Ablaze - Pudd & Flones - chapter 2, part 1
Two.
Be careful what you wish for, lingered on Tom’s mind as he stretched to gather his Lost Boys closer to him. The dusty yellow daylight crept in through the creaks and cracks in the worn blinds of the back of the sandy van. His head was swimming and at first, when he couldn’t find Dougie, his heart galloped in his chest - whining and spluttering. Rubbing a hand over his own chest, carefully as to not wake up the northerner that lay snuggled up at his side, he blinked in the murky light as he realised what must have happened the night before - again. He flexed his toes and fingers carefully, as to test his newly gathered energy and fully acknowledge the muscles he’d drained completely a few hours before.
He hadn’t meant to but the urge to protect Dougie from the rest of the world had manipulated him and it’s easy to get carried away when everyone seems to be your enemy.
His heartbeat slowed down, to its proper rate this time, as he caught a glimpse of Dougie on the other side of himself, not on his right where his fingers tangled in Harry’s hair, like he’d expected. He pieced together that the two must have had a fight again and he returned to pulling them closer to him, all three of them.
If he concentrated he could recognize and tell all their breathing patterns apart. He’d fantasized about Peter Pan and magical creatures, heroes and witches for as long as he could remember and probably before that, he thinks, because even though he can remember more than the others, even Tom doubts the trace of reality in his soul. Every time he tells them a story, this Peter Pan loses another fraction of what’s been dipped in fairy dust and what hasn’t. After all, reality is hard to tell apart from nightmares and dreams these days as days and nights seem equally dark to Tom.
Some things are better forgotten anyway, Tom thinks, and he kisses Dougie’s dirty forehead remembering the day the younger man asked Tom if he too had a dad once, or if Tom had always been the one taking care of him. The answer had seemed too complicated suddenly, even though the question was simple enough and Tom had played with Dougie’s hair humming a song he thought his own dad had taught him once, until the bassist had fallen asleep with his fingers curled around Tom’s wrist.
It wasn’t until much later that he’d realised that the song had been written by himself and leaning over a rusty sink in an abandoned rumble of a house he’d thrown up until his throat burned. Had he imagined this dad person, someone with warm hands that could always lift, and save and fix… someone that sang you asleep at night and played guitar when it stormed to keep your mind off things? Maybe Dougie had been right and it had just been himself all along. A deep pain scraped at his bones as he with a cold sweat collapsed over the foul and vile sink, bile rising in his throat again and he suddenly felt abandoned, so terrifyingly alone.
You never had too much time to think about things like that though and Tom took a shaky breath of morning air, shaking the memory out of his head. He was still numb and warm from the events of the night before and probing his own shoulder with a long finger he winced, the skin dark and purple where he’d been grazed by the electric bullet of energy aimed at him. Unbuttoning his shirt slightly, thankful and relieved to see that Danny or Harry hadn’t done so already, he peered down at himself. He was beaten blue and black down past his collarbone and as far as he could see down his chest. It could have been so much worse though of course and Tom knows, as his pale hands are still glowing in a soft pink light, shimmering and glittering in the shadows, that he must have been close to finishing himself off last night. His heartbeat is still feeling a bit foreign to him and though he rarely remembers much of the last efforts he takes to when his powers drain his human body of energy he can sometimes capture fractions of seconds where he’s in his dozing state been conscious enough to feel his blood slow and still in his veins. He’s supposed to keep it from happening by controlling himself and his fear, by recognizing his own limits but he’d never been good at it.
By instinct his eyes fall shut and he moans silently as fingers suddenly brush over his forehead, playing with his fringe.
“Feeling okay?” Harry murmurs and as Tom opens his eyes and turns his head to look at the drummer he realizes that Harry’s been awake all this time. He doesn’t rush to button his shirt back up, there’s no need, Harry’s seen it all already and Tom nuzzles his forehead and temple deeper into Harry’s cool palm. Harry chuckles as the pink electric glow tickles his skin and Tom blushes and apologises under his breath. Harry shakes his head and it doesn’t matter… it really doesn’t.
“Looks like she got me worse than I thought,” Tom mutters to break the silence, that isn’t awkward, just long and sometimes he has a nagging feeling in his stomach that they don’t have time to waste for silence. Harry knows what Tom’s referring to, in fact it’s hard for him to draw his eyes from the evil black marks on Tom’s porcelain skin - which used to go golden in the sunshine, he knows, even though Dougie giggles and doesn’t believe him - but the bruises stare back at him with their gloomy shine.
