The good thing about having Josh for a brother is that Drake has him around for all the fun stuff, like roller coasters and double-dates with twins and camping trips designed to be weekend-long makeout sessions. It hasn’t always been that way, but nowadays, as soon as something good comes up, Josh is the first person Drake calls.

“Camping weekend,” Drake says happily, sorting through his sock drawer for a match. He finds one and shoves it in his duffel bag. “Making out outdoors is completely different from making out indoors.”

“Best idea ever, brotha,” Josh says. He’s actually folding his clothes as he packs. “We have to make sure that we get stuff for S’mores, because they’re Mindy’s favorite.”

Drake drops a pair of boxers into his bag. “Wait, Mindy? Why would Mindy be there?”

Josh laughs and keeps packing. “You said this was some big makeout weekend, remember?”

“So?”

“So, you thought I’d want to sit alone watching you and your friends make out?”

“We’re bringing plenty of girls,” Drake assures him.

“Be that as it may,” Josh explains slowly, “Mindy is my girlfriend.”

Talk about ungrateful. “I asked Trevor to invite this really smart girl for you.”

“I already have a smart girl.”

“This one wears glasses,” Drake argues, but whatever. He’s convinced that deep down, Josh already knows he can do better than Mindy.

“Thanks for thinking of me.”

“Fine. More girls for me, then.”

“How many do you need?” Josh asks.

Drake considers this. Lately, he thinks he might be onto the secret of the elusive threesome, but doesn’t want to speak too soon. “Just one at a time, man,” he says. “For now.” He winks at Josh just to get a look of exasperation, and Josh doesn’t let him down.

A few hours later, they’re halfway to the state park, riding in the back of the RV Trevor had rented. The girls had all insisted on following in Cassie’s car, and while the first couple hours had been fun, Drake is now drowsing at Josh’s side. The RV gives a pretty smooth ride, and Josh’s shoulder is the perfect pillow, but Mindy’s stupid voice keeps pulling him out of his sleepy pocket of warmth.

…have to do that? he catches her hiss, but he definitely hears Josh’s whispered reply. “Shh. He’s just a little tired; we’ve been on Megan-watch since I knocked her charm bracelet down the drain.”

Drake tightens his grip on Josh’s arm, which is nice and solid to hold onto. The fact that it bugs Mindy makes it all the better.

The next time he wakes up, Mindy isn’t even bothering to whisper. “…I mean, look at him. His face is somehow even dumber when he’s asleep.”

“Mindy,” Josh says quietly; Drake can feel Josh’s breath on the top of his head; maybe he’s checking to see if Drake really looks that dumb. As payback, Drake lets himself slide forward until Josh has to catch him up in his arms, and now they’re completely entwined, with Drake’s head on Josh’s chest. The last thing he hears before he drifts back to sleep is Mindy’s sound of disgust as she gets up and heads for the back.

*

“That was some nap. You’re gonna be up all night,” Josh says when they arrive, and Drake is lifting his arms into a long, satisfying stretch as they separate.

“That’s the plan,” Drake smirks, but then Mindy ruins it by pausing as she squeezes past Josh.

“Nice,” she says. “He drooled on your shirt. I hope you brought an extra, if you want to get anywhere near me.”

Drake avoids looking at the very uncool wet spot on Josh’s shirt by jogging out of the RV to meet the girls.

There’s an hour or so when things aren’t very fun. Drake struggles to set up his tent while Josh and Mindy neatly and methodically erect their own in record time, but then it’s finished, their campsite is up, and the sun is beginning to set on their fledgling campfire. Everyone has dragged their sleeping bags into a circle around the fire, and the girls have put on sweaters and curled up on their bags.

“I saved a spot for you,” Cassie says, patting to the empty side of her sleeping bag, and Drake climbs on. Josh and Mindy are across the circle in lawn chairs, holding hands. Trevor and his cousin Bob are sitting across from one another, each with a different girl, which leaves one extra girl to sit down at Drake’s other side—the smart one, but Drake doesn’t mind. She’s not snooty about her brains, like Mindy.

Trevor uncaps a plastic flask and takes a sip before he passes it around. Josh declines, but Mindy takes a long swig without gasping or coughing the way the other girls do. Josh doesn’t even look surprised, which makes Drake wonder what they get up to on other nights. Boring stuff, he’s always thought, but maybe not.

“Spin the bottle,” Trevor says with a goofy smile, and pulls an empty bottle out of the cooler.

Drake laughs along with the other girls. He’s going to kiss both of them tonight.

“This is why we came out here?” Mindy says. “Why do we need a bottle in order to kiss?”

“Spin the bottle is a time-honored camping tradition that will not be forgone,” Trevor’s cousin says as Trevor gives it the first spin, right on the dirt next to the fire. He gets his cousin’s girl, and they spend a few seconds exchanging a chaste kiss completely unlike the one his girl has to lay on his cousin’s girl. They didn’t even protest, which is nice, because Drake had been willing to argue the rules in order to secure some girl-on-girl action.

Drake gets Mindy, which is quick and feels spectacularly dangerous, but then Cassie spins him and they kiss for a good thirty seconds with lots of tongue before Bob says, “Want to give the rest of us a chance?” For the sake of fairness, Drake forces himself to pull away from her mouth, which tastes of whatever’s in that flask.

Mindy has to kiss Trevor, which is so excellent Drake thinks he might just camp here forever, and then it’s Josh’s turn to spin. Drake gets a little nervous as he watches Josh bend near the fire to spin the bottle. He’s always thought that Josh’s hair looks particularly flammable.

He doesn’t catch fire, but of course he spins Drake.

Josh looks at him across the small circle. The others are laughing and groaning, but Josh just shakes his head and crosses the space to kneel at the edge of Drake’s sleeping bag. “It figures,” he says, rolling his eyes. Drake just sits back and smirks, because Josh has to kiss him in front of all these people. Spin the Bottle clearly loves him as much as he loves it.

