Tattoo - Flones - Chapter 5
Title:Tattoo
Author: Me!
Part:5/11
Pairing: Flones
Rating: NC-17
Genre: Angst
Word Count: Chapter : 2,109
Summary: They were best friends until they went to Uni. Six years later, they find each other again, but everything has changed.
Warnings: It's a pretty emotional fic. Some health issues that might hit hard if you have an eating disorder, or someone you know has one. Implied Mpreg, but theres a good explanation of how it happened, and no actual Mpreg in the fic. Anyways. Take a look.
A/N:For everywordsalie. Ugh. Yet again, a really busy day. I'm completely slacking on my chapter posting this time, compared to my other fics! Argh. Anyways, here's chapter 5 for y'all.
Chapter 1 Chapter 2
Chapter 3 Chapter 4
Tom panicked even as he spoke. He watched Danny recoil and take a couple of steps backwards. He instantly tried to ‘correct’ what he said, but he stumbled over the rubbish excuses that he couldn’t even think of, let alone say.
“I didn’t... I didn’t mean...” Finally, he gave up, and lifted a hand in Danny’s direction. “Dan-“
“What? Our daughter? You do realise we’re both blokes, right? That men can’t have kids?” Dan laughed nervously, as though he were going slightly crazy and were hearing things. “You’re going nutters, mate.”
Tom looked into confused, frightened blue eyes and let out the breath that he didn’t even realise he’d been holding. Turning, he scooped up the precious photo frame before returning to face Dan. He held it out at arm’s length, close enough for Danny to see the photo of his daughter. The blonde colour of her hair was so Tom, but the curls were immediately recognisable as belonging to Danny, as were the eyes that had had Tom wrapped around her little finger from day one.
Danny stared at the photograph in front of him, before stepping backwards and thumping hard against the cupboards behind him. He stared for another couple of minutes before his eyes suddenly darted up to Tom’s face.
The blonde’s face had so many emotions laying there in it’s features that Danny could never have described it to anyone. Hope, fear, loneliness, pride, joy, tears that shimmered in his eyes. Brown eyes that had wrenched every wish from Danny when they had been kids, he’d been powerless to their charms. Now, they created a terror in him.
He ran.
Tom continued to stare at where Danny had been, the hand that held the picture frame dropping to his side.
***
Eventually, Tom had to leave to pick up Dani. He had turned to place the precious photograph back on the shelf, before transferring his feet into his converse and grabbing his keys.
The journey to the school to pick up his daughter was made on autopilot, braking and steering in a way that kept him alive, but that didn’t take much brain function. He waited in the car for five minutes, before deliberately shaking himself out of his funk and getting out of the car to socialise with the mums that came to pick up their children. At least, that day it was mums. He figured that every now and again a father or grandparent would pick up their kid, but the day before, and the present day, it was women and him. He felt very outnumbered.
He smiled shyly at some of the women and greeted them, heading over to stand right beside the gate, waiting for a member of staff to open it and allow them onto the playground to greet the children that came streaming out the door.
“Hey.”
Tom turned, surprised to see a redheaded young lady standing behind him. She looked about the same age as him and she had a friendly smile on her face. “Hey,” he replied.
“You look a little lost.”
Tom grinned bashfully, shoving his hands into his jeans pockets. “I’ve had... a very odd day.”
She grinned at him and held out a hand in greeting. “I’m Eliana Price. Call me Eli though.”
Tom shook her hand gently, before pushing his hand back into it’s confines. “Tom Fletcher.”
“Do you have a son or daughter?”
“Little girl. Dani.”
“Oh right! Did she by any chance gush madly about a little girl called Amity? Because if she did, I’m her mum.”
Tom’s eyes lit up in recognition and he stood up a little straighter. “Awesome! Yeh. She wouldn’t stop going on about her last night. Dolls this and crayons that. She’s never driven me quite so crazy. I love her well enough, but she’s got a bit of a blabber mouth.”
Eli laughed sweetly, a chime that made Tom want to record it and listen to it whenever he felt blue. He frowned at the thought and shook his head - too creepy. “I definitely know what you mean. Those two are probably going to be fast friends forever.”
Tom smiled, even as he thought back to the day he met Danny. He really had been an angel in disguise. He was brought back to reality when Eli continued speaking.
