Sports Night fic: You Forgot Cranberries Too
Title: You Forgot Cranberries Too
Fandom: Sports Night
Characters: Casey McCall, Dan Rydell
Rating: PG
Category: Gen, slash undertones; 2,000 words
Summary: These are the gifts that Casey does not buy Dan for Christmas; these are the ways Dan knows Casey.
Written: For lordessrenegade, Christmas, 2006.
A huge - HUGE! - debt of thanks is owed to quiesce, who coded this for me, columns and fonts and all. I might have been able to figure it out eventually by myself, but not without an awful lot of grief and headdesking. If you're dumb, surround yourself with smart people. It works every time. Thank you!
You Forgot Cranberries Too
Casey goes through this same thing every year. What do guys get guys? Special guys. But not … you know. Not like that.
Really. Not like that.
*
Dan loves music. So, CDs. Casey wanders the aisles of Tower Records, turning cases over and over in his hands. Jazz (fusion, bebop, swing), blues, country (what the hell is alt.country?), folk (Celtic, American, African, Indian … why is there no Australian folk music?), world music (as opposed to what?), pop, rock, dance, hip-hop (isn't hip-hop a dance?), metal, alternative, indie … what does any of it mean? Who knew music could be so complicated?
Plus, of course, he has no idea in the first place what Danny already has, or what sort of thing he might like. Most of what Dan listens to is so much noise to Casey's ears. So he heads on down the stairs.Dan doesn't really buy CDs much any more. New stuff he downloads, and he scouts out vintage vinyl in the hidden, tucked-away, forgotten record shops of the East Village. On Christmas Eve, he walks into Tower Records, glances around the shelves, and scoops up two albums: an indie sampler, Anthems - one day he will succeed in broadening Casey's musical palate - and a compilation of number one hits from the year Casey was born, because that day is not this day. Casey will play each of them once only, but Charlie will pounce on them both, carry them away to rip to his iPod, and they'll never be seen again.
**
The video and DVD section's no more help. Same problem: see under 'CDs' and 'what does Dan already have?' They're plugging a big new computer game this year. Does Dan even play computer games? Surely he's too old for that sort of thing? But - then again: this is Danny. And he does always seem to know what Charlie's talking about.
Maybe he should buy the game for Charlie … except it's the sort that Lisa won't have in the house, all car chases and gunfights. (Casey's none too sure himself about the morality of it all. But he's happy to let Lisa play the killjoy on this one.)
No. Nothing that's helpful here.Last Christmas, Casey's present had almost bought itself: a deluxe boxed set of every one of the Rocky films, #1-#5, with outtakes, directors' commentaries, and an entire disc of bonus material. Casey had unwrapped the package with his usual meticulous, maddening care, stripping away the tape and rolling it into a neat ball, folding back the paper, but decorum was forgotten when he saw what it was. His face had split into a huge, delighted grin, he'd hugged Dan till his spine cracked, then plonked himself down on the couch with a bowl of popcorn and a supply of beer and, apart from bathroom breaks, that was the last anyone saw of him for hours.
**
Next up: Barnes & Noble. But this is the same thing all over again. Only worse. He's seen Dan's bookshelves. No - correction. No-one's seen Dan's bookshelves for years. Or his floor. Or almost any flat surface in his apartment. It's got to be a fire hazard, but Dan seems comfortable with it.
Casey checks through the bestsellers anyhow, on the off-chance that something will catch his eye. There's a handful of minor-celebrity autobiographies (so-called; he's met some of these people, they couldn't tell one end of a pen from the other. Still, even ghostwriters must eat), some would-be humorous seasonal offerings, good only for bathroom reading, a few new novels by veteran writers whose best years are long behind them. Useless.Buying books for Casey is the easiest thing in the world. Books on sports. Books about sports. Books on sporting history. Novels with a sports theme. And if even the most minor, most uninteresting (and most blatantly ghostwritten) sporting personality has a new book out, Casey will be first in line for it the morning of publication. The only problem is keeping track. You can't just go over to his apartment and check what's on the shelves; Casey is one of those weird people who'll read a book once, then pass it on, or give it to a book drive. He's got that freaky, almost eidetic memory for sports trivia, of course, but, even so; doesn't he miss the tactile experience?
Dan supposes not.
