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Author's Chapter Notes:
Thanks for all the reviews so far, and thanks for everyone who's been keeping on me about writing more! You helped me get through some writers block. :)

~*~Brian’s point of view~*~

“Have fun on your date?” I asked, arms crossed, when Nick answered his front door.

“Um…” I had obviously caught him off guard by my sudden appearance.

I walked past him into the living room without waiting for an invitation.

“Well, Brian, come on in. Make yourself at home! I’m good, thanks, and how are you?” he said.

“Well that’s just great man,” I rolled my eyes. “You’re already in another person’s body, but now you’re going to start having conversations with yourself, too? What a stable popstar you’ve turned out to be.”

Nick decided not to respond to that. “Look, Brian, I’m sorry.”

“A little late for that. While you were up making puppy dog eyes at the girl Kevin is trying to set me- the real me- up with, I was actually working on this little problem we have going on. Or do you want to stay me for forever?”

“It would certainly be an improvement for you. I don’t know what you’re complaining about. If you go to Universal, you’re actually tall enough to get on all the rides now,” Nick smirked.

“Because the short jokes aren’t getting old,” I shot back. “Very original.”

We sounded like three year olds, I realized.

“Look, Nick. Believe it or not, I didn’t come here to fight.”

“Could’ve fooled me. You’re the one who showed up and started…”

I raised my hands in the air as a form of surrender.

“Well I was trying to tell you that I didn’t mean to go out on your date.”

“Nick, how do you accidentally date someone? You just happened to trip and stumble inside the restaurant they were eating at?”

“No, but…”

“Especially when you were supposed to be helping me!”

“I know but…”

“Whatever. I went to the book store today,” I said, trying to get us back on topic. A blind date was the least of my problems right now.

“Well? Did you get us switched back?”

I raised my eyebrow incredulously. “Does it look to you like we’re switched back?” After making fun of his repeated short jokes, I had to bite my tongue to keep myself from adding a blonde one to the end of that statement.

He just made it too easy.

“I mean,” Nick looked frustrated, “do you have it sorted out for when we wake up tomorrow. You know- zap! We’re back.”

“Backstreet’s back,” I said wryly. “Us? Not so much. The person who owns the store is on vacation. South America, ironically enough.”

“That’s just our luck,” Nick said, flopping onto the couch.

“I’m going to spend some more time there this week. Her granddaughter’s running the place while she’s gone, and she’s ordering some books for me. And I’m still hoping I can maybe find something in the books they already have, although I didn’t get anywhere today. I don’t know that we’ll get any help besides that until the owner comes back. And I don’t know how soon that’ll be.”

“So, what? We’ve gotta do this for another… how long? Week? Two weeks? A month!”

I sat down in the recliner opposite him. I wasn’t looking forward to that either. This whole predicament was crazy.

“I can’t do this anymore. Everyone has noticed something is off. My date today? Horrible! Madeline thinks I’m a whack job. Being you makes me lame!” Nick said incredulously.

“Yeah it was my fault you were a dork,” I said. Then, “Wait a minute. So she is going to think I’m lame? Great!”

“You’d like her, too, man. She’s pretty and funny. Great laugh.”

“Yeah,” I said, “that makes me feel better.”

Nick seemed to be day dreaming for a few seconds, but snapped himself out of it. “What about the person AJ bought the skull from? I don’t know he didn’t have the information, but maybe they have records. The chick keeping the shop should know how to access those without waiting for her grandmother to get back.”

That was actually a good idea. Where was he today when I was at the shop? That was the kind of help I needed. “I’ll ask her about it tomorrow,” I promised him. “I didn’t find anything out about that yet.” “So… you basically came to tell me that we’ve gotten nowhere today?”

I’d momentarily felt indebted to him, but that feeling quickly passed. “We nothing. I got nowhere because I was the only one trying. I spent hours reading in vain!”

“Dude, why don’t you just try Wikipedia? Or Google, for that matter?”

“What?”

He went to get his laptop from the dining room table.

“This is an ancient skull. It’s bound to be in some dusty old book,” I said, getting annoyed because he was typing away instead of listening to me. “You can’t just find stuff like that on the internet. There’s going to be lots of bogus stories on there. We need actual facts about magic. Nothing there seemed to have it. This is going to take a lot of research.” I groaned, unable to take the clicking on keys any longer. “Are you even listening?”

“Yeah,” Nick said. “And if you’re done, I found some stuff on South American skulls.”

“Oh.”

Well I’ll be darned.

He yawned as he started to read. “It’s a lot of boring stuff.”

Had I not stressed to him enough how many books I had gone through today? And he was tired of reading after a paragraph? I resisted the urge to throw the lamp at him.

“I’ll email you the page,” Nick said. “It mostly has some suggestions on books. You can get that chick to order these for you.”

“Thanks,” I said, a little begrudgingly.

I looked at the clock. It wasn’t even 9:30 yet, and I was exhausted. Being Nick Carter took a lot out of you.

“Brian, just take a break until tomorrow, okay? You can check the message then. You’re stressing me out.”

I had the feeling I’d be looking through those books by myself once more, when they came in. We used to make such a good team. And now we could’ve even get through a single conversation without bickering. I didn’t think it was going to get any better between us, either.

Nick looked deep in though. “Man, I have some stuff planned for later this week. I guess I need to cancel. Oh, and a dentist appointment. Hey, I wonder if you get the filling for me as me, do you think it’ll stay that way when we get back into our own bodies?” He looked hopeful.

“Not a chance, Carter.”

He shrugged. “Worth a shot.”

There was that saying about walking in another person’s shoes to see life from their point of view. Well, I had been walking in Nick’s Adidas for days now, and his point of view hadn’t changed my opinion of him one bit.

The Frick and Frack days were obviously dead and gone. And I didn’t think the Backstreet Boys would be able to function successfully with two of the members unable to be in the same room for long periods of time.

If Nick thought I was stressed, then he was right. As if this hocus pocus ordeal wasn’t enough, I had other things I was going to need to think about.

The fact of the matter was, there wasn’t room for both of us in the group anymore.