“You guys should come round next Saturday. Not tomorrow, because we’re busy, but I think, if they’re still as excited about each other today as they were yesterday, they’d like to hang out at ours. You guys could come round for lunch, with her mother, and we could get to know each other.”
Tom stared, before shaking his head. “Oh, no, she hasn’t got a mum.”
Eli bit her lip. “Oh. Sorry.”
“Its fine. It’s a natural fact actually. I carried her.”
The woman’s eyes seemed to pop out of her head. “You realise you’re a guy right?”
Tom chuckled. “You’re the second person who’s said that to me today. And yes, I know. It’s very rare but... yeh.”
She flicked her red hair as she shook her head. The bell rang and a teacher opened the gate. They began walking into the playground, and as the girls ran towards them, bags and coats in hand, Eli spoke. “You’ve definitely got to come around next Saturday.”
***
“Right! What do you fancy doing this afternoon after we’ve done this tiny, incy wincy bit of homework, hmm?” Tom was helping Dani to colour in a picture of a fruit bowl, a colour by number that the teacher had given them to improve their colour and number recognition. That, and Tom thought the teacher was just an awesome lady who liked fun.
“I don’t know.” Dani shrugged, grabbing up a red pencil before scribbling as carefully as she could, colouring an apple in red. “Maybe do my Barbie book?”
“Sure thing, sweetie.”
“Can we bake some cookies tomorrow to take when we go and see grandma and grandpa?”
“Definitely. We’ll get them done and in the oven before getting ready to go out, and then they’ll be ready to get out before we go. They can cool on the side when we’re at the aquarium.”
“Ok.”
Tom stood, leaving her to colour in the picture as he headed for her book shelf, set low on the wall so that she could reach her books and read whenever she liked. He picked out the half finished Barbie colouring book from the end before going back to her and flicking through the pages to where she had last finished a picture of Barbie in her car.
Dani finished colouring in a grape, a deep purple that looked very un-grapelike and made Tom smile. “Done!” She dropped her pencil into the pot with a flourish, before brushing her hands of invisible dust, or flour, or whatever it was that gesture was meant to represent.
“Well done, Dan. I’ll put it in your book bag ready to take in on Monday, and you can colour this picture of Barbie.”
“Ohh. Her dress is pretty today,” she said, looking down at the picture of the puffed up princess. She grabbed up her yellow to begin colouring her hair while Tom slid her homework into her blue book bag.
“You say that every day.”
“That’s because she’s pretty every day.”
“Like another princess I know, ey?”
Dani grinned up at her dad and poked him hard in the leg with the blunt end of her pencil.
***
“And they all lived happily ever after.”
Tom closed the book on his last whisper, looking down at his sleeping daughter. Just like the night before, when he’d snuck in to watch over her like a guardian angel, he bent over and brushed a soft kiss to her temple. This time, she did not stir.
He slowly stood, tucking the small, white, wooden chair back against the wall and slid the large book of collected fairy tales onto Dani’s beside table. He crept from her room and pulled the door closed, leaving it slightly open so that he could hear if she woke. He wasn’t worried that she would, but she’d have the occasional nightmare, and he liked to be there when she woke so that he could comfort her, wipe away her tears and fight away her fears.
He headed downstairs and into the kitchen where he grabbed a bottle of water, before padding through to the music room. He stared at his piano in the corner. He hadn’t touched it since Danny had left six years ago, and had got someone else to write his piano parts. He just couldn’t bear to play. But now, he was drawn to the black and white keys, and he placed the bottle of water on the small table beside it before sliding onto the stool. He ran his hands over the wood, before pushing it up so he could run his hands over the keys, toeing off his slippers to reveal bare feet so he could press more easily at the pedals. He closed his eyes.
The song that he’d been writing started to flow from his fingers onto the piano, as natural to him as talking, even after all these years. His mouth opened and he began to sing.
“No matter what you say about love,
I keep coming back for more;
Keep my hand in the fire,
Sooner or later, I'll get what I'm asking for.
No matter what you say about life,
I learn every time I bleed,
That truth is a stranger,
Soul is in danger, I gotta let my spirit be free,
To admit that I'm wrong
And then change my mind.
I'm Sorry but I have to move on
And leave you behind.”
Tom never heard the front door open over the sound of his own voice and the notes of the piano, and simply continued to sing, even as the trespasser came further into the house and stood in the doorway.