**
Okay, then. He'll abandon the pursuit of culture, and get back to grass roots. Or, possibly, Astroturf roots he muses, as the doors of Sports Authority swing shut behind him. He's on familiar ground here. But … once again: but. He knows Dan. He's a creature of habit. He'll exclaim in delight over a new catcher's mitt, a designer racquet; a few weeks later, he'll be back to the old one, shaped and moulded to his hand. It'd just be a waste of money.
Although golf balls are always useful.
'Useful.' The very essence of what you want out of a Christmas gift.Dan's closet is stuffed full of sports gear - gloves, mitts, racquets, bats, balls, skates, skis; it's like a museum of sporting history in there, some of that stuff dates back almost fifteen years. Maybe he should charge an entrance fee. He drags it all out from time to time, looks it over, thinks about disposing of some of it, but then feels guilty. Most of these things were gifts, well-intentioned if not well-thought-out. The fact is, he has just a few things that he's used to, that he's comfortable with, and those are what he tends to stick to. Literally, on a hot, sweaty day.
Although golf balls are always useful.
**
Macy's window catches Casey's eye as he wanders. Clothing? Dan is always so effortlessly well-dressed, cool without any potentially fatal attempt to be trendy. Something safe. A sweater, a scarf, a tie? Socks?
Boring. Utilitarian. No.Sometimes Dan looks at Casey, as Casey comes into the room, and wishes he were Natalie and could drag him out shopping. He's a good-looking man; there's no need for him to dress like a geography teacher.
Dan's dropped hints. God knows. But can you say 'stony ground'?
**
Cologne?
No. More than vaguely gay.Dan had almost - almost! - weaned Casey off his lifelong addiction to English Leather cologne. Then Charlie bought him a giant bottle for Father's Day, and it was back to square one.
**
He's in the basement now, surrounded by kitchenware. He's not sure how he got there, but now he is there, he might as well look around. He finds himself hefting a copper-bottomed saucepan with, apparently, quite serious intent. He puts it down hastily, and beats a retreat, through the garlic presses, the miniature flamethrowers (what for?!), the knife sets and spice racks and woks and the salad bowls, back up the stairs and out onto the street.Dan learned to cook when he was a kid. Mostly in sheer self-defence. Face facts: his mother wasn't going to do it, and the family had to eat. He doesn't do it much these days; just occasionally, maybe for a special date. A man who can cook? You have no idea how hot women think that is. Sometimes they only have to see his restaurant-quality kitchen equipment to lose all control.
That sounds like it ought to be a double entendre. It isn't.
*
The big stores have come up a huge, fat zero. Maybe the side streets and marketplaces will have something that'll inspire him. He takes the subway downtown, carefully tucking his wallet away in an inside pocket as he goes.
*
Stationery. Now. There's a thought. He looks at fountain pens. There's one he likes, a thick, square nib, the shaft rounded and satisfying to his hand. He buys it for himself, knowing that it would be wasted on Dan. No matter what Danny uses to write with, the results look as though a demented spider had danced a fandango in the ink. Which reminds him - ink. He turns back and adds a bottle of the distinctive purple-brown ink he favours to his purchases. And a new notebook. Moleskine, of course. And some legal pads, for scribbling. And he needs some box files, and some binders; and, while he's there, they sell the cartridges he needs for his printer - it's several years out of date, and they're hard to find. Oh - and those little plastic wallet things. One can never have enough of those.Casey, Dan knows, has a thing about stationery. He collects pens. He pretends he doesn't, but what other reason is there for a man to have 26 (Dan has counted) fountain pens in an antique, roll-top desk? He buys expensive notebooks, too. Dan suspects him of using them to write poetry.
Dan himself never writes anything by hand if he can help it. His teachers, from elementary school onward, tried to force him to use his right hand for everything, and his penmanship - to say nothing of his central cortex - has never recovered. He smiles dutifully when Casey makes digs at his writing, but it's an effort. Does he think he writes that way on purpose, for crying out loud?!
