“You can’t demote me. I’m the best you’re ever going to get.”

Fletcher hadn’t been polite by inviting him in; he’d meant to trap him here, here in the hallway with all the photographs of his famous friends. His neighbors must hear arguments like these on a daily basis. Maybe he brings all his old students back home with him.

“How do you think you’ll prove it to me?”

“I’ve already proven it. Let me play.”

Fletcher’s hand shoves past the pocket of his jeans, thrust past Andrew’s hip to grip the plastic bag there — he withdraws it with a squeeze and Andrew grimaces.

“Well, lookee here. What are these supposed to be? You know if you’re looking to kill time IV drugs’ll give you a better run for your money. Is this where that ego’s coming from? Is this why you think you can walk out on me? Because you were high? Once you’re out, you’re out. I thought you learned that by now.

“Let me have it. Please, just let me have it. You know that I’m good for it.”

“If you’re so hell-bent on pissing your life away sucking dicks for dollars in public bathrooms, why play? It sounds like you’ve found your true calling. I knew you couldn’t hack it.”

Neiman takes a swing at him, but his balance is all wrong — Fletcher grabs him with a hard jostle and locks him in close against his body, gripping at his upper arm with a punishing force. Somehow he always finds the soft parts of him, the places Andrew never thinks to protect, and grinds his thumb right into that sore spot until it bruises. Places Andrew doesn’t even know about.

“Look at me, don’t look at the bag, you fucking junkie. Daddy never taught you how to throw a punch, did he? Come here.”

Shocked, shuddering and numb — he staggers upright but Fletcher follows him, pressing him with his body like he’s daring him to cringe away, like they’re playing chicken. Fletcher’s dick is hard, horribly hard — he takes Neiman’s wrist in his hand and he guides him to it. The understanding comes all at once, like a crack of thunder. Andrew lifts his head.

“If I suck your dick, am I back in the band?”

Fletcher’s eyes are shining, the way they do when he’s perversely pleased with himself. “What do you think?”

*

From below, Fletcher’s cock is thick and angry-red, hefted in a loose grip. Neiman takes him in his mouth.

It’s some sick gesture, and he lowers his head with the expectation that Fletcher will slap his face, call him a faggot, tell him to get out of his house. He can’t do this, he can’t do this and he doesn’t know how — Andrew pulls back, about to shake his head no, but Fletcher pushes him down instead into his lap, flush against his waiting erection. The first press of it makes him gag,

“How’s that, hmm? Not too much for you?”

“Fuck you,” Andrew snarls, jerking back up. His chin is wet with spit.

“You can do better than that, Neiman.”

And then Fletcher’s hand is on the back of his neck, pressing him down until Neiman winces — he doesn’t know what to do with his tongue, what to do with his teeth. He tries to shift the weight of him on his tongue, tries to negotiate past the blood-heat of it the way he pushes past pain, but his body rebels at the intrusion — Fletcher’s cock thrusts deeply enough in the wet socket of Andrew’s throat that his gag reflex makes him jerk back. He has to master it and keep going.

Neiman can’t fail now, and he can’t stop — he’s too drunk for this but it doesn’t matter. Andrew makes his mouth into a wet sheath, like just another hole, and moves into Fletcher’s rhythm. Fletcher is giving him the opportunity to make this good for him, just like he’s giving him a chance. Neither of them would do this for anyone else.

Andrew sucks a fluttering breath through his nose, blinking away sweat. The taste of Fletcher is in his mouth, and everything else is blocked out — he’s sweat-drenched and miserable but completely alive to what he’s doing, to what he is making himself do, finding a jerky and uneven rhythm as his head moves up and down. Spit is tracking down his chin, spit and pre-come, and he can feel the pulse of blood in the veins of Fletcher’s cock. The wet tug of his mouth becomes an accompaniment — his own thin strangled breaths, the damp choking sounds that come from his throat, and the cutting bitter taste of come swelling up against his tongue, filling the back of his mouth.

Fletcher presses a hand through Neiman’s hair, wet with sweat. A lurch of nausea makes his heartbeat skip and judder, and for the first time he thinks he might be sick.

It hurts, because of course it hurts — his eyes sting and his throat grows raw, but he continues on, they both continue on like this because Fletcher shows no sign of flagging or finishing any time soon. His jaw aches with a soreness he knows ice and opiates will never reach, and each catch of brittle nausea compounds the last.

Fletcher’s hand rests on his head, half a pressure and half an assurance. “I’m going to finish now,” he says, like you’d say some really ordinary thing — let’s pick that up again from bar 8 or I’m going to take a walk after lunch — and then he does. Andrew grunts with disgust and jerks back but Fletcher presses down on the back of his head at the moment he shoots.

