Drake holds his guitar with one hand and checks his cell with the other. No calls. From backstage, he can hear the other band winding down and the restless murmur of the crowd. In a few minutes, they’re going to call his name, and Josh isn’t here. He’s not even answering his phone, which makes it feel personal, especially since Josh knows Drake likes him there when he debuts a song for the first time. He’s Drake’s lucky charm—his manager, and he should be here.

“C’mon, kid,” the MC calls as he passes back into the wings, and Drake takes a deep breath, runs his fingers through his hair, and steps into the spotlight.

*

He’s great, of course. At least, that’s what they tell him when it’s over and he’s riding high on applause and eager hands and all the offers that always come after his shows. And it’s nice to hear that he’s a rock god, but it’s not the same as hearing it from his manager. Plus, if Josh were here, then they could laugh at all the flattery and pile into Drake’s car to discuss his performance all the way home.

But Josh isn’t here, and he hadn’t even bothered to beg off with some halfhearted excuse about why he couldn’t be there. No, that would require actually speaking to Drake, which Josh hasn’t done since last night, when things had fallen apart after a perfectly typical scuffle between them had gone a little…off course.

There’s always been a certain way he and Josh fight when they’re truly angry, with unwritten boundaries that make fists off limits, but leave a good hard spank as a perfectly acceptable outlet for their frustration. And sometimes they get the occasional low-level arousal going when they wrestle, but Drake has never found himself as unexpectedly turned on as he had last night, enjoying it against his better judgment as he’d twisted in and out of Josh’s grip. He doesn’t remember Josh feeling that fantastic, or having ever wanting to arch against him the way he’d done last night.

And Josh had definitely noticed. The fight had immediately completely gone out of him, and when Drake had looked up, he’d been sitting motionless, wide-eyed, with his palms held aloft as though it were some kind of stick-up. Heh, stick-up. Drake supposes it had been, in a way.

Drake drives home alone, and is curled in bed with his guitar working on a pretty spectacular bout of self-pity when Josh comes through the window, way past curfew. It takes Drake a few disoriented seconds to realize the scraping sound at the glass isn’t an intruder, because Josh has never used the window or curfew. Mom and Dad don’t even check to see if Josh is inside at bedtime, because where else would he be?

Drake picks out a few disgruntled notes on his guitar while Josh gathers himself up from the floor, where he’s fallen in his usual ungraceful way. To keep the weirdness alive, Josh doesn’t say anything at all. He just heads for his closet--god forbid he’d be late for jammie-time, Drake thinks as he plays a stark, angry chord.

“Blown off by my brother,” he sings in a low voice, “Brother won’t return my calls. But it don’t matter, ‘cause he didn’t wanna come to my show at aaaaall.”

Josh springs out from behind the closet and looks at Drake for the first time. His horrified expression is a relief—he hadn’t intentionally missed the show—and it goes a long way to relax the coil of tension pulling tight at Drake’s spine. “The Blue Star! Drake, I’m so sorry. I was at the library and I spaced, and—“ He wilts. “I’m such a jerk. How did your new song go over?”

“Fine,” Drake admits. “But dude, it wasn’t cool to blow me off for a room full of books.”

“I didn’t, I swear. I just forgot. I’ve had a lot on my mind.”

Yeah, like one hundred and one ways to make your brother feel like Satan. Drake just keeps strumming the ‘Josh let me down blues’ until Josh gets the nerve to come halfway across the room and say, “Want to play it for me now?”

Drake could leave him hanging, but Josh’s eyes are so pleading that he just shifts his hands on his guitar and scoots toward the wall so that Josh can leap onto the mattress, settling in with his feet under the blankets.

Drake plays the first few notes slowly, somewhat appeased by Josh’s apology, but mostly by this. There’s nothing like an audience that’s wild for him, but there’s something to be said for the private sessions he shares with Josh in their room. Josh listens to the lyrics, and Drake likes that he can glance up at any point and see Josh nodding along, his eyes never straying from Drake. He watches Drake different than other people watch him; Drake can feel the difference, and maybe Josh is scared off when their wrestling turns a little sexy, but when they’re together like this, quiet and focused, it doesn’t seem like too far of a stretch that he might be open to more.

Except that Drake knows better, now. Apparently, Josh isn’t open to that at all.

He glances up at Josh on his favorite bits, checking his reaction each time. Josh always seems to know which lines are his favorites and which riffs he’s most proud of. Tonight, he drags it out a little longer than he needs to, finesses the last chorus so Josh will remember how much he likes these moments and forget Drake’s unfortunate slip-up from the night before. Josh is pretty easy to distract that way.

Sure enough, when Drake strums the last note, Josh gives him two thumbs up. “That was fantastic. Your best yet,” he says, and his eyes are warm and smiling; he means it, even though it’s what he always says.

“You think? Did you notice the part with the-“

“Yeah, and the-“ Josh mimes a guitar riff that Drake picks up for real, and they end up grinning at each other, all forgiven.

“I really am sorry about missing the show,” Josh says. “My paper isn’t exactly going well, and it counts for thirty percent of our grade. How’s yours going?”

Drake shrugs. His copy of the novel is somewhere in the back seat of his car, still in its cellophane wrapping. “Eh, you know. More than I ever wanted to know about magicians.”

