Notes: This was actually written before I'd seen Really Big Shrimp, so it doesn't comply with the movie canon. Also, there is mention of light drug use, though it isn't exactly what it appears to be in the beginning. There is a point to be made. :P

As for reviews: So it probably isn't too nice to flame just because that's how you get your jollies, but ALL constructive crit is welcome and will be taken seriously!

Disclaimer: This was written purely for my own enjoyment – no profit made whatsoever. I post it in hopes I may bring a (non-distressing, non-eyeball-charring) light into the lives of a few others! Basically when all is said and done, I don't own Drake & Josh.

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I.

Josh sat like a boneless creature, his long legs set heavy and immobile over the low-seated plush of an old, stuffed recliner.

As far as he was concerned, the two of them were made up of the same inanimate materials - as if he could have been torn into halves and be found to harbor innards composed of parched, cotton-fluff organs and splinter for bones.

Well, if Josh hadn't established by the failed execution of simple movements that bones were nowhere in his body.

"I don't feel anything," Josh said, a fine feat for a self-professed armchair.

"Maybe you need to take another hit."

"No, it's – I mean, I can't feel anything," Josh clarified.

"Huh," Drake commented with a superiorly unconcerned shrug.

Drake was straddling the wiry backing of a swiveling desk chair, his jean-clad legs wrapped there like coal-smirched ropes. He nudged the floor lazily, rocking and gliding across the strips of hardwood just before Josh.

As was the way which was utterly Drake Parker, he looked incredibly composed and flawless, arms crossed over the peak of the chair and his sharp chin resting over them. So unfairly, that was all he ever had to do to sweep the ladies off their collective feet.

Except that the only things around with feet happened to be Josh and those sundry pieces of furniture that had been a part of the room since he'd moved in.

"What do you feel?" Josh asked, because considering Drake's small frame, the feeling Josh had that his body had turned from something solid to wisps of drifting smoke must have been coursing tenfold through Drake.

The air conditioning was out, and the atmosphere in the room was of small, sweltering spaces – the closet downstairs during the summer perhaps – and the upper part of Drake's lip where he either nicked himself shaving or his recent tryst with Darcy Pope turned violent was under a glaze of sweat.

Drake snorted in amusement and flicked his head - the tiny red gash flitting elsewhere - so the hair caught in the tiny combs of his eyelashes stuck to his forehead.

"Are you kidding?" he asked, voice laced with sparkling tones of amusement. "I don't smoke that stuff. Drugs aren't cool, man."

Josh was overwrought. "I – you – not cool!"

Josh had spent an entire week listening to Drake urgently prattle on about Josh's lumbar problems and the 'healing powers of ganja,' even expertly pretending to consider. But the whole thing was just so pointless – even more so than last month's, 'Hey Josh, come over here so I can see who has thicker fingernails' – that Josh had believed Drake's curiosity would pass.

Which lasted right up until the moment Drake actually showed up with his little goodies.

Giving in was a different thing all together then; more like that it was something they would do together, because if Drake was going to try something destructive, Josh was going to be there to offer the parental eye and enforce restrictions.

Also, the fact that Drake'd told him he would be able to scarf down an endless amount of churros had contributed a bit.

Now that he thought about it, though, Drake hadn't even bothered to bring any churros.

"Uh huh," Drake said soberly, disinterested with the amount of consternation he'd caused. "I think that's what I said."

Josh sputtered comprehensively because his indignation over being swindled once again by his step-brother decided to manifest in spittle and monosyllables. He tried standing, but gravity – and Drake – was adept in the practice of being rudely disobliging.

Especially to Josh.

A moment later, Josh was back in the groove he'd made in the chair, gripping the armrests as a heady fog swaddled him.

Rather belatedly he thought he might have bones after all.

Drake, who had glided toward Josh, as smoothly as a prowling cat, pushed down on Josh - Rude! - so that every stretch of Josh's back hit the gold-colored cushions.

Drake's hand was splayed over Josh's chest, those far-spread fingers pulsing and pushing, making their indentations so Josh thought that maybe he wasn't made of splinters after all, but warm clay.

"Hey, relax," Drake said in a tone that suggested a state Josh couldn't possibly achieve because all those years of 'just say no' had been hoodwinked out of him. His brain cells were probably being fried.

Josh looked up at Drake, focusing on the wicked smirk that clouded his default come-hither look like smoke under a pane of glass.

