Title
: A Picture Says A Thousand WordsShe could hardly believe her luck. AJ had left his cell phone just sitting there when he left for the studio. Denise McLean knew that with just two weeks until Thanksgiving, this would be her last chance to invite the mysterious Marshall. Finding his number in the phone list, she dialed.
When the other end picked up, loud music was playing, and a voice grumbled, "Now what?"
Denise paused. "I'm sorry, I think I have the wrong number. I was looking for Marshall."
"Great, another one. You found him, lady." The music shut off. "Alright, which label do you work for, and what did I do to piss you off this week?"
"Nothing!" AJ had told her Marshall was a singer, but she'd always assumed he was a local club musician. This guy had a northern accent, and sounded like he knew the business. "This is Denise McLean. Alex's mom."
Silence, and then, "He told you my phone number?"
"No, I stole his phone." Denise laughed. "Everyone is getting together the day after Thanksgiving. I wanted to invite you."
"Say that again." Eminem sounded utterly disbelieving.
"I want you do come to Thanksgiving with us." Denise wondered why he sounded so shocked. "Do you have other plans?"
"My own mother would probably call the cops if I set foot in her house, and you're inviting me to diner?" He was beyond disbelief into the Twilight Zone. "With the Backstreet Boys."
"They're family."
"And you want me there?"
"Of course. Kevin and Brian are bringing their wives, and sometimes Nick and Howie bring someone. Why shouldn't you be here?" Denis still couldn't figure out why he sounded so shocked.
"Should I, ya know, bring something?" No one had ever taken him home to meet their parents before.
"You can bring a desert if you want. So you'll come?"
"Yeah." Eminem hung up with a worried look on his face. "What the fuck did I just agree to?"
Proof laughed, and poked Bizarre in the ribs. "Guess who's coming to dinner."
-----
To make sure that that pop super stardom hadn't gone completely to their heads, Denise had all five Boys setting the table. AJ counted chairs with a sickening feeling. "Howie, there's nine chairs."
"So?" He stared into a drinking glass, trying to decide if it was clean.
"That implies nine people, D. All of us, the girls, and my mother makes eight." AJ glared at the extra chair. "She's doing it again. I told her I didn't want her to invite anyone. If I have to spend Thanksgiving alone, I want to spend it alone, not entertaining one of her girlfriend's daughters."
Howie knew he had to cut off AJ before he got into a full-blown rant. "Relax. So you have to sit next to a beautiful woman for a few hours. You can always pawn her off to Nick."
"There's always that."
-----
Denise stared through the entry way window in utter shock. 'I'm imagining things. My mind is just playing tricks on me.' She opened the door. Nope, it still looked like Eminem was standing on her front porch, holding a bakery box, looking nervous and out of place. "Hi. Just a second." Denise shut the door, and leaned against it. "I'm losing my mind." She let him in. "I'm sorry, the stress must be getting to me. I don't know if anyone has ever told you this, but you look just like Eminem."
He tugged at his tie. "That's because I am."
"I see." So it was her son who'd lost his mind, not her. "Have you met the rest of the guys?"
"Yeah." Eminem wondered if it was too late to cut and run. "Look, if you don’t want me here, I'll go. I'm sure as hell Alex's friends don’t want to see me."
"No, no, I invited you." Denise was a little dazed. "If you'll give me the pie, we're just about to sit down. I didn't tell anyone you were coming, I wanted it to be a surprise…."
Shocking people he was good at. Meeting people's mothers? That was a no. So rather than stand there awkwardly, he headed into the dining room. "You know where Alex is?"
Leighanne dropped the dish she was holding, and Kristin shot up from her seat. "What on earth are you doing here?"
Eminem smiled the smile that made interviewers back away. "I'm here to see Alex."
"AJ doesn't need any trouble." Kristin refused to back down.
"Forget it." He pushed past her, and into the kitchen. The door swung shut, and a few moments later they could hear a body being thrown against a wall.
Leighanne eyed the door nervously. "You think we should call the cops?"
"Actually," Brian had just come into the room, "I'd call the firemen."
"Firemen?" His wife sounded very, very confused.
"You're going to need a hose to separate them." Nick was right behind him, sounding disgusted.
"Hose?" Kristin opened the door, and her eyes bugged out.
-----
No one's mother had ever cared where he'd gone to school (a lot of places), how he'd gotten into mainstream rap (Dre), or asked about his little girl. It was strange, it made him twitchy, and Carter wouldn't stop glaring at him. AJ tapped his elbow. "Pass the potatoes?"
