London Diaries: The Gift - Fletcher/Jones - Standalone
Title: London Diaries: The Gift
Author: russsel
Part: 1/1
Rating: PG
Pairing: Fletcher/Jones
Genre: AU
Summary: Tom learns how jealously and uncertainty can turn everything upside down when Danny returns from a long trip in Paris.
A/N: I’ve had this idea of making an anthology collection for a while now, and these ideas just came hurtling at me out of nowhere. And so the London Diaries was born. It’s going to be a collection of short stories, almost like a marathon of short films. They’re all going to be based in one place, London, with different stories. The characters are never the same with each new story. I don’t know why, but I just don’t want to put these as pure standalones. I want them to feel more special in a way. But that’s just me. :)
Disclaimer: I do not own McFly in any way.
Raindrops splatter on the window, and the tapping rhythm calms Tom Fletcher’s nerves to a more tolerable degree, though not completely. Anxiety fills his body as he paces up and down the sitting room, sometimes sitting down on the couch, sometimes moving over to the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee that he doesn’t really need but for the warmth it provides. Eventually, the warmth disappears, and he finds himself discarding the black liquid down the drain and pouring more to replace it.
When the clock hits 9:37, he’s already on his eighth mug.
Where is he? he thinks impatiently, tapping the mug in sync with the falling rain, half looking at the clock, half watching the door for any sign of Danny Jones’s emergence. He said he’d be here an hour ago.
Danny left for Paris to help his father with their business, and while he said that he’d be back a week later, not even he knew that it would take much longer than that to get everything sorted out.
“I’ll be home next week, Tom, I’m sorry,” Danny had told Tom over the phone, who wound the cord to tight around his hand, it threatened to snap in two, but Tom didn’t care. It wasn’t that he wouldn’t be seeing Danny until the following week, it was because he promised.
Now, Tom knew he shouldn’t hold Danny accountable for something that’s completely out of his control, but for some reason, Tom couldn’t not blame him. Maybe he shouldn’t have been making promises he couldn’t keep. It would have been better if Danny left, called him when he arrived to tell him it would take some time, because then Tom wouldn’t have been waiting like a fool in the sitting room as he is right now, unsure of what to do to pass the time, heart pounding with the raindrops, desperate to see any sign that he will arrive in any second.
Then, just as a streak of lightning tore across the dark skies, the phone rings.
Tom turns his head woodenly to the noisy device stuck against the wall, and he feels his stomach drop. Not again, he thinks hopelessly.
Sighing heavily, he drops the mug on the counter, picks up the phone, and whispers hoarsely, “Hello?”
If it’s Danny again telling him his arrival is yet again pushed back a week, he doesn’t know what he’ll do. He’s been waiting for three weeks already, and he doesn’t know how long he can go on without seeing him.
An ecstatic voice answers back. “Hey, Tom! Danny back yet?”
Tom gives a sigh of relief. Harry Judd.
“No, not yet. Been waiting for more than an hour already. I don’t know if anything’s happened.”
“Have you tried calling him?”
Tom shakes his head. “He didn’t bring his mobile with him.”
“Oh, well, maybe he’s just held up in traffic, or his flight was delayed or something. Don’t worry about it. I’m sure if anything bad’s happened, he’d have called pronto.”
Tom appreciates his consideration by making him feel better about the situation, but his anxiety’s already sparked, and the only thing that can fix it is seeing Danny walking through that door. “Yeah, I hope you’re right.”
Silence fills the room, and Tom knows it’s because Harry has run out of any more encouraging words. Not that he can blame him, Tom’s a piece of work whenever he’s all wound up. He exhales a laugh that doesn’t even convince himself.
“Well, just call me when he gets back, yeah?”
Tom smiles and runs his long fingers through his hair. “You got it. Bye, Harry.”
Harry laughs. “Bye. And keep that pretty little head up. He could be rounding the corner right as we speak.”
Tom grins widely and wraps the cord around a long, pale finger. “Alright. Give my best to Izzy.”
“Will do.”
And with that, Tom hears the droning dial tone, and for the first time since he began waiting for Danny, he feels a weight lift off his chest. Harry’s always had that ability to make him feel better no matter how bad the situation, and it’s this that makes him an invaluable friend.
