.fic: Every Distance: PG13/R D/M 10/10
Title: Every Distance
By: HF
Email: aesc36 @gmail.com
Pairing: Danny/Martin
Rating/Warnings: PG13/Rish; language, maybe some smut, violence, angst, etc.
Disclaimer: Without a Trace belongs to Jerry Bruckheimer, CBS, and very likely many other people.
Advertisements: Sequel/companion to A Long Time Coming, set during and after the events of ALTC 10.
Previous parts: 01; 02 ; 03; 04; 05; 06; 07; 08; 09
CHAPTER TEN
It was over. Even before Victor could finish his order, a single shot rang out from somewhere above, and it was over.
A whipcrack of sound, and Martin had to fight not to turn and look up to find the sniper’s hideout on the rooftop, and in that space - a blink, breath, half a heartbeat between looking away and looking back - Harris had collapsed onto the pavement, crying out and clutching his ruined left hand, what was left of the detonator clattering to his side.
“Stay here, Martin,” Victor ordered as he shoved his radio in a pocket and turned to stalk off, and Martin nodded automatically.
Couldn’t move, could only stare as the bomb squad rushed in first, two of them forcing Harris into immobility while a third yanked his shirt up. Martin couldn’t hear the all-clear over the chaos, but saw the paramedics move by the barrier of S.W.A.T. officers, the bomb squad filtering back. He saw his father standing by the squad captain, arms folded and nodding impatiently as the captain explained something.
A nearby cell phone rang, distant and annoying. And rang and rang again, until it registered with Martin that it was, in fact, his cell phone. With fingers made clumsy by the cold - and God, it was cold out, come to think of it - he pulled the phone from his pocket and flipped it open.
His father, who was - yeah - standing thirty feet away and staring at him from across the space between them, and Victor’s face was impassive as always, tone clipped and efficient as he told Martin what they’d found.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, and the black device Martin had seen had in fact been a lighter, even its butane used up, and the wires led nowhere, only snaked up Harris’s sleeve to where he’d taped them at his ribs. Nothing on him at all, and Martin was furious, thinking that the man had drawn sniper fire with nothing more than some electrical tape and copper wire.
That he’d called it, that he’d seen how this would end didn’t help, and he was fucking furious, thinking that he hadn’t had a chance to shoot the man himself, almost shaking with it as he watched the cleanup from behind the driver’s-side door of the squad car.
And he wouldn’t have missed. He hadn’t won the marksmanship trophies on his desk for nothing; he certainly hadn’t won them to miss a guy’s head from fifty feet out.
But there’d been a day not too many years ago, when a sniper hadn’t missed, when an innocent man had died. He’d felt the bullet passing by his cheek - or, at least, he told himself this later, alone in his apartment, still shaking and exhausted from a ten-mile run, when his brain still outpaced his body and wondered all the other ways the day could have gone.
He was quivering with frustration now - could see his hand vibrating where it rested against his thigh - and had to move, had to do something. An answer for the moment, not the answer, because he’d never been able to outrun or outswim or out-think any of his problems, but still he broke away from the other agents, darting into the crime scene proper before any of them could stop him.
Sorry, Dad.
The ambulance had pulled up, resting crookedly with back wheels up on the curb, and was surrounded by a fleet of officers and agents, Victor among them, probably deputizing those who would escort Harris and his hand to the emergency room and then to a detention cell.
Harris was probably going to have his hand amputated - or what was left of his hand, judging by the amount of wet, bloody gauze Martin could see lying on the concrete. A spray of blood, bold and red against the pavement, decorated the ground and the open doorway to the apartment building, and the indent of a high-caliber bullet punctuated the old brick.
I wouldn’t have missed, he thought again, even knowing that the sniper had probably been under orders not to try for the sure kill. And maybe that was a good thing, that he’d been too fucking immobilized - helpless, God, almost helpless - because otherwise Harris would end up in a body bag, instead of the blankets the paramedics were strapping around him.
With a slam of ambulance doors, Harris was gone. Gone like a phantom almost, only his blood on the sidewalk, and for an irrational, frantic moment Martin wondered if maybe Harris really had escaped.
