Fic: When the Music Stops - The Kill ( 15/?, Drake & Josh, R, Drake/Josh )
Title: When The Music Stops
Chapter: 15/?
Series: Drake & Josh
Author: dancinbutterfly
Pairing: Drake/Josh
Rating: R
Warnings: Slashy stepbrothers.
Disclaimer: I don't own Drake & Josh or Drake or Josh. *sigh* Sad. I do not own any of the lyrics used either. I just have them on my ipod. I own all original characters though.
A/N: So sorry for the delays lately! But its here now and I hope you enjoy it. For those who are curious this is my original inspiration for Sam.
Dedications: This is for the usual suspects. You ten odd readers who review EVERY time, I love you dearly and this story is totally and completely for you guys.
Beta: Faithfully assisted by guest_age and mochacola
Feedback: Pretty please? Its a new fandom to me and I want to know what you all think.
Summary: Music or medicine, Drake and Josh have many skills. After ten years of estrangement, they've learned a few things about those skills. Taking care of himself isn't one of Drake's. Letting go of Drake isn't one of Josh's.
All chapters here
Chapter 15: The Kill
What if I wanted to break, laugh it all off in your face? What would you do? What if I fell to the floor, couldn't take this anymore? What would you do? Come, break me down. Bury me, bury me; I am finished with you. What if I wanted to fight, beg for the rest of my life? What would you do… Look in my eyes. You're killing me, killing me.
“Can you please pass the sweet potatoes?” Walter asked. No one answered him. But as if by magic, the sweet potato casserole floated down the dining room table toward him.
“Can someone hand me the gravy?” asked Audrey.
It slid across the table, scraping across the reindeer table cloth. Audrey mumbled a thank you and poured the thick brown gravy on her stuffing.
The silence punctuated by the clicking of silverware on china and the steady sound of feet tapping a staccato on the floor was louder than most fights and everyone could feel it. Audrey and Walter had been trying to start conversations for the last two days, but everything fell flat; halfway through Christmas Eve, Grammy had put a stop to it.
“Just leave it be,” she said sharply. “Things change when they’re ready. We’re not helping.”
Audrey had wrung her hands. “If this won’t, then what will?”
Grammy had just shrugged and glanced out into the living room where the children sat, as far away from each other as was possible. “I don’t know.”
Twenty-four hours later, Christmas dinner was threatening to be one of the most excruciating moments in Parker-Nichols history. No one could seem to meet any body else’s eyes.
Except for Drake. His energy was overwhelming in the awkward stillness. He kept glancing around the table with his hands drumming, his legs bouncing, and occasionally clicking his tongue. His food sat untouched, despite the fact that he loved the marshmallows on top of the sweet potatoes and was a big fan of ham.
The thick tension lasted thirty long minutes before Josh finally set down his fork, carefully, and lost it completely.
“JUST STOP IT!”
The entire table stared at him. Almost everyone froze; except Drake, who was still tapping a little. Making noise. Moving. He was moving because he couldn’t make himself stay still.
“You’ve got to fucking stop or I swear I will kill you with the force of my brain exploding!” Josh shouted. “So just stop!”
The silence that prevailed wasn’t like the quiet that had shadowed the meal so far. That had been strained and thin but this quiet was thick and dangerous, waiting to spill out something ugly.
“Josh, stop what?” Megan asked as her hand gripped Jimmy’s under the table.
Josh picked up his knife and pointed at Drake with it. “That. The drumming. The twitching. The shaking. It’s driving me crazy.”
Drake’s hand froze mid-tap. He turned his head to focus on an intimidating glare from Josh, but failed when he gave in to the irresistible urge to rub his nose.
“What’s your problem?” he demanded.
Josh let out a strained, semi-hysterical laugh that told the entire table that he hadn’t gotten as much sleep as anyone would have liked. “You’re un-freaking-believable, Drake. You know that? You’re sitting at Christmas dinner with our entire family, you’re tweaked out of your mind, and you want to know what my problem is.” Josh gestured sharply with his knife. “I shouldn’t have to come here and eat my holiday meal with a damn junkie. That’s my problem.”
Drake rolled his eyes. “Please, I’m not high.”
Josh snorted.
“I’m fine.”