**
By the time he gets out of the stationery store, he has three big, bulky shopping bags, and the handles are digging into his fingers, gloves notwithstanding. He's tired, he's spent too much, and he still hasn't got anything for Dan. He wanders through the nearest doorway in the hopes of divine inspiration. It's a tiny place that specialises, so far as he can see, in what they probably like to call antiques and curios. 'Junk', in other words. He sets his bags on the floor and picks up a couple of little carved figures, ivory (fake, he hopes, or really antique) and jade (probably also fake). There's a rabbit gazing at the moon, a dragon curled around a pearl. They're different. And cute. Dan likes odd things, unusual things. Almost, Casey is tempted. Except … wait. Aren't these Zodiac figures? Something to do with Chinese horoscopes, with one's birth year? If that's so, then which one relates to the year Dan was born …?
He doesn't know. He turns and leaves. A netsuke dog gazes after him, wistful and reproaching.Dan's grandmother had been an avid antique collector. As a kid, Dan had enjoying going along with her on her treasure hunts. Later, he'd begun to wonder if she'd been looking for something specific, something that had been lost or taken from her. If so, he never knew; and she never found it. He haunts junk shops himself now, running his hands through the discard bins of cheap bric-a-brac, sometimes picking up a good piece that's caught his eye. He doesn't pay much mind to style or provenance or value; these are just things. They're nice to have around.
You have to surround yourself with stuff: books and records, ornaments, oddments. These are the things that give shape to your existence, surround the floating void that is your inner self. Surround it, protect it, conceal it; a barrier, a barricade. A wall, tall as the sky and broad as the horizon, with only a crack here and there through with you'll sometimes peek to see if the world's changed yet, become safer, kinder.
Maybe one day.
*
Casey stops at the mom & pop grocery on Dan's corner, picks up a bottle of Scotch and a box of Mallomars, and a gift bag. In the elevator, he peels off price tags and performs an emergency gift-wrap.
"Merry Christmas," he says, as Dan answers the door, and, embarrassed, thrusts the sad little package into Dan's hands. "It's not much …"
Dan grins. "Nope, it's not," he says cheerfully, before he's even looked. "Hey, it's the thought …"
Casey laughs too. If that's the case, then Dan wins, for sure. He says so. Dan smiles: a small, private smile, the one that Casey's seen a hundred times, has never understood, has never asked.
If Casey did ask, Dan would tell him this:
Idiot. You don't have to try so hard. All I really want is you. And I've got you. All of you I'll ever have. Enough to get by.
(Casey will never ask.)
***
Fandom: Sports Night
Characters: Casey McCall, Dan Rydell
Rating: PG
Category: Gen, slash undertones; 2,000 words
Summary: These are the gifts that Casey does not buy Dan for Christmas; these are the ways Dan knows Casey.
Written: For lordessrenegade, Christmas, 2006.
A huge - HUGE! - debt of thanks is owed to quiesce, who coded this for me, columns and fonts and all. I might have been able to figure it out eventually by myself, but not without an awful lot of grief and headdesking. If you're dumb, surround yourself with smart people. It works every time. Thank you!
You Forgot Cranberries Too
Casey goes through this same thing every year. What do guys get guys? Special guys. But not … you know. Not like that.
Really. Not like that.
*
Dan loves music. So, CDs. Casey wanders the aisles of Tower Records, turning cases over and over in his hands. Jazz (fusion, bebop, swing), blues, country (what the hell is alt.country?), folk (Celtic, American, African, Indian … why is there no Australian folk music?), world music (as opposed to what?), pop, rock, dance, hip-hop (isn't hip-hop a dance?), metal, alternative, indie … what does any of it mean? Who knew music could be so complicated?
Plus, of course, he has no idea in the first place what Danny already has, or what sort of thing he might like. Most of what Dan listens to is so much noise to Casey's ears. So he heads on down the stairs.Dan doesn't really buy CDs much any more. New stuff he downloads, and he scouts out vintage vinyl in the hidden, tucked-away, forgotten record shops of the East Village. On Christmas Eve, he walks into Tower Records, glances around the shelves, and scoops up two albums: an indie sampler, Anthems - one day he will succeed in broadening Casey's musical palate - and a compilation of number one hits from the year Casey was born, because that day is not this day. Casey will play each of them once only, but Charlie will pounce on them both, carry them away to rip to his iPod, and they'll never be seen again.
**
The video and DVD section's no more help. Same problem: see under 'CDs' and 'what does Dan already have?' They're plugging a big new computer game this year. Does Dan even play computer games? Surely he's too old for that sort of thing? But - then again: this is Danny. And he does always seem to know what Charlie's talking about.
