"pretty fingers holding fast"
title: Maybe It’s Your Violent Past
with: main csi:ny cast; various pairings listed before each ficlet
rated: NC-17 overall
herein: a loosely affiliated set of ficlets charting the summer between S3 and S4: for summer-bits
disclaim: I only own the dvds; everything belongs to Zuiker, CBS, et al.
note: largely inspired by Low’s “Violent Past” (from drums and guns)
Lindsay (Lindsay/Danny)
City heat is different than the heat Lindsay’s been used to all her life. The air is heavy and unbreathable. The heat hides in every surface.
Lindsay had insisted on picking Danny up from his doctor’s appointment. It’s just too hot.
“What do you want to do tonight?” she asks when they’ve sat in silence for a few minutes.
“We’re doing something tonight?” His voice is flat, and he stares out the window. Lindsay’s stomach plummets, and she backs up the conversation.
“Did everything go all right with the doctor?” He hadn’t really given her an answer when he first got in the car. She’s worried, but Danny hasn’t told her there’s reason to be. He hasn’t talked about his hand much, his broken fingers, but he would’ve told her if there was a reason to worry. “Danny?”
Danny sniffs and considers the question. “Yeah. Of course everything went all right. Come back in ten days, and I can finally get rid of this fucker.” He taps the splinted backs of his fingers lightly against the dashboard, and Lindsay hides her wince even though he’s not looking at her. “A couple more rounds of physical therapy, and I’ll be good as new.”
“Great.” They pause at a stop light, and she glances across the car. She can see the fine, shiny scar at the corner of his eyebrow. “Did they say how much longer you’d have to do physical therapy?”
“Won’t say for sure until the next follow up.” Danny sighs. “But something like three to six weeks.”
“Well, that’s not too bad,” Lindsay says, reaching for positive and falling about a mile and a half short.
“Yeah, you’d thinks so.” Subtle emphases on the you. “PT’s a bitch,” he mutters, and Lindsay feels her stomach drop again.
“You’ve been through physical therapy before?” Something about the way he said it. She wishes he would talk more about himself, but then again she doesn’t think she has the right to make that particular complaint. “When?”
“Broke my wrist.” He’s fiddling with the edge of the splint now, and she knows it’s the gesture that means he wants a cigarette. “That was a fuckin lifetime ago.”
“How’d that happen?”
“Goddamn barfight.” Danny turns in the seat towards her and rubs his good hand through his hair. “What’s with the third degree here, Linds?”
“Nothing.” She changes lanes. They’re almost back to Danny’s apartment.
“Cause it sounds like you’re trying to start something.”
“Jeez, Danny. I swear, I’m just curious.”
When sweat is beading across her scalp it’s too much of an effort to confront Danny for his short temper. Besides, he’s allowed a little leeway. Her own hands itch in sympathy with his splint, which must be even more of a bitch to deal with in this heat. So she cuts him some slack when he snaps-and he does with almost clockwork precision-because it could’ve been her, should have been. In the dark, she goes down on him, and sometimes he forgets. The splint scratches against the back of her neck until he remembers or until he comes. She likes those times the best.
…
Danny (Danny/Mac)
Timing works out perfect. Danny’s getting back into the lab part time-not back to the field, but he’ll take what he can get-two days before Mac’s going to leave on his little jaunt through London with the girlfriend.
Today, though, Mac’s running around like he belongs in a psych ward. Stella tries to tail after him every now and then, but she knows that he needs the space to run around. Wear himself out like a child. Peyton braves the labs only once, and Danny’s there to see the slightly stunned look on her face. For his own part, Danny keeps his head down.
Since Danny’s tied to the lab and Mac is too, putting everything in order, the rest of the team spends the day out in the field. Mac still doesn’t know that Danny’s been screwing Lindsay, even though it’s not a secret. Because Mac can be damn oblivious when he wants. Plus, Danny’s been keeping his head down all day.
Timing works out perfect in another way too-the city’s in the middle of a heat wave that puts last year’s to shame. It's that smoggy, stifling, big city heat that coats your skin, and it's so fucking hot that Danny starts sweating the second he steps outside.
Twenty-four hours on the nose before Mac’s flight is scheduled to leave, a thunderstorm rolls into the city. The rain only makes Danny feel even more filthy, like he’s coated in a thin oil slick, especially when he's licking the rainwater from Mac's mouth.
Mac tastes like tinfoil and hardly at all of whiskey. Danny presses Mac’s damp body firmly against his living room wall, and it feels like a double victory. His own shirt is clinging coolly to his skin. Mac pants against Danny’s neck, little humid bursts of air, and Danny’s not entirely sure how he pulled this one off. The details are already lost in an alcoholic blur. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care for the how, just the is.
Danny cups Mac through his rain-dampened trousers, and Mac whines just a little. Danny ducks his head and licks a hot stripe along Mac’s pulsepoint. Mac whimpers just a little. Mac’s skin is cool, prickled with gooseflesh. Danny warms it the best he can with mouth and hands.