But he’d seen it happen, Martin told himself fiercely. He’d seen Derek Harris go down, clipped by that sniper’s bullet, swarmed by agents and then paramedics. It wasn’t ended - Harris would still need to be interrogated, still need to go to trial, still need to be executed, more than likely - not by a long shot.
And Martin had stood there and watched it, held back by the barrier of cars and his father’s fierce, commanding gaze. Harris hadn’t even really seen him; he hadn’t been able to get his hands around Harris’s throat, to make him pay for what he’d done, and that...
He was standing there, he realized, staring at a pile of blood-soaked gauze.
Cruiser and Bureau car lights flickered along the buildings lining the street, redoubling themselves in the windows and glass storefronts. Victor had ordered the sirens off, and the silence, filled only by footsteps and the intense murmur of speculation, CSIs marking off evidence and photographing, pale lightning of camera flashes punctuating their comments.
Martin moved through it all, negotiating the maze of yellow tape and the twisting confusion of the other agents. An alley ran between the wreck of the old complex and a newer building, and he moved toward it, reluctant and not a little afraid.
Damp and freezing with the wind whipping through it, smelling of garbage and motor oil. A door half off its hinges, white paint stained and broken, appeared out of the gloom, hanging drunkenly and supported only by the concrete steps.
He’d been here before, in this cold alley where it seemed no light could reach. In the dilapidated building with its peeling paint and smell of rotted wood and concrete. Behind the door, and he peered through the broken glass of the inset window, flinched back from the darkness there.
Couldn’t remember any of it consciously, not the alley or what lay beyond the door, only the smell was familiar, stale and old, musty, abandoned.
Sweat and unwashed flesh, smell of his own terror and the thick atmosphere of another’s breath, cold, wet hand closing around his arm. Clammy sweat mixing with his and he tried to shrink away, but the hand tightened cruelly, and another voice sounded in his right ear, so close and startling that he jerked around, looking for the source, wanting to lash out, but he couldn’t make himself move. Couldn’t fucking make himself move, and he was so scared.
Fascinated, he stood frozen in front of the door, half-wanting to move but unable to make himself do it, and he would have stood there all night if it weren’t for his father’s voice calling him back, saying the CSIs needed to get into the building and they needed to get back to the office, and there was the bright distraction of a flashlight in the corner of his eye.
* * *
The day - quite possibly the longest day of Martin’s life - had almost ended and he was back in the offices after a silent ride with Victor in the back of the car, and now surrounded by the strange, oppressive celebration of his fellow agents.
He ignored the cheers and the slaps on his back, an anonymous young agent crowing We got the bastard, Martin, we got him!, and God, looking at that kid made him feel old. Nick was there, though, steady and murmuring congratulations, shaking Victor’s hand, and Guerin there too, and Pete, Angela, and Lennox - and that felt good, seeing the three of them again, seeing Angie’s dark, pretty face smiling for the first time in weeks, Pete looking pale and relieved, Lennox austerely pleased.
But the only person he wanted to see he couldn’t. He craned his head and stood straighter, trying to see over the crowd of his colleagues, and -
There, he was right there, standing at the end of the hallway, detached and smiling slightly, dark eyes alight with it.
Martin broke free of the crowd, and they didn’t notice, too caught up in celebration and relief to notice he had gone. He glanced briefly over his shoulder, caught his father’s gaze for a heartbeat before Victor nodded - slight, almost imperceptible, not assent or anything more than acknowledgment - and Martin turned back to Danny.
Couldn’t keep himself from moving faster, taking Danny’s arm - wonderful, strong muscle under his hand, firm and flexible both at once - and pulling him along, Danny coming with him easily, just down the hall and into a file room, a half-dark and a quieter place.
They stood there a moment, Martin tense, with Danny staring at him in profound, determined silence, eyes raking over him, a minute examination. Concern written across his face, eloquent in the fingers pushing Martin’s jacket aside, running over the kevlar underneath it, down Martin’s arms. And his hands were shaking, like Martin had been shot - like that night, not like he could remember anything much longer after being shot, but he remembered Danny’s hands reaching for him - like he couldn’t believe Martin was here.
