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bedlamsbardWe've gone too long without a mental breakdown. IT IS TIME! Also, Flack Is Loud.
Flack came in sometime around seven, scowling and with his hands full of plastic evidence bags. “Techs collected ‘em up at the Empire State,” he explained gruffly to Danny when he handed them off. “Doubt there’s much there, but ya’ never know – ya’ might get lucky.” Almost as an afterthought he leaned in and kissed Danny hard on the mouth, quick but sure and familiar as the dawn. “Missed you,” he murmured, even as Danny cast a nervous glance toward the door of the lab to check if anyone had seen. Aiden was in their office looking over Flack’s witness reports; Mac and Stella had already left (already!) for the field.
“And how much sleep did you get?” Danny demanded, sorting through the bags with increasing dismay.
Flack shrugged. “Grabbed a couple hours at about three; got a phone call at five, five-thirty and left. You?”
“None.” He sighed. “No murder weapon?”
“Not that any’a my people have found yet.”
That translated to no. Fuck. If he could just have the goddamn gun… “Anything interesting in here?”
“Photographs, s’posedly.” Flack pulled out a stool and sat down on it facing Danny. “How much coffee have you had?”
“Not enough. Relevent photographs?”
Flack shrugged, running a hand through his dark hair. He’d been limping when he came in; his bad leg must have been acting up again. “Haven’t seen ‘em.” He reached out and kneaded Danny’s thigh, the muscles jumping under his palm as Danny turned in surprised familiarity.
“Flack, you charmer, you.”
“Missed you,” he said again and Danny blinked and saw the bags under his eyes and the fine lines tracing crows feet out on his skin.
“Hey,” he said, putting his gloved hand on Flack’s arm. “You all right? You have another nightmare?”
Flack turned his head aside.
Jesus, Danny thought. Bad enough when he was there, could try and calm Flack down till his wild swings turned into sobbing, but worse when he wasn’t. Didn’t know for sure how many times a month it was Flack woke up to an empty bed in blind panic, not knowing where his partner was or if Danny was okay. He didn’t know when the dreams would leave or if they ever would; they came erratically, sometimes two or three a night, sometimes none for days.
“Don,” Danny said softly. “I’m sorry.”
Flack swallowed. “’S’okay,” he said. “You got your job, and I – it wasn’t – been worse.” He was shaking, hand clenching on Danny’s leg.
Yeah, Danny always thought. There’s always worse, but there’s always better, too.
Flack’s throat worked silently, then he said, “Whatta we got, Danny?”
“Not much,” he said, turning away to gather up the papers he’d strewn across the table as the results arrived. “I’m still runnin’ the dirt I found earlier; maybe we can get a match to somewhere, get an idea where Dove came from, or the perp did. I got negative results back on one set’a prints; the others are still runnin’. Everythin’ else is a no-go, and man, I’m thinkin’ life kinda sucks.”
“Where’s Aiden?”
“Right here,” she announced, pushing the door open with her shoulder. Danny jumped away from Flack’s hand, turning on his stool to face her. “Ya’ need a hand with that, Aid?”
She dumped the load of – God alone knew whatever it was, Danny didn’t, on the lab table. “No, I’m good.”
Flack blinked at it dubiously, wrinkling his nose. Danny resisted the urge to do the same. “What the hell is that?”
Aiden rolled her eyes at them. “Anna Dove’s clothes and personal effects, what the hell do you think they are?”
“They didn’t smell like – that – at the crime scene,” Danny said.
“Uh-huh. And that’s where we come in, Dannyboy.”
Danny froze. Don’tcallmethatdon’tcallmethatdon’tcallmethat. Sonny, Curly, Phil, Vinnie, a hundred times over – Dannyboy, what’s up? That’s my Dannyboy. Dannyboy dannyboy dannyboy.
Aiden was looking at him urgently. “Danny?”
