fic: Nobody Move, Nobody Gets Hurt (McFly slash)
Title: Nobody Move, Nobody Gets Hurt
Fandom: McFly
Pairing: JuddJones
Rating: 18
Word count: 6000+
Summary: Five days from one week.
A/N: My first contribution to McFly slash. Lyrics from Rock & Roll Queen by The Subways and Nobody Move, Nobody Gets Hurt by We Are Scientists.
Dedicated to _princess_han_, for being a wonderful beta.
Nobody Move, Nobody Gets Hurt
Saturday
“Harry, Harry! Will you marry me?”
A girl thrusts a poster at you through the barrier. You smile and remember to ask for her name, and she beams at you, breathlessly grateful. “It’s Hannah.”
“Hannah,” you repeat.
You scrawl a generic message, about to add a kiss beneath your name when a pair of arms slips around your waist from behind. You almost drop the pen.
“Danny!” your autograph girl gushes, delighted. “Sign my poster?”
He tugs the pen out of your hand and adds his own autograph beneath yours. It’s odd you’ve never noticed before that it bears no resemblance to the everyday signature he uses on cheques and to sign contracts. You remember times in the very early days when he used to practice writing his autograph on napkins and half-written sheets of lyrics. You used to laugh at him for it and call him a tosser, secretly impressed by his ambition and his unshakeable conviction that one day you’d all be famous.
He hands the picture back through the railings with a grin and leans closer to you, tugging at your belt loops. Thinking he’s about to say something, you incline your head and briefly feel the warm puff of his breath against your neck. It takes you by surprise when he lurches forward and presses a swift kiss to your ear, the girls gathered on the other side of the barrier squealing and scrabbling for their cameras. There’s nothing unusual in it; you sling an arm around him and make a show of pinching his arse.
“Oi!” he protests, slapping your hand away.
You catch his eye as he wanders away across the car park and the pair of you share a grin.
“Harry! Harry, can I take a picture?”
You turn back to the crowd and pull a face for the camera. From the corner of your eye you can see Danny and Dougie play-fighting for the TV cameras on the other side of the enclosure. All four of your have been wearing matching Cheshire cat grins since lunchtime. It’s a good day, a normal day; you’re happy.
Sunday
“Alright, mate?”
Danny’s standing in the doorway, Fosters in hand, the light from the hallway behind him making a halo around his head. You nod, yawning without bothering to cover your mouth. When you open your eyes you realise he’s crossed the room. He’s behind you, leaning over the back of the sofa and resting his can on your head.
“Anything good on?”
You hand him the remote. India are 265 for 7, but you’re not watching out of any particular interest in the match.
“It’s all yours,” you tell him, reaching for your half-empty mug.
“You off to bed?” He sounds surprised; disappointed, even, so you sigh, reluctantly stifling another yawn.
“Not necessarily.”
“Nice one,” he mumbles, swinging his legs over the back of the sofa and flopping down next to you. “Mind if I change it?”
You don’t, so he starts to flick from channel to channel, pausing to show you a particularly hilarious advert and to comment on a Girls Aloud compilation on the music channel (“Blimey, Kimberley’s fit.”) You let it wash over you and sink back into the sofa. Before he’s settled on a channel to watch you find yourself dozing off, only half aware of him leaning forward to set his empty can down on the table.
You do wake up when, a minute or so later, he starts to fidget beside you, digging his elbow into your ribs.
“Shift up, Bigfoot,” he murmurs, settling against you more comfortably and draping his legs over the end of the sofa.
You look down at him, a little bit surprised. There’s something weirdly feline in his indiscriminate sprawl over you and the furniture, and the way he nudges your hip in an effort to get comfortable. If it were Dougie, you’d put your arm around his shoulders and let him curl closer; the fact that it’s Danny makes the situation awkward, though you can’t really make sense of the distinction.
“Erm, Danny?”
He mutters and shifts against your leg and you assume it’s his way of telling you to shut up and let him watch Jackass. A moment later, when he begins to snore, you realise your mistake and push his head off your knee. You know for a fact that he dribbles in his sleep.
Wednesday
The Wanderers are playing in the UEFA Cup qualifiers and you’re regretting your decision to share the sofa with Danny. He’s wound up, half-cut, accent broader than usual. The atmosphere has been subdued since he shouted you down ten minutes ago over the validity of a penalty decision.
“Fuck’s sake, Dan.” He keeps jogging your elbow, making you spill lager down the sofa.
He turns round, the first time he’s taken his eyes of the screen for 88 minutes, and gives you a brief, sheepish smile. “Sorry, mate.”
It’s an apology for the argument earlier as well, so you exercise some self-restraint and bite back your instinctive sarcasm.
You glance at Dougie, expecting him to roll his eyes and grin, both of you united for a moment by silent laughter at Danny’s expense. Instead, you realise he’s been watching you quietly from the armchair on the other side of the room. He meets your eye uncertainly, fingers twisting and untwisting the cords of his bracelet. Concerned (because Dougie never passes up an opportunity to make Danny the butt of a joke), you get to your feet, hoping he’ll follow you into the kitchen so you can ask him what’s wrong out of earshot of the others. You’re reaching for his empty can on the coffee table when Danny springs off the sofa, knocking you sideways and spraying Fosters all over the carpet.
“Fucking hell!” He yells, punching the air as the final whistle blows.
He turns to you as you’re wiping lager off your arm, grinning from ear to ear, his mouth wide and expressive. You offer him a slightly soggy high five, but he hangs on for too long, pulling you towards him and enveloping you in a hug. He’s all-but bouncing, trying to take you with him, body flush against yours as he punches the air again.
“We’re going to Europe!” he yells in your ear, gleeful and childlike, just before he grabs your face with both hands and plants a kiss in the middle of your forehead.
You’re about to tell him with a frown what a silly twat he is when his phone rings and he pulls away to answer it. He mouths ‘It’s Dad’ and starts to make his way up the stairs two at a time. You watch him go, then turn to fetch yourself another can.
Dougie’s looking at you with a confused expression on his face; the same look he gets when he’s about to figure out the punchline to one of Tom’s more impenetrable jokes.
“Better hope the wind doesn’t change, Doug,” you warn him.
He doesn’t follow you into the kitchen, so you don’t get a chance to ask him what was wrong.
Friday
Come midnight on Friday, you can’t remember whose idea it was to spend the night in an Indie club. It was probably up to Tom, because he seems to have met up with some mates you don’t recognise. They’ve all headed off in the direction of the bar, leaving you and Dougie in a corner sipping warm Kronenbourg from dirty bottles. For some reason Dougie’s glaring at you. You can’t figure out what you’re supposed to have done wrong, and the music’s to loud to lean over and ask. Danny’s disappeared but you’re sure you keep hearing his laughter during the gaps between songs.
Three hours ago you started off the night with four rounds of Jägermeister; now you’ve reached the point that the walls aren’t quite perpendicular to the ceiling. The club is in the basement of a warehouse off Albert Street, with no windows and the only doors up two steep flights of stairs. Everyone and everything glistens with sweat. Even the walls are damp, but they’re cool against your back and you’re glad you’ve got this corner in which to rest and a place to rest your head, which is swimming.
