Sports Night fiction written for Yuletide 2009: The Devil You Know
Title: The Devil You Know
Fandom: Sports Night
Characters: Natalie Hurley, Dan Rydell, Rebecca Wells
Rating: General; gen; 1,590 words.
Summary: If you see a person heading for a fall, you try to catch them. But you know what they say about good intentions ...
Notes: Written December 2009 for Yuletide against dipenates's prompt Dan/Casey slash or friendship. Angstiness would be awesome, but schmoop also welcome. Alternatively/additionally, angsty Natalie (especially an episode tag for "Mary Pat Shelby") would be fabulous. This is Natalie-Dan friendship, but I hope that it went some way toward at least part-filling the bill. Many, many thanks again to kmousie, for beta reading and advice.
If you saw a friend running headlong down the road not noticing the great, big, gaping hole that's just opened up in front of him, would you try to stop him?
Maybe you would. Maybe not. It might depend on your sense of humour. Possibly it depends on the friend. So let's rephrase it.
Say the friend's Dan Rydell. Say it's not a hole in the ground but a car crash waiting to happen. Say you were to see him exchanging phone numbers with a woman who you know chews men up and spits them out and dances on the remains in her six-inch spiked heels, a woman you know is bad news - wouldn't you try to get between them?
Say you stop talking in rhetorical questions and actually face up to the problem.
*
The problem comes with a name, and the name is Elaine. Natalie knows it, knows her, pretty well. New York may pride itself on its big-city status, but at heart it's just a small town like any other small town. You move in the same circles, you meet the same people, and Natalie's heard a lot about the legendary Elaine, even met a few of her past victims, stunned-looking and hollow-eyed, flinching if you get too close.
And now here's Dan, smiling down at Elaine as she leans in close and lets him glimpse her cleavage, saying something - something witty, something charming, something that makes Elaine throw back her pretty blonde head and laugh like the chiming of silver bells. Dan hasn't heard the stories, that much is clear, has never run into any of the survivors of Hurricane Elaine …
… which has a nicely poetic ring to it, but that's not the point. The point is: Danny is like a brother to Natalie, and she isn't about to stand idly by and watch him commit emotional suicide. He's a nice guy. He doesn't deserve that.
He really is a nice guy, sweet and sincere and caring. Oh, sure, he can be an obnoxious jerk some days, and he's far too convinced of his own cleverness and charm, but the good points outweigh the bad. Natalie remembers how he'd stood by Casey back when it was Casey who was being the obnoxious jerk, not just some days but every day, and everyone else, including the network, had had enough; she remembers how he'd come looking for her after the Christian Patrick thing, just to remind her that she had friends; she remembers how he'd acted as Jeremy's one-man personal cheering section until Jeremy had finally plucked up enough courage to ask her out.
So Natalie will do whatever it takes.
But it's no good just talking. Men never listen, not to anything they don't want to hear. No: what she needs is a plan. A distraction. And she needs it fast, before Elaine gets her talons hooked too tightly into Danny's vulnerable heart. That first encounter left him dancing on air, a dazed smile lighting up his face, but it's not too late. There's still time for an intervention.
And the perfect solution falls, almost literally, into Natalie's hands the very next day.
She's riding the elevator up to work when it stops on the fourteenth floor and a couple of women get on. One of them's Angie from the overseas rights department. Natalie knows her slightly, so she says hello, and she smiles politely at the woman with Angie, a pixie-faced redhead who Natalie's seen around from time to time but never met to speak to. Angie, on cue, says, "Natalie, this is Rebecca - Rebecca Sisco," and the redhead closes her eyes wearily and says, with devastating patience, "Wells. Rebecca Wells."
"Divorce?" Natalie asks, as though the answer weren't obvious.
Rebecca nods.
"Nasty?"
"Is there another kind?"
Natalie shrugs. "You hear about amicable divorces."
"You hear about them," Rebecca notes darkly, "but you never meet them."
Natalie thinks about this. It's true, and she says so, just as the elevator comes to a halt, gives one of its disconcerting lurches, and she and Rebecca are thrown into embarrassingly sudden and close proximity. They sort themselves out, profusely apologetic, and then Angie and Rebecca are gone, off to do whatever it is that people in offices do all day, while Natalie continues on up to the 49th floor.