Sonny, biting the words into Danny’s neck as he came. Vinnie, running out of a jewelry store with the alarm going off like cats in thunderstorms, yelling for Danny to open the fucking door, right the fuck now. Curly shoving him up against a wall whose weathered bricks crumble slightly under his grasping fingernails. You think you earned this tat, Dannyboy? You think you earned it, you traitorous little son of a bitch? I’m gonna burn it write off, because you never fucking earned, Dannyboy. All you Constantines are the same, all you goddamned Constantine bastards, interbreeding with cops like you think you can fit in. Fit in my sweet Italian Cosa Nostra ass, because you’ll never fucking fit in, Dannyboy. You’ll be an outsider until the day you die – not a cop, if you think you can be one with that blueblood Messer name – not Cosa Nostra, not anything except a goddamned fucking traitor and I’m going to show the whole damned world what kind of bastard you are, Dannyboy. You’re not Mafia, you’re not police, you’re just another damned Constantine trying to be something he isn’t. I’ll get that tat off’a you if it’s the last thing I do, because you never earned it. You never gave your blood and your guts and your freedom for Tanglewood, or for the Mafia either. Never gave a fuck about omerta, just turned over the first chance you got. I should never have listened to Vinnie about how having a Constantine in with us, because Constantine ain’t Mafia. Ain’t La Cosa Nostra. And neither are you, Daniel Valentine Constantine Messer. Neither are you, you goddamn Constantine NYPD traitor.
Danny had thought he’d forgotten. He hadn’t. Flack had never asked about the scars slashing across his tattoo, although he traced them sometimes in the deep night when he thought Danny was sleeping, gun-callused fingers sliding and catching on the rough scar tissue. Not just Curly’s burn scar; Vinnie’s and Phil’s bullet holes were there too. Funny how often he got shot in the shoulder; it was really getting a little annoying and he wished criminals would aim for something else. Like his leg. His leg would be good. Wait, no, he hated crutches. At least there weren’t many things that could be permanently damaged in his shoulder.
Aiden and Flack were both staring at him, he realized after a moment. “Danny?” Flack said finally, reaching over to touch his arm lightly.
Danny flinched away like he’d been burned and Flack receded back, a hurt expression dashing briefly across his handsome features.
“Danny,” Aiden said reprovingly. She put her hand on his wrist, as though feeling from his pulse, and didn’t let go when Danny tried to shake her off. “What’s wrong? What’d I say?”
Danny swallowed thickly. “Sonny,” he choked out. “He – and Curly, and Phil and Vinnie – they used to call me that.” He didn’t shake off Flack’s hand whe the detective touched him again, heavier and more reassuring. He didn’t think that he was imagining that Flack was shuddering slightly, short, quick tremors that reverberated out from his palm through his fingers. Curly had hurt him, too.
Aiden looked stricken. “Ah, Christ, Danny, I didn’t know,” she said, and seemed about to say more when one of the computers pinged. The two CSIs and the detective all swung around to look at it, then Danny stood up, grinning at the positive match. “Oh, thank you dear sweet fucking God,” he breathed, ripping the printout out of the printer. Then he froze, again. “Why does the universe HATE me?” he demanded of the still, sanitized lab air.
Flack blinked carefully, and probably would have taken a step back if he’d been standing. “I don’t hate you,” he said.
“Sorry, Flack, but last time I checked? You weren’t the fucking universe.” The paper crumpled beneath his clutching fingers, and he had to force himself not to rip it to shreds, because his luck couldn’t really be that bad and computers made errors sometimes, right? Couldn’t this be one of those times? Please?
Aiden’s expression had gone from stricken to alarmed. “Danny,” she said, “what the hell –”
He gave in to the urge, crumpled it into a tiny ball and flung it at her. Flack snatched it out of the air and smoothed it out, never mind Danny’d thrown it at Aiden. “Who the hell’s Mordecai Giovinazzo?” he demanded.
Aiden blinked, looked a little alarmed, and sudden understanding flashed in her eyes. “Oh,” she said softly. “Oh, shit.”
Danny scowled. “Mordecai Giovinazzo,” he said, unaware of the crazy grin spreading across his face, “is the identical twin brother of the guy sitting outside in the lobby right now, and he, like his brother, works for my uncle. My Mafia don, boss of the Constantine Family, patron of the perp in Mac and Stella’s case, who happens to be THE Constantine consigliere, criminal uncle. Don Valentine Constantine.”
“Oh, my dad’s not going to be happy to hear that,” Flack muttered to himself.
Danny blinked. “What?”