Another glance at Dougie reveals the depth of his hatred for the club and its scenester inmates. He doesn’t like the music, nor the fact that he knows he doesn’t fit in; a skater amongst the skinny-jeans brigade. Normally it wouldn’t bother him because you’d all be here in a group and the gang mentality would make you all invincible, untouchable. For some reason though, tonight you’ve all become separated. With just the two of you in the corner, the silence between you is becoming ridiculous. You push yourself away from the wall, thinking that conversation for conversation’s sake is better than no conversation at all.
You’re about to ask if he’s seen Danny when large sticky hands grab you from behind and the question dies on your lips. Danny’s suddenly here, laughing in your ear and folding himself round you, head appearing over your shoulder.
“Come and dance, you losers!” he demands.
You’ve almost reached the easy, tactile stage of drunkenness when any body wrapped around your own feels perfect. Dougie’s narrowed eyes follow your fingers as they curl around Danny’s wrists, pulling him closer.
“Dude, I’m wankered,” you begin to explain, hoping he’ll stay with you and somehow diffuse the situation with Dougie, so that the three of you can dance off the alcohol, then go and get a kebab. Instead he laughs and tugs at you by the belt loops of your jeans.
“So’m I, so’s everyone. Come on!”
You glance over at Dougie, wedged in the corner with his arms resolutely folded.
“Doug?”
He shakes his head, gestures sullenly that he’s going to get another drink. You raise your eyebrows and give a minute shake of your head because you both know you had enough trouble getting him in here, and that he probably won’t get served. You know Tom’ll go mental if Dougie gets you all thrown out. You’re about to offer to go to the bar for him yourself, but the moment is broken by Danny laughing into your ear, making you shiver. Dougie hesitates for a second, then shrugs and turns away to follow Tom and his friends to the bar.
Danny tugs on your belt loops again and you can’t be bothered to argue. You find yourself being led out of your quiet, dark corner into a seething mass of people. Everyone’s dancing and no one looks at you as you push your way past. It’s hot and airless down here and you can feel your shirt sticking to you already. Danny’s hair is a sweaty mess across his forehead; he pushes it away and grins at you over his shoulder.
He leads you to the opposite corner of the room, to a group of people you know you’ve met before but you can’t think where or why, and swaps the empty bottle in your hand for a new one. Droplets of condensation trickle over your fingertips, but you resist the urge to run it across your forehead.
The song changes and Danny gives broad grin of appreciation. He slings an arm around your shoulders, and starts moving against you without much reference to either rhythm or style. His voice is hoarse, rougher than usual, rasping away next to your ear as you try to lift your beer to your lips without losing your grip on the bottle.
“Be my little rock and roll queen.”
You catch him grinning at you and elbow him in the ribs.
The last time you saw Danny like this was the final night of the tour; sweat pouring down his back, hands clutching at you for support then pushing you away so there was room to move. He’s euphoric. It briefly crosses your mind to wonder whether he’s on something, but you remember the story he once told you about his mate from school and some little white tablets and you know, absolutely know that he wouldn’t.
“Harry!” he pulls you round to face him.
He’s dancing now, in that disorderly, ramshackle way of his, something about it telling you that this is all for fun, just like when he gropes Tom for the cameras, or nips at the back of Dougie’s neck in the middle of the set. It’s never crossed your mind before to wonder whether that sort of thing is normal, so you respond with a hand on his hip and a knowing grin.
You aren’t prepared for the change in atmosphere, for the way he comes closer and doesn’t stop. But by then he’s already against you, still moving, looking down at the space between you. Your hand’s still on his hip, so you’re in no position to complain.
He’s still singing along, though you hadn’t noticed that the song had changed: “My body is your body. I won’t tell anybody.” Somehow he’s making it sound like a promise.
He looks up at you (you’re not sure whether you meant to stop breathing), and suddenly he kisses you. Not even that; he just bumps his lips against yours, making it seem like a drunken stumble, which it might have been except for the way his hand settled briefly on your waist. You can’t even tell how long it lasts - surely only a second or so - because immediately afterwards he pulls back and stares at you, eyes a mess of confusion and uncertainty. He looks as surprised as you feel.
“Danny - ”
You don’t get to find out where your sentence was going because he seems to come to an abrupt decision and grabs a handful of your shirt. He uses it to propel you through the crowd, dragging you as quickly as you can keep up through groups of dancing people. You’re fairly sure you’re still smiling, but you can’t see his face; don’t know what he’s planning. You drain the final mouthful from your bottle and let it fall to the floor, where it’s kicked away by any number of feet.
You reach the stairs and he pulls you up to the first floor and along a corridor. Now that the music’s disappeared you can feel blood pounding in your ears and your heart beating deafeningly against your chest; surely Danny can hear it too? He shoves you through a swing door, and you realise you’re in the toilets. There’s no one here, so he pushes you into one of the cubicles, shuts the door behind you.
“Why’ve you brought me in here, you wanker?” you demand calmly, not really all that concerned.
Danny’s looking at you with a frown on his face, touching his lips with the back of his hand. “Shut up, Harry.”
You laugh breathlessly because you’re more fucked than you realised, and because Danny’s suddenly looking absurdly serious.
“Fuck off, you idiot,” you begin, pushing yourself away from the wall, reaching for the lock on the door.
With a shove, Danny pushes you backwards. You hit the wall hard, your shoulders jarring against the wood. His hands pin you in place.
“Danny, what the fuck - ”
This time your head hits the wall, and he kisses you roughly. You don’t have time to think except: fuck, it feels good. His chest is against your chest, your bodies flush, and it’s just what you need to have another body pressed up against yours like this. He licks at your bottom lip, bites it, and you open your mouth willingly. The slide of his tongue against yours makes your cock burn.
You fight against his hands, drag your own hands free to pull him nearer. He grinds against you and you feel the outline of his erection, pressing against your hip. This is why it’s different from kissing a girl; you don’t have to be careful, you don’t have to take your time. He tastes fantastic, even though it’s mostly beer and smoke on his tongue. You want more and so does he; you’re fighting with each other to get closer, get deeper.
You realise that the stinging pain at your hip is his nails bluntly digging into you beneath your shirt. His fingers are moving, scrabbling for the button of your jeans, reaching inside, trying to find something to hold onto. You moan, then, against his mouth, as his fingers curl around you at an awkward angle. He’s pushing your jeans off your hips, tugging at your boxers, and the back of your head keeps bumping the cubicle wall. You hope to God no one comes in to take a piss.
That, and the way the angle of his wrist is all wrong, and the fact that you haven’t got laid in weeks and if it’s going to be tonight, then it’s going to happen properly, makes you force yourself away from the brink of losing control. You knock his hands away and take him by surprise, spinning him round so that this time it’s his head which hits the wall.
“Harry, you fucker, what - ”
“I don’t know about you, but I’m not wild about the idea of a fuck up against the wall in the toilets.” It takes all your concentration not to stumble over the words.
He stops struggling and you can see for the first time that he’s worried. He’s just as horny as you are, just as desperate, but for some reason he’s afraid of your rejection. You’ll have to elucidate, but you’re not in any mood to bother being subtle (this is Danny, after all), so you keep your voice low, on the chance there’s anybody else outside.
“I’m not letting you fuck me in a toilet,” you say slowly, trying to make yourself clear. He regards you silently, breath still ragged, and you can see he hasn’t understood. You roll your eyes. “But I might let you at home.”