“Dude, uh,” he hears Trevor say as Josh bends his head for the kiss, but he’s busy now, because he’s good at this game. Drake relaxes his mouth against Josh’s lips and lets himself be kissed, hands sliding over Josh’s shoulders just as Josh begins to move away.

And then Josh is back in his seat, and the night sounds around them seem a thousand times louder than they had before. Cassie and the smart girl are smiling, but Trevor looks as though he’s trying to solve a difficult math problem.

“Dude, you didn’t have to do that,” Trevor finally says to Josh.

“Yes he did,” Mindy and Cassie say at the same time, but Mindy plows over her and continues, “Heather and Tricia had to kiss; can you say double-standard?”

“No, no, it’s cool,” Trevor says. It’s his turn with the flask again, which he drinks and then passes over Josh directly to Mindy. “I was just surprised. I’ve never seen two dudes do it without a fight. But you guys were all, ‘okay, we’re gonna kiss,' and you just went for it."

Drake is pleased by the compliment. “Well, I am an expert kisser,” he points out, nodding at Cassie.

“And it’s not a big deal. It’s just Drake,” Josh says. “Not like some stranger I’ve never…” He stops abruptly, and shrugs. “Trevor, we’re back to you.”

Trevor takes the bottle and spins it; this time, he gets his own girl and she manages to get him as well, so the group spends a good two minutes watching them make out.

“I just have one question,” Mindy says after her next pass of the flask. “How do you just kiss Drake on the mouth and it’s not a big deal?”

Josh looks uncomfortable, but Drake is happy for the chance to talk about his kissing prowess. Besides, it hadn’t been a big deal. He knows Josh, and Josh had been at ease the entire time. His mouth had been sweetly forward, as though they’d been telling a private joke, but Drake doesn’t know how to put it into words for Mindy. “It just isn’t. We share a room, you know,” he adds.

“No. I think it’s because you’ve done it before,” she says. Drake looks through the flames to Josh, who gives him a desperate don’t say a word look, which doesn’t make any sense. It’s not like he and Josh have ever done what she’s implying, but Drake is happy to keep secrets from Mindy, so he takes his own turn with the flask and leaves her question to hang there, discarded.

The thing is, he hadn’t expected everyone to take such an interest.

“Have you done it before?” smart-girl asks, and okay, he’s beginning to get Josh’s reluctance to talk about this, because judging by the way everyone is staring at him, they’re interested in a way he doesn’t understand, which means it might be bad. Things he doesn’t understand generally don’t turn out the way he wants them to.

“I think it’s your turn,” he says, crawling over to fetch the bottle for her, but when he hands it over, she holds the bottle in her hands, strokes the glass column suggestively, and says, “Actually, the best camping game isn’t Spin the Bottle. It’s Truth or Dare.”

Mindy says, “Yesss,” and Trevor shrugs, which is enough to nix the game, and Drake hasn’t even gotten to kiss smart-girl yet.

Outside the fire, it’s gotten chilly. Drake zips his sweatshirt the rest of the way and makes sure his ass is still on the sleeping bag. Maybe it won’t be so bad. Truth or Dare is a makeout game, too, so long as people play it right. In a way it’s even better, because the dares can go as far as you want them to.

“I hate truth or dare,” he hears Josh whimper, and looks up in time to see Mindy shush him with a quick hand through his hair.

“Quiet,” she says in a low voice, throaty enough to catch Drake’s attention. He squints at her through the fire. She’s half drunk, he realizes with reluctant admiration.

“But I can’t lie,” Josh persists, “and I always have to take the worst dares. The worst.”

Drake stretches his legs out closer to the fire and tries to think of some dares that might send Josh into a panic.

“Drake should go first,” smart-girl says. “Or Josh. Drake or Josh.”

“Josh,” Mindy says. “Truth or dare.”

Josh just shakes his head. “Why me? It was her idea.” He points at smart-girl, and then growls, “Truth.”

Oh, this is good. Drake doesn’t know how he’s going to decide which embarrassment he should force Josh to admit, but Mindy ruins it, as always, when she
butts in and says, “How many times have you kissed Drake before tonight?”

“Wait, that’s not a real question!” Drake says. It’s not funny or embarrassing, and it proves that Mindy has no idea how Truth or Dare is played.

“It’s already been asked,” smart-girl says. “Now he has to answer it.”

“What a waste,” Drake mutters. “Where are the marshmallows?”

Trevor tosses over a bag of marshmallow that Drake catches on his lap. As Drake tries to rip open the plastic bag, Josh has already begun to demonstrate why he hates this game so much. “What is kissing, really?” he babbles. “And who are we to say what’s a kiss and what’s merely kisslike.”

“Lips, Josh,” Mindy says flatly. “For the sake of this exercise, let’s get crazy and say that a kiss is when your lips touch another person.”

“Uhhhh,” Josh says, and when Drake looks up, Josh’s eyes are on his—asking a question, but Drake doesn’t know what, so he shrugs. The answer doesn’t even matter; who cares if they’ve kissed six or seven or ten times? It’s not like Josh is going to be graded on accuracy. “Eight?” Josh finally says.

Smart-girl turns to Drake. “Is that right?”

“I dunno. Maybe.”

“You’ve kissed Drake eight times,” Mindy says, shaking her head. “You realize that’s completely twisted, right?”

“It’s not,” Josh says, but he doesn’t sound sure of himself, which Drake hates. He likes how confident Josh has gotten, and he’s always secretly thought maybe Mindy had something to do with that, but now she’s trying to push him back into the same befuddled dork he’d been when she’d met him. “They weren’t all on the mouth.”

“It’s not twisted,” Drake adds through a mouthful of marshmallow. “You just saw us do it five minutes ago. Was that twisted?”

“Yes,” Cassie and Mindy say in unison, but smart-girl touches his arm and says, “I thought it was sweet,” which makes him cringe. He does not want to be the sweet guy in any scenario; not if he wants to get under her sweater at any point tonight.

“Uh, no. Not sweet,” he says, glancing around the circle. Something is happening, but he can’t quite figure out what. It has to do with Mindy being smug and everyone else falling oddly silent. “Mindy, isn’t it your turn?”