"Look, Josh, I knew you were freaking out over your course load and your college aps, and I thought since I have the connections -" He said 'connections' in a sly tone, accompanied by waggling eyebrows. "- then why not? I'd say you – unlike me – are at a low risk for dependency, even in the reckless days of your careful, overachieving, and responsible youth –"

Josh felt himself swell over the recognition: He really did try. "Thanks, man."

"- all true –" Drake said with a lilt before picking up his explanation as if never missing a step, "- and it's only this one time, so I figure, what's the big deal?"

So Drake was trying to throw him off then. It was an outrage, and Josh wouldn't stand for it.

"The big deal," Josh began, but his tongue was slow and leaden, dragging itself like a sodden sandbag over the top of his mouth. In comparison, Drake was the unstoppable flash flood which had come upon him. One sandbag had never been enough.

"See, what I want to know," Drake dragged out with the inflection that let Josh know that the next question wasn't going to be pleasant.

It must have been a really big favor, judging by the lengths Drake had gone. He was grinning down at Josh now, Satan ready to bargain for your soul and so close that the back of his wheely chair was etching its indentation into the front of Josh's recliner.

Josh Nichols would resist, though, stay more resolved than a deep-anchored stone. A deep-anchored stone that was a little woozy, but however.

Josh jut his chin and put on his stern face, pretending he wasn't doomed.

Dully he realized that this is where Drake would finally ask him to break Madey Stenson, Josh's study partner in English, so she'd finally agree to go out with Drake.

Josh'd been dreading it for weeks, much in the manner one dreads a trip to the dentist who can charm patients into an unnecessary root canal.

Still, he wanted to scoff.

As if Madey's first words to Drake being, 'I've heard of you. You're the one who causes the saline to flow unhampered in the girl's bathroom for weeks. Away, scumbag!' (All combined with Josh's compliments on her nice use of vocabulary while Drake screws up his face to say, "Ew, pee?") was a portent of eternal love. Or in Drake's case, a week of furious making out.

But being Drake, he was convinced that his charms would work on every girl. He just needed the right hair, opportunity, and mouthwash.

In Josh's opinion, though, Drake didn't have a chance.

Drake hung around the two of them during their study sessions, doodling pictures of himself making out with Madey on the vocabulary cards and puncturing vocabulary flash-offs with giggles over words that 'sounded dirty.'

He'd also constantly complain about how, by common decency, a 'flash-off' should require debauched waves of actual skin-revealing flashing, and should in no way involve index cards.

Unless they were pasties, he'd added thoughtfully and to Josh's sheer mortification.

Drake kept up his trend of being ever-so discomfiting and didn'tdo this.

"What I wanna know," Drake said, slow and focused, "is just why you let me talk you into things that go against your common sense." He then concluded with a haughty clearing-of-throat, believing himself to be clever.

Well that Josh would just have to deny, because if not - Jesus, Drake would just think that he had a one-up on Josh he'd be able to use to wheedle anything from him.

Drake did, of course. Have that one-up on Josh. But for the preservation of all that was good and holy, Drake did not need to know that.

Drake was looking expectantly at Josh, though; Josh realized that from somewhere in between the moment and that distressing thought.

"I –I don't – splagrahhh," Josh intoned dramatically, trailing off in a decided semblance of a valid explanation.

The Beatles were dragging their way over the expanse of the room in a meld of rippling sound and scattered melody, and there were more pressing matters at hand such as Drake's hand, which seemed to have fused itself into Josh's chest.

"You don't splagrah?" Drake asked incredulously, clearly enjoying himself.

In Josh's defense, or a terrible attribute of his complaisant nature, he was unaware of just why Drake has such a hold over him. It had always just been that way, so that long before they became step-brothers and before he even knew Drake's name, he was lodging finger foods into his sinuses just to impress him.

But either way, Drake lived in a way that Josh had never dared to live before Drake entered the carefully folded fabric of Josh's existence.

Perhaps Josh wanted to feel a connection to that same plane where Drake lived – a one toe in the water, the rest of your body fettered to dry land kind of connection, because Josh still wanted to get into a good college and know that when he laid down to go to sleep for the night, his grammy wouldn't be too horrified to know what he had done that day.

Drake broached Josh's thoughts, leaning forward, his knee pushing itself farther into Josh's thigh, and placed a finger over Josh's temple.

"You're writing an essay in there," Drake said with a smirk. The heat made his voice sound like old, dried bone. "Just say it," he urged quietly, and Josh almost missed it.

Josh moved his eyes lower because that tiny, bloodied chasm seemed to undulate with Drake's every word, and really, why he hadn't put a band-aid over it was beyond him, but he instead got the gleaming base of Drake's throat.