His eyes widen comically. “Fuck,” he breathes, and you worry that you might have scared him off. By this point you’re fairly desperate, and a wank in the toilets isn’t an appealing back-up plan. You needn’t have been concerned, though. Danny is nothing if not ruled by his dick. The corners of his mouth twitch. “Always knew you took it up the arse.”
Before you have a chance to thump him, he’s sliding back the lock on the cubicle door and readjusting himself in his underwear. You hurriedly follow suit, pulling up your jeans and fumbling with the zip. It strains uncomfortably, but you tell yourself that it’s only a five minute taxi ride home. You just hope that isn’t long enough for either of you to sober up enough not to want this.
You follow him back down the stairs and out into the heaving mass of bodies. His hair’s a mess and you realise distantly that yours probably is too, but you can’t be bothered to do anything about it.
“Hey!”
There’s a none-too-gentle tap on your shoulder and you turn to find Dougie behind you. You can’t spot Tom nearby, or any of his friends.
“Where’s Tom?”
“How the fuck should I know?” Dougie answers. There’s something not right here, something you’re too drunk to put your finger on.
“Have you seen him?” you ask, leaning forward to shout over the music.
Dougie is about to reply, but then his scowl deepens, and a moment later you feel Danny’s arm around your shoulders.
“You coming, or what?” he demands, lips at your ear, and you’re torn, but only for the briefest of moments. You nod.
“See you tomorrow, mate,” you say to Dougie, shooting him a look of apology, Tom forgotten. You follow Danny in the direction of the stairs.
~~~~~
You realise, as soon as you get home, that nothing is ever, ever easy where Danny’s concerned. Your fears about the taxi ride were mislaid, that much is obvious, but the interlude seems to have had an entirely different effect on him, beginning with the way he keeps his hand on your skin underneath your shirt all the way back to the house.
As soon as you get the door unlocked (the key is slippy and uncooperative in your horny, inebriated fingers) he’s on you, pushing you against the door before it even falls shut. You groan helplessly at the feel of his hips against yours, and twist your hands into his t-shirt, pulling him nearer. Your eyes fall closed, only to snap open a second later when he slaps your hands away and catches your wrists, slamming them against the door and keeping them there with his long, guitarist’s fingers.
“Danny -”
“Shut up,” he tells you, for the second time that night, and kisses you in a way you’ve never been kissed before.
Truth be told, it’s more like a fist-fight than a kiss. He doesn’t bother to worry about technique or not using his teeth; it’s as though he’s trying to subdue you, as though sheer force is going to stop you from retaliating. You try to move your leg, to insinuate your thigh between his and create some sort of friction, but he knocks it away, slamming you backwards again, so hard you might have worried about splinters, were you not quite so pissed off.
You know exactly what he’s doing, can sense the need for dominance in every unkind nip of teeth against your throat. It fucks you off that he’s playing this game with you, trying to force you into being submissive, trying to prove to himself that dry-humping another man against a door isn’t a sign that - God forbid - he might actually want to fuck him.
Somehow, though, the anger seems to mingle with desire, and makes you breathless with the need to touch him. You force him backwards - in what universe did he ever think he was stronger than you? - and spin him round once more, in an echo of your assignation in the toilets less than half an hour ago. He gives a muffled grunt of protest as you pin him there, kissing him so hard you’re sure it’ll bruise, using the thrust of your tongue as a weapon to control him. Fuck, yes, this is exactly what you need.
You force your leg between his thighs, pressing forward against the straining denim at the front of his jeans. Immediately he submits, sagging just a little bit against you, and you know this is a battle you’re going to be able to win. You kiss him more steadily, twisting his hair through your fingers as he moans around your tongue. You can feel his desire to thrust against your thigh, and dig your own erection harder against his hip in response.
Through the haze of want and need and sheer desperation, you manage to remember what you promised yourself earlier; that if this is going to happen, it’s going to happen properly. Properly does not, in your book, include ‘up against the front door’, so you push yourself away and lean over him, trying to regain your breath enough to speak.
“Don’t want to shag you here,” he supplies for you, helpfully, and you shake your head in agreement, nudging him away from the door.
“Bedroom,” you offer. “Mine if you want, I’m not bothered.”
As the pair of you scramble your way up the stairs, tripping and tugging at each others’ clothing (better not leave any of it on the stairs, you think absently, just in case the others get back any time soon), you wish half-heartedly that you weren’t quite this drunk. Yes, it makes every touch of Danny’s skin and tongue against yours feel like electricity, but you know that even if it does make you last a little longer, too, it’ll also take the edge off being fucked. It hasn’t happened all that many times before (though you have to admit you’re pretty adventurous when it comes to getting your rocks off) but it has happened enough for you to know your own body. By this time, however, you’ve reached your room and Danny’s standing unsteadily by the bed, looking about ready to topple over. You don’t have the faculties to think about anything else.
“Were you serious, before?” he mumbles, once you’re both naked and he’s under you, arching up into your hand.
You find a way to convey the fact that yes, you were serious and yes, you’d very much like it if he got on with it, please, all with a twist of your hand and the tug of your teeth on his earlobe.
“Fuck,” he says, “I never - ”
He pauses and flushes, gasps and bucks his hips. Silencing him like this is one of the most arousing things you’ve ever experienced, which shocks you a little.
“I mean, yeah, with girls, but…”
You never thought teaching Danny anything could be half as much fun as it turned out to be. He’s a quick learner, given the right incentives. It frustrates you at first that he’s uncertain and needs reassurance that it feels fucking fantastic every time he touches you there, yes, like that. You have to remind him that you’re a man, you want what he wants, and then he seems to get the idea. Before long he gets the hang of it, understands your need for it hard, and fast and a little bit painful.
“Oh, fuck, Harry,” he manages, as soon as you establish a rhythm, the words spilling out almost involuntarily against the slick skin of your back. You push backwards, trying to urge him on, and he gets the hint, moving faster, adjusting the angle so that you’re gasping and arching and swearing indiscriminately.
In the end, neither of you last particularly long. Danny comes first with an incoherent cry and his teeth sinking into your shoulder blade, and you follow him a moment later with his name shouted into the pillow. Which surprises you, but you’re too strung out to worry about the implications.
He slumps against your back, pulling out a little uncomfortably after a minute or so.
“Where’s the bin?” he asks, and you murmur sleepily, gesturing towards the floor.
You hear a faint, elastic snap, and a minute later the bed sags as he flops down next to you.
“Want me to go?”
You open your eyes and roll over to find him leaning on one elbow, chewing his lip uncertainly. Suddenly the two of you feel very young. It reminds you of the awkwardness after the time you lost your virginity with a girl at one of your mates’ parties. Except that this is Danny, and it’d be stupid to send him back to his room because… you’re still drunk and too tired to reason with yourself, or with him, so you shake your head and let him crawl under the covers.
You’re already dozing off, and thankfully he doesn’t make any attempt to touch you. The idea of Danny being a snuggler seems incongruous, anyway, and you would probably have laughed at him if he’d tried.
You think you hear him saying something, before you properly fall asleep. His voice is rough, and you wonder drowsily whether it’s from the singing or from the cry he gave just before he came.
“That were,” he whispers, with a pause as he tries to come up with the right word. He sighs, defeated. “That were really summat, mate.”
When he doesn’t get a response, he settles down fairly quickly. You drift off to sleep with his foot resting against your leg, as though he needs some sort of reassurance. Of what, you’re not really sure.
