Fic: The Stick and Carrot Method
Title: The Stick and Carrot Method
Fandom: Nathan Barley
Characters: Dan Ashcroft/Jones; Jonatton Yeah?
Prompt: 02- I was wrong about you
Word Count: 3115
Rating: PG
Summary: Jonatton visits Dan in the hospital.
Warnings: Swearing, angst
Disclaimer: Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker wrote Nathan Barley, not me
Author's Note: Written for the un_love_you challenge (link to my table). Many thanks to my beta thirsyrobot Also, a huge thank you to vous_et_moi who I owe the idea of a sympathetic interpretation of Jonatton thanks to his brilliant roleplaying of the character at thezooniverse. The idea would never have occurred to me, but it's such a great idea.
"Daniel?"
Someone was saying his name. His full name too, which meant that it was very possible he'd pissed them off. Oh well.
"Danbo? You're not in a coma, are you, you lazy oaf? If you're in a coma, I'm making you write about how you were visited by unicorns on the astral plain."
Oh God... maybe if he kept quiet, he'd go away.
"I brought you some gin."
Dan's eyes opened reluctantly.
"Unfortunately, this bitch of an orderly took it. Oh well, it's the thought that counts, yeah?"
Jonatton Yeah? was sitting with his hands tucked under his chin, staring at him in morbid curiosity.
"So what's dying like?" he asked. "Was Princess Diana there?"
Dan tried very hard to frown, but it made his face ache. He settled on a blank stare.
"I didn't die," he said.
"Oh," replied Jonatton, sounding vaguely disappointed.
They sat in silence for a few seconds. Dan's frustration mounted as Jonatton inspected his fingernails idly, pushing his cuticles back with his thumb.
"What are you doing here?" he snapped finally.
"Visiting, et cetera?" Jonatton looked up from his nails.
"Why?" he asked, beginning to darkly suspect that he was going to be asked to write about his little trip out the window.
Jonatton raised an eyebrow and then shrugged.
"I missed you?" he said, pouting, "Dead boring down at the ape house without you, yeah?" he went on, sounding marginally more sincere, but Dan never knew when Jonatton was being serious; the man had lost his non-sarcastic tone of voice sometime mid-2001. And he had no morals, no pride, no bounds of reason and absolutely no shame. Just like me.
Jonatton sniffed and then looked back at Dan.
"Well, without someone who realises when I'm taking the piss out of them anyway."
"Oh. My heart," Dan replied flatly.
"It's a bit tragic, actually, but you're my best friend," Jonatton said, "And you don't even like me."
"Fuck off," he said, without conviction.
"It's exactly that attitude that's the problem. Where did it all go wrong, Danbo?" Jonatton sighed dramatically.
Though the morphine was helping, he was in no mood for Jonatton right now. There was no way that he was going to dodge the traffic in memory lane with the cunt.
"Hard to say," Dan said, feeling a headache coming on. "You making me wank off builders probably didn't help though. Why are you here?"
“Yes, because we were bosom companions before I ruined it with wanking off builders,” Jonatton replied flatly, his dead shark eyes still staring curiously at Dan in the hospital bed. “Shall I make it up to you with a naughty nurse photo shoot? I can probably get a few of the student nurses here to take their clothes off for enough money, if you wanted real ones. Models would look less under-slept and put upon, though. Probably.”
“Can you fuck off?” Dan snapped. “Really?”
"Yeah, I can see you have a lot on." Jonatton rolled his eyes and patted the edge of the bed. "See you at work, then."
Dan felt relieved as he watched the other man walk away, but slightly annoyed that he'd been that easy to get bored of.
**
"Grapes."
Jonatton was back. Of course he was. In the drug-fuzzy haze of the past few days, he hadn't been sure that he hadn't just imagined the last visit. Too much to hope for that he'd be left alone to stew in his own regret and anaesthesia.
"That's what you get people when they're poorly, yeah? You could try fermenting them in a bed pan or something to make something exciting and contraband. They seem quite insistent here that cripples aren't allowed hard liquor."
