Fic: a rose by any other name (WAT, Danny/Martin, PG)
I'd like to go on record as saying this is not the first crackfic I'd planned for the Manny Challenge. It's not even the second. It is, in fact, the third, which means that it's entirely possible I will write two more Manny Challenge crackfics by the end of the month. Some days being productive doesn't seem like such a good thing.
Anyway, this particular crackfic was inadvertently inspired by alethialia, to whom I feel as though I should apologize, because I know this is not at all what you meant to inspire. I just hope it's vaguely amusing to someone, because you know me and my powers of Intentional Comedy. This could have been way longer, but it's crackfic, so...no.
Right. Shutting up and getting on with the fic.
Title: a rose by any other name
Fandom: Without a Trace
Pairing: Danny/Martin
Rating: ::passes crack pipe::
Summary: It started with a sandwich.
Author's note: For the Manny Challenge. It's supposed to be bad. Honest. For nekosmuse, because if she wants something, I want her to have it.
It started out innocently enough. They worked together, so when Danny said 'let's grab some food' Martin didn't hesitate before saying 'sure'. They were together all the time anyway, saw each other more often than they saw their own families - well, if either of them had families - and they already took the same train back to the Bronx.
Besides, they both had to eat, so they might as well do it together.
The first time they went to a little sandwich place not far from Danny's subway stop. Nothing special, just a local place Danny really liked, where two guys could sit at the counter and argue about cholesterol without looking too much like they were on a date.
Because they weren't.
They were just two guys who worked together, and if Danny worried a little more about Martin's cholesterol levels than he should, it was just because he liked being right. He was probably just waiting for Martin to drop dead of a heart attack so he could say 'I told you so'. Martin could picture it, that smug smile firmly in place and Danny leaning over him, pretending to be the concerned partner, when all the while he was thinking about how right he was.
It's possible Martin wasn't the best dinner companion that first night. So he was a little surprised when Danny asked him again, took him back to the same place and gave Martin the same lecture when he ordered the turkey club this time.
"Guacamole is the good fat," Martin countered half-heartedly when Danny started in on him.
"Yeah, but bacon isn't. And do you have any idea what's in mayonnaise?"
He tuned out the rest of Danny's lecture, mostly because he'd heard it before. Pretty much every time they ordered in while they were working, Danny had something to say about Martin's choice of food, so it wasn't like Danny was going to come up with any new material.
When he finally finished Martin glanced over at him, one eyebrow raised at Danny's familiar smirk. "You know, I've been taking care of myself for years. I even manage to get dressed by myself in the morning."
"That's debatable."
He wasn't sure why that made him blush; something about the quality of Danny's voice, or maybe it was the way his gaze strayed down the length of Martin's body. Then again, Danny just had one of those voices, and Martin found himself a little off center where Danny was concerned more often than he wanted to admit.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Just eat your sandwich, Martin."
So he did, because sometimes Danny's advice was actually worth taking.
~
Martin lost track of how many times they ended up at the little deli, running through pretty much everything on the menu that didn't sound like it was actually designed to give someone a heart attack. So he wasn't sure how many times they'd gone to that place before Danny invited him back to his place, and at the time it seemed like a good idea to say yes.
After all, they were both going to watch the Mets game, so they might as well do it together.
Martin would never admit it even under torture, but he spent most of that first night watching Danny watch the game. And okay, maybe the second night too. He went home alone each time and tried not to think about Danny, about what they were doing hanging out together and how it had become a regular thing. Because he hadn't planned for that, but he had a lot of time on his hands after that whole disaster with Sam, so he didn't really mind.
In fact, he kind of liked hanging out with Danny. So much, in fact, that when Martin got up to go home on the third night and Danny asked him to stay, he didn't even think before he said 'okay'. In retrospect, he might have sounded a little idiotic, but he didn't realize at the time that Danny was making a pass at him.
It took about thirty seconds to figure that part out. He probably would have caught on sooner, but his brain short-circuited when Danny got close enough to breathe the word 'stay' against his mouth, and when he nodded and murmured 'okay', Danny smiled that smile of his that always made Martin's brain shut down completely. So it took a few seconds for the reality of Danny pushing him up against the door and kissing him to sink in, but when he did his brain kicked back into gear long enough to think 'Oh my God, Danny's kissing me'.