“I’m okay,” Martin told him. And not once or twice, but three times he said it - I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay - and Danny kept looking at him, touching him with quick, elusive hands.
“Yeah,” Danny said hoarsely. “Shut up, Martin.” And he continued to touch him, working higher now past Martin’s collar, sliding across the skin of his neck - still cool from the winter air - and Danny’s fingers were warm. Massaging, soothing and Martin wanted to slump against him, let Danny take the weight for a time.
And Danny would.
“It’s done,” he whispered, the words soothed out of him by warmth and Danny’s presence. “They... Harris got his hand shot off. He’s in the hospital right now.”
“I heard,” Danny murmured, still rubbing, encouraging Martin closer, fingers working underneath Martin’s jaw now, encouraging him to look up into dark, concerned eyes. “How are you?”
“Tired,” he said, and made himself not look away as he said it, felt all of himself leaning into Danny. “I’m pretty tired, Danny, actually.”
“Bet you are.” Murmured, soft, intimate and powerful, into his ear.
And God, he was. So very, very tired. He could feel his eyelids drifting shut, and there wasn’t anything to keep him going now, no fear or anger or sense of justice. It was all gone, flooded out of him, and he was utterly without support, nothing holding him up anymore except Danny pressed against him now, legs spread a bit to brace the both of them upright.
“When can we get out of here?” Danny asked after a minute, fingers flicking through Martin’s hair - arranging it, messing it up, clearing away melted snow, Martin couldn’t say.
“Just need to talk to my dad,” Martin said into the warmth of Danny’s neck, mouth brushing against the collar of his shirt, “and then we can go home.”
* * *
Victor was already in his borrowed office, going over preliminary paperwork. The sounds of celebration had quieted a bit, replaced by renewed energy as agents rushed to finish the first round of reports, and Martin wondered if the party still would have been going on, if Victor hadn’t been there to impose some kind of order.
His father was at his desk, bent over an array of paper, squinting at it thoughtfully. Martin remembered his mother commenting that Victor had gotten bifocals not too long ago, and it occurred to Martin for the first time that his father was getting old.
“Martin?”
God, his father had caught him staring, and Martin jerked upright guiltily.
“Is there... is there any news on Harris?”
“He’s alive,” Victor said. “The doctors will have to amputate his hand - not much left worth saving, apparently - but he’ll live.” Fierce satisfaction in the words, close echo of Martin’s own.
I still wish I could have killed him.
“Better that he lives, Martin,” Victor added after a moment, and how he’d sensed what Martin was thinking, Martin had no idea. They hadn’t ever existed on this wavelength before, and it unnerved him. “I wouldn’t have minded seeing him die, but we need him - need his information, and he’ll face justice for what he did to you.”
To you. Not to Whitney and her kids, not the two hospitals. To Martin.
“The media will be all over this, once we have to go public with Harris’s connection to Silverman.” Victor restacked a pile of folders and set them to the side, pulled off his glasses and set them down. “It would be best for you to be out of the office until things settle down. Knowing the press, it won’t take long for them to move on to the next big disaster.”
“Plausible deniability?” Martin asked dryly.
“Something like that.” Victor’s smile was thin, hovering at the corner of his eyes, and Martin hadn’t seen that since he’d been a kid, in some distant memory when things had been okay between the two of them. “But, Martin...” Serious now, and his father folded his hands in front of him, studying Martin thoughtfully. “This has been a difficult assignment, and I’m telling you what I would tell any agent: you’ve been through enough already, and you need to rest.”
And he did. Hearing his father, Danny, Matt, Viv, everyone say it... He’d ignored it, pushed by it because there’d been too much to do to be tired. Too much to do in White Collar and Missing Persons and now Counter-Terrorism, and he’d made himself carry his exhaustion, one weight among many the past few weeks - no, not the past few weeks, the past thirty years, and he was so very tired.
“I’ve assigned a detail to drive you back to Danny’s apartment,” his father was saying, hesitant and not quite meeting Martin’s eyes. “They won’t stay,” he added, as Martin straightened in automatic defiance. “They’re going to make sure you’re safe, and will be by to pick you up tomorrow morning when you’re ready to come in; we’ll need a statement, before I can let you go.”