He was able to manage a frown this time as he glared past the proffered fruit to the man holding them towards him.
"You've eaten half of these," he said, snatching them.
"I was hungry?" Jonatton shrugged. "They kept me waiting fucking ages for 'official visiting hours' cos I'm not family. Fuck's sake, don't they know who I am?"
It was hard to tell if he was serious or just pretending to be, or maybe parodying someone who was pretending to be serious. It was tough trying to keep up with all Jonatton's fashionable postmodernism when he was this heavily medicated. Wanky bastard.
"I'm not a cripple," Dan muttered, belatedly, as he painfully pushed himself into a sitting position.
"Of course." Jonatton smiled condescendingly. "Whatever you say, Gimpy McGee."
"You're a shithead," he replied and ate a grape. It was sour.
**
He kept coming back. Why? Did Dan even care? Well, he did, but only in as far as it was annoying not knowing. He didn't like being toyed with and he'd rather just know what the fucking game was.
At the moment, it was Scrabble. Travel Scrabble, dropped on his bed at the end of the last visit and now they were fucking playing it, rather than talk to each other.
Gunman ("That's two words, yeah? Cheating bitch." "It's a compound word, you illiterate fuck.")
Mercy.
Bong.
Price(y).
(St)Ray.
(R)Ape(d).
Elephant.
Forgot(ten).
"He's still not been to see you then?" Jonatton asked casually, carefully putting the tiny m tile onto the board for the last letter of perineum.
"Fuck off," Dan said, a reflex many years old. Then, "No."
The other man said nothing.
**
Jones. His drum and bass indiscretion, his neon Lucifer, his all consuming passion, his... fuck buddy whose house he lived in, if he was being brutally honest. Not even that so much now that Claire lived with them; Jones thought it wasn't fair on her. Ironic, that, considering he cheerfully kept her awake all night every night with his music without a second thought.
"Well perverted, listening to sibling sexing," he had said, jerking his head towards the joining wall, the first night after she moved in when Dan had tried to crawl onto the sofa with him.
The next day Jones created the Sibling Sexing mix. It had gone down a treat with the idiot crowd containing, as it did, lyrics about incest and anal sex. Jones had been annoyed that no one had really got it.
Jones hadn't been to see him.
He... it's not like he had expected him to. He hadn't expected anyone, except maybe Claire. He hadn't expected Nathan Barley to see him, though maybe he should have; he hadn't expected Ned and Rufus; he had been pleasantly surprised by Sasha.... He really hadn't expected his faithful companion Captain Cunt over there, he thought as he glanced up at Jonatton cutting a deck of plastic-y gift shop playing cards. Just... of all the people he hadn't expected, he had sort of assumed Jones would be the one to challenge expectations.
**
"Alright, Preach?"
Dan groaned, not bothering to do it under his breath.
"Are you back again?"
"No, this is a dream, yeah? Cos you missed me so much," Jonatton replied, ever-present smirk fixed on his hateful face. "I've got you another Lousia May Alcott."
"Good Wives," Dan muttered, tossing the paperback onto the small pile of crap on his bed stand. "How did you know?"
Last time Jonatton had read Little Women to him for forty five excruciating minutes, in different silly voices, while he'd lain there helpless. He did not give a flying fuck about whether or not Jo and Laurie got together. And they didn't anyway.
“Next time just bring porn,” he sighed, hating himself for admitting out loud to a next time.
“Nope, you gotta get all big and strong enough to go and get your own wank material,” Jonatton said, sitting down on the chair beside the bed. “If I bring it, you've no incentive to try.”
Dan made a face, but it was closer to the faces that he pulled at Claire when she nagged him rather than out and out frowning.
“Is that why you're here then? To torment me into good health?” he asked petulantly, painfully aware that he was pouting in all but name.
Jonatton crossed his eyes in response, before winking and picking up Good Wives and clearing his throat significantly. Dan hid his head under the pillow.
