- Home
- About Me
- What's New
- Comments & Questions
-
The Complete Fic Directory
- All I Do Each Night Is Rehearse The Pray Routine
- Appendicitis
- An Act Of Un-Remembrance
- Beginnings
- Better Than Today - Kylie Minogue
- Black
- Breathe Out
- Christmas Shopping
- Choreography
- Dancers
- Dangling
- Days
- Default Settings/Do You Love Me? [Part One]
- Displacement Theory [Blue]
- DJ (I Could Be Dancing) - Alphabeat
- Enchanted
- Ends (Loose And Otherwise) [Ends]
- Enemies
- Family
- Fine Time To Lose Your Mind - Jack McManus
- Fireworks
- Flat Tyres And Palm Prints [Birth]
- Flu
- Friends: A Dictionary [Friends]
- From Angels To The Moon/The Soup
- Green Light [Green]
- Hell Raisers
- Home Invasion
- Hours
- In My Veins
- Insides
- It Was The Death Of Something [Death]
- Just Like Children [Children]
- Kiss And Make Up
- The Last Time
- Lonely At Christmas
- Love Songs
- Lovers
- Middles
- Midnight Sun
- Mistletoe
- Months Go By [Months]
- More Important Than Fear
- Muddied Stars [Brown]
- Not Enough
- Of Peacocks
- On The Subject Of Angels [Orange]
- Playing House [Parents]
- The Price Of Friendship
- The Prize
- Post-Match Analysis
- Puddles
- Red
- Secret Admirer
- Secret Agent Owen
- Shades
- Shine - Skies Of America
- Slow Dancing In A Burning Room
- Snap
- So Good To See You
- Stage Fright
- Stay (Oh Darlin')
- Study In Motion
- Summertime Feeling - S Club 7
- Sunrise
- Sunset
- Teammates
- That Night In Amsterdam/Do You Love Me? [Part Two]
- This
- Three Sets Of Three
- Twenty-Nine (And A Half)
- Under A Colourless Sky [Colourless]
- We Found Something That Belongs To You [Outsides]
- We Were Strangers Once [Strangers]
- Weeks
- What Did You Say This Time?
- What Will The Papers Say? [Purple]
- White Out [White]
- The Wordsmith/Breathe In
- Years
- Yellow
- Yesterday's Promise
- 3-0 Defeats
- Barlow's Music Shop Series
- Fanfiction Challenges
- The Postcard Prompts
- OT3, OT4 & OT5
- Stories By Band Member
- Stories By Ship
- Stories By Genre
- Stories By Era
- Band-Free AUs
- Prompt Requests
- Other Fandom Fics
- Follow Me
The Prize
Jay is a born dancer. It’s just in everything he does. The guy is in his forties and yet he can jump higher than most teenagers...and still remember to arch his back and point his toes. Jay can dance around anything. Any street, any song...any person, any issue. Often without even having to think about it. But don’t be fooled. Jay can act without having to think, but, somehow, he will still have some sort of thought about it. He’s rarely without a reason. Don’t ask me how that even makes sense, it’s just the truth. It’s as much a part of who he is as his dancing is. And that is why I know that, somehow, I’ve fucked it all up again.
Jay has danced round me for days now. Danced round speaking more than two sentences to me or getting left in rooms alone with me. I actually asked Howard about it the other day. And you know what Howard Donald said to me? Howard Fucking Donald, expert on every breath Jason Orange takes? He said he didn’t know. I say he said it, but he didn’t really speak so much as mumble into a cup of coffee, fucking glare at me then leave the room. Since then, Jason has gone with him to every one of his DJ gigs. Do you have any idea how many nights that means I don’t even see him? Yeah well, neither do I. I’ve lost count.