And it was a good thing Danny's tongue was already in his mouth or he might have said it out loud.
So that was how it started; a sandwich after work, then again, until somehow the little deli near Danny's place became 'their' place. The owner even knew them by name, which was kind of weird, but also kind of…cool. It was the first time Martin had ever been a regular anywhere. He had a feeling it was the sort of thing that happened to Danny all the time.
Which made it even weirder that Danny wanted him, but he made it pretty clear the first time he grabbed hold of Martin's tie and dragged him down the hall toward Danny's bedroom. And that was…yeah, hot, but not as hot as Danny pulling Martin out of his clothes for the first time. Or Danny pulling off his own clothes like he couldn't get them close enough fast enough. And granted, Martin probably wasn't much help that first night, but in his defense, his brain was still on vacation.
So he wasn't sure how much of that first night he actually remembered; mostly it was a blur of skin and heat and sweat and that voice in his ear and now just thinking about it made him blush, which didn't really seem fair. But it was Danny, so it wasn't like he was all that surprised.
It didn't take that long for him to stop going back to his own place at all. They worked long hours, after all, and they were spending most of their free time either arguing over the fat content of provolone or tearing each other's clothes off, and Danny's place was closer to the deli than his. At first he waited for Danny to get tired of having him around all the time, to start dropping hints about how maybe Martin might want to go home at some point. Water the plants or whatever. Not that Martin had any plants.
But he didn't, and when Martin's clothes started moving into his closet he just moved his own stuff over and made room. Then came the day Martin had to go out of town with Viv on an assignment, and before he left Danny dragged him into the men's room and kissed him long and hard. Then he pressed something metal into Martin's hand. A key, Martin realized after a few long moments of blinking down at his palm, and just like that, they were living together.
It made sense, really. They had to sleep sometime, so they might as well do it together.
~
So it started with a sandwich, and in a perfect world that's how it would have ended. They had a 'place' now, they had a life that bled over into work every now and then, but considering the soap opera that was Jack and Sam, they didn't worry about it that much. And they still rode the same subway line home, it was just that Martin got off a little earlier these days.
Things were pretty good, he had to admit. Better than they'd been with Sam, and better than he'd really expected them to be with Danny. But he knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouth, so he tried to relax and just enjoy the ride.
Until the deli owner's daughter disappeared.
Julia Cristiani, age fourteen. Her picture went up on the white board, along with vital stats and last known whereabouts. Just another case, except not, because this one involved someone they knew. Someone who meant something to them, and okay, maybe he was being a little sentimental, but he knew Danny was thinking the exact same thing.
They didn't talk about it, but they both worked just a little harder, pulled later hours and collapsed in an exhausted heap of wrinkled clothes just long enough to recharge before they went back to the search. They kept each other going, following dead-end leads about boyfriends and secret raves in the center of the city. And she was just a kid, so looking for her in those places made them all sick to their stomachs with worry and something else they tried not to name. But they kept going, because that was their job and there was still a chance she might come home alive.
Martin stopped into the deli to check on the family whenever he could. Sometimes Danny came with him, other times he went alone. They were always happy to see him, though, terrified but so grateful that he felt like a jerk for showing up without any news.
Every time he stopped in they sent him back to the office with enough sandwiches to feed the entire floor. It was kind of embarrassing, but it made them feel like they were doing something, so he let them.
Besides, the team had to eat, and Danny really liked their turkey pastrami.
~
It was cases like this one that made Martin wonder why people ever had kids. Sure, he loved his nieces, and he thought sometimes that it might be nice to have some of his own. Then he'd get the call about a teenage girl who disappeared in broad daylight, only to find out a week later that she'd taken a bus all the way across the country to meet some kid she met in a chat room.
"If I had kids they wouldn't even know what the internet was until they were thirty," he muttered just loud enough for Danny to hear as they watched Julia reunite with her parents.
He didn't have to look to know Danny was smirking, but he did anyway. It was a nice view, after all.