“Come on, you’re so high I’m amazed you haven’t spun off the planet!” Josh shot back, jumping to his feet so suddenly that his chair fell back with a loud crash. “And I don’t want to have to look at you like this. I don’t want to have to look at you at all!”
“Then don’t!”
“I can’t not!” Josh cried, desperation coloring his voice and breaking it in a way it hadn’t since puberty. “You’re right here. You’re at the freaking table. You’re on the radio. You’re on the Internet. You’re on TV. I don’t want to see you, but I can’t ever get away from you! You’re always here, Drake, and all I want to do is get the hell away from you!”
“It’s not like anyone said you had to be here,” Drake spat, slamming his hand down. He missed and it landed in his sweet potatoes.
The rest of the family had slid back from the table a little, watching the fight volley back and forth like a match at Wimbledon. Only Megan had the courage to stay seated firmly in place.
“Everyone's been treating me like your death wish is my problem,” Josh snapped. “Like I asked you to start imitating John Belushi and now I have to ask you to stop.” Tears stung Josh’s eyes even as the fire of his anger fed on itself. “Fixing your mistakes isn’t my job anymore, Drake! It hasn’t been my job since you abandoned me.”
“I didn’t-“
“Yes, you did! Be honest for once. You don’t lie well anymore, and it’s like you can’t stop. You don’t need another addiction, Drake.”
“Like you’re so perfect?” Drake demanded, waving a sweet potato-covered hand at him. He flung it so hard that a little orange blob landed on the floor by the window seat. “Don’t you stand there and judge me for doing want I want. I make my own choices, Josh. I have a life. I do something besides work. You think I don’t hear mom and dad talk? You’re barely a person. Have you gotten laid once since Sam walked out on you?”
The whole room fell silent again. Audrey was crying a little at the sight of her boys tearing each other apart, and Grammy had a hand on Walter’s arm, as if cautioning him not to speak up, not to get involved.
Josh didn’t see any of that because he was choking; whether it was on rage or grief was unclear, but he was gasping like he’d been hit.
“Don’t,” Josh gasped with a white knuckled grip on both his knife and the table. “Don’t you dare talk to me about Sam. Don’t you even say his name.”
Drake gave him a cruel smile. “What name? Sam?” The way he said it sounded almost dirty.
Josh abruptly let go of the lifelines he’d been clinging to, physical and metaphorical, and leapt across the table, through the stuffing, and onto Drake with a cry of wordless fury. He didn’t care that Drake was weaker than him now. He didn’t care that he was recovering. He didn’t care that touching Drake like this still made him want. He just wanted to hit him, just this once.
He landed a solid punch to Drake’s pretty face before Jimmy and Walter leapt up and pulled him off with Jimmy’s huge hands wrapped around his arms, holding him back. He wanted to fight against those hands, but he knew they’d win.
“Breathe, brother. Just breathe,” Jimmy advised as Megan and Grammy helped Drake up. His lip was split and bleeding; it wasn’t enough for everything Drake had cost him over the years.
Josh sagged in Jimmy’s grip and stared daggers at Drake, who was shrugging the incident off with a casualness that relit his anger even brighter than before.
“I lost him because of you!” The accusation exploded from him, thick and black like the cancer and tar he cleaned from patients’ lungs.
“Sam was the best thing that ever happened to me, Drake. He was my lover, my family. Everyone else could see that. We were supposed to-,” he couldn’t say it, not after everything, it hurt to much, thinking about dreams that he’d watched die and shook his head, glaring with defiant and tear-filled eyes.
Drake’s face had gone printer paper white with horror and guilt. Josh watched his bloody mouth move, open and shut, open and shut, before it finally found words.
“Josh…” was all he could manage.
“Since we’ve known each other I’ve tried to be there for you and yet your mere existence destroyed the most important thing in my life, Drake. You can’t seem to stop dragging me down.”
“Josh,” Drake’s tongue darted out, absently spreading the blood on his lips more evenly. “I didn’t mean-“
“We were supposed to have our whole lives together. We should have…we should have had this whole future,” Josh said as he started to laugh. It was a sick, empty sound that came from deep in his heart in the hollow place where Sam was supposed to be.
He shrugged Jimmy off and crossed the dinning room to Drake, so that he could see. He wanted him to understand what his presence had cost him.
“I wanted to marry him. I wanted to have children with him. I had names picked out and ranked in my head. But somehow, by having just touched my life, you ruined it.” He laughed again. “You always manage to ruin things for me, Drake. How do you do that?”