Tom replaces the phone, picks up the mug, and strides over to the kitchen to place it in the sink without dropping any of its contents. He realizes that the warmth isn’t really doing anything for him; he might as well just grab a pair of gloves to get the same results.
He leaves and plops down on the couch. Out of nowhere, he begins counting, watching the second hand of the clock make its way across the white surface.
One… Two… Three… Four…
The rain drags on, if not getting stronger every minute, and he tries to collect his thoughts with a deep sigh. He adjusts himself on the couch.
Five… Six… Seven… Eight…
The bright lights of a car’s headlights tear through the watery windows and sweep through the entire room, and Tom almost gets up, heart beating fast, before he realizes the car has no intention of stopping, and sure enough, the lights disappear as the vehicle rounds a corner. He collapses back on the couch deflated and bitterly resumes his counting.
Nine… Ten… Eleven… Twelve…
Three cars pass his house in quick succession, and this time he doesn’t bother to sit up; he’s just going to get his hopes up again, and then more disappointment. He turns away from the window and resumes counting just as the third car, a yellow cab, speeds out of his view.
Thirteen… Fourteen… Fifteen… Sixteen…
This is getting me nowhere, he thinks sullenly, sliding over to rest his elbow on the armrest. He’s about ready to give up and retire in his bed. Maybe Danny’ll turn up tomorrow, and then he can explain what took him so long to get back. He better have a good reason…
He begins to push himself to his feet, but as he’s doing so, he hears the doorbell ring, and a shock runs down his spine. At first, he can’t bring himself to answer. He doesn’t know why, but he knows he should soon, because the person on the other side’s getting impatient.
The person’s ringing the doorbell for the fourth time when Tom finally decides to turn the locks and push open the door. When he does, he feels his breath caught in his throat, and his eyes find themselves staring at blue orbs underneath a mop of wet, curly, brown hair.
“Hey,” Danny Jones says, tightening his damp jacket around him, tapping his feet on the welcoming mat, flashing a great big smile. “You gonna let me in?”
“Maybe,” Tom banters, and without thinking, he wraps his arms around Danny’s neck and holds him close, ignoring the frigid wetness pressing itself into existence in the front of his shirt. He feels Danny’s large hands coming up to return the action a second later, and Tom brings both of them inside, away from the rain and into the warmth. Danny’s shivering tells him he needs it.
“Where were you?” Tom asks, unzipping Danny’s jacket and taking it off him.
“You wouldn’t believe the traffic,” Danny replies, giving Tom a kiss on the cheek, and he begins unbuttoning his shirt. Tom drapes the jacket on his arm and watches Danny with a smile.
“Well, you better get in the shower and warm up before you get a cold,” Tom advises. “I’ll go make dinner in the meantime.”
“That sounds lovely,” Danny grins, and the two men share a long kiss before Danny makes his way past Tom to the bathroom. Tom throws the jacket on the couch and makes his way to the kitchen.
“Did you miss me?” Danny asks, and Tom smiles and shifts his head on Danny’s chest, enjoying the warm smell wafting through his clothes. Danny and soap, his favorite scent.
“Only a little bit,” Tom jokes, and, looking up, he plants a kiss on Danny’s jaw.
They don’t speak for a while, the only sounds in the room their uneven breathing and the rain, as consistent as it has been for the past three hours, pelting the windows. Tom’s missed this, just laying on Danny’s chest, Danny’s freckled fingers drawing geometric shapes on his stomach, feeling the vibration of his laughs on the back of his head, making him laugh a second later.
A few minutes later, Danny yawns, and it’s then that Tom realizes that Danny must have had a tough day today, and he inwardly punishes himself for blaming him in the first place.
“Go to sleep,” Tom tells Danny, who only laughs and rubs Tom stomach through the fabric of his shirt.
“Alright,” Danny says in mid-yawn, and he holds Tom close as his other arm reaches for the lamp switch on the bedside table. He flicks the light off, and Tom snuggles further in, sleeping the farthest thing in his mind.
He fakes a yawn just to put Danny at ease.
All night long, Tom’s had his eyes on the big paper bag sitting on the bureau across from them, and in his mind, he’s already gone through fifty possibilities of what might lie inside. At first, he discards the thought of peeking inside, but the temptation is just too strong for him to resist, and once he’s completely sure Danny’s asleep (he usually knows when Danny’s snores begin to get louder and deeper, like it is at the moment), he disentangles himself from his arm and lightly jumps to his feet.