The detective waved a hand approximately the size of a salad plate. “One of the things I remember about my childhood is my pop coming home from work everyday for three years doing nothing but complaining about the evidence he couldn’t get on Don Valentine. Then the Feds butted in, and he got distracted by that serial killer, whatshisname, the one they called the Phantom, ya’ know? Finally got the bastard in ’96; got life in prison. Shoulda got the chair, but no, judge didn’t like opera, so he got life instead.”
Aiden interrupted him. “Flack. We know the case.”
Danny was staring at him. “Ya’ don’t care?”
“Danny,” Flack said, leaning forward earnestly, “I don’t care if the goddamned Iceman’s your pop. I don’t care if John Valachi’s your first cousin. I don’t care if Blackie Mulligan’s your brother. And I sure as hell don’t care if Val Constantine’s your uncle, because you know what? You’re NYPD now.” He stabbed a finger at Danny across the lab bench and repeated that last. “You’re NYPD. You’re a cop. I never gave a fuck whether a guy was a blueblood or an illegal immigrant from ‘cross the border as long as they got their shit together. And you, my blue-eyed friend, you sure as hell got your shit together. You’re a fucking detective in the best fucking division of the NYPD, so don’t you dare think you can pull that ‘pity me, I got criminal relatives’ shit with me. I don’t care whether a guy’s been in and out of jail a thousand times or if he’s got the best fucking record this side of the Hudson, as long as he remembers that he is NYPD now. He is blue. Not green, not red, not pink or purple or polka-dotted, he is blue. I don’t care what the fuck you did in the past or what your fucking relatives did in the past or do right now, as long as you know what you are and respect that, goddammit. You. Are. NYPD. You are a member of the finest police department on God’s green earth, and don’t’ you ever fucking forget it, Danny Messer. Or I will pound it into your ex-gangbanger head with my own two blueblood hands.” He’d risen from his chair and was half-shouting, so close to Danny’s face that Danny probably could have kissed him without moving more than a centimeter. Breathing like a racehorse, he added, “You got that, Messer?”
It would take a braver man than Danny to say no. “Yeah,” he said. “I got that, Flack. Didn’t know you were so passionate about it.”
Flack stepped back. “Ronnie Ligambi worked with Gavin back in the day,” he said. “Met the guy a coupla times. Remember his trial, and how the NYPD stood behind him. Fuck the brass. If your partners don’t know what you are, you ain’t worth shit on the beat or on the job. Ligambi,” he added, “was one fine cop, and everything IAB said about him was a goddamned lie. They ripped him apart. Don’t do that to yourself, Danny.”
Ronnie Ligambi. The so-called “Mafia Cop.” He’d been connected too, but had forgone his bloodline entirely and chosen NYPD blue over La Cosa Nostra blood. Hadn’t served him well the day IAB charged him with selling his badge to John Valachi.
“Fuck,” Aiden said, sounding impressed. “You really do know everyone in the department, Flack.”
Flack was still breathing heavily. “Not everyone,” he said. “Never gave much of a fuck about Vice or IAB.”
Flack came in sometime around seven, scowling and with his hands full of plastic evidence bags. “Techs collected ‘em up at the Empire State,” he explained gruffly to Danny when he handed them off. “Doubt there’s much there, but ya’ never know – ya’ might get lucky.” Almost as an afterthought he leaned in and kissed Danny hard on the mouth, quick but sure and familiar as the dawn. “Missed you,” he murmured, even as Danny cast a nervous glance toward the door of the lab to check if anyone had seen. Aiden was in their office looking over Flack’s witness reports; Mac and Stella had already left (already!) for the field.
“And how much sleep did you get?” Danny demanded, sorting through the bags with increasing dismay.
Flack shrugged. “Grabbed a couple hours at about three; got a phone call at five, five-thirty and left. You?”
“None.” He sighed. “No murder weapon?”
“Not that any’a my people have found yet.”
That translated to no. Fuck. If he could just have the goddamn gun… “Anything interesting in here?”
“Photographs, s’posedly.” Flack pulled out a stool and sat down on it facing Danny. “How much coffee have you had?”
“Not enough. Relevent photographs?”
Flack shrugged, running a hand through his dark hair. He’d been limping when he came in; his bad leg must have been acting up again. “Haven’t seen ‘em.” He reached out and kneaded Danny’s thigh, the muscles jumping under his palm as Danny turned in surprised familiarity.
