FIC: How You Do What You Do Is Who You Are [S60, Various, NC-17]
Back To Part One.
May 2007
1995 was a fairly bad year, in Matt's estimation. No one ever asks him in interviews about 1995, even though that's the second year that's back on the record after the Missing Years.
Matt is a writer, and so he keeps lists: lists of questions he wishes reporters would never ask again, questions he wishes reporters would ask (but they never do), questions he didn't know he didn't want to answer until he was asked them. Lies Danny told to him, lies Matt told to Harriet, questions Matt never asked Danny, answers Danny never gave him.
In May, a reporter from Variety (who's doing the eighth profile on Matt and/or Danny since they came back to the show, and that doesn't even include Martha O'Dell's long lead story) asks Matt, "Has it been hard for you, carrying the weight of Danny Tripp all these years? He's brilliant, of course, but he's been notoriously flaky through the years."
Matt is a professional and so he smiles and says, "I've never had to carry Danny's weight. Danny and I have been partners, and it's always been an equal partnership. Working with Danny has always been a pleasure, not a problem, in every single way."
He hadn't ever thought of that question before, though, and it sticks in the back of his head. He spends two days avoiding Danny at the studio, and then Matt asks his shrink, "Do you think it's been hard for me to carry Danny's weight all these years?"
Matt's shrink, who is kind of an asshole, says, "I don't know, Matthew, what do you think?"
Matt shrugs. "Danny's my best friend," he says. "We've held each other up."
"Well, there's your answer," Matt's shrink says, and Matt cancels the rest of his appointments with that shrink and finds a new one.
Despite the fact that Matt is now on his sixth shrink in three years -- "You're never going to get better at this rate," Danny says, and Matt says, "You think I'm fucked up?", and Danny says, "I think you're a neurotic fuck, does that count?" -- and despite the fact that the shrink, Number Five (Danny referred to Matt's shrinks by their chronological numbers, like racehorses), who was kind of an asshole and who always answered questions with more questions was also the first of the five who didn't think that he and Danny were secretly gay for each other, Matt still needs to find another one anyway.
Six says that Matt is in denial when Matt stomps into his office for the first session and says, "Okay, I'm a TV writer, my best friend is a coke addict, sometimes we're homos for each other but it's not exactly a secret, and I need to know how to make my Christian ex-girlfriend fall in love with me again."
"Absolutely in denial," Six says
"Denial?" Matt says.
"Women will never love you if you're sleeping with a man," Six says, which hadn't even made sense, so Matt is back on the hunt.
The quote in Variety appears the day before Matt has his first appointment with Seven, and Seven says, "Would you like to talk about this quote?"
"What quote?" Matt says, because Danny has Suzanne on Matt-press-patrol, as in, Suzanne steals any press that includes mentions of the show, Matt, Danny, Danny's failed marriages, Jordan, Harriet, speculation about Simon's sexuality, and the Mets losing. Matt steals most of it back and reads it anyway, and Danny gets mad when Matt does that, and it's an old act that they mostly trot out because there's too much that they don't want to talk about right now, but Matt had been busy coaxing Lucy through her first really terrible bout of writer's block yesterday and he'd put off stealing things from Suzanne's hiding places until later.
"About your relationship with Danny Tripp," Seven says.
"No, thanks," Matt says, and that's the end of Number Seven.
In lieu of making Suzanne make calls to find Eight, Matt makes sure they have more sketches than time, and then he corrals Danny into his car and drives up into the hills.
Danny squints behind his sunglasses, like a man who's not used to the outdoors, which Matt suspects they both secretly are. A lot of secrets in their relationship -- the things they've never talked about, the things they've never told anyone else, the things that even the press have never discovered.
When he brought Danny home from rehab in June of '95, Danny was 20 pounds heavier than Matt had ever seen him, and it fit his frame better than Matt expected. Danny was 32 and Matt was 29, and they weren't famous yet, and somehow Matt wasn't nearly as fazed by that fact as he had expected to be.
They'd never talked about sleeping together -- the way they still gravitated toward each other in any room they were in, and Matt didn't want, hadn't ever wanted, to get philosophical about it, but that didn't surprise him, either, and it didn't surprise him that, even though Danny had been seeing a reasonably nice, non-gold-digging fifth grade teacher before rehab, the first night he was home, he crawled into Matt's bed and wrapped an arm around Matt's waist and went to sleep.
That first night, Matt spread his fingers out across Danny's chest and said a silent prayer that he couldn't count Danny's ribs underneath his skin anymore. The streetlight shone through the cheap blinds, setting the screenplay propped underneath Matt's alarm clock a ghostly orange color, and Matt fell asleep without thinking about anything except that he was glad to have Danny home.
They never dated -- on the list of Matt's least favorite questions ever: "Is it true that you and Danny Tripp have dated off and on since 1986"?; he never knows whether to say I wouldn't call it dating or Oh, we didn't start sleeping together until 1988 -- because that wasn't the point.
It wasn't dating, it was gravitational pull. If there weren't foreign objects, beautiful women, circling and pulling their orbits out of wack, Matt and Danny just slid together like an object back down to the Earth's surface ("I'm the Earth, and you're in my thrall," Matt once said, and Danny threw an apple core at him and then blew Matt in the kitchen of their crummy apartment).
Neither of them ever got up enough velocity to bust out of each other's gravitational forces, and Matt has never minded.
They drive up into the hills and park the car on a side street and sit on the hood, staring out over the city. Danny leaves his sunglasses on, hides his eyes, but he reaches out and digs his thumb into the sore spot in the back of Matt's neck.
In May, he and Harriet are on the outs, again, and he's spending more time at Danny's house than he is at his own apartment. Sitting on top of the city, he says, "Hey, whatever happened with you and Jordan?"
Danny's face twists, and sunglasses or not, Matt can see something that they're not going to talk about. "Come on," Matt says.
Danny shrugs, and says, "I think we're fated to spend our old age with each other, not with women."
"Could be worse," Matt says. "You could be stuck with somebody who doesn't give good head."
Danny snickers, and says, "Well, I'm still stuck with someone who enjoys denying that he's ever slept with men all over the press, but who has no problem rolling around a beach in public with me, so I'm going to call it even."
"I apologized for that," Matt says.
"You threw my back out," Danny says.
"Stop complaining, old man," Matt says. "Look, we're on top of the world."
Danny groans when Matt says that, but when they get back to the studio, Danny presses Matt up against the closed door of Matt's office, all the shades closed over the windows, and kisses Matt until Suzanne starts banging on the door and shouting something about Georgia peaches and the craft table.
"We'll deal with it in a minute," Matt shouts back, and Danny, his fingers wrapped in the belt loops on Matt's jeans, leans his head against the door and presses his mouth against Matt's jaw.
Matt listens to Danny breathe, and thinks about gravity.
September 1997
Matt still doesn't know why Wes Mandell was at Danny's second wedding (to an up-and-coming young chef named Maureen Paradiso), but that was how they got the Studio 60 job.
Matt liked Mo. She was funny, and she let him sit at the bar in Juno and drink for free, and she took no shit from Danny. Matt met her first -- he was sitting at the bar in Juno, paying for his drinks, when this smokin' hot girl came out from the back of the restaurant and sat next to him and said, "You know, the food's even better than the martinis."