He tiptoes across the room and makes for the bureau, a tingling sensation tickling his fingers.
He nears the paper bag.
He stretches out a hand, pinches the edge facing him and slowly pulls it down, and in the moonlight, he doesn’t hesitate to peer inside.
It’s something ceramic, that he’s sure of, but that’s all he can make out in the near-total darkness.
He turns his head to look at Danny over his shoulder, making sure he’s still asleep, and he goes back to the bag, hands itching to know whatever it is.
Not taking a moment to breathe, he plunges his arms deep inside, grabs the cold object with both hands, and pulls it out.
Tom’s eyes glaze over a well crafted vase glimmering slightly in what light spilled from the cloud-covered moon through the windows, and he feels butterflies exploding in his stomach.
Danny had gotten him a present from Paris.
He turns around and raises the ceramic up for closer inspection. It’s full of ornate flowers that bulged out, making it easier to get a better grip without the risk of dropping it, and as he smells the inside, he gets a whiff of the calming scent of flowers.
He grins.
Turning it every which way to look for a card or something taped on the surface, he finally sees an inscription at the bottom of the vase, readable even in the minimal light. It’s written in French, but in his years of studying the language, it’s easy for him to decipher the engraving.
As he reads, he’s expecting to read his name in bright, gold letters, but when he’s done, he feels a pang on his heart, as though a gun has just went off.
Slowly and carefully, he reads it again.
To my beloved Francesca Bosconi Minuet. May your beauty forever render every flower you encounter to shame.
Tom’s heart begins to race, and it’s all he can do not to drop the vase in devastation. Who’s this Francesca?
He turns halfway to Danny, who shifts under the covers and continues his loud snoring.
Is he seeing someone else?
Tears stinging his eyes, Tom places the vase on the bureau next to the bag, slowly as not to wake Danny up, and slips out of the room without looking back.
Storming out of the house, Tom jams the key in the ignition of his car, and makes his way to Harry’s house.
The sound of a door slamming wakes Danny up, and he sits up immediately, a yawn overtaking his face and his arms. He rubs his eyes the next moment, turning his head left and right, not really looking at anything in particular, but he needs to do something to shake the sleepiness off.
It takes him a few seconds to realize Tom’s not next to him anymore.
“Tom?” Danny calls out in the darkness, broken only by the light that spilled from the half-opened door, and his eyes immediately settle on something gleaming on the bureau.
The vase.
He planned to give it to Tom tomorrow as a present from Paris. He’s even bought a gift-wrap and everything. Now the surprise is gone, and he doesn’t know if Tom received the clever message or not.
Tom’s smart enough to get it, isn’t he? he thinks desperately, getting out of bed and running out the door.
He spots his jacket on the couch and he grabs it, and he’s halfway done putting it on when he opens the door to the outside. A feeling of dread washes over him at the sight of the empty driveway.
Tom’s run away.
“Are you sure you weren’t hallucinating?” Harry says tiredly as Izzy settles beside him on the couch with a mug of freshly made coffee. He was having a pretty good dream before Tom decided to bang on their door as though he was being chased by murderers, and to be honest, he was half-tempted just to ignore him and try to go back to sleep.
Tom shakes his head and folds his arms over his chest, adamant that he’s sure of what he saw. Not his name but someone else’s.
“I’m sure of it, Harry,” Tom defends. “It said something like, ‘To my beloved Francesca… something… Minuet. May your beauty… something… render… something something… to shame’.”
“Maybe it’s an antique?” Harry ponders, yawning before drowning himself with the coffee. Izzy places her head on his shoulder and snakes an arm around one of his. “Did you ask him about it?”
Tom shakes his head once again. “No, Harry, I was distraught! Imagine if you saw Izzy carrying something that said ‘To my beloved’ and it’s not your name!”
“Tom, I think you’re overreacting. Blowing everything out of proportion. I’m sure there’s a reason, you’re just too impulsive to think everything over. That’s always been your problem.”
“Oh, really?” Tom asks irritably, turning his head to face out the rain-spattered windows.
“Think about it, is Danny really that poetic?” asks Harry skeptically, taking a large sip of the coffee. “I don’t think he even knows what ‘render’ means.”
