Josh starts to get suspicious when Drake stays in for the third night straight with a Chemistry textbook. He’s suspicious the first night, but Drake is on the verge of failing the class, so the suspicion gives way to a glow of pride that flares up every time he sees Drake scribble something in his notebook. The second night he’s even more impressed by Drake’s dedication, but the third night is Friday, and Josh knows for a fact that Tiffany Tinning has been trying to get Drake’s attention all week.

“All right,” he says as their bedroom door swings shut and he makes his way down to where Drake is sitting perfectly motionless on the sofa. “What’s with the sudden academic interest?”

“Shhhh.” Drake squints down at a diagram that looks way too complex for anything they’re doing in class, and Josh realizes that sometime in the past few days, Drake has swapped out their Chemistry book for a college textbook.

“Hey,” he says, and grabs the book, holding it out of Drake’s reach while Drake scrambles for it with slow reflexes and bleary eyes. “How long have you been at this?” Drake had been in the same spot when Josh had left for his shift at work, but Josh has never seen him read for longer than ten minutes at a time, so he’d figured Drake had at least been somewhere.

“Uh, I don’t know.” Drake rubs his eyes and gives up on the book, flopping down on the sofa with his sock-feet squirming onto Josh’s lap. “Since dinner?”

“It’s midnight! And this isn’t our homework, so what’s going on?”

Drake lifts his arms in a long stretch that presses his feet against Josh’s thighs and lifts his t-shirt up over his belly. He must be exhausted; it’s even easier than usual to get a look at the pale skin of his belly and the light smattering of hair that trails up from his waistband. “What can I say?” Drake sighs. “I’ve got some kind of late-developing appreciation for education. I yearn for knowledge, I thirst for-“

“-Yeah, I get it,” Josh interrupts, and shoves Drake’s legs back onto the floor, where they land with a thunk. It’s like this all the time, just one big tease, and he can’t be annoyed with Drake for that part, but he can worry about the rest of it. English lit would be one thing, but Josh can think of a dozen ways Drake could get himself in trouble with a Chemistry book. “Is this about a girl?”

“Yeah, you’d think it would be,” Drake says, curling lazily onto his side of the sofa. “But this project is about the other great love of my life.”

“Your hair?”

“My music,” Drake says, but his hand makes a pass over his bangs just the same. “I am about to have the ultimate artistic experience, as instructed by Tanner LaGrange.”

He hates it when Drake gets like this; tossing dangerous ideas around like they’re nothing, because that way no one will notice. Maybe no one does notice, but Josh notices.

“So you met Tanner LaGrange, your rock idol, and didn’t even tell me about it?” The wound is deep, and Josh takes a step back. Drake had done a front handspring when he’d gotten tickets to Tanner’s show last year, and now he’s met the guy but hasn’t even said anything. “Who did you tell about it?” he demands. “Wait, where was it? What was he like? Did you give him one of your demos?”

“Because I was busy, nobody, at Club X, a lot shorter than I expected, and no.”

“So, I’m the first to know?” That appeases him some. At least some things in the world are still in their rightful order.

“Yes; you’re still my favorite.”

“Good. But wait, so you didn’t tell me about it because you were too busy stealing my Chemistry book? This reeks of badness!”

“I was waiting until I was closer to being done, but since you’re grilling me about it,” Drake waves his hands around, because apparently he has enough energy for sarcasm, “Fine. It just so happens that Tanner LaGrange gave me the secret recipe he uses to tap into his most creative channels. It’s how he wrote ‘Funeral Afterparty’ and like a million others.”

“Uh huh.” Josh flips through the textbook slowly, trying to figure out which pages Drake had been copying from. “A ‘recipe’ that requires graduate-level Chemistry?”

Drake shrugs. “More like a formula, then.”

“Uh huh. And have you got all the ‘ingredients’ for this recipe?”

“Almost,” Drake says, a smug smile stretching across his face as his eyes fall closed. “Man, I’m beat. I don’t know how you read every single day. When this is over, I’m not gonna read for weeks.”

“What are you making?” Josh asks, but Drake just gets up and heads toward his bed, shedding his jeans as he goes, as though there isn’t a hamper two feet away.

“You’ll know when it’s done; I’ll make sure of it.”

That doesn’t sound good. Drake’s plans never end up how they’re supposed to, so why should this be any different?

“At least give me a hint. Tell me one of the ingredients,” he says, but Drake is either resolved not to answer, or already asleep.

*

“I’ve figured out what you’re doing, you know,” Josh says the next morning on the way to school.

“You have, have you?” Drake says, one hand draped over the steering wheel as though there’s no way Josh could know anything.

“Yes. Well, I’ve figured out some of the synthesizing procedures you’re looking up, and I hate to be the one to inform you that there’s no way you can do most of them without a full laboratory.”

Drake gives him a look. “And?”

“And unless you’ve been even busier than I thought, you don’t have a lab.”

“No, but I’ve got connections.” Drake raises an eyebrow, and Josh crosses his arms over his bookbag, resolute. He will not be one of the hundreds sucked in by Drake’s can’t-say-no eyebrow-arch.

