This is the first story I have posted on here in a long time...I'd love to know what people think: D I know it's a Nathan Barely fic, but I hope that doesn't put people off...
Dan/Jones...Dan/OC...
I don't own this ; D
Thirteen Years Earlier...
It's four o'clock in the afternoon, and so far he has written a grand total of six words.
Six words.
But they aren't complete, in fact, in truth he has only actually managed to write three letters today, everything else has just been constant re-writes and revisions.
The panic grips him. It closes around his chest like the tightest of vices. He feels the beads of sweat form across his contorted brow.
He's lost it.
He tries to steady his nerves, which are already frayed almost to the point of insanity, by taking a deep drag from the cigarette that hangs limply from the corner of his mouth.
The back of his throat tingles and burns, and he feels the sliver of smoke roll across the course, slightly coated lining of his tongue. He holds his breath, staring at the flickering curser dancing in front of him. From this he envisages only two possible outcomes, either he will die, or he will write something.
In the end he gives up on both, and inhales with a gasp.
Apart from the low hum of his computer, the room is quite. It's the sort of quite that only exists on Friday afternoons, when the whole world seems trapped in a hermetically sealed bubble on the other side of the living room window.
The sun streams through the net curtains, irritating the back of his neck and causing pain to radiate across the front of his scull.
He's still too hung over the think about doing any real work, who is he trying to kid?
His small gaze shifts around the empty space, answering his own question.
The doorbell suddenly buzzes.
He stops trying to start, and stands up welcoming any distraction. At this point he'll even take a leaflet.
As he makes his way from the living room to the front door he realises that he hates this flat. He commits the thought silently to memory, and opens the door.
She is standing there.
She is standing there, in front of him, She is standing there on the cracked black and white titles, which make up the incline of his doorstep.
"Alright, Danny."
Everything around him seems to grind to a stuttering halt. Over her shoulder he notices a school boy on a BMX isfrozen mid-wheely.
He blinks, and the world floods back in on him.
"Dan."
She says his name again, but this time her smile is forced, stretched to tightly across her face to be natural.
Briefly he thinks about closing the door, that maybe he could just hide until She goes away. He wonders if he could do it, and along those lines he thinks about what might be her response.
He can't help but be curious as to why She is there, because the last time he checked they'd said everything that there had been left for them to say.
Maybe that was where his words had gone?
"Can I come in then?"
She asks, he can clearly hear the nervous note in her voice. He watches her as She tucks a stray fly-away strand of curly golden blonde hair behind her ear.
"Umm, yes, Kate, yes."
Kate, her name feels strange, and heavy in his mouth. It hasn't been that long since he's used it, since he's spoken to her, it could only have been about three or four months, but already it's stopped fitting.
Still Kate is better than a leaflet.
He steps aside, and she brushes neatly over the threshold.
Once she's inside, and the door is once again closed behind them he does his best impression of trying not to see her.
"You look, well."
He frowns at himself, at how much he suddenly sounds like his Mother. He's lying, because she doesn't really look well at all, she looks sort of faded, like a dead butterfly trapped on a windowsill. It's London, London washes people out, London has washed him out, it's given him premature crows feet, and heart palpitations.
Kate makes a noise of non-commitment.
"So, this is where you're living?"
Her tone of voice clearly betrays her feelings. And for the first time he hears her accent, he's never noticed it before, it makes him wince, because now he can hear his own.
He's just a boy from the provinces.
She can't glow here, nothing real or natural can glow here. The sunshine of a dozen patchwork fields plays over her features. Back in the countryside is where she belongs.
"Ummm, yeah, yes."
The next moment passes in a blur of complete confusion. He doesn't know why he does it, but the next thing he knows it that he is gripping her by the tops of her arms, and planting a kiss against the side of her mouth.
Kate doesn't move, she just stands there rigid.
He lets her go, and backs away.
"I'm sorry, I didn't..."
He shifts awkwardly from foot to foot. What he wants to say is that he has absolutely no idea of how to deal with this situation, he can't even identify if it is an actual situation. She's not screaming, or crying, or throwing herself at him.
So what is this?
"It's alright Dan, it's fine."
Kate reaches out, resting her small hand lightly across his frayed sleeve. He glances down at her, and she rewards him with a thin grin of reassurance.
