New York Minute 13 (Danny/Flack)
May. 21st, 2005 06:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardOh, holy crap was the snog scene in this hard to write. And since I wrote it at, like, four or five different times, it doesn't really fit together all that well. And I don't like most of it, since it didn't come over the way I wanted it to, so I may rewrite it later. But I really want to get NYM 13 up. Also, more than half this chapter was handwritten, because I wrote large chunks of it at school. (In class, of course. What, you expect me to actually pay attention? That was why textbooks were invented.) Also, this chapter is about 2200 words, which makes it the longest yet. I blame Flack, for being traumatized.
“Flack, how you doing?” Danny asked, coming up behind the detective.
He flexed his hands absently. “I almost killed a cop, Danny.”
“Flack –”
“I had the gun at his head,” Flack said. “And I almost shot him. I wanted to. I wanted him dead.” His eyes were very wide. “Danny, I almost shot a cop.”
“Flack.” Danny put his hand on the detective’s arm. And how the hell did I get to be the sane one? he wondered fleetingly. “Hey. It’s okay. Nothing happened. Aiden’s all right.” He threw a glance over his shoulder just to be sure, seeing Aiden sitting on the back of an ambulance with a blanket wrapped around her and Mac on side. He was on the phone, talking in short angry bursts as if demanding why? How did you let this happen? He seemed…softer, somehow, his hard edges dulled slightly. Not as hard to read. Maybe it was because of Stella.
Danny swallowed past the lump in his throat at the thought of Stella and looked at Flack again. “Flack,” he said, thinking look at me. Look at me, goddammit, I’m supposed to be the injured one.
Flack turned his head slightly, his face haunted and ghost-ridden. “I almost – Jesus Christ, Danny. I almost shot a cop. I almost – I coulda been a cop-killer.”
He was shaking beneath Danny’s hand like a brittle autumn leaf caught in a thin New York wind. “I almost – I coulda –”
“You saved Aiden’s life,” Danny said as strongly as he could. “She’d be dead right now if it wasn’t for you. Dead.”
Flack was shaking his head no even before Danny had finished speaking. “You’re the one talked the gun away from her head.”
“And you’re the one tackeld the sorry excuse for a cop before he could do somethin’ worse. All the SWAT teams in the world wouldn’t have helped if McCluskey took a couple steps off the roof with Aiden.”
Flack shuddered. “I didn’t –” he started, but he looked slightly more convinced.
“Partners,” Danny said, remembering what Flack talked about whenever he was trying to calm Danny down or deep in his cups. “Two parts of a whole, arright? Each of us does our part. Ya’ got that, Don?”
He looked down at Danny’s hand on his sleeve. “Yeah,” he said heavily. “I got that.”
*
“Go home,” Mac had told them, looking tired, and Danny had offered to let Aiden come back to his apartment with him and Flack, but she’d refused. “I got stuff to do,” she’d said and Danny knew, in a vague sort of way, what she would have said to him if it was him saying that, but what could he tell her? No? She’d brushed her fingers over the cuff of his shirt, saying, “I gotta make sure Delia Shelley gets her justice, Danny. Take Flack home, okay? I think he needs you.”
I think he does too, Danny wanted to say, but he didn’t let the words past his lips. Flack, with the nightmare look in his pale blue eyes that might be suicidal and certainly scares the shit out of Danny. Flack, who hadn’t stopped shaking since the roof and whose hands were in constant motion. Flack, who left the strap on his holster undone and kept his hands close to his gun. Flack, who looked at the blue and red lights of the patrol cars sliding over the shattered windows and broken lives of the Bronx as if searching for benediction.
“Are you gonna be okay?” Danny asked instead.
Aiden gave him a sad smile. “Yeah. I think I will. I’m thinking about gettin’ a new cell number, though. And therapy. There is so not enough therapy in the world to get rid’a this.” She leaned forward and kissed him softly on the cheek. “Go home and take care of Flack, Danny. He needs you more than I do. I’ll be okay. He won’t.”
*
“I don’t think we should be doin’ this, Danny,” Flack said, staring a little blindly at the flasher on his dashboard. His hands clenched on the steering wheel, fingers tapping with something that was not quite their usual impatience.
“What? Goin’ home?”