“Oh, no,” he says. “Forget it. Mr. Roland gave me those keys because I have proven myself responsible and trustworthy, which I would not be if I handed them over to the first person who asked.”

“Mr. Roland would never have to know.”

“Because there is nothing to know!”

“Well, not yet.”

“I am no longer listening,” Josh says, and lets Drake think he’s punishing Josh by singing along to the radio at full volume for the rest of the ride.

*

Josh watches Drake carefully over the next few weeks, but he can’t be around all the time. Even when Drake slips in and out at odd hours without dousing himself in cologne first, there’s nothing Josh can do but watch him go. Drake had said he was going to let Josh in on it at a certain point, so Josh takes him at his word and tries to focus on his own schoolwork. It would be a lot easier if he didn’t keep having dreams where Drake snaps on a pair of latex gloves and says things like, now I’ll wash the pooled extracts with dilute sodium hydroxide, his hands as deft with a test tube as they are on the strings of a guitar.

Josh hates those dreams as much as he likes them.

Finally, Drake comes home on a Sunday evening after being scarce all weekend, and collapses onto their sofa. “I did it,” he says, pale with exhaustion. “I am now in possession of Tanner LaGrange’s secret to success.”

“Let’s see it!”

“Not now. I haven’t showered or slept in nearly forty-eight hours. Shower, sleep, and tomorrow night I promise I’ll tell you all about it.”

Drake drags himself off to the bathroom, and Josh has to admit he looks pretty rough. Even his hair looks tired, so Josh goes downstairs to make a sandwich while Drake is in the shower, because he probably hasn’t eaten, either.

When he brings the sandwich up to their room, Drake is already on the sofa, wet-haired and dressed for bed. “You’re the best brother ever,” he declares when Josh hands over the food, devours the first half faster than Josh has ever seen him eat anything, and falls asleep on the sofa before he can answer any of Josh’s questions, damp towel still draped over his head.

Josh goes to bed early—he might as well, with Drake already crashed out so hard—and wakes up early with Mom’s voice in his ear. “Josh. Wake up, sweetie. You boys don’t have to get up this morning. There’s no school.”

Josh rolls over, still half-asleep, the image of Drake in a lab coat fading as he opens his eyes. “What? Why?”

“Because there is no school,” Megan says, alarmingly close where she’s standing over his bed with a bitter expression. “Some boobs burned it down last night.”

Mom lowers her voice. “Well, there’s no point in waking your brother. I’m going to work; enjoy sleeping in. Come on, Megan.”

Josh sinks back into his pillow, which is warm and fluffy and perfect, and listens to Mom’s shoes clack across the floor and down the stairs. Once the door shuts, they’ve got the whole quiet house to themselves, and Josh lets himself doze to the familiar sound of Drake’s breathing for another hour, heavy with sleep.

*

At first, Josh thinks it’s weird that Drake isn’t celebrating the ruination of school, because the news reports say it’ll be up to a month before they can relocate the students, which is like summer vacation come early for people who care about that kind of thing, but that evening, Dad says, “They say the fire originated in the chemistry lab,” and Josh’s stomach bottoms out when he sees the way Drake actually looks stricken, such an un-Drake-like expression that Josh can’t believe he’d seen it. A few seconds later, something blank and careless has taken its place, but Josh knows.

“Well, we’d better go do our homework!” Josh says loudly, strangely, as though he’s already telling a lie, and gets to his feet, clumsy at first, but more steady when he’s hooked arms with Drake and is carrying him along, up the stairs in a flurry of feet and legs and finally, to their bedroom.

Drake pulls away just inside their doorway, and grabs Josh’s wrists. “Okay,” he says, “Now, before you explode-“

“Where is my key!” Josh demands.

“I put it back, relax,” Drake says, but there’s a note of pleading in there, as if he knows arson isn’t something he can just shake off.

“I will not relax! I told you not to take it, I told you what it meant to me, and you took it anyway! And for what? So you could brew up some hallucinogenic ecstasy and channel your creative wonderland?”

“What? I didn’t do that.”

Josh jerks his hands away from Drake’s, which is hard to do, because Drake’s hands are warm and desperate on him, the way he’s always secretly enjoyed, but not right now. “Please! I read your notebook this morning when you were in the shower, and you synthesized MDMA—which is highly technical, by the way, so tell me how it’s possible you’re failing Chemistry?—then you threw in a little mescaline, and voilà! Tanner LaGrange’s secret recipe.”

“Oh man,” Drake says, sinking down into his armchair. “That’s got to be illegal.”

The pressure in Josh’s head quadruples. “So is burning down the school!”

“Yeah, but that was an accident.”

“This is the worst thing you’ve ever done! The two worst things you’ve ever done! And this time, you’re definitely old enough to be tried as an adult.”

Drake thinks for a few seconds, then slumps even further into the chair, his hands sliding up over his face in a way that makes Josh’s chest twist, hard and painful, because Drake should be happy-go-lucky, not scared and defeated.

“Look, maybe the fire destroyed all the evidence,” Josh offers. “Were you stealthy?”

“I was the definition of stealth,” Drake says, dropping his hands and looking up at Josh with the barest hint of hope in his eyes.