I tried asking Gaz. But he sighed tiredly like I was some little kid who’d just asked the wrong fucking question and he looked at me with his grown-up face on and told me some crap about having to understand band dynamics. I didn’t even know what he meant; I thought I did understand, I thought we’d worked it out. He just told me to talk to Jay and not get him involved. He didn’t explain to me how I was supposed to talk to a man with such stamina he could keep the dancing up long after we’d left the stage. Maybe I should be angrier with Gaz for not understanding, but I’m through being angry with Gaz these days. There’s a reason he acts how he acts, you know? He feels like he’s responsible for us all. Howard’s the oldest but he doesn’t act it, Jay’s the thinker but he’s so busy thinking he doesn’t have time to take charge. And me and Mark? We’re fucking kids. No. I wasn’t angry at Gaz. I got it. There was something he couldn’t interfere in, for the sake of keeping his own sanity and keeping his own authority over this ship, he had to stay away. So with Howard and Jay off at some other DJ gig, I turned to the only person I could turn to. The only one on my level.
Howard and Jay are dancers – this is how Mark explained it to me. They bonded over that first. And then they bonded over being the forgotten two, bringing up the rear. Mark insisted there weren’t many things stronger than the bond between two underdogs. The way he saw it, they understood each other in a way no one else understood them. Mark knew I couldn’t argue against that point, because him and me, we thought that way about ourselves. Maybe more keenly, back in the day, but the feeling never really goes. I asked Mark what that had to do with anything, and you know what he told me? He told me it had everything to do with everything. He told me Gaz was right; it’s band dynamics. So what, am I just rocking the boat? That’s what I wanted to ask but I didn’t. Mark sighed and I knew he wanted to explain it better but he was putting the interests of the band first. A small part of me wondered if he was putting Gary’s needs above mine, but that was a selfish thought. He carries on; Howard and Jay, they need each other, they depend on each other a lot. There’s almost a secret language between them, it’s pretty much a mystery to him and Gaz, so he says, and he reminds me, tentatively, that they’ve been around Jay and Howard longer than l have. Mark looked away from me then and he thought so long before saying anything else that I thought for a moment I might as well just leave. But eventually he sighed and, in as coded a way as he could muster, he told me everything I needed to know. Not that I understood that then, but that’s what he did. When something changes, to alter the specialness of that bond, when new languages are set up with other people that one or the other can’t be part of, that’s when things go wrong and they’re best left to sort that out together. No one else knows them the way they know each other was the only thing I took from Mark’s speech and, slightly sulkily, I went to bed.
Before that halfway point of the tour, I thought I’d gotten him still. I thought I’d stopped the dancer spinning out of everyone’s reach. I made no secret of the fact I was in awe of him. There’s whole universes inside that man’s head. You get him talking and you can learn things about the world you never imagined before. Maybe not facts, so much. But you can learn to look at the world in a different way. I was enjoying, for the first time in my life, just listening to someone. But I guess no dancer is built to stay still very long. And now he’s spun off with someone who can keep up with his pace. I started watching them more, after what Mark said. But for the longest time I got stuck on no one understanding them more than they understood each other. It was as good as saying: don’t even try to compete. I missed the brotherly dance at the very least though. That bit where Jay would roughhouse with me and call me names and let me make jokes at his expense then pick me up and hug me...then be arguing with me ten seconds later. I think I drove him a little bit insane but I think he liked that coz it reminded him of his brothers. But I don’t dance like Howard does.
I found myself really wanting to try though. For the first time ever I wished I could dance. I had done, in the past. But it wasn’t part of who I was. That had never bothered me before. Partly because I was so convinced that what I was had to be so much better than what any of them were. But mostly because I didn’t give a damn about Jay. If anything I thought he was arrogant. Never point a finger, eh? Still, it came back to haunt me in the end. The others knew, it was impossible not to know. Onstage it got to the point where they had to step in, they had to start throwing in their own lines to try and prompt Jay to even talk to me. Offstage he would hide behind his laptop, sneak off to sit outside and watch Pet Shop Boys perform. Or, my personal favourite, do twice as many stretches so I couldn’t say a word to him before he went onstage. Ever the dancer, that’s Jay.