Josh gapes at him. “Magicians? The Great Gatsby has nothing to do with the Great Doheny, how do you not know this? Have you even read it? What about all the class discussions we’ve had over the past month? You’re in class every day; there’s no way you could have missed everything.”

Drake tries to think back, but, Brianna, the girl who sits directly in front of him, has a short new haircut that exposes the soft nape of her neck and allows him to see right past her shoulder to the cleavage she keeps on display almost every day. Ah, that probably explains it. “Settle down, don’t we have two whole days left?”

“Not two whole days! One day. And this time you can’t just turn in a signed copy of your Shark Notes, Drake; you have to write at least five pages that make sense. Not a book report, but a thoughtful analysis of the plot or characters.”

“I’ve got time.”

“Headaches,” Josh mutters, but it doesn’t sound convincing.

“Anyway, there are more important things to worry about. The guy at the Blue Star said he wants my manager to give him a call,” Drake says, pleased when Josh perks up.

“Cool. I’m on it,” Josh says as he climbs down, and Drake can’t help thinking that no matter how many times he’s contemplated asking Josh to stay, he’ll never do it for real, because tonight for the first time, he knows what Josh’s answer would be.

*

Drake scrapes out his paper just after two o’clock on the morning it’s due. It’s good enough that he wants to read part of it for Josh, but Josh had gone to bed early with a hot water bottle that Mom had brought him wrapped in a towel, cooing with sympathy the whole while. It used to bug Drake the way Josh had latched onto his mom from the beginning, hungry for her affection in a way that’s a little pathetic, but who else is going to take care of him? Not Walter, who can barely put his own pants on in the morning. Drake thinks he and Josh do a good job taking care of each other, but for times when Josh is particularly needy, he’s happy to let Mom take over.

He’s just climbing into bed when Mom slips into their room. “Sorry, sweetie,” she whispers. “Wait. Why aren’t you asleep?”

“Why aren’t you?” Drake makes a point of fluffing his pillow and hopes these visits aren’t a nightly occurrence, because that would be gross.

She holds up a glass of water and with the other hand, a thermometer. “In case you didn’t notice, your brother is sick.”

Drake glances at the motionless lump of blankets on Josh’s bed. “He’s sleeping.”

“Not sleeping,” the lump says miserably. “Not with two hours of Drake’s hunt-and-peck typing.”

“Hey,” Drake says. “You didn’t say anything.”

“Because it hurts to speak,” Josh moans.

“Oh, you poor thing.” Mom sits on the edge of Josh’s bed and pulls the covers down so she can touch his face. “I don’t suppose with this fever I could talk you into a haircut,” she sighs, but her hand lingers on his forehead, smoothing back the long, damp pieces that are forever in Josh’s face.

Drake turns onto his side so he can watch, feeling strangely quiet. Mom strokes down Josh’s cheek and across the curve of his jaw, a gentle touch that Josh easily accepts, his eyes drooping shut so slowly Drake thinks he may have drifted off. As she soothes him, she reads the back of a small white bottle.

“Do you think you can swallow a few pills?” she asks softly.

At first, Josh turns his face toward her hand, but then he struggles up onto his elbows and lets her feed him a few tablets followed by a long swallow of water. When he’s done, his mouth and chin are gleaming wet, and Drake suddenly can’t breathe through the tug of longing that rises up from nowhere. There are a lot of things he can have with Josh, but this week seems to be all about discovering the things he can’t.

He shouldn’t care. It’s not like he wants to be Josh’s nursemaid, or tuck him into bed the way Mom is doing right now, but their soft murmurs make him roll onto his other side, curled away from his uneasy reaction to what should be nothing at all.


*

Drake steers clear of Josh for the next few days. He’s whiny and annoying when he’s sick, and Drake definitely doesn’t want to catch anything—or repeat that wrenching feeling from the other night. He’s lived a pain-free existence for this long; he’d be crazy to go after something out of his reach when there are so very many girls right at arm’s length.

He’s thinking about one of them in particular as he makes himself a sandwich after school, but then Josh bursts through the door and shouts, “Drake!” and the knife he’d been using to spread mustard falls clattering to the floor.

“Geez, what’s your problem?” Drake kicks the knife out of sight before reaching for another.

“My problem is that I have a failing grade in English and it’s all your fault!”

Drake spreads some more mustard on his sandwich and considers how this could possibly be his fault.

“How could you forget to turn in my paper when I was sick? I mean, I’m assuming you wouldn’t be so intentionally destructive, but maybe I should rethink that assumption!”

Drake winces, the knife poised in mid-air. “Ohhhh.”

“Oh? Drake, what happened?”

This probably isn’t going to go over very well, but he barrels ahead anyhow. “Look, I’m sorry. I was going to turn it in, but then Alyssa Sprightly was wearing a belly shirt, and it was kind of a big deal.”

Josh’s eyes go wide—the same way they had when he’d felt Drake’s erection, as though he’s endured a terrible injury—before he bellows, “Oh yeah? Is this a big deal?” and rips the edge of Drake’s t-shirt so hard it whips him into the side of the counter.

“Belly shirt!” Josh declares, like an insane person.