Josh grasps for more reassurances. “If the fire destroyed the school, then there’s no forensic evidence like fingerprints or, or whatever you left behind.”

“I didn’t leave anything behind,” Drake bristles, and that’s good; annoyance is much better than misery.

“And I’m sure the school has insurance. So all we really need to do is get rid of the drugs.”

“Whoa, wait.” Drake holds his hand up. “’Drugs’ is a really strong word. I mean, I made these tablets with my own two hands; they’re practically herbal.”

“Really? Did you happen to use any herbs in the process?” Josh demands, because what if they didn’t destroy all the evidence and the drug-sniffing dogs are already on their way?

“I’m just saying,” Drake says, stretching his legs out onto the coffee table. “You wouldn’t believe how hard it was to make this stuff, so I’m not about to waste it without taking my shot at writing the greatest song of all time.”

“You already write great songs,” Josh argues, but he can tell Drake has made up his mind. Fine. He’ll just have to find the stuff himself, and dispose of it before Drake can fry his brain or become some kind of underworld kingpin, which knowing Drake, could happen with little to no effort on his part, or entirely without his knowledge.

*

Of course Drake isn’t home with the police detectives show up. It’s just as well, because are they here to see Drake? Of course not; they’re here to question Josh, the sole keeper of the keys to the chemistry lab. So he sits on the sofa between mom and dad, rigid with nerves, while the detectives page casually through their pages of case notes.

Where were you on the night of the fire? How long have you had unrestricted access to the chemistry lab? Is there anyone who might want to frame you, burn down the school, hurt any of the faculty? The questions are actually pretty easy to answer, because Josh realizes that he is the suspect, and there isn’t even any lying required. Mom holds his hand the whole time, and Josh is just starting to relax when the second detective, a bald guy who looks like he a pro wrestler, sits back and says, “So you don’t really have an alibi for the night of the fire?”

“I…” Josh can tell his answer takes a beat too long, but he doesn’t exactly have an alibi, and to say he’d been in his room with Drake would mean bringing Drake into this whole mess, and lying, and the possibility that Drake might get in real trouble.

Stupid Tanner LaGrange.

“Mr. Nichols?”

“I was here,” Josh says, glancing at Mom and Dad. “It was Sunday night,” he says helplessly.

“But no one can verify that they saw you here.”

“Well, I—I…was online! I updated my Headbook account and everything!”

“But you see, anyone could do that for you,” bald detective says, and exchanges a look with his partner, which gets under Josh’s skin because he takes password protection very seriously—how many times has he told Drake about the importance of complex alphanumeric passwords?—and there is no way “anyone could do that” for him. He makes a strangled sound and feels Mom’s hand squeeze tight.

“If the conversation is going to go this way, then I think we need to call our lawyer,” she says, hard in a way Dad has never been able to pull off, and the detectives exchange another look that makes Josh’s palms all sweaty before the other one, a young, preppy guy with a goatee, puts away his glasses and says, “That won’t be necessary.”

“I didn’t do it,” Josh says after they’re gone, and Dad gives him a big strong hug that cracks Josh’s back in five places. “Of course you didn’t,” he says with such certainty that Josh hangs on just a little bit longer.

His cell phone has been buzzing in his pocket this entire time, so he lets Dad get one more slap on the back before he picks up.

“Josh, Josh, Josh.”

It’s Drake, but he sounds different—absent, in a way that makes Josh more nervous than a team of detectives in his living room. “Yes, it’s me.”

“Josh,” Drake says one more time, on a sigh. “I need to see you. I had an idea, but first I need to see you.”

“Where are you?” Josh shoves his feet into his sneakers even as he says it, running for his wallet and keys.

“Trevor’s basement. Come in the back door.” Maybe he doesn’t sound so bad after all, Josh thinks, until Drake adds, “It’s shaped like a person, only square.”

“I’ll be there in five minutes,” Josh says, and at least there aren’t any cops tailing him, because if they had been, they would’ve definitely noticed he was going at least eight miles over the speed limit the entire way there.

*

When Josh lets himself in Trevor’s basement door, Drake is curled up in a nest of furry beanbag chairs. The basement is dark, save for a hula-girl lamp that casts everything in the red tint of her skirt, and the unpredictable flicker of television.

“Oh hi, c’mere, brotha,” Drake says, light and easy, arms open wide.

“Where’s Trevor?”

“He had to go. Now, come here. I’ve been waiting for you. Take off your shoes so I know you’re staying for a while.”

Josh obeys without thinking, mostly because he wants a better look at Drake. “Did you take something? Did you take the stuff you made?”

“My recipe,” Drake says, “Tanner was right; I feel like I can do anything.” His face is warm, his hair mussed and damp at the roots when Josh gives him a quick pat-down. “That feels good,” Drake says, and touches Josh’s face in the same way, fingers working into Josh’s hair as though he’s going to massage Josh into submission, and okay, that really does feel good.

“That stuff is dangerous,” Josh says, settling onto a large blue beanbag. “You have to promise you won’t do it again. Look, I brought you some water. I read you should drink lots of water.” He uncaps the bottle, which Drake takes and guzzles greedily, chin lifted and throat working as though he’s wanted it for hours.