"I'm sure the food here is good," Matt said. "But the martinis are spectacular. And the olives are really far above par."
"Maureen Paradiso," she said. "I'm the chef here."
"Shit," Matt said. Mo laughed. "I mean," Matt said. "I'm Matt Albie, and I think you should meet my roommate."
He didn't really know why he brought Mo home to Danny, because he had given up setting Danny up on dates ten years earlier, but she seemed like the kind of girl that Danny would like -- like more than redheads with weird ideas about Ibsen. Never mind that Danny liked kleptomaniac exotic dancers, too -- Matt just had a feeling about this one.
He introduced them in February, and by September, there was a small, family-and-very-close-friends only; Mo's family and Danny's friends, by which Danny meant Matt, three producers that Danny hadn't managed to alienate yet, and Wes Mandell.
Matt didn't even know that Danny knew Wes Mandell.
They got married on Labor Day in the Pasadena Rose Garden, and it was almost too hot for tuxedos but it was worth it for Matt to watch Danny's face when Mo walked down the aisle in all that white satin. Matt stood at Danny's elbow and realized that they'd known each other for more than ten years, and he'd leaned over to Danny and said, "Sometimes I think you actually deserve nice things." Danny had just smiled, a quick, secret smile meant for Matt alone, and Matt had felt pretty good about the whole thing, like maybe these crazy kids would work it out after all.
Mo closed Juno for the day and her kitchen staff catered the reception, a stand-up cocktail affair where all the food was on little sticks and everyone but Danny got toasted because they didn't have any real food in their stomachs.
Matt was standing at the bar, eating dates and some sort of cheese stabbed through with toothpicks, drinking martinis, and watching Danny gaze at Maureen like she was the answer to every question Matt had never been able to answer. Someone came up behind him, and when a voice said, "You're Matthew Albie, aren't you?", Matt jumped and dropped his date and his cheese into his martini with his olives.
"Yes, sir," Matt said, and Wes chuckled. "I am, sir."
"I thought so," Wes said. "Daniel gave me your screenplay. I can't produce it, of course, but I'd like to offer you a job. Both of you -- Daniel is going to start as a segment producer when he comes back from Honolulu, and I'd like you to come in and meet the rest of the writing staff before then, if you'd like to come work for us."
"Uh," Matt said, and he swallowed the rest of his martini, date, olive, cheese and all. "Yes. Thank you. Absolutely."
Later he would claim that he passed out from hunger, because all the food was on sticks, but it was really a combination of surprise and, well, surprise -- surprise that Danny talked about him; surprise that something was going right; surprise that Danny had taken a job and not told him.
Matt, once he'd been revived and climbed up off the floor, had stared across the room at Danny and Mo, and wondered if there was something he should be seeing here, something that he was missing.
He couldn't find it, so he just had another martini.
November 1999
Matt won his first Writer's Guild of America award, for a recurring sketch that was still airing in the 12:55 spot, the same week that Danny and Maureen's divorce was final.
"You are why I can't have nice things," Matt said, dropping the Downtown News on Danny's desk. "I win an award, I should have gotten at least six sentences of press, and instead it's all Studio 60 Director Tripp and Hot Young Chef Paradiso Split In Acrimonious Divorce."
"I can hear the capital letters in your voice," Danny said. "And you got six sentences. In fact, if you check page 18 of section E of the Times, you will find you got ten sentences, and you were also called 'a hot young talent'. I think they might also imply that we're gay, but I can't exactly tell."
"You were more fun before," Matt said. Danny only had one chair in his office, and Matt spent too much time -- more time that he wanted to admit -- sitting on the floor of Danny's office, staring at Danny's knees. Danny was sleeping on Matt's couch, because Mo threw him out of the apartment and Matt's second bedroom was currently occupied by a skinny kid named Simon Stiles who had just gotten cast on Studio 60. "Was it acrimonious?"
"Do you even know what acrimonious means?"
"I could use it in a sentence," Matt said.
"Don't," Danny said. "I don't know, Matt, you tell me -- you were there the night she threw the bottle of brandy at my head."
"And I still wish I'd had a video camera," Matt said. "I'll never be able to recreate that explosion on stage without an example to work from."
"Shouldn't you be writing?"
"Shouldn't you be producing?"
Danny huffed, and yanked his feet off his desk, barely missing Matt's head. "If you're waiting for me to fall apart, you're too late," he said. "Or too early. I'm fine."
"The last time you said that you were fine," Matt said, and didn't finish the sentence.
"You know, I don't ever remember having these conversations with my wife when you and I fought," Danny said.
"We've never broken up," Matt said. "We were just on a break that one time."
"Not funny," Danny said.
"Always funny," Matt said. "You should get another chair."
"You have a chair in the writer's room," Danny said. "I recommend that you sit in it, every once in a while, or you're never going to get out of the 12:55 slot."
"Why do I need to get out of that slot?" Matt said. "I've got a Writer's Guild Award in that slot."
"Don't rest on your laurels, Matthew," Danny said.
"Want to go out and pick up chicks tonight?" Matt said.
Danny said, "There's not a chick in the city that would have you."
"Well, at least two of them haven't wanted you, either."
"There's a girl over at the Groundlings," Danny said, "she's got pretty good stuff. We should go see her."
"Girls aren't funny," Matt said. "Stop changing the subject."
"This one's funny," Danny said.
"You really don't want to talk about your terribly acrimonious divorce?"
"No," Danny said.
"You don't want to talk about how we broke up in 1988?"
"No."
"And I don't want to go see this funny girl," Matt said.
"So we're at a stalemate," Danny said.
"Are we breaking up?"
"We've never broken up," Danny said, and he stomped out of the room, leaving Matt sitting on the floor by himself.
Danny was cranky for most of 1999, and November was no exception. Matt stayed in the studio and wrote a sketch for a funny girl, and it flopped in rehearsal no matter who played the part, but later he thought it was probably because the sketch sucked, not because he was waiting for Harriet.
July 2007
"Do you think it's significant that the newspapers never say anything about Albie and Hayes?" Matt says.
"What?" Danny says.
"All the press is about Tripp and Albie, or Hayes, Stiles and Jeter. Is it significant that Harriet and I are never mentioned together professionally?"
"You're just mentioned in the gossip columns," Danny says. "As in, Hayes and Albie seen screaming at each other in popular restaurant and/or Studio 60 wrap party and/or Albie's expensive convertible. Are you off again?"
"You couldn't tell?" Matt says.
"It's been eight years," Danny says. "It's hard to keep up with your tempestuous romantic life."
"At least I have one," Matt says.
Danny rolls his eyes and shoves off from the doorway he's been leaning in. Matt is reading the Times (L.A., not New York) on his laptop because he's still under Danny's newspaper embargo, and he figured out -- he made Suzanne figure out -- how to get around all the blocking software Danny put on the laptop when Matt wasn't looking.
(Suzanne had complained. "He's my boss, too," she said. "How am I supposed to be a productive employee when you're constantly contradicting each other's orders?" "You're a productive employee now?" Matt said, and she rolled her eyes at him and went back to hacking away at Danny's attempts to keep Matt sane.