“Yeah.” Had to agree because he had no choice, and at least he wouldn’t have agents hovering around him and Danny for the rest of the night.
“It’s a precaution, Martin, not babysitting,” Victor said, sounding older than Martin had ever heard him sound before. “At least until you leave.” Dry, tired smile now. “I’ve given up watching you, you know. It doesn’t seem to work.”
“Okay,” Martin said quietly, unwilling suddenly to press his advantage in the face of that admission.
“Thank you.” Honestly grateful, and Martin didn’t know how to handle that. “I should get back to work... These reports aren’t going to write themselves.”
“Right, yeah.” Martin pushed his chair back and stood, hovering for a moment in front of his father’s desk. Victor was looking at him questioningly, eyes shadowed with a tiredness Martin had always considered foreign to him, mouth drawn and tight with it. “Um... don’t work too late, okay?”
And Victor stared at him a moment, openly confused before he pulled himself together.
“It never ends until you let it, Martin,” Victor said quietly. “I’ll see you back here tomorrow.”
“Yeah.”
Wanted to say more, and had no idea how to say it.
“Of course, Martin.” Warmth creeping into Victor’s voice now. “Good night.”
“’Night, Dad.” Martin nodded and escaped before he could think too long on that.
He shut the door behind him and sighed, pushed thoughts of his father off to the side to deal with later. Still too much there - too much history and complication, and he knew his mind couldn’t handle all of it at the moment, everything that had changed and stayed the same, new concern and old irritation, his father trying to understand how Danny fit into Martin’s life.
Speaking of which... He looked over his shoulder, back toward the main office area, jumped a bit as he saw Danny standing there, already in his coat with his cap and gloves shoved into a hip pocket and Martin’s coat draped over one arm.
“Done getting the third degree?” Danny asked lazily as he straightened from his elegant slouch against the wall and fell into step beside him. Smirked a bit at him, and like old times, that was, Danny smirking just to do it and make Martin uncomfortable.
“Yeah.” Not exactly the lectures he’d been used to, and too much sense in them to defy his father’s orders. “You ready to go?”
Danny only nodded thoughtfully as they walked down the hallway, moving with the same captivating grace that had Martin, despite the day, despite everything, watching him, silent and admiring. Brow creased a bit like he was thinking, hands shoved into the pockets of his overcoat, sleek, careless stride and Martin couldn’t get enough of that.
He’d never gotten enough when they’d worked together, when he’d spend hours and days filling himself up with the sight of Danny, watching him move around the office or the streets, the occasional fleeting touches on his shoulder or arm, glimpse of cologne when Danny bent close to look at something with him. Martin had a thousand memories, had wound them into a fabric of dreams and fantasies that kept him awake at night, and they’d never been enough.
Kept looking, determined to make this last, as though Danny would somehow vanish.
Of course Danny, being Danny, caught him watching and offered him a sidelong grin, far too smug and sly for Martin to do anything to counter it except to keep looking, steps slowing a bit. And Danny slowed a bit, smugness falling away as Martin continued to look, as they stepped outside into the New York evening, and Danny seemed almost to be at a loss as to how to handle Martin looking at him so openly.
“You’re something else, Fitzie, you really are.” Said after a couple heartbeats, like it was a natural, inevitable conclusion Danny had reached after much consideration.
Martin offered him a modest smile and Danny shook his head in wonderment, laughed, and his laughter was bright and warm in the late winter air.
“So you got any ideas on where to go?” Martin asked, once Danny had subsided.
“A few,” Danny said.
-end-
Post-fic notes: I... well. I honestly don't know what to say. Most times I say something like "Thank you so much for reading," and I probably say it way too often, but it's so very true. That people, WaT!fiends and non-WaT!fiends alike, have read both this and ALTC and liked it... it's perpetually amazing and humbling and gratifying for me, and so I end up lapsing into ridiculousness and repetition. And, as you can tell, I'm terrible at tributes and dedications, so I will say once again thank you so so so very much to everyone.
Because mardia_ has menaced me with dire things, there will be a final installment in this particular universe--and I hereby swear on my pen that no complication or bloodshed will be involved. After that, I'm quite inclined to let things be... Danny and Martin have earned that, I think.
