I don't know the Backstreet Boys, or N'Sync, nor is this story meant to imply anything about their sexuality, their private lives or their life choices. Please don't take any of this seriously, it is just a story, nothing more. Nothing in this story is real, it is the product of the author's imagination. That's enough disclaimers I think...
Now some suggestions, seeing as everyone else seems to be doing it. My favourite stories are: Forever (Kevin) My New Life (Lance) JC's Hitchhiker (JC) Get Another Boyfriend (Kevin) Whiplash (Kevin) Blind Date (Lance) Josh and Just (Duh!) Jamie's Romance (Justin) Brian and Me (Brian) Kevin and Dustin (Kevin) Tales of a Real Dark Knight (Lance) Under Management (Lance) Brian and Chance (Brian) Thieves (Lance) Lance and Martin (Lance) Good Life (Justin) That's it, I know there are more I read that I haven't mentioned, but I can't remember them right now, sorry! Here is part five of Season Two - I hope everyone enjoys it, and I hope that I get lots of emails - come on people! My email is at the top of the page! Give me a shout out if you like it or hate it...now here is part five!
On The Streets - Season Two - Part Five
Jared's Point of View<<<
The next day, I didn't have any appointments, and Reverend Swanson was supposed to come around again to talk to us about the wedding. I have to admit I was practically creeping around, trying not to get into Kevin's way up until the time the Reverend arrived. I was nervous that I might cause another fight or something so I just hid out most of the morning. About 11 the doorbell rung, and I heard Kevin answer it and escort the reverend into the kitchen to sit down. The next moment I heard him running up the stairs.
"Jared?" He called out. "Jared?" He stuck his head into the door of the room. I was sitting on one of the armchairs in Kevin's music room, reading. "Hey Jared, he's here, you can stop hiding now." Kevin said with half a grin. I started to open my mouth to say something, but then just nodded and stood up. I walked over to him, and as I walked past him, he grabbed me around the waist. "Hey I was kidding!" He said with a real laugh. I couldn't help but smile slightly. "Look, I know you're still concerned that we'll have problems after last time, but I want your input ok? I don't just want you to sit there mute while he's here ok?" I nodded slightly. "OK?" He shouted a second time, with a broad grin on his face.
"Yes!" I answered back, and couldn't help but smile at him. We kissed, and then headed downstairs.
"Found him!" Kevin announced as we walked into the kitchen, and I shook my head at him, he had a big grin on his face. I liked him like this, he was almost... bouncy.
"Good, good, then shall we begin?" He said.
"Um, I'm sorry, what is we're talking about?" I asked, feeling a bit stupid for not having asked Kevin. I noticed Kevin cast a glance at me, then back at the Reverend.
"Well Jared, we're basically discussing the arrangements for the wedding, the time, how long you want it to last, the number of people present, and payment." The reverend filled in. I nodded, and we begun.
"The time, Kevin and I already discussed, though now you're here, perhaps you'd care to reconsider it."
"No, whatever Kevin decided on is fine." I said quietly.
"Oh." He looked down again.
"Jared, are you sure? Do you not at least want to hear the details we've already gone over?" Kevin asked warily.
"Well, ok, but I can't imagine any reason why I'd disagree." I said, and the reverend started again.
"We only really went over the time and payment last time I was here. The time we decided on was 3:00 pm for the actual service to start, and, did you want me to go over payment methods with you as well?" The reverend turned to me and asked. I looked at Kevin for a second. He was nervous.
"Well, how did Kevin want it paid for?" I asked the reverend without taking my eyes off of Kevin.
"Well, it's a direct payment from Kevin's credit account." I looked over at him, and then back at Kevin.
"How much is it gonna cost?" I asked him. I knew I was probably being a bit presumptuous, and I should have considered that I might hurt Kevin's feeling by asking this, but it just seemed the right thing to do.
"Well, as the wedding is on such short notice, it won't be particularly extravagant, but, Kevin did want the full service." He then went on to tell me the full cost of the church service, not including the reception, and my mouth dropped open.
"What?" I couldn't believe it cost so much! "That's just the church service?"
"Well, it's not actually in a church."
"Huh?" The reverend cast a worried look at Kevin, who blushed slightly, then he looked back at me.
