He doesn't know what possesses him to let Fletcher walk him back from the club. Maybe it's resistance to the idea of being on his turf for longer than is strictly necessary -- as if the jazz club had been any less his domain than going back to his place -- but letting him in is so much worse. Inviting him up makes even less sense.

Fletcher takes his shoes off at the door, just slips out and stands there in his fancy socks; he must catch Andrew staring.

"I'm not a barbarian," he snarls, with some amusement, and after a moment says: "Nice place you've got here."

The clock on the microwave is glaring 0:00. There's nothing in here but an TV and a table and a radiator. Fletcher has got to be making fun of him. Andrew peels off his ragged sneakers and trudges in after him,

"--it's just for now, my dad's paying for it until--"

"I figured."

"Can I get you anything to drink?"

"Are you trying to get me liquored up, Neiman?"

"There's other stuff. Water, soda --" He doesn't drink; he's never really had a taste for it, even as a necessary lubricant for social situations at Shaffer, and even if he did his dad still buys his groceries and as far as his dad is concerned Andrew would never. He doesn't want him to worry about his kid out here. "-- coffee…"

"I'll have a water, then," he says; he sounds mildly disgusted by Neiman's idea of hospitality, but Andrew doesn't have anything else really to offer him unless he likes rice crackers and root beer. Andrew brings him a clean glass; he's made himself at home and taken a seat on the couch, legs crossed.

They're alone here. It's just bad luck that this happened, bad fucking luck. Andrew doesn't know how to play good host, or what he really even wants him for -- or he does, the burning in his blood at least suggests this, but doesn't know how to get it. He's letting him in. He'll use this like he's used every scrap of information Andrew has given him. This is a mistake.

Fletcher takes up the whole couch, an inky sprawl. When he pats the place next to him, Neiman smiles and demurs; it's only when he has to repeat himself, bracketed by a sharp comment, that Andrew feels bold enough to join him. Side by side

"So you invited me back here to… talk?" He lifts his shoulders, a tic that has accompanied him from the practice room to the concert hall to Andrew's shitty apartment. "Let's talk."

Andrew's idea of polite conversation is uninspired. The first thing that comes out of his mouth clangs.

"-- I'm sorry they fired you." This doesn't look suspicious, does it? Fletcher can't know about the hearing, anyone in studio band could have given that testimony, everyone had seen what had happened and any one of them could have given an account. He doesn't know. He thinks it was someone from Casey's year and he'll never ever know.

"Yeah, well. I'm not hurting for employment out here. I'll make do. Don't think about it too much." (Don't pity him, is what he's saying. Andrew's nowhere near the pity stage yet, but he's on the way, and he still feels bad. With some of the things he said, he could have stood to be less honest.)

"Still."

Fletcher rubs his palms on his pant legs, glancing Andrew's way. Andrew wishes he'd cleaned the place up at least before he'd gone out -- the place is still littered with application materials for next fall. At least his dorm room at Shaffer had borne evidence of his devotion on every wall -- this place could belong to anybody.

"You don't need to apologize; it was a long time coming. They don't just fire veteran faculty members the first time some little punk pisses his pants from mortal terror and writes a letter to the Dean about it."

"It's hard to imagine anybody who'd done studio band with you complaining like that." He's about to insinuate something about guys like Carl Tanner but that's laying it on pretty thick and he is already delivering a bold-faced self-serving lie to Terence Fletcher from not two feet away. He stares at the backs of his hands. "I -- I probably had something to do with it, going after you like that at Dunellen. I'm sorry for how I handled that."

"You kept playing with a broken finger after you concussed yourself. That's really something, man. You got blood on my fucking blazer." Distance from the event has changed it; Fletcher sounds almost admiring. Andrew looks up and it's present in his face, too -- a weird flexibility, a softness in the lines of his mouth that sets something off in his lizard hindbrain. Andrew has never been good with faces.

"Did I? Shit, I was so out of it. I don't know what came over me." Pills, mostly, and being completely fucking pissed -- at Fletcher's petty tyranny, at his own limitations, at every other no-talent acne-scarred piece of shit in studio band. He's used to talking about it like he snapped, but there wasn't a single person in that room who wouldn't have reaped tangible psychological benefits from beating Fletcher's ass, not even the ones in the audience.

"You can bear that in mind while you're looking at other places -- you've played through some of the toughest shit being a musician has to offer. Not the toughest, maybe, but I know it hasn't been a cakewalk. Never let anybody else scare you."

So modest. It's hard to imagine anyone who could have been harder on them, who could have pushed them harder or for more than Fletcher did. Living without that constant expenditure is unreal.

Andrew lifts his chin and bites his lip. "It was hard, but I miss it. I've never met anyone like you before. Nobody who ever went that far with us."

"There aren't a lot of teachers like me around these days. Lucky for you, I'm not your teacher any more."

That's the important thing. He's not his student any more, he's not cowering and getting spat on. Fletcher can't hurt him here -- that's been the theme of his coaxed testimony, that Andrew's out now and he's done and what he does from here on out is in his own hands. He just gazes at him, feeling that stupid smile on his face, knowing Fletcher must be sick of him -- but if he felt that way he'd say so, he's never been one for holding back.