“No.” His accent was stronger than usual, covering his words like maple syrup on pancakes. “We gotta job to do, ya’ know? People dead, families lookin’ for answers.”
Danny twisted over to frown at him. “Hey, it’s okay. Mac let us go, arright? We’re not gonna be gettin’ much done in the shape we’re in. No new evidence is gonna rear its absolutely gorgeous head in the next twelve hours, or I’m havin’ words with Mac on the proper behavior of that kinda thing.”
“Aiden’s workin’.”
“Aiden’s –” Danny’s stomach knotted unhappily at the thought of the expression, wounded, but not quite – injured, really. Like getting attacked by McCluskey was some kind of trial by fire, and she’d come out cleansed and kissed by flame. A little eerie, but preferable over her few minutes of terrified incoherency before that had faded away, as if it was expected but not really necessary. “Aiden’s got somethin’ she needs to do.”
Flack cocked his head to one side. “Delia Shelley,” he said flatly.
“Yeah. I think so.” He looked over at Flack, searching his face for – something. What, exactly, he wasn’t sure about. Peace, maybe. But all he saw was something perilously close to blind terror being forced down by the twin pressures of pride and duty. It’ll kill you, he thought. He’d seen that kamikaze look in his own eyes, though he hadn’t realized it then. Maybe you can’t see yourself, but your reflection’s always clear.
Flack frowned suddenly, the lines around his mouth deepening. He turned to stare out the back window.
“What?” Danny said.
“That car’s been followin’ us,” Flack said indignantly. One hand stretched down to touch the gun at his hip.
Danny followed his look. He cocked his head to the side consideringly. “Yeah, an’ I think I’ve seen it before, too. Can’t think where, but there’s somethin’ about it.”
Flack’s mouth pursed admiringly. “Nice car,” he said.
“You’re kiddin’ me. That thing looks like something you’d be lucky to get cheap at a used car dealership.” Had one of his uncle’s men had a taste for ugly cars? Joey Sforza, maybe. Carmine d’Alessandro wouldn’t be caught dead in anything that cost less than $60,000. Ace Aciello, last he remembered, had driven around a beat-up old pick-up truck when he was on his own, and a battered Jaguar when he was driving Val.
Val wouldn’t have put one of them on Danny’s tail without telling him, would he? Danny wouldn’t put it past him, but he liked to think Val had enough integrity to at least let him know. But he’d asked…
“Sure, it’s ugly,” Flack admitted. “I guess. But it’s a gorgeous car, ‘specially if you put a new paintjob on it. Check out the lines on that thing. I think I woulda noticed it if I saw it before.”
“I think I have seen it before,” Danny said. “I just can’t think where.” Was it Joey Sforza? It was hard to tell through the thick, tinted glass, but it seemed like there were two men in the car. Val surely didn’t need to put more than one on his wayward nephew.
Flack let his hand rest on the butt of his gun. “Any of ‘em tries anythin’,” he said warningly, “I’ll –”
Someone honked angrily from behind them. Flack rolled down his window to curse at the cabbie, seeming faintly more like himself. “And fuck you, too!” he added, pulling away.
*
“Don,” Danny said, leaning forward so he could look Flack in the eye. “You can trust me. I’m not going to hurt you.”
Flack was still and shaking beneath his hands, blue eyes almost white from terror darting wildly from side to side. “Danny,” he croaked. “Don’t –”
“Do you trust me?” Danny demanded.
After a brief moment of hesitation, Flack nodded minutely. “Danny –”
“Trust me,” Danny said more sharply than he meant. He slid one hand up Flack’s thigh, feeling scar tissue knot with tension beneath his palm. He leaned forward to kiss him lightly, barely letting teeth and tongue brush Flack’s mouth. He remembered Curly. Too well. “Is this okay?” he asked.
Flack shuddered, breath caught in his throat. “Yeah,” he managed.
Danny kissed him again, deeper this time, and Flack responded tentatively. “It’s okay,” he murmured, as calming as he could. “It’s okay, Don. Trust me.”
“Danny,” Flack said, half to himself, as if in reassurance. He let Danny settle one hand in the curve of his hip, stroking the fingers of his other hand very gently across Flack’s face. Flack flinched away as soon as skin touched skin, eyes wide and terrified in automatic reaction. “Don’t –” he gasped, and Danny dropped his hand back into his lap.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and he curved his head a little to the side, watching the play of flesh over bone and the awkward lump of bandage by Flack’s eye. Danny reached toward it, then stopped. “Can I –” he asked.