Saturday
You wake up the next morning stuck to the sheets and with a blinding headache. You groan and turn over, not quite sure what day it is, let alone aware of the time. It takes a few minutes before you realise you’re surprised not to find someone lying next to you. Danny has gone. You swear to yourself softly and try to go back to sleep.
The next time you wake up, the ache in your back overtakes the one behind your eyes and makes you realise you really need a piss. You sit up reluctantly, everything suddenly ten times worse with the effort of becoming vertical. As you lift your hand to scratch the back of your head, you look down at yourself and swear in surprise.
It’s as though your body has become a map of everything you did last night; Danny’s marked you so thoroughly it makes you wonder whether he did it on purpose. Your chest is a mess of scratches, as though someone has raked blunt nails down to your stomach. There are two sets of red crescent-moons on your hips, and bruises where you’ve been held too tightly. Twisting round you feel a burning pain across your shoulders. A quick look in the mirror above your desk confirms the presence of blue-black bruises, souvenirs of every time Danny slammed you against the wall. You wonder fleetingly whether he’s in this much of a mess as well; you can’t even remember it having been that rough.
Pulling on a pair of boxers and a t-shirt in case you bump into anyone on the landing, you make your way over to the bathroom. After you’ve taken a piss and brushed your teeth you inspect your injuries again. If anything, the fluorescent light and the white tiles only make everything look worse. Sighing, you cover yourself up and decide to head downstairs for breakfast. It’s not your style to wait in your bedroom for Danny to come and see you, or to go up the stairs to see him. What is there to say, in any case?
There’s no one around in the living room, and you couldn’t hear anyone talking as you made your way down the stairs, so you assume everyone must still be in bed. What time is it anyway? A glance at the clock tells you it’s half eleven - Tom’s probably already out.
You trudge into the kitchen and over to the fridge. Thankfully, there’s bacon and some orange juice. You take out both and close the door with your hip, wincing because you’d forgotten the bruises. You turn round and almost drop bacon all over the kitchen floor, because Dougie’s sitting there at the table, watching you in silence.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Doug! Nearly gave me a heart attack!”
“Sorry,” he says, insincerely.
He goes back to pouring milk over his cereal, but you saw the way his eyes lingered over the nail-marks on your arm. You realise you also forgot to check for love-bites and your hand goes reflexively to your throat. You feel like an idiot for letting Dougie make you feel so uncomfortable.
Nothing more is said while you find a frying pan, wait for the electric hob to warm, take out two slices of bread. You wonder whether Dougie knows, whether it’s any of his business anyway. Then you realise that this isn’t quite the same as the morning after any other one-night-stand, and a heavy, miserable weight seems to settle across your chest.
You set your sandwich on the table and take your seat without Dougie even looking at you, although you keep catching him glaring at you over his cornflakes. You try to ignore him, stir milk into your coffee, pick the rind off the bacon in your sandwich. In the end, you take your breakfast back to bed, and eat it leaning back against the headboard.
~~~~~
It’s a few hours later when you next venture out of your room. You’ve picked up last night’s condom off the floor and thrown it in your waste paper basket, then stripped the sheets off your bed. For some reason there’s a little bit of blood on them, you don’t like to think how it got there, and they smell overwhelmingly of Danny and of sex. You carry them in a bundle down the stairs, hoping Dougie’s gone out, or up to his room.
He hasn’t. He takes one look at you, still bed-headed and with (you checked) a livid love-bite blossoming just above your collarbone, with your sheets under your arm, and slams the magazine he was reading down against the counter top.
You walk over to the washing machine, ignore the fact that when your t-shirt rides up he must be able to see the nail-marks on your hips, and shove your sheets in. Taking your time over the soap powder means you hope he’ll have gone away by the time you turn round.
He hasn’t. He’s waiting for you, arms folded, fixing you with a look of absolute venom.
“Look, Dougie -”
He doesn’t let you finish whatever patronising speech you had planned, just marches over and somehow, despite being nearly a foot shorter than you, backs you up against the washing machine. He glares at you for an interminable moment, chewing the inside of his bottom lip. You’re horrified to realise there are tears gathering at the corner of his eyes. He scrubs away at them angrily with the back of his hand and gives you a hard shove in the shoulder, as though to compensate.
“Dougie, stop it,” you say, knocking his hand away. “What the fuck’s wrong?”
“You,” he says harshly, giving you another shove. “You and Danny. You’re going to ruin it for all us.”
You’re about to try to laugh it off, to scoff at him for being so ridiculous. You realise though, that you understand the fear in him. You’re suddenly very aware that this thing you all have going, this perfect, wonderful opportunity, might be on the verge of collapse, all because of your inability to let your brain be in command of your cock, for once. He gives you one last shove and turns to pick up his magazine from the table, leaving without saying another word. You hear the front door slam a moment later.
~~~~~
You realised just after Dougie left that the t-shirt you were wearing was the one Danny left on your floor last night, and how that can’t have helped the situation in the slightest. It also smelt of his deodorant, which wasn’t easing your hangover either, so you took it off and added it to the washing before you turned on the machine. You’ve been sitting here for quarter of an hour, now, watching the suds and the water swirl.
“What were all that about?”
You jump, because you assumed the house was empty. It hadn’t occurred to you that Danny might still be in bed, nursing his own hangover. He looks dreadful as he leans against the doorframe, yawning. His hair’s a mess, but then so is yours, and he’s blinking unattractively at the sunlight flooding in through the blind.
You’re about to tell him about Dougie, and how you think that just possibly you might between the two of you have fucked everything up, but he’s noticed the scratches and bruises and he’s coming over, eyes on your chest, his mouth a little ‘o’ of surprise.
“Did I do that?” he asks, and you can’t tell whether he’s ashamed of himself or actually rather proud.
You nod and turn to show him your back, wanting him to grasp the full extent of what you’ve done, not wanting to allow him the luxury of being able to pretend he can’t remember.
“Bloody hell, I didn’t realise I were being so rough.” He reaches out a hand, so you stand up to get another glass of juice before he’s able to touch you. “Good job you’re not a girl, eh?”
“What about you?”
He grins, and lifts up his t-shirt to reveal clear, unbroken skin. “Nah, I’m indestructible, me.”
You get him a glass of juice even though he doesn’t ask for one, and he takes it gratefully, handing you two paracetamol in return.
“Thought you might need them,” he says, by way of an explanation. “I know I do.”
You both sit in silence for a while, watching the washing. You know he can see his t-shirt in there along with your sheets, wonder if he’s bothered. Wonder if it ought to feel more awkward than this, seeing as you’ve recently had his cock in your mouth, amongst other places.
“Dougie thinks we’ve buggered everything up,” you say eventually, regretting your choice of vocabulary as soon as you see the grin reappearing. You leave the question unspoken, too hungover this morning to ask subtly for any kind of reassurance.
“Nah, he just wishes he’d been on the receiving end, that’s all,” Danny replies.
“Because you’re such a fantastic shag.”
“You know it,” he shoots back, and you’re suddenly incredibly glad that you did this with Danny, because how could anything ever be awkward with him? The two of you are masters at this, after all; it’s just another morning after.
Except that, possibly, there’s something different in the way in which he lays cool fingers against your bruised shoulder as he leans over to snag the remains of your sandwich. He gives you a slow smile and pokes you playfully in the ribs.
