Fic: Tell tale thudd
Jones could hear the tell-tale thud thud thud of his heart echoing between his ears as he brought the phone down. Dan was already standing close, this radiating warmth of silent stoicism.
Jones turned to face him and he couldn’t really even say anything. He must have made something clear though, because Dan started talking
“Best be out of here. Before the rest of the cops show.” He said, his voice low and gravely. Jones nodded and let the warm hand gently guide him towards the back of the crowd.
“Art’s dead,” Jones heard himself say as they edged up the block away from the mingling throng outside the building. No one knew exactly why the fire alarms had gone off, Jones included. That had been his job. It must have been Nick. All the same, the crowd wasn’t going to disperse until someone explained something and their fearless leader hadn’t left yet. Jones could only hope that whatever Nick had done to fuck everything up, he’d at least got Moore out of the way. That’d be enough for Art, if they managed to get the bastard they’d been out for.
Dan didn’t say anything and Jones let the quiet spread between them. He could tell by the curl in Dan’s shoulders that he wasn’t as uncaring as he seemed.
Dan never was.
Jones knew, he’d always known; that was half why Dan hadn’t pushed him away when this whole mess had started again. He also knew in some way, Dan blamed himself for every death that had come about since his stupid article all those years ago. Jones could barely remember the words now. There was a time when he’d known it off by heart. He’d known each sentence, every punctuation mark, everything. He knew it back to front what had been printed; Dan had known every meaning of it and carried the burden of it with him everywhere. For a long time Jones had been terrified that this time it wouldn’t just be a broken leg he and Dan would have to work through. He’d been terrified that Dan’s depressive state would have snatched him away faster than Jones could stop it. But he had, in some amazing bit of luck; he’d been able to stop Dan’s self-destruction. He’d been the only one who’d really cared, the only one who’d gotten through. It had been a long twelve months inside the House of Jones, but the fact Dan was still alive gave him every moment of it back.
Art had been there through that for a bit. Not long, but Art had known, and he was fucking gone.
“Danny?” Jones stopped still. They were a block and a half away from the building. How fast had they walked?
Dan stopped and turned to look at him, and that’s when it went up. There was a blast of noise behind him quickly followed by a shake in the ground that had Jones turning around and nearly stumbling on his feet.
The words stopped in his throat, stolen away. He stared as the rumbling seemed to drag on and the building came down over the treetops. He could hear the screams of the people who’d been gathered out the front. None of them had been inside, thank fuck. A part of him was a struggle of bursting pride - I’ve still got it, fuckin’ aye - but it was smothered by the gibbering shock of what had just happened. Art and his bloke had just gone up under the strength of his own work.
Dan’s snaking touch made him jump and he turned his gaze on Dan with wide eyes.
“We should go,” Dan said again. Jones nodded, following Dan with stumbling steps.
It didn’t take long at all for the wailing of emergency response to start rippling through the streets and a part of him was bubbling with the desire to record all of it, some strange euphoria at the cacophony of noise that with just a little tutoring could be fucking amazing.
He didn’t give in at all. He couldn’t.
Dan barely spoke beyond some instinctive urge that had him taking charge and calling them a fucking cab. He told the rookie where to go in quiet tones while a heavy hand rested on Jones’ thigh as he slouched against the windowpane of the cab. He was glad for the weight of it, the feel of Dan’s body linking to his own, because without it, he could easily entertain the notion he’d fucking come apart just the way the building had.
It had been near on ten years since he’d reacted this badly to something. He knew he was in fucking shock, but he couldn’t fucking help it. All he could do was be thankful it wasn’t like last time, when Claire had called him to say Dan had jumped out a two story window and was at the Royal Free.
He’d given into that jolting absence of emotion by downing as much cheap vodka as his empty stomach could handle and so many pills in a row he’d had a right mind to be admitted himself. When he’d realised on the fourth day running he was standing outside the hospital staring up at it, he forced himself up to Dan’s room. He stayed for twenty minutes and then left before the nurses could get a hold of him, or Dan could even wake up. He’d been a wreck and had slept for two days solid after that.
Once he was back on top of himself, he went and saw Dan every day until he was released and then brought him back to the House with him. It had been good, for about twelve months, right up until Dan had struck out again at the world of idiots he so abhorred and wound up inadvertently restarting the Rebellion. After that, it had been back to the drawing board. But all the same, he’d known how to deal with it then. This was different.
He wasn’t exactly sure why.
When they got back to the flat, Dan made a point of not turning on the tele, which was a good thing, because hours later when Dan had finally passed out and Jones had enough of the teeming silence he’d turned it on long enough to have the bombing screamed back at him for the thirty seconds it took him to turn it back off.
First though, Dan had steered him to the couch and he’d boiled the kettle and been a right silent snob about everything. He made tea and he pressed it into Jones’ hands as he sat right where Dan had set him down. He’d looked up and Dan had frowned at him like that gesture had been questioning his resolve. It hadn’t been, he wasn’t even sure what his own actions said right then.
“You sure you wanna do this, Art?” he’d asked, just yesterday. Art had turned to look at him and he’d seen it right across his face that he damn well wasn’t sure. Then he’d opened his mouth.
“I gotta do this. I gotta do it for Nick an’ me. I don’t know what Moore’s got on me, but whatever it is, he ain’t gonna stop and I can’t keep running any more.”
Art had been ready to bow out of the game and now he was dead.
“We gotta go away, Danny,” Jones murmured as Dan sat down, the couch groaning under their combined weight. Dan’s eyes burned on him and Jones tightened his grasp around the cup of tea Dan had handed him.
“Go somewhere where there ain’t anything.”
“There’ll have to be something there.”
“A house. Trees. A fucking shed if need be. Somewhere that ain’t here.”
“I never got why you and Dan just hid away from everything. I get it now. Funny that. You got it good, Jones. You’re lucky.”
“When do you want to go?”
“Ain’t now good?”
Dan didn’t answer, he reached out and slid his hand around the back of Jones’ neck and pulled him close, so that Jones could lean his weight down.
“Tomorrow,” Dan muttered and Jones clamped his eyes shut and breathed in the deep smell of tobacco and cheap booze and the musty smell of old clothes and Dan.
Damn right he was lucky.
“Tomorrow then.”
When the next day dawned, bright and bold and the world still shook, Jones made a point of pushing Dan into the back of Art's car, and started to drive and it was only when they heard it on the radio that afternoon, that an audio tape had been brought to light revealing the underhanded deals of one Michael Moore and the former Deputy Commissioner's honours had been revoked that they even thought about stopping.