“I can't waste time so give it a moment.
I realize, nothing's broken.
No need to worry 'bout everything I've done,
Live every second like it was my last one.
Don't look back, got a new direction,
I loved you once, needed protection.
You're still a part of everything I do
You're on my heart just like a tattoo.”
His playing was interrupted, when Danny spoke behind him. “Sometimes I regretted it.”
Tom whirled around, startled. He took a deep breath, before replying. “Regretted what?”
“Getting that tattoo.”
“Why?”
“Because I’d look at it every day and be reminded of how much my heart hurt.”
Tom had nothing to say to that, and finally he stood, taking a few steps closer. He stopped halfway across. He wasn’t going to go all the way. It was Danny’s choice whether to have a part in his and Dani’s life, and he wasn’t going to force himself upon him.
He needn’t have worried.
Danny took a couple of steps into the room, having pushed up from where he’d been leaning on the door frame. “But then, today, I realised something. I went home, and took a shower, and I was looking down, and I saw it. For once, my heart didn’t hurt. It’s ached, and it’s stung, and sometimes it felt so hollow that I just knew that I would collapse in on myself and nothing would pull me out.”
Tom watched Danny as he stepped even closer, within arm’s reach now.
The brunette carried on speaking. “But today, there wasn’t a twinge, and instead of feeling empty, my chest felt so full that I thought I’d burst. I did. Burst, I mean. Tears and tears. I didn’t cry once in the past six years, Tom, and today I just couldn’t stop. Hours and hours of tears until there was no tears left to cry. I realised that yes, I’m scared. Petrified. I realised that this should be impossible. I realised that that little girl in the photo? She looks just like both of us. She’s so beautiful, Tom. Just like you.”
Tom couldn’t stop the tears in his eyes at that point.
“I realised that now that I know about her? Now that I could have you back? There’s no way I can give it up. Not a chance. Not a fucking chance in hell am I letting you go again, Tom Fletcher.”
Tom choked back a sob as Danny’s large hands came up to frame his face and Danny stepped forwards, pressing his forehead to Tom’s. “I love you so much. I love her so much already. I’m not going anywhere.”
Chapter 6
Author: Me!
Part:5/11
Pairing: Flones
Rating: NC-17
Genre: Angst
Word Count: Chapter : 2,109
Summary: They were best friends until they went to Uni. Six years later, they find each other again, but everything has changed.
Warnings: It's a pretty emotional fic. Some health issues that might hit hard if you have an eating disorder, or someone you know has one. Implied Mpreg, but theres a good explanation of how it happened, and no actual Mpreg in the fic. Anyways. Take a look.
A/N:For everywordsalie. Ugh. Yet again, a really busy day. I'm completely slacking on my chapter posting this time, compared to my other fics! Argh. Anyways, here's chapter 5 for y'all.
Chapter 1 Chapter 2
Chapter 3 Chapter 4
Tom panicked even as he spoke. He watched Danny recoil and take a couple of steps backwards. He instantly tried to ‘correct’ what he said, but he stumbled over the rubbish excuses that he couldn’t even think of, let alone say.
“I didn’t... I didn’t mean...” Finally, he gave up, and lifted a hand in Danny’s direction. “Dan-“
“What? Our daughter? You do realise we’re both blokes, right? That men can’t have kids?” Dan laughed nervously, as though he were going slightly crazy and were hearing things. “You’re going nutters, mate.”
Tom looked into confused, frightened blue eyes and let out the breath that he didn’t even realise he’d been holding. Turning, he scooped up the precious photo frame before returning to face Dan. He held it out at arm’s length, close enough for Danny to see the photo of his daughter. The blonde colour of her hair was so Tom, but the curls were immediately recognisable as belonging to Danny, as were the eyes that had had Tom wrapped around her little finger from day one.
Danny stared at the photograph in front of him, before stepping backwards and thumping hard against the cupboards behind him. He stared for another couple of minutes before his eyes suddenly darted up to Tom’s face.
The blonde’s face had so many emotions laying there in it’s features that Danny could never have described it to anyone. Hope, fear, loneliness, pride, joy, tears that shimmered in his eyes. Brown eyes that had wrenched every wish from Danny when they had been kids, he’d been powerless to their charms. Now, they created a terror in him.