"My church is too small to accommodate even half the guests Kevin wants to invite, as my church is quite small, so Kevin wanted to hire a... concert hall. I arranged it for the service, that is the main bulk of the cost." I looked at Kevin.
"Oh. I didn't realise there were that many guests."
"It would be cheaper in the church obviously, but with that number of guests there's no way they would all fit. Mr. Richardson, did you talk to Jared about the number of guests to be attending?" Kevin looked down at his lap, and shook his head.
"How many are there?" I asked Kevin.
"About 1200." Kevin said quietly.
"Oh, well, I presumed you were going to invite all your friends. I mean, all of your friends, and everyone you work with and your family, and, wow, that's a lot of people." I couldn't believe there were that many, I couldn't remember ever going to a wedding with that many people coming. I didn't think I even knew that many people, in fact, I was sure of it. "You know that many people?" Kevin sort of smiled, and nodded his head. "Well, I guess there's no problem. Reverend, do you mind if I just talk to Kevin alone for a sec?" I asked as I stood up. He nodded his head, and Kevin followed me into the dining room.
"Is something wrong Jared? Are there too many people? Do you not want me to invite so many?"
"No, that's not it, um, how can I put this? I was gonna offer, to pay, you know, for some of the stuff for the wedding..." Kevin then cut me off.
"Jared, you don't need to do that."
"No, wait, hear me out. I was going to offer to pay for some of the stuff for the wedding." I said with the emphasis on the 'was'. "But, hearing how many people are coming, I don't think I can. I mean, I've saved almost my entire salary since we came to America, four months of my wages, at least, and most of my pay from the tour, and I still don't think I could afford a tiny portion of that wedding you're planning." I couldn't help it, I had to say something. "Are you sure you want to do this?" Kevin looked at me for a second, and I think we were finally on the same page. I wasn't looking for a way out, I didn't want to cancel getting married to Kevin, but I wanted to make sure he was willing to spend that much money on the actual getting married.
"You're worried about how much it's gonna cost?" Kevin asked, his eyes narrowed. I nodded slightly. "Once he's gone, we'll talk more about this, but for now at least... don't worry about it, I've got it covered." I looked at Kevin, and nodded. We joined the reverend again, and covered other details like length of the service, and the rehearsal for it. Kevin wanted at least some reflection of a traditional wedding, but wanted something a bit different - well I guess the concert hall made it a bit different, but he had a very...specific vision of how he wanted the wedding to look, and I agreed to it. Kevin seemed happy, and as the reverend left, he was hopeful at least about our future.
"Well it's good to see you've sorted out some of your problems, though Kevin, I would suggest increasing your communication with Jared. Jared, your trust for Kevin could probably do with some added effort, learn to trust him, he's not going to hurt you." I looked at the reverend with a straight face, and blinked. How had he worked out that? We had hardly spoken and yet he seemed to know Kevin and I surprisingly well. After saying our goodbyes, we shut the door and went into the living room.
"Can you just sit down a sec Jared?" Kevin asked. I nodded, worried about why he was suddenly so serious. He went over to his computer, and worked for a minute or two, then started printing something off. A moment later, he came over with about six sheets of print-outs in his hands.
Kevin's Point of View<<<
I handed Jared my assets report. This was probably an easy way out, but he should know before we get married about this. Everything will be his, if he'll accept it. I hadn't told Jared about my property, my investments, heck he didn't know about half the stuff I had my hands in. Jared may be able to tell me a lot about academic stuff, but as far as I was concerned, I knew a lot more about business, and Jared was gonna see this. I'd made investments for years, and this was the result, six pages of solid text explaining the sum of my assets.
"I don't understand this." Jared said, and I sat down beside him. The first page was property.
"Ok, well this explains the property I own. It lists addresses, value of the property..."
"Wait, I mean, ok, I don't actually understand this." He said pointing to the paper. "But actually, I meant why are you showing me this?"
"Well, this afternoon when you said you didn't think you could afford to pay for the wedding it made me realise that there's a lot of stuff you didn't know about when it came to my business side, and I thought you should know about it. Jared, I wanted to show you what will be yours." Jared's mouth sort of hung loose for a second, then he went back to looking at the paper.
"What's this number here?" He said pointing to a number with his thumb.
"That's just a registry number, then it shows the address, the current condition of the house, and then it's value." Jared's eyes flashed over it.