Flack closed his eyes and elt a shudder run down the long angles of his body. When he opened his eyes they focused on Danny, and the look in them said plainly, help. “Yeah,” he says, and seems to be searching for some other word. “I – it’s healed. I just don’t want –”
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Danny said flatly. Very deliberately, moving with exaggerated slowness (like swimming in molasses, thick and dark and not quite sweet enough), he reched toward Flack’s face, feeling the detective – his partner – shiver into terrified statue-stillness beneath his evidence-heavy hands. Trust me, he thought but didn’t say, and the ghost of Sonny leaning over him was almost too much to bear. Trust me, Dannyboy.
If you can’t trust Tanglewood, then who can you trust?
Flack’s eyes were shut tightly, lips moving in what might be silent prayer or whispered curses. Trust me.
Danny dug one nail under the edge of the bandage and began to peel it back, feeling electric sparks of fear and memory run along Flack’s skin.
“Don’t do that.” Flack’s eyes snapped open and for one heartbeat he was himself, sane and the only male detective in the crime lab within two zip codes of normal. “Rip the fucking thing off, if you gotta get it off.”
“Got it,” Danny said, and took the bandage off in one clean motion. He flicked absently away in the direction of the trashcan, looking at Flack and hoping the brief flicker of empotional stability was more solid than he suspected. “Jesus Christ, Flac,” he said, reaching out to rub his thumb briefly over the tiny pucker of scar tissue.
Flack’s eyes were fixed on Danny’s face, an unnerving shade of blue this close. “Sassone,” he croaked, his voice cracking. He tried again, reaching for Danny like an anchor. “Sassone did that. With a – a ring, or somethin’. And a lighter. He – he heated it up, and he – he –” He shuddered into silence. “It bubbled.”
They had an abuse case two weeks ago, where the cops and paramedics ha arrived in time to try and hold the mangled body of a ten-year-old boy with second degree burns together. The mother had screamed at them, brandishing a poker and an iron at anyone that came near. Flack had taken one look at the scorched remains of the boy’s four-year-old sister and limped out into the street.
“It’s okay,” Danny told him. He cupped his hands around Flack’s face and leaned in to kiss him, as slowly and reassuringly as he could. Flack shuddered again, but he seemed less tense now. He slid his hands up the front of Danny’s shirt, warm and unsure through the fabric. “Is this okay?” Danny moved his mouth to kiss the burn scar (a fucking brand! his mind wails. On a goddamn cop! Who the fuck does Curly think he is?) and the other thin white lines that trace faint non-patterns across his face.
“I trust you,” Flack whispered and let Danny push him down onto the floor, still kissing him, slow and steady. He wnt abruptly still as his back touched the ratty carpet, except for his eyes, which darted from side to side the way trauma victims did in the interrogation room.
Because he is. A trauma victim. Danny hadn’t forgotten it – he can’t, not with the nightmare look in Flack's eyes when they leave him alone for more than a minute – but he’d hoped he could make Flack forget. For a day, an hour, fifteen minutes. Wipe that blind terror from his face. Trust me.
“Don,” Danny said, pulling back, “I can help you. Trust me. I’m not going to hurt you.”
Flack reached up to touch his face. “I know,” he said, but his hands were shaking. “I know that. But – I can’t –” And there frustration in his voice, frustration and shame trying to beat away blind terror. “Don’t take your glasses off.”
“I won’t,” Danny promised. He leaned down over Flack again. Kissed the raw red scrape on one broad cheekbone. “I’ll do anything you want, Don. It’ll be okay, okay?”
“Yeah.” Flack fit his hands carefully around Danny’s waist. “I got that. Just –” He gnawed on his lip. “I hate this,” he spat out. “I really fuckin’ hate it. I wish you hadn’t shot Sassone, Danny, ‘cause I wanted to kill the son of a bitch myself.” He breathed quick and shallow against Danny’s jaw, then turned his head slightly to kiss him. “Help,” he said softly, the last plea of a man too proud to admit his fear.
“I gotcha back, Don.”
