First fic of 2008, woot! First Drake/Josh, first slash, yay for me, expanding my horizons and such. Still don't own nothing, though.
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Hey, Brother: Part One
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Josh comes home from Harvard with a degree, a scholarship for grad school, a goatee and a fiancé.
Drake's kinda still stuck on the goatee thing, because it seems to him that Josh has Oreo cookie crumbs all over his face, so when Audrey screams in excitement and starts jumping up and down, he's a little lost.
"Wait," he says. "What?"
Josh is hugging Walter now, and he's kind of blushing as he pulls back. He looks at Drake with familiar exasperated affection and laughs. "I'm engaged, Drake. I'm getting married."
It's weird, kind of like being doused in cold water or stepping out into a snow storm from a warm house. His whole body goes kind of tingly and there's one second, two seconds, three seconds when all he can do is stare.
Then – "What?"
"We told Wanda's parents last week – she stayed a couple extra nights for her cousin's birthday party, so she'll be here in a few days."
"You're engaged?" Drake repeats, stuck a few seconds behind everyone else. "You're engaged to a chick named Wanda?"
Josh rolls his eyes. "Wanda. Girlfriend, philosophy major, together a year and a half. Ring any bells?"
"Engaged, as in married?"
Audrey shakes her head slightly at Josh, as if to say ignore my idiot son, and clasps his forearm. "Have you set a date yet?"
Josh goes back to smiling in that strange, dopey way from before. "Sometime in April. It's our anniversary."
Audrey does her female-melt thing. "That's so sweet! Walter, isn't that sweet?"
"I'm happy for you, son." Walter's smiling so widely his face looks like it's gonna crack open. "Congratulations."
Then they're all looking at Drake, as if Drake is actually supposed to be able to form sentences right now. With words. And…syllables.
"Drake?" Josh looks hopeful and nervous and a little bit guilty, and Drake knows, in the way that he's always been able to know things about Josh, that all he wants Drake to do is say that it's okay.
Words, though. Drake opens his mouth and tries, but…yeah, not happening.
He settles for smiling, stretching it across his frozen face and feels cold, incredibly, bone-numbing, deep-aching cold, like his body is a huge, shaking, confused, absolutely miserable block of ice.
"Hug me, brotha!" Josh wraps him up in a bear hug, beaming from ear to ear, and Drake's knees buckle under Josh's weight. He clamps his eyes shut and tries desperately to hold on.
--
"Hey, Drake?"
Drake still loves his room. It's the most awesome room in the whole house, hands down, even if Megan did move into it for that one school year and ended up putting this big hole beneath the window. It smells vaguely of something burnt fabric now, a scent that Drake always associates with Megan, but he hasn't asked and she hasn't offered anything.
Josh bumps fists with him and collapses on the couch, melting into the cushions with a sigh. "What a day."
Drake makes some sort of grunting noise.
"So what's up?"
"Nothing," Drake replies. He's watching the television but not really, there's some reality show where a celebrity wants to find the perfect pet…whatever. He tries not to look at Josh but it's too hard, and he ends up doing his glance-and-dodge thing, where he looks and pretends he's not looking at the same time. He doesn't think that it works on Josh, because he smirks a little.
"So…"
"So…" Drake repeats. "What?"
"So what's going on?" Josh goes for the blunt approach. "Are you not happy for me? About Wanda, I mean?"
"Seriously. You're dating someone named Wanda?" Drake says. "Are Cosmo and Timmy gonna drop in anytime soon?"
Josh glares at him. "You've met her, Drake. Twice."
"So what?"
He scoffs. "Right. Silly me, thinking that you would pay attention to anything that doesn't pertain to Drake."
Per…what? "I totally pay attention to you, dude."
"When it's convenient for you." This is a fight they've had a thousand times before, but the look Josh shoots him is enough for Drake to back off, feeling vaguely as if he were just punched in the stomach.