Tom shrugs, not really knowing what to say as a counterargument. Danny’s not really the brightest person around, so for all he knew, Harry could be right.
“‘Poetic’, that’s it!” Izzy exclaims so suddenly, it nearly makes Harry drop his mug.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Harry snarls, placing the mug on the table in fear another outburst will make one huge mess, which is pretty hard to do because Izzy’s bouncing up and down in her seat in excitement.
“I knew I recognized that poem,” she says brightly, as though she had just won a quiz show.
Tom looks at her bemusedly, knitting his brows together. “Poem?”
Danny tears through the pavement in lightning speed, stomping as hard as he can to avoid slipping on the wet trap that can very well have him killed with the help of a passing car. He doesn’t care, though, all he cares about is reaching Tom.
Maybe he was wrong to buy that vase. Maybe the man had lied to him. “Everyone knows the story behind it,” he had said through the gaps in his aged teeth. Danny should have said “not everyone,” since he himself didn’t know, nor have heard of the names before in his life. But knowing Tom’s intellect, he assumed Tom would know at the least.
Well, he couldn’t be any more wrong, could he?
He can hardly see anything through the rain pelting his eyes every fraction of a second. He doesn’t even really know where he’s going; he’s only letting his feet take him, and right now, they’re taking him straight to Harry Judd’s house.
“What poem?” Tom asks, and Izzy smiles as she sits up more properly. Even Harry’s looking at her with a raised brow.
“The inscription on the vase,” Izzy tells Tom.
“How is that a poem?” Tom asks smartly. “It doesn’t even rhyme.”
“Well, not with the name part, it doesn’t. It’s part of a bigger poem.”
“And this concerns me because?”
“The author, Marcel Francois Minuet,” Izzy elaborates, and Tom leans his head in, interest suddenly piqued. “He was a poet in the seventeenth century, based in France. He dedicated an entire poem to his wife, a pretty lengthy one, I might add, after he was diagnosed with leukemia. His wife’s name was Francesca Bosconi, an Italian beauty back in her day. They were very much in love, and Francesca never remarried after her husband’s death. Now the next part’s where everything weaves in together.”
“Yeah?” Tom asks, having entirely no idea what she’s getting at. Izzy shoots him a sly look with a half-smirk, and Tom doesn’t know if he should be relieved or uncomfortable. Harry’s eyes look like they’re about to drift back to sleep, and his head’s starting to nod off. Izzy doesn't seem to notice and continues on.
“They had a son right before Marcel died, their only one. He was named after his grandfather and father respectively. Thomas Francois Minuet.”
“Wait, ‘Thomas’?” asks Tom, bewildered by the sudden idea pressing itself in the back of his head.
“Yep,” Izzy says, visibly amused. “Does the name ring a bell? I think it’s pretty clever, to be honest.”
Tom looks at her in disbelief, more at the new information than her expansive knowledge. “You mean to say the vase was meant for me after all?”
Danny huffs hoarsely when he arrives at Harry’s front porch, and he situates himself underneath the awning to escape the rain. Soaking wet to the bone, he takes a moment to get his breathing in order before rushing up to the door to ring the doorbell.
He presses the button twice in quick succession, certain that if Tom ran away anywhere, he would always end up in Harry’s house. He doesn’t bother to come up with an excuse if Tom’s not there; maybe Harry would help him search if he told him everything that’s happened.
A second later, the door swings open, and Danny jumps back to let the person on the other side get a better look at him.
“Dan?”
Danny looks up and buries his hands deep in his pockets, trying to prevent himself from shivering so much. He finds himself staring back at a tired-looking Harry.
“Harry, is Tom there?” Danny asks worriedly, turning his head slightly to the right to look past Harry inside the house for any sign of blond hair.
Harry yawns and lazily scratches his head. “This night’s just full of surprises, innit? He’s inside.”
“Tom?” someone asks from behind him, and Tom turns without hesitation to look at who it had been.
His heart swells when he sees Danny walking toward him with a large, exhausted grin.
“Danny!” Tom exclaims, and he jumps to his feet and rushes up to Danny with his arms outstretched, any and every bad thought disappearing, focusing his mind instead on, no matter how many troubles paved the way to never-ending conflicts and suspicions of disloyalty, how much he really loves him.