Drake shook his head, eyes wide and dark. “I don’t do anything to hurt you, Josh. Not on purpose.”
“Yeah, I have no reason to trust anything you say. I haven’t for years. I mean, why should I? You’ve been ruining my life since we were kids, and I just didn’t realize it.”
“Fuck you, Josh,” Drake spat, his eyes flashing suddenly cold again, but that was all he had.
Josh was fighting a virtually unarmed opponent. He’d so rarely been in a position of power like this with Drake that he was heady with the heavy feeling.
He was vindicated. He was justified. Hell, he was righteous.
“You know, I put myself out there for you a thousand times when we were young, Drake. More than I can count. And most of the time that I’ve counted on you, you’ve screwed me.”
The word ‘literally’went unspoken, but it hung heavy in the air between them.
“So maybe I was just counting on you to behave like a normal human being. Maybe I thought the whole overdosing and nearly dying thing would have woken you up. I thought that maybe I could have one normal family Christmas in my adult life, but you can’t even let me have that, can you?”
Drake threw his hands in the air. “Okay. So I’m so using. So the fuck what? What I do and when is not your problem, Josh. I’m not your kid and I’m not your patient. It’s not my fault that you’re a twitchy workaholic hermit.”
“Yeah, and it’s not my fault you’re a vapid coke-addicted whore.”
Drake looked like Josh had hit him again. But he had a quicker recovery time than Josh.
“If I’m a vapid coke whore, then tell me Josh, what the fuck are you doing here? Why did you come out when I was in the hospital? It’s not like anyone asked you. I know I didn’t.”
“Guys,” Megan said gently. Although where she’d suddenly come from, Josh had no idea. “Come on. Neither of you want to keep doing this.”
“Yeah, why don’t you tell us what we want, Megan,” Josh snapped, spinning to throw his fury at her. “You seem to know everything all the time.”
Megan folded her arms over her chest and glared at him. “I was just trying to help.”
“You’re. Not. Helping,” Drake bit out shortly.
Josh was boiling, hot and putrid inside. He spewed that lava at Megan because it had to get out somewhere and she’d made the mistake of getting in the path of the eruption. He knew, even as he spoke, that she didn’t deserve it but at that point he was too far gone to care.
“You don’t to get to spend a decade torturing us and then step in and be the heroine when you feel like it. So back the hell off right now before I tell your boyfriend what you got up to your sophomore year of college.”
Megan looked aghast, but Josh had already moved back to his primary target.
“I came because Little Miss Know-It-All over here called me at work and made me cut short an appointment with a guy who had a malignant tumor on his neck the size of a grapefruit!” Josh shouted. “Mr. Timor spent all week in ICU and died three hours before my flight for San Diego was supposed to take off. You know, just in case you give a damn why I haven’t slept.
“But you’re so wrapped in your personal reenactment of Less Than Zero that you probably don’t care about anything but where your next hit’s coming from, or how many days until you can climb those stairs and find someone to get your rocks off with, that you’d only care if he’d died in the middle of sex before finishing you off.”
Drake gave him an enraged, disgusted look. “Oh my God you self-righteous, fucking matron. You think you’re so fucking important just because you’re a doctor.”
“Matron? You mean martyr. God, read a book, you idiot!”
“I read,” Drake growled.
“What? Highlights Magazine? You know, I bet Goofus and Galant could teach you something! And just so you know, there’s a key for the puzzles in the back if you get stuck.”
“I don’t really have time to read, because I’ve got too much to do. Too many people to see, unlike you. Who calls you besides Megan, Josh? Ever. Anyone? Have you caved and bought that dog I heard you talking about back before you joined the rest of the single world, or do you still come home to an empty apartment every night?”
Josh narrowed his eyes. “The friends I have want more from me than a blow job or a line of coke, Drake. Some of us have a little bit of self-control. That’s why most people in this room still have fully functional heart valves.”
“Guys-“ Jimmy cut in, acting on Megan’s orders. That much was obvious to both combatants.
“I still have that video,” Josh hissed, shooting his sister a sharp look before turning to look at Jimmy. “You don’t want to know, and she definitely doesn’t want you to know, so butt out.”
“I don’t think so,” Megan said coolly, clearly pushed too far by that threat. Grim determination and rage could be seen in her eyes if either man had taken the time to look at her.