Danny doesn’t feel drunk; he feels like he’s high, done a line of really good coke, primo shit. His heart’s going to pound right through his chest. Mac whines again and puts his hips into it. They don’t make it to the bedroom. Danny pushes Mac onto the couch and peels his pants down just far enough to suck him off, nice and slow, getting him to make lots more of those whining and whimpering noises.
After Mac comes, he wraps his own hand around Danny’s, urging him to jerk off slower. It’s torture, kneeling over Mac and fisting his own cock like this. Mac looks up at Danny, eyes glazed and panic-wide, and watches unblinking while Danny comes.
…
Mac (implicit Mac/Peyton)
Morning in London feels like the shadow of another person’s life.
Mac straightens and buttons the cuff of his shirt sleeve, his clothes in keeping with the professional formality of Peyton’s convention. Peyton herself is already downstairs at the complimentary breakfast, catching up with old colleagues and new friends. He should be joining her any minute now.
Their hotel room smells of sex, and it cheapens the surprisingly elegant suite. He considers pulling the covers up on the bed but decides to let housekeeping take care of it.
It occurs to him that sex smells like adrenaline, like something wound up in the fight and flight from death.
Mac slips his feet into his shoes and sits on the bed to tie them, feeling all the while somewhat out of place, out of phase with the rest of the city. He supposes it will fade in another day or so, when they have the time to sightsee and visit Peyton’s brother. He straightens, looks to the bedside table where his cell phone is charging, and blames his sense of dislocation on jet lag and the fact that the convention is not quite for his field. Of course he has a professional interest-he quite enjoyed the panel he attended yesterday on lifting worthwhile trace from a decomp and of course the paper Peyton delivered as well-but too much of the knowledge involved is just out of his reach.
Mac should head downstairs now; Peyton will be wondering what has held him up.
The plastic of his cell phone is cool in his hand. Mac quickly does the math and figures it’s three in the morning back home. He dials, punching in the extension for trace. Adam has been taking more and more night shifts lately-which worries Mac in a vague way, but he can do nothing to solve it.
Adam picks up on the fourth ring. “Trace lab.”
“Adam,” Mac says, aware that his voice is strange, but again he can do nothing to solve it. “I was just calling to see how things are going back at the lab.”
“Mac!” Surprise and nerves, which is what Mac expected. “They’re good-things, things are good here. How’s London?”
“The weather’s been grey since we landed, but the convention is fascinating.” Mac fiddles with the room service menu, lining it up with the edges of the table.
“Cool. Good.”
Transatlantic silence.
“Stella mentioned you caught two triple homicides yesterday? Earlier today for you, I guess,” Mac says in a rush.
“Yeah, yeah, it’s a little crazy. Some rich guy with a knife lost it on the Upper West Side. Got a hit in CODIS and plenty of physical evidence as soon as Flack and Hawkes track him down. Then a family was shot execution style down in Brooklyn, mom, grandma, and a twelve year old girl. That one’s turning out rough.” Adam’s voice trails off. “But we, we’ve got it under control boss.”
Mac can almost see the wince Adam makes at the end of the sentence. In the pained silence that follows he can picture Adam hanging out with Danny, maybe shooting pool in that dive Danny likes over on the Lower East Side.
“Good. I’m sure you do,” Mac says.
“Yeah, we do.” If it were Danny, there’s be a bit of swagger to the statement, a bit of don’t you worry about nothing. If it were Stella, there’s be a bit of a challenge, don’t you dare worry. But Adam has none of that stubborn overconfidence. “Well, you have fun in London, Mac.”
“All right. Bye, Adam.” Mac hangs up abruptly, before he can tell Adam to call if the lab gets too bogged down. If he said that, Stella would hear about it and have a rant ready and waiting for him.
…
Adam
Adam doesn’t like drinking alone, but he can’t face the emptiness of his apartment at night, not yet. So he sits stiffly at the bar, hyperaware of every set of eyes in the moderate, Tuesday night crowd. He doesn’t know if he even wants to talk to anyone, doesn’t know if he wants some vague acquaintance to drop into the seat next to him.
When Adam walked into the bar-which isn’t a gay bar but is ‘alternative’ enough that at least half the people here are going to be bisexual-he’d entertained the idea of going to someone else’s home for the night. Man or woman, he didn’t particularly care. That thought’s long flown. The memory of being a hostage is too close to the surface tonight. Adam knows he’ll be fine, but if he dreams he doesn’t need some stranger there, thinking he’s more fucked up than he is. So he orders a second beer and watches the crowd like he’s waiting for somebody to show up.
He’s just trying to get to the place where his brain slows down, and he’s not there yet. Since it happened, he only sleeps when he wears himself out. It’s a bad way to operate, he knows, but only a temporary way. He’s getting better: dropping off easily enough with the summer sun glinting through the window. He doesn’t bother even trying to sleep at night. It feels safer that way. (He doesn’t, does not remember coming home from high school and crashing into a nap every afternoon because his dad would be at work for a few more hours.)