*shakes fist* Curse you, Mac Taylor! As if I don't have enough on my plate! And you too, Don Flack!
“Flack, how you doing?” Danny asked, coming up behind the detective.
He flexed his hands absently. “I almost killed a cop, Danny.”
“Flack –”
“I had the gun at his head,” Flack said. “And I almost shot him. I wanted to. I wanted him dead.” His eyes were very wide. “Danny, I almost shot a cop.”
“Flack.” Danny put his hand on the detective’s arm. And how the hell did I get to be the sane one? he wondered fleetingly. “Hey. It’s okay. Nothing happened. Aiden’s all right.” He threw a glance over his shoulder just to be sure, seeing Aiden sitting on the back of an ambulance with a blanket wrapped around her and Mac on side. He was on the phone, talking in short angry bursts as if demanding why? How did you let this happen? He seemed…softer, somehow, his hard edges dulled slightly. Not as hard to read. Maybe it was because of Stella.
Danny swallowed past the lump in his throat at the thought of Stella and looked at Flack again. “Flack,” he said, thinking look at me. Look at me, goddammit, I’m supposed to be the injured one.
Flack turned his head slightly, his face haunted and ghost-ridden. “I almost – Jesus Christ, Danny. I almost shot a cop. I almost – I coulda been a cop-killer.”
He was shaking beneath Danny’s hand like a brittle autumn leaf caught in a thin New York wind. “I almost – I coulda –”
“You saved Aiden’s life,” Danny said as strongly as he could. “She’d be dead right now if it wasn’t for you. Dead.”
Flack was shaking his head no even before Danny had finished speaking. “You’re the one talked the gun away from her head.”
“And you’re the one tackeld the sorry excuse for a cop before he could do somethin’ worse. All the SWAT teams in the world wouldn’t have helped if McCluskey took a couple steps off the roof with Aiden.”
Flack shuddered. “I didn’t –” he started, but he looked slightly more convinced.
“Partners,” Danny said, remembering what Flack talked about whenever he was trying to calm Danny down or deep in his cups. “Two parts of a whole, arright? Each of us does our part. Ya’ got that, Don?”
He looked down at Danny’s hand on his sleeve. “Yeah,” he said heavily. “I got that.”
*
“Go home,” Mac had told them, looking tired, and Danny had offered to let Aiden come back to his apartment with him and Flack, but she’d refused. “I got stuff to do,” she’d said and Danny knew, in a vague sort of way, what she would have said to him if it was him saying that, but what could he tell her? No? She’d brushed her fingers over the cuff of his shirt, saying, “I gotta make sure Delia Shelley gets her justice, Danny. Take Flack home, okay? I think he needs you.”
I think he does too, Danny wanted to say, but he didn’t let the words past his lips. Flack, with the nightmare look in his pale blue eyes that might be suicidal and certainly scares the shit out of Danny. Flack, who hadn’t stopped shaking since the roof and whose hands were in constant motion. Flack, who left the strap on his holster undone and kept his hands close to his gun. Flack, who looked at the blue and red lights of the patrol cars sliding over the shattered windows and broken lives of the Bronx as if searching for benediction.
“Are you gonna be okay?” Danny asked instead.
Aiden gave him a sad smile. “Yeah. I think I will. I’m thinking about gettin’ a new cell number, though. And therapy. There is so not enough therapy in the world to get rid’a this.” She leaned forward and kissed him softly on the cheek. “Go home and take care of Flack, Danny. He needs you more than I do. I’ll be okay. He won’t.”
*
“I don’t think we should be doin’ this, Danny,” Flack said, staring a little blindly at the flasher on his dashboard. His hands clenched on the steering wheel, fingers tapping with something that was not quite their usual impatience.
“What? Goin’ home?”
“No.” His accent was stronger than usual, covering his words like maple syrup on pancakes. “We gotta job to do, ya’ know? People dead, families lookin’ for answers.”
Danny twisted over to frown at him. “Hey, it’s okay. Mac let us go, arright? We’re not gonna be gettin’ much done in the shape we’re in. No new evidence is gonna rear its absolutely gorgeous head in the next twelve hours, or I’m havin’ words with Mac on the proper behavior of that kinda thing.”
“Aiden’s workin’.”