"You're less useful crazy," Danny said.
"But I'm more fun," Matt said, and Danny had rolled his eyes at Matt, too. Matt was the boss around here, and all he got was lip from Danny, and lip from Suzanne, and lip from Harriet. Made it hard to remember this was what they paid him for, and not just some place to show up for fun every day.
But, he had thought to himself, at least it's still fun.
This time, when it stopped being fun, he was going to quit for good.)
Danny puts his hands in his pockets and says, "Are you guys back together, then?"
"Not at the moment," Matt says.
Danny just raises an eyebrow, and Matt knows what he means. He and Danny have spent more time apart than together in the last six months, trying to keep everybody's head above water in terms of the show, and every time something goes wrong with one of the cast members (no one has been arrested in Nevada for at least three months, and Matt says a silent prayer in thanks every day), and every time Matt thinks he gets writer's block and throws his ashtray through the windows in his office and they have to be replaced.
It's easier to deal with all the shit that Matt keeps accidentally making happen if they're not in the same place, but Matt misses Danny's presence as much as he misses Harriet.
Maybe more -- Danny only makes Matt completely insane on purpose when Danny thinks Matt needs to be a little crazy. Harriet just has a gift.
"She was a little unhappy when she got the letter from the polyamory people last month," Matt says.
"You donated all that in her name?"
"In my defense, it seemed like a good idea at the time," Matt says, and it did, because the thing about Harriet is that he's constantly -- eight years, it's been, and it's still this way every time he looks at her -- caught in a surge of anger and affection whenever he thinks about her.
Matt's shrink thinks that Matt's problems with Harriet are rooted in some childhood trauma (of Matt's, not of Harriet's, though Matt has suggested the latter before and only received a withering look from Number Nine; Number Eight didn't work out, either).
Matt thinks that it's because the human brain is stupid enough to let him fall head over heels in love with someone whose basic morals are so completely different than his.
Danny thinks that Matt just has a problem letting go of things.
"I have a long list of things that you thought were a good idea at the time," Danny says, and then he disappears into the hallway and Matt can't argue that he has a track record that isn't the greatest, but Jordan wouldn't have come to them to save the show if they hadn't done something right, once upon a time, and Harriet wouldn't have fallen in love with Matt if she hadn't seen something in him that inspired affection and not just frustration.
He taps his pencil on the desk -- he's been writing almost 25 years, and even though he does everything on the computer now, he can't lay down a single word without a pencil clamped between his teeth or tucked behind his ear -- and reads a gossip article about how Harriet had dinner with Simon but not Tom last night.
He thinks about the first sketch he wrote for Harriet, just for Harriet, and not for some faceless, funny girl from the Groundlings. The first sketch he wrote for Danny, 20 years ago. He thinks about the Information Culture class he took on a lark his sophomore year, where the professor said that every writer had an Ideal Reader, capital letters clear in her voice as she said it.
He sets the pencil in his teeth and opens up a new file.
December 1999/January 2000
When Danny brought Harriet in for an audition with Wes, and when he introduced Harriet to Matt, Matt said, "Are you getting me back for Mo?"
"What?" Danny had said. "No."
"Are you getting me back for the redhead with the weird ideas about Ibsen?"
"Who?" Danny said.
"The girl you were on a date with the night you brought home a drag queen," Matt said.
"When?" Danny said.
"Are you sure you're not secretly a reporter?" Matt asked. "Because if the next thing you say is how or why, I'm going to punch you."
"When did I bring home a drag queen?" Danny said. "Wait, is Simon secretly a drag queen? I'm not sure how we could market that. Plus, also, I think you brought him home, not me."
"It's all one or the other," Matt said. "We're running the Studio 60 Starving Comedians' Hostel. I should write a sketch about it. You brought a drag queen home in 1988. Or maybe 1987."
"You have a memory like an elephant," Danny said.
"Somebody has to," Matt said, and Danny winced. The longer Danny was sober, the more things he told Matt -- things nobody else knew about, things Matt wished he didn't know about. But there was still plenty that Danny didn't remember, and Matt didn't want to know why Danny didn't remember, and so he remembered for both of them.
It was easier than letting Danny disappear again.
"I think you'll like her," Danny said.
"I already do," Matt said. "And I am suspicious of that fact, as we have already determined that you are why I never get nice things. And I have enough problems without you trying to make me fall in love with a funny woman."
"Contrary to your popular belief, not everything is about you," Danny said. "Besides, if I was trying to get you back for Mo, I would have made you pay for the lawyers who decided that she got 62% of my stuff."
Harriet auditioned for the writer's room the first week of December. After, Ricky said, "Well, she's pretty, but do we really need another pretty girl?"
Ron said, "I agree with Ricky."
Matt said, "Of course you do." He said it because he was hungover and because he had been at Studio 60 for three years and he was feeling sort of generally pissy at the world of comedy in general, and Ricky and Ron in particular.
He stood up for Harriet mostly because he woke up on the wrong side of the bed, which didn't go over well when he told her that on New Year's Eve.
Wes had liked her, though, and she'd tested well with Sim, and she could do voices, which was something they needed. So Matt's opinion hadn't mattered, in the end, but at least it was the majority opinion. He spent so much time being the damn minority in the writing room and suffering for it, suffering shitty time slots and people who couldn't handle what he wanted to be writing -- it was nice to be in the majority for once.
And she was pretty -- Matt couldn't deny that.
Danny gave her the tour the night of the last show before Christmas. Harriet was starting in January and Danny, probably because half the cast (to that point) and most of the producers (just in general in the universe) didn't like Matt and Danny very much (plus Danny was the one who had discovered Harriet playing bit parts for the Groundlings, and Wes was totally smitten with Harriet, just for existing, and Danny, just for finding her), had been saddled with showing her the place and finding her some place to watch the show from.
Matt was sitting on the floor beside Camera 3, chewing off his fingernails systematically because he was trying to quit smoking before the New Year, when Danny's feet and a pair of feet in very nice red high heels walked up beside him. "You remember Matt," Danny said.
"I thought he was taller," Harriet said. Danny grinned at her, smirked at Matt, and wandered off, leaving Harriet standing too close to Matt for his own objective comfort. Don't fall in love with everyone you see, Matt, Danny told him once, and he tried very hard not to, but Harriet was -- exactly his kind of woman. She wasn't everyone he saw.
"Very funny, funny girl," Matt said, and he grabbed the bleachers and hauled himself to his feet. She was even prettier than he remembered, and she smiled at him like he was the only person in the room. "Hi, Harriet. Welcome aboard."
"Danny says that you're the best writer on staff," she said.
"Danny tells egregious lies about me, and also he has been divorced twice," Matt said. "Believe nothing that he says."
"That's what he said about you," Harriet said, and her mouth quirked up in a way that said to Matt, this girl is a keeper.
"Pathological, both of us," Matt said, and somebody hissed at them to stop flirting and shut the hell up, and Harriet flushed bright red. He put a hand on her arm and pulled her out of the studio, into the hallway. "You'll get used to it."
"I hope so," Harriet said, and she leaned up and kissed him on the cheek and turned away. "It was nice to see you again, Matt."