Some wretched noise surfaced from the back of Josh's throat, and he expelled a long breath, because if he couldn't speak, the least he could do was breathe.

And Drake pushed through his exhalation as if it were a corporeal thing and kissed Josh full on the mouth.

It wasn't anything like when Josh kissed him on his birthday, which was a rash and unreciprocated (not to mention stiff) motion born of exhilarating, Oprah-related circumstance. Drake was calculating and most pliant, Drake was…kissing him.

"Wait – wait," Josh breathed fervently against Drake's mouth.

Josh stood abruptly and pushed Drake backwards, maybe a tad bit too hard. The chair went with him, but instead of tipping over, Drake ended up passenger on a contraption making its way across the floor. It stopped after a couple of feet, when hitting the shelved and clutter-strewn wall. Hard.

Drake then had the audacity to just stare at him.

"Now I know," Josh exclaimed, "that I didn't just give you tickets to see Oprah."

"'Course not," Drake said while playfully screwing up his face and flicking his hand with a distrait air. "Oprah's your thing, man."

Josh stared, and Drake's grin gained more flashes of teeth by the second before Josh began gesticulating madly and ended the whole tumultuous whirl of by appendages by thrusting a finger toward Drake. "That's not what I meant; you are taking advantage of a befuddled man!"

Josh then actually swayed - not swooned, because that would be wrong - and seeing the way Drake's pupils were dilated from the heat, wondered if he had perhaps lost his mind, the gray matter escaping from the top of his head rather than body heat.

During those weeks just before Madey, Drake had twice as many girls wrung around him (more tautly than nooses by the looks of things) right up until she began coming over after school to study with Josh. A terrible dry spell then passed over Drake's agenda.

Josh had first thought Drake had contracted mono, what with the way he was moping.

That is, only until he remembered the time he and Josh had bet on who could get more dates, and Drake couldn't go through with it because of his feelings for Carly.

The doodles on the index cards had then gotten progressively more explicit as the days went by, and Josh thought that maybe Drake really liked this girl. Josh had thought it was kind of sweet then, albeit highly disruptive to Josh's valued Sanctuary Of Learning.

Now Josh also thought that Drake was probably some type of sex addict, and it would, in fact, be better for him to keep up with his shocking girl-a-day regime. Surely this was what happened when Drake Parker was going through withdrawals.

"Look, Josh," Drake said, standing from his chair and kicking it off to the side. His shoulders were as stiff as boards, and he was watching Josh with the wary eye of an attack dog victim, the only way Josh knew that Drake wouldn't abruptly pounce. "I've been thinking –"

Josh decided it was a good time to bolt. He started over to the door while crying out, a bit too frantically: "And this must be why you don't do that often!" He then waved his hands in a way he hoped would shape disaster.

"Josh -"

Josh walked up the stairs, frantically grasping for the doorknob, but his hand slipped due to the perspiration pooled over his palms. Unfortunately, Josh thought, his body hadn't yet received the memo, and a painful head-to-door reaction ensued.

Josh's hands went out to cradle the spot on his forehead that'd probably be blooming with color tomorrow and heard Drake shuffling to his side. "Don't," he snarled.

In between song breaks, a muffled spell of shrieking laughter drifted from the floor below.

Very suddenly, Josh realized that perhaps Drake had thought this through.

Their parents were downstairs with his – their – Dad's boss, a gathering the two boys had been urged to give a wide berth to, and if Josh left the room, someone may have been able to catch trappings of his intoxication just by the state of his deceitful eyeballs.

His options were confined to their room. That is, if he knew what was good for him, and in being Josh Nichols, knowing what was good for him was carried over in his genes.

Josh began to pace.

Focused as he was on the floor, out the corner of his eye, he saw Drake making the failed gestures of one trying to gather the words to what could be the most disastrous speech in the history of disastrous speeches.

"You know," Josh began vehemently, because if he did, Drake couldn't, "you can't just go and – there's a thing called a personal bubble, and when a lady says, 'No' –" At this the two stopped to gaze at each other in intense confusion before Josh erratically continued, "Dude, I'm your brother! These are inappropriate actions. Inappropriate! 'Hug me, brotha,' wasn't meant that way!" Josh said desperately, pleading with himself as much as with Drake.

"Step-brothers!" Drake said, and his voice broke. He stepped toward Josh with a hand partially extended to him as if to beckon a frighten creature into his palm, as if Josh were the insane one, and Josh wondered just how Drake could turn things around even at a time like this. Outraged, he took a step back. "OK, Josh. Look, man –"

"Yeah, you bet I'm lookin'!" Josh said. "I'm keepin' an eye on you!" He emphasized this point by thrusting a finger in Drake's direction.