“I already had some ideas,” Drake says when he’s emptied the bottle, panting slightly. His mouth is wet and there are splotches of water all over his shirt. “I wrote them down. The music sounds so good--you sound good.”

“Well, you must not be listening, because I am very, very unhappy with you.” Josh shifts on his beanbag, and suddenly Drake is on him, crawling up his body and settling over him like a clingy blanket.

“Nah, you’re not. We shouldn’t be unhappy, man, we should just love each other.”

“I, uh.” Josh stares at the place where Drake’s hands are moving restlessly over his chest. “I think we already do love each other,” he says shakily.

“That’s good. I just, I just feel like it should be more. Josh, Josh,” he says softly, against Josh’s throat, a warm tickling gust of breath. “I didn’t know how good you felt.”

Josh has read about this part, too. Drake’s searching hands are just a side-effect of the drug, and so is the way he’s rolling his hips against Josh, as though he’s forgotten he’s not alone in his own bed.

“I thought you’d never get here. You took so long,” Drake says, which leaves his mouth wet and open on Josh’s throat. He sucks there, tongue stroking lightly, and Josh’s head falls backward for just a second, just a moment to enjoy the shivers of pleasure that scatter across his skin like sparks, as dangerous as everything else Drake has done.

He’s got to be crazy to let Drake do this, but he just holds on as Drake pants and sighs against him, stopping only to wrestle his own jeans open, and then there’s Drake, his underwear shoved down to his thighs and dick in his hand, hard and flushed dark, and so wet at the tip that when he lies back down on Josh—and who said he could do that?—it leaves a slick trail on Josh’s belly, where Drake has somehow opened his shirt.

This is where Josh knows he’s let things go too far, but there’s nothing he can do with the hot rub of Drake’s dick against his belly and his hands everywhere, leaving trails of scorching heat in all the places he’d never touch Josh in his right mind: the nape of his neck and the curve of his shoulders, searching for something solid to hold on to.

Drake’s mouth never stops. He leaves a chain of kisses around Josh’s neck before returning to that same spot, over and over, the scrape of teeth and hard suction as though he can’t get enough. Josh is reeling with the new knowledge that the hollow of his throat is such an erogenous zone, his arousal tempered by a vague abashment that Drake has to feel every gasp and moan that rumbles through his throat. But Drake’s mouth is so hot, and so busy sucking, hard bruising kisses that make Josh want to roll Drake over and just do it, go for it while Drake is still willing—mouth-kissing, nudity, and the whole nine yards.

And that is a pretty rotten thought to have about your brother.

“Okay wait, stop,” Josh says, trying to loosen Drake’s hold. “You’re going to—“ come all over me “regret this tomorrow.”

“Can’t stop, please,” Drake says, and maybe Josh can’t go down the path they’re headed, but when he sees Drake lift his red, kiss-swollen mouth—he’s seen Drake kiss girls, but his mouth has never looked like that—he pushes Drake off to the side and before Drake can do anything he’ll regret later, Josh takes him in hand, stroking hard and fast while Drake lies there, boneless and grateful.

“Josh, your hand,” Drake says, leaking against Josh’s palm like the greatest compliment he’s ever had. “Yes, yes, yes.”

He says yes a few more times, eyes fluttering closed as his chest heaves with every breath, and Josh genuinely hopes Drake isn’t having a heart attack, but then his fist slides over the head of Drake’s cock, which seems so impossibly swollen that he does it a few more times until Drake makes a sound like he’s dying and spills over Josh’s hand, again and again.

Maybe Josh is the one having the heart attack, he thinks as he watches the helpless clench of Drake’s abs, because he’s wanted to touch Drake Parker like this for years, and even though he’s going about it the wrong way, it’s still a rush to have Drake responding to every flex and twist of his hand.

“I’ll…be right back,” Josh says, and heads for the bathroom to wash his hands and refill Drake’s water bottle. While he’s there, carefully avoids his own reflection as he buttons his shirt, because he knows what he’ll see in the mirror: a guy who’s so turned on he can barely walk, a guy who just jerked off his brother—and, according to the news report that’s playing when he returns, a guy who’s the prime suspect for felony arson.

“This is wild,” Drake says as he takes the water from Josh for the second time. “That’s your picture on TV, they think you burned down the school.”

The room smells like sex and like Drake, who hasn’t even moved.

“Pull up your pants,” Josh says, abruptly sick of the whole situation. In a few hours—heck, maybe in a few minutes—Drake is going to sober up, and then what’s going to happen? Not that it’ll matter, if Josh is behind bars. “Get your things, and I’ll drive you home.”

“I’m tired,” Drake says. “And tired is the color of my bedspread.”

“No kidding,” Josh mutters, and for good measure, fills the water bottle one last time.

*

Megan had gone terrifyingly silent since their school burned down, but her jealousy appears to have disappeared along with Josh’s good reputation. The first thing she says when she comes home from school the next day is, “When you go to prison, can I have your G-O?”