"You gonna raise your kids in a cave?"
"If it keeps them from doing stupid stuff like this."
"Trust me, Martin, they'd find other stupid stuff to do. She's just lucky the kid she went to meet was actually a kid."
They both knew what that meant; they'd worked that case before too, and the ending wasn't usually as happy as this one. Still, anything could have happened to her while she was running off to meet some fifteen-year-old computer geek she thought was her soul mate.
Yeah, if she was Martin's kid she'd be locked in her room until college.
He didn't say any of that while her parents were thanking them. He just shook their hands and assured them that they'd just been doing their jobs. He even tried to argue when they insisted his money was no good at the deli anymore; technically that was probably against some kind of FBI rule, and anyway Sam and Jack were the ones who actually went and got Julia.
Martin knew from experience that logic wasn't worth the effort when it came to situations like these, though, so in the end he smiled as graciously as possible and sent them all home. Hopefully so the Cristianis could ground Julia until her eighteenth birthday. He even managed to get in one last stern look before the elevator closed on her.
So the case was closed, and all that was left was the paperwork. They stayed another hour or so before they were both so tired they couldn't see straight, then they decided to save the rest of the reports for the morning and headed home.
"We have to talk about this plan of yours," Danny said when they were on the subway, shoulder to shoulder at the back of the car. "I don't want to live in a cave, Martin."
And he knew Danny was just teasing him, but Martin blushed anyway. They didn't talk about the future, didn't make plans or discuss white picket fences the way he and Sam had a few times. With her it had been a safe subject, because he knew no matter what they said, it was never going to happen. With Danny nothing seemed impossible, and that was a lot scarier than he'd expected it to be.
He didn't answer, but he grinned and leaned a little harder against Danny's shoulder. What he really wanted to do was take hold of Danny's tie and pull him forward, kiss him breathless and then tear off all his clothes and spend the whole night fucking him. But they were in public, so he had to wait until they got home.
It was the longest fifteen minutes of his life.
~
For a few days they didn't go anywhere near the deli. Part of it was giving Martin time to get over the urge to lecture Julia any time he saw her, but most of it was the overwhelming need to get home as fast as possible so they could tear each other's clothes off. Martin was pretty sure everybody at the office had caught on by now, but he couldn't make himself care. At least he couldn't make himself stop looking at Danny while they were working, and Danny wasn't even trying not to look at him.
So everybody knew, but according to Danny they all figured it out before Martin even did, so in the end it didn't matter. Besides, it was kind of fun to be able to touch Danny whenever he wanted. They weren't making out in their cubicles or anything, but he didn't have to pretend not to notice when Danny squeezed his shoulder anymore, and that was kind of…nice.
He had no idea what Sam thought about the whole thing. He didn't really care, and that was kind of nice, too.
Not that he thought much about Sam, because there was that whole tearing each other's clothes off thing, and even when that calmed down they still had a routine. A routine that sometimes involved stopping in at the deli on the way home from work, and the first time they went back Martin glanced up at the menu - out of habit, mostly - and groaned.
"They didn't."
"What?" Danny asked, stepping so close that Martin was pretty sure he was attempting to fit them both into the same physical space.
"That," Martin answered, too stunned even to move away to a more seemly distance.
"Wow," Danny said after a few seconds of silence. "Huh."
"That's all you're going to say?"
"Well, it's kind of sweet," Danny said, and this time Martin did turn to look at him. "Come on, Martin, he probably just wanted to thank us again."
"Danny, he named a sandwich after us."
"I know. Turkey pastrami club; that was pretty smart, combining our favorites like that. We should try it."
"I'm not eating anything called 'The Manny'."
It was hard to keep a straight face when he actually said it out loud. Danny didn't even bother trying, and Martin hated himself a little for loving that smirk so much. "Yes you are. It would be rude not to. Besides, it's not like we're paying for it."
Martin opened his mouth to argue, then closed it again when Danny raised an eyebrow at him. "Fine. But at least we could ask him to change the name."
"I like it," Danny said, pushing past Martin to order two Mannys with a side of slaw. And he had no idea if Danny was just messing with him when he said he liked the name, but Martin took the sandwich Danny set in front of him, and he ate it without argument.