His hip throbbing, Drake grabs the counter and looks down at the bare strip of skin where the fabric has been torn away, pissed off and kind of impressed at the same time. As far as assaults go, it’s extreme. “Dude, what are you doing?” he demands, shoving Josh in the chest just because it seems like something he ought to do, which gives Josh the chance to shove him back, until they’re taking turns shoving their way into a level of fury that serves as the outlet Drake’s been needing for days—months, maybe. The anger is a lot better than the crappy feeling he’s been carrying around ever since Josh missed his show.

“I see you overcame your love of belly shirts long enough to turn in your own paper,” Josh pants as he struggles to dodge Drake’s open-handed slap. Mom gets to pet Josh, but Drake gets this: a stinging palm as he lands blows wherever he can get them. “You are the worst.”

“You’re the worst!” Drake yells, but he knows Josh well enough to know when to run away. There’s a clumsy, bruising chase up the stairs where Drake manages to keep ahead by a hair, until he hesitates a second too long when they get to their room, and Josh takes him down with a flying tackle that lands Drake face-first on Josh’s bed.

He grapples for the edge of the bed, but Josh has snagged him by the waistband and reeled him in. Man, Josh is strong, because Drake is pretty sure he’s still trying to get away, and then getting away isn’t an issue anymore because Josh sits on his back and whacks his ass with an open palm, ranting about belly shirts and selfish jerks the whole while.

At first, it kind of hurts. Josh means for it to hurt, at least. But after about twenty slaps and a lost shoe, Drake stops kicking his heels at Josh’s hands and admits that he just might be enjoying the excitement, he probably likes the attention, and he definitely likes the way Josh’s wide hand feels on his ass. His leg is held fast by Josh’s other hand, pressed into the mattress so he can’t kick, and between the way Josh’s fingers are curled into his inner thigh and the way each slap forces his hips into the mattress, Drake is hard again; desperately so, and Josh just keeps on going. It’s on the tip of his tongue to say Josh, wait, but it really does feel good, and it’s easier to just brace his arms against the bed and let it happen.

His skin is awash with liquid heat where the blows are landing, and it bleeds all the way through him until he’s caught somewhere Josh had never meant for him to be. Maybe Josh hears his undignified gasps, or maybe he just remembers what had happened last time, because his hand stills for the briefest moment.

It stills, but doesn’t stop, as though he’s not quite sure how to stop. He keeps going, a few more thwacks that have slowed until they’re too slow and easy to do any harm. The fight has gone out of him. It almost feels—Drake rests his cheek on the bedspread and tries to catch his breath, waiting for each blow to fall. It almost feels as though Josh is touching him.

Josh hesitates again, his hand slipping upward on Drake’s thigh, but then he clears his throat and climbs off Drake with a delicacy that contradicts everything he’s done in the past fifteen minutes—not exactly what Drake had hoped, in a wild spike of hope, to happen.

“What are you doing?” Drake asks, rolling onto his back with a groan. The cold air hits the overheated skin of his belly where his shirt is ripped away, and Josh has the nerve to slap his hand over his eyes as though he’s seen something obscene.

Josh peeks from between his fingers as Drake stretches out, dipping his fingers beneath his waistband in an attempt to nudge his erection into a more comfortable position. “Apologizing?” Josh squeaks.

Drake frowns and props himself up on his elbows. No. No, no, no. He can’t have just imagined what just happened. He can still feel the impression of Josh’s fingers on the inside of his thigh. “You mean you’re just going to leave me like this again?”


“I—what?” Josh suddenly doesn’t have any problem meeting Drake’s eyes, and his actions might be confusing, but there’s no mistaking the shock Drake sees there. “I mean, yes. What else would I do?”

“Finish what you started?”

Josh chokes out a laugh. “I didn’t mean to start anything.”

Of course he didn’t. Josh never means to do anything that’s not safe and predictable and completely devoid of fun.

“I’ll have you know it’s a perfectly normal reaction,” Drake says, getting up and flinging himself on the sofa. “Very healthy and…normal.”

“I know,” Josh says quickly. “I saw it on Oprah. I’m not judging you.”

“You saw it on Oprah,” Drake repeats, and reaches for the remote. “Congratulations. And by the way, you owe me a shirt.”

*

The one good thing is that this has turned into a situation where Drake is mad at Josh, rather than the other way around. Josh makes wafflecakes for breakfast, with two layers of syrup just the way Drake likes it, but Drake just grabs a handful of Toasty Grahams.

“What did you see on Oprah?” he asks between bites.

Josh looks up from his soggy wafflecake, confusion clouding his face. “What?”

“You said you saw something on Oprah and aren’t judging me.”

“Oh.” Josh gives him a sad smile. “She did a show on spanking fetishes. All kinds of fetishes, really. Pies, peanut butter, ladies underwear…but mostly spanking. Oprah does not judge,” he adds forcefully.

Drake screws up his face. “Peanut butter?”

“Yeah, some people like to, um-“

“Never mind,” Drake says on his way out. “It doesn’t matter, because I do not have a spanking fetish.”

*

And what’s wrong with Josh anyway, that Drake had all but begged him to make out, and Josh had assumed the whole thing was a fetish that probably doesn’t even exist? Oprah’s been doing this for forty or fifty years; she’s probably just running out of ideas, by now. Tomorrow it’ll be a show on pudding fixations or something--although the idea of Josh feeding him pudding does sound kind of nice, and wow, maybe he really does have all these fetishes, and will have to attend group therapy with a bunch of sex weirdos for the rest of his life.