And in his arms, he knows just how much Danny loves him in return.
Author: russsel
Part: 1/1
Rating: PG
Pairing: Fletcher/Jones
Genre: AU
Summary: Tom learns how jealously and uncertainty can turn everything upside down when Danny returns from a long trip in Paris.
A/N: I’ve had this idea of making an anthology collection for a while now, and these ideas just came hurtling at me out of nowhere. And so the London Diaries was born. It’s going to be a collection of short stories, almost like a marathon of short films. They’re all going to be based in one place, London, with different stories. The characters are never the same with each new story. I don’t know why, but I just don’t want to put these as pure standalones. I want them to feel more special in a way. But that’s just me. :)
Disclaimer: I do not own McFly in any way.
Raindrops splatter on the window, and the tapping rhythm calms Tom Fletcher’s nerves to a more tolerable degree, though not completely. Anxiety fills his body as he paces up and down the sitting room, sometimes sitting down on the couch, sometimes moving over to the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee that he doesn’t really need but for the warmth it provides. Eventually, the warmth disappears, and he finds himself discarding the black liquid down the drain and pouring more to replace it.
When the clock hits 9:37, he’s already on his eighth mug.
Where is he? he thinks impatiently, tapping the mug in sync with the falling rain, half looking at the clock, half watching the door for any sign of Danny Jones’s emergence. He said he’d be here an hour ago.
Danny left for Paris to help his father with their business, and while he said that he’d be back a week later, not even he knew that it would take much longer than that to get everything sorted out.
“I’ll be home next week, Tom, I’m sorry,” Danny had told Tom over the phone, who wound the cord to tight around his hand, it threatened to snap in two, but Tom didn’t care. It wasn’t that he wouldn’t be seeing Danny until the following week, it was because he promised.
Now, Tom knew he shouldn’t hold Danny accountable for something that’s completely out of his control, but for some reason, Tom couldn’t not blame him. Maybe he shouldn’t have been making promises he couldn’t keep. It would have been better if Danny left, called him when he arrived to tell him it would take some time, because then Tom wouldn’t have been waiting like a fool in the sitting room as he is right now, unsure of what to do to pass the time, heart pounding with the raindrops, desperate to see any sign that he will arrive in any second.
Then, just as a streak of lightning tore across the dark skies, the phone rings.
Tom turns his head woodenly to the noisy device stuck against the wall, and he feels his stomach drop. Not again, he thinks hopelessly.
Sighing heavily, he drops the mug on the counter, picks up the phone, and whispers hoarsely, “Hello?”
If it’s Danny again telling him his arrival is yet again pushed back a week, he doesn’t know what he’ll do. He’s been waiting for three weeks already, and he doesn’t know how long he can go on without seeing him.
An ecstatic voice answers back. “Hey, Tom! Danny back yet?”
Tom gives a sigh of relief. Harry Judd.
“No, not yet. Been waiting for more than an hour already. I don’t know if anything’s happened.”
“Have you tried calling him?”
Tom shakes his head. “He didn’t bring his mobile with him.”
“Oh, well, maybe he’s just held up in traffic, or his flight was delayed or something. Don’t worry about it. I’m sure if anything bad’s happened, he’d have called pronto.”
Tom appreciates his consideration by making him feel better about the situation, but his anxiety’s already sparked, and the only thing that can fix it is seeing Danny walking through that door. “Yeah, I hope you’re right.”
Silence fills the room, and Tom knows it’s because Harry has run out of any more encouraging words. Not that he can blame him, Tom’s a piece of work whenever he’s all wound up. He exhales a laugh that doesn’t even convince himself.
“Well, just call me when he gets back, yeah?”
Tom smiles and runs his long fingers through his hair. “You got it. Bye, Harry.”
Harry laughs. “Bye. And keep that pretty little head up. He could be rounding the corner right as we speak.”
Tom grins widely and wraps the cord around a long, pale finger. “Alright. Give my best to Izzy.”
“Will do.”
And with that, Tom hears the droning dial tone, and for the first time since he began waiting for Danny, he feels a weight lift off his chest. Harry’s always had that ability to make him feel better no matter how bad the situation, and it’s this that makes him an invaluable friend.