Adam’s deep in the moment, listening to the meaningless bits of conversation around him, when a large hand claps his shoulder, and it makes him jump. Makes a sharp and bitter spike of adrenaline.
“Ross!” Flack drops into the seat beside Adam, leaning in close. “Fancy meeting you here.”
Adam scans the statement for subtext, but it’s just one of those stupid things you say to people. “Yeah, you too.” As soon as Adam starts to wrap his head around the surprise of seeing Flack here, he recognizes that Flack is well on the way to wasted. “You do know where here is, right?”
Flack gives him this look, like Adam’s the one who’s fall-off-the-chair drunk. “Yeah, the Hardback in Chelsea. You waiting for somebody?”
“No, no.” Adam shrugs. “I just figures it’s better than staring at the walls of my apartment. Not like I’m going to sleep anyway.” He’s too off balance to lie, and he’s no good at lying. Besides, Flack’s too drunk to remember his candor. Hopefully.
“Yeah? Better reason than me. No more fucked up though.” Flack points at him, like this is really important and Adam should be taking notes. “I’m here to get laid, which is stupid. Stupid.”
Adam’s starting to think his initial estimate of Flack’s drunkenness was way below the mark. “That’s stupid? How come?” He’s sort of at a loss for words, holding tightly to his beer as if he’s afraid Flack will grab it away from him.
“Yeah, it’s stupid. Because it’s Danny’s m.o., am I right? What’re you drinking?” Flack pats his shoulder and turns to get the bartender’s attention. “Whiskey on the rocks, and another Guinness.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I think you’re right.” Adam shrugs off Flack’s heavy hand, and he thinks about how often Flack hangs out with Danny. How Danny’s not as cool as he likes people to think, and surely Flack sees through to that and keeps hanging out with him anyway. “But you gotta do stupid shit sometimes, don’t you.” Sometimes Adam feels like a cipher, a harmless stand-in for Danny’s friends, but he feels a little safer now, too.
Flack’s right; it’s stupid. All very, very stupid.
…
Flack (Flack/OFC, Flack/OMC)
Flack thinks that he’s starting to turn into an asshole when he’s drunk. It’s hard to tell, but he has this distinct impression all the same.
The girl he’s fucking tonight has too much perfume on-something sandalwood and musk. He kind of wants to tell her this even as he’s thrusting deep inside her. He doesn’t-so maybe not a total asshole yet-but the urge to sneeze keeps distracting him from his impending orgasm. Hell-maybe that’s her strategy, keep the guy who’s fucking her going for longer. She wraps her legs tighter around his waist, and he clutches at her hips. She’s soft in all the right places, and her tongue slides against his. His mouth is waxy with the taste of her lipstick; she’s put on too much of it as well. He tells himself stupid things, like he’s making up for the time he lost last summer.
The next morning, Flack wakes up sneezing, alone in his own bed but still smelling of sex and musk. He’s hungover, and his head throbs.
It hasn’t affected the job, so it’s no one’s business what he does when he’s off the clock. When he’s at the lab, though, he’ll get the occasional odd thought. Sometimes he thinks about talking to Stella just because she’s the sanest person he knows. But Stella never told him about her HIV scare. It shouldn’t make a difference; she’s still the sanest person he knows. Flack finally heard about it from Hawkes, and okay, maybe he’s a little pissed off about that.
But two nights later it’s like rinse and repeat, and Flack can’t tell how many times he’s done this lately. Go out, get drunk, get laid. Like it will change something. He has a vague memory of running into Adam Ross one night someplace suspicious, someplace he wouldn’t want to run into anyone from work, but Ross hasn’t mentioned anything. Every night, Flack does his best to forget, to forget what he doesn’t know and what he can’t remember.
It’s stupid. It’s all really fucking stupid because he’s acting like Danny, and he knows it. Sweat making his t-shirt cling to him tonight. But he can’t get drunk fast enough. He can’t. So he ends up in a back alley, pants shoved down around his thighs, all too aware of the slick condomed dick pushing into him. It’s been too long. He’s too tight to take it like this, but somehow he does, and right before his mind gives over to the white noise of getting fucked he thinks maybe Danny’s onto something after all.
After, the guy-Flack’s already forgotten his name-heads back into the bar, and Flack heads back out onto the street, feeling the ache of it with each step. It’s early, and he wants another drink. But not back in there.
He trips on his own feet when he runs into Hawkes.
“Flack, are you okay?” Hawkes frowns with a little surprise and a lot of concern, and Flack wonders if its written on him, if Hawkes can read what just happened as clearly as if he’d been standing in that back alley.
“Who me? I’m great.”