“Flack, you charmer, you.”
“Missed you,” he said again and Danny blinked and saw the bags under his eyes and the fine lines tracing crows feet out on his skin.
“Hey,” he said, putting his gloved hand on Flack’s arm. “You all right? You have another nightmare?”
Flack turned his head aside.
Jesus, Danny thought. Bad enough when he was there, could try and calm Flack down till his wild swings turned into sobbing, but worse when he wasn’t. Didn’t know for sure how many times a month it was Flack woke up to an empty bed in blind panic, not knowing where his partner was or if Danny was okay. He didn’t know when the dreams would leave or if they ever would; they came erratically, sometimes two or three a night, sometimes none for days.
“Don,” Danny said softly. “I’m sorry.”
Flack swallowed. “’S’okay,” he said. “You got your job, and I – it wasn’t – been worse.” He was shaking, hand clenching on Danny’s leg.
Yeah, Danny always thought. There’s always worse, but there’s always better, too.
Flack’s throat worked silently, then he said, “Whatta we got, Danny?”
“Not much,” he said, turning away to gather up the papers he’d strewn across the table as the results arrived. “I’m still runnin’ the dirt I found earlier; maybe we can get a match to somewhere, get an idea where Dove came from, or the perp did. I got negative results back on one set’a prints; the others are still runnin’. Everythin’ else is a no-go, and man, I’m thinkin’ life kinda sucks.”
“Where’s Aiden?”
“Right here,” she announced, pushing the door open with her shoulder. Danny jumped away from Flack’s hand, turning on his stool to face her. “Ya’ need a hand with that, Aid?”
She dumped the load of – God alone knew whatever it was, Danny didn’t, on the lab table. “No, I’m good.”
Flack blinked at it dubiously, wrinkling his nose. Danny resisted the urge to do the same. “What the hell is that?”
Aiden rolled her eyes at them. “Anna Dove’s clothes and personal effects, what the hell do you think they are?”
“They didn’t smell like – that – at the crime scene,” Danny said.
“Uh-huh. And that’s where we come in, Dannyboy.”
Danny froze. Don’tcallmethatdon’tcallmethatdon’tcallmethat. Sonny, Curly, Phil, Vinnie, a hundred times over – Dannyboy, what’s up? That’s my Dannyboy. Dannyboy dannyboy dannyboy.
Aiden was looking at him urgently. “Danny?”
Sonny, biting the words into Danny’s neck as he came. Vinnie, running out of a jewelry store with the alarm going off like cats in thunderstorms, yelling for Danny to open the fucking door, right the fuck now. Curly shoving him up against a wall whose weathered bricks crumble slightly under his grasping fingernails. You think you earned this tat, Dannyboy? You think you earned it, you traitorous little son of a bitch? I’m gonna burn it write off, because you never fucking earned, Dannyboy. All you Constantines are the same, all you goddamned Constantine bastards, interbreeding with cops like you think you can fit in. Fit in my sweet Italian Cosa Nostra ass, because you’ll never fucking fit in, Dannyboy. You’ll be an outsider until the day you die – not a cop, if you think you can be one with that blueblood Messer name – not Cosa Nostra, not anything except a goddamned fucking traitor and I’m going to show the whole damned world what kind of bastard you are, Dannyboy. You’re not Mafia, you’re not police, you’re just another damned Constantine trying to be something he isn’t. I’ll get that tat off’a you if it’s the last thing I do, because you never earned it. You never gave your blood and your guts and your freedom for Tanglewood, or for the Mafia either. Never gave a fuck about omerta, just turned over the first chance you got. I should never have listened to Vinnie about how having a Constantine in with us, because Constantine ain’t Mafia. Ain’t La Cosa Nostra. And neither are you, Daniel Valentine Constantine Messer. Neither are you, you goddamn Constantine NYPD traitor.
Danny had thought he’d forgotten. He hadn’t. Flack had never asked about the scars slashing across his tattoo, although he traced them sometimes in the deep night when he thought Danny was sleeping, gun-callused fingers sliding and catching on the rough scar tissue. Not just Curly’s burn scar; Vinnie’s and Phil’s bullet holes were there too. Funny how often he got shot in the shoulder; it was really getting a little annoying and he wished criminals would aim for something else. Like his leg. His leg would be good. Wait, no, he hated crutches. At least there weren’t many things that could be permanently damaged in his shoulder.