She pulls a black knit cap out of her pocket and puts it on, tucking her hair toward the back before she says, “Truth,” as though there’s nothing anyone could possibly ask her that she wouldn’t be able to answer without hesitation.

“Why did you want to know about me and Drake,” Josh asks. Drake recognizes his tone; he’s disappointed and suspicious and maybe a little sad, just like the time he’d been done--only this time, it’s all directed toward Mindy. Drake doesn’t have the best view of them through the flames, but how is it they’ve jumped from a happily snuggling couple to this without so much as an argument? He really doesn’t get them, and Josh’s question sucks as much as Mindy’s had.

“Because I want to know if my boyfriend is thinking about his stepbrother when we kiss.”

“I think about you,” Josh says softly, and Drake wonders if Mindy knows how badly she’s just blown it. It takes a lot to make Josh react that way, quiet and incredulous with hurt, rather than a loud, obnoxious overreaction.

“But we wouldn’t blame you for thinking of someone else,” Drake tells him. “Anyone else. Remember Bobo?”

“Uh, isn’t it Bob’s turn?” Trevor says, and the game moves along. Bob admits that he once ate a burrito he found in a parking lot, his girl shows everyone her fantastic fur-trimmed bra, and Cassie ends up gathering sticks for roasting marshmallows because no one else feels like doing it and two bra-flashings in a row seems like a lot to ask for.

Then it’s Drake’s turn, and smart-girl, who Drake is beginning to think of as “doesn’t-understand-Drake-at-all-girl”, says, “I dare you to make out with Josh for three minutes!”

Mindy snorts. “I thought dares were supposed to be something you don’t want to do.”

“I don’t want to!” He shrinks away from smart-girl and gives her his worst scowl. “All the hot girls sitting here and you pick Josh?”

“I want to see,” she says stubbornly, twisting a long lock of hair around her finger as she looks at him over the top of her glasses. “But it’s just a dare; no one is forcing you to do it.”

“Yeah, right,” Drake says, already shuffling through a dozen images of what he might be able to do with Josh without actually doing anything. “I’m Drake; I’ve never backed away from a dare.”

“You can’t do it if I don’t agree to it,” Josh says.

“Josh-”

“What? Mindy just accused me of- and now you want me to…no.”

Drake gets to his feet, brushing dirt and grass from his jeans. “Can I talk to you for a minute?” he asks, jerking his head toward the treeline. Through the flames, he sees Josh look at Mindy, who shrugs and screws the lid onto the flask.

For a moment, Drake doesn’t think he’s going to do it; that he’s going to cave to Mindy’s stupid accusations, but then Josh slowly rises and follows him to the edge of the forest where the others can’t see.

Once they’re out of view, he manhandles Josh up against a tree. “C’mon, forget Mindy. Let me do my dare. She did hers; I have to do mine.”

They’re mostly in shadow, but he can see the gleam of Josh’s eyes when he finally looks at Drake. “I really hate this game,” he says, but he lets Drake pet his arm the way he does when he’s willing to be talked into something.

“It doesn’t usually suck this much,” Drake says. “But Mindy’s messing everything up. Look, can’t you just…for three minutes?” He squeezes Josh’s bicep and smiles convincingly, in case Josh can see his face. “It’s nothing we’ve never done before.”

Josh makes a hysterical sound. “It is everything we’ve never done before!”

And okay, he has a point, but only technically. Drake already knows Josh’s mouth from a dozen hurried kisses and hundreds of whispered conversations, and there isn’t a part of Josh he hasn’t touched at some point. He knows the scent of the hand lotion Josh applies every morning and night, the texture of his hair, and the soft scrape of his stubble when he hasn’t shaved. As far as Drake is concerned, those are all the elements they need for making out. “Look, we’ve done this, right?” he says, and brings his hand to Josh’s throat, fingers resting lightly at the side of his neck.

He feels Josh swallow. “Sort of,” Josh says, sounding as though he’s ready to bolt.

“Okay. And we’ve done this, right?” he asks, and slides his arms around Josh’s waist. Predictably, Josh’s arms come up, warm hands spread across his back.

“Right,” Josh says, so it seems like as good a time as any for Drake to let his lips settle just below Josh’s mouth; not a kiss, just something to let him get used to the idea.

“And this is cool, right?” Drake says with far more confidence than he feels.

“This is cool,” Josh says, his hands frozen in place. “But there’s a big difference between this and what they want us to do.”

“Yeah, but you know how actors always say that love scenes are totally not hot because there are so many people standing around watching? That’s what it’ll be like with all those guys sitting there looking at their stopwatch.”

“What stopwatch?” Josh sputters. “You are seriously deluded if you think anyone’s going to be clocking us that carefully,” he says, but now he’s talking about it like it’s going to happen, and he hasn’t even tried to move away.

“Then we can keep track in our heads.” Drake presses a quick kiss to the corner of Josh’s mouth and pulls away, laughing when he sees Josh’s grin.

“Let’s just do this,” Josh says, pushing himself away from the tree, and Drake has to make an effort not to skip back to the fire in a victory dance. He rules Truth or Dare, and the fact that Mindy is going to see this is better than passing algebra, better than going on TRL, better than a fresh pan of Josh’s Fudgie-boos.

“Let’s do it!” he agrees, catching up to Josh, and grabs his sleeping bag out of his tent, because he is not making out with Josh while sandwiched between Cassie and supposedly-smart-girl. “Here,” he says, laying the sleeping bag just outside his tent, a bit removed from the fire, but still close enough for all these jerks to see.

When Josh sits down with his legs stretched out, Drake climbs right onto Josh’s thighs with his arms around Josh’s neck and says, “Hi.”

“Drake. I think I changed my mind,” Josh blurts, which gives Drake the push he needs to just do it. He kisses Josh the same way he had earlier, with a flutter of nerves that disappears when it registers that this feels exactly the same as it had thirty minutes ago. “We can do this,” he murmurs, slowly kissing Josh’s lower lip, then his top lip, and then both together.