…
Hawkes
Sheldon crunches a sliver of ice between his teeth and looks over Stella’s shoulder, out his living room window. The sun has finally gone down on the day, the wide shadows done cutting their way through the city. The city at sunset is like the river you can never set foot in twice. Always changing. Always moving forward.
“You’re drunk.” Stella laughs. The shine from a streetlight tangles with her curls.
“I’m tired.” Sheldon stretches an arm over his head. They grin at each other. “Besides, so are you,” he says.
Stella snorts and nods. Billie Holiday croons softly in the background. In my solitude you haunt me.
Sheldon finds his mind drifting back, tracing old shapes, finding the reasons he had for the various permutations in his career. He tries not to measure, to see if they’re still valid. He tries not to dwell on the past. Mac’s righteous disapproval, months gone, simply because he’d known that girl for an hour, that lovely and lost young woman who’s name escapes him tonight. His life is like that. A haphazard network of near misses and properly mistaken identities. Like getting framed for murder. That was a growing experience.
He knows he’s drunk. It makes him even more philosophical than the handful of times he smoked pot in college. The world feels like it’s in soft focus.
“This was a good idea, Sheldon,” Stella says, her voice throaty. She settles deeper into the couch and puts her feet up on the coffee table.
“Well, the weather seemed to call for it.” He smiles at her. They’re just lounging, drinking margaritas. His own recipe: añejo tequila, a crisp orange liqueor, crushed ice, and fresh lime juice. The right liqueor is the key; he buys a brandy from a small French house, hard to find in the States.
“The weather certainly does.” She gives him a little toast and drains the bottom of her glass.
It’s been a long, dry week, summer heat like dust coating the city. They had a case which led back to St. Luke’s and gave Sheldon another chance to exchange cold words with former colleagues. He invited Stella over to his place because no one else was interested in joining them and they’re both too worn out to sit in a bar. Billie Holiday: I’m afraid. Dear Lord above, send back my love.
“How you doing over there?” Stella sounds sleepy and benevolent. They’ve both reached a solid state of drunkenness.
“I’m doing okay,” he says. Outside his window, a flurry of pigeons rush up into the air. His head feels expansive. “How about you?”
Stella hums.
Condensation rolls down his glass to leave a careful circular pool on the flat arm of his chair. He doesn’t feel right bringing up those two and a half blows to his sense of self, not to Stella, and not when everyone else in the lab has been through worse in the same recent memory.
That night he dreams of small birds swooping across the street, and the next morning he wakes thinking that it smells like rain.
…
Stella (Stella/Lindsay)
It’s the hottest day of the year, so of course the building’s central air has to crap out. Stella shoves all the covers to the floor and flops down onto the bed. Lindsay’s little breadbox doesn’t have AC, so her apartment would be no better. Even with electric fans, neither place is going to get much of a crossdraft going. All she can think is hot, hot, hot like too many blankets, like standing too close to a fire.
Stella’s half-tempted to call up Sheldon and invite herself over.
Lindsay’s in the bathroom; Stella can hear the water running like bliss. She gathers her damp hair and piles it above her head on the pillow, getting it away from her neck. The heat has made her grumpy. Stella only told Lindsay to come over so she wouldn’t sweat to death in the night. Now they’re both screwed.
“You going to be much longer?” Stella calls toward the bathroom, loud enough to be heard over the running water.
“A couple more minutes.”
They’d showered together beneath the cool spray, but Lindsay’s skin care ritual is more arcane than any Stella’s seen.
Stella stretches until she can reach the fan with her toe and nudge it into a better position. She tugs her shirt off, baring her sticky skin to the fan’s breeze. Sweat is starting to bead at the small of her back.
“It’s going to be a long night,” Stella says when Lindsay comes back in the room.
Lindsay’s still wearing a towel. After a moment’s hesitation she backs up to hang the towel on the door, then crawls naked onto the bed, leaving a few inches of air between them. “I could go home,” she says, that uncertainty creeping back into her voice. Right now, it makes Stella want to scream.
“There’s no point in doing that.” Stella turns toward Lindsay and runs a fingertip up her arm. “But I was considering a camp out at Sheldon’s.”
“Is this?” Lindsay smiles, but her eyes are nervous. “Stella. Are we keeping this quiet, or something else?”
“I don’t see the point in making a big announcement.” Stella threads their fingers together. In a way, she feels like she’s starting over again, and it’s a good thing because it’s her choice. “But I don’t think it needs to be top secret either.” After the shouting match Lindsay had with Danny the yesterday, everyone knows that relationship is over. Stella thinks it was over not long after it started, but Lindsay hasn’t wanted to talk about it.
Lindsay sits up, looks down the length of Stella’s body, then leans in close. “Close your eyes, I have an idea,” she whispers, more hot air glancing against Stella’s face. She obeys though, and closes her eyes.