Josh remains slumped on the sofa, where he’s waiting for the evening news to come on, the same lineup as the mid-day and morning news: his school photo next to footage of burned rubble. The worst part is the growing collection of interviews; teachers who say things like model student and can’t believe it, and Helen, who looks at her ring and says, “Mm hmm. With Josh Nichols, you can expect things to go down in flames.”

It hurts, but he’s all set to watch it again. Maybe it’ll put Megan in an even better mood.

“Is the other boob upstairs?” Megan asks, and Josh just shrugs even though he knows Drake has been in bed all day. Mom and Dad will be home soon. Everything is so remarkably normal, other than the looming threat of federal prosecution. Dad will probably start dinner while Mom changes her clothes, and then she’ll take over while Dad reads the paper. Everyone is so calm, which makes sense, considering that only he and Drake know about all the horrible things that have happened. Josh shuts his eyes and tries to nap, dozing for an hour or so until he feels a hand ruffle through his hair.

“Family dinner,” Mom declares, and sure enough, Dad is already boiling water in a pot and rustling through the cupboards. Mom must have peeked in on Drake, because when it’s time to eat, he slinks reluctantly down the stairs, looking more or less normal, and not at all like the back-alley junkie Josh has been imagining all day.

“How was school today, sweetie?” Mom asks Megan.

“Fine,” Megan says. “School is good. It keeps kids off the streets, and prevents unsightly hickeys. Like those,” she says, pointing to Josh’s neck.

Josh’s fork clatters to the floor as he clamps his hand over his throat, in the general area where Drake’s mouth had been. “What? There are no hickeys,” he says, his eyes locking with Drake’s, which does nothing but remind him of the way Drake had stared at him all the way home, saying Your eyes are so blue, Josh; they’re just…blue. I wrote that in my notebook, you know. Eyes like yours will make a good song because…

Because why? he’d asked softly, and Drake had slumped against the seat, finally fading, and said, Because they’re so blue they hurt, and I already wrote down how all the chords should go.

He wonders if Drake is even noticing his eyes right now, if they’re even on talking speaking terms, if Drake is going to make any attempt to downplay the marks on Josh’s neck.

“I thought you said you didn’t believe in hickeys,” Drake says casually, which is true. Josh does say that, but that had been before he’d been held down by Drake and felt the sweet, desperate suction of his mouth.

“That…is true,” Josh says, hand still over his neck. He’s not taking any chances. “Which is why that isn’t possibly what’s going on here. If anything, I’ve got a rash from the stress of being falsely accused of arson!” He needs to breathe into a paper bag at the very thought: prison and a rash, wouldn’t that be a picnic?

“Josh,” Mom says, her face twisted with displeasure. “It’s no crime to have a hickey, but it’s definitely in poor taste. But in case it’s really a rash, I got your prescription refilled on Monday.”

“What kind of rash can you get from someone’s mouth?” Megan asks Mom, all false innocence. Josh doesn’t miss the way Drake is staring—the way they’re all staring—at his neck now, just waiting for his hand to drop. When the doorbell rings, Josh leaps up from his seat and bustles to the door, hand still in place.

“I’ll get it, I’ll get it—Mr. Roland.”

“Josh.” Mr. Roland doesn’t seem particularly happy to see him. “I’m just here to pick up the extra key to the chemistry lab.”

Josh blinks. “Uh, the chemistry lab that burned to the ground?”

“That’s right.”

“The chemistry lab that no longer has doors or doorknobs or locks?”

“That’s the one.”

Josh frowns at Mr. Roland for a few seconds. “But what’s the point? I mean, the key doesn’t even go to anything now; it’s just a key.”

“It’s that lax attitude that causes accidents, Josh,” Mr. Roland says, and holds out his hand. “Now, the key?”

“Sure, I understand.” Josh trudges upstairs and retrieves the key for Mr. Roland. He takes a moment to wipe it clean of fingerprints, just in case Drake had forgotten. By the time he’s finished and Mr. Roland is gone, he’s lost his appetite.

“I’m going to go lie down for a while,” he says, as his family enjoys their dinner. He doesn’t bother hiding his throat, but when he goes to his room, he stands in front of the mirror and looks at the dark bruises, left there by Drake’s mouth. Drake had known what he’d been doing—well, maybe he hadn’t known who he’d been doing it to, but he’s definitely got the technique down pat.

Except, he had known who he’d been with, hadn’t he? From the moment he’d dialed the phone, it had been Josh, Josh, Josh. Maybe that’s why Drake has been so distant and vaguely hostile since it had happened.

Drake comes in while Josh is still in front of the mirror. He climbs into his bed without a greeting and starts fiddling around with his guitar; not really playing; just tightening some strings and holding it the way he sometimes does for comfort. It’s not as though Josh had expected anything in particular, and certainly not an apology, but some acknowledgement would be nice.

“Do you know who did this to me?” Josh asks, but Drake just keeps his eyes on the chords he’s walking through on his guitar, finger over finger, single-minded in a way he’s normally not.

“Oh, so you think it’s normal for me to just go around letting people suck on my neck? I mean, I’ve told you that Mindy doesn’t even French kiss, but you just thought, ‘Yes indeed, there’s Josh, walking around with a bunch of unsightly hickeys!’” He does the meanest impression he can manage, the one where Drake sounds like an utter moron, but it doesn’t make him feel any better.