“You’d better not have finished all the bacon, you tosser.”
~~~~~
Fandom: McFly
Pairing: JuddJones
Rating: 18
Word count: 6000+
Summary: Five days from one week.
A/N: My first contribution to McFly slash. Lyrics from Rock & Roll Queen by The Subways and Nobody Move, Nobody Gets Hurt by We Are Scientists.
Dedicated to _princess_han_, for being a wonderful beta.
Nobody Move, Nobody Gets Hurt
Saturday
“Harry, Harry! Will you marry me?”
A girl thrusts a poster at you through the barrier. You smile and remember to ask for her name, and she beams at you, breathlessly grateful. “It’s Hannah.”
“Hannah,” you repeat.
You scrawl a generic message, about to add a kiss beneath your name when a pair of arms slips around your waist from behind. You almost drop the pen.
“Danny!” your autograph girl gushes, delighted. “Sign my poster?”
He tugs the pen out of your hand and adds his own autograph beneath yours. It’s odd you’ve never noticed before that it bears no resemblance to the everyday signature he uses on cheques and to sign contracts. You remember times in the very early days when he used to practice writing his autograph on napkins and half-written sheets of lyrics. You used to laugh at him for it and call him a tosser, secretly impressed by his ambition and his unshakeable conviction that one day you’d all be famous.
He hands the picture back through the railings with a grin and leans closer to you, tugging at your belt loops. Thinking he’s about to say something, you incline your head and briefly feel the warm puff of his breath against your neck. It takes you by surprise when he lurches forward and presses a swift kiss to your ear, the girls gathered on the other side of the barrier squealing and scrabbling for their cameras. There’s nothing unusual in it; you sling an arm around him and make a show of pinching his arse.
“Oi!” he protests, slapping your hand away.
You catch his eye as he wanders away across the car park and the pair of you share a grin.
“Harry! Harry, can I take a picture?”
You turn back to the crowd and pull a face for the camera. From the corner of your eye you can see Danny and Dougie play-fighting for the TV cameras on the other side of the enclosure. All four of your have been wearing matching Cheshire cat grins since lunchtime. It’s a good day, a normal day; you’re happy.
Sunday
“Alright, mate?”
Danny’s standing in the doorway, Fosters in hand, the light from the hallway behind him making a halo around his head. You nod, yawning without bothering to cover your mouth. When you open your eyes you realise he’s crossed the room. He’s behind you, leaning over the back of the sofa and resting his can on your head.
“Anything good on?”
You hand him the remote. India are 265 for 7, but you’re not watching out of any particular interest in the match.
“It’s all yours,” you tell him, reaching for your half-empty mug.
“You off to bed?” He sounds surprised; disappointed, even, so you sigh, reluctantly stifling another yawn.
“Not necessarily.”
“Nice one,” he mumbles, swinging his legs over the back of the sofa and flopping down next to you. “Mind if I change it?”
You don’t, so he starts to flick from channel to channel, pausing to show you a particularly hilarious advert and to comment on a Girls Aloud compilation on the music channel (“Blimey, Kimberley’s fit.”) You let it wash over you and sink back into the sofa. Before he’s settled on a channel to watch you find yourself dozing off, only half aware of him leaning forward to set his empty can down on the table.
You do wake up when, a minute or so later, he starts to fidget beside you, digging his elbow into your ribs.
“Shift up, Bigfoot,” he murmurs, settling against you more comfortably and draping his legs over the end of the sofa.
You look down at him, a little bit surprised. There’s something weirdly feline in his indiscriminate sprawl over you and the furniture, and the way he nudges your hip in an effort to get comfortable. If it were Dougie, you’d put your arm around his shoulders and let him curl closer; the fact that it’s Danny makes the situation awkward, though you can’t really make sense of the distinction.
“Erm, Danny?”
He mutters and shifts against your leg and you assume it’s his way of telling you to shut up and let him watch Jackass. A moment later, when he begins to snore, you realise your mistake and push his head off your knee. You know for a fact that he dribbles in his sleep.
Wednesday
The Wanderers are playing in the UEFA Cup qualifiers and you’re regretting your decision to share the sofa with Danny. He’s wound up, half-cut, accent broader than usual. The atmosphere has been subdued since he shouted you down ten minutes ago over the validity of a penalty decision.
“Fuck’s sake, Dan.” He keeps jogging your elbow, making you spill lager down the sofa.
He turns round, the first time he’s taken his eyes of the screen for 88 minutes, and gives you a brief, sheepish smile. “Sorry, mate.”
It’s an apology for the argument earlier as well, so you exercise some self-restraint and bite back your instinctive sarcasm.
You glance at Dougie, expecting him to roll his eyes and grin, both of you united for a moment by silent laughter at Danny’s expense. Instead, you realise he’s been watching you quietly from the armchair on the other side of the room. He meets your eye uncertainly, fingers twisting and untwisting the cords of his bracelet. Concerned (because Dougie never passes up an opportunity to make Danny the butt of a joke), you get to your feet, hoping he’ll follow you into the kitchen so you can ask him what’s wrong out of earshot of the others. You’re reaching for his empty can on the coffee table when Danny springs off the sofa, knocking you sideways and spraying Fosters all over the carpet.
“Fucking hell!” He yells, punching the air as the final whistle blows.
He turns to you as you’re wiping lager off your arm, grinning from ear to ear, his mouth wide and expressive. You offer him a slightly soggy high five, but he hangs on for too long, pulling you towards him and enveloping you in a hug. He’s all-but bouncing, trying to take you with him, body flush against yours as he punches the air again.
“We’re going to Europe!” he yells in your ear, gleeful and childlike, just before he grabs your face with both hands and plants a kiss in the middle of your forehead.
You’re about to tell him with a frown what a silly twat he is when his phone rings and he pulls away to answer it. He mouths ‘It’s Dad’ and starts to make his way up the stairs two at a time. You watch him go, then turn to fetch yourself another can.
Dougie’s looking at you with a confused expression on his face; the same look he gets when he’s about to figure out the punchline to one of Tom’s more impenetrable jokes.
“Better hope the wind doesn’t change, Doug,” you warn him.
He doesn’t follow you into the kitchen, so you don’t get a chance to ask him what was wrong.
Friday
Come midnight on Friday, you can’t remember whose idea it was to spend the night in an Indie club. It was probably up to Tom, because he seems to have met up with some mates you don’t recognise. They’ve all headed off in the direction of the bar, leaving you and Dougie in a corner sipping warm Kronenbourg from dirty bottles. For some reason Dougie’s glaring at you. You can’t figure out what you’re supposed to have done wrong, and the music’s to loud to lean over and ask. Danny’s disappeared but you’re sure you keep hearing his laughter during the gaps between songs.
Three hours ago you started off the night with four rounds of Jägermeister; now you’ve reached the point that the walls aren’t quite perpendicular to the ceiling. The club is in the basement of a warehouse off Albert Street, with no windows and the only doors up two steep flights of stairs. Everyone and everything glistens with sweat. Even the walls are damp, but they’re cool against your back and you’re glad you’ve got this corner in which to rest and a place to rest your head, which is swimming.
