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.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-01 12:50 am (UTC)(a tad brain dead, methinks I am.)
You know, I could send you a Boston postcard, but that wouldn't be the same as getting it here I guess.(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-01 01:15 am (UTC)My favorite thing about this is his wishing that Val would be there so he could go *home*, because it's... well, it does tie into Danny's larger themes in your series about where home is, and whose blood he is.
Right, because Danny's...well, he's Danny, which means he's eternally caught between two worlds - law enforcement, or law breaking? Constantine, or Messer? Val's son, or Ned's (and I mean that literally, although I doubt I'll ever go into detail in the series)? Mobster, or cop? He tries to choose, but life isn't really keen on that whole choices thing, so the alternatives keep hanging out around his crime scenes with guns in their pants. Plus, he's clueless.
You know, I could send you a Boston postcard, but that wouldn't be the same as getting it here I guess.Well, if you want to, I don't have a problem with it.(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-01 01:38 am (UTC)Oh, handwriting, the bane of my existence. (riddle me this: how is it I can draw for hours if I want, but can't manage to write a legible page?)
Right, because Danny's...well, he's Danny, which means he's eternally caught between two worlds - law enforcement, or law breaking?
You know... if we put this into a broader context, and look at canon in the series, then... well, we've got Aiden, Danny, and Flack. Flack knows where he comes from: the cops. Aiden is from Red Hook, not the most savory of places, and it's clear she knows in whose roots she stands. And then there's Danny, who's torn apart on identity. So much of this show seems to have undercurrents of that-- of being someone and trying to be no one (like Mac), or being no one and ending up someone (like Stella). Reconciling.
Val's son, or Ned's (and I mean that literally, although I doubt I'll ever go into detail in the series)?
...that's incredibly intriguing, in a vaguely creepy sort of way. :)
Well, if you want to, I don't have a problem with it.
Karmic balm for being a dunce and forgetting to bring my camera with me to Nina's so I could photograph keen patches of the city? ;-) (I actually have a couple of postcards I bought but never had anyone to send them to.)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-01 02:08 am (UTC)Wah, I wish I could draw. Well, I can draw, but not out of nowhere. Need a model, and don't like to do people because I can't do mouths. And I don't do it most of the time, because I suck.
You know... if we put this into a broader context, and look at canon in the series, then... well, we've got Aiden, Danny, and Flack. Flack knows where he comes from: the cops. Aiden is from Red Hook, not the most savory of places, and it's clear she knows in whose roots she stands. And then there's Danny, who's torn apart on identity. So much of this show seems to have undercurrents of that-- of being someone and trying to be no one (like Mac), or being no one and ending up someone (like Stella). Reconciling.
*nods* Identity. Flack knows who he is - he's a New York cop. Aiden obviously knows who she is, although I'm damned if I know what that is. Danny doesn't have a clue. Mac's someone, but he wants not to be. Stella's never had a mold, so she knows who she is. Which seems to be the underlying theme of the show, and my series too. Because they have all these corpses, and they spend their time reconstructing lives and people...and I'm for some reason incredibly philosophical right now.
...that's incredibly intriguing, in a vaguely creepy sort of way.
Yeah, and the sad thing is that I don't even know the truth of it. Danny doesn't. Neither do Ned or Val, and the only one that probably does is Angela, and she's dead. It's also creepy on the grounds that Val is only fifteen years older than Danny. But we know what Ned thinks.
Yes, I have issues.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-01 02:19 am (UTC)Heh, I can never draw directly from a model. Or hardly ever. I do better just observing things/people for long periods of time and then drawing them. Sketches. Been doing it forever, so, I never really think about it. (woe, that my writing was legible.)
Aiden obviously knows who she is, although I'm damned if I know what that is.
She's... Aiden Burn. Sister of brothers, catcher of rats. I know what you mean, though, and... her identity is *defined*, but not to us. (gah, CBS.)
Which seems to be the underlying theme of the show, and my series too. Because they have all these corpses, and they spend their time reconstructing lives and people...and I'm for some reason incredibly philosophical right now.
You know, the writers could have an amazing amount of fun with this theme, and I'm not sure they don't want to. Mac's always like, "la dee da, everything's connected" and meanwhile they're supposed to *disconnect* stuff, like emotions, to solve things. Like you can't see electricity if you are ele-- well, you can't see electricity anyway. But you know? (I especially do like that sharp discord between Stella's sense of self and Mac's-- that she is someone from nothing, and he is nothing from someone. And she's the saner of the two. I suppose I'm in a Macish mood.)
It's also creepy on the grounds that Val is only fifteen years older than Danny. But we know what Ned thinks.
And how much older is Angela? (she's much older you said, right?) Yeah, that's... kinda freaky.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-02 02:04 am (UTC)This reminds me...have I ever mentioned the Snafu-verse AU idea I had (I know, everything takes place in the Snafu-verse, which means I should probably just scrap everything and turn it into an original)? Aiden and Hawkes are PIs, Danny's a mobster, Stella's a thief/conwoman, and Mac and Flack are partners in Homicide. Yes, I know, it would have been Teh Crack. It would also have been Danny/Flack.
(I especially do like that sharp discord between Stella's sense of self and Mac's-- that she is someone from nothing, and he is nothing from someone. And she's the saner of the two. I suppose I'm in a Macish mood.)