I think the thing that pissed everyone off the most in the end was the fact I wouldn’t stop moping. They were used to Jay’s moods. Mark confided in me on more than one night that Jay wasn’t often moody and, even when he was, he was pretty easy to live with. You just had to let him be. He wouldn’t talk, he wouldn’t say a thing. Unless he felt like it. He might confide in Howard, he might not. But, after a certain amount of time, he’d be ok again. Or someone would ask him if he was ok and he would talk it out with them. Or someone would judge him to be ok again, ask him and he’d tell them everything. It was a pattern. So I think that’s why, eventually, over a copy of a newspaper he wasn’t particularly interested in, Gary looked at me one day and said ‘Just go to him. Now’. Mark had looked up, exchanged some secret, knowing, looking with Gaz and then looked back to me. Then he nodded his approval and assured me ‘You should, Rob’. But we were all aware of that brooding fourth presence in the room. Howard looked up from his computer and glanced at each of us in turn. He shrugged unconvincingly and said it was nothing to do with him. Another look passed between Mark and Gaz. ‘I think he’s out round the stage somewhere. You’ll find him I’m sure’ Gaz added softly. Howard didn’t look at me as I left the room.
I found Jay sitting on a railing. His back arched, his muscles straining to hold himself up on the bar. It was still effortless somehow. A dancer’s skill. I was surprised when he didn’t jump down and run at my arrival. I was surprised when he simply smiled at my approach, squinting slightly against the sun. ‘They looking for me?’ he asked. And by ‘they’ I suspected he meant Howard. I shook my head and told him no and the corner of his lips twitched up a little. ‘Were you looking for me?’ he clarified. ‘You’ve been dancing round me for ages’ I reminded him and he chuckled slightly, looking down. ‘You have to dance a bit Rob. Gets your blood flowing. Keeps you moving’ he explained. ‘What did I do to piss Howard off?’ I asked and he outright laughed. A soft, fond laugh. But a laugh nonetheless. And it was so long since I’d made him laugh that I didn’t even take offence at the fact he was laughing when I was being serious. ‘Howard’s a moody bastard. And he needs twenty-four hour care’ he told me. ‘From you?’ I pushed. Jay tilted his head on one side and he thought and I watched him think and I thought it was beautiful. He sighed at last and looked back at me and said ‘Sometimes. Just recently.’ I didn’t know what he meant by that and I think he could tell because he smiled self-consciously and looked away ‘Thing is Rob, when you’re a dancer, people stop trusting you’re going to stay still very long’ he murmured. I frowned ‘And?’ – it was all I could muster. He laughed again, sadly this time. ‘And I stayed in one routine for nearly twenty years, so I think maybe I owed a bit of an explanation before I went and added new steps’ he sighed. ‘Look, I don’t...I don’t know what fucking things I’m unbalancing by being here but...I just want to know what I did fucking wrong, ok?’ I lost my temper a little and I shouldn’t have. But Jay is Jay and he is a calm arguer, he didn’t even flinch. ‘You raised the stakes’ he said. My frown deepened and with a small sigh he jumped down, planting a firm hand on my shoulder. His slender fingers gripped me tight and he looked into my eyes. ‘Howard has always been one of my closest friends. The closest friend. I guess he was worried he missed out on something more and that, because he never knew it was there for the taking, someone else was going to come in and steal it from right under his nose’. I was dumbfounded for a moment. ‘You’re not a prize, Jay’ – I didn’t want him seeing himself as our toy to be fought over. He simply smiled and winked and patted my shoulder. ‘Howard thinks I am.'
Jay has danced round me for days now. Danced round speaking more than two sentences to me or getting left in rooms alone with me. I actually asked Howard about it the other day. And you know what Howard Donald said to me? Howard Fucking Donald, expert on every breath Jason Orange takes? He said he didn’t know. I say he said it, but he didn’t really speak so much as mumble into a cup of coffee, fucking glare at me then leave the room. Since then, Jason has gone with him to every one of his DJ gigs. Do you have any idea how many nights that means I don’t even see him? Yeah well, neither do I. I’ve lost count.
