Read My Mind - Judd/Jones - Standalone
Title: Read My Mind
Author: valquiris
Part: 1/1
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Judd/Jones
Genre: Angst
Summary: Harry realizes the value of Danny.
A/N: My first Junes, written as an attempt to remedy the lack of the pairing lately. Anyway, this piece was nagging me all last night, so I had to write it down before I forget. It's sort of a reflection of Another You In A Minute, but more intimate and more emotionally in-depth, and I hope you guys enjoy! :)
Disclaimer: I do not own McFly in any way.
You walk through the half-opened door and you stumble into the other side, catching the television set just in time before your knees gave out, and you stay in this position for some time, trying to readjust your vision and your balance. But you know that’s not going to happen anytime soon. Maybe a bit of rest and one of Danny’s late night sandwiches will get you back up in no time, but you also know that’s not going to happen any time soon.
Because through your fuzzy and disorientated vision, you see him sitting right across from you, blue eyes poring over your own pair, resting his inclined head on the knuckles of his interlaced hands. You know this look; it’s the same one he gives you whenever you came home with a bottle in one hand and half your brain cells missing.
Acting as though you haven’t seen him yet, you hiccup softly and gently set the bottle behind the television set (your not-so-hiding place for all your booze and God knows what else), cringing when the bottom of it clinked as it made contact with the polished floor. You turn your head slightly over to him to see if he’d heard, but his lingering gaze meets your eyes again, and you pick yourself up, using the top of the telly as a crutch.
“’Ello, Dan,” you say with a broad grin, hoping to ease the tension between you two with a bit of light conversation, but the look in his eyes tells you it’s no good. You’ve fucked up again, Harry, and you’re going to get a talking-to no matter how much you wanted to go to bed and rest the buzz off instead. That’s Danny’s way and you’ve no choice but to follow it.
“Don’t give me that,” Danny snaps, not yet angry but nowhere near amused either. You’re still holding on to the telly, and you try your best not to topple over and break it. It’s your fifth set, for fuck’s sake, and you’ve just bought it last week.
“What’s-what’s wrong, Dan?” you ask, pretending your innocence with a slight frown and crease of the eyebrows. The only thing you can do really-or know how to do during one of these times, because sometimes the look works for the most part, and he usually forgets everything and you cuddle in bed together even before you got your shoes off.
But he just stares with narrow eyes, and you know immediately it’s not going to work this time.
“Harry, it’s the third time this week,” Danny says, visibly flustered but not giving you that huffing expression that usually comes when people are talking in that way, and you sort of thank him for that because it doesn’t make you feel like an arsehole.
Not yet, anyway.
“Can you let up for a bit? I mean, I know you’re allowed your indulgences every now and then, but you can’t do it every two days. It’s mental, really, when you think about it.”
Something inside you snaps at those words, though you really don’t know what. Your head’s too fuzzy to even try to find what it is exactly, so you don’t try. You just look at him with this incredulous face as if he’d just damned you and your entire family to Hell.
“Mental?” you repeat with a slight laugh of disbelief because you really don’t know where he’s coming from.
He nods in agreement, though there’s a look in his eyes that’s not foreign to you. It’s the look of fear, and you’re conscious of the fact that you’re causing that fear. A voice inside your head tells you to stop (you’ve had too many arguments over stupid little things, and this is one of those things), but it’s immediately drowned out by this other voice, saying who exactly is Danny to tell you what’s crazy or not, that it’s your right to party however you want whenever you want; he’s not your Mum.
“Yeah, it is,” Danny agrees, and he stands up. “So please, for my sake.”
What does he know? The voice says again, and you shake your head to rid the thought away. But Danny stops and he looks at you with them narrowed eyes again, and at once you know what you’ve done wrong.
“No?” Danny asks, taking a step back, offended, and you grope in your mind for something to say, make him think he’s taking the gesture the wrong way, but the words wouldn’t come, and you only stare at him in silence. As though invisible hands are grabbing it, you shake your head again.
And he looks more offended than ever, crossing his arms now over his chest and shaking his own head.
“Alright, then, let me get this straight,” he says firmly, and you note the metallic tint in his voice, that sharpness that you don’t like. “I ask you, as nice and as straightforward as I can, to let up your partying for a bit so that you don’t come home every two fucking days, drunk as fuck like your brain’s been cut in half and fed to the dogs, and you say no.”
You open your mouth to retort, that he’s taking everything out of proportion-or say anything at the least, but it’s like your jaws are glued shut, your tongue tied to the roof of your mouth, and you can’t say anything. Fucking booze making you stand there like a stupid lamppost while your relationship whittles away right before your eyes.