But wanting Josh’s hand for something more than a thump on the head doesn’t seem unreasonable. Still, he’s already asked and Josh had said no, so he’s got no choice but to let it go and keep his grudge against Josh alive just on principle.

He drops by the Premiere that evening, and as he comes around the counter, overhears Josh talking to Eric. “It’s just, and now he’s mad at me even though I had to beg Mrs. Hayfer just to get a B!” Drake stops, just out of sight. Josh is making angry swipes across the candy counter with his rag, and it looks, from the expression on Eric’s face, that he’s been talking about this for a while.

“But why exactly would Drake be mad at you, then?” Eric asks, after a hesitation.

This, Drake would like to hear. As if Josh would ever admit that anything sexy has happened to him in his life. Sexual. Does Josh even think about sex unless Oprah brings it up first?

Josh waves the question away with his hand. “You know, the fight. I may have ripped his shirt.”

“You ripped his shirt?” Eric says, fidgeting uncomfortably. “Josh, that doesn’t sound very healthy.”

“It was to make a point,” Josh assures him. “It was well within the context of the argument!”

Belly shirts, Drake thinks dreamily. Then he sees a girl wearing one and almost wanders off to see if her skin feels as soft as it looks, but he wants to hear the rest of this conversation, so he keeps his back to the counter.

“I don’t know,” Eric says. “Think about it from Drake’s point of view. You’re a lot bigger than him, and you tore his shirt off. It must have been pretty scary.”

Drake crosses one boot over the other and smirks. Yeah, Josh is some beast.

“You are not seeing the big picture, here,” Josh moans. “Trust me, Drake isn’t afraid of me. He isn’t afraid of anything, except maybe Megan.”

There’s a silence that goes on for so long that Drake glances over his shoulder, to where Josh is staring at the counter, his shoulders slumped, and Eric is staring at him thoughtfully, which is never a good thing. “You’re probably the only thing Drake is really scared of,” Eric says, and Drake’s smirk disappears. Eric’s words don’t make him think about the fighting, but about the way he’d felt when he’d seen Mom’s hands on Josh’s face.

The counter is starting to dig into his back, so Drake pushes off and comes around to Josh’s side, making a big entrance just in case Eric tries to say anything else. “Hey, brotha,” Drake says with an extra swagger just to show Eric how not scared he is. “What’s the word with the Blue Star? Are they dying to have me back?”

Josh gives him a helpless look, as though he doesn’t understand where Drake had come from or what he wants. “Well, I’ve been pretty sick. And busy trying to get Mrs. Hayfer to accept my late paper,” he says, and okay, Josh still looks sickly enough that Drake isn’t sure he should be working, but then Josh does a dramatic shoulder-shimmy and says, “However, as a matter of fact, they are dying to have you back at the Blue Star, and they’re paying you double this time.”

After he catapults across the counter, Drake gives Eric a smug little smile over Josh’s shoulder. “Huh,” he says, tucking his chin against Josh’s shoulder, his cheek against Josh’s neck, which is radiant with heat. “You don’t look so good,” he says, drawing back to get a look at his face. From the other side of the counter, he hadn’t noticed the flush across Josh’s cheeks, or the bruised hollows beneath his eyes.

“I’m better,” Josh insists. “I can’t be sick.”

“That’s right,” Helen says as she passes by. “Josh isn’t allowed to be sick. He can be sick on his next day off, but for today, he’s fit as a fiddle.”

“Relapse,” Eric says wisely. “Too much strenuous activity after an illness. You haven’t done anything strenuous lately, have you, Josh?”

Drake and Josh glare as one.

“I’m good to finish my shift,” Josh says, but when Drake takes a seat to watch him, it’s obvious he’s not. He moves as though his limbs are heavy and his joints hurt, but he’s Josh, so he keeps going, straightening candy and cleaning the sticky soda nozzle until he’s finished every last second of his shift.

In the car, his teeth start to chatter. He insists he’s just a little chilled, but Josh is never chilled; only old ladies and maybe babies get chilled, so Drake knows he’s lying. “Why won’t you just admit you’re sick?” Drake asks as they pull into the driveway.

“Because I already—” Josh puts his head in his hands. “It’s too much trouble.”

“Trouble for who?”

Drake watches him get out of the car and drag himself upstairs without answering. He locks up before he follows Josh, and finds him curled on the sofa, eyes shut. For a second he just looks at him, the unhappy set of his face and the way he shivers even in sleep, but eventually he gets bored and wanders down the hall to find Mom.

“Josh is sick again,” he says when she comes to the door in a fluffy peach robe. “What’s going on? How come he’s so sick?”

She tugs at her belt and closes the door on Walter’s snores. “Oh honey, it’s just a virus that’s going around. Half my office is out with it. Do me a favor, run downstairs and boil some water?”

When he comes back upstairs with the mug of water, Mom is draping heating pads over Josh’s thighs while he trembles through his fever, arms hugged to his chest. “-don’t have to do that,” he’s saying as Drake comes in. “Please, I’m okay--oh,” he sighs in plain relief when she applies pressure. “Just maybe some aspirin or something and I’m fine,” he protests, and Drake remembers what he’d said in the car.

Too much trouble, Josh had said—for Mom? This is what moms are for.