Drake shakes his head and stands, heading for the beds, still in the same spot. He pulls his shirt up and over his head in one long motion and collapses on Josh's old bed, unable to muster energy to get to the top.
He hears Josh moving around, shuffling things and moving things, and finally feels him sit on the very edge of the bed, as if afraid to come any nearer to where Drake is sprawled out on top of the covers.
"Do you ever wish we were seventeen again?" Drake mumbles. He keeps his head face-down into the pillow and hears Josh sigh. He doesn't look up because he knows that it's pity he'll see.
"Sometimes, man." Drake burrows deeper into the covers and pretends that he's a teenager. "Is everything okay, Drake?"
He doesn't get what he's supposed to say to that. What's okay? Things are okay, sure. Things could always be okay. But okay kind of sucks sometimes too, and damn. It's just an unsatisfying word.
He realizes Josh is still waiting for an answer and tries to shrug, which is hard while lying face down on the bed. Josh seems to understand the gesture, though, and rises from the bed.
"I'll save you some dinner."
Josh's weight disappears from the bed and Drake clenches his fists into the sheets.
--
So Josh is like, really excited about this whole engagement thing, and spends most of his time on the phone to Wanda. The couple will be staying at home with Walter, Audrey and Megan until they can find an apartment to live in while Josh attends grad school there in San Diego. Drake's been staying at home since his apartment burnt down (yeah, long story) but after two mornings of waking up to Josh making babbling, baby-noises into his cell phone at eight o'clock in the morning, Drake seriously considers heading over to his manager's place, even if he does smell like beef jerky.
Josh always offers the phone to Drake while flailing his arms around and making strange faces. Drake ignores this, as Josh flails his arms and makes faces quite often, but apparently this time is different because after the third time that Drake turns down the offer to talk to Wanda, his face goes purple and he chucks a pillow at Drake.
"Hey! What was that for?"
Josh shushes him and goes back to his phone call. "Oops, I guess Drake's in the shower after all. Sorry, sugar."
Sugar? Drake grimaces and turns his back on his brother, heading for the kitchen.
"No, I'm SURE that Drake WANTS to talk to you, it's just that he's real BUSY," Josh's voice follows him into the kitchen and Drake rolls his eyes. "What? No, I'm not yelling at you, I just – ahem! – bug in my throat." He makes some more hacking, spitting noises.
Drake waits patiently by the fridge and then turns, pretending to be absolutely transfixed by the milk cartons when Josh finally hangs up and follows him in.
"Could you talk to her a little?" Josh pleads. "I really want you guys to get along. I think you will."
"Sure, man," Drake says blandly. There are three kinds of milk in the fridge. Skim for Audrey and Josh, two percent for Walter and whole for Megan and Drake. It reminds him of high school.
"…and we're gonna be married, you know. That's huge," Josh is saying, and Drake scoffs. He doesn't need to be reminded, thanks. "And she's huge and you're huge – I mean not that you're huge, or she's…you know, physically, she's just huge in my life. She's like, you know. Really big." Josh's eyes are wide and he's not really blinking. "And so are you, so. You two are both big, and you should…be big…together." He trails off lamely.
"Right," Drake says succinctly.
"This is important," Josh says imploringly, and damn.
"Fine." Drake sighs. "I'll try, okay? I never said I wouldn't try."
"Trying means talking!"
"I don't do phones well," Drake says. Josh starts to protest and he cuts him off. "You know I don't do phones! Remember when I did that radio interview and I ended up insulting Prince Wendell or something? Dude, they yelled at me for that. For a really long time."
"Prince William," Josh says. "You called him a loser."
"I thought they were talking about the guy from 24."
"How did you mix up…" Josh stops and grins. "Don't tell me."
Drake shrugs and Josh laughs a little, leaving the kitchen and shaking his head. Mission accomplished.
--
Okay, so he's a musician, like a real one, and that's really fucking awesome, most of the time. But there are days when things get too real, and that's when it starts to suck.
