never stood a chance to begin with - AJ was one of the worst fighters in the entire world.

For once in his life, AJ used some common sense, and sang his way back into the bathroom without trying anything.

Everything was quiet for a moment, except for the water running in the sink at random intervals, before AJ started talking to his reflection. "When the hell was the last time you looked in a mirror?"

Felicia stifled a giggle with the pillow. 

"Your hair looks like crap."  AJ added.

"Your hair is perfectly fine!"  Felicia called, pulling the pillow down.  True, his hair was getting a little long, but he had worn it longer before.  She had to speak up and say something before he decided to shave his head.

AJ appeared in the bathroom doorway, holding his toothbrush.  At that moment, his hair was still wet, making him look more or less like a slightly disgruntled wet cat.  "I knew you were awake."  He said in a slightly hurt tone."

"No, you didn't." 

"Did too." 

Felicia pulled the pillow back over her head.  "It's too bright in here."

"That's because it's almost noon."  AJ vaulted onto the bed next to her and wrestled the pillow away, but not before "accidentally" bopping her in the face with it. 

"I was tired!"  Felicia defended, shoving her hair back away from her face. 

AJ smirked.  "Yeah, I noticed."  He flopped down on his stomach on top of the pillow.  "Things are kind of quiet around here with Becky gone, huh?"

Kevin and Karen had flown back home over the weekend, and Becky was now back with her parents and happily reunited with Gertrude the angel doll. 

"Not for long."  Felicia patted her rounded stomach. 

"Yeah."  AJ agreed happily, crawling off the bed, taking the pillow and most of the blankets to the floor with him.  "C'mon, I'll make you breakfast." 

"You will?"  Felicia wondered.  "What happened to your mother?"

AJ turned to give her an incredulous look.  "What?  Are you used to kitchen fires every morning now?  I can try to start one if you enjoy them that much.  She went shopping."

"And you didn't go with her?"  Felicia was more than a little surprised.  She had never heard of a McLean turning down a shopping trip before. 

"Obviously not."  AJ sat down on the edge of the bed and started pulling at Felicia's arm until she was upright. "I have a surprise."  He added proudly, leaning over and pulling Felicia into a rather lengthy kiss.  "Guess!"

"You taste like toothpaste."  Felicia's brain hadn't quite caught up from the kiss yet.

AJ wrinkled his face up.  "What?  No!  Not even close."

"That wasn't a guess."

"Oh."

"Give me a hint?"

"Okay!"  AJ bounced back to his feet.  "I went... shopping!  In LA."  He added, striking a pose in the middle of the bedroom floor.

"In LA?  Alex, that was over a week ago!  And you still haven't shown me?  What did you get?"  Felicia shrieked.  If he had found more baby clothes and hadn't shown her, she beat him into little pieces with the pillow right then.  Baby clothes were even more fun than underwear, and underwear was her favorite shopping item of all time.

"Oh no..."  AJ shook his head.  "Breakfast first.  C'mon, let's go."  He vanished into the hallway, before sticking his head back around the doorjamb.  "We're going to have the best dressed baby on the entire west coast."

~*~

Kevin was standing, staring more or less in shock at the piles of junk in the kitchen when someone knocked on the door.  "It's open!"  He yelled, knowing it was Nick. 

He hadn't seen Nick since before game seven, to be completely truthful.  Kevin didn't spend much of his game time looking out at right field.  Still, when he had stopped by AJ's house to pick up Becky, AJ had offhandedly mentioned that Nick hadn't handled the aftermath of game seven very well, and although Kevin wasn't still quite sure why he cared, he had called Nick that morning and asked him if he wanted to stop by Brian's apartment.  He had been more than a little surprised when Nick had agreed.

"Hey..."  Nick found his way back to the kitchen.  "How's it going?"

"Not too bad."  Kevin turned his focus away from the pile of... he wasn't sure how to categorize it.  There was no method to Brian's madness.  "You?"

"Cool, I guess."  Nick shrugged.

Kevin's eyebrows drew together.  Nick was going to play the aloof game.  "I honestly didn't expect you to say you'd come over here." 

Nick shrugged again.  "Stacy's working late tonight.  It's better than sitting around the house by myself all day."

Kevin could feel his teeth grinding.  How in the world Brian had put up with Nick was beyond him.  How and why Stacy put up with him was also beyond him, but he didn't really feel like analyzing that relationship.  "So the two of you got things worked out, huh?"

"Yeah."  Nick leaned over and picked up the several pieces of paper that had drifted loose from the front of the refrigerator.  "She's been pretty cool about everything."

"Good."  Kevin said absently, staring at the counter again.  There was no way he was going to do something with the vast amount of junk Brian had stacked.  "Have you ever seen so much junk in your entire life?"  He wondered.