**
When visiting time came, he didn't even pretend to be surprised when he heard footsteps. He closed his eyes and pushed himself upright, grunting under his breath at the pain. He'd started being able to walk to and from the bathroom recently, with a surprisingly strong West Indian nurse practically carrying him as his legs wobbled, nearly buckling every so often, at the unfamiliar weight of his own body. The combination of his painfully mending bones and his weakened muscles were not a winning combination. He was almost glad that they'd kept him here so long on glorified suicide watch (although talking about his feelings and his childhood were distressingly tedious) so that he didn't have to ask Claire to help him go for a piss. He was not looking forward to physiotherapy when he was finally discharged, or to trying to piece his broken life together in general really.
He turned his head towards the footsteps, mentally preparing some kind of response more elegant than “fuck you” to whatever Jonatton's opening quip would be.
He opened his mouth to try and get the first barb in and then closed it suddenly when his heart stuttered at who it was.
“Jones.”
**
Jones hadn't been able to work since Dan had been in the hospital. All of his equipment was neatly tidied away rather than strewn across half the living room, making him feel a bit like he'd had his thumbs cut off, but he just couldn't fill the house with sound when his own head was so full.
He was trying to keep himself busy with cleaning every inch of the mould and dirt covered squat and by undertaking every kind of home improvement that was within the limits of his own skill and his bank balance. The place probably hadn't looked so well put together when whoever owned it had been looking after it properly. It would have almost have felt like a proper home if it weren't for the oppressively silent atmosphere.
The knock at the door sounded so loud in the unusually quiet house that he jumped and dropped the plate he was cleaning and it smashed into a million fragments on the floor. He stared at the sharp soap-shiny pieces on the cheap lino dumbly for a second. It had been a hideous, old lady-ish sort of plate with a badly painted kitten on it that looked a bit cross eyed. He'd bought it second hand in an Oxfam shop for 25p three years ago. They'd run out of clean crockery and neither of them could be arsed to clean up, so he'd gotten a matching pair of hilariously rubbish plates he hoped would make Dan laugh and a take away on his way home from work.
He wouldn't even be able to glue it back together.
He felt a lump in his throat and then felt stupid and angry with himself for feeling so cut up over a fucking plate. He swept it up carefully, making sure he didn't miss any of the tiny slivers so that they couldn't ambush a barefooted Clare making her breakfast the next morning, and then went to answer the door.
Outside was some suited arse with styled hair that he vaguely remembered from somewhere. After a second, it came to him.
“Jonatton, yeah?” The arse smiled unpleasantly. “Dan's not home yet,” he went on awkwardly. “If it's about work I can take a message....” He trailed off, seeing that Jonatton's smile had vanished midsentence and he was now scowling at him.
“I know Dan's not home,” he said shortly. “Stick's not working. You're up, Carrot.”
**
“'lo Dan.” Jones said, smiling at him weakly, but broke the eye contact quickly.
A few ice ages and major political upheavals passed as they stayed warily silent, hoping the other would speak first.
“Will you sit with me?” Dan asked finally, worrying that he sounded like he was begging. He was, really.
Jones seemed to snap to attention slightly and walked to the chair in three quick steps. When he sat down he moved around and fidgeted, still not saying anything. Dan could see his eyes filling slowly with tears and his chin wobbling.
He wasn't aware of deciding to reach out, but could feel his hand move from his side, seemingly by itself, and he watched it be grabbed by both of Jones'.
**
“S'not my place,” Jones mumbled and busied himself with the coffee machine while his guest stood in the corner frowning at him. “Claire goes and sees him on weekends like.... I'm not family or anything, they don't need randomers clogging up the ward.”
“Don't be a prick,” said Jonatton. And coming from him, that was pretty sobering. “Unless you're not going because you can't stand him, you will get your arse down there post fucking haste. And to be honest I don't think that you can't stand him, because you let him and his sister live with you for nothing more than the joy of their company, apparently, so chop-chop? He needs you, for reasons known only to him, and I honestly don't give a fuck if I have to carry you there and hold your hand in the waiting room while you fret about it, but you're going, yeah?”
