Kevin paced the small room back and forth, wanting to achieve a certain level of calmness that seemed to be eluding him at the moment. At the moment and for the past couple of the days, if he was to tell the truth.

He sighed softly. He knew he was supposed to be nervous, shaky and even doubtful, but this was a joke. He was down right shaking from hair to toes, sweating like a pig -- even though Brian would have told him that it was sweating like a horse -- and feeling far too choked in the clothes he was wearing.

Walking over to the mirror, Kevin took a good look at himself. He tugged at the tie on his tuxedo, trying to loosen it enough that it wasn't actually strangling him. When he was able to breath again, Kevin couldn't help but take another look to make sure that everything was in its place. He wondered, for a very brief moment, if he should do something different with his hair, before deciding that he wasn't going to get any better if he continued worrying about stuff as meaningless as his hair and resumed his pacing the floor.

Needing to do something with his hands, Kevin started cracking his knuckles. If the guys were to hear it, he knew they would ask him to stop it at once. It was one of his very bad habits. A habit that had become unbearable after seven years and, specially, when being cramped up in a small place with Kevin while waiting to be send on stage.

He knew he shouldn't really be nervous, not really having his heart in it. Kevin groaned loudly, the same thing that had been bugging him for the past couple of months, let alone the last couple of weeks, coming back to haunt him.

Kevin couldn't help but feel in the back of his mind that he wasn't doing this for the right reasons.

But I am, he told himself over and over again, just like he had for the past days. I am. I've thought about it and this was the reasonable answer. The only way to go.

Yeah, but then again, the fact that it was the logical answer to his inquiry didn't mean it was the right one, did it? And he knew that. Kevin knew that and it was that that kept torturing him during the sleepless nights looking at the ceiling and even during the busy days trying to get everything ready to this night.

It doesn't matter now, Kevin chastised himself, it just doesn't. I'm here and I will do it.

And after that?

After that... Kevin answered his own question, after that I'll just work around it. Find a way to make it work. Like everything in my life.

Kevin knew he shouldn't be feeling like that, not now, most certainly not on his wedding day, but he couldn't help it. He was dealing with this like he usually dealt with mistakes made on the tour. Look at it, try to fix it the best way you can, and just work around it.

He sighed warily. Way to go Richardson. At 28 you've got yourself one real fucked up life.

"Worried much, huh?"

The voice, that sounded loud in the until a moment ago quiet room, made him turn around, his eyes landing on the figure standing by the door. AJ walked in, closing the door behind him, taking off his sunglasses as amicable brown eyes pierced into green disturbed ones. The black suit seemed to give him an eerier and more serious presence. And the fact that, for once, he had his hair to its natural brown color, did help.

Kevin laughed nervously, not really knowing if it was because he had been found in the middle of a panic attack or because he was, indeed, nervous of what was to happen in merely half an hour from that moment. "Yeah, well," Kevin started, "you know me. I can't worry enough."

AJ nodding, making his way to his friend, a small smile on his lips. "Yep, I know you. I think I know you better than anyone. And just because I know you, I know the reason why you're so worried right now."

"Alex--" Kevin said warningly, not really wanting to talk about it. He had been having this very same conversation with AJ for the past months. Same conversation and, always, same answer. He still didn't know why AJ keep pushing it, persisting so much in the same thing. At least now I know he can be patient when he wants to, Kevin thought amusingly. This was just not the way I wanted to find out.

"What?" AJ lifted his hands defensively, his right one placing his sunglasses in his breast pocket out of instinct. "I didn't say anything important, so why should it matter, right?"

"Alex--"

"Because," he continued like he hadn't been interrupted in the first place, "wasn't that what you have been answering me for the last few days, was it? That it's not important, totally pointless, that I shouldn't give it a second thought."

"You shouldn't."

"Oh, you're right," AJ walked even closer to his older friend, his eyes hard and serious, "I shouldn't give it a second thought. But you should. And you are."

"That's not right." Kevin walked over to the other side of the room, not really sure if he was running away from AJ or not, but not really wanting to figure it out either.