Drake winced.

Josh was brutally satisfied.

"Boys!"

A sharp knock came from the other side of the door, and evermore quickly than it had mounted, the tension in the room teetered over, not quite into oblivion, but encompassing something very different all together.

On instinct, he turned toward Drake and saw his exact feelings echoed in his trepidatious stare.

"Just a minute, Walter!" Drake sang out, eyes still on Josh.

As if he'd been preparing for this his entire life, he bolted over the sofa to gather his illicit playthings and erratically shoved them into his desk drawer, leaving not even a ghost of any of it.

All the while, Josh pat his clothing in a desultory manner, trying for a semblance of composure and getting essence of accomplished hobo.

"I thought you said they wouldn't bother us tonight," Josh said, low and dizzying in his franticness. "Oh man, I'm dead – Dad's gonna murder me and serve my body as entrees to his boss, and I won't even taste good because I'm tainted!" Josh's voice raised a pitch for every step Drake ran toward him, ending disconcertingly high considering Drake was running and thus taking what were more like leaps.

Once in front of Josh, he tried to swat Josh's hands into a still position which wouldn't make Josh look so insane. This very nearly caused a hissy girl slap fight.

To end all motion, he took Josh's face in his hands.

Josh flinched.

"Josh, listen to me," he said slowly, gripping too tight and leaning in too close. His eyes, though, were bright and sincere. "I'm going to take care of it."

An involuntary shriek, possibly not too reassuring, surfaced from Josh at the words.

Earning a certain level of Josh's admiration, Drake seemed unfazed. "I want you to let me do all the talking," Drake said, to which Josh whimpered a bit but then nodded frantically because Drake now had an evil glint in his eye. "Alright," Drake confirmed, and he pat Josh on the cheek, looking him over twice before lunging coolly toward the door.

He touched the metal of the knob, opening it a chink before he abruptly slammed it against Dad's confused protests, and - what seemed before he'd even turned around - made a running leap over the sofa and to the desk.

Josh raised an eyebrow in inquiry. In response, Drake picked up an aerosol can and sprayed something that smelled of flowers and immediately brought Josh to a state of near-suffocation. Drake then took a moment to get a pleasant whiff of what Josh thought could very well be poison and sighed contently before leaping back over the sofa (quite unnecessarily) and back to the door.

All of this left Josh feeling as if he were in a snow globe that had just been tipped on end.

"Stand over there," Drake hissed, waving Josh - who was choking around the unholy burning in his nostrils - off to the side. After straightening his t-shirt and flicking his hair from his eyes, Drake opened the door, just as Dad began to knock once again.

"Hey, Walter," Drake said with a giddy and untrustworthy lilt, as if he lived for these moments, and he leaned himself heavily against the doorframe. "What up, man?"

Dad's hand was raised as if preparing to knock once more, and he quickly dropped it to his side while fabricating a more stern countenance.

"Drake," he greeted suspiciously, dragging the word out too long. "I need you and Josh to help me out in the kitchen with the Prussian desserts. I really need this to go well, and they're Mr. Galloway's favorites. Your mom's got Mrs. Galloway so into the stories of the Chinese fire ants she had as pets when she was a kid that I'd hate to break it up. So if you would," he concluded, making sure that he and Drake knew what 'if you would' meant exactly: 'Do it now. You have no choice.'

Drake flashed him a hundred-watt grin. "We'll be right on it, Dad."

Dad raised an eyebrow at hearing Drake call him 'Dad' and darted his eyes dubiously from Drake to Josh, because Drake being pointedly respectful either meant that he'd laid out the path to their dooms or he was standing over the trappings of some evildoing. Apparently Dad decided that he couldn't pin anything on them - yet - and turned on his heel, descending the stairs.

As Dad's head bobbed farther away, like a balloon suspended on a string, Josh realized that he was still clasping his hands together and smiling so wide there would probably be some nerve damage.

"You all right, man?" Drake asked, concern making his voice thin.

Josh looked toward Drake, whose eyes sparkled with the misty sheen of a martyred orphan, and only then did it occur to him once again to be angry with his brother.

It was Drake's fault. It was Drake's fault again, and it was up to Josh to fix it on his own, just like everything Drake was involved with: Josh took the fall and Drake lounged about to pleasantly take it all in with his tea and biscuits.

"I don't know, Drake," Josh said, and he pushed roughly past him, stopping to say too close to his face: "If I was, how would you screw it up this time?"

With that, Josh descended the stairs as if he were making his way to the electric chair.