[Nathan Barley] Fic: A Hypothesis of Flight
Title: A Hypothesis of Flight
Pairing: Dan/Jones
Rating: PG-13 for language and sexual references
Words: 5266
Summary: Dan does not want to lead a Movement. He doesn't even really want to move.
Notes: Written for lgbtfest. Prompt: 2158. Nathan Barley, Dan/Jones, The incident with the builder and subsequent article force Dan to come to terms with his own sexuality. It’s a topic that has plagued him for most of his life, and he has continually repressed with alcohol and general cynicism. He decides to finally confide his confusion in Jones, who has always been open about his own bisexuality. Could potentially lead to them questioning the true nature of their current relationship, or simply be written as Jones acting as a mentor of sorts.
Disclaimer/credits: Outcast was a real magazine (created by a different Chris Morris than the one who created the show), but had folded by the time this takes place. My apologies also to The Smiths and The Clash. All recognizable characters are the property of their creators and not of me.
Massive, massive thanks to: storyfan, eggnogged, silent_fields, waqaychay, luridlolly, and the_reverand, for hand-holding, idea-bouncing, cheerleading, and other supportive activities. You are all rockstars, as are my Twitter friends and flist for putting up with my blehhhh. However, any fail is mine and mine alone.
A Hypothesis of Flight
There is an under-tens menu complete with colour-ins and word jumbles onto which your aspiring ASBOs ('our younger guests') can crayon their 'I Don't Like Mondays' fantasies whilst Mum gets obliviously rat-arsed on resoundingly acceptable White Table Wine and Dad downs half-price pints of Real Ales. The whole family can feel wholesome and together and more functional than the next table that's arguing because little Billy got caught looking up girls' skirts on the jungle gyms again.
Oh, and rugged God-fearing builders take note: in between shitting out your pack lunch and vomiting up your shepherd's pie, you can top off your happy family tea with a complimentary hand job in the toilets.
I'm here on a mission: document the 'Stray' scene, the clandestine denial-wanking that occurs between clean red-blooded pillars of the community behind the facade of pubs just like this one, an apparently thriving culture of men who 'ain't no bloody queer' or similar. Presumably the etymology of 'Stray' stems from straying from one's marriage vows, but as a happy coincidence, its subscribers resemble nothing so much as straggling feral mutts who want in out of the rain.
The one that chats me up has that pitiful hangdog look of one kicked for pissing on the rug. He says he'll help me. 'It's not easy, Stray,' he says. 'But it helps. Here.' He taps his meaty fist over his red-blooded heart.
They're terribly clever, aren't they? Nip off to the gents', get their bollocks fondled, hope little Billy doesn't need a wee while they're at it. If the wife's sober enough to notice how long they've been gone, they can just grunt some euphemism about their bowels and carry on drinking. Pat little Billy on the back with a hand that smells of some stranger's cock. No one the wiser. Keeps families together.
My toilet partner, my good Samaritan guide to the spiralling circles of the Stray inferno, doesn't believe me when I say I'm doing this for a magazine. He wants to know my name and buy me a drink. I refuse both, but he gets the name because I'm one of those twats who answer their mobiles that way. Intrepid Journalist 101.
'Don't fight it, Dan,' says my doughy Virgil. I don't think he's much for irony so I just fuck off.
Now, then, O Trend-Grubbing Readership, a simple guide to a successful Stray experience, as I'm sure it will be 'totally fucking Mexico' by the time this goes to press.
1. Don't say you're not married when they ask if you've left the wife at home. They'll think you're gay. They don't like gays. Your wife's got a sick headache and doesn't understand you.
2. If you're a bit squeamish, they don't mind if you wear gloves, but don't take it too far. Latex is all right, but miss out the textured-grip gardeners.
3. If you happen to be wearing a jacket with holes in the pockets, make sure nothing identifying is in them, like flyers for where you work or your house key. Better yet, get a proper job so you can afford new clothes. But maybe you'd like to be followed home. Maybe you can be his bit on the side and casually toss each other off while you watch the football. Go to little Billy's birthday and smile at Mrs Stray after you've just had your hand down her husband's trackie bottoms in the garden shed.
4. Don't fight it. It helps.
*
"Well fucking harsh, Dan," is all Jones says when he comes in. Dan knows what he means even before he drops a wrinkled SugaRAPE onto the makeshift coffee table that occasionally shrinks when Jones needs at the records under the tapestry or grows lopsidedly when he consigns another of the million crates to storage.
"I did tell you not to read it," Dan says, but more time has passed than he realised and Jones is already cocooned in his headphones.
Dan stares motionless into the middle distance for minutes or hours. The ashtray started out too full to keep track that way, and with no noise blaring forth from the speakers, he can't gauge the time. Claire isn't here, so there's no reason to keep quiet. The silence feels like punishment.
When Jones sits down next to him like he's done a thousand times, it's as too-close as when they first met and Dan drank away the butterflies in his stomach. Dan bristles away and snaps, "What?"
"You're really a bit shit sometimes, you know."
"I'm surprised you hadn't noticed."
"Yeah, you'd not got that one by me, actually."
Dan lights a new cigarette off his last one and glares down at the magazine cover.
"Claire get her camera?" The fact that Jones leaves off the 'back' feels like charity.
"Yep."
"Y'should've told me before I bought the van."
That would have been easy, yes. Jones wouldn't have held the debt over him or probably even expected to see the money again. "You needed it." Jones is enamoured of the ancient clunky thing. He's named it Betty and has been brimming over with childlike excitement about taking it on tour. And would rather not have it if it would've meant Dan not doing this.
Jones does not lay his head on Dan's shoulder or criticise the state of Dan's hair with his fingertips or tell him about what mad thing happened at last night's gig. It's how he knows Jones is fucked-off with him, though Jones has been doing less of all those things the past few months anyway. Dan misses it more than he should.
*
Dan's always felt eyes on him to a certain degree, even before his photo ran next to all his articles, but it's never been like this. A portion of it is paranoia, yes, and always has been, but there is no other explanation for Lewis, the Nailgun barman who wears at least three pieces of Pride-themed jewellery at any given time, suddenly trying to engage him in conversation when he's only ever said hello and pulled Dan's pints. "You should see what goes on in the gents' here," he says conspiratorially.
'I'm straight' would be an outright lie (ignoring something doesn't force it out of existence), and 'I'm not gay, actually,' would just read as denial. 'I needed the money' was bad enough to admit the first time. So Dan just mutters something that isn't really words and goes back to his table.
Ned and Rufus are talking about organising a 'Stray Crawl' and using a Tube map to plot the locations of 'family' pubs. The one with the most handjobs at the end of the night wins. He's not sure if the talk of earning badges is facetious or not. Dan's relief at finding on Ned's first day of work that Ned was an utter twazzock was immense.