"Is it not?" Alex laughed sarcastically. "Don't you think it's time for both of us to cut the bullshit and really talk about it?"

"Really talk?" Now it was Kevin's turn to look at AJ with hard eyes, his own patience coming really close to totally extinguishing. "Really talk? Then what the fuck have we been doing for the past month AJ, if it wasn't really talking. Tell me, coz you sure as hell had me fooled there for a moment."

"It wasn't talking Kevin." His voice audibly soft, his own eyes loosing its intensity. "I was talking while you were only denying what I was saying. That's not talking. That's reciting to a wall."

Kevin sighed tiredly. He was frustrated and lost as it was, he didn't need to add anything to it. "AJ, I don't want to talk about it, ok? Not now. Not when I'm half an hour before getting married."

"For the very same reason Kevin." AJ walked to his friend, placing his hand on Kevin's forearm. "We don't have much time, but you still have another choice. You know that."

"AJ, it's pointless."

"No, it's not pointless." AJ sighed, his own frustrations accumulated in the past five months -- even since Kevin told them he was getting married with Kristin -- coming to surface. Kevin couldn't get married. That much he knew. "You're having second thoughts Kevin, I know that, I can see it. Shit, even you can tell."

"That's not it," Kevin fought back. He didn't want to discuss this any further. Not when someone could overhear them, when Brian -- or Kristin herself -- could walk in on them talking about precisely this. Not when he was starting to doubt his very own logical explanation on why he was doing it.

"Then what is it? What is it then if this doesn't come down to the fact that you can't marry her because you just don't love her?" There, he had said it. He had said it and even if Kevin didn't want to acknowledge it, it was down on the table and they would just have to look at it.

"I do love her." Kevin's voice was barely above a whisper, confidence totally lacking in that very short and weightless statement. He had been telling himself the same thing over and over again. If he repeated it enough times, Kevin knew he could convince himself that caring for her was enough. That knowing she was a great woman, someone who loved Kevin deeply, someone who understood him as good as she could under the circumstances, was enough.

"Ok, right, I give you that much. You love her. But you aren't in love with her." AJ's eyes challenged Kevin to refute it, to deny it. "You don't love her Kevin. You just can't love her. You've tried, I know it. I've seen you. But that's not enough. That's not enough for a marriage." AJ sighed, his voice softening at the amount of confusion Kevin was in. "You can't marry her when you love Nick."

Kevin turned around, his back to his younger friend, and walked over to the other side of the room, his hands flat against the old oak dresser that stood on the corner, his head doubled over in tiredness and almost defeat. "Don't say that, ok? Don't say that."

"Why?" Walking slowly over to the slumped form of one of his dearest friends, AJ continued his probing. "Why can't I say it? It's true. You know that, I know that. It's true. You told me so yourself. Why do you want to deny it now?"

"I'm not denying it." But wasn't he really? Wasn't he denying something he had come to learn years ago, something he had come to terms with after a long and painful hindsight of every little thing that had happened between him and the young blond in the past six years Kevin had known him? Kevin shook his head. He couldn't start questioning everything at this point. Not again.

"Oh please Kevin, not even you can lie to yourself so good and for so long." He rubbed his left eyebrow, pausing before intruding in Kevin's personal space. "If you're not denying that you love him, then what are you doing by marrying her?"

Kevin turned around, his eyes fixed with AJ's brown ones, not wanting him to doubt anything he was about to say. "I'm just giving myself, giving the two of us, a life we can actually live."

"Kevin, that's not living your life, that's lying through your teeth."

Kevin shook his head. "No. No. Alex, if I don't marry Kristin, then what can I do? Huh? Wait for Nick to realize that I'm alive and that I love him? Don't be that blind yourself either. He's straight and he doesn't feel that way. He could never feel that way."

"But that doesn't mean you have to marry the first person that can give you a normal -- a fake -- life."

Kevin snorted, turning around to move around -- needing to move around. "You just don't get it."

"Get it? Get it?" AJ laughed ironically, tired of the same charade over and over again. "Of course I don't get it Kevin. You say one moment that you love him. You say that you love him with all you have," Kevin turned to glare at AJ as he heard the words he had said when he confided in AJ almost a year ago, but AJ continued like nothing had happened, "but then you turn and you ask her to marry you. The fuck I don't get you!"