He continues.
“You refuse to grant me this one thing-this one, little thing-because you’d rather prefer your alcohol and your parties and your friends than me.”
You suddenly find your voice, and you’re quite grateful that you can put in your own side of the story now, but to your horror-and his-this is what comes out:
“What’re you so-so mad about, Dan? You’re being such a prick about-about this; it’s not even that big a deal.”
His eyes shoot open and so do yours, and you try to take your words back, but the realization of what you’ve just said tightens the bolts around your jaws once again, and all you can do is clench them.
“I’m being a prick?” Danny repeats loudly, way past the disbelief phase and into full-blown frustration. “If anyone’s being a fucking prick, it’s you! I asked you this one thing and you can’t even do that! I’m your boyfriend, for fuck’s sake, and you have no idea how much it hurts me to see you waste your life in that fucking booze and come home and not even give me the slightest hint that you know that I’m here waiting my arse off for you to come back!”
“Dan-” you say, but you’re cut off immediately like a slap on the face. It might as well have been one; the blow felt just the same.
“And you ask me what I’m so mad about! I’m mad at you, Harry! I’m fucking mad at you! I do everything for you! I take care of you when you’re sick! I make you your fucking sandwiches when you’re not feeling good! I wait for you and get you to bed when you’re like this! And what do I get? I get called a fucking prick when I’m out here basically slaving to everything you ask!”
He angrily wipes the tears with his forearm and you feel guilty. More than guilty, because you feel as though you’ve just stabbed him a hundred times. You want to cry with him but you can’t; the alcohol blocked your ability to create tears, and suddenly, you realize that he’s right.
You are wasting your life with booze because Danny is your life, and you’re wasting all the time you have together, taking them for granted because you know he’ll always be there no matter what. But in one fell swoop, that’s all changed, and you know he’s not going to be there for you anymore.
“Danny-”
“No,” he interjects coldly, a slight cracking to his voice, though not as loudly as before. It’s more controlled now, defying the tears rolling down his cheeks and creating an image that lets you know you’ve broken him to pieces. “I’m tired of it, Harry, I really am. I don’t deserve this. I-I’m…”
He breathes a shaky sigh and plunges his hands in his pockets. He looks at you with glassy eyes and you look at him with your cloudy ones.
“We’re done, Harry. We’re done.”
“No...” you whisper, and you know he heard it because he’s shaking his head in disagreement.
Without a word, he shuffles past you and drags his feet outside, leaving the door open, letting all the cold night air in. You’re left in the room alone, still clinging to the television, and you don’t know what to do.
You can always break things; that’s the sort of thing someone in your situation might do, but, really, what will it do? It won’t bring him back, and you’ll lose your furniture in the process. You can always drown yourself in alcohol until you’ve forgotten about the whole thing; that’s also what one might do when subjected to this problem, but will that be any better? It’s what got you in this situation in the first place, and you’ll feel even more terrible once you wake up the next day. What can you do?
Like a light bulb, a thought erupts in your head, and you disentangle yourself from the telly. You make your way stumbling into the kitchen, because you remember that Danny’s sandwiches always makes everything better, fixes things no matter how much they’re damaged. Maybe with one of them, you’ll hurt less, and you know when the spell of the alcohol ends, you’ll suffer the entire blow in one draconian strike.
So you rest your hands on the counter and you try to look for the ingredients. What does he use? You know there’s bread involved, to keep all the things inside. But what else? Does he use cheese? Does he use ham or chicken or turkey? Does he use lettuce or tomatoes or both? Ketchup or mustard or both?
You can’t remember, and you slump over the counter and bury your face in your hands. Not recollecting, but kicking yourself for letting him go just like that. You’re nothing without him; he’s what keeps you stable, what keeps you sane, what gets you through everyday by just seeing his face or his smile.
You try to cry, because you need the relief more than ever, but you can’t. It’s like your body’s closed down on you, and you’ve lost the key to open it back up. All you can do now is slam the side of your fist on the counter in frustration while a groan escapes your lips, and you’re even more determined now to make that fucking sandwich. You need to.
“What does he-what does he use…?” you ask yourself under your breath, tapping your fingers on the cold tiles and looking at the doors of the cabinets lining the kitchen. Drawing a complete blank, you sigh and reach over for the loaf of bread sitting to your left.
“I’ll start with these, I guess,” you say to yourself as you look at the individual slices, running them through your fingers to determine which one you want to use. Danny always uses the softest ones, so you look for the softest ones. Running through them a second time, you fail still, and you drop them in the basket, hopelessness coating every fiber of your body.
