Claire stared. It was hard not to really, everyone who walked past their seats stared at the two men facing each other on the train, each taking up a row of three, looking like soldiers returning home from the trenches, and so involved in their conversation - and each other - that they didn't even notice that they were being watched.

Claire hadn't wanted to come. She'd been ready to fight her mum over it, absolutely sure she wouldn't be welcome, but Pingu had pointed out, quietly, that Dan and Jones would probably, definitely, need help with their luggage, and getting on and off the train, and getting a taxi to her parents' house. So Claire had grudgingly agreed to accompany her brother and his boyfriend to Leeds, but she only planned to stay a few days.

Pingu had packed for them both and Claire had been a bit shocked because he wasn't the kind of person to usually make those sorts of assumptions. Then he'd mentioned that he'd talked to her mother, who had invited him as well, and Claire had wondered how a woman as busy as her mum, in another city, could still be keeping them all in order which such ease.

He was sitting opposite her now - her Pingu, her Harry - but he wasn't staring at anyone. He was engrossed in a new game on his Game Boy Advance, headphones on and a look of intense concentration on his face. It had used to confuse her, Pingu's obsession with computer games, but now it brought a smile to her face.

He'd explained, haltingly, shyly, that plugging into a game helped when he couldn't deal with social interactions and stimulations in the real world. In games he could control things like volume and brightness and who and what he had to interact with, and he could focus on one thing, rather than feeling overwhelmed by all the noises and idiots that he had to deal with the rest of the time.

Video games made Claire frustrated but to Harry they were like meditating, even when they were scary or made him jump.

Claire smiled again. He was still Pingu when he was plugged into one of his games, but she was starting to think of him more and more as Harry when they were together. Harry was insightful, in a quiet and thoughtful way, and Harry was the man she would soon be introducing to her parents. And while on one hand that was absolutely terrifying, it made her feel a flutter of nervous excitement too.

She wondered if Dan was feeling the same way. Probably not, since Jones had been in contact with their mum for years, and any shock she or their father might have felt at Dan and Jones' relationship probably paled into insignificance when compared with everything else going on in her brother's life.

She glanced across again and found she couldn't look away. Dan had that quiet smile on his face and it made his whole demeanor change. He was entirely focused on Jones, his body language was completely open to the younger man, and it made Claire wish that she was the sort of woman who got teary over other people's sentimentality. She pursed her lips instead and took a good, hard look at her brother.

He was tapping his fingers on a case of CDs (one of several that he and Jones had brought with them), his wrist in a brace that was barely noticeable under his loose shirt, but that occasionally made him wince when he tried to wave his arm about as he spoke. His leg, in a new cast, was propped up across the two seats next to him, beside an elegant, dark wood cane. He'd be going to St James' Hospital while they were staying in Leeds, to have "a bit of a procedure" as he kept telling her, which was his way of avoiding the fact that he needed a pin put into his leg. He'd overdone things and the bone wasn't healing as well as it should be, but Dan refused to make a fuss of it, or let anyone even think that looking after Jones had caused his leg to be permanently damaged. She wondered how Jones felt about it.

Jones' own leg was in a heavy brace over his trousers and his cane was fitted with an arm brace as well. He had enough metal in his leg to make the pin Dan needed seem insignificant, and Claire knew that there were pins in Jones' sternum and shoulder as well. His face and neck were still bruised, and he didn't really look ready to be out of hospital.

In fact, he'd gone straight from the hospital to the train station because Dan didn't want him seeing their home still covered in graffiti, with boarded up windows. But despite the fact that his breathing was stilted and the tightness of his eyes gave away the pain he was in, sitting on the barely padded train seat, Jones was smiling as well.

"Now I remember why we shouldn't play this game," Dan rumbled and Jones let out a breathy laugh in response. "We keep getting stuck on S."

"Not my fault so many bands names end in S," Jones shrugged, leaning himself carefully against the wall by the window. "Name a band or concede defeat."

"Fine," Dan huffed, even as he smiled at Jones like he might devour him. "Bloody... Spice Girls. Hah! Another S for you. Let's see how you go with that."