Aiden and Flack were both staring at him, he realized after a moment. “Danny?” Flack said finally, reaching over to touch his arm lightly.
Danny flinched away like he’d been burned and Flack receded back, a hurt expression dashing briefly across his handsome features.
“Danny,” Aiden said reprovingly. She put her hand on his wrist, as though feeling from his pulse, and didn’t let go when Danny tried to shake her off. “What’s wrong? What’d I say?”
Danny swallowed thickly. “Sonny,” he choked out. “He – and Curly, and Phil and Vinnie – they used to call me that.” He didn’t shake off Flack’s hand whe the detective touched him again, heavier and more reassuring. He didn’t think that he was imagining that Flack was shuddering slightly, short, quick tremors that reverberated out from his palm through his fingers. Curly had hurt him, too.
Aiden looked stricken. “Ah, Christ, Danny, I didn’t know,” she said, and seemed about to say more when one of the computers pinged. The two CSIs and the detective all swung around to look at it, then Danny stood up, grinning at the positive match. “Oh, thank you dear sweet fucking God,” he breathed, ripping the printout out of the printer. Then he froze, again. “Why does the universe HATE me?” he demanded of the still, sanitized lab air.
Flack blinked carefully, and probably would have taken a step back if he’d been standing. “I don’t hate you,” he said.
“Sorry, Flack, but last time I checked? You weren’t the fucking universe.” The paper crumpled beneath his clutching fingers, and he had to force himself not to rip it to shreds, because his luck couldn’t really be that bad and computers made errors sometimes, right? Couldn’t this be one of those times? Please?
Aiden’s expression had gone from stricken to alarmed. “Danny,” she said, “what the hell –”
He gave in to the urge, crumpled it into a tiny ball and flung it at her. Flack snatched it out of the air and smoothed it out, never mind Danny’d thrown it at Aiden. “Who the hell’s Mordecai Giovinazzo?” he demanded.
Aiden blinked, looked a little alarmed, and sudden understanding flashed in her eyes. “Oh,” she said softly. “Oh, shit.”
Danny scowled. “Mordecai Giovinazzo,” he said, unaware of the crazy grin spreading across his face, “is the identical twin brother of the guy sitting outside in the lobby right now, and he, like his brother, works for my uncle. My Mafia don, boss of the Constantine Family, patron of the perp in Mac and Stella’s case, who happens to be THE Constantine consigliere, criminal uncle. Don Valentine Constantine.”
“Oh, my dad’s not going to be happy to hear that,” Flack muttered to himself.
Danny blinked. “What?”
The detective waved a hand approximately the size of a salad plate. “One of the things I remember about my childhood is my pop coming home from work everyday for three years doing nothing but complaining about the evidence he couldn’t get on Don Valentine. Then the Feds butted in, and he got distracted by that serial killer, whatshisname, the one they called the Phantom, ya’ know? Finally got the bastard in ’96; got life in prison. Shoulda got the chair, but no, judge didn’t like opera, so he got life instead.”
Aiden interrupted him. “Flack. We know the case.”
Danny was staring at him. “Ya’ don’t care?”
“Danny,” Flack said, leaning forward earnestly, “I don’t care if the goddamned Iceman’s your pop. I don’t care if John Valachi’s your first cousin. I don’t care if Blackie Mulligan’s your brother. And I sure as hell don’t care if Val Constantine’s your uncle, because you know what? You’re NYPD now.” He stabbed a finger at Danny across the lab bench and repeated that last. “You’re NYPD. You’re a cop. I never gave a fuck whether a guy was a blueblood or an illegal immigrant from ‘cross the border as long as they got their shit together. And you, my blue-eyed friend, you sure as hell got your shit together. You’re a fucking detective in the best fucking division of the NYPD, so don’t you dare think you can pull that ‘pity me, I got criminal relatives’ shit with me. I don’t care whether a guy’s been in and out of jail a thousand times or if he’s got the best fucking record this side of the Hudson, as long as he remembers that he is NYPD now. He is blue. Not green, not red, not pink or purple or polka-dotted, he is blue. I don’t care what the fuck you did in the past or what your fucking relatives did in the past or do right now, as long as you know what you are and respect that, goddammit. You. Are. NYPD. You are a member of the finest police department on God’s green earth, and don’t’ you ever fucking forget it, Danny Messer. Or I will pound it into your ex-gangbanger head with my own two blueblood hands.” He’d risen from his chair and was half-shouting, so close to Danny’s face that Danny probably could have kissed him without moving more than a centimeter. Breathing like a racehorse, he added, “You got that, Messer?”
