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Title: Camping: Chapter One: Nicky And Aya

Author: Allison Wonderland

Rating: PG

Summary: About to leave for home from Las Vegas – the last stop of Triple Flip’s 2006 North American Tour – Nicky gets a phone call from his older sister that makes him rethink his plans.

Warning(s): None.

Disclaimer: Nicky, Princess, Ayame, Minako, Miki, Virginia, and L.J. are all the property of…well…me. If you want to use any of them for anything, ask first. I’ll probably say yes.

Note(s): Rewritten for NaNoWriMo 2007.

From the bathroom doorway of his Las Vegas hotel room Nicky tossed a bottle of shampoo halfway across the bedroom of said hotel room. It landed in the half-packed suitcase on the bed, on top of several crumpled articles of clothing in various states of cleanness – or rather uncleanness if one were to be completely honest. Princess would have such a tantrum if he saw that, he thought, tossing the bottle of conditioner into the suitcase alongside the shampoo. Princess had a special suitcase for all of makeup, hair products, special soaps, and god only knew what else that he found it essential to use before leaving the house in the morning. Truth be told, Nicky had one of those suitcases too – albeit a lot smaller – but it had already been taken down to the car that would take him to the airport. The flight back to New York left that his agent had booked him at the last minute left in two hours and he should have been at the airport half an hour ago. One last quick glance around confirmed that Nicky had removed everything he had taken in the bathroom with him and he went back into the bedroom.

He removed his cell phone from the charger and it rang in his hand just as he started to unplug the charger, startling him into dropping both of them. He picked his phone up again and checked the LCD screen, hoping it was Princess. His boyfriend was not expecting him back in New York until tomorrow but Davis, Triple Flip’s keyboardist had gone out to a party the night before, become drunk, and stumbled out into the middle of the busy Las Vegas strip only to be struck by an oncoming car. Davis was hospitalized but not seriously injured. The last concert of the Las Vegas leg of Triple Flip’s North American tour had been cancelled, an occurance that seemed to happen all too often, and Nicky had every intention of calling a meeting with the other band members and their manager and producer at the first opportunity once he got back to New York with the purpose of deciding what it would take to get Davis to leave Triple Flip. Missed interviews, cancelled concerts, and public appearances where Davis showed up drunk or stoned – or forgot to show up at all – were becoming the norm and his lack of commitment was hurting the band. But he would deal with that he came to it.

As luck would have it, it was not Princess’s name and number – and Nicky really needed to call his boyfriend and let him know he would be home today instead of tomorrow – that showed up on his caller ID but his oldest sister and only older sister Ayame’s. Ayame was an ice dancer and Nicky had once been her partner. This weekend she and her fiancée Leon were taking time off from training for next season’s competitions to take Aya’s two daughters Miki and Virginia and Nicky’s daughter Minako camping in Yellowstone. Nicky had a week off between the North American leg of the world tour and the European leg and was planning to spend time with both his daughter and Princess but he would not be able to see Minako until at least Wednesday when Aya and Leon ,whom the two-year-old lived with while Nicky was on tour, brought her to Nicky and Ayame’s mother’s house in Segundo, New York for Izumi’s fiftieth birthday party. That only gave him three days with his daughter before he flew to Paris early Saturday morning. He would only have about three and a half days alone with Princess before they went to Izumi’s house and were converged upon by Nicky’s crazy half Russian, half Japanese family – although in this case, most of the visiting relatives would be Japanese because that was his mother’s side of the family. He was not too worried about spending alone time with is boyfriend this week. Princess’s last class of the first half of summer quarter at the New York Institute Of Fashion And Design had ended yesterday and Princess would be coming along on the European part of the tour. Minako, as usual, would not. She would, however, be flying to London with most of the rest of Nicky’s family at the end of the summer for a sort of celebration – if Princess agreed, of course.