“Just let her do it,” Drake says, taking the packet of awful lemon flu remedy from Mom. He rips it open with his teeth and stirs it in slowly, watching the steam rise as Josh continues to put up a fuss until she tucks him snugly under a blanket. After that, he can’t seem to keep his eyes open.

Drake sits down hard on the coffee table. “Are you sure he doesn’t need a doctor?”

“His muscles ache,” Mom says softly, taking the mug from Drake and blowing across the surface. “His fever’s a little high, but if he drinks this, he should be fine for the night. Josh, sweetie, I know you’re tired, but if you can just get this down, then you can have a nice long nap.”

Josh’s eyes flutter open, moisture clinging to his eyelashes, and Mom helps him hold the cup steady as he drinks in slow, careful sips. When he’s finished, he lets his head fall back into the pillow, and even though he goes right under, she fetches a cool, damp cloth and wipes his face.

“Maybe I should stay for a while,” she says, sitting next to Drake and giving a long sigh. “He looks so pitiful.”

“Yeah,” Drake says. “Can’t you do something about that?”

“He’ll be fine,” she says, and gives his knee a squeeze before she gets up. “I’ll check in later.”

It’s weird to get ready for bed without Josh’s idle chatter. Drake doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like what Eric had said to Josh earlier, doesn’t like the way his fight with Josh had ended up, and most of all, he doesn’t like that he wants to touch Josh’s face the same way Mom had, but he just isn’t allowed.

This is new. Drake sees a girl, he wants to touch her, he touches her. Sometimes, they even touch him first.

Drake gets up and puts his pajamas on, then carries his guitar and blanket over to the recliner he drags nearer to the sofa, nearer to Josh. He’s not used to this kind of unrelenting wanting, and as his fingers work out a melody on his guitar, he finds that wanting is like a rusty key that slowly unlocks lyrics that Drake hadn’t even known he’d had in him. He works for over an hour in the dark room, feet propped up on the coffee table, until he hears Josh cough.

“Drake?”

He stills his hands on the strings. “Yeah?” Josh doesn’t usually mind Drake’s music, when Drake is up late and can’t sleep.

Josh is quiet for a while. “Nothing,” he says, weakly, as though talking is too much effort. “Go on. Sounds nice.”

“Did you need something? Because Mom said-“

“No,” Josh says quickly. “Don’t get Mom.”

Right. Because he doesn’t want to be any trouble.

Drake puts his guitar aside. “I don’t have to get Mom. I could do it.”

He sees the vague shape of Josh shifting on the sofa, but no reply.

“I’m already up,” he coaxes, as though he’s the one wanting the favor.

“S’nothing,” Josh says. “I just hurt all over. You probably shouldn’t come too close. But…talk to me?”

“No problem.” Drake swivels in the chair.

“I actually wanted to ask you something,” Josh says. “But I wasn’t sure if it would make you mad. Maybe I’ll take advantage since you’re being all nice.”

“Good idea,” Drake says. He’d definitely take advantage, if it were the other way around.

When Josh still doesn’t say anything, Drake thinks he might have drifted off again. He sounds awfully out of it. But finally, Josh clears his throat and says, “How do you, you know, find people to do it for you?”

“Do what?”

“To spank you,” Josh says, his voice hoarse. “It must be hard to find people who are into that kind of thing, isn’t it? Or do you just ask, and since you’re you, they agree to anything.”

Between the fatigue and what sounds like bitterness, Drake can’t read Josh’s tone, but it doesn’t really matter. “I told you, I don’t have a spanking fetish.”

“Drake-“

“Look, I don’t care what Oprah says: no one has ever spanked me in my life!” Drake begins to settle into good satisfying annoyance, until he realizes what he’s said and has to add, “Uh, I mean, besides…”

“Oh,” Josh says. “Me?”

“Yep.”

“I’m sorry,” Josh says quietly. “That must be really hard for you. But I’m sure eventually you’ll find someone who’s willing to, you know. Do that.”

“Josh,” Drake says, rolling his head across the back of the chair. How dense can he be? It’s bad enough that Josh thinks he’s some kind of pervert, but now Josh actually feels sorry for him because he can’t get what he wants. Josh is predictable in that he always tries to help Drake get what he wants, as though his job as Drake’s manager has bled through to every other area of his life.

“I don’t,” Drake begins to say, but the words die somewhere in his throat, because Josh always tries to help Drake get what he wants. Now he’s starting to see what Josh might be getting at. “I don’t…think I’ll ever find anyone who likes me that much,” he says carefully.

Josh snorts. “Everybody likes you that much.”

True. “Well, sure, but I have to feel comfortable with that person.”

As sick as he is, it only takes a few moments for Josh to find his way to Drake’s reasoning and say, “So, you must feel pretty comfortable with me.”

Drake considers the question. The road that he’s on might lead to being hit, which isn’t very appealing, but how hard would Josh hit if he weren’t really mad, if he were trying to turn Drake on rather than hurt him? It isn’t exactly what Drake wants, but then he thinks about the way Josh’s hand had gripped the back of his thigh, the way his palm had paused in an almost-caress, and decides that to have Josh’s attention that way would be worth a little discomfort.

“Yeah, I guess I do.”

“Comfortable enough to get me a glass of water?”