"Spice Girls?" Jones asked with a smirk. "Is that what you've been listening to while I've been out of it? Is this what happens when I'm not around to guide your musical tastes?"

"You?" Dan shot back, trying not to laugh while Jones grinned at him, daring him to be the one to crack. "Guide my tastes? I don't think so. You're musical tastes were honed by reading my music reviews, you young whipper-snapper. And don't you forget it."

Jones gave another breathy laugh but winced when his ribs protested and the smile dropped from Dan's face in an instant. Claire thought she really might cry then. In all the time she'd known them, she'd thought of them as barely friends. They were tactile with each other but they rarely acted lovey-dovey and even now she hadn't seen them actually kiss. But the care they had for each other was obvious.

Her film studies teacher had told her class that the camera picked up the subtleties of the human face and magnified them, which was why acting for the stage and acting for the screen were such different disciplines, and that a good filmmaker learned to see those subtle movements and emotions too, and to use them. Watching the way Dan and Jones mirrored each other's movements and body language, the way their worry for each other was written in their eyes and the line of their lips - it made Claire feel like she finally understood what her lecturer had been trying to say. Dan and Jones didn't hold hands much or call each other by sickly sweet pet names but that didn't mean they didn't show their affection in everything they did.

"Silverchair," Jones said, smiling again, but carefully, and Dan rolled his eyes as he realised he had to continue with their game of 'Name a band beginning with...' which had already lasted over an hour.

"Ramones," Dan shot back and Jones made a face.

"Sinead O'Connor."

"Rolling Stones."

"Now who's doing S ones on purpose!" Jones said in mock outrage, his voice high and croaky, but Dan just poked his tongue out and Claire had to turn away to hide the laugh that escaped her nose at seeing her grumpy, world-weary brother do something so juvenile and innocent in public.

"Give up?" Dan teased but Jones shook his head and grinned.

"System of a Down."

"Naked Lunch."

"You old perv. Um... H... Hunters and Collectors."

"You fucker."

Jones pulled two juice boxes out of the backpack sitting on the floor between them and stuck a straw in one with the kind of smile that said he was about to be seriously cheeky and Claire tried to keep watching whilst pretending to be engrossed by an old newspaper someone had left on the seat next to her.

"That's not a band," Jones said before taking a long, noisy slurp through his straw. "And it don't start with S."

"Smiths."

"You said them already."

"Fuck."

"Gonna give up. Gonna cede to the champion and accept that you have to give me my prize?"

Claire didn't know what the prize was, and by the way Jones was smiling and Dan was blushing she was fairly certain she didn't want to know. She couldn't even imagine how the two of them planned to have any sort of sex life considering their large collection of broken bones but the way they were making eye contact seemed to indicate fairly clearly that they intended to have a damn good go at it.

Dan reached across and plucked the second juice box from Jones' hand and poked his own straw through with a pop that somehow managed to sound triumphant.

"Split Enz," he said with a smirk and laughed when Jones' jaw dropped.

"Z? you're leaving me with Z? You prat, you're supposed to let me win, I'm an invalid. You promised to take care of me."

"Oh, I will," Dan said, giving Jones a look that made his eyes widen and a furious blush appear on his cheeks. "I promise you that, Jonesy. I will take very good care of you. But, I win."

Jones didn't respond but his chest was heaving and he was gazing at Dan in a way that Claire could only describe as lustful. She turned her attention back to the newspaper she had been pretending to read because watching Dan make promises of a sexual nature wasn't something she should want to witness. And she'd started blushing as well. Older brothers were not supposed to be sexy. That was just gross.

One glance down at the paper, however, made her wish she'd kept on watching the two men flirt, and she scowled down at the headline. It was an old paper and the story had never made the front page, but the sorry end to SugaRape had been news for a while and she hated being reminded of it.

They'd expected the libel case to drag on for months but a few days after Jones had been assaulted Dan had stormed over to Jonatton's apartment to confront him and had found his body instead. It had been an overdose, that was the official cause of death, but people had whispered that it was really suicide (when they thought Dan couldn't hear) and it had left Dan horribly shaken.