“I know who did it,” Drake says, his hand stilling on his guitar. He spares Josh a sideways glance, and Josh realizes with a jolt of insight that Drake isn’t being coy—he’s nervous. Drake Parker is nervous.

“Well…good,” Josh says. Despite everything, it doesn’t feel right to kick Drake when he’s down. “Then I’ll just be getting dressed for work.”

“Good,” Drake says bloodlessly, and because he can’t think of what else to do, Josh takes his work clothes to the bathroom and gets changed there.

*

Helen gives him the stinkeye when she sees him, and he’s not sure whether it’s because of the school or the hickeys, until she sends him to reorganize the projection room, which means it’s probably the hickeys. He needs the time alone—more importantly, the time away from Drake—and it soothes him to mindlessly stack boxes and label each one with the straight, even lines of his own handwriting. At first he thinks Helen must have been doing him a real favor, until there’s a light knock on the door and when he opens it, Mindy says, “Helen said I could find you here. Why aren’t you in the lobby?” and then, as she takes a look at him, “Oh.”

“I can explain,” he says quickly.

She crosses her arms. “All right.”

“Actually, I can’t. But it’s not what it looks like.”

“There’s nothing else it could be,” she says, and just like that, she’s not girlfriend-Mindy, but evil-Mindy from all those years of cutthroat competition.

They stand there for a few seconds in a standoff where things could still be fixed. The thing is, Mindy knows Drake. All Josh has to do is drop Drake’s name to make that look on her face disappear, but the thing is…he doesn’t want to. The last thing Drake needs right now is a confrontation with Mindy.

The whole thing had been Drake’s fault, but Josh can’t stop thinking of how Drake had felt in his hand as he’d jerked him off, hot and slick in his palm. Every once in a while, he lets himself think about the moment when Drake’s eyes had drifted open and they’d watched each other for a few endless seconds, every squeeze of Josh’s hand reflected in Drake’s eyes. It’s stupid, and Josh hates himself for thinking about it this way, but it’s the closest he’s ever felt to Drake.

*

When he gets home, Drake is still in the same spot.

“Did you get your song?” Josh asks flatly. “Was it worth everything?”

“I got it,” Drake says, and strums a slow chord that sends something dark and sensual trickling down Josh’s spine. He can hear the strike of Drake’s fingers on every string. He’s heard Drake play before; he’s got every one of Drake’s songs on his G-O, but this is different. As he plays, still halting and uncertain, the way Drake plays when things are still coming together and subject to change, he hums some lyrics and mumbles others, but Josh catches a few snatches of phrase every now and then. take me down to the basement, hold me down, take me down, and Drake knows he’s here, which means it has to be at least partly for Josh’s benefit.

It’s the first indication he’s given of his take on what had happened. He’s been after the ultimate song this whole time, and now he’s gotten it, broken out from good to great, and so what if the song flays Josh open for everyone to see?

“Congratulations,” he says softly. “I guess Tanner was right.”

“Yeah.” Drake’s hand stills on his guitar. “But you were right, too; it wasn’t worth it. I flushed the rest of the, you know, but I’m not sorry I did it, because it made me realize there’s this whole part of myself I wasn’t putting into my music.”

“How great for you,” Josh says, and he waits for the usual bitterness to rise up, but it doesn’t come. “Mindy saw me tonight and broke up with me.”

“How come?”

“Because she decided she didn’t like my delightful sense of humor. Why do you think?”

“I don’t know. Because she’s already suffering some kind of withdrawal from school?”

“No. Because she saw…” Josh doesn’t want to say it, so he jerks a thumb at his neck.

“Then why are you so calm? Aren’t you gonna yell at me, tell me how I always ruin everything?”

“I don’t know,” Josh says, taking off his uniform and folding it for later. At least after everything he’s been through, there’s still jammie-time. “I guess it’s not really worth it.”

“But Mindy, she’s like your soul mate.” Drake is watching him change, which for the first time ever, makes Josh extremely self-conscious.

“Not really,” Josh says. “We were more like good friends. And I know you remember what I did last night, so you can stop pretending you think I’m into Mindy like that.”

“You mean what I made you do,” Drake says. “I remember everything, and you were just doing what you always do—helping out. I think that’s why I called you; I knew you’d give me whatever I wanted. And I wanna make it up to you.” He digs around in his pocket for a few seconds, and then holds his hand out so that Josh is forced to come in close.

“You said you flushed it!” he screeches when he sees the tiny pill, and backs away as though it has the power to unzip Drake’s pants all over again.

“I did!” Drake says. “I mean, metaphorically.”

“There is no metaphorical flushing,” Josh says. “There is flushing and there is not flushing.”

“Just listen,” Drake says in his most convincing voice, the one that has talked Josh into a hundred bad situations. “I saved this one for you, so you could see what it was like. So we’d be even.”

“I can see how you’d think that destroying a few million of my brain cells would make us even, but I’m going to pass,” Josh says, and before Drake can talk him into anything stupid, lunges forward and takes the pill from Drake’s hand.