Drake smiles into the darkness, relieved. He can only handle the heavy stuff for so long. “Definitely.”

“And to play a little more of that song?” Josh calls after him.

“You’re gonna owe me,” Drake says, only half-teasing, but he doesn’t leave until he hears Josh’s quiet, “Okay.”

*

It’s two more days before Josh feels good enough to come downstairs. Drake makes a big show of handing in Josh’s history homework in class, and describes the feat in explicit detail so many times that Megan says, “Is this story a metaphor for some secret boob issue, or are you really this boring?”

“I appreciate it,” Josh says warmly, and Drake preens under the attention, which he hasn’t really had since that first night. Josh has been sleeping a lot, but now he’s up, and as Drake roams their room aimlessly looking for something to do, it occurs to him that while redeeming himself with Josh is second nature, it’s not going to get Josh’s hands on his ass anytime soon.

“You know,” Josh says later, when they’re watching cartoons before bed. “I was a little worried about whether you’d turn in my homework this time.”

“I said I was sorry,” Drake says, stretching out on his bed while Josh swivels in the orange chair.

“Yeah,” Josh says slowly, and pushes his hair back behind both ears a gesture that makes Drake swoon a little, just on the inside. “I know you did. I just thought you might want to make me mad.”

“I don’t ever try to make you mad. It just happens.”

“Oh.” Now Josh is doing that nervous thing where he rubs his hands on his thighs over and over, as though he’s working up to something.

“You thought I’d try to get you to spank me.”

Josh flushes as though he’s got a fever all over again. “Well, you said nobody else would.”

Drake doesn’t know what to say. He’s treading pretty close to lying territory here, and he tries not to lie to Josh except when it’s purely for fun.

“I keep thinking about what you said,” Josh says, glancing down at his hands, which he must have noticed, because he stills them in his lap. “About feeling comfortable with me. It was nice. I’m- We- I like that we’re close.”

“Do you?” Drake can’t help thinking of the way Josh had avoided him and missed his show the first time, and how the second time he’d turned him down flat.

“Of course. And I hate that there’s this thing you can’t have that you want so badly.”

Ha. At least Josh is half right.

“Are you offering to spank me, Josh?” Drake is glad he’s lying on his belly, because he’s already firming up just thinking about it.

It doesn’t help that Josh says “Maybe,” and lifts his gaze to Drake, his eyes dark and knowing, as though he’s already made his decision.

Drake can’t ask. He can just lie there and wait until Josh climbs onto his bed, settling near his hips, where Drake can’t see him. Drake folds his arms under his chin and wonders what Josh would think if he knew how hard he already is just from this; that he doesn’t need the spanking at all.

“It’s, uh. A lot harder to do when I’m not mad,” Josh admits.

“Would it help if I told you I was the one who bent your magic rings?”

“Not really. I figured it was you.”

“If I told you I knew Trevor was going to puke when I asked you to give him a ride home?”

“Again, I figured.”

Drake groans; he just wants Josh to touch him. “If I told you I made out with Mindy a few months ago?”

“What?”

“Yeah, it was very wrong. But you were already broken up and I…”

“What? Wanted to give her a nice parting gift?” Maybe Drake has gone a little far; Josh sounds a little pissed off, but then again, he’s not leaving.

“Something like that.”

“Define made out.”

Drake pauses. It doesn’t seem fair that he’d gotten his pants undone and her skirt up around her waist in about five minutes, when it had taken Josh years to get a little over the sweater action.

“That far?”

“No, no,” Drake says. “We just got each other off.”

“Just that,” Josh says flatly. Drake really wishes he hadn’t brought this up, but Josh’s hand has crept up over the curve of his ass and is resting there, tense and motionless, as though waiting for the right moment. “What did she do to you?”

“Gave me a hand job,” Drake says as Josh’s hand comes down hard, but he’d been right: it doesn’t hurt; Josh doesn’t have it in him. “It all happened really fast.”

“That’s great, Drake,” Josh says. “You used my girlfriend to get off, and now you’re using me.” He’s started a steady rhythm, a series of slow, light slaps that Drake arches toward every time.

“Hey, you offered,” Drake says unevenly. “And she used me to get off. She liked that I was your-“ Okay, that smack was a little harder, but the next pass of Josh’s hand soothes, pets over his ass and onto the top of his thighs, which feels wonderful. Josh has always been good at multi-tasking. “-brother.”

“And you liked that she was my girlfriend?”

“Yeah,” Drake breathes, caught again between Josh’s hand and the mattress. He rubs against the bed, moaning in protest when Josh pulls at the waist of his pajama pants, holding him back.

“Tell me exactly what you did,” Josh says.

“Just, the usual,” Drake says. It’s so hard to think about anything but the way Josh is touching him right now. “Got my hand inside her panties and, you know.”

“No, I don’t know. Tell me, Drake.”

“Just, rubbed her for a while until I got a couple fingers inside, and then I just did it nice and easy,” Drake says against his better judgment, and the sentence is only halfway out when Josh yanks down the elastic of Drake’s pajamas and then it’s his hot palm on bare skin, on Drake’s bare ass, and Drake will do anything to keep this going. “She wanted it like that; she kept telling me how you did it, kept telling me I wasn’t going deep enough, talked about your fingers so much I-“

“You what?” Josh asks, his slaps turning to mere pressure, hand spread across Drake’s ass and shoving Drake’s hips into the bed so Drake can’t even brace himself against it, over and over, like the free ride Drake wouldn’t have dared to ask for.