He’s gone. You can’t believe it, but he’s gone, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You can mope around and try to pretend to forget about him, but the truth is, you can’t. He’s Danny, and nothing or no one will ever replace him. No one will have as much drive and patience as he does, and you’re a fucking idiot for letting him slip from your fingertips with something as insignificant as the denial of a simple request.
You take a deep breath and reach over to grab the slices again, determined to make that sandwich as if your life depends on it, but another set of hands beats you to them, just under yours. Freckled and tan underneath, with the same watch that you gave Danny for your two-year anniversary. You turn your head and, with your eyes widening, you see him.
You see Danny; standing behind you, head resting on your shoulder and hands encompassing your waist to reach for the basket.
“It’s always in the center of the slices,” he says with a smile, his breath ticking your ears and your neck, and you can’t help but smile with him. “That’s where the softest ones are.”
You’re dumbstruck, and you want to ask him so many things; why he came back, why he does all these things for you, why he chose you out of everyone in the world, why you’re so lucky. But you settle with this one simple thing.
“Really?”
He laughs and kisses your neck, dropping the bread on the cutting board and linking his fingers over your stomach.
“Yeah. Look, Harry, I’m sorry for leaving you like that. It’s not… It wasn’t a nice thing to do, and I know that. You’re not in your right mind after you drink, and it’s not fair for me to go off on you like that in that condition. I didn’t mean to; it just sort of slipped out, I guess. I just can’t leave you like that, babe, it’ll kill me. I haven’t even told you what the ingredients are.”
“S’alright,” you say, and you grip his wrists and pull him closer, not quite rejoicing yet but enjoying the feeling of his body against yours for now. You’ll rejoice tomorrow if he’s still there right next to you when you wake up. And then you figure you should say something too, and this time, now with the alcohol’s hold deteriorating, you immediately find the right words. “I’m sorry, Dan. For everything.”
“Nah, let’s worry about that tomorrow,” he says, and he unhooks his fingers to reach for the bread once again. “Let’s just make your sandwich right now.”
“Sounds good to me,” you say with a chuckle, and you turn your head to kiss his forehead-the only part you can kiss in your current state, but he doesn’t mind and neither do you. And together, you work on that magical sandwich with the ability to mend wounds and fix troubles no matter how irreparable they may seem. But you suddenly realize it’s not the sandwich that does all those extraordinary things after all.
It’s the one who makes it.
Author: valquiris
Part: 1/1
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Judd/Jones
Genre: Angst
Summary: Harry realizes the value of Danny.
A/N: My first Junes, written as an attempt to remedy the lack of the pairing lately. Anyway, this piece was nagging me all last night, so I had to write it down before I forget. It's sort of a reflection of Another You In A Minute, but more intimate and more emotionally in-depth, and I hope you guys enjoy! :)
Disclaimer: I do not own McFly in any way.
You walk through the half-opened door and you stumble into the other side, catching the television set just in time before your knees gave out, and you stay in this position for some time, trying to readjust your vision and your balance. But you know that’s not going to happen anytime soon. Maybe a bit of rest and one of Danny’s late night sandwiches will get you back up in no time, but you also know that’s not going to happen any time soon.
Because through your fuzzy and disorientated vision, you see him sitting right across from you, blue eyes poring over your own pair, resting his inclined head on the knuckles of his interlaced hands. You know this look; it’s the same one he gives you whenever you came home with a bottle in one hand and half your brain cells missing.
Acting as though you haven’t seen him yet, you hiccup softly and gently set the bottle behind the television set (your not-so-hiding place for all your booze and God knows what else), cringing when the bottom of it clinked as it made contact with the polished floor. You turn your head slightly over to him to see if he’d heard, but his lingering gaze meets your eyes again, and you pick yourself up, using the top of the telly as a crutch.
“’Ello, Dan,” you say with a broad grin, hoping to ease the tension between you two with a bit of light conversation, but the look in his eyes tells you it’s no good. You’ve fucked up again, Harry, and you’re going to get a talking-to no matter how much you wanted to go to bed and rest the buzz off instead. That’s Danny’s way and you’ve no choice but to follow it.
“Don’t give me that,” Danny snaps, not yet angry but nowhere near amused either. You’re still holding on to the telly, and you try your best not to topple over and break it. It’s your fifth set, for fuck’s sake, and you’ve just bought it last week.
“What’s-what’s wrong, Dan?” you ask, pretending your innocence with a slight frown and crease of the eyebrows. The only thing you can do really-or know how to do during one of these times, because sometimes the look works for the most part, and he usually forgets everything and you cuddle in bed together even before you got your shoes off.