"It's fine, honestly, you're allowed to touch me Dan. Jesus..."
She breaks off into a chuckle, her green eyes flashing. He remembers that look, how it use to pickle his skin with goosebumps.
"I know, but I,"
Kate never lets him finish any sentence, she doesn't start now.
"Daniel."
She suddenly adopts the tone of voice of a maiden Aunt.
A sputter of laughter escapes his throat.
"This really is a nice hallway? Who would have thought, that you'd end up living in such a nice hallway? After you moved down here, I sort of pictured you in more cardboard box based habitation."
Her left eyebrow quirks upwards slightly, it's an invitation, she wants to come all the way inside, she probably wants to sit on the sofa.
He pauses, this is an old game, and it won't be over until one of them gives in, and of course it will be him. He tries to lose with as much dignity that nature has afforded him. He pushes the living room door open, and he tries not to see that her eyes never leave his face.
He coughs, and ushers her inside the next small room, which serves as his living room, dining room, and kitchen.
It is like seeing it for the first time, all over again, that stark little room with its nicotine stained walls, and barest sticks of cheap furniture.
"Do you want a drink?"
He crosses the entire space in three paces, reaching the fridge he pulls out two cans of medium strength larger. Kate's wide eyes narrow slightly in the direction of the can that is meant for her.
"It's a bit early for me. But, I'd murder a tea if you're still offering."
He puts her can back in the fridge, and flips the switch on the kettle, dragging a chipped mug across the work surface.
He sees her outline perching on the arm of the sofa.
"What are you doing here?"
The question is addressed to the mug, and the tea bag sat inside.
Kate makes a humming noise, he can tell she's wrestling with a thought.
"When I was on the train, I was thinking about what I was going to say when you asked me that. The whole journey, I was thinking, and thinking. In the end I decided I was going to lie."
He's not really sure if she's grasped that concept properly.
"And the lie is?"
Kate giggles for no reason, unsettling his already jangled nerves.
"Oh, I'm seeing some friends from Uni, I was in the area and I thought I'd drop in."
The kettle reaches a screeching crescendo, coming to a boil.
"And the truth is?"
He hears her exhale, she sounds as if she is deflating.
"I came to see you."
He silently digests her answer, stirring it around with the tea.
It makes him sort of happy, the idea that Kate has come all that way just for him. He does still like her in his own way, as much as he can ever bring himself to like another human being. And they've got the added bonus of a long, complicated and involved relationship. She knows exactly how little to expect from him. Before he left for London, he asked her to come with him, she is the only person he could really ever imagine himself able to share a life with. He knows it's not the same for her, Kate's got options, she's just the right side of unconventional, and not a complete nutcase fuck-up like him.
"Right."
Kate turned his offer down, in hindsight he probably shouldn't have delivered it in a drunken grunt. Although deep down in the thing he uses instead of a functioning human heart he knows that the sticking point was London itself. Kate spent her three years of University in London, while he'd been stuck in the county of their birth.
He's certain that if he'd asked her to follow him anywhere else, even to the very end of the world, she would. Just not to London. And there is nowhere else in the world that he can possibly exist except London.
So, that's the bloody big Bluebottle in the Viks.
He hands Kate her scalding brew, and she accepts it with a teasing wink.
"Mmm, you always did make a nice cuppa."
His grip tightens around the chill of his larger can, and he decides that he should defiantly do some more speaking.
"I'm not going back."
He tries to keep the desperate tone from his voice. Still drinking, she nods quietly.
Now that his statement of defiance is safely out there, he feels secure enough to pull at the ring pull, he takes a long deep swig.
"I'm pregnant."
He chokes suddenly, the beer escaping from his mouth and nose, hitting Kate square in the face.
"NO!"
He coughs desperately, gasping for breath.
He feels as if his fledging life is suddenly crumpling around his ears like soggy cardboard.
"Have you done this to trap me?"
His paranoia has gotten the better of him. Kate's dripping face freezes.
"You absolute fucking bastard!"
A mixture of venom, and disbelief escape through tightly clenched teeth. She glares at him as she struggles with the woollen fabric of her oversized cardigan, shrugging it off her shoulders she rubs it roughly over her face.
"Well, have you?"
They've never had an argument, things have never been this serious between them before.