“I don’t,” Drake pants, hiding his face in his arms. He’s already so close, and there’s only so far he can go with this story. “I can’t.”

“What did you do, Drake?” Josh says, and maybe he’s not unaffected by what he’s doing because he can barely get the words out.

“No, I,” Drake starts to say, but Josh withdraws his hand—no, not when Drake is almost there, and he can feel the back of his neck go burning hot when he blurts, “I told her to show me how you do it, jerked off while she got two fingers inside and fingered me the way you do it. The way she says you do it,” he mumbles, and gets Josh’s hand as a reward, kneading Drake’s ass like he owns it, as though he isn’t even concentrating anymore.

“Drake,” he says, “Is that true?”

“Look at me, do you think it’s true?” Drake gets out, giving up on Josh and just humping the mattress outright, because Josh had to have known that the spanking was going to lead to this point. He can feel it just out of reach, his thighs burning and balls aching as the pleasure builds on itself with every graze of his dick against the sheets.

“I don’t…”

“It’s true, and I came so fast, just like I’m gonna come now,” he says, his face pressed to the bed as he shoves a hand down to find his cock and give it a few good pulls, enough to come in hard, messy throbs that rip through him like a seizure, gasping into his bed as Josh delivers a few final slaps that leave him shuddering with satisfaction.

He shuts his eyes and sags into the mattress, hopelessly listless, except for the way his heart is still thundering in his chest and his nerves are still sparking with phantom echoes of his climax. Vaguely, he’s aware that Josh’s hand remains flat against the small of his back, warm and damp where it rests there, and oddly soothing, as though it gives him permission to just lie there and enjoy what’s just happened.

Eventually, he manages to lift his head and look back over his shoulder at Josh, who looks back at him, his mouth slack and bewildered. “You look,” Josh starts, but shakes his head.

“Like I just got laid?” Drake says, because that’s how he feels. Never mind that it had been mostly one-sided; Josh’s hand is still on his back. Josh is still in his bed.

“You said that stuff to make me mad,” Josh says haltingly.

Drake sighs and stretches out, his pants slipping down further. “Did it make you mad?”

Josh peels his hand from Drake’s overheated skin. “Not exactly.”

Drake tugs his pants up and pushes a blanket over the mess on his bed before he pulls himself up into a cross-legged position. He finds Josh sitting the same way, holding the edge of the blanket over his lap. The way he stares at Drake reminds him of how he must look, but no one would be put together after going through what Drake has just been through. “What?”

“Nothing,” Josh says, sounding as glum as Drake is beginning to feel. “It’s just, you and Mindy had this whole kinky thing going on, while I couldn’t ever even figure out a way to ask her to go down on me.”

“Did you ever try just asking?”

“It’s not the kind of thing you just ask!” Josh insists. “Or, I thought it wasn’t.”

Drake eyes the place where Josh has pulled the blanket over his lap.

“Maybe you can ask those things,” Josh continues. “It’s easy for you.”

“Fine,” Drake says. “I’ll ask. Can I go down on you?”

Josh grips the covers, breathing hard. “Why would you want to do that?”

Drake raises an eyebrow. “Did you hear the story I just told you?”

Josh’s eyes are wide and dazed. “I thought you were just talking dirty.”

“I was. And now I’m doing this.”

He tugs the blanket from Josh’s lap, and finds that Josh isn’t just hard; he’s leaked a wet patch through the front of his pajamas. He makes a move to cover himself, but Drake crawls into his lap, arms draped over Josh’s thighs and his head bent to lap at the wet patch, where he can feel the shape of Josh’s cock head under his tongue.

Josh makes a choked sound as his hands slide into Drake’s hair. “This isn’t…” he begins, but trails off into a gasp when Drake rubs the shaft through Josh’s pajamas, so thick and hard against his palm that he can’t wait to get it into his mouth. He fits his lips over the head and sucks, right through the fabric of Josh’s pajamas, touching his tongue everywhere he’d like to have a tongue on himself. Josh is weirdly silent, heavy breath and the occasional agonized sigh, and Drake can tell he’s completely lost in everything Drake is doing. Good.

He eases Josh’s waistband down over his erection, careful to get his mouth right back on the head before Josh can have second thoughts. He sucks away the sticky salt taste, lips and tongue gentle over that soft swell of skin, and then, just as Josh whispers his name, he lets Josh slide all the way inside.

Once he’s really sucking Josh off, going down with a regular rhythm, he uses the hand that’s not grasping the base of Josh’s cock to explore all the places he’s been curious about for a while: the soft curve of his belly, the hot crease of his thigh, and the tangle of hair in between. He traces them all with careful fingers, and then gropes with more determination, with Josh’s cock bumping his throat and his balls heavy against his hand.

Josh’s erection swells in his mouth, getting closer and making low, urgent sounds in his throat. Drake wants to see what that looks like—what Josh looks like when he feels this good—so he slides his lips back to the tip and glances up at Josh’s face, and finds him looking back.