“This isn’t any of your business, Megan,” Drake snapped.
“You know what else is none of my business?” Megan asked cheerfully. “You and Josh having hot, sweaty, semi-incestuous sex ten years ago. With Mom and Dad in the house, no less!”
Another wave of silence crashed down on the living room, but this time it was crushing. Josh didn’t dare turn around and face his parents’ reaction, but Drake’s terror-struck face told him it was bad. Very bad.
Megan’s grin was wide and toothy. Josh didn’t hear the Jaws theme exactly, but he was definitely getting the baseline.
“Still, much like this mess, it’s something I know all about. And much like this, maybe you two should have taken it outside if you didn’t want your entire family to know all about it.”
She gave them each a pat on the shoulder, and turned gracefully to face the shell-shocked collective in orbit around the bloodbath.
“Jimmy?”
“Yeah?”
“I think it’s time for bed, don’t you?” she asked, holding out a hand.
“Absolutely.”
There was silence as he took her hand and she gave the room one last smile. “Merry Christmas everybody,” she said warmly.
Josh watched them go and wished that his plane had just crashed en route to San Diego. Because it had to be better than turning around and facing his parents and Grammy. It had to be.
To Be Continued... here
The Kill by 30 Seconds To Mars
What if I wanted to break
Laugh it all off in your face
What would you do?
What if I fell to the floor
Couldn't take this anymore
What would you do, do, do?
Come, break me down
bury me, bury me
I am finished with you
What if I wanted to fight
Beg for the rest of my life
What would you do?
You say you wanted more
What are you waiting for
I'm not running from you
Come, break me down
bury me, bury me
I am finished with you
Look in my eyes
You're killing me, killing me
All I wanted was you
I tried to be someone else
But nothing seemed to change
I know now: this is who I really am inside
Finally found myself
Fighting for a chance
I know now, THIS IS WHO I REALLY AM
Oh oh
Oh oh
Oh oh
Come, break me down
bury me, bury me
I am finished with you, you, you
Look in my eyes
You're killing me, killing me
All I wanted was you
Come, break me down (bury me, bury me)
Break me down (bury me, bury me)
Break me down (bury me, bury me)
Chapter: 15/?
Series: Drake & Josh
Author: dancinbutterfly
Pairing: Drake/Josh
Rating: R
Warnings: Slashy stepbrothers.
Disclaimer: I don't own Drake & Josh or Drake or Josh. *sigh* Sad. I do not own any of the lyrics used either. I just have them on my ipod. I own all original characters though.
A/N: So sorry for the delays lately! But its here now and I hope you enjoy it. For those who are curious this is my original inspiration for Sam.
Dedications: This is for the usual suspects. You ten odd readers who review EVERY time, I love you dearly and this story is totally and completely for you guys.
Beta: Faithfully assisted by guest_age and mochacola
Feedback: Pretty please? Its a new fandom to me and I want to know what you all think.
Summary: Music or medicine, Drake and Josh have many skills. After ten years of estrangement, they've learned a few things about those skills. Taking care of himself isn't one of Drake's. Letting go of Drake isn't one of Josh's.
All chapters here
Chapter 15: The Kill
What if I wanted to break, laugh it all off in your face? What would you do? What if I fell to the floor, couldn't take this anymore? What would you do? Come, break me down. Bury me, bury me; I am finished with you. What if I wanted to fight, beg for the rest of my life? What would you do… Look in my eyes. You're killing me, killing me.
“Can you please pass the sweet potatoes?” Walter asked. No one answered him. But as if by magic, the sweet potato casserole floated down the dining room table toward him.
“Can someone hand me the gravy?” asked Audrey.
It slid across the table, scraping across the reindeer table cloth. Audrey mumbled a thank you and poured the thick brown gravy on her stuffing.
The silence punctuated by the clicking of silverware on china and the steady sound of feet tapping a staccato on the floor was louder than most fights and everyone could feel it. Audrey and Walter had been trying to start conversations for the last two days, but everything fell flat; halfway through Christmas Eve, Grammy had put a stop to it.
“Just leave it be,” she said sharply. “Things change when they’re ready. We’re not helping.”
Audrey had wrung her hands. “If this won’t, then what will?”