Danny, of course, turned out to be right; The Manny was pretty good after all.
Anyway, this particular crackfic was inadvertently inspired by alethialia, to whom I feel as though I should apologize, because I know this is not at all what you meant to inspire. I just hope it's vaguely amusing to someone, because you know me and my powers of Intentional Comedy. This could have been way longer, but it's crackfic, so...no.
Right. Shutting up and getting on with the fic.
Title: a rose by any other name
Fandom: Without a Trace
Pairing: Danny/Martin
Rating: ::passes crack pipe::
Summary: It started with a sandwich.
Author's note: For the Manny Challenge. It's supposed to be bad. Honest. For nekosmuse, because if she wants something, I want her to have it.
It started out innocently enough. They worked together, so when Danny said 'let's grab some food' Martin didn't hesitate before saying 'sure'. They were together all the time anyway, saw each other more often than they saw their own families - well, if either of them had families - and they already took the same train back to the Bronx.
Besides, they both had to eat, so they might as well do it together.
The first time they went to a little sandwich place not far from Danny's subway stop. Nothing special, just a local place Danny really liked, where two guys could sit at the counter and argue about cholesterol without looking too much like they were on a date.
Because they weren't.
They were just two guys who worked together, and if Danny worried a little more about Martin's cholesterol levels than he should, it was just because he liked being right. He was probably just waiting for Martin to drop dead of a heart attack so he could say 'I told you so'. Martin could picture it, that smug smile firmly in place and Danny leaning over him, pretending to be the concerned partner, when all the while he was thinking about how right he was.
It's possible Martin wasn't the best dinner companion that first night. So he was a little surprised when Danny asked him again, took him back to the same place and gave Martin the same lecture when he ordered the turkey club this time.
"Guacamole is the good fat," Martin countered half-heartedly when Danny started in on him.
"Yeah, but bacon isn't. And do you have any idea what's in mayonnaise?"
He tuned out the rest of Danny's lecture, mostly because he'd heard it before. Pretty much every time they ordered in while they were working, Danny had something to say about Martin's choice of food, so it wasn't like Danny was going to come up with any new material.
When he finally finished Martin glanced over at him, one eyebrow raised at Danny's familiar smirk. "You know, I've been taking care of myself for years. I even manage to get dressed by myself in the morning."
"That's debatable."
He wasn't sure why that made him blush; something about the quality of Danny's voice, or maybe it was the way his gaze strayed down the length of Martin's body. Then again, Danny just had one of those voices, and Martin found himself a little off center where Danny was concerned more often than he wanted to admit.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Just eat your sandwich, Martin."
So he did, because sometimes Danny's advice was actually worth taking.
~
Martin lost track of how many times they ended up at the little deli, running through pretty much everything on the menu that didn't sound like it was actually designed to give someone a heart attack. So he wasn't sure how many times they'd gone to that place before Danny invited him back to his place, and at the time it seemed like a good idea to say yes.
After all, they were both going to watch the Mets game, so they might as well do it together.
Martin would never admit it even under torture, but he spent most of that first night watching Danny watch the game. And okay, maybe the second night too. He went home alone each time and tried not to think about Danny, about what they were doing hanging out together and how it had become a regular thing. Because he hadn't planned for that, but he had a lot of time on his hands after that whole disaster with Sam, so he didn't really mind.
In fact, he kind of liked hanging out with Danny. So much, in fact, that when Martin got up to go home on the third night and Danny asked him to stay, he didn't even think before he said 'okay'. In retrospect, he might have sounded a little idiotic, but he didn't realize at the time that Danny was making a pass at him.
It took about thirty seconds to figure that part out. He probably would have caught on sooner, but his brain short-circuited when Danny got close enough to breathe the word 'stay' against his mouth, and when he nodded and murmured 'okay', Danny smiled that smile of his that always made Martin's brain shut down completely. So it took a few seconds for the reality of Danny pushing him up against the door and kissing him to sink in, but when he did his brain kicked back into gear long enough to think 'Oh my God, Danny's kissing me'.