Jones kept his back turned but stopped even trying to pretend that he was making coffee.
“He-” he swallowed heavily. “He doesn't... need me. You've got it wrong.”
He put his hands on the counter and hunched over slightly. Dan didn't need him. He didn't, couldn't. They were just mates, that's all. They... sometimes they fooled around and that, but it was just fun, they were still just mates. Not even very good mates; they hardly saw each other these days. They were always too busy. They hardly needed each other if they couldn't even make the time to have a coffee together in the mornings. Dan did live with him, but he was pretty sure that that was mostly just convenience. London was an expensive place to live-- who'd turn down a free place to stay? No, he was certain. Dan didn't need him.
You didn't want every bastard you'd ever had a drink with bothering you when you were in the hospital after something like... something like that. You didn't need that.
“Right now I am the highlight of that boy's day and if that doesn't properly illustrate the sheer urgency with which he needs you, I don't know what will,” Jonatton said sarcastically to Jones' tensed back.
“Did he say that?” Jones asked quietly, with his jaw clenched.
“Oh don't get jealous,” Jonatton laughed lightly. “He'd rather drink his own urine than say I was the highlight of his day, yeah? I was being a tiny bit facetious et cetera. Not much though, yeah, the rest of his day is about as fun as drinking his own urine and I'd like to think I'm at least a bit more fun than that.”
“Did he say that he needs me?” Jones said, really not happy with Jonatton for making him say it.
“No,” Jonatton admitted and Jones relaxed slightly, “But Dan has a very loud way of not saying things, yeah? I can hardly hear myself in there with the sound of him not saying that he doesn't deserve you and that it's his own fault you won't visit him. So-” Jonatton's hand was on his shoulder and he tensed up again at the unwelcome contact-- “are you going to go and see him?”
“Yeah,” Jones answered, finally. “Yeah.”
“Good DJ.” Jones looked over his shoulder and Jonatton released him and gave him a quick pat on the back. “Listen, you probably have people say this all the time, but you're the fucking spit of that pop art you've got, yeah?”
**
“I'm sorry,” Jones' shoulders were shaking and Dan could feel his own hand tremble in Jones'. He extracted it gently and wiped a tear from the side of Jones' face with the pad of his thumb. Jones turned his head and kissed Dan's hand before holding it against his cheek and exhaling loudly through his mouth. “I'm sorry,” he repeated with his eyes closed.
“It's alright,” Dan said a bit gruffly, not really sure if Jones was apologising for crying or for something else. He wasn't sure that Jones knew either.
Jones smiled a little and let his hand back onto the blanket where he folded his own back on top of it. They sat quietly for a while, but this time there wasn't any tension to break.
“Your face is all naked,” Jones said, touching his cheek gently.
“Yeah,” Dan rubbed his chin, feeling spiky stubble where he used to have a thick growth of hair. “I said to one of the nurses that it was getting a bit scraggly and she shaved the lot off.”
“Couldn't you have trimmed it yourself?” Jones asked.
“Not really allowed anything sharp. Chucking myself out a window lost me my scissor privileges,” Dan mumbled into his chest and instantly regretted it when he looked up and saw Jones' face crumble again.
“Oh,” he said quietly.
Dan felt Jones' hands tighten around his own again.
“I'm sorry, I'm an idiot,” Dan said sincerely, apologising for what he'd said, for what he'd done, everything he'd done, and for just being an idiot, all at once.
“I wish,” Jones stopped and closed his eyes tight against more tears threatening to fall, before continuing, “I wish it wasn't this way.”
“Me too,” Dan said sadly.
“When you get out of here...” Jones looked up at him warily, “Do you want to try doing it another way?”
He looked so scared and so sad. He hated that he'd done that to him.
Try doing it another way. What did that even mean, though? Try working somewhere else? Try not to let things get to him so much? Try not to be so fucking thick? Try vegetarianism? Try....
He looked back at Jones intently and, even though he'd always thought that the idea of seeing what people felt through looking them in the eyes was the most awful sentimental bollocks, he saw all the answers he'd ever needed there.