Stella listens to Lindsay walk out and a few minutes later walk back in, then-cold. Stella’s eyes snap open and she looks down, the shock of an ice cube resting on her navel. “Oh, that’s an idea.” Stella shivers.
with: main csi:ny cast; various pairings listed before each ficlet
rated: NC-17 overall
herein: a loosely affiliated set of ficlets charting the summer between S3 and S4: for summer-bits
disclaim: I only own the dvds; everything belongs to Zuiker, CBS, et al.
note: largely inspired by Low’s “Violent Past” (from drums and guns)
Lindsay (Lindsay/Danny)
City heat is different than the heat Lindsay’s been used to all her life. The air is heavy and unbreathable. The heat hides in every surface.
Lindsay had insisted on picking Danny up from his doctor’s appointment. It’s just too hot.
“What do you want to do tonight?” she asks when they’ve sat in silence for a few minutes.
“We’re doing something tonight?” His voice is flat, and he stares out the window. Lindsay’s stomach plummets, and she backs up the conversation.
“Did everything go all right with the doctor?” He hadn’t really given her an answer when he first got in the car. She’s worried, but Danny hasn’t told her there’s reason to be. He hasn’t talked about his hand much, his broken fingers, but he would’ve told her if there was a reason to worry. “Danny?”
Danny sniffs and considers the question. “Yeah. Of course everything went all right. Come back in ten days, and I can finally get rid of this fucker.” He taps the splinted backs of his fingers lightly against the dashboard, and Lindsay hides her wince even though he’s not looking at her. “A couple more rounds of physical therapy, and I’ll be good as new.”
“Great.” They pause at a stop light, and she glances across the car. She can see the fine, shiny scar at the corner of his eyebrow. “Did they say how much longer you’d have to do physical therapy?”
“Won’t say for sure until the next follow up.” Danny sighs. “But something like three to six weeks.”
“Well, that’s not too bad,” Lindsay says, reaching for positive and falling about a mile and a half short.
“Yeah, you’d thinks so.” Subtle emphases on the you. “PT’s a bitch,” he mutters, and Lindsay feels her stomach drop again.
“You’ve been through physical therapy before?” Something about the way he said it. She wishes he would talk more about himself, but then again she doesn’t think she has the right to make that particular complaint. “When?”
“Broke my wrist.” He’s fiddling with the edge of the splint now, and she knows it’s the gesture that means he wants a cigarette. “That was a fuckin lifetime ago.”
“How’d that happen?”
“Goddamn barfight.” Danny turns in the seat towards her and rubs his good hand through his hair. “What’s with the third degree here, Linds?”
“Nothing.” She changes lanes. They’re almost back to Danny’s apartment.
“Cause it sounds like you’re trying to start something.”
“Jeez, Danny. I swear, I’m just curious.”
When sweat is beading across her scalp it’s too much of an effort to confront Danny for his short temper. Besides, he’s allowed a little leeway. Her own hands itch in sympathy with his splint, which must be even more of a bitch to deal with in this heat. So she cuts him some slack when he snaps-and he does with almost clockwork precision-because it could’ve been her, should have been. In the dark, she goes down on him, and sometimes he forgets. The splint scratches against the back of her neck until he remembers or until he comes. She likes those times the best.
…
Danny (Danny/Mac)
Timing works out perfect. Danny’s getting back into the lab part time-not back to the field, but he’ll take what he can get-two days before Mac’s going to leave on his little jaunt through London with the girlfriend.
Today, though, Mac’s running around like he belongs in a psych ward. Stella tries to tail after him every now and then, but she knows that he needs the space to run around. Wear himself out like a child. Peyton braves the labs only once, and Danny’s there to see the slightly stunned look on her face. For his own part, Danny keeps his head down.
Since Danny’s tied to the lab and Mac is too, putting everything in order, the rest of the team spends the day out in the field. Mac still doesn’t know that Danny’s been screwing Lindsay, even though it’s not a secret. Because Mac can be damn oblivious when he wants. Plus, Danny’s been keeping his head down all day.
Timing works out perfect in another way too-the city’s in the middle of a heat wave that puts last year’s to shame. It's that smoggy, stifling, big city heat that coats your skin, and it's so fucking hot that Danny starts sweating the second he steps outside.
Twenty-four hours on the nose before Mac’s flight is scheduled to leave, a thunderstorm rolls into the city. The rain only makes Danny feel even more filthy, like he’s coated in a thin oil slick, especially when he's licking the rainwater from Mac's mouth.
Mac tastes like tinfoil and hardly at all of whiskey. Danny presses Mac’s damp body firmly against his living room wall, and it feels like a double victory. His own shirt is clinging coolly to his skin. Mac pants against Danny’s neck, little humid bursts of air, and Danny’s not entirely sure how he pulled this one off. The details are already lost in an alcoholic blur. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care for the how, just the is.
Danny cups Mac through his rain-dampened trousers, and Mac whines just a little. Danny ducks his head and licks a hot stripe along Mac’s pulsepoint. Mac whimpers just a little. Mac’s skin is cool, prickled with gooseflesh. Danny warms it the best he can with mouth and hands.