Tom replaces the phone, picks up the mug, and strides over to the kitchen to place it in the sink without dropping any of its contents. He realizes that the warmth isn’t really doing anything for him; he might as well just grab a pair of gloves to get the same results.
He leaves and plops down on the couch. Out of nowhere, he begins counting, watching the second hand of the clock make its way across the white surface.
One… Two… Three… Four…
The rain drags on, if not getting stronger every minute, and he tries to collect his thoughts with a deep sigh. He adjusts himself on the couch.
Five… Six… Seven… Eight…
The bright lights of a car’s headlights tear through the watery windows and sweep through the entire room, and Tom almost gets up, heart beating fast, before he realizes the car has no intention of stopping, and sure enough, the lights disappear as the vehicle rounds a corner. He collapses back on the couch deflated and bitterly resumes his counting.
Nine… Ten… Eleven… Twelve…
Three cars pass his house in quick succession, and this time he doesn’t bother to sit up; he’s just going to get his hopes up again, and then more disappointment. He turns away from the window and resumes counting just as the third car, a yellow cab, speeds out of his view.
Thirteen… Fourteen… Fifteen… Sixteen…
This is getting me nowhere, he thinks sullenly, sliding over to rest his elbow on the armrest. He’s about ready to give up and retire in his bed. Maybe Danny’ll turn up tomorrow, and then he can explain what took him so long to get back. He better have a good reason…
He begins to push himself to his feet, but as he’s doing so, he hears the doorbell ring, and a shock runs down his spine. At first, he can’t bring himself to answer. He doesn’t know why, but he knows he should soon, because the person on the other side’s getting impatient.
The person’s ringing the doorbell for the fourth time when Tom finally decides to turn the locks and push open the door. When he does, he feels his breath caught in his throat, and his eyes find themselves staring at blue orbs underneath a mop of wet, curly, brown hair.
“Hey,” Danny Jones says, tightening his damp jacket around him, tapping his feet on the welcoming mat, flashing a great big smile. “You gonna let me in?”
“Maybe,” Tom banters, and without thinking, he wraps his arms around Danny’s neck and holds him close, ignoring the frigid wetness pressing itself into existence in the front of his shirt. He feels Danny’s large hands coming up to return the action a second later, and Tom brings both of them inside, away from the rain and into the warmth. Danny’s shivering tells him he needs it.
“Where were you?” Tom asks, unzipping Danny’s jacket and taking it off him.
“You wouldn’t believe the traffic,” Danny replies, giving Tom a kiss on the cheek, and he begins unbuttoning his shirt. Tom drapes the jacket on his arm and watches Danny with a smile.
“Well, you better get in the shower and warm up before you get a cold,” Tom advises. “I’ll go make dinner in the meantime.”
“That sounds lovely,” Danny grins, and the two men share a long kiss before Danny makes his way past Tom to the bathroom. Tom throws the jacket on the couch and makes his way to the kitchen.
“Did you miss me?” Danny asks, and Tom smiles and shifts his head on Danny’s chest, enjoying the warm smell wafting through his clothes. Danny and soap, his favorite scent.
“Only a little bit,” Tom jokes, and, looking up, he plants a kiss on Danny’s jaw.
They don’t speak for a while, the only sounds in the room their uneven breathing and the rain, as consistent as it has been for the past three hours, pelting the windows. Tom’s missed this, just laying on Danny’s chest, Danny’s freckled fingers drawing geometric shapes on his stomach, feeling the vibration of his laughs on the back of his head, making him laugh a second later.
A few minutes later, Danny yawns, and it’s then that Tom realizes that Danny must have had a tough day today, and he inwardly punishes himself for blaming him in the first place.
“Go to sleep,” Tom tells Danny, who only laughs and rubs Tom stomach through the fabric of his shirt.
“Alright,” Danny says in mid-yawn, and he holds Tom close as his other arm reaches for the lamp switch on the bedside table. He flicks the light off, and Tom snuggles further in, sleeping the farthest thing in his mind.
He fakes a yawn just to put Danny at ease.
All night long, Tom’s had his eyes on the big paper bag sitting on the bureau across from them, and in his mind, he’s already gone through fifty possibilities of what might lie inside. At first, he discards the thought of peeking inside, but the temptation is just too strong for him to resist, and once he’s completely sure Danny’s asleep (he usually knows when Danny’s snores begin to get louder and deeper, like it is at the moment), he disentangles himself from his arm and lightly jumps to his feet.