He marches down the hall, drops it in the toilet and flushes with emphasis, to show those drugs that he really means it. Nothing can ever make them even, but it’s kind of nice that Drake has been thinking about him, for once.

From the bathroom, Josh can hear a few snatches of Drake’s song: take me down, hold me down, do it fast before I ask. Apparently, he’s been thinking about Josh a lot.

His voice makes something pull tight deep in Josh’s belly, and the drugs might be flushing through the plumbing right now, but...Josh slowly opens the medicine cabinet…Drake doesn’t know that. In fact, Drake can be downright gullible, so when Josh twists the top off a bottle of aspirin and looks at the small white pill in his hand, it’s like a free pass to everything.

This harmless little pill can buy him a few hours of being able to look at Drake any way he pleases, and maybe, if Drake doesn’t seem too put off, able to touch. He won’t take advantage; he wouldn’t do that. But Drake wants to make it up to him, and it would almost be like doing Drake a favor. He shuts the door and looks down at the aspirin, his heart thumping madly at the very idea. If he does this, it’ll be a lot like a lie, and everyone knows he can’t lie—except maybe Drake will blame his freakout on the drugs.

It’s not like he’d be doing anything as bad as what Drake has done to him over the past few days, and that’s what makes up his mind, because where would Drake get off being mad at him, after getting him blamed for burning down the school? Okay, he’d better not think of that right now. The lurch of his stomach just proves that he needs this distraction, and Drake has proven very, very good at being a distraction.

The pill is starting to stick to his sweaty palms, so he flings the bathroom door open and marches back, resolved in his decision.

“Okay,” he says as he returns to the room and makes a show of swallowing the pill dry, which makes him hack pathetically until Drake climbs down and throws a can of Mocha Cola at him. “Okay,” he wheezes when all that is over, and the aspirin has made it all the way down. “Make it up to me, brotha.”

“Holy crap, I didn’t think you’d really do it,” Drake says. For a second he looks at Josh as though he’s never seen him before, but then he takes his hand--takes his hand?--and leads him over to the sofa. “You’ll feel better here. Safer, just in case. We’ll put some music on, and you won’t believe how good it is.”

“I want to hear the song you’re working on now,” Josh says. How long is it supposed to take until this thing takes effect? Should he already be writhing around on the sofa? Just to be safe, he decides to wait a few minutes.

“Yeah? I didn’t know if you’d like it.”

“I like all your songs.” Josh doesn’t have to be high to admit that. Sometimes, he doesn’t think Drake understands that Josh is his biggest fan. “And this one is especially…” He gestures widely.

“It’s about you,” Drake blurts.

“Kinda got that,” Josh says, and then decides he should probably be beyond sarcasm by now. He should probably be to the detached non-sequitur stage right about now, so he says, “I like things about me,” and “Can I hear it?”

Drake scrambles to get his guitar, and settles at the end of the sofa with one leg tucked beneath him. It’s still in the composition stage, so he has to improvise a few sections, but when he sings, thought I’d die when you pulled the love right out of me, Josh doesn’t miss the rough edge to his voice that isn’t usually there. Either Drake been hiding this side of himself—the side that sounds like it just rolled around in the sheets for a few hours; got them good and dirty, and can’t wait to do it again—or he really hadn’t known about it. Josh has seen Drake with girls, and it’s all so sterile compared to this, so maybe Tanner LaGrange really had given Drake the key to everything.

The bridge leaves Josh stunned; an endless loop of want you to do it again, do it again, take me down, hold me down… where Drake doesn’t meet his eyes, and then it’s quiet.

“It’s not finished,” Drake says as he puts his guitar away. While he’s up, he turns on the stereo, dims the lights, and brings Josh another can of soda. “You feel it yet?” he asks, and Josh nods wordlessly, grateful for the drink that keeps him from having to say anything about what Drake has just shown him. The touch of a thumb across his neck makes him jump, but it’s just Drake, drawing a steady line across the marks he’d left. “Do these hurt?”

“No. It doesn’t feel like anything. When you put them there…” He drifts off as it occurs to him that he’s got a free pass to say anything he likes. Drake certainly had, when he’d taken the pills. “It hurt a little, but it mostly felt good.” Drake’s song and the thumb on his throat have left him so flushed he doesn’t even have to fake it. His pajama pants don’t do anything to hide the way that small touch thunders through every part of his body, as though Drake is stroking him through his pants rather than simply checking his handiwork.

“You were so cool about it,” Drake says, his warm, callused fingers trailing down to Josh’s collarbone. “And I feel really bad about the school, and the police, and all that junk.”

“Th-That’s okay,” Josh says, because suddenly he knows what’s coming next; he knows exactly how Drake intends to set things right, give his apology, make them even.

“It makes you feel good, right?” Drake asks. Josh doesn’t have to answer; Drake’s eyes are on his lap, so it’s out in the open exactly how good he feels.

“Drake,” Josh says. Drake had said his name last night. “Drake,” he says again, and it means yes. His whole body is saying yes, but Drake had been the one to reach out, and Josh can’t do it; he can’t let loose enough to just take what he’s wanted for years.

