CSI: NY ficlet
Jul. 31st, 2005 04:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbard*is gleeful* Dude, why is it that whenever I whine and complain and bitch and moan about having nowhere to go and nothing done and no idea what's going on, I write something that I actually really like, and then realize hey! I know what's going to happen in the next couple chapters of Omerta! (You have no idea what a relief this is. I mean, I know what the bad guys are doing and whodunnit and stuff, but I don't know how interpersonal relationships are going to work or what's going to happen next.) So: in the next couple of days, expect Flack and a guest appearance by Gavin Moran, and then Mac and Stella and Nick.
We were rearranging bookshelves today, and I found the folder of stuff from last year's New York/Boston trip. See, I'm a packrat, I hardly ever throw anything away. And now I have my NY postcards and a map of Boston sitting right next to me. Plus my plane tickets, Metro cards, a map of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (which would have been helpful before I wrote New York Minute, hmm?), ticket stubs from the Statue of Liberty, the Blue Man Group, the Empire State Building, various brochures from the Empire State Building, Lexington and Concord, Salem Witch Mueseum (which we did not actually visit, so I don't know why I have it), the Irish Hunger Memorial (where Will Smith was filming a movie right across from our hotel. Ah, New York), Ellis Island, Plimoth Plantation, playbills from Chicago (New York) and the Blue Man Group (Boston, obviously). It's too bad I don't scrapbook, this stuff could come in handy. See, the reason I have postcards is because I figured out that my pictures suck, so I might as well spend my money on postcards, because the pictures will be better. I don't have Boston postcards; I bet I blew all my money on the Celtic necklace (which I still have the package for *facepalm*) and the Harvard sweatshirt.
I have issues. Also, I hadn't realized I'd been to Ohio. Apparently we had a stopover in Cincinnatti. That must mean our stopover the year before (DC and Williamsburg) was in Chicago. Heh, I love being well-traveled.
Also, a Snafu-verse flashback to eighteen-year-old Danny, just after he gets out of the hospital after Vinnie shot him and Officer Andrew O'Malley died.
Danny, at eighteen, lives in a world of memories faded to dog-eared sepia and scratchy black and white, even the ones that date back no farther than last week. He lies on his old bed in his old room and tries not to listen to Val and his father screaming at each other downstairs, and sometimes he hears his mother’s voice butting in, sharp and spicy with Constantine’s Queens accent. It reminds him of Vinnie, and he tries to bat the memories away but his drug-blurred mind drags him back into the swirl of memory.
He tries to mouth the Italian he knws he can speak, but it’s the English that circles and circles, never quite coming to a rest on his tongue. “Dad,” he tries to say when Ned Messer’s silhouette appears in the door, but Ned stares down at him with hate and disgust and pride all jumbled up together on his face, and the words stop in his throat. Ned turns away; Danny sees the butt of his service pistol as the door slams shut.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers to the empty ceiling, to the white walls where his baseball posters used to hang before Nate or Ned or Angela took them down. “I didn’t mean –”
The tattoo burns regret into his back. Tanglewood. He did. He does. Messer. Constantine. His blood battles against the twin constraints of the law and his family, which is maybe the same thing. Angela Messer is his mother and Ned Messer his father. He knows. He does. Ned lied. He did. He does that. Danny knows this. He looks like his brothers.
He tries not to remember he hasn’t seen his brothers in four years.
Someone knocks on the door. Danny struggles up on one elbow, feels the tear in his bad shoulder where Vinnie or Curly or Christ, God knows who, shot him. “Yeah,” he croaks, and the door opens silently. The rusty hinge that Nate used to oil so he could sneak out and party with his jock friends has been fixed. Or maybe Nate just poured enough oil on it that the rust has been drowned away.
He doesn’t know who he expects. Maybe it’s his father, maybe it’s his mother, and he half-hopes it’s Val so he can go home, because this isn’t home and never has been. Home is Val’s apartment or Queens, or the house in Yonkers they’ve been frequenting since Danny got seriously involved in Tanglewood. That’s home. This isn’t. This is a cop’s house in a middle-class neighborhood in Staten Island, and Danny doesn’t belong here. He may be a cop’s son, but he isn’t a cop.