Nicky flipped his phone open. “Hey, Aya,” he addressed his favorite sister. “What’s up?” He was always happy to hear from Ayame, even if he would rather be talking to Princess. Out of Nicky, both of his sisters and his only brother, he and Ayame were the most alike. Both of them had inherited their mother’s completely straight black hair, tan skin tone, and almond shaped eyes. It gave them an exotic, Asian look yet was tempered by their father’s Russian heritage. Said Russian heritage gave both of them eyes the color of the sky just before it snowed and – according to Izumi – the love of cold temperatures that enabled both Nicky and Aya to be world famous ice dancers. Their few differences lay mostly in height and build. Ayame was only five feet, three inches tall – a full two inches shorter than Princess – and weighed only just over a hundred pounds, despite having given birth to Miki and Virginia two years apart. She looked fragile and delicate but that was a deception that went along with ice dancing. Ayame was, after all, one half of the first ice dancing team to ever do a throw quadruple axel. In contrast, Nicky was six feet, three inches tall – a full foot taller than his sister – and, at 175 pounds, his muscles were a lot less subtle; he had to be strong enough to his sister far enough that she could rotate four times in mid air before coming back down to land on the ice again.

“Nicky,” she said as soon as she heard his voice.

Nicky thought she sounded nervous but Ayame did not get nervous; she was the calmest person he knew. Even Nicky was more prone to freaking out than Aya. There was only a fifteen month age difference between the two of them but sometimes Nicky thought there was more like a fifteen year difference between himself and his sister, even though Ayame could physically still pass for a teenager despite having two children of her own. She had somehow grown up while competing in a sport that left little time for it. Ice dance was one practice after another for as much as eighteen hours a day for just a few competitions a year. “What’s wrong, Aya?” he asked. It had to be something drastic to make her sound like that. Maybe one of her children had been hurt and the camping trip was off or what if one of them were sick? Or what if- “Is Minako okay, Aya? She isn’t hurt or sick or-” All manner of horrific scenarios ran through Nicky’s mind, each one more terrible than the last and all of them ending in his daughter being ill or injured or…worse.

Ayame laughed, although it was not her usual bells tinkling, little girl laugh. It still sounded tense. “No, Nicky. There’s nothing wrong with Mimi.” ‘Mimi’ had been Minako’s nickname since she had first begun to talk. She had not been able to pronounce her full name – Minako Aki Nikkitaskaya – and had called herself Mimi, saying the first syllable of her first name twice. It had stuck and everyone else had taken to calling her Mimi. “it’s just that…well, there’s a sort of problem with the camping trip this weekend.” She paused and took a deep breath. “You know how this weekend Leon and I were going to take some time off to take Miki and Virginia camping in Yellowstone, right?” Ayame and her fiancée/ice dance partner Leon lived two hours by car away from Yellowstone National Park. They and Ayame’s two daughters went camping there every time Ayame and Leon had time off from practicing their routine and flying all around the world for competitions. “And we were going to take Minako with us this time.” Ayame had asked several times previously if she and Leon could take Minako camping with them and Nicky had always refused. This time Minako was going to be staying with Ayame’s family anyway because Nicky was still on tour – or supposed to be anyway – and had been so excited about going to ‘the big park’ that Nicky had been unable to deny her anything she wanted and, because she would be three-years-old at the beginning of September, he had finally decided to let her go.

“I know that, Aya. Get to the point,” he said, becoming a bit annoyed. He should have been at the airport already. “I still have to call Princess and tell him I’ll be home late tonight instead of tomorrow.” Nicky was looking forward to speaking to his boyfriend. It had been two weeks since they had last been together and several hours too long since their last telephone conversation and Nicky already missed his Princess’s soft, sleepy-sexy voice.