“I do.”
Fandom: Nathan Barley
Characters: Dan Ashcroft/Jones; Jonatton Yeah?
Prompt: 02- I was wrong about you
Word Count: 3115
Rating: PG
Summary: Jonatton visits Dan in the hospital.
Warnings: Swearing, angst
Disclaimer: Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker wrote Nathan Barley, not me
Author's Note: Written for the un_love_you challenge (link to my table). Many thanks to my beta thirsyrobot Also, a huge thank you to vous_et_moi who I owe the idea of a sympathetic interpretation of Jonatton thanks to his brilliant roleplaying of the character at thezooniverse. The idea would never have occurred to me, but it's such a great idea.
"Daniel?"
Someone was saying his name. His full name too, which meant that it was very possible he'd pissed them off. Oh well.
"Danbo? You're not in a coma, are you, you lazy oaf? If you're in a coma, I'm making you write about how you were visited by unicorns on the astral plain."
Oh God... maybe if he kept quiet, he'd go away.
"I brought you some gin."
Dan's eyes opened reluctantly.
"Unfortunately, this bitch of an orderly took it. Oh well, it's the thought that counts, yeah?"
Jonatton Yeah? was sitting with his hands tucked under his chin, staring at him in morbid curiosity.
"So what's dying like?" he asked. "Was Princess Diana there?"
Dan tried very hard to frown, but it made his face ache. He settled on a blank stare.
"I didn't die," he said.
"Oh," replied Jonatton, sounding vaguely disappointed.
They sat in silence for a few seconds. Dan's frustration mounted as Jonatton inspected his fingernails idly, pushing his cuticles back with his thumb.
"What are you doing here?" he snapped finally.
"Visiting, et cetera?" Jonatton looked up from his nails.
"Why?" he asked, beginning to darkly suspect that he was going to be asked to write about his little trip out the window.
Jonatton raised an eyebrow and then shrugged.
"I missed you?" he said, pouting, "Dead boring down at the ape house without you, yeah?" he went on, sounding marginally more sincere, but Dan never knew when Jonatton was being serious; the man had lost his non-sarcastic tone of voice sometime mid-2001. And he had no morals, no pride, no bounds of reason and absolutely no shame. Just like me.
Jonatton sniffed and then looked back at Dan.
"Well, without someone who realises when I'm taking the piss out of them anyway."
"Oh. My heart," Dan replied flatly.
"It's a bit tragic, actually, but you're my best friend," Jonatton said, "And you don't even like me."
"Fuck off," he said, without conviction.
"It's exactly that attitude that's the problem. Where did it all go wrong, Danbo?" Jonatton sighed dramatically.
Though the morphine was helping, he was in no mood for Jonatton right now. There was no way that he was going to dodge the traffic in memory lane with the cunt.
"Hard to say," Dan said, feeling a headache coming on. "You making me wank off builders probably didn't help though. Why are you here?"
“Yes, because we were bosom companions before I ruined it with wanking off builders,” Jonatton replied flatly, his dead shark eyes still staring curiously at Dan in the hospital bed. “Shall I make it up to you with a naughty nurse photo shoot? I can probably get a few of the student nurses here to take their clothes off for enough money, if you wanted real ones. Models would look less under-slept and put upon, though. Probably.”
“Can you fuck off?” Dan snapped. “Really?”
"Yeah, I can see you have a lot on." Jonatton rolled his eyes and patted the edge of the bed. "See you at work, then."
Dan felt relieved as he watched the other man walk away, but slightly annoyed that he'd been that easy to get bored of.
**
"Grapes."
Jonatton was back. Of course he was. In the drug-fuzzy haze of the past few days, he hadn't been sure that he hadn't just imagined the last visit. Too much to hope for that he'd be left alone to stew in his own regret and anaesthesia.
"That's what you get people when they're poorly, yeah? You could try fermenting them in a bed pan or something to make something exciting and contraband. They seem quite insistent here that cripples aren't allowed hard liquor."