Fletcher takes a drink, and Andrew suddenly becomes acutely aware of any potential fingerprints on his glassware.

Andrew must be misreading this. His senses say one thing, fine-tuned as a compass needle from his term in studio band -- and his gut says another, that this is a trick, that Fletcher was married, that he has a kid, that it's wrong to feel this way or to expect reciprocation. Nausea runs through him like water. This is the lull and it's about to be punctuated with something terrible, but it won't help him to flinch now, all he can give him is his rapt attention, eyes on him, alert, waiting.

Fletcher is watching him too, keenly attuned and reptilian. There's some resemblance there in the face. "Neiman?"

Shit, he sounds apprehensive. Andrew tugs at the hem of his shirt, lets his hand fall against Fletcher's hip with a purpose. He's never really been the one to touch him before, not sober. It's difficult to do. "Yeah?"

"I won't make you do anything you don't want to."

Fletcher has never made him do anything he didn't want to.

When their mouths meet there's nothing ambiguous in it -- Fletcher leads and Neiman tries to match him, pressed in the ruthless clack and grind of teeth, tongue, lips. Twisting his wrist back, driving his elbow against the couch -- it can't be about dominance when there's a clear winner from the start but it has the feel of a struggle anyway.

Andrew hasn't taken any of his pills in four months; they're bagged up under his mattress like a guilty secret. Kissing Fletcher has much of the same appeal; a businesslike shedding of guilt and then he's running hard, ready to go, ready to power through anything. He's ready for this, he's been ready for this all night, and he's not afraid any more.

Fletcher parts Andrew's legs with a press of his hand. Getting felt up by him is fucking bizarre -- it's hard to believe that his touch can do anything other than hurt, or at least strike, but it's like the first moment of seeing him there at the piano, drawing out something constructive with strange grace. He has broad palms and careful fingers and the friction against Neiman's skin makes him pinch his eyes shut and suck thin breaths of eagerness. (Andrew isn't wearing any underwear, which is gross and all but it's too late to be remorseful and Fletcher seems to find it amusing.)

He wants Fletcher to smile on him again, to feel his approval like the sun on his face. He wants to do this with somebody he admires, somebody who understands.

It's colder than usual for the middle of June, but the sweat still prickles against his shirt, down his back. His knees sink into the couch cushions; any moment now he might fall. Fletcher's hands brace his legs, gripping just beneath his ass. Andrew's hands are on the back of his neck, the side of his throat, he can just feel the blood pumping under his thumb and it's so ridiculous he could laugh. Read time from that. Shifting against him, he's petrified and Fletcher must feel it; he reallocates his grip on him. Andrew could topple down and jostle him but he doesn't. Tongues, lips, teeth. Fletcher's mouth is incongruously delicate, even when it's not gentle.

At some point in the proceedings, Fletcher's started getting hard, and his snarl acknowledging this makes Andrew flinch. He doesn't know anyone who wears a belt on a daily basis any more; Fletcher's is an obstacle designed to make him curse himself, even as Fletcher himself is perfectly compliant and his button-down shirt starts coming untucked. The backs of Andrew's knuckles graze skin.

(This is fucking ridiculous. He hasn't gotten this far with Nicole.)

Andrew fumbles his zipper down, with Fletcher's permission. He's hard in his gray briefs and Andrew's eyes must linger again because Fletcher gives a sharp nod, well?, and lets him touch it. His dick is thick and angry-red, wreathed in wiry gray hair -- Fletcher's old as fuck after all and yet here he is. Fletcher is getting hard, and Andrew is pumping away at him like his life depends on it. He fumbles with both hands before slipping into the miserable death grip he's been perfecting since adolescence, and he only catches this too late, trying to moderate.

"Jesus, ease up, would you? For fuck's sake--"

This is the first real sharp thing he's said since Andrew let him in his door, and it scatters like gunfire. Neiman stammers an apology and loosens his clenched fingers -- he's too scared to do anything special or go for his balls or anything, he's never done this before and it's already veering toward disaster. Andrew's hands are still stiff with mis-made calluses, even months after the fact -- they shouldn't be this way. In a perfect world his hands would be like Fletcher's, heavy and certain and uniformly rough instead of split with red seams. The bones of his index finger may never heal straight. It lends his technique a personal touch, perhaps; it hurts to keep going, even at a gentler pace as he navigates awful unfamiliarity. Maybe it should hurt. Fletcher presses him down, down, down, until he's kneeling on the floor (his own floor, in the shitty apartment where he watches North By Northwest with his dad on Friday nights and eats microwave popcorn) and he hardly dares to breathe.

Andrew presses his tongue against his lower lip. From below, Fletcher's face is full of deep-gouged shadows, and his cataclysmic anger is easy to imagine still brewing, but something flickers there briefly in the set of his mouth that resembles approval.