"What do you mean they're canceling the tour?" Drake's angry and he's waving his arms around like an idiot because that's what he does when he's angry. "They cannot cancel this tour, the album releases in a month!"
"There just isn't budget for the kind of tour you were scheduled for right now, Drake." The rep from his studio, his own personal Tommy Quincy, is a short blonde with immaculate everything, head to toe. Her name is Cara but she makes everyone call her Carrie, something she started doing the week that Sex and the City got cancelled. Drake would've dated her if it hadn't been for that. "They're booking you at clubs all over California. You'll still get tons of exposure."
"I don't care about California. I've been playing in California for years."
Cara/Carrie shrugs, playing with her cell phone. "It's better than nothing. It'll solidify your fanbase, maybe even open up more opportunities for you."
"My apartment won't be ready for another month," Drake says. "What am I supposed to do, keep bunking down with my parents?"
"Unless you've got a better idea." Cara/Carrie really isn't very helpful.
"This is great, dude!" Josh exclaims when Drake tells him. "Wanda and I will be staying here until our place is ready – and we can all get to know each other!"
"Great," Drake replies dully.
"It'll be just like high school," Josh says.
Drake scowls and kicks his shoes off, watching them hit the wall. "Right."
--
The first thing Drake notices about Wanda: her hair. As in, there's a lot of it.
It's curly and red and freaking everywhere, and as soon as she walks through the door she attacks Drake in a bear-hug, and he's got a mouthful of curls.
"Oh, it's so great to see you again, Josh talks about you all the time!" Wanda has small, wire-frame glasses and a small, delicate face. Everything about her is tiny, yet her clothes and personality are loud enough to make up for it. She also puts weird accents into her sentences which quickly starts to annoy Drake-the-songwriter. She also jumps a lot – when she speaks, when she doesn't speak, when she's excited, when she's bored. It's like she's got springs on the bottoms of her feet, and Drake finds it incredibly irritating.
Even worse than Wanda, is Wanda and Josh. They sit as close as they can possibly get, Wanda practically on Josh's lap, cooing and whispering and giggling. They have disgusting pet names, inside jokes – the whole nine yards. At dinner, they start a food fight and get scolded by Audrey; they duck their heads and smirk at each other like five-year-olds.
Drake watches it all and starts to swallow thickly, like he does whenever he's about to get sick. He wants to take his plate and throw it against the wall for some strange, foreign reason. He gets up and leaves the room instead.
--
The first night with the fiancé addition, Wanda stops Drake in the hallway between the bedroom and the bathroom. Drake has been crashing in his old bedroom with Josh, and as soon as he sees Wanda's wild mane of red, he feels a crushing feeling in his stomach.
"Um, Drake? I kinda wanted to talk to you, about the bedroom situation," Wanda says.
Drake kind of wants to smack her. "Okay."
"I figured, since Josh and I – well, we kind of share a bedroom, back at school." Wanda stops to blush and giggle. "And I don't know how your parents handle stuff like this, but I was wondering if you'd just switch beds with me anyway."
Drake pauses, trying desperately to think of reason why he has to stay in the same room with Josh. Allergic to the guest room? Phobia of new sleeping situations? Monster in the closet? "Uh…"
Josh appears behind Wanda, peeking his head out of the bedroom door. He grins at Drake and gives him a thumbs up, and Drake's stomach plummets even further.
"Fine," Drake hears himself saying. "Whatever."
He waits by the bathroom door and watches Josh pick Wanda up by her waist, carrying her into the bedroom, door swinging shut behind them. He can hear them laughing through the walls, and when he turns to head for the guest room, his knees shake.
--
Wanda is a philosophy major, and this, apparently, gives her the right to dissect Drake at every opportunity. Nothing is safe. Dating, career, family – even Drake's music falls to her mercy.
"You know Drake, this song you're writing, about being 'on the road,' or whatever?" Wanda also has this habit of ending things with a question mark. "Do you think it has something to do with your father's death and how it affected your feelings of abandonment as a child?"