And it was a good thing Danny's tongue was already in his mouth or he might have said it out loud.
So that was how it started; a sandwich after work, then again, until somehow the little deli near Danny's place became 'their' place. The owner even knew them by name, which was kind of weird, but also kind of…cool. It was the first time Martin had ever been a regular anywhere. He had a feeling it was the sort of thing that happened to Danny all the time.
Which made it even weirder that Danny wanted him, but he made it pretty clear the first time he grabbed hold of Martin's tie and dragged him down the hall toward Danny's bedroom. And that was…yeah, hot, but not as hot as Danny pulling Martin out of his clothes for the first time. Or Danny pulling off his own clothes like he couldn't get them close enough fast enough. And granted, Martin probably wasn't much help that first night, but in his defense, his brain was still on vacation.
So he wasn't sure how much of that first night he actually remembered; mostly it was a blur of skin and heat and sweat and that voice in his ear and now just thinking about it made him blush, which didn't really seem fair. But it was Danny, so it wasn't like he was all that surprised.
It didn't take that long for him to stop going back to his own place at all. They worked long hours, after all, and they were spending most of their free time either arguing over the fat content of provolone or tearing each other's clothes off, and Danny's place was closer to the deli than his. At first he waited for Danny to get tired of having him around all the time, to start dropping hints about how maybe Martin might want to go home at some point. Water the plants or whatever. Not that Martin had any plants.
But he didn't, and when Martin's clothes started moving into his closet he just moved his own stuff over and made room. Then came the day Martin had to go out of town with Viv on an assignment, and before he left Danny dragged him into the men's room and kissed him long and hard. Then he pressed something metal into Martin's hand. A key, Martin realized after a few long moments of blinking down at his palm, and just like that, they were living together.
It made sense, really. They had to sleep sometime, so they might as well do it together.
~
So it started with a sandwich, and in a perfect world that's how it would have ended. They had a 'place' now, they had a life that bled over into work every now and then, but considering the soap opera that was Jack and Sam, they didn't worry about it that much. And they still rode the same subway line home, it was just that Martin got off a little earlier these days.
Things were pretty good, he had to admit. Better than they'd been with Sam, and better than he'd really expected them to be with Danny. But he knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouth, so he tried to relax and just enjoy the ride.
Until the deli owner's daughter disappeared.
Julia Cristiani, age fourteen. Her picture went up on the white board, along with vital stats and last known whereabouts. Just another case, except not, because this one involved someone they knew. Someone who meant something to them, and okay, maybe he was being a little sentimental, but he knew Danny was thinking the exact same thing.
They didn't talk about it, but they both worked just a little harder, pulled later hours and collapsed in an exhausted heap of wrinkled clothes just long enough to recharge before they went back to the search. They kept each other going, following dead-end leads about boyfriends and secret raves in the center of the city. And she was just a kid, so looking for her in those places made them all sick to their stomachs with worry and something else they tried not to name. But they kept going, because that was their job and there was still a chance she might come home alive.
Martin stopped into the deli to check on the family whenever he could. Sometimes Danny came with him, other times he went alone. They were always happy to see him, though, terrified but so grateful that he felt like a jerk for showing up without any news.
Every time he stopped in they sent him back to the office with enough sandwiches to feed the entire floor. It was kind of embarrassing, but it made them feel like they were doing something, so he let them.
Besides, the team had to eat, and Danny really liked their turkey pastrami.
~
It was cases like this one that made Martin wonder why people ever had kids. Sure, he loved his nieces, and he thought sometimes that it might be nice to have some of his own. Then he'd get the call about a teenage girl who disappeared in broad daylight, only to find out a week later that she'd taken a bus all the way across the country to meet some kid she met in a chat room.
"If I had kids they wouldn't even know what the internet was until they were thirty," he muttered just loud enough for Danny to hear as they watched Julia reunite with her parents.
He didn't have to look to know Danny was smirking, but he did anyway. It was a nice view, after all.
"You gonna raise your kids in a cave?"
"If it keeps them from doing stupid stuff like this."