Claire had been furious, because it didn't seem fair that the person who had done everything in his power to ruin Dan's life, who almost destroyed her relationship with her brother, who'd set a bunch of thugs on Jones and then, according to all accounts, fled the scene, should get out of his punishment by dying. He was supposed to get what he deserved, he was supposed to pay, and they were supposed to get revenge. She had wanted to see his face when he was finally called out for being a lying, manipulative scumbag. Overdosing on vodka and heroin - slipping painlessly into a coma and then out of life altogether - just wasn't fair. She'd raged about it and had expected Dan to join her but instead he'd curled up on the sofa and hadn't even stirred when Harry covered him in a blanket and stuck a pillow under his head.

He'd stayed at Claire and Harry's that night and Claire had walked out in the morning to find him sitting on the sofa, staring at his little box of anti-depressant pills, turning it over and over in his hands, with an expression on his face that she just couldn't figure out.

She didn't know what to do so went to the kitchen and came back with a glass of water and when she'd put it down on the coffee table in front of him, Dan'd looked up at her with eyes that were red and sore and closer to tears than she'd probably ever seen him. Then he'd said thank you, and taken his medication and called their mum.

SugaRape was sent into liquidation. The lawyers had descended and the libel charges had been settled without anyone setting foot in court. Claire didn't know how much Dan and Jones had won in the end but they were going to be living at the Ashcroft's cottage in Hornsea for at least a few months and they had enough to get by without worrying about income while they healed. She hoped there was more than that, but she didn't want to ask.

The papers had focused on the drugs and sex and scandal, the hedonistic lifestyle of Shoreditch socialites and the dangers of party drugs and 'alternative lifestyles'. Mostly it was sensationalism and scaremongering but there had been a few pieces written that mentioned Jones, and what had actually happened. Not many, but a few. Claire wished there could have been a proper happy ending to write about but real life didn't often end neatly or happily.

She looked out of the window and realised that the scenery had started to get very familiar. They'd be there soon, and as happy as she was to be seeing her parents again, Claire was nervous. There was so much that'd changed so quickly, so much that'd happened, and she wasn't entirely sure that she felt ready to discuss it with anyone, even her mum, even Dan, and most of it had happened to him, not her.

"... You'll be ok, Jones. Hey, look at me. Mr Jones. Jonesy, it'll be alright."

Claire glanced up at the change in Dan's voice and saw that Jones was holding tight to his seat and breathing hard and fast through his nose.

"I'm sorry. Sorry. But what if they don't like me?" he whispered and Dan leaned forward to cup Jones' cheek in his palm.

"How could they not?" Dan's voice was low and smooth and Jones rubbed his face against the hand on his cheek but still didn't look up. "Jones, my mum already likes you better than she likes me, or Claire. You've got nothing to worry about."

"And your dad?"

"My dad-" Dan sighed, but Claire was curious to see what he would say. "My dad lives in a world of statistics and equations. He refuses to take trains because of statistical dangers. He works on unsolvable math problems for fun and if my mother didn't get most of their meals delivered he'd live on grilled cheese. He is a kind and loving man but he's also the most forgetful and vague person I've ever met."

"But-"

"Tell him your theory about sound as raindrops and the splatter effect. He'll love it. And you."

Jones nodded and gave a smile, but didn't look up.

"Jones?"

"Sorry."

"Please don't-" Dan started to say through clenched teeth and Claire watched in surprise as he stopped himself and started the sentence again. "Sorry. I know me telling you to stop doesn't actually help. Just... gentle breaths, ok? Your bones are still butterfly wings, remember? Don't go breaking them or I'll be the one who gets in trouble. Alright?"

Jones nodded then looked up and gave Dan a watery smile.

"Thanks, Dan," he whispered with a sniff and Dan nodded. "Oh, and, Dan?"

"Hmm?"

"ZZ Top."

"What?" Dan's brow creased in confusion but Jones just grinned.

"They're a band. ZZ Top. Starts with Z. You can still be the winner though. If you like."

Dan narrowed his eyes but Claire could see how hard he was working to stop himself from smiling.

"You little... tit box."