"be still and know your sign" (two of seven)
title: Seven Swans (2/7)
with: Danny
(pair: implicit Danny/Mac)
rated: R
herein: suppose time is a circle. reference to “tanglewood” and “run silent, run deep.”
disclaim: I only own the dvds. Everything belongs to Zuiker, et al.
note: each story was gleaned from prompts at mix7fics; each story in the set centers on a different character.
two. suppose time is a circle, bending back on itself. the world repeats itself, precisely, endlessly.
“if i am alive this time next year.”
Danny has court in the morning, and he turns on the charm: the jury’s eating out of his hand while he talks about the directionality of blood spatter. By noon, he’s done, and he grabs some lunch on the way over to the lab. He changes in the locker room and finds Mac in his office.
“Good.” Mac’s mouth tips up at Danny. “You can help me with this. A building inspector discovered the mummified remains of an adolescent male at an apartment building in the Bronx. No ID yet.” He starts to catch Danny up on the case, and Danny goes cold all over.
Danny re-writes his past without even thinking about it any more. Not a word of it is a lie, just a little shift of the truth.
It’s true he wasn’t in Giant’s Stadium the night Sonny popped that kid. His brother took Danny’s goddamn cigarette into the stadium, but Danny wasn’t there that night.
Maybe Danny was there on other nights, at other places. Maybe he wasn’t. His past has more lives than Schrödinger’s fucking cat. There’s no telling when he first learned the sound of a bat hitting flesh. No counting the back alleys and back rooms, no quantifying how blood and dirt blurs under a cocaine haze. Mac holds him now, so none of those other nights that he might have been there or might not-none of it matters. None of it happened.
In the end, it was remarkably easy to unravel that person who used to be Sonny’s boy. (smart boy, sharp boy, could’ve-been-something pussy boy)
It was easy to take that boy and make it so he never happened. Danny’s not a failure, and he’s not a fuck-up. He’s not a cop killer, and he’s not the impudent, cocksure kid who Mac hired.
Mac catches him up on this new case, a mummified body crammed in the crawlspace of an apartment building. For three endless seconds, Danny feels like he’s bleeding out. Then he breathes and relaxes, and Mac hasn’t noticed.
It wasn’t him. He was never there.
That night, Mac kisses Danny’s shoulder just above where the tatt would be.
…
note: this piece owes a great deal to stellaluna_, who kindly lent me the sentence, “Danny re-writes his past without even thinking about it any more.”
thanks for reading; feedback always appreciated
with: Danny
(pair: implicit Danny/Mac)
rated: R
herein: suppose time is a circle. reference to “tanglewood” and “run silent, run deep.”
disclaim: I only own the dvds. Everything belongs to Zuiker, et al.
note: each story was gleaned from prompts at mix7fics; each story in the set centers on a different character.
two. suppose time is a circle, bending back on itself. the world repeats itself, precisely, endlessly.
“if i am alive this time next year.”
Danny has court in the morning, and he turns on the charm: the jury’s eating out of his hand while he talks about the directionality of blood spatter. By noon, he’s done, and he grabs some lunch on the way over to the lab. He changes in the locker room and finds Mac in his office.
“Good.” Mac’s mouth tips up at Danny. “You can help me with this. A building inspector discovered the mummified remains of an adolescent male at an apartment building in the Bronx. No ID yet.” He starts to catch Danny up on the case, and Danny goes cold all over.
Danny re-writes his past without even thinking about it any more. Not a word of it is a lie, just a little shift of the truth.
It’s true he wasn’t in Giant’s Stadium the night Sonny popped that kid. His brother took Danny’s goddamn cigarette into the stadium, but Danny wasn’t there that night.
Maybe Danny was there on other nights, at other places. Maybe he wasn’t. His past has more lives than Schrödinger’s fucking cat. There’s no telling when he first learned the sound of a bat hitting flesh. No counting the back alleys and back rooms, no quantifying how blood and dirt blurs under a cocaine haze. Mac holds him now, so none of those other nights that he might have been there or might not-none of it matters. None of it happened.
In the end, it was remarkably easy to unravel that person who used to be Sonny’s boy. (smart boy, sharp boy, could’ve-been-something pussy boy)
It was easy to take that boy and make it so he never happened. Danny’s not a failure, and he’s not a fuck-up. He’s not a cop killer, and he’s not the impudent, cocksure kid who Mac hired.
Mac catches him up on this new case, a mummified body crammed in the crawlspace of an apartment building. For three endless seconds, Danny feels like he’s bleeding out. Then he breathes and relaxes, and Mac hasn’t noticed.
It wasn’t him. He was never there.
That night, Mac kisses Danny’s shoulder just above where the tatt would be.
…
note: this piece owes a great deal to stellaluna_, who kindly lent me the sentence, “Danny re-writes his past without even thinking about it any more.”
thanks for reading; feedback always appreciated