Another glance at Dougie reveals the depth of his hatred for the club and its scenester inmates. He doesn’t like the music, nor the fact that he knows he doesn’t fit in; a skater amongst the skinny-jeans brigade. Normally it wouldn’t bother him because you’d all be here in a group and the gang mentality would make you all invincible, untouchable. For some reason though, tonight you’ve all become separated. With just the two of you in the corner, the silence between you is becoming ridiculous. You push yourself away from the wall, thinking that conversation for conversation’s sake is better than no conversation at all.
You’re about to ask if he’s seen Danny when large sticky hands grab you from behind and the question dies on your lips. Danny’s suddenly here, laughing in your ear and folding himself round you, head appearing over your shoulder.
“Come and dance, you losers!” he demands.
You’ve almost reached the easy, tactile stage of drunkenness when any body wrapped around your own feels perfect. Dougie’s narrowed eyes follow your fingers as they curl around Danny’s wrists, pulling him closer.
“Dude, I’m wankered,” you begin to explain, hoping he’ll stay with you and somehow diffuse the situation with Dougie, so that the three of you can dance off the alcohol, then go and get a kebab. Instead he laughs and tugs at you by the belt loops of your jeans.
“So’m I, so’s everyone. Come on!”
You glance over at Dougie, wedged in the corner with his arms resolutely folded.
“Doug?”
He shakes his head, gestures sullenly that he’s going to get another drink. You raise your eyebrows and give a minute shake of your head because you both know you had enough trouble getting him in here, and that he probably won’t get served. You know Tom’ll go mental if Dougie gets you all thrown out. You’re about to offer to go to the bar for him yourself, but the moment is broken by Danny laughing into your ear, making you shiver. Dougie hesitates for a second, then shrugs and turns away to follow Tom and his friends to the bar.
Danny tugs on your belt loops again and you can’t be bothered to argue. You find yourself being led out of your quiet, dark corner into a seething mass of people. Everyone’s dancing and no one looks at you as you push your way past. It’s hot and airless down here and you can feel your shirt sticking to you already. Danny’s hair is a sweaty mess across his forehead; he pushes it away and grins at you over his shoulder.
He leads you to the opposite corner of the room, to a group of people you know you’ve met before but you can’t think where or why, and swaps the empty bottle in your hand for a new one. Droplets of condensation trickle over your fingertips, but you resist the urge to run it across your forehead.
The song changes and Danny gives broad grin of appreciation. He slings an arm around your shoulders, and starts moving against you without much reference to either rhythm or style. His voice is hoarse, rougher than usual, rasping away next to your ear as you try to lift your beer to your lips without losing your grip on the bottle.
“Be my little rock and roll queen.”
You catch him grinning at you and elbow him in the ribs.
The last time you saw Danny like this was the final night of the tour; sweat pouring down his back, hands clutching at you for support then pushing you away so there was room to move. He’s euphoric. It briefly crosses your mind to wonder whether he’s on something, but you remember the story he once told you about his mate from school and some little white tablets and you know, absolutely know that he wouldn’t.
“Harry!” he pulls you round to face him.
He’s dancing now, in that disorderly, ramshackle way of his, something about it telling you that this is all for fun, just like when he gropes Tom for the cameras, or nips at the back of Dougie’s neck in the middle of the set. It’s never crossed your mind before to wonder whether that sort of thing is normal, so you respond with a hand on his hip and a knowing grin.
You aren’t prepared for the change in atmosphere, for the way he comes closer and doesn’t stop. But by then he’s already against you, still moving, looking down at the space between you. Your hand’s still on his hip, so you’re in no position to complain.
He’s still singing along, though you hadn’t noticed that the song had changed: “My body is your body. I won’t tell anybody.” Somehow he’s making it sound like a promise.
He looks up at you (you’re not sure whether you meant to stop breathing), and suddenly he kisses you. Not even that; he just bumps his lips against yours, making it seem like a drunken stumble, which it might have been except for the way his hand settled briefly on your waist. You can’t even tell how long it lasts - surely only a second or so - because immediately afterwards he pulls back and stares at you, eyes a mess of confusion and uncertainty. He looks as surprised as you feel.
“Danny - ”
You don’t get to find out where your sentence was going because he seems to come to an abrupt decision and grabs a handful of your shirt. He uses it to propel you through the crowd, dragging you as quickly as you can keep up through groups of dancing people. You’re fairly sure you’re still smiling, but you can’t see his face; don’t know what he’s planning. You drain the final mouthful from your bottle and let it fall to the floor, where it’s kicked away by any number of feet.
You reach the stairs and he pulls you up to the first floor and along a corridor. Now that the music’s disappeared you can feel blood pounding in your ears and your heart beating deafeningly against your chest; surely Danny can hear it too? He shoves you through a swing door, and you realise you’re in the toilets. There’s no one here, so he pushes you into one of the cubicles, shuts the door behind you.
“Why’ve you brought me in here, you wanker?” you demand calmly, not really all that concerned.
Danny’s looking at you with a frown on his face, touching his lips with the back of his hand. “Shut up, Harry.”
You laugh breathlessly because you’re more fucked than you realised, and because Danny’s suddenly looking absurdly serious.
“Fuck off, you idiot,” you begin, pushing yourself away from the wall, reaching for the lock on the door.
With a shove, Danny pushes you backwards. You hit the wall hard, your shoulders jarring against the wood. His hands pin you in place.
“Danny, what the fuck - ”
This time your head hits the wall, and he kisses you roughly. You don’t have time to think except: fuck, it feels good. His chest is against your chest, your bodies flush, and it’s just what you need to have another body pressed up against yours like this. He licks at your bottom lip, bites it, and you open your mouth willingly. The slide of his tongue against yours makes your cock burn.
You fight against his hands, drag your own hands free to pull him nearer. He grinds against you and you feel the outline of his erection, pressing against your hip. This is why it’s different from kissing a girl; you don’t have to be careful, you don’t have to take your time. He tastes fantastic, even though it’s mostly beer and smoke on his tongue. You want more and so does he; you’re fighting with each other to get closer, get deeper.
You realise that the stinging pain at your hip is his nails bluntly digging into you beneath your shirt. His fingers are moving, scrabbling for the button of your jeans, reaching inside, trying to find something to hold onto. You moan, then, against his mouth, as his fingers curl around you at an awkward angle. He’s pushing your jeans off your hips, tugging at your boxers, and the back of your head keeps bumping the cubicle wall. You hope to God no one comes in to take a piss.
That, and the way the angle of his wrist is all wrong, and the fact that you haven’t got laid in weeks and if it’s going to be tonight, then it’s going to happen properly, makes you force yourself away from the brink of losing control. You knock his hands away and take him by surprise, spinning him round so that this time it’s his head which hits the wall.
“Harry, you fucker, what - ”
“I don’t know about you, but I’m not wild about the idea of a fuck up against the wall in the toilets.” It takes all your concentration not to stumble over the words.
He stops struggling and you can see for the first time that he’s worried. He’s just as horny as you are, just as desperate, but for some reason he’s afraid of your rejection. You’ll have to elucidate, but you’re not in any mood to bother being subtle (this is Danny, after all), so you keep your voice low, on the chance there’s anybody else outside.
“I’m not letting you fuck me in a toilet,” you say slowly, trying to make yourself clear. He regards you silently, breath still ragged, and you can see he hasn’t understood. You roll your eyes. “But I might let you at home.”