Danny doesn’t feel drunk; he feels like he’s high, done a line of really good coke, primo shit. His heart’s going to pound right through his chest. Mac whines again and puts his hips into it. They don’t make it to the bedroom. Danny pushes Mac onto the couch and peels his pants down just far enough to suck him off, nice and slow, getting him to make lots more of those whining and whimpering noises.
After Mac comes, he wraps his own hand around Danny’s, urging him to jerk off slower. It’s torture, kneeling over Mac and fisting his own cock like this. Mac looks up at Danny, eyes glazed and panic-wide, and watches unblinking while Danny comes.
…
Mac (implicit Mac/Peyton)
Morning in London feels like the shadow of another person’s life.
Mac straightens and buttons the cuff of his shirt sleeve, his clothes in keeping with the professional formality of Peyton’s convention. Peyton herself is already downstairs at the complimentary breakfast, catching up with old colleagues and new friends. He should be joining her any minute now.
Their hotel room smells of sex, and it cheapens the surprisingly elegant suite. He considers pulling the covers up on the bed but decides to let housekeeping take care of it.
It occurs to him that sex smells like adrenaline, like something wound up in the fight and flight from death.
Mac slips his feet into his shoes and sits on the bed to tie them, feeling all the while somewhat out of place, out of phase with the rest of the city. He supposes it will fade in another day or so, when they have the time to sightsee and visit Peyton’s brother. He straightens, looks to the bedside table where his cell phone is charging, and blames his sense of dislocation on jet lag and the fact that the convention is not quite for his field. Of course he has a professional interest-he quite enjoyed the panel he attended yesterday on lifting worthwhile trace from a decomp and of course the paper Peyton delivered as well-but too much of the knowledge involved is just out of his reach.
Mac should head downstairs now; Peyton will be wondering what has held him up.
The plastic of his cell phone is cool in his hand. Mac quickly does the math and figures it’s three in the morning back home. He dials, punching in the extension for trace. Adam has been taking more and more night shifts lately-which worries Mac in a vague way, but he can do nothing to solve it.
Adam picks up on the fourth ring. “Trace lab.”
“Adam,” Mac says, aware that his voice is strange, but again he can do nothing to solve it. “I was just calling to see how things are going back at the lab.”
“Mac!” Surprise and nerves, which is what Mac expected. “They’re good-things, things are good here. How’s London?”
“The weather’s been grey since we landed, but the convention is fascinating.” Mac fiddles with the room service menu, lining it up with the edges of the table.
“Cool. Good.”
Transatlantic silence.
“Stella mentioned you caught two triple homicides yesterday? Earlier today for you, I guess,” Mac says in a rush.
“Yeah, yeah, it’s a little crazy. Some rich guy with a knife lost it on the Upper West Side. Got a hit in CODIS and plenty of physical evidence as soon as Flack and Hawkes track him down. Then a family was shot execution style down in Brooklyn, mom, grandma, and a twelve year old girl. That one’s turning out rough.” Adam’s voice trails off. “But we, we’ve got it under control boss.”
Mac can almost see the wince Adam makes at the end of the sentence. In the pained silence that follows he can picture Adam hanging out with Danny, maybe shooting pool in that dive Danny likes over on the Lower East Side.
“Good. I’m sure you do,” Mac says.
“Yeah, we do.” If it were Danny, there’s be a bit of swagger to the statement, a bit of don’t you worry about nothing. If it were Stella, there’s be a bit of a challenge, don’t you dare worry. But Adam has none of that stubborn overconfidence. “Well, you have fun in London, Mac.”
“All right. Bye, Adam.” Mac hangs up abruptly, before he can tell Adam to call if the lab gets too bogged down. If he said that, Stella would hear about it and have a rant ready and waiting for him.
…
Adam
Adam doesn’t like drinking alone, but he can’t face the emptiness of his apartment at night, not yet. So he sits stiffly at the bar, hyperaware of every set of eyes in the moderate, Tuesday night crowd. He doesn’t know if he even wants to talk to anyone, doesn’t know if he wants some vague acquaintance to drop into the seat next to him.
When Adam walked into the bar-which isn’t a gay bar but is ‘alternative’ enough that at least half the people here are going to be bisexual-he’d entertained the idea of going to someone else’s home for the night. Man or woman, he didn’t particularly care. That thought’s long flown. The memory of being a hostage is too close to the surface tonight. Adam knows he’ll be fine, but if he dreams he doesn’t need some stranger there, thinking he’s more fucked up than he is. So he orders a second beer and watches the crowd like he’s waiting for somebody to show up.
He’s just trying to get to the place where his brain slows down, and he’s not there yet. Since it happened, he only sleeps when he wears himself out. It’s a bad way to operate, he knows, but only a temporary way. He’s getting better: dropping off easily enough with the summer sun glinting through the window. He doesn’t bother even trying to sleep at night. It feels safer that way. (He doesn’t, does not remember coming home from high school and crashing into a nap every afternoon because his dad would be at work for a few more hours.)