But he just stares with narrow eyes, and you know immediately it’s not going to work this time.
“Harry, it’s the third time this week,” Danny says, visibly flustered but not giving you that huffing expression that usually comes when people are talking in that way, and you sort of thank him for that because it doesn’t make you feel like an arsehole.
Not yet, anyway.
“Can you let up for a bit? I mean, I know you’re allowed your indulgences every now and then, but you can’t do it every two days. It’s mental, really, when you think about it.”
Something inside you snaps at those words, though you really don’t know what. Your head’s too fuzzy to even try to find what it is exactly, so you don’t try. You just look at him with this incredulous face as if he’d just damned you and your entire family to Hell.
“Mental?” you repeat with a slight laugh of disbelief because you really don’t know where he’s coming from.
He nods in agreement, though there’s a look in his eyes that’s not foreign to you. It’s the look of fear, and you’re conscious of the fact that you’re causing that fear. A voice inside your head tells you to stop (you’ve had too many arguments over stupid little things, and this is one of those things), but it’s immediately drowned out by this other voice, saying who exactly is Danny to tell you what’s crazy or not, that it’s your right to party however you want whenever you want; he’s not your Mum.
“Yeah, it is,” Danny agrees, and he stands up. “So please, for my sake.”
What does he know? The voice says again, and you shake your head to rid the thought away. But Danny stops and he looks at you with them narrowed eyes again, and at once you know what you’ve done wrong.
“No?” Danny asks, taking a step back, offended, and you grope in your mind for something to say, make him think he’s taking the gesture the wrong way, but the words wouldn’t come, and you only stare at him in silence. As though invisible hands are grabbing it, you shake your head again.
And he looks more offended than ever, crossing his arms now over his chest and shaking his own head.
“Alright, then, let me get this straight,” he says firmly, and you note the metallic tint in his voice, that sharpness that you don’t like. “I ask you, as nice and as straightforward as I can, to let up your partying for a bit so that you don’t come home every two fucking days, drunk as fuck like your brain’s been cut in half and fed to the dogs, and you say no.”
You open your mouth to retort, that he’s taking everything out of proportion-or say anything at the least, but it’s like your jaws are glued shut, your tongue tied to the roof of your mouth, and you can’t say anything. Fucking booze making you stand there like a stupid lamppost while your relationship whittles away right before your eyes.
He continues.
“You refuse to grant me this one thing-this one, little thing-because you’d rather prefer your alcohol and your parties and your friends than me.”
You suddenly find your voice, and you’re quite grateful that you can put in your own side of the story now, but to your horror-and his-this is what comes out:
“What’re you so-so mad about, Dan? You’re being such a prick about-about this; it’s not even that big a deal.”
His eyes shoot open and so do yours, and you try to take your words back, but the realization of what you’ve just said tightens the bolts around your jaws once again, and all you can do is clench them.
“I’m being a prick?” Danny repeats loudly, way past the disbelief phase and into full-blown frustration. “If anyone’s being a fucking prick, it’s you! I asked you this one thing and you can’t even do that! I’m your boyfriend, for fuck’s sake, and you have no idea how much it hurts me to see you waste your life in that fucking booze and come home and not even give me the slightest hint that you know that I’m here waiting my arse off for you to come back!”
“Dan-” you say, but you’re cut off immediately like a slap on the face. It might as well have been one; the blow felt just the same.
“And you ask me what I’m so mad about! I’m mad at you, Harry! I’m fucking mad at you! I do everything for you! I take care of you when you’re sick! I make you your fucking sandwiches when you’re not feeling good! I wait for you and get you to bed when you’re like this! And what do I get? I get called a fucking prick when I’m out here basically slaving to everything you ask!”
He angrily wipes the tears with his forearm and you feel guilty. More than guilty, because you feel as though you’ve just stabbed him a hundred times. You want to cry with him but you can’t; the alcohol blocked your ability to create tears, and suddenly, you realize that he’s right.
You are wasting your life with booze because Danny is your life, and you’re wasting all the time you have together, taking them for granted because you know he’ll always be there no matter what. But in one fell swoop, that’s all changed, and you know he’s not going to be there for you anymore.
“Danny-”
“No,” he interjects coldly, a slight cracking to his voice, though not as loudly as before. It’s more controlled now, defying the tears rolling down his cheeks and creating an image that lets you know you’ve broken him to pieces. “I’m tired of it, Harry, I really am. I don’t deserve this. I-I’m…”
He breathes a shaky sigh and plunges his hands in his pockets. He looks at you with glassy eyes and you look at him with your cloudy ones.
“We’re done, Harry. We’re done.”