"Yeah," Matt said. "You too."
Then he turned around, took two steps, and walked straight into a closed door.
When Matt came to, in one of the dressing rooms, Danny was smirking at him. "Well, that was new," he said.
"Shut up," Matt said.
"She's going to make you a star," Danny said. He looked somewhere between thrilled and terrified about this idea.
"You're crazy," Matt said, and he staggered to his feet and went to write the first sketch he ever wrote for Harriet.
It bombed. Matt thinks that maybe should have been a sign, but it wasn't -- at least, it wasn't then.
October 2003
Three things happened in October 2003, too: he and Danny quit Studio 60; all the newspapers reported that he and Danny had been fired from Studio 60; and Matt fell in love with Harriet Hayes for the first but not the last time.
Matt drank a lot, and despite the fact that he was in love with Harriet desperately, they fought a lot, too. Danny said it wasn't healthy, but Matt said, "Says the man almost decapitated by a bottle of brandy."
"Shut the hell up," Danny said, and went back to fiddling with their joint bank account. He'd been fiddling for weeks, and Matt left him to it, because Matt needed money for three things: cigarettes, gas, and beer. Everything else Danny wrote checks for -- the rent, the utilities, the insurance on the beater they were still sharing.
"You shut up," Matt said. "How bad is it?"
"The thing about you quitting in a blaze of glory," Danny said, "is that there's no severance pay. So -- pretty bad."
"You don't sound pretty bad," Matt said. Danny was shuffling money frantically, but he wasn't worried about it like he'd been worried about it in 1988 or 1995 or even in 1999, when their salaries from the show were more than enough to keep Mo's alimony paid and a roof over their heads.
"$427.06," Danny said. "After the rent check clears."
"That's not something to be cheerful about," Matt said. "You're suspiciously cheerful. Have you talked to your sponsor this week?"
"I could not afford to buy cocaine if I wanted to, Matthew," Danny said. "Well -- I always want to. I could not afford to buy cocaine even if I wasn't sober. Has Harriet called?"
"We're off again," Matt said. Seemed like they spent more time off than on lately; he knew he wasn't much fun to be around -- and Danny had stopped letting him buy beer, which either made him more or less fun, Danny said the jury was still out -- but he missed her. Or maybe he missed the idea of having someone other than Danny to listen to. He'd found a bottle of gin in the back of their ice-covered freezer and was well on his way to nicely toasted.
Matt's slightly pickled brain informed him that if he stopped thinking about what was best for Danny first, Matt and Harriet might not be off again. Matt thought, it's not that easy to break 15 years of habit, and took another swig of gin. Matt's brain informed him that they needed more ice, and he should probably see a therapist about that codependency thing he and Danny had going on.
"Are we codependent?" Matt said.
"What, are you thinking about couples therapy?" Danny said. "Because I think that's really something you should take Harriet to."
"Do we spend too much time together?"
Danny leaned over from his spot on the end of the couch and snagged the glass out of Matt's hand, sniffing carefully. "No gin, either, Matthew," he said, but he handed the glass back to Matt, and turned his head back to the laptop in front of him.
"I found it in the freezer," Matt said. "I was trying to defrost it."
"Is that why there were puddles of water all over the kitchen when I came back from my meeting on Thursday? As well as why you were sleeping in the middle of the afternoon when you were supposed to be writing?"
"I'm unemployed," Matt said. "And my girlfriend won't return my phone calls, possibly because the network has told her that she is no longer allowed to be seen with a disgraced failure of a comedy writer."
"Jack Rudolph may have told her that," Danny said. "But the network as a whole did not."
"Have you always been an eternal optimist?" Matt said. "Because if that's the case, I'd like to find a time machine and go back to 1987 and not give you the time of day."
"I had a meeting on Thursday," Danny said.
"You always have meetings on Thursdays," Matt said.
"Wrong meeting," Danny said. "Meeting with Universal. They have a script that they want me to direct."
Matt sat up sharply and smacked his forehead on the coffee table. He pressed the glass of gin against the rising bump and said, "Hey, Danny, that's fantastic."
"It's a pretty good script," Danny said. His voice was careful, and Matt tried to focus on Danny's face, turned away from him in the dark living room. Why they were sitting around in the apartment with all the lights off was beyond him, but then again -- there was a lot that, even after 15 years, was still beyond Matt. Why he and Danny were living together in a three bedroom condo when they could have bought their own places by now; why Matt hadn't bothered to buy a car when he finally got his driver's license, just drove Danny's.
Because, Matt's brain said, Danny is the first person that you look for when you finish something good. Because even before Harriet, you write for Danny.
Shut up, Matt said to his brain. "Is it?" he said to Danny.
"Yeah," Danny said. "Young guy, never had anything produced for the big screen before."
"That's good," Matt said. His chest felt suddenly tight, the idea of Danny directing someone else's work -- Matt's stuff at Studio 60 was directed, produced, by plenty of people on staff who weren't Danny, but Danny didn't produce anything that wasn't Matt's. Once upon a time he had, but not recently -- not now.
Danny looked over at him, and the corner of his mouth twitched. "Don't be stupid," Danny said. "I took them your script. Months ago, I sent it to the one guy I knew at Universal."
"My script," Matt said. "Wait, the one I wrote when you were ..."
"Yeah," Danny said.
Matt said, "Huh."
"They want rewrites," Danny said. "But they liked the premise."
Matt said, "Huh."
Danny said, "They're going to pay us a lot of money."
Matt said, "Does this mean I can buy beer again?"
"Yes, Matthew," Danny said, and then he started laughing, head back, face totally unguarded, and Matt thought, who needs anyone but Danny.
December 2007
"Is Michael Dukakis timeless humor?"
"I don't think Michael Dukakis was ever timely humor," Danny says, squinting at Matt. Danny is haloed against the window in Matt's office by the Christmas lights that Cal and Suzanne strung around the balconies. "What are you looking at?"
Matt smoothes the pages he's holding in his hands, and shrugs.
Danny crosses the room and pulls the pages out of Matt's hands, scanning Matt's college scrawl quickly. "I didn't know you still had this."
"Beginning of a beautiful friendship," Matt says.
"Something like that," Danny says.
Matt says, "Merry Christmas."
"Happy Hanukkah," Danny says. He drops down on the couch next to Matt, and his hands are still. He tilts his head toward Matt, a gesture so familiar that it makes Matt's heart clench. "Things will work out with Harriet. And the show."
"Mm," Matt says. They may, and they may not. Harriet will always be a constant in his life, like Danny, two fixed stars to navigate by, but sometimes he's almost stopped kidding himself that he and Harriet are meant to be, and the show is the show -- it is what it is, and Matt loves it, and if it disappeared tomorrow, he'd get up and write something else. "If they don't, I've always got you."
"Yeah," Danny says, and they sit on the couch in the office that Matt still thinks of as Wes Mandell's, and they watch the Christmas lights blink like stars.
*
author's notes: i started this months ago, and it stalled out horrifically about thanksgiving. i owe maggie and the queen a huge debt of gratitude for both cheerleading as i got back to work on it and betaing when it was done. the title is a quote from joe bill, one half of two men in a boat, an improv show in chicago that matt would probably hate.