By: HF
Email: aesc36 @gmail.com
Pairing: Danny/Martin
Rating/Warnings: PG13/Rish; language, maybe some smut, violence, angst, etc.
Disclaimer: Without a Trace belongs to Jerry Bruckheimer, CBS, and very likely many other people.
Advertisements: Sequel/companion to A Long Time Coming, set during and after the events of ALTC 10.
Previous parts: 01; 02 ; 03; 04; 05; 06; 07; 08; 09
CHAPTER TEN
It was over. Even before Victor could finish his order, a single shot rang out from somewhere above, and it was over.
A whipcrack of sound, and Martin had to fight not to turn and look up to find the sniper’s hideout on the rooftop, and in that space - a blink, breath, half a heartbeat between looking away and looking back - Harris had collapsed onto the pavement, crying out and clutching his ruined left hand, what was left of the detonator clattering to his side.
“Stay here, Martin,” Victor ordered as he shoved his radio in a pocket and turned to stalk off, and Martin nodded automatically.
Couldn’t move, could only stare as the bomb squad rushed in first, two of them forcing Harris into immobility while a third yanked his shirt up. Martin couldn’t hear the all-clear over the chaos, but saw the paramedics move by the barrier of S.W.A.T. officers, the bomb squad filtering back. He saw his father standing by the squad captain, arms folded and nodding impatiently as the captain explained something.
A nearby cell phone rang, distant and annoying. And rang and rang again, until it registered with Martin that it was, in fact, his cell phone. With fingers made clumsy by the cold - and God, it was cold out, come to think of it - he pulled the phone from his pocket and flipped it open.
His father, who was - yeah - standing thirty feet away and staring at him from across the space between them, and Victor’s face was impassive as always, tone clipped and efficient as he told Martin what they’d found.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, and the black device Martin had seen had in fact been a lighter, even its butane used up, and the wires led nowhere, only snaked up Harris’s sleeve to where he’d taped them at his ribs. Nothing on him at all, and Martin was furious, thinking that the man had drawn sniper fire with nothing more than some electrical tape and copper wire.
That he’d called it, that he’d seen how this would end didn’t help, and he was fucking furious, thinking that he hadn’t had a chance to shoot the man himself, almost shaking with it as he watched the cleanup from behind the driver’s-side door of the squad car.
And he wouldn’t have missed. He hadn’t won the marksmanship trophies on his desk for nothing; he certainly hadn’t won them to miss a guy’s head from fifty feet out.
But there’d been a day not too many years ago, when a sniper hadn’t missed, when an innocent man had died. He’d felt the bullet passing by his cheek - or, at least, he told himself this later, alone in his apartment, still shaking and exhausted from a ten-mile run, when his brain still outpaced his body and wondered all the other ways the day could have gone.
He was quivering with frustration now - could see his hand vibrating where it rested against his thigh - and had to move, had to do something. An answer for the moment, not the answer, because he’d never been able to outrun or outswim or out-think any of his problems, but still he broke away from the other agents, darting into the crime scene proper before any of them could stop him.
Sorry, Dad.
The ambulance had pulled up, resting crookedly with back wheels up on the curb, and was surrounded by a fleet of officers and agents, Victor among them, probably deputizing those who would escort Harris and his hand to the emergency room and then to a detention cell.
Harris was probably going to have his hand amputated - or what was left of his hand, judging by the amount of wet, bloody gauze Martin could see lying on the concrete. A spray of blood, bold and red against the pavement, decorated the ground and the open doorway to the apartment building, and the indent of a high-caliber bullet punctuated the old brick.
I wouldn’t have missed, he thought again, even knowing that the sniper had probably been under orders not to try for the sure kill. And maybe that was a good thing, that he’d been too fucking immobilized - helpless, God, almost helpless - because otherwise Harris would end up in a body bag, instead of the blankets the paramedics were strapping around him.
With a slam of ambulance doors, Harris was gone. Gone like a phantom almost, only his blood on the sidewalk, and for an irrational, frantic moment Martin wondered if maybe Harris really had escaped.