“Yeah,” Aya murmured, “um…Nicky…about that…”

“You can’t take Minako with you?” Nicky asked. He had wanted at least one night alone with Princess but if Ayame could not take his daughter camping with them he was willing to book yet another flight, fly to Colorado to pick up his daughter, then take her back to New York City with him. Princess loved Minako, even though he was not capable of taking care of her for weeks at a time while Nicky was on tour. The rockstar was sure his boyfriend would not object to putting off what he called their ‘reunion fuck’ for a few more hours. Well, he would object but just on principle and if Nicky brought Minako back with him Princess would have no choice because Nicky was not having sex while his daughter was in the house and awake. “That’s fine. I can stop over in Colorado and get her on the way home but you get to explain to her that she can’t go with you.” Minako had been looking forward to spending the weekend camping in ‘the big park’ since the day Nicky had told her she could go. He was not going to be the one to tell her she could not go.

“No. No, Nicky,” Ayame assured her younger brother. “It isn’t that at all. I love Minako. I’d be more than happy to take her with us but the thing is…Leon is sick. He can’t go. And it doesn’t look like he’ll be any better any time soon.”

So it was Leon who was ill. Nicky liked Leon – better than he had liked any of Aya’s other ice dance partners after Nicky had retired anyway – but he was still relieved that it was not his daughter who was sick. Still, if Leon had something too contagious he might stop over in Colorado anyway. “What does he have,” he asked, trying to sound concerned about his sister’s fiancee’s health when all he was really concerned about was his daughter.

“Nothing too bad,” Ayame assured him as if she knew exactly what he was thinking. “The doctor said it’s just the flu. But he isn’t going to be able to go out to the park tomorrow. I’m still taking the girls. The less time they spend around him while he’s sick the better. I don’t want them or me to catch it.”

Nicky frowned, still not convinced that he should just fly back to New York without making a stopover in Colorado to pick up Minako. It was not that he did not trust Ayame to take care of his daughter. She did that all the time when he was on tour. It was just that his sister was tiny. Her own seven-year-old was almost as tall as she was. And, no matter how well behaved they were, one adult along with three children, all under the age of eight, camping alone in the wilderness – okay, a well populated campground but still – for the whole weekend was never a good idea. He would have felt a lot better with Leon there too. “I don’t know, Aya-“ he began. That was it. He was booking yet a third flight, stopping over in Colorado to pick his daughter, then going back to New York City. He could put up with any tantrums Princess decided to throw.

He heard Ayame take a deep shuddering breath before she cut him off, still sounding nervous. “There’s no way I can handle all three girls all weekend by myself.”

“I can come get Minako on my way home, Aya. It’s no trouble.”

“No, Nicky,” Ayame said. “That’s not it. I really don’t mind taking her.”

“So how does this concern me?” he asked, trying to get his sister to just tell him why she had called him. He needed to get to the airport already.

“It’s just that…they’re so looking forward to this trip. Not just Minako but Miki and Ginny too. There’s no way I can cancel on them at the last minute. Miki was so upset when she found out Leon couldn’t go and the whole trip might be cancelled.” Ayame was trying to guilt trip Nicky now and she knew that he knew it. Nicky – and Ayame too, if she were honest – hated to acknowledge that there was a strong possibility that, due to a night of drunkenness at their last Worlds competition, Nicky could be Miki’s father. That night was a huge secret kept just between the two of them. It was never spoken of and only alluded to in the vaguest of terms when Aya wanted Nicky to do something – something that usually involved the little girl who could possibly be his daughter – usually innocent enough but that he would never agree to do otherwise.

Her guilt trip worked. It always worked. “What do you want, Aya?” Nicky asked irritably.

“A camping trip with Uncle Nicky would be extra special to Miki and Ginny. And I’m sure Minako would love to spend some extra time with you.” Nicky would do almost anything for his daughter even without Ayame making him feel guilty for not paying as much attention to Miki - even though her parentage had never been determined for sure because neither Nicky nor Aya really wanted to know - and unfortunately for him, Ayame knew it.