Grammy had just shrugged and glanced out into the living room where the children sat, as far away from each other as was possible. “I don’t know.”
Twenty-four hours later, Christmas dinner was threatening to be one of the most excruciating moments in Parker-Nichols history. No one could seem to meet any body else’s eyes.
Except for Drake. His energy was overwhelming in the awkward stillness. He kept glancing around the table with his hands drumming, his legs bouncing, and occasionally clicking his tongue. His food sat untouched, despite the fact that he loved the marshmallows on top of the sweet potatoes and was a big fan of ham.
The thick tension lasted thirty long minutes before Josh finally set down his fork, carefully, and lost it completely.
“JUST STOP IT!”
The entire table stared at him. Almost everyone froze; except Drake, who was still tapping a little. Making noise. Moving. He was moving because he couldn’t make himself stay still.
“You’ve got to fucking stop or I swear I will kill you with the force of my brain exploding!” Josh shouted. “So just stop!”
The silence that prevailed wasn’t like the quiet that had shadowed the meal so far. That had been strained and thin but this quiet was thick and dangerous, waiting to spill out something ugly.
“Josh, stop what?” Megan asked as her hand gripped Jimmy’s under the table.
Josh picked up his knife and pointed at Drake with it. “That. The drumming. The twitching. The shaking. It’s driving me crazy.”
Drake’s hand froze mid-tap. He turned his head to focus on an intimidating glare from Josh, but failed when he gave in to the irresistible urge to rub his nose.
“What’s your problem?” he demanded.
Josh let out a strained, semi-hysterical laugh that told the entire table that he hadn’t gotten as much sleep as anyone would have liked. “You’re un-freaking-believable, Drake. You know that? You’re sitting at Christmas dinner with our entire family, you’re tweaked out of your mind, and you want to know what my problem is.” Josh gestured sharply with his knife. “I shouldn’t have to come here and eat my holiday meal with a damn junkie. That’s my problem.”
Drake rolled his eyes. “Please, I’m not high.”
Josh snorted.
“I’m fine.”
“Come on, you’re so high I’m amazed you haven’t spun off the planet!” Josh shot back, jumping to his feet so suddenly that his chair fell back with a loud crash. “And I don’t want to have to look at you like this. I don’t want to have to look at you at all!”
“Then don’t!”
“I can’t not!” Josh cried, desperation coloring his voice and breaking it in a way it hadn’t since puberty. “You’re right here. You’re at the freaking table. You’re on the radio. You’re on the Internet. You’re on TV. I don’t want to see you, but I can’t ever get away from you! You’re always here, Drake, and all I want to do is get the hell away from you!”
“It’s not like anyone said you had to be here,” Drake spat, slamming his hand down. He missed and it landed in his sweet potatoes.
The rest of the family had slid back from the table a little, watching the fight volley back and forth like a match at Wimbledon. Only Megan had the courage to stay seated firmly in place.
“Everyone's been treating me like your death wish is my problem,” Josh snapped. “Like I asked you to start imitating John Belushi and now I have to ask you to stop.” Tears stung Josh’s eyes even as the fire of his anger fed on itself. “Fixing your mistakes isn’t my job anymore, Drake! It hasn’t been my job since you abandoned me.”
“I didn’t-“
“Yes, you did! Be honest for once. You don’t lie well anymore, and it’s like you can’t stop. You don’t need another addiction, Drake.”
“Like you’re so perfect?” Drake demanded, waving a sweet potato-covered hand at him. He flung it so hard that a little orange blob landed on the floor by the window seat. “Don’t you stand there and judge me for doing want I want. I make my own choices, Josh. I have a life. I do something besides work. You think I don’t hear mom and dad talk? You’re barely a person. Have you gotten laid once since Sam walked out on you?”
The whole room fell silent again. Audrey was crying a little at the sight of her boys tearing each other apart, and Grammy had a hand on Walter’s arm, as if cautioning him not to speak up, not to get involved.
Josh didn’t see any of that because he was choking; whether it was on rage or grief was unclear, but he was gasping like he’d been hit.
“Don’t,” Josh gasped with a white knuckled grip on both his knife and the table. “Don’t you dare talk to me about Sam. Don’t you even say his name.”
Drake gave him a cruel smile. “What name? Sam?” The way he said it sounded almost dirty.