But he’d seen it happen, Martin told himself fiercely. He’d seen Derek Harris go down, clipped by that sniper’s bullet, swarmed by agents and then paramedics. It wasn’t ended - Harris would still need to be interrogated, still need to go to trial, still need to be executed, more than likely - not by a long shot.
And Martin had stood there and watched it, held back by the barrier of cars and his father’s fierce, commanding gaze. Harris hadn’t even really seen him; he hadn’t been able to get his hands around Harris’s throat, to make him pay for what he’d done, and that...
He was standing there, he realized, staring at a pile of blood-soaked gauze.
Cruiser and Bureau car lights flickered along the buildings lining the street, redoubling themselves in the windows and glass storefronts. Victor had ordered the sirens off, and the silence, filled only by footsteps and the intense murmur of speculation, CSIs marking off evidence and photographing, pale lightning of camera flashes punctuating their comments.
Martin moved through it all, negotiating the maze of yellow tape and the twisting confusion of the other agents. An alley ran between the wreck of the old complex and a newer building, and he moved toward it, reluctant and not a little afraid.
Damp and freezing with the wind whipping through it, smelling of garbage and motor oil. A door half off its hinges, white paint stained and broken, appeared out of the gloom, hanging drunkenly and supported only by the concrete steps.
He’d been here before, in this cold alley where it seemed no light could reach. In the dilapidated building with its peeling paint and smell of rotted wood and concrete. Behind the door, and he peered through the broken glass of the inset window, flinched back from the darkness there.
Couldn’t remember any of it consciously, not the alley or what lay beyond the door, only the smell was familiar, stale and old, musty, abandoned.
Sweat and unwashed flesh, smell of his own terror and the thick atmosphere of another’s breath, cold, wet hand closing around his arm. Clammy sweat mixing with his and he tried to shrink away, but the hand tightened cruelly, and another voice sounded in his right ear, so close and startling that he jerked around, looking for the source, wanting to lash out, but he couldn’t make himself move. Couldn’t fucking make himself move, and he was so scared.
Fascinated, he stood frozen in front of the door, half-wanting to move but unable to make himself do it, and he would have stood there all night if it weren’t for his father’s voice calling him back, saying the CSIs needed to get into the building and they needed to get back to the office, and there was the bright distraction of a flashlight in the corner of his eye.
* * *
The day - quite possibly the longest day of Martin’s life - had almost ended and he was back in the offices after a silent ride with Victor in the back of the car, and now surrounded by the strange, oppressive celebration of his fellow agents.
He ignored the cheers and the slaps on his back, an anonymous young agent crowing We got the bastard, Martin, we got him!, and God, looking at that kid made him feel old. Nick was there, though, steady and murmuring congratulations, shaking Victor’s hand, and Guerin there too, and Pete, Angela, and Lennox - and that felt good, seeing the three of them again, seeing Angie’s dark, pretty face smiling for the first time in weeks, Pete looking pale and relieved, Lennox austerely pleased.
But the only person he wanted to see he couldn’t. He craned his head and stood straighter, trying to see over the crowd of his colleagues, and -
There, he was right there, standing at the end of the hallway, detached and smiling slightly, dark eyes alight with it.
Martin broke free of the crowd, and they didn’t notice, too caught up in celebration and relief to notice he had gone. He glanced briefly over his shoulder, caught his father’s gaze for a heartbeat before Victor nodded - slight, almost imperceptible, not assent or anything more than acknowledgment - and Martin turned back to Danny.
Couldn’t keep himself from moving faster, taking Danny’s arm - wonderful, strong muscle under his hand, firm and flexible both at once - and pulling him along, Danny coming with him easily, just down the hall and into a file room, a half-dark and a quieter place.
They stood there a moment, Martin tense, with Danny staring at him in profound, determined silence, eyes raking over him, a minute examination. Concern written across his face, eloquent in the fingers pushing Martin’s jacket aside, running over the kevlar underneath it, down Martin’s arms. And his hands were shaking, like Martin had been shot - like that night, not like he could remember anything much longer after being shot, but he remembered Danny’s hands reaching for him - like he couldn’t believe Martin was here.
“I’m okay,” Martin told him. And not once or twice, but three times he said it - I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay - and Danny kept looking at him, touching him with quick, elusive hands.
