Habit; CSI:NY; Mac/Flack; FRAO
Title: Habit
Fandom: CSI:NY
Pairing: Mac/Flack
Rating: FRAO
Disclaimer: All characters are properties of Jerry Bruckheimer, CBS, Alliance Atlantis and affliated companies.
Summary: It's just a habit. It always has been. Or so he tells himself.
A/N: This has been sitting around for a few months before I decided to post it. I would appreciate feedback on this piece a lot. Thanks.
Beta: Thanks to sunhawk for her wonderful beta. All other mistakes are mine.
Habit
They say when you do a thing more than twenty-one times it becomes a habit.
Maybe it wasn’t exactly twenty-one times. Maybe it was less than that. Which idiot decided on that particular magic number anyway? Did that person just decide to wake up on a Sunday after three weeks and think by god, the thing I have been doing all along has become a habit? Who ever counted anyway? It seemed as fucking ridiculous as counting the number of buttons on your shirt every time you put it on, but that was what he was doing anyway.
Flack was putting on his shirt in the blue half-light in his apartment, the amber beginnings of the streetlights fading into the thick fabric of the curtains as he tried not to look at Mac in his bed. It was two in the morning - at least, he thought it was - because it was always two in the morning when they woke up with the guilty hollow of a ghost hovering above them with the smell of sweat and semen.
It was an unspoken agreement between them: they didn’t ask why, they didn’t ask when. They would just drop by whenever they felt like it, fit the key into the lock and walk right in as if it was their home. Mac usually turned up at Flack’s apartment sober, deeply pissed and with a stack of work with him as if he could do any. Flack on the other hand, didn’t exactly have a routine. He had been to Mac’s drunk, sober, pissed, calm and laughing, with pizza and beer and empty-handed.
It was fine at first, until he had started wondering whether he should drop by Mac’s that night, or whether Mac would come by tonight and whether they should keep doing this, screwing each other up in more ways than one. He wondered whether they should make it more than it was.
He was tired of wondering.
“So, where is… this,” he paused, not out of nervousness but for his own benefit, because he couldn’t decide whether that it was a relationship or whether there was really an 'us' in there because he knew there wasn’t one. “...Going?” Flack finally settled on the vague flutter of a word, not looking at Mac as he licked his chapped lips.
Then there was silence. They said when silence was comfortable, you were good friends; when silence was awkward, you were not close enough; but this silence was different. He couldn’t say it was suffocating, nor was he particularly comfortable with it. Flack buttoned his shirt, trying to smooth out the wrinkles he had made when he tossed the shirt haphazardly aside the night before. There was no answer but he did not turn back.
It sounded like it was raining outside, silver pinpricks splattering on the window and occasional claps of thunder that Flack swore he hallucinated. He wouldn’t know until he drew the curtains.
“Until one of us says stop.” Mac finally said, and Flack was still staring at the curtained window as he knotted his tie.
There was that silence again. It meant that they both agreed.
That was a month ago.
A month since this screwed-up relationship had started and a month since he had started showing up at Mac’s place nearly every night, because, hell, he could use the fucks. It was only until he couldn’t find the apartment key in his locker one day, rummaging and cursing, checking in all his pockets and swearing that he put it in the locker that very morning that he realised Mac was saying stop.
It took him another two weeks to find out that he had been traded his place in Mac’s bed for a young brunette coroner.
It was different now. Cold beer and pizza on a warm summer night just didn’t cut it anymore. There were basketball games in the evening sometimes and Messer over for Chinese takeout with punches on the shoulder and jokes about big tits and skinny asses; but then again there was Mac. Mac and erections. Mac and this screwed up relationship. Mac and this… habit. It was a habit. Nothing more. He should have stopped it when he knew he was going there, but maybe those were how these things started: he just kept going on and on and on because there was this rush, this need he told himself he had and when it ended he realised it was too late because he wanted more. It wasn’t an addiction. He didn’t have the fucking shakes and the obsessive thoughts while he lay in bed jerking off to perfectly distorted images of Mac. He did jerk off more than usual maybe, lying in bed sweating and trying not to think, but that was besides the point.
