Jones liked dolls and toys. In Dan's experience there were three kinds of people who had toy collections. One: the desperately earnest anorak-type who spent ridiculous amounts of money on collectables. Two: Idiots who claimed they were making a "post modernist ironic statement, yeah?" and spent spent a ridiculous amount of money on making it. And Jones.

Jones was neither type one or type two, he just genuinely liked playing with his dollies. He bought (or rescued according to Jones) these pathetic looking things at car boot sales and charity shops with dodgy safety scissor haircuts and missing limbs, usually for about twenty pence.

Then he'd take them home and brush their hair and make them little outfits out of fabric offcuts he'd produce from somewhere. They kept him company next to his decks and he always brought some out gigging with him (they were on a rota so none of them would feel left out). A neon bracelet bedecked teeny bopper had tried to steal one of his mangled My Little Ponies as a souvenir once and he'd gone ape shit.

The shiny new toys in shops and mint collectables on ebay held no interest for him whatsoever. His toys had all been loved and hurt by scores of careless owners before him and he wouldn't have it any other way.

"I like toys that need someone to love them," he said looking up from a sex addicts anonymous meeting he was holding for his Barbies.

He had adopted Dan whole heartedly when he was thrown out of his flat like a homeless one-legged china doll with a raggedy dress. Took him home and took care of him insofar as Dan would let him.

"Stop with me for a bit," he smiled bouncing up and down on the heels of his feet

"If I do that, I'll probably never leave," sighed Dan. It would be too easy to get complacent if he was staying with Jones.

"So I get to keep you? Genius!"

Alright maybe the man had lost ten flatmates in four years but if you could put up with the ceaseless techno, he was the easiest person to live with in the world. And Dan was fine with the music.

The night he'd met Jones he was reviewing some new club that was supposed to be the last word in cool and after interviewing DJ Jones he'd fallen asleep on one of the plush sofas next to the dance floor. Jones had finished his set early (which he wouldn't do for love nor money normally) and bundled the somnolent Ashcroft into a taxi, took him home and tucked him into his bed and then wandered off to the living room to mix for several hours. He never got paid for that gig and Dan never wrote the review.

When Dan woke up he thought he was still in the club and then realised that night clubs generally speaking didn't have beds. He spent the next in quiet contemplation wondering where the fuck he was. With some trepidation he got out of the bed and walked to the door. The DJ from the last night was mixing furiously with intense concentration. He looked up and saw Dan and beamed at him,

"A'RIGHT?" he called over the music, "THIS IS THE BEST BIT!" Dan stood stock still in the doorway. Did he sleep him? Did he? Fuck, he hadn't a clue. After an hour or so Jones wound down and walked over to Dan.

"You ok then mate?" he asked baring his teeth in a somewhat feral smile.

"Did I fuck you last night?" asked Dan bluntly

"Naw, why d'you say that?" replied Jones, seemingly not taken aback by the question at all

"Did you fuck me?" Dan continued

"You're well weird, mister!" Jones giggled, covering his face like a Japanese schoolgirl, "You were out for the count and I thought I better get you some place safe. You get all sorts these days. Didn't know where yours was so I took ya to mine." Aside from being vaguely flattered that this strange man had considered him rapeable, Dan didn't know exactly what to think about this.

"I was in your bed?" he said, "Sorry about that"

"Oh don't worry, I've not been to bed for three days or so." That explained some of the mania that seemed to emanate from him.

"Right. Well. I'll be going," said Dan awkwardly. Jones leapt into the air and scrabbled around behind his equipment, startling Dan. He returned with a felt tip pen and a scrap of paper, scrawled his number on it and held it out. Dan took it gingerly.

"Thanks..."

"Jones"

"Right. I'll just-"

"Can I get yours?" Jones said quickly and blushed.

Dan nodded slowly and went to look in his pockets for a receipt to write on. Jones stuck out his arm and Dan carefully wrote his full address, email and both numbers on the skinny appendage.

"See you around," he said to the ground and made a move toward the door. Jones hugged him suddenly and kissed his cheek.

"Call me, yeah?" he said and scurried back to his decks.

They had been friends for a few months when Dan had been evicted for failure to pay rent and pretending he had multiple personality disorder to avoid paying the rent (this had worked surprisingly well for a while, but it was only a matter of time before it all went tits up). Jones' offer of a place to stay was the best he could hope for, for the time being. He pretended to entertain notions of getting a new place, but deep down knew that he was with Jones for the long haul.

Jones was very tactile and had no sense of boundaries. He followed Dan around cuddling him and petting him at random intervals. Dan was more bothered by how little this bothered him than anything else. He was so bitter and disenchanted with the world and humanity it was just nice having a warm body press against his and clever fingers fiddle with his hair. Jones made the bullshit temporarily evaporate with his sweet sincerity. He filled up all the chinks and fractures in Dan's malnourished soul with stop-gap bliss.

As time went on, Dan needed more and more of Jones to make the hurt go away. Touches became kisses to his temples and cheek, which became pecks on the lips and full-blown snogging. It was only a matter of time before sex was the only way to get a good Jones fix but that made him feel guilty and ashamed, thinking he was using the younger man. He'd tried to explain it to Jones who had found his logic very bizarre.

"You want to stop shagging because it makes you feel good. You're not joining some sort of cult are you?"

In the end it was too difficult to explain and he just surrendered to his unhealthy fixation on his flatmate. That which you cannot cure, you must endure. Which was an odd proverb to be used in reference to toe curling sex.

When Claire moved in, it became harder to have time alone with Jones and they had to satisfy themselves with quickies before she woke up and hand jobs in the kitchen. They only got to do it properly when she was out of the house and then Dan spent too much of the time trying not to think about where she was, to get into it.

So Dan looked more like a marionette with a few key strings severed as time passed and Nathan piss-midget Barley insinuated himself further into his life. He felt bits of his soul breaking off and falling away daily. The world was a pointless and bleak place where no one appreciated anything any more and no one had an opinion that they hadn't plagiarised and carefully edited from someone else. He couldn't cope with the Idiots anymore. He couldn't satisfy himself with ignoring them. It was becoming harder and harder to write anything that he wasn't deeply ashamed of and he had to do it more often.

When they were alone Jones would try to clean him and feed him and take him out but Dan was growing less receptive to the magic Jones used to wreak on him. It never crossed the DJ's mind to pack it all in with Dan and try again with someone marginally saner. He like to play with broken toys, because they were the ones who needed him the most.