“And since Leon can’t go this weekend and you can’t control three little girls on your own-“ Not that he really imagined anyone could “- you want me to go camping with you.” Nicky actually liked going camping. Before their parents’ divorce when Nicky was twelve and Ayame thirteen the whole family had gone camping in Yellowstone for a week every summer. Then Nicky and Ayame had won their first Junior Worlds championship and automatically moved on to compete on the senior level and within six months their parents’ marriage had fallen apart, partly due to the amount of time Izumi spent focused on Nicky and Ayame’s career instead of in their home being a stereotypical mother and wife the way Ivan had wanted her to. The last time Nicky had been camping he had gone with Ayame, Miki, Ayame’s ex-ice dance partner Jeffrey, and their younger sister Aimi. Miki had only been about two, maybe three, and Ayame had been almost five months pregnant with Virginia. It had, to say the least, not been fun. But Nicky did love both of his nieces and did not get to spend nearly enough time with them or his daughter. But there was still the whole issue of Princess and what to do with him. Princess was counting on Nicky coming home and spending the weekend and Monday alone with him before they went to Nicky’s mother’s house early Wednesday morning. Nicky had promised and they would do something special before leaving New York City. Princess had grown up on a farm not quite in Amish Country in Virginia but very close too it. His father was an old fashion preacher/farmer and lived his life by the bible. By Jake Gellar’s interpretation of the bible, men were the dominant force in the world and women and children listened and obeyed. Princess had spent the first seventeen years of his life on a farm in the middle of nowhere with a heavy-handed father and a mother who refused to stand up for him. Everything done was by his father’s command and Princess had never had a free moment to just be himself. Eventually he had tried to commit suicide, spent six weeks in a mental institution, then been kicked out of his home when his father had discovered his homosexuality. He had not been back home since then and only ever spoke to his sister Sarah. Since the day after Princess’s father had kicked him out, Nicky had taken full responsibility for him and did everything he possibly could to make up for his horrible childhood. The gifts and all the time the two of them spent together and all the other ways Nicky spoiled his princess were just part of that. And most importantly he had never broken a promise.

“Yes,” Ayame admitted. “That’s basically it. And I know how much you love camping and how awful it was the last time you went with us. And she knew he would do anything for his daughter.

“I really would like to, Aya.” He was not just telling her he wanted to go because of her earlier attempt to guilt trip him or because it was what she wanted to hear and would leave him alone once she heard it so he could get to the airport in time to go through security before his flight left. If truth be told, he would love to go camping with his sister and her children and his own daughter. However, there was Princess to think of. Even though they would be together for most of the summer in Europe, Nicky could not bring himself to break a promise to Princess.

“Because of Princess?” Ayame asked. She, like the rest of Nicky’s family, had forgotten Princess’s real name long ago. Nicky and Princess’s fans, however, had never even known Princess’s real name. The paparazzi had heard Nicky call him Princess at his eighteenth birthday party – disguised as a fund raiser for AIDS research so the reporters would not know exactly how serious their relationship was at that point – and had run with it, calling the beautiful boy Princess and believing, at least at first, that he was a girl and that Nicky Narcissus, Raging Homosexual had finally gone straight.

“Yes, it’s because of Princess,” Nicky told his sister. “I promised him that I would spend this weekend and most of the day Monday alone with him before you and Leon and the girls brought Minako to the city and we went up to Mom’s for her birthday thingy. You know I can’t break a promise to him, Aya.”

Ayame knew. A week after Nicky had liberated Princess from life on the farm he had come down with what they had both thought was only a slight cold. It had turned into an upper respiratory infection and Nicky, not knowing what else to do, had taken Princess home to Izumi, who was a registered nurse. Champions On Ice had been in town and Ayame had stopped by her mother’s before the show just as Nicky had arrived with Princess. She had been one of the only people to ever see the tiny boy who had been even shorter than she was then and hardly more than a child clinging to Nicky and begging – not that he had been able to speak very well but what little he had been able to talk – not to be put down and for Nicky to just hold him a little longer. But she had anticipated Nicky making a similar promise to Princess because it was the same thing he always did and had come up with an alternative suggestion.