"Yes! Yes! I decided to get pregnant to trap you. I was so devastated when you said you were moving away, that I thought fuck, I know what I'll get myself all nice and up the duff, and then Dan will have to take that job on the local paper! I've even picked us out one of those 'new builds' on the estate behind the train station. Fuck!"
Kate's tirade ends with a strangled sob, her chin bobs and wobbles with the effort of trying not to cry.
"Fuck off, you selfish fucking twat, get some perspective!"
Perspective suddenly hits him between the eyes in the form of a cushion.
"Ow!"
He yelps wounded, as the edge of the zip connects with his forehead. He feels the sudden sting of heat from the broken skin.
For no other reason that he doesn't know what else to with his cumbersome body he flops down on the sofa, behind her. The upholstery surrounding him smells like stale nicotine, and damp. His head lolls limply against his chest.
"I hope you've lost an eye, you complete shit!"
He can tell from the tone of Kate's voice that she doesn't mean that.
"You can't be pregnant, we haven't..."
He swallows thickly, deciding to have another bash at absorbing the unfolding horror of the situation.
"...I haven't seen you in months, you can't be pregnant."
What he is really attempting to say in the most diplomatic of ways, and failing miserably at, is that it can't be his baby.
"No, you haven't seen me in three months, Dan! And I haven't slept with anyone else since then, so this baby is either yours, or we all best get ready for the second-fucking-coming!"
He stares at her back, her shoulders slightly hunched, she seems smaller somehow, even though he is closer to the ground than her sprawled out across the manky cushions.
"Do you want some money?"
He says without vetting a single word before they fly out of his mouth. A second to late he realises that if Kate agrees to take the twenty pound note he's been hoarding for days he'll barely be able to feed himself.
"What, why?"
She shoots him a confused glance from over her left shoulder.
"Well, for you know."
He makes some sort of rudimentary movement with his hands, but he's got no clear idea of what he's trying to articulate with the aid of mime.
"If that's meant to be an abortion you can forget it, I'm a Catholic."
His brow suddenly furrows.
"Since, when?"
He asks, losing sight of the real point of the conversation in the first place.
"Since forever. I've always been a Catholic, you know I've always been a Catholic! I went to a Catholic primary school, you know all this."
He wonders at what stage he ever lead her to believe that he was the sort of person who cared, or worse even notices such things as his sort-of-on-off girlfriend's affiliation to any particular religious grouping.
It goes quiet for a bit. The only sounds in the room are a mixture of harsh breathes, and the distant ticking of an unseen clock. The sun passes behind a cloud, and he realises that the day must now be passing, time is skipping on ahead of him. He wants to trap this moment, he wants to lock it away somewhere dark, and never have to...
"I need a cig."
He says, but doesn't move. His small dark gaze drifts across the room, searching, coming to rest eventually on one of the many overflowing ashtrays, which are dotted around the flat. He eyes the remnants of the cigarette he had been previously chewing on, burnt down to nothing all that is left is the stub.
"Can I use your bathroom?"
Lost in a bubble of his own thoughts, he only distantly notes the sound of Kate's voice.
"Dan, can I use your bathroom?"
This time he hears her, because she punctures his reserve with a seriously hard pinch on his arm.
"Why?"
He recoils from her touch, wondering when exactly she became so violent, the velvet of her fingers so spiky.
"Because it took me around six bloody hours to get here, I had to change trains three fucking times, you spat beer in my face, and now I want a shower."
Her voice is prickly, and full of irritation, it does a good impression of articulating audibly how he feels on the inside. Kate climbs off the arm of the sofa, and without adding anything else she slips off the long flowery summer dress she's wearing, the fabric pools around her heavy black leather DR Martin's. He wonders silently if this is some new game, one he hasn't encountered before, one they have never played. The question of what sort of reaction she wants rolls around his head, while his eyes flick over her form. Kate doesn't look pregnant, she's still as thin and gawky as she was the last time he saw her in her mismatched underwear. Most of her rib cage is still on display, seeming to threaten at any moment to burst through her skin. She doesn't flinch under his eye, he wouldn't like it if she did.
"It doesn't work."
"A bath, then."
Kate counters, and then sets off in search of the bathroom leaving the room. He doesn't follow her, he decides that it's probably for the best if he just sits quietly on the sofa, and has a smoke for a bit.