"Trust me, Martin, they'd find other stupid stuff to do. She's just lucky the kid she went to meet was actually a kid."
They both knew what that meant; they'd worked that case before too, and the ending wasn't usually as happy as this one. Still, anything could have happened to her while she was running off to meet some fifteen-year-old computer geek she thought was her soul mate.
Yeah, if she was Martin's kid she'd be locked in her room until college.
He didn't say any of that while her parents were thanking them. He just shook their hands and assured them that they'd just been doing their jobs. He even tried to argue when they insisted his money was no good at the deli anymore; technically that was probably against some kind of FBI rule, and anyway Sam and Jack were the ones who actually went and got Julia.
Martin knew from experience that logic wasn't worth the effort when it came to situations like these, though, so in the end he smiled as graciously as possible and sent them all home. Hopefully so the Cristianis could ground Julia until her eighteenth birthday. He even managed to get in one last stern look before the elevator closed on her.
So the case was closed, and all that was left was the paperwork. They stayed another hour or so before they were both so tired they couldn't see straight, then they decided to save the rest of the reports for the morning and headed home.
"We have to talk about this plan of yours," Danny said when they were on the subway, shoulder to shoulder at the back of the car. "I don't want to live in a cave, Martin."
And he knew Danny was just teasing him, but Martin blushed anyway. They didn't talk about the future, didn't make plans or discuss white picket fences the way he and Sam had a few times. With her it had been a safe subject, because he knew no matter what they said, it was never going to happen. With Danny nothing seemed impossible, and that was a lot scarier than he'd expected it to be.
He didn't answer, but he grinned and leaned a little harder against Danny's shoulder. What he really wanted to do was take hold of Danny's tie and pull him forward, kiss him breathless and then tear off all his clothes and spend the whole night fucking him. But they were in public, so he had to wait until they got home.
It was the longest fifteen minutes of his life.
~
For a few days they didn't go anywhere near the deli. Part of it was giving Martin time to get over the urge to lecture Julia any time he saw her, but most of it was the overwhelming need to get home as fast as possible so they could tear each other's clothes off. Martin was pretty sure everybody at the office had caught on by now, but he couldn't make himself care. At least he couldn't make himself stop looking at Danny while they were working, and Danny wasn't even trying not to look at him.
So everybody knew, but according to Danny they all figured it out before Martin even did, so in the end it didn't matter. Besides, it was kind of fun to be able to touch Danny whenever he wanted. They weren't making out in their cubicles or anything, but he didn't have to pretend not to notice when Danny squeezed his shoulder anymore, and that was kind of…nice.
He had no idea what Sam thought about the whole thing. He didn't really care, and that was kind of nice, too.
Not that he thought much about Sam, because there was that whole tearing each other's clothes off thing, and even when that calmed down they still had a routine. A routine that sometimes involved stopping in at the deli on the way home from work, and the first time they went back Martin glanced up at the menu - out of habit, mostly - and groaned.
"They didn't."
"What?" Danny asked, stepping so close that Martin was pretty sure he was attempting to fit them both into the same physical space.
"That," Martin answered, too stunned even to move away to a more seemly distance.
"Wow," Danny said after a few seconds of silence. "Huh."
"That's all you're going to say?"
"Well, it's kind of sweet," Danny said, and this time Martin did turn to look at him. "Come on, Martin, he probably just wanted to thank us again."
"Danny, he named a sandwich after us."
"I know. Turkey pastrami club; that was pretty smart, combining our favorites like that. We should try it."
"I'm not eating anything called 'The Manny'."
It was hard to keep a straight face when he actually said it out loud. Danny didn't even bother trying, and Martin hated himself a little for loving that smirk so much. "Yes you are. It would be rude not to. Besides, it's not like we're paying for it."
Martin opened his mouth to argue, then closed it again when Danny raised an eyebrow at him. "Fine. But at least we could ask him to change the name."
"I like it," Danny said, pushing past Martin to order two Mannys with a side of slaw. And he had no idea if Danny was just messing with him when he said he liked the name, but Martin took the sandwich Danny set in front of him, and he ate it without argument.
Danny, of course, turned out to be right; The Manny was pretty good after all.