Sisco, she thinks. It's an unusual name. Sisco …
Oh. Steve Sisco. The sportscaster. She met him at the ESPYs a year or so back. It was kind of like shaking hands with a slug. An amorous slug. Whatever the marriage was like, Natalie suspects Rebecca is well out of it. The only question is, what was a nice woman like that doing in it in the first place, when clearly she could have done better.
Just like Dan could do better than Elaine …
And, simple as that, Natalie has a Plan. It's going to take some finagling to make sure that Dan and Rebecca come in contact with one another, but she's sure it can be done. Natalie can be very resourceful when she needs to be.
So she watches, and she makes a note of Rebecca's schedule. And, a day or so later, she comes up with some lame excuse to get Dan down to the lobby at around normal-people lunchtime, and then into the elevator just as the doors are closing behind a familiar bob of dark red hair.
"Oh!" Natalie says. "Hi, Rebecca. Remember me? Natalie Hurley? From Sports Night?" She squeezes Dan's arm. "And this is Dan. He's one of our stars."
Maybe she's gushing a little bit, because Dan is looking down at her as though she were mad, but Danny has this overwhelming need for everyone, even just passing casual strangers, to like him, so he turns on the charm, flashes a 100 megawatt smile in Rebecca's direction, and tells her he's pleased to meet her. Rebecca mumbles something far less enthusiastic and doesn't catch his eye, which doesn't seem too promising, but Natalie has worked with less.
"She seemed nice," Dan says, as Rebecca gets out and the elevator glides on upward. His tone is no more than polite, but Natalie smiles.
Game on.
*
Things happen. To start out with, they happen the way Natalie had wanted them to: Rebecca's not interested, and that - even though he proclaims loudly and often that he's dating Elaine and it would be wrong to pursue Rebecca as well - puts a big enough dent in Dan's ego that he just has to take up the challenge. It piques his own interest, too, maybe makes Rebecca more alluring than she might be otherwise. That's not to say anything against Rebecca - Natalie isn't that sort of a girl; where she comes from, they don't talk about people - but maybe, bright and by no means naturally red hair notwithstanding, Rebecca's a little timid, a little mousy, for Dan's usual tastes.
And Rebecca holds out, and holds out, while Dan gets more and more confused and frustrated and then, all at once, just like that, she gives in: she succumbs to the notorious Rydell charm. As what woman wouldn't, or so Natalie asks herself. If they weren't colleagues and friends, and if she didn't know far too much about Dan's weak spots and irritating little habits, she'd be in daily danger of succumbing to it herself. The great thing is, the main thing is, that in the midst of all this pursuing and persuading, Elaine has been all but forgotten. Which, Natalie thinks happily, must be a first for the little … um, a first for her, and she wishes she'd been around to see the look on that pretty, spiteful face when Dan broke things off.
Natalie rather loses track of the action at that point, because a lot of stuff happens: Dana's running round like a headless chicken trying to hang on to Gordon although, for the life of her, Natalie can't see why; and there's Sally closing in for the kill; and there's Isaac's stroke, after which it's the network that's closing in for their kill; and then there's Jeremy, and Jeremy's parents, and Jeremy's bizarre, quixotic, unilateral decision to put their relationship on hold - oh, Natalie has her hands full. She has no time to spend on worrying about Dan, not now that he and Rebecca seem to be hitting it off and everything's going so well. Natalie congratulates herself on a job well done, and goes back to worrying about her own life.
But actions have consequences. It turns out that 'divorced' doesn't, in this case, actually mean 'divorced'; it just means 'separated'. And it turns out that the damage Steve Sisco did runs a whole lot deeper than anyone might ever have suspected. And it also turns out that, in the long run, women, even abused women, will stick with the devil they know rather than bet the house on a knight in ever-so-slightly tarnished shining armour.
So now they're sitting around the bullpen, drinking very good wine from very cheap mugs, and Danny has a bruised, beaten look about him, his eyes wide and stunned, and he laughs like he's sobbing, and when he hugs her she can feel he's shaking, and all in all it's like -
It's like someone chewed up his heart and spat it out, and danced on the remains in her six-inch spiked heels.