"Why don't you just go wank each other in the toilet now and save everyone else the genital warts?"
Ned lights up with the smile that once, briefly, had Dan very worried. "Yeah, that's well Shirley!" Dan would suspect the phrase of being some Idiot rhyming slang referencing Shirley Jackson if it weren't Ned speaking. "All the idiots'll be going after regular Stray, but like, it's already over 'cause there's Nouveau Stray?"
Rufus looks everywhere but at Ned before agreeing enthusiastically, and Dan nearly feels guilty. Idiots have feelings, too. There should be a public service announcement. Jonatton smirks a shit-eating smirk into his Dutch wine.
*
"Keith Holland from Outcast called," Sasha says. Dan's had trouble looking at her lately because pity and disappointment are now permanently written all over her face, and he'd prefer not to examine the reasons for it.
"Who?"
Sasha's not looking at him either. "It's a controversial gay magazine."
Fucking brilliant. Dan crumples the message slip and throws it down the stairs. "Tell him I've died."
"Dan--"
Dan shoves past the intern bouncing about on a space hopper and sits down at his desk. Just the subject line of one email is enough to make him delete the other 43 unread. He realises too late that one is from his mother, but it's probably no better. He's tried to covertly cancel her subscription, but so far it hasn't worked.
*
Jones is up to his elbows in grease under the van's bonnet. Deep in concentration and whatever's crashing through his headphones, he doesn't notice Dan's arrival. Dan's always liked watching him work, with solder or paint or records, and while whatever he's banging a spanner against doesn't demonstrate the same deft finesse, Dan still can't stop himself staring.
Jones makes it look like a piece of piss to simply say 'fuck you and your labels' and do as he likes. If Jones ever does feel everyone looking and assuming, it can't bother him, or he couldn't be so constantly himself. And they must look. Jones wants them to look, but not at anything he supposedly stands for.
But even Jones seems to want Dan to stand for something. He's looked and judged and found Dan to be a bit shit. Which he is. Dan could ask Jones to teach him how not to care, but he's afraid he might be a lost cause.
Dan shuffles into the house (he hopes) unseen. It's too quiet.
*
Somehow Dan ends up in the Nailgun on his own with Ned.
"So those geezers in your Stray pub, yeah?"
"It's not my--"
"Do they snog and all?"
"Are you fucking twelve?"
"'Cause Rufus, yeah, he reckons the Nouveau movement ought to have one up on them."
"Oh, for god's--"
Dan's jarred out of a moment of blessed darkness squeezing his eyes shut behind his hand by the clatter of Nathan making his entrance. "Alright, cunt-socks?" he addresses to the pub at large and wheels his stupid little bike over to clamp a clammy hand on Dan's shoulder. Dan's fairly certain the stencil on Nathan's t-shirt is Tiësto's head on Hitler's body. It's someone's head on Hitler's body, anyway. Jones would know.
"Go away," Dan mutters, but Nathan just chuckles like an ass and spreads himself across the vacant bench. And no, he's not doing this today. "I've got to go. Tell Nathan about your Movement, Ned."
Dan exits to a shout of, "Peace and fucking, Preach!" He winks at Lewis on the way out and lets him know his bar tab will be on Nathan.
*
The flat is vibrating with music when Dan gets in. Some clenched thing in his chest loosens a little.
Dan follows the sound to the spare bedroom, which, beneath piles of canvases and circuit boards and silkscreen frames and dismantled toys, does theoretically contain a bed somewhere. Dan declined to have it unearthed when he thought he'd only be staying a couple of weeks, and Jones never offered again even though they both know it's gone way past temporary. There's no door to keep him out, but Dan never comes in here.
Jones has a sound for every occasion, and this is art music--less meddling from Jones than usual and with bits it's possible to sing along to. This is an old mix, from two or three years ago. Dan remembers arguing, pleasantly buzzed and laughing, over whether 'Junkie Slip' rated a place on Sandinista! and whether 'Mensforth Hill' rated a place in the universe (Dan came down against both and Jones admitted to a pre-teen crush on Paul Simonon that made Dan realise he'd had one too). The 'Capital Radio' intro looped in the background is actually Dan playing because pitching the record that much faster made it sound like chipmunks on speed.
Jones is on his hands and knees sketching something onto a large sheet of plastic spread out on the floor. He's got on the ancient too-tight jeans that are probably only held together by years of careless paint splatter and there's a black streak of grease pencil across his nose. He smiles a bit when he looks up at Dan, but it might simply be a mirror of his own rueful nostalgia.
"Alright?" Jones readjusts the pink clip holding back his fringe and smears black on his forehead.
Dan shrugs.
"C'mere and tell me if this looks straight."
"What?" Dan snaps, because geometrical definitions aren't the first place his mind is going with words like that.
"If it's fuckin' crooked, Dan, Christ. Me legs're asleep and I can't get up."
Dan takes a cautious step into the room. The drawing is of a record that seems to be breaking apart in the wind. He assumes it's for the side of the van, as there's not a blank bit of wall this size left in the flat. "Looks fine to me," he mutters from under a hot flush.
"Dory reckons it'll hold if we screen it on with house paint."
"She's out of rehab?" Dory is Jones's ex, though she was the one that told Dan that. Jones has never mentioned it. They'd been broken up for ages by the time Dan met her, and the last time he saw her she was being taken away in an ambulance.
"Mostly. Still has to do the meetings and that. She asked after you, actually."
"What'd you tell her?"
"'Oh, Dan? Practically famous now, he is.'"
"Thanks a fucking lot."
"What? True, innit? Fuckin' Hosegate royalty."
The open tin of red paint holding down an edge of the plastic is looking like a tempting target for a good swift kick, but Dan manages to hold it in until he's back in the hall and there's a wall to hit that won't ruin anything. Jones should probably stand between Dan and everything he's inclined to touch, because Jones is one of the few things left that Dan doesn't want shattered.
*
"Dan! Keith Holland from Outcast magazine! Really looking forward to hearing from you, mate. We've got an idea for an insider look at bondage clubs that'll be right up your--"
"Your message has been deleted."
"Right up yours," Dan mutters. He does not give himself the satisfaction of throwing his mobile across the room.
*
Someone's brought a gold-painted wooden throne into the Nailgun. Stranger things have turned up here--an entire Sainsbury's trolley full of mince pies, a window display of plastic sushi glued to the floor, an inflatable sex doll that sat at the end of the bar for a month before someone popped it. It looks straight out of a school Shakespeare production and might, in fact, be. There's an assortment of chairs and stools arranged on either side of it, but no one's sitting on any of them. Dan assumes it's some wanker's idea of an art installation.
Dan opens his mouth to order a pint, but Lewis just shoves a jewelled goblet into his hand. "They're waiting," he says.
"What?"
Lewis just points.