Josh abruptly let go of the lifelines he’d been clinging to, physical and metaphorical, and leapt across the table, through the stuffing, and onto Drake with a cry of wordless fury. He didn’t care that Drake was weaker than him now. He didn’t care that he was recovering. He didn’t care that touching Drake like this still made him want. He just wanted to hit him, just this once.
He landed a solid punch to Drake’s pretty face before Jimmy and Walter leapt up and pulled him off with Jimmy’s huge hands wrapped around his arms, holding him back. He wanted to fight against those hands, but he knew they’d win.
“Breathe, brother. Just breathe,” Jimmy advised as Megan and Grammy helped Drake up. His lip was split and bleeding; it wasn’t enough for everything Drake had cost him over the years.
Josh sagged in Jimmy’s grip and stared daggers at Drake, who was shrugging the incident off with a casualness that relit his anger even brighter than before.
“I lost him because of you!” The accusation exploded from him, thick and black like the cancer and tar he cleaned from patients’ lungs.
“Sam was the best thing that ever happened to me, Drake. He was my lover, my family. Everyone else could see that. We were supposed to-,” he couldn’t say it, not after everything, it hurt to much, thinking about dreams that he’d watched die and shook his head, glaring with defiant and tear-filled eyes.
Drake’s face had gone printer paper white with horror and guilt. Josh watched his bloody mouth move, open and shut, open and shut, before it finally found words.
“Josh…” was all he could manage.
“Since we’ve known each other I’ve tried to be there for you and yet your mere existence destroyed the most important thing in my life, Drake. You can’t seem to stop dragging me down.”
“Josh,” Drake’s tongue darted out, absently spreading the blood on his lips more evenly. “I didn’t mean-“
“We were supposed to have our whole lives together. We should have…we should have had this whole future,” Josh said as he started to laugh. It was a sick, empty sound that came from deep in his heart in the hollow place where Sam was supposed to be.
He shrugged Jimmy off and crossed the dinning room to Drake, so that he could see. He wanted him to understand what his presence had cost him.
“I wanted to marry him. I wanted to have children with him. I had names picked out and ranked in my head. But somehow, by having just touched my life, you ruined it.” He laughed again. “You always manage to ruin things for me, Drake. How do you do that?”
Drake shook his head, eyes wide and dark. “I don’t do anything to hurt you, Josh. Not on purpose.”
“Yeah, I have no reason to trust anything you say. I haven’t for years. I mean, why should I? You’ve been ruining my life since we were kids, and I just didn’t realize it.”
“Fuck you, Josh,” Drake spat, his eyes flashing suddenly cold again, but that was all he had.
Josh was fighting a virtually unarmed opponent. He’d so rarely been in a position of power like this with Drake that he was heady with the heavy feeling.
He was vindicated. He was justified. Hell, he was righteous.
“You know, I put myself out there for you a thousand times when we were young, Drake. More than I can count. And most of the time that I’ve counted on you, you’ve screwed me.”
The word ‘literally’went unspoken, but it hung heavy in the air between them.
“So maybe I was just counting on you to behave like a normal human being. Maybe I thought the whole overdosing and nearly dying thing would have woken you up. I thought that maybe I could have one normal family Christmas in my adult life, but you can’t even let me have that, can you?”
Drake threw his hands in the air. “Okay. So I’m so using. So the fuck what? What I do and when is not your problem, Josh. I’m not your kid and I’m not your patient. It’s not my fault that you’re a twitchy workaholic hermit.”
“Yeah, and it’s not my fault you’re a vapid coke-addicted whore.”
Drake looked like Josh had hit him again. But he had a quicker recovery time than Josh.
“If I’m a vapid coke whore, then tell me Josh, what the fuck are you doing here? Why did you come out when I was in the hospital? It’s not like anyone asked you. I know I didn’t.”
“Guys,” Megan said gently. Although where she’d suddenly come from, Josh had no idea. “Come on. Neither of you want to keep doing this.”
“Yeah, why don’t you tell us what we want, Megan,” Josh snapped, spinning to throw his fury at her. “You seem to know everything all the time.”
Megan folded her arms over her chest and glared at him. “I was just trying to help.”
“You’re. Not. Helping,” Drake bit out shortly.
Josh was boiling, hot and putrid inside. He spewed that lava at Megan because it had to get out somewhere and she’d made the mistake of getting in the path of the eruption. He knew, even as he spoke, that she didn’t deserve it but at that point he was too far gone to care.