Way to go, Natalie. You saved him from stumbling. Then you shoved him off a cliff.
***
Fandom: Sports Night
Characters: Natalie Hurley, Dan Rydell, Rebecca Wells
Rating: General; gen; 1,590 words.
Summary: If you see a person heading for a fall, you try to catch them. But you know what they say about good intentions ...
Notes: Written December 2009 for Yuletide against dipenates's prompt Dan/Casey slash or friendship. Angstiness would be awesome, but schmoop also welcome. Alternatively/additionally, angsty Natalie (especially an episode tag for "Mary Pat Shelby") would be fabulous. This is Natalie-Dan friendship, but I hope that it went some way toward at least part-filling the bill. Many, many thanks again to kmousie, for beta reading and advice.
If you saw a friend running headlong down the road not noticing the great, big, gaping hole that's just opened up in front of him, would you try to stop him?
Maybe you would. Maybe not. It might depend on your sense of humour. Possibly it depends on the friend. So let's rephrase it.
Say the friend's Dan Rydell. Say it's not a hole in the ground but a car crash waiting to happen. Say you were to see him exchanging phone numbers with a woman who you know chews men up and spits them out and dances on the remains in her six-inch spiked heels, a woman you know is bad news - wouldn't you try to get between them?
Say you stop talking in rhetorical questions and actually face up to the problem.
*
The problem comes with a name, and the name is Elaine. Natalie knows it, knows her, pretty well. New York may pride itself on its big-city status, but at heart it's just a small town like any other small town. You move in the same circles, you meet the same people, and Natalie's heard a lot about the legendary Elaine, even met a few of her past victims, stunned-looking and hollow-eyed, flinching if you get too close.
And now here's Dan, smiling down at Elaine as she leans in close and lets him glimpse her cleavage, saying something - something witty, something charming, something that makes Elaine throw back her pretty blonde head and laugh like the chiming of silver bells. Dan hasn't heard the stories, that much is clear, has never run into any of the survivors of Hurricane Elaine …
… which has a nicely poetic ring to it, but that's not the point. The point is: Danny is like a brother to Natalie, and she isn't about to stand idly by and watch him commit emotional suicide. He's a nice guy. He doesn't deserve that.
He really is a nice guy, sweet and sincere and caring. Oh, sure, he can be an obnoxious jerk some days, and he's far too convinced of his own cleverness and charm, but the good points outweigh the bad. Natalie remembers how he'd stood by Casey back when it was Casey who was being the obnoxious jerk, not just some days but every day, and everyone else, including the network, had had enough; she remembers how he'd come looking for her after the Christian Patrick thing, just to remind her that she had friends; she remembers how he'd acted as Jeremy's one-man personal cheering section until Jeremy had finally plucked up enough courage to ask her out.
So Natalie will do whatever it takes.
But it's no good just talking. Men never listen, not to anything they don't want to hear. No: what she needs is a plan. A distraction. And she needs it fast, before Elaine gets her talons hooked too tightly into Danny's vulnerable heart. That first encounter left him dancing on air, a dazed smile lighting up his face, but it's not too late. There's still time for an intervention.
And the perfect solution falls, almost literally, into Natalie's hands the very next day.
She's riding the elevator up to work when it stops on the fourteenth floor and a couple of women get on. One of them's Angie from the overseas rights department. Natalie knows her slightly, so she says hello, and she smiles politely at the woman with Angie, a pixie-faced redhead who Natalie's seen around from time to time but never met to speak to. Angie, on cue, says, "Natalie, this is Rebecca - Rebecca Sisco," and the redhead closes her eyes wearily and says, with devastating patience, "Wells. Rebecca Wells."
"Divorce?" Natalie asks, as though the answer weren't obvious.
Rebecca nods.
"Nasty?"
"Is there another kind?"
Natalie shrugs. "You hear about amicable divorces."
"You hear about them," Rebecca notes darkly, "but you never meet them."
Natalie thinks about this. It's true, and she says so, just as the elevator comes to a halt, gives one of its disconcerting lurches, and she and Rebecca are thrown into embarrassingly sudden and close proximity. They sort themselves out, profusely apologetic, and then Angie and Rebecca are gone, off to do whatever it is that people in offices do all day, while Natalie continues on up to the 49th floor.