“I think I might have helped a bit.” Harry says sheepishly and he’s stroking Tom’s ear now, his own body hoisted up on his elbow, Tom’s earlobe, soft and warm between his fingertips. His fingers are rough and probably not as gentle against Tom’s fair skin as he intends but Tom doesn’t protest and Harry knows he doesn’t mind.
“It’s okay Harry,” Tom whispers even though he doesn’t know what Harry means and Harry doesn’t offer an explanation. They’re both fine with leaving it at that.
Even as the two of them slip and slide across the wet stones by the shore moments later and Harry reaches to help Tom so he won’t fall, when a spell of dizziness hits him, the drummer doesn’t mention what exactly had happened the night before and Tom grabs his side wincing at the pain but lets Harry help him across. Leaning on each other slightly they hurry along the sandy dunes as the wind picks up around them. The clouds are hovering low over their heads, heavy with thunder suddenly and the yellow morning air has turned into a tense purple and grey eerie prickle of rain. Harry shudders in the cold but is happy he left his sweater with the sleeping Dougie before him and Tom sneaked out of the van.
“How did you and Danny manage to get me and Doug back? I can hardly carry myself across these fucking stones!” Tom gasped, his chest heaving with the effort of keeping himself up in the wind.
“We took the small streets down the back and then through the trees and down, it was dark then though. It’s too dangerous to do so now.”
Tom didn’t bother asking Harry how the hell he knew that, but grabbed hold of the material of Harry’s t-shirt instead as he dug his heels deep down into the sand and gravel under his feet.
“Hurry up Fletcher…” Harry called over his shoulder as the noise from the angry sky grew louder. The landscape changed around them as they got nearer to the town they’d been in the night before, blocks of what used to be walls and society littered along the side of a dusty road, covered in sand and dirt. A lamp post flickered, broken, in the distance and Tom hugged himself tightly as the dirty rain began to fall suddenly.
“Maybe we should go back?” Tom calls ahead to Harry, who’s now a few feet ahead of him, the drummer glancing into the dark openings in the walls that used to be windows before someone obviously smashed them all in.
“And leave without having eaten? Dougie wants to do this, and if I’m going to let him, if we’re going to have a chance at all we need to eat!”
“Do what?” Tom breathes as he’s caught up with Harry, and is now too investigating their surroundings.
“Go back to your newfound friend, and the water keepers.”
Tom looks up at Harry eyes muddy brown but warm. Swirls of confusion against deep golden syrup - like droplets of warm milk stirred into hot chocolate in the winter, Harry muses silently, but Tom can hear him as he looks him in the eye. He doesn’t say anything though, just cocks his head slightly and waits for Harry to continue - either silently or out loud, he doesn’t mind.
Harry settles at something in between and whispers, “we can do this Tom. Dougie’s right, we have to try to break them,” his eyes, and his mind weakly and shyly adding that he’s scared out of his mind. Tom nods slowly, he doesn’t question anything - though he knows he probably should considering this was apparently all Dougie’s idea and anything cooked up by Dougie usually got them all in trouble.
“We’re already knee deep in trouble Flumpy.” Harry called through the wind and rain suddenly, and Tom snapped out of it, looking up to find Harry further up the street. The sand at the ground swirls around Tom’s feet the rain gathering in long ribbons as it floods the ground. Tom pushes his fringe out of his eyes as it, wet and long, sticks to his forehead slightly and by the time he’s reached the top of the street Harry’s out of sight. The filthy rain smatters against rusty oil drums and a wrecked old car, lying upside down like a dead beetle in the mud. Tom tenses as foggy fumes fall over them, condensation thick like cotton but grey like ashes sneaking out from behind abandoned street corners and folding itself neatly and deceiving around their world.
“Harry?” Tom calls, his voice cracking slightly with worry. He twirls around, backing up on unsteady legs, gasping in surprise and fear as his back collides with a rough wall suddenly and he can feel the pores and cracks of the bricks dig into his back. Closing his eyes Tom can’t make out what is the wind ripping through the broken roofs and windows of the houses and what is the rain hammering against the ground. If he concentrates really hard he knows Harry’s okay, he’s not sure how he knows, but he does. He can feel Harry’s pulse, steady and strong - just like it should, in his fingertips. Hands sliding down the cold wall behind him for guidance, he lets his knees give out underneath him and he slips down on the ground with a whimper. He’d managed to lose one of them. He never lost one of them.
Part two.