"I'm doing this for us!"

"Oh please, like Kristin is gonna be so grateful you're marrying her out of pity."

"Not for her you asshole," Kevin close the space between the two of them in two big strides, coming to be barely inches from AJ's face as he finished. "I'm doing this for Nick and me. For the both of us." Kevin turned around again, keep moving in the small room. He felt like a caged animal and he wasn't sure if it was because of the small space the room was actually providing or because he was feeling trapped by AJ's questioning.

AJ let out a sigh of relieve he didn't even know he was holding when Kevin moved away from him without having punch him in the face. He knew that when Kevin was pushed far enough, he could brake. And, after years of living at each other's throats, him and the rest of the guys had come to the conclusion that the best thing for their own safety was to be as far away from Kevin as they could when that moment came.

"Why?" AJ asked after he found his voice once again. "Why this?"

Kevin placed his hands flat against the wall, leaning over it, his head hanging down, and shrugged. "It seemed the best answer in a pool of endless questions. At least when I'm married to Kristin, I'm with someone and not as alone as I've been for the past couple of years." Kevin's voice seemed pained and dry, the emotion in it barely held by. "And for Nick... he can have a life where I'm not pinning after him. He can have a life with a wife, 2.5 kids and a house with the picket fence." Kevin snorted, a sound like a heartbreak. A painful sound. "He can have a life where I'm not loving him from the corner, where I'm not looking at him like he's the only thing I need to have to keep on breathing, to keep on living. He can have a life where I don't long for his brotherly hugs or tender smiles." Kevin stood up, turned around and looked AJ. His green eyes had darken, brimming with tears that were already falling down his chiseled cheeks even though Kevin was trying his best to control himself and his emotions. "He can have a life where I don't die by the knowledge that he doesn't love me back and that he will never love me back. Not the way I love him."

Bringing his hands to his face, Kevin rubbed his palms against his burning eyes. He had promised himself he wasn't going to cry. He had cried enough for ten lifetimes already, he needn't to cry any longer, and here he was, loosing his battle to his own self restrain. Way to keep a promise.

"But this isn't the solution."

Moving his hands to his side, Kevin saw AJ standing right in front of him, his own look one of concern over his older brother. "It's the only one I know."

"He wouldn't want this Kev. You know that. Nick wouldn't want you to give yourself up like this. Not for anyone and most certainly not for him."

Kevin smiled sadly, the left corner of his mouth barely twitching up. "Yeah, well, good thing it's not Nick's choice."

AJ wanted to refute him, wanted to continue trying to convince Kevin that this was not the right way to do it. He wanted to try and probe deep enough and see if Kevin would crack and finally realize that the fact that he was in love with someone who wouldn't feel the same way didn't mean he had to commit himself to another person who he just felt comfortable with. AJ wanted to talked Kevin out of his own personal torture and settlement at the same time. He wanted to try to make Kevin understand that to let himself and Nick live their lives in the best way possible, he didn't have to pretend he was in a loving marriage. He wanted to do all those things and many things more, but he just couldn't.

Before AJ could say another word, the door opened and Brian's smiling face peaked its way through. Clasped in a suit very much like AJ's, the only difference was the small white rose bottom in his breast pocket indicating he was the Best Man, entered the room. "Hey guys. There you are AJ, Howie was starting to think you had left with a girl."

AJ laughed politely, trying to regain his calm self and wild nature. "Yeah, well, the night is young Brian." He turned to take a look at Kevin, who was walking closer to the door and to Brian, his face already composed and no one would have thought that only minutes before Kevin had a conviction attack and his breaking heart could be seen through his haunted eyes. Sighing softly, knowing that Kevin's masquerade was already on and that, now, there was no way he could reach deep enough to even try to convince him to call things off, AJ shook his head slightly. It looked like things were going to go through, after all.

Brian walked over to where Kevin was standing, still smiling, and reached over to re-arranged Kevin's crocked tie. "Kev, my god, you've been straightening our ties for as long as the group has been together and you still can do it to yourself."