His eyes widen comically. “Fuck,” he breathes, and you worry that you might have scared him off. By this point you’re fairly desperate, and a wank in the toilets isn’t an appealing back-up plan. You needn’t have been concerned, though. Danny is nothing if not ruled by his dick. The corners of his mouth twitch. “Always knew you took it up the arse.”
Before you have a chance to thump him, he’s sliding back the lock on the cubicle door and readjusting himself in his underwear. You hurriedly follow suit, pulling up your jeans and fumbling with the zip. It strains uncomfortably, but you tell yourself that it’s only a five minute taxi ride home. You just hope that isn’t long enough for either of you to sober up enough not to want this.
You follow him back down the stairs and out into the heaving mass of bodies. His hair’s a mess and you realise distantly that yours probably is too, but you can’t be bothered to do anything about it.
“Hey!”
There’s a none-too-gentle tap on your shoulder and you turn to find Dougie behind you. You can’t spot Tom nearby, or any of his friends.
“Where’s Tom?”
“How the fuck should I know?” Dougie answers. There’s something not right here, something you’re too drunk to put your finger on.
“Have you seen him?” you ask, leaning forward to shout over the music.
Dougie is about to reply, but then his scowl deepens, and a moment later you feel Danny’s arm around your shoulders.
“You coming, or what?” he demands, lips at your ear, and you’re torn, but only for the briefest of moments. You nod.
“See you tomorrow, mate,” you say to Dougie, shooting him a look of apology, Tom forgotten. You follow Danny in the direction of the stairs.
~~~~~
You realise, as soon as you get home, that nothing is ever, ever easy where Danny’s concerned. Your fears about the taxi ride were mislaid, that much is obvious, but the interlude seems to have had an entirely different effect on him, beginning with the way he keeps his hand on your skin underneath your shirt all the way back to the house.
As soon as you get the door unlocked (the key is slippy and uncooperative in your horny, inebriated fingers) he’s on you, pushing you against the door before it even falls shut. You groan helplessly at the feel of his hips against yours, and twist your hands into his t-shirt, pulling him nearer. Your eyes fall closed, only to snap open a second later when he slaps your hands away and catches your wrists, slamming them against the door and keeping them there with his long, guitarist’s fingers.
“Danny -”
“Shut up,” he tells you, for the second time that night, and kisses you in a way you’ve never been kissed before.
Truth be told, it’s more like a fist-fight than a kiss. He doesn’t bother to worry about technique or not using his teeth; it’s as though he’s trying to subdue you, as though sheer force is going to stop you from retaliating. You try to move your leg, to insinuate your thigh between his and create some sort of friction, but he knocks it away, slamming you backwards again, so hard you might have worried about splinters, were you not quite so pissed off.
You know exactly what he’s doing, can sense the need for dominance in every unkind nip of teeth against your throat. It fucks you off that he’s playing this game with you, trying to force you into being submissive, trying to prove to himself that dry-humping another man against a door isn’t a sign that - God forbid - he might actually want to fuck him.
Somehow, though, the anger seems to mingle with desire, and makes you breathless with the need to touch him. You force him backwards - in what universe did he ever think he was stronger than you? - and spin him round once more, in an echo of your assignation in the toilets less than half an hour ago. He gives a muffled grunt of protest as you pin him there, kissing him so hard you’re sure it’ll bruise, using the thrust of your tongue as a weapon to control him. Fuck, yes, this is exactly what you need.
You force your leg between his thighs, pressing forward against the straining denim at the front of his jeans. Immediately he submits, sagging just a little bit against you, and you know this is a battle you’re going to be able to win. You kiss him more steadily, twisting his hair through your fingers as he moans around your tongue. You can feel his desire to thrust against your thigh, and dig your own erection harder against his hip in response.
Through the haze of want and need and sheer desperation, you manage to remember what you promised yourself earlier; that if this is going to happen, it’s going to happen properly. Properly does not, in your book, include ‘up against the front door’, so you push yourself away and lean over him, trying to regain your breath enough to speak.
“Don’t want to shag you here,” he supplies for you, helpfully, and you shake your head in agreement, nudging him away from the door.
“Bedroom,” you offer. “Mine if you want, I’m not bothered.”
As the pair of you scramble your way up the stairs, tripping and tugging at each others’ clothing (better not leave any of it on the stairs, you think absently, just in case the others get back any time soon), you wish half-heartedly that you weren’t quite this drunk. Yes, it makes every touch of Danny’s skin and tongue against yours feel like electricity, but you know that even if it does make you last a little longer, too, it’ll also take the edge off being fucked. It hasn’t happened all that many times before (though you have to admit you’re pretty adventurous when it comes to getting your rocks off) but it has happened enough for you to know your own body. By this time, however, you’ve reached your room and Danny’s standing unsteadily by the bed, looking about ready to topple over. You don’t have the faculties to think about anything else.
“Were you serious, before?” he mumbles, once you’re both naked and he’s under you, arching up into your hand.
You find a way to convey the fact that yes, you were serious and yes, you’d very much like it if he got on with it, please, all with a twist of your hand and the tug of your teeth on his earlobe.
“Fuck,” he says, “I never - ”
He pauses and flushes, gasps and bucks his hips. Silencing him like this is one of the most arousing things you’ve ever experienced, which shocks you a little.
“I mean, yeah, with girls, but…”
You never thought teaching Danny anything could be half as much fun as it turned out to be. He’s a quick learner, given the right incentives. It frustrates you at first that he’s uncertain and needs reassurance that it feels fucking fantastic every time he touches you there, yes, like that. You have to remind him that you’re a man, you want what he wants, and then he seems to get the idea. Before long he gets the hang of it, understands your need for it hard, and fast and a little bit painful.
“Oh, fuck, Harry,” he manages, as soon as you establish a rhythm, the words spilling out almost involuntarily against the slick skin of your back. You push backwards, trying to urge him on, and he gets the hint, moving faster, adjusting the angle so that you’re gasping and arching and swearing indiscriminately.
In the end, neither of you last particularly long. Danny comes first with an incoherent cry and his teeth sinking into your shoulder blade, and you follow him a moment later with his name shouted into the pillow. Which surprises you, but you’re too strung out to worry about the implications.
He slumps against your back, pulling out a little uncomfortably after a minute or so.
“Where’s the bin?” he asks, and you murmur sleepily, gesturing towards the floor.
You hear a faint, elastic snap, and a minute later the bed sags as he flops down next to you.
“Want me to go?”
You open your eyes and roll over to find him leaning on one elbow, chewing his lip uncertainly. Suddenly the two of you feel very young. It reminds you of the awkwardness after the time you lost your virginity with a girl at one of your mates’ parties. Except that this is Danny, and it’d be stupid to send him back to his room because… you’re still drunk and too tired to reason with yourself, or with him, so you shake your head and let him crawl under the covers.
You’re already dozing off, and thankfully he doesn’t make any attempt to touch you. The idea of Danny being a snuggler seems incongruous, anyway, and you would probably have laughed at him if he’d tried.
You think you hear him saying something, before you properly fall asleep. His voice is rough, and you wonder drowsily whether it’s from the singing or from the cry he gave just before he came.
“That were,” he whispers, with a pause as he tries to come up with the right word. He sighs, defeated. “That were really summat, mate.”
When he doesn’t get a response, he settles down fairly quickly. You drift off to sleep with his foot resting against your leg, as though he needs some sort of reassurance. Of what, you’re not really sure.