That has to have taken up at least twenty seconds.

“That’s just kissing,” he hears Cassie say. “The dare is making out.” Josh makes a pained sound in his throat, but Drake is already in this for the win, so he buries his hands in Josh’s hair and rubs lightly at his scalp, tugs gently at the longer pieces that tangle around his knuckles. Ten more seconds down, or did they start over after Cassie yelled at them?

Josh’s hands are stroking polite lines down his back, but it’s not enough, so Drake isn’t very surprised when Cassie says, “Still just kissing,” or when she says, “Nice,” when Drake cups Josh’s jaw and coaxes his mouth open with a soft prod of tongue at the seam of his lips.

Then it gets a lot easier, because Josh is kissing him back, their mouths wet and busy as they stroke their tongues together as though they’ve discovered a whole new language. It almost feels like Josh means it when he clasps Drake to him with both arms, his hand so strong at the small of his back that Drake relaxes into it, and then Josh surprises him when he stomps across the line between kissing and making out by pulling out of the kiss and working over Drake’s neck with hot open-mouthed kisses that send pleasure signals down his spine, steady throbs of pleasure that go right through him and leave him hard in his jeans, because his dick doesn’t understand that it’s Josh leaving gentle scrapes of teeth over his earlobe.

“Good job,” Drake says, and immediately dies a little because he’d intended to sound reassuring, but his sex-voice is what comes out.

“Thanks,” Josh says, his fingers curling into Drake’s back, and then, after Drake is sure he’s been given a monster hickey at the base of his throat, whispers, “You taste amazing,” right into his ear. What Josh is doing feels amazing, and this must be exactly what Mindy is pissed off about, what she imagines they’re doing in their room every night. She knows that Josh can do this, and she’d somehow guessed how much Drake would like it.

By the time they’re back to kissing, Drake’s thighs are clamped around Josh’s hips and he doesn’t know how they’ll ever get out of this, because Josh’s erection is pressed to the swell of his own crotch, and he can’t believe he’s going to have the worst case of blue balls in all history from Josh Nichols.

He knows their time must be nearly up when Josh’s kisses turn deep and desperate. Drake finds himself doing the same thing, biting softly at Josh’s mouth and sweeping his tongue everywhere he can reach, hands fisted at the collar of Josh’s sweatshirt.

“Time’s up,” Trevor calls, and Drake falls away from Josh, landing on his ass on the cold ground. It’s one of the hardest things he’s ever done.

“Done,” he says as he eases himself between Cassie and smart-girl, but he can’t look at them. All he can feel is the heaviness between his legs and Mindy’s eyes on him from across the fire. She probably thinks she’s been proven right, when all she’s proven is that Drake is an even better kisser than he’d thought. He’d known he was good, but he hadn’t known he’d be so good he could make magic with Josh.

“It’s Tricia’s turn,” Trevor slurs, and Drake is a breath away from asking who Tricia is, before he realizes that smart-girl has a name.

He’s not even sure what Bob dares her to do; only that she’s trotting off into the woods, and Drake’s gaze is drawn back to Josh. He needs to check in, see where they’re at, but what he sees makes him narrow his eyes, choked by a rush of cutthroat rivalry, because Josh and Mindy’s chairs are pushed together now, the couple wrapped together beneath a blanket, and Drake knows enough about these things to know what the subtle movement on Josh’s lap is from. Mindy, somehow smug after everything that just happened, and why wouldn’t she be, with Josh’s head tipped back on his chair, mouth slack with pleasure.

Drake jerks his gaze down to the fire and gives it a vicious poke with one of the sticks Cassie had brought back. Mindy has got to know she’s just finishing what Drake had started, but the thing about Mindy is that she doesn’t care. She’ll take a win however she can get it. He doesn’t know if he’s more annoyed that Josh has forgiven Mindy or that Josh is getting off while Drake is so uncomfortable in his jeans that he’s tempted to go off and take care of it behind a tree.

To pass the time, Drake gets out his guitar and plays something in hopes of covering up the sounds Josh is making. Mindy isn’t the type for public displays, which means she’s just doing it to make a point, and if life were truly fair, a rogue spark would leap out and set her pants on fire. Everyone has just started to sing along, and Josh is listless in his chair, Mindy back to drinking from Trevor’s flask, when there’s a shriek from the woods and smart-girl breaks through the trees at breakneck speed.

Drake jumps up, but it’s dark and she’s screaming bear and help and people are knocking things over in some kind of mass hysteria, and he kind of wants to tell her to run back where she came from because sure enough, lumbering after her faster than Drake would have thought possible, is a bear, head bobbing and crazy sounds rolling out of its throat.

“Josh!” Drake yells, but Josh is already on it, shoving Mindy toward the RV, his belt dangling unfastened at his waist. It’s the kind of detail Drake knows it’s crazy to fixate on, but then he doesn’t have time to notice anything except the fact that smart-girl—and who is he kidding; those glasses are just a disguise for a giant freaking moron—is running straight toward him, bringing the bear right along.

“Drake!” He hears Josh’s muffled shout from the RV, but he’s out of time, and since everyone has left him in the path of the rampaging bear, there’s nothing left to do but swing his guitar at its face and hope for the best.

*

Trevor’s magically refilling flask had finished off nearly a bottle of Jack, so Josh ends up driving the RV home. He doesn’t complain. They all leave together, marshmallows spilled across the ground, fire blazing, and smart-girl hyperventilating in the back bunk as they make their getaway. Josh insists on stopping at the Ranger’s station to report the fire and the injured bear, which Drake barely notices. He’s too busy thinking about the way the guitar had cracked in his hand and made a sound like it was dying—which he supposes it had been—when he’d made contact with the bear’s lead skull.

“Sorry about your guitar,” Josh says, after they’ve been on the road for about an hour, Drake sitting shotgun and the road stretching ahead of them in the dark.

“Yeah.” Josh gets a hand job and Drake loses a guitar; this is so far from the natural order of things that Drake isn’t even sure how to deal with it.