The chairs have filled in. The throne is still empty. Jonatton is sat to the right of it, sewing something with a needle as long as his hand, raven on his shoulder nodding in approval. Ned and Rufus are to the left, grinning vapidly at each other with their hands clasped. Claire is at one end scowling and smoking. Sasha's at the other, motionless and blindfolded in an office chair. 15Peter20 is next to her, stark naked but for a leather collar and vulnerable written across his chest. Assorted Idiots fill in the other spaces: Dajve Bikinus, Toby, the intern whose name Dan has never bothered to learn (he's wearing a badge that helpfully identifies him as Nobody).
Nathan has abandoned his own chair to balance himself on a pained and teetering Pingu's shoulders. Dan has a sick feeling he knows who the throne's reserved for even before Nathan starts waving his phone around and shouting, "The Preacherman cometh!"
Dan's lips won't move to say no. His feet won't go any direction but towards this stage that's been set for him.
Jonatton stands and unfurls his sewing project with a flourish.
"Fucking a-hole!" Nathan exclaims.
It's the Preacherman robe, now with a massive pink triangle on the front.
Dan still can't say no. He chokes when he tries to speak, and every time he raises his goblet to take a drink, he finds it's gone dry.
There's still an empty seat left, Dan realises when Jones steps out of the shadows. Relief floods him. Jones will get him out of here.
But no. No matter how Dan tries to convey with his eyes what he can't say, Jones just smiles and smiles and smiles. Dan thinks he manages to shake his head as someone drapes the costume over him. Jones steps up close to him and fusses with his collar, then slides his hands up Dan's shoulders to gently cup his face, and they're so warm and familiar that maybe it'll all be all right.
Jones comes closer still. Dan can smell his hair and his skin and nearly hear his heartbeat. "Don't fight it," Jones whispers, and kisses him so, so sweetly, and Dan can moan, and he can taste sweat and sugar and dig his fingers into the wiry muscles of Jones's arms, but he can't breathe and he needs to search Jones's face for any sign of what this means.
When he pulls back, Dan can finally shout, "NO!" as he's flung backward and hits the throne with a sickening crack he can't actually feel.
He shouts it so loudly, when he bolts upright on the sofa, that Jones looks up startled from his decks.
"Alright?" Jones says, and there's real concern there, but Dan's head feels so far underwater he can't be sure if he heard it or he's just lip-reading.
He sags back onto the cushions without answering and tries to will away the spinning sickness as he stares up at the tapestries fluttering gently in the breeze from the open window. Jones changes to something down-tempo and Dan lets it wash him under.
*
Even after five cigarettes and a coffee, Dan can still taste the nightmare kiss. His brain threw half his education's worth of symbolism at him but he refuses to analyse it.
"You know," Claire says round a mouthful of Frosties, "I've really only looked at female sex workers."
"What?"
"In the documentary. Maybe I should expand it to male ones. They're just as--"
"I'm not a sex worker." Dan slams down his cup and sends coffee sloshing over something with buttons and exposed wires. He hopes it wasn't important.
"Did I fucking say you were? I was just thinking. Like people do when they use their brains?"
"Because you mention male prostitutes every day over breakfast."
"Don't start, Dan."
"I didn't start. You started."
"Believe it or not, some things aren't about you. But since you brought it up--"
"I didn't bring it up!"
"You did, because shock and horror, you've apparently still got a conscience and it won't leave you alone." Claire gets up and slams her bowl into the sink.
"Do you think I wanted to do it? Do you think that was fun for me?"
"You seemed to have a hell of a lot of fun taking the piss out of those men."
"What else was I meant to write? Graphic description of Jimmy the Builder's cock?"
"Fucking hell, Dan." Claire looks as disgusted as Dan's ever seen her. A far cry from the teenager who used to beg to spend her school holidays in London with him and got giggling drunk on the pink and red alcopops Jones snuck her when she finally got to. "You've got all these twats who hang on your every word. You could've written something that said something. Isn't that what you used to do?"
"I wouldn't have got your two grand for that, would I? 'Can't you take a deep breath,' you said. I fucking took one, all right? What do you want?"
Dan's been shouting, but Claire's voice is quiet and hard when she says, "I want you to go back to being someone I know." She shoves him out of the way and storms towards the door.
"Maybe Nathan can find a schoolboy to suck him off!" Dan shouts after her. "Document that!" All he gets in response is a slamming door, because she's no better than him, is she?
Dan picks up the nearest thing and throws it. It's the mug he was drinking out of, a vintage one with pink spots and stars that is--was--the last of a set that Jones bought in a charity shop in Dublin the first time he went on tour. Fuck. He watches it shatter against the wall, just inches from Jones's head where he's appeared at the end of the hallway.
Jone's doesn't flinch, just wipes the splattered coffee from his face and says, "Dan?"
There is an inertia to shouting. "It's all going to shit. No, it's gone to shit. It is shit." Dan turns away from the flinch that does come now, towards the sofa and the bottle of whiskey he's been eyeing since he woke up. Claire would have given him hell over drinking this early, but Jones won't. Maybe it'll finally wash the taste away.
"Want me to black out all the windows and put on a Smiths record?" Dan can't help but watch Jones's lips, the slight flash of teeth as he doesn't quite manage to form the th. There's the smallest ghost of a hint of a smile tugging at one corner, shadowed by morning stubble Dan (doesn't) remember the feeling of against his skin. The whiskey's not helping with that either. Jones sits down and takes the bottle from between Dan's knees. At first Dan thinks he's going to take it away, but he lifts it (to his lips) and takes a drink. A short one. "Christ, that's vile," he coughs.
"You hate whiskey."
"I don't. I hate the bog-swill you buy."
Dan stares at his hands instead and lights a cigarette for something to do.
"Fucksakes, what? I ain't dragging it out of you."
Jones wants what? Explanations? Apologies? He probably deserves both. But, "When's the tour start?" is the best thing Dan can put into the silence.
Jones sighs. "Tuesday." Possibly he's told Dan this fifty times already. "Dory's got the whole way from here to Ibiza booked up." Dory again. Jones never talks about anyone much unless they've done something particularly funny or stupid or brilliant. "'S been good for her, she's--"
"Are you fucking her?"
The brief surprise is enough to tell him the answer is no, and that maybe coming out the other side of addiction is brilliant enough. But Jones's mouth closes into a hard, thin line. He shakes his head and starts to get up.
Dan grabs his arm and sloshes whiskey over himself. "Come on, don't--" He can feel the pounding pulse in the wrist he's squeezing, or maybe that's in his own fingertips. He lets go. Jones stays. "It's doing my fucking head in," Dan says, but he can't make himself do it with much volume. "I don't want to be their...prophet of queerdom."
Jones chews the side of a ragged paint-stained thumbnail. "The prophet bit or the queer bit?"