It would take a braver man than Danny to say no. “Yeah,” he said. “I got that, Flack. Didn’t know you were so passionate about it.”
Flack stepped back. “Ronnie Ligambi worked with Gavin back in the day,” he said. “Met the guy a coupla times. Remember his trial, and how the NYPD stood behind him. Fuck the brass. If your partners don’t know what you are, you ain’t worth shit on the beat or on the job. Ligambi,” he added, “was one fine cop, and everything IAB said about him was a goddamned lie. They ripped him apart. Don’t do that to yourself, Danny.”
Ronnie Ligambi. The so-called “Mafia Cop.” He’d been connected too, but had forgone his bloodline entirely and chosen NYPD blue over La Cosa Nostra blood. Hadn’t served him well the day IAB charged him with selling his badge to John Valachi.
“Fuck,” Aiden said, sounding impressed. “You really do know everyone in the department, Flack.”
Flack was still breathing heavily. “Not everyone,” he said. “Never gave much of a fuck about Vice or IAB.”
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-12 12:49 am (UTC)Yay.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-12 01:17 am (UTC)Flack has a very clear view on what does and does not make a cop, which should serve him well when they go to interview Mordecai Giovinazzo and find Nick. And he knows, because he's been doing this and seeing this his entire life, because he's seen the bluebloods and the not-bluebloods, the betrayed and the betrayors.
And there's palpable tension and the sense of panic in Danny's memories at "dannyboy".
Danny panics too much, methinks. However, he is, after all, entitled to flashbacks, given what he's been through.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-12 01:25 am (UTC)Oh, that's going to be-- *really* interesting. That's a fine clash of heads, that is. Not necessarily a messy one, either.
I re-iterate: I love the way you write Flack, with his loyalty and bluntness and so much *him*, and he's not at all a pansy like sometimes people write him when they want him to be nice. He's-- Flack.
Danny panics too much, methinks. However, he is, after all, entitled to flashbacks, given what he's been through.
I probably shouldn't be laughing *quite* so hard at picturing a little chart of names, and little categories of freakout: "flashback" "panic attack" "blackout" "loss of temper (w or w/o injury)" and who has or hasn't had them that day.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-12 01:56 am (UTC)Well, it depends if they equate "Nick Bonasera" with "Stella Bonasera" - and if they do - well, that...could end interestingly. Of course, there's also the scene where Mac ends up with a sample of Astra Pagliuca's DNA...
*ahem*
I re-iterate: I love the way you write Flack, with his loyalty and bluntness and so much *him*, and he's not at all a pansy like sometimes people write him when they want him to be nice. He's-- Flack.
Well, he - he's Flack. He's not going to change his personality just because people think he's "abrasive" or something. It's just how he is. He can be nice without being out of character, although I don't know if "nice" is exactly the word to describe it.
I probably shouldn't be laughing *quite* so hard at picturing a little chart of names, and little categories of freakout: "flashback" "panic attack" "blackout" "loss of temper (w or w/o injury)" and who has or hasn't had them that day.
...why do I have the suspicion that Stella actually has one of those?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-12 04:10 am (UTC)And mental breakdowns are always fun (and, in this fandom, apparently par for the course).
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-13 12:16 am (UTC)And mental breakdowns are always fun (and, in this fandom, apparently par for the course).
*sigh* Why are all the male characters (excepting Hawkes) insane? No, really, why? No wonder the women aren't romantically interested in them; they're much, much smarter than that.
I'm glad Danny's freakout worked, I'm not sure - huh, I'd think Aiden wouldn't just call him that out of the blue, but maybe he's under a lot of stress and what would only make him blink before will do a lot more now.