“But hey, you’re a hero,” Josh says, with so much admiration that Drake glances over at him just to catch Josh’s tired smile of approval. “You took out a bear. You saved us.”

“You think?”

“Think? Brotha, I know it. This is the stuff of legend.”

When Josh puts it like that, it sounds pretty good, but all it takes is the memory of Josh’s belt hanging wide open to make the entire trip seem like a wash.

*

But the trip hadn’t been a wash, Drake realizes the next night, when he’s lying in bed and thinking about the dare Josh had helped him go through with. He wants to make it happen again, but he knows Josh, and Josh lives under the shadow of Mindy’s rules.

“So, Mindy pissed you off that night we were camping,” Drake says, because he’s pretty sure Josh isn’t asleep yet. “Didn’t she?”

Josh doesn’t answer, probably because Josh never answers until he’s sure what the question is really about. Sometimes Drake likes that about him; the feeling of Josh looking him over with those deep eyes that are light and dark all at once, but right now, he just wants an answer. Finally, Josh says, “I wasn’t happy with some of the things she said.”

“The stuff about the kissing?” Drake says, rolling onto his side so he’s facing Josh’s bed, even if he can’t really see him. “She thinks she knows everything, but she doesn’t get it.”

“Drake,” Josh says cautiously. “Mindy is pretty smart.”

Drake’s stomach clenches into a nervous knot, because back at the fire, it had been him and Josh unflinchingly telling everyone the way it is with them, and now there’s a very good chance that Mindy is going to have a say in it. He slides down from his bed in one smooth move and climbs onto Josh, ignoring Josh’s protests of personal space. Josh has never cared about personal space.

“So,” Drake says, hovering over Josh on all fours. “We told everybody it’s cool for us to do this,” he says, and feels his way around to a quick peck on Josh’s mouth. It’s nothing more than they’ve shared at an airport or after a miss with near-death, but Josh turns away, his entire body stiff beneath the covers.

“I knew it,” Drake says, his lip curling along with a bone-deep feeling of disgust for Mindy.

“Drake,” Josh says, pleading. “We-“

“-No,” Drake says. “No. We were fine the way we were, and Mindy made you feel like there’s something wrong with us.”

“She had a good point!” Josh argues. “If I’m going to be with her, I shouldn’t be kissing anyone else.”

“But we’re so good at it,” Drake says. He’s not bragging; it’s just a fact. “And now we know we’re good at other stuff, too,” he adds suggestively, but Josh pushes him away with a firm hand in the center of his chest.

“No.”

Drake sits back on his heels. “You’ve never cared this much what Mindy thinks. You hate it when she tells you what to do.”

“I still hate it,” Josh says, pulling himself into a sitting position. Drake can just make him out in the dark. “But I’m not like you, don’t you get it? Let me guess: you’re excited that you’ve found one more person to make out with anytime you feel like it, right? But I don’t want to be one of those people, Drake! We’re best friends and—and brothers, and I don’t even know how it would work to be…intimate-“ Josh trips over the word, “with someone and then watch them go off with someone else the next day. I always thought Mindy was overreacting about us, but now I see that I’ve been hurting her.”

“But we haven’t even done anything,” Drake says. “That dare was the first time.”

“Yeah, the first time for that,” Josh says softly. “But what about the other stuff? Things we wouldn’t do in front of Mom and Dad; things other people think are twisted.”

Twisted; that’s Mindy’s word.

Drake sits at the end of Josh’s bed and tries to come up with a reason why Josh is wrong. Okay, so there’s no denying that some of the stuff they do is private. Private, but definitely non-sexual, which makes this whole conversation all the more bewildering, because it sounds like he and Josh are having some kind of breakup.

“What are you saying? I’m not allowed to touch you anymore?” Drake’s hand is resting on Josh’s leg, and he refuses to move it, just in case this is the last time he’s ever allowed.

“Of course not,” Josh says. There’s a small comfort in how miserable he sounds. This isn’t what Josh wants, and there’s no way it’ll last. “But we probably shouldn’t kiss anymore.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” Josh says, as though he doesn’t quite trust the easy answer.

Drake shrugs. “Sure. It’s not like we’re getting anything out of it. Not like Mindy thinks, at least.”

“Right,” Josh says, with audible relief, and Drake smiles down at him in the dark, an irrepressible fondness bringing him down toward the very thing they’ve just agreed to abandon.

“How about one last time?” he says. There’s no way Josh will say no; he believes in long farewells and handwritten letters and like, the goodness of mankind. Drake, though: Drake believes in kissing.

“Fine,” Josh sighs.

In the dark, Drake finds his way across the warm curve of Josh’s mouth. It’s exactly like the kiss when Josh had spun the bottle at Drake: familiar and easy, and he even feels the eventual stretch of Josh’s smile against his lips.

“What?” he demands; this isn’t supposed to be funny.

“Nothing,” Josh says softly, their lips still touching. Everything about this feels soft right now, and Drake has the feeling he’s being let down easier than anyone in the history of let-downs. But the idea of it just doesn’t compute, because Josh would never let him down, especially not with Drake’s tongue nudging past that smile. Josh lets him in, but after a few seconds he turns his head, their mouths sliding apart, still wet and open, and says, “All right. That was the last time, remember?” as though Drake can’t feel the heat of him through the covers.

“I remember.” Drake climbs over to the other side of Josh’s bed, where he sits without leaving. “Last night, Mindy finished you off.”

“You saw that?” Josh says. It’s a little insulting that he sounds so mortified about it, after everything he and Drake have done together.

“Yeah. But she’s not the only one who knows how to do that, you know.”

Josh is quiet for a long while, but when he says, “I’ll have to take care of it myself, this time,” his resolve is so clear that Drake doesn’t ask again.

*

He’s been interested in people before, but never in Josh, so he really isn’t sure the best way to get the message across. Just to cover his bases, he gets in bed and takes care of himself the same time Josh does, which definitely adds something to the act, but ultimately leaves him annoyed he can’t have something that’s been his for years, and all because Mindy says so.