As having recently come from writing a Black Monday scene - boy, does he ever come from something. Two words: Fortune 500. Three more: old Southern money. A few more: worth, if not billions, a few million.
And how much older is Angela? (she's much older you said, right?) Yeah, that's... kinda freaky.
At least ten years, I think. They're a freaky family. I've ascertained the fact that IF it happened (which it definitely did, just no one knows what the outcome was), Angela and Ned had been fighting, so she got drunk and took a cab to the Constantine house.
*shakes head* Friggin' lunatics.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-02 03:33 pm (UTC)The Pagliuca family adopted Astra so maybe Lucky Constantine adopted Angela, so Angela and Val are not actually biologically related. Maybe Angela is actually a Messer by birth so Danny’s 3 ‘oh so superior’ older brothers could be the result of unknown incest. Or Angela could just be a cousin of sorts to Ned Messer. Anyway, instead of Danny getting the blue blood from his father’s side and the red from his mother’s, it could be the other way around.
Someone thought Carmine had eyes like Danny’s so maybe Lucky fooled around with Carmine’s mother. That would make Carmine and Val half brothers and Carmine Danny’s uncle. One big happy family. In fiction anything can happen!
I just really like Val and his crew and I’m always hoping they’re going to be all right. I know they kill people but they never seem to strike me as bad people. They do what they do because they have to and not because they like it, and they all care about Danny even when he’s trying to push them away. Val still loves Danny, does Danny still love Val?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-02 06:45 pm (UTC)Sadly, my first thought on that is: can we kill him, and sell him on the black market? But really, that would be very wrong.
More profit's made if he stays alive, after all.
At least ten years, I think. They're a freaky family. I've ascertained the fact that IF it happened (which it definitely did, just no one knows what the outcome was), Angela and Ned had been fighting, so she got drunk and took a cab to the Constantine house.
So she'd be at least twenty-five, then? If Val's... fifteen, sixteen? (Am I counting years right?) That's incredibly sketchy on its own, but really, really incredibly intriguing.
*shakes head* Friggin' lunatics.
Oh, amen to *that*.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-03 12:18 am (UTC)*blink* Angela and Val are definitely brother and sister. Well, half-siblings, anyway. And the three other Messer boys aren't actually all that bad, they just take after the Messer side of the family rather than the Constantine side, and we see them through Danny's eyes. They're not so bad on their own - we should actually meet Eddie in a couple of chapters, seen through Flack's eyes. I'm not actually sure how the whole sibling thing works, being an only child myself, but Danny's - well, Ned's got the nagging feeling that Danny isn't his, plus the incident with the cab driver and a bunch of other little stuff that basically culminates into Danny running away from home at fourteen. So his memories of his brothers (and especially Nate, who's closest to him in age and while isn't perfect, he's one of those kids that you have to hate because they seem like they're good at everything and bad at nothing) are those of a little kid's.
Someone thought Carmine had eyes like Danny’s so maybe Lucky fooled around with Carmine’s mother. That would make Carmine and Val half brothers and Carmine Danny’s uncle. One big happy family. In fiction anything can happen!
Carmine's eyes are green and Danny's are blue, sorry. But there is a chance that Danny is Carmine's son, which I'm not really go into since I'm not sure in the specifics myself, but the Mafia families are tangled up, although not usually in the incest-y kind of way.
I just really like Val and his crew and I’m always hoping they’re going to be all right. I know they kill people but they never seem to strike me as bad people. They do what they do because they have to and not because they like it, and they all care about Danny even when he’s trying to push them away.
Well, actually...they do like it. A lot, depending on what it is specifically they do. And while they're not bad guys, they're not "good" either. They operate on a darker shade of grey. They're bad, but they're our bad guys, if that makes any sense.
Val and Co. seem to be quite popular, for original characters pulled pretty much out of nowhere that are, technically, bad. Or at least, of the not-good variety.
Thanks for commenting, and welcome to my journal! I hope I didn't sound rude or anything, it's just that I have a fairly clear idea of who these characters are and where they come from. There are shady spots, of course, and sometimes they change their minds, but generally it's background I'm sure about.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-03 12:27 am (UTC)She might be older. *tries to do math* She has Danny's three older brothers - Nate's about two years older than Danny, and Chris and Eddie are...I don't know how much older. So there's them. She must have married really early, which strikes me as curious for such an independent woman. On the other hand, as a Mafia woman, she'd become a Mob wife if she didn't do something drastic (Astra mentions she's unusual, being thirty and unmarried, and Ace makes comments about Pagliuca marrying her off), so meeting Ned, probably one of the only non-Mob-related men she'd spoken to at length...hmmm. *considers*
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-04 01:37 pm (UTC)Carmine might be Danny’s father! Just how many candidates are there? Are Joey and Ace feeling left out here?
So they do like killing people? OK, there are over 6 billion people on the planet so it’s not like humans are an endangered species or anything. Maybe I’m just wicked myself, but I like Val and Carmine much more than Mac or Ned Messer. I was worried when Carmine was hurt but I laughed when Mac hit his head on a coffee table. It’s not that I don’t like Mac but…I don’t know, he’s annoying sometimes and can hurt Danny without even saying anything.