"Either, both. The louder I tell them to fuck off, the louder they writhe about like retarded monkeys. Jonatton's set fucking Outcast on me and Ned and Rufus think doing god-fucking-knows-what to each other in various toilets is some kind of movement. You don't even know--"
"'Course I fucking know. Try actually being queer before you have a go at people for not getting it right."
"What's getting it right?"
"It's-- there ain't a right, Dan. How d'you get being straight right?"
"I haven't got that right either."
"You've got not bein' a twat wrong, yeah, but it ain't fucking catching. One handjob in garden gloves don't make you--"
"No, you don't--I mean before."
"Before...?"
He's not catching on. Or he is and is trying to make Dan admit it properly. But properly's got terminology and boxes to tick, and it's not fair because Dan's never made Jones explain, even when he wanted to know. He observed, inferred, no questions ever asked. "It's always--" His throat feels too tight to say anything, choking on shutting up. It's the latest and greatest in a long line of bad ideas, but Jones's eyes are very blue and not full of judgement, and actions don't speak louder but his words always come back as chewed-up Chinese whispers. A kiss is just--they watched Casablanca together once, and Jones spent the ending shouting at the screen--
It's nothing like the dream, when Dan leans over and grabs Jones by the shoulder that's half-bared by his ripped-out collar. It's not so much a proper kiss as a collision of lips, for one thing; not so much sugar and starlight as bad whiskey over sleep, for another, and it's not invitation but surprise (Dan can both feel and hear the gasp) that parts Jones's lips, and there's nothing sweet about it at all. But it may actually be the fastest Dan's ever got hard in his life, because he's thought about this how many times? And now he doesn't have to try not to think about it because it's real and Jones isn't shoving him away or throwing him to the wolves--he's kissing back, all teeth and noisy breathing through his nose, fingers dug into the back of Dan's head and this fucking moaning sound that just makes Dan want.
It's a load of shit, of course, the hackish notion of conveying feelings with a kiss, but Dan gives it his best go since words just keep failing and maybe his whole problem is that he's one of those hacks. But he says too much, or not enough, or says it wrong, because the second he tries to pull Jones closer, it all falls apart. Jones isn't mean, he isn't rough, but he's firm about saying, "Dan-- Dan, stop," and pushing them apart.
"What--"
"Look, I get it, yeah? But I'm not being some...experiment. It never ends well."
It's not easy to hide an erection in cotton pyjama bottoms and Jones isn't even trying. "Speak from experience, do you?" He doesn't mean that to come out as nasty as it does, and he sees it sting. He meant to ask rationally how it went wrong before. More Chinese whispers. Fucking typical. "Sorry," Dan mutters.
"'f you want...advice, or whatever--well, fuck, I'll be useless, but I can try. But not...that ain't the way to sort it out, alright?"
"Right," Dan sighs. He can't help but wonder, as Jones gives him this awful look that's apology and pity and regret and goes off back to bed, if this would have gone a lot differently if he'd managed to do it before that fucking article.
*
"Tramp chic. Bum," Nathan says when Dan's answer to what cologne he's wearing is 'whiskey.'
Somebody's computer speakers in the office are blaring hang the DJ hang the DJ hang the DJ ad fucking nauseum, looped over a tired breakbeat that even Dan can tell is off (and knows more about how to correct it that he would care to admit). Dan storms off to the toilets for a smoke and finds Ned and Rufus up against the sink with their tongues down each other's throats.
Nathan smells like an exploded distillery come after-work pint time. He slaps Dan on the back hard enough to wind him but luckily takes all the credit.
Dan wins round after round off Nobody at Idiot Darts (properly called Thir-Fucking-Teen and invented by Nathan) and staggers enough on the way home that he thinks maybe he can look Jones in the eye.
He sees cutesy high-heeled feet dangling out the back of the van alongside Jones's boots and takes the other way round to the door. It's a long time before Jones comes in, and Dan's definitely pissed enough to look him in the eye. Pissed enough to say anything. "You used to think I was brilliant," he slurs out at a pace that feels like he's talking through treacle.
"I think you're arseholed," Jones says, and makes him drink a glass of water without comment on whether or not he thinks Dan is or was anything else.
Dan's not sure if he actually says, "Your arsehole," but would prefer to believe that he didn't.
Claire comes home and shouts at him about something but it's just sounds, nonsensical back-masking on records played in reverse by some long-ago Jones.
Dan can't sleep for the room spinning. He stumbles his way to the bathroom in a half-crawl and being sick forces more tears from his eyes than it usually does, and he's choking and fighting for air that isn't there, but Jones is there, hand on his back and sounding blurry when he tells Dan to breathe, an underwater Jones who says, "You tit, 've you even eaten anything?" It makes Dan smile to think of his teeth mis-forming fricatives and the gagging stops. Jones supplies water and toothpaste and biscuits and wavers in the dim. "You gotta promise not to starve to death while I'm gone," Jones says with a dream-mirror hand on his cheek.
"Was I ever brilliant?" Dan asks, or maybe he doesn't, but anyway Jones doesn't answer.
The sofa brings Jones sewing up the holes in Dan's jacket pockets with pink thread and telling him it won't show. It's the backs of his eyelids that are the Judas kiss, not Jones. He can see that now. Jones thinks 'Hey Jude' is a rubbish song. Rob Halford came out and became a leather daddy joke. Oh, yes, there's terminology. Dan peels his eyes wide and keeps them on Jones, who's at the decks and not sewing anything. Stitch that, Jonatton.
"It's time to go to sleep," Jones chants, further and further away as Dan obeys and submerges, and the beats amplify to an Idiot sideshow slideshow.
"Jones?"
It's quiet, just blinking lights and Jones asleep. It's Tuesday, and the Idiots are winning.
*
"...femur. Right distal radial..."
It comes back in little air bubbles at the bottom of a deep deaf well.
"...suffered a possible psychotic..."
Pingu's broken on the pavement and Nathan has a red hand in each pocket. His luck has finally run out and Dan wants to eat up the terrified guilt like catching snowflakes on his tongue.
"...sister. Is he going to be..."
Dan shakes the tape at Nathan, grinning like a man with the upper hand. Cut off the head and kill the beast.
"...parents. No, no one else."
There is a beautiful clarity to knowing you're fucked, and it's shaped like a window that leads out of Trash Industries and into a world of sirens and car horns and trains and birds that he can finally hear the music in.
"...what about..."
A moment of flying that reminds him of...
"...Spain somewhere..."
But without the wings that could have been sewn for him out of cloth and wire and noise.
"Dan?"
A symphony in the crack of his bones against metal.
"Anything you can manage."
But that fall was a long time ago.
"Dan?"
"Jones?"
"...been asking for you."
Finally the one hand that can stop him plummeting. Tired eyes. "You fucker."
"Wasn't an experiment."
A hitch in breathing that's not the machine, botched consonants and something soft and sweet against his lips. "Tell me that when you're not off your head."