Maybe he should buy the game for Charlie … except it's the sort that Lisa won't have in the house, all car chases and gunfights. (Casey's none too sure himself about the morality of it all. But he's happy to let Lisa play the killjoy on this one.)
No. Nothing that's helpful here.Last Christmas, Casey's present had almost bought itself: a deluxe boxed set of every one of the Rocky films, #1-#5, with outtakes, directors' commentaries, and an entire disc of bonus material. Casey had unwrapped the package with his usual meticulous, maddening care, stripping away the tape and rolling it into a neat ball, folding back the paper, but decorum was forgotten when he saw what it was. His face had split into a huge, delighted grin, he'd hugged Dan till his spine cracked, then plonked himself down on the couch with a bowl of popcorn and a supply of beer and, apart from bathroom breaks, that was the last anyone saw of him for hours.
**
Next up: Barnes & Noble. But this is the same thing all over again. Only worse. He's seen Dan's bookshelves. No - correction. No-one's seen Dan's bookshelves for years. Or his floor. Or almost any flat surface in his apartment. It's got to be a fire hazard, but Dan seems comfortable with it.
Casey checks through the bestsellers anyhow, on the off-chance that something will catch his eye. There's a handful of minor-celebrity autobiographies (so-called; he's met some of these people, they couldn't tell one end of a pen from the other. Still, even ghostwriters must eat), some would-be humorous seasonal offerings, good only for bathroom reading, a few new novels by veteran writers whose best years are long behind them. Useless.Buying books for Casey is the easiest thing in the world. Books on sports. Books about sports. Books on sporting history. Novels with a sports theme. And if even the most minor, most uninteresting (and most blatantly ghostwritten) sporting personality has a new book out, Casey will be first in line for it the morning of publication. The only problem is keeping track. You can't just go over to his apartment and check what's on the shelves; Casey is one of those weird people who'll read a book once, then pass it on, or give it to a book drive. He's got that freaky, almost eidetic memory for sports trivia, of course, but, even so; doesn't he miss the tactile experience?
Dan supposes not.
**
Okay, then. He'll abandon the pursuit of culture, and get back to grass roots. Or, possibly, Astroturf roots he muses, as the doors of Sports Authority swing shut behind him. He's on familiar ground here. But … once again: but. He knows Dan. He's a creature of habit. He'll exclaim in delight over a new catcher's mitt, a designer racquet; a few weeks later, he'll be back to the old one, shaped and moulded to his hand. It'd just be a waste of money.
Although golf balls are always useful.
'Useful.' The very essence of what you want out of a Christmas gift.Dan's closet is stuffed full of sports gear - gloves, mitts, racquets, bats, balls, skates, skis; it's like a museum of sporting history in there, some of that stuff dates back almost fifteen years. Maybe he should charge an entrance fee. He drags it all out from time to time, looks it over, thinks about disposing of some of it, but then feels guilty. Most of these things were gifts, well-intentioned if not well-thought-out. The fact is, he has just a few things that he's used to, that he's comfortable with, and those are what he tends to stick to. Literally, on a hot, sweaty day.
Although golf balls are always useful.
**
Macy's window catches Casey's eye as he wanders. Clothing? Dan is always so effortlessly well-dressed, cool without any potentially fatal attempt to be trendy. Something safe. A sweater, a scarf, a tie? Socks?
Boring. Utilitarian. No.Sometimes Dan looks at Casey, as Casey comes into the room, and wishes he were Natalie and could drag him out shopping. He's a good-looking man; there's no need for him to dress like a geography teacher.
Dan's dropped hints. God knows. But can you say 'stony ground'?
**
Cologne?
No. More than vaguely gay.Dan had almost - almost! - weaned Casey off his lifelong addiction to English Leather cologne. Then Charlie bought him a giant bottle for Father's Day, and it was back to square one.
**
He's in the basement now, surrounded by kitchenware. He's not sure how he got there, but now he is there, he might as well look around. He finds himself hefting a copper-bottomed saucepan with, apparently, quite serious intent. He puts it down hastily, and beats a retreat, through the garlic presses, the miniature flamethrowers (what for?!), the knife sets and spice racks and woks and the salad bowls, back up the stairs and out onto the street.Dan learned to cook when he was a kid. Mostly in sheer self-defence. Face facts: his mother wasn't going to do it, and the family had to eat. He doesn't do it much these days; just occasionally, maybe for a special date. A man who can cook? You have no idea how hot women think that is. Sometimes they only have to see his restaurant-quality kitchen equipment to lose all control.