Saturday
You wake up the next morning stuck to the sheets and with a blinding headache. You groan and turn over, not quite sure what day it is, let alone aware of the time. It takes a few minutes before you realise you’re surprised not to find someone lying next to you. Danny has gone. You swear to yourself softly and try to go back to sleep.
The next time you wake up, the ache in your back overtakes the one behind your eyes and makes you realise you really need a piss. You sit up reluctantly, everything suddenly ten times worse with the effort of becoming vertical. As you lift your hand to scratch the back of your head, you look down at yourself and swear in surprise.
It’s as though your body has become a map of everything you did last night; Danny’s marked you so thoroughly it makes you wonder whether he did it on purpose. Your chest is a mess of scratches, as though someone has raked blunt nails down to your stomach. There are two sets of red crescent-moons on your hips, and bruises where you’ve been held too tightly. Twisting round you feel a burning pain across your shoulders. A quick look in the mirror above your desk confirms the presence of blue-black bruises, souvenirs of every time Danny slammed you against the wall. You wonder fleetingly whether he’s in this much of a mess as well; you can’t even remember it having been that rough.
Pulling on a pair of boxers and a t-shirt in case you bump into anyone on the landing, you make your way over to the bathroom. After you’ve taken a piss and brushed your teeth you inspect your injuries again. If anything, the fluorescent light and the white tiles only make everything look worse. Sighing, you cover yourself up and decide to head downstairs for breakfast. It’s not your style to wait in your bedroom for Danny to come and see you, or to go up the stairs to see him. What is there to say, in any case?
There’s no one around in the living room, and you couldn’t hear anyone talking as you made your way down the stairs, so you assume everyone must still be in bed. What time is it anyway? A glance at the clock tells you it’s half eleven - Tom’s probably already out.
You trudge into the kitchen and over to the fridge. Thankfully, there’s bacon and some orange juice. You take out both and close the door with your hip, wincing because you’d forgotten the bruises. You turn round and almost drop bacon all over the kitchen floor, because Dougie’s sitting there at the table, watching you in silence.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Doug! Nearly gave me a heart attack!”
“Sorry,” he says, insincerely.
He goes back to pouring milk over his cereal, but you saw the way his eyes lingered over the nail-marks on your arm. You realise you also forgot to check for love-bites and your hand goes reflexively to your throat. You feel like an idiot for letting Dougie make you feel so uncomfortable.
Nothing more is said while you find a frying pan, wait for the electric hob to warm, take out two slices of bread. You wonder whether Dougie knows, whether it’s any of his business anyway. Then you realise that this isn’t quite the same as the morning after any other one-night-stand, and a heavy, miserable weight seems to settle across your chest.
You set your sandwich on the table and take your seat without Dougie even looking at you, although you keep catching him glaring at you over his cornflakes. You try to ignore him, stir milk into your coffee, pick the rind off the bacon in your sandwich. In the end, you take your breakfast back to bed, and eat it leaning back against the headboard.
~~~~~
It’s a few hours later when you next venture out of your room. You’ve picked up last night’s condom off the floor and thrown it in your waste paper basket, then stripped the sheets off your bed. For some reason there’s a little bit of blood on them, you don’t like to think how it got there, and they smell overwhelmingly of Danny and of sex. You carry them in a bundle down the stairs, hoping Dougie’s gone out, or up to his room.
He hasn’t. He takes one look at you, still bed-headed and with (you checked) a livid love-bite blossoming just above your collarbone, with your sheets under your arm, and slams the magazine he was reading down against the counter top.
You walk over to the washing machine, ignore the fact that when your t-shirt rides up he must be able to see the nail-marks on your hips, and shove your sheets in. Taking your time over the soap powder means you hope he’ll have gone away by the time you turn round.
He hasn’t. He’s waiting for you, arms folded, fixing you with a look of absolute venom.
“Look, Dougie -”
He doesn’t let you finish whatever patronising speech you had planned, just marches over and somehow, despite being nearly a foot shorter than you, backs you up against the washing machine. He glares at you for an interminable moment, chewing the inside of his bottom lip. You’re horrified to realise there are tears gathering at the corner of his eyes. He scrubs away at them angrily with the back of his hand and gives you a hard shove in the shoulder, as though to compensate.
“Dougie, stop it,” you say, knocking his hand away. “What the fuck’s wrong?”
“You,” he says harshly, giving you another shove. “You and Danny. You’re going to ruin it for all us.”
You’re about to try to laugh it off, to scoff at him for being so ridiculous. You realise though, that you understand the fear in him. You’re suddenly very aware that this thing you all have going, this perfect, wonderful opportunity, might be on the verge of collapse, all because of your inability to let your brain be in command of your cock, for once. He gives you one last shove and turns to pick up his magazine from the table, leaving without saying another word. You hear the front door slam a moment later.
~~~~~
You realised just after Dougie left that the t-shirt you were wearing was the one Danny left on your floor last night, and how that can’t have helped the situation in the slightest. It also smelt of his deodorant, which wasn’t easing your hangover either, so you took it off and added it to the washing before you turned on the machine. You’ve been sitting here for quarter of an hour, now, watching the suds and the water swirl.
“What were all that about?”
You jump, because you assumed the house was empty. It hadn’t occurred to you that Danny might still be in bed, nursing his own hangover. He looks dreadful as he leans against the doorframe, yawning. His hair’s a mess, but then so is yours, and he’s blinking unattractively at the sunlight flooding in through the blind.
You’re about to tell him about Dougie, and how you think that just possibly you might between the two of you have fucked everything up, but he’s noticed the scratches and bruises and he’s coming over, eyes on your chest, his mouth a little ‘o’ of surprise.
“Did I do that?” he asks, and you can’t tell whether he’s ashamed of himself or actually rather proud.
You nod and turn to show him your back, wanting him to grasp the full extent of what you’ve done, not wanting to allow him the luxury of being able to pretend he can’t remember.
“Bloody hell, I didn’t realise I were being so rough.” He reaches out a hand, so you stand up to get another glass of juice before he’s able to touch you. “Good job you’re not a girl, eh?”
“What about you?”
He grins, and lifts up his t-shirt to reveal clear, unbroken skin. “Nah, I’m indestructible, me.”
You get him a glass of juice even though he doesn’t ask for one, and he takes it gratefully, handing you two paracetamol in return.
“Thought you might need them,” he says, by way of an explanation. “I know I do.”
You both sit in silence for a while, watching the washing. You know he can see his t-shirt in there along with your sheets, wonder if he’s bothered. Wonder if it ought to feel more awkward than this, seeing as you’ve recently had his cock in your mouth, amongst other places.
“Dougie thinks we’ve buggered everything up,” you say eventually, regretting your choice of vocabulary as soon as you see the grin reappearing. You leave the question unspoken, too hungover this morning to ask subtly for any kind of reassurance.
“Nah, he just wishes he’d been on the receiving end, that’s all,” Danny replies.
“Because you’re such a fantastic shag.”
“You know it,” he shoots back, and you’re suddenly incredibly glad that you did this with Danny, because how could anything ever be awkward with him? The two of you are masters at this, after all; it’s just another morning after.
Except that, possibly, there’s something different in the way in which he lays cool fingers against your bruised shoulder as he leans over to snag the remains of your sandwich. He gives you a slow smile and pokes you playfully in the ribs.
“You’d better not have finished all the bacon, you tosser.”
~~~~~