He knows how to do this; he does it every time he goes on stage, and he takes advantage of Josh’s attention by making sure his mouth is nice and wet when he lifts it just far enough to lick a slow circle around the head, flicking the tip with his tongue and letting his eyes flutter shut as though it’s the best thing he’s ever tasted.

“Oh,” Josh says, and there’s a startling pulse against Drake’s palm right before liquid heat falls over his tongue and across his lips. Drake strokes Josh a few more times and then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

He lifts his face. He’s never seen Josh look like this before, gazing down at Drake through heavy-lidded eyes with a mixture of awe and suspicion: far more serious than what Drake is used to seeing on Josh’s face. Then again, he’s never had Josh’s come smeared across his mouth before.

Drake flops down on his bed, a bit dazed. Everything had happened so fast, and there’s no way he would’ve said those things about him and Mindy if Josh hadn’t had his hands all over Drake’s ass. It had been like truth serum. He wonders if the CIA knows about this. He wonders if it works on Josh—but no, there’d be no reason to use it on Josh, because Josh just says what he feels, no matter how mushy or embarrassing or hysterical. Sure enough, Josh hugs one of Drake’s pillows to his chest and says, “Oh my god. I can’t even…we just did more kinky things in the past twenty minutes than I’ve done my entire life!”

“Well, when you’re starting at zero…” Drake could really use a nap, if he weren’t so wired and Josh’s head wasn’t about to explode.

“That is not the point!” Josh squeezes the pillow until Drake worries the seams are going to give.

Drake sighs and pats the bed next to him. “Come on, you don’t want to have another relapse. Why don’t you lay down for a minute.” Josh immediately obeys, which is either a good or bad sign, but Drake doesn’t know which. “Could you be more specific about what’s bothering you?”

Josh makes a defeated sound and rolls to face Drake. “For starters, I did not know, nor did I want to know, that you fooled around with Mindy. I didn’t know you like to talk dirty, that you offer blow jobs like they’re gas money, or that—Drake, you let me come in your mouth,” he hisses.

“Then why’d you come up here?”

“I thought I was doing you a favor!”

“Yeah, smacking my ass is some favor.”

“What? But you said…”

Drake tries to smile, but it feels forced and tight, and whatever Josh sees on his face puts the panic right back into his eyes. “Josh, listen. You watch too much Oprah, okay? I’m sorry, but I don’t need anybody to spank me. I don’t even want anybody to spank me—not even you.”

“But you always get so-“

“No, I don’t. I mean, I do. But not because of the spanking. When we fight, you’re grabbing me all over. You put your hands everywhere.”

Understanding passes over Josh’s face like a tide that picks up the confusion and leaves nothing behind but a blank, thoughtful expression. It’s always been this way: Drake keeps his cool and talks Josh down from being a giant dork, and the next day things are flipped around and Josh is the one defining words for Drake with an air of put-upon patience. It works for them, and right now, Drake is relieved to just lie there and let Josh be the smart one, because he’s out of answers.

Josh’s eyes move across his face so slowly that Drake begins to worry about what he sees there, but neither of them look away, gauging one another with agonizing care, until Josh’s mouth lifts on one side in a hopeful smile. “That’s why you’ve been so nice to me,” he says. “You like me.” He thinks for a moment, before his eyes go wide. “You wanted to go down on me. You’ve been wanting it for a while, huh?”

“No, Josh,” Drake says uncomfortably. “I mean, sort of. I was nice to you because you were sick. And because I like you. And I did want to suck you.”

Josh laughs softly. “Wait, where’s the ‘no’? You just answered yes to everything.”

The ‘no’ is in the fact that it isn’t the whole truth, because Josh thinks that this is just Drake getting what he’s wanted all along. It had been great, having that part of Josh, but now they’re face to face and Drake still doesn’t know what Josh would do if Drake reached out and touched the broad curve of his cheek the way he’s wanted to since he saw Mom do the same thing. It’s such a stupid thing to want, but Drake has always wanted the things he thinks he’s most unlikely to get. That’s what makes it such a rush when he gets them, but with Josh, he’s found that he has to be careful. So, maybe Josh will indulge him in a fetish he imagines Drake is feeling unhappy about, and every guy wants to get his dick sucked, but Drake is aware of the difference between those two things and what it would mean right now if he touched Josh somewhere that wasn’t just about getting off.

“Never mind,” he says. He can still taste Josh on his lips, and that’s so damn depressing.

“Okay,” Josh says fondly, and now that he’s winding down from his hysteria, Drake is getting a glimpse at what post-sex Josh is like, all docile and soft-eyed and attentive. And just as Drake closes his eyes, because he doesn’t want to see any more, he feels a warm, smooth palm slide over his cheekbone, across his temple and into his hair, where Josh’s fingers massage gentle patterns into his scalp.

His eyes fly open, his pulse hammering in his throat. “Settle down,” Josh says, his hand sliding down around to cup Drake’s jaw, and there’s no mistaking the emotions behind Josh’s touch, because he’s forgotten that Josh can read him better than anyone.

“This is my fetish,” Drake blurts, closing his eyes again as Josh traces over his lower lip.

“This isn’t a fetish.” Josh strokes Drake’s hair away from his forehead again as though Drake were the one directing his hands.

“No?”

“No,” Josh says. “It’s just us.”

Drake believes him, and when he feels the soft press of a mouth against his own, he lifts his hands for what he wants.

*