He was able to manage a frown this time as he glared past the proffered fruit to the man holding them towards him.
"You've eaten half of these," he said, snatching them.
"I was hungry?" Jonatton shrugged. "They kept me waiting fucking ages for 'official visiting hours' cos I'm not family. Fuck's sake, don't they know who I am?"
It was hard to tell if he was serious or just pretending to be, or maybe parodying someone who was pretending to be serious. It was tough trying to keep up with all Jonatton's fashionable postmodernism when he was this heavily medicated. Wanky bastard.
"I'm not a cripple," Dan muttered, belatedly, as he painfully pushed himself into a sitting position.
"Of course." Jonatton smiled condescendingly. "Whatever you say, Gimpy McGee."
"You're a shithead," he replied and ate a grape. It was sour.
**
He kept coming back. Why? Did Dan even care? Well, he did, but only in as far as it was annoying not knowing. He didn't like being toyed with and he'd rather just know what the fucking game was.
At the moment, it was Scrabble. Travel Scrabble, dropped on his bed at the end of the last visit and now they were fucking playing it, rather than talk to each other.
Gunman ("That's two words, yeah? Cheating bitch." "It's a compound word, you illiterate fuck.")
Mercy.
Bong.
Price(y).
(St)Ray.
(R)Ape(d).
Elephant.
Forgot(ten).
"He's still not been to see you then?" Jonatton asked casually, carefully putting the tiny m tile onto the board for the last letter of perineum.
"Fuck off," Dan said, a reflex many years old. Then, "No."
The other man said nothing.
**
Jones. His drum and bass indiscretion, his neon Lucifer, his all consuming passion, his... fuck buddy whose house he lived in, if he was being brutally honest. Not even that so much now that Claire lived with them; Jones thought it wasn't fair on her. Ironic, that, considering he cheerfully kept her awake all night every night with his music without a second thought.
"Well perverted, listening to sibling sexing," he had said, jerking his head towards the joining wall, the first night after she moved in when Dan had tried to crawl onto the sofa with him.
The next day Jones created the Sibling Sexing mix. It had gone down a treat with the idiot crowd containing, as it did, lyrics about incest and anal sex. Jones had been annoyed that no one had really got it.
Jones hadn't been to see him.
He... it's not like he had expected him to. He hadn't expected anyone, except maybe Claire. He hadn't expected Nathan Barley to see him, though maybe he should have; he hadn't expected Ned and Rufus; he had been pleasantly surprised by Sasha.... He really hadn't expected his faithful companion Captain Cunt over there, he thought as he glanced up at Jonatton cutting a deck of plastic-y gift shop playing cards. Just... of all the people he hadn't expected, he had sort of assumed Jones would be the one to challenge expectations.
**
"Alright, Preach?"
Dan groaned, not bothering to do it under his breath.
"Are you back again?"
"No, this is a dream, yeah? Cos you missed me so much," Jonatton replied, ever-present smirk fixed on his hateful face. "I've got you another Lousia May Alcott."
"Good Wives," Dan muttered, tossing the paperback onto the small pile of crap on his bed stand. "How did you know?"
Last time Jonatton had read Little Women to him for forty five excruciating minutes, in different silly voices, while he'd lain there helpless. He did not give a flying fuck about whether or not Jo and Laurie got together. And they didn't anyway.
“Next time just bring porn,” he sighed, hating himself for admitting out loud to a next time.
“Nope, you gotta get all big and strong enough to go and get your own wank material,” Jonatton said, sitting down on the chair beside the bed. “If I bring it, you've no incentive to try.”
Dan made a face, but it was closer to the faces that he pulled at Claire when she nagged him rather than out and out frowning.
“Is that why you're here then? To torment me into good health?” he asked petulantly, painfully aware that he was pouting in all but name.
Jonatton crossed his eyes in response, before winking and picking up Good Wives and clearing his throat significantly. Dan hid his head under the pillow.