He pushed them in AJ's general direction, and tried to figure out how to tone down how he and AJ had first hooked up into something that wouldn’t offend his mother. Nick couldn't take it anymore. "How can you all sit here and act like this is normal? We are eating dinner with a madman who trashes our genre every change he gets!"
"Like you and yours are any better. If one of your competitors asked you to co-author a song, you'd tell him to go fuck himself. At least in R&B we don’t have to stab each other in the back to get teenage girls to buy our cd's." Eminem was sick of Nick's self-righteous shit. "And I bet you've never even listened to a complete track of my music."
Though all their arguing, AJ didn't say anything. He just put a serving of mashed potatoes on his plate, and then upended the bowl on top of Nick's head.
-----
Lines practically drew themselves across the paper. Nick had never done anything quite this complicated before. Both men had so many tattoos, he'd sketched them separately, and was adding them in private. It was his peace offering, after that disaster on Thanksgiving.
He reminded himself never to insult Eminem in front of AJ again. After washing the mashed potatoes out of his hair, he'd gone back into the living room and found the two of them asleep on the couch. Nick was a man who could admit when he was wrong. Seeing the two of them curled up on the couch, it seemed almost right. He'd gotten his sketchbook. Their anniversary was in mid-December. Nick was determined to have two copies done by then. He couldn't trust any Kinko's to keep their mouth shut.
-----
"Nick is planning something horrible for me, isn't he?" AJ took the opportunity to interrogate Brian, who was usually Nick's partner in crime. "He's always staring at me, and writing things down. He's going to the tabloids, isn't he?"
"He's not going to the tabloids." Brian snuck a quick look over his shoulder. Nick was indeed staring, and marking something on a piece of paper. "Or I could be wrong."
"You're not reassuring me here, Rok."
"That's his sketchbook. I'd be concerned." Brian grinned, and headed back towards the sound booth, leaving AJ to wonder what on earth Nick could possibly have been working on for two weeks.
----
Last fucking concert of the tour. Eminem was glad it was over. He was staring to hallucinate. He could swear he'd seen four men who looked suspiciously like Nick Carter, Kevin Richardson, Howie Dorough, and Brian Littrell in the front row with cameras. Of course, it was a ridiculous idea. If they had come to one of D12's concerts, (which had about a snowball's chance in hell) why wouldn't they have brought AJ? Come to think of it, his hallucinating made even less sense, because he defiantly would have seen AJ.
---
Nick pried out his earplugs. "Thanks for coming with me, guys."
Brian popped his ears. "For going into that concert, you owe me so big, you will be walking my dogs when we're eighty. Do you understand me, Nick?"
"Forget your dogs, he'll be cleaning my house." Kevin was working his way through a bottle of aspirin. "If we weren't supposed to be playing nice with the insane rapper, I'd be calling Britney Spears, telling her to sue for libel."
"I can't believe I'm saying this," Howie let his head rest against the window of the limo, "But sadly, some of those lyrics make sense."
-----
AJ cautiously took the gift box. "Is it going to explode?"
"Not unless the crew guy who wrapped it did something." Nick watched him handle it gingerly, as though it would bite him. "I have one for Eminem too."
"Marshall."
"Huh?"
"Marshall. His name is Marshall. Even Kevin has the decency to call him that, and he thinks I've lost my mind." AJ ripped open the wrapping paper. Inside was a picture in a matte frame. AJ's eyes almost bugged out. "So this is what you've been working on."
"Yeah." Nick grinned. "I dragged the guys to his last concert, you know. That's why they couldn't hear the headphones that day in the studio."
"You must've gone to a hell of a lot of trouble." He studied the detail. "God, Nick, I don't know what to say."
"Say thank you for the anniversary present."
"Howie can't keep his mouth shut." AJ looked across the room to where his best friend was asleep in his latest awkward position. "Thanks, Kaos. Just one question."
"There are only two copies, and you're holding the package with the other one." Nick could see AJ's confused look. "Brian told me you were afraid I was going to the tabloids."
-----
"Carter drew this?" Eminem was staring at the picture, taken back by the detail. "For us."
"I didn't believe it at first either." AJ rested his head on Eminem's shoulder, staring down at the drawing he held. "You weren't losing your mind, it was them at the last concert. He's been working on it for weeks. "
"Why?"
"It's his way of apologizing without having to say it."
"This is my worst fucking nightmare." Eminem had a disgusted look on his face.