“I can’t,” he moans, throwing himself back onto the sofa and flinging his arm up across his eyes. This whole thing is ridiculous: the aspirin, Drake’s offer, and his own inability to follow through.

But Drake misinterprets his surrender for submission of a different kind, and when his hands slide up Josh’s thighs, that husky voice is back. “I know it feels like that, but you don’t have to do anything.”

Drake has always been good with his hands. Josh thinks he could be better with his mind if he really wanted to, but Drake wants to touch everything instead, and Josh has covertly watched Drake’s hands since they’ve known one another, at first hoping some of that grace would rub off on him, and later, a different type of admiration. As it turns out, he’s not just good with a guitar. His hands move torturous circles up Josh’s thighs until Josh thinks he can’t bear it; until his balls ache in a way that means he needs something more—and then those hands are suddenly tracing a slow path beneath Josh’s waistband, back and forth, hardly making any progress at all until they bump the head of Josh’s cock.

Josh presses his arm against his eyes so hard he sees stars. “Please,” he pants. He’s done holding back; his legs fall open and Drake slides a palm over his balls, like a question and an answer.

He can feel Drake pulling at his waistband. The natural response is to lift his hips so Drake can pull the pajamas all the way down, and then there they are: Josh with his eyes covered—he can’t move his arm, can’t bear to see what Drake is seeing—and Drake being such a good sport, holding Josh’s cock in his hand and moving it so slowly that it’s killing Josh. He wants more than these slow fingers of pleasure; he wants to thrust up into Drake’s fist, or a thumb circling his cock head. The weak, “Drake,” he manages to get out doesn’t say anything about the other things he wants, like the taste of Drake’s mouth, or the weight of Drake’s body on his own.

“Wait,” he says, and removes his arm, even though he still can’t look. His dick shouldn’t be anywhere near Drake’s hand, and if he can get out of this quickly enough, he can go jerk off in the bathroom like always. “Stop,” he says with a little more force.

“Drake, stop,” he says, and he hates the confusion in Drake’s eyes when he lets go in the middle of a long, twisting stroke and falls backwards, to the other end of the sofa. “I’m sorry,” he says, yanking his pants up as well as he can. “I shouldn’t have—I’m sorry.” Now it’s his chest that feels tight and heavy. Maybe he’s more like Drake than he’d thought, because he’s only now realizing how awful it is, to have tricked--

“What’s wrong? I can do other stuff,” Drake says nonchalantly, but there it is again, nerves, when Drake has nothing to be nervous about.

“It’s not that. I..I didn’t take the drugs. I flushed it like I said I was going to, and then I pretended…it was stupid. I’m sorry.”

Drake just looks stupefied. “What? You had to have taken it. I saw you.”

“Aspirin.”

“But you’re all…hot and bothered.” Drake makes a humiliating motion toward Josh’s lap, which he tries to cover by crossing his arms in his lap.

“Excuse me, but you were giving me a hand job! And before that, you-“ Josh stops abruptly, unsure if he wants to give this away, but why not? He’s already given everything else away, and once Drake thinks about it, he’ll figure it all out. “That song is hot, okay? And you said it was about me, and then you made me talk about how I felt when you were sucking on my neck, which in case I haven’t mentioned it, was pretty freaking good.”

“So, wait, I turned you on?”

“Yes!”

Drake squints the way he does when he’s figuring things out, and then says, “Ohhh. That means you liked jerking me off, too. No wonder you were so good at it.”

“I was good at it?”

“Not the point!”

“Right. I know. The point is, I’m sorry I lied to you.”

“No sorries,” Drake says, and maybe he’s the one who ought to do magic, because before Josh can ask what he means, he’s getting all the things he wanted but could never say: Drake’s mouth—hot and dirty as he licks his way into Josh’s mouth—and the weight of his body, grinding down as though they’re well past a simple makeout session, which Josh supposes they are.

“That song, huh?” Drake mumbles later, when they’re pulling at each other’s clothes, uncoordinated, both trembling on the verge of orgasm. “Are we gonna do this every time I play it?”

Josh slides his hand down the back of Drake’s sweatpants just to see what happens. He doesn’t expect Drake to be so open to it, to spread his legs and hump forward with Josh’s hand spread across one small, smooth ass cheek. He certainly doesn’t expect Drake to say, “Yeah, like that,” as though Josh has done something special. Josh isn’t certain, but he’s a quick study, and when he lets his fingers drift down between Drake’s legs, gently prodding behind his balls, Drake pushes back against his fingers and seizes up, everything going silent as Josh finally, finally lets go, thrusting up against Drake the way he’s always wanted, breathing in the same ragged rhythm as they come in long, helpless pulses and cling together as though it might hurt to let go.

“Yes,” Josh says later, so much later that Drake has probably forgotten the question. “Every time. And no offense, but it needs a lot of work.”

Drake lets his head drop onto Josh’s chest. “No problem, because word on the street is that there’s no school for a month.”

“Lucky you,” Josh says, stroking down Drake’s spine in a way that makes him arch and purr with contentment.

“Lucky you,” Drake says. Josh can feel the smirk against his chest.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Lucky me.”