“Why not fly back to New York today since the concert has been cancelled?” Ayame’s Blackberry and internet enabled cell phone kept her up to date on her favorite brother’s whereabouts and what was going on in his life better than Nicky’s occasional phone calls did. Sometimes she thought that, thanks to the paparazzi, she knew what he was doing and where he was before he did. That was one of the few good things about having a famous – or infamous, depending on how one looked at it and who one believed – rock star for a brother.

“I am, Aya,” Nicky said as he closed his last suitcase and double checked the latches. “I’m leaving for the airport now.”

“All right,” she said far too perkily for Nicky’s liking. Nicky knew that tone. It meant Ayame was up to something that would sound like a better idea than it really was and Nicky would end up cleaning up the mess – or using his celebrity status to have someone else clean up the mess if it was too disgusting – when they were finished. “So,” she continued, “go home today and spend the night fucking Princess until his ass can’t take anymore.”

One thing Nicky loved about his sister was her ability to state things exactly the way she saw them. It was also what he hated most about her.

“Then early tomorrow morning,” Ayame was saying, “you can fly back to Colorado and go camping with us. That way you can spend part of today – this is Friday, right? – and the night with Princess and give him what he wants. And if you can get an early enough flight tomorrow you can spend most of Saturday, all Saturday night and all day Sunday and Sunday night camping with us then get up early Monday morning and get another flight back to New York. They you’ll have all day Monday and Monday night and Tuesday and Tuesday night with Princess before we get there Wednesday morning to go to Mom’s house for her party.”

Aya seemed to have half of his vacation already planned out for him. And unlike most everything else she had ever planned, it actually seemed as if this might work. But there was one small problem. “It sounds like fun, Aya. It really does,” Nicky tried to convince his sister. “But I promised Princess I would spend the first few days of the break between legs of the tour with him.” And he was not going to break that promise no matter how much he wanted to go camping.

“So bring Princess with you,” Ayame suggested. She knew the suggestion was probably useless but felt she had to bring it up anyway. She genuinely liked Nicky’s boyfriend and had since the first time she had met him a little over two years ago. He was the sweetest – and at times the bitchiest – boy she had ever met and the perfect partner for Nicky although she had doubted it at first due to their six-year age difference, among other reasons. There was no way anyone was going to persuade Princess to go camping and both Nicky and Ayame knew that. His highness’s idea of roughing it was a hotel without room service.

“I don’t know, Aya.” More than anything, Nicky did not want to let his daughter down. He loved her more than almost anyone else in his life, with the exception of Princess perhaps but that was an entirely different kind of love. Minako was only two-years-old. She would not be three until September but Nicky talked to her on the phone every night before she went to bed. He had given her permission to go on the camping trip with her cousins two weeks ago. Since then Minako had talked about nothing but their trip. He had already missed her first steps and her first words. Her first camping trip was not exactly a monumental event but he wanted to be there for her for something.

But he had promised Princess he was coming straight home after the tour so they could get in some quality time alone before Princess embarked on the European leg of the tour with him and they had to start living out of the tour bus with the rest of the band between luxury hotels. “I don’t know, Aya.” Nicky sighed. He hated these decisions even more than he hated writer’s block when he was trying to write new songs for Triple Flip. “Just…let me call Princess and see if he wants to go and then I’ll call you back and let you know what we’re doing.”

Ayame rolled her eyes. “Oh, all right,” she said dramatically. She ended the call with Nicky and turned back to her laptop to confirm the reservations for two tickets on a flight out of New York City leaving at 7:00 the following morning. Despite his ‘I’m-a-bad-ass-rock-star’ outward appearance and attitude her brother was such a pushover.