"What is?"
"Having Nick Carter do something nice for me." He set the picture down on the coffee table. "Come with me to get my kid?"
------------------------------------
"Mittens."
"Mittens." He looked at the bright pink fuzzy gloves his ex-wife handed him. 'And the nightmare continues.'
"Hat." Also bright pink.
"Hat." Eminem looked at his daughter, who was staring out the window. "Ready to get out of here, Hailey-J?"
She turned away from the glass, excited. "Is that Alex in the car?"
Kim's eyes immediately narrowed. "You're taking one of your hoods Christmas shopping, Marshall? God, can't you spare one afternoon for your daughter?"
Eminem had always found it funny how Marshall could sound nice coming from people like AJ and Denise, but a curse from Kim. "Leave it alone, Kim. Don't start this in front of her."
"I like Alex." Hailey was completely ignored by both her parents, locked into a contest of wills.
"That's right. We wouldn't want your precious little baby to know what a sicko you really are." Kim shook her head in disgust. "Who is he? A new act, or just your dealer?"
"Don't be such a bitch." He pulled Hailey's hat down over her ears. "He's clean enough to eat off of, so just drop it."
"None of your friends are anywhere near clean." Kim almost hissed the word. "And if you expect me to believe that, you really are as crazy as they say. Anything happens to her, and your ass will be in jail faster than you can blink."
"Get a new song, Kim, or I'll have to write one."
"You do, and I swear to god I'll sue." She fixed Hailey's hat. "Have her back by ten."
-----
Barbies, as far as they eye could see. An entire aisle of them. "This is hell."
"This is Toys R Us." AJ pulled his ski cap down a little lower. "I'm still not sure this is such a great idea. What if someone sees us together?"
"We're in a Toys R Us in Detroit, Michigan. Half the cashiers here would rather die than admit knowing your name." It didn't stop Eminem from adjusting his own hat though.
"What about the other half?" He could see a clerk already eyeing him suspiciously
"Fuck." He walked down the aisle to where Hailey was trying to pick something. "We've been spotted."
Hailey pouted for a moment. "You need a better disguise. We could get you a fake moustache."
"I don’t think that would work." AJ kept one eye on the cashiers clustering at the front of the store. "You pick anything out yet, kiddo?"
She held out a collectors doll with a heavy price tag. Eminem didn't even look at it, just tucked it under his arm, and took her hand. "Meet us outside, Alex. The labels will kill us if we're seen."
"Sometimes I hate this." AJ went outside, alone, and leaned against the wall. "Hiding out here like I'm criminal or something."
"Are you really him?" He hadn't noticed the girl standing farther down, smoking a cigarette. She dropped it, and crushed it with her heel. "I mean, are you really AJ?"
AJ sighed. "That's what they tell me. You got a piece of paper?"
She dug a receipt out of her pocket. "They're never going to believe me when I say I met you! I mean, people like us, we tend not to…" She stopped herself, turning red. "My friends and I, we're a minority."
She was white on the black side of Detroit, but AJ guessed that wasn't what she meant. He didn't want to know, however. He knew how strange some of their fans were. He just handed her an autograph. "I have to get going."
"Thank you." She watched him walk to a car, and slip into the passenger side. A few minutes later, someone else came out of the store, and her jaw dropped as he climbed into the same car. "Forget the autograph. I must be plain crazy."
-----
"She's gonna be a terror when she grows up." AJ stretched out on the couch. "Actually, she's one now. I can see the resemblance."
"No one makes fun of me and walks away." Eminem sat down on AJ's legs. He spoke just above a whisper. "Luckily, you're not going anywhere."
"You are." AJ took of his sunglasses, and gestured towards Hailey. "You said you had to have her home by ten."
"Damn." Eminem stood up. "Don't go anywhere. I'll be back in a few minutes."
"Uh huh." He flopped facedown. "I'm too tired to go anywhere. Think I'll turn in."
------
Eminem pulled into the driveway about 9:55. The door flew open, and Kim rushed out. "Thank god you're okay!" He was suddenly in a death grip hug.
"Uh, Kim, are you using something?" He pried her fingers off, and she latched onto Hailey. "Because I'll take her back home with me. Won't even tell the Judge."
"I’m not on anything." She looked up, and Eminem could see she was actually scared. "Your house, Marshall, it's on the news. There are cops everywhere. Someone was shot."
End of Part One. To Be Continued
~ When I look into the mirror, and see a face I don't recognize, I am no longer surprised.