That sounds like it ought to be a double entendre. It isn't.
*
The big stores have come up a huge, fat zero. Maybe the side streets and marketplaces will have something that'll inspire him. He takes the subway downtown, carefully tucking his wallet away in an inside pocket as he goes.
*
Stationery. Now. There's a thought. He looks at fountain pens. There's one he likes, a thick, square nib, the shaft rounded and satisfying to his hand. He buys it for himself, knowing that it would be wasted on Dan. No matter what Danny uses to write with, the results look as though a demented spider had danced a fandango in the ink. Which reminds him - ink. He turns back and adds a bottle of the distinctive purple-brown ink he favours to his purchases. And a new notebook. Moleskine, of course. And some legal pads, for scribbling. And he needs some box files, and some binders; and, while he's there, they sell the cartridges he needs for his printer - it's several years out of date, and they're hard to find. Oh - and those little plastic wallet things. One can never have enough of those.Casey, Dan knows, has a thing about stationery. He collects pens. He pretends he doesn't, but what other reason is there for a man to have 26 (Dan has counted) fountain pens in an antique, roll-top desk? He buys expensive notebooks, too. Dan suspects him of using them to write poetry.
Dan himself never writes anything by hand if he can help it. His teachers, from elementary school onward, tried to force him to use his right hand for everything, and his penmanship - to say nothing of his central cortex - has never recovered. He smiles dutifully when Casey makes digs at his writing, but it's an effort. Does he think he writes that way on purpose, for crying out loud?!
**
By the time he gets out of the stationery store, he has three big, bulky shopping bags, and the handles are digging into his fingers, gloves notwithstanding. He's tired, he's spent too much, and he still hasn't got anything for Dan. He wanders through the nearest doorway in the hopes of divine inspiration. It's a tiny place that specialises, so far as he can see, in what they probably like to call antiques and curios. 'Junk', in other words. He sets his bags on the floor and picks up a couple of little carved figures, ivory (fake, he hopes, or really antique) and jade (probably also fake). There's a rabbit gazing at the moon, a dragon curled around a pearl. They're different. And cute. Dan likes odd things, unusual things. Almost, Casey is tempted. Except … wait. Aren't these Zodiac figures? Something to do with Chinese horoscopes, with one's birth year? If that's so, then which one relates to the year Dan was born …?
He doesn't know. He turns and leaves. A netsuke dog gazes after him, wistful and reproaching.Dan's grandmother had been an avid antique collector. As a kid, Dan had enjoying going along with her on her treasure hunts. Later, he'd begun to wonder if she'd been looking for something specific, something that had been lost or taken from her. If so, he never knew; and she never found it. He haunts junk shops himself now, running his hands through the discard bins of cheap bric-a-brac, sometimes picking up a good piece that's caught his eye. He doesn't pay much mind to style or provenance or value; these are just things. They're nice to have around.
You have to surround yourself with stuff: books and records, ornaments, oddments. These are the things that give shape to your existence, surround the floating void that is your inner self. Surround it, protect it, conceal it; a barrier, a barricade. A wall, tall as the sky and broad as the horizon, with only a crack here and there through with you'll sometimes peek to see if the world's changed yet, become safer, kinder.
Maybe one day.
*
Casey stops at the mom & pop grocery on Dan's corner, picks up a bottle of Scotch and a box of Mallomars, and a gift bag. In the elevator, he peels off price tags and performs an emergency gift-wrap.
"Merry Christmas," he says, as Dan answers the door, and, embarrassed, thrusts the sad little package into Dan's hands. "It's not much …"
Dan grins. "Nope, it's not," he says cheerfully, before he's even looked. "Hey, it's the thought …"
Casey laughs too. If that's the case, then Dan wins, for sure. He says so. Dan smiles: a small, private smile, the one that Casey's seen a hundred times, has never understood, has never asked.
If Casey did ask, Dan would tell him this:
Idiot. You don't have to try so hard. All I really want is you. And I've got you. All of you I'll ever have. Enough to get by.
(Casey will never ask.)
***