The phone call is what changes everything. It comes the next morning, when channel eleven’s sexy weekend anchor wakes him by purring in his ear as he lies in bed with Josh snoring across the room.

“We’ve had a report from a Park Ranger Schneider that you took out a rabid bear Friday night,” she says. “You sound like a fascinating young man, and we’d love an exclusive report.”

Drake stretches his arm out behind his head and smiles into the phone. He is pretty fascinating, and it’s nice that someone else recognizes it, especially someone with long sleek legs in pantyhose and heels higher than any of the girls at school, which Drake knows because he’s seen her on TV with Bruce Winchell, and…wait, something is slowly clicking into place, but it takes a few more brain-stalling compliments before Drake finally gets it. Bruce Winchell: Walter’s sworn enemy.

If sexy weekend anchor wants something, then Bruce Winchell wants something, so why should Drake be a hero when he can be a double-hero?

*

“Hey,” Josh says when he comes down for breakfast. He’s moving slowly this morning, wary and sated all at once, and why wouldn’t he be? Between Drake and Mindy, everyone’s vying to take care of his every need, but Drake would like to see Mindy make him light up the way does when Walter grins up from his Frosty-Tart and says, “Son, it may only be ten in the morning, but I’ve already brokered my first major deal at the station.”

“Yeah?” Josh claps his hand on Walter’s shoulder and gives him a smile that goes all the way to his eyes. Drake scowls at the way his belly turns over in a slow rolling flip; he’s seen Josh smile before. “Way to go, Dad. Whatcha got going on?”

“Well, according to your brother, channel eleven has been dying to get their hands on an exclusive interview. But I called into work, told them I’d pulled some strings, and now channel two will be doing a piece on Drake Parker, bear-slaying hero. Eat that, Bruce Winchell!”

Drake doesn’t even feel bad about the belly-flip this time, because Josh’s smile is directed at him, and he gets to smile right back. “No slaying. I just stunned it,” Drake says, even though he knows the smile isn’t about the bear at all, but about Josh being happy for Walter. “Want to come down to the station with us?”

“Like you could stop me!” Josh says, looking from Walter to Drake and then back, until Walter bounces out of his seat and they engage in a back-slapping hug that somehow manages to be manly and girly at the same time. It’s a lot like Josh, Drake thinks with an inward sigh, stirring his cereal that’s not nearly as interesting once Josh has gone to shower and Walter has gone wherever it is he goes when he’s not speaking directly to Drake.

Later, when Drake returns to their room fresh from the shower, Josh is sitting on his bed, tying his shoes.

“That was a really nice thing you did for Dad,” he says, and something in his tone catches Drake’s attention: the halting question that sounds a lot like hope.

“I just like being on TV.”

“I don’t think so, you big softie. You like channel eleven’s weekend anchor,” Josh says. “The one with the legs? But you turned her down for Dad. You love Dad!” he declares, and Drake flings a pillow at his head. “You do!” he repeats, which forces Drake to throw another pillow, until they’re engaged in the weirdest wrestling match Drake has ever been in, with both of them ridiculously careful to keep their hands and faces away from anything that might be misconstrued as enjoyable.

For a wrestling match with Josh, it’s surprisingly unenjoyable.

Finally, they stop, and at least Josh looks as uneasy as Drake feels. “You know, we can still do all this stuff,” Josh says. “There’s no reason anything should change at all.”

Drake just shoves his hands into his pockets. The moment Mindy had said their kissing was twisted, something had changed. The moment they’d had the best makeout session Drake has ever had, something had changed. And he’s not like Josh; he doesn’t like to retreat back to safety; he wants to go forward and kiss Josh on his soft, curvy mouth until neither of them cares who thinks it’s twisted.

“I know,” he says, and stomps away as though they’re in the middle of a real fight.

*

Josh gets edgy as they navigate the halls of the channel two building. It’s been a few years, but Drake doesn’t think the humiliation of Josh’s tv appearance will ever die. Walter leads Drake proudly through makeup and a sound check, and then he’s in a seat under bright studio lights, facing weekday anchor Debbie Styler.

“Today we have Drake Parker, high school senior and local hero,” Debbie says, looking straight at the camera with an enormous smile. “Recently, while on a camping trip with some friends, your group was attacked by a rabid bear, correct?”

“It sure looked rabid,” Drake says. “It just came at us like this.” He does his best impression of the bear, hands raised into claws, and sees Josh laughing from his seat near the camera. “It chased one of my friends out from the woods,” he says.

“Ah, yes.” Debbie consults a notecard and says, “Tricia Hillfarm. Now, what was she doing in the woods?”

Drake pauses, stretching his feet out in front of him. He knows enough not to mention Truth or Dare. “Picking berries,” he says, and looks up just in time to see Josh slap both hands over his face.

“Picking berries?”

“Or nuts. Nuts or berries,” Drake says, but Josh’s expression remains pained. “Anyway, she’s in the forest and then she just comes out screaming.”

“That is a chilling account,” Debbie says, her tone suddenly as serious as though the entire group had been torn limb from limb. “And tell me, what were you thinking as this bear came at you?”

“I…” Drake runs his hand over his hair. “I guess I was thinking about my brother. I just yelled for Josh to get out of the way.”

Debbie nods and folds her hands together. “How sweet. And what about your brother? Was he trying to get you out of the way, as well?”

The studio lights are hot on Drake’s face. “He was, uh…he was getting his girlfriend into the RV,” he mumbles, and he doesn’t know what’s with this lady, but she just won’t let it go.

“But then he came back out to help you.”

“Not exactly.”

“That must have been disappointing,” she says, touching his arm. He edges out from beneath her long, manicured nails and blinks under the lights, which are really beginning to burn. “He left you all on your own. Did anyone at all come to your aid?”

“It all happened so fast,” he says, but he can remember the gleam of Josh’s belt buckle and the way his voice had sounded: muffled, as though the RV’s door had been closed. “I heard Josh yell for me, but it was too late. I was the only one left, and the only thing in my hand was my guitar, so I hit the bear as hard as I could.”