He waits a good half an hour until he starts hovering around the bathroom door listening to the silence.
"Are you coming in then, or what?"
Kate's voice rings out, he paces for a few moments longer debating with himself, and then finally ducks his head inside. The heat from the steam hits him first.
Kate flashes him a tired, sympathetic smile.
He sits on the floor, resting his back against the door, stretching his long legs out in front of him.
"So, is that it then?"
She scratches the end of her nose.
"Umm, yes, I think so."
The grey, silver clouds of water pool around her chin, Kate's cheeks are flushed a dark pinkish hew from the raised temperature. He can only make out the vaguest outline of her body.
"I don't want to be a Dad."
"I know."
The thin line across his mouth tightens. Is that all there is to say? It's not enough. He wants more, he wants Kate to say something, to use some magic combination of words that will slot everything back into place. Can you talk a thing out of existence? Can you unmake it with words?
"I can't be anyone's Father, I'm barely a human-being."
Kate's silent agreement screams across the room at him, he feels as if he can read her mind. He wishes he'd been half as good at reading the instructions on her uterus.
A fancy dress party, he's always hated social gatherings especially ones that involve people he's been a teenager in front of, but anything had been preferable to spending the night on the sofa sandwiched between his parents listening to them extolling the virtues of their new caravan, and the holiday they were planning to go on in Rill with the next door neighbours.
He hadn't been expecting to see her, he hadn't really thought about her at all for well over a year. In fact the only thing that had concerned him was how many sausage rolls he could stuff into his pockets without being noticed, and how many beers he could sink before he considered euthanasia as his only viable option for escape.
Of course when Kate had swam into his vision a few moments later dressed as the Julie Newmar version of Catwoman from the really rubbish Batman television series,resplendent in a brunette wig, and kitten ears clipped to the sides of her head, she'd managed to make even such a ridiculous costume look sexy.
Sexy, he feels his face twitch repulsed by the word.
After a brief banal conversation about how shit the music was (Cornershop played on a mind jittering loop), and what a knob the host had been at school, this baby, which had so rudely invaded his life had been conceived on the floor of said-knob's bathroom.
"I thought,"
He clears his throat, running his fingers over the rough stubble of his chin.
"I thought you said, you were on the pill."
His small eyes widen as the last word leaves his mouth.
"I was!"
Kate's voice is once again filled with the heavy notes of raw indignation. Leaning forward, she turns on the hot tap, the pipes vibrate, and squeal against her demands.
"I was, I just I didn't know...I went for a curry with this girl from work,"
"A curry, what was it laced with my sperm?"
She glares at him, trickles of water rolling down from the smooth surface of her forehead.
"Can you shut the fuck up, and let me finish! I went for this really dodgy curry, I was off sick from work for most of the week, and then on that weekend we shagged, and I thought it would be fine, I didn't realise that the contraceptive pill completely falters at the fence of sickness and diarrhoea."
Kate turns off the tap, and with it everything he wants to say dries up on the tip of his tongue. He stares at his hands, already his fingers are itching for another cigarette.
"I can do this, Dan."
He's not sure who she is trying to convince out of the pair of them, he's never heard her sound so unsure of anything before, but then again this is a big something, which the interplay between them has never extended before to accommodate.
He doesn't want to say the sentence, which is pounding away in his head ever since Kate finished hers'. He doesn't want to say it because, he knows how it sounds, and he hates himself for it.
"What about me?"
Kate lets her arm drape across the chipped rim of the beige bath, she stretches out her hand for him and without the aid of a cigarette to occupy him, he threads his fingers easily through her splayed digits. Her skin is slippery, and puckered against his rough, calloused touch.
"It will be alright, Danny I promise. I'm not expecting anything from you, I know what you're like."
He raises one eyebrow briefly, wondering if he should take moderate offence at her insinuation.
"Oh come off it, you admitted it yourself you're useless."
Kate's nose crinkles with her giggles, he manages a half hearted smile in response.
"Do you think I'm an idiot?"
She stops smiling at his question. He asks it because, well because since moving to London he's been plagued by the fear that he actually is an idiot, a massive one in fact.
"No, no of course not, I'd never have the baby of an idiot."