It’s not either of his parents, though, and it’s not Val. It’s Eddie, in civilian clothes, and Danny hasn’t realized till now how much his memories of his brother owe to the last time he saw him, one November day when Val pulled a gun on his father and Eddie is caught, forever, as the very epitome of cop, in his NYPD blues with his badge over his heart.
“Hey,” Eddie says, tentatively, and he pulls a chair away from Danny’s battered old desk to sit and watch.
“Hey,” Dannyy returns, and he can’t help but thing what the Boys would do if they ran across him in a dark alley some night. It would not be pretty, he knows, and there would be no evidence left but what the cop’s eyes and ears registered. If they left those.
Eddie seems to be searching for something to say, and Danny can’t quite decide what it might be. He doesn’t think he can stand pity, and he almost wished for the hostility man, I should’ve arrested your sorry ass when I had the chance will bring. Almost, but the thought of shouting hurts his head and his usual tactics won’t work on his brother.
Eddie clears his throat, and Danny jumps and looks up at him. “Happy birthday,” he says, and yeah, Danny’s definitely landed in a parallel universe now. No way this is happening. “Nate and Chris’ll be coming by later; Chris’s got a Narco bust and Nate has class.” He gives Danny an awkward look and adds, “At NYU. He’s getting a bachelor’s in psychology. Got in on a soccer scholarship.”
“Good for him,” Danny says tonelessly, because of course he would. Nate the brain. Nate the jock. Nate the perfect. Danny, even back when he had the 3.7 GPA (which is pretty damn good, if he says so himself, although it’s lousy next to Nate’s 4.0) and the promise of pitching for varsity when the season rolled around, was nothing compared to Nate. Especially not now, with ink on his back and blood on his hands and twisting through his veins. How blue can it be, when it bucks up against Constantine and Tanglewood and the Mob? Goodfellas. Yeah, that’s him, a regular wiseguy in the making. Only La Cosa Nostra wouldn’t have him if he paid in death.
Oh well, Danny thinks, because that only leaves him with one choice. And it’s not the would he thought five minutes ago he would have taken, but it will work, and it will fuck Vincent Patriso and the Sassones over. He grins up at his brother, and it hurts, but there’s something reassuring in the pain. “So what’d you bring me?”
He thinks he can deal with being half and half on the other side of the blue line. It’s what he’s been doing all his life.
We were rearranging bookshelves today, and I found the folder of stuff from last year's New York/Boston trip. See, I'm a packrat, I hardly ever throw anything away. And now I have my NY postcards and a map of Boston sitting right next to me. Plus my plane tickets, Metro cards, a map of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (which would have been helpful before I wrote New York Minute, hmm?), ticket stubs from the Statue of Liberty, the Blue Man Group, the Empire State Building, various brochures from the Empire State Building, Lexington and Concord, Salem Witch Mueseum (which we did not actually visit, so I don't know why I have it), the Irish Hunger Memorial (where Will Smith was filming a movie right across from our hotel. Ah, New York), Ellis Island, Plimoth Plantation, playbills from Chicago (New York) and the Blue Man Group (Boston, obviously). It's too bad I don't scrapbook, this stuff could come in handy. See, the reason I have postcards is because I figured out that my pictures suck, so I might as well spend my money on postcards, because the pictures will be better. I don't have Boston postcards; I bet I blew all my money on the Celtic necklace (which I still have the package for *facepalm*) and the Harvard sweatshirt.
I have issues. Also, I hadn't realized I'd been to Ohio. Apparently we had a stopover in Cincinnatti. That must mean our stopover the year before (DC and Williamsburg) was in Chicago. Heh, I love being well-traveled.
Also, a Snafu-verse flashback to eighteen-year-old Danny, just after he gets out of the hospital after Vinnie shot him and Officer Andrew O'Malley died.
Danny, at eighteen, lives in a world of memories faded to dog-eared sepia and scratchy black and white, even the ones that date back no farther than last week. He lies on his old bed in his old room and tries not to listen to Val and his father screaming at each other downstairs, and sometimes he hears his mother’s voice butting in, sharp and spicy with Constantine’s Queens accent. It reminds him of Vinnie, and he tries to bat the memories away but his drug-blurred mind drags him back into the swirl of memory.
