A.N:

Hey, long time no write. Seriously, it's been, what, half a year or something since I last updates anything? A lot has happened since then, 80% of it good stuff- my fics should be a bit happier now, so yey for that. Fucking buzzing about McBusted, I'm going to Bournemouth, literally frothing at the mouth whenever I think about it.

Tom's house was, for the first time in approximately 23 days, quiet.

There was no crash of cymbals from the third floor.

There were no hurried footsteps threatening to create a Golden Retriever-sized hole in the kitchen ceiling.

No screams of 'My fucking guitar string broke', 'Shit, Danny stood on my Fender again', or 'Holy Jesus, Matt, put the stapler down' could be heard.

Giovanna wandered down the stairs, a smile on her face, in search of coffee. It was 9am on a Thursday- nothing special, but pretty spectacular considering she had been out of bed at 5am for the last month due to Danny's habit of sleepwalking out of his room, which, by and large, lead to him sleepfalling down the stairs.

It never woke any of the boys up, of course. They were entirely used to Danny emitting noises similar to those of nuclear explosions at all times of the day, and had thus trained themselves to sleep right on through it.

The boys in question were currently at Matt's house, brainstorming ideas for the tour. Matt's house was the only one suitable for group meetings, mainly because he had a large dining room and a vending machine in the conservatory. Tom had embarked on a personal mission to have the meeting in his and Giovanna's home- 'We basically live here, anyway! It'd be like yesterday, and the day before, only more organized!'- but Giovanna had, as she pointed out using the kitten calendar in the living room, booked this day for her 'alone time', and she'd be damned if anybody but the cats was going to share the house with her today. Having relented in to letting the entirety of McBusted stay in her house like some form of sleepover for over-sized children for the last month, she deserved it.

Of course, the best laid plans generally end in death, destruction and depression (or was it devastation?), and this one was no exception.

The phone was ringing.

Had been Tom, or her mother, or her editor, Giovanna would have ignored it. Hell, if it'd been fucking Barack Obama, she would have picked up the phone with three- metre length tongs, placed it inside the washing machine, and set it on 'spin-dry'. But the I.D said Dougie, and Giovanna had always had a soft spot for Dougie, in the same way that most humans enjoy watching birds fly into windows and land, confused, and slightly worse-for-wear, on the concrete ground below.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Gi, it's me!" Pause. "Dougie!"

"Tom, we've been together since before we were legally old enough to drink; I know your voice when I hear it. It doesn't matter if you pinch your nose and use his phone, you do not sound any more like Dougie than you do when you sing Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' in the shower. Where's Dougie?"

This pause was slightly longer, and Giovanna could imagine her husband spiraling into the panic only a man feels when he has disturbed his wife's sacred Alone Time.

"Gi, can we do a trade?"

Giovanna was immediately suspicious; Tom's style was more to beg, plead and demand until he got what he wanted. "Of what?"

"If you let us come back for the day, we'll come stay here for a week."

"Why?"

"Because, um, Matt didn't tell Emma we'd be here, and she's... well, she's not happy."

Actually, when she listened carefully, Giovanna could hear the distant yelling of Matt's wife; she sounded rather like Ripley did in that Alien film, when the chest-burster made it's first appearance through a man's ribcage.

Giovanna closed her eyes. "Fine."

"Thanks, Gi!"

"One one condition," She barked.

"Yeah?"

"If James and Dougie try to make any kind of meal in my kitchen they are out; I just barely managed to get the dried omelette off of my lampshade."

It took the group about half an hour to get back to the Fletcher household, and when they did, they all tried to get in the door first, ending in two bloody noses, a split lip and a sprained ankle; Giovanna based her expectations of the rest of the day on this, and rapidly made her way back to bed, dragging the cats with her and screaming at them to stay away from the cooker as she went.

Fletch turned up two minutes later. Eventually, they were all spread around the living room, Fletch stood in the middle like a lone survivor of a terrible war.

"Right. To business."

Tom and James looked at each other in shock. Fletch couldn't be getting straight to business, surely?

"But Fletch," Dougie piped up, from behind a sofa, "Aren't you going to update us on your personal life first?"

"Yeah," Harry agreed, shifting so Matt's foot wasn't jammed up his left nostril. "You usually have some kind of fortnight-long speech prepared."

"Like the weather report, only less interesting, and generally more effective in inducing suicide," Matt finished. Danny, as was his way, nodded and said 'Yeah', probably completely unaware with what he was agreeing to, bless him.

"Shut up," Fletch said, waving his hand in the air. "I know you don't really care about me."

This called for a huge array of pantomime-esque disagreements- "We love you, Fletch, you're like the Jesus to our Disciples! The Simon Cowell to our X-Factor! The My to our Little Ponies!"

(The last, of course, was submitted by Danny, who was sat in what he and James had christened 'The McFort' but could, to the less imaginative, be construed as a pile of sagging cushions, most stained with orange juice or wine).

"Okay, so the fans are calling for basically the same setlist- Air Hostess, Five Colours, Year 3000, Who's David-"

"We never did find out who David was," Matt said suddenly.