He ran.
Tom continued to stare at where Danny had been, the hand that held the picture frame dropping to his side.
***
Eventually, Tom had to leave to pick up Dani. He had turned to place the precious photograph back on the shelf, before transferring his feet into his converse and grabbing his keys.
The journey to the school to pick up his daughter was made on autopilot, braking and steering in a way that kept him alive, but that didn’t take much brain function. He waited in the car for five minutes, before deliberately shaking himself out of his funk and getting out of the car to socialise with the mums that came to pick up their children. At least, that day it was mums. He figured that every now and again a father or grandparent would pick up their kid, but the day before, and the present day, it was women and him. He felt very outnumbered.
He smiled shyly at some of the women and greeted them, heading over to stand right beside the gate, waiting for a member of staff to open it and allow them onto the playground to greet the children that came streaming out the door.
“Hey.”
Tom turned, surprised to see a redheaded young lady standing behind him. She looked about the same age as him and she had a friendly smile on her face. “Hey,” he replied.
“You look a little lost.”
Tom grinned bashfully, shoving his hands into his jeans pockets. “I’ve had... a very odd day.”
She grinned at him and held out a hand in greeting. “I’m Eliana Price. Call me Eli though.”
Tom shook her hand gently, before pushing his hand back into it’s confines. “Tom Fletcher.”
“Do you have a son or daughter?”
“Little girl. Dani.”
“Oh right! Did she by any chance gush madly about a little girl called Amity? Because if she did, I’m her mum.”
Tom’s eyes lit up in recognition and he stood up a little straighter. “Awesome! Yeh. She wouldn’t stop going on about her last night. Dolls this and crayons that. She’s never driven me quite so crazy. I love her well enough, but she’s got a bit of a blabber mouth.”
Eli laughed sweetly, a chime that made Tom want to record it and listen to it whenever he felt blue. He frowned at the thought and shook his head - too creepy. “I definitely know what you mean. Those two are probably going to be fast friends forever.”
Tom smiled, even as he thought back to the day he met Danny. He really had been an angel in disguise. He was brought back to reality when Eli continued speaking.
“You guys should come round next Saturday. Not tomorrow, because we’re busy, but I think, if they’re still as excited about each other today as they were yesterday, they’d like to hang out at ours. You guys could come round for lunch, with her mother, and we could get to know each other.”
Tom stared, before shaking his head. “Oh, no, she hasn’t got a mum.”
Eli bit her lip. “Oh. Sorry.”
“Its fine. It’s a natural fact actually. I carried her.”
The woman’s eyes seemed to pop out of her head. “You realise you’re a guy right?”
Tom chuckled. “You’re the second person who’s said that to me today. And yes, I know. It’s very rare but... yeh.”
She flicked her red hair as she shook her head. The bell rang and a teacher opened the gate. They began walking into the playground, and as the girls ran towards them, bags and coats in hand, Eli spoke. “You’ve definitely got to come around next Saturday.”
***
“Right! What do you fancy doing this afternoon after we’ve done this tiny, incy wincy bit of homework, hmm?” Tom was helping Dani to colour in a picture of a fruit bowl, a colour by number that the teacher had given them to improve their colour and number recognition. That, and Tom thought the teacher was just an awesome lady who liked fun.
“I don’t know.” Dani shrugged, grabbing up a red pencil before scribbling as carefully as she could, colouring an apple in red. “Maybe do my Barbie book?”
“Sure thing, sweetie.”
“Can we bake some cookies tomorrow to take when we go and see grandma and grandpa?”
“Definitely. We’ll get them done and in the oven before getting ready to go out, and then they’ll be ready to get out before we go. They can cool on the side when we’re at the aquarium.”
“Ok.”
Tom stood, leaving her to colour in the picture as he headed for her book shelf, set low on the wall so that she could reach her books and read whenever she liked. He picked out the half finished Barbie colouring book from the end before going back to her and flicking through the pages to where she had last finished a picture of Barbie in her car.
Dani finished colouring in a grape, a deep purple that looked very un-grapelike and made Tom smile. “Done!” She dropped her pencil into the pot with a flourish, before brushing her hands of invisible dust, or flour, or whatever it was that gesture was meant to represent.
“Well done, Dan. I’ll put it in your book bag ready to take in on Monday, and you can colour this picture of Barbie.”