He tiptoes across the room and makes for the bureau, a tingling sensation tickling his fingers.
He nears the paper bag.
He stretches out a hand, pinches the edge facing him and slowly pulls it down, and in the moonlight, he doesn’t hesitate to peer inside.
It’s something ceramic, that he’s sure of, but that’s all he can make out in the near-total darkness.
He turns his head to look at Danny over his shoulder, making sure he’s still asleep, and he goes back to the bag, hands itching to know whatever it is.
Not taking a moment to breathe, he plunges his arms deep inside, grabs the cold object with both hands, and pulls it out.
Tom’s eyes glaze over a well crafted vase glimmering slightly in what light spilled from the cloud-covered moon through the windows, and he feels butterflies exploding in his stomach.
Danny had gotten him a present from Paris.
He turns around and raises the ceramic up for closer inspection. It’s full of ornate flowers that bulged out, making it easier to get a better grip without the risk of dropping it, and as he smells the inside, he gets a whiff of the calming scent of flowers.
He grins.
Turning it every which way to look for a card or something taped on the surface, he finally sees an inscription at the bottom of the vase, readable even in the minimal light. It’s written in French, but in his years of studying the language, it’s easy for him to decipher the engraving.
As he reads, he’s expecting to read his name in bright, gold letters, but when he’s done, he feels a pang on his heart, as though a gun has just went off.
Slowly and carefully, he reads it again.
To my beloved Francesca Bosconi Minuet. May your beauty forever render every flower you encounter to shame.
Tom’s heart begins to race, and it’s all he can do not to drop the vase in devastation. Who’s this Francesca?
He turns halfway to Danny, who shifts under the covers and continues his loud snoring.
Is he seeing someone else?
Tears stinging his eyes, Tom places the vase on the bureau next to the bag, slowly as not to wake Danny up, and slips out of the room without looking back.
Storming out of the house, Tom jams the key in the ignition of his car, and makes his way to Harry’s house.
The sound of a door slamming wakes Danny up, and he sits up immediately, a yawn overtaking his face and his arms. He rubs his eyes the next moment, turning his head left and right, not really looking at anything in particular, but he needs to do something to shake the sleepiness off.
It takes him a few seconds to realize Tom’s not next to him anymore.
“Tom?” Danny calls out in the darkness, broken only by the light that spilled from the half-opened door, and his eyes immediately settle on something gleaming on the bureau.
The vase.
He planned to give it to Tom tomorrow as a present from Paris. He’s even bought a gift-wrap and everything. Now the surprise is gone, and he doesn’t know if Tom received the clever message or not.
Tom’s smart enough to get it, isn’t he? he thinks desperately, getting out of bed and running out the door.
He spots his jacket on the couch and he grabs it, and he’s halfway done putting it on when he opens the door to the outside. A feeling of dread washes over him at the sight of the empty driveway.
Tom’s run away.
“Are you sure you weren’t hallucinating?” Harry says tiredly as Izzy settles beside him on the couch with a mug of freshly made coffee. He was having a pretty good dream before Tom decided to bang on their door as though he was being chased by murderers, and to be honest, he was half-tempted just to ignore him and try to go back to sleep.
Tom shakes his head and folds his arms over his chest, adamant that he’s sure of what he saw. Not his name but someone else’s.
“I’m sure of it, Harry,” Tom defends. “It said something like, ‘To my beloved Francesca… something… Minuet. May your beauty… something… render… something something… to shame’.”
“Maybe it’s an antique?” Harry ponders, yawning before drowning himself with the coffee. Izzy places her head on his shoulder and snakes an arm around one of his. “Did you ask him about it?”
Tom shakes his head once again. “No, Harry, I was distraught! Imagine if you saw Izzy carrying something that said ‘To my beloved’ and it’s not your name!”
“Tom, I think you’re overreacting. Blowing everything out of proportion. I’m sure there’s a reason, you’re just too impulsive to think everything over. That’s always been your problem.”
“Oh, really?” Tom asks irritably, turning his head to face out the rain-spattered windows.
“Think about it, is Danny really that poetic?” asks Harry skeptically, taking a large sip of the coffee. “I don’t think he even knows what ‘render’ means.”