“And I understand you did a fair amount of damage,” she says, patting his arm.

“Yeah,” he says, with a stab of melancholy right down to the bone. “The body was crushed, the neck and bridge were in splinters, and the strings snapped so hard I got this-“ He lifts his hand and shows her the side of his hand where he’d been cut deep. Josh had been the one who’d finally noticed that Drake had been bleeding into his lap all the way from the campsite.

“I meant damage to the bear,” she says with a smile that makes her look an awful lot like Mrs. Hayfer. “Park Ranger Schneider reports that the animal was knocked unconscious for several hours.”

“Oh. So, is he gonna be okay?” Until now, Drake hadn’t really thought about the animal’s injuries.

Debbie pauses. “The bear was rabid.”

Drake is pretty sure he’s heard of rabies shots, but with the cameras and the lights and Josh suddenly so grim in the sidelines, it’s best to just not say anything.

“Which means the animal had to be put down,” Debbie continues. “Luckily, no one was hurt, thanks to your quick thinking. Except your guitar, of course,” she adds with a wink that makes Drake sit up in his chair, because he’d loved that guitar, a Washburn acoustic-electric that had been his entire inspiration for the camping trip. That and making out, of course.

“Thanks for having me,” he says, and she smiles as though it had been the perfect thing to say.

*

“Well, it’s just like the news team to spin things that way,” Walter says on the way home, disapproval in every line of his face. “It was an emergency situation, son, and like Drake said, things can happen very quickly.”

Josh just looks out the window.

“And I’m very proud that you made sure the women got to safety first,” Walter adds, which is overkill, because since when is Mindy’s life worth more than Drake’s? But he’s trying to make Josh feel better, and Drake is used to Walter saying stupid things, so he lets it go.

When they get home, Drake follows Josh to their bedroom.

“Are you mad?” Drake asks, when Josh sits right in the middle of the sofa and turns on the tv without saying a word. “Because I had no way of knowing it was going to be like that. I thought I was doing y-Walter a favor.” He comes around and sits on the coffee table, their knees touching, but Josh still won’t look at him. “The things she said were…”

“The things she said were right,” Josh says, and presses his lips together in a hard line. He finally shifts his gaze to Drake, and Drake is caught off guard by how much sorrow is contained in those pretty, expressive eyes.

“Hey, they twisted-“ he begins, but there’s that word again, and Drake presses his hands to the table, keyed up and bound into knots and trying to ignore the little ache in his chest that he used to soothe with a big hug from Josh. This all used to be easy for them.

“Drake,” Josh says, looking terrified, when there’s no reason. It’s just the two of them here, but there’s a tremble to his mouth that Drake can’t look away from. “If I had to choose—I mean, really choose—between you and Mindy, I’d choose you. Easily.”

“But you said we had to stop.”

“We do! Because you want me to throw Mindy away so you can have me, along with everyone else who comes your way,” Josh says. “And I want to be the only one. With you, I can’t ever be the only one, but Mindy can give me that.”

Drake scoots forward on the table, his knees sliding between Josh’s. “I can give you that.”

“Drake,” Josh sighs. “You-“

“No, listen,” Drake says. He slides his hands over Josh’s knees and rubs his thighs lightly, just enough to get his attention. “This isn’t what you think. It’s not new. It’s not going to stop just because we agreed on some stupid rules about staying away from each other.”

“Just one rule,” Josh insists. “Kissing, that’s all. It shouldn’t even matter.”

“Kissing always matters,” Drake says, and slides forward into a hug that Josh welcomes by grabbing on tight. This part isn’t against the rules. Drake abandons the table to perch on Josh’s thigh, arms around his neck, and he sees it now: this is the type of embrace they save for behind closed doors.

Until now, he’d honestly thought they were out in the open about everything.

“I wanted to go back out,” Josh says, his thumb rubbing at the back of Drake’s neck; a slow, steady pressure that makes Drake’s eyelids heavy. “When you heard me yell for you at the campsite. They were blocking the door, they said it was crazy to go out there. But like you said, it was over so fast, and until that interview, I didn’t think…I mean, those things that lady said. You must have felt terrible.”

“Only because of my guitar.” Drake lays his head on Josh’s shoulder so that Josh’s neck is against his face, warm skin that smells faintly of cologne. “Forget about it.” He’s just resting his face there; not kissing.

“This isn’t working,” Josh says, his voice high with frustration, fingers bent into Drake’s skin so hard it almost hurts. Drake thinks he knows what Josh means. They’re so close, but it’s not close enough, and Josh keeps himself bound by these self-imposed codes that keep him from having what he wants. That’s why it’s always been Drake’s job to cut through those binds, even if it ends up getting them in trouble.

“I want what you said,” Drake says, and he’s still not kissing, but it’s not fault if his lips touch Josh’s throat as he talks. “Just you and me. I want it so bad, Josh.”

“I want it, too.”

Drake’s thighs tighten as he remembers how good it had felt to have them wrapped around Josh’s hips. His whole body gets in on the memory, until he can’t help but writhe the tiniest bit on Josh’s lap. “You said I tasted good. Was that just to make everybody think we were-“

“Of course not! You taste- I mean, you are making this so difficult,” Josh says, shifting Drake away from his crotch, widening the space between his legs. “You’ve always made everything impossible,” Josh moans, and Drake has readied himself with wheedling and convincing arguments, but it turns out he doesn’t need any of them because Josh is turning him, pushing with impatient hands, and by the time Drake is on his back, they’ve already taken up where they’d left off last night, when they’d decided not to do this anymore.

Drake is determined not to let Josh change his mind, but maybe he’s underestimated how much Josh wants this, because Josh pins Drake to the sofa, hands buried in his hair and kissing, kissing, harsh breath on Drake’s lips because there’s no time for breathing, for anything but all the touching they’ve never let themselves do.