"So there's this house." That was the first one. "$1.2 million?" He said in a shocked tone. He suddenly looked around, and then up at the ceiling. "Wow." Oh dear. If he reacted like that to this house, then he was gonna be... "$2 million?" He'd reached the next property. He stood up. "In LA? I didn't know you had a house in LA?" I nodded. "The house in LA is bigger than this one?"
"Err, they're about the same...but the area I bought it in in LA was more expensive." Jared nodded his head.
"And the last two, are Lexington...you have a house there?" I nodded my head. "That's 0.8 million, and Washington DC? Why do you have a house there?"
"It's not a house, it's an apartment. And I guess if you read on you'll realise why I got a place there." I said quietly.
"Charity offices?" Jared said as he turned the page.
"Yeah JWR has offices in DC, Chicago and Orlando." Unfortunately I knew what was at the bottom of that page - the total property value, and I just knew that was gonna shock Jared.
"$5.3 million?" Jared said in complete shock. His eyes must have scanned to the bottom of the page. "Wow. I mean, I don't know what to say. This is mind-blowing, how much you have. I'm sorry, I shouldn't think like that, it's just, I knew you were rich, well, at least well off, but I didn't know you had that much!" Jared said.
"Oh dear." I looked down at my hands. Jared was leaning on the back of the sofa.
"What?" Jared asked.
"Well, you haven't really covered everything yet." I paused. "Most of my assets are on the next few pages." Jared gave me an almost sceptical look, then turned the page, he got a confused look on his face.
"I don't understand. This is just random letters and numbers."
"No, they're stock references. Companies on the stock index are given symbols, which are like three letters that are normally selected from the company name. You can ignore those bits. The top one is Dakai, they're an electronics company, then Infurber Mech, that's a German company that moved over here a couple of years ago, and the bottom one is Largo, they own chains of restaurants."
"This number at the bottom is that the value of all the shares?" Jared asked. I leant forward, and he was pointing at the sub-total for the Largo shares.
"No, move your hand." He moved his hand out the way and I pointed to the total. His face paled again.
"That's over three million dollars." Jared gulped.
"Yeah. When I started with shares, it wasn't that much, and I don't put any more in, I refuse to, I guess I'm kind of a wary investor, but it's gone up quite a bit in the last couple of years." Jared nodded slowly, then started to turn the page. "Wait, Jared, are you not surprised by that?"
"No." Jared shook his head. "Kevin, I know that you can be good at anything you put your mind to, it doesn't surprise me that you're good at business. I'm not good with money, I tend to either ignore it, hoping that money problems resolve themselves, or I tend to fritter it away, and then I end up in trouble. But Kevin, you're planted firmly on the ground, so to speak, you have no trouble with things like that, being organised. To know that you did well with stocks and shares doesn't surprise me." I couldn't help but smile at the compliment.
"That's not what I meant, I meant the amount."
"Oh, well, it's a lot. I guess at the moment this is just numbers, it's gonna take a while for me to think about how much this really is." I frowned, I didn't understand exactly, but I just nodded and let Jared go on. "Investments? Isn't that the same as stocks?" Jared asked as he turned the page.
"Well, stocks could be classed as investments, but stocks are more like a subset of investments, all stocks are in a sense investments, but investments can be other things besides stocks, like you can invest in a company before it even starts up yet, or you can invest in... real estate, or a boat or something, though that would probably come under property in the case of this report, this is just how my accountant arranges it though." Jared looked at me with rapt attention. Then a smile spread across his face. "What?"
"Nothin'." Jared muttered, then he turned back to his reading after smiling at me again. "Peabody Hotels?" Jared asked.
"I invested in them last year. The Lakewater hotels I invested in three years ago."
"And you invested 2.5 and 2.3 million respectively?" Jared asked.
"Well, no, the investment increases in value." I said.
"Oh, wow, that's a lotta money." I couldn't help but grin at Jared's apt phrasing. I'll admit three years ago, the amount I put into Lakewater was a lot of money. Now that is still a lot of money, but I guess it just seems less important now, maybe I'm getting more mature. "What's this?" Jared asked.
"What?" I sat up next to him.
"Well this one, it's a 3 million dollar investment? But it's all blanked out - the name of the company has stars in place of a name." I gulped and nodded.