**
When visiting time came, he didn't even pretend to be surprised when he heard footsteps. He closed his eyes and pushed himself upright, grunting under his breath at the pain. He'd started being able to walk to and from the bathroom recently, with a surprisingly strong West Indian nurse practically carrying him as his legs wobbled, nearly buckling every so often, at the unfamiliar weight of his own body. The combination of his painfully mending bones and his weakened muscles were not a winning combination. He was almost glad that they'd kept him here so long on glorified suicide watch (although talking about his feelings and his childhood were distressingly tedious) so that he didn't have to ask Claire to help him go for a piss. He was not looking forward to physiotherapy when he was finally discharged, or to trying to piece his broken life together in general really.
He turned his head towards the footsteps, mentally preparing some kind of response more elegant than “fuck you” to whatever Jonatton's opening quip would be.
He opened his mouth to try and get the first barb in and then closed it suddenly when his heart stuttered at who it was.
“Jones.”
**
Jones hadn't been able to work since Dan had been in the hospital. All of his equipment was neatly tidied away rather than strewn across half the living room, making him feel a bit like he'd had his thumbs cut off, but he just couldn't fill the house with sound when his own head was so full.
He was trying to keep himself busy with cleaning every inch of the mould and dirt covered squat and by undertaking every kind of home improvement that was within the limits of his own skill and his bank balance. The place probably hadn't looked so well put together when whoever owned it had been looking after it properly. It would have almost have felt like a proper home if it weren't for the oppressively silent atmosphere.
The knock at the door sounded so loud in the unusually quiet house that he jumped and dropped the plate he was cleaning and it smashed into a million fragments on the floor. He stared at the sharp soap-shiny pieces on the cheap lino dumbly for a second. It had been a hideous, old lady-ish sort of plate with a badly painted kitten on it that looked a bit cross eyed. He'd bought it second hand in an Oxfam shop for 25p three years ago. They'd run out of clean crockery and neither of them could be arsed to clean up, so he'd gotten a matching pair of hilariously rubbish plates he hoped would make Dan laugh and a take away on his way home from work.
He wouldn't even be able to glue it back together.
He felt a lump in his throat and then felt stupid and angry with himself for feeling so cut up over a fucking plate. He swept it up carefully, making sure he didn't miss any of the tiny slivers so that they couldn't ambush a barefooted Clare making her breakfast the next morning, and then went to answer the door.
Outside was some suited arse with styled hair that he vaguely remembered from somewhere. After a second, it came to him.
“Jonatton, yeah?” The arse smiled unpleasantly. “Dan's not home yet,” he went on awkwardly. “If it's about work I can take a message....” He trailed off, seeing that Jonatton's smile had vanished midsentence and he was now scowling at him.
“I know Dan's not home,” he said shortly. “Stick's not working. You're up, Carrot.”
**
“'lo Dan.” Jones said, smiling at him weakly, but broke the eye contact quickly.
A few ice ages and major political upheavals passed as they stayed warily silent, hoping the other would speak first.
“Will you sit with me?” Dan asked finally, worrying that he sounded like he was begging. He was, really.
Jones seemed to snap to attention slightly and walked to the chair in three quick steps. When he sat down he moved around and fidgeted, still not saying anything. Dan could see his eyes filling slowly with tears and his chin wobbling.
He wasn't aware of deciding to reach out, but could feel his hand move from his side, seemingly by itself, and he watched it be grabbed by both of Jones'.
**
“S'not my place,” Jones mumbled and busied himself with the coffee machine while his guest stood in the corner frowning at him. “Claire goes and sees him on weekends like.... I'm not family or anything, they don't need randomers clogging up the ward.”
“Don't be a prick,” said Jonatton. And coming from him, that was pretty sobering. “Unless you're not going because you can't stand him, you will get your arse down there post fucking haste. And to be honest I don't think that you can't stand him, because you let him and his sister live with you for nothing more than the joy of their company, apparently, so chop-chop? He needs you, for reasons known only to him, and I honestly don't give a fuck if I have to carry you there and hold your hand in the waiting room while you fret about it, but you're going, yeah?”
Jones kept his back turned but stopped even trying to pretend that he was making coffee.