“Yeah,” Danny said hoarsely. “Shut up, Martin.” And he continued to touch him, working higher now past Martin’s collar, sliding across the skin of his neck - still cool from the winter air - and Danny’s fingers were warm. Massaging, soothing and Martin wanted to slump against him, let Danny take the weight for a time.
And Danny would.
“It’s done,” he whispered, the words soothed out of him by warmth and Danny’s presence. “They... Harris got his hand shot off. He’s in the hospital right now.”
“I heard,” Danny murmured, still rubbing, encouraging Martin closer, fingers working underneath Martin’s jaw now, encouraging him to look up into dark, concerned eyes. “How are you?”
“Tired,” he said, and made himself not look away as he said it, felt all of himself leaning into Danny. “I’m pretty tired, Danny, actually.”
“Bet you are.” Murmured, soft, intimate and powerful, into his ear.
And God, he was. So very, very tired. He could feel his eyelids drifting shut, and there wasn’t anything to keep him going now, no fear or anger or sense of justice. It was all gone, flooded out of him, and he was utterly without support, nothing holding him up anymore except Danny pressed against him now, legs spread a bit to brace the both of them upright.
“When can we get out of here?” Danny asked after a minute, fingers flicking through Martin’s hair - arranging it, messing it up, clearing away melted snow, Martin couldn’t say.
“Just need to talk to my dad,” Martin said into the warmth of Danny’s neck, mouth brushing against the collar of his shirt, “and then we can go home.”
* * *
Victor was already in his borrowed office, going over preliminary paperwork. The sounds of celebration had quieted a bit, replaced by renewed energy as agents rushed to finish the first round of reports, and Martin wondered if the party still would have been going on, if Victor hadn’t been there to impose some kind of order.
His father was at his desk, bent over an array of paper, squinting at it thoughtfully. Martin remembered his mother commenting that Victor had gotten bifocals not too long ago, and it occurred to Martin for the first time that his father was getting old.
“Martin?”
God, his father had caught him staring, and Martin jerked upright guiltily.
“Is there... is there any news on Harris?”
“He’s alive,” Victor said. “The doctors will have to amputate his hand - not much left worth saving, apparently - but he’ll live.” Fierce satisfaction in the words, close echo of Martin’s own.
I still wish I could have killed him.
“Better that he lives, Martin,” Victor added after a moment, and how he’d sensed what Martin was thinking, Martin had no idea. They hadn’t ever existed on this wavelength before, and it unnerved him. “I wouldn’t have minded seeing him die, but we need him - need his information, and he’ll face justice for what he did to you.”
To you. Not to Whitney and her kids, not the two hospitals. To Martin.
“The media will be all over this, once we have to go public with Harris’s connection to Silverman.” Victor restacked a pile of folders and set them to the side, pulled off his glasses and set them down. “It would be best for you to be out of the office until things settle down. Knowing the press, it won’t take long for them to move on to the next big disaster.”
“Plausible deniability?” Martin asked dryly.
“Something like that.” Victor’s smile was thin, hovering at the corner of his eyes, and Martin hadn’t seen that since he’d been a kid, in some distant memory when things had been okay between the two of them. “But, Martin...” Serious now, and his father folded his hands in front of him, studying Martin thoughtfully. “This has been a difficult assignment, and I’m telling you what I would tell any agent: you’ve been through enough already, and you need to rest.”
And he did. Hearing his father, Danny, Matt, Viv, everyone say it... He’d ignored it, pushed by it because there’d been too much to do to be tired. Too much to do in White Collar and Missing Persons and now Counter-Terrorism, and he’d made himself carry his exhaustion, one weight among many the past few weeks - no, not the past few weeks, the past thirty years, and he was so very tired.
“I’ve assigned a detail to drive you back to Danny’s apartment,” his father was saying, hesitant and not quite meeting Martin’s eyes. “They won’t stay,” he added, as Martin straightened in automatic defiance. “They’re going to make sure you’re safe, and will be by to pick you up tomorrow morning when you’re ready to come in; we’ll need a statement, before I can let you go.”