He hears the desperate sound rise up from Josh’s throat the same time he feels the press of his hips turn deliberate, steady, and Drake doesn’t want it to happen like this when they’ve got two perfectly good beds. “Josh,” he says, but he slips his hands up inside Josh’s shirt as he says it, finally touching the smooth, overheated skin of his back, and that doesn’t do anything to slow them down. If anything, Josh just goes deeper, teeth scraping Drake’s bottom lip one last time as he goes down his throat again.

This time, he doesn’t stop there; he keeps going down until he shoves Drake’s t-shirt up over his chest, and the shock of Josh laying wet kisses across his belly makes Drake reach down and press a hand to the front of his jeans, not sure whether he wants to come or not, because it’s all so much that he could; he could just let go right now and let the shivery slide of Josh’s tongue dipping under his waistband push him over the edge.

It’s a lot to think about at once, but getting naked is too appealing, so he manages to twist away and say, “Josh, man, go lock the door.”

Josh lifts his head, biting at his lip as though he’d been so involved in getting down Drake’s pants that he doesn’t know what’s going on.

“The door,” Drake repeats, scrambling off the sofa and thumbing open his fly. “Come on,” he says, on his way to Josh’s bed, and after a moment of dumbstruck silence, Josh hurries to the door and turns the lock. By the time Josh gets to the bed, Drake is down to his underwear, and he eventually gets Josh the same way, with the obstacle of Josh’s hands all over him the entire time.

Drake tries to pull him onto the bed, but Josh hesitates. “I’m close,” he says. He’s flushed all the way down his chest, which Drake strokes with an open hand, feeling the light curl of hair against his fingers.

“Then let’s do this,” Drake says, and he doesn’t usually do this in the middle of the day out in the open, but he wants it badly enough that he’s willing to be the first one to pull his boxers down over his hips and kick them onto the floor. “You too, come on.” The truth is, he’s as close as Josh, and he doesn’t care how it happens; as soon as they do, as soon as his dick finds something warm and solid to rub against, it’s all going to be over. He throbs a little just thinking about it, leaking onto his belly as he stretches out on the bed.

Josh takes a few seconds to decide, as though he doesn’t know how good he looks, how much Drake wants to see where all that dark hair leads, how much he wants Josh on top of him again. “Josh,” Drake pleads, and he finally strips off his underwear and climbs onto the bed.

And then they’re in each other’s hands, pulling and stroking with far less finesse than Drake would like, but none of it matters except for the way Josh responds to every variation in Drake’s speed and angle. They don’t even get down to the mattress, just kneel there clinging together, Josh licking mindlessly at Drake’s shoulder as they rush toward their orgasms, Drake gasping through his and Josh moaning and saying Drake a lot, over and over, his name and Josh’s fingers still tight around his dick, wet and messy.

They collapse onto the bed at the same time, and who cares about Josh’s bedspread, because Josh is the one who’ll have to either wash it or explain to Mom how it got into such bad shape. This is usually the point Drake is putting his pants back on, but he finds himself reaching for Josh, who reaches back, until he’s got the warm weight of Josh on top of him and slow, dirty kisses like they haven’t gotten anything out of their systems yet.

“We can do this every day,” Drake says, running his hands over Josh’s ass, just to see if it’s allowed. It is.

“Every night.”

“In the morning, before school.”

“I can get down under the covers and wake you up,” Josh says, his face hot against Drake’s shoulder.

“Holy crap,” Drake says. “We’re gonna get caught.” He can imagine it now, their door locked twenty-four hours a day, the washing machine running at all hours, and for anyone who bothered to listen, the rhythm of a squeaky mattress and Josh saying his name like he can’t come without it.

“We won’t. We’ll be careful,” Josh says, but they’re lying on his bed, naked in the early afternoon sun.

“Hmm,” Drake says, too warm and sleepy to care, and suddenly remembers what Mindy had said in the RV. “Hey,” he mumbles. “Do I look dumber when I sleep?”

“No. You look nice. Really nice,” Josh says softly, as Drake begins to drift off.

*

Everyone watches the evening news together, and while everyone agrees that Debbie Styler is the devil, Megan laughs herself silly. “How were those berries, Drake?” she snorts during commercial break. “And nuts?”

“I’m sure they would have been delicious,” Josh says, and puts his arm around Drake’s shoulders in a move that seems daring, but probably looks like any other night. “If it hadn’t been for the bear.”

“I like a good honey-roasted pecan,” Walter says. Drake thinks he’s still worried that Drake is going to have some kind of post-traumatic abandonment meltdown because of the interview.

When they come back from commercial, Debbie Styler is ready with another interview; a middle-aged guy and a girl about their own age.

“Smart-girl!” Drake blurts, and Josh gives him a strange look, halfway between scorn and fondness.

“I hate to shatter your illusions, but Tricia Hillfarm is a D student,” he says, which makes a lot of sense to Drake, even though he doesn’t think it’s fair to measure intelligence by grades alone. Although apparently, glasses aren’t a good gauge, either.

Walter shushes them as Debbie starts talking, smiling maniacally into the camera the whole while.

“And as a follow-up to our interview with Drake, we have Tricia Hillfarm and her father, Steven Hillfarm of Hillfarm Gardens Incorporated. If you remember, Drake Parker’s guitar was destroyed during his brave rescue-“ A still-shot of Drake’s mournful face appears in the corner of the screen, which makes Megan laugh out loud. “-and out of gratitude, Mr. Hillfarm would like to present Drake with this gift certificate to Benson’s Guitar Emporium for five thousand dollars.”

Megan’s face falls, Debbie Styler beams, and Josh grabs Drake’s sleeve. “Five thousand dollars!” Josh bellows, hoisting Drake up over the sofa so they can do a victory dance that Drake wants so badly to end in a kiss. He settles for jumping into Josh’s arms and letting Josh spin him around, holding on tight as they celebrate new guitars and rich, grateful fathers.

“Congratulations, sweetie,” Mom says, and Walter looks relaxed for the first time all day.

“I think we should go look at their website,” Josh says, tugging Drake toward the stairs before he can properly accept all the congratulations. “Don’t you think, Drake?”

Drake thinks yes.

*