If he can just surface.
Pairing: Dan/Jones
Rating: PG-13 for language and sexual references
Words: 5266
Summary: Dan does not want to lead a Movement. He doesn't even really want to move.
Notes: Written for lgbtfest. Prompt: 2158. Nathan Barley, Dan/Jones, The incident with the builder and subsequent article force Dan to come to terms with his own sexuality. It’s a topic that has plagued him for most of his life, and he has continually repressed with alcohol and general cynicism. He decides to finally confide his confusion in Jones, who has always been open about his own bisexuality. Could potentially lead to them questioning the true nature of their current relationship, or simply be written as Jones acting as a mentor of sorts.
Disclaimer/credits: Outcast was a real magazine (created by a different Chris Morris than the one who created the show), but had folded by the time this takes place. My apologies also to The Smiths and The Clash. All recognizable characters are the property of their creators and not of me.
Massive, massive thanks to: storyfan, eggnogged, silent_fields, waqaychay, luridlolly, and the_reverand, for hand-holding, idea-bouncing, cheerleading, and other supportive activities. You are all rockstars, as are my Twitter friends and flist for putting up with my blehhhh. However, any fail is mine and mine alone.
A Hypothesis of Flight
There is an under-tens menu complete with colour-ins and word jumbles onto which your aspiring ASBOs ('our younger guests') can crayon their 'I Don't Like Mondays' fantasies whilst Mum gets obliviously rat-arsed on resoundingly acceptable White Table Wine and Dad downs half-price pints of Real Ales. The whole family can feel wholesome and together and more functional than the next table that's arguing because little Billy got caught looking up girls' skirts on the jungle gyms again.
Oh, and rugged God-fearing builders take note: in between shitting out your pack lunch and vomiting up your shepherd's pie, you can top off your happy family tea with a complimentary hand job in the toilets.
I'm here on a mission: document the 'Stray' scene, the clandestine denial-wanking that occurs between clean red-blooded pillars of the community behind the facade of pubs just like this one, an apparently thriving culture of men who 'ain't no bloody queer' or similar. Presumably the etymology of 'Stray' stems from straying from one's marriage vows, but as a happy coincidence, its subscribers resemble nothing so much as straggling feral mutts who want in out of the rain.
The one that chats me up has that pitiful hangdog look of one kicked for pissing on the rug. He says he'll help me. 'It's not easy, Stray,' he says. 'But it helps. Here.' He taps his meaty fist over his red-blooded heart.
They're terribly clever, aren't they? Nip off to the gents', get their bollocks fondled, hope little Billy doesn't need a wee while they're at it. If the wife's sober enough to notice how long they've been gone, they can just grunt some euphemism about their bowels and carry on drinking. Pat little Billy on the back with a hand that smells of some stranger's cock. No one the wiser. Keeps families together.
My toilet partner, my good Samaritan guide to the spiralling circles of the Stray inferno, doesn't believe me when I say I'm doing this for a magazine. He wants to know my name and buy me a drink. I refuse both, but he gets the name because I'm one of those twats who answer their mobiles that way. Intrepid Journalist 101.
'Don't fight it, Dan,' says my doughy Virgil. I don't think he's much for irony so I just fuck off.
Now, then, O Trend-Grubbing Readership, a simple guide to a successful Stray experience, as I'm sure it will be 'totally fucking Mexico' by the time this goes to press.
1. Don't say you're not married when they ask if you've left the wife at home. They'll think you're gay. They don't like gays. Your wife's got a sick headache and doesn't understand you.
2. If you're a bit squeamish, they don't mind if you wear gloves, but don't take it too far. Latex is all right, but miss out the textured-grip gardeners.
3. If you happen to be wearing a jacket with holes in the pockets, make sure nothing identifying is in them, like flyers for where you work or your house key. Better yet, get a proper job so you can afford new clothes. But maybe you'd like to be followed home. Maybe you can be his bit on the side and casually toss each other off while you watch the football. Go to little Billy's birthday and smile at Mrs Stray after you've just had your hand down her husband's trackie bottoms in the garden shed.
4. Don't fight it. It helps.
*
"Well fucking harsh, Dan," is all Jones says when he comes in. Dan knows what he means even before he drops a wrinkled SugaRAPE onto the makeshift coffee table that occasionally shrinks when Jones needs at the records under the tapestry or grows lopsidedly when he consigns another of the million crates to storage.
"I did tell you not to read it," Dan says, but more time has passed than he realised and Jones is already cocooned in his headphones.
Dan stares motionless into the middle distance for minutes or hours. The ashtray started out too full to keep track that way, and with no noise blaring forth from the speakers, he can't gauge the time. Claire isn't here, so there's no reason to keep quiet. The silence feels like punishment.
When Jones sits down next to him like he's done a thousand times, it's as too-close as when they first met and Dan drank away the butterflies in his stomach. Dan bristles away and snaps, "What?"
"You're really a bit shit sometimes, you know."
"I'm surprised you hadn't noticed."
"Yeah, you'd not got that one by me, actually."
Dan lights a new cigarette off his last one and glares down at the magazine cover.
"Claire get her camera?" The fact that Jones leaves off the 'back' feels like charity.
"Yep."
"Y'should've told me before I bought the van."
That would have been easy, yes. Jones wouldn't have held the debt over him or probably even expected to see the money again. "You needed it." Jones is enamoured of the ancient clunky thing. He's named it Betty and has been brimming over with childlike excitement about taking it on tour. And would rather not have it if it would've meant Dan not doing this.
Jones does not lay his head on Dan's shoulder or criticise the state of Dan's hair with his fingertips or tell him about what mad thing happened at last night's gig. It's how he knows Jones is fucked-off with him, though Jones has been doing less of all those things the past few months anyway. Dan misses it more than he should.
*
Dan's always felt eyes on him to a certain degree, even before his photo ran next to all his articles, but it's never been like this. A portion of it is paranoia, yes, and always has been, but there is no other explanation for Lewis, the Nailgun barman who wears at least three pieces of Pride-themed jewellery at any given time, suddenly trying to engage him in conversation when he's only ever said hello and pulled Dan's pints. "You should see what goes on in the gents' here," he says conspiratorially.
'I'm straight' would be an outright lie (ignoring something doesn't force it out of existence), and 'I'm not gay, actually,' would just read as denial. 'I needed the money' was bad enough to admit the first time. So Dan just mutters something that isn't really words and goes back to his table.
Ned and Rufus are talking about organising a 'Stray Crawl' and using a Tube map to plot the locations of 'family' pubs. The one with the most handjobs at the end of the night wins. He's not sure if the talk of earning badges is facetious or not. Dan's relief at finding on Ned's first day of work that Ned was an utter twazzock was immense.
"Why don't you just go wank each other in the toilet now and save everyone else the genital warts?"