Andrew whimpers. Fletcher’s hand rubs at his jaw, his thumb tracing the track of sweat down Andrew’s skin — his load is in Andrew’s mouth, slick and massy. Andrew is beyond speech now -- nausea stabs through him and his throat has constricted like a noose.

“Swallow,” Fletcher says, with his thumbnail gouging into Andrew’s cheek. His voice says, you know what to do.

Andrew swallows convulsively but the taste of salt doesn’t leave his mouth — the taste of Fletcher, as much his as his blood and his sweat.

“Fuck you,” Andrew spits, raw-mouthed.

Fletcher’s hand slips down to his throat in one sleek motion and Neiman only has a split second to think ah, fuck before Fletcher is squeezing — his rough heavy hand grips Neiman’s throat and presses, like this is what he was made for.

The world drops into gray, and he can hear the blood beating in his ears — everything else has dulled to nothing, there is nothing for him but Fletcher’s grip pressing the air out of him, a dry pain and a ravenous hunger for air. He struggles, but not enough — Andrew digs into Fletcher’s wrist with his stub fingernails, and Fletcher shakes him hard enough to make his teeth rattle.

Dying like this will be the right way to die. His life was nothing before he met Fletcher and if Fletcher is finished with him his life will be over.

Fletcher lets him drop. Andrew lands on his knees, unstrung.

“Dear God.” Fletcher is watching him, crouching down like Satan for a better look, and Andrew is on hands and knees, slumping onto his forearms to cough and gag.

For a long moment he can’t breathe, and the tightness in his throat is like a hard barrier, a muscle caught up in a spasm. Andrew vomits convulsively, his body ceding control of itself — casting up the contents of his stomach until it feels like there’s nothing inside him, until his throat is blazing raw and the stomach acids are stinging his sinuses. There is nothing for him there except more sickness, and then he is empty and there is nothing at all.

When he comes back to himself Fletcher’s hand is pressing against his back, between his shoulder blades. Cuffing at his mouth with his hands, feeling out the raw inside of his lip — his shirt front is wet and his throat is burning. Something has been ripped away from him like a scab.

Fletcher says, “Fucking animal. What’d you go and do that for?”

He’s actually enjoying this — he loves this, he loves seeing him like this. He loves seeing him broken.

“I’ll fucking kill you,” Andrew says, with bile in his mouth and sweat stinging his eyes. His throat is raw, and his voice is a broken rasp, breathless.

“You’re one sick kid, Andrew. You know that.” Fletcher pats him on the back.

*

The bathroom in Fletcher’s apartment is impossibly clean and impossibly white; he flushes Andrew’s pills down the toilet, the way you’re not supposed to do, still in their plastic bag. Andrew runs the water in the sink, letting it grow cold as it floods over his hands. He’s thirsty, but his throat is a contracted mass of soreness, fucked raw. His bottom lip has a swollen quality to it — but then Fletcher had always hated his mouth, and hadn’t been shy about saying so.

Andrew washes his face — he thinks of washing his mouth, but the bitter taste is bracing. The water runs in the sink, and the dull drumming of blood still sounds in his ears.

When he’s done Fletcher takes him by both arms, gripping him at the level of his elbows. Neiman has to catch himself from flinching away.

Look at me. Don’t look away. Look at me. His head throbs.

He isn’t a kid any more, squeak-voiced, shaking. He’s never going to be that kid again, because Fletcher has burned it out of him. His damp tee shirt clings to the hollow in the middle of his chest, wet with sweat and vomit, and his breath only comes in irregular pulls. Andrew swallows in a raw and bitter throat and straightens his spine, pushes his shoulders back; he listens.

For a moment Neiman sees this man as other people must see him, like he’s gone out of his body and someone else is looking through Andrew’s eyes. Fletcher’s body is solid as a block and untouched. His black tee shirt is immaculately laundered, and his voice is methodically level. This is a man who other people instinctively respect.

“Maybe I came on a little strong back there,” Fletcher says.

His bearing is authoritative, stiffly wary — he is the teacher again, the bandleader, the conductor. It is a strategic withdrawal. Fletcher is afraid of him now after what he’s done — afraid of what Andrew might do now, afraid of who he might tell, afraid of what he might want. Recognizing that gives him a terrible spike of pity. There’s nobody to tell, and there’s nothing Andrew could ever say that would explain what exists between them. More than music, more than sex, more than power. Andrew lifts his head to look him in the eye.

“No, no — it’s fine. It’s fine. You were right. About the pills, about my attitude.” His own voice sounds like a stranger’s, hoarse and weak. “I’m sorry.”

“I can’t have anything happen to you,” Fletcher says. “Not when you’re my number one drummer. You need to start thinking about the consequences of this stuff for other people.”

“I never use when I’m playing.”

This is a lie. Andrew swallows hard — tasting spit, blood, come. Fletcher claps him on the shoulder, warm as a father.

“Then let’s keep it that way.”