I tried asking Gaz. But he sighed tiredly like I was some little kid who’d just asked the wrong fucking question and he looked at me with his grown-up face on and told me some crap about having to understand band dynamics. I didn’t even know what he meant; I thought I did understand, I thought we’d worked it out. He just told me to talk to Jay and not get him involved. He didn’t explain to me how I was supposed to talk to a man with such stamina he could keep the dancing up long after we’d left the stage. Maybe I should be angrier with Gaz for not understanding, but I’m through being angry with Gaz these days. There’s a reason he acts how he acts, you know? He feels like he’s responsible for us all. Howard’s the oldest but he doesn’t act it, Jay’s the thinker but he’s so busy thinking he doesn’t have time to take charge. And me and Mark? We’re fucking kids. No. I wasn’t angry at Gaz. I got it. There was something he couldn’t interfere in, for the sake of keeping his own sanity and keeping his own authority over this ship, he had to stay away. So with Howard and Jay off at some other DJ gig, I turned to the only person I could turn to. The only one on my level.
Howard and Jay are dancers – this is how Mark explained it to me. They bonded over that first. And then they bonded over being the forgotten two, bringing up the rear. Mark insisted there weren’t many things stronger than the bond between two underdogs. The way he saw it, they understood each other in a way no one else understood them. Mark knew I couldn’t argue against that point, because him and me, we thought that way about ourselves. Maybe more keenly, back in the day, but the feeling never really goes. I asked Mark what that had to do with anything, and you know what he told me? He told me it had everything to do with everything. He told me Gaz was right; it’s band dynamics. So what, am I just rocking the boat? That’s what I wanted to ask but I didn’t. Mark sighed and I knew he wanted to explain it better but he was putting the interests of the band first. A small part of me wondered if he was putting Gary’s needs above mine, but that was a selfish thought. He carries on; Howard and Jay, they need each other, they depend on each other a lot. There’s almost a secret language between them, it’s pretty much a mystery to him and Gaz, so he says, and he reminds me, tentatively, that they’ve been around Jay and Howard longer than l have. Mark looked away from me then and he thought so long before saying anything else that I thought for a moment I might as well just leave. But eventually he sighed and, in as coded a way as he could muster, he told me everything I needed to know. Not that I understood that then, but that’s what he did. When something changes, to alter the specialness of that bond, when new languages are set up with other people that one or the other can’t be part of, that’s when things go wrong and they’re best left to sort that out together. No one else knows them the way they know each other was the only thing I took from Mark’s speech and, slightly sulkily, I went to bed.
Before that halfway point of the tour, I thought I’d gotten him still. I thought I’d stopped the dancer spinning out of everyone’s reach. I made no secret of the fact I was in awe of him. There’s whole universes inside that man’s head. You get him talking and you can learn things about the world you never imagined before. Maybe not facts, so much. But you can learn to look at the world in a different way. I was enjoying, for the first time in my life, just listening to someone. But I guess no dancer is built to stay still very long. And now he’s spun off with someone who can keep up with his pace. I started watching them more, after what Mark said. But for the longest time I got stuck on no one understanding them more than they understood each other. It was as good as saying: don’t even try to compete. I missed the brotherly dance at the very least though. That bit where Jay would roughhouse with me and call me names and let me make jokes at his expense then pick me up and hug me...then be arguing with me ten seconds later. I think I drove him a little bit insane but I think he liked that coz it reminded him of his brothers. But I don’t dance like Howard does.