“Aiden’s –” Danny’s stomach knotted unhappily at the thought of the expression, wounded, but not quite – injured, really. Like getting attacked by McCluskey was some kind of trial by fire, and she’d come out cleansed and kissed by flame. A little eerie, but preferable over her few minutes of terrified incoherency before that had faded away, as if it was expected but not really necessary. “Aiden’s got somethin’ she needs to do.”
Flack cocked his head to one side. “Delia Shelley,” he said flatly.
“Yeah. I think so.” He looked over at Flack, searching his face for – something. What, exactly, he wasn’t sure about. Peace, maybe. But all he saw was something perilously close to blind terror being forced down by the twin pressures of pride and duty. It’ll kill you, he thought. He’d seen that kamikaze look in his own eyes, though he hadn’t realized it then. Maybe you can’t see yourself, but your reflection’s always clear.
Flack frowned suddenly, the lines around his mouth deepening. He turned to stare out the back window.
“What?” Danny said.
“That car’s been followin’ us,” Flack said indignantly. One hand stretched down to touch the gun at his hip.
Danny followed his look. He cocked his head to the side consideringly. “Yeah, an’ I think I’ve seen it before, too. Can’t think where, but there’s somethin’ about it.”
Flack’s mouth pursed admiringly. “Nice car,” he said.
“You’re kiddin’ me. That thing looks like something you’d be lucky to get cheap at a used car dealership.” Had one of his uncle’s men had a taste for ugly cars? Joey Sforza, maybe. Carmine d’Alessandro wouldn’t be caught dead in anything that cost less than $60,000. Ace Aciello, last he remembered, had driven around a beat-up old pick-up truck when he was on his own, and a battered Jaguar when he was driving Val.
Val wouldn’t have put one of them on Danny’s tail without telling him, would he? Danny wouldn’t put it past him, but he liked to think Val had enough integrity to at least let him know. But he’d asked…
“Sure, it’s ugly,” Flack admitted. “I guess. But it’s a gorgeous car, ‘specially if you put a new paintjob on it. Check out the lines on that thing. I think I woulda noticed it if I saw it before.”
“I think I have seen it before,” Danny said. “I just can’t think where.” Was it Joey Sforza? It was hard to tell through the thick, tinted glass, but it seemed like there were two men in the car. Val surely didn’t need to put more than one on his wayward nephew.
Flack let his hand rest on the butt of his gun. “Any of ‘em tries anythin’,” he said warningly, “I’ll –”
Someone honked angrily from behind them. Flack rolled down his window to curse at the cabbie, seeming faintly more like himself. “And fuck you, too!” he added, pulling away.
*
“Don,” Danny said, leaning forward so he could look Flack in the eye. “You can trust me. I’m not going to hurt you.”
Flack was still and shaking beneath his hands, blue eyes almost white from terror darting wildly from side to side. “Danny,” he croaked. “Don’t –”
“Do you trust me?” Danny demanded.
After a brief moment of hesitation, Flack nodded minutely. “Danny –”
“Trust me,” Danny said more sharply than he meant. He slid one hand up Flack’s thigh, feeling scar tissue knot with tension beneath his palm. He leaned forward to kiss him lightly, barely letting teeth and tongue brush Flack’s mouth. He remembered Curly. Too well. “Is this okay?” he asked.
Flack shuddered, breath caught in his throat. “Yeah,” he managed.
Danny kissed him again, deeper this time, and Flack responded tentatively. “It’s okay,” he murmured, as calming as he could. “It’s okay, Don. Trust me.”
“Danny,” Flack said, half to himself, as if in reassurance. He let Danny settle one hand in the curve of his hip, stroking the fingers of his other hand very gently across Flack’s face. Flack flinched away as soon as skin touched skin, eyes wide and terrified in automatic reaction. “Don’t –” he gasped, and Danny dropped his hand back into his lap.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and he curved his head a little to the side, watching the play of flesh over bone and the awkward lump of bandage by Flack’s eye. Danny reached toward it, then stopped. “Can I –” he asked.