It was a habit. A habit that kept him on the edge of his own fictional eighteen-storey building, never quite deciding to fall or fly. A habit that changed their relationship permanently, like ink washing over a crisp white page, because no matter what they said, things would never be the same again. The very same habit that had brought him walking towards Mac’s apartment building right now, even as he tasted the metallic tang of gunpowder on his tongue and the itch from the sweat running down his suit collar.
He had just saved another officer’s ass. They hadn't known the suspect was armed until he pulled out that cannon and pointed it at Davis. Flack had wrestled him down, grabbing for the gun until all he heard was a bomb going off beside his ear and the hot metal stinging his cheek. The fucker was supposed to be unarmed. Davis held the guy until backup came and it was all oh god oh god are you hurt, that fucker shot you, you saved my ass. Then it was all the paramedics who asked him the game of a hundred questions whether he could move his arm, his leg. He was called to the captain’s office, but he didn’t remember whether he went back to the precinct in the ambulance or the squad car because all he saw was uniforms and people saying words he couldn’t hear.
The captain had told him to take the rest of the day off, Flack had argued that he didn’t need to. The captain wouldn’t let him step foot into the precinct until he did. Flack took the rest of the day off.
Flack had walked out of the precinct and gone home. He slept the afternoon away in his work clothes, suit and all, the television muffled in the background. When he got up he drank a glass of water and tried not to think, but the room was warm and he was shivering so he left the glass in the sink and headed towards Mac’s.
The doorbell was stiff as he pressed it a few times before leaning against the doorjamb, closing his eyes as he heard the footsteps across the panelled flooring and the click of the lock.
“Hey.” Mac greeted him when he swung the door open. He didn’t sound welcoming, but then again he didn’t sound hostile enough to close the door on him either. Flack didn’t know what to think of that. He didn’t even know why he was here. Danny could have been better help. He would clap him on the shoulder, pop a few bucks for a cold beer, maybe even something stronger (ice cream was for chicks), and hug him so tightly while asking what the fuck he was doing trying to get himself killed, stop that or I’ll kill you myself.
Mac was standing at the doorway waiting for an answer, so Flack forced a smile that was usually so easy for him. The door opened and Mac stepped aside for Flack to walk in.
“No company?” Flack asked as he walked in, and the statement sounded oddly muffled. The shot was still ringing in his ears. He would be partially deaf for another few hours but he didn’t care; sometimes it was all the better when the world was passing by in a muffled blur.
“Peyton just left. She has an early morning tomorrow.” Peyton. They were on a first name basis. Not Miss Driscoll or Driscoll. It was Peyton, honey, would you like to share my bed? Flack took off his coat, tossing it on the couch. His gun was still in its shoulder holster, his shirt tight over his body. It might have been sexy once, but they both knew that the guns brought more than just dead weight in a holster; it brought emotional heaviness along with the cold metal, connecting themselves to the gun as much as the blood which ran through their veins.
“You seem to like the British accent.” Flack didn’t say it teasingly or even with a tinge of hurt in his voice. He spoke it with abandon, as if it were merely a fact he had noticed recently.
“There are things beyond that, Don.” Mac sounded tired, if not pissed. He paused for a while, walking towards the couch in the living room where Flack was standing, as if searching for a light switch but all he was searching for were words. He still hadn’t met Flack’s eyes. “It’s about the whole person, not just the… accent.”
“She’s that good, huh?”
“We get along.”
Flack didn’t hear that, partially because he couldn’t and partially because he didn’t want to. He walked towards Mac, almost laughing because he was thinking about accents and wondered what Mac would do if he pulled a bad English accent on him. But that was pushing it, he knew.
“Don,” Mac protested softly as Flack wrapped his arms around him, pressing all his warm body weight onto him. Mac could have sent him flying across the living room and he felt Mac's arm muscles tense beneath the thin shirt he was wearing, but he didn’t push Flack away and that counted for a lot. Mac wanted this.
“Don.” Mac tried again. Flack wasn’t used to forcing like this. He was used to teasing, to gentle and torturous caresses, but Mac had relaxed - he could feel that - so he reached up to tilt his chin towards him, pressing a hard kiss on his lips as he felt the stubble scrape his cheek. Mac didn’t pull away, so Flack bit his lip roughly, pushing him towards the hallway.
“I need her,” was all Mac managed to say, sounding almost like a reminder to himself between gasps. Then there were the hands - the hands that skated roughly over his body, dipping into his pants and pulling his shirt and fumbling with the buttons. It was as if he wanted to get this over as quickly as possible, like an ambush and Mac wouldn’t know what hit him.