Ned lights up with the smile that once, briefly, had Dan very worried. "Yeah, that's well Shirley!" Dan would suspect the phrase of being some Idiot rhyming slang referencing Shirley Jackson if it weren't Ned speaking. "All the idiots'll be going after regular Stray, but like, it's already over 'cause there's Nouveau Stray?"
Rufus looks everywhere but at Ned before agreeing enthusiastically, and Dan nearly feels guilty. Idiots have feelings, too. There should be a public service announcement. Jonatton smirks a shit-eating smirk into his Dutch wine.
*
"Keith Holland from Outcast called," Sasha says. Dan's had trouble looking at her lately because pity and disappointment are now permanently written all over her face, and he'd prefer not to examine the reasons for it.
"Who?"
Sasha's not looking at him either. "It's a controversial gay magazine."
Fucking brilliant. Dan crumples the message slip and throws it down the stairs. "Tell him I've died."
"Dan--"
Dan shoves past the intern bouncing about on a space hopper and sits down at his desk. Just the subject line of one email is enough to make him delete the other 43 unread. He realises too late that one is from his mother, but it's probably no better. He's tried to covertly cancel her subscription, but so far it hasn't worked.
*
Jones is up to his elbows in grease under the van's bonnet. Deep in concentration and whatever's crashing through his headphones, he doesn't notice Dan's arrival. Dan's always liked watching him work, with solder or paint or records, and while whatever he's banging a spanner against doesn't demonstrate the same deft finesse, Dan still can't stop himself staring.
Jones makes it look like a piece of piss to simply say 'fuck you and your labels' and do as he likes. If Jones ever does feel everyone looking and assuming, it can't bother him, or he couldn't be so constantly himself. And they must look. Jones wants them to look, but not at anything he supposedly stands for.
But even Jones seems to want Dan to stand for something. He's looked and judged and found Dan to be a bit shit. Which he is. Dan could ask Jones to teach him how not to care, but he's afraid he might be a lost cause.
Dan shuffles into the house (he hopes) unseen. It's too quiet.
*
Somehow Dan ends up in the Nailgun on his own with Ned.
"So those geezers in your Stray pub, yeah?"
"It's not my--"
"Do they snog and all?"
"Are you fucking twelve?"
"'Cause Rufus, yeah, he reckons the Nouveau movement ought to have one up on them."
"Oh, for god's--"
Dan's jarred out of a moment of blessed darkness squeezing his eyes shut behind his hand by the clatter of Nathan making his entrance. "Alright, cunt-socks?" he addresses to the pub at large and wheels his stupid little bike over to clamp a clammy hand on Dan's shoulder. Dan's fairly certain the stencil on Nathan's t-shirt is Tiësto's head on Hitler's body. It's someone's head on Hitler's body, anyway. Jones would know.
"Go away," Dan mutters, but Nathan just chuckles like an ass and spreads himself across the vacant bench. And no, he's not doing this today. "I've got to go. Tell Nathan about your Movement, Ned."
Dan exits to a shout of, "Peace and fucking, Preach!" He winks at Lewis on the way out and lets him know his bar tab will be on Nathan.
*
The flat is vibrating with music when Dan gets in. Some clenched thing in his chest loosens a little.
Dan follows the sound to the spare bedroom, which, beneath piles of canvases and circuit boards and silkscreen frames and dismantled toys, does theoretically contain a bed somewhere. Dan declined to have it unearthed when he thought he'd only be staying a couple of weeks, and Jones never offered again even though they both know it's gone way past temporary. There's no door to keep him out, but Dan never comes in here.
Jones has a sound for every occasion, and this is art music--less meddling from Jones than usual and with bits it's possible to sing along to. This is an old mix, from two or three years ago. Dan remembers arguing, pleasantly buzzed and laughing, over whether 'Junkie Slip' rated a place on Sandinista! and whether 'Mensforth Hill' rated a place in the universe (Dan came down against both and Jones admitted to a pre-teen crush on Paul Simonon that made Dan realise he'd had one too). The 'Capital Radio' intro looped in the background is actually Dan playing because pitching the record that much faster made it sound like chipmunks on speed.
Jones is on his hands and knees sketching something onto a large sheet of plastic spread out on the floor. He's got on the ancient too-tight jeans that are probably only held together by years of careless paint splatter and there's a black streak of grease pencil across his nose. He smiles a bit when he looks up at Dan, but it might simply be a mirror of his own rueful nostalgia.
"Alright?" Jones readjusts the pink clip holding back his fringe and smears black on his forehead.
Dan shrugs.
"C'mere and tell me if this looks straight."
"What?" Dan snaps, because geometrical definitions aren't the first place his mind is going with words like that.
"If it's fuckin' crooked, Dan, Christ. Me legs're asleep and I can't get up."
Dan takes a cautious step into the room. The drawing is of a record that seems to be breaking apart in the wind. He assumes it's for the side of the van, as there's not a blank bit of wall this size left in the flat. "Looks fine to me," he mutters from under a hot flush.
"Dory reckons it'll hold if we screen it on with house paint."
"She's out of rehab?" Dory is Jones's ex, though she was the one that told Dan that. Jones has never mentioned it. They'd been broken up for ages by the time Dan met her, and the last time he saw her she was being taken away in an ambulance.
"Mostly. Still has to do the meetings and that. She asked after you, actually."
"What'd you tell her?"
"'Oh, Dan? Practically famous now, he is.'"
"Thanks a fucking lot."
"What? True, innit? Fuckin' Hosegate royalty."
The open tin of red paint holding down an edge of the plastic is looking like a tempting target for a good swift kick, but Dan manages to hold it in until he's back in the hall and there's a wall to hit that won't ruin anything. Jones should probably stand between Dan and everything he's inclined to touch, because Jones is one of the few things left that Dan doesn't want shattered.
*
"Dan! Keith Holland from Outcast magazine! Really looking forward to hearing from you, mate. We've got an idea for an insider look at bondage clubs that'll be right up your--"
"Your message has been deleted."
"Right up yours," Dan mutters. He does not give himself the satisfaction of throwing his mobile across the room.
*
Someone's brought a gold-painted wooden throne into the Nailgun. Stranger things have turned up here--an entire Sainsbury's trolley full of mince pies, a window display of plastic sushi glued to the floor, an inflatable sex doll that sat at the end of the bar for a month before someone popped it. It looks straight out of a school Shakespeare production and might, in fact, be. There's an assortment of chairs and stools arranged on either side of it, but no one's sitting on any of them. Dan assumes it's some wanker's idea of an art installation.
Dan opens his mouth to order a pint, but Lewis just shoves a jewelled goblet into his hand. "They're waiting," he says.
"What?"
Lewis just points.