Drake looks at her plainly. "No."
Josh just chuckles whenever this happens. "C'mon, Wan. Leave the poor guy alone." (What the hell kind of nickname is 'Wan' and why does Josh call her that, Drake wonders.)
Wanda shrugs and smiles at Drake in the same condescending way that every single teacher that Drake has ever had smiled at him. "We're gonna be brother and sister soon, you know," she points out. "It's my job to look out for you."
"Don't remind me," Drake mutters.
--
So it starts out small. Wanda obviously disapproves of him, and Drake just doesn't necessarily try and prove her wrong, or anything. Little things. Leaving his towels on the bathroom floor, drinking straight from the carton of orange juice.
It's subtle enough that Josh thinks that Drake is just being his usual messy self, and while Drake isn't entirely convinced that Wanda is totally clueless as to what he's doing, he still gets a little thrill whenever he sees her mouth flatten in irritation, then smooth out again, as she visibly tries to let it go.
Then come the dates. Drake is an avoidant type of personality, he's aware of this. And there's nothing that he's more used to than burying his feelings in a sea of anonymous faces – soft faces with long hair and spicy perfume and curves that make him forget his own name.
He brings them to the house, the easiest place. Megan is never home, always on band trips or…evil little girl conventions or whatever the hell it is that she does. Walter was switched to the evening news so he never gets home before midnight, and Audrey heads to the station after work to keep him company.
The only people the house contains, then, are Josh and Wanda.
He brings a new girl home every chance he gets, never one of them twice. They blend together in a sea of designer skirts and fake eyelashes, and Drake would start feeling bad about using them all so blatantly if they weren't using him right back.
It's not fulfilling or meaningful in any sort of way, but his hands and mind are busy and occupied, and lately that's what Drake craves more than anything else. When he's alone, with no new songs bouncing around his head and no company to keep him talking, he starts thinking of how when they were sixteen and Drake started having nightmares every night, Josh would stay up with him and watch Celebrities in Rehab marathons until they'd both pass out on the couch halfway through Lindsay Lohan's third stint at Promises. Or how throughout the four years that they'd lived in separate cities, Drake in SoCal with his music career and Josh up North with his Ivy Leagues, Josh would call Drake's cell phone before every single show – never missing a single one. If Drake didn't pick up, Josh would leave a message. And how Drake has every single message downloaded into his iTunes, mislabeled and Megan-proof, but a select few still on his 'top 25 played' list all the same.
It hurts – it hurts a lot, actually, for some reason that Drake hasn't quite figured out yet. It hurts to think of Wanda in his bedroom, turning it into WandaandJosh's room instead of DrakeandJosh's room, like it has always been before. It hurts to think of Josh moving out and away, into some house in the suburbs and building a white picket fence and having tons of curly-red-haired children with annoying accents and Oprah fetishes. It hurts to think about – well, it just hurts to think, and Drake isn't used to this kind of hurt. It's strange and scary and unnerving and it's just easier to sleep around, because that's something that Drake is very good at.
It's also something that Wanda wholeheartedly disapproves of. Apparently, she's religious.
"It's wrong, and I am not comfortable with him using all these women every night." Drake can hear them arguing through the walls if he sits on the bathroom floor. He doesn't really want to think about what it means that he's eavesdropping, so he doesn't.
"Drake always does this, it's just – he's just Drake," Josh says. "I'm not particularly happy about it either, but it's his life."
"He's your brother, aren't you worried about him? He's gonna get an STD or AIDS or something."
"Drake knows what he's doing."
"And what about those girls? Do they know what they're doing?"
Josh murmurs something in reply that Drake can't hear, but it gives him a thrill all the same. They're arguing about him, and that makes him feel miles better for whatever reason.
But – "Wanda, he's my brother," he hears Josh say suddenly, and instantly feels sick again.
He hates that word.
--
End Part One