“You need me more.” Flack didn’t know why he said that because he didn’t know that for sure, but Mac didn’t argue with that. He didn’t argue even when they reached his bedroom, pants shoved down to their ankles and Flack’s hand wrapped around Mac’s cock, pumping.
It was hurried, messy. No lingering on touches or playful tongues skating over sensitive flesh. Flack swore when Mac entered him, although he couldn’t remember what because it was all heat and flesh and oh god oh god right there don’t stop. And then they rolled over, hot and sticky, with Mac helping Flack with his straining erection, stroking softly, teasingly, like he always had before. It wasn’t long before he came, arching his back over the bedsheets and moaning.
When Flack opened his eyes he saw Mac above him, breathing, eyes closed and he reached a hand up to cup his cheek. He could feel the heat in the reddened face, the slight hitch of a breath as his fingers touched bare skin and Mac’s eyelids fluttered open.
“Christ, how long has it been?” Mac asked, as if he were just recovering from a long bout of sleep. Flack hesitated, looking up at the blue eyes and licked his lips which tasted of Mac and the iron tang of blood. Suddenly it hurt so much more than it should.
“Three weeks.” He finally answered.
“You counted.” The tone was not accusing, not amused, just slightly… relieved.
“Yeah, maybe I did.”
--
Flack bolted up, staring at the glowing red digits on the clock on the nightstand - 2:01am. Some things never change. Some just wouldn’t stop changing.
He couldn’t just run around fucking him, fucking himself like this, when everything went wrong. Maybe they had that in common, screwing things up worse when things go bad, like slamming your hand in the door after stubbing your toe, as if two wrongs could make a right.
Tomorrow Mac would find out that he had nearly been shot and that was why he had dropped by his apartment. Flack would turn up all bright and happy in his suit because he was perfectly fine with it, this whole nearly being shot thing. He was Flack, he bounced right back like a rubber ball.
So he leant down and kissed Mac. Kissed him on the corner of his lips where his taste still lingered with the slight smell of sleep.
Then he left without saying goodbye.
After all, it was just a habit.
Fandom: CSI:NY
Pairing: Mac/Flack
Rating: FRAO
Disclaimer: All characters are properties of Jerry Bruckheimer, CBS, Alliance Atlantis and affliated companies.
Summary: It's just a habit. It always has been. Or so he tells himself.
A/N: This has been sitting around for a few months before I decided to post it. I would appreciate feedback on this piece a lot. Thanks.
Beta: Thanks to sunhawk for her wonderful beta. All other mistakes are mine.
Habit
They say when you do a thing more than twenty-one times it becomes a habit.
Maybe it wasn’t exactly twenty-one times. Maybe it was less than that. Which idiot decided on that particular magic number anyway? Did that person just decide to wake up on a Sunday after three weeks and think by god, the thing I have been doing all along has become a habit? Who ever counted anyway? It seemed as fucking ridiculous as counting the number of buttons on your shirt every time you put it on, but that was what he was doing anyway.
Flack was putting on his shirt in the blue half-light in his apartment, the amber beginnings of the streetlights fading into the thick fabric of the curtains as he tried not to look at Mac in his bed. It was two in the morning - at least, he thought it was - because it was always two in the morning when they woke up with the guilty hollow of a ghost hovering above them with the smell of sweat and semen.
It was an unspoken agreement between them: they didn’t ask why, they didn’t ask when. They would just drop by whenever they felt like it, fit the key into the lock and walk right in as if it was their home. Mac usually turned up at Flack’s apartment sober, deeply pissed and with a stack of work with him as if he could do any. Flack on the other hand, didn’t exactly have a routine. He had been to Mac’s drunk, sober, pissed, calm and laughing, with pizza and beer and empty-handed.
It was fine at first, until he had started wondering whether he should drop by Mac’s that night, or whether Mac would come by tonight and whether they should keep doing this, screwing each other up in more ways than one. He wondered whether they should make it more than it was.
He was tired of wondering.
“So, where is… this,” he paused, not out of nervousness but for his own benefit, because he couldn’t decide whether that it was a relationship or whether there was really an 'us' in there because he knew there wasn’t one. “...Going?” Flack finally settled on the vague flutter of a word, not looking at Mac as he licked his chapped lips.