"Jared, you've got to promise not to tell anyone about the next investment, especially not the guys." Jared gave me a frown, then nodded.
"So what is it?"
"N'Sync."
"What? But, how? When? Why?" Jared stumbled.
"When they were first starting up, I invested. I could see they were gonna be successful, and I wanted to be a part of that, even if it meant supporting the competition. JC and Lance both know, but they were the only ones sitting on that meeting. Since then I've been a silent investor, and they promised not to tell. Obviously it wouldn't let very good that a Backstreet Boy was investing in N'Sync, so please just don't tell."
"Of course I won't Kevin, why would I?" Jared reached over and took my hand. "I won't tell anyone about any of this." Jared said looking into my eyes. I nodded.
"There's another two pages." I said, casting my eyes down to the report. Jared looked at the bottom of the investments page.
"So that's 7.8 million total?" Jared stated. I nodded, and Jared took a breath.
"Are you ok Jared?"
"Yeah, it's just, it's a lot of money, I don't, how can I put it. I can't even imagine what this much money could buy. I mean, this is huge quantities of money." Jared stood up again. "I mean, where I lived, a family could survive easily on twenty thousand a year. We've covered what is it 15 million? That could support 750 families for a year, on minimum wage. I just can't get my head around this much."
"Oh dear." I mumbled.
"What now?"
"Well, it's just the last pages..." I sort of trailed off. Jared remained standing. He turned the page. The last pages were my bank accounts. I had three of them, one difficult to access but high interest rates. One had quite easy access, and my credit account." Jared looked at the numbers, and fell into the chair opposite.
"Fuck me." He was out of breath. "How did you get that much?"
"That's what comes from being the business minded one in the group. Our contracts are arranged according to the work we do. I always took on extra duties, I got closer to the management types, I even picked up a few stock tips from them, and it paid off. I just... I worked." Jared looked at me again, and I could see him biting his lip. That's when he turned the final page, I knew what was on the last page - the summation of all the totals. Jared's face actually paled. He went white. It was... creepy.
"That can't be right." Jared mumbled.
"About 27 and a half million?" I asked him.
"Twenty seven point eight." Jared replied. He looked up at me again. "Why? I mean, why do you have that much?"
"Cos I worked for it, I mean, the stocks obviously work on their own but..."
"No, I meant why did you bother trying? Surely you could live on less than half on that for the rest of your life. Just the interest would sustain you easily. Why?" This was actually a question I often asked myself. I have a charity right? Why not just give it to them, and start again?
"Because... I started saving to provide for my family that I one day would have. I want us to be comfortable, and if we have children I want them to be comfortable. Jared no matter what lifestyle we choose be it glamorous and exciting or secluded and relaxing, that money will provide for us." I couldn't think how to explain myself, and Jared kept looking at me like he was expecting me to go on. I went over and knelt by his chair. "Jared, I knew you, before I met you." He looked at me like I was mad. "Jared, I wanted to make a perfect life for you, that's it, we're meant for each other, you could never handle figures like this, and I could never handle all the stuff you do, be it academic stuff, or teaching people, or just dealing with people, you're a little less serious than I am, at least when you're relaxed, and people like that. We fit together perfectly, and we've both excelled at the things we're good at. And now we're together. This is all yours Jared, but if you never want to have to deal with figures like money and stuff again, don't worry. I'll do it for us." I took the papers out of his hand, and flung them over my shoulder. "All I care about is you though, and I want to make you as happy as I can." Jared looked shocked for a moment.
"Give it away." He stated.
"What?"
"Give it away, most of your money, just give it away." I blinked, I couldn't believe he'd say that, that was my life's work, and it was gonna be gone. But...
"Yeah, fine." I said hesitantly. I could do it, I could, I'd start again. I mean, that's... oh God, he said most of it didn't he? I sat down on the chair behind me. I could feel my chest closing up on me.
"Kevin, don't give it away."
"What?" I asked, slightly out of breath.
"I just wanted to see if you would. I'm sorry, I wanted to see how much the money meant to you." He was testing me? Should I be angry? For a moment I was. Then it passed, and I saw Jared. He accepted me for me, even if I can be a bit money-grabbing, and materialistic, but he just wanted to check it didn't mean everything. Only one thing meant everything to me.