Flack closed his eyes and elt a shudder run down the long angles of his body. When he opened his eyes they focused on Danny, and the look in them said plainly, help. “Yeah,” he says, and seems to be searching for some other word. “I – it’s healed. I just don’t want –”
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Danny said flatly. Very deliberately, moving with exaggerated slowness (like swimming in molasses, thick and dark and not quite sweet enough), he reched toward Flack’s face, feeling the detective – his partner – shiver into terrified statue-stillness beneath his evidence-heavy hands. Trust me, he thought but didn’t say, and the ghost of Sonny leaning over him was almost too much to bear. Trust me, Dannyboy.
If you can’t trust Tanglewood, then who can you trust?
Flack’s eyes were shut tightly, lips moving in what might be silent prayer or whispered curses. Trust me.
Danny dug one nail under the edge of the bandage and began to peel it back, feeling electric sparks of fear and memory run along Flack’s skin.
“Don’t do that.” Flack’s eyes snapped open and for one heartbeat he was himself, sane and the only male detective in the crime lab within two zip codes of normal. “Rip the fucking thing off, if you gotta get it off.”
“Got it,” Danny said, and took the bandage off in one clean motion. He flicked absently away in the direction of the trashcan, looking at Flack and hoping the brief flicker of empotional stability was more solid than he suspected. “Jesus Christ, Flac,” he said, reaching out to rub his thumb briefly over the tiny pucker of scar tissue.
Flack’s eyes were fixed on Danny’s face, an unnerving shade of blue this close. “Sassone,” he croaked, his voice cracking. He tried again, reaching for Danny like an anchor. “Sassone did that. With a – a ring, or somethin’. And a lighter. He – he heated it up, and he – he –” He shuddered into silence. “It bubbled.”
They had an abuse case two weeks ago, where the cops and paramedics ha arrived in time to try and hold the mangled body of a ten-year-old boy with second degree burns together. The mother had screamed at them, brandishing a poker and an iron at anyone that came near. Flack had taken one look at the scorched remains of the boy’s four-year-old sister and limped out into the street.
“It’s okay,” Danny told him. He cupped his hands around Flack’s face and leaned in to kiss him, as slowly and reassuringly as he could. Flack shuddered again, but he seemed less tense now. He slid his hands up the front of Danny’s shirt, warm and unsure through the fabric. “Is this okay?” Danny moved his mouth to kiss the burn scar (a fucking brand! his mind wails. On a goddamn cop! Who the fuck does Curly think he is?) and the other thin white lines that trace faint non-patterns across his face.
“I trust you,” Flack whispered and let Danny push him down onto the floor, still kissing him, slow and steady. He wnt abruptly still as his back touched the ratty carpet, except for his eyes, which darted from side to side the way trauma victims did in the interrogation room.
Because he is. A trauma victim. Danny hadn’t forgotten it – he can’t, not with the nightmare look in Flack's eyes when they leave him alone for more than a minute – but he’d hoped he could make Flack forget. For a day, an hour, fifteen minutes. Wipe that blind terror from his face. Trust me.
“Don,” Danny said, pulling back, “I can help you. Trust me. I’m not going to hurt you.”
Flack reached up to touch his face. “I know,” he said, but his hands were shaking. “I know that. But – I can’t –” And there frustration in his voice, frustration and shame trying to beat away blind terror. “Don’t take your glasses off.”
“I won’t,” Danny promised. He leaned down over Flack again. Kissed the raw red scrape on one broad cheekbone. “I’ll do anything you want, Don. It’ll be okay, okay?”
“Yeah.” Flack fit his hands carefully around Danny’s waist. “I got that. Just –” He gnawed on his lip. “I hate this,” he spat out. “I really fuckin’ hate it. I wish you hadn’t shot Sassone, Danny, ‘cause I wanted to kill the son of a bitch myself.” He breathed quick and shallow against Danny’s jaw, then turned his head slightly to kiss him. “Help,” he said softly, the last plea of a man too proud to admit his fear.
“I gotcha back, Don.”
*shakes fist* Curse you, Mac Taylor! As if I don't have enough on my plate! And you too, Don Flack!
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-22 01:52 am (UTC)Dude, the snog scene? *works*. It's hot, and it's painful and drawn, and I love... it's very *Flack* for him to declare that the bandage should just be ripped off. Some things don't take to gentle, but some things do.
