Ablaze - Pudd & Flones - chapter 1, part 2
Danny’s cradling Tom in his arms and walking slightly ahead of him back into the small back streets of what used to be a sea town and is now nothing more than sandy rumble and Harry can feel Danny’s angry glares as he looks over his shoulder, but Harry’s only looking down at Dougie as he walks. He follows Danny’s lead with the help of his hearing and doesn’t mind, doesn’t dare to take his eyes off Dougie’s still face. Bushes, and trees, overgrown greens… they climb high and low, carrying their best friends all the way, before they fall into the back of the van crushing the two blondes underneath them, trying to catch their breaths.
“He would have died.” Harry breathes out loud this time, his way of apologizing, and Danny doesn’t say anything for what Harry’s sure is at least an hour… or maybe just a minute - time is a fleeting thing these days, manipulative even.
“No, but it would have taken too long to talk him out of that trance… I know why- I just…” Danny sighs using his shirt sleeve to dry the blood from Tom’s nose, “you could have warned me. Don’t just kick away at him, please? If anything that can kill him too!”
Harry looks at him. He’d never kick hard enough, he’d never do anything to hurt his friend for real, it just ends up that way sometimes because Tom’s weakened himself already from the start but he doesn’t say anything. He knows that Tom will be fine… he always is, but Danny, maybe even more so than himself doesn’t like the thought of that day when it will all have been pushed that little bit too far. Harry doesn’t say that either. None of them needs to hear it anyway - it’s always looming over them.
“I could go back…” Harry starts but Danny shakes his head. “Really, I could- I do trust you and Tom with Dougie, hell I trust Dougie with himself… he’s a big boy these days, I just… someone should go back for what we came for! I’m sure there’s food to steal somewhere in that little town.”
Danny rolls Tom over and pulls a ragged blanket over him before lying down next to his fellow guitarist and Harry’s fingers are twitching, he wants to reach over and unbutton Tom’s shirt, loosen his black tie a bit to let him breathe better, he wants water to clean the blood off his face and get him to drink something - but he knows Danny’s not bothering, not because he doesn’t care, but because there is no way. There is no clean water, not enough at least.
“You wanted to come back here, now we’re here…” Danny mutters flatly and Harry knows not to take his dull tone personally. It’s not about what he’s said or done. Danny’s just worried about Tom and angry because it could have been prevented. Not by them so much as by Tom himself. For being the smart one in the group he sure is stupid, Harry thinks and he sinks down into the muddy grass beneath his feet. One hand is lazily resting up inside the back of the van still, his fingertips tingling dangerously with lack of oxygenated blood but he doesn’t care. His other hand tugs absentmindedly at brown tufts of grass… never green like it used to be, the sun has been closed out from their world for too long and the acid rain storms wears and tears at the fragile straws. Looking up naked tree crowns reach across the dark grey sky like long boney legs of a million spiders and Harry feels himself twitch and hitch feeling locked in and caged up. He’s too angry to be kept in a cage, always have been and there was a time when he used to jump up and with a roar of determination look at the others and decide that they were to break out, escape… not give up so damn easily… but he can’t remember when that was anymore, he can’t remember how to gather that hope. He knows they’re still working towards something though. They wouldn’t be alive otherwise, and himself possibly the very least - though ironically enough the worst scar his body carried, the one at the side of his head, Tom had told him, he’d had since he was little, since before everything went wrong.
Small pebbles are digging into his back, and he’s glad. This way he won’t fall asleep. He doesn’t like to sleep when they’re not moving. When Tom’s driving and Danny’s grumbling like a lit up stack of explosives next to him muttering with pent up frustrations and what Harry knows, recognizes even is the need to punch a hole in something, then he can feel himself doze off in the murky back of the van.