Kevin chuckled -- and AJ did realized that it was a natural chuckle -- his hands moving to his pockets as he waited for Brian to be done with him. "Hey, someone had to teach you guys to help me, right?"

Brian merely nodded, his mind totally focused on getting the damn white tie to fall into place. "There," he said as he finished, "done." Brian turned to look at both his friends, tension and apprehension almost tangible in the room. He frowned. "You guys ok?"

Smiling down at his younger cousin, Kevin dropped his arm around Brian's shoulders. "Yeah, we were just talking." Before anything else could be asked, or said, Kevin continued, "Why did you come in, anyway?"

"Oh, right," Brian said as it had just hit him, "Kris is on her way. We should get going to our places."

Kevin nodded, checking the time and realizing that Brian was right. The ceremony was about to start. "Sure, lets get going."

Brian left the room right away, AJ reaching the door before Kevin could and placed his hand the other side of the threshold, blocking the way out. He lifted his eyes to meet Kevin's green ones, brown eyes pleading silently. "Please Kevin, don't do it." He had to do it one more time, to try once again. AJ felt like he just had to do everything in his hands.

His eyes still fixed with AJ's, they saddened for a moment before putting his calm and controlled facade on again, and let a ghost of a smile come upon his lips. Kevin sighed softly, knowing AJ meant well. Still, it wasn't enough. "Sorry Alex, but I have to do it."

Sighing warily, his last hope dashed out in one single phrase, AJ let his arm drop, allowing Kevin to walk out of the room.

The older man gave AJ one last look, another sad smile, then walked out of the room. Even though he wasn't completely sure of his answer and choice, he knew that, under the circumstance, was the only thing that seemed sane in the lost sea of feelings and emotions that his life had turned into. Deciding that, for the day -- and for his life -- he had thought enough about it, Kevin walked into the main area of the church were 150 people had gathered among family and guests were waiting for him to marry his seven year old girlfriend. And that was just what he was about to do.

AJ looked at Kevin's retreating back and couldn't help the nudging feeling in the back of his mind, telling him that Kevin was about to make the worse mistake in his life. Sighing softly, shaking his head slightly, AJ walked out of the room and into the hallway, following Kevin.

*****

The entire ceremony went unnoticed for the, supposedly, excited and nervous groom. Everything seemed to blur in his eyes, the sounds falling on deaf ears. Everything, until the most important question of the night was brought up.

"Kevin Richardson," the priest started and it seemed like it was the only thing Kevin had actually heard him say the whole night, "do you take Kristin Willits to be your loved weeded wife, to love and to honor, to have and to hold, in sickness or in health, for richer or for poorer, until death do you apart?"

Time seemed to stand still for Kevin at that precise second when anyone in his situation would have answered I do instinctively. His eyes darted from the priest to look at the beautiful blue eyes, the tender milk white skin and shinning blond locks of his wife to be and Kevin couldn't help but be reminded by them of the man that held his heart and would hold it for the rest of his live.

Kevin lost focus for a split of a second, seeing in his peripheral vision his four friends standing barely two steps behind him, Brian leading the line as his formal Best Man. He didn't have to turn to know that Brian was looking at him with a smile on his face, that Howie had a serene expression on, that AJ had a look that screamed No! to whoever was to look close enough to see it. Let alone, he needn't turn to see Nick standing there, his beautiful breathtaking smile on his lips, his sea blue eyes dazzling under the chandelier light, his soft velvet like locks brushed back.

And if Kevin ever doubted his answer, if he ever felt like he couldn't do it, only picturing Nick smiling at him, smiling like this was the best thing that could have happened to either of them, Kevin had his answer right in front of him.

He turned around once again, his green eyes finding Kristin's blue ones -- knowing in his heart that she would always remind him of the one he loved -- and knew he was doing the right thing. He was making the right choice. If doing this meant that Nick could have a life where Kevin would only be his friend and nothing more, then Kevin knew he was making the right choice.

Even as he knew that, even as he was sure of that, Kevin couldn't help but feel a tightening in his chest and a lack of oxygen in his lungs.