May 2007
1995 was a fairly bad year, in Matt's estimation. No one ever asks him in interviews about 1995, even though that's the second year that's back on the record after the Missing Years.
Matt is a writer, and so he keeps lists: lists of questions he wishes reporters would never ask again, questions he wishes reporters would ask (but they never do), questions he didn't know he didn't want to answer until he was asked them. Lies Danny told to him, lies Matt told to Harriet, questions Matt never asked Danny, answers Danny never gave him.
In May, a reporter from Variety (who's doing the eighth profile on Matt and/or Danny since they came back to the show, and that doesn't even include Martha O'Dell's long lead story) asks Matt, "Has it been hard for you, carrying the weight of Danny Tripp all these years? He's brilliant, of course, but he's been notoriously flaky through the years."
Matt is a professional and so he smiles and says, "I've never had to carry Danny's weight. Danny and I have been partners, and it's always been an equal partnership. Working with Danny has always been a pleasure, not a problem, in every single way."
He hadn't ever thought of that question before, though, and it sticks in the back of his head. He spends two days avoiding Danny at the studio, and then Matt asks his shrink, "Do you think it's been hard for me to carry Danny's weight all these years?"
Matt's shrink, who is kind of an asshole, says, "I don't know, Matthew, what do you think?"
Matt shrugs. "Danny's my best friend," he says. "We've held each other up."
"Well, there's your answer," Matt's shrink says, and Matt cancels the rest of his appointments with that shrink and finds a new one.
Despite the fact that Matt is now on his sixth shrink in three years -- "You're never going to get better at this rate," Danny says, and Matt says, "You think I'm fucked up?", and Danny says, "I think you're a neurotic fuck, does that count?" -- and despite the fact that the shrink, Number Five (Danny referred to Matt's shrinks by their chronological numbers, like racehorses), who was kind of an asshole and who always answered questions with more questions was also the first of the five who didn't think that he and Danny were secretly gay for each other, Matt still needs to find another one anyway.
Six says that Matt is in denial when Matt stomps into his office for the first session and says, "Okay, I'm a TV writer, my best friend is a coke addict, sometimes we're homos for each other but it's not exactly a secret, and I need to know how to make my Christian ex-girlfriend fall in love with me again."
"Absolutely in denial," Six says
"Denial?" Matt says.
"Women will never love you if you're sleeping with a man," Six says, which hadn't even made sense, so Matt is back on the hunt.
The quote in Variety appears the day before Matt has his first appointment with Seven, and Seven says, "Would you like to talk about this quote?"
"What quote?" Matt says, because Danny has Suzanne on Matt-press-patrol, as in, Suzanne steals any press that includes mentions of the show, Matt, Danny, Danny's failed marriages, Jordan, Harriet, speculation about Simon's sexuality, and the Mets losing. Matt steals most of it back and reads it anyway, and Danny gets mad when Matt does that, and it's an old act that they mostly trot out because there's too much that they don't want to talk about right now, but Matt had been busy coaxing Lucy through her first really terrible bout of writer's block yesterday and he'd put off stealing things from Suzanne's hiding places until later.
"About your relationship with Danny Tripp," Seven says.
"No, thanks," Matt says, and that's the end of Number Seven.
In lieu of making Suzanne make calls to find Eight, Matt makes sure they have more sketches than time, and then he corrals Danny into his car and drives up into the hills.
Danny squints behind his sunglasses, like a man who's not used to the outdoors, which Matt suspects they both secretly are. A lot of secrets in their relationship -- the things they've never talked about, the things they've never told anyone else, the things that even the press have never discovered.
When he brought Danny home from rehab in June of '95, Danny was 20 pounds heavier than Matt had ever seen him, and it fit his frame better than Matt expected. Danny was 32 and Matt was 29, and they weren't famous yet, and somehow Matt wasn't nearly as fazed by that fact as he had expected to be.
They'd never talked about sleeping together -- the way they still gravitated toward each other in any room they were in, and Matt didn't want, hadn't ever wanted, to get philosophical about it, but that didn't surprise him, either, and it didn't surprise him that, even though Danny had been seeing a reasonably nice, non-gold-digging fifth grade teacher before rehab, the first night he was home, he crawled into Matt's bed and wrapped an arm around Matt's waist and went to sleep.
That first night, Matt spread his fingers out across Danny's chest and said a silent prayer that he couldn't count Danny's ribs underneath his skin anymore. The streetlight shone through the cheap blinds, setting the screenplay propped underneath Matt's alarm clock a ghostly orange color, and Matt fell asleep without thinking about anything except that he was glad to have Danny home.
They never dated -- on the list of Matt's least favorite questions ever: "Is it true that you and Danny Tripp have dated off and on since 1986"?; he never knows whether to say I wouldn't call it dating or Oh, we didn't start sleeping together until 1988 -- because that wasn't the point.
It wasn't dating, it was gravitational pull. If there weren't foreign objects, beautiful women, circling and pulling their orbits out of wack, Matt and Danny just slid together like an object back down to the Earth's surface ("I'm the Earth, and you're in my thrall," Matt once said, and Danny threw an apple core at him and then blew Matt in the kitchen of their crummy apartment).
Neither of them ever got up enough velocity to bust out of each other's gravitational forces, and Matt has never minded.
They drive up into the hills and park the car on a side street and sit on the hood, staring out over the city. Danny leaves his sunglasses on, hides his eyes, but he reaches out and digs his thumb into the sore spot in the back of Matt's neck.
In May, he and Harriet are on the outs, again, and he's spending more time at Danny's house than he is at his own apartment. Sitting on top of the city, he says, "Hey, whatever happened with you and Jordan?"
Danny's face twists, and sunglasses or not, Matt can see something that they're not going to talk about. "Come on," Matt says.
Danny shrugs, and says, "I think we're fated to spend our old age with each other, not with women."
"Could be worse," Matt says. "You could be stuck with somebody who doesn't give good head."
Danny snickers, and says, "Well, I'm still stuck with someone who enjoys denying that he's ever slept with men all over the press, but who has no problem rolling around a beach in public with me, so I'm going to call it even."
"I apologized for that," Matt says.
"You threw my back out," Danny says.
"Stop complaining, old man," Matt says. "Look, we're on top of the world."
Danny groans when Matt says that, but when they get back to the studio, Danny presses Matt up against the closed door of Matt's office, all the shades closed over the windows, and kisses Matt until Suzanne starts banging on the door and shouting something about Georgia peaches and the craft table.
"We'll deal with it in a minute," Matt shouts back, and Danny, his fingers wrapped in the belt loops on Matt's jeans, leans his head against the door and presses his mouth against Matt's jaw.
Matt listens to Danny breathe, and thinks about gravity.
September 1997
Matt still doesn't know why Wes Mandell was at Danny's second wedding (to an up-and-coming young chef named Maureen Paradiso), but that was how they got the Studio 60 job.
Matt liked Mo. She was funny, and she let him sit at the bar in Juno and drink for free, and she took no shit from Danny. Matt met her first -- he was sitting at the bar in Juno, paying for his drinks, when this smokin' hot girl came out from the back of the restaurant and sat next to him and said, "You know, the food's even better than the martinis."