He tries to mouth the Italian he knws he can speak, but it’s the English that circles and circles, never quite coming to a rest on his tongue. “Dad,” he tries to say when Ned Messer’s silhouette appears in the door, but Ned stares down at him with hate and disgust and pride all jumbled up together on his face, and the words stop in his throat. Ned turns away; Danny sees the butt of his service pistol as the door slams shut.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers to the empty ceiling, to the white walls where his baseball posters used to hang before Nate or Ned or Angela took them down. “I didn’t mean –”
The tattoo burns regret into his back. Tanglewood. He did. He does. Messer. Constantine. His blood battles against the twin constraints of the law and his family, which is maybe the same thing. Angela Messer is his mother and Ned Messer his father. He knows. He does. Ned lied. He did. He does that. Danny knows this. He looks like his brothers.
He tries not to remember he hasn’t seen his brothers in four years.
Someone knocks on the door. Danny struggles up on one elbow, feels the tear in his bad shoulder where Vinnie or Curly or Christ, God knows who, shot him. “Yeah,” he croaks, and the door opens silently. The rusty hinge that Nate used to oil so he could sneak out and party with his jock friends has been fixed. Or maybe Nate just poured enough oil on it that the rust has been drowned away.
He doesn’t know who he expects. Maybe it’s his father, maybe it’s his mother, and he half-hopes it’s Val so he can go home, because this isn’t home and never has been. Home is Val’s apartment or Queens, or the house in Yonkers they’ve been frequenting since Danny got seriously involved in Tanglewood. That’s home. This isn’t. This is a cop’s house in a middle-class neighborhood in Staten Island, and Danny doesn’t belong here. He may be a cop’s son, but he isn’t a cop.
It’s not either of his parents, though, and it’s not Val. It’s Eddie, in civilian clothes, and Danny hasn’t realized till now how much his memories of his brother owe to the last time he saw him, one November day when Val pulled a gun on his father and Eddie is caught, forever, as the very epitome of cop, in his NYPD blues with his badge over his heart.
“Hey,” Eddie says, tentatively, and he pulls a chair away from Danny’s battered old desk to sit and watch.
“Hey,” Dannyy returns, and he can’t help but thing what the Boys would do if they ran across him in a dark alley some night. It would not be pretty, he knows, and there would be no evidence left but what the cop’s eyes and ears registered. If they left those.
Eddie seems to be searching for something to say, and Danny can’t quite decide what it might be. He doesn’t think he can stand pity, and he almost wished for the hostility man, I should’ve arrested your sorry ass when I had the chance will bring. Almost, but the thought of shouting hurts his head and his usual tactics won’t work on his brother.
Eddie clears his throat, and Danny jumps and looks up at him. “Happy birthday,” he says, and yeah, Danny’s definitely landed in a parallel universe now. No way this is happening. “Nate and Chris’ll be coming by later; Chris’s got a Narco bust and Nate has class.” He gives Danny an awkward look and adds, “At NYU. He’s getting a bachelor’s in psychology. Got in on a soccer scholarship.”
“Good for him,” Danny says tonelessly, because of course he would. Nate the brain. Nate the jock. Nate the perfect. Danny, even back when he had the 3.7 GPA (which is pretty damn good, if he says so himself, although it’s lousy next to Nate’s 4.0) and the promise of pitching for varsity when the season rolled around, was nothing compared to Nate. Especially not now, with ink on his back and blood on his hands and twisting through his veins. How blue can it be, when it bucks up against Constantine and Tanglewood and the Mob? Goodfellas. Yeah, that’s him, a regular wiseguy in the making. Only La Cosa Nostra wouldn’t have him if he paid in death.
Oh well, Danny thinks, because that only leaves him with one choice. And it’s not the would he thought five minutes ago he would have taken, but it will work, and it will fuck Vincent Patriso and the Sassones over. He grins up at his brother, and it hurts, but there’s something reassuring in the pain. “So what’d you bring me?”
He thinks he can deal with being half and half on the other side of the blue line. It’s what he’s been doing all his life.