The chairs have filled in. The throne is still empty. Jonatton is sat to the right of it, sewing something with a needle as long as his hand, raven on his shoulder nodding in approval. Ned and Rufus are to the left, grinning vapidly at each other with their hands clasped. Claire is at one end scowling and smoking. Sasha's at the other, motionless and blindfolded in an office chair. 15Peter20 is next to her, stark naked but for a leather collar and vulnerable written across his chest. Assorted Idiots fill in the other spaces: Dajve Bikinus, Toby, the intern whose name Dan has never bothered to learn (he's wearing a badge that helpfully identifies him as Nobody).
Nathan has abandoned his own chair to balance himself on a pained and teetering Pingu's shoulders. Dan has a sick feeling he knows who the throne's reserved for even before Nathan starts waving his phone around and shouting, "The Preacherman cometh!"
Dan's lips won't move to say no. His feet won't go any direction but towards this stage that's been set for him.
Jonatton stands and unfurls his sewing project with a flourish.
"Fucking a-hole!" Nathan exclaims.
It's the Preacherman robe, now with a massive pink triangle on the front.
Dan still can't say no. He chokes when he tries to speak, and every time he raises his goblet to take a drink, he finds it's gone dry.
There's still an empty seat left, Dan realises when Jones steps out of the shadows. Relief floods him. Jones will get him out of here.
But no. No matter how Dan tries to convey with his eyes what he can't say, Jones just smiles and smiles and smiles. Dan thinks he manages to shake his head as someone drapes the costume over him. Jones steps up close to him and fusses with his collar, then slides his hands up Dan's shoulders to gently cup his face, and they're so warm and familiar that maybe it'll all be all right.
Jones comes closer still. Dan can smell his hair and his skin and nearly hear his heartbeat. "Don't fight it," Jones whispers, and kisses him so, so sweetly, and Dan can moan, and he can taste sweat and sugar and dig his fingers into the wiry muscles of Jones's arms, but he can't breathe and he needs to search Jones's face for any sign of what this means.
When he pulls back, Dan can finally shout, "NO!" as he's flung backward and hits the throne with a sickening crack he can't actually feel.
He shouts it so loudly, when he bolts upright on the sofa, that Jones looks up startled from his decks.
"Alright?" Jones says, and there's real concern there, but Dan's head feels so far underwater he can't be sure if he heard it or he's just lip-reading.
He sags back onto the cushions without answering and tries to will away the spinning sickness as he stares up at the tapestries fluttering gently in the breeze from the open window. Jones changes to something down-tempo and Dan lets it wash him under.
*
Even after five cigarettes and a coffee, Dan can still taste the nightmare kiss. His brain threw half his education's worth of symbolism at him but he refuses to analyse it.
"You know," Claire says round a mouthful of Frosties, "I've really only looked at female sex workers."
"What?"
"In the documentary. Maybe I should expand it to male ones. They're just as--"
"I'm not a sex worker." Dan slams down his cup and sends coffee sloshing over something with buttons and exposed wires. He hopes it wasn't important.
"Did I fucking say you were? I was just thinking. Like people do when they use their brains?"
"Because you mention male prostitutes every day over breakfast."
"Don't start, Dan."
"I didn't start. You started."
"Believe it or not, some things aren't about you. But since you brought it up--"
"I didn't bring it up!"
"You did, because shock and horror, you've apparently still got a conscience and it won't leave you alone." Claire gets up and slams her bowl into the sink.
"Do you think I wanted to do it? Do you think that was fun for me?"
"You seemed to have a hell of a lot of fun taking the piss out of those men."
"What else was I meant to write? Graphic description of Jimmy the Builder's cock?"
"Fucking hell, Dan." Claire looks as disgusted as Dan's ever seen her. A far cry from the teenager who used to beg to spend her school holidays in London with him and got giggling drunk on the pink and red alcopops Jones snuck her when she finally got to. "You've got all these twats who hang on your every word. You could've written something that said something. Isn't that what you used to do?"
"I wouldn't have got your two grand for that, would I? 'Can't you take a deep breath,' you said. I fucking took one, all right? What do you want?"
Dan's been shouting, but Claire's voice is quiet and hard when she says, "I want you to go back to being someone I know." She shoves him out of the way and storms towards the door.
"Maybe Nathan can find a schoolboy to suck him off!" Dan shouts after her. "Document that!" All he gets in response is a slamming door, because she's no better than him, is she?
Dan picks up the nearest thing and throws it. It's the mug he was drinking out of, a vintage one with pink spots and stars that is--was--the last of a set that Jones bought in a charity shop in Dublin the first time he went on tour. Fuck. He watches it shatter against the wall, just inches from Jones's head where he's appeared at the end of the hallway.
Jone's doesn't flinch, just wipes the splattered coffee from his face and says, "Dan?"
There is an inertia to shouting. "It's all going to shit. No, it's gone to shit. It is shit." Dan turns away from the flinch that does come now, towards the sofa and the bottle of whiskey he's been eyeing since he woke up. Claire would have given him hell over drinking this early, but Jones won't. Maybe it'll finally wash the taste away.
"Want me to black out all the windows and put on a Smiths record?" Dan can't help but watch Jones's lips, the slight flash of teeth as he doesn't quite manage to form the th. There's the smallest ghost of a hint of a smile tugging at one corner, shadowed by morning stubble Dan (doesn't) remember the feeling of against his skin. The whiskey's not helping with that either. Jones sits down and takes the bottle from between Dan's knees. At first Dan thinks he's going to take it away, but he lifts it (to his lips) and takes a drink. A short one. "Christ, that's vile," he coughs.
"You hate whiskey."
"I don't. I hate the bog-swill you buy."
Dan stares at his hands instead and lights a cigarette for something to do.
"Fucksakes, what? I ain't dragging it out of you."
Jones wants what? Explanations? Apologies? He probably deserves both. But, "When's the tour start?" is the best thing Dan can put into the silence.
Jones sighs. "Tuesday." Possibly he's told Dan this fifty times already. "Dory's got the whole way from here to Ibiza booked up." Dory again. Jones never talks about anyone much unless they've done something particularly funny or stupid or brilliant. "'S been good for her, she's--"
"Are you fucking her?"
The brief surprise is enough to tell him the answer is no, and that maybe coming out the other side of addiction is brilliant enough. But Jones's mouth closes into a hard, thin line. He shakes his head and starts to get up.
Dan grabs his arm and sloshes whiskey over himself. "Come on, don't--" He can feel the pounding pulse in the wrist he's squeezing, or maybe that's in his own fingertips. He lets go. Jones stays. "It's doing my fucking head in," Dan says, but he can't make himself do it with much volume. "I don't want to be their...prophet of queerdom."
Jones chews the side of a ragged paint-stained thumbnail. "The prophet bit or the queer bit?"