“No...” you whisper, and you know he heard it because he’s shaking his head in disagreement.
Without a word, he shuffles past you and drags his feet outside, leaving the door open, letting all the cold night air in. You’re left in the room alone, still clinging to the television, and you don’t know what to do.
You can always break things; that’s the sort of thing someone in your situation might do, but, really, what will it do? It won’t bring him back, and you’ll lose your furniture in the process. You can always drown yourself in alcohol until you’ve forgotten about the whole thing; that’s also what one might do when subjected to this problem, but will that be any better? It’s what got you in this situation in the first place, and you’ll feel even more terrible once you wake up the next day. What can you do?
Like a light bulb, a thought erupts in your head, and you disentangle yourself from the telly. You make your way stumbling into the kitchen, because you remember that Danny’s sandwiches always makes everything better, fixes things no matter how much they’re damaged. Maybe with one of them, you’ll hurt less, and you know when the spell of the alcohol ends, you’ll suffer the entire blow in one draconian strike.
So you rest your hands on the counter and you try to look for the ingredients. What does he use? You know there’s bread involved, to keep all the things inside. But what else? Does he use cheese? Does he use ham or chicken or turkey? Does he use lettuce or tomatoes or both? Ketchup or mustard or both?
You can’t remember, and you slump over the counter and bury your face in your hands. Not recollecting, but kicking yourself for letting him go just like that. You’re nothing without him; he’s what keeps you stable, what keeps you sane, what gets you through everyday by just seeing his face or his smile.
You try to cry, because you need the relief more than ever, but you can’t. It’s like your body’s closed down on you, and you’ve lost the key to open it back up. All you can do now is slam the side of your fist on the counter in frustration while a groan escapes your lips, and you’re even more determined now to make that fucking sandwich. You need to.
“What does he-what does he use…?” you ask yourself under your breath, tapping your fingers on the cold tiles and looking at the doors of the cabinets lining the kitchen. Drawing a complete blank, you sigh and reach over for the loaf of bread sitting to your left.
“I’ll start with these, I guess,” you say to yourself as you look at the individual slices, running them through your fingers to determine which one you want to use. Danny always uses the softest ones, so you look for the softest ones. Running through them a second time, you fail still, and you drop them in the basket, hopelessness coating every fiber of your body.
He’s gone. You can’t believe it, but he’s gone, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You can mope around and try to pretend to forget about him, but the truth is, you can’t. He’s Danny, and nothing or no one will ever replace him. No one will have as much drive and patience as he does, and you’re a fucking idiot for letting him slip from your fingertips with something as insignificant as the denial of a simple request.
You take a deep breath and reach over to grab the slices again, determined to make that sandwich as if your life depends on it, but another set of hands beats you to them, just under yours. Freckled and tan underneath, with the same watch that you gave Danny for your two-year anniversary. You turn your head and, with your eyes widening, you see him.
You see Danny; standing behind you, head resting on your shoulder and hands encompassing your waist to reach for the basket.
“It’s always in the center of the slices,” he says with a smile, his breath ticking your ears and your neck, and you can’t help but smile with him. “That’s where the softest ones are.”
You’re dumbstruck, and you want to ask him so many things; why he came back, why he does all these things for you, why he chose you out of everyone in the world, why you’re so lucky. But you settle with this one simple thing.
“Really?”
He laughs and kisses your neck, dropping the bread on the cutting board and linking his fingers over your stomach.
“Yeah. Look, Harry, I’m sorry for leaving you like that. It’s not… It wasn’t a nice thing to do, and I know that. You’re not in your right mind after you drink, and it’s not fair for me to go off on you like that in that condition. I didn’t mean to; it just sort of slipped out, I guess. I just can’t leave you like that, babe, it’ll kill me. I haven’t even told you what the ingredients are.”
“S’alright,” you say, and you grip his wrists and pull him closer, not quite rejoicing yet but enjoying the feeling of his body against yours for now. You’ll rejoice tomorrow if he’s still there right next to you when you wake up. And then you figure you should say something too, and this time, now with the alcohol’s hold deteriorating, you immediately find the right words. “I’m sorry, Dan. For everything.”
“Nah, let’s worry about that tomorrow,” he says, and he unhooks his fingers to reach for the bread once again. “Let’s just make your sandwich right now.”
“Sounds good to me,” you say with a chuckle, and you turn your head to kiss his forehead-the only part you can kiss in your current state, but he doesn’t mind and neither do you. And together, you work on that magical sandwich with the ability to mend wounds and fix troubles no matter how irreparable they may seem. But you suddenly realize it’s not the sandwich that does all those extraordinary things after all.
It’s the one who makes it.