Also love the line:
cleansed and kissed by flame, as much for the rhythm of it as the way ties to Aiden and the trial-by-fire concept. (which ties to Flack and his brand, or could if one squinted).
non-patterns : that I like too, but I'm not sure why. It just... it fits. Everything fits well. Aiden kissing Danny on the cheek is... it *is* something like benediction, the way you get kissed by a man of the cloth, almost.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-22 11:24 pm (UTC)I'm really glad that works, because it was - well, not exactly hard to write, but frustrating, because I didn't know if I was overdoing it or not. Flack's trying to get over Curly, but he's been traumatized. Like Danny says, he's a trauma victim, and neither of them can forget it. And the bandage? Flack is definitely of the rip it quick school.
as much for the rhythm of it as the way ties to Aiden and the trial-by-fire concept. (which ties to Flack and his brand, or could if one squinted).
*facepalm* Sadly, I don't even remember writing this, so I had to look back through the chapter to find it. I think I have a definite fire fetish.
that I like too, but I'm not sure why. It just... it fits. Everything fits well. Aiden kissing Danny on the cheek is... it *is* something like benediction, the way you get kissed by a man of the cloth, almost.
*nods* Danny's guilty because he didn't get there fast enough (in his eyes), because he didn't figure it out about McCluskey as soon as possible. Aiden's forgiving him, telling him, it's not your fault. And just saying thanks. Letting him leave with Flack without guilt.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-22 11:44 pm (UTC)Right, he is. As much as a--somewhat gentler touch would probably benefit him at this point, in the long run, he's very much the "tact is for pussies" sort of guy. He doesn't want to dance around anything, but sex is, at least, easier to go straight into than "holy fuck, Sassone scared the living *fuck* out of me, and still *is* scaring me". There's an excellent balance of that in this scene.
Sadly, I don't even remember writing this, so I had to look back through the chapter to find it. I think I have a definite fire fetish.
Nothing wrong with a metaphor fetish. (pretty sure I have a water one). And man, I so sympathize on the not remembering bit.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-23 12:10 am (UTC)Exactly. He hates dancing around stuff and his own fear and trauma frustrate him as much as anything else, but the bandage is something he has (more or less) control over. It's not out of his hands, which I suppose is more or less an analogy for the whole thing. He wants to get over his trauma in the most blunt way he can, and I'm suddenly aware I'm not even making sense to myself.
*frowns* He has to admit to someone how freaked out he is. And Danny understands, more or less. And it's not admitting so much as showing.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-22 04:14 am (UTC)Poor Danny. How did he get to be the sane one, indeed? And --
Curse you, Mac Taylor!
-- I say this *all the time*.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-22 11:40 pm (UTC)What happens to Aiden is too much like what happened to him at the end of Snafu for him to be comfortable, and he wasn't coping well before anyway. He's terrified and he's traumatized and he's trigger-happy, and those really aren't a good combination. I'm glad that came across, though.
And yes, it's also completely on-key how he finally just orders Danny to rip off the bandage. And the detail of him asking Danny not to take his glasses off. It's also very real and believable for Aiden that she reacts, once she's past the immediate shock, by wanting to move on and do what she has to do. Trial by fire is just it.
Aiden has never sturck me as the kind of person who'd mope around after trauma; she'd just want to get everything the hell together and move on. It's in the past, it's over, nothing happened. I'm really happy that came through as a realistic reaction, since I was worried about it.
Poor Danny. How did he get to be the sane one, indeed?
He has no idea. He's really quite confused about the whole thing.
-- I say this *all the time*.
He dropped another trilogy on my head! Evil!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-23 03:47 am (UTC)Aiden has never sturck me as the kind of person who'd mope around after trauma; she'd just want to get everything the hell together and move on. It's in the past, it's over, nothing happened. I'm really happy that came through as a realistic reaction, since I was worried about it.
Oh, that's absolutely how I read her. It would have struck me as unrealistic if she'd been all weeping and wailing and had just fallen to girly little pieces about it. No, she's very much the kind of person who would be all, look, it happened, can't change shit, now let's get on with things. What's the point of sitting around brooding?
He dropped another trilogy on my head! Evil!
...Mac and I have to have a little chat, because he keeps dropping plotbunnies in my lap and I *do not* need any more. Especially not now that I've finally started the
stupidsequel, and am distracted by all these *other* stories. For someone who's so determined that people not get in his business, he sure does provoke a lot of stories.