"Probably," Danny said, "Probably, he's a guy lookin' for Kate."

"Oh shut up." Harry reached over to smack Danny over the head with a remote control. Danny leaped away, immediately on the defense.

"Come at me, you Mighty Twat!"

"Bring it on, you Rather Large Anus!"

The room was quickly filled with the chants of 'Fight, fight'; the two rose to the challenge, and it wasn't long before Danny was being suffocated inbetween the East and West wings of the McFort.

"Watch it!" James bellowed. "Don't hurt the McFort, we spent fucking days on that thing!"

Upstairs, Giovanna turned up the volume on The Jeremy Kyle show, and wondered how long a prison sentence would be for the murder of six men- or, she corrected herself, five men and a chimp; Dougie had never quite mastered the art of not picking fleas off of people.

Lunchtime arrived at around 11am. This outraged Matt, who had been brought up on the idea of three square meals at 7am, 1pm and 6pm, allowing for an 8pm snack if one was still peckish. He was instantly shot down amid cries of 'Peanut butter jelly time!' and 'OhMyGoodness, chocolate and crumpets- let's make chocolate crumpets!'

(The latter was quickly halted when an anguished cry sounded from upstairs ('I told you to stay the hell away from the cooker!'), so they had to settle for sandwiches.)

"Jam, or marmite? I can never quite decide." Harry gazed wistfully between the two jars.

"I swear on my mum's life if you open that jar of hell I will drown you in it."

Dougie's feelings on Marmite made clear, Harry opted for jam, purely because Dougie was holding a butter knife covered in Milky Way spread, and Harry was not in the mood for a round of confectionary-armed fisticuffs.

Soon, they were back in the living room, jammed inside the McFort, happily munching away on poorly- made sandwiches.

"Danny," Matt said suddenly, peering between Tom's right ear and James' left knee to get a glimpse of their Northern friend, "Have you been busy recently?"

There was a shocked silence; such polite small- talk was unheard of in their company. Danny, however, answered in all eagerness- he disliked quiet. "Yeah, mate!" He said, spraying crumbs down Harry's shirt. "Been way busy! Literally flat out! Ain't no rest for the wicked! This candle's been burning at both ends, my friend!"

In fact, Danny's only recent trepidation into the World of the Active had been to fetch chocolate milk from the corner shop; nonetheless, they were all proud of him for it, and so kept quiet. Attention turned to Harry, who was always a source of great entertainment.

"Washed any windows?"

"Cleaned the carpets?"

"Swept the chimney?"

"Scrubbed the taps?"

Harry nodded to each one, until Tom took pity and informed him that they weren't actually speaking about household chores; rather, they were referring to life between the sheets.

"Oy!" Harry stuck out his elbows and kicked out his legs, managing to simultaneously hit all five friends at once. "Don't be so crude, you little shits!"

Fletch, who had taken refuge on the Comfiest Chair, soon called them back to order; at 1pm, they were finally on track: the McBusted Tour.

By 1:05pm, they were back off that track, and onto a more interesting one: had Tom's chin grown?

"I swear it gets bigger every morning," Tom wailed, as Matt measured it with a tape measure he had found in the bread cupboard. "One day, I'll wake up and find that I am a chin. Not even a chin, in fact- just, Chin. Chin, with arms and legs."

"You need to learn how to dress it down, mate," Harry advised, as James wrote down the measurements Matt was calling out. "Wear a big hat, to detract attention from the Chinular area. I'd suggest a sombrero, or maybe a helmet."

Danny disagreed heartily; "Nah, you need to get attention away from your face altogether, so what you need to do is get some big-ass fucking shoes, like clown ones."

"Of course," Dougie pointed out, "You would have to find them in a pale blue, or maybe a mauve; red just isn't your colour."

"I'll be remembered for my chin," Tom cried, inconsolable. "My music will be forgotten; the entirety of my life's achievements will be shrunk down, like a small pile of cocaine, and snorted into the monstrosity that is my Chin. This is my thingy."

"Your what?"

"You know, my thingy," Tom said, "What people will remember me by. I forgot the word; I am too depressed for linguistics."

"Well," James said cheerfully, "At least you haven't got Harry's nose, or Danny's ears; that would truly be a disaster, considering the strength of the average human's neck. You wouldn't be able to hold your head up. You would have to drag it around in a manner similar to a small child with a cat."

"But I already drag my head around," Tom said miserably. "With shame. How much is Chin reduction surgery?" This final question was directed at Fletch, who always seemed to be omnipotent in his ability to acquire all knowledge. Fletch, however, took it the wrong way: "Why the hell should I know? You saying I have a big chin? Anyway, we need to be talking about the tour, not your bloody face! We need to plan!"

"The only thing we should be planning for," Harry said, as he squeezed Tom's chin inbetween his thumb and index finger, "Is our retirement; considering that our success has been based thus far on our dashing good looks, we seem to have run out of time, if Tom's chin, my nose, Danny's ears, James' hair, Matt's eyes and Dougie's general exterior are anything to go by."