Tom shrugs, not really knowing what to say as a counterargument. Danny’s not really the brightest person around, so for all he knew, Harry could be right.
“‘Poetic’, that’s it!” Izzy exclaims so suddenly, it nearly makes Harry drop his mug.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Harry snarls, placing the mug on the table in fear another outburst will make one huge mess, which is pretty hard to do because Izzy’s bouncing up and down in her seat in excitement.
“I knew I recognized that poem,” she says brightly, as though she had just won a quiz show.
Tom looks at her bemusedly, knitting his brows together. “Poem?”
Danny tears through the pavement in lightning speed, stomping as hard as he can to avoid slipping on the wet trap that can very well have him killed with the help of a passing car. He doesn’t care, though, all he cares about is reaching Tom.
Maybe he was wrong to buy that vase. Maybe the man had lied to him. “Everyone knows the story behind it,” he had said through the gaps in his aged teeth. Danny should have said “not everyone,” since he himself didn’t know, nor have heard of the names before in his life. But knowing Tom’s intellect, he assumed Tom would know at the least.
Well, he couldn’t be any more wrong, could he?
He can hardly see anything through the rain pelting his eyes every fraction of a second. He doesn’t even really know where he’s going; he’s only letting his feet take him, and right now, they’re taking him straight to Harry Judd’s house.
“What poem?” Tom asks, and Izzy smiles as she sits up more properly. Even Harry’s looking at her with a raised brow.
“The inscription on the vase,” Izzy tells Tom.
“How is that a poem?” Tom asks smartly. “It doesn’t even rhyme.”
“Well, not with the name part, it doesn’t. It’s part of a bigger poem.”
“And this concerns me because?”
“The author, Marcel Francois Minuet,” Izzy elaborates, and Tom leans his head in, interest suddenly piqued. “He was a poet in the seventeenth century, based in France. He dedicated an entire poem to his wife, a pretty lengthy one, I might add, after he was diagnosed with leukemia. His wife’s name was Francesca Bosconi, an Italian beauty back in her day. They were very much in love, and Francesca never remarried after her husband’s death. Now the next part’s where everything weaves in together.”
“Yeah?” Tom asks, having entirely no idea what she’s getting at. Izzy shoots him a sly look with a half-smirk, and Tom doesn’t know if he should be relieved or uncomfortable. Harry’s eyes look like they’re about to drift back to sleep, and his head’s starting to nod off. Izzy doesn't seem to notice and continues on.
“They had a son right before Marcel died, their only one. He was named after his grandfather and father respectively. Thomas Francois Minuet.”
“Wait, ‘Thomas’?” asks Tom, bewildered by the sudden idea pressing itself in the back of his head.
“Yep,” Izzy says, visibly amused. “Does the name ring a bell? I think it’s pretty clever, to be honest.”
Tom looks at her in disbelief, more at the new information than her expansive knowledge. “You mean to say the vase was meant for me after all?”
Danny huffs hoarsely when he arrives at Harry’s front porch, and he situates himself underneath the awning to escape the rain. Soaking wet to the bone, he takes a moment to get his breathing in order before rushing up to the door to ring the doorbell.
He presses the button twice in quick succession, certain that if Tom ran away anywhere, he would always end up in Harry’s house. He doesn’t bother to come up with an excuse if Tom’s not there; maybe Harry would help him search if he told him everything that’s happened.
A second later, the door swings open, and Danny jumps back to let the person on the other side get a better look at him.
“Dan?”
Danny looks up and buries his hands deep in his pockets, trying to prevent himself from shivering so much. He finds himself staring back at a tired-looking Harry.
“Harry, is Tom there?” Danny asks worriedly, turning his head slightly to the right to look past Harry inside the house for any sign of blond hair.
Harry yawns and lazily scratches his head. “This night’s just full of surprises, innit? He’s inside.”
“Tom?” someone asks from behind him, and Tom turns without hesitation to look at who it had been.
His heart swells when he sees Danny walking toward him with a large, exhausted grin.
“Danny!” Tom exclaims, and he jumps to his feet and rushes up to Danny with his arms outstretched, any and every bad thought disappearing, focusing his mind instead on, no matter how many troubles paved the way to never-ending conflicts and suspicions of disloyalty, how much he really loves him.
And in his arms, he knows just how much Danny loves him in return.