“You don’t to get to spend a decade torturing us and then step in and be the heroine when you feel like it. So back the hell off right now before I tell your boyfriend what you got up to your sophomore year of college.”
Megan looked aghast, but Josh had already moved back to his primary target.
“I came because Little Miss Know-It-All over here called me at work and made me cut short an appointment with a guy who had a malignant tumor on his neck the size of a grapefruit!” Josh shouted. “Mr. Timor spent all week in ICU and died three hours before my flight for San Diego was supposed to take off. You know, just in case you give a damn why I haven’t slept.
“But you’re so wrapped in your personal reenactment of Less Than Zero that you probably don’t care about anything but where your next hit’s coming from, or how many days until you can climb those stairs and find someone to get your rocks off with, that you’d only care if he’d died in the middle of sex before finishing you off.”
Drake gave him an enraged, disgusted look. “Oh my God you self-righteous, fucking matron. You think you’re so fucking important just because you’re a doctor.”
“Matron? You mean martyr. God, read a book, you idiot!”
“I read,” Drake growled.
“What? Highlights Magazine? You know, I bet Goofus and Galant could teach you something! And just so you know, there’s a key for the puzzles in the back if you get stuck.”
“I don’t really have time to read, because I’ve got too much to do. Too many people to see, unlike you. Who calls you besides Megan, Josh? Ever. Anyone? Have you caved and bought that dog I heard you talking about back before you joined the rest of the single world, or do you still come home to an empty apartment every night?”
Josh narrowed his eyes. “The friends I have want more from me than a blow job or a line of coke, Drake. Some of us have a little bit of self-control. That’s why most people in this room still have fully functional heart valves.”
“Guys-“ Jimmy cut in, acting on Megan’s orders. That much was obvious to both combatants.
“I still have that video,” Josh hissed, shooting his sister a sharp look before turning to look at Jimmy. “You don’t want to know, and she definitely doesn’t want you to know, so butt out.”
“I don’t think so,” Megan said coolly, clearly pushed too far by that threat. Grim determination and rage could be seen in her eyes if either man had taken the time to look at her.
“This isn’t any of your business, Megan,” Drake snapped.
“You know what else is none of my business?” Megan asked cheerfully. “You and Josh having hot, sweaty, semi-incestuous sex ten years ago. With Mom and Dad in the house, no less!”
Another wave of silence crashed down on the living room, but this time it was crushing. Josh didn’t dare turn around and face his parents’ reaction, but Drake’s terror-struck face told him it was bad. Very bad.
Megan’s grin was wide and toothy. Josh didn’t hear the Jaws theme exactly, but he was definitely getting the baseline.
“Still, much like this mess, it’s something I know all about. And much like this, maybe you two should have taken it outside if you didn’t want your entire family to know all about it.”
She gave them each a pat on the shoulder, and turned gracefully to face the shell-shocked collective in orbit around the bloodbath.
“Jimmy?”
“Yeah?”
“I think it’s time for bed, don’t you?” she asked, holding out a hand.
“Absolutely.”
There was silence as he took her hand and she gave the room one last smile. “Merry Christmas everybody,” she said warmly.
Josh watched them go and wished that his plane had just crashed en route to San Diego. Because it had to be better than turning around and facing his parents and Grammy. It had to be.
To Be Continued... here
The Kill by 30 Seconds To Mars
What if I wanted to break
Laugh it all off in your face
What would you do?
What if I fell to the floor
Couldn't take this anymore
What would you do, do, do?
Come, break me down
bury me, bury me
I am finished with you
What if I wanted to fight
Beg for the rest of my life
What would you do?
You say you wanted more
What are you waiting for
I'm not running from you
Come, break me down
bury me, bury me
I am finished with you
Look in my eyes
You're killing me, killing me
All I wanted was you
I tried to be someone else
But nothing seemed to change
I know now: this is who I really am inside
Finally found myself
Fighting for a chance
I know now, THIS IS WHO I REALLY AM
Oh oh
Oh oh
Oh oh
Come, break me down
bury me, bury me
I am finished with you, you, you
Look in my eyes
You're killing me, killing me
All I wanted was you
Come, break me down (bury me, bury me)
Break me down (bury me, bury me)
Break me down (bury me, bury me)