"Either, both. The louder I tell them to fuck off, the louder they writhe about like retarded monkeys. Jonatton's set fucking Outcast on me and Ned and Rufus think doing god-fucking-knows-what to each other in various toilets is some kind of movement. You don't even know--"
"'Course I fucking know. Try actually being queer before you have a go at people for not getting it right."
"What's getting it right?"
"It's-- there ain't a right, Dan. How d'you get being straight right?"
"I haven't got that right either."
"You've got not bein' a twat wrong, yeah, but it ain't fucking catching. One handjob in garden gloves don't make you--"
"No, you don't--I mean before."
"Before...?"
He's not catching on. Or he is and is trying to make Dan admit it properly. But properly's got terminology and boxes to tick, and it's not fair because Dan's never made Jones explain, even when he wanted to know. He observed, inferred, no questions ever asked. "It's always--" His throat feels too tight to say anything, choking on shutting up. It's the latest and greatest in a long line of bad ideas, but Jones's eyes are very blue and not full of judgement, and actions don't speak louder but his words always come back as chewed-up Chinese whispers. A kiss is just--they watched Casablanca together once, and Jones spent the ending shouting at the screen--
It's nothing like the dream, when Dan leans over and grabs Jones by the shoulder that's half-bared by his ripped-out collar. It's not so much a proper kiss as a collision of lips, for one thing; not so much sugar and starlight as bad whiskey over sleep, for another, and it's not invitation but surprise (Dan can both feel and hear the gasp) that parts Jones's lips, and there's nothing sweet about it at all. But it may actually be the fastest Dan's ever got hard in his life, because he's thought about this how many times? And now he doesn't have to try not to think about it because it's real and Jones isn't shoving him away or throwing him to the wolves--he's kissing back, all teeth and noisy breathing through his nose, fingers dug into the back of Dan's head and this fucking moaning sound that just makes Dan want.
It's a load of shit, of course, the hackish notion of conveying feelings with a kiss, but Dan gives it his best go since words just keep failing and maybe his whole problem is that he's one of those hacks. But he says too much, or not enough, or says it wrong, because the second he tries to pull Jones closer, it all falls apart. Jones isn't mean, he isn't rough, but he's firm about saying, "Dan-- Dan, stop," and pushing them apart.
"What--"
"Look, I get it, yeah? But I'm not being some...experiment. It never ends well."
It's not easy to hide an erection in cotton pyjama bottoms and Jones isn't even trying. "Speak from experience, do you?" He doesn't mean that to come out as nasty as it does, and he sees it sting. He meant to ask rationally how it went wrong before. More Chinese whispers. Fucking typical. "Sorry," Dan mutters.
"'f you want...advice, or whatever--well, fuck, I'll be useless, but I can try. But not...that ain't the way to sort it out, alright?"
"Right," Dan sighs. He can't help but wonder, as Jones gives him this awful look that's apology and pity and regret and goes off back to bed, if this would have gone a lot differently if he'd managed to do it before that fucking article.
*
"Tramp chic. Bum," Nathan says when Dan's answer to what cologne he's wearing is 'whiskey.'
Somebody's computer speakers in the office are blaring hang the DJ hang the DJ hang the DJ ad fucking nauseum, looped over a tired breakbeat that even Dan can tell is off (and knows more about how to correct it that he would care to admit). Dan storms off to the toilets for a smoke and finds Ned and Rufus up against the sink with their tongues down each other's throats.
Nathan smells like an exploded distillery come after-work pint time. He slaps Dan on the back hard enough to wind him but luckily takes all the credit.
Dan wins round after round off Nobody at Idiot Darts (properly called Thir-Fucking-Teen and invented by Nathan) and staggers enough on the way home that he thinks maybe he can look Jones in the eye.
He sees cutesy high-heeled feet dangling out the back of the van alongside Jones's boots and takes the other way round to the door. It's a long time before Jones comes in, and Dan's definitely pissed enough to look him in the eye. Pissed enough to say anything. "You used to think I was brilliant," he slurs out at a pace that feels like he's talking through treacle.
"I think you're arseholed," Jones says, and makes him drink a glass of water without comment on whether or not he thinks Dan is or was anything else.
Dan's not sure if he actually says, "Your arsehole," but would prefer to believe that he didn't.
Claire comes home and shouts at him about something but it's just sounds, nonsensical back-masking on records played in reverse by some long-ago Jones.
Dan can't sleep for the room spinning. He stumbles his way to the bathroom in a half-crawl and being sick forces more tears from his eyes than it usually does, and he's choking and fighting for air that isn't there, but Jones is there, hand on his back and sounding blurry when he tells Dan to breathe, an underwater Jones who says, "You tit, 've you even eaten anything?" It makes Dan smile to think of his teeth mis-forming fricatives and the gagging stops. Jones supplies water and toothpaste and biscuits and wavers in the dim. "You gotta promise not to starve to death while I'm gone," Jones says with a dream-mirror hand on his cheek.
"Was I ever brilliant?" Dan asks, or maybe he doesn't, but anyway Jones doesn't answer.
The sofa brings Jones sewing up the holes in Dan's jacket pockets with pink thread and telling him it won't show. It's the backs of his eyelids that are the Judas kiss, not Jones. He can see that now. Jones thinks 'Hey Jude' is a rubbish song. Rob Halford came out and became a leather daddy joke. Oh, yes, there's terminology. Dan peels his eyes wide and keeps them on Jones, who's at the decks and not sewing anything. Stitch that, Jonatton.
"It's time to go to sleep," Jones chants, further and further away as Dan obeys and submerges, and the beats amplify to an Idiot sideshow slideshow.
"Jones?"
It's quiet, just blinking lights and Jones asleep. It's Tuesday, and the Idiots are winning.
*
"...femur. Right distal radial..."
It comes back in little air bubbles at the bottom of a deep deaf well.
"...suffered a possible psychotic..."
Pingu's broken on the pavement and Nathan has a red hand in each pocket. His luck has finally run out and Dan wants to eat up the terrified guilt like catching snowflakes on his tongue.
"...sister. Is he going to be..."
Dan shakes the tape at Nathan, grinning like a man with the upper hand. Cut off the head and kill the beast.
"...parents. No, no one else."
There is a beautiful clarity to knowing you're fucked, and it's shaped like a window that leads out of Trash Industries and into a world of sirens and car horns and trains and birds that he can finally hear the music in.
"...what about..."
A moment of flying that reminds him of...
"...Spain somewhere..."
But without the wings that could have been sewn for him out of cloth and wire and noise.
"Dan?"
A symphony in the crack of his bones against metal.
"Anything you can manage."
But that fall was a long time ago.
"Dan?"
"Jones?"
"...been asking for you."
Finally the one hand that can stop him plummeting. Tired eyes. "You fucker."
"Wasn't an experiment."
A hitch in breathing that's not the machine, botched consonants and something soft and sweet against his lips. "Tell me that when you're not off your head."
If he can just surface.