I found myself really wanting to try though. For the first time ever I wished I could dance. I had done, in the past. But it wasn’t part of who I was. That had never bothered me before. Partly because I was so convinced that what I was had to be so much better than what any of them were. But mostly because I didn’t give a damn about Jay. If anything I thought he was arrogant. Never point a finger, eh? Still, it came back to haunt me in the end. The others knew, it was impossible not to know. Onstage it got to the point where they had to step in, they had to start throwing in their own lines to try and prompt Jay to even talk to me. Offstage he would hide behind his laptop, sneak off to sit outside and watch Pet Shop Boys perform. Or, my personal favourite, do twice as many stretches so I couldn’t say a word to him before he went onstage. Ever the dancer, that’s Jay.
I think the thing that pissed everyone off the most in the end was the fact I wouldn’t stop moping. They were used to Jay’s moods. Mark confided in me on more than one night that Jay wasn’t often moody and, even when he was, he was pretty easy to live with. You just had to let him be. He wouldn’t talk, he wouldn’t say a thing. Unless he felt like it. He might confide in Howard, he might not. But, after a certain amount of time, he’d be ok again. Or someone would ask him if he was ok and he would talk it out with them. Or someone would judge him to be ok again, ask him and he’d tell them everything. It was a pattern. So I think that’s why, eventually, over a copy of a newspaper he wasn’t particularly interested in, Gary looked at me one day and said ‘Just go to him. Now’. Mark had looked up, exchanged some secret, knowing, looking with Gaz and then looked back to me. Then he nodded his approval and assured me ‘You should, Rob’. But we were all aware of that brooding fourth presence in the room. Howard looked up from his computer and glanced at each of us in turn. He shrugged unconvincingly and said it was nothing to do with him. Another look passed between Mark and Gaz. ‘I think he’s out round the stage somewhere. You’ll find him I’m sure’ Gaz added softly. Howard didn’t look at me as I left the room.
I found Jay sitting on a railing. His back arched, his muscles straining to hold himself up on the bar. It was still effortless somehow. A dancer’s skill. I was surprised when he didn’t jump down and run at my arrival. I was surprised when he simply smiled at my approach, squinting slightly against the sun. ‘They looking for me?’ he asked. And by ‘they’ I suspected he meant Howard. I shook my head and told him no and the corner of his lips twitched up a little. ‘Were you looking for me?’ he clarified. ‘You’ve been dancing round me for ages’ I reminded him and he chuckled slightly, looking down. ‘You have to dance a bit Rob. Gets your blood flowing. Keeps you moving’ he explained. ‘What did I do to piss Howard off?’ I asked and he outright laughed. A soft, fond laugh. But a laugh nonetheless. And it was so long since I’d made him laugh that I didn’t even take offence at the fact he was laughing when I was being serious. ‘Howard’s a moody bastard. And he needs twenty-four hour care’ he told me. ‘From you?’ I pushed. Jay tilted his head on one side and he thought and I watched him think and I thought it was beautiful. He sighed at last and looked back at me and said ‘Sometimes. Just recently.’ I didn’t know what he meant by that and I think he could tell because he smiled self-consciously and looked away ‘Thing is Rob, when you’re a dancer, people stop trusting you’re going to stay still very long’ he murmured. I frowned ‘And?’ – it was all I could muster. He laughed again, sadly this time. ‘And I stayed in one routine for nearly twenty years, so I think maybe I owed a bit of an explanation before I went and added new steps’ he sighed. ‘Look, I don’t...I don’t know what fucking things I’m unbalancing by being here but...I just want to know what I did fucking wrong, ok?’ I lost my temper a little and I shouldn’t have. But Jay is Jay and he is a calm arguer, he didn’t even flinch. ‘You raised the stakes’ he said. My frown deepened and with a small sigh he jumped down, planting a firm hand on my shoulder. His slender fingers gripped me tight and he looked into my eyes. ‘Howard has always been one of my closest friends. The closest friend. I guess he was worried he missed out on something more and that, because he never knew it was there for the taking, someone else was going to come in and steal it from right under his nose’. I was dumbfounded for a moment. ‘You’re not a prize, Jay’ – I didn’t want him seeing himself as our toy to be fought over. He simply smiled and winked and patted my shoulder. ‘Howard thinks I am.'