"What do you mean most of them already agreed?" Jared asked.
"Well, most of them said yes straight away. I guess the idea of a gay celebrity wedding is a bit too good of an opportunity to miss - not only is it a celebrity event, but it shows support for the gay community - you're killing two birds with one stone." I'd already confirmed most of the guests to the wedding and Jared was having trouble with this - he was presuming that at least some of them wouldn't be able to make it considering the short notice, but about 95% of the people invited had already r.s.v.p'ed.
"So 1500 people have already agreed?"
"Well, it's closer to 1450, but bear in mind when they were invited it was for them and a guest, it's quite likely we only know about half the people coming."
"You mean you only know, I'm sure I don't know anywhere near that many people."
"What about all your clients?"
"Huh?"
"Well they're all invited, so is a lot of the Jive management crew. That's most of your lunchtime sessions as well. Obviously Janet couldn't make it she's on her honeymoon, but there are a lot of people you know Jared, like I mean a lot."
"Oh, so you invited all my clients?"
"Yeah - the people like 98 degrees, obviously N'Sync are coming..."
"Hey, what about Nick and Leo? We're not running around Europe like Britney and Justin did - what about reporters?" Jared asked.
"Well, thing is, on this short notice we can't do anything about it, so they're kinda going with other dates. I think Leo is going with Kristin, and Nick is going stag." I felt pretty bad about that, they wouldn't be able to be together much throughout the day. At Justin's and Britney's wedding we were able to dance together and spend the day together, but because there was no way we could manage a press blackout on such short notice, they couldn't.
"Surely if we don't tell the reporters how can they know we're getting married?" Jared asked.
"Well, I think you'll find it's already leaked."
"What? How? You mean one of our guests told?" Jared asked.
"Well, no, it could've been at any point, I spoke to a few of the people's assistants rather than speaking to the people directly, a few people re-arranged their schedules, so maybe they gave the excuse to other people, and I didn't phone everybody."
"What do you mean - you didn't phone everybody?"
"Well, I got people at Jive to do it. If we need it, we can get the secretaries there to do jobs for us, like organising stuff. I've got a couple of them working to get everything ready." Jared nodded. "Hey would you like to see the venue? I mean..." I couldn't help but grin, and Jared realised what I was smiling about. I was so used to calling places like concert halls venues that even when I was getting married in one of them, it still seemed like I was performing. "I mean would you like to see our 'church'?"
"Sure." Jared said, and we headed out. I grabbed my keys on the way, and we headed to the car. "Where is it?" Oh Geez, I've gotta start telling Jared stuff.
"It's in Lakeland." Jared looked at me blankly. "It's a town about an three-quarters of an hour drive from here." He nodded. We got in the car and headed onto the freeway. Jared and I talked a bit. I think he was still considering what the money he found out about this morning meant - he'd never had that much money and I think he was shocked. About twenty minutes later. Jared and I were sitting in silence, driving along the freeway.
"What's that?"
"Huh?"
"That, over there." Jared asked. He was pointing to the tops of the buildings which could be seen of Disney World.
"It's Disney World."
"Oh. I didn't realise it was this close." Jared went back to just looking out the window.
"Have you ever been, I mean not to there, but to like say the one in Europe or something like it in England." Jared shook his head.
"Don't laugh ok? But, I've never been on a roller-coaster." Jared said with a smirk on his face.
"Never?" I couldn't believe it. We must have been to Disney World or Disney Land a hundred times, especially when we were all younger. Jared shook his head still smiling. "Wow." We drove the rest of the way there, and got out the car in front of an old looking building, probably 1930's. It looked like it could fit into a gangster movie or something, but the beaten up sign above the door read 'The Moonlight Theater'. It was kind of a concert hall, but also sort of a proper theatre, and Jared and I would get married on the stage, I know, I know, kinda unconventional, but firstly, it's the only way we're gonna get the guests into anywhere, and secondly, it's quite a nice old place. It's rented out now as a lecture theatre among other things. Jared and I walked straight in, the only guy there didn't seem interested in knowing who we were.