"I'm sure the food here is good," Matt said. "But the martinis are spectacular. And the olives are really far above par."
"Maureen Paradiso," she said. "I'm the chef here."
"Shit," Matt said. Mo laughed. "I mean," Matt said. "I'm Matt Albie, and I think you should meet my roommate."
He didn't really know why he brought Mo home to Danny, because he had given up setting Danny up on dates ten years earlier, but she seemed like the kind of girl that Danny would like -- like more than redheads with weird ideas about Ibsen. Never mind that Danny liked kleptomaniac exotic dancers, too -- Matt just had a feeling about this one.
He introduced them in February, and by September, there was a small, family-and-very-close-friends only; Mo's family and Danny's friends, by which Danny meant Matt, three producers that Danny hadn't managed to alienate yet, and Wes Mandell.
Matt didn't even know that Danny knew Wes Mandell.
They got married on Labor Day in the Pasadena Rose Garden, and it was almost too hot for tuxedos but it was worth it for Matt to watch Danny's face when Mo walked down the aisle in all that white satin. Matt stood at Danny's elbow and realized that they'd known each other for more than ten years, and he'd leaned over to Danny and said, "Sometimes I think you actually deserve nice things." Danny had just smiled, a quick, secret smile meant for Matt alone, and Matt had felt pretty good about the whole thing, like maybe these crazy kids would work it out after all.
Mo closed Juno for the day and her kitchen staff catered the reception, a stand-up cocktail affair where all the food was on little sticks and everyone but Danny got toasted because they didn't have any real food in their stomachs.
Matt was standing at the bar, eating dates and some sort of cheese stabbed through with toothpicks, drinking martinis, and watching Danny gaze at Maureen like she was the answer to every question Matt had never been able to answer. Someone came up behind him, and when a voice said, "You're Matthew Albie, aren't you?", Matt jumped and dropped his date and his cheese into his martini with his olives.
"Yes, sir," Matt said, and Wes chuckled. "I am, sir."
"I thought so," Wes said. "Daniel gave me your screenplay. I can't produce it, of course, but I'd like to offer you a job. Both of you -- Daniel is going to start as a segment producer when he comes back from Honolulu, and I'd like you to come in and meet the rest of the writing staff before then, if you'd like to come work for us."
"Uh," Matt said, and he swallowed the rest of his martini, date, olive, cheese and all. "Yes. Thank you. Absolutely."
Later he would claim that he passed out from hunger, because all the food was on sticks, but it was really a combination of surprise and, well, surprise -- surprise that Danny talked about him; surprise that something was going right; surprise that Danny had taken a job and not told him.
Matt, once he'd been revived and climbed up off the floor, had stared across the room at Danny and Mo, and wondered if there was something he should be seeing here, something that he was missing.
He couldn't find it, so he just had another martini.
November 1999
Matt won his first Writer's Guild of America award, for a recurring sketch that was still airing in the 12:55 spot, the same week that Danny and Maureen's divorce was final.
"You are why I can't have nice things," Matt said, dropping the Downtown News on Danny's desk. "I win an award, I should have gotten at least six sentences of press, and instead it's all Studio 60 Director Tripp and Hot Young Chef Paradiso Split In Acrimonious Divorce."
"I can hear the capital letters in your voice," Danny said. "And you got six sentences. In fact, if you check page 18 of section E of the Times, you will find you got ten sentences, and you were also called 'a hot young talent'. I think they might also imply that we're gay, but I can't exactly tell."
"You were more fun before," Matt said. Danny only had one chair in his office, and Matt spent too much time -- more time that he wanted to admit -- sitting on the floor of Danny's office, staring at Danny's knees. Danny was sleeping on Matt's couch, because Mo threw him out of the apartment and Matt's second bedroom was currently occupied by a skinny kid named Simon Stiles who had just gotten cast on Studio 60. "Was it acrimonious?"
"Do you even know what acrimonious means?"
"I could use it in a sentence," Matt said.
"Don't," Danny said. "I don't know, Matt, you tell me -- you were there the night she threw the bottle of brandy at my head."
"And I still wish I'd had a video camera," Matt said. "I'll never be able to recreate that explosion on stage without an example to work from."
"Shouldn't you be writing?"
"Shouldn't you be producing?"
Danny huffed, and yanked his feet off his desk, barely missing Matt's head. "If you're waiting for me to fall apart, you're too late," he said. "Or too early. I'm fine."
"The last time you said that you were fine," Matt said, and didn't finish the sentence.
"You know, I don't ever remember having these conversations with my wife when you and I fought," Danny said.
"We've never broken up," Matt said. "We were just on a break that one time."
"Not funny," Danny said.
"Always funny," Matt said. "You should get another chair."
"You have a chair in the writer's room," Danny said. "I recommend that you sit in it, every once in a while, or you're never going to get out of the 12:55 slot."
"Why do I need to get out of that slot?" Matt said. "I've got a Writer's Guild Award in that slot."
"Don't rest on your laurels, Matthew," Danny said.
"Want to go out and pick up chicks tonight?" Matt said.
Danny said, "There's not a chick in the city that would have you."
"Well, at least two of them haven't wanted you, either."
"There's a girl over at the Groundlings," Danny said, "she's got pretty good stuff. We should go see her."
"Girls aren't funny," Matt said. "Stop changing the subject."
"This one's funny," Danny said.
"You really don't want to talk about your terribly acrimonious divorce?"
"No," Danny said.
"You don't want to talk about how we broke up in 1988?"
"No."
"And I don't want to go see this funny girl," Matt said.
"So we're at a stalemate," Danny said.
"Are we breaking up?"
"We've never broken up," Danny said, and he stomped out of the room, leaving Matt sitting on the floor by himself.
Danny was cranky for most of 1999, and November was no exception. Matt stayed in the studio and wrote a sketch for a funny girl, and it flopped in rehearsal no matter who played the part, but later he thought it was probably because the sketch sucked, not because he was waiting for Harriet.
July 2007
"Do you think it's significant that the newspapers never say anything about Albie and Hayes?" Matt says.
"What?" Danny says.
"All the press is about Tripp and Albie, or Hayes, Stiles and Jeter. Is it significant that Harriet and I are never mentioned together professionally?"
"You're just mentioned in the gossip columns," Danny says. "As in, Hayes and Albie seen screaming at each other in popular restaurant and/or Studio 60 wrap party and/or Albie's expensive convertible. Are you off again?"
"You couldn't tell?" Matt says.
"It's been eight years," Danny says. "It's hard to keep up with your tempestuous romantic life."
"At least I have one," Matt says.
Danny rolls his eyes and shoves off from the doorway he's been leaning in. Matt is reading the Times (L.A., not New York) on his laptop because he's still under Danny's newspaper embargo, and he figured out -- he made Suzanne figure out -- how to get around all the blocking software Danny put on the laptop when Matt wasn't looking.
(Suzanne had complained. "He's my boss, too," she said. "How am I supposed to be a productive employee when you're constantly contradicting each other's orders?" "You're a productive employee now?" Matt said, and she rolled her eyes at him and went back to hacking away at Danny's attempts to keep Matt sane.