Sisco, she thinks. It's an unusual name. Sisco …
Oh. Steve Sisco. The sportscaster. She met him at the ESPYs a year or so back. It was kind of like shaking hands with a slug. An amorous slug. Whatever the marriage was like, Natalie suspects Rebecca is well out of it. The only question is, what was a nice woman like that doing in it in the first place, when clearly she could have done better.
Just like Dan could do better than Elaine …
And, simple as that, Natalie has a Plan. It's going to take some finagling to make sure that Dan and Rebecca come in contact with one another, but she's sure it can be done. Natalie can be very resourceful when she needs to be.
So she watches, and she makes a note of Rebecca's schedule. And, a day or so later, she comes up with some lame excuse to get Dan down to the lobby at around normal-people lunchtime, and then into the elevator just as the doors are closing behind a familiar bob of dark red hair.
"Oh!" Natalie says. "Hi, Rebecca. Remember me? Natalie Hurley? From Sports Night?" She squeezes Dan's arm. "And this is Dan. He's one of our stars."
Maybe she's gushing a little bit, because Dan is looking down at her as though she were mad, but Danny has this overwhelming need for everyone, even just passing casual strangers, to like him, so he turns on the charm, flashes a 100 megawatt smile in Rebecca's direction, and tells her he's pleased to meet her. Rebecca mumbles something far less enthusiastic and doesn't catch his eye, which doesn't seem too promising, but Natalie has worked with less.
"She seemed nice," Dan says, as Rebecca gets out and the elevator glides on upward. His tone is no more than polite, but Natalie smiles.
Game on.
*
Things happen. To start out with, they happen the way Natalie had wanted them to: Rebecca's not interested, and that - even though he proclaims loudly and often that he's dating Elaine and it would be wrong to pursue Rebecca as well - puts a big enough dent in Dan's ego that he just has to take up the challenge. It piques his own interest, too, maybe makes Rebecca more alluring than she might be otherwise. That's not to say anything against Rebecca - Natalie isn't that sort of a girl; where she comes from, they don't talk about people - but maybe, bright and by no means naturally red hair notwithstanding, Rebecca's a little timid, a little mousy, for Dan's usual tastes.
And Rebecca holds out, and holds out, while Dan gets more and more confused and frustrated and then, all at once, just like that, she gives in: she succumbs to the notorious Rydell charm. As what woman wouldn't, or so Natalie asks herself. If they weren't colleagues and friends, and if she didn't know far too much about Dan's weak spots and irritating little habits, she'd be in daily danger of succumbing to it herself. The great thing is, the main thing is, that in the midst of all this pursuing and persuading, Elaine has been all but forgotten. Which, Natalie thinks happily, must be a first for the little … um, a first for her, and she wishes she'd been around to see the look on that pretty, spiteful face when Dan broke things off.
Natalie rather loses track of the action at that point, because a lot of stuff happens: Dana's running round like a headless chicken trying to hang on to Gordon although, for the life of her, Natalie can't see why; and there's Sally closing in for the kill; and there's Isaac's stroke, after which it's the network that's closing in for their kill; and then there's Jeremy, and Jeremy's parents, and Jeremy's bizarre, quixotic, unilateral decision to put their relationship on hold - oh, Natalie has her hands full. She has no time to spend on worrying about Dan, not now that he and Rebecca seem to be hitting it off and everything's going so well. Natalie congratulates herself on a job well done, and goes back to worrying about her own life.
But actions have consequences. It turns out that 'divorced' doesn't, in this case, actually mean 'divorced'; it just means 'separated'. And it turns out that the damage Steve Sisco did runs a whole lot deeper than anyone might ever have suspected. And it also turns out that, in the long run, women, even abused women, will stick with the devil they know rather than bet the house on a knight in ever-so-slightly tarnished shining armour.
So now they're sitting around the bullpen, drinking very good wine from very cheap mugs, and Danny has a bruised, beaten look about him, his eyes wide and stunned, and he laughs like he's sobbing, and when he hugs her she can feel he's shaking, and all in all it's like -
It's like someone chewed up his heart and spat it out, and danced on the remains in her six-inch spiked heels.
Way to go, Natalie. You saved him from stumbling. Then you shoved him off a cliff.
***