A gasp gets caught in his throat suddenly, but his eyes warm up and the icy glint melts into a glowing warm blue as his gaze shifts upwards, his body recognizing the hand playing with his fingers before his mind does. Dougie lies on his stomach, smiling down at him, his eyes tired but wrinkled with his grin and Harry can see him suppress a giggle at the sight of the transformation in Harry’s eyes. The young bassist doesn’t always know what exactly Harry is to him… or more like what he is to Harry but the effect he can have on Harry’s pupils without the drummer being able to control it at all thrills Dougie as much as it entertains him to Harry’s dismay. The drummer himself doesn’t mostly mind at all… except when Dougie does it to tease him and point out an area he’s not in control of.
Their fingers twist and entwine, while they both lie in silence the rumble of thunder rolling across the sky somewhere in the distance and Danny’s even deep breaths as he sleeps melting into the background like another grey cloud. Dougie’s thin fingers of his free hand, the one not brushing small patterns on Harry’s rough palm, balance a large white cup and he takes a sip from it, swallowing the warm and somewhat mucky water before dangling the cup down towards Harry who takes it from him, more for the sake of not having to watch Dougie drop it so that it shatters than himself being thirsty - because he’s always thirsty - but under Dougie’s sleepy gaze he lets the water moist his lips and tongue anyway.
“So, are we going back or what?” Dougie says suddenly and Harry looks at him through dark eyelashes thinking that he should have known.
“Back where?” Harry tries, knowing exactly where and Dougie knows Harry’s just being difficult and ignores his question.
“We disrupted things pretty badly for them. I bet that if we go back we can bring them down. The world needs us to Harry. We can’t just ignore how close we’ve been to ending this!”
Harry doesn’t move, he fights to keep anger and urgency out of his voice… he likes it when Dougie talks and remembers that once the blonde had been quite loud and talkative around him. These days the youngest of them is often too hungry or tired to share what’s going through his mind and Harry cherishes times when he does share, and besides, it’s always better to be in on Dougie’s plans of action as opposed to waking up in the morning to find him gone.
“We didn’t disrupt a thing, what happened was that we were nearly captured. We were badly outnumbered and almost played straight into their hands, you were seconds away from spending the night in their underground dungeons Pugsley.”
Dougie looks down at his and Harry’s entwined hands at the mention of the nickname he doesn’t get to hear as often anymore. He used to tell Harry to stop calling him that but now he misses it… it returns when Harry’s emotional - only, Dougie thinks, never emotional in the right way anymore. Always angry or stressed, never love soaked and childishly needy the way he used to be.
“And besides,” Harry pushes, and he knows it too, “you were in shock, clinging to Tom like a baby as we got back… and now you want to put yourself through all that again, what’s gotten into you?”
Dougie looks almost shy suddenly and Harry looks at him expectantly.
“I… I had a dream about my mum,” Dougie grasps Harry’s hand harder with his words and just as Harry’s about to jump in he rushes on, to continue, to explain, “we have to try to put things right Harry!”
“Your mum?” Harry muses slowly, not moving from his position in the grass, his jaw is clenched tight as he realizes where this all is coming from. He closes his eyes momentarily and the mental picture, the memory of Dougie snuggled up to Tom’s chest earlier on the ground comes back to him, dances on his retina. “Fucking hell,” Harry whispers up to him, “Tom’s heart is full of shit Dougie!”
“It’s not!” Dougie looks away, out into the grey darkness, out among the naked blackened trees. “And I can’t help it okay… I can’t help but listening to it. It tells the most amazing stories!”
“It tells the same fairytales as he does! It’s his imagination you’re listening to, just like when he speaks.” Harry could go on, he could continue and lecture the younger man about how he should have asked Tom first, and how he’s invading Tom’s privacy listening to his heart like that but he can sense Dougie doesn’t need him to.
Dougie tears his hand from his suddenly, jerking backwards, crawling deeper into the van, away from Harry.
“My mother is beautiful!” He defiantly hurls at Harry and the drummer closes his eyes as his hand is left cold and abandoned, he doesn’t have the heart to say anything against that, what good would it do them? “We’re going back!” Dougie says, his voice scratchy and Harry can hear he’s getting tired again and only nods, kicking out on the ground, gravel and sand crunching under his feet.
“Yes…” he murmurs up into the spider web above after he’s sure Dougie’s safe asleep again. “We’re going back.”
to be continued....