Nick laughed quietly.  "He always defended that by saying it was his life." 

Kevin had heard that phrase before, several times.  Every single time he had given Brian a bad time about his housekeeping skills, Brian had flung the same retort at him, and then usually shoved something else onto the floor, just to spite him.

"So, what do you want me to do?"  Nick shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. 

"Hell, I don't know."  Kevin shrugged.  "Pick a spot and dig in.  I have no clue where to start and I've been here for five hours already."

Nick snickered.  "Well, make sure you stay away from the shower then."

"Why?"  Kevin frowned suspiciously.  "He didn't have something living in there, did he?"

"F---, man!  What did you do to Mount Tide!"  Nick hollered from the living room.

Kevin shook his head.  Kids nowadays... the language they used.  "Pretty impressive, huh?  There was a couch under there after all."  He had spent a good two hours attempting to dig through that pile.  He'd stop and drop the clothes off at the Union Gospel Mission or something on his way home. 

He went back to the piles on the kitchen counter, tossing the stuff unless it struck him as something someone Brian had known might like to have. 

"You want any of these newspapers out here, dude?"  Nick yelled.

"No... I have no clue why he kept them."  Kevin suspected he hadn't kept them for a reason at all, Brian just never bothered to get rid of them.  He'd probably open in the kitchen cupboards and find more newspapers.

Things calmed down after that.  Whatever Nick was doing in the living room, he was quiet, and Kevin sorted through the entire left side of the counter, discovering Anaheim Angels media guides from Brian's rookie year forward and the fact that the counter had blue Formica. 

He was flipping through the media guides, curious as to who had been on the Angels back then, when he heard glass breaking in the living room.

"What'd you break?"  He called.  Nick didn't answer.

"Nick?"  Kevin set down the media guide, and wandered around the half wall into the living room.  "What happened?"

"Nothin'."  Nick was sitting across from the couch, his back up against the lone chair in the living room. 

"Is that what broke?"  Kevin crossed over to the table at the end of the couch to pick up the pieces of the coffee mug scattered around it.

"Yeah."  Nick said shortly.

"What'd you do, throw it?"  Kevin wondered idly.  The mug hadn't magically traveled across the room, and throwing was probably the only way the thick ceramic could have broken in the first place.

Nick didn't answer, and Kevin left him alone, taking the pieces of china back into the kitchen and tossing them in the garbage bag.  Nick was going to have to make the first move; Kevin didn't really feel like reading him wrong and getting socked in the face.  The mug hadn't fared too well. 

Kevin was heading back in the front door after depositing his second bag of trash in the dumpster in the parking lot before he even bothered to look over at the living room again.  Nick was still sitting cross-legged in front of the chair, staring down at the carpet. 

"Hey, you okay?"  Kevin perched himself on the edge of the now clothes free couch.

"I guess."  Nick picked at the carpet with one hand, before finally glancing up at Kevin.  "I'm not a whole lot of help, am I?"

"Well, in all honesty, I asked you to come over for the company, not the cleaning."  Kevin admitted, the room lapsing back into silence afterwards. 

"Am I the only one that finds all this really weird?"  Nick wondered finally.

"Which?"  Kevin leaned back against the couch.  "The fact that we haven't started fighting, or the fact that Brian isn't here?" 

Nick smiled slightly.  "Both I guess." 

Kevin stared up at the ceiling idly.  He didn't have any more small talk readily available, and Nick didn't look like he was going to be moving onto anything else in the near future.  He was sure there was some way of getting around Nick's attitude and pushing his buttons, but he had no clue how to do it, and he wasn't certain that he really wanted to. 

Brian would have figured out what to do with Nick.  Brian had a solution for everything.  He had always been able to fix everything.  Except this time.  There wasn't a way he could fix dying.

Kevin headed back into the kitchen.  He might be growing more tolerant of Nick, but he still had some pride, and he'd do just about anything rather that start crying in front of Nick Carter.

~*~

Kevin was pondering if he really wanted to know why there was a plastic tub full of gravel in Brian's oven when Nick appeared in the kitchen again.  "Kevin, I'm gonna head home before the traffic."

"Okay."  Kevin pulled the tub out and set it on the cleared counter.  "Nick, thanks for coming over.  I wasn't really looking forward to spending the entire day here by myself." 

Nick was eyeing the gravel curiously, but he didn't say anything.  It would certainly do no good to question it now.  "You gonna do this again tomorrow?"

"I don't know yet.  I'm going to have to come over again sometime."  Kevin shook his head. 

"Well, give me a call when you do."  Nick offered. 

"I'll do that.  Thanks."  Kevin stood and watched Nick depart, before turning back to the tub of gravel, unsure which one had just confused him more.