Then there was silence. They said when silence was comfortable, you were good friends; when silence was awkward, you were not close enough; but this silence was different. He couldn’t say it was suffocating, nor was he particularly comfortable with it. Flack buttoned his shirt, trying to smooth out the wrinkles he had made when he tossed the shirt haphazardly aside the night before. There was no answer but he did not turn back.
It sounded like it was raining outside, silver pinpricks splattering on the window and occasional claps of thunder that Flack swore he hallucinated. He wouldn’t know until he drew the curtains.
“Until one of us says stop.” Mac finally said, and Flack was still staring at the curtained window as he knotted his tie.
There was that silence again. It meant that they both agreed.
That was a month ago.
A month since this screwed-up relationship had started and a month since he had started showing up at Mac’s place nearly every night, because, hell, he could use the fucks. It was only until he couldn’t find the apartment key in his locker one day, rummaging and cursing, checking in all his pockets and swearing that he put it in the locker that very morning that he realised Mac was saying stop.
It took him another two weeks to find out that he had been traded his place in Mac’s bed for a young brunette coroner.
It was different now. Cold beer and pizza on a warm summer night just didn’t cut it anymore. There were basketball games in the evening sometimes and Messer over for Chinese takeout with punches on the shoulder and jokes about big tits and skinny asses; but then again there was Mac. Mac and erections. Mac and this screwed up relationship. Mac and this… habit. It was a habit. Nothing more. He should have stopped it when he knew he was going there, but maybe those were how these things started: he just kept going on and on and on because there was this rush, this need he told himself he had and when it ended he realised it was too late because he wanted more. It wasn’t an addiction. He didn’t have the fucking shakes and the obsessive thoughts while he lay in bed jerking off to perfectly distorted images of Mac. He did jerk off more than usual maybe, lying in bed sweating and trying not to think, but that was besides the point.
It was a habit. A habit that kept him on the edge of his own fictional eighteen-storey building, never quite deciding to fall or fly. A habit that changed their relationship permanently, like ink washing over a crisp white page, because no matter what they said, things would never be the same again. The very same habit that had brought him walking towards Mac’s apartment building right now, even as he tasted the metallic tang of gunpowder on his tongue and the itch from the sweat running down his suit collar.
He had just saved another officer’s ass. They hadn't known the suspect was armed until he pulled out that cannon and pointed it at Davis. Flack had wrestled him down, grabbing for the gun until all he heard was a bomb going off beside his ear and the hot metal stinging his cheek. The fucker was supposed to be unarmed. Davis held the guy until backup came and it was all oh god oh god are you hurt, that fucker shot you, you saved my ass. Then it was all the paramedics who asked him the game of a hundred questions whether he could move his arm, his leg. He was called to the captain’s office, but he didn’t remember whether he went back to the precinct in the ambulance or the squad car because all he saw was uniforms and people saying words he couldn’t hear.
The captain had told him to take the rest of the day off, Flack had argued that he didn’t need to. The captain wouldn’t let him step foot into the precinct until he did. Flack took the rest of the day off.
Flack had walked out of the precinct and gone home. He slept the afternoon away in his work clothes, suit and all, the television muffled in the background. When he got up he drank a glass of water and tried not to think, but the room was warm and he was shivering so he left the glass in the sink and headed towards Mac’s.
The doorbell was stiff as he pressed it a few times before leaning against the doorjamb, closing his eyes as he heard the footsteps across the panelled flooring and the click of the lock.
“Hey.” Mac greeted him when he swung the door open. He didn’t sound welcoming, but then again he didn’t sound hostile enough to close the door on him either. Flack didn’t know what to think of that. He didn’t even know why he was here. Danny could have been better help. He would clap him on the shoulder, pop a few bucks for a cold beer, maybe even something stronger (ice cream was for chicks), and hug him so tightly while asking what the fuck he was doing trying to get himself killed, stop that or I’ll kill you myself.
Mac was standing at the doorway waiting for an answer, so Flack forced a smile that was usually so easy for him. The door opened and Mac stepped aside for Flack to walk in.
“No company?” Flack asked as he walked in, and the statement sounded oddly muffled. The shot was still ringing in his ears. He would be partially deaf for another few hours but he didn’t care; sometimes it was all the better when the world was passing by in a muffled blur.