Adam’s deep in the moment, listening to the meaningless bits of conversation around him, when a large hand claps his shoulder, and it makes him jump. Makes a sharp and bitter spike of adrenaline.
“Ross!” Flack drops into the seat beside Adam, leaning in close. “Fancy meeting you here.”
Adam scans the statement for subtext, but it’s just one of those stupid things you say to people. “Yeah, you too.” As soon as Adam starts to wrap his head around the surprise of seeing Flack here, he recognizes that Flack is well on the way to wasted. “You do know where here is, right?”
Flack gives him this look, like Adam’s the one who’s fall-off-the-chair drunk. “Yeah, the Hardback in Chelsea. You waiting for somebody?”
“No, no.” Adam shrugs. “I just figures it’s better than staring at the walls of my apartment. Not like I’m going to sleep anyway.” He’s too off balance to lie, and he’s no good at lying. Besides, Flack’s too drunk to remember his candor. Hopefully.
“Yeah? Better reason than me. No more fucked up though.” Flack points at him, like this is really important and Adam should be taking notes. “I’m here to get laid, which is stupid. Stupid.”
Adam’s starting to think his initial estimate of Flack’s drunkenness was way below the mark. “That’s stupid? How come?” He’s sort of at a loss for words, holding tightly to his beer as if he’s afraid Flack will grab it away from him.
“Yeah, it’s stupid. Because it’s Danny’s m.o., am I right? What’re you drinking?” Flack pats his shoulder and turns to get the bartender’s attention. “Whiskey on the rocks, and another Guinness.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I think you’re right.” Adam shrugs off Flack’s heavy hand, and he thinks about how often Flack hangs out with Danny. How Danny’s not as cool as he likes people to think, and surely Flack sees through to that and keeps hanging out with him anyway. “But you gotta do stupid shit sometimes, don’t you.” Sometimes Adam feels like a cipher, a harmless stand-in for Danny’s friends, but he feels a little safer now, too.
Flack’s right; it’s stupid. All very, very stupid.
…
Flack (Flack/OFC, Flack/OMC)
Flack thinks that he’s starting to turn into an asshole when he’s drunk. It’s hard to tell, but he has this distinct impression all the same.
The girl he’s fucking tonight has too much perfume on-something sandalwood and musk. He kind of wants to tell her this even as he’s thrusting deep inside her. He doesn’t-so maybe not a total asshole yet-but the urge to sneeze keeps distracting him from his impending orgasm. Hell-maybe that’s her strategy, keep the guy who’s fucking her going for longer. She wraps her legs tighter around his waist, and he clutches at her hips. She’s soft in all the right places, and her tongue slides against his. His mouth is waxy with the taste of her lipstick; she’s put on too much of it as well. He tells himself stupid things, like he’s making up for the time he lost last summer.
The next morning, Flack wakes up sneezing, alone in his own bed but still smelling of sex and musk. He’s hungover, and his head throbs.
It hasn’t affected the job, so it’s no one’s business what he does when he’s off the clock. When he’s at the lab, though, he’ll get the occasional odd thought. Sometimes he thinks about talking to Stella just because she’s the sanest person he knows. But Stella never told him about her HIV scare. It shouldn’t make a difference; she’s still the sanest person he knows. Flack finally heard about it from Hawkes, and okay, maybe he’s a little pissed off about that.
But two nights later it’s like rinse and repeat, and Flack can’t tell how many times he’s done this lately. Go out, get drunk, get laid. Like it will change something. He has a vague memory of running into Adam Ross one night someplace suspicious, someplace he wouldn’t want to run into anyone from work, but Ross hasn’t mentioned anything. Every night, Flack does his best to forget, to forget what he doesn’t know and what he can’t remember.
It’s stupid. It’s all really fucking stupid because he’s acting like Danny, and he knows it. Sweat making his t-shirt cling to him tonight. But he can’t get drunk fast enough. He can’t. So he ends up in a back alley, pants shoved down around his thighs, all too aware of the slick condomed dick pushing into him. It’s been too long. He’s too tight to take it like this, but somehow he does, and right before his mind gives over to the white noise of getting fucked he thinks maybe Danny’s onto something after all.
After, the guy-Flack’s already forgotten his name-heads back into the bar, and Flack heads back out onto the street, feeling the ache of it with each step. It’s early, and he wants another drink. But not back in there.
He trips on his own feet when he runs into Hawkes.
“Flack, are you okay?” Hawkes frowns with a little surprise and a lot of concern, and Flack wonders if its written on him, if Hawkes can read what just happened as clearly as if he’d been standing in that back alley.
“Who me? I’m great.”
…
Hawkes
Sheldon crunches a sliver of ice between his teeth and looks over Stella’s shoulder, out his living room window. The sun has finally gone down on the day, the wide shadows done cutting their way through the city. The city at sunset is like the river you can never set foot in twice. Always changing. Always moving forward.