"You're less useful crazy," Danny said.
"But I'm more fun," Matt said, and Danny had rolled his eyes at Matt, too. Matt was the boss around here, and all he got was lip from Danny, and lip from Suzanne, and lip from Harriet. Made it hard to remember this was what they paid him for, and not just some place to show up for fun every day.
But, he had thought to himself, at least it's still fun.
This time, when it stopped being fun, he was going to quit for good.)
Danny puts his hands in his pockets and says, "Are you guys back together, then?"
"Not at the moment," Matt says.
Danny just raises an eyebrow, and Matt knows what he means. He and Danny have spent more time apart than together in the last six months, trying to keep everybody's head above water in terms of the show, and every time something goes wrong with one of the cast members (no one has been arrested in Nevada for at least three months, and Matt says a silent prayer in thanks every day), and every time Matt thinks he gets writer's block and throws his ashtray through the windows in his office and they have to be replaced.
It's easier to deal with all the shit that Matt keeps accidentally making happen if they're not in the same place, but Matt misses Danny's presence as much as he misses Harriet.
Maybe more -- Danny only makes Matt completely insane on purpose when Danny thinks Matt needs to be a little crazy. Harriet just has a gift.
"She was a little unhappy when she got the letter from the polyamory people last month," Matt says.
"You donated all that in her name?"
"In my defense, it seemed like a good idea at the time," Matt says, and it did, because the thing about Harriet is that he's constantly -- eight years, it's been, and it's still this way every time he looks at her -- caught in a surge of anger and affection whenever he thinks about her.
Matt's shrink thinks that Matt's problems with Harriet are rooted in some childhood trauma (of Matt's, not of Harriet's, though Matt has suggested the latter before and only received a withering look from Number Nine; Number Eight didn't work out, either).
Matt thinks that it's because the human brain is stupid enough to let him fall head over heels in love with someone whose basic morals are so completely different than his.
Danny thinks that Matt just has a problem letting go of things.
"I have a long list of things that you thought were a good idea at the time," Danny says, and then he disappears into the hallway and Matt can't argue that he has a track record that isn't the greatest, but Jordan wouldn't have come to them to save the show if they hadn't done something right, once upon a time, and Harriet wouldn't have fallen in love with Matt if she hadn't seen something in him that inspired affection and not just frustration.
He taps his pencil on the desk -- he's been writing almost 25 years, and even though he does everything on the computer now, he can't lay down a single word without a pencil clamped between his teeth or tucked behind his ear -- and reads a gossip article about how Harriet had dinner with Simon but not Tom last night.
He thinks about the first sketch he wrote for Harriet, just for Harriet, and not for some faceless, funny girl from the Groundlings. The first sketch he wrote for Danny, 20 years ago. He thinks about the Information Culture class he took on a lark his sophomore year, where the professor said that every writer had an Ideal Reader, capital letters clear in her voice as she said it.
He sets the pencil in his teeth and opens up a new file.
December 1999/January 2000
When Danny brought Harriet in for an audition with Wes, and when he introduced Harriet to Matt, Matt said, "Are you getting me back for Mo?"
"What?" Danny had said. "No."
"Are you getting me back for the redhead with the weird ideas about Ibsen?"
"Who?" Danny said.
"The girl you were on a date with the night you brought home a drag queen," Matt said.
"When?" Danny said.
"Are you sure you're not secretly a reporter?" Matt asked. "Because if the next thing you say is how or why, I'm going to punch you."
"When did I bring home a drag queen?" Danny said. "Wait, is Simon secretly a drag queen? I'm not sure how we could market that. Plus, also, I think you brought him home, not me."
"It's all one or the other," Matt said. "We're running the Studio 60 Starving Comedians' Hostel. I should write a sketch about it. You brought a drag queen home in 1988. Or maybe 1987."
"You have a memory like an elephant," Danny said.
"Somebody has to," Matt said, and Danny winced. The longer Danny was sober, the more things he told Matt -- things nobody else knew about, things Matt wished he didn't know about. But there was still plenty that Danny didn't remember, and Matt didn't want to know why Danny didn't remember, and so he remembered for both of them.
It was easier than letting Danny disappear again.
"I think you'll like her," Danny said.
"I already do," Matt said. "And I am suspicious of that fact, as we have already determined that you are why I never get nice things. And I have enough problems without you trying to make me fall in love with a funny woman."
"Contrary to your popular belief, not everything is about you," Danny said. "Besides, if I was trying to get you back for Mo, I would have made you pay for the lawyers who decided that she got 62% of my stuff."
Harriet auditioned for the writer's room the first week of December. After, Ricky said, "Well, she's pretty, but do we really need another pretty girl?"
Ron said, "I agree with Ricky."
Matt said, "Of course you do." He said it because he was hungover and because he had been at Studio 60 for three years and he was feeling sort of generally pissy at the world of comedy in general, and Ricky and Ron in particular.
He stood up for Harriet mostly because he woke up on the wrong side of the bed, which didn't go over well when he told her that on New Year's Eve.
Wes had liked her, though, and she'd tested well with Sim, and she could do voices, which was something they needed. So Matt's opinion hadn't mattered, in the end, but at least it was the majority opinion. He spent so much time being the damn minority in the writing room and suffering for it, suffering shitty time slots and people who couldn't handle what he wanted to be writing -- it was nice to be in the majority for once.
And she was pretty -- Matt couldn't deny that.
Danny gave her the tour the night of the last show before Christmas. Harriet was starting in January and Danny, probably because half the cast (to that point) and most of the producers (just in general in the universe) didn't like Matt and Danny very much (plus Danny was the one who had discovered Harriet playing bit parts for the Groundlings, and Wes was totally smitten with Harriet, just for existing, and Danny, just for finding her), had been saddled with showing her the place and finding her some place to watch the show from.
Matt was sitting on the floor beside Camera 3, chewing off his fingernails systematically because he was trying to quit smoking before the New Year, when Danny's feet and a pair of feet in very nice red high heels walked up beside him. "You remember Matt," Danny said.
"I thought he was taller," Harriet said. Danny grinned at her, smirked at Matt, and wandered off, leaving Harriet standing too close to Matt for his own objective comfort. Don't fall in love with everyone you see, Matt, Danny told him once, and he tried very hard not to, but Harriet was -- exactly his kind of woman. She wasn't everyone he saw.
"Very funny, funny girl," Matt said, and he grabbed the bleachers and hauled himself to his feet. She was even prettier than he remembered, and she smiled at him like he was the only person in the room. "Hi, Harriet. Welcome aboard."
"Danny says that you're the best writer on staff," she said.
"Danny tells egregious lies about me, and also he has been divorced twice," Matt said. "Believe nothing that he says."
"That's what he said about you," Harriet said, and her mouth quirked up in a way that said to Matt, this girl is a keeper.
"Pathological, both of us," Matt said, and somebody hissed at them to stop flirting and shut the hell up, and Harriet flushed bright red. He put a hand on her arm and pulled her out of the studio, into the hallway. "You'll get used to it."
"I hope so," Harriet said, and she leaned up and kissed him on the cheek and turned away. "It was nice to see you again, Matt."
"Yeah," Matt said. "You too."