“Peyton just left. She has an early morning tomorrow.” Peyton. They were on a first name basis. Not Miss Driscoll or Driscoll. It was Peyton, honey, would you like to share my bed? Flack took off his coat, tossing it on the couch. His gun was still in its shoulder holster, his shirt tight over his body. It might have been sexy once, but they both knew that the guns brought more than just dead weight in a holster; it brought emotional heaviness along with the cold metal, connecting themselves to the gun as much as the blood which ran through their veins.
“You seem to like the British accent.” Flack didn’t say it teasingly or even with a tinge of hurt in his voice. He spoke it with abandon, as if it were merely a fact he had noticed recently.
“There are things beyond that, Don.” Mac sounded tired, if not pissed. He paused for a while, walking towards the couch in the living room where Flack was standing, as if searching for a light switch but all he was searching for were words. He still hadn’t met Flack’s eyes. “It’s about the whole person, not just the… accent.”
“She’s that good, huh?”
“We get along.”
Flack didn’t hear that, partially because he couldn’t and partially because he didn’t want to. He walked towards Mac, almost laughing because he was thinking about accents and wondered what Mac would do if he pulled a bad English accent on him. But that was pushing it, he knew.
“Don,” Mac protested softly as Flack wrapped his arms around him, pressing all his warm body weight onto him. Mac could have sent him flying across the living room and he felt Mac's arm muscles tense beneath the thin shirt he was wearing, but he didn’t push Flack away and that counted for a lot. Mac wanted this.
“Don.” Mac tried again. Flack wasn’t used to forcing like this. He was used to teasing, to gentle and torturous caresses, but Mac had relaxed - he could feel that - so he reached up to tilt his chin towards him, pressing a hard kiss on his lips as he felt the stubble scrape his cheek. Mac didn’t pull away, so Flack bit his lip roughly, pushing him towards the hallway.
“I need her,” was all Mac managed to say, sounding almost like a reminder to himself between gasps. Then there were the hands - the hands that skated roughly over his body, dipping into his pants and pulling his shirt and fumbling with the buttons. It was as if he wanted to get this over as quickly as possible, like an ambush and Mac wouldn’t know what hit him.
“You need me more.” Flack didn’t know why he said that because he didn’t know that for sure, but Mac didn’t argue with that. He didn’t argue even when they reached his bedroom, pants shoved down to their ankles and Flack’s hand wrapped around Mac’s cock, pumping.
It was hurried, messy. No lingering on touches or playful tongues skating over sensitive flesh. Flack swore when Mac entered him, although he couldn’t remember what because it was all heat and flesh and oh god oh god right there don’t stop. And then they rolled over, hot and sticky, with Mac helping Flack with his straining erection, stroking softly, teasingly, like he always had before. It wasn’t long before he came, arching his back over the bedsheets and moaning.
When Flack opened his eyes he saw Mac above him, breathing, eyes closed and he reached a hand up to cup his cheek. He could feel the heat in the reddened face, the slight hitch of a breath as his fingers touched bare skin and Mac’s eyelids fluttered open.
“Christ, how long has it been?” Mac asked, as if he were just recovering from a long bout of sleep. Flack hesitated, looking up at the blue eyes and licked his lips which tasted of Mac and the iron tang of blood. Suddenly it hurt so much more than it should.
“Three weeks.” He finally answered.
“You counted.” The tone was not accusing, not amused, just slightly… relieved.
“Yeah, maybe I did.”
--
Flack bolted up, staring at the glowing red digits on the clock on the nightstand - 2:01am. Some things never change. Some just wouldn’t stop changing.
He couldn’t just run around fucking him, fucking himself like this, when everything went wrong. Maybe they had that in common, screwing things up worse when things go bad, like slamming your hand in the door after stubbing your toe, as if two wrongs could make a right.
Tomorrow Mac would find out that he had nearly been shot and that was why he had dropped by his apartment. Flack would turn up all bright and happy in his suit because he was perfectly fine with it, this whole nearly being shot thing. He was Flack, he bounced right back like a rubber ball.
So he leant down and kissed Mac. Kissed him on the corner of his lips where his taste still lingered with the slight smell of sleep.
Then he left without saying goodbye.
After all, it was just a habit.