“Yeah.” Had to agree because he had no choice, and at least he wouldn’t have agents hovering around him and Danny for the rest of the night.
“It’s a precaution, Martin, not babysitting,” Victor said, sounding older than Martin had ever heard him sound before. “At least until you leave.” Dry, tired smile now. “I’ve given up watching you, you know. It doesn’t seem to work.”
“Okay,” Martin said quietly, unwilling suddenly to press his advantage in the face of that admission.
“Thank you.” Honestly grateful, and Martin didn’t know how to handle that. “I should get back to work... These reports aren’t going to write themselves.”
“Right, yeah.” Martin pushed his chair back and stood, hovering for a moment in front of his father’s desk. Victor was looking at him questioningly, eyes shadowed with a tiredness Martin had always considered foreign to him, mouth drawn and tight with it. “Um... don’t work too late, okay?”
And Victor stared at him a moment, openly confused before he pulled himself together.
“It never ends until you let it, Martin,” Victor said quietly. “I’ll see you back here tomorrow.”
“Yeah.”
Wanted to say more, and had no idea how to say it.
“Of course, Martin.” Warmth creeping into Victor’s voice now. “Good night.”
“’Night, Dad.” Martin nodded and escaped before he could think too long on that.
He shut the door behind him and sighed, pushed thoughts of his father off to the side to deal with later. Still too much there - too much history and complication, and he knew his mind couldn’t handle all of it at the moment, everything that had changed and stayed the same, new concern and old irritation, his father trying to understand how Danny fit into Martin’s life.
Speaking of which... He looked over his shoulder, back toward the main office area, jumped a bit as he saw Danny standing there, already in his coat with his cap and gloves shoved into a hip pocket and Martin’s coat draped over one arm.
“Done getting the third degree?” Danny asked lazily as he straightened from his elegant slouch against the wall and fell into step beside him. Smirked a bit at him, and like old times, that was, Danny smirking just to do it and make Martin uncomfortable.
“Yeah.” Not exactly the lectures he’d been used to, and too much sense in them to defy his father’s orders. “You ready to go?”
Danny only nodded thoughtfully as they walked down the hallway, moving with the same captivating grace that had Martin, despite the day, despite everything, watching him, silent and admiring. Brow creased a bit like he was thinking, hands shoved into the pockets of his overcoat, sleek, careless stride and Martin couldn’t get enough of that.
He’d never gotten enough when they’d worked together, when he’d spend hours and days filling himself up with the sight of Danny, watching him move around the office or the streets, the occasional fleeting touches on his shoulder or arm, glimpse of cologne when Danny bent close to look at something with him. Martin had a thousand memories, had wound them into a fabric of dreams and fantasies that kept him awake at night, and they’d never been enough.
Kept looking, determined to make this last, as though Danny would somehow vanish.
Of course Danny, being Danny, caught him watching and offered him a sidelong grin, far too smug and sly for Martin to do anything to counter it except to keep looking, steps slowing a bit. And Danny slowed a bit, smugness falling away as Martin continued to look, as they stepped outside into the New York evening, and Danny seemed almost to be at a loss as to how to handle Martin looking at him so openly.
“You’re something else, Fitzie, you really are.” Said after a couple heartbeats, like it was a natural, inevitable conclusion Danny had reached after much consideration.
Martin offered him a modest smile and Danny shook his head in wonderment, laughed, and his laughter was bright and warm in the late winter air.
“So you got any ideas on where to go?” Martin asked, once Danny had subsided.
“A few,” Danny said.
-end-
Post-fic notes: I... well. I honestly don't know what to say. Most times I say something like "Thank you so much for reading," and I probably say it way too often, but it's so very true. That people, WaT!fiends and non-WaT!fiends alike, have read both this and ALTC and liked it... it's perpetually amazing and humbling and gratifying for me, and so I end up lapsing into ridiculousness and repetition. And, as you can tell, I'm terrible at tributes and dedications, so I will say once again thank you so so so very much to everyone.
Because mardia_ has menaced me with dire things, there will be a final installment in this particular universe--and I hereby swear on my pen that no complication or bloodshed will be involved. After that, I'm quite inclined to let things be... Danny and Martin have earned that, I think.