“He-” he swallowed heavily. “He doesn't... need me. You've got it wrong.”
He put his hands on the counter and hunched over slightly. Dan didn't need him. He didn't, couldn't. They were just mates, that's all. They... sometimes they fooled around and that, but it was just fun, they were still just mates. Not even very good mates; they hardly saw each other these days. They were always too busy. They hardly needed each other if they couldn't even make the time to have a coffee together in the mornings. Dan did live with him, but he was pretty sure that that was mostly just convenience. London was an expensive place to live-- who'd turn down a free place to stay? No, he was certain. Dan didn't need him.
You didn't want every bastard you'd ever had a drink with bothering you when you were in the hospital after something like... something like that. You didn't need that.
“Right now I am the highlight of that boy's day and if that doesn't properly illustrate the sheer urgency with which he needs you, I don't know what will,” Jonatton said sarcastically to Jones' tensed back.
“Did he say that?” Jones asked quietly, with his jaw clenched.
“Oh don't get jealous,” Jonatton laughed lightly. “He'd rather drink his own urine than say I was the highlight of his day, yeah? I was being a tiny bit facetious et cetera. Not much though, yeah, the rest of his day is about as fun as drinking his own urine and I'd like to think I'm at least a bit more fun than that.”
“Did he say that he needs me?” Jones said, really not happy with Jonatton for making him say it.
“No,” Jonatton admitted and Jones relaxed slightly, “But Dan has a very loud way of not saying things, yeah? I can hardly hear myself in there with the sound of him not saying that he doesn't deserve you and that it's his own fault you won't visit him. So-” Jonatton's hand was on his shoulder and he tensed up again at the unwelcome contact-- “are you going to go and see him?”
“Yeah,” Jones answered, finally. “Yeah.”
“Good DJ.” Jones looked over his shoulder and Jonatton released him and gave him a quick pat on the back. “Listen, you probably have people say this all the time, but you're the fucking spit of that pop art you've got, yeah?”
**
“I'm sorry,” Jones' shoulders were shaking and Dan could feel his own hand tremble in Jones'. He extracted it gently and wiped a tear from the side of Jones' face with the pad of his thumb. Jones turned his head and kissed Dan's hand before holding it against his cheek and exhaling loudly through his mouth. “I'm sorry,” he repeated with his eyes closed.
“It's alright,” Dan said a bit gruffly, not really sure if Jones was apologising for crying or for something else. He wasn't sure that Jones knew either.
Jones smiled a little and let his hand back onto the blanket where he folded his own back on top of it. They sat quietly for a while, but this time there wasn't any tension to break.
“Your face is all naked,” Jones said, touching his cheek gently.
“Yeah,” Dan rubbed his chin, feeling spiky stubble where he used to have a thick growth of hair. “I said to one of the nurses that it was getting a bit scraggly and she shaved the lot off.”
“Couldn't you have trimmed it yourself?” Jones asked.
“Not really allowed anything sharp. Chucking myself out a window lost me my scissor privileges,” Dan mumbled into his chest and instantly regretted it when he looked up and saw Jones' face crumble again.
“Oh,” he said quietly.
Dan felt Jones' hands tighten around his own again.
“I'm sorry, I'm an idiot,” Dan said sincerely, apologising for what he'd said, for what he'd done, everything he'd done, and for just being an idiot, all at once.
“I wish,” Jones stopped and closed his eyes tight against more tears threatening to fall, before continuing, “I wish it wasn't this way.”
“Me too,” Dan said sadly.
“When you get out of here...” Jones looked up at him warily, “Do you want to try doing it another way?”
He looked so scared and so sad. He hated that he'd done that to him.
Try doing it another way. What did that even mean, though? Try working somewhere else? Try not to let things get to him so much? Try not to be so fucking thick? Try vegetarianism? Try....
He looked back at Jones intently and, even though he'd always thought that the idea of seeing what people felt through looking them in the eyes was the most awful sentimental bollocks, he saw all the answers he'd ever needed there.
“I do.”