Fletcher reaches down and cups his face, pulls at Andrew's lower lip with his thumb and presses it between his teeth; Andrew lets it in, and the taste of sweat is familiar to him, whiskey and glass and hard plastic. (He doesn't know what whiskey tastes like, he's just guessing from the fumes that had radiated from Fletcher's glass as he toyed with it across the tabletop.) Fletcher probes for a moment in his cheek and then withdraws -- Andrew presses his face into the passing touch of his hand, hoping it'll stay, and Fletcher's thumb slices a wet line in saliva down his chin.

He's never thought of doing this before, never thought of it as something he'd want to do even in the worst knotted-up nightmares of last semester. But he must want it, or Fletcher wouldn't be so ready to give it to him, he wouldn't be itching in his skin with desire. He'd be able to quit staring up at him like he's waiting for a cue.

His dick is vein-tangled and uncut, thick, heavy. Andrew sucks his cock for him with amateur enthusiasm, and tries to keep up, though he knows it can't be good. The animal taste of it fills his mouth and with every carefully timed hitch of breath he can smell it, even, every push and pull. Something distant in him is already putting this scene under analysis. Whether he's going too fast, whether he risks gagging himself and whether Fletcher would like that, what he's supposed to do with his teeth. He can feel the muscles in Fletcher's thighs shake and jump whenever he does something right, and thank fuck he never has to pick up on what it feels like when he's done something wrong.

("You're a sweet kid, Andrew." His voice is so low that Neiman feels the words like a dark rumble. Fletcher pushes a hand through Andrew's hair, thumbing at his overgrown curls. Warm fingertips brush the top of his ear. Sweet kid.)

His jaw hurts. Spit is leaking from the corners of his mouth, there's zero dignity in it, his shoulders shake. His whole body shakes. But he tries, and everything else shudders out of focus but the heat and the weight and the way his tongue feels against skin.

Fletcher finishes, and without hesitation Andrew swallows.

Blood still pounds in his ears, the same thin tinnitus-whine as after long practice sessions. Breathing is tough, but he has to keep it together. Andrew squares his shoulders, and keeps his head up. He refuses to make himself small. His vision swims.

After a moment, Fletcher's thumb swipes at the corner of his mouth. He's already put himself away and is straightening out his belt one-handed.

"You've never done that before, have you?" Fletcher says pleasantly.

What does Fletcher want to hear? If he says no, a cataclysm, an explosion -- and if he says yes, what then? Maybe he'd have been more popular at Shaffer if he did enjoy sucking cock on a regular basis.

Andrew swallows again. "No, I haven't." (Why?)

"You've got a knack for it."

It's no good job, but you take what you can get with Fletcher.

They come apart, unsteadily. Fletcher is careful as ever with his movements but for the first time ever he seems exhausted, spent. Andrew's aching knees compel him up off the floor and he'd do anything to hide his face. He can feel his cheeks burning, and he realizes now that he's come in his pants. He doesn't know how he didn't realize it when it was actually happening -- that seems like exactly the kind of thing a healthy young man should be aware of -- but the dampness is there and the sick uncoiled-wire feeling of a climax escaped too soon.

There must be some nonverbal cue for Fletcher to make his exit -- not that he was ever going to stay long, but he mercifully doesn't seem like the kind of man to linger. He straightens out the coffee table on his way by. The gesture is oddly compulsive, like the way he smooths his shirt or slips into his shoes again. Andrew just stares at the drinking glass on the table, looking for fingerprints.

"Well, I'd better be going." When Fletcher speaks again his voice is a rasp, but he's back to professionalism again, and unreadable. "Good night, Andrew. We'd be lucky to have you."

He's turned to go, he's already gone. Andrew doesn't know what to say, but he must say something, since Fletcher seems satisfied enough. 'See you around', maybe, or 'nice seeing you'. He half-expects Fletcher to come right back through that door again (forgot my jacket) but he doesn't. Fletcher leaves him there, alone.

*

Andrew's still shaking. He wants to call his dad. What the fuck is he going to say? I hate living alone so I panicked and blew a guy, you wouldn't believe who it was-- Maybe he should text Nicole, maybe she'll want to come over and watch a DVD, but the thought of her being here makes him feel sick. In a place that's indelibly marked now, that still throbs with disruptive presence as if Fletcher had stuck around, the memory of what he's just done aching in his head like a ghost or a migraine.

His mouth still tastes like come, and when he sticks his head under the tap to try and wash it away he almost gags; Andrew jerks back, coughing on water, and rubs at his mouth with the back of a hand until a pink smudge shows across his cheeks from the friction. At the back of his head keeps throbbing up like a repeated riff, did he do this to Sean Casey? did he do this to Sean Casey? Sweet kid.

He peels out of his jeans and steps into the shower, doesn't even take his ratty shirt off. It's been a point of pride that he's never been one of those people who throws up from stress. He might lose that distinction tonight. He stands in the tub and runs the tap, shivering in the June heat.

Andrew wrings one out under the cold water, just to clear his head. It's a lot easier this time, and a lot faster.

He's not hurt. Fletcher didn't hurt him, and he didn't withdraw his offer either. There's no hard feelings. He understands how this works and he understands Fletcher's method and he'll forgive him for everything if he can just show him this once. He'll be there for JVC and he'll make Fletcher proud. Nothing to do til then but practice.