"Wow, it's...big." Jared said. It was big, it could probably hold 2,000 at maximum capacity, and that would be useful in case we did have to add any more to the list. We walked down the stairways, and up the steps onto the stage. The house lights were up, and from the stage we could see the balcony. Jared was looking up at the purple-red curtains that hung at the sides of the stage, and along the back. It had ornate carvings up the sides of the stage, and old fashioned stage lamps. There was even a prompter's box at the front. The seats were laid out fan style, so that as they went up, they were offset from one another, and it made a patterned effect. The balcony was large, and overhung some of the lower seating. It had decorative carvings along the front too, and Jared smiled when he looked at it - it was carvings of cherubs and little angels playing trumpets and horns, painted in gold. "It's really beautiful in here." He smiled at me, then came over to kiss me.
"Great." I smiled at him, and kissed him again.
"This place is amazing, and it's gonna be full?" Jared asked.
"Almost, this place holds about 2000." Jared nodded. He bit his lip.
"Is there someone else you wanted to invite?" I asked him.
"I don't know anyone else! You've got like 750 people invited already, I'm pretty sure you've got everyone I've met in there somewhere." I looked at him for a second, then I thought.
"There's no one from England you want to invite?" Jared looked around, then shook his head.
"I can't think of anyone I was really that close to, I worked with people, or chatted to people sometimes, but I wasn't so close that I would want them here."
"Cos, you know I can have them flown over if they can't afford it or something." Jared grinned at me.
"Yeah, yeah, I know Mr. Millionaire." Jared grinned, but that hurt a bit. I couldn't explain it, but before Jared knew, about everything, he never brought up how much money I had, or anything even related to money matters. Now, 'Mr. Millionaire'? I don't know, it just seemed different, not nice different either. "Sorry." Jared uttered, realising my pause.
"No, it's just that seemed weird." I mumbled, then went and sat on the edge of the stage, in between a couple of stage lights. Jared came and sat next to me.
"What's the matter Kev?"
"Money would never have entered any conversation we ever had before this morning."
"But...oh yeah, I get it. Well, do you never want to talk about it? I'm pretty good at just shutting up about stuff." Jared smiled at me, and leant on my shoulder slightly.
"No, I mean, I don't want it to become something we just don't talk about, like we can't or something. If there's some money matter we need to talk about, fine. But, I just showed that to you this morning, so that you'd know. I felt guilty for not telling you the arrangements I'd made for the wedding, and I realised you didn't know a lot about my business stuff. I didn't want it to change the sort of things we talked about, or change how we acted around each other."
"I'm sorry. I guess it was a little mean to call you that, but don't be sensitive about your money Kevin. You worked for it. This is weird."
"What?"
"Well, isn't it supposed to be the other way around? Normally the British are silent on money matters especially when it comes to success, and it's the Americans who are outspoken about it." I couldn't help but smile at Jared's observation.
"You know, I'm gonna make the credit account a joint one." I told him.
"Why?"
"Cos, I want you to know that my money is yours too. If you want to, I'll make the rest joint, I was only gonna do that though if you wanted to as it would mean that you would have to fly around with me a lot more to sign stuff, and I didn't think you'd want that."
"Um, well, you don't even need to do the credit account, I don't need that money Kevin."
"That's what I love about you Jared. You don't need anything."
"I need you." I grinned at him, and we kissed.
Jared's Point of View<<<
Management was reluctant to have me take off basically all the time leading up to the guys' tour. But they had been warned, and they were arranging a substitute. But the lunchtime sessions for instance which I'd been running had been partially off my own back, so management was trying to arrange some new fitness trainer who would work over lunchtimes so that the sessions could continue. I ate lunch on the move, and apparently finding someone who was willing to go without a break for the whole day sometimes, and to train quite diverse groups of clients was difficult. It was now the 22nd of April, I had to work till the end of the week, and then I was off for the week leading up to the wedding, and for four weeks afterwards. That would take me up to the guys' tour for which I would be travelling around with them again. I had a 98 degrees session today.
"Hey guys." I called as they walked into the gym. I had been playing around with one of the cross-country skiers. They were fun, and I'd never used one before I started working here.
"Hey." Came their response.
"No need to sound quite so excited." I told them, and they smirked or chuckled, and we got down to business.
End of Chapter Five TBC...
Hey, I hope everyone likes this new chapter, also I'm starting another story which probably won't run as long as this one, I want you to tell me what you think, it will probably be up in a day or two, and is called "Human, all too human".