Happy October! Not only is this one of my favorite times of year, but our favorite long-haired, football-loving Backstreet Boy is turning fifty-four tomorrow! In honor of Kevy Kev, this week’s blog is all about my favorite Kevin characters from my fics.
This was both an easy and hard list to put together, because, prior to 2021, I’d never written a Kevin-centered novel. If you filter my stories by boy, only two stories come up for Kevin: My Brother’s Keeper and its sequel, The World Will Be Waiting. That narrowed down my options quite a bit but made it fairly simple to rank my top five. Without further ado, here they are!
5. Dr. Richardson
Because of my lack of Kevin stories, I fully admit that I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel to come up with a fifth-favorite Kevin character for this blog. I was originally going to go with “Koma Kevin” from Guilty Roads, but since his character is comatose for most of the story and doesn’t do much on account of his traumatic brain injury, I went with a different character from another discontinued story: Dr. Kevin Richardson from my medical drama AU, Code Blue.
In Code Blue, Kevin plays a general surgeon who performs many of the operations required by the patients who roll through the doors of the fictional Atlantic City Memorial Hospital. His character was inspired by Dr. Peter Benton from my favorite TV show, ER. Like Benton, Dr. Richardson is a talented surgeon who’s serious about his work, although he makes time for the people who matter to him, which include his cousin, Dr. Brian Littrell, who’s employed as a pediatrician in the same hospital, paramedics Howie Dorough and AJ McLean, and his eventual med student, Nick Carter. He also has a romantic relationship with a fellow doctor named Elizabeth and a platonic friendship with his surgical nurse, Hayley. While it’s been awhile since I’ve read Code Blue – and even longer since I co-wrote it – I remember how much fun it was to imagine the guys as medical professionals. Kevin would look so sexy in scrubs! This just goes to show that, sometimes, it’s best to put the boys on the other side of the hospital bed.
4. Agent K
In 00Carter, Kevin plays Agent K, otherwise known as Agent 002, the highest-ranking secret agent in our fictional organization, Himitsu Takana. As the leader, K oversees the activities of all the other agents, including his right-hand man, Agent Jay (AJ), and his protege, 00Carter (Nick). He also collaborates with his cousin, CIA officer Brian Littrell, otherwise known as The Rok, as they try to track down the elusive criminal organization FANS, led by supervillain Dr. Rough (Howie). Straight-laced K takes his work seriously, but he also has a surprising sense of humor that he allows to surface on rare occasions. My favorite K-centered episodes are Episode 6: “It’s a Small World,” which reveals some of K’s backstory, and Episode 12: “Mr. Body Beautiful,” which shows what K’s really like on the inside – literally!
3. Lieutenant Colonel Richardson
In Song for the Undead, Kevin plays an Air Force pilot who is stationed at the Florida base that becomes a sanctuary for a small group of survivors during the zombie apocalypse. As the oldest male survivor and the one most familiar with the base, Lieutenant Colonel Richardson becomes the natural leader of the group. Aside from Kevin and Brian, who are still cousins in this alternate universe, none of the other survivors know each other at the beginning of the story, but when fate brings them together, they become a family. Kevin acts as a big brother to the other guys and a father figure to thirteen-year-old Gabby, taking her under his wing after her mother dies. His pilot skills come in handy as he leads a couple of dangerous missions to search for and connect with more survivors across the United States and the United Kingdom. Ultimately, Song for the Undead is more exciting with Kevin in it!
2. Big Brother Kev
Up until the last few years, my favorite way to write Kevin was as the reassuring older brother of the group, who’s always willing to lend his little brothers a helping hand, a listening ear, or a shoulder to lean on. Big Brother Kev has appeared in many of my fics over the years, but my favorite versions of him are from Nick-centered stories, such as Broken, Curtain Call, and my ultimate Kevin & Nick bromance, My Brother’s Keeper. Kevin’s protective nature comes out in all of these stories, as he tries to help Nick through a crisis – or struggles with the fact that he can’t help Nick.
I’ve always found the relationship between Kevin and Nick interesting. When Kevin joined the Backstreet Boys, he was a full-fledged adult at twenty-one, while Nick was barely a teenager, having just turned thirteen. When I was twenty-one, I spent a couple of months working with twelve-year-olds in a sixth grade class as part of my clinical experience the semester before I started student teaching. I could not imagine considering those kids my coworkers. The age gap between twelve-going-on-thirteen and twenty-one-going-on-twenty-two is considerable – and the maturity gap, even more so. Yet, that’s exactly what Kevin and Nick were back then: coworkers. Bandmates. Eventually, they became brothers, and then, finally, friends – because by the time you hit your thirties and forties, an eight-year age difference is no longer the big deal it was in your teens and twenties. As both a fan and a fanfic writer, it’s been fun to see how the group dynamics have shifted over the years, as the guys have gone through different stages in their lives and careers. But, at the end of the day, Kevin will always be the big brother of the Backstreet Boys, and I enjoy writing him that way.
1. Quadriplegic Kevin
What happens when the roles are reversed, and the little brothers have to look after the big brother? That’s the premise of My Brother’s Keeper, which stars my current favorite Kevin character to write: Quadriplegic Kevin. Inspired by the In a World Like This bonus track “Take Care,” MBK is a bromantic hurt/comfort story in which Nick and AJ move in with Kevin to help care for him after a tragic car accident leaves him widowed and permanently paralyzed. Having lost the love of his life and the use of his legs, Kevin struggles to find the will to live at first. But knowing that six-month-old Mason needs him gives him the strength to keep going, despite the difficulty he faces adjusting to his new life with a significant disability. By the sequel, The World Will Be Waiting, Kevin is four years down this long, hard road and has reached the point where he’s finally ready to revive both his music career and his love life. Over the past five years, I’ve come to really enjoy writing this character at both stages in his journey. For a whump-lover like me, it’s always fun to knock one of the guys down… but only so I can get the pleasure of building him back up again, as I’ve done with Quadriplegic Kevin. I have learned a lot from researching for and writing his story, and what I hope readers will take away from it is that while life with a disability may be hard, it’s still a life worth living. (Also, never take the ability to use the bathroom independently for granted again!)
There you have it, my five favorite Kevin characters! I hope our boy has the best birthday tomorrow! I’ll be back in a couple of weeks with a blog fit for spooky season!
Love this list!! I haven’t read code Blue, but I’ll have to see to see what the boys are like as doctors!!
Thanks! Code Blue is fun but has too many characters besides the boys to keep track of! It took me some skimming to even remember any of Kevin’s storylines in it LOL.