Then he turned around, took two steps, and walked straight into a closed door.
When Matt came to, in one of the dressing rooms, Danny was smirking at him. "Well, that was new," he said.
"Shut up," Matt said.
"She's going to make you a star," Danny said. He looked somewhere between thrilled and terrified about this idea.
"You're crazy," Matt said, and he staggered to his feet and went to write the first sketch he ever wrote for Harriet.
It bombed. Matt thinks that maybe should have been a sign, but it wasn't -- at least, it wasn't then.
October 2003
Three things happened in October 2003, too: he and Danny quit Studio 60; all the newspapers reported that he and Danny had been fired from Studio 60; and Matt fell in love with Harriet Hayes for the first but not the last time.
Matt drank a lot, and despite the fact that he was in love with Harriet desperately, they fought a lot, too. Danny said it wasn't healthy, but Matt said, "Says the man almost decapitated by a bottle of brandy."
"Shut the hell up," Danny said, and went back to fiddling with their joint bank account. He'd been fiddling for weeks, and Matt left him to it, because Matt needed money for three things: cigarettes, gas, and beer. Everything else Danny wrote checks for -- the rent, the utilities, the insurance on the beater they were still sharing.
"You shut up," Matt said. "How bad is it?"
"The thing about you quitting in a blaze of glory," Danny said, "is that there's no severance pay. So -- pretty bad."
"You don't sound pretty bad," Matt said. Danny was shuffling money frantically, but he wasn't worried about it like he'd been worried about it in 1988 or 1995 or even in 1999, when their salaries from the show were more than enough to keep Mo's alimony paid and a roof over their heads.
"$427.06," Danny said. "After the rent check clears."
"That's not something to be cheerful about," Matt said. "You're suspiciously cheerful. Have you talked to your sponsor this week?"
"I could not afford to buy cocaine if I wanted to, Matthew," Danny said. "Well -- I always want to. I could not afford to buy cocaine even if I wasn't sober. Has Harriet called?"
"We're off again," Matt said. Seemed like they spent more time off than on lately; he knew he wasn't much fun to be around -- and Danny had stopped letting him buy beer, which either made him more or less fun, Danny said the jury was still out -- but he missed her. Or maybe he missed the idea of having someone other than Danny to listen to. He'd found a bottle of gin in the back of their ice-covered freezer and was well on his way to nicely toasted.
Matt's slightly pickled brain informed him that if he stopped thinking about what was best for Danny first, Matt and Harriet might not be off again. Matt thought, it's not that easy to break 15 years of habit, and took another swig of gin. Matt's brain informed him that they needed more ice, and he should probably see a therapist about that codependency thing he and Danny had going on.
"Are we codependent?" Matt said.
"What, are you thinking about couples therapy?" Danny said. "Because I think that's really something you should take Harriet to."
"Do we spend too much time together?"
Danny leaned over from his spot on the end of the couch and snagged the glass out of Matt's hand, sniffing carefully. "No gin, either, Matthew," he said, but he handed the glass back to Matt, and turned his head back to the laptop in front of him.
"I found it in the freezer," Matt said. "I was trying to defrost it."
"Is that why there were puddles of water all over the kitchen when I came back from my meeting on Thursday? As well as why you were sleeping in the middle of the afternoon when you were supposed to be writing?"
"I'm unemployed," Matt said. "And my girlfriend won't return my phone calls, possibly because the network has told her that she is no longer allowed to be seen with a disgraced failure of a comedy writer."
"Jack Rudolph may have told her that," Danny said. "But the network as a whole did not."
"Have you always been an eternal optimist?" Matt said. "Because if that's the case, I'd like to find a time machine and go back to 1987 and not give you the time of day."
"I had a meeting on Thursday," Danny said.
"You always have meetings on Thursdays," Matt said.
"Wrong meeting," Danny said. "Meeting with Universal. They have a script that they want me to direct."
Matt sat up sharply and smacked his forehead on the coffee table. He pressed the glass of gin against the rising bump and said, "Hey, Danny, that's fantastic."
"It's a pretty good script," Danny said. His voice was careful, and Matt tried to focus on Danny's face, turned away from him in the dark living room. Why they were sitting around in the apartment with all the lights off was beyond him, but then again -- there was a lot that, even after 15 years, was still beyond Matt. Why he and Danny were living together in a three bedroom condo when they could have bought their own places by now; why Matt hadn't bothered to buy a car when he finally got his driver's license, just drove Danny's.
Because, Matt's brain said, Danny is the first person that you look for when you finish something good. Because even before Harriet, you write for Danny.
Shut up, Matt said to his brain. "Is it?" he said to Danny.
"Yeah," Danny said. "Young guy, never had anything produced for the big screen before."
"That's good," Matt said. His chest felt suddenly tight, the idea of Danny directing someone else's work -- Matt's stuff at Studio 60 was directed, produced, by plenty of people on staff who weren't Danny, but Danny didn't produce anything that wasn't Matt's. Once upon a time he had, but not recently -- not now.
Danny looked over at him, and the corner of his mouth twitched. "Don't be stupid," Danny said. "I took them your script. Months ago, I sent it to the one guy I knew at Universal."
"My script," Matt said. "Wait, the one I wrote when you were ..."
"Yeah," Danny said.
Matt said, "Huh."
"They want rewrites," Danny said. "But they liked the premise."
Matt said, "Huh."
Danny said, "They're going to pay us a lot of money."
Matt said, "Does this mean I can buy beer again?"
"Yes, Matthew," Danny said, and then he started laughing, head back, face totally unguarded, and Matt thought, who needs anyone but Danny.
December 2007
"Is Michael Dukakis timeless humor?"
"I don't think Michael Dukakis was ever timely humor," Danny says, squinting at Matt. Danny is haloed against the window in Matt's office by the Christmas lights that Cal and Suzanne strung around the balconies. "What are you looking at?"
Matt smoothes the pages he's holding in his hands, and shrugs.
Danny crosses the room and pulls the pages out of Matt's hands, scanning Matt's college scrawl quickly. "I didn't know you still had this."
"Beginning of a beautiful friendship," Matt says.
"Something like that," Danny says.
Matt says, "Merry Christmas."
"Happy Hanukkah," Danny says. He drops down on the couch next to Matt, and his hands are still. He tilts his head toward Matt, a gesture so familiar that it makes Matt's heart clench. "Things will work out with Harriet. And the show."
"Mm," Matt says. They may, and they may not. Harriet will always be a constant in his life, like Danny, two fixed stars to navigate by, but sometimes he's almost stopped kidding himself that he and Harriet are meant to be, and the show is the show -- it is what it is, and Matt loves it, and if it disappeared tomorrow, he'd get up and write something else. "If they don't, I've always got you."
"Yeah," Danny says, and they sit on the couch in the office that Matt still thinks of as Wes Mandell's, and they watch the Christmas lights blink like stars.
*
author's notes: i started this months ago, and it stalled out horrifically about thanksgiving. i owe maggie and the queen a huge debt of gratitude for both cheerleading as i got back to work on it and betaing when it was done. the title is a quote from joe bill, one half of two men in a boat, an improv show in chicago that matt would probably hate.