“Ohh. Her dress is pretty today,” she said, looking down at the picture of the puffed up princess. She grabbed up her yellow to begin colouring her hair while Tom slid her homework into her blue book bag.
“You say that every day.”
“That’s because she’s pretty every day.”
“Like another princess I know, ey?”
Dani grinned up at her dad and poked him hard in the leg with the blunt end of her pencil.
***
“And they all lived happily ever after.”
Tom closed the book on his last whisper, looking down at his sleeping daughter. Just like the night before, when he’d snuck in to watch over her like a guardian angel, he bent over and brushed a soft kiss to her temple. This time, she did not stir.
He slowly stood, tucking the small, white, wooden chair back against the wall and slid the large book of collected fairy tales onto Dani’s beside table. He crept from her room and pulled the door closed, leaving it slightly open so that he could hear if she woke. He wasn’t worried that she would, but she’d have the occasional nightmare, and he liked to be there when she woke so that he could comfort her, wipe away her tears and fight away her fears.
He headed downstairs and into the kitchen where he grabbed a bottle of water, before padding through to the music room. He stared at his piano in the corner. He hadn’t touched it since Danny had left six years ago, and had got someone else to write his piano parts. He just couldn’t bear to play. But now, he was drawn to the black and white keys, and he placed the bottle of water on the small table beside it before sliding onto the stool. He ran his hands over the wood, before pushing it up so he could run his hands over the keys, toeing off his slippers to reveal bare feet so he could press more easily at the pedals. He closed his eyes.
The song that he’d been writing started to flow from his fingers onto the piano, as natural to him as talking, even after all these years. His mouth opened and he began to sing.
“No matter what you say about love,
I keep coming back for more;
Keep my hand in the fire,
Sooner or later, I'll get what I'm asking for.
No matter what you say about life,
I learn every time I bleed,
That truth is a stranger,
Soul is in danger, I gotta let my spirit be free,
To admit that I'm wrong
And then change my mind.
I'm Sorry but I have to move on
And leave you behind.”
Tom never heard the front door open over the sound of his own voice and the notes of the piano, and simply continued to sing, even as the trespasser came further into the house and stood in the doorway.
“I can't waste time so give it a moment.
I realize, nothing's broken.
No need to worry 'bout everything I've done,
Live every second like it was my last one.
Don't look back, got a new direction,
I loved you once, needed protection.
You're still a part of everything I do
You're on my heart just like a tattoo.”
His playing was interrupted, when Danny spoke behind him. “Sometimes I regretted it.”
Tom whirled around, startled. He took a deep breath, before replying. “Regretted what?”
“Getting that tattoo.”
“Why?”
“Because I’d look at it every day and be reminded of how much my heart hurt.”
Tom had nothing to say to that, and finally he stood, taking a few steps closer. He stopped halfway across. He wasn’t going to go all the way. It was Danny’s choice whether to have a part in his and Dani’s life, and he wasn’t going to force himself upon him.
He needn’t have worried.
Danny took a couple of steps into the room, having pushed up from where he’d been leaning on the door frame. “But then, today, I realised something. I went home, and took a shower, and I was looking down, and I saw it. For once, my heart didn’t hurt. It’s ached, and it’s stung, and sometimes it felt so hollow that I just knew that I would collapse in on myself and nothing would pull me out.”
Tom watched Danny as he stepped even closer, within arm’s reach now.
The brunette carried on speaking. “But today, there wasn’t a twinge, and instead of feeling empty, my chest felt so full that I thought I’d burst. I did. Burst, I mean. Tears and tears. I didn’t cry once in the past six years, Tom, and today I just couldn’t stop. Hours and hours of tears until there was no tears left to cry. I realised that yes, I’m scared. Petrified. I realised that this should be impossible. I realised that that little girl in the photo? She looks just like both of us. She’s so beautiful, Tom. Just like you.”
Tom couldn’t stop the tears in his eyes at that point.
“I realised that now that I know about her? Now that I could have you back? There’s no way I can give it up. Not a chance. Not a fucking chance in hell am I letting you go again, Tom Fletcher.”
Tom choked back a sob as Danny’s large hands came up to frame his face and Danny stepped forwards, pressing his forehead to Tom’s. “I love you so much. I love her so much already. I’m not going anywhere.”
Chapter 6