disclaimer: danny and tom and dougie and harry. they belong to themselves.

TWENTY-FOUR - THE ONE WITH THE TWICE CRACKED EGGS

All the paragraphs and pages you could write could not contain
It is curious and careless and it's flowing through my veins
The fear of growing old, and doing what you're told
You can't disguise a heart while it's breaking

I couldn't for the life of me remember where I was. It took a long thinking process, which used a lot of energy that I didn't exactly have, to realise it. And then, it was when I saw Tom asleep in a chair at the foot of the bed that I actually knew where I was.

He looked only somewhat comfortable in the chair, but I had neither the energy nor the manpower to try to move him to the bed.

Instead, I got up, still slightly unstable from the previous night, and looked at the dress I was still wearing. Last evening, it had been a rather attractive, medium-blue, cocktail dress. Now, after all that I had been and put myself through, it was a filthy, mangled and wrinkled mess of a dress.

I wanted the thing off. And I wanted out of it now. I fought my way out, trying to get the zipper at the back to cooperate with me, until, finally, I was out of the retched thing and it was at my ankles in a heap on the floor.

In the slip I wore under it, I collected the dress and tip-toed out of the room, dropping the thing in the rubbish bin across the hall in the loo. I continued to the kitchen, planning on finding and figuring out how to make something for breakfast for Tom as thanks for everything he had done the night before for me.

When I got to the kitchen, though, I practically screamed, I was so startled to see the refrigerator door open. Whoever was on the other side of the door dropped what they held, including a carton of eggs.

"Good grief, calm down," the familiar and friendly voice said, sounding as though he was recovering from my scream.

"Danny?" I asked before the door closed, revealing the redhead in his pyjamas with a housecoat over them, slightly covering his bare chest. He wore only slippers on his feet. "What are you doing here?"

He took in what I was wearing before replying. "I could ask the same thing." He bent to clean up the mess the eggs had made.

"Oh, shush, you," I told him, slightly harshly, crossing my arm over my chest to cover up a bit, feeling suddenly a little naked in just my slip. "Seriously, what are you doing here?" I asked again.

"I came to get some things for breakfast. I didn't have anything, and I told Anna I'd make her breakfast," Danny explained.

"And Anna would be…?" I asked, suddenly confused.

"I met her last night. Didn't I introduce you to her? Wait, no, I never saw you. And come to think of it, Tom disappeared. What did you two do last night? Was it PG? It better not have been PG."

I was startled by this. "If you must know," I said, somewhat sourly, "we were on the roof, where Tom was keeping me company because my boyfriend – make that ex-boyfriend – was cheating on me."

This startled him speechless, because his face dropped and he looked saddened and shocked. "Dare, I'm really sorry. I wouldn't have said that if I knew. I'm sorry about what happened with that jerk, too. You deserve better than that," he said, dropping the eggs once again.

His action made me laugh.

"What? Are you joshing me? You're joshing me, aren't you?"

Still laughing, I replied, "No, no, that really happened. It's just – you dropped the eggs… again." I paused, becoming sober. "I think I'm still drunk."

"What did you get drunk on? Pure vodka?"

"Quite possibly, actually," I told him. I knew I really wasn't still drunk, but that his reaction had just startled me into laughter. "You know, I was planning on using those…."

Danny picked up the carton of twice-cracked eggs, opening it to check how badly the eggs were damage. The sight of the gooey and slimy mess that was inside was enough to make me have to make a rash decision: rubbish can that was across the room, or the loo that was down the hallway. I chose the loo, luckily making it to the toilet just in time to empty the contents on my stomach into it. I really had had too much to drink and not enough to eat the night before.

I cleaned myself up, including brushing my teeth with an extra toothbrush I had invested in for leaving at Tom's for when I accidently fell asleep when I was over (it had happened a few time already), before heading back out to the kitchen, where Danny was now at the counter next to the stove, the carton of eggs no longer filled with broken eggs and eggshells and nowhere to be seen.

"What're you up to there, Dan?" I asked, staying a few steps away from him after the egg-incident that just happened.

"Helping you make breakfast," he said with a laugh. "You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." Instead of actually having me watch something on the stove, or anything, all Danny had to me do in order to make breakfast was fetch ingredients from around the kitchen.

When he had finished cooking, there were four plates of eggs: three omelettes, and one dry, scrambled eggs. Since he had initially come to get things so he could make Anna and himself breakfast, he had just made the breakfast while he was over, telling me on his way out that he would bring back what he had borrowed later.

"Oh," he said, appearing once again in the door after having already left, "tell Tom you made the eggs. He'll like that."

I smiled. "What do you think I was planning on doing? Telling him he had a thief in the kitchen, making him breakfast?" I gently pushed him back out the door and he was on his way, back to his house, again.

I finished loading breakfast for Tom and me, along with some juice and coffee, onto a tray, and brought it with me to the room where Tom was still sleeping.

I didn't really want to wake him, but I didn't want breakfast to get too cold either, so, after putting the tray down, I did what had usually done the trick with boys before: I kissed his cheek. In response, all I got was him swatting at where I had just been. I thought again, and came up with another way that worked when the first didn't. This time, I leaned in, kissing him on the lips.

To my exaltation, Tom's eyes slowly opened. "Did you make breakfast?" was the first thing from his mouth, with the second thing being: "And did you just kiss me?"

song: you're making it come alive (cello remix) by my favorite highway.

an: ta!