“You’re drunk.” Stella laughs. The shine from a streetlight tangles with her curls.
“I’m tired.” Sheldon stretches an arm over his head. They grin at each other. “Besides, so are you,” he says.
Stella snorts and nods. Billie Holiday croons softly in the background. In my solitude you haunt me.
Sheldon finds his mind drifting back, tracing old shapes, finding the reasons he had for the various permutations in his career. He tries not to measure, to see if they’re still valid. He tries not to dwell on the past. Mac’s righteous disapproval, months gone, simply because he’d known that girl for an hour, that lovely and lost young woman who’s name escapes him tonight. His life is like that. A haphazard network of near misses and properly mistaken identities. Like getting framed for murder. That was a growing experience.
He knows he’s drunk. It makes him even more philosophical than the handful of times he smoked pot in college. The world feels like it’s in soft focus.
“This was a good idea, Sheldon,” Stella says, her voice throaty. She settles deeper into the couch and puts her feet up on the coffee table.
“Well, the weather seemed to call for it.” He smiles at her. They’re just lounging, drinking margaritas. His own recipe: añejo tequila, a crisp orange liqueor, crushed ice, and fresh lime juice. The right liqueor is the key; he buys a brandy from a small French house, hard to find in the States.
“The weather certainly does.” She gives him a little toast and drains the bottom of her glass.
It’s been a long, dry week, summer heat like dust coating the city. They had a case which led back to St. Luke’s and gave Sheldon another chance to exchange cold words with former colleagues. He invited Stella over to his place because no one else was interested in joining them and they’re both too worn out to sit in a bar. Billie Holiday: I’m afraid. Dear Lord above, send back my love.
“How you doing over there?” Stella sounds sleepy and benevolent. They’ve both reached a solid state of drunkenness.
“I’m doing okay,” he says. Outside his window, a flurry of pigeons rush up into the air. His head feels expansive. “How about you?”
Stella hums.
Condensation rolls down his glass to leave a careful circular pool on the flat arm of his chair. He doesn’t feel right bringing up those two and a half blows to his sense of self, not to Stella, and not when everyone else in the lab has been through worse in the same recent memory.
That night he dreams of small birds swooping across the street, and the next morning he wakes thinking that it smells like rain.
…
Stella (Stella/Lindsay)
It’s the hottest day of the year, so of course the building’s central air has to crap out. Stella shoves all the covers to the floor and flops down onto the bed. Lindsay’s little breadbox doesn’t have AC, so her apartment would be no better. Even with electric fans, neither place is going to get much of a crossdraft going. All she can think is hot, hot, hot like too many blankets, like standing too close to a fire.
Stella’s half-tempted to call up Sheldon and invite herself over.
Lindsay’s in the bathroom; Stella can hear the water running like bliss. She gathers her damp hair and piles it above her head on the pillow, getting it away from her neck. The heat has made her grumpy. Stella only told Lindsay to come over so she wouldn’t sweat to death in the night. Now they’re both screwed.
“You going to be much longer?” Stella calls toward the bathroom, loud enough to be heard over the running water.
“A couple more minutes.”
They’d showered together beneath the cool spray, but Lindsay’s skin care ritual is more arcane than any Stella’s seen.
Stella stretches until she can reach the fan with her toe and nudge it into a better position. She tugs her shirt off, baring her sticky skin to the fan’s breeze. Sweat is starting to bead at the small of her back.
“It’s going to be a long night,” Stella says when Lindsay comes back in the room.
Lindsay’s still wearing a towel. After a moment’s hesitation she backs up to hang the towel on the door, then crawls naked onto the bed, leaving a few inches of air between them. “I could go home,” she says, that uncertainty creeping back into her voice. Right now, it makes Stella want to scream.
“There’s no point in doing that.” Stella turns toward Lindsay and runs a fingertip up her arm. “But I was considering a camp out at Sheldon’s.”
“Is this?” Lindsay smiles, but her eyes are nervous. “Stella. Are we keeping this quiet, or something else?”
“I don’t see the point in making a big announcement.” Stella threads their fingers together. In a way, she feels like she’s starting over again, and it’s a good thing because it’s her choice. “But I don’t think it needs to be top secret either.” After the shouting match Lindsay had with Danny the yesterday, everyone knows that relationship is over. Stella thinks it was over not long after it started, but Lindsay hasn’t wanted to talk about it.
Lindsay sits up, looks down the length of Stella’s body, then leans in close. “Close your eyes, I have an idea,” she whispers, more hot air glancing against Stella’s face. She obeys though, and closes her eyes.
Stella listens to Lindsay walk out and a few minutes later walk back in, then-cold. Stella’s eyes snap open and she looks down, the shock of an ice cube resting on her navel. “Oh, that’s an idea.” Stella shivers.